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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Zanoni, by Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Zanoni
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+Release Date: February 18, 2006 [EBook #2664]
+Last Updated: August 29, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZANONI ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dave Ceponis, Sue Asscher and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+ZANONI
+
+BY
+
+EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
+
+
+(PLATE: “Thou art good and fair,” said Viola. Drawn by P. Kauffmann,
+etched by Deblois.)
+
+
+DEDICATORY EPISTLE First prefixed to the Edition of 1845
+
+
+TO
+
+JOHN GIBSON, R.A., SCULPTOR.
+
+In looking round the wide and luminous circle of our great living
+Englishmen, to select one to whom I might fitly dedicate this work,--one
+who, in his life as in his genius, might illustrate the principle I have
+sought to convey; elevated by the ideal which he exalts, and
+serenely dwelling in a glorious existence with the images born of his
+imagination,--in looking round for some such man, my thoughts rested
+upon you. Afar from our turbulent cabals; from the ignoble jealousy and
+the sordid strife which degrade and acerbate the ambition of Genius,--in
+your Roman Home, you have lived amidst all that is loveliest and least
+perishable in the past, and contributed with the noblest aims, and in
+the purest spirit, to the mighty heirlooms of the future. Your youth has
+been devoted to toil, that your manhood may be consecrated to fame: a
+fame unsullied by one desire of gold. You have escaped the two worst
+perils that beset the artist in our time and land,--the debasing
+tendencies of commerce, and the angry rivalries of competition. You have
+not wrought your marble for the market,--you have not been tempted, by
+the praises which our vicious criticism has showered upon exaggeration
+and distortion, to lower your taste to the level of the hour; you
+have lived, and you have laboured, as if you had no rivals but in the
+dead,--no purchasers, save in judges of what is best. In the divine
+priesthood of the beautiful, you have sought only to increase her
+worshippers and enrich her temples. The pupil of Canova, you have
+inherited his excellences, while you have shunned his errors,--yours his
+delicacy, not his affectation. Your heart resembles him even more
+than your genius: you have the same noble enthusiasm for your sublime
+profession; the same lofty freedom from envy, and the spirit that
+depreciates; the same generous desire not to war with but to serve
+artists in your art; aiding, strengthening, advising, elevating the
+timidity of inexperience, and the vague aspirations of youth. By
+the intuition of a kindred mind, you have equalled the learning
+of Winckelman, and the plastic poetry of Goethe, in the intimate
+comprehension of the antique. Each work of yours, rightly studied, is in
+itself a CRITICISM, illustrating the sublime secrets of the Grecian
+Art, which, without the servility of plagiarism, you have contributed to
+revive amongst us; in you we behold its three great and long-undetected
+principles,--simplicity, calm, and concentration.
+
+But your admiration of the Greeks has not led you to the bigotry of
+the mere antiquarian, nor made you less sensible of the unappreciated
+excellence of the mighty modern, worthy to be your countryman,--though
+till his statue is in the streets of our capital, we show ourselves not
+worthy of the glory he has shed upon our land. You have not suffered
+even your gratitude to Canova to blind you to the superiority of
+Flaxman. When we become sensible of our title-deeds to renown in that
+single name, we may look for an English public capable of real patronage
+to English Art,--and not till then.
+
+I, artist in words, dedicate, then, to you, artist whose ideas speak in
+marble, this well-loved work of my matured manhood. I love it not the
+less because it has been little understood and superficially judged
+by the common herd: it was not meant for them. I love it not the more
+because it has found enthusiastic favorers amongst the Few. My affection
+for my work is rooted in the solemn and pure delight which it gave me
+to conceive and to perform. If I had graven it on the rocks of a desert,
+this apparition of my own innermost mind, in its least-clouded moments,
+would have been to me as dear; and this ought, I believe, to be the
+sentiment with which he whose Art is born of faith in the truth and
+beauty of the principles he seeks to illustrate, should regard his work.
+Your serener existence, uniform and holy, my lot denies,--if my heart
+covets. But our true nature is in our thoughts, not our deeds: and
+therefore, in books--which ARE his thoughts--the author’s character lies
+bare to the discerning eye. It is not in the life of cities,--in the
+turmoil and the crowd; it is in the still, the lonely, and more sacred
+life, which for some hours, under every sun, the student lives (his
+stolen retreat from the Agora to the Cave), that I feel there is between
+us the bond of that secret sympathy, that magnetic chain, which unites
+the everlasting brotherhood of whose being Zanoni is the type.
+
+E.B.L. London, May, 1845.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+One of the peculiarities of Bulwer was his passion for occult studies.
+They had a charm for him early in life, and he pursued them with the
+earnestness which characterised his pursuit of other studies. He
+became absorbed in wizard lore; he equipped himself with magical
+implements,--with rods for transmitting influence, and crystal balls
+in which to discern coming scenes and persons; and communed with
+spiritualists and mediums. The fruit of these mystic studies is seen in
+“Zanoni” and “A strange Story,” romances which were a labour of love to
+the author, and into which he threw all the power he possessed,--power
+re-enforced by multifarious reading and an instinctive appreciation
+of Oriental thought. These weird stories, in which the author has
+formulated his theory of magic, are of a wholly different type from his
+previous fictions, and, in place of the heroes and villains of every
+day life, we have beings that belong in part to another sphere, and that
+deal with mysterious and occult agencies. Once more the old forgotten
+lore of the Cabala is unfolded; the furnace of the alchemist, whose
+fires have been extinct for centuries, is lighted anew, and the lamp
+of the Rosicrucian re-illumined. No other works of the author,
+contradictory as have been the opinions of them, have provoked such
+a diversity of criticism as these. To some persons they represent
+a temporary aberration of genius rather than any serious thought or
+definite purpose; while others regard them as surpassing in bold and
+original speculation, profound analysis of character, and thrilling
+interest, all of the author’s other works. The truth, we believe,
+lies midway between these extremes. It is questionable whether the
+introduction into a novel of such subjects as are discussed in these
+romances be not an offence against good sense and good taste; but it
+is as unreasonable to deny the vigour and originality of their author’s
+conceptions, as to deny that the execution is imperfect, and, at times,
+bungling and absurd.
+
+It has been justly said that the present half century has witnessed
+the rise and triumphs of science, the extent and marvels of which even
+Bacon’s fancy never conceived, simultaneously with superstitions grosser
+than any which Bacon’s age believed. “The one is, in fact, the
+natural reaction from the other. The more science seeks to exclude
+the miraculous, and reduce all nature, animate and inanimate, to an
+invariable law of sequences, the more does the natural instinct of man
+rebel, and seek an outlet for those obstinate questionings, those ‘blank
+misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realised,’ taking
+refuge in delusions as degrading as any of the so-called Dark Ages.” It
+was the revolt from the chilling materialism of the age which inspired
+the mystic creations of “Zanoni” and “A Strange Story.” Of these works,
+which support and supplement each other, one is the contemplation of our
+actual life through a spiritual medium, the other is designed to show
+that, without some gleams of the supernatural, man is not man, nor
+nature nature.
+
+In “Zanoni” the author introduces us to two human beings who have
+achieved immortality: one, Mejnour, void of all passion or feeling,
+calm, benignant, bloodless, an intellect rather than a man; the other,
+Zanoni, the pupil of Mejnour, the representative of an ideal life in
+its utmost perfection, possessing eternal youth, absolute power, and
+absolute knowledge, and withal the fullest capacity to enjoy and to
+love, and, as a necessity of that love, to sorrow and despair. By his
+love for Viola Zanoni is compelled to descend from his exalted state,
+to lose his eternal calm, and to share in the cares and anxieties of
+humanity; and this degradation is completed by the birth of a child.
+Finally, he gives up the life which hangs on that of another, in order
+to save that other, the loving and beloved wife, who has delivered
+him from his solitude and isolation. Wife and child are mortal, and to
+outlive them and his love for them is impossible. But Mejnour, who is
+the impersonation of thought,--pure intellect without affection,--lives
+on.
+
+Bulwer has himself justly characterised this work, in the Introduction,
+as a romance and not a romance, as a truth for those who can comprehend
+it, and an extravagance for those who cannot. The most careless or
+matter-of-fact reader must see that the work, like the enigmatical
+“Faust,” deals in types and symbols; that the writer intends to suggest
+to the mind something more subtle and impalpable than that which is
+embodied to the senses. What that something is, hardly two persons will
+agree. The most obvious interpretation of the types is, that in Zanoni
+the author depicts to us humanity, perfected, sublimed, which lives
+not for self, but for others; in Mejnour, as we have before said, cold,
+passionless, self-sufficing intellect; in Glyndon, the young Englishman,
+the mingled strength and weakness of human nature; in the heartless,
+selfish artist, Nicot, icy, soulless atheism, believing nothing, hoping
+nothing, trusting and loving nothing; and in the beautiful, artless
+Viola, an exquisite creation, pure womanhood, loving, trusting and
+truthful. As a work of art the romance is one of great power. It is
+original in its conception, and pervaded by one central idea; but
+it would have been improved, we think, by a more sparing use of the
+supernatural. The inevitable effect of so much hackneyed diablerie--of
+such an accumulation of wonder upon wonder--is to deaden the impression
+they would naturally make upon us. In Hawthorne’s tales we see with what
+ease a great imaginative artist can produce a deeper thrill by a far
+slighter use of the weird and the mysterious.
+
+The chief interest of the story for the ordinary reader centres, not in
+its ghostly characters and improbable machinery, the scenes in Mejnour’s
+chamber in the ruined castle among the Apennines, the colossal and
+appalling apparitions on Vesuvius, the hideous phantom with its burning
+eye that haunted Glyndon, but in the loves of Viola and the mysterious
+Zanoni, the blissful and the fearful scenes through which they pass,
+and their final destiny, when the hero of the story sacrifices his
+own “charmed life” to save hers, and the Immortal finds the only true
+immortality in death. Among the striking passages in the work are the
+pathetic sketch of the old violinist and composer, Pisani, with his
+sympathetic “barbiton” which moaned, groaned, growled, and laughed
+responsive to the feelings of its master; the description of Viola’s and
+her father’s triumph, when “The Siren,” his masterpiece, is performed at
+the San Carlo in Naples; Glyndon’s adventure at the Carnival in Naples;
+the death of his sister; the vivid pictures of the Reign of Terror in
+Paris, closing with the downfall of Robespierre and his satellites; and
+perhaps, above all, the thrilling scene where Zanoni leaves Viola asleep
+in prison when his guards call him to execution, and she, unconscious of
+the terrible sacrifice, but awaking and missing him, has a vision of the
+procession to the guillotine, with Zanoni there, radiant in youth
+and beauty, followed by the sudden vanishing of the headsman,--the
+horror,--and the “Welcome” of her loved one to Heaven in a myriad of
+melodies from the choral hosts above.
+
+“Zanoni” was originally published by Saunders and Otley, London, in
+three volumes 12mo., in 1842. A translation into French, made by M.
+Sheldon under the direction of P. Lorain, was published in Paris in the
+“Bibliotheque des Meilleurs Romans Etrangers.”
+
+W.M.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1853.
+
+As a work of imagination, “Zanoni” ranks, perhaps, amongst the highest
+of my prose fictions. In the Poem of “King Arthur,” published many years
+afterwards, I have taken up an analogous design, in the contemplation
+of our positive life through a spiritual medium; and I have enforced,
+through a far wider development, and, I believe, with more complete and
+enduring success, that harmony between the external events which are
+all that the superficial behold on the surface of human affairs, and the
+subtle and intellectual agencies which in reality influence the conduct
+of individuals, and shape out the destinies of the world. As man has two
+lives,--that of action and that of thought,--so I conceive that work
+to be the truest representation of humanity which faithfully delineates
+both, and opens some elevating glimpse into the sublimest mysteries of
+our being, by establishing the inevitable union that exists between
+the plain things of the day, in which our earthly bodies perform their
+allotted part, and the latent, often uncultivated, often invisible,
+affinities of the soul with all the powers that eternally breathe and
+move throughout the Universe of Spirit.
+
+I refer those who do me the honour to read “Zanoni” with more attention
+than is given to ordinary romance, to the Poem of “King Arthur,” for
+suggestive conjecture into most of the regions of speculative research,
+affecting the higher and more important condition of our ultimate being,
+which have engaged the students of immaterial philosophy in my own age.
+
+Affixed to the “Note” with which this work concludes, and which treats
+of the distinctions between type and allegory, the reader will find,
+from the pen of one of our most eminent living writers, an ingenious
+attempt to explain the interior or typical meanings of the work now
+before him.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+It is possible that among my readers there may be a few not unacquainted
+with an old-book shop, existing some years since in the neighbourhood
+of Covent Garden; I say a few, for certainly there was little enough to
+attract the many in those precious volumes which the labour of a life
+had accumulated on the dusty shelves of my old friend D--. There were to
+be found no popular treatises, no entertaining romances, no histories,
+no travels, no “Library for the People,” no “Amusement for the Million.”
+ But there, perhaps, throughout all Europe, the curious might discover
+the most notable collection, ever amassed by an enthusiast, of the works
+of alchemist, cabalist, and astrologer. The owner had lavished a fortune
+in the purchase of unsalable treasures. But old D-- did not desire to
+sell. It absolutely went to his heart when a customer entered his shop:
+he watched the movements of the presumptuous intruder with a vindictive
+glare; he fluttered around him with uneasy vigilance,--he frowned, he
+groaned, when profane hands dislodged his idols from their niches. If
+it were one of the favourite sultanas of his wizard harem that attracted
+you, and the price named were not sufficiently enormous, he would not
+unfrequently double the sum. Demur, and in brisk delight he snatched the
+venerable charmer from your hands; accede, and he became the picture of
+despair,--nor unfrequently, at the dead of night, would he knock at your
+door, and entreat you to sell him back, at your own terms, what you had
+so egregiously bought at his. A believer himself in his Averroes and
+Paracelsus, he was as loth as the philosophers he studied to communicate
+to the profane the learning he had collected.
+
+It so chanced that some years ago, in my younger days, whether of
+authorship or life, I felt a desire to make myself acquainted with
+the true origin and tenets of the singular sect known by the name of
+Rosicrucians. Dissatisfied with the scanty and superficial accounts to
+be found in the works usually referred to on the subject, it struck
+me as possible that Mr. D--‘s collection, which was rich, not only in
+black-letter, but in manuscripts, might contain some more accurate and
+authentic records of that famous brotherhood,--written, who knows?
+by one of their own order, and confirming by authority and detail the
+pretensions to wisdom and to virtue which Bringaret had arrogated to the
+successors of the Chaldean and Gymnosophist. Accordingly I repaired to
+what, doubtless, I ought to be ashamed to confess, was once one of
+my favourite haunts. But are there no errors and no fallacies, in the
+chronicles of our own day, as absurd as those of the alchemists of old?
+Our very newspapers may seem to our posterity as full of delusions as
+the books of the alchemists do to us; not but what the press is the air
+we breathe,--and uncommonly foggy the air is too!
+
+On entering the shop, I was struck by the venerable appearance of a
+customer whom I had never seen there before. I was struck yet more
+by the respect with which he was treated by the disdainful collector.
+“Sir,” cried the last, emphatically, as I was turning over the leaves of
+the catalogue,--“sir, you are the only man I have met, in five-and-forty
+years that I have spent in these researches, who is worthy to be my
+customer. How--where, in this frivolous age, could you have acquired
+a knowledge so profound? And this august fraternity, whose doctrines,
+hinted at by the earliest philosophers, are still a mystery to the
+latest; tell me if there really exists upon the earth any book,
+any manuscript, in which their discoveries, their tenets, are to be
+learned?”
+
+At the words, “august fraternity,” I need scarcely say that my attention
+had been at once aroused, and I listened eagerly for the stranger’s
+reply.
+
+“I do not think,” said the old gentleman, “that the masters of the
+school have ever consigned, except by obscure hint and mystical parable,
+their real doctrines to the world. And I do not blame them for their
+discretion.”
+
+Here he paused, and seemed about to retire, when I said, somewhat
+abruptly, to the collector, “I see nothing, Mr. D--, in this catalogue
+which relates to the Rosicrucians!”
+
+“The Rosicrucians!” repeated the old gentleman, and in his turn he
+surveyed me with deliberate surprise. “Who but a Rosicrucian could
+explain the Rosicrucian mysteries! And can you imagine that any members
+of that sect, the most jealous of all secret societies, would themselves
+lift the veil that hides the Isis of their wisdom from the world?”
+
+“Aha!” thought I, “this, then, is ‘the august fraternity’ of which
+you spoke. Heaven be praised! I certainly have stumbled on one of the
+brotherhood.”
+
+“But,” I said aloud, “if not in books, sir, where else am I to obtain
+information? Nowadays one can hazard nothing in print without authority,
+and one may scarcely quote Shakespeare without citing chapter and verse.
+This is the age of facts,--the age of facts, sir.”
+
+“Well,” said the old gentleman, with a pleasant smile, “if we meet
+again, perhaps, at least, I may direct your researches to the proper
+source of intelligence.” And with that he buttoned his greatcoat,
+whistled to his dog, and departed.
+
+It so happened that I did meet again with the old gentleman, exactly
+four days after our brief conversation in Mr. D--‘s bookshop. I was
+riding leisurely towards Highgate, when, at the foot of its classic
+hill, I recognised the stranger; he was mounted on a black pony, and
+before him trotted his dog, which was black also.
+
+If you meet the man whom you wish to know, on horseback, at the
+commencement of a long hill, where, unless he has borrowed a friend’s
+favourite hack, he cannot, in decent humanity to the brute creation,
+ride away from you, I apprehend that it is your own fault if you have
+not gone far in your object before you have gained the top. In short, so
+well did I succeed, that on reaching Highgate the old gentleman invited
+me to rest at his house, which was a little apart from the village; and
+an excellent house it was,--small, but commodious, with a large garden,
+and commanding from the windows such a prospect as Lucretius would
+recommend to philosophers: the spires and domes of London, on a clear
+day, distinctly visible; here the Retreat of the Hermit, and there the
+Mare Magnum of the world.
+
+The walls of the principal rooms were embellished with pictures of
+extraordinary merit, and in that high school of art which is so little
+understood out of Italy. I was surprised to learn that they were all
+from the hand of the owner. My evident admiration pleased my new friend,
+and led to talk upon his part, which showed him no less elevated in his
+theories of art than an adept in the practice. Without fatiguing
+the reader with irrelevant criticism, it is necessary, perhaps, as
+elucidating much of the design and character of the work which these
+prefatory pages introduce, that I should briefly observe, that he
+insisted as much upon the connection of the arts, as a distinguished
+author has upon that of the sciences; that he held that in all works of
+imagination, whether expressed by words or by colours, the artist of the
+higher schools must make the broadest distinction between the real and
+the true,--in other words, between the imitation of actual life, and the
+exaltation of Nature into the Ideal.
+
+“The one,” said he, “is the Dutch School, the other is the Greek.”
+
+“Sir,” said I, “the Dutch is the most in fashion.”
+
+“Yes, in painting, perhaps,” answered my host, “but in literature--”
+
+“It was of literature I spoke. Our growing poets are all for simplicity
+and Betty Foy; and our critics hold it the highest praise of a work of
+imagination, to say that its characters are exact to common life, even
+in sculpture--”
+
+“In sculpture! No, no! THERE the high ideal must at least be essential!”
+
+“Pardon me; I fear you have not seen Souter Johnny and Tam O’Shanter.”
+
+“Ah!” said the old gentleman, shaking his head, “I live very much out of
+the world, I see. I suppose Shakespeare has ceased to be admired?”
+
+“On the contrary; people make the adoration of Shakespeare the excuse
+for attacking everybody else. But then our critics have discovered that
+Shakespeare is so REAL!”
+
+“Real! The poet who has never once drawn a character to be met with in
+actual life,--who has never once descended to a passion that is false,
+or a personage who is real!”
+
+I was about to reply very severely to this paradox, when I perceived
+that my companion was growing a little out of temper. And he who wishes
+to catch a Rosicrucian, must take care not to disturb the waters. I
+thought it better, therefore, to turn the conversation.
+
+“Revenons a nos moutons,” said I; “you promised to enlighten my
+ignorance as to the Rosicrucians.”
+
+“Well!” quoth he, rather sternly; “but for what purpose? Perhaps you
+desire only to enter the temple in order to ridicule the rites?”
+
+“What do you take me for! Surely, were I so inclined, the fate of the
+Abbe de Villars is a sufficient warning to all men not to treat idly
+of the realms of the Salamander and the Sylph. Everybody knows how
+mysteriously that ingenious personage was deprived of his life, in
+revenge for the witty mockeries of his ‘Comte de Gabalis.’”
+
+“Salamander and Sylph! I see that you fall into the vulgar error, and
+translate literally the allegorical language of the mystics.”
+
+With that the old gentleman condescended to enter into a very
+interesting, and, as it seemed to me, a very erudite relation, of the
+tenets of the Rosicrucians, some of whom, he asserted, still existed,
+and still prosecuted, in august secrecy, their profound researches into
+natural science and occult philosophy.
+
+“But this fraternity,” said he, “however respectable and
+virtuous,--virtuous I say, for no monastic order is more severe in the
+practice of moral precepts, or more ardent in Christian faith,--this
+fraternity is but a branch of others yet more transcendent in the powers
+they have obtained, and yet more illustrious in their origin. Are you
+acquainted with the Platonists?”
+
+“I have occasionally lost my way in their labyrinth,” said I. “Faith,
+they are rather difficult gentlemen to understand.”
+
+“Yet their knottiest problems have never yet been published. Their
+sublimest works are in manuscript, and constitute the initiatory
+learning, not only of the Rosicrucians, but of the nobler brotherhoods
+I have referred to. More solemn and sublime still is the knowledge to
+be gleaned from the elder Pythagoreans, and the immortal masterpieces of
+Apollonius.”
+
+“Apollonius, the imposter of Tyanea! are his writings extant?”
+
+“Imposter!” cried my host; “Apollonius an imposter!”
+
+“I beg your pardon; I did not know he was a friend of yours; and if
+you vouch for his character, I will believe him to have been a very
+respectable man, who only spoke the truth when he boasted of his power
+to be in two places at the same time.”
+
+“Is that so difficult?” said the old gentleman; “if so, you have never
+dreamed!”
+
+Here ended our conversation; but from that time an acquaintance was
+formed between us which lasted till my venerable friend departed
+this life. Peace to his ashes! He was a person of singular habits and
+eccentric opinions; but the chief part of his time was occupied in acts
+of quiet and unostentatious goodness. He was an enthusiast in the duties
+of the Samaritan; and as his virtues were softened by the gentlest
+charity, so his hopes were based upon the devoutest belief. He never
+conversed upon his own origin and history, nor have I ever been able to
+penetrate the darkness in which they were concealed. He seemed to have
+seen much of the world, and to have been an eye-witness of the first
+French Revolution, a subject upon which he was equally eloquent and
+instructive. At the same time he did not regard the crimes of that
+stormy period with the philosophical leniency with which enlightened
+writers (their heads safe upon their shoulders) are, in the present day,
+inclined to treat the massacres of the past: he spoke not as a student
+who had read and reasoned, but as a man who had seen and suffered. The
+old gentleman seemed alone in the world; nor did I know that he had one
+relation, till his executor, a distant cousin, residing abroad, informed
+me of the very handsome legacy which my poor friend had bequeathed
+me. This consisted, first, of a sum about which I think it best to be
+guarded, foreseeing the possibility of a new tax upon real and funded
+property; and, secondly, of certain precious manuscripts, to which the
+following volumes owe their existence.
+
+I imagine I trace this latter bequest to a visit I paid the Sage, if so
+I may be permitted to call him, a few weeks before his death.
+
+Although he read little of our modern literature, my friend, with the
+affable good-nature which belonged to him, graciously permitted me
+to consult him upon various literary undertakings meditated by the
+desultory ambition of a young and inexperienced student. And at that
+time I sought his advice upon a work of imagination, intended to depict
+the effects of enthusiasm upon different modifications of character.
+He listened to my conception, which was sufficiently trite and
+prosaic, with his usual patience; and then, thoughtfully turning to his
+bookshelves, took down an old volume, and read to me, first, in Greek,
+and secondly, in English, some extracts to the following effect:--
+
+“Plato here expresses four kinds of mania, by which I desire to
+understand enthusiasm and the inspiration of the gods: Firstly, the
+musical; secondly, the telestic or mystic; thirdly, the prophetic; and
+fourthly, that which belongs to love.”
+
+The author he quoted, after contending that there is something in the
+soul above intellect, and stating that there are in our nature distinct
+energies,--by the one of which we discover and seize, as it were,
+on sciences and theorems with almost intuitive rapidity, by
+another, through which high art is accomplished, like the statues of
+Phidias,--proceeded to state that “enthusiasm, in the true acceptation
+of the word, is, when that part of the soul which is above intellect is
+excited to the gods, and thence derives its inspiration.”
+
+The author, then pursuing his comment upon Plato, observes, that “one of
+these manias may suffice (especially that which belongs to love) to lead
+back the soul to its first divinity and happiness; but that there is
+an intimate union with them all; and that the ordinary progress through
+which the soul ascends is, primarily, through the musical; next, through
+the telestic or mystic; thirdly, through the prophetic; and lastly,
+through the enthusiasm of love.”
+
+While with a bewildered understanding and a reluctant attention I
+listened to these intricate sublimities, my adviser closed the volume,
+and said with complacency, “There is the motto for your book,--the
+thesis for your theme.”
+
+“Davus sum, non Oedipus,” said I, shaking my head, discontentedly.
+“All this may be exceedingly fine, but, Heaven forgive me,--I don’t
+understand a word of it. The mysteries of your Rosicrucians, and your
+fraternities, are mere child’s play to the jargon of the Platonists.”
+
+“Yet, not till you rightly understand this passage, can you understand
+the higher theories of the Rosicrucians, or of the still nobler
+fraternities you speak of with so much levity.”
+
+“Oh, if that be the case, I give up in despair. Why not, since you are
+so well versed in the matter, take the motto for a book of your own?”
+
+“But if I have already composed a book with that thesis for its theme,
+will you prepare it for the public?”
+
+“With the greatest pleasure,” said I,--alas, too rashly!
+
+“I shall hold you to your promise,” returned the old gentleman, “and
+when I am no more, you will receive the manuscripts. From what you say
+of the prevailing taste in literature, I cannot flatter you with
+the hope that you will gain much by the undertaking. And I tell you
+beforehand that you will find it not a little laborious.”
+
+“Is your work a romance?”
+
+“It is a romance, and it is not a romance. It is a truth for those who
+can comprehend it, and an extravagance for those who cannot.”
+
+At last there arrived the manuscripts, with a brief note from my
+deceased friend, reminding me of my imprudent promise.
+
+With mournful interest, and yet with eager impatience, I opened the
+packet and trimmed my lamp. Conceive my dismay when I found the whole
+written in an unintelligible cipher. I present the reader with a
+specimen:
+
+(Several strange characters.)
+
+and so on for nine hundred and forty mortal pages in foolscap. I could
+scarcely believe my eyes: in fact, I began to think the lamp burned
+singularly blue; and sundry misgivings as to the unhallowed nature
+of the characters I had so unwittingly opened upon, coupled with the
+strange hints and mystical language of the old gentleman, crept through
+my disordered imagination. Certainly, to say no worse of it, the whole
+thing looked UNCANNY! I was about, precipitately, to hurry the papers
+into my desk, with a pious determination to have nothing more to do with
+them, when my eye fell upon a book, neatly bound in blue morocco, and
+which, in my eagerness, I had hitherto overlooked. I opened this volume
+with great precaution, not knowing what might jump out, and--guess
+my delight--found that it contained a key or dictionary to the
+hieroglyphics. Not to weary the reader with an account of my labours,
+I am contented with saying that at last I imagined myself capable of
+construing the characters, and set to work in good earnest. Still it was
+no easy task, and two years elapsed before I had made much progress. I
+then, by way of experiment on the public, obtained the insertion of a
+few desultory chapters, in a periodical with which, for a few months, I
+had the honour to be connected. They appeared to excite more curiosity
+than I had presumed to anticipate; and I renewed, with better heart, my
+laborious undertaking. But now a new misfortune befell me: I found, as
+I proceeded, that the author had made two copies of his work, one much
+more elaborate and detailed than the other; I had stumbled upon the
+earlier copy, and had my whole task to remodel, and the chapters I had
+written to retranslate. I may say then, that, exclusive of intervals
+devoted to more pressing occupations, my unlucky promise cost me the
+toil of several years before I could bring it to adequate fulfilment.
+The task was the more difficult, since the style in the original is
+written in a kind of rhythmical prose, as if the author desired that in
+some degree his work should be regarded as one of poetical conception
+and design. To this it was not possible to do justice, and in the
+attempt I have doubtless very often need of the reader’s indulgent
+consideration. My natural respect for the old gentleman’s vagaries,
+with a muse of equivocal character, must be my only excuse whenever
+the language, without luxuriating into verse, borrows flowers scarcely
+natural to prose. Truth compels me also to confess, that, with all
+my pains, I am by no means sure that I have invariably given the true
+meaning of the cipher; nay, that here and there either a gap in the
+narrative, or the sudden assumption of a new cipher, to which no key was
+afforded, has obliged me to resort to interpolations of my own, no doubt
+easily discernible, but which, I flatter myself, are not inharmonious to
+the general design. This confession leads me to the sentence with
+which I shall conclude: If, reader, in this book there be anything that
+pleases you, it is certainly mine; but whenever you come to something
+you dislike,--lay the blame upon the old gentleman!
+
+London, January, 1842.
+
+N.B.--The notes appended to the text are sometimes by the author,
+sometimes by the editor. I have occasionally (but not always) marked
+the distinction; where, however, this is omitted, the ingenuity of the
+reader will be rarely at fault.
+
+
+
+
+ZANONI.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I. -- THE MUSICIAN.
+
+     Due Fontane
+     Chi di diverso effeto hanno liquore!
+
+     “Ariosto, Orland. Fur.” Canto 1.7.
+
+     (Two Founts
+     That hold a draught of different effects.)
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.I.
+
+     Vergina era
+     D’ alta belta, ma sua belta non cura:
+     ....
+     Di natura, d’ amor, de’ cieli amici
+     Le negligenze sue sono artifici.
+
+     “Gerusal. Lib.,” canto ii. xiv.-xviii.
+
+     (She was a virgin of a glorious beauty, but regarded not her
+     beauty...Negligence itself is art in those favoured by Nature, by
+     love, and by the heavens.)
+
+At Naples, in the latter half of the last century, a worthy artist named
+Gaetano Pisani lived and flourished. He was a musician of great genius,
+but not of popular reputation; there was in all his compositions
+something capricious and fantastic which did not please the taste of the
+Dilettanti of Naples. He was fond of unfamiliar subjects into which he
+introduced airs and symphonies that excited a kind of terror in those
+who listened. The names of his pieces will probably suggest their
+nature. I find, for instance, among his MSS., these titles: “The Feast
+of the Harpies,” “The Witches at Benevento,” “The Descent of Orpheus
+into Hades,” “The Evil Eye,” “The Eumenides,” and many others
+that evince a powerful imagination delighting in the fearful and
+supernatural, but often relieved by an airy and delicate fancy with
+passages of exquisite grace and beauty. It is true that in the selection
+of his subjects from ancient fable, Gaetano Pisani was much more
+faithful than his contemporaries to the remote origin and the early
+genius of Italian Opera.
+
+That descendant, however effeminate, of the ancient union between Song
+and Drama, when, after long obscurity and dethronement, it regained a
+punier sceptre, though a gaudier purple, by the banks of the Etrurian
+Arno, or amidst the lagunes of Venice, had chosen all its primary
+inspirations from the unfamiliar and classic sources of heathen legend;
+and Pisani’s “Descent of Orpheus” was but a bolder, darker, and more
+scientific repetition of the “Euridice” which Jacopi Peri set to music
+at the august nuptials of Henry of Navarre and Mary of Medicis.* Still,
+as I have said, the style of the Neapolitan musician was not on the
+whole pleasing to ears grown nice and euphuistic in the more dulcet
+melodies of the day; and faults and extravagances easily discernible,
+and often to appearance wilful, served the critics for an excuse for
+their distaste. Fortunately, or the poor musician might have starved,
+he was not only a composer, but also an excellent practical performer,
+especially on the violin, and by that instrument he earned a decent
+subsistence as one of the orchestra at the Great Theatre of San Carlo.
+Here formal and appointed tasks necessarily kept his eccentric fancies
+in tolerable check, though it is recorded that no less than five times
+he had been deposed from his desk for having shocked the conoscenti,
+and thrown the whole band into confusion, by impromptu variations of so
+frantic and startling a nature that one might well have imagined that
+the harpies or witches who inspired his compositions had clawed hold of
+his instrument.
+
+The impossibility, however, to find any one of equal excellence as a
+performer (that is to say, in his more lucid and orderly moments) had
+forced his reinstalment, and he had now, for the most part, reconciled
+himself to the narrow sphere of his appointed adagios or allegros. The
+audience, too, aware of his propensity, were quick to perceive the least
+deviation from the text; and if he wandered for a moment, which
+might also be detected by the eye as well as the ear, in some strange
+contortion of visage, and some ominous flourish of his bow, a gentle and
+admonitory murmur recalled the musician from his Elysium or his Tartarus
+to the sober regions of his desk. Then he would start as if from a
+dream, cast a hurried, frightened, apologetic glance around, and, with
+a crestfallen, humbled air, draw his rebellious instrument back to the
+beaten track of the glib monotony. But at home he would make himself
+amends for this reluctant drudgery. And there, grasping the unhappy
+violin with ferocious fingers, he would pour forth, often till the
+morning rose, strange, wild measures that would startle the early
+fisherman on the shore below with a superstitious awe, and make him
+cross himself as if mermaid or sprite had wailed no earthly music in his
+ear.
+
+     (*Orpheus was the favourite hero of early Italian Opera, or
+     Lyrical Drama. The Orfeo of Angelo Politiano was produced in
+     1475. The Orfeo of Monteverde was performed at Venice in
+     1667.)
+
+This man’s appearance was in keeping with the characteristics of his
+art. The features were noble and striking, but worn and haggard,
+with black, careless locks tangled into a maze of curls, and a fixed,
+speculative, dreamy stare in his large and hollow eyes. All his
+movements were peculiar, sudden, and abrupt, as the impulse seized him;
+and in gliding through the streets, or along the beach, he was heard
+laughing and talking to himself. Withal, he was a harmless, guileless,
+gentle creature, and would share his mite with any idle lazzaroni, whom
+he often paused to contemplate as they lay lazily basking in the sun.
+Yet was he thoroughly unsocial. He formed no friends, flattered no
+patrons, resorted to none of the merry-makings so dear to the children
+of music and the South. He and his art seemed alone suited to each
+other,--both quaint, primitive, unworldly, irregular. You could not
+separate the man from his music; it was himself. Without it he was
+nothing, a mere machine! WITH it, he was king over worlds of his own.
+Poor man, he had little enough in this! At a manufacturing town in
+England there is a gravestone on which the epitaph records “one Claudius
+Phillips, whose absolute contempt for riches, and inimitable performance
+on the violin, made him the admiration of all that knew him!” Logical
+conjunction of opposite eulogies! In proportion, O Genius, to thy
+contempt for riches will be thy performance on thy violin!
+
+Gaetano Pisani’s talents as a composer had been chiefly exhibited
+in music appropriate to this his favourite instrument, of all
+unquestionably the most various and royal in its resources and power
+over the passions. As Shakespeare among poets is the Cremona among
+instruments. Nevertheless, he had composed other pieces of larger
+ambition and wider accomplishment, and chief of these, his precious, his
+unpurchased, his unpublished, his unpublishable and imperishable opera
+of the “Siren.” This great work had been the dream of his boyhood, the
+mistress of his manhood; in advancing age “it stood beside him like
+his youth.” Vainly had he struggled to place it before the world. Even
+bland, unjealous Paisiello, Maestro di Capella, shook his gentle head
+when the musician favoured him with a specimen of one of his most
+thrilling scenas. And yet, Paisiello, though that music differs from all
+Durante taught thee to emulate, there may--but patience, Gaetano Pisani!
+bide thy time, and keep thy violin in tune!
+
+Strange as it may appear to the fairer reader, this grotesque personage
+had yet formed those ties which ordinary mortals are apt to consider
+their especial monopoly,--he was married, and had one child. What is
+more strange yet, his wife was a daughter of quiet, sober, unfantastic
+England: she was much younger than himself; she was fair and gentle,
+with a sweet English face; she had married him from choice, and (will
+you believe it?) she yet loved him. How she came to marry him, or how
+this shy, unsocial, wayward creature ever ventured to propose, I can
+only explain by asking you to look round and explain first to ME how
+half the husbands and half the wives you meet ever found a mate! Yet, on
+reflection, this union was not so extraordinary after all. The girl was
+a natural child of parents too noble ever to own and claim her. She was
+brought into Italy to learn the art by which she was to live, for she
+had taste and voice; she was a dependant and harshly treated, and poor
+Pisani was her master, and his voice the only one she had heard from
+her cradle that seemed without one tone that could scorn or chide. And
+so--well, is the rest natural? Natural or not, they married. This young
+wife loved her husband; and young and gentle as she was, she might
+almost be said to be the protector of the two. From how many disgraces
+with the despots of San Carlo and the Conservatorio had her unknown
+officious mediation saved him! In how many ailments--for his frame was
+weak--had she nursed and tended him! Often, in the dark nights, she
+would wait at the theatre with her lantern to light him and her steady
+arm to lean on; otherwise, in his abstract reveries, who knows but the
+musician would have walked after his “Siren” into the sea! And then she
+would so patiently, perhaps (for in true love there is not always the
+finest taste) so DELIGHTEDLY, listen to those storms of eccentric and
+fitful melody, and steal him--whispering praises all the way--from the
+unwholesome night-watch to rest and sleep!
+
+I said his music was a part of the man, and this gentle creature seemed
+a part of the music; it was, in fact, when she sat beside him that
+whatever was tender or fairy-like in his motley fantasia crept into the
+harmony as by stealth. Doubtless her presence acted on the music, and
+shaped and softened it; but, he, who never examined how or what his
+inspiration, knew it not. All that he knew was, that he loved and
+blessed her. He fancied he told her so twenty times a day; but he never
+did, for he was not of many words, even to his wife. His language
+was his music,--as hers, her cares! He was more communicative to his
+barbiton, as the learned Mersennus teaches us to call all the varieties
+of the great viol family. Certainly barbiton sounds better than
+fiddle; and barbiton let it be. He would talk to THAT by the hour
+together,--praise it, scold it, coax it, nay (for such is man, even the
+most guileless), he had been known to swear at it; but for that excess
+he was always penitentially remorseful. And the barbiton had a tongue of
+his own, could take his own part, and when HE also scolded, had much
+the best of it. He was a noble fellow, this Violin!--a Tyrolese, the
+handiwork of the illustrious Steiner. There was something mysterious in
+his great age. How many hands, now dust, had awakened his strings ere
+he became the Robin Goodfellow and Familiar of Gaetano Pisani! His very
+case was venerable,--beautifully painted, it was said, by Caracci. An
+English collector had offered more for the case than Pisani had ever
+made by the violin. But Pisani, who cared not if he had inhabited a
+cabin himself, was proud of a palace for the barbiton. His barbiton, it
+was his elder child! He had another child, and now we must turn to her.
+
+How shall I describe thee, Viola? Certainly the music had something to
+answer for in the advent of that young stranger. For both in her form
+and her character you might have traced a family likeness to that
+singular and spirit-like life of sound which night after night threw
+itself in airy and goblin sport over the starry seas...Beautiful
+she was, but of a very uncommon beauty,--a combination, a harmony of
+opposite attributes. Her hair of a gold richer and purer than that
+which is seen even in the North; but the eyes, of all the dark, tender,
+subduing light of more than Italian--almost of Oriental--splendour. The
+complexion exquisitely fair, but never the same,--vivid in one moment,
+pale the next. And with the complexion, the expression also varied;
+nothing now so sad, and nothing now so joyous.
+
+I grieve to say that what we rightly entitle education was much
+neglected for their daughter by this singular pair. To be sure, neither
+of them had much knowledge to bestow; and knowledge was not then the
+fashion, as it is now. But accident or nature favoured young Viola. She
+learned, as of course, her mother’s language with her father’s. And she
+contrived soon to read and to write; and her mother, who, by the
+way, was a Roman Catholic, taught her betimes to pray. But then, to
+counteract all these acquisitions, the strange habits of Pisani, and the
+incessant watch and care which he required from his wife, often left the
+child alone with an old nurse, who, to be sure, loved her dearly, but
+who was in no way calculated to instruct her.
+
+Dame Gionetta was every inch Italian and Neapolitan. Her youth had been
+all love, and her age was all superstition. She was garrulous, fond,--a
+gossip. Now she would prattle to the girl of cavaliers and princes at
+her feet, and now she would freeze her blood with tales and legends,
+perhaps as old as Greek or Etrurian fable, of demon and vampire,--of the
+dances round the great walnut-tree at Benevento, and the haunting spell
+of the Evil Eye. All this helped silently to weave charmed webs over
+Viola’s imagination that afterthought and later years might labour
+vainly to dispel. And all this especially fitted her to hang, with a
+fearful joy, upon her father’s music. Those visionary strains, ever
+struggling to translate into wild and broken sounds the language of
+unearthly beings, breathed around her from her birth. Thus you might
+have said that her whole mind was full of music; associations, memories,
+sensations of pleasure or pain,--all were mixed up inexplicably with
+those sounds that now delighted and now terrified; that greeted her when
+her eyes opened to the sun, and woke her trembling on her lonely couch
+in the darkness of the night. The legends and tales of Gionetta only
+served to make the child better understand the signification of those
+mysterious tones; they furnished her with words to the music. It was
+natural that the daughter of such a parent should soon evince some taste
+in his art. But this developed itself chiefly in the ear and the voice.
+She was yet a child when she sang divinely. A great Cardinal--great
+alike in the State and the Conservatorio--heard of her gifts, and sent
+for her. From that moment her fate was decided: she was to be the future
+glory of Naples, the prima donna of San Carlo.
+
+The Cardinal insisted upon the accomplishment of his own predictions,
+and provided her with the most renowned masters. To inspire her with
+emulation, his Eminence took her one evening to his own box: it would
+be something to see the performance, something more to hear the applause
+lavished upon the glittering signoras she was hereafter to excel! Oh,
+how gloriously that life of the stage, that fairy world of music and
+song, dawned upon her! It was the only world that seemed to correspond
+with her strange childish thoughts. It appeared to her as if, cast
+hitherto on a foreign shore, she was brought at last to see the forms
+and hear the language of her native land. Beautiful and true enthusiasm,
+rich with the promise of genius! Boy or man, thou wilt never be a poet,
+if thou hast not felt the ideal, the romance, the Calypso’s isle that
+opened to thee when for the first time the magic curtain was drawn
+aside, and let in the world of poetry on the world of prose!
+
+And now the initiation was begun. She was to read, to study, to depict
+by a gesture, a look, the passions she was to delineate on the boards;
+lessons dangerous, in truth, to some, but not to the pure enthusiasm
+that comes from art; for the mind that rightly conceives art is but
+a mirror which gives back what is cast on its surface faithfully
+only--while unsullied. She seized on nature and truth intuitively. Her
+recitations became full of unconscious power; her voice moved the heart
+to tears, or warmed it into generous rage. But this arose from that
+sympathy which genius ever has, even in its earliest innocence, with
+whatever feels, or aspires, or suffers.
+
+It was no premature woman comprehending the love or the jealousy that
+the words expressed; her art was one of those strange secrets which
+the psychologists may unriddle to us if they please, and tell us why
+children of the simplest minds and the purest hearts are often so acute
+to distinguish, in the tales you tell them, or the songs you sing, the
+difference between the true art and the false, passion and jargon, Homer
+and Racine,--echoing back, from hearts that have not yet felt what they
+repeat, the melodious accents of the natural pathos. Apart from
+her studies, Viola was a simple, affectionate, but somewhat wayward
+child,--wayward, not in temper, for that was sweet and docile; but in
+her moods, which, as I before hinted, changed from sad to gay and gay to
+sad without an apparent cause. If cause there were, it must be traced to
+the early and mysterious influences I have referred to, when seeking to
+explain the effect produced on her imagination by those restless streams
+of sound that constantly played around it; for it is noticeable that to
+those who are much alive to the effects of music, airs and tunes often
+come back, in the commonest pursuits of life, to vex, as it were, and
+haunt them. The music, once admitted to the soul, becomes also a sort
+of spirit, and never dies. It wanders perturbedly through the halls and
+galleries of the memory, and is often heard again, distinct and living
+as when it first displaced the wavelets of the air. Now at times, then,
+these phantoms of sound floated back upon her fancy; if gay, to call
+a smile from every dimple; if mournful, to throw a shade upon her
+brow,--to make her cease from her childishmirth, and sit apart and muse.
+
+Rightly, then, in a typical sense, might this fair creature, so airy in
+her shape, so harmonious in her beauty, so unfamiliar in her ways and
+thoughts,--rightly might she be called a daughter, less of the musician
+than the music, a being for whom you could imagine that some fate was
+reserved, less of actual life than the romance which, to eyes that can
+see, and hearts that can feel, glides ever along WITH the actual life,
+stream by stream, to the Dark Ocean.
+
+And therefore it seemed not strange that Viola herself, even in
+childhood, and yet more as she bloomed into the sweet seriousness of
+virgin youth, should fancy her life ordained for a lot, whether of bliss
+or woe, that should accord with the romance and reverie which made the
+atmosphere she breathed. Frequently she would climb through the thickets
+that clothed the neighbouring grotto of Posilipo,--the mighty work of
+the old Cimmerians,--and, seated by the haunted Tomb of Virgil, indulge
+those visions, the subtle vagueness of which no poetry can render
+palpable and defined; for the Poet that surpasses all who ever sang, is
+the heart of dreaming youth! Frequently there, too, beside the threshold
+over which the vine-leaves clung, and facing that dark-blue, waveless
+sea, she would sit in the autumn noon or summer twilight, and build her
+castles in the air. Who doth not do the same,--not in youth alone, but
+with the dimmed hopes of age! It is man’s prerogative to dream, the
+common royalty of peasant and of king. But those day-dreams of hers were
+more habitual, distinct, and solemn than the greater part of us indulge.
+They seemed like the Orama of the Greeks,--prophets while phantasma.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.II.
+
+     Fu stupor, fu vaghezza, fu diletto!
+     “Gerusal. Lib.,” cant. ii. xxi.
+
+     (“Desire it was, ‘t was wonder, ‘t was delight.”
+      Wiffen’s Translation.)
+
+Now at last the education is accomplished! Viola is nearly sixteen.
+The Cardinal declares that the time is come when the new name must be
+inscribed in the Libro d’Oro,--the Golden Book set apart to the children
+of Art and Song. Yes, but in what character?--to whose genius is she
+to give embodiment and form? Ah, there is the secret! Rumours go abroad
+that the inexhaustible Paisiello, charmed with her performance of his
+“Nel cor piu non me sento,” and his “Io son Lindoro,” will produce some
+new masterpiece to introduce the debutante. Others insist upon it that
+her forte is the comic, and that Cimarosa is hard at work at another
+“Matrimonia Segreto.” But in the meanwhile there is a check in the
+diplomacy somewhere. The Cardinal is observed to be out of humour. He
+has said publicly,--and the words are portentous,--“The silly girl is
+as mad as her father; what she asks is preposterous!” Conference follows
+conference; the Cardinal talks to the poor child very solemnly in
+his closet,--all in vain. Naples is distracted with curiosity and
+conjecture. The lecture ends in a quarrel, and Viola comes home sullen
+and pouting: she will not act,--she has renounced the engagement.
+
+Pisani, too inexperienced to be aware of all the dangers of the stage,
+had been pleased at the notion that one, at least, of his name would add
+celebrity to his art. The girl’s perverseness displeased him. However,
+he said nothing,--he never scolded in words, but he took up the faithful
+barbiton. Oh, faithful barbiton, how horribly thou didst scold! It
+screeched, it gabbled, it moaned, it growled. And Viola’s eyes filled
+with tears, for she understood that language. She stole to her mother,
+and whispered in her ear; and when Pisani turned from his employment,
+lo! both mother and daughter were weeping. He looked at them with a
+wondering stare; and then, as if he felt he had been harsh, he flew
+again to his Familiar. And now you thought you heard the lullaby which a
+fairy might sing to some fretful changeling it had adopted and sought to
+soothe. Liquid, low, silvery, streamed the tones beneath the enchanted
+bow. The most stubborn grief would have paused to hear; and withal,
+at times, out came a wild, merry, ringing note, like a laugh, but not
+mortal laughter. It was one of his most successful airs from his beloved
+opera,--the Siren in the act of charming the waves and the winds to
+sleep. Heaven knows what next would have come, but his arm was arrested.
+Viola had thrown herself on his breast, and kissed him, with happy
+eyes that smiled through her sunny hair. At that very moment the door
+opened,--a message from the Cardinal. Viola must go to his Eminence at
+once. Her mother went with her. All was reconciled and settled; Viola
+had her way, and selected her own opera. O ye dull nations of the North,
+with your broils and debates,--your bustling lives of the Pnyx and
+the Agora!--you cannot guess what a stir throughout musical Naples was
+occasioned by the rumour of a new opera and a new singer. But whose
+the opera? No cabinet intrigue ever was so secret. Pisani came back one
+night from the theatre, evidently disturbed and irate. Woe to thine ears
+hadst thou heard the barbiton that night! They had suspended him from
+his office,--they feared that the new opera, and the first debut of
+his daughter as prima donna, would be too much for his nerves. And his
+variations, his diablerie of sirens and harpies, on such a night, made
+a hazard not to be contemplated without awe. To be set aside, and on the
+very night that his child, whose melody was but an emanation of his own,
+was to perform,--set aside for some new rival: it was too much for a
+musician’s flesh and blood. For the first time he spoke in words upon
+the subject, and gravely asked--for that question the barbiton, eloquent
+as it was, could not express distinctly--what was to be the opera, and
+what the part? And Viola as gravely answered that she was pledged to the
+Cardinal not to reveal. Pisani said nothing, but disappeared with
+the violin; and presently they heard the Familiar from the house-top
+(whither, when thoroughly out of humour, the musician sometimes fled),
+whining and sighing as if its heart were broken.
+
+The affections of Pisani were little visible on the surface. He was not
+one of those fond, caressing fathers whose children are ever playing
+round their knees; his mind and soul were so thoroughly in his art that
+domestic life glided by him, seemingly as if THAT were a dream, and
+the heart the substantial form and body of existence. Persons
+much cultivating an abstract study are often thus; mathematicians
+proverbially so. When his servant ran to the celebrated French
+philosopher, shrieking, “The house is on fire, sir!” “Go and tell my
+wife then, fool!” said the wise man, settling back to his problems;
+“do _I_ ever meddle with domestic affairs?” But what are mathematics to
+music--music, that not only composes operas, but plays on the barbiton?
+Do you know what the illustrious Giardini said when the tyro asked how
+long it would take to learn to play on the violin? Hear, and despair, ye
+who would bend the bow to which that of Ulysses was a plaything, “Twelve
+hours a day for twenty years together!” Can a man, then, who plays the
+barbiton be always playing also with his little ones? No, Pisani; often,
+with the keen susceptibility of childhood, poor Viola had stolen from
+the room to weep at the thought that thou didst not love her. And yet,
+underneath this outward abstraction of the artist, the natural fondness
+flowed all the same; and as she grew up, the dreamer had understood the
+dreamer. And now, shut out from all fame himself; to be forbidden to
+hail even his daughter’s fame!--and that daughter herself to be in
+the conspiracy against him! Sharper than the serpent’s tooth was the
+ingratitude, and sharper than the serpent’s tooth was the wail of the
+pitying barbiton!
+
+The eventful hour is come. Viola is gone to the theatre,--her mother
+with her. The indignant musician remains at home. Gionetta bursts into
+the room: my Lord Cardinal’s carriage is at the door,--the Padrone is
+sent for. He must lay aside his violin; he must put on his brocade coat
+and his lace ruffles. Here they are,--quick, quick! And quick rolls the
+gilded coach, and majestic sits the driver, and statelily prance the
+steeds. Poor Pisani is lost in a mist of uncomfortable amaze. He arrives
+at the theatre; he descends at the great door; he turns round and
+round, and looks about him and about: he misses something,--where is the
+violin? Alas! his soul, his voice, his self of self, is left behind! It
+is but an automaton that the lackeys conduct up the stairs, through the
+tier, into the Cardinal’s box. But then, what bursts upon him! Does he
+dream? The first act is over (they did not send for him till success
+seemed no longer doubtful); the first act has decided all. He feels THAT
+by the electric sympathy which ever the one heart has at once with
+a vast audience. He feels it by the breathless stillness of that
+multitude; he feels it even by the lifted finger of the Cardinal. He
+sees his Viola on the stage, radiant in her robes and gems,--he hears
+her voice thrilling through the single heart of the thousands! But the
+scene, the part, the music! It is his other child,--his immortal child;
+the spirit-infant of his soul; his darling of many years of patient
+obscurity and pining genius; his masterpiece; his opera of the Siren!
+
+This, then, was the mystery that had so galled him,--this the cause of
+the quarrel with the Cardinal; this the secret not to be proclaimed till
+the success was won, and the daughter had united her father’s triumph
+with her own! And there she stands, as all souls bow before her,--fairer
+than the very Siren he had called from the deeps of melody. Oh, long and
+sweet recompense of toil! Where is on earth the rapture like that which
+is known to genius when at last it bursts from its hidden cavern into
+light and fame!
+
+He did not speak, he did not move; he stood transfixed, breathless, the
+tears rolling down his cheeks; only from time to time his hands still
+wandered about,--mechanically they sought for the faithful instrument,
+why was it not there to share his triumph?
+
+At last the curtain fell; but on such a storm and diapason of applause!
+Up rose the audience as one man, as with one voice that dear name was
+shouted. She came on, trembling, pale, and in the whole crowd saw but
+her father’s face. The audience followed those moistened eyes; they
+recognised with a thrill the daughter’s impulse and her meaning. The
+good old Cardinal drew him gently forward. Wild musician, thy daughter
+has given thee back more than the life thou gavest!
+
+“My poor violin!” said he, wiping his eyes, “they will never hiss thee
+again now!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.III.
+
+     Fra si contrarie tempre in ghiaccio e in foco,
+     In riso e in pianto, e fra paura e speme
+     L’ingannatrice Donna--
+     “Gerusal. Lib.,” cant. iv. xciv.
+
+     (Between such contrarious mixtures of ice and fire, laughter and
+     tears,--fear and hope, the deceiving dame.)
+
+Now notwithstanding the triumph both of the singer and the opera, there
+had been one moment in the first act, and, consequently, BEFORE the
+arrival of Pisani, when the scale seemed more than doubtful. It was in a
+chorus replete with all the peculiarities of the composer. And when the
+Maelstrom of Capricci whirled and foamed, and tore ear and sense through
+every variety of sound, the audience simultaneously recognised the
+hand of Pisani. A title had been given to the opera which had hitherto
+prevented all suspicion of its parentage; and the overture and opening,
+in which the music had been regular and sweet, had led the audience
+to fancy they detected the genius of their favourite Paisiello. Long
+accustomed to ridicule and almost to despise the pretensions of Pisani
+as a composer, they now felt as if they had been unduly cheated into
+the applause with which they had hailed the overture and the commencing
+scenas. An ominous buzz circulated round the house: the singers,
+the orchestra,--electrically sensitive to the impression of the
+audience,--grew, themselves, agitated and dismayed, and failed in the
+energy and precision which could alone carry off the grotesqueness of
+the music.
+
+There are always in every theatre many rivals to a new author and a new
+performer,--a party impotent while all goes well, but a dangerous ambush
+the instant some accident throws into confusion the march of success. A
+hiss arose; it was partial, it is true, but the significant silence of
+all applause seemed to forebode the coming moment when the displeasure
+would grow contagious. It was the breath that stirred the impending
+avalanche. At that critical moment Viola, the Siren queen, emerged for
+the first time from her ocean cave. As she came forward to the
+lamps, the novelty of her situation, the chilling apathy of the
+audience,--which even the sight of so singular a beauty did not at the
+first arouse,--the whispers of the malignant singers on the stage, the
+glare of the lights, and more--far more than the rest--that recent hiss,
+which had reached her in her concealment, all froze up her faculties and
+suspended her voice. And, instead of the grand invocation into which
+she ought rapidly to have burst, the regal Siren, retransformed into
+the trembling girl, stood pale and mute before the stern, cold array of
+those countless eyes.
+
+At that instant, and when consciousness itself seemed about to fail her,
+as she turned a timid beseeching glance around the still multitude, she
+perceived, in a box near the stage, a countenance which at once, and
+like magic, produced on her mind an effect never to be analysed
+nor forgotten. It was one that awakened an indistinct, haunting
+reminiscence, as if she had seen it in those day-dreams she had been so
+wont from infancy to indulge. She could not withdraw her gaze from that
+face, and as she gazed, the awe and coldness that had before seized her,
+vanished like a mist from before the sun.
+
+In the dark splendour of the eyes that met her own there was indeed
+so much of gentle encouragement, of benign and compassionate
+admiration,--so much that warmed, and animated, and nerved,--that any
+one, actor or orator, who has ever observed the effect that a single
+earnest and kindly look in the crowd that is to be addressed and won,
+will produce upon his mind, may readily account for the sudden and
+inspiriting influence which the eye and smile of the stranger exercised
+on the debutante.
+
+And while yet she gazed, and the glow returned to her heart, the
+stranger half rose, as if to recall the audience to a sense of the
+courtesy due to one so fair and young; and the instant his voice gave
+the signal, the audience followed it by a burst of generous applause.
+For this stranger himself was a marked personage, and his recent arrival
+at Naples had divided with the new opera the gossip of the city. And
+then as the applause ceased, clear, full, and freed from every fetter,
+like a spirit from the clay, the Siren’s voice poured forth its
+entrancing music. From that time Viola forgot the crowd, the hazard,
+the whole world,--except the fairy one over with she presided. It seemed
+that the stranger’s presence only served still more to heighten that
+delusion, in which the artist sees no creation without the circle of his
+art, she felt as if that serene brow, and those brilliant eyes, inspired
+her with powers never known before: and, as if searching for a language
+to express the strange sensations occasioned by his presence, that
+presence itself whispered to her the melody and the song.
+
+Only when all was over, and she saw her father and felt his joy, did
+this wild spell vanish before the sweeter one of the household and
+filial love. Yet again, as she turned from the stage, she looked back
+involuntarily, and the stranger’s calm and half-melancholy smile sank
+into her heart,--to live there, to be recalled with confused memories,
+half of pleasure, and half of pain.
+
+Pass over the congratulations of the good Cardinal-Virtuoso, astonished
+at finding himself and all Naples had been hitherto in the wrong on
+a subject of taste,--still more astonished at finding himself and all
+Naples combining to confess it; pass over the whispered ecstasies of
+admiration which buzzed in the singer’s ear, as once more, in her modest
+veil and quiet dress, she escaped from the crowd of gallants that choked
+up every avenue behind the scenes; pass over the sweet embrace of father
+and child, returning through the starlit streets and along the deserted
+Chiaja in the Cardinal’s carriage; never pause now to note the tears and
+ejaculations of the good, simple-hearted mother,--see them returned;
+see the well-known room, venimus ad larem nostrum (We come to our own
+house.); see old Gionetta bustling at the supper; and hear Pisani, as he
+rouses the barbiton from its case, communicating all that has happened
+to the intelligent Familiar; hark to the mother’s merry, low, English
+laugh. Why, Viola, strange child, sittest thou apart, thy face leaning
+on thy fair hands, thine eyes fixed on space? Up, rouse thee! Every
+dimple on the cheek of home must smile to-night. (“Ridete quidquid est
+domi cachinnorum.” Catull. “ad Sirm. Penin.”)
+
+And a happy reunion it was round that humble table: a feast Lucullus
+might have envied in his Hall of Apollo, in the dried grapes, and
+the dainty sardines, and the luxurious polenta, and the old lacrima a
+present from the good Cardinal. The barbiton, placed on a chair--a tall,
+high-backed chair--beside the musician, seemed to take a part in the
+festive meal. Its honest varnished face glowed in the light of the lamp;
+and there was an impish, sly demureness in its very silence, as its
+master, between every mouthful, turned to talk to it of something he had
+forgotten to relate before. The good wife looked on affectionately, and
+could not eat for joy; but suddenly she rose, and placed on the
+artist’s temples a laurel wreath, which she had woven beforehand in fond
+anticipation; and Viola, on the other side her brother, the barbiton,
+rearranged the chaplet, and, smoothing back her father’s hair,
+whispered, “Caro Padre, you will not let HIM scold me again!”
+
+Then poor Pisani, rather distracted between the two, and excited both by
+the lacrima and his triumph, turned to the younger child with so naive
+and grotesque a pride, “I don’t know which to thank the most. You give
+me so much joy, child,--I am so proud of thee and myself. But he and I,
+poor fellow, have been so often unhappy together!”
+
+Viola’s sleep was broken,--that was natural. The intoxication of vanity
+and triumph, the happiness in the happiness she had caused, all this was
+better than sleep. But still from all this, again and again her thoughts
+flew to those haunting eyes, to that smile with which forever the memory
+of the triumph, of the happiness, was to be united. Her feelings, like
+her own character, were strange and peculiar. They were not those of a
+girl whose heart, for the first time reached through the eye, sighs
+its natural and native language of first love. It was not so much
+admiration, though the face that reflected itself on every wave of her
+restless fancies was of the rarest order of majesty and beauty; nor a
+pleased and enamoured recollection that the sight of this stranger had
+bequeathed: it was a human sentiment of gratitude and delight, mixed
+with something more mysterious, of fear and awe. Certainly she had seen
+before those features; but when and how? Only when her thoughts had
+sought to shape out her future, and when, in spite of all the attempts
+to vision forth a fate of flowers and sunshine, a dark and chill
+foreboding made her recoil back into her deepest self. It was a
+something found that had long been sought for by a thousand restless
+yearnings and vague desires, less of the heart than mind; not as when
+youth discovers the one to be beloved, but rather as when the student,
+long wandering after the clew to some truth in science, sees it glimmer
+dimly before him, to beckon, to recede, to allure, and to wane again.
+She fell at last into unquiet slumber, vexed by deformed, fleeting,
+shapeless phantoms; and, waking, as the sun, through a veil of hazy
+cloud, glinted with a sickly ray across the casement, she heard her
+father settled back betimes to his one pursuit, and calling forth from
+his Familiar a low mournful strain, like a dirge over the dead.
+
+“And why,” she asked, when she descended to the room below,--“why, my
+father, was your inspiration so sad, after the joy of last night?”
+
+“I know not, child. I meant to be merry, and compose an air in honour of
+thee; but he is an obstinate fellow, this,--and he would have it so.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.IV.
+
+     E cosi i pigri e timidi desiri
+     Sprona.
+     “Gerusal. Lib.,” cant. iv. lxxxviii.
+
+     (And thus the slow and timid passions urged.)
+
+It was the custom of Pisani, except when the duties of his profession
+made special demand on his time, to devote a certain portion of the
+mid-day to sleep,--a habit not so much a luxury as a necessity to a man
+who slept very little during the night. In fact, whether to compose
+or to practice, the hours of noon were precisely those in which Pisani
+could not have been active if he would. His genius resembled those
+fountains full at dawn and evening, overflowing at night, and perfectly
+dry at the meridian. During this time, consecrated by her husband to
+repose, the signora generally stole out to make the purchases necessary
+for the little household, or to enjoy (as what woman does not?) a little
+relaxation in gossip with some of her own sex. And the day following
+this brilliant triumph, how many congratulations would she have to
+receive!
+
+At these times it was Viola’s habit to seat herself without the door
+of the house, under an awning which sheltered from the sun without
+obstructing the view; and there now, with the prompt-book on her knee,
+on which her eye roves listlessly from time to time, you may behold
+her, the vine-leaves clustering from their arching trellis over the
+door behind, and the lazy white-sailed boats skimming along the sea that
+stretched before.
+
+As she thus sat, rather in reverie than thought, a man coming from the
+direction of Posilipo, with a slow step and downcast eyes, passed close
+by the house, and Viola, looking up abruptly, started in a kind of
+terror as she recognised the stranger. She uttered an involuntary
+exclamation, and the cavalier turning, saw, and paused.
+
+He stood a moment or two between her and the sunlit ocean, contemplating
+in a silence too serious and gentle for the boldness of gallantry, the
+blushing face and the young slight form before him; at length he spoke.
+
+“Are you happy, my child,” he said, in almost a paternal tone, “at the
+career that lies before you? From sixteen to thirty, the music in the
+breath of applause is sweeter than all the music your voice can utter!”
+
+“I know not,” replied Viola, falteringly, but encouraged by the liquid
+softness of the accents that addressed her,--“I know not whether I am
+happy now, but I was last night. And I feel, too, Excellency, that I
+have you to thank, though, perhaps, you scarce know why!”
+
+“You deceive yourself,” said the cavalier, with a smile. “I am aware
+that I assisted to your merited success, and it is you who scarce know
+how. The WHY I will tell you: because I saw in your heart a nobler
+ambition than that of the woman’s vanity; it was the daughter that
+interested me. Perhaps you would rather I should have admired the
+singer?”
+
+“No; oh, no!”
+
+“Well, I believe you. And now, since we have thus met, I will pause to
+counsel you. When next you go to the theatre, you will have at your feet
+all the young gallants of Naples. Poor infant! the flame that dazzles
+the eye can scorch the wing. Remember that the only homage that does not
+sully must be that which these gallants will not give thee. And whatever
+thy dreams of the future,--and I see, while I speak to thee, how
+wandering they are, and wild,--may only those be fulfilled which centre
+round the hearth of home.”
+
+He paused, as Viola’s breast heaved beneath its robe. And with a burst
+of natural and innocent emotions, scarcely comprehending, though an
+Italian, the grave nature of his advice, she exclaimed,--
+
+“Ah, Excellency, you cannot know how dear to me that home is already.
+And my father,--there would be no home, signor, without him!”
+
+A deep and melancholy shade settled over the face of the cavalier. He
+looked up at the quiet house buried amidst the vine-leaves, and turned
+again to the vivid, animated face of the young actress.
+
+“It is well,” said he. “A simple heart may be its own best guide, and
+so, go on, and prosper. Adieu, fair singer.”
+
+“Adieu, Excellency; but,” and something she could not resist--an
+anxious, sickening feeling of fear and hope,--impelled her to the
+question, “I shall see you again, shall I not, at San Carlo?”
+
+“Not, at least, for some time. I leave Naples to-day.”
+
+“Indeed!” and Viola’s heart sank within her; the poetry of the stage was
+gone.
+
+“And,” said the cavalier, turning back, and gently laying his hand on
+hers,--“and, perhaps, before we meet, you may have suffered: known the
+first sharp griefs of human life,--known how little what fame can gain,
+repays what the heart can lose; but be brave and yield not,--not even to
+what may seem the piety of sorrow. Observe yon tree in your neighbour’s
+garden. Look how it grows up, crooked and distorted. Some wind scattered
+the germ from which it sprang, in the clefts of the rock; choked up and
+walled round by crags and buildings, by Nature and man, its life has
+been one struggle for the light,--light which makes to that life the
+necessity and the principle: you see how it has writhed and twisted;
+how, meeting the barrier in one spot, it has laboured and worked, stem
+and branches, towards the clear skies at last. What has preserved it
+through each disfavour of birth and circumstances,--why are its leaves
+as green and fair as those of the vine behind you, which, with all
+its arms, can embrace the open sunshine? My child, because of the very
+instinct that impelled the struggle,--because the labour for the light
+won to the light at length. So with a gallant heart, through every
+adverse accident of sorrow and of fate to turn to the sun, to strive for
+the heaven; this it is that gives knowledge to the strong and happiness
+to the weak. Ere we meet again, you will turn sad and heavy eyes to
+those quiet boughs, and when you hear the birds sing from them, and see
+the sunshine come aslant from crag and housetop to be the playfellow
+of their leaves, learn the lesson that Nature teaches you, and strive
+through darkness to the light!”
+
+As he spoke he moved on slowly, and left Viola wondering, silent,
+saddened with his dim prophecy of coming evil, and yet, through sadness,
+charmed. Involuntarily her eyes followed him,--involuntarily she
+stretched forth her arms, as if by a gesture to call him back; she would
+have given worlds to have seen him turn,--to have heard once more his
+low, calm, silvery voice; to have felt again the light touch of his hand
+on hers. As moonlight that softens into beauty every angle on which it
+falls, seemed his presence,--as moonlight vanishes, and things assume
+their common aspect of the rugged and the mean, he receded from her
+eyes, and the outward scene was commonplace once more.
+
+The stranger passed on, through that long and lovely road which reaches
+at last the palaces that face the public gardens, and conducts to the
+more populous quarters of the city.
+
+A group of young, dissipated courtiers, loitering by the gateway of a
+house which was open for the favourite pastime of the day,--the resort
+of the wealthier and more high-born gamesters,--made way for him, as
+with a courteous inclination he passed them by.
+
+“Per fede,” said one, “is not that the rich Zanoni, of whom the town
+talks?”
+
+“Ay; they say his wealth is incalculable!”
+
+“THEY say,--who are THEY?--what is the authority? He has not been many
+days at Naples, and I cannot yet find any one who knows aught of his
+birthplace, his parentage, or, what is more important, his estates!”
+
+“That is true; but he arrived in a goodly vessel, which THEY SAY is his
+own. See,--no, you cannot see it here; but it rides yonder in the bay.
+The bankers he deals with speak with awe of the sums placed in their
+hands.”
+
+“Whence came he?”
+
+“From some seaport in the East. My valet learned from some of the
+sailors on the Mole that he had resided many years in the interior of
+India.”
+
+“Ah, I am told that in India men pick up gold like pebbles, and that
+there are valleys where the birds build their nests with emeralds to
+attract the moths. Here comes our prince of gamesters, Cetoxa; be sure
+that he already must have made acquaintance with so wealthy a cavalier;
+he has that attraction to gold which the magnet has to steel. Well,
+Cetoxa, what fresh news of the ducats of Signor Zanoni?”
+
+“Oh,” said Cetoxa, carelessly, “my friend--”
+
+“Ha! ha! hear him; his friend--”
+
+“Yes; my friend Zanoni is going to Rome for a short time; when he
+returns, he has promised me to fix a day to sup with me, and I will then
+introduce him to you, and to the best society of Naples! Diavolo! but he
+is a most agreeable and witty gentleman!”
+
+“Pray tell us how you came so suddenly to be his friend.”
+
+“My dear Belgioso, nothing more natural. He desired a box at San Carlo;
+but I need not tell you that the expectation of a new opera (ah, how
+superb it is,--that poor devil, Pisani; who would have thought it?) and
+a new singer (what a face,--what a voice!--ah!) had engaged every corner
+of the house. I heard of Zanoni’s desire to honour the talent of Naples,
+and, with my usual courtesy to distinguished strangers, I sent to place
+my box at his disposal. He accepts it,--I wait on him between the acts;
+he is most charming; he invites me to supper. Cospetto, what a retinue!
+We sit late,--I tell him all the news of Naples; we grow bosom friends;
+he presses on me this diamond before we part,--is a trifle, he tells me:
+the jewellers value it at 5000 pistoles!--the merriest evening I have
+passed these ten years.”
+
+The cavaliers crowded round to admire the diamond.
+
+“Signor Count Cetoxa,” said one grave-looking sombre man, who had
+crossed himself two or three times during the Neapolitan’s narrative,
+“are you not aware of the strange reports about this person; and are you
+not afraid to receive from him a gift which may carry with it the most
+fatal consequences? Do you not know that he is said to be a sorcerer; to
+possess the mal-occhio; to--”
+
+“Prithee, spare us your antiquated superstitions,” interrupted Cetoxa,
+contemptuously. “They are out of fashion; nothing now goes down but
+scepticism and philosophy. And what, after all, do these rumours, when
+sifted, amount to? They have no origin but this,--a silly old man of
+eighty-six, quite in his dotage, solemnly avers that he saw this same
+Zanoni seventy years ago (he himself, the narrator, then a mere boy) at
+Milan; when this very Zanoni, as you all see, is at least as young as
+you or I, Belgioso.”
+
+“But that,” said the grave gentleman,--“THAT is the mystery. Old Avelli
+declares that Zanoni does not seem a day older than when they met at
+Milan. He says that even then at Milan--mark this--where, though
+under another name, this Zanoni appeared in the same splendour, he was
+attended also by the same mystery. And that an old man THERE remembered
+to have seen him sixty years before, in Sweden.”
+
+“Tush,” returned Cetoxa, “the same thing has been said of the quack
+Cagliostro,--mere fables. I will believe them when I see this diamond
+turn to a wisp of hay. For the rest,” he added gravely, “I consider this
+illustrious gentleman my friend; and a whisper against his honour and
+repute will in future be equivalent to an affront to myself.”
+
+Cetoxa was a redoubted swordsman, and excelled in a peculiarly awkward
+manoeuvre, which he himself had added to the variations of the stoccata.
+The grave gentleman, however anxious for the spiritual weal of the
+count, had an equal regard for his own corporeal safety. He contented
+himself with a look of compassion, and, turning through the gateway,
+ascended the stairs to the gaming-tables.
+
+“Ha, ha!” said Cetoxa, laughing, “our good Loredano is envious of my
+diamond. Gentlemen, you sup with me to-night. I assure you I never met a
+more delightful, sociable, entertaining person, than my dear friend the
+Signor Zanoni.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.V.
+
+     Quello Ippogifo, grande e strano augello
+     Lo porta via.
+     “Orlando Furioso,” c. vi. xviii.
+
+     (That hippogriff, great and marvellous bird, bears him away.)
+
+And now, accompanying this mysterious Zanoni, am I compelled to bid
+a short farewell to Naples. Mount behind me,--mount on my hippogriff,
+reader; settle yourself at your ease. I bought the pillion the other
+day of a poet who loves his comfort; it has been newly stuffed for
+your special accommodation. So, so, we ascend! Look as we ride
+aloft,--look!--never fear, hippogriffs never stumble; and every
+hippogriff in Italy is warranted to carry elderly gentlemen,--look down
+on the gliding landscapes! There, near the ruins of the Oscan’s old
+Atella, rises Aversa, once the stronghold of the Norman; there gleam the
+columns of Capua, above the Vulturnian Stream. Hail to ye, cornfields
+and vineyards famous for the old Falernian! Hail to ye, golden
+orange-groves of Mola di Gaeta! Hail to ye, sweet shrubs and wild
+flowers, omnis copia narium, that clothe the mountain-skirts of the
+silent Lautulae! Shall we rest at the Volscian Anxur,--the modern
+Terracina,--where the lofty rock stands like the giant that guards the
+last borders of the southern land of love? Away, away! and hold your
+breath as we flit above the Pontine Marshes. Dreary and desolate, their
+miasma is to the gardens we have passed what the rank commonplace of
+life is to the heart when it has left love behind.
+
+Mournful Campagna, thou openest on us in majestic sadness. Rome,
+seven-hilled Rome! receive us as Memory receives the way-worn; receive
+us in silence, amidst ruins! Where is the traveller we pursue? Turn the
+hippogriff loose to graze: he loves the acanthus that wreathes round
+yon broken columns. Yes, that is the arch of Titus, the conqueror of
+Jerusalem,--that the Colosseum! Through one passed the triumph of the
+deified invader; in one fell the butchered gladiators. Monuments of
+murder, how poor the thoughts, how mean the memories ye awaken, compared
+with those that speak to the heart of man on the heights of Phyle, or
+by thy lone mound, grey Marathon! We stand amidst weeds and brambles
+and long waving herbage. Where we stand reigned Nero,--here were his
+tessellated floors; here,
+
+“Mighty in the heaven, a second heaven,”
+
+hung the vault of his ivory roofs; here, arch upon arch, pillar on
+pillar, glittered to the world the golden palace of its master,--the
+Golden House of Nero. How the lizard watches us with his bright,
+timorous eye! We disturb his reign. Gather that wild flower: the Golden
+House is vanished, but the wild flower may have kin to those which the
+stranger’s hand scattered over the tyrant’s grave; see, over this soil,
+the grave of Rome, Nature strews the wild flowers still!
+
+In the midst of this desolation is an old building of the middle ages.
+Here dwells a singular recluse. In the season of the malaria the native
+peasant flies the rank vegetation round; but he, a stranger and a
+foreigner, no associates, no companions, except books and instruments
+of science. He is often seen wandering over the grass-grown hills, or
+sauntering through the streets of the new city, not with the absent brow
+and incurious air of students, but with observant piercing eyes that
+seem to dive into the hearts of the passers-by. An old man, but not
+infirm,--erect and stately, as if in his prime. None know whether he be
+rich or poor. He asks no charity, and he gives none,--he does no evil,
+and seems to confer no good. He is a man who appears to have no world
+beyond himself; but appearances are deceitful, and Science, as well as
+Benevolence, lives in the Universe. This abode, for the first time since
+thus occupied, a visitor enters. It is Zanoni.
+
+You observe those two men seated together, conversing earnestly. Years
+long and many have flown away since they met last,--at least, bodily,
+and face to face. But if they are sages, thought can meet thought, and
+spirit spirit, though oceans divide the forms. Death itself divides not
+the wise. Thou meetest Plato when thine eyes moisten over the Phaedo.
+May Homer live with all men forever!
+
+They converse; they confess to each other; they conjure up the past, and
+repeople it; but note how differently do such remembrances affect the
+two. On Zanoni’s face, despite its habitual calm, the emotions change
+and go. HE has acted in the past he surveys; but not a trace of the
+humanity that participates in joy and sorrow can be detected on the
+passionless visage of his companion; the past, to him, as is now
+the present, has been but as Nature to the sage, the volume to the
+student,--a calm and spiritual life, a study, a contemplation.
+
+From the past they turn to the future. Ah! at the close of the last
+century, the future seemed a thing tangible,--it was woven up in all
+men’s fears and hopes of the present.
+
+At the verge of that hundred years, Man, the ripest born of Time,
+
+(“An des Jahrhunderts Neige, Der reifste Sohn der Zeit.” “Die
+Kunstler.”)
+
+stood as at the deathbed of the Old World, and beheld the New Orb,
+blood-red amidst cloud and vapour,--uncertain if a comet or a sun.
+Behold the icy and profound disdain on the brow of the old man,--the
+lofty yet touching sadness that darkens the glorious countenance of
+Zanoni. Is it that one views with contempt the struggle and its issue,
+and the other with awe or pity? Wisdom contemplating mankind leads but
+to the two results,--compassion or disdain. He who believes in other
+worlds can accustom himself to look on this as the naturalist on
+the revolutions of an ant-hill, or of a leaf. What is the Earth to
+Infinity,--what its duration to the Eternal? Oh, how much greater is
+the soul of one man than the vicissitudes of the whole globe! Child of
+heaven, and heir of immortality, how from some star hereafter wilt
+thou look back on the ant-hill and its commotions, from Clovis
+to Robespierre, from Noah to the Final Fire. The spirit that can
+contemplate, that lives only in the intellect, can ascend to its star,
+even from the midst of the burial-ground called Earth, and while the
+sarcophagus called Life immures in its clay the everlasting!
+
+But thou, Zanoni,--thou hast refused to live ONLY in the intellect; thou
+hast not mortified the heart; thy pulse still beats with the sweet music
+of mortal passion; thy kind is to thee still something warmer than an
+abstraction,--thou wouldst look upon this Revolution in its cradle,
+which the storms rock; thou wouldst see the world while its elements yet
+struggle through the chaos!
+
+Go!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.VI.
+
+     Precepteurs ignorans de ce faible univers.--Voltaire.
+     (Ignorant teachers of this weak world.)
+
+     Nous etions a table chez un de nos confreres a l’Academie,
+     Grand Seigneur et homme d’esprit.--La Harpe.
+     (We supped with one of our confreres of the Academy,--a great
+     nobleman and wit.)
+
+One evening, at Paris, several months after the date of our last
+chapter, there was a reunion of some of the most eminent wits of the
+time, at the house of a personage distinguished alike by noble birth and
+liberal accomplishments. Nearly all present were of the views that
+were then the mode. For, as came afterwards a time when nothing was so
+unpopular as the people, so that was the time when nothing was so vulgar
+as aristocracy. The airiest fine gentleman and the haughtiest noble
+prated of equality, and lisped enlightenment.
+
+Among the more remarkable guests were Condorcet, then in the prime of
+his reputation, the correspondent of the king of Prussia, the intimate
+of Voltaire, the member of half the academies of Europe,--noble by
+birth, polished in manners, republican in opinions. There, too, was the
+venerable Malesherbes, “l’amour et les delices de la Nation.” (The idol
+and delight of the nation (so-called by his historian, Gaillard).) There
+Jean Silvain Bailly, the accomplished scholar,--the aspiring politician.
+It was one of those petits soupers for which the capital of all social
+pleasures was so renowned. The conversation, as might be expected, was
+literary and intellectual, enlivened by graceful pleasantry. Many of the
+ladies of that ancient and proud noblesse--for the noblesse yet existed,
+though its hours were already numbered--added to the charm of the
+society; and theirs were the boldest criticisms, and often the most
+liberal sentiments.
+
+Vain labour for me--vain labour almost for the grave English
+language--to do justice to the sparkling paradoxes that flew from lip
+to lip. The favourite theme was the superiority of the moderns to the
+ancients. Condorcet on this head was eloquent, and to some, at least, of
+his audience, most convincing. That Voltaire was greater than Homer few
+there were disposed to deny. Keen was the ridicule lavished on the dull
+pedantry which finds everything ancient necessarily sublime.
+
+“Yet,” said the graceful Marquis de --, as the champagne danced to his
+glass, “more ridiculous still is the superstition that finds everything
+incomprehensible holy! But intelligence circulates, Condorcet; like
+water, it finds its level. My hairdresser said to me this morning,
+‘Though I am but a poor fellow, I believe as little as the finest
+gentleman!’” “Unquestionably, the great Revolution draws near to its
+final completion,--a pas de geant, as Montesquieu said of his own
+immortal work.”
+
+Then there rushed from all--wit and noble, courtier and republican--a
+confused chorus, harmonious only in its anticipation of the brilliant
+things to which “the great Revolution” was to give birth. Here Condrocet
+is more eloquent than before.
+
+“Il faut absolument que la Superstition et le Fanatisme fassent place
+a la Philosophie. (It must necessarily happen that superstition and
+fanaticism give place to philosophy.) Kings persecute persons, priests
+opinion. Without kings, men must be safe; and without priests, minds
+must be free.”
+
+“Ah,” murmured the marquis, “and as ce cher Diderot has so well sung,--
+
+‘Et des boyaux du dernier pretre Serrez le cou du dernier roi.’”
+
+     (And throttle the neck of the last king with the string from
+     the bowels of the last priest.)
+
+“And then,” resumed Condorcet,--“then commences the Age of
+Reason!--equality in instruction, equality in institutions, equality
+in wealth! The great impediments to knowledge are, first, the want of
+a common language; and next, the short duration of existence. But as to
+the first, when all men are brothers, why not a universal language?
+As to the second, the organic perfectibility of the vegetable world is
+undisputed, is Nature less powerful in the nobler existence of thinking
+man? The very destruction of the two most active causes of physical
+deterioration--here, luxurious wealth; there, abject penury,--must
+necessarily prolong the general term of life. (See Condorcet’s
+posthumous work on the Progress of the Human Mind.--Ed.) The art of
+medicine will then be honoured in the place of war, which is the art of
+murder: the noblest study of the acutest minds will be devoted to the
+discovery and arrest of the causes of disease. Life, I grant, cannot be
+made eternal; but it may be prolonged almost indefinitely. And as
+the meaner animal bequeaths its vigour to its offspring, so man shall
+transmit his improved organisation, mental and physical, to his sons.
+Oh, yes, to such a consummation does our age approach!”
+
+The venerable Malesherbes sighed. Perhaps he feared the consummation
+might not come in time for him. The handsome Marquis de -- and the
+ladies, yet handsomer than he, looked conviction and delight.
+
+But two men there were, seated next to each other, who joined not in
+the general talk: the one a stranger newly arrived in Paris, where
+his wealth, his person, and his accomplishments, had already made
+him remarked and courted; the other, an old man, somewhere about
+seventy,--the witty and virtuous, brave, and still light-hearted
+Cazotte, the author of “Le Diable Amoureux.”
+
+These two conversed familiarly, and apart from the rest, and only by an
+occasional smile testified their attention to the general conversation.
+
+“Yes,” said the stranger,--“yes, we have met before.”
+
+“I thought I could not forget your countenance; yet I task in vain my
+recollections of the past.”
+
+“I will assist you. Recall the time when, led by curiosity, or
+perhaps the nobler desire of knowledge, you sought initiation into the
+mysterious order of Martines de Pasqualis.”
+
+(It is so recorded of Cazotte. Of Martines de Pasqualis little is known;
+even the country to which he belonged is matter of conjecture. Equally
+so the rites, ceremonies, and nature of the cabalistic order he
+established. St. Martin was a disciple of the school, and that, at
+least, is in its favour; for in spite of his mysticism, no man more
+beneficent, generous, pure, and virtuous than St. Martin adorned the
+last century. Above all, no man more distinguished himself from the herd
+of sceptical philosophers by the gallantry and fervour with which he
+combated materialism, and vindicated the necessity of faith amidst a
+chaos of unbelief. It may also be observed, that Cazotte, whatever
+else he learned of the brotherhood of Martines, learned nothing that
+diminished the excellence of his life and the sincerity of his religion.
+At once gentle and brave, he never ceased to oppose the excesses of
+the Revolution. To the last, unlike the Liberals of his time, he was a
+devout and sincere Christian. Before his execution, he demanded a pen
+and paper to write these words: “Ma femme, mes enfans, ne me pleurez
+pas; ne m’oubliez pas, mais souvenez-vous surtout de ne jamais offenser
+Dieu.” (“My wife, my children, weep not for me; forget me not, but
+remember above everything never to offend God.)--Ed.)
+
+“Ah, is it possible! You are one of that theurgic brotherhood?”
+
+“Nay, I attended their ceremonies but to see how vainly they sought to
+revive the ancient marvels of the cabala.”
+
+“Such studies please you? I have shaken off the influence they once had
+on my own imagination.”
+
+“You have not shaken it off,” returned the stranger, bravely; “it is on
+you still,--on you at this hour; it beats in your heart; it kindles in
+your reason; it will speak in your tongue!”
+
+And then, with a yet lower voice, the stranger continued to address
+him, to remind him of certain ceremonies and doctrines,--to explain and
+enforce them by references to the actual experience and history of his
+listener, which Cazotte thrilled to find so familiar to a stranger.
+
+Gradually the old man’s pleasing and benevolent countenance grew
+overcast, and he turned, from time to time, searching, curious, uneasy
+glances towards his companion.
+
+The charming Duchesse de G-- archly pointed out to the lively guests the
+abstracted air and clouded brow of the poet; and Condorcet, who liked no
+one else to be remarked, when he himself was present, said to Cazotte,
+“Well, and what do YOU predict of the Revolution,--how, at least, will
+it affect us?”
+
+At that question Cazotte started; his cheeks grew pale, large drops
+stood on his forehead; his lips writhed; his gay companions gazed on him
+in surprise.
+
+“Speak!” whispered the stranger, laying his hand gently upon the arm of
+the old wit.
+
+At that word Cazotte’s face grew locked and rigid, his eyes dwelt
+vacantly on space, and in a low, hollow voice, he thus answered
+
+(The following prophecy (not unfamiliar, perhaps, to some of my
+readers), with some slight variations, and at greater length, in the
+text of the authority I am about to cite, is to be found in La
+Harpe’s posthumous works. The MS. is said to exist still in La Harpe’s
+handwriting, and the story is given on M. Petitot’s authority, volume
+i. page 62. It is not for me to enquire if there be doubts of its
+foundation on fact.--Ed.),--
+
+“You ask how it will affect yourselves,--you, its most learned, and its
+least selfish agents. I will answer: you, Marquis de Condorcet, will
+die in prison, but not by the hand of the executioner. In the peaceful
+happiness of that day, the philosopher will carry about with him not the
+elixir but the poison.”
+
+“My poor Cazotte,” said Condorcet, with his gentle smile, “what have
+prisons, executioners, and poison to do with an age of liberty and
+brotherhood?”
+
+“It is in the names of Liberty and Brotherhood that the prisons will
+reek, and the headsman be glutted.”
+
+“You are thinking of priestcraft, not philosophy, Cazotte,” said
+Champfort.
+
+(Champfort, one of those men of letters who, though misled by the first
+fair show of the Revolution, refused to follow the baser men of action
+into its horrible excesses, lived to express the murderous philanthropy
+of its agents by the best bon mot of the time. Seeing written on the
+walls, “Fraternite ou la Mort,” he observed that the sentiment should be
+translated thus, “Sois mon frere, ou je te tue.” (“Be my brother, or I
+kill thee.”)) “And what of me?”
+
+“You will open your own veins to escape the fraternity of Cain. Be
+comforted; the last drops will not follow the razor. For you, venerable
+Malesherbes; for you, Aimar Nicolai; for you, learned Bailly,--I see
+them dress the scaffold! And all the while, O great philosophers, your
+murderers will have no word but philosophy on their lips!”
+
+The hush was complete and universal when the pupil of Voltaire--the
+prince of the academic sceptics, hot La Harpe--cried with a sarcastic
+laugh, “Do not flatter me, O prophet, by exemption from the fate of
+my companions. Shall _I_ have no part to play in this drama of your
+fantasies.”
+
+At this question, Cazotte’s countenance lost its unnatural expression of
+awe and sternness; the sardonic humour most common to it came back and
+played in his brightening eyes.
+
+“Yes, La Harpe, the most wonderful part of all! YOU will become--a
+Christian!”
+
+This was too much for the audience that a moment before seemed grave
+and thoughtful, and they burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, while
+Cazotte, as if exhausted by his predictions, sank back in his chair, and
+breathed hard and heavily.
+
+“Nay,” said Madame de G--, “you who have predicted such grave things
+concerning us, must prophesy something also about yourself.”
+
+A convulsive tremor shook the involuntary prophet,--it passed, and
+left his countenance elevated by an expression of resignation and calm.
+“Madame,” said he, after a long pause, “during the siege of Jerusalem,
+we are told by its historian that a man, for seven successive days,
+went round the ramparts, exclaiming, ‘Woe to thee, Jerusalem,--woe to
+myself!’”
+
+“Well, Cazotte, well?”
+
+“And on the seventh day, while he thus spoke, a stone from the machines
+of the Romans dashed him into atoms!”
+
+With these words, Cazotte rose; and the guests, awed in spite of
+themselves, shortly afterwards broke up and retired.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.VII.
+
+     Qui donc t’a donne la mission s’annoncer au peuple que la
+     divinite n’existe pas?  Quel avantage trouves-tu a persuader a
+     l’homme qu’une force aveugle preside a ses destinees et frappe au
+     hasard le crime et la vertu?--Robespierre, “Discours,” Mai 7,
+     1794.
+
+     (Who then invested you with the mission to announce to the people
+     that there is no God?  What advantage find you in persuading man
+     that nothing but blind force presides over his destinies, and
+     strikes haphazard both crime and virtue?)
+
+It was some time before midnight when the stranger returned home. His
+apartments were situated in one of those vast abodes which may be called
+an epitome of Paris itself,--the cellars rented by mechanics, scarcely
+removed a step from paupers, often by outcasts and fugitives from the
+law, often by some daring writer, who, after scattering amongst the
+people doctrines the most subversive of order, or the most libellous on
+the characters of priest, minister, and king, retired amongst the rats,
+to escape the persecution that attends the virtuous; the ground-floor
+occupied by shops; the entresol by artists; the principal stories by
+nobles; and the garrets by journeymen or grisettes.
+
+As the stranger passed up the stairs, a young man of a form and
+countenance singularly unprepossessing emerged from a door in the
+entresol, and brushed beside him. His glance was furtive, sinister,
+savage, and yet timorous; the man’s face was of an ashen paleness, and
+the features worked convulsively. The stranger paused, and observed
+him with thoughtful looks, as he hurried down the stairs. While he
+thus stood, he heard a groan from the room which the young man had just
+quitted; the latter had pulled to the door with hasty vehemence, but
+some fragment, probably of fuel, had prevented its closing, and it now
+stood slightly ajar; the stranger pushed it open and entered. He passed
+a small anteroom, meanly furnished, and stood in a bedchamber of meagre
+and sordid discomfort. Stretched on the bed, and writhing in pain, lay
+an old man; a single candle lit the room, and threw its feeble ray over
+the furrowed and death-like face of the sick person. No attendant
+was by; he seemed left alone, to breathe his last. “Water,” he moaned
+feebly,--“water:--I parch,--I burn!” The intruder approached the bed,
+bent over him, and took his hand. “Oh, bless thee, Jean, bless thee!”
+ said the sufferer; “hast thou brought back the physician already? Sir,
+I am poor, but I can pay you well. I would not die yet, for that young
+man’s sake.” And he sat upright in his bed, and fixed his dim eyes
+anxiously on his visitor.
+
+“What are your symptoms, your disease?”
+
+“Fire, fire, fire in the heart, the entrails: I burn!”
+
+“How long is it since you have taken food?”
+
+“Food! only this broth. There is the basin, all I have taken these six
+hours. I had scarce drunk it ere these pains began.”
+
+The stranger looked at the basin; some portion of the contents was yet
+left there.
+
+“Who administered this to you?”
+
+“Who? Jean! Who else should? I have no servant,--none! I am poor, very
+poor, sir. But no! you physicians do not care for the poor. I AM RICH!
+can you cure me?”
+
+“Yes, if Heaven permit. Wait but a few moments.”
+
+The old man was fast sinking under the rapid effects of poison. The
+stranger repaired to his own apartments, and returned in a few moments
+with some preparation that had the instant result of an antidote. The
+pain ceased, the blue and livid colour receded from the lips; the old
+man fell into a profound sleep. The stranger drew the curtains round the
+bed, took up the light, and inspected the apartment. The walls of both
+rooms were hung with drawings of masterly excellence. A portfolio
+was filled with sketches of equal skill,--but these last were mostly
+subjects that appalled the eye and revolted the taste: they displayed
+the human figure in every variety of suffering,--the rack, the wheel,
+the gibbet; all that cruelty has invented to sharpen the pangs of death
+seemed yet more dreadful from the passionate gusto and earnest force of
+the designer. And some of the countenances of those thus delineated were
+sufficiently removed from the ideal to show that they were portraits; in
+a large, bold, irregular hand was written beneath these drawings, “The
+Future of the Aristocrats.” In a corner of the room, and close by an old
+bureau, was a small bundle, over which, as if to hide it, a cloak was
+thrown carelessly. Several shelves were filled with books; these
+were almost entirely the works of the philosophers of the time,--the
+philosophers of the material school, especially the Encyclopedistes,
+whom Robespierre afterwards so singularly attacked when the coward
+deemed it unsafe to leave his reign without a God.
+
+(“Cette secte (les Encyclopedistes) propagea avec beaucoup de zele
+l’opinion du materialisme, qui prevalut parmi les grands et parmi
+les beaux esprits; on lui doit en partie cette espece de philosophie
+pratique qui, reduisant l’Egoisme en systeme regarde la societe humaine
+comme une guerre de ruse, le succes comme la regle du juste et de
+l’injuste, la probite comme une affaire de gout, ou de bienseance,
+le monde comme le patrimoine des fripons adroits.”--“Discours de
+Robespierre,” Mai 7, 1794. (This sect (the Encyclopaedists) propagate
+with much zeal the doctrine of materialism, which prevails among
+the great and the wits; we owe to it partly that kind of practical
+philosophy which, reducing Egotism to a system, looks upon society as
+a war of cunning; success the rule of right and wrong, honesty as an
+affair of taste or decency: and the world as the patrimony of clever
+scoundrels.))
+
+A volume lay on a table,--it was one of Voltaire, and the page was
+opened at his argumentative assertion of the existence of the Supreme
+Being. (“Histoire de Jenni.”) The margin was covered with pencilled
+notes, in the stiff but tremulous hand of old age; all in attempt to
+refute or to ridicule the logic of the sage of Ferney: Voltaire did not
+go far enough for the annotator! The clock struck two, when the sound
+of steps was heard without. The stranger silently seated himself on the
+farther side of the bed, and its drapery screened him, as he sat, from
+the eyes of a man who now entered on tiptoe; it was the same person
+who had passed him on the stairs. The new-comer took up the candle and
+approached the bed. The old man’s face was turned to the pillow; but he
+lay so still, and his breathing was so inaudible, that his sleep might
+well, by that hasty, shrinking, guilty glance, be mistaken for the
+repose of death. The new-comer drew back, and a grim smile passed over
+his face: he replaced the candle on the table, opened the bureau with
+a key which he took from his pocket, and loaded himself with several
+rouleaus of gold that he found in the drawers. At this time the old man
+began to wake. He stirred, he looked up; he turned his eyes towards the
+light now waning in its socket; he saw the robber at his work; he sat
+erect for an instant, as if transfixed, more even by astonishment than
+terror. At last he sprang from his bed.
+
+“Just Heaven! do I dream! Thou--thou--thou, for whom I toiled and
+starved!--THOU!”
+
+The robber started; the gold fell from his hand, and rolled on the
+floor.
+
+“What!” he said, “art thou not dead yet? Has the poison failed?”
+
+“Poison, boy! Ah!” shrieked the old man, and covered his face with his
+hands; then, with sudden energy, he exclaimed, “Jean! Jean! recall that
+word. Rob, plunder me if thou wilt, but do not say thou couldst murder
+one who only lived for thee! There, there, take the gold; I hoarded it
+but for thee. Go! go!” and the old man, who in his passion had quitted
+his bed, fell at the feet of the foiled assassin, and writhed on the
+ground,--the mental agony more intolerable than that of the body,
+which he had so lately undergone. The robber looked at him with a
+hard disdain. “What have I ever done to thee, wretch?” cried the old
+man,--“what but loved and cherished thee? Thou wert an orphan,--an
+outcast. I nurtured, nursed, adopted thee as my son. If men call me a
+miser, it was but that none might despise thee, my heir, because Nature
+has stunted and deformed thee, when I was no more. Thou wouldst have
+had all when I was dead. Couldst thou not spare me a few months or
+days,--nothing to thy youth, all that is left to my age? What have I
+done to thee?”
+
+“Thou hast continued to live, and thou wouldst make no will.”
+
+“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!”
+
+“TON DIEU! Thy God! Fool! Hast thou not told me, from my childhood, that
+there is NO God? Hast thou not fed me on philosophy? Hast thou not said,
+‘Be virtuous, be good, be just, for the sake of mankind: but there is no
+life after this life’? Mankind! why should I love mankind? Hideous and
+misshapen, mankind jeer at me as I pass the streets. What hast thou done
+to me? Thou hast taken away from me, who am the scoff of this world, the
+hopes of another! Is there no other life? Well, then, I want thy gold,
+that at least I may hasten to make the best of this!”
+
+“Monster! Curses light on thy ingratitude, thy--”
+
+“And who hears thy curses? Thou knowest there is no God! Mark me; I have
+prepared all to fly. See,--I have my passport; my horses wait without;
+relays are ordered. I have thy gold.” (And the wretch, as he spoke,
+continued coldly to load his person with the rouleaus). “And now, if I
+spare thy life, how shall I be sure that thou wilt not inform against
+mine?” He advanced with a gloomy scowl and a menacing gesture as he
+spoke.
+
+The old man’s anger changed to fear. He cowered before the savage. “Let
+me live! let me live!--that--that--”
+
+“That--what?”
+
+“I may pardon thee! Yes, thou hast nothing to fear from me. I swear it!”
+
+“Swear! But by whom and what, old man? I cannot believe thee, if thou
+believest not in any God! Ha, ha! behold the result of thy lessons.”
+
+Another moment and those murderous fingers would have strangled their
+prey. But between the assassin and his victim rose a form that seemed
+almost to both a visitor from the world that both denied,--stately with
+majestic strength, glorious with awful beauty.
+
+The ruffian recoiled, looked, trembled, and then turned and fled from
+the chamber. The old man fell again to the ground insensible.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.VIII.
+
+     To know how a bad man will act when in power, reverse all the
+     doctrines he preaches when obscure.--S. Montague.
+
+     Antipathies also form a part of magic (falsely) so-called.  Man
+     naturally has the same instinct as the animals, which warns them
+     involuntarily against the creatures that are hostile or fatal to
+     their existence.  But HE so often neglects it, that it becomes
+     dormant.  Not so the true cultivator of the Great Science, etc.
+
+     --Trismegistus the Fourth (a Rosicrucian).
+
+When he again saw the old man the next day, the stranger found him calm,
+and surprisingly recovered from the scene and sufferings of the night.
+He expressed his gratitude to his preserver with tearful fervour,
+and stated that he had already sent for a relation who would make
+arrangements for his future safety and mode of life. “For I have money
+yet left,” said the old man; “and henceforth have no motive to be a
+miser.” He proceeded then briefly to relate the origin and circumstances
+of his connection with his intended murderer.
+
+It seems that in earlier life he had quarrelled with his
+relations,--from a difference in opinions of belief. Rejecting all
+religion as a fable, he yet cultivated feelings that inclined him--for
+though his intellect was weak, his dispositions were good--to that
+false and exaggerated sensibility which its dupes so often mistake
+for benevolence. He had no children; he resolved to adopt an enfant
+du peuple. He resolved to educate this boy according to “reason.” He
+selected an orphan of the lowest extraction, whose defects of person and
+constitution only yet the more moved his pity, and finally engrossed his
+affection. In this outcast he not only loved a son, he loved a theory!
+He brought him up most philosophically. Helvetius had proved to him
+that education can do all; and before he was eight years old, the little
+Jean’s favourite expressions were, “La lumiere et la vertu.” (Light and
+virtue.) The boy showed talents, especially in art.
+
+The protector sought for a master who was as free from “superstition” as
+himself, and selected the painter David. That person, as hideous as
+his pupil, and whose dispositions were as vicious as his professional
+abilities were undeniable, was certainly as free from “superstition” as
+the protector could desire. It was reserved for Robespierre hereafter
+to make the sanguinary painter believe in the Etre Supreme. The boy
+was early sensible of his ugliness, which was almost preternatural. His
+benefactor found it in vain to reconcile him to the malice of Nature by
+his philosophical aphorisms; but when he pointed out to him that in
+this world money, like charity, covers a multitude of defects, the boy
+listened eagerly and was consoled. To save money for his protege,--for
+the only thing in the world he loved,--this became the patron’s passion.
+Verily, he had met with his reward.
+
+“But I am thankful he has escaped,” said the old man, wiping his eyes.
+“Had he left me a beggar, I could never have accused him.”
+
+“No, for you are the author of his crimes.”
+
+“How! I, who never ceased to inculcate the beauty of virtue? Explain
+yourself.”
+
+“Alas! if thy pupil did not make this clear to thee last night from his
+own lips, an angel might come from heaven to preach to thee in vain.”
+
+The old man moved uneasily, and was about to reply, when the relative he
+had sent for--and who, a native of Nancy, happened to be at Paris at the
+time--entered the room. He was a man somewhat past thirty, and of a dry,
+saturnine, meagre countenance, restless eyes, and compressed lips. He
+listened, with many ejaculations of horror, to his relation’s recital,
+and sought earnestly, but in vain, to induce him to give information
+against his protege.
+
+“Tush, tush, Rene Dumas!” said the old man, “you are a lawyer. You are
+bred to regard human life with contempt. Let any man break a law, and
+you shout, ‘Execute him!’”
+
+“I!” cried Dumas, lifting up his hands and eyes: “venerable sage, how
+you misjudge me! I lament more than any one the severity of our code. I
+think the state never should take away life,--no, not even the life of
+a murderer. I agree with that young statesman,--Maximilien
+Robespierre,--that the executioner is the invention of the tyrant. My
+very attachment to our advancing revolution is, that it must sweep away
+this legal butchery.”
+
+The lawyer paused, out of breath. The stranger regarded him fixedly and
+turned pale.
+
+“You change countenance, sir,” said Dumas; “you do not agree with me.”
+
+“Pardon me, I was at that moment repressing a vague fear which seemed
+prophetic.”
+
+“And that--”
+
+“Was that we should meet again, when your opinions on Death and the
+philosophy of Revolutions might be different.”
+
+“Never!”
+
+“You enchant me, Cousin Rene,” said the old man, who had listened to his
+relation with delight. “Ah, I see you have proper sentiments of justice
+and philanthropy. Why did I not seek to know you before? You admire the
+Revolution;--you, equally with me, detest the barbarity of kings and the
+fraud of priests?”
+
+“Detest! How could I love mankind if I did not?”
+
+“And,” said the old man, hesitatingly, “you do not think, with this
+noble gentleman, that I erred in the precepts I instilled into that
+wretched man?”
+
+“Erred! Was Socrates to blame if Alcibiades was an adulterer and a
+traitor?”
+
+“You hear him, you hear him! But Socrates had also a Plato; henceforth
+you shall be a Plato to me. You hear him?” exclaimed the old man,
+turning to the stranger.
+
+But the latter was at the threshold. Who shall argue with the most
+stubborn of all bigotries,--the fanaticism of unbelief?
+
+“Are you going?” exclaimed Dumas, “and before I have thanked you,
+blessed you, for the life of this dear and venerable man? Oh, if ever I
+can repay you,--if ever you want the heart’s blood of Rene Dumas!” Thus
+volubly delivering himself, he followed the stranger to the threshold of
+the second chamber, and there, gently detaining him, and after looking
+over his shoulder, to be sure that he was not heard by the owner,
+he whispered, “I ought to return to Nancy. One would not lose one’s
+time,--you don’t think, sir, that that scoundrel took away ALL the old
+fool’s money?”
+
+“Was it thus Plato spoke of Socrates, Monsieur Dumas?”
+
+“Ha, ha!--you are caustic. Well, you have a right. Sir, we shall meet
+again.”
+
+“AGAIN!” muttered the stranger, and his brow darkened. He hastened to
+his chamber; he passed the day and the night alone, and in studies, no
+matter of what nature,--they served to increase his gloom.
+
+What could ever connect his fate with Rene Dumas, or the fugitive
+assassin? Why did the buoyant air of Paris seem to him heavy with
+the steams of blood; why did an instinct urge him to fly from those
+sparkling circles, from that focus of the world’s awakened hopes,
+warning him from return?--he, whose lofty existence defied--but away
+these dreams and omens! He leaves France behind. Back, O Italy, to thy
+majestic wrecks! On the Alps his soul breathes the free air once more.
+Free air! Alas! let the world-healers exhaust their chemistry; man never
+shall be as free in the marketplace as on the mountain. But we, reader,
+we too escape from these scenes of false wisdom clothing godless crime.
+Away, once more
+
+“In den heitern Regionen Wo die reinen Formen wohnen.”
+
+Away, to the loftier realm where the pure dwellers are. Unpolluted by
+the Actual, the Ideal lives only with Art and Beauty. Sweet Viola, by
+the shores of the blue Parthenope, by Virgil’s tomb, and the Cimmerian
+cavern, we return to thee once more.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.IX.
+
+     Che non vuol che ‘l destrier piu vada in alto,
+     Poi lo lega nel margine marino
+     A un verde mirto in mezzo un lauro E UN PINO.
+     “Orlando Furioso,” c. vi. xxiii.
+
+     (As he did not wish that his charger (the hippogriff) should take
+     any further excursions into the higher regions for the present,
+     he bound him at the sea-shore to a green myrtle between a laurel
+     and a pine.)
+
+O Musician! art thou happy now? Thou art reinstalled at thy stately
+desk,--thy faithful barbiton has its share in the triumph. It is thy
+masterpiece which fills thy ear; it is thy daughter who fills the
+scene,--the music, the actress, so united, that applause to one is
+applause to both. They make way for thee, at the orchestra,--they no
+longer jeer and wink, when, with a fierce fondness, thou dost caress
+thy Familiar, that plains, and wails, and chides, and growls, under thy
+remorseless hand. They understand now how irregular is ever the symmetry
+of real genius. The inequalities in its surface make the moon luminous
+to man. Giovanni Paisiello, Maestro di Capella, if thy gentle soul could
+know envy, thou must sicken to see thy Elfrida and thy Pirro laid aside,
+and all Naples turned fanatic to the Siren, at whose measures shook
+querulously thy gentle head! But thou, Paisiello, calm in the long
+prosperity of fame, knowest that the New will have its day, and
+comfortest thyself that the Elfrida and the Pirro will live forever.
+Perhaps a mistake, but it is by such mistakes that true genius conquers
+envy. “To be immortal,” says Schiller, “live in the whole.” To be
+superior to the hour, live in thy self-esteem. The audience now would
+give their ears for those variations and flights they were once wont to
+hiss. No!--Pisani has been two-thirds of a life at silent work on his
+masterpiece: there is nothing he can add to THAT, however he might have
+sought to improve on the masterpieces of others. Is not this common?
+The least little critic, in reviewing some work of art, will say, “pity
+this, and pity that;” “this should have been altered,--that omitted.”
+ Yea, with his wiry fiddlestring will he creak out his accursed
+variations. But let him sit down and compose himself. He sees no
+improvement in variations THEN! Every man can control his fiddle when it
+is his own work with which its vagaries would play the devil.
+
+And Viola is the idol, the theme of Naples. She is the spoiled sultana
+of the boards. To spoil her acting may be easy enough,--shall they
+spoil her nature? No, I think not. There, at home, she is still good
+and simple; and there, under the awning by the doorway,--there she still
+sits, divinely musing. How often, crook-trunked tree, she looks to thy
+green boughs; how often, like thee, in her dreams, and fancies, does she
+struggle for the light,--not the light of the stage-lamps. Pooh, child!
+be contented with the lamps, even with the rush-lights. A farthing
+candle is more convenient for household purposes than the stars.
+
+Weeks passed, and the stranger did not reappear; months had passed, and
+his prophecy of sorrow was not yet fulfilled. One evening Pisani was
+taken ill. His success had brought on the long-neglected composer
+pressing applications for concerti and sonata, adapted to his more
+peculiar science on the violin. He had been employed for some weeks, day
+and night, on a piece in which he hoped to excel himself. He took, as
+usual, one of those seemingly impracticable subjects which it was his
+pride to subject to the expressive powers of his art,--the terrible
+legend connected with the transformation of Philomel. The pantomime of
+sound opened with the gay merriment of a feast. The monarch of Thrace
+is at his banquet; a sudden discord brays through the joyous notes,--the
+string seems to screech with horror. The king learns the murder of his
+son by the hands of the avenging sisters. Swift rage the chords, through
+the passions of fear, of horror, of fury, and dismay. The father pursues
+the sisters. Hark! what changes the dread--the discord--into that long,
+silvery, mournful music? The transformation is completed; and Philomel,
+now the nightingale, pours from the myrtle-bough the full, liquid,
+subduing notes that are to tell evermore to the world the history of
+her woes and wrongs. Now, it was in the midst of this complicated and
+difficult attempt that the health of the over-tasked musician, excited
+alike by past triumph and new ambition, suddenly gave way. He was taken
+ill at night. The next morning the doctor pronounced that his disease
+was a malignant and infectious fever. His wife and Viola shared in their
+tender watch; but soon that task was left to the last alone. The Signora
+Pisani caught the infection, and in a few hours was even in a state more
+alarming than that of her husband. The Neapolitans, in common with the
+inhabitants of all warm climates, are apt to become selfish and brutal
+in their dread of infectious disorders. Gionetta herself pretended to be
+ill, to avoid the sick-chamber. The whole labour of love and sorrow
+fell on Viola. It was a terrible trial,--I am willing to hurry over the
+details. The wife died first!
+
+One day, a little before sunset, Pisani woke partially recovered from
+the delirium which had preyed upon him, with few intervals, since the
+second day of the disease; and casting about him his dizzy and feeble
+eyes, he recognised Viola, and smiled. He faltered her name as he rose
+and stretched his arms. She fell upon his breast, and strove to suppress
+her tears.
+
+“Thy mother?” he said. “Does she sleep?”
+
+“She sleeps,--ah, yes!” and the tears gushed forth.
+
+“I thought--eh! I know not WHAT I have thought. But do not weep: I shall
+be well now,--quite well. She will come to me when she wakes,--will
+she?”
+
+Viola could not speak; but she busied herself in pouring forth an
+anodyne, which she had been directed to give the sufferer as soon as the
+delirium should cease. The doctor had told her, too, to send for him the
+instant so important a change should occur.
+
+She went to the door and called to the woman who, during Gionetta’s
+pretended illness, had been induced to supply her place; but the
+hireling answered not. She flew through the chambers to search for her
+in vain,--the hireling had caught Gionetta’s fears, and vanished. What
+was to be done? The case was urgent,--the doctor had declared not a
+moment should be lost in obtaining his attendance; she must leave her
+father,--she must go herself! She crept back into the room,--the anodyne
+seemed already to have taken benign effect; the patient’s eyes were
+closed, and he breathed regularly, as in sleep. She stole away, threw
+her veil over her face, and hurried from the house.
+
+Now the anodyne had not produced the effect which it appeared to
+have done; instead of healthful sleep, it had brought on a kind of
+light-headed somnolence, in which the mind, preternaturally restless,
+wandered about its accustomed haunts, waking up its old familiar
+instincts and inclinations. It was not sleep,--it was not delirium;
+it was the dream-wakefulness which opium sometimes induces, when every
+nerve grows tremulously alive, and creates a corresponding activity in
+the frame, to which it gives a false and hectic vigour. Pisani missed
+something,--what, he scarcely knew; it was a combination of the two
+wants most essential to his mental life,--the voice of his wife, the
+touch of his Familiar. He rose,--he left his bed, he leisurely put on
+his old dressing-robe, in which he had been wont to compose. He smiled
+complacently as the associations connected with the garment came over
+his memory; he walked tremulously across the room, and entered the small
+cabinet next to his chamber, in which his wife had been accustomed more
+often to watch than sleep, when illness separated her from his side. The
+room was desolate and void. He looked round wistfully, and muttered
+to himself, and then proceeded regularly, and with a noiseless step,
+through the chambers of the silent house, one by one.
+
+He came at last to that in which old Gionetta--faithful to her own
+safety, if nothing else--nursed herself, in the remotest corner of the
+house, from the danger of infection. As he glided in,--wan, emaciated,
+with an uneasy, anxious, searching look in his haggard eyes,--the old
+woman shrieked aloud, and fell at his feet. He bent over her, passed his
+thin hands along her averted face, shook his head, and said in a hollow
+voice,--
+
+“I cannot find them; where are they?”
+
+“Who, dear master? Oh, have compassion on yourself; they are not here.
+Blessed saints! this is terrible; he has touched me; I am dead!”
+
+“Dead! who is dead? Is any one dead?”
+
+“Ah! don’t talk so; you must know it well: my poor mistress,--she caught
+the fever from you; it is infectious enough to kill a whole city. San
+Gennaro protect me! My poor mistress, she is dead,--buried, too; and
+I, your faithful Gionetta, woe is me! Go, go--to--to bed again, dearest
+master,--go!”
+
+The poor musician stood for one moment mute and unmoving, then a slight
+shiver ran through his frame; he turned and glided back, silent and
+spectre-like, as he had entered. He came into the room where he had been
+accustomed to compose,--where his wife, in her sweet patience, had so
+often sat by his side, and praised and flattered when the world had but
+jeered and scorned. In one corner he found the laurel-wreath she had
+placed on his brows that happy night of fame and triumph; and near it,
+half hid by her mantilla, lay in its case the neglected instrument.
+
+Viola was not long gone: she had found the physician; she returned with
+him; and as they gained the threshold, they heard a strain of music from
+within,--a strain of piercing, heart-rending anguish. It was not like
+some senseless instrument, mechanical in its obedience to a human
+hand,--it was as some spirit calling, in wail and agony from the forlorn
+shades, to the angels it beheld afar beyond the Eternal Gulf. They
+exchanged glances of dismay. They hurried into the house; they hastened
+into the room. Pisani turned, and his look, full of ghastly intelligence
+and stern command, awed them back. The black mantilla, the faded
+laurel-leaf, lay there before him. Viola’s heart guessed all at a single
+glance; she sprung to his knees; she clasped them,--“Father, father, _I_
+am left thee still!”
+
+The wail ceased,--the note changed; with a confused association--half of
+the man, half of the artist--the anguish, still a melody, was connected
+with sweeter sounds and thoughts. The nightingale had escaped the
+pursuit,--soft, airy, bird-like, thrilled the delicious notes a moment,
+and then died away. The instrument fell to the floor, and its chords
+snapped. You heard that sound through the silence. The artist looked
+on his kneeling child, and then on the broken chords... “Bury me by her
+side,” he said, in a very calm, low voice; “and THAT by mine.” And with
+these words his whole frame became rigid, as if turned to stone. The
+last change passed over his face. He fell to the ground, sudden and
+heavy. The chords THERE, too,--the chords of the human instrument were
+snapped asunder. As he fell, his robe brushed the laurel-wreath, and
+that fell also, near but not in reach of the dead man’s nerveless hand.
+
+Broken instrument, broken heart, withered laurel-wreath!--the setting
+sun through the vine-clad lattice streamed on all! So smiles the eternal
+Nature on the wrecks of all that make life glorious! And not a sun that
+sets not somewhere on the silenced music,--on the faded laurel!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.X.
+
+     Che difesa miglior ch’ usbergo e scudo,
+     E la santa innocenza al petto ignudo!
+     “Ger. Lib.,” c. viii. xli.
+
+     (Better defence than shield or breastplate is holy innocence
+     to the naked breast.)
+
+And they buried the musician and his barbiton together, in the same
+coffin. That famous Steiner--primeval Titan of the great Tyrolese
+race--often hast thou sought to scale the heavens, and therefore must
+thou, like the meaner children of men, descend to the dismal Hades!
+Harder fate for thee than thy mortal master. For THY soul sleeps with
+thee in the coffin. And the music that belongs to HIS, separate from
+the instrument, ascends on high, to be heard often by a daughter’s pious
+ears when the heaven is serene and the earth sad. For there is a sense
+of hearing that the vulgar know not. And the voices of the dead breathe
+soft and frequent to those who can unite the memory with the faith.
+
+And now Viola is alone in the world,--alone in the home where loneliness
+had seemed from the cradle a thing that was not of nature. And at
+first the solitude and the stillness were insupportable. Have you, ye
+mourners, to whom these sibyl leaves, weird with many a dark enigma,
+shall be borne, have you not felt that when the death of some best-loved
+one has made the hearth desolate,--have you not felt as if the gloom of
+the altered home was too heavy for thought to bear?--you would leave it,
+though a palace, even for a cabin. And yet,--sad to say,--when you obey
+the impulse, when you fly from the walls, when in the strange place in
+which you seek your refuge nothing speaks to you of the lost, have ye
+not felt again a yearning for that very food to memory which was just
+before but bitterness and gall? Is it not almost impious and profane
+to abandon that dear hearth to strangers? And the desertion of the home
+where your parents dwelt, and blessed you, upbraids your conscience as
+if you had sold their tombs.
+
+Beautiful was the Etruscan superstition that the ancestors become the
+household gods. Deaf is the heart to which the Lares call from the
+desolate floors in vain. At first Viola had, in her intolerable anguish,
+gratefully welcomed the refuge which the house and family of a kindly
+neighbour, much attached to her father, and who was one of the orchestra
+that Pisani shall perplex no more, had proffered to the orphan. But the
+company of the unfamiliar in our grief, the consolation of the stranger,
+how it irritates the wound! And then, to hear elsewhere the name of
+father, mother, child,--as if death came alone to you,--to see elsewhere
+the calm regularity of those lives united in love and order, keeping
+account of happy hours, the unbroken timepiece of home, as if
+nowhere else the wheels were arrested, the chain shattered, the hands
+motionless, the chime still! No, the grave itself does not remind us of
+our loss like the company of those who have no loss to mourn. Go back to
+thy solitude, young orphan,--go back to thy home: the sorrow that meets
+thee on the threshold can greet thee, even in its sadness, like the
+smile upon the face of the dead. And there, from thy casement, and
+there, from without thy door, thou seest still the tree, solitary as
+thyself, and springing from the clefts of the rock, but forcing its way
+to light,--as, through all sorrow, while the seasons yet can renew the
+verdure and bloom of youth, strives the instinct of the human heart!
+Only when the sap is dried up, only when age comes on, does the sun
+shine in vain for man and for the tree.
+
+Weeks and months--months sad and many--again passed, and Naples will
+not longer suffer its idol to seclude itself from homage. The world ever
+plucks us back from ourselves with a thousand arms. And again Viola’s
+voice is heard upon the stage, which, mystically faithful to life, is in
+nought more faithful than this, that it is the appearances that fill the
+scene; and we pause not to ask of what realities they are the proxies.
+When the actor of Athens moved all hearts as he clasped the burial urn,
+and burst into broken sobs; how few, there, knew that it held the ashes
+of his son! Gold, as well as fame, was showered upon the young actress;
+but she still kept to her simple mode of life, to her lowly home, to
+the one servant whose faults, selfish as they were, Viola was too
+inexperienced to perceive. And it was Gionetta who had placed her when
+first born in her father’s arms! She was surrounded by every snare,
+wooed by every solicitation that could beset her unguarded beauty and
+her dangerous calling. But her modest virtue passed unsullied through
+them all. It is true that she had been taught by lips now mute the
+maiden duties enjoined by honour and religion. And all love that spoke
+not of the altar only shocked and repelled her. But besides that, as
+grief and solitude ripened her heart, and made her tremble at times
+to think how deeply it could feel, her vague and early visions shaped
+themselves into an ideal of love. And till the ideal is found, how
+the shadow that it throws before it chills us to the actual! With
+that ideal, ever and ever, unconsciously, and with a certain awe and
+shrinking, came the shape and voice of the warning stranger. Nearly two
+years had passed since he had appeared at Naples. Nothing had been heard
+of him, save that his vessel had been directed, some months after his
+departure, to sail for Leghorn. By the gossips of Naples, his existence,
+supposed so extraordinary, was wellnigh forgotten; but the heart of
+Viola was more faithful. Often he glided through her dreams, and
+when the wind sighed through that fantastic tree, associated with his
+remembrance, she started with a tremor and a blush, as if she had heard
+him speak.
+
+But amongst the train of her suitors was one to whom she listened
+more gently than to the rest; partly because, perhaps, he spoke in
+her mother’s native tongue; partly because in his diffidence there was
+little to alarm and displease; partly because his rank, nearer to
+her own than that of lordlier wooers, prevented his admiration from
+appearing insult; partly because he himself, eloquent and a dreamer,
+often uttered thoughts that were kindred to those buried deepest in her
+mind. She began to like, perhaps to love him, but as a sister loves;
+a sort of privileged familiarity sprung up between them. If in the
+Englishman’s breast arose wild and unworthy hopes, he had not yet
+expressed them. Is there danger to thee here, lone Viola, or is the
+danger greater in thy unfound ideal?
+
+And now, as the overture to some strange and wizard spectacle, closes
+this opening prelude. Wilt thou hear more? Come with thy faith prepared.
+I ask not the blinded eyes, but the awakened sense. As the enchanted
+Isle, remote from the homes of men,--
+
+“Ove alcun legno Rado, o non mai va dalle nostre sponde,”--“Ger.Lib.,”
+ cant. xiv. 69.
+
+(Where ship seldom or never comes from our coasts.)
+
+is the space in the weary ocean of actual life to which the Muse or
+Sibyl (ancient in years, but ever young in aspect), offers thee no
+unhallowed sail,--
+
+     “Quinci ella in cima a una montagna ascende
+     Disabitata, e d’ ombre oscura e bruna;
+     E par incanto a lei nevose rende
+     Le spalle e i fianchi; e sensa neve alcuna
+     Gli lascia il capo verdeggiante e vago;
+     E vi fonda un palagio appresso un lago.”
+
+     (There, she a mountain’s lofty peak ascends, Unpeopled,
+     shady, shagg’d with forests brown, Whose sides, by power of
+     magic, half-way down She heaps with slippery ice and frost
+     and snow, But sunshiny and verdant leaves the crown With
+     orange-woods and myrtles,--speaks, and lo! Rich from the
+     bordering lake a palace rises slow. Wiffin’s “Translation.”)
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II. -- ART, LOVE, AND WONDER.
+
+     Diversi aspetti in un confusi e misti.
+     “Ger. Lib,” cant. iv. 7.
+
+     Different appearances, confused and mixt in one.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.I.
+
+     Centauri, e Sfingi, e pallide Gorgoni.
+     “Ger. Lib.,” c. iv. v.
+
+     (Centaurs and Sphinxes and pallid Gorgons.)
+
+One moonlit night, in the Gardens at Naples, some four or five gentleman
+were seated under a tree, drinking their sherbet, and listening, in the
+intervals of conversation, to the music which enlivened that gay and
+favourite resort of an indolent population. One of this little party was
+a young Englishman, who had been the life of the whole group, but who,
+for the last few moments, had sunk into a gloomy and abstracted reverie.
+One of his countrymen observed this sudden gloom, and, tapping him on
+the back, said, “What ails you, Glyndon? Are you ill? You have grown
+quite pale,--you tremble. Is it a sudden chill? You had better go home:
+these Italian nights are often dangerous to our English constitutions.”
+
+“No, I am well now; it was a passing shudder. I cannot account for it
+myself.”
+
+A man, apparently of about thirty years of age, and of a mien and
+countenance strikingly superior to those around him, turned abruptly,
+and looked steadfastly at Glyndon.
+
+“I think I understand what you mean,” said he; “and perhaps,” he added,
+with a grave smile, “I could explain it better than yourself.” Here,
+turning to the others, he added, “You must often have felt, gentlemen,
+each and all of you, especially when sitting alone at night, a strange
+and unaccountable sensation of coldness and awe creep over you; your
+blood curdles, and the heart stands still; the limbs shiver; the hair
+bristles; you are afraid to look up, to turn your eyes to the darker
+corners of the room; you have a horrible fancy that something unearthly
+is at hand; presently the whole spell, if I may so call it, passes away,
+and you are ready to laugh at your own weakness. Have you not often felt
+what I have thus imperfectly described?--if so, you can understand what
+our young friend has just experienced, even amidst the delights of this
+magical scene, and amidst the balmy whispers of a July night.”
+
+“Sir,” replied Glyndon, evidently much surprised, “you have defined
+exactly the nature of that shudder which came over me. But how could my
+manner be so faithful an index to my impressions?”
+
+“I know the signs of the visitation,” returned the stranger, gravely;
+“they are not to be mistaken by one of my experience.”
+
+All the gentleman present then declared that they could comprehend, and
+had felt, what the stranger had described.
+
+“According to one of our national superstitions,” said Mervale, the
+Englishman who had first addressed Glyndon, “the moment you so feel your
+blood creep, and your hair stand on end, some one is walking over the
+spot which shall be your grave.”
+
+“There are in all lands different superstitions to account for so common
+an occurrence,” replied the stranger: “one sect among the Arabians holds
+that at that instant God is deciding the hour either of your death,
+or of some one dear to you. The African savage, whose imagination is
+darkened by the hideous rites of his gloomy idolatry, believes that the
+Evil Spirit is pulling you towards him by the hair: so do the Grotesque
+and the Terrible mingle with each other.”
+
+“It is evidently a mere physical accident,--a derangement of the
+stomach, a chill of the blood,” said a young Neapolitan, with whom
+Glyndon had formed a slight acquaintance.
+
+“Then why is it always coupled in all nations with some superstitious
+presentiment or terror,--some connection between the material frame and
+the supposed world without us? For my part, I think--”
+
+“Ay, what do you think, sir?” asked Glyndon, curiously.
+
+“I think,” continued the stranger, “that it is the repugnance and
+horror with which our more human elements recoil from something, indeed,
+invisible, but antipathetic to our own nature; and from a knowledge of
+which we are happily secured by the imperfection of our senses.”
+
+“You are a believer in spirits, then?” said Mervale, with an incredulous
+smile.
+
+“Nay, it was not precisely of spirits that I spoke; but there may be
+forms of matter as invisible and impalpable to us as the animalculae
+in the air we breathe,--in the water that plays in yonder basin. Such
+beings may have passions and powers like our own--as the animalculae to
+which I have compared them. The monster that lives and dies in a drop of
+water--carnivorous, insatiable, subsisting on the creatures minuter than
+himself--is not less deadly in his wrath, less ferocious in his nature,
+than the tiger of the desert. There may be things around us that would
+be dangerous and hostile to men, if Providence had not placed a wall
+between them and us, merely by different modifications of matter.”
+
+“And think you that wall never can be removed?” asked young Glyndon,
+abruptly. “Are the traditions of sorcerer and wizard, universal and
+immemorial as they are, merely fables?”
+
+“Perhaps yes,--perhaps no,” answered the stranger, indifferently. “But
+who, in an age in which the reason has chosen its proper bounds, would
+be mad enough to break the partition that divides him from the boa and
+the lion,--to repine at and rebel against the law which confines the
+shark to the great deep? Enough of these idle speculations.”
+
+Here the stranger rose, summoned the attendant, paid for his sherbet,
+and, bowing slightly to the company, soon disappeared among the trees.
+
+“Who is that gentleman?” asked Glyndon, eagerly.
+
+The rest looked at each other, without replying, for some moments.
+
+“I never saw him before,” said Mervale, at last.
+
+“Nor I.”
+
+“Nor I.”
+
+“I know him well,” said the Neapolitan, who was, indeed, the Count
+Cetoxa. “If you remember, it was as my companion that he joined you.
+He visited Naples about two years ago, and has recently returned; he is
+very rich,--indeed, enormously so. A most agreeable person. I am sorry
+to hear him talk so strangely to-night; it serves to encourage the
+various foolish reports that are circulated concerning him.”
+
+“And surely,” said another Neapolitan, “the circumstance that occurred
+but the other day, so well known to yourself, Cetoxa, justifies the
+reports you pretend to deprecate.”
+
+“Myself and my countryman,” said Glyndon, “mix so little in Neapolitan
+society, that we lose much that appears well worthy of lively interest.
+May I enquire what are the reports, and what is the circumstance you
+refer to?”
+
+“As to the reports, gentlemen,” said Cetoxa, courteously, addressing
+himself to the two Englishmen, “it may suffice to observe, that they
+attribute to the Signor Zanoni certain qualities which everybody desires
+for himself, but damns any one else for possessing. The incident Signor
+Belgioso alludes to, illustrates these qualities, and is, I must own,
+somewhat startling. You probably play, gentlemen?” (Here Cetoxa paused;
+and as both Englishmen had occasionally staked a few scudi at the public
+gaming-tables, they bowed assent to the conjecture.) Cetoxa continued.
+“Well, then, not many days since, and on the very day that Zanoni
+returned to Naples, it so happened that I had been playing pretty high,
+and had lost considerably. I rose from the table, resolved no longer to
+tempt fortune, when I suddenly perceived Zanoni, whose acquaintance I
+had before made (and who, I may say, was under some slight obligation to
+me), standing by, a spectator. Ere I could express my gratification at
+this unexpected recognition, he laid his hand on my arm. ‘You have lost
+much,’ said he; ‘more than you can afford. For my part, I dislike play;
+yet I wish to have some interest in what is going on. Will you play this
+sum for me? the risk is mine,--the half profits yours.’ I was startled,
+as you may suppose, at such an address; but Zanoni had an air and tone
+with him it was impossible to resist; besides, I was burning to recover
+my losses, and should not have risen had I had any money left about me.
+I told him I would accept his offer, provided we shared the risk as well
+as profits. ‘As you will,’ said he, smiling; ‘we need have no scruple,
+for you will be sure to win.’ I sat down; Zanoni stood behind me; my
+luck rose,--I invariably won. In fact, I rose from the table a rich
+man.”
+
+“There can be no foul play at the public tables, especially when foul
+play would make against the bank?” This question was put by Glyndon.
+
+“Certainly not,” replied the count. “But our good fortune was, indeed,
+marvellous,--so extraordinary that a Sicilian (the Sicilians are all
+ill-bred, bad-tempered fellows) grew angry and insolent. ‘Sir,’ said he,
+turning to my new friend, ‘you have no business to stand so near to
+the table. I do not understand this; you have not acted fairly.’ Zanoni
+replied, with great composure, that he had done nothing against the
+rules,--that he was very sorry that one man could not win without
+another man losing; and that he could not act unfairly, even if disposed
+to do so. The Sicilian took the stranger’s mildness for apprehension,
+and blustered more loudly. In fact, he rose from the table, and
+confronted Zanoni in a manner that, to say the least of it, was
+provoking to any gentleman who has some quickness of temper, or some
+skill with the small-sword.”
+
+“And,” interrupted Belgioso, “the most singular part of the whole to me
+was, that this Zanoni, who stood opposite to where I sat, and whose face
+I distinctly saw, made no remark, showed no resentment. He fixed his
+eyes steadfastly on the Sicilian; never shall I forget that look! it is
+impossible to describe it,--it froze the blood in my veins. The Sicilian
+staggered back as if struck. I saw him tremble; he sank on the bench.
+And then--”
+
+“Yes, then,” said Cetoxa, “to my infinite surprise, our gentleman, thus
+disarmed by a look from Zanoni, turned his whole anger upon me, THE--but
+perhaps you do not know, gentlemen, that I have some repute with my
+weapon?”
+
+“The best swordsman in Italy,” said Belgioso.
+
+“Before I could guess why or wherefore,” resumed Cetoxa, “I found myself
+in the garden behind the house, with Ughelli (that was the Sicilian’s
+name) facing me, and five or six gentlemen, the witnesses of the duel
+about to take place, around. Zanoni beckoned me aside. ‘This man will
+fall,’ said he. ‘When he is on the ground, go to him, and ask whether he
+will be buried by the side of his father in the church of San Gennaro?’
+‘Do you then know his family?’ I asked with great surprise. Zanoni made
+me no answer, and the next moment I was engaged with the Sicilian. To
+do him justice, his imbrogliato was magnificent, and a swifter lounger
+never crossed a sword; nevertheless,” added Cetoxa, with a pleasing
+modesty, “he was run through the body. I went up to him; he could
+scarcely speak. ‘Have you any request to make,--any affairs to settle?’
+He shook his head. ‘Where would you wish to be interred?’ He pointed
+towards the Sicilian coast. ‘What!’ said I, in surprise, ‘NOT by the
+side of your father, in the church of San Gennaro?’ As I spoke, his face
+altered terribly; he uttered a piercing shriek,--the blood gushed from
+his mouth, and he fell dead. The most strange part of the story is to
+come. We buried him in the church of San Gennaro. In doing so, we took
+up his father’s coffin; the lid came off in moving it, and the skeleton
+was visible. In the hollow of the skull we found a very slender wire of
+sharp steel; this caused surprise and inquiry. The father, who was rich
+and a miser, had died suddenly, and been buried in haste, owing, it
+was said, to the heat of the weather. Suspicion once awakened, the
+examination became minute. The old man’s servant was questioned, and at
+last confessed that the son had murdered the sire. The contrivance was
+ingenious: the wire was so slender that it pierced to the brain,
+and drew but one drop of blood, which the grey hairs concealed. The
+accomplice will be executed.”
+
+“And Zanoni,--did he give evidence, did he account for--”
+
+“No,” interrupted the count: “he declared that he had by accident
+visited the church that morning; that he had observed the tombstone of
+the Count Ughelli; that his guide had told him the count’s son was in
+Naples,--a spendthrift and a gambler. While we were at play, he had
+heard the count mentioned by name at the table; and when the challenge
+was given and accepted, it had occurred to him to name the place of
+burial, by an instinct which he either could not or would not account
+for.”
+
+“A very lame story,” said Mervale.
+
+“Yes! but we Italians are superstitious,--the alleged instinct was
+regarded by many as the whisper of Providence. The next day the stranger
+became an object of universal interest and curiosity. His wealth, his
+manner of living, his extraordinary personal beauty, have assisted also
+to make him the rage; besides, I have had the pleasure in introducing so
+eminent a person to our gayest cavaliers and our fairest ladies.”
+
+“A most interesting narrative,” said Mervale, rising. “Come, Glyndon;
+shall we seek our hotel? It is almost daylight. Adieu, signor!”
+
+“What think you of this story?” said Glyndon, as the young men walked
+homeward.
+
+“Why, it is very clear that this Zanoni is some imposter,--some clever
+rogue; and the Neapolitan shares the booty, and puffs him off with all
+the hackneyed charlatanism of the marvellous. An unknown adventurer gets
+into society by being made an object of awe and curiosity; he is more
+than ordinarily handsome, and the women are quite content to receive him
+without any other recommendation than his own face and Cetoxa’s fables.”
+
+“I cannot agree with you. Cetoxa, though a gambler and a rake, is a
+nobleman of birth and high repute for courage and honour. Besides,
+this stranger, with his noble presence and lofty air,--so calm, so
+unobtrusive,--has nothing in common with the forward garrulity of an
+imposter.”
+
+“My dear Glyndon, pardon me; but you have not yet acquired any knowledge
+of the world! The stranger makes the best of a fine person, and his
+grand air is but a trick of the trade. But to change the subject,--how
+advances the love affair?”
+
+“Oh, Viola could not see me to-day.”
+
+“You must not marry her. What would they all say at home?”
+
+“Let us enjoy the present,” said Glyndon, with vivacity; “we are young,
+rich, good-looking; let us not think of to-morrow.”
+
+“Bravo, Glyndon! Here we are at the hotel. Sleep sound, and don’t dream
+of Signor Zanoni.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.II.
+
+     Prende, giovine audace e impaziente,
+     L’occasione offerta avidamente.
+     “Ger. Lib.,” c. vi. xxix.
+
+     (Take, youth, bold and impatient, the offered occasion eagerly.)
+
+Clarence Glyndon was a young man of fortune, not large, but easy and
+independent. His parents were dead, and his nearest relation was an
+only sister, left in England under the care of her aunt, and many years
+younger than himself. Early in life he had evinced considerable promise
+in the art of painting, and rather from enthusiasm than any pecuniary
+necessity for a profession, he determined to devote himself to a
+career in which the English artist generally commences with rapture
+and historical composition, to conclude with avaricious calculation and
+portraits of Alderman Simpkins. Glyndon was supposed by his friends to
+possess no inconsiderable genius; but it was of a rash and presumptuous
+order. He was averse from continuous and steady labour, and his ambition
+rather sought to gather the fruit than to plant the tree. In common with
+many artists in their youth, he was fond of pleasure and excitement,
+yielding with little forethought to whatever impressed his fancy or
+appealed to his passions. He had travelled through the more celebrated
+cities of Europe, with the avowed purpose and sincere resolution of
+studying the divine masterpieces of his art. But in each, pleasure had
+too often allured him from ambition, and living beauty distracted his
+worship from the senseless canvas. Brave, adventurous, vain, restless,
+inquisitive, he was ever involved in wild projects and pleasant
+dangers,--the creature of impulse and the slave of imagination.
+
+It was then the period when a feverish spirit of change was working
+its way to that hideous mockery of human aspirations, the Revolution
+of France; and from the chaos into which were already jarring the
+sanctities of the World’s Venerable Belief, arose many shapeless and
+unformed chimeras. Need I remind the reader that, while that was the day
+for polished scepticism and affected wisdom, it was the day also for the
+most egregious credulity and the most mystical superstitions,--the day
+in which magnetism and magic found converts amongst the disciples of
+Diderot; when prophecies were current in every mouth; when the salon
+of a philosophical deist was converted into an Heraclea, in which
+necromancy professed to conjure up the shadows of the dead; when the
+Crosier and the Book were ridiculed, and Mesmer and Cagliostro were
+believed. In that Heliacal Rising, heralding the new sun before which
+all vapours were to vanish, stalked from their graves in the feudal
+ages all the phantoms that had flitted before the eyes of Paracelsus
+and Agrippa. Dazzled by the dawn of the Revolution, Glyndon was yet more
+attracted by its strange accompaniments; and natural it was with him, as
+with others, that the fancy which ran riot amidst the hopes of a social
+Utopia, should grasp with avidity all that promised, out of the dusty
+tracks of the beaten science, the bold discoveries of some marvellous
+Elysium.
+
+In his travels he had listened with vivid interest, at least, if
+not with implicit belief, to the wonders told of each more renowned
+Ghost-seer, and his mind was therefore prepared for the impression which
+the mysterious Zanoni at first sight had produced upon it.
+
+There might be another cause for this disposition to credulity. A
+remote ancestor of Glyndon’s on the mother’s side, had achieved no
+inconsiderable reputation as a philosopher and alchemist. Strange
+stories were afloat concerning this wise progenitor. He was said to
+have lived to an age far exceeding the allotted boundaries of mortal
+existence, and to have preserved to the last the appearance of middle
+life. He had died at length, it was supposed, of grief for the sudden
+death of a great-grandchild, the only creature he had ever appeared to
+love. The works of this philosopher, though rare, were extant, and found
+in the library of Glyndon’s home. Their Platonic mysticism, their bold
+assertions, the high promises that might be detected through their
+figurative and typical phraseology, had early made a deep impression on
+the young imagination of Clarence Glyndon. His parents, not alive to the
+consequences of encouraging fancies which the very enlightenment of the
+age appeared to them sufficient to prevent or dispel, were fond, in the
+long winter nights, of conversing on the traditional history of this
+distinguished progenitor. And Clarence thrilled with a fearful pleasure
+when his mother playfully detected a striking likeness between the
+features of the young heir and the faded portrait of the alchemist that
+overhung their mantelpiece, and was the boast of their household and the
+admiration of their friends,--the child is, indeed, more often than we
+think for, “the father of the man.”
+
+I have said that Glyndon was fond of pleasure. Facile, as genius
+ever must be, to cheerful impression, his careless artist-life, ere
+artist-life settles down to labour, had wandered from flower to flower.
+He had enjoyed, almost to the reaction of satiety, the gay revelries of
+Naples, when he fell in love with the face and voice of Viola Pisani.
+But his love, like his ambition, was vague and desultory. It did not
+satisfy his whole heart and fill up his whole nature; not from want of
+strong and noble passions, but because his mind was not yet matured and
+settled enough for their development. As there is one season for the
+blossom, another for the fruit; so it is not till the bloom of fancy
+begins to fade, that the heart ripens to the passions that the bloom
+precedes and foretells. Joyous alike at his lonely easel or amidst his
+boon companions, he had not yet known enough of sorrow to love deeply.
+For man must be disappointed with the lesser things of life before
+he can comprehend the full value of the greatest. It is the shallow
+sensualists of France, who, in their salon-language, call love “a
+folly,”--love, better understood, is wisdom. Besides, the world was too
+much with Clarence Glyndon. His ambition of art was associated with the
+applause and estimation of that miserable minority of the surface that
+we call the Public.
+
+Like those who deceive, he was ever fearful of being himself the dupe.
+He distrusted the sweet innocence of Viola. He could not venture the
+hazard of seriously proposing marriage to an Italian actress; but the
+modest dignity of the girl, and something good and generous in his own
+nature, had hitherto made him shrink from any more worldly but less
+honourable designs. Thus the familiarity between them seemed rather that
+of kindness and regard than passion. He attended the theatre; he stole
+behind the scenes to converse with her; he filled his portfolio with
+countless sketches of a beauty that charmed him as an artist as well as
+lover; and day after day he floated on through a changing sea of
+doubt and irresolution, of affection and distrust. The last, indeed,
+constantly sustained against his better reason by the sober admonitions
+of Mervale, a matter-of-fact man!
+
+The day following that eve on which this section of my story opens,
+Glyndon was riding alone by the shores of the Neapolitan sea, on the
+other side of the Cavern of Posilipo. It was past noon; the sun had lost
+its early fervour, and a cool breeze sprung up voluptuously from the
+sparkling sea. Bending over a fragment of stone near the roadside,
+he perceived the form of a man; and when he approached, he recognised
+Zanoni.
+
+The Englishman saluted him courteously. “Have you discovered some
+antique?” said he, with a smile; “they are common as pebbles on this
+road.”
+
+“No,” replied Zanoni; “it was but one of those antiques that have
+their date, indeed, from the beginning of the world, but which Nature
+eternally withers and renews.” So saying, he showed Glyndon a small herb
+with a pale-blue flower, and then placed it carefully in his bosom.
+
+“You are an herbalist?”
+
+“I am.”
+
+“It is, I am told, a study full of interest.”
+
+“To those who understand it, doubtless.”
+
+“Is the knowledge, then, so rare?”
+
+“Rare! The deeper knowledge is perhaps rather, among the arts, LOST to
+the modern philosophy of commonplace and surface! Do you imagine there
+was no foundation for those traditions which come dimly down from
+remoter ages,--as shells now found on the mountain-tops inform us where
+the seas have been? What was the old Colchian magic, but the minute
+study of Nature in her lowliest works? What the fable of Medea, but a
+proof of the powers that may be extracted from the germ and leaf? The
+most gifted of all the Priestcrafts, the mysterious sisterhoods of Cuth,
+concerning whose incantations Learning vainly bewilders itself amidst
+the maze of legends, sought in the meanest herbs what, perhaps, the
+Babylonian Sages explored in vain amidst the loftiest stars. Tradition
+yet tells you that there existed a race (“Plut. Symp.” l. 5. c. 7.) who
+could slay their enemies from afar, without weapon, without movement.
+The herb that ye tread on may have deadlier powers than your engineers
+can give to their mightiest instruments of war. Can you guess that to
+these Italian shores, to the old Circaean Promontory, came the Wise
+from the farthest East, to search for plants and simples which your
+Pharmacists of the Counter would fling from them as weeds? The first
+herbalists--the master chemists of the world--were the tribe that
+the ancient reverence called by the name of Titans. (Syncellus, page
+14.--“Chemistry the Invention of the Giants.”) I remember once, by the
+Hebrus, in the reign of -- But this talk,” said Zanoni, checking himself
+abruptly, and with a cold smile, “serves only to waste your time and my
+own.” He paused, looked steadily at Glyndon, and continued, “Young man,
+think you that vague curiosity will supply the place of earnest labour?
+I read your heart. You wish to know me, and not this humble herb: but
+pass on; your desire cannot be satisfied.”
+
+“You have not the politeness of your countrymen,” said Glyndon, somewhat
+discomposed. “Suppose I were desirous to cultivate your acquaintance,
+why should you reject my advances?”
+
+“I reject no man’s advances,” answered Zanoni; “I must know them if they
+so desire; but ME, in return, they can never comprehend. If you ask my
+acquaintance, it is yours; but I would warn you to shun me.”
+
+“And why are you, then, so dangerous?”
+
+“On this earth, men are often, without their own agency, fated to be
+dangerous to others. If I were to predict your fortune by the vain
+calculations of the astrologer, I should tell you, in their despicable
+jargon, that my planet sat darkly in your house of life. Cross me not,
+if you can avoid it. I warn you now for the first time and last.”
+
+“You despise the astrologers, yet you utter a jargon as mysterious as
+theirs. I neither gamble nor quarrel; why, then, should I fear you?”
+
+“As you will; I have done.”
+
+“Let me speak frankly,--your conversation last night interested and
+perplexed me.”
+
+“I know it: minds like yours are attracted by mystery.”
+
+Glyndon was piqued at these words, though in the tone in which they were
+spoken there was no contempt.
+
+“I see you do not consider me worthy of your friendship. Be it so.
+Good-day!”
+
+Zanoni coldly replied to the salutation; and as the Englishman rode on,
+returned to his botanical employment.
+
+The same night, Glyndon went, as usual, to the theatre. He was standing
+behind the scenes watching Viola, who was on the stage in one of her
+most brilliant parts. The house resounded with applause. Glyndon was
+transported with a young man’s passion and a young man’s pride: “This
+glorious creature,” thought he, “may yet be mine.”
+
+He felt, while thus wrapped in delicious reverie, a slight touch upon
+his shoulder; he turned, and beheld Zanoni. “You are in danger,” said
+the latter. “Do not walk home to-night; or if you do, go not alone.”
+
+Before Glyndon recovered from his surprise, Zanoni disappeared; and when
+the Englishman saw him again, he was in the box of one of the Neapolitan
+nobles, where Glyndon could not follow him.
+
+Viola now left the stage, and Glyndon accosted her with an unaccustomed
+warmth of gallantry. But Viola, contrary to her gentle habit, turned
+with an evident impatience from the address of her lover. Taking aside
+Gionetta, who was her constant attendant at the theatre, she said, in an
+earnest whisper,--
+
+“Oh, Gionetta! He is here again!--the stranger of whom I spoke to
+thee!--and again, he alone, of the whole theatre, withholds from me his
+applause.”
+
+“Which is he, my darling?” said the old woman, with fondness in her
+voice. “He must indeed be dull--not worth a thought.”
+
+The actress drew Gionetta nearer to the stage, and pointed out to her a
+man in one of the boxes, conspicuous amongst all else by the simplicity
+of his dress, and the extraordinary beauty of his features.
+
+“Not worth a thought, Gionetta!” repeated Viola,--“Not worth a thought!
+Alas, not to think of him, seems the absence of thought itself!”
+
+The prompter summoned the Signora Pisani. “Find out his name, Gionetta,”
+ said she, moving slowly to the stage, and passing by Glyndon, who gazed
+at her with a look of sorrowful reproach.
+
+The scene on which the actress now entered was that of the final
+catastrophe, wherein all her remarkable powers of voice and art were
+pre-eminently called forth. The house hung on every word with breathless
+worship; but the eyes of Viola sought only those of one calm and unmoved
+spectator; she exerted herself as if inspired. Zanoni listened, and
+observed her with an attentive gaze, but no approval escaped his lips;
+no emotion changed the expression of his cold and half-disdainful
+aspect. Viola, who was in the character of one who loved, but without
+return, never felt so acutely the part she played. Her tears were
+truthful; her passion that of nature: it was almost too terrible to
+behold. She was borne from the stage exhausted and insensible, amidst
+such a tempest of admiring rapture as Continental audiences alone can
+raise. The crowd stood up, handkerchiefs waved, garlands and flowers
+were thrown on the stage,--men wiped their eyes, and women sobbed aloud.
+
+“By heavens!” said a Neapolitan of great rank, “She has fired me beyond
+endurance. To-night--this very night--she shall be mine! You have
+arranged all, Mascari?”
+
+“All, signor. And the young Englishman?”
+
+“The presuming barbarian! As I before told thee, let him bleed for his
+folly. I will have no rival.”
+
+“But an Englishman! There is always a search after the bodies of the
+English.”
+
+“Fool! is not the sea deep enough, or the earth secret enough, to hide
+one dead man? Our ruffians are silent as the grave itself; and I!--who
+would dare to suspect, to arraign the Prince di --? See to it,--this
+night. I trust him to you. Robbers murder him, you understand,--the
+country swarms with them; plunder and strip him, the better to favour
+such report. Take three men; the rest shall be my escort.”
+
+Mascari shrugged his shoulders, and bowed submissively.
+
+The streets of Naples were not then so safe as now, and carriages were
+both less expensive and more necessary. The vehicle which was regularly
+engaged by the young actress was not to be found. Gionetta, too aware of
+the beauty of her mistress and the number of her admirers to contemplate
+without alarm the idea of their return on foot, communicated her
+distress to Glyndon, and he besought Viola, who recovered but slowly,
+to accept his own carriage. Perhaps before that night she would not
+have rejected so slight a service. Now, for some reason or other, she
+refused. Glyndon, offended, was retiring sullenly, when Gionetta stopped
+him. “Stay, signor,” said she, coaxingly: “the dear signora is not
+well,--do not be angry with her; I will make her accept your offer.”
+
+Glyndon stayed, and after a few moments spent in expostulation on
+the part of Gionetta, and resistance on that of Viola, the offer was
+accepted. Gionetta and her charge entered the carriage, and Glyndon was
+left at the door of the theatre to return home on foot. The mysterious
+warning of Zanoni then suddenly occurred to him; he had forgotten it
+in the interest of his lover’s quarrel with Viola. He thought it now
+advisable to guard against danger foretold by lips so mysterious.
+He looked round for some one he knew: the theatre was disgorging
+its crowds; they hustled, and jostled, and pressed upon him; but he
+recognised no familiar countenance. While pausing irresolute, he heard
+Mervale’s voice calling on him, and, to his great relief, discovered his
+friend making his way through the throng.
+
+“I have secured you,” said he, “a place in the Count Cetoxa’s carriage.
+Come along, he is waiting for us.”
+
+“How kind in you! how did you find me out?”
+
+“I met Zanoni in the passage,--‘Your friend is at the door of the
+theatre,’ said he; ‘do not let him go home on foot to-night; the streets
+of Naples are not always safe.’ I immediately remembered that some of
+the Calabrian bravos had been busy within the city the last few weeks,
+and suddenly meeting Cetoxa--but here he is.”
+
+Further explanation was forbidden, for they now joined the count. As
+Glyndon entered the carriage and drew up the glass, he saw four men
+standing apart by the pavement, who seemed to eye him with attention.
+
+“Cospetto!” cried one; “that is the Englishman!” Glyndon imperfectly
+heard the exclamation as the carriage drove on. He reached home in
+safety.
+
+The familiar and endearing intimacy which always exists in Italy between
+the nurse and the child she has reared, and which the “Romeo and Juliet”
+ of Shakespeare in no way exaggerates, could not but be drawn yet closer
+than usual, in a situation so friendless as that of the orphan-actress.
+In all that concerned the weaknesses of the heart, Gionetta had large
+experience; and when, three nights before, Viola, on returning from the
+theatre, had wept bitterly, the nurse had succeeded in extracting from
+her a confession that she had seen one,--not seen for two weary and
+eventful years,--but never forgotten, and who, alas! had not evinced the
+slightest recognition of herself. Gionetta could not comprehend all the
+vague and innocent emotions that swelled this sorrow; but she resolved
+them all, with her plain, blunt understanding, to the one sentiment
+of love. And here, she was well fitted to sympathise and console.
+Confidante to Viola’s entire and deep heart she never could be,--for
+that heart never could have words for all its secrets. But such
+confidence as she could obtain, she was ready to repay by the most
+unreproving pity and the most ready service.
+
+“Have you discovered who he is?” asked Viola, as she was now alone in
+the carriage with Gionetta.
+
+“Yes; he is the celebrated Signor Zanoni, about whom all the great
+ladies have gone mad. They say he is so rich!--oh! so much richer than
+any of the Inglesi!--not but what the Signor Glyndon--”
+
+“Cease!” interrupted the young actress. “Zanoni! Speak of the Englishman
+no more.”
+
+The carriage was now entering that more lonely and remote part of the
+city in which Viola’s house was situated, when it suddenly stopped.
+
+Gionetta, in alarm, thrust her head out of the window, and perceived,
+by the pale light of the moon, that the driver, torn from his seat, was
+already pinioned in the arms of two men; the next moment the door was
+opened violently, and a tall figure, masked and mantled, appeared.
+
+“Fear not, fairest Pisani,” said he, gently; “no ill shall befall you.”
+ As he spoke, he wound his arm round the form of the fair actress, and
+endeavoured to lift her from the carriage. But Gionetta was no ordinary
+ally,--she thrust back the assailant with a force that astonished him,
+and followed the shock by a volley of the most energetic reprobation.
+
+The mask drew back, and composed his disordered mantle.
+
+“By the body of Bacchus!” said he, half laughing, “she is well
+protected. Here, Luigi, Giovanni! seize the hag!--quick!--why loiter
+ye?”
+
+The mask retired from the door, and another and yet taller form
+presented itself. “Be calm, Viola Pisani,” said he, in a low voice;
+“with me you are indeed safe!” He lifted his mask as he spoke, and
+showed the noble features of Zanoni.
+
+“Be calm, be hushed,--I can save you.” He vanished, leaving Viola lost
+in surprise, agitation, and delight. There were, in all, nine masks:
+two were engaged with the driver; one stood at the head of the
+carriage-horses; a fourth guarded the well-trained steeds of the party;
+three others (besides Zanoni and the one who had first accosted Viola)
+stood apart by a carriage drawn to the side of the road. To these three
+Zanoni motioned; they advanced; he pointed towards the first mask, who
+was in fact the Prince di --, and to his unspeakable astonishment the
+prince was suddenly seized from behind.
+
+“Treason!” he cried. “Treason among my own men! What means this?”
+
+“Place him in his carriage! If he resist, his blood be on his own head!”
+ said Zanoni, calmly.
+
+He approached the men who had detained the coachman.
+
+“You are outnumbered and outwitted,” said he; “join your lord; you are
+three men,--we six, armed to the teeth. Thank our mercy that we spare
+your lives. Go!”
+
+The men gave way, dismayed. The driver remounted.
+
+“Cut the traces of their carriage and the bridles of their horses,” said
+Zanoni, as he entered the vehicle containing Viola, which now drove on
+rapidly, leaving the discomfited ravisher in a state of rage and stupor
+impossible to describe.
+
+“Allow me to explain this mystery to you,” said Zanoni. “I discovered
+the plot against you,--no matter how; I frustrated it thus: The head of
+this design is a nobleman, who has long persecuted you in vain. He
+and two of his creatures watched you from the entrance of the theatre,
+having directed six others to await him on the spot where you were
+attacked; myself and five of my servants supplied their place, and were
+mistaken for his own followers. I had previously ridden alone to the
+spot where the men were waiting, and informed them that their master
+would not require their services that night. They believed me, and
+accordingly dispersed. I then joined my own band, whom I had left in the
+rear; you know all. We are at your door.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.III.
+
+     When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
+     For all the day they view things unrespected;
+     But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
+     And, darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
+     Shakespeare.
+
+     Zanoni followed the young Neapolitan into her house; Gionetta
+     vanished,--they were left alone.
+
+Alone, in that room so often filled, in the old happy days, with the
+wild melodies of Pisani; and now, as she saw this mysterious, haunting,
+yet beautiful and stately stranger, standing on the very spot where
+she had sat at her father’s feet, thrilled and spellbound,--she almost
+thought, in her fantastic way of personifying her own airy notions,
+that that spiritual Music had taken shape and life, and stood before her
+glorious in the image it assumed. She was unconscious all the while of
+her own loveliness. She had thrown aside her hood and veil; her hair,
+somewhat disordered, fell over the ivory neck which the dress partially
+displayed; and as her dark eyes swam with grateful tears, and her cheek
+flushed with its late excitement, the god of light and music himself
+never, amidst his Arcadian valleys, wooed, in his mortal guise, maiden
+or nymph more fair.
+
+Zanoni gazed at her with a look in which admiration seemed not unmingled
+with compassion. He muttered a few words to himself, and then addressed
+her aloud.
+
+“Viola, I have saved you from a great peril; not from dishonour only,
+but perhaps from death. The Prince di --, under a weak despot and a
+venal administration, is a man above the law. He is capable of every
+crime; but amongst his passions he has such prudence as belongs to
+ambition; if you were not to reconcile yourself to your shame, you would
+never enter the world again to tell your tale. The ravisher has no heart
+for repentance, but he has a hand that can murder. I have saved you,
+Viola. Perhaps you would ask me wherefore?” Zanoni paused, and smiled
+mournfully, as he added, “You will not wrong me by the thought that he
+who has preserved is not less selfish than he who would have injured.
+Orphan, I do not speak to you in the language of your wooers; enough
+that I know pity, and am not ungrateful for affection. Why blush, why
+tremble at the word? I read your heart while I speak, and I see not
+one thought that should give you shame. I say not that you love me yet;
+happily, the fancy may be roused long before the heart is touched.
+But it has been my fate to fascinate your eye, to influence your
+imagination. It is to warn you against what could bring you but sorrow,
+as I warned you once to prepare for sorrow itself, that I am now your
+guest. The Englishman, Glyndon, loves thee well,--better, perhaps, than
+I can ever love; if not worthy of thee, yet, he has but to know thee
+more to deserve thee better. He may wed thee, he may bear thee to his
+own free and happy land,--the land of thy mother’s kin. Forget me; teach
+thyself to return and deserve his love; and I tell thee that thou wilt
+be honoured and be happy.”
+
+Viola listened with silent, inexpressible emotion, and burning blushes,
+to this strange address, and when he had concluded, she covered her face
+with her hands, and wept. And yet, much as his words were calculated to
+humble or irritate, to produce indignation or excite shame, those were
+not the feelings with which her eyes streamed and her heart swelled. The
+woman at that moment was lost in the child; and AS a child, with all its
+exacting, craving, yet innocent desire to be loved, weeps in unrebuking
+sadness when its affection is thrown austerely back upon itself,--so,
+without anger and without shame, wept Viola.
+
+Zanoni contemplated her thus, as her graceful head, shadowed by its
+redundant tresses, bent before him; and after a moment’s pause he drew
+near to her, and said, in a voice of the most soothing sweetness, and
+with a half smile upon his lip,--
+
+“Do you remember, when I told you to struggle for the light, that I
+pointed for example to the resolute and earnest tree? I did not tell
+you, fair child, to take example by the moth, that would soar to the
+star, but falls scorched beside the lamp. Come, I will talk to thee.
+This Englishman--”
+
+Viola drew herself away, and wept yet more passionately.
+
+“This Englishman is of thine own years, not far above thine own rank.
+Thou mayst share his thoughts in life,--thou mayst sleep beside him
+in the same grave in death! And I--but THAT view of the future should
+concern us not. Look into thy heart, and thou wilt see that till again
+my shadow crossed thy path, there had grown up for this thine equal a
+pure and calm affection that would have ripened into love. Hast thou
+never pictured to thyself a home in which thy partner was thy young
+wooer?”
+
+“Never!” said Viola, with sudden energy,--“never but to feel that such
+was not the fate ordained me. And, oh!” she continued, rising suddenly,
+and, putting aside the tresses that veiled her face, she fixed her eyes
+upon the questioner,--“and, oh! whoever thou art that thus wouldst read
+my soul and shape my future, do not mistake the sentiment that, that--”
+ she faltered an instant, and went on with downcast eyes,--“that has
+fascinated my thoughts to thee. Do not think that I could nourish a love
+unsought and unreturned. It is not love that I feel for thee, stranger.
+Why should I? Thou hast never spoken to me but to admonish,--and now, to
+wound!” Again she paused, again her voice faltered; the tears trembled
+on her eyelids; she brushed them away and resumed. “No, not love,--if
+that be love which I have heard and read of, and sought to simulate
+on the stage,--but a more solemn, fearful, and, it seems to me, almost
+preternatural attraction, which makes me associate thee, waking or
+dreaming, with images that at once charm and awe. Thinkest thou, if it
+were love, that I could speak to thee thus; that,” she raised her looks
+suddenly to his, “mine eyes could thus search and confront thine own?
+Stranger, I ask but at times to see, to hear thee! Stranger, talk not to
+me of others. Forewarn, rebuke, bruise my heart, reject the not unworthy
+gratitude it offers thee, if thou wilt, but come not always to me as
+an omen of grief and trouble. Sometimes have I seen thee in my dreams
+surrounded by shapes of glory and light; thy looks radiant with a
+celestial joy which they wear not now. Stranger, thou hast saved me, and
+I thank and bless thee! Is that also a homage thou wouldst reject?”
+ With these words, she crossed her arms meekly on her bosom, and inclined
+lowlily before him. Nor did her humility seem unwomanly or abject, nor
+that of mistress to lover, of slave to master, but rather of a child to
+its guardian, of a neophyte of the old religion to her priest. Zanoni’s
+brow was melancholy and thoughtful. He looked at her with a strange
+expression of kindness, of sorrow, yet of tender affection, in his eyes;
+but his lips were stern, and his voice cold, as he replied,--
+
+“Do you know what you ask, Viola? Do you guess the danger to
+yourself--perhaps to both of us--which you court? Do you know that my
+life, separated from the turbulent herd of men, is one worship of the
+Beautiful, from which I seek to banish what the Beautiful inspires in
+most? As a calamity, I shun what to man seems the fairest fate,--the
+love of the daughters of earth. At present I can warn and save thee from
+many evils; if I saw more of thee, would the power still be mine?
+You understand me not. What I am about to add, it will be easier to
+comprehend. I bid thee banish from thy heart all thought of me, but
+as one whom the Future cries aloud to thee to avoid. Glyndon, if thou
+acceptest his homage, will love thee till the tomb closes upon both. I,
+too,” he added with emotion,--“I, too, might love thee!”
+
+“You!” cried Viola, with the vehemence of a sudden impulse of delight,
+of rapture, which she could not suppress; but the instant after, she
+would have given worlds to recall the exclamation.
+
+“Yes, Viola, I might love thee; but in that love what sorrow and what
+change! The flower gives perfume to the rock on whose heart it grows. A
+little while, and the flower is dead; but the rock still endures,--the
+snow at its breast, the sunshine on its summit. Pause,--think well.
+Danger besets thee yet. For some days thou shalt be safe from thy
+remorseless persecutor; but the hour soon comes when thy only security
+will be in flight. If the Englishman love thee worthily, thy honour will
+be dear to him as his own; if not, there are yet other lands where love
+will be truer, and virtue less in danger from fraud and force. Farewell;
+my own destiny I cannot foresee except through cloud and shadow. I know,
+at least, that we shall meet again; but learn ere then, sweet flower,
+that there are more genial resting-places than the rock.”
+
+He turned as he spoke, and gained the outer door where Gionetta
+discreetly stood. Zanoni lightly laid his hand on her arm. With the gay
+accent of a jesting cavalier, he said,--
+
+“The Signor Glyndon woos your mistress; he may wed her. I know your love
+for her. Disabuse her of any caprice for me. I am a bird ever on the
+wing.”
+
+He dropped a purse into Gionetta’s hand as he spoke, and was gone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.IV.
+
+     Les Intelligences Celestes se font voir, et see communiquent plus
+     volontiers, dans le silence et dans la tranquillite de la
+     solitude.  On aura donc une petite chambre ou un cabinet secret,
+     etc.
+
+     “Les Clavicules de Rabbi Salomon,” chapter 3; traduites
+     exactement du texte Hebreu par M. Pierre Morissoneau, Professeur
+     des Langues Orientales, et Sectateur de la Philosophie des Sages
+     Cabalistes.  (Manuscript Translation.)
+
+     (The Celestial Intelligences exhibit and explain themselves most
+     freely in silence and the tranquillity of solitude.  One will
+     have then a little chamber, or a secret cabinet, etc.)
+
+The palace retained by Zanoni was in one of the less frequented quarters
+of the city. It still stands, now ruined and dismantled, a monument of
+the splendour of a chivalry long since vanished from Naples, with the
+lordly races of the Norman and the Spaniard.
+
+As he entered the rooms reserved for his private hours, two Indians, in
+the dress of their country, received him at the threshold with the grave
+salutations of the East. They had accompanied him from the far lands in
+which, according to rumour, he had for many years fixed his home.
+But they could communicate nothing to gratify curiosity or justify
+suspicion. They spoke no language but their own. With the exception of
+these two his princely retinue was composed of the native hirelings of
+the city, whom his lavish but imperious generosity made the implicit
+creatures of his will. In his house, and in his habits, so far as they
+were seen, there was nothing to account for the rumours which were
+circulated abroad. He was not, as we are told of Albertus Magnus or the
+great Leonardo da Vinci, served by airy forms; and no brazen image, the
+invention of magic mechanism, communicated to him the influences of
+the stars. None of the apparatus of the alchemist--the crucible and the
+metals--gave solemnity to his chambers, or accounted for his wealth;
+nor did he even seem to interest himself in those serener studies which
+might be supposed to colour his peculiar conversation with abstract
+notions, and often with recondite learning. No books spoke to him in his
+solitude; and if ever he had drawn from them his knowledge, it seemed
+now that the only page he read was the wide one of Nature, and that
+a capacious and startling memory supplied the rest. Yet was there one
+exception to what in all else seemed customary and commonplace, and
+which, according to the authority we have prefixed to this chapter,
+might indicate the follower of the occult sciences. Whether at Rome or
+Naples, or, in fact, wherever his abode, he selected one room remote
+from the rest of the house, which was fastened by a lock scarcely larger
+than the seal of a ring, yet which sufficed to baffle the most cunning
+instruments of the locksmith: at least, one of his servants, prompted by
+irresistible curiosity, had made the attempt in vain; and though he had
+fancied it was tried in the most favourable time for secrecy,--not a
+soul near, in the dead of night, Zanoni himself absent from home,--yet
+his superstition, or his conscience, told him the reason why the next
+day the Major Domo quietly dismissed him. He compensated himself for
+this misfortune by spreading his own story, with a thousand amusing
+exaggerations. He declared that, as he approached the door, invisible
+hands seemed to pluck him away; and that when he touched the lock, he
+was struck, as by a palsy, to the ground. One surgeon, who heard the
+tale, observed, to the distaste of the wonder-mongers, that possibly
+Zanoni made a dexterous use of electricity. Howbeit, this room, once so
+secured, was never entered save by Zanoni himself.
+
+The solemn voice of Time, from the neighbouring church at last aroused
+the lord of the palace from the deep and motionless reverie, rather
+resembling a trance than thought, in which his mind was absorbed.
+
+“It is one more sand out of the mighty hour-glass,” said he,
+murmuringly, “and yet time neither adds to, nor steals from, an atom in
+the Infinite! Soul of mine, the luminous, the Augoeides (Augoeides,--a
+word favoured by the mystical Platonists, sphaira psuches augoeides,
+otan mete ekteinetai epi ti, mete eso suntreche mete sunizane, alla
+photi lampetai, o ten aletheian opa ten panton, kai ten en aute.--Marc.
+Ant., lib. 2.--The sense of which beautiful sentence of the old
+philosophy, which, as Bayle well observes, in his article on Cornelius
+Agrippa, the modern Quietists have (however impotently) sought to
+imitate, is to the effect that ‘the sphere of the soul is luminous when
+nothing external has contact with the soul itself; but when lit by its
+own light, it sees the truth of all things and the truth centred in
+itself.’), why descendest thou from thy sphere,--why from the eternal,
+starlike, and passionless Serene, shrinkest thou back to the mists of
+the dark sarcophagus? How long, too austerely taught that companionship
+with the things that die brings with it but sorrow in its sweetness,
+hast thou dwelt contented with thy majestic solitude?”
+
+As he thus murmured, one of the earliest birds that salute the dawn
+broke into sudden song from amidst the orange-trees in the garden below
+his casement; and as suddenly, song answered song; the mate, awakened at
+the note, gave back its happy answer to the bird. He listened; and not
+the soul he had questioned, but the heart replied. He rose, and with
+restless strides paced the narrow floor. “Away from this world!” he
+exclaimed at length, with an impatient tone. “Can no time loosen its
+fatal ties? As the attraction that holds the earth in space, is the
+attraction that fixes the soul to earth. Away from the dark grey planet!
+Break, ye fetters: arise, ye wings!”
+
+He passed through the silent galleries, and up the lofty stairs, and
+entered the secret chamber....
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.V.
+
+     I and my fellows
+     Are ministers of Fate.
+     --“The Tempest.”
+
+The next day Glyndon bent his steps towards Zanoni’s palace. The young
+man’s imagination, naturally inflammable, was singularly excited by the
+little he had seen and heard of this strange being,--a spell, he could
+neither master nor account for, attracted him towards the stranger.
+Zanoni’s power seemed mysterious and great, his motives kindly and
+benevolent, yet his manners chilling and repellent. Why at one moment
+reject Glyndon’s acquaintance, at another save him from danger? How
+had Zanoni thus acquired the knowledge of enemies unknown to Glyndon
+himself? His interest was deeply roused, his gratitude appealed to; he
+resolved to make another effort to conciliate the ungracious herbalist.
+
+The signor was at home, and Glyndon was admitted into a lofty saloon,
+where in a few moments Zanoni joined him.
+
+“I am come to thank you for your warning last night,” said he, “and to
+entreat you to complete my obligation by informing me of the quarter to
+which I may look for enmity and peril.”
+
+“You are a gallant,” said Zanoni, with a smile, and in the English
+language, “and do you know so little of the South as not to be aware
+that gallants have always rivals?”
+
+“Are you serious?” said Glyndon, colouring.
+
+“Most serious. You love Viola Pisani; you have for rival one of the most
+powerful and relentless of the Neapolitan princes. Your danger is indeed
+great.”
+
+“But pardon me!--how came it known to you?”
+
+“I give no account of myself to mortal man,” replied Zanoni, haughtily;
+“and to me it matters nothing whether you regard or scorn my warning.”
+
+“Well, if I may not question you, be it so; but at least advise me what
+to do.”
+
+“Would you follow my advice?”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because you are constitutionally brave; you are fond of excitement and
+mystery; you like to be the hero of a romance. Were I to advise you to
+leave Naples, would you do so while Naples contains a foe to confront or
+a mistress to pursue?”
+
+“You are right,” said the young Englishman, with energy. “No! and you
+cannot reproach me for such a resolution.”
+
+“But there is another course left to you: do you love Viola Pisani truly
+and fervently?--if so, marry her, and take a bride to your native land.”
+
+“Nay,” answered Glyndon, embarrassed; “Viola is not of my rank. Her
+profession, too, is--in short, I am enslaved by her beauty, but I cannot
+wed her.”
+
+Zanoni frowned.
+
+“Your love, then, is but selfish lust, and I advise you to your own
+happiness no more. Young man, Destiny is less inexorable than it
+appears. The resources of the great Ruler of the Universe are not so
+scanty and so stern as to deny to men the divine privilege of Free
+Will; all of us can carve out our own way, and God can make our very
+contradictions harmonise with His solemn ends. You have before you
+an option. Honourable and generous love may even now work out your
+happiness, and effect your escape; a frantic and selfish passion will
+but lead you to misery and doom.”
+
+“Do you pretend, then, to read the future?”
+
+“I have said all that it pleases me to utter.”
+
+“While you assume the moralist to me, Signor Zanoni,” said Glyndon, with
+a smile, “are you yourself so indifferent to youth and beauty as to act
+the stoic to its allurements?”
+
+“If it were necessary that practice square with precept,” said Zanoni,
+with a bitter smile, “our monitors would be but few. The conduct of the
+individual can affect but a small circle beyond himself; the permanent
+good or evil that he works to others lies rather in the sentiments he
+can diffuse. His acts are limited and momentary; his sentiments may
+pervade the universe, and inspire generations till the day of doom. All
+our virtues, all our laws, are drawn from books and maxims, which ARE
+sentiments, not from deeds. In conduct, Julian had the virtues of a
+Christian, and Constantine the vices of a Pagan. The sentiments of
+Julian reconverted thousands to Paganism; those of Constantine helped,
+under Heaven’s will, to bow to Christianity the nations of the earth.
+In conduct, the humblest fisherman on yonder sea, who believes in
+the miracles of San Gennaro, may be a better man than Luther; to the
+sentiments of Luther the mind of modern Europe is indebted for the
+noblest revolution it has known. Our opinions, young Englishman, are the
+angel part of us; our acts, the earthly.”
+
+“You have reflected deeply for an Italian,” said Glyndon.
+
+“Who told you that I was an Italian?”
+
+“Are you not? And yet, when I hear you speak my own language as a
+native, I--”
+
+“Tush!” interrupted Zanoni, impatiently turning away. Then, after a
+pause, he resumed in a mild voice, “Glyndon, do you renounce Viola
+Pisani? Will you take some days to consider what I have said?”
+
+“Renounce her,--never!”
+
+“Then you will marry her?”
+
+“Impossible!”
+
+“Be it so; she will then renounce you. I tell you that you have rivals.”
+
+“Yes; the Prince di --; but I do not fear him.”
+
+“You have another whom you will fear more.”
+
+“And who is he?”
+
+“Myself.”
+
+Glyndon turned pale, and started from his seat.
+
+“You, Signor Zanoni!--you,--and you dare to tell me so?”
+
+“Dare! Alas! there are times when I wish that I could fear.”
+
+These arrogant words were not uttered arrogantly, but in a tone of the
+most mournful dejection. Glyndon was enraged, confounded, and yet
+awed. However, he had a brave English heart within his breast, and he
+recovered himself quickly.
+
+“Signor,” said he, calmly, “I am not to be duped by these solemn phrases
+and these mystical assumptions. You may have powers which I cannot
+comprehend or emulate, or you may be but a keen imposter.”
+
+“Well, proceed!”
+
+“I mean, then,” continued Glyndon, resolutely, though somewhat
+disconcerted,--“I mean you to understand, that, though I am not to be
+persuaded or compelled by a stranger to marry Viola Pisani, I am not the
+less determined never tamely to yield her to another.”
+
+Zanoni looked gravely at the young man, whose sparkling eyes and
+heightened colour testified the spirit to support his words, and
+replied, “So bold! well; it becomes you. But take my advice; wait yet
+nine days, and tell me then if you will marry the fairest and the purest
+creature that ever crossed your path.”
+
+“But if you love her, why--why--”
+
+“Why am I anxious that she should wed another?--to save her from myself!
+Listen to me. That girl, humble and uneducated though she be, has in her
+the seeds of the most lofty qualities and virtues. She can be all to the
+man she loves,--all that man can desire in wife. Her soul, developed by
+affection, will elevate your own; it will influence your fortunes, exalt
+your destiny; you will become a great and a prosperous man. If, on the
+contrary, she fall to me, I know not what may be her lot; but I know
+that there is an ordeal which few can pass, and which hitherto no woman
+has survived.”
+
+As Zanoni spoke, his face became colourless, and there was something in
+his voice that froze the warm blood of the listener.
+
+“What is this mystery which surrounds you?” exclaimed Glyndon, unable to
+repress his emotion. “Are you, in truth, different from other men? Have
+you passed the boundary of lawful knowledge? Are you, as some declare, a
+sorcerer, or only a--”
+
+“Hush!” interrupted Zanoni, gently, and with a smile of singular
+but melancholy sweetness; “have you earned the right to ask me these
+questions? Though Italy still boast an Inquisition, its power is
+rivelled as a leaf which the first wind shall scatter. The days of
+torture and persecution are over; and a man may live as he pleases, and
+talk as it suits him, without fear of the stake and the rack. Since I
+can defy persecution, pardon me if I do not yield to curiosity.”
+
+Glyndon blushed, and rose. In spite of his love for Viola, and his
+natural terror of such a rival, he felt himself irresistibly drawn
+towards the very man he had most cause to suspect and dread. He held
+out his hand to Zanoni, saying, “Well, then, if we are to be rivals, our
+swords must settle our rights; till then I would fain be friends.”
+
+“Friends! You know not what you ask.”
+
+“Enigmas again!”
+
+“Enigmas!” cried Zanoni, passionately; “ay! can you dare to solve them?
+Not till then could I give you my right hand, and call you friend.”
+
+“I could dare everything and all things for the attainment of superhuman
+wisdom,” said Glyndon, and his countenance was lighted up with wild and
+intense enthusiasm.
+
+Zanoni observed him in thoughtful silence.
+
+“The seeds of the ancestor live in the son,” he muttered; “he
+may--yet--” He broke off abruptly; then, speaking aloud, “Go, Glyndon,”
+ said he; “we shall meet again, but I will not ask your answer till the
+hour presses for decision.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.VI.
+
+     ‘Tis certain that this man has an estate of fifty thousand
+     livres, and seems to be a person of very great accomplishments.
+     But, then, if he’s a wizard, are wizards so devoutly given as
+     this man seems to be?  In short, I could make neither head nor
+     tail on’t
+
+     --The Count de Gabalis, Translation affixed to the
+     second edition of the “Rape of the Lock.”
+
+Of all the weaknesses which little men rail against, there is none that
+they are more apt to ridicule than the tendency to believe. And of
+all the signs of a corrupt heart and a feeble head, the tendency of
+incredulity is the surest.
+
+Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny. While we hear, every
+day, the small pretenders to science talk of the absurdities of alchemy
+and the dream of the Philosopher’s Stone, a more erudite knowledge is
+aware that by alchemists the greatest discoveries in science have been
+made, and much which still seems abstruse, had we the key to the mystic
+phraseology they were compelled to adopt, might open the way to yet
+more noble acquisitions. The Philosopher’s Stone itself has seemed no
+visionary chimera to some of the soundest chemists that even the present
+century has produced. (Mr. Disraeli, in his “Curiosities of Literature”
+ (article “Alchem”), after quoting the sanguine judgments of modern
+chemists as to the transmutation of metals, observes of one yet greater
+and more recent than those to which Glyndon’s thoughts could have
+referred, “Sir Humphry Davy told me that he did not consider this
+undiscovered art as impossible; but should it ever be discovered, it
+would certainly be useless.”) Man cannot contradict the Laws of Nature.
+But are all the laws of Nature yet discovered?
+
+“Give me a proof of your art,” says the rational inquirer. “When I have
+seen the effect, I will endeavour, with you, to ascertain the causes.”
+
+Somewhat to the above effect were the first thoughts of Clarence Glyndon
+on quitting Zanoni. But Clarence Glyndon was no “rational inquirer.” The
+more vague and mysterious the language of Zanoni, the more it imposed
+upon him. A proof would have been something tangible, with which he
+would have sought to grapple. And it would have only disappointed his
+curiosity to find the supernatural reduced to Nature. He endeavoured in
+vain, at some moments rousing himself from credulity to the scepticism
+he deprecated, to reconcile what he had heard with the probable motives
+and designs of an imposter. Unlike Mesmer and Cagliostro, Zanoni,
+whatever his pretensions, did not make them a source of profit; nor was
+Glyndon’s position or rank in life sufficient to render any influence
+obtained over his mind, subservient to schemes, whether of avarice or
+ambition. Yet, ever and anon, with the suspicion of worldly knowledge,
+he strove to persuade himself that Zanoni had at least some sinister
+object in inducing him to what his English pride and manner of thought
+considered a derogatory marriage with the poor actress. Might not Viola
+and the Mystic be in league with each other? Might not all this jargon
+of prophecy and menace be but artifices to dupe him?
+
+He felt an unjust resentment towards Viola at having secured such an
+ally. But with that resentment was mingled a natural jealousy. Zanoni
+threatened him with rivalry. Zanoni, who, whatever his character or his
+arts, possessed at least all the external attributes that dazzle and
+command. Impatient of his own doubts, he plunged into the society of
+such acquaintances as he had made at Naples--chiefly artists, like
+himself, men of letters, and the rich commercialists, who were already
+vying with the splendour, though debarred from the privileges, of the
+nobles. From these he heard much of Zanoni, already with them, as with
+the idler classes, an object of curiosity and speculation.
+
+He had noticed, as a thing remarkable, that Zanoni had conversed with
+him in English, and with a command of the language so complete that he
+might have passed for a native. On the other hand, in Italian, Zanoni
+was equally at ease. Glyndon found that it was the same in languages
+less usually learned by foreigners. A painter from Sweden, who had
+conversed with him, was positive that he was a Swede; and a merchant
+from Constantinople, who had sold some of his goods to Zanoni, professed
+his conviction that none but a Turk, or at least a native of the East,
+could have so thoroughly mastered the soft Oriental intonations. Yet
+in all these languages, when they came to compare their several
+recollections, there was a slight, scarce perceptible distinction, not
+in pronunciation, nor even accent, but in the key and chime, as it were,
+of the voice, between himself and a native. This faculty was one which
+Glyndon called to mind, that sect, whose tenets and powers have never
+been more than most partially explored, the Rosicrucians, especially
+arrogated. He remembered to have heard in Germany of the work of John
+Bringeret (Printed in 1615.), asserting that all the languages of the
+earth were known to the genuine Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. Did
+Zanoni belong to this mystical Fraternity, who, in an earlier age,
+boasted of secrets of which the Philosopher’s Stone was but the least;
+who considered themselves the heirs of all that the Chaldeans, the Magi,
+the Gymnosophists, and the Platonists had taught; and who differed from
+all the darker Sons of Magic in the virtue of their lives, the purity of
+their doctrines, and their insisting, as the foundation of all wisdom,
+on the subjugation of the senses, and the intensity of Religious
+Faith?--a glorious sect, if they lied not! And, in truth, if Zanoni
+had powers beyond the race of worldly sages, they seemed not unworthily
+exercised. The little known of his life was in his favour. Some acts,
+not of indiscriminate, but judicious generosity and beneficence, were
+recorded; in repeating which, still, however, the narrators shook their
+heads, and expressed surprise how a stranger should have possessed so
+minute a knowledge of the quiet and obscure distresses he had relieved.
+Two or three sick persons, when abandoned by their physicians, he had
+visited, and conferred with alone. They had recovered: they ascribed to
+him their recovery; yet they could not tell by what medicines they had
+been healed. They could only depose that he came, conversed with them,
+and they were cured; it usually, however, happened that a deep sleep had
+preceded the recovery.
+
+Another circumstance was also beginning to be remarked, and spoke yet
+more in his commendation. Those with whom he principally associated--the
+gay, the dissipated, the thoughtless, the sinners and publicans of the
+more polished world--all appeared rapidly, yet insensibly to themselves,
+to awaken to purer thoughts and more regulated lives. Even Cetoxa, the
+prince of gallants, duellists, and gamesters, was no longer the same man
+since the night of the singular events which he had related to
+Glyndon. The first trace of his reform was in his retirement from the
+gaming-houses; the next was his reconciliation with an hereditary enemy
+of his house, whom it had been his constant object for the last six
+years to entangle in such a quarrel as might call forth his inimitable
+manoeuvre of the stoccata. Nor when Cetoxa and his young companions were
+heard to speak of Zanoni, did it seem that this change had been brought
+about by any sober lectures or admonitions. They all described Zanoni as
+a man keenly alive to enjoyment: of manners the reverse of formal,--not
+precisely gay, but equable, serene, and cheerful; ever ready to listen
+to the talk of others, however idle, or to charm all ears with an
+inexhaustible fund of brilliant anecdote and worldly experience. All
+manners, all nations, all grades of men, seemed familiar to him. He was
+reserved only if allusion were ever ventured to his birth or history.
+
+The more general opinion of his origin certainly seemed the more
+plausible. His riches, his familiarity with the languages of the East,
+his residence in India, a certain gravity which never deserted his most
+cheerful and familiar hours, the lustrous darkness of his eyes and hair,
+and even the peculiarities of his shape, in the delicate smallness of
+the hands, and the Arab-like turn of the stately head, appeared to fix
+him as belonging to one at least of the Oriental races. And a dabbler
+in the Eastern tongues even sought to reduce the simple name of Zanoni,
+which a century before had been borne by an inoffensive naturalist of
+Bologna (The author of two works on botany and rare plants.), to the
+radicals of the extinct language. Zan was unquestionably the Chaldean
+appellation for the sun. Even the Greeks, who mutilated every Oriental
+name, had retained the right one in this case, as the Cretan inscription
+on the tomb of Zeus (Ode megas keitai Zan.--“Cyril contra Julian.” (Here
+lies great Jove.)) significantly showed. As to the rest, the Zan, or
+Zaun, was, with the Sidonians, no uncommon prefix to On. Adonis was but
+another name for Zanonas, whose worship in Sidon Hesychius records. To
+this profound and unanswerable derivation Mervale listened with great
+attention, and observed that he now ventured to announce an erudite
+discovery he himself had long since made,--namely, that the numerous
+family of Smiths in England were undoubtedly the ancient priests of the
+Phrygian Apollo. “For,” said he, “was not Apollo’s surname, in
+Phrygia, Smintheus? How clear all the ensuing corruptions of the august
+name,--Smintheus, Smitheus, Smithe, Smith! And even now, I may remark
+that the more ancient branches of that illustrious family, unconsciously
+anxious to approximate at least by a letter nearer to the true title,
+take a pious pleasure in writing their names Smith_e_!”
+
+The philologist was much struck with this discovery, and begged
+Mervale’s permission to note it down as an illustration suitable to a
+work he was about to publish on the origin of languages, to be called
+“Babel,” and published in three quartos by subscription.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.VII.
+
+     Learn to be poor in spirit, my son, if you would penetrate that
+     sacred night which environs truth.  Learn of the Sages to allow
+     to the Devils no power in Nature, since the fatal stone has shut
+     ‘em up in the depth of the abyss.  Learn of the Philosophers
+     always to look for natural causes in all extraordinary events;
+     and when such natural causes are wanting, recur to God.--The
+     Count de Gabalis.
+
+All these additions to his knowledge of Zanoni, picked up in the various
+lounging-places and resorts that he frequented, were unsatisfactory to
+Glyndon. That night Viola did not perform at the theatre; and the next
+day, still disturbed by bewildered fancies, and averse to the sober and
+sarcastic companionship of Mervale, Glyndon sauntered musingly into the
+public gardens, and paused under the very tree under which he had
+first heard the voice that had exercised upon his mind so singular an
+influence. The gardens were deserted. He threw himself on one of the
+seats placed beneath the shade; and again, in the midst of his reverie,
+the same cold shudder came over him which Zanoni had so distinctly
+defined, and to which he had ascribed so extraordinary a cause.
+
+He roused himself with a sudden effort, and started to see, seated next
+him, a figure hideous enough to have personated one of the malignant
+beings of whom Zanoni had spoken. It was a small man, dressed in a
+fashion strikingly at variance with the elaborate costume of the day:
+an affectation of homeliness and poverty approaching to squalor, in
+the loose trousers, coarse as a ship’s sail; in the rough jacket, which
+appeared rent wilfully into holes; and the black, ragged, tangled locks
+that streamed from their confinement under a woollen cap, accorded but
+ill with other details which spoke of comparative wealth. The shirt,
+open at the throat, was fastened by a brooch of gaudy stones; and two
+pendent massive gold chains announced the foppery of two watches.
+
+The man’s figure, if not absolutely deformed, was yet marvellously
+ill-favoured; his shoulders high and square; his chest flattened, as if
+crushed in; his gloveless hands were knotted at the joints, and, large,
+bony, and muscular, dangled from lean, emaciated wrists, as if not
+belonging to them. His features had the painful distortion sometimes
+seen in the countenance of a cripple,--large, exaggerated, with the nose
+nearly touching the chin; the eyes small, but glowing with a cunning
+fire as they dwelt on Glyndon; and the mouth was twisted into a grin
+that displayed rows of jagged, black, broken teeth. Yet over this
+frightful face there still played a kind of disagreeable intelligence,
+an expression at once astute and bold; and as Glyndon, recovering from
+the first impression, looked again at his neighbour, he blushed at his
+own dismay, and recognised a French artist, with whom he had formed an
+acquaintance, and who was possessed of no inconsiderable talents in his
+calling.
+
+Indeed, it was to be remarked that this creature, whose externals were
+so deserted by the Graces, particularly delighted in designs aspiring to
+majesty and grandeur. Though his colouring was hard and shallow, as
+was that generally of the French school at the time, his DRAWINGS were
+admirable for symmetry, simple elegance, and classic vigour; at the same
+time they unquestionably wanted ideal grace. He was fond of selecting
+subjects from Roman history, rather than from the copious world of
+Grecian beauty, or those still more sublime stories of scriptural record
+from which Raphael and Michael Angelo borrowed their inspirations. His
+grandeur was that not of gods and saints, but mortals. His delineation
+of beauty was that which the eye cannot blame and the soul does
+not acknowledge. In a word, as it was said of Dionysius, he was an
+Anthropographos, or Painter of Men. It was also a notable contradiction
+in this person, who was addicted to the most extravagant excesses in
+every passion, whether of hate or love, implacable in revenge, and
+insatiable in debauch, that he was in the habit of uttering the most
+beautiful sentiments of exalted purity and genial philanthropy. The
+world was not good enough for him; he was, to use the expressive German
+phrase, A WORLD-BETTERER! Nevertheless, his sarcastic lip often seemed
+to mock the sentiments he uttered, as if it sought to insinuate that he
+was above even the world he would construct.
+
+Finally, this painter was in close correspondence with the Republicans
+of Paris, and was held to be one of those missionaries whom, from the
+earliest period of the Revolution, the regenerators of mankind were
+pleased to despatch to the various states yet shackled, whether by
+actual tyranny or wholesome laws. Certainly, as the historian of Italy
+(Botta.) has observed, there was no city in Italy where these new
+doctrines would be received with greater favour than Naples, partly from
+the lively temper of the people, principally because the most hateful
+feudal privileges, however partially curtailed some years before by the
+great minister, Tanuccini, still presented so many daily and practical
+evils as to make change wear a more substantial charm than the mere and
+meretricious bloom on the cheek of the harlot, Novelty. This man, whom
+I will call Jean Nicot, was, therefore, an oracle among the younger and
+bolder spirits of Naples; and before Glyndon had met Zanoni, the former
+had not been among the least dazzled by the eloquent aspirations of the
+hideous philanthropist.
+
+“It is so long since we have met, cher confrere,” said Nicot, drawing
+his seat nearer to Glyndon’s, “that you cannot be surprised that I
+see you with delight, and even take the liberty to intrude on your
+meditations.
+
+“They were of no agreeable nature,” said Glyndon; “and never was
+intrusion more welcome.”
+
+“You will be charmed to hear,” said Nicot, drawing several letters
+from his bosom, “that the good work proceeds with marvellous rapidity.
+Mirabeau, indeed, is no more; but, mort Diable! the French people are
+now a Mirabeau themselves.” With this remark, Monsieur Nicot proceeded
+to read and to comment upon several animated and interesting passages in
+his correspondence, in which the word virtue was introduced twenty-seven
+times, and God not once. And then, warmed by the cheering prospects thus
+opened to him, he began to indulge in those anticipations of the future,
+the outline of which we have already seen in the eloquent extravagance
+of Condorcet. All the old virtues were dethroned for a new Pantheon:
+patriotism was a narrow sentiment; philanthropy was to be its successor.
+No love that did not embrace all mankind, as warm for Indus and the
+Pole as for the hearth of home, was worthy the breast of a generous
+man. Opinion was to be free as air; and in order to make it so, it was
+necessary to exterminate all those whose opinions were not the same as
+Mons. Jean Nicot’s. Much of this amused, much revolted Glyndon; but when
+the painter turned to dwell upon a science that all should comprehend,
+and the results of which all should enjoy,--a science that, springing
+from the soil of equal institutions and equal mental cultivation, should
+give to all the races of men wealth without labour, and a life longer
+than the Patriarchs’, without care,--then Glyndon listened with interest
+and admiration, not unmixed with awe. “Observe,” said Nicot, “how much
+that we now cherish as a virtue will then be rejected as meanness. Our
+oppressors, for instance, preach to us of the excellence of gratitude.
+Gratitude, the confession of inferiority! What so hateful to a noble
+spirit as the humiliating sense of obligation? But where there is
+equality there can be no means for power thus to enslave merit. The
+benefactor and the client will alike cease, and--”
+
+“And in the mean time,” said a low voice, at hand,--“in the mean time,
+Jean Nicot?”
+
+The two artists started, and Glyndon recognised Zanoni.
+
+He gazed with a brow of unusual sternness on Nicot, who, lumped together
+as he sat, looked up at him askew, and with an expression of fear and
+dismay upon his distorted countenance.
+
+Ho, ho! Messire Jean Nicot, thou who fearest neither God nor Devil, why
+fearest thou the eye of a man?
+
+“It is not the first time I have been a witness to your opinions on the
+infirmity of gratitude,” said Zanoni.
+
+Nicot suppressed an exclamation, and, after gloomily surveying Zanoni
+with an eye villanous and sinister, but full of hate impotent and
+unutterable, said, “I know you not,--what would you of me?”
+
+“Your absence. Leave us!”
+
+Nicot sprang forward a step, with hands clenched, and showing his teeth
+from ear to ear, like a wild beast incensed. Zanoni stood motionless,
+and smiled at him in scorn. Nicot halted abruptly, as if fixed and
+fascinated by the look, shivered from head to foot, and sullenly, and
+with a visible effort, as if impelled by a power not his own, turned
+away.
+
+Glyndon’s eyes followed him in surprise.
+
+“And what know you of this man?” said Zanoni.
+
+“I know him as one like myself,--a follower of art.”
+
+“Of ART! Do not so profane that glorious word. What Nature is to God,
+art should be to man,--a sublime, beneficent, genial, and warm creation.
+That wretch may be a PAINTER, not an ARTIST.”
+
+“And pardon me if I ask what YOU know of one you thus disparage?”
+
+“I know thus much, that you are beneath my care if it be necessary to
+warn you against him; his own lips show the hideousness of his heart.
+Why should I tell you of the crimes he has committed? He SPEAKS crime!”
+
+“You do not seem, Signor Zanoni, to be one of the admirers of the
+dawning Revolution. Perhaps you are prejudiced against the man because
+you dislike the opinions?”
+
+“What opinions?”
+
+Glyndon paused, somewhat puzzled to define; but at length he said, “Nay,
+I must wrong you; for you, of all men, I suppose, cannot discredit the
+doctrine that preaches the infinite improvement of the human species.”
+
+“You are right; the few in every age improve the many; the many now may
+be as wise as the few were; but improvement is at a standstill, if you
+tell me that the many now are as wise as the few ARE.”
+
+“I comprehend you; you will not allow the law of universal equality!”
+
+“Law! If the whole world conspired to enforce the falsehood they could
+not make it LAW. Level all conditions to-day, and you only smooth away
+all obstacles to tyranny to-morrow. A nation that aspires to EQUALITY
+is unfit for FREEDOM. Throughout all creation, from the archangel to the
+worm, from Olympus to the pebble, from the radiant and completed planet
+to the nebula that hardens through ages of mist and slime into the
+habitable world, the first law of Nature is inequality.”
+
+“Harsh doctrine, if applied to states. Are the cruel disparities of life
+never to be removed?”
+
+“Disparities of the PHYSICAL life? Oh, let us hope so. But disparities
+of the INTELLECTUAL and the MORAL, never! Universal equality of
+intelligence, of mind, of genius, of virtue!--no teacher left to the
+world! no men wiser, better than others,--were it not an impossible
+condition, WHAT A HOPELESS PROSPECT FOR HUMANITY! No, while the world
+lasts, the sun will gild the mountain-top before it shines upon the
+plain. Diffuse all the knowledge the earth contains equally over all
+mankind to-day, and some men will be wiser than the rest to-morrow. And
+THIS is not a harsh, but a loving law,--the REAL law of improvement;
+the wiser the few in one generation, the wiser will be the multitude the
+next!”
+
+As Zanoni thus spoke, they moved on through the smiling gardens, and the
+beautiful bay lay sparkling in the noontide. A gentle breeze just cooled
+the sunbeam, and stirred the ocean; and in the inexpressible clearness
+of the atmosphere there was something that rejoiced the senses. The very
+soul seemed to grow lighter and purer in that lucid air.
+
+“And these men, to commence their era of improvement and equality, are
+jealous even of the Creator. They would deny an intelligence,--a God!”
+ said Zanoni, as if involuntarily. “Are you an artist, and, looking on
+the world, can you listen to such a dogma? Between God and genius there
+is a necessary link,--there is almost a correspondent language. Well
+said the Pythagorean (Sextus, the Pythagorean.), ‘A good intellect is
+the chorus of divinity.’”
+
+Struck and touched with these sentiments, which he little expected to
+fall from one to whom he ascribed those powers which the superstitions
+of childhood ascribe to the darker agencies, Glyndon said: “And yet you
+have confessed that your life, separated from that of others, is one
+that man should dread to share. Is there, then, a connection between
+magic and religion?”
+
+“Magic!” And what is magic! When the traveller beholds in Persia the
+ruins of palaces and temples, the ignorant inhabitants inform him they
+were the work of magicians. What is beyond their own power, the vulgar
+cannot comprehend to be lawfully in the power of others. But if by
+magic you mean a perpetual research amongst all that is more latent and
+obscure in Nature, I answer, I profess that magic, and that he who does
+so comes but nearer to the fountain of all belief. Knowest thou not that
+magic was taught in the schools of old? But how, and by whom? As the
+last and most solemn lesson, by the Priests who ministered to the
+Temple. (Psellus de Daemon (MS.)) And you, who would be a painter, is
+not there a magic also in that art you would advance? Must you not,
+after long study of the Beautiful that has been, seize upon new and airy
+combinations of a beauty that is to be? See you not that the grander
+art, whether of poet or of painter, ever seeking for the TRUE, abhors
+the REAL; that you must seize Nature as her master, not lackey her as
+her slave?
+
+“You demand mastery over the past, a conception of the future. Has not
+the art that is truly noble for its domain the future and the past? You
+would conjure the invisible beings to your charm; and what is painting
+but the fixing into substance the Invisible? Are you discontented with
+this world? This world was never meant for genius! To exist, it must
+create another. What magician can do more; nay, what science can do
+as much? There are two avenues from the little passions and the drear
+calamities of earth; both lead to heaven and away from hell,--art and
+science. But art is more godlike than science; science discovers, art
+creates. You have faculties that may command art; be contented with your
+lot. The astronomer who catalogues the stars cannot add one atom to the
+universe; the poet can call a universe from the atom; the chemist may
+heal with his drugs the infirmities of the human form; the painter,
+or the sculptor, fixes into everlasting youth forms divine, which
+no disease can ravage, and no years impair. Renounce those wandering
+fancies that lead you now to myself, and now to yon orator of the human
+race; to us two, who are the antipodes of each other! Your pencil is
+your wand; your canvas may raise Utopias fairer than Condorcet dreams
+of. I press not yet for your decision; but what man of genius ever asked
+more to cheer his path to the grave than love and glory?”
+
+“But,” said Glyndon, fixing his eyes earnestly on Zanoni, “if there be a
+power to baffle the grave itself--”
+
+Zanoni’s brow darkened. “And were this so,” he said, after a pause,
+“would it be so sweet a lot to outlive all you loved, and to recoil from
+every human tie? Perhaps the fairest immortality on earth is that of a
+noble name.”
+
+“You do not answer me,--you equivocate. I have read of the long lives
+far beyond the date common experience assigns to man,” persisted
+Glyndon, “which some of the alchemists enjoyed. Is the golden elixir but
+a fable?”
+
+“If not, and these men discovered it, they died, because they refused to
+live! There may be a mournful warning in your conjecture. Turn once more
+to the easel and the canvas!”
+
+So saying, Zanoni waved his hand, and, with downcast eyes and a slow
+step, bent his way back into the city.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.VIII.
+
+     The Goddess Wisdom.
+
+     To some she is the goddess great;
+     To some the milch cow of the field;
+     Their care is but to calculate
+     What butter she will yield.
+     From Schiller.
+
+This last conversation with Zanoni left upon the mind of Glyndon a
+tranquillising and salutary effect.
+
+From the confused mists of his fancy glittered forth again those happy,
+golden schemes which part from the young ambition of art, to play in the
+air, to illumine the space like rays that kindle from the sun. And with
+these projects mingled also the vision of a love purer and serener than
+his life yet had known. His mind went back into that fair childhood of
+genius, when the forbidden fruit is not yet tasted, and we know of no
+land beyond the Eden which is gladdened by an Eve. Insensibly before
+him there rose the scenes of a home, with his art sufficing for all
+excitement, and Viola’s love circling occupation with happiness and
+content; and in the midst of these fantasies of a future that might
+be at his command, he was recalled to the present by the clear, strong
+voice of Mervale, the man of common-sense.
+
+Whoever has studied the lives of persons in whom the imagination is
+stronger than the will, who suspect their own knowledge of actual life,
+and are aware of their facility to impressions, will have observed the
+influence which a homely, vigorous, worldly understanding obtains over
+such natures. It was thus with Glyndon. His friend had often extricated
+him from danger, and saved him from the consequences of imprudence; and
+there was something in Mervale’s voice alone that damped his enthusiasm,
+and often made him yet more ashamed of noble impulses than weak conduct.
+For Mervale, though a downright honest man, could not sympathise with
+the extravagance of generosity any more than with that of presumption
+and credulity. He walked the straight line of life, and felt an equal
+contempt for the man who wandered up the hill-sides, no matter whether
+to chase a butterfly, or to catch a prospect of the ocean.
+
+“I will tell you your thoughts, Clarence,” said Mervale, laughing,
+“though I am no Zanoni. I know them by the moisture of your eyes,
+and the half-smile on your lips. You are musing upon that fair
+perdition,--the little singer of San Carlo.”
+
+The little singer of San Carlo! Glyndon coloured as he answered,--
+
+“Would you speak thus of her if she were my wife?”
+
+“No! for then any contempt I might venture to feel would be for
+yourself. One may dislike the duper, but it is the dupe that one
+despises.”
+
+“Are you sure that I should be the dupe in such a union? Where can I
+find one so lovely and so innocent,--where one whose virtue has been
+tried by such temptation? Does even a single breath of slander sully the
+name of Viola Pisani?”
+
+“I know not all the gossip of Naples, and therefore cannot answer; but I
+know this, that in England no one would believe that a young Englishman,
+of good fortune and respectable birth, who marries a singer from the
+theatre of Naples, has not been lamentably taken in. I would save you
+from a fall of position so irretrievable. Think how many mortifications
+you will be subjected to; how many young men will visit at your
+house,--and how many young wives will as carefully avoid it.”
+
+“I can choose my own career, to which commonplace society is not
+essential. I can owe the respect of the world to my art, and not to the
+accidents of birth and fortune.”
+
+“That is, you still persist in your second folly,--the absurd ambition
+of daubing canvas. Heaven forbid I should say anything against the
+laudable industry of one who follows such a profession for the sake of
+subsistence; but with means and connections that will raise you in life,
+why voluntarily sink into a mere artist? As an accomplishment in leisure
+moments, it is all very well in its way; but as the occupation of
+existence, it is a frenzy.”
+
+“Artists have been the friends of princes.”
+
+“Very rarely so, I fancy, in sober England. There in the great centre of
+political aristocracy, what men respect is the practical, not the ideal.
+Just suffer me to draw two pictures of my own. Clarence Glyndon returns
+to England; he marries a lady of fortune equal to his own, of friends
+and parentage that advance rational ambition. Clarence Glyndon, thus a
+wealthy and respectable man, of good talents, of bustling energies then
+concentrated, enters into practical life. He has a house at which he can
+receive those whose acquaintance is both advantage and honour; he has
+leisure which he can devote to useful studies; his reputation, built on
+a solid base, grows in men’s mouths. He attaches himself to a party; he
+enters political life; and new connections serve to promote his objects.
+At the age of five-and-forty, what, in all probability, may Clarence
+Glyndon be? Since you are ambitious I leave that question for you to
+decide! Now turn to the other picture. Clarence Glyndon returns to
+England with a wife who can bring him no money, unless he lets her out
+on the stage; so handsome, that every one asks who she is, and every one
+hears,--the celebrated singer, Pisani. Clarence Glyndon shuts himself
+up to grind colours and paint pictures in the grand historical school,
+which nobody buys. There is even a prejudice against him, as not having
+studied in the Academy,--as being an amateur. Who is Mr. Clarence
+Glyndon? Oh, the celebrated Pisani’s husband! What else? Oh, he exhibits
+those large pictures! Poor man! they have merit in their way; but
+Teniers and Watteau are more convenient, and almost as cheap. Clarence
+Glyndon, with an easy fortune while single, has a large family which his
+fortune, unaided by marriage, can just rear up to callings more plebeian
+than his own. He retires into the country, to save and to paint; he
+grows slovenly and discontented; ‘the world does not appreciate him,’
+he says, and he runs away from the world. At the age of forty-five
+what will be Clarence Glyndon? Your ambition shall decide that question
+also!”
+
+“If all men were as worldly as you,” said Glyndon, rising, “there would
+never have been an artist or a poet!”
+
+“Perhaps we should do just as well without them,” answered Mervale. “Is
+it not time to think of dinner? The mullets here are remarkably fine!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.IX.
+
+     Wollt ihr hoch auf ihren Flugeln schweben,
+     Werft die Angst des Irdischen von euch!
+     Fliehet aus dem engen dumpfen Leben
+     In des Ideales Reich!
+     “Das Ideal und das Leben.”
+
+     Wouldst thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing?
+     Cast off the earthly burden of the Real;
+     High from this cramped and dungeoned being, spring
+     Into the realm of the Ideal.
+
+As some injudicious master lowers and vitiates the taste of the student
+by fixing his attention to what he falsely calls the Natural, but which,
+in reality, is the Commonplace, and understands not that beauty in
+art is created by what Raphael so well describes,--namely, THE IDEA OF
+BEAUTY IN THE PAINTER’S OWN MIND; and that in every art, whether its
+plastic expression be found in words or marble, colours or sounds, the
+servile imitation of Nature is the work of journeymen and tyros,--so in
+conduct the man of the world vitiates and lowers the bold enthusiasm of
+loftier natures by the perpetual reduction of whatever is generous and
+trustful to all that is trite and coarse. A great German poet has well
+defined the distinction between discretion and the larger wisdom. In the
+last there is a certain rashness which the first disdains,--
+
+“The purblind see but the receding shore, Not that to which the bold
+wave wafts them o’er.”
+
+Yet in this logic of the prudent and the worldly there is often a
+reasoning unanswerable of its kind.
+
+You must have a feeling,--a faith in whatever is self-sacrificing
+and divine, whether in religion or in art, in glory or in love; or
+Common-sense will reason you out of the sacrifice, and a syllogism will
+debase the Divine to an article in the market.
+
+Every true critic in art, from Aristotle and Pliny, from Winkelman and
+Vasari to Reynolds and Fuseli, has sought to instruct the painter that
+Nature is not to be copied, but EXALTED; that the loftiest order of art,
+selecting only the loftiest combinations, is the perpetual struggle of
+Humanity to approach the gods. The great painter, as the great author,
+embodies what is POSSIBLE to MAN, it is true, but what is not COMMON
+to MANKIND. There is truth in Hamlet; in Macbeth, and his witches; in
+Desdemona; in Othello; in Prospero, and in Caliban; there is truth in
+the cartoons of Raphael; there is truth in the Apollo, the Antinous,
+and the Laocoon. But you do not meet the originals of the words, the
+cartoons, or the marble, in Oxford Street or St. James’s. All these, to
+return to Raphael, are the creatures of the idea in the artist’s mind.
+This idea is not inborn, it has come from an intense study. But that
+study has been of the ideal that can be raised from the positive and
+the actual into grandeur and beauty. The commonest model becomes full of
+exquisite suggestions to him who has formed this idea; a Venus of flesh
+and blood would be vulgarised by the imitation of him who has not.
+
+When asked where he got his models, Guido summoned a common porter from
+his calling, and drew from a mean original a head of surpassing beauty.
+It resembled the porter, but idealised the porter to the hero. It was
+true, but it was not real. There are critics who will tell you that the
+Boor of Teniers is more true to Nature than the Porter of Guido! The
+commonplace public scarcely understand the idealising principle, even in
+art; for high art is an acquired taste.
+
+But to come to my comparison. Still less is the kindred principle
+comprehended in conduct. And the advice of worldly prudence would as
+often deter from the risks of virtue as from the punishments of vice;
+yet in conduct, as in art, there is an idea of the great and beautiful,
+by which men should exalt the hackneyed and the trite of life. Now
+Glyndon felt the sober prudence of Mervale’s reasonings; he recoiled
+from the probable picture placed before him, in his devotion to the one
+master-talent he possessed, and the one master-passion that, rightly
+directed, might purify his whole being as a strong wind purifies the
+air.
+
+But though he could not bring himself to decide in the teeth of so
+rational a judgment, neither could he resolve at once to abandon the
+pursuit of Viola. Fearful of being influenced by Zanoni’s counsels and
+his own heart, he had for the last two days shunned an interview with
+the young actress. But after a night following his last conversation
+with Zanoni, and that we have just recorded with Mervale,--a night
+coloured by dreams so distinct as to seem prophetic, dreams that
+appeared so to shape his future according to the hints of Zanoni that he
+could have fancied Zanoni himself had sent them from the house of sleep
+to haunt his pillow,--he resolved once more to seek Viola; and though
+without a definite or distinct object, he yielded himself up to the
+impulse of his heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.X.
+
+     O sollecito dubbio e fredda tema
+     Che pensando l’accresci.
+     Tasso, Canzone vi.
+
+     (O anxious doubt and chilling fear that grows by thinking.)
+
+She was seated outside her door,--the young actress! The sea before her
+in that heavenly bay seemed literally to sleep in the arms of the shore;
+while, to the right, not far off, rose the dark and tangled crags to
+which the traveller of to-day is duly brought to gaze on the tomb of
+Virgil, or compare with the cavern of Posilipo the archway of Highgate
+Hill. There were a few fisherman loitering by the cliffs, on which their
+nets were hung to dry; and at a distance the sound of some rustic pipe
+(more common at that day than at this), mingled now and then with the
+bells of the lazy mules, broke the voluptuous silence,--the silence of
+declining noon on the shores of Naples; never, till you have enjoyed it,
+never, till you have felt its enervating but delicious charm, believe
+that you can comprehend all the meaning of the Dolce far niente (The
+pleasure of doing nothing.); and when that luxury has been known, when
+you have breathed that atmosphere of fairy-land, then you will no longer
+wonder why the heart ripens into fruit so sudden and so rich beneath the
+rosy skies and the glorious sunshine of the South.
+
+The eyes of the actress were fixed on the broad blue deep beyond. In the
+unwonted negligence of her dress might be traced the abstraction of her
+mind. Her beautiful hair was gathered up loosely, and partially bandaged
+by a kerchief whose purple colour served to deepen the golden hue of her
+tresses. A stray curl escaped and fell down the graceful neck. A loose
+morning-robe, girded by a sash, left the breeze. That came ever and anon
+from the sea, to die upon the bust half disclosed; and the tiny slipper,
+that Cinderella might have worn, seemed a world too wide for the tiny
+foot which it scarcely covered. It might be the heat of the day that
+deepened the soft bloom of the cheeks, and gave an unwonted languor to
+the large, dark eyes. In all the pomp of her stage attire,--in all the
+flush of excitement before the intoxicating lamps,--never had Viola
+looked so lovely.
+
+By the side of the actress, and filling up the threshold,--stood
+Gionetta, with her arms thrust to the elbow in two huge pockets on
+either side of her gown.
+
+“But I assure you,” said the nurse, in that sharp, quick, ear-splitting
+tone in which the old women of the South are more than a match for those
+of the North,--“but I assure you, my darling, that there is not a finer
+cavalier in all Naples, nor a more beautiful, than this Inglese; and I
+am told that all these Inglesi are much richer than they seem. Though
+they have no trees in their country, poor people! and instead of
+twenty-four they have only twelve hours to the day, yet I hear that they
+shoe their horses with scudi; and since they cannot (the poor heretics!)
+turn grapes into wine, for they have no grapes, they turn gold into
+physic, and take a glass or two of pistoles whenever they are troubled
+with the colic. But you don’t hear me, little pupil of my eyes,--you
+don’t hear me!”
+
+“And these things are whispered of Zanoni!” said Viola, half to herself,
+and unheeding Gionetta’s eulogies on Glyndon and the English.
+
+“Blessed Maria! do not talk of this terrible Zanoni. You may be sure
+that his beautiful face, like his yet more beautiful pistoles, is
+only witchcraft. I look at the money he gave me the other night, every
+quarter of an hour, to see whether it has not turned into pebbles.”
+
+“Do you then really believe,” said Viola, with timid earnestness, “that
+sorcery still exists?”
+
+“Believe! Do I believe in the blessed San Gennaro? How do you think he
+cured old Filippo the fisherman, when the doctor gave him up? How do you
+think he has managed himself to live at least these three hundred years?
+How do you think he fascinates every one to his bidding with a look, as
+the vampires do?”
+
+“Ah, is this only witchcraft? It is like it,--it must be!” murmured
+Viola, turning very pale. Gionetta herself was scarcely more
+superstitious than the daughter of the musician. And her very innocence,
+chilled at the strangeness of virgin passion, might well ascribe to
+magic what hearts more experienced would have resolved to love.
+
+“And then, why has this great Prince di -- been so terrified by him? Why
+has he ceased to persecute us? Why has he been so quiet and still? Is
+there no sorcery in all that?”
+
+“Think you, then,” said Viola, with sweet inconsistency, “that I owe
+that happiness and safety to his protection? Oh, let me so believe! Be
+silent, Gionetta! Why have I only thee and my own terrors to consult?
+O beautiful sun!” and the girl pressed her hand to her heart with wild
+energy; “thou lightest every spot but this. Go, Gionetta! leave me
+alone,--leave me!”
+
+“And indeed it is time I should leave you; for the polenta will be
+spoiled, and you have eat nothing all day. If you don’t eat you will
+lose your beauty, my darling, and then nobody will care for you. Nobody
+cares for us when we grow ugly,--I know that; and then you must, like
+old Gionetta, get some Viola of your own to spoil. I’ll go and see to
+the polenta.”
+
+“Since I have known this man,” said the girl, half aloud,--“since his
+dark eyes have haunted me, I am no longer the same. I long to escape
+from myself,--to glide with the sunbeam over the hill-tops; to become
+something that is not of earth. Phantoms float before me at night; and
+a fluttering, like the wing of a bird, within my heart, seems as if the
+spirit were terrified, and would break its cage.”
+
+While murmuring these incoherent rhapsodies, a step that she did not
+hear approached the actress, and a light hand touched her arm.
+
+“Viola!--bellissima!--Viola!”
+
+She turned, and saw Glyndon. The sight of his fair young face calmed her
+at once. His presence gave her pleasure.
+
+“Viola,” said the Englishman, taking her hand, and drawing her again
+to the bench from which she had risen, as he seated himself beside her,
+“you shall hear me speak! You must know already that I love thee! It has
+not been pity or admiration alone that has led me ever and ever to thy
+dear side; reasons there may have been why I have not spoken, save by
+my eyes, before; but this day--I know not how it is--I feel a more
+sustained and settled courage to address thee, and learn the happiest or
+the worst. I have rivals, I know,--rivals who are more powerful than the
+poor artist; are they also more favoured?”
+
+Viola blushed faintly; but her countenance was grave and distressed.
+Looking down, and marking some hieroglyphical figures in the dust with
+the point of her slipper, she said, with some hesitation, and a vain
+attempt to be gay, “Signor, whoever wastes his thoughts on an actress
+must submit to have rivals. It is our unhappy destiny not to be sacred
+even to ourselves.”
+
+“But you do not love this destiny, glittering though it seem; your heart
+is not in the vocation which your gifts adorn.”
+
+“Ah, no!” said the actress, her eyes filling with tears. “Once I loved
+to be the priestess of song and music; now I feel only that it is a
+miserable lot to be slave to a multitude.”
+
+“Fly, then, with me,” said the artist, passionately; “quit forever the
+calling that divides that heart I would have all my own. Share my fate
+now and forever,--my pride, my delight, my ideal! Thou shalt inspire my
+canvas and my song; thy beauty shall be made at once holy and renowned.
+In the galleries of princes, crowds shall gather round the effigy of a
+Venus or a Saint, and a whisper shall break forth, ‘It is Viola Pisani!’
+Ah! Viola, I adore thee; tell me that I do not worship in vain.”
+
+“Thou art good and fair,” said Viola, gazing on her lover, as he pressed
+nearer to her, and clasped her hand in his; “but what should I give thee
+in return?”
+
+“Love, love,--only love!”
+
+“A sister’s love?”
+
+“Ah, speak not with such cruel coldness!”
+
+“It is all I have for thee. Listen to me, signor: when I look on your
+face, when I hear your voice, a certain serene and tranquil calm creeps
+over and lulls thoughts,--oh, how feverish, how wild! When thou art
+gone, the day seems a shade more dark; but the shadow soon flies. I
+miss thee not; I think not of thee: no, I love thee not; and I will give
+myself only where I love.”
+
+“But I would teach thee to love me; fear it not. Nay, such love as
+thou describest, in our tranquil climates, is the love of innocence and
+youth.”
+
+“Of innocence!” said Viola. “Is it so? Perhaps--” She paused, and added,
+with an effort, “Foreigner! and wouldst thou wed the orphan? Ah, THOU at
+least art generous! It is not the innocence thou wouldst destroy!”
+
+Glyndon drew back, conscience-stricken.
+
+“No, it may not be!” she said, rising, but not conscious of the
+thoughts, half of shame, half suspicion, that passed through the mind
+of her lover. “Leave me, and forget me. You do not understand, you
+could not comprehend, the nature of her whom you think to love. From my
+childhood upward, I have felt as if I were marked out for some strange
+and preternatural doom; as if I were singled from my kind. This feeling
+(and, oh! at times it is one of delirious and vague delight, at others
+of the darkest gloom) deepens within me day by day. It is like the
+shadow of twilight, spreading slowly and solemnly around. My hour
+approaches: a little while, and it will be night!”
+
+As she spoke, Glyndon listened with visible emotion and perturbation.
+“Viola!” he exclaimed, as she ceased, “your words more than ever enchain
+me to you. As you feel, I feel. I, too, have been ever haunted with a
+chill and unearthly foreboding. Amidst the crowds of men I have felt
+alone. In all my pleasures, my toils, my pursuits, a warning voice has
+murmured in my ear, ‘Time has a dark mystery in store for thy manhood.’
+When you spoke, it was as the voice of my own soul.”
+
+Viola gazed upon him in wonder and fear. Her countenance was as white as
+marble; and those features, so divine in their rare symmetry, might have
+served the Greek with a study for the Pythoness, when, from the mystic
+cavern and the bubbling spring, she first hears the voice of the
+inspiring god. Gradually the rigour and tension of that wonderful face
+relaxed, the colour returned, the pulse beat: the heart animated the
+frame.
+
+“Tell me,” she said, turning partially aside,--“tell me, have you
+seen--do you know--a stranger in this city,--one of whom wild stories
+are afloat?”
+
+“You speak of Zanoni? I have seen him: I know him,--and you? Ah, he,
+too, would be my rival!--he, too, would bear thee from me!”
+
+“You err,” said Viola, hastily, and with a deep sigh; “he pleads for
+you: he informed me of your love; he besought me not--not to reject it.”
+
+“Strange being! incomprehensible enigma! Why did you name him?”
+
+“Why! ah, I would have asked whether, when you first saw him, the
+foreboding, the instinct, of which you spoke, came on you more
+fearfully, more intelligibly than before; whether you felt at once
+repelled from him, yet attracted towards him; whether you felt,” and the
+actress spoke with hurried animation, “that with HIM was connected the
+secret of your life?”
+
+“All this I felt,” answered Glyndon, in a trembling voice, “the first
+time I was in his presence. Though all around me was gay,--music,
+amidst lamp-lit trees, light converse near, and heaven without a cloud
+above,--my knees knocked together, my hair bristled, and my blood
+curdled like ice. Since then he has divided my thoughts with thee.”
+
+“No more, no more!” said Viola, in a stifled tone; “there must be the
+hand of fate in this. I can speak to you no more now. Farewell!” She
+sprung past him into the house, and closed the door. Glyndon did not
+follow her, nor, strange as it may seem, was he so inclined. The thought
+and recollection of that moonlit hour in the gardens, of the strange
+address of Zanoni, froze up all human passion. Viola herself, if not
+forgotten, shrunk back like a shadow into the recesses of his breast.
+He shivered as he stepped into the sunlight, and musingly retraced his
+steps into the more populous parts of that liveliest of Italian cities.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III. -- THEURGIA.
+
+     --i cavalier sen vanno
+     dove il pino fatal gli attende in porto.
+     Gerus. Lib., cant. xv (Argomento.)
+
+     The knights came where the fatal bark
+     Awaited them in the port.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.I.
+
+     But that which especially distinguishes the brotherhood is their
+     marvellous knowledge of all the resources of medical art.  They
+     work not by charms, but simples.
+     --“MS.  Account of the Origin and Attributes of the true
+     Rosicrucians,” by J. Von D--.
+
+At this time it chanced that Viola had the opportunity to return the
+kindness shown to her by the friendly musician whose house had received
+and sheltered her when first left an orphan on the world. Old Bernardi
+had brought up three sons to the same profession as himself, and they
+had lately left Naples to seek their fortunes in the wealthier cities
+of Northern Europe, where the musical market was less overstocked. There
+was only left to glad the household of his aged wife and himself, a
+lively, prattling, dark-eyed girl of some eight years old, the child
+of his second son, whose mother had died in giving her birth. It so
+happened that, about a month previous to the date on which our story has
+now entered, a paralytic affection had disabled Bernardi from the duties
+of his calling. He had been always a social, harmless, improvident,
+generous fellow--living on his gains from day to day, as if the day of
+sickness and old age never was to arrive. Though he received a small
+allowance for his past services, it ill sufficed for his wants,; neither
+was he free from debt. Poverty stood at his hearth,--when Viola’s
+grateful smile and liberal hand came to chase the grim fiend away. But
+it is not enough to a heart truly kind to send and give; more charitable
+is it to visit and console. “Forget not thy father’s friend.” So almost
+daily went the bright idol of Naples to the house of Bernardi. Suddenly
+a heavier affliction than either poverty or the palsy befell the old
+musician. His grandchild, his little Beatrice, fell ill, suddenly and
+dangerously ill, of one of those rapid fevers common to the South; and
+Viola was summoned from her strange and fearful reveries of love or
+fancy, to the sick-bed of the young sufferer.
+
+The child was exceedingly fond of Viola, and the old people thought that
+her mere presence would bring healing; but when Viola arrived, Beatrice
+was insensible. Fortunately there was no performance that evening at San
+Carlo, and she resolved to stay the night and partake its fearful cares
+and dangerous vigil.
+
+But during the night the child grew worse, the physician (the leechcraft
+has never been very skilful at Naples) shook his powdered head, kept his
+aromatics at his nostrils, administered his palliatives, and departed.
+Old Bernardi seated himself by the bedside in stern silence; here was
+the last tie that bound him to life. Well, let the anchor break and the
+battered ship go down! It was an iron resolve, more fearful than sorrow.
+An old man, with one foot in the grave, watching by the couch of a dying
+child, is one of the most awful spectacles in human calamities. The wife
+was more active, more bustling, more hopeful, and more tearful. Viola
+took heed of all three. But towards dawn, Beatrice’s state became so
+obviously alarming, that Viola herself began to despair. At this time
+she saw the old woman suddenly rise from before the image of the saint
+at which she had been kneeling, wrap herself in her cloak and hood, and
+quietly quit the chamber. Viola stole after her.
+
+“It is cold for thee, good mother, to brave the air; let me go for the
+physician?”
+
+“Child, I am not going to him. I have heard of one in the city who has
+been tender to the poor, and who, they say, has cured the sick when
+physicians failed. I will go and say to him, ‘Signor, we are beggars
+in all else, but yesterday we were rich in love. We are at the close
+of life, but we lived in our grandchild’s childhood. Give us back our
+wealth,--give us back our youth. Let us die blessing God that the thing
+we love survives us.’”
+
+She was gone. Why did thy heart beat, Viola? The infant’s sharp cry
+of pain called her back to the couch; and there still sat the old man,
+unconscious of his wife’s movements, not stirring, his eyes glazing fast
+as they watched the agonies of that slight frame. By degrees the wail
+of pain died into a low moan,--the convulsions grew feebler, but more
+frequent; the glow of fever faded into the blue, pale tinge that settles
+into the last bloodless marble.
+
+The daylight came broader and clearer through the casement; steps were
+heard on the stairs,--the old woman entered hastily; she rushed to the
+bed, cast a glance on the patient, “She lives yet, signor, she lives!”
+
+Viola raised her eyes,--the child’s head was pillowed on her bosom,--and
+she beheld Zanoni. He smiled on her with a tender and soft approval,
+and took the infant from her arms. Yet even then, as she saw him bending
+silently over that pale face, a superstitious fear mingled with her
+hopes. “Was it by lawful--by holy art that--” her self-questioning
+ceased abruptly; for his dark eye turned to her as if he read her soul,
+and his aspect accused her conscience for its suspicion, for it spoke
+reproach not unmingled with disdain.
+
+“Be comforted,” he said, gently turning to the old man, “the danger is
+not beyond the reach of human skill;” and, taking from his bosom a small
+crystal vase, he mingled a few drops with water. No sooner did this
+medicine moisten the infant’s lips, than it seemed to produce an
+astonishing effect. The colour revived rapidly on the lips and cheeks;
+in a few moments the sufferer slept calmly, and with the regular
+breathing of painless sleep. And then the old man rose, rigidly, as a
+corpse might rise,--looked down, listened, and creeping gently away,
+stole to the corner of the room, and wept, and thanked Heaven!
+
+Now, old Bernardi had been, hitherto, but a cold believer; sorrow had
+never before led him aloft from earth. Old as he was, he had never
+before thought as the old should think of death,--that endangered life
+of the young had wakened up the careless soul of age. Zanoni whispered
+to the wife, and she drew the old man quietly from the room.
+
+“Dost thou fear to leave me an hour with thy charge, Viola? Thinkest
+thou still that this knowledge is of the Fiend?”
+
+“Ah,” said Viola, humbled and yet rejoiced, “forgive me, forgive me,
+signor. Thou biddest the young live and the old pray. My thoughts never
+shall wrong thee more!”
+
+Before the sun rose, Beatrice was out of danger; at noon Zanoni escaped
+from the blessings of the aged pair, and as he closed the door of the
+house, he found Viola awaiting him without.
+
+She stood before him timidly, her hands crossed meekly on her bosom, her
+downcast eyes swimming with tears.
+
+“Do not let me be the only one you leave unhappy!”
+
+“And what cure can the herbs and anodynes effect for thee? If thou canst
+so readily believe ill of those who have aided and yet would serve thee,
+thy disease is of the heart; and--nay, weep not! nurse of the sick, and
+comforter of the sad, I should rather approve than chide thee. Forgive
+thee! Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has, for its first duty, to
+forgive.”
+
+“No, do not forgive me yet. I do not deserve a pardon; for even now,
+while I feel how ungrateful I was to believe, suspect, aught injurious
+and false to my preserver, my tears flow from happiness, not remorse.
+Oh!” she continued, with a simple fervour, unconscious, in her innocence
+and her generous emotions, of all the secrets she betrayed,--“thou
+knowest not how bitter it was to believe thee not more good, more pure,
+more sacred than all the world. And when I saw thee,--the wealthy,
+the noble, coming from thy palace to minister to the sufferings of
+the hovel,--when I heard those blessings of the poor breathed upon thy
+parting footsteps, I felt my very self exalted,--good in thy goodness,
+noble at least in those thoughts that did NOT wrong thee.”
+
+“And thinkest thou, Viola, that in a mere act of science there is so
+much virtue? The commonest leech will tend the sick for his fee. Are
+prayers and blessings a less reward than gold?”
+
+“And mine, then, are not worthless? Thou wilt accept of mine?”
+
+“Ah, Viola!” exclaimed Zanoni, with a sudden passion, that covered her
+face with blushes, “thou only, methinks, on all the earth, hast the
+power to wound or delight me!” He checked himself, and his face became
+grave and sad. “And this,” he added, in an altered tone, “because, if
+thou wouldst heed my counsels, methinks I could guide a guileless heart
+to a happy fate.”
+
+“Thy counsels! I will obey them all. Mould me to what thou wilt. In
+thine absence, I am as a child that fears every shadow in the dark; in
+thy presence, my soul expands, and the whole world seems calm with a
+celestial noonday. Do not deny to me that presence. I am fatherless and
+ignorant and alone!”
+
+Zanoni averted his face, and, after a moment’s silence, replied
+calmly,--
+
+“Be it so. Sister, I will visit thee again!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.II.
+
+     Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.
+     Shakespeare.
+
+Who so happy as Viola now! A dark load was lifted from her heart: her
+step seemed to tread on air; she would have sung for very delight as she
+went gayly home. It is such happiness to the pure to love,--but oh, such
+more than happiness to believe in the worth of the one beloved. Between
+them there might be human obstacles,--wealth, rank, man’s little world.
+But there was no longer that dark gulf which the imagination recoils to
+dwell on, and which separates forever soul from soul. He did not love
+her in return. Love her! But did she ask for love? Did she herself love?
+No; or she would never have been at once so humble and so bold. How
+merrily the ocean murmured in her ear; how radiant an aspect the
+commonest passer-by seemed to wear! She gained her home,--she looked
+upon the tree, glancing, with fantastic branches, in the sun. “Yes,
+brother mine!” she said, laughing in her joy, “like thee, I HAVE
+struggled to the light!”
+
+She had never hitherto, like the more instructed Daughters of the North,
+accustomed herself to that delicious Confessional, the transfusion of
+thought to writing. Now, suddenly, her heart felt an impulse; a new-born
+instinct, that bade it commune with itself, bade it disentangle its web
+of golden fancies,--made her wish to look upon her inmost self as in
+a glass. Upsprung from the embrace of Love and Soul--the Eros and the
+Psyche--their beautiful offspring, Genius! She blushed, she sighed, she
+trembled as she wrote. And from the fresh world that she had built for
+herself, she was awakened to prepare for the glittering stage. How dull
+became the music, how dim the scene, so exquisite and so bright of old.
+Stage, thou art the Fairy Land to the vision of the worldly. Fancy,
+whose music is not heard by men, whose scenes shift not by mortal hand,
+as the stage to the present world, art thou to the future and the past!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.III.
+
+     In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes.
+     Shakespeare.
+
+The next day, at noon, Zanoni visited Viola; and the next day and the
+next and again the next,--days that to her seemed like a special time
+set apart from the rest of life. And yet he never spoke to her in the
+language of flattery, and almost of adoration, to which she had been
+accustomed. Perhaps his very coldness, so gentle as it was, assisted to
+this mysterious charm. He talked to her much of her past life, and she
+was scarcely surprised (she now never thought of TERROR) to perceive how
+much of that past seemed known to him.
+
+He made her speak to him of her father; he made her recall some of the
+airs of Pisani’s wild music. And those airs seemed to charm and lull him
+into reverie.
+
+“As music was to the musician,” said he, “may science be to the wise.
+Your father looked abroad in the world; all was discord to the fine
+sympathies that he felt with the harmonies that daily and nightly float
+to the throne of Heaven. Life, with its noisy ambition and its mean
+passions, is so poor and base! Out of his soul he created the life and
+the world for which his soul was fitted. Viola, thou art the daughter of
+that life, and wilt be the denizen of that world.”
+
+In his earlier visits he did not speak of Glyndon. The day soon came on
+which he renewed the subject. And so trustful, obedient, and entire was
+the allegiance that Viola now owned to his dominion, that, unwelcome
+as that subject was, she restrained her heart, and listened to him in
+silence.
+
+At last he said, “Thou hast promised thou wilt obey my counsels, and if,
+Viola, I should ask thee, nay adjure, to accept this stranger’s hand,
+and share his fate, should he offer to thee such a lot,--wouldst thou
+refuse?”
+
+And then she pressed back the tears that gushed to her eyes; and with
+a strange pleasure in the midst of pain,--the pleasure of one who
+sacrifices heart itself to the one who commands that heart,--she
+answered falteringly, “If thou CANST ordain it, why--”
+
+“Speak on.”
+
+“Dispose of me as thou wilt!”
+
+Zanoni stood in silence for some moments: he saw the struggle which
+the girl thought she concealed so well; he made an involuntary movement
+towards her, and pressed her hand to his lips; it was the first time
+he had ever departed even so far from a certain austerity which perhaps
+made her fear him and her own thoughts the less.
+
+“Viola,” said he, and his voice trembled, “the danger that I can avert
+no more, if thou linger still in Naples, comes hourly near and near to
+thee! On the third day from this thy fate must be decided. I accept thy
+promise. Before the last hour of that day, come what may, I shall see
+thee again, HERE, at thine own house. Till then, farewell!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.IV.
+
+     Between two worlds life hovers like a star
+     ‘Twixt night and morn.
+     --Byron.
+
+When Glyndon left Viola, as recorded in the concluding chapter of the
+second division of this work, he was absorbed again in those mystical
+desires and conjectures which the haunting recollection of Zanoni
+always served to create. And as he wandered through the streets, he
+was scarcely conscious of his own movements till, in the mechanism of
+custom, he found himself in the midst of one of the noble collections of
+pictures which form the boast of those Italian cities whose glory is
+in the past. Thither he had been wont, almost daily, to repair, for the
+gallery contained some of the finest specimens of a master especially
+the object of his enthusiasm and study. There, before the works of
+Salvator, he had often paused in deep and earnest reverence. The
+striking characteristic of that artist is the “Vigour of Will;” void
+of the elevated idea of abstract beauty, which furnishes a model and
+archetype to the genius of more illustrious order, the singular energy
+of the man hews out of the rock a dignity of his own. His images have
+the majesty, not of the god, but the savage; utterly free, like the
+sublimer schools, from the common-place of imitation,--apart, with
+them, from the conventional littleness of the Real,--he grasps the
+imagination, and compels it to follow him, not to the heaven, but
+through all that is most wild and fantastic upon earth; a sorcery, not
+of the starry magian, but of the gloomy wizard,--a man of romance whose
+heart beat strongly, griping art with a hand of iron, and forcing it
+to idealise the scenes of his actual life. Before this powerful will,
+Glyndon drew back more awed and admiring than before the calmer beauty
+which rose from the soul of Raphael, like Venus from the deep.
+
+And now, as awaking from his reverie, he stood opposite to that wild and
+magnificent gloom of Nature which frowned on him from the canvas,
+the very leaves on those gnome-like, distorted trees seemed to rustle
+sibylline secrets in his ear. Those rugged and sombre Apennines, the
+cataract that dashed between, suited, more than the actual scenes would
+have done, the mood and temper of his mind. The stern, uncouth forms
+at rest on the crags below, and dwarfed by the giant size of the Matter
+that reigned around them, impressed him with the might of Nature and the
+littleness of Man. As in genius of the more spiritual cast, the living
+man, and the soul that lives in him, are studiously made the prominent
+image; and the mere accessories of scene kept down, and cast back, as if
+to show that the exile from paradise is yet the monarch of the outward
+world,--so, in the landscapes of Salvator, the tree, the mountain,
+the waterfall, become the principal, and man himself dwindles to the
+accessory. The Matter seems to reign supreme, and its true lord to
+creep beneath its stupendous shadow. Inert matter giving interest to
+the immortal man, not the immortal man to the inert matter. A terrible
+philosophy in art!
+
+While something of these thoughts passed through the mind of the
+painter, he felt his arm touched, and saw Nicot by his side.
+
+“A great master,” said Nicot, “but I do not love the school.”
+
+“I do not love, but I am awed by it. We love the beautiful and serene,
+but we have a feeling as deep as love for the terrible and dark.”
+
+“True,” said Nicot, thoughtfully. “And yet that feeling is only a
+superstition. The nursery, with its tales of ghosts and goblins, is the
+cradle of many of our impressions in the world. But art should not seek
+to pander to our ignorance; art should represent only truths. I confess
+that Raphael pleases me less, because I have no sympathy with his
+subjects. His saints and virgins are to me only men and women.”
+
+“And from what source should painting, then, take its themes?”
+
+“From history, without doubt,” returned Nicot, pragmatically,--“those
+great Roman actions which inspire men with sentiments of liberty and
+valour, with the virtues of a republic. I wish the cartoons of Raphael
+had illustrated the story of the Horatii; but it remains for France and
+her Republic to give to posterity the new and the true school, which
+could never have arisen in a country of priestcraft and delusion.”
+
+“And the saints and virgins of Raphael are to you only men and women?”
+ repeated Glyndon, going back to Nicot’s candid confession in amaze, and
+scarcely hearing the deductions the Frenchman drew from his proposition.
+
+“Assuredly. Ha, ha!” and Nicot laughed hideously, “do you ask me to
+believe in the calendar, or what?”
+
+“But the ideal?”
+
+“The ideal!” interrupted Nicot. “Stuff! The Italian critics, and your
+English Reynolds, have turned your head. They are so fond of
+their ‘gusto grande,’ and their ‘ideal beauty that speaks to the
+soul!’--soul!--IS there a soul? I understand a man when he talks of
+composing for a refined taste,--for an educated and intelligent reason;
+for a sense that comprehends truths. But as for the soul,--bah!--we
+are but modifications of matter, and painting is modification of matter
+also.”
+
+Glyndon turned his eyes from the picture before him to Nicot, and from
+Nicot to the picture. The dogmatist gave a voice to the thoughts which
+the sight of the picture had awakened. He shook his head without reply.
+
+“Tell me,” said Nicot, abruptly, “that imposter,--Zanoni!--oh! I have
+now learned his name and quackeries, forsooth,--what did he say to thee
+of me?”
+
+“Of thee? Nothing; but to warn me against thy doctrines.”
+
+“Aha! was that all?” said Nicot. “He is a notable inventor, and since,
+when we met last, I unmasked his delusions, I thought he might retaliate
+by some tale of slander.”
+
+“Unmasked his delusions!--how?”
+
+“A dull and long story: he wished to teach an old doting friend of mine
+his secrets of prolonged life and philosophical alchemy. I advise thee
+to renounce so discreditable an acquaintance.”
+
+With that Nicot nodded significantly, and, not wishing to be further
+questioned, went his way.
+
+Glyndon’s mind at that moment had escaped to his art, and the comments
+and presence of Nicot had been no welcome interruption. He turned
+from the landscape of Salvator, and his eye falling on a Nativity by
+Coreggio, the contrast between the two ranks of genius struck him as
+a discovery. That exquisite repose, that perfect sense of beauty, that
+strength without effort, that breathing moral of high art, which speaks
+to the mind through the eye, and raises the thoughts, by the aid of
+tenderness and love, to the regions of awe and wonder,--ay! THAT was the
+true school. He quitted the gallery with reluctant steps and inspired
+ideas; he sought his own home. Here, pleased not to find the sober
+Mervale, he leaned his face on his hands, and endeavoured to recall the
+words of Zanoni in their last meeting. Yes, he felt Nicot’s talk even on
+art was crime; it debased the imagination itself to mechanism. Could
+he, who saw nothing in the soul but a combination of matter, prate of
+schools that should excel a Raphael? Yes, art was magic; and as he owned
+the truth of the aphorism, he could comprehend that in magic there may
+be religion, for religion is an essential to art. His old ambition,
+freeing itself from the frigid prudence with which Mervale sought to
+desecrate all images less substantial than the golden calf of the world,
+revived, and stirred, and kindled. The subtle detection of what he
+conceived to be an error in the school he had hitherto adopted, made
+more manifest to him by the grinning commentary of Nicot, seemed to open
+to him a new world of invention. He seized the happy moment,--he placed
+before him the colours and the canvas. Lost in his conceptions of a
+fresh ideal, his mind was lifted aloft into the airy realms of beauty;
+dark thoughts, unhallowed desires, vanished. Zanoni was right: the
+material world shrunk from his gaze; he viewed Nature as from a
+mountain-top afar; and as the waves of his unquiet heart became calm and
+still, again the angel eyes of Viola beamed on them as a holy star.
+
+Locking himself in his chamber, he refused even the visits of Mervale.
+Intoxicated with the pure air of his fresh existence, he remained for
+three days, and almost nights, absorbed in his employment; but on the
+fourth morning came that reaction to which all labour is exposed. He
+woke listless and fatigued; and as he cast his eyes on the canvas, the
+glory seemed to have gone from it. Humiliating recollections of the
+great masters he aspired to rival forced themselves upon him; defects
+before unseen magnified themselves to deformities in his languid and
+discontented eyes. He touched and retouched, but his hand failed him; he
+threw down his instruments in despair; he opened his casement: the day
+without was bright and lovely; the street was crowded with that life
+which is ever so joyous and affluent in the animated population of
+Naples. He saw the lover, as he passed, conversing with his mistress by
+those mute gestures which have survived all changes of languages, the
+same now as when the Etruscan painted yon vases in the Museo Borbonico.
+Light from without beckoned his youth to its mirth and its pleasures;
+and the dull walls within, lately large enough to comprise heaven and
+earth, seemed now cabined and confined as a felon’s prison. He welcomed
+the step of Mervale at his threshold, and unbarred the door.
+
+“And is that all you have done?” said Mervale, glancing disdainfully
+at the canvas. “Is it for this that you have shut yourself out from the
+sunny days and moonlit nights of Naples?”
+
+“While the fit was on me, I basked in a brighter sun, and imbibed the
+voluptuous luxury of a softer moon.”
+
+“You own that the fit is over. Well, that is some sign of returning
+sense. After all, it is better to daub canvas for three days than make a
+fool of yourself for life. This little siren?”
+
+“Be dumb! I hate to hear you name her.”
+
+Mervale drew his chair nearer to Glyndon’s, thrust his hands deep in his
+breeches-pockets, stretched his legs, and was about to begin a serious
+strain of expostulation, when a knock was heard at the door, and Nicot,
+without waiting for leave, obtruded his ugly head.
+
+“Good-day, mon cher confrere. I wished to speak to you. Hein! you have
+been at work, I see. This is well,--very well! A bold outline,--great
+freedom in that right hand. But, hold! is the composition good? You have
+not got the great pyramidal form. Don’t you think, too, that you have
+lost the advantage of contrast in this figure; since the right leg is
+put forward, surely the right arm should be put back? Peste! but that
+little finger is very fine!”
+
+Mervale detested Nicot. For all speculators, Utopians, alterers of the
+world, and wanderers from the high road, were equally hateful to
+him; but he could have hugged the Frenchman at that moment. He saw
+in Glyndon’s expressive countenance all the weariness and disgust he
+endured. After so wrapped a study, to be prated to about pyramidal
+forms and right arms and right legs, the accidence of the art, the whole
+conception to be overlooked, and the criticism to end in approval of the
+little finger!
+
+“Oh,” said Glyndon, peevishly, throwing the cloth over his design,
+“enough of my poor performance. What is it you have to say to me?”
+
+“In the first place,” said Nicot, huddling himself together upon
+a stool,--“in the first place, this Signor Zanoni,--this second
+Cagliostro,--who disputes my doctrines! (no doubt a spy of the man
+Capet) I am not vindictive; as Helvetius says, ‘our errors arise from
+our passions.’ I keep mine in order; but it is virtuous to hate in the
+cause of mankind; I would I had the denouncing and the judging of Signor
+Zanoni at Paris.” And Nicot’s small eyes shot fire, and he gnashed his
+teeth.
+
+“Have you any new cause to hate him?”
+
+“Yes,” said Nicot, fiercely. “Yes, I hear he is courting the girl I mean
+to marry.”
+
+“You! Whom do you speak of?”
+
+“The celebrated Pisani! She is divinely handsome. She would make my
+fortune in a republic. And a republic we shall have before the year is
+out.”
+
+Mervale rubbed his hands, and chuckled. Glyndon coloured with rage and
+shame.
+
+“Do you know the Signora Pisani? Have you ever spoken to her?”
+
+“Not yet. But when I make up my mind to anything, it is soon done. I
+am about to return to Paris. They write me word that a handsome wife
+advances the career of a patriot. The age of prejudice is over.
+The sublimer virtues begin to be understood. I shall take back the
+handsomest wife in Europe.”
+
+“Be quiet! What are you about?” said Mervale, seizing Glyndon as he saw
+him advance towards the Frenchman, his eyes sparkling, and his hands
+clenched.
+
+“Sir!” said Glyndon, between his teeth, “you know not of whom you thus
+speak. Do you affect to suppose that Viola Pisani would accept YOU?”
+
+“Not if she could get a better offer,” said Mervale, looking up to the
+ceiling.
+
+“A better offer? You don’t understand me,” said Nicot. “I, Jean Nicot,
+propose to marry the girl; marry her! Others may make her more liberal
+offers, but no one, I apprehend, would make one so honourable. I alone
+have pity on her friendless situation. Besides, according to the dawning
+state of things, one will always, in France, be able to get rid of a
+wife whenever one wishes. We shall have new laws of divorce. Do you
+imagine that an Italian girl--and in no country in the world are
+maidens, it seems, more chaste (though wives may console themselves with
+virtues more philosophical)--would refuse the hand of an artist for the
+settlements of a prince? No; I think better of the Pisani than you do. I
+shall hasten to introduce myself to her.”
+
+“I wish you all success, Monsieur Nicot,” said Mervale, rising, and
+shaking him heartily by the hand.
+
+Glyndon cast at them both a disdainful glance.
+
+“Perhaps, Monsieur Nicot,” said he, at length, constraining his lips
+into a bitter smile,--“perhaps you may have rivals.”
+
+“So much the better,” replied Monsieur Nicot, carelessly, kicking his
+heels together, and appearing absorbed in admiration at the size of his
+large feet.
+
+“I myself admire Viola Pisani.”
+
+“Every painter must!”
+
+“I may offer her marriage as well as yourself.”
+
+“That would be folly in you, though wisdom in me. You would not know
+how to draw profit from the speculation! Cher confrere, you have
+prejudices.”
+
+“You do not dare to say you would make profit from your own wife?”
+
+“The virtuous Cato lent his wife to a friend. I love virtue, and I
+cannot do better than imitate Cato. But to be serious,--I do not
+fear you as a rival. You are good-looking, and I am ugly. But you are
+irresolute, and I decisive. While you are uttering fine phrases, I shall
+say, simply, ‘I have a bon etat. Will you marry me?’ So do your worst,
+cher confrere. Au revoir, behind the scenes!”
+
+So saying, Nicot rose, stretched his long arms and short legs, yawned
+till he showed all his ragged teeth from ear to ear, pressed down his
+cap on his shaggy head with an air of defiance, and casting over his
+left shoulder a glance of triumph and malice at the indignant Glyndon,
+sauntered out of the room.
+
+Mervale burst into a violent fit of laughter. “See how your Viola is
+estimated by your friend. A fine victory, to carry her off from the
+ugliest dog between Lapland and the Calmucks.”
+
+Glyndon was yet too indignant to answer, when a new visitor arrived. It
+was Zanoni himself. Mervale, on whom the appearance and aspect of this
+personage imposed a kind of reluctant deference, which he was unwilling
+to acknowledge, and still more to betray, nodded to Glyndon, and saying,
+simply, “More when I see you again,” left the painter and his unexpected
+visitor.
+
+“I see,” said Zanoni, lifting the cloth from the canvas, “that you have
+not slighted the advice I gave you. Courage, young artist; this is an
+escape from the schools: this is full of the bold self-confidence of
+real genius. You had no Nicot--no Mervale--at your elbow when this image
+of true beauty was conceived!”
+
+Charmed back to his art by this unlooked-for praise, Glyndon replied
+modestly, “I thought well of my design till this morning; and then I was
+disenchanted of my happy persuasion.”
+
+“Say, rather, that, unaccustomed to continuous labour, you were fatigued
+with your employment.”
+
+“That is true. Shall I confess it? I began to miss the world without. It
+seemed to me as if, while I lavished my heart and my youth upon visions
+of beauty, I was losing the beautiful realities of actual life. And I
+envied the merry fisherman, singing as he passed below my casement, and
+the lover conversing with his mistress.”
+
+“And,” said Zanoni, with an encouraging smile, “do you blame yourself
+for the natural and necessary return to earth, in which even the most
+habitual visitor of the Heavens of Invention seeks his relaxation and
+repose? Man’s genius is a bird that cannot be always on the wing; when
+the craving for the actual world is felt, it is a hunger that must be
+appeased. They who command best the ideal, enjoy ever most the real.
+See the true artist, when abroad in men’s thoroughfares, ever observant,
+ever diving into the heart, ever alive to the least as to the greatest
+of the complicated truths of existence; descending to what pedants would
+call the trivial and the frivolous. From every mesh in the social web,
+he can disentangle a grace. And for him each airy gossamer floats in
+the gold of the sunlight. Know you not that around the animalcule that
+sports in the water there shines a halo, as around the star (The monas
+mica, found in the purest pools, is encompassed with a halo. And this
+is frequent amongst many other species of animalcule.) that revolves in
+bright pastime through the space? True art finds beauty everywhere. In
+the street, in the market-place, in the hovel, it gathers food for the
+hive of its thoughts. In the mire of politics, Dante and Milton selected
+pearls for the wreath of song.
+
+“Who ever told you that Raphael did not enjoy the life without, carrying
+everywhere with him the one inward idea of beauty which attracted and
+imbedded in its own amber every straw that the feet of the dull man
+trampled into mud? As some lord of the forest wanders abroad for its
+prey, and scents and follows it over plain and hill, through brake and
+jungle, but, seizing it at last, bears the quarry to its unwitnessed
+cave,--so Genius searches through wood and waste, untiringly and
+eagerly, every sense awake, every nerve strained to speed and strength,
+for the scattered and flying images of matter, that it seizes at
+last with its mighty talons, and bears away with it into solitudes
+no footstep can invade. Go, seek the world without; it is for art the
+inexhaustible pasture-ground and harvest to the world within!”
+
+“You comfort me,” said Glyndon, brightening. “I had imagined my
+weariness a proof of my deficiency! But not now would I speak to you
+of these labours. Pardon me, if I pass from the toil to the reward.
+You have uttered dim prophecies of my future, if I wed one who, in
+the judgment of the sober world, would only darken its prospects and
+obstruct its ambition. Do you speak from the wisdom which is experience,
+or that which aspires to prediction?”
+
+“Are they not allied? Is it not he best accustomed to calculation who
+can solve at a glance any new problem in the arithmetic of chances?”
+
+“You evade my question.”
+
+“No; but I will adapt my answer the better to your comprehension, for
+it is upon this very point that I have sought you. Listen to me!”
+ Zanoni fixed his eyes earnestly on his listener, and continued: “For the
+accomplishment of whatever is great and lofty, the clear perception of
+truths is the first requisite,--truths adapted to the object desired.
+The warrior thus reduces the chances of battle to combinations almost
+of mathematics. He can predict a result, if he can but depend upon
+the materials he is forced to employ. At such a loss he can cross that
+bridge; in such a time he can reduce that fort. Still more accurately,
+for he depends less on material causes than ideas at his command, can
+the commander of the purer science or diviner art, if he once perceive
+the truths that are in him and around, foretell what he can achieve,
+and in what he is condemned to fail. But this perception of truths is
+disturbed by many causes,--vanity, passion, fear, indolence in himself,
+ignorance of the fitting means without to accomplish what he designs. He
+may miscalculate his own forces; he may have no chart of the country
+he would invade. It is only in a peculiar state of the mind that it is
+capable of perceiving truth; and that state is profound serenity. Your
+mind is fevered by a desire for truth: you would compel it to your
+embraces; you would ask me to impart to you, without ordeal or
+preparation, the grandest secrets that exist in Nature. But truth can no
+more be seen by the mind unprepared for it, than the sun can dawn upon
+the midst of night. Such a mind receives truth only to pollute it: to
+use the simile of one who has wandered near to the secret of the sublime
+Goetia (or the magic that lies within Nature, as electricity within the
+cloud), ‘He who pours water into the muddy well, does but disturb the
+mud.’” (“Iamb. de Vit. Pythag.”)
+
+“What do you tend to?”
+
+“This: that you have faculties that may attain to surpassing power, that
+may rank you among those enchanters who, greater than the magian,
+leave behind them an enduring influence, worshipped wherever beauty is
+comprehended, wherever the soul is sensible of a higher world than that
+in which matter struggles for crude and incomplete existence.
+
+“But to make available those faculties, need I be a prophet to tell you
+that you must learn to concentre upon great objects all your desires?
+The heart must rest, that the mind may be active. At present you wander
+from aim to aim. As the ballast to the ship, so to the spirit are faith
+and love. With your whole heart, affections, humanity, centred in one
+object, your mind and aspirations will become equally steadfast and in
+earnest. Viola is a child as yet; you do not perceive the high nature
+the trials of life will develop. Pardon me, if I say that her soul,
+purer and loftier than your own, will bear it upward, as a secret hymn
+carries aloft the spirits of the world. Your nature wants the harmony,
+the music which, as the Pythagoreans wisely taught, at once elevates and
+soothes. I offer you that music in her love.”
+
+“But am I sure that she does love me?”
+
+“Artist, no; she loves you not at present; her affections are full of
+another. But if I could transfer to you, as the loadstone transfers its
+attraction to the magnet, the love that she has now for me,--if I could
+cause her to see in you the ideal of her dreams--”
+
+“Is such a gift in the power of man?”
+
+“I offer it to you, if your love be lawful, if your faith in virtue and
+yourself be deep and loyal; if not, think you that I would disenchant
+her with truth to make her adore a falsehood?”
+
+“But if,” persisted Glyndon,--“if she be all that you tell me, and if
+she love you, how can you rob yourself of so priceless a treasure?”
+
+“Oh, shallow and mean heart of man!” exclaimed Zanoni, with unaccustomed
+passion and vehemence, “dost thou conceive so little of love as not to
+know that it sacrifices all--love itself--for the happiness of the thing
+it loves? Hear me!” And Zanoni’s face grew pale. “Hear me! I press this
+upon you, because I love her, and because I fear that with me her fate
+will be less fair than with yourself. Why,--ask not, for I will not
+tell you. Enough! Time presses now for your answer; it cannot long be
+delayed. Before the night of the third day from this, all choice will be
+forbid you!”
+
+“But,” said Glyndon, still doubting and suspicious,--“but why this
+haste?”
+
+“Man, you are not worthy of her when you ask me. All I can tell you
+here, you should have known yourself. This ravisher, this man of will,
+this son of the old Visconti, unlike you,--steadfast, resolute, earnest
+even in his crimes,--never relinquishes an object. But one passion
+controls his lust,--it is his avarice. The day after his attempt on
+Viola, his uncle, the Cardinal --, from whom he has large expectations
+of land and gold, sent for him, and forbade him, on pain of forfeiting
+all the possessions which his schemes already had parcelled out, to
+pursue with dishonourable designs one whom the Cardinal had heeded and
+loved from childhood. This is the cause of his present pause from his
+pursuit. While we speak, the cause expires. Before the hand of the clock
+reaches the hour of noon, the Cardinal -- will be no more. At this very
+moment thy friend, Jean Nicot, is with the Prince di --.”
+
+“He! wherefore?”
+
+“To ask what dower shall go with Viola Pisani, the morning that she
+leaves the palace of the prince.”
+
+“And how do you know all this?”
+
+“Fool! I tell thee again, because a lover is a watcher by night and day;
+because love never sleeps when danger menaces the beloved one!”
+
+“And you it was that informed the Cardinal --?”
+
+“Yes; and what has been my task might as easily have been thine.
+Speak,--thine answer!”
+
+“You shall have it on the third day from this.”
+
+“Be it so. Put off, poor waverer, thy happiness to the last hour. On the
+third day from this, I will ask thee thy resolve.”
+
+“And where shall we meet?”
+
+“Before midnight, where you may least expect me. You cannot shun me,
+though you may seek to do so!”
+
+“Stay one moment! You condemn me as doubtful, irresolute, suspicious.
+Have I no cause? Can I yield without a struggle to the strange
+fascination you exert upon my mind? What interest can you have in me, a
+stranger, that you should thus dictate to me the gravest action in the
+life of man? Do you suppose that any one in his senses would not pause,
+and deliberate, and ask himself, ‘Why should this stranger care thus for
+me?’”
+
+“And yet,” said Zanoni, “if I told thee that I could initiate thee into
+the secrets of that magic which the philosophy of the whole existing
+world treats as a chimera, or imposture; if I promised to show thee how
+to command the beings of air and ocean, how to accumulate wealth more
+easily than a child can gather pebbles on the shore, to place in thy
+hands the essence of the herbs which prolong life from age to age, the
+mystery of that attraction by which to awe all danger and disarm all
+violence and subdue man as the serpent charms the bird,--if I told thee
+that all these it was mine to possess and to communicate, thou wouldst
+listen to me then, and obey me without a doubt!”
+
+“It is true; and I can account for this only by the imperfect
+associations of my childhood,--by traditions in our house of--”
+
+“Your forefather, who, in the revival of science, sought the secrets of
+Apollonius and Paracelsus.”
+
+“What!” said Glyndon, amazed, “are you so well acquainted with the
+annals of an obscure lineage?”
+
+“To the man who aspires to know, no man who has been the meanest
+student of knowledge should be unknown. You ask me why I have shown this
+interest in your fate? There is one reason which I have not yet told
+you. There is a fraternity as to whose laws and whose mysteries the most
+inquisitive schoolmen are in the dark. By those laws all are pledged to
+warn, to aid, and to guide even the remotest descendants of men who
+have toiled, though vainly, like your ancestor, in the mysteries of the
+Order. We are bound to advise them to their welfare; nay, more,--if they
+command us to it, we must accept them as our pupils. I am a survivor
+of that most ancient and immemorial union. This it was that bound me to
+thee at the first; this, perhaps, attracted thyself unconsciously, Son
+of our Brotherhood, to me.”
+
+“If this be so, I command thee, in the name of the laws thou obeyest, to
+receive me as thy pupil!”
+
+“What do you ask?” said Zanoni, passionately. “Learn, first, the
+conditions. No neophyte must have, at his initiation, one affection or
+desire that chains him to the world. He must be pure from the love of
+woman, free from avarice and ambition, free from the dreams even of
+art, or the hope of earthly fame. The first sacrifice thou must make
+is--Viola herself. And for what? For an ordeal that the most daring
+courage only can encounter, the most ethereal natures alone survive!
+Thou art unfit for the science that has made me and others what we are
+or have been; for thy whole nature is one fear!”
+
+“Fear!” cried Glyndon, colouring with resentment, and rising to the full
+height of his stature.
+
+“Fear! and the worst fear,--fear of the world’s opinion; fear of the
+Nicots and the Mervales; fear of thine own impulses when most generous;
+fear of thine own powers when thy genius is most bold; fear that virtue
+is not eternal; fear that God does not live in heaven to keep watch on
+earth; fear, the fear of little men; and that fear is never known to the
+great.”
+
+With these words Zanoni abruptly left the artist, humbled, bewildered,
+and not convinced. He remained alone with his thoughts till he was
+aroused by the striking of the clock; he then suddenly remembered
+Zanoni’s prediction of the Cardinal’s death; and, seized with an intense
+desire to learn its truth, he hurried into the streets,--he gained the
+Cardinal’s palace. Five minutes before noon his Eminence had expired,
+after an illness of less than an hour. Zanoni’s visit had occupied more
+time than the illness of the Cardinal. Awed and perplexed, he turned
+from the palace, and as he walked through the Chiaja, he saw Jean Nicot
+emerge from the portals of the Prince di --.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.V.
+
+     Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
+     Which like two spirits do suggest me still.
+     --Shakespeare.
+
+Venerable Brotherhood, so sacred and so little known, from whose secret
+and precious archives the materials for this history have been drawn; ye
+who have retained, from century to century, all that time has spared of
+the august and venerable science,--thanks to you, if now, for the
+first time, some record of the thoughts and actions of no false and
+self-styled luminary of your Order be given, however imperfectly, to
+the world. Many have called themselves of your band; many spurious
+pretenders have been so-called by the learned ignorance which still,
+baffled and perplexed, is driven to confess that it knows nothing of
+your origin, your ceremonies or doctrines, nor even if you still have
+local habitation on the earth. Thanks to you if I, the only one of
+my country, in this age, admitted, with a profane footstep, into your
+mysterious Academe (The reader will have the goodness to remember that
+this is said by the author of the original MS., not by the editor.),
+have been by you empowered and instructed to adapt to the comprehension
+of the uninitiated, some few of the starry truths which shone on the
+great Shemaia of the Chaldean Lore, and gleamed dimly through the
+darkened knowledge of latter disciples, labouring, like Psellus and
+Iamblichus, to revive the embers of the fire which burned in the Hamarin
+of the East. Though not to us of an aged and hoary world is vouchsafed
+the NAME which, so say the earliest oracles of the earth, “rushes into
+the infinite worlds,” yet is it ours to trace the reviving truths,
+through each new discovery of the philosopher and chemist. The laws of
+attraction, of electricity, and of the yet more mysterious agency of
+that great principal of life, which, if drawn from the universe, would
+leave the universe a grave, were but the code in which the Theurgy of
+old sought the guides that led it to a legislation and science of its
+own. To rebuild on words the fragments of this history, it seems to me
+as if, in a solemn trance, I was led through the ruins of a city whose
+only remains were tombs. From the sarcophagus and the urn I awake the
+genius (The Greek Genius of Death.) of the extinguished Torch, and so
+closely does its shape resemble Eros, that at moments I scarcely know
+which of ye dictates to me,--O Love! O Death!
+
+And it stirred in the virgin’s heart,--this new, unfathomable, and
+divine emotion! Was it only the ordinary affection of the pulse and the
+fancy, of the eye to the Beautiful, of the ear to the Eloquent, or did
+it not justify the notion she herself conceived of it,--that it was born
+not of the senses, that it was less of earthly and human love than the
+effect of some wondrous but not unholy charm? I said that, from that day
+in which, no longer with awe and trembling, she surrendered herself to
+the influence of Zanoni, she had sought to put her thoughts into words.
+Let the thoughts attest their own nature.
+
+THE SELF CONFESSIONAL.
+
+“Is it the daylight that shines on me, or the memory of thy presence?
+Wherever I look, the world seems full of thee; in every ray that
+trembles on the water, that smiles upon the leaves, I behold but a
+likeness to thine eyes. What is this change, that alters not only
+myself, but the face of the whole universe?
+
+....
+
+“How instantaneously leaped into life the power with which thou swayest
+my heart in its ebb and flow. Thousands were around me, and I saw but
+thee. That was the night in which I first entered upon the world which
+crowds life into a drama, and has no language but music. How strangely
+and how suddenly with thee became that world evermore connected! What
+the delusion of the stage was to others, thy presence was to me. My
+life, too, seemed to centre into those short hours, and from thy lips
+I heard a music, mute to all ears but mine. I sit in the room where my
+father dwelt. Here, on that happy night, forgetting why THEY were so
+happy, I shrunk into the shadow, and sought to guess what thou wert to
+me; and my mother’s low voice woke me, and I crept to my father’s side,
+close--close, from fear of my own thoughts.
+
+“Ah! sweet and sad was the morrow to that night, when thy lips warned me
+of the future. An orphan now,--what is there that lives for me to think
+of, to dream upon, to revere, but thou!
+
+“How tenderly thou hast rebuked me for the grievous wrong that my
+thoughts did thee! Why should I have shuddered to feel thee glancing
+upon my thoughts like the beam on the solitary tree, to which thou didst
+once liken me so well? It was--it was, that, like the tree, I struggled
+for the light, and the light came. They tell me of love, and my very
+life of the stage breathes the language of love into my lips. No; again
+and again, I know THAT is not the love that I feel for thee!--it is not
+a passion, it is a thought! I ask not to be loved again. I murmur not
+that thy words are stern and thy looks are cold. I ask not if I have
+rivals; I sigh not to be fair in thine eyes. It is my SPIRIT that would
+blend itself with thine. I would give worlds, though we were apart,
+though oceans rolled between us, to know the hour in which thy gaze was
+lifted to the stars,--in which thy heart poured itself in prayer. They
+tell me thou art more beautiful than the marble images that are fairer
+than all human forms; but I have never dared to gaze steadfastly on thy
+face, that memory might compare thee with the rest. Only thine eyes and
+thy soft, calm smile haunt me; as when I look upon the moon, all that
+passes into my heart is her silent light.
+
+....
+
+“Often, when the air is calm, I have thought that I hear the strains of
+my father’s music; often, though long stilled in the grave, have they
+waked me from the dreams of the solemn night. Methinks, ere thou comest
+to me that I hear them herald thy approach. Methinks I hear them wail
+and moan, when I sink back into myself on seeing thee depart. Thou art
+OF that music,--its spirit, its genius. My father must have guessed
+at thee and thy native regions, when the winds hushed to listen to his
+tones, and the world deemed him mad! I hear where I sit, the far murmur
+of the sea. Murmur on, ye blessed waters! The waves are the pulses of
+the shore. They beat with the gladness of the morning wind,--so beats my
+heart in the freshness and light that make up the thoughts of thee!
+
+....
+
+“Often in my childhood I have mused and asked for what I was born; and
+my soul answered my heart and said, ‘THOU WERT BORN TO WORSHIP!’ Yes; I
+know why the real world has ever seemed to me so false and cold. I know
+why the world of the stage charmed and dazzled me. I know why it was so
+sweet to sit apart and gaze my whole being into the distant heavens.
+My nature is not formed for this life, happy though that life seem to
+others. It is its very want to have ever before it some image loftier
+than itself! Stranger, in what realm above, when the grave is past,
+shall my soul, hour after hour, worship at the same source as thine?
+
+....
+
+“In the gardens of my neighbour there is a small fountain. I stood by it
+this morning after sunrise. How it sprung up, with its eager spray, to
+the sunbeams! And then I thought that I should see thee again this day,
+and so sprung my heart to the new morning which thou bringest me from
+the skies.
+
+....
+
+“I HAVE seen, I have LISTENED to thee again. How bold I have become! I
+ran on with my childlike thoughts and stories, my recollections of the
+past, as if I had known thee from an infant. Suddenly the idea of my
+presumption struck me. I stopped, and timidly sought thine eyes.
+
+“‘Well, and when you found that the nightingale refused to sing?’--
+
+“‘Ah!’ I said, ‘what to thee this history of the heart of a child?’
+
+“‘Viola,’ didst thou answer, with that voice, so inexpressibly calm
+and earnest!--‘Viola, the darkness of a child’s heart is often but the
+shadow of a star. Speak on! And thy nightingale, when they caught and
+caged it, refused to sing?’
+
+“‘And I placed the cage yonder, amidst the vine-leaves, and took up my
+lute, and spoke to it on the strings; for I thought that all music was
+its native language, and it would understand that I sought to comfort
+it.’
+
+“‘Yes,’ saidst thou. ‘And at last it answered thee, but not with
+song,--in a sharp, brief cry; so mournful, that thy hands let fall the
+lute, and the tears gushed from thine eyes. So softly didst thou unbar
+the cage, and the nightingale flew into yonder thicket; and thou heardst
+the foliage rustle, and, looking through the moonlight, thine eyes saw
+that it had found its mate. It sang to thee then from the boughs a long,
+loud, joyous jubilee. And musing, thou didst feel that it was not the
+vine-leaves or the moonlight that made the bird give melody to night,
+and that the secret of its music was the presence of a thing beloved.’
+
+“How didst thou know my thoughts in that childlike time better than
+I knew myself! How is the humble life of my past years, with its
+mean events, so mysteriously familiar to thee, bright stranger! I
+wonder,--but I do not again dare to fear thee!
+
+....
+
+“Once the thought of him oppressed and weighed me down. As an infant
+that longs for the moon, my being was one vague desire for something
+never to be attained. Now I feel rather as if to think of thee sufficed
+to remove every fetter from my spirit. I float in the still seas of
+light, and nothing seems too high for my wings, too glorious for my
+eyes. It was mine ignorance that made me fear thee. A knowledge that is
+not in books seems to breathe around thee as an atmosphere. How little
+have I read!--how little have I learned! Yet when thou art by my side,
+it seems as if the veil were lifted from all wisdom and all Nature. I
+startle when I look even at the words I have written; they seem not to
+come from myself, but are the signs of another language which thou hast
+taught my heart, and which my hand traces rapidly, as at thy dictation.
+Sometimes, while I write or muse, I could fancy that I heard light wings
+hovering around me, and saw dim shapes of beauty floating round, and
+vanishing as they smiled upon me. No unquiet and fearful dream ever
+comes to me now in sleep, yet sleep and waking are alike but as one
+dream. In sleep I wander with thee, not through the paths of earth, but
+through impalpable air--an air which seems a music--upward and upward,
+as the soul mounts on the tones of a lyre! Till I knew thee, I was as a
+slave to the earth. Thou hast given to me the liberty of the universe!
+Before, it was life; it seems to me now as if I had commenced eternity!
+
+....
+
+“Formerly, when I was to appear upon the stage, my heart beat more
+loudly. I trembled to encounter the audience, whose breath gave shame or
+renown; and now I have no fear of them. I see them, heed them, hear them
+not! I know that there will be music in my voice, for it is a hymn that
+I pour to thee. Thou never comest to the theatre; and that no longer
+grieves me. Thou art become too sacred to appear a part of the common
+world, and I feel glad that thou art not by when crowds have a right to
+judge me.
+
+....
+
+“And he spoke to me of ANOTHER: to another he would consign me! No, it
+is not love that I feel for thee, Zanoni; or why did I hear thee without
+anger, why did thy command seem to me not a thing impossible? As
+the strings of the instrument obey the hand of the master, thy look
+modulates the wildest chords of my heart to thy will. If it please
+thee,--yes, let it be so. Thou art lord of my destinies; they cannot
+rebel against thee! I almost think I could love him, whoever it be, on
+whom thou wouldst shed the rays that circumfuse thyself. Whatever thou
+hast touched, I love; whatever thou speakest of, I love. Thy hand played
+with these vine leaves; I wear them in my bosom. Thou seemest to me the
+source of all love; too high and too bright to be loved thyself,
+but darting light into other objects, on which the eye can gaze less
+dazzled. No, no; it is not love that I feel for thee, and therefore
+it is that I do not blush to nourish and confess it. Shame on me if I
+loved, knowing myself so worthless a thing to thee!
+
+....
+
+“ANOTHER!--my memory echoes back that word. Another! Dost thou mean that
+I shall see thee no more? It is not sadness,--it is not despair that
+seizes me. I cannot weep. It is an utter sense of desolation. I am
+plunged back into the common life; and I shudder coldly at the solitude.
+But I will obey thee, if thou wilt. Shall I not see thee again beyond
+the grave? O how sweet it were to die!
+
+“Why do I not struggle from the web in which my will is thus entangled?
+Hast thou a right to dispose of me thus? Give me back--give me back the
+life I knew before I gave life itself away to thee. Give me back the
+careless dreams of my youth,---my liberty of heart that sung aloud as it
+walked the earth. Thou hast disenchanted me of everything that is not
+of thyself. Where was the sin, at least, to think of thee,--to see thee?
+Thy kiss still glows upon my hand; is that hand mine to bestow? Thy kiss
+claimed and hallowed it to thyself. Stranger, I will NOT obey thee.
+
+....
+
+“Another day,--one day of the fatal three is gone! It is strange to me
+that since the sleep of the last night, a deep calm has settled upon my
+breast. I feel so assured that my very being is become a part of thee,
+that I cannot believe that my life can be separated from thine; and in
+this conviction I repose, and smile even at thy words and my own
+fears. Thou art fond of one maxim, which thou repeatest in a thousand
+forms,--that the beauty of the soul is faith; that as ideal loveliness
+to the sculptor, faith is to the heart; that faith, rightly understood,
+extends over all the works of the Creator, whom we can know but through
+belief; that it embraces a tranquil confidence in ourselves, and a
+serene repose as to our future; that it is the moonlight that sways the
+tides of the human sea. That faith I comprehend now. I reject all doubt,
+all fear. I know that I have inextricably linked the whole that makes
+the inner life to thee; and thou canst not tear me from thee, if
+thou wouldst! And this change from struggle into calm came to me
+with sleep,--a sleep without a dream; but when I woke, it was with
+a mysterious sense of happiness,--an indistinct memory of something
+blessed,--as if thou hadst cast from afar off a smile upon my slumber.
+At night I was so sad; not a blossom that had not closed itself up, as
+if never more to open to the sun; and the night itself, in the heart
+as on the earth, has ripened the blossoms into flowers. The world is
+beautiful once more, but beautiful in repose,--not a breeze stirs thy
+tree, not a doubt my soul!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.VI.
+
+     Tu vegga o per violenzia o per inganno
+     Patire o disonore o mortal danno.
+     “Orlando Furioso,” Cant. xlii. i.
+
+     (Thou art about, either through violence or artifice, to suffer
+     either dishonour or mortal loss.)
+
+It was a small cabinet; the walls were covered with pictures, one of
+which was worth more than the whole lineage of the owner of the palace.
+Oh, yes! Zanoni was right. The painter IS a magician; the gold he at
+least wrings from his crucible is no delusion. A Venetian noble might be
+a fribble, or an assassin,--a scoundrel, or a dolt; worthless, or worse
+than worthless, yet he might have sat to Titian, and his portrait may
+be inestimable,--a few inches of painted canvas a thousand times more
+valuable than a man with his veins and muscles, brain, will, heart, and
+intellect!
+
+In this cabinet sat a man of about three-and-forty,--dark-eyed, sallow,
+with short, prominent features, a massive conformation of jaw, and
+thick, sensual, but resolute lips; this man was the Prince di --. His
+form, above the middle height, and rather inclined to corpulence, was
+clad in a loose dressing-robe of rich brocade. On a table before him lay
+an old-fashioned sword and hat, a mask, dice and dice-box, a portfolio,
+and an inkstand of silver curiously carved.
+
+“Well, Mascari,” said the prince, looking up towards his parasite, who
+stood by the embrasure of the deep-set barricadoed window,--“well! the
+Cardinal sleeps with his fathers. I require comfort for the loss of
+so excellent a relation; and where a more dulcet voice than Viola
+Pisani’s?”
+
+“Is your Excellency serious? So soon after the death of his Eminence?”
+
+“It will be the less talked of, and I the less suspected. Hast thou
+ascertained the name of the insolent who baffled us that night, and
+advised the Cardinal the next day?”
+
+“Not yet.”
+
+“Sapient Mascari! I will inform thee. It was the strange Unknown.”
+
+“The Signor Zanoni! Are you sure, my prince?”
+
+“Mascari, yes. There is a tone in that man’s voice that I never can
+mistake; so clear, and so commanding, when I hear it I almost fancy
+there is such a thing as conscience. However, we must rid ourselves of
+an impertinent. Mascari, Signor Zanoni hath not yet honoured our poor
+house with his presence. He is a distinguished stranger,--we must give a
+banquet in his honour.”
+
+“Ah, and the Cyprus wine! The cypress is a proper emblem of the grave.”
+
+“But this anon. I am superstitious; there are strange stories of
+Zanoni’s power and foresight; remember the death of Ughelli. No matter,
+though the Fiend were his ally, he should not rob me of my prize; no,
+nor my revenge.”
+
+“Your Excellency is infatuated; the actress has bewitched you.”
+
+“Mascari,” said the prince, with a haughty smile, “through these veins
+rolls the blood of the old Visconti--of those who boasted that no woman
+ever escaped their lust, and no man their resentment. The crown of my
+fathers has shrunk into a gewgaw and a toy,--their ambition and their
+spirit are undecayed! My honour is now enlisted in this pursuit,--Viola
+must be mine!”
+
+“Another ambuscade?” said Mascari, inquiringly.
+
+“Nay, why not enter the house itself?--the situation is lonely, and the
+door is not made of iron.”
+
+“But what if, on her return home, she tell the tale of our violence? A
+house forced,--a virgin stolen! Reflect; though the feudal privileges
+are not destroyed, even a Visconti is not now above the law.”
+
+“Is he not, Mascari? Fool! in what age of the world, even if the Madmen
+of France succeed in their chimeras, will the iron of law not bend
+itself, like an osier twig, to the strong hand of power and gold? But
+look not so pale, Mascari; I have foreplanned all things. The day that
+she leaves this palace, she will leave it for France, with Monsieur Jean
+Nicot.”
+
+Before Mascari could reply, the gentleman of the chamber announced the
+Signor Zanoni.
+
+The prince involuntarily laid his hand upon the sword placed on the
+table, then with a smile at his own impulse, rose, and met his visitor
+at the threshold, with all the profuse and respectful courtesy of
+Italian simulation.
+
+“This is an honour highly prized,” said the prince. “I have long desired
+to clasp the hand of one so distinguished.”
+
+“And I give it in the spirit with which you seek it,” replied Zanoni.
+
+The Neapolitan bowed over the hand he pressed; but as he touched it a
+shiver came over him, and his heart stood still. Zanoni bent on him his
+dark, smiling eyes, and then seated himself with a familiar air.
+
+“Thus it is signed and sealed; I mean our friendship, noble prince. And
+now I will tell you the object of my visit. I find, Excellency, that,
+unconsciously perhaps, we are rivals. Can we not accommodate out
+pretensions!”
+
+“Ah!” said the prince, carelessly, “you, then, were the cavalier who
+robbed me of the reward of my chase. All stratagems fair in love, as in
+war. Reconcile our pretensions! Well, here is the dice-box; let us throw
+for her. He who casts the lowest shall resign his claim.”
+
+“Is this a decision by which you will promise to be bound?”
+
+“Yes, on my faith.”
+
+“And for him who breaks his word so plighted, what shall be the
+forfeit?”
+
+“The sword lies next to the dice-box, Signor Zanoni. Let him who stands
+not by his honour fall by the sword.”
+
+“And you invoke that sentence if either of us fail his word? Be it so;
+let Signor Mascari cast for us.”
+
+“Well said!--Mascari, the dice!”
+
+The prince threw himself back in his chair; and, world-hardened as he
+was, could not suppress the glow of triumph and satisfaction that spread
+itself over his features. Mascari took up the three dice, and rattled
+them noisily in the box. Zanoni, leaning his cheek on his hand, and
+bending over the table, fixed his eyes steadfastly on the parasite;
+Mascari in vain struggled to extricate from that searching gaze; he grew
+pale, and trembled, he put down the box.
+
+“I give the first throw to your Excellency. Signor Mascari, be pleased
+to terminate our suspense.”
+
+Again Mascari took up the box; again his hand shook so that the dice
+rattled within. He threw; the numbers were sixteen.
+
+“It is a high throw,” said Zanoni, calmly; “nevertheless, Signor
+Mascari, I do not despond.”
+
+Mascari gathered up the dice, shook the box, and rolled the contents
+once more on the table: the number was the highest that can be
+thrown,--eighteen.
+
+The prince darted a glance of fire at his minion, who stood with gaping
+mouth, staring at the dice, and trembling from head to foot.
+
+“I have won, you see,” said Zanoni; “may we be friends still?”
+
+“Signor,” said the prince, obviously struggling with anger and
+confusion, “the victory is yours. But pardon me, you have spoken lightly
+of this young girl,--will anything tempt you to yield your claim?”
+
+“Ah, do not think so ill of my gallantry; and,” resumed Zanoni, with a
+stern meaning in his voice, “forget not the forfeit your own lips have
+named.”
+
+The prince knit his brow, but constrained the haughty answer that was
+his first impulse.
+
+“Enough!” he said, forcing a smile; “I yield. Let me prove that I do not
+yield ungraciously; will you favour me with your presence at a little
+feast I propose to give in honour,” he added, with a sardonic mockery,
+“of the elevation of my kinsman, the late Cardinal, of pious memory, to
+the true seat of St. Peter?”
+
+“It is, indeed, a happiness to hear one command of yours I can obey.”
+
+Zanoni then turned the conversation, talked lightly and gayly, and soon
+afterwards departed.
+
+“Villain!” then exclaimed the prince, grasping Mascari by the collar,
+“you betrayed me!”
+
+“I assure your Excellency that the dice were properly arranged; he
+should have thrown twelve; but he is the Devil, and that’s the end of
+it.”
+
+“There is no time to be lost,” said the prince, quitting his hold of his
+parasite, who quietly resettled his cravat.
+
+“My blood is up,--I will win this girl, if I die for it! What noise is
+that?”
+
+“It is but the sword of your illustrious ancestor that has fallen from
+the table.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.VII.
+
+     Il ne faut appeler aucun ordre si ce n’est en tems clair et
+     serein.
+     “Les Clavicules du Rabbi Salomon.”
+
+     (No order of spirits must be invoked unless the weather be clear
+     and serene.)
+
+Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.
+
+My art is already dim and troubled. I have lost the tranquillity which
+is power. I cannot influence the decisions of those whom I would most
+guide to the shore; I see them wander farther and deeper into the
+infinite ocean where our barks sail evermore to the horizon that flies
+before us! Amazed and awed to find that I can only warn where I would
+control, I have looked into my own soul. It is true that the desires of
+earth chain me to the present, and shut me from the solemn secrets which
+Intellect, purified from all the dross of the clay, alone can examine
+and survey. The stern condition on which we hold our nobler and diviner
+gifts darkens our vision towards the future of those for whom we know
+the human infirmities of jealousy or hate or love. Mejnour, all around
+me is mist and haze; I have gone back in our sublime existence; and
+from the bosom of the imperishable youth that blooms only in the spirit,
+springs up the dark poison-flower of human love.
+
+This man is not worthy of her,--I know that truth; yet in his nature
+are the seeds of good and greatness, if the tares and weeds of worldly
+vanities and fears would suffer them to grow. If she were his, and I had
+thus transplanted to another soil the passion that obscures my gaze and
+disarms my power, unseen, unheard, unrecognised, I could watch over his
+fate, and secretly prompt his deeds, and minister to her welfare through
+his own. But time rushes on! Through the shadows that encircle me, I
+see, gathering round her, the darkest dangers. No choice but flight,--no
+escape save with him or me. With me!--the rapturous thought,--the
+terrible conviction! With me! Mejnour, canst thou wonder that I would
+save her from myself? A moment in the life of ages,--a bubble on the
+shoreless sea. What else to me can be human love? And in this exquisite
+nature of hers,--more pure, more spiritual, even in its young affections
+than ever heretofore the countless volumes of the heart, race after
+race, have given to my gaze: there is yet a deep-buried feeling
+that warns me of inevitable woe. Thou austere and remorseless
+Hierophant,--thou who hast sought to convert to our brotherhood every
+spirit that seemed to thee most high and bold,--even thou knowest, by
+horrible experience, how vain the hope to banish FEAR from the heart of
+woman.
+
+My life would be to her one marvel. Even if, on the other hand, I sought
+to guide her path through the realms of terror to the light, think of
+the Haunter of the Threshold, and shudder with me at the awful hazard!
+I have endeavoured to fill the Englishman’s ambition with the true
+glory of his art; but the restless spirit of his ancestor still seems to
+whisper in him, and to attract to the spheres in which it lost its own
+wandering way. There is a mystery in man’s inheritance from his fathers.
+Peculiarities of the mind, as diseases of the body, rest dormant for
+generations, to revive in some distant descendant, baffle all treatment
+and elude all skill. Come to me from thy solitude amidst the wrecks of
+Rome! I pant for a living confidant,--for one who in the old time has
+himself known jealousy and love. I have sought commune with Adon-Ai; but
+his presence, that once inspired such heavenly content with knowledge,
+and so serene a confidence in destiny, now only troubles and perplexes
+me. From the height from which I strive to search into the shadows of
+things to come, I see confused spectres of menace and wrath. Methinks I
+behold a ghastly limit to the wondrous existence I have held,--methinks
+that, after ages of the Ideal Life, I see my course merge into the most
+stormy whirlpool of the Real. Where the stars opened to me their gates,
+there looms a scaffold,--thick steams of blood rise as from a shambles.
+What is more strange to me, a creature here, a very type of the false
+ideal of common men,--body and mind, a hideous mockery of the art that
+shapes the Beautiful, and the desires that seek the Perfect, ever haunts
+my vision amidst these perturbed and broken clouds of the fate to be.
+By that shadowy scaffold it stands and gibbers at me, with lips dropping
+slime and gore. Come, O friend of the far-time; for me, at least, thy
+wisdom has not purged away thy human affections. According to the bonds
+of our solemn order, reduced now to thee and myself, lone survivors of
+so many haughty and glorious aspirants, thou art pledged, too, to warn
+the descendant of those whom thy counsels sought to initiate into the
+great secret in a former age. The last of that bold Visconti who was
+once thy pupil is the relentless persecutor of this fair child. With
+thoughts of lust and murder, he is digging his own grave; thou mayest
+yet daunt him from his doom. And I also mysteriously, by the same bond,
+am pledged to obey, if he so command, a less guilty descendant of a
+baffled but nobler student. If he reject my counsel, and insist upon
+the pledge, Mejnour, thou wilt have another neophyte. Beware of another
+victim! Come to me! This will reach thee with all speed. Answer it by
+the pressure of one hand that I can dare to clasp!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.VIII.
+
+     Il lupo
+     Ferito, credo, mi conobbe e ‘ncontro
+     Mi venne con la bocca sanguinosa.
+     “Aminta,” At. iv. Sc. i.
+
+     (The wounded wolf, I think, knew me, and came to meet me with its
+     bloody mouth.)
+
+At Naples, the tomb of Virgil, beetling over the cave of Posilipo, is
+reverenced, not with the feelings that should hallow the memory of the
+poet, but the awe that wraps the memory of the magician. To his charms
+they ascribe the hollowing of that mountain passage; and tradition yet
+guards his tomb by the spirits he had raised to construct the cavern.
+This spot, in the immediate vicinity of Viola’s home, had often
+attracted her solitary footsteps. She had loved the dim and solemn
+fancies that beset her as she looked into the lengthened gloom of the
+grotto, or, ascending to the tomb, gazed from the rock on the dwarfed
+figures of the busy crowd that seemed to creep like insects along the
+windings of the soil below; and now, at noon, she bent thither her
+thoughtful way. She threaded the narrow path, she passed the gloomy
+vineyard that clambers up the rock, and gained the lofty spot, green
+with moss and luxuriant foliage, where the dust of him who yet soothes
+and elevates the minds of men is believed to rest. From afar rose the
+huge fortress of St. Elmo, frowning darkly amidst spires and domes that
+glittered in the sun. Lulled in its azure splendour lay the Siren’s sea;
+and the grey smoke of Vesuvius, in the clear distance, soared like
+a moving pillar into the lucid sky. Motionless on the brink of the
+precipice, Viola looked upon the lovely and living world that stretched
+below; and the sullen vapour of Vesuvius fascinated her eye yet more
+than the scattered gardens, or the gleaming Caprea, smiling amidst the
+smiles of the sea. She heard not a step that had followed her on her
+path and started to hear a voice at hand. So sudden was the apparition
+of the form that stood by her side, emerging from the bushes that clad
+the crags, and so singularly did it harmonise in its uncouth ugliness
+with the wild nature of the scene immediately around her, and the wizard
+traditions of the place, that the colour left her cheek, and a faint cry
+broke from her lips.
+
+“Tush, pretty trembler!--do not be frightened at my face,” said the
+man, with a bitter smile. “After three months’ marriage, there is no
+different between ugliness and beauty. Custom is a great leveller. I was
+coming to your house when I saw you leave it; so, as I have matters of
+importance to communicate, I ventured to follow your footsteps. My name
+is Jean Nicot, a name already favourably known as a French artist. The
+art of painting and the art of music are nearly connected, and the stage
+is an altar that unites the two.”
+
+There was something frank and unembarrassed in the man’s address that
+served to dispel the fear his appearance had occasioned. He seated
+himself, as he spoke, on a crag beside her, and, looking up steadily
+into her face, continued:--
+
+“You are very beautiful, Viola Pisani, and I am not surprised at the
+number of your admirers. If I presume to place myself in the list, it is
+because I am the only one who loves thee honestly, and woos thee fairly.
+Nay, look not so indignant! Listen to me. Has the Prince di -- ever
+spoken to thee of marriage; or the beautiful imposter Zanoni, or the
+young blue-eyed Englishman, Clarence Glyndon? It is marriage,--it is a
+home, it is safety, it is reputation, that I offer to thee; and these
+last when the straight form grows crooked, and the bright eyes dim. What
+say you?” and he attempted to seize her hand.
+
+Viola shrunk from him, and silently turned to depart. He rose abruptly
+and placed himself on her path.
+
+“Actress, you must hear me! Do you know what this calling of the stage
+is in the eyes of prejudice,--that is, of the common opinion of mankind?
+It is to be a princess before the lamps, and a Pariah before the day.
+No man believes in your virtue, no man credits your vows; you are the
+puppet that they consent to trick out with tinsel for their amusement,
+not an idol for their worship. Are you so enamoured of this career
+that you scorn even to think of security and honour? Perhaps you are
+different from what you seem. Perhaps you laugh at the prejudice that
+would degrade you, and would wisely turn it to advantage. Speak frankly
+to me; I have no prejudice either. Sweet one, I am sure we should agree.
+Now, this Prince di --, I have a message from him. Shall I deliver it?”
+
+Never had Viola felt as she felt then, never had she so thoroughly seen
+all the perils of her forelorn condition and her fearful renown. Nicot
+continued:--
+
+“Zanoni would but amuse himself with thy vanity; Glyndon would despise
+himself, if he offered thee his name, and thee, if thou wouldst accept
+it; but the Prince di -- is in earnest, and he is wealthy. Listen!”
+
+And Nicot approached his lips to her, and hissed a sentence which she
+did not suffer him to complete. She darted from him with one glance of
+unutterable disdain. As he strove to regain his hold of her arm, he
+lost his footing, and fell down the sides of the rock till, bruised and
+lacerated, a pine-branch saved him from the yawning abyss below. She
+heard his exclamation of rage and pain as she bounded down the path,
+and, without once turning to look behind, regained her home. By the
+porch stood Glyndon, conversing with Gionetta. She passed him
+abruptly, entered the house, and, sinking on the floor, wept loud and
+passionately.
+
+Glyndon, who had followed her in surprise, vainly sought to soothe and
+calm her. She would not reply to his questions; she did not seem to
+listen to his protestations of love, till suddenly, as Nicot’s terrible
+picture of the world’s judgment of that profession which to her younger
+thoughts had seemed the service of Song and the Beautiful, forced itself
+upon her, she raised her face from her hands, and, looking steadily upon
+the Englishman, said, “False one, dost thou talk of me of love?”
+
+“By my honour, words fail to tell thee how I love!”
+
+“Wilt thou give me thy home, thy name? Dost thou woo me as thy wife?”
+ And at that moment, had Glyndon answered as his better angel would have
+counselled, perhaps, in that revolution of her whole mind which the
+words of Nicot had effected, which made her despise her very self,
+sicken of her lofty dreams, despair of the future, and distrust her
+whole ideal,--perhaps, I say, in restoring her self-esteem,--he would
+have won her confidence, and ultimately secured her love. But against
+the prompting of his nobler nature rose up at that sudden question all
+those doubts which, as Zanoni had so well implied, made the true enemies
+of his soul. Was he thus suddenly to be entangled into a snare laid for
+his credulity by deceivers? Was she not instructed to seize the moment
+to force him into an avowal which prudence must repent? Was not the
+great actress rehearsing a premeditated part? He turned round, as these
+thoughts, the children of the world, passed across him, for he literally
+fancied that he heard the sarcastic laugh of Mervale without. Nor was
+he deceived. Mervale was passing by the threshold, and Gionetta had told
+him his friend was within. Who does not know the effect of the world’s
+laugh? Mervale was the personation of the world. The whole world seemed
+to shout derision in those ringing tones. He drew back,--he recoiled.
+Viola followed him with her earnest, impatient eyes. At last, he
+faltered forth, “Do all of thy profession, beautiful Viola, exact
+marriage as the sole condition of love?” Oh, bitter question! Oh,
+poisoned taunt! He repented it the moment after. He was seized with
+remorse of reason, of feeling, and of conscience. He saw her form
+shrink, as it were, at his cruel words. He saw the colour come and go,
+to leave the writhing lips like marble; and then, with a sad, gentle
+look of self-pity, rather than reproach, she pressed her hands tightly
+to her bosom, and said,--
+
+“He was right! Pardon me, Englishman; I see now, indeed, that I am the
+Pariah and the outcast.”
+
+“Hear me. I retract. Viola, Viola! it is for you to forgive!”
+
+But Viola waved him from her, and, smiling mournfully as she passed him
+by, glided from the chamber; and he did not dare to detain her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.IX.
+
+     Dafne:  Ma, chi lung’ e d’Amor?
+     Tirsi:  Chi teme e fugge.
+     Dafne:  E che giova fuggir da lui ch’ ha l’ ali?
+     Tirsi:  AMOR NASCENTE HA CORTE L’ ALI!
+     “Aminta,” At. ii. Sc. ii.
+
+     (Dafne:  But, who is far from Love?
+     Tirsi:  He who fears and flies.
+     Dafne:  What use to flee from one who has wings?
+     Tirsi:  The wings of Love, while he yet grows, are short.)
+
+When Glyndon found himself without Viola’s house, Mervale, still
+loitering at the door, seized his arm. Glyndon shook him off abruptly.
+
+“Thou and thy counsels,” said he, bitterly, “have made me a coward and
+a wretch. But I will go home,--I will write to her. I will pour out my
+whole soul; she will forgive me yet.”
+
+Mervale, who was a man of imperturbable temper, arranged his ruffles,
+which his friend’s angry gesture had a little discomposed, and not till
+Glyndon had exhausted himself awhile by passionate exclamations and
+reproaches, did the experienced angler begin to tighten the line. He
+then drew from Glyndon the explanation of what had passed, and artfully
+sought not to irritate, but soothe him. Mervale, indeed, was by no means
+a bad man; he had stronger moral notions than are common amongst the
+young. He sincerely reproved his friend for harbouring dishonourable
+intentions with regard to the actress. “Because I would not have her thy
+wife, I never dreamed that thou shouldst degrade her to thy mistress.
+Better of the two an imprudent match than an illicit connection. But
+pause yet, do not act on the impulse of the moment.”
+
+“But there is no time to lose. I have promised to Zanoni to give him my
+answer by to-morrow night. Later than that time, all option ceases.”
+
+“Ah!” said Mervale, “this seems suspicious. Explain yourself.”
+
+And Glyndon, in the earnestness of his passion, told his friend what
+had passed between himself and Zanoni,--suppressing only, he scarce knew
+why, the reference to his ancestor and the mysterious brotherhood.
+
+This recital gave to Mervale all the advantage he could desire. Heavens!
+with what sound, shrewd common-sense he talked. How evidently some
+charlatanic coalition between the actress, and perhaps,--who knows?--her
+clandestine protector, sated with possession! How equivocal the
+character of one,--the position of the other! What cunning in the
+question of the actress! How profoundly had Glyndon, at the first
+suggestion of his sober reason, seen through the snare. What! was he
+to be thus mystically cajoled and hurried into a rash marriage, because
+Zanoni, a mere stranger, told him with a grave face that he must decide
+before the clock struck a certain hour?
+
+“Do this at least,” said Mervale, reasonably enough,--“wait till the
+time expires; it is but another day. Baffle Zanoni. He tells thee that
+he will meet thee before midnight to-morrow, and defies thee to avoid
+him. Pooh! let us quit Naples for some neighbouring place, where, unless
+he be indeed the Devil, he cannot possibly find us. Show him that you
+will not be led blindfold even into an act that you meditate yourself.
+Defer to write to her, or to see her, till after to-morrow. This is all
+I ask. Then visit her, and decide for yourself.”
+
+Glyndon was staggered. He could not combat the reasonings of his friend;
+he was not convinced, but he hesitated; and at that moment Nicot passed
+them. He turned round, and stopped, as he saw Glyndon.
+
+“Well, and do you think still of the Pisani?”
+
+“Yes; and you--”
+
+“Have seen and conversed with her. She shall be Madame Nicot before this
+day week! I am going to the cafe, in the Toledo; and hark ye, when next
+you meet your friend Signor Zanoni, tell him that he has twice crossed
+my path. Jean Nicot, though a painter, is a plain, honest man, and
+always pays his debts.”
+
+“It is a good doctrine in money matters,” said Mervale; “as to revenge,
+it is not so moral, and certainly not so wise. But is it in your love
+that Zanoni has crossed your path? How that, if your suit prosper so
+well?”
+
+“Ask Viola Pisani that question. Bah! Glyndon, she is a prude only to
+thee. But I have no prejudices. Once more, farewell.”
+
+“Rouse thyself, man!” said Mervale, slapping Glyndon on the shoulder.
+“What think you of your fair one now?”
+
+“This man must lie.”
+
+“Will you write to her at once?”
+
+“No; if she be really playing a game, I could renounce her without a
+sigh. I will watch her closely; and, at all events, Zanoni shall not be
+the master of my fate. Let us, as you advise, leave Naples at daybreak
+to-morrow.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.X.
+
+     O chiunque tu sia, che fuor d’ogni uso
+     Pieghi Natura ad opre altere e strane,
+     E, spiando i segreti, entri al piu chiuso
+     Spazi’ a tua voglia delle menti umane--Deh, Dimmi!
+     “Gerus. Lib.,” Cant. x. xviii.
+
+     (O thou, whoever thou art, who through every use bendest Nature
+     to works foreign and strange; and by spying into her secrets,
+     enterest at thy will into the closest recesses of the human
+     mind,--O speak!  O tell me!)
+
+Early the next morning the young Englishmen mounted their horses, and
+took the road towards Baiae. Glyndon left word at his hotel, that if
+Signor Zanoni sought him, it was in the neighbourhood of that once
+celebrated watering-place of the ancients that he should be found.
+
+They passed by Viola’s house, but Glyndon resisted the temptation of
+pausing there; and after threading the grotto of Posilipo, they wound
+by a circuitous route back into the suburbs of the city, and took the
+opposite road, which conducts to Portici and Pompeii. It was late at
+noon when they arrived at the former of these places. Here they halted
+to dine; for Mervale had heard much of the excellence of the macaroni at
+Portici, and Mervale was a bon vivant.
+
+They put up at an inn of very humble pretensions, and dined under an
+awning. Mervale was more than usually gay; he pressed the lacrima upon
+his friend, and conversed gayly.
+
+“Well, my dear friend, we have foiled Signor Zanoni in one of his
+predictions at least. You will have no faith in him hereafter.”
+
+“The ides are come, not gone.”
+
+“Tush! If he be the soothsayer, you are not the Caesar. It is your
+vanity that makes you credulous. Thank Heaven, I do not think myself of
+such importance that the operations of Nature should be changed in order
+to frighten me.”
+
+“But why should the operations of Nature be changed? There may be a
+deeper philosophy than we dream of,--a philosophy that discovers the
+secrets of Nature, but does not alter, by penetrating, its courses.”
+
+“Ah, you relapse into your heretical credulity; you seriously suppose
+Zanoni to be a prophet,--a reader of the future; perhaps an associate of
+genii and spirits!”
+
+Here the landlord, a little, fat, oily fellow, came up with a fresh
+bottle of lacrima. He hoped their Excellencies were pleased. He was most
+touched--touched to the heart, that they liked the macaroni. Were their
+Excellencies going to Vesuvius? There was a slight eruption; they could
+not see it where they were, but it was pretty, and would be prettier
+still after sunset.
+
+“A capital idea!” cried Mervale. “What say you, Glyndon?”
+
+“I have not yet seen an eruption; I should like it much.”
+
+“But is there no danger?” asked the prudent Mervale.
+
+“Oh, not at all; the mountain is very civil at present. It only plays a
+little, just to amuse their Excellencies the English.”
+
+“Well, order the horses, and bring the bill; we will go before it is
+dark. Clarence, my friend,--nunc est bibendum; but take care of the pede
+libero, which will scarce do for walking on lava!”
+
+The bottle was finished, the bill paid; the gentlemen mounted, the
+landlord bowed, and they bent their way, in the cool of the delightful
+evening, towards Resina.
+
+The wine, perhaps the excitement of his thoughts, animated Glyndon,
+whose unequal spirits were, at times, high and brilliant as those of a
+schoolboy released; and the laughter of the Northern tourists sounded
+oft and merrily along the melancholy domains of buried cities.
+
+Hesperus had lighted his lamp amidst the rosy skies as they arrived at
+Resina. Here they quitted their horses, and took mules and a guide.
+As the sky grew darker and more dark, the mountain fire burned with an
+intense lustre. In various streaks and streamlets, the fountain of flame
+rolled down the dark summit, and the Englishmen began to feel increase
+upon them, as they ascended, that sensation of solemnity and awe which
+makes the very atmosphere that surrounds the Giant of the Plains of the
+Antique Hades.
+
+It was night, when, leaving the mules, they ascended on foot,
+accompanied by their guide, and a peasant who bore a rude torch. The
+guide was a conversable, garrulous fellow, like most of his country
+and his calling; and Mervale, who possessed a sociable temper, loved to
+amuse or to instruct himself on every incidental occasion.
+
+“Ah, Excellency,” said the guide, “your countrymen have a strong passion
+for the volcano. Long life to them, they bring us plenty of money! If
+our fortunes depended on the Neapolitans, we should starve.”
+
+“True, they have no curiosity,” said Mervale. “Do you remember, Glyndon,
+the contempt with which that old count said to us, ‘You will go to
+Vesuvius, I suppose? I have never been; why should I go? You have cold,
+you have hunger, you have fatigue, you have danger, and all for
+nothing but to see fire, which looks just as well in a brazier as on a
+mountain.’ Ha! ha! the old fellow was right.”
+
+“But, Excellency,” said the guide, “that is not all: some cavaliers
+think to ascend the mountain without our help. I am sure they deserve to
+tumble into the crater.”
+
+“They must be bold fellows to go alone; you don’t often find such.”
+
+“Sometimes among the French, signor. But the other night--I never was
+so frightened--I had been with an English party, and a lady had left a
+pocket-book on the mountain, where she had been sketching. She offered
+me a handsome sum to return for it, and bring it to her at Naples. So I
+went in the evening. I found it, sure enough, and was about to return,
+when I saw a figure that seemed to emerge from the crater itself. The
+air there was so pestiferous that I could not have conceived a human
+creature could breathe it, and live. I was so astounded that I stood
+still as a stone, till the figure came over the hot ashes, and stood
+before me, face to face. Santa Maria, what a head!”
+
+“What! hideous?”
+
+“No; so beautiful, but so terrible. It had nothing human in its aspect.”
+
+“And what said the salamander?”
+
+“Nothing! It did not even seem to perceive me, though I was near as I am
+to you; but its eyes seemed to emerge prying into the air. It passed by
+me quickly, and, walking across a stream of burning lava, soon vanished
+on the other side of the mountain. I was curious and foolhardy, and
+resolved to see if I could bear the atmosphere which this visitor had
+left; but though I did not advance within thirty yards of the spot at
+which he had first appeared, I was driven back by a vapour that wellnigh
+stifled me. Cospetto! I have spat blood ever since.”
+
+“Now will I lay a wager that you fancy this fire-king must be Zanoni,”
+ whispered Mervale, laughing.
+
+The little party had now arrived nearly at the summit of the mountain;
+and unspeakably grand was the spectacle on which they gazed. From
+the crater arose a vapour, intensely dark, that overspread the whole
+background of the heavens; in the centre whereof rose a flame that
+assumed a form singularly beautiful. It might have been compared to a
+crest of gigantic feathers, the diadem of the mountain, high-arched, and
+drooping downward, with the hues delicately shaded off, and the whole
+shifting and tremulous as the plumage on a warrior’s helmet.
+
+The glare of the flame spread, luminous and crimson, over the dark and
+rugged ground on which they stood, and drew an innumerable variety of
+shadows from crag and hollow. An oppressive and sulphureous exhalation
+served to increase the gloomy and sublime terror of the place. But on
+turning from the mountain, and towards the distant and unseen ocean, the
+contrast was wonderfully great; the heavens serene and blue, the stars
+still and calm as the eyes of Divine Love. It was as if the realms of
+the opposing principles of Evil and of Good were brought in one
+view before the gaze of man! Glyndon--once more the enthusiast, the
+artist--was enchained and entranced by emotions vague and undefinable,
+half of delight and half of pain. Leaning on the shoulder of his friend,
+he gazed around him, and heard with deepening awe the rumbling of the
+earth below, the wheels and voices of the Ministry of Nature in her
+darkest and most inscrutable recess. Suddenly, as a bomb from a shell,
+a huge stone was flung hundreds of yards up from the jaws of the crater,
+and falling with a mighty crash upon the rock below, split into ten
+thousand fragments, which bounded down the sides of the mountain,
+sparkling and groaning as they went. One of these, the largest fragment,
+struck the narrow space of soil between the Englishmen and the guide,
+not three feet from the spot where the former stood. Mervale uttered an
+exclamation of terror, and Glyndon held his breath, and shuddered.
+
+“Diavolo!” cried the guide. “Descend, Excellencies,--descend! we have
+not a moment to lose; follow me close!”
+
+So saying, the guide and the peasant fled with as much swiftness as they
+were able to bring to bear. Mervale, ever more prompt and ready than his
+friend, imitated their example; and Glyndon, more confused than alarmed,
+followed close. But they had not gone many yards, before, with a rushing
+and sudden blast, came from the crater an enormous volume of vapour. It
+pursued,--it overtook, it overspread them. It swept the light from the
+heavens. All was abrupt and utter darkness; and through the gloom was
+heard the shout of the guide, already distant, and lost in an instant
+amidst the sound of the rushing gust and the groans of the earth
+beneath. Glyndon paused. He was separated from his friend, from the
+guide. He was alone,--with the Darkness and the Terror. The vapour
+rolled sullenly away; the form of the plumed fire was again dimly
+visible, and its struggling and perturbed reflection again shed a
+glow over the horrors of the path. Glyndon recovered himself, and sped
+onward. Below, he heard the voice of Mervale calling on him, though
+he no longer saw his form. The sound served as a guide. Dizzy and
+breathless, he bounded forward; when--hark!--a sullen, slow rolling
+sounded in his ear! He halted,--and turned back to gaze. The fire had
+overflowed its course; it had opened itself a channel amidst the furrows
+of the mountain. The stream pursued him fast--fast; and the hot breath
+of the chasing and preternatural foe came closer and closer upon his
+cheek! He turned aside; he climbed desperately with hands and feet upon
+a crag that, to the right, broke the scathed and blasted level of the
+soil. The stream rolled beside and beneath him, and then taking a sudden
+wind round the spot on which he stood, interposed its liquid fire,--a
+broad and impassable barrier between his resting-place and escape. There
+he stood, cut off from descent, and with no alternative but to retrace
+his steps towards the crater, and thence seek, without guide or clew,
+some other pathway.
+
+For a moment his courage left him; he cried in despair, and in that
+overstrained pitch of voice which is never heard afar off, to the guide,
+to Mervale, to return to aid him.
+
+No answer came; and the Englishman, thus abandoned solely to his own
+resources, felt his spirit and energy rise against the danger. He turned
+back, and ventured as far towards the crater as the noxious exhalation
+would permit; then, gazing below, carefully and deliberately he chalked
+out for himself a path by which he trusted to shun the direction the
+fire-stream had taken, and trod firmly and quickly over the crumbling
+and heated strata.
+
+He had proceeded about fifty yards, when he halted abruptly; an
+unspeakable and unaccountable horror, not hitherto experienced amidst
+all his peril, came over him. He shook in every limb; his muscles
+refused his will,--he felt, as it were, palsied and death-stricken. The
+horror, I say, was unaccountable, for the path seemed clear and safe.
+The fire, above and behind, burned clear and far; and beyond, the stars
+lent him their cheering guidance. No obstacle was visible,--no danger
+seemed at hand. As thus, spell-bound, and panic-stricken, he stood
+chained to the soil,--his breast heaving, large drops rolling down his
+brow, and his eyes starting wildly from their sockets,--he saw before
+him, at some distance, gradually shaping itself more and more distinctly
+to his gaze, a colossal shadow; a shadow that seemed partially borrowed
+from the human shape, but immeasurably above the human stature; vague,
+dark, almost formless; and differing, he could not tell where or why,
+not only from the proportions, but also from the limbs and outline of
+man.
+
+The glare of the volcano, that seemed to shrink and collapse from this
+gigantic and appalling apparition, nevertheless threw its light,
+redly and steadily, upon another shape that stood beside, quiet and
+motionless; and it was, perhaps, the contrast of these two things--the
+Being and the Shadow--that impressed the beholder with the difference
+between them,--the Man and the Superhuman. It was but for a moment--nay,
+for the tenth part of a moment--that this sight was permitted to the
+wanderer. A second eddy of sulphureous vapours from the volcano, yet
+more rapidly, yet more densely than its predecessor, rolled over the
+mountain; and either the nature of the exhalation, or the excess of his
+own dread, was such, that Glyndon, after one wild gasp for breath, fell
+senseless on the earth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XI.
+
+     Was hab’ich,
+     Wenn ich nicht Alles habe?--sprach der Jungling.
+     “Das Verschleierte Bild zu Sais.”
+
+     (“What have I, if I possess not All?” said the youth.)
+
+Mervale and the Italians arrived in safety at the spot where they had
+left the mules; and not till they had recovered their own alarm and
+breath did they think of Glyndon. But then, as the minutes passed, and
+he appeared not, Mervale, whose heart was as good at least as human
+hearts are in general, grew seriously alarmed. He insisted on returning
+to search for his friend; and by dint of prodigal promises prevailed at
+last on the guide to accompany him. The lower part of the mountain lay
+calm and white in the starlight; and the guide’s practised eye could
+discern all objects on the surface at a considerable distance. They
+had not, however, gone very far, before they perceived two forms slowly
+approaching them.
+
+As they came near, Mervale recognised the form of his friend. “Thank
+Heaven, he is safe!” he cried, turning to the guide.
+
+“Holy angels befriend us!” said the Italian, trembling,--“behold the
+very being that crossed me last Friday night. It is he, but his face is
+human now!”
+
+“Signor Inglese,” said the voice of Zanoni, as Glyndon--pale, wan, and
+silent--returned passively the joyous greeting of Mervale,--“Signor
+Inglese, I told your friend that we should meet to-night. You see you
+have NOT foiled my prediction.”
+
+“But how?--but where?” stammered Mervale, in great confusion and
+surprise.
+
+“I found your friend stretched on the ground, overpowered by the
+mephitic exhalation of the crater. I bore him to a purer atmosphere; and
+as I know the mountain well, I have conducted him safely to you. This is
+all our history. You see, sir, that were it not for that prophecy which
+you desired to frustrate, your friend would ere this time have been
+a corpse; one minute more, and the vapour had done its work. Adieu;
+goodnight, and pleasant dreams.”
+
+“But, my preserver, you will not leave us?” said Glyndon, anxiously, and
+speaking for the first time. “Will you not return with us?”
+
+Zanoni paused, and drew Glyndon aside. “Young man,” said he, gravely,
+“it is necessary that we should again meet to-night. It is necessary
+that you should, ere the first hour of morning, decide on your own fate.
+I know that you have insulted her whom you profess to love. It is not
+too late to repent. Consult not your friend: he is sensible and wise;
+but not now is his wisdom needed. There are times in life when, from the
+imagination, and not the reason, should wisdom come,--this, for you, is
+one of them. I ask not your answer now. Collect your thoughts,--recover
+your jaded and scattered spirits. It wants two hours of midnight. Before
+midnight I will be with you.”
+
+“Incomprehensible being!” replied the Englishman, “I would leave the
+life you have preserved in your own hands; but what I have seen this
+night has swept even Viola from my thoughts. A fiercer desire than that
+of love burns in my veins,--the desire not to resemble but to surpass
+my kind; the desire to penetrate and to share the secret of your own
+existence--the desire of a preternatural knowledge and unearthly power.
+I make my choice. In my ancestor’s name, I adjure and remind thee of thy
+pledge. Instruct me; school me; make me thine; and I surrender to thee
+at once, and without a murmur, the woman whom, till I saw thee, I would
+have defied a world to obtain.”
+
+“I bid thee consider well: on the one hand, Viola, a tranquil home, a
+happy and serene life; on the other hand, all is darkness,--darkness,
+that even these eyes cannot penetrate.”
+
+“But thou hast told me, that if I wed Viola, I must be contented with
+the common existence,--if I refuse, it is to aspire to thy knowledge and
+thy power.”
+
+“Vain man, knowledge and power are not happiness.”
+
+“But they are better than happiness. Say!--if I marry Viola, wilt thou
+be my master,--my guide? Say this, and I am resolved.
+
+“It were impossible.”
+
+“Then I renounce her? I renounce love. I renounce happiness. Welcome
+solitude,--welcome despair; if they are the entrances to thy dark and
+sublime secret.”
+
+“I will not take thy answer now. Before the last hour of night thou
+shalt give it in one word,--ay or no! Farewell till then.”
+
+Zanoni waved his hand, and, descending rapidly, was seen no more.
+
+Glyndon rejoined his impatient and wondering friend; but Mervale, gazing
+on his face, saw that a great change had passed there. The flexile and
+dubious expression of youth was forever gone. The features were locked,
+rigid, and stern; and so faded was the natural bloom, that an hour
+seemed to have done the work of years.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XII.
+
+     Was ist’s
+     Das hinter diesem Schleier sich verbirgt?
+     “Das Verschleierte Bild zu Sais.”
+
+     (What is it that conceals itself behind this veil?)
+
+On returning from Vesuvius or Pompeii, you enter Naples through its most
+animated, its most Neapolitan quarter,--through that quarter in which
+modern life most closely resembles the ancient; and in which, when, on
+a fair-day, the thoroughfare swarms alike with Indolence and Trade, you
+are impressed at once with the recollection of that restless, lively
+race from which the population of Naples derives its origin; so that in
+one day you may see at Pompeii the habitations of a remote age; and on
+the Mole, at Naples, you may imagine you behold the very beings with
+whom those habitations had been peopled.
+
+But now, as the Englishmen rode slowly through the deserted streets,
+lighted but by the lamps of heaven, all the gayety of day was hushed and
+breathless. Here and there, stretched under a portico or a dingy booth,
+were sleeping groups of houseless Lazzaroni,--a tribe now merging its
+indolent individuality amidst an energetic and active population.
+
+The Englishman rode on in silence; for Glyndon neither appeared to heed
+nor hear the questions and comments of Mervale, and Mervale himself was
+almost as weary as the jaded animal he bestrode.
+
+Suddenly the silence of earth and ocean was broken by the sound of a
+distant clock that proclaimed the quarter preceding the last hour of
+night. Glyndon started from his reverie, and looked anxiously round. As
+the final stroke died, the noise of hoofs rung on the broad stones of
+the pavement, and from a narrow street to the right emerged the form of
+a solitary horseman. He neared the Englishmen, and Glyndon recognised
+the features and mien of Zanoni.
+
+“What! do we meet again, signor?” said Mervale, in a vexed but drowsy
+tone.
+
+“Your friend and I have business together,” replied Zanoni, as
+he wheeled his steed to the side of Glyndon. “But it will be soon
+transacted. Perhaps you, sir, will ride on to your hotel.”
+
+“Alone!”
+
+“There is no danger!” returned Zanoni, with a slight expression of
+disdain in his voice.
+
+“None to me; but to Glyndon?”
+
+“Danger from me! Ah, perhaps you are right.”
+
+“Go on, my dear Mervale,” said Glyndon; “I will join you before you
+reach the hotel.”
+
+Mervale nodded, whistled, and pushed his horse into a kind of amble.
+
+“Now your answer,--quick?”
+
+“I have decided. The love of Viola has vanished from my heart. The
+pursuit is over.”
+
+“You have decided?”
+
+“I have; and now my reward.”
+
+“Thy reward! Well; ere this hour to-morrow it shall await thee.”
+
+Zanoni gave the rein to his horse; it sprang forward with a bound: the
+sparks flew from its hoofs, and horse and rider disappeared amidst the
+shadows of the street whence they had emerged.
+
+Mervale was surprised to see his friend by his side, a minute after they
+had parted.
+
+“What has passed between you and Zanoni?”
+
+“Mervale, do not ask me to-night! I am in a dream.”
+
+“I do not wonder at it, for even I am in a sleep. Let us push on.”
+
+In the retirement of his chamber, Glyndon sought to recollect his
+thoughts. He sat down on the foot of his bed, and pressed his hands
+tightly to his throbbing temples. The events of the last few hours; the
+apparition of the gigantic and shadowy Companion of the Mystic, amidst
+the fires and clouds of Vesuvius; the strange encounter with Zanoni
+himself, on a spot in which he could never, by ordinary reasoning, have
+calculated on finding Glyndon, filled his mind with emotions, in which
+terror and awe the least prevailed. A fire, the train of which had been
+long laid, was lighted at his heart,--the asbestos-fire that, once lit,
+is never to be quenched. All his early aspirations--his young ambition,
+his longings for the laurel--were merged in one passionate yearning to
+surpass the bounds of the common knowledge of man, and reach that solemn
+spot, between two worlds, on which the mysterious stranger appeared to
+have fixed his home.
+
+Far from recalling with renewed affright the remembrance of the
+apparition that had so appalled him, the recollection only served to
+kindle and concentrate his curiosity into a burning focus. He had said
+aright,--LOVE HAD VANISHED FROM HIS HEART; there was no longer a serene
+space amidst its disordered elements for human affection to move and
+breathe. The enthusiast was rapt from this earth; and he would have
+surrendered all that mortal beauty ever promised, that mortal hope ever
+whispered, for one hour with Zanoni beyond the portals of the visible
+world.
+
+He rose, oppressed and fevered with the new thoughts that raged within
+him, and threw open his casement for air. The ocean lay suffused in the
+starry light, and the stillness of the heavens never more eloquently
+preached the morality of repose to the madness of earthly passions. But
+such was Glyndon’s mood that their very hush only served to deepen the
+wild desires that preyed upon his soul; and the solemn stars, that are
+mysteries in themselves, seemed, by a kindred sympathy, to agitate the
+wings of the spirit no longer contented with its cage. As he gazed, a
+star shot from its brethren, and vanished from the depth of space!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XIII.
+
+     O, be gone!
+     By Heaven, I love thee better than myself,
+     For I came hither armed against myself.
+     --“Romeo and Juliet.”
+
+The young actress and Gionetta had returned from the theatre; and Viola
+fatigued and exhausted, had thrown herself on a sofa, while Gionetta
+busied herself with the long tresses which, released from the fillet
+that bound them, half-concealed the form of the actress, like a veil of
+threads of gold. As she smoothed the luxuriant locks, the old nurse
+ran gossiping on about the little events of the night, the scandal and
+politics of the scenes and the tireroom. Gionetta was a worthy soul.
+Almanzor, in Dryden’s tragedy of “Almahide,” did not change sides with
+more gallant indifference than the exemplary nurse. She was at last
+grieved and scandalised that Viola had not selected one chosen cavalier.
+But the choice she left wholly to her fair charge. Zegri or Abencerrage,
+Glyndon or Zanoni, it had been the same to her, except that the
+rumours she had collected respecting the latter, combined with his
+own recommendations of his rival, had given her preference to the
+Englishman. She interpreted ill the impatient and heavy sigh with which
+Viola greeted her praises of Glyndon, and her wonder that he had of late
+so neglected his attentions behind the scenes, and she exhausted all
+her powers of panegyric upon the supposed object of the sigh. “And
+then, too,” she said, “if nothing else were to be said against the other
+signor, it is enough that he is about to leave Naples.”
+
+“Leave Naples!--Zanoni?”
+
+“Yes, darling! In passing by the Mole to-day, there was a crowd round
+some outlandish-looking sailors. His ship arrived this morning, and
+anchors in the bay. The sailors say that they are to be prepared to sail
+with the first wind; they were taking in fresh stores. They--”
+
+“Leave me, Gionetta! Leave me!”
+
+The time had already passed when the girl could confide in Gionetta.
+Her thoughts had advanced to that point when the heart recoils from all
+confidence, and feels that it cannot be comprehended. Alone now, in the
+principal apartment of the house, she paced its narrow boundaries
+with tremulous and agitated steps: she recalled the frightful suit
+of Nicot,--the injurious taunt of Glyndon; and she sickened at the
+remembrance of the hollow applauses which, bestowed on the actress, not
+the woman, only subjected her to contumely and insult. In that room the
+recollection of her father’s death, the withered laurel and the broken
+chords, rose chillingly before her. Hers, she felt, was a yet gloomier
+fate,--the chords may break while the laurel is yet green. The lamp,
+waning in its socket, burned pale and dim, and her eyes instinctively
+turned from the darker corner of the room. Orphan, by the hearth of thy
+parent, dost thou fear the presence of the dead!
+
+And was Zanoni indeed about to quit Naples? Should she see him no
+more? Oh, fool, to think that there was grief in any other thought! The
+past!--that was gone! The future!--there was no future to her, Zanoni
+absent! But this was the night of the third day on which Zanoni had told
+her that, come what might, he would visit her again. It was, then, if
+she might believe him, some appointed crisis in her fate; and how should
+she tell him of Glyndon’s hateful words? The pure and the proud mind
+can never confide its wrongs to another, only its triumphs and its
+happiness. But at that late hour would Zanoni visit her,--could she
+receive him? Midnight was at hand. Still in undefined suspense, in
+intense anxiety, she lingered in the room. The quarter before midnight
+sounded, dull and distant. All was still, and she was about to pass to
+her sleeping-room, when she heard the hoofs of a horse at full speed;
+the sound ceased, there was a knock at the door. Her heart beat
+violently; but fear gave way to another sentiment when she heard a
+voice, too well known, calling on her name. She paused, and then, with
+the fearlessness of innocence, descended and unbarred the door.
+
+Zanoni entered with a light and hasty step. His horseman’s cloak fitted
+tightly to his noble form, and his broad hat threw a gloomy shade over
+his commanding features.
+
+The girl followed him into the room she had just left, trembling and
+blushing deeply, and stood before him with the lamp she held shining
+upward on her cheek and the long hair that fell like a shower of light
+over the half-clad shoulders and heaving bust.
+
+“Viola,” said Zanoni, in a voice that spoke deep emotion, “I am by thy
+side once more to save thee. Not a moment is to be lost. Thou must fly
+with me, or remain the victim of the Prince di --. I would have made the
+charge I now undertake another’s; thou knowest I would,--thou knowest
+it!--but he is not worthy of thee, the cold Englishman! I throw myself
+at thy feet; have trust in me, and fly.”
+
+He grasped her hand passionately as he dropped on his knee, and looked
+up into her face with his bright, beseeching eyes.
+
+“Fly with thee!” said Viola, scarce believing her senses.
+
+“With me. Name, fame, honour,--all will be sacrificed if thou dost not.”
+
+“Then--then,” said the wild girl, falteringly, and turning aside her
+face,--“then I am not indifferent to thee; thou wouldst not give me to
+another?”
+
+Zanoni was silent; but his breast heaved, his cheeks flushed, his eyes
+darted dark and impassioned fire.
+
+“Speak!” exclaimed Viola, in jealous suspicion of his silence.
+
+“Indifferent to me! No; but I dare not yet say that I love thee.”
+
+“Then what matters my fate?” said Viola, turning pale, and shrinking
+from his side; “leave me,--I fear no danger. My life, and therefore my
+honour, is in mine own hands.”
+
+“Be not so mad,” said Zanoni. “Hark! do you hear the neigh of my
+steed?--it is an alarm that warns us of the approaching peril. Haste, or
+you are lost!”
+
+“Why dost thou care for me?” said the girl, bitterly. “Thou hast read my
+heart; thou knowest that thou art become the lord of my destiny. But to
+be bound beneath the weight of a cold obligation; to be the beggar on
+the eyes of indifference; to cast myself on one who loves me not,--THAT
+were indeed the vilest sin of my sex. Ah, Zanoni, rather let me die!”
+
+She had thrown back her clustering hair from her face while she spoke;
+and as she now stood, with her arms drooping mournfully, and her hands
+clasped together with the proud bitterness of her wayward spirit, giving
+new zest and charm to her singular beauty, it was impossible to conceive
+a sight more irresistible to the eye and the heart.
+
+“Tempt me not to thine own danger,--perhaps destruction!” exclaimed
+Zanoni, in faltering accents. “Thou canst not dream of what thou wouldst
+demand,--come!” and, advancing, he wound his arm round her waist. “Come,
+Viola; believe at least in my friendship, my honour, my protection--”
+
+“And not thy love,” said the Italian, turning on him her reproachful
+eyes. Those eyes met his, and he could not withdraw from the charm of
+their gaze. He felt her heart throbbing beneath his own; her breath came
+warm upon his cheek. He trembled,--HE! the lofty, the mysterious Zanoni,
+who seemed to stand aloof from his race. With a deep and burning sigh,
+he murmured, “Viola, I love thee! Oh!” he continued passionately, and,
+releasing his hold, he threw himself abruptly at her feet, “I no more
+command,--as woman should be wooed, I woo thee. From the first glance of
+those eyes, from the first sound of thy voice, thou becamest too fatally
+dear to me. Thou speakest of fascination,--it lives and it breathes
+in thee! I fled from Naples to fly from thy presence,--it pursued me.
+Months, years passed, and thy sweet face still shone upon my heart. I
+returned, because I pictured thee alone and sorrowful in the world, and
+knew that dangers, from which I might save thee, were gathering
+near thee and around. Beautiful Soul! whose leaves I have read with
+reverence, it was for thy sake, thine alone, that I would have given
+thee to one who might make thee happier on earth than I can. Viola!
+Viola! thou knowest not--never canst thou know--how dear thou art to
+me!”
+
+It is in vain to seek for words to describe the delight--the proud, the
+full, the complete, and the entire delight--that filled the heart of the
+Neapolitan. He whom she had considered too lofty even for love,--more
+humble to her than those she had half-despised! She was silent, but her
+eyes spoke to him; and then slowly, as aware, at last, that the human
+love had advanced on the ideal, she shrank into the terrors of a modest
+and virtuous nature. She did not dare,--she did not dream to ask him the
+question she had so fearlessly made to Glyndon; but she felt a sudden
+coldness,--a sense that a barrier was yet between love and love. “Oh,
+Zanoni!” she murmured, with downcast eyes, “ask me not to fly with
+thee; tempt me not to my shame. Thou wouldst protect me from others. Oh,
+protect me from thyself!”
+
+“Poor orphan!” said he, tenderly, “and canst thou think that I ask from
+thee one sacrifice,--still less the greatest that woman can give to
+love? As my wife I woo thee, and by every tie, and by every vow that can
+hallow and endear affection. Alas! they have belied love to thee indeed,
+if thou dost not know the religion that belongs to it! They who truly
+love would seek, for the treasure they obtain, every bond that can make
+it lasting and secure. Viola, weep not, unless thou givest me the holy
+right to kiss away thy tears!”
+
+And that beautiful face, no more averted, drooped upon his bosom; and
+as he bent down, his lips sought the rosy mouth: a long and burning
+kiss,--danger, life, the world was forgotten! Suddenly Zanoni tore
+himself from her.
+
+“Hearest thou the wind that sighs, and dies away? As that wind, my power
+to preserve thee, to guard thee, to foresee the storm in thy skies, is
+gone. No matter. Haste, haste; and may love supply the loss of all that
+it has dared to sacrifice! Come.”
+
+Viola hesitated no more. She threw her mantle over her shoulders, and
+gathered up her dishevelled hair; a moment, and she was prepared, when a
+sudden crash was heard below.
+
+“Too late!--fool that I was, too late!” cried Zanoni, in a sharp tone of
+agony, as he hurried to the door. He opened it, only to be borne back by
+the press of armed men. The room literally swarmed with the followers of
+the ravisher, masked, and armed to the teeth.
+
+Viola was already in the grasp of two of the myrmidons. Her shriek smote
+the ear of Zanoni. He sprang forward; and Viola heard his wild cry in
+a foreign tongue. She saw the blades of the ruffians pointed at his
+breast! She lost her senses; and when she recovered, she found herself
+gagged, and in a carriage that was driven rapidly, by the side of a
+masked and motionless figure. The carriage stopped at the portals of a
+gloomy mansion. The gates opened noiselessly; a broad flight of steps,
+brilliantly illumined, was before her. She was in the palace of the
+Prince di --.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XIV.
+
+     Ma lasciamo, per Dio, Signore, ormai
+     Di parlar d’ ira, e di cantar di morte.
+     “Orlando Furioso,” Canto xvii. xvii.
+
+     (But leave me, I solemnly conjure thee, signor, to speak of
+     wrath, and to sing of death.)
+
+The young actress was led to, and left alone in a chamber adorned with
+all the luxurious and half-Eastern taste that at one time characterised
+the palaces of the great seigneurs of Italy. Her first thought was for
+Zanoni. Was he yet living? Had he escaped unscathed the blades of the
+foe,--her new treasure, the new light of her life, her lord, at last her
+lover?
+
+She had short time for reflection. She heard steps approaching the
+chamber; she drew back, but trembled not. A courage not of herself,
+never known before, sparkled in her eyes, and dilated her stature.
+Living or dead, she would be faithful still to Zanoni! There was a new
+motive to the preservation of honour. The door opened, and the prince
+entered in the gorgeous and gaudy custume still worn at that time in
+Naples.
+
+“Fair and cruel one,” said he, advancing with a half-sneer upon his lip,
+“thou wilt not too harshly blame the violence of love.” He attempted to
+take her hand as he spoke.
+
+“Nay,” said he, as she recoiled, “reflect that thou art now in the power
+of one that never faltered in the pursuit of an object less dear to him
+than thou art. Thy lover, presumptuous though he be, is not by to save
+thee. Mine thou art; but instead of thy master, suffer me to be thy
+slave.”
+
+“Prince,” said Viola, with a stern gravity, “your boast is in vain. Your
+power! I am NOT in your power. Life and death are in my own hands. I
+will not defy; but I do not fear you. I feel--and in some feelings,”
+ added Viola, with a solemnity almost thrilling, “there is all the
+strength, and all the divinity of knowledge--I feel that I am safe even
+here; but you--you, Prince di --, have brought danger to your home and
+hearth!”
+
+The Neapolitan seemed startled by an earnestness and boldness he was but
+little prepared for. He was not, however, a man easily intimidated or
+deterred from any purpose he had formed; and, approaching Viola, he
+was about to reply with much warmth, real or affected, when a knock
+was heard at the door of the chamber. The sound was repeated, and
+the prince, chafed at the interruption, opened the door and demanded
+impatiently who had ventured to disobey his orders, and invade his
+leisure. Mascari presented himself, pale and agitated: “My lord,” said
+he, in a whisper, “pardon me; but a stranger is below, who insists on
+seeing you; and, from some words he let fall, I judged it advisable even
+to infringe your commands.”
+
+“A stranger!--and at this hour! What business can he pretend? Why was he
+even admitted?”
+
+“He asserts that your life is in imminent danger. The source whence it
+proceeds he will relate to your Excellency alone.”
+
+The prince frowned; but his colour changed. He mused a moment, and then,
+re-entering the chamber and advancing towards Viola, he said,--
+
+“Believe me, fair creature, I have no wish to take advantage of my
+power. I would fain trust alone to the gentler authorities of affection.
+Hold yourself queen within these walls more absolutely than you have
+ever enacted that part on the stage. To-night, farewell! May your sleep
+be calm, and your dreams propitious to my hopes.”
+
+With these words he retired, and in a few moments Viola was surrounded
+by officious attendants, whom she at length, with some difficulty,
+dismissed; and, refusing to retire to rest, she spent the night in
+examining the chamber, which she found was secured, and in thoughts of
+Zanoni, in whose power she felt an almost preternatural confidence.
+
+Meanwhile the prince descended the stairs and sought the room into which
+the stranger had been shown.
+
+He found the visitor wrapped from head to foot in a long robe,
+half-gown, half-mantle, such as was sometimes worn by ecclesiastics. The
+face of this stranger was remarkable. So sunburnt and swarthy were his
+hues, that he must, apparently, have derived his origin amongst the
+races of the farthest East. His forehead was lofty, and his eyes so
+penetrating yet so calm in their gaze that the prince shrank from them
+as we shrink from a questioner who is drawing forth the guiltiest secret
+of our hearts.
+
+“What would you with me?” asked the prince, motioning his visitor to a
+seat.
+
+“Prince of --,” said the stranger, in a voice deep and sweet, but
+foreign in its accent,--“son of the most energetic and masculine race
+that ever applied godlike genius to the service of Human Will, with its
+winding wickedness and its stubborn grandeur; descendant of the great
+Visconti in whose chronicles lies the history of Italy in her palmy
+day, and in whose rise was the development of the mightiest intellect,
+ripened by the most restless ambition,--I come to gaze upon the last
+star in a darkening firmament. By this hour to-morrow space shall know
+it not. Man, unless thy whole nature change, thy days are numbered!”
+
+“What means this jargon?” said the prince, in visible astonishment and
+secret awe. “Comest thou to menace me in my own halls, or wouldst
+thou warn me of a danger? Art thou some itinerant mountebank, or some
+unguessed-of friend? Speak out, and plainly. What danger threatens me?”
+
+“Zanoni and thy ancestor’s sword,” replied the stranger.
+
+“Ha! ha!” said the prince, laughing scournfully; “I half-suspected thee
+from the first. Thou art then the accomplice or the tool of that most
+dexterous, but, at present, defeated charlatan? And I suppose thou wilt
+tell me that if I were to release a certain captive I have made, the
+danger would vanish, and the hand of the dial would be put back?”
+
+“Judge of me as thou wilt, Prince di --. I confess my knowledge of
+Zanoni. Thou, too, wilt know his power, but not till it consume thee.
+I would save, therefore I warn thee. Dost thou ask me why? I will tell
+thee. Canst thou remember to have heard wild tales of thy grandsire;
+of his desire for a knowledge that passes that of the schools and
+cloisters; of a strange man from the East who was his familiar and
+master in lore against which the Vatican has, from age to age,
+launched its mimic thunder? Dost thou call to mind the fortunes of thy
+ancestor?--how he succeeded in youth to little but a name; how, after a
+career wild and dissolute as thine, he disappeared from Milan, a pauper,
+and a self-exile; how, after years spent, none knew in what climes or
+in what pursuits, he again revisited the city where his progenitors had
+reigned; how with him came the wise man of the East, the mystic Mejnour;
+how they who beheld him, beheld with amaze and fear that time had
+ploughed no furrow on his brow; that youth seemed fixed, as by a spell,
+upon his face and form? Dost thou not know that from that hour his
+fortunes rose? Kinsmen the most remote died; estate upon estate fell
+into the hands of the ruined noble. He became the guide of princes, the
+first magnate of Italy. He founded anew the house of which thou art the
+last lineal upholder, and transferred his splendour from Milan to the
+Sicilian realms. Visions of high ambition were then present with him
+nightly and daily. Had he lived, Italy would have known a new dynasty,
+and the Visconti would have reigned over Magna-Graecia. He was a man
+such as the world rarely sees; but his ends, too earthly, were at war
+with the means he sought. Had his ambition been more or less, he had
+been worthy of a realm mightier than the Caesars swayed; worthy of our
+solemn order; worthy of the fellowship of Mejnour, whom you now behold
+before you.”
+
+The prince, who had listened with deep and breathless attention to the
+words of his singular guest, started from his seat at his last words.
+“Imposter!” he cried, “can you dare thus to play with my credulity?
+Sixty years have flown since my grandsire died; were he living, he had
+passed his hundred and twentieth year; and you, whose old age is
+erect and vigorous, have the assurance to pretend to have been his
+contemporary! But you have imperfectly learned your tale. You know not,
+it seems, that my grandsire, wise and illustrious indeed, in all save
+his faith in a charlatan, was found dead in his bed, in the very hour
+when his colossal plans were ripe for execution, and that Mejnour was
+guilty of his murder.”
+
+“Alas!” answered the stranger, in a voice of great sadness, “had he
+but listened to Mejnour,--had he but delayed the last and most perilous
+ordeal of daring wisdom until the requisite training and initiation had
+been completed,--your ancestor would have stood with me upon an
+eminence which the waters of Death itself wash everlastingly, but cannot
+overflow. Your grandsire resisted my fervent prayers, disobeyed my most
+absolute commands, and in the sublime rashness of a soul that panted
+for secrets, which he who desires orbs and sceptres never can obtain,
+perished, the victim of his own frenzy.”
+
+“He was poisoned, and Mejnour fled.”
+
+“Mejnour fled not,” answered the stranger, proudly--“Mejnour could not
+fly from danger; for to him danger is a thing long left behind. It was
+the day before the duke took the fatal draft which he believed was to
+confer on the mortal the immortal boon, that, finding my power over him
+was gone, I abandoned him to his doom. But a truce with this: I loved
+your grandsire! I would save the last of his race. Oppose not thyself
+to Zanoni. Yield not thy soul to thine evil passions. Draw back from the
+precipice while there is yet time. In thy front, and in thine eyes, I
+detect some of that diviner glory which belonged to thy race. Thou hast
+in thee some germs of their hereditary genius, but they are choked up
+by worse than thy hereditary vices. Recollect that by genius thy house
+rose; by vice it ever failed to perpetuate its power. In the laws
+which regulate the universe, it is decreed that nothing wicked can long
+endure. Be wise, and let history warn thee. Thou standest on the verge
+of two worlds, the past and the future; and voices from either shriek
+omen in thy ear. I have done. I bid thee farewell!”
+
+“Not so; thou shalt not quit these walls. I will make experiment of thy
+boasted power. What, ho there!--ho!”
+
+The prince shouted; the room was filled with his minions.
+
+“Seize that man!” he cried, pointing to the spot which had been filled
+by the form of Mejnour. To his inconceivable amaze and horror, the spot
+was vacant. The mysterious stranger had vanished like a dream; but a
+thin and fragrant mist undulated, in pale volumes, round the walls of
+the chamber. “Look to my lord,” cried Mascari. The prince had fallen to
+the floor insensible. For many hours he seemed in a kind of trance. When
+he recovered, he dismissed his attendants, and his step was heard in his
+chamber, pacing to and fro, with heavy and disordered strides. Not till
+an hour before his banquet the next day did he seem restored to his
+wonted self.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XV.
+
+     Oime! come poss’ io
+     Altri trovar, se me trovar non posso.
+     “Amint.,” At. i. Sc. ii.
+
+     (Alas! how can I find another when I cannot find myself?)
+
+The sleep of Glyndon, the night after his last interview with Zanoni,
+was unusually profound; and the sun streamed full upon his eyes as he
+opened them to the day. He rose refreshed, and with a strange sentiment
+of calmness that seemed more the result of resolution than exhaustion.
+The incidents and emotions of the past night had settled into distinct
+and clear impressions. He thought of them but slightly,--he thought
+rather of the future. He was as one of the initiated in the old Egyptian
+mysteries who have crossed the gate only to long more ardently for the
+penetralia.
+
+He dressed himself, and was relieved to find that Mervale had joined a
+party of his countrymen on an excursion to Ischia. He spent the heat of
+noon in thoughtful solitude, and gradually the image of Viola returned
+to his heart. It was a holy--for it was a HUMAN--image. He had resigned
+her; and though he repented not, he was troubled at the thought that
+repentance would have come too late.
+
+He started impatiently from his seat, and strode with rapid steps to the
+humble abode of the actress.
+
+The distance was considerable, and the air oppressive. Glyndon arrived
+at the door breathless and heated. He knocked; no answer came. He lifted
+the latch and entered. He ascended the stairs; no sound, no sight of
+life met his ear and eye. In the front chamber, on a table, lay the
+guitar of the actress, and some manuscript parts in the favourite
+operas. He paused, and, summoning courage, tapped at the door which
+seemed to lead into the inner apartment. The door was ajar; and, hearing
+no sound within, he pushed it open. It was the sleeping-chamber of the
+young actress, that holiest ground to a lover; and well did the place
+become the presiding deity: none of the tawdry finery of the profession
+was visible, on the one hand; none of the slovenly disorder common to
+the humbler classes of the South, on the other. All was pure and simple;
+even the ornaments were those of an innocent refinement,--a few books,
+placed carefully on shelves, a few half-faded flowers in an earthen
+vase, which was modelled and painted in the Etruscan fashion. The
+sunlight streamed over the snowy draperies of the bed, and a few
+articles of clothing on the chair beside it. Viola was not there; but
+the nurse!--was she gone also? He made the house resound with the name
+of Gionetta, but there was not even an echo to reply. At last, as he
+reluctantly quitted the desolate abode, he perceived Gionetta coming
+towards him from the street.
+
+The poor old woman uttered an exclamation of joy on seeing him; but,
+to their mutual disappointment, neither had any cheerful tidings or
+satisfactory explanation to afford the other. Gionetta had been aroused
+from her slumber the night before by the noise in the rooms below; but
+ere she could muster courage to descend, Viola was gone! She found the
+marks of violence on the door without; and all she had since been able
+to learn in the neighbourhood was, that a Lazzarone, from his nocturnal
+resting-place on the Chiaja, had seen by the moonlight a carriage, which
+he recognised as belonging to the Prince di --, pass and repass that
+road about the first hour of morning. Glyndon, on gathering from the
+confused words and broken sobs of the old nurse the heads of this
+account, abruptly left her, and repaired to the palace of Zanoni. There
+he was informed that the signor was gone to the banquet of the Prince
+di --, and would not return till late. Glyndon stood motionless with
+perplexity and dismay; he knew not what to believe, or how to act.
+Even Mervale was not at hand to advise him. His conscience smote him
+bitterly. He had had the power to save the woman he had loved, and had
+foregone that power; but how was it that in this Zanoni himself had
+failed? How was it that he was gone to the very banquet of the ravisher?
+Could Zanoni be aware of what had passed? If not, should he lose a
+moment in apprising him? Though mentally irresolute, no man was more
+physically brave. He would repair at once to the palace of the prince
+himself; and if Zanoni failed in the trust he had half-appeared to
+arrogate, he, the humble foreigner, would demand the captive of fraud
+and force, in the very halls and before the assembled guests of the
+Prince di --.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XVI.
+
+     Ardua vallatur duris sapientia scrupis.
+     Hadr. Jun., “Emblem.” xxxvii.
+
+     (Lofty wisdom is circled round with rugged rocks.)
+
+We must go back some hours in the progress of this narrative. It was the
+first faint and gradual break of the summer dawn; and two men stood in
+a balcony overhanging a garden fragrant with the scents of the awakening
+flowers. The stars had not yet left the sky,--the birds were yet silent
+on the boughs: all was still, hushed, and tranquil; but how different
+the tranquillity of reviving day from the solemn repose of night! In the
+music of silence there are a thousand variations. These men, who alone
+seemed awake in Naples, were Zanoni and the mysterious stranger who
+had but an hour or two ago startled the Prince di -- in his voluptuous
+palace.
+
+“No,” said the latter; “hadst thou delayed the acceptance of the
+Arch-gift until thou hadst attained to the years, and passed through
+all the desolate bereavements that chilled and seared myself ere my
+researches had made it mine, thou wouldst have escaped the curse of
+which thou complainest now,--thou wouldst not have mourned over the
+brevity of human affection as compared to the duration of thine own
+existence; for thou wouldst have survived the very desire and dream
+of the love of woman. Brightest, and, but for that error, perhaps the
+loftiest, of the secret and solemn race that fills up the interval in
+creation between mankind and the children of the Empyreal, age after age
+wilt thou rue the splendid folly which made thee ask to carry the
+beauty and the passions of youth into the dreary grandeur of earthly
+immortality.”
+
+“I do not repent, nor shall I,” answered Zanoni. “The transport and the
+sorrow, so wildly blended, which have at intervals diversified my doom,
+are better than the calm and bloodless tenor of thy solitary way--thou,
+who lovest nothing, hatest nothing, feelest nothing, and walkest the
+world with the noiseless and joyless footsteps of a dream!”
+
+“You mistake,” replied he who had owned the name of Mejnour,--“though I
+care not for love, and am dead to every PASSION that agitates the sons
+of clay, I am not dead to their more serene enjoyments. I carry down the
+stream of the countless years, not the turbulent desires of youth,
+but the calm and spiritual delights of age. Wisely and deliberately I
+abandoned youth forever when I separated my lot from men. Let us not
+envy or reproach each other. I would have saved this Neapolitan,
+Zanoni (since so it now pleases thee to be called), partly because
+his grandsire was but divided by the last airy barrier from our own
+brotherhood, partly because I know that in the man himself lurk the
+elements of ancestral courage and power, which in earlier life would
+have fitted him for one of us. Earth holds but few to whom Nature has
+given the qualities that can bear the ordeal. But time and excess,
+that have quickened his grosser senses, have blunted his imagination. I
+relinquish him to his doom.”
+
+“And still, then, Mejnour, you cherish the desire to revive our
+order, limited now to ourselves alone, by new converts and allies.
+Surely--surely--thy experience might have taught thee, that scarcely
+once in a thousand years is born the being who can pass through the
+horrible gates that lead into the worlds without! Is not thy path
+already strewed with thy victims? Do not their ghastly faces of agony
+and fear--the blood-stained suicide, the raving maniac--rise before
+thee, and warn what is yet left to thee of human sympathy from thy
+insane ambition?”
+
+“Nay,” answered Mejnour; “have I not had success to counterbalance
+failure? And can I forego this lofty and august hope, worthy alone of
+our high condition,--the hope to form a mighty and numerous race with
+a force and power sufficient to permit them to acknowledge to mankind
+their majestic conquests and dominion, to become the true lords of this
+planet, invaders, perchance, of others, masters of the inimical and
+malignant tribes by which at this moment we are surrounded: a race
+that may proceed, in their deathless destinies, from stage to stage of
+celestial glory, and rank at last amongst the nearest ministrants and
+agents gathered round the Throne of Thrones? What matter a thousand
+victims for one convert to our band? And you, Zanoni,” continued
+Mejnour, after a pause,--“you, even you, should this affection for a
+mortal beauty that you have dared, despite yourself, to cherish, be more
+than a passing fancy; should it, once admitted into your inmost nature,
+partake of its bright and enduring essence,--even you may brave all
+things to raise the beloved one into your equal. Nay, interrupt me not.
+Can you see sickness menace her; danger hover around; years creep on;
+the eyes grow dim; the beauty fade, while the heart, youthful still,
+clings and fastens round your own,--can you see this, and know it is
+yours to--”
+
+“Cease!” cried Zanoni, fiercely. “What is all other fate as compared
+to the death of terror? What, when the coldest sage, the most heated
+enthusiast, the hardiest warrior with his nerves of iron, have been
+found dead in their beds, with straining eyeballs and horrent hair,
+at the first step of the Dread Progress,--thinkest thou that this
+weak woman--from whose cheek a sound at the window, the screech of the
+night-owl, the sight of a drop of blood on a man’s sword, would start
+the colour--could brave one glance of--Away! the very thought of such
+sights for her makes even myself a coward!”
+
+“When you told her you loved her,--when you clasped her to your breast,
+you renounced all power to foresee her future lot, or protect her from
+harm. Henceforth to her you are human, and human only. How know you,
+then, to what you may be tempted; how know you what her curiosity may
+learn and her courage brave? But enough of this,--you are bent on your
+pursuit?”
+
+“The fiat has gone forth.”
+
+“And to-morrow?”
+
+“To-morrow, at this hour, our bark will be bounding over yonder ocean,
+and the weight of ages will have fallen from my heart! I compassionate
+thee, O foolish sage,--THOU hast given up THY youth!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XVII.
+
+     Alch:  Thou always speakest riddles.  Tell me if thou art that
+     fountain of which Bernard Lord Trevizan writ?
+
+     Merc:  I am not that fountain, but I am the water.  The fountain
+     compasseth me about.
+
+     Sandivogius, “New Light of Alchymy.”
+
+The Prince di -- was not a man whom Naples could suppose to be addicted
+to superstitious fancies. Still, in the South of Italy, there was then,
+and there still lingers a certain spirit of credulity, which may, ever
+and anon, be visible amidst the boldest dogmas of their philosophers and
+sceptics. In his childhood, the prince had learned strange tales of the
+ambition, the genius, and the career of his grandsire,--and secretly,
+perhaps influenced by ancestral example, in earlier youth he himself
+had followed science, not only through her legitimate course, but her
+antiquated and erratic windings. I have, indeed, been shown in Naples a
+little volume, blazoned with the arms of the Visconti, and ascribed
+to the nobleman I refer to, which treats of alchemy in a spirit
+half-mocking and half-reverential.
+
+Pleasure soon distracted him from such speculations, and his talents,
+which were unquestionably great, were wholly perverted to extravagant
+intrigues, or to the embellishment of a gorgeous ostentation with
+something of classic grace. His immense wealth, his imperious pride,
+his unscrupulous and daring character, made him an object of no
+inconsiderable fear to a feeble and timid court; and the ministers of
+the indolent government willingly connived at excesses which allured him
+at least from ambition. The strange visit and yet more strange departure
+of Mejnour filled the breast of the Neapolitan with awe and wonder,
+against which all the haughty arrogance and learned scepticism of his
+maturer manhood combated in vain. The apparition of Mejnour served,
+indeed, to invest Zanoni with a character in which the prince had not
+hitherto regarded him. He felt a strange alarm at the rival he had
+braved,--at the foe he had provoked. When, a little before his banquet,
+he had resumed his self-possession, it was with a fell and gloomy
+resolution that he brooded over the perfidious schemes he had previously
+formed. He felt as if the death of the mysterious Zanoni were necessary
+for the preservation of his own life; and if at an earlier period of
+their rivalry he had determined on the fate of Zanoni, the warnings of
+Mejnour only served to confirm his resolve.
+
+“We will try if his magic can invent an antidote to the bane,” said
+he, half-aloud, and with a stern smile, as he summoned Mascari to his
+presence. The poison which the prince, with his own hands, mixed into
+the wine intended for his guest, was compounded from materials, the
+secret of which had been one of the proudest heir-looms of that able
+and evil race which gave to Italy her wisest and guiltiest tyrants. Its
+operation was quick yet not sudden: it produced no pain,--it left on
+the form no grim convulsion, on the skin no purpling spot, to arouse
+suspicion; you might have cut and carved every membrane and fibre of the
+corpse, but the sharpest eyes of the leech would not have detected the
+presence of the subtle life-queller. For twelve hours the victim felt
+nothing save a joyous and elated exhilaration of the blood; a delicious
+languor followed, the sure forerunner of apoplexy. No lancet then
+could save! Apoplexy had run much in the families of the enemies of the
+Visconti!
+
+The hour of the feast arrived,--the guests assembled. There were the
+flower of the Neapolitan seignorie, the descendants of the Norman, the
+Teuton, the Goth; for Naples had then a nobility, but derived it from
+the North, which has indeed been the Nutrix Leonum,--the nurse of the
+lion-hearted chivalry of the world.
+
+Last of the guests came Zanoni; and the crowd gave way as the dazzling
+foreigner moved along to the lord of the palace. The prince greeted him
+with a meaning smile, to which Zanoni answered by a whisper, “He who
+plays with loaded dice does not always win.”
+
+The prince bit his lip, and Zanoni, passing on, seemed deep in
+conversation with the fawning Mascari.
+
+“Who is the prince’s heir?” asked the guest.
+
+“A distant relation on the mother’s side; with his Excellency dies the
+male line.”
+
+“Is the heir present at our host’s banquet?”
+
+“No; they are not friends.”
+
+“No matter; he will be here to-morrow.”
+
+Mascari stared in surprise; but the signal for the banquet was given,
+and the guests were marshalled to the board. As was the custom then, the
+feast took place not long after mid-day. It was a long, oval hall, the
+whole of one side opening by a marble colonnade upon a court or garden,
+in which the eye rested gratefully upon cool fountains and statues of
+whitest marble, half-sheltered by orange-trees. Every art that
+luxury could invent to give freshness and coolness to the languid and
+breezeless heat of the day without (a day on which the breath of the
+sirocco was abroad) had been called into existence. Artificial currents
+of air through invisible tubes, silken blinds waving to and fro, as if
+to cheat the senses into the belief of an April wind, and miniature jets
+d’eau in each corner of the apartment, gave to the Italians the same
+sense of exhilaration and COMFORT (if I may use the word) which the
+well-drawn curtains and the blazing hearth afford to the children of
+colder climes.
+
+The conversation was somewhat more lively and intellectual than is
+common amongst the languid pleasure-hunters of the South; for the
+prince, himself accomplished, sought his acquaintance not only amongst
+the beaux esprits of his own country, but amongst the gay foreigners who
+adorned and relieved the monotony of the Neapolitan circles. There were
+present two or three of the brilliant Frenchmen of the old regime, who
+had already emigrated from the advancing Revolution; and their peculiar
+turn of thought and wit was well calculated for the meridian of a
+society that made the dolce far niente at once its philosophy and its
+faith. The prince, however, was more silent than usual; and when he
+sought to rouse himself, his spirits were forced and exaggerated. To the
+manners of his host, those of Zanoni afforded a striking contrast. The
+bearing of this singular person was at all times characterised by a calm
+and polished ease, which was attributed by the courtiers to the long
+habit of society. He could scarcely be called gay; yet few persons more
+tended to animate the general spirits of a convivial circle. He seemed,
+by a kind of intuition, to elicit from each companion the qualities in
+which he most excelled; and if occasionally a certain tone of latent
+mockery characterised his remarks upon the topics on which the
+conversation fell, it appeared to men who took nothing in earnest to be
+the language both of wit and wisdom. To the Frenchmen, in particular,
+there was something startling in his intimate knowledge of the minutest
+events in their own capital and country, and his profound penetration
+(evinced but in epigrams and sarcasms) into the eminent characters who
+were then playing a part upon the great stage of continental intrigue.
+
+It was while this conversation grew animated, and the feast was at its
+height, that Glyndon arrived at the palace. The porter, perceiving by
+his dress that he was not one of the invited guests, told him that
+his Excellency was engaged, and on no account could be disturbed;
+and Glyndon then, for the first time, became aware how strange and
+embarrassing was the duty he had taken on himself. To force an entrance
+into the banquet-hall of a great and powerful noble, surrounded by the
+rank of Naples, and to arraign him for what to his boon-companions would
+appear but an act of gallantry, was an exploit that could not fail to be
+at once ludicrous and impotent. He mused a moment, and, slipping a piece
+of gold into the porter’s hand, said that he was commissioned to seek
+the Signor Zanoni upon an errand of life and death, and easily won his
+way across the court, and into the interior building. He passed up the
+broad staircase, and the voices and merriment of the revellers smote
+his ear at a distance. At the entrance of the reception-rooms he found
+a page, whom he despatched with a message to Zanoni. The page did the
+errand; and Zanoni, on hearing the whispered name of Glyndon, turned to
+his host.
+
+“Pardon me, my lord; an English friend of mine, the Signor Glyndon (not
+unknown by name to your Excellency) waits without,--the business must
+indeed be urgent on which he has sought me in such an hour. You will
+forgive my momentary absence.”
+
+“Nay, signor,” answered the prince, courteously, but with a sinister
+smile on his countenance, “would it not be better for your friend
+to join us? An Englishman is welcome everywhere; and even were he a
+Dutchman, your friendship would invest his presence with attraction.
+Pray his attendance; we would not spare you even for a moment.”
+
+Zanoni bowed; the page was despatched with all flattering messages
+to Glyndon,--a seat next to Zanoni was placed for him, and the young
+Englishman entered.
+
+“You are most welcome, sir. I trust your business to our illustrious
+guest is of good omen and pleasant import. If you bring evil news, defer
+it, I pray you.”
+
+Glyndon’s brow was sullen; and he was about to startle the guests by
+his reply, when Zanoni, touching his arm significantly, whispered in
+English, “I know why you have sought me. Be silent, and witness what
+ensues.”
+
+“You know then that Viola, whom you boasted you had the power to save
+from danger--”
+
+“Is in this house!--yes. I know also that Murder sits at the right hand
+of our host. But his fate is now separated from hers forever; and the
+mirror which glasses it to my eye is clear through the streams of blood.
+Be still, and learn the fate that awaits the wicked!
+
+“My lord,” said Zanoni, speaking aloud, “the Signor Glyndon has indeed
+brought me tidings not wholly unexpected. I am compelled to leave
+Naples,--an additional motive to make the most of the present hour.”
+
+“And what, if I may venture to ask, may be the cause that brings such
+affliction on the fair dames of Naples?”
+
+“It is the approaching death of one who honoured me with most loyal
+friendship,” replied Zanoni, gravely. “Let us not speak of it; grief
+cannot put back the dial. As we supply by new flowers those that fade
+in our vases, so it is the secret of worldly wisdom to replace by fresh
+friendships those that fade from our path.”
+
+“True philosophy!” exclaimed the prince. “‘Not to admire,’ was the
+Roman’s maxim; ‘Never to mourn,’ is mine. There is nothing in life to
+grieve for, save, indeed, Signor Zanoni, when some young beauty, on whom
+we have set our hearts, slips from our grasp. In such a moment we have
+need of all our wisdom, not to succumb to despair, and shake hands with
+death. What say you, signor? You smile! Such never could be your lot.
+Pledge me in a sentiment, ‘Long life to the fortunate lover,--a quick
+release to the baffled suitor’?”
+
+“I pledge you,” said Zanoni; and, as the fatal wine was poured into his
+glass, he repeated, fixing his eyes on the prince, “I pledge you even in
+this wine!”
+
+He lifted the glass to his lips. The prince seemed ghastly pale,
+while the gaze of his guest bent upon him, with an intent and stern
+brightness, beneath which the conscience-stricken host cowered and
+quailed. Not till he had drained his draft, and replaced the glass upon
+the board, did Zanoni turn his eyes from the prince; and he then said,
+“Your wine has been kept too long; it has lost its virtues. It might
+disagree with many, but do not fear: it will not harm me, prince, Signor
+Mascari, you are a judge of the grape; will you favour us with your
+opinion?”
+
+“Nay,” answered Mascari, with well-affected composure, “I like not the
+wines of Cyprus; they are heating. Perhaps Signor Glyndon may not have
+the same distaste? The English are said to love their potations warm and
+pungent.”
+
+“Do you wish my friend also to taste the wine, prince?” said Zanoni.
+“Recollect, all cannot drink it with the same impunity as myself.”
+
+“No,” said the prince, hastily; “if you do not recommend the wine,
+Heaven forbid that we should constrain our guests! My lord duke,”
+ turning to one of the Frenchmen, “yours is the true soil of Bacchus.
+What think you of this cask from Burgundy? Has it borne the journey?”
+
+“Ah,” said Zanoni, “let us change both the wine and the theme.”
+
+With that, Zanoni grew yet more animated and brilliant. Never did wit
+more sparkling, airy, exhilarating, flash from the lips of reveller.
+His spirits fascinated all present--even the prince himself, even
+Glyndon--with a strange and wild contagion. The former, indeed, whom the
+words and gaze of Zanoni, when he drained the poison, had filled with
+fearful misgivings, now hailed in the brilliant eloquence of his wit a
+certain sign of the operation of the bane. The wine circulated fast; but
+none seemed conscious of its effects. One by one the rest of the party
+fell into a charmed and spellbound silence, as Zanoni continued to pour
+forth sally upon sally, tale upon tale. They hung on his words, they
+almost held their breath to listen. Yet, how bitter was his mirth; how
+full of contempt for the triflers present, and for the trifles which
+made their life!
+
+Night came on; the room grew dim, and the feast had lasted several hours
+longer than was the customary duration of similar entertainments at
+that day. Still the guests stirred not, and still Zanoni continued, with
+glittering eye and mocking lip, to lavish his stores of intellect
+and anecdote; when suddenly the moon rose, and shed its rays over the
+flowers and fountains in the court without, leaving the room itself half
+in shadow, and half tinged by a quiet and ghostly light.
+
+It was then that Zanoni rose. “Well, gentlemen,” said he, “we have not
+yet wearied our host, I hope; and his garden offers a new temptation to
+protract our stay. Have you no musicians among your train, prince,
+that might regale our ears while we inhale the fragrance of your
+orange-trees?”
+
+“An excellent thought!” said the prince. “Mascari, see to the music.”
+
+The party rose simultaneously to adjourn to the garden; and then, for
+the first time, the effect of the wine they had drunk seemed to make
+itself felt.
+
+With flushed cheeks and unsteady steps they came into the open air,
+which tended yet more to stimulate that glowing fever of the grape.
+As if to make up for the silence with which the guests had hitherto
+listened to Zanoni, every tongue was now loosened,--every man talked,
+no man listened. There was something wild and fearful in the contrast
+between the calm beauty of the night and scene, and the hubbub and
+clamour of these disorderly roysters. One of the Frenchmen, in especial,
+the young Duc de R--, a nobleman of the highest rank, and of all the
+quick, vivacious, and irascible temperament of his countrymen, was
+particularly noisy and excited. And as circumstances, the remembrance
+of which is still preserved among certain circles of Naples, rendered it
+afterwards necessary that the duc should himself give evidence of what
+occurred, I will here translate the short account he drew up, and which
+was kindly submitted to me some few years ago by my accomplished and
+lively friend, Il Cavaliere di B--.
+
+“I never remember,” writes the duc, “to have felt my spirits so excited
+as on that evening; we were like so many boys released from school,
+jostling each other as we reeled or ran down the flight of seven
+or eight stairs that led from the colonnade into the garden,--some
+laughing, some whooping, some scolding, some babbling. The wine had
+brought out, as it were, each man’s inmost character. Some were loud and
+quarrelsome, others sentimental and whining; some, whom we had hitherto
+thought dull, most mirthful; some, whom we had ever regarded as discreet
+and taciturn, most garrulous and uproarious. I remember that in the
+midst of our clamorous gayety, my eye fell upon the cavalier Signor
+Zanoni, whose conversation had so enchanted us all; and I felt a
+certain chill come over me to perceive that he wore the same calm and
+unsympathising smile upon his countenance which had characterised it
+in his singular and curious stories of the court of Louis XIV. I felt,
+indeed, half-inclined to seek a quarrel with one whose composure
+was almost an insult to our disorder. Nor was such an effect of this
+irritating and mocking tranquillity confined to myself alone. Several of
+the party have told me since, that on looking at Zanoni they felt their
+blood yet more heated, and gayety change to resentment. There seemed in
+his icy smile a very charm to wound vanity and provoke rage. It was at
+this moment that the prince came up to me, and, passing his arm into
+mine, led me a little apart from the rest. He had certainly indulged in
+the same excess as ourselves, but it did not produce the same effect of
+noisy excitement. There was, on the contrary, a certain cold arrogance
+and supercilious scorn in his bearing and language, which, even while
+affecting so much caressing courtesy towards me, roused my self-love
+against him. He seemed as if Zanoni had infected him; and in imitating
+the manner of his guest, he surpassed the original. He rallied me on
+some court gossip, which had honoured my name by associating it with a
+certain beautiful and distinguished Sicilian lady, and affected to treat
+with contempt that which, had it been true, I should have regarded as a
+boast. He spoke, indeed, as if he himself had gathered all the flowers
+of Naples, and left us foreigners only the gleanings he had scorned.
+At this my natural and national gallantry was piqued, and I retorted
+by some sarcasms that I should certainly have spared had my blood been
+cooler. He laughed heartily, and left me in a strange fit of resentment
+and anger. Perhaps (I must own the truth) the wine had produced in me a
+wild disposition to take offence and provoke quarrel. As the prince left
+me, I turned, and saw Zanoni at my side.
+
+“‘The prince is a braggart,’ said he, with the same smile that
+displeased me before. ‘He would monopolize all fortune and all love. Let
+us take our revenge.’
+
+“‘And how?’
+
+“‘He has at this moment, in his house, the most enchanting singer in
+Naples,--the celebrated Viola Pisani. She is here, it is true, not by
+her own choice; he carried her hither by force, but he will pretend that
+she adores him. Let us insist on his producing this secret treasure, and
+when she enters, the Duc de R-- can have no doubt that his flatteries
+and attentions will charm the lady, and provoke all the jealous fears of
+our host. It would be a fair revenge upon his imperious self-conceit.’
+
+“This suggestion delighted me. I hastened to the prince. At that instant
+the musicians had just commenced; I waved my hand, ordered the music to
+stop, and, addressing the prince, who was standing in the centre of one
+of the gayest groups, complained of his want of hospitality in affording
+to us such poor proficients in the art, while he reserved for his own
+solace the lute and voice of the first performer in Naples. I demanded,
+half-laughingly, half-seriously, that he should produce the Pisani. My
+demand was received with shouts of applause by the rest. We drowned the
+replies of our host with uproar, and would hear no denial. ‘Gentlemen,’
+at last said the prince, when he could obtain an audience, ‘even were
+I to assent to your proposal, I could not induce the signora to present
+herself before an assemblage as riotous as they are noble. You have too
+much chivalry to use compulsion with her, though the Duc de R--forgets
+himself sufficiently to administer it to me.’
+
+“I was stung by this taunt, however well deserved. ‘Prince,’ said I, ‘I
+have for the indelicacy of compulsion so illustrious an example that I
+cannot hesitate to pursue the path honoured by your own footsteps. All
+Naples knows that the Pisani despises at once your gold and your love;
+that force alone could have brought her under your roof; and that you
+refuse to produce her, because you fear her complaints, and know enough
+of the chivalry your vanity sneers at to feel assured that the gentlemen
+of France are not more disposed to worship beauty than to defend it from
+wrong.’
+
+“‘You speak well, sir,’ said Zanoni, gravely. ‘The prince dares not
+produce his prize!’
+
+“The prince remained speechless for a few moments, as if with
+indignation. At last he broke out into expressions the most injurious
+and insulting against Signor Zanoni and myself. Zanoni replied not; I
+was more hot and hasty. The guests appeared to delight in our dispute.
+None, except Mascari, whom we pushed aside and disdained to hear, strove
+to conciliate; some took one side, some another. The issue may be well
+foreseen. Swords were called for and procured. Two were offered me by
+one of the party. I was about to choose one, when Zanoni placed in
+my hand the other, which, from its hilt, appeared of antiquated
+workmanship. At the same moment, looking towards the prince, he said,
+smilingly, ‘The duc takes your grandsire’s sword. Prince, you are too
+brave a man for superstition; you have forgot the forfeit!’ Our host
+seemed to me to recoil and turn pale at those words; nevertheless, he
+returned Zanoni’s smile with a look of defiance. The next moment all was
+broil and disorder. There might be some six or eight persons engaged
+in a strange and confused kind of melee, but the prince and myself only
+sought each other. The noise around us, the confusion of the guests,
+the cries of the musicians, the clash of our own swords, only served
+to stimulate our unhappy fury. We feared to be interrupted by the
+attendants, and fought like madmen, without skill or method. I thrust
+and parried mechanically, blind and frantic, as if a demon had entered
+into me, till I saw the prince stretched at my feet, bathed in his
+blood, and Zanoni bending over him, and whispering in his ear. That
+sight cooled us all. The strife ceased; we gathered, in shame, remorse,
+and horror, round our ill-fated host; but it was too late,--his eyes
+rolled fearfully in his head. I have seen many men die, but never one
+who wore such horror on his countenance. At last all was over! Zanoni
+rose from the corpse, and, taking, with great composure, the sword from
+my hand, said calmly, ‘Ye are witnesses, gentlemen, that the prince
+brought his fate upon himself. The last of that illustrious house has
+perished in a brawl.’
+
+“I saw no more of Zanoni. I hastened to our envoy to narrate the event,
+and abide the issue. I am grateful to the Neapolitan government, and to
+the illustrious heir of the unfortunate nobleman, for the lenient and
+generous, yet just, interpretation put upon a misfortune the memory of
+which will afflict me to the last hour of my life.
+
+(Signed) “Louis Victor, Duc de R.”
+
+In the above memorial, the reader will find the most exact and minute
+account yet given of an event which created the most lively sensation at
+Naples in that day.
+
+Glyndon had taken no part in the affray, neither had he participated
+largely in the excesses of the revel. For his exemption from both he was
+perhaps indebted to the whispered exhortations of Zanoni. When the last
+rose from the corpse, and withdrew from that scene of confusion, Glyndon
+remarked that in passing the crowd he touched Mascari on the shoulder,
+and said something which the Englishman did not overhear. Glyndon
+followed Zanoni into the banquet-room, which, save where the moonlight
+slept on the marble floor, was wrapped in the sad and gloomy shadows of
+the advancing night.
+
+“How could you foretell this fearful event? He fell not by your arm!”
+ said Glyndon, in a tremulous and hollow tone.
+
+“The general who calculates on the victory does not fight in person,”
+ answered Zanoni; “let the past sleep with the dead. Meet me at midnight
+by the sea-shore, half a mile to the left of your hotel. You will know
+the spot by a rude pillar--the only one near--to which a broken chain
+is attached. There and then, if thou wouldst learn our lore, thou shalt
+find the master. Go; I have business here yet. Remember, Viola is still
+in the house of the dead man!”
+
+Here Mascari approached, and Zanoni, turning to the Italian, and waving
+his hand to Glyndon, drew the former aside. Glyndon slowly departed.
+
+“Mascari,” said Zanoni, “your patron is no more; your services will
+be valueless to his heir,--a sober man whom poverty has preserved
+from vice. For yourself, thank me that I do not give you up to the
+executioner; recollect the wine of Cyprus. Well, never tremble, man; it
+could not act on me, though it might react on others; in that it is a
+common type of crime. I forgive you; and if the wine should kill me,
+I promise you that my ghost shall not haunt so worshipful a penitent.
+Enough of this; conduct me to the chamber of Viola Pisani. You have
+no further need of her. The death of the jailer opens the cell of the
+captive. Be quick; I would be gone.”
+
+Mascari muttered some inaudible words, bowed low, and led the way to the
+chamber in which Viola was confined.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XVIII.
+
+     Merc:  Tell me, therefore, what thou seekest after, and what thou
+     wilt have.  What dost thou desire to make?
+
+     Alch:  The Philosopher’s Stone.
+
+     Sandivogius.
+
+It wanted several minutes of midnight, and Glyndon repaired to the
+appointed spot. The mysterious empire which Zanoni had acquired over
+him, was still more solemnly confirmed by the events of the last few
+hours; the sudden fate of the prince, so deliberately foreshadowed, and
+yet so seemingly accidental, brought out by causes the most commonplace,
+and yet associated with words the most prophetic, impressed him with
+the deepest sentiments of admiration and awe. It was as if this dark and
+wondrous being could convert the most ordinary events and the meanest
+instruments into the agencies of his inscrutable will; yet, if so, why
+have permitted the capture of Viola? Why not have prevented the crime
+rather than punish the criminal? And did Zanoni really feel love for
+Viola? Love, and yet offer to resign her to himself,--to a rival whom
+his arts could not have failed to baffle. He no longer reverted to the
+belief that Zanoni or Viola had sought to dupe him into marriage. His
+fear and reverence for the former now forbade the notion of so poor an
+imposture. Did he any longer love Viola himself? No; when that morning
+he had heard of her danger, he had, it is true, returned to the
+sympathies and the fears of affection; but with the death of the prince
+her image faded from his heart, and he felt no jealous pang at the
+thought that she had been saved by Zanoni,--that at that moment she
+was perhaps beneath his roof. Whoever has, in the course of his life,
+indulged the absorbing passion of the gamester, will remember how all
+other pursuits and objects vanished from his mind; how solely he was
+wrapped in the one wild delusion; with what a sceptre of magic power
+the despot-demon ruled every feeling and every thought. Far more intense
+than the passion of the gamester was the frantic yet sublime desire that
+mastered the breast of Glyndon. He would be the rival of Zanoni, not in
+human and perishable affections, but in preternatural and eternal lore.
+He would have laid down life with content--nay, rapture--as the price of
+learning those solemn secrets which separated the stranger from mankind.
+Enamoured of the goddess of goddesses, he stretched forth his arms--the
+wild Ixion--and embraced a cloud!
+
+The night was most lovely and serene, and the waves scarcely rippled at
+his feet as the Englishman glided on by the cool and starry beach. At
+length he arrived at the spot, and there, leaning against the broken
+pillar, he beheld a man wrapped in a long mantle, and in an attitude
+of profound repose. He approached, and uttered the name of Zanoni. The
+figure turned, and he saw the face of a stranger: a face not stamped by
+the glorious beauty of Zanoni, but equally majestic in its aspect, and
+perhaps still more impressive from the mature age and the passionless
+depth of thought that characterised the expanded forehead, and deep-set
+but piercing eyes.
+
+“You seek Zanoni,” said the stranger; “he will be here anon; but,
+perhaps, he whom you see before you is more connected with your destiny,
+and more disposed to realise your dreams.”
+
+“Hath the earth, then, another Zanoni?”
+
+“If not,” replied the stranger, “why do you cherish the hope and the
+wild faith to be yourself a Zanoni? Think you that none others
+have burned with the same godlike dream? Who, indeed in his first
+youth,--youth when the soul is nearer to the heaven from which it
+sprang, and its divine and primal longings are not all effaced by the
+sordid passions and petty cares that are begot in time,--who is there
+in youth that has not nourished the belief that the universe has
+secrets not known to the common herd, and panted, as the hart for the
+water-springs, for the fountains that lie hid and far away amidst the
+broad wilderness of trackless science? The music of the fountain is
+heard in the soul WITHIN, till the steps, deceived and erring, rove away
+from its waters, and the wanderer dies in the mighty desert. Think you
+that none who have cherished the hope have found the truth, or that the
+yearning after the Ineffable Knowledge was given to us utterly in vain?
+No! Every desire in human hearts is but a glimpse of things that exist,
+alike distant and divine. No! in the world there have been from age to
+age some brighter and happier spirits who have attained to the air in
+which the beings above mankind move and breathe. Zanoni, great though
+he be, stands not alone. He has had his predecessors, and long lines of
+successors may be yet to come.”
+
+“And will you tell me,” said Glyndon, “that in yourself I behold one
+of that mighty few over whom Zanoni has no superiority in power and
+wisdom?”
+
+“In me,” answered the stranger, “you see one from whom Zanoni himself
+learned some of his loftiest secrets. On these shores, on this spot,
+have I stood in ages that your chroniclers but feebly reach. The
+Phoenician, the Greek, the Oscan, the Roman, the Lombard, I have seen
+them all!--leaves gay and glittering on the trunk of the universal life,
+scattered in due season and again renewed; till, indeed, the same race
+that gave its glory to the ancient world bestowed a second youth upon
+the new. For the pure Greeks, the Hellenes, whose origin has bewildered
+your dreaming scholars, were of the same great family as the Norman
+tribe, born to be the lords of the universe, and in no land on earth
+destined to become the hewers of wood. Even the dim traditions of the
+learned, which bring the sons of Hellas from the vast and undetermined
+territories of Northern Thrace, to be the victors of the pastoral
+Pelasgi, and the founders of the line of demi-gods; which assign to a
+population bronzed beneath the suns of the West, the blue-eyed Minerva
+and the yellow-haired Achilles (physical characteristics of the North);
+which introduce, amongst a pastoral people, warlike aristocracies and
+limited monarchies, the feudalism of the classic time,--even these might
+serve you to trace back the primeval settlements of the Hellenes to the
+same region whence, in later times, the Norman warriors broke on
+the dull and savage hordes of the Celt, and became the Greeks of the
+Christian world. But this interests you not, and you are wise in
+your indifference. Not in the knowledge of things without, but in the
+perfection of the soul within, lies the empire of man aspiring to be
+more than man.”
+
+“And what books contain that science; from what laboratory is it
+wrought?”
+
+“Nature supplies the materials; they are around you in your daily walks.
+In the herbs that the beast devours and the chemist disdains to cull; in
+the elements from which matter in its meanest and its mightiest shapes
+is deduced; in the wide bosom of the air; in the black abysses of the
+earth; everywhere are given to mortals the resources and libraries
+of immortal lore. But as the simplest problems in the simplest of
+all studies are obscure to one who braces not his mind to their
+comprehension; as the rower in yonder vessel cannot tell you why two
+circles can touch each other only in one point,--so though all earth
+were carved over and inscribed with the letters of diviner knowledge,
+the characters would be valueless to him who does not pause to inquire
+the language and meditate the truth. Young man, if thy imagination is
+vivid, if thy heart is daring, if thy curiosity is insatiate, I will
+accept thee as my pupil. But the first lessons are stern and dread.”
+
+“If thou hast mastered them, why not I?” answered Glyndon, boldly. “I
+have felt from my boyhood that strange mysteries were reserved for my
+career; and from the proudest ends of ordinary ambition I have carried
+my gaze into the cloud and darkness that stretch beyond. The instant I
+beheld Zanoni, I felt as if I had discovered the guide and the tutor for
+which my youth had idly languished and vainly burned.”
+
+“And to me his duty is transferred,” replied the stranger. “Yonder lies,
+anchored in the bay, the vessel in which Zanoni seeks a fairer home;
+a little while and the breeze will rise, the sail will swell; and the
+stranger will have passed, like a wind, away. Still, like the wind, he
+leaves in thy heart the seeds that may bear the blossom and the fruit.
+Zanoni hath performed his task,--he is wanted no more; the perfecter of
+his work is at thy side. He comes! I hear the dash of the oar. You will
+have your choice submitted to you. According as you decide we shall meet
+again.” With these words the stranger moved slowly away, and disappeared
+beneath the shadow of the cliffs. A boat glided rapidly across the
+waters: it touched land; a man leaped on shore, and Glyndon recognised
+Zanoni.
+
+“I give thee, Glyndon,--I give thee no more the option of happy love and
+serene enjoyment. That hour is past, and fate has linked the hand that
+might have been thine own to mine. But I have ample gifts to bestow
+upon thee, if thou wilt abandon the hope that gnaws thy heart, and the
+realisation of which even _I_ have not the power to foresee. Be thine
+ambition human, and I can gratify it to the full. Men desire four things
+in life,--love, wealth, fame, power. The first I cannot give thee, the
+rest are at my disposal. Select which of them thou wilt, and let us part
+in peace.”
+
+“Such are not the gifts I covet. I choose knowledge; that knowledge must
+be thine own. For this, and for this alone, I surrendered the love of
+Viola; this, and this alone, must be my recompense.”
+
+“I cannot gain say thee, though I can warn. The desire to learn does not
+always contain the faculty to acquire. I can give thee, it is true, the
+teacher,--the rest must depend on thee. Be wise in time, and take that
+which I can assure to thee.”
+
+“Answer me but these questions, and according to your answer I will
+decide. Is it in the power of man to attain intercourse with the beings
+of other worlds? Is it in the power of man to influence the elements,
+and to insure life against the sword and against disease?”
+
+“All this may be possible,” answered Zanoni, evasively, “to the few; but
+for one who attains such secrets, millions may perish in the attempt.”
+
+“One question more. Thou--”
+
+“Beware! Of myself, as I have said before, I render no account.”
+
+“Well, then, the stranger I have met this night,--are his boasts to be
+believed? Is he in truth one of the chosen seers whom you allow to have
+mastered the mysteries I yearn to fathom?”
+
+“Rash man,” said Zanoni, in a tone of compassion, “thy crisis is past,
+and thy choice made! I can only bid thee be bold and prosper; yes, I
+resign thee to a master who HAS the power and the will to open to thee
+the gates of an awful world. Thy weal or woe are as nought in the eyes
+of his relentless wisdom. I would bid him spare thee, but he will heed
+me not. Mejnour, receive thy pupil!” Glyndon turned, and his heart beat
+when he perceived that the stranger, whose footsteps he had not heard
+upon the pebbles, whose approach he had not beheld in the moonlight, was
+once more by his side.
+
+“Farewell,” resumed Zanoni; “thy trial commences. When next we meet,
+thou wilt be the victim or the victor.”
+
+Glyndon’s eyes followed the receding form of the mysterious stranger.
+He saw him enter the boat, and he then for the first time noticed that
+besides the rowers there was a female, who stood up as Zanoni gained the
+boat. Even at the distance he recognised the once-adored form of Viola.
+She waved her hand to him, and across the still and shining air came
+her voice, mournfully and sweetly, in her mother’s tongue, “Farewell,
+Clarence,--I forgive thee!--farewell, farewell!”
+
+He strove to answer; but the voice touched a chord at his heart, and
+the words failed him. Viola was then lost forever, gone with this dread
+stranger; darkness was round her lot! And he himself had decided her
+fate and his own! The boat bounded on, the soft waves flashed and
+sparkled beneath the oars, and it was along one sapphire track of
+moonlight that the frail vessel bore away the lovers. Farther and
+farther from his gaze sped the boat, till at last the speck, scarcely
+visible, touched the side of the ship that lay lifeless in the glorious
+bay. At that instant, as if by magic, up sprang, with a glad murmur, the
+playful and freshening wind: and Glyndon turned to Mejnour and broke the
+silence.
+
+“Tell me--if thou canst read the future--tell me that HER lot will be
+fair, and that HER choice at least is wise?”
+
+“My pupil!” answered Mejnour, in a voice the calmness of which well
+accorded with the chilling words, “thy first task must be to withdraw
+all thought, feeling, sympathy from others. The elementary stage of
+knowledge is to make self, and self alone, thy study and thy world.
+Thou hast decided thine own career; thou hast renounced love; thou hast
+rejected wealth, fame, and the vulgar pomps of power. What, then, are
+all mankind to thee? To perfect thy faculties, and concentrate thy
+emotions, is henceforth thy only aim!”
+
+“And will happiness be the end?”
+
+“If happiness exist,” answered Mejnour, “it must be centred in a SELF to
+which all passion is unknown. But happiness is the last state of being;
+and as yet thou art on the threshold of the first.”
+
+As Mejnour spoke, the distant vessel spread its sails to the wind,
+and moved slowly along the deep. Glyndon sighed, and the pupil and the
+master retraced their steps towards the city.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV. -- THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD.
+
+     Bey hinter ihm was will! Ich heb ihn auf.
+     “Das Verschleierte Bildzu Sais”
+
+     (Be behind what there may,--I raise the veil.)
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.I.
+
+     Come vittima io vengo all’ ara.
+     “Metast.,” At. ii. Sc. 7.
+
+     (As a victim I go to the altar.)
+
+It was about a month after the date of Zanoni’s departure and Glyndon’s
+introduction to Mejnour, when two Englishmen were walking, arm-in-arm,
+through the Toledo.
+
+“I tell you,” said one (who spoke warmly), “that if you have a particle
+of common-sense left in you, you will accompany me to England. This
+Mejnour is an imposter more dangerous, because more in earnest, than
+Zanoni. After all, what do his promises amount to? You allow that
+nothing can be more equivocal. You say that he has left Naples,--that he
+has selected a retreat more congenial than the crowded thoroughfares of
+men to the studies in which he is to initiate you; and this retreat is
+among the haunts of the fiercest bandits of Italy,--haunts which justice
+itself dares not penetrate. Fitting hermitage for a sage! I tremble for
+you. What if this stranger--of whom nothing is known--be leagued with
+the robbers; and these lures for your credulity bait but the traps
+for your property,--perhaps your life? You might come off cheaply by
+a ransom of half your fortune. You smile indignantly! Well, put
+common-sense out of the question; take your own view of the matter.
+You are to undergo an ordeal which Mejnour himself does not profess to
+describe as a very tempting one. It may, or it may not, succeed: if it
+does not, you are menaced with the darkest evils; and if it does, you
+cannot be better off than the dull and joyless mystic whom you have
+taken for a master. Away with this folly; enjoy youth while it is left
+to you; return with me to England; forget these dreams; enter your
+proper career; form affections more respectable than those which lured
+you awhile to an Italian adventuress. Attend to your fortune, make
+money, and become a happy and distinguished man. This is the advice of
+sober friendship; yet the promises I hold out to you are fairer than
+those of Mejnour.”
+
+“Mervale,” said Glyndon, doggedly, “I cannot, if I would, yield to
+your wishes. A power that is above me urges me on; I cannot resist
+its influence. I will proceed to the last in the strange career I have
+commenced. Think of me no more. Follow yourself the advice you give to
+me, and be happy.”
+
+“This is madness,” said Mervale; “your health is already failing; you
+are so changed I should scarcely know you. Come; I have already had your
+name entered in my passport; in another hour I shall be gone, and you,
+boy that you are, will be left, without a friend, to the deceits of your
+own fancy and the machinations of this relentless mountebank.”
+
+“Enough,” said Glyndon, coldly; “you cease to be an effective counsellor
+when you suffer your prejudices to be thus evident. I have already had
+ample proof,” added the Englishman, and his pale cheek grew more pale,
+“of the power of this man,--if man he be, which I sometimes doubt,--and,
+come life, come death, I will not shrink from the paths that allure me.
+Farewell, Mervale; if we never meet again,--if you hear, amidst our old
+and cheerful haunts, that Clarence Glyndon sleeps the last sleep by the
+shores of Naples, or amidst yon distant hills, say to the friends of
+our youth, ‘He died worthily, as thousands of martyr-students have died
+before him, in the pursuit of knowledge.’”
+
+He wrung Mervale’s hand as he spoke, darted from his side, and
+disappeared amidst the crowd.
+
+By the corner of the Toledo he was arrested by Nicot.
+
+“Ah, Glyndon! I have not seen you this month. Where have you hid
+yourself? Have you been absorbed in your studies?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I am about to leave Naples for Paris. Will you accompany me? Talent of
+all order is eagerly sought for there, and will be sure to rise.”
+
+“I thank you; I have other schemes for the present.”
+
+“So laconic!--what ails you? Do you grieve for the loss of the
+Pisani? Take example by me. I have already consoled myself with Bianca
+Sacchini,--a handsome woman, enlightened, no prejudices. A valuable
+creature I shall find her, no doubt. But as for this Zanoni!”
+
+“What of him?”
+
+“If ever I paint an allegorical subject, I will take his likeness as
+Satan. Ha, ha! a true painter’s revenge,--eh? And the way of the world,
+too! When we can do nothing else against a man whom we hate, we can at
+least paint his effigies as the Devil’s. Seriously, though: I abhor that
+man.”
+
+“Wherefore?’
+
+“Wherefore! Has he not carried off the wife and the dowry I had marked
+for myself! Yet, after all,” added Nicot, musingly, “had he served
+instead of injured me, I should have hated him all the same. His very
+form, and his very face, made me at once envy and detest him. I felt
+that there is something antipathetic in our natures. I feel, too, that
+we shall meet again, when Jean Nicot’s hate may be less impotent. We,
+too, cher confrere,--we, too, may meet again! Vive la Republique! I to
+my new world!”
+
+“And I to mine. Farewell!”
+
+That day Mervale left Naples; the next morning Glyndon also quitted
+the City of Delight alone, and on horseback. He bent his way into those
+picturesque but dangerous parts of the country which at that time were
+infested by banditti, and which few travellers dared to pass, even in
+broad daylight, without a strong escort. A road more lonely cannot well
+be conceived than that on which the hoofs of his steed, striking upon
+the fragments of rock that encumbered the neglected way, woke a dull
+and melancholy echo. Large tracts of waste land, varied by the rank and
+profuse foliage of the South, lay before him; occasionally a wild goat
+peeped down from some rocky crag, or the discordant cry of a bird of
+prey, startled in its sombre haunt, was heard above the hills. These
+were the only signs of life; not a human being was met,--not a hut was
+visible. Wrapped in his own ardent and solemn thoughts, the young man
+continued his way, till the sun had spent its noonday heat, and a breeze
+that announced the approach of eve sprung up from the unseen ocean
+which lay far distant to his right. It was then that a turn in the road
+brought before him one of those long, desolate, gloomy villages which
+are found in the interior of the Neapolitan dominions: and now he came
+upon a small chapel on one side the road, with a gaudily painted image
+of the Virgin in the open shrine. Around this spot, which, in the heart
+of a Christian land, retained the vestige of the old idolatry (for
+just such were the chapels that in the pagan age were dedicated to the
+demon-saints of mythology), gathered six or seven miserable and squalid
+wretches, whom the curse of the leper had cut off from mankind. They
+set up a shrill cry as they turned their ghastly visages towards the
+horseman; and, without stirring from the spot, stretched out their gaunt
+arms, and implored charity in the name of the Merciful Mother! Glyndon
+hastily threw them some small coins, and, turning away his face, clapped
+spurs to his horse, and relaxed not his speed till he entered the
+village. On either side the narrow and miry street, fierce and haggard
+forms--some leaning against the ruined walls of blackened huts, some
+seated at the threshold, some lying at full length in the mud--presented
+groups that at once invoked pity and aroused alarm: pity for their
+squalor, alarm for the ferocity imprinted on their savage aspects. They
+gazed at him, grim and sullen, as he rode slowly up the rugged street;
+sometimes whispering significantly to each other, but without attempting
+to stop his way. Even the children hushed their babble, and ragged
+urchins, devouring him with sparkling eyes, muttered to their mothers;
+“We shall feast well to-morrow!” It was, indeed, one of those hamlets
+in which Law sets not its sober step, in which Violence and Murder house
+secure,--hamlets common then in the wilder parts of Italy, in which the
+peasant was but the gentler name for the robber.
+
+Glyndon’s heart somewhat failed him as he looked around, and the
+question he desired to ask died upon his lips. At length from one of
+the dismal cabins emerged a form superior to the rest. Instead of the
+patched and ragged over-all, which made the only garment of the men he
+had hitherto seen, the dress of this person was characterised by all the
+trappings of the national bravery. Upon his raven hair, the glossy curls
+of which made a notable contrast to the matted and elfin locks of the
+savages around, was placed a cloth cap, with a gold tassel that hung
+down to his shoulder; his mustaches were trimmed with care, and a silk
+kerchief of gay hues was twisted round a well-shaped but sinewy throat;
+a short jacket of rough cloth was decorated with several rows of gilt
+filagree buttons; his nether garments fitted tight to his limbs, and
+were curiously braided; while in a broad parti-coloured sash were placed
+two silver-hilted pistols, and the sheathed knife, usually worn by
+Italians of the lower order, mounted in ivory elaborately carved. A
+small carbine of handsome workmanship was slung across his shoulder and
+completed his costume. The man himself was of middle size, athletic yet
+slender, with straight and regular features, sunburnt, but not swarthy;
+and an expression of countenance which, though reckless and bold, had in
+it frankness rather than ferocity, and, if defying, was not altogether
+unprepossessing.
+
+Glyndon, after eyeing this figure for some moments with great attention,
+checked his rein, and asked the way to the “Castle of the Mountain.”
+
+The man lifted his cap as he heard the question, and, approaching
+Glyndon, laid his hand upon the neck of the horse, and said, in a low
+voice, “Then you are the cavalier whom our patron the signor expected.
+He bade me wait for you here, and lead you to the castle. And indeed,
+signor, it might have been unfortunate if I had neglected to obey the
+command.”
+
+The man then, drawing a little aside, called out to the bystanders in a
+loud voice, “Ho, ho! my friends, pay henceforth and forever all respect
+to this worshipful cavalier. He is the expected guest of our blessed
+patron of the Castle of the Mountain. Long life to him! May he, like his
+host, be safe by day and by night; on the hill and in the waste; against
+the dagger and the bullet,--in limb and in life! Cursed be he who
+touches a hair of his head, or a baioccho in his pouch. Now and forever
+we will protect and honour him,--for the law or against the law; with
+the faith and to the death. Amen! Amen!”
+
+“Amen!” responded, in wild chorus, a hundred voices; and the scattered
+and straggling groups pressed up the street, nearer and nearer to the
+horseman.
+
+“And that he may be known,” continued the Englishman’s strange
+protector, “to the eye and to the ear, I place around him the white
+sash, and I give him the sacred watchword, ‘Peace to the Brave.’ Signor,
+when you wear this sash, the proudest in these parts will bare the head
+and bend the knee. Signor, when you utter this watchword, the bravest
+hearts will be bound to your bidding. Desire you safety, or ask you
+revenge--to gain a beauty, or to lose a foe,--speak but the word, and we
+are yours: we are yours! Is it not so, comrades?”
+
+And again the hoarse voices shouted, “Amen, Amen!”
+
+“Now, signor,” whispered the bravo, “if you have a few coins to spare,
+scatter them amongst the crowd, and let us be gone.”
+
+Glyndon, not displeased at the concluding sentence, emptied his purse
+in the streets; and while, with mingled oaths, blessings, shrieks, and
+yells, men, women, and children scrambled for the money, the bravo,
+taking the rein of the horse, led it a few paces through the village at
+a brisk trot, and then, turning up a narrow lane to the left, in a few
+minutes neither houses nor men were visible, and the mountains closed
+their path on either side. It was then that, releasing the bridle and
+slackening his pace, the guide turned his dark eyes on Glyndon with an
+arch expression, and said,--
+
+“Your Excellency was not, perhaps, prepared for the hearty welcome we
+have given you.”
+
+“Why, in truth, I OUGHT to have been prepared for it, since the signor,
+to whose house I am bound, did not disguise from me the character of the
+neighbourhood. And your name, my friend, if I may so call you?”
+
+“Oh, no ceremonies with me, Excellency. In the village I am generally
+called Maestro Paolo. I had a surname once, though a very equivocal one;
+and I have forgotten THAT since I retired from the world.”
+
+“And was it from disgust, from poverty, or from some--some ebullition
+of passion which entailed punishment, that you betook yourself to the
+mountains?”
+
+“Why, signor,” said the bravo, with a gay laugh, “hermits of my class
+seldom love the confessional. However, I have no secrets while my step
+is in these defiles, my whistle in my pouch, and my carbine at my back.”
+ With that the robber, as if he loved permission to talk at his
+will, hemmed thrice, and began with much humour; though, as his tale
+proceeded, the memories it roused seemed to carry him farther than he
+at first intended, and reckless and light-hearted ease gave way to
+that fierce and varied play of countenance and passion of gesture which
+characterise the emotions of his countrymen.
+
+“I was born at Terracina,--a fair spot, is it not? My father was a
+learned monk of high birth; my mother--Heaven rest her!--an innkeeper’s
+pretty daughter. Of course there could be no marriage in the case;
+and when I was born, the monk gravely declared my appearance to be
+miraculous. I was dedicated from my cradle to the altar; and my head was
+universally declared to be the orthodox shape for a cowl. As I grew up,
+the monk took great pains with my education; and I learned Latin and
+psalmody as soon as less miraculous infants learn crowing. Nor did the
+holy man’s care stint itself to my interior accomplishments. Although
+vowed to poverty, he always contrived that my mother should have
+her pockets full; and between her pockets and mine there was soon
+established a clandestine communication; accordingly, at fourteen,
+I wore my cap on one side, stuck pistols in my belt, and assumed the
+swagger of a cavalier and a gallant. At that age my poor mother died;
+and about the same period my father, having written a History of the
+Pontifical Bulls, in forty volumes, and being, as I said, of high birth,
+obtained a cardinal’s hat. From that time he thought fit to disown your
+humble servant. He bound me over to an honest notary at Naples, and gave
+me two hundred crowns by way of provision. Well, signor, I saw enough of
+the law to convince me that I should never be rogue enough to shine in
+the profession. So, instead of spoiling parchment, I made love to the
+notary’s daughter. My master discovered our innocent amusement, and
+turned me out of doors; that was disagreeable. But my Ninetta loved
+me, and took care that I should not lie out in the streets with the
+Lazzaroni. Little jade! I think I see her now with her bare feet, and
+her finger to her lips, opening the door in the summer nights, and
+bidding me creep softly into the kitchen, where, praised be the saints!
+a flask and a manchet always awaited the hungry amoroso. At last,
+however, Ninetta grew cold. It is the way of the sex, signor. Her
+father found her an excellent marriage in the person of a withered old
+picture-dealer. She took the spouse, and very properly clapped the door
+in the face of the lover. I was not disheartened, Excellency; no, not I.
+Women are plentiful while we are young. So, without a ducat in my pocket
+or a crust for my teeth, I set out to seek my fortune on board of a
+Spanish merchantman. That was duller work than I expected; but luckily
+we were attacked by a pirate,--half the crew were butchered, the
+rest captured. I was one of the last: always in luck, you see,
+signor,--monks’ sons have a knack that way! The captain of the pirates
+took a fancy to me. ‘Serve with us?’ said he. ‘Too happy,’ said I.
+Behold me, then, a pirate! O jolly life! how I blessed the old notary
+for turning me out of doors! What feasting, what fighting, what wooing,
+what quarrelling! Sometimes we ran ashore and enjoyed ourselves like
+princes; sometimes we lay in a calm for days together on the loveliest
+sea that man ever traversed. And then, if the breeze rose and a sail
+came in sight, who so merry as we? I passed three years in that charming
+profession, and then, signor, I grew ambitious. I caballed against the
+captain; I wanted his post. One still night we struck the blow. The ship
+was like a log in the sea, no land to be seen from the mast-head, the
+waves like glass, and the moon at its full. Up we rose, thirty of us and
+more. Up we rose with a shout; we poured into the captain’s cabin, I at
+the head. The brave old boy had caught the alarm, and there he stood at
+the doorway, a pistol in each hand; and his one eye (he had only one)
+worse to meet than the pistols were.
+
+“‘Yield!’ cried I; ‘your life shall be safe.’
+
+“‘Take that,’ said he, and whiz went the pistol; but the saints took
+care of their own, and the ball passed by my cheek, and shot the
+boatswain behind me. I closed with the captain, and the other pistol
+went off without mischief in the struggle. Such a fellow he was,--six
+feet four without his shoes! Over we went, rolling each on the other.
+Santa Maria! no time to get hold of one’s knife. Meanwhile all the crew
+were up, some for the captain, some for me,--clashing and firing, and
+swearing and groaning, and now and then a heavy splash in the sea. Fine
+supper for the sharks that night! At last old Bilboa got uppermost; out
+flashed his knife; down it came, but not in my heart. No! I gave my left
+arm as a shield; and the blade went through to the hilt, with the blood
+spurting up like the rain from a whale’s nostril! With the weight of the
+blow the stout fellow came down so that his face touched mine; with
+my right hand I caught him by the throat, turned him over like a lamb,
+signor, and faith it was soon all up with him: the boatswain’s brother,
+a fat Dutchman, ran him through with a pike.
+
+“‘Old fellow,’ said I, as he turned his terrible eye to me, ‘I bear
+you no malice, but we must try to get on in the world, you know.’ The
+captain grinned and gave up the ghost. I went upon deck,--what a sight!
+Twenty bold fellows stark and cold, and the moon sparkling on the
+puddles of blood as calmly as if it were water. Well, signor, the
+victory was ours, and the ship mine; I ruled merrily enough for six
+months. We then attacked a French ship twice our size; what sport it
+was! And we had not had a good fight so long, we were quite like virgins
+at it! We got the best of it, and won ship and cargo. They wanted to
+pistol the captain, but that was against my laws: so we gagged him, for
+he scolded as loud as if we were married to him; left him and the
+rest of his crew on board our own vessel, which was terribly battered;
+clapped our black flag on the Frenchman’s, and set off merrily, with a
+brisk wind in our favour. But luck deserted us on forsaking our own dear
+old ship. A storm came on, a plank struck; several of us escaped in a
+boat; we had lots of gold with us, but no water. For two days and two
+nights we suffered horribly; but at last we ran ashore near a French
+seaport. Our sorry plight moved compassion, and as we had money, we were
+not suspected,--people only suspect the poor. Here we soon recovered
+our fatigues, rigged ourselves out gayly, and your humble servant was
+considered as noble a captain as ever walked deck. But now, alas! my
+fate would have it that I should fall in love with a silk-mercer’s
+daughter. Ah, how I loved her!--the pretty Clara! Yes, I loved her
+so well that I was seized with horror at my past life! I resolved to
+repent, to marry her, and settle down into an honest man. Accordingly, I
+summoned my messmates, told them my resolution, resigned my command,
+and persuaded them to depart. They were good fellows, engaged with a
+Dutchman, against whom I heard afterwards they made a successful mutiny,
+but I never saw them more. I had two thousand crowns still left; with
+this sum I obtained the consent of the silk-mercer, and it was agreed
+that I should become a partner in the firm. I need not say that no one
+suspected that I had been so great a man, and I passed for a Neapolitan
+goldsmith’s son instead of a cardinal’s. I was very happy then, signor,
+very,--I could not have harmed a fly! Had I married Clara, I had been as
+gentle a mercer as ever handled a measure.”
+
+The bravo paused a moment, and it was easy to see that he felt more than
+his words and tone betokened. “Well, well, we must not look back at the
+past too earnestly,--the sunlight upon it makes one’s eyes water. The
+day was fixed for our wedding,--it approached. On the evening before the
+appointed day, Clara, her mother, her little sister, and myself, were
+walking by the port; and as we looked on the sea, I was telling them
+old gossip-tales of mermaids and sea-serpents, when a red-faced,
+bottle-nosed Frenchman clapped himself right before me, and, placing his
+spectacles very deliberately astride his proboscis, echoed out, ‘Sacre,
+mille tonnerres! this is the damned pirate who boarded the “Niobe”!’”
+
+“‘None of your jests,’ said I, mildly. ‘Ho, ho!’ said he; ‘I can’t be
+mistaken; help there!’ and he griped me by the collar. I replied, as
+you may suppose, by laying him in the kennel; but it would not do. The
+French captain had a French lieutenant at his back, whose memory was as
+good as his chief’s. A crowd assembled; other sailors came up: the
+odds were against me. I slept that night in prison; and in a few weeks
+afterwards I was sent to the galleys. They spared my life, because the
+old Frenchman politely averred that I had made my crew spare his. You
+may believe that the oar and the chain were not to my taste. I and two
+others escaped; they took to the road, and have, no doubt, been long
+since broken on the wheel. I, soft soul, would not commit another crime
+to gain my bread, for Clara was still at my heart with her sweet eyes;
+so, limiting my rogueries to the theft of a beggar’s rags, which I
+compensated by leaving him my galley attire instead, I begged my way
+to the town where I left Clara. It was a clear winter’s day when I
+approached the outskirts of the town. I had no fear of detection, for my
+beard and hair were as good as a mask. Oh, Mother of Mercy! there came
+across my way a funeral procession! There, now you know it; I can tell
+you no more. She had died, perhaps of love, more likely of shame. Can
+you guess how I spent that night?--I stole a pickaxe from a mason’s
+shed, and all alone and unseen, under the frosty heavens, I dug the
+fresh mould from the grave; I lifted the coffin, I wrenched the lid, I
+saw her again--again! Decay had not touched her. She was always pale in
+life! I could have sworn she lived! It was a blessed thing to see her
+once more, and all alone too! But then, at dawn, to give her back to the
+earth,--to close the lid, to throw down the mould, to hear the pebbles
+rattle on the coffin: that was dreadful! Signor, I never knew before,
+and I don’t wish to think now, how valuable a thing human life is. At
+sunrise I was again a wanderer; but now that Clara was gone, my scruples
+vanished, and again I was at war with my betters. I contrived at last,
+at O--, to get taken on board a vessel bound to Leghorn, working out my
+passage. From Leghorn I went to Rome, and stationed myself at the door
+of the cardinal’s palace. Out he came, his gilded coach at the gate.
+
+“‘Ho, father!’ said I; ‘don’t you know me?’
+
+“‘Who are you?’
+
+“‘Your son,’ said I, in a whisper.
+
+“The cardinal drew back, looked at me earnestly, and mused a moment.
+‘All men are my sons,’ quoth he then, very mildly; ‘there is gold for
+thee! To him who begs once, alms are due; to him who begs twice, jails
+are open. Take the hint and molest me no more. Heaven bless thee!’ With
+that he got into his coach, and drove off to the Vatican. His purse
+which he had left behind was well supplied. I was grateful and
+contented, and took my way to Terracina. I had not long passed the
+marshes when I saw two horsemen approach at a canter.
+
+“‘You look poor, friend,’ said one of them, halting; ‘yet you are
+strong.’
+
+“‘Poor men and strong are both serviceable and dangerous, Signor
+Cavalier.’
+
+“‘Well said; follow us.’
+
+“I obeyed, and became a bandit. I rose by degrees; and as I have always
+been mild in my calling, and have taken purses without cutting throats,
+I bear an excellent character, and can eat my macaroni at Naples without
+any danger to life and limb. For the last two years I have settled in
+these parts, where I hold sway, and where I have purchased land. I am
+called a farmer, signor; and I myself now only rob for amusement, and to
+keep my hand in. I trust I have satisfied your curiosity. We are within
+a hundred yards of the castle.”
+
+“And how,” asked the Englishman, whose interest had been much excited
+by his companion’s narrative,--“and how came you acquainted with my
+host?--and by what means has he so well conciliated the goodwill of
+yourself and friends?”
+
+Maestro Paolo turned his black eyes very gravely towards his questioner.
+“Why, signor,” said he, “you must surely know more of the foreign
+cavalier with the hard name than I do. All I can say is, that about
+a fortnight ago I chanced to be standing by a booth in the Toledo at
+Naples, when a sober-looking gentleman touched me by the arm, and said,
+‘Maestro Paolo, I want to make your acquaintance; do me the favour to
+come into yonder tavern, and drink a flask of lacrima.’ ‘Willingly,’
+said I. So we entered the tavern. When we were seated, my new
+acquaintance thus accosted me: ‘The Count d’O-- has offered to let me
+hire his old castle near B--. You know the spot?’
+
+“‘Extremely well; no one has inhabited it for a century at least; it
+is half in ruins, signor. A queer place to hire; I hope the rent is not
+heavy.’
+
+“‘Maestro Paolo,’ said he, ‘I am a philosopher, and don’t care for
+luxuries. I want a quiet retreat for some scientific experiments.
+The castle will suit me very well, provided you will accept me as a
+neighbour, and place me and my friends under your special protection.
+I am rich; but I shall take nothing to the castle worth robbing. I will
+pay one rent to the count, and another to you.’
+
+“With that we soon came to terms; and as the strange signor doubled the
+sum I myself proposed, he is in high favour with all his neighbours. We
+would guard the whole castle against an army. And now, signor, that I
+have been thus frank, be frank with me. Who is this singular cavalier?”
+
+“Who?--he himself told you, a philosopher.”
+
+“Hem! searching for the Philosopher’s Stone,--eh, a bit of a magician;
+afraid of the priests?”
+
+“Precisely; you have hit it.”
+
+“I thought so; and you are his pupil?”
+
+“I am.”
+
+“I wish you well through it,” said the robber, seriously, and crossing
+himself with much devotion; “I am not much better than other people,
+but one’s soul is one’s soul. I do not mind a little honest robbery, or
+knocking a man on the head if need be,--but to make a bargain with the
+devil! Ah, take care, young gentleman, take care!”
+
+“You need not fear,” said Glyndon, smiling; “my preceptor is too wise
+and too good for such a compact. But here we are, I suppose. A noble
+ruin,--a glorious prospect!”
+
+Glyndon paused delightedly, and surveyed the scene before and below with
+the eye of a painter. Insensibly, while listening to the bandit, he had
+wound up a considerable ascent, and now he was upon a broad ledge of
+rock covered with mosses and dwarf shrubs. Between this eminence and
+another of equal height, upon which the castle was built, there was a
+deep but narrow fissure, overgrown with the most profuse foliage, so
+that the eye could not penetrate many yards below the rugged surface of
+the abyss; but the profoundness might be well conjectured by the
+hoarse, low, monotonous roar of waters unseen that rolled below, and the
+subsequent course of which was visible at a distance in a perturbed and
+rapid stream that intersected the waste and desolate valleys.
+
+To the left, the prospect seemed almost boundless,--the extreme
+clearness of the purple air serving to render distinct the features of
+a range of country that a conqueror of old might have deemed in itself
+a kingdom. Lonely and desolate as the road which Glyndon had passed that
+day had appeared, the landscape now seemed studded with castles, spires,
+and villages. Afar off, Naples gleamed whitely in the last rays of the
+sun, and the rose-tints of the horizon melted into the azure of her
+glorious bay. Yet more remote, and in another part of the prospect,
+might be caught, dim and shadowy, and backed by the darkest foliage,
+the ruined pillars of the ancient Posidonia. There, in the midst of his
+blackened and sterile realms, rose the dismal Mount of Fire; while on
+the other hand, winding through variegated plains, to which distance
+lent all its magic, glittered many and many a stream by which Etruscan
+and Sybarite, Roman and Saracen and Norman had, at intervals of ages,
+pitched the invading tent. All the visions of the past--the stormy and
+dazzling histories of Southern Italy--rushed over the artist’s mind as
+he gazed below. And then, slowly turning to look behind, he saw the grey
+and mouldering walls of the castle in which he sought the secrets that
+were to give to hope in the future a mightier empire than memory owns in
+the past. It was one of those baronial fortresses with which Italy was
+studded in the earlier middle ages, having but little of the Gothic
+grace or grandeur which belongs to the ecclesiastical architecture of
+the same time, but rude, vast, and menacing, even in decay. A wooden
+bridge was thrown over the chasm, wide enough to admit two horsemen
+abreast; and the planks trembled and gave back a hollow sound as Glyndon
+urged his jaded steed across.
+
+A road which had once been broad and paved with rough flags, but which
+now was half-obliterated by long grass and rank weeds, conducted to the
+outer court of the castle hard by; the gates were open, and half the
+building in this part was dismantled; the ruins partially hid by ivy
+that was the growth of centuries. But on entering the inner court,
+Glyndon was not sorry to notice that there was less appearance of
+neglect and decay; some wild roses gave a smile to the grey walls, and
+in the centre there was a fountain in which the waters still trickled
+coolly, and with a pleasing murmur, from the jaws of a gigantic Triton.
+Here he was met by Mejnour with a smile.
+
+“Welcome, my friend and pupil,” said he: “he who seeks for Truth can
+find in these solitudes an immortal Academe.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.II.
+
+     And Abaris, so far from esteeming Pythagoras, who taught these
+     things, a necromancer or wizard, rather revered and admired him
+     as something divine.--Iamblich., “Vit. Pythag.”
+
+The attendants whom Mejnour had engaged for his strange abode were such
+as might suit a philosopher of few wants. An old Armenian whom Glyndon
+recognised as in the mystic’s service at Naples, a tall, hard-featured
+woman from the village, recommended by Maestro Paolo, and two
+long-haired, smooth-spoken, but fierce-visaged youths from the
+same place, and honoured by the same sponsorship, constituted
+the establishment. The rooms used by the sage were commodious and
+weather-proof, with some remains of ancient splendour in the faded
+arras that clothed the walls, and the huge tables of costly marble and
+elaborate carving. Glyndon’s sleeping apartment communicated with a kind
+of belvedere, or terrace, that commanded prospects of unrivalled beauty
+and extent, and was separated on the other side by a long gallery, and
+a flight of ten or a dozen stairs, from the private chambers of the
+mystic. There was about the whole place a sombre and yet not displeasing
+depth of repose. It suited well with the studies to which it was now to
+be appropriated.
+
+For several days Mejnour refused to confer with Glyndon on the subjects
+nearest to his heart.
+
+“All without,” said he, “is prepared, but not all within; your own
+soul must grow accustomed to the spot, and filled with the surrounding
+nature; for Nature is the source of all inspiration.”
+
+With these words Mejnour turned to lighter topics. He made the
+Englishman accompany him in long rambles through the wild scenes
+around, and he smiled approvingly when the young artist gave way to the
+enthusiasm which their fearful beauty could not have failed to rouse in
+a duller breast; and then Mejnour poured forth to his wondering pupil
+the stores of a knowledge that seemed inexhaustible and boundless. He
+gave accounts the most curious, graphic, and minute of the various races
+(their characters, habits, creeds, and manners) by which that fair land
+had been successively overrun. It is true that his descriptions could
+not be found in books, and were unsupported by learned authorities; but
+he possessed the true charm of the tale-teller, and spoke of all with
+the animated confidence of a personal witness. Sometimes, too, he would
+converse upon the more durable and the loftier mysteries of Nature with
+an eloquence and a research which invested them with all the colours
+rather of poetry than science. Insensibly the young artist found himself
+elevated and soothed by the lore of his companion; the fever of his wild
+desires was slaked. His mind became more and more lulled into the divine
+tranquillity of contemplation; he felt himself a nobler being, and in
+the silence of his senses he imagined that he heard the voice of his
+soul.
+
+It was to this state that Mejnour evidently sought to bring the
+neophyte, and in this elementary initiation the mystic was like every
+more ordinary sage. For he who seeks to DISCOVER must first reduce
+himself into a kind of abstract idealism, and be rendered up, in solemn
+and sweet bondage, to the faculties which CONTEMPLATE and IMAGINE.
+
+Glyndon noticed that, in their rambles, Mejnour often paused, where the
+foliage was rifest, to gather some herb or flower; and this reminded him
+that he had seen Zanoni similarly occupied. “Can these humble children
+of Nature,” said he one day to Mejnour,--“things that bloom and wither
+in a day, be serviceable to the science of the higher secrets? Is there
+a pharmacy for the soul as well as the body, and do the nurslings of the
+summer minister not only to human health but spiritual immortality?”
+
+“If,” answered Mejnour, “a stranger had visited a wandering tribe before
+one property of herbalism was known to them; if he had told the savages
+that the herbs which every day they trampled under foot were endowed
+with the most potent virtues; that one would restore to health a brother
+on the verge of death; that another would paralyse into idiocy their
+wisest sage; that a third would strike lifeless to the dust their most
+stalwart champion; that tears and laughter, vigour and disease, madness
+and reason, wakefulness and sleep, existence and dissolution, were
+coiled up in those unregarded leaves,--would they not have held him a
+sorcerer or a liar? To half the virtues of the vegetable world mankind
+are yet in the darkness of the savages I have supposed. There are
+faculties within us with which certain herbs have affinity, and over
+which they have power. The moly of the ancients is not all a fable.”
+
+The apparent character of Mejnour differed in much from that of Zanoni;
+and while it fascinated Glyndon less, it subdued and impressed him
+more. The conversation of Zanoni evinced a deep and general interest for
+mankind,--a feeling approaching to enthusiasm for art and beauty. The
+stories circulated concerning his habits elevated the mystery of his
+life by actions of charity and beneficence. And in all this there
+was something genial and humane that softened the awe he created, and
+tended, perhaps, to raise suspicions as to the loftier secrets that he
+arrogated to himself. But Mejnour seemed wholly indifferent to all the
+actual world. If he committed no evil, he seemed equally apathetic to
+good. His deeds relieved no want, his words pitied no distress. What
+we call the heart appeared to have merged into the intellect. He moved,
+thought, and lived like some regular and calm abstraction, rather than
+one who yet retained, with the form, the feelings and sympathies of his
+kind.
+
+Glyndon once, observing the tone of supreme indifference with which he
+spoke of those changes on the face of earth which he asserted he had
+witnessed, ventured to remark to him the distinction he had noted.
+
+“It is true,” said Mejnour, coldly. “My life is the life that
+contemplates,--Zanoni’s is the life that enjoys: when I gather the herb,
+I think but of its uses; Zanoni will pause to admire its beauties.”
+
+“And you deem your own the superior and the loftier existence?”
+
+“No. His is the existence of youth,--mine of age. We have cultivated
+different faculties. Each has powers the other cannot aspire to. Those
+with whom he associates live better,--those who associate with me know
+more.”
+
+“I have heard, in truth,” said Glyndon, “that his companions at Naples
+were observed to lead purer and nobler lives after intercourse with
+Zanoni; yet were they not strange companions, at the best, for a sage?
+This terrible power, too, that he exercises at will, as in the death of
+the Prince di --, and that of the Count Ughelli, scarcely becomes the
+tranquil seeker after good.”
+
+“True,” said Mejnour, with an icy smile; “such must ever be the error of
+those philosophers who would meddle with the active life of mankind. You
+cannot serve some without injuring others; you cannot protect the good
+without warring on the bad; and if you desire to reform the faulty, why,
+you must lower yourself to live with the faulty to know their faults.
+Even so saith Paracelsus, a great man, though often wrong. [‘It is as
+necessary to know evil things as good; for who can know what is good
+without the knowing what is evil?’ etc.--Paracelsus, ‘De Nat. Rer.,’
+lib. 3.) Not mine this folly; I live but in knowledge,--I have no life
+in mankind!”
+
+Another time Glyndon questioned the mystic as to the nature of that
+union or fraternity to which Zanoni had once referred.
+
+“I am right, I suppose,” said he, “in conjecturing that you and himself
+profess to be the brothers of the Rosy Cross?”
+
+“Do you imagine,” answered Mejnour, “that there were no mystic and
+solemn unions of men seeking the same end through the same means before
+the Arabians of Damus, in 1378, taught to a wandering German the secrets
+which founded the Institution of the Rosicrucians? I allow, however,
+that the Rosicrucians formed a sect descended from the greater and
+earlier school. They were wiser than the Alchemists,--their masters are
+wiser than they.”
+
+“And of this early and primary order how many still exist?”
+
+“Zanoni and myself.”
+
+“What, two only!--and you profess the power to teach to all the secret
+that baffles Death?”
+
+“Your ancestor attained that secret; he died rather than survive the
+only thing he loved. We have, my pupil, no arts by which we CAN PUT
+DEATH OUT OF OUR OPTION, or out of the will of Heaven. These walls may
+crush me as I stand. All that we profess to do is but this,--to find
+out the secrets of the human frame; to know why the parts ossify and the
+blood stagnates, and to apply continual preventives to the effects of
+time. This is not magic; it is the art of medicine rightly understood.
+In our order we hold most noble,--first, that knowledge which elevates
+the intellect; secondly, that which preserves the body. But the mere art
+(extracted from the juices and simples) which recruits the animal vigour
+and arrests the progress of decay, or that more noble secret, which I
+will only hint to thee at present, by which HEAT, or CALORIC, as ye
+call it, being, as Heraclitus wisely taught, the primordial principle
+of life, can be made its perpetual renovater,--these I say, would not
+suffice for safety. It is ours also to disarm and elude the wrath of
+men, to turn the swords of our foes against each other, to glide (if
+not incorporeal) invisible to eyes over which we can throw a mist and
+darkness. And this some seers have professed to be the virtue of a stone
+of agate. Abaris placed it in his arrow. I will find you an herb in yon
+valley that will give a surer charm than the agate and the arrow. In one
+word, know this, that the humblest and meanest products of Nature are
+those from which the sublimest properties are to be drawn.”
+
+“But,” said Glyndon, “if possessed of these great secrets, why
+so churlish in withholding their diffusion? Does not the false or
+charlatanic science differ in this from the true and indisputable,--that
+the last communicates to the world the process by which it attains its
+discoveries; the first boasts of marvellous results, and refuses to
+explain the causes?”
+
+“Well said, O Logician of the Schools; but think again. Suppose we were
+to impart all our knowledge to all mankind indiscriminately,--alike to
+the vicious and the virtuous,--should we be benefactors or scourges?
+Imagine the tyrant, the sensualist, the evil and corrupted being
+possessed of these tremendous powers; would he not be a demon let loose
+on earth? Grant that the same privilege be accorded also to the good;
+and in what state would be society? Engaged in a Titan war,--the good
+forever on the defensive, the bad forever in assault. In the present
+condition of the earth, evil is a more active principle than good, and
+the evil would prevail. It is for these reasons that we are not only
+solemnly bound to administer our lore only to those who will not misuse
+and pervert it, but that we place our ordeal in tests that purify
+the passions and elevate the desires. And Nature in this controls and
+assists us: for it places awful guardians and insurmountable barriers
+between the ambition of vice and the heaven of the loftier science.”
+
+Such made a small part of the numerous conversations Mejnour held
+with his pupil,--conversations that, while they appeared to address
+themselves to the reason, inflamed yet more the fancy. It was the very
+disclaiming of all powers which Nature, properly investigated, did
+not suffice to create, that gave an air of probability to those which
+Mejnour asserted Nature might bestow.
+
+Thus days and weeks rolled on; and the mind of Glyndon, gradually fitted
+to this sequestered and musing life, forgot at last the vanities and
+chimeras of the world without.
+
+One evening he had lingered alone and late upon the ramparts, watching
+the stars as, one by one, they broke upon the twilight. Never had he
+felt so sensibly the mighty power of the heavens and the earth upon man;
+how much the springs of our intellectual being are moved and acted upon
+by the solemn influences of Nature. As a patient on whom, slowly and by
+degrees, the agencies of mesmerism are brought to bear, he acknowledged
+to his heart the growing force of that vast and universal magnetism
+which is the life of creation, and binds the atom to the whole. A
+strange and ineffable consciousness of power, of the SOMETHING GREAT
+within the perishable clay, appealed to feelings at once dim and
+glorious,--like the faint recognitions of a holier and former being. An
+impulse, that he could not resist, led him to seek the mystic. He would
+demand, that hour, his initiation into the worlds beyond our world,--he
+was prepared to breathe a diviner air. He entered the castle, and strode
+the shadowy and starlit gallery which conducted to Mejnour’s apartment.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.III.
+
+     Man is the eye of things.--Euryph, “de Vit. Hum.”
+
+     ...There is, therefore, a certain ecstatical or transporting
+     power, which, if at any time it shall be excited or stirred up by
+     an ardent desire and most strong imagination, is able to conduct
+     the spirit of the more outward even to some absent and
+     far-distant object.--Von Helmont.
+
+The rooms that Mejnour occupied consisted of two chambers communicating
+with each other, and a third in which he slept. All these rooms
+were placed in the huge square tower that beetled over the dark and
+bush-grown precipice. The first chamber which Glyndon entered was empty.
+With a noiseless step he passed on, and opened the door that admitted
+into the inner one. He drew back at the threshold, overpowered by a
+strong fragrance which filled the chamber: a kind of mist thickened the
+air rather than obscured it, for this vapour was not dark, but resembled
+a snow-cloud moving slowly, and in heavy undulations, wave upon wave
+regularly over the space. A mortal cold struck to the Englishman’s
+heart, and his blood froze. He stood rooted to the spot; and as his eyes
+strained involuntarily through the vapour, he fancied (for he could not
+be sure that it was not the trick of his imagination) that he saw dim,
+spectre-like, but gigantic forms floating through the mist; or was it
+not rather the mist itself that formed its vapours fantastically into
+those moving, impalpable, and bodiless apparitions? A great painter
+of antiquity is said, in a picture of Hades, to have represented the
+monsters that glide through the ghostly River of the Dead, so artfully,
+that the eye perceived at once that the river itself was but a spectre,
+and the bloodless things that tenanted it had no life, their forms
+blending with the dead waters till, as the eye continued to gaze, it
+ceased to discern them from the preternatural element they were supposed
+to inhabit. Such were the moving outlines that coiled and floated
+through the mist; but before Glyndon had even drawn breath in this
+atmosphere--for his life itself seemed arrested or changed into a kind
+of horrid trance--he felt his hand seized, and he was led from that room
+into the outer one. He heard the door close,--his blood rushed again
+through his veins, and he saw Mejnour by his side. Strong convulsions
+then suddenly seized his whole frame,--he fell to the ground insensible.
+When he recovered, he found himself in the open air in a rude balcony of
+stone that jutted from the chamber, the stars shining serenely over the
+dark abyss below, and resting calmly upon the face of the mystic, who
+stood beside him with folded arms.
+
+“Young man,” said Mejnour, “judge by what you have just felt, how
+dangerous it is to seek knowledge until prepared to receive it. Another
+moment in the air of that chamber and you had been a corpse.”
+
+“Then of what nature was the knowledge that you, once mortal like
+myself, could safely have sought in that icy atmosphere, which it was
+death for me to breathe? Mejnour,” continued Glyndon, and his wild
+desire, sharpened by the very danger he had passed, once more animated
+and nerved him, “I am prepared at least for the first steps. I come to
+you as of old the pupil to the Hierophant, and demand the initiation.”
+
+Mejnour passed his hand over the young man’s heart,--it beat loud,
+regularly, and boldly. He looked at him with something almost like
+admiration in his passionless and frigid features, and muttered, half
+to himself, “Surely, in so much courage the true disciple is found at
+last.” Then, speaking aloud, he added, “Be it so; man’s first initiation
+is in TRANCE. In dreams commences all human knowledge; in dreams
+hovers over measureless space the first faint bridge between spirit and
+spirit,--this world and the worlds beyond! Look steadfastly on yonder
+star!”
+
+Glyndon obeyed, and Mejnour retired into the chamber, from which there
+then slowly emerged a vapour, somewhat paler and of fainter odour than
+that which had nearly produced so fatal an effect on his frame. This,
+on the contrary, as it coiled around him, and then melted in thin spires
+into the air, breathed a refreshing and healthful fragrance. He still
+kept his eyes on the star, and the star seemed gradually to fix and
+command his gaze. A sort of languor next seized his frame, but without,
+as he thought, communicating itself to the mind; and as this crept over
+him, he felt his temples sprinkled with some volatile and fiery essence.
+At the same moment a slight tremor shook his limbs and thrilled through
+his veins. The languor increased, still he kept his gaze upon the star,
+and now its luminous circumference seemed to expand and dilate. It
+became gradually softer and clearer in its light; spreading wider and
+broader, it diffused all space,--all space seemed swallowed up in it.
+And at last, in the midst of a silver shining atmosphere, he felt as if
+something burst within his brain,--as if a strong chain were broken; and
+at that moment a sense of heavenly liberty, of unutterable delight, of
+freedom from the body, of birdlike lightness, seemed to float him
+into the space itself. “Whom, now upon earth, dost thou wish to see?”
+ whispered the voice of Mejnour. “Viola and Zanoni!” answered Glyndon, in
+his heart; but he felt that his lips moved not.
+
+Suddenly at that thought,--through this space, in which nothing save one
+mellow translucent light had been discernible,--a swift succession
+of shadowy landscapes seemed to roll: trees, mountains, cities, seas,
+glided along like the changes of a phantasmagoria; and at last,
+settled and stationary, he saw a cave by the gradual marge of an ocean
+shore,--myrtles and orange-trees clothing the gentle banks. On a height,
+at a distance, gleamed the white but shattered relics of some ruined
+heathen edifice; and the moon, in calm splendour, shining over all,
+literally bathed with its light two forms without the cave, at whose
+feet the blue waters crept, and he thought that he even heard them
+murmur. He recognised both the figures. Zanoni was seated on a fragment
+of stone; Viola, half-reclining by his side, was looking into his face,
+which was bent down to her, and in her countenance was the expression of
+that perfect happiness which belongs to perfect love. “Wouldst thou hear
+them speak?” whispered Mejnour; and again, without sound, Glyndon inly
+answered, “Yes!” Their voices then came to his ear, but in tones that
+seemed to him strange; so subdued were they, and sounding, as it were,
+so far off, that they were as voices heard in the visions of some holier
+men from a distant sphere.
+
+“And how is it,” said Viola, “that thou canst find pleasure in listening
+to the ignorant?”
+
+“Because the heart is never ignorant; because the mysteries of the
+feelings are as full of wonder as those of the intellect. If at times
+thou canst not comprehend the language of my thoughts, at times also I
+hear sweet enigmas in that of thy emotions.”
+
+“Ah, say not so!” said Viola, winding her arm tenderly round his neck,
+and under that heavenly light her face seemed lovelier for its blushes.
+“For the enigmas are but love’s common language, and love should solve
+them. Till I knew thee,--till I lived with thee; till I learned to
+watch for thy footstep when absent: yet even in absence to see
+thee everywhere!--I dreamed not how strong and all-pervading is the
+connection between nature and the human soul!...
+
+“And yet,” she continued, “I am now assured of what I at first
+believed,--that the feelings which attracted me towards thee at first
+were not those of love. I know THAT, by comparing the present with the
+past,--it was a sentiment then wholly of the mind or the spirit! I could
+not hear thee now say, ‘Viola, be happy with another!’”
+
+“And I could not now tell thee so! Ah, Viola, never be weary of assuring
+me that thou art happy!”
+
+“Happy while thou art so. Yet at times, Zanoni, thou art so sad!”
+
+“Because human life is so short; because we must part at last; because
+yon moon shines on when the nightingale sings to it no more! A little
+while, and thine eyes will grow dim, and thy beauty haggard, and these
+locks that I toy with now will be grey and loveless.”
+
+“And thou, cruel one!” said Viola, touchingly, “I shall never see the
+signs of age in thee! But shall we not grow old together, and our eyes
+be accustomed to a change which the heart shall not share!”
+
+Zanoni sighed. He turned away, and seemed to commune with himself.
+
+Glyndon’s attention grew yet more earnest.
+
+“But were it so,” muttered Zanoni; and then looking steadfastly at
+Viola, he said, with a half-smile, “Hast thou no curiosity to learn more
+of the lover thou once couldst believe the agent of the Evil One?”
+
+“None; all that one wishes to know of the beloved one, I know--THAT THOU
+LOVEST ME!”
+
+“I have told thee that my life is apart from others. Wouldst thou not
+seek to share it?”
+
+“I share it now!”
+
+“But were it possible to be thus young and fair forever, till the world
+blazes round us as one funeral pyre!”
+
+“We shall be so, when we leave the world!”
+
+Zanoni was mute for some moments, and at length he said,--
+
+“Canst thou recall those brilliant and aerial dreams which once visited
+thee, when thou didst fancy that thou wert preordained to some fate
+aloof and afar from the common children of the earth?”
+
+“Zanoni, the fate is found.”
+
+“And hast thou no terror of the future?”
+
+“The future! I forget it! Time past and present and to come reposes
+in thy smile. Ah, Zanoni, play not with the foolish credulities of my
+youth! I have been better and humbler since thy presence has dispelled
+the mist of the air. The future!--well, when I have cause to dread it, I
+will look up to heaven, and remember who guides our fate!”
+
+As she lifted her eyes above, a dark cloud swept suddenly over the
+scene. It wrapped the orange-trees, the azure ocean, the dense sands;
+but still the last images that it veiled from the charmed eyes of
+Glyndon were the forms of Viola and Zanoni. The face of the one rapt,
+serene, and radiant; the face of the other, dark, thoughtful, and locked
+in more than its usual rigidness of melancholy beauty and profound
+repose.
+
+“Rouse thyself,” said Mejnour; “thy ordeal has commenced! There are
+pretenders to the solemn science who could have shown thee the
+absent, and prated to thee, in their charlatanic jargon, of the secret
+electricities and the magnetic fluid of whose true properties they know
+but the germs and elements. I will lend thee the books of those glorious
+dupes, and thou wilt find, in the dark ages, how many erring steps have
+stumbled upon the threshold of the mighty learning, and fancied they
+had pierced the temple. Hermes and Albert and Paracelsus, I knew ye all;
+but, noble as ye were, ye were fated to be deceived. Ye had not souls
+of faith, and daring fitted for the destinies at which ye aimed! Yet
+Paracelsus--modest Paracelsus--had an arrogance that soared higher than
+all our knowledge. Ho, ho!--he thought he could make a race of men from
+chemistry; he arrogated to himself the Divine gift,--the breath of life.
+(Paracelsus, ‘De Nat. Rer.,’ lib. i.)
+
+“He would have made men, and, after all, confessed that they could be but
+pygmies! My art is to make men above mankind. But you are impatient of
+my digressions. Forgive me. All these men (they were great dreamers, as
+you desire to be) were intimate friends of mine. But they are dead and
+rotten. They talked of spirits,--but they dreaded to be in other company
+than that of men. Like orators whom I have heard, when I stood by the
+Pnyx of Athens, blazing with words like comets in the assembly, and
+extinguishing their ardour like holiday rockets when they were in the
+field. Ho, ho! Demosthenes, my hero-coward, how nimble were thy heels
+at Chaeronea! And thou art impatient still! Boy, I could tell thee such
+truths of the past as would make thee the luminary of schools. But thou
+lustest only for the shadows of the future. Thou shalt have thy wish.
+But the mind must be first exercised and trained. Go to thy room, and
+sleep; fast austerely, read no books; meditate, imagine, dream, bewilder
+thyself if thou wilt. Thought shapes out its own chaos at last. Before
+midnight, seek me again!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.IV.
+
+     It is fit that we who endeavour to rise to an elevation so
+     sublime, should study first to leave behind carnal affections,
+     the frailty of the senses, the passions that belong to matter;
+     secondly, to learn by what means we may ascend to the climax of
+     pure intellect, united with the powers above, without which never
+     can we gain the lore of secret things, nor the magic that effects
+     true wonders.--Tritemius “On Secret Things and Secret Spirits.”
+
+It wanted still many minutes of midnight, and Glyndon was once more in
+the apartment of the mystic. He had rigidly observed the fast ordained
+to him; and in the rapt and intense reveries into which his excited
+fancy had plunged him, he was not only insensible to the wants of the
+flesh,--he felt above them.
+
+Mejnour, seated beside his disciple, thus addressed him:--
+
+“Man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance. Man’s natural tendency
+is to egotism. Man, in his infancy of knowledge, thinks that all
+creation was formed for him. For several ages he saw in the countless
+worlds that sparkle through space like the bubbles of a shoreless ocean
+only the petty candles, the household torches, that Providence had
+been pleased to light for no other purpose but to make the night more
+agreeable to man. Astronomy has corrected this delusion of human vanity;
+and man now reluctantly confesses that the stars are worlds larger and
+more glorious than his own,--that the earth on which he crawls is a
+scarce visible speck on the vast chart of creation. But in the small as
+in the vast, God is equally profuse of life. The traveller looks upon
+the tree, and fancies its boughs were formed for his shelter in the
+summer sun, or his fuel in the winter frosts. But in each leaf of these
+boughs the Creator has made a world; it swarms with innumerable races.
+Each drop of the water in yon moat is an orb more populous than a
+kingdom is of men. Everywhere, then, in this immense design, science
+brings new life to light. Life is the one pervading principle, and even
+the thing that seems to die and putrify but engenders new life, and
+changes to fresh forms of matter. Reasoning, then, by evident analogy:
+if not a leaf, if not a drop of water, but is, no less than yonder star,
+a habitable and breathing world,--nay, if even man himself is a world to
+other lives, and millions and myriads dwell in the rivers of his blood,
+and inhabit man’s frame as man inhabits earth, commonsense (if your
+schoolmen had it) would suffice to teach that the circumfluent infinite
+which you call space--the countless Impalpable which divides earth
+from the moon and stars--is filled also with its correspondent and
+appropriate life. Is it not a visible absurdity to suppose that being is
+crowded upon every leaf, and yet absent from the immensities of space?
+The law of the Great System forbids the waste even of an atom; it
+knows no spot where something of life does not breathe. In the very
+charnel-house is the nursery of production and animation. Is that true?
+Well, then, can you conceive that space, which is the Infinite itself,
+is alone a waste, is alone lifeless, is less useful to the one design of
+universal being than the dead carcass of a dog, than the peopled leaf,
+than the swarming globule? The microscope shows you the creatures on the
+leaf; no mechanical tube is yet invented to discover the nobler and more
+gifted things that hover in the illimitable air. Yet between these last
+and man is a mysterious and terrible affinity. And hence, by tales and
+legends, not wholly false nor wholly true, have arisen from time to
+time, beliefs in apparitions and spectres. If more common to the earlier
+and simpler tribes than to the men of your duller age, it is but that,
+with the first, the senses are more keen and quick. And as the savage
+can see or scent miles away the traces of a foe, invisible to the gross
+sense of the civilised animal, so the barrier itself between him and
+the creatures of the airy world is less thickened and obscured. Do you
+listen?”
+
+“With my soul!”
+
+“But first, to penetrate this barrier, the soul with which you listen
+must be sharpened by intense enthusiasm, purified from all earthlier
+desires. Not without reason have the so-styled magicians, in all
+lands and times, insisted on chastity and abstemious reverie as the
+communicants of inspiration. When thus prepared, science can be brought
+to aid it; the sight itself may be rendered more subtle, the nerves more
+acute, the spirit more alive and outward, and the element itself--the
+air, the space--may be made, by certain secrets of the higher chemistry,
+more palpable and clear. And this, too, is not magic, as the credulous
+call it; as I have so often said before, magic (or science that violates
+Nature) exists not: it is but the science by which Nature can be
+controlled. Now, in space there are millions of beings not literally
+spiritual, for they have all, like the animalculae unseen by the naked
+eye, certain forms of matter, though matter so delicate, air-drawn, and
+subtle, that it is, as it were, but a film, a gossamer that clothes the
+spirit. Hence the Rosicrucian’s lovely phantoms of sylph and gnome. Yet,
+in truth, these races and tribes differ more widely, each from each,
+than the Calmuc from the Greek,--differ in attributes and powers. In the
+drop of water you see how the animalculae vary, how vast and terrible
+are some of those monster mites as compared with others. Equally so with
+the inhabitants of the atmosphere: some of surpassing wisdom, some of
+horrible malignity; some hostile as fiends to men, others gentle as
+messengers between earth and heaven.
+
+“He who would establish intercourse with these varying beings resembles
+the traveller who would penetrate into unknown lands. He is exposed to
+strange dangers and unconjectured terrors. THAT INTERCOURSE ONCE GAINED,
+I CANNOT SECURE THEE FROM THE CHANCES TO WHICH THY JOURNEY IS EXPOSED.
+I cannot direct thee to paths free from the wanderings of the deadliest
+foes. Thou must alone, and of thyself, face and hazard all. But if thou
+art so enamoured of life as to care only to live on, no matter for what
+ends, recruiting the nerves and veins with the alchemist’s vivifying
+elixir, why seek these dangers from the intermediate tribes? Because the
+very elixir that pours a more glorious life into the frame, so sharpens
+the senses that those larvae of the air become to thee audible and
+apparent; so that, unless trained by degrees to endure the phantoms and
+subdue their malice, a life thus gifted would be the most awful doom
+man could bring upon himself. Hence it is, that though the elixir be
+compounded of the simplest herbs, his frame only is prepared to receive
+it who has gone through the subtlest trials. Nay, some, scared and
+daunted into the most intolerable horror by the sights that burst upon
+their eyes at the first draft, have found the potion less powerful to
+save than the agony and travail of Nature to destroy. To the unprepared
+the elixir is thus but the deadliest poison. Amidst the dwellers of
+the threshold is ONE, too, surpassing in malignity and hatred all her
+tribe,--one whose eyes have paralyzed the bravest, and whose power
+increases over the spirit precisely in proportion to its fear. Does thy
+courage falter?”
+
+“Nay; thy words but kindle it.”
+
+“Follow me, then, and submit to the initiatory labours.”
+
+With that, Mejnour led him into the interior chamber, and proceeded
+to explain to him certain chemical operations which, though extremely
+simple in themselves, Glyndon soon perceived were capable of very
+extraordinary results.
+
+“In the remoter times,” said Mejnour, smiling, “our brotherhood were
+often compelled to recur to delusions to protect realities; and, as
+dexterous mechanicians or expert chemists, they obtained the name
+of sorcerers. Observe how easy to construct is the Spectre Lion that
+attended the renowned Leonardo da Vinci!”
+
+And Glyndon beheld with delighted surprise the simple means by which the
+wildest cheats of the imagination can be formed. The magical landscapes
+in which Baptista Porta rejoiced; the apparent change of the seasons
+with which Albertus Magnus startled the Earl of Holland; nay, even those
+more dread delusions of the Ghost and Image with which the necromancers
+of Heraclea woke the conscience of the conqueror of Plataea
+(Pausanias,--see Plutarch.),--all these, as the showman enchants
+some trembling children on a Christmas Eve with his lantern and
+phantasmagoria, Mejnour exhibited to his pupil.
+
+....
+
+“And now laugh forever at magic! when these, the very tricks, the very
+sports and frivolities of science, were the very acts which men viewed
+with abhorrence, and inquisitors and kings rewarded with the rack and
+the stake.”
+
+“But the alchemist’s transmutation of metals--”
+
+“Nature herself is a laboratory in which metals, and all elements, are
+forever at change. Easy to make gold,--easier, more commodious, and
+cheaper still, to make the pearl, the diamond, and the ruby. Oh, yes;
+wise men found sorcery in this too; but they found no sorcery in the
+discovery that by the simplest combination of things of every-day use
+they could raise a devil that would sweep away thousands of their kind
+by the breath of consuming fire. Discover what will destroy life, and
+you are a great man!--what will prolong it, and you are an imposter!
+Discover some invention in machinery that will make the rich more rich
+and the poor more poor, and they will build you a statue! Discover some
+mystery in art that will equalise physical disparities, and they will
+pull down their own houses to stone you! Ha, ha, my pupil! such is
+the world Zanoni still cares for!--you and I will leave this world to
+itself. And now that you have seen some few of the effects of science,
+begin to learn its grammar.”
+
+Mejnour then set before his pupil certain tasks, in which the rest of
+the night wore itself away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.V.
+
+     Great travell hath the gentle Calidore
+     And toyle endured...
+     There on a day,--He chaunst to spy a sort of shepheard groomes,
+     Playing on pipes and caroling apace.
+     ...He, there besyde
+     Saw a faire damzell.
+     --Spenser, “Faerie Queene,” cant. ix.
+
+For a considerable period the pupil of Mejnour was now absorbed in
+labour dependent on the most vigilant attention, on the most minute and
+subtle calculation. Results astonishing and various rewarded his toils
+and stimulated his interest. Nor were these studies limited to chemical
+discovery,--in which it is permitted me to say that the greatest marvels
+upon the organisation of physical life seemed wrought by experiments
+of the vivifying influence of heat. Mejnour professed to find a
+link between all intellectual beings in the existence of a certain
+all-pervading and invisible fluid resembling electricity, yet distinct
+from the known operations of that mysterious agency--a fluid that
+connected thought to thought with the rapidity and precision of the
+modern telegraph, and the influence of this fluid, according to Mejnour,
+extended to the remotest past,--that is to say, whenever and wheresoever
+man had thought. Thus, if the doctrine were true, all human knowledge
+became attainable through a medium established between the brain of the
+individual inquirer and all the farthest and obscurest regions in the
+universe of ideas. Glyndon was surprised to find Mejnour attached to the
+abstruse mysteries which the Pythagoreans ascribed to the occult science
+of NUMBERS. In this last, new lights glimmered dimly on his eyes; and
+he began to perceive that even the power to predict, or rather to
+calculate, results, might by-- (Here there is an erasure in the MS.)
+
+....
+
+But he observed that the last brief process by which, in each of these
+experiments, the wonder was achieved, Mejnour reserved for himself,
+and refused to communicate the secret. The answer he obtained to his
+remonstrances on this head was more stern than satisfactory:
+
+“Dost thou think,” said Mejnour, “that I would give to the mere pupil,
+whose qualities are not yet tried, powers that might change the face of
+the social world? The last secrets are intrusted only to him of whose
+virtue the Master is convinced. Patience! It is labour itself that is
+the great purifier of the mind; and by degrees the secrets will grow
+upon thyself as thy mind becomes riper to receive them.”
+
+At last Mejnour professed himself satisfied with the progress made by
+his pupil. “The hour now arrives,” he said, “when thou mayst pass the
+great but airy barrier,--when thou mayst gradually confront the terrible
+Dweller of the Threshold. Continue thy labours--continue to surpass
+thine impatience for results until thou canst fathom the causes. I leave
+thee for one month; if at the end of that period, when I return, the
+tasks set thee are completed, and thy mind prepared by contemplation
+and austere thought for the ordeal, I promise thee the ordeal shall
+commence. One caution alone I give thee: regard it as a peremptory
+command, enter not this chamber!” (They were then standing in the room
+where their experiments had been chiefly made, and in which Glyndon, on
+the night he had sought the solitude of the mystic, had nearly fallen a
+victim to his intrusion.)
+
+“Enter not this chamber till my return; or, above all, if by any search
+for materials necessary to thy toils thou shouldst venture hither,
+forbear to light the naphtha in those vessels, and to open the vases on
+yonder shelves. I leave the key of the room in thy keeping, in order to
+try thy abstinence and self-control. Young man, this very temptation is
+a part of thy trial.”
+
+With that, Mejnour placed the key in his hands; and at sunset he left
+the castle.
+
+For several days Glyndon continued immersed in employments which
+strained to the utmost all the faculties of his intellect. Even the most
+partial success depended so entirely on the abstraction of the mind, and
+the minuteness of its calculations, that there was scarcely room for any
+other thought than those absorbed in the occupation. And doubtless this
+perpetual strain of the faculties was the object of Mejnour in works
+that did not seem exactly pertinent to the purposes in view. As the
+study of the elementary mathematics, for example, is not so profitable
+in the solving of problems, useless in our after-callings, as it is
+serviceable in training the intellect to the comprehension and analysis
+of general truths.
+
+But in less than half the time which Mejnour had stated for the duration
+of his absence, all that the mystic had appointed to his toils was
+completed by the pupil; and then his mind, thus relieved from the
+drudgery and mechanism of employment, once more sought occupation in dim
+conjecture and restless fancies. His inquisitive and rash nature grew
+excited by the prohibition of Mejnour, and he found himself gazing
+too often, with perturbed and daring curiosity, upon the key of the
+forbidden chamber. He began to feel indignant at a trial of constancy
+which he deemed frivolous and puerile. What nursery tales of Bluebeard
+and his closet were revived to daunt and terrify him! How could the
+mere walls of a chamber, in which he had so often securely pursued his
+labours, start into living danger? If haunted, it could be but by those
+delusions which Mejnour had taught him to despise,--a shadowy lion,--a
+chemical phantasm! Tush! he lost half his awe of Mejnour, when he
+thought that by such tricks the sage could practise upon the very
+intellect he had awakened and instructed! Still he resisted the impulses
+of his curiosity and his pride, and, to escape from their dictation, he
+took long rambles on the hills, or amidst the valleys that surrounded
+the castle,--seeking by bodily fatigue to subdue the unreposing mind.
+One day suddenly emerging from a dark ravine, he came upon one of those
+Italian scenes of rural festivity and mirth in which the classic age
+appears to revive. It was a festival, partly agricultural, partly
+religious, held yearly by the peasants of that district. Assembled
+at the outskirts of a village, animated crowds, just returned from a
+procession to a neighbouring chapel, were now forming themselves into
+groups: the old to taste the vintage, the young to dance,--all to be
+gay and happy. This sudden picture of easy joy and careless ignorance,
+contrasting so forcibly with the intense studies and that parching
+desire for wisdom which had so long made up his own life, and burned at
+his own heart, sensibly affected Glyndon. As he stood aloof and gazing
+on them, the young man felt once more that he was young. The memory of
+all he had been content to sacrifice spoke to him like the sharp voice
+of remorse. The flitting forms of the women in their picturesque attire,
+their happy laughter ringing through the cool, still air of the autumn
+noon, brought back to the heart, or rather perhaps to the senses, the
+images of his past time, the “golden shepherd hours,” when to live was
+but to enjoy.
+
+He approached nearer and nearer to the scene, and suddenly a noisy
+group swept round him; and Maestro Paolo, tapping him familiarly on the
+shoulder, exclaimed in a hearty voice, “Welcome, Excellency!--we are
+rejoiced to see you amongst us.” Glyndon was about to reply to this
+salutation, when his eyes rested upon the face of a young girl leaning
+on Paolo’s arm, of a beauty so attractive that his colour rose and his
+heart beat as he encountered her gaze. Her eyes sparkled with a roguish
+and petulant mirth, her parted lips showed teeth like pearls; as if
+impatient at the pause of her companion from the revel of the rest,
+her little foot beat the ground to a measure that she half-hummed,
+half-chanted. Paolo laughed as he saw the effect the girl had produced
+upon the young foreigner.
+
+“Will you not dance, Excellency? Come, lay aside your greatness, and be
+merry, like us poor devils. See how our pretty Fillide is longing for a
+partner. Take compassion on her.”
+
+Fillide pouted at this speech, and, disengaging her arm from Paolo’s,
+turned away, but threw over her shoulder a glance half inviting, half
+defying. Glyndon, almost involuntarily, advanced to her, and addressed
+her.
+
+Oh, yes; he addresses her! She looks down, and smiles. Paolo leaves them
+to themselves, sauntering off with a devil-me-carish air. Fillide speaks
+now, and looks up at the scholar’s face with arch invitation. He shakes
+his head; Fillide laughs, and her laugh is silvery. She points to a gay
+mountaineer, who is tripping up to her merrily. Why does Glyndon feel
+jealous? Why, when she speaks again, does he shake his head no more? He
+offers his hand; Fillide blushes, and takes it with a demure coquetry.
+What! is it so, indeed! They whirl into the noisy circle of the
+revellers. Ha! ha! is not this better than distilling herbs, and
+breaking thy brains on Pythagorean numbers? How lightly Fillide bounds
+along! How her lithesome waist supples itself to thy circling arm!
+Tara-ra-tara, ta-tara, rara-ra! What the devil is in the measure that
+it makes the blood course like quicksilver through the veins? Was there
+ever a pair of eyes like Fillide’s? Nothing of the cold stars there! Yet
+how they twinkle and laugh at thee! And that rosy, pursed-up mouth that
+will answer so sparingly to thy flatteries, as if words were a waste of
+time, and kisses were their proper language. Oh, pupil of Mejnour! Oh,
+would-be Rosicrucian, Platonist, Magian, I know not what! I am ashamed
+of thee! What, in the names of Averroes and Burri and Agrippa and Hermes
+have become of thy austere contemplations? Was it for this thou didst
+resign Viola? I don’t think thou hast the smallest recollection of the
+elixir or the Cabala. Take care! What are you about, sir? Why do you
+clasp that small hand locked within your own? Why do you--Tara-rara
+tara-ra tara-rara-ra, rarara, ta-ra, a-ra! Keep your eyes off those
+slender ankles and that crimson bodice! Tara-rara-ra! There they go
+again! And now they rest under the broad trees. The revel has whirled
+away from them. They hear--or do they not hear--the laughter at the
+distance? They see--or if they have their eyes about them, they SHOULD
+see--couple after couple gliding by, love-talking and love-looking. But
+I will lay a wager, as they sit under that tree, and the round sun goes
+down behind the mountains, that they see or hear very little except
+themselves.
+
+“Hollo, Signor Excellency! and how does your partner please you? Come
+and join our feast, loiterers; one dances more merrily after wine.”
+
+Down goes the round sun; up comes the autumn moon. Tara, tara, rarara,
+rarara, tarara-ra! Dancing again; is it a dance, or some movement gayer,
+noisier, wilder still? How they glance and gleam through the night
+shadows, those flitting forms! What confusion!--what order! Ha, that is
+the Tarantula dance; Maestro Paolo foots it bravely! Diavolo, what
+fury! the Tarantula has stung them all. Dance or die; it is fury,--the
+Corybantes, the Maenads, the--Ho, ho! more wine! the Sabbat of the
+Witches at Benevento is a joke to this! From cloud to cloud wanders the
+moon,--now shining, now lost. Dimness while the maiden blushes; light
+when the maiden smiles.
+
+“Fillide, thou art an enchantress!”
+
+“Buona notte, Excellency; you will see me again!”
+
+“Ah, young man,” said an old, decrepit, hollow-eyed octogenarian,
+leaning on his staff, “make the best of your youth. I, too, once had
+a Fillide! I was handsomer than you then! Alas! if we could be always
+young!”
+
+“Always young!” Glyndon started, as he turned his gaze from the fresh,
+fair, rosy face of the girl, and saw the eyes dropping rheum, the yellow
+wrinkled skin, the tottering frame of the old man.
+
+“Ha, ha!” said the decrepit creature, hobbling near to him, and with a
+malicious laugh. “Yet I, too, was young once! Give me a baioccho for a
+glass of aqua vitae!”
+
+Tara, rara, ra-rara, tara, rara-ra! There dances Youth! Wrap thy rags
+round thee, and totter off, Old Age!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.VI.
+
+     Whilest Calidore does follow that faire mayd,
+     Unmindful of his vow and high beheast
+     Which by the Faerie Queene was on him layd.
+     --Spenser, “Faerie Queene,” cant. x. s. 1.
+
+It was that grey, indistinct, struggling interval between the night and
+the dawn, when Clarence stood once more in his chamber. The abstruse
+calculations lying on his table caught his eye, and filled him with a
+sentiment of weariness and distaste. But--“Alas, if we could be
+always young! Oh, thou horrid spectre of the old, rheum-eyed man!
+What apparition can the mystic chamber shadow forth more ugly and more
+hateful than thou? Oh, yes, if we could be always young! But not [thinks
+the neophyte now]--not to labour forever at these crabbed figures and
+these cold compounds of herbs and drugs. No; but to enjoy, to love, to
+revel! What should be the companion of youth but pleasure? And the gift
+of eternal youth may be mine this very hour! What means this prohibition
+of Mejnour’s? Is it not of the same complexion as his ungenerous
+reserve even in the minutest secrets of chemistry, or the numbers of
+his Cabala?--compelling me to perform all the toils, and yet withholding
+from me the knowledge of the crowning result? No doubt he will still,
+on his return, show me that the great mystery CAN be attained; but will
+still forbid ME to attain it. Is it not as if he desired to keep my
+youth the slave to his age; to make me dependent solely on himself; to
+bind me to a journeyman’s service by perpetual excitement to curiosity,
+and the sight of the fruits he places beyond my lips?” These, and many
+reflections still more repining, disturbed and irritated him. Heated
+with wine--excited by the wild revels he had left--he was unable to
+sleep. The image of that revolting Old Age which Time, unless defeated,
+must bring upon himself, quickened the eagerness of his desire for the
+dazzling and imperishable Youth he ascribed to Zanoni. The prohibition
+only served to create a spirit of defiance. The reviving day, laughing
+jocundly through his lattice, dispelled all the fears and superstitions
+that belong to night. The mystic chamber presented to his imagination
+nothing to differ from any other apartment in the castle. What foul or
+malignant apparition could harm him in the light of that blessed sun!
+It was the peculiar, and on the whole most unhappy, contradiction in
+Glyndon’s nature, that while his reasonings led him to doubt,--and doubt
+rendered him in MORAL conduct irresolute and unsteady; he was PHYSICALLY
+brave to rashness. Nor is this uncommon: scepticism and presumption are
+often twins. When a man of this character determines upon any action,
+personal fear never deters him; and for the moral fear, any sophistry
+suffices to self-will. Almost without analysing himself the mental
+process by which his nerves hardened themselves and his limbs moved,
+he traversed the corridor, gained Mejnour’s apartment, and opened the
+forbidden door. All was as he had been accustomed to see it, save
+that on a table in the centre of the room lay open a large volume. He
+approached, and gazed on the characters on the page; they were in a
+cipher, the study of which had made a part of his labours. With but
+slight difficulty he imagined that he interpreted the meaning of the
+first sentences, and that they ran thus:--
+
+“To quaff the inner life, is to see the outer life: to live in defiance
+of time, is to live in the whole. He who discovers the elixir discovers
+what lies in space; for the spirit that vivifies the frame strengthens
+the senses. There is attraction in the elementary principle of light.
+In the lamps of Rosicrucius the fire is the pure elementary principle.
+Kindle the lamps while thou openst the vessel that contains the elixir,
+and the light attracts towards thee those beings whose life is that
+light. Beware of Fear. Fear is the deadliest enemy to Knowledge.” Here
+the ciphers changed their character, and became incomprehensible. But
+had he not read enough? Did not the last sentence suffice?--“Beware of
+Fear!” It was as if Mejnour had purposely left the page open,--as if the
+trial was, in truth, the reverse of the one pretended; as if the mystic
+had designed to make experiment of his COURAGE while affecting but that
+of his FORBEARANCE. Not Boldness, but Fear, was the deadliest enemy
+to Knowledge. He moved to the shelves on which the crystal vases were
+placed; with an untrembling hand he took from one of them the stopper,
+and a delicious odor suddenly diffused itself through the room. The air
+sparkled as if with a diamond-dust. A sense of unearthly delight,--of an
+existence that seemed all spirit, flashed through his whole frame; and
+a faint, low, but exquisite music crept, thrilling, through the chamber.
+At this moment he heard a voice in the corridor calling on his name;
+and presently there was a knock at the door without. “Are you there,
+signor?” said the clear tones of Maestro Paolo. Glyndon hastily reclosed
+and replaced the vial, and bidding Paolo await him in his own apartment,
+tarried till he heard the intruder’s steps depart; he then reluctantly
+quitted the room. As he locked the door, he still heard the dying
+strain of that fairy music; and with a light step and a joyous heart he
+repaired to Paolo, inly resolving to visit again the chamber at an hour
+when his experiment would be safe from interruption.
+
+As he crossed his threshold, Paolo started back, and exclaimed, “Why,
+Excellency! I scarcely recognise you! Amusement, I see, is a great
+beautifier to the young. Yesterday you looked so pale and haggard; but
+Fillide’s merry eyes have done more for you than the Philosopher’s
+Stone (saints forgive me for naming it) ever did for the wizards.”
+ And Glyndon, glancing at the old Venetian mirror as Paolo spoke, was
+scarcely less startled than Paolo himself at the change in his own mien
+and bearing. His form, before bent with thought, seemed to him taller by
+half the head, so lithesome and erect rose his slender stature; his
+eyes glowed, his cheeks bloomed with health and the innate and pervading
+pleasure. If the mere fragrance of the elixir was thus potent, well
+might the alchemists have ascribed life and youth to the draught!
+
+“You must forgive me, Excellency, for disturbing you,” said Paolo,
+producing a letter from his pouch; “but our Patron has just written to
+me to say that he will be here to-morrow, and desired me to lose not a
+moment in giving to yourself this billet, which he enclosed.”
+
+“Who brought the letter?”
+
+“A horseman, who did not wait for any reply.”
+
+Glyndon opened the letter, and read as follows:--
+
+“I return a week sooner than I had intended, and you will expect me
+to-morrow. You will then enter on the ordeal you desire, but remember
+that, in doing so, you must reduce Being as far as possible into Mind.
+The senses must be mortified and subdued,--not the whisper of one
+passion heard. Thou mayst be master of the Cabala and the Chemistry; but
+thou must be master also over the Flesh and the Blood,--over Love
+and Vanity, Ambition and Hate. I will trust to find thee so. Fast and
+meditate till we meet!”
+
+Glyndon crumpled the letter in his hand with a smile of disdain. What!
+more drudgery,--more abstinence! Youth without love and pleasure! Ha,
+ha! baffled Mejnour, thy pupil shall gain thy secrets without thine aid!
+
+“And Fillide! I passed her cottage in my way,--she blushed and sighed
+when I jested her about you, Excellency!”
+
+“Well, Paolo! I thank thee for so charming an introduction. Thine must
+be a rare life.”
+
+“Ah, Excellency, while we are young, nothing like adventure,--except
+love, wine, and laughter!”
+
+“Very true. Farewell, Maestro Paolo; we will talk more with each other
+in a few days.”
+
+All that morning Glyndon was almost overpowered with the new sentiment
+of happiness that had entered into him. He roamed into the woods, and
+he felt a pleasure that resembled his earlier life of an artist, but a
+pleasure yet more subtle and vivid, in the various colours of the
+autumn foliage. Certainly Nature seemed to be brought closer to him; he
+comprehended better all that Mejnour had often preached to him of the
+mystery of sympathies and attractions. He was about to enter into the
+same law as those mute children of the forests. He was to know THE
+RENEWAL OF LIFE; the seasons that chilled to winter should yet bring
+again the bloom and the mirth of spring. Man’s common existence is as
+one year to the vegetable world: he has his spring, his summer, his
+autumn, and winter,--but only ONCE. But the giant oaks round him go
+through a revolving series of verdure and youth, and the green of the
+centenarian is as vivid in the beams of May as that of the sapling by
+its side. “Mine shall be your spring, but not your winter!” exclaimed
+the aspirant.
+
+Wrapped in these sanguine and joyous reveries, Glyndon, quitting the
+woods, found himself amidst cultivated fields and vineyards to which his
+footstep had not before wandered; and there stood, by the skirts of a
+green lane that reminded him of verdant England, a modest house,--half
+cottage, half farm. The door was open, and he saw a girl at work with
+her distaff. She looked up, uttered a slight cry, and, tripping gayly
+into the lane to his side, he recognised the dark-eyed Fillide.
+
+“Hist!” she said, archly putting her finger to her lip; “do not speak
+loud,--my mother is asleep within; and I knew you would come to see me.
+It is kind!”
+
+Glyndon, with a little embarrassment, accepted the compliment to his
+kindness, which he did not exactly deserve. “You have thought, then, of
+me, fair Fillide?”
+
+“Yes,” answered the girl, colouring, but with that frank, bold
+ingenuousness, which characterises the females of Italy, especially
+of the lower class, and in the southern provinces,--“oh, yes! I have
+thought of little else. Paolo said he knew you would visit me.”
+
+“And what relation is Paolo to you?”
+
+“None; but a good friend to us all. My brother is one of his band.”
+
+“One of his band!--a robber?”
+
+“We of the mountains do not call a mountaineer ‘a robber,’ signor.”
+
+“I ask pardon. Do you not tremble sometimes for your brother’s life? The
+law--”
+
+“Law never ventures into these defiles. Tremble for him! No. My father
+and grandsire were of the same calling. I often wish I were a man!”
+
+“By these lips, I am enchanted that your wish cannot be realised.”
+
+“Fie, signor! And do you really love me?”
+
+“With my whole heart!”
+
+“And I thee!” said the girl, with a candour that seemed innocent, as she
+suffered him to clasp her hand.
+
+“But,” she added, “thou wilt soon leave us; and I--” She stopped short,
+and the tears stood in her eyes.
+
+There was something dangerous in this, it must be confessed. Certainly
+Fillide had not the seraphic loveliness of Viola; but hers was a beauty
+that equally at least touched the senses. Perhaps Glyndon had never
+really loved Viola; perhaps the feelings with which she had inspired
+him were not of that ardent character which deserves the name of love.
+However that be, he thought, as he gazed on those dark eyes, that he had
+never loved before.
+
+“And couldst thou not leave thy mountains?” he whispered, as he drew yet
+nearer to her.
+
+“Dost thou ask me?” she said, retreating, and looking him steadfastly
+in the face. “Dost thou know what we daughters of the mountains are? You
+gay, smooth cavaliers of cities seldom mean what you speak. With you,
+love is amusement; with us, it is life. Leave these mountains! Well! I
+should not leave my nature.”
+
+“Keep thy nature ever,--it is a sweet one.”
+
+“Yes, sweet while thou art true; stern, if thou art faithless. Shall I
+tell thee what I--what the girls of this country are? Daughters of men
+whom you call robbers, we aspire to be the companions of our lovers or
+our husbands. We love ardently; we own it boldly. We stand by your side
+in danger; we serve you as slaves in safety: we never change, and we
+resent change. You may reproach, strike us, trample us as a dog,--we
+bear all without a murmur; betray us, and no tiger is more relentless.
+Be true, and our hearts reward you; be false, and our hands revenge!
+Dost thou love me now?”
+
+During this speech the Italian’s countenance had most eloquently aided
+her words,--by turns soft, frank, fierce,--and at the last question she
+inclined her head humbly, and stood, as in fear of his reply, before
+him. The stern, brave, wild spirit, in which what seemed unfeminine
+was yet, if I may so say, still womanly, did not recoil, it rather
+captivated Glyndon. He answered readily, briefly, and freely,
+“Fillide,--yes!”
+
+Oh, “yes!” forsooth, Clarence Glyndon! Every light nature answers “yes”
+ lightly to such a question from lips so rosy! Have a care,--have a care!
+Why the deuce, Mejnour, do you leave your pupil of four-and-twenty to
+the mercy of these wild cats-a-mountain! Preach fast, and abstinence,
+and sublime renunciation of the cheats of the senses! Very well in
+you, sir, Heaven knows how many ages old; but at four-and-twenty, your
+Hierophant would have kept you out of Fillide’s way, or you would have
+had small taste for the Cabala.
+
+And so they stood, and talked, and vowed, and whispered, till the girl’s
+mother made some noise within the house, and Fillide bounded back to the
+distaff, her finger once more on her lip.
+
+“There is more magic in Fillide than in Mejnour,” said Glyndon to
+himself, walking gayly home; “yet on second thoughts, I know not if I
+quite so well like a character so ready for revenge. But he who has the
+real secret can baffle even the vengeance of a woman, and disarm all
+danger!”
+
+Sirrah! dost thou even already meditate the possibility of treason?
+Oh, well said Zanoni, “to pour pure water into the muddy well does but
+disturb the mud.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.VII.
+
+     Cernis, custodia qualis
+     Vestibulo sedeat? facies quae limina servet?
+     “Aeneid,” lib. vi. 574.
+
+     (See you what porter sits within the vestibule?--what face
+     watches at the threshold?)
+
+And it is profound night. All is at rest within the old castle,--all is
+breathless under the melancholy stars. Now is the time. Mejnour with his
+austere wisdom,--Mejnour the enemy to love; Mejnour, whose eye will read
+thy heart, and refuse thee the promised secrets because the sunny face
+of Fillide disturbs the lifeless shadow that he calls repose,--Mejnour
+comes to-morrow! Seize the night! Beware of fear! Never, or this hour!
+So, brave youth,--brave despite all thy errors,--so, with a steady
+pulse, thy hand unlocks once more the forbidden door.
+
+He placed his lamp on the table beside the book, which still lay there
+opened; he turned over the leaves, but could not decipher their meaning
+till he came to the following passage:--
+
+“When, then, the pupil is thus initiated and prepared, let him open the
+casement, light the lamps, and bathe his temples with the elixir. He
+must beware how he presume yet to quaff the volatile and fiery spirit.
+To taste till repeated inhalations have accustomed the frame gradually
+to the ecstatic liquid, is to know not life, but death.”
+
+He could penetrate no farther into the instructions; the cipher again
+changed. He now looked steadily and earnestly round the chamber. The
+moonlight came quietly through the lattice as his hand opened it,
+and seemed, as it rested on the floor, and filled the walls, like the
+presence of some ghostly and mournful Power. He ranged the mystic lamps
+(nine in number) round the centre of the room, and lighted them one by
+one. A flame of silvery and azure tints sprung up from each, and lighted
+the apartment with a calm and yet most dazzling splendour; but presently
+this light grew more soft and dim, as a thin, grey cloud, like a mist,
+gradually spread over the room; and an icy thrill shot through the heart
+of the Englishman, and quickly gathered over him like the coldness
+of death. Instinctively aware of his danger, he tottered, though with
+difficulty, for his limbs seemed rigid and stone-like, to the shelf that
+contained the crystal vials; hastily he inhaled the spirit, and laved
+his temples with the sparkling liquid. The same sensation of vigour
+and youth, and joy and airy lightness, that he had felt in the morning,
+instantaneously replaced the deadly numbness that just before had
+invaded the citadel of life. He stood, with his arms folded on his bosom
+erect and dauntless, to watch what should ensue.
+
+The vapour had now assumed almost the thickness and seeming consistency
+of a snow-cloud; the lamps piercing it like stars. And now he distinctly
+saw shapes, somewhat resembling in outline those of the human form,
+gliding slowly and with regular evolutions through the cloud. They
+appeared bloodless; their bodies were transparent, and contracted or
+expanded like the folds of a serpent. As they moved in majestic order,
+he heard a low sound--the ghost, as it were, of voice--which each caught
+and echoed from the other; a low sound, but musical, which seemed the
+chant of some unspeakably tranquil joy. None of these apparitions heeded
+him. His intense longing to accost them, to be of them, to make one of
+this movement of aerial happiness,--for such it seemed to him,--made him
+stretch forth his arms and seek to cry aloud, but only an inarticulate
+whisper passed his lips; and the movement and the music went on the same
+as if the mortal were not there. Slowly they glided round and aloft,
+till, in the same majestic order, one after one, they floated through
+the casement and were lost in the moonlight; then, as his eyes followed
+them, the casement became darkened with some object undistinguishable at
+the first gaze, but which sufficed mysteriously to change into ineffable
+horror the delight he had before experienced. By degrees this object
+shaped itself to his sight. It was as that of a human head covered with
+a dark veil through which glared, with livid and demoniac fire, eyes
+that froze the marrow of his bones. Nothing else of the face was
+distinguishable,--nothing but those intolerable eyes; but his terror,
+that even at the first seemed beyond nature to endure, was increased a
+thousand-fold, when, after a pause, the phantom glided slowly into the
+chamber.
+
+The cloud retreated from it as it advanced; the bright lamps grew wan,
+and flickered restlessly as at the breath of its presence. Its form was
+veiled as the face, but the outline was that of a female; yet it moved
+not as move even the ghosts that simulate the living. It seemed rather
+to crawl as some vast misshapen reptile; and pausing, at length it
+cowered beside the table which held the mystic volume, and again fixed
+its eyes through the filmy veil on the rash invoker. All fancies, the
+most grotesque, of monk or painter in the early North, would have failed
+to give to the visage of imp or fiend that aspect of deadly malignity
+which spoke to the shuddering nature in those eyes alone. All else
+so dark,--shrouded, veiled and larva-like. But that burning glare so
+intense, so livid, yet so living, had in it something that was almost
+HUMAN in its passion of hate and mockery,--something that served to
+show that the shadowy Horror was not all a spirit, but partook of
+matter enough, at least, to make it more deadly and fearful an enemy to
+material forms. As, clinging with the grasp of agony to the wall,--his
+hair erect, his eyeballs starting, he still gazed back upon that
+appalling gaze,--the Image spoke to him: his soul rather than his ear
+comprehended the words it said.
+
+“Thou hast entered the immeasurable region. I am the Dweller of the
+Threshold. What wouldst thou with me? Silent? Dost thou fear me? Am
+I not thy beloved? Is it not for me that thou hast rendered up the
+delights of thy race? Wouldst thou be wise? Mine is the wisdom of the
+countless ages. Kiss me, my mortal lover.” And the Horror crawled near
+and nearer to him; it crept to his side, its breath breathed upon his
+cheek! With a sharp cry he fell to the earth insensible, and knew no
+more till, far in the noon of the next day, he opened his eyes and found
+himself in his bed,--the glorious sun streaming through his lattice,
+and the bandit Paolo by his side, engaged in polishing his carbine, and
+whistling a Calabrian love-air.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.VIII.
+
+     Thus man pursues his weary calling,
+     And wrings the hard life from the sky,
+     While happiness unseen is falling
+     Down from God’s bosom silently.
+     --Schiller.
+
+In one of those islands whose history the imperishable literature and
+renown of Athens yet invest with melancholy interest, and on which
+Nature, in whom “there is nothing melancholy,” still bestows a glory of
+scenery and climate equally radiant for the freeman or the
+slave,--the Ionian, the Venetian, the Gaul, the Turk, or the restless
+Briton,--Zanoni had fixed his bridal home. There the air carries with it
+the perfumes of the plains for miles along the blue, translucent deep.
+(See Dr. Holland’s “Travels to the Ionian Isles,” etc., page 18.) Seen
+from one of its green sloping heights, the island he had selected seemed
+one delicious garden. The towers and turrets of its capital gleaming
+amidst groves of oranges and lemons; vineyards and olive-woods filling
+up the valleys, and clambering along the hill-sides; and villa, farm,
+and cottage covered with luxuriant trellises of dark-green leaves and
+purple fruit. For there the prodigal beauty yet seems half to justify
+those graceful superstitions of a creed that, too enamoured of earth,
+rather brought the deities to man, than raised the man to their less
+alluring and less voluptuous Olympus.
+
+And still to the fishermen, weaving yet their antique dances on the
+sand; to the maiden, adorning yet, with many a silver fibula, her glossy
+tresses under the tree that overshadows her tranquil cot,--the same
+Great Mother that watched over the wise of Samos, the democracy of
+Corcyra, the graceful and deep-taught loveliness of Miletus, smiles
+as graciously as of yore. For the North, philosophy and freedom are
+essentials to human happiness; in the lands which Aphrodite rose from
+the waves to govern, as the Seasons, hand in hand, stood to welcome her
+on the shores, Nature is all sufficient. (Homeric Hymn.)
+
+The isle which Zanoni had selected was one of the loveliest in that
+divine sea. His abode, at some distance from the city, but near one of
+the creeks on the shore, belonged to a Venetian, and, though small, had
+more of elegance than the natives ordinarily cared for. On the seas, and
+in sight, rode his vessel. His Indians, as before, ministered in
+mute gravity to the service of the household. No spot could be more
+beautiful,--no solitude less invaded. To the mysterious knowledge of
+Zanoni, to the harmless ignorance of Viola, the babbling and garish
+world of civilised man was alike unheeded. The loving sky and the lovely
+earth are companions enough to Wisdom and to Ignorance while they love.
+
+Although, as I have before said, there was nothing in the visible
+occupations of Zanoni that betrayed a cultivator of the occult sciences,
+his habits were those of a man who remembers or reflects. He loved
+to roam alone, chiefly at dawn, or at night, when the moon was clear
+(especially in each month, at its rise and full), miles and miles away
+over the rich inlands of the island, and to cull herbs and flowers,
+which he hoarded with jealous care. Sometimes, at the dead of night,
+Viola would wake by an instinct that told her he was not by her side,
+and, stretching out her arms, find that the instinct had not deceived
+her. But she early saw that he was reserved on his peculiar habits; and
+if at times a chill, a foreboding, a suspicious awe crept over her, she
+forebore to question him.
+
+But his rambles were not always unaccompanied,--he took pleasure in
+excursions less solitary. Often, when the sea lay before them like
+a lake, the barren dreariness of the opposite coast of Cephallenia
+contrasting the smiling shores on which they dwelt, Viola and himself
+would pass days in cruising slowly around the coast, or in visits to
+the neighbouring isles. Every spot of the Greek soil, “that fair
+Fable-Land,” seemed to him familiar; and as he conversed of the past and
+its exquisite traditions, he taught Viola to love the race from which
+have descended the poetry and the wisdom of the world. There was much in
+Zanoni, as she knew him better, that deepened the fascination in which
+Viola was from the first enthralled. His love for herself was so tender,
+so vigilant, and had that best and most enduring attribute, that it
+seemed rather grateful for the happiness in its own cares than vain of
+the happiness it created. His habitual mood with all who approached him
+was calm and gentle, almost to apathy. An angry word never passed his
+lips,--an angry gleam never shot from his eyes. Once they had been
+exposed to the danger not uncommon in those then half-savage lands. Some
+pirates who infested the neighbouring coasts had heard of the arrival
+of the strangers, and the seamen Zanoni employed had gossiped of their
+master’s wealth. One night, after Viola had retired to rest, she was
+awakened by a slight noise below. Zanoni was not by her side; she
+listened in some alarm. Was that a groan that came upon her ear? She
+started up, she went to the door; all was still. A footstep now slowly
+approached, and Zanoni entered calm as usual, and seemed unconscious of
+her fears.
+
+The next morning three men were found dead at the threshold of the
+principal entrance, the door of which had been forced. They were
+recognised in the neighbourhood as the most sanguinary and terrible
+marauders of the coasts,--men stained with a thousand murders, and who
+had never hitherto failed in any attempt to which the lust of rapine
+had impelled them. The footsteps of many others were tracked to the
+seashore. It seemed that their accomplices must have fled on the death
+of their leaders. But when the Venetian Proveditore, or authority, of
+the island, came to examine into the matter, the most unaccountable
+mystery was the manner in which these ruffians had met their fate.
+Zanoni had not stirred from the apartment in which he ordinarily pursued
+his chemical studies. None of the servants had even been disturbed from
+their slumbers. No marks of human violence were on the bodies of the
+dead. They died, and made no sign. From that moment Zanoni’s house--nay,
+the whole vicinity--was sacred. The neighbouring villages, rejoiced
+to be delivered from a scourge, regarded the stranger as one whom the
+Pagiana (or Virgin) held under her especial protection.
+
+In truth, the lively Greeks around, facile to all external impressions,
+and struck with the singular and majestic beauty of the man who knew
+their language as a native, whose voice often cheered them in their
+humble sorrows, and whose hand was never closed to their wants,
+long after he had left their shore preserved his memory by grateful
+traditions, and still point to the lofty platanus beneath which they had
+often seen him seated, alone and thoughtful, in the heats of noon. But
+Zanoni had haunts less open to the gaze than the shade of the platanus.
+In that isle there are the bituminous springs which Herodotus has
+commemorated. Often at night, the moon, at least, beheld him emerging
+from the myrtle and cystus that clothe the hillocks around the marsh
+that imbeds the pools containing the inflammable materia, all the
+medical uses of which, as applied to the nerves of organic life, modern
+science has not yet perhaps explored. Yet more often would he pass
+his hours in a cavern, by the loneliest part of the beach, where the
+stalactites seem almost arranged by the hand of art, and which the
+superstition of the peasants associates, in some ancient legends, with
+the numerous and almost incessant earthquakes to which the island is so
+singularly subjected.
+
+Whatever the pursuits that instigated these wanderings and favoured
+these haunts, either they were linked with, or else subordinate to, one
+main and master desire, which every fresh day passed in the sweet human
+company of Viola confirmed and strengthened.
+
+The scene that Glyndon had witnessed in his trance was faithful to
+truth. And some little time after the date of that night, Viola
+was dimly aware that an influence, she knew not of what nature, was
+struggling to establish itself over her happy life. Visions indistinct
+and beautiful, such as those she had known in her earlier days, but more
+constant and impressive, began to haunt her night and day when Zanoni
+was absent, to fade in his presence, and seem less fair than THAT.
+Zanoni questioned her eagerly and minutely of these visitations, but
+seemed dissatisfied, and at times perplexed, by her answers.
+
+“Tell me not,” he said, one day, “of those unconnected images, those
+evolutions of starry shapes in a choral dance, or those delicious
+melodies that seem to thee of the music and the language of the distant
+spheres. Has no ONE shape been to thee more distinct and more beautiful
+than the rest,--no voice uttering, or seeming to utter, thine own
+tongue, and whispering to thee of strange secrets and solemn knowledge?”
+
+“No; all is confused in these dreams, whether of day or night; and when
+at the sound of thy footsteps I recover, my memory retains nothing but
+a vague impression of happiness. How different--how cold--to the rapture
+of hanging on thy smile, and listening to thy voice, when it says, ‘I
+love thee!’”
+
+“Yet, how is it that visions less fair than these once seemed to thee
+so alluring? How is it that they then stirred thy fancies and filled
+thy heart? Once thou didst desire a fairy-land, and now thou seemest so
+contented with common life.”
+
+“Have I not explained it to thee before? Is it common life, then, to
+love, and to live with the one we love? My true fairy-land is won! Speak
+to me of no other.”
+
+And so night surprised them by the lonely beach; and Zanoni, allured
+from his sublimer projects, and bending over that tender face, forgot
+that, in the Harmonious Infinite which spread around, there were other
+worlds than that one human heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.IX.
+
+     There is a principle of the soul, superior to all nature, through
+     which we are capable of surpassing the order and systems of the
+     world.  When the soul is elevated to natures better than itself,
+     THEN it is entirely separated from subordinate natures, exchanges
+     this for another life, and, deserting the order of things with
+     which it was connected, links and mingles itself with another.
+     --Iamblichus.
+
+“Adon-Ai! Adon-Ai!--appear, appear!”
+
+And in the lonely cave, whence once had gone forth the oracles of
+a heathen god, there emerged from the shadows of fantastic rocks a
+luminous and gigantic column, glittering and shifting. It resembled the
+shining but misty spray which, seen afar off, a fountain seems to send
+up on a starry night. The radiance lit the stalactites, the crags,
+the arches of the cave, and shed a pale and tremulous splendour on the
+features of Zanoni.
+
+“Son of Eternal Light,” said the invoker, “thou to whose knowledge,
+grade after grade, race after race, I attained at last, on the
+broad Chaldean plains; thou from whom I have drawn so largely of the
+unutterable knowledge that yet eternity alone can suffice to drain; thou
+who, congenial with myself, so far as our various beings will permit,
+hast been for centuries my familiar and my friend,--answer me and
+counsel!”
+
+From the column there emerged a shape of unimaginable glory. Its
+face was that of a man in its first youth, but solemn, as with the
+consciousness of eternity and the tranquillity of wisdom; light, like
+starbeams, flowed through its transparent veins; light made its limbs
+themselves, and undulated, in restless sparkles, through the waves of
+its dazzling hair. With its arms folded on its breast, it stood distant
+a few feet from Zanoni, and its low voice murmured gently, “My counsels
+were sweet to thee once; and once, night after night, thy soul could
+follow my wings through the untroubled splendours of the Infinite. Now
+thou hast bound thyself back to the earth by its strongest chains, and
+the attraction to the clay is more potent than the sympathies that drew
+to thy charms the Dweller of the Starbeam and the Air. When last thy
+soul hearkened to me, the senses already troubled thine intellect and
+obscured thy vision. Once again I come to thee; but thy power even to
+summon me to thy side is fading from thy spirit, as sunshine fades from
+the wave when the winds drive the cloud between the ocean and the sky.”
+
+“Alas, Adon-Ai!” answered the seer, mournfully, “I know too well the
+conditions of the being which thy presence was wont to rejoice. I know
+that our wisdom comes but from the indifference to the things of the
+world which the wisdom masters. The mirror of the soul cannot reflect
+both earth and heaven; and the one vanishes from the surface as the
+other is glassed upon its deeps. But it is not to restore me to that
+sublime abstraction in which the intellect, free and disembodied, rises,
+region after region, to the spheres,--that once again, and with the
+agony and travail of enfeebled power I have called thee to mine aid. I
+love; and in love I begin to live in the sweet humanities of another. If
+wise, yet in all which makes danger powerless against myself, or those
+on whom I can gaze from the calm height of indifferent science, I am
+blind as the merest mortal to the destinies of the creature that makes
+my heart beat with the passions which obscure my gaze.”
+
+“What matter!” answered Adon-Ai. “Thy love must be but a mockery of the
+name; thou canst not love as they do for whom there are death and the
+grave. A short time,--like a day in thy incalculable life,--and the form
+thou dotest on is dust! Others of the nether world go hand in hand, each
+with each, unto the tomb; hand in hand they ascend from the worm to new
+cycles of existence. For thee, below are ages; for her, but hours. And
+for her and thee--O poor, but mighty one!--will there be even a joint
+hereafter! Through what grades and heavens of spiritualised being will
+her soul have passed when thou, the solitary loiterer, comest from the
+vapours of the earth to the gates of light!”
+
+“Son of the Starbeam, thinkest thou that this thought is not with me
+forever; and seest thou not that I have invoked thee to hearken and
+minister to my design? Readest thou not my desire and dream to raise the
+conditions of her being to my own? Thou, Adon-Ai, bathing the celestial
+joy that makes thy life in the oceans of eternal splendour,--thou,
+save by the sympathies of knowledge, canst conjecture not what I,
+the offspring of mortals, feel--debarred yet from the objects of the
+tremendous and sublime ambition that first winged my desires above the
+clay--when I see myself compelled to stand in this low world alone. I
+have sought amongst my tribe for comrades, and in vain. At last I have
+found a mate. The wild bird and the wild beast have theirs; and my
+mastery over the malignant tribes of terror can banish their larvae from
+the path that shall lead her upward, till the air of eternity fits the
+frame for the elixir that baffles death.”
+
+“And thou hast begun the initiation, and thou art foiled! I know it.
+Thou hast conjured to her sleep the fairest visions; thou hast invoked
+the loveliest children of the air to murmur their music to her trance,
+and her soul heeds them not, and, returning to the earth, escapes from
+their control. Blind one, wherefore? canst thou not perceive? Because
+in her soul all is love. There is no intermediate passion with which the
+things thou wouldst charm to her have association and affinities. Their
+attraction is but to the desires and cravings of the INTELLECT. What
+have they with the PASSION that is of earth, and the HOPE that goes
+direct to heaven?”
+
+“But can there be no medium--no link--in which our souls, as our hearts,
+can be united, and so mine may have influence over her own?”
+
+“Ask me not,--thou wilt not comprehend me!”
+
+“I adjure thee!--speak!”
+
+“When two souls are divided, knowest thou not that a third in which both
+meet and live is the link between them!”
+
+“I do comprehend thee, Adon-Ai,” said Zanoni, with a light of more human
+joy upon his face than it had ever before been seen to wear; “and if my
+destiny, which here is dark to mine eyes, vouchsafes to me the happy lot
+of the humble,--if ever there be a child that I may clasp to my bosom
+and call my own--”
+
+“And is it to be man at last, that thou hast aspired to be more than
+man?”
+
+“But a child,--a second Viola!” murmured Zanoni, scarcely heeding the
+Son of Light; “a young soul fresh from heaven, that I may rear from the
+first moment it touches earth,--whose wings I may train to follow mine
+through the glories of creation; and through whom the mother herself may
+be led upward over the realm of death!”
+
+“Beware,--reflect! Knowest thou not that thy darkest enemy dwells in the
+Real? Thy wishes bring thee near and nearer to humanity.”
+
+“Ah, humanity is sweet!” answered Zanoni.
+
+And as the seer spoke, on the glorious face of Adon-Ai there broke a
+smile.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.X.
+
+     Aeterna aeternus tribuit, mortalia confert
+     Mortalis; divina Deus, peritura caducus.
+     “Aurel. Prud. contra Symmachum,” lib. ii.
+
+     (The Eternal gives eternal things, the Mortal gathers mortal
+     things:  God, that which is divine, and the perishable that which
+     is perishable.)
+
+EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS OF ZANONI TO MEJNOUR.
+
+Letter 1.
+
+Thou hast not informed me of the progress of thy pupil; and I fear that
+so differently does circumstance shape the minds of the generations to
+which we are descended, from the intense and earnest children of the
+earlier world, that even thy most careful and elaborate guidance would
+fail, with loftier and purer natures than that of the neophyte thou hast
+admitted within thy gates. Even that third state of being, which the
+Indian sage (The Brahmins, speaking of Brahm, say, “To the Omniscient
+the three modes of being--sleep, waking, and trance--are not;”
+ distinctly recognising trance as a third and coequal condition of
+being.) rightly recognises as being between the sleep and the waking,
+and describes imperfectly by the name of TRANCE, is unknown to the
+children of the Northern world; and few but would recoil to indulge it,
+regarding its peopled calm as maya and delusion of the mind. Instead of
+ripening and culturing that airy soil, from which Nature, duly known,
+can evoke fruits so rich and flowers so fair, they strive but to exclude
+it from their gaze; they esteem that struggle of the intellect from
+men’s narrow world to the spirit’s infinite home, as a disease which the
+leech must extirpate with pharmacy and drugs, and know not even that it
+is from this condition of their being, in its most imperfect and infant
+form, that poetry, music, art--all that belong to an Idea of Beauty
+to which neither SLEEPING nor WAKING can furnish archetype and actual
+semblance--take their immortal birth. When we, O Mejnour in the far
+time, were ourselves the neophytes and aspirants, we were of a class
+to which the actual world was shut and barred. Our forefathers had no
+object in life but knowledge. From the cradle we were predestined and
+reared to wisdom as to a priesthood. We commenced research where modern
+Conjecture closes its faithless wings. And with us, those were common
+elements of science which the sages of to-day disdain as wild
+chimeras, or despair of as unfathomable mysteries. Even the fundamental
+principles, the large yet simple theories of electricity and magnetism,
+rest obscure and dim in the disputes of their blinded schools; yet,
+even in our youth, how few ever attained to the first circle of the
+brotherhood, and, after wearily enjoying the sublime privileges they
+sought, they voluntarily abandoned the light of the sun, and sunk,
+without effort, to the grave, like pilgrims in a trackless desert,
+overawed by the stillness of their solitude, and appalled by the absence
+of a goal. Thou, in whom nothing seems to live BUT THE DESIRE TO KNOW;
+thou, who, indifferent whether it leads to weal or to woe, lendest
+thyself to all who would tread the path of mysterious science, a human
+book, insensate to the precepts it enounces,--thou hast ever sought,
+and often made additions to our number. But to these have only been
+vouchsafed partial secrets; vanity and passion unfitted them for the
+rest; and now, without other interest than that of an experiment in
+science, without love, and without pity, thou exposest this new soul
+to the hazards of the tremendous ordeal! Thou thinkest that a zeal
+so inquisitive, a courage so absolute and dauntless, may suffice to
+conquer, where austerer intellect and purer virtue have so often failed.
+Thou thinkest, too, that the germ of art that lies in the painter’s
+mind, as it comprehends in itself the entire embryo of power and beauty,
+may be expanded into the stately flower of the Golden Science. It is a
+new experiment to thee. Be gentle with thy neophyte, and if his nature
+disappoint thee in the first stages of the process, dismiss him back to
+the Real while it is yet time to enjoy the brief and outward life which
+dwells in the senses, and closes with the tomb. And as I thus admonish
+thee, O Mejnour, wilt thou smile at my inconsistent hopes? I, who have
+so invariably refused to initiate others into our mysteries,--I begin at
+last to comprehend why the great law, which binds man to his kind, even
+when seeking most to set himself aloof from their condition, has made
+thy cold and bloodless science the link between thyself and thy race;
+why, THOU has sought converts and pupils; why, in seeing life after life
+voluntarily dropping from our starry order, thou still aspirest to
+renew the vanished, and repair the lost; why, amidst thy calculations,
+restless and unceasing as the wheels of Nature herself, thou recoilest
+from the THOUGHT TO BE ALONE! So with myself; at last I, too, seek a
+convert, an equal,--I, too, shudder to be alone! What thou hast warned
+me of has come to pass. Love reduces all things to itself. Either must I
+be drawn down to the nature of the beloved, or hers must be lifted to
+my own. As whatever belongs to true Art has always necessarily had
+attraction for US, whose very being is in the ideal whence Art descends,
+so in this fair creature I have learned, at last, the secret that bound
+me to her at the first glance. The daughter of music,--music, passing
+into her being, became poetry. It was not the stage that attracted her,
+with its hollow falsehoods; it was the land in her own fancy which
+the stage seemed to centre and represent. There the poetry found a
+voice,--there it struggled into imperfect shape; and then (that land
+insufficient for it) it fell back upon itself. It coloured her thoughts,
+it suffused her soul; it asked not words, it created not things; it gave
+birth but to emotions, and lavished itself on dreams. At last came love;
+and there, as a river into the sea, it poured its restless waves, to
+become mute and deep and still,--the everlasting mirror of the heavens.
+
+And is it not through this poetry which lies within her that she may
+be led into the large poetry of the universe! Often I listen to her
+careless talk, and find oracles in its unconscious beauty, as we find
+strange virtues in some lonely flower. I see her mind ripening under my
+eyes; and in its fair fertility what ever-teeming novelties of thought!
+O Mejnour! how many of our tribe have unravelled the laws of the
+universe,--have solved the riddles of the exterior nature, and deduced
+the light from darkness! And is not the POET, who studies nothing but
+the human heart, a greater philosopher than all? Knowledge and atheism
+are incompatible. To know Nature is to know that there must be a God.
+But does it require this to examine the method and architecture of
+creation? Methinks, when I look upon a pure mind, however ignorant and
+childlike, that I see the August and Immaterial One more clearly than in
+all the orbs of matter which career at His bidding through space.
+
+Rightly is it the fundamental decree of our order, that we must impart
+our secrets only to the pure. The most terrible part of the ordeal is
+in the temptations that our power affords to the criminal. If it were
+possible that a malevolent being could attain to our faculties, what
+disorder it might introduce into the globe! Happy that it is NOT
+possible; the malevolence would disarm the power. It is in the purity of
+Viola that I rely, as thou more vainly hast relied on the courage or the
+genius of thy pupils. Bear me witness, Mejnour! Never since the distant
+day in which I pierced the Arcana of our knowledge, have I ever sought
+to make its mysteries subservient to unworthy objects; though, alas! the
+extension of our existence robs us of a country and a home; though the
+law that places all science, as all art, in the abstraction from the
+noisy passions and turbulent ambition of actual life, forbids us to
+influence the destinies of nations, for which Heaven selects ruder and
+blinder agencies; yet, wherever have been my wanderings, I have sought
+to soften distress, and to convert from sin. My power has been hostile
+only to the guilty; and yet with all our lore, how in each step we are
+reduced to be but the permitted instruments of the Power that vouchsafes
+our own, but only to direct it. How all our wisdom shrinks into nought,
+compared with that which gives the meanest herb its virtues, and peoples
+the smallest globule with its appropriate world. And while we are
+allowed at times to influence the happiness of others, how mysteriously
+the shadows thicken round our own future doom! We cannot be prophets
+to ourselves! With what trembling hope I nurse the thought that I may
+preserve to my solitude the light of a living smile!
+
+....
+
+Extracts from Letter II.
+
+Deeming myself not pure enough to initiate so pure a heart, I invoke to
+her trance those fairest and most tender inhabitants of space that have
+furnished to poetry, which is the instinctive guess into creation, the
+ideas of the Glendoveer and Sylph. And these were less pure than her own
+thoughts, and less tender than her own love! They could not raise her
+above her human heart, for THAT has a heaven of its own.
+
+....
+
+I have just looked on her in sleep,--I have heard her breathe my name.
+Alas! that which is so sweet to others has its bitterness to me; for
+I think how soon the time may come when that sleep will be without a
+dream,--when the heart that dictates the name will be cold, and the
+lips that utter it be dumb. What a twofold shape there is in love! If we
+examine it coarsely,--if we look but on its fleshy ties, its enjoyments
+of a moment, its turbulent fever and its dull reaction,--how strange it
+seems that this passion should be the supreme mover of the world; that
+it is this which has dictated the greatest sacrifices, and influenced
+all societies and all times; that to this the loftiest and loveliest
+genius has ever consecrated its devotion; that, but for love, there
+were no civilisation, no music, no poetry, no beauty, no life beyond the
+brute’s.
+
+But examine it in its heavenlier shape,--in its utter abnegation of
+self; in its intimate connection with all that is most delicate and
+subtle in the spirit,--its power above all that is sordid in existence;
+its mastery over the idols of the baser worship; its ability to create
+a palace of the cottage, an oasis in the desert, a summer in the
+Iceland,--where it breathes, and fertilises, and glows; and the wonder
+rather becomes how so few regard it in its holiest nature. What the
+sensual call its enjoyments, are the least of its joys. True love is
+less a passion than a symbol. Mejnour, shall the time come when I can
+speak to thee of Viola as a thing that was?
+
+....
+
+Extract from Letter III.
+
+Knowest thou that of late I have sometimes asked myself, “Is there no
+guilt in the knowledge that has so divided us from our race?” It is true
+that the higher we ascend the more hateful seem to us the vices of the
+short-lived creepers of the earth,--the more the sense of the goodness
+of the All-good penetrates and suffuses us, and the more immediately
+does our happiness seem to emanate from him. But, on the other hand, how
+many virtues must lie dead in those who live in the world of death, and
+refuse to die! Is not this sublime egotism, this state of abstraction
+and reverie,--this self-wrapped and self-dependent majesty of existence,
+a resignation of that nobility which incorporates our own welfare, our
+joys, our hopes, our fears with others? To live on in no dread of foes,
+undegraded by infirmity, secure through the cares, and free from the
+disease of flesh, is a spectacle that captivates our pride. And yet dost
+thou not more admire him who dies for another? Since I have loved her,
+Mejnour, it seems almost cowardice to elude the grave which devours the
+hearts that wrap us in their folds. I feel it,--the earth grows upon
+my spirit. Thou wert right; eternal age, serene and passionless, is a
+happier boon than eternal youth, with its yearnings and desires. Until
+we can be all spirit, the tranquillity of solitude must be indifference.
+
+....
+
+Extracts from Letter IV.
+
+I have received thy communication. What! is it so? Has thy pupil
+disappointed thee? Alas, poor pupil! But--
+
+....
+
+(Here follow comments on those passages in Glyndon’s life already known
+to the reader, or about to be made so, with earnest adjurations to
+Mejnour to watch yet over the fate of his scholar.)
+
+....
+
+But I cherish the same desire, with a warmer heart. My pupil! how the
+terrors that shall encompass thine ordeal warn me from the task! Once
+more I will seek the Son of Light.
+
+....
+
+Yes; Adon-Ai, long deaf to my call, at last has descended to my vision,
+and left behind him the glory of his presence in the shape of Hope. Oh,
+not impossible, Viola,--not impossible, that we yet may be united, soul
+with soul!
+
+Extract from Letter V.--(Many months after the last.)
+
+Mejnour, awake from thine apathy,--rejoice! A new soul will be born to
+the world,--a new soul that shall call me father. Ah, if they for whom
+exist all the occupations and resources of human life,--if they can
+thrill with exquisite emotion at the thought of hailing again their own
+childhood in the faces of their children; if in that birth they are born
+once more into the holy Innocence which is the first state of existence;
+if they can feel that on man devolves almost an angel’s duty, when
+he has a life to guide from the cradle, and a soul to nurture for the
+heaven,--what to me must be the rapture to welcome an inheritor of all
+the gifts which double themselves in being shared! How sweet the power
+to watch, and to guard,--to instil the knowledge, to avert the evil,
+and to guide back the river of life in a richer and broader and deeper
+stream to the paradise from which it flows! And beside that river our
+souls shall meet, sweet mother. Our child shall supply the sympathy that
+fails as yet; and what shape shall haunt thee, what terror shall dismay,
+when thy initiation is beside the cradle of thy child!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.XI.
+
+     They thus beguile the way
+     Untill the blustring storme is overblowne,
+     When weening to returne whence they did stray,
+     They cannot finde that path which first was showne,
+     But wander to and fro in waies unknowne.
+     --Spenser’s “Faerie Queene,” book i. canto i. st. x.
+
+Yes, Viola, thou art another being than when, by the threshold of thy
+Italian home, thou didst follow thy dim fancies through the Land of
+Shadow; or when thou didst vainly seek to give voice to an ideal beauty,
+on the boards where illusion counterfeits earth and heaven for an
+hour, till the weary sense, awaking, sees but the tinsel and the
+scene-shifter. Thy spirit reposes in its own happiness. Its wanderings
+have found a goal. In a moment there often dwells the sense of eternity;
+for when profoundly happy, we know that it is impossible to die.
+Whenever the soul FEELS ITSELF, it feels everlasting life.
+
+The initiation is deferred,--thy days and nights are left to no other
+visions than those with which a contented heart enchants a guileless
+fancy. Glendoveers and Sylphs, pardon me if I question whether those
+visions are not lovelier than yourselves.
+
+They stand by the beach, and see the sun sinking into the sea. How long
+now have they dwelt on that island? What matters!--it may be months, or
+years--what matters! Why should I, or they, keep account of that happy
+time? As in the dream of a moment ages may seem to pass, so shall we
+measure transport or woe,--by the length of the dream, or the number of
+emotions that the dream involves?
+
+The sun sinks slowly down; the air is arid and oppressive; on the sea,
+the stately vessel lies motionless; on the shore, no leaf trembles on
+the trees.
+
+Viola drew nearer to Zanoni. A presentiment she could not define made
+her heart beat more quickly; and, looking into his face, she was struck
+with its expression: it was anxious, abstracted, perturbed. “This
+stillness awes me,” she whispered.
+
+Zanoni did not seem to hear her. He muttered to himself, and his eyes
+gazed round restlessly. She knew not why, but that gaze, which seemed
+to pierce into space,--that muttered voice in some foreign
+language--revived dimly her earlier superstitions. She was more fearful
+since the hour when she knew that she was to be a mother. Strange crisis
+in the life of woman, and in her love! Something yet unborn begins
+already to divide her heart with that which had been before its only
+monarch.
+
+“Look on me, Zanoni,” she said, pressing his hand.
+
+He turned: “Thou art pale, Viola; thy hand trembles!”
+
+“It is true. I feel as if some enemy were creeping near us.”
+
+“And the instinct deceives thee not. An enemy is indeed at hand. I see
+it through the heavy air; I hear it through the silence: the Ghostly
+One,--the Destroyer, the PESTILENCE! Ah, seest thou how the leaves swarm
+with insects, only by an effort visible to the eye. They follow the
+breath of the plague!” As he spoke, a bird fell from the boughs at
+Viola’s feet; it fluttered, it writhed an instant, and was dead.
+
+“Oh, Viola!” cried Zanoni, passionately, “that is death. Dost thou not
+fear to die?”
+
+“To leave thee? Ah, yes!”
+
+“And if I could teach thee how Death may be defied; if I could arrest
+for thy youth the course of time; if I could--”
+
+He paused abruptly, for Viola’s eyes spoke only terror; her cheek and
+lips were pale.
+
+“Speak not thus,--look not thus,” she said, recoiling from him. “You
+dismay me. Ah, speak not thus, or I should tremble,--no, not for myself,
+but for thy child.”
+
+“Thy child! But wouldst thou reject for thy child the same glorious
+boon?”
+
+“Zanoni!”
+
+“Well!”
+
+“The sun has sunk from our eyes, but to rise on those of others. To
+disappear from this world is to live in the world afar. Oh, lover,--oh,
+husband!” she continued, with sudden energy, “tell me that thou didst
+but jest,--that thou didst but trifle with my folly! There is less
+terror in the pestilence than in thy words.”
+
+Zanoni’s brow darkened; he looked at her in silence for some moments,
+and then said, almost severely,--
+
+“What hast thou known of me to distrust?”
+
+“Oh, pardon, pardon!--nothing!” cried Viola, throwing herself on his
+breast, and bursting into tears. “I will not believe even thine own
+words, if they seem to wrong thee!” He kissed the tears from her eyes,
+but made no answer.
+
+“And ah!” she resumed, with an enchanting and child-like smile, “if thou
+wouldst give me a charm against the pestilence! see, I will take it from
+thee.” And she laid her hand on a small, antique amulet that he wore on
+his breast.
+
+“Thou knowest how often this has made me jealous of the past; surely
+some love-gift, Zanoni? But no, thou didst not love the giver as thou
+dost me. Shall I steal thine amulet?”
+
+“Infant!” said Zanoni, tenderly; “she who placed this round my neck
+deemed it indeed a charm, for she had superstitions like thyself; but
+to me it is more than the wizard’s spell,--it is the relic of a sweet
+vanished time when none who loved me could distrust.”
+
+He said these words in a tone of such melancholy reproach that it went
+to the heart of Viola; but the tone changed into a solemnity which
+chilled back the gush of her feelings as he resumed: “And this, Viola,
+one day, perhaps, I will transfer from my breast to thine; yes, whenever
+thou shalt comprehend me better,--WHENEVER THE LAWS OF OUR BEING SHALL
+BE THE SAME!”
+
+He moved on gently. They returned slowly home; but fear still was in the
+heart of Viola, though she strove to shake it off. Italian and Catholic
+she was, with all the superstitions of land and sect. She stole to
+her chamber and prayed before a little relic of San Gennaro, which
+the priest of her house had given to her in childhood, and which had
+accompanied her in all her wanderings. She had never deemed it
+possible to part with it before. Now, if there was a charm against the
+pestilence, did she fear the pestilence for herself? The next morning,
+when he awoke, Zanoni found the relic of the saint suspended with his
+mystic amulet round his neck.
+
+“Ah! thou wilt have nothing to fear from the pestilence now,” said
+Viola, between tears and smiles; “and when thou wouldst talk to me again
+as thou didst last night, the saint shall rebuke thee.”
+
+Well, Zanoni, can there ever indeed be commune of thought and spirit,
+except with equals?
+
+Yes, the plague broke out,--the island home must be abandoned. Mighty
+Seer, THOU HAST NO POWER TO SAVE THOSE WHOM THOU LOVEST! Farewell, thou
+bridal roof!--sweet resting-place from care, farewell! Climates as soft
+may greet ye, O lovers,--skies as serene, and waters as blue and calm;
+but THAT TIME,--can it ever more return? Who shall say that the heart
+does not change with the scene,--the place where we first dwelt with the
+beloved one? Every spot THERE has so many memories which the place only
+can recall. The past that haunts it seems to command such constancy in
+the future. If a thought less kind, less trustful, enter within us, the
+sight of a tree under which a vow has been exchanged, a tear has
+been kissed away, restores us again to the hours of the first divine
+illusion. But in a home where nothing speaks of the first nuptials,
+where there is no eloquence of association, no holy burial-places of
+emotions, whose ghosts are angels!--yes, who that has gone through the
+sad history of affection will tell us that the heart changes not with
+the scene! Blow fair, ye favouring winds; cheerily swell, ye sails; away
+from the land where death has come to snatch the sceptre of Love! The
+shores glide by; new coasts succeed to the green hills and orange-groves
+of the Bridal Isle. From afar now gleam in the moonlight the columns,
+yet extant, of a temple which the Athenian dedicated to wisdom; and,
+standing on the bark that bounded on in the freshening gale, the votary
+who had survived the goddess murmured to himself,--
+
+“Has the wisdom of ages brought me no happier hours than those common
+to the shepherd and the herdsman, with no world beyond their village, no
+aspiration beyond the kiss and the smile of home?”
+
+And the moon, resting alike over the ruins of the temple of the
+departed creed, over the hut of the living peasant, over the immemorial
+mountain-top, and the perishable herbage that clothed its sides, seemed
+to smile back its answer of calm disdain to the being who, perchance,
+might have seen the temple built, and who, in his inscrutable existence,
+might behold the mountain shattered from its base.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V. -- THE EFFECTS OF THE ELIXIR.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.I.
+
+     Frommet’s den Schleier aufzuheben,
+     Wo das nahe Schreckness droht?
+     Nur das Irrthum ist das Leben
+     Und das Wissen ist der Tod,
+
+     --Schiller, Kassandro.
+
+     Delusion is the life we live
+     And knowledge death; oh wherefore, then,
+     To sight the coming evils give
+     And lift the veil of Fate to Man?
+
+     Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust.
+
+     (Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast.)
+
+     ....
+
+     Was stehst du so, und blickst erstaunt hinaus?
+
+     (Why standest thou so, and lookest out astonished?)
+
+     --“Faust.”
+
+It will be remembered that we left Master Paolo by the bedside of
+Glyndon; and as, waking from that profound slumber, the recollections of
+the past night came horribly back to his mind, the Englishman uttered a
+cry, and covered his face with his hands.
+
+“Good morrow, Excellency!” said Paolo, gayly. “Corpo di Bacco, you have
+slept soundly!”
+
+The sound of this man’s voice, so lusty, ringing, and healthful, served
+to scatter before it the phantasma that yet haunted Glyndon’s memory.
+
+He rose erect in his bed. “And where did you find me? Why are you here?”
+
+“Where did I find you!” repeated Paolo, in surprise,--“in your bed, to
+be sure. Why am I here!--because the Padrone bade me await your waking,
+and attend your commands.”
+
+“The Padrone, Mejnour!--is he arrived?”
+
+“Arrived and departed, signor. He has left this letter for you.”
+
+“Give it me, and wait without till I am dressed.”
+
+“At your service. I have bespoke an excellent breakfast: you must be
+hungry. I am a very tolerable cook; a monk’s son ought to be! You will
+be startled at my genius in the dressing of fish. My singing, I
+trust, will not disturb you. I always sing while I prepare a salad; it
+harmonises the ingredients.” And slinging his carbine over his shoulder,
+Paolo sauntered from the room, and closed the door.
+
+Glyndon was already deep in the contents of the following letter:--
+
+“When I first received thee as my pupil, I promised Zanoni, if convinced
+by thy first trials that thou couldst but swell, not the number of our
+order, but the list of the victims who have aspired to it in vain, I
+would not rear thee to thine own wretchedness and doom,--I would dismiss
+thee back to the world. I fulfil my promise. Thine ordeal has been the
+easiest that neophyte ever knew. I asked for nothing but abstinence from
+the sensual, and a brief experiment of thy patience and thy faith. Go
+back to thine own world; thou hast no nature to aspire to ours!
+
+“It was I who prepared Paolo to receive thee at the revel. It was I who
+instigated the old beggar to ask thee for alms. It was I who left open
+the book that thou couldst not read without violating my command. Well,
+thou hast seen what awaits thee at the threshold of knowledge. Thou hast
+confronted the first foe that menaces him whom the senses yet grasp and
+inthrall. Dost thou wonder that I close upon thee the gates forever?
+Dost thou not comprehend, at last, that it needs a soul tempered and
+purified and raised, not by external spells, but by its own sublimity
+and valour, to pass the threshold and disdain the foe? Wretch! all
+my silence avails nothing for the rash, for the sensual,--for him who
+desires our secrets but to pollute them to gross enjoyments and selfish
+vice. How have the imposters and sorcerers of the earlier times perished
+by their very attempt to penetrate the mysteries that should purify, and
+not deprave! They have boasted of the Philosopher’s Stone, and died in
+rags; of the immortal elixir, and sunk to their grave, grey before their
+time. Legends tell you that the fiend rent them into fragments. Yes;
+the fiend of their own unholy desires and criminal designs! What they
+coveted, thou covetest; and if thou hadst the wings of a seraph thou
+couldst soar not from the slough of thy mortality. Thy desire for
+knowledge, but petulant presumption; thy thirst for happiness, but
+the diseased longing for the unclean and muddied waters of corporeal
+pleasure; thy very love, which usually elevates even the mean, a passion
+that calculates treason amidst the first glow of lust. THOU one of us;
+thou a brother of the August Order; thou an Aspirant to the Stars that
+shine in the Shemaia of the Chaldean lore! The eagle can raise but the
+eaglet to the sun. I abandon thee to thy twilight!
+
+“But, alas for thee, disobedient and profane! thou hast inhaled the
+elixir; thou hast attracted to thy presence a ghastly and remorseless
+foe. Thou thyself must exorcise the phantom thou hast raised. Thou must
+return to the world; but not without punishment and strong effort canst
+thou regain the calm and the joy of the life thou hast left behind.
+This, for thy comfort, will I tell thee: he who has drawn into his frame
+even so little of the volatile and vital energy of the aerial juices as
+thyself, has awakened faculties that cannot sleep,--faculties that may
+yet, with patient humility, with sound faith, and the courage that
+is not of the body like thine, but of the resolute and virtuous mind,
+attain, if not to the knowledge that reigns above, to high achievement
+in the career of men. Thou wilt find the restless influence in all that
+thou wouldst undertake. Thy heart, amidst vulgar joys will aspire to
+something holier; thy ambition, amidst coarse excitement, to something
+beyond thy reach. But deem not that this of itself will suffice for
+glory. Equally may the craving lead thee to shame and guilt. It is but
+an imperfect and new-born energy which will not suffer thee to repose.
+As thou directest it, must thou believe it to be the emanation of thine
+evil genius or thy good.
+
+“But woe to thee! insect meshed in the web in which thou hast entangled
+limbs and wings! Thou hast not only inhaled the elixir, thou hast
+conjured the spectre; of all the tribes of the space, no foe is so
+malignant to man,--and thou hast lifted the veil from thy gaze. I cannot
+restore to thee the happy dimness of thy vision. Know, at least, that
+all of us--the highest and the wisest--who have, in sober truth, passed
+beyond the threshold, have had, as our first fearful task, to master and
+subdue its grisly and appalling guardian. Know that thou CANST deliver
+thyself from those livid eyes,--know that, while they haunt, they cannot
+harm, if thou resistest the thoughts to which they tempt, and the horror
+they engender. DREAD THEM MOST WHEN THOU BEHOLDEST THEM NOT. And thus,
+son of the worm, we part! All that I can tell thee to encourage, yet to
+warn and to guide, I have told thee in these lines. Not from me, from
+thyself has come the gloomy trial from which I yet trust thou wilt
+emerge into peace. Type of the knowledge that I serve, I withhold no
+lesson from the pure aspirant; I am a dark enigma to the general seeker.
+As man’s only indestructible possession is his memory, so it is not in
+mine art to crumble into matter the immaterial thoughts that have sprung
+up within thy breast. The tyro might shatter this castle to the dust,
+and topple down the mountain to the plain. The master has no power to
+say, ‘Exist no more,’ to one THOUGHT that his knowledge has inspired.
+Thou mayst change the thoughts into new forms; thou mayst rarefy and
+sublimate it into a finer spirit,--but thou canst not annihilate that
+which has no home but in the memory, no substance but the idea. EVERY
+THOUGHT IS A SOUL! Vainly, therefore, would I or thou undo the past,
+or restore to thee the gay blindness of thy youth. Thou must endure the
+influence of the elixir thou hast inhaled; thou must wrestle with the
+spectre thou hast invoked!”
+
+The letter fell from Glyndon’s hand. A sort of stupor succeeded to the
+various emotions which had chased each other in the perusal,--a stupor
+resembling that which follows the sudden destruction of any ardent and
+long-nursed hope in the human heart, whether it be of love, of avarice,
+of ambition. The loftier world for which he had so thirsted, sacrificed,
+and toiled, was closed upon him “forever,” and by his own faults of
+rashness and presumption. But Glyndon’s was not of that nature which
+submits long to condemn itself. His indignation began to kindle against
+Mejnour, who owned he had tempted, and who now abandoned him,--abandoned
+him to the presence of a spectre. The mystic’s reproaches stung rather
+than humbled him. What crime had he committed to deserve language so
+harsh and disdainful? Was it so deep a debasement to feel pleasure in
+the smile and the eyes of Fillide? Had not Zanoni himself confessed
+love for Viola; had he not fled with her as his companion? Glyndon never
+paused to consider if there are no distinctions between one kind of
+love and another. Where, too, was the great offence of yielding to a
+temptation which only existed for the brave? Had not the mystic volume
+which Mejnour had purposely left open, bid him but “Beware of fear”? Was
+not, then, every wilful provocative held out to the strongest influences
+of the human mind, in the prohibition to enter the chamber, in the
+possession of the key which excited his curiosity, in the volume which
+seemed to dictate the mode by which the curiosity was to be gratified?
+As rapidly these thoughts passed over him, he began to consider the
+whole conduct of Mejnour either as a perfidious design to entrap him to
+his own misery, or as the trick of an imposter, who knew that he could
+not realise the great professions he had made. On glancing again over
+the more mysterious threats and warnings in Mejnour’s letter, they
+seemed to assume the language of mere parable and allegory,--the jargon
+of the Platonists and Pythagoreans. By little and little, he began to
+consider that the very spectra he had seen--even that one phantom so
+horrid in its aspect--were but the delusions which Mejnour’s science had
+enable him to raise. The healthful sunlight, filling up every cranny
+in his chamber, seemed to laugh away the terrors of the past night. His
+pride and his resentment nerved his habitual courage; and when, having
+hastily dressed himself, he rejoined Paolo, it was with a flushed cheek
+and a haughty step.
+
+“So, Paolo,” said he, “the Padrone, as you call him, told you to expect
+and welcome me at your village feast?”
+
+“He did so by a message from a wretched old cripple. This surprised
+me at the time, for I thought he was far distant; but these great
+philosophers make a joke of two or three hundred leagues.”
+
+“Why did you not tell me you had heard from Mejnour?”
+
+“Because the old cripple forbade me.”
+
+“Did you not see the man afterwards during the dance?”
+
+“No, Excellency.”
+
+“Humph!”
+
+“Allow me to serve you,” said Paolo, piling Glyndon’s plate, and then
+filling his glass. “I wish, signor, now the Padrone is gone,--not,”
+ added Paolo, as he cast rather a frightened and suspicious glance round
+the room, “that I mean to say anything disrespectful of him,--I wish, I
+say, now that he is gone, that you would take pity on yourself, and ask
+your own heart what your youth was meant for? Not to bury yourself alive
+in these old ruins, and endanger body and soul by studies which I am
+sure no saint could approve of.”
+
+“Are the saints so partial, then, to your own occupations, Master
+Paolo?”
+
+“Why,” answered the bandit, a little confused, “a gentleman with plenty
+of pistoles in his purse need not, of necessity, make it his profession
+to take away the pistoles of other people! It is a different thing for
+us poor rogues. After all, too, I always devote a tithe of my gains
+to the Virgin; and I share the rest charitably with the poor. But eat,
+drink, enjoy yourself; be absolved by your confessor for any little
+peccadilloes and don’t run too long scores at a time,--that’s my advice.
+Your health, Excellency! Pshaw, signor, fasting, except on the days
+prescribed to a good Catholic, only engenders phantoms.”
+
+“Phantoms!”
+
+“Yes; the devil always tempts the empty stomach. To covet, to hate, to
+thieve, to rob, and to murder,--these are the natural desires of a man
+who is famishing. With a full belly, signor, we are at peace with all
+the world. That’s right; you like the partridge! Cospetto! when I myself
+have passed two or three days in the mountains, with nothing from sunset
+to sunrise but a black crust and an onion, I grow as fierce as a wolf.
+That’s not the worst, too. In these times I see little imps dancing
+before me. Oh, yes; fasting is as full of spectres as a field of
+battle.”
+
+Glyndon thought there was some sound philosophy in the reasoning of
+his companion; and certainly the more he ate and drank, the more the
+recollection of the past night and of Mejnour’s desertion faded from his
+mind. The casement was open, the breeze blew, the sun shone,--all Nature
+was merry; and merry as Nature herself grew Maestro Paolo. He talked
+of adventures, of travel, of women, with a hearty gusto that had its
+infection. But Glyndon listened yet more complacently when Paolo turned
+with an arch smile to praises of the eye, the teeth, the ankles, and the
+shape of the handsome Fillide.
+
+This man, indeed, seemed the very personation of animal sensual life. He
+would have been to Faust a more dangerous tempter than Mephistopheles.
+There was no sneer on HIS lip at the pleasures which animated his voice.
+To one awaking to a sense of the vanities in knowledge, this reckless
+ignorant joyousness of temper was a worse corrupter than all the icy
+mockeries of a learned Fiend. But when Paolo took his leave, with a
+promise to return the next day, the mind of the Englishman again settled
+back to a graver and more thoughtful mood. The elixir seemed, in truth,
+to have left the refining effects Mejnour had ascribed to it. As Glyndon
+paced to and fro the solitary corridor, or, pausing, gazed upon the
+extended and glorious scenery that stretched below, high thoughts
+of enterprise and ambition--bright visions of glory--passed in rapid
+succession through his soul.
+
+“Mejnour denies me his science. Well,” said the painter, proudly, “he
+has not robbed me of my art.”
+
+What! Clarence Glyndon, dost thou return to that from which thy career
+commenced? Was Zanoni right after all?
+
+He found himself in the chamber of the mystic; not a vessel,--not an
+herb! the solemn volume is vanished,--the elixir shall sparkle for him
+no more! But still in the room itself seems to linger the atmosphere of
+a charm. Faster and fiercer it burns within thee, the desire to achieve,
+to create! Thou longest for a life beyond the sensual!--but the life
+that is permitted to all genius,--that which breathes through the
+immortal work, and endures in the imperishable name.
+
+Where are the implements for thine art? Tush!--when did the true workman
+ever fail to find his tools? Thou art again in thine own chamber,--the
+white wall thy canvas, a fragment of charcoal for thy pencil. They
+suffice, at least, to give outline to the conception that may otherwise
+vanish with the morrow.
+
+The idea that thus excited the imagination of the artist was
+unquestionably noble and august. It was derived from that Egyptian
+ceremonial which Diodorus has recorded,--the Judgment of the Dead by the
+Living (Diod., lib. i.): when the corpse, duly embalmed, is placed by
+the margin of the Acherusian Lake; and before it may be consigned to the
+bark which is to bear it across the waters to its final resting-place,
+it is permitted to the appointed judges to hear all accusations of the
+past life of the deceased, and, if proved, to deprive the corpse of the
+rites of sepulture.
+
+Unconsciously to himself, it was Mejnour’s description of this custom,
+which he had illustrated by several anecdotes not to be found in books,
+that now suggested the design to the artist, and gave it reality and
+force. He supposed a powerful and guilty king whom in life scarce a
+whisper had dared to arraign, but against whom, now the breath was gone,
+came the slave from his fetters, the mutilated victim from his dungeon,
+livid and squalid as if dead themselves, invoking with parched lips the
+justice that outlives the grave.
+
+Strange fervour this, O artist! breaking suddenly forth from the mists
+and darkness which the occult science had spread so long over thy
+fancies,--strange that the reaction of the night’s terror and the day’s
+disappointment should be back to thine holy art! Oh, how freely goes
+the bold hand over the large outline! How, despite those rude materials,
+speaks forth no more the pupil, but the master! Fresh yet from the
+glorious elixir, how thou givest to thy creatures the finer life denied
+to thyself!--some power not thine own writes the grand symbols on the
+wall. Behind rises the mighty sepulchre, on the building of which repose
+to the dead the lives of thousands had been consumed. There sit in a
+semicircle the solemn judges. Black and sluggish flows the lake. There
+lies the mummied and royal dead. Dost thou quail at the frown on
+his lifelike brow? Ha!--bravely done, O artist!--up rise the haggard
+forms!--pale speak the ghastly faces! Shall not Humanity after death
+avenge itself on Power? Thy conception, Clarence Glyndon, is a sublime
+truth; thy design promises renown to genius. Better this magic than the
+charms of the volume and the vessel. Hour after hour has gone; thou hast
+lighted the lamp; night sees thee yet at thy labour. Merciful Heaven!
+what chills the atmosphere; why does the lamp grow wan; why does thy
+hair bristle? There!--there!--there! at the casement! It gazes on thee,
+the dark, mantled, loathsome thing! There, with their devilish mockery
+and hateful craft, glare on thee those horrid eyes!
+
+He stood and gazed,--it was no delusion. It spoke not, moved not, till,
+unable to bear longer that steady and burning look, he covered his face
+with his hands. With a start, with a thrill, he removed them; he felt
+the nearer presence of the nameless. There it cowered on the floor
+beside his design; and lo! the figures seemed to start from the wall!
+Those pale accusing figures, the shapes he himself had raised, frowned
+at him, and gibbered. With a violent effort that convulsed his whole
+being, and bathed his body in the sweat of agony, the young man mastered
+his horror. He strode towards the phantom; he endured its eyes; he
+accosted it with a steady voice; he demanded its purpose and defied its
+power.
+
+And then, as a wind from a charnel, was heard its voice. What it said,
+what revealed, it is forbidden the lips to repeat, the hand to record.
+Nothing save the subtle life that yet animated the frame to which
+the inhalations of the elixir had given vigour and energy beyond the
+strength of the strongest, could have survived that awful hour. Better
+to wake in the catacombs and see the buried rise from their cerements,
+and hear the ghouls, in their horrid orgies, amongst the festering
+ghastliness of corruption, than to front those features when the veil
+was lifted, and listen to that whispered voice!
+
+....
+
+The next day Glyndon fled from the ruined castle. With what hopes of
+starry light had he crossed the threshold; with what memories to shudder
+evermore at the darkness did he look back at the frown of its time-worn
+towers!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.II.
+
+     Faust:  Wohin soll es nun gehm?
+     Mephist:  Wohin es Dir gefallt.
+     Wir sehn die kleine, dann die grosse Welt.
+     “Faust.”
+
+     (Faust:  Whither go now!
+     Mephist:  Whither it pleases thee.
+     We see the small world, then the great.)
+
+Draw your chair to the fireside, brush clean the hearth, and trim the
+lights. Oh, home of sleekness, order, substance, comfort! Oh, excellent
+thing art thou, Matter of Fact!
+
+It is some time after the date of the last chapter. Here we are, not in
+moonlit islands or mouldering castles, but in a room twenty-six feet by
+twenty-two,--well carpeted, well cushioned, solid arm-chairs and eight
+such bad pictures, in such fine frames, upon the walls! Thomas Mervale,
+Esq., merchant, of London, you are an enviable dog!
+
+It was the easiest thing in the world for Mervale, on returning from his
+Continental episode of life, to settle down to his desk,--his heart had
+been always there. The death of his father gave him, as a birthright,
+a high position in a respectable though second-rate firm. To make this
+establishment first-rate was an honourable ambition,--it was his! He had
+lately married, not entirely for money,--no! he was worldly rather than
+mercenary. He had no romantic ideas of love; but he was too sensible
+a man not to know that a wife should be a companion,--not merely a
+speculation. He did not care for beauty and genius, but he liked health
+and good temper, and a certain proportion of useful understanding. He
+chose a wife from his reason, not his heart, and a very good choice he
+made. Mrs. Mervale was an excellent young woman,--bustling, managing,
+economical, but affectionate and good. She had a will of her own, but
+was no shrew. She had a great notion of the rights of a wife, and a
+strong perception of the qualities that insure comfort. She would never
+have forgiven her husband, had she found him guilty of the most passing
+fancy for another; but, in return, she had the most admirable sense of
+propriety herself. She held in abhorrence all levity, all flirtation,
+all coquetry,--small vices which often ruin domestic happiness, but
+which a giddy nature incurs without consideration. But she did not think
+it right to love a husband over much. She left a surplus of affection,
+for all her relations, all her friends, some of her acquaintances, and
+the possibility of a second marriage, should any accident happen to Mr.
+M. She kept a good table, for it suited their station; and her temper
+was considered even, though firm; but she could say a sharp thing
+or two, if Mr. Mervale was not punctual to a moment. She was very
+particular that he should change his shoes on coming home,--the carpets
+were new and expensive. She was not sulky, nor passionate,--Heaven
+bless her for that!--but when displeased she showed it, administered a
+dignified rebuke, alluded to her own virtues, to her uncle who was an
+admiral, and to the thirty thousand pounds which she had brought to the
+object of her choice. But as Mr. Mervale was a good-humoured man, owned
+his faults, and subscribed to her excellence, the displeasure was soon
+over.
+
+Every household has its little disagreements, none fewer than that of
+Mr. and Mrs. Mervale. Mrs. Mervale, without being improperly fond of
+dress, paid due attention to it. She was never seen out of her chamber
+with papers in her hair, nor in that worst of dis-illusions,--a morning
+wrapper. At half-past eight every morning Mrs. Mervale was dressed
+for the day,--that is, till she re-dressed for dinner,--her stays well
+laced, her cap prim, her gowns, winter and summer, of a thick, handsome
+silk. Ladies at that time wore very short waists; so did Mrs. Mervale.
+Her morning ornaments were a thick, gold chain, to which was suspended
+a gold watch,--none of those fragile dwarfs of mechanism that look so
+pretty and go so ill, but a handsome repeater which chronicled Father
+Time to a moment; also a mosaic brooch; also a miniature of her uncle,
+the admiral, set in a bracelet. For the evening she had two handsome
+sets,--necklace, earrings, and bracelets complete,--one of amethysts,
+the other topazes. With these, her costume for the most part was a
+gold-coloured satin and a turban, in which last her picture had been
+taken. Mrs. Mervale had an aquiline nose, good teeth, fair hair, and
+light eyelashes, rather a high complexion, what is generally called a
+fine bust; full cheeks; large useful feet made for walking; large, white
+hands with filbert nails, on which not a speck of dust had, even in
+childhood, ever been known to a light. She looked a little older than
+she really was; but that might arise from a certain air of dignity and
+the aforesaid aquiline nose. She generally wore short mittens. She never
+read any poetry but Goldsmith’s and Cowper’s. She was not amused by
+novels, though she had no prejudice against them. She liked a play and
+a pantomime, with a slight supper afterwards. She did not like concerts
+nor operas. At the beginning of the winter she selected some book to
+read, and some piece of work to commence. The two lasted her till the
+spring, when, though she continued to work, she left off reading. Her
+favourite study was history, which she read through the medium of Dr.
+Goldsmith. Her favourite author in the belles lettres was, of course,
+Dr. Johnson. A worthier woman, or one more respected, was not to be
+found, except in an epitaph!
+
+It was an autumn night. Mr. and Mrs. Mervale, lately returned from an
+excursion to Weymouth, are in the drawing-room,--“the dame sat on this
+side, the man sat on that.”
+
+“Yes, I assure you, my dear, that Glyndon, with all his eccentricities,
+was a very engaging, amiable fellow. You would certainly have liked
+him,--all the women did.”
+
+“My dear Thomas, you will forgive the remark,--but that expression of
+yours, ‘all the WOMEN’--”
+
+“I beg your pardon,--you are right. I meant to say that he was a general
+favourite with your charming sex.”
+
+“I understand,--rather a frivolous character.”
+
+“Frivolous! no, not exactly; a little unsteady,--very odd, but certainly
+not frivolous; presumptuous and headstrong in character, but modest and
+shy in his manners, rather too much so,--just what you like. However,
+to return; I am seriously uneasy at the accounts I have heard of him
+to-day. He has been living, it seems, a very strange and irregular life,
+travelling from place to place, and must have spent already a great deal
+of money.”
+
+“Apropos of money,” said Mrs. Mervale; “I fear we must change our
+butcher; he is certainly in league with the cook.”
+
+“That is a pity; his beef is remarkably fine. These London servants are
+as bad as the Carbonari. But, as I was saying, poor Glyndon--”
+
+Here a knock was heard at the door. “Bless me,” said Mrs. Mervale, “it
+is past ten! Who can that possibly be?”
+
+“Perhaps your uncle, the admiral,” said the husband, with a slight
+peevishness in his accent. “He generally favours us about this hour.”
+
+“I hope, my love, that none of my relations are unwelcome visitors at
+your house. The admiral is a most entertaining man, and his fortune is
+entirely at his own disposal.”
+
+“No one I respect more,” said Mr. Mervale, with emphasis.
+
+The servant threw open the door, and announced Mr. Glyndon.
+
+“Mr. Glyndon!--what an extraordinary--” exclaimed Mrs. Mervale; but
+before she could conclude the sentence, Glyndon was in the room.
+
+The two friends greeted each other with all the warmth of early
+recollection and long absence. An appropriate and proud presentation
+to Mrs. Mervale ensued; and Mrs. Mervale, with a dignified smile, and
+a furtive glance at his boots, bade her husband’s friend welcome to
+England.
+
+Glyndon was greatly altered since Mervale had seen him last. Though
+less than two years had elapsed since then, his fair complexion was more
+bronzed and manly. Deep lines of care, or thought, or dissipation, had
+replaced the smooth contour of happy youth. To a manner once gentle
+and polished had succeeded a certain recklessness of mien, tone, and
+bearing, which bespoke the habits of a society that cared little for the
+calm decorums of conventional ease. Still a kind of wild nobleness, not
+before apparent in him, characterised his aspect, and gave something of
+dignity to the freedom of his language and gestures.
+
+“So, then, you are settled, Mervale,--I need not ask you if you are
+happy. Worth, sense, wealth, character, and so fair a companion deserve
+happiness, and command it.”
+
+“Would you like some tea, Mr. Glyndon?” asked Mrs. Mervale, kindly.
+
+“Thank you,--no. I propose a more convivial stimulus to my old friend.
+Wine, Mervale,--wine, eh!--or a bowl of old English punch. Your wife
+will excuse us,--we will make a night of it!”
+
+Mrs. Mervale drew back her chair, and tried not to look aghast. Glyndon
+did not give his friend time to reply.
+
+“So at last I am in England,” he said, looking round the room, with
+a slight sneer on his lips; “surely this sober air must have its
+influence; surely here I shall be like the rest.”
+
+“Have you been ill, Glyndon?”
+
+“Ill, yes. Humph! you have a fine house. Does it contain a spare room
+for a solitary wanderer?”
+
+Mr. Mervale glanced at his wife, and his wife looked steadily on the
+carpet. “Modest and shy in his manners--rather too much so!” Mrs.
+Mervale was in the seventh heaven of indignation and amaze!
+
+“My dear?” said Mr. Mervale at last, meekly and interogatingly.
+
+“My dear!” returned Mrs. Mervale, innocently and sourly.
+
+“We can make up a room for my old friend, Sarah?”
+
+The old friend had sunk back on his chair, and, gazing intently on the
+fire, with his feet at ease upon the fender, seemed to have forgotten
+his question.
+
+Mrs. Mervale bit her lips, looked thoughtful, and at last coldly
+replied, “Certainly, Mr. Mervale; your friends do right to make
+themselves at home.”
+
+With that she lighted a candle, and moved majestically from the room.
+When she returned, the two friends had vanished into Mr. Mervale’s
+study.
+
+Twelve o’clock struck,--one o’clock, two! Thrice had Mrs. Mervale sent
+into the room to know,--first, if they wanted anything; secondly, if Mr.
+Glyndon slept on a mattress or feather-bed; thirdly, to inquire if Mr.
+Glyndon’s trunk, which he had brought with him, should be unpacked. And
+to the answer to all these questions was added, in a loud voice from the
+visitor,--a voice that pierced from the kitchen to the attic,--“Another
+bowl! stronger, if you please, and be quick with it!”
+
+At last Mr. Mervale appeared in the conjugal chamber, not penitent, nor
+apologetic,--no, not a bit of it. His eyes twinkled, his cheek flushed,
+his feet reeled; he sang,--Mr. Thomas Mervale positively sang!
+
+“Mr. Mervale! is it possible, sir--”
+
+“‘Old King Cole was a merry old soul--’”
+
+“Mr. Mervale! sir!--leave me alone, sir!”
+
+“‘And a merry old soul was he--’”
+
+“What an example to the servants!”
+
+“‘And he called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl--’”
+
+“If you don’t behave yourself, sir, I shall call--”
+
+“‘Call for his fiddlers three!’”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.III.
+
+     In der Welt weit
+     Aus der Einsamkeit
+     Wollen sie Dich locken.
+     --“Faust.”
+
+     (In the wide world, out of the solitude, will these allure thee.)
+
+The next morning, at breakfast, Mrs. Mervale looked as if all the wrongs
+of injured woman sat upon her brow. Mr. Mervale seemed the picture of
+remorseful guilt and avenging bile. He said little, except to complain
+of headache, and to request the eggs to be removed from the table.
+Clarence Glyndon--impervious, unconscious, unailing, impenitent--was in
+noisy spirits, and talked for three.
+
+“Poor Mervale! he has lost the habit of good-fellowship, madam. Another
+night or two, and he will be himself again!”
+
+“Sir,” said Mrs. Mervale, launching a premeditated sentence with more
+than Johnsonian dignity, “permit me to remind you that Mr. Mervale is
+now a married man, the destined father of a family, and the present
+master of a household.”
+
+“Precisely the reasons why I envy him so much. I myself have a great
+mind to marry. Happiness is contagious.”
+
+“Do you still take to painting?” asked Mervale, languidly, endeavouring
+to turn the tables on his guest.
+
+“Oh, no; I have adopted your advice. No art, no ideal,--nothing loftier
+than Commonplace for me now. If I were to paint again, I positively
+think YOU would purchase my pictures. Make haste and finish your
+breakfast, man; I wish to consult you. I have come to England to see
+after my affairs. My ambition is to make money; your counsels and
+experience cannot fail to assist me here.”
+
+“Ah, you were soon disenchanted of your Philosopher’s Stone! You must
+know, Sarah, that when I last left Glyndon, he was bent upon turning
+alchemist and magician.”
+
+“You are witty to-day, Mr. Mervale.”
+
+“Upon my honour it is true, I told you so before.”
+
+Glyndon rose abruptly.
+
+“Why revive those recollections of folly and presumption? Have I not
+said that I have returned to my native land to pursue the healthful
+avocations of my kind! Oh, yes! what so healthful, so noble, so
+fitted to our nature, as what you call the Practical Life? If we
+have faculties, what is their use, but to sell them to advantage! Buy
+knowledge as we do our goods; buy it at the cheapest market, sell it at
+the dearest. Have you not breakfasted yet?”
+
+The friends walked into the streets, and Mervale shrank from the irony
+with which Glyndon complimented him on his respectability, his station,
+his pursuits, his happy marriage, and his eight pictures in their
+handsome frames. Formerly the sober Mervale had commanded an influence
+over his friend: HIS had been the sarcasm; Glyndon’s the irresolute
+shame at his own peculiarities. Now this position was reversed. There
+was a fierce earnestness in Glyndon’s altered temper which awed and
+silenced the quiet commonplace of his friend’s character. He seemed to
+take a malignant delight in persuading himself that the sober life of
+the world was contemptible and base.
+
+“Ah!” he exclaimed, “how right you were to tell me to marry respectably;
+to have a solid position; to live in decorous fear of the world and
+one’s wife; and to command the envy of the poor, the good opinion of
+the rich. You have practised what you preach. Delicious existence! The
+merchant’s desk and the curtain lecture! Ha! ha! Shall we have another
+night of it?”
+
+Mervale, embarrassed and irritated, turned the conversation upon
+Glyndon’s affairs. He was surprised at the knowledge of the world which
+the artist seemed to have suddenly acquired, surprised still more at
+the acuteness and energy with which he spoke of the speculations most in
+vogue at the market. Yes; Glyndon was certainly in earnest: he desired
+to be rich and respectable,--and to make at least ten per cent for his
+money!
+
+After spending some days with the merchant, during which time he
+contrived to disorganise all the mechanism of the house, to turn
+night into day, harmony into discord, to drive poor Mrs. Mervale
+half-distracted, and to convince her husband that he was horribly
+hen-pecked, the ill-omened visitor left them as suddenly as he had
+arrived. He took a house of his own; he sought the society of persons
+of substance; he devoted himself to the money-market; he seemed to
+have become a man of business; his schemes were bold and colossal; his
+calculations rapid and profound. He startled Mervale by his energy,
+and dazzled him by his success. Mervale began to envy him,--to be
+discontented with his own regular and slow gains. When Glyndon bought or
+sold in the funds, wealth rolled upon him like the tide of a sea; what
+years of toil could not have done for him in art, a few months, by
+a succession of lucky chances, did for him in speculation. Suddenly,
+however, he relaxed his exertions; new objects of ambition seemed to
+attract him. If he heard a drum in the streets, what glory like the
+soldier’s? If a new poem were published, what renown like the poet’s?
+He began works in literature, which promised great excellence, to throw
+them aside in disgust. All at once he abandoned the decorous and formal
+society he had courted; he joined himself, with young and riotous
+associates; he plunged into the wildest excesses of the great city,
+where Gold reigns alike over Toil and Pleasure. Through all he carried
+with him a certain power and heat of soul. In all society he aspired
+to command,--in all pursuits to excel. Yet whatever the passion of the
+moment, the reaction was terrible in its gloom. He sank, at times, into
+the most profound and the darkest reveries. His fever was that of a mind
+that would escape memory,--his repose, that of a mind which the memory
+seizes again, and devours as a prey. Mervale now saw little of him; they
+shunned each other. Glyndon had no confidant, and no friend.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.IV.
+
+     Ich fuhle Dich mir nahe;
+     Die Einsamkeit belebt;
+     Wie uber seinen Welten
+     Der Unsichtbare schwebt.
+     Uhland.
+
+     (I feel thee near to me,
+     The loneliness takes life,--As over its world
+     The Invisible hovers.)
+
+From this state of restlessness and agitation rather than continuous
+action, Glyndon was aroused by a visitor who seemed to exercise the most
+salutary influence over him. His sister, an orphan with himself, had
+resided in the country with her aunt. In the early years of hope and
+home he had loved this girl, much younger than himself, with all a
+brother’s tenderness. On his return to England, he had seemed to forget
+her existence. She recalled herself to him on her aunt’s death by
+a touching and melancholy letter: she had now no home but his,--no
+dependence save on his affection; he wept when he read it, and was
+impatient till Adela arrived.
+
+This girl, then about eighteen, concerned beneath a gentle and calm
+exterior much of the romance or enthusiasm that had, at her own age,
+characterised her brother. But her enthusiasm was of a far purer order,
+and was restrained within proper bounds, partly by the sweetness of a
+very feminine nature, and partly by a strict and methodical education.
+She differed from him especially in a timidity of character which
+exceeded that usual at her age, but which the habit of self-command
+concealed no less carefully than that timidity itself concealed the
+romance I have ascribed to her.
+
+Adela was not handsome: she had the complexion and the form of delicate
+health; and too fine an organisation of the nerves rendered her
+susceptible to every impression that could influence the health of the
+frame through the sympathy of the mind. But as she never complained, and
+as the singular serenity of her manners seemed to betoken an
+equanimity of temperament which, with the vulgar, might have passed for
+indifference, her sufferings had so long been borne unnoticed that it
+ceased to be an effort to disguise them. Though, as I have said, not
+handsome, her countenance was interesting and pleasing; and there
+was that caressing kindness, that winning charm about her smile, her
+manners, her anxiety to please, to comfort, and to soothe which went at
+once to the heart, and made her lovely,--because so loving.
+
+Such was the sister whom Glyndon had so long neglected, and whom he
+now so cordially welcomed. Adela had passed many years a victim to
+the caprices, and a nurse to the maladies, of a selfish and exacting
+relation. The delicate and generous and respectful affection of her
+brother was no less new to her than delightful. He took pleasure in the
+happiness he created; he gradually weaned himself from other society;
+he felt the charm of home. It is not surprising, then, that this
+young creature, free and virgin from every more ardent attachment,
+concentrated all her grateful love on this cherished and protecting
+relative. Her study by day, her dream by night, was to repay him for
+his affection. She was proud of his talents, devoted to his welfare;
+the smallest trifle that could interest him swelled in her eyes to the
+gravest affairs of life. In short, all the long-hoarded enthusiasm,
+which was her perilous and only heritage, she invested in this one
+object of her holy tenderness, her pure ambition.
+
+But in proportion as Glyndon shunned those excitements by which he had
+so long sought to occupy his time or distract his thoughts, the gloom
+of his calmer hours became deeper and more continuous. He ever and
+especially dreaded to be alone; he could not bear his new companion to
+be absent from his eyes: he rode with her, walked with her, and it was
+with visible reluctance, which almost partook of horror, that he retired
+to rest at an hour when even revel grows fatigued. This gloom was not
+that which could be called by the soft name of melancholy,--it was far
+more intense; it seemed rather like despair. Often after a silence as of
+death--so heavy, abstracted, motionless, did it appear--he would start
+abruptly, and cast hurried glances around him,--his limbs trembling, his
+lips livid, his brows bathed in dew. Convinced that some secret sorrow
+preyed upon his mind, and would consume his health, it was the dearest
+as the most natural desire of Adela to become his confidant and
+consoler. She observed, with the quick tact of the delicate, that he
+disliked her to seem affected by, or even sensible of, his darker moods.
+She schooled herself to suppress her fears and her feelings. She would
+not ask his confidence,--she sought to steal into it. By little and
+little she felt that she was succeeding. Too wrapped in his own strange
+existence to be acutely observant of the character of others, Glyndon
+mistook the self-content of a generous and humble affection for
+constitutional fortitude; and this quality pleased and soothed him. It
+is fortitude that the diseased mind requires in the confidant whom
+it selects as its physician. And how irresistible is that desire to
+communicate! How often the lonely man thought to himself, “My heart
+would be lightened of its misery, if once confessed!” He felt, too, that
+in the very youth, the inexperience, the poetical temperament of Adela,
+he could find one who would comprehend and bear with him better than
+any sterner and more practical nature. Mervale would have looked on his
+revelations as the ravings of madness, and most men, at best, as the
+sicklied chimeras, the optical delusions, of disease. Thus gradually
+preparing himself for that relief for which he yearned, the moment for
+his disclosure arrived thus:--
+
+One evening, as they sat alone together, Adela, who inherited some
+portion of her brother’s talent in art, was employed in drawing, and
+Glyndon, rousing himself from meditations less gloomy than usual, rose,
+and affectionately passing his arm round her waist, looked over her as
+she sat. An exclamation of dismay broke from his lips,--he snatched the
+drawing from her hand: “What are you about?--what portrait is this?”
+
+“Dear Clarence, do you not remember the original?--it is a copy from
+that portrait of our wise ancestor which our poor mother used to say
+so strongly resembled you. I thought it would please you if I copied it
+from memory.”
+
+“Accursed was the likeness!” said Glyndon, gloomily. “Guess you not the
+reason why I have shunned to return to the home of my fathers!--because
+I dreaded to meet that portrait!--because--because--but pardon me; I
+alarm you!”
+
+“Ah, no,--no, Clarence, you never alarm me when you speak: only when you
+are silent! Oh, if you thought me worthy of your trust; oh, if you had
+given me the right to reason with you in the sorrows that I yearn to
+share!”
+
+Glyndon made no answer, but paced the room for some moments with
+disordered strides. He stopped at last, and gazed at her earnestly.
+“Yes, you, too, are his descendant; you know that such men have lived
+and suffered; you will not mock me,--you will not disbelieve! Listen!
+hark!--what sound is that?”
+
+“But the wind on the house-top, Clarence,--but the wind.”
+
+“Give me your hand; let me feel its living clasp; and when I have told
+you, never revert to the tale again. Conceal it from all: swear that it
+shall die with us,--the last of our predestined race!”
+
+“Never will I betray your trust; I swear it,--never!” said Adela,
+firmly; and she drew closer to his side. Then Glyndon commenced his
+story. That which, perhaps, in writing, and to minds prepared to
+question and disbelieve, may seem cold and terrorless, became far
+different when told by those blanched lips, with all that truth of
+suffering which convinces and appalls. Much, indeed, he concealed,
+much he involuntarily softened; but he revealed enough to make his
+tale intelligible and distinct to his pale and trembling listener. “At
+daybreak,” he said, “I left that unhallowed and abhorred abode. I had
+one hope still,--I would seek Mejnour through the world. I would force
+him to lay at rest the fiend that haunted my soul. With this intent I
+journeyed from city to city. I instituted the most vigilant researches
+through the police of Italy. I even employed the services of the
+Inquisition at Rome, which had lately asserted its ancient powers in the
+trial of the less dangerous Cagliostro. All was in vain; not a trace of
+him could be discovered. I was not alone, Adela.” Here Glyndon paused a
+moment, as if embarrassed; for in his recital, I need scarcely say that
+he had only indistinctly alluded to Fillide, whom the reader may
+surmise to be his companion. “I was not alone, but the associate of
+my wanderings was not one in whom my soul could confide,--faithful and
+affectionate, but without education, without faculties to comprehend me,
+with natural instincts rather than cultivated reason; one in whom the
+heart might lean in its careless hours, but with whom the mind could
+have no commune, in whom the bewildered spirit could seek no guide. Yet
+in the society of this person the demon troubled me not. Let me
+explain yet more fully the dread conditions of its presence. In coarse
+excitement, in commonplace life, in the wild riot, in the fierce excess,
+in the torpid lethargy of that animal existence which we share with the
+brutes, its eyes were invisible, its whisper was unheard. But whenever
+the soul would aspire, whenever the imagination kindled to the loftier
+ends, whenever the consciousness of our proper destiny struggled against
+the unworthy life I pursued, then, Adela--then, it cowered by my side
+in the light of noon, or sat by my bed,--a Darkness visible through the
+Dark. If, in the galleries of Divine Art, the dreams of my youth woke
+the early emulation,--if I turned to the thoughts of sages; if the
+example of the great, if the converse of the wise, aroused the silenced
+intellect, the demon was with me as by a spell. At last, one evening, at
+Genoa, to which city I had travelled in pursuit of the mystic, suddenly,
+and when least expected, he appeared before me. It was the time of the
+Carnival. It was in one of those half-frantic scenes of noise and revel,
+call it not gayety, which establish a heathen saturnalia in the midst
+of a Christian festival. Wearied with the dance, I had entered a room in
+which several revellers were seated, drinking, singing, shouting; and
+in their fantastic dresses and hideous masks, their orgy seemed scarcely
+human. I placed myself amongst them, and in that fearful excitement of
+the spirits which the happy never know, I was soon the most riotous of
+all. The conversation fell on the Revolution of France, which had
+always possessed for me an absorbing fascination. The masks spoke of the
+millennium it was to bring on earth, not as philosophers rejoicing in
+the advent of light, but as ruffians exulting in the annihilation of
+law. I know not why it was, but their licentious language infected
+myself; and, always desirous to be foremost in every circle, I soon
+exceeded even these rioters in declamations on the nature of the liberty
+which was about to embrace all the families of the globe,--a liberty
+that should pervade not only public legislation, but domestic life; an
+emancipation from every fetter that men had forged for themselves. In
+the midst of this tirade one of the masks whispered me,--
+
+“‘Take care. One listens to you who seems to be a spy!’
+
+“My eyes followed those of the mask, and I observed a man who took
+no part in the conversation, but whose gaze was bent upon me. He was
+disguised like the rest, yet I found by a general whisper that none had
+observed him enter. His silence, his attention, had alarmed the fears of
+the other revellers,--they only excited me the more. Rapt in my subject,
+I pursued it, insensible to the signs of those about me; and, addressing
+myself only to the silent mask who sat alone, apart from the group, I
+did not even observe that, one by one, the revellers slunk off, and that
+I and the silent listener were left alone, until, pausing from my heated
+and impetuous declamations, I said,--
+
+“‘And you, signor,--what is your view of this mighty era? Opinion
+without persecution; brotherhood without jealousy; love without
+bondage--’
+
+“‘And life without God,’ added the mask as I hesitated for new images.
+
+“The sound of that well-known voice changed the current of my thought. I
+sprang forward, and cried,--
+
+“‘Imposter or Fiend, we meet at last!’
+
+“The figure rose as I advanced, and, unmasking, showed the features of
+Mejnour. His fixed eye, his majestic aspect, awed and repelled me. I
+stood rooted to the ground.
+
+“‘Yes,’ he said solemnly, ‘we meet, and it is this meeting that I have
+sought. How hast thou followed my admonitions! Are these the scenes in
+which the Aspirant for the Serene Science thinks to escape the Ghastly
+Enemy? Do the thoughts thou hast uttered--thoughts that would strike all
+order from the universe--express the hopes of the sage who would rise to
+the Harmony of the Eternal Spheres?’
+
+“‘It is thy fault,--it is thine!’ I exclaimed. ‘Exorcise the phantom!
+Take the haunting terror from my soul!’
+
+“Mejnour looked at me a moment with a cold and cynical disdain which
+provoked at once my fear and rage, and replied,--
+
+“‘No; fool of thine own senses! No; thou must have full and entire
+experience of the illusions to which the Knowledge that is without Faith
+climbs its Titan way. Thou pantest for this Millennium,--thou shalt
+behold it! Thou shalt be one of the agents of the era of Light and
+Reason. I see, while I speak, the Phantom thou fliest, by thy side; it
+marshals thy path; it has power over thee as yet,--a power that defies
+my own. In the last days of that Revolution which thou hailest, amidst
+the wrecks of the Order thou cursest as Oppression, seek the fulfilment
+of thy destiny, and await thy cure.’
+
+“At that instant a troop of masks, clamorous, intoxicated, reeling, and
+rushing, as they reeled, poured into the room, and separated me from the
+mystic. I broke through them, and sought him everywhere, but in vain.
+All my researches the next day were equally fruitless. Weeks were
+consumed in the same pursuit,--not a trace of Mejnour could be
+discovered. Wearied with false pleasures, roused by reproaches I had
+deserved, recoiling from Mejnour’s prophecy of the scene in which I was
+to seek deliverance, it occurred to me, at last, that in the sober air
+of my native country, and amidst its orderly and vigorous pursuits, I
+might work out my own emancipation from the spectre. I left all whom
+I had before courted and clung to,--I came hither. Amidst mercenary
+schemes and selfish speculations, I found the same relief as in debauch
+and excess. The Phantom was invisible; but these pursuits soon became
+to me distasteful as the rest. Ever and ever I felt that I was born for
+something nobler than the greed of gain,--that life may be made equally
+worthless, and the soul equally degraded by the icy lust of avarice, as
+by the noisier passions. A higher ambition never ceased to torment
+me. But, but,” continued Glyndon, with a whitening lip and a visible
+shudder, “at every attempt to rise into loftier existence, came that
+hideous form. It gloomed beside me at the easel. Before the volumes of
+poet and sage it stood with its burning eyes in the stillness of night,
+and I thought I heard its horrible whispers uttering temptations never
+to be divulged.” He paused, and the drops stood upon his brow.
+
+“But I,” said Adela, mastering her fears and throwing her arms around
+him,--“but I henceforth will have no life but in thine. And in this love
+so pure, so holy, thy terror shall fade away.”
+
+“No, no!” exclaimed Glyndon, starting from her. “The worst revelation is
+to come. Since thou hast been here, since I have sternly and resolutely
+refrained from every haunt, every scene in which this preternatural
+enemy troubled me not, I--I--have--Oh, Heaven! Mercy--mercy! There it
+stands,--there, by thy side,--there, there!” And he fell to the ground
+insensible.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.V.
+
+     Doch wunderbar ergriff mich’s diese Nacht;
+     Die Glieder schienen schon in Todes Macht.
+     Uhland.
+
+     (This night it fearfully seized on me; my limbs appeared already
+     in the power of death.)
+
+A fever, attended with delirium, for several days deprived Glyndon of
+consciousness; and when, by Adela’s care more than the skill of the
+physicians, he was restored to life and reason, he was unutterably
+shocked by the change in his sister’s appearance; at first, he fondly
+imagined that her health, affected by her vigils, would recover with his
+own. But he soon saw, with an anguish which partook of remorse, that the
+malady was deep-seated,--deep, deep, beyond the reach of Aesculapius and
+his drugs. Her imagination, little less lively than his own, was awfully
+impressed by the strange confessions she had heard,--by the ravings
+of his delirium. Again and again had he shrieked forth, “It is
+there,--there, by thy side, my sister!” He had transferred to her fancy
+the spectre, and the horror that cursed himself. He perceived this, not
+by her words, but her silence; by the eyes that strained into space; by
+the shiver that came over her frame; by the start of terror; by the look
+that did not dare to turn behind. Bitterly he repented his confession;
+bitterly he felt that between his sufferings and human sympathy there
+could be no gentle and holy commune; vainly he sought to retract,--to
+undo what he had done, to declare all was but the chimera of an
+overheated brain!
+
+And brave and generous was this denial of himself; for, often and often,
+as he thus spoke, he saw the Thing of Dread gliding to her side, and
+glaring at him as he disowned its being. But what chilled him, if
+possible, yet more than her wasting form and trembling nerves, was the
+change in her love for him; a natural terror had replaced it. She turned
+paler if he approached,--she shuddered if he took her hand. Divided from
+the rest of earth, the gulf of the foul remembrance yawned now between
+his sister and himself. He could endure no more the presence of the one
+whose life HIS life had embittered. He made some excuses for departure,
+and writhed to see that they were greeted eagerly. The first gleam of
+joy he had detected since that fatal night, on Adela’s face, he beheld
+when he murmured “Farewell.” He travelled for some weeks through the
+wildest parts of Scotland; scenery which MAKES the artist, was loveless
+to his haggard eyes. A letter recalled him to London on the wings of
+new agony and fear; he arrived to find his sister in a condition both of
+mind and health which exceeded his worst apprehensions.
+
+Her vacant look, her lifeless posture, appalled him; it was as one who
+gazed on the Medusa’s head, and felt, without a struggle, the human
+being gradually harden to the statue. It was not frenzy, it was not
+idiocy,--it was an abstraction, an apathy, a sleep in waking. Only as
+the night advanced towards the eleventh hour--the hour in which Glyndon
+had concluded his tale--she grew visibly uneasy, anxious, and perturbed.
+Then her lips muttered; her hands writhed; she looked round with a look
+of unspeakable appeal for succour, for protection, and suddenly, as the
+clock struck, fell with a shriek to the ground, cold and lifeless. With
+difficulty, and not until after the most earnest prayers, did she answer
+the agonised questions of Glyndon; at last she owned that at that hour,
+and that hour alone, wherever she was placed, however occupied, she
+distinctly beheld the apparition of an old hag, who, after thrice
+knocking at the door, entered the room, and hobbling up to her with a
+countenance distorted by hideous rage and menace, laid its icy fingers
+on her forehead: from that moment she declared that sense forsook her;
+and when she woke again, it was only to wait, in suspense that froze up
+her blood, the repetition of the ghastly visitation.
+
+The physician who had been summoned before Glyndon’s return, and whose
+letter had recalled him to London, was a commonplace practitioner,
+ignorant of the case, and honestly anxious that one more experienced
+should be employed. Clarence called in one of the most eminent of the
+faculty, and to him he recited the optical delusion of his sister. The
+physician listened attentively, and seemed sanguine in his hopes of
+cure. He came to the house two hours before the one so dreaded by the
+patient. He had quietly arranged that the clocks should be put forward
+half an hour, unknown to Adela, and even to her brother. He was a man of
+the most extraordinary powers of conversation, of surpassing wit, of
+all the faculties that interest and amuse. He first administered to the
+patient a harmless potion, which he pledged himself would dispel the
+delusion. His confident tone woke her own hopes,--he continued to excite
+her attention, to rouse her lethargy; he jested, he laughed away the
+time. The hour struck. “Joy, my brother!” she exclaimed, throwing
+herself in his arms; “the time is past!” And then, like one released
+from a spell, she suddenly assumed more than her ancient
+cheerfulness. “Ah, Clarence!” she whispered, “forgive me for my former
+desertion,--forgive me that I feared YOU. I shall live!--I shall live!
+in my turn to banish the spectre that haunts my brother!” And Clarence
+smiled and wiped the tears from his burning eyes. The physician renewed
+his stories, his jests. In the midst of a stream of rich humour that
+seemed to carry away both brother and sister, Glyndon suddenly saw over
+Adela’s face the same fearful change, the same anxious look, the same
+restless, straining eye, he had beheld the night before. He rose,--he
+approached her. Adela started up, “look--look--look!” she exclaimed.
+“She comes! Save me,--save me!” and she fell at his feet in strong
+convulsions as the clock, falsely and in vain put forward, struck the
+half-hour.
+
+The physician lifted her in his arms. “My worst fears are confirmed,”
+ he said gravely; “the disease is epilepsy.” (The most celebrated
+practitioner in Dublin related to the editor a story of optical delusion
+precisely similar in its circumstances and its physical cause to the one
+here narrated.)
+
+The next night, at the same hour, Adela Glyndon died.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.VI.
+
+     La loi, dont le regne vous epouvante, a son glaive leve sur vous:
+     elle vous frappera tous:  le genre humain a besoin de cet
+     exemple.--Couthon.
+
+     (The law, whose reign terrifies you, has its sword raised against
+     you; it will strike you all:  humanity has need of this example.)
+
+“Oh, joy, joy!--thou art come again! This is thy hand--these thy lips.
+Say that thou didst not desert me from the love of another; say it
+again,--say it ever!--and I will pardon thee all the rest!”
+
+“So thou hast mourned for me?”
+
+“Mourned!--and thou wert cruel enough to leave me gold; there it
+is,--there, untouched!”
+
+“Poor child of Nature! how, then, in this strange town of Marseilles,
+hast thou found bread and shelter?”
+
+“Honestly, soul of my soul! honestly, but yet by the face thou didst
+once think so fair; thinkest thou THAT now?”
+
+“Yes, Fillide, more fair than ever. But what meanest thou?”
+
+“There is a painter here--a great man, one of their great men at Paris,
+I know not what they call them; but he rules over all here,--life and
+death; and he has paid me largely but to sit for my portrait. It is for
+a picture to be given to the Nation, for he paints only for glory. Think
+of thy Fillide’s renown!” And the girl’s wild eyes sparkled; her vanity
+was roused. “And he would have married me if I would!--divorced his wife
+to marry me! But I waited for thee, ungrateful!”
+
+A knock at the door was heard,--a man entered.
+
+“Nicot!”
+
+“Ah, Glyndon!--hum!--welcome! What! thou art twice my rival! But Jean
+Nicot bears no malice. Virtue is my dream,--my country, my mistress.
+Serve my country, citizen; and I forgive thee the preference of beauty.
+Ca ira! ca ira!”
+
+But as the painter spoke, it hymned, it rolled through the streets,--the
+fiery song of the Marseillaise! There was a crowd, a multitude, a people
+up, abroad, with colours and arms, enthusiasm and song,--with song, with
+enthusiasm, with colours and arms! And who could guess that that
+martial movement was one, not of war, but massacre,--Frenchmen against
+Frenchmen? For there are two parties in Marseilles,--and ample work for
+Jourdan Coupe-tete! But this, the Englishman, just arrived, a stranger
+to all factions, did not as yet comprehend. He comprehended nothing but
+the song, the enthusiasm, the arms, and the colours that lifted to the
+sun the glorious lie, “Le peuple Francais, debout contre les tyrans!”
+ (Up, Frenchmen, against tyrants!)
+
+The dark brow of the wretched wanderer grew animated; he gazed from the
+window on the throng that marched below, beneath their waving Oriflamme.
+They shouted as they beheld the patriot Nicot, the friend of Liberty and
+relentless Hebert, by the stranger’s side, at the casement.
+
+“Ay, shout again!” cried the painter,--“shout for the brave Englishman
+who abjures his Pitts and his Coburgs to be a citizen of Liberty and
+France!”
+
+A thousand voices rent the air, and the hymn of the Marseillaise rose in
+majesty again.
+
+“Well, and if it be among these high hopes and this brave people that
+the phantom is to vanish, and the cure to come!” muttered Glyndon; and
+he thought he felt again the elixir sparkling through his veins.
+
+“Thou shalt be one of the Convention with Paine and Clootz,--I will
+manage it all for thee!” cried Nicot, slapping him on the shoulder: “and
+Paris--”
+
+“Ah, if I could but see Paris!” cried Fillide, in her joyous voice.
+Joyous! the whole time, the town, the air--save where, unheard, rose the
+cry of agony and the yell of murder--were joy! Sleep unhaunting in thy
+grave, cold Adela. Joy, joy! In the Jubilee of Humanity all private
+griefs should cease! Behold, wild mariner, the vast whirlpool draws thee
+to its stormy bosom! There the individual is not. All things are of the
+whole! Open thy gates, fair Paris, for the stranger-citizen! Receive in
+your ranks, O meek Republicans, the new champion of liberty, of reason,
+of mankind! “Mejnour is right; it was in virtue, in valour, in glorious
+struggle for the human race, that the spectre was to shrink to her
+kindred darkness.”
+
+And Nicot’s shrill voice praised him; and lean Robespierre--“Flambeau,
+colonne, pierre angulaire de l’edifice de la Republique!” (“The light,
+column, and keystone of the Republic.”--“Lettre du Citoyen P--; Papiers
+inedits trouves chez Robespierre,” tom 11, page 127.)--smiled ominously
+on him from his bloodshot eyes; and Fillide clasped him with passionate
+arms to her tender breast. And at his up-rising and down-sitting, at
+board and in bed, though he saw it not, the Nameless One guided him with
+the demon eyes to the sea whose waves were gore.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VI. -- SUPERSTITION DESERTING FAITH.
+
+     Why do I yield to that suggestion, Whose horrid image doth unfix
+     my hair.--Shakespeare
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.I.
+
+     Therefore the Genii were painted with a platter full of garlands
+     and flowers in one hand, and a whip in the other.--Alexander
+     Ross, “Mystag. Poet.”
+
+According to the order of the events related in this narrative, the
+departure of Zanoni and Viola from the Greek isle, in which two happy
+years appear to have been passed, must have been somewhat later in date
+than the arrival of Glyndon at Marseilles. It must have been in the
+course of the year 1791 when Viola fled from Naples with her mysterious
+lover, and when Glyndon sought Mejnour in the fatal castle. It is now
+towards the close of 1793, when our story again returns to Zanoni. The
+stars of winter shone down on the lagunes of Venice. The hum of the
+Rialto was hushed,--the last loiterers had deserted the Place of St.
+Mark’s, and only at distant intervals might be heard the oars of the
+rapid gondolas, bearing reveller or lover to his home. But lights still
+flitted to and fro across the windows of one of the Palladian palaces,
+whose shadow slept in the great canal; and within the palace watched the
+twin Eumenides that never sleep for Man,--Fear and Pain.
+
+“I will make thee the richest man in all Venice, if thou savest her.”
+
+“Signor,” said the leech; “your gold cannot control death, and the will
+of Heaven, signor, unless within the next hour there is some blessed
+change, prepare your courage.”
+
+Ho--ho, Zanoni! man of mystery and might, who hast walked amidst the
+passions of the world, with no changes on thy brow, art thou tossed at
+last upon the billows of tempestuous fear? Does thy spirit reel to and
+fro?--knowest thou at last the strength and the majesty of Death?
+
+He fled, trembling, from the pale-faced man of art,--fled through
+stately hall and long-drawn corridor, and gained a remote chamber in the
+palace, which other step than his was not permitted to profane. Out
+with thy herbs and vessels. Break from the enchanted elements, O
+silvery-azure flame! Why comes he not,--the Son of the Starbeam! Why
+is Adon-Ai deaf to thy solemn call? It comes not,--the luminous and
+delightsome Presence! Cabalist! are thy charms in vain? Has thy throne
+vanished from the realms of space? Thou standest pale and trembling.
+Pale trembler! not thus didst thou look when the things of glory
+gathered at thy spell. Never to the pale trembler bow the things of
+glory: the soul, and not the herbs, nor the silvery-azure flame, nor the
+spells of the Cabala, commands the children of the air; and THY soul, by
+Love and Death, is made sceptreless and discrowned!
+
+At length the flame quivers,--the air grows cold as the wind in
+charnels. A thing not of earth is present,--a mistlike, formless thing.
+It cowers in the distance,--a silent Horror! it rises; it creeps; it
+nears thee--dark in its mantle of dusky haze; and under its veil it
+looks on thee with its livid, malignant eyes,--the thing of malignant
+eyes!
+
+“Ha, young Chaldean! young in thy countless ages,--young as when, cold
+to pleasure and to beauty, thou stoodest on the old Firetower, and
+heardest the starry silence whisper to thee the last mystery that
+baffles Death,--fearest thou Death at length? Is thy knowledge but a
+circle that brings thee back whence thy wanderings began! Generations on
+generations have withered since we two met! Lo! thou beholdest me now!”
+
+“But I behold thee without fear! Though beneath thine eyes thousands
+have perished; though, where they burn, spring up the foul poisons of
+the human heart, and to those whom thou canst subject to thy will, thy
+presence glares in the dreams of the raving maniac, or blackens the
+dungeon of despairing crime, thou art not my vanquisher, but my slave!”
+
+“And as a slave will I serve thee! Command thy slave, O beautiful
+Chaldean! Hark, the wail of women!--hark, the sharp shriek of thy
+beloved one! Death is in thy palace! Adon-Ai comes not to thy call. Only
+where no cloud of the passion and the flesh veils the eye of the Serene
+Intelligence can the Sons of the Starbeam glide to man. But _I_ can aid
+thee!--hark!” And Zanoni heard distinctly in his heart, even at that
+distance from the chamber, the voice of Viola calling in delirium on her
+beloved one.
+
+“Oh, Viola, I can save thee not!” exclaimed the seer, passionately; “my
+love for thee has made me powerless!”
+
+“Not powerless; I can gift thee with the art to save her,--I can place
+healing in thy hand!”
+
+“For both?--child and mother,--for both?”
+
+“Both!”
+
+A convulsion shook the limbs of the seer,--a mighty struggle shook him
+as a child: the Humanity and the Hour conquered the repugnant spirit.
+
+“I yield! Mother and child--save both!”
+
+....
+
+In the dark chamber lay Viola, in the sharpest agonies of travail; life
+seemed rending itself away in the groans and cries that spoke of pain in
+the midst of frenzy; and still, in groan and cry, she called on Zanoni,
+her beloved. The physician looked to the clock; on it beat: the Heart
+of Time,--regularly and slowly,--Heart that never sympathised with Life,
+and never flagged for Death! “The cries are fainter,” said the leech;
+“in ten minutes more all will be past.”
+
+Fool! the minutes laugh at thee; Nature, even now, like a blue sky
+through a shattered temple, is smiling through the tortured frame. The
+breathing grows more calm and hushed; the voice of delirium is dumb,--a
+sweet dream has come to Viola. Is it a dream, or is it the soul that
+sees? She thinks suddenly that she is with Zanoni, that her burning head
+is pillowed on his bosom; she thinks, as he gazes on her, that his eyes
+dispel the tortures that prey upon her,--the touch of his hand cools the
+fever on her brow; she hears his voice in murmurs,--it is a music from
+which the fiends fly. Where is the mountain that seemed to press upon
+her temples? Like a vapour, it rolls away. In the frosts of the winter
+night, she sees the sun laughing in luxurious heaven,--she hears the
+whisper of green leaves; the beautiful world, valley and stream and
+woodland, lie before, and with a common voice speak to her, “We are
+not yet past for thee!” Fool of drugs and formula, look to thy
+dial-plate!--the hand has moved on; the minutes are with Eternity; the
+soul thy sentence would have dismissed, still dwells on the shores of
+Time. She sleeps: the fever abates; the convulsions are gone; the living
+rose blooms upon her cheek; the crisis is past! Husband, thy wife lives;
+lover, thy universe is no solitude! Heart of Time, beat on! A while, a
+little while,--joy! joy! joy!--father, embrace thy child!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.II.
+
+     Tristis Erinnys
+     Praetulit infaustas sanguinolenta faces.
+     Ovid.
+
+     (Erinnys, doleful and bloody, extends the unblessed torches.)
+
+And they placed the child in the father’s arms! As silently he bent
+over it, tears--tears, how human!--fell from his eyes like rain! And
+the little one smiled through the tears that bathed its cheeks! Ah, with
+what happy tears we welcome the stranger into our sorrowing world!
+With what agonising tears we dismiss the stranger back to the angels!
+Unselfish joy; but how selfish is the sorrow!
+
+And now through the silent chamber a faint sweet voice is heard,--the
+young mother’s voice.
+
+“I am here: I am by thy side!” murmured Zanoni.
+
+The mother smiled, and clasped his hand, and asked no more; she was
+contented.
+
+....
+
+Viola recovered with a rapidity that startled the physician; and the
+young stranger thrived as if it already loved the world to which it had
+descended. From that hour Zanoni seemed to live in the infant’s life,
+and in that life the souls of mother and father met as in a new bond.
+Nothing more beautiful than this infant had eye ever dwelt upon. It was
+strange to the nurses that it came not wailing to the light, but smiled
+to the light as a thing familiar to it before. It never uttered one cry
+of childish pain. In its very repose it seemed to be listening to some
+happy voice within its heart: it seemed itself so happy. In its eyes
+you would have thought intellect already kindled, though it had not yet
+found a language. Already it seemed to recognise its parents; already
+it stretched forth its arms when Zanoni bent over the bed, in which
+it breathed and bloomed,--the budding flower! And from that bed he was
+rarely absent: gazing upon it with his serene, delighted eyes, his soul
+seemed to feed its own. At night and in utter darkness he was still
+there; and Viola often heard him murmuring over it as she lay in
+a half-sleep. But the murmur was in a language strange to her; and
+sometimes when she heard she feared, and vague, undefined superstitions
+came back to her,--the superstitions of earlier youth. A mother fears
+everything, even the gods, for her new-born. The mortals shrieked aloud
+when of old they saw the great Demeter seeking to make their child
+immortal.
+
+But Zanoni, wrapped in the sublime designs that animated the human love
+to which he was now awakened, forgot all, even all he had forfeited or
+incurred, in the love that blinded him.
+
+But the dark, formless thing, though he nor invoked nor saw it, crept,
+often, round and round him, and often sat by the infant’s couch, with
+its hateful eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.III.
+
+     Fuscis tellurem amplectitur alis.
+     Virgil.
+
+     (Embraces the Earth with gloomy wings.)
+
+Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.
+
+Mejnour, Humanity, with all its sorrows and its joys, is mine once more.
+Day by day, I am forging my own fetters. I live in other lives than my
+own, and in them I have lost more than half my empire. Not lifting them
+aloft, they drag me by the strong bands of the affections to their own
+earth. Exiled from the beings only visible to the most abstract sense,
+the grim Enemy that guards the Threshold has entangled me in its web.
+Canst thou credit me, when I tell thee that I have accepted its gifts,
+and endure the forfeit? Ages must pass ere the brighter beings can again
+obey the spirit that has bowed to the ghastly one! And--
+
+....
+
+In this hope, then, Mejnour, I triumph still; I yet have supreme power
+over this young life. Insensibly and inaudibly my soul speaks to its
+own, and prepares it even now. Thou knowest that for the pure and
+unsullied infant spirit, the ordeal has no terror and no peril. Thus
+unceasingly I nourish it with no unholy light; and ere it yet be
+conscious of the gift, it will gain the privileges it has been mine to
+attain: the child, by slow and scarce-seen degrees, will communicate its
+own attributes to the mother; and content to see Youth forever radiant
+on the brows of the two that now suffice to fill up my whole infinity of
+thought, shall I regret the airier kingdom that vanishes hourly from my
+grasp? But thou, whose vision is still clear and serene, look into the
+far deeps shut from my gaze, and counsel me, or forewarn! I know that
+the gifts of the Being whose race is so hostile to our own are, to the
+common seeker, fatal and perfidious as itself. And hence, when, at the
+outskirts of knowledge, which in earlier ages men called Magic,
+they encountered the things of the hostile tribes, they believed the
+apparitions to be fiends, and, by fancied compacts, imagined they had
+signed away their souls; as if man could give for an eternity that over
+which he has control but while he lives! Dark, and shrouded forever from
+human sight, dwell the demon rebels, in their impenetrable realm; in
+them is no breath of the Divine One. In every human creature the Divine
+One breathes; and He alone can judge His own hereafter, and allot its
+new career and home. Could man sell himself to the fiend, man could
+prejudge himself, and arrogate the disposal of eternity! But these
+creatures, modifications as they are of matter, and some with more
+than the malignanty of man, may well seem, to fear and unreasoning
+superstition, the representatives of fiends. And from the darkest and
+mightiest of them I have accepted a boon,--the secret that startled
+Death from those so dear to me. Can I not trust that enough of power yet
+remains to me to baffle or to daunt the Phantom, if it seek to pervert
+the gift? Answer me, Mejnour, for in the darkness that veils me, I see
+only the pure eyes of the new-born; I hear only the low beating of my
+heart. Answer me, thou whose wisdom is without love!
+
+Mejnour to Zanoni.
+
+Rome.
+
+Fallen One!--I see before thee Evil and Death and Woe! Thou to have
+relinquished Adon-Ai for the nameless Terror,--the heavenly stars for
+those fearful eyes! Thou, at the last to be the victim of the Larva of
+the dreary Threshold, that, in thy first novitiate, fled, withered
+and shrivelled, from thy kingly brow! When, at the primary grades of
+initiation, the pupil I took from thee on the shores of the changed
+Parthenope, fell senseless and cowering before that Phantom-Darkness, I
+knew that his spirit was not formed to front the worlds beyond; for
+FEAR is the attraction of man to earthiest earth, and while he fears, he
+cannot soar. But THOU, seest thou not that to love is but to fear; seest
+thou not that the power of which thou boastest over the malignant one
+is already gone? It awes, it masters thee; it will mock thee and betray.
+Lose not a moment; come to me. If there can yet be sufficient sympathy
+between us, through MY eyes shalt thou see, and perhaps guard against
+the perils that, shapeless yet, and looming through the shadow, marshal
+themselves around thee and those whom thy very love has doomed. Come
+from all the ties of thy fond humanity; they will but obscure thy
+vision! Come forth from thy fears and hopes, thy desires and passions.
+Come, as alone Mind can be the monarch and the seer, shining through the
+home it tenants,--a pure, impressionless, sublime intelligence!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.IV.
+
+     Plus que vous ne pensez ce moment est terrible.
+     La Harpe, “Le Comte de Warwick,” Act 3, sc. 5.
+
+     (The moment is more terrible than you think.)
+
+For the first time since their union, Zanoni and Viola were
+separated,--Zanoni went to Rome on important business. “It was,” he
+said, “but for a few days;” and he went so suddenly that there was
+little time either for surprise or sorrow. But first parting is always
+more melancholy than it need be: it seems an interruption to the
+existence which Love shares with Love; it makes the heart feel what a
+void life will be when the last parting shall succeed, as succeed it
+must, the first. But Viola had a new companion; she was enjoying that
+most delicious novelty which ever renews the youth and dazzles the eyes
+of woman. As the mistress--the wife--she leans on another; from another
+are reflected her happiness, her being,--as an orb that takes light from
+its sun. But now, in turn, as the mother, she is raised from dependence
+into power; it is another that leans on her,--a star has sprung into
+space, to which she herself has become the sun!
+
+A few days,--but they will be sweet through the sorrow! A few
+days,--every hour of which seems an era to the infant, over whom bend
+watchful the eyes and the heart. From its waking to its sleep, from
+its sleep to its waking, is a revolution in Time. Every gesture to be
+noted,--every smile to seem a new progress into the world it has come
+to bless! Zanoni has gone,--the last dash of the oar is lost, the last
+speck of the gondola has vanished from the ocean-streets of Venice! Her
+infant is sleeping in the cradle at the mother’s feet; and she thinks
+through her tears what tales of the fairy-land, that spreads far and
+wide, with a thousand wonders, in that narrow bed, she shall have to
+tell the father! Smile on, weep on, young mother! Already the fairest
+leaf in the wild volume is closed for thee, and the invisible finger
+turns the page!
+
+....
+
+By the bridge of the Rialto stood two Venetians--ardent Republicans and
+Democrats--looking to the Revolution of France as the earthquake which
+must shatter their own expiring and vicious constitution, and give
+equality of ranks and rights to Venice.
+
+“Yes, Cottalto,” said one; “my correspondent of Paris has promised to
+elude all obstacles, and baffle all danger. He will arrange with us the
+hour of revolt, when the legions of France shall be within hearing of
+our guns. One day in this week, at this hour, he is to meet me here.
+This is but the fourth day.”
+
+He had scarce said these words before a man, wrapped in his roquelaire,
+emerging from one of the narrow streets to the left, halted opposite
+the pair, and eying them for a few moments with an earnest scrutiny,
+whispered, “Salut!”
+
+“Et fraternite,” answered the speaker.
+
+“You, then, are the brave Dandolo with whom the Comite deputed me to
+correspond? And this citizen--”
+
+“Is Cottalto, whom my letters have so often mentioned.” (I know not if
+the author of the original MSS. designs, under these names, to introduce
+the real Cottalto and the true Dandolo, who, in 1797, distinguished
+themselves by their sympathy with the French, and their democratic
+ardor.--Ed.)
+
+“Health and brotherhood to him! I have much to impart to you both. I
+will meet you at night, Dandolo. But in the streets we may be observed.”
+
+“And I dare not appoint my own house; tyranny makes spies of our very
+walls. But the place herein designated is secure;” and he slipped an
+address into the hand of his correspondent.
+
+“To-night, then, at nine! Meanwhile I have other business.” The man
+paused, his colour changed, and it was with an eager and passionate
+voice that he resumed,--
+
+“Your last letter mentioned this wealthy and mysterious visitor,--this
+Zanoni. He is still at Venice?”
+
+“I heard that he had left this morning; but his wife is still here.”
+
+“His wife!--that is well!”
+
+“What know you of him? Think you that he would join us? His wealth would
+be--”
+
+“His house, his address,--quick!” interrupted the man.
+
+“The Palazzo di --, on the Grand Canal.”
+
+“I thank you,--at nine we meet.”
+
+The man hurried on through the street from which he had emerged; and,
+passing by the house in which he had taken up his lodging (he had
+arrived at Venice the night before), a woman who stood by the door
+caught his arm.
+
+“Monsieur,” she said in French, “I have been watching for your return.
+Do you understand me? I will brave all, risk all, to go back with you to
+France,--to stand, through life or in death, by my husband’s side!”
+
+“Citoyenne, I promised your husband that, if such your choice, I would
+hazard my own safety to aid it. But think again! Your husband is one of
+the faction which Robespierre’s eyes have already marked; he cannot
+fly. All France is become a prison to the ‘suspect.’ You do not endanger
+yourself by return. Frankly, citoyenne, the fate you would share may be
+the guillotine. I speak (as you know by his letter) as your husband bade
+me.”
+
+“Monsieur, I will return with you,” said the woman, with a smile upon
+her pale face.
+
+“And yet you deserted your husband in the fair sunshine of the
+Revolution, to return to him amidst its storms and thunder,” said the
+man, in a tone half of wonder, half rebuke.
+
+“Because my father’s days were doomed; because he had no safety but in
+flight to a foreign land; because he was old and penniless, and had none
+but me to work for him; because my husband was not then in danger,
+and my father was! HE is dead--dead! My husband is in danger now. The
+daughter’s duties are no more,--the wife’s return!”
+
+“Be it so, citoyenne; on the third night I depart. Before then you may
+retract your choice.”
+
+“Never!”
+
+A dark smile passed over the man’s face.
+
+“O guillotine!” he said, “how many virtues hast thou brought to light!
+Well may they call thee ‘A Holy Mother!’ O gory guillotine!”
+
+He passed on muttering to himself, hailed a gondola, and was soon amidst
+the crowded waters of the Grand Canal.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.V.
+
+     Ce que j’ignore
+     Est plus triste peut-etre et plus affreux encore.
+     La Harpe, “Le Comte de Warwick,” Act 5, sc. 1.
+
+     (That which I know not is, perhaps, more sad and fearful still.)
+
+The casement stood open, and Viola was seated by it. Beneath sparkled
+the broad waters in the cold but cloudless sunlight; and to that
+fair form, that half-averted face, turned the eyes of many a gallant
+cavalier, as their gondolas glided by.
+
+But at last, in the centre of the canal, one of these dark vessels
+halted motionless, as a man fixed his gaze from its lattice upon that
+stately palace. He gave the word to the rowers,--the vessel approached
+the marge. The stranger quitted the gondola; he passed up the
+broad stairs; he entered the palace. Weep on, smile no more, young
+mother!--the last page is turned!
+
+An attendant entered the room, and gave to Viola a card, with these
+words in English, “Viola, I must see you! Clarence Glyndon.”
+
+Oh, yes, how gladly Viola would see him; how gladly speak to him of her
+happiness, of Zanoni!--how gladly show to him her child! Poor Clarence!
+she had forgotten him till now, as she had all the fever of her earlier
+life,--its dreams, its vanities, its poor excitement, the lamps of the
+gaudy theatre, the applause of the noisy crowd.
+
+He entered. She started to behold him, so changed were his gloomy brow,
+his resolute, careworn features, from the graceful form and careless
+countenance of the artist-lover. His dress, though not mean, was rude,
+neglected, and disordered. A wild, desperate, half-savage air had
+supplanted that ingenuous mien, diffident in its grace, earnest in its
+diffidence, which had once characterised the young worshipper of Art,
+the dreaming aspirant after some starrier lore.
+
+“Is it you?” she said at last. “Poor Clarence, how changed!”
+
+“Changed!” he said abruptly, as he placed himself by her side. “And whom
+am I to thank, but the fiends--the sorcerers--who have seized upon thy
+existence, as upon mine? Viola, hear me. A few weeks since the news
+reached me that you were in Venice. Under other pretences, and through
+innumerable dangers, I have come hither, risking liberty, perhaps
+life, if my name and career are known in Venice, to warn and save you.
+Changed, you call me!--changed without; but what is that to the ravages
+within? Be warned, be warned in time!”
+
+The voice of Glyndon, sounding hollow and sepulchral, alarmed Viola even
+more than his words. Pale, haggard, emaciated, he seemed almost as one
+risen from the dead, to appall and awe her. “What,” she said, at last,
+in a faltering voice,--“what wild words do you utter! Can you--”
+
+“Listen!” interrupted Glyndon, laying his hand upon her arm, and its
+touch was as cold as death,--“listen! You have heard of the old stories
+of men who have leagued themselves with devils for the attainment of
+preternatural powers. Those stories are not fables. Such men live.
+Their delight is to increase the unhallowed circle of wretches like
+themselves. If their proselytes fail in the ordeal, the demon seizes
+them, even in this life, as it hath seized me!--if they succeed, woe,
+yea, a more lasting woe! There is another life, where no spells can
+charm the evil one, or allay the torture. I have come from a scene where
+blood flows in rivers,--where Death stands by the side of the bravest
+and the highest, and the one monarch is the Guillotine; but all the
+mortal perils with which men can be beset, are nothing to the dreariness
+of the chamber where the Horror that passes death moves and stirs!”
+
+It was then that Glyndon, with a cold and distinct precision, detailed,
+as he had done to Adela, the initiation through which he had gone. He
+described, in words that froze the blood of his listener, the appearance
+of that formless phantom, with the eyes that seared the brain and
+congealed the marrow of those who beheld. Once seen, it never
+was to be exorcised. It came at its own will, prompting black
+thoughts,--whispering strange temptations. Only in scenes of turbulent
+excitement was it absent! Solitude, serenity, the struggling desires
+after peace and virtue,--THESE were the elements it loved to haunt!
+Bewildered, terror-stricken, the wild account confirmed by the dim
+impressions that never, in the depth and confidence of affection, had
+been closely examined, but rather banished as soon as felt,--that
+the life and attributes of Zanoni were not like those of
+mortals,--impressions which her own love had made her hitherto censure
+as suspicions that wronged, and which, thus mitigated, had perhaps only
+served to rivet the fascinated chains in which he bound her heart and
+senses, but which now, as Glyndon’s awful narrative filled her
+with contagious dread, half unbound the very spells they had woven
+before,--Viola started up in fear, not for HERSELF, and clasped her
+child in her arms!
+
+“Unhappiest one!” cried Glyndon, shuddering, “hast thou indeed given
+birth to a victim thou canst not save? Refuse it sustenance,--let it
+look to thee in vain for food! In the grave, at least, there are repose
+and peace!”
+
+Then there came back to Viola’s mind the remembrance of Zanoni’s
+night-long watches by that cradle, and the fear which even then had
+crept over her as she heard his murmured half-chanted words. And as
+the child looked at her with its clear, steadfast eye, in the strange
+intelligence of that look there was something that only confirmed her
+awe. So there both Mother and Forewarner stood in silence,--the sun
+smiling upon them through the casement, and dark by the cradle, though
+they saw it not, sat the motionless, veiled Thing!
+
+But by degrees better and juster and more grateful memories of the past
+returned to the young mother. The features of the infant, as she gazed,
+took the aspect of the absent father. A voice seemed to break from those
+rosy lips, and say, mournfully, “I speak to thee in thy child. In return
+for all my love for thee and thine, dost thou distrust me, at the first
+sentence of a maniac who accuses?”
+
+Her breast heaved, her stature rose, her eyes shone with a serene and
+holy light.
+
+“Go, poor victim of thine own delusions,” she said to Glyndon; “I
+would not believe mine own senses, if they accused ITS father! And
+what knowest thou of Zanoni? What relation have Mejnour and the grisly
+spectres he invoked, with the radiant image with which thou wouldst
+connect them?”
+
+“Thou wilt learn too soon,” replied Glyndon, gloomily. “And the very
+phantom that haunts me, whispers, with its bloodless lips, that its
+horrors await both thine and thee! I take not thy decision yet; before I
+leave Venice we shall meet again.”
+
+He said, and departed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.VI.
+
+     Quel est l’egarement ou ton ame se livre?
+     La Harpe, “Le Comte de Warwick,” Act 4, sc. 4.
+
+     (To what delusion does thy soul abandon itself?)
+
+Alas, Zanoni! the aspirer, the dark, bright one!--didst thou think that
+the bond between the survivor of ages and the daughter of a day could
+endure? Didst thou not foresee that, until the ordeal was past, there
+could be no equality between thy wisdom and her love? Art thou absent
+now seeking amidst thy solemn secrets the solemn safeguards for child
+and mother, and forgettest thou that the phantom that served thee hath
+power over its own gifts,--over the lives it taught thee to rescue from
+the grave? Dost thou not know that Fear and Distrust, once sown in the
+heart of Love, spring up from the seed into a forest that excludes the
+stars? Dark, bright one! the hateful eyes glare beside the mother and
+the child!
+
+All that day Viola was distracted by a thousand thoughts and terrors,
+which fled as she examined them to settle back the darklier. She
+remembered that, as she had once said to Glyndon, her very childhood had
+been haunted with strange forebodings, that she was ordained for some
+preternatural doom. She remembered that, as she had told him this,
+sitting by the seas that slumbered in the arms of the Bay of Naples, he,
+too, had acknowledged the same forebodings, and a mysterious sympathy
+had appeared to unite their fates. She remembered, above all, that,
+comparing their entangled thoughts, both had then said, that with the
+first sight of Zanoni the foreboding, the instinct, had spoken to their
+hearts more audibly than before, whispering that “with HIM was connected
+the secret of the unconjectured life.”
+
+And now, when Glyndon and Viola met again, the haunting fears of
+childhood, thus referred to, woke from their enchanted sleep. With
+Glyndon’s terror she felt a sympathy, against which her reason and her
+love struggled in vain. And still, when she turned her looks upon her
+child, it watched her with that steady, earnest eye, and its lips moved
+as if it sought to speak to her,--but no sound came. The infant refused
+to sleep. Whenever she gazed upon its face, still those wakeful,
+watchful eyes!--and in their earnestness, there spoke something of pain,
+of upbraiding, of accusation. They chilled her as she looked. Unable
+to endure, of herself, this sudden and complete revulsion of all the
+feelings which had hitherto made up her life, she formed the resolution
+natural to her land and creed; she sent for the priest who had
+habitually attended her at Venice, and to him she confessed, with
+passionate sobs and intense terror, the doubts that had broken upon her.
+The good father, a worthy and pious man, but with little education and
+less sense, one who held (as many of the lower Italians do to this day)
+even a poet to be a sort of sorcerer, seemed to shut the gates of
+hope upon her heart. His remonstrances were urgent, for his horror was
+unfeigned. He joined with Glyndon in imploring her to fly, if she felt
+the smallest doubt that her husband’s pursuits were of the nature which
+the Roman Church had benevolently burned so many scholars for adopting.
+And even the little that Viola could communicate seemed, to the ignorant
+ascetic, irrefragable proof of sorcery and witchcraft; he had, indeed,
+previously heard some of the strange rumours which followed the path
+of Zanoni, and was therefore prepared to believe the worst; the worthy
+Bartolomeo would have made no bones of sending Watt to the stake, had he
+heard him speak of the steam-engine. But Viola, as untutored as himself,
+was terrified by his rough and vehement eloquence,--terrified, for
+by that penetration which Catholic priests, however dull, generally
+acquire, in their vast experience of the human heart hourly exposed
+to their probe, Bartolomeo spoke less of danger to herself than to her
+child. “Sorcerers,” said he, “have ever sought the most to decoy and
+seduce the souls of the young,--nay, the infant;” and therewith he
+entered into a long catalogue of legendary fables, which he quoted
+as historical facts. All at which an English woman would have smiled,
+appalled the tender but superstitious Neapolitan; and when the priest
+left her, with solemn rebukes and grave accusations of a dereliction of
+her duties to her child, if she hesitated to fly with it from an abode
+polluted by the darker powers and unhallowed arts, Viola, still clinging
+to the image of Zanoni, sank into a passive lethargy which held her very
+reason in suspense.
+
+The hours passed: night came on; the house was hushed; and Viola, slowly
+awakened from the numbness and torpor which had usurped her faculties,
+tossed to and fro on her couch, restless and perturbed. The stillness
+became intolerable; yet more intolerable the sound that alone broke it,
+the voice of the clock, knelling moment after moment to its grave. The
+moments, at last, seemed themselves to find voice,--to gain shape. She
+thought she beheld them springing, wan and fairy-like, from the womb of
+darkness; and ere they fell again, extinguished, into that womb, their
+grave, their low small voices murmured, “Woman, we report to eternity
+all that is done in time! What shall we report of thee, O guardian of a
+new-born soul?” She became sensible that her fancies had brought a sort
+of partial delirium, that she was in a state between sleep and waking,
+when suddenly one thought became more predominant than the rest. The
+chamber which, in that and every house they had inhabited, even that in
+the Greek isles, Zanoni had set apart to a solitude on which none might
+intrude, the threshold of which even Viola’s step was forbid to cross,
+and never, hitherto, in that sweet repose of confidence which belongs to
+contented love, had she even felt the curious desire to disobey,--now,
+that chamber drew her towards it. Perhaps THERE might be found a
+somewhat to solve the riddle, to dispel or confirm the doubt: that
+thought grew and deepened in its intenseness; it fastened on her as with
+a palpable and irresistible grasp; it seemed to raise her limbs without
+her will.
+
+And now, through the chamber, along the galleries thou glidest, O lovely
+shape! sleep-walking, yet awake. The moon shines on thee as thou glidest
+by, casement after casement, white-robed and wandering spirit!--thine
+arms crossed upon thy bosom, thine eyes fixed and open, with a calm
+unfearing awe. Mother, it is thy child that leads thee on! The fairy
+moments go before thee; thou hearest still the clock-knell tolling them
+to their graves behind. On, gliding on, thou hast gained the door; no
+lock bars thee, no magic spell drives thee back. Daughter of the
+dust, thou standest alone with night in the chamber where, pale and
+numberless, the hosts of space have gathered round the seer!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.VII.
+
+     Des Erdenlebens
+     Schweres Traumbild sinkt, und sinkt, und sinkt.
+     “Das Ideal und das Lebens.”
+
+     (The Dream Shape of the heavy earthly life sinks, and sinks, and
+     sinks.)
+
+She stood within the chamber, and gazed around her; no signs by which an
+inquisitor of old could have detected the scholar of the Black Art were
+visible. No crucibles and caldrons, no brass-bound volumes and ciphered
+girdles, no skulls and cross-bones. Quietly streamed the broad moonlight
+through the desolate chamber with its bare, white walls. A few bunches
+of withered herbs, a few antique vessels of bronze, placed carelessly on
+a wooden form, were all which that curious gaze could identify with the
+pursuits of the absent owner. The magic, if it existed, dwelt in the
+artificer, and the materials, to other hands, were but herbs and bronze.
+So is it ever with thy works and wonders, O Genius,--Seeker of the
+Stars! Words themselves are the common property of all men; yet, from
+words themselves, Thou Architect of Immortalities, pilest up temples
+that shall outlive the Pyramids, and the very leaf of the Papyrus
+becomes a Shinar, stately with towers, round which the Deluge of Ages,
+shall roar in vain!
+
+But in that solitude has the Presence that there had invoked its wonders
+left no enchantment of its own? It seemed so; for as Viola stood in the
+chamber, she became sensible that some mysterious change was at work
+within herself. Her blood coursed rapidly, and with a sensation of
+delight, through her veins,--she felt as if chains were falling from
+her limbs, as if cloud after cloud was rolling from her gaze. All the
+confused thoughts which had moved through her trance settled and centred
+themselves in one intense desire to see the Absent One,--to be with him.
+The monads that make up space and air seemed charged with a spiritual
+attraction,--to become a medium through which her spirit could pass from
+its clay, and confer with the spirit to which the unutterable desire
+compelled it. A faintness seized her; she tottered to the seat on which
+the vessels and herbs were placed, and, as she bent down, she saw in one
+of the vessels a small vase of crystal. By a mechanical and involuntary
+impulse, her hand seized the vase; she opened it, and the volatile
+essence it contained sparkled up, and spread through the room a powerful
+and delicious fragrance. She inhaled the odour, she laved her temples
+with the liquid, and suddenly her life seemed to spring up from the
+previous faintness,--to spring, to soar, to float, to dilate upon the
+wings of a bird. The room vanished from her eyes. Away, away, over lands
+and seas and space on the rushing desire flies the disprisoned mind!
+
+Upon a stratum, not of this world, stood the world-born shapes of the
+sons of Science, upon an embryo world, upon a crude, wan, attenuated
+mass of matter, one of the Nebulae, which the suns of the myriad systems
+throw off as they roll round the Creator’s throne*, to become themselves
+new worlds of symmetry and glory,--planets and suns that forever and
+forever shall in their turn multiply their shining race, and be the
+fathers of suns and planets yet to come.
+
+     (* “Astronomy instructs us that, in the original condition of
+     the solar system, the sun was the nucleus of a nebulosity or
+     luminous mass which revolved on its axis, and extended far
+     beyond the orbits of all the planets,--the planets as yet
+     having no existence. Its temperature gradually diminished,
+     and, becoming contracted by cooling, the rotation increased
+     in rapidity, and zones of nebulosity were successively
+     thrown off, in consequence of the centrifugal force
+     overpowering the central attraction. The condensation of
+     these separate masses constituted the planets and
+     satellites. But this view of the conversion of gaseous
+     matter into planetary bodies is not limited to our own
+     system; it extends to the formation of the innumerable suns
+     and worlds which are distributed throughout the universe.
+     The sublime discoveries of modern astronomers have shown
+     that every part of the realms of space abounds in large
+     expansions of attenuated matter termed nebulae, which are
+     irregularly reflective of light, of various figures, and in
+     different states of condensation, from that of a diffused,
+     luminous mass to suns and planets like our own.”--From
+     Mantell’s eloquent and delightful work, entitled “The
+     Wonders of Geology,” volume i. page 22.)
+
+There, in that enormous solitude of an infant world, which thousands and
+thousands of years can alone ripen into form, the spirit of Viola beheld
+the shape of Zanoni, or rather the likeness, the simulacrun, the LEMUR
+of his shape, not its human and corporeal substance,--as if, like hers,
+the Intelligence was parted from the Clay,--and as the sun, while it
+revolves and glows, had cast off into remotest space that nebular image
+of itself, so the thing of earth, in the action of its more luminous and
+enduring being, had thrown its likeness into that new-born stranger of
+the heavens. There stood the phantom,--a phantom Mejnour, by its side.
+In the gigantic chaos around raved and struggled the kindling elements;
+water and fire, darkness and light, at war,--vapour and cloud hardening
+into mountains, and the Breath of Life moving like a steadfast splendour
+over all.
+
+As the dreamer looked, and shivered, she beheld that even there the
+two phantoms of humanity were not alone. Dim monster-forms that that
+disordered chaos alone could engender, the first reptile Colossal race
+that wreathe and crawl through the earliest stratum of a world labouring
+into life, coiled in the oozing matter or hovered through the meteorous
+vapours. But these the two seekers seemed not to heed; their gaze was
+fixed intent upon an object in the farthest space. With the eyes of the
+spirit, Viola followed theirs; with a terror far greater than the chaos
+and its hideous inhabitants produced, she beheld a shadowy likeness
+of the very room in which her form yet dwelt, its white walls, the
+moonshine sleeping on its floor, its open casement, with the quiet roofs
+and domes of Venice looming over the sea that sighed below,--and in that
+room the ghost-like image of herself! This double phantom--here herself
+a phantom, gazing there upon a phantom-self--had in it a horror which no
+words can tell, no length of life forego.
+
+But presently she saw this image of herself rise slowly, leave the room
+with its noiseless feet: it passes the corridor, it kneels by a cradle!
+Heaven of Heaven! She beholds her child!--still with its wondrous,
+child-like beauty and its silent, wakeful eyes. But beside that cradle
+there sits cowering a mantled, shadowy form,--the more fearful and
+ghastly from its indistinct and unsubstantial gloom. The walls of that
+chamber seem to open as the scene of a theatre. A grim dungeon; streets
+through which pour shadowy crowds; wrath and hatred, and the aspect
+of demons in their ghastly visages; a place of death; a murderous
+instrument; a shamble-house of human flesh; herself; her child;--all,
+all, rapid phantasmagoria, chased each other. Suddenly the
+phantom-Zanoni turned, it seemed to perceive herself,--her second self.
+It sprang towards her; her spirit could bear no more. She shrieked,
+she woke. She found that in truth she had left that dismal chamber; the
+cradle was before her, the child! all--all as that trance had seen it;
+and, vanishing into air, even that dark, formless Thing!
+
+“My child! my child! thy mother shall save thee yet!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.VIII.
+
+     Qui?  Toi m’abandonner!  Ou vas-tu?  Non! demeure,
+     Demeure!
+     La Harpe, “Le Comte de Warwick,” Act 3, sc. 5.
+
+     (Who?  THOU abandon me!--where goest thou?  No! stay, stay!)
+
+Letter from Viola to Zanoni.
+
+“It has come to this!--I am the first to part! I, the unfaithful one,
+bid thee farewell forever. When thine eyes fall upon this writing thou
+wilt know me as one of the dead. For thou that wert, and still art my
+life,--I am lost to thee! O lover! O husband! O still worshipped and
+adored! if thou hast ever loved me, if thou canst still pity, seek not
+to discover the steps that fly thee. If thy charms can detect and tract
+me, spare me, spare our child! Zanoni, I will rear it to love thee, to
+call thee father! Zanoni, its young lips shall pray for thee! Ah, spare
+thy child, for infants are the saints of earth, and their mediation
+may be heard on high! Shall I tell thee why I part? No; thou, the
+wisely-terrible, canst divine what the hand trembles to record; and
+while I shudder at thy power,--while it is thy power I fly (our child
+upon my bosom),--it comforts me still to think that thy power can read
+the heart! Thou knowest that it is the faithful mother that writes
+to thee, it is not the faithless wife! Is there sin in thy knowledge,
+Zanoni? Sin must have sorrow: and it were sweet--oh, how sweet--to be
+thy comforter. But the child, the infant, the soul that looks to mine
+for its shield!--magician, I wrest from thee that soul! Pardon, pardon,
+if my words wrong thee. See, I fall on my knees to write the rest!
+
+“Why did I never recoil before from thy mysterious lore; why did the
+very strangeness of thine unearthly life only fascinate me with a
+delightful fear? Because, if thou wert sorcerer or angel-demon, there
+was no peril to other but myself: and none to me, for my love was my
+heavenliest part; and my ignorance in all things, except the art to love
+thee, repelled every thought that was not bright and glorious as thine
+image to my eyes. But NOW there is another! Look! why does it watch me
+thus,--why that never-sleeping, earnest, rebuking gaze? Have thy spells
+encompassed it already? Hast thou marked it, cruel one, for the terrors
+of thy unutterable art? Do not madden me,--do not madden me!--unbind the
+spell!
+
+“Hark! the oars without! They come,--they come, to bear me from thee! I
+look round, and methinks that I see thee everywhere. Thou speakest to
+me from every shadow, from every star. There, by the casement, thy lips
+last pressed mine; there, there by that threshold didst thou turn again,
+and thy smile seemed so trustingly to confide in me! Zanoni--husband!--I
+will stay! I cannot part from thee! No, no! I will go to the room
+where thy dear voice, with its gentle music, assuaged the pangs
+of travail!--where, heard through the thrilling darkness, it first
+whispered to my ear, ‘Viola, thou art a mother!’ A mother!--yes, I rise
+from my knees,--I AM a mother! They come! I am firm; farewell!”
+
+Yes; thus suddenly, thus cruelly, whether in the delirium of blind and
+unreasoning superstition, or in the resolve of that conviction which
+springs from duty, the being for whom he had resigned so much of empire
+and of glory forsook Zanoni. This desertion, never foreseen, never
+anticipated, was yet but the constant fate that attends those who would
+place Mind BEYOND the earth, and yet treasure the Heart WITHIN it.
+Ignorance everlastingly shall recoil from knowledge. But never yet, from
+nobler and purer motives of self-sacrifice, did human love link itself
+to another, than did the forsaking wife now abandon the absent. For
+rightly had she said that it was not the faithless wife, it WAS the
+faithful mother that fled from all in which her earthly happiness was
+centred.
+
+As long as the passion and fervour that impelled the act animated
+her with false fever, she clasped her infant to her breast, and was
+consoled,--resigned. But what bitter doubt of her own conduct, what icy
+pang of remorse shot through her heart, when, as they rested for a
+few hours on the road to Leghorn, she heard the woman who accompanied
+herself and Glyndon pray for safety to reach her husband’s side,
+and strength to share the perils that would meet her there! Terrible
+contrast to her own desertion! She shrunk into the darkness of her own
+heart,--and then no voice from within consoled her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.IX.
+
+     Zukunft hast du mir gegeben,
+     Doch du nehmst den Augenblick.
+     “Kassandra.”
+
+     (Futurity hast thou given to me,--yet takest from me the Moment.)
+
+“Mejnour, behold thy work! Out, out upon our little vanities of
+wisdom!--out upon our ages of lore and life! To save her from Peril I
+left her presence, and the Peril has seized her in its grasp!”
+
+“Chide not thy wisdom but thy passions! Abandon thine idle hope of the
+love of woman. See, for those who would unite the lofty with the lowly,
+the inevitable curse; thy very nature uncomprehended,--thy sacrifices
+unguessed. The lowly one views but in the lofty a necromancer or a
+fiend. Titan, canst thou weep?”
+
+“I know it now, I see it all! It WAS her spirit that stood beside
+our own, and escaped my airy clasp! O strong desire of motherhood
+and nature! unveiling all our secrets, piercing space and traversing
+worlds!--Mejnour, what awful learning lies hid in the ignorance of the
+heart that loves!”
+
+“The heart,” answered the mystic, coldly; “ay, for five thousand years I
+have ransacked the mysteries of creation, but I have not yet discovered
+all the wonders in the heart of the simplest boor!”
+
+“Yet our solemn rites deceived us not; the prophet-shadows, dark with
+terror and red with blood, still foretold that, even in the dungeon, and
+before the deathsman, I,--I had the power to save them both!”
+
+“But at some unconjectured and most fatal sacrifice to thyself.”
+
+“To myself! Icy sage, there is no self in love! I go. Nay, alone: I
+want thee not. I want now no other guide but the human instincts of
+affection. No cave so dark, no solitude so vast, as to conceal her.
+Though mine art fail me; though the stars heed me not; though space,
+with its shining myriads, is again to me but the azure void,--I return
+but to love and youth and hope! When have they ever failed to triumph
+and to save!”
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VII. -- THE REIGN OF TERROR.
+
+     Orrida maesta nei fero aspetto
+     Terrore accresce, e piu superbo il rende;
+     Rosseggian gli occhi, e di veneno infetto
+     Come infausta cometa, il guardo splende,
+     Gil involve il mento, e sull ‘irsuto petto
+     Ispida efoita la gran barbe scende;
+     E IN GUISA DE VORAGINE PROFONDA
+     SAPRE LA BOCCA A’ATRO SANGUE IMMONDA.
+     (Ger. Lib., Cant. iv. 7.)
+
+
+     A horrible majesty in the fierce aspect increases it terror, and
+     renders it more  superb.  Red glow the eyes, and the aspect
+     infected, like a baleful comet, with  envenomed influences,
+     glares around.  A vast beard covers the chin--and, rough  and
+     thick, descends over the shaggy breast.--And like a profound gulf
+     expand the jaws, foul with black gore.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.I.
+
+     Qui suis-je, moi qu’on accuse?  Un esclave de la Liberte, un
+     martyr vivant de la Republique.
+     --“Discours de Robespierre, 8 Thermidor.”
+
+     (Who am I,--_I_ whom they accuse?  A slave of Liberty,--a living
+     martyr for the Republic.)
+
+It roars,--The River of Hell, whose first outbreak was chanted as the
+gush of a channel to Elysium. How burst into blossoming hopes fair
+hearts that had nourished themselves on the diamond dews of the rosy
+dawn, when Liberty came from the dark ocean, and the arms of decrepit
+Thraldom--Aurora from the bed of Tithon! Hopes! ye have ripened into
+fruit, and the fruit is gore and ashes! Beautiful Roland, eloquent
+Vergniaud, visionary Condorcet, high-hearted Malesherbes!--wits,
+philosophers, statesmen, patriots, dreamers! behold the millennium for
+which ye dared and laboured!
+
+I invoke the ghosts! Saturn hath devoured his children (“La Revolution
+est comme Saturne, elle devorera tous ses enfans.”--Vergniaud.), and
+lives alone,--I his true name of Moloch!
+
+It is the Reign of Terror, with Robespierre the king. The struggles
+between the boa and the lion are past: the boa has consumed the lion,
+and is heavy with the gorge,--Danton has fallen, and Camille Desmoulins.
+Danton had said before his death, “The poltroon Robespierre,--I alone
+could have saved him.” From that hour, indeed, the blood of the dead
+giant clouded the craft of “Maximilien the Incorruptible,” as at last,
+amidst the din of the roused Convention, it choked his voice. (“Le sang
+de Danton t’etouffe!” (the blood of Danton chokes thee!) said Garnier
+de l’Aube, when on the fatal 9th of Thermidor, Robespierre gasped feebly
+forth, “Pour la derniere fois, President des Assassins, je te demande
+la parole.” (For the last time, President of Assassins, I demand to
+speak.)) If, after that last sacrifice, essential, perhaps, to his
+safety, Robespierre had proclaimed the close of the Reign of Terror,
+and acted upon the mercy which Danton had begun to preach, he might have
+lived and died a monarch. But the prisons continued to reek,--the glaive
+to fall; and Robespierre perceived not that his mobs were glutted to
+satiety with death, and the strongest excitement a chief could give
+would be a return from devils into men.
+
+We are transported to a room in the house of Citizen Dupleix, the
+menuisier, in the month of July, 1794; or, in the calendar of the
+Revolutionists, it was the Thermidor of the Second Year of the Republic,
+One and Indivisible! Though the room was small, it was furnished and
+decorated with a minute and careful effort at elegance and refinement.
+It seemed, indeed, the desire of the owner to avoid at once what was
+mean and rude, and what was luxurious and voluptuous. It was a trim,
+orderly, precise grace that shaped the classic chairs, arranged the
+ample draperies, sank the frameless mirrors into the wall, placed bust
+and bronze on their pedestals, and filled up the niches here and there
+with well-bound books, filed regularly in their appointed ranks. An
+observer would have said, “This man wishes to imply to you,--I am
+not rich; I am not ostentatious; I am not luxurious; I am no indolent
+Sybarite, with couches of down, and pictures that provoke the sense;
+I am no haughty noble, with spacious halls, and galleries that awe the
+echo. But so much the greater is my merit if I disdain these excesses
+of the ease or the pride, since I love the elegant, and have a taste!
+Others may be simple and honest, from the very coarseness of their
+habits; if I, with so much refinement and delicacy, am simple and
+honest,--reflect, and admire me!”
+
+On the walls of this chamber hung many portraits, most of them
+represented but one face; on the formal pedestals were grouped many
+busts, most of them sculptured but one head. In that small chamber
+Egotism sat supreme, and made the Arts its looking-glasses. Erect in
+a chair, before a large table spread with letters, sat the original of
+bust and canvas, the owner of the apartment. He was alone, yet he sat
+erect, formal, stiff, precise, as if in his very home he was not at
+ease. His dress was in harmony with his posture and his chamber; it
+affected a neatness of its own,--foreign both to the sumptuous fashions
+of the deposed nobles, and the filthy ruggedness of the sans-culottes.
+Frizzled and coiffe, not a hair was out of order, not a speck lodged
+on the sleek surface of the blue coat, not a wrinkle crumpled the snowy
+vest, with its under-relief of delicate pink. At the first glance, you
+might have seen in that face nothing but the ill-favoured features of a
+sickly countenance; at a second glance, you would have perceived that
+it had a power, a character of its own. The forehead, though low and
+compressed, was not without that appearance of thought and intelligence
+which, it may be observed, that breadth between the eyebrows almost
+invariably gives; the lips were firm and tightly drawn together, yet
+ever and anon they trembled, and writhed restlessly. The eyes, sullen
+and gloomy, were yet piercing, and full of a concentrated vigour that
+did not seem supported by the thin, feeble frame, or the green lividness
+of the hues, which told of anxiety and disease.
+
+Such was Maximilien Robespierre; such the chamber over the menuisier’s
+shop, whence issued the edicts that launched armies on their career of
+glory, and ordained an artificial conduit to carry off the blood that
+deluged the metropolis of the most martial people in the globe! Such was
+the man who had resigned a judicial appointment (the early object of
+his ambition) rather than violate his philanthropical principles by
+subscribing to the death of a single fellow-creature; such was the
+virgin enemy to capital punishments; and such, Butcher-Dictator now, was
+the man whose pure and rigid manners, whose incorruptible honesty, whose
+hatred of the excesses that tempt to love and wine, would, had he died
+five years earlier, have left him the model for prudent fathers and
+careful citizens to place before their sons. Such was the man who seemed
+to have no vice, till circumstance, that hotbed, brought forth the two
+which, in ordinary times, lie ever the deepest and most latent in a
+man’s heart,--Cowardice and Envy. To one of these sources is to be
+traced every murder that master-fiend committed. His cowardice was of
+a peculiar and strange sort; for it was accompanied with the most
+unscrupulous and determined WILL,--a will that Napoleon reverenced;
+a will of iron, and yet nerves of aspen. Mentally, he was a
+hero,--physically, a dastard. When the veriest shadow of danger
+threatened his person, the frame cowered, but the will swept the danger
+to the slaughter-house. So there he sat, bolt upright,--his small, lean
+fingers clenched convulsively; his sullen eyes straining into space,
+their whites yellowed with streaks of corrupt blood; his ears literally
+moving to and fro, like the ignobler animals’, to catch every sound,--a
+Dionysius in his cave; but his posture decorous and collected, and every
+formal hair in its frizzled place.
+
+“Yes, yes,” he said in a muttered tone, “I hear them; my good Jacobins
+are at their post on the stairs. Pity they swear so! I have a law
+against oaths,--the manners of the poor and virtuous people must
+be reformed. When all is safe, an example or two amongst those good
+Jacobins would make effect. Faithful fellows, how they love me!
+Hum!--what an oath was that!--they need not swear so loud,--upon the
+very staircase, too! It detracts from my reputation. Ha! steps!”
+
+The soliloquist glanced at the opposite mirror, and took up a volume;
+he seemed absorbed in its contents, as a tall fellow, a bludgeon in his
+hand, a girdle adorned with pistols round his waist, opened the door,
+and announced two visitors. The one was a young man, said to resemble
+Robespierre in person, but of a far more decided and resolute expression
+of countenance. He entered first, and, looking over the volume in
+Robespierre’s hand, for the latter seemed still intent on his lecture,
+exclaimed,--
+
+“What! Rousseau’s Heloise? A love-tale!”
+
+“Dear Payan, it is not the love,--it is the philosophy that charms me.
+What noble sentiments!--what ardour of virtue! If Jean Jacques had but
+lived to see this day!”
+
+While the Dictator thus commented on his favourite author, whom in his
+orations he laboured hard to imitate, the second visitor was wheeled
+into the room in a chair. This man was also in what, to most, is the
+prime of life,--namely, about thirty-eight; but he was literally dead in
+the lower limbs: crippled, paralytic, distorted, he was yet, as the time
+soon came to tell him,--a Hercules in Crime! But the sweetest of human
+smiles dwelt upon his lips; a beauty almost angelic characterised his
+features (“Figure d’ange,” says one of his contemporaries, in describing
+Couthon. The address, drawn up most probably by Payan (Thermidor 9),
+after the arrest of Robespierre, thus mentions his crippled colleague:
+“Couthon, ce citoyen vertueux, QUI N’A QUE LE COEUR ET LA TETE DE
+VIVANS, mais qui les a brulants de patriotisme” (Couthon, that virtuous
+citizen, who has but the head and the heart of the living, yet possesses
+these all on flame with patriotism.)); an inexpressible aspect of
+kindness, and the resignation of suffering but cheerful benignity, stole
+into the hearts of those who for the first time beheld him. With the
+most caressing, silver, flute-like voice, Citizen Couthon saluted the
+admirer of Jean Jacques.
+
+“Nay,--do not say that it is not the LOVE that attracts thee; it IS the
+love! but not the gross, sensual attachment of man for woman. No! the
+sublime affection for the whole human race, and indeed, for all that
+lives!”
+
+And Citizen Couthon, bending down, fondled the little spaniel that he
+invariably carried in his bosom, even to the Convention, as a vent for
+the exuberant sensibilities which overflowed his affectionate heart.
+(This tenderness for some pet animal was by no means peculiar to
+Couthon; it seems rather a common fashion with the gentle butchers of
+the Revolution. M. George Duval informs us (“Souvenirs de la Terreur,”
+ volume iii page 183) that Chaumette had an aviary, to which he devoted
+his harmless leisure; the murderous Fournier carried on his shoulders a
+pretty little squirrel, attached by a silver chain; Panis bestowed the
+superfluity of his affections upon two gold pheasants; and Marat, who
+would not abate one of the three hundred thousand heads he demanded,
+REARED DOVES! Apropos of the spaniel of Couthon, Duval gives us an
+amusing anecdote of Sergent, not one of the least relentless agents of
+the massacre of September. A lady came to implore his protection for one
+of her relations confined in the Abbaye. He scarcely deigned to speak to
+her. As she retired in despair, she trod by accident on the paw of
+his favourite spaniel. Sergent, turning round, enraged and furious,
+exclaimed, “MADAM, HAVE YOU NO HUMANITY?”)
+
+“Yes, for all that lives,” repeated Robespierre, tenderly.
+“Good Couthon,--poor Couthon! Ah, the malice of men!--how we are
+misrepresented! To be calumniated as the executioners of our colleagues!
+Ah, it is THAT which pierces the heart! To be an object of terror to the
+enemies of our country,--THAT is noble; but to be an object of terror
+to the good, the patriotic, to those one loves and reveres,--THAT is the
+most terrible of human tortures at least, to a susceptible and honest
+heart!” (Not to fatigue the reader with annotations, I may here observe
+that nearly every sentiment ascribed in the text to Robespierre is to be
+found expressed in his various discourses.)
+
+“How I love to hear him!” ejaculated Couthon.
+
+“Hem!” said Payan, with some impatience. “But now to business!”
+
+“Ah, to business!” said Robespierre, with a sinister glance from his
+bloodshot eyes.
+
+“The time has come,” said Payan, “when the safety of the Republic
+demands a complete concentration of its power. These brawlers of the
+Comite du Salut Public can only destroy; they cannot construct. They
+hated you, Maximilien, from the moment you attempted to replace anarcy
+by institutions. How they mock at the festival which proclaimed the
+acknowledgment of a Supreme Being: they would have no ruler, even in
+heaven! Your clear and vigorous intellect saw that, having wrecked
+an old world, it became necessary to shape a new one. The first step
+towards construction must be to destroy the destroyers. While we
+deliberate, your enemies act. Better this very night to attack the
+handful of gensdarmes that guard them, than to confront the battalions
+they may raise to-morrow.”
+
+“No,” said Robespierre, who recoiled before the determined spirit of
+Payan; “I have a better and safer plan. This is the 6th of Thermidor;
+on the 10th--on the 10th, the Convention go in a body to the Fete
+Decadaire. A mob shall form; the canonniers, the troops of Henriot, the
+young pupils de l’Ecole de Mars, shall mix in the crowd. Easy, then, to
+strike the conspirators whom we shall designate to our agents. On the
+same day, too, Fouquier and Dumas shall not rest; and a sufficient
+number of ‘the suspect’ to maintain salutary awe, and keep up the
+revolutionary excitement, shall perish by the glaive of the law. The
+10th shall be the great day of action. Payan, of these last culprits,
+have you prepared a list?”
+
+“It is here,” returned Payan, laconically, presenting a paper.
+
+Robespierre glanced over it rapidly. “Collot d’Herbois!--good!
+Barrere!--ay, it was Barrere who said, ‘Let us strike: the dead alone
+never return.’ [‘Frappons! il n’y a que les morts qui ne revient
+pas.’--Barrere.) Vadier, the savage jester!--good--good! Vadier of the
+Mountain. He has called me ‘Mahomet!’ Scelerat! blasphemer!”
+
+“Mahomet is coming to the Mountain,” said Couthon, with his silvery
+accent, as he caressed his spaniel.
+
+“But how is this? I do not see the name of Tallien? Tallien,--I hate
+that man; that is,” said Robespierre, correcting himself with the
+hypocrisy or self-deceit which those who formed the council of this
+phrase-monger exhibited habitually, even among themselves,--“that is,
+Virtue and our Country hate him! There is no man in the whole Convention
+who inspires me with the same horror as Tallien. Couthon, I see a
+thousand Dantons where Tallien sits!”
+
+“Tallien has the only head that belongs to this deformed body,” said
+Payan, whose ferocity and crime, like those of St. Just, were not
+unaccompanied by talents of no common order. “Were it not better to
+draw away the head, to win, to buy him, for the time, and dispose of him
+better when left alone? He may hate YOU, but he loves MONEY!”
+
+“No,” said Robespierre, writing down the name of Jean Lambert Tallien,
+with a slow hand that shaped each letter with stern distinctness; “that
+one head IS MY NECESSITY!”
+
+“I have a SMALL list here,” said Couthon, sweetly,--“a VERY small
+list. You are dealing with the Mountain; it is necessary to make a few
+examples in the Plain. These moderates are as straws which follow the
+wind. They turned against us yesterday in the Convention. A little
+terror will correct the weathercocks. Poor creatures! I owe them no
+ill-will; I could weep for them. But before all, la chere patrie!”
+
+The terrible glance of Robespierre devoured the list which the man of
+sensibility submitted to him. “Ah, these are well chosen; men not of
+mark enough to be regretted, which is the best policy with the relics
+of that party; some foreigners too,--yes, THEY have no parents in
+Paris. These wives and parents are beginning to plead against us. Their
+complaints demoralise the guillotine!”
+
+“Couthon is right,” said Payan; “MY list contains those whom it will be
+safer to despatch en masse in the crowd assembled at the Fete. HIS list
+selects those whom we may prudently consign to the law. Shall it not be
+signed at once?”
+
+“It IS signed,” said Robespierre, formally replacing his pen upon the
+inkstand. “Now to more important matters. These deaths will create no
+excitement; but Collot d’Herbois, Bourdon De l’Oise, Tallien,” the
+last name Robespierre gasped as he pronounced, “THEY are the heads of
+parties. This is life or death to us as well as them.”
+
+“Their heads are the footstools to your curule chair,” said Payan, in
+a half whisper. “There is no danger if we are bold. Judges, juries, all
+have been your selection. You seize with one hand the army, with the
+other, the law. Your voice yet commands the people--”
+
+“The poor and virtuous people,” murmured Robespierre.
+
+“And even,” continued Payan, “if our design at the Fete fail us, we must
+not shrink from the resources still at our command. Reflect! Henriot,
+the general of the Parisian army, furnishes you with troops to arrest;
+the Jacobin Club with a public to approve; inexorable Dumas with judges
+who never acquit. We must be bold!”
+
+“And we ARE bold,” exclaimed Robespierre, with sudden passion, and
+striking his hand on the table as he rose, with his crest erect, as a
+serpent in the act to strike. “In seeing the multitude of vices that
+the revolutionary torrent mingles with civic virtues, I tremble to be
+sullied in the eyes of posterity by the impure neighbourhood of these
+perverse men who thrust themselves among the sincere defenders of
+humanity. What!--they think to divide the country like a booty! I
+thank them for their hatred to all that is virtuous and worthy! These
+men,”--and he grasped the list of Payan in his hand,--“these!--not
+WE--have drawn the line of demarcation between themselves and the lovers
+of France!”
+
+“True, we must reign alone!” muttered Payan; “in other words, the state
+needs unity of will;” working, with his strong practical mind, the
+corollary from the logic of his word-compelling colleague.
+
+“I will go to the Convention,” continued Robespierre. “I have absented
+myself too long,--lest I might seem to overawe the Republic that I have
+created. Away with such scruples! I will prepare the people! I will
+blast the traitors with a look!”
+
+He spoke with the terrible firmness of the orator that had never
+failed,--of the moral will that marched like a warrior on the cannon. At
+that instant he was interrupted; a letter was brought to him: he opened
+it,--his face fell, he shook from limb to limb; it was one of the
+anonymous warnings by which the hate and revenge of those yet left alive
+to threaten tortured the death-giver.
+
+“Thou art smeared,” ran the lines, “with the best blood of France. Read
+thy sentence! I await the hour when the people shall knell thee to the
+doomsman. If my hope deceive me, if deferred too long,--hearken, read!
+This hand, which thine eyes shall search in vain to discover, shall
+pierce thy heart. I see thee every day,--I am with thee every day. At
+each hour my arm rises against thy breast. Wretch! live yet awhile,
+though but for few and miserable days--live to think of me; sleep to
+dream of me! Thy terror and thy thought of me are the heralds of thy
+doom. Adieu! this day itself I go forth to riot on thy fears!” (See
+“Papiers inedits trouves chez Robespierre,” etc., volume ii. page 155.
+(No. lx.))
+
+“Your lists are not full enough!” said the tyrant, with a hollow voice,
+as the paper dropped from his trembling hand. “Give them to me!--give
+them to me! Think again, think again! Barrere is right--right!
+‘Frappons! il n’y a que les morts qui ne revient pas!’”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.II.
+
+     La haine, dans ces lieux, n’a qu’un glaive assassin.
+     Elle marche dans l’ombre.
+     La Harpe, “Jeanne de Naples,” Act iv. sc. 1.
+
+     (Hate, in these regions, has but the sword of the assassin.  She
+     moves in the shade.)
+
+While such the designs and fears of Maximilien Robespierre, common
+danger, common hatred, whatever was yet left of mercy or of virtue
+in the agents of the Revolution, served to unite strange opposites in
+hostility to the universal death-dealer. There was, indeed, an actual
+conspiracy at work against him among men little less bespattered than
+himself with innocent blood. But that conspiracy would have been idle of
+itself, despite the abilities of Tallien and Barras (the only men whom
+it comprised, worthy, by foresight and energy, the names of “leaders”).
+The sure and destroying elements that gathered round the tyrant were
+Time and Nature; the one, which he no longer suited; the other, which
+he had outraged and stirred up in the human breast. The most atrocious
+party of the Revolution, the followers of Hebert, gone to his last
+account, the butcher-atheists, who, in desecrating heaven and earth,
+still arrogated inviolable sanctity to themselves, were equally enraged
+at the execution of their filthy chief, and the proclamation of a
+Supreme Being. The populace, brutal as it had been, started as from a
+dream of blood, when their huge idol, Danton, no longer filled the
+stage of terror, rendering crime popular by that combination of careless
+frankness and eloquent energy which endears their heroes to the herd.
+The glaive of the guillotine had turned against THEMSELVES. They had
+yelled and shouted, and sung and danced, when the venerable age, or the
+gallant youth, of aristocracy or letters, passed by their streets in
+the dismal tumbrils; but they shut up their shops, and murmured to each
+other, when their own order was invaded, and tailors and cobblers, and
+journeymen and labourers, were huddled off to the embraces of the “Holy
+Mother Guillotine,” with as little ceremony as if they had been the
+Montmorencies or the La Tremouilles, the Malesherbes or the Lavoisiers.
+“At this time,” said Couthon, justly, “Les ombres de Danton, d’Hebert,
+de Chaumette, se promenent parmi nous!” (The shades of Danton, Hebert,
+and Chaumette walk amongst us.)
+
+Among those who had shared the doctrines, and who now dreaded the
+fate of the atheist Hebert, was the painter, Jean Nicot. Mortified and
+enraged to find that, by the death of his patron, his career was closed;
+and that, in the zenith of the Revolution for which he had laboured,
+he was lurking in caves and cellars, more poor, more obscure, more
+despicable than he had been at the commencement,--not daring to exercise
+even his art, and fearful every hour that his name would swell the lists
+of the condemned,--he was naturally one of the bitterest enemies of
+Robespierre and his government. He held secret meetings with Collot
+d’Herbois, who was animated by the same spirit; and with the creeping
+and furtive craft that characterised his abilities, he contrived,
+undetected, to disseminate tracts and invectives against the Dictator,
+and to prepare, amidst “the poor and virtuous people,” the train for
+the grand explosion. But still so firm to the eyes, even of profounder
+politicians than Jean Nicot, appeared the sullen power of the
+incorruptible Maximilien; so timorous was the movement against
+him,--that Nicot, in common with many others, placed his hopes rather in
+the dagger of the assassin than the revolt of the multitude. But Nicot,
+though not actually a coward, shrunk himself from braving the fate of
+the martyr; he had sense enough to see that, though all parties might
+rejoice in the assassination, all parties would probably concur in
+beheading the assassin. He had not the virtue to become a Brutus.
+His object was to inspire a proxy-Brutus; and in the centre of that
+inflammable population this was no improbable hope.
+
+Amongst those loudest and sternest against the reign of blood; amongst
+those most disenchanted of the Revolution; amongst those most appalled
+by its excesses,--was, as might be expected, the Englishman, Clarence
+Glyndon. The wit and accomplishments, the uncertain virtues that
+had lighted with fitful gleams the mind of Camille Desmoulins, had
+fascinated Glyndon more than the qualities of any other agent in the
+Revolution. And when (for Camille Desmoulins had a heart, which seemed
+dead or dormant in most of his contemporaries) that vivid child of
+genius and of error, shocked at the massacre of the Girondins, and
+repentant of his own efforts against them, began to rouse the serpent
+malice of Robespierre by new doctrines of mercy and toleration, Glyndon
+espoused his views with his whole strength and soul. Camille Desmoulins
+perished, and Glyndon, hopeless at once of his own life and the cause
+of humanity, from that time sought only the occasion of flight from the
+devouring Golgotha. He had two lives to heed besides his own; for them
+he trembled, and for them he schemed and plotted the means of escape.
+Though Glyndon hated the principles, the party (None were more opposed
+to the Hebertists than Camille Desmoulins and his friends. It is curious
+and amusing to see these leaders of the mob, calling the mob “the
+people” one day, and the “canaille” the next, according as it suits
+them. “I know,” says Camille, “that they (the Hebertists) have all the
+canaille with them.”--(Ils ont toute la canaille pour eux.)), and the
+vices of Nicot, he yet extended to the painter’s penury the means of
+subsistence; and Jean Nicot, in return, designed to exalt Glyndon
+to that very immortality of a Brutus from which he modestly recoiled
+himself. He founded his designs on the physical courage, on the wild and
+unsettled fancies of the English artist, and on the vehement hate and
+indignant loathing with which he openly regarded the government of
+Maximilien.
+
+At the same hour, on the same day in July, in which Robespierre
+conferred (as we have seen) with his allies, two persons were seated in
+a small room in one of the streets leading out of the Rue St. Honore;
+the one, a man, appeared listening impatiently, and with a sullen
+brow, to his companion, a woman of singular beauty, but with a bold
+and reckless expression, and her face as she spoke was animated by the
+passions of a half-savage and vehement nature.
+
+“Englishman,” said the woman, “beware!--you know that, whether in flight
+or at the place of death, I would brave all to be by your side,--you
+know THAT! Speak!”
+
+“Well, Fillide; did I ever doubt your fidelity?”
+
+“Doubt it you cannot,--betray it you may. You tell me that in flight you
+must have a companion besides myself, and that companion is a female. It
+shall not be!”
+
+“Shall not!”
+
+“It shall not!” repeated Fillide, firmly, and folding her arms across
+her breast. Before Glyndon could reply, a slight knock at the door was
+heard, and Nicot opened the latch and entered.
+
+Fillide sank into her chair, and, leaning her face on her hands,
+appeared unheeding of the intruder and the conversation that ensued.
+
+“I cannot bid thee good-day, Glyndon,” said Nicot, as in his
+sans-culotte fashion he strode towards the artist, his ragged hat on his
+head, his hands in his pockets, and the beard of a week’s growth upon
+his chin,--“I cannot bid thee good-day; for while the tyrant lives, evil
+is every sun that sheds its beams on France.”
+
+“It is true; what then? We have sown the wind, we must reap the
+whirlwind.”
+
+“And yet,” said Nicot, apparently not heeding the reply, and as if
+musingly to himself, “it is strange to think that the butcher is as
+mortal as the butchered; that his life hangs on as slight a thread; that
+between the cuticle and the heart there is as short a passage,--that, in
+short, one blow can free France and redeem mankind!”
+
+Glyndon surveyed the speaker with a careless and haughty scorn, and made
+no answer.
+
+“And,” proceeded Nicot, “I have sometimes looked round for the man born
+for this destiny, and whenever I have done so, my steps have led me
+hither!”
+
+“Should they not rather have led thee to the side of Maximilien
+Robespierre?” said Glyndon, with a sneer.
+
+“No,” returned Nicot, coldly,--“no; for I am a ‘suspect:’ I could not
+mix with his train; I could not approach within a hundred yards of his
+person, but I should be seized; YOU, as yet, are safe. Hear me!”--and
+his voice became earnest and expressive,--“hear me! There seems danger
+in this action; there is none. I have been with Collot d’Herbois and
+Bilaud-Varennes; they will hold him harmless who strikes the blow; the
+populace would run to thy support; the Convention would hail thee as
+their deliverer, the--”
+
+“Hold, man! How darest thou couple my name with the act of an assassin?
+Let the tocsin sound from yonder tower, to a war between Humanity and
+the Tyrant, and I will not be the last in the field; but liberty never
+yet acknowledged a defender in a felon.”
+
+There was something so brave and noble in Glyndon’s voice, mien, and
+manner, as he thus spoke, that Nicot at once was silenced; at once he
+saw that he had misjudged the man.
+
+“No,” said Fillide, lifting her face from her hands,--“no! your friend
+has a wiser scheme in preparation; he would leave you wolves to mangle
+each other. He is right; but--”
+
+“Flight!” exclaimed Nicot; “is it possible? Flight; how?--when?--by what
+means? All France begirt with spies and guards! Flight! would to Heaven
+it were in our power!”
+
+“Dost thou, too, desire to escape the blessed Revolution?”
+
+“Desire! Oh!” cried Nicot, suddenly, and, falling down, he clasped
+Glyndon’s knees,--“oh, save me with thyself! My life is a torture;
+every moment the guillotine frowns before me. I know that my hours are
+numbered; I know that the tyrant waits but his time to write my name
+in his inexorable list; I know that Rene Dumas, the judge who never
+pardons, has, from the first, resolved upon my death. Oh, Glyndon, by
+our old friendship, by our common art, by thy loyal English faith and
+good English heart, let me share thy flight!”
+
+“If thou wilt, so be it.”
+
+“Thanks!--my whole life shall thank thee. But how hast thou prepared the
+means, the passports, the disguise, the--”
+
+“I will tell thee. Thou knowest C--, of the Convention,--he has power,
+and he is covetous. ‘Qu’on me meprise, pourvu que je dine’ (Let them
+despise me, provided that I dine.), said he, when reproached for his
+avarice.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“By the help of this sturdy republican, who has friends enough in the
+Comite, I have obtained the means necessary for flight; I have purchased
+them. For a consideration I can procure thy passport also.”
+
+“Thy riches, then, are not in assignats?”
+
+“No; I have gold enough for us all.”
+
+And here Glyndon, beckoning Nicot into the next room, first briefly
+and rapidly detailed to him the plan proposed, and the disguises to be
+assumed conformably to the passports, and then added, “In return for
+the service I render thee, grant me one favour, which I think is in thy
+power. Thou rememberest Viola Pisani?”
+
+“Ah,--remember, yes!--and the lover with whom she fled.”
+
+“And FROM whom she is a fugitive now.”
+
+“Indeed--what!--I understand. Sacre bleu! but you are a lucky fellow,
+cher confrere.”
+
+“Silence, man! with thy eternal prate of brotherhood and virtue, thou
+seemest never to believe in one kindly action, or one virtuous thought!”
+
+Nicot bit his lip, and replied sullenly, “Experience is a great
+undeceiver. Humph! What service can I do thee with regard to the
+Italian?”
+
+“I have been accessory to her arrival in this city of snares and
+pitfalls. I cannot leave her alone amidst dangers from which neither
+innocence nor obscurity is a safeguard. In your blessed Republic, a good
+and unsuspected citizen, who casts a desire on any woman, maid or wife,
+has but to say, ‘Be mine, or I denounce you!’ In a word, Viola must
+share our flight.”
+
+“What so easy? I see your passports provide for her.”
+
+“What so easy? What so difficult? This Fillide--would that I had never
+seen her!--would that I had never enslaved my soul to my senses! The
+love of an uneducated, violent, unprincipled woman, opens with a heaven,
+to merge in a hell! She is jealous as all the Furies; she will not hear
+of a female companion; and when once she sees the beauty of Viola!--I
+tremble to think of it. She is capable of any excess in the storm of her
+passions.”
+
+“Aha, I know what such women are! My wife, Beatrice Sacchini, whom I
+took from Naples, when I failed with this very Viola, divorced me when
+my money failed, and, as the mistress of a judge, passes me in her
+carriage while I crawl through the streets. Plague on her!--but
+patience, patience! such is the lot of virtue. Would I were Robespierre
+for a day!”
+
+“Cease these tirades!” exclaimed Glyndon, impatiently; “and to the
+point. What would you advise?”
+
+“Leave your Fillide behind.”
+
+“Leave her to her own ignorance; leave her unprotected even by the
+mind; leave her in the Saturnalia of Rape and Murder? No! I have sinned
+against her once. But come what may, I will not so basely desert one
+who, with all her errors, trusted her fate to my love.”
+
+“You deserted her at Marseilles.”
+
+“True; but I left her in safety, and I did not then believe her love to
+be so deep and faithful. I left her gold, and I imagined she would be
+easily consoled; but since THEN WE HAVE KNOWN DANGER TOGETHER! And now
+to leave her alone to that danger which she would never have incurred
+but for devotion to me!--no, that is impossible. A project occurs to
+me. Canst thou not say that thou hast a sister, a relative, or a
+benefactress, whom thou wouldst save? Can we not--till we have left
+France--make Fillide believe that Viola is one in whom THOU only art
+interested; and whom, for thy sake only, I permit to share in our
+escape?”
+
+“Ha, well thought of!--certainly!”
+
+“I will then appear to yield to Fillide’s wishes, and resign the
+project, which she so resents, of saving the innocent object of her
+frantic jealousy. You, meanwhile, shall yourself entreat Fillide to
+intercede with me to extend the means of escape to--”
+
+“To a lady (she knows I have no sister) who has aided me in my distress.
+Yes, I will manage all, never fear. One word more,--what has become of
+that Zanoni?”
+
+“Talk not of him,--I know not.”
+
+“Does he love this girl still?”
+
+“It would seem so. She is his wife, the mother of his infant, who is
+with her.”
+
+“Wife!--mother! He loves her. Aha! And why--”
+
+“No questions now. I will go and prepare Viola for the flight; you,
+meanwhile, return to Fillide.”
+
+“But the address of the Neapolitan? It is necessary I should know, lest
+Fillide inquire.”
+
+“Rue M-- T--, No. 27. Adieu.”
+
+Glyndon seized his hat and hastened from the house.
+
+Nicot, left alone, seemed for a few moments buried in thought. “Oho,” he
+muttered to himself, “can I not turn all this to my account? Can I not
+avenge myself on thee, Zanoni, as I have so often sworn,--through thy
+wife and child? Can I not possess myself of thy gold, thy passports,
+and thy Fillide, hot Englishman, who wouldst humble me with thy loathed
+benefits, and who hast chucked me thine alms as to a beggar? And
+Fillide, I love her: and thy gold, I love THAT more! Puppets, I move
+your strings!”
+
+He passed slowly into the chamber where Fillide yet sat, with gloomy
+thought on her brow and tears standing in her dark eyes. She looked up
+eagerly as the door opened, and turned from the rugged face of Nicot
+with an impatient movement of disappointment.
+
+“Glyndon,” said the painter, drawing a chair to Fillide’s, “has left me
+to enliven your solitude, fair Italian. He is not jealous of the ugly
+Nicot!--ha, ha!--yet Nicot loved thee well once, when his fortunes were
+more fair. But enough of such past follies.”
+
+“Your friend, then, has left the house. Whither? Ah, you look away;
+you falter,--you cannot meet my eyes! Speak! I implore, I command thee,
+speak!”
+
+“Enfant! And what dost thou fear?”
+
+“FEAR!--yes, alas, I fear!” said the Italian; and her whole frame seemed
+to shrink into itself as she fell once more back into her seat.
+
+Then, after a pause, she tossed the long hair from her eyes, and,
+starting up abruptly, paced the room with disordered strides. At length
+she stopped opposite to Nicot, laid her hand on his arm, drew him
+towards an escritoire, which she unlocked, and, opening a well, pointed
+to the gold that lay within, and said, “Thou art poor,--thou lovest
+money; take what thou wilt, but undeceive me. Who is this woman whom thy
+friend visits,--and does he love her?”
+
+Nicot’s eyes sparkled, and his hands opened and clenched, and clenched
+and opened, as he gazed upon the coins. But reluctantly resisting the
+impulse, he said, with an affected bitterness, “Thinkest thou to bribe
+me?--if so, it cannot be with gold. But what if he does love a rival;
+what if he betrays thee; what if, wearied by thy jealousies, he designs
+in his flight to leave thee behind,--would such knowledge make thee
+happier?”
+
+“Yes!” exclaimed the Italian, fiercely; “yes, for it would be happiness
+to hate and to be avenged! Oh, thou knowest not how sweet is hatred to
+those who have really loved!”
+
+“But wilt thou swear, if I reveal to thee the secret, that thou wilt not
+betray me,--that thou wilt not fall, as women do, into weak tears and
+fond reproaches, when thy betrayer returns?”
+
+“Tears, reproaches! Revenge hides itself in smiles!”
+
+“Thou art a brave creature!” said Nicot, almost admiringly. “One
+condition more: thy lover designs to fly with his new love, to leave
+thee to thy fate; if I prove this to thee, and if I give thee revenge
+against thy rival, wilt thou fly with me? I love thee!--I will wed
+thee!”
+
+Fillide’s eyes flashed fire; she looked at him with unutterable disdain,
+and was silent.
+
+Nicot felt he had gone too far; and with that knowledge of the evil part
+of our nature which his own heart and association with crime had taught
+him, he resolved to trust the rest to the passions of the Italian, when
+raised to the height to which he was prepared to lead them.
+
+“Pardon me,” he said; “my love made me too presumptuous; and yet it is
+only that love,--my sympathy for thee, beautiful and betrayed, that can
+induce me to wrong, with my revelations, one whom I have regarded as a
+brother. I can depend upon thine oath to conceal all from Glyndon?”
+
+“On my oath and my wrongs and my mountain blood!”
+
+“Enough! get thy hat and mantle, and follow me.”
+
+As Fillide left the room, Nicot’s eyes again rested on the gold; it was
+much,--much more than he had dared to hope for; and as he peered into
+the well and opened the drawers, he perceived a packet of letters in the
+well-known hand of Camille Desmoulins. He seized--he opened the packet;
+his looks brightened as he glanced over a few sentences. “This would
+give fifty Glyndons to the guillotine!” he muttered, and thrust the
+packet into his bosom.
+
+O artist!--O haunted one!--O erring genius!--behold the two worst
+foes,--the False Ideal that knows no God, and the False Love that burns
+from the corruption of the senses, and takes no lustre from the soul!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.III.
+
+     Liebe sonnt das Reich der Nacht.
+     “Der Triumph der Liebe.”
+
+     (Love illumes the realm of Night.)
+
+Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.
+
+Paris.
+
+Dost thou remember in the old time, when the Beautiful yet dwelt in
+Greece, how we two, in the vast Athenian Theatre, witnessed the birth of
+Words as undying as ourselves? Dost thou remember the thrill of terror
+that ran through that mighty audience, when the wild Cassandra burst
+from her awful silence to shriek to her relentless god! How ghastly, at
+the entrance of the House of Atreus, about to become her tomb, rang out
+her exclamations of foreboding woe: “Dwelling abhorred of heaven!--human
+shamble-house and floor blood-bespattered!” (Aesch. “Agam.” 1098.)
+Dost thou remember how, amidst the breathless awe of those assembled
+thousands, I drew close to thee, and whispered, “Verily, no prophet like
+the poet! This scene of fabled horror comes to me as a dream, shadowing
+forth some likeness in my own remoter future!” As I enter this
+slaughter-house that scene returns to me, and I hearken to the voice of
+Cassandra ringing in my ears. A solemn and warning dread gathers round
+me, as if I too were come to find a grave, and “the Net of Hades”
+ had already entangled me in its web! What dark treasure-houses of
+vicissitude and woe are our memories become! What our lives, but the
+chronicles of unrelenting death! It seems to me as yesterday when I
+stood in the streets of this city of the Gaul, as they shone with plumed
+chivalry, and the air rustled with silken braveries. Young Louis, the
+monarch and the lover, was victor of the Tournament at the Carousel; and
+all France felt herself splendid in the splendour of her gorgeous chief!
+Now there is neither throne nor altar; and what is in their stead? I
+see it yonder--the GUILLOTINE! It is dismal to stand amidst the ruins
+of mouldering cities, to startle the serpent and the lizard amidst
+the wrecks of Persepolis and Thebes; but more dismal still to stand as
+I--the stranger from Empires that have ceased to be--stand now amidst
+the yet ghastlier ruins of Law and Order, the shattering of mankind
+themselves! Yet here, even here, Love, the Beautifier, that hath led my
+steps, can walk with unshrinking hope through the wilderness of Death.
+Strange is the passion that makes a world in itself, that individualises
+the One amidst the Multitude; that, through all the changes of my solemn
+life, yet survives, though ambition and hate and anger are dead; the one
+solitary angel, hovering over a universe of tombs on its two tremulous
+and human wings,--Hope and Fear!
+
+How is it, Mejnour, that, as my diviner art abandoned me,--as, in my
+search for Viola, I was aided but by the ordinary instincts of the
+merest mortal,--how is it that I have never desponded, that I have felt
+in every difficulty the prevailing prescience that we should meet at
+last? So cruelly was every vestige of her flight concealed from
+me,--so suddenly, so secretly had she fled, that all the spies, all the
+authorities of Venice, could give me no clew. All Italy I searched in
+vain! Her young home at Naples!--how still, in its humble chambers,
+there seemed to linger the fragrance of her presence! All the sublimest
+secrets of our lore failed me,--failed to bring her soul visible to
+mine; yet morning and night, thou lone and childless one, morning and
+night, detached from myself, I can commune with my child! There in that
+most blessed, typical, and mysterious of all relations, Nature herself
+appears to supply what Science would refuse. Space cannot separate the
+father’s watchful soul from the cradle of his first-born! I know not of
+its resting-place and home,--my visions picture not the land,--only the
+small and tender life to which all space is as yet the heritage! For to
+the infant, before reason dawns,--before man’s bad passions can dim
+the essence that it takes from the element it hath left, there is no
+peculiar country, no native city, and no mortal language. Its soul as
+yet is the denizen of all airs and of every world; and in space its
+soul meets with mine,--the child communes with the father! Cruel and
+forsaking one,--thou for whom I left the wisdom of the spheres;
+thou whose fatal dower has been the weakness and terrors of
+humanity,--couldst thou think that young soul less safe on earth because
+I would lead it ever more up to heaven! Didst thou think that I could
+have wronged mine own? Didst thou not know that in its serenest eyes the
+life that I gave it spoke to warn, to upbraid the mother who would bind
+it to the darkness and pangs of the prison-house of clay? Didst thou
+not feel that it was I who, permitted by the Heavens, shielded it from
+suffering and disease? And in its wondrous beauty, I blessed the holy
+medium through which, at last, my spirit might confer with thine!
+
+And how have I tracked them hither? I learned that thy pupil had been at
+Venice. I could not trace the young and gentle neophyte of Parthenope in
+the description of the haggard and savage visitor who had come to Viola
+before she fled; but when I would have summoned his IDEA before me, it
+refused to obey; and I knew then that his fate had become entwined with
+Viola’s. I have tracked him, then, to this Lazar House. I arrived but
+yesterday; I have not yet discovered him.
+
+....
+
+I have just returned from their courts of justice,--dens where tigers
+arraign their prey. I find not whom I would seek. They are saved as
+yet; but I recognise in the crimes of mortals the dark wisdom of the
+Everlasting. Mejnour, I see here, for the first time, how majestic and
+beauteous a thing is death! Of what sublime virtues we robbed ourselves,
+when, in the thirst for virtue, we attained the art by which we can
+refuse to die! When in some happy clime, where to breathe is to enjoy,
+the charnel-house swallows up the young and fair; when in the noble
+pursuit of knowledge, Death comes to the student, and shuts out the
+enchanted land which was opening to his gaze,--how natural for us to
+desire to live; how natural to make perpetual life the first object of
+research! But here, from my tower of time, looking over the darksome
+past, and into the starry future, I learn how great hearts feel what
+sweetness and glory there is to die for the things they love! I saw
+a father sacrificing himself for his son; he was subjected to charges
+which a word of his could dispel,--he was mistaken for his boy. With
+what joy he seized the error, confessed the noble crimes of valour
+and fidelity which the son had indeed committed, and went to the doom,
+exulting that his death saved the life he had given, not in vain! I saw
+women, young, delicate, in the bloom of their beauty; they had vowed
+themselves to the cloister. Hands smeared with the blood of saints
+opened the gate that had shut them from the world, and bade them go
+forth, forget their vows, forswear the Divine one these demons would
+depose, find lovers and helpmates, and be free. And some of these young
+hearts had loved, and even, though in struggles, loved yet. Did they
+forswear the vow? Did they abandon the faith? Did even love allure them?
+Mejnour, with one voice, they preferred to die. And whence comes this
+courage?--because such HEARTS LIVE IN SOME MORE ABSTRACT AND HOLIER
+LIFE THAN THEIR OWN. BUT TO LIVE FOREVER UPON THIS EARTH IS TO LIVE IN
+NOTHING DIVINER THAN OURSELVES. Yes, even amidst this gory butcherdom,
+God, the Ever-living, vindicates to man the sanctity of His servant,
+Death!
+
+....
+
+Again I have seen thee in spirit; I have seen and blessed thee, my sweet
+child! Dost thou not know me also in thy dreams? Dost thou not feel the
+beating of my heart through the veil of thy rosy slumbers? Dost thou
+not hear the wings of the brighter beings that I yet can conjure around
+thee, to watch, to nourish, and to save? And when the spell fades at thy
+waking, when thine eyes open to the day, will they not look round for
+me, and ask thy mother, with their mute eloquence, “Why she has robbed
+thee of a father?”
+
+Woman, dost thou not repent thee? Flying from imaginary fears, hast
+thou not come to the very lair of terror, where Danger sits visible
+and incarnate? Oh, if we could but meet, wouldst thou not fall upon the
+bosom thou hast so wronged, and feel, poor wanderer amidst the storms,
+as if thou hadst regained the shelter? Mejnour, still my researches
+fail me. I mingle with all men, even their judges and their spies, but
+I cannot yet gain the clew. I know that she is here. I know it by an
+instinct; the breath of my child seems warmer and more familiar.
+
+They peer at me with venomous looks, as I pass through their streets.
+With a glance I disarm their malice, and fascinate the basilisks.
+Everywhere I see the track and scent the presence of the Ghostly One
+that dwells on the Threshold, and whose victims are the souls that would
+ASPIRE, and can only FEAR. I see its dim shapelessness going before the
+men of blood, and marshalling their way. Robespierre passed me with his
+furtive step. Those eyes of horror were gnawing into his heart. I looked
+down upon their senate; the grim Phantom sat cowering on its floor.
+It hath taken up its abode in the city of Dread. And what in truth
+are these would-be builders of a new world? Like the students who have
+vainly struggled after our supreme science, they have attempted what is
+beyond their power; they have passed from this solid earth of usages and
+forms into the land of shadow, and its loathsome keeper has seized them
+as its prey. I looked into the tyrant’s shuddering soul, as it trembled
+past me. There, amidst the ruins of a thousand systems which aimed at
+virtue, sat Crime, and shivered at its desolation. Yet this man is the
+only Thinker, the only Aspirant, amongst them all. He still looks for
+a future of peace and mercy, to begin,--ay! at what date? When he has
+swept away every foe. Fool! new foes spring from every drop of blood.
+Led by the eyes of the Unutterable, he is walking to his doom.
+
+O Viola, thy innocence protects thee! Thou whom the sweet humanities
+of love shut out even from the dreams of aerial and spiritual beauty,
+making thy heart a universe of visions fairer than the wanderer over the
+rosy Hesperus can survey,--shall not the same pure affection encompass
+thee, even here, with a charmed atmosphere, and terror itself fall
+harmless on a life too innocent for wisdom?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.IV.
+
+     Ombra piu che di notte, in cui di luce
+     Raggio misto non e;
+
+     ....
+
+     Ne piu il palagio appar, ne piu le sue
+     Vestigia; ne dir puossi--egli qui fue.
+     --“Ger. Lib.”, canto xvi.-lxix.
+
+     (Darkness greater than of night, in which not a ray of light is
+     mixed;...The palace appears no more:  not even a vestige,--nor
+     can one say that it has been.)
+
+The clubs are noisy with clamorous frenzy; the leaders are grim with
+schemes. Black Henriot flies here and there, muttering to his armed
+troops, “Robespierre, your beloved, is in danger!” Robespierre stalks
+perturbed, his list of victims swelling every hour. Tallien, the Macduff
+to the doomed Macbeth, is whispering courage to his pale conspirators.
+Along the streets heavily roll the tumbrils. The shops are closed,--the
+people are gorged with gore, and will lap no more. And night after
+night, to the eighty theatres flock the children of the Revolution, to
+laugh at the quips of comedy, and weep gentle tears over imaginary woes!
+
+In a small chamber, in the heart of the city, sits the mother, watching
+over her child. It is quiet, happy noon; the sunlight, broken by the
+tall roofs in the narrow street, comes yet through the open casement,
+the impartial playfellow of the air, gleesome alike in temple and
+prison, hall and hovel; as golden and as blithe, whether it laugh over
+the first hour of life, or quiver in its gay delight on the terror
+and agony of the last! The child, where it lay at the feet of Viola,
+stretched out its dimpled hands as if to clasp the dancing motes that
+revelled in the beam. The mother turned her eyes from the glory; it
+saddened her yet more. She turned and sighed.
+
+Is this the same Viola who bloomed fairer than their own Idalia under
+the skies of Greece? How changed! How pale and worn! She sat listlessly,
+her arms dropping on her knee; the smile that was habitual to her lips
+was gone. A heavy, dull despondency, as if the life of life were no
+more, seemed to weigh down her youth, and make it weary of that happy
+sun! In truth, her existence had languished away since it had wandered,
+as some melancholy stream, from the source that fed it. The sudden
+enthusiasm of fear or superstition that had almost, as if still in the
+unconscious movements of a dream, led her to fly from Zanoni, had ceased
+from the day which dawned upon her in a foreign land. Then--there--she
+felt that in the smile she had evermore abandoned lived her life. She
+did not repent,--she would not have recalled the impulse that winged her
+flight. Though the enthusiasm was gone, the superstition yet remained;
+she still believed she had saved her child from that dark and guilty
+sorcery, concerning which the traditions of all lands are prodigal, but
+in none do they find such credulity, or excite such dread, as in
+the South of Italy. This impression was confirmed by the mysterious
+conversations of Glyndon, and by her own perception of the fearful
+change that had passed over one who represented himself as the victim
+of the enchanters. She did not, therefore, repent; but her very volition
+seemed gone.
+
+On their arrival at Paris, Viola saw her companion--the faithful
+wife--no more. Ere three weeks were passed, husband and wife had ceased
+to live.
+
+And now, for the first time, the drudgeries of this hard earth claimed
+the beautiful Neapolitan. In that profession, giving voice and shape to
+poetry and song, in which her first years were passed, there is, while
+it lasts, an excitement in the art that lifts it from the labour of a
+calling. Hovering between two lives, the Real and Ideal, dwells the life
+of music and the stage. But that life was lost evermore to the idol of
+the eyes and ears of Naples. Lifted to the higher realm of passionate
+love, it seemed as if the fictitious genius which represents the
+thoughts of others was merged in the genius that grows all thought
+itself. It had been the worst infidelity to the Lost, to have descended
+again to live on the applause of others. And so--for she would not
+accept alms from Glyndon--so, by the commonest arts, the humblest
+industry which the sex knows, alone and unseen, she who had slept on the
+breast of Zanoni found a shelter for their child. As when, in the
+noble verse prefixed to this chapter, Armida herself has destroyed her
+enchanted palace,--not a vestige of that bower, raised of old by Poetry
+and Love, remained to say, “It had been!”
+
+And the child avenged the father; it bloomed, it thrived,--it waxed
+strong in the light of life. But still it seemed haunted and preserved
+by some other being than her own. In its sleep there was that slumber,
+so deep and rigid, which a thunderbolt could not have disturbed; and
+in such sleep often it moved its arms, as to embrace the air: often its
+lips stirred with murmured sounds of indistinct affection,--NOT FOR HER;
+and all the while upon its cheeks a hue of such celestial bloom, upon
+its lips a smile of such mysterious joy! Then, when it waked, its eyes
+did not turn first to HER,--wistful, earnest, wandering, they roved
+around, to fix on her pale face, at last, in mute sorrow and reproach.
+
+Never had Viola felt before how mighty was her love for Zanoni; how
+thought, feeling, heart, soul, life,--all lay crushed and dormant in
+the icy absence to which she had doomed herself! She heard not the
+roar without, she felt not one amidst those stormy millions,--worlds
+of excitement labouring through every hour. Only when Glyndon, haggard,
+wan, and spectre-like, glided in, day after day, to visit her, did the
+fair daughter of the careless South know how heavy and universal was
+the Death-Air that girt her round. Sublime in her passive
+unconsciousness,--her mechanic life,--she sat, and feared not, in the
+den of the Beasts of Prey.
+
+The door of the room opened abruptly, and Glyndon entered. His manner
+was more agitated than usual.
+
+“Is it you, Clarence?” she said in her soft, languid tones. “You are
+before the hour I expected you.”
+
+“Who can count on his hours at Paris?” returned Glyndon, with a
+frightful smile. “Is it not enough that I am here! Your apathy in the
+midst of these sorrows appalls me. You say calmly, ‘Farewell;’ calmly
+you bid me, ‘Welcome!’--as if in every corner there was not a spy, and
+as if with every day there was not a massacre!”
+
+“Pardon me! But in these walls lies my world. I can hardly credit all
+the tales you tell me. Everything here, save THAT,” and she pointed
+to the infant, “seems already so lifeless, that in the tomb itself one
+could scarcely less heed the crimes that are done without.”
+
+Glyndon paused for a few moments, and gazed with strange and mingled
+feelings upon that face and form, still so young, and yet so invested
+with that saddest of all repose,--when the heart feels old.
+
+“O Viola,” said he, at last, and in a voice of suppressed passion, “was
+it thus I ever thought to see you,--ever thought to feel for you, when
+we two first met in the gay haunts of Naples? Ah, why then did you
+refuse my love; or why was mine not worthy of you? Nay, shrink not!--let
+me touch your hand. No passion so sweet as that youthful love can return
+to me again. I feel for you but as a brother for some younger and lonely
+sister. With you, in your presence, sad though it be, I seem to breathe
+back the purer air of my early life. Here alone, except in scenes of
+turbulence and tempest, the Phantom ceases to pursue me. I forget even
+the Death that stalks behind, and haunts me as my shadow. But better
+days may be in store for us yet. Viola, I at last begin dimly to
+perceive how to baffle and subdue the Phantom that has cursed my
+life,--it is to brave, and defy it. In sin and in riot, as I have told
+thee, it haunts me not. But I comprehend now what Mejnour said in his
+dark apothegms, ‘that I should dread the spectre most WHEN UNSEEN.’ In
+virtuous and calm resolution it appears,--ay, I behold it now; there,
+there, with its livid eyes!”--and the drops fell from his brow. “But
+it shall no longer daunt me from that resolution. I face it, and it
+gradually darkens back into the shade.” He paused, and his eyes dwelt
+with a terrible exultation upon the sunlit space; then, with a heavy and
+deep-drawn breath, he resumed, “Viola, I have found the means of escape.
+We will leave this city. In some other land we will endeavour to comfort
+each other, and forget the past.”
+
+“No,” said Viola, calmly; “I have no further wish to stir, till I am
+born hence to the last resting-place. I dreamed of him last night,
+Clarence!--dreamed of him for the first time since we parted; and,
+do not mock me, methought that he forgave the deserter, and called me
+‘Wife.’ That dream hallows the room. Perhaps it will visit me again
+before I die.”
+
+“Talk not of him,--of the demi-fiend!” cried Glyndon, fiercely, and
+stamping his foot. “Thank the Heavens for any fate that hath rescued
+thee from him!”
+
+“Hush!” said Viola, gravely. And as she was about to proceed, her eye
+fell upon the child. It was standing in the very centre of that slanting
+column of light which the sun poured into the chamber; and the rays
+seemed to surround it as a halo, and settled, crown-like, on the gold
+of its shining hair. In its small shape, so exquisitely modelled, in its
+large, steady, tranquil eyes, there was something that awed, while it
+charmed the mother’s pride. It gazed on Glyndon as he spoke, with a
+look which almost might have seemed disdain, and which Viola, at least,
+interpreted as a defence of the Absent, stronger than her own lips could
+frame.
+
+Glyndon broke the pause.
+
+“Thou wouldst stay, for what? To betray a mother’s duty! If any evil
+happen to thee here, what becomes of thine infant? Shall it be brought
+up an orphan, in a country that has desecrated thy religion, and where
+human charity exists no more? Ah, weep, and clasp it to thy bosom; but
+tears do not protect and save.”
+
+“Thou hast conquered, my friend, I will fly with thee.”
+
+“To-morrow night, then, be prepared. I will bring thee the necessary
+disguises.”
+
+And Glyndon then proceeded to sketch rapidly the outline of the path
+they were to take, and the story they were to tell. Viola listened, but
+scarcely comprehended; he pressed her hand to his heart and departed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.V.
+
+     Van seco pur anco
+     Sdegno ed Amor, quasi due Veltri al fianco.
+     “Ger. Lib.” cant. xx. cxvii.
+
+     (There went with him still Disdain and Love, like two greyhounds
+     side by side.)
+
+Glyndon did not perceive, as he hurried from the house, two forms
+crouching by the angle of the wall. He saw still the spectre gliding by
+his side; but he beheld not the yet more poisonous eyes of human envy
+and woman’s jealousy that glared on his retreating footsteps.
+
+Nicot advanced to the house; Fillide followed him in silence. The
+painter, an old sans-culotte, knew well what language to assume to the
+porter. He beckoned the latter from his lodge, “How is this, citizen?
+Thou harbourest a ‘suspect.’”
+
+“Citizen, you terrify me!--if so, name him.”
+
+“It is not a man; a refugee, an Italian woman, lodges here.”
+
+“Yes, au troisieme,--the door to the left. But what of her?--she cannot
+be dangerous, poor child!”
+
+“Citizen, beware! Dost thou dare to pity her?”
+
+“I? No, no, indeed. But--”
+
+“Speak the truth! Who visits her?”
+
+“No one but an Englishman.”
+
+“That is it,--an Englishman, a spy of Pitt and Coburg.”
+
+“Just Heaven! is it possible?”
+
+“How, citizen! dost thou speak of Heaven? Thou must be an aristocrat!”
+
+“No, indeed; it was but an old bad habit, and escaped me unawares.”
+
+“How often does the Englishman visit her?”
+
+“Daily.”
+
+Fillide uttered an exclamation.
+
+“She never stirs out,” said the porter. “Her sole occupations are in
+work, and care of her infant.”
+
+“Her infant!”
+
+Fillide made a bound forward. Nicot in vain endeavoured to arrest her.
+She sprang up the stairs; she paused not till she was before the door
+indicated by the porter; it stood ajar, she entered, she stood at the
+threshold, and beheld that face, still so lovely! The sight of so much
+beauty left her hopeless. And the child, over whom the mother bent!--she
+who had never been a mother!--she uttered no sound; the furies were at
+work within her breast. Viola turned, and saw her, and, terrified by the
+strange apparition, with features that expressed the deadliest hate and
+scorn and vengeance, uttered a cry, and snatched the child to her bosom.
+The Italian laughed aloud,--turned, descended, and, gaining the spot
+where Nicot still conversed with the frightened porter drew him from the
+house. When they were in the open street, she halted abruptly, and said,
+“Avenge me, and name thy price!”
+
+“My price, sweet one! is but permission to love thee. Thou wilt fly with
+me to-morrow night; thou wilt possess thyself of the passports and the
+plan.”
+
+“And they--”
+
+“Shall, before then, find their asylum in the Conciergerie. The
+guillotine shall requite thy wrongs.”
+
+“Do this, and I am satisfied,” said Fillide, firmly.
+
+And they spoke no more till they regained the house. But when she there,
+looking up to the dull building, saw the windows of the room which the
+belief of Glyndon’s love had once made a paradise, the tiger relented at
+the heart; something of the woman gushed back upon her nature, dark and
+savage as it was. She pressed the arm on which she leaned convulsively,
+and exclaimed, “No, no! not him! denounce her,--let her perish; but I
+have slept on HIS bosom,--not HIM!”
+
+“It shall be as thou wilt,” said Nicot, with a devil’s sneer; “but he
+must be arrested for the moment. No harm shall happen to him, for no
+accuser shall appear. But her,--thou wilt not relent for her?”
+
+Fillide turned upon him her eyes, and their dark glance was sufficient
+answer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.VI.
+
+     In poppa quella
+     Che guidar gli dovea, fatal Donsella.
+     “Ger. Lib.” cant. xv. 3.
+
+     (By the prow was the fatal lady ordained to be the guide.)
+
+The Italian did not overrate that craft of simulation proverbial with
+her country and her sex. Not a word, not a look, that day revealed to
+Glyndon the deadly change that had converted devotion into hate. He
+himself, indeed, absorbed in his own schemes, and in reflections on his
+own strange destiny, was no nice observer. But her manner, milder
+and more subdued than usual, produced a softening effect upon his
+meditations towards the evening; and he then began to converse with her
+on the certain hope of escape, and on the future that would await them
+in less unhallowed lands.
+
+“And thy fair friend,” said Fillide, with an averted eye and a false
+smile, “who was to be our companion?--thou hast resigned her, Nicot
+tells me, in favour of one in whom he is interested. Is it so?”
+
+“He told thee this!” returned Glyndon, evasively. “Well! does the change
+content thee?”
+
+“Traitor!” muttered Fillide; and she rose suddenly, approached him,
+parted the long hair from his forehead caressingly, and pressed her lips
+convulsively on his brow.
+
+“This were too fair a head for the doomsman,” said she, with a slight
+laugh, and, turning away, appeared occupied in preparations for their
+departure.
+
+The next morning, when he rose, Glyndon did not see the Italian; she was
+absent from the house when he left it. It was necessary that he should
+once more visit C-- before his final Departure, not only to arrange for
+Nicot’s participation in the flight, but lest any suspicion should have
+arisen to thwart or endanger the plan he had adopted. C--, though not
+one of the immediate coterie of Robespierre, and indeed secretly hostile
+to him, had possessed the art of keeping well with each faction as
+it rose to power. Sprung from the dregs of the populace, he had,
+nevertheless, the grace and vivacity so often found impartially amongst
+every class in France. He had contrived to enrich himself--none knew
+how--in the course of his rapid career. He became, indeed, ultimately
+one of the wealthiest proprietors of Paris, and at that time kept a
+splendid and hospitable mansion. He was one of those whom, from various
+reasons, Robespierre deigned to favour; and he had often saved the
+proscribed and suspected, by procuring them passports under disguised
+names, and advising their method of escape. But C-- was a man who took
+this trouble only for the rich. “The incorruptible Maximilien,” who did
+not want the tyrant’s faculty of penetration, probably saw through all
+his manoeuvres, and the avarice which he cloaked beneath his charity.
+But it was noticeable that Robespierre frequently seemed to wink
+at--nay, partially to encourage--such vice in men whom he meant
+hereafter to destroy, as would tend to lower them in the public
+estimation, and to contrast with his own austere and unassailable
+integrity and PURISM. And, doubtless, he often grimly smiled in his
+sleeve at the sumptuous mansion and the griping covetousness of the
+worthy Citizen C--.
+
+To this personage, then, Glyndon musingly bent his way. It was true, as
+he had darkly said to Viola, that in proportion as he had resisted the
+spectre, its terrors had lost their influence. The time had come at
+last, when, seeing crime and vice in all their hideousness, and in so
+vast a theatre, he had found that in vice and crime there are deadlier
+horrors than in the eyes of a phantom-fear. His native nobleness began
+to return to him. As he passed the streets, he revolved in his mind
+projects of future repentance and reformation. He even meditated, as a
+just return for Fillide’s devotion, the sacrifice of all the reasonings
+of his birth and education. He would repair whatever errors he had
+committed against her, by the self-immolation of marriage with one
+little congenial with himself. He who had once revolted from marriage
+with the noble and gentle Viola!--he had learned in that world of wrong
+to know that right is right, and that Heaven did not make the one sex to
+be the victim of the other. The young visions of the Beautiful and the
+Good rose once more before him; and along the dark ocean of his mind lay
+the smile of reawakening virtue, as a path of moonlight. Never, perhaps,
+had the condition of his soul been so elevated and unselfish.
+
+In the meanwhile Jean Nicot, equally absorbed in dreams of the future,
+and already in his own mind laying out to the best advantage the gold of
+the friend he was about to betray, took his way to the house honoured
+by the residence of Robespierre. He had no intention to comply with the
+relenting prayer of Fillide, that the life of Glyndon should be spared.
+He thought with Barrere, “Il n’y a que les morts qui ne revient pas.”
+ In all men who have devoted themselves to any study, or any art, with
+sufficient pains to attain a certain degree of excellence, there must be
+a fund of energy immeasurably above that of the ordinary herd. Usually
+this energy is concentrated on the objects of their professional
+ambition, and leaves them, therefore, apathetic to the other pursuits
+of men. But where those objects are denied, where the stream has not its
+legitimate vent, the energy, irritated and aroused, possesses the whole
+being, and if not wasted on desultory schemes, or if not purified by
+conscience and principle, becomes a dangerous and destructive element in
+the social system, through which it wanders in riot and disorder. Hence,
+in all wise monarchies,--nay, in all well-constituted states,--the
+peculiar care with which channels are opened for every art and every
+science; hence the honour paid to their cultivators by subtle and
+thoughtful statesmen, who, perhaps, for themselves, see nothing in a
+picture but coloured canvas,--nothing in a problem but an ingenious
+puzzle. No state is ever more in danger than when the talent that should
+be consecrated to peace has no occupation but political intrigue or
+personal advancement. Talent unhonoured is talent at war with men. And
+here it is noticeable, that the class of actors having been the most
+degraded by the public opinion of the old regime, their very dust
+deprived of Christian burial, no men (with certain exceptions in the
+company especially favoured by the Court) were more relentless and
+revengeful among the scourges of the Revolution. In the savage Collot
+d’Herbois, mauvais comedien, were embodied the wrongs and the vengeance
+of a class.
+
+Now the energy of Jean Nicot had never been sufficiently directed to
+the art he professed. Even in his earliest youth, the political
+disquisitions of his master, David, had distracted him from the more
+tedious labours of the easel. The defects of his person had embittered
+his mind; the atheism of his benefactor had deadened his conscience.
+For one great excellence of religion--above all, the Religion of the
+Cross--is, that it raises PATIENCE first into a virtue, and next into a
+hope. Take away the doctrine of another life, of requital hereafter, of
+the smile of a Father upon our sufferings and trials in our ordeal here,
+and what becomes of patience? But without patience, what is man?--and
+what a people? Without patience, art never can be high; without
+patience, liberty never can be perfected. By wild throes, and impetuous,
+aimless struggles, Intellect seeks to soar from Penury, and a nation
+to struggle into Freedom. And woe, thus unfortified, guideless, and
+unenduring,--woe to both!
+
+Nicot was a villain as a boy. In most criminals, however abandoned,
+there are touches of humanity,--relics of virtue; and the true
+delineator of mankind often incurs the taunt of bad hearts and dull
+minds, for showing that even the worst alloy has some particles of gold,
+and even the best that come stamped from the mint of Nature have some
+adulteration of the dross. But there are exceptions, though few, to the
+general rule,--exceptions, when the conscience lies utterly dead, and
+when good or bad are things indifferent but as means to some selfish
+end. So was it with the protege of the atheist. Envy and hate filled up
+his whole being, and the consciousness of superior talent only made him
+curse the more all who passed him in the sunlight with a fairer form or
+happier fortunes. But, monster though he was, when his murderous fingers
+griped the throat of his benefactor, Time, and that ferment of all evil
+passions--the Reign of Blood--had made in the deep hell of his heart a
+deeper still. Unable to exercise his calling (for even had he dared to
+make his name prominent, revolutions are no season for painters; and no
+man--no! not the richest and proudest magnate of the land, has so great
+an interest in peace and order, has so high and essential a stake in the
+well being of society, as the poet and the artist), his whole intellect,
+ever restless and unguided, was left to ponder over the images of guilt
+most congenial to it. He had no future but in this life; and how in this
+life had the men of power around him, the great wrestlers for dominion,
+thriven? All that was good, pure, unselfish,--whether among Royalists or
+Republicans,--swept to the shambles, and the deathsmen left alone in the
+pomp and purple of their victims! Nobler paupers than Jean Nicot would
+despair; and Poverty would rise in its ghastly multitudes to cut the
+throat of Wealth, and then gash itself limb by limb, if Patience, the
+Angel of the Poor, sat not by its side, pointing with solemn finger to
+the life to come! And now, as Nicot neared the house of the Dictator, he
+began to meditate a reversal of his plans of the previous day: not
+that he faltered in his resolution to denounce Glyndon, and Viola would
+necessarily share his fate, as a companion and accomplice,--no, THERE
+he was resolved! for he hated both (to say nothing of his old but
+never-to-be-forgotten grudge against Zanoni). Viola had scorned him,
+Glyndon had served, and the thought of gratitude was as intolerable
+to him as the memory of insult. But why, now, should he fly from
+France?--he could possess himself of Glyndon’s gold; he doubted not
+that he could so master Fillide by her wrath and jealousy that he
+could command her acquiescence in all he proposed. The papers he had
+purloined--Desmoulins’ correspondence with Glyndon--while it insured the
+fate of the latter, might be eminently serviceable to Robespierre, might
+induce the tyrant to forget his own old liaisons with Hebert, and
+enlist him among the allies and tools of the King of Terror. Hopes
+of advancement, of wealth, of a career, again rose before him. This
+correspondence, dated shortly before Camille Desmoulins’ death, was
+written with that careless and daring imprudence which characterised the
+spoiled child of Danton. It spoke openly of designs against Robespierre;
+it named confederates whom the tyrant desired only a popular pretext
+to crush. It was a new instrument of death in the hands of the
+Death-compeller. What greater gift could he bestow on Maximilien the
+Incorruptible?
+
+Nursing these thoughts, he arrived at last before the door of Citizen
+Dupleix. Around the threshold were grouped, in admired confusion,
+some eight or ten sturdy Jacobins, the voluntary body-guard of
+Robespierre,--tall fellows, well armed, and insolent with the power that
+reflects power, mingled with women, young and fair, and gayly dressed,
+who had come, upon the rumour that Maximilien had had an attack of bile,
+to inquire tenderly of his health; for Robespierre, strange though it
+seem, was the idol of the sex!
+
+Through this cortege stationed without the door, and reaching up the
+stairs to the landing-place,--for Robespierre’s apartments were not
+spacious enough to afford sufficient antechamber for levees so numerous
+and miscellaneous,--Nicot forced his way; and far from friendly or
+flattering were the expressions that regaled his ears.
+
+“Aha, le joli Polichinelle!” said a comely matron, whose robe his
+obtrusive and angular elbows cruelly discomposed. “But how could one
+expect gallantry from such a scarecrow!”
+
+“Citizen, I beg to advise thee (The courteous use of the plural was
+proscribed at Paris. The Societies Populaires had decided that whoever
+used it should be prosecuted as suspect et adulateur! At the door of
+the public administrations and popular societies was written up, “Ici on
+s’honore du Citoyen, et on se tutoye”!!! (“Here they respect the title
+of Citizen, and they ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ one another.”) Take away Murder
+from the French Revolution and it becomes the greatest farce ever played
+before the angels!) that thou art treading on my feet. I beg thy pardon,
+but now I look at thine, I see the hall is not wide enough for them.”
+
+“Ho! Citizen Nicot,” cried a Jacobin, shouldering his formidable
+bludgeon, “and what brings thee hither?--thinkest thou that Hebert’s
+crimes are forgotten already? Off, sport of Nature! and thank the Etre
+Supreme that he made thee insignificant enough to be forgiven.”
+
+“A pretty face to look out of the National Window” (The Guillotine.),
+said the woman whose robe the painter had ruffled.
+
+“Citizens,” said Nicot, white with passion, but constraining himself so
+that his words seemed to come from grinded teeth, “I have the honour
+to inform you that I seek the Representant upon business of the
+utmost importance to the public and himself; and,” he added slowly and
+malignantly, glaring round, “I call all good citizens to be my witnesses
+when I shall complain to Robespierre of the reception bestowed on me by
+some amongst you.”
+
+There was in the man’s look and his tone of voice so much of deep
+and concentrated malignity, that the idlers drew back, and as the
+remembrance of the sudden ups and downs of revolutionary life occurred
+to them, several voices were lifted to assure the squalid and ragged
+painter that nothing was farther from their thoughts than to offer
+affront to a citizen whose very appearance proved him to be an exemplary
+sans-culotte. Nicot received these apologies in sullen silence, and,
+folding his arms, leaned against the wall, waiting in grim patience for
+his admission.
+
+The loiterers talked to each other in separate knots of two and three;
+and through the general hum rang the clear, loud, careless whistle of
+the tall Jacobin who stood guard by the stairs. Next to Nicot, an old
+woman and a young virgin were muttering in earnest whispers, and the
+atheist painter chuckled inly to overhear their discourse.
+
+“I assure thee, my dear,” said the crone, with a mysterious shake of
+head, “that the divine Catherine Theot, whom the impious now persecute,
+is really inspired. There can be no doubt that the elect, of whom Dom
+Gerle and the virtuous Robespierre are destined to be the two grand
+prophets, will enjoy eternal life here, and exterminate all their
+enemies. There is no doubt of it,--not the least!”
+
+“How delightful!” said the girl; “ce cher Robespierre!--he does not look
+very long-lived either!”
+
+“The greater the miracle,” said the old woman. “I am just eighty-one,
+and I don’t feel a day older since Catherine Theot promised me I should
+be one of the elect!”
+
+Here the women were jostled aside by some newcomers, who talked loud and
+eagerly.
+
+“Yes,” cried a brawny man, whose garb denoted him to be a butcher,
+with bare arms, and a cap of liberty on his head; “I am come to warn
+Robespierre. They lay a snare for him; they offer him the Palais
+National. ‘On ne peut etre ami du peuple et habiter un palais.’” (“No
+one can be a friend of the people, and dwell in a palace.”--“Papiers
+inedits trouves chez Robespierre,” etc., volume ii. page 132.)
+
+“No, indeed,” answered a cordonnier; “I like him best in his little
+lodging with the menuisier: it looks like one of US.”
+
+Another rush of the crowd, and a new group were thrown forward in the
+vicinity of Nicot. And these men gabbled and chattered faster and louder
+than the rest.
+
+“But my plan is--”
+
+“Au diable with YOUR plan! I tell you MY scheme is--”
+
+“Nonsense!” cried a third. “When Robespierre understands MY new method
+of making gunpowder, the enemies of France shall--”
+
+“Bah! who fears foreign enemies?” interrupted a fourth; “the enemies
+to be feared are at home. MY new guillotine takes off fifty heads at a
+time!”
+
+“But MY new Constitution!” exclaimed a fifth.
+
+“MY new Religion, citizen!” murmured, complacently, a sixth.
+
+“Sacre mille tonnerres, silence!” roared forth one of the Jacobin guard.
+
+And the crowd suddenly parted as a fierce-looking man, buttoned up to
+the chin, his sword rattling by his side, his spurs clinking at
+his heel, descended the stairs,--his cheeks swollen and purple with
+intemperance, his eyes dead and savage as a vulture’s. There was a still
+pause, as all, with pale cheeks, made way for the relentless Henriot.
+(Or H_a_nriot. It is singular how undetermined are not only the
+characters of the French Revolution, but even the spelling of their
+names. With the historians it is Vergniau_d_,--with the journalists of
+the time it is Vorgniau_x_. With one authority it is Robespierre,--with
+another Robe_r_spierre.) Scarce had this gruff and iron minion of the
+tyrant stalked through the throng, than a new movement of respect and
+agitation and fear swayed the increasing crowd, as there glided in, with
+the noiselessness of a shadow, a smiling, sober citizen, plainly but
+neatly clad, with a downcast humble eye. A milder, meeker face no
+pastoral poet could assign to Corydon or Thyrsis,--why did the crowd
+shrink and hold their breath? As the ferret in a burrow crept that
+slight form amongst the larger and rougher creatures that huddled and
+pressed back on each other as he passed. A wink of his stealthy eye, and
+the huge Jacobins left the passage clear, without sound or question. On
+he went to the apartment of the tyrant, and thither will we follow him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.VII.
+
+     Constitutum est, ut quisquis eum HOMINEM dixisset fuisse,
+     capitalem penderet poenam.
+     --St. Augustine, “Of the God Serapis,” l. 18, “de Civ. Dei,” c. 5.
+
+     (It was decreed, that whoso should say that he had been a MAN,
+     should suffer the punishment of a capital offence.)
+
+Robespierre was reclining languidly in his fauteuil, his cadaverous
+countenance more jaded and fatigued than usual. He to whom Catherine
+Theot assured immortal life, looked, indeed, like a man at death’s door.
+On the table before him was a dish heaped with oranges, with the juice
+of which it is said that he could alone assuage the acrid bile that
+overflowed his system; and an old woman, richly dressed (she had been a
+Marquise in the old regime) was employed in peeling the Hesperian fruits
+for the sick Dragon, with delicate fingers covered with jewels. I
+have before said that Robespierre was the idol of the women. Strange
+certainly!--but then they were French women! The old Marquise, who, like
+Catherine Theot, called him “son,” really seemed to love him piously and
+disinterestedly as a mother; and as she peeled the oranges, and heaped
+on him the most caressing and soothing expressions, the livid ghost of a
+smile fluttered about his meagre lips. At a distance, Payan and Couthon,
+seated at another table, were writing rapidly, and occasionally pausing
+from their work to consult with each other in brief whispers.
+
+Suddenly one of the Jacobins opened the door, and, approaching
+Robespierre, whispered to him the name of Guerin. (See for the espionage
+on which Guerin was employed, “Les Papiers inedits,” etc., volume i.
+page 366, No. xxviii.) At that word the sick man started up, as if new
+life were in the sound.
+
+“My kind friend,” he said to the Marquise, “forgive me; I must dispense
+with thy tender cares. France demands me. I am never ill when I can
+serve my country!”
+
+The old Marquise lifted up her eyes to heaven and murmured, “Quel ange!”
+
+Robespierre waved his hand impatiently; and the old woman, with a sigh,
+patted his pale cheek, kissed his forehead, and submissively withdrew.
+The next moment, the smiling, sober man we have before described, stood,
+bending low, before the tyrant. And well might Robespierre welcome one
+of the subtlest agents of his power,--one on whom he relied more than
+the clubs of his Jacobins, the tongues of his orators, the bayonets of
+his armies; Guerin, the most renowned of his ecouteurs,--the searching,
+prying, universal, omnipresent spy, who glided like a sunbeam through
+chink and crevice, and brought to him intelligence not only of the
+deeds, but the hearts of men!
+
+“Well, citizen, well!--and what of Tallien?”
+
+“This morning, early, two minutes after eight, he went out.”
+
+“So early?--hem!”
+
+“He passed Rue des Quatre Fils, Rue de Temple, Rue de la Reunion, au
+Marais, Rue Martin; nothing observable, except that--”
+
+“That what?”
+
+“He amused himself at a stall in bargaining for some books.”
+
+“Bargaining for books! Aha, the charlatan!--he would cloak the
+intriguant under the savant! Well!”
+
+“At last, in the Rue des Fosses Montmartre, an individual in a blue
+surtout (unknown) accosted him. They walked together about the street
+some minutes, and were joined by Legendre.”
+
+“Legendre! approach, Payan! Legendre, thou hearest!”
+
+“I went into a fruit-stall, and hired two little girls to go and play
+at ball within hearing. They heard Legendre say, ‘I believe his power is
+wearing itself out.’ And Tallien answered, ‘And HIMSELF too. I would not
+give three months’ purchase for his life.’ I do not know, citizen, if
+they meant THEE?”
+
+“Nor I, citizen,” answered Robespierre, with a fell smile, succeeded by
+an expression of gloomy thought. “Ha!” he muttered; “I am young yet,--in
+the prime of life. I commit no excess. No; my constitution is sound,
+sound. Anything farther of Tallien?”
+
+“Yes. The woman whom he loves--Teresa de Fontenai--who lies in prison,
+still continues to correspond with him; to urge him to save her by thy
+destruction: this my listeners overheard. His servant is the messenger
+between the prisoner and himself.”
+
+“So! The servant shall be seized in the open streets of Paris. The Reign
+of Terror is not over yet. With the letters found on him, if such their
+context, I will pluck Tallien from his benches in the Convention.”
+
+Robespierre rose, and after walking a few moments to and fro the room
+in thought, opened the door and summoned one of the Jacobins without.
+To him he gave his orders for the watch and arrest of Tallien’s servant,
+and then threw himself again into his chair. As the Jacobin departed,
+Guerin whispered,--
+
+“Is not that the Citizen Aristides?”
+
+“Yes; a faithful fellow, if he would wash himself, and not swear so
+much.”
+
+“Didst thou not guillotine his brother?”
+
+“But Aristides denounced him.”
+
+“Nevertheless, are such men safe about thy person?”
+
+“Humph! that is true.” And Robespierre, drawing out his pocketbook,
+wrote a memorandum in it, replaced it in his vest, and resumed,--
+
+“What else of Tallien?”
+
+“Nothing more. He and Legendre, with the unknown, walked to the Jardin
+Egalite, and there parted. I saw Tallien to his house. But I have
+other news. Thou badest me watch for those who threaten thee in secret
+letters.”
+
+“Guerin! hast thou detected them? Hast thou--hast thou--”
+
+And the tyrant, as he spoke, opened and shut both his hands, as if
+already grasping the lives of the writers, and one of those convulsive
+grimaces that seemed like an epileptic affection, to which he was
+subject, distorted his features.
+
+“Citizen, I think I have found one. Thou must know that amongst those
+most disaffected is the painter Nicot.”
+
+“Stay, stay!” said Robespierre, opening a manuscript book, bound in red
+morocco (for Robespierre was neat and precise, even in his death-lists),
+and turning to an alphabetical index,--“Nicot!--I have him,--atheist,
+sans-culotte (I hate slovens), friend of Hebert! Aha! N.B.--Rene Dumas
+knows of his early career and crimes. Proceed!”
+
+“This Nicot has been suspected of diffusing tracts and pamphlets against
+thyself and the Comite. Yesterday evening, when he was out, his porter
+admitted me into his apartment, Rue Beau Repaire. With my master-key I
+opened his desk and escritoire. I found herein a drawing of thyself at
+the guillotine; and underneath was written, ‘Bourreau de ton pays, lis
+l’arret de ton chatiment!’ (Executioner of thy country, read the decree
+of thy punishment!) I compared the words with the fragments of the
+various letters thou gavest me: the handwriting tallies with one. See, I
+tore off the writing.”
+
+Robespierre looked, smiled, and, as if his vengeance were already
+satisfied, threw himself on his chair. “It is well! I feared it was a
+more powerful enemy. This man must be arrested at once.”
+
+“And he waits below. I brushed by him as I ascended the stairs.”
+
+“Does he so?--admit!--nay,--hold! hold! Guerin, withdraw into the
+inner chamber till I summon thee again. Dear Payan, see that this Nicot
+conceals no weapons.”
+
+Payan, who was as brave as Robespierre was pusillanimous, repressed the
+smile of disdain that quivered on his lips a moment, and left the room.
+
+Meanwhile Robespierre, with his head buried in his bosom, seemed
+plunged in deep thought. “Life is a melancholy thing, Couthon!” said he,
+suddenly.
+
+“Begging your pardon, I think death worse,” answered the philanthropist,
+gently.
+
+Robespierre made no rejoinder, but took from his portefeuille that
+singular letter, which was found afterwards amongst his papers, and
+is marked LXI. in the published collection. (“Papiers inedits,’ etc.,
+volume ii. page 156.)
+
+“Without doubt,” it began, “you are uneasy at not having earlier
+received news from me. Be not alarmed; you know that I ought only to
+reply by our ordinary courier; and as he has been interrupted, dans sa
+derniere course, that is the cause of my delay. When you receive this,
+employ all diligence to fly a theatre where you are about to appear
+and disappear for the last time. It were idle to recall to you all the
+reasons that expose you to peril. The last step that should place you
+sur le sopha de la presidence, but brings you to the scaffold; and the
+mob will spit on your face as it has spat on those whom you have
+judged. Since, then, you have accumulated here a sufficient treasure for
+existence, I await you with great impatience, to laugh with you at the
+part you have played in the troubles of a nation as credulous as it is
+avid of novelties. Take your part according to our arrangements,--all is
+prepared. I conclude,--our courier waits. I expect your reply.”
+
+Musingly and slowly the Dictator devoured the contents of this epistle.
+“No,” he said to himself,--“no; he who has tasted power can no longer
+enjoy repose. Yet, Danton, Danton! thou wert right; better to be a poor
+fisherman than to govern men.” (“Il vaudrait mieux,” said Danton, in his
+dungeon, “etre un pauvre pecheur que de gouverner les hommes.”)
+
+The door opened, and Payan reappeared and whispered Robespierre, “All is
+safe! See the man.”
+
+The Dictator, satisfied, summoned his attendant Jacobin to conduct Nicot
+to his presence. The painter entered with a fearless expression in his
+deformed features, and stood erect before Robespierre, who scanned him
+with a sidelong eye.
+
+It is remarkable that most of the principal actors of the Revolution
+were singularly hideous in appearance,--from the colossal ugliness of
+Mirabeau and Danton, or the villanous ferocity in the countenances
+of David and Simon, to the filthy squalor of Marat, the sinister and
+bilious meanness of the Dictator’s features. But Robespierre, who was
+said to resemble a cat, had also a cat’s cleanness; and his prim and
+dainty dress, his shaven smoothness, the womanly whiteness of his
+lean hands, made yet more remarkable the disorderly ruffianism that
+characterised the attire and mien of the painter-sans-culotte.
+
+“And so, citizen,” said Robespierre, mildly, “thou wouldst speak with
+me? I know thy merits and civism have been overlooked too long. Thou
+wouldst ask some suitable provision in the state? Scruple not--say on!”
+
+“Virtuous Robespierre, toi qui eclaires l’univers (Thou who enlightenest
+the world.), I come not to ask a favour, but to render service to the
+state. I have discovered a correspondence that lays open a conspiracy of
+which many of the actors are yet unsuspected.” And he placed the papers
+on the table. Robespierre seized, and ran his eye over them rapidly and
+eagerly.
+
+“Good!--good!” he muttered to himself: “this is all I wanted. Barrere,
+Legendre! I have them! Camille Desmoulins was but their dupe. I loved
+him once; I never loved them! Citizen Nicot, I thank thee. I observe
+these letters are addressed to an Englishman. What Frenchman but must
+distrust these English wolves in sheep’s clothing! France wants no
+longer citizens of the world; that farce ended with Anarcharsis Clootz.
+I beg pardon, Citizen Nicot; but Clootz and Hebert were THY friends.”
+
+“Nay,” said Nicot, apologetically, “we are all liable to be deceived. I
+ceased to honour them whom thou didst declare against; for I disown my
+own senses rather than thy justice.”
+
+“Yes, I pretend to justice; that IS the virtue I affect,” said
+Robespierre, meekly; and with his feline propensities he enjoyed, even
+in that critical hour of vast schemes, of imminent danger, of meditated
+revenge, the pleasure of playing with a solitary victim. (The most
+detestable anecdote of this peculiar hypocrisy in Robespierre is that
+in which he is recorded to have tenderly pressed the hand of his old
+school-friend, Camille Desmoulins, the day that he signed the warrant
+for his arrest.) “And my justice shall no longer be blind to thy
+services, good Nicot. Thou knowest this Glyndon?”
+
+“Yes, well,--intimately. He WAS my friend, but I would give up my
+brother if he were one of the ‘indulgents.’ I am not ashamed to say that
+I have received favours from this man.”
+
+“Aha!--and thou dost honestly hold the doctrine that where a man
+threatens my life all personal favours are to be forgotten?”
+
+“All!”
+
+“Good citizen!--kind Nicot!--oblige me by writing the address of this
+Glyndon.”
+
+Nicot stooped to the table; and suddenly when the pen was in his hand, a
+thought flashed across him, and he paused, embarrassed and confused.
+
+“Write on, KIND Nicot!”
+
+The painter slowly obeyed.
+
+“Who are the other familiars of Glyndon?”
+
+“It was on that point I was about to speak to thee, Representant,” said
+Nicot. “He visits daily a woman, a foreigner, who knows all his secrets;
+she affects to be poor, and to support her child by industry. But she is
+the wife of an Italian of immense wealth, and there is no doubt that
+she has moneys which are spent in corrupting the citizens. She should be
+seized and arrested.”
+
+“Write down her name also.”
+
+“But no time is to be lost; for I know that both have a design to escape
+from Paris this very night.”
+
+“Our government is prompt, good Nicot,--never fear. Humph!--humph!” and
+Robespierre took the paper on which Nicot had written, and stooping over
+it--for he was near-sighted--added, smilingly, “Dost thou always write
+the same hand, citizen? This seems almost like a disguised character.”
+
+“I should not like them to know who denounced them, Representant.”
+
+“Good! good! Thy virtue shall be rewarded, trust me. Salut et
+fraternite!”
+
+Robespierre half rose as he spoke, and Nicot withdrew.
+
+“Ho, there!--without!” cried the Dictator, ringing his bell; and as the
+ready Jacobin attended the summons, “Follow that man, Jean Nicot. The
+instant he has cleared the house seize him. At once to the Conciergerie
+with him. Stay!--nothing against the law; there is thy warrant. The
+public accuser shall have my instruction. Away!--quick!”
+
+The Jacobin vanished. All trace of illness, of infirmity, had gone from
+the valetudinarian; he stood erect on the floor, his face
+twitching convulsively, and his arms folded. “Ho! Guerin!” the spy
+reappeared--“take these addresses! Within an hour this Englishman and
+his woman must be in prison; their revelations will aid me against
+worthier foes. They shall die: they shall perish with the rest on the
+10th,--the third day from this. There!” and he wrote hastily,--“there,
+also, is thy warrant! Off!
+
+“And now, Couthon, Payan, we will dally no longer with Tallien and his
+crew. I have information that the Convention will NOT attend the Fete on
+the 10th. We must trust only to the sword of the law. I must compose
+my thoughts,--prepare my harangue. To-morrow, I will reappear at the
+Convention; to-morrow, bold St. Just joins us, fresh from our victorious
+armies; to-morrow, from the tribune, I will dart the thunderbolt on the
+masked enemies of France; to-morrow, I will demand, in the face of the
+country, the heads of the conspirators.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.VIII.
+
+     Le glaive est contre toi tourne de toutes parties.
+     La Harpe, “Jeanne de Naples,” Act iv. sc. 4.
+
+     (The sword is raised against you on all sides.)
+
+In the mean time Glyndon, after an audience of some length with C--,
+in which the final preparations were arranged, sanguine of safety,
+and foreseeing no obstacle to escape, bent his way back to Fillide.
+Suddenly, in the midst of his cheerful thoughts, he fancied he heard a
+voice too well and too terribly recognised, hissing in his ear, “What!
+thou wouldst defy and escape me! thou wouldst go back to virtue and
+content. It is in vain,--it is too late. No, _I_ will not haunt thee;
+HUMAN footsteps, no less inexorable, dog thee now. Me thou shalt not see
+again till in the dungeon, at midnight, before thy doom! Behold--”
+
+And Glyndon, mechanically turning his head, saw, close behind him, the
+stealthy figure of a man whom he had observed before, but with little
+heed, pass and repass him, as he quitted the house of Citizen C--.
+Instantly and instinctively he knew that he was watched,--that he was
+pursued. The street he was in was obscure and deserted, for the day was
+oppressively sultry, and it was the hour when few were abroad, either
+on business or pleasure. Bold as he was, an icy chill shot through his
+heart, he knew too well the tremendous system that then reigned in Paris
+not to be aware of his danger. As the sight of the first plague-boil to
+the victim of the pestilence, was the first sight of the shadowy spy
+to that of the Revolution: the watch, the arrest, the trial, the
+guillotine,--these made the regular and rapid steps of the monster that
+the anarchists called Law! He breathed hard, he heard distinctly the
+loud beating of his heart. And so he paused, still and motionless,
+gazing upon the shadow that halted also behind him.
+
+Presently, the absence of all allies to the spy, the solitude of the
+streets, reanimated his courage; he made a step towards his pursuer, who
+retreated as he advanced. “Citizen, thou followest me,” he said. “Thy
+business?”
+
+“Surely,” answered the man, with a deprecating smile, “the streets are
+broad enough for both? Thou art not so bad a republican as to arrogate
+all Paris to thyself!”
+
+“Go on first, then. I make way for thee.”
+
+The man bowed, doffed his hat politely, and passed forward. The next
+moment Glyndon plunged into a winding lane, and fled fast through a
+labyrinth of streets, passages, and alleys. By degrees he composed
+himself, and, looking behind, imagined that he had baffled the pursuer;
+he then, by a circuitous route, bent his way once more to his home. As
+he emerged into one of the broader streets, a passenger, wrapped in
+a mantle, brushing so quickly by him that he did not observe his
+countenance, whispered, “Clarence Glyndon, you are dogged,--follow
+me!” and the stranger walked quickly before him. Clarence turned, and
+sickened once more to see at his heels, with the same servile smile
+on his face, the pursuer he fancied he had escaped. He forgot the
+injunction of the stranger to follow him, and perceiving a crowd
+gathered close at hand, round a caricature-shop, dived amidst them, and,
+gaining another street, altered the direction he had before taken, and,
+after a long and breathless course, gained without once more seeing the
+spy, a distant quartier of the city.
+
+Here, indeed, all seemed so serene and fair that his artist eye, even
+in that imminent hour, rested with pleasure on the scene. It was a
+comparatively broad space, formed by one of the noble quays. The Seine
+flowed majestically along, with boats and craft resting on its surface.
+The sun gilt a thousand spires and domes, and gleamed on the white
+palaces of a fallen chivalry. Here fatigued and panting, he paused an
+instant, and a cooler air from the river fanned his brow. “Awhile, at
+least, I am safe here,” he murmured; and as he spoke, some thirty paces
+behind him, he beheld the spy. He stood rooted to the spot; wearied and
+spent as he was, escape seemed no longer possible,--the river on one
+side (no bridge at hand), and the long row of mansions closing up the
+other. As he halted, he heard laughter and obscene songs from a house a
+little in his rear, between himself and the spy. It was a cafe fearfully
+known in that quarter. Hither often resorted the black troop of
+Henriot,--the minions and huissiers of Robespierre. The spy, then,
+had hunted the victim within the jaws of the hounds. The man slowly
+advanced, and, pausing before the open window of the cafe, put his head
+through the aperture, as to address and summon forth its armed inmates.
+
+At that very instant, and while the spy’s head was thus turned from him,
+standing in the half-open gateway of the house immediately before
+him, he perceived the stranger who had warned; the figure, scarcely
+distinguishable through the mantle that wrapped it, motioned to him
+to enter. He sprang noiselessly through the friendly opening: the door
+closed; breathlessly he followed the stranger up a flight of broad
+stairs and through a suite of empty rooms, until, having gained a small
+cabinet, his conductor doffed the large hat and the long mantle that had
+hitherto concealed his shape and features, and Glyndon beheld Zanoni!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.IX.
+
+     Think not my magic wonders wrought by aid
+     Of Stygian angels summoned up from hell;
+     Scorned and accursed be those who have essayed
+     Her gloomy Dives and Afrites to compel.
+     But by perception of the secret powers
+     Of mineral springs in Nature’s inmost cell,
+     Of herbs in curtain of her greenest bowers,
+     And of the moving stars o’er mountain tops and towers.
+     Wiffen’s “Translation of Tasso,” cant. xiv. xliii.
+
+“You are safe here, young Englishman!” said Zanoni, motioning Glyndon to
+a seat. “Fortunate for you that I come on your track at last!”
+
+“Far happier had it been if we had never met! Yet even in these last
+hours of my fate, I rejoice to look once more on the face of that
+ominous and mysterious being to whom I can ascribe all the sufferings
+I have known. Here, then, thou shalt not palter with or elude me. Here,
+before we part, thou shalt unravel to me the dark enigma, if not of thy
+life, of my own!”
+
+“Hast thou suffered? Poor neophyte!” said Zanoni, pityingly. “Yes; I see
+it on thy brow. But wherefore wouldst thou blame me? Did I not warn thee
+against the whispers of thy spirit; did I not warn thee to forbear? Did
+I not tell thee that the ordeal was one of awful hazard and tremendous
+fears,--nay, did I not offer to resign to thee the heart that was mighty
+enough, while mine, Glyndon, to content me? Was it not thine own daring
+and resolute choice to brave the initiation! Of thine own free will
+didst thou make Mejnour thy master, and his lore thy study!”
+
+“But whence came the irresistible desires of that wild and unholy
+knowledge? I knew them not till thine evil eye fell upon me, and I was
+drawn into the magic atmosphere of thy being!”
+
+“Thou errest!--the desires were in thee; and, whether in one direction
+or the other, would have forced their way! Man! thou askest me the
+enigma of thy fate and my own! Look round all being, is there not
+mystery everywhere? Can thine eye trace the ripening of the grain
+beneath the earth? In the moral and the physical world alike, lie dark
+portents, far more wondrous than the powers thou wouldst ascribe to me!”
+
+“Dost thou disown those powers; dost thou confess thyself an
+imposter?--or wilt thou dare to tell me that thou art indeed sold to the
+Evil one,--a magician whose familiar has haunted me night and day?”
+
+“It matters not what I am,” returned Zanoni; “it matters only whether I
+can aid thee to exorcise thy dismal phantom, and return once more to the
+wholesome air of this common life. Something, however, will I tell thee,
+not to vindicate myself, but the Heaven and the Nature that thy doubts
+malign.”
+
+Zanoni paused a moment, and resumed with a slight smile,--
+
+“In thy younger days thou hast doubtless read with delight the great
+Christian poet, whose muse, like the morning it celebrated, came to
+earth, ‘crowned with flowers culled in Paradise.’ [‘L’aurea testa Di
+rose colte in Paradiso infiora.’ Tasso, “Ger. Lib.” iv. l.)
+
+“No spirit was more imbued with the knightly superstitions of the time;
+and surely the Poet of Jerusalem hath sufficiently, to satisfy even the
+Inquisitor he consulted, execrated all the practitioners of the unlawful
+spells invoked,--
+
+‘Per isforzar Cocito o Flegetonte.’ (To constrain Cocytus or
+Phlegethon.)
+
+“But in his sorrows and his wrongs, in the prison of his madhouse,
+know you not that Tasso himself found his solace, his escape, in the
+recognition of a holy and spiritual Theurgia,--of a magic that could
+summon the Angel, or the Good Genius, not the Fiend? And do you not
+remember how he, deeply versed as he was for his age, in the mysteries
+of the nobler Platonism, which hints at the secrets of all the starry
+brotherhoods, from the Chaldean to the later Rosicrucian, discriminates
+in his lovely verse, between the black art of Ismeno and the glorious
+lore of the Enchanter who counsels and guides upon their errand the
+champions of the Holy Land? HIS, not the charms wrought by the aid of
+the Stygian Rebels (See this remarkable passage, which does indeed
+not unfaithfully represent the doctrine of the Pythagorean and the
+Platonist, in Tasso, cant. xiv. stanzas xli. to xlvii. (“Ger. Lib.”)
+They are beautifully translated by Wiffen.), but the perception of the
+secret powers of the fountain and the herb,--the Arcana of the unknown
+nature and the various motions of the stars. His, the holy haunts of
+Lebanon and Carmel,--beneath his feet he saw the clouds, the snows, the
+hues of Iris, the generations of the rains and dews. Did the Christian
+Hermit who converted that Enchanter (no fabulous being, but the type of
+all spirit that would aspire through Nature up to God) command him to
+lay aside these sublime studies, ‘Le solite arte e l’ uso mio’? No! but
+to cherish and direct them to worthy ends. And in this grand conception
+of the poet lies the secret of the true Theurgia, which startles your
+ignorance in a more learned day with puerile apprehensions, and the
+nightmares of a sick man’s dreams.”
+
+Again Zanoni paused, and again resumed:--
+
+“In ages far remote,--of a civilisation far different from that which
+now merges the individual in the state,--there existed men of ardent
+minds, and an intense desire of knowledge. In the mighty and solemn
+kingdoms in which they dwelt, there were no turbulent and earthly
+channels to work off the fever of their minds. Set in the antique mould
+of casts through which no intellect could pierce, no valour could force
+its way, the thirst for wisdom alone reigned in the hearts of those who
+received its study as a heritage from sire to son. Hence, even in your
+imperfect records of the progress of human knowledge, you find that, in
+the earliest ages, Philosophy descended not to the business and homes of
+men. It dwelt amidst the wonders of the loftier creation; it sought to
+analyse the formation of matter,--the essentials of the prevailing soul;
+to read the mysteries of the starry orbs; to dive into those depths
+of Nature in which Zoroaster is said by the schoolmen first to have
+discovered the arts which your ignorance classes under the name of
+magic. In such an age, then, arose some men, who, amidst the vanities
+and delusions of their class, imagined that they detected gleams of a
+brighter and steadier lore. They fancied an affinity existing among all
+the works of Nature, and that in the lowliest lay the secret attraction
+that might conduct them upward to the loftiest. (Agreeably, it would
+seem, to the notion of Iamblichus and Plotinus, that the universe is as
+an animal; so that there is sympathy and communication between one part
+and the other; in the smallest part may be the subtlest nerve. And hence
+the universal magnetism of Nature. But man contemplates the universe as
+an animalcule would an elephant. The animalcule, seeing scarcely the tip
+of the hoof, would be incapable of comprehending that the trunk belonged
+to the same creature,--that the effect produced upon one extremity would
+be felt in an instant by the other.) Centuries passed, and lives were
+wasted in these discoveries; but step after step was chronicled and
+marked, and became the guide to the few who alone had the hereditary
+privilege to track their path.
+
+“At last from this dimness upon some eyes the light broke; but think not,
+young visionary, that to those who nursed unholy thoughts, over whom
+the Origin of Evil held a sway, that dawning was vouchsafed. It could
+be given then, as now, only to the purest ecstasies of imagination and
+intellect, undistracted by the cares of a vulgar life, or the appetites
+of the common clay. Far from descending to the assistance of a fiend,
+theirs was but the august ambition to approach nearer to the Fount
+of Good; the more they emancipated themselves from this limbo of the
+planets, the more they were penetrated by the splendour and beneficence
+of God. And if they sought, and at last discovered, how to the eye of
+the Spirit all the subtler modifications of being and of matter might be
+made apparent; if they discovered how, for the wings of the Spirit, all
+space might be annihilated, and while the body stood heavy and solid
+here, as a deserted tomb, the freed IDEA might wander from star to
+star,--if such discoveries became in truth their own, the sublimest
+luxury of their knowledge was but this, to wonder, to venerate, and
+adore! For, as one not unlearned in these high matters has expressed it,
+‘There is a principle of the soul superior to all external nature,
+and through this principle we are capable of surpassing the order and
+systems of the world, and participating the immortal life and the energy
+of the Sublime Celestials. When the soul is elevated to natures above
+itself, it deserts the order to which it is awhile compelled, and by a
+religious magnetism is attracted to another and a loftier, with which it
+blends and mingles.’ (From Iamblichus, “On the Mysteries,” c. 7, sect.
+7.) Grant, then, that such beings found at last the secret to arrest
+death; to fascinate danger and the foe; to walk the revolutions of the
+earth unharmed,--think you that this life could teach them other desire
+than to yearn the more for the Immortal, and to fit their intellect the
+better for the higher being to which they might, when Time and Death
+exist no longer, be transferred? Away with your gloomy fantasies of
+sorcerer and demon!--the soul can aspire only to the light; and even the
+error of our lofty knowledge was but the forgetfulness of the weakness,
+the passions, and the bonds which the death we so vainly conquered only
+can purge away!”
+
+This address was so different from what Glyndon had anticipated, that he
+remained for some moments speechless, and at length faltered out,--
+
+“But why, then, to me--”
+
+“Why,” added Zanoni,--“why to thee have been only the penance and the
+terror,--the Threshold and the Phantom? Vain man! look to the commonest
+elements of the common learning. Can every tyro at his mere wish and
+will become the master; can the student, when he has bought his Euclid,
+become a Newton; can the youth whom the Muses haunt, say, ‘I will equal
+Homer;’ yea, can yon pale tyrant, with all the parchment laws of a
+hundred system-shapers, and the pikes of his dauntless multitude, carve,
+at his will, a constitution not more vicious than the one which the
+madness of a mob could overthrow? When, in that far time to which I have
+referred, the student aspired to the heights to which thou wouldst have
+sprung at a single bound, he was trained from his very cradle to the
+career he was to run. The internal and the outward nature were made
+clear to his eyes, year after year, as they opened on the day. He was
+not admitted to the practical initiation till not one earthly wish
+chained that sublimest faculty which you call the IMAGINATION, one
+carnal desire clouded the penetrative essence that you call the
+INTELLECT. And even then, and at the best, how few attained to the
+last mystery! Happier inasmuch as they attained the earlier to the holy
+glories for which Death is the heavenliest gate.”
+
+Zanoni paused, and a shade of thought and sorrow darkened his celestial
+beauty.
+
+“And are there, indeed, others, besides thee and Mejnour, who lay claim
+to thine attributes, and have attained to thy secrets?”
+
+“Others there have been before us, but we two now are alone on earth.”
+
+“Imposter, thou betrayest thyself! If they could conquer Death, why
+live they not yet?” (Glyndon appears to forget that Mejnour had before
+answered the very question which his doubts here a second time suggest.)
+
+“Child of a day!” answered Zanoni, mournfully, “have I not told thee the
+error of our knowledge was the forgetfulness of the desires and passions
+which the spirit never can wholly and permanently conquer while this
+matter cloaks it? Canst thou think that it is no sorrow, either to
+reject all human ties, all friendship, and all love, or to see, day
+after day, friendship and love wither from our life, as blossoms from
+the stem? Canst thou wonder how, with the power to live while the world
+shall last, ere even our ordinary date be finished we yet may prefer to
+die? Wonder rather that there are two who have clung so faithfully to
+earth! Me, I confess, that earth can enamour yet. Attaining to the last
+secret while youth was in its bloom, youth still colours all around me
+with its own luxuriant beauty; to me, yet, to breathe is to enjoy. The
+freshness has not faded from the face of Nature, and not an herb in
+which I cannot discover a new charm,--an undetected wonder.
+
+“As with my youth, so with Mejnour’s age: he will tell you that life to
+him is but a power to examine; and not till he has exhausted all
+the marvels which the Creator has sown on earth, would he desire new
+habitations for the renewed Spirit to explore. We are the types of the
+two essences of what is imperishable,--‘ART, that enjoys; and SCIENCE,
+that contemplates!’ And now, that thou mayest be contented that the
+secrets are not vouchsafed to thee, learn that so utterly must the idea
+detach itself from what makes up the occupation and excitement of men;
+so must it be void of whatever would covet, or love, or hate,--that for
+the ambitious man, for the lover, the hater, the power avails not. And
+I, at last, bound and blinded by the most common of household ties; I,
+darkened and helpless, adjure thee, the baffled and discontented,--I
+adjure thee to direct, to guide me; where are they? Oh, tell me,--speak!
+My wife,--my child? Silent!--oh, thou knowest now that I am no sorcerer,
+no enemy. I cannot give thee what thy faculties deny,--I cannot achieve
+what the passionless Mejnour failed to accomplish; but I can give thee
+the next-best boon, perhaps the fairest,--I can reconcile thee to the
+daily world, and place peace between thy conscience and thyself.”
+
+“Wilt thou promise?”
+
+“By their sweet lives, I promise!”
+
+Glyndon looked and believed. He whispered the address to the house
+whither his fatal step already had brought woe and doom.
+
+“Bless thee for this,” exclaimed Zanoni, passionately, “and thou shalt
+be blessed! What! couldst thou not perceive that at the entrance to all
+the grander worlds dwell the race that intimidate and awe? Who in thy
+daily world ever left the old regions of Custom and Prescription,
+and felt not the first seizure of the shapeless and nameless Fear?
+Everywhere around thee where men aspire and labour, though they see it
+not,--in the closet of the sage, in the council of the demagogue, in
+the camp of the warrior,--everywhere cowers and darkens the Unutterable
+Horror. But there, where thou hast ventured, alone is the Phantom
+VISIBLE; and never will it cease to haunt, till thou canst pass to the
+Infinite, as the seraph; or return to the Familiar, as a child! But
+answer me this: when, seeking to adhere to some calm resolve of virtue,
+the Phantom hath stalked suddenly to thy side; when its voice hath
+whispered thee despair; when its ghastly eyes would scare thee back to
+those scenes of earthly craft or riotous excitement from which, as
+it leaves thee to worse foes to the soul, its presence is ever
+absent,--hast thou never bravely resisted the spectre and thine own
+horror; hast thou never said, ‘Come what may, to Virtue I will cling?’”
+
+“Alas!” answered Glyndon, “only of late have I dared to do so.”
+
+“And thou hast felt then that the Phantom grew more dim and its power
+more faint?”
+
+“It is true.”
+
+“Rejoice, then!--thou hast overcome the true terror and mystery of the
+ordeal. Resolve is the first success. Rejoice, for the exorcism is sure!
+Thou art not of those who, denying a life to come, are the victims of
+the Inexorable Horror. Oh, when shall men learn, at last, that if the
+Great Religion inculcates so rigidly the necessity of FAITH, it is not
+alone that FAITH leads to the world to be; but that without faith there
+is no excellence in this,--faith in something wiser, happier, diviner,
+than we see on earth!--the artist calls it the Ideal,--the priest,
+Faith. The Ideal and Faith are one and the same. Return, O wanderer,
+return! Feel what beauty and holiness dwell in the Customary and the
+Old. Back to thy gateway glide, thou Horror! and calm, on the childlike
+heart, smile again, O azure Heaven, with thy night and thy morning star
+but as one, though under its double name of Memory and Hope!”
+
+As he thus spoke, Zanoni laid his hand gently on the burning temples of
+his excited and wondering listener; and presently a sort of trance came
+over him: he imagined that he was returned to the home of his infancy;
+that he was in the small chamber where, over his early slumbers,
+his mother had watched and prayed. There it was,--visible, palpable,
+solitary, unaltered. In the recess, the homely bed; on the walls, the
+shelves filled with holy books; the very easel on which he had first
+sought to call the ideal to the canvas, dust-covered, broken, in the
+corner. Below the window lay the old churchyard: he saw it green in the
+distance, the sun glancing through the yew-trees; he saw the tomb where
+father and mother lay united, and the spire pointing up to heaven, the
+symbol of the hopes of those who consigned the ashes to the dust; in
+his ear rang the bells, pealing, as on a Sabbath day. Far fled all
+the visions of anxiety and awe that had haunted and convulsed; youth,
+boyhood, childhood came back to him with innocent desires and hopes; he
+thought he fell upon his knees to pray. He woke,--he woke in
+delicious tears, he felt that the Phantom was fled forever. He looked
+round,--Zanoni was gone. On the table lay these lines, the ink yet
+wet:--
+
+“I will find ways and means for thy escape. At nightfall, as the clock
+strikes nine, a boat shall wait thee on the river before this house;
+the boatman will guide thee to a retreat where thou mayst rest in safety
+till the Reign of Terror, which nears its close, be past. Think no more
+of the sensual love that lured, and wellnigh lost thee. It betrayed, and
+would have destroyed. Thou wilt regain thy land in safety,--long years
+yet spared to thee to muse over the past, and to redeem it. For thy
+future, be thy dream thy guide, and thy tears thy baptism.”
+
+The Englishman obeyed the injunctions of the letter, and found their
+truth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.X.
+
+     Quid mirare meas tot in uno corpore formas?
+     Propert.
+
+     (Why wonder that I have so many forms in a single body?)
+
+Zanoni to Mejnour.
+
+.....
+
+“She is in one of their prisons,--their inexorable prisons. It is
+Robespierre’s order,--I have tracked the cause to Glyndon. This, then,
+made that terrible connection between their fates which I could not
+unravel, but which (till severed as it now is) wrapped Glyndon himself
+in the same cloud that concealed her. In prison,--in prison!--it is the
+gate of the grave! Her trial, and the inevitable execution that follows
+such trial, is the third day from this. The tyrant has fixed all his
+schemes of slaughter for the 10th of Thermidor. While the deaths of the
+unoffending strike awe to the city, his satellites are to massacre his
+foes. There is but one hope left,--that the Power which now dooms the
+doomer, may render me an instrument to expedite his fall. But two
+days left,--two days! In all my wealth of time I see but two days; all
+beyond,--darkness, solitude. I may save her yet. The tyrant shall fall
+the day before that which he has set apart for slaughter! For the first
+time I mix among the broils and stratagems of men, and my mind leaps up
+from my despair, armed and eager for the contest.”
+
+....
+
+A crowd had gathered round the Rue St. Honore; a young man was just
+arrested by the order of Robespierre. He was known to be in the service
+of Tallien, that hostile leader in the Convention, whom the tyrant had
+hitherto trembled to attack. This incident had therefore produced a
+greater excitement than a circumstance so customary as an arrest in the
+Reign of Terror might be supposed to create. Amongst the crowd were many
+friends of Tallien, many foes to the tyrant, many weary of beholding
+the tiger dragging victim after victim to its den. Hoarse, foreboding
+murmurs were heard; fierce eyes glared upon the officers as they seized
+their prisoner; and though they did not yet dare openly to resist, those
+in the rear pressed on those behind, and encumbered the path of the
+captive and his captors. The young man struggled hard for escape, and,
+by a violent effort, at last wrenched himself from the grasp. The
+crowd made way, and closed round to protect him, as he dived and darted
+through their ranks; but suddenly the trampling of horses was heard at
+hand,--the savage Henriot and his troop were bearing down upon the mob.
+The crowd gave way in alarm, and the prisoner was again seized by one
+of the partisans of the Dictator. At that moment a voice whispered the
+prisoner, “Thou hast a letter which, if found on thee, ruins thy last
+hope. Give it to me! I will bear it to Tallien.” The prisoner turned in
+amaze, read something that encouraged him in the eyes of the stranger
+who thus accosted him. The troop were now on the spot; the Jacobin who
+had seized the prisoner released hold of him for a moment to escape
+the hoofs of the horses: in that moment the opportunity was found,--the
+stranger had disappeared.
+
+....
+
+At the house of Tallien the principal foes of the tyrant were assembled.
+Common danger made common fellowship. All factions laid aside their
+feuds for the hour to unite against the formidable man who was marching
+over all factions to his gory throne. There was bold Lecointre, the
+declared enemy; there, creeping Barrere, who would reconcile all
+extremes, the hero of the cowards; Barras, calm and collected; Collet
+d’Herbois, breathing wrath and vengeance, and seeing not that the crimes
+of Robespierre alone sheltered his own.
+
+The council was agitated and irresolute. The awe which the uniform
+success and the prodigious energy of Robespierre excited still held the
+greater part under its control. Tallien, whom the tyrant most feared,
+and who alone could give head and substance and direction to so many
+contradictory passions, was too sullied by the memory of his own
+cruelties not to feel embarrassed by his position as the champion
+of mercy. “It is true,” he said, after an animating harangue from
+Lecointre, “that the Usurper menaces us all. But he is still so beloved
+by his mobs,--still so supported by his Jacobins: better delay open
+hostilities till the hour is more ripe. To attempt and not succeed is
+to give us, bound hand and foot, to the guillotine. Every day his power
+must decline. Procrastination is our best ally--” While yet speaking,
+and while yet producing the effect of water on the fire, it was
+announced that a stranger demanded to see him instantly on business that
+brooked no delay.
+
+“I am not at leisure,” said the orator, impatiently. The servant placed
+a note on the table. Tallien opened it, and found these words in pencil,
+“From the prison of Teresa de Fontenai.” He turned pale, started up,
+and hastened to the anteroom, where he beheld a face entirely strange to
+him.
+
+“Hope of France!” said the visitor to him, and the very sound of his
+voice went straight to the heart,--“your servant is arrested in the
+streets. I have saved your life, and that of your wife who will be. I
+bring to you this letter from Teresa de Fontenai.”
+
+Tallien, with a trembling hand, opened the letter, and read,--
+
+“Am I forever to implore you in vain? Again and again I say, ‘Lose not
+an hour if you value my life and your own.’ My trial and death are fixed
+the third day from this,--the 10th Thermidor. Strike while it is yet
+time,--strike the monster!--you have two days yet. If you fail,--if you
+procrastinate,--see me for the last time as I pass your windows to the
+guillotine!”
+
+“Her trial will give proof against you,” said the stranger. “Her death
+is the herald of your own. Fear not the populace,--the populace would
+have rescued your servant. Fear not Robespierre,--he gives himself to
+your hands. To-morrow he comes to the Convention,--to-morrow you must
+cast the last throw for his head or your own.”
+
+“To-morrow he comes to the Convention! And who are you that know so well
+what is concealed from me?”
+
+“A man like you, who would save the woman he loves.”
+
+Before Tallien could recover his surprise, the visitor was gone.
+
+Back went the Avenger to his conclave an altered man. “I have heard
+tidings,--no matter what,” he cried,--“that have changed my purpose.
+On the 10th we are destined to the guillotine. I revoke my counsel for
+delay. Robespierre comes to the Convention to-morrow; THERE we must
+confront and crush him. From the Mountain shall frown against him
+the grim shade of Danton,--from the Plain shall rise, in their bloody
+cerements, the spectres of Vergniaud and Condorcet. Frappons!”
+
+“Frappons!” cried even Barrere, startled into energy by the new daring
+of his colleague,--“frappons! il n’y a que les morts qui ne reviennent
+pas.”
+
+It was observable (and the fact may be found in one of the memoirs
+of the time) that, during that day and night (the 7th Thermidor), a
+stranger to all the previous events of that stormy time was seen in
+various parts of the city,--in the cafes, the clubs, the haunts of the
+various factions; that, to the astonishment and dismay of his hearers,
+he talked aloud of the crimes of Robespierre, and predicted his coming
+fall; and, as he spoke, he stirred up the hearts of men, he loosed the
+bonds of their fear,--he inflamed them with unwonted rage and daring.
+But what surprised them most was, that no voice replied, no hand was
+lifted against him, no minion, even of the tyrant, cried, “Arrest the
+traitor.” In that impunity men read, as in a book, that the populace had
+deserted the man of blood.
+
+Once only a fierce, brawny Jacobin sprang up from the table at which he
+sat, drinking deep, and, approaching the stranger, said, “I seize thee,
+in the name of the Republic.”
+
+“Citizen Aristides,” answered the stranger, in a whisper, “go to the
+lodgings of Robespierre,--he is from home; and in the left pocket of the
+vest which he cast off not an hour since thou wilt find a paper; when
+thou hast read that, return. I will await thee; and if thou wouldst then
+seize me, I will go without a struggle. Look round on those lowering
+brows; touch me NOW, and thou wilt be torn to pieces.”
+
+The Jacobin felt as if compelled to obey against his will. He went
+forth muttering; he returned,--the stranger was still there. “Mille
+tonnerres,” he said to him, “I thank thee; the poltroon had my name in
+his list for the guillotine.”
+
+With that the Jacobin Aristides sprang upon the table and shouted,
+“Death to the Tyrant!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XI.
+
+     Le lendemain, 8 Thermidor, Robespierre se decida a prononcer son
+     fameux discours.
+     --Thiers, “Hist. de la Revolution.”
+
+     (The next day, 8th Thermidor, Robespierre resolved to deliver his
+     celebrated discourse.)
+
+The morning rose,--the 8th of Thermidor (July 26). Robespierre has gone
+to the Convention. He has gone with his laboured speech; he has gone
+with his phrases of philanthropy and virtue; he has gone to single out
+his prey. All his agents are prepared for his reception; the fierce St.
+Just has arrived from the armies to second his courage and inflame his
+wrath. His ominous apparition prepares the audience for the crisis.
+“Citizens!” screeched the shrill voice of Robespierre “others have
+placed before you flattering pictures; I come to announce to you useful
+truths.
+
+....
+
+“And they attribute to me,--to me alone!--whatever of harsh or evil
+is committed: it is Robespierre who wishes it; it is Robespierre who
+ordains it. Is there a new tax?--it is Robespierre who ruins you. They
+call me tyrant!--and why? Because I have acquired some influence; but
+how?--in speaking truth; and who pretends that truth is to be without
+force in the mouths of the Representatives of the French people?
+Doubtless, truth has its power, its rage, its despotism, its accents,
+touching, terrible, which resound in the pure heart as in the guilty
+conscience; and which Falsehood can no more imitate than Salmoneus could
+forge the thunderbolts of Heaven. What am I whom they accuse? A slave
+of liberty,--a living martyr of the Republic; the victim as the enemy of
+crime! All ruffianism affronts me, and actions legitimate in others are
+crimes in me. It is enough to know me to be calumniated. It is in my
+very zeal that they discover my guilt. Take from me my conscience, and I
+should be the most miserable of men!”
+
+He paused; and Couthon wiped his eyes, and St. Just murmured applause
+as with stern looks he gazed on the rebellious Mountain; and there was a
+dead, mournful, and chilling silence through the audience. The touching
+sentiment woke no echo.
+
+The orator cast his eyes around. Ho! he will soon arouse that apathy.
+He proceeds, he praises, he pities himself no more. He denounces,--he
+accuses. Overflooded with his venom, he vomits it forth on all. At home,
+abroad, finances, war,--on all! Shriller and sharper rose his voice,--
+
+“A conspiracy exists against the public liberty. It owes its strength
+to a criminal coalition in the very bosom of the Convention; it has
+accomplices in the bosom of the Committee of Public Safety...What is the
+remedy to this evil? To punish the traitors; to purify this committee;
+to crush all factions by the weight of the National Authority; to
+raise upon their ruins the power of Liberty and Justice. Such are the
+principles of that Reform. Must I be ambitious to profess them?--then
+the principles are proscribed, and Tyranny reigns amongst us! For what
+can you object to a man who is in the right, and has at least this
+knowledge,--he knows how to die for his native land! I am made to combat
+crime, and not to govern it. The time, alas! is not yet arrived when men
+of worth can serve with impunity their country. So long as the knaves
+rule, the defenders of liberty will be only the proscribed.”
+
+For two hours, through that cold and gloomy audience, shrilled the
+Death-speech. In silence it began, in silence closed. The enemies of the
+orator were afraid to express resentment; they knew not yet the exact
+balance of power. His partisans were afraid to approve; they knew not
+whom of their own friends and relations the accusations were designed to
+single forth. “Take care!” whispered each to each; “it is thou whom
+he threatens.” But silent though the audience, it was, at the first,
+wellnigh subdued. There was still about this terrible man the spell
+of an overmastering will. Always--though not what is called a great
+orator--resolute, and sovereign in the use of words; words seemed as
+things when uttered by one who with a nod moved the troops of Henriot,
+and influenced the judgment of Rene Dumas, grim President of the
+Tribunal. Lecointre of Versailles rose, and there was an anxious
+movement of attention; for Lecointre was one of the fiercest foes of the
+tyrant. What was the dismay of the Tallien faction; what the complacent
+smile of Couthon,--when Lecointre demanded only that the oration should
+be printed! All seemed paralyzed. At length Bourdon de l’Oise, whose
+name was doubly marked in the black list of the Dictator, stalked to the
+tribune, and moved the bold counter-resolution, that the speech should
+be referred to the two committees whom that very speech accused. Still
+no applause from the conspirators; they sat torpid as frozen men. The
+shrinking Barrere, ever on the prudent side, looked round before he
+rose. He rises, and sides with Lecointre! Then Couthon seized the
+occasion, and from his seat (a privilege permitted only to the paralytic
+philanthropist) (M. Thiers in his History, volume iv. page 79, makes
+a curious blunder: he says, “Couthon s’elance a la tribune.” (Couthon
+darted towards the tribune.) Poor Couthon! whose half body was dead,
+and who was always wheeled in his chair into the Convention, and spoke
+sitting.), and with his melodious voice sought to convert the crisis
+into a triumph.
+
+He demanded, not only that the harangue should be printed, but sent
+to all the communes and all the armies. It was necessary to soothe
+a wronged and ulcerated heart. Deputies, the most faithful, had been
+accused of shedding blood. “Ah! if HE had contributed to the death of
+one innocent man, he should immolate himself with grief.” Beautiful
+tenderness!--and while he spoke, he fondled the spaniel in his bosom.
+Bravo, Couthon! Robespierre triumphs! The reign of Terror shall endure!
+The old submission settles dovelike back in the assembly! They vote
+the printing of the Death-speech, and its transmission to all the
+municipalities. From the benches of the Mountain, Tallien, alarmed,
+dismayed, impatient, and indignant, cast his gaze where sat the
+strangers admitted to hear the debates; and suddenly he met the eyes of
+the Unknown who had brought to him the letter from Teresa de Fontenai
+the preceding day. The eyes fascinated him as he gazed. In aftertimes he
+often said that their regard, fixed, earnest, half-reproachful, and
+yet cheering and triumphant, filled him with new life and courage. They
+spoke to his heart as the trumpet speaks to the war-horse. He moved from
+his seat; he whispered with his allies: the spirit he had drawn in was
+contagious; the men whom Robespierre especially had denounced, and who
+saw the sword over their heads, woke from their torpid trance. Vadier,
+Cambon, Billaud-Varennes, Panis, Amar, rose at once,--all at once
+demanded speech. Vadier is first heard, the rest succeed. It burst
+forth, the Mountain, with its fires and consuming lava; flood upon flood
+they rush, a legion of Ciceros upon the startled Catiline! Robespierre
+falters, hesitates,--would qualify, retract. They gather new courage
+from his new fears; they interrupt him; they drown his voice; they
+demand the reversal of the motion. Amar moves again that the speech
+be referred to the Committees, to the Committees,--to his enemies!
+Confusion and noise and clamour! Robespierre wraps himself in silent
+and superb disdain. Pale, defeated, but not yet destroyed, he
+stands,--a storm in the midst of storm!
+
+The motion is carried. All men foresee in that defeat the Dictator’s
+downfall. A solitary cry rose from the galleries; it was caught up;
+it circled through the hall, the audience: “A bas le tyrant! Vive la
+republique!” (Down with the tyrant! Hurrah for the republic!)
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XII.
+
+     Aupres d’un corps aussi avili que la Convention, il restait des
+     chances pour que Robespierre sortit vainqueur de cette lutte.
+     Lacretelle, volume xii.
+
+     (Amongst a body so debased as the Convention, there still
+     remained some chances that Robespierre would come off victor in
+     the struggle.)
+
+As Robespierre left the hall, there was a dead and ominous silence in
+the crowd without. The herd, in every country, side with success;
+and the rats run from the falling tower. But Robespierre, who wanted
+courage, never wanted pride, and the last often supplied the place
+of the first; thoughtfully, and with an impenetrable brow, he passed
+through the throng, leaning on St. Just, Payan and his brother following
+him.
+
+As they got into the open space, Robespierre abruptly broke the silence.
+
+“How many heads were to fall upon the tenth?”
+
+“Eighty,” replied Payan.
+
+“Ah, we must not tarry so long; a day may lose an empire: terrorism must
+serve us yet!”
+
+He was silent a few moments, and his eyes roved suspiciously through the
+street.
+
+“St. Just,” he said abruptly, “they have not found this Englishman
+whose revelations, or whose trial, would have crushed the Amars and the
+Talliens. No, no! my Jacobins themselves are growing dull and blind. But
+they have seized a woman,--only a woman!”
+
+“A woman’s hand stabbed Marat,” said St. Just. Robespierre stopped
+short, and breathed hard.
+
+“St. Just,” said he, “when this peril is past, we will found the Reign
+of Peace. There shall be homes and gardens set apart for the old. David
+is already designing the porticos. Virtuous men shall be appointed to
+instruct the young. All vice and disorder shall be NOT exterminated--no,
+no! only banished! We must not die yet. Posterity cannot judge us till
+our work is done. We have recalled L’Etre Supreme; we must now remodel
+this corrupted world. All shall be love and brotherhood; and--ho! Simon!
+Simon!--hold! Your pencil, St. Just!” And Robespierre wrote hastily.
+“This to Citizen President Dumas. Go with it quick, Simon. These eighty
+heads must fall TO-MORROW,--TO-MORROW, Simon. Dumas will advance their
+trial a day. I will write to Fouquier-Tinville, the public accuser.
+We meet at the Jacobins to-night, Simon; there we will denounce the
+Convention itself; there we will rally round us the last friends of
+liberty and France.”
+
+A shout was heard in the distance behind, “Vive la republique!”
+
+The tyrant’s eye shot a vindictive gleam. “The republic!--faugh! We did
+not destroy the throne of a thousand years for that canaille!”
+
+THE TRIAL, THE EXECUTION, OF THE VICTIMS IS ADVANCED A DAY! By the
+aid of the mysterious intelligence that had guided and animated him
+hitherto, Zanoni learned that his arts had been in vain. He knew that
+Viola was safe, if she could but survive an hour the life of the
+tyrant. He knew that Robespierre’s hours were numbered; that the 10th of
+Thermidor, on which he had originally designed the execution of his
+last victims, would see himself at the scaffold. Zanoni had toiled, had
+schemed for the fall of the Butcher and his reign. To what end? A single
+word from the tyrant had baffled the result of all. The execution
+of Viola is advanced a day. Vain seer, who wouldst make thyself the
+instrument of the Eternal, the very dangers that now beset the tyrant
+but expedite the doom of his victims! To-morrow, eighty heads, and
+hers whose pillow has been thy heart! To-morrow! and Maximilien is safe
+to-night!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XIII.
+
+     Erde mag zuruck in Erde stauben;
+     Fliegt der Geist doch aus dem morschen Haus.
+     Seine Asche mag der Sturmwind treiben,
+     Sein Leben dauert ewig aus!
+     Elegie.
+
+     (Earth may crumble back into earth; the Spirit will still escape
+     from its frail tenement.  The wind of the storm may scatter his
+     ashes; his being endures forever.)
+
+To-morrow!--and it is already twilight. One after one, the gentle stars
+come smiling through the heaven. The Seine, in its slow waters, yet
+trembles with the last kiss of the rosy day; and still in the blue sky
+gleams the spire of Notre Dame; and still in the blue sky looms the
+guillotine by the Barriere du Trone. Turn to that time-worn building,
+once the church and the convent of the Freres-Precheurs, known by the
+then holy name of Jacobins; there the new Jacobins hold their club.
+There, in that oblong hall, once the library of the peaceful monks,
+assemble the idolaters of St. Robespierre. Two immense tribunes,
+raised at either end, contain the lees and dregs of the atrocious
+populace,--the majority of that audience consisting of the furies of
+the guillotine (furies de guillotine). In the midst of the hall are
+the bureau and chair of the president,--the chair long preserved by the
+piety of the monks as the relic of St. Thomas Aquinas! Above this seat
+scowls the harsh bust of Brutus. An iron lamp and two branches scatter
+over the vast room a murky, fuliginous ray, beneath the light of which
+the fierce faces of that Pandemonium seem more grim and haggard. There,
+from the orator’s tribune, shrieks the shrill wrath of Robespierre!
+
+Meanwhile all is chaos, disorder, half daring and half cowardice, in the
+Committee of his foes. Rumours fly from street to street, from haunt to
+haunt, from house to house. The swallows flit low, and the cattle group
+together before the storm. And above this roar of the lives and things
+of the little hour, alone in his chamber stood he on whose starry
+youth--symbol of the imperishable bloom of the calm Ideal amidst the
+mouldering Actual--the clouds of ages had rolled in vain.
+
+All those exertions which ordinary wit and courage could suggest had
+been tried in vain. All such exertions WERE in vain, where, in that
+Saturnalia of death, a life was the object. Nothing but the fall of
+Robespierre could have saved his victims; now, too late, that fall would
+only serve to avenge.
+
+Once more, in that last agony of excitement and despair, the seer had
+plunged into solitude, to invoke again the aid or counsel of those
+mysterious intermediates between earth and heaven who had renounced the
+intercourse of the spirit when subjected to the common bondage of the
+mortal. In the intense desire and anguish of his heart, perhaps, lay a
+power not yet called forth; for who has not felt that the sharpness
+of extreme grief cuts and grinds away many of those strongest bonds
+of infirmity and doubt which bind down the souls of men to the cabined
+darkness of the hour; and that from the cloud and thunderstorm often
+swoops the Olympian eagle that can ravish us aloft!
+
+And the invocation was heard,--the bondage of sense was rent away from
+the visual mind. He looked, and saw,--no, not the being he had called,
+with its limbs of light and unutterably tranquil smile--not his
+familiar, Adon-Ai, the Son of Glory and the Star, but the Evil Omen, the
+dark Chimera, the implacable Foe, with exultation and malice burning in
+its hell-lit eyes. The Spectre, no longer cowering and retreating into
+shadow, rose before him, gigantic and erect; the face, whose veil no
+mortal hand had ever raised, was still concealed, but the form was more
+distinct, corporeal, and cast from it, as an atmosphere, horror and rage
+and awe. As an iceberg, the breath of that presence froze the air; as a
+cloud, it filled the chamber and blackened the stars from heaven.
+
+“Lo!” said its voice, “I am here once more. Thou hast robbed me of a
+meaner prey. Now exorcise THYSELF from my power! Thy life has left thee,
+to live in the heart of a daughter of the charnel and the worm. In that
+life I come to thee with my inexorable tread. Thou art returned to the
+Threshold,--thou, whose steps have trodden the verges of the Infinite!
+And as the goblin of its fantasy seizes on a child in the dark,--mighty
+one, who wouldst conquer Death,--I seize on thee!”
+
+“Back to thy thraldom, slave! If thou art come to the voice that called
+thee not, it is again not to command, but to obey! Thou, from whose
+whisper I gained the boons of the lives lovelier and dearer than my own;
+thou--I command thee, not by spell and charm, but by the force of a soul
+mightier than the malice of thy being,--thou serve me yet, and speak
+again the secret that can rescue the lives thou hast, by permission of
+the Universal Master, permitted me to retain awhile in the temple of the
+clay!”
+
+Brighter and more devouringly burned the glare from those lurid eyes;
+more visible and colossal yet rose the dilating shape; a yet fiercer and
+more disdainful hate spoke in the voice that answered, “Didst thou think
+that my boon would be other than thy curse? Happy for thee hadst thou
+mourned over the deaths which come by the gentle hand of Nature,--hadst
+thou never known how the name of mother consecrates the face of Beauty,
+and never, bending over thy first-born, felt the imperishable sweetness
+of a father’s love! They are saved, for what?--the mother, for the death
+of violence and shame and blood, for the doomsman’s hand to put aside
+that shining hair which has entangled thy bridegroom kisses; the child,
+first and last of thine offspring, in whom thou didst hope to found a
+race that should hear with thee the music of celestial harps, and
+float, by the side of thy familiar, Adon-Ai, through the azure rivers of
+joy,--the child, to live on a few days as a fungus in a burial-vault, a
+thing of the loathsome dungeon, dying of cruelty and neglect and famine.
+Ha! ha! thou who wouldst baffle Death, learn how the deathless die if
+they dare to love the mortal. Now, Chaldean, behold my boons! Now I
+seize and wrap thee with the pestilence of my presence; now, evermore,
+till thy long race is run, mine eyes shall glow into thy brain, and mine
+arms shall clasp thee, when thou wouldst take the wings of the Morning
+and flee from the embrace of Night!”
+
+“I tell thee, no! And again I compel thee, speak and answer to the lord
+who can command his slave. I know, though my lore fails me, and the
+reeds on which I leaned pierce my side,--I know yet that it is written
+that the life of which I question can be saved from the headsman. Thou
+wrappest her future in the darkness of thy shadow, but thou canst not
+shape it. Thou mayest foreshow the antidote; thou canst not effect the
+bane. From thee I wring the secret, though it torture thee to name it.
+I approach thee,--I look dauntless into thine eyes. The soul that loves
+can dare all things. Shadow, I defy thee, and compel!”
+
+The spectre waned and recoiled. Like a vapour that lessens as the sun
+pierces and pervades it, the form shrank cowering and dwarfed in the
+dimmer distance, and through the casement again rushed the stars.
+
+“Yes,” said the Voice, with a faint and hollow accent, “thou CANST save
+her from the headsman; for it is written, that sacrifice can save. Ha!
+ha!” And the shape again suddenly dilated into the gloom of its giant
+stature, and its ghastly laugh exulted, as if the Foe, a moment baffled,
+had regained its might. “Ha! ha!--thou canst save her life, if thou wilt
+sacrifice thine own! Is it for this thou hast lived on through crumbling
+empires and countless generations of thy race? At last shall Death
+reclaim thee? Wouldst thou save her?--DIE FOR HER! Fall, O stately
+column, over which stars yet unformed may gleam,--fall, that the herb at
+thy base may drink a few hours longer the sunlight and the dews! Silent!
+Art thou ready for the sacrifice? See, the moon moves up through
+heaven. Beautiful and wise one, wilt thou bid her smile to-morrow on thy
+headless clay?”
+
+“Back! for my soul, in answering thee from depths where thou canst not
+hear it, has regained its glory; and I hear the wings of Adon-Ai gliding
+musical through the air.”
+
+He spoke; and, with a low shriek of baffled rage and hate, the Thing was
+gone, and through the room rushed, luminous and sudden, the Presence of
+silvery light.
+
+As the heavenly visitor stood in the atmosphere of his own lustre,
+and looked upon the face of the Theurgist with an aspect of ineffable
+tenderness and love, all space seemed lighted from his smile. Along the
+blue air without, from that chamber in which his wings had halted, to
+the farthest star in the azure distance, it seemed as if the track of
+his flight were visible, by a lengthened splendour in the air, like the
+column of moonlight on the sea. Like the flower that diffuses perfume as
+the very breath of its life, so the emanation of that presence was joy.
+Over the world, as a million times swifter than light, than electricity,
+the Son of Glory had sped his way to the side of love, his wings had
+scattered delight as the morning scatters dew. For that brief moment,
+Poverty had ceased to mourn, Disease fled from its prey, and Hope
+breathed a dream of Heaven into the darkness of Despair.
+
+“Thou art right,” said the melodious Voice. “Thy courage has restored
+thy power. Once more, in the haunts of earth, thy soul charms me to thy
+side. Wiser now, in the moment when thou comprehendest Death, than when
+thy unfettered spirit learned the solemn mystery of Life; the human
+affections that thralled and humbled thee awhile bring to thee, in these
+last hours of thy mortality, the sublimest heritage of thy race,--the
+eternity that commences from the grave.”
+
+“O Adon-Ai,” said the Chaldean, as, circumfused in the splendour of the
+visitant, a glory more radiant than human beauty settled round his form,
+and seemed already to belong to the eternity of which the Bright One
+spoke, “as men, before they die, see and comprehend the enigmas hidden
+from them before (The greatest poet, and one of the noblest thinkers, of
+the last age, said, on his deathbed, “Many things obscure to me before,
+now clear up, and become visible.”--See the ‘Life of Schiller.’), “so in
+this hour, when the sacrifice of self to another brings the course of
+ages to its goal, I see the littleness of Life, compared to the majesty
+of Death; but oh, Divine Consoler, even here, even in thy presence,
+the affections that inspire me, sadden. To leave behind me in this
+bad world, unaided, unprotected, those for whom I die! the wife! the
+child!--oh, speak comfort to me in this!”
+
+“And what,” said the visitor, with a slight accent of reproof in the
+tone of celestial pity,--“what, with all thy wisdom and thy starry
+secrets, with all thy empire of the past, and thy visions of the future;
+what art thou to the All-Directing and Omniscient? Canst thou yet
+imagine that thy presence on earth can give to the hearts thou lovest
+the shelter which the humblest take from the wings of the Presence that
+lives in heaven? Fear not thou for their future. Whether thou live or
+die, their future is the care of the Most High! In the dungeon and on
+the scaffold looks everlasting the Eye of HIM, tenderer than thou to
+love, wiser than thou to guide, mightier than thou to save!”
+
+Zanoni bowed his head; and when he looked up again, the last shadow had
+left his brow. The visitor was gone; but still the glory of his presence
+seemed to shine upon the spot, still the solitary air seemed to murmur
+with tremulous delight. And thus ever shall it be with those who have
+once, detaching themselves utterly from life, received the visit of the
+Angel FAITH. Solitude and space retain the splendour, and it settles
+like a halo round their graves.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XIV.
+
+     Dann zur Blumenflor der Sterne
+     Aufgeschauet liebewarm,
+     Fass’ ihn freundlich Arm in Arm
+     Trag’ ihn in die blaue Ferne.
+     --Uhland, “An den Tod.”
+
+     Then towards the Garden of the Star
+     Lift up thine aspect warm with love,
+     And, friendlike link’d through space afar,
+     Mount with him, arm in arm, above.
+     --Uhland, “Poem to Death.”
+
+He stood upon the lofty balcony that overlooked the quiet city. Though
+afar, the fiercest passions of men were at work on the web of strife and
+doom, all that gave itself to his view was calm and still in the rays
+of the summer moon, for his soul was wrapped from man and man’s narrow
+sphere, and only the serener glories of creation were present to the
+vision of the seer. There he stood, alone and thoughtful, to take the
+last farewell of the wondrous life that he had known.
+
+Coursing through the fields of space, he beheld the gossamer shapes,
+whose choral joys his spirit had so often shared. There, group upon
+group, they circled in the starry silence multiform in the unimaginable
+beauty of a being fed by ambrosial dews and serenest light. In his
+trance, all the universe stretched visible beyond; in the green valleys
+afar, he saw the dances of the fairies; in the bowels of the mountains,
+he beheld the race that breathe the lurid air of the volcanoes, and hide
+from the light of heaven; on every leaf in the numberless forests, in
+every drop of the unmeasured seas, he surveyed its separate and swarming
+world; far up, in the farthest blue, he saw orb upon orb ripening into
+shape, and planets starting from the central fire, to run their day
+of ten thousand years. For everywhere in creation is the breath of the
+Creator, and in every spot where the breath breathes is life! And alone,
+in the distance, the lonely man beheld his Magian brother. There,
+at work with his numbers and his Cabala, amidst the wrecks of Rome,
+passionless and calm, sat in his cell the mystic Mejnour,--living on,
+living ever while the world lasts, indifferent whether his knowledge
+produces weal or woe; a mechanical agent of a more tender and a wiser
+will, that guides every spring to its inscrutable designs. Living
+on,--living ever,--as science that cares alone for knowledge, and halts
+not to consider how knowledge advances happiness; how Human Improvement,
+rushing through civilisation, crushes in its march all who cannot
+grapple to its wheels (“You colonise the lands of the savage with the
+Anglo-Saxon,--you civilise that portion of THE EARTH; but is the SAVAGE
+civilised? He is exterminated! You accumulate machinery,--you increase
+the total of wealth; but what becomes of the labour you displace? One
+generation is sacrificed to the next. You diffuse knowledge,--and
+the world seems to grow brighter; but Discontent at Poverty replaces
+Ignorance, happy with its crust. Every improvement, every advancement in
+civilisation, injures some, to benefit others, and either cherishes
+the want of to-day, or prepares the revolution of to-morrow.”--Stephen
+Montague.); ever, with its Cabala and its number, lives on to change, in
+its bloodless movements, the face of the habitable world!
+
+And, “Oh, farewell to life!” murmured the glorious dreamer. “Sweet, O
+life! hast thou been to me. How fathomless thy joys,--how rapturously
+has my soul bounded forth upon the upward paths! To him who forever
+renews his youth in the clear fount of Nature, how exquisite is the mere
+happiness TO BE! Farewell, ye lamps of heaven, and ye million tribes,
+the Populace of Air. Not a mote in the beam, not an herb on the
+mountain, not a pebble on the shore, not a seed far-blown into the
+wilderness, but contributed to the lore that sought in all the true
+principle of life, the Beautiful, the Joyous, the Immortal. To others,
+a land, a city, a hearth, has been a home; MY home has been wherever the
+intellect could pierce, or the spirit could breathe the air.”
+
+He paused, and through the immeasurable space his eyes and his
+heart, penetrating the dismal dungeon, rested on his child. He saw it
+slumbering in the arms of the pale mother, and HIS soul spoke to the
+sleeping soul. “Forgive me, if my desire was sin; I dreamed to have
+reared and nurtured thee to the divinest destinies my visions could
+foresee. Betimes, as the mortal part was strengthened against disease,
+to have purified the spiritual from every sin; to have led thee, heaven
+upon heaven, through the holy ecstasies which make up the existence
+of the orders that dwell on high; to have formed, from thy sublime
+affections, the pure and ever-living communication between thy mother
+and myself. The dream was but a dream--it is no more! In sight myself of
+the grave, I feel, at last, that through the portals of the grave lies
+the true initiation into the holy and the wise. Beyond those portals I
+await ye both, beloved pilgrims!”
+
+From his numbers and his Cabala, in his cell, amidst the wrecks of Rome,
+Mejnour, startled, looked up, and through the spirit, felt that the
+spirit of his distant friend addressed him.
+
+“Fare thee well forever upon this earth! Thy last companion forsakes thy
+side. Thine age survives the youth of all; and the Final Day shall find
+thee still the contemplator of our tombs. I go with my free will into
+the land of darkness; but new suns and systems blaze around us from the
+grave. I go where the souls of those for whom I resign the clay shall be
+my co-mates through eternal youth. At last I recognise the true ordeal
+and the real victory. Mejnour, cast down thy elixir; lay by thy load
+of years! Wherever the soul can wander, the Eternal Soul of all things
+protects it still!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XV.
+
+     Il ne veulent plus perdre un moment d’une nuit si precieuse.
+     Lacretelle, tom. xii.
+
+     (They would not lose another moment of so precious a night.)
+
+It was late that night, and Rene-Francois Dumas, President of the
+Revolutionary Tribunal, had re-entered his cabinet, on his return from
+the Jacobin Club. With him were two men who might be said to represent,
+the one the moral, the other the physical force of the Reign of Terror:
+Fouquier-Tinville, the Public Accuser, and Francois Henriot, the
+General of the Parisian National Guard. This formidable triumvirate were
+assembled to debate on the proceedings of the next day; and the three
+sister-witches over their hellish caldron were scarcely animated by a
+more fiend-like spirit, or engaged in more execrable designs, than these
+three heroes of the Revolution in their premeditated massacre of the
+morrow.
+
+Dumas was but little altered in appearance since, in the earlier part of
+this narrative, he was presented to the reader, except that his manner
+was somewhat more short and severe, and his eye yet more restless. But
+he seemed almost a superior being by the side of his associates. Rene
+Dumas, born of respectable parents, and well educated, despite his
+ferocity, was not without a certain refinement, which perhaps rendered
+him the more acceptable to the precise and formal Robespierre. (Dumas
+was a beau in his way. His gala-dress was a BLOOD-RED COAT, with the
+finest ruffles.) But Henriot had been a lackey, a thief, a spy of the
+police; he had drunk the blood of Madame de Lamballe, and had risen
+to his present rank for no quality but his ruffianism; and
+Fouquier-Tinville, the son of a provincial agriculturist, and afterwards
+a clerk at the Bureau of the Police, was little less base in his
+manners, and yet more, from a certain loathsome buffoonery, revolting
+in his speech,--bull-headed, with black, sleek hair, with a narrow and
+livid forehead, with small eyes, that twinkled with a sinister malice;
+strongly and coarsely built, he looked what he was, the audacious bully
+of a lawless and relentless Bar.
+
+Dumas trimmed the candles, and bent over the list of the victims for the
+morrow.
+
+“It is a long catalogue,” said the president; “eighty trials for
+one day! And Robespierre’s orders to despatch the whole fournee are
+unequivocal.”
+
+“Pooh!” said Fouquier, with a coarse, loud laugh; “we must try them en
+masse. I know how to deal with our jury. ‘Je pense, citoyens, que vous
+etes convaincus du crime des accuses?’ (I think, citizens, that you are
+convinced of the crime of the accused.) Ha! ha!--the longer the list,
+the shorter the work.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” growled out Henriot, with an oath,--as usual, half-drunk,
+and lolling on his chair, with his spurred heels on the table,--“little
+Tinville is the man for despatch.”
+
+“Citizen Henriot,” said Dumas, gravely, “permit me to request thee
+to select another footstool; and for the rest, let me warn thee that
+to-morrow is a critical and important day; one that will decide the fate
+of France.”
+
+“A fig for little France! Vive le Vertueux Robespierre, la Colonne de
+la Republique! (Long life to the virtuous Robespierre, the pillar of the
+Republic!) Plague on this talking; it is dry work. Hast thou no eau de
+vie in that little cupboard?”
+
+Dumas and Fouquier exchanged looks of disgust. Dumas shrugged his
+shoulders, and replied,--
+
+“It is to guard thee against eau de vie, Citizen General Henriot, that I
+have requested thee to meet me here. Listen if thou canst!”
+
+“Oh, talk away! thy metier is to talk, mine to fight and to drink.”
+
+“To-morrow, I tell thee then, the populace will be abroad; all factions
+will be astir. It is probable enough that they will even seek to arrest
+our tumbrils on their way to the guillotine. Have thy men armed and
+ready; keep the streets clear; cut down without mercy whomsoever may
+obstruct the ways.”
+
+“I understand,” said Henriot, striking his sword so loudly that Dumas
+half-started at the clank,--“Black Henriot is no ‘Indulgent.’”
+
+“Look to it, then, citizen,--look to it! And hark thee,” he added, with
+a grave and sombre brow, “if thou wouldst keep thine own head on thy
+shoulders, beware of the eau de vie.”
+
+“My own head!--sacre mille tonnerres! Dost thou threaten the general of
+the Parisian army?”
+
+Dumas, like Robespierre, a precise atrabilious, and arrogant man, was
+about to retort, when the craftier Tinville laid his hand on his arm,
+and, turning to the general, said, “My dear Henriot, thy dauntless
+republicanism, which is too ready to give offence, must learn to take
+a reprimand from the representative of Republican Law. Seriously, mon
+cher, thou must be sober for the next three or four days; after the
+crisis is over, thou and I will drink a bottle together. Come, Dumas
+relax thine austerity, and shake hands with our friend. No quarrels
+amongst ourselves!”
+
+Dumas hesitated, and extended his hand, which the ruffian clasped; and,
+maudlin tears succeeding his ferocity, he half-sobbed, half-hiccoughed
+forth his protestations of civism and his promises of sobriety.
+
+“Well, we depend on thee, mon general,” said Dumas; “and now, since we
+shall all have need of vigour for to-morrow, go home and sleep soundly.”
+
+“Yes, I forgive thee, Dumas,--I forgive thee. I am not vindictive,--I!
+but still, if a man threatens me; if a man insults me--” and, with the
+quick changes of intoxication, again his eyes gleamed fire through their
+foul tears. With some difficulty Fouquier succeeded at last in soothing
+the brute, and leading him from the chamber. But still, as some wild
+beast disappointed of a prey, he growled and snarled as his heavy tread
+descended the stairs. A tall trooper, mounted, was leading Henriot’s
+horse to and fro the streets; and as the general waited at the porch
+till his attendant turned, a stranger stationed by the wall accosted
+him:
+
+“General Henriot, I have desired to speak with thee. Next to
+Robespierre, thou art, or shouldst be, the most powerful man in France.”
+
+“Hem!--yes, I ought to be. What then?--every man has not his deserts!”
+
+“Hist!” said the stranger; “thy pay is scarcely suitable to thy rank and
+thy wants.”
+
+“That is true.”
+
+“Even in a revolution, a man takes care of his fortunes!”
+
+“Diable! speak out, citizen.”
+
+“I have a thousand pieces of gold with me,--they are thine, if thou wilt
+grant me one small favour.”
+
+“Citizen, I grant it!” said Henriot, waving his hand majestically. “Is
+it to denounce some rascal who has offended thee?”
+
+“No; it is simply this: write these words to President Dumas, ‘Admit
+the bearer to thy presence; and, if thou canst, grant him the request
+he will make to thee, it will be an inestimable obligation to Francois
+Henriot.’” The stranger, as he spoke, placed pencil and tablets in the
+shaking hands of the soldier.
+
+“And where is the gold?”
+
+“Here.”
+
+With some difficulty, Henriot scrawled the words dictated to him,
+clutched the gold, mounted his horse, and was gone.
+
+Meanwhile Fouquier, when he had closed the door upon Henriot, said
+sharply, “How canst thou be so mad as to incense that brigand? Knowest
+thou not that our laws are nothing without the physical force of the
+National Guard, and that he is their leader?”
+
+“I know this, that Robespierre must have been mad to place that drunkard
+at their head; and mark my words, Fouquier, if the struggle come, it
+is that man’s incapacity and cowardice that will destroy us. Yes, thou
+mayst live thyself to accuse thy beloved Robespierre, and to perish in
+his fall.”
+
+“For all that, we must keep well with Henriot till we can find the
+occasion to seize and behead him. To be safe, we must fawn on those who
+are still in power; and fawn the more, the more we would depose them.
+Do not think this Henriot, when he wakes to-morrow, will forget thy
+threats. He is the most revengeful of human beings. Thou must send and
+soothe him in the morning!”
+
+“Right,” said Dumas, convinced. “I was too hasty; and now I think we
+have nothing further to do, since we have arranged to make short work
+with our fournee of to-morrow. I see in the list a knave I have long
+marked out, though his crime once procured me a legacy,--Nicot, the
+Hebertist.”
+
+“And young Andre Chenier, the poet? Ah, I forgot; we be headed HIM
+to-day! Revolutionary virtue is at its acme. His own brother abandoned
+him.” (His brother is said, indeed, to have contributed to the
+condemnation of this virtuous and illustrious person. He was heard to
+cry aloud, “Si mon frere est coupable, qu’il perisse” (If my brother be
+culpable, let him die). This brother, Marie-Joseph, also a poet, and
+the author of “Charles IX.,” so celebrated in the earlier days of the
+Revolution, enjoyed, of course, according to the wonted justice of the
+world, a triumphant career, and was proclaimed in the Champ de Mars “le
+premier de poetes Francais,” a title due to his murdered brother.)
+
+“There is a foreigner,--an Italian woman in the list; but I can find no
+charge made out against her.”
+
+“All the same we must execute her for the sake of the round number;
+eighty sounds better than seventy-nine!”
+
+Here a huissier brought a paper on which was written the request of
+Henriot.
+
+“Ah! this is fortunate,” said Tinville, to whom Dumas chucked the
+scroll,--“grant the prayer by all means; so at least that it does not
+lessen our bead-roll. But I will do Henriot the justice to say that
+he never asks to let off, but to put on. Good-night! I am worn out--my
+escort waits below. Only on such an occasion would I venture forth in
+the streets at night.” (During the latter part of the Reign of Terror,
+Fouquier rarely stirred out at night, and never without an escort. In
+the Reign of Terror those most terrified were its kings.) And Fouquier,
+with a long yawn, quitted the room.
+
+“Admit the bearer!” said Dumas, who, withered and dried, as lawyers
+in practice mostly are, seemed to require as little sleep as his
+parchments.
+
+The stranger entered.
+
+“Rene-Francois Dumas,” said he, seating himself opposite to the
+president, and markedly adopting the plural, as if in contempt of the
+revolutionary jargon, “amidst the excitement and occupations of your
+later life, I know not if you can remember that we have met before?”
+
+The judge scanned the features of his visitor, and a pale blush settled
+on his sallow cheeks, “Yes, citizen, I remember!”
+
+“And you recall the words I then uttered! You spoke tenderly and
+philanthropically of your horror of capital executions; you exulted
+in the approaching Revolution as the termination of all sanguinary
+punishments; you quoted reverently the saying of Maximilien Robespierre,
+the rising statesman, ‘The executioner is the invention of the tyrant:’
+and I replied, that while you spoke, a foreboding seized me that
+we should meet again when your ideas of death and the philosophy of
+revolutions might be changed! Was I right, Citizen Rene-Francois Dumas,
+President of the Revolutionary Tribunal?”
+
+“Pooh!” said Dumas, with some confusion on his brazen brow, “I spoke
+then as men speak who have not acted. Revolutions are not made with
+rose-water! But truce to the gossip of the long-ago. I remember, also,
+that thou didst then save the life of my relation, and it will please
+thee to learn that his intended murderer will be guillotined to-morrow.”
+
+“That concerns yourself,--your justice or your revenge. Permit me the
+egotism to remind you that you then promised that if ever a day should
+come when you could serve me, your life--yes, the phrase was, ‘your
+heart’s blood’--was at my bidding. Think not, austere judge, that I
+come to ask a boon that can affect yourself,--I come but to ask a day’s
+respite for another!”
+
+“Citizen, it is impossible! I have the order of Robespierre that not one
+less than the total on my list must undergo their trial for to-morrow.
+As for the verdict, that rests with the jury!”
+
+“I do not ask you to diminish the catalogue. Listen still! In your
+death-roll there is the name of an Italian woman whose youth, whose
+beauty, and whose freedom not only from every crime, but every tangible
+charge, will excite only compassion, and not terror. Even YOU would
+tremble to pronounce her sentence. It will be dangerous on a day when
+the populace will be excited, when your tumbrils may be arrested, to
+expose youth and innocence and beauty to the pity and courage of a
+revolted crowd.”
+
+Dumas looked up and shrunk from the eye of the stranger.
+
+“I do not deny, citizen, that there is reason in what thou urgest. But
+my orders are positive.”
+
+“Positive only as to the number of the victims. I offer you a substitute
+for this one. I offer you the head of a man who knows all of the very
+conspiracy which now threatens Robespierre and yourself, and compared
+with one clew to which, you would think even eighty ordinary lives a
+cheap purchase.”
+
+“That alters the case,” said Dumas, eagerly; “if thou canst do this, on
+my own responsibility I will postpone the trial of the Italian. Now name
+the proxy!”
+
+“You behold him!”
+
+“Thou!” exclaimed Dumas, while a fear he could not conceal betrayed
+itself through his surprise. “Thou!--and thou comest to me alone at
+night, to offer thyself to justice. Ha!--this is a snare. Tremble,
+fool!--thou art in my power, and I can have BOTH!”
+
+“You can,” said the stranger, with a calm smile of disdain; “but my life
+is valueless without my revelations. Sit still, I command you,--hear
+me!” and the light in those dauntless eyes spell-bound and awed the
+judge. “You will remove me to the Conciergerie,--you will fix my trial,
+under the name of Zanoni, amidst your fournee of to-morrow. If I do
+not satisfy you by my speech, you hold the woman I die to save as your
+hostage. It is but the reprieve for her of a single day that I demand.
+The day following the morrow I shall be dust, and you may wreak your
+vengeance on the life that remains. Tush! judge and condemner of
+thousands, do you hesitate,--do you imagine that the man who voluntarily
+offers himself to death will be daunted into uttering one syllable at
+your Bar against his will? Have you not had experience enough of the
+inflexibility of pride and courage? President, I place before you the
+ink and implements! Write to the jailer a reprieve of one day for the
+woman whose life can avail you nothing, and I will bear the order to my
+own prison: I, who can now tell this much as an earnest of what I can
+communicate,--while I speak, your own name, judge, is in a list of
+death. I can tell you by whose hand it is written down; I can tell you
+in what quarter to look for danger; I can tell you from what cloud, in
+this lurid atmosphere, hangs the storm that shall burst on Robespierre
+and his reign!”
+
+Dumas grew pale; and his eyes vainly sought to escape the magnetic gaze
+that overpowered and mastered him. Mechanically, and as if under an
+agency not his own, he wrote while the stranger dictated.
+
+“Well,” he said then, forcing a smile to his lips, “I promised I would
+serve you; see, I am faithful to my word. I suppose that you are one of
+those fools of feeling,--those professors of anti-revolutionary virtue,
+of whom I have seen not a few before my Bar. Faugh! it sickens me to see
+those who make a merit of incivism, and perish to save some bad patriot,
+because it is a son, or a father, or a wife, or a daughter, who is
+saved.”
+
+“I AM one of those fools of feeling,” said the stranger, rising. “You
+have divined aright.”
+
+“And wilt thou not, in return for my mercy, utter to-night the
+revelations thou wouldst proclaim to-morrow? Come; and perhaps thou
+too--nay, the woman also--may receive, not reprieve, but pardon.”
+
+“Before your tribunal, and there alone! Nor will I deceive you,
+president. My information may avail you not; and even while I show the
+cloud, the bolt may fall.”
+
+“Tush! prophet, look to thyself! Go, madman, go. I know too well the
+contumacious obstinacy of the class to which I suspect thou belongest,
+to waste further words. Diable! but ye grow so accustomed to look on
+death, that ye forget the respect ye owe to it. Since thou offerest
+me thy head, I accept it. To-morrow thou mayst repent; it will be too
+late.”
+
+“Ay, too late, president!” echoed the calm visitor.
+
+“But, remember, it is not pardon, it is but a day’s reprieve, I have
+promised to this woman. According as thou dost satisfy me to-morrow,
+she lives or dies. I am frank, citizen; thy ghost shall not haunt me for
+want of faith.”
+
+“It is but a day that I have asked; the rest I leave to justice and to
+Heaven. Your huissiers wait below.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XVI.
+
+     Und den Mordstahl seh’ ich blinken;
+     Und das Morderauge gluhn!
+     “Kassandra.”
+
+     (And I see the steel of Murder glitter,
+     And the eye of Murder glow.)
+
+Viola was in the prison that opened not but for those already condemned
+before adjudged. Since her exile from Zanoni, her very intellect had
+seemed paralysed. All that beautiful exuberance of fancy which, if not
+the fruit of genius, seemed its blossoms; all that gush of exquisite
+thought which Zanoni had justly told her flowed with mysteries and
+subtleties ever new to him, the wise one,--all were gone, annihilated;
+the blossom withered, the fount dried up. From something almost above
+womanhood, she seemed listlessly to sink into something below childhood.
+With the inspirer the inspirations had ceased; and, in deserting love,
+genius also was left behind.
+
+She scarcely comprehended why she had been thus torn from her home and
+the mechanism of her dull tasks. She scarcely knew what meant those
+kindly groups, that, struck with her exceeding loveliness, had gathered
+round her in the prison, with mournful looks, but with words of comfort.
+She, who had hitherto been taught to abhor those whom Law condemns for
+crime, was amazed to hear that beings thus compassionate and tender,
+with cloudless and lofty brows, with gallant and gentle mien, were
+criminals for whom Law had no punishment short of death. But they, the
+savages, gaunt and menacing, who had dragged her from her home, who
+had attempted to snatch from her the infant while she clasped it in her
+arms, and laughed fierce scorn at her mute, quivering lips,--THEY were
+the chosen citizens, the men of virtue, the favourites of Power, the
+ministers of Law! Such thy black caprices, O thou, the ever-shifting and
+calumnious,--Human Judgment!
+
+A squalid, and yet a gay world, did the prison-houses of that day
+present. There, as in the sepulchre to which they led, all ranks were
+cast with an even-handed scorn. And yet there, the reverence that comes
+from great emotions restored Nature’s first and imperishable, and most
+lovely, and most noble Law,--THE INEQUALITY BETWEEN MAN AND MAN! There,
+place was given by the prisoners, whether royalists or sans-culottes,
+to Age, to Learning, to Renown, to Beauty; and Strength, with its own
+inborn chivalry, raised into rank the helpless and the weak. The iron
+sinews and the Herculean shoulders made way for the woman and the child;
+and the graces of Humanity, lost elsewhere, sought their refuge in the
+abode of Terror.
+
+“And wherefore, my child, do they bring thee hither?” asked an old,
+grey-haired priest.
+
+“I cannot guess.”
+
+“Ah, if you know not your offence, fear the worst!”
+
+“And my child?”--for the infant was still suffered to rest upon her
+bosom.
+
+“Alas, young mother, they will suffer thy child to live.’
+
+“And for this,--an orphan in the dungeon!” murmured the accusing heart
+of Viola,--“have I reserved his offspring! Zanoni, even in thought, ask
+not--ask not what I have done with the child I bore thee!”
+
+Night came; the crowd rushed to the grate to hear the muster-roll.
+(Called, in the mocking jargon of the day, “The Evening Gazette.”) Her
+name was with the doomed. And the old priest, better prepared to die,
+but reserved from the death-list, laid his hands on her head, and
+blessed her while he wept. She heard, and wondered; but she did not
+weep. With downcast eyes, with arms folded on her bosom, she bent
+submissively to the call. But now another name was uttered; and a man,
+who had pushed rudely past her to gaze or to listen, shrieked out a
+howl of despair and rage. She turned, and their eyes met. Through
+the distance of time she recognised that hideous aspect. Nicot’s face
+settled back into its devilish sneer. “At least, gentle Neapolitan, the
+guillotine will unite us. Oh, we shall sleep well our wedding-night!”
+ And, with a laugh, he strode away through the crowd, and vanished into
+his lair.
+
+....
+
+She was placed in her gloomy cell, to await the morrow. But the child
+was still spared her; and she thought it seemed as if conscious of the
+awful present. In their way to the prison it had not moaned or wept. It
+had looked with its clear eyes, unshrinking, on the gleaming pikes and
+savage brows of the huissiers. And now, alone in the dungeon, it put its
+arms round her neck, and murmured its indistinct sounds, low and sweet
+as some unknown language of consolation and of heaven. And of heaven it
+was!--for, at the murmur, the terror melted from her soul; upward, from
+the dungeon and the death,--upward, where the happy cherubim chant the
+mercy of the All-loving, whispered that cherub’s voice. She fell upon
+her knees and prayed. The despoilers of all that beautifies and hallows
+life had desecrated the altar, and denied the God!--they had removed
+from the last hour of their victims the Priest, the Scripture, and the
+Cross! But Faith builds in the dungeon and the lazar-house its sublimest
+shrines; and up, through roofs of stone, that shut out the eye of
+Heaven, ascends the ladder where the angels glide to and fro,--PRAYER.
+
+And there, in the very cell beside her own, the atheist Nicot sits
+stolid amidst the darkness, and hugs the thought of Danton, that death
+is nothingness. (“Ma demeure sera bientot LE NEANT” (My abode will soon
+be nothingness), said Danton before his judges.)) His, no spectacle
+of an appalled and perturbed conscience! Remorse is the echo of a lost
+virtue, and virtue he never knew. Had he to live again, he would live
+the same. But more terrible than the death-bed of a believing and
+despairing sinner that blank gloom of apathy,--that contemplation of
+the worm and the rat of the charnel-house; that grim and loathsome
+NOTHINGNESS which, for his eye, falls like a pall over the universe of
+life. Still, staring into space, gnawing his livid lip, he looks upon
+the darkness, convinced that darkness is forever and forever!
+
+....
+
+Place, there! place! Room yet in your crowded cells. Another has come to
+the slaughter-house.
+
+As the jailer, lamp in hand, ushered in the stranger, the latter touched
+him and whispered. The stranger drew a jewel from his finger. Diantre,
+how the diamond flashed in the ray of the lamp! Value each head of your
+eighty at a thousand francs, and the jewel is more worth than all!
+The jailer paused, and the diamond laughed in his dazzled eyes. O thou
+Cerberus, thou hast mastered all else that seems human in that fell
+employ! Thou hast no pity, no love, and no remorse. But Avarice survives
+the rest, and the foul heart’s master-serpent swallows up the tribe.
+Ha! ha! crafty stranger, thou hast conquered! They tread the gloomy
+corridor; they arrive at the door where the jailer has placed the fatal
+mark, now to be erased, for the prisoner within is to be reprieved a
+day. The key grates in the lock; the door yawns,--the stranger takes the
+lamp and enters.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XVII. The Seventeenth and Last.
+
+     Cosi vince Goffredo!
+     “Ger. Lib.” cant. xx.-xliv.
+
+     (Thus conquered Godfrey.)
+
+And Viola was in prayer. She heard not the opening of the door; she saw
+not the dark shadow that fell along the floor. HIS power, HIS arts were
+gone; but the mystery and the spell known to HER simple heart did not
+desert her in the hours of trial and despair. When Science falls as a
+firework from the sky it would invade; when Genius withers as a flower
+in the breath of the icy charnel,--the hope of a child-like soul wraps
+the air in light, and the innocence of unquestioning Belief covers the
+grave with blossoms.
+
+In the farthest corner of the cell she knelt; and the infant, as if to
+imitate what it could not comprehend, bent its little limbs, and bowed
+its smiling face, and knelt with her also, by her side.
+
+He stood and gazed upon them as the light of the lamp fell calmly on
+their forms. It fell over those clouds of golden hair, dishevelled,
+parted, thrown back from the rapt, candid brow; the dark eyes raised
+on high, where, through the human tears, a light as from above was
+mirrored; the hands clasped, the lips apart, the form all animate and
+holy with the sad serenity of innocence and the touching humility of
+woman. And he heard her voice, though it scarcely left her lips: the low
+voice that the heart speaks,--loud enough for God to hear!
+
+“And if never more to see him, O Father! Canst Thou not make the love
+that will not die, minister, even beyond the grave, to his earthly fate?
+Canst Thou not yet permit it, as a living spirit, to hover over him,--a
+spirit fairer than all his science can conjure? Oh, whatever lot be
+ordained to either, grant--even though a thousand ages may roll between
+us--grant, when at last purified and regenerate, and fitted for the
+transport of such reunion--grant that we may meet once more! And for his
+child,--it kneels to Thee from the dungeon floor! To-morrow, and whose
+breast shall cradle it; whose hand shall feed; whose lips shall pray for
+its weal below and its soul hereafter!” She paused,--her voice choked
+with sobs.
+
+“Thou Viola!--thou, thyself. He whom thou hast deserted is here to
+preserve the mother to the child!”
+
+She started!--those accents, tremulous as her own! She started to
+her feet!--he was there,--in all the pride of his unwaning youth and
+superhuman beauty; there, in the house of dread, and in the hour of
+travail; there, image and personation of the love that can pierce the
+Valley of the Shadow, and can glide, the unscathed wanderer from the
+heaven, through the roaring abyss of hell!
+
+With a cry never, perhaps, heard before in that gloomy vault,--a cry of
+delight and rapture, she sprang forward, and fell at his feet.
+
+He bent down to raise her; but she slid from his arms. He called her by
+the familiar epithets of the old endearment, and she only answered him
+by sobs. Wildly, passionately, she kissed his hands, the hem of his
+garment, but voice was gone.
+
+“Look up, look up!--I am here,--I am here to save thee! Wilt thou deny
+to me thy sweet face? Truant, wouldst thou fly me still?”
+
+“Fly thee!” she said, at last, and in a broken voice; “oh, if
+my thoughts wronged thee,--oh, if my dream, that awful dream,
+deceived,--kneel down with me, and pray for our child!” Then springing
+to her feet with a sudden impulse, she caught up the infant, and,
+placing it in his arms, sobbed forth, with deprecating and humble tones,
+“Not for my sake,--not for mine, did I abandon thee, but--”
+
+“Hush!” said Zanoni; “I know all the thoughts that thy confused and
+struggling senses can scarcely analyse themselves. And see how, with a
+look, thy child answers them!”
+
+And in truth the face of that strange infant seemed radiant with its
+silent and unfathomable joy. It seemed as if it recognised the father;
+it clung--it forced itself to his breast, and there, nestling, turned
+its bright, clear eyes upon Viola, and smiled.
+
+“Pray for my child!” said Zanoni, mournfully. “The thoughts of souls
+that would aspire as mine are All PRAYER!” And, seating himself by her
+side, he began to reveal to her some of the holier secrets of his lofty
+being. He spoke of the sublime and intense faith from which alone the
+diviner knowledge can arise,--the faith which, seeing the immortal
+everywhere, purifies and exalts the mortal that beholds, the glorious
+ambition that dwells not in the cabals and crimes of earth, but amidst
+those solemn wonders that speak not of men, but of God; of that power to
+abstract the soul from the clay which gives to the eye of the soul its
+subtle vision, and to the soul’s wing the unlimited realm; of that
+pure, severe, and daring initiation from which the mind emerges, as from
+death, into clear perceptions of its kindred with the Father-Principles
+of life and light, so that in its own sense of the Beautiful it finds
+its joy; in the serenity of its will, its power; in its sympathy with
+the youthfulness of the Infinite Creation, of which itself is an essence
+and a part, the secrets that embalm the very clay which they consecrate,
+and renew the strength of life with the ambrosia of mysterious and
+celestial sleep. And while he spoke, Viola listened, breathless. If she
+could not comprehend, she no longer dared to distrust. She felt that in
+that enthusiasm, self-deceiving or not, no fiend could lurk; and by an
+intuition, rather than an effort of the reason, she saw before her, like
+a starry ocean, the depth and mysterious beauty of the soul which
+her fears had wronged. Yet, when he said (concluding his strange
+confessions) that to this life WITHIN life and ABOVE life he had dreamed
+to raise her own, the fear of humanity crept over her, and he read in
+her silence how vain, with all his science, would the dream have been.
+
+But now, as he closed, and, leaning on his breast, she felt the clasp of
+his protecting arms,--when, in one holy kiss, the past was forgiven and
+the present lost,--then there returned to her the sweet and warm hopes
+of the natural life, of the loving woman. He was come to save her! She
+asked not how,--she believed it without a question. They should be at
+last again united. They would fly far from those scenes of violence and
+blood. Their happy Ionian isle, their fearless solitudes, would once
+more receive them. She laughed, with a child’s joy, as this picture rose
+up amidst the gloom of the dungeon. Her mind, faithful to its sweet,
+simple instincts, refused to receive the lofty images that flitted
+confusedly by it, and settled back to its human visions, yet more
+baseless, of the earthly happiness and the tranquil home.
+
+“Talk not now to me, beloved,--talk not more now to me of the past! Thou
+art here,--thou wilt save me; we shall live yet the common happy life,
+that life with thee is happiness and glory enough to me. Traverse, if
+thou wilt, in thy pride of soul, the universe; thy heart again is the
+universe to mine. I thought but now that I was prepared to die; I see
+thee, touch thee, and again I know how beautiful a thing is life! See
+through the grate the stars are fading from the sky; the morrow will
+soon be here,--The MORROW which will open the prison doors! Thou sayest
+thou canst save me,--I will not doubt it now. Oh, let us dwell no more
+in cities! I never doubted thee in our lovely isle; no dreams haunted
+me there, except dreams of joy and beauty; and thine eyes made yet more
+beautiful and joyous the world in waking. To-morrow!--why do you not
+smile? To-morrow, love! is not TO-MORROW a blessed word! Cruel! you
+would punish me still, that you will not share my joy. Aha! see our
+little one, how it laughs to my eyes! I will talk to THAT. Child, thy
+father is come back!”
+
+And taking the infant in her arms, and seating herself at a little
+distance, she rocked it to and fro on her bosom, and prattled to it, and
+kissed it between every word, and laughed and wept by fits, as ever and
+anon she cast over her shoulder her playful, mirthful glance upon the
+father to whom those fading stars smiled sadly their last farewell. How
+beautiful she seemed as she thus sat, unconscious of the future! Still
+half a child herself, her child laughing to her laughter,--two soft
+triflers on the brink of the grave! Over her throat, as she bent, fell,
+like a golden cloud, her redundant hair; it covered her treasure like
+a veil of light, and the child’s little hands put it aside from time to
+time, to smile through the parted tresses, and then to cover its face
+and peep and smile again. It were cruel to damp that joy, more cruel
+still to share it.
+
+“Viola,” said Zanoni, at last, “dost thou remember that, seated by the
+cave on the moonlit beach, in our bridal isle, thou once didst ask me
+for this amulet?--the charm of a superstition long vanished from the
+world, with the creed to which it belonged. It is the last relic of my
+native land, and my mother, on her deathbed, placed it round my neck.
+I told thee then I would give it thee on that day WHEN THE LAWS OF OUR
+BEING SHOULD BECOME THE SAME.”
+
+“I remember it well.”
+
+“To-morrow it shall be thine!”
+
+“Ah, that dear to-morrow!” And, gently laying down her child,--for it
+slept now,--she threw herself on his breast, and pointed to the dawn
+that began greyly to creep along the skies.
+
+There, in those horror-breathing walls, the day-star looked through the
+dismal bars upon those three beings, in whom were concentrated whatever
+is most tender in human ties; whatever is most mysterious in the
+combinations of the human mind; the sleeping Innocence; the trustful
+Affection, that, contented with a touch, a breath, can foresee no
+sorrow; the weary Science that, traversing all the secrets of creation,
+comes at last to Death for their solution, and still clings, as it
+nears the threshold, to the breast of Love. Thus, within, THE WITHIN,--a
+dungeon; without, the WITHOUT,--stately with marts and halls, with
+palaces and temples; Revenge and Terror, at their dark schemes and
+counter-schemes; to and fro, upon the tide of the shifting passions,
+reeled the destinies of men and nations; and hard at hand that day-star,
+waning into space, looked with impartial eye on the church tower and
+the guillotine. Up springs the blithesome morn. In yon gardens the
+birds renew their familiar song. The fishes are sporting through the
+freshening waters of the Seine. The gladness of divine nature, the
+roar and dissonance of mortal life, awake again: the trader unbars his
+windows; the flower-girls troop gayly to their haunts; busy feet are
+tramping to the daily drudgeries that revolutions which strike down
+kings and kaisars, leave the same Cain’s heritage to the boor; the
+wagons groan and reel to the mart; Tyranny, up betimes, holds its pallid
+levee; Conspiracy, that hath not slept, hears the clock, and whispers to
+its own heart, “The hour draws near.” A group gather, eager-eyed, round
+the purlieus of the Convention Hall; to-day decides the sovereignty of
+France,--about the courts of the Tribunal their customary hum and stir.
+No matter what the hazard of the die, or who the ruler, this day eighty
+heads shall fall!
+
+....
+
+And she slept so sweetly. Wearied out with joy, secure in the presence
+of the eyes regained, she had laughed and wept herself to sleep; and
+still in that slumber there seemed a happy consciousness that the loved
+was by,--the lost was found. For she smiled and murmured to herself, and
+breathed his name often, and stretched out her arms, and sighed if
+they touched him not. He gazed upon her as he stood apart,--with what
+emotions it were vain to say. She would wake no more to him; she could
+not know how dearly the safety of that sleep was purchased. That morrow
+she had so yearned for,--it had come at last. HOW WOULD SHE GREET
+THE EVE? Amidst all the exquisite hopes with which love and youth
+contemplate the future, her eyes had closed. Those hopes still lent
+their iris-colours to her dreams. She would wake to live! To-morrow, and
+the Reign of Terror was no more; the prison gates would be opened,--she
+would go forth, with their child, into that summer-world of light. And
+HE?--he turned, and his eye fell upon the child; it was broad awake, and
+that clear, serious, thoughtful look which it mostly wore, watched him
+with a solemn steadiness. He bent over and kissed its lips.
+
+“Never more,” he murmured, “O heritor of love and grief,--never more
+wilt thou see me in thy visions; never more will the light of those
+eyes be fed by celestial commune; never more can my soul guard from
+thy pillow the trouble and the disease. Not such as I would have vainly
+shaped it, must be thy lot. In common with thy race, it must be thine
+to suffer, to struggle, and to err. But mild be thy human trials, and
+strong be thy spirit to love and to believe! And thus, as I gaze upon
+thee,--thus may my nature breathe into thine its last and most intense
+desire; may my love for thy mother pass to thee, and in thy looks may
+she hear my spirit comfort and console her. Hark! they come! Yes! I
+await ye both beyond the grave!”
+
+The door slowly opened; the jailer appeared, and through the aperture
+rushed, at the same instant, a ray of sunlight: it streamed over the
+fair, hushed face of the happy sleeper,--it played like a smile upon
+the lips of the child that, still, mute, and steadfast, watched the
+movements of its father. At that moment Viola muttered in her sleep,
+“The day is come,--the gates are open! Give me thy hand; we will go
+forth! To sea, to sea! How the sunshine plays upon the waters!--to home,
+beloved one, to home again!”
+
+“Citizen, thine hour is come!”
+
+“Hist! she sleeps! A moment! There, it is done! thank Heaven!--and STILL
+she sleeps!” He would not kiss, lest he should awaken her, but gently
+placed round her neck the amulet that would speak to her, hereafter,
+the farewell,--and promise, in that farewell, reunion! He is at the
+threshold,--he turns again, and again. The door closes! He is gone
+forever!
+
+She woke at last,--she gazed round. “Zanoni, it is day!” No answer but
+the low wail of her child. Merciful Heaven! was it then all a dream?
+She tossed back the long tresses that must veil her sight; she felt
+the amulet on her bosom,--it was NO dream! “O God! and he is gone!” She
+sprang to the door,--she shrieked aloud. The jailer comes. “My husband,
+my child’s father?”
+
+“He is gone before thee, woman!”
+
+“Whither? Speak--speak!”
+
+“To the guillotine!”--and the black door closed again.
+
+It closed upon the senseless! As a lightning-flash, Zanoni’s words, his
+sadness, the true meaning of his mystic gift, the very sacrifice he
+made for her, all became distinct for a moment to her mind,--and then
+darkness swept on it like a storm, yet darkness which had its light. And
+while she sat there, mute, rigid, voiceless, as congealed to stone, A
+VISION, like a wind, glided over the deeps within,--the grim court, the
+judge, the jury, the accuser; and amidst the victims the one dauntless
+and radiant form.
+
+“Thou knowest the danger to the State,--confess!”
+
+“I know; and I keep my promise. Judge, I reveal thy doom! I know that
+the Anarchy thou callest a State expires with the setting of this sun.
+Hark, to the tramp without; hark to the roar of voices! Room there, ye
+dead!--room in hell for Robespierre and his crew!”
+
+They hurry into the court,--the hasty and pale messengers; there is
+confusion and fear and dismay! “Off with the conspirator, and to-morrow
+the woman thou wouldst have saved shall die!”
+
+“To-morrow, president, the steel falls on THEE!”
+
+On, through the crowded and roaring streets, on moves the Procession of
+Death. Ha, brave people! thou art aroused at last. They shall not die!
+Death is dethroned!--Robespierre has fallen!--they rush to the rescue!
+Hideous in the tumbril, by the side of Zanoni, raved and gesticulated
+that form which, in his prophetic dreams, he had seen his companion at
+the place of death. “Save us!--save us!” howled the atheist Nicot. “On,
+brave populace! we SHALL be saved!” And through the crowd, her dark
+hair streaming wild, her eyes flashing fire, pressed a female form, “My
+Clarence!” she shrieked, in the soft Southern language native to the
+ears of Viola; “butcher! what hast thou done with Clarence?” Her eyes
+roved over the eager faces of the prisoners; she saw not the one she
+sought. “Thank Heaven!--thank Heaven! I am not thy murderess!”
+
+Nearer and nearer press the populace,--another moment, and the deathsman
+is defrauded. O Zanoni! why still upon THY brow the resignation that
+speaks no hope? Tramp! tramp! through the streets dash the armed troop;
+faithful to his orders, Black Henriot leads them on. Tramp! tramp!
+over the craven and scattered crowd! Here, flying in disorder,--there,
+trampled in the mire, the shrieking rescuers! And amidst them, stricken
+by the sabres of the guard, her long hair blood-bedabbled, lies the
+Italian woman; and still upon her writhing lips sits joy, as they
+murmur, “Clarence! I have not destroyed thee!”
+
+On to the Barriere du Trone. It frowns dark in the air,--the giant
+instrument of murder! One after one to the glaive,--another and another
+and another! Mercy! O mercy! Is the bridge between the sun and the
+shades so brief,--brief as a sigh? There, there,--HIS turn has come.
+“Die not yet; leave me not behind; hear me--hear me!” shrieked the
+inspired sleeper. “What! and thou smilest still!” They smiled,--those
+pale lips,--and WITH the smile, the place of doom, the headsman, the
+horror vanished. With that smile, all space seemed suffused in eternal
+sunshine. Up from the earth he rose; he hovered over her,--a thing not
+of matter, an IDEA of joy and light! Behind, Heaven opened, deep after
+deep; and the Hosts of Beauty were seen, rank upon rank, afar; and
+“Welcome!” in a myriad melodies, broke from your choral multitude, ye
+People of the Skies,--“welcome! O purified by sacrifice, and immortal
+only through the grave,--this it is to die.” And radiant amidst the
+radiant, the IMAGE stretched forth its arms, and murmured to the
+sleeper: “Companion of Eternity!--THIS it is to die!”
+
+....
+
+“Ho! wherefore do they make us signs from the house-tops? Wherefore
+gather the crowds through the street? Why sounds the bell? Why shrieks
+the tocsin? Hark to the guns!--the armed clash! Fellow-captives, is
+there hope for us at last?”
+
+So gasp out the prisoners, each to each. Day wanes--evening closes;
+still they press their white faces to the bars, and still from window
+and from house-top they see the smiles of friends,--the waving signals!
+“Hurrah!” at last,--“Hurrah! Robespierre is fallen! The Reign of Terror
+is no more! God hath permitted us to live!”
+
+Yes; cast thine eyes into the hall where the tyrant and his conclave
+hearkened to the roar without! Fulfilling the prophecy of Dumas,
+Henriot, drunk with blood and alcohol, reels within, and chucks his gory
+sabre on the floor. “All is lost!”
+
+“Wretch! thy cowardice hath destroyed us!” yelled the fierce Coffinhal,
+as he hurled the coward from the window.
+
+Calm as despair stands the stern St. Just; the palsied Couthon crawls,
+grovelling, beneath table; a shot,--an explosion! Robespierre would
+destroy himself! The trembling hand has mangled, and failed to kill! The
+clock of the Hotel de Ville strikes the third hour. Through the battered
+door, along the gloomy passages, into the Death-hall, burst the crowd.
+Mangled, livid, blood-stained, speechless but not unconscious, sits
+haughty yet, in his seat erect, the Master-Murderer! Around him they
+throng; they hoot,--they execrate, their faces gleaming in the tossing
+torches! HE, and not the starry Magian, the REAL Sorcerer! And round HIS
+last hours gather the Fiends he raised!
+
+They drag him forth! Open thy gates, inexorable prison! The Conciergerie
+receives its prey! Never a word again on earth spoke Maximilien
+Robespierre! Pour forth thy thousands, and tens of thousands,
+emancipated Paris! To the Place de la Revolution rolls the tumbril of
+the King of Terror,--St. Just, Dumas, Couthon, his companions to the
+grave! A woman--a childless woman, with hoary hair--springs to his
+side, “Thy death makes me drunk with joy!” He opened his bloodshot
+eyes,--“Descend to hell with the curses of wives and mothers!”
+
+The headsmen wrench the rag from the shattered jaw; a shriek, and the
+crowd laugh, and the axe descends amidst the shout of the countless
+thousands, and blackness rushes on thy soul, Maximilien Robespierre! So
+ended the Reign of Terror.
+
+....
+
+Daylight in the prison. From cell to cell they hurry with the
+news,--crowd upon crowd; the joyous captives mingled with the very
+jailers, who, for fear, would fain seem joyous too; they stream through
+the dens and alleys of the grim house they will shortly leave. They
+burst into a cell, forgotten since the previous morning. They found
+there a young female, sitting upon her wretched bed; her arms crossed
+upon her bosom, her face raised upward; the eyes unclosed, and a smile
+of more than serenity--of bliss--upon her lips. Even in the riot of
+their joy, they drew back in astonishment and awe. Never had they seen
+life so beautiful; and as they crept nearer, and with noiseless feet,
+they saw that the lips breathed not, that the repose was of marble,
+that the beauty and the ecstasy were of death. They gathered round in
+silence; and lo! at her feet there was a young infant, who, wakened
+by their tread, looked at them steadfastly, and with its rosy fingers
+played with its dead mother’s robe. An orphan there in a dungeon vault!
+
+“Poor one!” said a female (herself a parent), “and they say the father
+fell yesterday; and now the mother! Alone in the world, what can be its
+fate?”
+
+The infant smiled fearlessly on the crowd, as the woman spoke thus. And
+the old priest, who stood amongst them, said gently, “Woman, see! the
+orphan smiles! THE FATHERLESS ARE THE CARE OF GOD!”
+
+
+*****
+
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+The curiosity which Zanoni has excited among those who think it worth
+while to dive into the subtler meanings they believe it intended to
+convey, may excuse me in adding a few words, not in explanation of its
+mysteries, but upon the principles which permit them. Zanoni is not, as
+some have supposed, an allegory; but beneath the narrative it relates,
+TYPICAL meanings are concealed. It is to be regarded in two characters,
+distinct yet harmonious,--1st, that of the simple and objective fiction,
+in which (once granting the license of the author to select a subject
+which is, or appears to be, preternatural) the reader judges the writer
+by the usual canons,--namely, by the consistency of his characters
+under such admitted circumstances, the interest of his story, and the
+coherence of his plot; of the work regarded in this view, it is not my
+intention to say anything, whether in exposition of the design, or in
+defence of the execution. No typical meanings (which, in plain terms are
+but moral suggestions, more or less numerous, more or less subtle) can
+afford just excuse to a writer of fiction, for the errors he should
+avoid in the most ordinary novel. We have no right to expect the most
+ingenious reader to search for the inner meaning, if the obvious course
+of the narrative be tedious and displeasing. It is, on the contrary,
+in proportion as we are satisfied with the objective sense of a work of
+imagination, that we are inclined to search into its depths for the more
+secret intentions of the author. Were we not so divinely charmed with
+“Faust,” and “Hamlet,” and “Prometheus,” so ardently carried on by
+the interest of the story told to the common understanding, we should
+trouble ourselves little with the types in each which all of us can
+detect,--none of us can elucidate; none elucidate, for the essence of
+type is mystery. We behold the figure, we cannot lift the veil. The
+author himself is not called upon to explain what he designed. An
+allegory is a personation of distinct and definite things,--virtues or
+qualities,--and the key can be given easily; but a writer who conveys
+typical meanings, may express them in myriads. He cannot disentangle all
+the hues which commingle into the light he seeks to cast upon truth;
+and therefore the great masters of this enchanted soil,--Fairyland of
+Fairyland, Poetry imbedded beneath Poetry,--wisely leave to each mind to
+guess at such truths as best please or instruct it. To have asked Goethe
+to explain the “Faust” would have entailed as complex and puzzling an
+answer as to have asked Mephistopheles to explain what is beneath the
+earth we tread on. The stores beneath may differ for every passenger;
+each step may require a new description; and what is treasure to the
+geologist may be rubbish to the miner. Six worlds may lie under a sod,
+but to the common eye they are but six layers of stone.
+
+Art in itself, if not necessarily typical, is essentially a suggester of
+something subtler than that which it embodies to the sense. What Pliny
+tells us of a great painter of old, is true of most great painters;
+“their works express something beyond the works,”--“more felt than
+understood.” This belongs to the concentration of intellect which high
+art demands, and which, of all the arts, sculpture best illustrates.
+Take Thorwaldsen’s Statue of Mercury,--it is but a single figure, yet
+it tells to those conversant with mythology a whole legend. The god has
+removed the pipe from his lips, because he has already lulled to sleep
+the Argus, whom you do not see. He is pressing his heel against his
+sword, because the moment is come when he may slay his victim. Apply the
+principle of this noble concentration of art to the moral writer: he,
+too, gives to your eye but a single figure; yet each attitude, each
+expression, may refer to events and truths you must have the learning to
+remember, the acuteness to penetrate, or the imagination to conjecture.
+But to a classical judge of sculpture, would not the exquisite pleasure
+of discovering the all not told in Thorwaldsen’s masterpiece be
+destroyed if the artist had engraved in detail his meaning at the base
+of the statue? Is it not the same with the typical sense which the
+artist in words conveys? The pleasure of divining art in each is the
+noble exercise of all by whom art is worthily regarded.
+
+We of the humbler race not unreasonably shelter ourselves under the
+authority of the masters, on whom the world’s judgment is pronounced;
+and great names are cited, not with the arrogance of equals, but with
+the humility of inferiors.
+
+The author of Zanoni gives, then, no key to mysteries, be they trivial
+or important, which may be found in the secret chambers by those who
+lift the tapestry from the wall; but out of the many solutions of the
+main enigma--if enigma, indeed, there be--which have been sent to him,
+he ventures to select the one which he subjoins, from the ingenuity and
+thought which it displays, and from respect for the distinguished writer
+(one of the most eminent our time has produced) who deemed him worthy
+of an honour he is proud to display. He leaves it to the reader to agree
+with, or dissent from the explanation. “A hundred men,” says the old
+Platonist, “may read the book by the help of the same lamp, yet all may
+differ on the text, for the lamp only lights the characters,--the mind
+must divine the meaning.” The object of a parable is not that of a
+problem; it does not seek to convince, but to suggest. It takes
+the thought below the surface of the understanding to the deeper
+intelligence which the world rarely tasks. It is not sunlight on the
+water; it is a hymn chanted to the nymph who hearkens and awakes below.
+
+....
+
+
+
+
+“ZANONI EXPLAINED.
+
+BY--.”
+
+MEJNOUR:--Contemplation of the Actual,--SCIENCE. Always old, and must
+last as long as the Actual. Less fallible than Idealism, but less
+practically potent, from its ignorance of the human heart.
+
+ZANONI:--Contemplation of the Ideal,--IDEALISM. Always necessarily
+sympathetic: lives by enjoyment; and is therefore typified by eternal
+youth. (“I do not understand the making Idealism less undying (on this
+scene of existence) than Science.”--Commentator. Because, granting
+the above premises, Idealism is more subjected than Science to the
+Affections, or to Instinct, because the Affections, sooner or later,
+force Idealism into the Actual, and in the Actual its immortality
+departs. The only absolutely Actual portion of the work is found in the
+concluding scenes that depict the Reign of Terror. The introduction of
+this part was objected to by some as out of keeping with the fanciful
+portions that preceded it. But if the writer of the solution has rightly
+shown or suggested the intention of the author, the most strongly
+and rudely actual scene of the age in which the story is cast was the
+necessary and harmonious completion of the whole. The excesses and
+crimes of Humanity are the grave of the Ideal.--Author.) Idealism is the
+potent Interpreter and Prophet of the Real; but its powers are impaired
+in proportion to their exposure to human passion.
+
+VIOLA:--Human INSTINCT. (Hardly worthy to be called LOVE, as Love would
+not forsake its object at the bidding of Superstition.) Resorts, first
+in its aspiration after the Ideal, to tinsel shows; then relinquishes
+these for a higher love; but is still, from the conditions of its
+nature, inadequate to this, and liable to suspicion and mistrust. Its
+greatest force (Maternal Instinct) has power to penetrate some secrets,
+to trace some movements of the Ideal, but, too feeble to command them,
+yields to Superstition, sees sin where there is none, while committing
+sin, under a false guidance; weakly seeking refuge amidst the very
+tumults of the warring passions of the Actual, while deserting the
+serene Ideal,--pining, nevertheless, in the absence of the Ideal, and
+expiring (not perishing, but becoming transmuted) in the aspiration
+after having the laws of the two natures reconciled.
+
+(It might best suit popular apprehension to call these three the
+Understanding, the Imagination, and the Heart.)
+
+CHILD:--NEW-BORN INSTINCT, while trained and informed by Idealism,
+promises a preter-human result by its early, incommunicable vigilance
+and intelligence, but is compelled, by inevitable orphanhood, and
+the one-half of the laws of its existence, to lapse into ordinary
+conditions.
+
+AIDON-AI:--FAITH, which manifests its splendour, and delivers its
+oracles, and imparts its marvels, only to the higher moods of the soul,
+and whose directed antagonism is with Fear; so that those who employ
+the resources of Fear must dispense with those of Faith. Yet aspiration
+holds open a way of restoration, and may summon Faith, even when the cry
+issues from beneath the yoke of fear.
+
+DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD:--FEAR (or HORROR), from whose ghastliness men
+are protected by the opacity of the region of Prescription and Custom.
+The moment this protection is relinquished, and the human spirit pierces
+the cloud, and enters alone on the unexplored regions of Nature, this
+Natural Horror haunts it, and is to be successfully encountered only
+by defiance,--by aspiration towards, and reliance on, the Former and
+Director of Nature, whose Messenger and Instrument of reassurance is
+Faith.
+
+MERVALE:--CONVENTIONALISM.
+
+NICOT:--Base, grovelling, malignant PASSION.
+
+GLYNDON:--UNSUSTAINED ASPIRATION: Would follow Instinct, but is
+deterred by Conventionalism, is overawed by Idealism, yet attracted,
+and transiently inspired, but has not steadiness for the initiatory
+contemplation of the Actual. He conjoins its snatched privileges with a
+besetting sensualism, and suffers at once from the horror of the one and
+the disgust of the other, involving the innocent in the fatal conflict
+of his spirit. When on the point of perishing, he is rescued by
+Idealism, and, unable to rise to that species of existence, is grateful
+to be replunged into the region of the Familiar, and takes up his rest
+henceforth in Custom. (Mirror of Young Manhood.)
+
+....
+
+ARGUMENT.
+
+Human Existence subject to, and exempt from, ordinary conditions
+(Sickness, Poverty, Ignorance, Death).
+
+SCIENCE is ever striving to carry the most gifted beyond ordinary
+conditions,--the result being as many victims as efforts, and the
+striver being finally left a solitary,--for his object is unsuitable to
+the natures he has to deal with.
+
+The pursuit of the Ideal involves so much emotion as to render the
+Idealist vulnerable by human passion, however long and well guarded,
+still vulnerable,--liable, at last, to a union with Instinct. Passion
+obscures both Insight and Forecast. All effort to elevate Instinct to
+Idealism is abortive, the laws of their being not coinciding (in the
+early stage of the existence of the one). Instinct is either alarmed,
+and takes refuge in Superstition or Custom, or is left helpless to human
+charity, or given over to providential care.
+
+Idealism, stripped of in sight and forecast, loses its serenity, becomes
+subject once more to the horror from which it had escaped, and by
+accepting its aids, forfeits the higher help of Faith; aspiration,
+however, remaining still possible, and, thereby, slow restoration; and
+also, SOMETHING BETTER.
+
+Summoned by aspiration, Faith extorts from Fear itself the saving truth
+to which Science continues blind, and which Idealism itself hails as its
+crowning acquisition,--the inestimable PROOF wrought out by all labours
+and all conflicts.
+
+Pending the elaboration of this proof,
+
+CONVENTIONALISM plods on, safe and complacent;
+
+SELFISH PASSION perishes, grovelling and hopeless;
+
+INSTINCT sleeps, in order to a loftier waking; and
+
+IDEALISM learns, as its ultimate lesson, that self-sacrifice is true
+redemption; that the region beyond the grave is the fitting one for
+exemption from mortal conditions; and that Death is the everlasting
+portal, indicated by the finger of God,--the broad avenue through
+which man does not issue solitary and stealthy into the region of Free
+Existence, but enters triumphant, hailed by a hierarchy of immortal
+natures.
+
+The result is (in other words), THAT THE UNIVERSAL HUMAN LOT IS, AFTER
+ALL, THAT OF THE HIGHEST PRIVILEGE.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Zanoni, by Edward Bulwer Lytton
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Zanoni, by Edward Bulwer Lytton
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd7; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    pre     { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Zanoni, by Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Zanoni
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+Release Date: February 18, 2006 [EBook #2664]
+Last Updated: August 29, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZANONI ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dave Ceponis, Sue Asscher and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      ZANONI
+    </h1>
+    <h3>
+      BY
+    </h3>
+    <h2>
+      EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> (PLATE: &ldquo;Thou art good and fair,&rdquo; said Viola. Drawn by P.
+      Kauffmann, etched by Deblois.) <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      DEDICATORY EPISTLE First prefixed to the Edition of 1845
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      TO JOHN GIBSON, R.A., SCULPTOR.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In looking round the wide and luminous circle of our great living
+      Englishmen, to select one to whom I might fitly dedicate this work,&mdash;one
+      who, in his life as in his genius, might illustrate the principle I have
+      sought to convey; elevated by the ideal which he exalts, and serenely
+      dwelling in a glorious existence with the images born of his imagination,&mdash;in
+      looking round for some such man, my thoughts rested upon you. Afar from
+      our turbulent cabals; from the ignoble jealousy and the sordid strife
+      which degrade and acerbate the ambition of Genius,&mdash;in your Roman
+      Home, you have lived amidst all that is loveliest and least perishable in
+      the past, and contributed with the noblest aims, and in the purest spirit,
+      to the mighty heirlooms of the future. Your youth has been devoted to
+      toil, that your manhood may be consecrated to fame: a fame unsullied by
+      one desire of gold. You have escaped the two worst perils that beset the
+      artist in our time and land,&mdash;the debasing tendencies of commerce,
+      and the angry rivalries of competition. You have not wrought your marble
+      for the market,&mdash;you have not been tempted, by the praises which our
+      vicious criticism has showered upon exaggeration and distortion, to lower
+      your taste to the level of the hour; you have lived, and you have
+      laboured, as if you had no rivals but in the dead,&mdash;no purchasers,
+      save in judges of what is best. In the divine priesthood of the beautiful,
+      you have sought only to increase her worshippers and enrich her temples.
+      The pupil of Canova, you have inherited his excellences, while you have
+      shunned his errors,&mdash;yours his delicacy, not his affectation. Your
+      heart resembles him even more than your genius: you have the same noble
+      enthusiasm for your sublime profession; the same lofty freedom from envy,
+      and the spirit that depreciates; the same generous desire not to war with
+      but to serve artists in your art; aiding, strengthening, advising,
+      elevating the timidity of inexperience, and the vague aspirations of
+      youth. By the intuition of a kindred mind, you have equalled the learning
+      of Winckelman, and the plastic poetry of Goethe, in the intimate
+      comprehension of the antique. Each work of yours, rightly studied, is in
+      itself a CRITICISM, illustrating the sublime secrets of the Grecian Art,
+      which, without the servility of plagiarism, you have contributed to revive
+      amongst us; in you we behold its three great and long-undetected
+      principles,&mdash;simplicity, calm, and concentration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But your admiration of the Greeks has not led you to the bigotry of the
+      mere antiquarian, nor made you less sensible of the unappreciated
+      excellence of the mighty modern, worthy to be your countryman,&mdash;though
+      till his statue is in the streets of our capital, we show ourselves not
+      worthy of the glory he has shed upon our land. You have not suffered even
+      your gratitude to Canova to blind you to the superiority of Flaxman. When
+      we become sensible of our title-deeds to renown in that single name, we
+      may look for an English public capable of real patronage to English Art,&mdash;and
+      not till then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I, artist in words, dedicate, then, to you, artist whose ideas speak in
+      marble, this well-loved work of my matured manhood. I love it not the less
+      because it has been little understood and superficially judged by the
+      common herd: it was not meant for them. I love it not the more because it
+      has found enthusiastic favorers amongst the Few. My affection for my work
+      is rooted in the solemn and pure delight which it gave me to conceive and
+      to perform. If I had graven it on the rocks of a desert, this apparition
+      of my own innermost mind, in its least-clouded moments, would have been to
+      me as dear; and this ought, I believe, to be the sentiment with which he
+      whose Art is born of faith in the truth and beauty of the principles he
+      seeks to illustrate, should regard his work. Your serener existence,
+      uniform and holy, my lot denies,&mdash;if my heart covets. But our true
+      nature is in our thoughts, not our deeds: and therefore, in books&mdash;which
+      ARE his thoughts&mdash;the author&rsquo;s character lies bare to the discerning
+      eye. It is not in the life of cities,&mdash;in the turmoil and the crowd;
+      it is in the still, the lonely, and more sacred life, which for some
+      hours, under every sun, the student lives (his stolen retreat from the
+      Agora to the Cave), that I feel there is between us the bond of that
+      secret sympathy, that magnetic chain, which unites the everlasting
+      brotherhood of whose being Zanoni is the type.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      E.B.L. London, May, 1845.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_INTR1"> INTRODUCTION I. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1853. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_INTR2"> INTRODUCTION II. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> <big><b>ZANONI.</b></big> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> <b>BOOK I. &mdash; THE MUSICIAN.</b> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER 1.I. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER 1.II. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER 1.III. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER 1.IV. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER 1.V. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER 1.VI. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER 1.VII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER 1.VIII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER 1.IX. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER 1.X. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> <b>BOOK II. &mdash; ART, LOVE, AND WONDER.</b>
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER 2.I. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER 2.II. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER 2.III. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER 2.IV. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER 2.V. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER 2.VI. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER 2.VII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER 2.VIII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER 2.IX. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER 2.X. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> <b>BOOK III. &mdash; THEURGIA.</b> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER 3.I. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER 3.II. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER 3.III. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER 3.IV. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER 3.V. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER 3.VI. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER 3.VII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER 3.VIII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER 3.IX. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER 3.X. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER 3.XI. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER 3.XII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0033"> CHAPTER 3.XIII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0034"> CHAPTER 3.XIV. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0035"> CHAPTER 3.XV. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0036"> CHAPTER 3.XVI. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0037"> CHAPTER 3.XVII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0038"> CHAPTER 3.XVIII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0046"> <b>BOOK IV. &mdash; THE DWELLER OF THE
+        THRESHOLD.</b> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0039"> CHAPTER 4.I. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0040"> CHAPTER 4.II. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0041"> CHAPTER 4.III. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0042"> CHAPTER 4.IV. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0043"> CHAPTER 4.V. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0044"> CHAPTER 4.VI. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0045"> CHAPTER 4.VII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0046"> CHAPTER 4.VIII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0047"> CHAPTER 4.IX. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0048"> CHAPTER 4.X. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0049"> CHAPTER 4.XI. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0058"> <b>BOOK V. &mdash; THE EFFECTS OF THE ELIXIR.</b>
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0050"> CHAPTER 5.I. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0051"> CHAPTER 5.II. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0052"> CHAPTER 5.III. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0053"> CHAPTER 5.IV. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0054"> CHAPTER 5.V. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0055"> CHAPTER 5.VI. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0065"> <b>BOOK VI. &mdash; SUPERSTITION DESERTING
+        FAITH.</b> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0056"> CHAPTER 6.I. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0057"> CHAPTER 6.II. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0058"> CHAPTER 6.III. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0059"> CHAPTER 6.IV. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0060"> CHAPTER 6.V. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0061"> CHAPTER 6.VI. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0062"> CHAPTER 6.VII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0063"> CHAPTER 6.VIII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0064"> CHAPTER 6.IX. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0075"> <b>BOOK VII. &mdash; THE REIGN OF TERROR.</b>
+        </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0065"> CHAPTER 7.I. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0066"> CHAPTER 7.II. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0067"> CHAPTER 7.III. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0068"> CHAPTER 7.IV. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0069"> CHAPTER 7.V. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0070"> CHAPTER 7.VI. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0071"> CHAPTER 7.VII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0072"> CHAPTER 7.VIII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0073"> CHAPTER 7.IX. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0074"> CHAPTER 7.X. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0075"> CHAPTER 7.XI. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0076"> CHAPTER 7.XII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0077"> CHAPTER 7.XIII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0078"> CHAPTER 7.XIV. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0079"> CHAPTER 7.XV. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0080"> CHAPTER 7.XVI. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2HCH0081"> CHAPTER 7.XVII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0093"> NOTE. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0094"> &ldquo;ZANONI EXPLAINED. </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_INTR1" id="link2H_INTR1"> <br /> <br /> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      INTRODUCTION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One of the peculiarities of Bulwer was his passion for occult studies.
+      They had a charm for him early in life, and he pursued them with the
+      earnestness which characterised his pursuit of other studies. He became
+      absorbed in wizard lore; he equipped himself with magical implements,&mdash;with
+      rods for transmitting influence, and crystal balls in which to discern
+      coming scenes and persons; and communed with spiritualists and mediums.
+      The fruit of these mystic studies is seen in &ldquo;Zanoni&rdquo; and &ldquo;A strange
+      Story,&rdquo; romances which were a labour of love to the author, and into which
+      he threw all the power he possessed,&mdash;power re-enforced by
+      multifarious reading and an instinctive appreciation of Oriental thought.
+      These weird stories, in which the author has formulated his theory of
+      magic, are of a wholly different type from his previous fictions, and, in
+      place of the heroes and villains of every day life, we have beings that
+      belong in part to another sphere, and that deal with mysterious and occult
+      agencies. Once more the old forgotten lore of the Cabala is unfolded; the
+      furnace of the alchemist, whose fires have been extinct for centuries, is
+      lighted anew, and the lamp of the Rosicrucian re-illumined. No other works
+      of the author, contradictory as have been the opinions of them, have
+      provoked such a diversity of criticism as these. To some persons they
+      represent a temporary aberration of genius rather than any serious thought
+      or definite purpose; while others regard them as surpassing in bold and
+      original speculation, profound analysis of character, and thrilling
+      interest, all of the author&rsquo;s other works. The truth, we believe, lies
+      midway between these extremes. It is questionable whether the introduction
+      into a novel of such subjects as are discussed in these romances be not an
+      offence against good sense and good taste; but it is as unreasonable to
+      deny the vigour and originality of their author&rsquo;s conceptions, as to deny
+      that the execution is imperfect, and, at times, bungling and absurd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It has been justly said that the present half century has witnessed the
+      rise and triumphs of science, the extent and marvels of which even Bacon&rsquo;s
+      fancy never conceived, simultaneously with superstitions grosser than any
+      which Bacon&rsquo;s age believed. &ldquo;The one is, in fact, the natural reaction
+      from the other. The more science seeks to exclude the miraculous, and
+      reduce all nature, animate and inanimate, to an invariable law of
+      sequences, the more does the natural instinct of man rebel, and seek an
+      outlet for those obstinate questionings, those &lsquo;blank misgivings of a
+      creature moving about in worlds not realised,&rsquo; taking refuge in delusions
+      as degrading as any of the so-called Dark Ages.&rdquo; It was the revolt from
+      the chilling materialism of the age which inspired the mystic creations of
+      &ldquo;Zanoni&rdquo; and &ldquo;A Strange Story.&rdquo; Of these works, which support and
+      supplement each other, one is the contemplation of our actual life through
+      a spiritual medium, the other is designed to show that, without some
+      gleams of the supernatural, man is not man, nor nature nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In &ldquo;Zanoni&rdquo; the author introduces us to two human beings who have achieved
+      immortality: one, Mejnour, void of all passion or feeling, calm,
+      benignant, bloodless, an intellect rather than a man; the other, Zanoni,
+      the pupil of Mejnour, the representative of an ideal life in its utmost
+      perfection, possessing eternal youth, absolute power, and absolute
+      knowledge, and withal the fullest capacity to enjoy and to love, and, as a
+      necessity of that love, to sorrow and despair. By his love for Viola
+      Zanoni is compelled to descend from his exalted state, to lose his eternal
+      calm, and to share in the cares and anxieties of humanity; and this
+      degradation is completed by the birth of a child. Finally, he gives up the
+      life which hangs on that of another, in order to save that other, the
+      loving and beloved wife, who has delivered him from his solitude and
+      isolation. Wife and child are mortal, and to outlive them and his love for
+      them is impossible. But Mejnour, who is the impersonation of thought,&mdash;pure
+      intellect without affection,&mdash;lives on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bulwer has himself justly characterised this work, in the Introduction, as
+      a romance and not a romance, as a truth for those who can comprehend it,
+      and an extravagance for those who cannot. The most careless or
+      matter-of-fact reader must see that the work, like the enigmatical
+      &ldquo;Faust,&rdquo; deals in types and symbols; that the writer intends to suggest to
+      the mind something more subtle and impalpable than that which is embodied
+      to the senses. What that something is, hardly two persons will agree. The
+      most obvious interpretation of the types is, that in Zanoni the author
+      depicts to us humanity, perfected, sublimed, which lives not for self, but
+      for others; in Mejnour, as we have before said, cold, passionless,
+      self-sufficing intellect; in Glyndon, the young Englishman, the mingled
+      strength and weakness of human nature; in the heartless, selfish artist,
+      Nicot, icy, soulless atheism, believing nothing, hoping nothing, trusting
+      and loving nothing; and in the beautiful, artless Viola, an exquisite
+      creation, pure womanhood, loving, trusting and truthful. As a work of art
+      the romance is one of great power. It is original in its conception, and
+      pervaded by one central idea; but it would have been improved, we think,
+      by a more sparing use of the supernatural. The inevitable effect of so
+      much hackneyed diablerie&mdash;of such an accumulation of wonder upon
+      wonder&mdash;is to deaden the impression they would naturally make upon
+      us. In Hawthorne&rsquo;s tales we see with what ease a great imaginative artist
+      can produce a deeper thrill by a far slighter use of the weird and the
+      mysterious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chief interest of the story for the ordinary reader centres, not in
+      its ghostly characters and improbable machinery, the scenes in Mejnour&rsquo;s
+      chamber in the ruined castle among the Apennines, the colossal and
+      appalling apparitions on Vesuvius, the hideous phantom with its burning
+      eye that haunted Glyndon, but in the loves of Viola and the mysterious
+      Zanoni, the blissful and the fearful scenes through which they pass, and
+      their final destiny, when the hero of the story sacrifices his own
+      &ldquo;charmed life&rdquo; to save hers, and the Immortal finds the only true
+      immortality in death. Among the striking passages in the work are the
+      pathetic sketch of the old violinist and composer, Pisani, with his
+      sympathetic &ldquo;barbiton&rdquo; which moaned, groaned, growled, and laughed
+      responsive to the feelings of its master; the description of Viola&rsquo;s and
+      her father&rsquo;s triumph, when &ldquo;The Siren,&rdquo; his masterpiece, is performed at
+      the San Carlo in Naples; Glyndon&rsquo;s adventure at the Carnival in Naples;
+      the death of his sister; the vivid pictures of the Reign of Terror in
+      Paris, closing with the downfall of Robespierre and his satellites; and
+      perhaps, above all, the thrilling scene where Zanoni leaves Viola asleep
+      in prison when his guards call him to execution, and she, unconscious of
+      the terrible sacrifice, but awaking and missing him, has a vision of the
+      procession to the guillotine, with Zanoni there, radiant in youth and
+      beauty, followed by the sudden vanishing of the headsman,&mdash;the
+      horror,&mdash;and the &ldquo;Welcome&rdquo; of her loved one to Heaven in a myriad of
+      melodies from the choral hosts above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Zanoni&rdquo; was originally published by Saunders and Otley, London, in three
+      volumes 12mo., in 1842. A translation into French, made by M. Sheldon
+      under the direction of P. Lorain, was published in Paris in the
+      &ldquo;Bibliotheque des Meilleurs Romans Etrangers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      W.M. <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1853.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As a work of imagination, &ldquo;Zanoni&rdquo; ranks, perhaps, amongst the highest of
+      my prose fictions. In the Poem of &ldquo;King Arthur,&rdquo; published many years
+      afterwards, I have taken up an analogous design, in the contemplation of
+      our positive life through a spiritual medium; and I have enforced, through
+      a far wider development, and, I believe, with more complete and enduring
+      success, that harmony between the external events which are all that the
+      superficial behold on the surface of human affairs, and the subtle and
+      intellectual agencies which in reality influence the conduct of
+      individuals, and shape out the destinies of the world. As man has two
+      lives,&mdash;that of action and that of thought,&mdash;so I conceive that
+      work to be the truest representation of humanity which faithfully
+      delineates both, and opens some elevating glimpse into the sublimest
+      mysteries of our being, by establishing the inevitable union that exists
+      between the plain things of the day, in which our earthly bodies perform
+      their allotted part, and the latent, often uncultivated, often invisible,
+      affinities of the soul with all the powers that eternally breathe and move
+      throughout the Universe of Spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I refer those who do me the honour to read &ldquo;Zanoni&rdquo; with more attention
+      than is given to ordinary romance, to the Poem of &ldquo;King Arthur,&rdquo; for
+      suggestive conjecture into most of the regions of speculative research,
+      affecting the higher and more important condition of our ultimate being,
+      which have engaged the students of immaterial philosophy in my own age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Affixed to the &ldquo;Note&rdquo; with which this work concludes, and which treats of
+      the distinctions between type and allegory, the reader will find, from the
+      pen of one of our most eminent living writers, an ingenious attempt to
+      explain the interior or typical meanings of the work now before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_INTR2" id="link2H_INTR2">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      INTRODUCTION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It is possible that among my readers there may be a few not unacquainted
+      with an old-book shop, existing some years since in the neighbourhood of
+      Covent Garden; I say a few, for certainly there was little enough to
+      attract the many in those precious volumes which the labour of a life had
+      accumulated on the dusty shelves of my old friend D&mdash;. There were to
+      be found no popular treatises, no entertaining romances, no histories, no
+      travels, no &ldquo;Library for the People,&rdquo; no &ldquo;Amusement for the Million.&rdquo; But
+      there, perhaps, throughout all Europe, the curious might discover the most
+      notable collection, ever amassed by an enthusiast, of the works of
+      alchemist, cabalist, and astrologer. The owner had lavished a fortune in
+      the purchase of unsalable treasures. But old D&mdash; did not desire to
+      sell. It absolutely went to his heart when a customer entered his shop: he
+      watched the movements of the presumptuous intruder with a vindictive
+      glare; he fluttered around him with uneasy vigilance,&mdash;he frowned, he
+      groaned, when profane hands dislodged his idols from their niches. If it
+      were one of the favourite sultanas of his wizard harem that attracted you,
+      and the price named were not sufficiently enormous, he would not
+      unfrequently double the sum. Demur, and in brisk delight he snatched the
+      venerable charmer from your hands; accede, and he became the picture of
+      despair,&mdash;nor unfrequently, at the dead of night, would he knock at
+      your door, and entreat you to sell him back, at your own terms, what you
+      had so egregiously bought at his. A believer himself in his Averroes and
+      Paracelsus, he was as loth as the philosophers he studied to communicate
+      to the profane the learning he had collected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It so chanced that some years ago, in my younger days, whether of
+      authorship or life, I felt a desire to make myself acquainted with the
+      true origin and tenets of the singular sect known by the name of
+      Rosicrucians. Dissatisfied with the scanty and superficial accounts to be
+      found in the works usually referred to on the subject, it struck me as
+      possible that Mr. D&mdash;&rsquo;s collection, which was rich, not only in
+      black-letter, but in manuscripts, might contain some more accurate and
+      authentic records of that famous brotherhood,&mdash;written, who knows? by
+      one of their own order, and confirming by authority and detail the
+      pretensions to wisdom and to virtue which Bringaret had arrogated to the
+      successors of the Chaldean and Gymnosophist. Accordingly I repaired to
+      what, doubtless, I ought to be ashamed to confess, was once one of my
+      favourite haunts. But are there no errors and no fallacies, in the
+      chronicles of our own day, as absurd as those of the alchemists of old?
+      Our very newspapers may seem to our posterity as full of delusions as the
+      books of the alchemists do to us; not but what the press is the air we
+      breathe,&mdash;and uncommonly foggy the air is too!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On entering the shop, I was struck by the venerable appearance of a
+      customer whom I had never seen there before. I was struck yet more by the
+      respect with which he was treated by the disdainful collector. &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo;
+       cried the last, emphatically, as I was turning over the leaves of the
+      catalogue,&mdash;&ldquo;sir, you are the only man I have met, in five-and-forty
+      years that I have spent in these researches, who is worthy to be my
+      customer. How&mdash;where, in this frivolous age, could you have acquired
+      a knowledge so profound? And this august fraternity, whose doctrines,
+      hinted at by the earliest philosophers, are still a mystery to the latest;
+      tell me if there really exists upon the earth any book, any manuscript, in
+      which their discoveries, their tenets, are to be learned?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the words, &ldquo;august fraternity,&rdquo; I need scarcely say that my attention
+      had been at once aroused, and I listened eagerly for the stranger&rsquo;s reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not think,&rdquo; said the old gentleman, &ldquo;that the masters of the school
+      have ever consigned, except by obscure hint and mystical parable, their
+      real doctrines to the world. And I do not blame them for their
+      discretion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here he paused, and seemed about to retire, when I said, somewhat
+      abruptly, to the collector, &ldquo;I see nothing, Mr. D&mdash;, in this
+      catalogue which relates to the Rosicrucians!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Rosicrucians!&rdquo; repeated the old gentleman, and in his turn he
+      surveyed me with deliberate surprise. &ldquo;Who but a Rosicrucian could explain
+      the Rosicrucian mysteries! And can you imagine that any members of that
+      sect, the most jealous of all secret societies, would themselves lift the
+      veil that hides the Isis of their wisdom from the world?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aha!&rdquo; thought I, &ldquo;this, then, is &lsquo;the august fraternity&rsquo; of which you
+      spoke. Heaven be praised! I certainly have stumbled on one of the
+      brotherhood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; I said aloud, &ldquo;if not in books, sir, where else am I to obtain
+      information? Nowadays one can hazard nothing in print without authority,
+      and one may scarcely quote Shakespeare without citing chapter and verse.
+      This is the age of facts,&mdash;the age of facts, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the old gentleman, with a pleasant smile, &ldquo;if we meet again,
+      perhaps, at least, I may direct your researches to the proper source of
+      intelligence.&rdquo; And with that he buttoned his greatcoat, whistled to his
+      dog, and departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It so happened that I did meet again with the old gentleman, exactly four
+      days after our brief conversation in Mr. D&mdash;&rsquo;s bookshop. I was
+      riding leisurely towards Highgate, when, at the foot of its classic hill,
+      I recognised the stranger; he was mounted on a black pony, and before him
+      trotted his dog, which was black also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you meet the man whom you wish to know, on horseback, at the
+      commencement of a long hill, where, unless he has borrowed a friend&rsquo;s
+      favourite hack, he cannot, in decent humanity to the brute creation, ride
+      away from you, I apprehend that it is your own fault if you have not gone
+      far in your object before you have gained the top. In short, so well did I
+      succeed, that on reaching Highgate the old gentleman invited me to rest at
+      his house, which was a little apart from the village; and an excellent
+      house it was,&mdash;small, but commodious, with a large garden, and
+      commanding from the windows such a prospect as Lucretius would recommend
+      to philosophers: the spires and domes of London, on a clear day,
+      distinctly visible; here the Retreat of the Hermit, and there the Mare
+      Magnum of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The walls of the principal rooms were embellished with pictures of
+      extraordinary merit, and in that high school of art which is so little
+      understood out of Italy. I was surprised to learn that they were all from
+      the hand of the owner. My evident admiration pleased my new friend, and
+      led to talk upon his part, which showed him no less elevated in his
+      theories of art than an adept in the practice. Without fatiguing the
+      reader with irrelevant criticism, it is necessary, perhaps, as elucidating
+      much of the design and character of the work which these prefatory pages
+      introduce, that I should briefly observe, that he insisted as much upon
+      the connection of the arts, as a distinguished author has upon that of the
+      sciences; that he held that in all works of imagination, whether expressed
+      by words or by colours, the artist of the higher schools must make the
+      broadest distinction between the real and the true,&mdash;in other words,
+      between the imitation of actual life, and the exaltation of Nature into
+      the Ideal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The one,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;is the Dutch School, the other is the Greek.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;the Dutch is the most in fashion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, in painting, perhaps,&rdquo; answered my host, &ldquo;but in literature&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was of literature I spoke. Our growing poets are all for simplicity
+      and Betty Foy; and our critics hold it the highest praise of a work of
+      imagination, to say that its characters are exact to common life, even in
+      sculpture&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In sculpture! No, no! THERE the high ideal must at least be essential!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me; I fear you have not seen Souter Johnny and Tam O&rsquo;Shanter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said the old gentleman, shaking his head, &ldquo;I live very much out of
+      the world, I see. I suppose Shakespeare has ceased to be admired?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary; people make the adoration of Shakespeare the excuse for
+      attacking everybody else. But then our critics have discovered that
+      Shakespeare is so REAL!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Real! The poet who has never once drawn a character to be met with in
+      actual life,&mdash;who has never once descended to a passion that is
+      false, or a personage who is real!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was about to reply very severely to this paradox, when I perceived that
+      my companion was growing a little out of temper. And he who wishes to
+      catch a Rosicrucian, must take care not to disturb the waters. I thought
+      it better, therefore, to turn the conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Revenons a nos moutons,&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;you promised to enlighten my ignorance
+      as to the Rosicrucians.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well!&rdquo; quoth he, rather sternly; &ldquo;but for what purpose? Perhaps you
+      desire only to enter the temple in order to ridicule the rites?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you take me for! Surely, were I so inclined, the fate of the Abbe
+      de Villars is a sufficient warning to all men not to treat idly of the
+      realms of the Salamander and the Sylph. Everybody knows how mysteriously
+      that ingenious personage was deprived of his life, in revenge for the
+      witty mockeries of his &lsquo;Comte de Gabalis.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Salamander and Sylph! I see that you fall into the vulgar error, and
+      translate literally the allegorical language of the mystics.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that the old gentleman condescended to enter into a very interesting,
+      and, as it seemed to me, a very erudite relation, of the tenets of the
+      Rosicrucians, some of whom, he asserted, still existed, and still
+      prosecuted, in august secrecy, their profound researches into natural
+      science and occult philosophy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this fraternity,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;however respectable and virtuous,&mdash;virtuous
+      I say, for no monastic order is more severe in the practice of moral
+      precepts, or more ardent in Christian faith,&mdash;this fraternity is but
+      a branch of others yet more transcendent in the powers they have obtained,
+      and yet more illustrious in their origin. Are you acquainted with the
+      Platonists?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have occasionally lost my way in their labyrinth,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;Faith, they
+      are rather difficult gentlemen to understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet their knottiest problems have never yet been published. Their
+      sublimest works are in manuscript, and constitute the initiatory learning,
+      not only of the Rosicrucians, but of the nobler brotherhoods I have
+      referred to. More solemn and sublime still is the knowledge to be gleaned
+      from the elder Pythagoreans, and the immortal masterpieces of Apollonius.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Apollonius, the imposter of Tyanea! are his writings extant?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Imposter!&rdquo; cried my host; &ldquo;Apollonius an imposter!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon; I did not know he was a friend of yours; and if you
+      vouch for his character, I will believe him to have been a very
+      respectable man, who only spoke the truth when he boasted of his power to
+      be in two places at the same time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that so difficult?&rdquo; said the old gentleman; &ldquo;if so, you have never
+      dreamed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here ended our conversation; but from that time an acquaintance was formed
+      between us which lasted till my venerable friend departed this life. Peace
+      to his ashes! He was a person of singular habits and eccentric opinions;
+      but the chief part of his time was occupied in acts of quiet and
+      unostentatious goodness. He was an enthusiast in the duties of the
+      Samaritan; and as his virtues were softened by the gentlest charity, so
+      his hopes were based upon the devoutest belief. He never conversed upon
+      his own origin and history, nor have I ever been able to penetrate the
+      darkness in which they were concealed. He seemed to have seen much of the
+      world, and to have been an eye-witness of the first French Revolution, a
+      subject upon which he was equally eloquent and instructive. At the same
+      time he did not regard the crimes of that stormy period with the
+      philosophical leniency with which enlightened writers (their heads safe
+      upon their shoulders) are, in the present day, inclined to treat the
+      massacres of the past: he spoke not as a student who had read and
+      reasoned, but as a man who had seen and suffered. The old gentleman seemed
+      alone in the world; nor did I know that he had one relation, till his
+      executor, a distant cousin, residing abroad, informed me of the very
+      handsome legacy which my poor friend had bequeathed me. This consisted,
+      first, of a sum about which I think it best to be guarded, foreseeing the
+      possibility of a new tax upon real and funded property; and, secondly, of
+      certain precious manuscripts, to which the following volumes owe their
+      existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I imagine I trace this latter bequest to a visit I paid the Sage, if so I
+      may be permitted to call him, a few weeks before his death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although he read little of our modern literature, my friend, with the
+      affable good-nature which belonged to him, graciously permitted me to
+      consult him upon various literary undertakings meditated by the desultory
+      ambition of a young and inexperienced student. And at that time I sought
+      his advice upon a work of imagination, intended to depict the effects of
+      enthusiasm upon different modifications of character. He listened to my
+      conception, which was sufficiently trite and prosaic, with his usual
+      patience; and then, thoughtfully turning to his bookshelves, took down an
+      old volume, and read to me, first, in Greek, and secondly, in English,
+      some extracts to the following effect:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plato here expresses four kinds of mania, by which I desire to understand
+      enthusiasm and the inspiration of the gods: Firstly, the musical;
+      secondly, the telestic or mystic; thirdly, the prophetic; and fourthly,
+      that which belongs to love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The author he quoted, after contending that there is something in the soul
+      above intellect, and stating that there are in our nature distinct
+      energies,&mdash;by the one of which we discover and seize, as it were, on
+      sciences and theorems with almost intuitive rapidity, by another, through
+      which high art is accomplished, like the statues of Phidias,&mdash;proceeded
+      to state that &ldquo;enthusiasm, in the true acceptation of the word, is, when
+      that part of the soul which is above intellect is excited to the gods, and
+      thence derives its inspiration.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The author, then pursuing his comment upon Plato, observes, that &ldquo;one of
+      these manias may suffice (especially that which belongs to love) to lead
+      back the soul to its first divinity and happiness; but that there is an
+      intimate union with them all; and that the ordinary progress through which
+      the soul ascends is, primarily, through the musical; next, through the
+      telestic or mystic; thirdly, through the prophetic; and lastly, through
+      the enthusiasm of love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While with a bewildered understanding and a reluctant attention I listened
+      to these intricate sublimities, my adviser closed the volume, and said
+      with complacency, &ldquo;There is the motto for your book,&mdash;the thesis for
+      your theme.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Davus sum, non Oedipus,&rdquo; said I, shaking my head, discontentedly. &ldquo;All
+      this may be exceedingly fine, but, Heaven forgive me,&mdash;I don&rsquo;t
+      understand a word of it. The mysteries of your Rosicrucians, and your
+      fraternities, are mere child&rsquo;s play to the jargon of the Platonists.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet, not till you rightly understand this passage, can you understand the
+      higher theories of the Rosicrucians, or of the still nobler fraternities
+      you speak of with so much levity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if that be the case, I give up in despair. Why not, since you are so
+      well versed in the matter, take the motto for a book of your own?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if I have already composed a book with that thesis for its theme,
+      will you prepare it for the public?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With the greatest pleasure,&rdquo; said I,&mdash;alas, too rashly!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall hold you to your promise,&rdquo; returned the old gentleman, &ldquo;and when
+      I am no more, you will receive the manuscripts. From what you say of the
+      prevailing taste in literature, I cannot flatter you with the hope that
+      you will gain much by the undertaking. And I tell you beforehand that you
+      will find it not a little laborious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is your work a romance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a romance, and it is not a romance. It is a truth for those who can
+      comprehend it, and an extravagance for those who cannot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At last there arrived the manuscripts, with a brief note from my deceased
+      friend, reminding me of my imprudent promise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With mournful interest, and yet with eager impatience, I opened the packet
+      and trimmed my lamp. Conceive my dismay when I found the whole written in
+      an unintelligible cipher. I present the reader with a specimen:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (Several strange characters.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      and so on for nine hundred and forty mortal pages in foolscap. I could
+      scarcely believe my eyes: in fact, I began to think the lamp burned
+      singularly blue; and sundry misgivings as to the unhallowed nature of the
+      characters I had so unwittingly opened upon, coupled with the strange
+      hints and mystical language of the old gentleman, crept through my
+      disordered imagination. Certainly, to say no worse of it, the whole thing
+      looked UNCANNY! I was about, precipitately, to hurry the papers into my
+      desk, with a pious determination to have nothing more to do with them,
+      when my eye fell upon a book, neatly bound in blue morocco, and which, in
+      my eagerness, I had hitherto overlooked. I opened this volume with great
+      precaution, not knowing what might jump out, and&mdash;guess my delight&mdash;found
+      that it contained a key or dictionary to the hieroglyphics. Not to weary
+      the reader with an account of my labours, I am contented with saying that
+      at last I imagined myself capable of construing the characters, and set to
+      work in good earnest. Still it was no easy task, and two years elapsed
+      before I had made much progress. I then, by way of experiment on the
+      public, obtained the insertion of a few desultory chapters, in a
+      periodical with which, for a few months, I had the honour to be connected.
+      They appeared to excite more curiosity than I had presumed to anticipate;
+      and I renewed, with better heart, my laborious undertaking. But now a new
+      misfortune befell me: I found, as I proceeded, that the author had made
+      two copies of his work, one much more elaborate and detailed than the
+      other; I had stumbled upon the earlier copy, and had my whole task to
+      remodel, and the chapters I had written to retranslate. I may say then,
+      that, exclusive of intervals devoted to more pressing occupations, my
+      unlucky promise cost me the toil of several years before I could bring it
+      to adequate fulfilment. The task was the more difficult, since the style
+      in the original is written in a kind of rhythmical prose, as if the author
+      desired that in some degree his work should be regarded as one of poetical
+      conception and design. To this it was not possible to do justice, and in
+      the attempt I have doubtless very often need of the reader&rsquo;s indulgent
+      consideration. My natural respect for the old gentleman&rsquo;s vagaries, with a
+      muse of equivocal character, must be my only excuse whenever the language,
+      without luxuriating into verse, borrows flowers scarcely natural to prose.
+      Truth compels me also to confess, that, with all my pains, I am by no
+      means sure that I have invariably given the true meaning of the cipher;
+      nay, that here and there either a gap in the narrative, or the sudden
+      assumption of a new cipher, to which no key was afforded, has obliged me
+      to resort to interpolations of my own, no doubt easily discernible, but
+      which, I flatter myself, are not inharmonious to the general design. This
+      confession leads me to the sentence with which I shall conclude: If,
+      reader, in this book there be anything that pleases you, it is certainly
+      mine; but whenever you come to something you dislike,&mdash;lay the blame
+      upon the old gentleman!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      London, January, 1842.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      N.B.&mdash;The notes appended to the text are sometimes by the author,
+      sometimes by the editor. I have occasionally (but not always) marked the
+      distinction; where, however, this is omitted, the ingenuity of the reader
+      will be rarely at fault.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ZANONI.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK I. &mdash; THE MUSICIAN.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Due Fontane
+     Chi di diverso effeto hanno liquore!
+
+     &ldquo;Ariosto, Orland. Fur.&rdquo; Canto 1.7.
+
+     (Two Founts
+     That hold a draught of different effects.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 1.I.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Vergina era
+     D&rsquo; alta belta, ma sua belta non cura:
+     ....
+     Di natura, d&rsquo; amor, de&rsquo; cieli amici
+     Le negligenze sue sono artifici.
+
+     &ldquo;Gerusal. Lib.,&rdquo; canto ii. xiv.-xviii.
+
+     (She was a virgin of a glorious beauty, but regarded not her
+     beauty...Negligence itself is art in those favoured by Nature, by
+     love, and by the heavens.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At Naples, in the latter half of the last century, a worthy artist named
+      Gaetano Pisani lived and flourished. He was a musician of great genius,
+      but not of popular reputation; there was in all his compositions something
+      capricious and fantastic which did not please the taste of the Dilettanti
+      of Naples. He was fond of unfamiliar subjects into which he introduced
+      airs and symphonies that excited a kind of terror in those who listened.
+      The names of his pieces will probably suggest their nature. I find, for
+      instance, among his MSS., these titles: &ldquo;The Feast of the Harpies,&rdquo; &ldquo;The
+      Witches at Benevento,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Descent of Orpheus into Hades,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Evil
+      Eye,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Eumenides,&rdquo; and many others that evince a powerful imagination
+      delighting in the fearful and supernatural, but often relieved by an airy
+      and delicate fancy with passages of exquisite grace and beauty. It is true
+      that in the selection of his subjects from ancient fable, Gaetano Pisani
+      was much more faithful than his contemporaries to the remote origin and
+      the early genius of Italian Opera.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That descendant, however effeminate, of the ancient union between Song and
+      Drama, when, after long obscurity and dethronement, it regained a punier
+      sceptre, though a gaudier purple, by the banks of the Etrurian Arno, or
+      amidst the lagunes of Venice, had chosen all its primary inspirations from
+      the unfamiliar and classic sources of heathen legend; and Pisani&rsquo;s
+      &ldquo;Descent of Orpheus&rdquo; was but a bolder, darker, and more scientific
+      repetition of the &ldquo;Euridice&rdquo; which Jacopi Peri set to music at the august
+      nuptials of Henry of Navarre and Mary of Medicis.* Still, as I have said,
+      the style of the Neapolitan musician was not on the whole pleasing to ears
+      grown nice and euphuistic in the more dulcet melodies of the day; and
+      faults and extravagances easily discernible, and often to appearance
+      wilful, served the critics for an excuse for their distaste. Fortunately,
+      or the poor musician might have starved, he was not only a composer, but
+      also an excellent practical performer, especially on the violin, and by
+      that instrument he earned a decent subsistence as one of the orchestra at
+      the Great Theatre of San Carlo. Here formal and appointed tasks
+      necessarily kept his eccentric fancies in tolerable check, though it is
+      recorded that no less than five times he had been deposed from his desk
+      for having shocked the conoscenti, and thrown the whole band into
+      confusion, by impromptu variations of so frantic and startling a nature
+      that one might well have imagined that the harpies or witches who inspired
+      his compositions had clawed hold of his instrument.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The impossibility, however, to find any one of equal excellence as a
+      performer (that is to say, in his more lucid and orderly moments) had
+      forced his reinstalment, and he had now, for the most part, reconciled
+      himself to the narrow sphere of his appointed adagios or allegros. The
+      audience, too, aware of his propensity, were quick to perceive the least
+      deviation from the text; and if he wandered for a moment, which might also
+      be detected by the eye as well as the ear, in some strange contortion of
+      visage, and some ominous flourish of his bow, a gentle and admonitory
+      murmur recalled the musician from his Elysium or his Tartarus to the sober
+      regions of his desk. Then he would start as if from a dream, cast a
+      hurried, frightened, apologetic glance around, and, with a crestfallen,
+      humbled air, draw his rebellious instrument back to the beaten track of
+      the glib monotony. But at home he would make himself amends for this
+      reluctant drudgery. And there, grasping the unhappy violin with ferocious
+      fingers, he would pour forth, often till the morning rose, strange, wild
+      measures that would startle the early fisherman on the shore below with a
+      superstitious awe, and make him cross himself as if mermaid or sprite had
+      wailed no earthly music in his ear.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     (*Orpheus was the favourite hero of early Italian Opera, or
+     Lyrical Drama. The Orfeo of Angelo Politiano was produced in
+     1475. The Orfeo of Monteverde was performed at Venice in
+     1667.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      This man&rsquo;s appearance was in keeping with the characteristics of his art.
+      The features were noble and striking, but worn and haggard, with black,
+      careless locks tangled into a maze of curls, and a fixed, speculative,
+      dreamy stare in his large and hollow eyes. All his movements were
+      peculiar, sudden, and abrupt, as the impulse seized him; and in gliding
+      through the streets, or along the beach, he was heard laughing and talking
+      to himself. Withal, he was a harmless, guileless, gentle creature, and
+      would share his mite with any idle lazzaroni, whom he often paused to
+      contemplate as they lay lazily basking in the sun. Yet was he thoroughly
+      unsocial. He formed no friends, flattered no patrons, resorted to none of
+      the merry-makings so dear to the children of music and the South. He and
+      his art seemed alone suited to each other,&mdash;both quaint, primitive,
+      unworldly, irregular. You could not separate the man from his music; it
+      was himself. Without it he was nothing, a mere machine! WITH it, he was
+      king over worlds of his own. Poor man, he had little enough in this! At a
+      manufacturing town in England there is a gravestone on which the epitaph
+      records &ldquo;one Claudius Phillips, whose absolute contempt for riches, and
+      inimitable performance on the violin, made him the admiration of all that
+      knew him!&rdquo; Logical conjunction of opposite eulogies! In proportion, O
+      Genius, to thy contempt for riches will be thy performance on thy violin!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gaetano Pisani&rsquo;s talents as a composer had been chiefly exhibited in music
+      appropriate to this his favourite instrument, of all unquestionably the
+      most various and royal in its resources and power over the passions. As
+      Shakespeare among poets is the Cremona among instruments. Nevertheless, he
+      had composed other pieces of larger ambition and wider accomplishment, and
+      chief of these, his precious, his unpurchased, his unpublished, his
+      unpublishable and imperishable opera of the &ldquo;Siren.&rdquo; This great work had
+      been the dream of his boyhood, the mistress of his manhood; in advancing
+      age &ldquo;it stood beside him like his youth.&rdquo; Vainly had he struggled to place
+      it before the world. Even bland, unjealous Paisiello, Maestro di Capella,
+      shook his gentle head when the musician favoured him with a specimen of
+      one of his most thrilling scenas. And yet, Paisiello, though that music
+      differs from all Durante taught thee to emulate, there may&mdash;but
+      patience, Gaetano Pisani! bide thy time, and keep thy violin in tune!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strange as it may appear to the fairer reader, this grotesque personage
+      had yet formed those ties which ordinary mortals are apt to consider their
+      especial monopoly,&mdash;he was married, and had one child. What is more
+      strange yet, his wife was a daughter of quiet, sober, unfantastic England:
+      she was much younger than himself; she was fair and gentle, with a sweet
+      English face; she had married him from choice, and (will you believe it?)
+      she yet loved him. How she came to marry him, or how this shy, unsocial,
+      wayward creature ever ventured to propose, I can only explain by asking
+      you to look round and explain first to ME how half the husbands and half
+      the wives you meet ever found a mate! Yet, on reflection, this union was
+      not so extraordinary after all. The girl was a natural child of parents
+      too noble ever to own and claim her. She was brought into Italy to learn
+      the art by which she was to live, for she had taste and voice; she was a
+      dependant and harshly treated, and poor Pisani was her master, and his
+      voice the only one she had heard from her cradle that seemed without one
+      tone that could scorn or chide. And so&mdash;well, is the rest natural?
+      Natural or not, they married. This young wife loved her husband; and young
+      and gentle as she was, she might almost be said to be the protector of the
+      two. From how many disgraces with the despots of San Carlo and the
+      Conservatorio had her unknown officious mediation saved him! In how many
+      ailments&mdash;for his frame was weak&mdash;had she nursed and tended him!
+      Often, in the dark nights, she would wait at the theatre with her lantern
+      to light him and her steady arm to lean on; otherwise, in his abstract
+      reveries, who knows but the musician would have walked after his &ldquo;Siren&rdquo;
+       into the sea! And then she would so patiently, perhaps (for in true love
+      there is not always the finest taste) so DELIGHTEDLY, listen to those
+      storms of eccentric and fitful melody, and steal him&mdash;whispering
+      praises all the way&mdash;from the unwholesome night-watch to rest and
+      sleep!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said his music was a part of the man, and this gentle creature seemed a
+      part of the music; it was, in fact, when she sat beside him that whatever
+      was tender or fairy-like in his motley fantasia crept into the harmony as
+      by stealth. Doubtless her presence acted on the music, and shaped and
+      softened it; but, he, who never examined how or what his inspiration, knew
+      it not. All that he knew was, that he loved and blessed her. He fancied he
+      told her so twenty times a day; but he never did, for he was not of many
+      words, even to his wife. His language was his music,&mdash;as hers, her
+      cares! He was more communicative to his barbiton, as the learned Mersennus
+      teaches us to call all the varieties of the great viol family. Certainly
+      barbiton sounds better than fiddle; and barbiton let it be. He would talk
+      to THAT by the hour together,&mdash;praise it, scold it, coax it, nay (for
+      such is man, even the most guileless), he had been known to swear at it;
+      but for that excess he was always penitentially remorseful. And the
+      barbiton had a tongue of his own, could take his own part, and when HE
+      also scolded, had much the best of it. He was a noble fellow, this Violin!&mdash;a
+      Tyrolese, the handiwork of the illustrious Steiner. There was something
+      mysterious in his great age. How many hands, now dust, had awakened his
+      strings ere he became the Robin Goodfellow and Familiar of Gaetano Pisani!
+      His very case was venerable,&mdash;beautifully painted, it was said, by
+      Caracci. An English collector had offered more for the case than Pisani
+      had ever made by the violin. But Pisani, who cared not if he had inhabited
+      a cabin himself, was proud of a palace for the barbiton. His barbiton, it
+      was his elder child! He had another child, and now we must turn to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How shall I describe thee, Viola? Certainly the music had something to
+      answer for in the advent of that young stranger. For both in her form and
+      her character you might have traced a family likeness to that singular and
+      spirit-like life of sound which night after night threw itself in airy and
+      goblin sport over the starry seas...Beautiful she was, but of a very
+      uncommon beauty,&mdash;a combination, a harmony of opposite attributes.
+      Her hair of a gold richer and purer than that which is seen even in the
+      North; but the eyes, of all the dark, tender, subduing light of more than
+      Italian&mdash;almost of Oriental&mdash;splendour. The complexion
+      exquisitely fair, but never the same,&mdash;vivid in one moment, pale the
+      next. And with the complexion, the expression also varied; nothing now so
+      sad, and nothing now so joyous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I grieve to say that what we rightly entitle education was much neglected
+      for their daughter by this singular pair. To be sure, neither of them had
+      much knowledge to bestow; and knowledge was not then the fashion, as it is
+      now. But accident or nature favoured young Viola. She learned, as of
+      course, her mother&rsquo;s language with her father&rsquo;s. And she contrived soon to
+      read and to write; and her mother, who, by the way, was a Roman Catholic,
+      taught her betimes to pray. But then, to counteract all these
+      acquisitions, the strange habits of Pisani, and the incessant watch and
+      care which he required from his wife, often left the child alone with an
+      old nurse, who, to be sure, loved her dearly, but who was in no way
+      calculated to instruct her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dame Gionetta was every inch Italian and Neapolitan. Her youth had been
+      all love, and her age was all superstition. She was garrulous, fond,&mdash;a
+      gossip. Now she would prattle to the girl of cavaliers and princes at her
+      feet, and now she would freeze her blood with tales and legends, perhaps
+      as old as Greek or Etrurian fable, of demon and vampire,&mdash;of the
+      dances round the great walnut-tree at Benevento, and the haunting spell of
+      the Evil Eye. All this helped silently to weave charmed webs over Viola&rsquo;s
+      imagination that afterthought and later years might labour vainly to
+      dispel. And all this especially fitted her to hang, with a fearful joy,
+      upon her father&rsquo;s music. Those visionary strains, ever struggling to
+      translate into wild and broken sounds the language of unearthly beings,
+      breathed around her from her birth. Thus you might have said that her
+      whole mind was full of music; associations, memories, sensations of
+      pleasure or pain,&mdash;all were mixed up inexplicably with those sounds
+      that now delighted and now terrified; that greeted her when her eyes
+      opened to the sun, and woke her trembling on her lonely couch in the
+      darkness of the night. The legends and tales of Gionetta only served to
+      make the child better understand the signification of those mysterious
+      tones; they furnished her with words to the music. It was natural that the
+      daughter of such a parent should soon evince some taste in his art. But
+      this developed itself chiefly in the ear and the voice. She was yet a
+      child when she sang divinely. A great Cardinal&mdash;great alike in the
+      State and the Conservatorio&mdash;heard of her gifts, and sent for her.
+      From that moment her fate was decided: she was to be the future glory of
+      Naples, the prima donna of San Carlo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cardinal insisted upon the accomplishment of his own predictions, and
+      provided her with the most renowned masters. To inspire her with
+      emulation, his Eminence took her one evening to his own box: it would be
+      something to see the performance, something more to hear the applause
+      lavished upon the glittering signoras she was hereafter to excel! Oh, how
+      gloriously that life of the stage, that fairy world of music and song,
+      dawned upon her! It was the only world that seemed to correspond with her
+      strange childish thoughts. It appeared to her as if, cast hitherto on a
+      foreign shore, she was brought at last to see the forms and hear the
+      language of her native land. Beautiful and true enthusiasm, rich with the
+      promise of genius! Boy or man, thou wilt never be a poet, if thou hast not
+      felt the ideal, the romance, the Calypso&rsquo;s isle that opened to thee when
+      for the first time the magic curtain was drawn aside, and let in the world
+      of poetry on the world of prose!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now the initiation was begun. She was to read, to study, to depict by
+      a gesture, a look, the passions she was to delineate on the boards;
+      lessons dangerous, in truth, to some, but not to the pure enthusiasm that
+      comes from art; for the mind that rightly conceives art is but a mirror
+      which gives back what is cast on its surface faithfully only&mdash;while
+      unsullied. She seized on nature and truth intuitively. Her recitations
+      became full of unconscious power; her voice moved the heart to tears, or
+      warmed it into generous rage. But this arose from that sympathy which
+      genius ever has, even in its earliest innocence, with whatever feels, or
+      aspires, or suffers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was no premature woman comprehending the love or the jealousy that the
+      words expressed; her art was one of those strange secrets which the
+      psychologists may unriddle to us if they please, and tell us why children
+      of the simplest minds and the purest hearts are often so acute to
+      distinguish, in the tales you tell them, or the songs you sing, the
+      difference between the true art and the false, passion and jargon, Homer
+      and Racine,&mdash;echoing back, from hearts that have not yet felt what
+      they repeat, the melodious accents of the natural pathos. Apart from her
+      studies, Viola was a simple, affectionate, but somewhat wayward child,&mdash;wayward,
+      not in temper, for that was sweet and docile; but in her moods, which, as
+      I before hinted, changed from sad to gay and gay to sad without an
+      apparent cause. If cause there were, it must be traced to the early and
+      mysterious influences I have referred to, when seeking to explain the
+      effect produced on her imagination by those restless streams of sound that
+      constantly played around it; for it is noticeable that to those who are
+      much alive to the effects of music, airs and tunes often come back, in the
+      commonest pursuits of life, to vex, as it were, and haunt them. The music,
+      once admitted to the soul, becomes also a sort of spirit, and never dies.
+      It wanders perturbedly through the halls and galleries of the memory, and
+      is often heard again, distinct and living as when it first displaced the
+      wavelets of the air. Now at times, then, these phantoms of sound floated
+      back upon her fancy; if gay, to call a smile from every dimple; if
+      mournful, to throw a shade upon her brow,&mdash;to make her cease from her
+      childishmirth, and sit apart and muse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rightly, then, in a typical sense, might this fair creature, so airy in
+      her shape, so harmonious in her beauty, so unfamiliar in her ways and
+      thoughts,&mdash;rightly might she be called a daughter, less of the
+      musician than the music, a being for whom you could imagine that some fate
+      was reserved, less of actual life than the romance which, to eyes that can
+      see, and hearts that can feel, glides ever along WITH the actual life,
+      stream by stream, to the Dark Ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And therefore it seemed not strange that Viola herself, even in childhood,
+      and yet more as she bloomed into the sweet seriousness of virgin youth,
+      should fancy her life ordained for a lot, whether of bliss or woe, that
+      should accord with the romance and reverie which made the atmosphere she
+      breathed. Frequently she would climb through the thickets that clothed the
+      neighbouring grotto of Posilipo,&mdash;the mighty work of the old
+      Cimmerians,&mdash;and, seated by the haunted Tomb of Virgil, indulge those
+      visions, the subtle vagueness of which no poetry can render palpable and
+      defined; for the Poet that surpasses all who ever sang, is the heart of
+      dreaming youth! Frequently there, too, beside the threshold over which the
+      vine-leaves clung, and facing that dark-blue, waveless sea, she would sit
+      in the autumn noon or summer twilight, and build her castles in the air.
+      Who doth not do the same,&mdash;not in youth alone, but with the dimmed
+      hopes of age! It is man&rsquo;s prerogative to dream, the common royalty of
+      peasant and of king. But those day-dreams of hers were more habitual,
+      distinct, and solemn than the greater part of us indulge. They seemed like
+      the Orama of the Greeks,&mdash;prophets while phantasma.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 1.II.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Fu stupor, fu vaghezza, fu diletto!
+     &ldquo;Gerusal. Lib.,&rdquo; cant. ii. xxi.
+
+     (&ldquo;Desire it was, &lsquo;t was wonder, &lsquo;t was delight.&rdquo;
+       Wiffen&rsquo;s Translation.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Now at last the education is accomplished! Viola is nearly sixteen. The
+      Cardinal declares that the time is come when the new name must be
+      inscribed in the Libro d&rsquo;Oro,&mdash;the Golden Book set apart to the
+      children of Art and Song. Yes, but in what character?&mdash;to whose
+      genius is she to give embodiment and form? Ah, there is the secret!
+      Rumours go abroad that the inexhaustible Paisiello, charmed with her
+      performance of his &ldquo;Nel cor piu non me sento,&rdquo; and his &ldquo;Io son Lindoro,&rdquo;
+       will produce some new masterpiece to introduce the debutante. Others
+      insist upon it that her forte is the comic, and that Cimarosa is hard at
+      work at another &ldquo;Matrimonia Segreto.&rdquo; But in the meanwhile there is a
+      check in the diplomacy somewhere. The Cardinal is observed to be out of
+      humour. He has said publicly,&mdash;and the words are portentous,&mdash;&ldquo;The
+      silly girl is as mad as her father; what she asks is preposterous!&rdquo;
+       Conference follows conference; the Cardinal talks to the poor child very
+      solemnly in his closet,&mdash;all in vain. Naples is distracted with
+      curiosity and conjecture. The lecture ends in a quarrel, and Viola comes
+      home sullen and pouting: she will not act,&mdash;she has renounced the
+      engagement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pisani, too inexperienced to be aware of all the dangers of the stage, had
+      been pleased at the notion that one, at least, of his name would add
+      celebrity to his art. The girl&rsquo;s perverseness displeased him. However, he
+      said nothing,&mdash;he never scolded in words, but he took up the faithful
+      barbiton. Oh, faithful barbiton, how horribly thou didst scold! It
+      screeched, it gabbled, it moaned, it growled. And Viola&rsquo;s eyes filled with
+      tears, for she understood that language. She stole to her mother, and
+      whispered in her ear; and when Pisani turned from his employment, lo! both
+      mother and daughter were weeping. He looked at them with a wondering
+      stare; and then, as if he felt he had been harsh, he flew again to his
+      Familiar. And now you thought you heard the lullaby which a fairy might
+      sing to some fretful changeling it had adopted and sought to soothe.
+      Liquid, low, silvery, streamed the tones beneath the enchanted bow. The
+      most stubborn grief would have paused to hear; and withal, at times, out
+      came a wild, merry, ringing note, like a laugh, but not mortal laughter.
+      It was one of his most successful airs from his beloved opera,&mdash;the
+      Siren in the act of charming the waves and the winds to sleep. Heaven
+      knows what next would have come, but his arm was arrested. Viola had
+      thrown herself on his breast, and kissed him, with happy eyes that smiled
+      through her sunny hair. At that very moment the door opened,&mdash;a
+      message from the Cardinal. Viola must go to his Eminence at once. Her
+      mother went with her. All was reconciled and settled; Viola had her way,
+      and selected her own opera. O ye dull nations of the North, with your
+      broils and debates,&mdash;your bustling lives of the Pnyx and the Agora!&mdash;you
+      cannot guess what a stir throughout musical Naples was occasioned by the
+      rumour of a new opera and a new singer. But whose the opera? No cabinet
+      intrigue ever was so secret. Pisani came back one night from the theatre,
+      evidently disturbed and irate. Woe to thine ears hadst thou heard the
+      barbiton that night! They had suspended him from his office,&mdash;they
+      feared that the new opera, and the first debut of his daughter as prima
+      donna, would be too much for his nerves. And his variations, his diablerie
+      of sirens and harpies, on such a night, made a hazard not to be
+      contemplated without awe. To be set aside, and on the very night that his
+      child, whose melody was but an emanation of his own, was to perform,&mdash;set
+      aside for some new rival: it was too much for a musician&rsquo;s flesh and
+      blood. For the first time he spoke in words upon the subject, and gravely
+      asked&mdash;for that question the barbiton, eloquent as it was, could not
+      express distinctly&mdash;what was to be the opera, and what the part? And
+      Viola as gravely answered that she was pledged to the Cardinal not to
+      reveal. Pisani said nothing, but disappeared with the violin; and
+      presently they heard the Familiar from the house-top (whither, when
+      thoroughly out of humour, the musician sometimes fled), whining and
+      sighing as if its heart were broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The affections of Pisani were little visible on the surface. He was not
+      one of those fond, caressing fathers whose children are ever playing round
+      their knees; his mind and soul were so thoroughly in his art that domestic
+      life glided by him, seemingly as if THAT were a dream, and the heart the
+      substantial form and body of existence. Persons much cultivating an
+      abstract study are often thus; mathematicians proverbially so. When his
+      servant ran to the celebrated French philosopher, shrieking, &ldquo;The house is
+      on fire, sir!&rdquo; &ldquo;Go and tell my wife then, fool!&rdquo; said the wise man,
+      settling back to his problems; &ldquo;do <i>I</i> ever meddle with domestic
+      affairs?&rdquo; But what are mathematics to music&mdash;music, that not only
+      composes operas, but plays on the barbiton? Do you know what the
+      illustrious Giardini said when the tyro asked how long it would take to
+      learn to play on the violin? Hear, and despair, ye who would bend the bow
+      to which that of Ulysses was a plaything, &ldquo;Twelve hours a day for twenty
+      years together!&rdquo; Can a man, then, who plays the barbiton be always playing
+      also with his little ones? No, Pisani; often, with the keen susceptibility
+      of childhood, poor Viola had stolen from the room to weep at the thought
+      that thou didst not love her. And yet, underneath this outward abstraction
+      of the artist, the natural fondness flowed all the same; and as she grew
+      up, the dreamer had understood the dreamer. And now, shut out from all
+      fame himself; to be forbidden to hail even his daughter&rsquo;s fame!&mdash;and
+      that daughter herself to be in the conspiracy against him! Sharper than
+      the serpent&rsquo;s tooth was the ingratitude, and sharper than the serpent&rsquo;s
+      tooth was the wail of the pitying barbiton!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The eventful hour is come. Viola is gone to the theatre,&mdash;her mother
+      with her. The indignant musician remains at home. Gionetta bursts into the
+      room: my Lord Cardinal&rsquo;s carriage is at the door,&mdash;the Padrone is
+      sent for. He must lay aside his violin; he must put on his brocade coat
+      and his lace ruffles. Here they are,&mdash;quick, quick! And quick rolls
+      the gilded coach, and majestic sits the driver, and statelily prance the
+      steeds. Poor Pisani is lost in a mist of uncomfortable amaze. He arrives
+      at the theatre; he descends at the great door; he turns round and round,
+      and looks about him and about: he misses something,&mdash;where is the
+      violin? Alas! his soul, his voice, his self of self, is left behind! It is
+      but an automaton that the lackeys conduct up the stairs, through the tier,
+      into the Cardinal&rsquo;s box. But then, what bursts upon him! Does he dream?
+      The first act is over (they did not send for him till success seemed no
+      longer doubtful); the first act has decided all. He feels THAT by the
+      electric sympathy which ever the one heart has at once with a vast
+      audience. He feels it by the breathless stillness of that multitude; he
+      feels it even by the lifted finger of the Cardinal. He sees his Viola on
+      the stage, radiant in her robes and gems,&mdash;he hears her voice
+      thrilling through the single heart of the thousands! But the scene, the
+      part, the music! It is his other child,&mdash;his immortal child; the
+      spirit-infant of his soul; his darling of many years of patient obscurity
+      and pining genius; his masterpiece; his opera of the Siren!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, then, was the mystery that had so galled him,&mdash;this the cause
+      of the quarrel with the Cardinal; this the secret not to be proclaimed
+      till the success was won, and the daughter had united her father&rsquo;s triumph
+      with her own! And there she stands, as all souls bow before her,&mdash;fairer
+      than the very Siren he had called from the deeps of melody. Oh, long and
+      sweet recompense of toil! Where is on earth the rapture like that which is
+      known to genius when at last it bursts from its hidden cavern into light
+      and fame!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not speak, he did not move; he stood transfixed, breathless, the
+      tears rolling down his cheeks; only from time to time his hands still
+      wandered about,&mdash;mechanically they sought for the faithful
+      instrument, why was it not there to share his triumph?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the curtain fell; but on such a storm and diapason of applause! Up
+      rose the audience as one man, as with one voice that dear name was
+      shouted. She came on, trembling, pale, and in the whole crowd saw but her
+      father&rsquo;s face. The audience followed those moistened eyes; they recognised
+      with a thrill the daughter&rsquo;s impulse and her meaning. The good old
+      Cardinal drew him gently forward. Wild musician, thy daughter has given
+      thee back more than the life thou gavest!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor violin!&rdquo; said he, wiping his eyes, &ldquo;they will never hiss thee
+      again now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"></a>
+       <!--  H2 anchor -->
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 1.III.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Fra si contrarie tempre in ghiaccio e in foco,
+     In riso e in pianto, e fra paura e speme
+     L&rsquo;ingannatrice Donna&mdash;
+     &ldquo;Gerusal. Lib.,&rdquo; cant. iv. xciv.
+
+     (Between such contrarious mixtures of ice and fire, laughter and
+     tears,&mdash;fear and hope, the deceiving dame.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Now notwithstanding the triumph both of the singer and the opera, there
+      had been one moment in the first act, and, consequently, BEFORE the
+      arrival of Pisani, when the scale seemed more than doubtful. It was in a
+      chorus replete with all the peculiarities of the composer. And when the
+      Maelstrom of Capricci whirled and foamed, and tore ear and sense through
+      every variety of sound, the audience simultaneously recognised the hand of
+      Pisani. A title had been given to the opera which had hitherto prevented
+      all suspicion of its parentage; and the overture and opening, in which the
+      music had been regular and sweet, had led the audience to fancy they
+      detected the genius of their favourite Paisiello. Long accustomed to
+      ridicule and almost to despise the pretensions of Pisani as a composer,
+      they now felt as if they had been unduly cheated into the applause with
+      which they had hailed the overture and the commencing scenas. An ominous
+      buzz circulated round the house: the singers, the orchestra,&mdash;electrically
+      sensitive to the impression of the audience,&mdash;grew, themselves,
+      agitated and dismayed, and failed in the energy and precision which could
+      alone carry off the grotesqueness of the music.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are always in every theatre many rivals to a new author and a new
+      performer,&mdash;a party impotent while all goes well, but a dangerous
+      ambush the instant some accident throws into confusion the march of
+      success. A hiss arose; it was partial, it is true, but the significant
+      silence of all applause seemed to forebode the coming moment when the
+      displeasure would grow contagious. It was the breath that stirred the
+      impending avalanche. At that critical moment Viola, the Siren queen,
+      emerged for the first time from her ocean cave. As she came forward to the
+      lamps, the novelty of her situation, the chilling apathy of the audience,&mdash;which
+      even the sight of so singular a beauty did not at the first arouse,&mdash;the
+      whispers of the malignant singers on the stage, the glare of the lights,
+      and more&mdash;far more than the rest&mdash;that recent hiss, which had
+      reached her in her concealment, all froze up her faculties and suspended
+      her voice. And, instead of the grand invocation into which she ought
+      rapidly to have burst, the regal Siren, retransformed into the trembling
+      girl, stood pale and mute before the stern, cold array of those countless
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that instant, and when consciousness itself seemed about to fail her,
+      as she turned a timid beseeching glance around the still multitude, she
+      perceived, in a box near the stage, a countenance which at once, and like
+      magic, produced on her mind an effect never to be analysed nor forgotten.
+      It was one that awakened an indistinct, haunting reminiscence, as if she
+      had seen it in those day-dreams she had been so wont from infancy to
+      indulge. She could not withdraw her gaze from that face, and as she gazed,
+      the awe and coldness that had before seized her, vanished like a mist from
+      before the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the dark splendour of the eyes that met her own there was indeed so
+      much of gentle encouragement, of benign and compassionate admiration,&mdash;so
+      much that warmed, and animated, and nerved,&mdash;that any one, actor or
+      orator, who has ever observed the effect that a single earnest and kindly
+      look in the crowd that is to be addressed and won, will produce upon his
+      mind, may readily account for the sudden and inspiriting influence which
+      the eye and smile of the stranger exercised on the debutante.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And while yet she gazed, and the glow returned to her heart, the stranger
+      half rose, as if to recall the audience to a sense of the courtesy due to
+      one so fair and young; and the instant his voice gave the signal, the
+      audience followed it by a burst of generous applause. For this stranger
+      himself was a marked personage, and his recent arrival at Naples had
+      divided with the new opera the gossip of the city. And then as the
+      applause ceased, clear, full, and freed from every fetter, like a spirit
+      from the clay, the Siren&rsquo;s voice poured forth its entrancing music. From
+      that time Viola forgot the crowd, the hazard, the whole world,&mdash;except
+      the fairy one over with she presided. It seemed that the stranger&rsquo;s
+      presence only served still more to heighten that delusion, in which the
+      artist sees no creation without the circle of his art, she felt as if that
+      serene brow, and those brilliant eyes, inspired her with powers never
+      known before: and, as if searching for a language to express the strange
+      sensations occasioned by his presence, that presence itself whispered to
+      her the melody and the song.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only when all was over, and she saw her father and felt his joy, did this
+      wild spell vanish before the sweeter one of the household and filial love.
+      Yet again, as she turned from the stage, she looked back involuntarily,
+      and the stranger&rsquo;s calm and half-melancholy smile sank into her heart,&mdash;to
+      live there, to be recalled with confused memories, half of pleasure, and
+      half of pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pass over the congratulations of the good Cardinal-Virtuoso, astonished at
+      finding himself and all Naples had been hitherto in the wrong on a subject
+      of taste,&mdash;still more astonished at finding himself and all Naples
+      combining to confess it; pass over the whispered ecstasies of admiration
+      which buzzed in the singer&rsquo;s ear, as once more, in her modest veil and
+      quiet dress, she escaped from the crowd of gallants that choked up every
+      avenue behind the scenes; pass over the sweet embrace of father and child,
+      returning through the starlit streets and along the deserted Chiaja in the
+      Cardinal&rsquo;s carriage; never pause now to note the tears and ejaculations of
+      the good, simple-hearted mother,&mdash;see them returned; see the
+      well-known room, venimus ad larem nostrum (We come to our own house.); see
+      old Gionetta bustling at the supper; and hear Pisani, as he rouses the
+      barbiton from its case, communicating all that has happened to the
+      intelligent Familiar; hark to the mother&rsquo;s merry, low, English laugh. Why,
+      Viola, strange child, sittest thou apart, thy face leaning on thy fair
+      hands, thine eyes fixed on space? Up, rouse thee! Every dimple on the
+      cheek of home must smile to-night. (&ldquo;Ridete quidquid est domi
+      cachinnorum.&rdquo; Catull. &ldquo;ad Sirm. Penin.&rdquo;)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And a happy reunion it was round that humble table: a feast Lucullus might
+      have envied in his Hall of Apollo, in the dried grapes, and the dainty
+      sardines, and the luxurious polenta, and the old lacrima a present from
+      the good Cardinal. The barbiton, placed on a chair&mdash;a tall,
+      high-backed chair&mdash;beside the musician, seemed to take a part in the
+      festive meal. Its honest varnished face glowed in the light of the lamp;
+      and there was an impish, sly demureness in its very silence, as its
+      master, between every mouthful, turned to talk to it of something he had
+      forgotten to relate before. The good wife looked on affectionately, and
+      could not eat for joy; but suddenly she rose, and placed on the artist&rsquo;s
+      temples a laurel wreath, which she had woven beforehand in fond
+      anticipation; and Viola, on the other side her brother, the barbiton,
+      rearranged the chaplet, and, smoothing back her father&rsquo;s hair, whispered,
+      &ldquo;Caro Padre, you will not let HIM scold me again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then poor Pisani, rather distracted between the two, and excited both by
+      the lacrima and his triumph, turned to the younger child with so naive and
+      grotesque a pride, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know which to thank the most. You give me so
+      much joy, child,&mdash;I am so proud of thee and myself. But he and I,
+      poor fellow, have been so often unhappy together!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Viola&rsquo;s sleep was broken,&mdash;that was natural. The intoxication of
+      vanity and triumph, the happiness in the happiness she had caused, all
+      this was better than sleep. But still from all this, again and again her
+      thoughts flew to those haunting eyes, to that smile with which forever the
+      memory of the triumph, of the happiness, was to be united. Her feelings,
+      like her own character, were strange and peculiar. They were not those of
+      a girl whose heart, for the first time reached through the eye, sighs its
+      natural and native language of first love. It was not so much admiration,
+      though the face that reflected itself on every wave of her restless
+      fancies was of the rarest order of majesty and beauty; nor a pleased and
+      enamoured recollection that the sight of this stranger had bequeathed: it
+      was a human sentiment of gratitude and delight, mixed with something more
+      mysterious, of fear and awe. Certainly she had seen before those features;
+      but when and how? Only when her thoughts had sought to shape out her
+      future, and when, in spite of all the attempts to vision forth a fate of
+      flowers and sunshine, a dark and chill foreboding made her recoil back
+      into her deepest self. It was a something found that had long been sought
+      for by a thousand restless yearnings and vague desires, less of the heart
+      than mind; not as when youth discovers the one to be beloved, but rather
+      as when the student, long wandering after the clew to some truth in
+      science, sees it glimmer dimly before him, to beckon, to recede, to
+      allure, and to wane again. She fell at last into unquiet slumber, vexed by
+      deformed, fleeting, shapeless phantoms; and, waking, as the sun, through a
+      veil of hazy cloud, glinted with a sickly ray across the casement, she
+      heard her father settled back betimes to his one pursuit, and calling
+      forth from his Familiar a low mournful strain, like a dirge over the dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why,&rdquo; she asked, when she descended to the room below,&mdash;&ldquo;why, my
+      father, was your inspiration so sad, after the joy of last night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know not, child. I meant to be merry, and compose an air in honour of
+      thee; but he is an obstinate fellow, this,&mdash;and he would have it so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 1.IV.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     E cosi i pigri e timidi desiri
+     Sprona.
+     &ldquo;Gerusal. Lib.,&rdquo; cant. iv. lxxxviii.
+
+     (And thus the slow and timid passions urged.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It was the custom of Pisani, except when the duties of his profession made
+      special demand on his time, to devote a certain portion of the mid-day to
+      sleep,&mdash;a habit not so much a luxury as a necessity to a man who
+      slept very little during the night. In fact, whether to compose or to
+      practice, the hours of noon were precisely those in which Pisani could not
+      have been active if he would. His genius resembled those fountains full at
+      dawn and evening, overflowing at night, and perfectly dry at the meridian.
+      During this time, consecrated by her husband to repose, the signora
+      generally stole out to make the purchases necessary for the little
+      household, or to enjoy (as what woman does not?) a little relaxation in
+      gossip with some of her own sex. And the day following this brilliant
+      triumph, how many congratulations would she have to receive!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At these times it was Viola&rsquo;s habit to seat herself without the door of
+      the house, under an awning which sheltered from the sun without
+      obstructing the view; and there now, with the prompt-book on her knee, on
+      which her eye roves listlessly from time to time, you may behold her, the
+      vine-leaves clustering from their arching trellis over the door behind,
+      and the lazy white-sailed boats skimming along the sea that stretched
+      before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she thus sat, rather in reverie than thought, a man coming from the
+      direction of Posilipo, with a slow step and downcast eyes, passed close by
+      the house, and Viola, looking up abruptly, started in a kind of terror as
+      she recognised the stranger. She uttered an involuntary exclamation, and
+      the cavalier turning, saw, and paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood a moment or two between her and the sunlit ocean, contemplating
+      in a silence too serious and gentle for the boldness of gallantry, the
+      blushing face and the young slight form before him; at length he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you happy, my child,&rdquo; he said, in almost a paternal tone, &ldquo;at the
+      career that lies before you? From sixteen to thirty, the music in the
+      breath of applause is sweeter than all the music your voice can utter!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know not,&rdquo; replied Viola, falteringly, but encouraged by the liquid
+      softness of the accents that addressed her,&mdash;&ldquo;I know not whether I am
+      happy now, but I was last night. And I feel, too, Excellency, that I have
+      you to thank, though, perhaps, you scarce know why!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You deceive yourself,&rdquo; said the cavalier, with a smile. &ldquo;I am aware that
+      I assisted to your merited success, and it is you who scarce know how. The
+      WHY I will tell you: because I saw in your heart a nobler ambition than
+      that of the woman&rsquo;s vanity; it was the daughter that interested me.
+      Perhaps you would rather I should have admired the singer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; oh, no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I believe you. And now, since we have thus met, I will pause to
+      counsel you. When next you go to the theatre, you will have at your feet
+      all the young gallants of Naples. Poor infant! the flame that dazzles the
+      eye can scorch the wing. Remember that the only homage that does not sully
+      must be that which these gallants will not give thee. And whatever thy
+      dreams of the future,&mdash;and I see, while I speak to thee, how
+      wandering they are, and wild,&mdash;may only those be fulfilled which
+      centre round the hearth of home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused, as Viola&rsquo;s breast heaved beneath its robe. And with a burst of
+      natural and innocent emotions, scarcely comprehending, though an Italian,
+      the grave nature of his advice, she exclaimed,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Excellency, you cannot know how dear to me that home is already. And
+      my father,&mdash;there would be no home, signor, without him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A deep and melancholy shade settled over the face of the cavalier. He
+      looked up at the quiet house buried amidst the vine-leaves, and turned
+      again to the vivid, animated face of the young actress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is well,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;A simple heart may be its own best guide, and so,
+      go on, and prosper. Adieu, fair singer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adieu, Excellency; but,&rdquo; and something she could not resist&mdash;an
+      anxious, sickening feeling of fear and hope,&mdash;impelled her to the
+      question, &ldquo;I shall see you again, shall I not, at San Carlo?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not, at least, for some time. I leave Naples to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed!&rdquo; and Viola&rsquo;s heart sank within her; the poetry of the stage was
+      gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; said the cavalier, turning back, and gently laying his hand on
+      hers,&mdash;&ldquo;and, perhaps, before we meet, you may have suffered: known
+      the first sharp griefs of human life,&mdash;known how little what fame can
+      gain, repays what the heart can lose; but be brave and yield not,&mdash;not
+      even to what may seem the piety of sorrow. Observe yon tree in your
+      neighbour&rsquo;s garden. Look how it grows up, crooked and distorted. Some wind
+      scattered the germ from which it sprang, in the clefts of the rock; choked
+      up and walled round by crags and buildings, by Nature and man, its life
+      has been one struggle for the light,&mdash;light which makes to that life
+      the necessity and the principle: you see how it has writhed and twisted;
+      how, meeting the barrier in one spot, it has laboured and worked, stem and
+      branches, towards the clear skies at last. What has preserved it through
+      each disfavour of birth and circumstances,&mdash;why are its leaves as
+      green and fair as those of the vine behind you, which, with all its arms,
+      can embrace the open sunshine? My child, because of the very instinct that
+      impelled the struggle,&mdash;because the labour for the light won to the
+      light at length. So with a gallant heart, through every adverse accident
+      of sorrow and of fate to turn to the sun, to strive for the heaven; this
+      it is that gives knowledge to the strong and happiness to the weak. Ere we
+      meet again, you will turn sad and heavy eyes to those quiet boughs, and
+      when you hear the birds sing from them, and see the sunshine come aslant
+      from crag and housetop to be the playfellow of their leaves, learn the
+      lesson that Nature teaches you, and strive through darkness to the light!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he moved on slowly, and left Viola wondering, silent, saddened
+      with his dim prophecy of coming evil, and yet, through sadness, charmed.
+      Involuntarily her eyes followed him,&mdash;involuntarily she stretched
+      forth her arms, as if by a gesture to call him back; she would have given
+      worlds to have seen him turn,&mdash;to have heard once more his low, calm,
+      silvery voice; to have felt again the light touch of his hand on hers. As
+      moonlight that softens into beauty every angle on which it falls, seemed
+      his presence,&mdash;as moonlight vanishes, and things assume their common
+      aspect of the rugged and the mean, he receded from her eyes, and the
+      outward scene was commonplace once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger passed on, through that long and lovely road which reaches at
+      last the palaces that face the public gardens, and conducts to the more
+      populous quarters of the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A group of young, dissipated courtiers, loitering by the gateway of a
+      house which was open for the favourite pastime of the day,&mdash;the
+      resort of the wealthier and more high-born gamesters,&mdash;made way for
+      him, as with a courteous inclination he passed them by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Per fede,&rdquo; said one, &ldquo;is not that the rich Zanoni, of whom the town
+      talks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay; they say his wealth is incalculable!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;THEY say,&mdash;who are THEY?&mdash;what is the authority? He has not
+      been many days at Naples, and I cannot yet find any one who knows aught of
+      his birthplace, his parentage, or, what is more important, his estates!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is true; but he arrived in a goodly vessel, which THEY SAY is his
+      own. See,&mdash;no, you cannot see it here; but it rides yonder in the
+      bay. The bankers he deals with speak with awe of the sums placed in their
+      hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whence came he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From some seaport in the East. My valet learned from some of the sailors
+      on the Mole that he had resided many years in the interior of India.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I am told that in India men pick up gold like pebbles, and that there
+      are valleys where the birds build their nests with emeralds to attract the
+      moths. Here comes our prince of gamesters, Cetoxa; be sure that he already
+      must have made acquaintance with so wealthy a cavalier; he has that
+      attraction to gold which the magnet has to steel. Well, Cetoxa, what fresh
+      news of the ducats of Signor Zanoni?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Cetoxa, carelessly, &ldquo;my friend&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! ha! hear him; his friend&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; my friend Zanoni is going to Rome for a short time; when he returns,
+      he has promised me to fix a day to sup with me, and I will then introduce
+      him to you, and to the best society of Naples! Diavolo! but he is a most
+      agreeable and witty gentleman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pray tell us how you came so suddenly to be his friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Belgioso, nothing more natural. He desired a box at San Carlo;
+      but I need not tell you that the expectation of a new opera (ah, how
+      superb it is,&mdash;that poor devil, Pisani; who would have thought it?)
+      and a new singer (what a face,&mdash;what a voice!&mdash;ah!) had engaged
+      every corner of the house. I heard of Zanoni&rsquo;s desire to honour the talent
+      of Naples, and, with my usual courtesy to distinguished strangers, I sent
+      to place my box at his disposal. He accepts it,&mdash;I wait on him
+      between the acts; he is most charming; he invites me to supper. Cospetto,
+      what a retinue! We sit late,&mdash;I tell him all the news of Naples; we
+      grow bosom friends; he presses on me this diamond before we part,&mdash;is
+      a trifle, he tells me: the jewellers value it at 5000 pistoles!&mdash;the
+      merriest evening I have passed these ten years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cavaliers crowded round to admire the diamond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Signor Count Cetoxa,&rdquo; said one grave-looking sombre man, who had crossed
+      himself two or three times during the Neapolitan&rsquo;s narrative, &ldquo;are you not
+      aware of the strange reports about this person; and are you not afraid to
+      receive from him a gift which may carry with it the most fatal
+      consequences? Do you not know that he is said to be a sorcerer; to possess
+      the mal-occhio; to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Prithee, spare us your antiquated superstitions,&rdquo; interrupted Cetoxa,
+      contemptuously. &ldquo;They are out of fashion; nothing now goes down but
+      scepticism and philosophy. And what, after all, do these rumours, when
+      sifted, amount to? They have no origin but this,&mdash;a silly old man of
+      eighty-six, quite in his dotage, solemnly avers that he saw this same
+      Zanoni seventy years ago (he himself, the narrator, then a mere boy) at
+      Milan; when this very Zanoni, as you all see, is at least as young as you
+      or I, Belgioso.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that,&rdquo; said the grave gentleman,&mdash;&ldquo;THAT is the mystery. Old
+      Avelli declares that Zanoni does not seem a day older than when they met
+      at Milan. He says that even then at Milan&mdash;mark this&mdash;where,
+      though under another name, this Zanoni appeared in the same splendour, he
+      was attended also by the same mystery. And that an old man THERE
+      remembered to have seen him sixty years before, in Sweden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tush,&rdquo; returned Cetoxa, &ldquo;the same thing has been said of the quack
+      Cagliostro,&mdash;mere fables. I will believe them when I see this diamond
+      turn to a wisp of hay. For the rest,&rdquo; he added gravely, &ldquo;I consider this
+      illustrious gentleman my friend; and a whisper against his honour and
+      repute will in future be equivalent to an affront to myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cetoxa was a redoubted swordsman, and excelled in a peculiarly awkward
+      manoeuvre, which he himself had added to the variations of the stoccata.
+      The grave gentleman, however anxious for the spiritual weal of the count,
+      had an equal regard for his own corporeal safety. He contented himself
+      with a look of compassion, and, turning through the gateway, ascended the
+      stairs to the gaming-tables.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha, ha!&rdquo; said Cetoxa, laughing, &ldquo;our good Loredano is envious of my
+      diamond. Gentlemen, you sup with me to-night. I assure you I never met a
+      more delightful, sociable, entertaining person, than my dear friend the
+      Signor Zanoni.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 1.V.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Quello Ippogifo, grande e strano augello
+     Lo porta via.
+     &ldquo;Orlando Furioso,&rdquo; c. vi. xviii.
+
+     (That hippogriff, great and marvellous bird, bears him away.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And now, accompanying this mysterious Zanoni, am I compelled to bid a
+      short farewell to Naples. Mount behind me,&mdash;mount on my hippogriff,
+      reader; settle yourself at your ease. I bought the pillion the other day
+      of a poet who loves his comfort; it has been newly stuffed for your
+      special accommodation. So, so, we ascend! Look as we ride aloft,&mdash;look!&mdash;never
+      fear, hippogriffs never stumble; and every hippogriff in Italy is
+      warranted to carry elderly gentlemen,&mdash;look down on the gliding
+      landscapes! There, near the ruins of the Oscan&rsquo;s old Atella, rises Aversa,
+      once the stronghold of the Norman; there gleam the columns of Capua, above
+      the Vulturnian Stream. Hail to ye, cornfields and vineyards famous for the
+      old Falernian! Hail to ye, golden orange-groves of Mola di Gaeta! Hail to
+      ye, sweet shrubs and wild flowers, omnis copia narium, that clothe the
+      mountain-skirts of the silent Lautulae! Shall we rest at the Volscian
+      Anxur,&mdash;the modern Terracina,&mdash;where the lofty rock stands like
+      the giant that guards the last borders of the southern land of love? Away,
+      away! and hold your breath as we flit above the Pontine Marshes. Dreary
+      and desolate, their miasma is to the gardens we have passed what the rank
+      commonplace of life is to the heart when it has left love behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mournful Campagna, thou openest on us in majestic sadness. Rome,
+      seven-hilled Rome! receive us as Memory receives the way-worn; receive us
+      in silence, amidst ruins! Where is the traveller we pursue? Turn the
+      hippogriff loose to graze: he loves the acanthus that wreathes round yon
+      broken columns. Yes, that is the arch of Titus, the conqueror of
+      Jerusalem,&mdash;that the Colosseum! Through one passed the triumph of the
+      deified invader; in one fell the butchered gladiators. Monuments of
+      murder, how poor the thoughts, how mean the memories ye awaken, compared
+      with those that speak to the heart of man on the heights of Phyle, or by
+      thy lone mound, grey Marathon! We stand amidst weeds and brambles and long
+      waving herbage. Where we stand reigned Nero,&mdash;here were his
+      tessellated floors; here,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mighty in the heaven, a second heaven,&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      hung the vault of his ivory roofs; here, arch upon arch, pillar on pillar,
+      glittered to the world the golden palace of its master,&mdash;the Golden
+      House of Nero. How the lizard watches us with his bright, timorous eye! We
+      disturb his reign. Gather that wild flower: the Golden House is vanished,
+      but the wild flower may have kin to those which the stranger&rsquo;s hand
+      scattered over the tyrant&rsquo;s grave; see, over this soil, the grave of Rome,
+      Nature strews the wild flowers still!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of this desolation is an old building of the middle ages.
+      Here dwells a singular recluse. In the season of the malaria the native
+      peasant flies the rank vegetation round; but he, a stranger and a
+      foreigner, no associates, no companions, except books and instruments of
+      science. He is often seen wandering over the grass-grown hills, or
+      sauntering through the streets of the new city, not with the absent brow
+      and incurious air of students, but with observant piercing eyes that seem
+      to dive into the hearts of the passers-by. An old man, but not infirm,&mdash;erect
+      and stately, as if in his prime. None know whether he be rich or poor. He
+      asks no charity, and he gives none,&mdash;he does no evil, and seems to
+      confer no good. He is a man who appears to have no world beyond himself;
+      but appearances are deceitful, and Science, as well as Benevolence, lives
+      in the Universe. This abode, for the first time since thus occupied, a
+      visitor enters. It is Zanoni.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You observe those two men seated together, conversing earnestly. Years
+      long and many have flown away since they met last,&mdash;at least, bodily,
+      and face to face. But if they are sages, thought can meet thought, and
+      spirit spirit, though oceans divide the forms. Death itself divides not
+      the wise. Thou meetest Plato when thine eyes moisten over the Phaedo. May
+      Homer live with all men forever!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They converse; they confess to each other; they conjure up the past, and
+      repeople it; but note how differently do such remembrances affect the two.
+      On Zanoni&rsquo;s face, despite its habitual calm, the emotions change and go.
+      HE has acted in the past he surveys; but not a trace of the humanity that
+      participates in joy and sorrow can be detected on the passionless visage
+      of his companion; the past, to him, as is now the present, has been but as
+      Nature to the sage, the volume to the student,&mdash;a calm and spiritual
+      life, a study, a contemplation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the past they turn to the future. Ah! at the close of the last
+      century, the future seemed a thing tangible,&mdash;it was woven up in all
+      men&rsquo;s fears and hopes of the present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the verge of that hundred years, Man, the ripest born of Time,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (&ldquo;An des Jahrhunderts Neige, Der reifste Sohn der Zeit.&rdquo; &ldquo;Die Kunstler.&rdquo;)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      stood as at the deathbed of the Old World, and beheld the New Orb,
+      blood-red amidst cloud and vapour,&mdash;uncertain if a comet or a sun.
+      Behold the icy and profound disdain on the brow of the old man,&mdash;the
+      lofty yet touching sadness that darkens the glorious countenance of
+      Zanoni. Is it that one views with contempt the struggle and its issue, and
+      the other with awe or pity? Wisdom contemplating mankind leads but to the
+      two results,&mdash;compassion or disdain. He who believes in other worlds
+      can accustom himself to look on this as the naturalist on the revolutions
+      of an ant-hill, or of a leaf. What is the Earth to Infinity,&mdash;what
+      its duration to the Eternal? Oh, how much greater is the soul of one man
+      than the vicissitudes of the whole globe! Child of heaven, and heir of
+      immortality, how from some star hereafter wilt thou look back on the
+      ant-hill and its commotions, from Clovis to Robespierre, from Noah to the
+      Final Fire. The spirit that can contemplate, that lives only in the
+      intellect, can ascend to its star, even from the midst of the
+      burial-ground called Earth, and while the sarcophagus called Life immures
+      in its clay the everlasting!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But thou, Zanoni,&mdash;thou hast refused to live ONLY in the intellect;
+      thou hast not mortified the heart; thy pulse still beats with the sweet
+      music of mortal passion; thy kind is to thee still something warmer than
+      an abstraction,&mdash;thou wouldst look upon this Revolution in its
+      cradle, which the storms rock; thou wouldst see the world while its
+      elements yet struggle through the chaos!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Go!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 1.VI.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Precepteurs ignorans de ce faible univers.&mdash;Voltaire.
+     (Ignorant teachers of this weak world.)
+
+     Nous etions a table chez un de nos confreres a l&rsquo;Academie,
+     Grand Seigneur et homme d&rsquo;esprit.&mdash;La Harpe.
+     (We supped with one of our confreres of the Academy,&mdash;a great
+     nobleman and wit.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      One evening, at Paris, several months after the date of our last chapter,
+      there was a reunion of some of the most eminent wits of the time, at the
+      house of a personage distinguished alike by noble birth and liberal
+      accomplishments. Nearly all present were of the views that were then the
+      mode. For, as came afterwards a time when nothing was so unpopular as the
+      people, so that was the time when nothing was so vulgar as aristocracy.
+      The airiest fine gentleman and the haughtiest noble prated of equality,
+      and lisped enlightenment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the more remarkable guests were Condorcet, then in the prime of his
+      reputation, the correspondent of the king of Prussia, the intimate of
+      Voltaire, the member of half the academies of Europe,&mdash;noble by
+      birth, polished in manners, republican in opinions. There, too, was the
+      venerable Malesherbes, &ldquo;l&rsquo;amour et les delices de la Nation.&rdquo; (The idol
+      and delight of the nation (so-called by his historian, Gaillard).) There
+      Jean Silvain Bailly, the accomplished scholar,&mdash;the aspiring
+      politician. It was one of those petits soupers for which the capital of
+      all social pleasures was so renowned. The conversation, as might be
+      expected, was literary and intellectual, enlivened by graceful pleasantry.
+      Many of the ladies of that ancient and proud noblesse&mdash;for the
+      noblesse yet existed, though its hours were already numbered&mdash;added
+      to the charm of the society; and theirs were the boldest criticisms, and
+      often the most liberal sentiments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vain labour for me&mdash;vain labour almost for the grave English language&mdash;to
+      do justice to the sparkling paradoxes that flew from lip to lip. The
+      favourite theme was the superiority of the moderns to the ancients.
+      Condorcet on this head was eloquent, and to some, at least, of his
+      audience, most convincing. That Voltaire was greater than Homer few there
+      were disposed to deny. Keen was the ridicule lavished on the dull pedantry
+      which finds everything ancient necessarily sublime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet,&rdquo; said the graceful Marquis de &mdash;, as the champagne danced to
+      his glass, &ldquo;more ridiculous still is the superstition that finds
+      everything incomprehensible holy! But intelligence circulates, Condorcet;
+      like water, it finds its level. My hairdresser said to me this morning,
+      &lsquo;Though I am but a poor fellow, I believe as little as the finest
+      gentleman!&rsquo;&rdquo; &ldquo;Unquestionably, the great Revolution draws near to its final
+      completion,&mdash;a pas de geant, as Montesquieu said of his own immortal
+      work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there rushed from all&mdash;wit and noble, courtier and republican&mdash;a
+      confused chorus, harmonious only in its anticipation of the brilliant
+      things to which &ldquo;the great Revolution&rdquo; was to give birth. Here Condrocet
+      is more eloquent than before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Il faut absolument que la Superstition et le Fanatisme fassent place a la
+      Philosophie. (It must necessarily happen that superstition and fanaticism
+      give place to philosophy.) Kings persecute persons, priests opinion.
+      Without kings, men must be safe; and without priests, minds must be free.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; murmured the marquis, &ldquo;and as ce cher Diderot has so well sung,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Et des boyaux du dernier pretre Serrez le cou du dernier roi.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     (And throttle the neck of the last king with the string from
+     the bowels of the last priest.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then,&rdquo; resumed Condorcet,&mdash;&ldquo;then commences the Age of Reason!&mdash;equality
+      in instruction, equality in institutions, equality in wealth! The great
+      impediments to knowledge are, first, the want of a common language; and
+      next, the short duration of existence. But as to the first, when all men
+      are brothers, why not a universal language? As to the second, the organic
+      perfectibility of the vegetable world is undisputed, is Nature less
+      powerful in the nobler existence of thinking man? The very destruction of
+      the two most active causes of physical deterioration&mdash;here, luxurious
+      wealth; there, abject penury,&mdash;must necessarily prolong the general
+      term of life. (See Condorcet&rsquo;s posthumous work on the Progress of the
+      Human Mind.&mdash;Ed.) The art of medicine will then be honoured in the
+      place of war, which is the art of murder: the noblest study of the acutest
+      minds will be devoted to the discovery and arrest of the causes of
+      disease. Life, I grant, cannot be made eternal; but it may be prolonged
+      almost indefinitely. And as the meaner animal bequeaths its vigour to its
+      offspring, so man shall transmit his improved organisation, mental and
+      physical, to his sons. Oh, yes, to such a consummation does our age
+      approach!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The venerable Malesherbes sighed. Perhaps he feared the consummation might
+      not come in time for him. The handsome Marquis de &mdash; and the ladies,
+      yet handsomer than he, looked conviction and delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But two men there were, seated next to each other, who joined not in the
+      general talk: the one a stranger newly arrived in Paris, where his wealth,
+      his person, and his accomplishments, had already made him remarked and
+      courted; the other, an old man, somewhere about seventy,&mdash;the witty
+      and virtuous, brave, and still light-hearted Cazotte, the author of &ldquo;Le
+      Diable Amoureux.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These two conversed familiarly, and apart from the rest, and only by an
+      occasional smile testified their attention to the general conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the stranger,&mdash;&ldquo;yes, we have met before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought I could not forget your countenance; yet I task in vain my
+      recollections of the past.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will assist you. Recall the time when, led by curiosity, or perhaps the
+      nobler desire of knowledge, you sought initiation into the mysterious
+      order of Martines de Pasqualis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      (It is so recorded of Cazotte. Of Martines de Pasqualis little is known;
+      even the country to which he belonged is matter of conjecture. Equally so
+      the rites, ceremonies, and nature of the cabalistic order he established.
+      St. Martin was a disciple of the school, and that, at least, is in its
+      favour; for in spite of his mysticism, no man more beneficent, generous,
+      pure, and virtuous than St. Martin adorned the last century. Above all, no
+      man more distinguished himself from the herd of sceptical philosophers by
+      the gallantry and fervour with which he combated materialism, and
+      vindicated the necessity of faith amidst a chaos of unbelief. It may also
+      be observed, that Cazotte, whatever else he learned of the brotherhood of
+      Martines, learned nothing that diminished the excellence of his life and
+      the sincerity of his religion. At once gentle and brave, he never ceased
+      to oppose the excesses of the Revolution. To the last, unlike the Liberals
+      of his time, he was a devout and sincere Christian. Before his execution,
+      he demanded a pen and paper to write these words: &ldquo;Ma femme, mes enfans,
+      ne me pleurez pas; ne m&rsquo;oubliez pas, mais souvenez-vous surtout de ne
+      jamais offenser Dieu.&rdquo; (&ldquo;My wife, my children, weep not for me; forget me
+      not, but remember above everything never to offend God.)&mdash;Ed.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, is it possible! You are one of that theurgic brotherhood?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, I attended their ceremonies but to see how vainly they sought to
+      revive the ancient marvels of the cabala.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such studies please you? I have shaken off the influence they once had on
+      my own imagination.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have not shaken it off,&rdquo; returned the stranger, bravely; &ldquo;it is on
+      you still,&mdash;on you at this hour; it beats in your heart; it kindles
+      in your reason; it will speak in your tongue!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, with a yet lower voice, the stranger continued to address him,
+      to remind him of certain ceremonies and doctrines,&mdash;to explain and
+      enforce them by references to the actual experience and history of his
+      listener, which Cazotte thrilled to find so familiar to a stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gradually the old man&rsquo;s pleasing and benevolent countenance grew overcast,
+      and he turned, from time to time, searching, curious, uneasy glances
+      towards his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The charming Duchesse de G&mdash; archly pointed out to the lively guests
+      the abstracted air and clouded brow of the poet; and Condorcet, who liked
+      no one else to be remarked, when he himself was present, said to Cazotte,
+      &ldquo;Well, and what do YOU predict of the Revolution,&mdash;how, at least,
+      will it affect us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that question Cazotte started; his cheeks grew pale, large drops stood
+      on his forehead; his lips writhed; his gay companions gazed on him in
+      surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak!&rdquo; whispered the stranger, laying his hand gently upon the arm of
+      the old wit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that word Cazotte&rsquo;s face grew locked and rigid, his eyes dwelt vacantly
+      on space, and in a low, hollow voice, he thus answered
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (The following prophecy (not unfamiliar, perhaps, to some of my readers),
+      with some slight variations, and at greater length, in the text of the
+      authority I am about to cite, is to be found in La Harpe&rsquo;s posthumous
+      works. The MS. is said to exist still in La Harpe&rsquo;s handwriting, and the
+      story is given on M. Petitot&rsquo;s authority, volume i. page 62. It is not for
+      me to enquire if there be doubts of its foundation on fact.&mdash;Ed.),&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ask how it will affect yourselves,&mdash;you, its most learned, and
+      its least selfish agents. I will answer: you, Marquis de Condorcet, will
+      die in prison, but not by the hand of the executioner. In the peaceful
+      happiness of that day, the philosopher will carry about with him not the
+      elixir but the poison.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor Cazotte,&rdquo; said Condorcet, with his gentle smile, &ldquo;what have
+      prisons, executioners, and poison to do with an age of liberty and
+      brotherhood?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is in the names of Liberty and Brotherhood that the prisons will reek,
+      and the headsman be glutted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are thinking of priestcraft, not philosophy, Cazotte,&rdquo; said
+      Champfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (Champfort, one of those men of letters who, though misled by the first
+      fair show of the Revolution, refused to follow the baser men of action
+      into its horrible excesses, lived to express the murderous philanthropy of
+      its agents by the best bon mot of the time. Seeing written on the walls,
+      &ldquo;Fraternite ou la Mort,&rdquo; he observed that the sentiment should be
+      translated thus, &ldquo;Sois mon frere, ou je te tue.&rdquo; (&ldquo;Be my brother, or I
+      kill thee.&rdquo;)) &ldquo;And what of me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will open your own veins to escape the fraternity of Cain. Be
+      comforted; the last drops will not follow the razor. For you, venerable
+      Malesherbes; for you, Aimar Nicolai; for you, learned Bailly,&mdash;I see
+      them dress the scaffold! And all the while, O great philosophers, your
+      murderers will have no word but philosophy on their lips!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The hush was complete and universal when the pupil of Voltaire&mdash;the
+      prince of the academic sceptics, hot La Harpe&mdash;cried with a sarcastic
+      laugh, &ldquo;Do not flatter me, O prophet, by exemption from the fate of my
+      companions. Shall <i>I</i> have no part to play in this drama of your
+      fantasies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this question, Cazotte&rsquo;s countenance lost its unnatural expression of
+      awe and sternness; the sardonic humour most common to it came back and
+      played in his brightening eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, La Harpe, the most wonderful part of all! YOU will become&mdash;a
+      Christian!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was too much for the audience that a moment before seemed grave and
+      thoughtful, and they burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, while
+      Cazotte, as if exhausted by his predictions, sank back in his chair, and
+      breathed hard and heavily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; said Madame de G&mdash;, &ldquo;you who have predicted such grave things
+      concerning us, must prophesy something also about yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A convulsive tremor shook the involuntary prophet,&mdash;it passed, and
+      left his countenance elevated by an expression of resignation and calm.
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; said he, after a long pause, &ldquo;during the siege of Jerusalem, we
+      are told by its historian that a man, for seven successive days, went
+      round the ramparts, exclaiming, &lsquo;Woe to thee, Jerusalem,&mdash;woe to
+      myself!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Cazotte, well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And on the seventh day, while he thus spoke, a stone from the machines of
+      the Romans dashed him into atoms!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With these words, Cazotte rose; and the guests, awed in spite of
+      themselves, shortly afterwards broke up and retired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 1.VII.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Qui donc t&rsquo;a donne la mission s&rsquo;annoncer au peuple que la
+     divinite n&rsquo;existe pas?  Quel avantage trouves-tu a persuader a
+     l&rsquo;homme qu&rsquo;une force aveugle preside a ses destinees et frappe au
+     hasard le crime et la vertu?&mdash;Robespierre, &ldquo;Discours,&rdquo; Mai 7,
+     1794.
+
+     (Who then invested you with the mission to announce to the people
+     that there is no God?  What advantage find you in persuading man
+     that nothing but blind force presides over his destinies, and
+     strikes haphazard both crime and virtue?)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It was some time before midnight when the stranger returned home. His
+      apartments were situated in one of those vast abodes which may be called
+      an epitome of Paris itself,&mdash;the cellars rented by mechanics,
+      scarcely removed a step from paupers, often by outcasts and fugitives from
+      the law, often by some daring writer, who, after scattering amongst the
+      people doctrines the most subversive of order, or the most libellous on
+      the characters of priest, minister, and king, retired amongst the rats, to
+      escape the persecution that attends the virtuous; the ground-floor
+      occupied by shops; the entresol by artists; the principal stories by
+      nobles; and the garrets by journeymen or grisettes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the stranger passed up the stairs, a young man of a form and
+      countenance singularly unprepossessing emerged from a door in the
+      entresol, and brushed beside him. His glance was furtive, sinister,
+      savage, and yet timorous; the man&rsquo;s face was of an ashen paleness, and the
+      features worked convulsively. The stranger paused, and observed him with
+      thoughtful looks, as he hurried down the stairs. While he thus stood, he
+      heard a groan from the room which the young man had just quitted; the
+      latter had pulled to the door with hasty vehemence, but some fragment,
+      probably of fuel, had prevented its closing, and it now stood slightly
+      ajar; the stranger pushed it open and entered. He passed a small anteroom,
+      meanly furnished, and stood in a bedchamber of meagre and sordid
+      discomfort. Stretched on the bed, and writhing in pain, lay an old man; a
+      single candle lit the room, and threw its feeble ray over the furrowed and
+      death-like face of the sick person. No attendant was by; he seemed left
+      alone, to breathe his last. &ldquo;Water,&rdquo; he moaned feebly,&mdash;&ldquo;water:&mdash;I
+      parch,&mdash;I burn!&rdquo; The intruder approached the bed, bent over him, and
+      took his hand. &ldquo;Oh, bless thee, Jean, bless thee!&rdquo; said the sufferer;
+      &ldquo;hast thou brought back the physician already? Sir, I am poor, but I can
+      pay you well. I would not die yet, for that young man&rsquo;s sake.&rdquo; And he sat
+      upright in his bed, and fixed his dim eyes anxiously on his visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are your symptoms, your disease?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fire, fire, fire in the heart, the entrails: I burn!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long is it since you have taken food?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Food! only this broth. There is the basin, all I have taken these six
+      hours. I had scarce drunk it ere these pains began.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger looked at the basin; some portion of the contents was yet
+      left there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who administered this to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who? Jean! Who else should? I have no servant,&mdash;none! I am poor,
+      very poor, sir. But no! you physicians do not care for the poor. I AM
+      RICH! can you cure me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if Heaven permit. Wait but a few moments.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man was fast sinking under the rapid effects of poison. The
+      stranger repaired to his own apartments, and returned in a few moments
+      with some preparation that had the instant result of an antidote. The pain
+      ceased, the blue and livid colour receded from the lips; the old man fell
+      into a profound sleep. The stranger drew the curtains round the bed, took
+      up the light, and inspected the apartment. The walls of both rooms were
+      hung with drawings of masterly excellence. A portfolio was filled with
+      sketches of equal skill,&mdash;but these last were mostly subjects that
+      appalled the eye and revolted the taste: they displayed the human figure
+      in every variety of suffering,&mdash;the rack, the wheel, the gibbet; all
+      that cruelty has invented to sharpen the pangs of death seemed yet more
+      dreadful from the passionate gusto and earnest force of the designer. And
+      some of the countenances of those thus delineated were sufficiently
+      removed from the ideal to show that they were portraits; in a large, bold,
+      irregular hand was written beneath these drawings, &ldquo;The Future of the
+      Aristocrats.&rdquo; In a corner of the room, and close by an old bureau, was a
+      small bundle, over which, as if to hide it, a cloak was thrown carelessly.
+      Several shelves were filled with books; these were almost entirely the
+      works of the philosophers of the time,&mdash;the philosophers of the
+      material school, especially the Encyclopedistes, whom Robespierre
+      afterwards so singularly attacked when the coward deemed it unsafe to
+      leave his reign without a God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (&ldquo;Cette secte (les Encyclopedistes) propagea avec beaucoup de zele
+      l&rsquo;opinion du materialisme, qui prevalut parmi les grands et parmi les
+      beaux esprits; on lui doit en partie cette espece de philosophie pratique
+      qui, reduisant l&rsquo;Egoisme en systeme regarde la societe humaine comme une
+      guerre de ruse, le succes comme la regle du juste et de l&rsquo;injuste, la
+      probite comme une affaire de gout, ou de bienseance, le monde comme le
+      patrimoine des fripons adroits.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Discours de Robespierre,&rdquo; Mai 7,
+      1794. (This sect (the Encyclopaedists) propagate with much zeal the
+      doctrine of materialism, which prevails among the great and the wits; we
+      owe to it partly that kind of practical philosophy which, reducing Egotism
+      to a system, looks upon society as a war of cunning; success the rule of
+      right and wrong, honesty as an affair of taste or decency: and the world
+      as the patrimony of clever scoundrels.))
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A volume lay on a table,&mdash;it was one of Voltaire, and the page was
+      opened at his argumentative assertion of the existence of the Supreme
+      Being. (&ldquo;Histoire de Jenni.&rdquo;) The margin was covered with pencilled notes,
+      in the stiff but tremulous hand of old age; all in attempt to refute or to
+      ridicule the logic of the sage of Ferney: Voltaire did not go far enough
+      for the annotator! The clock struck two, when the sound of steps was heard
+      without. The stranger silently seated himself on the farther side of the
+      bed, and its drapery screened him, as he sat, from the eyes of a man who
+      now entered on tiptoe; it was the same person who had passed him on the
+      stairs. The new-comer took up the candle and approached the bed. The old
+      man&rsquo;s face was turned to the pillow; but he lay so still, and his
+      breathing was so inaudible, that his sleep might well, by that hasty,
+      shrinking, guilty glance, be mistaken for the repose of death. The
+      new-comer drew back, and a grim smile passed over his face: he replaced
+      the candle on the table, opened the bureau with a key which he took from
+      his pocket, and loaded himself with several rouleaus of gold that he found
+      in the drawers. At this time the old man began to wake. He stirred, he
+      looked up; he turned his eyes towards the light now waning in its socket;
+      he saw the robber at his work; he sat erect for an instant, as if
+      transfixed, more even by astonishment than terror. At last he sprang from
+      his bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just Heaven! do I dream! Thou&mdash;thou&mdash;thou, for whom I toiled
+      and starved!&mdash;THOU!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The robber started; the gold fell from his hand, and rolled on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;art thou not dead yet? Has the poison failed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poison, boy! Ah!&rdquo; shrieked the old man, and covered his face with his
+      hands; then, with sudden energy, he exclaimed, &ldquo;Jean! Jean! recall that
+      word. Rob, plunder me if thou wilt, but do not say thou couldst murder one
+      who only lived for thee! There, there, take the gold; I hoarded it but for
+      thee. Go! go!&rdquo; and the old man, who in his passion had quitted his bed,
+      fell at the feet of the foiled assassin, and writhed on the ground,&mdash;the
+      mental agony more intolerable than that of the body, which he had so
+      lately undergone. The robber looked at him with a hard disdain. &ldquo;What have
+      I ever done to thee, wretch?&rdquo; cried the old man,&mdash;&ldquo;what but loved and
+      cherished thee? Thou wert an orphan,&mdash;an outcast. I nurtured, nursed,
+      adopted thee as my son. If men call me a miser, it was but that none might
+      despise thee, my heir, because Nature has stunted and deformed thee, when
+      I was no more. Thou wouldst have had all when I was dead. Couldst thou not
+      spare me a few months or days,&mdash;nothing to thy youth, all that is
+      left to my age? What have I done to thee?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou hast continued to live, and thou wouldst make no will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;TON DIEU! Thy God! Fool! Hast thou not told me, from my childhood, that
+      there is NO God? Hast thou not fed me on philosophy? Hast thou not said,
+      &lsquo;Be virtuous, be good, be just, for the sake of mankind: but there is no
+      life after this life&rsquo;? Mankind! why should I love mankind? Hideous and
+      misshapen, mankind jeer at me as I pass the streets. What hast thou done
+      to me? Thou hast taken away from me, who am the scoff of this world, the
+      hopes of another! Is there no other life? Well, then, I want thy gold,
+      that at least I may hasten to make the best of this!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monster! Curses light on thy ingratitude, thy&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who hears thy curses? Thou knowest there is no God! Mark me; I have
+      prepared all to fly. See,&mdash;I have my passport; my horses wait
+      without; relays are ordered. I have thy gold.&rdquo; (And the wretch, as he
+      spoke, continued coldly to load his person with the rouleaus). &ldquo;And now,
+      if I spare thy life, how shall I be sure that thou wilt not inform against
+      mine?&rdquo; He advanced with a gloomy scowl and a menacing gesture as he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man&rsquo;s anger changed to fear. He cowered before the savage. &ldquo;Let me
+      live! let me live!&mdash;that&mdash;that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I may pardon thee! Yes, thou hast nothing to fear from me. I swear it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Swear! But by whom and what, old man? I cannot believe thee, if thou
+      believest not in any God! Ha, ha! behold the result of thy lessons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another moment and those murderous fingers would have strangled their
+      prey. But between the assassin and his victim rose a form that seemed
+      almost to both a visitor from the world that both denied,&mdash;stately
+      with majestic strength, glorious with awful beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ruffian recoiled, looked, trembled, and then turned and fled from the
+      chamber. The old man fell again to the ground insensible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 1.VIII.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     To know how a bad man will act when in power, reverse all the
+     doctrines he preaches when obscure.&mdash;S. Montague.
+
+     Antipathies also form a part of magic (falsely) so-called.  Man
+     naturally has the same instinct as the animals, which warns them
+     involuntarily against the creatures that are hostile or fatal to
+     their existence.  But HE so often neglects it, that it becomes
+     dormant.  Not so the true cultivator of the Great Science, etc.
+
+     &mdash;Trismegistus the Fourth (a Rosicrucian).
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      When he again saw the old man the next day, the stranger found him calm,
+      and surprisingly recovered from the scene and sufferings of the night. He
+      expressed his gratitude to his preserver with tearful fervour, and stated
+      that he had already sent for a relation who would make arrangements for
+      his future safety and mode of life. &ldquo;For I have money yet left,&rdquo; said the
+      old man; &ldquo;and henceforth have no motive to be a miser.&rdquo; He proceeded then
+      briefly to relate the origin and circumstances of his connection with his
+      intended murderer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems that in earlier life he had quarrelled with his relations,&mdash;from
+      a difference in opinions of belief. Rejecting all religion as a fable, he
+      yet cultivated feelings that inclined him&mdash;for though his intellect
+      was weak, his dispositions were good&mdash;to that false and exaggerated
+      sensibility which its dupes so often mistake for benevolence. He had no
+      children; he resolved to adopt an enfant du peuple. He resolved to educate
+      this boy according to &ldquo;reason.&rdquo; He selected an orphan of the lowest
+      extraction, whose defects of person and constitution only yet the more
+      moved his pity, and finally engrossed his affection. In this outcast he
+      not only loved a son, he loved a theory! He brought him up most
+      philosophically. Helvetius had proved to him that education can do all;
+      and before he was eight years old, the little Jean&rsquo;s favourite expressions
+      were, &ldquo;La lumiere et la vertu.&rdquo; (Light and virtue.) The boy showed
+      talents, especially in art.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The protector sought for a master who was as free from &ldquo;superstition&rdquo; as
+      himself, and selected the painter David. That person, as hideous as his
+      pupil, and whose dispositions were as vicious as his professional
+      abilities were undeniable, was certainly as free from &ldquo;superstition&rdquo; as
+      the protector could desire. It was reserved for Robespierre hereafter to
+      make the sanguinary painter believe in the Etre Supreme. The boy was early
+      sensible of his ugliness, which was almost preternatural. His benefactor
+      found it in vain to reconcile him to the malice of Nature by his
+      philosophical aphorisms; but when he pointed out to him that in this world
+      money, like charity, covers a multitude of defects, the boy listened
+      eagerly and was consoled. To save money for his protege,&mdash;for the
+      only thing in the world he loved,&mdash;this became the patron&rsquo;s passion.
+      Verily, he had met with his reward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am thankful he has escaped,&rdquo; said the old man, wiping his eyes.
+      &ldquo;Had he left me a beggar, I could never have accused him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, for you are the author of his crimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How! I, who never ceased to inculcate the beauty of virtue? Explain
+      yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! if thy pupil did not make this clear to thee last night from his
+      own lips, an angel might come from heaven to preach to thee in vain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man moved uneasily, and was about to reply, when the relative he
+      had sent for&mdash;and who, a native of Nancy, happened to be at Paris at
+      the time&mdash;entered the room. He was a man somewhat past thirty, and of
+      a dry, saturnine, meagre countenance, restless eyes, and compressed lips.
+      He listened, with many ejaculations of horror, to his relation&rsquo;s recital,
+      and sought earnestly, but in vain, to induce him to give information
+      against his protege.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tush, tush, Rene Dumas!&rdquo; said the old man, &ldquo;you are a lawyer. You are
+      bred to regard human life with contempt. Let any man break a law, and you
+      shout, &lsquo;Execute him!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I!&rdquo; cried Dumas, lifting up his hands and eyes: &ldquo;venerable sage, how you
+      misjudge me! I lament more than any one the severity of our code. I think
+      the state never should take away life,&mdash;no, not even the life of a
+      murderer. I agree with that young statesman,&mdash;Maximilien Robespierre,&mdash;that
+      the executioner is the invention of the tyrant. My very attachment to our
+      advancing revolution is, that it must sweep away this legal butchery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lawyer paused, out of breath. The stranger regarded him fixedly and
+      turned pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You change countenance, sir,&rdquo; said Dumas; &ldquo;you do not agree with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me, I was at that moment repressing a vague fear which seemed
+      prophetic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was that we should meet again, when your opinions on Death and the
+      philosophy of Revolutions might be different.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You enchant me, Cousin Rene,&rdquo; said the old man, who had listened to his
+      relation with delight. &ldquo;Ah, I see you have proper sentiments of justice
+      and philanthropy. Why did I not seek to know you before? You admire the
+      Revolution;&mdash;you, equally with me, detest the barbarity of kings and
+      the fraud of priests?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Detest! How could I love mankind if I did not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; said the old man, hesitatingly, &ldquo;you do not think, with this noble
+      gentleman, that I erred in the precepts I instilled into that wretched
+      man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Erred! Was Socrates to blame if Alcibiades was an adulterer and a
+      traitor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hear him, you hear him! But Socrates had also a Plato; henceforth you
+      shall be a Plato to me. You hear him?&rdquo; exclaimed the old man, turning to
+      the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the latter was at the threshold. Who shall argue with the most
+      stubborn of all bigotries,&mdash;the fanaticism of unbelief?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going?&rdquo; exclaimed Dumas, &ldquo;and before I have thanked you, blessed
+      you, for the life of this dear and venerable man? Oh, if ever I can repay
+      you,&mdash;if ever you want the heart&rsquo;s blood of Rene Dumas!&rdquo; Thus volubly
+      delivering himself, he followed the stranger to the threshold of the
+      second chamber, and there, gently detaining him, and after looking over
+      his shoulder, to be sure that he was not heard by the owner, he whispered,
+      &ldquo;I ought to return to Nancy. One would not lose one&rsquo;s time,&mdash;you
+      don&rsquo;t think, sir, that that scoundrel took away ALL the old fool&rsquo;s money?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it thus Plato spoke of Socrates, Monsieur Dumas?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha, ha!&mdash;you are caustic. Well, you have a right. Sir, we shall meet
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;AGAIN!&rdquo; muttered the stranger, and his brow darkened. He hastened to his
+      chamber; he passed the day and the night alone, and in studies, no matter
+      of what nature,&mdash;they served to increase his gloom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What could ever connect his fate with Rene Dumas, or the fugitive
+      assassin? Why did the buoyant air of Paris seem to him heavy with the
+      steams of blood; why did an instinct urge him to fly from those sparkling
+      circles, from that focus of the world&rsquo;s awakened hopes, warning him from
+      return?&mdash;he, whose lofty existence defied&mdash;but away these dreams
+      and omens! He leaves France behind. Back, O Italy, to thy majestic wrecks!
+      On the Alps his soul breathes the free air once more. Free air! Alas! let
+      the world-healers exhaust their chemistry; man never shall be as free in
+      the marketplace as on the mountain. But we, reader, we too escape from
+      these scenes of false wisdom clothing godless crime. Away, once more
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In den heitern Regionen Wo die reinen Formen wohnen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Away, to the loftier realm where the pure dwellers are. Unpolluted by the
+      Actual, the Ideal lives only with Art and Beauty. Sweet Viola, by the
+      shores of the blue Parthenope, by Virgil&rsquo;s tomb, and the Cimmerian cavern,
+      we return to thee once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 1.IX.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Che non vuol che &lsquo;l destrier piu vada in alto,
+     Poi lo lega nel margine marino
+     A un verde mirto in mezzo un lauro E UN PINO.
+     &ldquo;Orlando Furioso,&rdquo; c. vi. xxiii.
+
+     (As he did not wish that his charger (the hippogriff) should take
+     any further excursions into the higher regions for the present,
+     he bound him at the sea-shore to a green myrtle between a laurel
+     and a pine.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      O Musician! art thou happy now? Thou art reinstalled at thy stately desk,&mdash;thy
+      faithful barbiton has its share in the triumph. It is thy masterpiece
+      which fills thy ear; it is thy daughter who fills the scene,&mdash;the
+      music, the actress, so united, that applause to one is applause to both.
+      They make way for thee, at the orchestra,&mdash;they no longer jeer and
+      wink, when, with a fierce fondness, thou dost caress thy Familiar, that
+      plains, and wails, and chides, and growls, under thy remorseless hand.
+      They understand now how irregular is ever the symmetry of real genius. The
+      inequalities in its surface make the moon luminous to man. Giovanni
+      Paisiello, Maestro di Capella, if thy gentle soul could know envy, thou
+      must sicken to see thy Elfrida and thy Pirro laid aside, and all Naples
+      turned fanatic to the Siren, at whose measures shook querulously thy
+      gentle head! But thou, Paisiello, calm in the long prosperity of fame,
+      knowest that the New will have its day, and comfortest thyself that the
+      Elfrida and the Pirro will live forever. Perhaps a mistake, but it is by
+      such mistakes that true genius conquers envy. &ldquo;To be immortal,&rdquo; says
+      Schiller, &ldquo;live in the whole.&rdquo; To be superior to the hour, live in thy
+      self-esteem. The audience now would give their ears for those variations
+      and flights they were once wont to hiss. No!&mdash;Pisani has been
+      two-thirds of a life at silent work on his masterpiece: there is nothing
+      he can add to THAT, however he might have sought to improve on the
+      masterpieces of others. Is not this common? The least little critic, in
+      reviewing some work of art, will say, &ldquo;pity this, and pity that;&rdquo; &ldquo;this
+      should have been altered,&mdash;that omitted.&rdquo; Yea, with his wiry
+      fiddlestring will he creak out his accursed variations. But let him sit
+      down and compose himself. He sees no improvement in variations THEN! Every
+      man can control his fiddle when it is his own work with which its vagaries
+      would play the devil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Viola is the idol, the theme of Naples. She is the spoiled sultana of
+      the boards. To spoil her acting may be easy enough,&mdash;shall they spoil
+      her nature? No, I think not. There, at home, she is still good and simple;
+      and there, under the awning by the doorway,&mdash;there she still sits,
+      divinely musing. How often, crook-trunked tree, she looks to thy green
+      boughs; how often, like thee, in her dreams, and fancies, does she
+      struggle for the light,&mdash;not the light of the stage-lamps. Pooh,
+      child! be contented with the lamps, even with the rush-lights. A farthing
+      candle is more convenient for household purposes than the stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Weeks passed, and the stranger did not reappear; months had passed, and
+      his prophecy of sorrow was not yet fulfilled. One evening Pisani was taken
+      ill. His success had brought on the long-neglected composer pressing
+      applications for concerti and sonata, adapted to his more peculiar science
+      on the violin. He had been employed for some weeks, day and night, on a
+      piece in which he hoped to excel himself. He took, as usual, one of those
+      seemingly impracticable subjects which it was his pride to subject to the
+      expressive powers of his art,&mdash;the terrible legend connected with the
+      transformation of Philomel. The pantomime of sound opened with the gay
+      merriment of a feast. The monarch of Thrace is at his banquet; a sudden
+      discord brays through the joyous notes,&mdash;the string seems to screech
+      with horror. The king learns the murder of his son by the hands of the
+      avenging sisters. Swift rage the chords, through the passions of fear, of
+      horror, of fury, and dismay. The father pursues the sisters. Hark! what
+      changes the dread&mdash;the discord&mdash;into that long, silvery,
+      mournful music? The transformation is completed; and Philomel, now the
+      nightingale, pours from the myrtle-bough the full, liquid, subduing notes
+      that are to tell evermore to the world the history of her woes and wrongs.
+      Now, it was in the midst of this complicated and difficult attempt that
+      the health of the over-tasked musician, excited alike by past triumph and
+      new ambition, suddenly gave way. He was taken ill at night. The next
+      morning the doctor pronounced that his disease was a malignant and
+      infectious fever. His wife and Viola shared in their tender watch; but
+      soon that task was left to the last alone. The Signora Pisani caught the
+      infection, and in a few hours was even in a state more alarming than that
+      of her husband. The Neapolitans, in common with the inhabitants of all
+      warm climates, are apt to become selfish and brutal in their dread of
+      infectious disorders. Gionetta herself pretended to be ill, to avoid the
+      sick-chamber. The whole labour of love and sorrow fell on Viola. It was a
+      terrible trial,&mdash;I am willing to hurry over the details. The wife
+      died first!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, a little before sunset, Pisani woke partially recovered from the
+      delirium which had preyed upon him, with few intervals, since the second
+      day of the disease; and casting about him his dizzy and feeble eyes, he
+      recognised Viola, and smiled. He faltered her name as he rose and
+      stretched his arms. She fell upon his breast, and strove to suppress her
+      tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thy mother?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Does she sleep?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She sleeps,&mdash;ah, yes!&rdquo; and the tears gushed forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought&mdash;eh! I know not WHAT I have thought. But do not weep: I
+      shall be well now,&mdash;quite well. She will come to me when she wakes,&mdash;will
+      she?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Viola could not speak; but she busied herself in pouring forth an anodyne,
+      which she had been directed to give the sufferer as soon as the delirium
+      should cease. The doctor had told her, too, to send for him the instant so
+      important a change should occur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to the door and called to the woman who, during Gionetta&rsquo;s
+      pretended illness, had been induced to supply her place; but the hireling
+      answered not. She flew through the chambers to search for her in vain,&mdash;the
+      hireling had caught Gionetta&rsquo;s fears, and vanished. What was to be done?
+      The case was urgent,&mdash;the doctor had declared not a moment should be
+      lost in obtaining his attendance; she must leave her father,&mdash;she
+      must go herself! She crept back into the room,&mdash;the anodyne seemed
+      already to have taken benign effect; the patient&rsquo;s eyes were closed, and
+      he breathed regularly, as in sleep. She stole away, threw her veil over
+      her face, and hurried from the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the anodyne had not produced the effect which it appeared to have
+      done; instead of healthful sleep, it had brought on a kind of light-headed
+      somnolence, in which the mind, preternaturally restless, wandered about
+      its accustomed haunts, waking up its old familiar instincts and
+      inclinations. It was not sleep,&mdash;it was not delirium; it was the
+      dream-wakefulness which opium sometimes induces, when every nerve grows
+      tremulously alive, and creates a corresponding activity in the frame, to
+      which it gives a false and hectic vigour. Pisani missed something,&mdash;what,
+      he scarcely knew; it was a combination of the two wants most essential to
+      his mental life,&mdash;the voice of his wife, the touch of his Familiar.
+      He rose,&mdash;he left his bed, he leisurely put on his old dressing-robe,
+      in which he had been wont to compose. He smiled complacently as the
+      associations connected with the garment came over his memory; he walked
+      tremulously across the room, and entered the small cabinet next to his
+      chamber, in which his wife had been accustomed more often to watch than
+      sleep, when illness separated her from his side. The room was desolate and
+      void. He looked round wistfully, and muttered to himself, and then
+      proceeded regularly, and with a noiseless step, through the chambers of
+      the silent house, one by one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came at last to that in which old Gionetta&mdash;faithful to her own
+      safety, if nothing else&mdash;nursed herself, in the remotest corner of
+      the house, from the danger of infection. As he glided in,&mdash;wan,
+      emaciated, with an uneasy, anxious, searching look in his haggard eyes,&mdash;the
+      old woman shrieked aloud, and fell at his feet. He bent over her, passed
+      his thin hands along her averted face, shook his head, and said in a
+      hollow voice,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot find them; where are they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who, dear master? Oh, have compassion on yourself; they are not here.
+      Blessed saints! this is terrible; he has touched me; I am dead!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dead! who is dead? Is any one dead?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! don&rsquo;t talk so; you must know it well: my poor mistress,&mdash;she
+      caught the fever from you; it is infectious enough to kill a whole city.
+      San Gennaro protect me! My poor mistress, she is dead,&mdash;buried, too;
+      and I, your faithful Gionetta, woe is me! Go, go&mdash;to&mdash;to bed
+      again, dearest master,&mdash;go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor musician stood for one moment mute and unmoving, then a slight
+      shiver ran through his frame; he turned and glided back, silent and
+      spectre-like, as he had entered. He came into the room where he had been
+      accustomed to compose,&mdash;where his wife, in her sweet patience, had so
+      often sat by his side, and praised and flattered when the world had but
+      jeered and scorned. In one corner he found the laurel-wreath she had
+      placed on his brows that happy night of fame and triumph; and near it,
+      half hid by her mantilla, lay in its case the neglected instrument.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Viola was not long gone: she had found the physician; she returned with
+      him; and as they gained the threshold, they heard a strain of music from
+      within,&mdash;a strain of piercing, heart-rending anguish. It was not like
+      some senseless instrument, mechanical in its obedience to a human hand,&mdash;it
+      was as some spirit calling, in wail and agony from the forlorn shades, to
+      the angels it beheld afar beyond the Eternal Gulf. They exchanged glances
+      of dismay. They hurried into the house; they hastened into the room.
+      Pisani turned, and his look, full of ghastly intelligence and stern
+      command, awed them back. The black mantilla, the faded laurel-leaf, lay
+      there before him. Viola&rsquo;s heart guessed all at a single glance; she sprung
+      to his knees; she clasped them,&mdash;&ldquo;Father, father, <i>I</i> am left
+      thee still!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The wail ceased,&mdash;the note changed; with a confused association&mdash;half
+      of the man, half of the artist&mdash;the anguish, still a melody, was
+      connected with sweeter sounds and thoughts. The nightingale had escaped
+      the pursuit,&mdash;soft, airy, bird-like, thrilled the delicious notes a
+      moment, and then died away. The instrument fell to the floor, and its
+      chords snapped. You heard that sound through the silence. The artist
+      looked on his kneeling child, and then on the broken chords... &ldquo;Bury me by
+      her side,&rdquo; he said, in a very calm, low voice; &ldquo;and THAT by mine.&rdquo; And
+      with these words his whole frame became rigid, as if turned to stone. The
+      last change passed over his face. He fell to the ground, sudden and heavy.
+      The chords THERE, too,&mdash;the chords of the human instrument were
+      snapped asunder. As he fell, his robe brushed the laurel-wreath, and that
+      fell also, near but not in reach of the dead man&rsquo;s nerveless hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Broken instrument, broken heart, withered laurel-wreath!&mdash;the setting
+      sun through the vine-clad lattice streamed on all! So smiles the eternal
+      Nature on the wrecks of all that make life glorious! And not a sun that
+      sets not somewhere on the silenced music,&mdash;on the faded laurel!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 1.X.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Che difesa miglior ch&rsquo; usbergo e scudo,
+     E la santa innocenza al petto ignudo!
+     &ldquo;Ger. Lib.,&rdquo; c. viii. xli.
+
+     (Better defence than shield or breastplate is holy innocence
+     to the naked breast.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And they buried the musician and his barbiton together, in the same
+      coffin. That famous Steiner&mdash;primeval Titan of the great Tyrolese
+      race&mdash;often hast thou sought to scale the heavens, and therefore must
+      thou, like the meaner children of men, descend to the dismal Hades! Harder
+      fate for thee than thy mortal master. For THY soul sleeps with thee in the
+      coffin. And the music that belongs to HIS, separate from the instrument,
+      ascends on high, to be heard often by a daughter&rsquo;s pious ears when the
+      heaven is serene and the earth sad. For there is a sense of hearing that
+      the vulgar know not. And the voices of the dead breathe soft and frequent
+      to those who can unite the memory with the faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now Viola is alone in the world,&mdash;alone in the home where
+      loneliness had seemed from the cradle a thing that was not of nature. And
+      at first the solitude and the stillness were insupportable. Have you, ye
+      mourners, to whom these sibyl leaves, weird with many a dark enigma, shall
+      be borne, have you not felt that when the death of some best-loved one has
+      made the hearth desolate,&mdash;have you not felt as if the gloom of the
+      altered home was too heavy for thought to bear?&mdash;you would leave it,
+      though a palace, even for a cabin. And yet,&mdash;sad to say,&mdash;when
+      you obey the impulse, when you fly from the walls, when in the strange
+      place in which you seek your refuge nothing speaks to you of the lost,
+      have ye not felt again a yearning for that very food to memory which was
+      just before but bitterness and gall? Is it not almost impious and profane
+      to abandon that dear hearth to strangers? And the desertion of the home
+      where your parents dwelt, and blessed you, upbraids your conscience as if
+      you had sold their tombs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beautiful was the Etruscan superstition that the ancestors become the
+      household gods. Deaf is the heart to which the Lares call from the
+      desolate floors in vain. At first Viola had, in her intolerable anguish,
+      gratefully welcomed the refuge which the house and family of a kindly
+      neighbour, much attached to her father, and who was one of the orchestra
+      that Pisani shall perplex no more, had proffered to the orphan. But the
+      company of the unfamiliar in our grief, the consolation of the stranger,
+      how it irritates the wound! And then, to hear elsewhere the name of
+      father, mother, child,&mdash;as if death came alone to you,&mdash;to see
+      elsewhere the calm regularity of those lives united in love and order,
+      keeping account of happy hours, the unbroken timepiece of home, as if
+      nowhere else the wheels were arrested, the chain shattered, the hands
+      motionless, the chime still! No, the grave itself does not remind us of
+      our loss like the company of those who have no loss to mourn. Go back to
+      thy solitude, young orphan,&mdash;go back to thy home: the sorrow that
+      meets thee on the threshold can greet thee, even in its sadness, like the
+      smile upon the face of the dead. And there, from thy casement, and there,
+      from without thy door, thou seest still the tree, solitary as thyself, and
+      springing from the clefts of the rock, but forcing its way to light,&mdash;as,
+      through all sorrow, while the seasons yet can renew the verdure and bloom
+      of youth, strives the instinct of the human heart! Only when the sap is
+      dried up, only when age comes on, does the sun shine in vain for man and
+      for the tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Weeks and months&mdash;months sad and many&mdash;again passed, and Naples
+      will not longer suffer its idol to seclude itself from homage. The world
+      ever plucks us back from ourselves with a thousand arms. And again Viola&rsquo;s
+      voice is heard upon the stage, which, mystically faithful to life, is in
+      nought more faithful than this, that it is the appearances that fill the
+      scene; and we pause not to ask of what realities they are the proxies.
+      When the actor of Athens moved all hearts as he clasped the burial urn,
+      and burst into broken sobs; how few, there, knew that it held the ashes of
+      his son! Gold, as well as fame, was showered upon the young actress; but
+      she still kept to her simple mode of life, to her lowly home, to the one
+      servant whose faults, selfish as they were, Viola was too inexperienced to
+      perceive. And it was Gionetta who had placed her when first born in her
+      father&rsquo;s arms! She was surrounded by every snare, wooed by every
+      solicitation that could beset her unguarded beauty and her dangerous
+      calling. But her modest virtue passed unsullied through them all. It is
+      true that she had been taught by lips now mute the maiden duties enjoined
+      by honour and religion. And all love that spoke not of the altar only
+      shocked and repelled her. But besides that, as grief and solitude ripened
+      her heart, and made her tremble at times to think how deeply it could
+      feel, her vague and early visions shaped themselves into an ideal of love.
+      And till the ideal is found, how the shadow that it throws before it
+      chills us to the actual! With that ideal, ever and ever, unconsciously,
+      and with a certain awe and shrinking, came the shape and voice of the
+      warning stranger. Nearly two years had passed since he had appeared at
+      Naples. Nothing had been heard of him, save that his vessel had been
+      directed, some months after his departure, to sail for Leghorn. By the
+      gossips of Naples, his existence, supposed so extraordinary, was wellnigh
+      forgotten; but the heart of Viola was more faithful. Often he glided
+      through her dreams, and when the wind sighed through that fantastic tree,
+      associated with his remembrance, she started with a tremor and a blush, as
+      if she had heard him speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But amongst the train of her suitors was one to whom she listened more
+      gently than to the rest; partly because, perhaps, he spoke in her mother&rsquo;s
+      native tongue; partly because in his diffidence there was little to alarm
+      and displease; partly because his rank, nearer to her own than that of
+      lordlier wooers, prevented his admiration from appearing insult; partly
+      because he himself, eloquent and a dreamer, often uttered thoughts that
+      were kindred to those buried deepest in her mind. She began to like,
+      perhaps to love him, but as a sister loves; a sort of privileged
+      familiarity sprung up between them. If in the Englishman&rsquo;s breast arose
+      wild and unworthy hopes, he had not yet expressed them. Is there danger to
+      thee here, lone Viola, or is the danger greater in thy unfound ideal?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, as the overture to some strange and wizard spectacle, closes this
+      opening prelude. Wilt thou hear more? Come with thy faith prepared. I ask
+      not the blinded eyes, but the awakened sense. As the enchanted Isle,
+      remote from the homes of men,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ove alcun legno Rado, o non mai va dalle nostre sponde,&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Ger.Lib.,&rdquo;
+       cant. xiv. 69.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (Where ship seldom or never comes from our coasts.)
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+is the space in the weary ocean of actual life to which the Muse or
+Sibyl (ancient in years, but ever young in aspect), offers thee no
+unhallowed sail,&mdash;
+
+     &ldquo;Quinci ella in cima a una montagna ascende
+     Disabitata, e d&rsquo; ombre oscura e bruna;
+     E par incanto a lei nevose rende
+     Le spalle e i fianchi; e sensa neve alcuna
+     Gli lascia il capo verdeggiante e vago;
+     E vi fonda un palagio appresso un lago.&rdquo;
+ 
+     (There, she a mountain&rsquo;s lofty peak ascends, Unpeopled,
+     shady, shagg&rsquo;d with forests brown, Whose sides, by power of
+     magic, half-way down She heaps with slippery ice and frost
+     and snow, But sunshiny and verdant leaves the crown With
+     orange-woods and myrtles,&mdash;speaks, and lo! Rich from the
+     bordering lake a palace rises slow. Wiffin&rsquo;s &ldquo;Translation.&rdquo;)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK II. &mdash; ART, LOVE, AND WONDER.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Diversi aspetti in un confusi e misti.
+     &ldquo;Ger. Lib,&rdquo; cant. iv. 7.
+
+     Different appearances, confused and mixt in one.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 2.I.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Centauri, e Sfingi, e pallide Gorgoni.
+     &ldquo;Ger. Lib.,&rdquo; c. iv. v.
+
+     (Centaurs and Sphinxes and pallid Gorgons.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      One moonlit night, in the Gardens at Naples, some four or five gentleman
+      were seated under a tree, drinking their sherbet, and listening, in the
+      intervals of conversation, to the music which enlivened that gay and
+      favourite resort of an indolent population. One of this little party was a
+      young Englishman, who had been the life of the whole group, but who, for
+      the last few moments, had sunk into a gloomy and abstracted reverie. One
+      of his countrymen observed this sudden gloom, and, tapping him on the
+      back, said, &ldquo;What ails you, Glyndon? Are you ill? You have grown quite
+      pale,&mdash;you tremble. Is it a sudden chill? You had better go home:
+      these Italian nights are often dangerous to our English constitutions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I am well now; it was a passing shudder. I cannot account for it
+      myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I understand what you mean,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;and perhaps,&rdquo; he added,
+      with a grave smile, &ldquo;I could explain it better than yourself.&rdquo; Here,
+      turning to the others, he added, &ldquo;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?&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; replied Glyndon, evidently much surprised, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know the signs of the visitation,&rdquo; returned the stranger, gravely;
+      &ldquo;they are not to be mistaken by one of my experience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All the gentleman present then declared that they could comprehend, and
+      had felt, what the stranger had described.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;According to one of our national superstitions,&rdquo; said Mervale, the
+      Englishman who had first addressed Glyndon, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are in all lands different superstitions to account for so common
+      an occurrence,&rdquo; replied the stranger: &ldquo;one sect among the Arabians holds
+      that at that instant God is deciding the hour either of your death, or of
+      some one dear to you. The African savage, whose imagination is darkened by
+      the hideous rites of his gloomy idolatry, believes that the Evil Spirit is
+      pulling you towards him by the hair: so do the Grotesque and the Terrible
+      mingle with each other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is evidently a mere physical accident,&mdash;a derangement of the
+      stomach, a chill of the blood,&rdquo; said a young Neapolitan, with whom Glyndon
+      had formed a slight acquaintance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why is it always coupled in all nations with some superstitious
+      presentiment or terror,&mdash;some connection between the material frame
+      and the supposed world without us? For my part, I think&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, what do you think, sir?&rdquo; asked Glyndon, curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; continued the stranger, &ldquo;that it is the repugnance and horror
+      with which our more human elements recoil from something, indeed,
+      invisible, but antipathetic to our own nature; and from a knowledge of
+      which we are happily secured by the imperfection of our senses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a believer in spirits, then?&rdquo; said Mervale, with an incredulous
+      smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, it was not precisely of spirits that I spoke; but there may be forms
+      of matter as invisible and impalpable to us as the animalculae in the air
+      we breathe,&mdash;in the water that plays in yonder basin. Such beings may
+      have passions and powers like our own&mdash;as the animalculae to which I
+      have compared them. The monster that lives and dies in a drop of water&mdash;carnivorous,
+      insatiable, subsisting on the creatures minuter than himself&mdash;is not
+      less deadly in his wrath, less ferocious in his nature, than the tiger of
+      the desert. There may be things around us that would be dangerous and
+      hostile to men, if Providence had not placed a wall between them and us,
+      merely by different modifications of matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And think you that wall never can be removed?&rdquo; asked young Glyndon,
+      abruptly. &ldquo;Are the traditions of sorcerer and wizard, universal and
+      immemorial as they are, merely fables?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps yes,&mdash;perhaps no,&rdquo; answered the stranger, indifferently.
+      &ldquo;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,&mdash;to repine at and rebel against the law which confines
+      the shark to the great deep? Enough of these idle speculations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the stranger rose, summoned the attendant, paid for his sherbet, and,
+      bowing slightly to the company, soon disappeared among the trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is that gentleman?&rdquo; asked Glyndon, eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest looked at each other, without replying, for some moments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never saw him before,&rdquo; said Mervale, at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor I.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know him well,&rdquo; said the Neapolitan, who was, indeed, the Count Cetoxa.
+      &ldquo;If you remember, it was as my companion that he joined you. He visited
+      Naples about two years ago, and has recently returned; he is very rich,&mdash;indeed,
+      enormously so. A most agreeable person. I am sorry to hear him talk so
+      strangely to-night; it serves to encourage the various foolish reports
+      that are circulated concerning him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And surely,&rdquo; said another Neapolitan, &ldquo;the circumstance that occurred but
+      the other day, so well known to yourself, Cetoxa, justifies the reports
+      you pretend to deprecate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Myself and my countryman,&rdquo; said Glyndon, &ldquo;mix so little in Neapolitan
+      society, that we lose much that appears well worthy of lively interest.
+      May I enquire what are the reports, and what is the circumstance you refer
+      to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to the reports, gentlemen,&rdquo; said Cetoxa, courteously, addressing
+      himself to the two Englishmen, &ldquo;it may suffice to observe, that they
+      attribute to the Signor Zanoni certain qualities which everybody desires
+      for himself, but damns any one else for possessing. The incident Signor
+      Belgioso alludes to, illustrates these qualities, and is, I must own,
+      somewhat startling. You probably play, gentlemen?&rdquo; (Here Cetoxa paused;
+      and as both Englishmen had occasionally staked a few scudi at the public
+      gaming-tables, they bowed assent to the conjecture.) Cetoxa continued.
+      &ldquo;Well, then, not many days since, and on the very day that Zanoni returned
+      to Naples, it so happened that I had been playing pretty high, and had
+      lost considerably. I rose from the table, resolved no longer to tempt
+      fortune, when I suddenly perceived Zanoni, whose acquaintance I had before
+      made (and who, I may say, was under some slight obligation to me),
+      standing by, a spectator. Ere I could express my gratification at this
+      unexpected recognition, he laid his hand on my arm. &lsquo;You have lost much,&rsquo; 
+      said he; &lsquo;more than you can afford. For my part, I dislike play; yet I
+      wish to have some interest in what is going on. Will you play this sum for
+      me? the risk is mine,&mdash;the half profits yours.&rsquo; I was startled, as
+      you may suppose, at such an address; but Zanoni had an air and tone with
+      him it was impossible to resist; besides, I was burning to recover my
+      losses, and should not have risen had I had any money left about me. I
+      told him I would accept his offer, provided we shared the risk as well as
+      profits. &lsquo;As you will,&rsquo; said he, smiling; &lsquo;we need have no scruple, for
+      you will be sure to win.&rsquo; I sat down; Zanoni stood behind me; my luck
+      rose,&mdash;I invariably won. In fact, I rose from the table a rich man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There can be no foul play at the public tables, especially when foul play
+      would make against the bank?&rdquo; This question was put by Glyndon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not,&rdquo; replied the count. &ldquo;But our good fortune was, indeed,
+      marvellous,&mdash;so extraordinary that a Sicilian (the Sicilians are all
+      ill-bred, bad-tempered fellows) grew angry and insolent. &lsquo;Sir,&rsquo; said he,
+      turning to my new friend, &lsquo;you have no business to stand so near to the
+      table. I do not understand this; you have not acted fairly.&rsquo; Zanoni
+      replied, with great composure, that he had done nothing against the rules,&mdash;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&rsquo;s mildness for apprehension, and blustered more
+      loudly. In fact, he rose from the table, and confronted Zanoni in a manner
+      that, to say the least of it, was provoking to any gentleman who has some
+      quickness of temper, or some skill with the small-sword.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; interrupted Belgioso, &ldquo;the most singular part of the whole to me
+      was, that this Zanoni, who stood opposite to where I sat, and whose face I
+      distinctly saw, made no remark, showed no resentment. He fixed his eyes
+      steadfastly on the Sicilian; never shall I forget that look! it is
+      impossible to describe it,&mdash;it froze the blood in my veins. The
+      Sicilian staggered back as if struck. I saw him tremble; he sank on the
+      bench. And then&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, then,&rdquo; said Cetoxa, &ldquo;to my infinite surprise, our gentleman, thus
+      disarmed by a look from Zanoni, turned his whole anger upon me, THE&mdash;but
+      perhaps you do not know, gentlemen, that I have some repute with my
+      weapon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The best swordsman in Italy,&rdquo; said Belgioso.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before I could guess why or wherefore,&rdquo; resumed Cetoxa, &ldquo;I found myself
+      in the garden behind the house, with Ughelli (that was the Sicilian&rsquo;s
+      name) facing me, and five or six gentlemen, the witnesses of the duel
+      about to take place, around. Zanoni beckoned me aside. &lsquo;This man will
+      fall,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;When he is on the ground, go to him, and ask whether he
+      will be buried by the side of his father in the church of San Gennaro?&rsquo; 
+      &lsquo;Do you then know his family?&rsquo; I asked with great surprise. Zanoni made me
+      no answer, and the next moment I was engaged with the Sicilian. To do him
+      justice, his imbrogliato was magnificent, and a swifter lounger never
+      crossed a sword; nevertheless,&rdquo; added Cetoxa, with a pleasing modesty, &ldquo;he
+      was run through the body. I went up to him; he could scarcely speak. &lsquo;Have
+      you any request to make,&mdash;any affairs to settle?&rsquo; He shook his head.
+      &lsquo;Where would you wish to be interred?&rsquo; He pointed towards the Sicilian
+      coast. &lsquo;What!&rsquo; said I, in surprise, &lsquo;NOT by the side of your father, in
+      the church of San Gennaro?&rsquo; As I spoke, his face altered terribly; he
+      uttered a piercing shriek,&mdash;the blood gushed from his mouth, and he
+      fell dead. The most strange part of the story is to come. We buried him in
+      the church of San Gennaro. In doing so, we took up his father&rsquo;s coffin;
+      the lid came off in moving it, and the skeleton was visible. In the hollow
+      of the skull we found a very slender wire of sharp steel; this caused
+      surprise and inquiry. The father, who was rich and a miser, had died
+      suddenly, and been buried in haste, owing, it was said, to the heat of the
+      weather. Suspicion once awakened, the examination became minute. The old
+      man&rsquo;s servant was questioned, and at last confessed that the son had
+      murdered the sire. The contrivance was ingenious: the wire was so slender
+      that it pierced to the brain, and drew but one drop of blood, which the
+      grey hairs concealed. The accomplice will be executed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Zanoni,&mdash;did he give evidence, did he account for&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; interrupted the count: &ldquo;he declared that he had by accident visited
+      the church that morning; that he had observed the tombstone of the Count
+      Ughelli; that his guide had told him the count&rsquo;s son was in Naples,&mdash;a
+      spendthrift and a gambler. While we were at play, he had heard the count
+      mentioned by name at the table; and when the challenge was given and
+      accepted, it had occurred to him to name the place of burial, by an
+      instinct which he either could not or would not account for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A very lame story,&rdquo; said Mervale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes! but we Italians are superstitious,&mdash;the alleged instinct was
+      regarded by many as the whisper of Providence. The next day the stranger
+      became an object of universal interest and curiosity. His wealth, his
+      manner of living, his extraordinary personal beauty, have assisted also to
+      make him the rage; besides, I have had the pleasure in introducing so
+      eminent a person to our gayest cavaliers and our fairest ladies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A most interesting narrative,&rdquo; said Mervale, rising. &ldquo;Come, Glyndon;
+      shall we seek our hotel? It is almost daylight. Adieu, signor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What think you of this story?&rdquo; said Glyndon, as the young men walked
+      homeward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, it is very clear that this Zanoni is some imposter,&mdash;some
+      clever rogue; and the Neapolitan shares the booty, and puffs him off with
+      all the hackneyed charlatanism of the marvellous. An unknown adventurer
+      gets into society by being made an object of awe and curiosity; he is more
+      than ordinarily handsome, and the women are quite content to receive him
+      without any other recommendation than his own face and Cetoxa&rsquo;s fables.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot agree with you. Cetoxa, though a gambler and a rake, is a
+      nobleman of birth and high repute for courage and honour. Besides, this
+      stranger, with his noble presence and lofty air,&mdash;so calm, so
+      unobtrusive,&mdash;has nothing in common with the forward garrulity of an
+      imposter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&mdash;how
+      advances the love affair?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Viola could not see me to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not marry her. What would they all say at home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us enjoy the present,&rdquo; said Glyndon, with vivacity; &ldquo;we are young,
+      rich, good-looking; let us not think of to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bravo, Glyndon! Here we are at the hotel. Sleep sound, and don&rsquo;t dream of
+      Signor Zanoni.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 2.II.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Prende, giovine audace e impaziente,
+     L&rsquo;occasione offerta avidamente.
+     &ldquo;Ger. Lib.,&rdquo; c. vi. xxix.
+
+     (Take, youth, bold and impatient, the offered occasion eagerly.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Clarence Glyndon was a young man of fortune, not large, but easy and
+      independent. His parents were dead, and his nearest relation was an only
+      sister, left in England under the care of her aunt, and many years younger
+      than himself. Early in life he had evinced considerable promise in the art
+      of painting, and rather from enthusiasm than any pecuniary necessity for a
+      profession, he determined to devote himself to a career in which the
+      English artist generally commences with rapture and historical
+      composition, to conclude with avaricious calculation and portraits of
+      Alderman Simpkins. Glyndon was supposed by his friends to possess no
+      inconsiderable genius; but it was of a rash and presumptuous order. He was
+      averse from continuous and steady labour, and his ambition rather sought
+      to gather the fruit than to plant the tree. In common with many artists in
+      their youth, he was fond of pleasure and excitement, yielding with little
+      forethought to whatever impressed his fancy or appealed to his passions.
+      He had travelled through the more celebrated cities of Europe, with the
+      avowed purpose and sincere resolution of studying the divine masterpieces
+      of his art. But in each, pleasure had too often allured him from ambition,
+      and living beauty distracted his worship from the senseless canvas. Brave,
+      adventurous, vain, restless, inquisitive, he was ever involved in wild
+      projects and pleasant dangers,&mdash;the creature of impulse and the slave
+      of imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was then the period when a feverish spirit of change was working its
+      way to that hideous mockery of human aspirations, the Revolution of
+      France; and from the chaos into which were already jarring the sanctities
+      of the World&rsquo;s Venerable Belief, arose many shapeless and unformed
+      chimeras. Need I remind the reader that, while that was the day for
+      polished scepticism and affected wisdom, it was the day also for the most
+      egregious credulity and the most mystical superstitions,&mdash;the day in
+      which magnetism and magic found converts amongst the disciples of Diderot;
+      when prophecies were current in every mouth; when the salon of a
+      philosophical deist was converted into an Heraclea, in which necromancy
+      professed to conjure up the shadows of the dead; when the Crosier and the
+      Book were ridiculed, and Mesmer and Cagliostro were believed. In that
+      Heliacal Rising, heralding the new sun before which all vapours were to
+      vanish, stalked from their graves in the feudal ages all the phantoms that
+      had flitted before the eyes of Paracelsus and Agrippa. Dazzled by the dawn
+      of the Revolution, Glyndon was yet more attracted by its strange
+      accompaniments; and natural it was with him, as with others, that the
+      fancy which ran riot amidst the hopes of a social Utopia, should grasp
+      with avidity all that promised, out of the dusty tracks of the beaten
+      science, the bold discoveries of some marvellous Elysium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his travels he had listened with vivid interest, at least, if not with
+      implicit belief, to the wonders told of each more renowned Ghost-seer, and
+      his mind was therefore prepared for the impression which the mysterious
+      Zanoni at first sight had produced upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There might be another cause for this disposition to credulity. A remote
+      ancestor of Glyndon&rsquo;s on the mother&rsquo;s side, had achieved no inconsiderable
+      reputation as a philosopher and alchemist. Strange stories were afloat
+      concerning this wise progenitor. He was said to have lived to an age far
+      exceeding the allotted boundaries of mortal existence, and to have
+      preserved to the last the appearance of middle life. He had died at
+      length, it was supposed, of grief for the sudden death of a
+      great-grandchild, the only creature he had ever appeared to love. The
+      works of this philosopher, though rare, were extant, and found in the
+      library of Glyndon&rsquo;s home. Their Platonic mysticism, their bold
+      assertions, the high promises that might be detected through their
+      figurative and typical phraseology, had early made a deep impression on
+      the young imagination of Clarence Glyndon. His parents, not alive to the
+      consequences of encouraging fancies which the very enlightenment of the
+      age appeared to them sufficient to prevent or dispel, were fond, in the
+      long winter nights, of conversing on the traditional history of this
+      distinguished progenitor. And Clarence thrilled with a fearful pleasure
+      when his mother playfully detected a striking likeness between the
+      features of the young heir and the faded portrait of the alchemist that
+      overhung their mantelpiece, and was the boast of their household and the
+      admiration of their friends,&mdash;the child is, indeed, more often than
+      we think for, &ldquo;the father of the man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I have said that Glyndon was fond of pleasure. Facile, as genius ever must
+      be, to cheerful impression, his careless artist-life, ere artist-life
+      settles down to labour, had wandered from flower to flower. He had
+      enjoyed, almost to the reaction of satiety, the gay revelries of Naples,
+      when he fell in love with the face and voice of Viola Pisani. But his
+      love, like his ambition, was vague and desultory. It did not satisfy his
+      whole heart and fill up his whole nature; not from want of strong and
+      noble passions, but because his mind was not yet matured and settled
+      enough for their development. As there is one season for the blossom,
+      another for the fruit; so it is not till the bloom of fancy begins to
+      fade, that the heart ripens to the passions that the bloom precedes and
+      foretells. Joyous alike at his lonely easel or amidst his boon companions,
+      he had not yet known enough of sorrow to love deeply. For man must be
+      disappointed with the lesser things of life before he can comprehend the
+      full value of the greatest. It is the shallow sensualists of France, who,
+      in their salon-language, call love &ldquo;a folly,&rdquo;&mdash;love, better
+      understood, is wisdom. Besides, the world was too much with Clarence
+      Glyndon. His ambition of art was associated with the applause and
+      estimation of that miserable minority of the surface that we call the
+      Public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like those who deceive, he was ever fearful of being himself the dupe. He
+      distrusted the sweet innocence of Viola. He could not venture the hazard
+      of seriously proposing marriage to an Italian actress; but the modest
+      dignity of the girl, and something good and generous in his own nature,
+      had hitherto made him shrink from any more worldly but less honourable
+      designs. Thus the familiarity between them seemed rather that of kindness
+      and regard than passion. He attended the theatre; he stole behind the
+      scenes to converse with her; he filled his portfolio with countless
+      sketches of a beauty that charmed him as an artist as well as lover; and
+      day after day he floated on through a changing sea of doubt and
+      irresolution, of affection and distrust. The last, indeed, constantly
+      sustained against his better reason by the sober admonitions of Mervale, a
+      matter-of-fact man!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day following that eve on which this section of my story opens,
+      Glyndon was riding alone by the shores of the Neapolitan sea, on the other
+      side of the Cavern of Posilipo. It was past noon; the sun had lost its
+      early fervour, and a cool breeze sprung up voluptuously from the sparkling
+      sea. Bending over a fragment of stone near the roadside, he perceived the
+      form of a man; and when he approached, he recognised Zanoni.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Englishman saluted him courteously. &ldquo;Have you discovered some
+      antique?&rdquo; said he, with a smile; &ldquo;they are common as pebbles on this
+      road.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Zanoni; &ldquo;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.&rdquo; So saying, he showed Glyndon a small herb with a
+      pale-blue flower, and then placed it carefully in his bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are an herbalist?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is, I am told, a study full of interest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To those who understand it, doubtless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the knowledge, then, so rare?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rare! The deeper knowledge is perhaps rather, among the arts, LOST to the
+      modern philosophy of commonplace and surface! Do you imagine there was no
+      foundation for those traditions which come dimly down from remoter ages,&mdash;as
+      shells now found on the mountain-tops inform us where the seas have been?
+      What was the old Colchian magic, but the minute study of Nature in her
+      lowliest works? What the fable of Medea, but a proof of the powers that
+      may be extracted from the germ and leaf? The most gifted of all the
+      Priestcrafts, the mysterious sisterhoods of Cuth, concerning whose
+      incantations Learning vainly bewilders itself amidst the maze of legends,
+      sought in the meanest herbs what, perhaps, the Babylonian Sages explored
+      in vain amidst the loftiest stars. Tradition yet tells you that there
+      existed a race (&ldquo;Plut. Symp.&rdquo; l. 5. c. 7.) who could slay their enemies
+      from afar, without weapon, without movement. The herb that ye tread on may
+      have deadlier powers than your engineers can give to their mightiest
+      instruments of war. Can you guess that to these Italian shores, to the old
+      Circaean Promontory, came the Wise from the farthest East, to search for
+      plants and simples which your Pharmacists of the Counter would fling from
+      them as weeds? The first herbalists&mdash;the master chemists of the world&mdash;were
+      the tribe that the ancient reverence called by the name of Titans.
+      (Syncellus, page 14.&mdash;&ldquo;Chemistry the Invention of the Giants.&rdquo;) I
+      remember once, by the Hebrus, in the reign of &mdash; But this talk,&rdquo; said
+      Zanoni, checking himself abruptly, and with a cold smile, &ldquo;serves only to
+      waste your time and my own.&rdquo; He paused, looked steadily at Glyndon, and
+      continued, &ldquo;Young man, think you that vague curiosity will supply the
+      place of earnest labour? I read your heart. You wish to know me, and not
+      this humble herb: but pass on; your desire cannot be satisfied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have not the politeness of your countrymen,&rdquo; said Glyndon, somewhat
+      discomposed. &ldquo;Suppose I were desirous to cultivate your acquaintance, why
+      should you reject my advances?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reject no man&rsquo;s advances,&rdquo; answered Zanoni; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why are you, then, so dangerous?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On this earth, men are often, without their own agency, fated to be
+      dangerous to others. If I were to predict your fortune by the vain
+      calculations of the astrologer, I should tell you, in their despicable
+      jargon, that my planet sat darkly in your house of life. Cross me not, if
+      you can avoid it. I warn you now for the first time and last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You despise the astrologers, yet you utter a jargon as mysterious as
+      theirs. I neither gamble nor quarrel; why, then, should I fear you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As you will; I have done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me speak frankly,&mdash;your conversation last night interested and
+      perplexed me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it: minds like yours are attracted by mystery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon was piqued at these words, though in the tone in which they were
+      spoken there was no contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see you do not consider me worthy of your friendship. Be it so.
+      Good-day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni coldly replied to the salutation; and as the Englishman rode on,
+      returned to his botanical employment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same night, Glyndon went, as usual, to the theatre. He was standing
+      behind the scenes watching Viola, who was on the stage in one of her most
+      brilliant parts. The house resounded with applause. Glyndon was
+      transported with a young man&rsquo;s passion and a young man&rsquo;s pride: &ldquo;This
+      glorious creature,&rdquo; thought he, &ldquo;may yet be mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt, while thus wrapped in delicious reverie, a slight touch upon his
+      shoulder; he turned, and beheld Zanoni. &ldquo;You are in danger,&rdquo; said the
+      latter. &ldquo;Do not walk home to-night; or if you do, go not alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Glyndon recovered from his surprise, Zanoni disappeared; and when
+      the Englishman saw him again, he was in the box of one of the Neapolitan
+      nobles, where Glyndon could not follow him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Viola now left the stage, and Glyndon accosted her with an unaccustomed
+      warmth of gallantry. But Viola, contrary to her gentle habit, turned with
+      an evident impatience from the address of her lover. Taking aside
+      Gionetta, who was her constant attendant at the theatre, she said, in an
+      earnest whisper,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Gionetta! He is here again!&mdash;the stranger of whom I spoke to
+      thee!&mdash;and again, he alone, of the whole theatre, withholds from me
+      his applause.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which is he, my darling?&rdquo; said the old woman, with fondness in her voice.
+      &ldquo;He must indeed be dull&mdash;not worth a thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The actress drew Gionetta nearer to the stage, and pointed out to her a
+      man in one of the boxes, conspicuous amongst all else by the simplicity of
+      his dress, and the extraordinary beauty of his features.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not worth a thought, Gionetta!&rdquo; repeated Viola,&mdash;&ldquo;Not worth a
+      thought! Alas, not to think of him, seems the absence of thought itself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prompter summoned the Signora Pisani. &ldquo;Find out his name, Gionetta,&rdquo;
+       said she, moving slowly to the stage, and passing by Glyndon, who gazed at
+      her with a look of sorrowful reproach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The scene on which the actress now entered was that of the final
+      catastrophe, wherein all her remarkable powers of voice and art were
+      pre-eminently called forth. The house hung on every word with breathless
+      worship; but the eyes of Viola sought only those of one calm and unmoved
+      spectator; she exerted herself as if inspired. Zanoni listened, and
+      observed her with an attentive gaze, but no approval escaped his lips; no
+      emotion changed the expression of his cold and half-disdainful aspect.
+      Viola, who was in the character of one who loved, but without return,
+      never felt so acutely the part she played. Her tears were truthful; her
+      passion that of nature: it was almost too terrible to behold. She was
+      borne from the stage exhausted and insensible, amidst such a tempest of
+      admiring rapture as Continental audiences alone can raise. The crowd stood
+      up, handkerchiefs waved, garlands and flowers were thrown on the stage,&mdash;men
+      wiped their eyes, and women sobbed aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By heavens!&rdquo; said a Neapolitan of great rank, &ldquo;She has fired me beyond
+      endurance. To-night&mdash;this very night&mdash;she shall be mine! You
+      have arranged all, Mascari?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All, signor. And the young Englishman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The presuming barbarian! As I before told thee, let him bleed for his
+      folly. I will have no rival.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But an Englishman! There is always a search after the bodies of the
+      English.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&mdash;who
+      would dare to suspect, to arraign the Prince di &mdash;? See to it,&mdash;this
+      night. I trust him to you. Robbers murder him, you understand,&mdash;the
+      country swarms with them; plunder and strip him, the better to favour such
+      report. Take three men; the rest shall be my escort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mascari shrugged his shoulders, and bowed submissively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The streets of Naples were not then so safe as now, and carriages were
+      both less expensive and more necessary. The vehicle which was regularly
+      engaged by the young actress was not to be found. Gionetta, too aware of
+      the beauty of her mistress and the number of her admirers to contemplate
+      without alarm the idea of their return on foot, communicated her distress
+      to Glyndon, and he besought Viola, who recovered but slowly, to accept his
+      own carriage. Perhaps before that night she would not have rejected so
+      slight a service. Now, for some reason or other, she refused. Glyndon,
+      offended, was retiring sullenly, when Gionetta stopped him. &ldquo;Stay,
+      signor,&rdquo; said she, coaxingly: &ldquo;the dear signora is not well,&mdash;do not
+      be angry with her; I will make her accept your offer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon stayed, and after a few moments spent in expostulation on the part
+      of Gionetta, and resistance on that of Viola, the offer was accepted.
+      Gionetta and her charge entered the carriage, and Glyndon was left at the
+      door of the theatre to return home on foot. The mysterious warning of
+      Zanoni then suddenly occurred to him; he had forgotten it in the interest
+      of his lover&rsquo;s quarrel with Viola. He thought it now advisable to guard
+      against danger foretold by lips so mysterious. He looked round for some
+      one he knew: the theatre was disgorging its crowds; they hustled, and
+      jostled, and pressed upon him; but he recognised no familiar countenance.
+      While pausing irresolute, he heard Mervale&rsquo;s voice calling on him, and, to
+      his great relief, discovered his friend making his way through the throng.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have secured you,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;a place in the Count Cetoxa&rsquo;s carriage.
+      Come along, he is waiting for us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How kind in you! how did you find me out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I met Zanoni in the passage,&mdash;&lsquo;Your friend is at the door of
+      the theatre,&rsquo; said he; &lsquo;do not let him go home on foot to-night; the
+      streets of Naples are not always safe.&rsquo; I immediately remembered that some
+      of the Calabrian bravos had been busy within the city the last few weeks,
+      and suddenly meeting Cetoxa&mdash;but here he is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cospetto!&rdquo; cried one; &ldquo;that is the Englishman!&rdquo; Glyndon imperfectly heard
+      the exclamation as the carriage drove on. He reached home in safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The familiar and endearing intimacy which always exists in Italy between
+      the nurse and the child she has reared, and which the &ldquo;Romeo and Juliet&rdquo;
+       of Shakespeare in no way exaggerates, could not but be drawn yet closer
+      than usual, in a situation so friendless as that of the orphan-actress. In
+      all that concerned the weaknesses of the heart, Gionetta had large
+      experience; and when, three nights before, Viola, on returning from the
+      theatre, had wept bitterly, the nurse had succeeded in extracting from her
+      a confession that she had seen one,&mdash;not seen for two weary and
+      eventful years,&mdash;but never forgotten, and who, alas! had not evinced
+      the slightest recognition of herself. Gionetta could not comprehend all
+      the vague and innocent emotions that swelled this sorrow; but she resolved
+      them all, with her plain, blunt understanding, to the one sentiment of
+      love. And here, she was well fitted to sympathise and console. Confidante
+      to Viola&rsquo;s entire and deep heart she never could be,&mdash;for that heart
+      never could have words for all its secrets. But such confidence as she
+      could obtain, she was ready to repay by the most unreproving pity and the
+      most ready service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you discovered who he is?&rdquo; asked Viola, as she was now alone in the
+      carriage with Gionetta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; he is the celebrated Signor Zanoni, about whom all the great ladies
+      have gone mad. They say he is so rich!&mdash;oh! so much richer than any
+      of the Inglesi!&mdash;not but what the Signor Glyndon&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cease!&rdquo; interrupted the young actress. &ldquo;Zanoni! Speak of the Englishman
+      no more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The carriage was now entering that more lonely and remote part of the city
+      in which Viola&rsquo;s house was situated, when it suddenly stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gionetta, in alarm, thrust her head out of the window, and perceived, by
+      the pale light of the moon, that the driver, torn from his seat, was
+      already pinioned in the arms of two men; the next moment the door was
+      opened violently, and a tall figure, masked and mantled, appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fear not, fairest Pisani,&rdquo; said he, gently; &ldquo;no ill shall befall you.&rdquo; As
+      he spoke, he wound his arm round the form of the fair actress, and
+      endeavoured to lift her from the carriage. But Gionetta was no ordinary
+      ally,&mdash;she thrust back the assailant with a force that astonished
+      him, and followed the shock by a volley of the most energetic reprobation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mask drew back, and composed his disordered mantle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the body of Bacchus!&rdquo; said he, half laughing, &ldquo;she is well protected.
+      Here, Luigi, Giovanni! seize the hag!&mdash;quick!&mdash;why loiter ye?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mask retired from the door, and another and yet taller form presented
+      itself. &ldquo;Be calm, Viola Pisani,&rdquo; said he, in a low voice; &ldquo;with me you are
+      indeed safe!&rdquo; He lifted his mask as he spoke, and showed the noble
+      features of Zanoni.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be calm, be hushed,&mdash;I can save you.&rdquo; He vanished, leaving Viola
+      lost in surprise, agitation, and delight. There were, in all, nine masks:
+      two were engaged with the driver; one stood at the head of the
+      carriage-horses; a fourth guarded the well-trained steeds of the party;
+      three others (besides Zanoni and the one who had first accosted Viola)
+      stood apart by a carriage drawn to the side of the road. To these three
+      Zanoni motioned; they advanced; he pointed towards the first mask, who was
+      in fact the Prince di &mdash;, and to his unspeakable astonishment the
+      prince was suddenly seized from behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Treason!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Treason among my own men! What means this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Place him in his carriage! If he resist, his blood be on his own head!&rdquo;
+       said Zanoni, calmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He approached the men who had detained the coachman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are outnumbered and outwitted,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;join your lord; you are
+      three men,&mdash;we six, armed to the teeth. Thank our mercy that we spare
+      your lives. Go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The men gave way, dismayed. The driver remounted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cut the traces of their carriage and the bridles of their horses,&rdquo; said
+      Zanoni, as he entered the vehicle containing Viola, which now drove on
+      rapidly, leaving the discomfited ravisher in a state of rage and stupor
+      impossible to describe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allow me to explain this mystery to you,&rdquo; said Zanoni. &ldquo;I discovered the
+      plot against you,&mdash;no matter how; I frustrated it thus: The head of
+      this design is a nobleman, who has long persecuted you in vain. He and two
+      of his creatures watched you from the entrance of the theatre, having
+      directed six others to await him on the spot where you were attacked;
+      myself and five of my servants supplied their place, and were mistaken for
+      his own followers. I had previously ridden alone to the spot where the men
+      were waiting, and informed them that their master would not require their
+      services that night. They believed me, and accordingly dispersed. I then
+      joined my own band, whom I had left in the rear; you know all. We are at
+      your door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 2.III.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
+     For all the day they view things unrespected;
+     But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
+     And, darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
+     Shakespeare.
+
+     Zanoni followed the young Neapolitan into her house; Gionetta
+     vanished,&mdash;they were left alone.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Alone, in that room so often filled, in the old happy days, with the wild
+      melodies of Pisani; and now, as she saw this mysterious, haunting, yet
+      beautiful and stately stranger, standing on the very spot where she had
+      sat at her father&rsquo;s feet, thrilled and spellbound,&mdash;she almost
+      thought, in her fantastic way of personifying her own airy notions, that
+      that spiritual Music had taken shape and life, and stood before her
+      glorious in the image it assumed. She was unconscious all the while of her
+      own loveliness. She had thrown aside her hood and veil; her hair, somewhat
+      disordered, fell over the ivory neck which the dress partially displayed;
+      and as her dark eyes swam with grateful tears, and her cheek flushed with
+      its late excitement, the god of light and music himself never, amidst his
+      Arcadian valleys, wooed, in his mortal guise, maiden or nymph more fair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni gazed at her with a look in which admiration seemed not unmingled
+      with compassion. He muttered a few words to himself, and then addressed
+      her aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Viola, I have saved you from a great peril; not from dishonour only, but
+      perhaps from death. The Prince di &mdash;, under a weak despot and a venal
+      administration, is a man above the law. He is capable of every crime; but
+      amongst his passions he has such prudence as belongs to ambition; if you
+      were not to reconcile yourself to your shame, you would never enter the
+      world again to tell your tale. The ravisher has no heart for repentance,
+      but he has a hand that can murder. I have saved you, Viola. Perhaps you
+      would ask me wherefore?&rdquo; Zanoni paused, and smiled mournfully, as he
+      added, &ldquo;You will not wrong me by the thought that he who has preserved is
+      not less selfish than he who would have injured. Orphan, I do not speak to
+      you in the language of your wooers; enough that I know pity, and am not
+      ungrateful for affection. Why blush, why tremble at the word? I read your
+      heart while I speak, and I see not one thought that should give you shame.
+      I say not that you love me yet; happily, the fancy may be roused long
+      before the heart is touched. But it has been my fate to fascinate your
+      eye, to influence your imagination. It is to warn you against what could
+      bring you but sorrow, as I warned you once to prepare for sorrow itself,
+      that I am now your guest. The Englishman, Glyndon, loves thee well,&mdash;better,
+      perhaps, than I can ever love; if not worthy of thee, yet, he has but to
+      know thee more to deserve thee better. He may wed thee, he may bear thee
+      to his own free and happy land,&mdash;the land of thy mother&rsquo;s kin. Forget
+      me; teach thyself to return and deserve his love; and I tell thee that
+      thou wilt be honoured and be happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Viola listened with silent, inexpressible emotion, and burning blushes, to
+      this strange address, and when he had concluded, she covered her face with
+      her hands, and wept. And yet, much as his words were calculated to humble
+      or irritate, to produce indignation or excite shame, those were not the
+      feelings with which her eyes streamed and her heart swelled. The woman at
+      that moment was lost in the child; and AS a child, with all its exacting,
+      craving, yet innocent desire to be loved, weeps in unrebuking sadness when
+      its affection is thrown austerely back upon itself,&mdash;so, without
+      anger and without shame, wept Viola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni contemplated her thus, as her graceful head, shadowed by its
+      redundant tresses, bent before him; and after a moment&rsquo;s pause he drew
+      near to her, and said, in a voice of the most soothing sweetness, and with
+      a half smile upon his lip,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember, when I told you to struggle for the light, that I
+      pointed for example to the resolute and earnest tree? I did not tell you,
+      fair child, to take example by the moth, that would soar to the star, but
+      falls scorched beside the lamp. Come, I will talk to thee. This Englishman&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Viola drew herself away, and wept yet more passionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This Englishman is of thine own years, not far above thine own rank. Thou
+      mayst share his thoughts in life,&mdash;thou mayst sleep beside him in the
+      same grave in death! And I&mdash;but THAT view of the future should
+      concern us not. Look into thy heart, and thou wilt see that till again my
+      shadow crossed thy path, there had grown up for this thine equal a pure
+      and calm affection that would have ripened into love. Hast thou never
+      pictured to thyself a home in which thy partner was thy young wooer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never!&rdquo; said Viola, with sudden energy,&mdash;&ldquo;never but to feel that
+      such was not the fate ordained me. And, oh!&rdquo; she continued, rising
+      suddenly, and, putting aside the tresses that veiled her face, she fixed
+      her eyes upon the questioner,&mdash;&ldquo;and, oh! whoever thou art that thus
+      wouldst read my soul and shape my future, do not mistake the sentiment
+      that, that&mdash;&rdquo; she faltered an instant, and went on with downcast
+      eyes,&mdash;&ldquo;that has fascinated my thoughts to thee. Do not think that I
+      could nourish a love unsought and unreturned. It is not love that I feel
+      for thee, stranger. Why should I? Thou hast never spoken to me but to
+      admonish,&mdash;and now, to wound!&rdquo; Again she paused, again her voice
+      faltered; the tears trembled on her eyelids; she brushed them away and
+      resumed. &ldquo;No, not love,&mdash;if that be love which I have heard and read
+      of, and sought to simulate on the stage,&mdash;but a more solemn, fearful,
+      and, it seems to me, almost preternatural attraction, which makes me
+      associate thee, waking or dreaming, with images that at once charm and
+      awe. Thinkest thou, if it were love, that I could speak to thee thus;
+      that,&rdquo; she raised her looks suddenly to his, &ldquo;mine eyes could thus search
+      and confront thine own? Stranger, I ask but at times to see, to hear thee!
+      Stranger, talk not to me of others. Forewarn, rebuke, bruise my heart,
+      reject the not unworthy gratitude it offers thee, if thou wilt, but come
+      not always to me as an omen of grief and trouble. Sometimes have I seen
+      thee in my dreams surrounded by shapes of glory and light; thy looks
+      radiant with a celestial joy which they wear not now. Stranger, thou hast
+      saved me, and I thank and bless thee! Is that also a homage thou wouldst
+      reject?&rdquo; With these words, she crossed her arms meekly on her bosom, and
+      inclined lowlily before him. Nor did her humility seem unwomanly or
+      abject, nor that of mistress to lover, of slave to master, but rather of a
+      child to its guardian, of a neophyte of the old religion to her priest.
+      Zanoni&rsquo;s brow was melancholy and thoughtful. He looked at her with a
+      strange expression of kindness, of sorrow, yet of tender affection, in his
+      eyes; but his lips were stern, and his voice cold, as he replied,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know what you ask, Viola? Do you guess the danger to yourself&mdash;perhaps
+      to both of us&mdash;which you court? Do you know that my life, separated
+      from the turbulent herd of men, is one worship of the Beautiful, from
+      which I seek to banish what the Beautiful inspires in most? As a calamity,
+      I shun what to man seems the fairest fate,&mdash;the love of the daughters
+      of earth. At present I can warn and save thee from many evils; if I saw
+      more of thee, would the power still be mine? You understand me not. What I
+      am about to add, it will be easier to comprehend. I bid thee banish from
+      thy heart all thought of me, but as one whom the Future cries aloud to
+      thee to avoid. Glyndon, if thou acceptest his homage, will love thee till
+      the tomb closes upon both. I, too,&rdquo; he added with emotion,&mdash;&ldquo;I, too,
+      might love thee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; cried Viola, with the vehemence of a sudden impulse of delight, of
+      rapture, which she could not suppress; but the instant after, she would
+      have given worlds to recall the exclamation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Viola, I might love thee; but in that love what sorrow and what
+      change! The flower gives perfume to the rock on whose heart it grows. A
+      little while, and the flower is dead; but the rock still endures,&mdash;the
+      snow at its breast, the sunshine on its summit. Pause,&mdash;think well.
+      Danger besets thee yet. For some days thou shalt be safe from thy
+      remorseless persecutor; but the hour soon comes when thy only security
+      will be in flight. If the Englishman love thee worthily, thy honour will
+      be dear to him as his own; if not, there are yet other lands where love
+      will be truer, and virtue less in danger from fraud and force. Farewell;
+      my own destiny I cannot foresee except through cloud and shadow. I know,
+      at least, that we shall meet again; but learn ere then, sweet flower, that
+      there are more genial resting-places than the rock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned as he spoke, and gained the outer door where Gionetta discreetly
+      stood. Zanoni lightly laid his hand on her arm. With the gay accent of a
+      jesting cavalier, he said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Signor Glyndon woos your mistress; he may wed her. I know your love
+      for her. Disabuse her of any caprice for me. I am a bird ever on the
+      wing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He dropped a purse into Gionetta&rsquo;s hand as he spoke, and was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 2.IV.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Les Intelligences Celestes se font voir, et see communiquent plus
+     volontiers, dans le silence et dans la tranquillite de la
+     solitude.  On aura donc une petite chambre ou un cabinet secret,
+     etc.
+
+     &ldquo;Les Clavicules de Rabbi Salomon,&rdquo; chapter 3; traduites
+     exactement du texte Hebreu par M. Pierre Morissoneau, Professeur
+     des Langues Orientales, et Sectateur de la Philosophie des Sages
+     Cabalistes.  (Manuscript Translation.)
+
+     (The Celestial Intelligences exhibit and explain themselves most
+     freely in silence and the tranquillity of solitude.  One will
+     have then a little chamber, or a secret cabinet, etc.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The palace retained by Zanoni was in one of the less frequented quarters
+      of the city. It still stands, now ruined and dismantled, a monument of the
+      splendour of a chivalry long since vanished from Naples, with the lordly
+      races of the Norman and the Spaniard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he entered the rooms reserved for his private hours, two Indians, in
+      the dress of their country, received him at the threshold with the grave
+      salutations of the East. They had accompanied him from the far lands in
+      which, according to rumour, he had for many years fixed his home. But they
+      could communicate nothing to gratify curiosity or justify suspicion. They
+      spoke no language but their own. With the exception of these two his
+      princely retinue was composed of the native hirelings of the city, whom
+      his lavish but imperious generosity made the implicit creatures of his
+      will. In his house, and in his habits, so far as they were seen, there was
+      nothing to account for the rumours which were circulated abroad. He was
+      not, as we are told of Albertus Magnus or the great Leonardo da Vinci,
+      served by airy forms; and no brazen image, the invention of magic
+      mechanism, communicated to him the influences of the stars. None of the
+      apparatus of the alchemist&mdash;the crucible and the metals&mdash;gave
+      solemnity to his chambers, or accounted for his wealth; nor did he even
+      seem to interest himself in those serener studies which might be supposed
+      to colour his peculiar conversation with abstract notions, and often with
+      recondite learning. No books spoke to him in his solitude; and if ever he
+      had drawn from them his knowledge, it seemed now that the only page he
+      read was the wide one of Nature, and that a capacious and startling memory
+      supplied the rest. Yet was there one exception to what in all else seemed
+      customary and commonplace, and which, according to the authority we have
+      prefixed to this chapter, might indicate the follower of the occult
+      sciences. Whether at Rome or Naples, or, in fact, wherever his abode, he
+      selected one room remote from the rest of the house, which was fastened by
+      a lock scarcely larger than the seal of a ring, yet which sufficed to
+      baffle the most cunning instruments of the locksmith: at least, one of his
+      servants, prompted by irresistible curiosity, had made the attempt in
+      vain; and though he had fancied it was tried in the most favourable time
+      for secrecy,&mdash;not a soul near, in the dead of night, Zanoni himself
+      absent from home,&mdash;yet his superstition, or his conscience, told him
+      the reason why the next day the Major Domo quietly dismissed him. He
+      compensated himself for this misfortune by spreading his own story, with a
+      thousand amusing exaggerations. He declared that, as he approached the
+      door, invisible hands seemed to pluck him away; and that when he touched
+      the lock, he was struck, as by a palsy, to the ground. One surgeon, who
+      heard the tale, observed, to the distaste of the wonder-mongers, that
+      possibly Zanoni made a dexterous use of electricity. Howbeit, this room,
+      once so secured, was never entered save by Zanoni himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The solemn voice of Time, from the neighbouring church at last aroused the
+      lord of the palace from the deep and motionless reverie, rather resembling
+      a trance than thought, in which his mind was absorbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is one more sand out of the mighty hour-glass,&rdquo; said he, murmuringly,
+      &ldquo;and yet time neither adds to, nor steals from, an atom in the Infinite!
+      Soul of mine, the luminous, the Augoeides (Augoeides,&mdash;a word
+      favoured by the mystical Platonists, sphaira psuches augoeides, otan mete
+      ekteinetai epi ti, mete eso suntreche mete sunizane, alla photi lampetai,
+      o ten aletheian opa ten panton, kai ten en aute.&mdash;Marc. Ant., lib. 2.&mdash;The
+      sense of which beautiful sentence of the old philosophy, which, as Bayle
+      well observes, in his article on Cornelius Agrippa, the modern Quietists
+      have (however impotently) sought to imitate, is to the effect that &lsquo;the
+      sphere of the soul is luminous when nothing external has contact with the
+      soul itself; but when lit by its own light, it sees the truth of all
+      things and the truth centred in itself.&rsquo;), why descendest thou from thy
+      sphere,&mdash;why from the eternal, starlike, and passionless Serene,
+      shrinkest thou back to the mists of the dark sarcophagus? How long, too
+      austerely taught that companionship with the things that die brings with
+      it but sorrow in its sweetness, hast thou dwelt contented with thy
+      majestic solitude?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he thus murmured, one of the earliest birds that salute the dawn broke
+      into sudden song from amidst the orange-trees in the garden below his
+      casement; and as suddenly, song answered song; the mate, awakened at the
+      note, gave back its happy answer to the bird. He listened; and not the
+      soul he had questioned, but the heart replied. He rose, and with restless
+      strides paced the narrow floor. &ldquo;Away from this world!&rdquo; he exclaimed at
+      length, with an impatient tone. &ldquo;Can no time loosen its fatal ties? As the
+      attraction that holds the earth in space, is the attraction that fixes the
+      soul to earth. Away from the dark grey planet! Break, ye fetters: arise,
+      ye wings!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed through the silent galleries, and up the lofty stairs, and
+      entered the secret chamber....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 2.V.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     I and my fellows
+     Are ministers of Fate.
+     &mdash;&ldquo;The Tempest.&rdquo;
+  </pre>
+    <p>
+      The next day Glyndon bent his steps towards Zanoni&rsquo;s palace. The young
+      man&rsquo;s imagination, naturally inflammable, was singularly excited by the
+      little he had seen and heard of this strange being,&mdash;a spell, he
+      could neither master nor account for, attracted him towards the stranger.
+      Zanoni&rsquo;s power seemed mysterious and great, his motives kindly and
+      benevolent, yet his manners chilling and repellent. Why at one moment
+      reject Glyndon&rsquo;s acquaintance, at another save him from danger? How had
+      Zanoni thus acquired the knowledge of enemies unknown to Glyndon himself?
+      His interest was deeply roused, his gratitude appealed to; he resolved to
+      make another effort to conciliate the ungracious herbalist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The signor was at home, and Glyndon was admitted into a lofty saloon,
+      where in a few moments Zanoni joined him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am come to thank you for your warning last night,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;and to
+      entreat you to complete my obligation by informing me of the quarter to
+      which I may look for enmity and peril.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a gallant,&rdquo; said Zanoni, with a smile, and in the English
+      language, &ldquo;and do you know so little of the South as not to be aware that
+      gallants have always rivals?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you serious?&rdquo; said Glyndon, colouring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most serious. You love Viola Pisani; you have for rival one of the most
+      powerful and relentless of the Neapolitan princes. Your danger is indeed
+      great.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But pardon me!&mdash;how came it known to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I give no account of myself to mortal man,&rdquo; replied Zanoni, haughtily;
+      &ldquo;and to me it matters nothing whether you regard or scorn my warning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if I may not question you, be it so; but at least advise me what to
+      do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you follow my advice?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you are constitutionally brave; you are fond of excitement and
+      mystery; you like to be the hero of a romance. Were I to advise you to
+      leave Naples, would you do so while Naples contains a foe to confront or a
+      mistress to pursue?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right,&rdquo; said the young Englishman, with energy. &ldquo;No! and you
+      cannot reproach me for such a resolution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there is another course left to you: do you love Viola Pisani truly
+      and fervently?&mdash;if so, marry her, and take a bride to your native
+      land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; answered Glyndon, embarrassed; &ldquo;Viola is not of my rank. Her
+      profession, too, is&mdash;in short, I am enslaved by her beauty, but I
+      cannot wed her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni frowned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your love, then, is but selfish lust, and I advise you to your own
+      happiness no more. Young man, Destiny is less inexorable than it appears.
+      The resources of the great Ruler of the Universe are not so scanty and so
+      stern as to deny to men the divine privilege of Free Will; all of us can
+      carve out our own way, and God can make our very contradictions harmonise
+      with His solemn ends. You have before you an option. Honourable and
+      generous love may even now work out your happiness, and effect your
+      escape; a frantic and selfish passion will but lead you to misery and
+      doom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you pretend, then, to read the future?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have said all that it pleases me to utter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;While you assume the moralist to me, Signor Zanoni,&rdquo; said Glyndon, with a
+      smile, &ldquo;are you yourself so indifferent to youth and beauty as to act the
+      stoic to its allurements?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it were necessary that practice square with precept,&rdquo; said Zanoni,
+      with a bitter smile, &ldquo;our monitors would be but few. The conduct of the
+      individual can affect but a small circle beyond himself; the permanent
+      good or evil that he works to others lies rather in the sentiments he can
+      diffuse. His acts are limited and momentary; his sentiments may pervade
+      the universe, and inspire generations till the day of doom. All our
+      virtues, all our laws, are drawn from books and maxims, which ARE
+      sentiments, not from deeds. In conduct, Julian had the virtues of a
+      Christian, and Constantine the vices of a Pagan. The sentiments of Julian
+      reconverted thousands to Paganism; those of Constantine helped, under
+      Heaven&rsquo;s will, to bow to Christianity the nations of the earth. In
+      conduct, the humblest fisherman on yonder sea, who believes in the
+      miracles of San Gennaro, may be a better man than Luther; to the
+      sentiments of Luther the mind of modern Europe is indebted for the noblest
+      revolution it has known. Our opinions, young Englishman, are the angel
+      part of us; our acts, the earthly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have reflected deeply for an Italian,&rdquo; said Glyndon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who told you that I was an Italian?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you not? And yet, when I hear you speak my own language as a native,
+      I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tush!&rdquo; interrupted Zanoni, impatiently turning away. Then, after a pause,
+      he resumed in a mild voice, &ldquo;Glyndon, do you renounce Viola Pisani? Will
+      you take some days to consider what I have said?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Renounce her,&mdash;never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you will marry her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be it so; she will then renounce you. I tell you that you have rivals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; the Prince di &mdash;; but I do not fear him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have another whom you will fear more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon turned pale, and started from his seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, Signor Zanoni!&mdash;you,&mdash;and you dare to tell me so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dare! Alas! there are times when I wish that I could fear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These arrogant words were not uttered arrogantly, but in a tone of the
+      most mournful dejection. Glyndon was enraged, confounded, and yet awed.
+      However, he had a brave English heart within his breast, and he recovered
+      himself quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Signor,&rdquo; said he, calmly, &ldquo;I am not to be duped by these solemn phrases
+      and these mystical assumptions. You may have powers which I cannot
+      comprehend or emulate, or you may be but a keen imposter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, proceed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean, then,&rdquo; continued Glyndon, resolutely, though somewhat
+      disconcerted,&mdash;&ldquo;I mean you to understand, that, though I am not to be
+      persuaded or compelled by a stranger to marry Viola Pisani, I am not the
+      less determined never tamely to yield her to another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni looked gravely at the young man, whose sparkling eyes and
+      heightened colour testified the spirit to support his words, and replied,
+      &ldquo;So bold! well; it becomes you. But take my advice; wait yet nine days,
+      and tell me then if you will marry the fairest and the purest creature
+      that ever crossed your path.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if you love her, why&mdash;why&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why am I anxious that she should wed another?&mdash;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,&mdash;all that man can desire in wife. Her soul,
+      developed by affection, will elevate your own; it will influence your
+      fortunes, exalt your destiny; you will become a great and a prosperous
+      man. If, on the contrary, she fall to me, I know not what may be her lot;
+      but I know that there is an ordeal which few can pass, and which hitherto
+      no woman has survived.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Zanoni spoke, his face became colourless, and there was something in
+      his voice that froze the warm blood of the listener.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is this mystery which surrounds you?&rdquo; exclaimed Glyndon, unable to
+      repress his emotion. &ldquo;Are you, in truth, different from other men? Have
+      you passed the boundary of lawful knowledge? Are you, as some declare, a
+      sorcerer, or only a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; interrupted Zanoni, gently, and with a smile of singular but
+      melancholy sweetness; &ldquo;have you earned the right to ask me these
+      questions? Though Italy still boast an Inquisition, its power is rivelled
+      as a leaf which the first wind shall scatter. The days of torture and
+      persecution are over; and a man may live as he pleases, and talk as it
+      suits him, without fear of the stake and the rack. Since I can defy
+      persecution, pardon me if I do not yield to curiosity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon blushed, and rose. In spite of his love for Viola, and his natural
+      terror of such a rival, he felt himself irresistibly drawn towards the
+      very man he had most cause to suspect and dread. He held out his hand to
+      Zanoni, saying, &ldquo;Well, then, if we are to be rivals, our swords must
+      settle our rights; till then I would fain be friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Friends! You know not what you ask.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enigmas again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enigmas!&rdquo; cried Zanoni, passionately; &ldquo;ay! can you dare to solve them?
+      Not till then could I give you my right hand, and call you friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could dare everything and all things for the attainment of superhuman
+      wisdom,&rdquo; said Glyndon, and his countenance was lighted up with wild and
+      intense enthusiasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni observed him in thoughtful silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The seeds of the ancestor live in the son,&rdquo; he muttered; &ldquo;he may&mdash;yet&mdash;&rdquo;
+       He broke off abruptly; then, speaking aloud, &ldquo;Go, Glyndon,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;we
+      shall meet again, but I will not ask your answer till the hour presses for
+      decision.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 2.VI.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &lsquo;Tis certain that this man has an estate of fifty thousand
+     livres, and seems to be a person of very great accomplishments.
+     But, then, if he&rsquo;s a wizard, are wizards so devoutly given as
+     this man seems to be?  In short, I could make neither head nor
+     tail on&rsquo;t
+
+     &mdash;The Count de Gabalis, Translation affixed to the
+     second edition of the &ldquo;Rape of the Lock.&rdquo;
+  </pre>
+    <p>
+      Of all the weaknesses which little men rail against, there is none that
+      they are more apt to ridicule than the tendency to believe. And of all the
+      signs of a corrupt heart and a feeble head, the tendency of incredulity is
+      the surest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny. While we hear, every
+      day, the small pretenders to science talk of the absurdities of alchemy
+      and the dream of the Philosopher&rsquo;s Stone, a more erudite knowledge is
+      aware that by alchemists the greatest discoveries in science have been
+      made, and much which still seems abstruse, had we the key to the mystic
+      phraseology they were compelled to adopt, might open the way to yet more
+      noble acquisitions. The Philosopher&rsquo;s Stone itself has seemed no visionary
+      chimera to some of the soundest chemists that even the present century has
+      produced. (Mr. Disraeli, in his &ldquo;Curiosities of Literature&rdquo; (article
+      &ldquo;Alchem&rdquo;), after quoting the sanguine judgments of modern chemists as to
+      the transmutation of metals, observes of one yet greater and more recent
+      than those to which Glyndon&rsquo;s thoughts could have referred, &ldquo;Sir Humphry
+      Davy told me that he did not consider this undiscovered art as impossible;
+      but should it ever be discovered, it would certainly be useless.&rdquo;) Man
+      cannot contradict the Laws of Nature. But are all the laws of Nature yet
+      discovered?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me a proof of your art,&rdquo; says the rational inquirer. &ldquo;When I have
+      seen the effect, I will endeavour, with you, to ascertain the causes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Somewhat to the above effect were the first thoughts of Clarence Glyndon
+      on quitting Zanoni. But Clarence Glyndon was no &ldquo;rational inquirer.&rdquo; The
+      more vague and mysterious the language of Zanoni, the more it imposed upon
+      him. A proof would have been something tangible, with which he would have
+      sought to grapple. And it would have only disappointed his curiosity to
+      find the supernatural reduced to Nature. He endeavoured in vain, at some
+      moments rousing himself from credulity to the scepticism he deprecated, to
+      reconcile what he had heard with the probable motives and designs of an
+      imposter. Unlike Mesmer and Cagliostro, Zanoni, whatever his pretensions,
+      did not make them a source of profit; nor was Glyndon&rsquo;s position or rank
+      in life sufficient to render any influence obtained over his mind,
+      subservient to schemes, whether of avarice or ambition. Yet, ever and
+      anon, with the suspicion of worldly knowledge, he strove to persuade
+      himself that Zanoni had at least some sinister object in inducing him to
+      what his English pride and manner of thought considered a derogatory
+      marriage with the poor actress. Might not Viola and the Mystic be in
+      league with each other? Might not all this jargon of prophecy and menace
+      be but artifices to dupe him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt an unjust resentment towards Viola at having secured such an ally.
+      But with that resentment was mingled a natural jealousy. Zanoni threatened
+      him with rivalry. Zanoni, who, whatever his character or his arts,
+      possessed at least all the external attributes that dazzle and command.
+      Impatient of his own doubts, he plunged into the society of such
+      acquaintances as he had made at Naples&mdash;chiefly artists, like
+      himself, men of letters, and the rich commercialists, who were already
+      vying with the splendour, though debarred from the privileges, of the
+      nobles. From these he heard much of Zanoni, already with them, as with the
+      idler classes, an object of curiosity and speculation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had noticed, as a thing remarkable, that Zanoni had conversed with him
+      in English, and with a command of the language so complete that he might
+      have passed for a native. On the other hand, in Italian, Zanoni was
+      equally at ease. Glyndon found that it was the same in languages less
+      usually learned by foreigners. A painter from Sweden, who had conversed
+      with him, was positive that he was a Swede; and a merchant from
+      Constantinople, who had sold some of his goods to Zanoni, professed his
+      conviction that none but a Turk, or at least a native of the East, could
+      have so thoroughly mastered the soft Oriental intonations. Yet in all
+      these languages, when they came to compare their several recollections,
+      there was a slight, scarce perceptible distinction, not in pronunciation,
+      nor even accent, but in the key and chime, as it were, of the voice,
+      between himself and a native. This faculty was one which Glyndon called to
+      mind, that sect, whose tenets and powers have never been more than most
+      partially explored, the Rosicrucians, especially arrogated. He remembered
+      to have heard in Germany of the work of John Bringeret (Printed in 1615.),
+      asserting that all the languages of the earth were known to the genuine
+      Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. Did Zanoni belong to this mystical
+      Fraternity, who, in an earlier age, boasted of secrets of which the
+      Philosopher&rsquo;s Stone was but the least; who considered themselves the heirs
+      of all that the Chaldeans, the Magi, the Gymnosophists, and the Platonists
+      had taught; and who differed from all the darker Sons of Magic in the
+      virtue of their lives, the purity of their doctrines, and their insisting,
+      as the foundation of all wisdom, on the subjugation of the senses, and the
+      intensity of Religious Faith?&mdash;a glorious sect, if they lied not!
+      And, in truth, if Zanoni had powers beyond the race of worldly sages, they
+      seemed not unworthily exercised. The little known of his life was in his
+      favour. Some acts, not of indiscriminate, but judicious generosity and
+      beneficence, were recorded; in repeating which, still, however, the
+      narrators shook their heads, and expressed surprise how a stranger should
+      have possessed so minute a knowledge of the quiet and obscure distresses
+      he had relieved. Two or three sick persons, when abandoned by their
+      physicians, he had visited, and conferred with alone. They had recovered:
+      they ascribed to him their recovery; yet they could not tell by what
+      medicines they had been healed. They could only depose that he came,
+      conversed with them, and they were cured; it usually, however, happened
+      that a deep sleep had preceded the recovery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another circumstance was also beginning to be remarked, and spoke yet more
+      in his commendation. Those with whom he principally associated&mdash;the
+      gay, the dissipated, the thoughtless, the sinners and publicans of the
+      more polished world&mdash;all appeared rapidly, yet insensibly to
+      themselves, to awaken to purer thoughts and more regulated lives. Even
+      Cetoxa, the prince of gallants, duellists, and gamesters, was no longer
+      the same man since the night of the singular events which he had related
+      to Glyndon. The first trace of his reform was in his retirement from the
+      gaming-houses; the next was his reconciliation with an hereditary enemy of
+      his house, whom it had been his constant object for the last six years to
+      entangle in such a quarrel as might call forth his inimitable manoeuvre of
+      the stoccata. Nor when Cetoxa and his young companions were heard to speak
+      of Zanoni, did it seem that this change had been brought about by any
+      sober lectures or admonitions. They all described Zanoni as a man keenly
+      alive to enjoyment: of manners the reverse of formal,&mdash;not precisely
+      gay, but equable, serene, and cheerful; ever ready to listen to the talk
+      of others, however idle, or to charm all ears with an inexhaustible fund
+      of brilliant anecdote and worldly experience. All manners, all nations,
+      all grades of men, seemed familiar to him. He was reserved only if
+      allusion were ever ventured to his birth or history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The more general opinion of his origin certainly seemed the more
+      plausible. His riches, his familiarity with the languages of the East, his
+      residence in India, a certain gravity which never deserted his most
+      cheerful and familiar hours, the lustrous darkness of his eyes and hair,
+      and even the peculiarities of his shape, in the delicate smallness of the
+      hands, and the Arab-like turn of the stately head, appeared to fix him as
+      belonging to one at least of the Oriental races. And a dabbler in the
+      Eastern tongues even sought to reduce the simple name of Zanoni, which a
+      century before had been borne by an inoffensive naturalist of Bologna (The
+      author of two works on botany and rare plants.), to the radicals of the
+      extinct language. Zan was unquestionably the Chaldean appellation for the
+      sun. Even the Greeks, who mutilated every Oriental name, had retained the
+      right one in this case, as the Cretan inscription on the tomb of Zeus (Ode
+      megas keitai Zan.&mdash;&ldquo;Cyril contra Julian.&rdquo; (Here lies great Jove.))
+      significantly showed. As to the rest, the Zan, or Zaun, was, with the
+      Sidonians, no uncommon prefix to On. Adonis was but another name for
+      Zanonas, whose worship in Sidon Hesychius records. To this profound and
+      unanswerable derivation Mervale listened with great attention, and
+      observed that he now ventured to announce an erudite discovery he himself
+      had long since made,&mdash;namely, that the numerous family of Smiths in
+      England were undoubtedly the ancient priests of the Phrygian Apollo.
+      &ldquo;For,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;was not Apollo&rsquo;s surname, in Phrygia, Smintheus? How
+      clear all the ensuing corruptions of the august name,&mdash;Smintheus,
+      Smitheus, Smithe, Smith! And even now, I may remark that the more ancient
+      branches of that illustrious family, unconsciously anxious to approximate
+      at least by a letter nearer to the true title, take a pious pleasure in
+      writing their names Smith<i>e</i>!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The philologist was much struck with this discovery, and begged Mervale&rsquo;s
+      permission to note it down as an illustration suitable to a work he was
+      about to publish on the origin of languages, to be called &ldquo;Babel,&rdquo; and
+      published in three quartos by subscription.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 2.VII.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Learn to be poor in spirit, my son, if you would penetrate that
+     sacred night which environs truth.  Learn of the Sages to allow
+     to the Devils no power in Nature, since the fatal stone has shut
+     &lsquo;em up in the depth of the abyss.  Learn of the Philosophers
+     always to look for natural causes in all extraordinary events;
+     and when such natural causes are wanting, recur to God.&mdash;The
+     Count de Gabalis.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      All these additions to his knowledge of Zanoni, picked up in the various
+      lounging-places and resorts that he frequented, were unsatisfactory to
+      Glyndon. That night Viola did not perform at the theatre; and the next
+      day, still disturbed by bewildered fancies, and averse to the sober and
+      sarcastic companionship of Mervale, Glyndon sauntered musingly into the
+      public gardens, and paused under the very tree under which he had first
+      heard the voice that had exercised upon his mind so singular an influence.
+      The gardens were deserted. He threw himself on one of the seats placed
+      beneath the shade; and again, in the midst of his reverie, the same cold
+      shudder came over him which Zanoni had so distinctly defined, and to which
+      he had ascribed so extraordinary a cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He roused himself with a sudden effort, and started to see, seated next
+      him, a figure hideous enough to have personated one of the malignant
+      beings of whom Zanoni had spoken. It was a small man, dressed in a fashion
+      strikingly at variance with the elaborate costume of the day: an
+      affectation of homeliness and poverty approaching to squalor, in the loose
+      trousers, coarse as a ship&rsquo;s sail; in the rough jacket, which appeared
+      rent wilfully into holes; and the black, ragged, tangled locks that
+      streamed from their confinement under a woollen cap, accorded but ill with
+      other details which spoke of comparative wealth. The shirt, open at the
+      throat, was fastened by a brooch of gaudy stones; and two pendent massive
+      gold chains announced the foppery of two watches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man&rsquo;s figure, if not absolutely deformed, was yet marvellously
+      ill-favoured; his shoulders high and square; his chest flattened, as if
+      crushed in; his gloveless hands were knotted at the joints, and, large,
+      bony, and muscular, dangled from lean, emaciated wrists, as if not
+      belonging to them. His features had the painful distortion sometimes seen
+      in the countenance of a cripple,&mdash;large, exaggerated, with the nose
+      nearly touching the chin; the eyes small, but glowing with a cunning fire
+      as they dwelt on Glyndon; and the mouth was twisted into a grin that
+      displayed rows of jagged, black, broken teeth. Yet over this frightful
+      face there still played a kind of disagreeable intelligence, an expression
+      at once astute and bold; and as Glyndon, recovering from the first
+      impression, looked again at his neighbour, he blushed at his own dismay,
+      and recognised a French artist, with whom he had formed an acquaintance,
+      and who was possessed of no inconsiderable talents in his calling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, it was to be remarked that this creature, whose externals were so
+      deserted by the Graces, particularly delighted in designs aspiring to
+      majesty and grandeur. Though his colouring was hard and shallow, as was
+      that generally of the French school at the time, his DRAWINGS were
+      admirable for symmetry, simple elegance, and classic vigour; at the same
+      time they unquestionably wanted ideal grace. He was fond of selecting
+      subjects from Roman history, rather than from the copious world of Grecian
+      beauty, or those still more sublime stories of scriptural record from
+      which Raphael and Michael Angelo borrowed their inspirations. His grandeur
+      was that not of gods and saints, but mortals. His delineation of beauty
+      was that which the eye cannot blame and the soul does not acknowledge. In
+      a word, as it was said of Dionysius, he was an Anthropographos, or Painter
+      of Men. It was also a notable contradiction in this person, who was
+      addicted to the most extravagant excesses in every passion, whether of
+      hate or love, implacable in revenge, and insatiable in debauch, that he
+      was in the habit of uttering the most beautiful sentiments of exalted
+      purity and genial philanthropy. The world was not good enough for him; he
+      was, to use the expressive German phrase, A WORLD-BETTERER! Nevertheless,
+      his sarcastic lip often seemed to mock the sentiments he uttered, as if it
+      sought to insinuate that he was above even the world he would construct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, this painter was in close correspondence with the Republicans of
+      Paris, and was held to be one of those missionaries whom, from the
+      earliest period of the Revolution, the regenerators of mankind were
+      pleased to despatch to the various states yet shackled, whether by actual
+      tyranny or wholesome laws. Certainly, as the historian of Italy (Botta.)
+      has observed, there was no city in Italy where these new doctrines would
+      be received with greater favour than Naples, partly from the lively temper
+      of the people, principally because the most hateful feudal privileges,
+      however partially curtailed some years before by the great minister,
+      Tanuccini, still presented so many daily and practical evils as to make
+      change wear a more substantial charm than the mere and meretricious bloom
+      on the cheek of the harlot, Novelty. This man, whom I will call Jean
+      Nicot, was, therefore, an oracle among the younger and bolder spirits of
+      Naples; and before Glyndon had met Zanoni, the former had not been among
+      the least dazzled by the eloquent aspirations of the hideous
+      philanthropist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is so long since we have met, cher confrere,&rdquo; said Nicot, drawing his
+      seat nearer to Glyndon&rsquo;s, &ldquo;that you cannot be surprised that I see you
+      with delight, and even take the liberty to intrude on your meditations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They were of no agreeable nature,&rdquo; said Glyndon; &ldquo;and never was intrusion
+      more welcome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be charmed to hear,&rdquo; said Nicot, drawing several letters from
+      his bosom, &ldquo;that the good work proceeds with marvellous rapidity.
+      Mirabeau, indeed, is no more; but, mort Diable! the French people are now
+      a Mirabeau themselves.&rdquo; With this remark, Monsieur Nicot proceeded to read
+      and to comment upon several animated and interesting passages in his
+      correspondence, in which the word virtue was introduced twenty-seven
+      times, and God not once. And then, warmed by the cheering prospects thus
+      opened to him, he began to indulge in those anticipations of the future,
+      the outline of which we have already seen in the eloquent extravagance of
+      Condorcet. All the old virtues were dethroned for a new Pantheon:
+      patriotism was a narrow sentiment; philanthropy was to be its successor.
+      No love that did not embrace all mankind, as warm for Indus and the Pole
+      as for the hearth of home, was worthy the breast of a generous man.
+      Opinion was to be free as air; and in order to make it so, it was
+      necessary to exterminate all those whose opinions were not the same as
+      Mons. Jean Nicot&rsquo;s. Much of this amused, much revolted Glyndon; but when
+      the painter turned to dwell upon a science that all should comprehend, and
+      the results of which all should enjoy,&mdash;a science that, springing
+      from the soil of equal institutions and equal mental cultivation, should
+      give to all the races of men wealth without labour, and a life longer than
+      the Patriarchs&rsquo;, without care,&mdash;then Glyndon listened with interest
+      and admiration, not unmixed with awe. &ldquo;Observe,&rdquo; said Nicot, &ldquo;how much
+      that we now cherish as a virtue will then be rejected as meanness. Our
+      oppressors, for instance, preach to us of the excellence of gratitude.
+      Gratitude, the confession of inferiority! What so hateful to a noble
+      spirit as the humiliating sense of obligation? But where there is equality
+      there can be no means for power thus to enslave merit. The benefactor and
+      the client will alike cease, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And in the mean time,&rdquo; said a low voice, at hand,&mdash;&ldquo;in the mean
+      time, Jean Nicot?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two artists started, and Glyndon recognised Zanoni.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gazed with a brow of unusual sternness on Nicot, who, lumped together
+      as he sat, looked up at him askew, and with an expression of fear and
+      dismay upon his distorted countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ho, ho! Messire Jean Nicot, thou who fearest neither God nor Devil, why
+      fearest thou the eye of a man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not the first time I have been a witness to your opinions on the
+      infirmity of gratitude,&rdquo; said Zanoni.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nicot suppressed an exclamation, and, after gloomily surveying Zanoni with
+      an eye villanous and sinister, but full of hate impotent and unutterable,
+      said, &ldquo;I know you not,&mdash;what would you of me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your absence. Leave us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nicot sprang forward a step, with hands clenched, and showing his teeth
+      from ear to ear, like a wild beast incensed. Zanoni stood motionless, and
+      smiled at him in scorn. Nicot halted abruptly, as if fixed and fascinated
+      by the look, shivered from head to foot, and sullenly, and with a visible
+      effort, as if impelled by a power not his own, turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon&rsquo;s eyes followed him in surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what know you of this man?&rdquo; said Zanoni.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know him as one like myself,&mdash;a follower of art.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of ART! Do not so profane that glorious word. What Nature is to God, art
+      should be to man,&mdash;a sublime, beneficent, genial, and warm creation.
+      That wretch may be a PAINTER, not an ARTIST.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And pardon me if I ask what YOU know of one you thus disparage?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know thus much, that you are beneath my care if it be necessary to warn
+      you against him; his own lips show the hideousness of his heart. Why
+      should I tell you of the crimes he has committed? He SPEAKS crime!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not seem, Signor Zanoni, to be one of the admirers of the dawning
+      Revolution. Perhaps you are prejudiced against the man because you dislike
+      the opinions?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What opinions?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon paused, somewhat puzzled to define; but at length he said, &ldquo;Nay, I
+      must wrong you; for you, of all men, I suppose, cannot discredit the
+      doctrine that preaches the infinite improvement of the human species.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right; the few in every age improve the many; the many now may be
+      as wise as the few were; but improvement is at a standstill, if you tell
+      me that the many now are as wise as the few ARE.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I comprehend you; you will not allow the law of universal equality!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Law! If the whole world conspired to enforce the falsehood they could not
+      make it LAW. Level all conditions to-day, and you only smooth away all
+      obstacles to tyranny to-morrow. A nation that aspires to EQUALITY is unfit
+      for FREEDOM. Throughout all creation, from the archangel to the worm, from
+      Olympus to the pebble, from the radiant and completed planet to the nebula
+      that hardens through ages of mist and slime into the habitable world, the
+      first law of Nature is inequality.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harsh doctrine, if applied to states. Are the cruel disparities of life
+      never to be removed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Disparities of the PHYSICAL life? Oh, let us hope so. But disparities of
+      the INTELLECTUAL and the MORAL, never! Universal equality of intelligence,
+      of mind, of genius, of virtue!&mdash;no teacher left to the world! no men
+      wiser, better than others,&mdash;were it not an impossible condition, WHAT
+      A HOPELESS PROSPECT FOR HUMANITY! No, while the world lasts, the sun will
+      gild the mountain-top before it shines upon the plain. Diffuse all the
+      knowledge the earth contains equally over all mankind to-day, and some men
+      will be wiser than the rest to-morrow. And THIS is not a harsh, but a
+      loving law,&mdash;the REAL law of improvement; the wiser the few in one
+      generation, the wiser will be the multitude the next!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Zanoni thus spoke, they moved on through the smiling gardens, and the
+      beautiful bay lay sparkling in the noontide. A gentle breeze just cooled
+      the sunbeam, and stirred the ocean; and in the inexpressible clearness of
+      the atmosphere there was something that rejoiced the senses. The very soul
+      seemed to grow lighter and purer in that lucid air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And these men, to commence their era of improvement and equality, are
+      jealous even of the Creator. They would deny an intelligence,&mdash;a
+      God!&rdquo; said Zanoni, as if involuntarily. &ldquo;Are you an artist, and, looking
+      on the world, can you listen to such a dogma? Between God and genius there
+      is a necessary link,&mdash;there is almost a correspondent language. Well
+      said the Pythagorean (Sextus, the Pythagorean.), &lsquo;A good intellect is the
+      chorus of divinity.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Struck and touched with these sentiments, which he little expected to fall
+      from one to whom he ascribed those powers which the superstitions of
+      childhood ascribe to the darker agencies, Glyndon said: &ldquo;And yet you have
+      confessed that your life, separated from that of others, is one that man
+      should dread to share. Is there, then, a connection between magic and
+      religion?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Magic!&rdquo; And what is magic! When the traveller beholds in Persia the ruins
+      of palaces and temples, the ignorant inhabitants inform him they were the
+      work of magicians. What is beyond their own power, the vulgar cannot
+      comprehend to be lawfully in the power of others. But if by magic you mean
+      a perpetual research amongst all that is more latent and obscure in
+      Nature, I answer, I profess that magic, and that he who does so comes but
+      nearer to the fountain of all belief. Knowest thou not that magic was
+      taught in the schools of old? But how, and by whom? As the last and most
+      solemn lesson, by the Priests who ministered to the Temple. (Psellus de
+      Daemon (MS.)) And you, who would be a painter, is not there a magic also
+      in that art you would advance? Must you not, after long study of the
+      Beautiful that has been, seize upon new and airy combinations of a beauty
+      that is to be? See you not that the grander art, whether of poet or of
+      painter, ever seeking for the TRUE, abhors the REAL; that you must seize
+      Nature as her master, not lackey her as her slave?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You demand mastery over the past, a conception of the future. Has not the
+      art that is truly noble for its domain the future and the past? You would
+      conjure the invisible beings to your charm; and what is painting but the
+      fixing into substance the Invisible? Are you discontented with this world?
+      This world was never meant for genius! To exist, it must create another.
+      What magician can do more; nay, what science can do as much? There are two
+      avenues from the little passions and the drear calamities of earth; both
+      lead to heaven and away from hell,&mdash;art and science. But art is more
+      godlike than science; science discovers, art creates. You have faculties
+      that may command art; be contented with your lot. The astronomer who
+      catalogues the stars cannot add one atom to the universe; the poet can
+      call a universe from the atom; the chemist may heal with his drugs the
+      infirmities of the human form; the painter, or the sculptor, fixes into
+      everlasting youth forms divine, which no disease can ravage, and no years
+      impair. Renounce those wandering fancies that lead you now to myself, and
+      now to yon orator of the human race; to us two, who are the antipodes of
+      each other! Your pencil is your wand; your canvas may raise Utopias fairer
+      than Condorcet dreams of. I press not yet for your decision; but what man
+      of genius ever asked more to cheer his path to the grave than love and
+      glory?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Glyndon, fixing his eyes earnestly on Zanoni, &ldquo;if there be a
+      power to baffle the grave itself&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni&rsquo;s brow darkened. &ldquo;And were this so,&rdquo; he said, after a pause, &ldquo;would
+      it be so sweet a lot to outlive all you loved, and to recoil from every
+      human tie? Perhaps the fairest immortality on earth is that of a noble
+      name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not answer me,&mdash;you equivocate. I have read of the long lives
+      far beyond the date common experience assigns to man,&rdquo; persisted Glyndon,
+      &ldquo;which some of the alchemists enjoyed. Is the golden elixir but a fable?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If not, and these men discovered it, they died, because they refused to
+      live! There may be a mournful warning in your conjecture. Turn once more
+      to the easel and the canvas!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, Zanoni waved his hand, and, with downcast eyes and a slow step,
+      bent his way back into the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 2.VIII.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The Goddess Wisdom.
+
+     To some she is the goddess great;
+     To some the milch cow of the field;
+     Their care is but to calculate
+     What butter she will yield.
+     From Schiller.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      This last conversation with Zanoni left upon the mind of Glyndon a
+      tranquillising and salutary effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the confused mists of his fancy glittered forth again those happy,
+      golden schemes which part from the young ambition of art, to play in the
+      air, to illumine the space like rays that kindle from the sun. And with
+      these projects mingled also the vision of a love purer and serener than
+      his life yet had known. His mind went back into that fair childhood of
+      genius, when the forbidden fruit is not yet tasted, and we know of no land
+      beyond the Eden which is gladdened by an Eve. Insensibly before him there
+      rose the scenes of a home, with his art sufficing for all excitement, and
+      Viola&rsquo;s love circling occupation with happiness and content; and in the
+      midst of these fantasies of a future that might be at his command, he was
+      recalled to the present by the clear, strong voice of Mervale, the man of
+      common-sense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whoever has studied the lives of persons in whom the imagination is
+      stronger than the will, who suspect their own knowledge of actual life,
+      and are aware of their facility to impressions, will have observed the
+      influence which a homely, vigorous, worldly understanding obtains over
+      such natures. It was thus with Glyndon. His friend had often extricated
+      him from danger, and saved him from the consequences of imprudence; and
+      there was something in Mervale&rsquo;s voice alone that damped his enthusiasm,
+      and often made him yet more ashamed of noble impulses than weak conduct.
+      For Mervale, though a downright honest man, could not sympathise with the
+      extravagance of generosity any more than with that of presumption and
+      credulity. He walked the straight line of life, and felt an equal contempt
+      for the man who wandered up the hill-sides, no matter whether to chase a
+      butterfly, or to catch a prospect of the ocean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell you your thoughts, Clarence,&rdquo; said Mervale, laughing, &ldquo;though
+      I am no Zanoni. I know them by the moisture of your eyes, and the
+      half-smile on your lips. You are musing upon that fair perdition,&mdash;the
+      little singer of San Carlo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little singer of San Carlo! Glyndon coloured as he answered,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you speak thus of her if she were my wife?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! for then any contempt I might venture to feel would be for yourself.
+      One may dislike the duper, but it is the dupe that one despises.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure that I should be the dupe in such a union? Where can I find
+      one so lovely and so innocent,&mdash;where one whose virtue has been tried
+      by such temptation? Does even a single breath of slander sully the name of
+      Viola Pisani?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know not all the gossip of Naples, and therefore cannot answer; but I
+      know this, that in England no one would believe that a young Englishman,
+      of good fortune and respectable birth, who marries a singer from the
+      theatre of Naples, has not been lamentably taken in. I would save you from
+      a fall of position so irretrievable. Think how many mortifications you
+      will be subjected to; how many young men will visit at your house,&mdash;and
+      how many young wives will as carefully avoid it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can choose my own career, to which commonplace society is not
+      essential. I can owe the respect of the world to my art, and not to the
+      accidents of birth and fortune.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is, you still persist in your second folly,&mdash;the absurd
+      ambition of daubing canvas. Heaven forbid I should say anything against
+      the laudable industry of one who follows such a profession for the sake of
+      subsistence; but with means and connections that will raise you in life,
+      why voluntarily sink into a mere artist? As an accomplishment in leisure
+      moments, it is all very well in its way; but as the occupation of
+      existence, it is a frenzy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Artists have been the friends of princes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very rarely so, I fancy, in sober England. There in the great centre of
+      political aristocracy, what men respect is the practical, not the ideal.
+      Just suffer me to draw two pictures of my own. Clarence Glyndon returns to
+      England; he marries a lady of fortune equal to his own, of friends and
+      parentage that advance rational ambition. Clarence Glyndon, thus a wealthy
+      and respectable man, of good talents, of bustling energies then
+      concentrated, enters into practical life. He has a house at which he can
+      receive those whose acquaintance is both advantage and honour; he has
+      leisure which he can devote to useful studies; his reputation, built on a
+      solid base, grows in men&rsquo;s mouths. He attaches himself to a party; he
+      enters political life; and new connections serve to promote his objects.
+      At the age of five-and-forty, what, in all probability, may Clarence
+      Glyndon be? Since you are ambitious I leave that question for you to
+      decide! Now turn to the other picture. Clarence Glyndon returns to England
+      with a wife who can bring him no money, unless he lets her out on the
+      stage; so handsome, that every one asks who she is, and every one hears,&mdash;the
+      celebrated singer, Pisani. Clarence Glyndon shuts himself up to grind
+      colours and paint pictures in the grand historical school, which nobody
+      buys. There is even a prejudice against him, as not having studied in the
+      Academy,&mdash;as being an amateur. Who is Mr. Clarence Glyndon? Oh, the
+      celebrated Pisani&rsquo;s husband! What else? Oh, he exhibits those large
+      pictures! Poor man! they have merit in their way; but Teniers and Watteau
+      are more convenient, and almost as cheap. Clarence Glyndon, with an easy
+      fortune while single, has a large family which his fortune, unaided by
+      marriage, can just rear up to callings more plebeian than his own. He
+      retires into the country, to save and to paint; he grows slovenly and
+      discontented; &lsquo;the world does not appreciate him,&rsquo; he says, and he runs
+      away from the world. At the age of forty-five what will be Clarence
+      Glyndon? Your ambition shall decide that question also!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If all men were as worldly as you,&rdquo; said Glyndon, rising, &ldquo;there would
+      never have been an artist or a poet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps we should do just as well without them,&rdquo; answered Mervale. &ldquo;Is it
+      not time to think of dinner? The mullets here are remarkably fine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 2.IX.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Wollt ihr hoch auf ihren Flugeln schweben,
+     Werft die Angst des Irdischen von euch!
+     Fliehet aus dem engen dumpfen Leben
+     In des Ideales Reich!
+     &ldquo;Das Ideal und das Leben.&rdquo;
+ 
+     Wouldst thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing?
+     Cast off the earthly burden of the Real;
+     High from this cramped and dungeoned being, spring
+     Into the realm of the Ideal.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      As some injudicious master lowers and vitiates the taste of the student by
+      fixing his attention to what he falsely calls the Natural, but which, in
+      reality, is the Commonplace, and understands not that beauty in art is
+      created by what Raphael so well describes,&mdash;namely, THE IDEA OF
+      BEAUTY IN THE PAINTER&rsquo;S OWN MIND; and that in every art, whether its
+      plastic expression be found in words or marble, colours or sounds, the
+      servile imitation of Nature is the work of journeymen and tyros,&mdash;so
+      in conduct the man of the world vitiates and lowers the bold enthusiasm of
+      loftier natures by the perpetual reduction of whatever is generous and
+      trustful to all that is trite and coarse. A great German poet has well
+      defined the distinction between discretion and the larger wisdom. In the
+      last there is a certain rashness which the first disdains,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The purblind see but the receding shore, Not that to which the bold wave
+      wafts them o&rsquo;er.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet in this logic of the prudent and the worldly there is often a
+      reasoning unanswerable of its kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You must have a feeling,&mdash;a faith in whatever is self-sacrificing and
+      divine, whether in religion or in art, in glory or in love; or
+      Common-sense will reason you out of the sacrifice, and a syllogism will
+      debase the Divine to an article in the market.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every true critic in art, from Aristotle and Pliny, from Winkelman and
+      Vasari to Reynolds and Fuseli, has sought to instruct the painter that
+      Nature is not to be copied, but EXALTED; that the loftiest order of art,
+      selecting only the loftiest combinations, is the perpetual struggle of
+      Humanity to approach the gods. The great painter, as the great author,
+      embodies what is POSSIBLE to MAN, it is true, but what is not COMMON to
+      MANKIND. There is truth in Hamlet; in Macbeth, and his witches; in
+      Desdemona; in Othello; in Prospero, and in Caliban; there is truth in the
+      cartoons of Raphael; there is truth in the Apollo, the Antinous, and the
+      Laocoon. But you do not meet the originals of the words, the cartoons, or
+      the marble, in Oxford Street or St. James&rsquo;s. All these, to return to
+      Raphael, are the creatures of the idea in the artist&rsquo;s mind. This idea is
+      not inborn, it has come from an intense study. But that study has been of
+      the ideal that can be raised from the positive and the actual into
+      grandeur and beauty. The commonest model becomes full of exquisite
+      suggestions to him who has formed this idea; a Venus of flesh and blood
+      would be vulgarised by the imitation of him who has not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When asked where he got his models, Guido summoned a common porter from
+      his calling, and drew from a mean original a head of surpassing beauty. It
+      resembled the porter, but idealised the porter to the hero. It was true,
+      but it was not real. There are critics who will tell you that the Boor of
+      Teniers is more true to Nature than the Porter of Guido! The commonplace
+      public scarcely understand the idealising principle, even in art; for high
+      art is an acquired taste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to come to my comparison. Still less is the kindred principle
+      comprehended in conduct. And the advice of worldly prudence would as often
+      deter from the risks of virtue as from the punishments of vice; yet in
+      conduct, as in art, there is an idea of the great and beautiful, by which
+      men should exalt the hackneyed and the trite of life. Now Glyndon felt the
+      sober prudence of Mervale&rsquo;s reasonings; he recoiled from the probable
+      picture placed before him, in his devotion to the one master-talent he
+      possessed, and the one master-passion that, rightly directed, might purify
+      his whole being as a strong wind purifies the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though he could not bring himself to decide in the teeth of so
+      rational a judgment, neither could he resolve at once to abandon the
+      pursuit of Viola. Fearful of being influenced by Zanoni&rsquo;s counsels and his
+      own heart, he had for the last two days shunned an interview with the
+      young actress. But after a night following his last conversation with
+      Zanoni, and that we have just recorded with Mervale,&mdash;a night
+      coloured by dreams so distinct as to seem prophetic, dreams that appeared
+      so to shape his future according to the hints of Zanoni that he could have
+      fancied Zanoni himself had sent them from the house of sleep to haunt his
+      pillow,&mdash;he resolved once more to seek Viola; and though without a
+      definite or distinct object, he yielded himself up to the impulse of his
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 2.X.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     O sollecito dubbio e fredda tema
+     Che pensando l&rsquo;accresci.
+     Tasso, Canzone vi.
+
+     (O anxious doubt and chilling fear that grows by thinking.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      She was seated outside her door,&mdash;the young actress! The sea before
+      her in that heavenly bay seemed literally to sleep in the arms of the
+      shore; while, to the right, not far off, rose the dark and tangled crags
+      to which the traveller of to-day is duly brought to gaze on the tomb of
+      Virgil, or compare with the cavern of Posilipo the archway of Highgate
+      Hill. There were a few fisherman loitering by the cliffs, on which their
+      nets were hung to dry; and at a distance the sound of some rustic pipe
+      (more common at that day than at this), mingled now and then with the
+      bells of the lazy mules, broke the voluptuous silence,&mdash;the silence
+      of declining noon on the shores of Naples; never, till you have enjoyed
+      it, never, till you have felt its enervating but delicious charm, believe
+      that you can comprehend all the meaning of the Dolce far niente (The
+      pleasure of doing nothing.); and when that luxury has been known, when you
+      have breathed that atmosphere of fairy-land, then you will no longer
+      wonder why the heart ripens into fruit so sudden and so rich beneath the
+      rosy skies and the glorious sunshine of the South.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The eyes of the actress were fixed on the broad blue deep beyond. In the
+      unwonted negligence of her dress might be traced the abstraction of her
+      mind. Her beautiful hair was gathered up loosely, and partially bandaged
+      by a kerchief whose purple colour served to deepen the golden hue of her
+      tresses. A stray curl escaped and fell down the graceful neck. A loose
+      morning-robe, girded by a sash, left the breeze. That came ever and anon
+      from the sea, to die upon the bust half disclosed; and the tiny slipper,
+      that Cinderella might have worn, seemed a world too wide for the tiny foot
+      which it scarcely covered. It might be the heat of the day that deepened
+      the soft bloom of the cheeks, and gave an unwonted languor to the large,
+      dark eyes. In all the pomp of her stage attire,&mdash;in all the flush of
+      excitement before the intoxicating lamps,&mdash;never had Viola looked so
+      lovely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the side of the actress, and filling up the threshold,&mdash;stood
+      Gionetta, with her arms thrust to the elbow in two huge pockets on either
+      side of her gown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I assure you,&rdquo; said the nurse, in that sharp, quick, ear-splitting
+      tone in which the old women of the South are more than a match for those
+      of the North,&mdash;&ldquo;but I assure you, my darling, that there is not a
+      finer cavalier in all Naples, nor a more beautiful, than this Inglese; and
+      I am told that all these Inglesi are much richer than they seem. Though
+      they have no trees in their country, poor people! and instead of
+      twenty-four they have only twelve hours to the day, yet I hear that they
+      shoe their horses with scudi; and since they cannot (the poor heretics!)
+      turn grapes into wine, for they have no grapes, they turn gold into
+      physic, and take a glass or two of pistoles whenever they are troubled
+      with the colic. But you don&rsquo;t hear me, little pupil of my eyes,&mdash;you
+      don&rsquo;t hear me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And these things are whispered of Zanoni!&rdquo; said Viola, half to herself,
+      and unheeding Gionetta&rsquo;s eulogies on Glyndon and the English.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blessed Maria! do not talk of this terrible Zanoni. You may be sure that
+      his beautiful face, like his yet more beautiful pistoles, is only
+      witchcraft. I look at the money he gave me the other night, every quarter
+      of an hour, to see whether it has not turned into pebbles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you then really believe,&rdquo; said Viola, with timid earnestness, &ldquo;that
+      sorcery still exists?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Believe! Do I believe in the blessed San Gennaro? How do you think he
+      cured old Filippo the fisherman, when the doctor gave him up? How do you
+      think he has managed himself to live at least these three hundred years?
+      How do you think he fascinates every one to his bidding with a look, as
+      the vampires do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, is this only witchcraft? It is like it,&mdash;it must be!&rdquo; murmured
+      Viola, turning very pale. Gionetta herself was scarcely more superstitious
+      than the daughter of the musician. And her very innocence, chilled at the
+      strangeness of virgin passion, might well ascribe to magic what hearts
+      more experienced would have resolved to love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then, why has this great Prince di &mdash; been so terrified by him?
+      Why has he ceased to persecute us? Why has he been so quiet and still? Is
+      there no sorcery in all that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think you, then,&rdquo; said Viola, with sweet inconsistency, &ldquo;that I owe that
+      happiness and safety to his protection? Oh, let me so believe! Be silent,
+      Gionetta! Why have I only thee and my own terrors to consult? O beautiful
+      sun!&rdquo; and the girl pressed her hand to her heart with wild energy; &ldquo;thou
+      lightest every spot but this. Go, Gionetta! leave me alone,&mdash;leave
+      me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And indeed it is time I should leave you; for the polenta will be
+      spoiled, and you have eat nothing all day. If you don&rsquo;t eat you will lose
+      your beauty, my darling, and then nobody will care for you. Nobody cares
+      for us when we grow ugly,&mdash;I know that; and then you must, like old
+      Gionetta, get some Viola of your own to spoil. I&rsquo;ll go and see to the
+      polenta.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since I have known this man,&rdquo; said the girl, half aloud,&mdash;&ldquo;since his
+      dark eyes have haunted me, I am no longer the same. I long to escape from
+      myself,&mdash;to glide with the sunbeam over the hill-tops; to become
+      something that is not of earth. Phantoms float before me at night; and a
+      fluttering, like the wing of a bird, within my heart, seems as if the
+      spirit were terrified, and would break its cage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While murmuring these incoherent rhapsodies, a step that she did not hear
+      approached the actress, and a light hand touched her arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Viola!&mdash;bellissima!&mdash;Viola!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned, and saw Glyndon. The sight of his fair young face calmed her
+      at once. His presence gave her pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Viola,&rdquo; said the Englishman, taking her hand, and drawing her again to
+      the bench from which she had risen, as he seated himself beside her, &ldquo;you
+      shall hear me speak! You must know already that I love thee! It has not
+      been pity or admiration alone that has led me ever and ever to thy dear
+      side; reasons there may have been why I have not spoken, save by my eyes,
+      before; but this day&mdash;I know not how it is&mdash;I feel a more
+      sustained and settled courage to address thee, and learn the happiest or
+      the worst. I have rivals, I know,&mdash;rivals who are more powerful than
+      the poor artist; are they also more favoured?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Viola blushed faintly; but her countenance was grave and distressed.
+      Looking down, and marking some hieroglyphical figures in the dust with the
+      point of her slipper, she said, with some hesitation, and a vain attempt
+      to be gay, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you do not love this destiny, glittering though it seem; your heart
+      is not in the vocation which your gifts adorn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, no!&rdquo; said the actress, her eyes filling with tears. &ldquo;Once I loved to
+      be the priestess of song and music; now I feel only that it is a miserable
+      lot to be slave to a multitude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fly, then, with me,&rdquo; said the artist, passionately; &ldquo;quit forever the
+      calling that divides that heart I would have all my own. Share my fate now
+      and forever,&mdash;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, &lsquo;It is Viola Pisani!&rsquo; Ah!
+      Viola, I adore thee; tell me that I do not worship in vain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou art good and fair,&rdquo; said Viola, gazing on her lover, as he pressed
+      nearer to her, and clasped her hand in his; &ldquo;but what should I give thee
+      in return?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Love, love,&mdash;only love!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A sister&rsquo;s love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, speak not with such cruel coldness!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I would teach thee to love me; fear it not. Nay, such love as thou
+      describest, in our tranquil climates, is the love of innocence and youth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of innocence!&rdquo; said Viola. &ldquo;Is it so? Perhaps&mdash;&rdquo; She paused, and
+      added, with an effort, &ldquo;Foreigner! and wouldst thou wed the orphan? Ah,
+      THOU at least art generous! It is not the innocence thou wouldst destroy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon drew back, conscience-stricken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it may not be!&rdquo; she said, rising, but not conscious of the thoughts,
+      half of shame, half suspicion, that passed through the mind of her lover.
+      &ldquo;Leave me, and forget me. You do not understand, you could not comprehend,
+      the nature of her whom you think to love. From my childhood upward, I have
+      felt as if I were marked out for some strange and preternatural doom; as
+      if I were singled from my kind. This feeling (and, oh! at times it is one
+      of delirious and vague delight, at others of the darkest gloom) deepens
+      within me day by day. It is like the shadow of twilight, spreading slowly
+      and solemnly around. My hour approaches: a little while, and it will be
+      night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she spoke, Glyndon listened with visible emotion and perturbation.
+      &ldquo;Viola!&rdquo; he exclaimed, as she ceased, &ldquo;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, &lsquo;Time has a dark mystery in store for thy manhood.&rsquo; 
+      When you spoke, it was as the voice of my own soul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Viola gazed upon him in wonder and fear. Her countenance was as white as
+      marble; and those features, so divine in their rare symmetry, might have
+      served the Greek with a study for the Pythoness, when, from the mystic
+      cavern and the bubbling spring, she first hears the voice of the inspiring
+      god. Gradually the rigour and tension of that wonderful face relaxed, the
+      colour returned, the pulse beat: the heart animated the frame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; she said, turning partially aside,&mdash;&ldquo;tell me, have you
+      seen&mdash;do you know&mdash;a stranger in this city,&mdash;one of whom
+      wild stories are afloat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You speak of Zanoni? I have seen him: I know him,&mdash;and you? Ah, he,
+      too, would be my rival!&mdash;he, too, would bear thee from me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You err,&rdquo; said Viola, hastily, and with a deep sigh; &ldquo;he pleads for you:
+      he informed me of your love; he besought me not&mdash;not to reject it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Strange being! incomprehensible enigma! Why did you name him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; and the actress spoke with
+      hurried animation, &ldquo;that with HIM was connected the secret of your life?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All this I felt,&rdquo; answered Glyndon, in a trembling voice, &ldquo;the first time
+      I was in his presence. Though all around me was gay,&mdash;music, amidst
+      lamp-lit trees, light converse near, and heaven without a cloud above,&mdash;my
+      knees knocked together, my hair bristled, and my blood curdled like ice.
+      Since then he has divided my thoughts with thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more, no more!&rdquo; said Viola, in a stifled tone; &ldquo;there must be the hand
+      of fate in this. I can speak to you no more now. Farewell!&rdquo; She sprung
+      past him into the house, and closed the door. Glyndon did not follow her,
+      nor, strange as it may seem, was he so inclined. The thought and
+      recollection of that moonlit hour in the gardens, of the strange address
+      of Zanoni, froze up all human passion. Viola herself, if not forgotten,
+      shrunk back like a shadow into the recesses of his breast. He shivered as
+      he stepped into the sunlight, and musingly retraced his steps into the
+      more populous parts of that liveliest of Italian cities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK III. &mdash; THEURGIA.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &mdash;i cavalier sen vanno
+     dove il pino fatal gli attende in porto.
+     Gerus. Lib., cant. xv (Argomento.)
+
+     The knights came where the fatal bark
+     Awaited them in the port.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 3.I.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     But that which especially distinguishes the brotherhood is their
+     marvellous knowledge of all the resources of medical art.  They
+     work not by charms, but simples.
+     &mdash;&ldquo;MS.  Account of the Origin and Attributes of the true
+     Rosicrucians,&rdquo; by J. Von D&mdash;.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At this time it chanced that Viola had the opportunity to return the
+      kindness shown to her by the friendly musician whose house had received
+      and sheltered her when first left an orphan on the world. Old Bernardi had
+      brought up three sons to the same profession as himself, and they had
+      lately left Naples to seek their fortunes in the wealthier cities of
+      Northern Europe, where the musical market was less overstocked. There was
+      only left to glad the household of his aged wife and himself, a lively,
+      prattling, dark-eyed girl of some eight years old, the child of his second
+      son, whose mother had died in giving her birth. It so happened that, about
+      a month previous to the date on which our story has now entered, a
+      paralytic affection had disabled Bernardi from the duties of his calling.
+      He had been always a social, harmless, improvident, generous fellow&mdash;living
+      on his gains from day to day, as if the day of sickness and old age never
+      was to arrive. Though he received a small allowance for his past services,
+      it ill sufficed for his wants,; neither was he free from debt. Poverty
+      stood at his hearth,&mdash;when Viola&rsquo;s grateful smile and liberal hand
+      came to chase the grim fiend away. But it is not enough to a heart truly
+      kind to send and give; more charitable is it to visit and console. &ldquo;Forget
+      not thy father&rsquo;s friend.&rdquo; So almost daily went the bright idol of Naples
+      to the house of Bernardi. Suddenly a heavier affliction than either
+      poverty or the palsy befell the old musician. His grandchild, his little
+      Beatrice, fell ill, suddenly and dangerously ill, of one of those rapid
+      fevers common to the South; and Viola was summoned from her strange and
+      fearful reveries of love or fancy, to the sick-bed of the young sufferer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child was exceedingly fond of Viola, and the old people thought that
+      her mere presence would bring healing; but when Viola arrived, Beatrice
+      was insensible. Fortunately there was no performance that evening at San
+      Carlo, and she resolved to stay the night and partake its fearful cares
+      and dangerous vigil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But during the night the child grew worse, the physician (the leechcraft
+      has never been very skilful at Naples) shook his powdered head, kept his
+      aromatics at his nostrils, administered his palliatives, and departed. Old
+      Bernardi seated himself by the bedside in stern silence; here was the last
+      tie that bound him to life. Well, let the anchor break and the battered
+      ship go down! It was an iron resolve, more fearful than sorrow. An old
+      man, with one foot in the grave, watching by the couch of a dying child,
+      is one of the most awful spectacles in human calamities. The wife was more
+      active, more bustling, more hopeful, and more tearful. Viola took heed of
+      all three. But towards dawn, Beatrice&rsquo;s state became so obviously
+      alarming, that Viola herself began to despair. At this time she saw the
+      old woman suddenly rise from before the image of the saint at which she
+      had been kneeling, wrap herself in her cloak and hood, and quietly quit
+      the chamber. Viola stole after her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is cold for thee, good mother, to brave the air; let me go for the
+      physician?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Child, I am not going to him. I have heard of one in the city who has
+      been tender to the poor, and who, they say, has cured the sick when
+      physicians failed. I will go and say to him, &lsquo;Signor, we are beggars in
+      all else, but yesterday we were rich in love. We are at the close of life,
+      but we lived in our grandchild&rsquo;s childhood. Give us back our wealth,&mdash;give
+      us back our youth. Let us die blessing God that the thing we love survives
+      us.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was gone. Why did thy heart beat, Viola? The infant&rsquo;s sharp cry of
+      pain called her back to the couch; and there still sat the old man,
+      unconscious of his wife&rsquo;s movements, not stirring, his eyes glazing fast
+      as they watched the agonies of that slight frame. By degrees the wail of
+      pain died into a low moan,&mdash;the convulsions grew feebler, but more
+      frequent; the glow of fever faded into the blue, pale tinge that settles
+      into the last bloodless marble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The daylight came broader and clearer through the casement; steps were
+      heard on the stairs,&mdash;the old woman entered hastily; she rushed to
+      the bed, cast a glance on the patient, &ldquo;She lives yet, signor, she lives!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Viola raised her eyes,&mdash;the child&rsquo;s head was pillowed on her bosom,&mdash;and
+      she beheld Zanoni. He smiled on her with a tender and soft approval, and
+      took the infant from her arms. Yet even then, as she saw him bending
+      silently over that pale face, a superstitious fear mingled with her hopes.
+      &ldquo;Was it by lawful&mdash;by holy art that&mdash;&rdquo; her self-questioning
+      ceased abruptly; for his dark eye turned to her as if he read her soul,
+      and his aspect accused her conscience for its suspicion, for it spoke
+      reproach not unmingled with disdain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be comforted,&rdquo; he said, gently turning to the old man, &ldquo;the danger is not
+      beyond the reach of human skill;&rdquo; and, taking from his bosom a small
+      crystal vase, he mingled a few drops with water. No sooner did this
+      medicine moisten the infant&rsquo;s lips, than it seemed to produce an
+      astonishing effect. The colour revived rapidly on the lips and cheeks; in
+      a few moments the sufferer slept calmly, and with the regular breathing of
+      painless sleep. And then the old man rose, rigidly, as a corpse might
+      rise,&mdash;looked down, listened, and creeping gently away, stole to the
+      corner of the room, and wept, and thanked Heaven!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, old Bernardi had been, hitherto, but a cold believer; sorrow had
+      never before led him aloft from earth. Old as he was, he had never before
+      thought as the old should think of death,&mdash;that endangered life of
+      the young had wakened up the careless soul of age. Zanoni whispered to the
+      wife, and she drew the old man quietly from the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dost thou fear to leave me an hour with thy charge, Viola? Thinkest thou
+      still that this knowledge is of the Fiend?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Viola, humbled and yet rejoiced, &ldquo;forgive me, forgive me,
+      signor. Thou biddest the young live and the old pray. My thoughts never
+      shall wrong thee more!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the sun rose, Beatrice was out of danger; at noon Zanoni escaped
+      from the blessings of the aged pair, and as he closed the door of the
+      house, he found Viola awaiting him without.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood before him timidly, her hands crossed meekly on her bosom, her
+      downcast eyes swimming with tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not let me be the only one you leave unhappy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what cure can the herbs and anodynes effect for thee? If thou canst
+      so readily believe ill of those who have aided and yet would serve thee,
+      thy disease is of the heart; and&mdash;nay, weep not! nurse of the sick,
+      and comforter of the sad, I should rather approve than chide thee. Forgive
+      thee! Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has, for its first duty, to
+      forgive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, do not forgive me yet. I do not deserve a pardon; for even now, while
+      I feel how ungrateful I was to believe, suspect, aught injurious and false
+      to my preserver, my tears flow from happiness, not remorse. Oh!&rdquo; she
+      continued, with a simple fervour, unconscious, in her innocence and her
+      generous emotions, of all the secrets she betrayed,&mdash;&ldquo;thou knowest
+      not how bitter it was to believe thee not more good, more pure, more
+      sacred than all the world. And when I saw thee,&mdash;the wealthy, the
+      noble, coming from thy palace to minister to the sufferings of the hovel,&mdash;when
+      I heard those blessings of the poor breathed upon thy parting footsteps, I
+      felt my very self exalted,&mdash;good in thy goodness, noble at least in
+      those thoughts that did NOT wrong thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And thinkest thou, Viola, that in a mere act of science there is so much
+      virtue? The commonest leech will tend the sick for his fee. Are prayers
+      and blessings a less reward than gold?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And mine, then, are not worthless? Thou wilt accept of mine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Viola!&rdquo; exclaimed Zanoni, with a sudden passion, that covered her
+      face with blushes, &ldquo;thou only, methinks, on all the earth, hast the power
+      to wound or delight me!&rdquo; He checked himself, and his face became grave and
+      sad. &ldquo;And this,&rdquo; he added, in an altered tone, &ldquo;because, if thou wouldst
+      heed my counsels, methinks I could guide a guileless heart to a happy
+      fate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thy counsels! I will obey them all. Mould me to what thou wilt. In thine
+      absence, I am as a child that fears every shadow in the dark; in thy
+      presence, my soul expands, and the whole world seems calm with a celestial
+      noonday. Do not deny to me that presence. I am fatherless and ignorant and
+      alone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni averted his face, and, after a moment&rsquo;s silence, replied calmly,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be it so. Sister, I will visit thee again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 3.II.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.
+     Shakespeare.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Who so happy as Viola now! A dark load was lifted from her heart: her step
+      seemed to tread on air; she would have sung for very delight as she went
+      gayly home. It is such happiness to the pure to love,&mdash;but oh, such
+      more than happiness to believe in the worth of the one beloved. Between
+      them there might be human obstacles,&mdash;wealth, rank, man&rsquo;s little
+      world. But there was no longer that dark gulf which the imagination
+      recoils to dwell on, and which separates forever soul from soul. He did
+      not love her in return. Love her! But did she ask for love? Did she
+      herself love? No; or she would never have been at once so humble and so
+      bold. How merrily the ocean murmured in her ear; how radiant an aspect the
+      commonest passer-by seemed to wear! She gained her home,&mdash;she looked
+      upon the tree, glancing, with fantastic branches, in the sun. &ldquo;Yes,
+      brother mine!&rdquo; she said, laughing in her joy, &ldquo;like thee, I HAVE struggled
+      to the light!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had never hitherto, like the more instructed Daughters of the North,
+      accustomed herself to that delicious Confessional, the transfusion of
+      thought to writing. Now, suddenly, her heart felt an impulse; a new-born
+      instinct, that bade it commune with itself, bade it disentangle its web of
+      golden fancies,&mdash;made her wish to look upon her inmost self as in a
+      glass. Upsprung from the embrace of Love and Soul&mdash;the Eros and the
+      Psyche&mdash;their beautiful offspring, Genius! She blushed, she sighed,
+      she trembled as she wrote. And from the fresh world that she had built for
+      herself, she was awakened to prepare for the glittering stage. How dull
+      became the music, how dim the scene, so exquisite and so bright of old.
+      Stage, thou art the Fairy Land to the vision of the worldly. Fancy, whose
+      music is not heard by men, whose scenes shift not by mortal hand, as the
+      stage to the present world, art thou to the future and the past!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 3.III.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes.
+     Shakespeare.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The next day, at noon, Zanoni visited Viola; and the next day and the next
+      and again the next,&mdash;days that to her seemed like a special time set
+      apart from the rest of life. And yet he never spoke to her in the language
+      of flattery, and almost of adoration, to which she had been accustomed.
+      Perhaps his very coldness, so gentle as it was, assisted to this
+      mysterious charm. He talked to her much of her past life, and she was
+      scarcely surprised (she now never thought of TERROR) to perceive how much
+      of that past seemed known to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made her speak to him of her father; he made her recall some of the
+      airs of Pisani&rsquo;s wild music. And those airs seemed to charm and lull him
+      into reverie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As music was to the musician,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;may science be to the wise. Your
+      father looked abroad in the world; all was discord to the fine sympathies
+      that he felt with the harmonies that daily and nightly float to the throne
+      of Heaven. Life, with its noisy ambition and its mean passions, is so poor
+      and base! Out of his soul he created the life and the world for which his
+      soul was fitted. Viola, thou art the daughter of that life, and wilt be
+      the denizen of that world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In his earlier visits he did not speak of Glyndon. The day soon came on
+      which he renewed the subject. And so trustful, obedient, and entire was
+      the allegiance that Viola now owned to his dominion, that, unwelcome as
+      that subject was, she restrained her heart, and listened to him in
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last he said, &ldquo;Thou hast promised thou wilt obey my counsels, and if,
+      Viola, I should ask thee, nay adjure, to accept this stranger&rsquo;s hand, and
+      share his fate, should he offer to thee such a lot,&mdash;wouldst thou
+      refuse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then she pressed back the tears that gushed to her eyes; and with a
+      strange pleasure in the midst of pain,&mdash;the pleasure of one who
+      sacrifices heart itself to the one who commands that heart,&mdash;she
+      answered falteringly, &ldquo;If thou CANST ordain it, why&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dispose of me as thou wilt!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni stood in silence for some moments: he saw the struggle which the
+      girl thought she concealed so well; he made an involuntary movement
+      towards her, and pressed her hand to his lips; it was the first time he
+      had ever departed even so far from a certain austerity which perhaps made
+      her fear him and her own thoughts the less.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Viola,&rdquo; said he, and his voice trembled, &ldquo;the danger that I can avert no
+      more, if thou linger still in Naples, comes hourly near and near to thee!
+      On the third day from this thy fate must be decided. I accept thy promise.
+      Before the last hour of that day, come what may, I shall see thee again,
+      HERE, at thine own house. Till then, farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 3.IV.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Between two worlds life hovers like a star
+     &lsquo;Twixt night and morn.
+     &mdash;Byron.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      When Glyndon left Viola, as recorded in the concluding chapter of the
+      second division of this work, he was absorbed again in those mystical
+      desires and conjectures which the haunting recollection of Zanoni always
+      served to create. And as he wandered through the streets, he was scarcely
+      conscious of his own movements till, in the mechanism of custom, he found
+      himself in the midst of one of the noble collections of pictures which
+      form the boast of those Italian cities whose glory is in the past. Thither
+      he had been wont, almost daily, to repair, for the gallery contained some
+      of the finest specimens of a master especially the object of his
+      enthusiasm and study. There, before the works of Salvator, he had often
+      paused in deep and earnest reverence. The striking characteristic of that
+      artist is the &ldquo;Vigour of Will;&rdquo; void of the elevated idea of abstract
+      beauty, which furnishes a model and archetype to the genius of more
+      illustrious order, the singular energy of the man hews out of the rock a
+      dignity of his own. His images have the majesty, not of the god, but the
+      savage; utterly free, like the sublimer schools, from the common-place of
+      imitation,&mdash;apart, with them, from the conventional littleness of the
+      Real,&mdash;he grasps the imagination, and compels it to follow him, not
+      to the heaven, but through all that is most wild and fantastic upon earth;
+      a sorcery, not of the starry magian, but of the gloomy wizard,&mdash;a man
+      of romance whose heart beat strongly, griping art with a hand of iron, and
+      forcing it to idealise the scenes of his actual life. Before this powerful
+      will, Glyndon drew back more awed and admiring than before the calmer
+      beauty which rose from the soul of Raphael, like Venus from the deep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, as awaking from his reverie, he stood opposite to that wild and
+      magnificent gloom of Nature which frowned on him from the canvas, the very
+      leaves on those gnome-like, distorted trees seemed to rustle sibylline
+      secrets in his ear. Those rugged and sombre Apennines, the cataract that
+      dashed between, suited, more than the actual scenes would have done, the
+      mood and temper of his mind. The stern, uncouth forms at rest on the crags
+      below, and dwarfed by the giant size of the Matter that reigned around
+      them, impressed him with the might of Nature and the littleness of Man. As
+      in genius of the more spiritual cast, the living man, and the soul that
+      lives in him, are studiously made the prominent image; and the mere
+      accessories of scene kept down, and cast back, as if to show that the
+      exile from paradise is yet the monarch of the outward world,&mdash;so, in
+      the landscapes of Salvator, the tree, the mountain, the waterfall, become
+      the principal, and man himself dwindles to the accessory. The Matter seems
+      to reign supreme, and its true lord to creep beneath its stupendous
+      shadow. Inert matter giving interest to the immortal man, not the immortal
+      man to the inert matter. A terrible philosophy in art!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While something of these thoughts passed through the mind of the painter,
+      he felt his arm touched, and saw Nicot by his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great master,&rdquo; said Nicot, &ldquo;but I do not love the school.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not love, but I am awed by it. We love the beautiful and serene, but
+      we have a feeling as deep as love for the terrible and dark.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True,&rdquo; said Nicot, thoughtfully. &ldquo;And yet that feeling is only a
+      superstition. The nursery, with its tales of ghosts and goblins, is the
+      cradle of many of our impressions in the world. But art should not seek to
+      pander to our ignorance; art should represent only truths. I confess that
+      Raphael pleases me less, because I have no sympathy with his subjects. His
+      saints and virgins are to me only men and women.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And from what source should painting, then, take its themes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From history, without doubt,&rdquo; returned Nicot, pragmatically,&mdash;&ldquo;those
+      great Roman actions which inspire men with sentiments of liberty and
+      valour, with the virtues of a republic. I wish the cartoons of Raphael had
+      illustrated the story of the Horatii; but it remains for France and her
+      Republic to give to posterity the new and the true school, which could
+      never have arisen in a country of priestcraft and delusion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the saints and virgins of Raphael are to you only men and women?&rdquo;
+       repeated Glyndon, going back to Nicot&rsquo;s candid confession in amaze, and
+      scarcely hearing the deductions the Frenchman drew from his proposition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Assuredly. Ha, ha!&rdquo; and Nicot laughed hideously, &ldquo;do you ask me to
+      believe in the calendar, or what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the ideal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The ideal!&rdquo; interrupted Nicot. &ldquo;Stuff! The Italian critics, and your
+      English Reynolds, have turned your head. They are so fond of their &lsquo;gusto
+      grande,&rsquo; and their &lsquo;ideal beauty that speaks to the soul!&lsquo;&mdash;soul!&mdash;IS
+      there a soul? I understand a man when he talks of composing for a refined
+      taste,&mdash;for an educated and intelligent reason; for a sense that
+      comprehends truths. But as for the soul,&mdash;bah!&mdash;we are but
+      modifications of matter, and painting is modification of matter also.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon turned his eyes from the picture before him to Nicot, and from
+      Nicot to the picture. The dogmatist gave a voice to the thoughts which the
+      sight of the picture had awakened. He shook his head without reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; said Nicot, abruptly, &ldquo;that imposter,&mdash;Zanoni!&mdash;oh! I
+      have now learned his name and quackeries, forsooth,&mdash;what did he say
+      to thee of me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of thee? Nothing; but to warn me against thy doctrines.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aha! was that all?&rdquo; said Nicot. &ldquo;He is a notable inventor, and since,
+      when we met last, I unmasked his delusions, I thought he might retaliate
+      by some tale of slander.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unmasked his delusions!&mdash;how?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A dull and long story: he wished to teach an old doting friend of mine
+      his secrets of prolonged life and philosophical alchemy. I advise thee to
+      renounce so discreditable an acquaintance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that Nicot nodded significantly, and, not wishing to be further
+      questioned, went his way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon&rsquo;s mind at that moment had escaped to his art, and the comments and
+      presence of Nicot had been no welcome interruption. He turned from the
+      landscape of Salvator, and his eye falling on a Nativity by Coreggio, the
+      contrast between the two ranks of genius struck him as a discovery. That
+      exquisite repose, that perfect sense of beauty, that strength without
+      effort, that breathing moral of high art, which speaks to the mind through
+      the eye, and raises the thoughts, by the aid of tenderness and love, to
+      the regions of awe and wonder,&mdash;ay! THAT was the true school. He
+      quitted the gallery with reluctant steps and inspired ideas; he sought his
+      own home. Here, pleased not to find the sober Mervale, he leaned his face
+      on his hands, and endeavoured to recall the words of Zanoni in their last
+      meeting. Yes, he felt Nicot&rsquo;s talk even on art was crime; it debased the
+      imagination itself to mechanism. Could he, who saw nothing in the soul but
+      a combination of matter, prate of schools that should excel a Raphael?
+      Yes, art was magic; and as he owned the truth of the aphorism, he could
+      comprehend that in magic there may be religion, for religion is an
+      essential to art. His old ambition, freeing itself from the frigid
+      prudence with which Mervale sought to desecrate all images less
+      substantial than the golden calf of the world, revived, and stirred, and
+      kindled. The subtle detection of what he conceived to be an error in the
+      school he had hitherto adopted, made more manifest to him by the grinning
+      commentary of Nicot, seemed to open to him a new world of invention. He
+      seized the happy moment,&mdash;he placed before him the colours and the
+      canvas. Lost in his conceptions of a fresh ideal, his mind was lifted
+      aloft into the airy realms of beauty; dark thoughts, unhallowed desires,
+      vanished. Zanoni was right: the material world shrunk from his gaze; he
+      viewed Nature as from a mountain-top afar; and as the waves of his unquiet
+      heart became calm and still, again the angel eyes of Viola beamed on them
+      as a holy star.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Locking himself in his chamber, he refused even the visits of Mervale.
+      Intoxicated with the pure air of his fresh existence, he remained for
+      three days, and almost nights, absorbed in his employment; but on the
+      fourth morning came that reaction to which all labour is exposed. He woke
+      listless and fatigued; and as he cast his eyes on the canvas, the glory
+      seemed to have gone from it. Humiliating recollections of the great
+      masters he aspired to rival forced themselves upon him; defects before
+      unseen magnified themselves to deformities in his languid and discontented
+      eyes. He touched and retouched, but his hand failed him; he threw down his
+      instruments in despair; he opened his casement: the day without was bright
+      and lovely; the street was crowded with that life which is ever so joyous
+      and affluent in the animated population of Naples. He saw the lover, as he
+      passed, conversing with his mistress by those mute gestures which have
+      survived all changes of languages, the same now as when the Etruscan
+      painted yon vases in the Museo Borbonico. Light from without beckoned his
+      youth to its mirth and its pleasures; and the dull walls within, lately
+      large enough to comprise heaven and earth, seemed now cabined and confined
+      as a felon&rsquo;s prison. He welcomed the step of Mervale at his threshold, and
+      unbarred the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is that all you have done?&rdquo; said Mervale, glancing disdainfully at
+      the canvas. &ldquo;Is it for this that you have shut yourself out from the sunny
+      days and moonlit nights of Naples?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;While the fit was on me, I basked in a brighter sun, and imbibed the
+      voluptuous luxury of a softer moon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You own that the fit is over. Well, that is some sign of returning sense.
+      After all, it is better to daub canvas for three days than make a fool of
+      yourself for life. This little siren?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be dumb! I hate to hear you name her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mervale drew his chair nearer to Glyndon&rsquo;s, thrust his hands deep in his
+      breeches-pockets, stretched his legs, and was about to begin a serious
+      strain of expostulation, when a knock was heard at the door, and Nicot,
+      without waiting for leave, obtruded his ugly head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-day, mon cher confrere. I wished to speak to you. Hein! you have
+      been at work, I see. This is well,&mdash;very well! A bold outline,&mdash;great
+      freedom in that right hand. But, hold! is the composition good? You have
+      not got the great pyramidal form. Don&rsquo;t you think, too, that you have lost
+      the advantage of contrast in this figure; since the right leg is put
+      forward, surely the right arm should be put back? Peste! but that little
+      finger is very fine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mervale detested Nicot. For all speculators, Utopians, alterers of the
+      world, and wanderers from the high road, were equally hateful to him; but
+      he could have hugged the Frenchman at that moment. He saw in Glyndon&rsquo;s
+      expressive countenance all the weariness and disgust he endured. After so
+      wrapped a study, to be prated to about pyramidal forms and right arms and
+      right legs, the accidence of the art, the whole conception to be
+      overlooked, and the criticism to end in approval of the little finger!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Glyndon, peevishly, throwing the cloth over his design, &ldquo;enough
+      of my poor performance. What is it you have to say to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the first place,&rdquo; said Nicot, huddling himself together upon a stool,&mdash;&ldquo;in
+      the first place, this Signor Zanoni,&mdash;this second Cagliostro,&mdash;who
+      disputes my doctrines! (no doubt a spy of the man Capet) I am not
+      vindictive; as Helvetius says, &lsquo;our errors arise from our passions.&rsquo; I
+      keep mine in order; but it is virtuous to hate in the cause of mankind; I
+      would I had the denouncing and the judging of Signor Zanoni at Paris.&rdquo; And
+      Nicot&rsquo;s small eyes shot fire, and he gnashed his teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you any new cause to hate him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Nicot, fiercely. &ldquo;Yes, I hear he is courting the girl I mean
+      to marry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You! Whom do you speak of?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The celebrated Pisani! She is divinely handsome. She would make my
+      fortune in a republic. And a republic we shall have before the year is
+      out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mervale rubbed his hands, and chuckled. Glyndon coloured with rage and
+      shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know the Signora Pisani? Have you ever spoken to her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet. But when I make up my mind to anything, it is soon done. I am
+      about to return to Paris. They write me word that a handsome wife advances
+      the career of a patriot. The age of prejudice is over. The sublimer
+      virtues begin to be understood. I shall take back the handsomest wife in
+      Europe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be quiet! What are you about?&rdquo; said Mervale, seizing Glyndon as he saw
+      him advance towards the Frenchman, his eyes sparkling, and his hands
+      clenched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir!&rdquo; said Glyndon, between his teeth, &ldquo;you know not of whom you thus
+      speak. Do you affect to suppose that Viola Pisani would accept YOU?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not if she could get a better offer,&rdquo; said Mervale, looking up to the
+      ceiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A better offer? You don&rsquo;t understand me,&rdquo; said Nicot. &ldquo;I, Jean Nicot,
+      propose to marry the girl; marry her! Others may make her more liberal
+      offers, but no one, I apprehend, would make one so honourable. I alone
+      have pity on her friendless situation. Besides, according to the dawning
+      state of things, one will always, in France, be able to get rid of a wife
+      whenever one wishes. We shall have new laws of divorce. Do you imagine
+      that an Italian girl&mdash;and in no country in the world are maidens, it
+      seems, more chaste (though wives may console themselves with virtues more
+      philosophical)&mdash;would refuse the hand of an artist for the
+      settlements of a prince? No; I think better of the Pisani than you do. I
+      shall hasten to introduce myself to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you all success, Monsieur Nicot,&rdquo; said Mervale, rising, and
+      shaking him heartily by the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon cast at them both a disdainful glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps, Monsieur Nicot,&rdquo; said he, at length, constraining his lips into
+      a bitter smile,&mdash;&ldquo;perhaps you may have rivals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much the better,&rdquo; replied Monsieur Nicot, carelessly, kicking his
+      heels together, and appearing absorbed in admiration at the size of his
+      large feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I myself admire Viola Pisani.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every painter must!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I may offer her marriage as well as yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would be folly in you, though wisdom in me. You would not know how
+      to draw profit from the speculation! Cher confrere, you have prejudices.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not dare to say you would make profit from your own wife?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The virtuous Cato lent his wife to a friend. I love virtue, and I cannot
+      do better than imitate Cato. But to be serious,&mdash;I do not fear you as
+      a rival. You are good-looking, and I am ugly. But you are irresolute, and
+      I decisive. While you are uttering fine phrases, I shall say, simply, &lsquo;I
+      have a bon etat. Will you marry me?&rsquo; So do your worst, cher confrere. Au
+      revoir, behind the scenes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, Nicot rose, stretched his long arms and short legs, yawned till
+      he showed all his ragged teeth from ear to ear, pressed down his cap on
+      his shaggy head with an air of defiance, and casting over his left
+      shoulder a glance of triumph and malice at the indignant Glyndon,
+      sauntered out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mervale burst into a violent fit of laughter. &ldquo;See how your Viola is
+      estimated by your friend. A fine victory, to carry her off from the
+      ugliest dog between Lapland and the Calmucks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon was yet too indignant to answer, when a new visitor arrived. It
+      was Zanoni himself. Mervale, on whom the appearance and aspect of this
+      personage imposed a kind of reluctant deference, which he was unwilling to
+      acknowledge, and still more to betray, nodded to Glyndon, and saying,
+      simply, &ldquo;More when I see you again,&rdquo; left the painter and his unexpected
+      visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Zanoni, lifting the cloth from the canvas, &ldquo;that you have
+      not slighted the advice I gave you. Courage, young artist; this is an
+      escape from the schools: this is full of the bold self-confidence of real
+      genius. You had no Nicot&mdash;no Mervale&mdash;at your elbow when this
+      image of true beauty was conceived!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Charmed back to his art by this unlooked-for praise, Glyndon replied
+      modestly, &ldquo;I thought well of my design till this morning; and then I was
+      disenchanted of my happy persuasion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, rather, that, unaccustomed to continuous labour, you were fatigued
+      with your employment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is true. Shall I confess it? I began to miss the world without. It
+      seemed to me as if, while I lavished my heart and my youth upon visions of
+      beauty, I was losing the beautiful realities of actual life. And I envied
+      the merry fisherman, singing as he passed below my casement, and the lover
+      conversing with his mistress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; said Zanoni, with an encouraging smile, &ldquo;do you blame yourself for
+      the natural and necessary return to earth, in which even the most habitual
+      visitor of the Heavens of Invention seeks his relaxation and repose? Man&rsquo;s
+      genius is a bird that cannot be always on the wing; when the craving for
+      the actual world is felt, it is a hunger that must be appeased. They who
+      command best the ideal, enjoy ever most the real. See the true artist,
+      when abroad in men&rsquo;s thoroughfares, ever observant, ever diving into the
+      heart, ever alive to the least as to the greatest of the complicated
+      truths of existence; descending to what pedants would call the trivial and
+      the frivolous. From every mesh in the social web, he can disentangle a
+      grace. And for him each airy gossamer floats in the gold of the sunlight.
+      Know you not that around the animalcule that sports in the water there
+      shines a halo, as around the star (The monas mica, found in the purest
+      pools, is encompassed with a halo. And this is frequent amongst many other
+      species of animalcule.) that revolves in bright pastime through the space?
+      True art finds beauty everywhere. In the street, in the market-place, in
+      the hovel, it gathers food for the hive of its thoughts. In the mire of
+      politics, Dante and Milton selected pearls for the wreath of song.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who ever told you that Raphael did not enjoy the life without, carrying
+      everywhere with him the one inward idea of beauty which attracted and
+      imbedded in its own amber every straw that the feet of the dull man
+      trampled into mud? As some lord of the forest wanders abroad for its prey,
+      and scents and follows it over plain and hill, through brake and jungle,
+      but, seizing it at last, bears the quarry to its unwitnessed cave,&mdash;so
+      Genius searches through wood and waste, untiringly and eagerly, every
+      sense awake, every nerve strained to speed and strength, for the scattered
+      and flying images of matter, that it seizes at last with its mighty
+      talons, and bears away with it into solitudes no footstep can invade. Go,
+      seek the world without; it is for art the inexhaustible pasture-ground and
+      harvest to the world within!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You comfort me,&rdquo; said Glyndon, brightening. &ldquo;I had imagined my weariness
+      a proof of my deficiency! But not now would I speak to you of these
+      labours. Pardon me, if I pass from the toil to the reward. You have
+      uttered dim prophecies of my future, if I wed one who, in the judgment of
+      the sober world, would only darken its prospects and obstruct its
+      ambition. Do you speak from the wisdom which is experience, or that which
+      aspires to prediction?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are they not allied? Is it not he best accustomed to calculation who can
+      solve at a glance any new problem in the arithmetic of chances?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You evade my question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; but I will adapt my answer the better to your comprehension, for it
+      is upon this very point that I have sought you. Listen to me!&rdquo; Zanoni
+      fixed his eyes earnestly on his listener, and continued: &ldquo;For the
+      accomplishment of whatever is great and lofty, the clear perception of
+      truths is the first requisite,&mdash;truths adapted to the object desired.
+      The warrior thus reduces the chances of battle to combinations almost of
+      mathematics. He can predict a result, if he can but depend upon the
+      materials he is forced to employ. At such a loss he can cross that bridge;
+      in such a time he can reduce that fort. Still more accurately, for he
+      depends less on material causes than ideas at his command, can the
+      commander of the purer science or diviner art, if he once perceive the
+      truths that are in him and around, foretell what he can achieve, and in
+      what he is condemned to fail. But this perception of truths is disturbed
+      by many causes,&mdash;vanity, passion, fear, indolence in himself,
+      ignorance of the fitting means without to accomplish what he designs. He
+      may miscalculate his own forces; he may have no chart of the country he
+      would invade. It is only in a peculiar state of the mind that it is
+      capable of perceiving truth; and that state is profound serenity. Your
+      mind is fevered by a desire for truth: you would compel it to your
+      embraces; you would ask me to impart to you, without ordeal or
+      preparation, the grandest secrets that exist in Nature. But truth can no
+      more be seen by the mind unprepared for it, than the sun can dawn upon the
+      midst of night. Such a mind receives truth only to pollute it: to use the
+      simile of one who has wandered near to the secret of the sublime Goetia
+      (or the magic that lies within Nature, as electricity within the cloud),
+      &lsquo;He who pours water into the muddy well, does but disturb the mud.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+       (&ldquo;Iamb. de Vit. Pythag.&rdquo;)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you tend to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This: that you have faculties that may attain to surpassing power, that
+      may rank you among those enchanters who, greater than the magian, leave
+      behind them an enduring influence, worshipped wherever beauty is
+      comprehended, wherever the soul is sensible of a higher world than that in
+      which matter struggles for crude and incomplete existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But to make available those faculties, need I be a prophet to tell you
+      that you must learn to concentre upon great objects all your desires? The
+      heart must rest, that the mind may be active. At present you wander from
+      aim to aim. As the ballast to the ship, so to the spirit are faith and
+      love. With your whole heart, affections, humanity, centred in one object,
+      your mind and aspirations will become equally steadfast and in earnest.
+      Viola is a child as yet; you do not perceive the high nature the trials of
+      life will develop. Pardon me, if I say that her soul, purer and loftier
+      than your own, will bear it upward, as a secret hymn carries aloft the
+      spirits of the world. Your nature wants the harmony, the music which, as
+      the Pythagoreans wisely taught, at once elevates and soothes. I offer you
+      that music in her love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But am I sure that she does love me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Artist, no; she loves you not at present; her affections are full of
+      another. But if I could transfer to you, as the loadstone transfers its
+      attraction to the magnet, the love that she has now for me,&mdash;if I
+      could cause her to see in you the ideal of her dreams&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is such a gift in the power of man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I offer it to you, if your love be lawful, if your faith in virtue and
+      yourself be deep and loyal; if not, think you that I would disenchant her
+      with truth to make her adore a falsehood?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if,&rdquo; persisted Glyndon,&mdash;&ldquo;if she be all that you tell me, and if
+      she love you, how can you rob yourself of so priceless a treasure?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, shallow and mean heart of man!&rdquo; exclaimed Zanoni, with unaccustomed
+      passion and vehemence, &ldquo;dost thou conceive so little of love as not to
+      know that it sacrifices all&mdash;love itself&mdash;for the happiness of
+      the thing it loves? Hear me!&rdquo; And Zanoni&rsquo;s face grew pale. &ldquo;Hear me! I
+      press this upon you, because I love her, and because I fear that with me
+      her fate will be less fair than with yourself. Why,&mdash;ask not, for I
+      will not tell you. Enough! Time presses now for your answer; it cannot
+      long be delayed. Before the night of the third day from this, all choice
+      will be forbid you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Glyndon, still doubting and suspicious,&mdash;&ldquo;but why this
+      haste?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man, you are not worthy of her when you ask me. All I can tell you here,
+      you should have known yourself. This ravisher, this man of will, this son
+      of the old Visconti, unlike you,&mdash;steadfast, resolute, earnest even
+      in his crimes,&mdash;never relinquishes an object. But one passion
+      controls his lust,&mdash;it is his avarice. The day after his attempt on
+      Viola, his uncle, the Cardinal &mdash;, from whom he has large
+      expectations of land and gold, sent for him, and forbade him, on pain of
+      forfeiting all the possessions which his schemes already had parcelled
+      out, to pursue with dishonourable designs one whom the Cardinal had heeded
+      and loved from childhood. This is the cause of his present pause from his
+      pursuit. While we speak, the cause expires. Before the hand of the clock
+      reaches the hour of noon, the Cardinal &mdash; will be no more. At this
+      very moment thy friend, Jean Nicot, is with the Prince di &mdash;.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He! wherefore?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To ask what dower shall go with Viola Pisani, the morning that she leaves
+      the palace of the prince.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how do you know all this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fool! I tell thee again, because a lover is a watcher by night and day;
+      because love never sleeps when danger menaces the beloved one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you it was that informed the Cardinal &mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; and what has been my task might as easily have been thine. Speak,&mdash;thine
+      answer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall have it on the third day from this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be it so. Put off, poor waverer, thy happiness to the last hour. On the
+      third day from this, I will ask thee thy resolve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where shall we meet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before midnight, where you may least expect me. You cannot shun me,
+      though you may seek to do so!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay one moment! You condemn me as doubtful, irresolute, suspicious. Have
+      I no cause? Can I yield without a struggle to the strange fascination you
+      exert upon my mind? What interest can you have in me, a stranger, that you
+      should thus dictate to me the gravest action in the life of man? Do you
+      suppose that any one in his senses would not pause, and deliberate, and
+      ask himself, &lsquo;Why should this stranger care thus for me?&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; said Zanoni, &ldquo;if I told thee that I could initiate thee into
+      the secrets of that magic which the philosophy of the whole existing world
+      treats as a chimera, or imposture; if I promised to show thee how to
+      command the beings of air and ocean, how to accumulate wealth more easily
+      than a child can gather pebbles on the shore, to place in thy hands the
+      essence of the herbs which prolong life from age to age, the mystery of
+      that attraction by which to awe all danger and disarm all violence and
+      subdue man as the serpent charms the bird,&mdash;if I told thee that all
+      these it was mine to possess and to communicate, thou wouldst listen to me
+      then, and obey me without a doubt!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true; and I can account for this only by the imperfect associations
+      of my childhood,&mdash;by traditions in our house of&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your forefather, who, in the revival of science, sought the secrets of
+      Apollonius and Paracelsus.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; said Glyndon, amazed, &ldquo;are you so well acquainted with the annals
+      of an obscure lineage?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the man who aspires to know, no man who has been the meanest student
+      of knowledge should be unknown. You ask me why I have shown this interest
+      in your fate? There is one reason which I have not yet told you. There is
+      a fraternity as to whose laws and whose mysteries the most inquisitive
+      schoolmen are in the dark. By those laws all are pledged to warn, to aid,
+      and to guide even the remotest descendants of men who have toiled, though
+      vainly, like your ancestor, in the mysteries of the Order. We are bound to
+      advise them to their welfare; nay, more,&mdash;if they command us to it,
+      we must accept them as our pupils. I am a survivor of that most ancient
+      and immemorial union. This it was that bound me to thee at the first;
+      this, perhaps, attracted thyself unconsciously, Son of our Brotherhood, to
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If this be so, I command thee, in the name of the laws thou obeyest, to
+      receive me as thy pupil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you ask?&rdquo; said Zanoni, passionately. &ldquo;Learn, first, the
+      conditions. No neophyte must have, at his initiation, one affection or
+      desire that chains him to the world. He must be pure from the love of
+      woman, free from avarice and ambition, free from the dreams even of art,
+      or the hope of earthly fame. The first sacrifice thou must make is&mdash;Viola
+      herself. And for what? For an ordeal that the most daring courage only can
+      encounter, the most ethereal natures alone survive! Thou art unfit for the
+      science that has made me and others what we are or have been; for thy
+      whole nature is one fear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fear!&rdquo; cried Glyndon, colouring with resentment, and rising to the full
+      height of his stature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fear! and the worst fear,&mdash;fear of the world&rsquo;s opinion; fear of the
+      Nicots and the Mervales; fear of thine own impulses when most generous;
+      fear of thine own powers when thy genius is most bold; fear that virtue is
+      not eternal; fear that God does not live in heaven to keep watch on earth;
+      fear, the fear of little men; and that fear is never known to the great.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With these words Zanoni abruptly left the artist, humbled, bewildered, and
+      not convinced. He remained alone with his thoughts till he was aroused by
+      the striking of the clock; he then suddenly remembered Zanoni&rsquo;s prediction
+      of the Cardinal&rsquo;s death; and, seized with an intense desire to learn its
+      truth, he hurried into the streets,&mdash;he gained the Cardinal&rsquo;s palace.
+      Five minutes before noon his Eminence had expired, after an illness of
+      less than an hour. Zanoni&rsquo;s visit had occupied more time than the illness
+      of the Cardinal. Awed and perplexed, he turned from the palace, and as he
+      walked through the Chiaja, he saw Jean Nicot emerge from the portals of
+      the Prince di &mdash;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 3.V.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
+     Which like two spirits do suggest me still.
+     &mdash;Shakespeare.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Venerable Brotherhood, so sacred and so little known, from whose secret
+      and precious archives the materials for this history have been drawn; ye
+      who have retained, from century to century, all that time has spared of
+      the august and venerable science,&mdash;thanks to you, if now, for the
+      first time, some record of the thoughts and actions of no false and
+      self-styled luminary of your Order be given, however imperfectly, to the
+      world. Many have called themselves of your band; many spurious pretenders
+      have been so-called by the learned ignorance which still, baffled and
+      perplexed, is driven to confess that it knows nothing of your origin, your
+      ceremonies or doctrines, nor even if you still have local habitation on
+      the earth. Thanks to you if I, the only one of my country, in this age,
+      admitted, with a profane footstep, into your mysterious Academe (The
+      reader will have the goodness to remember that this is said by the author
+      of the original MS., not by the editor.), have been by you empowered and
+      instructed to adapt to the comprehension of the uninitiated, some few of
+      the starry truths which shone on the great Shemaia of the Chaldean Lore,
+      and gleamed dimly through the darkened knowledge of latter disciples,
+      labouring, like Psellus and Iamblichus, to revive the embers of the fire
+      which burned in the Hamarin of the East. Though not to us of an aged and
+      hoary world is vouchsafed the NAME which, so say the earliest oracles of
+      the earth, &ldquo;rushes into the infinite worlds,&rdquo; yet is it ours to trace the
+      reviving truths, through each new discovery of the philosopher and
+      chemist. The laws of attraction, of electricity, and of the yet more
+      mysterious agency of that great principal of life, which, if drawn from
+      the universe, would leave the universe a grave, were but the code in which
+      the Theurgy of old sought the guides that led it to a legislation and
+      science of its own. To rebuild on words the fragments of this history, it
+      seems to me as if, in a solemn trance, I was led through the ruins of a
+      city whose only remains were tombs. From the sarcophagus and the urn I
+      awake the genius (The Greek Genius of Death.) of the extinguished Torch,
+      and so closely does its shape resemble Eros, that at moments I scarcely
+      know which of ye dictates to me,&mdash;O Love! O Death!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And it stirred in the virgin&rsquo;s heart,&mdash;this new, unfathomable, and
+      divine emotion! Was it only the ordinary affection of the pulse and the
+      fancy, of the eye to the Beautiful, of the ear to the Eloquent, or did it
+      not justify the notion she herself conceived of it,&mdash;that it was born
+      not of the senses, that it was less of earthly and human love than the
+      effect of some wondrous but not unholy charm? I said that, from that day
+      in which, no longer with awe and trembling, she surrendered herself to the
+      influence of Zanoni, she had sought to put her thoughts into words. Let
+      the thoughts attest their own nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SELF CONFESSIONAL.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it the daylight that shines on me, or the memory of thy presence?
+      Wherever I look, the world seems full of thee; in every ray that trembles
+      on the water, that smiles upon the leaves, I behold but a likeness to
+      thine eyes. What is this change, that alters not only myself, but the face
+      of the whole universe?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How instantaneously leaped into life the power with which thou swayest my
+      heart in its ebb and flow. Thousands were around me, and I saw but thee.
+      That was the night in which I first entered upon the world which crowds
+      life into a drama, and has no language but music. How strangely and how
+      suddenly with thee became that world evermore connected! What the delusion
+      of the stage was to others, thy presence was to me. My life, too, seemed
+      to centre into those short hours, and from thy lips I heard a music, mute
+      to all ears but mine. I sit in the room where my father dwelt. Here, on
+      that happy night, forgetting why THEY were so happy, I shrunk into the
+      shadow, and sought to guess what thou wert to me; and my mother&rsquo;s low
+      voice woke me, and I crept to my father&rsquo;s side, close&mdash;close, from
+      fear of my own thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! sweet and sad was the morrow to that night, when thy lips warned me
+      of the future. An orphan now,&mdash;what is there that lives for me to
+      think of, to dream upon, to revere, but thou!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How tenderly thou hast rebuked me for the grievous wrong that my thoughts
+      did thee! Why should I have shuddered to feel thee glancing upon my
+      thoughts like the beam on the solitary tree, to which thou didst once
+      liken me so well? It was&mdash;it was, that, like the tree, I struggled
+      for the light, and the light came. They tell me of love, and my very life
+      of the stage breathes the language of love into my lips. No; again and
+      again, I know THAT is not the love that I feel for thee!&mdash;it is not a
+      passion, it is a thought! I ask not to be loved again. I murmur not that
+      thy words are stern and thy looks are cold. I ask not if I have rivals; I
+      sigh not to be fair in thine eyes. It is my SPIRIT that would blend itself
+      with thine. I would give worlds, though we were apart, though oceans
+      rolled between us, to know the hour in which thy gaze was lifted to the
+      stars,&mdash;in which thy heart poured itself in prayer. They tell me thou
+      art more beautiful than the marble images that are fairer than all human
+      forms; but I have never dared to gaze steadfastly on thy face, that memory
+      might compare thee with the rest. Only thine eyes and thy soft, calm smile
+      haunt me; as when I look upon the moon, all that passes into my heart is
+      her silent light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Often, when the air is calm, I have thought that I hear the strains of my
+      father&rsquo;s music; often, though long stilled in the grave, have they waked
+      me from the dreams of the solemn night. Methinks, ere thou comest to me
+      that I hear them herald thy approach. Methinks I hear them wail and moan,
+      when I sink back into myself on seeing thee depart. Thou art OF that
+      music,&mdash;its spirit, its genius. My father must have guessed at thee
+      and thy native regions, when the winds hushed to listen to his tones, and
+      the world deemed him mad! I hear where I sit, the far murmur of the sea.
+      Murmur on, ye blessed waters! The waves are the pulses of the shore. They
+      beat with the gladness of the morning wind,&mdash;so beats my heart in the
+      freshness and light that make up the thoughts of thee!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Often in my childhood I have mused and asked for what I was born; and my
+      soul answered my heart and said, &lsquo;THOU WERT BORN TO WORSHIP!&rsquo; Yes; I know
+      why the real world has ever seemed to me so false and cold. I know why the
+      world of the stage charmed and dazzled me. I know why it was so sweet to
+      sit apart and gaze my whole being into the distant heavens. My nature is
+      not formed for this life, happy though that life seem to others. It is its
+      very want to have ever before it some image loftier than itself! Stranger,
+      in what realm above, when the grave is past, shall my soul, hour after
+      hour, worship at the same source as thine?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the gardens of my neighbour there is a small fountain. I stood by it
+      this morning after sunrise. How it sprung up, with its eager spray, to the
+      sunbeams! And then I thought that I should see thee again this day, and so
+      sprung my heart to the new morning which thou bringest me from the skies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I HAVE seen, I have LISTENED to thee again. How bold I have become! I ran
+      on with my childlike thoughts and stories, my recollections of the past,
+      as if I had known thee from an infant. Suddenly the idea of my presumption
+      struck me. I stopped, and timidly sought thine eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Well, and when you found that the nightingale refused to sing?&rsquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;what to thee this history of the heart of a child?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Viola,&rsquo; didst thou answer, with that voice, so inexpressibly calm and
+      earnest!&mdash;&lsquo;Viola, the darkness of a child&rsquo;s heart is often but
+      the shadow of a star. Speak on! And thy nightingale, when they caught and
+      caged it, refused to sing?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;And I placed the cage yonder, amidst the vine-leaves, and took up my
+      lute, and spoke to it on the strings; for I thought that all music was its
+      native language, and it would understand that I sought to comfort it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; saidst thou. &lsquo;And at last it answered thee, but not with song,&mdash;in
+      a sharp, brief cry; so mournful, that thy hands let fall the lute, and the
+      tears gushed from thine eyes. So softly didst thou unbar the cage, and the
+      nightingale flew into yonder thicket; and thou heardst the foliage rustle,
+      and, looking through the moonlight, thine eyes saw that it had found its
+      mate. It sang to thee then from the boughs a long, loud, joyous jubilee.
+      And musing, thou didst feel that it was not the vine-leaves or the
+      moonlight that made the bird give melody to night, and that the secret of
+      its music was the presence of a thing beloved.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How didst thou know my thoughts in that childlike time better than I knew
+      myself! How is the humble life of my past years, with its mean events, so
+      mysteriously familiar to thee, bright stranger! I wonder,&mdash;but I do
+      not again dare to fear thee!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Once the thought of him oppressed and weighed me down. As an infant that
+      longs for the moon, my being was one vague desire for something never to
+      be attained. Now I feel rather as if to think of thee sufficed to remove
+      every fetter from my spirit. I float in the still seas of light, and
+      nothing seems too high for my wings, too glorious for my eyes. It was mine
+      ignorance that made me fear thee. A knowledge that is not in books seems
+      to breathe around thee as an atmosphere. How little have I read!&mdash;how
+      little have I learned! Yet when thou art by my side, it seems as if the
+      veil were lifted from all wisdom and all Nature. I startle when I look
+      even at the words I have written; they seem not to come from myself, but
+      are the signs of another language which thou hast taught my heart, and
+      which my hand traces rapidly, as at thy dictation. Sometimes, while I
+      write or muse, I could fancy that I heard light wings hovering around me,
+      and saw dim shapes of beauty floating round, and vanishing as they smiled
+      upon me. No unquiet and fearful dream ever comes to me now in sleep, yet
+      sleep and waking are alike but as one dream. In sleep I wander with thee,
+      not through the paths of earth, but through impalpable air&mdash;an air
+      which seems a music&mdash;upward and upward, as the soul mounts on the
+      tones of a lyre! Till I knew thee, I was as a slave to the earth. Thou
+      hast given to me the liberty of the universe! Before, it was life; it
+      seems to me now as if I had commenced eternity!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Formerly, when I was to appear upon the stage, my heart beat more loudly.
+      I trembled to encounter the audience, whose breath gave shame or renown;
+      and now I have no fear of them. I see them, heed them, hear them not! I
+      know that there will be music in my voice, for it is a hymn that I pour to
+      thee. Thou never comest to the theatre; and that no longer grieves me.
+      Thou art become too sacred to appear a part of the common world, and I
+      feel glad that thou art not by when crowds have a right to judge me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he spoke to me of ANOTHER: to another he would consign me! No, it is
+      not love that I feel for thee, Zanoni; or why did I hear thee without
+      anger, why did thy command seem to me not a thing impossible? As the
+      strings of the instrument obey the hand of the master, thy look modulates
+      the wildest chords of my heart to thy will. If it please thee,&mdash;yes,
+      let it be so. Thou art lord of my destinies; they cannot rebel against
+      thee! I almost think I could love him, whoever it be, on whom thou wouldst
+      shed the rays that circumfuse thyself. Whatever thou hast touched, I love;
+      whatever thou speakest of, I love. Thy hand played with these vine leaves;
+      I wear them in my bosom. Thou seemest to me the source of all love; too
+      high and too bright to be loved thyself, but darting light into other
+      objects, on which the eye can gaze less dazzled. No, no; it is not love
+      that I feel for thee, and therefore it is that I do not blush to nourish
+      and confess it. Shame on me if I loved, knowing myself so worthless a
+      thing to thee!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;ANOTHER!&mdash;my memory echoes back that word. Another! Dost thou mean
+      that I shall see thee no more? It is not sadness,&mdash;it is not despair
+      that seizes me. I cannot weep. It is an utter sense of desolation. I am
+      plunged back into the common life; and I shudder coldly at the solitude.
+      But I will obey thee, if thou wilt. Shall I not see thee again beyond the
+      grave? O how sweet it were to die!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do I not struggle from the web in which my will is thus entangled?
+      Hast thou a right to dispose of me thus? Give me back&mdash;give me back
+      the life I knew before I gave life itself away to thee. Give me back the
+      careless dreams of my youth,&mdash;-my liberty of heart that sung aloud as
+      it walked the earth. Thou hast disenchanted me of everything that is not
+      of thyself. Where was the sin, at least, to think of thee,&mdash;to see
+      thee? Thy kiss still glows upon my hand; is that hand mine to bestow? Thy
+      kiss claimed and hallowed it to thyself. Stranger, I will NOT obey thee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another day,&mdash;one day of the fatal three is gone! It is strange to
+      me that since the sleep of the last night, a deep calm has settled upon my
+      breast. I feel so assured that my very being is become a part of thee,
+      that I cannot believe that my life can be separated from thine; and in
+      this conviction I repose, and smile even at thy words and my own fears.
+      Thou art fond of one maxim, which thou repeatest in a thousand forms,&mdash;that
+      the beauty of the soul is faith; that as ideal loveliness to the sculptor,
+      faith is to the heart; that faith, rightly understood, extends over all
+      the works of the Creator, whom we can know but through belief; that it
+      embraces a tranquil confidence in ourselves, and a serene repose as to our
+      future; that it is the moonlight that sways the tides of the human sea.
+      That faith I comprehend now. I reject all doubt, all fear. I know that I
+      have inextricably linked the whole that makes the inner life to thee; and
+      thou canst not tear me from thee, if thou wouldst! And this change from
+      struggle into calm came to me with sleep,&mdash;a sleep without a dream;
+      but when I woke, it was with a mysterious sense of happiness,&mdash;an
+      indistinct memory of something blessed,&mdash;as if thou hadst cast from
+      afar off a smile upon my slumber. At night I was so sad; not a blossom
+      that had not closed itself up, as if never more to open to the sun; and
+      the night itself, in the heart as on the earth, has ripened the blossoms
+      into flowers. The world is beautiful once more, but beautiful in repose,&mdash;not
+      a breeze stirs thy tree, not a doubt my soul!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 3.VI.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Tu vegga o per violenzia o per inganno
+     Patire o disonore o mortal danno.
+     &ldquo;Orlando Furioso,&rdquo; Cant. xlii. i.
+
+     (Thou art about, either through violence or artifice, to suffer
+     either dishonour or mortal loss.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It was a small cabinet; the walls were covered with pictures, one of which
+      was worth more than the whole lineage of the owner of the palace. Oh, yes!
+      Zanoni was right. The painter IS a magician; the gold he at least wrings
+      from his crucible is no delusion. A Venetian noble might be a fribble, or
+      an assassin,&mdash;a scoundrel, or a dolt; worthless, or worse than
+      worthless, yet he might have sat to Titian, and his portrait may be
+      inestimable,&mdash;a few inches of painted canvas a thousand times more
+      valuable than a man with his veins and muscles, brain, will, heart, and
+      intellect!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this cabinet sat a man of about three-and-forty,&mdash;dark-eyed,
+      sallow, with short, prominent features, a massive conformation of jaw, and
+      thick, sensual, but resolute lips; this man was the Prince di &mdash;. His
+      form, above the middle height, and rather inclined to corpulence, was clad
+      in a loose dressing-robe of rich brocade. On a table before him lay an
+      old-fashioned sword and hat, a mask, dice and dice-box, a portfolio, and
+      an inkstand of silver curiously carved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Mascari,&rdquo; said the prince, looking up towards his parasite, who
+      stood by the embrasure of the deep-set barricadoed window,&mdash;&ldquo;well!
+      the Cardinal sleeps with his fathers. I require comfort for the loss of so
+      excellent a relation; and where a more dulcet voice than Viola Pisani&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is your Excellency serious? So soon after the death of his Eminence?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be the less talked of, and I the less suspected. Hast thou
+      ascertained the name of the insolent who baffled us that night, and
+      advised the Cardinal the next day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sapient Mascari! I will inform thee. It was the strange Unknown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Signor Zanoni! Are you sure, my prince?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mascari, yes. There is a tone in that man&rsquo;s voice that I never can
+      mistake; so clear, and so commanding, when I hear it I almost fancy there
+      is such a thing as conscience. However, we must rid ourselves of an
+      impertinent. Mascari, Signor Zanoni hath not yet honoured our poor house
+      with his presence. He is a distinguished stranger,&mdash;we must give a
+      banquet in his honour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, and the Cyprus wine! The cypress is a proper emblem of the grave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this anon. I am superstitious; there are strange stories of Zanoni&rsquo;s
+      power and foresight; remember the death of Ughelli. No matter, though the
+      Fiend were his ally, he should not rob me of my prize; no, nor my
+      revenge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your Excellency is infatuated; the actress has bewitched you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mascari,&rdquo; said the prince, with a haughty smile, &ldquo;through these veins
+      rolls the blood of the old Visconti&mdash;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,&mdash;their ambition and
+      their spirit are undecayed! My honour is now enlisted in this pursuit,&mdash;Viola
+      must be mine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another ambuscade?&rdquo; said Mascari, inquiringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, why not enter the house itself?&mdash;the situation is lonely, and
+      the door is not made of iron.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what if, on her return home, she tell the tale of our violence? A
+      house forced,&mdash;a virgin stolen! Reflect; though the feudal privileges
+      are not destroyed, even a Visconti is not now above the law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he not, Mascari? Fool! in what age of the world, even if the Madmen of
+      France succeed in their chimeras, will the iron of law not bend itself,
+      like an osier twig, to the strong hand of power and gold? But look not so
+      pale, Mascari; I have foreplanned all things. The day that she leaves this
+      palace, she will leave it for France, with Monsieur Jean Nicot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Mascari could reply, the gentleman of the chamber announced the
+      Signor Zanoni.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince involuntarily laid his hand upon the sword placed on the table,
+      then with a smile at his own impulse, rose, and met his visitor at the
+      threshold, with all the profuse and respectful courtesy of Italian
+      simulation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is an honour highly prized,&rdquo; said the prince. &ldquo;I have long desired
+      to clasp the hand of one so distinguished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I give it in the spirit with which you seek it,&rdquo; replied Zanoni.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Neapolitan bowed over the hand he pressed; but as he touched it a
+      shiver came over him, and his heart stood still. Zanoni bent on him his
+      dark, smiling eyes, and then seated himself with a familiar air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thus it is signed and sealed; I mean our friendship, noble prince. And
+      now I will tell you the object of my visit. I find, Excellency, that,
+      unconsciously perhaps, we are rivals. Can we not accommodate out
+      pretensions!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said the prince, carelessly, &ldquo;you, then, were the cavalier who
+      robbed me of the reward of my chase. All stratagems fair in love, as in
+      war. Reconcile our pretensions! Well, here is the dice-box; let us throw
+      for her. He who casts the lowest shall resign his claim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this a decision by which you will promise to be bound?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, on my faith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And for him who breaks his word so plighted, what shall be the forfeit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sword lies next to the dice-box, Signor Zanoni. Let him who stands
+      not by his honour fall by the sword.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you invoke that sentence if either of us fail his word? Be it so; let
+      Signor Mascari cast for us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well said!&mdash;Mascari, the dice!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince threw himself back in his chair; and, world-hardened as he was,
+      could not suppress the glow of triumph and satisfaction that spread itself
+      over his features. Mascari took up the three dice, and rattled them
+      noisily in the box. Zanoni, leaning his cheek on his hand, and bending
+      over the table, fixed his eyes steadfastly on the parasite; Mascari in
+      vain struggled to extricate from that searching gaze; he grew pale, and
+      trembled, he put down the box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I give the first throw to your Excellency. Signor Mascari, be pleased to
+      terminate our suspense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Mascari took up the box; again his hand shook so that the dice
+      rattled within. He threw; the numbers were sixteen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a high throw,&rdquo; said Zanoni, calmly; &ldquo;nevertheless, Signor Mascari,
+      I do not despond.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mascari gathered up the dice, shook the box, and rolled the contents once
+      more on the table: the number was the highest that can be thrown,&mdash;eighteen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince darted a glance of fire at his minion, who stood with gaping
+      mouth, staring at the dice, and trembling from head to foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have won, you see,&rdquo; said Zanoni; &ldquo;may we be friends still?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Signor,&rdquo; said the prince, obviously struggling with anger and confusion,
+      &ldquo;the victory is yours. But pardon me, you have spoken lightly of this
+      young girl,&mdash;will anything tempt you to yield your claim?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, do not think so ill of my gallantry; and,&rdquo; resumed Zanoni, with a
+      stern meaning in his voice, &ldquo;forget not the forfeit your own lips have
+      named.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince knit his brow, but constrained the haughty answer that was his
+      first impulse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough!&rdquo; he said, forcing a smile; &ldquo;I yield. Let me prove that I do not
+      yield ungraciously; will you favour me with your presence at a little
+      feast I propose to give in honour,&rdquo; he added, with a sardonic mockery, &ldquo;of
+      the elevation of my kinsman, the late Cardinal, of pious memory, to the
+      true seat of St. Peter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is, indeed, a happiness to hear one command of yours I can obey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni then turned the conversation, talked lightly and gayly, and soon
+      afterwards departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Villain!&rdquo; then exclaimed the prince, grasping Mascari by the collar, &ldquo;you
+      betrayed me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I assure your Excellency that the dice were properly arranged; he should
+      have thrown twelve; but he is the Devil, and that&rsquo;s the end of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no time to be lost,&rdquo; said the prince, quitting his hold of his
+      parasite, who quietly resettled his cravat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My blood is up,&mdash;I will win this girl, if I die for it! What noise
+      is that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is but the sword of your illustrious ancestor that has fallen from the
+      table.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 3.VII.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Il ne faut appeler aucun ordre si ce n&rsquo;est en tems clair et
+     serein.
+     &ldquo;Les Clavicules du Rabbi Salomon.&rdquo;
+ 
+     (No order of spirits must be invoked unless the weather be clear
+     and serene.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My art is already dim and troubled. I have lost the tranquillity which is
+      power. I cannot influence the decisions of those whom I would most guide
+      to the shore; I see them wander farther and deeper into the infinite ocean
+      where our barks sail evermore to the horizon that flies before us! Amazed
+      and awed to find that I can only warn where I would control, I have looked
+      into my own soul. It is true that the desires of earth chain me to the
+      present, and shut me from the solemn secrets which Intellect, purified
+      from all the dross of the clay, alone can examine and survey. The stern
+      condition on which we hold our nobler and diviner gifts darkens our vision
+      towards the future of those for whom we know the human infirmities of
+      jealousy or hate or love. Mejnour, all around me is mist and haze; I have
+      gone back in our sublime existence; and from the bosom of the imperishable
+      youth that blooms only in the spirit, springs up the dark poison-flower of
+      human love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This man is not worthy of her,&mdash;I know that truth; yet in his nature
+      are the seeds of good and greatness, if the tares and weeds of worldly
+      vanities and fears would suffer them to grow. If she were his, and I had
+      thus transplanted to another soil the passion that obscures my gaze and
+      disarms my power, unseen, unheard, unrecognised, I could watch over his
+      fate, and secretly prompt his deeds, and minister to her welfare through
+      his own. But time rushes on! Through the shadows that encircle me, I see,
+      gathering round her, the darkest dangers. No choice but flight,&mdash;no
+      escape save with him or me. With me!&mdash;the rapturous thought,&mdash;the
+      terrible conviction! With me! Mejnour, canst thou wonder that I would save
+      her from myself? A moment in the life of ages,&mdash;a bubble on the
+      shoreless sea. What else to me can be human love? And in this exquisite
+      nature of hers,&mdash;more pure, more spiritual, even in its young
+      affections than ever heretofore the countless volumes of the heart, race
+      after race, have given to my gaze: there is yet a deep-buried feeling that
+      warns me of inevitable woe. Thou austere and remorseless Hierophant,&mdash;thou
+      who hast sought to convert to our brotherhood every spirit that seemed to
+      thee most high and bold,&mdash;even thou knowest, by horrible experience,
+      how vain the hope to banish FEAR from the heart of woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My life would be to her one marvel. Even if, on the other hand, I sought
+      to guide her path through the realms of terror to the light, think of the
+      Haunter of the Threshold, and shudder with me at the awful hazard! I have
+      endeavoured to fill the Englishman&rsquo;s ambition with the true glory of his
+      art; but the restless spirit of his ancestor still seems to whisper in
+      him, and to attract to the spheres in which it lost its own wandering way.
+      There is a mystery in man&rsquo;s inheritance from his fathers. Peculiarities of
+      the mind, as diseases of the body, rest dormant for generations, to revive
+      in some distant descendant, baffle all treatment and elude all skill. Come
+      to me from thy solitude amidst the wrecks of Rome! I pant for a living
+      confidant,&mdash;for one who in the old time has himself known jealousy
+      and love. I have sought commune with Adon-Ai; but his presence, that once
+      inspired such heavenly content with knowledge, and so serene a confidence
+      in destiny, now only troubles and perplexes me. From the height from which
+      I strive to search into the shadows of things to come, I see confused
+      spectres of menace and wrath. Methinks I behold a ghastly limit to the
+      wondrous existence I have held,&mdash;methinks that, after ages of the
+      Ideal Life, I see my course merge into the most stormy whirlpool of the
+      Real. Where the stars opened to me their gates, there looms a scaffold,&mdash;thick
+      steams of blood rise as from a shambles. What is more strange to me, a
+      creature here, a very type of the false ideal of common men,&mdash;body
+      and mind, a hideous mockery of the art that shapes the Beautiful, and the
+      desires that seek the Perfect, ever haunts my vision amidst these
+      perturbed and broken clouds of the fate to be. By that shadowy scaffold it
+      stands and gibbers at me, with lips dropping slime and gore. Come, O
+      friend of the far-time; for me, at least, thy wisdom has not purged away
+      thy human affections. According to the bonds of our solemn order, reduced
+      now to thee and myself, lone survivors of so many haughty and glorious
+      aspirants, thou art pledged, too, to warn the descendant of those whom thy
+      counsels sought to initiate into the great secret in a former age. The
+      last of that bold Visconti who was once thy pupil is the relentless
+      persecutor of this fair child. With thoughts of lust and murder, he is
+      digging his own grave; thou mayest yet daunt him from his doom. And I also
+      mysteriously, by the same bond, am pledged to obey, if he so command, a
+      less guilty descendant of a baffled but nobler student. If he reject my
+      counsel, and insist upon the pledge, Mejnour, thou wilt have another
+      neophyte. Beware of another victim! Come to me! This will reach thee with
+      all speed. Answer it by the pressure of one hand that I can dare to clasp!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 3.VIII.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Il lupo
+     Ferito, credo, mi conobbe e &lsquo;ncontro
+     Mi venne con la bocca sanguinosa.
+     &ldquo;Aminta,&rdquo; At. iv. Sc. i.
+
+     (The wounded wolf, I think, knew me, and came to meet me with its
+     bloody mouth.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At Naples, the tomb of Virgil, beetling over the cave of Posilipo, is
+      reverenced, not with the feelings that should hallow the memory of the
+      poet, but the awe that wraps the memory of the magician. To his charms
+      they ascribe the hollowing of that mountain passage; and tradition yet
+      guards his tomb by the spirits he had raised to construct the cavern. This
+      spot, in the immediate vicinity of Viola&rsquo;s home, had often attracted her
+      solitary footsteps. She had loved the dim and solemn fancies that beset
+      her as she looked into the lengthened gloom of the grotto, or, ascending
+      to the tomb, gazed from the rock on the dwarfed figures of the busy crowd
+      that seemed to creep like insects along the windings of the soil below;
+      and now, at noon, she bent thither her thoughtful way. She threaded the
+      narrow path, she passed the gloomy vineyard that clambers up the rock, and
+      gained the lofty spot, green with moss and luxuriant foliage, where the
+      dust of him who yet soothes and elevates the minds of men is believed to
+      rest. From afar rose the huge fortress of St. Elmo, frowning darkly amidst
+      spires and domes that glittered in the sun. Lulled in its azure splendour
+      lay the Siren&rsquo;s sea; and the grey smoke of Vesuvius, in the clear
+      distance, soared like a moving pillar into the lucid sky. Motionless on
+      the brink of the precipice, Viola looked upon the lovely and living world
+      that stretched below; and the sullen vapour of Vesuvius fascinated her eye
+      yet more than the scattered gardens, or the gleaming Caprea, smiling
+      amidst the smiles of the sea. She heard not a step that had followed her
+      on her path and started to hear a voice at hand. So sudden was the
+      apparition of the form that stood by her side, emerging from the bushes
+      that clad the crags, and so singularly did it harmonise in its uncouth
+      ugliness with the wild nature of the scene immediately around her, and the
+      wizard traditions of the place, that the colour left her cheek, and a
+      faint cry broke from her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tush, pretty trembler!&mdash;do not be frightened at my face,&rdquo; said the
+      man, with a bitter smile. &ldquo;After three months&rsquo; marriage, there is no
+      different between ugliness and beauty. Custom is a great leveller. I was
+      coming to your house when I saw you leave it; so, as I have matters of
+      importance to communicate, I ventured to follow your footsteps. My name is
+      Jean Nicot, a name already favourably known as a French artist. The art of
+      painting and the art of music are nearly connected, and the stage is an
+      altar that unites the two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something frank and unembarrassed in the man&rsquo;s address that
+      served to dispel the fear his appearance had occasioned. He seated
+      himself, as he spoke, on a crag beside her, and, looking up steadily into
+      her face, continued:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very beautiful, Viola Pisani, and I am not surprised at the
+      number of your admirers. If I presume to place myself in the list, it is
+      because I am the only one who loves thee honestly, and woos thee fairly.
+      Nay, look not so indignant! Listen to me. Has the Prince di &mdash; ever
+      spoken to thee of marriage; or the beautiful imposter Zanoni, or the young
+      blue-eyed Englishman, Clarence Glyndon? It is marriage,&mdash;it is a
+      home, it is safety, it is reputation, that I offer to thee; and these last
+      when the straight form grows crooked, and the bright eyes dim. What say
+      you?&rdquo; and he attempted to seize her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Viola shrunk from him, and silently turned to depart. He rose abruptly and
+      placed himself on her path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Actress, you must hear me! Do you know what this calling of the stage is
+      in the eyes of prejudice,&mdash;that is, of the common opinion of mankind?
+      It is to be a princess before the lamps, and a Pariah before the day. No
+      man believes in your virtue, no man credits your vows; you are the puppet
+      that they consent to trick out with tinsel for their amusement, not an
+      idol for their worship. Are you so enamoured of this career that you scorn
+      even to think of security and honour? Perhaps you are different from what
+      you seem. Perhaps you laugh at the prejudice that would degrade you, and
+      would wisely turn it to advantage. Speak frankly to me; I have no
+      prejudice either. Sweet one, I am sure we should agree. Now, this Prince
+      di &mdash;, I have a message from him. Shall I deliver it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Never had Viola felt as she felt then, never had she so thoroughly seen
+      all the perils of her forelorn condition and her fearful renown. Nicot
+      continued:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Zanoni would but amuse himself with thy vanity; Glyndon would despise
+      himself, if he offered thee his name, and thee, if thou wouldst accept it;
+      but the Prince di &mdash; is in earnest, and he is wealthy. Listen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Nicot approached his lips to her, and hissed a sentence which she did
+      not suffer him to complete. She darted from him with one glance of
+      unutterable disdain. As he strove to regain his hold of her arm, he lost
+      his footing, and fell down the sides of the rock till, bruised and
+      lacerated, a pine-branch saved him from the yawning abyss below. She heard
+      his exclamation of rage and pain as she bounded down the path, and,
+      without once turning to look behind, regained her home. By the porch stood
+      Glyndon, conversing with Gionetta. She passed him abruptly, entered the
+      house, and, sinking on the floor, wept loud and passionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon, who had followed her in surprise, vainly sought to soothe and
+      calm her. She would not reply to his questions; she did not seem to listen
+      to his protestations of love, till suddenly, as Nicot&rsquo;s terrible picture
+      of the world&rsquo;s judgment of that profession which to her younger thoughts
+      had seemed the service of Song and the Beautiful, forced itself upon her,
+      she raised her face from her hands, and, looking steadily upon the
+      Englishman, said, &ldquo;False one, dost thou talk of me of love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By my honour, words fail to tell thee how I love!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wilt thou give me thy home, thy name? Dost thou woo me as thy wife?&rdquo; And
+      at that moment, had Glyndon answered as his better angel would have
+      counselled, perhaps, in that revolution of her whole mind which the words
+      of Nicot had effected, which made her despise her very self, sicken of her
+      lofty dreams, despair of the future, and distrust her whole ideal,&mdash;perhaps,
+      I say, in restoring her self-esteem,&mdash;he would have won her
+      confidence, and ultimately secured her love. But against the prompting of
+      his nobler nature rose up at that sudden question all those doubts which,
+      as Zanoni had so well implied, made the true enemies of his soul. Was he
+      thus suddenly to be entangled into a snare laid for his credulity by
+      deceivers? Was she not instructed to seize the moment to force him into an
+      avowal which prudence must repent? Was not the great actress rehearsing a
+      premeditated part? He turned round, as these thoughts, the children of the
+      world, passed across him, for he literally fancied that he heard the
+      sarcastic laugh of Mervale without. Nor was he deceived. Mervale was
+      passing by the threshold, and Gionetta had told him his friend was within.
+      Who does not know the effect of the world&rsquo;s laugh? Mervale was the
+      personation of the world. The whole world seemed to shout derision in
+      those ringing tones. He drew back,&mdash;he recoiled. Viola followed him
+      with her earnest, impatient eyes. At last, he faltered forth, &ldquo;Do all of
+      thy profession, beautiful Viola, exact marriage as the sole condition of
+      love?&rdquo; Oh, bitter question! Oh, poisoned taunt! He repented it the moment
+      after. He was seized with remorse of reason, of feeling, and of
+      conscience. He saw her form shrink, as it were, at his cruel words. He saw
+      the colour come and go, to leave the writhing lips like marble; and then,
+      with a sad, gentle look of self-pity, rather than reproach, she pressed
+      her hands tightly to her bosom, and said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was right! Pardon me, Englishman; I see now, indeed, that I am the
+      Pariah and the outcast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hear me. I retract. Viola, Viola! it is for you to forgive!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Viola waved him from her, and, smiling mournfully as she passed him
+      by, glided from the chamber; and he did not dare to detain her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 3.IX.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Dafne:  Ma, chi lung&rsquo; e d&rsquo;Amor?
+     Tirsi:  Chi teme e fugge.
+     Dafne:  E che giova fuggir da lui ch&rsquo; ha l&rsquo; ali?
+     Tirsi:  AMOR NASCENTE HA CORTE L&rsquo; ALI!
+     &ldquo;Aminta,&rdquo; At. ii. Sc. ii.
+
+     (Dafne:  But, who is far from Love?
+     Tirsi:  He who fears and flies.
+     Dafne:  What use to flee from one who has wings?
+     Tirsi:  The wings of Love, while he yet grows, are short.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      When Glyndon found himself without Viola&rsquo;s house, Mervale, still loitering
+      at the door, seized his arm. Glyndon shook him off abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou and thy counsels,&rdquo; said he, bitterly, &ldquo;have made me a coward and a
+      wretch. But I will go home,&mdash;I will write to her. I will pour out my
+      whole soul; she will forgive me yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mervale, who was a man of imperturbable temper, arranged his ruffles,
+      which his friend&rsquo;s angry gesture had a little discomposed, and not till
+      Glyndon had exhausted himself awhile by passionate exclamations and
+      reproaches, did the experienced angler begin to tighten the line. He then
+      drew from Glyndon the explanation of what had passed, and artfully sought
+      not to irritate, but soothe him. Mervale, indeed, was by no means a bad
+      man; he had stronger moral notions than are common amongst the young. He
+      sincerely reproved his friend for harbouring dishonourable intentions with
+      regard to the actress. &ldquo;Because I would not have her thy wife, I never
+      dreamed that thou shouldst degrade her to thy mistress. Better of the two
+      an imprudent match than an illicit connection. But pause yet, do not act
+      on the impulse of the moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there is no time to lose. I have promised to Zanoni to give him my
+      answer by to-morrow night. Later than that time, all option ceases.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Mervale, &ldquo;this seems suspicious. Explain yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Glyndon, in the earnestness of his passion, told his friend what had
+      passed between himself and Zanoni,&mdash;suppressing only, he scarce knew
+      why, the reference to his ancestor and the mysterious brotherhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This recital gave to Mervale all the advantage he could desire. Heavens!
+      with what sound, shrewd common-sense he talked. How evidently some
+      charlatanic coalition between the actress, and perhaps,&mdash;who knows?&mdash;her
+      clandestine protector, sated with possession! How equivocal the character
+      of one,&mdash;the position of the other! What cunning in the question of
+      the actress! How profoundly had Glyndon, at the first suggestion of his
+      sober reason, seen through the snare. What! was he to be thus mystically
+      cajoled and hurried into a rash marriage, because Zanoni, a mere stranger,
+      told him with a grave face that he must decide before the clock struck a
+      certain hour?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do this at least,&rdquo; said Mervale, reasonably enough,&mdash;&ldquo;wait till the
+      time expires; it is but another day. Baffle Zanoni. He tells thee that he
+      will meet thee before midnight to-morrow, and defies thee to avoid him.
+      Pooh! let us quit Naples for some neighbouring place, where, unless he be
+      indeed the Devil, he cannot possibly find us. Show him that you will not
+      be led blindfold even into an act that you meditate yourself. Defer to
+      write to her, or to see her, till after to-morrow. This is all I ask. Then
+      visit her, and decide for yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon was staggered. He could not combat the reasonings of his friend;
+      he was not convinced, but he hesitated; and at that moment Nicot passed
+      them. He turned round, and stopped, as he saw Glyndon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and do you think still of the Pisani?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; and you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have seen and conversed with her. She shall be Madame Nicot before this
+      day week! I am going to the cafe, in the Toledo; and hark ye, when next
+      you meet your friend Signor Zanoni, tell him that he has twice crossed my
+      path. Jean Nicot, though a painter, is a plain, honest man, and always
+      pays his debts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a good doctrine in money matters,&rdquo; said Mervale; &ldquo;as to revenge, it
+      is not so moral, and certainly not so wise. But is it in your love that
+      Zanoni has crossed your path? How that, if your suit prosper so well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask Viola Pisani that question. Bah! Glyndon, she is a prude only to
+      thee. But I have no prejudices. Once more, farewell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rouse thyself, man!&rdquo; said Mervale, slapping Glyndon on the shoulder.
+      &ldquo;What think you of your fair one now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This man must lie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you write to her at once?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; if she be really playing a game, I could renounce her without a sigh.
+      I will watch her closely; and, at all events, Zanoni shall not be the
+      master of my fate. Let us, as you advise, leave Naples at daybreak
+      to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 3.X.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     O chiunque tu sia, che fuor d&rsquo;ogni uso
+     Pieghi Natura ad opre altere e strane,
+     E, spiando i segreti, entri al piu chiuso
+     Spazi&rsquo; a tua voglia delle menti umane&mdash;Deh, Dimmi!
+     &ldquo;Gerus. Lib.,&rdquo; Cant. x. xviii.
+
+     (O thou, whoever thou art, who through every use bendest Nature
+     to works foreign and strange; and by spying into her secrets,
+     enterest at thy will into the closest recesses of the human
+     mind,&mdash;O speak!  O tell me!)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Early the next morning the young Englishmen mounted their horses, and took
+      the road towards Baiae. Glyndon left word at his hotel, that if Signor
+      Zanoni sought him, it was in the neighbourhood of that once celebrated
+      watering-place of the ancients that he should be found.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They passed by Viola&rsquo;s house, but Glyndon resisted the temptation of
+      pausing there; and after threading the grotto of Posilipo, they wound by a
+      circuitous route back into the suburbs of the city, and took the opposite
+      road, which conducts to Portici and Pompeii. It was late at noon when they
+      arrived at the former of these places. Here they halted to dine; for
+      Mervale had heard much of the excellence of the macaroni at Portici, and
+      Mervale was a bon vivant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They put up at an inn of very humble pretensions, and dined under an
+      awning. Mervale was more than usually gay; he pressed the lacrima upon his
+      friend, and conversed gayly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear friend, we have foiled Signor Zanoni in one of his
+      predictions at least. You will have no faith in him hereafter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The ides are come, not gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tush! If he be the soothsayer, you are not the Caesar. It is your vanity
+      that makes you credulous. Thank Heaven, I do not think myself of such
+      importance that the operations of Nature should be changed in order to
+      frighten me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why should the operations of Nature be changed? There may be a deeper
+      philosophy than we dream of,&mdash;a philosophy that discovers the secrets
+      of Nature, but does not alter, by penetrating, its courses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you relapse into your heretical credulity; you seriously suppose
+      Zanoni to be a prophet,&mdash;a reader of the future; perhaps an associate
+      of genii and spirits!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the landlord, a little, fat, oily fellow, came up with a fresh bottle
+      of lacrima. He hoped their Excellencies were pleased. He was most touched&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A capital idea!&rdquo; cried Mervale. &ldquo;What say you, Glyndon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not yet seen an eruption; I should like it much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But is there no danger?&rdquo; asked the prudent Mervale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, not at all; the mountain is very civil at present. It only plays a
+      little, just to amuse their Excellencies the English.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, order the horses, and bring the bill; we will go before it is dark.
+      Clarence, my friend,&mdash;nunc est bibendum; but take care of the pede
+      libero, which will scarce do for walking on lava!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wine, perhaps the excitement of his thoughts, animated Glyndon, whose
+      unequal spirits were, at times, high and brilliant as those of a schoolboy
+      released; and the laughter of the Northern tourists sounded oft and
+      merrily along the melancholy domains of buried cities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hesperus had lighted his lamp amidst the rosy skies as they arrived at
+      Resina. Here they quitted their horses, and took mules and a guide. As the
+      sky grew darker and more dark, the mountain fire burned with an intense
+      lustre. In various streaks and streamlets, the fountain of flame rolled
+      down the dark summit, and the Englishmen began to feel increase upon them,
+      as they ascended, that sensation of solemnity and awe which makes the very
+      atmosphere that surrounds the Giant of the Plains of the Antique Hades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was night, when, leaving the mules, they ascended on foot, accompanied
+      by their guide, and a peasant who bore a rude torch. The guide was a
+      conversable, garrulous fellow, like most of his country and his calling;
+      and Mervale, who possessed a sociable temper, loved to amuse or to
+      instruct himself on every incidental occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Excellency,&rdquo; said the guide, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True, they have no curiosity,&rdquo; said Mervale. &ldquo;Do you remember, Glyndon,
+      the contempt with which that old count said to us, &lsquo;You will go to
+      Vesuvius, I suppose? I have never been; why should I go? You have cold,
+      you have hunger, you have fatigue, you have danger, and all for nothing
+      but to see fire, which looks just as well in a brazier as on a mountain.&rsquo; 
+      Ha! ha! the old fellow was right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Excellency,&rdquo; said the guide, &ldquo;that is not all: some cavaliers think
+      to ascend the mountain without our help. I am sure they deserve to tumble
+      into the crater.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They must be bold fellows to go alone; you don&rsquo;t often find such.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sometimes among the French, signor. But the other night&mdash;I never was
+      so frightened&mdash;I had been with an English party, and a lady had left
+      a pocket-book on the mountain, where she had been sketching. She offered
+      me a handsome sum to return for it, and bring it to her at Naples. So I
+      went in the evening. I found it, sure enough, and was about to return,
+      when I saw a figure that seemed to emerge from the crater itself. The air
+      there was so pestiferous that I could not have conceived a human creature
+      could breathe it, and live. I was so astounded that I stood still as a
+      stone, till the figure came over the hot ashes, and stood before me, face
+      to face. Santa Maria, what a head!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! hideous?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; so beautiful, but so terrible. It had nothing human in its aspect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what said the salamander?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing! It did not even seem to perceive me, though I was near as I am
+      to you; but its eyes seemed to emerge prying into the air. It passed by me
+      quickly, and, walking across a stream of burning lava, soon vanished on
+      the other side of the mountain. I was curious and foolhardy, and resolved
+      to see if I could bear the atmosphere which this visitor had left; but
+      though I did not advance within thirty yards of the spot at which he had
+      first appeared, I was driven back by a vapour that wellnigh stifled me.
+      Cospetto! I have spat blood ever since.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now will I lay a wager that you fancy this fire-king must be Zanoni,&rdquo;
+       whispered Mervale, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little party had now arrived nearly at the summit of the mountain; and
+      unspeakably grand was the spectacle on which they gazed. From the crater
+      arose a vapour, intensely dark, that overspread the whole background of
+      the heavens; in the centre whereof rose a flame that assumed a form
+      singularly beautiful. It might have been compared to a crest of gigantic
+      feathers, the diadem of the mountain, high-arched, and drooping downward,
+      with the hues delicately shaded off, and the whole shifting and tremulous
+      as the plumage on a warrior&rsquo;s helmet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The glare of the flame spread, luminous and crimson, over the dark and
+      rugged ground on which they stood, and drew an innumerable variety of
+      shadows from crag and hollow. An oppressive and sulphureous exhalation
+      served to increase the gloomy and sublime terror of the place. But on
+      turning from the mountain, and towards the distant and unseen ocean, the
+      contrast was wonderfully great; the heavens serene and blue, the stars
+      still and calm as the eyes of Divine Love. It was as if the realms of the
+      opposing principles of Evil and of Good were brought in one view before
+      the gaze of man! Glyndon&mdash;once more the enthusiast, the artist&mdash;was
+      enchained and entranced by emotions vague and undefinable, half of delight
+      and half of pain. Leaning on the shoulder of his friend, he gazed around
+      him, and heard with deepening awe the rumbling of the earth below, the
+      wheels and voices of the Ministry of Nature in her darkest and most
+      inscrutable recess. Suddenly, as a bomb from a shell, a huge stone was
+      flung hundreds of yards up from the jaws of the crater, and falling with a
+      mighty crash upon the rock below, split into ten thousand fragments, which
+      bounded down the sides of the mountain, sparkling and groaning as they
+      went. One of these, the largest fragment, struck the narrow space of soil
+      between the Englishmen and the guide, not three feet from the spot where
+      the former stood. Mervale uttered an exclamation of terror, and Glyndon
+      held his breath, and shuddered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Diavolo!&rdquo; cried the guide. &ldquo;Descend, Excellencies,&mdash;descend! we have
+      not a moment to lose; follow me close!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, the guide and the peasant fled with as much swiftness as they
+      were able to bring to bear. Mervale, ever more prompt and ready than his
+      friend, imitated their example; and Glyndon, more confused than alarmed,
+      followed close. But they had not gone many yards, before, with a rushing
+      and sudden blast, came from the crater an enormous volume of vapour. It
+      pursued,&mdash;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,&mdash;with the Darkness and the Terror. The vapour rolled sullenly
+      away; the form of the plumed fire was again dimly visible, and its
+      struggling and perturbed reflection again shed a glow over the horrors of
+      the path. Glyndon recovered himself, and sped onward. Below, he heard the
+      voice of Mervale calling on him, though he no longer saw his form. The
+      sound served as a guide. Dizzy and breathless, he bounded forward; when&mdash;hark!&mdash;a
+      sullen, slow rolling sounded in his ear! He halted,&mdash;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&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment his courage left him; he cried in despair, and in that
+      overstrained pitch of voice which is never heard afar off, to the guide,
+      to Mervale, to return to aid him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had proceeded about fifty yards, when he halted abruptly; an
+      unspeakable and unaccountable horror, not hitherto experienced amidst all
+      his peril, came over him. He shook in every limb; his muscles refused his
+      will,&mdash;he felt, as it were, palsied and death-stricken. The horror, I
+      say, was unaccountable, for the path seemed clear and safe. The fire,
+      above and behind, burned clear and far; and beyond, the stars lent him
+      their cheering guidance. No obstacle was visible,&mdash;no danger seemed
+      at hand. As thus, spell-bound, and panic-stricken, he stood chained to the
+      soil,&mdash;his breast heaving, large drops rolling down his brow, and his
+      eyes starting wildly from their sockets,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the Being and the
+      Shadow&mdash;that impressed the beholder with the difference between them,&mdash;the
+      Man and the Superhuman. It was but for a moment&mdash;nay, for the tenth
+      part of a moment&mdash;that this sight was permitted to the wanderer. A
+      second eddy of sulphureous vapours from the volcano, yet more rapidly, yet
+      more densely than its predecessor, rolled over the mountain; and either
+      the nature of the exhalation, or the excess of his own dread, was such,
+      that Glyndon, after one wild gasp for breath, fell senseless on the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 3.XI.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Was hab&rsquo;ich,
+     Wenn ich nicht Alles habe?&mdash;sprach der Jungling.
+     &ldquo;Das Verschleierte Bild zu Sais.&rdquo;
+ 
+     (&ldquo;What have I, if I possess not All?&rdquo; said the youth.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Mervale and the Italians arrived in safety at the spot where they had left
+      the mules; and not till they had recovered their own alarm and breath did
+      they think of Glyndon. But then, as the minutes passed, and he appeared
+      not, Mervale, whose heart was as good at least as human hearts are in
+      general, grew seriously alarmed. He insisted on returning to search for
+      his friend; and by dint of prodigal promises prevailed at last on the
+      guide to accompany him. The lower part of the mountain lay calm and white
+      in the starlight; and the guide&rsquo;s practised eye could discern all objects
+      on the surface at a considerable distance. They had not, however, gone
+      very far, before they perceived two forms slowly approaching them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they came near, Mervale recognised the form of his friend. &ldquo;Thank
+      Heaven, he is safe!&rdquo; he cried, turning to the guide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Holy angels befriend us!&rdquo; said the Italian, trembling,&mdash;&ldquo;behold the
+      very being that crossed me last Friday night. It is he, but his face is
+      human now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Signor Inglese,&rdquo; said the voice of Zanoni, as Glyndon&mdash;pale, wan,
+      and silent&mdash;returned passively the joyous greeting of Mervale,&mdash;&ldquo;Signor
+      Inglese, I told your friend that we should meet to-night. You see you have
+      NOT foiled my prediction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how?&mdash;but where?&rdquo; stammered Mervale, in great confusion and
+      surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I found your friend stretched on the ground, overpowered by the mephitic
+      exhalation of the crater. I bore him to a purer atmosphere; and as I know
+      the mountain well, I have conducted him safely to you. This is all our
+      history. You see, sir, that were it not for that prophecy which you
+      desired to frustrate, your friend would ere this time have been a corpse;
+      one minute more, and the vapour had done its work. Adieu; goodnight, and
+      pleasant dreams.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my preserver, you will not leave us?&rdquo; said Glyndon, anxiously, and
+      speaking for the first time. &ldquo;Will you not return with us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni paused, and drew Glyndon aside. &ldquo;Young man,&rdquo; said he, gravely, &ldquo;it
+      is necessary that we should again meet to-night. It is necessary that you
+      should, ere the first hour of morning, decide on your own fate. I know
+      that you have insulted her whom you profess to love. It is not too late to
+      repent. Consult not your friend: he is sensible and wise; but not now is
+      his wisdom needed. There are times in life when, from the imagination, and
+      not the reason, should wisdom come,&mdash;this, for you, is one of them. I
+      ask not your answer now. Collect your thoughts,&mdash;recover your jaded
+      and scattered spirits. It wants two hours of midnight. Before midnight I
+      will be with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Incomprehensible being!&rdquo; replied the Englishman, &ldquo;I would leave the life
+      you have preserved in your own hands; but what I have seen this night has
+      swept even Viola from my thoughts. A fiercer desire than that of love
+      burns in my veins,&mdash;the desire not to resemble but to surpass my
+      kind; the desire to penetrate and to share the secret of your own
+      existence&mdash;the desire of a preternatural knowledge and unearthly
+      power. I make my choice. In my ancestor&rsquo;s name, I adjure and remind thee
+      of thy pledge. Instruct me; school me; make me thine; and I surrender to
+      thee at once, and without a murmur, the woman whom, till I saw thee, I
+      would have defied a world to obtain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bid thee consider well: on the one hand, Viola, a tranquil home, a
+      happy and serene life; on the other hand, all is darkness,&mdash;darkness,
+      that even these eyes cannot penetrate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But thou hast told me, that if I wed Viola, I must be contented with the
+      common existence,&mdash;if I refuse, it is to aspire to thy knowledge and
+      thy power.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vain man, knowledge and power are not happiness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they are better than happiness. Say!&mdash;if I marry Viola, wilt
+      thou be my master,&mdash;my guide? Say this, and I am resolved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It were impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I renounce her? I renounce love. I renounce happiness. Welcome
+      solitude,&mdash;welcome despair; if they are the entrances to thy dark and
+      sublime secret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not take thy answer now. Before the last hour of night thou shalt
+      give it in one word,&mdash;ay or no! Farewell till then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni waved his hand, and, descending rapidly, was seen no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon rejoined his impatient and wondering friend; but Mervale, gazing
+      on his face, saw that a great change had passed there. The flexile and
+      dubious expression of youth was forever gone. The features were locked,
+      rigid, and stern; and so faded was the natural bloom, that an hour seemed
+      to have done the work of years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 3.XII.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Was ist&rsquo;s
+     Das hinter diesem Schleier sich verbirgt?
+     &ldquo;Das Verschleierte Bild zu Sais.&rdquo;
+ 
+     (What is it that conceals itself behind this veil?)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      On returning from Vesuvius or Pompeii, you enter Naples through its most
+      animated, its most Neapolitan quarter,&mdash;through that quarter in which
+      modern life most closely resembles the ancient; and in which, when, on a
+      fair-day, the thoroughfare swarms alike with Indolence and Trade, you are
+      impressed at once with the recollection of that restless, lively race from
+      which the population of Naples derives its origin; so that in one day you
+      may see at Pompeii the habitations of a remote age; and on the Mole, at
+      Naples, you may imagine you behold the very beings with whom those
+      habitations had been peopled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now, as the Englishmen rode slowly through the deserted streets,
+      lighted but by the lamps of heaven, all the gayety of day was hushed and
+      breathless. Here and there, stretched under a portico or a dingy booth,
+      were sleeping groups of houseless Lazzaroni,&mdash;a tribe now merging its
+      indolent individuality amidst an energetic and active population.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Englishman rode on in silence; for Glyndon neither appeared to heed
+      nor hear the questions and comments of Mervale, and Mervale himself was
+      almost as weary as the jaded animal he bestrode.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the silence of earth and ocean was broken by the sound of a
+      distant clock that proclaimed the quarter preceding the last hour of
+      night. Glyndon started from his reverie, and looked anxiously round. As
+      the final stroke died, the noise of hoofs rung on the broad stones of the
+      pavement, and from a narrow street to the right emerged the form of a
+      solitary horseman. He neared the Englishmen, and Glyndon recognised the
+      features and mien of Zanoni.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! do we meet again, signor?&rdquo; said Mervale, in a vexed but drowsy
+      tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your friend and I have business together,&rdquo; replied Zanoni, as he wheeled
+      his steed to the side of Glyndon. &ldquo;But it will be soon transacted. Perhaps
+      you, sir, will ride on to your hotel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no danger!&rdquo; returned Zanoni, with a slight expression of disdain
+      in his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None to me; but to Glyndon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Danger from me! Ah, perhaps you are right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on, my dear Mervale,&rdquo; said Glyndon; &ldquo;I will join you before you reach
+      the hotel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mervale nodded, whistled, and pushed his horse into a kind of amble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now your answer,&mdash;quick?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have decided. The love of Viola has vanished from my heart. The pursuit
+      is over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have decided?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have; and now my reward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thy reward! Well; ere this hour to-morrow it shall await thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni gave the rein to his horse; it sprang forward with a bound: the
+      sparks flew from its hoofs, and horse and rider disappeared amidst the
+      shadows of the street whence they had emerged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mervale was surprised to see his friend by his side, a minute after they
+      had parted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has passed between you and Zanoni?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mervale, do not ask me to-night! I am in a dream.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not wonder at it, for even I am in a sleep. Let us push on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the retirement of his chamber, Glyndon sought to recollect his
+      thoughts. He sat down on the foot of his bed, and pressed his hands
+      tightly to his throbbing temples. The events of the last few hours; the
+      apparition of the gigantic and shadowy Companion of the Mystic, amidst the
+      fires and clouds of Vesuvius; the strange encounter with Zanoni himself,
+      on a spot in which he could never, by ordinary reasoning, have calculated
+      on finding Glyndon, filled his mind with emotions, in which terror and awe
+      the least prevailed. A fire, the train of which had been long laid, was
+      lighted at his heart,&mdash;the asbestos-fire that, once lit, is never to
+      be quenched. All his early aspirations&mdash;his young ambition, his
+      longings for the laurel&mdash;were merged in one passionate yearning to
+      surpass the bounds of the common knowledge of man, and reach that solemn
+      spot, between two worlds, on which the mysterious stranger appeared to
+      have fixed his home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;LOVE
+      HAD VANISHED FROM HIS HEART; there was no longer a serene space amidst its
+      disordered elements for human affection to move and breathe. The
+      enthusiast was rapt from this earth; and he would have surrendered all
+      that mortal beauty ever promised, that mortal hope ever whispered, for one
+      hour with Zanoni beyond the portals of the visible world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 3.XIII.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     O, be gone!
+     By Heaven, I love thee better than myself,
+     For I came hither armed against myself.
+     &mdash;&ldquo;Romeo and Juliet.&rdquo;
+  </pre>
+    <p>
+      The young actress and Gionetta had returned from the theatre; and Viola
+      fatigued and exhausted, had thrown herself on a sofa, while Gionetta
+      busied herself with the long tresses which, released from the fillet that
+      bound them, half-concealed the form of the actress, like a veil of threads
+      of gold. As she smoothed the luxuriant locks, the old nurse ran gossiping
+      on about the little events of the night, the scandal and politics of the
+      scenes and the tireroom. Gionetta was a worthy soul. Almanzor, in Dryden&rsquo;s
+      tragedy of &ldquo;Almahide,&rdquo; did not change sides with more gallant indifference
+      than the exemplary nurse. She was at last grieved and scandalised that
+      Viola had not selected one chosen cavalier. But the choice she left wholly
+      to her fair charge. Zegri or Abencerrage, Glyndon or Zanoni, it had been
+      the same to her, except that the rumours she had collected respecting the
+      latter, combined with his own recommendations of his rival, had given her
+      preference to the Englishman. She interpreted ill the impatient and heavy
+      sigh with which Viola greeted her praises of Glyndon, and her wonder that
+      he had of late so neglected his attentions behind the scenes, and she
+      exhausted all her powers of panegyric upon the supposed object of the
+      sigh. &ldquo;And then, too,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;if nothing else were to be said against
+      the other signor, it is enough that he is about to leave Naples.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave Naples!&mdash;Zanoni?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, darling! In passing by the Mole to-day, there was a crowd round some
+      outlandish-looking sailors. His ship arrived this morning, and anchors in
+      the bay. The sailors say that they are to be prepared to sail with the
+      first wind; they were taking in fresh stores. They&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave me, Gionetta! Leave me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The time had already passed when the girl could confide in Gionetta. Her
+      thoughts had advanced to that point when the heart recoils from all
+      confidence, and feels that it cannot be comprehended. Alone now, in the
+      principal apartment of the house, she paced its narrow boundaries with
+      tremulous and agitated steps: she recalled the frightful suit of Nicot,&mdash;the
+      injurious taunt of Glyndon; and she sickened at the remembrance of the
+      hollow applauses which, bestowed on the actress, not the woman, only
+      subjected her to contumely and insult. In that room the recollection of
+      her father&rsquo;s death, the withered laurel and the broken chords, rose
+      chillingly before her. Hers, she felt, was a yet gloomier fate,&mdash;the
+      chords may break while the laurel is yet green. The lamp, waning in its
+      socket, burned pale and dim, and her eyes instinctively turned from the
+      darker corner of the room. Orphan, by the hearth of thy parent, dost thou
+      fear the presence of the dead!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And was Zanoni indeed about to quit Naples? Should she see him no more?
+      Oh, fool, to think that there was grief in any other thought! The past!&mdash;that
+      was gone! The future!&mdash;there was no future to her, Zanoni absent! But
+      this was the night of the third day on which Zanoni had told her that,
+      come what might, he would visit her again. It was, then, if she might
+      believe him, some appointed crisis in her fate; and how should she tell
+      him of Glyndon&rsquo;s hateful words? The pure and the proud mind can never
+      confide its wrongs to another, only its triumphs and its happiness. But at
+      that late hour would Zanoni visit her,&mdash;could she receive him?
+      Midnight was at hand. Still in undefined suspense, in intense anxiety, she
+      lingered in the room. The quarter before midnight sounded, dull and
+      distant. All was still, and she was about to pass to her sleeping-room,
+      when she heard the hoofs of a horse at full speed; the sound ceased, there
+      was a knock at the door. Her heart beat violently; but fear gave way to
+      another sentiment when she heard a voice, too well known, calling on her
+      name. She paused, and then, with the fearlessness of innocence, descended
+      and unbarred the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni entered with a light and hasty step. His horseman&rsquo;s cloak fitted
+      tightly to his noble form, and his broad hat threw a gloomy shade over his
+      commanding features.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl followed him into the room she had just left, trembling and
+      blushing deeply, and stood before him with the lamp she held shining
+      upward on her cheek and the long hair that fell like a shower of light
+      over the half-clad shoulders and heaving bust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Viola,&rdquo; said Zanoni, in a voice that spoke deep emotion, &ldquo;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 &mdash;. I would have made
+      the charge I now undertake another&rsquo;s; thou knowest I would,&mdash;thou
+      knowest it!&mdash;but he is not worthy of thee, the cold Englishman! I
+      throw myself at thy feet; have trust in me, and fly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He grasped her hand passionately as he dropped on his knee, and looked up
+      into her face with his bright, beseeching eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fly with thee!&rdquo; said Viola, scarce believing her senses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With me. Name, fame, honour,&mdash;all will be sacrificed if thou dost
+      not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then&mdash;then,&rdquo; said the wild girl, falteringly, and turning aside her
+      face,&mdash;&ldquo;then I am not indifferent to thee; thou wouldst not give me
+      to another?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni was silent; but his breast heaved, his cheeks flushed, his eyes
+      darted dark and impassioned fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak!&rdquo; exclaimed Viola, in jealous suspicion of his silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indifferent to me! No; but I dare not yet say that I love thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what matters my fate?&rdquo; said Viola, turning pale, and shrinking from
+      his side; &ldquo;leave me,&mdash;I fear no danger. My life, and therefore my
+      honour, is in mine own hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be not so mad,&rdquo; said Zanoni. &ldquo;Hark! do you hear the neigh of my steed?&mdash;it
+      is an alarm that warns us of the approaching peril. Haste, or you are
+      lost!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why dost thou care for me?&rdquo; said the girl, bitterly. &ldquo;Thou hast read my
+      heart; thou knowest that thou art become the lord of my destiny. But to be
+      bound beneath the weight of a cold obligation; to be the beggar on the
+      eyes of indifference; to cast myself on one who loves me not,&mdash;THAT
+      were indeed the vilest sin of my sex. Ah, Zanoni, rather let me die!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had thrown back her clustering hair from her face while she spoke; and
+      as she now stood, with her arms drooping mournfully, and her hands clasped
+      together with the proud bitterness of her wayward spirit, giving new zest
+      and charm to her singular beauty, it was impossible to conceive a sight
+      more irresistible to the eye and the heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tempt me not to thine own danger,&mdash;perhaps destruction!&rdquo; exclaimed
+      Zanoni, in faltering accents. &ldquo;Thou canst not dream of what thou wouldst
+      demand,&mdash;come!&rdquo; and, advancing, he wound his arm round her waist.
+      &ldquo;Come, Viola; believe at least in my friendship, my honour, my protection&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And not thy love,&rdquo; said the Italian, turning on him her reproachful eyes.
+      Those eyes met his, and he could not withdraw from the charm of their
+      gaze. He felt her heart throbbing beneath his own; her breath came warm
+      upon his cheek. He trembled,&mdash;HE! the lofty, the mysterious Zanoni,
+      who seemed to stand aloof from his race. With a deep and burning sigh, he
+      murmured, &ldquo;Viola, I love thee! Oh!&rdquo; he continued passionately, and,
+      releasing his hold, he threw himself abruptly at her feet, &ldquo;I no more
+      command,&mdash;as woman should be wooed, I woo thee. From the first glance
+      of those eyes, from the first sound of thy voice, thou becamest too
+      fatally dear to me. Thou speakest of fascination,&mdash;it lives and it
+      breathes in thee! I fled from Naples to fly from thy presence,&mdash;it
+      pursued me. Months, years passed, and thy sweet face still shone upon my
+      heart. I returned, because I pictured thee alone and sorrowful in the
+      world, and knew that dangers, from which I might save thee, were gathering
+      near thee and around. Beautiful Soul! whose leaves I have read with
+      reverence, it was for thy sake, thine alone, that I would have given thee
+      to one who might make thee happier on earth than I can. Viola! Viola! thou
+      knowest not&mdash;never canst thou know&mdash;how dear thou art to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is in vain to seek for words to describe the delight&mdash;the proud,
+      the full, the complete, and the entire delight&mdash;that filled the heart
+      of the Neapolitan. He whom she had considered too lofty even for love,&mdash;more
+      humble to her than those she had half-despised! She was silent, but her
+      eyes spoke to him; and then slowly, as aware, at last, that the human love
+      had advanced on the ideal, she shrank into the terrors of a modest and
+      virtuous nature. She did not dare,&mdash;she did not dream to ask him the
+      question she had so fearlessly made to Glyndon; but she felt a sudden
+      coldness,&mdash;a sense that a barrier was yet between love and love. &ldquo;Oh,
+      Zanoni!&rdquo; she murmured, with downcast eyes, &ldquo;ask me not to fly with thee;
+      tempt me not to my shame. Thou wouldst protect me from others. Oh, protect
+      me from thyself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor orphan!&rdquo; said he, tenderly, &ldquo;and canst thou think that I ask from
+      thee one sacrifice,&mdash;still less the greatest that woman can give to
+      love? As my wife I woo thee, and by every tie, and by every vow that can
+      hallow and endear affection. Alas! they have belied love to thee indeed,
+      if thou dost not know the religion that belongs to it! They who truly love
+      would seek, for the treasure they obtain, every bond that can make it
+      lasting and secure. Viola, weep not, unless thou givest me the holy right
+      to kiss away thy tears!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And that beautiful face, no more averted, drooped upon his bosom; and as
+      he bent down, his lips sought the rosy mouth: a long and burning kiss,&mdash;danger,
+      life, the world was forgotten! Suddenly Zanoni tore himself from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hearest thou the wind that sighs, and dies away? As that wind, my power
+      to preserve thee, to guard thee, to foresee the storm in thy skies, is
+      gone. No matter. Haste, haste; and may love supply the loss of all that it
+      has dared to sacrifice! Come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Viola hesitated no more. She threw her mantle over her shoulders, and
+      gathered up her dishevelled hair; a moment, and she was prepared, when a
+      sudden crash was heard below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too late!&mdash;fool that I was, too late!&rdquo; cried Zanoni, in a sharp tone
+      of agony, as he hurried to the door. He opened it, only to be borne back
+      by the press of armed men. The room literally swarmed with the followers
+      of the ravisher, masked, and armed to the teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Viola was already in the grasp of two of the myrmidons. Her shriek smote
+      the ear of Zanoni. He sprang forward; and Viola heard his wild cry in a
+      foreign tongue. She saw the blades of the ruffians pointed at his breast!
+      She lost her senses; and when she recovered, she found herself gagged, and
+      in a carriage that was driven rapidly, by the side of a masked and
+      motionless figure. The carriage stopped at the portals of a gloomy
+      mansion. The gates opened noiselessly; a broad flight of steps,
+      brilliantly illumined, was before her. She was in the palace of the Prince
+      di &mdash;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 3.XIV.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Ma lasciamo, per Dio, Signore, ormai
+     Di parlar d&rsquo; ira, e di cantar di morte.
+     &ldquo;Orlando Furioso,&rdquo; Canto xvii. xvii.
+
+     (But leave me, I solemnly conjure thee, signor, to speak of
+     wrath, and to sing of death.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The young actress was led to, and left alone in a chamber adorned with all
+      the luxurious and half-Eastern taste that at one time characterised the
+      palaces of the great seigneurs of Italy. Her first thought was for Zanoni.
+      Was he yet living? Had he escaped unscathed the blades of the foe,&mdash;her
+      new treasure, the new light of her life, her lord, at last her lover?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had short time for reflection. She heard steps approaching the
+      chamber; she drew back, but trembled not. A courage not of herself, never
+      known before, sparkled in her eyes, and dilated her stature. Living or
+      dead, she would be faithful still to Zanoni! There was a new motive to the
+      preservation of honour. The door opened, and the prince entered in the
+      gorgeous and gaudy custume still worn at that time in Naples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fair and cruel one,&rdquo; said he, advancing with a half-sneer upon his lip,
+      &ldquo;thou wilt not too harshly blame the violence of love.&rdquo; He attempted to
+      take her hand as he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; said he, as she recoiled, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Prince,&rdquo; said Viola, with a stern gravity, &ldquo;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&mdash;and in some feelings,&rdquo; added
+      Viola, with a solemnity almost thrilling, &ldquo;there is all the strength, and
+      all the divinity of knowledge&mdash;I feel that I am safe even here; but
+      you&mdash;you, Prince di &mdash;, have brought danger to your home and
+      hearth!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Neapolitan seemed startled by an earnestness and boldness he was but
+      little prepared for. He was not, however, a man easily intimidated or
+      deterred from any purpose he had formed; and, approaching Viola, he was
+      about to reply with much warmth, real or affected, when a knock was heard
+      at the door of the chamber. The sound was repeated, and the prince, chafed
+      at the interruption, opened the door and demanded impatiently who had
+      ventured to disobey his orders, and invade his leisure. Mascari presented
+      himself, pale and agitated: &ldquo;My lord,&rdquo; said he, in a whisper, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A stranger!&mdash;and at this hour! What business can he pretend? Why was
+      he even admitted?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He asserts that your life is in imminent danger. The source whence it
+      proceeds he will relate to your Excellency alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince frowned; but his colour changed. He mused a moment, and then,
+      re-entering the chamber and advancing towards Viola, he said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Believe me, fair creature, I have no wish to take advantage of my power.
+      I would fain trust alone to the gentler authorities of affection. Hold
+      yourself queen within these walls more absolutely than you have ever
+      enacted that part on the stage. To-night, farewell! May your sleep be
+      calm, and your dreams propitious to my hopes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With these words he retired, and in a few moments Viola was surrounded by
+      officious attendants, whom she at length, with some difficulty, dismissed;
+      and, refusing to retire to rest, she spent the night in examining the
+      chamber, which she found was secured, and in thoughts of Zanoni, in whose
+      power she felt an almost preternatural confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the prince descended the stairs and sought the room into which
+      the stranger had been shown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found the visitor wrapped from head to foot in a long robe, half-gown,
+      half-mantle, such as was sometimes worn by ecclesiastics. The face of this
+      stranger was remarkable. So sunburnt and swarthy were his hues, that he
+      must, apparently, have derived his origin amongst the races of the
+      farthest East. His forehead was lofty, and his eyes so penetrating yet so
+      calm in their gaze that the prince shrank from them as we shrink from a
+      questioner who is drawing forth the guiltiest secret of our hearts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would you with me?&rdquo; asked the prince, motioning his visitor to a
+      seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Prince of &mdash;,&rdquo; said the stranger, in a voice deep and sweet, but
+      foreign in its accent,&mdash;&ldquo;son of the most energetic and masculine race
+      that ever applied godlike genius to the service of Human Will, with its
+      winding wickedness and its stubborn grandeur; descendant of the great
+      Visconti in whose chronicles lies the history of Italy in her palmy day,
+      and in whose rise was the development of the mightiest intellect, ripened
+      by the most restless ambition,&mdash;I come to gaze upon the last star in
+      a darkening firmament. By this hour to-morrow space shall know it not.
+      Man, unless thy whole nature change, thy days are numbered!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What means this jargon?&rdquo; said the prince, in visible astonishment and
+      secret awe. &ldquo;Comest thou to menace me in my own halls, or wouldst thou
+      warn me of a danger? Art thou some itinerant mountebank, or some
+      unguessed-of friend? Speak out, and plainly. What danger threatens me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Zanoni and thy ancestor&rsquo;s sword,&rdquo; replied the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! ha!&rdquo; said the prince, laughing scournfully; &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Judge of me as thou wilt, Prince di &mdash;. I confess my knowledge of
+      Zanoni. Thou, too, wilt know his power, but not till it consume thee. I
+      would save, therefore I warn thee. Dost thou ask me why? I will tell thee.
+      Canst thou remember to have heard wild tales of thy grandsire; of his
+      desire for a knowledge that passes that of the schools and cloisters; of a
+      strange man from the East who was his familiar and master in lore against
+      which the Vatican has, from age to age, launched its mimic thunder? Dost
+      thou call to mind the fortunes of thy ancestor?&mdash;how he succeeded in
+      youth to little but a name; how, after a career wild and dissolute as
+      thine, he disappeared from Milan, a pauper, and a self-exile; how, after
+      years spent, none knew in what climes or in what pursuits, he again
+      revisited the city where his progenitors had reigned; how with him came
+      the wise man of the East, the mystic Mejnour; how they who beheld him,
+      beheld with amaze and fear that time had ploughed no furrow on his brow;
+      that youth seemed fixed, as by a spell, upon his face and form? Dost thou
+      not know that from that hour his fortunes rose? Kinsmen the most remote
+      died; estate upon estate fell into the hands of the ruined noble. He
+      became the guide of princes, the first magnate of Italy. He founded anew
+      the house of which thou art the last lineal upholder, and transferred his
+      splendour from Milan to the Sicilian realms. Visions of high ambition were
+      then present with him nightly and daily. Had he lived, Italy would have
+      known a new dynasty, and the Visconti would have reigned over
+      Magna-Graecia. He was a man such as the world rarely sees; but his ends,
+      too earthly, were at war with the means he sought. Had his ambition been
+      more or less, he had been worthy of a realm mightier than the Caesars
+      swayed; worthy of our solemn order; worthy of the fellowship of Mejnour,
+      whom you now behold before you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+      &ldquo;Imposter!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;can you dare thus to play with my credulity? Sixty
+      years have flown since my grandsire died; were he living, he had passed
+      his hundred and twentieth year; and you, whose old age is erect and
+      vigorous, have the assurance to pretend to have been his contemporary! But
+      you have imperfectly learned your tale. You know not, it seems, that my
+      grandsire, wise and illustrious indeed, in all save his faith in a
+      charlatan, was found dead in his bed, in the very hour when his colossal
+      plans were ripe for execution, and that Mejnour was guilty of his murder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; answered the stranger, in a voice of great sadness, &ldquo;had he but
+      listened to Mejnour,&mdash;had he but delayed the last and most perilous
+      ordeal of daring wisdom until the requisite training and initiation had
+      been completed,&mdash;your ancestor would have stood with me upon an
+      eminence which the waters of Death itself wash everlastingly, but cannot
+      overflow. Your grandsire resisted my fervent prayers, disobeyed my most
+      absolute commands, and in the sublime rashness of a soul that panted for
+      secrets, which he who desires orbs and sceptres never can obtain,
+      perished, the victim of his own frenzy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was poisoned, and Mejnour fled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mejnour fled not,&rdquo; answered the stranger, proudly&mdash;&ldquo;Mejnour could
+      not fly from danger; for to him danger is a thing long left behind. It was
+      the day before the duke took the fatal draft which he believed was to
+      confer on the mortal the immortal boon, that, finding my power over him
+      was gone, I abandoned him to his doom. But a truce with this: I loved your
+      grandsire! I would save the last of his race. Oppose not thyself to
+      Zanoni. Yield not thy soul to thine evil passions. Draw back from the
+      precipice while there is yet time. In thy front, and in thine eyes, I
+      detect some of that diviner glory which belonged to thy race. Thou hast in
+      thee some germs of their hereditary genius, but they are choked up by
+      worse than thy hereditary vices. Recollect that by genius thy house rose;
+      by vice it ever failed to perpetuate its power. In the laws which regulate
+      the universe, it is decreed that nothing wicked can long endure. Be wise,
+      and let history warn thee. Thou standest on the verge of two worlds, the
+      past and the future; and voices from either shriek omen in thy ear. I have
+      done. I bid thee farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not so; thou shalt not quit these walls. I will make experiment of thy
+      boasted power. What, ho there!&mdash;ho!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince shouted; the room was filled with his minions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seize that man!&rdquo; he cried, pointing to the spot which had been filled by
+      the form of Mejnour. To his inconceivable amaze and horror, the spot was
+      vacant. The mysterious stranger had vanished like a dream; but a thin and
+      fragrant mist undulated, in pale volumes, round the walls of the chamber.
+      &ldquo;Look to my lord,&rdquo; cried Mascari. The prince had fallen to the floor
+      insensible. For many hours he seemed in a kind of trance. When he
+      recovered, he dismissed his attendants, and his step was heard in his
+      chamber, pacing to and fro, with heavy and disordered strides. Not till an
+      hour before his banquet the next day did he seem restored to his wonted
+      self.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 3.XV.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Oime! come poss&rsquo; io
+     Altri trovar, se me trovar non posso.
+     &ldquo;Amint.,&rdquo; At. i. Sc. ii.
+
+     (Alas! how can I find another when I cannot find myself?)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The sleep of Glyndon, the night after his last interview with Zanoni, was
+      unusually profound; and the sun streamed full upon his eyes as he opened
+      them to the day. He rose refreshed, and with a strange sentiment of
+      calmness that seemed more the result of resolution than exhaustion. The
+      incidents and emotions of the past night had settled into distinct and
+      clear impressions. He thought of them but slightly,&mdash;he thought
+      rather of the future. He was as one of the initiated in the old Egyptian
+      mysteries who have crossed the gate only to long more ardently for the
+      penetralia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dressed himself, and was relieved to find that Mervale had joined a
+      party of his countrymen on an excursion to Ischia. He spent the heat of
+      noon in thoughtful solitude, and gradually the image of Viola returned to
+      his heart. It was a holy&mdash;for it was a HUMAN&mdash;image. He had
+      resigned her; and though he repented not, he was troubled at the thought
+      that repentance would have come too late.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He started impatiently from his seat, and strode with rapid steps to the
+      humble abode of the actress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The distance was considerable, and the air oppressive. Glyndon arrived at
+      the door breathless and heated. He knocked; no answer came. He lifted the
+      latch and entered. He ascended the stairs; no sound, no sight of life met
+      his ear and eye. In the front chamber, on a table, lay the guitar of the
+      actress, and some manuscript parts in the favourite operas. He paused,
+      and, summoning courage, tapped at the door which seemed to lead into the
+      inner apartment. The door was ajar; and, hearing no sound within, he
+      pushed it open. It was the sleeping-chamber of the young actress, that
+      holiest ground to a lover; and well did the place become the presiding
+      deity: none of the tawdry finery of the profession was visible, on the one
+      hand; none of the slovenly disorder common to the humbler classes of the
+      South, on the other. All was pure and simple; even the ornaments were
+      those of an innocent refinement,&mdash;a few books, placed carefully on
+      shelves, a few half-faded flowers in an earthen vase, which was modelled
+      and painted in the Etruscan fashion. The sunlight streamed over the snowy
+      draperies of the bed, and a few articles of clothing on the chair beside
+      it. Viola was not there; but the nurse!&mdash;was she gone also? He made
+      the house resound with the name of Gionetta, but there was not even an
+      echo to reply. At last, as he reluctantly quitted the desolate abode, he
+      perceived Gionetta coming towards him from the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor old woman uttered an exclamation of joy on seeing him; but, to
+      their mutual disappointment, neither had any cheerful tidings or
+      satisfactory explanation to afford the other. Gionetta had been aroused
+      from her slumber the night before by the noise in the rooms below; but ere
+      she could muster courage to descend, Viola was gone! She found the marks
+      of violence on the door without; and all she had since been able to learn
+      in the neighbourhood was, that a Lazzarone, from his nocturnal
+      resting-place on the Chiaja, had seen by the moonlight a carriage, which
+      he recognised as belonging to the Prince di &mdash;, pass and repass that
+      road about the first hour of morning. Glyndon, on gathering from the
+      confused words and broken sobs of the old nurse the heads of this account,
+      abruptly left her, and repaired to the palace of Zanoni. There he was
+      informed that the signor was gone to the banquet of the Prince di &mdash;,
+      and would not return till late. Glyndon stood motionless with perplexity
+      and dismay; he knew not what to believe, or how to act. Even Mervale was
+      not at hand to advise him. His conscience smote him bitterly. He had had
+      the power to save the woman he had loved, and had foregone that power; but
+      how was it that in this Zanoni himself had failed? How was it that he was
+      gone to the very banquet of the ravisher? Could Zanoni be aware of what
+      had passed? If not, should he lose a moment in apprising him? Though
+      mentally irresolute, no man was more physically brave. He would repair at
+      once to the palace of the prince himself; and if Zanoni failed in the
+      trust he had half-appeared to arrogate, he, the humble foreigner, would
+      demand the captive of fraud and force, in the very halls and before the
+      assembled guests of the Prince di &mdash;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0036" id="link2HCH0036">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 3.XVI.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Ardua vallatur duris sapientia scrupis.
+     Hadr. Jun., &ldquo;Emblem.&rdquo; xxxvii.
+
+     (Lofty wisdom is circled round with rugged rocks.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      We must go back some hours in the progress of this narrative. It was the
+      first faint and gradual break of the summer dawn; and two men stood in a
+      balcony overhanging a garden fragrant with the scents of the awakening
+      flowers. The stars had not yet left the sky,&mdash;the birds were yet
+      silent on the boughs: all was still, hushed, and tranquil; but how
+      different the tranquillity of reviving day from the solemn repose of
+      night! In the music of silence there are a thousand variations. These men,
+      who alone seemed awake in Naples, were Zanoni and the mysterious stranger
+      who had but an hour or two ago startled the Prince di &mdash; in his
+      voluptuous palace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the latter; &ldquo;hadst thou delayed the acceptance of the Arch-gift
+      until thou hadst attained to the years, and passed through all the
+      desolate bereavements that chilled and seared myself ere my researches had
+      made it mine, thou wouldst have escaped the curse of which thou
+      complainest now,&mdash;thou wouldst not have mourned over the brevity of
+      human affection as compared to the duration of thine own existence; for
+      thou wouldst have survived the very desire and dream of the love of woman.
+      Brightest, and, but for that error, perhaps the loftiest, of the secret
+      and solemn race that fills up the interval in creation between mankind and
+      the children of the Empyreal, age after age wilt thou rue the splendid
+      folly which made thee ask to carry the beauty and the passions of youth
+      into the dreary grandeur of earthly immortality.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not repent, nor shall I,&rdquo; answered Zanoni. &ldquo;The transport and the
+      sorrow, so wildly blended, which have at intervals diversified my doom,
+      are better than the calm and bloodless tenor of thy solitary way&mdash;thou,
+      who lovest nothing, hatest nothing, feelest nothing, and walkest the world
+      with the noiseless and joyless footsteps of a dream!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mistake,&rdquo; replied he who had owned the name of Mejnour,&mdash;&ldquo;though
+      I care not for love, and am dead to every PASSION that agitates the sons
+      of clay, I am not dead to their more serene enjoyments. I carry down the
+      stream of the countless years, not the turbulent desires of youth, but the
+      calm and spiritual delights of age. Wisely and deliberately I abandoned
+      youth forever when I separated my lot from men. Let us not envy or
+      reproach each other. I would have saved this Neapolitan, Zanoni (since so
+      it now pleases thee to be called), partly because his grandsire was but
+      divided by the last airy barrier from our own brotherhood, partly because
+      I know that in the man himself lurk the elements of ancestral courage and
+      power, which in earlier life would have fitted him for one of us. Earth
+      holds but few to whom Nature has given the qualities that can bear the
+      ordeal. But time and excess, that have quickened his grosser senses, have
+      blunted his imagination. I relinquish him to his doom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And still, then, Mejnour, you cherish the desire to revive our order,
+      limited now to ourselves alone, by new converts and allies. Surely&mdash;surely&mdash;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&mdash;the blood-stained suicide,
+      the raving maniac&mdash;rise before thee, and warn what is yet left to
+      thee of human sympathy from thy insane ambition?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; answered Mejnour; &ldquo;have I not had success to counterbalance
+      failure? And can I forego this lofty and august hope, worthy alone of our
+      high condition,&mdash;the hope to form a mighty and numerous race with a
+      force and power sufficient to permit them to acknowledge to mankind their
+      majestic conquests and dominion, to become the true lords of this planet,
+      invaders, perchance, of others, masters of the inimical and malignant
+      tribes by which at this moment we are surrounded: a race that may proceed,
+      in their deathless destinies, from stage to stage of celestial glory, and
+      rank at last amongst the nearest ministrants and agents gathered round the
+      Throne of Thrones? What matter a thousand victims for one convert to our
+      band? And you, Zanoni,&rdquo; continued Mejnour, after a pause,&mdash;&ldquo;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;can
+      you see this, and know it is yours to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cease!&rdquo; cried Zanoni, fiercely. &ldquo;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,&mdash;thinkest thou that this weak woman&mdash;from
+      whose cheek a sound at the window, the screech of the night-owl, the sight
+      of a drop of blood on a man&rsquo;s sword, would start the colour&mdash;could
+      brave one glance of&mdash;Away! the very thought of such sights for her
+      makes even myself a coward!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you told her you loved her,&mdash;when you clasped her to your
+      breast, you renounced all power to foresee her future lot, or protect her
+      from harm. Henceforth to her you are human, and human only. How know you,
+      then, to what you may be tempted; how know you what her curiosity may
+      learn and her courage brave? But enough of this,&mdash;you are bent on
+      your pursuit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The fiat has gone forth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And to-morrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow, at this hour, our bark will be bounding over yonder ocean, and
+      the weight of ages will have fallen from my heart! I compassionate thee, O
+      foolish sage,&mdash;THOU hast given up THY youth!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0037" id="link2HCH0037">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 3.XVII.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Alch:  Thou always speakest riddles.  Tell me if thou art that
+     fountain of which Bernard Lord Trevizan writ?
+
+     Merc:  I am not that fountain, but I am the water.  The fountain
+     compasseth me about.
+
+     Sandivogius, &ldquo;New Light of Alchymy.&rdquo;
+  </pre>
+    <p>
+      The Prince di &mdash; was not a man whom Naples could suppose to be
+      addicted to superstitious fancies. Still, in the South of Italy, there was
+      then, and there still lingers a certain spirit of credulity, which may,
+      ever and anon, be visible amidst the boldest dogmas of their philosophers
+      and sceptics. In his childhood, the prince had learned strange tales of
+      the ambition, the genius, and the career of his grandsire,&mdash;and
+      secretly, perhaps influenced by ancestral example, in earlier youth he
+      himself had followed science, not only through her legitimate course, but
+      her antiquated and erratic windings. I have, indeed, been shown in Naples
+      a little volume, blazoned with the arms of the Visconti, and ascribed to
+      the nobleman I refer to, which treats of alchemy in a spirit half-mocking
+      and half-reverential.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pleasure soon distracted him from such speculations, and his talents,
+      which were unquestionably great, were wholly perverted to extravagant
+      intrigues, or to the embellishment of a gorgeous ostentation with
+      something of classic grace. His immense wealth, his imperious pride, his
+      unscrupulous and daring character, made him an object of no inconsiderable
+      fear to a feeble and timid court; and the ministers of the indolent
+      government willingly connived at excesses which allured him at least from
+      ambition. The strange visit and yet more strange departure of Mejnour
+      filled the breast of the Neapolitan with awe and wonder, against which all
+      the haughty arrogance and learned scepticism of his maturer manhood
+      combated in vain. The apparition of Mejnour served, indeed, to invest
+      Zanoni with a character in which the prince had not hitherto regarded him.
+      He felt a strange alarm at the rival he had braved,&mdash;at the foe he
+      had provoked. When, a little before his banquet, he had resumed his
+      self-possession, it was with a fell and gloomy resolution that he brooded
+      over the perfidious schemes he had previously formed. He felt as if the
+      death of the mysterious Zanoni were necessary for the preservation of his
+      own life; and if at an earlier period of their rivalry he had determined
+      on the fate of Zanoni, the warnings of Mejnour only served to confirm his
+      resolve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will try if his magic can invent an antidote to the bane,&rdquo; said he,
+      half-aloud, and with a stern smile, as he summoned Mascari to his
+      presence. The poison which the prince, with his own hands, mixed into the
+      wine intended for his guest, was compounded from materials, the secret of
+      which had been one of the proudest heir-looms of that able and evil race
+      which gave to Italy her wisest and guiltiest tyrants. Its operation was
+      quick yet not sudden: it produced no pain,&mdash;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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hour of the feast arrived,&mdash;the guests assembled. There were the
+      flower of the Neapolitan seignorie, the descendants of the Norman, the
+      Teuton, the Goth; for Naples had then a nobility, but derived it from the
+      North, which has indeed been the Nutrix Leonum,&mdash;the nurse of the
+      lion-hearted chivalry of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Last of the guests came Zanoni; and the crowd gave way as the dazzling
+      foreigner moved along to the lord of the palace. The prince greeted him
+      with a meaning smile, to which Zanoni answered by a whisper, &ldquo;He who plays
+      with loaded dice does not always win.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The prince bit his lip, and Zanoni, passing on, seemed deep in
+      conversation with the fawning Mascari.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is the prince&rsquo;s heir?&rdquo; asked the guest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A distant relation on the mother&rsquo;s side; with his Excellency dies the
+      male line.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the heir present at our host&rsquo;s banquet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; they are not friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No matter; he will be here to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mascari stared in surprise; but the signal for the banquet was given, and
+      the guests were marshalled to the board. As was the custom then, the feast
+      took place not long after mid-day. It was a long, oval hall, the whole of
+      one side opening by a marble colonnade upon a court or garden, in which
+      the eye rested gratefully upon cool fountains and statues of whitest
+      marble, half-sheltered by orange-trees. Every art that luxury could invent
+      to give freshness and coolness to the languid and breezeless heat of the
+      day without (a day on which the breath of the sirocco was abroad) had been
+      called into existence. Artificial currents of air through invisible tubes,
+      silken blinds waving to and fro, as if to cheat the senses into the belief
+      of an April wind, and miniature jets d&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conversation was somewhat more lively and intellectual than is common
+      amongst the languid pleasure-hunters of the South; for the prince, himself
+      accomplished, sought his acquaintance not only amongst the beaux esprits
+      of his own country, but amongst the gay foreigners who adorned and
+      relieved the monotony of the Neapolitan circles. There were present two or
+      three of the brilliant Frenchmen of the old regime, who had already
+      emigrated from the advancing Revolution; and their peculiar turn of
+      thought and wit was well calculated for the meridian of a society that
+      made the dolce far niente at once its philosophy and its faith. The
+      prince, however, was more silent than usual; and when he sought to rouse
+      himself, his spirits were forced and exaggerated. To the manners of his
+      host, those of Zanoni afforded a striking contrast. The bearing of this
+      singular person was at all times characterised by a calm and polished
+      ease, which was attributed by the courtiers to the long habit of society.
+      He could scarcely be called gay; yet few persons more tended to animate
+      the general spirits of a convivial circle. He seemed, by a kind of
+      intuition, to elicit from each companion the qualities in which he most
+      excelled; and if occasionally a certain tone of latent mockery
+      characterised his remarks upon the topics on which the conversation fell,
+      it appeared to men who took nothing in earnest to be the language both of
+      wit and wisdom. To the Frenchmen, in particular, there was something
+      startling in his intimate knowledge of the minutest events in their own
+      capital and country, and his profound penetration (evinced but in epigrams
+      and sarcasms) into the eminent characters who were then playing a part
+      upon the great stage of continental intrigue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was while this conversation grew animated, and the feast was at its
+      height, that Glyndon arrived at the palace. The porter, perceiving by his
+      dress that he was not one of the invited guests, told him that his
+      Excellency was engaged, and on no account could be disturbed; and Glyndon
+      then, for the first time, became aware how strange and embarrassing was
+      the duty he had taken on himself. To force an entrance into the
+      banquet-hall of a great and powerful noble, surrounded by the rank of
+      Naples, and to arraign him for what to his boon-companions would appear
+      but an act of gallantry, was an exploit that could not fail to be at once
+      ludicrous and impotent. He mused a moment, and, slipping a piece of gold
+      into the porter&rsquo;s hand, said that he was commissioned to seek the Signor
+      Zanoni upon an errand of life and death, and easily won his way across the
+      court, and into the interior building. He passed up the broad staircase,
+      and the voices and merriment of the revellers smote his ear at a distance.
+      At the entrance of the reception-rooms he found a page, whom he despatched
+      with a message to Zanoni. The page did the errand; and Zanoni, on hearing
+      the whispered name of Glyndon, turned to his host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me, my lord; an English friend of mine, the Signor Glyndon (not
+      unknown by name to your Excellency) waits without,&mdash;the business must
+      indeed be urgent on which he has sought me in such an hour. You will
+      forgive my momentary absence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, signor,&rdquo; answered the prince, courteously, but with a sinister smile
+      on his countenance, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni bowed; the page was despatched with all flattering messages to
+      Glyndon,&mdash;a seat next to Zanoni was placed for him, and the young
+      Englishman entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon&rsquo;s brow was sullen; and he was about to startle the guests by his
+      reply, when Zanoni, touching his arm significantly, whispered in English,
+      &ldquo;I know why you have sought me. Be silent, and witness what ensues.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know then that Viola, whom you boasted you had the power to save from
+      danger&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is in this house!&mdash;yes. I know also that Murder sits at the right
+      hand of our host. But his fate is now separated from hers forever; and the
+      mirror which glasses it to my eye is clear through the streams of blood.
+      Be still, and learn the fate that awaits the wicked!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My lord,&rdquo; said Zanoni, speaking aloud, &ldquo;the Signor Glyndon has indeed
+      brought me tidings not wholly unexpected. I am compelled to leave Naples,&mdash;an
+      additional motive to make the most of the present hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what, if I may venture to ask, may be the cause that brings such
+      affliction on the fair dames of Naples?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the approaching death of one who honoured me with most loyal
+      friendship,&rdquo; replied Zanoni, gravely. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True philosophy!&rdquo; exclaimed the prince. &ldquo;&lsquo;Not to admire,&rsquo; was the Roman&rsquo;s
+      maxim; &lsquo;Never to mourn,&rsquo; is mine. There is nothing in life to grieve for,
+      save, indeed, Signor Zanoni, when some young beauty, on whom we have set
+      our hearts, slips from our grasp. In such a moment we have need of all our
+      wisdom, not to succumb to despair, and shake hands with death. What say
+      you, signor? You smile! Such never could be your lot. Pledge me in a
+      sentiment, &lsquo;Long life to the fortunate lover,&mdash;a quick release to the
+      baffled suitor&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I pledge you,&rdquo; said Zanoni; and, as the fatal wine was poured into his
+      glass, he repeated, fixing his eyes on the prince, &ldquo;I pledge you even in
+      this wine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He lifted the glass to his lips. The prince seemed ghastly pale, while the
+      gaze of his guest bent upon him, with an intent and stern brightness,
+      beneath which the conscience-stricken host cowered and quailed. Not till
+      he had drained his draft, and replaced the glass upon the board, did
+      Zanoni turn his eyes from the prince; and he then said, &ldquo;Your wine has
+      been kept too long; it has lost its virtues. It might disagree with many,
+      but do not fear: it will not harm me, prince, Signor Mascari, you are a
+      judge of the grape; will you favour us with your opinion?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; answered Mascari, with well-affected composure, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you wish my friend also to taste the wine, prince?&rdquo; said Zanoni.
+      &ldquo;Recollect, all cannot drink it with the same impunity as myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the prince, hastily; &ldquo;if you do not recommend the wine, Heaven
+      forbid that we should constrain our guests! My lord duke,&rdquo; turning to one
+      of the Frenchmen, &ldquo;yours is the true soil of Bacchus. What think you of
+      this cask from Burgundy? Has it borne the journey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Zanoni, &ldquo;let us change both the wine and the theme.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that, Zanoni grew yet more animated and brilliant. Never did wit more
+      sparkling, airy, exhilarating, flash from the lips of reveller. His
+      spirits fascinated all present&mdash;even the prince himself, even Glyndon&mdash;with
+      a strange and wild contagion. The former, indeed, whom the words and gaze
+      of Zanoni, when he drained the poison, had filled with fearful misgivings,
+      now hailed in the brilliant eloquence of his wit a certain sign of the
+      operation of the bane. The wine circulated fast; but none seemed conscious
+      of its effects. One by one the rest of the party fell into a charmed and
+      spellbound silence, as Zanoni continued to pour forth sally upon sally,
+      tale upon tale. They hung on his words, they almost held their breath to
+      listen. Yet, how bitter was his mirth; how full of contempt for the
+      triflers present, and for the trifles which made their life!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Night came on; the room grew dim, and the feast had lasted several hours
+      longer than was the customary duration of similar entertainments at that
+      day. Still the guests stirred not, and still Zanoni continued, with
+      glittering eye and mocking lip, to lavish his stores of intellect and
+      anecdote; when suddenly the moon rose, and shed its rays over the flowers
+      and fountains in the court without, leaving the room itself half in
+      shadow, and half tinged by a quiet and ghostly light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was then that Zanoni rose. &ldquo;Well, gentlemen,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An excellent thought!&rdquo; said the prince. &ldquo;Mascari, see to the music.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With flushed cheeks and unsteady steps they came into the open air, which
+      tended yet more to stimulate that glowing fever of the grape. As if to
+      make up for the silence with which the guests had hitherto listened to
+      Zanoni, every tongue was now loosened,&mdash;every man talked, no man
+      listened. There was something wild and fearful in the contrast between the
+      calm beauty of the night and scene, and the hubbub and clamour of these
+      disorderly roysters. One of the Frenchmen, in especial, the young Duc de R&mdash;,
+      a nobleman of the highest rank, and of all the quick, vivacious, and
+      irascible temperament of his countrymen, was particularly noisy and
+      excited. And as circumstances, the remembrance of which is still preserved
+      among certain circles of Naples, rendered it afterwards necessary that the
+      duc should himself give evidence of what occurred, I will here translate
+      the short account he drew up, and which was kindly submitted to me some
+      few years ago by my accomplished and lively friend, Il Cavaliere di B&mdash;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never remember,&rdquo; writes the duc, &ldquo;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,&mdash;some laughing, some
+      whooping, some scolding, some babbling. The wine had brought out, as it
+      were, each man&rsquo;s inmost character. Some were loud and quarrelsome, others
+      sentimental and whining; some, whom we had hitherto thought dull, most
+      mirthful; some, whom we had ever regarded as discreet and taciturn, most
+      garrulous and uproarious. I remember that in the midst of our clamorous
+      gayety, my eye fell upon the cavalier Signor Zanoni, whose conversation
+      had so enchanted us all; and I felt a certain chill come over me to
+      perceive that he wore the same calm and unsympathising smile upon his
+      countenance which had characterised it in his singular and curious stories
+      of the court of Louis XIV. I felt, indeed, half-inclined to seek a quarrel
+      with one whose composure was almost an insult to our disorder. Nor was
+      such an effect of this irritating and mocking tranquillity confined to
+      myself alone. Several of the party have told me since, that on looking at
+      Zanoni they felt their blood yet more heated, and gayety change to
+      resentment. There seemed in his icy smile a very charm to wound vanity and
+      provoke rage. It was at this moment that the prince came up to me, and,
+      passing his arm into mine, led me a little apart from the rest. He had
+      certainly indulged in the same excess as ourselves, but it did not produce
+      the same effect of noisy excitement. There was, on the contrary, a certain
+      cold arrogance and supercilious scorn in his bearing and language, which,
+      even while affecting so much caressing courtesy towards me, roused my
+      self-love against him. He seemed as if Zanoni had infected him; and in
+      imitating the manner of his guest, he surpassed the original. He rallied
+      me on some court gossip, which had honoured my name by associating it with
+      a certain beautiful and distinguished Sicilian lady, and affected to treat
+      with contempt that which, had it been true, I should have regarded as a
+      boast. He spoke, indeed, as if he himself had gathered all the flowers of
+      Naples, and left us foreigners only the gleanings he had scorned. At this
+      my natural and national gallantry was piqued, and I retorted by some
+      sarcasms that I should certainly have spared had my blood been cooler. He
+      laughed heartily, and left me in a strange fit of resentment and anger.
+      Perhaps (I must own the truth) the wine had produced in me a wild
+      disposition to take offence and provoke quarrel. As the prince left me, I
+      turned, and saw Zanoni at my side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;The prince is a braggart,&rsquo; said he, with the same smile that displeased
+      me before. &lsquo;He would monopolize all fortune and all love. Let us take our
+      revenge.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;And how?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;He has at this moment, in his house, the most enchanting singer in
+      Naples,&mdash;the celebrated Viola Pisani. She is here, it is true, not by
+      her own choice; he carried her hither by force, but he will pretend that
+      she adores him. Let us insist on his producing this secret treasure, and
+      when she enters, the Duc de R&mdash; 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.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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. &lsquo;Gentlemen,&rsquo; at
+      last said the prince, when he could obtain an audience, &lsquo;even were I to
+      assent to your proposal, I could not induce the signora to present herself
+      before an assemblage as riotous as they are noble. You have too much
+      chivalry to use compulsion with her, though the Duc de R&mdash;forgets
+      himself sufficiently to administer it to me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was stung by this taunt, however well deserved. &lsquo;Prince,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;I
+      have for the indelicacy of compulsion so illustrious an example that I
+      cannot hesitate to pursue the path honoured by your own footsteps. All
+      Naples knows that the Pisani despises at once your gold and your love;
+      that force alone could have brought her under your roof; and that you
+      refuse to produce her, because you fear her complaints, and know enough of
+      the chivalry your vanity sneers at to feel assured that the gentlemen of
+      France are not more disposed to worship beauty than to defend it from
+      wrong.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;You speak well, sir,&rsquo; said Zanoni, gravely. &lsquo;The prince dares not
+      produce his prize!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The prince remained speechless for a few moments, as if with indignation.
+      At last he broke out into expressions the most injurious and insulting
+      against Signor Zanoni and myself. Zanoni replied not; I was more hot and
+      hasty. The guests appeared to delight in our dispute. None, except
+      Mascari, whom we pushed aside and disdained to hear, strove to conciliate;
+      some took one side, some another. The issue may be well foreseen. Swords
+      were called for and procured. Two were offered me by one of the party. I
+      was about to choose one, when Zanoni placed in my hand the other, which,
+      from its hilt, appeared of antiquated workmanship. At the same moment,
+      looking towards the prince, he said, smilingly, &lsquo;The duc takes your
+      grandsire&rsquo;s sword. Prince, you are too brave a man for superstition; you
+      have forgot the forfeit!&rsquo; Our host seemed to me to recoil and turn pale at
+      those words; nevertheless, he returned Zanoni&rsquo;s smile with a look of
+      defiance. The next moment all was broil and disorder. There might be some
+      six or eight persons engaged in a strange and confused kind of melee, but
+      the prince and myself only sought each other. The noise around us, the
+      confusion of the guests, the cries of the musicians, the clash of our own
+      swords, only served to stimulate our unhappy fury. We feared to be
+      interrupted by the attendants, and fought like madmen, without skill or
+      method. I thrust and parried mechanically, blind and frantic, as if a
+      demon had entered into me, till I saw the prince stretched at my feet,
+      bathed in his blood, and Zanoni bending over him, and whispering in his
+      ear. That sight cooled us all. The strife ceased; we gathered, in shame,
+      remorse, and horror, round our ill-fated host; but it was too late,&mdash;his
+      eyes rolled fearfully in his head. I have seen many men die, but never one
+      who wore such horror on his countenance. At last all was over! Zanoni rose
+      from the corpse, and, taking, with great composure, the sword from my
+      hand, said calmly, &lsquo;Ye are witnesses, gentlemen, that the prince brought
+      his fate upon himself. The last of that illustrious house has perished in
+      a brawl.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw no more of Zanoni. I hastened to our envoy to narrate the event,
+      and abide the issue. I am grateful to the Neapolitan government, and to
+      the illustrious heir of the unfortunate nobleman, for the lenient and
+      generous, yet just, interpretation put upon a misfortune the memory of
+      which will afflict me to the last hour of my life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (Signed) &ldquo;Louis Victor, Duc de R.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon had taken no part in the affray, neither had he participated
+      largely in the excesses of the revel. For his exemption from both he was
+      perhaps indebted to the whispered exhortations of Zanoni. When the last
+      rose from the corpse, and withdrew from that scene of confusion, Glyndon
+      remarked that in passing the crowd he touched Mascari on the shoulder, and
+      said something which the Englishman did not overhear. Glyndon followed
+      Zanoni into the banquet-room, which, save where the moonlight slept on the
+      marble floor, was wrapped in the sad and gloomy shadows of the advancing
+      night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How could you foretell this fearful event? He fell not by your arm!&rdquo; said
+      Glyndon, in a tremulous and hollow tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The general who calculates on the victory does not fight in person,&rdquo;
+       answered Zanoni; &ldquo;let the past sleep with the dead. Meet me at midnight by
+      the sea-shore, half a mile to the left of your hotel. You will know the
+      spot by a rude pillar&mdash;the only one near&mdash;to which a broken
+      chain is attached. There and then, if thou wouldst learn our lore, thou
+      shalt find the master. Go; I have business here yet. Remember, Viola is
+      still in the house of the dead man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Mascari approached, and Zanoni, turning to the Italian, and waving
+      his hand to Glyndon, drew the former aside. Glyndon slowly departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mascari,&rdquo; said Zanoni, &ldquo;your patron is no more; your services will be
+      valueless to his heir,&mdash;a sober man whom poverty has preserved from
+      vice. For yourself, thank me that I do not give you up to the executioner;
+      recollect the wine of Cyprus. Well, never tremble, man; it could not act
+      on me, though it might react on others; in that it is a common type of
+      crime. I forgive you; and if the wine should kill me, I promise you that
+      my ghost shall not haunt so worshipful a penitent. Enough of this; conduct
+      me to the chamber of Viola Pisani. You have no further need of her. The
+      death of the jailer opens the cell of the captive. Be quick; I would be
+      gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mascari muttered some inaudible words, bowed low, and led the way to the
+      chamber in which Viola was confined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0038" id="link2HCH0038">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 3.XVIII.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Merc:  Tell me, therefore, what thou seekest after, and what thou
+     wilt have.  What dost thou desire to make?
+
+     Alch:  The Philosopher&rsquo;s Stone.
+
+     Sandivogius.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It wanted several minutes of midnight, and Glyndon repaired to the
+      appointed spot. The mysterious empire which Zanoni had acquired over him,
+      was still more solemnly confirmed by the events of the last few hours; the
+      sudden fate of the prince, so deliberately foreshadowed, and yet so
+      seemingly accidental, brought out by causes the most commonplace, and yet
+      associated with words the most prophetic, impressed him with the deepest
+      sentiments of admiration and awe. It was as if this dark and wondrous
+      being could convert the most ordinary events and the meanest instruments
+      into the agencies of his inscrutable will; yet, if so, why have permitted
+      the capture of Viola? Why not have prevented the crime rather than punish
+      the criminal? And did Zanoni really feel love for Viola? Love, and yet
+      offer to resign her to himself,&mdash;to a rival whom his arts could not
+      have failed to baffle. He no longer reverted to the belief that Zanoni or
+      Viola had sought to dupe him into marriage. His fear and reverence for the
+      former now forbade the notion of so poor an imposture. Did he any longer
+      love Viola himself? No; when that morning he had heard of her danger, he
+      had, it is true, returned to the sympathies and the fears of affection;
+      but with the death of the prince her image faded from his heart, and he
+      felt no jealous pang at the thought that she had been saved by Zanoni,&mdash;that
+      at that moment she was perhaps beneath his roof. Whoever has, in the
+      course of his life, indulged the absorbing passion of the gamester, will
+      remember how all other pursuits and objects vanished from his mind; how
+      solely he was wrapped in the one wild delusion; with what a sceptre of
+      magic power the despot-demon ruled every feeling and every thought. Far
+      more intense than the passion of the gamester was the frantic yet sublime
+      desire that mastered the breast of Glyndon. He would be the rival of
+      Zanoni, not in human and perishable affections, but in preternatural and
+      eternal lore. He would have laid down life with content&mdash;nay, rapture&mdash;as
+      the price of learning those solemn secrets which separated the stranger
+      from mankind. Enamoured of the goddess of goddesses, he stretched forth
+      his arms&mdash;the wild Ixion&mdash;and embraced a cloud!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The night was most lovely and serene, and the waves scarcely rippled at
+      his feet as the Englishman glided on by the cool and starry beach. At
+      length he arrived at the spot, and there, leaning against the broken
+      pillar, he beheld a man wrapped in a long mantle, and in an attitude of
+      profound repose. He approached, and uttered the name of Zanoni. The figure
+      turned, and he saw the face of a stranger: a face not stamped by the
+      glorious beauty of Zanoni, but equally majestic in its aspect, and perhaps
+      still more impressive from the mature age and the passionless depth of
+      thought that characterised the expanded forehead, and deep-set but
+      piercing eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seek Zanoni,&rdquo; said the stranger; &ldquo;he will be here anon; but, perhaps,
+      he whom you see before you is more connected with your destiny, and more
+      disposed to realise your dreams.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hath the earth, then, another Zanoni?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If not,&rdquo; replied the stranger, &ldquo;why do you cherish the hope and the wild
+      faith to be yourself a Zanoni? Think you that none others have burned with
+      the same godlike dream? Who, indeed in his first youth,&mdash;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,&mdash;who is there in youth that has not nourished
+      the belief that the universe has secrets not known to the common herd, and
+      panted, as the hart for the water-springs, for the fountains that lie hid
+      and far away amidst the broad wilderness of trackless science? The music
+      of the fountain is heard in the soul WITHIN, till the steps, deceived and
+      erring, rove away from its waters, and the wanderer dies in the mighty
+      desert. Think you that none who have cherished the hope have found the
+      truth, or that the yearning after the Ineffable Knowledge was given to us
+      utterly in vain? No! Every desire in human hearts is but a glimpse of
+      things that exist, alike distant and divine. No! in the world there have
+      been from age to age some brighter and happier spirits who have attained
+      to the air in which the beings above mankind move and breathe. Zanoni,
+      great though he be, stands not alone. He has had his predecessors, and
+      long lines of successors may be yet to come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And will you tell me,&rdquo; said Glyndon, &ldquo;that in yourself I behold one of
+      that mighty few over whom Zanoni has no superiority in power and wisdom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In me,&rdquo; answered the stranger, &ldquo;you see one from whom Zanoni himself
+      learned some of his loftiest secrets. On these shores, on this spot, have
+      I stood in ages that your chroniclers but feebly reach. The Phoenician,
+      the Greek, the Oscan, the Roman, the Lombard, I have seen them all!&mdash;leaves
+      gay and glittering on the trunk of the universal life, scattered in due
+      season and again renewed; till, indeed, the same race that gave its glory
+      to the ancient world bestowed a second youth upon the new. For the pure
+      Greeks, the Hellenes, whose origin has bewildered your dreaming scholars,
+      were of the same great family as the Norman tribe, born to be the lords of
+      the universe, and in no land on earth destined to become the hewers of
+      wood. Even the dim traditions of the learned, which bring the sons of
+      Hellas from the vast and undetermined territories of Northern Thrace, to
+      be the victors of the pastoral Pelasgi, and the founders of the line of
+      demi-gods; which assign to a population bronzed beneath the suns of the
+      West, the blue-eyed Minerva and the yellow-haired Achilles (physical
+      characteristics of the North); which introduce, amongst a pastoral people,
+      warlike aristocracies and limited monarchies, the feudalism of the classic
+      time,&mdash;even these might serve you to trace back the primeval
+      settlements of the Hellenes to the same region whence, in later times, the
+      Norman warriors broke on the dull and savage hordes of the Celt, and
+      became the Greeks of the Christian world. But this interests you not, and
+      you are wise in your indifference. Not in the knowledge of things without,
+      but in the perfection of the soul within, lies the empire of man aspiring
+      to be more than man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what books contain that science; from what laboratory is it wrought?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If thou hast mastered them, why not I?&rdquo; answered Glyndon, boldly. &ldquo;I have
+      felt from my boyhood that strange mysteries were reserved for my career;
+      and from the proudest ends of ordinary ambition I have carried my gaze
+      into the cloud and darkness that stretch beyond. The instant I beheld
+      Zanoni, I felt as if I had discovered the guide and the tutor for which my
+      youth had idly languished and vainly burned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And to me his duty is transferred,&rdquo; replied the stranger. &ldquo;Yonder lies,
+      anchored in the bay, the vessel in which Zanoni seeks a fairer home; a
+      little while and the breeze will rise, the sail will swell; and the
+      stranger will have passed, like a wind, away. Still, like the wind, he
+      leaves in thy heart the seeds that may bear the blossom and the fruit.
+      Zanoni hath performed his task,&mdash;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.&rdquo; With these words the stranger moved slowly away, and disappeared
+      beneath the shadow of the cliffs. A boat glided rapidly across the waters:
+      it touched land; a man leaped on shore, and Glyndon recognised Zanoni.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I give thee, Glyndon,&mdash;I give thee no more the option of happy love
+      and serene enjoyment. That hour is past, and fate has linked the hand that
+      might have been thine own to mine. But I have ample gifts to bestow upon
+      thee, if thou wilt abandon the hope that gnaws thy heart, and the
+      realisation of which even <i>I</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,&mdash;love, wealth, fame, power. The first I cannot give thee,
+      the rest are at my disposal. Select which of them thou wilt, and let us
+      part in peace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such are not the gifts I covet. I choose knowledge; that knowledge must
+      be thine own. For this, and for this alone, I surrendered the love of
+      Viola; this, and this alone, must be my recompense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot gain say thee, though I can warn. The desire to learn does not
+      always contain the faculty to acquire. I can give thee, it is true, the
+      teacher,&mdash;the rest must depend on thee. Be wise in time, and take
+      that which I can assure to thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Answer me but these questions, and according to your answer I will
+      decide. Is it in the power of man to attain intercourse with the beings of
+      other worlds? Is it in the power of man to influence the elements, and to
+      insure life against the sword and against disease?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All this may be possible,&rdquo; answered Zanoni, evasively, &ldquo;to the few; but
+      for one who attains such secrets, millions may perish in the attempt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One question more. Thou&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beware! Of myself, as I have said before, I render no account.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, the stranger I have met this night,&mdash;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rash man,&rdquo; said Zanoni, in a tone of compassion, &ldquo;thy crisis is past, and
+      thy choice made! I can only bid thee be bold and prosper; yes, I resign
+      thee to a master who HAS the power and the will to open to thee the gates
+      of an awful world. Thy weal or woe are as nought in the eyes of his
+      relentless wisdom. I would bid him spare thee, but he will heed me not.
+      Mejnour, receive thy pupil!&rdquo; Glyndon turned, and his heart beat when he
+      perceived that the stranger, whose footsteps he had not heard upon the
+      pebbles, whose approach he had not beheld in the moonlight, was once more
+      by his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farewell,&rdquo; resumed Zanoni; &ldquo;thy trial commences. When next we meet, thou
+      wilt be the victim or the victor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon&rsquo;s eyes followed the receding form of the mysterious stranger. He
+      saw him enter the boat, and he then for the first time noticed that
+      besides the rowers there was a female, who stood up as Zanoni gained the
+      boat. Even at the distance he recognised the once-adored form of Viola.
+      She waved her hand to him, and across the still and shining air came her
+      voice, mournfully and sweetly, in her mother&rsquo;s tongue, &ldquo;Farewell,
+      Clarence,&mdash;I forgive thee!&mdash;farewell, farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He strove to answer; but the voice touched a chord at his heart, and the
+      words failed him. Viola was then lost forever, gone with this dread
+      stranger; darkness was round her lot! And he himself had decided her fate
+      and his own! The boat bounded on, the soft waves flashed and sparkled
+      beneath the oars, and it was along one sapphire track of moonlight that
+      the frail vessel bore away the lovers. Farther and farther from his gaze
+      sped the boat, till at last the speck, scarcely visible, touched the side
+      of the ship that lay lifeless in the glorious bay. At that instant, as if
+      by magic, up sprang, with a glad murmur, the playful and freshening wind:
+      and Glyndon turned to Mejnour and broke the silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me&mdash;if thou canst read the future&mdash;tell me that HER lot
+      will be fair, and that HER choice at least is wise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My pupil!&rdquo; answered Mejnour, in a voice the calmness of which well
+      accorded with the chilling words, &ldquo;thy first task must be to withdraw all
+      thought, feeling, sympathy from others. The elementary stage of knowledge
+      is to make self, and self alone, thy study and thy world. Thou hast
+      decided thine own career; thou hast renounced love; thou hast rejected
+      wealth, fame, and the vulgar pomps of power. What, then, are all mankind
+      to thee? To perfect thy faculties, and concentrate thy emotions, is
+      henceforth thy only aim!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And will happiness be the end?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If happiness exist,&rdquo; answered Mejnour, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0046" id="link2H_4_0046">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK IV. &mdash; THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Bey hinter ihm was will! Ich heb ihn auf.
+     &ldquo;Das Verschleierte Bildzu Sais&rdquo;
+ 
+     (Be behind what there may,&mdash;I raise the veil.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0039" id="link2HCH0039">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 4.I.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Come vittima io vengo all&rsquo; ara.
+     &ldquo;Metast.,&rdquo; At. ii. Sc. 7.
+
+     (As a victim I go to the altar.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It was about a month after the date of Zanoni&rsquo;s departure and Glyndon&rsquo;s
+      introduction to Mejnour, when two Englishmen were walking, arm-in-arm,
+      through the Toledo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you,&rdquo; said one (who spoke warmly), &ldquo;that if you have a particle of
+      common-sense left in you, you will accompany me to England. This Mejnour
+      is an imposter more dangerous, because more in earnest, than Zanoni. After
+      all, what do his promises amount to? You allow that nothing can be more
+      equivocal. You say that he has left Naples,&mdash;that he has selected a
+      retreat more congenial than the crowded thoroughfares of men to the
+      studies in which he is to initiate you; and this retreat is among the
+      haunts of the fiercest bandits of Italy,&mdash;haunts which justice itself
+      dares not penetrate. Fitting hermitage for a sage! I tremble for you. What
+      if this stranger&mdash;of whom nothing is known&mdash;be leagued with the
+      robbers; and these lures for your credulity bait but the traps for your
+      property,&mdash;perhaps your life? You might come off cheaply by a ransom
+      of half your fortune. You smile indignantly! Well, put common-sense out of
+      the question; take your own view of the matter. You are to undergo an
+      ordeal which Mejnour himself does not profess to describe as a very
+      tempting one. It may, or it may not, succeed: if it does not, you are
+      menaced with the darkest evils; and if it does, you cannot be better off
+      than the dull and joyless mystic whom you have taken for a master. Away
+      with this folly; enjoy youth while it is left to you; return with me to
+      England; forget these dreams; enter your proper career; form affections
+      more respectable than those which lured you awhile to an Italian
+      adventuress. Attend to your fortune, make money, and become a happy and
+      distinguished man. This is the advice of sober friendship; yet the
+      promises I hold out to you are fairer than those of Mejnour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mervale,&rdquo; said Glyndon, doggedly, &ldquo;I cannot, if I would, yield to your
+      wishes. A power that is above me urges me on; I cannot resist its
+      influence. I will proceed to the last in the strange career I have
+      commenced. Think of me no more. Follow yourself the advice you give to me,
+      and be happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is madness,&rdquo; said Mervale; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough,&rdquo; said Glyndon, coldly; &ldquo;you cease to be an effective counsellor
+      when you suffer your prejudices to be thus evident. I have already had
+      ample proof,&rdquo; added the Englishman, and his pale cheek grew more pale, &ldquo;of
+      the power of this man,&mdash;if man he be, which I sometimes doubt,&mdash;and,
+      come life, come death, I will not shrink from the paths that allure me.
+      Farewell, Mervale; if we never meet again,&mdash;if you hear, amidst our
+      old and cheerful haunts, that Clarence Glyndon sleeps the last sleep by
+      the shores of Naples, or amidst yon distant hills, say to the friends of
+      our youth, &lsquo;He died worthily, as thousands of martyr-students have died
+      before him, in the pursuit of knowledge.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He wrung Mervale&rsquo;s hand as he spoke, darted from his side, and disappeared
+      amidst the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the corner of the Toledo he was arrested by Nicot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Glyndon! I have not seen you this month. Where have you hid yourself?
+      Have you been absorbed in your studies?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am about to leave Naples for Paris. Will you accompany me? Talent of
+      all order is eagerly sought for there, and will be sure to rise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thank you; I have other schemes for the present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So laconic!&mdash;what ails you? Do you grieve for the loss of the
+      Pisani? Take example by me. I have already consoled myself with Bianca
+      Sacchini,&mdash;a handsome woman, enlightened, no prejudices. A valuable
+      creature I shall find her, no doubt. But as for this Zanoni!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What of him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If ever I paint an allegorical subject, I will take his likeness as
+      Satan. Ha, ha! a true painter&rsquo;s revenge,&mdash;eh? And the way of the
+      world, too! When we can do nothing else against a man whom we hate, we can
+      at least paint his effigies as the Devil&rsquo;s. Seriously, though: I abhor
+      that man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wherefore?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wherefore! Has he not carried off the wife and the dowry I had marked for
+      myself! Yet, after all,&rdquo; added Nicot, musingly, &ldquo;had he served instead of
+      injured me, I should have hated him all the same. His very form, and his
+      very face, made me at once envy and detest him. I felt that there is
+      something antipathetic in our natures. I feel, too, that we shall meet
+      again, when Jean Nicot&rsquo;s hate may be less impotent. We, too, cher
+      confrere,&mdash;we, too, may meet again! Vive la Republique! I to my new
+      world!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I to mine. Farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That day Mervale left Naples; the next morning Glyndon also quitted the
+      City of Delight alone, and on horseback. He bent his way into those
+      picturesque but dangerous parts of the country which at that time were
+      infested by banditti, and which few travellers dared to pass, even in
+      broad daylight, without a strong escort. A road more lonely cannot well be
+      conceived than that on which the hoofs of his steed, striking upon the
+      fragments of rock that encumbered the neglected way, woke a dull and
+      melancholy echo. Large tracts of waste land, varied by the rank and
+      profuse foliage of the South, lay before him; occasionally a wild goat
+      peeped down from some rocky crag, or the discordant cry of a bird of prey,
+      startled in its sombre haunt, was heard above the hills. These were the
+      only signs of life; not a human being was met,&mdash;not a hut was
+      visible. Wrapped in his own ardent and solemn thoughts, the young man
+      continued his way, till the sun had spent its noonday heat, and a breeze
+      that announced the approach of eve sprung up from the unseen ocean which
+      lay far distant to his right. It was then that a turn in the road brought
+      before him one of those long, desolate, gloomy villages which are found in
+      the interior of the Neapolitan dominions: and now he came upon a small
+      chapel on one side the road, with a gaudily painted image of the Virgin in
+      the open shrine. Around this spot, which, in the heart of a Christian
+      land, retained the vestige of the old idolatry (for just such were the
+      chapels that in the pagan age were dedicated to the demon-saints of
+      mythology), gathered six or seven miserable and squalid wretches, whom the
+      curse of the leper had cut off from mankind. They set up a shrill cry as
+      they turned their ghastly visages towards the horseman; and, without
+      stirring from the spot, stretched out their gaunt arms, and implored
+      charity in the name of the Merciful Mother! Glyndon hastily threw them
+      some small coins, and, turning away his face, clapped spurs to his horse,
+      and relaxed not his speed till he entered the village. On either side the
+      narrow and miry street, fierce and haggard forms&mdash;some leaning
+      against the ruined walls of blackened huts, some seated at the threshold,
+      some lying at full length in the mud&mdash;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; &ldquo;We shall feast well
+      to-morrow!&rdquo; It was, indeed, one of those hamlets in which Law sets not its
+      sober step, in which Violence and Murder house secure,&mdash;hamlets
+      common then in the wilder parts of Italy, in which the peasant was but the
+      gentler name for the robber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon&rsquo;s heart somewhat failed him as he looked around, and the question
+      he desired to ask died upon his lips. At length from one of the dismal
+      cabins emerged a form superior to the rest. Instead of the patched and
+      ragged over-all, which made the only garment of the men he had hitherto
+      seen, the dress of this person was characterised by all the trappings of
+      the national bravery. Upon his raven hair, the glossy curls of which made
+      a notable contrast to the matted and elfin locks of the savages around,
+      was placed a cloth cap, with a gold tassel that hung down to his shoulder;
+      his mustaches were trimmed with care, and a silk kerchief of gay hues was
+      twisted round a well-shaped but sinewy throat; a short jacket of rough
+      cloth was decorated with several rows of gilt filagree buttons; his nether
+      garments fitted tight to his limbs, and were curiously braided; while in a
+      broad parti-coloured sash were placed two silver-hilted pistols, and the
+      sheathed knife, usually worn by Italians of the lower order, mounted in
+      ivory elaborately carved. A small carbine of handsome workmanship was
+      slung across his shoulder and completed his costume. The man himself was
+      of middle size, athletic yet slender, with straight and regular features,
+      sunburnt, but not swarthy; and an expression of countenance which, though
+      reckless and bold, had in it frankness rather than ferocity, and, if
+      defying, was not altogether unprepossessing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon, after eyeing this figure for some moments with great attention,
+      checked his rein, and asked the way to the &ldquo;Castle of the Mountain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man then, drawing a little aside, called out to the bystanders in a
+      loud voice, &ldquo;Ho, ho! my friends, pay henceforth and forever all respect to
+      this worshipful cavalier. He is the expected guest of our blessed patron
+      of the Castle of the Mountain. Long life to him! May he, like his host, be
+      safe by day and by night; on the hill and in the waste; against the dagger
+      and the bullet,&mdash;in limb and in life! Cursed be he who touches a hair
+      of his head, or a baioccho in his pouch. Now and forever we will protect
+      and honour him,&mdash;for the law or against the law; with the faith and
+      to the death. Amen! Amen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Amen!&rdquo; responded, in wild chorus, a hundred voices; and the scattered and
+      straggling groups pressed up the street, nearer and nearer to the
+      horseman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that he may be known,&rdquo; continued the Englishman&rsquo;s strange protector,
+      &ldquo;to the eye and to the ear, I place around him the white sash, and I give
+      him the sacred watchword, &lsquo;Peace to the Brave.&rsquo; 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&mdash;to gain a
+      beauty, or to lose a foe,&mdash;speak but the word, and we are yours: we
+      are yours! Is it not so, comrades?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And again the hoarse voices shouted, &ldquo;Amen, Amen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, signor,&rdquo; whispered the bravo, &ldquo;if you have a few coins to spare,
+      scatter them amongst the crowd, and let us be gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon, not displeased at the concluding sentence, emptied his purse in
+      the streets; and while, with mingled oaths, blessings, shrieks, and yells,
+      men, women, and children scrambled for the money, the bravo, taking the
+      rein of the horse, led it a few paces through the village at a brisk trot,
+      and then, turning up a narrow lane to the left, in a few minutes neither
+      houses nor men were visible, and the mountains closed their path on either
+      side. It was then that, releasing the bridle and slackening his pace, the
+      guide turned his dark eyes on Glyndon with an arch expression, and said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your Excellency was not, perhaps, prepared for the hearty welcome we have
+      given you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, in truth, I OUGHT to have been prepared for it, since the signor, to
+      whose house I am bound, did not disguise from me the character of the
+      neighbourhood. And your name, my friend, if I may so call you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no ceremonies with me, Excellency. In the village I am generally
+      called Maestro Paolo. I had a surname once, though a very equivocal one;
+      and I have forgotten THAT since I retired from the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And was it from disgust, from poverty, or from some&mdash;some ebullition
+      of passion which entailed punishment, that you betook yourself to the
+      mountains?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, signor,&rdquo; said the bravo, with a gay laugh, &ldquo;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.&rdquo; With
+      that the robber, as if he loved permission to talk at his will, hemmed
+      thrice, and began with much humour; though, as his tale proceeded, the
+      memories it roused seemed to carry him farther than he at first intended,
+      and reckless and light-hearted ease gave way to that fierce and varied
+      play of countenance and passion of gesture which characterise the emotions
+      of his countrymen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was born at Terracina,&mdash;a fair spot, is it not? My father was a
+      learned monk of high birth; my mother&mdash;Heaven rest her!&mdash;an
+      innkeeper&rsquo;s pretty daughter. Of course there could be no marriage in the
+      case; and when I was born, the monk gravely declared my appearance to be
+      miraculous. I was dedicated from my cradle to the altar; and my head was
+      universally declared to be the orthodox shape for a cowl. As I grew up,
+      the monk took great pains with my education; and I learned Latin and
+      psalmody as soon as less miraculous infants learn crowing. Nor did the
+      holy man&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s daughter. My master
+      discovered our innocent amusement, and turned me out of doors; that was
+      disagreeable. But my Ninetta loved me, and took care that I should not lie
+      out in the streets with the Lazzaroni. Little jade! I think I see her now
+      with her bare feet, and her finger to her lips, opening the door in the
+      summer nights, and bidding me creep softly into the kitchen, where,
+      praised be the saints! a flask and a manchet always awaited the hungry
+      amoroso. At last, however, Ninetta grew cold. It is the way of the sex,
+      signor. Her father found her an excellent marriage in the person of a
+      withered old picture-dealer. She took the spouse, and very properly
+      clapped the door in the face of the lover. I was not disheartened,
+      Excellency; no, not I. Women are plentiful while we are young. So, without
+      a ducat in my pocket or a crust for my teeth, I set out to seek my fortune
+      on board of a Spanish merchantman. That was duller work than I expected;
+      but luckily we were attacked by a pirate,&mdash;half the crew were
+      butchered, the rest captured. I was one of the last: always in luck, you
+      see, signor,&mdash;monks&rsquo; sons have a knack that way! The captain of the
+      pirates took a fancy to me. &lsquo;Serve with us?&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;Too happy,&rsquo; said I.
+      Behold me, then, a pirate! O jolly life! how I blessed the old notary for
+      turning me out of doors! What feasting, what fighting, what wooing, what
+      quarrelling! Sometimes we ran ashore and enjoyed ourselves like princes;
+      sometimes we lay in a calm for days together on the loveliest sea that man
+      ever traversed. And then, if the breeze rose and a sail came in sight, who
+      so merry as we? I passed three years in that charming profession, and
+      then, signor, I grew ambitious. I caballed against the captain; I wanted
+      his post. One still night we struck the blow. The ship was like a log in
+      the sea, no land to be seen from the mast-head, the waves like glass, and
+      the moon at its full. Up we rose, thirty of us and more. Up we rose with a
+      shout; we poured into the captain&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Yield!&rsquo; cried I; &lsquo;your life shall be safe.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Take that,&rsquo; 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,&mdash;six feet
+      four without his shoes! Over we went, rolling each on the other. Santa
+      Maria! no time to get hold of one&rsquo;s knife. Meanwhile all the crew were up,
+      some for the captain, some for me,&mdash;clashing and firing, and swearing
+      and groaning, and now and then a heavy splash in the sea. Fine supper for
+      the sharks that night! At last old Bilboa got uppermost; out flashed his
+      knife; down it came, but not in my heart. No! I gave my left arm as a
+      shield; and the blade went through to the hilt, with the blood spurting up
+      like the rain from a whale&rsquo;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&rsquo;s brother, a fat Dutchman, ran
+      him through with a pike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Old fellow,&rsquo; said I, as he turned his terrible eye to me, &lsquo;I bear you no
+      malice, but we must try to get on in the world, you know.&rsquo; The captain
+      grinned and gave up the ghost. I went upon deck,&mdash;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&rsquo;s, and set off merrily, with a brisk wind in our favour. But
+      luck deserted us on forsaking our own dear old ship. A storm came on, a
+      plank struck; several of us escaped in a boat; we had lots of gold with
+      us, but no water. For two days and two nights we suffered horribly; but at
+      last we ran ashore near a French seaport. Our sorry plight moved
+      compassion, and as we had money, we were not suspected,&mdash;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&rsquo;s daughter. Ah, how I loved her!&mdash;the
+      pretty Clara! Yes, I loved her so well that I was seized with horror at my
+      past life! I resolved to repent, to marry her, and settle down into an
+      honest man. Accordingly, I summoned my messmates, told them my resolution,
+      resigned my command, and persuaded them to depart. They were good fellows,
+      engaged with a Dutchman, against whom I heard afterwards they made a
+      successful mutiny, but I never saw them more. I had two thousand crowns
+      still left; with this sum I obtained the consent of the silk-mercer, and
+      it was agreed that I should become a partner in the firm. I need not say
+      that no one suspected that I had been so great a man, and I passed for a
+      Neapolitan goldsmith&rsquo;s son instead of a cardinal&rsquo;s. I was very happy then,
+      signor, very,&mdash;I could not have harmed a fly! Had I married Clara, I
+      had been as gentle a mercer as ever handled a measure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bravo paused a moment, and it was easy to see that he felt more than
+      his words and tone betokened. &ldquo;Well, well, we must not look back at the
+      past too earnestly,&mdash;the sunlight upon it makes one&rsquo;s eyes water. The
+      day was fixed for our wedding,&mdash;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, &lsquo;Sacre, mille
+      tonnerres! this is the damned pirate who boarded the &ldquo;Niobe&rdquo;!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;None of your jests,&rsquo; said I, mildly. &lsquo;Ho, ho!&rsquo; said he; &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t be
+      mistaken; help there!&rsquo; and he griped me by the collar. I replied, as you
+      may suppose, by laying him in the kennel; but it would not do. The French
+      captain had a French lieutenant at his back, whose memory was as good as
+      his chief&rsquo;s. A crowd assembled; other sailors came up: the odds were
+      against me. I slept that night in prison; and in a few weeks afterwards I
+      was sent to the galleys. They spared my life, because the old Frenchman
+      politely averred that I had made my crew spare his. You may believe that
+      the oar and the chain were not to my taste. I and two others escaped; they
+      took to the road, and have, no doubt, been long since broken on the wheel.
+      I, soft soul, would not commit another crime to gain my bread, for Clara
+      was still at my heart with her sweet eyes; so, limiting my rogueries to
+      the theft of a beggar&rsquo;s rags, which I compensated by leaving him my galley
+      attire instead, I begged my way to the town where I left Clara. It was a
+      clear winter&rsquo;s day when I approached the outskirts of the town. I had no
+      fear of detection, for my beard and hair were as good as a mask. Oh,
+      Mother of Mercy! there came across my way a funeral procession! There, now
+      you know it; I can tell you no more. She had died, perhaps of love, more
+      likely of shame. Can you guess how I spent that night?&mdash;I stole a
+      pickaxe from a mason&rsquo;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&mdash;again! Decay had not touched her.
+      She was always pale in life! I could have sworn she lived! It was a
+      blessed thing to see her once more, and all alone too! But then, at dawn,
+      to give her back to the earth,&mdash;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&rsquo;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&mdash;, 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&rsquo;s palace. Out he came, his
+      gilded coach at the gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Ho, father!&rsquo; said I; &lsquo;don&rsquo;t you know me?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Who are you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Your son,&rsquo; said I, in a whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The cardinal drew back, looked at me earnestly, and mused a moment. &lsquo;All
+      men are my sons,&rsquo; quoth he then, very mildly; &lsquo;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!&rsquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;You look poor, friend,&rsquo; said one of them, halting; &lsquo;yet you are strong.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Poor men and strong are both serviceable and dangerous, Signor
+      Cavalier.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Well said; follow us.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I obeyed, and became a bandit. I rose by degrees; and as I have always
+      been mild in my calling, and have taken purses without cutting throats, I
+      bear an excellent character, and can eat my macaroni at Naples without any
+      danger to life and limb. For the last two years I have settled in these
+      parts, where I hold sway, and where I have purchased land. I am called a
+      farmer, signor; and I myself now only rob for amusement, and to keep my
+      hand in. I trust I have satisfied your curiosity. We are within a hundred
+      yards of the castle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how,&rdquo; asked the Englishman, whose interest had been much excited by
+      his companion&rsquo;s narrative,&mdash;&ldquo;and how came you acquainted with my
+      host?&mdash;and by what means has he so well conciliated the goodwill of
+      yourself and friends?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maestro Paolo turned his black eyes very gravely towards his questioner.
+      &ldquo;Why, signor,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;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, &lsquo;Maestro Paolo, I
+      want to make your acquaintance; do me the favour to come into yonder
+      tavern, and drink a flask of lacrima.&rsquo; &lsquo;Willingly,&rsquo; said I. So we entered
+      the tavern. When we were seated, my new acquaintance thus accosted me:
+      &lsquo;The Count d&rsquo;O&mdash; has offered to let me hire his old castle near B&mdash;.
+      You know the spot?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;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.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Maestro Paolo,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;I am a philosopher, and don&rsquo;t care for
+      luxuries. I want a quiet retreat for some scientific experiments. The
+      castle will suit me very well, provided you will accept me as a neighbour,
+      and place me and my friends under your special protection. I am rich; but
+      I shall take nothing to the castle worth robbing. I will pay one rent to
+      the count, and another to you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With that we soon came to terms; and as the strange signor doubled the
+      sum I myself proposed, he is in high favour with all his neighbours. We
+      would guard the whole castle against an army. And now, signor, that I have
+      been thus frank, be frank with me. Who is this singular cavalier?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&mdash;he himself told you, a philosopher.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hem! searching for the Philosopher&rsquo;s Stone,&mdash;eh, a bit of a
+      magician; afraid of the priests?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precisely; you have hit it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought so; and you are his pupil?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you well through it,&rdquo; said the robber, seriously, and crossing
+      himself with much devotion; &ldquo;I am not much better than other people, but
+      one&rsquo;s soul is one&rsquo;s soul. I do not mind a little honest robbery, or
+      knocking a man on the head if need be,&mdash;but to make a bargain with
+      the devil! Ah, take care, young gentleman, take care!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You need not fear,&rdquo; said Glyndon, smiling; &ldquo;my preceptor is too wise and
+      too good for such a compact. But here we are, I suppose. A noble ruin,&mdash;a
+      glorious prospect!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon paused delightedly, and surveyed the scene before and below with
+      the eye of a painter. Insensibly, while listening to the bandit, he had
+      wound up a considerable ascent, and now he was upon a broad ledge of rock
+      covered with mosses and dwarf shrubs. Between this eminence and another of
+      equal height, upon which the castle was built, there was a deep but narrow
+      fissure, overgrown with the most profuse foliage, so that the eye could
+      not penetrate many yards below the rugged surface of the abyss; but the
+      profoundness might be well conjectured by the hoarse, low, monotonous roar
+      of waters unseen that rolled below, and the subsequent course of which was
+      visible at a distance in a perturbed and rapid stream that intersected the
+      waste and desolate valleys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the left, the prospect seemed almost boundless,&mdash;the extreme
+      clearness of the purple air serving to render distinct the features of a
+      range of country that a conqueror of old might have deemed in itself a
+      kingdom. Lonely and desolate as the road which Glyndon had passed that day
+      had appeared, the landscape now seemed studded with castles, spires, and
+      villages. Afar off, Naples gleamed whitely in the last rays of the sun,
+      and the rose-tints of the horizon melted into the azure of her glorious
+      bay. Yet more remote, and in another part of the prospect, might be
+      caught, dim and shadowy, and backed by the darkest foliage, the ruined
+      pillars of the ancient Posidonia. There, in the midst of his blackened and
+      sterile realms, rose the dismal Mount of Fire; while on the other hand,
+      winding through variegated plains, to which distance lent all its magic,
+      glittered many and many a stream by which Etruscan and Sybarite, Roman and
+      Saracen and Norman had, at intervals of ages, pitched the invading tent.
+      All the visions of the past&mdash;the stormy and dazzling histories of
+      Southern Italy&mdash;rushed over the artist&rsquo;s mind as he gazed below. And
+      then, slowly turning to look behind, he saw the grey and mouldering walls
+      of the castle in which he sought the secrets that were to give to hope in
+      the future a mightier empire than memory owns in the past. It was one of
+      those baronial fortresses with which Italy was studded in the earlier
+      middle ages, having but little of the Gothic grace or grandeur which
+      belongs to the ecclesiastical architecture of the same time, but rude,
+      vast, and menacing, even in decay. A wooden bridge was thrown over the
+      chasm, wide enough to admit two horsemen abreast; and the planks trembled
+      and gave back a hollow sound as Glyndon urged his jaded steed across.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A road which had once been broad and paved with rough flags, but which now
+      was half-obliterated by long grass and rank weeds, conducted to the outer
+      court of the castle hard by; the gates were open, and half the building in
+      this part was dismantled; the ruins partially hid by ivy that was the
+      growth of centuries. But on entering the inner court, Glyndon was not
+      sorry to notice that there was less appearance of neglect and decay; some
+      wild roses gave a smile to the grey walls, and in the centre there was a
+      fountain in which the waters still trickled coolly, and with a pleasing
+      murmur, from the jaws of a gigantic Triton. Here he was met by Mejnour
+      with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Welcome, my friend and pupil,&rdquo; said he: &ldquo;he who seeks for Truth can find
+      in these solitudes an immortal Academe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0040" id="link2HCH0040">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 4.II.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     And Abaris, so far from esteeming Pythagoras, who taught these
+     things, a necromancer or wizard, rather revered and admired him
+     as something divine.&mdash;Iamblich., &ldquo;Vit. Pythag.&rdquo;
+  </pre>
+    <p>
+      The attendants whom Mejnour had engaged for his strange abode were such as
+      might suit a philosopher of few wants. An old Armenian whom Glyndon
+      recognised as in the mystic&rsquo;s service at Naples, a tall, hard-featured
+      woman from the village, recommended by Maestro Paolo, and two long-haired,
+      smooth-spoken, but fierce-visaged youths from the same place, and honoured
+      by the same sponsorship, constituted the establishment. The rooms used by
+      the sage were commodious and weather-proof, with some remains of ancient
+      splendour in the faded arras that clothed the walls, and the huge tables
+      of costly marble and elaborate carving. Glyndon&rsquo;s sleeping apartment
+      communicated with a kind of belvedere, or terrace, that commanded
+      prospects of unrivalled beauty and extent, and was separated on the other
+      side by a long gallery, and a flight of ten or a dozen stairs, from the
+      private chambers of the mystic. There was about the whole place a sombre
+      and yet not displeasing depth of repose. It suited well with the studies
+      to which it was now to be appropriated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For several days Mejnour refused to confer with Glyndon on the subjects
+      nearest to his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All without,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With these words Mejnour turned to lighter topics. He made the Englishman
+      accompany him in long rambles through the wild scenes around, and he
+      smiled approvingly when the young artist gave way to the enthusiasm which
+      their fearful beauty could not have failed to rouse in a duller breast;
+      and then Mejnour poured forth to his wondering pupil the stores of a
+      knowledge that seemed inexhaustible and boundless. He gave accounts the
+      most curious, graphic, and minute of the various races (their characters,
+      habits, creeds, and manners) by which that fair land had been successively
+      overrun. It is true that his descriptions could not be found in books, and
+      were unsupported by learned authorities; but he possessed the true charm
+      of the tale-teller, and spoke of all with the animated confidence of a
+      personal witness. Sometimes, too, he would converse upon the more durable
+      and the loftier mysteries of Nature with an eloquence and a research which
+      invested them with all the colours rather of poetry than science.
+      Insensibly the young artist found himself elevated and soothed by the lore
+      of his companion; the fever of his wild desires was slaked. His mind
+      became more and more lulled into the divine tranquillity of contemplation;
+      he felt himself a nobler being, and in the silence of his senses he
+      imagined that he heard the voice of his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was to this state that Mejnour evidently sought to bring the neophyte,
+      and in this elementary initiation the mystic was like every more ordinary
+      sage. For he who seeks to DISCOVER must first reduce himself into a kind
+      of abstract idealism, and be rendered up, in solemn and sweet bondage, to
+      the faculties which CONTEMPLATE and IMAGINE.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon noticed that, in their rambles, Mejnour often paused, where the
+      foliage was rifest, to gather some herb or flower; and this reminded him
+      that he had seen Zanoni similarly occupied. &ldquo;Can these humble children of
+      Nature,&rdquo; said he one day to Mejnour,&mdash;&ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If,&rdquo; answered Mejnour, &ldquo;a stranger had visited a wandering tribe before
+      one property of herbalism was known to them; if he had told the savages
+      that the herbs which every day they trampled under foot were endowed with
+      the most potent virtues; that one would restore to health a brother on the
+      verge of death; that another would paralyse into idiocy their wisest sage;
+      that a third would strike lifeless to the dust their most stalwart
+      champion; that tears and laughter, vigour and disease, madness and reason,
+      wakefulness and sleep, existence and dissolution, were coiled up in those
+      unregarded leaves,&mdash;would they not have held him a sorcerer or a
+      liar? To half the virtues of the vegetable world mankind are yet in the
+      darkness of the savages I have supposed. There are faculties within us
+      with which certain herbs have affinity, and over which they have power.
+      The moly of the ancients is not all a fable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The apparent character of Mejnour differed in much from that of Zanoni;
+      and while it fascinated Glyndon less, it subdued and impressed him more.
+      The conversation of Zanoni evinced a deep and general interest for
+      mankind,&mdash;a feeling approaching to enthusiasm for art and beauty. The
+      stories circulated concerning his habits elevated the mystery of his life
+      by actions of charity and beneficence. And in all this there was something
+      genial and humane that softened the awe he created, and tended, perhaps,
+      to raise suspicions as to the loftier secrets that he arrogated to
+      himself. But Mejnour seemed wholly indifferent to all the actual world. If
+      he committed no evil, he seemed equally apathetic to good. His deeds
+      relieved no want, his words pitied no distress. What we call the heart
+      appeared to have merged into the intellect. He moved, thought, and lived
+      like some regular and calm abstraction, rather than one who yet retained,
+      with the form, the feelings and sympathies of his kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon once, observing the tone of supreme indifference with which he
+      spoke of those changes on the face of earth which he asserted he had
+      witnessed, ventured to remark to him the distinction he had noted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true,&rdquo; said Mejnour, coldly. &ldquo;My life is the life that
+      contemplates,&mdash;Zanoni&rsquo;s is the life that enjoys: when I gather the
+      herb, I think but of its uses; Zanoni will pause to admire its beauties.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you deem your own the superior and the loftier existence?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. His is the existence of youth,&mdash;mine of age. We have cultivated
+      different faculties. Each has powers the other cannot aspire to. Those
+      with whom he associates live better,&mdash;those who associate with me
+      know more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have heard, in truth,&rdquo; said Glyndon, &ldquo;that his companions at Naples
+      were observed to lead purer and nobler lives after intercourse with
+      Zanoni; yet were they not strange companions, at the best, for a sage?
+      This terrible power, too, that he exercises at will, as in the death of
+      the Prince di &mdash;, and that of the Count Ughelli, scarcely becomes the
+      tranquil seeker after good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True,&rdquo; said Mejnour, with an icy smile; &ldquo;such must ever be the error of
+      those philosophers who would meddle with the active life of mankind. You
+      cannot serve some without injuring others; you cannot protect the good
+      without warring on the bad; and if you desire to reform the faulty, why,
+      you must lower yourself to live with the faulty to know their faults. Even
+      so saith Paracelsus, a great man, though often wrong. [&lsquo;It is as necessary
+      to know evil things as good; for who can know what is good without the
+      knowing what is evil?&rsquo; etc.&mdash;Paracelsus, &lsquo;De Nat. Rer.,&rsquo; lib. 3.) Not
+      mine this folly; I live but in knowledge,&mdash;I have no life in
+      mankind!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another time Glyndon questioned the mystic as to the nature of that union
+      or fraternity to which Zanoni had once referred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am right, I suppose,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;in conjecturing that you and himself
+      profess to be the brothers of the Rosy Cross?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you imagine,&rdquo; answered Mejnour, &ldquo;that there were no mystic and solemn
+      unions of men seeking the same end through the same means before the
+      Arabians of Damus, in 1378, taught to a wandering German the secrets which
+      founded the Institution of the Rosicrucians? I allow, however, that the
+      Rosicrucians formed a sect descended from the greater and earlier school.
+      They were wiser than the Alchemists,&mdash;their masters are wiser than
+      they.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And of this early and primary order how many still exist?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Zanoni and myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, two only!&mdash;and you profess the power to teach to all the
+      secret that baffles Death?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your ancestor attained that secret; he died rather than survive the only
+      thing he loved. We have, my pupil, no arts by which we CAN PUT DEATH OUT
+      OF OUR OPTION, or out of the will of Heaven. These walls may crush me as I
+      stand. All that we profess to do is but this,&mdash;to find out the
+      secrets of the human frame; to know why the parts ossify and the blood
+      stagnates, and to apply continual preventives to the effects of time. This
+      is not magic; it is the art of medicine rightly understood. In our order
+      we hold most noble,&mdash;first, that knowledge which elevates the
+      intellect; secondly, that which preserves the body. But the mere art
+      (extracted from the juices and simples) which recruits the animal vigour
+      and arrests the progress of decay, or that more noble secret, which I will
+      only hint to thee at present, by which HEAT, or CALORIC, as ye call it,
+      being, as Heraclitus wisely taught, the primordial principle of life, can
+      be made its perpetual renovater,&mdash;these I say, would not suffice for
+      safety. It is ours also to disarm and elude the wrath of men, to turn the
+      swords of our foes against each other, to glide (if not incorporeal)
+      invisible to eyes over which we can throw a mist and darkness. And this
+      some seers have professed to be the virtue of a stone of agate. Abaris
+      placed it in his arrow. I will find you an herb in yon valley that will
+      give a surer charm than the agate and the arrow. In one word, know this,
+      that the humblest and meanest products of Nature are those from which the
+      sublimest properties are to be drawn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Glyndon, &ldquo;if possessed of these great secrets, why so churlish
+      in withholding their diffusion? Does not the false or charlatanic science
+      differ in this from the true and indisputable,&mdash;that the last
+      communicates to the world the process by which it attains its discoveries;
+      the first boasts of marvellous results, and refuses to explain the
+      causes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well said, O Logician of the Schools; but think again. Suppose we were to
+      impart all our knowledge to all mankind indiscriminately,&mdash;alike to
+      the vicious and the virtuous,&mdash;should we be benefactors or scourges?
+      Imagine the tyrant, the sensualist, the evil and corrupted being possessed
+      of these tremendous powers; would he not be a demon let loose on earth?
+      Grant that the same privilege be accorded also to the good; and in what
+      state would be society? Engaged in a Titan war,&mdash;the good forever on
+      the defensive, the bad forever in assault. In the present condition of the
+      earth, evil is a more active principle than good, and the evil would
+      prevail. It is for these reasons that we are not only solemnly bound to
+      administer our lore only to those who will not misuse and pervert it, but
+      that we place our ordeal in tests that purify the passions and elevate the
+      desires. And Nature in this controls and assists us: for it places awful
+      guardians and insurmountable barriers between the ambition of vice and the
+      heaven of the loftier science.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such made a small part of the numerous conversations Mejnour held with his
+      pupil,&mdash;conversations that, while they appeared to address themselves
+      to the reason, inflamed yet more the fancy. It was the very disclaiming of
+      all powers which Nature, properly investigated, did not suffice to create,
+      that gave an air of probability to those which Mejnour asserted Nature
+      might bestow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus days and weeks rolled on; and the mind of Glyndon, gradually fitted
+      to this sequestered and musing life, forgot at last the vanities and
+      chimeras of the world without.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening he had lingered alone and late upon the ramparts, watching the
+      stars as, one by one, they broke upon the twilight. Never had he felt so
+      sensibly the mighty power of the heavens and the earth upon man; how much
+      the springs of our intellectual being are moved and acted upon by the
+      solemn influences of Nature. As a patient on whom, slowly and by degrees,
+      the agencies of mesmerism are brought to bear, he acknowledged to his
+      heart the growing force of that vast and universal magnetism which is the
+      life of creation, and binds the atom to the whole. A strange and ineffable
+      consciousness of power, of the SOMETHING GREAT within the perishable clay,
+      appealed to feelings at once dim and glorious,&mdash;like the faint
+      recognitions of a holier and former being. An impulse, that he could not
+      resist, led him to seek the mystic. He would demand, that hour, his
+      initiation into the worlds beyond our world,&mdash;he was prepared to
+      breathe a diviner air. He entered the castle, and strode the shadowy and
+      starlit gallery which conducted to Mejnour&rsquo;s apartment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0041" id="link2HCH0041">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 4.III.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Man is the eye of things.&mdash;Euryph, &ldquo;de Vit. Hum.&rdquo;
+ 
+     ...There is, therefore, a certain ecstatical or transporting
+     power, which, if at any time it shall be excited or stirred up by
+     an ardent desire and most strong imagination, is able to conduct
+     the spirit of the more outward even to some absent and
+     far-distant object.&mdash;Von Helmont.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The rooms that Mejnour occupied consisted of two chambers communicating
+      with each other, and a third in which he slept. All these rooms were
+      placed in the huge square tower that beetled over the dark and bush-grown
+      precipice. The first chamber which Glyndon entered was empty. With a
+      noiseless step he passed on, and opened the door that admitted into the
+      inner one. He drew back at the threshold, overpowered by a strong
+      fragrance which filled the chamber: a kind of mist thickened the air
+      rather than obscured it, for this vapour was not dark, but resembled a
+      snow-cloud moving slowly, and in heavy undulations, wave upon wave
+      regularly over the space. A mortal cold struck to the Englishman&rsquo;s heart,
+      and his blood froze. He stood rooted to the spot; and as his eyes strained
+      involuntarily through the vapour, he fancied (for he could not be sure
+      that it was not the trick of his imagination) that he saw dim,
+      spectre-like, but gigantic forms floating through the mist; or was it not
+      rather the mist itself that formed its vapours fantastically into those
+      moving, impalpable, and bodiless apparitions? A great painter of antiquity
+      is said, in a picture of Hades, to have represented the monsters that
+      glide through the ghostly River of the Dead, so artfully, that the eye
+      perceived at once that the river itself was but a spectre, and the
+      bloodless things that tenanted it had no life, their forms blending with
+      the dead waters till, as the eye continued to gaze, it ceased to discern
+      them from the preternatural element they were supposed to inhabit. Such
+      were the moving outlines that coiled and floated through the mist; but
+      before Glyndon had even drawn breath in this atmosphere&mdash;for his life
+      itself seemed arrested or changed into a kind of horrid trance&mdash;he
+      felt his hand seized, and he was led from that room into the outer one. He
+      heard the door close,&mdash;his blood rushed again through his veins, and
+      he saw Mejnour by his side. Strong convulsions then suddenly seized his
+      whole frame,&mdash;he fell to the ground insensible. When he recovered, he
+      found himself in the open air in a rude balcony of stone that jutted from
+      the chamber, the stars shining serenely over the dark abyss below, and
+      resting calmly upon the face of the mystic, who stood beside him with
+      folded arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Young man,&rdquo; said Mejnour, &ldquo;judge by what you have just felt, how
+      dangerous it is to seek knowledge until prepared to receive it. Another
+      moment in the air of that chamber and you had been a corpse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then of what nature was the knowledge that you, once mortal like myself,
+      could safely have sought in that icy atmosphere, which it was death for me
+      to breathe? Mejnour,&rdquo; continued Glyndon, and his wild desire, sharpened by
+      the very danger he had passed, once more animated and nerved him, &ldquo;I am
+      prepared at least for the first steps. I come to you as of old the pupil
+      to the Hierophant, and demand the initiation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mejnour passed his hand over the young man&rsquo;s heart,&mdash;it beat loud,
+      regularly, and boldly. He looked at him with something almost like
+      admiration in his passionless and frigid features, and muttered, half to
+      himself, &ldquo;Surely, in so much courage the true disciple is found at last.&rdquo;
+       Then, speaking aloud, he added, &ldquo;Be it so; man&rsquo;s first initiation is in
+      TRANCE. In dreams commences all human knowledge; in dreams hovers over
+      measureless space the first faint bridge between spirit and spirit,&mdash;this
+      world and the worlds beyond! Look steadfastly on yonder star!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon obeyed, and Mejnour retired into the chamber, from which there
+      then slowly emerged a vapour, somewhat paler and of fainter odour than
+      that which had nearly produced so fatal an effect on his frame. This, on
+      the contrary, as it coiled around him, and then melted in thin spires into
+      the air, breathed a refreshing and healthful fragrance. He still kept his
+      eyes on the star, and the star seemed gradually to fix and command his
+      gaze. A sort of languor next seized his frame, but without, as he thought,
+      communicating itself to the mind; and as this crept over him, he felt his
+      temples sprinkled with some volatile and fiery essence. At the same moment
+      a slight tremor shook his limbs and thrilled through his veins. The
+      languor increased, still he kept his gaze upon the star, and now its
+      luminous circumference seemed to expand and dilate. It became gradually
+      softer and clearer in its light; spreading wider and broader, it diffused
+      all space,&mdash;all space seemed swallowed up in it. And at last, in the
+      midst of a silver shining atmosphere, he felt as if something burst within
+      his brain,&mdash;as if a strong chain were broken; and at that moment a
+      sense of heavenly liberty, of unutterable delight, of freedom from the
+      body, of birdlike lightness, seemed to float him into the space itself.
+      &ldquo;Whom, now upon earth, dost thou wish to see?&rdquo; whispered the voice of
+      Mejnour. &ldquo;Viola and Zanoni!&rdquo; answered Glyndon, in his heart; but he felt
+      that his lips moved not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly at that thought,&mdash;through this space, in which nothing save
+      one mellow translucent light had been discernible,&mdash;a swift
+      succession of shadowy landscapes seemed to roll: trees, mountains, cities,
+      seas, glided along like the changes of a phantasmagoria; and at last,
+      settled and stationary, he saw a cave by the gradual marge of an ocean
+      shore,&mdash;myrtles and orange-trees clothing the gentle banks. On a
+      height, at a distance, gleamed the white but shattered relics of some
+      ruined heathen edifice; and the moon, in calm splendour, shining over all,
+      literally bathed with its light two forms without the cave, at whose feet
+      the blue waters crept, and he thought that he even heard them murmur. He
+      recognised both the figures. Zanoni was seated on a fragment of stone;
+      Viola, half-reclining by his side, was looking into his face, which was
+      bent down to her, and in her countenance was the expression of that
+      perfect happiness which belongs to perfect love. &ldquo;Wouldst thou hear them
+      speak?&rdquo; whispered Mejnour; and again, without sound, Glyndon inly
+      answered, &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; Their voices then came to his ear, but in tones that
+      seemed to him strange; so subdued were they, and sounding, as it were, so
+      far off, that they were as voices heard in the visions of some holier men
+      from a distant sphere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how is it,&rdquo; said Viola, &ldquo;that thou canst find pleasure in listening
+      to the ignorant?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because the heart is never ignorant; because the mysteries of the
+      feelings are as full of wonder as those of the intellect. If at times thou
+      canst not comprehend the language of my thoughts, at times also I hear
+      sweet enigmas in that of thy emotions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, say not so!&rdquo; said Viola, winding her arm tenderly round his neck, and
+      under that heavenly light her face seemed lovelier for its blushes. &ldquo;For
+      the enigmas are but love&rsquo;s common language, and love should solve them.
+      Till I knew thee,&mdash;till I lived with thee; till I learned to watch
+      for thy footstep when absent: yet even in absence to see thee everywhere!&mdash;I
+      dreamed not how strong and all-pervading is the connection between nature
+      and the human soul!...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;I am now assured of what I at first believed,&mdash;that
+      the feelings which attracted me towards thee at first were not those of
+      love. I know THAT, by comparing the present with the past,&mdash;it was a
+      sentiment then wholly of the mind or the spirit! I could not hear thee now
+      say, &lsquo;Viola, be happy with another!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I could not now tell thee so! Ah, Viola, never be weary of assuring
+      me that thou art happy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Happy while thou art so. Yet at times, Zanoni, thou art so sad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because human life is so short; because we must part at last; because yon
+      moon shines on when the nightingale sings to it no more! A little while,
+      and thine eyes will grow dim, and thy beauty haggard, and these locks that
+      I toy with now will be grey and loveless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And thou, cruel one!&rdquo; said Viola, touchingly, &ldquo;I shall never see the
+      signs of age in thee! But shall we not grow old together, and our eyes be
+      accustomed to a change which the heart shall not share!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni sighed. He turned away, and seemed to commune with himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon&rsquo;s attention grew yet more earnest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But were it so,&rdquo; muttered Zanoni; and then looking steadfastly at Viola,
+      he said, with a half-smile, &ldquo;Hast thou no curiosity to learn more of the
+      lover thou once couldst believe the agent of the Evil One?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None; all that one wishes to know of the beloved one, I know&mdash;THAT
+      THOU LOVEST ME!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have told thee that my life is apart from others. Wouldst thou not seek
+      to share it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I share it now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But were it possible to be thus young and fair forever, till the world
+      blazes round us as one funeral pyre!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall be so, when we leave the world!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni was mute for some moments, and at length he said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Canst thou recall those brilliant and aerial dreams which once visited
+      thee, when thou didst fancy that thou wert preordained to some fate aloof
+      and afar from the common children of the earth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Zanoni, the fate is found.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And hast thou no terror of the future?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The future! I forget it! Time past and present and to come reposes in thy
+      smile. Ah, Zanoni, play not with the foolish credulities of my youth! I
+      have been better and humbler since thy presence has dispelled the mist of
+      the air. The future!&mdash;well, when I have cause to dread it, I will
+      look up to heaven, and remember who guides our fate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she lifted her eyes above, a dark cloud swept suddenly over the scene.
+      It wrapped the orange-trees, the azure ocean, the dense sands; but still
+      the last images that it veiled from the charmed eyes of Glyndon were the
+      forms of Viola and Zanoni. The face of the one rapt, serene, and radiant;
+      the face of the other, dark, thoughtful, and locked in more than its usual
+      rigidness of melancholy beauty and profound repose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rouse thyself,&rdquo; said Mejnour; &ldquo;thy ordeal has commenced! There are
+      pretenders to the solemn science who could have shown thee the absent, and
+      prated to thee, in their charlatanic jargon, of the secret electricities
+      and the magnetic fluid of whose true properties they know but the germs
+      and elements. I will lend thee the books of those glorious dupes, and thou
+      wilt find, in the dark ages, how many erring steps have stumbled upon the
+      threshold of the mighty learning, and fancied they had pierced the temple.
+      Hermes and Albert and Paracelsus, I knew ye all; but, noble as ye were, ye
+      were fated to be deceived. Ye had not souls of faith, and daring fitted
+      for the destinies at which ye aimed! Yet Paracelsus&mdash;modest
+      Paracelsus&mdash;had an arrogance that soared higher than all our
+      knowledge. Ho, ho!&mdash;he thought he could make a race of men from
+      chemistry; he arrogated to himself the Divine gift,&mdash;the breath of
+      life. (Paracelsus, &lsquo;De Nat. Rer.,&rsquo; lib. i.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would have made men, and, after all, confessed that they could be but
+      pygmies! My art is to make men above mankind. But you are impatient of my
+      digressions. Forgive me. All these men (they were great dreamers, as you
+      desire to be) were intimate friends of mine. But they are dead and rotten.
+      They talked of spirits,&mdash;but they dreaded to be in other company than
+      that of men. Like orators whom I have heard, when I stood by the Pnyx of
+      Athens, blazing with words like comets in the assembly, and extinguishing
+      their ardour like holiday rockets when they were in the field. Ho, ho!
+      Demosthenes, my hero-coward, how nimble were thy heels at Chaeronea! And
+      thou art impatient still! Boy, I could tell thee such truths of the past
+      as would make thee the luminary of schools. But thou lustest only for the
+      shadows of the future. Thou shalt have thy wish. But the mind must be
+      first exercised and trained. Go to thy room, and sleep; fast austerely,
+      read no books; meditate, imagine, dream, bewilder thyself if thou wilt.
+      Thought shapes out its own chaos at last. Before midnight, seek me again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0042" id="link2HCH0042">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 4.IV.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     It is fit that we who endeavour to rise to an elevation so
+     sublime, should study first to leave behind carnal affections,
+     the frailty of the senses, the passions that belong to matter;
+     secondly, to learn by what means we may ascend to the climax of
+     pure intellect, united with the powers above, without which never
+     can we gain the lore of secret things, nor the magic that effects
+     true wonders.&mdash;Tritemius &ldquo;On Secret Things and Secret Spirits.&rdquo;
+  </pre>
+    <p>
+      It wanted still many minutes of midnight, and Glyndon was once more in the
+      apartment of the mystic. He had rigidly observed the fast ordained to him;
+      and in the rapt and intense reveries into which his excited fancy had
+      plunged him, he was not only insensible to the wants of the flesh,&mdash;he
+      felt above them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mejnour, seated beside his disciple, thus addressed him:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance. Man&rsquo;s natural tendency is
+      to egotism. Man, in his infancy of knowledge, thinks that all creation was
+      formed for him. For several ages he saw in the countless worlds that
+      sparkle through space like the bubbles of a shoreless ocean only the petty
+      candles, the household torches, that Providence had been pleased to light
+      for no other purpose but to make the night more agreeable to man.
+      Astronomy has corrected this delusion of human vanity; and man now
+      reluctantly confesses that the stars are worlds larger and more glorious
+      than his own,&mdash;that the earth on which he crawls is a scarce visible
+      speck on the vast chart of creation. But in the small as in the vast, God
+      is equally profuse of life. The traveller looks upon the tree, and fancies
+      its boughs were formed for his shelter in the summer sun, or his fuel in
+      the winter frosts. But in each leaf of these boughs the Creator has made a
+      world; it swarms with innumerable races. Each drop of the water in yon
+      moat is an orb more populous than a kingdom is of men. Everywhere, then,
+      in this immense design, science brings new life to light. Life is the one
+      pervading principle, and even the thing that seems to die and putrify but
+      engenders new life, and changes to fresh forms of matter. Reasoning, then,
+      by evident analogy: if not a leaf, if not a drop of water, but is, no less
+      than yonder star, a habitable and breathing world,&mdash;nay, if even man
+      himself is a world to other lives, and millions and myriads dwell in the
+      rivers of his blood, and inhabit man&rsquo;s frame as man inhabits earth,
+      commonsense (if your schoolmen had it) would suffice to teach that the
+      circumfluent infinite which you call space&mdash;the countless Impalpable
+      which divides earth from the moon and stars&mdash;is filled also with its
+      correspondent and appropriate life. Is it not a visible absurdity to
+      suppose that being is crowded upon every leaf, and yet absent from the
+      immensities of space? The law of the Great System forbids the waste even
+      of an atom; it knows no spot where something of life does not breathe. In
+      the very charnel-house is the nursery of production and animation. Is that
+      true? Well, then, can you conceive that space, which is the Infinite
+      itself, is alone a waste, is alone lifeless, is less useful to the one
+      design of universal being than the dead carcass of a dog, than the peopled
+      leaf, than the swarming globule? The microscope shows you the creatures on
+      the leaf; no mechanical tube is yet invented to discover the nobler and
+      more gifted things that hover in the illimitable air. Yet between these
+      last and man is a mysterious and terrible affinity. And hence, by tales
+      and legends, not wholly false nor wholly true, have arisen from time to
+      time, beliefs in apparitions and spectres. If more common to the earlier
+      and simpler tribes than to the men of your duller age, it is but that,
+      with the first, the senses are more keen and quick. And as the savage can
+      see or scent miles away the traces of a foe, invisible to the gross sense
+      of the civilised animal, so the barrier itself between him and the
+      creatures of the airy world is less thickened and obscured. Do you
+      listen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With my soul!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But first, to penetrate this barrier, the soul with which you listen must
+      be sharpened by intense enthusiasm, purified from all earthlier desires.
+      Not without reason have the so-styled magicians, in all lands and times,
+      insisted on chastity and abstemious reverie as the communicants of
+      inspiration. When thus prepared, science can be brought to aid it; the
+      sight itself may be rendered more subtle, the nerves more acute, the
+      spirit more alive and outward, and the element itself&mdash;the air, the
+      space&mdash;may be made, by certain secrets of the higher chemistry, more
+      palpable and clear. And this, too, is not magic, as the credulous call it;
+      as I have so often said before, magic (or science that violates Nature)
+      exists not: it is but the science by which Nature can be controlled. Now,
+      in space there are millions of beings not literally spiritual, for they
+      have all, like the animalculae unseen by the naked eye, certain forms of
+      matter, though matter so delicate, air-drawn, and subtle, that it is, as
+      it were, but a film, a gossamer that clothes the spirit. Hence the
+      Rosicrucian&rsquo;s lovely phantoms of sylph and gnome. Yet, in truth, these
+      races and tribes differ more widely, each from each, than the Calmuc from
+      the Greek,&mdash;differ in attributes and powers. In the drop of water you
+      see how the animalculae vary, how vast and terrible are some of those
+      monster mites as compared with others. Equally so with the inhabitants of
+      the atmosphere: some of surpassing wisdom, some of horrible malignity;
+      some hostile as fiends to men, others gentle as messengers between earth
+      and heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He who would establish intercourse with these varying beings resembles
+      the traveller who would penetrate into unknown lands. He is exposed to
+      strange dangers and unconjectured terrors. THAT INTERCOURSE ONCE GAINED, I
+      CANNOT SECURE THEE FROM THE CHANCES TO WHICH THY JOURNEY IS EXPOSED. I
+      cannot direct thee to paths free from the wanderings of the deadliest
+      foes. Thou must alone, and of thyself, face and hazard all. But if thou
+      art so enamoured of life as to care only to live on, no matter for what
+      ends, recruiting the nerves and veins with the alchemist&rsquo;s vivifying
+      elixir, why seek these dangers from the intermediate tribes? Because the
+      very elixir that pours a more glorious life into the frame, so sharpens
+      the senses that those larvae of the air become to thee audible and
+      apparent; so that, unless trained by degrees to endure the phantoms and
+      subdue their malice, a life thus gifted would be the most awful doom man
+      could bring upon himself. Hence it is, that though the elixir be
+      compounded of the simplest herbs, his frame only is prepared to receive it
+      who has gone through the subtlest trials. Nay, some, scared and daunted
+      into the most intolerable horror by the sights that burst upon their eyes
+      at the first draft, have found the potion less powerful to save than the
+      agony and travail of Nature to destroy. To the unprepared the elixir is
+      thus but the deadliest poison. Amidst the dwellers of the threshold is
+      ONE, too, surpassing in malignity and hatred all her tribe,&mdash;one
+      whose eyes have paralyzed the bravest, and whose power increases over the
+      spirit precisely in proportion to its fear. Does thy courage falter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay; thy words but kindle it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Follow me, then, and submit to the initiatory labours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that, Mejnour led him into the interior chamber, and proceeded to
+      explain to him certain chemical operations which, though extremely simple
+      in themselves, Glyndon soon perceived were capable of very extraordinary
+      results.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the remoter times,&rdquo; said Mejnour, smiling, &ldquo;our brotherhood were often
+      compelled to recur to delusions to protect realities; and, as dexterous
+      mechanicians or expert chemists, they obtained the name of sorcerers.
+      Observe how easy to construct is the Spectre Lion that attended the
+      renowned Leonardo da Vinci!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Glyndon beheld with delighted surprise the simple means by which the
+      wildest cheats of the imagination can be formed. The magical landscapes in
+      which Baptista Porta rejoiced; the apparent change of the seasons with
+      which Albertus Magnus startled the Earl of Holland; nay, even those more
+      dread delusions of the Ghost and Image with which the necromancers of
+      Heraclea woke the conscience of the conqueror of Plataea (Pausanias,&mdash;see
+      Plutarch.),&mdash;all these, as the showman enchants some trembling
+      children on a Christmas Eve with his lantern and phantasmagoria, Mejnour
+      exhibited to his pupil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now laugh forever at magic! when these, the very tricks, the very
+      sports and frivolities of science, were the very acts which men viewed
+      with abhorrence, and inquisitors and kings rewarded with the rack and the
+      stake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the alchemist&rsquo;s transmutation of metals&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nature herself is a laboratory in which metals, and all elements, are
+      forever at change. Easy to make gold,&mdash;easier, more commodious, and
+      cheaper still, to make the pearl, the diamond, and the ruby. Oh, yes; wise
+      men found sorcery in this too; but they found no sorcery in the discovery
+      that by the simplest combination of things of every-day use they could
+      raise a devil that would sweep away thousands of their kind by the breath
+      of consuming fire. Discover what will destroy life, and you are a great
+      man!&mdash;what will prolong it, and you are an imposter! Discover some
+      invention in machinery that will make the rich more rich and the poor more
+      poor, and they will build you a statue! Discover some mystery in art that
+      will equalise physical disparities, and they will pull down their own
+      houses to stone you! Ha, ha, my pupil! such is the world Zanoni still
+      cares for!&mdash;you and I will leave this world to itself. And now that
+      you have seen some few of the effects of science, begin to learn its
+      grammar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mejnour then set before his pupil certain tasks, in which the rest of the
+      night wore itself away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0043" id="link2HCH0043">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 4.V.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Great travell hath the gentle Calidore
+     And toyle endured...
+     There on a day,&mdash;He chaunst to spy a sort of shepheard groomes,
+     Playing on pipes and caroling apace.
+     ...He, there besyde
+     Saw a faire damzell.
+     &mdash;Spenser, &ldquo;Faerie Queene,&rdquo; cant. ix.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      For a considerable period the pupil of Mejnour was now absorbed in labour
+      dependent on the most vigilant attention, on the most minute and subtle
+      calculation. Results astonishing and various rewarded his toils and
+      stimulated his interest. Nor were these studies limited to chemical
+      discovery,&mdash;in which it is permitted me to say that the greatest
+      marvels upon the organisation of physical life seemed wrought by
+      experiments of the vivifying influence of heat. Mejnour professed to find
+      a link between all intellectual beings in the existence of a certain
+      all-pervading and invisible fluid resembling electricity, yet distinct
+      from the known operations of that mysterious agency&mdash;a fluid that
+      connected thought to thought with the rapidity and precision of the modern
+      telegraph, and the influence of this fluid, according to Mejnour, extended
+      to the remotest past,&mdash;that is to say, whenever and wheresoever man
+      had thought. Thus, if the doctrine were true, all human knowledge became
+      attainable through a medium established between the brain of the
+      individual inquirer and all the farthest and obscurest regions in the
+      universe of ideas. Glyndon was surprised to find Mejnour attached to the
+      abstruse mysteries which the Pythagoreans ascribed to the occult science
+      of NUMBERS. In this last, new lights glimmered dimly on his eyes; and he
+      began to perceive that even the power to predict, or rather to calculate,
+      results, might by&mdash; (Here there is an erasure in the MS.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he observed that the last brief process by which, in each of these
+      experiments, the wonder was achieved, Mejnour reserved for himself, and
+      refused to communicate the secret. The answer he obtained to his
+      remonstrances on this head was more stern than satisfactory:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dost thou think,&rdquo; said Mejnour, &ldquo;that I would give to the mere pupil,
+      whose qualities are not yet tried, powers that might change the face of
+      the social world? The last secrets are intrusted only to him of whose
+      virtue the Master is convinced. Patience! It is labour itself that is the
+      great purifier of the mind; and by degrees the secrets will grow upon
+      thyself as thy mind becomes riper to receive them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Mejnour professed himself satisfied with the progress made by his
+      pupil. &ldquo;The hour now arrives,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;when thou mayst pass the great
+      but airy barrier,&mdash;when thou mayst gradually confront the terrible
+      Dweller of the Threshold. Continue thy labours&mdash;continue to surpass
+      thine impatience for results until thou canst fathom the causes. I leave
+      thee for one month; if at the end of that period, when I return, the tasks
+      set thee are completed, and thy mind prepared by contemplation and austere
+      thought for the ordeal, I promise thee the ordeal shall commence. One
+      caution alone I give thee: regard it as a peremptory command, enter not
+      this chamber!&rdquo; (They were then standing in the room where their
+      experiments had been chiefly made, and in which Glyndon, on the night he
+      had sought the solitude of the mystic, had nearly fallen a victim to his
+      intrusion.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enter not this chamber till my return; or, above all, if by any search
+      for materials necessary to thy toils thou shouldst venture hither, forbear
+      to light the naphtha in those vessels, and to open the vases on yonder
+      shelves. I leave the key of the room in thy keeping, in order to try thy
+      abstinence and self-control. Young man, this very temptation is a part of
+      thy trial.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that, Mejnour placed the key in his hands; and at sunset he left the
+      castle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For several days Glyndon continued immersed in employments which strained
+      to the utmost all the faculties of his intellect. Even the most partial
+      success depended so entirely on the abstraction of the mind, and the
+      minuteness of its calculations, that there was scarcely room for any other
+      thought than those absorbed in the occupation. And doubtless this
+      perpetual strain of the faculties was the object of Mejnour in works that
+      did not seem exactly pertinent to the purposes in view. As the study of
+      the elementary mathematics, for example, is not so profitable in the
+      solving of problems, useless in our after-callings, as it is serviceable
+      in training the intellect to the comprehension and analysis of general
+      truths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in less than half the time which Mejnour had stated for the duration
+      of his absence, all that the mystic had appointed to his toils was
+      completed by the pupil; and then his mind, thus relieved from the drudgery
+      and mechanism of employment, once more sought occupation in dim conjecture
+      and restless fancies. His inquisitive and rash nature grew excited by the
+      prohibition of Mejnour, and he found himself gazing too often, with
+      perturbed and daring curiosity, upon the key of the forbidden chamber. He
+      began to feel indignant at a trial of constancy which he deemed frivolous
+      and puerile. What nursery tales of Bluebeard and his closet were revived
+      to daunt and terrify him! How could the mere walls of a chamber, in which
+      he had so often securely pursued his labours, start into living danger? If
+      haunted, it could be but by those delusions which Mejnour had taught him
+      to despise,&mdash;a shadowy lion,&mdash;a chemical phantasm! Tush! he lost
+      half his awe of Mejnour, when he thought that by such tricks the sage
+      could practise upon the very intellect he had awakened and instructed!
+      Still he resisted the impulses of his curiosity and his pride, and, to
+      escape from their dictation, he took long rambles on the hills, or amidst
+      the valleys that surrounded the castle,&mdash;seeking by bodily fatigue to
+      subdue the unreposing mind. One day suddenly emerging from a dark ravine,
+      he came upon one of those Italian scenes of rural festivity and mirth in
+      which the classic age appears to revive. It was a festival, partly
+      agricultural, partly religious, held yearly by the peasants of that
+      district. Assembled at the outskirts of a village, animated crowds, just
+      returned from a procession to a neighbouring chapel, were now forming
+      themselves into groups: the old to taste the vintage, the young to dance,&mdash;all
+      to be gay and happy. This sudden picture of easy joy and careless
+      ignorance, contrasting so forcibly with the intense studies and that
+      parching desire for wisdom which had so long made up his own life, and
+      burned at his own heart, sensibly affected Glyndon. As he stood aloof and
+      gazing on them, the young man felt once more that he was young. The memory
+      of all he had been content to sacrifice spoke to him like the sharp voice
+      of remorse. The flitting forms of the women in their picturesque attire,
+      their happy laughter ringing through the cool, still air of the autumn
+      noon, brought back to the heart, or rather perhaps to the senses, the
+      images of his past time, the &ldquo;golden shepherd hours,&rdquo; when to live was but
+      to enjoy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He approached nearer and nearer to the scene, and suddenly a noisy group
+      swept round him; and Maestro Paolo, tapping him familiarly on the
+      shoulder, exclaimed in a hearty voice, &ldquo;Welcome, Excellency!&mdash;we are
+      rejoiced to see you amongst us.&rdquo; Glyndon was about to reply to this
+      salutation, when his eyes rested upon the face of a young girl leaning on
+      Paolo&rsquo;s arm, of a beauty so attractive that his colour rose and his heart
+      beat as he encountered her gaze. Her eyes sparkled with a roguish and
+      petulant mirth, her parted lips showed teeth like pearls; as if impatient
+      at the pause of her companion from the revel of the rest, her little foot
+      beat the ground to a measure that she half-hummed, half-chanted. Paolo
+      laughed as he saw the effect the girl had produced upon the young
+      foreigner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you not dance, Excellency? Come, lay aside your greatness, and be
+      merry, like us poor devils. See how our pretty Fillide is longing for a
+      partner. Take compassion on her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fillide pouted at this speech, and, disengaging her arm from Paolo&rsquo;s,
+      turned away, but threw over her shoulder a glance half inviting, half
+      defying. Glyndon, almost involuntarily, advanced to her, and addressed
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, yes; he addresses her! She looks down, and smiles. Paolo leaves them
+      to themselves, sauntering off with a devil-me-carish air. Fillide speaks
+      now, and looks up at the scholar&rsquo;s face with arch invitation. He shakes
+      his head; Fillide laughs, and her laugh is silvery. She points to a gay
+      mountaineer, who is tripping up to her merrily. Why does Glyndon feel
+      jealous? Why, when she speaks again, does he shake his head no more? He
+      offers his hand; Fillide blushes, and takes it with a demure coquetry.
+      What! is it so, indeed! They whirl into the noisy circle of the revellers.
+      Ha! ha! is not this better than distilling herbs, and breaking thy brains
+      on Pythagorean numbers? How lightly Fillide bounds along! How her
+      lithesome waist supples itself to thy circling arm! Tara-ra-tara, ta-tara,
+      rara-ra! What the devil is in the measure that it makes the blood course
+      like quicksilver through the veins? Was there ever a pair of eyes like
+      Fillide&rsquo;s? Nothing of the cold stars there! Yet how they twinkle and laugh
+      at thee! And that rosy, pursed-up mouth that will answer so sparingly to
+      thy flatteries, as if words were a waste of time, and kisses were their
+      proper language. Oh, pupil of Mejnour! Oh, would-be Rosicrucian,
+      Platonist, Magian, I know not what! I am ashamed of thee! What, in the
+      names of Averroes and Burri and Agrippa and Hermes have become of thy
+      austere contemplations? Was it for this thou didst resign Viola? I don&rsquo;t
+      think thou hast the smallest recollection of the elixir or the Cabala.
+      Take care! What are you about, sir? Why do you clasp that small hand
+      locked within your own? Why do you&mdash;Tara-rara tara-ra tara-rara-ra,
+      rarara, ta-ra, a-ra! Keep your eyes off those slender ankles and that
+      crimson bodice! Tara-rara-ra! There they go again! And now they rest under
+      the broad trees. The revel has whirled away from them. They hear&mdash;or
+      do they not hear&mdash;the laughter at the distance? They see&mdash;or if
+      they have their eyes about them, they SHOULD see&mdash;couple after couple
+      gliding by, love-talking and love-looking. But I will lay a wager, as they
+      sit under that tree, and the round sun goes down behind the mountains,
+      that they see or hear very little except themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hollo, Signor Excellency! and how does your partner please you? Come and
+      join our feast, loiterers; one dances more merrily after wine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Down goes the round sun; up comes the autumn moon. Tara, tara, rarara,
+      rarara, tarara-ra! Dancing again; is it a dance, or some movement gayer,
+      noisier, wilder still? How they glance and gleam through the night
+      shadows, those flitting forms! What confusion!&mdash;what order! Ha, that
+      is the Tarantula dance; Maestro Paolo foots it bravely! Diavolo, what
+      fury! the Tarantula has stung them all. Dance or die; it is fury,&mdash;the
+      Corybantes, the Maenads, the&mdash;Ho, ho! more wine! the Sabbat of the
+      Witches at Benevento is a joke to this! From cloud to cloud wanders the
+      moon,&mdash;now shining, now lost. Dimness while the maiden blushes; light
+      when the maiden smiles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fillide, thou art an enchantress!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Buona notte, Excellency; you will see me again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, young man,&rdquo; said an old, decrepit, hollow-eyed octogenarian, leaning
+      on his staff, &ldquo;make the best of your youth. I, too, once had a Fillide! I
+      was handsomer than you then! Alas! if we could be always young!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Always young!&rdquo; Glyndon started, as he turned his gaze from the fresh,
+      fair, rosy face of the girl, and saw the eyes dropping rheum, the yellow
+      wrinkled skin, the tottering frame of the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha, ha!&rdquo; said the decrepit creature, hobbling near to him, and with a
+      malicious laugh. &ldquo;Yet I, too, was young once! Give me a baioccho for a
+      glass of aqua vitae!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tara, rara, ra-rara, tara, rara-ra! There dances Youth! Wrap thy rags
+      round thee, and totter off, Old Age!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0044" id="link2HCH0044">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 4.VI.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Whilest Calidore does follow that faire mayd,
+     Unmindful of his vow and high beheast
+     Which by the Faerie Queene was on him layd.
+     &mdash;Spenser, &ldquo;Faerie Queene,&rdquo; cant. x. s. 1.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It was that grey, indistinct, struggling interval between the night and
+      the dawn, when Clarence stood once more in his chamber. The abstruse
+      calculations lying on his table caught his eye, and filled him with a
+      sentiment of weariness and distaste. But&mdash;&ldquo;Alas, if we could be
+      always young! Oh, thou horrid spectre of the old, rheum-eyed man! What
+      apparition can the mystic chamber shadow forth more ugly and more hateful
+      than thou? Oh, yes, if we could be always young! But not [thinks the
+      neophyte now]&mdash;not to labour forever at these crabbed figures and
+      these cold compounds of herbs and drugs. No; but to enjoy, to love, to
+      revel! What should be the companion of youth but pleasure? And the gift of
+      eternal youth may be mine this very hour! What means this prohibition of
+      Mejnour&rsquo;s? Is it not of the same complexion as his ungenerous reserve even
+      in the minutest secrets of chemistry, or the numbers of his Cabala?&mdash;compelling
+      me to perform all the toils, and yet withholding from me the knowledge of
+      the crowning result? No doubt he will still, on his return, show me that
+      the great mystery CAN be attained; but will still forbid ME to attain it.
+      Is it not as if he desired to keep my youth the slave to his age; to make
+      me dependent solely on himself; to bind me to a journeyman&rsquo;s service by
+      perpetual excitement to curiosity, and the sight of the fruits he places
+      beyond my lips?&rdquo; These, and many reflections still more repining,
+      disturbed and irritated him. Heated with wine&mdash;excited by the wild
+      revels he had left&mdash;he was unable to sleep. The image of that
+      revolting Old Age which Time, unless defeated, must bring upon himself,
+      quickened the eagerness of his desire for the dazzling and imperishable
+      Youth he ascribed to Zanoni. The prohibition only served to create a
+      spirit of defiance. The reviving day, laughing jocundly through his
+      lattice, dispelled all the fears and superstitions that belong to night.
+      The mystic chamber presented to his imagination nothing to differ from any
+      other apartment in the castle. What foul or malignant apparition could
+      harm him in the light of that blessed sun! It was the peculiar, and on the
+      whole most unhappy, contradiction in Glyndon&rsquo;s nature, that while his
+      reasonings led him to doubt,&mdash;and doubt rendered him in MORAL conduct
+      irresolute and unsteady; he was PHYSICALLY brave to rashness. Nor is this
+      uncommon: scepticism and presumption are often twins. When a man of this
+      character determines upon any action, personal fear never deters him; and
+      for the moral fear, any sophistry suffices to self-will. Almost without
+      analysing himself the mental process by which his nerves hardened
+      themselves and his limbs moved, he traversed the corridor, gained
+      Mejnour&rsquo;s apartment, and opened the forbidden door. All was as he had been
+      accustomed to see it, save that on a table in the centre of the room lay
+      open a large volume. He approached, and gazed on the characters on the
+      page; they were in a cipher, the study of which had made a part of his
+      labours. With but slight difficulty he imagined that he interpreted the
+      meaning of the first sentences, and that they ran thus:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To quaff the inner life, is to see the outer life: to live in defiance of
+      time, is to live in the whole. He who discovers the elixir discovers what
+      lies in space; for the spirit that vivifies the frame strengthens the
+      senses. There is attraction in the elementary principle of light. In the
+      lamps of Rosicrucius the fire is the pure elementary principle. Kindle the
+      lamps while thou openst the vessel that contains the elixir, and the light
+      attracts towards thee those beings whose life is that light. Beware of
+      Fear. Fear is the deadliest enemy to Knowledge.&rdquo; Here the ciphers changed
+      their character, and became incomprehensible. But had he not read enough?
+      Did not the last sentence suffice?&mdash;&ldquo;Beware of Fear!&rdquo; It was as if
+      Mejnour had purposely left the page open,&mdash;as if the trial was, in
+      truth, the reverse of the one pretended; as if the mystic had designed to
+      make experiment of his COURAGE while affecting but that of his
+      FORBEARANCE. Not Boldness, but Fear, was the deadliest enemy to Knowledge.
+      He moved to the shelves on which the crystal vases were placed; with an
+      untrembling hand he took from one of them the stopper, and a delicious
+      odor suddenly diffused itself through the room. The air sparkled as if
+      with a diamond-dust. A sense of unearthly delight,&mdash;of an existence
+      that seemed all spirit, flashed through his whole frame; and a faint, low,
+      but exquisite music crept, thrilling, through the chamber. At this moment
+      he heard a voice in the corridor calling on his name; and presently there
+      was a knock at the door without. &ldquo;Are you there, signor?&rdquo; said the clear
+      tones of Maestro Paolo. Glyndon hastily reclosed and replaced the vial,
+      and bidding Paolo await him in his own apartment, tarried till he heard
+      the intruder&rsquo;s steps depart; he then reluctantly quitted the room. As he
+      locked the door, he still heard the dying strain of that fairy music; and
+      with a light step and a joyous heart he repaired to Paolo, inly resolving
+      to visit again the chamber at an hour when his experiment would be safe
+      from interruption.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he crossed his threshold, Paolo started back, and exclaimed, &ldquo;Why,
+      Excellency! I scarcely recognise you! Amusement, I see, is a great
+      beautifier to the young. Yesterday you looked so pale and haggard; but
+      Fillide&rsquo;s merry eyes have done more for you than the Philosopher&rsquo;s Stone
+      (saints forgive me for naming it) ever did for the wizards.&rdquo; And Glyndon,
+      glancing at the old Venetian mirror as Paolo spoke, was scarcely less
+      startled than Paolo himself at the change in his own mien and bearing. His
+      form, before bent with thought, seemed to him taller by half the head, so
+      lithesome and erect rose his slender stature; his eyes glowed, his cheeks
+      bloomed with health and the innate and pervading pleasure. If the mere
+      fragrance of the elixir was thus potent, well might the alchemists have
+      ascribed life and youth to the draught!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must forgive me, Excellency, for disturbing you,&rdquo; said Paolo,
+      producing a letter from his pouch; &ldquo;but our Patron has just written to me
+      to say that he will be here to-morrow, and desired me to lose not a moment
+      in giving to yourself this billet, which he enclosed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who brought the letter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A horseman, who did not wait for any reply.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon opened the letter, and read as follows:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I return a week sooner than I had intended, and you will expect me
+      to-morrow. You will then enter on the ordeal you desire, but remember
+      that, in doing so, you must reduce Being as far as possible into Mind. The
+      senses must be mortified and subdued,&mdash;not the whisper of one passion
+      heard. Thou mayst be master of the Cabala and the Chemistry; but thou must
+      be master also over the Flesh and the Blood,&mdash;over Love and Vanity,
+      Ambition and Hate. I will trust to find thee so. Fast and meditate till we
+      meet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon crumpled the letter in his hand with a smile of disdain. What!
+      more drudgery,&mdash;more abstinence! Youth without love and pleasure! Ha,
+      ha! baffled Mejnour, thy pupil shall gain thy secrets without thine aid!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Fillide! I passed her cottage in my way,&mdash;she blushed and sighed
+      when I jested her about you, Excellency!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Paolo! I thank thee for so charming an introduction. Thine must be
+      a rare life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Excellency, while we are young, nothing like adventure,&mdash;except
+      love, wine, and laughter!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very true. Farewell, Maestro Paolo; we will talk more with each other in
+      a few days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All that morning Glyndon was almost overpowered with the new sentiment of
+      happiness that had entered into him. He roamed into the woods, and he felt
+      a pleasure that resembled his earlier life of an artist, but a pleasure
+      yet more subtle and vivid, in the various colours of the autumn foliage.
+      Certainly Nature seemed to be brought closer to him; he comprehended
+      better all that Mejnour had often preached to him of the mystery of
+      sympathies and attractions. He was about to enter into the same law as
+      those mute children of the forests. He was to know THE RENEWAL OF LIFE;
+      the seasons that chilled to winter should yet bring again the bloom and
+      the mirth of spring. Man&rsquo;s common existence is as one year to the
+      vegetable world: he has his spring, his summer, his autumn, and winter,&mdash;but
+      only ONCE. But the giant oaks round him go through a revolving series of
+      verdure and youth, and the green of the centenarian is as vivid in the
+      beams of May as that of the sapling by its side. &ldquo;Mine shall be your
+      spring, but not your winter!&rdquo; exclaimed the aspirant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wrapped in these sanguine and joyous reveries, Glyndon, quitting the
+      woods, found himself amidst cultivated fields and vineyards to which his
+      footstep had not before wandered; and there stood, by the skirts of a
+      green lane that reminded him of verdant England, a modest house,&mdash;half
+      cottage, half farm. The door was open, and he saw a girl at work with her
+      distaff. She looked up, uttered a slight cry, and, tripping gayly into the
+      lane to his side, he recognised the dark-eyed Fillide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hist!&rdquo; she said, archly putting her finger to her lip; &ldquo;do not speak
+      loud,&mdash;my mother is asleep within; and I knew you would come to see
+      me. It is kind!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon, with a little embarrassment, accepted the compliment to his
+      kindness, which he did not exactly deserve. &ldquo;You have thought, then, of
+      me, fair Fillide?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered the girl, colouring, but with that frank, bold
+      ingenuousness, which characterises the females of Italy, especially of the
+      lower class, and in the southern provinces,&mdash;&ldquo;oh, yes! I have thought
+      of little else. Paolo said he knew you would visit me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what relation is Paolo to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None; but a good friend to us all. My brother is one of his band.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of his band!&mdash;a robber?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We of the mountains do not call a mountaineer &lsquo;a robber,&rsquo; signor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ask pardon. Do you not tremble sometimes for your brother&rsquo;s life? The
+      law&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Law never ventures into these defiles. Tremble for him! No. My father and
+      grandsire were of the same calling. I often wish I were a man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By these lips, I am enchanted that your wish cannot be realised.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fie, signor! And do you really love me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With my whole heart!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I thee!&rdquo; said the girl, with a candour that seemed innocent, as she
+      suffered him to clasp her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;thou wilt soon leave us; and I&mdash;&rdquo; She stopped
+      short, and the tears stood in her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something dangerous in this, it must be confessed. Certainly
+      Fillide had not the seraphic loveliness of Viola; but hers was a beauty
+      that equally at least touched the senses. Perhaps Glyndon had never really
+      loved Viola; perhaps the feelings with which she had inspired him were not
+      of that ardent character which deserves the name of love. However that be,
+      he thought, as he gazed on those dark eyes, that he had never loved
+      before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And couldst thou not leave thy mountains?&rdquo; he whispered, as he drew yet
+      nearer to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dost thou ask me?&rdquo; she said, retreating, and looking him steadfastly in
+      the face. &ldquo;Dost thou know what we daughters of the mountains are? You gay,
+      smooth cavaliers of cities seldom mean what you speak. With you, love is
+      amusement; with us, it is life. Leave these mountains! Well! I should not
+      leave my nature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep thy nature ever,&mdash;it is a sweet one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sweet while thou art true; stern, if thou art faithless. Shall I
+      tell thee what I&mdash;what the girls of this country are? Daughters of
+      men whom you call robbers, we aspire to be the companions of our lovers or
+      our husbands. We love ardently; we own it boldly. We stand by your side in
+      danger; we serve you as slaves in safety: we never change, and we resent
+      change. You may reproach, strike us, trample us as a dog,&mdash;we bear
+      all without a murmur; betray us, and no tiger is more relentless. Be true,
+      and our hearts reward you; be false, and our hands revenge! Dost thou love
+      me now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      During this speech the Italian&rsquo;s countenance had most eloquently aided her
+      words,&mdash;by turns soft, frank, fierce,&mdash;and at the last question
+      she inclined her head humbly, and stood, as in fear of his reply, before
+      him. The stern, brave, wild spirit, in which what seemed unfeminine was
+      yet, if I may so say, still womanly, did not recoil, it rather captivated
+      Glyndon. He answered readily, briefly, and freely, &ldquo;Fillide,&mdash;yes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, &ldquo;yes!&rdquo; forsooth, Clarence Glyndon! Every light nature answers &ldquo;yes&rdquo;
+       lightly to such a question from lips so rosy! Have a care,&mdash;have a
+      care! Why the deuce, Mejnour, do you leave your pupil of four-and-twenty
+      to the mercy of these wild cats-a-mountain! Preach fast, and abstinence,
+      and sublime renunciation of the cheats of the senses! Very well in you,
+      sir, Heaven knows how many ages old; but at four-and-twenty, your
+      Hierophant would have kept you out of Fillide&rsquo;s way, or you would have had
+      small taste for the Cabala.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so they stood, and talked, and vowed, and whispered, till the girl&rsquo;s
+      mother made some noise within the house, and Fillide bounded back to the
+      distaff, her finger once more on her lip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is more magic in Fillide than in Mejnour,&rdquo; said Glyndon to himself,
+      walking gayly home; &ldquo;yet on second thoughts, I know not if I quite so well
+      like a character so ready for revenge. But he who has the real secret can
+      baffle even the vengeance of a woman, and disarm all danger!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sirrah! dost thou even already meditate the possibility of treason? Oh,
+      well said Zanoni, &ldquo;to pour pure water into the muddy well does but disturb
+      the mud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0045" id="link2HCH0045">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 4.VII.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Cernis, custodia qualis
+     Vestibulo sedeat? facies quae limina servet?
+     &ldquo;Aeneid,&rdquo; lib. vi. 574.
+
+     (See you what porter sits within the vestibule?&mdash;what face
+     watches at the threshold?)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And it is profound night. All is at rest within the old castle,&mdash;all
+      is breathless under the melancholy stars. Now is the time. Mejnour with
+      his austere wisdom,&mdash;Mejnour the enemy to love; Mejnour, whose eye
+      will read thy heart, and refuse thee the promised secrets because the
+      sunny face of Fillide disturbs the lifeless shadow that he calls repose,&mdash;Mejnour
+      comes to-morrow! Seize the night! Beware of fear! Never, or this hour! So,
+      brave youth,&mdash;brave despite all thy errors,&mdash;so, with a steady
+      pulse, thy hand unlocks once more the forbidden door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He placed his lamp on the table beside the book, which still lay there
+      opened; he turned over the leaves, but could not decipher their meaning
+      till he came to the following passage:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When, then, the pupil is thus initiated and prepared, let him open the
+      casement, light the lamps, and bathe his temples with the elixir. He must
+      beware how he presume yet to quaff the volatile and fiery spirit. To taste
+      till repeated inhalations have accustomed the frame gradually to the
+      ecstatic liquid, is to know not life, but death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He could penetrate no farther into the instructions; the cipher again
+      changed. He now looked steadily and earnestly round the chamber. The
+      moonlight came quietly through the lattice as his hand opened it, and
+      seemed, as it rested on the floor, and filled the walls, like the presence
+      of some ghostly and mournful Power. He ranged the mystic lamps (nine in
+      number) round the centre of the room, and lighted them one by one. A flame
+      of silvery and azure tints sprung up from each, and lighted the apartment
+      with a calm and yet most dazzling splendour; but presently this light grew
+      more soft and dim, as a thin, grey cloud, like a mist, gradually spread
+      over the room; and an icy thrill shot through the heart of the Englishman,
+      and quickly gathered over him like the coldness of death. Instinctively
+      aware of his danger, he tottered, though with difficulty, for his limbs
+      seemed rigid and stone-like, to the shelf that contained the crystal
+      vials; hastily he inhaled the spirit, and laved his temples with the
+      sparkling liquid. The same sensation of vigour and youth, and joy and airy
+      lightness, that he had felt in the morning, instantaneously replaced the
+      deadly numbness that just before had invaded the citadel of life. He
+      stood, with his arms folded on his bosom erect and dauntless, to watch
+      what should ensue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The vapour had now assumed almost the thickness and seeming consistency of
+      a snow-cloud; the lamps piercing it like stars. And now he distinctly saw
+      shapes, somewhat resembling in outline those of the human form, gliding
+      slowly and with regular evolutions through the cloud. They appeared
+      bloodless; their bodies were transparent, and contracted or expanded like
+      the folds of a serpent. As they moved in majestic order, he heard a low
+      sound&mdash;the ghost, as it were, of voice&mdash;which each caught and
+      echoed from the other; a low sound, but musical, which seemed the chant of
+      some unspeakably tranquil joy. None of these apparitions heeded him. His
+      intense longing to accost them, to be of them, to make one of this
+      movement of aerial happiness,&mdash;for such it seemed to him,&mdash;made
+      him stretch forth his arms and seek to cry aloud, but only an inarticulate
+      whisper passed his lips; and the movement and the music went on the same
+      as if the mortal were not there. Slowly they glided round and aloft, till,
+      in the same majestic order, one after one, they floated through the
+      casement and were lost in the moonlight; then, as his eyes followed them,
+      the casement became darkened with some object undistinguishable at the
+      first gaze, but which sufficed mysteriously to change into ineffable
+      horror the delight he had before experienced. By degrees this object
+      shaped itself to his sight. It was as that of a human head covered with a
+      dark veil through which glared, with livid and demoniac fire, eyes that
+      froze the marrow of his bones. Nothing else of the face was
+      distinguishable,&mdash;nothing but those intolerable eyes; but his terror,
+      that even at the first seemed beyond nature to endure, was increased a
+      thousand-fold, when, after a pause, the phantom glided slowly into the
+      chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cloud retreated from it as it advanced; the bright lamps grew wan, and
+      flickered restlessly as at the breath of its presence. Its form was veiled
+      as the face, but the outline was that of a female; yet it moved not as
+      move even the ghosts that simulate the living. It seemed rather to crawl
+      as some vast misshapen reptile; and pausing, at length it cowered beside
+      the table which held the mystic volume, and again fixed its eyes through
+      the filmy veil on the rash invoker. All fancies, the most grotesque, of
+      monk or painter in the early North, would have failed to give to the
+      visage of imp or fiend that aspect of deadly malignity which spoke to the
+      shuddering nature in those eyes alone. All else so dark,&mdash;shrouded,
+      veiled and larva-like. But that burning glare so intense, so livid, yet so
+      living, had in it something that was almost HUMAN in its passion of hate
+      and mockery,&mdash;something that served to show that the shadowy Horror
+      was not all a spirit, but partook of matter enough, at least, to make it
+      more deadly and fearful an enemy to material forms. As, clinging with the
+      grasp of agony to the wall,&mdash;his hair erect, his eyeballs starting,
+      he still gazed back upon that appalling gaze,&mdash;the Image spoke to
+      him: his soul rather than his ear comprehended the words it said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou hast entered the immeasurable region. I am the Dweller of the
+      Threshold. What wouldst thou with me? Silent? Dost thou fear me? Am I not
+      thy beloved? Is it not for me that thou hast rendered up the delights of
+      thy race? Wouldst thou be wise? Mine is the wisdom of the countless ages.
+      Kiss me, my mortal lover.&rdquo; And the Horror crawled near and nearer to him;
+      it crept to his side, its breath breathed upon his cheek! With a sharp cry
+      he fell to the earth insensible, and knew no more till, far in the noon of
+      the next day, he opened his eyes and found himself in his bed,&mdash;the
+      glorious sun streaming through his lattice, and the bandit Paolo by his
+      side, engaged in polishing his carbine, and whistling a Calabrian
+      love-air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0046" id="link2HCH0046">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 4.VIII.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Thus man pursues his weary calling,
+     And wrings the hard life from the sky,
+     While happiness unseen is falling
+     Down from God&rsquo;s bosom silently.
+     &mdash;Schiller.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In one of those islands whose history the imperishable literature and
+      renown of Athens yet invest with melancholy interest, and on which Nature,
+      in whom &ldquo;there is nothing melancholy,&rdquo; still bestows a glory of scenery
+      and climate equally radiant for the freeman or the slave,&mdash;the
+      Ionian, the Venetian, the Gaul, the Turk, or the restless Briton,&mdash;Zanoni
+      had fixed his bridal home. There the air carries with it the perfumes of
+      the plains for miles along the blue, translucent deep. (See Dr. Holland&rsquo;s
+      &ldquo;Travels to the Ionian Isles,&rdquo; etc., page 18.) Seen from one of its green
+      sloping heights, the island he had selected seemed one delicious garden.
+      The towers and turrets of its capital gleaming amidst groves of oranges
+      and lemons; vineyards and olive-woods filling up the valleys, and
+      clambering along the hill-sides; and villa, farm, and cottage covered with
+      luxuriant trellises of dark-green leaves and purple fruit. For there the
+      prodigal beauty yet seems half to justify those graceful superstitions of
+      a creed that, too enamoured of earth, rather brought the deities to man,
+      than raised the man to their less alluring and less voluptuous Olympus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And still to the fishermen, weaving yet their antique dances on the sand;
+      to the maiden, adorning yet, with many a silver fibula, her glossy tresses
+      under the tree that overshadows her tranquil cot,&mdash;the same Great
+      Mother that watched over the wise of Samos, the democracy of Corcyra, the
+      graceful and deep-taught loveliness of Miletus, smiles as graciously as of
+      yore. For the North, philosophy and freedom are essentials to human
+      happiness; in the lands which Aphrodite rose from the waves to govern, as
+      the Seasons, hand in hand, stood to welcome her on the shores, Nature is
+      all sufficient. (Homeric Hymn.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The isle which Zanoni had selected was one of the loveliest in that divine
+      sea. His abode, at some distance from the city, but near one of the creeks
+      on the shore, belonged to a Venetian, and, though small, had more of
+      elegance than the natives ordinarily cared for. On the seas, and in sight,
+      rode his vessel. His Indians, as before, ministered in mute gravity to the
+      service of the household. No spot could be more beautiful,&mdash;no
+      solitude less invaded. To the mysterious knowledge of Zanoni, to the
+      harmless ignorance of Viola, the babbling and garish world of civilised
+      man was alike unheeded. The loving sky and the lovely earth are companions
+      enough to Wisdom and to Ignorance while they love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although, as I have before said, there was nothing in the visible
+      occupations of Zanoni that betrayed a cultivator of the occult sciences,
+      his habits were those of a man who remembers or reflects. He loved to roam
+      alone, chiefly at dawn, or at night, when the moon was clear (especially
+      in each month, at its rise and full), miles and miles away over the rich
+      inlands of the island, and to cull herbs and flowers, which he hoarded
+      with jealous care. Sometimes, at the dead of night, Viola would wake by an
+      instinct that told her he was not by her side, and, stretching out her
+      arms, find that the instinct had not deceived her. But she early saw that
+      he was reserved on his peculiar habits; and if at times a chill, a
+      foreboding, a suspicious awe crept over her, she forebore to question him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his rambles were not always unaccompanied,&mdash;he took pleasure in
+      excursions less solitary. Often, when the sea lay before them like a lake,
+      the barren dreariness of the opposite coast of Cephallenia contrasting the
+      smiling shores on which they dwelt, Viola and himself would pass days in
+      cruising slowly around the coast, or in visits to the neighbouring isles.
+      Every spot of the Greek soil, &ldquo;that fair Fable-Land,&rdquo; seemed to him
+      familiar; and as he conversed of the past and its exquisite traditions, he
+      taught Viola to love the race from which have descended the poetry and the
+      wisdom of the world. There was much in Zanoni, as she knew him better,
+      that deepened the fascination in which Viola was from the first
+      enthralled. His love for herself was so tender, so vigilant, and had that
+      best and most enduring attribute, that it seemed rather grateful for the
+      happiness in its own cares than vain of the happiness it created. His
+      habitual mood with all who approached him was calm and gentle, almost to
+      apathy. An angry word never passed his lips,&mdash;an angry gleam never
+      shot from his eyes. Once they had been exposed to the danger not uncommon
+      in those then half-savage lands. Some pirates who infested the
+      neighbouring coasts had heard of the arrival of the strangers, and the
+      seamen Zanoni employed had gossiped of their master&rsquo;s wealth. One night,
+      after Viola had retired to rest, she was awakened by a slight noise below.
+      Zanoni was not by her side; she listened in some alarm. Was that a groan
+      that came upon her ear? She started up, she went to the door; all was
+      still. A footstep now slowly approached, and Zanoni entered calm as usual,
+      and seemed unconscious of her fears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning three men were found dead at the threshold of the
+      principal entrance, the door of which had been forced. They were
+      recognised in the neighbourhood as the most sanguinary and terrible
+      marauders of the coasts,&mdash;men stained with a thousand murders, and
+      who had never hitherto failed in any attempt to which the lust of rapine
+      had impelled them. The footsteps of many others were tracked to the
+      seashore. It seemed that their accomplices must have fled on the death of
+      their leaders. But when the Venetian Proveditore, or authority, of the
+      island, came to examine into the matter, the most unaccountable mystery
+      was the manner in which these ruffians had met their fate. Zanoni had not
+      stirred from the apartment in which he ordinarily pursued his chemical
+      studies. None of the servants had even been disturbed from their slumbers.
+      No marks of human violence were on the bodies of the dead. They died, and
+      made no sign. From that moment Zanoni&rsquo;s house&mdash;nay, the whole
+      vicinity&mdash;was sacred. The neighbouring villages, rejoiced to be
+      delivered from a scourge, regarded the stranger as one whom the Pagiana
+      (or Virgin) held under her especial protection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In truth, the lively Greeks around, facile to all external impressions,
+      and struck with the singular and majestic beauty of the man who knew their
+      language as a native, whose voice often cheered them in their humble
+      sorrows, and whose hand was never closed to their wants, long after he had
+      left their shore preserved his memory by grateful traditions, and still
+      point to the lofty platanus beneath which they had often seen him seated,
+      alone and thoughtful, in the heats of noon. But Zanoni had haunts less
+      open to the gaze than the shade of the platanus. In that isle there are
+      the bituminous springs which Herodotus has commemorated. Often at night,
+      the moon, at least, beheld him emerging from the myrtle and cystus that
+      clothe the hillocks around the marsh that imbeds the pools containing the
+      inflammable materia, all the medical uses of which, as applied to the
+      nerves of organic life, modern science has not yet perhaps explored. Yet
+      more often would he pass his hours in a cavern, by the loneliest part of
+      the beach, where the stalactites seem almost arranged by the hand of art,
+      and which the superstition of the peasants associates, in some ancient
+      legends, with the numerous and almost incessant earthquakes to which the
+      island is so singularly subjected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever the pursuits that instigated these wanderings and favoured these
+      haunts, either they were linked with, or else subordinate to, one main and
+      master desire, which every fresh day passed in the sweet human company of
+      Viola confirmed and strengthened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The scene that Glyndon had witnessed in his trance was faithful to truth.
+      And some little time after the date of that night, Viola was dimly aware
+      that an influence, she knew not of what nature, was struggling to
+      establish itself over her happy life. Visions indistinct and beautiful,
+      such as those she had known in her earlier days, but more constant and
+      impressive, began to haunt her night and day when Zanoni was absent, to
+      fade in his presence, and seem less fair than THAT. Zanoni questioned her
+      eagerly and minutely of these visitations, but seemed dissatisfied, and at
+      times perplexed, by her answers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me not,&rdquo; he said, one day, &ldquo;of those unconnected images, those
+      evolutions of starry shapes in a choral dance, or those delicious melodies
+      that seem to thee of the music and the language of the distant spheres.
+      Has no ONE shape been to thee more distinct and more beautiful than the
+      rest,&mdash;no voice uttering, or seeming to utter, thine own tongue, and
+      whispering to thee of strange secrets and solemn knowledge?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; all is confused in these dreams, whether of day or night; and when at
+      the sound of thy footsteps I recover, my memory retains nothing but a
+      vague impression of happiness. How different&mdash;how cold&mdash;to the
+      rapture of hanging on thy smile, and listening to thy voice, when it says,
+      &lsquo;I love thee!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet, how is it that visions less fair than these once seemed to thee so
+      alluring? How is it that they then stirred thy fancies and filled thy
+      heart? Once thou didst desire a fairy-land, and now thou seemest so
+      contented with common life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have I not explained it to thee before? Is it common life, then, to love,
+      and to live with the one we love? My true fairy-land is won! Speak to me
+      of no other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so night surprised them by the lonely beach; and Zanoni, allured from
+      his sublimer projects, and bending over that tender face, forgot that, in
+      the Harmonious Infinite which spread around, there were other worlds than
+      that one human heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0047" id="link2HCH0047">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 4.IX.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     There is a principle of the soul, superior to all nature, through
+     which we are capable of surpassing the order and systems of the
+     world.  When the soul is elevated to natures better than itself,
+     THEN it is entirely separated from subordinate natures, exchanges
+     this for another life, and, deserting the order of things with
+     which it was connected, links and mingles itself with another.
+     &mdash;Iamblichus.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adon-Ai! Adon-Ai!&mdash;appear, appear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And in the lonely cave, whence once had gone forth the oracles of a
+      heathen god, there emerged from the shadows of fantastic rocks a luminous
+      and gigantic column, glittering and shifting. It resembled the shining but
+      misty spray which, seen afar off, a fountain seems to send up on a starry
+      night. The radiance lit the stalactites, the crags, the arches of the
+      cave, and shed a pale and tremulous splendour on the features of Zanoni.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Son of Eternal Light,&rdquo; said the invoker, &ldquo;thou to whose knowledge, grade
+      after grade, race after race, I attained at last, on the broad Chaldean
+      plains; thou from whom I have drawn so largely of the unutterable
+      knowledge that yet eternity alone can suffice to drain; thou who,
+      congenial with myself, so far as our various beings will permit, hast been
+      for centuries my familiar and my friend,&mdash;answer me and counsel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From the column there emerged a shape of unimaginable glory. Its face was
+      that of a man in its first youth, but solemn, as with the consciousness of
+      eternity and the tranquillity of wisdom; light, like starbeams, flowed
+      through its transparent veins; light made its limbs themselves, and
+      undulated, in restless sparkles, through the waves of its dazzling hair.
+      With its arms folded on its breast, it stood distant a few feet from
+      Zanoni, and its low voice murmured gently, &ldquo;My counsels were sweet to thee
+      once; and once, night after night, thy soul could follow my wings through
+      the untroubled splendours of the Infinite. Now thou hast bound thyself
+      back to the earth by its strongest chains, and the attraction to the clay
+      is more potent than the sympathies that drew to thy charms the Dweller of
+      the Starbeam and the Air. When last thy soul hearkened to me, the senses
+      already troubled thine intellect and obscured thy vision. Once again I
+      come to thee; but thy power even to summon me to thy side is fading from
+      thy spirit, as sunshine fades from the wave when the winds drive the cloud
+      between the ocean and the sky.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas, Adon-Ai!&rdquo; answered the seer, mournfully, &ldquo;I know too well the
+      conditions of the being which thy presence was wont to rejoice. I know
+      that our wisdom comes but from the indifference to the things of the world
+      which the wisdom masters. The mirror of the soul cannot reflect both earth
+      and heaven; and the one vanishes from the surface as the other is glassed
+      upon its deeps. But it is not to restore me to that sublime abstraction in
+      which the intellect, free and disembodied, rises, region after region, to
+      the spheres,&mdash;that once again, and with the agony and travail of
+      enfeebled power I have called thee to mine aid. I love; and in love I
+      begin to live in the sweet humanities of another. If wise, yet in all
+      which makes danger powerless against myself, or those on whom I can gaze
+      from the calm height of indifferent science, I am blind as the merest
+      mortal to the destinies of the creature that makes my heart beat with the
+      passions which obscure my gaze.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What matter!&rdquo; answered Adon-Ai. &ldquo;Thy love must be but a mockery of the
+      name; thou canst not love as they do for whom there are death and the
+      grave. A short time,&mdash;like a day in thy incalculable life,&mdash;and
+      the form thou dotest on is dust! Others of the nether world go hand in
+      hand, each with each, unto the tomb; hand in hand they ascend from the
+      worm to new cycles of existence. For thee, below are ages; for her, but
+      hours. And for her and thee&mdash;O poor, but mighty one!&mdash;will there
+      be even a joint hereafter! Through what grades and heavens of
+      spiritualised being will her soul have passed when thou, the solitary
+      loiterer, comest from the vapours of the earth to the gates of light!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Son of the Starbeam, thinkest thou that this thought is not with me
+      forever; and seest thou not that I have invoked thee to hearken and
+      minister to my design? Readest thou not my desire and dream to raise the
+      conditions of her being to my own? Thou, Adon-Ai, bathing the celestial
+      joy that makes thy life in the oceans of eternal splendour,&mdash;thou,
+      save by the sympathies of knowledge, canst conjecture not what I, the
+      offspring of mortals, feel&mdash;debarred yet from the objects of the
+      tremendous and sublime ambition that first winged my desires above the
+      clay&mdash;when I see myself compelled to stand in this low world alone. I
+      have sought amongst my tribe for comrades, and in vain. At last I have
+      found a mate. The wild bird and the wild beast have theirs; and my mastery
+      over the malignant tribes of terror can banish their larvae from the path
+      that shall lead her upward, till the air of eternity fits the frame for
+      the elixir that baffles death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And thou hast begun the initiation, and thou art foiled! I know it. Thou
+      hast conjured to her sleep the fairest visions; thou hast invoked the
+      loveliest children of the air to murmur their music to her trance, and her
+      soul heeds them not, and, returning to the earth, escapes from their
+      control. Blind one, wherefore? canst thou not perceive? Because in her
+      soul all is love. There is no intermediate passion with which the things
+      thou wouldst charm to her have association and affinities. Their
+      attraction is but to the desires and cravings of the INTELLECT. What have
+      they with the PASSION that is of earth, and the HOPE that goes direct to
+      heaven?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But can there be no medium&mdash;no link&mdash;in which our souls, as our
+      hearts, can be united, and so mine may have influence over her own?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask me not,&mdash;thou wilt not comprehend me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I adjure thee!&mdash;speak!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When two souls are divided, knowest thou not that a third in which both
+      meet and live is the link between them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do comprehend thee, Adon-Ai,&rdquo; said Zanoni, with a light of more human
+      joy upon his face than it had ever before been seen to wear; &ldquo;and if my
+      destiny, which here is dark to mine eyes, vouchsafes to me the happy lot
+      of the humble,&mdash;if ever there be a child that I may clasp to my bosom
+      and call my own&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is it to be man at last, that thou hast aspired to be more than man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But a child,&mdash;a second Viola!&rdquo; murmured Zanoni, scarcely heeding the
+      Son of Light; &ldquo;a young soul fresh from heaven, that I may rear from the
+      first moment it touches earth,&mdash;whose wings I may train to follow
+      mine through the glories of creation; and through whom the mother herself
+      may be led upward over the realm of death!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beware,&mdash;reflect! Knowest thou not that thy darkest enemy dwells in
+      the Real? Thy wishes bring thee near and nearer to humanity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, humanity is sweet!&rdquo; answered Zanoni.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as the seer spoke, on the glorious face of Adon-Ai there broke a
+      smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0048" id="link2HCH0048">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 4.X.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Aeterna aeternus tribuit, mortalia confert
+     Mortalis; divina Deus, peritura caducus.
+     &ldquo;Aurel. Prud. contra Symmachum,&rdquo; lib. ii.
+
+     (The Eternal gives eternal things, the Mortal gathers mortal
+     things:  God, that which is divine, and the perishable that which
+     is perishable.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS OF ZANONI TO MEJNOUR.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Letter 1.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thou hast not informed me of the progress of thy pupil; and I fear that so
+      differently does circumstance shape the minds of the generations to which
+      we are descended, from the intense and earnest children of the earlier
+      world, that even thy most careful and elaborate guidance would fail, with
+      loftier and purer natures than that of the neophyte thou hast admitted
+      within thy gates. Even that third state of being, which the Indian sage
+      (The Brahmins, speaking of Brahm, say, &ldquo;To the Omniscient the three modes
+      of being&mdash;sleep, waking, and trance&mdash;are not;&rdquo; distinctly
+      recognising trance as a third and coequal condition of being.) rightly
+      recognises as being between the sleep and the waking, and describes
+      imperfectly by the name of TRANCE, is unknown to the children of the
+      Northern world; and few but would recoil to indulge it, regarding its
+      peopled calm as maya and delusion of the mind. Instead of ripening and
+      culturing that airy soil, from which Nature, duly known, can evoke fruits
+      so rich and flowers so fair, they strive but to exclude it from their
+      gaze; they esteem that struggle of the intellect from men&rsquo;s narrow world
+      to the spirit&rsquo;s infinite home, as a disease which the leech must extirpate
+      with pharmacy and drugs, and know not even that it is from this condition
+      of their being, in its most imperfect and infant form, that poetry, music,
+      art&mdash;all that belong to an Idea of Beauty to which neither SLEEPING
+      nor WAKING can furnish archetype and actual semblance&mdash;take their
+      immortal birth. When we, O Mejnour in the far time, were ourselves the
+      neophytes and aspirants, we were of a class to which the actual world was
+      shut and barred. Our forefathers had no object in life but knowledge. From
+      the cradle we were predestined and reared to wisdom as to a priesthood. We
+      commenced research where modern Conjecture closes its faithless wings. And
+      with us, those were common elements of science which the sages of to-day
+      disdain as wild chimeras, or despair of as unfathomable mysteries. Even
+      the fundamental principles, the large yet simple theories of electricity
+      and magnetism, rest obscure and dim in the disputes of their blinded
+      schools; yet, even in our youth, how few ever attained to the first circle
+      of the brotherhood, and, after wearily enjoying the sublime privileges
+      they sought, they voluntarily abandoned the light of the sun, and sunk,
+      without effort, to the grave, like pilgrims in a trackless desert,
+      overawed by the stillness of their solitude, and appalled by the absence
+      of a goal. Thou, in whom nothing seems to live BUT THE DESIRE TO KNOW;
+      thou, who, indifferent whether it leads to weal or to woe, lendest thyself
+      to all who would tread the path of mysterious science, a human book,
+      insensate to the precepts it enounces,&mdash;thou hast ever sought, and
+      often made additions to our number. But to these have only been vouchsafed
+      partial secrets; vanity and passion unfitted them for the rest; and now,
+      without other interest than that of an experiment in science, without
+      love, and without pity, thou exposest this new soul to the hazards of the
+      tremendous ordeal! Thou thinkest that a zeal so inquisitive, a courage so
+      absolute and dauntless, may suffice to conquer, where austerer intellect
+      and purer virtue have so often failed. Thou thinkest, too, that the germ
+      of art that lies in the painter&rsquo;s mind, as it comprehends in itself the
+      entire embryo of power and beauty, may be expanded into the stately flower
+      of the Golden Science. It is a new experiment to thee. Be gentle with thy
+      neophyte, and if his nature disappoint thee in the first stages of the
+      process, dismiss him back to the Real while it is yet time to enjoy the
+      brief and outward life which dwells in the senses, and closes with the
+      tomb. And as I thus admonish thee, O Mejnour, wilt thou smile at my
+      inconsistent hopes? I, who have so invariably refused to initiate others
+      into our mysteries,&mdash;I begin at last to comprehend why the great law,
+      which binds man to his kind, even when seeking most to set himself aloof
+      from their condition, has made thy cold and bloodless science the link
+      between thyself and thy race; why, THOU has sought converts and pupils;
+      why, in seeing life after life voluntarily dropping from our starry order,
+      thou still aspirest to renew the vanished, and repair the lost; why,
+      amidst thy calculations, restless and unceasing as the wheels of Nature
+      herself, thou recoilest from the THOUGHT TO BE ALONE! So with myself; at
+      last I, too, seek a convert, an equal,&mdash;I, too, shudder to be alone!
+      What thou hast warned me of has come to pass. Love reduces all things to
+      itself. Either must I be drawn down to the nature of the beloved, or hers
+      must be lifted to my own. As whatever belongs to true Art has always
+      necessarily had attraction for US, whose very being is in the ideal whence
+      Art descends, so in this fair creature I have learned, at last, the secret
+      that bound me to her at the first glance. The daughter of music,&mdash;music,
+      passing into her being, became poetry. It was not the stage that attracted
+      her, with its hollow falsehoods; it was the land in her own fancy which
+      the stage seemed to centre and represent. There the poetry found a voice,&mdash;there
+      it struggled into imperfect shape; and then (that land insufficient for
+      it) it fell back upon itself. It coloured her thoughts, it suffused her
+      soul; it asked not words, it created not things; it gave birth but to
+      emotions, and lavished itself on dreams. At last came love; and there, as
+      a river into the sea, it poured its restless waves, to become mute and
+      deep and still,&mdash;the everlasting mirror of the heavens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And is it not through this poetry which lies within her that she may be
+      led into the large poetry of the universe! Often I listen to her careless
+      talk, and find oracles in its unconscious beauty, as we find strange
+      virtues in some lonely flower. I see her mind ripening under my eyes; and
+      in its fair fertility what ever-teeming novelties of thought! O Mejnour!
+      how many of our tribe have unravelled the laws of the universe,&mdash;have
+      solved the riddles of the exterior nature, and deduced the light from
+      darkness! And is not the POET, who studies nothing but the human heart, a
+      greater philosopher than all? Knowledge and atheism are incompatible. To
+      know Nature is to know that there must be a God. But does it require this
+      to examine the method and architecture of creation? Methinks, when I look
+      upon a pure mind, however ignorant and childlike, that I see the August
+      and Immaterial One more clearly than in all the orbs of matter which
+      career at His bidding through space.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rightly is it the fundamental decree of our order, that we must impart our
+      secrets only to the pure. The most terrible part of the ordeal is in the
+      temptations that our power affords to the criminal. If it were possible
+      that a malevolent being could attain to our faculties, what disorder it
+      might introduce into the globe! Happy that it is NOT possible; the
+      malevolence would disarm the power. It is in the purity of Viola that I
+      rely, as thou more vainly hast relied on the courage or the genius of thy
+      pupils. Bear me witness, Mejnour! Never since the distant day in which I
+      pierced the Arcana of our knowledge, have I ever sought to make its
+      mysteries subservient to unworthy objects; though, alas! the extension of
+      our existence robs us of a country and a home; though the law that places
+      all science, as all art, in the abstraction from the noisy passions and
+      turbulent ambition of actual life, forbids us to influence the destinies
+      of nations, for which Heaven selects ruder and blinder agencies; yet,
+      wherever have been my wanderings, I have sought to soften distress, and to
+      convert from sin. My power has been hostile only to the guilty; and yet
+      with all our lore, how in each step we are reduced to be but the permitted
+      instruments of the Power that vouchsafes our own, but only to direct it.
+      How all our wisdom shrinks into nought, compared with that which gives the
+      meanest herb its virtues, and peoples the smallest globule with its
+      appropriate world. And while we are allowed at times to influence the
+      happiness of others, how mysteriously the shadows thicken round our own
+      future doom! We cannot be prophets to ourselves! With what trembling hope
+      I nurse the thought that I may preserve to my solitude the light of a
+      living smile!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Extracts from Letter II.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deeming myself not pure enough to initiate so pure a heart, I invoke to
+      her trance those fairest and most tender inhabitants of space that have
+      furnished to poetry, which is the instinctive guess into creation, the
+      ideas of the Glendoveer and Sylph. And these were less pure than her own
+      thoughts, and less tender than her own love! They could not raise her
+      above her human heart, for THAT has a heaven of its own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have just looked on her in sleep,&mdash;I have heard her breathe my
+      name. Alas! that which is so sweet to others has its bitterness to me; for
+      I think how soon the time may come when that sleep will be without a
+      dream,&mdash;when the heart that dictates the name will be cold, and the
+      lips that utter it be dumb. What a twofold shape there is in love! If we
+      examine it coarsely,&mdash;if we look but on its fleshy ties, its
+      enjoyments of a moment, its turbulent fever and its dull reaction,&mdash;how
+      strange it seems that this passion should be the supreme mover of the
+      world; that it is this which has dictated the greatest sacrifices, and
+      influenced all societies and all times; that to this the loftiest and
+      loveliest genius has ever consecrated its devotion; that, but for love,
+      there were no civilisation, no music, no poetry, no beauty, no life beyond
+      the brute&rsquo;s.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But examine it in its heavenlier shape,&mdash;in its utter abnegation of
+      self; in its intimate connection with all that is most delicate and subtle
+      in the spirit,&mdash;its power above all that is sordid in existence; its
+      mastery over the idols of the baser worship; its ability to create a
+      palace of the cottage, an oasis in the desert, a summer in the Iceland,&mdash;where
+      it breathes, and fertilises, and glows; and the wonder rather becomes how
+      so few regard it in its holiest nature. What the sensual call its
+      enjoyments, are the least of its joys. True love is less a passion than a
+      symbol. Mejnour, shall the time come when I can speak to thee of Viola as
+      a thing that was?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Extract from Letter III.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Knowest thou that of late I have sometimes asked myself, &ldquo;Is there no
+      guilt in the knowledge that has so divided us from our race?&rdquo; It is true
+      that the higher we ascend the more hateful seem to us the vices of the
+      short-lived creepers of the earth,&mdash;the more the sense of the
+      goodness of the All-good penetrates and suffuses us, and the more
+      immediately does our happiness seem to emanate from him. But, on the other
+      hand, how many virtues must lie dead in those who live in the world of
+      death, and refuse to die! Is not this sublime egotism, this state of
+      abstraction and reverie,&mdash;this self-wrapped and self-dependent
+      majesty of existence, a resignation of that nobility which incorporates
+      our own welfare, our joys, our hopes, our fears with others? To live on in
+      no dread of foes, undegraded by infirmity, secure through the cares, and
+      free from the disease of flesh, is a spectacle that captivates our pride.
+      And yet dost thou not more admire him who dies for another? Since I have
+      loved her, Mejnour, it seems almost cowardice to elude the grave which
+      devours the hearts that wrap us in their folds. I feel it,&mdash;the earth
+      grows upon my spirit. Thou wert right; eternal age, serene and
+      passionless, is a happier boon than eternal youth, with its yearnings and
+      desires. Until we can be all spirit, the tranquillity of solitude must be
+      indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Extracts from Letter IV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have received thy communication. What! is it so? Has thy pupil
+      disappointed thee? Alas, poor pupil! But&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (Here follow comments on those passages in Glyndon&rsquo;s life already known to
+      the reader, or about to be made so, with earnest adjurations to Mejnour to
+      watch yet over the fate of his scholar.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I cherish the same desire, with a warmer heart. My pupil! how the
+      terrors that shall encompass thine ordeal warn me from the task! Once more
+      I will seek the Son of Light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes; Adon-Ai, long deaf to my call, at last has descended to my vision,
+      and left behind him the glory of his presence in the shape of Hope. Oh,
+      not impossible, Viola,&mdash;not impossible, that we yet may be united,
+      soul with soul!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Extract from Letter V.&mdash;(Many months after the last.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mejnour, awake from thine apathy,&mdash;rejoice! A new soul will be born
+      to the world,&mdash;a new soul that shall call me father. Ah, if they for
+      whom exist all the occupations and resources of human life,&mdash;if they
+      can thrill with exquisite emotion at the thought of hailing again their
+      own childhood in the faces of their children; if in that birth they are
+      born once more into the holy Innocence which is the first state of
+      existence; if they can feel that on man devolves almost an angel&rsquo;s duty,
+      when he has a life to guide from the cradle, and a soul to nurture for the
+      heaven,&mdash;what to me must be the rapture to welcome an inheritor of
+      all the gifts which double themselves in being shared! How sweet the power
+      to watch, and to guard,&mdash;to instil the knowledge, to avert the evil,
+      and to guide back the river of life in a richer and broader and deeper
+      stream to the paradise from which it flows! And beside that river our
+      souls shall meet, sweet mother. Our child shall supply the sympathy that
+      fails as yet; and what shape shall haunt thee, what terror shall dismay,
+      when thy initiation is beside the cradle of thy child!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0049" id="link2HCH0049">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 4.XI.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     They thus beguile the way
+     Untill the blustring storme is overblowne,
+     When weening to returne whence they did stray,
+     They cannot finde that path which first was showne,
+     But wander to and fro in waies unknowne.
+     &mdash;Spenser&rsquo;s &ldquo;Faerie Queene,&rdquo; book i. canto i. st. x.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Yes, Viola, thou art another being than when, by the threshold of thy
+      Italian home, thou didst follow thy dim fancies through the Land of
+      Shadow; or when thou didst vainly seek to give voice to an ideal beauty,
+      on the boards where illusion counterfeits earth and heaven for an hour,
+      till the weary sense, awaking, sees but the tinsel and the scene-shifter.
+      Thy spirit reposes in its own happiness. Its wanderings have found a goal.
+      In a moment there often dwells the sense of eternity; for when profoundly
+      happy, we know that it is impossible to die. Whenever the soul FEELS
+      ITSELF, it feels everlasting life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The initiation is deferred,&mdash;thy days and nights are left to no other
+      visions than those with which a contented heart enchants a guileless
+      fancy. Glendoveers and Sylphs, pardon me if I question whether those
+      visions are not lovelier than yourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They stand by the beach, and see the sun sinking into the sea. How long
+      now have they dwelt on that island? What matters!&mdash;it may be months,
+      or years&mdash;what matters! Why should I, or they, keep account of that
+      happy time? As in the dream of a moment ages may seem to pass, so shall we
+      measure transport or woe,&mdash;by the length of the dream, or the number
+      of emotions that the dream involves?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun sinks slowly down; the air is arid and oppressive; on the sea, the
+      stately vessel lies motionless; on the shore, no leaf trembles on the
+      trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Viola drew nearer to Zanoni. A presentiment she could not define made her
+      heart beat more quickly; and, looking into his face, she was struck with
+      its expression: it was anxious, abstracted, perturbed. &ldquo;This stillness
+      awes me,&rdquo; she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni did not seem to hear her. He muttered to himself, and his eyes
+      gazed round restlessly. She knew not why, but that gaze, which seemed to
+      pierce into space,&mdash;that muttered voice in some foreign language&mdash;revived
+      dimly her earlier superstitions. She was more fearful since the hour when
+      she knew that she was to be a mother. Strange crisis in the life of woman,
+      and in her love! Something yet unborn begins already to divide her heart
+      with that which had been before its only monarch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look on me, Zanoni,&rdquo; she said, pressing his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned: &ldquo;Thou art pale, Viola; thy hand trembles!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true. I feel as if some enemy were creeping near us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the instinct deceives thee not. An enemy is indeed at hand. I see it
+      through the heavy air; I hear it through the silence: the Ghostly One,&mdash;the
+      Destroyer, the PESTILENCE! Ah, seest thou how the leaves swarm with
+      insects, only by an effort visible to the eye. They follow the breath of
+      the plague!&rdquo; As he spoke, a bird fell from the boughs at Viola&rsquo;s feet; it
+      fluttered, it writhed an instant, and was dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Viola!&rdquo; cried Zanoni, passionately, &ldquo;that is death. Dost thou not
+      fear to die?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To leave thee? Ah, yes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if I could teach thee how Death may be defied; if I could arrest for
+      thy youth the course of time; if I could&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused abruptly, for Viola&rsquo;s eyes spoke only terror; her cheek and lips
+      were pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak not thus,&mdash;look not thus,&rdquo; she said, recoiling from him. &ldquo;You
+      dismay me. Ah, speak not thus, or I should tremble,&mdash;no, not for
+      myself, but for thy child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thy child! But wouldst thou reject for thy child the same glorious boon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Zanoni!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sun has sunk from our eyes, but to rise on those of others. To
+      disappear from this world is to live in the world afar. Oh, lover,&mdash;oh,
+      husband!&rdquo; she continued, with sudden energy, &ldquo;tell me that thou didst but
+      jest,&mdash;that thou didst but trifle with my folly! There is less terror
+      in the pestilence than in thy words.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni&rsquo;s brow darkened; he looked at her in silence for some moments, and
+      then said, almost severely,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What hast thou known of me to distrust?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, pardon, pardon!&mdash;nothing!&rdquo; cried Viola, throwing herself on his
+      breast, and bursting into tears. &ldquo;I will not believe even thine own words,
+      if they seem to wrong thee!&rdquo; He kissed the tears from her eyes, but made
+      no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And ah!&rdquo; she resumed, with an enchanting and child-like smile, &ldquo;if thou
+      wouldst give me a charm against the pestilence! see, I will take it from
+      thee.&rdquo; And she laid her hand on a small, antique amulet that he wore on
+      his breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou knowest how often this has made me jealous of the past; surely some
+      love-gift, Zanoni? But no, thou didst not love the giver as thou dost me.
+      Shall I steal thine amulet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Infant!&rdquo; said Zanoni, tenderly; &ldquo;she who placed this round my neck deemed
+      it indeed a charm, for she had superstitions like thyself; but to me it is
+      more than the wizard&rsquo;s spell,&mdash;it is the relic of a sweet vanished
+      time when none who loved me could distrust.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He said these words in a tone of such melancholy reproach that it went to
+      the heart of Viola; but the tone changed into a solemnity which chilled
+      back the gush of her feelings as he resumed: &ldquo;And this, Viola, one day,
+      perhaps, I will transfer from my breast to thine; yes, whenever thou shalt
+      comprehend me better,&mdash;WHENEVER THE LAWS OF OUR BEING SHALL BE THE
+      SAME!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He moved on gently. They returned slowly home; but fear still was in the
+      heart of Viola, though she strove to shake it off. Italian and Catholic
+      she was, with all the superstitions of land and sect. She stole to her
+      chamber and prayed before a little relic of San Gennaro, which the priest
+      of her house had given to her in childhood, and which had accompanied her
+      in all her wanderings. She had never deemed it possible to part with it
+      before. Now, if there was a charm against the pestilence, did she fear the
+      pestilence for herself? The next morning, when he awoke, Zanoni found the
+      relic of the saint suspended with his mystic amulet round his neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! thou wilt have nothing to fear from the pestilence now,&rdquo; said Viola,
+      between tears and smiles; &ldquo;and when thou wouldst talk to me again as thou
+      didst last night, the saint shall rebuke thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, Zanoni, can there ever indeed be commune of thought and spirit,
+      except with equals?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, the plague broke out,&mdash;the island home must be abandoned. Mighty
+      Seer, THOU HAST NO POWER TO SAVE THOSE WHOM THOU LOVEST! Farewell, thou
+      bridal roof!&mdash;sweet resting-place from care, farewell! Climates as
+      soft may greet ye, O lovers,&mdash;skies as serene, and waters as blue and
+      calm; but THAT TIME,&mdash;can it ever more return? Who shall say that the
+      heart does not change with the scene,&mdash;the place where we first dwelt
+      with the beloved one? Every spot THERE has so many memories which the
+      place only can recall. The past that haunts it seems to command such
+      constancy in the future. If a thought less kind, less trustful, enter
+      within us, the sight of a tree under which a vow has been exchanged, a
+      tear has been kissed away, restores us again to the hours of the first
+      divine illusion. But in a home where nothing speaks of the first nuptials,
+      where there is no eloquence of association, no holy burial-places of
+      emotions, whose ghosts are angels!&mdash;yes, who that has gone through
+      the sad history of affection will tell us that the heart changes not with
+      the scene! Blow fair, ye favouring winds; cheerily swell, ye sails; away
+      from the land where death has come to snatch the sceptre of Love! The
+      shores glide by; new coasts succeed to the green hills and orange-groves
+      of the Bridal Isle. From afar now gleam in the moonlight the columns, yet
+      extant, of a temple which the Athenian dedicated to wisdom; and, standing
+      on the bark that bounded on in the freshening gale, the votary who had
+      survived the goddess murmured to himself,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has the wisdom of ages brought me no happier hours than those common to
+      the shepherd and the herdsman, with no world beyond their village, no
+      aspiration beyond the kiss and the smile of home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the moon, resting alike over the ruins of the temple of the departed
+      creed, over the hut of the living peasant, over the immemorial
+      mountain-top, and the perishable herbage that clothed its sides, seemed to
+      smile back its answer of calm disdain to the being who, perchance, might
+      have seen the temple built, and who, in his inscrutable existence, might
+      behold the mountain shattered from its base.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0058" id="link2H_4_0058">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK V. &mdash; THE EFFECTS OF THE ELIXIR.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0050" id="link2HCH0050">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 5.I.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Frommet&rsquo;s den Schleier aufzuheben,
+     Wo das nahe Schreckness droht?
+     Nur das Irrthum ist das Leben
+     Und das Wissen ist der Tod,
+
+     &mdash;Schiller, Kassandro.
+
+     Delusion is the life we live
+     And knowledge death; oh wherefore, then,
+     To sight the coming evils give
+     And lift the veil of Fate to Man?
+
+     Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust.
+
+     (Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast.)
+
+     ....
+
+     Was stehst du so, und blickst erstaunt hinaus?
+
+     (Why standest thou so, and lookest out astonished?)
+
+     &mdash;&ldquo;Faust.&rdquo;
+  </pre>
+    <p>
+      It will be remembered that we left Master Paolo by the bedside of Glyndon;
+      and as, waking from that profound slumber, the recollections of the past
+      night came horribly back to his mind, the Englishman uttered a cry, and
+      covered his face with his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good morrow, Excellency!&rdquo; said Paolo, gayly. &ldquo;Corpo di Bacco, you have
+      slept soundly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sound of this man&rsquo;s voice, so lusty, ringing, and healthful, served to
+      scatter before it the phantasma that yet haunted Glyndon&rsquo;s memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose erect in his bed. &ldquo;And where did you find me? Why are you here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did I find you!&rdquo; repeated Paolo, in surprise,&mdash;&ldquo;in your bed,
+      to be sure. Why am I here!&mdash;because the Padrone bade me await your
+      waking, and attend your commands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Padrone, Mejnour!&mdash;is he arrived?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arrived and departed, signor. He has left this letter for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give it me, and wait without till I am dressed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At your service. I have bespoke an excellent breakfast: you must be
+      hungry. I am a very tolerable cook; a monk&rsquo;s son ought to be! You will be
+      startled at my genius in the dressing of fish. My singing, I trust, will
+      not disturb you. I always sing while I prepare a salad; it harmonises the
+      ingredients.&rdquo; And slinging his carbine over his shoulder, Paolo sauntered
+      from the room, and closed the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon was already deep in the contents of the following letter:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I first received thee as my pupil, I promised Zanoni, if convinced
+      by thy first trials that thou couldst but swell, not the number of our
+      order, but the list of the victims who have aspired to it in vain, I would
+      not rear thee to thine own wretchedness and doom,&mdash;I would dismiss
+      thee back to the world. I fulfil my promise. Thine ordeal has been the
+      easiest that neophyte ever knew. I asked for nothing but abstinence from
+      the sensual, and a brief experiment of thy patience and thy faith. Go back
+      to thine own world; thou hast no nature to aspire to ours!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was I who prepared Paolo to receive thee at the revel. It was I who
+      instigated the old beggar to ask thee for alms. It was I who left open the
+      book that thou couldst not read without violating my command. Well, thou
+      hast seen what awaits thee at the threshold of knowledge. Thou hast
+      confronted the first foe that menaces him whom the senses yet grasp and
+      inthrall. Dost thou wonder that I close upon thee the gates forever? Dost
+      thou not comprehend, at last, that it needs a soul tempered and purified
+      and raised, not by external spells, but by its own sublimity and valour,
+      to pass the threshold and disdain the foe? Wretch! all my silence avails
+      nothing for the rash, for the sensual,&mdash;for him who desires our
+      secrets but to pollute them to gross enjoyments and selfish vice. How have
+      the imposters and sorcerers of the earlier times perished by their very
+      attempt to penetrate the mysteries that should purify, and not deprave!
+      They have boasted of the Philosopher&rsquo;s Stone, and died in rags; of the
+      immortal elixir, and sunk to their grave, grey before their time. Legends
+      tell you that the fiend rent them into fragments. Yes; the fiend of their
+      own unholy desires and criminal designs! What they coveted, thou covetest;
+      and if thou hadst the wings of a seraph thou couldst soar not from the
+      slough of thy mortality. Thy desire for knowledge, but petulant
+      presumption; thy thirst for happiness, but the diseased longing for the
+      unclean and muddied waters of corporeal pleasure; thy very love, which
+      usually elevates even the mean, a passion that calculates treason amidst
+      the first glow of lust. THOU one of us; thou a brother of the August
+      Order; thou an Aspirant to the Stars that shine in the Shemaia of the
+      Chaldean lore! The eagle can raise but the eaglet to the sun. I abandon
+      thee to thy twilight!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, alas for thee, disobedient and profane! thou hast inhaled the
+      elixir; thou hast attracted to thy presence a ghastly and remorseless foe.
+      Thou thyself must exorcise the phantom thou hast raised. Thou must return
+      to the world; but not without punishment and strong effort canst thou
+      regain the calm and the joy of the life thou hast left behind. This, for
+      thy comfort, will I tell thee: he who has drawn into his frame even so
+      little of the volatile and vital energy of the aerial juices as thyself,
+      has awakened faculties that cannot sleep,&mdash;faculties that may yet,
+      with patient humility, with sound faith, and the courage that is not of
+      the body like thine, but of the resolute and virtuous mind, attain, if not
+      to the knowledge that reigns above, to high achievement in the career of
+      men. Thou wilt find the restless influence in all that thou wouldst
+      undertake. Thy heart, amidst vulgar joys will aspire to something holier;
+      thy ambition, amidst coarse excitement, to something beyond thy reach. But
+      deem not that this of itself will suffice for glory. Equally may the
+      craving lead thee to shame and guilt. It is but an imperfect and new-born
+      energy which will not suffer thee to repose. As thou directest it, must
+      thou believe it to be the emanation of thine evil genius or thy good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But woe to thee! insect meshed in the web in which thou hast entangled
+      limbs and wings! Thou hast not only inhaled the elixir, thou hast conjured
+      the spectre; of all the tribes of the space, no foe is so malignant to
+      man,&mdash;and thou hast lifted the veil from thy gaze. I cannot restore
+      to thee the happy dimness of thy vision. Know, at least, that all of us&mdash;the
+      highest and the wisest&mdash;who have, in sober truth, passed beyond the
+      threshold, have had, as our first fearful task, to master and subdue its
+      grisly and appalling guardian. Know that thou CANST deliver thyself from
+      those livid eyes,&mdash;know that, while they haunt, they cannot harm, if
+      thou resistest the thoughts to which they tempt, and the horror they
+      engender. DREAD THEM MOST WHEN THOU BEHOLDEST THEM NOT. And thus, son of
+      the worm, we part! All that I can tell thee to encourage, yet to warn and
+      to guide, I have told thee in these lines. Not from me, from thyself has
+      come the gloomy trial from which I yet trust thou wilt emerge into peace.
+      Type of the knowledge that I serve, I withhold no lesson from the pure
+      aspirant; I am a dark enigma to the general seeker. As man&rsquo;s only
+      indestructible possession is his memory, so it is not in mine art to
+      crumble into matter the immaterial thoughts that have sprung up within thy
+      breast. The tyro might shatter this castle to the dust, and topple down
+      the mountain to the plain. The master has no power to say, &lsquo;Exist no
+      more,&rsquo; to one THOUGHT that his knowledge has inspired. Thou mayst change
+      the thoughts into new forms; thou mayst rarefy and sublimate it into a
+      finer spirit,&mdash;but thou canst not annihilate that which has no home
+      but in the memory, no substance but the idea. EVERY THOUGHT IS A SOUL!
+      Vainly, therefore, would I or thou undo the past, or restore to thee the
+      gay blindness of thy youth. Thou must endure the influence of the elixir
+      thou hast inhaled; thou must wrestle with the spectre thou hast invoked!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The letter fell from Glyndon&rsquo;s hand. A sort of stupor succeeded to the
+      various emotions which had chased each other in the perusal,&mdash;a
+      stupor resembling that which follows the sudden destruction of any ardent
+      and long-nursed hope in the human heart, whether it be of love, of
+      avarice, of ambition. The loftier world for which he had so thirsted,
+      sacrificed, and toiled, was closed upon him &ldquo;forever,&rdquo; and by his own
+      faults of rashness and presumption. But Glyndon&rsquo;s was not of that nature
+      which submits long to condemn itself. His indignation began to kindle
+      against Mejnour, who owned he had tempted, and who now abandoned him,&mdash;abandoned
+      him to the presence of a spectre. The mystic&rsquo;s reproaches stung rather
+      than humbled him. What crime had he committed to deserve language so harsh
+      and disdainful? Was it so deep a debasement to feel pleasure in the smile
+      and the eyes of Fillide? Had not Zanoni himself confessed love for Viola;
+      had he not fled with her as his companion? Glyndon never paused to
+      consider if there are no distinctions between one kind of love and
+      another. Where, too, was the great offence of yielding to a temptation
+      which only existed for the brave? Had not the mystic volume which Mejnour
+      had purposely left open, bid him but &ldquo;Beware of fear&rdquo;? Was not, then,
+      every wilful provocative held out to the strongest influences of the human
+      mind, in the prohibition to enter the chamber, in the possession of the
+      key which excited his curiosity, in the volume which seemed to dictate the
+      mode by which the curiosity was to be gratified? As rapidly these thoughts
+      passed over him, he began to consider the whole conduct of Mejnour either
+      as a perfidious design to entrap him to his own misery, or as the trick of
+      an imposter, who knew that he could not realise the great professions he
+      had made. On glancing again over the more mysterious threats and warnings
+      in Mejnour&rsquo;s letter, they seemed to assume the language of mere parable
+      and allegory,&mdash;the jargon of the Platonists and Pythagoreans. By
+      little and little, he began to consider that the very spectra he had seen&mdash;even
+      that one phantom so horrid in its aspect&mdash;were but the delusions
+      which Mejnour&rsquo;s science had enable him to raise. The healthful sunlight,
+      filling up every cranny in his chamber, seemed to laugh away the terrors
+      of the past night. His pride and his resentment nerved his habitual
+      courage; and when, having hastily dressed himself, he rejoined Paolo, it
+      was with a flushed cheek and a haughty step.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So, Paolo,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;the Padrone, as you call him, told you to expect
+      and welcome me at your village feast?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did so by a message from a wretched old cripple. This surprised me at
+      the time, for I thought he was far distant; but these great philosophers
+      make a joke of two or three hundred leagues.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did you not tell me you had heard from Mejnour?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because the old cripple forbade me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you not see the man afterwards during the dance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Excellency.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Humph!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allow me to serve you,&rdquo; said Paolo, piling Glyndon&rsquo;s plate, and then
+      filling his glass. &ldquo;I wish, signor, now the Padrone is gone,&mdash;not,&rdquo;
+       added Paolo, as he cast rather a frightened and suspicious glance round
+      the room, &ldquo;that I mean to say anything disrespectful of him,&mdash;I wish,
+      I say, now that he is gone, that you would take pity on yourself, and ask
+      your own heart what your youth was meant for? Not to bury yourself alive
+      in these old ruins, and endanger body and soul by studies which I am sure
+      no saint could approve of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are the saints so partial, then, to your own occupations, Master Paolo?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; answered the bandit, a little confused, &ldquo;a gentleman with plenty of
+      pistoles in his purse need not, of necessity, make it his profession to
+      take away the pistoles of other people! It is a different thing for us
+      poor rogues. After all, too, I always devote a tithe of my gains to the
+      Virgin; and I share the rest charitably with the poor. But eat, drink,
+      enjoy yourself; be absolved by your confessor for any little peccadilloes
+      and don&rsquo;t run too long scores at a time,&mdash;that&rsquo;s my advice. Your
+      health, Excellency! Pshaw, signor, fasting, except on the days prescribed
+      to a good Catholic, only engenders phantoms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Phantoms!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; the devil always tempts the empty stomach. To covet, to hate, to
+      thieve, to rob, and to murder,&mdash;these are the natural desires of a
+      man who is famishing. With a full belly, signor, we are at peace with all
+      the world. That&rsquo;s right; you like the partridge! Cospetto! when I myself
+      have passed two or three days in the mountains, with nothing from sunset
+      to sunrise but a black crust and an onion, I grow as fierce as a wolf.
+      That&rsquo;s not the worst, too. In these times I see little imps dancing before
+      me. Oh, yes; fasting is as full of spectres as a field of battle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon thought there was some sound philosophy in the reasoning of his
+      companion; and certainly the more he ate and drank, the more the
+      recollection of the past night and of Mejnour&rsquo;s desertion faded from his
+      mind. The casement was open, the breeze blew, the sun shone,&mdash;all
+      Nature was merry; and merry as Nature herself grew Maestro Paolo. He
+      talked of adventures, of travel, of women, with a hearty gusto that had
+      its infection. But Glyndon listened yet more complacently when Paolo
+      turned with an arch smile to praises of the eye, the teeth, the ankles,
+      and the shape of the handsome Fillide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This man, indeed, seemed the very personation of animal sensual life. He
+      would have been to Faust a more dangerous tempter than Mephistopheles.
+      There was no sneer on HIS lip at the pleasures which animated his voice.
+      To one awaking to a sense of the vanities in knowledge, this reckless
+      ignorant joyousness of temper was a worse corrupter than all the icy
+      mockeries of a learned Fiend. But when Paolo took his leave, with a
+      promise to return the next day, the mind of the Englishman again settled
+      back to a graver and more thoughtful mood. The elixir seemed, in truth, to
+      have left the refining effects Mejnour had ascribed to it. As Glyndon
+      paced to and fro the solitary corridor, or, pausing, gazed upon the
+      extended and glorious scenery that stretched below, high thoughts of
+      enterprise and ambition&mdash;bright visions of glory&mdash;passed in
+      rapid succession through his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mejnour denies me his science. Well,&rdquo; said the painter, proudly, &ldquo;he has
+      not robbed me of my art.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What! Clarence Glyndon, dost thou return to that from which thy career
+      commenced? Was Zanoni right after all?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found himself in the chamber of the mystic; not a vessel,&mdash;not an
+      herb! the solemn volume is vanished,&mdash;the elixir shall sparkle for
+      him no more! But still in the room itself seems to linger the atmosphere
+      of a charm. Faster and fiercer it burns within thee, the desire to
+      achieve, to create! Thou longest for a life beyond the sensual!&mdash;but
+      the life that is permitted to all genius,&mdash;that which breathes
+      through the immortal work, and endures in the imperishable name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where are the implements for thine art? Tush!&mdash;when did the true
+      workman ever fail to find his tools? Thou art again in thine own chamber,&mdash;the
+      white wall thy canvas, a fragment of charcoal for thy pencil. They
+      suffice, at least, to give outline to the conception that may otherwise
+      vanish with the morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea that thus excited the imagination of the artist was
+      unquestionably noble and august. It was derived from that Egyptian
+      ceremonial which Diodorus has recorded,&mdash;the Judgment of the Dead by
+      the Living (Diod., lib. i.): when the corpse, duly embalmed, is placed by
+      the margin of the Acherusian Lake; and before it may be consigned to the
+      bark which is to bear it across the waters to its final resting-place, it
+      is permitted to the appointed judges to hear all accusations of the past
+      life of the deceased, and, if proved, to deprive the corpse of the rites
+      of sepulture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unconsciously to himself, it was Mejnour&rsquo;s description of this custom,
+      which he had illustrated by several anecdotes not to be found in books,
+      that now suggested the design to the artist, and gave it reality and
+      force. He supposed a powerful and guilty king whom in life scarce a
+      whisper had dared to arraign, but against whom, now the breath was gone,
+      came the slave from his fetters, the mutilated victim from his dungeon,
+      livid and squalid as if dead themselves, invoking with parched lips the
+      justice that outlives the grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strange fervour this, O artist! breaking suddenly forth from the mists and
+      darkness which the occult science had spread so long over thy fancies,&mdash;strange
+      that the reaction of the night&rsquo;s terror and the day&rsquo;s disappointment
+      should be back to thine holy art! Oh, how freely goes the bold hand over
+      the large outline! How, despite those rude materials, speaks forth no more
+      the pupil, but the master! Fresh yet from the glorious elixir, how thou
+      givest to thy creatures the finer life denied to thyself!&mdash;some power
+      not thine own writes the grand symbols on the wall. Behind rises the
+      mighty sepulchre, on the building of which repose to the dead the lives of
+      thousands had been consumed. There sit in a semicircle the solemn judges.
+      Black and sluggish flows the lake. There lies the mummied and royal dead.
+      Dost thou quail at the frown on his lifelike brow? Ha!&mdash;bravely done,
+      O artist!&mdash;up rise the haggard forms!&mdash;pale speak the ghastly
+      faces! Shall not Humanity after death avenge itself on Power? Thy
+      conception, Clarence Glyndon, is a sublime truth; thy design promises
+      renown to genius. Better this magic than the charms of the volume and the
+      vessel. Hour after hour has gone; thou hast lighted the lamp; night sees
+      thee yet at thy labour. Merciful Heaven! what chills the atmosphere; why
+      does the lamp grow wan; why does thy hair bristle? There!&mdash;there!&mdash;there!
+      at the casement! It gazes on thee, the dark, mantled, loathsome thing!
+      There, with their devilish mockery and hateful craft, glare on thee those
+      horrid eyes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood and gazed,&mdash;it was no delusion. It spoke not, moved not,
+      till, unable to bear longer that steady and burning look, he covered his
+      face with his hands. With a start, with a thrill, he removed them; he felt
+      the nearer presence of the nameless. There it cowered on the floor beside
+      his design; and lo! the figures seemed to start from the wall! Those pale
+      accusing figures, the shapes he himself had raised, frowned at him, and
+      gibbered. With a violent effort that convulsed his whole being, and bathed
+      his body in the sweat of agony, the young man mastered his horror. He
+      strode towards the phantom; he endured its eyes; he accosted it with a
+      steady voice; he demanded its purpose and defied its power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, as a wind from a charnel, was heard its voice. What it said,
+      what revealed, it is forbidden the lips to repeat, the hand to record.
+      Nothing save the subtle life that yet animated the frame to which the
+      inhalations of the elixir had given vigour and energy beyond the strength
+      of the strongest, could have survived that awful hour. Better to wake in
+      the catacombs and see the buried rise from their cerements, and hear the
+      ghouls, in their horrid orgies, amongst the festering ghastliness of
+      corruption, than to front those features when the veil was lifted, and
+      listen to that whispered voice!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day Glyndon fled from the ruined castle. With what hopes of
+      starry light had he crossed the threshold; with what memories to shudder
+      evermore at the darkness did he look back at the frown of its time-worn
+      towers!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0051" id="link2HCH0051">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 5.II.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Faust:  Wohin soll es nun gehm?
+     Mephist:  Wohin es Dir gefallt.
+     Wir sehn die kleine, dann die grosse Welt.
+     &ldquo;Faust.&rdquo;
+ 
+     (Faust:  Whither go now!
+     Mephist:  Whither it pleases thee.
+     We see the small world, then the great.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Draw your chair to the fireside, brush clean the hearth, and trim the
+      lights. Oh, home of sleekness, order, substance, comfort! Oh, excellent
+      thing art thou, Matter of Fact!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is some time after the date of the last chapter. Here we are, not in
+      moonlit islands or mouldering castles, but in a room twenty-six feet by
+      twenty-two,&mdash;well carpeted, well cushioned, solid arm-chairs and
+      eight such bad pictures, in such fine frames, upon the walls! Thomas
+      Mervale, Esq., merchant, of London, you are an enviable dog!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the easiest thing in the world for Mervale, on returning from his
+      Continental episode of life, to settle down to his desk,&mdash;his heart
+      had been always there. The death of his father gave him, as a birthright,
+      a high position in a respectable though second-rate firm. To make this
+      establishment first-rate was an honourable ambition,&mdash;it was his! He
+      had lately married, not entirely for money,&mdash;no! he was worldly
+      rather than mercenary. He had no romantic ideas of love; but he was too
+      sensible a man not to know that a wife should be a companion,&mdash;not
+      merely a speculation. He did not care for beauty and genius, but he liked
+      health and good temper, and a certain proportion of useful understanding.
+      He chose a wife from his reason, not his heart, and a very good choice he
+      made. Mrs. Mervale was an excellent young woman,&mdash;bustling, managing,
+      economical, but affectionate and good. She had a will of her own, but was
+      no shrew. She had a great notion of the rights of a wife, and a strong
+      perception of the qualities that insure comfort. She would never have
+      forgiven her husband, had she found him guilty of the most passing fancy
+      for another; but, in return, she had the most admirable sense of propriety
+      herself. She held in abhorrence all levity, all flirtation, all coquetry,&mdash;small
+      vices which often ruin domestic happiness, but which a giddy nature incurs
+      without consideration. But she did not think it right to love a husband
+      over much. She left a surplus of affection, for all her relations, all her
+      friends, some of her acquaintances, and the possibility of a second
+      marriage, should any accident happen to Mr. M. She kept a good table, for
+      it suited their station; and her temper was considered even, though firm;
+      but she could say a sharp thing or two, if Mr. Mervale was not punctual to
+      a moment. She was very particular that he should change his shoes on
+      coming home,&mdash;the carpets were new and expensive. She was not sulky,
+      nor passionate,&mdash;Heaven bless her for that!&mdash;but when displeased
+      she showed it, administered a dignified rebuke, alluded to her own
+      virtues, to her uncle who was an admiral, and to the thirty thousand
+      pounds which she had brought to the object of her choice. But as Mr.
+      Mervale was a good-humoured man, owned his faults, and subscribed to her
+      excellence, the displeasure was soon over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every household has its little disagreements, none fewer than that of Mr.
+      and Mrs. Mervale. Mrs. Mervale, without being improperly fond of dress,
+      paid due attention to it. She was never seen out of her chamber with
+      papers in her hair, nor in that worst of dis-illusions,&mdash;a morning
+      wrapper. At half-past eight every morning Mrs. Mervale was dressed for the
+      day,&mdash;that is, till she re-dressed for dinner,&mdash;her stays well
+      laced, her cap prim, her gowns, winter and summer, of a thick, handsome
+      silk. Ladies at that time wore very short waists; so did Mrs. Mervale. Her
+      morning ornaments were a thick, gold chain, to which was suspended a gold
+      watch,&mdash;none of those fragile dwarfs of mechanism that look so pretty
+      and go so ill, but a handsome repeater which chronicled Father Time to a
+      moment; also a mosaic brooch; also a miniature of her uncle, the admiral,
+      set in a bracelet. For the evening she had two handsome sets,&mdash;necklace,
+      earrings, and bracelets complete,&mdash;one of amethysts, the other
+      topazes. With these, her costume for the most part was a gold-coloured
+      satin and a turban, in which last her picture had been taken. Mrs. Mervale
+      had an aquiline nose, good teeth, fair hair, and light eyelashes, rather a
+      high complexion, what is generally called a fine bust; full cheeks; large
+      useful feet made for walking; large, white hands with filbert nails, on
+      which not a speck of dust had, even in childhood, ever been known to a
+      light. She looked a little older than she really was; but that might arise
+      from a certain air of dignity and the aforesaid aquiline nose. She
+      generally wore short mittens. She never read any poetry but Goldsmith&rsquo;s
+      and Cowper&rsquo;s. She was not amused by novels, though she had no prejudice
+      against them. She liked a play and a pantomime, with a slight supper
+      afterwards. She did not like concerts nor operas. At the beginning of the
+      winter she selected some book to read, and some piece of work to commence.
+      The two lasted her till the spring, when, though she continued to work,
+      she left off reading. Her favourite study was history, which she read
+      through the medium of Dr. Goldsmith. Her favourite author in the belles
+      lettres was, of course, Dr. Johnson. A worthier woman, or one more
+      respected, was not to be found, except in an epitaph!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was an autumn night. Mr. and Mrs. Mervale, lately returned from an
+      excursion to Weymouth, are in the drawing-room,&mdash;&ldquo;the dame sat on
+      this side, the man sat on that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I assure you, my dear, that Glyndon, with all his eccentricities,
+      was a very engaging, amiable fellow. You would certainly have liked him,&mdash;all
+      the women did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Thomas, you will forgive the remark,&mdash;but that expression of
+      yours, &lsquo;all the WOMEN&lsquo;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&mdash;you are right. I meant to say that he was a
+      general favourite with your charming sex.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand,&mdash;rather a frivolous character.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Frivolous! no, not exactly; a little unsteady,&mdash;very odd, but
+      certainly not frivolous; presumptuous and headstrong in character, but
+      modest and shy in his manners, rather too much so,&mdash;just what you
+      like. However, to return; I am seriously uneasy at the accounts I have
+      heard of him to-day. He has been living, it seems, a very strange and
+      irregular life, travelling from place to place, and must have spent
+      already a great deal of money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Apropos of money,&rdquo; said Mrs. Mervale; &ldquo;I fear we must change our butcher;
+      he is certainly in league with the cook.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a pity; his beef is remarkably fine. These London servants are as
+      bad as the Carbonari. But, as I was saying, poor Glyndon&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here a knock was heard at the door. &ldquo;Bless me,&rdquo; said Mrs. Mervale, &ldquo;it is
+      past ten! Who can that possibly be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps your uncle, the admiral,&rdquo; said the husband, with a slight
+      peevishness in his accent. &ldquo;He generally favours us about this hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope, my love, that none of my relations are unwelcome visitors at your
+      house. The admiral is a most entertaining man, and his fortune is entirely
+      at his own disposal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one I respect more,&rdquo; said Mr. Mervale, with emphasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The servant threw open the door, and announced Mr. Glyndon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Glyndon!&mdash;what an extraordinary&mdash;&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Mervale;
+      but before she could conclude the sentence, Glyndon was in the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two friends greeted each other with all the warmth of early
+      recollection and long absence. An appropriate and proud presentation to
+      Mrs. Mervale ensued; and Mrs. Mervale, with a dignified smile, and a
+      furtive glance at his boots, bade her husband&rsquo;s friend welcome to England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon was greatly altered since Mervale had seen him last. Though less
+      than two years had elapsed since then, his fair complexion was more
+      bronzed and manly. Deep lines of care, or thought, or dissipation, had
+      replaced the smooth contour of happy youth. To a manner once gentle and
+      polished had succeeded a certain recklessness of mien, tone, and bearing,
+      which bespoke the habits of a society that cared little for the calm
+      decorums of conventional ease. Still a kind of wild nobleness, not before
+      apparent in him, characterised his aspect, and gave something of dignity
+      to the freedom of his language and gestures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So, then, you are settled, Mervale,&mdash;I need not ask you if you are
+      happy. Worth, sense, wealth, character, and so fair a companion deserve
+      happiness, and command it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you like some tea, Mr. Glyndon?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Mervale, kindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&mdash;no. I propose a more convivial stimulus to my old
+      friend. Wine, Mervale,&mdash;wine, eh!&mdash;or a bowl of old English
+      punch. Your wife will excuse us,&mdash;we will make a night of it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Mervale drew back her chair, and tried not to look aghast. Glyndon
+      did not give his friend time to reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So at last I am in England,&rdquo; he said, looking round the room, with a
+      slight sneer on his lips; &ldquo;surely this sober air must have its influence;
+      surely here I shall be like the rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you been ill, Glyndon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ill, yes. Humph! you have a fine house. Does it contain a spare room for
+      a solitary wanderer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Mervale glanced at his wife, and his wife looked steadily on the
+      carpet. &ldquo;Modest and shy in his manners&mdash;rather too much so!&rdquo; Mrs.
+      Mervale was in the seventh heaven of indignation and amaze!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear?&rdquo; said Mr. Mervale at last, meekly and interogatingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear!&rdquo; returned Mrs. Mervale, innocently and sourly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can make up a room for my old friend, Sarah?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old friend had sunk back on his chair, and, gazing intently on the
+      fire, with his feet at ease upon the fender, seemed to have forgotten his
+      question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Mervale bit her lips, looked thoughtful, and at last coldly replied,
+      &ldquo;Certainly, Mr. Mervale; your friends do right to make themselves at
+      home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that she lighted a candle, and moved majestically from the room. When
+      she returned, the two friends had vanished into Mr. Mervale&rsquo;s study.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twelve o&rsquo;clock struck,&mdash;one o&rsquo;clock, two! Thrice had Mrs. Mervale
+      sent into the room to know,&mdash;first, if they wanted anything;
+      secondly, if Mr. Glyndon slept on a mattress or feather-bed; thirdly, to
+      inquire if Mr. Glyndon&rsquo;s trunk, which he had brought with him, should be
+      unpacked. And to the answer to all these questions was added, in a loud
+      voice from the visitor,&mdash;a voice that pierced from the kitchen to the
+      attic,&mdash;&ldquo;Another bowl! stronger, if you please, and be quick with
+      it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Mr. Mervale appeared in the conjugal chamber, not penitent, nor
+      apologetic,&mdash;no, not a bit of it. His eyes twinkled, his cheek
+      flushed, his feet reeled; he sang,&mdash;Mr. Thomas Mervale positively
+      sang!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Mervale! is it possible, sir&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Old King Cole was a merry old soul&mdash;&lsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Mervale! sir!&mdash;leave me alone, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;And a merry old soul was he&mdash;&lsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What an example to the servants!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;And he called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl&mdash;&lsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t behave yourself, sir, I shall call&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Call for his fiddlers three!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0052" id="link2HCH0052">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 5.III.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     In der Welt weit
+     Aus der Einsamkeit
+     Wollen sie Dich locken.
+     &mdash;&ldquo;Faust.&rdquo;
+ 
+     (In the wide world, out of the solitude, will these allure thee.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, at breakfast, Mrs. Mervale looked as if all the wrongs
+      of injured woman sat upon her brow. Mr. Mervale seemed the picture of
+      remorseful guilt and avenging bile. He said little, except to complain of
+      headache, and to request the eggs to be removed from the table. Clarence
+      Glyndon&mdash;impervious, unconscious, unailing, impenitent&mdash;was in
+      noisy spirits, and talked for three.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Mervale! he has lost the habit of good-fellowship, madam. Another
+      night or two, and he will be himself again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; said Mrs. Mervale, launching a premeditated sentence with more than
+      Johnsonian dignity, &ldquo;permit me to remind you that Mr. Mervale is now a
+      married man, the destined father of a family, and the present master of a
+      household.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precisely the reasons why I envy him so much. I myself have a great mind
+      to marry. Happiness is contagious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you still take to painting?&rdquo; asked Mervale, languidly, endeavouring to
+      turn the tables on his guest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no; I have adopted your advice. No art, no ideal,&mdash;nothing
+      loftier than Commonplace for me now. If I were to paint again, I
+      positively think YOU would purchase my pictures. Make haste and finish
+      your breakfast, man; I wish to consult you. I have come to England to see
+      after my affairs. My ambition is to make money; your counsels and
+      experience cannot fail to assist me here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you were soon disenchanted of your Philosopher&rsquo;s Stone! You must
+      know, Sarah, that when I last left Glyndon, he was bent upon turning
+      alchemist and magician.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are witty to-day, Mr. Mervale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon my honour it is true, I told you so before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon rose abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why revive those recollections of folly and presumption? Have I not said
+      that I have returned to my native land to pursue the healthful avocations
+      of my kind! Oh, yes! what so healthful, so noble, so fitted to our nature,
+      as what you call the Practical Life? If we have faculties, what is their
+      use, but to sell them to advantage! Buy knowledge as we do our goods; buy
+      it at the cheapest market, sell it at the dearest. Have you not
+      breakfasted yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The friends walked into the streets, and Mervale shrank from the irony
+      with which Glyndon complimented him on his respectability, his station,
+      his pursuits, his happy marriage, and his eight pictures in their handsome
+      frames. Formerly the sober Mervale had commanded an influence over his
+      friend: HIS had been the sarcasm; Glyndon&rsquo;s the irresolute shame at his
+      own peculiarities. Now this position was reversed. There was a fierce
+      earnestness in Glyndon&rsquo;s altered temper which awed and silenced the quiet
+      commonplace of his friend&rsquo;s character. He seemed to take a malignant
+      delight in persuading himself that the sober life of the world was
+      contemptible and base.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;how right you were to tell me to marry respectably;
+      to have a solid position; to live in decorous fear of the world and one&rsquo;s
+      wife; and to command the envy of the poor, the good opinion of the rich.
+      You have practised what you preach. Delicious existence! The merchant&rsquo;s
+      desk and the curtain lecture! Ha! ha! Shall we have another night of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mervale, embarrassed and irritated, turned the conversation upon Glyndon&rsquo;s
+      affairs. He was surprised at the knowledge of the world which the artist
+      seemed to have suddenly acquired, surprised still more at the acuteness
+      and energy with which he spoke of the speculations most in vogue at the
+      market. Yes; Glyndon was certainly in earnest: he desired to be rich and
+      respectable,&mdash;and to make at least ten per cent for his money!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After spending some days with the merchant, during which time he contrived
+      to disorganise all the mechanism of the house, to turn night into day,
+      harmony into discord, to drive poor Mrs. Mervale half-distracted, and to
+      convince her husband that he was horribly hen-pecked, the ill-omened
+      visitor left them as suddenly as he had arrived. He took a house of his
+      own; he sought the society of persons of substance; he devoted himself to
+      the money-market; he seemed to have become a man of business; his schemes
+      were bold and colossal; his calculations rapid and profound. He startled
+      Mervale by his energy, and dazzled him by his success. Mervale began to
+      envy him,&mdash;to be discontented with his own regular and slow gains.
+      When Glyndon bought or sold in the funds, wealth rolled upon him like the
+      tide of a sea; what years of toil could not have done for him in art, a
+      few months, by a succession of lucky chances, did for him in speculation.
+      Suddenly, however, he relaxed his exertions; new objects of ambition
+      seemed to attract him. If he heard a drum in the streets, what glory like
+      the soldier&rsquo;s? If a new poem were published, what renown like the poet&rsquo;s?
+      He began works in literature, which promised great excellence, to throw
+      them aside in disgust. All at once he abandoned the decorous and formal
+      society he had courted; he joined himself, with young and riotous
+      associates; he plunged into the wildest excesses of the great city, where
+      Gold reigns alike over Toil and Pleasure. Through all he carried with him
+      a certain power and heat of soul. In all society he aspired to command,&mdash;in
+      all pursuits to excel. Yet whatever the passion of the moment, the
+      reaction was terrible in its gloom. He sank, at times, into the most
+      profound and the darkest reveries. His fever was that of a mind that would
+      escape memory,&mdash;his repose, that of a mind which the memory seizes
+      again, and devours as a prey. Mervale now saw little of him; they shunned
+      each other. Glyndon had no confidant, and no friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0053" id="link2HCH0053">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 5.IV.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Ich fuhle Dich mir nahe;
+     Die Einsamkeit belebt;
+     Wie uber seinen Welten
+     Der Unsichtbare schwebt.
+     Uhland.
+
+     (I feel thee near to me,
+     The loneliness takes life,&mdash;As over its world
+     The Invisible hovers.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      From this state of restlessness and agitation rather than continuous
+      action, Glyndon was aroused by a visitor who seemed to exercise the most
+      salutary influence over him. His sister, an orphan with himself, had
+      resided in the country with her aunt. In the early years of hope and home
+      he had loved this girl, much younger than himself, with all a brother&rsquo;s
+      tenderness. On his return to England, he had seemed to forget her
+      existence. She recalled herself to him on her aunt&rsquo;s death by a touching
+      and melancholy letter: she had now no home but his,&mdash;no dependence
+      save on his affection; he wept when he read it, and was impatient till
+      Adela arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This girl, then about eighteen, concerned beneath a gentle and calm
+      exterior much of the romance or enthusiasm that had, at her own age,
+      characterised her brother. But her enthusiasm was of a far purer order,
+      and was restrained within proper bounds, partly by the sweetness of a very
+      feminine nature, and partly by a strict and methodical education. She
+      differed from him especially in a timidity of character which exceeded
+      that usual at her age, but which the habit of self-command concealed no
+      less carefully than that timidity itself concealed the romance I have
+      ascribed to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Adela was not handsome: she had the complexion and the form of delicate
+      health; and too fine an organisation of the nerves rendered her
+      susceptible to every impression that could influence the health of the
+      frame through the sympathy of the mind. But as she never complained, and
+      as the singular serenity of her manners seemed to betoken an equanimity of
+      temperament which, with the vulgar, might have passed for indifference,
+      her sufferings had so long been borne unnoticed that it ceased to be an
+      effort to disguise them. Though, as I have said, not handsome, her
+      countenance was interesting and pleasing; and there was that caressing
+      kindness, that winning charm about her smile, her manners, her anxiety to
+      please, to comfort, and to soothe which went at once to the heart, and
+      made her lovely,&mdash;because so loving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the sister whom Glyndon had so long neglected, and whom he now so
+      cordially welcomed. Adela had passed many years a victim to the caprices,
+      and a nurse to the maladies, of a selfish and exacting relation. The
+      delicate and generous and respectful affection of her brother was no less
+      new to her than delightful. He took pleasure in the happiness he created;
+      he gradually weaned himself from other society; he felt the charm of home.
+      It is not surprising, then, that this young creature, free and virgin from
+      every more ardent attachment, concentrated all her grateful love on this
+      cherished and protecting relative. Her study by day, her dream by night,
+      was to repay him for his affection. She was proud of his talents, devoted
+      to his welfare; the smallest trifle that could interest him swelled in her
+      eyes to the gravest affairs of life. In short, all the long-hoarded
+      enthusiasm, which was her perilous and only heritage, she invested in this
+      one object of her holy tenderness, her pure ambition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in proportion as Glyndon shunned those excitements by which he had so
+      long sought to occupy his time or distract his thoughts, the gloom of his
+      calmer hours became deeper and more continuous. He ever and especially
+      dreaded to be alone; he could not bear his new companion to be absent from
+      his eyes: he rode with her, walked with her, and it was with visible
+      reluctance, which almost partook of horror, that he retired to rest at an
+      hour when even revel grows fatigued. This gloom was not that which could
+      be called by the soft name of melancholy,&mdash;it was far more intense;
+      it seemed rather like despair. Often after a silence as of death&mdash;so
+      heavy, abstracted, motionless, did it appear&mdash;he would start
+      abruptly, and cast hurried glances around him,&mdash;his limbs trembling,
+      his lips livid, his brows bathed in dew. Convinced that some secret sorrow
+      preyed upon his mind, and would consume his health, it was the dearest as
+      the most natural desire of Adela to become his confidant and consoler. She
+      observed, with the quick tact of the delicate, that he disliked her to
+      seem affected by, or even sensible of, his darker moods. She schooled
+      herself to suppress her fears and her feelings. She would not ask his
+      confidence,&mdash;she sought to steal into it. By little and little she
+      felt that she was succeeding. Too wrapped in his own strange existence to
+      be acutely observant of the character of others, Glyndon mistook the
+      self-content of a generous and humble affection for constitutional
+      fortitude; and this quality pleased and soothed him. It is fortitude that
+      the diseased mind requires in the confidant whom it selects as its
+      physician. And how irresistible is that desire to communicate! How often
+      the lonely man thought to himself, &ldquo;My heart would be lightened of its
+      misery, if once confessed!&rdquo; He felt, too, that in the very youth, the
+      inexperience, the poetical temperament of Adela, he could find one who
+      would comprehend and bear with him better than any sterner and more
+      practical nature. Mervale would have looked on his revelations as the
+      ravings of madness, and most men, at best, as the sicklied chimeras, the
+      optical delusions, of disease. Thus gradually preparing himself for that
+      relief for which he yearned, the moment for his disclosure arrived thus:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, as they sat alone together, Adela, who inherited some portion
+      of her brother&rsquo;s talent in art, was employed in drawing, and Glyndon,
+      rousing himself from meditations less gloomy than usual, rose, and
+      affectionately passing his arm round her waist, looked over her as she
+      sat. An exclamation of dismay broke from his lips,&mdash;he snatched the
+      drawing from her hand: &ldquo;What are you about?&mdash;what portrait is this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Clarence, do you not remember the original?&mdash;it is a copy from
+      that portrait of our wise ancestor which our poor mother used to say so
+      strongly resembled you. I thought it would please you if I copied it from
+      memory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Accursed was the likeness!&rdquo; said Glyndon, gloomily. &ldquo;Guess you not the
+      reason why I have shunned to return to the home of my fathers!&mdash;because
+      I dreaded to meet that portrait!&mdash;because&mdash;because&mdash;but
+      pardon me; I alarm you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, no,&mdash;no, Clarence, you never alarm me when you speak: only when
+      you are silent! Oh, if you thought me worthy of your trust; oh, if you had
+      given me the right to reason with you in the sorrows that I yearn to
+      share!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon made no answer, but paced the room for some moments with
+      disordered strides. He stopped at last, and gazed at her earnestly. &ldquo;Yes,
+      you, too, are his descendant; you know that such men have lived and
+      suffered; you will not mock me,&mdash;you will not disbelieve! Listen!
+      hark!&mdash;what sound is that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the wind on the house-top, Clarence,&mdash;but the wind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me your hand; let me feel its living clasp; and when I have told
+      you, never revert to the tale again. Conceal it from all: swear that it
+      shall die with us,&mdash;the last of our predestined race!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never will I betray your trust; I swear it,&mdash;never!&rdquo; said Adela,
+      firmly; and she drew closer to his side. Then Glyndon commenced his story.
+      That which, perhaps, in writing, and to minds prepared to question and
+      disbelieve, may seem cold and terrorless, became far different when told
+      by those blanched lips, with all that truth of suffering which convinces
+      and appalls. Much, indeed, he concealed, much he involuntarily softened;
+      but he revealed enough to make his tale intelligible and distinct to his
+      pale and trembling listener. &ldquo;At daybreak,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I left that
+      unhallowed and abhorred abode. I had one hope still,&mdash;I would seek
+      Mejnour through the world. I would force him to lay at rest the fiend that
+      haunted my soul. With this intent I journeyed from city to city. I
+      instituted the most vigilant researches through the police of Italy. I
+      even employed the services of the Inquisition at Rome, which had lately
+      asserted its ancient powers in the trial of the less dangerous Cagliostro.
+      All was in vain; not a trace of him could be discovered. I was not alone,
+      Adela.&rdquo; Here Glyndon paused a moment, as if embarrassed; for in his
+      recital, I need scarcely say that he had only indistinctly alluded to
+      Fillide, whom the reader may surmise to be his companion. &ldquo;I was not
+      alone, but the associate of my wanderings was not one in whom my soul
+      could confide,&mdash;faithful and affectionate, but without education,
+      without faculties to comprehend me, with natural instincts rather than
+      cultivated reason; one in whom the heart might lean in its careless hours,
+      but with whom the mind could have no commune, in whom the bewildered
+      spirit could seek no guide. Yet in the society of this person the demon
+      troubled me not. Let me explain yet more fully the dread conditions of its
+      presence. In coarse excitement, in commonplace life, in the wild riot, in
+      the fierce excess, in the torpid lethargy of that animal existence which
+      we share with the brutes, its eyes were invisible, its whisper was
+      unheard. But whenever the soul would aspire, whenever the imagination
+      kindled to the loftier ends, whenever the consciousness of our proper
+      destiny struggled against the unworthy life I pursued, then, Adela&mdash;then,
+      it cowered by my side in the light of noon, or sat by my bed,&mdash;a
+      Darkness visible through the Dark. If, in the galleries of Divine Art, the
+      dreams of my youth woke the early emulation,&mdash;if I turned to the
+      thoughts of sages; if the example of the great, if the converse of the
+      wise, aroused the silenced intellect, the demon was with me as by a spell.
+      At last, one evening, at Genoa, to which city I had travelled in pursuit
+      of the mystic, suddenly, and when least expected, he appeared before me.
+      It was the time of the Carnival. It was in one of those half-frantic
+      scenes of noise and revel, call it not gayety, which establish a heathen
+      saturnalia in the midst of a Christian festival. Wearied with the dance, I
+      had entered a room in which several revellers were seated, drinking,
+      singing, shouting; and in their fantastic dresses and hideous masks, their
+      orgy seemed scarcely human. I placed myself amongst them, and in that
+      fearful excitement of the spirits which the happy never know, I was soon
+      the most riotous of all. The conversation fell on the Revolution of
+      France, which had always possessed for me an absorbing fascination. The
+      masks spoke of the millennium it was to bring on earth, not as
+      philosophers rejoicing in the advent of light, but as ruffians exulting in
+      the annihilation of law. I know not why it was, but their licentious
+      language infected myself; and, always desirous to be foremost in every
+      circle, I soon exceeded even these rioters in declamations on the nature
+      of the liberty which was about to embrace all the families of the globe,&mdash;a
+      liberty that should pervade not only public legislation, but domestic
+      life; an emancipation from every fetter that men had forged for
+      themselves. In the midst of this tirade one of the masks whispered me,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Take care. One listens to you who seems to be a spy!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My eyes followed those of the mask, and I observed a man who took no part
+      in the conversation, but whose gaze was bent upon me. He was disguised
+      like the rest, yet I found by a general whisper that none had observed him
+      enter. His silence, his attention, had alarmed the fears of the other
+      revellers,&mdash;they only excited me the more. Rapt in my subject, I
+      pursued it, insensible to the signs of those about me; and, addressing
+      myself only to the silent mask who sat alone, apart from the group, I did
+      not even observe that, one by one, the revellers slunk off, and that I and
+      the silent listener were left alone, until, pausing from my heated and
+      impetuous declamations, I said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;And you, signor,&mdash;what is your view of this mighty era? Opinion
+      without persecution; brotherhood without jealousy; love without bondage&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;And life without God,&rsquo; added the mask as I hesitated for new images.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sound of that well-known voice changed the current of my thought. I
+      sprang forward, and cried,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Imposter or Fiend, we meet at last!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The figure rose as I advanced, and, unmasking, showed the features of
+      Mejnour. His fixed eye, his majestic aspect, awed and repelled me. I stood
+      rooted to the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; he said solemnly, &lsquo;we meet, and it is this meeting that I have
+      sought. How hast thou followed my admonitions! Are these the scenes in
+      which the Aspirant for the Serene Science thinks to escape the Ghastly
+      Enemy? Do the thoughts thou hast uttered&mdash;thoughts that would strike
+      all order from the universe&mdash;express the hopes of the sage who would
+      rise to the Harmony of the Eternal Spheres?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;It is thy fault,&mdash;it is thine!&rsquo; I exclaimed. &lsquo;Exorcise the phantom!
+      Take the haunting terror from my soul!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mejnour looked at me a moment with a cold and cynical disdain which
+      provoked at once my fear and rage, and replied,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;No; fool of thine own senses! No; thou must have full and entire
+      experience of the illusions to which the Knowledge that is without Faith
+      climbs its Titan way. Thou pantest for this Millennium,&mdash;thou shalt
+      behold it! Thou shalt be one of the agents of the era of Light and Reason.
+      I see, while I speak, the Phantom thou fliest, by thy side; it marshals
+      thy path; it has power over thee as yet,&mdash;a power that defies my own.
+      In the last days of that Revolution which thou hailest, amidst the wrecks
+      of the Order thou cursest as Oppression, seek the fulfilment of thy
+      destiny, and await thy cure.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At that instant a troop of masks, clamorous, intoxicated, reeling, and
+      rushing, as they reeled, poured into the room, and separated me from the
+      mystic. I broke through them, and sought him everywhere, but in vain. All
+      my researches the next day were equally fruitless. Weeks were consumed in
+      the same pursuit,&mdash;not a trace of Mejnour could be discovered.
+      Wearied with false pleasures, roused by reproaches I had deserved,
+      recoiling from Mejnour&rsquo;s prophecy of the scene in which I was to seek
+      deliverance, it occurred to me, at last, that in the sober air of my
+      native country, and amidst its orderly and vigorous pursuits, I might work
+      out my own emancipation from the spectre. I left all whom I had before
+      courted and clung to,&mdash;I came hither. Amidst mercenary schemes and
+      selfish speculations, I found the same relief as in debauch and excess.
+      The Phantom was invisible; but these pursuits soon became to me
+      distasteful as the rest. Ever and ever I felt that I was born for
+      something nobler than the greed of gain,&mdash;that life may be made
+      equally worthless, and the soul equally degraded by the icy lust of
+      avarice, as by the noisier passions. A higher ambition never ceased to
+      torment me. But, but,&rdquo; continued Glyndon, with a whitening lip and a
+      visible shudder, &ldquo;at every attempt to rise into loftier existence, came
+      that hideous form. It gloomed beside me at the easel. Before the volumes
+      of poet and sage it stood with its burning eyes in the stillness of night,
+      and I thought I heard its horrible whispers uttering temptations never to
+      be divulged.&rdquo; He paused, and the drops stood upon his brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I,&rdquo; said Adela, mastering her fears and throwing her arms around him,&mdash;&ldquo;but
+      I henceforth will have no life but in thine. And in this love so pure, so
+      holy, thy terror shall fade away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; exclaimed Glyndon, starting from her. &ldquo;The worst revelation is
+      to come. Since thou hast been here, since I have sternly and resolutely
+      refrained from every haunt, every scene in which this preternatural enemy
+      troubled me not, I&mdash;I&mdash;have&mdash;Oh, Heaven! Mercy&mdash;mercy!
+      There it stands,&mdash;there, by thy side,&mdash;there, there!&rdquo; And he
+      fell to the ground insensible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0054" id="link2HCH0054">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 5.V.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Doch wunderbar ergriff mich&rsquo;s diese Nacht;
+     Die Glieder schienen schon in Todes Macht.
+     Uhland.
+
+     (This night it fearfully seized on me; my limbs appeared already
+     in the power of death.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      A fever, attended with delirium, for several days deprived Glyndon of
+      consciousness; and when, by Adela&rsquo;s care more than the skill of the
+      physicians, he was restored to life and reason, he was unutterably shocked
+      by the change in his sister&rsquo;s appearance; at first, he fondly imagined
+      that her health, affected by her vigils, would recover with his own. But
+      he soon saw, with an anguish which partook of remorse, that the malady was
+      deep-seated,&mdash;deep, deep, beyond the reach of Aesculapius and his
+      drugs. Her imagination, little less lively than his own, was awfully
+      impressed by the strange confessions she had heard,&mdash;by the ravings
+      of his delirium. Again and again had he shrieked forth, &ldquo;It is there,&mdash;there,
+      by thy side, my sister!&rdquo; He had transferred to her fancy the spectre, and
+      the horror that cursed himself. He perceived this, not by her words, but
+      her silence; by the eyes that strained into space; by the shiver that came
+      over her frame; by the start of terror; by the look that did not dare to
+      turn behind. Bitterly he repented his confession; bitterly he felt that
+      between his sufferings and human sympathy there could be no gentle and
+      holy commune; vainly he sought to retract,&mdash;to undo what he had done,
+      to declare all was but the chimera of an overheated brain!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And brave and generous was this denial of himself; for, often and often,
+      as he thus spoke, he saw the Thing of Dread gliding to her side, and
+      glaring at him as he disowned its being. But what chilled him, if
+      possible, yet more than her wasting form and trembling nerves, was the
+      change in her love for him; a natural terror had replaced it. She turned
+      paler if he approached,&mdash;she shuddered if he took her hand. Divided
+      from the rest of earth, the gulf of the foul remembrance yawned now
+      between his sister and himself. He could endure no more the presence of
+      the one whose life HIS life had embittered. He made some excuses for
+      departure, and writhed to see that they were greeted eagerly. The first
+      gleam of joy he had detected since that fatal night, on Adela&rsquo;s face, he
+      beheld when he murmured &ldquo;Farewell.&rdquo; He travelled for some weeks through
+      the wildest parts of Scotland; scenery which MAKES the artist, was
+      loveless to his haggard eyes. A letter recalled him to London on the wings
+      of new agony and fear; he arrived to find his sister in a condition both
+      of mind and health which exceeded his worst apprehensions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her vacant look, her lifeless posture, appalled him; it was as one who
+      gazed on the Medusa&rsquo;s head, and felt, without a struggle, the human being
+      gradually harden to the statue. It was not frenzy, it was not idiocy,&mdash;it
+      was an abstraction, an apathy, a sleep in waking. Only as the night
+      advanced towards the eleventh hour&mdash;the hour in which Glyndon had
+      concluded his tale&mdash;she grew visibly uneasy, anxious, and perturbed.
+      Then her lips muttered; her hands writhed; she looked round with a look of
+      unspeakable appeal for succour, for protection, and suddenly, as the clock
+      struck, fell with a shriek to the ground, cold and lifeless. With
+      difficulty, and not until after the most earnest prayers, did she answer
+      the agonised questions of Glyndon; at last she owned that at that hour,
+      and that hour alone, wherever she was placed, however occupied, she
+      distinctly beheld the apparition of an old hag, who, after thrice knocking
+      at the door, entered the room, and hobbling up to her with a countenance
+      distorted by hideous rage and menace, laid its icy fingers on her
+      forehead: from that moment she declared that sense forsook her; and when
+      she woke again, it was only to wait, in suspense that froze up her blood,
+      the repetition of the ghastly visitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The physician who had been summoned before Glyndon&rsquo;s return, and whose
+      letter had recalled him to London, was a commonplace practitioner,
+      ignorant of the case, and honestly anxious that one more experienced
+      should be employed. Clarence called in one of the most eminent of the
+      faculty, and to him he recited the optical delusion of his sister. The
+      physician listened attentively, and seemed sanguine in his hopes of cure.
+      He came to the house two hours before the one so dreaded by the patient.
+      He had quietly arranged that the clocks should be put forward half an
+      hour, unknown to Adela, and even to her brother. He was a man of the most
+      extraordinary powers of conversation, of surpassing wit, of all the
+      faculties that interest and amuse. He first administered to the patient a
+      harmless potion, which he pledged himself would dispel the delusion. His
+      confident tone woke her own hopes,&mdash;he continued to excite her
+      attention, to rouse her lethargy; he jested, he laughed away the time. The
+      hour struck. &ldquo;Joy, my brother!&rdquo; she exclaimed, throwing herself in his
+      arms; &ldquo;the time is past!&rdquo; And then, like one released from a spell, she
+      suddenly assumed more than her ancient cheerfulness. &ldquo;Ah, Clarence!&rdquo; she
+      whispered, &ldquo;forgive me for my former desertion,&mdash;forgive me that I
+      feared YOU. I shall live!&mdash;I shall live! in my turn to banish the
+      spectre that haunts my brother!&rdquo; And Clarence smiled and wiped the tears
+      from his burning eyes. The physician renewed his stories, his jests. In
+      the midst of a stream of rich humour that seemed to carry away both
+      brother and sister, Glyndon suddenly saw over Adela&rsquo;s face the same
+      fearful change, the same anxious look, the same restless, straining eye,
+      he had beheld the night before. He rose,&mdash;he approached her. Adela
+      started up, &ldquo;look&mdash;look&mdash;look!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;She comes! Save
+      me,&mdash;save me!&rdquo; and she fell at his feet in strong convulsions as the
+      clock, falsely and in vain put forward, struck the half-hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The physician lifted her in his arms. &ldquo;My worst fears are confirmed,&rdquo; he
+      said gravely; &ldquo;the disease is epilepsy.&rdquo; (The most celebrated practitioner
+      in Dublin related to the editor a story of optical delusion precisely
+      similar in its circumstances and its physical cause to the one here
+      narrated.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next night, at the same hour, Adela Glyndon died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0055" id="link2HCH0055">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 5.VI.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     La loi, dont le regne vous epouvante, a son glaive leve sur vous:
+     elle vous frappera tous:  le genre humain a besoin de cet
+     exemple.&mdash;Couthon.
+
+     (The law, whose reign terrifies you, has its sword raised against
+     you; it will strike you all:  humanity has need of this example.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, joy, joy!&mdash;thou art come again! This is thy hand&mdash;these thy
+      lips. Say that thou didst not desert me from the love of another; say it
+      again,&mdash;say it ever!&mdash;and I will pardon thee all the rest!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So thou hast mourned for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mourned!&mdash;and thou wert cruel enough to leave me gold; there it is,&mdash;there,
+      untouched!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor child of Nature! how, then, in this strange town of Marseilles, hast
+      thou found bread and shelter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honestly, soul of my soul! honestly, but yet by the face thou didst once
+      think so fair; thinkest thou THAT now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Fillide, more fair than ever. But what meanest thou?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a painter here&mdash;a great man, one of their great men at
+      Paris, I know not what they call them; but he rules over all here,&mdash;life
+      and death; and he has paid me largely but to sit for my portrait. It is
+      for a picture to be given to the Nation, for he paints only for glory.
+      Think of thy Fillide&rsquo;s renown!&rdquo; And the girl&rsquo;s wild eyes sparkled; her
+      vanity was roused. &ldquo;And he would have married me if I would!&mdash;divorced
+      his wife to marry me! But I waited for thee, ungrateful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A knock at the door was heard,&mdash;a man entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nicot!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Glyndon!&mdash;hum!&mdash;welcome! What! thou art twice my rival! But
+      Jean Nicot bears no malice. Virtue is my dream,&mdash;my country, my
+      mistress. Serve my country, citizen; and I forgive thee the preference of
+      beauty. Ca ira! ca ira!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But as the painter spoke, it hymned, it rolled through the streets,&mdash;the
+      fiery song of the Marseillaise! There was a crowd, a multitude, a people
+      up, abroad, with colours and arms, enthusiasm and song,&mdash;with song,
+      with enthusiasm, with colours and arms! And who could guess that that
+      martial movement was one, not of war, but massacre,&mdash;Frenchmen
+      against Frenchmen? For there are two parties in Marseilles,&mdash;and
+      ample work for Jourdan Coupe-tete! But this, the Englishman, just arrived,
+      a stranger to all factions, did not as yet comprehend. He comprehended
+      nothing but the song, the enthusiasm, the arms, and the colours that
+      lifted to the sun the glorious lie, &ldquo;Le peuple Francais, debout contre les
+      tyrans!&rdquo; (Up, Frenchmen, against tyrants!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dark brow of the wretched wanderer grew animated; he gazed from the
+      window on the throng that marched below, beneath their waving Oriflamme.
+      They shouted as they beheld the patriot Nicot, the friend of Liberty and
+      relentless Hebert, by the stranger&rsquo;s side, at the casement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, shout again!&rdquo; cried the painter,&mdash;&ldquo;shout for the brave
+      Englishman who abjures his Pitts and his Coburgs to be a citizen of
+      Liberty and France!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A thousand voices rent the air, and the hymn of the Marseillaise rose in
+      majesty again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and if it be among these high hopes and this brave people that the
+      phantom is to vanish, and the cure to come!&rdquo; muttered Glyndon; and he
+      thought he felt again the elixir sparkling through his veins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou shalt be one of the Convention with Paine and Clootz,&mdash;I will
+      manage it all for thee!&rdquo; cried Nicot, slapping him on the shoulder: &ldquo;and
+      Paris&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, if I could but see Paris!&rdquo; cried Fillide, in her joyous voice.
+      Joyous! the whole time, the town, the air&mdash;save where, unheard, rose
+      the cry of agony and the yell of murder&mdash;were joy! Sleep unhaunting
+      in thy grave, cold Adela. Joy, joy! In the Jubilee of Humanity all private
+      griefs should cease! Behold, wild mariner, the vast whirlpool draws thee
+      to its stormy bosom! There the individual is not. All things are of the
+      whole! Open thy gates, fair Paris, for the stranger-citizen! Receive in
+      your ranks, O meek Republicans, the new champion of liberty, of reason, of
+      mankind! &ldquo;Mejnour is right; it was in virtue, in valour, in glorious
+      struggle for the human race, that the spectre was to shrink to her kindred
+      darkness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Nicot&rsquo;s shrill voice praised him; and lean Robespierre&mdash;&ldquo;Flambeau,
+      colonne, pierre angulaire de l&rsquo;edifice de la Republique!&rdquo; (&ldquo;The light,
+      column, and keystone of the Republic.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Lettre du Citoyen P&mdash;;
+      Papiers inedits trouves chez Robespierre,&rdquo; tom 11, page 127.)&mdash;smiled
+      ominously on him from his bloodshot eyes; and Fillide clasped him with
+      passionate arms to her tender breast. And at his up-rising and
+      down-sitting, at board and in bed, though he saw it not, the Nameless One
+      guided him with the demon eyes to the sea whose waves were gore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0065" id="link2H_4_0065">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK VI. &mdash; SUPERSTITION DESERTING FAITH.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Why do I yield to that suggestion, Whose horrid image doth unfix
+     my hair.&mdash;Shakespeare
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0056" id="link2HCH0056">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 6.I.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Therefore the Genii were painted with a platter full of garlands
+     and flowers in one hand, and a whip in the other.&mdash;Alexander
+     Ross, &ldquo;Mystag. Poet.&rdquo;
+  </pre>
+    <p>
+      According to the order of the events related in this narrative, the
+      departure of Zanoni and Viola from the Greek isle, in which two happy
+      years appear to have been passed, must have been somewhat later in date
+      than the arrival of Glyndon at Marseilles. It must have been in the course
+      of the year 1791 when Viola fled from Naples with her mysterious lover,
+      and when Glyndon sought Mejnour in the fatal castle. It is now towards the
+      close of 1793, when our story again returns to Zanoni. The stars of winter
+      shone down on the lagunes of Venice. The hum of the Rialto was hushed,&mdash;the
+      last loiterers had deserted the Place of St. Mark&rsquo;s, and only at distant
+      intervals might be heard the oars of the rapid gondolas, bearing reveller
+      or lover to his home. But lights still flitted to and fro across the
+      windows of one of the Palladian palaces, whose shadow slept in the great
+      canal; and within the palace watched the twin Eumenides that never sleep
+      for Man,&mdash;Fear and Pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will make thee the richest man in all Venice, if thou savest her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Signor,&rdquo; said the leech; &ldquo;your gold cannot control death, and the will of
+      Heaven, signor, unless within the next hour there is some blessed change,
+      prepare your courage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ho&mdash;ho, Zanoni! man of mystery and might, who hast walked amidst the
+      passions of the world, with no changes on thy brow, art thou tossed at
+      last upon the billows of tempestuous fear? Does thy spirit reel to and
+      fro?&mdash;knowest thou at last the strength and the majesty of Death?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He fled, trembling, from the pale-faced man of art,&mdash;fled through
+      stately hall and long-drawn corridor, and gained a remote chamber in the
+      palace, which other step than his was not permitted to profane. Out with
+      thy herbs and vessels. Break from the enchanted elements, O silvery-azure
+      flame! Why comes he not,&mdash;the Son of the Starbeam! Why is Adon-Ai
+      deaf to thy solemn call? It comes not,&mdash;the luminous and delightsome
+      Presence! Cabalist! are thy charms in vain? Has thy throne vanished from
+      the realms of space? Thou standest pale and trembling. Pale trembler! not
+      thus didst thou look when the things of glory gathered at thy spell. Never
+      to the pale trembler bow the things of glory: the soul, and not the herbs,
+      nor the silvery-azure flame, nor the spells of the Cabala, commands the
+      children of the air; and THY soul, by Love and Death, is made sceptreless
+      and discrowned!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length the flame quivers,&mdash;the air grows cold as the wind in
+      charnels. A thing not of earth is present,&mdash;a mistlike, formless
+      thing. It cowers in the distance,&mdash;a silent Horror! it rises; it
+      creeps; it nears thee&mdash;dark in its mantle of dusky haze; and under
+      its veil it looks on thee with its livid, malignant eyes,&mdash;the thing
+      of malignant eyes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha, young Chaldean! young in thy countless ages,&mdash;young as when,
+      cold to pleasure and to beauty, thou stoodest on the old Firetower, and
+      heardest the starry silence whisper to thee the last mystery that baffles
+      Death,&mdash;fearest thou Death at length? Is thy knowledge but a circle
+      that brings thee back whence thy wanderings began! Generations on
+      generations have withered since we two met! Lo! thou beholdest me now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I behold thee without fear! Though beneath thine eyes thousands have
+      perished; though, where they burn, spring up the foul poisons of the human
+      heart, and to those whom thou canst subject to thy will, thy presence
+      glares in the dreams of the raving maniac, or blackens the dungeon of
+      despairing crime, thou art not my vanquisher, but my slave!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And as a slave will I serve thee! Command thy slave, O beautiful
+      Chaldean! Hark, the wail of women!&mdash;hark, the sharp shriek of thy
+      beloved one! Death is in thy palace! Adon-Ai comes not to thy call. Only
+      where no cloud of the passion and the flesh veils the eye of the Serene
+      Intelligence can the Sons of the Starbeam glide to man. But <i>I</i> can
+      aid thee!&mdash;hark!&rdquo; And Zanoni heard distinctly in his heart, even at
+      that distance from the chamber, the voice of Viola calling in delirium on
+      her beloved one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Viola, I can save thee not!&rdquo; exclaimed the seer, passionately; &ldquo;my
+      love for thee has made me powerless!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not powerless; I can gift thee with the art to save her,&mdash;I can
+      place healing in thy hand!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For both?&mdash;child and mother,&mdash;for both?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Both!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A convulsion shook the limbs of the seer,&mdash;a mighty struggle shook
+      him as a child: the Humanity and the Hour conquered the repugnant spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I yield! Mother and child&mdash;save both!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the dark chamber lay Viola, in the sharpest agonies of travail; life
+      seemed rending itself away in the groans and cries that spoke of pain in
+      the midst of frenzy; and still, in groan and cry, she called on Zanoni,
+      her beloved. The physician looked to the clock; on it beat: the Heart of
+      Time,&mdash;regularly and slowly,&mdash;Heart that never sympathised with
+      Life, and never flagged for Death! &ldquo;The cries are fainter,&rdquo; said the
+      leech; &ldquo;in ten minutes more all will be past.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fool! the minutes laugh at thee; Nature, even now, like a blue sky through
+      a shattered temple, is smiling through the tortured frame. The breathing
+      grows more calm and hushed; the voice of delirium is dumb,&mdash;a sweet
+      dream has come to Viola. Is it a dream, or is it the soul that sees? She
+      thinks suddenly that she is with Zanoni, that her burning head is pillowed
+      on his bosom; she thinks, as he gazes on her, that his eyes dispel the
+      tortures that prey upon her,&mdash;the touch of his hand cools the fever
+      on her brow; she hears his voice in murmurs,&mdash;it is a music from
+      which the fiends fly. Where is the mountain that seemed to press upon her
+      temples? Like a vapour, it rolls away. In the frosts of the winter night,
+      she sees the sun laughing in luxurious heaven,&mdash;she hears the whisper
+      of green leaves; the beautiful world, valley and stream and woodland, lie
+      before, and with a common voice speak to her, &ldquo;We are not yet past for
+      thee!&rdquo; Fool of drugs and formula, look to thy dial-plate!&mdash;the hand
+      has moved on; the minutes are with Eternity; the soul thy sentence would
+      have dismissed, still dwells on the shores of Time. She sleeps: the fever
+      abates; the convulsions are gone; the living rose blooms upon her cheek;
+      the crisis is past! Husband, thy wife lives; lover, thy universe is no
+      solitude! Heart of Time, beat on! A while, a little while,&mdash;joy! joy!
+      joy!&mdash;father, embrace thy child!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0057" id="link2HCH0057">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 6.II.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Tristis Erinnys
+     Praetulit infaustas sanguinolenta faces.
+     Ovid.
+
+     (Erinnys, doleful and bloody, extends the unblessed torches.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And they placed the child in the father&rsquo;s arms! As silently he bent over
+      it, tears&mdash;tears, how human!&mdash;fell from his eyes like rain! And
+      the little one smiled through the tears that bathed its cheeks! Ah, with
+      what happy tears we welcome the stranger into our sorrowing world! With
+      what agonising tears we dismiss the stranger back to the angels! Unselfish
+      joy; but how selfish is the sorrow!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now through the silent chamber a faint sweet voice is heard,&mdash;the
+      young mother&rsquo;s voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am here: I am by thy side!&rdquo; murmured Zanoni.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother smiled, and clasped his hand, and asked no more; she was
+      contented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Viola recovered with a rapidity that startled the physician; and the young
+      stranger thrived as if it already loved the world to which it had
+      descended. From that hour Zanoni seemed to live in the infant&rsquo;s life, and
+      in that life the souls of mother and father met as in a new bond. Nothing
+      more beautiful than this infant had eye ever dwelt upon. It was strange to
+      the nurses that it came not wailing to the light, but smiled to the light
+      as a thing familiar to it before. It never uttered one cry of childish
+      pain. In its very repose it seemed to be listening to some happy voice
+      within its heart: it seemed itself so happy. In its eyes you would have
+      thought intellect already kindled, though it had not yet found a language.
+      Already it seemed to recognise its parents; already it stretched forth its
+      arms when Zanoni bent over the bed, in which it breathed and bloomed,&mdash;the
+      budding flower! And from that bed he was rarely absent: gazing upon it
+      with his serene, delighted eyes, his soul seemed to feed its own. At night
+      and in utter darkness he was still there; and Viola often heard him
+      murmuring over it as she lay in a half-sleep. But the murmur was in a
+      language strange to her; and sometimes when she heard she feared, and
+      vague, undefined superstitions came back to her,&mdash;the superstitions
+      of earlier youth. A mother fears everything, even the gods, for her
+      new-born. The mortals shrieked aloud when of old they saw the great
+      Demeter seeking to make their child immortal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Zanoni, wrapped in the sublime designs that animated the human love to
+      which he was now awakened, forgot all, even all he had forfeited or
+      incurred, in the love that blinded him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the dark, formless thing, though he nor invoked nor saw it, crept,
+      often, round and round him, and often sat by the infant&rsquo;s couch, with its
+      hateful eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0058" id="link2HCH0058">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 6.III.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Fuscis tellurem amplectitur alis.
+     Virgil.
+
+     (Embraces the Earth with gloomy wings.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mejnour, Humanity, with all its sorrows and its joys, is mine once more.
+      Day by day, I am forging my own fetters. I live in other lives than my
+      own, and in them I have lost more than half my empire. Not lifting them
+      aloft, they drag me by the strong bands of the affections to their own
+      earth. Exiled from the beings only visible to the most abstract sense, the
+      grim Enemy that guards the Threshold has entangled me in its web. Canst
+      thou credit me, when I tell thee that I have accepted its gifts, and
+      endure the forfeit? Ages must pass ere the brighter beings can again obey
+      the spirit that has bowed to the ghastly one! And&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this hope, then, Mejnour, I triumph still; I yet have supreme power
+      over this young life. Insensibly and inaudibly my soul speaks to its own,
+      and prepares it even now. Thou knowest that for the pure and unsullied
+      infant spirit, the ordeal has no terror and no peril. Thus unceasingly I
+      nourish it with no unholy light; and ere it yet be conscious of the gift,
+      it will gain the privileges it has been mine to attain: the child, by slow
+      and scarce-seen degrees, will communicate its own attributes to the
+      mother; and content to see Youth forever radiant on the brows of the two
+      that now suffice to fill up my whole infinity of thought, shall I regret
+      the airier kingdom that vanishes hourly from my grasp? But thou, whose
+      vision is still clear and serene, look into the far deeps shut from my
+      gaze, and counsel me, or forewarn! I know that the gifts of the Being
+      whose race is so hostile to our own are, to the common seeker, fatal and
+      perfidious as itself. And hence, when, at the outskirts of knowledge,
+      which in earlier ages men called Magic, they encountered the things of the
+      hostile tribes, they believed the apparitions to be fiends, and, by
+      fancied compacts, imagined they had signed away their souls; as if man
+      could give for an eternity that over which he has control but while he
+      lives! Dark, and shrouded forever from human sight, dwell the demon
+      rebels, in their impenetrable realm; in them is no breath of the Divine
+      One. In every human creature the Divine One breathes; and He alone can
+      judge His own hereafter, and allot its new career and home. Could man sell
+      himself to the fiend, man could prejudge himself, and arrogate the
+      disposal of eternity! But these creatures, modifications as they are of
+      matter, and some with more than the malignanty of man, may well seem, to
+      fear and unreasoning superstition, the representatives of fiends. And from
+      the darkest and mightiest of them I have accepted a boon,&mdash;the secret
+      that startled Death from those so dear to me. Can I not trust that enough
+      of power yet remains to me to baffle or to daunt the Phantom, if it seek
+      to pervert the gift? Answer me, Mejnour, for in the darkness that veils
+      me, I see only the pure eyes of the new-born; I hear only the low beating
+      of my heart. Answer me, thou whose wisdom is without love!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mejnour to Zanoni.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fallen One!&mdash;I see before thee Evil and Death and Woe! Thou to have
+      relinquished Adon-Ai for the nameless Terror,&mdash;the heavenly stars for
+      those fearful eyes! Thou, at the last to be the victim of the Larva of the
+      dreary Threshold, that, in thy first novitiate, fled, withered and
+      shrivelled, from thy kingly brow! When, at the primary grades of
+      initiation, the pupil I took from thee on the shores of the changed
+      Parthenope, fell senseless and cowering before that Phantom-Darkness, I
+      knew that his spirit was not formed to front the worlds beyond; for FEAR
+      is the attraction of man to earthiest earth, and while he fears, he cannot
+      soar. But THOU, seest thou not that to love is but to fear; seest thou not
+      that the power of which thou boastest over the malignant one is already
+      gone? It awes, it masters thee; it will mock thee and betray. Lose not a
+      moment; come to me. If there can yet be sufficient sympathy between us,
+      through MY eyes shalt thou see, and perhaps guard against the perils that,
+      shapeless yet, and looming through the shadow, marshal themselves around
+      thee and those whom thy very love has doomed. Come from all the ties of
+      thy fond humanity; they will but obscure thy vision! Come forth from thy
+      fears and hopes, thy desires and passions. Come, as alone Mind can be the
+      monarch and the seer, shining through the home it tenants,&mdash;a pure,
+      impressionless, sublime intelligence!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0059" id="link2HCH0059">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 6.IV.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Plus que vous ne pensez ce moment est terrible.
+     La Harpe, &ldquo;Le Comte de Warwick,&rdquo; Act 3, sc. 5.
+
+     (The moment is more terrible than you think.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      For the first time since their union, Zanoni and Viola were separated,&mdash;Zanoni
+      went to Rome on important business. &ldquo;It was,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but for a few
+      days;&rdquo; and he went so suddenly that there was little time either for
+      surprise or sorrow. But first parting is always more melancholy than it
+      need be: it seems an interruption to the existence which Love shares with
+      Love; it makes the heart feel what a void life will be when the last
+      parting shall succeed, as succeed it must, the first. But Viola had a new
+      companion; she was enjoying that most delicious novelty which ever renews
+      the youth and dazzles the eyes of woman. As the mistress&mdash;the wife&mdash;she
+      leans on another; from another are reflected her happiness, her being,&mdash;as
+      an orb that takes light from its sun. But now, in turn, as the mother, she
+      is raised from dependence into power; it is another that leans on her,&mdash;a
+      star has sprung into space, to which she herself has become the sun!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few days,&mdash;but they will be sweet through the sorrow! A few days,&mdash;every
+      hour of which seems an era to the infant, over whom bend watchful the eyes
+      and the heart. From its waking to its sleep, from its sleep to its waking,
+      is a revolution in Time. Every gesture to be noted,&mdash;every smile to
+      seem a new progress into the world it has come to bless! Zanoni has gone,&mdash;the
+      last dash of the oar is lost, the last speck of the gondola has vanished
+      from the ocean-streets of Venice! Her infant is sleeping in the cradle at
+      the mother&rsquo;s feet; and she thinks through her tears what tales of the
+      fairy-land, that spreads far and wide, with a thousand wonders, in that
+      narrow bed, she shall have to tell the father! Smile on, weep on, young
+      mother! Already the fairest leaf in the wild volume is closed for thee,
+      and the invisible finger turns the page!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the bridge of the Rialto stood two Venetians&mdash;ardent Republicans
+      and Democrats&mdash;looking to the Revolution of France as the earthquake
+      which must shatter their own expiring and vicious constitution, and give
+      equality of ranks and rights to Venice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Cottalto,&rdquo; said one; &ldquo;my correspondent of Paris has promised to
+      elude all obstacles, and baffle all danger. He will arrange with us the
+      hour of revolt, when the legions of France shall be within hearing of our
+      guns. One day in this week, at this hour, he is to meet me here. This is
+      but the fourth day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had scarce said these words before a man, wrapped in his roquelaire,
+      emerging from one of the narrow streets to the left, halted opposite the
+      pair, and eying them for a few moments with an earnest scrutiny,
+      whispered, &ldquo;Salut!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Et fraternite,&rdquo; answered the speaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, then, are the brave Dandolo with whom the Comite deputed me to
+      correspond? And this citizen&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Cottalto, whom my letters have so often mentioned.&rdquo; (I know not if the
+      author of the original MSS. designs, under these names, to introduce the
+      real Cottalto and the true Dandolo, who, in 1797, distinguished themselves
+      by their sympathy with the French, and their democratic ardor.&mdash;Ed.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Health and brotherhood to him! I have much to impart to you both. I will
+      meet you at night, Dandolo. But in the streets we may be observed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I dare not appoint my own house; tyranny makes spies of our very
+      walls. But the place herein designated is secure;&rdquo; and he slipped an
+      address into the hand of his correspondent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-night, then, at nine! Meanwhile I have other business.&rdquo; The man
+      paused, his colour changed, and it was with an eager and passionate voice
+      that he resumed,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your last letter mentioned this wealthy and mysterious visitor,&mdash;this
+      Zanoni. He is still at Venice?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard that he had left this morning; but his wife is still here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His wife!&mdash;that is well!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What know you of him? Think you that he would join us? His wealth would
+      be&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His house, his address,&mdash;quick!&rdquo; interrupted the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Palazzo di &mdash;, on the Grand Canal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thank you,&mdash;at nine we meet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man hurried on through the street from which he had emerged; and,
+      passing by the house in which he had taken up his lodging (he had arrived
+      at Venice the night before), a woman who stood by the door caught his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; she said in French, &ldquo;I have been watching for your return. Do
+      you understand me? I will brave all, risk all, to go back with you to
+      France,&mdash;to stand, through life or in death, by my husband&rsquo;s side!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Citoyenne, I promised your husband that, if such your choice, I would
+      hazard my own safety to aid it. But think again! Your husband is one of
+      the faction which Robespierre&rsquo;s eyes have already marked; he cannot fly.
+      All France is become a prison to the &lsquo;suspect.&rsquo; You do not endanger
+      yourself by return. Frankly, citoyenne, the fate you would share may be
+      the guillotine. I speak (as you know by his letter) as your husband bade
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur, I will return with you,&rdquo; said the woman, with a smile upon her
+      pale face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet you deserted your husband in the fair sunshine of the Revolution,
+      to return to him amidst its storms and thunder,&rdquo; said the man, in a tone
+      half of wonder, half rebuke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because my father&rsquo;s days were doomed; because he had no safety but in
+      flight to a foreign land; because he was old and penniless, and had none
+      but me to work for him; because my husband was not then in danger, and my
+      father was! HE is dead&mdash;dead! My husband is in danger now. The
+      daughter&rsquo;s duties are no more,&mdash;the wife&rsquo;s return!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be it so, citoyenne; on the third night I depart. Before then you may
+      retract your choice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A dark smile passed over the man&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O guillotine!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;how many virtues hast thou brought to light!
+      Well may they call thee &lsquo;A Holy Mother!&rsquo; O gory guillotine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed on muttering to himself, hailed a gondola, and was soon amidst
+      the crowded waters of the Grand Canal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0060" id="link2HCH0060">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 6.V.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Ce que j&rsquo;ignore
+     Est plus triste peut-etre et plus affreux encore.
+     La Harpe, &ldquo;Le Comte de Warwick,&rdquo; Act 5, sc. 1.
+
+     (That which I know not is, perhaps, more sad and fearful still.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The casement stood open, and Viola was seated by it. Beneath sparkled the
+      broad waters in the cold but cloudless sunlight; and to that fair form,
+      that half-averted face, turned the eyes of many a gallant cavalier, as
+      their gondolas glided by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at last, in the centre of the canal, one of these dark vessels halted
+      motionless, as a man fixed his gaze from its lattice upon that stately
+      palace. He gave the word to the rowers,&mdash;the vessel approached the
+      marge. The stranger quitted the gondola; he passed up the broad stairs; he
+      entered the palace. Weep on, smile no more, young mother!&mdash;the last
+      page is turned!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An attendant entered the room, and gave to Viola a card, with these words
+      in English, &ldquo;Viola, I must see you! Clarence Glyndon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, yes, how gladly Viola would see him; how gladly speak to him of her
+      happiness, of Zanoni!&mdash;how gladly show to him her child! Poor
+      Clarence! she had forgotten him till now, as she had all the fever of her
+      earlier life,&mdash;its dreams, its vanities, its poor excitement, the
+      lamps of the gaudy theatre, the applause of the noisy crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He entered. She started to behold him, so changed were his gloomy brow,
+      his resolute, careworn features, from the graceful form and careless
+      countenance of the artist-lover. His dress, though not mean, was rude,
+      neglected, and disordered. A wild, desperate, half-savage air had
+      supplanted that ingenuous mien, diffident in its grace, earnest in its
+      diffidence, which had once characterised the young worshipper of Art, the
+      dreaming aspirant after some starrier lore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it you?&rdquo; she said at last. &ldquo;Poor Clarence, how changed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Changed!&rdquo; he said abruptly, as he placed himself by her side. &ldquo;And whom
+      am I to thank, but the fiends&mdash;the sorcerers&mdash;who have seized
+      upon thy existence, as upon mine? Viola, hear me. A few weeks since the
+      news reached me that you were in Venice. Under other pretences, and
+      through innumerable dangers, I have come hither, risking liberty, perhaps
+      life, if my name and career are known in Venice, to warn and save you.
+      Changed, you call me!&mdash;changed without; but what is that to the
+      ravages within? Be warned, be warned in time!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice of Glyndon, sounding hollow and sepulchral, alarmed Viola even
+      more than his words. Pale, haggard, emaciated, he seemed almost as one
+      risen from the dead, to appall and awe her. &ldquo;What,&rdquo; she said, at last, in
+      a faltering voice,&mdash;&ldquo;what wild words do you utter! Can you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; interrupted Glyndon, laying his hand upon her arm, and its touch
+      was as cold as death,&mdash;&ldquo;listen! You have heard of the old stories of
+      men who have leagued themselves with devils for the attainment of
+      preternatural powers. Those stories are not fables. Such men live. Their
+      delight is to increase the unhallowed circle of wretches like themselves.
+      If their proselytes fail in the ordeal, the demon seizes them, even in
+      this life, as it hath seized me!&mdash;if they succeed, woe, yea, a more
+      lasting woe! There is another life, where no spells can charm the evil
+      one, or allay the torture. I have come from a scene where blood flows in
+      rivers,&mdash;where Death stands by the side of the bravest and the
+      highest, and the one monarch is the Guillotine; but all the mortal perils
+      with which men can be beset, are nothing to the dreariness of the chamber
+      where the Horror that passes death moves and stirs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was then that Glyndon, with a cold and distinct precision, detailed, as
+      he had done to Adela, the initiation through which he had gone. He
+      described, in words that froze the blood of his listener, the appearance
+      of that formless phantom, with the eyes that seared the brain and
+      congealed the marrow of those who beheld. Once seen, it never was to be
+      exorcised. It came at its own will, prompting black thoughts,&mdash;whispering
+      strange temptations. Only in scenes of turbulent excitement was it absent!
+      Solitude, serenity, the struggling desires after peace and virtue,&mdash;THESE
+      were the elements it loved to haunt! Bewildered, terror-stricken, the wild
+      account confirmed by the dim impressions that never, in the depth and
+      confidence of affection, had been closely examined, but rather banished as
+      soon as felt,&mdash;that the life and attributes of Zanoni were not like
+      those of mortals,&mdash;impressions which her own love had made her
+      hitherto censure as suspicions that wronged, and which, thus mitigated,
+      had perhaps only served to rivet the fascinated chains in which he bound
+      her heart and senses, but which now, as Glyndon&rsquo;s awful narrative filled
+      her with contagious dread, half unbound the very spells they had woven
+      before,&mdash;Viola started up in fear, not for HERSELF, and clasped her
+      child in her arms!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unhappiest one!&rdquo; cried Glyndon, shuddering, &ldquo;hast thou indeed given birth
+      to a victim thou canst not save? Refuse it sustenance,&mdash;let it look
+      to thee in vain for food! In the grave, at least, there are repose and
+      peace!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there came back to Viola&rsquo;s mind the remembrance of Zanoni&rsquo;s
+      night-long watches by that cradle, and the fear which even then had crept
+      over her as she heard his murmured half-chanted words. And as the child
+      looked at her with its clear, steadfast eye, in the strange intelligence
+      of that look there was something that only confirmed her awe. So there
+      both Mother and Forewarner stood in silence,&mdash;the sun smiling upon
+      them through the casement, and dark by the cradle, though they saw it not,
+      sat the motionless, veiled Thing!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But by degrees better and juster and more grateful memories of the past
+      returned to the young mother. The features of the infant, as she gazed,
+      took the aspect of the absent father. A voice seemed to break from those
+      rosy lips, and say, mournfully, &ldquo;I speak to thee in thy child. In return
+      for all my love for thee and thine, dost thou distrust me, at the first
+      sentence of a maniac who accuses?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her breast heaved, her stature rose, her eyes shone with a serene and holy
+      light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go, poor victim of thine own delusions,&rdquo; she said to Glyndon; &ldquo;I would
+      not believe mine own senses, if they accused ITS father! And what knowest
+      thou of Zanoni? What relation have Mejnour and the grisly spectres he
+      invoked, with the radiant image with which thou wouldst connect them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou wilt learn too soon,&rdquo; replied Glyndon, gloomily. &ldquo;And the very
+      phantom that haunts me, whispers, with its bloodless lips, that its
+      horrors await both thine and thee! I take not thy decision yet; before I
+      leave Venice we shall meet again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He said, and departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0061" id="link2HCH0061">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 6.VI.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Quel est l&rsquo;egarement ou ton ame se livre?
+     La Harpe, &ldquo;Le Comte de Warwick,&rdquo; Act 4, sc. 4.
+
+     (To what delusion does thy soul abandon itself?)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Alas, Zanoni! the aspirer, the dark, bright one!&mdash;didst thou think
+      that the bond between the survivor of ages and the daughter of a day could
+      endure? Didst thou not foresee that, until the ordeal was past, there
+      could be no equality between thy wisdom and her love? Art thou absent now
+      seeking amidst thy solemn secrets the solemn safeguards for child and
+      mother, and forgettest thou that the phantom that served thee hath power
+      over its own gifts,&mdash;over the lives it taught thee to rescue from the
+      grave? Dost thou not know that Fear and Distrust, once sown in the heart
+      of Love, spring up from the seed into a forest that excludes the stars?
+      Dark, bright one! the hateful eyes glare beside the mother and the child!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All that day Viola was distracted by a thousand thoughts and terrors,
+      which fled as she examined them to settle back the darklier. She
+      remembered that, as she had once said to Glyndon, her very childhood had
+      been haunted with strange forebodings, that she was ordained for some
+      preternatural doom. She remembered that, as she had told him this, sitting
+      by the seas that slumbered in the arms of the Bay of Naples, he, too, had
+      acknowledged the same forebodings, and a mysterious sympathy had appeared
+      to unite their fates. She remembered, above all, that, comparing their
+      entangled thoughts, both had then said, that with the first sight of
+      Zanoni the foreboding, the instinct, had spoken to their hearts more
+      audibly than before, whispering that &ldquo;with HIM was connected the secret of
+      the unconjectured life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, when Glyndon and Viola met again, the haunting fears of
+      childhood, thus referred to, woke from their enchanted sleep. With
+      Glyndon&rsquo;s terror she felt a sympathy, against which her reason and her
+      love struggled in vain. And still, when she turned her looks upon her
+      child, it watched her with that steady, earnest eye, and its lips moved as
+      if it sought to speak to her,&mdash;but no sound came. The infant refused
+      to sleep. Whenever she gazed upon its face, still those wakeful, watchful
+      eyes!&mdash;and in their earnestness, there spoke something of pain, of
+      upbraiding, of accusation. They chilled her as she looked. Unable to
+      endure, of herself, this sudden and complete revulsion of all the feelings
+      which had hitherto made up her life, she formed the resolution natural to
+      her land and creed; she sent for the priest who had habitually attended
+      her at Venice, and to him she confessed, with passionate sobs and intense
+      terror, the doubts that had broken upon her. The good father, a worthy and
+      pious man, but with little education and less sense, one who held (as many
+      of the lower Italians do to this day) even a poet to be a sort of
+      sorcerer, seemed to shut the gates of hope upon her heart. His
+      remonstrances were urgent, for his horror was unfeigned. He joined with
+      Glyndon in imploring her to fly, if she felt the smallest doubt that her
+      husband&rsquo;s pursuits were of the nature which the Roman Church had
+      benevolently burned so many scholars for adopting. And even the little
+      that Viola could communicate seemed, to the ignorant ascetic, irrefragable
+      proof of sorcery and witchcraft; he had, indeed, previously heard some of
+      the strange rumours which followed the path of Zanoni, and was therefore
+      prepared to believe the worst; the worthy Bartolomeo would have made no
+      bones of sending Watt to the stake, had he heard him speak of the
+      steam-engine. But Viola, as untutored as himself, was terrified by his
+      rough and vehement eloquence,&mdash;terrified, for by that penetration
+      which Catholic priests, however dull, generally acquire, in their vast
+      experience of the human heart hourly exposed to their probe, Bartolomeo
+      spoke less of danger to herself than to her child. &ldquo;Sorcerers,&rdquo; said he,
+      &ldquo;have ever sought the most to decoy and seduce the souls of the young,&mdash;nay,
+      the infant;&rdquo; and therewith he entered into a long catalogue of legendary
+      fables, which he quoted as historical facts. All at which an English woman
+      would have smiled, appalled the tender but superstitious Neapolitan; and
+      when the priest left her, with solemn rebukes and grave accusations of a
+      dereliction of her duties to her child, if she hesitated to fly with it
+      from an abode polluted by the darker powers and unhallowed arts, Viola,
+      still clinging to the image of Zanoni, sank into a passive lethargy which
+      held her very reason in suspense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hours passed: night came on; the house was hushed; and Viola, slowly
+      awakened from the numbness and torpor which had usurped her faculties,
+      tossed to and fro on her couch, restless and perturbed. The stillness
+      became intolerable; yet more intolerable the sound that alone broke it,
+      the voice of the clock, knelling moment after moment to its grave. The
+      moments, at last, seemed themselves to find voice,&mdash;to gain shape.
+      She thought she beheld them springing, wan and fairy-like, from the womb
+      of darkness; and ere they fell again, extinguished, into that womb, their
+      grave, their low small voices murmured, &ldquo;Woman, we report to eternity all
+      that is done in time! What shall we report of thee, O guardian of a
+      new-born soul?&rdquo; She became sensible that her fancies had brought a sort of
+      partial delirium, that she was in a state between sleep and waking, when
+      suddenly one thought became more predominant than the rest. The chamber
+      which, in that and every house they had inhabited, even that in the Greek
+      isles, Zanoni had set apart to a solitude on which none might intrude, the
+      threshold of which even Viola&rsquo;s step was forbid to cross, and never,
+      hitherto, in that sweet repose of confidence which belongs to contented
+      love, had she even felt the curious desire to disobey,&mdash;now, that
+      chamber drew her towards it. Perhaps THERE might be found a somewhat to
+      solve the riddle, to dispel or confirm the doubt: that thought grew and
+      deepened in its intenseness; it fastened on her as with a palpable and
+      irresistible grasp; it seemed to raise her limbs without her will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, through the chamber, along the galleries thou glidest, O lovely
+      shape! sleep-walking, yet awake. The moon shines on thee as thou glidest
+      by, casement after casement, white-robed and wandering spirit!&mdash;thine
+      arms crossed upon thy bosom, thine eyes fixed and open, with a calm
+      unfearing awe. Mother, it is thy child that leads thee on! The fairy
+      moments go before thee; thou hearest still the clock-knell tolling them to
+      their graves behind. On, gliding on, thou hast gained the door; no lock
+      bars thee, no magic spell drives thee back. Daughter of the dust, thou
+      standest alone with night in the chamber where, pale and numberless, the
+      hosts of space have gathered round the seer!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0062" id="link2HCH0062">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 6.VII.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Des Erdenlebens
+     Schweres Traumbild sinkt, und sinkt, und sinkt.
+     &ldquo;Das Ideal und das Lebens.&rdquo;
+ 
+     (The Dream Shape of the heavy earthly life sinks, and sinks, and
+     sinks.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      She stood within the chamber, and gazed around her; no signs by which an
+      inquisitor of old could have detected the scholar of the Black Art were
+      visible. No crucibles and caldrons, no brass-bound volumes and ciphered
+      girdles, no skulls and cross-bones. Quietly streamed the broad moonlight
+      through the desolate chamber with its bare, white walls. A few bunches of
+      withered herbs, a few antique vessels of bronze, placed carelessly on a
+      wooden form, were all which that curious gaze could identify with the
+      pursuits of the absent owner. The magic, if it existed, dwelt in the
+      artificer, and the materials, to other hands, were but herbs and bronze.
+      So is it ever with thy works and wonders, O Genius,&mdash;Seeker of the
+      Stars! Words themselves are the common property of all men; yet, from
+      words themselves, Thou Architect of Immortalities, pilest up temples that
+      shall outlive the Pyramids, and the very leaf of the Papyrus becomes a
+      Shinar, stately with towers, round which the Deluge of Ages, shall roar in
+      vain!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in that solitude has the Presence that there had invoked its wonders
+      left no enchantment of its own? It seemed so; for as Viola stood in the
+      chamber, she became sensible that some mysterious change was at work
+      within herself. Her blood coursed rapidly, and with a sensation of
+      delight, through her veins,&mdash;she felt as if chains were falling from
+      her limbs, as if cloud after cloud was rolling from her gaze. All the
+      confused thoughts which had moved through her trance settled and centred
+      themselves in one intense desire to see the Absent One,&mdash;to be with
+      him. The monads that make up space and air seemed charged with a spiritual
+      attraction,&mdash;to become a medium through which her spirit could pass
+      from its clay, and confer with the spirit to which the unutterable desire
+      compelled it. A faintness seized her; she tottered to the seat on which
+      the vessels and herbs were placed, and, as she bent down, she saw in one
+      of the vessels a small vase of crystal. By a mechanical and involuntary
+      impulse, her hand seized the vase; she opened it, and the volatile essence
+      it contained sparkled up, and spread through the room a powerful and
+      delicious fragrance. She inhaled the odour, she laved her temples with the
+      liquid, and suddenly her life seemed to spring up from the previous
+      faintness,&mdash;to spring, to soar, to float, to dilate upon the wings of
+      a bird. The room vanished from her eyes. Away, away, over lands and seas
+      and space on the rushing desire flies the disprisoned mind!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon a stratum, not of this world, stood the world-born shapes of the sons
+      of Science, upon an embryo world, upon a crude, wan, attenuated mass of
+      matter, one of the Nebulae, which the suns of the myriad systems throw off
+      as they roll round the Creator&rsquo;s throne*, to become themselves new worlds
+      of symmetry and glory,&mdash;planets and suns that forever and forever
+      shall in their turn multiply their shining race, and be the fathers of
+      suns and planets yet to come.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     (*"Astronomy instructs us that, in the original condition of
+     the solar system, the sun was the nucleus of a nebulosity or
+     luminous mass which revolved on its axis, and extended far
+     beyond the orbits of all the planets,&mdash;the planets as yet
+     having no existence. Its temperature gradually diminished,
+     and, becoming contracted by cooling, the rotation increased
+     in rapidity, and zones of nebulosity were successively
+     thrown off, in consequence of the centrifugal force
+     overpowering the central attraction. The condensation of
+     these separate masses constituted the planets and
+     satellites. But this view of the conversion of gaseous
+     matter into planetary bodies is not limited to our own
+     system; it extends to the formation of the innumerable suns
+     and worlds which are distributed throughout the universe.
+     The sublime discoveries of modern astronomers have shown
+     that every part of the realms of space abounds in large
+     expansions of attenuated matter termed nebulae, which are
+     irregularly reflective of light, of various figures, and in
+     different states of condensation, from that of a diffused,
+     luminous mass to suns and planets like our own.&rdquo;&mdash;From
+     Mantell&rsquo;s eloquent and delightful work, entitled &ldquo;The
+     Wonders of Geology,&rdquo; volume i. page 22.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      There, in that enormous solitude of an infant world, which thousands and
+      thousands of years can alone ripen into form, the spirit of Viola beheld
+      the shape of Zanoni, or rather the likeness, the simulacrun, the LEMUR of
+      his shape, not its human and corporeal substance,&mdash;as if, like hers,
+      the Intelligence was parted from the Clay,&mdash;and as the sun, while it
+      revolves and glows, had cast off into remotest space that nebular image of
+      itself, so the thing of earth, in the action of its more luminous and
+      enduring being, had thrown its likeness into that new-born stranger of the
+      heavens. There stood the phantom,&mdash;a phantom Mejnour, by its side. In
+      the gigantic chaos around raved and struggled the kindling elements; water
+      and fire, darkness and light, at war,&mdash;vapour and cloud hardening
+      into mountains, and the Breath of Life moving like a steadfast splendour
+      over all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the dreamer looked, and shivered, she beheld that even there the two
+      phantoms of humanity were not alone. Dim monster-forms that that
+      disordered chaos alone could engender, the first reptile Colossal race
+      that wreathe and crawl through the earliest stratum of a world labouring
+      into life, coiled in the oozing matter or hovered through the meteorous
+      vapours. But these the two seekers seemed not to heed; their gaze was
+      fixed intent upon an object in the farthest space. With the eyes of the
+      spirit, Viola followed theirs; with a terror far greater than the chaos
+      and its hideous inhabitants produced, she beheld a shadowy likeness of the
+      very room in which her form yet dwelt, its white walls, the moonshine
+      sleeping on its floor, its open casement, with the quiet roofs and domes
+      of Venice looming over the sea that sighed below,&mdash;and in that room
+      the ghost-like image of herself! This double phantom&mdash;here herself a
+      phantom, gazing there upon a phantom-self&mdash;had in it a horror which
+      no words can tell, no length of life forego.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But presently she saw this image of herself rise slowly, leave the room
+      with its noiseless feet: it passes the corridor, it kneels by a cradle!
+      Heaven of Heaven! She beholds her child!&mdash;still with its wondrous,
+      child-like beauty and its silent, wakeful eyes. But beside that cradle
+      there sits cowering a mantled, shadowy form,&mdash;the more fearful and
+      ghastly from its indistinct and unsubstantial gloom. The walls of that
+      chamber seem to open as the scene of a theatre. A grim dungeon; streets
+      through which pour shadowy crowds; wrath and hatred, and the aspect of
+      demons in their ghastly visages; a place of death; a murderous instrument;
+      a shamble-house of human flesh; herself; her child;&mdash;all, all, rapid
+      phantasmagoria, chased each other. Suddenly the phantom-Zanoni turned, it
+      seemed to perceive herself,&mdash;her second self. It sprang towards her;
+      her spirit could bear no more. She shrieked, she woke. She found that in
+      truth she had left that dismal chamber; the cradle was before her, the
+      child! all&mdash;all as that trance had seen it; and, vanishing into air,
+      even that dark, formless Thing!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My child! my child! thy mother shall save thee yet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0063" id="link2HCH0063">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 6.VIII.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Qui?  Toi m&rsquo;abandonner!  Ou vas-tu?  Non! demeure,
+     Demeure!
+     La Harpe, &ldquo;Le Comte de Warwick,&rdquo; Act 3, sc. 5.
+
+     (Who?  THOU abandon me!&mdash;where goest thou?  No! stay, stay!)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Letter from Viola to Zanoni.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has come to this!&mdash;I am the first to part! I, the unfaithful one,
+      bid thee farewell forever. When thine eyes fall upon this writing thou
+      wilt know me as one of the dead. For thou that wert, and still art my
+      life,&mdash;I am lost to thee! O lover! O husband! O still worshipped and
+      adored! if thou hast ever loved me, if thou canst still pity, seek not to
+      discover the steps that fly thee. If thy charms can detect and tract me,
+      spare me, spare our child! Zanoni, I will rear it to love thee, to call
+      thee father! Zanoni, its young lips shall pray for thee! Ah, spare thy
+      child, for infants are the saints of earth, and their mediation may be
+      heard on high! Shall I tell thee why I part? No; thou, the
+      wisely-terrible, canst divine what the hand trembles to record; and while
+      I shudder at thy power,&mdash;while it is thy power I fly (our child upon
+      my bosom),&mdash;it comforts me still to think that thy power can read the
+      heart! Thou knowest that it is the faithful mother that writes to thee, it
+      is not the faithless wife! Is there sin in thy knowledge, Zanoni? Sin must
+      have sorrow: and it were sweet&mdash;oh, how sweet&mdash;to be thy
+      comforter. But the child, the infant, the soul that looks to mine for its
+      shield!&mdash;magician, I wrest from thee that soul! Pardon, pardon, if my
+      words wrong thee. See, I fall on my knees to write the rest!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why did I never recoil before from thy mysterious lore; why did the very
+      strangeness of thine unearthly life only fascinate me with a delightful
+      fear? Because, if thou wert sorcerer or angel-demon, there was no peril to
+      other but myself: and none to me, for my love was my heavenliest part; and
+      my ignorance in all things, except the art to love thee, repelled every
+      thought that was not bright and glorious as thine image to my eyes. But
+      NOW there is another! Look! why does it watch me thus,&mdash;why that
+      never-sleeping, earnest, rebuking gaze? Have thy spells encompassed it
+      already? Hast thou marked it, cruel one, for the terrors of thy
+      unutterable art? Do not madden me,&mdash;do not madden me!&mdash;unbind
+      the spell!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hark! the oars without! They come,&mdash;they come, to bear me from thee!
+      I look round, and methinks that I see thee everywhere. Thou speakest to me
+      from every shadow, from every star. There, by the casement, thy lips last
+      pressed mine; there, there by that threshold didst thou turn again, and
+      thy smile seemed so trustingly to confide in me! Zanoni&mdash;husband!&mdash;I
+      will stay! I cannot part from thee! No, no! I will go to the room where
+      thy dear voice, with its gentle music, assuaged the pangs of travail!&mdash;where,
+      heard through the thrilling darkness, it first whispered to my ear,
+      &lsquo;Viola, thou art a mother!&rsquo; A mother!&mdash;yes, I rise from my knees,&mdash;I
+      AM a mother! They come! I am firm; farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes; thus suddenly, thus cruelly, whether in the delirium of blind and
+      unreasoning superstition, or in the resolve of that conviction which
+      springs from duty, the being for whom he had resigned so much of empire
+      and of glory forsook Zanoni. This desertion, never foreseen, never
+      anticipated, was yet but the constant fate that attends those who would
+      place Mind BEYOND the earth, and yet treasure the Heart WITHIN it.
+      Ignorance everlastingly shall recoil from knowledge. But never yet, from
+      nobler and purer motives of self-sacrifice, did human love link itself to
+      another, than did the forsaking wife now abandon the absent. For rightly
+      had she said that it was not the faithless wife, it WAS the faithful
+      mother that fled from all in which her earthly happiness was centred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As long as the passion and fervour that impelled the act animated her with
+      false fever, she clasped her infant to her breast, and was consoled,&mdash;resigned.
+      But what bitter doubt of her own conduct, what icy pang of remorse shot
+      through her heart, when, as they rested for a few hours on the road to
+      Leghorn, she heard the woman who accompanied herself and Glyndon pray for
+      safety to reach her husband&rsquo;s side, and strength to share the perils that
+      would meet her there! Terrible contrast to her own desertion! She shrunk
+      into the darkness of her own heart,&mdash;and then no voice from within
+      consoled her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0064" id="link2HCH0064">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 6.IX.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Zukunft hast du mir gegeben,
+     Doch du nehmst den Augenblick.
+     &ldquo;Kassandra.&rdquo;
+ 
+     (Futurity hast thou given to me,&mdash;yet takest from me the Moment.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mejnour, behold thy work! Out, out upon our little vanities of wisdom!&mdash;out
+      upon our ages of lore and life! To save her from Peril I left her
+      presence, and the Peril has seized her in its grasp!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Chide not thy wisdom but thy passions! Abandon thine idle hope of the
+      love of woman. See, for those who would unite the lofty with the lowly,
+      the inevitable curse; thy very nature uncomprehended,&mdash;thy sacrifices
+      unguessed. The lowly one views but in the lofty a necromancer or a fiend.
+      Titan, canst thou weep?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it now, I see it all! It WAS her spirit that stood beside our own,
+      and escaped my airy clasp! O strong desire of motherhood and nature!
+      unveiling all our secrets, piercing space and traversing worlds!&mdash;Mejnour,
+      what awful learning lies hid in the ignorance of the heart that loves!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The heart,&rdquo; answered the mystic, coldly; &ldquo;ay, for five thousand years I
+      have ransacked the mysteries of creation, but I have not yet discovered
+      all the wonders in the heart of the simplest boor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet our solemn rites deceived us not; the prophet-shadows, dark with
+      terror and red with blood, still foretold that, even in the dungeon, and
+      before the deathsman, I,&mdash;I had the power to save them both!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But at some unconjectured and most fatal sacrifice to thyself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To myself! Icy sage, there is no self in love! I go. Nay, alone: I want
+      thee not. I want now no other guide but the human instincts of affection.
+      No cave so dark, no solitude so vast, as to conceal her. Though mine art
+      fail me; though the stars heed me not; though space, with its shining
+      myriads, is again to me but the azure void,&mdash;I return but to love and
+      youth and hope! When have they ever failed to triumph and to save!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0075" id="link2H_4_0075">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK VII. &mdash; THE REIGN OF TERROR.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Orrida maesta nei fero aspetto
+     Terrore accresce, e piu superbo il rende;
+     Rosseggian gli occhi, e di veneno infetto
+     Come infausta cometa, il guardo splende,
+     Gil involve il mento, e sull &lsquo;irsuto petto
+     Ispida efoita la gran barbe scende;
+     E IN GUISA DE VORAGINE PROFONDA
+     SAPRE LA BOCCA A&rsquo;ATRO SANGUE IMMONDA.
+     (Ger. Lib., Cant. iv. 7.)
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     A horrible majesty in the fierce aspect increases it terror, and
+     renders it more  superb.  Red glow the eyes, and the aspect
+     infected, like a baleful comet, with  envenomed influences,
+     glares around.  A vast beard covers the chin&mdash;and, rough  and
+     thick, descends over the shaggy breast.&mdash;And like a profound gulf
+     expand the jaws, foul with black gore.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0065" id="link2HCH0065">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 7.I.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Qui suis-je, moi qu&rsquo;on accuse?  Un esclave de la Liberte, un
+     martyr vivant de la Republique.
+     &mdash;&ldquo;Discours de Robespierre, 8 Thermidor.&rdquo;
+ 
+     (Who am I,&mdash;<i>I</i> whom they accuse?  A slave of Liberty,&mdash;a living
+     martyr for the Republic.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It roars,&mdash;The River of Hell, whose first outbreak was chanted as the
+      gush of a channel to Elysium. How burst into blossoming hopes fair hearts
+      that had nourished themselves on the diamond dews of the rosy dawn, when
+      Liberty came from the dark ocean, and the arms of decrepit Thraldom&mdash;Aurora
+      from the bed of Tithon! Hopes! ye have ripened into fruit, and the fruit
+      is gore and ashes! Beautiful Roland, eloquent Vergniaud, visionary
+      Condorcet, high-hearted Malesherbes!&mdash;wits, philosophers, statesmen,
+      patriots, dreamers! behold the millennium for which ye dared and laboured!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I invoke the ghosts! Saturn hath devoured his children (&ldquo;La Revolution est
+      comme Saturne, elle devorera tous ses enfans.&rdquo;&mdash;Vergniaud.), and
+      lives alone,&mdash;I his true name of Moloch!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is the Reign of Terror, with Robespierre the king. The struggles
+      between the boa and the lion are past: the boa has consumed the lion, and
+      is heavy with the gorge,&mdash;Danton has fallen, and Camille Desmoulins.
+      Danton had said before his death, &ldquo;The poltroon Robespierre,&mdash;I alone
+      could have saved him.&rdquo; From that hour, indeed, the blood of the dead giant
+      clouded the craft of &ldquo;Maximilien the Incorruptible,&rdquo; as at last, amidst
+      the din of the roused Convention, it choked his voice. (&ldquo;Le sang de Danton
+      t&rsquo;etouffe!&rdquo; (the blood of Danton chokes thee!) said Garnier de l&rsquo;Aube,
+      when on the fatal 9th of Thermidor, Robespierre gasped feebly forth, &ldquo;Pour
+      la derniere fois, President des Assassins, je te demande la parole.&rdquo; (For
+      the last time, President of Assassins, I demand to speak.)) If, after that
+      last sacrifice, essential, perhaps, to his safety, Robespierre had
+      proclaimed the close of the Reign of Terror, and acted upon the mercy
+      which Danton had begun to preach, he might have lived and died a monarch.
+      But the prisons continued to reek,&mdash;the glaive to fall; and
+      Robespierre perceived not that his mobs were glutted to satiety with
+      death, and the strongest excitement a chief could give would be a return
+      from devils into men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are transported to a room in the house of Citizen Dupleix, the
+      menuisier, in the month of July, 1794; or, in the calendar of the
+      Revolutionists, it was the Thermidor of the Second Year of the Republic,
+      One and Indivisible! Though the room was small, it was furnished and
+      decorated with a minute and careful effort at elegance and refinement. It
+      seemed, indeed, the desire of the owner to avoid at once what was mean and
+      rude, and what was luxurious and voluptuous. It was a trim, orderly,
+      precise grace that shaped the classic chairs, arranged the ample
+      draperies, sank the frameless mirrors into the wall, placed bust and
+      bronze on their pedestals, and filled up the niches here and there with
+      well-bound books, filed regularly in their appointed ranks. An observer
+      would have said, &ldquo;This man wishes to imply to you,&mdash;I am not rich; I
+      am not ostentatious; I am not luxurious; I am no indolent Sybarite, with
+      couches of down, and pictures that provoke the sense; I am no haughty
+      noble, with spacious halls, and galleries that awe the echo. But so much
+      the greater is my merit if I disdain these excesses of the ease or the
+      pride, since I love the elegant, and have a taste! Others may be simple
+      and honest, from the very coarseness of their habits; if I, with so much
+      refinement and delicacy, am simple and honest,&mdash;reflect, and admire
+      me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the walls of this chamber hung many portraits, most of them represented
+      but one face; on the formal pedestals were grouped many busts, most of
+      them sculptured but one head. In that small chamber Egotism sat supreme,
+      and made the Arts its looking-glasses. Erect in a chair, before a large
+      table spread with letters, sat the original of bust and canvas, the owner
+      of the apartment. He was alone, yet he sat erect, formal, stiff, precise,
+      as if in his very home he was not at ease. His dress was in harmony with
+      his posture and his chamber; it affected a neatness of its own,&mdash;foreign
+      both to the sumptuous fashions of the deposed nobles, and the filthy
+      ruggedness of the sans-culottes. Frizzled and coiffe, not a hair was out
+      of order, not a speck lodged on the sleek surface of the blue coat, not a
+      wrinkle crumpled the snowy vest, with its under-relief of delicate pink.
+      At the first glance, you might have seen in that face nothing but the
+      ill-favoured features of a sickly countenance; at a second glance, you
+      would have perceived that it had a power, a character of its own. The
+      forehead, though low and compressed, was not without that appearance of
+      thought and intelligence which, it may be observed, that breadth between
+      the eyebrows almost invariably gives; the lips were firm and tightly drawn
+      together, yet ever and anon they trembled, and writhed restlessly. The
+      eyes, sullen and gloomy, were yet piercing, and full of a concentrated
+      vigour that did not seem supported by the thin, feeble frame, or the green
+      lividness of the hues, which told of anxiety and disease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was Maximilien Robespierre; such the chamber over the menuisier&rsquo;s
+      shop, whence issued the edicts that launched armies on their career of
+      glory, and ordained an artificial conduit to carry off the blood that
+      deluged the metropolis of the most martial people in the globe! Such was
+      the man who had resigned a judicial appointment (the early object of his
+      ambition) rather than violate his philanthropical principles by
+      subscribing to the death of a single fellow-creature; such was the virgin
+      enemy to capital punishments; and such, Butcher-Dictator now, was the man
+      whose pure and rigid manners, whose incorruptible honesty, whose hatred of
+      the excesses that tempt to love and wine, would, had he died five years
+      earlier, have left him the model for prudent fathers and careful citizens
+      to place before their sons. Such was the man who seemed to have no vice,
+      till circumstance, that hotbed, brought forth the two which, in ordinary
+      times, lie ever the deepest and most latent in a man&rsquo;s heart,&mdash;Cowardice
+      and Envy. To one of these sources is to be traced every murder that
+      master-fiend committed. His cowardice was of a peculiar and strange sort;
+      for it was accompanied with the most unscrupulous and determined WILL,&mdash;a
+      will that Napoleon reverenced; a will of iron, and yet nerves of aspen.
+      Mentally, he was a hero,&mdash;physically, a dastard. When the veriest
+      shadow of danger threatened his person, the frame cowered, but the will
+      swept the danger to the slaughter-house. So there he sat, bolt upright,&mdash;his
+      small, lean fingers clenched convulsively; his sullen eyes straining into
+      space, their whites yellowed with streaks of corrupt blood; his ears
+      literally moving to and fro, like the ignobler animals&rsquo;, to catch every
+      sound,&mdash;a Dionysius in his cave; but his posture decorous and
+      collected, and every formal hair in its frizzled place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; he said in a muttered tone, &ldquo;I hear them; my good Jacobins are
+      at their post on the stairs. Pity they swear so! I have a law against
+      oaths,&mdash;the manners of the poor and virtuous people must be reformed.
+      When all is safe, an example or two amongst those good Jacobins would make
+      effect. Faithful fellows, how they love me! Hum!&mdash;what an oath was
+      that!&mdash;they need not swear so loud,&mdash;upon the very staircase,
+      too! It detracts from my reputation. Ha! steps!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The soliloquist glanced at the opposite mirror, and took up a volume; he
+      seemed absorbed in its contents, as a tall fellow, a bludgeon in his hand,
+      a girdle adorned with pistols round his waist, opened the door, and
+      announced two visitors. The one was a young man, said to resemble
+      Robespierre in person, but of a far more decided and resolute expression
+      of countenance. He entered first, and, looking over the volume in
+      Robespierre&rsquo;s hand, for the latter seemed still intent on his lecture,
+      exclaimed,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! Rousseau&rsquo;s Heloise? A love-tale!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Payan, it is not the love,&mdash;it is the philosophy that charms
+      me. What noble sentiments!&mdash;what ardour of virtue! If Jean Jacques
+      had but lived to see this day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While the Dictator thus commented on his favourite author, whom in his
+      orations he laboured hard to imitate, the second visitor was wheeled into
+      the room in a chair. This man was also in what, to most, is the prime of
+      life,&mdash;namely, about thirty-eight; but he was literally dead in the
+      lower limbs: crippled, paralytic, distorted, he was yet, as the time soon
+      came to tell him,&mdash;a Hercules in Crime! But the sweetest of human
+      smiles dwelt upon his lips; a beauty almost angelic characterised his
+      features (&ldquo;Figure d&rsquo;ange,&rdquo; says one of his contemporaries, in describing
+      Couthon. The address, drawn up most probably by Payan (Thermidor 9), after
+      the arrest of Robespierre, thus mentions his crippled colleague: &ldquo;Couthon,
+      ce citoyen vertueux, QUI N&rsquo;A QUE LE COEUR ET LA TETE DE VIVANS, mais qui
+      les a brulants de patriotisme&rdquo; (Couthon, that virtuous citizen, who has
+      but the head and the heart of the living, yet possesses these all on flame
+      with patriotism.)); an inexpressible aspect of kindness, and the
+      resignation of suffering but cheerful benignity, stole into the hearts of
+      those who for the first time beheld him. With the most caressing, silver,
+      flute-like voice, Citizen Couthon saluted the admirer of Jean Jacques.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay,&mdash;do not say that it is not the LOVE that attracts thee; it IS
+      the love! but not the gross, sensual attachment of man for woman. No! the
+      sublime affection for the whole human race, and indeed, for all that
+      lives!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Citizen Couthon, bending down, fondled the little spaniel that he
+      invariably carried in his bosom, even to the Convention, as a vent for the
+      exuberant sensibilities which overflowed his affectionate heart. (This
+      tenderness for some pet animal was by no means peculiar to Couthon; it
+      seems rather a common fashion with the gentle butchers of the Revolution.
+      M. George Duval informs us (&ldquo;Souvenirs de la Terreur,&rdquo; volume iii page
+      183) that Chaumette had an aviary, to which he devoted his harmless
+      leisure; the murderous Fournier carried on his shoulders a pretty little
+      squirrel, attached by a silver chain; Panis bestowed the superfluity of
+      his affections upon two gold pheasants; and Marat, who would not abate one
+      of the three hundred thousand heads he demanded, REARED DOVES! Apropos of
+      the spaniel of Couthon, Duval gives us an amusing anecdote of Sergent, not
+      one of the least relentless agents of the massacre of September. A lady
+      came to implore his protection for one of her relations confined in the
+      Abbaye. He scarcely deigned to speak to her. As she retired in despair,
+      she trod by accident on the paw of his favourite spaniel. Sergent, turning
+      round, enraged and furious, exclaimed, &ldquo;MADAM, HAVE YOU NO HUMANITY?&rdquo;)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, for all that lives,&rdquo; repeated Robespierre, tenderly. &ldquo;Good Couthon,&mdash;poor
+      Couthon! Ah, the malice of men!&mdash;how we are misrepresented! To be
+      calumniated as the executioners of our colleagues! Ah, it is THAT which
+      pierces the heart! To be an object of terror to the enemies of our
+      country,&mdash;THAT is noble; but to be an object of terror to the good,
+      the patriotic, to those one loves and reveres,&mdash;THAT is the most
+      terrible of human tortures at least, to a susceptible and honest heart!&rdquo;
+       (Not to fatigue the reader with annotations, I may here observe that
+      nearly every sentiment ascribed in the text to Robespierre is to be found
+      expressed in his various discourses.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How I love to hear him!&rdquo; ejaculated Couthon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hem!&rdquo; said Payan, with some impatience. &ldquo;But now to business!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, to business!&rdquo; said Robespierre, with a sinister glance from his
+      bloodshot eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The time has come,&rdquo; said Payan, &ldquo;when the safety of the Republic demands
+      a complete concentration of its power. These brawlers of the Comite du
+      Salut Public can only destroy; they cannot construct. They hated you,
+      Maximilien, from the moment you attempted to replace anarcy by
+      institutions. How they mock at the festival which proclaimed the
+      acknowledgment of a Supreme Being: they would have no ruler, even in
+      heaven! Your clear and vigorous intellect saw that, having wrecked an old
+      world, it became necessary to shape a new one. The first step towards
+      construction must be to destroy the destroyers. While we deliberate, your
+      enemies act. Better this very night to attack the handful of gensdarmes
+      that guard them, than to confront the battalions they may raise
+      to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Robespierre, who recoiled before the determined spirit of
+      Payan; &ldquo;I have a better and safer plan. This is the 6th of Thermidor; on
+      the 10th&mdash;on the 10th, the Convention go in a body to the Fete
+      Decadaire. A mob shall form; the canonniers, the troops of Henriot, the
+      young pupils de l&rsquo;Ecole de Mars, shall mix in the crowd. Easy, then, to
+      strike the conspirators whom we shall designate to our agents. On the same
+      day, too, Fouquier and Dumas shall not rest; and a sufficient number of
+      &lsquo;the suspect&rsquo; to maintain salutary awe, and keep up the revolutionary
+      excitement, shall perish by the glaive of the law. The 10th shall be the
+      great day of action. Payan, of these last culprits, have you prepared a
+      list?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is here,&rdquo; returned Payan, laconically, presenting a paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Robespierre glanced over it rapidly. &ldquo;Collot d&rsquo;Herbois!&mdash;good!
+      Barrere!&mdash;ay, it was Barrere who said, &lsquo;Let us strike: the dead alone
+      never return.&rsquo; [&lsquo;Frappons! il n&rsquo;y a que les morts qui ne revient pas.&rsquo;&mdash;Barrere.)
+      Vadier, the savage jester!&mdash;good&mdash;good! Vadier of the Mountain.
+      He has called me &lsquo;Mahomet!&rsquo; Scelerat! blasphemer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mahomet is coming to the Mountain,&rdquo; said Couthon, with his silvery
+      accent, as he caressed his spaniel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how is this? I do not see the name of Tallien? Tallien,&mdash;I hate
+      that man; that is,&rdquo; said Robespierre, correcting himself with the
+      hypocrisy or self-deceit which those who formed the council of this
+      phrase-monger exhibited habitually, even among themselves,&mdash;&ldquo;that is,
+      Virtue and our Country hate him! There is no man in the whole Convention
+      who inspires me with the same horror as Tallien. Couthon, I see a thousand
+      Dantons where Tallien sits!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tallien has the only head that belongs to this deformed body,&rdquo; said
+      Payan, whose ferocity and crime, like those of St. Just, were not
+      unaccompanied by talents of no common order. &ldquo;Were it not better to draw
+      away the head, to win, to buy him, for the time, and dispose of him better
+      when left alone? He may hate YOU, but he loves MONEY!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Robespierre, writing down the name of Jean Lambert Tallien,
+      with a slow hand that shaped each letter with stern distinctness; &ldquo;that
+      one head IS MY NECESSITY!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a SMALL list here,&rdquo; said Couthon, sweetly,&mdash;&ldquo;a VERY small
+      list. You are dealing with the Mountain; it is necessary to make a few
+      examples in the Plain. These moderates are as straws which follow the
+      wind. They turned against us yesterday in the Convention. A little terror
+      will correct the weathercocks. Poor creatures! I owe them no ill-will; I
+      could weep for them. But before all, la chere patrie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The terrible glance of Robespierre devoured the list which the man of
+      sensibility submitted to him. &ldquo;Ah, these are well chosen; men not of mark
+      enough to be regretted, which is the best policy with the relics of that
+      party; some foreigners too,&mdash;yes, THEY have no parents in Paris.
+      These wives and parents are beginning to plead against us. Their
+      complaints demoralise the guillotine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Couthon is right,&rdquo; said Payan; &ldquo;MY list contains those whom it will be
+      safer to despatch en masse in the crowd assembled at the Fete. HIS list
+      selects those whom we may prudently consign to the law. Shall it not be
+      signed at once?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It IS signed,&rdquo; said Robespierre, formally replacing his pen upon the
+      inkstand. &ldquo;Now to more important matters. These deaths will create no
+      excitement; but Collot d&rsquo;Herbois, Bourdon De l&rsquo;Oise, Tallien,&rdquo; the last
+      name Robespierre gasped as he pronounced, &ldquo;THEY are the heads of parties.
+      This is life or death to us as well as them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Their heads are the footstools to your curule chair,&rdquo; said Payan, in a
+      half whisper. &ldquo;There is no danger if we are bold. Judges, juries, all have
+      been your selection. You seize with one hand the army, with the other, the
+      law. Your voice yet commands the people&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poor and virtuous people,&rdquo; murmured Robespierre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And even,&rdquo; continued Payan, &ldquo;if our design at the Fete fail us, we must
+      not shrink from the resources still at our command. Reflect! Henriot, the
+      general of the Parisian army, furnishes you with troops to arrest; the
+      Jacobin Club with a public to approve; inexorable Dumas with judges who
+      never acquit. We must be bold!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And we ARE bold,&rdquo; exclaimed Robespierre, with sudden passion, and
+      striking his hand on the table as he rose, with his crest erect, as a
+      serpent in the act to strike. &ldquo;In seeing the multitude of vices that the
+      revolutionary torrent mingles with civic virtues, I tremble to be sullied
+      in the eyes of posterity by the impure neighbourhood of these perverse men
+      who thrust themselves among the sincere defenders of humanity. What!&mdash;they
+      think to divide the country like a booty! I thank them for their hatred to
+      all that is virtuous and worthy! These men,&rdquo;&mdash;and he grasped the list
+      of Payan in his hand,&mdash;&ldquo;these!&mdash;not WE&mdash;have drawn the line
+      of demarcation between themselves and the lovers of France!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True, we must reign alone!&rdquo; muttered Payan; &ldquo;in other words, the state
+      needs unity of will;&rdquo; working, with his strong practical mind, the
+      corollary from the logic of his word-compelling colleague.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go to the Convention,&rdquo; continued Robespierre. &ldquo;I have absented
+      myself too long,&mdash;lest I might seem to overawe the Republic that I
+      have created. Away with such scruples! I will prepare the people! I will
+      blast the traitors with a look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke with the terrible firmness of the orator that had never failed,&mdash;of
+      the moral will that marched like a warrior on the cannon. At that instant
+      he was interrupted; a letter was brought to him: he opened it,&mdash;his
+      face fell, he shook from limb to limb; it was one of the anonymous
+      warnings by which the hate and revenge of those yet left alive to threaten
+      tortured the death-giver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou art smeared,&rdquo; ran the lines, &ldquo;with the best blood of France. Read
+      thy sentence! I await the hour when the people shall knell thee to the
+      doomsman. If my hope deceive me, if deferred too long,&mdash;hearken,
+      read! This hand, which thine eyes shall search in vain to discover, shall
+      pierce thy heart. I see thee every day,&mdash;I am with thee every day. At
+      each hour my arm rises against thy breast. Wretch! live yet awhile, though
+      but for few and miserable days&mdash;live to think of me; sleep to dream
+      of me! Thy terror and thy thought of me are the heralds of thy doom.
+      Adieu! this day itself I go forth to riot on thy fears!&rdquo; (See &ldquo;Papiers
+      inedits trouves chez Robespierre,&rdquo; etc., volume ii. page 155. (No. lx.))
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your lists are not full enough!&rdquo; said the tyrant, with a hollow voice, as
+      the paper dropped from his trembling hand. &ldquo;Give them to me!&mdash;give
+      them to me! Think again, think again! Barrere is right&mdash;right!
+      &lsquo;Frappons! il n&rsquo;y a que les morts qui ne revient pas!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0066" id="link2HCH0066">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 7.II.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     La haine, dans ces lieux, n&rsquo;a qu&rsquo;un glaive assassin.
+     Elle marche dans l&rsquo;ombre.
+     La Harpe, &ldquo;Jeanne de Naples,&rdquo; Act iv. sc. 1.
+
+     (Hate, in these regions, has but the sword of the assassin.  She
+     moves in the shade.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      While such the designs and fears of Maximilien Robespierre, common danger,
+      common hatred, whatever was yet left of mercy or of virtue in the agents
+      of the Revolution, served to unite strange opposites in hostility to the
+      universal death-dealer. There was, indeed, an actual conspiracy at work
+      against him among men little less bespattered than himself with innocent
+      blood. But that conspiracy would have been idle of itself, despite the
+      abilities of Tallien and Barras (the only men whom it comprised, worthy,
+      by foresight and energy, the names of &ldquo;leaders&rdquo;). The sure and destroying
+      elements that gathered round the tyrant were Time and Nature; the one,
+      which he no longer suited; the other, which he had outraged and stirred up
+      in the human breast. The most atrocious party of the Revolution, the
+      followers of Hebert, gone to his last account, the butcher-atheists, who,
+      in desecrating heaven and earth, still arrogated inviolable sanctity to
+      themselves, were equally enraged at the execution of their filthy chief,
+      and the proclamation of a Supreme Being. The populace, brutal as it had
+      been, started as from a dream of blood, when their huge idol, Danton, no
+      longer filled the stage of terror, rendering crime popular by that
+      combination of careless frankness and eloquent energy which endears their
+      heroes to the herd. The glaive of the guillotine had turned against
+      THEMSELVES. They had yelled and shouted, and sung and danced, when the
+      venerable age, or the gallant youth, of aristocracy or letters, passed by
+      their streets in the dismal tumbrils; but they shut up their shops, and
+      murmured to each other, when their own order was invaded, and tailors and
+      cobblers, and journeymen and labourers, were huddled off to the embraces
+      of the &ldquo;Holy Mother Guillotine,&rdquo; with as little ceremony as if they had
+      been the Montmorencies or the La Tremouilles, the Malesherbes or the
+      Lavoisiers. &ldquo;At this time,&rdquo; said Couthon, justly, &ldquo;Les ombres de Danton,
+      d&rsquo;Hebert, de Chaumette, se promenent parmi nous!&rdquo; (The shades of Danton,
+      Hebert, and Chaumette walk amongst us.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among those who had shared the doctrines, and who now dreaded the fate of
+      the atheist Hebert, was the painter, Jean Nicot. Mortified and enraged to
+      find that, by the death of his patron, his career was closed; and that, in
+      the zenith of the Revolution for which he had laboured, he was lurking in
+      caves and cellars, more poor, more obscure, more despicable than he had
+      been at the commencement,&mdash;not daring to exercise even his art, and
+      fearful every hour that his name would swell the lists of the condemned,&mdash;he
+      was naturally one of the bitterest enemies of Robespierre and his
+      government. He held secret meetings with Collot d&rsquo;Herbois, who was
+      animated by the same spirit; and with the creeping and furtive craft that
+      characterised his abilities, he contrived, undetected, to disseminate
+      tracts and invectives against the Dictator, and to prepare, amidst &ldquo;the
+      poor and virtuous people,&rdquo; the train for the grand explosion. But still so
+      firm to the eyes, even of profounder politicians than Jean Nicot, appeared
+      the sullen power of the incorruptible Maximilien; so timorous was the
+      movement against him,&mdash;that Nicot, in common with many others, placed
+      his hopes rather in the dagger of the assassin than the revolt of the
+      multitude. But Nicot, though not actually a coward, shrunk himself from
+      braving the fate of the martyr; he had sense enough to see that, though
+      all parties might rejoice in the assassination, all parties would probably
+      concur in beheading the assassin. He had not the virtue to become a
+      Brutus. His object was to inspire a proxy-Brutus; and in the centre of
+      that inflammable population this was no improbable hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amongst those loudest and sternest against the reign of blood; amongst
+      those most disenchanted of the Revolution; amongst those most appalled by
+      its excesses,&mdash;was, as might be expected, the Englishman, Clarence
+      Glyndon. The wit and accomplishments, the uncertain virtues that had
+      lighted with fitful gleams the mind of Camille Desmoulins, had fascinated
+      Glyndon more than the qualities of any other agent in the Revolution. And
+      when (for Camille Desmoulins had a heart, which seemed dead or dormant in
+      most of his contemporaries) that vivid child of genius and of error,
+      shocked at the massacre of the Girondins, and repentant of his own efforts
+      against them, began to rouse the serpent malice of Robespierre by new
+      doctrines of mercy and toleration, Glyndon espoused his views with his
+      whole strength and soul. Camille Desmoulins perished, and Glyndon,
+      hopeless at once of his own life and the cause of humanity, from that time
+      sought only the occasion of flight from the devouring Golgotha. He had two
+      lives to heed besides his own; for them he trembled, and for them he
+      schemed and plotted the means of escape. Though Glyndon hated the
+      principles, the party (None were more opposed to the Hebertists than
+      Camille Desmoulins and his friends. It is curious and amusing to see these
+      leaders of the mob, calling the mob &ldquo;the people&rdquo; one day, and the
+      &ldquo;canaille&rdquo; the next, according as it suits them. &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; says Camille,
+      &ldquo;that they (the Hebertists) have all the canaille with them.&rdquo;&mdash;(Ils
+      ont toute la canaille pour eux.)), and the vices of Nicot, he yet extended
+      to the painter&rsquo;s penury the means of subsistence; and Jean Nicot, in
+      return, designed to exalt Glyndon to that very immortality of a Brutus
+      from which he modestly recoiled himself. He founded his designs on the
+      physical courage, on the wild and unsettled fancies of the English artist,
+      and on the vehement hate and indignant loathing with which he openly
+      regarded the government of Maximilien.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the same hour, on the same day in July, in which Robespierre conferred
+      (as we have seen) with his allies, two persons were seated in a small room
+      in one of the streets leading out of the Rue St. Honore; the one, a man,
+      appeared listening impatiently, and with a sullen brow, to his companion,
+      a woman of singular beauty, but with a bold and reckless expression, and
+      her face as she spoke was animated by the passions of a half-savage and
+      vehement nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Englishman,&rdquo; said the woman, &ldquo;beware!&mdash;you know that, whether in
+      flight or at the place of death, I would brave all to be by your side,&mdash;you
+      know THAT! Speak!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Fillide; did I ever doubt your fidelity?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doubt it you cannot,&mdash;betray it you may. You tell me that in flight
+      you must have a companion besides myself, and that companion is a female.
+      It shall not be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It shall not!&rdquo; repeated Fillide, firmly, and folding her arms across her
+      breast. Before Glyndon could reply, a slight knock at the door was heard,
+      and Nicot opened the latch and entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fillide sank into her chair, and, leaning her face on her hands, appeared
+      unheeding of the intruder and the conversation that ensued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot bid thee good-day, Glyndon,&rdquo; said Nicot, as in his sans-culotte
+      fashion he strode towards the artist, his ragged hat on his head, his
+      hands in his pockets, and the beard of a week&rsquo;s growth upon his chin,&mdash;&ldquo;I
+      cannot bid thee good-day; for while the tyrant lives, evil is every sun
+      that sheds its beams on France.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true; what then? We have sown the wind, we must reap the
+      whirlwind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; said Nicot, apparently not heeding the reply, and as if
+      musingly to himself, &ldquo;it is strange to think that the butcher is as mortal
+      as the butchered; that his life hangs on as slight a thread; that between
+      the cuticle and the heart there is as short a passage,&mdash;that, in
+      short, one blow can free France and redeem mankind!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon surveyed the speaker with a careless and haughty scorn, and made
+      no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; proceeded Nicot, &ldquo;I have sometimes looked round for the man born
+      for this destiny, and whenever I have done so, my steps have led me
+      hither!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Should they not rather have led thee to the side of Maximilien
+      Robespierre?&rdquo; said Glyndon, with a sneer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; returned Nicot, coldly,&mdash;&ldquo;no; for I am a &lsquo;suspect:&rsquo; I could not
+      mix with his train; I could not approach within a hundred yards of his
+      person, but I should be seized; YOU, as yet, are safe. Hear me!&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      his voice became earnest and expressive,&mdash;&ldquo;hear me! There seems
+      danger in this action; there is none. I have been with Collot d&rsquo;Herbois
+      and Bilaud-Varennes; they will hold him harmless who strikes the blow; the
+      populace would run to thy support; the Convention would hail thee as their
+      deliverer, the&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold, man! How darest thou couple my name with the act of an assassin?
+      Let the tocsin sound from yonder tower, to a war between Humanity and the
+      Tyrant, and I will not be the last in the field; but liberty never yet
+      acknowledged a defender in a felon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something so brave and noble in Glyndon&rsquo;s voice, mien, and
+      manner, as he thus spoke, that Nicot at once was silenced; at once he saw
+      that he had misjudged the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Fillide, lifting her face from her hands,&mdash;&ldquo;no! your
+      friend has a wiser scheme in preparation; he would leave you wolves to
+      mangle each other. He is right; but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Flight!&rdquo; exclaimed Nicot; &ldquo;is it possible? Flight; how?&mdash;when?&mdash;by
+      what means? All France begirt with spies and guards! Flight! would to
+      Heaven it were in our power!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dost thou, too, desire to escape the blessed Revolution?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Desire! Oh!&rdquo; cried Nicot, suddenly, and, falling down, he clasped
+      Glyndon&rsquo;s knees,&mdash;&ldquo;oh, save me with thyself! My life is a torture;
+      every moment the guillotine frowns before me. I know that my hours are
+      numbered; I know that the tyrant waits but his time to write my name in
+      his inexorable list; I know that Rene Dumas, the judge who never pardons,
+      has, from the first, resolved upon my death. Oh, Glyndon, by our old
+      friendship, by our common art, by thy loyal English faith and good English
+      heart, let me share thy flight!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If thou wilt, so be it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks!&mdash;my whole life shall thank thee. But how hast thou prepared
+      the means, the passports, the disguise, the&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell thee. Thou knowest C&mdash;, of the Convention,&mdash;he has
+      power, and he is covetous. &lsquo;Qu&rsquo;on me meprise, pourvu que je dine&rsquo; (Let
+      them despise me, provided that I dine.), said he, when reproached for his
+      avarice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the help of this sturdy republican, who has friends enough in the
+      Comite, I have obtained the means necessary for flight; I have purchased
+      them. For a consideration I can procure thy passport also.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thy riches, then, are not in assignats?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I have gold enough for us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And here Glyndon, beckoning Nicot into the next room, first briefly and
+      rapidly detailed to him the plan proposed, and the disguises to be assumed
+      conformably to the passports, and then added, &ldquo;In return for the service I
+      render thee, grant me one favour, which I think is in thy power. Thou
+      rememberest Viola Pisani?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&mdash;remember, yes!&mdash;and the lover with whom she fled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And FROM whom she is a fugitive now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed&mdash;what!&mdash;I understand. Sacre bleu! but you are a lucky
+      fellow, cher confrere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Silence, man! with thy eternal prate of brotherhood and virtue, thou
+      seemest never to believe in one kindly action, or one virtuous thought!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nicot bit his lip, and replied sullenly, &ldquo;Experience is a great
+      undeceiver. Humph! What service can I do thee with regard to the Italian?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been accessory to her arrival in this city of snares and pitfalls.
+      I cannot leave her alone amidst dangers from which neither innocence nor
+      obscurity is a safeguard. In your blessed Republic, a good and unsuspected
+      citizen, who casts a desire on any woman, maid or wife, has but to say,
+      &lsquo;Be mine, or I denounce you!&rsquo; In a word, Viola must share our flight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What so easy? I see your passports provide for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What so easy? What so difficult? This Fillide&mdash;would that I had
+      never seen her!&mdash;would that I had never enslaved my soul to my
+      senses! The love of an uneducated, violent, unprincipled woman, opens with
+      a heaven, to merge in a hell! She is jealous as all the Furies; she will
+      not hear of a female companion; and when once she sees the beauty of
+      Viola!&mdash;I tremble to think of it. She is capable of any excess in the
+      storm of her passions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aha, I know what such women are! My wife, Beatrice Sacchini, whom I took
+      from Naples, when I failed with this very Viola, divorced me when my money
+      failed, and, as the mistress of a judge, passes me in her carriage while I
+      crawl through the streets. Plague on her!&mdash;but patience, patience!
+      such is the lot of virtue. Would I were Robespierre for a day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cease these tirades!&rdquo; exclaimed Glyndon, impatiently; &ldquo;and to the point.
+      What would you advise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave your Fillide behind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave her to her own ignorance; leave her unprotected even by the mind;
+      leave her in the Saturnalia of Rape and Murder? No! I have sinned against
+      her once. But come what may, I will not so basely desert one who, with all
+      her errors, trusted her fate to my love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You deserted her at Marseilles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True; but I left her in safety, and I did not then believe her love to be
+      so deep and faithful. I left her gold, and I imagined she would be easily
+      consoled; but since THEN WE HAVE KNOWN DANGER TOGETHER! And now to leave
+      her alone to that danger which she would never have incurred but for
+      devotion to me!&mdash;no, that is impossible. A project occurs to me.
+      Canst thou not say that thou hast a sister, a relative, or a benefactress,
+      whom thou wouldst save? Can we not&mdash;till we have left France&mdash;make
+      Fillide believe that Viola is one in whom THOU only art interested; and
+      whom, for thy sake only, I permit to share in our escape?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha, well thought of!&mdash;certainly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will then appear to yield to Fillide&rsquo;s wishes, and resign the project,
+      which she so resents, of saving the innocent object of her frantic
+      jealousy. You, meanwhile, shall yourself entreat Fillide to intercede with
+      me to extend the means of escape to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To a lady (she knows I have no sister) who has aided me in my distress.
+      Yes, I will manage all, never fear. One word more,&mdash;what has become
+      of that Zanoni?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Talk not of him,&mdash;I know not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he love this girl still?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would seem so. She is his wife, the mother of his infant, who is with
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wife!&mdash;mother! He loves her. Aha! And why&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No questions now. I will go and prepare Viola for the flight; you,
+      meanwhile, return to Fillide.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the address of the Neapolitan? It is necessary I should know, lest
+      Fillide inquire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rue M&mdash; T&mdash;, No. 27. Adieu.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon seized his hat and hastened from the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nicot, left alone, seemed for a few moments buried in thought. &ldquo;Oho,&rdquo; he
+      muttered to himself, &ldquo;can I not turn all this to my account? Can I not
+      avenge myself on thee, Zanoni, as I have so often sworn,&mdash;through thy
+      wife and child? Can I not possess myself of thy gold, thy passports, and
+      thy Fillide, hot Englishman, who wouldst humble me with thy loathed
+      benefits, and who hast chucked me thine alms as to a beggar? And Fillide,
+      I love her: and thy gold, I love THAT more! Puppets, I move your strings!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed slowly into the chamber where Fillide yet sat, with gloomy
+      thought on her brow and tears standing in her dark eyes. She looked up
+      eagerly as the door opened, and turned from the rugged face of Nicot with
+      an impatient movement of disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Glyndon,&rdquo; said the painter, drawing a chair to Fillide&rsquo;s, &ldquo;has left me to
+      enliven your solitude, fair Italian. He is not jealous of the ugly Nicot!&mdash;ha,
+      ha!&mdash;yet Nicot loved thee well once, when his fortunes were more
+      fair. But enough of such past follies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your friend, then, has left the house. Whither? Ah, you look away; you
+      falter,&mdash;you cannot meet my eyes! Speak! I implore, I command thee,
+      speak!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enfant! And what dost thou fear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;FEAR!&mdash;yes, alas, I fear!&rdquo; said the Italian; and her whole frame
+      seemed to shrink into itself as she fell once more back into her seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, after a pause, she tossed the long hair from her eyes, and, starting
+      up abruptly, paced the room with disordered strides. At length she stopped
+      opposite to Nicot, laid her hand on his arm, drew him towards an
+      escritoire, which she unlocked, and, opening a well, pointed to the gold
+      that lay within, and said, &ldquo;Thou art poor,&mdash;thou lovest money; take
+      what thou wilt, but undeceive me. Who is this woman whom thy friend
+      visits,&mdash;and does he love her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nicot&rsquo;s eyes sparkled, and his hands opened and clenched, and clenched and
+      opened, as he gazed upon the coins. But reluctantly resisting the impulse,
+      he said, with an affected bitterness, &ldquo;Thinkest thou to bribe me?&mdash;if
+      so, it cannot be with gold. But what if he does love a rival; what if he
+      betrays thee; what if, wearied by thy jealousies, he designs in his flight
+      to leave thee behind,&mdash;would such knowledge make thee happier?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; exclaimed the Italian, fiercely; &ldquo;yes, for it would be happiness to
+      hate and to be avenged! Oh, thou knowest not how sweet is hatred to those
+      who have really loved!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But wilt thou swear, if I reveal to thee the secret, that thou wilt not
+      betray me,&mdash;that thou wilt not fall, as women do, into weak tears and
+      fond reproaches, when thy betrayer returns?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tears, reproaches! Revenge hides itself in smiles!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou art a brave creature!&rdquo; said Nicot, almost admiringly. &ldquo;One condition
+      more: thy lover designs to fly with his new love, to leave thee to thy
+      fate; if I prove this to thee, and if I give thee revenge against thy
+      rival, wilt thou fly with me? I love thee!&mdash;I will wed thee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fillide&rsquo;s eyes flashed fire; she looked at him with unutterable disdain,
+      and was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nicot felt he had gone too far; and with that knowledge of the evil part
+      of our nature which his own heart and association with crime had taught
+      him, he resolved to trust the rest to the passions of the Italian, when
+      raised to the height to which he was prepared to lead them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;my love made me too presumptuous; and yet it is
+      only that love,&mdash;my sympathy for thee, beautiful and betrayed, that
+      can induce me to wrong, with my revelations, one whom I have regarded as a
+      brother. I can depend upon thine oath to conceal all from Glyndon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On my oath and my wrongs and my mountain blood!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough! get thy hat and mantle, and follow me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Fillide left the room, Nicot&rsquo;s eyes again rested on the gold; it was
+      much,&mdash;much more than he had dared to hope for; and as he peered into
+      the well and opened the drawers, he perceived a packet of letters in the
+      well-known hand of Camille Desmoulins. He seized&mdash;he opened the
+      packet; his looks brightened as he glanced over a few sentences. &ldquo;This
+      would give fifty Glyndons to the guillotine!&rdquo; he muttered, and thrust the
+      packet into his bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O artist!&mdash;O haunted one!&mdash;O erring genius!&mdash;behold the two
+      worst foes,&mdash;the False Ideal that knows no God, and the False Love
+      that burns from the corruption of the senses, and takes no lustre from the
+      soul!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0067" id="link2HCH0067">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 7.III.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Liebe sonnt das Reich der Nacht.
+     &ldquo;Der Triumph der Liebe.&rdquo;
+ 
+     (Love illumes the realm of Night.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dost thou remember in the old time, when the Beautiful yet dwelt in
+      Greece, how we two, in the vast Athenian Theatre, witnessed the birth of
+      Words as undying as ourselves? Dost thou remember the thrill of terror
+      that ran through that mighty audience, when the wild Cassandra burst from
+      her awful silence to shriek to her relentless god! How ghastly, at the
+      entrance of the House of Atreus, about to become her tomb, rang out her
+      exclamations of foreboding woe: &ldquo;Dwelling abhorred of heaven!&mdash;human
+      shamble-house and floor blood-bespattered!&rdquo; (Aesch. &ldquo;Agam.&rdquo; 1098.) Dost
+      thou remember how, amidst the breathless awe of those assembled thousands,
+      I drew close to thee, and whispered, &ldquo;Verily, no prophet like the poet!
+      This scene of fabled horror comes to me as a dream, shadowing forth some
+      likeness in my own remoter future!&rdquo; As I enter this slaughter-house that
+      scene returns to me, and I hearken to the voice of Cassandra ringing in my
+      ears. A solemn and warning dread gathers round me, as if I too were come
+      to find a grave, and &ldquo;the Net of Hades&rdquo; had already entangled me in its
+      web! What dark treasure-houses of vicissitude and woe are our memories
+      become! What our lives, but the chronicles of unrelenting death! It seems
+      to me as yesterday when I stood in the streets of this city of the Gaul,
+      as they shone with plumed chivalry, and the air rustled with silken
+      braveries. Young Louis, the monarch and the lover, was victor of the
+      Tournament at the Carousel; and all France felt herself splendid in the
+      splendour of her gorgeous chief! Now there is neither throne nor altar;
+      and what is in their stead? I see it yonder&mdash;the GUILLOTINE! It is
+      dismal to stand amidst the ruins of mouldering cities, to startle the
+      serpent and the lizard amidst the wrecks of Persepolis and Thebes; but
+      more dismal still to stand as I&mdash;the stranger from Empires that have
+      ceased to be&mdash;stand now amidst the yet ghastlier ruins of Law and
+      Order, the shattering of mankind themselves! Yet here, even here, Love,
+      the Beautifier, that hath led my steps, can walk with unshrinking hope
+      through the wilderness of Death. Strange is the passion that makes a world
+      in itself, that individualises the One amidst the Multitude; that, through
+      all the changes of my solemn life, yet survives, though ambition and hate
+      and anger are dead; the one solitary angel, hovering over a universe of
+      tombs on its two tremulous and human wings,&mdash;Hope and Fear!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How is it, Mejnour, that, as my diviner art abandoned me,&mdash;as, in my
+      search for Viola, I was aided but by the ordinary instincts of the merest
+      mortal,&mdash;how is it that I have never desponded, that I have felt in
+      every difficulty the prevailing prescience that we should meet at last? So
+      cruelly was every vestige of her flight concealed from me,&mdash;so
+      suddenly, so secretly had she fled, that all the spies, all the
+      authorities of Venice, could give me no clew. All Italy I searched in
+      vain! Her young home at Naples!&mdash;how still, in its humble chambers,
+      there seemed to linger the fragrance of her presence! All the sublimest
+      secrets of our lore failed me,&mdash;failed to bring her soul visible to
+      mine; yet morning and night, thou lone and childless one, morning and
+      night, detached from myself, I can commune with my child! There in that
+      most blessed, typical, and mysterious of all relations, Nature herself
+      appears to supply what Science would refuse. Space cannot separate the
+      father&rsquo;s watchful soul from the cradle of his first-born! I know not of
+      its resting-place and home,&mdash;my visions picture not the land,&mdash;only
+      the small and tender life to which all space is as yet the heritage! For
+      to the infant, before reason dawns,&mdash;before man&rsquo;s bad passions can
+      dim the essence that it takes from the element it hath left, there is no
+      peculiar country, no native city, and no mortal language. Its soul as yet
+      is the denizen of all airs and of every world; and in space its soul meets
+      with mine,&mdash;the child communes with the father! Cruel and forsaking
+      one,&mdash;thou for whom I left the wisdom of the spheres; thou whose
+      fatal dower has been the weakness and terrors of humanity,&mdash;couldst
+      thou think that young soul less safe on earth because I would lead it ever
+      more up to heaven! Didst thou think that I could have wronged mine own?
+      Didst thou not know that in its serenest eyes the life that I gave it
+      spoke to warn, to upbraid the mother who would bind it to the darkness and
+      pangs of the prison-house of clay? Didst thou not feel that it was I who,
+      permitted by the Heavens, shielded it from suffering and disease? And in
+      its wondrous beauty, I blessed the holy medium through which, at last, my
+      spirit might confer with thine!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And how have I tracked them hither? I learned that thy pupil had been at
+      Venice. I could not trace the young and gentle neophyte of Parthenope in
+      the description of the haggard and savage visitor who had come to Viola
+      before she fled; but when I would have summoned his IDEA before me, it
+      refused to obey; and I knew then that his fate had become entwined with
+      Viola&rsquo;s. I have tracked him, then, to this Lazar House. I arrived but
+      yesterday; I have not yet discovered him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have just returned from their courts of justice,&mdash;dens where tigers
+      arraign their prey. I find not whom I would seek. They are saved as yet;
+      but I recognise in the crimes of mortals the dark wisdom of the
+      Everlasting. Mejnour, I see here, for the first time, how majestic and
+      beauteous a thing is death! Of what sublime virtues we robbed ourselves,
+      when, in the thirst for virtue, we attained the art by which we can refuse
+      to die! When in some happy clime, where to breathe is to enjoy, the
+      charnel-house swallows up the young and fair; when in the noble pursuit of
+      knowledge, Death comes to the student, and shuts out the enchanted land
+      which was opening to his gaze,&mdash;how natural for us to desire to live;
+      how natural to make perpetual life the first object of research! But here,
+      from my tower of time, looking over the darksome past, and into the starry
+      future, I learn how great hearts feel what sweetness and glory there is to
+      die for the things they love! I saw a father sacrificing himself for his
+      son; he was subjected to charges which a word of his could dispel,&mdash;he
+      was mistaken for his boy. With what joy he seized the error, confessed the
+      noble crimes of valour and fidelity which the son had indeed committed,
+      and went to the doom, exulting that his death saved the life he had given,
+      not in vain! I saw women, young, delicate, in the bloom of their beauty;
+      they had vowed themselves to the cloister. Hands smeared with the blood of
+      saints opened the gate that had shut them from the world, and bade them go
+      forth, forget their vows, forswear the Divine one these demons would
+      depose, find lovers and helpmates, and be free. And some of these young
+      hearts had loved, and even, though in struggles, loved yet. Did they
+      forswear the vow? Did they abandon the faith? Did even love allure them?
+      Mejnour, with one voice, they preferred to die. And whence comes this
+      courage?&mdash;because such HEARTS LIVE IN SOME MORE ABSTRACT AND HOLIER
+      LIFE THAN THEIR OWN. BUT TO LIVE FOREVER UPON THIS EARTH IS TO LIVE IN
+      NOTHING DIVINER THAN OURSELVES. Yes, even amidst this gory butcherdom,
+      God, the Ever-living, vindicates to man the sanctity of His servant,
+      Death!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again I have seen thee in spirit; I have seen and blessed thee, my sweet
+      child! Dost thou not know me also in thy dreams? Dost thou not feel the
+      beating of my heart through the veil of thy rosy slumbers? Dost thou not
+      hear the wings of the brighter beings that I yet can conjure around thee,
+      to watch, to nourish, and to save? And when the spell fades at thy waking,
+      when thine eyes open to the day, will they not look round for me, and ask
+      thy mother, with their mute eloquence, &ldquo;Why she has robbed thee of a
+      father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Woman, dost thou not repent thee? Flying from imaginary fears, hast thou
+      not come to the very lair of terror, where Danger sits visible and
+      incarnate? Oh, if we could but meet, wouldst thou not fall upon the bosom
+      thou hast so wronged, and feel, poor wanderer amidst the storms, as if
+      thou hadst regained the shelter? Mejnour, still my researches fail me. I
+      mingle with all men, even their judges and their spies, but I cannot yet
+      gain the clew. I know that she is here. I know it by an instinct; the
+      breath of my child seems warmer and more familiar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They peer at me with venomous looks, as I pass through their streets. With
+      a glance I disarm their malice, and fascinate the basilisks. Everywhere I
+      see the track and scent the presence of the Ghostly One that dwells on the
+      Threshold, and whose victims are the souls that would ASPIRE, and can only
+      FEAR. I see its dim shapelessness going before the men of blood, and
+      marshalling their way. Robespierre passed me with his furtive step. Those
+      eyes of horror were gnawing into his heart. I looked down upon their
+      senate; the grim Phantom sat cowering on its floor. It hath taken up its
+      abode in the city of Dread. And what in truth are these would-be builders
+      of a new world? Like the students who have vainly struggled after our
+      supreme science, they have attempted what is beyond their power; they have
+      passed from this solid earth of usages and forms into the land of shadow,
+      and its loathsome keeper has seized them as its prey. I looked into the
+      tyrant&rsquo;s shuddering soul, as it trembled past me. There, amidst the ruins
+      of a thousand systems which aimed at virtue, sat Crime, and shivered at
+      its desolation. Yet this man is the only Thinker, the only Aspirant,
+      amongst them all. He still looks for a future of peace and mercy, to
+      begin,&mdash;ay! at what date? When he has swept away every foe. Fool! new
+      foes spring from every drop of blood. Led by the eyes of the Unutterable,
+      he is walking to his doom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O Viola, thy innocence protects thee! Thou whom the sweet humanities of
+      love shut out even from the dreams of aerial and spiritual beauty, making
+      thy heart a universe of visions fairer than the wanderer over the rosy
+      Hesperus can survey,&mdash;shall not the same pure affection encompass
+      thee, even here, with a charmed atmosphere, and terror itself fall
+      harmless on a life too innocent for wisdom?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0068" id="link2HCH0068">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 7.IV.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Ombra piu che di notte, in cui di luce
+     Raggio misto non e;
+
+     ....
+
+     Ne piu il palagio appar, ne piu le sue
+     Vestigia; ne dir puossi&mdash;egli qui fue.
+     &mdash;&ldquo;Ger. Lib.&rdquo;, canto xvi.-lxix.
+
+     (Darkness greater than of night, in which not a ray of light is
+     mixed;...The palace appears no more:  not even a vestige,&mdash;nor
+     can one say that it has been.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The clubs are noisy with clamorous frenzy; the leaders are grim with
+      schemes. Black Henriot flies here and there, muttering to his armed
+      troops, &ldquo;Robespierre, your beloved, is in danger!&rdquo; Robespierre stalks
+      perturbed, his list of victims swelling every hour. Tallien, the Macduff
+      to the doomed Macbeth, is whispering courage to his pale conspirators.
+      Along the streets heavily roll the tumbrils. The shops are closed,&mdash;the
+      people are gorged with gore, and will lap no more. And night after night,
+      to the eighty theatres flock the children of the Revolution, to laugh at
+      the quips of comedy, and weep gentle tears over imaginary woes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a small chamber, in the heart of the city, sits the mother, watching
+      over her child. It is quiet, happy noon; the sunlight, broken by the tall
+      roofs in the narrow street, comes yet through the open casement, the
+      impartial playfellow of the air, gleesome alike in temple and prison, hall
+      and hovel; as golden and as blithe, whether it laugh over the first hour
+      of life, or quiver in its gay delight on the terror and agony of the last!
+      The child, where it lay at the feet of Viola, stretched out its dimpled
+      hands as if to clasp the dancing motes that revelled in the beam. The
+      mother turned her eyes from the glory; it saddened her yet more. She
+      turned and sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Is this the same Viola who bloomed fairer than their own Idalia under the
+      skies of Greece? How changed! How pale and worn! She sat listlessly, her
+      arms dropping on her knee; the smile that was habitual to her lips was
+      gone. A heavy, dull despondency, as if the life of life were no more,
+      seemed to weigh down her youth, and make it weary of that happy sun! In
+      truth, her existence had languished away since it had wandered, as some
+      melancholy stream, from the source that fed it. The sudden enthusiasm of
+      fear or superstition that had almost, as if still in the unconscious
+      movements of a dream, led her to fly from Zanoni, had ceased from the day
+      which dawned upon her in a foreign land. Then&mdash;there&mdash;she felt
+      that in the smile she had evermore abandoned lived her life. She did not
+      repent,&mdash;she would not have recalled the impulse that winged her
+      flight. Though the enthusiasm was gone, the superstition yet remained; she
+      still believed she had saved her child from that dark and guilty sorcery,
+      concerning which the traditions of all lands are prodigal, but in none do
+      they find such credulity, or excite such dread, as in the South of Italy.
+      This impression was confirmed by the mysterious conversations of Glyndon,
+      and by her own perception of the fearful change that had passed over one
+      who represented himself as the victim of the enchanters. She did not,
+      therefore, repent; but her very volition seemed gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On their arrival at Paris, Viola saw her companion&mdash;the faithful wife&mdash;no
+      more. Ere three weeks were passed, husband and wife had ceased to live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, for the first time, the drudgeries of this hard earth claimed the
+      beautiful Neapolitan. In that profession, giving voice and shape to poetry
+      and song, in which her first years were passed, there is, while it lasts,
+      an excitement in the art that lifts it from the labour of a calling.
+      Hovering between two lives, the Real and Ideal, dwells the life of music
+      and the stage. But that life was lost evermore to the idol of the eyes and
+      ears of Naples. Lifted to the higher realm of passionate love, it seemed
+      as if the fictitious genius which represents the thoughts of others was
+      merged in the genius that grows all thought itself. It had been the worst
+      infidelity to the Lost, to have descended again to live on the applause of
+      others. And so&mdash;for she would not accept alms from Glyndon&mdash;so,
+      by the commonest arts, the humblest industry which the sex knows, alone
+      and unseen, she who had slept on the breast of Zanoni found a shelter for
+      their child. As when, in the noble verse prefixed to this chapter, Armida
+      herself has destroyed her enchanted palace,&mdash;not a vestige of that
+      bower, raised of old by Poetry and Love, remained to say, &ldquo;It had been!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the child avenged the father; it bloomed, it thrived,&mdash;it waxed
+      strong in the light of life. But still it seemed haunted and preserved by
+      some other being than her own. In its sleep there was that slumber, so
+      deep and rigid, which a thunderbolt could not have disturbed; and in such
+      sleep often it moved its arms, as to embrace the air: often its lips
+      stirred with murmured sounds of indistinct affection,&mdash;NOT FOR HER;
+      and all the while upon its cheeks a hue of such celestial bloom, upon its
+      lips a smile of such mysterious joy! Then, when it waked, its eyes did not
+      turn first to HER,&mdash;wistful, earnest, wandering, they roved around,
+      to fix on her pale face, at last, in mute sorrow and reproach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never had Viola felt before how mighty was her love for Zanoni; how
+      thought, feeling, heart, soul, life,&mdash;all lay crushed and dormant in
+      the icy absence to which she had doomed herself! She heard not the roar
+      without, she felt not one amidst those stormy millions,&mdash;worlds of
+      excitement labouring through every hour. Only when Glyndon, haggard, wan,
+      and spectre-like, glided in, day after day, to visit her, did the fair
+      daughter of the careless South know how heavy and universal was the
+      Death-Air that girt her round. Sublime in her passive unconsciousness,&mdash;her
+      mechanic life,&mdash;she sat, and feared not, in the den of the Beasts of
+      Prey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door of the room opened abruptly, and Glyndon entered. His manner was
+      more agitated than usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it you, Clarence?&rdquo; she said in her soft, languid tones. &ldquo;You are
+      before the hour I expected you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who can count on his hours at Paris?&rdquo; returned Glyndon, with a frightful
+      smile. &ldquo;Is it not enough that I am here! Your apathy in the midst of these
+      sorrows appalls me. You say calmly, &lsquo;Farewell;&rsquo; calmly you bid me,
+      &lsquo;Welcome!&lsquo;&mdash;as if in every corner there was not a spy, and as
+      if with every day there was not a massacre!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me! But in these walls lies my world. I can hardly credit all the
+      tales you tell me. Everything here, save THAT,&rdquo; and she pointed to the
+      infant, &ldquo;seems already so lifeless, that in the tomb itself one could
+      scarcely less heed the crimes that are done without.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon paused for a few moments, and gazed with strange and mingled
+      feelings upon that face and form, still so young, and yet so invested with
+      that saddest of all repose,&mdash;when the heart feels old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Viola,&rdquo; said he, at last, and in a voice of suppressed passion, &ldquo;was it
+      thus I ever thought to see you,&mdash;ever thought to feel for you, when
+      we two first met in the gay haunts of Naples? Ah, why then did you refuse
+      my love; or why was mine not worthy of you? Nay, shrink not!&mdash;let me
+      touch your hand. No passion so sweet as that youthful love can return to
+      me again. I feel for you but as a brother for some younger and lonely
+      sister. With you, in your presence, sad though it be, I seem to breathe
+      back the purer air of my early life. Here alone, except in scenes of
+      turbulence and tempest, the Phantom ceases to pursue me. I forget even the
+      Death that stalks behind, and haunts me as my shadow. But better days may
+      be in store for us yet. Viola, I at last begin dimly to perceive how to
+      baffle and subdue the Phantom that has cursed my life,&mdash;it is to
+      brave, and defy it. In sin and in riot, as I have told thee, it haunts me
+      not. But I comprehend now what Mejnour said in his dark apothegms, &lsquo;that I
+      should dread the spectre most WHEN UNSEEN.&rsquo; In virtuous and calm
+      resolution it appears,&mdash;ay, I behold it now; there, there, with its
+      livid eyes!&rdquo;&mdash;and the drops fell from his brow. &ldquo;But it shall no
+      longer daunt me from that resolution. I face it, and it gradually darkens
+      back into the shade.&rdquo; He paused, and his eyes dwelt with a terrible
+      exultation upon the sunlit space; then, with a heavy and deep-drawn
+      breath, he resumed, &ldquo;Viola, I have found the means of escape. We will
+      leave this city. In some other land we will endeavour to comfort each
+      other, and forget the past.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Viola, calmly; &ldquo;I have no further wish to stir, till I am born
+      hence to the last resting-place. I dreamed of him last night, Clarence!&mdash;dreamed
+      of him for the first time since we parted; and, do not mock me, methought
+      that he forgave the deserter, and called me &lsquo;Wife.&rsquo; That dream hallows the
+      room. Perhaps it will visit me again before I die.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Talk not of him,&mdash;of the demi-fiend!&rdquo; cried Glyndon, fiercely, and
+      stamping his foot. &ldquo;Thank the Heavens for any fate that hath rescued thee
+      from him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; said Viola, gravely. And as she was about to proceed, her eye fell
+      upon the child. It was standing in the very centre of that slanting column
+      of light which the sun poured into the chamber; and the rays seemed to
+      surround it as a halo, and settled, crown-like, on the gold of its shining
+      hair. In its small shape, so exquisitely modelled, in its large, steady,
+      tranquil eyes, there was something that awed, while it charmed the
+      mother&rsquo;s pride. It gazed on Glyndon as he spoke, with a look which almost
+      might have seemed disdain, and which Viola, at least, interpreted as a
+      defence of the Absent, stronger than her own lips could frame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon broke the pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou wouldst stay, for what? To betray a mother&rsquo;s duty! If any evil
+      happen to thee here, what becomes of thine infant? Shall it be brought up
+      an orphan, in a country that has desecrated thy religion, and where human
+      charity exists no more? Ah, weep, and clasp it to thy bosom; but tears do
+      not protect and save.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou hast conquered, my friend, I will fly with thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow night, then, be prepared. I will bring thee the necessary
+      disguises.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Glyndon then proceeded to sketch rapidly the outline of the path they
+      were to take, and the story they were to tell. Viola listened, but
+      scarcely comprehended; he pressed her hand to his heart and departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0069" id="link2HCH0069">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 7.V.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Van seco pur anco
+     Sdegno ed Amor, quasi due Veltri al fianco.
+     &ldquo;Ger. Lib.&rdquo; cant. xx. cxvii.
+
+     (There went with him still Disdain and Love, like two greyhounds
+     side by side.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon did not perceive, as he hurried from the house, two forms
+      crouching by the angle of the wall. He saw still the spectre gliding by
+      his side; but he beheld not the yet more poisonous eyes of human envy and
+      woman&rsquo;s jealousy that glared on his retreating footsteps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nicot advanced to the house; Fillide followed him in silence. The painter,
+      an old sans-culotte, knew well what language to assume to the porter. He
+      beckoned the latter from his lodge, &ldquo;How is this, citizen? Thou harbourest
+      a &lsquo;suspect.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Citizen, you terrify me!&mdash;if so, name him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not a man; a refugee, an Italian woman, lodges here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, au troisieme,&mdash;the door to the left. But what of her?&mdash;she
+      cannot be dangerous, poor child!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Citizen, beware! Dost thou dare to pity her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I? No, no, indeed. But&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak the truth! Who visits her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one but an Englishman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is it,&mdash;an Englishman, a spy of Pitt and Coburg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just Heaven! is it possible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How, citizen! dost thou speak of Heaven? Thou must be an aristocrat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, indeed; it was but an old bad habit, and escaped me unawares.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How often does the Englishman visit her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fillide uttered an exclamation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She never stirs out,&rdquo; said the porter. &ldquo;Her sole occupations are in work,
+      and care of her infant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her infant!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fillide made a bound forward. Nicot in vain endeavoured to arrest her. She
+      sprang up the stairs; she paused not till she was before the door
+      indicated by the porter; it stood ajar, she entered, she stood at the
+      threshold, and beheld that face, still so lovely! The sight of so much
+      beauty left her hopeless. And the child, over whom the mother bent!&mdash;she
+      who had never been a mother!&mdash;she uttered no sound; the furies were
+      at work within her breast. Viola turned, and saw her, and, terrified by
+      the strange apparition, with features that expressed the deadliest hate
+      and scorn and vengeance, uttered a cry, and snatched the child to her
+      bosom. The Italian laughed aloud,&mdash;turned, descended, and, gaining
+      the spot where Nicot still conversed with the frightened porter drew him
+      from the house. When they were in the open street, she halted abruptly,
+      and said, &ldquo;Avenge me, and name thy price!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My price, sweet one! is but permission to love thee. Thou wilt fly with
+      me to-morrow night; thou wilt possess thyself of the passports and the
+      plan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And they&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall, before then, find their asylum in the Conciergerie. The guillotine
+      shall requite thy wrongs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do this, and I am satisfied,&rdquo; said Fillide, firmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And they spoke no more till they regained the house. But when she there,
+      looking up to the dull building, saw the windows of the room which the
+      belief of Glyndon&rsquo;s love had once made a paradise, the tiger relented at
+      the heart; something of the woman gushed back upon her nature, dark and
+      savage as it was. She pressed the arm on which she leaned convulsively,
+      and exclaimed, &ldquo;No, no! not him! denounce her,&mdash;let her perish; but I
+      have slept on HIS bosom,&mdash;not HIM!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It shall be as thou wilt,&rdquo; said Nicot, with a devil&rsquo;s sneer; &ldquo;but he must
+      be arrested for the moment. No harm shall happen to him, for no accuser
+      shall appear. But her,&mdash;thou wilt not relent for her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fillide turned upon him her eyes, and their dark glance was sufficient
+      answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0070" id="link2HCH0070">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 7.VI.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     In poppa quella
+     Che guidar gli dovea, fatal Donsella.
+     &ldquo;Ger. Lib.&rdquo; cant. xv. 3.
+
+     (By the prow was the fatal lady ordained to be the guide.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The Italian did not overrate that craft of simulation proverbial with her
+      country and her sex. Not a word, not a look, that day revealed to Glyndon
+      the deadly change that had converted devotion into hate. He himself,
+      indeed, absorbed in his own schemes, and in reflections on his own strange
+      destiny, was no nice observer. But her manner, milder and more subdued
+      than usual, produced a softening effect upon his meditations towards the
+      evening; and he then began to converse with her on the certain hope of
+      escape, and on the future that would await them in less unhallowed lands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And thy fair friend,&rdquo; said Fillide, with an averted eye and a false
+      smile, &ldquo;who was to be our companion?&mdash;thou hast resigned her, Nicot
+      tells me, in favour of one in whom he is interested. Is it so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He told thee this!&rdquo; returned Glyndon, evasively. &ldquo;Well! does the change
+      content thee?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Traitor!&rdquo; muttered Fillide; and she rose suddenly, approached him, parted
+      the long hair from his forehead caressingly, and pressed her lips
+      convulsively on his brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This were too fair a head for the doomsman,&rdquo; said she, with a slight
+      laugh, and, turning away, appeared occupied in preparations for their
+      departure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, when he rose, Glyndon did not see the Italian; she was
+      absent from the house when he left it. It was necessary that he should
+      once more visit C&mdash; before his final Departure, not only to arrange
+      for Nicot&rsquo;s participation in the flight, but lest any suspicion should
+      have arisen to thwart or endanger the plan he had adopted. C&mdash;,
+      though not one of the immediate coterie of Robespierre, and indeed
+      secretly hostile to him, had possessed the art of keeping well with each
+      faction as it rose to power. Sprung from the dregs of the populace, he
+      had, nevertheless, the grace and vivacity so often found impartially
+      amongst every class in France. He had contrived to enrich himself&mdash;none
+      knew how&mdash;in the course of his rapid career. He became, indeed,
+      ultimately one of the wealthiest proprietors of Paris, and at that time
+      kept a splendid and hospitable mansion. He was one of those whom, from
+      various reasons, Robespierre deigned to favour; and he had often saved the
+      proscribed and suspected, by procuring them passports under disguised
+      names, and advising their method of escape. But C&mdash; was a man who
+      took this trouble only for the rich. &ldquo;The incorruptible Maximilien,&rdquo; who
+      did not want the tyrant&rsquo;s faculty of penetration, probably saw through all
+      his manoeuvres, and the avarice which he cloaked beneath his charity. But
+      it was noticeable that Robespierre frequently seemed to wink at&mdash;nay,
+      partially to encourage&mdash;such vice in men whom he meant hereafter to
+      destroy, as would tend to lower them in the public estimation, and to
+      contrast with his own austere and unassailable integrity and PURISM. And,
+      doubtless, he often grimly smiled in his sleeve at the sumptuous mansion
+      and the griping covetousness of the worthy Citizen C&mdash;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To this personage, then, Glyndon musingly bent his way. It was true, as he
+      had darkly said to Viola, that in proportion as he had resisted the
+      spectre, its terrors had lost their influence. The time had come at last,
+      when, seeing crime and vice in all their hideousness, and in so vast a
+      theatre, he had found that in vice and crime there are deadlier horrors
+      than in the eyes of a phantom-fear. His native nobleness began to return
+      to him. As he passed the streets, he revolved in his mind projects of
+      future repentance and reformation. He even meditated, as a just return for
+      Fillide&rsquo;s devotion, the sacrifice of all the reasonings of his birth and
+      education. He would repair whatever errors he had committed against her,
+      by the self-immolation of marriage with one little congenial with himself.
+      He who had once revolted from marriage with the noble and gentle Viola!&mdash;he
+      had learned in that world of wrong to know that right is right, and that
+      Heaven did not make the one sex to be the victim of the other. The young
+      visions of the Beautiful and the Good rose once more before him; and along
+      the dark ocean of his mind lay the smile of reawakening virtue, as a path
+      of moonlight. Never, perhaps, had the condition of his soul been so
+      elevated and unselfish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meanwhile Jean Nicot, equally absorbed in dreams of the future, and
+      already in his own mind laying out to the best advantage the gold of the
+      friend he was about to betray, took his way to the house honoured by the
+      residence of Robespierre. He had no intention to comply with the relenting
+      prayer of Fillide, that the life of Glyndon should be spared. He thought
+      with Barrere, &ldquo;Il n&rsquo;y a que les morts qui ne revient pas.&rdquo; In all men who
+      have devoted themselves to any study, or any art, with sufficient pains to
+      attain a certain degree of excellence, there must be a fund of energy
+      immeasurably above that of the ordinary herd. Usually this energy is
+      concentrated on the objects of their professional ambition, and leaves
+      them, therefore, apathetic to the other pursuits of men. But where those
+      objects are denied, where the stream has not its legitimate vent, the
+      energy, irritated and aroused, possesses the whole being, and if not
+      wasted on desultory schemes, or if not purified by conscience and
+      principle, becomes a dangerous and destructive element in the social
+      system, through which it wanders in riot and disorder. Hence, in all wise
+      monarchies,&mdash;nay, in all well-constituted states,&mdash;the peculiar
+      care with which channels are opened for every art and every science; hence
+      the honour paid to their cultivators by subtle and thoughtful statesmen,
+      who, perhaps, for themselves, see nothing in a picture but coloured
+      canvas,&mdash;nothing in a problem but an ingenious puzzle. No state is
+      ever more in danger than when the talent that should be consecrated to
+      peace has no occupation but political intrigue or personal advancement.
+      Talent unhonoured is talent at war with men. And here it is noticeable,
+      that the class of actors having been the most degraded by the public
+      opinion of the old regime, their very dust deprived of Christian burial,
+      no men (with certain exceptions in the company especially favoured by the
+      Court) were more relentless and revengeful among the scourges of the
+      Revolution. In the savage Collot d&rsquo;Herbois, mauvais comedien, were
+      embodied the wrongs and the vengeance of a class.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the energy of Jean Nicot had never been sufficiently directed to the
+      art he professed. Even in his earliest youth, the political disquisitions
+      of his master, David, had distracted him from the more tedious labours of
+      the easel. The defects of his person had embittered his mind; the atheism
+      of his benefactor had deadened his conscience. For one great excellence of
+      religion&mdash;above all, the Religion of the Cross&mdash;is, that it
+      raises PATIENCE first into a virtue, and next into a hope. Take away the
+      doctrine of another life, of requital hereafter, of the smile of a Father
+      upon our sufferings and trials in our ordeal here, and what becomes of
+      patience? But without patience, what is man?&mdash;and what a people?
+      Without patience, art never can be high; without patience, liberty never
+      can be perfected. By wild throes, and impetuous, aimless struggles,
+      Intellect seeks to soar from Penury, and a nation to struggle into
+      Freedom. And woe, thus unfortified, guideless, and unenduring,&mdash;woe
+      to both!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nicot was a villain as a boy. In most criminals, however abandoned, there
+      are touches of humanity,&mdash;relics of virtue; and the true delineator
+      of mankind often incurs the taunt of bad hearts and dull minds, for
+      showing that even the worst alloy has some particles of gold, and even the
+      best that come stamped from the mint of Nature have some adulteration of
+      the dross. But there are exceptions, though few, to the general rule,&mdash;exceptions,
+      when the conscience lies utterly dead, and when good or bad are things
+      indifferent but as means to some selfish end. So was it with the protege
+      of the atheist. Envy and hate filled up his whole being, and the
+      consciousness of superior talent only made him curse the more all who
+      passed him in the sunlight with a fairer form or happier fortunes. But,
+      monster though he was, when his murderous fingers griped the throat of his
+      benefactor, Time, and that ferment of all evil passions&mdash;the Reign of
+      Blood&mdash;had made in the deep hell of his heart a deeper still. Unable
+      to exercise his calling (for even had he dared to make his name prominent,
+      revolutions are no season for painters; and no man&mdash;no! not the
+      richest and proudest magnate of the land, has so great an interest in
+      peace and order, has so high and essential a stake in the well being of
+      society, as the poet and the artist), his whole intellect, ever restless
+      and unguided, was left to ponder over the images of guilt most congenial
+      to it. He had no future but in this life; and how in this life had the men
+      of power around him, the great wrestlers for dominion, thriven? All that
+      was good, pure, unselfish,&mdash;whether among Royalists or Republicans,&mdash;swept
+      to the shambles, and the deathsmen left alone in the pomp and purple of
+      their victims! Nobler paupers than Jean Nicot would despair; and Poverty
+      would rise in its ghastly multitudes to cut the throat of Wealth, and then
+      gash itself limb by limb, if Patience, the Angel of the Poor, sat not by
+      its side, pointing with solemn finger to the life to come! And now, as
+      Nicot neared the house of the Dictator, he began to meditate a reversal of
+      his plans of the previous day: not that he faltered in his resolution to
+      denounce Glyndon, and Viola would necessarily share his fate, as a
+      companion and accomplice,&mdash;no, THERE he was resolved! for he hated
+      both (to say nothing of his old but never-to-be-forgotten grudge against
+      Zanoni). Viola had scorned him, Glyndon had served, and the thought of
+      gratitude was as intolerable to him as the memory of insult. But why, now,
+      should he fly from France?&mdash;he could possess himself of Glyndon&rsquo;s
+      gold; he doubted not that he could so master Fillide by her wrath and
+      jealousy that he could command her acquiescence in all he proposed. The
+      papers he had purloined&mdash;Desmoulins&rsquo; correspondence with Glyndon&mdash;while
+      it insured the fate of the latter, might be eminently serviceable to
+      Robespierre, might induce the tyrant to forget his own old liaisons with
+      Hebert, and enlist him among the allies and tools of the King of Terror.
+      Hopes of advancement, of wealth, of a career, again rose before him. This
+      correspondence, dated shortly before Camille Desmoulins&rsquo; death, was
+      written with that careless and daring imprudence which characterised the
+      spoiled child of Danton. It spoke openly of designs against Robespierre;
+      it named confederates whom the tyrant desired only a popular pretext to
+      crush. It was a new instrument of death in the hands of the
+      Death-compeller. What greater gift could he bestow on Maximilien the
+      Incorruptible?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nursing these thoughts, he arrived at last before the door of Citizen
+      Dupleix. Around the threshold were grouped, in admired confusion, some
+      eight or ten sturdy Jacobins, the voluntary body-guard of Robespierre,&mdash;tall
+      fellows, well armed, and insolent with the power that reflects power,
+      mingled with women, young and fair, and gayly dressed, who had come, upon
+      the rumour that Maximilien had had an attack of bile, to inquire tenderly
+      of his health; for Robespierre, strange though it seem, was the idol of
+      the sex!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through this cortege stationed without the door, and reaching up the
+      stairs to the landing-place,&mdash;for Robespierre&rsquo;s apartments were not
+      spacious enough to afford sufficient antechamber for levees so numerous
+      and miscellaneous,&mdash;Nicot forced his way; and far from friendly or
+      flattering were the expressions that regaled his ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aha, le joli Polichinelle!&rdquo; said a comely matron, whose robe his
+      obtrusive and angular elbows cruelly discomposed. &ldquo;But how could one
+      expect gallantry from such a scarecrow!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Citizen, I beg to advise thee (The courteous use of the plural was
+      proscribed at Paris. The Societies Populaires had decided that whoever
+      used it should be prosecuted as suspect et adulateur! At the door of the
+      public administrations and popular societies was written up, &ldquo;Ici on
+      s&rsquo;honore du Citoyen, et on se tutoye&rdquo;!!! (&ldquo;Here they respect the title of
+      Citizen, and they &lsquo;thee&rsquo; and &lsquo;thou&rsquo; one another.&rdquo;) Take away Murder from
+      the French Revolution and it becomes the greatest farce ever played before
+      the angels!) that thou art treading on my feet. I beg thy pardon, but now
+      I look at thine, I see the hall is not wide enough for them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ho! Citizen Nicot,&rdquo; cried a Jacobin, shouldering his formidable bludgeon,
+      &ldquo;and what brings thee hither?&mdash;thinkest thou that Hebert&rsquo;s crimes are
+      forgotten already? Off, sport of Nature! and thank the Etre Supreme that
+      he made thee insignificant enough to be forgiven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A pretty face to look out of the National Window&rdquo; (The Guillotine.), said
+      the woman whose robe the painter had ruffled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Citizens,&rdquo; said Nicot, white with passion, but constraining himself so
+      that his words seemed to come from grinded teeth, &ldquo;I have the honour to
+      inform you that I seek the Representant upon business of the utmost
+      importance to the public and himself; and,&rdquo; he added slowly and
+      malignantly, glaring round, &ldquo;I call all good citizens to be my witnesses
+      when I shall complain to Robespierre of the reception bestowed on me by
+      some amongst you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was in the man&rsquo;s look and his tone of voice so much of deep and
+      concentrated malignity, that the idlers drew back, and as the remembrance
+      of the sudden ups and downs of revolutionary life occurred to them,
+      several voices were lifted to assure the squalid and ragged painter that
+      nothing was farther from their thoughts than to offer affront to a citizen
+      whose very appearance proved him to be an exemplary sans-culotte. Nicot
+      received these apologies in sullen silence, and, folding his arms, leaned
+      against the wall, waiting in grim patience for his admission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The loiterers talked to each other in separate knots of two and three; and
+      through the general hum rang the clear, loud, careless whistle of the tall
+      Jacobin who stood guard by the stairs. Next to Nicot, an old woman and a
+      young virgin were muttering in earnest whispers, and the atheist painter
+      chuckled inly to overhear their discourse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I assure thee, my dear,&rdquo; said the crone, with a mysterious shake of head,
+      &ldquo;that the divine Catherine Theot, whom the impious now persecute, is
+      really inspired. There can be no doubt that the elect, of whom Dom Gerle
+      and the virtuous Robespierre are destined to be the two grand prophets,
+      will enjoy eternal life here, and exterminate all their enemies. There is
+      no doubt of it,&mdash;not the least!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How delightful!&rdquo; said the girl; &ldquo;ce cher Robespierre!&mdash;he does not
+      look very long-lived either!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The greater the miracle,&rdquo; said the old woman. &ldquo;I am just eighty-one, and
+      I don&rsquo;t feel a day older since Catherine Theot promised me I should be one
+      of the elect!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the women were jostled aside by some newcomers, who talked loud and
+      eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; cried a brawny man, whose garb denoted him to be a butcher, with
+      bare arms, and a cap of liberty on his head; &ldquo;I am come to warn
+      Robespierre. They lay a snare for him; they offer him the Palais National.
+      &lsquo;On ne peut etre ami du peuple et habiter un palais.&rsquo;&rdquo; (&ldquo;No one can be a
+      friend of the people, and dwell in a palace.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Papiers inedits
+      trouves chez Robespierre,&rdquo; etc., volume ii. page 132.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, indeed,&rdquo; answered a cordonnier; &ldquo;I like him best in his little
+      lodging with the menuisier: it looks like one of US.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another rush of the crowd, and a new group were thrown forward in the
+      vicinity of Nicot. And these men gabbled and chattered faster and louder
+      than the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But my plan is&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Au diable with YOUR plan! I tell you MY scheme is&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo; cried a third. &ldquo;When Robespierre understands MY new method of
+      making gunpowder, the enemies of France shall&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah! who fears foreign enemies?&rdquo; interrupted a fourth; &ldquo;the enemies to be
+      feared are at home. MY new guillotine takes off fifty heads at a time!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But MY new Constitution!&rdquo; exclaimed a fifth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MY new Religion, citizen!&rdquo; murmured, complacently, a sixth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sacre mille tonnerres, silence!&rdquo; roared forth one of the Jacobin guard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the crowd suddenly parted as a fierce-looking man, buttoned up to the
+      chin, his sword rattling by his side, his spurs clinking at his heel,
+      descended the stairs,&mdash;his cheeks swollen and purple with
+      intemperance, his eyes dead and savage as a vulture&rsquo;s. There was a still
+      pause, as all, with pale cheeks, made way for the relentless Henriot. (Or
+      H<i>a</i>nriot. It is singular how undetermined are not only the
+      characters of the French Revolution, but even the spelling of their names.
+      With the historians it is Vergniau<i>d</i>,&mdash;with the journalists of
+      the time it is Vorgniau<i>x</i>. With one authority it is Robespierre,&mdash;with
+      another Robe<i>r</i>spierre.) Scarce had this gruff and iron minion of the
+      tyrant stalked through the throng, than a new movement of respect and
+      agitation and fear swayed the increasing crowd, as there glided in, with
+      the noiselessness of a shadow, a smiling, sober citizen, plainly but
+      neatly clad, with a downcast humble eye. A milder, meeker face no pastoral
+      poet could assign to Corydon or Thyrsis,&mdash;why did the crowd shrink
+      and hold their breath? As the ferret in a burrow crept that slight form
+      amongst the larger and rougher creatures that huddled and pressed back on
+      each other as he passed. A wink of his stealthy eye, and the huge Jacobins
+      left the passage clear, without sound or question. On he went to the
+      apartment of the tyrant, and thither will we follow him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0071" id="link2HCH0071">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 7.VII.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Constitutum est, ut quisquis eum HOMINEM dixisset fuisse,
+     capitalem penderet poenam.
+     &mdash;St. Augustine, &ldquo;Of the God Serapis,&rdquo; l. 18, &ldquo;de Civ. Dei,&rdquo; c. 5.
+
+     (It was decreed, that whoso should say that he had been a MAN,
+     should suffer the punishment of a capital offence.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Robespierre was reclining languidly in his fauteuil, his cadaverous
+      countenance more jaded and fatigued than usual. He to whom Catherine Theot
+      assured immortal life, looked, indeed, like a man at death&rsquo;s door. On the
+      table before him was a dish heaped with oranges, with the juice of which
+      it is said that he could alone assuage the acrid bile that overflowed his
+      system; and an old woman, richly dressed (she had been a Marquise in the
+      old regime) was employed in peeling the Hesperian fruits for the sick
+      Dragon, with delicate fingers covered with jewels. I have before said that
+      Robespierre was the idol of the women. Strange certainly!&mdash;but then
+      they were French women! The old Marquise, who, like Catherine Theot,
+      called him &ldquo;son,&rdquo; really seemed to love him piously and disinterestedly as
+      a mother; and as she peeled the oranges, and heaped on him the most
+      caressing and soothing expressions, the livid ghost of a smile fluttered
+      about his meagre lips. At a distance, Payan and Couthon, seated at another
+      table, were writing rapidly, and occasionally pausing from their work to
+      consult with each other in brief whispers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly one of the Jacobins opened the door, and, approaching
+      Robespierre, whispered to him the name of Guerin. (See for the espionage
+      on which Guerin was employed, &ldquo;Les Papiers inedits,&rdquo; etc., volume i. page
+      366, No. xxviii.) At that word the sick man started up, as if new life
+      were in the sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My kind friend,&rdquo; he said to the Marquise, &ldquo;forgive me; I must dispense
+      with thy tender cares. France demands me. I am never ill when I can serve
+      my country!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old Marquise lifted up her eyes to heaven and murmured, &ldquo;Quel ange!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Robespierre waved his hand impatiently; and the old woman, with a sigh,
+      patted his pale cheek, kissed his forehead, and submissively withdrew. The
+      next moment, the smiling, sober man we have before described, stood,
+      bending low, before the tyrant. And well might Robespierre welcome one of
+      the subtlest agents of his power,&mdash;one on whom he relied more than
+      the clubs of his Jacobins, the tongues of his orators, the bayonets of his
+      armies; Guerin, the most renowned of his ecouteurs,&mdash;the searching,
+      prying, universal, omnipresent spy, who glided like a sunbeam through
+      chink and crevice, and brought to him intelligence not only of the deeds,
+      but the hearts of men!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, citizen, well!&mdash;and what of Tallien?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This morning, early, two minutes after eight, he went out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So early?&mdash;hem!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He passed Rue des Quatre Fils, Rue de Temple, Rue de la Reunion, au
+      Marais, Rue Martin; nothing observable, except that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He amused himself at a stall in bargaining for some books.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bargaining for books! Aha, the charlatan!&mdash;he would cloak the
+      intriguant under the savant! Well!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At last, in the Rue des Fosses Montmartre, an individual in a blue
+      surtout (unknown) accosted him. They walked together about the street some
+      minutes, and were joined by Legendre.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Legendre! approach, Payan! Legendre, thou hearest!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went into a fruit-stall, and hired two little girls to go and play at
+      ball within hearing. They heard Legendre say, &lsquo;I believe his power is
+      wearing itself out.&rsquo; And Tallien answered, &lsquo;And HIMSELF too. I would not
+      give three months&rsquo; purchase for his life.&rsquo; I do not know, citizen, if they
+      meant THEE?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor I, citizen,&rdquo; answered Robespierre, with a fell smile, succeeded by an
+      expression of gloomy thought. &ldquo;Ha!&rdquo; he muttered; &ldquo;I am young yet,&mdash;in
+      the prime of life. I commit no excess. No; my constitution is sound,
+      sound. Anything farther of Tallien?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. The woman whom he loves&mdash;Teresa de Fontenai&mdash;who lies in
+      prison, still continues to correspond with him; to urge him to save her by
+      thy destruction: this my listeners overheard. His servant is the messenger
+      between the prisoner and himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So! The servant shall be seized in the open streets of Paris. The Reign
+      of Terror is not over yet. With the letters found on him, if such their
+      context, I will pluck Tallien from his benches in the Convention.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Robespierre rose, and after walking a few moments to and fro the room in
+      thought, opened the door and summoned one of the Jacobins without. To him
+      he gave his orders for the watch and arrest of Tallien&rsquo;s servant, and then
+      threw himself again into his chair. As the Jacobin departed, Guerin
+      whispered,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is not that the Citizen Aristides?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; a faithful fellow, if he would wash himself, and not swear so much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didst thou not guillotine his brother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Aristides denounced him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nevertheless, are such men safe about thy person?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Humph! that is true.&rdquo; And Robespierre, drawing out his pocketbook, wrote
+      a memorandum in it, replaced it in his vest, and resumed,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What else of Tallien?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing more. He and Legendre, with the unknown, walked to the Jardin
+      Egalite, and there parted. I saw Tallien to his house. But I have other
+      news. Thou badest me watch for those who threaten thee in secret letters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guerin! hast thou detected them? Hast thou&mdash;hast thou&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the tyrant, as he spoke, opened and shut both his hands, as if already
+      grasping the lives of the writers, and one of those convulsive grimaces
+      that seemed like an epileptic affection, to which he was subject,
+      distorted his features.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Citizen, I think I have found one. Thou must know that amongst those most
+      disaffected is the painter Nicot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay, stay!&rdquo; said Robespierre, opening a manuscript book, bound in red
+      morocco (for Robespierre was neat and precise, even in his death-lists),
+      and turning to an alphabetical index,&mdash;&ldquo;Nicot!&mdash;I have him,&mdash;atheist,
+      sans-culotte (I hate slovens), friend of Hebert! Aha! N.B.&mdash;Rene
+      Dumas knows of his early career and crimes. Proceed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This Nicot has been suspected of diffusing tracts and pamphlets against
+      thyself and the Comite. Yesterday evening, when he was out, his porter
+      admitted me into his apartment, Rue Beau Repaire. With my master-key I
+      opened his desk and escritoire. I found herein a drawing of thyself at the
+      guillotine; and underneath was written, &lsquo;Bourreau de ton pays, lis l&rsquo;arret
+      de ton chatiment!&rsquo; (Executioner of thy country, read the decree of thy
+      punishment!) I compared the words with the fragments of the various
+      letters thou gavest me: the handwriting tallies with one. See, I tore off
+      the writing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Robespierre looked, smiled, and, as if his vengeance were already
+      satisfied, threw himself on his chair. &ldquo;It is well! I feared it was a more
+      powerful enemy. This man must be arrested at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he waits below. I brushed by him as I ascended the stairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he so?&mdash;admit!&mdash;nay,&mdash;hold! hold! Guerin, withdraw
+      into the inner chamber till I summon thee again. Dear Payan, see that this
+      Nicot conceals no weapons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Payan, who was as brave as Robespierre was pusillanimous, repressed the
+      smile of disdain that quivered on his lips a moment, and left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile Robespierre, with his head buried in his bosom, seemed plunged
+      in deep thought. &ldquo;Life is a melancholy thing, Couthon!&rdquo; said he, suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Begging your pardon, I think death worse,&rdquo; answered the philanthropist,
+      gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Robespierre made no rejoinder, but took from his portefeuille that
+      singular letter, which was found afterwards amongst his papers, and is
+      marked LXI. in the published collection. (&ldquo;Papiers inedits,&rsquo; etc., volume
+      ii. page 156.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Without doubt,&rdquo; it began, &ldquo;you are uneasy at not having earlier received
+      news from me. Be not alarmed; you know that I ought only to reply by our
+      ordinary courier; and as he has been interrupted, dans sa derniere course,
+      that is the cause of my delay. When you receive this, employ all diligence
+      to fly a theatre where you are about to appear and disappear for the last
+      time. It were idle to recall to you all the reasons that expose you to
+      peril. The last step that should place you sur le sopha de la presidence,
+      but brings you to the scaffold; and the mob will spit on your face as it
+      has spat on those whom you have judged. Since, then, you have accumulated
+      here a sufficient treasure for existence, I await you with great
+      impatience, to laugh with you at the part you have played in the troubles
+      of a nation as credulous as it is avid of novelties. Take your part
+      according to our arrangements,&mdash;all is prepared. I conclude,&mdash;our
+      courier waits. I expect your reply.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Musingly and slowly the Dictator devoured the contents of this epistle.
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said to himself,&mdash;&ldquo;no; he who has tasted power can no longer
+      enjoy repose. Yet, Danton, Danton! thou wert right; better to be a poor
+      fisherman than to govern men.&rdquo; (&ldquo;Il vaudrait mieux,&rdquo; said Danton, in his
+      dungeon, &ldquo;etre un pauvre pecheur que de gouverner les hommes.&rdquo;)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opened, and Payan reappeared and whispered Robespierre, &ldquo;All is
+      safe! See the man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Dictator, satisfied, summoned his attendant Jacobin to conduct Nicot
+      to his presence. The painter entered with a fearless expression in his
+      deformed features, and stood erect before Robespierre, who scanned him
+      with a sidelong eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is remarkable that most of the principal actors of the Revolution were
+      singularly hideous in appearance,&mdash;from the colossal ugliness of
+      Mirabeau and Danton, or the villanous ferocity in the countenances of
+      David and Simon, to the filthy squalor of Marat, the sinister and bilious
+      meanness of the Dictator&rsquo;s features. But Robespierre, who was said to
+      resemble a cat, had also a cat&rsquo;s cleanness; and his prim and dainty dress,
+      his shaven smoothness, the womanly whiteness of his lean hands, made yet
+      more remarkable the disorderly ruffianism that characterised the attire
+      and mien of the painter-sans-culotte.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so, citizen,&rdquo; said Robespierre, mildly, &ldquo;thou wouldst speak with me?
+      I know thy merits and civism have been overlooked too long. Thou wouldst
+      ask some suitable provision in the state? Scruple not&mdash;say on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Virtuous Robespierre, toi qui eclaires l&rsquo;univers (Thou who enlightenest
+      the world.), I come not to ask a favour, but to render service to the
+      state. I have discovered a correspondence that lays open a conspiracy of
+      which many of the actors are yet unsuspected.&rdquo; And he placed the papers on
+      the table. Robespierre seized, and ran his eye over them rapidly and
+      eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good!&mdash;good!&rdquo; he muttered to himself: &ldquo;this is all I wanted.
+      Barrere, Legendre! I have them! Camille Desmoulins was but their dupe. I
+      loved him once; I never loved them! Citizen Nicot, I thank thee. I observe
+      these letters are addressed to an Englishman. What Frenchman but must
+      distrust these English wolves in sheep&rsquo;s clothing! France wants no longer
+      citizens of the world; that farce ended with Anarcharsis Clootz. I beg
+      pardon, Citizen Nicot; but Clootz and Hebert were THY friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; said Nicot, apologetically, &ldquo;we are all liable to be deceived. I
+      ceased to honour them whom thou didst declare against; for I disown my own
+      senses rather than thy justice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I pretend to justice; that IS the virtue I affect,&rdquo; said
+      Robespierre, meekly; and with his feline propensities he enjoyed, even in
+      that critical hour of vast schemes, of imminent danger, of meditated
+      revenge, the pleasure of playing with a solitary victim. (The most
+      detestable anecdote of this peculiar hypocrisy in Robespierre is that in
+      which he is recorded to have tenderly pressed the hand of his old
+      school-friend, Camille Desmoulins, the day that he signed the warrant for
+      his arrest.) &ldquo;And my justice shall no longer be blind to thy services,
+      good Nicot. Thou knowest this Glyndon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, well,&mdash;intimately. He WAS my friend, but I would give up my
+      brother if he were one of the &lsquo;indulgents.&rsquo; I am not ashamed to say that I
+      have received favours from this man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aha!&mdash;and thou dost honestly hold the doctrine that where a man
+      threatens my life all personal favours are to be forgotten?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good citizen!&mdash;kind Nicot!&mdash;oblige me by writing the address of
+      this Glyndon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nicot stooped to the table; and suddenly when the pen was in his hand, a
+      thought flashed across him, and he paused, embarrassed and confused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Write on, KIND Nicot!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The painter slowly obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are the other familiars of Glyndon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was on that point I was about to speak to thee, Representant,&rdquo; said
+      Nicot. &ldquo;He visits daily a woman, a foreigner, who knows all his secrets;
+      she affects to be poor, and to support her child by industry. But she is
+      the wife of an Italian of immense wealth, and there is no doubt that she
+      has moneys which are spent in corrupting the citizens. She should be
+      seized and arrested.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Write down her name also.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But no time is to be lost; for I know that both have a design to escape
+      from Paris this very night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our government is prompt, good Nicot,&mdash;never fear. Humph!&mdash;humph!&rdquo;
+       and Robespierre took the paper on which Nicot had written, and stooping
+      over it&mdash;for he was near-sighted&mdash;added, smilingly, &ldquo;Dost thou
+      always write the same hand, citizen? This seems almost like a disguised
+      character.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should not like them to know who denounced them, Representant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good! good! Thy virtue shall be rewarded, trust me. Salut et fraternite!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Robespierre half rose as he spoke, and Nicot withdrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ho, there!&mdash;without!&rdquo; cried the Dictator, ringing his bell; and as
+      the ready Jacobin attended the summons, &ldquo;Follow that man, Jean Nicot. The
+      instant he has cleared the house seize him. At once to the Conciergerie
+      with him. Stay!&mdash;nothing against the law; there is thy warrant. The
+      public accuser shall have my instruction. Away!&mdash;quick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Jacobin vanished. All trace of illness, of infirmity, had gone from
+      the valetudinarian; he stood erect on the floor, his face twitching
+      convulsively, and his arms folded. &ldquo;Ho! Guerin!&rdquo; the spy reappeared&mdash;&ldquo;take
+      these addresses! Within an hour this Englishman and his woman must be in
+      prison; their revelations will aid me against worthier foes. They shall
+      die: they shall perish with the rest on the 10th,&mdash;the third day from
+      this. There!&rdquo; and he wrote hastily,&mdash;&ldquo;there, also, is thy warrant!
+      Off!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now, Couthon, Payan, we will dally no longer with Tallien and his
+      crew. I have information that the Convention will NOT attend the Fete on
+      the 10th. We must trust only to the sword of the law. I must compose my
+      thoughts,&mdash;prepare my harangue. To-morrow, I will reappear at the
+      Convention; to-morrow, bold St. Just joins us, fresh from our victorious
+      armies; to-morrow, from the tribune, I will dart the thunderbolt on the
+      masked enemies of France; to-morrow, I will demand, in the face of the
+      country, the heads of the conspirators.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0072" id="link2HCH0072">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 7.VIII.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Le glaive est contre toi tourne de toutes parties.
+     La Harpe, &ldquo;Jeanne de Naples,&rdquo; Act iv. sc. 4.
+
+     (The sword is raised against you on all sides.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In the mean time Glyndon, after an audience of some length with C&mdash;,
+      in which the final preparations were arranged, sanguine of safety, and
+      foreseeing no obstacle to escape, bent his way back to Fillide. Suddenly,
+      in the midst of his cheerful thoughts, he fancied he heard a voice too
+      well and too terribly recognised, hissing in his ear, &ldquo;What! thou wouldst
+      defy and escape me! thou wouldst go back to virtue and content. It is in
+      vain,&mdash;it is too late. No, <i>I</i> will not haunt thee; HUMAN
+      footsteps, no less inexorable, dog thee now. Me thou shalt not see again
+      till in the dungeon, at midnight, before thy doom! Behold&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Glyndon, mechanically turning his head, saw, close behind him, the
+      stealthy figure of a man whom he had observed before, but with little
+      heed, pass and repass him, as he quitted the house of Citizen C&mdash;.
+      Instantly and instinctively he knew that he was watched,&mdash;that he was
+      pursued. The street he was in was obscure and deserted, for the day was
+      oppressively sultry, and it was the hour when few were abroad, either on
+      business or pleasure. Bold as he was, an icy chill shot through his heart,
+      he knew too well the tremendous system that then reigned in Paris not to
+      be aware of his danger. As the sight of the first plague-boil to the
+      victim of the pestilence, was the first sight of the shadowy spy to that
+      of the Revolution: the watch, the arrest, the trial, the guillotine,&mdash;these
+      made the regular and rapid steps of the monster that the anarchists called
+      Law! He breathed hard, he heard distinctly the loud beating of his heart.
+      And so he paused, still and motionless, gazing upon the shadow that halted
+      also behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently, the absence of all allies to the spy, the solitude of the
+      streets, reanimated his courage; he made a step towards his pursuer, who
+      retreated as he advanced. &ldquo;Citizen, thou followest me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Thy
+      business?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely,&rdquo; answered the man, with a deprecating smile, &ldquo;the streets are
+      broad enough for both? Thou art not so bad a republican as to arrogate all
+      Paris to thyself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on first, then. I make way for thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man bowed, doffed his hat politely, and passed forward. The next
+      moment Glyndon plunged into a winding lane, and fled fast through a
+      labyrinth of streets, passages, and alleys. By degrees he composed
+      himself, and, looking behind, imagined that he had baffled the pursuer; he
+      then, by a circuitous route, bent his way once more to his home. As he
+      emerged into one of the broader streets, a passenger, wrapped in a mantle,
+      brushing so quickly by him that he did not observe his countenance,
+      whispered, &ldquo;Clarence Glyndon, you are dogged,&mdash;follow me!&rdquo; and the
+      stranger walked quickly before him. Clarence turned, and sickened once
+      more to see at his heels, with the same servile smile on his face, the
+      pursuer he fancied he had escaped. He forgot the injunction of the
+      stranger to follow him, and perceiving a crowd gathered close at hand,
+      round a caricature-shop, dived amidst them, and, gaining another street,
+      altered the direction he had before taken, and, after a long and
+      breathless course, gained without once more seeing the spy, a distant
+      quartier of the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, indeed, all seemed so serene and fair that his artist eye, even in
+      that imminent hour, rested with pleasure on the scene. It was a
+      comparatively broad space, formed by one of the noble quays. The Seine
+      flowed majestically along, with boats and craft resting on its surface.
+      The sun gilt a thousand spires and domes, and gleamed on the white palaces
+      of a fallen chivalry. Here fatigued and panting, he paused an instant, and
+      a cooler air from the river fanned his brow. &ldquo;Awhile, at least, I am safe
+      here,&rdquo; he murmured; and as he spoke, some thirty paces behind him, he
+      beheld the spy. He stood rooted to the spot; wearied and spent as he was,
+      escape seemed no longer possible,&mdash;the river on one side (no bridge
+      at hand), and the long row of mansions closing up the other. As he halted,
+      he heard laughter and obscene songs from a house a little in his rear,
+      between himself and the spy. It was a cafe fearfully known in that
+      quarter. Hither often resorted the black troop of Henriot,&mdash;the
+      minions and huissiers of Robespierre. The spy, then, had hunted the victim
+      within the jaws of the hounds. The man slowly advanced, and, pausing
+      before the open window of the cafe, put his head through the aperture, as
+      to address and summon forth its armed inmates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that very instant, and while the spy&rsquo;s head was thus turned from him,
+      standing in the half-open gateway of the house immediately before him, he
+      perceived the stranger who had warned; the figure, scarcely
+      distinguishable through the mantle that wrapped it, motioned to him to
+      enter. He sprang noiselessly through the friendly opening: the door
+      closed; breathlessly he followed the stranger up a flight of broad stairs
+      and through a suite of empty rooms, until, having gained a small cabinet,
+      his conductor doffed the large hat and the long mantle that had hitherto
+      concealed his shape and features, and Glyndon beheld Zanoni!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0073" id="link2HCH0073">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 7.IX.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Think not my magic wonders wrought by aid
+     Of Stygian angels summoned up from hell;
+     Scorned and accursed be those who have essayed
+     Her gloomy Dives and Afrites to compel.
+     But by perception of the secret powers
+     Of mineral springs in Nature&rsquo;s inmost cell,
+     Of herbs in curtain of her greenest bowers,
+     And of the moving stars o&rsquo;er mountain tops and towers.
+     Wiffen&rsquo;s &ldquo;Translation of Tasso,&rdquo; cant. xiv. xliii.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are safe here, young Englishman!&rdquo; said Zanoni, motioning Glyndon to a
+      seat. &ldquo;Fortunate for you that I come on your track at last!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Far happier had it been if we had never met! Yet even in these last hours
+      of my fate, I rejoice to look once more on the face of that ominous and
+      mysterious being to whom I can ascribe all the sufferings I have known.
+      Here, then, thou shalt not palter with or elude me. Here, before we part,
+      thou shalt unravel to me the dark enigma, if not of thy life, of my own!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hast thou suffered? Poor neophyte!&rdquo; said Zanoni, pityingly. &ldquo;Yes; I see
+      it on thy brow. But wherefore wouldst thou blame me? Did I not warn thee
+      against the whispers of thy spirit; did I not warn thee to forbear? Did I
+      not tell thee that the ordeal was one of awful hazard and tremendous
+      fears,&mdash;nay, did I not offer to resign to thee the heart that was
+      mighty enough, while mine, Glyndon, to content me? Was it not thine own
+      daring and resolute choice to brave the initiation! Of thine own free will
+      didst thou make Mejnour thy master, and his lore thy study!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But whence came the irresistible desires of that wild and unholy
+      knowledge? I knew them not till thine evil eye fell upon me, and I was
+      drawn into the magic atmosphere of thy being!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou errest!&mdash;the desires were in thee; and, whether in one
+      direction or the other, would have forced their way! Man! thou askest me
+      the enigma of thy fate and my own! Look round all being, is there not
+      mystery everywhere? Can thine eye trace the ripening of the grain beneath
+      the earth? In the moral and the physical world alike, lie dark portents,
+      far more wondrous than the powers thou wouldst ascribe to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dost thou disown those powers; dost thou confess thyself an imposter?&mdash;or
+      wilt thou dare to tell me that thou art indeed sold to the Evil one,&mdash;a
+      magician whose familiar has haunted me night and day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It matters not what I am,&rdquo; returned Zanoni; &ldquo;it matters only whether I
+      can aid thee to exorcise thy dismal phantom, and return once more to the
+      wholesome air of this common life. Something, however, will I tell thee,
+      not to vindicate myself, but the Heaven and the Nature that thy doubts
+      malign.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni paused a moment, and resumed with a slight smile,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In thy younger days thou hast doubtless read with delight the great
+      Christian poet, whose muse, like the morning it celebrated, came to earth,
+      &lsquo;crowned with flowers culled in Paradise.&rsquo; [&lsquo;L&rsquo;aurea testa Di rose colte
+      in Paradiso infiora.&rsquo; Tasso, &ldquo;Ger. Lib.&rdquo; iv. l.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No spirit was more imbued with the knightly superstitions of the time;
+      and surely the Poet of Jerusalem hath sufficiently, to satisfy even the
+      Inquisitor he consulted, execrated all the practitioners of the unlawful
+      spells invoked,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Per isforzar Cocito o Flegetonte.&rsquo; (To constrain Cocytus or Phlegethon.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But in his sorrows and his wrongs, in the prison of his madhouse, know
+      you not that Tasso himself found his solace, his escape, in the
+      recognition of a holy and spiritual Theurgia,&mdash;of a magic that could
+      summon the Angel, or the Good Genius, not the Fiend? And do you not
+      remember how he, deeply versed as he was for his age, in the mysteries of
+      the nobler Platonism, which hints at the secrets of all the starry
+      brotherhoods, from the Chaldean to the later Rosicrucian, discriminates in
+      his lovely verse, between the black art of Ismeno and the glorious lore of
+      the Enchanter who counsels and guides upon their errand the champions of
+      the Holy Land? HIS, not the charms wrought by the aid of the Stygian
+      Rebels (See this remarkable passage, which does indeed not unfaithfully
+      represent the doctrine of the Pythagorean and the Platonist, in Tasso,
+      cant. xiv. stanzas xli. to xlvii. (&ldquo;Ger. Lib.&rdquo;) They are beautifully
+      translated by Wiffen.), but the perception of the secret powers of the
+      fountain and the herb,&mdash;the Arcana of the unknown nature and the
+      various motions of the stars. His, the holy haunts of Lebanon and Carmel,&mdash;beneath
+      his feet he saw the clouds, the snows, the hues of Iris, the generations
+      of the rains and dews. Did the Christian Hermit who converted that
+      Enchanter (no fabulous being, but the type of all spirit that would aspire
+      through Nature up to God) command him to lay aside these sublime studies,
+      &lsquo;Le solite arte e l&rsquo; uso mio&rsquo;? No! but to cherish and direct them to
+      worthy ends. And in this grand conception of the poet lies the secret of
+      the true Theurgia, which startles your ignorance in a more learned day
+      with puerile apprehensions, and the nightmares of a sick man&rsquo;s dreams.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Zanoni paused, and again resumed:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In ages far remote,&mdash;of a civilisation far different from that which
+      now merges the individual in the state,&mdash;there existed men of ardent
+      minds, and an intense desire of knowledge. In the mighty and solemn
+      kingdoms in which they dwelt, there were no turbulent and earthly channels
+      to work off the fever of their minds. Set in the antique mould of casts
+      through which no intellect could pierce, no valour could force its way,
+      the thirst for wisdom alone reigned in the hearts of those who received
+      its study as a heritage from sire to son. Hence, even in your imperfect
+      records of the progress of human knowledge, you find that, in the earliest
+      ages, Philosophy descended not to the business and homes of men. It dwelt
+      amidst the wonders of the loftier creation; it sought to analyse the
+      formation of matter,&mdash;the essentials of the prevailing soul; to read
+      the mysteries of the starry orbs; to dive into those depths of Nature in
+      which Zoroaster is said by the schoolmen first to have discovered the arts
+      which your ignorance classes under the name of magic. In such an age,
+      then, arose some men, who, amidst the vanities and delusions of their
+      class, imagined that they detected gleams of a brighter and steadier lore.
+      They fancied an affinity existing among all the works of Nature, and that
+      in the lowliest lay the secret attraction that might conduct them upward
+      to the loftiest. (Agreeably, it would seem, to the notion of Iamblichus
+      and Plotinus, that the universe is as an animal; so that there is sympathy
+      and communication between one part and the other; in the smallest part may
+      be the subtlest nerve. And hence the universal magnetism of Nature. But
+      man contemplates the universe as an animalcule would an elephant. The
+      animalcule, seeing scarcely the tip of the hoof, would be incapable of
+      comprehending that the trunk belonged to the same creature,&mdash;that the
+      effect produced upon one extremity would be felt in an instant by the
+      other.) Centuries passed, and lives were wasted in these discoveries; but
+      step after step was chronicled and marked, and became the guide to the few
+      who alone had the hereditary privilege to track their path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At last from this dimness upon some eyes the light broke; but think not,
+      young visionary, that to those who nursed unholy thoughts, over whom the
+      Origin of Evil held a sway, that dawning was vouchsafed. It could be given
+      then, as now, only to the purest ecstasies of imagination and intellect,
+      undistracted by the cares of a vulgar life, or the appetites of the common
+      clay. Far from descending to the assistance of a fiend, theirs was but the
+      august ambition to approach nearer to the Fount of Good; the more they
+      emancipated themselves from this limbo of the planets, the more they were
+      penetrated by the splendour and beneficence of God. And if they sought,
+      and at last discovered, how to the eye of the Spirit all the subtler
+      modifications of being and of matter might be made apparent; if they
+      discovered how, for the wings of the Spirit, all space might be
+      annihilated, and while the body stood heavy and solid here, as a deserted
+      tomb, the freed IDEA might wander from star to star,&mdash;if such
+      discoveries became in truth their own, the sublimest luxury of their
+      knowledge was but this, to wonder, to venerate, and adore! For, as one not
+      unlearned in these high matters has expressed it, &lsquo;There is a principle of
+      the soul superior to all external nature, and through this principle we
+      are capable of surpassing the order and systems of the world, and
+      participating the immortal life and the energy of the Sublime Celestials.
+      When the soul is elevated to natures above itself, it deserts the order to
+      which it is awhile compelled, and by a religious magnetism is attracted to
+      another and a loftier, with which it blends and mingles.&rsquo; (From
+      Iamblichus, &ldquo;On the Mysteries,&rdquo; c. 7, sect. 7.) Grant, then, that such
+      beings found at last the secret to arrest death; to fascinate danger and
+      the foe; to walk the revolutions of the earth unharmed,&mdash;think you
+      that this life could teach them other desire than to yearn the more for
+      the Immortal, and to fit their intellect the better for the higher being
+      to which they might, when Time and Death exist no longer, be transferred?
+      Away with your gloomy fantasies of sorcerer and demon!&mdash;the soul can
+      aspire only to the light; and even the error of our lofty knowledge was
+      but the forgetfulness of the weakness, the passions, and the bonds which
+      the death we so vainly conquered only can purge away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This address was so different from what Glyndon had anticipated, that he
+      remained for some moments speechless, and at length faltered out,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why, then, to me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; added Zanoni,&mdash;&ldquo;why to thee have been only the penance and the
+      terror,&mdash;the Threshold and the Phantom? Vain man! look to the
+      commonest elements of the common learning. Can every tyro at his mere wish
+      and will become the master; can the student, when he has bought his
+      Euclid, become a Newton; can the youth whom the Muses haunt, say, &lsquo;I will
+      equal Homer;&rsquo; yea, can yon pale tyrant, with all the parchment laws of a
+      hundred system-shapers, and the pikes of his dauntless multitude, carve,
+      at his will, a constitution not more vicious than the one which the
+      madness of a mob could overthrow? When, in that far time to which I have
+      referred, the student aspired to the heights to which thou wouldst have
+      sprung at a single bound, he was trained from his very cradle to the
+      career he was to run. The internal and the outward nature were made clear
+      to his eyes, year after year, as they opened on the day. He was not
+      admitted to the practical initiation till not one earthly wish chained
+      that sublimest faculty which you call the IMAGINATION, one carnal desire
+      clouded the penetrative essence that you call the INTELLECT. And even
+      then, and at the best, how few attained to the last mystery! Happier
+      inasmuch as they attained the earlier to the holy glories for which Death
+      is the heavenliest gate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni paused, and a shade of thought and sorrow darkened his celestial
+      beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And are there, indeed, others, besides thee and Mejnour, who lay claim to
+      thine attributes, and have attained to thy secrets?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Others there have been before us, but we two now are alone on earth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Imposter, thou betrayest thyself! If they could conquer Death, why live
+      they not yet?&rdquo; (Glyndon appears to forget that Mejnour had before answered
+      the very question which his doubts here a second time suggest.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Child of a day!&rdquo; answered Zanoni, mournfully, &ldquo;have I not told thee the
+      error of our knowledge was the forgetfulness of the desires and passions
+      which the spirit never can wholly and permanently conquer while this
+      matter cloaks it? Canst thou think that it is no sorrow, either to reject
+      all human ties, all friendship, and all love, or to see, day after day,
+      friendship and love wither from our life, as blossoms from the stem? Canst
+      thou wonder how, with the power to live while the world shall last, ere
+      even our ordinary date be finished we yet may prefer to die? Wonder rather
+      that there are two who have clung so faithfully to earth! Me, I confess,
+      that earth can enamour yet. Attaining to the last secret while youth was
+      in its bloom, youth still colours all around me with its own luxuriant
+      beauty; to me, yet, to breathe is to enjoy. The freshness has not faded
+      from the face of Nature, and not an herb in which I cannot discover a new
+      charm,&mdash;an undetected wonder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As with my youth, so with Mejnour&rsquo;s age: he will tell you that life to
+      him is but a power to examine; and not till he has exhausted all the
+      marvels which the Creator has sown on earth, would he desire new
+      habitations for the renewed Spirit to explore. We are the types of the two
+      essences of what is imperishable,&mdash;&lsquo;ART, that enjoys; and
+      SCIENCE, that contemplates!&rsquo; And now, that thou mayest be contented that
+      the secrets are not vouchsafed to thee, learn that so utterly must the
+      idea detach itself from what makes up the occupation and excitement of
+      men; so must it be void of whatever would covet, or love, or hate,&mdash;that
+      for the ambitious man, for the lover, the hater, the power avails not. And
+      I, at last, bound and blinded by the most common of household ties; I,
+      darkened and helpless, adjure thee, the baffled and discontented,&mdash;I
+      adjure thee to direct, to guide me; where are they? Oh, tell me,&mdash;speak!
+      My wife,&mdash;my child? Silent!&mdash;oh, thou knowest now that I am no
+      sorcerer, no enemy. I cannot give thee what thy faculties deny,&mdash;I
+      cannot achieve what the passionless Mejnour failed to accomplish; but I
+      can give thee the next-best boon, perhaps the fairest,&mdash;I can
+      reconcile thee to the daily world, and place peace between thy conscience
+      and thyself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wilt thou promise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By their sweet lives, I promise!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Glyndon looked and believed. He whispered the address to the house whither
+      his fatal step already had brought woe and doom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless thee for this,&rdquo; exclaimed Zanoni, passionately, &ldquo;and thou shalt be
+      blessed! What! couldst thou not perceive that at the entrance to all the
+      grander worlds dwell the race that intimidate and awe? Who in thy daily
+      world ever left the old regions of Custom and Prescription, and felt not
+      the first seizure of the shapeless and nameless Fear? Everywhere around
+      thee where men aspire and labour, though they see it not,&mdash;in the
+      closet of the sage, in the council of the demagogue, in the camp of the
+      warrior,&mdash;everywhere cowers and darkens the Unutterable Horror. But
+      there, where thou hast ventured, alone is the Phantom VISIBLE; and never
+      will it cease to haunt, till thou canst pass to the Infinite, as the
+      seraph; or return to the Familiar, as a child! But answer me this: when,
+      seeking to adhere to some calm resolve of virtue, the Phantom hath stalked
+      suddenly to thy side; when its voice hath whispered thee despair; when its
+      ghastly eyes would scare thee back to those scenes of earthly craft or
+      riotous excitement from which, as it leaves thee to worse foes to the
+      soul, its presence is ever absent,&mdash;hast thou never bravely resisted
+      the spectre and thine own horror; hast thou never said, &lsquo;Come what may, to
+      Virtue I will cling?&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; answered Glyndon, &ldquo;only of late have I dared to do so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And thou hast felt then that the Phantom grew more dim and its power more
+      faint?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rejoice, then!&mdash;thou hast overcome the true terror and mystery of
+      the ordeal. Resolve is the first success. Rejoice, for the exorcism is
+      sure! Thou art not of those who, denying a life to come, are the victims
+      of the Inexorable Horror. Oh, when shall men learn, at last, that if the
+      Great Religion inculcates so rigidly the necessity of FAITH, it is not
+      alone that FAITH leads to the world to be; but that without faith there is
+      no excellence in this,&mdash;faith in something wiser, happier, diviner,
+      than we see on earth!&mdash;the artist calls it the Ideal,&mdash;the
+      priest, Faith. The Ideal and Faith are one and the same. Return, O
+      wanderer, return! Feel what beauty and holiness dwell in the Customary and
+      the Old. Back to thy gateway glide, thou Horror! and calm, on the
+      childlike heart, smile again, O azure Heaven, with thy night and thy
+      morning star but as one, though under its double name of Memory and Hope!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he thus spoke, Zanoni laid his hand gently on the burning temples of
+      his excited and wondering listener; and presently a sort of trance came
+      over him: he imagined that he was returned to the home of his infancy;
+      that he was in the small chamber where, over his early slumbers, his
+      mother had watched and prayed. There it was,&mdash;visible, palpable,
+      solitary, unaltered. In the recess, the homely bed; on the walls, the
+      shelves filled with holy books; the very easel on which he had first
+      sought to call the ideal to the canvas, dust-covered, broken, in the
+      corner. Below the window lay the old churchyard: he saw it green in the
+      distance, the sun glancing through the yew-trees; he saw the tomb where
+      father and mother lay united, and the spire pointing up to heaven, the
+      symbol of the hopes of those who consigned the ashes to the dust; in his
+      ear rang the bells, pealing, as on a Sabbath day. Far fled all the visions
+      of anxiety and awe that had haunted and convulsed; youth, boyhood,
+      childhood came back to him with innocent desires and hopes; he thought he
+      fell upon his knees to pray. He woke,&mdash;he woke in delicious tears, he
+      felt that the Phantom was fled forever. He looked round,&mdash;Zanoni was
+      gone. On the table lay these lines, the ink yet wet:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will find ways and means for thy escape. At nightfall, as the clock
+      strikes nine, a boat shall wait thee on the river before this house; the
+      boatman will guide thee to a retreat where thou mayst rest in safety till
+      the Reign of Terror, which nears its close, be past. Think no more of the
+      sensual love that lured, and wellnigh lost thee. It betrayed, and would
+      have destroyed. Thou wilt regain thy land in safety,&mdash;long years yet
+      spared to thee to muse over the past, and to redeem it. For thy future, be
+      thy dream thy guide, and thy tears thy baptism.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Englishman obeyed the injunctions of the letter, and found their
+      truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0074" id="link2HCH0074">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 7.X.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Quid mirare meas tot in uno corpore formas?
+     Propert.
+
+     (Why wonder that I have so many forms in a single body?)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni to Mejnour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      .....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is in one of their prisons,&mdash;their inexorable prisons. It is
+      Robespierre&rsquo;s order,&mdash;I have tracked the cause to Glyndon. This,
+      then, made that terrible connection between their fates which I could not
+      unravel, but which (till severed as it now is) wrapped Glyndon himself in
+      the same cloud that concealed her. In prison,&mdash;in prison!&mdash;it is
+      the gate of the grave! Her trial, and the inevitable execution that
+      follows such trial, is the third day from this. The tyrant has fixed all
+      his schemes of slaughter for the 10th of Thermidor. While the deaths of
+      the unoffending strike awe to the city, his satellites are to massacre his
+      foes. There is but one hope left,&mdash;that the Power which now dooms the
+      doomer, may render me an instrument to expedite his fall. But two days
+      left,&mdash;two days! In all my wealth of time I see but two days; all
+      beyond,&mdash;darkness, solitude. I may save her yet. The tyrant shall
+      fall the day before that which he has set apart for slaughter! For the
+      first time I mix among the broils and stratagems of men, and my mind leaps
+      up from my despair, armed and eager for the contest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A crowd had gathered round the Rue St. Honore; a young man was just
+      arrested by the order of Robespierre. He was known to be in the service of
+      Tallien, that hostile leader in the Convention, whom the tyrant had
+      hitherto trembled to attack. This incident had therefore produced a
+      greater excitement than a circumstance so customary as an arrest in the
+      Reign of Terror might be supposed to create. Amongst the crowd were many
+      friends of Tallien, many foes to the tyrant, many weary of beholding the
+      tiger dragging victim after victim to its den. Hoarse, foreboding murmurs
+      were heard; fierce eyes glared upon the officers as they seized their
+      prisoner; and though they did not yet dare openly to resist, those in the
+      rear pressed on those behind, and encumbered the path of the captive and
+      his captors. The young man struggled hard for escape, and, by a violent
+      effort, at last wrenched himself from the grasp. The crowd made way, and
+      closed round to protect him, as he dived and darted through their ranks;
+      but suddenly the trampling of horses was heard at hand,&mdash;the savage
+      Henriot and his troop were bearing down upon the mob. The crowd gave way
+      in alarm, and the prisoner was again seized by one of the partisans of the
+      Dictator. At that moment a voice whispered the prisoner, &ldquo;Thou hast a
+      letter which, if found on thee, ruins thy last hope. Give it to me! I will
+      bear it to Tallien.&rdquo; The prisoner turned in amaze, read something that
+      encouraged him in the eyes of the stranger who thus accosted him. The
+      troop were now on the spot; the Jacobin who had seized the prisoner
+      released hold of him for a moment to escape the hoofs of the horses: in
+      that moment the opportunity was found,&mdash;the stranger had disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the house of Tallien the principal foes of the tyrant were assembled.
+      Common danger made common fellowship. All factions laid aside their feuds
+      for the hour to unite against the formidable man who was marching over all
+      factions to his gory throne. There was bold Lecointre, the declared enemy;
+      there, creeping Barrere, who would reconcile all extremes, the hero of the
+      cowards; Barras, calm and collected; Collet d&rsquo;Herbois, breathing wrath and
+      vengeance, and seeing not that the crimes of Robespierre alone sheltered
+      his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The council was agitated and irresolute. The awe which the uniform success
+      and the prodigious energy of Robespierre excited still held the greater
+      part under its control. Tallien, whom the tyrant most feared, and who
+      alone could give head and substance and direction to so many contradictory
+      passions, was too sullied by the memory of his own cruelties not to feel
+      embarrassed by his position as the champion of mercy. &ldquo;It is true,&rdquo; he
+      said, after an animating harangue from Lecointre, &ldquo;that the Usurper
+      menaces us all. But he is still so beloved by his mobs,&mdash;still so
+      supported by his Jacobins: better delay open hostilities till the hour is
+      more ripe. To attempt and not succeed is to give us, bound hand and foot,
+      to the guillotine. Every day his power must decline. Procrastination is
+      our best ally&mdash;&rdquo; While yet speaking, and while yet producing the
+      effect of water on the fire, it was announced that a stranger demanded to
+      see him instantly on business that brooked no delay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not at leisure,&rdquo; said the orator, impatiently. The servant placed a
+      note on the table. Tallien opened it, and found these words in pencil,
+      &ldquo;From the prison of Teresa de Fontenai.&rdquo; He turned pale, started up, and
+      hastened to the anteroom, where he beheld a face entirely strange to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hope of France!&rdquo; said the visitor to him, and the very sound of his voice
+      went straight to the heart,&mdash;&ldquo;your servant is arrested in the
+      streets. I have saved your life, and that of your wife who will be. I
+      bring to you this letter from Teresa de Fontenai.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tallien, with a trembling hand, opened the letter, and read,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I forever to implore you in vain? Again and again I say, &lsquo;Lose not an
+      hour if you value my life and your own.&rsquo; My trial and death are fixed the
+      third day from this,&mdash;the 10th Thermidor. Strike while it is yet
+      time,&mdash;strike the monster!&mdash;you have two days yet. If you fail,&mdash;if
+      you procrastinate,&mdash;see me for the last time as I pass your windows
+      to the guillotine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her trial will give proof against you,&rdquo; said the stranger. &ldquo;Her death is
+      the herald of your own. Fear not the populace,&mdash;the populace would
+      have rescued your servant. Fear not Robespierre,&mdash;he gives himself to
+      your hands. To-morrow he comes to the Convention,&mdash;to-morrow you must
+      cast the last throw for his head or your own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow he comes to the Convention! And who are you that know so well
+      what is concealed from me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man like you, who would save the woman he loves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Tallien could recover his surprise, the visitor was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Back went the Avenger to his conclave an altered man. &ldquo;I have heard
+      tidings,&mdash;no matter what,&rdquo; he cried,&mdash;&ldquo;that have changed my
+      purpose. On the 10th we are destined to the guillotine. I revoke my
+      counsel for delay. Robespierre comes to the Convention to-morrow; THERE we
+      must confront and crush him. From the Mountain shall frown against him the
+      grim shade of Danton,&mdash;from the Plain shall rise, in their bloody
+      cerements, the spectres of Vergniaud and Condorcet. Frappons!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Frappons!&rdquo; cried even Barrere, startled into energy by the new daring of
+      his colleague,&mdash;&ldquo;frappons! il n&rsquo;y a que les morts qui ne reviennent
+      pas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was observable (and the fact may be found in one of the memoirs of the
+      time) that, during that day and night (the 7th Thermidor), a stranger to
+      all the previous events of that stormy time was seen in various parts of
+      the city,&mdash;in the cafes, the clubs, the haunts of the various
+      factions; that, to the astonishment and dismay of his hearers, he talked
+      aloud of the crimes of Robespierre, and predicted his coming fall; and, as
+      he spoke, he stirred up the hearts of men, he loosed the bonds of their
+      fear,&mdash;he inflamed them with unwonted rage and daring. But what
+      surprised them most was, that no voice replied, no hand was lifted against
+      him, no minion, even of the tyrant, cried, &ldquo;Arrest the traitor.&rdquo; In that
+      impunity men read, as in a book, that the populace had deserted the man of
+      blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once only a fierce, brawny Jacobin sprang up from the table at which he
+      sat, drinking deep, and, approaching the stranger, said, &ldquo;I seize thee, in
+      the name of the Republic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Citizen Aristides,&rdquo; answered the stranger, in a whisper, &ldquo;go to the
+      lodgings of Robespierre,&mdash;he is from home; and in the left pocket of
+      the vest which he cast off not an hour since thou wilt find a paper; when
+      thou hast read that, return. I will await thee; and if thou wouldst then
+      seize me, I will go without a struggle. Look round on those lowering
+      brows; touch me NOW, and thou wilt be torn to pieces.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Jacobin felt as if compelled to obey against his will. He went forth
+      muttering; he returned,&mdash;the stranger was still there. &ldquo;Mille
+      tonnerres,&rdquo; he said to him, &ldquo;I thank thee; the poltroon had my name in his
+      list for the guillotine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that the Jacobin Aristides sprang upon the table and shouted, &ldquo;Death
+      to the Tyrant!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0075" id="link2HCH0075">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 7.XI.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Le lendemain, 8 Thermidor, Robespierre se decida a prononcer son
+     fameux discours.
+     &mdash;Thiers, &ldquo;Hist. de la Revolution.&rdquo;
+ 
+     (The next day, 8th Thermidor, Robespierre resolved to deliver his
+     celebrated discourse.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The morning rose,&mdash;the 8th of Thermidor (July 26). Robespierre has
+      gone to the Convention. He has gone with his laboured speech; he has gone
+      with his phrases of philanthropy and virtue; he has gone to single out his
+      prey. All his agents are prepared for his reception; the fierce St. Just
+      has arrived from the armies to second his courage and inflame his wrath.
+      His ominous apparition prepares the audience for the crisis. &ldquo;Citizens!&rdquo;
+       screeched the shrill voice of Robespierre &ldquo;others have placed before you
+      flattering pictures; I come to announce to you useful truths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And they attribute to me,&mdash;to me alone!&mdash;whatever of harsh or
+      evil is committed: it is Robespierre who wishes it; it is Robespierre who
+      ordains it. Is there a new tax?&mdash;it is Robespierre who ruins you.
+      They call me tyrant!&mdash;and why? Because I have acquired some
+      influence; but how?&mdash;in speaking truth; and who pretends that truth
+      is to be without force in the mouths of the Representatives of the French
+      people? Doubtless, truth has its power, its rage, its despotism, its
+      accents, touching, terrible, which resound in the pure heart as in the
+      guilty conscience; and which Falsehood can no more imitate than Salmoneus
+      could forge the thunderbolts of Heaven. What am I whom they accuse? A
+      slave of liberty,&mdash;a living martyr of the Republic; the victim as the
+      enemy of crime! All ruffianism affronts me, and actions legitimate in
+      others are crimes in me. It is enough to know me to be calumniated. It is
+      in my very zeal that they discover my guilt. Take from me my conscience,
+      and I should be the most miserable of men!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused; and Couthon wiped his eyes, and St. Just murmured applause as
+      with stern looks he gazed on the rebellious Mountain; and there was a
+      dead, mournful, and chilling silence through the audience. The touching
+      sentiment woke no echo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The orator cast his eyes around. Ho! he will soon arouse that apathy. He
+      proceeds, he praises, he pities himself no more. He denounces,&mdash;he
+      accuses. Overflooded with his venom, he vomits it forth on all. At home,
+      abroad, finances, war,&mdash;on all! Shriller and sharper rose his voice,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A conspiracy exists against the public liberty. It owes its strength to a
+      criminal coalition in the very bosom of the Convention; it has accomplices
+      in the bosom of the Committee of Public Safety...What is the remedy to
+      this evil? To punish the traitors; to purify this committee; to crush all
+      factions by the weight of the National Authority; to raise upon their
+      ruins the power of Liberty and Justice. Such are the principles of that
+      Reform. Must I be ambitious to profess them?&mdash;then the principles are
+      proscribed, and Tyranny reigns amongst us! For what can you object to a
+      man who is in the right, and has at least this knowledge,&mdash;he knows
+      how to die for his native land! I am made to combat crime, and not to
+      govern it. The time, alas! is not yet arrived when men of worth can serve
+      with impunity their country. So long as the knaves rule, the defenders of
+      liberty will be only the proscribed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For two hours, through that cold and gloomy audience, shrilled the
+      Death-speech. In silence it began, in silence closed. The enemies of the
+      orator were afraid to express resentment; they knew not yet the exact
+      balance of power. His partisans were afraid to approve; they knew not whom
+      of their own friends and relations the accusations were designed to single
+      forth. &ldquo;Take care!&rdquo; whispered each to each; &ldquo;it is thou whom he
+      threatens.&rdquo; But silent though the audience, it was, at the first, wellnigh
+      subdued. There was still about this terrible man the spell of an
+      overmastering will. Always&mdash;though not what is called a great orator&mdash;resolute,
+      and sovereign in the use of words; words seemed as things when uttered by
+      one who with a nod moved the troops of Henriot, and influenced the
+      judgment of Rene Dumas, grim President of the Tribunal. Lecointre of
+      Versailles rose, and there was an anxious movement of attention; for
+      Lecointre was one of the fiercest foes of the tyrant. What was the dismay
+      of the Tallien faction; what the complacent smile of Couthon,&mdash;when
+      Lecointre demanded only that the oration should be printed! All seemed
+      paralyzed. At length Bourdon de l&rsquo;Oise, whose name was doubly marked in
+      the black list of the Dictator, stalked to the tribune, and moved the bold
+      counter-resolution, that the speech should be referred to the two
+      committees whom that very speech accused. Still no applause from the
+      conspirators; they sat torpid as frozen men. The shrinking Barrere, ever
+      on the prudent side, looked round before he rose. He rises, and sides with
+      Lecointre! Then Couthon seized the occasion, and from his seat (a
+      privilege permitted only to the paralytic philanthropist) (M. Thiers in
+      his History, volume iv. page 79, makes a curious blunder: he says,
+      &ldquo;Couthon s&rsquo;elance a la tribune.&rdquo; (Couthon darted towards the tribune.)
+      Poor Couthon! whose half body was dead, and who was always wheeled in his
+      chair into the Convention, and spoke sitting.), and with his melodious
+      voice sought to convert the crisis into a triumph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He demanded, not only that the harangue should be printed, but sent to all
+      the communes and all the armies. It was necessary to soothe a wronged and
+      ulcerated heart. Deputies, the most faithful, had been accused of shedding
+      blood. &ldquo;Ah! if HE had contributed to the death of one innocent man, he
+      should immolate himself with grief.&rdquo; Beautiful tenderness!&mdash;and while
+      he spoke, he fondled the spaniel in his bosom. Bravo, Couthon! Robespierre
+      triumphs! The reign of Terror shall endure! The old submission settles
+      dovelike back in the assembly! They vote the printing of the Death-speech,
+      and its transmission to all the municipalities. From the benches of the
+      Mountain, Tallien, alarmed, dismayed, impatient, and indignant, cast his
+      gaze where sat the strangers admitted to hear the debates; and suddenly he
+      met the eyes of the Unknown who had brought to him the letter from Teresa
+      de Fontenai the preceding day. The eyes fascinated him as he gazed. In
+      aftertimes he often said that their regard, fixed, earnest,
+      half-reproachful, and yet cheering and triumphant, filled him with new
+      life and courage. They spoke to his heart as the trumpet speaks to the
+      war-horse. He moved from his seat; he whispered with his allies: the
+      spirit he had drawn in was contagious; the men whom Robespierre especially
+      had denounced, and who saw the sword over their heads, woke from their
+      torpid trance. Vadier, Cambon, Billaud-Varennes, Panis, Amar, rose at
+      once,&mdash;all at once demanded speech. Vadier is first heard, the rest
+      succeed. It burst forth, the Mountain, with its fires and consuming lava;
+      flood upon flood they rush, a legion of Ciceros upon the startled
+      Catiline! Robespierre falters, hesitates,&mdash;would qualify, retract.
+      They gather new courage from his new fears; they interrupt him; they drown
+      his voice; they demand the reversal of the motion. Amar moves again that
+      the speech be referred to the Committees, to the Committees,&mdash;to his
+      enemies! Confusion and noise and clamour! Robespierre wraps himself in
+      silent and superb disdain. Pale, defeated, but not yet destroyed, he
+      stands,&mdash;a storm in the midst of storm!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The motion is carried. All men foresee in that defeat the Dictator&rsquo;s
+      downfall. A solitary cry rose from the galleries; it was caught up; it
+      circled through the hall, the audience: &ldquo;A bas le tyrant! Vive la
+      republique!&rdquo; (Down with the tyrant! Hurrah for the republic!)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0076" id="link2HCH0076">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 7.XII.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Aupres d&rsquo;un corps aussi avili que la Convention, il restait des
+     chances pour que Robespierre sortit vainqueur de cette lutte.
+     Lacretelle, volume xii.
+
+     (Amongst a body so debased as the Convention, there still
+     remained some chances that Robespierre would come off victor in
+     the struggle.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      As Robespierre left the hall, there was a dead and ominous silence in the
+      crowd without. The herd, in every country, side with success; and the rats
+      run from the falling tower. But Robespierre, who wanted courage, never
+      wanted pride, and the last often supplied the place of the first;
+      thoughtfully, and with an impenetrable brow, he passed through the throng,
+      leaning on St. Just, Payan and his brother following him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they got into the open space, Robespierre abruptly broke the silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many heads were to fall upon the tenth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eighty,&rdquo; replied Payan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, we must not tarry so long; a day may lose an empire: terrorism must
+      serve us yet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent a few moments, and his eyes roved suspiciously through the
+      street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;St. Just,&rdquo; he said abruptly, &ldquo;they have not found this Englishman whose
+      revelations, or whose trial, would have crushed the Amars and the
+      Talliens. No, no! my Jacobins themselves are growing dull and blind. But
+      they have seized a woman,&mdash;only a woman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman&rsquo;s hand stabbed Marat,&rdquo; said St. Just. Robespierre stopped short,
+      and breathed hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;St. Just,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;when this peril is past, we will found the Reign of
+      Peace. There shall be homes and gardens set apart for the old. David is
+      already designing the porticos. Virtuous men shall be appointed to
+      instruct the young. All vice and disorder shall be NOT exterminated&mdash;no,
+      no! only banished! We must not die yet. Posterity cannot judge us till our
+      work is done. We have recalled L&rsquo;Etre Supreme; we must now remodel this
+      corrupted world. All shall be love and brotherhood; and&mdash;ho! Simon!
+      Simon!&mdash;hold! Your pencil, St. Just!&rdquo; And Robespierre wrote hastily.
+      &ldquo;This to Citizen President Dumas. Go with it quick, Simon. These eighty
+      heads must fall TO-MORROW,&mdash;TO-MORROW, Simon. Dumas will advance
+      their trial a day. I will write to Fouquier-Tinville, the public accuser.
+      We meet at the Jacobins to-night, Simon; there we will denounce the
+      Convention itself; there we will rally round us the last friends of
+      liberty and France.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A shout was heard in the distance behind, &ldquo;Vive la republique!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tyrant&rsquo;s eye shot a vindictive gleam. &ldquo;The republic!&mdash;faugh! We
+      did not destroy the throne of a thousand years for that canaille!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      THE TRIAL, THE EXECUTION, OF THE VICTIMS IS ADVANCED A DAY! By the aid of
+      the mysterious intelligence that had guided and animated him hitherto,
+      Zanoni learned that his arts had been in vain. He knew that Viola was
+      safe, if she could but survive an hour the life of the tyrant. He knew
+      that Robespierre&rsquo;s hours were numbered; that the 10th of Thermidor, on
+      which he had originally designed the execution of his last victims, would
+      see himself at the scaffold. Zanoni had toiled, had schemed for the fall
+      of the Butcher and his reign. To what end? A single word from the tyrant
+      had baffled the result of all. The execution of Viola is advanced a day.
+      Vain seer, who wouldst make thyself the instrument of the Eternal, the
+      very dangers that now beset the tyrant but expedite the doom of his
+      victims! To-morrow, eighty heads, and hers whose pillow has been thy
+      heart! To-morrow! and Maximilien is safe to-night!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0077" id="link2HCH0077">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 7.XIII.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Erde mag zuruck in Erde stauben;
+     Fliegt der Geist doch aus dem morschen Haus.
+     Seine Asche mag der Sturmwind treiben,
+     Sein Leben dauert ewig aus!
+     Elegie.
+
+     (Earth may crumble back into earth; the Spirit will still escape
+     from its frail tenement.  The wind of the storm may scatter his
+     ashes; his being endures forever.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      To-morrow!&mdash;and it is already twilight. One after one, the gentle
+      stars come smiling through the heaven. The Seine, in its slow waters, yet
+      trembles with the last kiss of the rosy day; and still in the blue sky
+      gleams the spire of Notre Dame; and still in the blue sky looms the
+      guillotine by the Barriere du Trone. Turn to that time-worn building, once
+      the church and the convent of the Freres-Precheurs, known by the then holy
+      name of Jacobins; there the new Jacobins hold their club. There, in that
+      oblong hall, once the library of the peaceful monks, assemble the
+      idolaters of St. Robespierre. Two immense tribunes, raised at either end,
+      contain the lees and dregs of the atrocious populace,&mdash;the majority
+      of that audience consisting of the furies of the guillotine (furies de
+      guillotine). In the midst of the hall are the bureau and chair of the
+      president,&mdash;the chair long preserved by the piety of the monks as the
+      relic of St. Thomas Aquinas! Above this seat scowls the harsh bust of
+      Brutus. An iron lamp and two branches scatter over the vast room a murky,
+      fuliginous ray, beneath the light of which the fierce faces of that
+      Pandemonium seem more grim and haggard. There, from the orator&rsquo;s tribune,
+      shrieks the shrill wrath of Robespierre!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile all is chaos, disorder, half daring and half cowardice, in the
+      Committee of his foes. Rumours fly from street to street, from haunt to
+      haunt, from house to house. The swallows flit low, and the cattle group
+      together before the storm. And above this roar of the lives and things of
+      the little hour, alone in his chamber stood he on whose starry youth&mdash;symbol
+      of the imperishable bloom of the calm Ideal amidst the mouldering Actual&mdash;the
+      clouds of ages had rolled in vain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All those exertions which ordinary wit and courage could suggest had been
+      tried in vain. All such exertions WERE in vain, where, in that Saturnalia
+      of death, a life was the object. Nothing but the fall of Robespierre could
+      have saved his victims; now, too late, that fall would only serve to
+      avenge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more, in that last agony of excitement and despair, the seer had
+      plunged into solitude, to invoke again the aid or counsel of those
+      mysterious intermediates between earth and heaven who had renounced the
+      intercourse of the spirit when subjected to the common bondage of the
+      mortal. In the intense desire and anguish of his heart, perhaps, lay a
+      power not yet called forth; for who has not felt that the sharpness of
+      extreme grief cuts and grinds away many of those strongest bonds of
+      infirmity and doubt which bind down the souls of men to the cabined
+      darkness of the hour; and that from the cloud and thunderstorm often
+      swoops the Olympian eagle that can ravish us aloft!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the invocation was heard,&mdash;the bondage of sense was rent away
+      from the visual mind. He looked, and saw,&mdash;no, not the being he had
+      called, with its limbs of light and unutterably tranquil smile&mdash;not
+      his familiar, Adon-Ai, the Son of Glory and the Star, but the Evil Omen,
+      the dark Chimera, the implacable Foe, with exultation and malice burning
+      in its hell-lit eyes. The Spectre, no longer cowering and retreating into
+      shadow, rose before him, gigantic and erect; the face, whose veil no
+      mortal hand had ever raised, was still concealed, but the form was more
+      distinct, corporeal, and cast from it, as an atmosphere, horror and rage
+      and awe. As an iceberg, the breath of that presence froze the air; as a
+      cloud, it filled the chamber and blackened the stars from heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lo!&rdquo; said its voice, &ldquo;I am here once more. Thou hast robbed me of a
+      meaner prey. Now exorcise THYSELF from my power! Thy life has left thee,
+      to live in the heart of a daughter of the charnel and the worm. In that
+      life I come to thee with my inexorable tread. Thou art returned to the
+      Threshold,&mdash;thou, whose steps have trodden the verges of the
+      Infinite! And as the goblin of its fantasy seizes on a child in the dark,&mdash;mighty
+      one, who wouldst conquer Death,&mdash;I seize on thee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back to thy thraldom, slave! If thou art come to the voice that called
+      thee not, it is again not to command, but to obey! Thou, from whose
+      whisper I gained the boons of the lives lovelier and dearer than my own;
+      thou&mdash;I command thee, not by spell and charm, but by the force of a
+      soul mightier than the malice of thy being,&mdash;thou serve me yet, and
+      speak again the secret that can rescue the lives thou hast, by permission
+      of the Universal Master, permitted me to retain awhile in the temple of
+      the clay!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Brighter and more devouringly burned the glare from those lurid eyes; more
+      visible and colossal yet rose the dilating shape; a yet fiercer and more
+      disdainful hate spoke in the voice that answered, &ldquo;Didst thou think that
+      my boon would be other than thy curse? Happy for thee hadst thou mourned
+      over the deaths which come by the gentle hand of Nature,&mdash;hadst thou
+      never known how the name of mother consecrates the face of Beauty, and
+      never, bending over thy first-born, felt the imperishable sweetness of a
+      father&rsquo;s love! They are saved, for what?&mdash;the mother, for the death
+      of violence and shame and blood, for the doomsman&rsquo;s hand to put aside that
+      shining hair which has entangled thy bridegroom kisses; the child, first
+      and last of thine offspring, in whom thou didst hope to found a race that
+      should hear with thee the music of celestial harps, and float, by the side
+      of thy familiar, Adon-Ai, through the azure rivers of joy,&mdash;the
+      child, to live on a few days as a fungus in a burial-vault, a thing of the
+      loathsome dungeon, dying of cruelty and neglect and famine. Ha! ha! thou
+      who wouldst baffle Death, learn how the deathless die if they dare to love
+      the mortal. Now, Chaldean, behold my boons! Now I seize and wrap thee with
+      the pestilence of my presence; now, evermore, till thy long race is run,
+      mine eyes shall glow into thy brain, and mine arms shall clasp thee, when
+      thou wouldst take the wings of the Morning and flee from the embrace of
+      Night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell thee, no! And again I compel thee, speak and answer to the lord
+      who can command his slave. I know, though my lore fails me, and the reeds
+      on which I leaned pierce my side,&mdash;I know yet that it is written that
+      the life of which I question can be saved from the headsman. Thou wrappest
+      her future in the darkness of thy shadow, but thou canst not shape it.
+      Thou mayest foreshow the antidote; thou canst not effect the bane. From
+      thee I wring the secret, though it torture thee to name it. I approach
+      thee,&mdash;I look dauntless into thine eyes. The soul that loves can dare
+      all things. Shadow, I defy thee, and compel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The spectre waned and recoiled. Like a vapour that lessens as the sun
+      pierces and pervades it, the form shrank cowering and dwarfed in the
+      dimmer distance, and through the casement again rushed the stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the Voice, with a faint and hollow accent, &ldquo;thou CANST save
+      her from the headsman; for it is written, that sacrifice can save. Ha!
+      ha!&rdquo; And the shape again suddenly dilated into the gloom of its giant
+      stature, and its ghastly laugh exulted, as if the Foe, a moment baffled,
+      had regained its might. &ldquo;Ha! ha!&mdash;thou canst save her life, if thou
+      wilt sacrifice thine own! Is it for this thou hast lived on through
+      crumbling empires and countless generations of thy race? At last shall
+      Death reclaim thee? Wouldst thou save her?&mdash;DIE FOR HER! Fall, O
+      stately column, over which stars yet unformed may gleam,&mdash;fall, that
+      the herb at thy base may drink a few hours longer the sunlight and the
+      dews! Silent! Art thou ready for the sacrifice? See, the moon moves up
+      through heaven. Beautiful and wise one, wilt thou bid her smile to-morrow
+      on thy headless clay?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back! for my soul, in answering thee from depths where thou canst not
+      hear it, has regained its glory; and I hear the wings of Adon-Ai gliding
+      musical through the air.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke; and, with a low shriek of baffled rage and hate, the Thing was
+      gone, and through the room rushed, luminous and sudden, the Presence of
+      silvery light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the heavenly visitor stood in the atmosphere of his own lustre, and
+      looked upon the face of the Theurgist with an aspect of ineffable
+      tenderness and love, all space seemed lighted from his smile. Along the
+      blue air without, from that chamber in which his wings had halted, to the
+      farthest star in the azure distance, it seemed as if the track of his
+      flight were visible, by a lengthened splendour in the air, like the column
+      of moonlight on the sea. Like the flower that diffuses perfume as the very
+      breath of its life, so the emanation of that presence was joy. Over the
+      world, as a million times swifter than light, than electricity, the Son of
+      Glory had sped his way to the side of love, his wings had scattered
+      delight as the morning scatters dew. For that brief moment, Poverty had
+      ceased to mourn, Disease fled from its prey, and Hope breathed a dream of
+      Heaven into the darkness of Despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou art right,&rdquo; said the melodious Voice. &ldquo;Thy courage has restored thy
+      power. Once more, in the haunts of earth, thy soul charms me to thy side.
+      Wiser now, in the moment when thou comprehendest Death, than when thy
+      unfettered spirit learned the solemn mystery of Life; the human affections
+      that thralled and humbled thee awhile bring to thee, in these last hours
+      of thy mortality, the sublimest heritage of thy race,&mdash;the eternity
+      that commences from the grave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Adon-Ai,&rdquo; said the Chaldean, as, circumfused in the splendour of the
+      visitant, a glory more radiant than human beauty settled round his form,
+      and seemed already to belong to the eternity of which the Bright One
+      spoke, &ldquo;as men, before they die, see and comprehend the enigmas hidden
+      from them before (The greatest poet, and one of the noblest thinkers, of
+      the last age, said, on his deathbed, &ldquo;Many things obscure to me before,
+      now clear up, and become visible.&rdquo;&mdash;See the &lsquo;Life of Schiller.&rsquo;), &ldquo;so
+      in this hour, when the sacrifice of self to another brings the course of
+      ages to its goal, I see the littleness of Life, compared to the majesty of
+      Death; but oh, Divine Consoler, even here, even in thy presence, the
+      affections that inspire me, sadden. To leave behind me in this bad world,
+      unaided, unprotected, those for whom I die! the wife! the child!&mdash;oh,
+      speak comfort to me in this!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what,&rdquo; said the visitor, with a slight accent of reproof in the tone
+      of celestial pity,&mdash;&ldquo;what, with all thy wisdom and thy starry
+      secrets, with all thy empire of the past, and thy visions of the future;
+      what art thou to the All-Directing and Omniscient? Canst thou yet imagine
+      that thy presence on earth can give to the hearts thou lovest the shelter
+      which the humblest take from the wings of the Presence that lives in
+      heaven? Fear not thou for their future. Whether thou live or die, their
+      future is the care of the Most High! In the dungeon and on the scaffold
+      looks everlasting the Eye of HIM, tenderer than thou to love, wiser than
+      thou to guide, mightier than thou to save!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Zanoni bowed his head; and when he looked up again, the last shadow had
+      left his brow. The visitor was gone; but still the glory of his presence
+      seemed to shine upon the spot, still the solitary air seemed to murmur
+      with tremulous delight. And thus ever shall it be with those who have
+      once, detaching themselves utterly from life, received the visit of the
+      Angel FAITH. Solitude and space retain the splendour, and it settles like
+      a halo round their graves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0078" id="link2HCH0078">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 7.XIV.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Dann zur Blumenflor der Sterne
+     Aufgeschauet liebewarm,
+     Fass&rsquo; ihn freundlich Arm in Arm
+     Trag&rsquo; ihn in die blaue Ferne.
+     &mdash;Uhland, &ldquo;An den Tod.&rdquo;
+ 
+     Then towards the Garden of the Star
+     Lift up thine aspect warm with love,
+     And, friendlike link&rsquo;d through space afar,
+     Mount with him, arm in arm, above.
+     &mdash;Uhland, &ldquo;Poem to Death.&rdquo;
+  </pre>
+    <p>
+      He stood upon the lofty balcony that overlooked the quiet city. Though
+      afar, the fiercest passions of men were at work on the web of strife and
+      doom, all that gave itself to his view was calm and still in the rays of
+      the summer moon, for his soul was wrapped from man and man&rsquo;s narrow
+      sphere, and only the serener glories of creation were present to the
+      vision of the seer. There he stood, alone and thoughtful, to take the last
+      farewell of the wondrous life that he had known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coursing through the fields of space, he beheld the gossamer shapes, whose
+      choral joys his spirit had so often shared. There, group upon group, they
+      circled in the starry silence multiform in the unimaginable beauty of a
+      being fed by ambrosial dews and serenest light. In his trance, all the
+      universe stretched visible beyond; in the green valleys afar, he saw the
+      dances of the fairies; in the bowels of the mountains, he beheld the race
+      that breathe the lurid air of the volcanoes, and hide from the light of
+      heaven; on every leaf in the numberless forests, in every drop of the
+      unmeasured seas, he surveyed its separate and swarming world; far up, in
+      the farthest blue, he saw orb upon orb ripening into shape, and planets
+      starting from the central fire, to run their day of ten thousand years.
+      For everywhere in creation is the breath of the Creator, and in every spot
+      where the breath breathes is life! And alone, in the distance, the lonely
+      man beheld his Magian brother. There, at work with his numbers and his
+      Cabala, amidst the wrecks of Rome, passionless and calm, sat in his cell
+      the mystic Mejnour,&mdash;living on, living ever while the world lasts,
+      indifferent whether his knowledge produces weal or woe; a mechanical agent
+      of a more tender and a wiser will, that guides every spring to its
+      inscrutable designs. Living on,&mdash;living ever,&mdash;as science that
+      cares alone for knowledge, and halts not to consider how knowledge
+      advances happiness; how Human Improvement, rushing through civilisation,
+      crushes in its march all who cannot grapple to its wheels (&ldquo;You colonise
+      the lands of the savage with the Anglo-Saxon,&mdash;you civilise that
+      portion of THE EARTH; but is the SAVAGE civilised? He is exterminated! You
+      accumulate machinery,&mdash;you increase the total of wealth; but what
+      becomes of the labour you displace? One generation is sacrificed to the
+      next. You diffuse knowledge,&mdash;and the world seems to grow brighter;
+      but Discontent at Poverty replaces Ignorance, happy with its crust. Every
+      improvement, every advancement in civilisation, injures some, to benefit
+      others, and either cherishes the want of to-day, or prepares the
+      revolution of to-morrow.&rdquo;&mdash;Stephen Montague.); ever, with its Cabala
+      and its number, lives on to change, in its bloodless movements, the face
+      of the habitable world!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, &ldquo;Oh, farewell to life!&rdquo; murmured the glorious dreamer. &ldquo;Sweet, O
+      life! hast thou been to me. How fathomless thy joys,&mdash;how rapturously
+      has my soul bounded forth upon the upward paths! To him who forever renews
+      his youth in the clear fount of Nature, how exquisite is the mere
+      happiness TO BE! Farewell, ye lamps of heaven, and ye million tribes, the
+      Populace of Air. Not a mote in the beam, not an herb on the mountain, not
+      a pebble on the shore, not a seed far-blown into the wilderness, but
+      contributed to the lore that sought in all the true principle of life, the
+      Beautiful, the Joyous, the Immortal. To others, a land, a city, a hearth,
+      has been a home; MY home has been wherever the intellect could pierce, or
+      the spirit could breathe the air.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused, and through the immeasurable space his eyes and his heart,
+      penetrating the dismal dungeon, rested on his child. He saw it slumbering
+      in the arms of the pale mother, and HIS soul spoke to the sleeping soul.
+      &ldquo;Forgive me, if my desire was sin; I dreamed to have reared and nurtured
+      thee to the divinest destinies my visions could foresee. Betimes, as the
+      mortal part was strengthened against disease, to have purified the
+      spiritual from every sin; to have led thee, heaven upon heaven, through
+      the holy ecstasies which make up the existence of the orders that dwell on
+      high; to have formed, from thy sublime affections, the pure and
+      ever-living communication between thy mother and myself. The dream was but
+      a dream&mdash;it is no more! In sight myself of the grave, I feel, at
+      last, that through the portals of the grave lies the true initiation into
+      the holy and the wise. Beyond those portals I await ye both, beloved
+      pilgrims!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From his numbers and his Cabala, in his cell, amidst the wrecks of Rome,
+      Mejnour, startled, looked up, and through the spirit, felt that the spirit
+      of his distant friend addressed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fare thee well forever upon this earth! Thy last companion forsakes thy
+      side. Thine age survives the youth of all; and the Final Day shall find
+      thee still the contemplator of our tombs. I go with my free will into the
+      land of darkness; but new suns and systems blaze around us from the grave.
+      I go where the souls of those for whom I resign the clay shall be my
+      co-mates through eternal youth. At last I recognise the true ordeal and
+      the real victory. Mejnour, cast down thy elixir; lay by thy load of years!
+      Wherever the soul can wander, the Eternal Soul of all things protects it
+      still!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0079" id="link2HCH0079">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 7.XV.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Il ne veulent plus perdre un moment d&rsquo;une nuit si precieuse.
+     Lacretelle, tom. xii.
+
+     (They would not lose another moment of so precious a night.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It was late that night, and Rene-Francois Dumas, President of the
+      Revolutionary Tribunal, had re-entered his cabinet, on his return from the
+      Jacobin Club. With him were two men who might be said to represent, the
+      one the moral, the other the physical force of the Reign of Terror:
+      Fouquier-Tinville, the Public Accuser, and Francois Henriot, the General
+      of the Parisian National Guard. This formidable triumvirate were assembled
+      to debate on the proceedings of the next day; and the three sister-witches
+      over their hellish caldron were scarcely animated by a more fiend-like
+      spirit, or engaged in more execrable designs, than these three heroes of
+      the Revolution in their premeditated massacre of the morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dumas was but little altered in appearance since, in the earlier part of
+      this narrative, he was presented to the reader, except that his manner was
+      somewhat more short and severe, and his eye yet more restless. But he
+      seemed almost a superior being by the side of his associates. Rene Dumas,
+      born of respectable parents, and well educated, despite his ferocity, was
+      not without a certain refinement, which perhaps rendered him the more
+      acceptable to the precise and formal Robespierre. (Dumas was a beau in his
+      way. His gala-dress was a BLOOD-RED COAT, with the finest ruffles.) But
+      Henriot had been a lackey, a thief, a spy of the police; he had drunk the
+      blood of Madame de Lamballe, and had risen to his present rank for no
+      quality but his ruffianism; and Fouquier-Tinville, the son of a provincial
+      agriculturist, and afterwards a clerk at the Bureau of the Police, was
+      little less base in his manners, and yet more, from a certain loathsome
+      buffoonery, revolting in his speech,&mdash;bull-headed, with black, sleek
+      hair, with a narrow and livid forehead, with small eyes, that twinkled
+      with a sinister malice; strongly and coarsely built, he looked what he
+      was, the audacious bully of a lawless and relentless Bar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dumas trimmed the candles, and bent over the list of the victims for the
+      morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a long catalogue,&rdquo; said the president; &ldquo;eighty trials for one day!
+      And Robespierre&rsquo;s orders to despatch the whole fournee are unequivocal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pooh!&rdquo; said Fouquier, with a coarse, loud laugh; &ldquo;we must try them en
+      masse. I know how to deal with our jury. &lsquo;Je pense, citoyens, que vous
+      etes convaincus du crime des accuses?&rsquo; (I think, citizens, that you are
+      convinced of the crime of the accused.) Ha! ha!&mdash;the longer the list,
+      the shorter the work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; growled out Henriot, with an oath,&mdash;as usual, half-drunk,
+      and lolling on his chair, with his spurred heels on the table,&mdash;&ldquo;little
+      Tinville is the man for despatch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Citizen Henriot,&rdquo; said Dumas, gravely, &ldquo;permit me to request thee to
+      select another footstool; and for the rest, let me warn thee that
+      to-morrow is a critical and important day; one that will decide the fate
+      of France.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A fig for little France! Vive le Vertueux Robespierre, la Colonne de la
+      Republique! (Long life to the virtuous Robespierre, the pillar of the
+      Republic!) Plague on this talking; it is dry work. Hast thou no eau de vie
+      in that little cupboard?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dumas and Fouquier exchanged looks of disgust. Dumas shrugged his
+      shoulders, and replied,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is to guard thee against eau de vie, Citizen General Henriot, that I
+      have requested thee to meet me here. Listen if thou canst!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, talk away! thy metier is to talk, mine to fight and to drink.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow, I tell thee then, the populace will be abroad; all factions
+      will be astir. It is probable enough that they will even seek to arrest
+      our tumbrils on their way to the guillotine. Have thy men armed and ready;
+      keep the streets clear; cut down without mercy whomsoever may obstruct the
+      ways.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; said Henriot, striking his sword so loudly that Dumas
+      half-started at the clank,&mdash;&ldquo;Black Henriot is no &lsquo;Indulgent.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look to it, then, citizen,&mdash;look to it! And hark thee,&rdquo; he added,
+      with a grave and sombre brow, &ldquo;if thou wouldst keep thine own head on thy
+      shoulders, beware of the eau de vie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My own head!&mdash;sacre mille tonnerres! Dost thou threaten the general
+      of the Parisian army?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dumas, like Robespierre, a precise atrabilious, and arrogant man, was
+      about to retort, when the craftier Tinville laid his hand on his arm, and,
+      turning to the general, said, &ldquo;My dear Henriot, thy dauntless
+      republicanism, which is too ready to give offence, must learn to take a
+      reprimand from the representative of Republican Law. Seriously, mon cher,
+      thou must be sober for the next three or four days; after the crisis is
+      over, thou and I will drink a bottle together. Come, Dumas relax thine
+      austerity, and shake hands with our friend. No quarrels amongst
+      ourselves!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dumas hesitated, and extended his hand, which the ruffian clasped; and,
+      maudlin tears succeeding his ferocity, he half-sobbed, half-hiccoughed
+      forth his protestations of civism and his promises of sobriety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we depend on thee, mon general,&rdquo; said Dumas; &ldquo;and now, since we
+      shall all have need of vigour for to-morrow, go home and sleep soundly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I forgive thee, Dumas,&mdash;I forgive thee. I am not vindictive,&mdash;I!
+      but still, if a man threatens me; if a man insults me&mdash;&rdquo; and, with
+      the quick changes of intoxication, again his eyes gleamed fire through
+      their foul tears. With some difficulty Fouquier succeeded at last in
+      soothing the brute, and leading him from the chamber. But still, as some
+      wild beast disappointed of a prey, he growled and snarled as his heavy
+      tread descended the stairs. A tall trooper, mounted, was leading Henriot&rsquo;s
+      horse to and fro the streets; and as the general waited at the porch till
+      his attendant turned, a stranger stationed by the wall accosted him:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;General Henriot, I have desired to speak with thee. Next to Robespierre,
+      thou art, or shouldst be, the most powerful man in France.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hem!&mdash;yes, I ought to be. What then?&mdash;every man has not his
+      deserts!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hist!&rdquo; said the stranger; &ldquo;thy pay is scarcely suitable to thy rank and
+      thy wants.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even in a revolution, a man takes care of his fortunes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Diable! speak out, citizen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a thousand pieces of gold with me,&mdash;they are thine, if thou
+      wilt grant me one small favour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Citizen, I grant it!&rdquo; said Henriot, waving his hand majestically. &ldquo;Is it
+      to denounce some rascal who has offended thee?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; it is simply this: write these words to President Dumas, &lsquo;Admit the
+      bearer to thy presence; and, if thou canst, grant him the request he will
+      make to thee, it will be an inestimable obligation to Francois Henriot.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+       The stranger, as he spoke, placed pencil and tablets in the shaking hands
+      of the soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where is the gold?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With some difficulty, Henriot scrawled the words dictated to him, clutched
+      the gold, mounted his horse, and was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile Fouquier, when he had closed the door upon Henriot, said
+      sharply, &ldquo;How canst thou be so mad as to incense that brigand? Knowest
+      thou not that our laws are nothing without the physical force of the
+      National Guard, and that he is their leader?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know this, that Robespierre must have been mad to place that drunkard
+      at their head; and mark my words, Fouquier, if the struggle come, it is
+      that man&rsquo;s incapacity and cowardice that will destroy us. Yes, thou mayst
+      live thyself to accuse thy beloved Robespierre, and to perish in his
+      fall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For all that, we must keep well with Henriot till we can find the
+      occasion to seize and behead him. To be safe, we must fawn on those who
+      are still in power; and fawn the more, the more we would depose them. Do
+      not think this Henriot, when he wakes to-morrow, will forget thy threats.
+      He is the most revengeful of human beings. Thou must send and soothe him
+      in the morning!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right,&rdquo; said Dumas, convinced. &ldquo;I was too hasty; and now I think we have
+      nothing further to do, since we have arranged to make short work with our
+      fournee of to-morrow. I see in the list a knave I have long marked out,
+      though his crime once procured me a legacy,&mdash;Nicot, the Hebertist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And young Andre Chenier, the poet? Ah, I forgot; we be headed HIM to-day!
+      Revolutionary virtue is at its acme. His own brother abandoned him.&rdquo; (His
+      brother is said, indeed, to have contributed to the condemnation of this
+      virtuous and illustrious person. He was heard to cry aloud, &ldquo;Si mon frere
+      est coupable, qu&rsquo;il perisse&rdquo; (If my brother be culpable, let him die).
+      This brother, Marie-Joseph, also a poet, and the author of &ldquo;Charles IX.,&rdquo;
+       so celebrated in the earlier days of the Revolution, enjoyed, of course,
+      according to the wonted justice of the world, a triumphant career, and was
+      proclaimed in the Champ de Mars &ldquo;le premier de poetes Francais,&rdquo; a title
+      due to his murdered brother.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a foreigner,&mdash;an Italian woman in the list; but I can find
+      no charge made out against her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the same we must execute her for the sake of the round number; eighty
+      sounds better than seventy-nine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here a huissier brought a paper on which was written the request of
+      Henriot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! this is fortunate,&rdquo; said Tinville, to whom Dumas chucked the scroll,&mdash;&ldquo;grant
+      the prayer by all means; so at least that it does not lessen our
+      bead-roll. But I will do Henriot the justice to say that he never asks to
+      let off, but to put on. Good-night! I am worn out&mdash;my escort waits
+      below. Only on such an occasion would I venture forth in the streets at
+      night.&rdquo; (During the latter part of the Reign of Terror, Fouquier rarely
+      stirred out at night, and never without an escort. In the Reign of Terror
+      those most terrified were its kings.) And Fouquier, with a long yawn,
+      quitted the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Admit the bearer!&rdquo; said Dumas, who, withered and dried, as lawyers in
+      practice mostly are, seemed to require as little sleep as his parchments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rene-Francois Dumas,&rdquo; said he, seating himself opposite to the president,
+      and markedly adopting the plural, as if in contempt of the revolutionary
+      jargon, &ldquo;amidst the excitement and occupations of your later life, I know
+      not if you can remember that we have met before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The judge scanned the features of his visitor, and a pale blush settled on
+      his sallow cheeks, &ldquo;Yes, citizen, I remember!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you recall the words I then uttered! You spoke tenderly and
+      philanthropically of your horror of capital executions; you exulted in the
+      approaching Revolution as the termination of all sanguinary punishments;
+      you quoted reverently the saying of Maximilien Robespierre, the rising
+      statesman, &lsquo;The executioner is the invention of the tyrant:&rsquo; and I
+      replied, that while you spoke, a foreboding seized me that we should meet
+      again when your ideas of death and the philosophy of revolutions might be
+      changed! Was I right, Citizen Rene-Francois Dumas, President of the
+      Revolutionary Tribunal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pooh!&rdquo; said Dumas, with some confusion on his brazen brow, &ldquo;I spoke then
+      as men speak who have not acted. Revolutions are not made with rose-water!
+      But truce to the gossip of the long-ago. I remember, also, that thou didst
+      then save the life of my relation, and it will please thee to learn that
+      his intended murderer will be guillotined to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That concerns yourself,&mdash;your justice or your revenge. Permit me the
+      egotism to remind you that you then promised that if ever a day should
+      come when you could serve me, your life&mdash;yes, the phrase was, &lsquo;your
+      heart&rsquo;s blood&lsquo;&mdash;was at my bidding. Think not, austere judge,
+      that I come to ask a boon that can affect yourself,&mdash;I come but to
+      ask a day&rsquo;s respite for another!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Citizen, it is impossible! I have the order of Robespierre that not one
+      less than the total on my list must undergo their trial for to-morrow. As
+      for the verdict, that rests with the jury!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not ask you to diminish the catalogue. Listen still! In your
+      death-roll there is the name of an Italian woman whose youth, whose
+      beauty, and whose freedom not only from every crime, but every tangible
+      charge, will excite only compassion, and not terror. Even YOU would
+      tremble to pronounce her sentence. It will be dangerous on a day when the
+      populace will be excited, when your tumbrils may be arrested, to expose
+      youth and innocence and beauty to the pity and courage of a revolted
+      crowd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dumas looked up and shrunk from the eye of the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not deny, citizen, that there is reason in what thou urgest. But my
+      orders are positive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Positive only as to the number of the victims. I offer you a substitute
+      for this one. I offer you the head of a man who knows all of the very
+      conspiracy which now threatens Robespierre and yourself, and compared with
+      one clew to which, you would think even eighty ordinary lives a cheap
+      purchase.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That alters the case,&rdquo; said Dumas, eagerly; &ldquo;if thou canst do this, on my
+      own responsibility I will postpone the trial of the Italian. Now name the
+      proxy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You behold him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou!&rdquo; exclaimed Dumas, while a fear he could not conceal betrayed itself
+      through his surprise. &ldquo;Thou!&mdash;and thou comest to me alone at night,
+      to offer thyself to justice. Ha!&mdash;this is a snare. Tremble, fool!&mdash;thou
+      art in my power, and I can have BOTH!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can,&rdquo; said the stranger, with a calm smile of disdain; &ldquo;but my life
+      is valueless without my revelations. Sit still, I command you,&mdash;hear
+      me!&rdquo; and the light in those dauntless eyes spell-bound and awed the judge.
+      &ldquo;You will remove me to the Conciergerie,&mdash;you will fix my trial,
+      under the name of Zanoni, amidst your fournee of to-morrow. If I do not
+      satisfy you by my speech, you hold the woman I die to save as your
+      hostage. It is but the reprieve for her of a single day that I demand. The
+      day following the morrow I shall be dust, and you may wreak your vengeance
+      on the life that remains. Tush! judge and condemner of thousands, do you
+      hesitate,&mdash;do you imagine that the man who voluntarily offers himself
+      to death will be daunted into uttering one syllable at your Bar against
+      his will? Have you not had experience enough of the inflexibility of pride
+      and courage? President, I place before you the ink and implements! Write
+      to the jailer a reprieve of one day for the woman whose life can avail you
+      nothing, and I will bear the order to my own prison: I, who can now tell
+      this much as an earnest of what I can communicate,&mdash;while I speak,
+      your own name, judge, is in a list of death. I can tell you by whose hand
+      it is written down; I can tell you in what quarter to look for danger; I
+      can tell you from what cloud, in this lurid atmosphere, hangs the storm
+      that shall burst on Robespierre and his reign!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dumas grew pale; and his eyes vainly sought to escape the magnetic gaze
+      that overpowered and mastered him. Mechanically, and as if under an agency
+      not his own, he wrote while the stranger dictated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said then, forcing a smile to his lips, &ldquo;I promised I would
+      serve you; see, I am faithful to my word. I suppose that you are one of
+      those fools of feeling,&mdash;those professors of anti-revolutionary
+      virtue, of whom I have seen not a few before my Bar. Faugh! it sickens me
+      to see those who make a merit of incivism, and perish to save some bad
+      patriot, because it is a son, or a father, or a wife, or a daughter, who
+      is saved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I AM one of those fools of feeling,&rdquo; said the stranger, rising. &ldquo;You have
+      divined aright.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And wilt thou not, in return for my mercy, utter to-night the revelations
+      thou wouldst proclaim to-morrow? Come; and perhaps thou too&mdash;nay, the
+      woman also&mdash;may receive, not reprieve, but pardon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before your tribunal, and there alone! Nor will I deceive you, president.
+      My information may avail you not; and even while I show the cloud, the
+      bolt may fall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tush! prophet, look to thyself! Go, madman, go. I know too well the
+      contumacious obstinacy of the class to which I suspect thou belongest, to
+      waste further words. Diable! but ye grow so accustomed to look on death,
+      that ye forget the respect ye owe to it. Since thou offerest me thy head,
+      I accept it. To-morrow thou mayst repent; it will be too late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, too late, president!&rdquo; echoed the calm visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, remember, it is not pardon, it is but a day&rsquo;s reprieve, I have
+      promised to this woman. According as thou dost satisfy me to-morrow, she
+      lives or dies. I am frank, citizen; thy ghost shall not haunt me for want
+      of faith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is but a day that I have asked; the rest I leave to justice and to
+      Heaven. Your huissiers wait below.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0080" id="link2HCH0080">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 7.XVI.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Und den Mordstahl seh&rsquo; ich blinken;
+     Und das Morderauge gluhn!
+     &ldquo;Kassandra.&rdquo;
+ 
+     (And I see the steel of Murder glitter,
+     And the eye of Murder glow.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Viola was in the prison that opened not but for those already condemned
+      before adjudged. Since her exile from Zanoni, her very intellect had
+      seemed paralysed. All that beautiful exuberance of fancy which, if not the
+      fruit of genius, seemed its blossoms; all that gush of exquisite thought
+      which Zanoni had justly told her flowed with mysteries and subtleties ever
+      new to him, the wise one,&mdash;all were gone, annihilated; the blossom
+      withered, the fount dried up. From something almost above womanhood, she
+      seemed listlessly to sink into something below childhood. With the
+      inspirer the inspirations had ceased; and, in deserting love, genius also
+      was left behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She scarcely comprehended why she had been thus torn from her home and the
+      mechanism of her dull tasks. She scarcely knew what meant those kindly
+      groups, that, struck with her exceeding loveliness, had gathered round her
+      in the prison, with mournful looks, but with words of comfort. She, who
+      had hitherto been taught to abhor those whom Law condemns for crime, was
+      amazed to hear that beings thus compassionate and tender, with cloudless
+      and lofty brows, with gallant and gentle mien, were criminals for whom Law
+      had no punishment short of death. But they, the savages, gaunt and
+      menacing, who had dragged her from her home, who had attempted to snatch
+      from her the infant while she clasped it in her arms, and laughed fierce
+      scorn at her mute, quivering lips,&mdash;THEY were the chosen citizens,
+      the men of virtue, the favourites of Power, the ministers of Law! Such thy
+      black caprices, O thou, the ever-shifting and calumnious,&mdash;Human
+      Judgment!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A squalid, and yet a gay world, did the prison-houses of that day present.
+      There, as in the sepulchre to which they led, all ranks were cast with an
+      even-handed scorn. And yet there, the reverence that comes from great
+      emotions restored Nature&rsquo;s first and imperishable, and most lovely, and
+      most noble Law,&mdash;THE INEQUALITY BETWEEN MAN AND MAN! There, place was
+      given by the prisoners, whether royalists or sans-culottes, to Age, to
+      Learning, to Renown, to Beauty; and Strength, with its own inborn
+      chivalry, raised into rank the helpless and the weak. The iron sinews and
+      the Herculean shoulders made way for the woman and the child; and the
+      graces of Humanity, lost elsewhere, sought their refuge in the abode of
+      Terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And wherefore, my child, do they bring thee hither?&rdquo; asked an old,
+      grey-haired priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, if you know not your offence, fear the worst!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And my child?&rdquo;&mdash;for the infant was still suffered to rest upon her
+      bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas, young mother, they will suffer thy child to live.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And for this,&mdash;an orphan in the dungeon!&rdquo; murmured the accusing
+      heart of Viola,&mdash;&ldquo;have I reserved his offspring! Zanoni, even in
+      thought, ask not&mdash;ask not what I have done with the child I bore
+      thee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Night came; the crowd rushed to the grate to hear the muster-roll.
+      (Called, in the mocking jargon of the day, &ldquo;The Evening Gazette.&rdquo;) Her
+      name was with the doomed. And the old priest, better prepared to die, but
+      reserved from the death-list, laid his hands on her head, and blessed her
+      while he wept. She heard, and wondered; but she did not weep. With
+      downcast eyes, with arms folded on her bosom, she bent submissively to the
+      call. But now another name was uttered; and a man, who had pushed rudely
+      past her to gaze or to listen, shrieked out a howl of despair and rage.
+      She turned, and their eyes met. Through the distance of time she
+      recognised that hideous aspect. Nicot&rsquo;s face settled back into its
+      devilish sneer. &ldquo;At least, gentle Neapolitan, the guillotine will unite
+      us. Oh, we shall sleep well our wedding-night!&rdquo; And, with a laugh, he
+      strode away through the crowd, and vanished into his lair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was placed in her gloomy cell, to await the morrow. But the child was
+      still spared her; and she thought it seemed as if conscious of the awful
+      present. In their way to the prison it had not moaned or wept. It had
+      looked with its clear eyes, unshrinking, on the gleaming pikes and savage
+      brows of the huissiers. And now, alone in the dungeon, it put its arms
+      round her neck, and murmured its indistinct sounds, low and sweet as some
+      unknown language of consolation and of heaven. And of heaven it was!&mdash;for,
+      at the murmur, the terror melted from her soul; upward, from the dungeon
+      and the death,&mdash;upward, where the happy cherubim chant the mercy of
+      the All-loving, whispered that cherub&rsquo;s voice. She fell upon her knees and
+      prayed. The despoilers of all that beautifies and hallows life had
+      desecrated the altar, and denied the God!&mdash;they had removed from the
+      last hour of their victims the Priest, the Scripture, and the Cross! But
+      Faith builds in the dungeon and the lazar-house its sublimest shrines; and
+      up, through roofs of stone, that shut out the eye of Heaven, ascends the
+      ladder where the angels glide to and fro,&mdash;PRAYER.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there, in the very cell beside her own, the atheist Nicot sits stolid
+      amidst the darkness, and hugs the thought of Danton, that death is
+      nothingness. (&ldquo;Ma demeure sera bientot LE NEANT&rdquo; (My abode will soon be
+      nothingness), said Danton before his judges.)) His, no spectacle of an
+      appalled and perturbed conscience! Remorse is the echo of a lost virtue,
+      and virtue he never knew. Had he to live again, he would live the same.
+      But more terrible than the death-bed of a believing and despairing sinner
+      that blank gloom of apathy,&mdash;that contemplation of the worm and the
+      rat of the charnel-house; that grim and loathsome NOTHINGNESS which, for
+      his eye, falls like a pall over the universe of life. Still, staring into
+      space, gnawing his livid lip, he looks upon the darkness, convinced that
+      darkness is forever and forever!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Place, there! place! Room yet in your crowded cells. Another has come to
+      the slaughter-house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the jailer, lamp in hand, ushered in the stranger, the latter touched
+      him and whispered. The stranger drew a jewel from his finger. Diantre, how
+      the diamond flashed in the ray of the lamp! Value each head of your eighty
+      at a thousand francs, and the jewel is more worth than all! The jailer
+      paused, and the diamond laughed in his dazzled eyes. O thou Cerberus, thou
+      hast mastered all else that seems human in that fell employ! Thou hast no
+      pity, no love, and no remorse. But Avarice survives the rest, and the foul
+      heart&rsquo;s master-serpent swallows up the tribe. Ha! ha! crafty stranger,
+      thou hast conquered! They tread the gloomy corridor; they arrive at the
+      door where the jailer has placed the fatal mark, now to be erased, for the
+      prisoner within is to be reprieved a day. The key grates in the lock; the
+      door yawns,&mdash;the stranger takes the lamp and enters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0081" id="link2HCH0081">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER 7.XVII. The Seventeenth and Last.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Cosi vince Goffredo!
+     &ldquo;Ger. Lib.&rdquo; cant. xx.-xliv.
+
+     (Thus conquered Godfrey.)
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And Viola was in prayer. She heard not the opening of the door; she saw
+      not the dark shadow that fell along the floor. HIS power, HIS arts were
+      gone; but the mystery and the spell known to HER simple heart did not
+      desert her in the hours of trial and despair. When Science falls as a
+      firework from the sky it would invade; when Genius withers as a flower in
+      the breath of the icy charnel,&mdash;the hope of a child-like soul wraps
+      the air in light, and the innocence of unquestioning Belief covers the
+      grave with blossoms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the farthest corner of the cell she knelt; and the infant, as if to
+      imitate what it could not comprehend, bent its little limbs, and bowed its
+      smiling face, and knelt with her also, by her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood and gazed upon them as the light of the lamp fell calmly on their
+      forms. It fell over those clouds of golden hair, dishevelled, parted,
+      thrown back from the rapt, candid brow; the dark eyes raised on high,
+      where, through the human tears, a light as from above was mirrored; the
+      hands clasped, the lips apart, the form all animate and holy with the sad
+      serenity of innocence and the touching humility of woman. And he heard her
+      voice, though it scarcely left her lips: the low voice that the heart
+      speaks,&mdash;loud enough for God to hear!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if never more to see him, O Father! Canst Thou not make the love that
+      will not die, minister, even beyond the grave, to his earthly fate? Canst
+      Thou not yet permit it, as a living spirit, to hover over him,&mdash;a
+      spirit fairer than all his science can conjure? Oh, whatever lot be
+      ordained to either, grant&mdash;even though a thousand ages may roll
+      between us&mdash;grant, when at last purified and regenerate, and fitted
+      for the transport of such reunion&mdash;grant that we may meet once more!
+      And for his child,&mdash;it kneels to Thee from the dungeon floor!
+      To-morrow, and whose breast shall cradle it; whose hand shall feed; whose
+      lips shall pray for its weal below and its soul hereafter!&rdquo; She paused,&mdash;her
+      voice choked with sobs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou Viola!&mdash;thou, thyself. He whom thou hast deserted is here to
+      preserve the mother to the child!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She started!&mdash;those accents, tremulous as her own! She started to her
+      feet!&mdash;he was there,&mdash;in all the pride of his unwaning youth and
+      superhuman beauty; there, in the house of dread, and in the hour of
+      travail; there, image and personation of the love that can pierce the
+      Valley of the Shadow, and can glide, the unscathed wanderer from the
+      heaven, through the roaring abyss of hell!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a cry never, perhaps, heard before in that gloomy vault,&mdash;a cry
+      of delight and rapture, she sprang forward, and fell at his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bent down to raise her; but she slid from his arms. He called her by
+      the familiar epithets of the old endearment, and she only answered him by
+      sobs. Wildly, passionately, she kissed his hands, the hem of his garment,
+      but voice was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look up, look up!&mdash;I am here,&mdash;I am here to save thee! Wilt
+      thou deny to me thy sweet face? Truant, wouldst thou fly me still?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fly thee!&rdquo; she said, at last, and in a broken voice; &ldquo;oh, if my thoughts
+      wronged thee,&mdash;oh, if my dream, that awful dream, deceived,&mdash;kneel
+      down with me, and pray for our child!&rdquo; Then springing to her feet with a
+      sudden impulse, she caught up the infant, and, placing it in his arms,
+      sobbed forth, with deprecating and humble tones, &ldquo;Not for my sake,&mdash;not
+      for mine, did I abandon thee, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; said Zanoni; &ldquo;I know all the thoughts that thy confused and
+      struggling senses can scarcely analyse themselves. And see how, with a
+      look, thy child answers them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And in truth the face of that strange infant seemed radiant with its
+      silent and unfathomable joy. It seemed as if it recognised the father; it
+      clung&mdash;it forced itself to his breast, and there, nestling, turned
+      its bright, clear eyes upon Viola, and smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pray for my child!&rdquo; said Zanoni, mournfully. &ldquo;The thoughts of souls that
+      would aspire as mine are All PRAYER!&rdquo; And, seating himself by her side, he
+      began to reveal to her some of the holier secrets of his lofty being. He
+      spoke of the sublime and intense faith from which alone the diviner
+      knowledge can arise,&mdash;the faith which, seeing the immortal
+      everywhere, purifies and exalts the mortal that beholds, the glorious
+      ambition that dwells not in the cabals and crimes of earth, but amidst
+      those solemn wonders that speak not of men, but of God; of that power to
+      abstract the soul from the clay which gives to the eye of the soul its
+      subtle vision, and to the soul&rsquo;s wing the unlimited realm; of that pure,
+      severe, and daring initiation from which the mind emerges, as from death,
+      into clear perceptions of its kindred with the Father-Principles of life
+      and light, so that in its own sense of the Beautiful it finds its joy; in
+      the serenity of its will, its power; in its sympathy with the youthfulness
+      of the Infinite Creation, of which itself is an essence and a part, the
+      secrets that embalm the very clay which they consecrate, and renew the
+      strength of life with the ambrosia of mysterious and celestial sleep. And
+      while he spoke, Viola listened, breathless. If she could not comprehend,
+      she no longer dared to distrust. She felt that in that enthusiasm,
+      self-deceiving or not, no fiend could lurk; and by an intuition, rather
+      than an effort of the reason, she saw before her, like a starry ocean, the
+      depth and mysterious beauty of the soul which her fears had wronged. Yet,
+      when he said (concluding his strange confessions) that to this life WITHIN
+      life and ABOVE life he had dreamed to raise her own, the fear of humanity
+      crept over her, and he read in her silence how vain, with all his science,
+      would the dream have been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now, as he closed, and, leaning on his breast, she felt the clasp of
+      his protecting arms,&mdash;when, in one holy kiss, the past was forgiven
+      and the present lost,&mdash;then there returned to her the sweet and warm
+      hopes of the natural life, of the loving woman. He was come to save her!
+      She asked not how,&mdash;she believed it without a question. They should
+      be at last again united. They would fly far from those scenes of violence
+      and blood. Their happy Ionian isle, their fearless solitudes, would once
+      more receive them. She laughed, with a child&rsquo;s joy, as this picture rose
+      up amidst the gloom of the dungeon. Her mind, faithful to its sweet,
+      simple instincts, refused to receive the lofty images that flitted
+      confusedly by it, and settled back to its human visions, yet more
+      baseless, of the earthly happiness and the tranquil home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Talk not now to me, beloved,&mdash;talk not more now to me of the past!
+      Thou art here,&mdash;thou wilt save me; we shall live yet the common happy
+      life, that life with thee is happiness and glory enough to me. Traverse,
+      if thou wilt, in thy pride of soul, the universe; thy heart again is the
+      universe to mine. I thought but now that I was prepared to die; I see
+      thee, touch thee, and again I know how beautiful a thing is life! See
+      through the grate the stars are fading from the sky; the morrow will soon
+      be here,&mdash;The MORROW which will open the prison doors! Thou sayest
+      thou canst save me,&mdash;I will not doubt it now. Oh, let us dwell no
+      more in cities! I never doubted thee in our lovely isle; no dreams haunted
+      me there, except dreams of joy and beauty; and thine eyes made yet more
+      beautiful and joyous the world in waking. To-morrow!&mdash;why do you not
+      smile? To-morrow, love! is not TO-MORROW a blessed word! Cruel! you would
+      punish me still, that you will not share my joy. Aha! see our little one,
+      how it laughs to my eyes! I will talk to THAT. Child, thy father is come
+      back!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And taking the infant in her arms, and seating herself at a little
+      distance, she rocked it to and fro on her bosom, and prattled to it, and
+      kissed it between every word, and laughed and wept by fits, as ever and
+      anon she cast over her shoulder her playful, mirthful glance upon the
+      father to whom those fading stars smiled sadly their last farewell. How
+      beautiful she seemed as she thus sat, unconscious of the future! Still
+      half a child herself, her child laughing to her laughter,&mdash;two soft
+      triflers on the brink of the grave! Over her throat, as she bent, fell,
+      like a golden cloud, her redundant hair; it covered her treasure like a
+      veil of light, and the child&rsquo;s little hands put it aside from time to
+      time, to smile through the parted tresses, and then to cover its face and
+      peep and smile again. It were cruel to damp that joy, more cruel still to
+      share it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Viola,&rdquo; said Zanoni, at last, &ldquo;dost thou remember that, seated by the
+      cave on the moonlit beach, in our bridal isle, thou once didst ask me for
+      this amulet?&mdash;the charm of a superstition long vanished from the
+      world, with the creed to which it belonged. It is the last relic of my
+      native land, and my mother, on her deathbed, placed it round my neck. I
+      told thee then I would give it thee on that day WHEN THE LAWS OF OUR BEING
+      SHOULD BECOME THE SAME.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember it well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow it shall be thine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that dear to-morrow!&rdquo; And, gently laying down her child,&mdash;for it
+      slept now,&mdash;she threw herself on his breast, and pointed to the dawn
+      that began greyly to creep along the skies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There, in those horror-breathing walls, the day-star looked through the
+      dismal bars upon those three beings, in whom were concentrated whatever is
+      most tender in human ties; whatever is most mysterious in the combinations
+      of the human mind; the sleeping Innocence; the trustful Affection, that,
+      contented with a touch, a breath, can foresee no sorrow; the weary Science
+      that, traversing all the secrets of creation, comes at last to Death for
+      their solution, and still clings, as it nears the threshold, to the breast
+      of Love. Thus, within, THE WITHIN,&mdash;a dungeon; without, the WITHOUT,&mdash;stately
+      with marts and halls, with palaces and temples; Revenge and Terror, at
+      their dark schemes and counter-schemes; to and fro, upon the tide of the
+      shifting passions, reeled the destinies of men and nations; and hard at
+      hand that day-star, waning into space, looked with impartial eye on the
+      church tower and the guillotine. Up springs the blithesome morn. In yon
+      gardens the birds renew their familiar song. The fishes are sporting
+      through the freshening waters of the Seine. The gladness of divine nature,
+      the roar and dissonance of mortal life, awake again: the trader unbars his
+      windows; the flower-girls troop gayly to their haunts; busy feet are
+      tramping to the daily drudgeries that revolutions which strike down kings
+      and kaisars, leave the same Cain&rsquo;s heritage to the boor; the wagons groan
+      and reel to the mart; Tyranny, up betimes, holds its pallid levee;
+      Conspiracy, that hath not slept, hears the clock, and whispers to its own
+      heart, &ldquo;The hour draws near.&rdquo; A group gather, eager-eyed, round the
+      purlieus of the Convention Hall; to-day decides the sovereignty of France,&mdash;about
+      the courts of the Tribunal their customary hum and stir. No matter what
+      the hazard of the die, or who the ruler, this day eighty heads shall fall!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she slept so sweetly. Wearied out with joy, secure in the presence of
+      the eyes regained, she had laughed and wept herself to sleep; and still in
+      that slumber there seemed a happy consciousness that the loved was by,&mdash;the
+      lost was found. For she smiled and murmured to herself, and breathed his
+      name often, and stretched out her arms, and sighed if they touched him
+      not. He gazed upon her as he stood apart,&mdash;with what emotions it were
+      vain to say. She would wake no more to him; she could not know how dearly
+      the safety of that sleep was purchased. That morrow she had so yearned
+      for,&mdash;it had come at last. HOW WOULD SHE GREET THE EVE? Amidst all
+      the exquisite hopes with which love and youth contemplate the future, her
+      eyes had closed. Those hopes still lent their iris-colours to her dreams.
+      She would wake to live! To-morrow, and the Reign of Terror was no more;
+      the prison gates would be opened,&mdash;she would go forth, with their
+      child, into that summer-world of light. And HE?&mdash;he turned, and his
+      eye fell upon the child; it was broad awake, and that clear, serious,
+      thoughtful look which it mostly wore, watched him with a solemn
+      steadiness. He bent over and kissed its lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never more,&rdquo; he murmured, &ldquo;O heritor of love and grief,&mdash;never more
+      wilt thou see me in thy visions; never more will the light of those eyes
+      be fed by celestial commune; never more can my soul guard from thy pillow
+      the trouble and the disease. Not such as I would have vainly shaped it,
+      must be thy lot. In common with thy race, it must be thine to suffer, to
+      struggle, and to err. But mild be thy human trials, and strong be thy
+      spirit to love and to believe! And thus, as I gaze upon thee,&mdash;thus
+      may my nature breathe into thine its last and most intense desire; may my
+      love for thy mother pass to thee, and in thy looks may she hear my spirit
+      comfort and console her. Hark! they come! Yes! I await ye both beyond the
+      grave!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The door slowly opened; the jailer appeared, and through the aperture
+      rushed, at the same instant, a ray of sunlight: it streamed over the fair,
+      hushed face of the happy sleeper,&mdash;it played like a smile upon the
+      lips of the child that, still, mute, and steadfast, watched the movements
+      of its father. At that moment Viola muttered in her sleep, &ldquo;The day is
+      come,&mdash;the gates are open! Give me thy hand; we will go forth! To
+      sea, to sea! How the sunshine plays upon the waters!&mdash;to home,
+      beloved one, to home again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Citizen, thine hour is come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hist! she sleeps! A moment! There, it is done! thank Heaven!&mdash;and
+      STILL she sleeps!&rdquo; He would not kiss, lest he should awaken her, but
+      gently placed round her neck the amulet that would speak to her,
+      hereafter, the farewell,&mdash;and promise, in that farewell, reunion! He
+      is at the threshold,&mdash;he turns again, and again. The door closes! He
+      is gone forever!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She woke at last,&mdash;she gazed round. &ldquo;Zanoni, it is day!&rdquo; No answer
+      but the low wail of her child. Merciful Heaven! was it then all a dream?
+      She tossed back the long tresses that must veil her sight; she felt the
+      amulet on her bosom,&mdash;it was NO dream! &ldquo;O God! and he is gone!&rdquo; She
+      sprang to the door,&mdash;she shrieked aloud. The jailer comes. &ldquo;My
+      husband, my child&rsquo;s father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is gone before thee, woman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whither? Speak&mdash;speak!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the guillotine!&rdquo;&mdash;and the black door closed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It closed upon the senseless! As a lightning-flash, Zanoni&rsquo;s words, his
+      sadness, the true meaning of his mystic gift, the very sacrifice he made
+      for her, all became distinct for a moment to her mind,&mdash;and then
+      darkness swept on it like a storm, yet darkness which had its light. And
+      while she sat there, mute, rigid, voiceless, as congealed to stone, A
+      VISION, like a wind, glided over the deeps within,&mdash;the grim court,
+      the judge, the jury, the accuser; and amidst the victims the one dauntless
+      and radiant form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou knowest the danger to the State,&mdash;confess!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know; and I keep my promise. Judge, I reveal thy doom! I know that the
+      Anarchy thou callest a State expires with the setting of this sun. Hark,
+      to the tramp without; hark to the roar of voices! Room there, ye dead!&mdash;room
+      in hell for Robespierre and his crew!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They hurry into the court,&mdash;the hasty and pale messengers; there is
+      confusion and fear and dismay! &ldquo;Off with the conspirator, and to-morrow
+      the woman thou wouldst have saved shall die!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow, president, the steel falls on THEE!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On, through the crowded and roaring streets, on moves the Procession of
+      Death. Ha, brave people! thou art aroused at last. They shall not die!
+      Death is dethroned!&mdash;Robespierre has fallen!&mdash;they rush to the
+      rescue! Hideous in the tumbril, by the side of Zanoni, raved and
+      gesticulated that form which, in his prophetic dreams, he had seen his
+      companion at the place of death. &ldquo;Save us!&mdash;save us!&rdquo; howled the
+      atheist Nicot. &ldquo;On, brave populace! we SHALL be saved!&rdquo; And through the
+      crowd, her dark hair streaming wild, her eyes flashing fire, pressed a
+      female form, &ldquo;My Clarence!&rdquo; she shrieked, in the soft Southern language
+      native to the ears of Viola; &ldquo;butcher! what hast thou done with Clarence?&rdquo;
+       Her eyes roved over the eager faces of the prisoners; she saw not the one
+      she sought. &ldquo;Thank Heaven!&mdash;thank Heaven! I am not thy murderess!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nearer and nearer press the populace,&mdash;another moment, and the
+      deathsman is defrauded. O Zanoni! why still upon THY brow the resignation
+      that speaks no hope? Tramp! tramp! through the streets dash the armed
+      troop; faithful to his orders, Black Henriot leads them on. Tramp! tramp!
+      over the craven and scattered crowd! Here, flying in disorder,&mdash;there,
+      trampled in the mire, the shrieking rescuers! And amidst them, stricken by
+      the sabres of the guard, her long hair blood-bedabbled, lies the Italian
+      woman; and still upon her writhing lips sits joy, as they murmur,
+      &ldquo;Clarence! I have not destroyed thee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On to the Barriere du Trone. It frowns dark in the air,&mdash;the giant
+      instrument of murder! One after one to the glaive,&mdash;another and
+      another and another! Mercy! O mercy! Is the bridge between the sun and the
+      shades so brief,&mdash;brief as a sigh? There, there,&mdash;HIS turn has
+      come. &ldquo;Die not yet; leave me not behind; hear me&mdash;hear me!&rdquo; shrieked
+      the inspired sleeper. &ldquo;What! and thou smilest still!&rdquo; They smiled,&mdash;those
+      pale lips,&mdash;and WITH the smile, the place of doom, the headsman, the
+      horror vanished. With that smile, all space seemed suffused in eternal
+      sunshine. Up from the earth he rose; he hovered over her,&mdash;a thing
+      not of matter, an IDEA of joy and light! Behind, Heaven opened, deep after
+      deep; and the Hosts of Beauty were seen, rank upon rank, afar; and
+      &ldquo;Welcome!&rdquo; in a myriad melodies, broke from your choral multitude, ye
+      People of the Skies,&mdash;&ldquo;welcome! O purified by sacrifice, and immortal
+      only through the grave,&mdash;this it is to die.&rdquo; And radiant amidst the
+      radiant, the IMAGE stretched forth its arms, and murmured to the sleeper:
+      &ldquo;Companion of Eternity!&mdash;THIS it is to die!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ho! wherefore do they make us signs from the house-tops? Wherefore gather
+      the crowds through the street? Why sounds the bell? Why shrieks the
+      tocsin? Hark to the guns!&mdash;the armed clash! Fellow-captives, is there
+      hope for us at last?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So gasp out the prisoners, each to each. Day wanes&mdash;evening closes;
+      still they press their white faces to the bars, and still from window and
+      from house-top they see the smiles of friends,&mdash;the waving signals!
+      &ldquo;Hurrah!&rdquo; at last,&mdash;&ldquo;Hurrah! Robespierre is fallen! The Reign of
+      Terror is no more! God hath permitted us to live!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes; cast thine eyes into the hall where the tyrant and his conclave
+      hearkened to the roar without! Fulfilling the prophecy of Dumas, Henriot,
+      drunk with blood and alcohol, reels within, and chucks his gory sabre on
+      the floor. &ldquo;All is lost!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wretch! thy cowardice hath destroyed us!&rdquo; yelled the fierce Coffinhal, as
+      he hurled the coward from the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Calm as despair stands the stern St. Just; the palsied Couthon crawls,
+      grovelling, beneath table; a shot,&mdash;an explosion! Robespierre would
+      destroy himself! The trembling hand has mangled, and failed to kill! The
+      clock of the Hotel de Ville strikes the third hour. Through the battered
+      door, along the gloomy passages, into the Death-hall, burst the crowd.
+      Mangled, livid, blood-stained, speechless but not unconscious, sits
+      haughty yet, in his seat erect, the Master-Murderer! Around him they
+      throng; they hoot,&mdash;they execrate, their faces gleaming in the
+      tossing torches! HE, and not the starry Magian, the REAL Sorcerer! And
+      round HIS last hours gather the Fiends he raised!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They drag him forth! Open thy gates, inexorable prison! The Conciergerie
+      receives its prey! Never a word again on earth spoke Maximilien
+      Robespierre! Pour forth thy thousands, and tens of thousands, emancipated
+      Paris! To the Place de la Revolution rolls the tumbril of the King of
+      Terror,&mdash;St. Just, Dumas, Couthon, his companions to the grave! A
+      woman&mdash;a childless woman, with hoary hair&mdash;springs to his side,
+      &ldquo;Thy death makes me drunk with joy!&rdquo; He opened his bloodshot eyes,&mdash;&ldquo;Descend
+      to hell with the curses of wives and mothers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The headsmen wrench the rag from the shattered jaw; a shriek, and the
+      crowd laugh, and the axe descends amidst the shout of the countless
+      thousands, and blackness rushes on thy soul, Maximilien Robespierre! So
+      ended the Reign of Terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Daylight in the prison. From cell to cell they hurry with the news,&mdash;crowd
+      upon crowd; the joyous captives mingled with the very jailers, who, for
+      fear, would fain seem joyous too; they stream through the dens and alleys
+      of the grim house they will shortly leave. They burst into a cell,
+      forgotten since the previous morning. They found there a young female,
+      sitting upon her wretched bed; her arms crossed upon her bosom, her face
+      raised upward; the eyes unclosed, and a smile of more than serenity&mdash;of
+      bliss&mdash;upon her lips. Even in the riot of their joy, they drew back
+      in astonishment and awe. Never had they seen life so beautiful; and as
+      they crept nearer, and with noiseless feet, they saw that the lips
+      breathed not, that the repose was of marble, that the beauty and the
+      ecstasy were of death. They gathered round in silence; and lo! at her feet
+      there was a young infant, who, wakened by their tread, looked at them
+      steadfastly, and with its rosy fingers played with its dead mother&rsquo;s robe.
+      An orphan there in a dungeon vault!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor one!&rdquo; said a female (herself a parent), &ldquo;and they say the father
+      fell yesterday; and now the mother! Alone in the world, what can be its
+      fate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The infant smiled fearlessly on the crowd, as the woman spoke thus. And
+      the old priest, who stood amongst them, said gently, &ldquo;Woman, see! the
+      orphan smiles! THE FATHERLESS ARE THE CARE OF GOD!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0093" id="link2H_4_0093">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      NOTE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The curiosity which Zanoni has excited among those who think it worth while
+      to dive into the subtler meanings they believe it intended to convey, may
+      excuse me in adding a few words, not in explanation of its mysteries, but
+      upon the principles which permit them. Zanoni is not, as some have
+      supposed, an allegory; but beneath the narrative it relates, TYPICAL
+      meanings are concealed. It is to be regarded in two characters, distinct
+      yet harmonious,&mdash;1st, that of the simple and objective fiction, in
+      which (once granting the license of the author to select a subject which
+      is, or appears to be, preternatural) the reader judges the writer by the
+      usual canons,&mdash;namely, by the consistency of his characters under
+      such admitted circumstances, the interest of his story, and the coherence
+      of his plot; of the work regarded in this view, it is not my intention to
+      say anything, whether in exposition of the design, or in defence of the
+      execution. No typical meanings (which, in plain terms are but moral
+      suggestions, more or less numerous, more or less subtle) can afford just
+      excuse to a writer of fiction, for the errors he should avoid in the most
+      ordinary novel. We have no right to expect the most ingenious reader to
+      search for the inner meaning, if the obvious course of the narrative be
+      tedious and displeasing. It is, on the contrary, in proportion as we are
+      satisfied with the objective sense of a work of imagination, that we are
+      inclined to search into its depths for the more secret intentions of the
+      author. Were we not so divinely charmed with &ldquo;Faust,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Hamlet,&rdquo; and
+      &ldquo;Prometheus,&rdquo; so ardently carried on by the interest of the story told to
+      the common understanding, we should trouble ourselves little with the
+      types in each which all of us can detect,&mdash;none of us can elucidate;
+      none elucidate, for the essence of type is mystery. We behold the figure,
+      we cannot lift the veil. The author himself is not called upon to explain
+      what he designed. An allegory is a personation of distinct and definite
+      things,&mdash;virtues or qualities,&mdash;and the key can be given easily;
+      but a writer who conveys typical meanings, may express them in myriads. He
+      cannot disentangle all the hues which commingle into the light he seeks to
+      cast upon truth; and therefore the great masters of this enchanted soil,&mdash;Fairyland
+      of Fairyland, Poetry imbedded beneath Poetry,&mdash;wisely leave to each
+      mind to guess at such truths as best please or instruct it. To have asked
+      Goethe to explain the &ldquo;Faust&rdquo; would have entailed as complex and puzzling
+      an answer as to have asked Mephistopheles to explain what is beneath the
+      earth we tread on. The stores beneath may differ for every passenger; each
+      step may require a new description; and what is treasure to the geologist
+      may be rubbish to the miner. Six worlds may lie under a sod, but to the
+      common eye they are but six layers of stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Art in itself, if not necessarily typical, is essentially a suggester of
+      something subtler than that which it embodies to the sense. What Pliny
+      tells us of a great painter of old, is true of most great painters; &ldquo;their
+      works express something beyond the works,&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;more felt than
+      understood.&rdquo; This belongs to the concentration of intellect which high art
+      demands, and which, of all the arts, sculpture best illustrates. Take
+      Thorwaldsen&rsquo;s Statue of Mercury,&mdash;it is but a single figure, yet it
+      tells to those conversant with mythology a whole legend. The god has
+      removed the pipe from his lips, because he has already lulled to sleep the
+      Argus, whom you do not see. He is pressing his heel against his sword,
+      because the moment is come when he may slay his victim. Apply the
+      principle of this noble concentration of art to the moral writer: he, too,
+      gives to your eye but a single figure; yet each attitude, each expression,
+      may refer to events and truths you must have the learning to remember, the
+      acuteness to penetrate, or the imagination to conjecture. But to a
+      classical judge of sculpture, would not the exquisite pleasure of
+      discovering the all not told in Thorwaldsen&rsquo;s masterpiece be destroyed if
+      the artist had engraved in detail his meaning at the base of the statue?
+      Is it not the same with the typical sense which the artist in words
+      conveys? The pleasure of divining art in each is the noble exercise of all
+      by whom art is worthily regarded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We of the humbler race not unreasonably shelter ourselves under the
+      authority of the masters, on whom the world&rsquo;s judgment is pronounced; and
+      great names are cited, not with the arrogance of equals, but with the
+      humility of inferiors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The author of Zanoni gives, then, no key to mysteries, be they trivial or
+      important, which may be found in the secret chambers by those who lift the
+      tapestry from the wall; but out of the many solutions of the main enigma&mdash;if
+      enigma, indeed, there be&mdash;which have been sent to him, he ventures to
+      select the one which he subjoins, from the ingenuity and thought which it
+      displays, and from respect for the distinguished writer (one of the most
+      eminent our time has produced) who deemed him worthy of an honour he is
+      proud to display. He leaves it to the reader to agree with, or dissent
+      from the explanation. &ldquo;A hundred men,&rdquo; says the old Platonist, &ldquo;may read
+      the book by the help of the same lamp, yet all may differ on the text, for
+      the lamp only lights the characters,&mdash;the mind must divine the
+      meaning.&rdquo; The object of a parable is not that of a problem; it does not
+      seek to convince, but to suggest. It takes the thought below the surface
+      of the understanding to the deeper intelligence which the world rarely
+      tasks. It is not sunlight on the water; it is a hymn chanted to the nymph
+      who hearkens and awakes below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      .... <a name="link2H_4_0094" id="link2H_4_0094">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      &ldquo;ZANONI EXPLAINED.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      BY&mdash;.&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      MEJNOUR:&mdash;Contemplation of the Actual,&mdash;SCIENCE. Always old, and
+      must last as long as the Actual. Less fallible than Idealism, but less
+      practically potent, from its ignorance of the human heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ZANONI:&mdash;Contemplation of the Ideal,&mdash;IDEALISM. Always
+      necessarily sympathetic: lives by enjoyment; and is therefore typified by
+      eternal youth. (&ldquo;I do not understand the making Idealism less undying (on
+      this scene of existence) than Science.&rdquo;&mdash;Commentator. Because,
+      granting the above premises, Idealism is more subjected than Science to
+      the Affections, or to Instinct, because the Affections, sooner or later,
+      force Idealism into the Actual, and in the Actual its immortality departs.
+      The only absolutely Actual portion of the work is found in the concluding
+      scenes that depict the Reign of Terror. The introduction of this part was
+      objected to by some as out of keeping with the fanciful portions that
+      preceded it. But if the writer of the solution has rightly shown or
+      suggested the intention of the author, the most strongly and rudely actual
+      scene of the age in which the story is cast was the necessary and
+      harmonious completion of the whole. The excesses and crimes of Humanity
+      are the grave of the Ideal.&mdash;Author.) Idealism is the potent
+      Interpreter and Prophet of the Real; but its powers are impaired in
+      proportion to their exposure to human passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      VIOLA:&mdash;Human INSTINCT. (Hardly worthy to be called LOVE, as Love
+      would not forsake its object at the bidding of Superstition.) Resorts,
+      first in its aspiration after the Ideal, to tinsel shows; then
+      relinquishes these for a higher love; but is still, from the conditions of
+      its nature, inadequate to this, and liable to suspicion and mistrust. Its
+      greatest force (Maternal Instinct) has power to penetrate some secrets, to
+      trace some movements of the Ideal, but, too feeble to command them, yields
+      to Superstition, sees sin where there is none, while committing sin, under
+      a false guidance; weakly seeking refuge amidst the very tumults of the
+      warring passions of the Actual, while deserting the serene Ideal,&mdash;pining,
+      nevertheless, in the absence of the Ideal, and expiring (not perishing,
+      but becoming transmuted) in the aspiration after having the laws of the
+      two natures reconciled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (It might best suit popular apprehension to call these three the
+      Understanding, the Imagination, and the Heart.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CHILD:&mdash;NEW-BORN INSTINCT, while trained and informed by Idealism,
+      promises a preter-human result by its early, incommunicable vigilance and
+      intelligence, but is compelled, by inevitable orphanhood, and the one-half
+      of the laws of its existence, to lapse into ordinary conditions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AIDON-AI:&mdash;FAITH, which manifests its splendour, and delivers its
+      oracles, and imparts its marvels, only to the higher moods of the soul,
+      and whose directed antagonism is with Fear; so that those who employ the
+      resources of Fear must dispense with those of Faith. Yet aspiration holds
+      open a way of restoration, and may summon Faith, even when the cry issues
+      from beneath the yoke of fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD:&mdash;FEAR (or HORROR), from whose ghastliness
+      men are protected by the opacity of the region of Prescription and Custom.
+      The moment this protection is relinquished, and the human spirit pierces
+      the cloud, and enters alone on the unexplored regions of Nature, this
+      Natural Horror haunts it, and is to be successfully encountered only by
+      defiance,&mdash;by aspiration towards, and reliance on, the Former and
+      Director of Nature, whose Messenger and Instrument of reassurance is
+      Faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MERVALE:&mdash;CONVENTIONALISM.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NICOT:&mdash;Base, grovelling, malignant PASSION.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GLYNDON:&mdash;UNSUSTAINED ASPIRATION: Would follow Instinct, but is
+      deterred by Conventionalism, is overawed by Idealism, yet attracted, and
+      transiently inspired, but has not steadiness for the initiatory
+      contemplation of the Actual. He conjoins its snatched privileges with a
+      besetting sensualism, and suffers at once from the horror of the one and
+      the disgust of the other, involving the innocent in the fatal conflict of
+      his spirit. When on the point of perishing, he is rescued by Idealism,
+      and, unable to rise to that species of existence, is grateful to be
+      replunged into the region of the Familiar, and takes up his rest
+      henceforth in Custom. (Mirror of Young Manhood.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      .... ARGUMENT.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Human Existence subject to, and exempt from, ordinary conditions
+      (Sickness, Poverty, Ignorance, Death).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SCIENCE is ever striving to carry the most gifted beyond ordinary
+      conditions,&mdash;the result being as many victims as efforts, and the
+      striver being finally left a solitary,&mdash;for his object is unsuitable
+      to the natures he has to deal with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pursuit of the Ideal involves so much emotion as to render the
+      Idealist vulnerable by human passion, however long and well guarded, still
+      vulnerable,&mdash;liable, at last, to a union with Instinct. Passion
+      obscures both Insight and Forecast. All effort to elevate Instinct to
+      Idealism is abortive, the laws of their being not coinciding (in the early
+      stage of the existence of the one). Instinct is either alarmed, and takes
+      refuge in Superstition or Custom, or is left helpless to human charity, or
+      given over to providential care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Idealism, stripped of in sight and forecast, loses its serenity, becomes
+      subject once more to the horror from which it had escaped, and by
+      accepting its aids, forfeits the higher help of Faith; aspiration,
+      however, remaining still possible, and, thereby, slow restoration; and
+      also, SOMETHING BETTER.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Summoned by aspiration, Faith extorts from Fear itself the saving truth to
+      which Science continues blind, and which Idealism itself hails as its
+      crowning acquisition,&mdash;the inestimable PROOF wrought out by all
+      labours and all conflicts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pending the elaboration of this proof,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CONVENTIONALISM plods on, safe and complacent;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SELFISH PASSION perishes, grovelling and hopeless;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      INSTINCT sleeps, in order to a loftier waking; and
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IDEALISM learns, as its ultimate lesson, that self-sacrifice is true
+      redemption; that the region beyond the grave is the fitting one for
+      exemption from mortal conditions; and that Death is the everlasting
+      portal, indicated by the finger of God,&mdash;the broad avenue through
+      which man does not issue solitary and stealthy into the region of Free
+      Existence, but enters triumphant, hailed by a hierarchy of immortal
+      natures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The result is (in other words), THAT THE UNIVERSAL HUMAN LOT IS, AFTER
+      ALL, THAT OF THE HIGHEST PRIVILEGE.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Zanoni, by Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Zanoni
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+Release Date: February 18, 2006 [EBook #2664]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZANONI ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dave Ceponis, Sue Asscher and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+ZANONI
+
+BY
+
+EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
+
+
+(PLATE: "Thou art good and fair," said Viola. Drawn by P. Kauffmann,
+etched by Deblois.)
+
+
+DEDICATORY EPISTLE First prefixed to the Edition of 1845
+
+
+TO
+
+JOHN GIBSON, R.A., SCULPTOR.
+
+In looking round the wide and luminous circle of our great living
+Englishmen, to select one to whom I might fitly dedicate this work,--one
+who, in his life as in his genius, might illustrate the principle I have
+sought to convey; elevated by the ideal which he exalts, and
+serenely dwelling in a glorious existence with the images born of his
+imagination,--in looking round for some such man, my thoughts rested
+upon you. Afar from our turbulent cabals; from the ignoble jealousy and
+the sordid strife which degrade and acerbate the ambition of Genius,--in
+your Roman Home, you have lived amidst all that is loveliest and least
+perishable in the past, and contributed with the noblest aims, and in
+the purest spirit, to the mighty heirlooms of the future. Your youth has
+been devoted to toil, that your manhood may be consecrated to fame: a
+fame unsullied by one desire of gold. You have escaped the two worst
+perils that beset the artist in our time and land,--the debasing
+tendencies of commerce, and the angry rivalries of competition. You have
+not wrought your marble for the market,--you have not been tempted, by
+the praises which our vicious criticism has showered upon exaggeration
+and distortion, to lower your taste to the level of the hour; you
+have lived, and you have laboured, as if you had no rivals but in the
+dead,--no purchasers, save in judges of what is best. In the divine
+priesthood of the beautiful, you have sought only to increase her
+worshippers and enrich her temples. The pupil of Canova, you have
+inherited his excellences, while you have shunned his errors,--yours his
+delicacy, not his affectation. Your heart resembles him even more
+than your genius: you have the same noble enthusiasm for your sublime
+profession; the same lofty freedom from envy, and the spirit that
+depreciates; the same generous desire not to war with but to serve
+artists in your art; aiding, strengthening, advising, elevating the
+timidity of inexperience, and the vague aspirations of youth. By
+the intuition of a kindred mind, you have equalled the learning
+of Winckelman, and the plastic poetry of Goethe, in the intimate
+comprehension of the antique. Each work of yours, rightly studied, is in
+itself a CRITICISM, illustrating the sublime secrets of the Grecian
+Art, which, without the servility of plagiarism, you have contributed to
+revive amongst us; in you we behold its three great and long-undetected
+principles,--simplicity, calm, and concentration.
+
+But your admiration of the Greeks has not led you to the bigotry of
+the mere antiquarian, nor made you less sensible of the unappreciated
+excellence of the mighty modern, worthy to be your countryman,--though
+till his statue is in the streets of our capital, we show ourselves not
+worthy of the glory he has shed upon our land. You have not suffered
+even your gratitude to Canova to blind you to the superiority of
+Flaxman. When we become sensible of our title-deeds to renown in that
+single name, we may look for an English public capable of real patronage
+to English Art,--and not till then.
+
+I, artist in words, dedicate, then, to you, artist whose ideas speak in
+marble, this well-loved work of my matured manhood. I love it not the
+less because it has been little understood and superficially judged
+by the common herd: it was not meant for them. I love it not the more
+because it has found enthusiastic favorers amongst the Few. My affection
+for my work is rooted in the solemn and pure delight which it gave me
+to conceive and to perform. If I had graven it on the rocks of a desert,
+this apparition of my own innermost mind, in its least-clouded moments,
+would have been to me as dear; and this ought, I believe, to be the
+sentiment with which he whose Art is born of faith in the truth and
+beauty of the principles he seeks to illustrate, should regard his work.
+Your serener existence, uniform and holy, my lot denies,--if my heart
+covets. But our true nature is in our thoughts, not our deeds: and
+therefore, in books--which ARE his thoughts--the author's character lies
+bare to the discerning eye. It is not in the life of cities,--in the
+turmoil and the crowd; it is in the still, the lonely, and more sacred
+life, which for some hours, under every sun, the student lives (his
+stolen retreat from the Agora to the Cave), that I feel there is between
+us the bond of that secret sympathy, that magnetic chain, which unites
+the everlasting brotherhood of whose being Zanoni is the type.
+
+E.B.L. London, May, 1845.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+One of the peculiarities of Bulwer was his passion for occult studies.
+They had a charm for him early in life, and he pursued them with the
+earnestness which characterised his pursuit of other studies. He
+became absorbed in wizard lore; he equipped himself with magical
+implements,--with rods for transmitting influence, and crystal balls
+in which to discern coming scenes and persons; and communed with
+spiritualists and mediums. The fruit of these mystic studies is seen in
+"Zanoni" and "A strange Story," romances which were a labour of love to
+the author, and into which he threw all the power he possessed,--power
+re-enforced by multifarious reading and an instinctive appreciation
+of Oriental thought. These weird stories, in which the author has
+formulated his theory of magic, are of a wholly different type from his
+previous fictions, and, in place of the heroes and villains of every
+day life, we have beings that belong in part to another sphere, and that
+deal with mysterious and occult agencies. Once more the old forgotten
+lore of the Cabala is unfolded; the furnace of the alchemist, whose
+fires have been extinct for centuries, is lighted anew, and the lamp
+of the Rosicrucian re-illumined. No other works of the author,
+contradictory as have been the opinions of them, have provoked such
+a diversity of criticism as these. To some persons they represent
+a temporary aberration of genius rather than any serious thought or
+definite purpose; while others regard them as surpassing in bold and
+original speculation, profound analysis of character, and thrilling
+interest, all of the author's other works. The truth, we believe,
+lies midway between these extremes. It is questionable whether the
+introduction into a novel of such subjects as are discussed in these
+romances be not an offence against good sense and good taste; but it
+is as unreasonable to deny the vigour and originality of their author's
+conceptions, as to deny that the execution is imperfect, and, at times,
+bungling and absurd.
+
+It has been justly said that the present half century has witnessed
+the rise and triumphs of science, the extent and marvels of which even
+Bacon's fancy never conceived, simultaneously with superstitions grosser
+than any which Bacon's age believed. "The one is, in fact, the
+natural reaction from the other. The more science seeks to exclude
+the miraculous, and reduce all nature, animate and inanimate, to an
+invariable law of sequences, the more does the natural instinct of man
+rebel, and seek an outlet for those obstinate questionings, those 'blank
+misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realised,' taking
+refuge in delusions as degrading as any of the so-called Dark Ages." It
+was the revolt from the chilling materialism of the age which inspired
+the mystic creations of "Zanoni" and "A Strange Story." Of these works,
+which support and supplement each other, one is the contemplation of our
+actual life through a spiritual medium, the other is designed to show
+that, without some gleams of the supernatural, man is not man, nor
+nature nature.
+
+In "Zanoni" the author introduces us to two human beings who have
+achieved immortality: one, Mejnour, void of all passion or feeling,
+calm, benignant, bloodless, an intellect rather than a man; the other,
+Zanoni, the pupil of Mejnour, the representative of an ideal life in
+its utmost perfection, possessing eternal youth, absolute power, and
+absolute knowledge, and withal the fullest capacity to enjoy and to
+love, and, as a necessity of that love, to sorrow and despair. By his
+love for Viola Zanoni is compelled to descend from his exalted state,
+to lose his eternal calm, and to share in the cares and anxieties of
+humanity; and this degradation is completed by the birth of a child.
+Finally, he gives up the life which hangs on that of another, in order
+to save that other, the loving and beloved wife, who has delivered
+him from his solitude and isolation. Wife and child are mortal, and to
+outlive them and his love for them is impossible. But Mejnour, who is
+the impersonation of thought,--pure intellect without affection,--lives
+on.
+
+Bulwer has himself justly characterised this work, in the Introduction,
+as a romance and not a romance, as a truth for those who can comprehend
+it, and an extravagance for those who cannot. The most careless or
+matter-of-fact reader must see that the work, like the enigmatical
+"Faust," deals in types and symbols; that the writer intends to suggest
+to the mind something more subtle and impalpable than that which is
+embodied to the senses. What that something is, hardly two persons will
+agree. The most obvious interpretation of the types is, that in Zanoni
+the author depicts to us humanity, perfected, sublimed, which lives
+not for self, but for others; in Mejnour, as we have before said, cold,
+passionless, self-sufficing intellect; in Glyndon, the young Englishman,
+the mingled strength and weakness of human nature; in the heartless,
+selfish artist, Nicot, icy, soulless atheism, believing nothing, hoping
+nothing, trusting and loving nothing; and in the beautiful, artless
+Viola, an exquisite creation, pure womanhood, loving, trusting and
+truthful. As a work of art the romance is one of great power. It is
+original in its conception, and pervaded by one central idea; but
+it would have been improved, we think, by a more sparing use of the
+supernatural. The inevitable effect of so much hackneyed diablerie--of
+such an accumulation of wonder upon wonder--is to deaden the impression
+they would naturally make upon us. In Hawthorne's tales we see with what
+ease a great imaginative artist can produce a deeper thrill by a far
+slighter use of the weird and the mysterious.
+
+The chief interest of the story for the ordinary reader centres, not in
+its ghostly characters and improbable machinery, the scenes in Mejnour's
+chamber in the ruined castle among the Apennines, the colossal and
+appalling apparitions on Vesuvius, the hideous phantom with its burning
+eye that haunted Glyndon, but in the loves of Viola and the mysterious
+Zanoni, the blissful and the fearful scenes through which they pass,
+and their final destiny, when the hero of the story sacrifices his
+own "charmed life" to save hers, and the Immortal finds the only true
+immortality in death. Among the striking passages in the work are the
+pathetic sketch of the old violinist and composer, Pisani, with his
+sympathetic "barbiton" which moaned, groaned, growled, and laughed
+responsive to the feelings of its master; the description of Viola's and
+her father's triumph, when "The Siren," his masterpiece, is performed at
+the San Carlo in Naples; Glyndon's adventure at the Carnival in Naples;
+the death of his sister; the vivid pictures of the Reign of Terror in
+Paris, closing with the downfall of Robespierre and his satellites; and
+perhaps, above all, the thrilling scene where Zanoni leaves Viola asleep
+in prison when his guards call him to execution, and she, unconscious of
+the terrible sacrifice, but awaking and missing him, has a vision of the
+procession to the guillotine, with Zanoni there, radiant in youth
+and beauty, followed by the sudden vanishing of the headsman,--the
+horror,--and the "Welcome" of her loved one to Heaven in a myriad of
+melodies from the choral hosts above.
+
+"Zanoni" was originally published by Saunders and Otley, London, in
+three volumes 12mo., in 1842. A translation into French, made by M.
+Sheldon under the direction of P. Lorain, was published in Paris in the
+"Bibliotheque des Meilleurs Romans Etrangers."
+
+W.M.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1853.
+
+As a work of imagination, "Zanoni" ranks, perhaps, amongst the highest
+of my prose fictions. In the Poem of "King Arthur," published many years
+afterwards, I have taken up an analogous design, in the contemplation
+of our positive life through a spiritual medium; and I have enforced,
+through a far wider development, and, I believe, with more complete and
+enduring success, that harmony between the external events which are
+all that the superficial behold on the surface of human affairs, and the
+subtle and intellectual agencies which in reality influence the conduct
+of individuals, and shape out the destinies of the world. As man has two
+lives,--that of action and that of thought,--so I conceive that work
+to be the truest representation of humanity which faithfully delineates
+both, and opens some elevating glimpse into the sublimest mysteries of
+our being, by establishing the inevitable union that exists between
+the plain things of the day, in which our earthly bodies perform their
+allotted part, and the latent, often uncultivated, often invisible,
+affinities of the soul with all the powers that eternally breathe and
+move throughout the Universe of Spirit.
+
+I refer those who do me the honour to read "Zanoni" with more attention
+than is given to ordinary romance, to the Poem of "King Arthur," for
+suggestive conjecture into most of the regions of speculative research,
+affecting the higher and more important condition of our ultimate being,
+which have engaged the students of immaterial philosophy in my own age.
+
+Affixed to the "Note" with which this work concludes, and which treats
+of the distinctions between type and allegory, the reader will find,
+from the pen of one of our most eminent living writers, an ingenious
+attempt to explain the interior or typical meanings of the work now
+before him.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+It is possible that among my readers there may be a few not unacquainted
+with an old-book shop, existing some years since in the neighbourhood
+of Covent Garden; I say a few, for certainly there was little enough to
+attract the many in those precious volumes which the labour of a life
+had accumulated on the dusty shelves of my old friend D--. There were to
+be found no popular treatises, no entertaining romances, no histories,
+no travels, no "Library for the People," no "Amusement for the Million."
+But there, perhaps, throughout all Europe, the curious might discover
+the most notable collection, ever amassed by an enthusiast, of the works
+of alchemist, cabalist, and astrologer. The owner had lavished a fortune
+in the purchase of unsalable treasures. But old D-- did not desire to
+sell. It absolutely went to his heart when a customer entered his shop:
+he watched the movements of the presumptuous intruder with a vindictive
+glare; he fluttered around him with uneasy vigilance,--he frowned, he
+groaned, when profane hands dislodged his idols from their niches. If
+it were one of the favourite sultanas of his wizard harem that attracted
+you, and the price named were not sufficiently enormous, he would not
+unfrequently double the sum. Demur, and in brisk delight he snatched the
+venerable charmer from your hands; accede, and he became the picture of
+despair,--nor unfrequently, at the dead of night, would he knock at your
+door, and entreat you to sell him back, at your own terms, what you had
+so egregiously bought at his. A believer himself in his Averroes and
+Paracelsus, he was as loth as the philosophers he studied to communicate
+to the profane the learning he had collected.
+
+It so chanced that some years ago, in my younger days, whether of
+authorship or life, I felt a desire to make myself acquainted with
+the true origin and tenets of the singular sect known by the name of
+Rosicrucians. Dissatisfied with the scanty and superficial accounts to
+be found in the works usually referred to on the subject, it struck
+me as possible that Mr. D--'s collection, which was rich, not only in
+black-letter, but in manuscripts, might contain some more accurate and
+authentic records of that famous brotherhood,--written, who knows?
+by one of their own order, and confirming by authority and detail the
+pretensions to wisdom and to virtue which Bringaret had arrogated to the
+successors of the Chaldean and Gymnosophist. Accordingly I repaired to
+what, doubtless, I ought to be ashamed to confess, was once one of
+my favourite haunts. But are there no errors and no fallacies, in the
+chronicles of our own day, as absurd as those of the alchemists of old?
+Our very newspapers may seem to our posterity as full of delusions as
+the books of the alchemists do to us; not but what the press is the air
+we breathe,--and uncommonly foggy the air is too!
+
+On entering the shop, I was struck by the venerable appearance of a
+customer whom I had never seen there before. I was struck yet more
+by the respect with which he was treated by the disdainful collector.
+"Sir," cried the last, emphatically, as I was turning over the leaves of
+the catalogue,--"sir, you are the only man I have met, in five-and-forty
+years that I have spent in these researches, who is worthy to be my
+customer. How--where, in this frivolous age, could you have acquired
+a knowledge so profound? And this august fraternity, whose doctrines,
+hinted at by the earliest philosophers, are still a mystery to the
+latest; tell me if there really exists upon the earth any book,
+any manuscript, in which their discoveries, their tenets, are to be
+learned?"
+
+At the words, "august fraternity," I need scarcely say that my attention
+had been at once aroused, and I listened eagerly for the stranger's
+reply.
+
+"I do not think," said the old gentleman, "that the masters of the
+school have ever consigned, except by obscure hint and mystical parable,
+their real doctrines to the world. And I do not blame them for their
+discretion."
+
+Here he paused, and seemed about to retire, when I said, somewhat
+abruptly, to the collector, "I see nothing, Mr. D--, in this catalogue
+which relates to the Rosicrucians!"
+
+"The Rosicrucians!" repeated the old gentleman, and in his turn he
+surveyed me with deliberate surprise. "Who but a Rosicrucian could
+explain the Rosicrucian mysteries! And can you imagine that any members
+of that sect, the most jealous of all secret societies, would themselves
+lift the veil that hides the Isis of their wisdom from the world?"
+
+"Aha!" thought I, "this, then, is 'the august fraternity' of which
+you spoke. Heaven be praised! I certainly have stumbled on one of the
+brotherhood."
+
+"But," I said aloud, "if not in books, sir, where else am I to obtain
+information? Nowadays one can hazard nothing in print without authority,
+and one may scarcely quote Shakespeare without citing chapter and verse.
+This is the age of facts,--the age of facts, sir."
+
+"Well," said the old gentleman, with a pleasant smile, "if we meet
+again, perhaps, at least, I may direct your researches to the proper
+source of intelligence." And with that he buttoned his greatcoat,
+whistled to his dog, and departed.
+
+It so happened that I did meet again with the old gentleman, exactly
+four days after our brief conversation in Mr. D--'s bookshop. I was
+riding leisurely towards Highgate, when, at the foot of its classic
+hill, I recognised the stranger; he was mounted on a black pony, and
+before him trotted his dog, which was black also.
+
+If you meet the man whom you wish to know, on horseback, at the
+commencement of a long hill, where, unless he has borrowed a friend's
+favourite hack, he cannot, in decent humanity to the brute creation,
+ride away from you, I apprehend that it is your own fault if you have
+not gone far in your object before you have gained the top. In short, so
+well did I succeed, that on reaching Highgate the old gentleman invited
+me to rest at his house, which was a little apart from the village; and
+an excellent house it was,--small, but commodious, with a large garden,
+and commanding from the windows such a prospect as Lucretius would
+recommend to philosophers: the spires and domes of London, on a clear
+day, distinctly visible; here the Retreat of the Hermit, and there the
+Mare Magnum of the world.
+
+The walls of the principal rooms were embellished with pictures of
+extraordinary merit, and in that high school of art which is so little
+understood out of Italy. I was surprised to learn that they were all
+from the hand of the owner. My evident admiration pleased my new friend,
+and led to talk upon his part, which showed him no less elevated in his
+theories of art than an adept in the practice. Without fatiguing
+the reader with irrelevant criticism, it is necessary, perhaps, as
+elucidating much of the design and character of the work which these
+prefatory pages introduce, that I should briefly observe, that he
+insisted as much upon the connection of the arts, as a distinguished
+author has upon that of the sciences; that he held that in all works of
+imagination, whether expressed by words or by colours, the artist of the
+higher schools must make the broadest distinction between the real and
+the true,--in other words, between the imitation of actual life, and the
+exaltation of Nature into the Ideal.
+
+"The one," said he, "is the Dutch School, the other is the Greek."
+
+"Sir," said I, "the Dutch is the most in fashion."
+
+"Yes, in painting, perhaps," answered my host, "but in literature--"
+
+"It was of literature I spoke. Our growing poets are all for simplicity
+and Betty Foy; and our critics hold it the highest praise of a work of
+imagination, to say that its characters are exact to common life, even
+in sculpture--"
+
+"In sculpture! No, no! THERE the high ideal must at least be essential!"
+
+"Pardon me; I fear you have not seen Souter Johnny and Tam O'Shanter."
+
+"Ah!" said the old gentleman, shaking his head, "I live very much out of
+the world, I see. I suppose Shakespeare has ceased to be admired?"
+
+"On the contrary; people make the adoration of Shakespeare the excuse
+for attacking everybody else. But then our critics have discovered that
+Shakespeare is so REAL!"
+
+"Real! The poet who has never once drawn a character to be met with in
+actual life,--who has never once descended to a passion that is false,
+or a personage who is real!"
+
+I was about to reply very severely to this paradox, when I perceived
+that my companion was growing a little out of temper. And he who wishes
+to catch a Rosicrucian, must take care not to disturb the waters. I
+thought it better, therefore, to turn the conversation.
+
+"Revenons a nos moutons," said I; "you promised to enlighten my
+ignorance as to the Rosicrucians."
+
+"Well!" quoth he, rather sternly; "but for what purpose? Perhaps you
+desire only to enter the temple in order to ridicule the rites?"
+
+"What do you take me for! Surely, were I so inclined, the fate of the
+Abbe de Villars is a sufficient warning to all men not to treat idly
+of the realms of the Salamander and the Sylph. Everybody knows how
+mysteriously that ingenious personage was deprived of his life, in
+revenge for the witty mockeries of his 'Comte de Gabalis.'"
+
+"Salamander and Sylph! I see that you fall into the vulgar error, and
+translate literally the allegorical language of the mystics."
+
+With that the old gentleman condescended to enter into a very
+interesting, and, as it seemed to me, a very erudite relation, of the
+tenets of the Rosicrucians, some of whom, he asserted, still existed,
+and still prosecuted, in august secrecy, their profound researches into
+natural science and occult philosophy.
+
+"But this fraternity," said he, "however respectable and
+virtuous,--virtuous I say, for no monastic order is more severe in the
+practice of moral precepts, or more ardent in Christian faith,--this
+fraternity is but a branch of others yet more transcendent in the powers
+they have obtained, and yet more illustrious in their origin. Are you
+acquainted with the Platonists?"
+
+"I have occasionally lost my way in their labyrinth," said I. "Faith,
+they are rather difficult gentlemen to understand."
+
+"Yet their knottiest problems have never yet been published. Their
+sublimest works are in manuscript, and constitute the initiatory
+learning, not only of the Rosicrucians, but of the nobler brotherhoods
+I have referred to. More solemn and sublime still is the knowledge to
+be gleaned from the elder Pythagoreans, and the immortal masterpieces of
+Apollonius."
+
+"Apollonius, the imposter of Tyanea! are his writings extant?"
+
+"Imposter!" cried my host; "Apollonius an imposter!"
+
+"I beg your pardon; I did not know he was a friend of yours; and if
+you vouch for his character, I will believe him to have been a very
+respectable man, who only spoke the truth when he boasted of his power
+to be in two places at the same time."
+
+"Is that so difficult?" said the old gentleman; "if so, you have never
+dreamed!"
+
+Here ended our conversation; but from that time an acquaintance was
+formed between us which lasted till my venerable friend departed
+this life. Peace to his ashes! He was a person of singular habits and
+eccentric opinions; but the chief part of his time was occupied in acts
+of quiet and unostentatious goodness. He was an enthusiast in the duties
+of the Samaritan; and as his virtues were softened by the gentlest
+charity, so his hopes were based upon the devoutest belief. He never
+conversed upon his own origin and history, nor have I ever been able to
+penetrate the darkness in which they were concealed. He seemed to have
+seen much of the world, and to have been an eye-witness of the first
+French Revolution, a subject upon which he was equally eloquent and
+instructive. At the same time he did not regard the crimes of that
+stormy period with the philosophical leniency with which enlightened
+writers (their heads safe upon their shoulders) are, in the present day,
+inclined to treat the massacres of the past: he spoke not as a student
+who had read and reasoned, but as a man who had seen and suffered. The
+old gentleman seemed alone in the world; nor did I know that he had one
+relation, till his executor, a distant cousin, residing abroad, informed
+me of the very handsome legacy which my poor friend had bequeathed
+me. This consisted, first, of a sum about which I think it best to be
+guarded, foreseeing the possibility of a new tax upon real and funded
+property; and, secondly, of certain precious manuscripts, to which the
+following volumes owe their existence.
+
+I imagine I trace this latter bequest to a visit I paid the Sage, if so
+I may be permitted to call him, a few weeks before his death.
+
+Although he read little of our modern literature, my friend, with the
+affable good-nature which belonged to him, graciously permitted me
+to consult him upon various literary undertakings meditated by the
+desultory ambition of a young and inexperienced student. And at that
+time I sought his advice upon a work of imagination, intended to depict
+the effects of enthusiasm upon different modifications of character.
+He listened to my conception, which was sufficiently trite and
+prosaic, with his usual patience; and then, thoughtfully turning to his
+bookshelves, took down an old volume, and read to me, first, in Greek,
+and secondly, in English, some extracts to the following effect:--
+
+"Plato here expresses four kinds of mania, by which I desire to
+understand enthusiasm and the inspiration of the gods: Firstly, the
+musical; secondly, the telestic or mystic; thirdly, the prophetic; and
+fourthly, that which belongs to love."
+
+The author he quoted, after contending that there is something in the
+soul above intellect, and stating that there are in our nature distinct
+energies,--by the one of which we discover and seize, as it were,
+on sciences and theorems with almost intuitive rapidity, by
+another, through which high art is accomplished, like the statues of
+Phidias,--proceeded to state that "enthusiasm, in the true acceptation
+of the word, is, when that part of the soul which is above intellect is
+excited to the gods, and thence derives its inspiration."
+
+The author, then pursuing his comment upon Plato, observes, that "one of
+these manias may suffice (especially that which belongs to love) to lead
+back the soul to its first divinity and happiness; but that there is
+an intimate union with them all; and that the ordinary progress through
+which the soul ascends is, primarily, through the musical; next, through
+the telestic or mystic; thirdly, through the prophetic; and lastly,
+through the enthusiasm of love."
+
+While with a bewildered understanding and a reluctant attention I
+listened to these intricate sublimities, my adviser closed the volume,
+and said with complacency, "There is the motto for your book,--the
+thesis for your theme."
+
+"Davus sum, non Oedipus," said I, shaking my head, discontentedly.
+"All this may be exceedingly fine, but, Heaven forgive me,--I don't
+understand a word of it. The mysteries of your Rosicrucians, and your
+fraternities, are mere child's play to the jargon of the Platonists."
+
+"Yet, not till you rightly understand this passage, can you understand
+the higher theories of the Rosicrucians, or of the still nobler
+fraternities you speak of with so much levity."
+
+"Oh, if that be the case, I give up in despair. Why not, since you are
+so well versed in the matter, take the motto for a book of your own?"
+
+"But if I have already composed a book with that thesis for its theme,
+will you prepare it for the public?"
+
+"With the greatest pleasure," said I,--alas, too rashly!
+
+"I shall hold you to your promise," returned the old gentleman, "and
+when I am no more, you will receive the manuscripts. From what you say
+of the prevailing taste in literature, I cannot flatter you with
+the hope that you will gain much by the undertaking. And I tell you
+beforehand that you will find it not a little laborious."
+
+"Is your work a romance?"
+
+"It is a romance, and it is not a romance. It is a truth for those who
+can comprehend it, and an extravagance for those who cannot."
+
+At last there arrived the manuscripts, with a brief note from my
+deceased friend, reminding me of my imprudent promise.
+
+With mournful interest, and yet with eager impatience, I opened the
+packet and trimmed my lamp. Conceive my dismay when I found the whole
+written in an unintelligible cipher. I present the reader with a
+specimen:
+
+(Several strange characters.)
+
+and so on for nine hundred and forty mortal pages in foolscap. I could
+scarcely believe my eyes: in fact, I began to think the lamp burned
+singularly blue; and sundry misgivings as to the unhallowed nature
+of the characters I had so unwittingly opened upon, coupled with the
+strange hints and mystical language of the old gentleman, crept through
+my disordered imagination. Certainly, to say no worse of it, the whole
+thing looked UNCANNY! I was about, precipitately, to hurry the papers
+into my desk, with a pious determination to have nothing more to do with
+them, when my eye fell upon a book, neatly bound in blue morocco, and
+which, in my eagerness, I had hitherto overlooked. I opened this volume
+with great precaution, not knowing what might jump out, and--guess
+my delight--found that it contained a key or dictionary to the
+hieroglyphics. Not to weary the reader with an account of my labours,
+I am contented with saying that at last I imagined myself capable of
+construing the characters, and set to work in good earnest. Still it was
+no easy task, and two years elapsed before I had made much progress. I
+then, by way of experiment on the public, obtained the insertion of a
+few desultory chapters, in a periodical with which, for a few months, I
+had the honour to be connected. They appeared to excite more curiosity
+than I had presumed to anticipate; and I renewed, with better heart, my
+laborious undertaking. But now a new misfortune befell me: I found, as
+I proceeded, that the author had made two copies of his work, one much
+more elaborate and detailed than the other; I had stumbled upon the
+earlier copy, and had my whole task to remodel, and the chapters I had
+written to retranslate. I may say then, that, exclusive of intervals
+devoted to more pressing occupations, my unlucky promise cost me the
+toil of several years before I could bring it to adequate fulfilment.
+The task was the more difficult, since the style in the original is
+written in a kind of rhythmical prose, as if the author desired that in
+some degree his work should be regarded as one of poetical conception
+and design. To this it was not possible to do justice, and in the
+attempt I have doubtless very often need of the reader's indulgent
+consideration. My natural respect for the old gentleman's vagaries,
+with a muse of equivocal character, must be my only excuse whenever
+the language, without luxuriating into verse, borrows flowers scarcely
+natural to prose. Truth compels me also to confess, that, with all
+my pains, I am by no means sure that I have invariably given the true
+meaning of the cipher; nay, that here and there either a gap in the
+narrative, or the sudden assumption of a new cipher, to which no key was
+afforded, has obliged me to resort to interpolations of my own, no doubt
+easily discernible, but which, I flatter myself, are not inharmonious to
+the general design. This confession leads me to the sentence with
+which I shall conclude: If, reader, in this book there be anything that
+pleases you, it is certainly mine; but whenever you come to something
+you dislike,--lay the blame upon the old gentleman!
+
+London, January, 1842.
+
+N.B.--The notes appended to the text are sometimes by the author,
+sometimes by the editor. I have occasionally (but not always) marked
+the distinction; where, however, this is omitted, the ingenuity of the
+reader will be rarely at fault.
+
+
+
+
+ZANONI.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I. -- THE MUSICIAN.
+
+     Due Fontane
+     Chi di diverso effeto hanno liquore!
+
+     "Ariosto, Orland. Fur." Canto 1.7.
+
+     (Two Founts
+     That hold a draught of different effects.)
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.I.
+
+     Vergina era
+     D' alta belta, ma sua belta non cura:
+     ....
+     Di natura, d' amor, de' cieli amici
+     Le negligenze sue sono artifici.
+
+     "Gerusal. Lib.," canto ii. xiv.-xviii.
+
+     (She was a virgin of a glorious beauty, but regarded not her
+     beauty...Negligence itself is art in those favoured by Nature, by
+     love, and by the heavens.)
+
+At Naples, in the latter half of the last century, a worthy artist named
+Gaetano Pisani lived and flourished. He was a musician of great genius,
+but not of popular reputation; there was in all his compositions
+something capricious and fantastic which did not please the taste of the
+Dilettanti of Naples. He was fond of unfamiliar subjects into which he
+introduced airs and symphonies that excited a kind of terror in those
+who listened. The names of his pieces will probably suggest their
+nature. I find, for instance, among his MSS., these titles: "The Feast
+of the Harpies," "The Witches at Benevento," "The Descent of Orpheus
+into Hades," "The Evil Eye," "The Eumenides," and many others
+that evince a powerful imagination delighting in the fearful and
+supernatural, but often relieved by an airy and delicate fancy with
+passages of exquisite grace and beauty. It is true that in the selection
+of his subjects from ancient fable, Gaetano Pisani was much more
+faithful than his contemporaries to the remote origin and the early
+genius of Italian Opera.
+
+That descendant, however effeminate, of the ancient union between Song
+and Drama, when, after long obscurity and dethronement, it regained a
+punier sceptre, though a gaudier purple, by the banks of the Etrurian
+Arno, or amidst the lagunes of Venice, had chosen all its primary
+inspirations from the unfamiliar and classic sources of heathen legend;
+and Pisani's "Descent of Orpheus" was but a bolder, darker, and more
+scientific repetition of the "Euridice" which Jacopi Peri set to music
+at the august nuptials of Henry of Navarre and Mary of Medicis.* Still,
+as I have said, the style of the Neapolitan musician was not on the
+whole pleasing to ears grown nice and euphuistic in the more dulcet
+melodies of the day; and faults and extravagances easily discernible,
+and often to appearance wilful, served the critics for an excuse for
+their distaste. Fortunately, or the poor musician might have starved,
+he was not only a composer, but also an excellent practical performer,
+especially on the violin, and by that instrument he earned a decent
+subsistence as one of the orchestra at the Great Theatre of San Carlo.
+Here formal and appointed tasks necessarily kept his eccentric fancies
+in tolerable check, though it is recorded that no less than five times
+he had been deposed from his desk for having shocked the conoscenti,
+and thrown the whole band into confusion, by impromptu variations of so
+frantic and startling a nature that one might well have imagined that
+the harpies or witches who inspired his compositions had clawed hold of
+his instrument.
+
+The impossibility, however, to find any one of equal excellence as a
+performer (that is to say, in his more lucid and orderly moments) had
+forced his reinstalment, and he had now, for the most part, reconciled
+himself to the narrow sphere of his appointed adagios or allegros. The
+audience, too, aware of his propensity, were quick to perceive the least
+deviation from the text; and if he wandered for a moment, which
+might also be detected by the eye as well as the ear, in some strange
+contortion of visage, and some ominous flourish of his bow, a gentle and
+admonitory murmur recalled the musician from his Elysium or his Tartarus
+to the sober regions of his desk. Then he would start as if from a
+dream, cast a hurried, frightened, apologetic glance around, and, with
+a crestfallen, humbled air, draw his rebellious instrument back to the
+beaten track of the glib monotony. But at home he would make himself
+amends for this reluctant drudgery. And there, grasping the unhappy
+violin with ferocious fingers, he would pour forth, often till the
+morning rose, strange, wild measures that would startle the early
+fisherman on the shore below with a superstitious awe, and make him
+cross himself as if mermaid or sprite had wailed no earthly music in his
+ear.
+
+     (*Orpheus was the favourite hero of early Italian Opera, or
+     Lyrical Drama. The Orfeo of Angelo Politiano was produced in
+     1475. The Orfeo of Monteverde was performed at Venice in
+     1667.)
+
+This man's appearance was in keeping with the characteristics of his
+art. The features were noble and striking, but worn and haggard,
+with black, careless locks tangled into a maze of curls, and a fixed,
+speculative, dreamy stare in his large and hollow eyes. All his
+movements were peculiar, sudden, and abrupt, as the impulse seized him;
+and in gliding through the streets, or along the beach, he was heard
+laughing and talking to himself. Withal, he was a harmless, guileless,
+gentle creature, and would share his mite with any idle lazzaroni, whom
+he often paused to contemplate as they lay lazily basking in the sun.
+Yet was he thoroughly unsocial. He formed no friends, flattered no
+patrons, resorted to none of the merry-makings so dear to the children
+of music and the South. He and his art seemed alone suited to each
+other,--both quaint, primitive, unworldly, irregular. You could not
+separate the man from his music; it was himself. Without it he was
+nothing, a mere machine! WITH it, he was king over worlds of his own.
+Poor man, he had little enough in this! At a manufacturing town in
+England there is a gravestone on which the epitaph records "one Claudius
+Phillips, whose absolute contempt for riches, and inimitable performance
+on the violin, made him the admiration of all that knew him!" Logical
+conjunction of opposite eulogies! In proportion, O Genius, to thy
+contempt for riches will be thy performance on thy violin!
+
+Gaetano Pisani's talents as a composer had been chiefly exhibited
+in music appropriate to this his favourite instrument, of all
+unquestionably the most various and royal in its resources and power
+over the passions. As Shakespeare among poets is the Cremona among
+instruments. Nevertheless, he had composed other pieces of larger
+ambition and wider accomplishment, and chief of these, his precious, his
+unpurchased, his unpublished, his unpublishable and imperishable opera
+of the "Siren." This great work had been the dream of his boyhood, the
+mistress of his manhood; in advancing age "it stood beside him like
+his youth." Vainly had he struggled to place it before the world. Even
+bland, unjealous Paisiello, Maestro di Capella, shook his gentle head
+when the musician favoured him with a specimen of one of his most
+thrilling scenas. And yet, Paisiello, though that music differs from all
+Durante taught thee to emulate, there may--but patience, Gaetano Pisani!
+bide thy time, and keep thy violin in tune!
+
+Strange as it may appear to the fairer reader, this grotesque personage
+had yet formed those ties which ordinary mortals are apt to consider
+their especial monopoly,--he was married, and had one child. What is
+more strange yet, his wife was a daughter of quiet, sober, unfantastic
+England: she was much younger than himself; she was fair and gentle,
+with a sweet English face; she had married him from choice, and (will
+you believe it?) she yet loved him. How she came to marry him, or how
+this shy, unsocial, wayward creature ever ventured to propose, I can
+only explain by asking you to look round and explain first to ME how
+half the husbands and half the wives you meet ever found a mate! Yet, on
+reflection, this union was not so extraordinary after all. The girl was
+a natural child of parents too noble ever to own and claim her. She was
+brought into Italy to learn the art by which she was to live, for she
+had taste and voice; she was a dependant and harshly treated, and poor
+Pisani was her master, and his voice the only one she had heard from
+her cradle that seemed without one tone that could scorn or chide. And
+so--well, is the rest natural? Natural or not, they married. This young
+wife loved her husband; and young and gentle as she was, she might
+almost be said to be the protector of the two. From how many disgraces
+with the despots of San Carlo and the Conservatorio had her unknown
+officious mediation saved him! In how many ailments--for his frame was
+weak--had she nursed and tended him! Often, in the dark nights, she
+would wait at the theatre with her lantern to light him and her steady
+arm to lean on; otherwise, in his abstract reveries, who knows but the
+musician would have walked after his "Siren" into the sea! And then she
+would so patiently, perhaps (for in true love there is not always the
+finest taste) so DELIGHTEDLY, listen to those storms of eccentric and
+fitful melody, and steal him--whispering praises all the way--from the
+unwholesome night-watch to rest and sleep!
+
+I said his music was a part of the man, and this gentle creature seemed
+a part of the music; it was, in fact, when she sat beside him that
+whatever was tender or fairy-like in his motley fantasia crept into the
+harmony as by stealth. Doubtless her presence acted on the music, and
+shaped and softened it; but, he, who never examined how or what his
+inspiration, knew it not. All that he knew was, that he loved and
+blessed her. He fancied he told her so twenty times a day; but he never
+did, for he was not of many words, even to his wife. His language
+was his music,--as hers, her cares! He was more communicative to his
+barbiton, as the learned Mersennus teaches us to call all the varieties
+of the great viol family. Certainly barbiton sounds better than
+fiddle; and barbiton let it be. He would talk to THAT by the hour
+together,--praise it, scold it, coax it, nay (for such is man, even the
+most guileless), he had been known to swear at it; but for that excess
+he was always penitentially remorseful. And the barbiton had a tongue of
+his own, could take his own part, and when HE also scolded, had much
+the best of it. He was a noble fellow, this Violin!--a Tyrolese, the
+handiwork of the illustrious Steiner. There was something mysterious in
+his great age. How many hands, now dust, had awakened his strings ere
+he became the Robin Goodfellow and Familiar of Gaetano Pisani! His very
+case was venerable,--beautifully painted, it was said, by Caracci. An
+English collector had offered more for the case than Pisani had ever
+made by the violin. But Pisani, who cared not if he had inhabited a
+cabin himself, was proud of a palace for the barbiton. His barbiton, it
+was his elder child! He had another child, and now we must turn to her.
+
+How shall I describe thee, Viola? Certainly the music had something to
+answer for in the advent of that young stranger. For both in her form
+and her character you might have traced a family likeness to that
+singular and spirit-like life of sound which night after night threw
+itself in airy and goblin sport over the starry seas...Beautiful
+she was, but of a very uncommon beauty,--a combination, a harmony of
+opposite attributes. Her hair of a gold richer and purer than that
+which is seen even in the North; but the eyes, of all the dark, tender,
+subduing light of more than Italian--almost of Oriental--splendour. The
+complexion exquisitely fair, but never the same,--vivid in one moment,
+pale the next. And with the complexion, the expression also varied;
+nothing now so sad, and nothing now so joyous.
+
+I grieve to say that what we rightly entitle education was much
+neglected for their daughter by this singular pair. To be sure, neither
+of them had much knowledge to bestow; and knowledge was not then the
+fashion, as it is now. But accident or nature favoured young Viola. She
+learned, as of course, her mother's language with her father's. And she
+contrived soon to read and to write; and her mother, who, by the
+way, was a Roman Catholic, taught her betimes to pray. But then, to
+counteract all these acquisitions, the strange habits of Pisani, and the
+incessant watch and care which he required from his wife, often left the
+child alone with an old nurse, who, to be sure, loved her dearly, but
+who was in no way calculated to instruct her.
+
+Dame Gionetta was every inch Italian and Neapolitan. Her youth had been
+all love, and her age was all superstition. She was garrulous, fond,--a
+gossip. Now she would prattle to the girl of cavaliers and princes at
+her feet, and now she would freeze her blood with tales and legends,
+perhaps as old as Greek or Etrurian fable, of demon and vampire,--of the
+dances round the great walnut-tree at Benevento, and the haunting spell
+of the Evil Eye. All this helped silently to weave charmed webs over
+Viola's imagination that afterthought and later years might labour
+vainly to dispel. And all this especially fitted her to hang, with a
+fearful joy, upon her father's music. Those visionary strains, ever
+struggling to translate into wild and broken sounds the language of
+unearthly beings, breathed around her from her birth. Thus you might
+have said that her whole mind was full of music; associations, memories,
+sensations of pleasure or pain,--all were mixed up inexplicably with
+those sounds that now delighted and now terrified; that greeted her when
+her eyes opened to the sun, and woke her trembling on her lonely couch
+in the darkness of the night. The legends and tales of Gionetta only
+served to make the child better understand the signification of those
+mysterious tones; they furnished her with words to the music. It was
+natural that the daughter of such a parent should soon evince some taste
+in his art. But this developed itself chiefly in the ear and the voice.
+She was yet a child when she sang divinely. A great Cardinal--great
+alike in the State and the Conservatorio--heard of her gifts, and sent
+for her. From that moment her fate was decided: she was to be the future
+glory of Naples, the prima donna of San Carlo.
+
+The Cardinal insisted upon the accomplishment of his own predictions,
+and provided her with the most renowned masters. To inspire her with
+emulation, his Eminence took her one evening to his own box: it would
+be something to see the performance, something more to hear the applause
+lavished upon the glittering signoras she was hereafter to excel! Oh,
+how gloriously that life of the stage, that fairy world of music and
+song, dawned upon her! It was the only world that seemed to correspond
+with her strange childish thoughts. It appeared to her as if, cast
+hitherto on a foreign shore, she was brought at last to see the forms
+and hear the language of her native land. Beautiful and true enthusiasm,
+rich with the promise of genius! Boy or man, thou wilt never be a poet,
+if thou hast not felt the ideal, the romance, the Calypso's isle that
+opened to thee when for the first time the magic curtain was drawn
+aside, and let in the world of poetry on the world of prose!
+
+And now the initiation was begun. She was to read, to study, to depict
+by a gesture, a look, the passions she was to delineate on the boards;
+lessons dangerous, in truth, to some, but not to the pure enthusiasm
+that comes from art; for the mind that rightly conceives art is but
+a mirror which gives back what is cast on its surface faithfully
+only--while unsullied. She seized on nature and truth intuitively. Her
+recitations became full of unconscious power; her voice moved the heart
+to tears, or warmed it into generous rage. But this arose from that
+sympathy which genius ever has, even in its earliest innocence, with
+whatever feels, or aspires, or suffers.
+
+It was no premature woman comprehending the love or the jealousy that
+the words expressed; her art was one of those strange secrets which
+the psychologists may unriddle to us if they please, and tell us why
+children of the simplest minds and the purest hearts are often so acute
+to distinguish, in the tales you tell them, or the songs you sing, the
+difference between the true art and the false, passion and jargon, Homer
+and Racine,--echoing back, from hearts that have not yet felt what they
+repeat, the melodious accents of the natural pathos. Apart from
+her studies, Viola was a simple, affectionate, but somewhat wayward
+child,--wayward, not in temper, for that was sweet and docile; but in
+her moods, which, as I before hinted, changed from sad to gay and gay to
+sad without an apparent cause. If cause there were, it must be traced to
+the early and mysterious influences I have referred to, when seeking to
+explain the effect produced on her imagination by those restless streams
+of sound that constantly played around it; for it is noticeable that to
+those who are much alive to the effects of music, airs and tunes often
+come back, in the commonest pursuits of life, to vex, as it were, and
+haunt them. The music, once admitted to the soul, becomes also a sort
+of spirit, and never dies. It wanders perturbedly through the halls and
+galleries of the memory, and is often heard again, distinct and living
+as when it first displaced the wavelets of the air. Now at times, then,
+these phantoms of sound floated back upon her fancy; if gay, to call
+a smile from every dimple; if mournful, to throw a shade upon her
+brow,--to make her cease from her childishmirth, and sit apart and muse.
+
+Rightly, then, in a typical sense, might this fair creature, so airy in
+her shape, so harmonious in her beauty, so unfamiliar in her ways and
+thoughts,--rightly might she be called a daughter, less of the musician
+than the music, a being for whom you could imagine that some fate was
+reserved, less of actual life than the romance which, to eyes that can
+see, and hearts that can feel, glides ever along WITH the actual life,
+stream by stream, to the Dark Ocean.
+
+And therefore it seemed not strange that Viola herself, even in
+childhood, and yet more as she bloomed into the sweet seriousness of
+virgin youth, should fancy her life ordained for a lot, whether of bliss
+or woe, that should accord with the romance and reverie which made the
+atmosphere she breathed. Frequently she would climb through the thickets
+that clothed the neighbouring grotto of Posilipo,--the mighty work of
+the old Cimmerians,--and, seated by the haunted Tomb of Virgil, indulge
+those visions, the subtle vagueness of which no poetry can render
+palpable and defined; for the Poet that surpasses all who ever sang, is
+the heart of dreaming youth! Frequently there, too, beside the threshold
+over which the vine-leaves clung, and facing that dark-blue, waveless
+sea, she would sit in the autumn noon or summer twilight, and build her
+castles in the air. Who doth not do the same,--not in youth alone, but
+with the dimmed hopes of age! It is man's prerogative to dream, the
+common royalty of peasant and of king. But those day-dreams of hers were
+more habitual, distinct, and solemn than the greater part of us indulge.
+They seemed like the Orama of the Greeks,--prophets while phantasma.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.II.
+
+     Fu stupor, fu vaghezza, fu diletto!
+     "Gerusal. Lib.," cant. ii. xxi.
+
+     ("Desire it was, 't was wonder, 't was delight."
+     Wiffen's Translation.)
+
+Now at last the education is accomplished! Viola is nearly sixteen.
+The Cardinal declares that the time is come when the new name must be
+inscribed in the Libro d'Oro,--the Golden Book set apart to the children
+of Art and Song. Yes, but in what character?--to whose genius is she
+to give embodiment and form? Ah, there is the secret! Rumours go abroad
+that the inexhaustible Paisiello, charmed with her performance of his
+"Nel cor piu non me sento," and his "Io son Lindoro," will produce some
+new masterpiece to introduce the debutante. Others insist upon it that
+her forte is the comic, and that Cimarosa is hard at work at another
+"Matrimonia Segreto." But in the meanwhile there is a check in the
+diplomacy somewhere. The Cardinal is observed to be out of humour. He
+has said publicly,--and the words are portentous,--"The silly girl is
+as mad as her father; what she asks is preposterous!" Conference follows
+conference; the Cardinal talks to the poor child very solemnly in
+his closet,--all in vain. Naples is distracted with curiosity and
+conjecture. The lecture ends in a quarrel, and Viola comes home sullen
+and pouting: she will not act,--she has renounced the engagement.
+
+Pisani, too inexperienced to be aware of all the dangers of the stage,
+had been pleased at the notion that one, at least, of his name would add
+celebrity to his art. The girl's perverseness displeased him. However,
+he said nothing,--he never scolded in words, but he took up the faithful
+barbiton. Oh, faithful barbiton, how horribly thou didst scold! It
+screeched, it gabbled, it moaned, it growled. And Viola's eyes filled
+with tears, for she understood that language. She stole to her mother,
+and whispered in her ear; and when Pisani turned from his employment,
+lo! both mother and daughter were weeping. He looked at them with a
+wondering stare; and then, as if he felt he had been harsh, he flew
+again to his Familiar. And now you thought you heard the lullaby which a
+fairy might sing to some fretful changeling it had adopted and sought to
+soothe. Liquid, low, silvery, streamed the tones beneath the enchanted
+bow. The most stubborn grief would have paused to hear; and withal,
+at times, out came a wild, merry, ringing note, like a laugh, but not
+mortal laughter. It was one of his most successful airs from his beloved
+opera,--the Siren in the act of charming the waves and the winds to
+sleep. Heaven knows what next would have come, but his arm was arrested.
+Viola had thrown herself on his breast, and kissed him, with happy
+eyes that smiled through her sunny hair. At that very moment the door
+opened,--a message from the Cardinal. Viola must go to his Eminence at
+once. Her mother went with her. All was reconciled and settled; Viola
+had her way, and selected her own opera. O ye dull nations of the North,
+with your broils and debates,--your bustling lives of the Pnyx and
+the Agora!--you cannot guess what a stir throughout musical Naples was
+occasioned by the rumour of a new opera and a new singer. But whose
+the opera? No cabinet intrigue ever was so secret. Pisani came back one
+night from the theatre, evidently disturbed and irate. Woe to thine ears
+hadst thou heard the barbiton that night! They had suspended him from
+his office,--they feared that the new opera, and the first debut of
+his daughter as prima donna, would be too much for his nerves. And his
+variations, his diablerie of sirens and harpies, on such a night, made
+a hazard not to be contemplated without awe. To be set aside, and on the
+very night that his child, whose melody was but an emanation of his own,
+was to perform,--set aside for some new rival: it was too much for a
+musician's flesh and blood. For the first time he spoke in words upon
+the subject, and gravely asked--for that question the barbiton, eloquent
+as it was, could not express distinctly--what was to be the opera, and
+what the part? And Viola as gravely answered that she was pledged to the
+Cardinal not to reveal. Pisani said nothing, but disappeared with
+the violin; and presently they heard the Familiar from the house-top
+(whither, when thoroughly out of humour, the musician sometimes fled),
+whining and sighing as if its heart were broken.
+
+The affections of Pisani were little visible on the surface. He was not
+one of those fond, caressing fathers whose children are ever playing
+round their knees; his mind and soul were so thoroughly in his art that
+domestic life glided by him, seemingly as if THAT were a dream, and
+the heart the substantial form and body of existence. Persons
+much cultivating an abstract study are often thus; mathematicians
+proverbially so. When his servant ran to the celebrated French
+philosopher, shrieking, "The house is on fire, sir!" "Go and tell my
+wife then, fool!" said the wise man, settling back to his problems;
+"do _I_ ever meddle with domestic affairs?" But what are mathematics to
+music--music, that not only composes operas, but plays on the barbiton?
+Do you know what the illustrious Giardini said when the tyro asked how
+long it would take to learn to play on the violin? Hear, and despair, ye
+who would bend the bow to which that of Ulysses was a plaything, "Twelve
+hours a day for twenty years together!" Can a man, then, who plays the
+barbiton be always playing also with his little ones? No, Pisani; often,
+with the keen susceptibility of childhood, poor Viola had stolen from
+the room to weep at the thought that thou didst not love her. And yet,
+underneath this outward abstraction of the artist, the natural fondness
+flowed all the same; and as she grew up, the dreamer had understood the
+dreamer. And now, shut out from all fame himself; to be forbidden to
+hail even his daughter's fame!--and that daughter herself to be in
+the conspiracy against him! Sharper than the serpent's tooth was the
+ingratitude, and sharper than the serpent's tooth was the wail of the
+pitying barbiton!
+
+The eventful hour is come. Viola is gone to the theatre,--her mother
+with her. The indignant musician remains at home. Gionetta bursts into
+the room: my Lord Cardinal's carriage is at the door,--the Padrone is
+sent for. He must lay aside his violin; he must put on his brocade coat
+and his lace ruffles. Here they are,--quick, quick! And quick rolls the
+gilded coach, and majestic sits the driver, and statelily prance the
+steeds. Poor Pisani is lost in a mist of uncomfortable amaze. He arrives
+at the theatre; he descends at the great door; he turns round and
+round, and looks about him and about: he misses something,--where is the
+violin? Alas! his soul, his voice, his self of self, is left behind! It
+is but an automaton that the lackeys conduct up the stairs, through the
+tier, into the Cardinal's box. But then, what bursts upon him! Does he
+dream? The first act is over (they did not send for him till success
+seemed no longer doubtful); the first act has decided all. He feels THAT
+by the electric sympathy which ever the one heart has at once with
+a vast audience. He feels it by the breathless stillness of that
+multitude; he feels it even by the lifted finger of the Cardinal. He
+sees his Viola on the stage, radiant in her robes and gems,--he hears
+her voice thrilling through the single heart of the thousands! But the
+scene, the part, the music! It is his other child,--his immortal child;
+the spirit-infant of his soul; his darling of many years of patient
+obscurity and pining genius; his masterpiece; his opera of the Siren!
+
+This, then, was the mystery that had so galled him,--this the cause of
+the quarrel with the Cardinal; this the secret not to be proclaimed till
+the success was won, and the daughter had united her father's triumph
+with her own! And there she stands, as all souls bow before her,--fairer
+than the very Siren he had called from the deeps of melody. Oh, long and
+sweet recompense of toil! Where is on earth the rapture like that which
+is known to genius when at last it bursts from its hidden cavern into
+light and fame!
+
+He did not speak, he did not move; he stood transfixed, breathless, the
+tears rolling down his cheeks; only from time to time his hands still
+wandered about,--mechanically they sought for the faithful instrument,
+why was it not there to share his triumph?
+
+At last the curtain fell; but on such a storm and diapason of applause!
+Up rose the audience as one man, as with one voice that dear name was
+shouted. She came on, trembling, pale, and in the whole crowd saw but
+her father's face. The audience followed those moistened eyes; they
+recognised with a thrill the daughter's impulse and her meaning. The
+good old Cardinal drew him gently forward. Wild musician, thy daughter
+has given thee back more than the life thou gavest!
+
+"My poor violin!" said he, wiping his eyes, "they will never hiss thee
+again now!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.III.
+
+     Fra si contrarie tempre in ghiaccio e in foco,
+     In riso e in pianto, e fra paura e speme
+     L'ingannatrice Donna--
+     "Gerusal. Lib.," cant. iv. xciv.
+
+     (Between such contrarious mixtures of ice and fire, laughter and
+     tears,--fear and hope, the deceiving dame.)
+
+Now notwithstanding the triumph both of the singer and the opera, there
+had been one moment in the first act, and, consequently, BEFORE the
+arrival of Pisani, when the scale seemed more than doubtful. It was in a
+chorus replete with all the peculiarities of the composer. And when the
+Maelstrom of Capricci whirled and foamed, and tore ear and sense through
+every variety of sound, the audience simultaneously recognised the
+hand of Pisani. A title had been given to the opera which had hitherto
+prevented all suspicion of its parentage; and the overture and opening,
+in which the music had been regular and sweet, had led the audience
+to fancy they detected the genius of their favourite Paisiello. Long
+accustomed to ridicule and almost to despise the pretensions of Pisani
+as a composer, they now felt as if they had been unduly cheated into
+the applause with which they had hailed the overture and the commencing
+scenas. An ominous buzz circulated round the house: the singers,
+the orchestra,--electrically sensitive to the impression of the
+audience,--grew, themselves, agitated and dismayed, and failed in the
+energy and precision which could alone carry off the grotesqueness of
+the music.
+
+There are always in every theatre many rivals to a new author and a new
+performer,--a party impotent while all goes well, but a dangerous ambush
+the instant some accident throws into confusion the march of success. A
+hiss arose; it was partial, it is true, but the significant silence of
+all applause seemed to forebode the coming moment when the displeasure
+would grow contagious. It was the breath that stirred the impending
+avalanche. At that critical moment Viola, the Siren queen, emerged for
+the first time from her ocean cave. As she came forward to the
+lamps, the novelty of her situation, the chilling apathy of the
+audience,--which even the sight of so singular a beauty did not at the
+first arouse,--the whispers of the malignant singers on the stage, the
+glare of the lights, and more--far more than the rest--that recent hiss,
+which had reached her in her concealment, all froze up her faculties and
+suspended her voice. And, instead of the grand invocation into which
+she ought rapidly to have burst, the regal Siren, retransformed into
+the trembling girl, stood pale and mute before the stern, cold array of
+those countless eyes.
+
+At that instant, and when consciousness itself seemed about to fail her,
+as she turned a timid beseeching glance around the still multitude, she
+perceived, in a box near the stage, a countenance which at once, and
+like magic, produced on her mind an effect never to be analysed
+nor forgotten. It was one that awakened an indistinct, haunting
+reminiscence, as if she had seen it in those day-dreams she had been so
+wont from infancy to indulge. She could not withdraw her gaze from that
+face, and as she gazed, the awe and coldness that had before seized her,
+vanished like a mist from before the sun.
+
+In the dark splendour of the eyes that met her own there was indeed
+so much of gentle encouragement, of benign and compassionate
+admiration,--so much that warmed, and animated, and nerved,--that any
+one, actor or orator, who has ever observed the effect that a single
+earnest and kindly look in the crowd that is to be addressed and won,
+will produce upon his mind, may readily account for the sudden and
+inspiriting influence which the eye and smile of the stranger exercised
+on the debutante.
+
+And while yet she gazed, and the glow returned to her heart, the
+stranger half rose, as if to recall the audience to a sense of the
+courtesy due to one so fair and young; and the instant his voice gave
+the signal, the audience followed it by a burst of generous applause.
+For this stranger himself was a marked personage, and his recent arrival
+at Naples had divided with the new opera the gossip of the city. And
+then as the applause ceased, clear, full, and freed from every fetter,
+like a spirit from the clay, the Siren's voice poured forth its
+entrancing music. From that time Viola forgot the crowd, the hazard,
+the whole world,--except the fairy one over with she presided. It seemed
+that the stranger's presence only served still more to heighten that
+delusion, in which the artist sees no creation without the circle of his
+art, she felt as if that serene brow, and those brilliant eyes, inspired
+her with powers never known before: and, as if searching for a language
+to express the strange sensations occasioned by his presence, that
+presence itself whispered to her the melody and the song.
+
+Only when all was over, and she saw her father and felt his joy, did
+this wild spell vanish before the sweeter one of the household and
+filial love. Yet again, as she turned from the stage, she looked back
+involuntarily, and the stranger's calm and half-melancholy smile sank
+into her heart,--to live there, to be recalled with confused memories,
+half of pleasure, and half of pain.
+
+Pass over the congratulations of the good Cardinal-Virtuoso, astonished
+at finding himself and all Naples had been hitherto in the wrong on
+a subject of taste,--still more astonished at finding himself and all
+Naples combining to confess it; pass over the whispered ecstasies of
+admiration which buzzed in the singer's ear, as once more, in her modest
+veil and quiet dress, she escaped from the crowd of gallants that choked
+up every avenue behind the scenes; pass over the sweet embrace of father
+and child, returning through the starlit streets and along the deserted
+Chiaja in the Cardinal's carriage; never pause now to note the tears and
+ejaculations of the good, simple-hearted mother,--see them returned;
+see the well-known room, venimus ad larem nostrum (We come to our own
+house.); see old Gionetta bustling at the supper; and hear Pisani, as he
+rouses the barbiton from its case, communicating all that has happened
+to the intelligent Familiar; hark to the mother's merry, low, English
+laugh. Why, Viola, strange child, sittest thou apart, thy face leaning
+on thy fair hands, thine eyes fixed on space? Up, rouse thee! Every
+dimple on the cheek of home must smile to-night. ("Ridete quidquid est
+domi cachinnorum." Catull. "ad Sirm. Penin.")
+
+And a happy reunion it was round that humble table: a feast Lucullus
+might have envied in his Hall of Apollo, in the dried grapes, and
+the dainty sardines, and the luxurious polenta, and the old lacrima a
+present from the good Cardinal. The barbiton, placed on a chair--a tall,
+high-backed chair--beside the musician, seemed to take a part in the
+festive meal. Its honest varnished face glowed in the light of the lamp;
+and there was an impish, sly demureness in its very silence, as its
+master, between every mouthful, turned to talk to it of something he had
+forgotten to relate before. The good wife looked on affectionately, and
+could not eat for joy; but suddenly she rose, and placed on the
+artist's temples a laurel wreath, which she had woven beforehand in fond
+anticipation; and Viola, on the other side her brother, the barbiton,
+rearranged the chaplet, and, smoothing back her father's hair,
+whispered, "Caro Padre, you will not let HIM scold me again!"
+
+Then poor Pisani, rather distracted between the two, and excited both by
+the lacrima and his triumph, turned to the younger child with so naive
+and grotesque a pride, "I don't know which to thank the most. You give
+me so much joy, child,--I am so proud of thee and myself. But he and I,
+poor fellow, have been so often unhappy together!"
+
+Viola's sleep was broken,--that was natural. The intoxication of vanity
+and triumph, the happiness in the happiness she had caused, all this was
+better than sleep. But still from all this, again and again her thoughts
+flew to those haunting eyes, to that smile with which forever the memory
+of the triumph, of the happiness, was to be united. Her feelings, like
+her own character, were strange and peculiar. They were not those of a
+girl whose heart, for the first time reached through the eye, sighs
+its natural and native language of first love. It was not so much
+admiration, though the face that reflected itself on every wave of her
+restless fancies was of the rarest order of majesty and beauty; nor a
+pleased and enamoured recollection that the sight of this stranger had
+bequeathed: it was a human sentiment of gratitude and delight, mixed
+with something more mysterious, of fear and awe. Certainly she had seen
+before those features; but when and how? Only when her thoughts had
+sought to shape out her future, and when, in spite of all the attempts
+to vision forth a fate of flowers and sunshine, a dark and chill
+foreboding made her recoil back into her deepest self. It was a
+something found that had long been sought for by a thousand restless
+yearnings and vague desires, less of the heart than mind; not as when
+youth discovers the one to be beloved, but rather as when the student,
+long wandering after the clew to some truth in science, sees it glimmer
+dimly before him, to beckon, to recede, to allure, and to wane again.
+She fell at last into unquiet slumber, vexed by deformed, fleeting,
+shapeless phantoms; and, waking, as the sun, through a veil of hazy
+cloud, glinted with a sickly ray across the casement, she heard her
+father settled back betimes to his one pursuit, and calling forth from
+his Familiar a low mournful strain, like a dirge over the dead.
+
+"And why," she asked, when she descended to the room below,--"why, my
+father, was your inspiration so sad, after the joy of last night?"
+
+"I know not, child. I meant to be merry, and compose an air in honour of
+thee; but he is an obstinate fellow, this,--and he would have it so."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.IV.
+
+     E cosi i pigri e timidi desiri
+     Sprona.
+     "Gerusal. Lib.," cant. iv. lxxxviii.
+
+     (And thus the slow and timid passions urged.)
+
+It was the custom of Pisani, except when the duties of his profession
+made special demand on his time, to devote a certain portion of the
+mid-day to sleep,--a habit not so much a luxury as a necessity to a man
+who slept very little during the night. In fact, whether to compose
+or to practice, the hours of noon were precisely those in which Pisani
+could not have been active if he would. His genius resembled those
+fountains full at dawn and evening, overflowing at night, and perfectly
+dry at the meridian. During this time, consecrated by her husband to
+repose, the signora generally stole out to make the purchases necessary
+for the little household, or to enjoy (as what woman does not?) a little
+relaxation in gossip with some of her own sex. And the day following
+this brilliant triumph, how many congratulations would she have to
+receive!
+
+At these times it was Viola's habit to seat herself without the door
+of the house, under an awning which sheltered from the sun without
+obstructing the view; and there now, with the prompt-book on her knee,
+on which her eye roves listlessly from time to time, you may behold
+her, the vine-leaves clustering from their arching trellis over the
+door behind, and the lazy white-sailed boats skimming along the sea that
+stretched before.
+
+As she thus sat, rather in reverie than thought, a man coming from the
+direction of Posilipo, with a slow step and downcast eyes, passed close
+by the house, and Viola, looking up abruptly, started in a kind of
+terror as she recognised the stranger. She uttered an involuntary
+exclamation, and the cavalier turning, saw, and paused.
+
+He stood a moment or two between her and the sunlit ocean, contemplating
+in a silence too serious and gentle for the boldness of gallantry, the
+blushing face and the young slight form before him; at length he spoke.
+
+"Are you happy, my child," he said, in almost a paternal tone, "at the
+career that lies before you? From sixteen to thirty, the music in the
+breath of applause is sweeter than all the music your voice can utter!"
+
+"I know not," replied Viola, falteringly, but encouraged by the liquid
+softness of the accents that addressed her,--"I know not whether I am
+happy now, but I was last night. And I feel, too, Excellency, that I
+have you to thank, though, perhaps, you scarce know why!"
+
+"You deceive yourself," said the cavalier, with a smile. "I am aware
+that I assisted to your merited success, and it is you who scarce know
+how. The WHY I will tell you: because I saw in your heart a nobler
+ambition than that of the woman's vanity; it was the daughter that
+interested me. Perhaps you would rather I should have admired the
+singer?"
+
+"No; oh, no!"
+
+"Well, I believe you. And now, since we have thus met, I will pause to
+counsel you. When next you go to the theatre, you will have at your feet
+all the young gallants of Naples. Poor infant! the flame that dazzles
+the eye can scorch the wing. Remember that the only homage that does not
+sully must be that which these gallants will not give thee. And whatever
+thy dreams of the future,--and I see, while I speak to thee, how
+wandering they are, and wild,--may only those be fulfilled which centre
+round the hearth of home."
+
+He paused, as Viola's breast heaved beneath its robe. And with a burst
+of natural and innocent emotions, scarcely comprehending, though an
+Italian, the grave nature of his advice, she exclaimed,--
+
+"Ah, Excellency, you cannot know how dear to me that home is already.
+And my father,--there would be no home, signor, without him!"
+
+A deep and melancholy shade settled over the face of the cavalier. He
+looked up at the quiet house buried amidst the vine-leaves, and turned
+again to the vivid, animated face of the young actress.
+
+"It is well," said he. "A simple heart may be its own best guide, and
+so, go on, and prosper. Adieu, fair singer."
+
+"Adieu, Excellency; but," and something she could not resist--an
+anxious, sickening feeling of fear and hope,--impelled her to the
+question, "I shall see you again, shall I not, at San Carlo?"
+
+"Not, at least, for some time. I leave Naples to-day."
+
+"Indeed!" and Viola's heart sank within her; the poetry of the stage was
+gone.
+
+"And," said the cavalier, turning back, and gently laying his hand on
+hers,--"and, perhaps, before we meet, you may have suffered: known the
+first sharp griefs of human life,--known how little what fame can gain,
+repays what the heart can lose; but be brave and yield not,--not even to
+what may seem the piety of sorrow. Observe yon tree in your neighbour's
+garden. Look how it grows up, crooked and distorted. Some wind scattered
+the germ from which it sprang, in the clefts of the rock; choked up and
+walled round by crags and buildings, by Nature and man, its life has
+been one struggle for the light,--light which makes to that life the
+necessity and the principle: you see how it has writhed and twisted;
+how, meeting the barrier in one spot, it has laboured and worked, stem
+and branches, towards the clear skies at last. What has preserved it
+through each disfavour of birth and circumstances,--why are its leaves
+as green and fair as those of the vine behind you, which, with all
+its arms, can embrace the open sunshine? My child, because of the very
+instinct that impelled the struggle,--because the labour for the light
+won to the light at length. So with a gallant heart, through every
+adverse accident of sorrow and of fate to turn to the sun, to strive for
+the heaven; this it is that gives knowledge to the strong and happiness
+to the weak. Ere we meet again, you will turn sad and heavy eyes to
+those quiet boughs, and when you hear the birds sing from them, and see
+the sunshine come aslant from crag and housetop to be the playfellow
+of their leaves, learn the lesson that Nature teaches you, and strive
+through darkness to the light!"
+
+As he spoke he moved on slowly, and left Viola wondering, silent,
+saddened with his dim prophecy of coming evil, and yet, through sadness,
+charmed. Involuntarily her eyes followed him,--involuntarily she
+stretched forth her arms, as if by a gesture to call him back; she would
+have given worlds to have seen him turn,--to have heard once more his
+low, calm, silvery voice; to have felt again the light touch of his hand
+on hers. As moonlight that softens into beauty every angle on which it
+falls, seemed his presence,--as moonlight vanishes, and things assume
+their common aspect of the rugged and the mean, he receded from her
+eyes, and the outward scene was commonplace once more.
+
+The stranger passed on, through that long and lovely road which reaches
+at last the palaces that face the public gardens, and conducts to the
+more populous quarters of the city.
+
+A group of young, dissipated courtiers, loitering by the gateway of a
+house which was open for the favourite pastime of the day,--the resort
+of the wealthier and more high-born gamesters,--made way for him, as
+with a courteous inclination he passed them by.
+
+"Per fede," said one, "is not that the rich Zanoni, of whom the town
+talks?"
+
+"Ay; they say his wealth is incalculable!"
+
+"THEY say,--who are THEY?--what is the authority? He has not been many
+days at Naples, and I cannot yet find any one who knows aught of his
+birthplace, his parentage, or, what is more important, his estates!"
+
+"That is true; but he arrived in a goodly vessel, which THEY SAY is his
+own. See,--no, you cannot see it here; but it rides yonder in the bay.
+The bankers he deals with speak with awe of the sums placed in their
+hands."
+
+"Whence came he?"
+
+"From some seaport in the East. My valet learned from some of the
+sailors on the Mole that he had resided many years in the interior of
+India."
+
+"Ah, I am told that in India men pick up gold like pebbles, and that
+there are valleys where the birds build their nests with emeralds to
+attract the moths. Here comes our prince of gamesters, Cetoxa; be sure
+that he already must have made acquaintance with so wealthy a cavalier;
+he has that attraction to gold which the magnet has to steel. Well,
+Cetoxa, what fresh news of the ducats of Signor Zanoni?"
+
+"Oh," said Cetoxa, carelessly, "my friend--"
+
+"Ha! ha! hear him; his friend--"
+
+"Yes; my friend Zanoni is going to Rome for a short time; when he
+returns, he has promised me to fix a day to sup with me, and I will then
+introduce him to you, and to the best society of Naples! Diavolo! but he
+is a most agreeable and witty gentleman!"
+
+"Pray tell us how you came so suddenly to be his friend."
+
+"My dear Belgioso, nothing more natural. He desired a box at San Carlo;
+but I need not tell you that the expectation of a new opera (ah, how
+superb it is,--that poor devil, Pisani; who would have thought it?) and
+a new singer (what a face,--what a voice!--ah!) had engaged every corner
+of the house. I heard of Zanoni's desire to honour the talent of Naples,
+and, with my usual courtesy to distinguished strangers, I sent to place
+my box at his disposal. He accepts it,--I wait on him between the acts;
+he is most charming; he invites me to supper. Cospetto, what a retinue!
+We sit late,--I tell him all the news of Naples; we grow bosom friends;
+he presses on me this diamond before we part,--is a trifle, he tells me:
+the jewellers value it at 5000 pistoles!--the merriest evening I have
+passed these ten years."
+
+The cavaliers crowded round to admire the diamond.
+
+"Signor Count Cetoxa," said one grave-looking sombre man, who had
+crossed himself two or three times during the Neapolitan's narrative,
+"are you not aware of the strange reports about this person; and are you
+not afraid to receive from him a gift which may carry with it the most
+fatal consequences? Do you not know that he is said to be a sorcerer; to
+possess the mal-occhio; to--"
+
+"Prithee, spare us your antiquated superstitions," interrupted Cetoxa,
+contemptuously. "They are out of fashion; nothing now goes down but
+scepticism and philosophy. And what, after all, do these rumours, when
+sifted, amount to? They have no origin but this,--a silly old man of
+eighty-six, quite in his dotage, solemnly avers that he saw this same
+Zanoni seventy years ago (he himself, the narrator, then a mere boy) at
+Milan; when this very Zanoni, as you all see, is at least as young as
+you or I, Belgioso."
+
+"But that," said the grave gentleman,--"THAT is the mystery. Old Avelli
+declares that Zanoni does not seem a day older than when they met at
+Milan. He says that even then at Milan--mark this--where, though
+under another name, this Zanoni appeared in the same splendour, he was
+attended also by the same mystery. And that an old man THERE remembered
+to have seen him sixty years before, in Sweden."
+
+"Tush," returned Cetoxa, "the same thing has been said of the quack
+Cagliostro,--mere fables. I will believe them when I see this diamond
+turn to a wisp of hay. For the rest," he added gravely, "I consider this
+illustrious gentleman my friend; and a whisper against his honour and
+repute will in future be equivalent to an affront to myself."
+
+Cetoxa was a redoubted swordsman, and excelled in a peculiarly awkward
+manoeuvre, which he himself had added to the variations of the stoccata.
+The grave gentleman, however anxious for the spiritual weal of the
+count, had an equal regard for his own corporeal safety. He contented
+himself with a look of compassion, and, turning through the gateway,
+ascended the stairs to the gaming-tables.
+
+"Ha, ha!" said Cetoxa, laughing, "our good Loredano is envious of my
+diamond. Gentlemen, you sup with me to-night. I assure you I never met a
+more delightful, sociable, entertaining person, than my dear friend the
+Signor Zanoni."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.V.
+
+     Quello Ippogifo, grande e strano augello
+     Lo porta via.
+     "Orlando Furioso," c. vi. xviii.
+
+     (That hippogriff, great and marvellous bird, bears him away.)
+
+And now, accompanying this mysterious Zanoni, am I compelled to bid
+a short farewell to Naples. Mount behind me,--mount on my hippogriff,
+reader; settle yourself at your ease. I bought the pillion the other
+day of a poet who loves his comfort; it has been newly stuffed for
+your special accommodation. So, so, we ascend! Look as we ride
+aloft,--look!--never fear, hippogriffs never stumble; and every
+hippogriff in Italy is warranted to carry elderly gentlemen,--look down
+on the gliding landscapes! There, near the ruins of the Oscan's old
+Atella, rises Aversa, once the stronghold of the Norman; there gleam the
+columns of Capua, above the Vulturnian Stream. Hail to ye, cornfields
+and vineyards famous for the old Falernian! Hail to ye, golden
+orange-groves of Mola di Gaeta! Hail to ye, sweet shrubs and wild
+flowers, omnis copia narium, that clothe the mountain-skirts of the
+silent Lautulae! Shall we rest at the Volscian Anxur,--the modern
+Terracina,--where the lofty rock stands like the giant that guards the
+last borders of the southern land of love? Away, away! and hold your
+breath as we flit above the Pontine Marshes. Dreary and desolate, their
+miasma is to the gardens we have passed what the rank commonplace of
+life is to the heart when it has left love behind.
+
+Mournful Campagna, thou openest on us in majestic sadness. Rome,
+seven-hilled Rome! receive us as Memory receives the way-worn; receive
+us in silence, amidst ruins! Where is the traveller we pursue? Turn the
+hippogriff loose to graze: he loves the acanthus that wreathes round
+yon broken columns. Yes, that is the arch of Titus, the conqueror of
+Jerusalem,--that the Colosseum! Through one passed the triumph of the
+deified invader; in one fell the butchered gladiators. Monuments of
+murder, how poor the thoughts, how mean the memories ye awaken, compared
+with those that speak to the heart of man on the heights of Phyle, or
+by thy lone mound, grey Marathon! We stand amidst weeds and brambles
+and long waving herbage. Where we stand reigned Nero,--here were his
+tessellated floors; here,
+
+"Mighty in the heaven, a second heaven,"
+
+hung the vault of his ivory roofs; here, arch upon arch, pillar on
+pillar, glittered to the world the golden palace of its master,--the
+Golden House of Nero. How the lizard watches us with his bright,
+timorous eye! We disturb his reign. Gather that wild flower: the Golden
+House is vanished, but the wild flower may have kin to those which the
+stranger's hand scattered over the tyrant's grave; see, over this soil,
+the grave of Rome, Nature strews the wild flowers still!
+
+In the midst of this desolation is an old building of the middle ages.
+Here dwells a singular recluse. In the season of the malaria the native
+peasant flies the rank vegetation round; but he, a stranger and a
+foreigner, no associates, no companions, except books and instruments
+of science. He is often seen wandering over the grass-grown hills, or
+sauntering through the streets of the new city, not with the absent brow
+and incurious air of students, but with observant piercing eyes that
+seem to dive into the hearts of the passers-by. An old man, but not
+infirm,--erect and stately, as if in his prime. None know whether he be
+rich or poor. He asks no charity, and he gives none,--he does no evil,
+and seems to confer no good. He is a man who appears to have no world
+beyond himself; but appearances are deceitful, and Science, as well as
+Benevolence, lives in the Universe. This abode, for the first time since
+thus occupied, a visitor enters. It is Zanoni.
+
+You observe those two men seated together, conversing earnestly. Years
+long and many have flown away since they met last,--at least, bodily,
+and face to face. But if they are sages, thought can meet thought, and
+spirit spirit, though oceans divide the forms. Death itself divides not
+the wise. Thou meetest Plato when thine eyes moisten over the Phaedo.
+May Homer live with all men forever!
+
+They converse; they confess to each other; they conjure up the past, and
+repeople it; but note how differently do such remembrances affect the
+two. On Zanoni's face, despite its habitual calm, the emotions change
+and go. HE has acted in the past he surveys; but not a trace of the
+humanity that participates in joy and sorrow can be detected on the
+passionless visage of his companion; the past, to him, as is now
+the present, has been but as Nature to the sage, the volume to the
+student,--a calm and spiritual life, a study, a contemplation.
+
+From the past they turn to the future. Ah! at the close of the last
+century, the future seemed a thing tangible,--it was woven up in all
+men's fears and hopes of the present.
+
+At the verge of that hundred years, Man, the ripest born of Time,
+
+("An des Jahrhunderts Neige, Der reifste Sohn der Zeit." "Die
+Kunstler.")
+
+stood as at the deathbed of the Old World, and beheld the New Orb,
+blood-red amidst cloud and vapour,--uncertain if a comet or a sun.
+Behold the icy and profound disdain on the brow of the old man,--the
+lofty yet touching sadness that darkens the glorious countenance of
+Zanoni. Is it that one views with contempt the struggle and its issue,
+and the other with awe or pity? Wisdom contemplating mankind leads but
+to the two results,--compassion or disdain. He who believes in other
+worlds can accustom himself to look on this as the naturalist on
+the revolutions of an ant-hill, or of a leaf. What is the Earth to
+Infinity,--what its duration to the Eternal? Oh, how much greater is
+the soul of one man than the vicissitudes of the whole globe! Child of
+heaven, and heir of immortality, how from some star hereafter wilt
+thou look back on the ant-hill and its commotions, from Clovis
+to Robespierre, from Noah to the Final Fire. The spirit that can
+contemplate, that lives only in the intellect, can ascend to its star,
+even from the midst of the burial-ground called Earth, and while the
+sarcophagus called Life immures in its clay the everlasting!
+
+But thou, Zanoni,--thou hast refused to live ONLY in the intellect; thou
+hast not mortified the heart; thy pulse still beats with the sweet music
+of mortal passion; thy kind is to thee still something warmer than an
+abstraction,--thou wouldst look upon this Revolution in its cradle,
+which the storms rock; thou wouldst see the world while its elements yet
+struggle through the chaos!
+
+Go!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.VI.
+
+     Precepteurs ignorans de ce faible univers.--Voltaire.
+     (Ignorant teachers of this weak world.)
+
+     Nous etions a table chez un de nos confreres a l'Academie,
+     Grand Seigneur et homme d'esprit.--La Harpe.
+     (We supped with one of our confreres of the Academy,--a great
+     nobleman and wit.)
+
+One evening, at Paris, several months after the date of our last
+chapter, there was a reunion of some of the most eminent wits of the
+time, at the house of a personage distinguished alike by noble birth and
+liberal accomplishments. Nearly all present were of the views that
+were then the mode. For, as came afterwards a time when nothing was so
+unpopular as the people, so that was the time when nothing was so vulgar
+as aristocracy. The airiest fine gentleman and the haughtiest noble
+prated of equality, and lisped enlightenment.
+
+Among the more remarkable guests were Condorcet, then in the prime of
+his reputation, the correspondent of the king of Prussia, the intimate
+of Voltaire, the member of half the academies of Europe,--noble by
+birth, polished in manners, republican in opinions. There, too, was the
+venerable Malesherbes, "l'amour et les delices de la Nation." (The idol
+and delight of the nation (so-called by his historian, Gaillard).) There
+Jean Silvain Bailly, the accomplished scholar,--the aspiring politician.
+It was one of those petits soupers for which the capital of all social
+pleasures was so renowned. The conversation, as might be expected, was
+literary and intellectual, enlivened by graceful pleasantry. Many of the
+ladies of that ancient and proud noblesse--for the noblesse yet existed,
+though its hours were already numbered--added to the charm of the
+society; and theirs were the boldest criticisms, and often the most
+liberal sentiments.
+
+Vain labour for me--vain labour almost for the grave English
+language--to do justice to the sparkling paradoxes that flew from lip
+to lip. The favourite theme was the superiority of the moderns to the
+ancients. Condorcet on this head was eloquent, and to some, at least, of
+his audience, most convincing. That Voltaire was greater than Homer few
+there were disposed to deny. Keen was the ridicule lavished on the dull
+pedantry which finds everything ancient necessarily sublime.
+
+"Yet," said the graceful Marquis de --, as the champagne danced to his
+glass, "more ridiculous still is the superstition that finds everything
+incomprehensible holy! But intelligence circulates, Condorcet; like
+water, it finds its level. My hairdresser said to me this morning,
+'Though I am but a poor fellow, I believe as little as the finest
+gentleman!'" "Unquestionably, the great Revolution draws near to its
+final completion,--a pas de geant, as Montesquieu said of his own
+immortal work."
+
+Then there rushed from all--wit and noble, courtier and republican--a
+confused chorus, harmonious only in its anticipation of the brilliant
+things to which "the great Revolution" was to give birth. Here Condrocet
+is more eloquent than before.
+
+"Il faut absolument que la Superstition et le Fanatisme fassent place
+a la Philosophie. (It must necessarily happen that superstition and
+fanaticism give place to philosophy.) Kings persecute persons, priests
+opinion. Without kings, men must be safe; and without priests, minds
+must be free."
+
+"Ah," murmured the marquis, "and as ce cher Diderot has so well sung,--
+
+'Et des boyaux du dernier pretre Serrez le cou du dernier roi.'"
+
+     (And throttle the neck of the last king with the string from
+     the bowels of the last priest.)
+
+"And then," resumed Condorcet,--"then commences the Age of
+Reason!--equality in instruction, equality in institutions, equality
+in wealth! The great impediments to knowledge are, first, the want of
+a common language; and next, the short duration of existence. But as to
+the first, when all men are brothers, why not a universal language?
+As to the second, the organic perfectibility of the vegetable world is
+undisputed, is Nature less powerful in the nobler existence of thinking
+man? The very destruction of the two most active causes of physical
+deterioration--here, luxurious wealth; there, abject penury,--must
+necessarily prolong the general term of life. (See Condorcet's
+posthumous work on the Progress of the Human Mind.--Ed.) The art of
+medicine will then be honoured in the place of war, which is the art of
+murder: the noblest study of the acutest minds will be devoted to the
+discovery and arrest of the causes of disease. Life, I grant, cannot be
+made eternal; but it may be prolonged almost indefinitely. And as
+the meaner animal bequeaths its vigour to its offspring, so man shall
+transmit his improved organisation, mental and physical, to his sons.
+Oh, yes, to such a consummation does our age approach!"
+
+The venerable Malesherbes sighed. Perhaps he feared the consummation
+might not come in time for him. The handsome Marquis de -- and the
+ladies, yet handsomer than he, looked conviction and delight.
+
+But two men there were, seated next to each other, who joined not in
+the general talk: the one a stranger newly arrived in Paris, where
+his wealth, his person, and his accomplishments, had already made
+him remarked and courted; the other, an old man, somewhere about
+seventy,--the witty and virtuous, brave, and still light-hearted
+Cazotte, the author of "Le Diable Amoureux."
+
+These two conversed familiarly, and apart from the rest, and only by an
+occasional smile testified their attention to the general conversation.
+
+"Yes," said the stranger,--"yes, we have met before."
+
+"I thought I could not forget your countenance; yet I task in vain my
+recollections of the past."
+
+"I will assist you. Recall the time when, led by curiosity, or
+perhaps the nobler desire of knowledge, you sought initiation into the
+mysterious order of Martines de Pasqualis."
+
+(It is so recorded of Cazotte. Of Martines de Pasqualis little is known;
+even the country to which he belonged is matter of conjecture. Equally
+so the rites, ceremonies, and nature of the cabalistic order he
+established. St. Martin was a disciple of the school, and that, at
+least, is in its favour; for in spite of his mysticism, no man more
+beneficent, generous, pure, and virtuous than St. Martin adorned the
+last century. Above all, no man more distinguished himself from the herd
+of sceptical philosophers by the gallantry and fervour with which he
+combated materialism, and vindicated the necessity of faith amidst a
+chaos of unbelief. It may also be observed, that Cazotte, whatever
+else he learned of the brotherhood of Martines, learned nothing that
+diminished the excellence of his life and the sincerity of his religion.
+At once gentle and brave, he never ceased to oppose the excesses of
+the Revolution. To the last, unlike the Liberals of his time, he was a
+devout and sincere Christian. Before his execution, he demanded a pen
+and paper to write these words: "Ma femme, mes enfans, ne me pleurez
+pas; ne m'oubliez pas, mais souvenez-vous surtout de ne jamais offenser
+Dieu." ("My wife, my children, weep not for me; forget me not, but
+remember above everything never to offend God.)--Ed.)
+
+"Ah, is it possible! You are one of that theurgic brotherhood?"
+
+"Nay, I attended their ceremonies but to see how vainly they sought to
+revive the ancient marvels of the cabala."
+
+"Such studies please you? I have shaken off the influence they once had
+on my own imagination."
+
+"You have not shaken it off," returned the stranger, bravely; "it is on
+you still,--on you at this hour; it beats in your heart; it kindles in
+your reason; it will speak in your tongue!"
+
+And then, with a yet lower voice, the stranger continued to address
+him, to remind him of certain ceremonies and doctrines,--to explain and
+enforce them by references to the actual experience and history of his
+listener, which Cazotte thrilled to find so familiar to a stranger.
+
+Gradually the old man's pleasing and benevolent countenance grew
+overcast, and he turned, from time to time, searching, curious, uneasy
+glances towards his companion.
+
+The charming Duchesse de G-- archly pointed out to the lively guests the
+abstracted air and clouded brow of the poet; and Condorcet, who liked no
+one else to be remarked, when he himself was present, said to Cazotte,
+"Well, and what do YOU predict of the Revolution,--how, at least, will
+it affect us?"
+
+At that question Cazotte started; his cheeks grew pale, large drops
+stood on his forehead; his lips writhed; his gay companions gazed on him
+in surprise.
+
+"Speak!" whispered the stranger, laying his hand gently upon the arm of
+the old wit.
+
+At that word Cazotte's face grew locked and rigid, his eyes dwelt
+vacantly on space, and in a low, hollow voice, he thus answered
+
+(The following prophecy (not unfamiliar, perhaps, to some of my
+readers), with some slight variations, and at greater length, in the
+text of the authority I am about to cite, is to be found in La
+Harpe's posthumous works. The MS. is said to exist still in La Harpe's
+handwriting, and the story is given on M. Petitot's authority, volume
+i. page 62. It is not for me to enquire if there be doubts of its
+foundation on fact.--Ed.),--
+
+"You ask how it will affect yourselves,--you, its most learned, and its
+least selfish agents. I will answer: you, Marquis de Condorcet, will
+die in prison, but not by the hand of the executioner. In the peaceful
+happiness of that day, the philosopher will carry about with him not the
+elixir but the poison."
+
+"My poor Cazotte," said Condorcet, with his gentle smile, "what have
+prisons, executioners, and poison to do with an age of liberty and
+brotherhood?"
+
+"It is in the names of Liberty and Brotherhood that the prisons will
+reek, and the headsman be glutted."
+
+"You are thinking of priestcraft, not philosophy, Cazotte," said
+Champfort.
+
+(Champfort, one of those men of letters who, though misled by the first
+fair show of the Revolution, refused to follow the baser men of action
+into its horrible excesses, lived to express the murderous philanthropy
+of its agents by the best bon mot of the time. Seeing written on the
+walls, "Fraternite ou la Mort," he observed that the sentiment should be
+translated thus, "Sois mon frere, ou je te tue." ("Be my brother, or I
+kill thee.")) "And what of me?"
+
+"You will open your own veins to escape the fraternity of Cain. Be
+comforted; the last drops will not follow the razor. For you, venerable
+Malesherbes; for you, Aimar Nicolai; for you, learned Bailly,--I see
+them dress the scaffold! And all the while, O great philosophers, your
+murderers will have no word but philosophy on their lips!"
+
+The hush was complete and universal when the pupil of Voltaire--the
+prince of the academic sceptics, hot La Harpe--cried with a sarcastic
+laugh, "Do not flatter me, O prophet, by exemption from the fate of
+my companions. Shall _I_ have no part to play in this drama of your
+fantasies."
+
+At this question, Cazotte's countenance lost its unnatural expression of
+awe and sternness; the sardonic humour most common to it came back and
+played in his brightening eyes.
+
+"Yes, La Harpe, the most wonderful part of all! YOU will become--a
+Christian!"
+
+This was too much for the audience that a moment before seemed grave
+and thoughtful, and they burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, while
+Cazotte, as if exhausted by his predictions, sank back in his chair, and
+breathed hard and heavily.
+
+"Nay," said Madame de G--, "you who have predicted such grave things
+concerning us, must prophesy something also about yourself."
+
+A convulsive tremor shook the involuntary prophet,--it passed, and
+left his countenance elevated by an expression of resignation and calm.
+"Madame," said he, after a long pause, "during the siege of Jerusalem,
+we are told by its historian that a man, for seven successive days,
+went round the ramparts, exclaiming, 'Woe to thee, Jerusalem,--woe to
+myself!'"
+
+"Well, Cazotte, well?"
+
+"And on the seventh day, while he thus spoke, a stone from the machines
+of the Romans dashed him into atoms!"
+
+With these words, Cazotte rose; and the guests, awed in spite of
+themselves, shortly afterwards broke up and retired.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.VII.
+
+     Qui donc t'a donne la mission s'annoncer au peuple que la
+     divinite n'existe pas?  Quel avantage trouves-tu a persuader a
+     l'homme qu'une force aveugle preside a ses destinees et frappe au
+     hasard le crime et la vertu?--Robespierre, "Discours," Mai 7,
+     1794.
+
+     (Who then invested you with the mission to announce to the people
+     that there is no God?  What advantage find you in persuading man
+     that nothing but blind force presides over his destinies, and
+     strikes haphazard both crime and virtue?)
+
+It was some time before midnight when the stranger returned home. His
+apartments were situated in one of those vast abodes which may be called
+an epitome of Paris itself,--the cellars rented by mechanics, scarcely
+removed a step from paupers, often by outcasts and fugitives from the
+law, often by some daring writer, who, after scattering amongst the
+people doctrines the most subversive of order, or the most libellous on
+the characters of priest, minister, and king, retired amongst the rats,
+to escape the persecution that attends the virtuous; the ground-floor
+occupied by shops; the entresol by artists; the principal stories by
+nobles; and the garrets by journeymen or grisettes.
+
+As the stranger passed up the stairs, a young man of a form and
+countenance singularly unprepossessing emerged from a door in the
+entresol, and brushed beside him. His glance was furtive, sinister,
+savage, and yet timorous; the man's face was of an ashen paleness, and
+the features worked convulsively. The stranger paused, and observed
+him with thoughtful looks, as he hurried down the stairs. While he
+thus stood, he heard a groan from the room which the young man had just
+quitted; the latter had pulled to the door with hasty vehemence, but
+some fragment, probably of fuel, had prevented its closing, and it now
+stood slightly ajar; the stranger pushed it open and entered. He passed
+a small anteroom, meanly furnished, and stood in a bedchamber of meagre
+and sordid discomfort. Stretched on the bed, and writhing in pain, lay
+an old man; a single candle lit the room, and threw its feeble ray over
+the furrowed and death-like face of the sick person. No attendant
+was by; he seemed left alone, to breathe his last. "Water," he moaned
+feebly,--"water:--I parch,--I burn!" The intruder approached the bed,
+bent over him, and took his hand. "Oh, bless thee, Jean, bless thee!"
+said the sufferer; "hast thou brought back the physician already? Sir,
+I am poor, but I can pay you well. I would not die yet, for that young
+man's sake." And he sat upright in his bed, and fixed his dim eyes
+anxiously on his visitor.
+
+"What are your symptoms, your disease?"
+
+"Fire, fire, fire in the heart, the entrails: I burn!"
+
+"How long is it since you have taken food?"
+
+"Food! only this broth. There is the basin, all I have taken these six
+hours. I had scarce drunk it ere these pains began."
+
+The stranger looked at the basin; some portion of the contents was yet
+left there.
+
+"Who administered this to you?"
+
+"Who? Jean! Who else should? I have no servant,--none! I am poor, very
+poor, sir. But no! you physicians do not care for the poor. I AM RICH!
+can you cure me?"
+
+"Yes, if Heaven permit. Wait but a few moments."
+
+The old man was fast sinking under the rapid effects of poison. The
+stranger repaired to his own apartments, and returned in a few moments
+with some preparation that had the instant result of an antidote. The
+pain ceased, the blue and livid colour receded from the lips; the old
+man fell into a profound sleep. The stranger drew the curtains round the
+bed, took up the light, and inspected the apartment. The walls of both
+rooms were hung with drawings of masterly excellence. A portfolio
+was filled with sketches of equal skill,--but these last were mostly
+subjects that appalled the eye and revolted the taste: they displayed
+the human figure in every variety of suffering,--the rack, the wheel,
+the gibbet; all that cruelty has invented to sharpen the pangs of death
+seemed yet more dreadful from the passionate gusto and earnest force of
+the designer. And some of the countenances of those thus delineated were
+sufficiently removed from the ideal to show that they were portraits; in
+a large, bold, irregular hand was written beneath these drawings, "The
+Future of the Aristocrats." In a corner of the room, and close by an old
+bureau, was a small bundle, over which, as if to hide it, a cloak was
+thrown carelessly. Several shelves were filled with books; these
+were almost entirely the works of the philosophers of the time,--the
+philosophers of the material school, especially the Encyclopedistes,
+whom Robespierre afterwards so singularly attacked when the coward
+deemed it unsafe to leave his reign without a God.
+
+("Cette secte (les Encyclopedistes) propagea avec beaucoup de zele
+l'opinion du materialisme, qui prevalut parmi les grands et parmi
+les beaux esprits; on lui doit en partie cette espece de philosophie
+pratique qui, reduisant l'Egoisme en systeme regarde la societe humaine
+comme une guerre de ruse, le succes comme la regle du juste et de
+l'injuste, la probite comme une affaire de gout, ou de bienseance,
+le monde comme le patrimoine des fripons adroits."--"Discours de
+Robespierre," Mai 7, 1794. (This sect (the Encyclopaedists) propagate
+with much zeal the doctrine of materialism, which prevails among
+the great and the wits; we owe to it partly that kind of practical
+philosophy which, reducing Egotism to a system, looks upon society as
+a war of cunning; success the rule of right and wrong, honesty as an
+affair of taste or decency: and the world as the patrimony of clever
+scoundrels.))
+
+A volume lay on a table,--it was one of Voltaire, and the page was
+opened at his argumentative assertion of the existence of the Supreme
+Being. ("Histoire de Jenni.") The margin was covered with pencilled
+notes, in the stiff but tremulous hand of old age; all in attempt to
+refute or to ridicule the logic of the sage of Ferney: Voltaire did not
+go far enough for the annotator! The clock struck two, when the sound
+of steps was heard without. The stranger silently seated himself on the
+farther side of the bed, and its drapery screened him, as he sat, from
+the eyes of a man who now entered on tiptoe; it was the same person
+who had passed him on the stairs. The new-comer took up the candle and
+approached the bed. The old man's face was turned to the pillow; but he
+lay so still, and his breathing was so inaudible, that his sleep might
+well, by that hasty, shrinking, guilty glance, be mistaken for the
+repose of death. The new-comer drew back, and a grim smile passed over
+his face: he replaced the candle on the table, opened the bureau with
+a key which he took from his pocket, and loaded himself with several
+rouleaus of gold that he found in the drawers. At this time the old man
+began to wake. He stirred, he looked up; he turned his eyes towards the
+light now waning in its socket; he saw the robber at his work; he sat
+erect for an instant, as if transfixed, more even by astonishment than
+terror. At last he sprang from his bed.
+
+"Just Heaven! do I dream! Thou--thou--thou, for whom I toiled and
+starved!--THOU!"
+
+The robber started; the gold fell from his hand, and rolled on the
+floor.
+
+"What!" he said, "art thou not dead yet? Has the poison failed?"
+
+"Poison, boy! Ah!" shrieked the old man, and covered his face with his
+hands; then, with sudden energy, he exclaimed, "Jean! Jean! recall that
+word. Rob, plunder me if thou wilt, but do not say thou couldst murder
+one who only lived for thee! There, there, take the gold; I hoarded it
+but for thee. Go! go!" and the old man, who in his passion had quitted
+his bed, fell at the feet of the foiled assassin, and writhed on the
+ground,--the mental agony more intolerable than that of the body,
+which he had so lately undergone. The robber looked at him with a
+hard disdain. "What have I ever done to thee, wretch?" cried the old
+man,--"what but loved and cherished thee? Thou wert an orphan,--an
+outcast. I nurtured, nursed, adopted thee as my son. If men call me a
+miser, it was but that none might despise thee, my heir, because Nature
+has stunted and deformed thee, when I was no more. Thou wouldst have
+had all when I was dead. Couldst thou not spare me a few months or
+days,--nothing to thy youth, all that is left to my age? What have I
+done to thee?"
+
+"Thou hast continued to live, and thou wouldst make no will."
+
+"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!"
+
+"TON DIEU! Thy God! Fool! Hast thou not told me, from my childhood, that
+there is NO God? Hast thou not fed me on philosophy? Hast thou not said,
+'Be virtuous, be good, be just, for the sake of mankind: but there is no
+life after this life'? Mankind! why should I love mankind? Hideous and
+misshapen, mankind jeer at me as I pass the streets. What hast thou done
+to me? Thou hast taken away from me, who am the scoff of this world, the
+hopes of another! Is there no other life? Well, then, I want thy gold,
+that at least I may hasten to make the best of this!"
+
+"Monster! Curses light on thy ingratitude, thy--"
+
+"And who hears thy curses? Thou knowest there is no God! Mark me; I have
+prepared all to fly. See,--I have my passport; my horses wait without;
+relays are ordered. I have thy gold." (And the wretch, as he spoke,
+continued coldly to load his person with the rouleaus). "And now, if I
+spare thy life, how shall I be sure that thou wilt not inform against
+mine?" He advanced with a gloomy scowl and a menacing gesture as he
+spoke.
+
+The old man's anger changed to fear. He cowered before the savage. "Let
+me live! let me live!--that--that--"
+
+"That--what?"
+
+"I may pardon thee! Yes, thou hast nothing to fear from me. I swear it!"
+
+"Swear! But by whom and what, old man? I cannot believe thee, if thou
+believest not in any God! Ha, ha! behold the result of thy lessons."
+
+Another moment and those murderous fingers would have strangled their
+prey. But between the assassin and his victim rose a form that seemed
+almost to both a visitor from the world that both denied,--stately with
+majestic strength, glorious with awful beauty.
+
+The ruffian recoiled, looked, trembled, and then turned and fled from
+the chamber. The old man fell again to the ground insensible.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.VIII.
+
+     To know how a bad man will act when in power, reverse all the
+     doctrines he preaches when obscure.--S. Montague.
+
+     Antipathies also form a part of magic (falsely) so-called.  Man
+     naturally has the same instinct as the animals, which warns them
+     involuntarily against the creatures that are hostile or fatal to
+     their existence.  But HE so often neglects it, that it becomes
+     dormant.  Not so the true cultivator of the Great Science, etc.
+
+     --Trismegistus the Fourth (a Rosicrucian).
+
+When he again saw the old man the next day, the stranger found him calm,
+and surprisingly recovered from the scene and sufferings of the night.
+He expressed his gratitude to his preserver with tearful fervour,
+and stated that he had already sent for a relation who would make
+arrangements for his future safety and mode of life. "For I have money
+yet left," said the old man; "and henceforth have no motive to be a
+miser." He proceeded then briefly to relate the origin and circumstances
+of his connection with his intended murderer.
+
+It seems that in earlier life he had quarrelled with his
+relations,--from a difference in opinions of belief. Rejecting all
+religion as a fable, he yet cultivated feelings that inclined him--for
+though his intellect was weak, his dispositions were good--to that
+false and exaggerated sensibility which its dupes so often mistake
+for benevolence. He had no children; he resolved to adopt an enfant
+du peuple. He resolved to educate this boy according to "reason." He
+selected an orphan of the lowest extraction, whose defects of person and
+constitution only yet the more moved his pity, and finally engrossed his
+affection. In this outcast he not only loved a son, he loved a theory!
+He brought him up most philosophically. Helvetius had proved to him
+that education can do all; and before he was eight years old, the little
+Jean's favourite expressions were, "La lumiere et la vertu." (Light and
+virtue.) The boy showed talents, especially in art.
+
+The protector sought for a master who was as free from "superstition" as
+himself, and selected the painter David. That person, as hideous as
+his pupil, and whose dispositions were as vicious as his professional
+abilities were undeniable, was certainly as free from "superstition" as
+the protector could desire. It was reserved for Robespierre hereafter
+to make the sanguinary painter believe in the Etre Supreme. The boy
+was early sensible of his ugliness, which was almost preternatural. His
+benefactor found it in vain to reconcile him to the malice of Nature by
+his philosophical aphorisms; but when he pointed out to him that in
+this world money, like charity, covers a multitude of defects, the boy
+listened eagerly and was consoled. To save money for his protege,--for
+the only thing in the world he loved,--this became the patron's passion.
+Verily, he had met with his reward.
+
+"But I am thankful he has escaped," said the old man, wiping his eyes.
+"Had he left me a beggar, I could never have accused him."
+
+"No, for you are the author of his crimes."
+
+"How! I, who never ceased to inculcate the beauty of virtue? Explain
+yourself."
+
+"Alas! if thy pupil did not make this clear to thee last night from his
+own lips, an angel might come from heaven to preach to thee in vain."
+
+The old man moved uneasily, and was about to reply, when the relative he
+had sent for--and who, a native of Nancy, happened to be at Paris at the
+time--entered the room. He was a man somewhat past thirty, and of a dry,
+saturnine, meagre countenance, restless eyes, and compressed lips. He
+listened, with many ejaculations of horror, to his relation's recital,
+and sought earnestly, but in vain, to induce him to give information
+against his protege.
+
+"Tush, tush, Rene Dumas!" said the old man, "you are a lawyer. You are
+bred to regard human life with contempt. Let any man break a law, and
+you shout, 'Execute him!'"
+
+"I!" cried Dumas, lifting up his hands and eyes: "venerable sage, how
+you misjudge me! I lament more than any one the severity of our code. I
+think the state never should take away life,--no, not even the life of
+a murderer. I agree with that young statesman,--Maximilien
+Robespierre,--that the executioner is the invention of the tyrant. My
+very attachment to our advancing revolution is, that it must sweep away
+this legal butchery."
+
+The lawyer paused, out of breath. The stranger regarded him fixedly and
+turned pale.
+
+"You change countenance, sir," said Dumas; "you do not agree with me."
+
+"Pardon me, I was at that moment repressing a vague fear which seemed
+prophetic."
+
+"And that--"
+
+"Was that we should meet again, when your opinions on Death and the
+philosophy of Revolutions might be different."
+
+"Never!"
+
+"You enchant me, Cousin Rene," said the old man, who had listened to his
+relation with delight. "Ah, I see you have proper sentiments of justice
+and philanthropy. Why did I not seek to know you before? You admire the
+Revolution;--you, equally with me, detest the barbarity of kings and the
+fraud of priests?"
+
+"Detest! How could I love mankind if I did not?"
+
+"And," said the old man, hesitatingly, "you do not think, with this
+noble gentleman, that I erred in the precepts I instilled into that
+wretched man?"
+
+"Erred! Was Socrates to blame if Alcibiades was an adulterer and a
+traitor?"
+
+"You hear him, you hear him! But Socrates had also a Plato; henceforth
+you shall be a Plato to me. You hear him?" exclaimed the old man,
+turning to the stranger.
+
+But the latter was at the threshold. Who shall argue with the most
+stubborn of all bigotries,--the fanaticism of unbelief?
+
+"Are you going?" exclaimed Dumas, "and before I have thanked you,
+blessed you, for the life of this dear and venerable man? Oh, if ever I
+can repay you,--if ever you want the heart's blood of Rene Dumas!" Thus
+volubly delivering himself, he followed the stranger to the threshold of
+the second chamber, and there, gently detaining him, and after looking
+over his shoulder, to be sure that he was not heard by the owner,
+he whispered, "I ought to return to Nancy. One would not lose one's
+time,--you don't think, sir, that that scoundrel took away ALL the old
+fool's money?"
+
+"Was it thus Plato spoke of Socrates, Monsieur Dumas?"
+
+"Ha, ha!--you are caustic. Well, you have a right. Sir, we shall meet
+again."
+
+"AGAIN!" muttered the stranger, and his brow darkened. He hastened to
+his chamber; he passed the day and the night alone, and in studies, no
+matter of what nature,--they served to increase his gloom.
+
+What could ever connect his fate with Rene Dumas, or the fugitive
+assassin? Why did the buoyant air of Paris seem to him heavy with
+the steams of blood; why did an instinct urge him to fly from those
+sparkling circles, from that focus of the world's awakened hopes,
+warning him from return?--he, whose lofty existence defied--but away
+these dreams and omens! He leaves France behind. Back, O Italy, to thy
+majestic wrecks! On the Alps his soul breathes the free air once more.
+Free air! Alas! let the world-healers exhaust their chemistry; man never
+shall be as free in the marketplace as on the mountain. But we, reader,
+we too escape from these scenes of false wisdom clothing godless crime.
+Away, once more
+
+"In den heitern Regionen Wo die reinen Formen wohnen."
+
+Away, to the loftier realm where the pure dwellers are. Unpolluted by
+the Actual, the Ideal lives only with Art and Beauty. Sweet Viola, by
+the shores of the blue Parthenope, by Virgil's tomb, and the Cimmerian
+cavern, we return to thee once more.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.IX.
+
+     Che non vuol che 'l destrier piu vada in alto,
+     Poi lo lega nel margine marino
+     A un verde mirto in mezzo un lauro E UN PINO.
+     "Orlando Furioso," c. vi. xxiii.
+
+     (As he did not wish that his charger (the hippogriff) should take
+     any further excursions into the higher regions for the present,
+     he bound him at the sea-shore to a green myrtle between a laurel
+     and a pine.)
+
+O Musician! art thou happy now? Thou art reinstalled at thy stately
+desk,--thy faithful barbiton has its share in the triumph. It is thy
+masterpiece which fills thy ear; it is thy daughter who fills the
+scene,--the music, the actress, so united, that applause to one is
+applause to both. They make way for thee, at the orchestra,--they no
+longer jeer and wink, when, with a fierce fondness, thou dost caress
+thy Familiar, that plains, and wails, and chides, and growls, under thy
+remorseless hand. They understand now how irregular is ever the symmetry
+of real genius. The inequalities in its surface make the moon luminous
+to man. Giovanni Paisiello, Maestro di Capella, if thy gentle soul could
+know envy, thou must sicken to see thy Elfrida and thy Pirro laid aside,
+and all Naples turned fanatic to the Siren, at whose measures shook
+querulously thy gentle head! But thou, Paisiello, calm in the long
+prosperity of fame, knowest that the New will have its day, and
+comfortest thyself that the Elfrida and the Pirro will live forever.
+Perhaps a mistake, but it is by such mistakes that true genius conquers
+envy. "To be immortal," says Schiller, "live in the whole." To be
+superior to the hour, live in thy self-esteem. The audience now would
+give their ears for those variations and flights they were once wont to
+hiss. No!--Pisani has been two-thirds of a life at silent work on his
+masterpiece: there is nothing he can add to THAT, however he might have
+sought to improve on the masterpieces of others. Is not this common?
+The least little critic, in reviewing some work of art, will say, "pity
+this, and pity that;" "this should have been altered,--that omitted."
+Yea, with his wiry fiddlestring will he creak out his accursed
+variations. But let him sit down and compose himself. He sees no
+improvement in variations THEN! Every man can control his fiddle when it
+is his own work with which its vagaries would play the devil.
+
+And Viola is the idol, the theme of Naples. She is the spoiled sultana
+of the boards. To spoil her acting may be easy enough,--shall they
+spoil her nature? No, I think not. There, at home, she is still good
+and simple; and there, under the awning by the doorway,--there she still
+sits, divinely musing. How often, crook-trunked tree, she looks to thy
+green boughs; how often, like thee, in her dreams, and fancies, does she
+struggle for the light,--not the light of the stage-lamps. Pooh, child!
+be contented with the lamps, even with the rush-lights. A farthing
+candle is more convenient for household purposes than the stars.
+
+Weeks passed, and the stranger did not reappear; months had passed, and
+his prophecy of sorrow was not yet fulfilled. One evening Pisani was
+taken ill. His success had brought on the long-neglected composer
+pressing applications for concerti and sonata, adapted to his more
+peculiar science on the violin. He had been employed for some weeks, day
+and night, on a piece in which he hoped to excel himself. He took, as
+usual, one of those seemingly impracticable subjects which it was his
+pride to subject to the expressive powers of his art,--the terrible
+legend connected with the transformation of Philomel. The pantomime of
+sound opened with the gay merriment of a feast. The monarch of Thrace
+is at his banquet; a sudden discord brays through the joyous notes,--the
+string seems to screech with horror. The king learns the murder of his
+son by the hands of the avenging sisters. Swift rage the chords, through
+the passions of fear, of horror, of fury, and dismay. The father pursues
+the sisters. Hark! what changes the dread--the discord--into that long,
+silvery, mournful music? The transformation is completed; and Philomel,
+now the nightingale, pours from the myrtle-bough the full, liquid,
+subduing notes that are to tell evermore to the world the history of
+her woes and wrongs. Now, it was in the midst of this complicated and
+difficult attempt that the health of the over-tasked musician, excited
+alike by past triumph and new ambition, suddenly gave way. He was taken
+ill at night. The next morning the doctor pronounced that his disease
+was a malignant and infectious fever. His wife and Viola shared in their
+tender watch; but soon that task was left to the last alone. The Signora
+Pisani caught the infection, and in a few hours was even in a state more
+alarming than that of her husband. The Neapolitans, in common with the
+inhabitants of all warm climates, are apt to become selfish and brutal
+in their dread of infectious disorders. Gionetta herself pretended to be
+ill, to avoid the sick-chamber. The whole labour of love and sorrow
+fell on Viola. It was a terrible trial,--I am willing to hurry over the
+details. The wife died first!
+
+One day, a little before sunset, Pisani woke partially recovered from
+the delirium which had preyed upon him, with few intervals, since the
+second day of the disease; and casting about him his dizzy and feeble
+eyes, he recognised Viola, and smiled. He faltered her name as he rose
+and stretched his arms. She fell upon his breast, and strove to suppress
+her tears.
+
+"Thy mother?" he said. "Does she sleep?"
+
+"She sleeps,--ah, yes!" and the tears gushed forth.
+
+"I thought--eh! I know not WHAT I have thought. But do not weep: I shall
+be well now,--quite well. She will come to me when she wakes,--will
+she?"
+
+Viola could not speak; but she busied herself in pouring forth an
+anodyne, which she had been directed to give the sufferer as soon as the
+delirium should cease. The doctor had told her, too, to send for him the
+instant so important a change should occur.
+
+She went to the door and called to the woman who, during Gionetta's
+pretended illness, had been induced to supply her place; but the
+hireling answered not. She flew through the chambers to search for her
+in vain,--the hireling had caught Gionetta's fears, and vanished. What
+was to be done? The case was urgent,--the doctor had declared not a
+moment should be lost in obtaining his attendance; she must leave her
+father,--she must go herself! She crept back into the room,--the anodyne
+seemed already to have taken benign effect; the patient's eyes were
+closed, and he breathed regularly, as in sleep. She stole away, threw
+her veil over her face, and hurried from the house.
+
+Now the anodyne had not produced the effect which it appeared to
+have done; instead of healthful sleep, it had brought on a kind of
+light-headed somnolence, in which the mind, preternaturally restless,
+wandered about its accustomed haunts, waking up its old familiar
+instincts and inclinations. It was not sleep,--it was not delirium;
+it was the dream-wakefulness which opium sometimes induces, when every
+nerve grows tremulously alive, and creates a corresponding activity in
+the frame, to which it gives a false and hectic vigour. Pisani missed
+something,--what, he scarcely knew; it was a combination of the two
+wants most essential to his mental life,--the voice of his wife, the
+touch of his Familiar. He rose,--he left his bed, he leisurely put on
+his old dressing-robe, in which he had been wont to compose. He smiled
+complacently as the associations connected with the garment came over
+his memory; he walked tremulously across the room, and entered the small
+cabinet next to his chamber, in which his wife had been accustomed more
+often to watch than sleep, when illness separated her from his side. The
+room was desolate and void. He looked round wistfully, and muttered
+to himself, and then proceeded regularly, and with a noiseless step,
+through the chambers of the silent house, one by one.
+
+He came at last to that in which old Gionetta--faithful to her own
+safety, if nothing else--nursed herself, in the remotest corner of the
+house, from the danger of infection. As he glided in,--wan, emaciated,
+with an uneasy, anxious, searching look in his haggard eyes,--the old
+woman shrieked aloud, and fell at his feet. He bent over her, passed his
+thin hands along her averted face, shook his head, and said in a hollow
+voice,--
+
+"I cannot find them; where are they?"
+
+"Who, dear master? Oh, have compassion on yourself; they are not here.
+Blessed saints! this is terrible; he has touched me; I am dead!"
+
+"Dead! who is dead? Is any one dead?"
+
+"Ah! don't talk so; you must know it well: my poor mistress,--she caught
+the fever from you; it is infectious enough to kill a whole city. San
+Gennaro protect me! My poor mistress, she is dead,--buried, too; and
+I, your faithful Gionetta, woe is me! Go, go--to--to bed again, dearest
+master,--go!"
+
+The poor musician stood for one moment mute and unmoving, then a slight
+shiver ran through his frame; he turned and glided back, silent and
+spectre-like, as he had entered. He came into the room where he had been
+accustomed to compose,--where his wife, in her sweet patience, had so
+often sat by his side, and praised and flattered when the world had but
+jeered and scorned. In one corner he found the laurel-wreath she had
+placed on his brows that happy night of fame and triumph; and near it,
+half hid by her mantilla, lay in its case the neglected instrument.
+
+Viola was not long gone: she had found the physician; she returned with
+him; and as they gained the threshold, they heard a strain of music from
+within,--a strain of piercing, heart-rending anguish. It was not like
+some senseless instrument, mechanical in its obedience to a human
+hand,--it was as some spirit calling, in wail and agony from the forlorn
+shades, to the angels it beheld afar beyond the Eternal Gulf. They
+exchanged glances of dismay. They hurried into the house; they hastened
+into the room. Pisani turned, and his look, full of ghastly intelligence
+and stern command, awed them back. The black mantilla, the faded
+laurel-leaf, lay there before him. Viola's heart guessed all at a single
+glance; she sprung to his knees; she clasped them,--"Father, father, _I_
+am left thee still!"
+
+The wail ceased,--the note changed; with a confused association--half of
+the man, half of the artist--the anguish, still a melody, was connected
+with sweeter sounds and thoughts. The nightingale had escaped the
+pursuit,--soft, airy, bird-like, thrilled the delicious notes a moment,
+and then died away. The instrument fell to the floor, and its chords
+snapped. You heard that sound through the silence. The artist looked
+on his kneeling child, and then on the broken chords... "Bury me by her
+side," he said, in a very calm, low voice; "and THAT by mine." And with
+these words his whole frame became rigid, as if turned to stone. The
+last change passed over his face. He fell to the ground, sudden and
+heavy. The chords THERE, too,--the chords of the human instrument were
+snapped asunder. As he fell, his robe brushed the laurel-wreath, and
+that fell also, near but not in reach of the dead man's nerveless hand.
+
+Broken instrument, broken heart, withered laurel-wreath!--the setting
+sun through the vine-clad lattice streamed on all! So smiles the eternal
+Nature on the wrecks of all that make life glorious! And not a sun that
+sets not somewhere on the silenced music,--on the faded laurel!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.X.
+
+     Che difesa miglior ch' usbergo e scudo,
+     E la santa innocenza al petto ignudo!
+     "Ger. Lib.," c. viii. xli.
+
+     (Better defence than shield or breastplate is holy innocence
+     to the naked breast.)
+
+And they buried the musician and his barbiton together, in the same
+coffin. That famous Steiner--primeval Titan of the great Tyrolese
+race--often hast thou sought to scale the heavens, and therefore must
+thou, like the meaner children of men, descend to the dismal Hades!
+Harder fate for thee than thy mortal master. For THY soul sleeps with
+thee in the coffin. And the music that belongs to HIS, separate from
+the instrument, ascends on high, to be heard often by a daughter's pious
+ears when the heaven is serene and the earth sad. For there is a sense
+of hearing that the vulgar know not. And the voices of the dead breathe
+soft and frequent to those who can unite the memory with the faith.
+
+And now Viola is alone in the world,--alone in the home where loneliness
+had seemed from the cradle a thing that was not of nature. And at
+first the solitude and the stillness were insupportable. Have you, ye
+mourners, to whom these sibyl leaves, weird with many a dark enigma,
+shall be borne, have you not felt that when the death of some best-loved
+one has made the hearth desolate,--have you not felt as if the gloom of
+the altered home was too heavy for thought to bear?--you would leave it,
+though a palace, even for a cabin. And yet,--sad to say,--when you obey
+the impulse, when you fly from the walls, when in the strange place in
+which you seek your refuge nothing speaks to you of the lost, have ye
+not felt again a yearning for that very food to memory which was just
+before but bitterness and gall? Is it not almost impious and profane
+to abandon that dear hearth to strangers? And the desertion of the home
+where your parents dwelt, and blessed you, upbraids your conscience as
+if you had sold their tombs.
+
+Beautiful was the Etruscan superstition that the ancestors become the
+household gods. Deaf is the heart to which the Lares call from the
+desolate floors in vain. At first Viola had, in her intolerable anguish,
+gratefully welcomed the refuge which the house and family of a kindly
+neighbour, much attached to her father, and who was one of the orchestra
+that Pisani shall perplex no more, had proffered to the orphan. But the
+company of the unfamiliar in our grief, the consolation of the stranger,
+how it irritates the wound! And then, to hear elsewhere the name of
+father, mother, child,--as if death came alone to you,--to see elsewhere
+the calm regularity of those lives united in love and order, keeping
+account of happy hours, the unbroken timepiece of home, as if
+nowhere else the wheels were arrested, the chain shattered, the hands
+motionless, the chime still! No, the grave itself does not remind us of
+our loss like the company of those who have no loss to mourn. Go back to
+thy solitude, young orphan,--go back to thy home: the sorrow that meets
+thee on the threshold can greet thee, even in its sadness, like the
+smile upon the face of the dead. And there, from thy casement, and
+there, from without thy door, thou seest still the tree, solitary as
+thyself, and springing from the clefts of the rock, but forcing its way
+to light,--as, through all sorrow, while the seasons yet can renew the
+verdure and bloom of youth, strives the instinct of the human heart!
+Only when the sap is dried up, only when age comes on, does the sun
+shine in vain for man and for the tree.
+
+Weeks and months--months sad and many--again passed, and Naples will
+not longer suffer its idol to seclude itself from homage. The world ever
+plucks us back from ourselves with a thousand arms. And again Viola's
+voice is heard upon the stage, which, mystically faithful to life, is in
+nought more faithful than this, that it is the appearances that fill the
+scene; and we pause not to ask of what realities they are the proxies.
+When the actor of Athens moved all hearts as he clasped the burial urn,
+and burst into broken sobs; how few, there, knew that it held the ashes
+of his son! Gold, as well as fame, was showered upon the young actress;
+but she still kept to her simple mode of life, to her lowly home, to
+the one servant whose faults, selfish as they were, Viola was too
+inexperienced to perceive. And it was Gionetta who had placed her when
+first born in her father's arms! She was surrounded by every snare,
+wooed by every solicitation that could beset her unguarded beauty and
+her dangerous calling. But her modest virtue passed unsullied through
+them all. It is true that she had been taught by lips now mute the
+maiden duties enjoined by honour and religion. And all love that spoke
+not of the altar only shocked and repelled her. But besides that, as
+grief and solitude ripened her heart, and made her tremble at times
+to think how deeply it could feel, her vague and early visions shaped
+themselves into an ideal of love. And till the ideal is found, how
+the shadow that it throws before it chills us to the actual! With
+that ideal, ever and ever, unconsciously, and with a certain awe and
+shrinking, came the shape and voice of the warning stranger. Nearly two
+years had passed since he had appeared at Naples. Nothing had been heard
+of him, save that his vessel had been directed, some months after his
+departure, to sail for Leghorn. By the gossips of Naples, his existence,
+supposed so extraordinary, was wellnigh forgotten; but the heart of
+Viola was more faithful. Often he glided through her dreams, and
+when the wind sighed through that fantastic tree, associated with his
+remembrance, she started with a tremor and a blush, as if she had heard
+him speak.
+
+But amongst the train of her suitors was one to whom she listened
+more gently than to the rest; partly because, perhaps, he spoke in
+her mother's native tongue; partly because in his diffidence there was
+little to alarm and displease; partly because his rank, nearer to
+her own than that of lordlier wooers, prevented his admiration from
+appearing insult; partly because he himself, eloquent and a dreamer,
+often uttered thoughts that were kindred to those buried deepest in her
+mind. She began to like, perhaps to love him, but as a sister loves;
+a sort of privileged familiarity sprung up between them. If in the
+Englishman's breast arose wild and unworthy hopes, he had not yet
+expressed them. Is there danger to thee here, lone Viola, or is the
+danger greater in thy unfound ideal?
+
+And now, as the overture to some strange and wizard spectacle, closes
+this opening prelude. Wilt thou hear more? Come with thy faith prepared.
+I ask not the blinded eyes, but the awakened sense. As the enchanted
+Isle, remote from the homes of men,--
+
+"Ove alcun legno Rado, o non mai va dalle nostre sponde,"--"Ger.Lib.,"
+cant. xiv. 69.
+
+(Where ship seldom or never comes from our coasts.)
+
+is the space in the weary ocean of actual life to which the Muse or
+Sibyl (ancient in years, but ever young in aspect), offers thee no
+unhallowed sail,--
+
+     "Quinci ella in cima a una montagna ascende
+     Disabitata, e d' ombre oscura e bruna;
+     E par incanto a lei nevose rende
+     Le spalle e i fianchi; e sensa neve alcuna
+     Gli lascia il capo verdeggiante e vago;
+     E vi fonda un palagio appresso un lago."
+
+     (There, she a mountain's lofty peak ascends, Unpeopled,
+     shady, shagg'd with forests brown, Whose sides, by power of
+     magic, half-way down She heaps with slippery ice and frost
+     and snow, But sunshiny and verdant leaves the crown With
+     orange-woods and myrtles,--speaks, and lo! Rich from the
+     bordering lake a palace rises slow. Wiffin's "Translation.")
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II. -- ART, LOVE, AND WONDER.
+
+     Diversi aspetti in un confusi e misti.
+     "Ger. Lib," cant. iv. 7.
+
+     Different appearances, confused and mixt in one.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.I.
+
+     Centauri, e Sfingi, e pallide Gorgoni.
+     "Ger. Lib.," c. iv. v.
+
+     (Centaurs and Sphinxes and pallid Gorgons.)
+
+One moonlit night, in the Gardens at Naples, some four or five gentleman
+were seated under a tree, drinking their sherbet, and listening, in the
+intervals of conversation, to the music which enlivened that gay and
+favourite resort of an indolent population. One of this little party was
+a young Englishman, who had been the life of the whole group, but who,
+for the last few moments, had sunk into a gloomy and abstracted reverie.
+One of his countrymen observed this sudden gloom, and, tapping him on
+the back, said, "What ails you, Glyndon? Are you ill? You have grown
+quite pale,--you tremble. Is it a sudden chill? You had better go home:
+these Italian nights are often dangerous to our English constitutions."
+
+"No, I am well now; it was a passing shudder. I cannot account for it
+myself."
+
+A man, apparently of about thirty years of age, and of a mien and
+countenance strikingly superior to those around him, turned abruptly,
+and looked steadfastly at Glyndon.
+
+"I think I understand what you mean," said he; "and perhaps," he added,
+with a grave smile, "I could explain it better than yourself." Here,
+turning to the others, he added, "You must often have felt, gentlemen,
+each and all of you, especially when sitting alone at night, a strange
+and unaccountable sensation of coldness and awe creep over you; your
+blood curdles, and the heart stands still; the limbs shiver; the hair
+bristles; you are afraid to look up, to turn your eyes to the darker
+corners of the room; you have a horrible fancy that something unearthly
+is at hand; presently the whole spell, if I may so call it, passes away,
+and you are ready to laugh at your own weakness. Have you not often felt
+what I have thus imperfectly described?--if so, you can understand what
+our young friend has just experienced, even amidst the delights of this
+magical scene, and amidst the balmy whispers of a July night."
+
+"Sir," replied Glyndon, evidently much surprised, "you have defined
+exactly the nature of that shudder which came over me. But how could my
+manner be so faithful an index to my impressions?"
+
+"I know the signs of the visitation," returned the stranger, gravely;
+"they are not to be mistaken by one of my experience."
+
+All the gentleman present then declared that they could comprehend, and
+had felt, what the stranger had described.
+
+"According to one of our national superstitions," said Mervale, the
+Englishman who had first addressed Glyndon, "the moment you so feel your
+blood creep, and your hair stand on end, some one is walking over the
+spot which shall be your grave."
+
+"There are in all lands different superstitions to account for so common
+an occurrence," replied the stranger: "one sect among the Arabians holds
+that at that instant God is deciding the hour either of your death,
+or of some one dear to you. The African savage, whose imagination is
+darkened by the hideous rites of his gloomy idolatry, believes that the
+Evil Spirit is pulling you towards him by the hair: so do the Grotesque
+and the Terrible mingle with each other."
+
+"It is evidently a mere physical accident,--a derangement of the
+stomach, a chill of the blood," said a young Neapolitan, with whom
+Glyndon had formed a slight acquaintance.
+
+"Then why is it always coupled in all nations with some superstitious
+presentiment or terror,--some connection between the material frame and
+the supposed world without us? For my part, I think--"
+
+"Ay, what do you think, sir?" asked Glyndon, curiously.
+
+"I think," continued the stranger, "that it is the repugnance and
+horror with which our more human elements recoil from something, indeed,
+invisible, but antipathetic to our own nature; and from a knowledge of
+which we are happily secured by the imperfection of our senses."
+
+"You are a believer in spirits, then?" said Mervale, with an incredulous
+smile.
+
+"Nay, it was not precisely of spirits that I spoke; but there may be
+forms of matter as invisible and impalpable to us as the animalculae
+in the air we breathe,--in the water that plays in yonder basin. Such
+beings may have passions and powers like our own--as the animalculae to
+which I have compared them. The monster that lives and dies in a drop of
+water--carnivorous, insatiable, subsisting on the creatures minuter than
+himself--is not less deadly in his wrath, less ferocious in his nature,
+than the tiger of the desert. There may be things around us that would
+be dangerous and hostile to men, if Providence had not placed a wall
+between them and us, merely by different modifications of matter."
+
+"And think you that wall never can be removed?" asked young Glyndon,
+abruptly. "Are the traditions of sorcerer and wizard, universal and
+immemorial as they are, merely fables?"
+
+"Perhaps yes,--perhaps no," answered the stranger, indifferently. "But
+who, in an age in which the reason has chosen its proper bounds, would
+be mad enough to break the partition that divides him from the boa and
+the lion,--to repine at and rebel against the law which confines the
+shark to the great deep? Enough of these idle speculations."
+
+Here the stranger rose, summoned the attendant, paid for his sherbet,
+and, bowing slightly to the company, soon disappeared among the trees.
+
+"Who is that gentleman?" asked Glyndon, eagerly.
+
+The rest looked at each other, without replying, for some moments.
+
+"I never saw him before," said Mervale, at last.
+
+"Nor I."
+
+"Nor I."
+
+"I know him well," said the Neapolitan, who was, indeed, the Count
+Cetoxa. "If you remember, it was as my companion that he joined you.
+He visited Naples about two years ago, and has recently returned; he is
+very rich,--indeed, enormously so. A most agreeable person. I am sorry
+to hear him talk so strangely to-night; it serves to encourage the
+various foolish reports that are circulated concerning him."
+
+"And surely," said another Neapolitan, "the circumstance that occurred
+but the other day, so well known to yourself, Cetoxa, justifies the
+reports you pretend to deprecate."
+
+"Myself and my countryman," said Glyndon, "mix so little in Neapolitan
+society, that we lose much that appears well worthy of lively interest.
+May I enquire what are the reports, and what is the circumstance you
+refer to?"
+
+"As to the reports, gentlemen," said Cetoxa, courteously, addressing
+himself to the two Englishmen, "it may suffice to observe, that they
+attribute to the Signor Zanoni certain qualities which everybody desires
+for himself, but damns any one else for possessing. The incident Signor
+Belgioso alludes to, illustrates these qualities, and is, I must own,
+somewhat startling. You probably play, gentlemen?" (Here Cetoxa paused;
+and as both Englishmen had occasionally staked a few scudi at the public
+gaming-tables, they bowed assent to the conjecture.) Cetoxa continued.
+"Well, then, not many days since, and on the very day that Zanoni
+returned to Naples, it so happened that I had been playing pretty high,
+and had lost considerably. I rose from the table, resolved no longer to
+tempt fortune, when I suddenly perceived Zanoni, whose acquaintance I
+had before made (and who, I may say, was under some slight obligation to
+me), standing by, a spectator. Ere I could express my gratification at
+this unexpected recognition, he laid his hand on my arm. 'You have lost
+much,' said he; 'more than you can afford. For my part, I dislike play;
+yet I wish to have some interest in what is going on. Will you play this
+sum for me? the risk is mine,--the half profits yours.' I was startled,
+as you may suppose, at such an address; but Zanoni had an air and tone
+with him it was impossible to resist; besides, I was burning to recover
+my losses, and should not have risen had I had any money left about me.
+I told him I would accept his offer, provided we shared the risk as well
+as profits. 'As you will,' said he, smiling; 'we need have no scruple,
+for you will be sure to win.' I sat down; Zanoni stood behind me; my
+luck rose,--I invariably won. In fact, I rose from the table a rich
+man."
+
+"There can be no foul play at the public tables, especially when foul
+play would make against the bank?" This question was put by Glyndon.
+
+"Certainly not," replied the count. "But our good fortune was, indeed,
+marvellous,--so extraordinary that a Sicilian (the Sicilians are all
+ill-bred, bad-tempered fellows) grew angry and insolent. 'Sir,' said he,
+turning to my new friend, 'you have no business to stand so near to
+the table. I do not understand this; you have not acted fairly.' Zanoni
+replied, with great composure, that he had done nothing against the
+rules,--that he was very sorry that one man could not win without
+another man losing; and that he could not act unfairly, even if disposed
+to do so. The Sicilian took the stranger's mildness for apprehension,
+and blustered more loudly. In fact, he rose from the table, and
+confronted Zanoni in a manner that, to say the least of it, was
+provoking to any gentleman who has some quickness of temper, or some
+skill with the small-sword."
+
+"And," interrupted Belgioso, "the most singular part of the whole to me
+was, that this Zanoni, who stood opposite to where I sat, and whose face
+I distinctly saw, made no remark, showed no resentment. He fixed his
+eyes steadfastly on the Sicilian; never shall I forget that look! it is
+impossible to describe it,--it froze the blood in my veins. The Sicilian
+staggered back as if struck. I saw him tremble; he sank on the bench.
+And then--"
+
+"Yes, then," said Cetoxa, "to my infinite surprise, our gentleman, thus
+disarmed by a look from Zanoni, turned his whole anger upon me, THE--but
+perhaps you do not know, gentlemen, that I have some repute with my
+weapon?"
+
+"The best swordsman in Italy," said Belgioso.
+
+"Before I could guess why or wherefore," resumed Cetoxa, "I found myself
+in the garden behind the house, with Ughelli (that was the Sicilian's
+name) facing me, and five or six gentlemen, the witnesses of the duel
+about to take place, around. Zanoni beckoned me aside. 'This man will
+fall,' said he. 'When he is on the ground, go to him, and ask whether he
+will be buried by the side of his father in the church of San Gennaro?'
+'Do you then know his family?' I asked with great surprise. Zanoni made
+me no answer, and the next moment I was engaged with the Sicilian. To
+do him justice, his imbrogliato was magnificent, and a swifter lounger
+never crossed a sword; nevertheless," added Cetoxa, with a pleasing
+modesty, "he was run through the body. I went up to him; he could
+scarcely speak. 'Have you any request to make,--any affairs to settle?'
+He shook his head. 'Where would you wish to be interred?' He pointed
+towards the Sicilian coast. 'What!' said I, in surprise, 'NOT by the
+side of your father, in the church of San Gennaro?' As I spoke, his face
+altered terribly; he uttered a piercing shriek,--the blood gushed from
+his mouth, and he fell dead. The most strange part of the story is to
+come. We buried him in the church of San Gennaro. In doing so, we took
+up his father's coffin; the lid came off in moving it, and the skeleton
+was visible. In the hollow of the skull we found a very slender wire of
+sharp steel; this caused surprise and inquiry. The father, who was rich
+and a miser, had died suddenly, and been buried in haste, owing, it
+was said, to the heat of the weather. Suspicion once awakened, the
+examination became minute. The old man's servant was questioned, and at
+last confessed that the son had murdered the sire. The contrivance was
+ingenious: the wire was so slender that it pierced to the brain,
+and drew but one drop of blood, which the grey hairs concealed. The
+accomplice will be executed."
+
+"And Zanoni,--did he give evidence, did he account for--"
+
+"No," interrupted the count: "he declared that he had by accident
+visited the church that morning; that he had observed the tombstone of
+the Count Ughelli; that his guide had told him the count's son was in
+Naples,--a spendthrift and a gambler. While we were at play, he had
+heard the count mentioned by name at the table; and when the challenge
+was given and accepted, it had occurred to him to name the place of
+burial, by an instinct which he either could not or would not account
+for."
+
+"A very lame story," said Mervale.
+
+"Yes! but we Italians are superstitious,--the alleged instinct was
+regarded by many as the whisper of Providence. The next day the stranger
+became an object of universal interest and curiosity. His wealth, his
+manner of living, his extraordinary personal beauty, have assisted also
+to make him the rage; besides, I have had the pleasure in introducing so
+eminent a person to our gayest cavaliers and our fairest ladies."
+
+"A most interesting narrative," said Mervale, rising. "Come, Glyndon;
+shall we seek our hotel? It is almost daylight. Adieu, signor!"
+
+"What think you of this story?" said Glyndon, as the young men walked
+homeward.
+
+"Why, it is very clear that this Zanoni is some imposter,--some clever
+rogue; and the Neapolitan shares the booty, and puffs him off with all
+the hackneyed charlatanism of the marvellous. An unknown adventurer gets
+into society by being made an object of awe and curiosity; he is more
+than ordinarily handsome, and the women are quite content to receive him
+without any other recommendation than his own face and Cetoxa's fables."
+
+"I cannot agree with you. Cetoxa, though a gambler and a rake, is a
+nobleman of birth and high repute for courage and honour. Besides,
+this stranger, with his noble presence and lofty air,--so calm, so
+unobtrusive,--has nothing in common with the forward garrulity of an
+imposter."
+
+"My dear Glyndon, pardon me; but you have not yet acquired any knowledge
+of the world! The stranger makes the best of a fine person, and his
+grand air is but a trick of the trade. But to change the subject,--how
+advances the love affair?"
+
+"Oh, Viola could not see me to-day."
+
+"You must not marry her. What would they all say at home?"
+
+"Let us enjoy the present," said Glyndon, with vivacity; "we are young,
+rich, good-looking; let us not think of to-morrow."
+
+"Bravo, Glyndon! Here we are at the hotel. Sleep sound, and don't dream
+of Signor Zanoni."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.II.
+
+     Prende, giovine audace e impaziente,
+     L'occasione offerta avidamente.
+     "Ger. Lib.," c. vi. xxix.
+
+     (Take, youth, bold and impatient, the offered occasion eagerly.)
+
+Clarence Glyndon was a young man of fortune, not large, but easy and
+independent. His parents were dead, and his nearest relation was an
+only sister, left in England under the care of her aunt, and many years
+younger than himself. Early in life he had evinced considerable promise
+in the art of painting, and rather from enthusiasm than any pecuniary
+necessity for a profession, he determined to devote himself to a
+career in which the English artist generally commences with rapture
+and historical composition, to conclude with avaricious calculation and
+portraits of Alderman Simpkins. Glyndon was supposed by his friends to
+possess no inconsiderable genius; but it was of a rash and presumptuous
+order. He was averse from continuous and steady labour, and his ambition
+rather sought to gather the fruit than to plant the tree. In common with
+many artists in their youth, he was fond of pleasure and excitement,
+yielding with little forethought to whatever impressed his fancy or
+appealed to his passions. He had travelled through the more celebrated
+cities of Europe, with the avowed purpose and sincere resolution of
+studying the divine masterpieces of his art. But in each, pleasure had
+too often allured him from ambition, and living beauty distracted his
+worship from the senseless canvas. Brave, adventurous, vain, restless,
+inquisitive, he was ever involved in wild projects and pleasant
+dangers,--the creature of impulse and the slave of imagination.
+
+It was then the period when a feverish spirit of change was working
+its way to that hideous mockery of human aspirations, the Revolution
+of France; and from the chaos into which were already jarring the
+sanctities of the World's Venerable Belief, arose many shapeless and
+unformed chimeras. Need I remind the reader that, while that was the day
+for polished scepticism and affected wisdom, it was the day also for the
+most egregious credulity and the most mystical superstitions,--the day
+in which magnetism and magic found converts amongst the disciples of
+Diderot; when prophecies were current in every mouth; when the salon
+of a philosophical deist was converted into an Heraclea, in which
+necromancy professed to conjure up the shadows of the dead; when the
+Crosier and the Book were ridiculed, and Mesmer and Cagliostro were
+believed. In that Heliacal Rising, heralding the new sun before which
+all vapours were to vanish, stalked from their graves in the feudal
+ages all the phantoms that had flitted before the eyes of Paracelsus
+and Agrippa. Dazzled by the dawn of the Revolution, Glyndon was yet more
+attracted by its strange accompaniments; and natural it was with him, as
+with others, that the fancy which ran riot amidst the hopes of a social
+Utopia, should grasp with avidity all that promised, out of the dusty
+tracks of the beaten science, the bold discoveries of some marvellous
+Elysium.
+
+In his travels he had listened with vivid interest, at least, if
+not with implicit belief, to the wonders told of each more renowned
+Ghost-seer, and his mind was therefore prepared for the impression which
+the mysterious Zanoni at first sight had produced upon it.
+
+There might be another cause for this disposition to credulity. A
+remote ancestor of Glyndon's on the mother's side, had achieved no
+inconsiderable reputation as a philosopher and alchemist. Strange
+stories were afloat concerning this wise progenitor. He was said to
+have lived to an age far exceeding the allotted boundaries of mortal
+existence, and to have preserved to the last the appearance of middle
+life. He had died at length, it was supposed, of grief for the sudden
+death of a great-grandchild, the only creature he had ever appeared to
+love. The works of this philosopher, though rare, were extant, and found
+in the library of Glyndon's home. Their Platonic mysticism, their bold
+assertions, the high promises that might be detected through their
+figurative and typical phraseology, had early made a deep impression on
+the young imagination of Clarence Glyndon. His parents, not alive to the
+consequences of encouraging fancies which the very enlightenment of the
+age appeared to them sufficient to prevent or dispel, were fond, in the
+long winter nights, of conversing on the traditional history of this
+distinguished progenitor. And Clarence thrilled with a fearful pleasure
+when his mother playfully detected a striking likeness between the
+features of the young heir and the faded portrait of the alchemist that
+overhung their mantelpiece, and was the boast of their household and the
+admiration of their friends,--the child is, indeed, more often than we
+think for, "the father of the man."
+
+I have said that Glyndon was fond of pleasure. Facile, as genius
+ever must be, to cheerful impression, his careless artist-life, ere
+artist-life settles down to labour, had wandered from flower to flower.
+He had enjoyed, almost to the reaction of satiety, the gay revelries of
+Naples, when he fell in love with the face and voice of Viola Pisani.
+But his love, like his ambition, was vague and desultory. It did not
+satisfy his whole heart and fill up his whole nature; not from want of
+strong and noble passions, but because his mind was not yet matured and
+settled enough for their development. As there is one season for the
+blossom, another for the fruit; so it is not till the bloom of fancy
+begins to fade, that the heart ripens to the passions that the bloom
+precedes and foretells. Joyous alike at his lonely easel or amidst his
+boon companions, he had not yet known enough of sorrow to love deeply.
+For man must be disappointed with the lesser things of life before
+he can comprehend the full value of the greatest. It is the shallow
+sensualists of France, who, in their salon-language, call love "a
+folly,"--love, better understood, is wisdom. Besides, the world was too
+much with Clarence Glyndon. His ambition of art was associated with the
+applause and estimation of that miserable minority of the surface that
+we call the Public.
+
+Like those who deceive, he was ever fearful of being himself the dupe.
+He distrusted the sweet innocence of Viola. He could not venture the
+hazard of seriously proposing marriage to an Italian actress; but the
+modest dignity of the girl, and something good and generous in his own
+nature, had hitherto made him shrink from any more worldly but less
+honourable designs. Thus the familiarity between them seemed rather that
+of kindness and regard than passion. He attended the theatre; he stole
+behind the scenes to converse with her; he filled his portfolio with
+countless sketches of a beauty that charmed him as an artist as well as
+lover; and day after day he floated on through a changing sea of
+doubt and irresolution, of affection and distrust. The last, indeed,
+constantly sustained against his better reason by the sober admonitions
+of Mervale, a matter-of-fact man!
+
+The day following that eve on which this section of my story opens,
+Glyndon was riding alone by the shores of the Neapolitan sea, on the
+other side of the Cavern of Posilipo. It was past noon; the sun had lost
+its early fervour, and a cool breeze sprung up voluptuously from the
+sparkling sea. Bending over a fragment of stone near the roadside,
+he perceived the form of a man; and when he approached, he recognised
+Zanoni.
+
+The Englishman saluted him courteously. "Have you discovered some
+antique?" said he, with a smile; "they are common as pebbles on this
+road."
+
+"No," replied Zanoni; "it was but one of those antiques that have
+their date, indeed, from the beginning of the world, but which Nature
+eternally withers and renews." So saying, he showed Glyndon a small herb
+with a pale-blue flower, and then placed it carefully in his bosom.
+
+"You are an herbalist?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"It is, I am told, a study full of interest."
+
+"To those who understand it, doubtless."
+
+"Is the knowledge, then, so rare?"
+
+"Rare! The deeper knowledge is perhaps rather, among the arts, LOST to
+the modern philosophy of commonplace and surface! Do you imagine there
+was no foundation for those traditions which come dimly down from
+remoter ages,--as shells now found on the mountain-tops inform us where
+the seas have been? What was the old Colchian magic, but the minute
+study of Nature in her lowliest works? What the fable of Medea, but a
+proof of the powers that may be extracted from the germ and leaf? The
+most gifted of all the Priestcrafts, the mysterious sisterhoods of Cuth,
+concerning whose incantations Learning vainly bewilders itself amidst
+the maze of legends, sought in the meanest herbs what, perhaps, the
+Babylonian Sages explored in vain amidst the loftiest stars. Tradition
+yet tells you that there existed a race ("Plut. Symp." l. 5. c. 7.) who
+could slay their enemies from afar, without weapon, without movement.
+The herb that ye tread on may have deadlier powers than your engineers
+can give to their mightiest instruments of war. Can you guess that to
+these Italian shores, to the old Circaean Promontory, came the Wise
+from the farthest East, to search for plants and simples which your
+Pharmacists of the Counter would fling from them as weeds? The first
+herbalists--the master chemists of the world--were the tribe that
+the ancient reverence called by the name of Titans. (Syncellus, page
+14.--"Chemistry the Invention of the Giants.") I remember once, by the
+Hebrus, in the reign of -- But this talk," said Zanoni, checking himself
+abruptly, and with a cold smile, "serves only to waste your time and my
+own." He paused, looked steadily at Glyndon, and continued, "Young man,
+think you that vague curiosity will supply the place of earnest labour?
+I read your heart. You wish to know me, and not this humble herb: but
+pass on; your desire cannot be satisfied."
+
+"You have not the politeness of your countrymen," said Glyndon, somewhat
+discomposed. "Suppose I were desirous to cultivate your acquaintance,
+why should you reject my advances?"
+
+"I reject no man's advances," answered Zanoni; "I must know them if they
+so desire; but ME, in return, they can never comprehend. If you ask my
+acquaintance, it is yours; but I would warn you to shun me."
+
+"And why are you, then, so dangerous?"
+
+"On this earth, men are often, without their own agency, fated to be
+dangerous to others. If I were to predict your fortune by the vain
+calculations of the astrologer, I should tell you, in their despicable
+jargon, that my planet sat darkly in your house of life. Cross me not,
+if you can avoid it. I warn you now for the first time and last."
+
+"You despise the astrologers, yet you utter a jargon as mysterious as
+theirs. I neither gamble nor quarrel; why, then, should I fear you?"
+
+"As you will; I have done."
+
+"Let me speak frankly,--your conversation last night interested and
+perplexed me."
+
+"I know it: minds like yours are attracted by mystery."
+
+Glyndon was piqued at these words, though in the tone in which they were
+spoken there was no contempt.
+
+"I see you do not consider me worthy of your friendship. Be it so.
+Good-day!"
+
+Zanoni coldly replied to the salutation; and as the Englishman rode on,
+returned to his botanical employment.
+
+The same night, Glyndon went, as usual, to the theatre. He was standing
+behind the scenes watching Viola, who was on the stage in one of her
+most brilliant parts. The house resounded with applause. Glyndon was
+transported with a young man's passion and a young man's pride: "This
+glorious creature," thought he, "may yet be mine."
+
+He felt, while thus wrapped in delicious reverie, a slight touch upon
+his shoulder; he turned, and beheld Zanoni. "You are in danger," said
+the latter. "Do not walk home to-night; or if you do, go not alone."
+
+Before Glyndon recovered from his surprise, Zanoni disappeared; and when
+the Englishman saw him again, he was in the box of one of the Neapolitan
+nobles, where Glyndon could not follow him.
+
+Viola now left the stage, and Glyndon accosted her with an unaccustomed
+warmth of gallantry. But Viola, contrary to her gentle habit, turned
+with an evident impatience from the address of her lover. Taking aside
+Gionetta, who was her constant attendant at the theatre, she said, in an
+earnest whisper,--
+
+"Oh, Gionetta! He is here again!--the stranger of whom I spoke to
+thee!--and again, he alone, of the whole theatre, withholds from me his
+applause."
+
+"Which is he, my darling?" said the old woman, with fondness in her
+voice. "He must indeed be dull--not worth a thought."
+
+The actress drew Gionetta nearer to the stage, and pointed out to her a
+man in one of the boxes, conspicuous amongst all else by the simplicity
+of his dress, and the extraordinary beauty of his features.
+
+"Not worth a thought, Gionetta!" repeated Viola,--"Not worth a thought!
+Alas, not to think of him, seems the absence of thought itself!"
+
+The prompter summoned the Signora Pisani. "Find out his name, Gionetta,"
+said she, moving slowly to the stage, and passing by Glyndon, who gazed
+at her with a look of sorrowful reproach.
+
+The scene on which the actress now entered was that of the final
+catastrophe, wherein all her remarkable powers of voice and art were
+pre-eminently called forth. The house hung on every word with breathless
+worship; but the eyes of Viola sought only those of one calm and unmoved
+spectator; she exerted herself as if inspired. Zanoni listened, and
+observed her with an attentive gaze, but no approval escaped his lips;
+no emotion changed the expression of his cold and half-disdainful
+aspect. Viola, who was in the character of one who loved, but without
+return, never felt so acutely the part she played. Her tears were
+truthful; her passion that of nature: it was almost too terrible to
+behold. She was borne from the stage exhausted and insensible, amidst
+such a tempest of admiring rapture as Continental audiences alone can
+raise. The crowd stood up, handkerchiefs waved, garlands and flowers
+were thrown on the stage,--men wiped their eyes, and women sobbed aloud.
+
+"By heavens!" said a Neapolitan of great rank, "She has fired me beyond
+endurance. To-night--this very night--she shall be mine! You have
+arranged all, Mascari?"
+
+"All, signor. And the young Englishman?"
+
+"The presuming barbarian! As I before told thee, let him bleed for his
+folly. I will have no rival."
+
+"But an Englishman! There is always a search after the bodies of the
+English."
+
+"Fool! is not the sea deep enough, or the earth secret enough, to hide
+one dead man? Our ruffians are silent as the grave itself; and I!--who
+would dare to suspect, to arraign the Prince di --? See to it,--this
+night. I trust him to you. Robbers murder him, you understand,--the
+country swarms with them; plunder and strip him, the better to favour
+such report. Take three men; the rest shall be my escort."
+
+Mascari shrugged his shoulders, and bowed submissively.
+
+The streets of Naples were not then so safe as now, and carriages were
+both less expensive and more necessary. The vehicle which was regularly
+engaged by the young actress was not to be found. Gionetta, too aware of
+the beauty of her mistress and the number of her admirers to contemplate
+without alarm the idea of their return on foot, communicated her
+distress to Glyndon, and he besought Viola, who recovered but slowly,
+to accept his own carriage. Perhaps before that night she would not
+have rejected so slight a service. Now, for some reason or other, she
+refused. Glyndon, offended, was retiring sullenly, when Gionetta stopped
+him. "Stay, signor," said she, coaxingly: "the dear signora is not
+well,--do not be angry with her; I will make her accept your offer."
+
+Glyndon stayed, and after a few moments spent in expostulation on
+the part of Gionetta, and resistance on that of Viola, the offer was
+accepted. Gionetta and her charge entered the carriage, and Glyndon was
+left at the door of the theatre to return home on foot. The mysterious
+warning of Zanoni then suddenly occurred to him; he had forgotten it
+in the interest of his lover's quarrel with Viola. He thought it now
+advisable to guard against danger foretold by lips so mysterious.
+He looked round for some one he knew: the theatre was disgorging
+its crowds; they hustled, and jostled, and pressed upon him; but he
+recognised no familiar countenance. While pausing irresolute, he heard
+Mervale's voice calling on him, and, to his great relief, discovered his
+friend making his way through the throng.
+
+"I have secured you," said he, "a place in the Count Cetoxa's carriage.
+Come along, he is waiting for us."
+
+"How kind in you! how did you find me out?"
+
+"I met Zanoni in the passage,--'Your friend is at the door of the
+theatre,' said he; 'do not let him go home on foot to-night; the streets
+of Naples are not always safe.' I immediately remembered that some of
+the Calabrian bravos had been busy within the city the last few weeks,
+and suddenly meeting Cetoxa--but here he is."
+
+Further explanation was forbidden, for they now joined the count. As
+Glyndon entered the carriage and drew up the glass, he saw four men
+standing apart by the pavement, who seemed to eye him with attention.
+
+"Cospetto!" cried one; "that is the Englishman!" Glyndon imperfectly
+heard the exclamation as the carriage drove on. He reached home in
+safety.
+
+The familiar and endearing intimacy which always exists in Italy between
+the nurse and the child she has reared, and which the "Romeo and Juliet"
+of Shakespeare in no way exaggerates, could not but be drawn yet closer
+than usual, in a situation so friendless as that of the orphan-actress.
+In all that concerned the weaknesses of the heart, Gionetta had large
+experience; and when, three nights before, Viola, on returning from the
+theatre, had wept bitterly, the nurse had succeeded in extracting from
+her a confession that she had seen one,--not seen for two weary and
+eventful years,--but never forgotten, and who, alas! had not evinced the
+slightest recognition of herself. Gionetta could not comprehend all the
+vague and innocent emotions that swelled this sorrow; but she resolved
+them all, with her plain, blunt understanding, to the one sentiment
+of love. And here, she was well fitted to sympathise and console.
+Confidante to Viola's entire and deep heart she never could be,--for
+that heart never could have words for all its secrets. But such
+confidence as she could obtain, she was ready to repay by the most
+unreproving pity and the most ready service.
+
+"Have you discovered who he is?" asked Viola, as she was now alone in
+the carriage with Gionetta.
+
+"Yes; he is the celebrated Signor Zanoni, about whom all the great
+ladies have gone mad. They say he is so rich!--oh! so much richer than
+any of the Inglesi!--not but what the Signor Glyndon--"
+
+"Cease!" interrupted the young actress. "Zanoni! Speak of the Englishman
+no more."
+
+The carriage was now entering that more lonely and remote part of the
+city in which Viola's house was situated, when it suddenly stopped.
+
+Gionetta, in alarm, thrust her head out of the window, and perceived,
+by the pale light of the moon, that the driver, torn from his seat, was
+already pinioned in the arms of two men; the next moment the door was
+opened violently, and a tall figure, masked and mantled, appeared.
+
+"Fear not, fairest Pisani," said he, gently; "no ill shall befall you."
+As he spoke, he wound his arm round the form of the fair actress, and
+endeavoured to lift her from the carriage. But Gionetta was no ordinary
+ally,--she thrust back the assailant with a force that astonished him,
+and followed the shock by a volley of the most energetic reprobation.
+
+The mask drew back, and composed his disordered mantle.
+
+"By the body of Bacchus!" said he, half laughing, "she is well
+protected. Here, Luigi, Giovanni! seize the hag!--quick!--why loiter
+ye?"
+
+The mask retired from the door, and another and yet taller form
+presented itself. "Be calm, Viola Pisani," said he, in a low voice;
+"with me you are indeed safe!" He lifted his mask as he spoke, and
+showed the noble features of Zanoni.
+
+"Be calm, be hushed,--I can save you." He vanished, leaving Viola lost
+in surprise, agitation, and delight. There were, in all, nine masks:
+two were engaged with the driver; one stood at the head of the
+carriage-horses; a fourth guarded the well-trained steeds of the party;
+three others (besides Zanoni and the one who had first accosted Viola)
+stood apart by a carriage drawn to the side of the road. To these three
+Zanoni motioned; they advanced; he pointed towards the first mask, who
+was in fact the Prince di --, and to his unspeakable astonishment the
+prince was suddenly seized from behind.
+
+"Treason!" he cried. "Treason among my own men! What means this?"
+
+"Place him in his carriage! If he resist, his blood be on his own head!"
+said Zanoni, calmly.
+
+He approached the men who had detained the coachman.
+
+"You are outnumbered and outwitted," said he; "join your lord; you are
+three men,--we six, armed to the teeth. Thank our mercy that we spare
+your lives. Go!"
+
+The men gave way, dismayed. The driver remounted.
+
+"Cut the traces of their carriage and the bridles of their horses," said
+Zanoni, as he entered the vehicle containing Viola, which now drove on
+rapidly, leaving the discomfited ravisher in a state of rage and stupor
+impossible to describe.
+
+"Allow me to explain this mystery to you," said Zanoni. "I discovered
+the plot against you,--no matter how; I frustrated it thus: The head of
+this design is a nobleman, who has long persecuted you in vain. He
+and two of his creatures watched you from the entrance of the theatre,
+having directed six others to await him on the spot where you were
+attacked; myself and five of my servants supplied their place, and were
+mistaken for his own followers. I had previously ridden alone to the
+spot where the men were waiting, and informed them that their master
+would not require their services that night. They believed me, and
+accordingly dispersed. I then joined my own band, whom I had left in the
+rear; you know all. We are at your door."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.III.
+
+     When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
+     For all the day they view things unrespected;
+     But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
+     And, darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
+     Shakespeare.
+
+     Zanoni followed the young Neapolitan into her house; Gionetta
+     vanished,--they were left alone.
+
+Alone, in that room so often filled, in the old happy days, with the
+wild melodies of Pisani; and now, as she saw this mysterious, haunting,
+yet beautiful and stately stranger, standing on the very spot where
+she had sat at her father's feet, thrilled and spellbound,--she almost
+thought, in her fantastic way of personifying her own airy notions,
+that that spiritual Music had taken shape and life, and stood before her
+glorious in the image it assumed. She was unconscious all the while of
+her own loveliness. She had thrown aside her hood and veil; her hair,
+somewhat disordered, fell over the ivory neck which the dress partially
+displayed; and as her dark eyes swam with grateful tears, and her cheek
+flushed with its late excitement, the god of light and music himself
+never, amidst his Arcadian valleys, wooed, in his mortal guise, maiden
+or nymph more fair.
+
+Zanoni gazed at her with a look in which admiration seemed not unmingled
+with compassion. He muttered a few words to himself, and then addressed
+her aloud.
+
+"Viola, I have saved you from a great peril; not from dishonour only,
+but perhaps from death. The Prince di --, under a weak despot and a
+venal administration, is a man above the law. He is capable of every
+crime; but amongst his passions he has such prudence as belongs to
+ambition; if you were not to reconcile yourself to your shame, you would
+never enter the world again to tell your tale. The ravisher has no heart
+for repentance, but he has a hand that can murder. I have saved you,
+Viola. Perhaps you would ask me wherefore?" Zanoni paused, and smiled
+mournfully, as he added, "You will not wrong me by the thought that he
+who has preserved is not less selfish than he who would have injured.
+Orphan, I do not speak to you in the language of your wooers; enough
+that I know pity, and am not ungrateful for affection. Why blush, why
+tremble at the word? I read your heart while I speak, and I see not
+one thought that should give you shame. I say not that you love me yet;
+happily, the fancy may be roused long before the heart is touched.
+But it has been my fate to fascinate your eye, to influence your
+imagination. It is to warn you against what could bring you but sorrow,
+as I warned you once to prepare for sorrow itself, that I am now your
+guest. The Englishman, Glyndon, loves thee well,--better, perhaps, than
+I can ever love; if not worthy of thee, yet, he has but to know thee
+more to deserve thee better. He may wed thee, he may bear thee to his
+own free and happy land,--the land of thy mother's kin. Forget me; teach
+thyself to return and deserve his love; and I tell thee that thou wilt
+be honoured and be happy."
+
+Viola listened with silent, inexpressible emotion, and burning blushes,
+to this strange address, and when he had concluded, she covered her face
+with her hands, and wept. And yet, much as his words were calculated to
+humble or irritate, to produce indignation or excite shame, those were
+not the feelings with which her eyes streamed and her heart swelled. The
+woman at that moment was lost in the child; and AS a child, with all its
+exacting, craving, yet innocent desire to be loved, weeps in unrebuking
+sadness when its affection is thrown austerely back upon itself,--so,
+without anger and without shame, wept Viola.
+
+Zanoni contemplated her thus, as her graceful head, shadowed by its
+redundant tresses, bent before him; and after a moment's pause he drew
+near to her, and said, in a voice of the most soothing sweetness, and
+with a half smile upon his lip,--
+
+"Do you remember, when I told you to struggle for the light, that I
+pointed for example to the resolute and earnest tree? I did not tell
+you, fair child, to take example by the moth, that would soar to the
+star, but falls scorched beside the lamp. Come, I will talk to thee.
+This Englishman--"
+
+Viola drew herself away, and wept yet more passionately.
+
+"This Englishman is of thine own years, not far above thine own rank.
+Thou mayst share his thoughts in life,--thou mayst sleep beside him
+in the same grave in death! And I--but THAT view of the future should
+concern us not. Look into thy heart, and thou wilt see that till again
+my shadow crossed thy path, there had grown up for this thine equal a
+pure and calm affection that would have ripened into love. Hast thou
+never pictured to thyself a home in which thy partner was thy young
+wooer?"
+
+"Never!" said Viola, with sudden energy,--"never but to feel that such
+was not the fate ordained me. And, oh!" she continued, rising suddenly,
+and, putting aside the tresses that veiled her face, she fixed her eyes
+upon the questioner,--"and, oh! whoever thou art that thus wouldst read
+my soul and shape my future, do not mistake the sentiment that, that--"
+she faltered an instant, and went on with downcast eyes,--"that has
+fascinated my thoughts to thee. Do not think that I could nourish a love
+unsought and unreturned. It is not love that I feel for thee, stranger.
+Why should I? Thou hast never spoken to me but to admonish,--and now, to
+wound!" Again she paused, again her voice faltered; the tears trembled
+on her eyelids; she brushed them away and resumed. "No, not love,--if
+that be love which I have heard and read of, and sought to simulate
+on the stage,--but a more solemn, fearful, and, it seems to me, almost
+preternatural attraction, which makes me associate thee, waking or
+dreaming, with images that at once charm and awe. Thinkest thou, if it
+were love, that I could speak to thee thus; that," she raised her looks
+suddenly to his, "mine eyes could thus search and confront thine own?
+Stranger, I ask but at times to see, to hear thee! Stranger, talk not to
+me of others. Forewarn, rebuke, bruise my heart, reject the not unworthy
+gratitude it offers thee, if thou wilt, but come not always to me as
+an omen of grief and trouble. Sometimes have I seen thee in my dreams
+surrounded by shapes of glory and light; thy looks radiant with a
+celestial joy which they wear not now. Stranger, thou hast saved me, and
+I thank and bless thee! Is that also a homage thou wouldst reject?"
+With these words, she crossed her arms meekly on her bosom, and inclined
+lowlily before him. Nor did her humility seem unwomanly or abject, nor
+that of mistress to lover, of slave to master, but rather of a child to
+its guardian, of a neophyte of the old religion to her priest. Zanoni's
+brow was melancholy and thoughtful. He looked at her with a strange
+expression of kindness, of sorrow, yet of tender affection, in his eyes;
+but his lips were stern, and his voice cold, as he replied,--
+
+"Do you know what you ask, Viola? Do you guess the danger to
+yourself--perhaps to both of us--which you court? Do you know that my
+life, separated from the turbulent herd of men, is one worship of the
+Beautiful, from which I seek to banish what the Beautiful inspires in
+most? As a calamity, I shun what to man seems the fairest fate,--the
+love of the daughters of earth. At present I can warn and save thee from
+many evils; if I saw more of thee, would the power still be mine?
+You understand me not. What I am about to add, it will be easier to
+comprehend. I bid thee banish from thy heart all thought of me, but
+as one whom the Future cries aloud to thee to avoid. Glyndon, if thou
+acceptest his homage, will love thee till the tomb closes upon both. I,
+too," he added with emotion,--"I, too, might love thee!"
+
+"You!" cried Viola, with the vehemence of a sudden impulse of delight,
+of rapture, which she could not suppress; but the instant after, she
+would have given worlds to recall the exclamation.
+
+"Yes, Viola, I might love thee; but in that love what sorrow and what
+change! The flower gives perfume to the rock on whose heart it grows. A
+little while, and the flower is dead; but the rock still endures,--the
+snow at its breast, the sunshine on its summit. Pause,--think well.
+Danger besets thee yet. For some days thou shalt be safe from thy
+remorseless persecutor; but the hour soon comes when thy only security
+will be in flight. If the Englishman love thee worthily, thy honour will
+be dear to him as his own; if not, there are yet other lands where love
+will be truer, and virtue less in danger from fraud and force. Farewell;
+my own destiny I cannot foresee except through cloud and shadow. I know,
+at least, that we shall meet again; but learn ere then, sweet flower,
+that there are more genial resting-places than the rock."
+
+He turned as he spoke, and gained the outer door where Gionetta
+discreetly stood. Zanoni lightly laid his hand on her arm. With the gay
+accent of a jesting cavalier, he said,--
+
+"The Signor Glyndon woos your mistress; he may wed her. I know your love
+for her. Disabuse her of any caprice for me. I am a bird ever on the
+wing."
+
+He dropped a purse into Gionetta's hand as he spoke, and was gone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.IV.
+
+     Les Intelligences Celestes se font voir, et see communiquent plus
+     volontiers, dans le silence et dans la tranquillite de la
+     solitude.  On aura donc une petite chambre ou un cabinet secret,
+     etc.
+
+     "Les Clavicules de Rabbi Salomon," chapter 3; traduites
+     exactement du texte Hebreu par M. Pierre Morissoneau, Professeur
+     des Langues Orientales, et Sectateur de la Philosophie des Sages
+     Cabalistes.  (Manuscript Translation.)
+
+     (The Celestial Intelligences exhibit and explain themselves most
+     freely in silence and the tranquillity of solitude.  One will
+     have then a little chamber, or a secret cabinet, etc.)
+
+The palace retained by Zanoni was in one of the less frequented quarters
+of the city. It still stands, now ruined and dismantled, a monument of
+the splendour of a chivalry long since vanished from Naples, with the
+lordly races of the Norman and the Spaniard.
+
+As he entered the rooms reserved for his private hours, two Indians, in
+the dress of their country, received him at the threshold with the grave
+salutations of the East. They had accompanied him from the far lands in
+which, according to rumour, he had for many years fixed his home.
+But they could communicate nothing to gratify curiosity or justify
+suspicion. They spoke no language but their own. With the exception of
+these two his princely retinue was composed of the native hirelings of
+the city, whom his lavish but imperious generosity made the implicit
+creatures of his will. In his house, and in his habits, so far as they
+were seen, there was nothing to account for the rumours which were
+circulated abroad. He was not, as we are told of Albertus Magnus or the
+great Leonardo da Vinci, served by airy forms; and no brazen image, the
+invention of magic mechanism, communicated to him the influences of
+the stars. None of the apparatus of the alchemist--the crucible and the
+metals--gave solemnity to his chambers, or accounted for his wealth;
+nor did he even seem to interest himself in those serener studies which
+might be supposed to colour his peculiar conversation with abstract
+notions, and often with recondite learning. No books spoke to him in his
+solitude; and if ever he had drawn from them his knowledge, it seemed
+now that the only page he read was the wide one of Nature, and that
+a capacious and startling memory supplied the rest. Yet was there one
+exception to what in all else seemed customary and commonplace, and
+which, according to the authority we have prefixed to this chapter,
+might indicate the follower of the occult sciences. Whether at Rome or
+Naples, or, in fact, wherever his abode, he selected one room remote
+from the rest of the house, which was fastened by a lock scarcely larger
+than the seal of a ring, yet which sufficed to baffle the most cunning
+instruments of the locksmith: at least, one of his servants, prompted by
+irresistible curiosity, had made the attempt in vain; and though he had
+fancied it was tried in the most favourable time for secrecy,--not a
+soul near, in the dead of night, Zanoni himself absent from home,--yet
+his superstition, or his conscience, told him the reason why the next
+day the Major Domo quietly dismissed him. He compensated himself for
+this misfortune by spreading his own story, with a thousand amusing
+exaggerations. He declared that, as he approached the door, invisible
+hands seemed to pluck him away; and that when he touched the lock, he
+was struck, as by a palsy, to the ground. One surgeon, who heard the
+tale, observed, to the distaste of the wonder-mongers, that possibly
+Zanoni made a dexterous use of electricity. Howbeit, this room, once so
+secured, was never entered save by Zanoni himself.
+
+The solemn voice of Time, from the neighbouring church at last aroused
+the lord of the palace from the deep and motionless reverie, rather
+resembling a trance than thought, in which his mind was absorbed.
+
+"It is one more sand out of the mighty hour-glass," said he,
+murmuringly, "and yet time neither adds to, nor steals from, an atom in
+the Infinite! Soul of mine, the luminous, the Augoeides (Augoeides,--a
+word favoured by the mystical Platonists, sphaira psuches augoeides,
+otan mete ekteinetai epi ti, mete eso suntreche mete sunizane, alla
+photi lampetai, o ten aletheian opa ten panton, kai ten en aute.--Marc.
+Ant., lib. 2.--The sense of which beautiful sentence of the old
+philosophy, which, as Bayle well observes, in his article on Cornelius
+Agrippa, the modern Quietists have (however impotently) sought to
+imitate, is to the effect that 'the sphere of the soul is luminous when
+nothing external has contact with the soul itself; but when lit by its
+own light, it sees the truth of all things and the truth centred in
+itself.'), why descendest thou from thy sphere,--why from the eternal,
+starlike, and passionless Serene, shrinkest thou back to the mists of
+the dark sarcophagus? How long, too austerely taught that companionship
+with the things that die brings with it but sorrow in its sweetness,
+hast thou dwelt contented with thy majestic solitude?"
+
+As he thus murmured, one of the earliest birds that salute the dawn
+broke into sudden song from amidst the orange-trees in the garden below
+his casement; and as suddenly, song answered song; the mate, awakened at
+the note, gave back its happy answer to the bird. He listened; and not
+the soul he had questioned, but the heart replied. He rose, and with
+restless strides paced the narrow floor. "Away from this world!" he
+exclaimed at length, with an impatient tone. "Can no time loosen its
+fatal ties? As the attraction that holds the earth in space, is the
+attraction that fixes the soul to earth. Away from the dark grey planet!
+Break, ye fetters: arise, ye wings!"
+
+He passed through the silent galleries, and up the lofty stairs, and
+entered the secret chamber....
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.V.
+
+     I and my fellows
+     Are ministers of Fate.
+     --"The Tempest."
+
+The next day Glyndon bent his steps towards Zanoni's palace. The young
+man's imagination, naturally inflammable, was singularly excited by the
+little he had seen and heard of this strange being,--a spell, he could
+neither master nor account for, attracted him towards the stranger.
+Zanoni's power seemed mysterious and great, his motives kindly and
+benevolent, yet his manners chilling and repellent. Why at one moment
+reject Glyndon's acquaintance, at another save him from danger? How
+had Zanoni thus acquired the knowledge of enemies unknown to Glyndon
+himself? His interest was deeply roused, his gratitude appealed to; he
+resolved to make another effort to conciliate the ungracious herbalist.
+
+The signor was at home, and Glyndon was admitted into a lofty saloon,
+where in a few moments Zanoni joined him.
+
+"I am come to thank you for your warning last night," said he, "and to
+entreat you to complete my obligation by informing me of the quarter to
+which I may look for enmity and peril."
+
+"You are a gallant," said Zanoni, with a smile, and in the English
+language, "and do you know so little of the South as not to be aware
+that gallants have always rivals?"
+
+"Are you serious?" said Glyndon, colouring.
+
+"Most serious. You love Viola Pisani; you have for rival one of the most
+powerful and relentless of the Neapolitan princes. Your danger is indeed
+great."
+
+"But pardon me!--how came it known to you?"
+
+"I give no account of myself to mortal man," replied Zanoni, haughtily;
+"and to me it matters nothing whether you regard or scorn my warning."
+
+"Well, if I may not question you, be it so; but at least advise me what
+to do."
+
+"Would you follow my advice?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because you are constitutionally brave; you are fond of excitement and
+mystery; you like to be the hero of a romance. Were I to advise you to
+leave Naples, would you do so while Naples contains a foe to confront or
+a mistress to pursue?"
+
+"You are right," said the young Englishman, with energy. "No! and you
+cannot reproach me for such a resolution."
+
+"But there is another course left to you: do you love Viola Pisani truly
+and fervently?--if so, marry her, and take a bride to your native land."
+
+"Nay," answered Glyndon, embarrassed; "Viola is not of my rank. Her
+profession, too, is--in short, I am enslaved by her beauty, but I cannot
+wed her."
+
+Zanoni frowned.
+
+"Your love, then, is but selfish lust, and I advise you to your own
+happiness no more. Young man, Destiny is less inexorable than it
+appears. The resources of the great Ruler of the Universe are not so
+scanty and so stern as to deny to men the divine privilege of Free
+Will; all of us can carve out our own way, and God can make our very
+contradictions harmonise with His solemn ends. You have before you
+an option. Honourable and generous love may even now work out your
+happiness, and effect your escape; a frantic and selfish passion will
+but lead you to misery and doom."
+
+"Do you pretend, then, to read the future?"
+
+"I have said all that it pleases me to utter."
+
+"While you assume the moralist to me, Signor Zanoni," said Glyndon, with
+a smile, "are you yourself so indifferent to youth and beauty as to act
+the stoic to its allurements?"
+
+"If it were necessary that practice square with precept," said Zanoni,
+with a bitter smile, "our monitors would be but few. The conduct of the
+individual can affect but a small circle beyond himself; the permanent
+good or evil that he works to others lies rather in the sentiments he
+can diffuse. His acts are limited and momentary; his sentiments may
+pervade the universe, and inspire generations till the day of doom. All
+our virtues, all our laws, are drawn from books and maxims, which ARE
+sentiments, not from deeds. In conduct, Julian had the virtues of a
+Christian, and Constantine the vices of a Pagan. The sentiments of
+Julian reconverted thousands to Paganism; those of Constantine helped,
+under Heaven's will, to bow to Christianity the nations of the earth.
+In conduct, the humblest fisherman on yonder sea, who believes in
+the miracles of San Gennaro, may be a better man than Luther; to the
+sentiments of Luther the mind of modern Europe is indebted for the
+noblest revolution it has known. Our opinions, young Englishman, are the
+angel part of us; our acts, the earthly."
+
+"You have reflected deeply for an Italian," said Glyndon.
+
+"Who told you that I was an Italian?"
+
+"Are you not? And yet, when I hear you speak my own language as a
+native, I--"
+
+"Tush!" interrupted Zanoni, impatiently turning away. Then, after a
+pause, he resumed in a mild voice, "Glyndon, do you renounce Viola
+Pisani? Will you take some days to consider what I have said?"
+
+"Renounce her,--never!"
+
+"Then you will marry her?"
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"Be it so; she will then renounce you. I tell you that you have rivals."
+
+"Yes; the Prince di --; but I do not fear him."
+
+"You have another whom you will fear more."
+
+"And who is he?"
+
+"Myself."
+
+Glyndon turned pale, and started from his seat.
+
+"You, Signor Zanoni!--you,--and you dare to tell me so?"
+
+"Dare! Alas! there are times when I wish that I could fear."
+
+These arrogant words were not uttered arrogantly, but in a tone of the
+most mournful dejection. Glyndon was enraged, confounded, and yet
+awed. However, he had a brave English heart within his breast, and he
+recovered himself quickly.
+
+"Signor," said he, calmly, "I am not to be duped by these solemn phrases
+and these mystical assumptions. You may have powers which I cannot
+comprehend or emulate, or you may be but a keen imposter."
+
+"Well, proceed!"
+
+"I mean, then," continued Glyndon, resolutely, though somewhat
+disconcerted,--"I mean you to understand, that, though I am not to be
+persuaded or compelled by a stranger to marry Viola Pisani, I am not the
+less determined never tamely to yield her to another."
+
+Zanoni looked gravely at the young man, whose sparkling eyes and
+heightened colour testified the spirit to support his words, and
+replied, "So bold! well; it becomes you. But take my advice; wait yet
+nine days, and tell me then if you will marry the fairest and the purest
+creature that ever crossed your path."
+
+"But if you love her, why--why--"
+
+"Why am I anxious that she should wed another?--to save her from myself!
+Listen to me. That girl, humble and uneducated though she be, has in her
+the seeds of the most lofty qualities and virtues. She can be all to the
+man she loves,--all that man can desire in wife. Her soul, developed by
+affection, will elevate your own; it will influence your fortunes, exalt
+your destiny; you will become a great and a prosperous man. If, on the
+contrary, she fall to me, I know not what may be her lot; but I know
+that there is an ordeal which few can pass, and which hitherto no woman
+has survived."
+
+As Zanoni spoke, his face became colourless, and there was something in
+his voice that froze the warm blood of the listener.
+
+"What is this mystery which surrounds you?" exclaimed Glyndon, unable to
+repress his emotion. "Are you, in truth, different from other men? Have
+you passed the boundary of lawful knowledge? Are you, as some declare, a
+sorcerer, or only a--"
+
+"Hush!" interrupted Zanoni, gently, and with a smile of singular
+but melancholy sweetness; "have you earned the right to ask me these
+questions? Though Italy still boast an Inquisition, its power is
+rivelled as a leaf which the first wind shall scatter. The days of
+torture and persecution are over; and a man may live as he pleases, and
+talk as it suits him, without fear of the stake and the rack. Since I
+can defy persecution, pardon me if I do not yield to curiosity."
+
+Glyndon blushed, and rose. In spite of his love for Viola, and his
+natural terror of such a rival, he felt himself irresistibly drawn
+towards the very man he had most cause to suspect and dread. He held
+out his hand to Zanoni, saying, "Well, then, if we are to be rivals, our
+swords must settle our rights; till then I would fain be friends."
+
+"Friends! You know not what you ask."
+
+"Enigmas again!"
+
+"Enigmas!" cried Zanoni, passionately; "ay! can you dare to solve them?
+Not till then could I give you my right hand, and call you friend."
+
+"I could dare everything and all things for the attainment of superhuman
+wisdom," said Glyndon, and his countenance was lighted up with wild and
+intense enthusiasm.
+
+Zanoni observed him in thoughtful silence.
+
+"The seeds of the ancestor live in the son," he muttered; "he
+may--yet--" He broke off abruptly; then, speaking aloud, "Go, Glyndon,"
+said he; "we shall meet again, but I will not ask your answer till the
+hour presses for decision."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.VI.
+
+     'Tis certain that this man has an estate of fifty thousand
+     livres, and seems to be a person of very great accomplishments.
+     But, then, if he's a wizard, are wizards so devoutly given as
+     this man seems to be?  In short, I could make neither head nor
+     tail on't
+
+     --The Count de Gabalis, Translation affixed to the
+     second edition of the "Rape of the Lock."
+
+Of all the weaknesses which little men rail against, there is none that
+they are more apt to ridicule than the tendency to believe. And of
+all the signs of a corrupt heart and a feeble head, the tendency of
+incredulity is the surest.
+
+Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny. While we hear, every
+day, the small pretenders to science talk of the absurdities of alchemy
+and the dream of the Philosopher's Stone, a more erudite knowledge is
+aware that by alchemists the greatest discoveries in science have been
+made, and much which still seems abstruse, had we the key to the mystic
+phraseology they were compelled to adopt, might open the way to yet
+more noble acquisitions. The Philosopher's Stone itself has seemed no
+visionary chimera to some of the soundest chemists that even the present
+century has produced. (Mr. Disraeli, in his "Curiosities of Literature"
+(article "Alchem"), after quoting the sanguine judgments of modern
+chemists as to the transmutation of metals, observes of one yet greater
+and more recent than those to which Glyndon's thoughts could have
+referred, "Sir Humphry Davy told me that he did not consider this
+undiscovered art as impossible; but should it ever be discovered, it
+would certainly be useless.") Man cannot contradict the Laws of Nature.
+But are all the laws of Nature yet discovered?
+
+"Give me a proof of your art," says the rational inquirer. "When I have
+seen the effect, I will endeavour, with you, to ascertain the causes."
+
+Somewhat to the above effect were the first thoughts of Clarence Glyndon
+on quitting Zanoni. But Clarence Glyndon was no "rational inquirer." The
+more vague and mysterious the language of Zanoni, the more it imposed
+upon him. A proof would have been something tangible, with which he
+would have sought to grapple. And it would have only disappointed his
+curiosity to find the supernatural reduced to Nature. He endeavoured in
+vain, at some moments rousing himself from credulity to the scepticism
+he deprecated, to reconcile what he had heard with the probable motives
+and designs of an imposter. Unlike Mesmer and Cagliostro, Zanoni,
+whatever his pretensions, did not make them a source of profit; nor was
+Glyndon's position or rank in life sufficient to render any influence
+obtained over his mind, subservient to schemes, whether of avarice or
+ambition. Yet, ever and anon, with the suspicion of worldly knowledge,
+he strove to persuade himself that Zanoni had at least some sinister
+object in inducing him to what his English pride and manner of thought
+considered a derogatory marriage with the poor actress. Might not Viola
+and the Mystic be in league with each other? Might not all this jargon
+of prophecy and menace be but artifices to dupe him?
+
+He felt an unjust resentment towards Viola at having secured such an
+ally. But with that resentment was mingled a natural jealousy. Zanoni
+threatened him with rivalry. Zanoni, who, whatever his character or his
+arts, possessed at least all the external attributes that dazzle and
+command. Impatient of his own doubts, he plunged into the society of
+such acquaintances as he had made at Naples--chiefly artists, like
+himself, men of letters, and the rich commercialists, who were already
+vying with the splendour, though debarred from the privileges, of the
+nobles. From these he heard much of Zanoni, already with them, as with
+the idler classes, an object of curiosity and speculation.
+
+He had noticed, as a thing remarkable, that Zanoni had conversed with
+him in English, and with a command of the language so complete that he
+might have passed for a native. On the other hand, in Italian, Zanoni
+was equally at ease. Glyndon found that it was the same in languages
+less usually learned by foreigners. A painter from Sweden, who had
+conversed with him, was positive that he was a Swede; and a merchant
+from Constantinople, who had sold some of his goods to Zanoni, professed
+his conviction that none but a Turk, or at least a native of the East,
+could have so thoroughly mastered the soft Oriental intonations. Yet
+in all these languages, when they came to compare their several
+recollections, there was a slight, scarce perceptible distinction, not
+in pronunciation, nor even accent, but in the key and chime, as it were,
+of the voice, between himself and a native. This faculty was one which
+Glyndon called to mind, that sect, whose tenets and powers have never
+been more than most partially explored, the Rosicrucians, especially
+arrogated. He remembered to have heard in Germany of the work of John
+Bringeret (Printed in 1615.), asserting that all the languages of the
+earth were known to the genuine Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. Did
+Zanoni belong to this mystical Fraternity, who, in an earlier age,
+boasted of secrets of which the Philosopher's Stone was but the least;
+who considered themselves the heirs of all that the Chaldeans, the Magi,
+the Gymnosophists, and the Platonists had taught; and who differed from
+all the darker Sons of Magic in the virtue of their lives, the purity of
+their doctrines, and their insisting, as the foundation of all wisdom,
+on the subjugation of the senses, and the intensity of Religious
+Faith?--a glorious sect, if they lied not! And, in truth, if Zanoni
+had powers beyond the race of worldly sages, they seemed not unworthily
+exercised. The little known of his life was in his favour. Some acts,
+not of indiscriminate, but judicious generosity and beneficence, were
+recorded; in repeating which, still, however, the narrators shook their
+heads, and expressed surprise how a stranger should have possessed so
+minute a knowledge of the quiet and obscure distresses he had relieved.
+Two or three sick persons, when abandoned by their physicians, he had
+visited, and conferred with alone. They had recovered: they ascribed to
+him their recovery; yet they could not tell by what medicines they had
+been healed. They could only depose that he came, conversed with them,
+and they were cured; it usually, however, happened that a deep sleep had
+preceded the recovery.
+
+Another circumstance was also beginning to be remarked, and spoke yet
+more in his commendation. Those with whom he principally associated--the
+gay, the dissipated, the thoughtless, the sinners and publicans of the
+more polished world--all appeared rapidly, yet insensibly to themselves,
+to awaken to purer thoughts and more regulated lives. Even Cetoxa, the
+prince of gallants, duellists, and gamesters, was no longer the same man
+since the night of the singular events which he had related to
+Glyndon. The first trace of his reform was in his retirement from the
+gaming-houses; the next was his reconciliation with an hereditary enemy
+of his house, whom it had been his constant object for the last six
+years to entangle in such a quarrel as might call forth his inimitable
+manoeuvre of the stoccata. Nor when Cetoxa and his young companions were
+heard to speak of Zanoni, did it seem that this change had been brought
+about by any sober lectures or admonitions. They all described Zanoni as
+a man keenly alive to enjoyment: of manners the reverse of formal,--not
+precisely gay, but equable, serene, and cheerful; ever ready to listen
+to the talk of others, however idle, or to charm all ears with an
+inexhaustible fund of brilliant anecdote and worldly experience. All
+manners, all nations, all grades of men, seemed familiar to him. He was
+reserved only if allusion were ever ventured to his birth or history.
+
+The more general opinion of his origin certainly seemed the more
+plausible. His riches, his familiarity with the languages of the East,
+his residence in India, a certain gravity which never deserted his most
+cheerful and familiar hours, the lustrous darkness of his eyes and hair,
+and even the peculiarities of his shape, in the delicate smallness of
+the hands, and the Arab-like turn of the stately head, appeared to fix
+him as belonging to one at least of the Oriental races. And a dabbler
+in the Eastern tongues even sought to reduce the simple name of Zanoni,
+which a century before had been borne by an inoffensive naturalist of
+Bologna (The author of two works on botany and rare plants.), to the
+radicals of the extinct language. Zan was unquestionably the Chaldean
+appellation for the sun. Even the Greeks, who mutilated every Oriental
+name, had retained the right one in this case, as the Cretan inscription
+on the tomb of Zeus (Ode megas keitai Zan.--"Cyril contra Julian." (Here
+lies great Jove.)) significantly showed. As to the rest, the Zan, or
+Zaun, was, with the Sidonians, no uncommon prefix to On. Adonis was but
+another name for Zanonas, whose worship in Sidon Hesychius records. To
+this profound and unanswerable derivation Mervale listened with great
+attention, and observed that he now ventured to announce an erudite
+discovery he himself had long since made,--namely, that the numerous
+family of Smiths in England were undoubtedly the ancient priests of the
+Phrygian Apollo. "For," said he, "was not Apollo's surname, in
+Phrygia, Smintheus? How clear all the ensuing corruptions of the august
+name,--Smintheus, Smitheus, Smithe, Smith! And even now, I may remark
+that the more ancient branches of that illustrious family, unconsciously
+anxious to approximate at least by a letter nearer to the true title,
+take a pious pleasure in writing their names Smith_e_!"
+
+The philologist was much struck with this discovery, and begged
+Mervale's permission to note it down as an illustration suitable to a
+work he was about to publish on the origin of languages, to be called
+"Babel," and published in three quartos by subscription.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.VII.
+
+     Learn to be poor in spirit, my son, if you would penetrate that
+     sacred night which environs truth.  Learn of the Sages to allow
+     to the Devils no power in Nature, since the fatal stone has shut
+     'em up in the depth of the abyss.  Learn of the Philosophers
+     always to look for natural causes in all extraordinary events;
+     and when such natural causes are wanting, recur to God.--The
+     Count de Gabalis.
+
+All these additions to his knowledge of Zanoni, picked up in the various
+lounging-places and resorts that he frequented, were unsatisfactory to
+Glyndon. That night Viola did not perform at the theatre; and the next
+day, still disturbed by bewildered fancies, and averse to the sober and
+sarcastic companionship of Mervale, Glyndon sauntered musingly into the
+public gardens, and paused under the very tree under which he had
+first heard the voice that had exercised upon his mind so singular an
+influence. The gardens were deserted. He threw himself on one of the
+seats placed beneath the shade; and again, in the midst of his reverie,
+the same cold shudder came over him which Zanoni had so distinctly
+defined, and to which he had ascribed so extraordinary a cause.
+
+He roused himself with a sudden effort, and started to see, seated next
+him, a figure hideous enough to have personated one of the malignant
+beings of whom Zanoni had spoken. It was a small man, dressed in a
+fashion strikingly at variance with the elaborate costume of the day:
+an affectation of homeliness and poverty approaching to squalor, in
+the loose trousers, coarse as a ship's sail; in the rough jacket, which
+appeared rent wilfully into holes; and the black, ragged, tangled locks
+that streamed from their confinement under a woollen cap, accorded but
+ill with other details which spoke of comparative wealth. The shirt,
+open at the throat, was fastened by a brooch of gaudy stones; and two
+pendent massive gold chains announced the foppery of two watches.
+
+The man's figure, if not absolutely deformed, was yet marvellously
+ill-favoured; his shoulders high and square; his chest flattened, as if
+crushed in; his gloveless hands were knotted at the joints, and, large,
+bony, and muscular, dangled from lean, emaciated wrists, as if not
+belonging to them. His features had the painful distortion sometimes
+seen in the countenance of a cripple,--large, exaggerated, with the nose
+nearly touching the chin; the eyes small, but glowing with a cunning
+fire as they dwelt on Glyndon; and the mouth was twisted into a grin
+that displayed rows of jagged, black, broken teeth. Yet over this
+frightful face there still played a kind of disagreeable intelligence,
+an expression at once astute and bold; and as Glyndon, recovering from
+the first impression, looked again at his neighbour, he blushed at his
+own dismay, and recognised a French artist, with whom he had formed an
+acquaintance, and who was possessed of no inconsiderable talents in his
+calling.
+
+Indeed, it was to be remarked that this creature, whose externals were
+so deserted by the Graces, particularly delighted in designs aspiring to
+majesty and grandeur. Though his colouring was hard and shallow, as
+was that generally of the French school at the time, his DRAWINGS were
+admirable for symmetry, simple elegance, and classic vigour; at the same
+time they unquestionably wanted ideal grace. He was fond of selecting
+subjects from Roman history, rather than from the copious world of
+Grecian beauty, or those still more sublime stories of scriptural record
+from which Raphael and Michael Angelo borrowed their inspirations. His
+grandeur was that not of gods and saints, but mortals. His delineation
+of beauty was that which the eye cannot blame and the soul does
+not acknowledge. In a word, as it was said of Dionysius, he was an
+Anthropographos, or Painter of Men. It was also a notable contradiction
+in this person, who was addicted to the most extravagant excesses in
+every passion, whether of hate or love, implacable in revenge, and
+insatiable in debauch, that he was in the habit of uttering the most
+beautiful sentiments of exalted purity and genial philanthropy. The
+world was not good enough for him; he was, to use the expressive German
+phrase, A WORLD-BETTERER! Nevertheless, his sarcastic lip often seemed
+to mock the sentiments he uttered, as if it sought to insinuate that he
+was above even the world he would construct.
+
+Finally, this painter was in close correspondence with the Republicans
+of Paris, and was held to be one of those missionaries whom, from the
+earliest period of the Revolution, the regenerators of mankind were
+pleased to despatch to the various states yet shackled, whether by
+actual tyranny or wholesome laws. Certainly, as the historian of Italy
+(Botta.) has observed, there was no city in Italy where these new
+doctrines would be received with greater favour than Naples, partly from
+the lively temper of the people, principally because the most hateful
+feudal privileges, however partially curtailed some years before by the
+great minister, Tanuccini, still presented so many daily and practical
+evils as to make change wear a more substantial charm than the mere and
+meretricious bloom on the cheek of the harlot, Novelty. This man, whom
+I will call Jean Nicot, was, therefore, an oracle among the younger and
+bolder spirits of Naples; and before Glyndon had met Zanoni, the former
+had not been among the least dazzled by the eloquent aspirations of the
+hideous philanthropist.
+
+"It is so long since we have met, cher confrere," said Nicot, drawing
+his seat nearer to Glyndon's, "that you cannot be surprised that I
+see you with delight, and even take the liberty to intrude on your
+meditations.
+
+"They were of no agreeable nature," said Glyndon; "and never was
+intrusion more welcome."
+
+"You will be charmed to hear," said Nicot, drawing several letters
+from his bosom, "that the good work proceeds with marvellous rapidity.
+Mirabeau, indeed, is no more; but, mort Diable! the French people are
+now a Mirabeau themselves." With this remark, Monsieur Nicot proceeded
+to read and to comment upon several animated and interesting passages in
+his correspondence, in which the word virtue was introduced twenty-seven
+times, and God not once. And then, warmed by the cheering prospects thus
+opened to him, he began to indulge in those anticipations of the future,
+the outline of which we have already seen in the eloquent extravagance
+of Condorcet. All the old virtues were dethroned for a new Pantheon:
+patriotism was a narrow sentiment; philanthropy was to be its successor.
+No love that did not embrace all mankind, as warm for Indus and the
+Pole as for the hearth of home, was worthy the breast of a generous
+man. Opinion was to be free as air; and in order to make it so, it was
+necessary to exterminate all those whose opinions were not the same as
+Mons. Jean Nicot's. Much of this amused, much revolted Glyndon; but when
+the painter turned to dwell upon a science that all should comprehend,
+and the results of which all should enjoy,--a science that, springing
+from the soil of equal institutions and equal mental cultivation, should
+give to all the races of men wealth without labour, and a life longer
+than the Patriarchs', without care,--then Glyndon listened with interest
+and admiration, not unmixed with awe. "Observe," said Nicot, "how much
+that we now cherish as a virtue will then be rejected as meanness. Our
+oppressors, for instance, preach to us of the excellence of gratitude.
+Gratitude, the confession of inferiority! What so hateful to a noble
+spirit as the humiliating sense of obligation? But where there is
+equality there can be no means for power thus to enslave merit. The
+benefactor and the client will alike cease, and--"
+
+"And in the mean time," said a low voice, at hand,--"in the mean time,
+Jean Nicot?"
+
+The two artists started, and Glyndon recognised Zanoni.
+
+He gazed with a brow of unusual sternness on Nicot, who, lumped together
+as he sat, looked up at him askew, and with an expression of fear and
+dismay upon his distorted countenance.
+
+Ho, ho! Messire Jean Nicot, thou who fearest neither God nor Devil, why
+fearest thou the eye of a man?
+
+"It is not the first time I have been a witness to your opinions on the
+infirmity of gratitude," said Zanoni.
+
+Nicot suppressed an exclamation, and, after gloomily surveying Zanoni
+with an eye villanous and sinister, but full of hate impotent and
+unutterable, said, "I know you not,--what would you of me?"
+
+"Your absence. Leave us!"
+
+Nicot sprang forward a step, with hands clenched, and showing his teeth
+from ear to ear, like a wild beast incensed. Zanoni stood motionless,
+and smiled at him in scorn. Nicot halted abruptly, as if fixed and
+fascinated by the look, shivered from head to foot, and sullenly, and
+with a visible effort, as if impelled by a power not his own, turned
+away.
+
+Glyndon's eyes followed him in surprise.
+
+"And what know you of this man?" said Zanoni.
+
+"I know him as one like myself,--a follower of art."
+
+"Of ART! Do not so profane that glorious word. What Nature is to God,
+art should be to man,--a sublime, beneficent, genial, and warm creation.
+That wretch may be a PAINTER, not an ARTIST."
+
+"And pardon me if I ask what YOU know of one you thus disparage?"
+
+"I know thus much, that you are beneath my care if it be necessary to
+warn you against him; his own lips show the hideousness of his heart.
+Why should I tell you of the crimes he has committed? He SPEAKS crime!"
+
+"You do not seem, Signor Zanoni, to be one of the admirers of the
+dawning Revolution. Perhaps you are prejudiced against the man because
+you dislike the opinions?"
+
+"What opinions?"
+
+Glyndon paused, somewhat puzzled to define; but at length he said, "Nay,
+I must wrong you; for you, of all men, I suppose, cannot discredit the
+doctrine that preaches the infinite improvement of the human species."
+
+"You are right; the few in every age improve the many; the many now may
+be as wise as the few were; but improvement is at a standstill, if you
+tell me that the many now are as wise as the few ARE."
+
+"I comprehend you; you will not allow the law of universal equality!"
+
+"Law! If the whole world conspired to enforce the falsehood they could
+not make it LAW. Level all conditions to-day, and you only smooth away
+all obstacles to tyranny to-morrow. A nation that aspires to EQUALITY
+is unfit for FREEDOM. Throughout all creation, from the archangel to the
+worm, from Olympus to the pebble, from the radiant and completed planet
+to the nebula that hardens through ages of mist and slime into the
+habitable world, the first law of Nature is inequality."
+
+"Harsh doctrine, if applied to states. Are the cruel disparities of life
+never to be removed?"
+
+"Disparities of the PHYSICAL life? Oh, let us hope so. But disparities
+of the INTELLECTUAL and the MORAL, never! Universal equality of
+intelligence, of mind, of genius, of virtue!--no teacher left to the
+world! no men wiser, better than others,--were it not an impossible
+condition, WHAT A HOPELESS PROSPECT FOR HUMANITY! No, while the world
+lasts, the sun will gild the mountain-top before it shines upon the
+plain. Diffuse all the knowledge the earth contains equally over all
+mankind to-day, and some men will be wiser than the rest to-morrow. And
+THIS is not a harsh, but a loving law,--the REAL law of improvement;
+the wiser the few in one generation, the wiser will be the multitude the
+next!"
+
+As Zanoni thus spoke, they moved on through the smiling gardens, and the
+beautiful bay lay sparkling in the noontide. A gentle breeze just cooled
+the sunbeam, and stirred the ocean; and in the inexpressible clearness
+of the atmosphere there was something that rejoiced the senses. The very
+soul seemed to grow lighter and purer in that lucid air.
+
+"And these men, to commence their era of improvement and equality, are
+jealous even of the Creator. They would deny an intelligence,--a God!"
+said Zanoni, as if involuntarily. "Are you an artist, and, looking on
+the world, can you listen to such a dogma? Between God and genius there
+is a necessary link,--there is almost a correspondent language. Well
+said the Pythagorean (Sextus, the Pythagorean.), 'A good intellect is
+the chorus of divinity.'"
+
+Struck and touched with these sentiments, which he little expected to
+fall from one to whom he ascribed those powers which the superstitions
+of childhood ascribe to the darker agencies, Glyndon said: "And yet you
+have confessed that your life, separated from that of others, is one
+that man should dread to share. Is there, then, a connection between
+magic and religion?"
+
+"Magic!" And what is magic! When the traveller beholds in Persia the
+ruins of palaces and temples, the ignorant inhabitants inform him they
+were the work of magicians. What is beyond their own power, the vulgar
+cannot comprehend to be lawfully in the power of others. But if by
+magic you mean a perpetual research amongst all that is more latent and
+obscure in Nature, I answer, I profess that magic, and that he who does
+so comes but nearer to the fountain of all belief. Knowest thou not that
+magic was taught in the schools of old? But how, and by whom? As the
+last and most solemn lesson, by the Priests who ministered to the
+Temple. (Psellus de Daemon (MS.)) And you, who would be a painter, is
+not there a magic also in that art you would advance? Must you not,
+after long study of the Beautiful that has been, seize upon new and airy
+combinations of a beauty that is to be? See you not that the grander
+art, whether of poet or of painter, ever seeking for the TRUE, abhors
+the REAL; that you must seize Nature as her master, not lackey her as
+her slave?
+
+"You demand mastery over the past, a conception of the future. Has not
+the art that is truly noble for its domain the future and the past? You
+would conjure the invisible beings to your charm; and what is painting
+but the fixing into substance the Invisible? Are you discontented with
+this world? This world was never meant for genius! To exist, it must
+create another. What magician can do more; nay, what science can do
+as much? There are two avenues from the little passions and the drear
+calamities of earth; both lead to heaven and away from hell,--art and
+science. But art is more godlike than science; science discovers, art
+creates. You have faculties that may command art; be contented with your
+lot. The astronomer who catalogues the stars cannot add one atom to the
+universe; the poet can call a universe from the atom; the chemist may
+heal with his drugs the infirmities of the human form; the painter,
+or the sculptor, fixes into everlasting youth forms divine, which
+no disease can ravage, and no years impair. Renounce those wandering
+fancies that lead you now to myself, and now to yon orator of the human
+race; to us two, who are the antipodes of each other! Your pencil is
+your wand; your canvas may raise Utopias fairer than Condorcet dreams
+of. I press not yet for your decision; but what man of genius ever asked
+more to cheer his path to the grave than love and glory?"
+
+"But," said Glyndon, fixing his eyes earnestly on Zanoni, "if there be a
+power to baffle the grave itself--"
+
+Zanoni's brow darkened. "And were this so," he said, after a pause,
+"would it be so sweet a lot to outlive all you loved, and to recoil from
+every human tie? Perhaps the fairest immortality on earth is that of a
+noble name."
+
+"You do not answer me,--you equivocate. I have read of the long lives
+far beyond the date common experience assigns to man," persisted
+Glyndon, "which some of the alchemists enjoyed. Is the golden elixir but
+a fable?"
+
+"If not, and these men discovered it, they died, because they refused to
+live! There may be a mournful warning in your conjecture. Turn once more
+to the easel and the canvas!"
+
+So saying, Zanoni waved his hand, and, with downcast eyes and a slow
+step, bent his way back into the city.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.VIII.
+
+     The Goddess Wisdom.
+
+     To some she is the goddess great;
+     To some the milch cow of the field;
+     Their care is but to calculate
+     What butter she will yield.
+     From Schiller.
+
+This last conversation with Zanoni left upon the mind of Glyndon a
+tranquillising and salutary effect.
+
+From the confused mists of his fancy glittered forth again those happy,
+golden schemes which part from the young ambition of art, to play in the
+air, to illumine the space like rays that kindle from the sun. And with
+these projects mingled also the vision of a love purer and serener than
+his life yet had known. His mind went back into that fair childhood of
+genius, when the forbidden fruit is not yet tasted, and we know of no
+land beyond the Eden which is gladdened by an Eve. Insensibly before
+him there rose the scenes of a home, with his art sufficing for all
+excitement, and Viola's love circling occupation with happiness and
+content; and in the midst of these fantasies of a future that might
+be at his command, he was recalled to the present by the clear, strong
+voice of Mervale, the man of common-sense.
+
+Whoever has studied the lives of persons in whom the imagination is
+stronger than the will, who suspect their own knowledge of actual life,
+and are aware of their facility to impressions, will have observed the
+influence which a homely, vigorous, worldly understanding obtains over
+such natures. It was thus with Glyndon. His friend had often extricated
+him from danger, and saved him from the consequences of imprudence; and
+there was something in Mervale's voice alone that damped his enthusiasm,
+and often made him yet more ashamed of noble impulses than weak conduct.
+For Mervale, though a downright honest man, could not sympathise with
+the extravagance of generosity any more than with that of presumption
+and credulity. He walked the straight line of life, and felt an equal
+contempt for the man who wandered up the hill-sides, no matter whether
+to chase a butterfly, or to catch a prospect of the ocean.
+
+"I will tell you your thoughts, Clarence," said Mervale, laughing,
+"though I am no Zanoni. I know them by the moisture of your eyes,
+and the half-smile on your lips. You are musing upon that fair
+perdition,--the little singer of San Carlo."
+
+The little singer of San Carlo! Glyndon coloured as he answered,--
+
+"Would you speak thus of her if she were my wife?"
+
+"No! for then any contempt I might venture to feel would be for
+yourself. One may dislike the duper, but it is the dupe that one
+despises."
+
+"Are you sure that I should be the dupe in such a union? Where can I
+find one so lovely and so innocent,--where one whose virtue has been
+tried by such temptation? Does even a single breath of slander sully the
+name of Viola Pisani?"
+
+"I know not all the gossip of Naples, and therefore cannot answer; but I
+know this, that in England no one would believe that a young Englishman,
+of good fortune and respectable birth, who marries a singer from the
+theatre of Naples, has not been lamentably taken in. I would save you
+from a fall of position so irretrievable. Think how many mortifications
+you will be subjected to; how many young men will visit at your
+house,--and how many young wives will as carefully avoid it."
+
+"I can choose my own career, to which commonplace society is not
+essential. I can owe the respect of the world to my art, and not to the
+accidents of birth and fortune."
+
+"That is, you still persist in your second folly,--the absurd ambition
+of daubing canvas. Heaven forbid I should say anything against the
+laudable industry of one who follows such a profession for the sake of
+subsistence; but with means and connections that will raise you in life,
+why voluntarily sink into a mere artist? As an accomplishment in leisure
+moments, it is all very well in its way; but as the occupation of
+existence, it is a frenzy."
+
+"Artists have been the friends of princes."
+
+"Very rarely so, I fancy, in sober England. There in the great centre of
+political aristocracy, what men respect is the practical, not the ideal.
+Just suffer me to draw two pictures of my own. Clarence Glyndon returns
+to England; he marries a lady of fortune equal to his own, of friends
+and parentage that advance rational ambition. Clarence Glyndon, thus a
+wealthy and respectable man, of good talents, of bustling energies then
+concentrated, enters into practical life. He has a house at which he can
+receive those whose acquaintance is both advantage and honour; he has
+leisure which he can devote to useful studies; his reputation, built on
+a solid base, grows in men's mouths. He attaches himself to a party; he
+enters political life; and new connections serve to promote his objects.
+At the age of five-and-forty, what, in all probability, may Clarence
+Glyndon be? Since you are ambitious I leave that question for you to
+decide! Now turn to the other picture. Clarence Glyndon returns to
+England with a wife who can bring him no money, unless he lets her out
+on the stage; so handsome, that every one asks who she is, and every one
+hears,--the celebrated singer, Pisani. Clarence Glyndon shuts himself
+up to grind colours and paint pictures in the grand historical school,
+which nobody buys. There is even a prejudice against him, as not having
+studied in the Academy,--as being an amateur. Who is Mr. Clarence
+Glyndon? Oh, the celebrated Pisani's husband! What else? Oh, he exhibits
+those large pictures! Poor man! they have merit in their way; but
+Teniers and Watteau are more convenient, and almost as cheap. Clarence
+Glyndon, with an easy fortune while single, has a large family which his
+fortune, unaided by marriage, can just rear up to callings more plebeian
+than his own. He retires into the country, to save and to paint; he
+grows slovenly and discontented; 'the world does not appreciate him,'
+he says, and he runs away from the world. At the age of forty-five
+what will be Clarence Glyndon? Your ambition shall decide that question
+also!"
+
+"If all men were as worldly as you," said Glyndon, rising, "there would
+never have been an artist or a poet!"
+
+"Perhaps we should do just as well without them," answered Mervale. "Is
+it not time to think of dinner? The mullets here are remarkably fine!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.IX.
+
+     Wollt ihr hoch auf ihren Flugeln schweben,
+     Werft die Angst des Irdischen von euch!
+     Fliehet aus dem engen dumpfen Leben
+     In des Ideales Reich!
+     "Das Ideal und das Leben."
+
+     Wouldst thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing?
+     Cast off the earthly burden of the Real;
+     High from this cramped and dungeoned being, spring
+     Into the realm of the Ideal.
+
+As some injudicious master lowers and vitiates the taste of the student
+by fixing his attention to what he falsely calls the Natural, but which,
+in reality, is the Commonplace, and understands not that beauty in
+art is created by what Raphael so well describes,--namely, THE IDEA OF
+BEAUTY IN THE PAINTER'S OWN MIND; and that in every art, whether its
+plastic expression be found in words or marble, colours or sounds, the
+servile imitation of Nature is the work of journeymen and tyros,--so in
+conduct the man of the world vitiates and lowers the bold enthusiasm of
+loftier natures by the perpetual reduction of whatever is generous and
+trustful to all that is trite and coarse. A great German poet has well
+defined the distinction between discretion and the larger wisdom. In the
+last there is a certain rashness which the first disdains,--
+
+"The purblind see but the receding shore, Not that to which the bold
+wave wafts them o'er."
+
+Yet in this logic of the prudent and the worldly there is often a
+reasoning unanswerable of its kind.
+
+You must have a feeling,--a faith in whatever is self-sacrificing
+and divine, whether in religion or in art, in glory or in love; or
+Common-sense will reason you out of the sacrifice, and a syllogism will
+debase the Divine to an article in the market.
+
+Every true critic in art, from Aristotle and Pliny, from Winkelman and
+Vasari to Reynolds and Fuseli, has sought to instruct the painter that
+Nature is not to be copied, but EXALTED; that the loftiest order of art,
+selecting only the loftiest combinations, is the perpetual struggle of
+Humanity to approach the gods. The great painter, as the great author,
+embodies what is POSSIBLE to MAN, it is true, but what is not COMMON
+to MANKIND. There is truth in Hamlet; in Macbeth, and his witches; in
+Desdemona; in Othello; in Prospero, and in Caliban; there is truth in
+the cartoons of Raphael; there is truth in the Apollo, the Antinous,
+and the Laocoon. But you do not meet the originals of the words, the
+cartoons, or the marble, in Oxford Street or St. James's. All these, to
+return to Raphael, are the creatures of the idea in the artist's mind.
+This idea is not inborn, it has come from an intense study. But that
+study has been of the ideal that can be raised from the positive and
+the actual into grandeur and beauty. The commonest model becomes full of
+exquisite suggestions to him who has formed this idea; a Venus of flesh
+and blood would be vulgarised by the imitation of him who has not.
+
+When asked where he got his models, Guido summoned a common porter from
+his calling, and drew from a mean original a head of surpassing beauty.
+It resembled the porter, but idealised the porter to the hero. It was
+true, but it was not real. There are critics who will tell you that the
+Boor of Teniers is more true to Nature than the Porter of Guido! The
+commonplace public scarcely understand the idealising principle, even in
+art; for high art is an acquired taste.
+
+But to come to my comparison. Still less is the kindred principle
+comprehended in conduct. And the advice of worldly prudence would as
+often deter from the risks of virtue as from the punishments of vice;
+yet in conduct, as in art, there is an idea of the great and beautiful,
+by which men should exalt the hackneyed and the trite of life. Now
+Glyndon felt the sober prudence of Mervale's reasonings; he recoiled
+from the probable picture placed before him, in his devotion to the one
+master-talent he possessed, and the one master-passion that, rightly
+directed, might purify his whole being as a strong wind purifies the
+air.
+
+But though he could not bring himself to decide in the teeth of so
+rational a judgment, neither could he resolve at once to abandon the
+pursuit of Viola. Fearful of being influenced by Zanoni's counsels and
+his own heart, he had for the last two days shunned an interview with
+the young actress. But after a night following his last conversation
+with Zanoni, and that we have just recorded with Mervale,--a night
+coloured by dreams so distinct as to seem prophetic, dreams that
+appeared so to shape his future according to the hints of Zanoni that he
+could have fancied Zanoni himself had sent them from the house of sleep
+to haunt his pillow,--he resolved once more to seek Viola; and though
+without a definite or distinct object, he yielded himself up to the
+impulse of his heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.X.
+
+     O sollecito dubbio e fredda tema
+     Che pensando l'accresci.
+     Tasso, Canzone vi.
+
+     (O anxious doubt and chilling fear that grows by thinking.)
+
+She was seated outside her door,--the young actress! The sea before her
+in that heavenly bay seemed literally to sleep in the arms of the shore;
+while, to the right, not far off, rose the dark and tangled crags to
+which the traveller of to-day is duly brought to gaze on the tomb of
+Virgil, or compare with the cavern of Posilipo the archway of Highgate
+Hill. There were a few fisherman loitering by the cliffs, on which their
+nets were hung to dry; and at a distance the sound of some rustic pipe
+(more common at that day than at this), mingled now and then with the
+bells of the lazy mules, broke the voluptuous silence,--the silence of
+declining noon on the shores of Naples; never, till you have enjoyed it,
+never, till you have felt its enervating but delicious charm, believe
+that you can comprehend all the meaning of the Dolce far niente (The
+pleasure of doing nothing.); and when that luxury has been known, when
+you have breathed that atmosphere of fairy-land, then you will no longer
+wonder why the heart ripens into fruit so sudden and so rich beneath the
+rosy skies and the glorious sunshine of the South.
+
+The eyes of the actress were fixed on the broad blue deep beyond. In the
+unwonted negligence of her dress might be traced the abstraction of her
+mind. Her beautiful hair was gathered up loosely, and partially bandaged
+by a kerchief whose purple colour served to deepen the golden hue of her
+tresses. A stray curl escaped and fell down the graceful neck. A loose
+morning-robe, girded by a sash, left the breeze. That came ever and anon
+from the sea, to die upon the bust half disclosed; and the tiny slipper,
+that Cinderella might have worn, seemed a world too wide for the tiny
+foot which it scarcely covered. It might be the heat of the day that
+deepened the soft bloom of the cheeks, and gave an unwonted languor to
+the large, dark eyes. In all the pomp of her stage attire,--in all the
+flush of excitement before the intoxicating lamps,--never had Viola
+looked so lovely.
+
+By the side of the actress, and filling up the threshold,--stood
+Gionetta, with her arms thrust to the elbow in two huge pockets on
+either side of her gown.
+
+"But I assure you," said the nurse, in that sharp, quick, ear-splitting
+tone in which the old women of the South are more than a match for those
+of the North,--"but I assure you, my darling, that there is not a finer
+cavalier in all Naples, nor a more beautiful, than this Inglese; and I
+am told that all these Inglesi are much richer than they seem. Though
+they have no trees in their country, poor people! and instead of
+twenty-four they have only twelve hours to the day, yet I hear that they
+shoe their horses with scudi; and since they cannot (the poor heretics!)
+turn grapes into wine, for they have no grapes, they turn gold into
+physic, and take a glass or two of pistoles whenever they are troubled
+with the colic. But you don't hear me, little pupil of my eyes,--you
+don't hear me!"
+
+"And these things are whispered of Zanoni!" said Viola, half to herself,
+and unheeding Gionetta's eulogies on Glyndon and the English.
+
+"Blessed Maria! do not talk of this terrible Zanoni. You may be sure
+that his beautiful face, like his yet more beautiful pistoles, is
+only witchcraft. I look at the money he gave me the other night, every
+quarter of an hour, to see whether it has not turned into pebbles."
+
+"Do you then really believe," said Viola, with timid earnestness, "that
+sorcery still exists?"
+
+"Believe! Do I believe in the blessed San Gennaro? How do you think he
+cured old Filippo the fisherman, when the doctor gave him up? How do you
+think he has managed himself to live at least these three hundred years?
+How do you think he fascinates every one to his bidding with a look, as
+the vampires do?"
+
+"Ah, is this only witchcraft? It is like it,--it must be!" murmured
+Viola, turning very pale. Gionetta herself was scarcely more
+superstitious than the daughter of the musician. And her very innocence,
+chilled at the strangeness of virgin passion, might well ascribe to
+magic what hearts more experienced would have resolved to love.
+
+"And then, why has this great Prince di -- been so terrified by him? Why
+has he ceased to persecute us? Why has he been so quiet and still? Is
+there no sorcery in all that?"
+
+"Think you, then," said Viola, with sweet inconsistency, "that I owe
+that happiness and safety to his protection? Oh, let me so believe! Be
+silent, Gionetta! Why have I only thee and my own terrors to consult?
+O beautiful sun!" and the girl pressed her hand to her heart with wild
+energy; "thou lightest every spot but this. Go, Gionetta! leave me
+alone,--leave me!"
+
+"And indeed it is time I should leave you; for the polenta will be
+spoiled, and you have eat nothing all day. If you don't eat you will
+lose your beauty, my darling, and then nobody will care for you. Nobody
+cares for us when we grow ugly,--I know that; and then you must, like
+old Gionetta, get some Viola of your own to spoil. I'll go and see to
+the polenta."
+
+"Since I have known this man," said the girl, half aloud,--"since his
+dark eyes have haunted me, I am no longer the same. I long to escape
+from myself,--to glide with the sunbeam over the hill-tops; to become
+something that is not of earth. Phantoms float before me at night; and
+a fluttering, like the wing of a bird, within my heart, seems as if the
+spirit were terrified, and would break its cage."
+
+While murmuring these incoherent rhapsodies, a step that she did not
+hear approached the actress, and a light hand touched her arm.
+
+"Viola!--bellissima!--Viola!"
+
+She turned, and saw Glyndon. The sight of his fair young face calmed her
+at once. His presence gave her pleasure.
+
+"Viola," said the Englishman, taking her hand, and drawing her again
+to the bench from which she had risen, as he seated himself beside her,
+"you shall hear me speak! You must know already that I love thee! It has
+not been pity or admiration alone that has led me ever and ever to thy
+dear side; reasons there may have been why I have not spoken, save by
+my eyes, before; but this day--I know not how it is--I feel a more
+sustained and settled courage to address thee, and learn the happiest or
+the worst. I have rivals, I know,--rivals who are more powerful than the
+poor artist; are they also more favoured?"
+
+Viola blushed faintly; but her countenance was grave and distressed.
+Looking down, and marking some hieroglyphical figures in the dust with
+the point of her slipper, she said, with some hesitation, and a vain
+attempt to be gay, "Signor, whoever wastes his thoughts on an actress
+must submit to have rivals. It is our unhappy destiny not to be sacred
+even to ourselves."
+
+"But you do not love this destiny, glittering though it seem; your heart
+is not in the vocation which your gifts adorn."
+
+"Ah, no!" said the actress, her eyes filling with tears. "Once I loved
+to be the priestess of song and music; now I feel only that it is a
+miserable lot to be slave to a multitude."
+
+"Fly, then, with me," said the artist, passionately; "quit forever the
+calling that divides that heart I would have all my own. Share my fate
+now and forever,--my pride, my delight, my ideal! Thou shalt inspire my
+canvas and my song; thy beauty shall be made at once holy and renowned.
+In the galleries of princes, crowds shall gather round the effigy of a
+Venus or a Saint, and a whisper shall break forth, 'It is Viola Pisani!'
+Ah! Viola, I adore thee; tell me that I do not worship in vain."
+
+"Thou art good and fair," said Viola, gazing on her lover, as he pressed
+nearer to her, and clasped her hand in his; "but what should I give thee
+in return?"
+
+"Love, love,--only love!"
+
+"A sister's love?"
+
+"Ah, speak not with such cruel coldness!"
+
+"It is all I have for thee. Listen to me, signor: when I look on your
+face, when I hear your voice, a certain serene and tranquil calm creeps
+over and lulls thoughts,--oh, how feverish, how wild! When thou art
+gone, the day seems a shade more dark; but the shadow soon flies. I
+miss thee not; I think not of thee: no, I love thee not; and I will give
+myself only where I love."
+
+"But I would teach thee to love me; fear it not. Nay, such love as
+thou describest, in our tranquil climates, is the love of innocence and
+youth."
+
+"Of innocence!" said Viola. "Is it so? Perhaps--" She paused, and added,
+with an effort, "Foreigner! and wouldst thou wed the orphan? Ah, THOU at
+least art generous! It is not the innocence thou wouldst destroy!"
+
+Glyndon drew back, conscience-stricken.
+
+"No, it may not be!" she said, rising, but not conscious of the
+thoughts, half of shame, half suspicion, that passed through the mind
+of her lover. "Leave me, and forget me. You do not understand, you
+could not comprehend, the nature of her whom you think to love. From my
+childhood upward, I have felt as if I were marked out for some strange
+and preternatural doom; as if I were singled from my kind. This feeling
+(and, oh! at times it is one of delirious and vague delight, at others
+of the darkest gloom) deepens within me day by day. It is like the
+shadow of twilight, spreading slowly and solemnly around. My hour
+approaches: a little while, and it will be night!"
+
+As she spoke, Glyndon listened with visible emotion and perturbation.
+"Viola!" he exclaimed, as she ceased, "your words more than ever enchain
+me to you. As you feel, I feel. I, too, have been ever haunted with a
+chill and unearthly foreboding. Amidst the crowds of men I have felt
+alone. In all my pleasures, my toils, my pursuits, a warning voice has
+murmured in my ear, 'Time has a dark mystery in store for thy manhood.'
+When you spoke, it was as the voice of my own soul."
+
+Viola gazed upon him in wonder and fear. Her countenance was as white as
+marble; and those features, so divine in their rare symmetry, might have
+served the Greek with a study for the Pythoness, when, from the mystic
+cavern and the bubbling spring, she first hears the voice of the
+inspiring god. Gradually the rigour and tension of that wonderful face
+relaxed, the colour returned, the pulse beat: the heart animated the
+frame.
+
+"Tell me," she said, turning partially aside,--"tell me, have you
+seen--do you know--a stranger in this city,--one of whom wild stories
+are afloat?"
+
+"You speak of Zanoni? I have seen him: I know him,--and you? Ah, he,
+too, would be my rival!--he, too, would bear thee from me!"
+
+"You err," said Viola, hastily, and with a deep sigh; "he pleads for
+you: he informed me of your love; he besought me not--not to reject it."
+
+"Strange being! incomprehensible enigma! Why did you name him?"
+
+"Why! ah, I would have asked whether, when you first saw him, the
+foreboding, the instinct, of which you spoke, came on you more
+fearfully, more intelligibly than before; whether you felt at once
+repelled from him, yet attracted towards him; whether you felt," and the
+actress spoke with hurried animation, "that with HIM was connected the
+secret of your life?"
+
+"All this I felt," answered Glyndon, in a trembling voice, "the first
+time I was in his presence. Though all around me was gay,--music,
+amidst lamp-lit trees, light converse near, and heaven without a cloud
+above,--my knees knocked together, my hair bristled, and my blood
+curdled like ice. Since then he has divided my thoughts with thee."
+
+"No more, no more!" said Viola, in a stifled tone; "there must be the
+hand of fate in this. I can speak to you no more now. Farewell!" She
+sprung past him into the house, and closed the door. Glyndon did not
+follow her, nor, strange as it may seem, was he so inclined. The thought
+and recollection of that moonlit hour in the gardens, of the strange
+address of Zanoni, froze up all human passion. Viola herself, if not
+forgotten, shrunk back like a shadow into the recesses of his breast.
+He shivered as he stepped into the sunlight, and musingly retraced his
+steps into the more populous parts of that liveliest of Italian cities.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III. -- THEURGIA.
+
+     --i cavalier sen vanno
+     dove il pino fatal gli attende in porto.
+     Gerus. Lib., cant. xv (Argomento.)
+
+     The knights came where the fatal bark
+     Awaited them in the port.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.I.
+
+     But that which especially distinguishes the brotherhood is their
+     marvellous knowledge of all the resources of medical art.  They
+     work not by charms, but simples.
+     --"MS.  Account of the Origin and Attributes of the true
+     Rosicrucians," by J. Von D--.
+
+At this time it chanced that Viola had the opportunity to return the
+kindness shown to her by the friendly musician whose house had received
+and sheltered her when first left an orphan on the world. Old Bernardi
+had brought up three sons to the same profession as himself, and they
+had lately left Naples to seek their fortunes in the wealthier cities
+of Northern Europe, where the musical market was less overstocked. There
+was only left to glad the household of his aged wife and himself, a
+lively, prattling, dark-eyed girl of some eight years old, the child
+of his second son, whose mother had died in giving her birth. It so
+happened that, about a month previous to the date on which our story has
+now entered, a paralytic affection had disabled Bernardi from the duties
+of his calling. He had been always a social, harmless, improvident,
+generous fellow--living on his gains from day to day, as if the day of
+sickness and old age never was to arrive. Though he received a small
+allowance for his past services, it ill sufficed for his wants,; neither
+was he free from debt. Poverty stood at his hearth,--when Viola's
+grateful smile and liberal hand came to chase the grim fiend away. But
+it is not enough to a heart truly kind to send and give; more charitable
+is it to visit and console. "Forget not thy father's friend." So almost
+daily went the bright idol of Naples to the house of Bernardi. Suddenly
+a heavier affliction than either poverty or the palsy befell the old
+musician. His grandchild, his little Beatrice, fell ill, suddenly and
+dangerously ill, of one of those rapid fevers common to the South; and
+Viola was summoned from her strange and fearful reveries of love or
+fancy, to the sick-bed of the young sufferer.
+
+The child was exceedingly fond of Viola, and the old people thought that
+her mere presence would bring healing; but when Viola arrived, Beatrice
+was insensible. Fortunately there was no performance that evening at San
+Carlo, and she resolved to stay the night and partake its fearful cares
+and dangerous vigil.
+
+But during the night the child grew worse, the physician (the leechcraft
+has never been very skilful at Naples) shook his powdered head, kept his
+aromatics at his nostrils, administered his palliatives, and departed.
+Old Bernardi seated himself by the bedside in stern silence; here was
+the last tie that bound him to life. Well, let the anchor break and the
+battered ship go down! It was an iron resolve, more fearful than sorrow.
+An old man, with one foot in the grave, watching by the couch of a dying
+child, is one of the most awful spectacles in human calamities. The wife
+was more active, more bustling, more hopeful, and more tearful. Viola
+took heed of all three. But towards dawn, Beatrice's state became so
+obviously alarming, that Viola herself began to despair. At this time
+she saw the old woman suddenly rise from before the image of the saint
+at which she had been kneeling, wrap herself in her cloak and hood, and
+quietly quit the chamber. Viola stole after her.
+
+"It is cold for thee, good mother, to brave the air; let me go for the
+physician?"
+
+"Child, I am not going to him. I have heard of one in the city who has
+been tender to the poor, and who, they say, has cured the sick when
+physicians failed. I will go and say to him, 'Signor, we are beggars
+in all else, but yesterday we were rich in love. We are at the close
+of life, but we lived in our grandchild's childhood. Give us back our
+wealth,--give us back our youth. Let us die blessing God that the thing
+we love survives us.'"
+
+She was gone. Why did thy heart beat, Viola? The infant's sharp cry
+of pain called her back to the couch; and there still sat the old man,
+unconscious of his wife's movements, not stirring, his eyes glazing fast
+as they watched the agonies of that slight frame. By degrees the wail
+of pain died into a low moan,--the convulsions grew feebler, but more
+frequent; the glow of fever faded into the blue, pale tinge that settles
+into the last bloodless marble.
+
+The daylight came broader and clearer through the casement; steps were
+heard on the stairs,--the old woman entered hastily; she rushed to the
+bed, cast a glance on the patient, "She lives yet, signor, she lives!"
+
+Viola raised her eyes,--the child's head was pillowed on her bosom,--and
+she beheld Zanoni. He smiled on her with a tender and soft approval,
+and took the infant from her arms. Yet even then, as she saw him bending
+silently over that pale face, a superstitious fear mingled with her
+hopes. "Was it by lawful--by holy art that--" her self-questioning
+ceased abruptly; for his dark eye turned to her as if he read her soul,
+and his aspect accused her conscience for its suspicion, for it spoke
+reproach not unmingled with disdain.
+
+"Be comforted," he said, gently turning to the old man, "the danger is
+not beyond the reach of human skill;" and, taking from his bosom a small
+crystal vase, he mingled a few drops with water. No sooner did this
+medicine moisten the infant's lips, than it seemed to produce an
+astonishing effect. The colour revived rapidly on the lips and cheeks;
+in a few moments the sufferer slept calmly, and with the regular
+breathing of painless sleep. And then the old man rose, rigidly, as a
+corpse might rise,--looked down, listened, and creeping gently away,
+stole to the corner of the room, and wept, and thanked Heaven!
+
+Now, old Bernardi had been, hitherto, but a cold believer; sorrow had
+never before led him aloft from earth. Old as he was, he had never
+before thought as the old should think of death,--that endangered life
+of the young had wakened up the careless soul of age. Zanoni whispered
+to the wife, and she drew the old man quietly from the room.
+
+"Dost thou fear to leave me an hour with thy charge, Viola? Thinkest
+thou still that this knowledge is of the Fiend?"
+
+"Ah," said Viola, humbled and yet rejoiced, "forgive me, forgive me,
+signor. Thou biddest the young live and the old pray. My thoughts never
+shall wrong thee more!"
+
+Before the sun rose, Beatrice was out of danger; at noon Zanoni escaped
+from the blessings of the aged pair, and as he closed the door of the
+house, he found Viola awaiting him without.
+
+She stood before him timidly, her hands crossed meekly on her bosom, her
+downcast eyes swimming with tears.
+
+"Do not let me be the only one you leave unhappy!"
+
+"And what cure can the herbs and anodynes effect for thee? If thou canst
+so readily believe ill of those who have aided and yet would serve thee,
+thy disease is of the heart; and--nay, weep not! nurse of the sick, and
+comforter of the sad, I should rather approve than chide thee. Forgive
+thee! Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has, for its first duty, to
+forgive."
+
+"No, do not forgive me yet. I do not deserve a pardon; for even now,
+while I feel how ungrateful I was to believe, suspect, aught injurious
+and false to my preserver, my tears flow from happiness, not remorse.
+Oh!" she continued, with a simple fervour, unconscious, in her innocence
+and her generous emotions, of all the secrets she betrayed,--"thou
+knowest not how bitter it was to believe thee not more good, more pure,
+more sacred than all the world. And when I saw thee,--the wealthy,
+the noble, coming from thy palace to minister to the sufferings of
+the hovel,--when I heard those blessings of the poor breathed upon thy
+parting footsteps, I felt my very self exalted,--good in thy goodness,
+noble at least in those thoughts that did NOT wrong thee."
+
+"And thinkest thou, Viola, that in a mere act of science there is so
+much virtue? The commonest leech will tend the sick for his fee. Are
+prayers and blessings a less reward than gold?"
+
+"And mine, then, are not worthless? Thou wilt accept of mine?"
+
+"Ah, Viola!" exclaimed Zanoni, with a sudden passion, that covered her
+face with blushes, "thou only, methinks, on all the earth, hast the
+power to wound or delight me!" He checked himself, and his face became
+grave and sad. "And this," he added, in an altered tone, "because, if
+thou wouldst heed my counsels, methinks I could guide a guileless heart
+to a happy fate."
+
+"Thy counsels! I will obey them all. Mould me to what thou wilt. In
+thine absence, I am as a child that fears every shadow in the dark; in
+thy presence, my soul expands, and the whole world seems calm with a
+celestial noonday. Do not deny to me that presence. I am fatherless and
+ignorant and alone!"
+
+Zanoni averted his face, and, after a moment's silence, replied
+calmly,--
+
+"Be it so. Sister, I will visit thee again!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.II.
+
+     Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.
+     Shakespeare.
+
+Who so happy as Viola now! A dark load was lifted from her heart: her
+step seemed to tread on air; she would have sung for very delight as she
+went gayly home. It is such happiness to the pure to love,--but oh, such
+more than happiness to believe in the worth of the one beloved. Between
+them there might be human obstacles,--wealth, rank, man's little world.
+But there was no longer that dark gulf which the imagination recoils to
+dwell on, and which separates forever soul from soul. He did not love
+her in return. Love her! But did she ask for love? Did she herself love?
+No; or she would never have been at once so humble and so bold. How
+merrily the ocean murmured in her ear; how radiant an aspect the
+commonest passer-by seemed to wear! She gained her home,--she looked
+upon the tree, glancing, with fantastic branches, in the sun. "Yes,
+brother mine!" she said, laughing in her joy, "like thee, I HAVE
+struggled to the light!"
+
+She had never hitherto, like the more instructed Daughters of the North,
+accustomed herself to that delicious Confessional, the transfusion of
+thought to writing. Now, suddenly, her heart felt an impulse; a new-born
+instinct, that bade it commune with itself, bade it disentangle its web
+of golden fancies,--made her wish to look upon her inmost self as in
+a glass. Upsprung from the embrace of Love and Soul--the Eros and the
+Psyche--their beautiful offspring, Genius! She blushed, she sighed, she
+trembled as she wrote. And from the fresh world that she had built for
+herself, she was awakened to prepare for the glittering stage. How dull
+became the music, how dim the scene, so exquisite and so bright of old.
+Stage, thou art the Fairy Land to the vision of the worldly. Fancy,
+whose music is not heard by men, whose scenes shift not by mortal hand,
+as the stage to the present world, art thou to the future and the past!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.III.
+
+     In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes.
+     Shakespeare.
+
+The next day, at noon, Zanoni visited Viola; and the next day and the
+next and again the next,--days that to her seemed like a special time
+set apart from the rest of life. And yet he never spoke to her in the
+language of flattery, and almost of adoration, to which she had been
+accustomed. Perhaps his very coldness, so gentle as it was, assisted to
+this mysterious charm. He talked to her much of her past life, and she
+was scarcely surprised (she now never thought of TERROR) to perceive how
+much of that past seemed known to him.
+
+He made her speak to him of her father; he made her recall some of the
+airs of Pisani's wild music. And those airs seemed to charm and lull him
+into reverie.
+
+"As music was to the musician," said he, "may science be to the wise.
+Your father looked abroad in the world; all was discord to the fine
+sympathies that he felt with the harmonies that daily and nightly float
+to the throne of Heaven. Life, with its noisy ambition and its mean
+passions, is so poor and base! Out of his soul he created the life and
+the world for which his soul was fitted. Viola, thou art the daughter of
+that life, and wilt be the denizen of that world."
+
+In his earlier visits he did not speak of Glyndon. The day soon came on
+which he renewed the subject. And so trustful, obedient, and entire was
+the allegiance that Viola now owned to his dominion, that, unwelcome
+as that subject was, she restrained her heart, and listened to him in
+silence.
+
+At last he said, "Thou hast promised thou wilt obey my counsels, and if,
+Viola, I should ask thee, nay adjure, to accept this stranger's hand,
+and share his fate, should he offer to thee such a lot,--wouldst thou
+refuse?"
+
+And then she pressed back the tears that gushed to her eyes; and with
+a strange pleasure in the midst of pain,--the pleasure of one who
+sacrifices heart itself to the one who commands that heart,--she
+answered falteringly, "If thou CANST ordain it, why--"
+
+"Speak on."
+
+"Dispose of me as thou wilt!"
+
+Zanoni stood in silence for some moments: he saw the struggle which
+the girl thought she concealed so well; he made an involuntary movement
+towards her, and pressed her hand to his lips; it was the first time
+he had ever departed even so far from a certain austerity which perhaps
+made her fear him and her own thoughts the less.
+
+"Viola," said he, and his voice trembled, "the danger that I can avert
+no more, if thou linger still in Naples, comes hourly near and near to
+thee! On the third day from this thy fate must be decided. I accept thy
+promise. Before the last hour of that day, come what may, I shall see
+thee again, HERE, at thine own house. Till then, farewell!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.IV.
+
+     Between two worlds life hovers like a star
+     'Twixt night and morn.
+     --Byron.
+
+When Glyndon left Viola, as recorded in the concluding chapter of the
+second division of this work, he was absorbed again in those mystical
+desires and conjectures which the haunting recollection of Zanoni
+always served to create. And as he wandered through the streets, he
+was scarcely conscious of his own movements till, in the mechanism of
+custom, he found himself in the midst of one of the noble collections of
+pictures which form the boast of those Italian cities whose glory is
+in the past. Thither he had been wont, almost daily, to repair, for the
+gallery contained some of the finest specimens of a master especially
+the object of his enthusiasm and study. There, before the works of
+Salvator, he had often paused in deep and earnest reverence. The
+striking characteristic of that artist is the "Vigour of Will;" void
+of the elevated idea of abstract beauty, which furnishes a model and
+archetype to the genius of more illustrious order, the singular energy
+of the man hews out of the rock a dignity of his own. His images have
+the majesty, not of the god, but the savage; utterly free, like the
+sublimer schools, from the common-place of imitation,--apart, with
+them, from the conventional littleness of the Real,--he grasps the
+imagination, and compels it to follow him, not to the heaven, but
+through all that is most wild and fantastic upon earth; a sorcery, not
+of the starry magian, but of the gloomy wizard,--a man of romance whose
+heart beat strongly, griping art with a hand of iron, and forcing it
+to idealise the scenes of his actual life. Before this powerful will,
+Glyndon drew back more awed and admiring than before the calmer beauty
+which rose from the soul of Raphael, like Venus from the deep.
+
+And now, as awaking from his reverie, he stood opposite to that wild and
+magnificent gloom of Nature which frowned on him from the canvas,
+the very leaves on those gnome-like, distorted trees seemed to rustle
+sibylline secrets in his ear. Those rugged and sombre Apennines, the
+cataract that dashed between, suited, more than the actual scenes would
+have done, the mood and temper of his mind. The stern, uncouth forms
+at rest on the crags below, and dwarfed by the giant size of the Matter
+that reigned around them, impressed him with the might of Nature and the
+littleness of Man. As in genius of the more spiritual cast, the living
+man, and the soul that lives in him, are studiously made the prominent
+image; and the mere accessories of scene kept down, and cast back, as if
+to show that the exile from paradise is yet the monarch of the outward
+world,--so, in the landscapes of Salvator, the tree, the mountain,
+the waterfall, become the principal, and man himself dwindles to the
+accessory. The Matter seems to reign supreme, and its true lord to
+creep beneath its stupendous shadow. Inert matter giving interest to
+the immortal man, not the immortal man to the inert matter. A terrible
+philosophy in art!
+
+While something of these thoughts passed through the mind of the
+painter, he felt his arm touched, and saw Nicot by his side.
+
+"A great master," said Nicot, "but I do not love the school."
+
+"I do not love, but I am awed by it. We love the beautiful and serene,
+but we have a feeling as deep as love for the terrible and dark."
+
+"True," said Nicot, thoughtfully. "And yet that feeling is only a
+superstition. The nursery, with its tales of ghosts and goblins, is the
+cradle of many of our impressions in the world. But art should not seek
+to pander to our ignorance; art should represent only truths. I confess
+that Raphael pleases me less, because I have no sympathy with his
+subjects. His saints and virgins are to me only men and women."
+
+"And from what source should painting, then, take its themes?"
+
+"From history, without doubt," returned Nicot, pragmatically,--"those
+great Roman actions which inspire men with sentiments of liberty and
+valour, with the virtues of a republic. I wish the cartoons of Raphael
+had illustrated the story of the Horatii; but it remains for France and
+her Republic to give to posterity the new and the true school, which
+could never have arisen in a country of priestcraft and delusion."
+
+"And the saints and virgins of Raphael are to you only men and women?"
+repeated Glyndon, going back to Nicot's candid confession in amaze, and
+scarcely hearing the deductions the Frenchman drew from his proposition.
+
+"Assuredly. Ha, ha!" and Nicot laughed hideously, "do you ask me to
+believe in the calendar, or what?"
+
+"But the ideal?"
+
+"The ideal!" interrupted Nicot. "Stuff! The Italian critics, and your
+English Reynolds, have turned your head. They are so fond of
+their 'gusto grande,' and their 'ideal beauty that speaks to the
+soul!'--soul!--IS there a soul? I understand a man when he talks of
+composing for a refined taste,--for an educated and intelligent reason;
+for a sense that comprehends truths. But as for the soul,--bah!--we
+are but modifications of matter, and painting is modification of matter
+also."
+
+Glyndon turned his eyes from the picture before him to Nicot, and from
+Nicot to the picture. The dogmatist gave a voice to the thoughts which
+the sight of the picture had awakened. He shook his head without reply.
+
+"Tell me," said Nicot, abruptly, "that imposter,--Zanoni!--oh! I have
+now learned his name and quackeries, forsooth,--what did he say to thee
+of me?"
+
+"Of thee? Nothing; but to warn me against thy doctrines."
+
+"Aha! was that all?" said Nicot. "He is a notable inventor, and since,
+when we met last, I unmasked his delusions, I thought he might retaliate
+by some tale of slander."
+
+"Unmasked his delusions!--how?"
+
+"A dull and long story: he wished to teach an old doting friend of mine
+his secrets of prolonged life and philosophical alchemy. I advise thee
+to renounce so discreditable an acquaintance."
+
+With that Nicot nodded significantly, and, not wishing to be further
+questioned, went his way.
+
+Glyndon's mind at that moment had escaped to his art, and the comments
+and presence of Nicot had been no welcome interruption. He turned
+from the landscape of Salvator, and his eye falling on a Nativity by
+Coreggio, the contrast between the two ranks of genius struck him as
+a discovery. That exquisite repose, that perfect sense of beauty, that
+strength without effort, that breathing moral of high art, which speaks
+to the mind through the eye, and raises the thoughts, by the aid of
+tenderness and love, to the regions of awe and wonder,--ay! THAT was the
+true school. He quitted the gallery with reluctant steps and inspired
+ideas; he sought his own home. Here, pleased not to find the sober
+Mervale, he leaned his face on his hands, and endeavoured to recall the
+words of Zanoni in their last meeting. Yes, he felt Nicot's talk even on
+art was crime; it debased the imagination itself to mechanism. Could
+he, who saw nothing in the soul but a combination of matter, prate of
+schools that should excel a Raphael? Yes, art was magic; and as he owned
+the truth of the aphorism, he could comprehend that in magic there may
+be religion, for religion is an essential to art. His old ambition,
+freeing itself from the frigid prudence with which Mervale sought to
+desecrate all images less substantial than the golden calf of the world,
+revived, and stirred, and kindled. The subtle detection of what he
+conceived to be an error in the school he had hitherto adopted, made
+more manifest to him by the grinning commentary of Nicot, seemed to open
+to him a new world of invention. He seized the happy moment,--he placed
+before him the colours and the canvas. Lost in his conceptions of a
+fresh ideal, his mind was lifted aloft into the airy realms of beauty;
+dark thoughts, unhallowed desires, vanished. Zanoni was right: the
+material world shrunk from his gaze; he viewed Nature as from a
+mountain-top afar; and as the waves of his unquiet heart became calm and
+still, again the angel eyes of Viola beamed on them as a holy star.
+
+Locking himself in his chamber, he refused even the visits of Mervale.
+Intoxicated with the pure air of his fresh existence, he remained for
+three days, and almost nights, absorbed in his employment; but on the
+fourth morning came that reaction to which all labour is exposed. He
+woke listless and fatigued; and as he cast his eyes on the canvas, the
+glory seemed to have gone from it. Humiliating recollections of the
+great masters he aspired to rival forced themselves upon him; defects
+before unseen magnified themselves to deformities in his languid and
+discontented eyes. He touched and retouched, but his hand failed him; he
+threw down his instruments in despair; he opened his casement: the day
+without was bright and lovely; the street was crowded with that life
+which is ever so joyous and affluent in the animated population of
+Naples. He saw the lover, as he passed, conversing with his mistress by
+those mute gestures which have survived all changes of languages, the
+same now as when the Etruscan painted yon vases in the Museo Borbonico.
+Light from without beckoned his youth to its mirth and its pleasures;
+and the dull walls within, lately large enough to comprise heaven and
+earth, seemed now cabined and confined as a felon's prison. He welcomed
+the step of Mervale at his threshold, and unbarred the door.
+
+"And is that all you have done?" said Mervale, glancing disdainfully
+at the canvas. "Is it for this that you have shut yourself out from the
+sunny days and moonlit nights of Naples?"
+
+"While the fit was on me, I basked in a brighter sun, and imbibed the
+voluptuous luxury of a softer moon."
+
+"You own that the fit is over. Well, that is some sign of returning
+sense. After all, it is better to daub canvas for three days than make a
+fool of yourself for life. This little siren?"
+
+"Be dumb! I hate to hear you name her."
+
+Mervale drew his chair nearer to Glyndon's, thrust his hands deep in his
+breeches-pockets, stretched his legs, and was about to begin a serious
+strain of expostulation, when a knock was heard at the door, and Nicot,
+without waiting for leave, obtruded his ugly head.
+
+"Good-day, mon cher confrere. I wished to speak to you. Hein! you have
+been at work, I see. This is well,--very well! A bold outline,--great
+freedom in that right hand. But, hold! is the composition good? You have
+not got the great pyramidal form. Don't you think, too, that you have
+lost the advantage of contrast in this figure; since the right leg is
+put forward, surely the right arm should be put back? Peste! but that
+little finger is very fine!"
+
+Mervale detested Nicot. For all speculators, Utopians, alterers of the
+world, and wanderers from the high road, were equally hateful to
+him; but he could have hugged the Frenchman at that moment. He saw
+in Glyndon's expressive countenance all the weariness and disgust he
+endured. After so wrapped a study, to be prated to about pyramidal
+forms and right arms and right legs, the accidence of the art, the whole
+conception to be overlooked, and the criticism to end in approval of the
+little finger!
+
+"Oh," said Glyndon, peevishly, throwing the cloth over his design,
+"enough of my poor performance. What is it you have to say to me?"
+
+"In the first place," said Nicot, huddling himself together upon
+a stool,--"in the first place, this Signor Zanoni,--this second
+Cagliostro,--who disputes my doctrines! (no doubt a spy of the man
+Capet) I am not vindictive; as Helvetius says, 'our errors arise from
+our passions.' I keep mine in order; but it is virtuous to hate in the
+cause of mankind; I would I had the denouncing and the judging of Signor
+Zanoni at Paris." And Nicot's small eyes shot fire, and he gnashed his
+teeth.
+
+"Have you any new cause to hate him?"
+
+"Yes," said Nicot, fiercely. "Yes, I hear he is courting the girl I mean
+to marry."
+
+"You! Whom do you speak of?"
+
+"The celebrated Pisani! She is divinely handsome. She would make my
+fortune in a republic. And a republic we shall have before the year is
+out."
+
+Mervale rubbed his hands, and chuckled. Glyndon coloured with rage and
+shame.
+
+"Do you know the Signora Pisani? Have you ever spoken to her?"
+
+"Not yet. But when I make up my mind to anything, it is soon done. I
+am about to return to Paris. They write me word that a handsome wife
+advances the career of a patriot. The age of prejudice is over.
+The sublimer virtues begin to be understood. I shall take back the
+handsomest wife in Europe."
+
+"Be quiet! What are you about?" said Mervale, seizing Glyndon as he saw
+him advance towards the Frenchman, his eyes sparkling, and his hands
+clenched.
+
+"Sir!" said Glyndon, between his teeth, "you know not of whom you thus
+speak. Do you affect to suppose that Viola Pisani would accept YOU?"
+
+"Not if she could get a better offer," said Mervale, looking up to the
+ceiling.
+
+"A better offer? You don't understand me," said Nicot. "I, Jean Nicot,
+propose to marry the girl; marry her! Others may make her more liberal
+offers, but no one, I apprehend, would make one so honourable. I alone
+have pity on her friendless situation. Besides, according to the dawning
+state of things, one will always, in France, be able to get rid of a
+wife whenever one wishes. We shall have new laws of divorce. Do you
+imagine that an Italian girl--and in no country in the world are
+maidens, it seems, more chaste (though wives may console themselves with
+virtues more philosophical)--would refuse the hand of an artist for the
+settlements of a prince? No; I think better of the Pisani than you do. I
+shall hasten to introduce myself to her."
+
+"I wish you all success, Monsieur Nicot," said Mervale, rising, and
+shaking him heartily by the hand.
+
+Glyndon cast at them both a disdainful glance.
+
+"Perhaps, Monsieur Nicot," said he, at length, constraining his lips
+into a bitter smile,--"perhaps you may have rivals."
+
+"So much the better," replied Monsieur Nicot, carelessly, kicking his
+heels together, and appearing absorbed in admiration at the size of his
+large feet.
+
+"I myself admire Viola Pisani."
+
+"Every painter must!"
+
+"I may offer her marriage as well as yourself."
+
+"That would be folly in you, though wisdom in me. You would not know
+how to draw profit from the speculation! Cher confrere, you have
+prejudices."
+
+"You do not dare to say you would make profit from your own wife?"
+
+"The virtuous Cato lent his wife to a friend. I love virtue, and I
+cannot do better than imitate Cato. But to be serious,--I do not
+fear you as a rival. You are good-looking, and I am ugly. But you are
+irresolute, and I decisive. While you are uttering fine phrases, I shall
+say, simply, 'I have a bon etat. Will you marry me?' So do your worst,
+cher confrere. Au revoir, behind the scenes!"
+
+So saying, Nicot rose, stretched his long arms and short legs, yawned
+till he showed all his ragged teeth from ear to ear, pressed down his
+cap on his shaggy head with an air of defiance, and casting over his
+left shoulder a glance of triumph and malice at the indignant Glyndon,
+sauntered out of the room.
+
+Mervale burst into a violent fit of laughter. "See how your Viola is
+estimated by your friend. A fine victory, to carry her off from the
+ugliest dog between Lapland and the Calmucks."
+
+Glyndon was yet too indignant to answer, when a new visitor arrived. It
+was Zanoni himself. Mervale, on whom the appearance and aspect of this
+personage imposed a kind of reluctant deference, which he was unwilling
+to acknowledge, and still more to betray, nodded to Glyndon, and saying,
+simply, "More when I see you again," left the painter and his unexpected
+visitor.
+
+"I see," said Zanoni, lifting the cloth from the canvas, "that you have
+not slighted the advice I gave you. Courage, young artist; this is an
+escape from the schools: this is full of the bold self-confidence of
+real genius. You had no Nicot--no Mervale--at your elbow when this image
+of true beauty was conceived!"
+
+Charmed back to his art by this unlooked-for praise, Glyndon replied
+modestly, "I thought well of my design till this morning; and then I was
+disenchanted of my happy persuasion."
+
+"Say, rather, that, unaccustomed to continuous labour, you were fatigued
+with your employment."
+
+"That is true. Shall I confess it? I began to miss the world without. It
+seemed to me as if, while I lavished my heart and my youth upon visions
+of beauty, I was losing the beautiful realities of actual life. And I
+envied the merry fisherman, singing as he passed below my casement, and
+the lover conversing with his mistress."
+
+"And," said Zanoni, with an encouraging smile, "do you blame yourself
+for the natural and necessary return to earth, in which even the most
+habitual visitor of the Heavens of Invention seeks his relaxation and
+repose? Man's genius is a bird that cannot be always on the wing; when
+the craving for the actual world is felt, it is a hunger that must be
+appeased. They who command best the ideal, enjoy ever most the real.
+See the true artist, when abroad in men's thoroughfares, ever observant,
+ever diving into the heart, ever alive to the least as to the greatest
+of the complicated truths of existence; descending to what pedants would
+call the trivial and the frivolous. From every mesh in the social web,
+he can disentangle a grace. And for him each airy gossamer floats in
+the gold of the sunlight. Know you not that around the animalcule that
+sports in the water there shines a halo, as around the star (The monas
+mica, found in the purest pools, is encompassed with a halo. And this
+is frequent amongst many other species of animalcule.) that revolves in
+bright pastime through the space? True art finds beauty everywhere. In
+the street, in the market-place, in the hovel, it gathers food for the
+hive of its thoughts. In the mire of politics, Dante and Milton selected
+pearls for the wreath of song.
+
+"Who ever told you that Raphael did not enjoy the life without, carrying
+everywhere with him the one inward idea of beauty which attracted and
+imbedded in its own amber every straw that the feet of the dull man
+trampled into mud? As some lord of the forest wanders abroad for its
+prey, and scents and follows it over plain and hill, through brake and
+jungle, but, seizing it at last, bears the quarry to its unwitnessed
+cave,--so Genius searches through wood and waste, untiringly and
+eagerly, every sense awake, every nerve strained to speed and strength,
+for the scattered and flying images of matter, that it seizes at
+last with its mighty talons, and bears away with it into solitudes
+no footstep can invade. Go, seek the world without; it is for art the
+inexhaustible pasture-ground and harvest to the world within!"
+
+"You comfort me," said Glyndon, brightening. "I had imagined my
+weariness a proof of my deficiency! But not now would I speak to you
+of these labours. Pardon me, if I pass from the toil to the reward.
+You have uttered dim prophecies of my future, if I wed one who, in
+the judgment of the sober world, would only darken its prospects and
+obstruct its ambition. Do you speak from the wisdom which is experience,
+or that which aspires to prediction?"
+
+"Are they not allied? Is it not he best accustomed to calculation who
+can solve at a glance any new problem in the arithmetic of chances?"
+
+"You evade my question."
+
+"No; but I will adapt my answer the better to your comprehension, for
+it is upon this very point that I have sought you. Listen to me!"
+Zanoni fixed his eyes earnestly on his listener, and continued: "For the
+accomplishment of whatever is great and lofty, the clear perception of
+truths is the first requisite,--truths adapted to the object desired.
+The warrior thus reduces the chances of battle to combinations almost
+of mathematics. He can predict a result, if he can but depend upon
+the materials he is forced to employ. At such a loss he can cross that
+bridge; in such a time he can reduce that fort. Still more accurately,
+for he depends less on material causes than ideas at his command, can
+the commander of the purer science or diviner art, if he once perceive
+the truths that are in him and around, foretell what he can achieve,
+and in what he is condemned to fail. But this perception of truths is
+disturbed by many causes,--vanity, passion, fear, indolence in himself,
+ignorance of the fitting means without to accomplish what he designs. He
+may miscalculate his own forces; he may have no chart of the country
+he would invade. It is only in a peculiar state of the mind that it is
+capable of perceiving truth; and that state is profound serenity. Your
+mind is fevered by a desire for truth: you would compel it to your
+embraces; you would ask me to impart to you, without ordeal or
+preparation, the grandest secrets that exist in Nature. But truth can no
+more be seen by the mind unprepared for it, than the sun can dawn upon
+the midst of night. Such a mind receives truth only to pollute it: to
+use the simile of one who has wandered near to the secret of the sublime
+Goetia (or the magic that lies within Nature, as electricity within the
+cloud), 'He who pours water into the muddy well, does but disturb the
+mud.'" ("Iamb. de Vit. Pythag.")
+
+"What do you tend to?"
+
+"This: that you have faculties that may attain to surpassing power, that
+may rank you among those enchanters who, greater than the magian,
+leave behind them an enduring influence, worshipped wherever beauty is
+comprehended, wherever the soul is sensible of a higher world than that
+in which matter struggles for crude and incomplete existence.
+
+"But to make available those faculties, need I be a prophet to tell you
+that you must learn to concentre upon great objects all your desires?
+The heart must rest, that the mind may be active. At present you wander
+from aim to aim. As the ballast to the ship, so to the spirit are faith
+and love. With your whole heart, affections, humanity, centred in one
+object, your mind and aspirations will become equally steadfast and in
+earnest. Viola is a child as yet; you do not perceive the high nature
+the trials of life will develop. Pardon me, if I say that her soul,
+purer and loftier than your own, will bear it upward, as a secret hymn
+carries aloft the spirits of the world. Your nature wants the harmony,
+the music which, as the Pythagoreans wisely taught, at once elevates and
+soothes. I offer you that music in her love."
+
+"But am I sure that she does love me?"
+
+"Artist, no; she loves you not at present; her affections are full of
+another. But if I could transfer to you, as the loadstone transfers its
+attraction to the magnet, the love that she has now for me,--if I could
+cause her to see in you the ideal of her dreams--"
+
+"Is such a gift in the power of man?"
+
+"I offer it to you, if your love be lawful, if your faith in virtue and
+yourself be deep and loyal; if not, think you that I would disenchant
+her with truth to make her adore a falsehood?"
+
+"But if," persisted Glyndon,--"if she be all that you tell me, and if
+she love you, how can you rob yourself of so priceless a treasure?"
+
+"Oh, shallow and mean heart of man!" exclaimed Zanoni, with unaccustomed
+passion and vehemence, "dost thou conceive so little of love as not to
+know that it sacrifices all--love itself--for the happiness of the thing
+it loves? Hear me!" And Zanoni's face grew pale. "Hear me! I press this
+upon you, because I love her, and because I fear that with me her fate
+will be less fair than with yourself. Why,--ask not, for I will not
+tell you. Enough! Time presses now for your answer; it cannot long be
+delayed. Before the night of the third day from this, all choice will be
+forbid you!"
+
+"But," said Glyndon, still doubting and suspicious,--"but why this
+haste?"
+
+"Man, you are not worthy of her when you ask me. All I can tell you
+here, you should have known yourself. This ravisher, this man of will,
+this son of the old Visconti, unlike you,--steadfast, resolute, earnest
+even in his crimes,--never relinquishes an object. But one passion
+controls his lust,--it is his avarice. The day after his attempt on
+Viola, his uncle, the Cardinal --, from whom he has large expectations
+of land and gold, sent for him, and forbade him, on pain of forfeiting
+all the possessions which his schemes already had parcelled out, to
+pursue with dishonourable designs one whom the Cardinal had heeded and
+loved from childhood. This is the cause of his present pause from his
+pursuit. While we speak, the cause expires. Before the hand of the clock
+reaches the hour of noon, the Cardinal -- will be no more. At this very
+moment thy friend, Jean Nicot, is with the Prince di --."
+
+"He! wherefore?"
+
+"To ask what dower shall go with Viola Pisani, the morning that she
+leaves the palace of the prince."
+
+"And how do you know all this?"
+
+"Fool! I tell thee again, because a lover is a watcher by night and day;
+because love never sleeps when danger menaces the beloved one!"
+
+"And you it was that informed the Cardinal --?"
+
+"Yes; and what has been my task might as easily have been thine.
+Speak,--thine answer!"
+
+"You shall have it on the third day from this."
+
+"Be it so. Put off, poor waverer, thy happiness to the last hour. On the
+third day from this, I will ask thee thy resolve."
+
+"And where shall we meet?"
+
+"Before midnight, where you may least expect me. You cannot shun me,
+though you may seek to do so!"
+
+"Stay one moment! You condemn me as doubtful, irresolute, suspicious.
+Have I no cause? Can I yield without a struggle to the strange
+fascination you exert upon my mind? What interest can you have in me, a
+stranger, that you should thus dictate to me the gravest action in the
+life of man? Do you suppose that any one in his senses would not pause,
+and deliberate, and ask himself, 'Why should this stranger care thus for
+me?'"
+
+"And yet," said Zanoni, "if I told thee that I could initiate thee into
+the secrets of that magic which the philosophy of the whole existing
+world treats as a chimera, or imposture; if I promised to show thee how
+to command the beings of air and ocean, how to accumulate wealth more
+easily than a child can gather pebbles on the shore, to place in thy
+hands the essence of the herbs which prolong life from age to age, the
+mystery of that attraction by which to awe all danger and disarm all
+violence and subdue man as the serpent charms the bird,--if I told thee
+that all these it was mine to possess and to communicate, thou wouldst
+listen to me then, and obey me without a doubt!"
+
+"It is true; and I can account for this only by the imperfect
+associations of my childhood,--by traditions in our house of--"
+
+"Your forefather, who, in the revival of science, sought the secrets of
+Apollonius and Paracelsus."
+
+"What!" said Glyndon, amazed, "are you so well acquainted with the
+annals of an obscure lineage?"
+
+"To the man who aspires to know, no man who has been the meanest
+student of knowledge should be unknown. You ask me why I have shown this
+interest in your fate? There is one reason which I have not yet told
+you. There is a fraternity as to whose laws and whose mysteries the most
+inquisitive schoolmen are in the dark. By those laws all are pledged to
+warn, to aid, and to guide even the remotest descendants of men who
+have toiled, though vainly, like your ancestor, in the mysteries of the
+Order. We are bound to advise them to their welfare; nay, more,--if they
+command us to it, we must accept them as our pupils. I am a survivor
+of that most ancient and immemorial union. This it was that bound me to
+thee at the first; this, perhaps, attracted thyself unconsciously, Son
+of our Brotherhood, to me."
+
+"If this be so, I command thee, in the name of the laws thou obeyest, to
+receive me as thy pupil!"
+
+"What do you ask?" said Zanoni, passionately. "Learn, first, the
+conditions. No neophyte must have, at his initiation, one affection or
+desire that chains him to the world. He must be pure from the love of
+woman, free from avarice and ambition, free from the dreams even of
+art, or the hope of earthly fame. The first sacrifice thou must make
+is--Viola herself. And for what? For an ordeal that the most daring
+courage only can encounter, the most ethereal natures alone survive!
+Thou art unfit for the science that has made me and others what we are
+or have been; for thy whole nature is one fear!"
+
+"Fear!" cried Glyndon, colouring with resentment, and rising to the full
+height of his stature.
+
+"Fear! and the worst fear,--fear of the world's opinion; fear of the
+Nicots and the Mervales; fear of thine own impulses when most generous;
+fear of thine own powers when thy genius is most bold; fear that virtue
+is not eternal; fear that God does not live in heaven to keep watch on
+earth; fear, the fear of little men; and that fear is never known to the
+great."
+
+With these words Zanoni abruptly left the artist, humbled, bewildered,
+and not convinced. He remained alone with his thoughts till he was
+aroused by the striking of the clock; he then suddenly remembered
+Zanoni's prediction of the Cardinal's death; and, seized with an intense
+desire to learn its truth, he hurried into the streets,--he gained the
+Cardinal's palace. Five minutes before noon his Eminence had expired,
+after an illness of less than an hour. Zanoni's visit had occupied more
+time than the illness of the Cardinal. Awed and perplexed, he turned
+from the palace, and as he walked through the Chiaja, he saw Jean Nicot
+emerge from the portals of the Prince di --.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.V.
+
+     Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
+     Which like two spirits do suggest me still.
+     --Shakespeare.
+
+Venerable Brotherhood, so sacred and so little known, from whose secret
+and precious archives the materials for this history have been drawn; ye
+who have retained, from century to century, all that time has spared of
+the august and venerable science,--thanks to you, if now, for the
+first time, some record of the thoughts and actions of no false and
+self-styled luminary of your Order be given, however imperfectly, to
+the world. Many have called themselves of your band; many spurious
+pretenders have been so-called by the learned ignorance which still,
+baffled and perplexed, is driven to confess that it knows nothing of
+your origin, your ceremonies or doctrines, nor even if you still have
+local habitation on the earth. Thanks to you if I, the only one of
+my country, in this age, admitted, with a profane footstep, into your
+mysterious Academe (The reader will have the goodness to remember that
+this is said by the author of the original MS., not by the editor.),
+have been by you empowered and instructed to adapt to the comprehension
+of the uninitiated, some few of the starry truths which shone on the
+great Shemaia of the Chaldean Lore, and gleamed dimly through the
+darkened knowledge of latter disciples, labouring, like Psellus and
+Iamblichus, to revive the embers of the fire which burned in the Hamarin
+of the East. Though not to us of an aged and hoary world is vouchsafed
+the NAME which, so say the earliest oracles of the earth, "rushes into
+the infinite worlds," yet is it ours to trace the reviving truths,
+through each new discovery of the philosopher and chemist. The laws of
+attraction, of electricity, and of the yet more mysterious agency of
+that great principal of life, which, if drawn from the universe, would
+leave the universe a grave, were but the code in which the Theurgy of
+old sought the guides that led it to a legislation and science of its
+own. To rebuild on words the fragments of this history, it seems to me
+as if, in a solemn trance, I was led through the ruins of a city whose
+only remains were tombs. From the sarcophagus and the urn I awake the
+genius (The Greek Genius of Death.) of the extinguished Torch, and so
+closely does its shape resemble Eros, that at moments I scarcely know
+which of ye dictates to me,--O Love! O Death!
+
+And it stirred in the virgin's heart,--this new, unfathomable, and
+divine emotion! Was it only the ordinary affection of the pulse and the
+fancy, of the eye to the Beautiful, of the ear to the Eloquent, or did
+it not justify the notion she herself conceived of it,--that it was born
+not of the senses, that it was less of earthly and human love than the
+effect of some wondrous but not unholy charm? I said that, from that day
+in which, no longer with awe and trembling, she surrendered herself to
+the influence of Zanoni, she had sought to put her thoughts into words.
+Let the thoughts attest their own nature.
+
+THE SELF CONFESSIONAL.
+
+"Is it the daylight that shines on me, or the memory of thy presence?
+Wherever I look, the world seems full of thee; in every ray that
+trembles on the water, that smiles upon the leaves, I behold but a
+likeness to thine eyes. What is this change, that alters not only
+myself, but the face of the whole universe?
+
+....
+
+"How instantaneously leaped into life the power with which thou swayest
+my heart in its ebb and flow. Thousands were around me, and I saw but
+thee. That was the night in which I first entered upon the world which
+crowds life into a drama, and has no language but music. How strangely
+and how suddenly with thee became that world evermore connected! What
+the delusion of the stage was to others, thy presence was to me. My
+life, too, seemed to centre into those short hours, and from thy lips
+I heard a music, mute to all ears but mine. I sit in the room where my
+father dwelt. Here, on that happy night, forgetting why THEY were so
+happy, I shrunk into the shadow, and sought to guess what thou wert to
+me; and my mother's low voice woke me, and I crept to my father's side,
+close--close, from fear of my own thoughts.
+
+"Ah! sweet and sad was the morrow to that night, when thy lips warned me
+of the future. An orphan now,--what is there that lives for me to think
+of, to dream upon, to revere, but thou!
+
+"How tenderly thou hast rebuked me for the grievous wrong that my
+thoughts did thee! Why should I have shuddered to feel thee glancing
+upon my thoughts like the beam on the solitary tree, to which thou didst
+once liken me so well? It was--it was, that, like the tree, I struggled
+for the light, and the light came. They tell me of love, and my very
+life of the stage breathes the language of love into my lips. No; again
+and again, I know THAT is not the love that I feel for thee!--it is not
+a passion, it is a thought! I ask not to be loved again. I murmur not
+that thy words are stern and thy looks are cold. I ask not if I have
+rivals; I sigh not to be fair in thine eyes. It is my SPIRIT that would
+blend itself with thine. I would give worlds, though we were apart,
+though oceans rolled between us, to know the hour in which thy gaze was
+lifted to the stars,--in which thy heart poured itself in prayer. They
+tell me thou art more beautiful than the marble images that are fairer
+than all human forms; but I have never dared to gaze steadfastly on thy
+face, that memory might compare thee with the rest. Only thine eyes and
+thy soft, calm smile haunt me; as when I look upon the moon, all that
+passes into my heart is her silent light.
+
+....
+
+"Often, when the air is calm, I have thought that I hear the strains of
+my father's music; often, though long stilled in the grave, have they
+waked me from the dreams of the solemn night. Methinks, ere thou comest
+to me that I hear them herald thy approach. Methinks I hear them wail
+and moan, when I sink back into myself on seeing thee depart. Thou art
+OF that music,--its spirit, its genius. My father must have guessed
+at thee and thy native regions, when the winds hushed to listen to his
+tones, and the world deemed him mad! I hear where I sit, the far murmur
+of the sea. Murmur on, ye blessed waters! The waves are the pulses of
+the shore. They beat with the gladness of the morning wind,--so beats my
+heart in the freshness and light that make up the thoughts of thee!
+
+....
+
+"Often in my childhood I have mused and asked for what I was born; and
+my soul answered my heart and said, 'THOU WERT BORN TO WORSHIP!' Yes; I
+know why the real world has ever seemed to me so false and cold. I know
+why the world of the stage charmed and dazzled me. I know why it was so
+sweet to sit apart and gaze my whole being into the distant heavens.
+My nature is not formed for this life, happy though that life seem to
+others. It is its very want to have ever before it some image loftier
+than itself! Stranger, in what realm above, when the grave is past,
+shall my soul, hour after hour, worship at the same source as thine?
+
+....
+
+"In the gardens of my neighbour there is a small fountain. I stood by it
+this morning after sunrise. How it sprung up, with its eager spray, to
+the sunbeams! And then I thought that I should see thee again this day,
+and so sprung my heart to the new morning which thou bringest me from
+the skies.
+
+....
+
+"I HAVE seen, I have LISTENED to thee again. How bold I have become! I
+ran on with my childlike thoughts and stories, my recollections of the
+past, as if I had known thee from an infant. Suddenly the idea of my
+presumption struck me. I stopped, and timidly sought thine eyes.
+
+"'Well, and when you found that the nightingale refused to sing?'--
+
+"'Ah!' I said, 'what to thee this history of the heart of a child?'
+
+"'Viola,' didst thou answer, with that voice, so inexpressibly calm
+and earnest!--'Viola, the darkness of a child's heart is often but the
+shadow of a star. Speak on! And thy nightingale, when they caught and
+caged it, refused to sing?'
+
+"'And I placed the cage yonder, amidst the vine-leaves, and took up my
+lute, and spoke to it on the strings; for I thought that all music was
+its native language, and it would understand that I sought to comfort
+it.'
+
+"'Yes,' saidst thou. 'And at last it answered thee, but not with
+song,--in a sharp, brief cry; so mournful, that thy hands let fall the
+lute, and the tears gushed from thine eyes. So softly didst thou unbar
+the cage, and the nightingale flew into yonder thicket; and thou heardst
+the foliage rustle, and, looking through the moonlight, thine eyes saw
+that it had found its mate. It sang to thee then from the boughs a long,
+loud, joyous jubilee. And musing, thou didst feel that it was not the
+vine-leaves or the moonlight that made the bird give melody to night,
+and that the secret of its music was the presence of a thing beloved.'
+
+"How didst thou know my thoughts in that childlike time better than
+I knew myself! How is the humble life of my past years, with its
+mean events, so mysteriously familiar to thee, bright stranger! I
+wonder,--but I do not again dare to fear thee!
+
+....
+
+"Once the thought of him oppressed and weighed me down. As an infant
+that longs for the moon, my being was one vague desire for something
+never to be attained. Now I feel rather as if to think of thee sufficed
+to remove every fetter from my spirit. I float in the still seas of
+light, and nothing seems too high for my wings, too glorious for my
+eyes. It was mine ignorance that made me fear thee. A knowledge that is
+not in books seems to breathe around thee as an atmosphere. How little
+have I read!--how little have I learned! Yet when thou art by my side,
+it seems as if the veil were lifted from all wisdom and all Nature. I
+startle when I look even at the words I have written; they seem not to
+come from myself, but are the signs of another language which thou hast
+taught my heart, and which my hand traces rapidly, as at thy dictation.
+Sometimes, while I write or muse, I could fancy that I heard light wings
+hovering around me, and saw dim shapes of beauty floating round, and
+vanishing as they smiled upon me. No unquiet and fearful dream ever
+comes to me now in sleep, yet sleep and waking are alike but as one
+dream. In sleep I wander with thee, not through the paths of earth, but
+through impalpable air--an air which seems a music--upward and upward,
+as the soul mounts on the tones of a lyre! Till I knew thee, I was as a
+slave to the earth. Thou hast given to me the liberty of the universe!
+Before, it was life; it seems to me now as if I had commenced eternity!
+
+....
+
+"Formerly, when I was to appear upon the stage, my heart beat more
+loudly. I trembled to encounter the audience, whose breath gave shame or
+renown; and now I have no fear of them. I see them, heed them, hear them
+not! I know that there will be music in my voice, for it is a hymn that
+I pour to thee. Thou never comest to the theatre; and that no longer
+grieves me. Thou art become too sacred to appear a part of the common
+world, and I feel glad that thou art not by when crowds have a right to
+judge me.
+
+....
+
+"And he spoke to me of ANOTHER: to another he would consign me! No, it
+is not love that I feel for thee, Zanoni; or why did I hear thee without
+anger, why did thy command seem to me not a thing impossible? As
+the strings of the instrument obey the hand of the master, thy look
+modulates the wildest chords of my heart to thy will. If it please
+thee,--yes, let it be so. Thou art lord of my destinies; they cannot
+rebel against thee! I almost think I could love him, whoever it be, on
+whom thou wouldst shed the rays that circumfuse thyself. Whatever thou
+hast touched, I love; whatever thou speakest of, I love. Thy hand played
+with these vine leaves; I wear them in my bosom. Thou seemest to me the
+source of all love; too high and too bright to be loved thyself,
+but darting light into other objects, on which the eye can gaze less
+dazzled. No, no; it is not love that I feel for thee, and therefore
+it is that I do not blush to nourish and confess it. Shame on me if I
+loved, knowing myself so worthless a thing to thee!
+
+....
+
+"ANOTHER!--my memory echoes back that word. Another! Dost thou mean that
+I shall see thee no more? It is not sadness,--it is not despair that
+seizes me. I cannot weep. It is an utter sense of desolation. I am
+plunged back into the common life; and I shudder coldly at the solitude.
+But I will obey thee, if thou wilt. Shall I not see thee again beyond
+the grave? O how sweet it were to die!
+
+"Why do I not struggle from the web in which my will is thus entangled?
+Hast thou a right to dispose of me thus? Give me back--give me back the
+life I knew before I gave life itself away to thee. Give me back the
+careless dreams of my youth,---my liberty of heart that sung aloud as it
+walked the earth. Thou hast disenchanted me of everything that is not
+of thyself. Where was the sin, at least, to think of thee,--to see thee?
+Thy kiss still glows upon my hand; is that hand mine to bestow? Thy kiss
+claimed and hallowed it to thyself. Stranger, I will NOT obey thee.
+
+....
+
+"Another day,--one day of the fatal three is gone! It is strange to me
+that since the sleep of the last night, a deep calm has settled upon my
+breast. I feel so assured that my very being is become a part of thee,
+that I cannot believe that my life can be separated from thine; and in
+this conviction I repose, and smile even at thy words and my own
+fears. Thou art fond of one maxim, which thou repeatest in a thousand
+forms,--that the beauty of the soul is faith; that as ideal loveliness
+to the sculptor, faith is to the heart; that faith, rightly understood,
+extends over all the works of the Creator, whom we can know but through
+belief; that it embraces a tranquil confidence in ourselves, and a
+serene repose as to our future; that it is the moonlight that sways the
+tides of the human sea. That faith I comprehend now. I reject all doubt,
+all fear. I know that I have inextricably linked the whole that makes
+the inner life to thee; and thou canst not tear me from thee, if
+thou wouldst! And this change from struggle into calm came to me
+with sleep,--a sleep without a dream; but when I woke, it was with
+a mysterious sense of happiness,--an indistinct memory of something
+blessed,--as if thou hadst cast from afar off a smile upon my slumber.
+At night I was so sad; not a blossom that had not closed itself up, as
+if never more to open to the sun; and the night itself, in the heart
+as on the earth, has ripened the blossoms into flowers. The world is
+beautiful once more, but beautiful in repose,--not a breeze stirs thy
+tree, not a doubt my soul!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.VI.
+
+     Tu vegga o per violenzia o per inganno
+     Patire o disonore o mortal danno.
+     "Orlando Furioso," Cant. xlii. i.
+
+     (Thou art about, either through violence or artifice, to suffer
+     either dishonour or mortal loss.)
+
+It was a small cabinet; the walls were covered with pictures, one of
+which was worth more than the whole lineage of the owner of the palace.
+Oh, yes! Zanoni was right. The painter IS a magician; the gold he at
+least wrings from his crucible is no delusion. A Venetian noble might be
+a fribble, or an assassin,--a scoundrel, or a dolt; worthless, or worse
+than worthless, yet he might have sat to Titian, and his portrait may
+be inestimable,--a few inches of painted canvas a thousand times more
+valuable than a man with his veins and muscles, brain, will, heart, and
+intellect!
+
+In this cabinet sat a man of about three-and-forty,--dark-eyed, sallow,
+with short, prominent features, a massive conformation of jaw, and
+thick, sensual, but resolute lips; this man was the Prince di --. His
+form, above the middle height, and rather inclined to corpulence, was
+clad in a loose dressing-robe of rich brocade. On a table before him lay
+an old-fashioned sword and hat, a mask, dice and dice-box, a portfolio,
+and an inkstand of silver curiously carved.
+
+"Well, Mascari," said the prince, looking up towards his parasite, who
+stood by the embrasure of the deep-set barricadoed window,--"well! the
+Cardinal sleeps with his fathers. I require comfort for the loss of
+so excellent a relation; and where a more dulcet voice than Viola
+Pisani's?"
+
+"Is your Excellency serious? So soon after the death of his Eminence?"
+
+"It will be the less talked of, and I the less suspected. Hast thou
+ascertained the name of the insolent who baffled us that night, and
+advised the Cardinal the next day?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Sapient Mascari! I will inform thee. It was the strange Unknown."
+
+"The Signor Zanoni! Are you sure, my prince?"
+
+"Mascari, yes. There is a tone in that man's voice that I never can
+mistake; so clear, and so commanding, when I hear it I almost fancy
+there is such a thing as conscience. However, we must rid ourselves of
+an impertinent. Mascari, Signor Zanoni hath not yet honoured our poor
+house with his presence. He is a distinguished stranger,--we must give a
+banquet in his honour."
+
+"Ah, and the Cyprus wine! The cypress is a proper emblem of the grave."
+
+"But this anon. I am superstitious; there are strange stories of
+Zanoni's power and foresight; remember the death of Ughelli. No matter,
+though the Fiend were his ally, he should not rob me of my prize; no,
+nor my revenge."
+
+"Your Excellency is infatuated; the actress has bewitched you."
+
+"Mascari," said the prince, with a haughty smile, "through these veins
+rolls the blood of the old Visconti--of those who boasted that no woman
+ever escaped their lust, and no man their resentment. The crown of my
+fathers has shrunk into a gewgaw and a toy,--their ambition and their
+spirit are undecayed! My honour is now enlisted in this pursuit,--Viola
+must be mine!"
+
+"Another ambuscade?" said Mascari, inquiringly.
+
+"Nay, why not enter the house itself?--the situation is lonely, and the
+door is not made of iron."
+
+"But what if, on her return home, she tell the tale of our violence? A
+house forced,--a virgin stolen! Reflect; though the feudal privileges
+are not destroyed, even a Visconti is not now above the law."
+
+"Is he not, Mascari? Fool! in what age of the world, even if the Madmen
+of France succeed in their chimeras, will the iron of law not bend
+itself, like an osier twig, to the strong hand of power and gold? But
+look not so pale, Mascari; I have foreplanned all things. The day that
+she leaves this palace, she will leave it for France, with Monsieur Jean
+Nicot."
+
+Before Mascari could reply, the gentleman of the chamber announced the
+Signor Zanoni.
+
+The prince involuntarily laid his hand upon the sword placed on the
+table, then with a smile at his own impulse, rose, and met his visitor
+at the threshold, with all the profuse and respectful courtesy of
+Italian simulation.
+
+"This is an honour highly prized," said the prince. "I have long desired
+to clasp the hand of one so distinguished."
+
+"And I give it in the spirit with which you seek it," replied Zanoni.
+
+The Neapolitan bowed over the hand he pressed; but as he touched it a
+shiver came over him, and his heart stood still. Zanoni bent on him his
+dark, smiling eyes, and then seated himself with a familiar air.
+
+"Thus it is signed and sealed; I mean our friendship, noble prince. And
+now I will tell you the object of my visit. I find, Excellency, that,
+unconsciously perhaps, we are rivals. Can we not accommodate out
+pretensions!"
+
+"Ah!" said the prince, carelessly, "you, then, were the cavalier who
+robbed me of the reward of my chase. All stratagems fair in love, as in
+war. Reconcile our pretensions! Well, here is the dice-box; let us throw
+for her. He who casts the lowest shall resign his claim."
+
+"Is this a decision by which you will promise to be bound?"
+
+"Yes, on my faith."
+
+"And for him who breaks his word so plighted, what shall be the
+forfeit?"
+
+"The sword lies next to the dice-box, Signor Zanoni. Let him who stands
+not by his honour fall by the sword."
+
+"And you invoke that sentence if either of us fail his word? Be it so;
+let Signor Mascari cast for us."
+
+"Well said!--Mascari, the dice!"
+
+The prince threw himself back in his chair; and, world-hardened as he
+was, could not suppress the glow of triumph and satisfaction that spread
+itself over his features. Mascari took up the three dice, and rattled
+them noisily in the box. Zanoni, leaning his cheek on his hand, and
+bending over the table, fixed his eyes steadfastly on the parasite;
+Mascari in vain struggled to extricate from that searching gaze; he grew
+pale, and trembled, he put down the box.
+
+"I give the first throw to your Excellency. Signor Mascari, be pleased
+to terminate our suspense."
+
+Again Mascari took up the box; again his hand shook so that the dice
+rattled within. He threw; the numbers were sixteen.
+
+"It is a high throw," said Zanoni, calmly; "nevertheless, Signor
+Mascari, I do not despond."
+
+Mascari gathered up the dice, shook the box, and rolled the contents
+once more on the table: the number was the highest that can be
+thrown,--eighteen.
+
+The prince darted a glance of fire at his minion, who stood with gaping
+mouth, staring at the dice, and trembling from head to foot.
+
+"I have won, you see," said Zanoni; "may we be friends still?"
+
+"Signor," said the prince, obviously struggling with anger and
+confusion, "the victory is yours. But pardon me, you have spoken lightly
+of this young girl,--will anything tempt you to yield your claim?"
+
+"Ah, do not think so ill of my gallantry; and," resumed Zanoni, with a
+stern meaning in his voice, "forget not the forfeit your own lips have
+named."
+
+The prince knit his brow, but constrained the haughty answer that was
+his first impulse.
+
+"Enough!" he said, forcing a smile; "I yield. Let me prove that I do not
+yield ungraciously; will you favour me with your presence at a little
+feast I propose to give in honour," he added, with a sardonic mockery,
+"of the elevation of my kinsman, the late Cardinal, of pious memory, to
+the true seat of St. Peter?"
+
+"It is, indeed, a happiness to hear one command of yours I can obey."
+
+Zanoni then turned the conversation, talked lightly and gayly, and soon
+afterwards departed.
+
+"Villain!" then exclaimed the prince, grasping Mascari by the collar,
+"you betrayed me!"
+
+"I assure your Excellency that the dice were properly arranged; he
+should have thrown twelve; but he is the Devil, and that's the end of
+it."
+
+"There is no time to be lost," said the prince, quitting his hold of his
+parasite, who quietly resettled his cravat.
+
+"My blood is up,--I will win this girl, if I die for it! What noise is
+that?"
+
+"It is but the sword of your illustrious ancestor that has fallen from
+the table."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.VII.
+
+     Il ne faut appeler aucun ordre si ce n'est en tems clair et
+     serein.
+     "Les Clavicules du Rabbi Salomon."
+
+     (No order of spirits must be invoked unless the weather be clear
+     and serene.)
+
+Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.
+
+My art is already dim and troubled. I have lost the tranquillity which
+is power. I cannot influence the decisions of those whom I would most
+guide to the shore; I see them wander farther and deeper into the
+infinite ocean where our barks sail evermore to the horizon that flies
+before us! Amazed and awed to find that I can only warn where I would
+control, I have looked into my own soul. It is true that the desires of
+earth chain me to the present, and shut me from the solemn secrets which
+Intellect, purified from all the dross of the clay, alone can examine
+and survey. The stern condition on which we hold our nobler and diviner
+gifts darkens our vision towards the future of those for whom we know
+the human infirmities of jealousy or hate or love. Mejnour, all around
+me is mist and haze; I have gone back in our sublime existence; and
+from the bosom of the imperishable youth that blooms only in the spirit,
+springs up the dark poison-flower of human love.
+
+This man is not worthy of her,--I know that truth; yet in his nature
+are the seeds of good and greatness, if the tares and weeds of worldly
+vanities and fears would suffer them to grow. If she were his, and I had
+thus transplanted to another soil the passion that obscures my gaze and
+disarms my power, unseen, unheard, unrecognised, I could watch over his
+fate, and secretly prompt his deeds, and minister to her welfare through
+his own. But time rushes on! Through the shadows that encircle me, I
+see, gathering round her, the darkest dangers. No choice but flight,--no
+escape save with him or me. With me!--the rapturous thought,--the
+terrible conviction! With me! Mejnour, canst thou wonder that I would
+save her from myself? A moment in the life of ages,--a bubble on the
+shoreless sea. What else to me can be human love? And in this exquisite
+nature of hers,--more pure, more spiritual, even in its young affections
+than ever heretofore the countless volumes of the heart, race after
+race, have given to my gaze: there is yet a deep-buried feeling
+that warns me of inevitable woe. Thou austere and remorseless
+Hierophant,--thou who hast sought to convert to our brotherhood every
+spirit that seemed to thee most high and bold,--even thou knowest, by
+horrible experience, how vain the hope to banish FEAR from the heart of
+woman.
+
+My life would be to her one marvel. Even if, on the other hand, I sought
+to guide her path through the realms of terror to the light, think of
+the Haunter of the Threshold, and shudder with me at the awful hazard!
+I have endeavoured to fill the Englishman's ambition with the true
+glory of his art; but the restless spirit of his ancestor still seems to
+whisper in him, and to attract to the spheres in which it lost its own
+wandering way. There is a mystery in man's inheritance from his fathers.
+Peculiarities of the mind, as diseases of the body, rest dormant for
+generations, to revive in some distant descendant, baffle all treatment
+and elude all skill. Come to me from thy solitude amidst the wrecks of
+Rome! I pant for a living confidant,--for one who in the old time has
+himself known jealousy and love. I have sought commune with Adon-Ai; but
+his presence, that once inspired such heavenly content with knowledge,
+and so serene a confidence in destiny, now only troubles and perplexes
+me. From the height from which I strive to search into the shadows of
+things to come, I see confused spectres of menace and wrath. Methinks I
+behold a ghastly limit to the wondrous existence I have held,--methinks
+that, after ages of the Ideal Life, I see my course merge into the most
+stormy whirlpool of the Real. Where the stars opened to me their gates,
+there looms a scaffold,--thick steams of blood rise as from a shambles.
+What is more strange to me, a creature here, a very type of the false
+ideal of common men,--body and mind, a hideous mockery of the art that
+shapes the Beautiful, and the desires that seek the Perfect, ever haunts
+my vision amidst these perturbed and broken clouds of the fate to be.
+By that shadowy scaffold it stands and gibbers at me, with lips dropping
+slime and gore. Come, O friend of the far-time; for me, at least, thy
+wisdom has not purged away thy human affections. According to the bonds
+of our solemn order, reduced now to thee and myself, lone survivors of
+so many haughty and glorious aspirants, thou art pledged, too, to warn
+the descendant of those whom thy counsels sought to initiate into the
+great secret in a former age. The last of that bold Visconti who was
+once thy pupil is the relentless persecutor of this fair child. With
+thoughts of lust and murder, he is digging his own grave; thou mayest
+yet daunt him from his doom. And I also mysteriously, by the same bond,
+am pledged to obey, if he so command, a less guilty descendant of a
+baffled but nobler student. If he reject my counsel, and insist upon
+the pledge, Mejnour, thou wilt have another neophyte. Beware of another
+victim! Come to me! This will reach thee with all speed. Answer it by
+the pressure of one hand that I can dare to clasp!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.VIII.
+
+     Il lupo
+     Ferito, credo, mi conobbe e 'ncontro
+     Mi venne con la bocca sanguinosa.
+     "Aminta," At. iv. Sc. i.
+
+     (The wounded wolf, I think, knew me, and came to meet me with its
+     bloody mouth.)
+
+At Naples, the tomb of Virgil, beetling over the cave of Posilipo, is
+reverenced, not with the feelings that should hallow the memory of the
+poet, but the awe that wraps the memory of the magician. To his charms
+they ascribe the hollowing of that mountain passage; and tradition yet
+guards his tomb by the spirits he had raised to construct the cavern.
+This spot, in the immediate vicinity of Viola's home, had often
+attracted her solitary footsteps. She had loved the dim and solemn
+fancies that beset her as she looked into the lengthened gloom of the
+grotto, or, ascending to the tomb, gazed from the rock on the dwarfed
+figures of the busy crowd that seemed to creep like insects along the
+windings of the soil below; and now, at noon, she bent thither her
+thoughtful way. She threaded the narrow path, she passed the gloomy
+vineyard that clambers up the rock, and gained the lofty spot, green
+with moss and luxuriant foliage, where the dust of him who yet soothes
+and elevates the minds of men is believed to rest. From afar rose the
+huge fortress of St. Elmo, frowning darkly amidst spires and domes that
+glittered in the sun. Lulled in its azure splendour lay the Siren's sea;
+and the grey smoke of Vesuvius, in the clear distance, soared like
+a moving pillar into the lucid sky. Motionless on the brink of the
+precipice, Viola looked upon the lovely and living world that stretched
+below; and the sullen vapour of Vesuvius fascinated her eye yet more
+than the scattered gardens, or the gleaming Caprea, smiling amidst the
+smiles of the sea. She heard not a step that had followed her on her
+path and started to hear a voice at hand. So sudden was the apparition
+of the form that stood by her side, emerging from the bushes that clad
+the crags, and so singularly did it harmonise in its uncouth ugliness
+with the wild nature of the scene immediately around her, and the wizard
+traditions of the place, that the colour left her cheek, and a faint cry
+broke from her lips.
+
+"Tush, pretty trembler!--do not be frightened at my face," said the
+man, with a bitter smile. "After three months' marriage, there is no
+different between ugliness and beauty. Custom is a great leveller. I was
+coming to your house when I saw you leave it; so, as I have matters of
+importance to communicate, I ventured to follow your footsteps. My name
+is Jean Nicot, a name already favourably known as a French artist. The
+art of painting and the art of music are nearly connected, and the stage
+is an altar that unites the two."
+
+There was something frank and unembarrassed in the man's address that
+served to dispel the fear his appearance had occasioned. He seated
+himself, as he spoke, on a crag beside her, and, looking up steadily
+into her face, continued:--
+
+"You are very beautiful, Viola Pisani, and I am not surprised at the
+number of your admirers. If I presume to place myself in the list, it is
+because I am the only one who loves thee honestly, and woos thee fairly.
+Nay, look not so indignant! Listen to me. Has the Prince di -- ever
+spoken to thee of marriage; or the beautiful imposter Zanoni, or the
+young blue-eyed Englishman, Clarence Glyndon? It is marriage,--it is a
+home, it is safety, it is reputation, that I offer to thee; and these
+last when the straight form grows crooked, and the bright eyes dim. What
+say you?" and he attempted to seize her hand.
+
+Viola shrunk from him, and silently turned to depart. He rose abruptly
+and placed himself on her path.
+
+"Actress, you must hear me! Do you know what this calling of the stage
+is in the eyes of prejudice,--that is, of the common opinion of mankind?
+It is to be a princess before the lamps, and a Pariah before the day.
+No man believes in your virtue, no man credits your vows; you are the
+puppet that they consent to trick out with tinsel for their amusement,
+not an idol for their worship. Are you so enamoured of this career
+that you scorn even to think of security and honour? Perhaps you are
+different from what you seem. Perhaps you laugh at the prejudice that
+would degrade you, and would wisely turn it to advantage. Speak frankly
+to me; I have no prejudice either. Sweet one, I am sure we should agree.
+Now, this Prince di --, I have a message from him. Shall I deliver it?"
+
+Never had Viola felt as she felt then, never had she so thoroughly seen
+all the perils of her forelorn condition and her fearful renown. Nicot
+continued:--
+
+"Zanoni would but amuse himself with thy vanity; Glyndon would despise
+himself, if he offered thee his name, and thee, if thou wouldst accept
+it; but the Prince di -- is in earnest, and he is wealthy. Listen!"
+
+And Nicot approached his lips to her, and hissed a sentence which she
+did not suffer him to complete. She darted from him with one glance of
+unutterable disdain. As he strove to regain his hold of her arm, he
+lost his footing, and fell down the sides of the rock till, bruised and
+lacerated, a pine-branch saved him from the yawning abyss below. She
+heard his exclamation of rage and pain as she bounded down the path,
+and, without once turning to look behind, regained her home. By the
+porch stood Glyndon, conversing with Gionetta. She passed him
+abruptly, entered the house, and, sinking on the floor, wept loud and
+passionately.
+
+Glyndon, who had followed her in surprise, vainly sought to soothe and
+calm her. She would not reply to his questions; she did not seem to
+listen to his protestations of love, till suddenly, as Nicot's terrible
+picture of the world's judgment of that profession which to her younger
+thoughts had seemed the service of Song and the Beautiful, forced itself
+upon her, she raised her face from her hands, and, looking steadily upon
+the Englishman, said, "False one, dost thou talk of me of love?"
+
+"By my honour, words fail to tell thee how I love!"
+
+"Wilt thou give me thy home, thy name? Dost thou woo me as thy wife?"
+And at that moment, had Glyndon answered as his better angel would have
+counselled, perhaps, in that revolution of her whole mind which the
+words of Nicot had effected, which made her despise her very self,
+sicken of her lofty dreams, despair of the future, and distrust her
+whole ideal,--perhaps, I say, in restoring her self-esteem,--he would
+have won her confidence, and ultimately secured her love. But against
+the prompting of his nobler nature rose up at that sudden question all
+those doubts which, as Zanoni had so well implied, made the true enemies
+of his soul. Was he thus suddenly to be entangled into a snare laid for
+his credulity by deceivers? Was she not instructed to seize the moment
+to force him into an avowal which prudence must repent? Was not the
+great actress rehearsing a premeditated part? He turned round, as these
+thoughts, the children of the world, passed across him, for he literally
+fancied that he heard the sarcastic laugh of Mervale without. Nor was
+he deceived. Mervale was passing by the threshold, and Gionetta had told
+him his friend was within. Who does not know the effect of the world's
+laugh? Mervale was the personation of the world. The whole world seemed
+to shout derision in those ringing tones. He drew back,--he recoiled.
+Viola followed him with her earnest, impatient eyes. At last, he
+faltered forth, "Do all of thy profession, beautiful Viola, exact
+marriage as the sole condition of love?" Oh, bitter question! Oh,
+poisoned taunt! He repented it the moment after. He was seized with
+remorse of reason, of feeling, and of conscience. He saw her form
+shrink, as it were, at his cruel words. He saw the colour come and go,
+to leave the writhing lips like marble; and then, with a sad, gentle
+look of self-pity, rather than reproach, she pressed her hands tightly
+to her bosom, and said,--
+
+"He was right! Pardon me, Englishman; I see now, indeed, that I am the
+Pariah and the outcast."
+
+"Hear me. I retract. Viola, Viola! it is for you to forgive!"
+
+But Viola waved him from her, and, smiling mournfully as she passed him
+by, glided from the chamber; and he did not dare to detain her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.IX.
+
+     Dafne:  Ma, chi lung' e d'Amor?
+     Tirsi:  Chi teme e fugge.
+     Dafne:  E che giova fuggir da lui ch' ha l' ali?
+     Tirsi:  AMOR NASCENTE HA CORTE L' ALI!
+     "Aminta," At. ii. Sc. ii.
+
+     (Dafne:  But, who is far from Love?
+     Tirsi:  He who fears and flies.
+     Dafne:  What use to flee from one who has wings?
+     Tirsi:  The wings of Love, while he yet grows, are short.)
+
+When Glyndon found himself without Viola's house, Mervale, still
+loitering at the door, seized his arm. Glyndon shook him off abruptly.
+
+"Thou and thy counsels," said he, bitterly, "have made me a coward and
+a wretch. But I will go home,--I will write to her. I will pour out my
+whole soul; she will forgive me yet."
+
+Mervale, who was a man of imperturbable temper, arranged his ruffles,
+which his friend's angry gesture had a little discomposed, and not till
+Glyndon had exhausted himself awhile by passionate exclamations and
+reproaches, did the experienced angler begin to tighten the line. He
+then drew from Glyndon the explanation of what had passed, and artfully
+sought not to irritate, but soothe him. Mervale, indeed, was by no means
+a bad man; he had stronger moral notions than are common amongst the
+young. He sincerely reproved his friend for harbouring dishonourable
+intentions with regard to the actress. "Because I would not have her thy
+wife, I never dreamed that thou shouldst degrade her to thy mistress.
+Better of the two an imprudent match than an illicit connection. But
+pause yet, do not act on the impulse of the moment."
+
+"But there is no time to lose. I have promised to Zanoni to give him my
+answer by to-morrow night. Later than that time, all option ceases."
+
+"Ah!" said Mervale, "this seems suspicious. Explain yourself."
+
+And Glyndon, in the earnestness of his passion, told his friend what
+had passed between himself and Zanoni,--suppressing only, he scarce knew
+why, the reference to his ancestor and the mysterious brotherhood.
+
+This recital gave to Mervale all the advantage he could desire. Heavens!
+with what sound, shrewd common-sense he talked. How evidently some
+charlatanic coalition between the actress, and perhaps,--who knows?--her
+clandestine protector, sated with possession! How equivocal the
+character of one,--the position of the other! What cunning in the
+question of the actress! How profoundly had Glyndon, at the first
+suggestion of his sober reason, seen through the snare. What! was he
+to be thus mystically cajoled and hurried into a rash marriage, because
+Zanoni, a mere stranger, told him with a grave face that he must decide
+before the clock struck a certain hour?
+
+"Do this at least," said Mervale, reasonably enough,--"wait till the
+time expires; it is but another day. Baffle Zanoni. He tells thee that
+he will meet thee before midnight to-morrow, and defies thee to avoid
+him. Pooh! let us quit Naples for some neighbouring place, where, unless
+he be indeed the Devil, he cannot possibly find us. Show him that you
+will not be led blindfold even into an act that you meditate yourself.
+Defer to write to her, or to see her, till after to-morrow. This is all
+I ask. Then visit her, and decide for yourself."
+
+Glyndon was staggered. He could not combat the reasonings of his friend;
+he was not convinced, but he hesitated; and at that moment Nicot passed
+them. He turned round, and stopped, as he saw Glyndon.
+
+"Well, and do you think still of the Pisani?"
+
+"Yes; and you--"
+
+"Have seen and conversed with her. She shall be Madame Nicot before this
+day week! I am going to the cafe, in the Toledo; and hark ye, when next
+you meet your friend Signor Zanoni, tell him that he has twice crossed
+my path. Jean Nicot, though a painter, is a plain, honest man, and
+always pays his debts."
+
+"It is a good doctrine in money matters," said Mervale; "as to revenge,
+it is not so moral, and certainly not so wise. But is it in your love
+that Zanoni has crossed your path? How that, if your suit prosper so
+well?"
+
+"Ask Viola Pisani that question. Bah! Glyndon, she is a prude only to
+thee. But I have no prejudices. Once more, farewell."
+
+"Rouse thyself, man!" said Mervale, slapping Glyndon on the shoulder.
+"What think you of your fair one now?"
+
+"This man must lie."
+
+"Will you write to her at once?"
+
+"No; if she be really playing a game, I could renounce her without a
+sigh. I will watch her closely; and, at all events, Zanoni shall not be
+the master of my fate. Let us, as you advise, leave Naples at daybreak
+to-morrow."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.X.
+
+     O chiunque tu sia, che fuor d'ogni uso
+     Pieghi Natura ad opre altere e strane,
+     E, spiando i segreti, entri al piu chiuso
+     Spazi' a tua voglia delle menti umane--Deh, Dimmi!
+     "Gerus. Lib.," Cant. x. xviii.
+
+     (O thou, whoever thou art, who through every use bendest Nature
+     to works foreign and strange; and by spying into her secrets,
+     enterest at thy will into the closest recesses of the human
+     mind,--O speak!  O tell me!)
+
+Early the next morning the young Englishmen mounted their horses, and
+took the road towards Baiae. Glyndon left word at his hotel, that if
+Signor Zanoni sought him, it was in the neighbourhood of that once
+celebrated watering-place of the ancients that he should be found.
+
+They passed by Viola's house, but Glyndon resisted the temptation of
+pausing there; and after threading the grotto of Posilipo, they wound
+by a circuitous route back into the suburbs of the city, and took the
+opposite road, which conducts to Portici and Pompeii. It was late at
+noon when they arrived at the former of these places. Here they halted
+to dine; for Mervale had heard much of the excellence of the macaroni at
+Portici, and Mervale was a bon vivant.
+
+They put up at an inn of very humble pretensions, and dined under an
+awning. Mervale was more than usually gay; he pressed the lacrima upon
+his friend, and conversed gayly.
+
+"Well, my dear friend, we have foiled Signor Zanoni in one of his
+predictions at least. You will have no faith in him hereafter."
+
+"The ides are come, not gone."
+
+"Tush! If he be the soothsayer, you are not the Caesar. It is your
+vanity that makes you credulous. Thank Heaven, I do not think myself of
+such importance that the operations of Nature should be changed in order
+to frighten me."
+
+"But why should the operations of Nature be changed? There may be a
+deeper philosophy than we dream of,--a philosophy that discovers the
+secrets of Nature, but does not alter, by penetrating, its courses."
+
+"Ah, you relapse into your heretical credulity; you seriously suppose
+Zanoni to be a prophet,--a reader of the future; perhaps an associate of
+genii and spirits!"
+
+Here the landlord, a little, fat, oily fellow, came up with a fresh
+bottle of lacrima. He hoped their Excellencies were pleased. He was most
+touched--touched to the heart, that they liked the macaroni. Were their
+Excellencies going to Vesuvius? There was a slight eruption; they could
+not see it where they were, but it was pretty, and would be prettier
+still after sunset.
+
+"A capital idea!" cried Mervale. "What say you, Glyndon?"
+
+"I have not yet seen an eruption; I should like it much."
+
+"But is there no danger?" asked the prudent Mervale.
+
+"Oh, not at all; the mountain is very civil at present. It only plays a
+little, just to amuse their Excellencies the English."
+
+"Well, order the horses, and bring the bill; we will go before it is
+dark. Clarence, my friend,--nunc est bibendum; but take care of the pede
+libero, which will scarce do for walking on lava!"
+
+The bottle was finished, the bill paid; the gentlemen mounted, the
+landlord bowed, and they bent their way, in the cool of the delightful
+evening, towards Resina.
+
+The wine, perhaps the excitement of his thoughts, animated Glyndon,
+whose unequal spirits were, at times, high and brilliant as those of a
+schoolboy released; and the laughter of the Northern tourists sounded
+oft and merrily along the melancholy domains of buried cities.
+
+Hesperus had lighted his lamp amidst the rosy skies as they arrived at
+Resina. Here they quitted their horses, and took mules and a guide.
+As the sky grew darker and more dark, the mountain fire burned with an
+intense lustre. In various streaks and streamlets, the fountain of flame
+rolled down the dark summit, and the Englishmen began to feel increase
+upon them, as they ascended, that sensation of solemnity and awe which
+makes the very atmosphere that surrounds the Giant of the Plains of the
+Antique Hades.
+
+It was night, when, leaving the mules, they ascended on foot,
+accompanied by their guide, and a peasant who bore a rude torch. The
+guide was a conversable, garrulous fellow, like most of his country
+and his calling; and Mervale, who possessed a sociable temper, loved to
+amuse or to instruct himself on every incidental occasion.
+
+"Ah, Excellency," said the guide, "your countrymen have a strong passion
+for the volcano. Long life to them, they bring us plenty of money! If
+our fortunes depended on the Neapolitans, we should starve."
+
+"True, they have no curiosity," said Mervale. "Do you remember, Glyndon,
+the contempt with which that old count said to us, 'You will go to
+Vesuvius, I suppose? I have never been; why should I go? You have cold,
+you have hunger, you have fatigue, you have danger, and all for
+nothing but to see fire, which looks just as well in a brazier as on a
+mountain.' Ha! ha! the old fellow was right."
+
+"But, Excellency," said the guide, "that is not all: some cavaliers
+think to ascend the mountain without our help. I am sure they deserve to
+tumble into the crater."
+
+"They must be bold fellows to go alone; you don't often find such."
+
+"Sometimes among the French, signor. But the other night--I never was
+so frightened--I had been with an English party, and a lady had left a
+pocket-book on the mountain, where she had been sketching. She offered
+me a handsome sum to return for it, and bring it to her at Naples. So I
+went in the evening. I found it, sure enough, and was about to return,
+when I saw a figure that seemed to emerge from the crater itself. The
+air there was so pestiferous that I could not have conceived a human
+creature could breathe it, and live. I was so astounded that I stood
+still as a stone, till the figure came over the hot ashes, and stood
+before me, face to face. Santa Maria, what a head!"
+
+"What! hideous?"
+
+"No; so beautiful, but so terrible. It had nothing human in its aspect."
+
+"And what said the salamander?"
+
+"Nothing! It did not even seem to perceive me, though I was near as I am
+to you; but its eyes seemed to emerge prying into the air. It passed by
+me quickly, and, walking across a stream of burning lava, soon vanished
+on the other side of the mountain. I was curious and foolhardy, and
+resolved to see if I could bear the atmosphere which this visitor had
+left; but though I did not advance within thirty yards of the spot at
+which he had first appeared, I was driven back by a vapour that wellnigh
+stifled me. Cospetto! I have spat blood ever since."
+
+"Now will I lay a wager that you fancy this fire-king must be Zanoni,"
+whispered Mervale, laughing.
+
+The little party had now arrived nearly at the summit of the mountain;
+and unspeakably grand was the spectacle on which they gazed. From
+the crater arose a vapour, intensely dark, that overspread the whole
+background of the heavens; in the centre whereof rose a flame that
+assumed a form singularly beautiful. It might have been compared to a
+crest of gigantic feathers, the diadem of the mountain, high-arched, and
+drooping downward, with the hues delicately shaded off, and the whole
+shifting and tremulous as the plumage on a warrior's helmet.
+
+The glare of the flame spread, luminous and crimson, over the dark and
+rugged ground on which they stood, and drew an innumerable variety of
+shadows from crag and hollow. An oppressive and sulphureous exhalation
+served to increase the gloomy and sublime terror of the place. But on
+turning from the mountain, and towards the distant and unseen ocean, the
+contrast was wonderfully great; the heavens serene and blue, the stars
+still and calm as the eyes of Divine Love. It was as if the realms of
+the opposing principles of Evil and of Good were brought in one
+view before the gaze of man! Glyndon--once more the enthusiast, the
+artist--was enchained and entranced by emotions vague and undefinable,
+half of delight and half of pain. Leaning on the shoulder of his friend,
+he gazed around him, and heard with deepening awe the rumbling of the
+earth below, the wheels and voices of the Ministry of Nature in her
+darkest and most inscrutable recess. Suddenly, as a bomb from a shell,
+a huge stone was flung hundreds of yards up from the jaws of the crater,
+and falling with a mighty crash upon the rock below, split into ten
+thousand fragments, which bounded down the sides of the mountain,
+sparkling and groaning as they went. One of these, the largest fragment,
+struck the narrow space of soil between the Englishmen and the guide,
+not three feet from the spot where the former stood. Mervale uttered an
+exclamation of terror, and Glyndon held his breath, and shuddered.
+
+"Diavolo!" cried the guide. "Descend, Excellencies,--descend! we have
+not a moment to lose; follow me close!"
+
+So saying, the guide and the peasant fled with as much swiftness as they
+were able to bring to bear. Mervale, ever more prompt and ready than his
+friend, imitated their example; and Glyndon, more confused than alarmed,
+followed close. But they had not gone many yards, before, with a rushing
+and sudden blast, came from the crater an enormous volume of vapour. It
+pursued,--it overtook, it overspread them. It swept the light from the
+heavens. All was abrupt and utter darkness; and through the gloom was
+heard the shout of the guide, already distant, and lost in an instant
+amidst the sound of the rushing gust and the groans of the earth
+beneath. Glyndon paused. He was separated from his friend, from the
+guide. He was alone,--with the Darkness and the Terror. The vapour
+rolled sullenly away; the form of the plumed fire was again dimly
+visible, and its struggling and perturbed reflection again shed a
+glow over the horrors of the path. Glyndon recovered himself, and sped
+onward. Below, he heard the voice of Mervale calling on him, though
+he no longer saw his form. The sound served as a guide. Dizzy and
+breathless, he bounded forward; when--hark!--a sullen, slow rolling
+sounded in his ear! He halted,--and turned back to gaze. The fire had
+overflowed its course; it had opened itself a channel amidst the furrows
+of the mountain. The stream pursued him fast--fast; and the hot breath
+of the chasing and preternatural foe came closer and closer upon his
+cheek! He turned aside; he climbed desperately with hands and feet upon
+a crag that, to the right, broke the scathed and blasted level of the
+soil. The stream rolled beside and beneath him, and then taking a sudden
+wind round the spot on which he stood, interposed its liquid fire,--a
+broad and impassable barrier between his resting-place and escape. There
+he stood, cut off from descent, and with no alternative but to retrace
+his steps towards the crater, and thence seek, without guide or clew,
+some other pathway.
+
+For a moment his courage left him; he cried in despair, and in that
+overstrained pitch of voice which is never heard afar off, to the guide,
+to Mervale, to return to aid him.
+
+No answer came; and the Englishman, thus abandoned solely to his own
+resources, felt his spirit and energy rise against the danger. He turned
+back, and ventured as far towards the crater as the noxious exhalation
+would permit; then, gazing below, carefully and deliberately he chalked
+out for himself a path by which he trusted to shun the direction the
+fire-stream had taken, and trod firmly and quickly over the crumbling
+and heated strata.
+
+He had proceeded about fifty yards, when he halted abruptly; an
+unspeakable and unaccountable horror, not hitherto experienced amidst
+all his peril, came over him. He shook in every limb; his muscles
+refused his will,--he felt, as it were, palsied and death-stricken. The
+horror, I say, was unaccountable, for the path seemed clear and safe.
+The fire, above and behind, burned clear and far; and beyond, the stars
+lent him their cheering guidance. No obstacle was visible,--no danger
+seemed at hand. As thus, spell-bound, and panic-stricken, he stood
+chained to the soil,--his breast heaving, large drops rolling down his
+brow, and his eyes starting wildly from their sockets,--he saw before
+him, at some distance, gradually shaping itself more and more distinctly
+to his gaze, a colossal shadow; a shadow that seemed partially borrowed
+from the human shape, but immeasurably above the human stature; vague,
+dark, almost formless; and differing, he could not tell where or why,
+not only from the proportions, but also from the limbs and outline of
+man.
+
+The glare of the volcano, that seemed to shrink and collapse from this
+gigantic and appalling apparition, nevertheless threw its light,
+redly and steadily, upon another shape that stood beside, quiet and
+motionless; and it was, perhaps, the contrast of these two things--the
+Being and the Shadow--that impressed the beholder with the difference
+between them,--the Man and the Superhuman. It was but for a moment--nay,
+for the tenth part of a moment--that this sight was permitted to the
+wanderer. A second eddy of sulphureous vapours from the volcano, yet
+more rapidly, yet more densely than its predecessor, rolled over the
+mountain; and either the nature of the exhalation, or the excess of his
+own dread, was such, that Glyndon, after one wild gasp for breath, fell
+senseless on the earth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XI.
+
+     Was hab'ich,
+     Wenn ich nicht Alles habe?--sprach der Jungling.
+     "Das Verschleierte Bild zu Sais."
+
+     ("What have I, if I possess not All?" said the youth.)
+
+Mervale and the Italians arrived in safety at the spot where they had
+left the mules; and not till they had recovered their own alarm and
+breath did they think of Glyndon. But then, as the minutes passed, and
+he appeared not, Mervale, whose heart was as good at least as human
+hearts are in general, grew seriously alarmed. He insisted on returning
+to search for his friend; and by dint of prodigal promises prevailed at
+last on the guide to accompany him. The lower part of the mountain lay
+calm and white in the starlight; and the guide's practised eye could
+discern all objects on the surface at a considerable distance. They
+had not, however, gone very far, before they perceived two forms slowly
+approaching them.
+
+As they came near, Mervale recognised the form of his friend. "Thank
+Heaven, he is safe!" he cried, turning to the guide.
+
+"Holy angels befriend us!" said the Italian, trembling,--"behold the
+very being that crossed me last Friday night. It is he, but his face is
+human now!"
+
+"Signor Inglese," said the voice of Zanoni, as Glyndon--pale, wan, and
+silent--returned passively the joyous greeting of Mervale,--"Signor
+Inglese, I told your friend that we should meet to-night. You see you
+have NOT foiled my prediction."
+
+"But how?--but where?" stammered Mervale, in great confusion and
+surprise.
+
+"I found your friend stretched on the ground, overpowered by the
+mephitic exhalation of the crater. I bore him to a purer atmosphere; and
+as I know the mountain well, I have conducted him safely to you. This is
+all our history. You see, sir, that were it not for that prophecy which
+you desired to frustrate, your friend would ere this time have been
+a corpse; one minute more, and the vapour had done its work. Adieu;
+goodnight, and pleasant dreams."
+
+"But, my preserver, you will not leave us?" said Glyndon, anxiously, and
+speaking for the first time. "Will you not return with us?"
+
+Zanoni paused, and drew Glyndon aside. "Young man," said he, gravely,
+"it is necessary that we should again meet to-night. It is necessary
+that you should, ere the first hour of morning, decide on your own fate.
+I know that you have insulted her whom you profess to love. It is not
+too late to repent. Consult not your friend: he is sensible and wise;
+but not now is his wisdom needed. There are times in life when, from the
+imagination, and not the reason, should wisdom come,--this, for you, is
+one of them. I ask not your answer now. Collect your thoughts,--recover
+your jaded and scattered spirits. It wants two hours of midnight. Before
+midnight I will be with you."
+
+"Incomprehensible being!" replied the Englishman, "I would leave the
+life you have preserved in your own hands; but what I have seen this
+night has swept even Viola from my thoughts. A fiercer desire than that
+of love burns in my veins,--the desire not to resemble but to surpass
+my kind; the desire to penetrate and to share the secret of your own
+existence--the desire of a preternatural knowledge and unearthly power.
+I make my choice. In my ancestor's name, I adjure and remind thee of thy
+pledge. Instruct me; school me; make me thine; and I surrender to thee
+at once, and without a murmur, the woman whom, till I saw thee, I would
+have defied a world to obtain."
+
+"I bid thee consider well: on the one hand, Viola, a tranquil home, a
+happy and serene life; on the other hand, all is darkness,--darkness,
+that even these eyes cannot penetrate."
+
+"But thou hast told me, that if I wed Viola, I must be contented with
+the common existence,--if I refuse, it is to aspire to thy knowledge and
+thy power."
+
+"Vain man, knowledge and power are not happiness."
+
+"But they are better than happiness. Say!--if I marry Viola, wilt thou
+be my master,--my guide? Say this, and I am resolved.
+
+"It were impossible."
+
+"Then I renounce her? I renounce love. I renounce happiness. Welcome
+solitude,--welcome despair; if they are the entrances to thy dark and
+sublime secret."
+
+"I will not take thy answer now. Before the last hour of night thou
+shalt give it in one word,--ay or no! Farewell till then."
+
+Zanoni waved his hand, and, descending rapidly, was seen no more.
+
+Glyndon rejoined his impatient and wondering friend; but Mervale, gazing
+on his face, saw that a great change had passed there. The flexile and
+dubious expression of youth was forever gone. The features were locked,
+rigid, and stern; and so faded was the natural bloom, that an hour
+seemed to have done the work of years.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XII.
+
+     Was ist's
+     Das hinter diesem Schleier sich verbirgt?
+     "Das Verschleierte Bild zu Sais."
+
+     (What is it that conceals itself behind this veil?)
+
+On returning from Vesuvius or Pompeii, you enter Naples through its most
+animated, its most Neapolitan quarter,--through that quarter in which
+modern life most closely resembles the ancient; and in which, when, on
+a fair-day, the thoroughfare swarms alike with Indolence and Trade, you
+are impressed at once with the recollection of that restless, lively
+race from which the population of Naples derives its origin; so that in
+one day you may see at Pompeii the habitations of a remote age; and on
+the Mole, at Naples, you may imagine you behold the very beings with
+whom those habitations had been peopled.
+
+But now, as the Englishmen rode slowly through the deserted streets,
+lighted but by the lamps of heaven, all the gayety of day was hushed and
+breathless. Here and there, stretched under a portico or a dingy booth,
+were sleeping groups of houseless Lazzaroni,--a tribe now merging its
+indolent individuality amidst an energetic and active population.
+
+The Englishman rode on in silence; for Glyndon neither appeared to heed
+nor hear the questions and comments of Mervale, and Mervale himself was
+almost as weary as the jaded animal he bestrode.
+
+Suddenly the silence of earth and ocean was broken by the sound of a
+distant clock that proclaimed the quarter preceding the last hour of
+night. Glyndon started from his reverie, and looked anxiously round. As
+the final stroke died, the noise of hoofs rung on the broad stones of
+the pavement, and from a narrow street to the right emerged the form of
+a solitary horseman. He neared the Englishmen, and Glyndon recognised
+the features and mien of Zanoni.
+
+"What! do we meet again, signor?" said Mervale, in a vexed but drowsy
+tone.
+
+"Your friend and I have business together," replied Zanoni, as
+he wheeled his steed to the side of Glyndon. "But it will be soon
+transacted. Perhaps you, sir, will ride on to your hotel."
+
+"Alone!"
+
+"There is no danger!" returned Zanoni, with a slight expression of
+disdain in his voice.
+
+"None to me; but to Glyndon?"
+
+"Danger from me! Ah, perhaps you are right."
+
+"Go on, my dear Mervale," said Glyndon; "I will join you before you
+reach the hotel."
+
+Mervale nodded, whistled, and pushed his horse into a kind of amble.
+
+"Now your answer,--quick?"
+
+"I have decided. The love of Viola has vanished from my heart. The
+pursuit is over."
+
+"You have decided?"
+
+"I have; and now my reward."
+
+"Thy reward! Well; ere this hour to-morrow it shall await thee."
+
+Zanoni gave the rein to his horse; it sprang forward with a bound: the
+sparks flew from its hoofs, and horse and rider disappeared amidst the
+shadows of the street whence they had emerged.
+
+Mervale was surprised to see his friend by his side, a minute after they
+had parted.
+
+"What has passed between you and Zanoni?"
+
+"Mervale, do not ask me to-night! I am in a dream."
+
+"I do not wonder at it, for even I am in a sleep. Let us push on."
+
+In the retirement of his chamber, Glyndon sought to recollect his
+thoughts. He sat down on the foot of his bed, and pressed his hands
+tightly to his throbbing temples. The events of the last few hours; the
+apparition of the gigantic and shadowy Companion of the Mystic, amidst
+the fires and clouds of Vesuvius; the strange encounter with Zanoni
+himself, on a spot in which he could never, by ordinary reasoning, have
+calculated on finding Glyndon, filled his mind with emotions, in which
+terror and awe the least prevailed. A fire, the train of which had been
+long laid, was lighted at his heart,--the asbestos-fire that, once lit,
+is never to be quenched. All his early aspirations--his young ambition,
+his longings for the laurel--were merged in one passionate yearning to
+surpass the bounds of the common knowledge of man, and reach that solemn
+spot, between two worlds, on which the mysterious stranger appeared to
+have fixed his home.
+
+Far from recalling with renewed affright the remembrance of the
+apparition that had so appalled him, the recollection only served to
+kindle and concentrate his curiosity into a burning focus. He had said
+aright,--LOVE HAD VANISHED FROM HIS HEART; there was no longer a serene
+space amidst its disordered elements for human affection to move and
+breathe. The enthusiast was rapt from this earth; and he would have
+surrendered all that mortal beauty ever promised, that mortal hope ever
+whispered, for one hour with Zanoni beyond the portals of the visible
+world.
+
+He rose, oppressed and fevered with the new thoughts that raged within
+him, and threw open his casement for air. The ocean lay suffused in the
+starry light, and the stillness of the heavens never more eloquently
+preached the morality of repose to the madness of earthly passions. But
+such was Glyndon's mood that their very hush only served to deepen the
+wild desires that preyed upon his soul; and the solemn stars, that are
+mysteries in themselves, seemed, by a kindred sympathy, to agitate the
+wings of the spirit no longer contented with its cage. As he gazed, a
+star shot from its brethren, and vanished from the depth of space!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XIII.
+
+     O, be gone!
+     By Heaven, I love thee better than myself,
+     For I came hither armed against myself.
+     --"Romeo and Juliet."
+
+The young actress and Gionetta had returned from the theatre; and Viola
+fatigued and exhausted, had thrown herself on a sofa, while Gionetta
+busied herself with the long tresses which, released from the fillet
+that bound them, half-concealed the form of the actress, like a veil of
+threads of gold. As she smoothed the luxuriant locks, the old nurse
+ran gossiping on about the little events of the night, the scandal and
+politics of the scenes and the tireroom. Gionetta was a worthy soul.
+Almanzor, in Dryden's tragedy of "Almahide," did not change sides with
+more gallant indifference than the exemplary nurse. She was at last
+grieved and scandalised that Viola had not selected one chosen cavalier.
+But the choice she left wholly to her fair charge. Zegri or Abencerrage,
+Glyndon or Zanoni, it had been the same to her, except that the
+rumours she had collected respecting the latter, combined with his
+own recommendations of his rival, had given her preference to the
+Englishman. She interpreted ill the impatient and heavy sigh with which
+Viola greeted her praises of Glyndon, and her wonder that he had of late
+so neglected his attentions behind the scenes, and she exhausted all
+her powers of panegyric upon the supposed object of the sigh. "And
+then, too," she said, "if nothing else were to be said against the other
+signor, it is enough that he is about to leave Naples."
+
+"Leave Naples!--Zanoni?"
+
+"Yes, darling! In passing by the Mole to-day, there was a crowd round
+some outlandish-looking sailors. His ship arrived this morning, and
+anchors in the bay. The sailors say that they are to be prepared to sail
+with the first wind; they were taking in fresh stores. They--"
+
+"Leave me, Gionetta! Leave me!"
+
+The time had already passed when the girl could confide in Gionetta.
+Her thoughts had advanced to that point when the heart recoils from all
+confidence, and feels that it cannot be comprehended. Alone now, in the
+principal apartment of the house, she paced its narrow boundaries
+with tremulous and agitated steps: she recalled the frightful suit
+of Nicot,--the injurious taunt of Glyndon; and she sickened at the
+remembrance of the hollow applauses which, bestowed on the actress, not
+the woman, only subjected her to contumely and insult. In that room the
+recollection of her father's death, the withered laurel and the broken
+chords, rose chillingly before her. Hers, she felt, was a yet gloomier
+fate,--the chords may break while the laurel is yet green. The lamp,
+waning in its socket, burned pale and dim, and her eyes instinctively
+turned from the darker corner of the room. Orphan, by the hearth of thy
+parent, dost thou fear the presence of the dead!
+
+And was Zanoni indeed about to quit Naples? Should she see him no
+more? Oh, fool, to think that there was grief in any other thought! The
+past!--that was gone! The future!--there was no future to her, Zanoni
+absent! But this was the night of the third day on which Zanoni had told
+her that, come what might, he would visit her again. It was, then, if
+she might believe him, some appointed crisis in her fate; and how should
+she tell him of Glyndon's hateful words? The pure and the proud mind
+can never confide its wrongs to another, only its triumphs and its
+happiness. But at that late hour would Zanoni visit her,--could she
+receive him? Midnight was at hand. Still in undefined suspense, in
+intense anxiety, she lingered in the room. The quarter before midnight
+sounded, dull and distant. All was still, and she was about to pass to
+her sleeping-room, when she heard the hoofs of a horse at full speed;
+the sound ceased, there was a knock at the door. Her heart beat
+violently; but fear gave way to another sentiment when she heard a
+voice, too well known, calling on her name. She paused, and then, with
+the fearlessness of innocence, descended and unbarred the door.
+
+Zanoni entered with a light and hasty step. His horseman's cloak fitted
+tightly to his noble form, and his broad hat threw a gloomy shade over
+his commanding features.
+
+The girl followed him into the room she had just left, trembling and
+blushing deeply, and stood before him with the lamp she held shining
+upward on her cheek and the long hair that fell like a shower of light
+over the half-clad shoulders and heaving bust.
+
+"Viola," said Zanoni, in a voice that spoke deep emotion, "I am by thy
+side once more to save thee. Not a moment is to be lost. Thou must fly
+with me, or remain the victim of the Prince di --. I would have made the
+charge I now undertake another's; thou knowest I would,--thou knowest
+it!--but he is not worthy of thee, the cold Englishman! I throw myself
+at thy feet; have trust in me, and fly."
+
+He grasped her hand passionately as he dropped on his knee, and looked
+up into her face with his bright, beseeching eyes.
+
+"Fly with thee!" said Viola, scarce believing her senses.
+
+"With me. Name, fame, honour,--all will be sacrificed if thou dost not."
+
+"Then--then," said the wild girl, falteringly, and turning aside her
+face,--"then I am not indifferent to thee; thou wouldst not give me to
+another?"
+
+Zanoni was silent; but his breast heaved, his cheeks flushed, his eyes
+darted dark and impassioned fire.
+
+"Speak!" exclaimed Viola, in jealous suspicion of his silence.
+
+"Indifferent to me! No; but I dare not yet say that I love thee."
+
+"Then what matters my fate?" said Viola, turning pale, and shrinking
+from his side; "leave me,--I fear no danger. My life, and therefore my
+honour, is in mine own hands."
+
+"Be not so mad," said Zanoni. "Hark! do you hear the neigh of my
+steed?--it is an alarm that warns us of the approaching peril. Haste, or
+you are lost!"
+
+"Why dost thou care for me?" said the girl, bitterly. "Thou hast read my
+heart; thou knowest that thou art become the lord of my destiny. But to
+be bound beneath the weight of a cold obligation; to be the beggar on
+the eyes of indifference; to cast myself on one who loves me not,--THAT
+were indeed the vilest sin of my sex. Ah, Zanoni, rather let me die!"
+
+She had thrown back her clustering hair from her face while she spoke;
+and as she now stood, with her arms drooping mournfully, and her hands
+clasped together with the proud bitterness of her wayward spirit, giving
+new zest and charm to her singular beauty, it was impossible to conceive
+a sight more irresistible to the eye and the heart.
+
+"Tempt me not to thine own danger,--perhaps destruction!" exclaimed
+Zanoni, in faltering accents. "Thou canst not dream of what thou wouldst
+demand,--come!" and, advancing, he wound his arm round her waist. "Come,
+Viola; believe at least in my friendship, my honour, my protection--"
+
+"And not thy love," said the Italian, turning on him her reproachful
+eyes. Those eyes met his, and he could not withdraw from the charm of
+their gaze. He felt her heart throbbing beneath his own; her breath came
+warm upon his cheek. He trembled,--HE! the lofty, the mysterious Zanoni,
+who seemed to stand aloof from his race. With a deep and burning sigh,
+he murmured, "Viola, I love thee! Oh!" he continued passionately, and,
+releasing his hold, he threw himself abruptly at her feet, "I no more
+command,--as woman should be wooed, I woo thee. From the first glance of
+those eyes, from the first sound of thy voice, thou becamest too fatally
+dear to me. Thou speakest of fascination,--it lives and it breathes
+in thee! I fled from Naples to fly from thy presence,--it pursued me.
+Months, years passed, and thy sweet face still shone upon my heart. I
+returned, because I pictured thee alone and sorrowful in the world, and
+knew that dangers, from which I might save thee, were gathering
+near thee and around. Beautiful Soul! whose leaves I have read with
+reverence, it was for thy sake, thine alone, that I would have given
+thee to one who might make thee happier on earth than I can. Viola!
+Viola! thou knowest not--never canst thou know--how dear thou art to
+me!"
+
+It is in vain to seek for words to describe the delight--the proud, the
+full, the complete, and the entire delight--that filled the heart of the
+Neapolitan. He whom she had considered too lofty even for love,--more
+humble to her than those she had half-despised! She was silent, but her
+eyes spoke to him; and then slowly, as aware, at last, that the human
+love had advanced on the ideal, she shrank into the terrors of a modest
+and virtuous nature. She did not dare,--she did not dream to ask him the
+question she had so fearlessly made to Glyndon; but she felt a sudden
+coldness,--a sense that a barrier was yet between love and love. "Oh,
+Zanoni!" she murmured, with downcast eyes, "ask me not to fly with
+thee; tempt me not to my shame. Thou wouldst protect me from others. Oh,
+protect me from thyself!"
+
+"Poor orphan!" said he, tenderly, "and canst thou think that I ask from
+thee one sacrifice,--still less the greatest that woman can give to
+love? As my wife I woo thee, and by every tie, and by every vow that can
+hallow and endear affection. Alas! they have belied love to thee indeed,
+if thou dost not know the religion that belongs to it! They who truly
+love would seek, for the treasure they obtain, every bond that can make
+it lasting and secure. Viola, weep not, unless thou givest me the holy
+right to kiss away thy tears!"
+
+And that beautiful face, no more averted, drooped upon his bosom; and
+as he bent down, his lips sought the rosy mouth: a long and burning
+kiss,--danger, life, the world was forgotten! Suddenly Zanoni tore
+himself from her.
+
+"Hearest thou the wind that sighs, and dies away? As that wind, my power
+to preserve thee, to guard thee, to foresee the storm in thy skies, is
+gone. No matter. Haste, haste; and may love supply the loss of all that
+it has dared to sacrifice! Come."
+
+Viola hesitated no more. She threw her mantle over her shoulders, and
+gathered up her dishevelled hair; a moment, and she was prepared, when a
+sudden crash was heard below.
+
+"Too late!--fool that I was, too late!" cried Zanoni, in a sharp tone of
+agony, as he hurried to the door. He opened it, only to be borne back by
+the press of armed men. The room literally swarmed with the followers of
+the ravisher, masked, and armed to the teeth.
+
+Viola was already in the grasp of two of the myrmidons. Her shriek smote
+the ear of Zanoni. He sprang forward; and Viola heard his wild cry in
+a foreign tongue. She saw the blades of the ruffians pointed at his
+breast! She lost her senses; and when she recovered, she found herself
+gagged, and in a carriage that was driven rapidly, by the side of a
+masked and motionless figure. The carriage stopped at the portals of a
+gloomy mansion. The gates opened noiselessly; a broad flight of steps,
+brilliantly illumined, was before her. She was in the palace of the
+Prince di --.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XIV.
+
+     Ma lasciamo, per Dio, Signore, ormai
+     Di parlar d' ira, e di cantar di morte.
+     "Orlando Furioso," Canto xvii. xvii.
+
+     (But leave me, I solemnly conjure thee, signor, to speak of
+     wrath, and to sing of death.)
+
+The young actress was led to, and left alone in a chamber adorned with
+all the luxurious and half-Eastern taste that at one time characterised
+the palaces of the great seigneurs of Italy. Her first thought was for
+Zanoni. Was he yet living? Had he escaped unscathed the blades of the
+foe,--her new treasure, the new light of her life, her lord, at last her
+lover?
+
+She had short time for reflection. She heard steps approaching the
+chamber; she drew back, but trembled not. A courage not of herself,
+never known before, sparkled in her eyes, and dilated her stature.
+Living or dead, she would be faithful still to Zanoni! There was a new
+motive to the preservation of honour. The door opened, and the prince
+entered in the gorgeous and gaudy custume still worn at that time in
+Naples.
+
+"Fair and cruel one," said he, advancing with a half-sneer upon his lip,
+"thou wilt not too harshly blame the violence of love." He attempted to
+take her hand as he spoke.
+
+"Nay," said he, as she recoiled, "reflect that thou art now in the power
+of one that never faltered in the pursuit of an object less dear to him
+than thou art. Thy lover, presumptuous though he be, is not by to save
+thee. Mine thou art; but instead of thy master, suffer me to be thy
+slave."
+
+"Prince," said Viola, with a stern gravity, "your boast is in vain. Your
+power! I am NOT in your power. Life and death are in my own hands. I
+will not defy; but I do not fear you. I feel--and in some feelings,"
+added Viola, with a solemnity almost thrilling, "there is all the
+strength, and all the divinity of knowledge--I feel that I am safe even
+here; but you--you, Prince di --, have brought danger to your home and
+hearth!"
+
+The Neapolitan seemed startled by an earnestness and boldness he was but
+little prepared for. He was not, however, a man easily intimidated or
+deterred from any purpose he had formed; and, approaching Viola, he
+was about to reply with much warmth, real or affected, when a knock
+was heard at the door of the chamber. The sound was repeated, and
+the prince, chafed at the interruption, opened the door and demanded
+impatiently who had ventured to disobey his orders, and invade his
+leisure. Mascari presented himself, pale and agitated: "My lord," said
+he, in a whisper, "pardon me; but a stranger is below, who insists on
+seeing you; and, from some words he let fall, I judged it advisable even
+to infringe your commands."
+
+"A stranger!--and at this hour! What business can he pretend? Why was he
+even admitted?"
+
+"He asserts that your life is in imminent danger. The source whence it
+proceeds he will relate to your Excellency alone."
+
+The prince frowned; but his colour changed. He mused a moment, and then,
+re-entering the chamber and advancing towards Viola, he said,--
+
+"Believe me, fair creature, I have no wish to take advantage of my
+power. I would fain trust alone to the gentler authorities of affection.
+Hold yourself queen within these walls more absolutely than you have
+ever enacted that part on the stage. To-night, farewell! May your sleep
+be calm, and your dreams propitious to my hopes."
+
+With these words he retired, and in a few moments Viola was surrounded
+by officious attendants, whom she at length, with some difficulty,
+dismissed; and, refusing to retire to rest, she spent the night in
+examining the chamber, which she found was secured, and in thoughts of
+Zanoni, in whose power she felt an almost preternatural confidence.
+
+Meanwhile the prince descended the stairs and sought the room into which
+the stranger had been shown.
+
+He found the visitor wrapped from head to foot in a long robe,
+half-gown, half-mantle, such as was sometimes worn by ecclesiastics. The
+face of this stranger was remarkable. So sunburnt and swarthy were his
+hues, that he must, apparently, have derived his origin amongst the
+races of the farthest East. His forehead was lofty, and his eyes so
+penetrating yet so calm in their gaze that the prince shrank from them
+as we shrink from a questioner who is drawing forth the guiltiest secret
+of our hearts.
+
+"What would you with me?" asked the prince, motioning his visitor to a
+seat.
+
+"Prince of --," said the stranger, in a voice deep and sweet, but
+foreign in its accent,--"son of the most energetic and masculine race
+that ever applied godlike genius to the service of Human Will, with its
+winding wickedness and its stubborn grandeur; descendant of the great
+Visconti in whose chronicles lies the history of Italy in her palmy
+day, and in whose rise was the development of the mightiest intellect,
+ripened by the most restless ambition,--I come to gaze upon the last
+star in a darkening firmament. By this hour to-morrow space shall know
+it not. Man, unless thy whole nature change, thy days are numbered!"
+
+"What means this jargon?" said the prince, in visible astonishment and
+secret awe. "Comest thou to menace me in my own halls, or wouldst
+thou warn me of a danger? Art thou some itinerant mountebank, or some
+unguessed-of friend? Speak out, and plainly. What danger threatens me?"
+
+"Zanoni and thy ancestor's sword," replied the stranger.
+
+"Ha! ha!" said the prince, laughing scournfully; "I half-suspected thee
+from the first. Thou art then the accomplice or the tool of that most
+dexterous, but, at present, defeated charlatan? And I suppose thou wilt
+tell me that if I were to release a certain captive I have made, the
+danger would vanish, and the hand of the dial would be put back?"
+
+"Judge of me as thou wilt, Prince di --. I confess my knowledge of
+Zanoni. Thou, too, wilt know his power, but not till it consume thee.
+I would save, therefore I warn thee. Dost thou ask me why? I will tell
+thee. Canst thou remember to have heard wild tales of thy grandsire;
+of his desire for a knowledge that passes that of the schools and
+cloisters; of a strange man from the East who was his familiar and
+master in lore against which the Vatican has, from age to age,
+launched its mimic thunder? Dost thou call to mind the fortunes of thy
+ancestor?--how he succeeded in youth to little but a name; how, after a
+career wild and dissolute as thine, he disappeared from Milan, a pauper,
+and a self-exile; how, after years spent, none knew in what climes or
+in what pursuits, he again revisited the city where his progenitors had
+reigned; how with him came the wise man of the East, the mystic Mejnour;
+how they who beheld him, beheld with amaze and fear that time had
+ploughed no furrow on his brow; that youth seemed fixed, as by a spell,
+upon his face and form? Dost thou not know that from that hour his
+fortunes rose? Kinsmen the most remote died; estate upon estate fell
+into the hands of the ruined noble. He became the guide of princes, the
+first magnate of Italy. He founded anew the house of which thou art the
+last lineal upholder, and transferred his splendour from Milan to the
+Sicilian realms. Visions of high ambition were then present with him
+nightly and daily. Had he lived, Italy would have known a new dynasty,
+and the Visconti would have reigned over Magna-Graecia. He was a man
+such as the world rarely sees; but his ends, too earthly, were at war
+with the means he sought. Had his ambition been more or less, he had
+been worthy of a realm mightier than the Caesars swayed; worthy of our
+solemn order; worthy of the fellowship of Mejnour, whom you now behold
+before you."
+
+The prince, who had listened with deep and breathless attention to the
+words of his singular guest, started from his seat at his last words.
+"Imposter!" he cried, "can you dare thus to play with my credulity?
+Sixty years have flown since my grandsire died; were he living, he had
+passed his hundred and twentieth year; and you, whose old age is
+erect and vigorous, have the assurance to pretend to have been his
+contemporary! But you have imperfectly learned your tale. You know not,
+it seems, that my grandsire, wise and illustrious indeed, in all save
+his faith in a charlatan, was found dead in his bed, in the very hour
+when his colossal plans were ripe for execution, and that Mejnour was
+guilty of his murder."
+
+"Alas!" answered the stranger, in a voice of great sadness, "had he
+but listened to Mejnour,--had he but delayed the last and most perilous
+ordeal of daring wisdom until the requisite training and initiation had
+been completed,--your ancestor would have stood with me upon an
+eminence which the waters of Death itself wash everlastingly, but cannot
+overflow. Your grandsire resisted my fervent prayers, disobeyed my most
+absolute commands, and in the sublime rashness of a soul that panted
+for secrets, which he who desires orbs and sceptres never can obtain,
+perished, the victim of his own frenzy."
+
+"He was poisoned, and Mejnour fled."
+
+"Mejnour fled not," answered the stranger, proudly--"Mejnour could not
+fly from danger; for to him danger is a thing long left behind. It was
+the day before the duke took the fatal draft which he believed was to
+confer on the mortal the immortal boon, that, finding my power over him
+was gone, I abandoned him to his doom. But a truce with this: I loved
+your grandsire! I would save the last of his race. Oppose not thyself
+to Zanoni. Yield not thy soul to thine evil passions. Draw back from the
+precipice while there is yet time. In thy front, and in thine eyes, I
+detect some of that diviner glory which belonged to thy race. Thou hast
+in thee some germs of their hereditary genius, but they are choked up
+by worse than thy hereditary vices. Recollect that by genius thy house
+rose; by vice it ever failed to perpetuate its power. In the laws
+which regulate the universe, it is decreed that nothing wicked can long
+endure. Be wise, and let history warn thee. Thou standest on the verge
+of two worlds, the past and the future; and voices from either shriek
+omen in thy ear. I have done. I bid thee farewell!"
+
+"Not so; thou shalt not quit these walls. I will make experiment of thy
+boasted power. What, ho there!--ho!"
+
+The prince shouted; the room was filled with his minions.
+
+"Seize that man!" he cried, pointing to the spot which had been filled
+by the form of Mejnour. To his inconceivable amaze and horror, the spot
+was vacant. The mysterious stranger had vanished like a dream; but a
+thin and fragrant mist undulated, in pale volumes, round the walls of
+the chamber. "Look to my lord," cried Mascari. The prince had fallen to
+the floor insensible. For many hours he seemed in a kind of trance. When
+he recovered, he dismissed his attendants, and his step was heard in his
+chamber, pacing to and fro, with heavy and disordered strides. Not till
+an hour before his banquet the next day did he seem restored to his
+wonted self.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XV.
+
+     Oime! come poss' io
+     Altri trovar, se me trovar non posso.
+     "Amint.," At. i. Sc. ii.
+
+     (Alas! how can I find another when I cannot find myself?)
+
+The sleep of Glyndon, the night after his last interview with Zanoni,
+was unusually profound; and the sun streamed full upon his eyes as he
+opened them to the day. He rose refreshed, and with a strange sentiment
+of calmness that seemed more the result of resolution than exhaustion.
+The incidents and emotions of the past night had settled into distinct
+and clear impressions. He thought of them but slightly,--he thought
+rather of the future. He was as one of the initiated in the old Egyptian
+mysteries who have crossed the gate only to long more ardently for the
+penetralia.
+
+He dressed himself, and was relieved to find that Mervale had joined a
+party of his countrymen on an excursion to Ischia. He spent the heat of
+noon in thoughtful solitude, and gradually the image of Viola returned
+to his heart. It was a holy--for it was a HUMAN--image. He had resigned
+her; and though he repented not, he was troubled at the thought that
+repentance would have come too late.
+
+He started impatiently from his seat, and strode with rapid steps to the
+humble abode of the actress.
+
+The distance was considerable, and the air oppressive. Glyndon arrived
+at the door breathless and heated. He knocked; no answer came. He lifted
+the latch and entered. He ascended the stairs; no sound, no sight of
+life met his ear and eye. In the front chamber, on a table, lay the
+guitar of the actress, and some manuscript parts in the favourite
+operas. He paused, and, summoning courage, tapped at the door which
+seemed to lead into the inner apartment. The door was ajar; and, hearing
+no sound within, he pushed it open. It was the sleeping-chamber of the
+young actress, that holiest ground to a lover; and well did the place
+become the presiding deity: none of the tawdry finery of the profession
+was visible, on the one hand; none of the slovenly disorder common to
+the humbler classes of the South, on the other. All was pure and simple;
+even the ornaments were those of an innocent refinement,--a few books,
+placed carefully on shelves, a few half-faded flowers in an earthen
+vase, which was modelled and painted in the Etruscan fashion. The
+sunlight streamed over the snowy draperies of the bed, and a few
+articles of clothing on the chair beside it. Viola was not there; but
+the nurse!--was she gone also? He made the house resound with the name
+of Gionetta, but there was not even an echo to reply. At last, as he
+reluctantly quitted the desolate abode, he perceived Gionetta coming
+towards him from the street.
+
+The poor old woman uttered an exclamation of joy on seeing him; but,
+to their mutual disappointment, neither had any cheerful tidings or
+satisfactory explanation to afford the other. Gionetta had been aroused
+from her slumber the night before by the noise in the rooms below; but
+ere she could muster courage to descend, Viola was gone! She found the
+marks of violence on the door without; and all she had since been able
+to learn in the neighbourhood was, that a Lazzarone, from his nocturnal
+resting-place on the Chiaja, had seen by the moonlight a carriage, which
+he recognised as belonging to the Prince di --, pass and repass that
+road about the first hour of morning. Glyndon, on gathering from the
+confused words and broken sobs of the old nurse the heads of this
+account, abruptly left her, and repaired to the palace of Zanoni. There
+he was informed that the signor was gone to the banquet of the Prince
+di --, and would not return till late. Glyndon stood motionless with
+perplexity and dismay; he knew not what to believe, or how to act.
+Even Mervale was not at hand to advise him. His conscience smote him
+bitterly. He had had the power to save the woman he had loved, and had
+foregone that power; but how was it that in this Zanoni himself had
+failed? How was it that he was gone to the very banquet of the ravisher?
+Could Zanoni be aware of what had passed? If not, should he lose a
+moment in apprising him? Though mentally irresolute, no man was more
+physically brave. He would repair at once to the palace of the prince
+himself; and if Zanoni failed in the trust he had half-appeared to
+arrogate, he, the humble foreigner, would demand the captive of fraud
+and force, in the very halls and before the assembled guests of the
+Prince di --.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XVI.
+
+     Ardua vallatur duris sapientia scrupis.
+     Hadr. Jun., "Emblem." xxxvii.
+
+     (Lofty wisdom is circled round with rugged rocks.)
+
+We must go back some hours in the progress of this narrative. It was the
+first faint and gradual break of the summer dawn; and two men stood in
+a balcony overhanging a garden fragrant with the scents of the awakening
+flowers. The stars had not yet left the sky,--the birds were yet silent
+on the boughs: all was still, hushed, and tranquil; but how different
+the tranquillity of reviving day from the solemn repose of night! In the
+music of silence there are a thousand variations. These men, who alone
+seemed awake in Naples, were Zanoni and the mysterious stranger who
+had but an hour or two ago startled the Prince di -- in his voluptuous
+palace.
+
+"No," said the latter; "hadst thou delayed the acceptance of the
+Arch-gift until thou hadst attained to the years, and passed through
+all the desolate bereavements that chilled and seared myself ere my
+researches had made it mine, thou wouldst have escaped the curse of
+which thou complainest now,--thou wouldst not have mourned over the
+brevity of human affection as compared to the duration of thine own
+existence; for thou wouldst have survived the very desire and dream
+of the love of woman. Brightest, and, but for that error, perhaps the
+loftiest, of the secret and solemn race that fills up the interval in
+creation between mankind and the children of the Empyreal, age after age
+wilt thou rue the splendid folly which made thee ask to carry the
+beauty and the passions of youth into the dreary grandeur of earthly
+immortality."
+
+"I do not repent, nor shall I," answered Zanoni. "The transport and the
+sorrow, so wildly blended, which have at intervals diversified my doom,
+are better than the calm and bloodless tenor of thy solitary way--thou,
+who lovest nothing, hatest nothing, feelest nothing, and walkest the
+world with the noiseless and joyless footsteps of a dream!"
+
+"You mistake," replied he who had owned the name of Mejnour,--"though I
+care not for love, and am dead to every PASSION that agitates the sons
+of clay, I am not dead to their more serene enjoyments. I carry down the
+stream of the countless years, not the turbulent desires of youth,
+but the calm and spiritual delights of age. Wisely and deliberately I
+abandoned youth forever when I separated my lot from men. Let us not
+envy or reproach each other. I would have saved this Neapolitan,
+Zanoni (since so it now pleases thee to be called), partly because
+his grandsire was but divided by the last airy barrier from our own
+brotherhood, partly because I know that in the man himself lurk the
+elements of ancestral courage and power, which in earlier life would
+have fitted him for one of us. Earth holds but few to whom Nature has
+given the qualities that can bear the ordeal. But time and excess,
+that have quickened his grosser senses, have blunted his imagination. I
+relinquish him to his doom."
+
+"And still, then, Mejnour, you cherish the desire to revive our
+order, limited now to ourselves alone, by new converts and allies.
+Surely--surely--thy experience might have taught thee, that scarcely
+once in a thousand years is born the being who can pass through the
+horrible gates that lead into the worlds without! Is not thy path
+already strewed with thy victims? Do not their ghastly faces of agony
+and fear--the blood-stained suicide, the raving maniac--rise before
+thee, and warn what is yet left to thee of human sympathy from thy
+insane ambition?"
+
+"Nay," answered Mejnour; "have I not had success to counterbalance
+failure? And can I forego this lofty and august hope, worthy alone of
+our high condition,--the hope to form a mighty and numerous race with
+a force and power sufficient to permit them to acknowledge to mankind
+their majestic conquests and dominion, to become the true lords of this
+planet, invaders, perchance, of others, masters of the inimical and
+malignant tribes by which at this moment we are surrounded: a race
+that may proceed, in their deathless destinies, from stage to stage of
+celestial glory, and rank at last amongst the nearest ministrants and
+agents gathered round the Throne of Thrones? What matter a thousand
+victims for one convert to our band? And you, Zanoni," continued
+Mejnour, after a pause,--"you, even you, should this affection for a
+mortal beauty that you have dared, despite yourself, to cherish, be more
+than a passing fancy; should it, once admitted into your inmost nature,
+partake of its bright and enduring essence,--even you may brave all
+things to raise the beloved one into your equal. Nay, interrupt me not.
+Can you see sickness menace her; danger hover around; years creep on;
+the eyes grow dim; the beauty fade, while the heart, youthful still,
+clings and fastens round your own,--can you see this, and know it is
+yours to--"
+
+"Cease!" cried Zanoni, fiercely. "What is all other fate as compared
+to the death of terror? What, when the coldest sage, the most heated
+enthusiast, the hardiest warrior with his nerves of iron, have been
+found dead in their beds, with straining eyeballs and horrent hair,
+at the first step of the Dread Progress,--thinkest thou that this
+weak woman--from whose cheek a sound at the window, the screech of the
+night-owl, the sight of a drop of blood on a man's sword, would start
+the colour--could brave one glance of--Away! the very thought of such
+sights for her makes even myself a coward!"
+
+"When you told her you loved her,--when you clasped her to your breast,
+you renounced all power to foresee her future lot, or protect her from
+harm. Henceforth to her you are human, and human only. How know you,
+then, to what you may be tempted; how know you what her curiosity may
+learn and her courage brave? But enough of this,--you are bent on your
+pursuit?"
+
+"The fiat has gone forth."
+
+"And to-morrow?"
+
+"To-morrow, at this hour, our bark will be bounding over yonder ocean,
+and the weight of ages will have fallen from my heart! I compassionate
+thee, O foolish sage,--THOU hast given up THY youth!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XVII.
+
+     Alch:  Thou always speakest riddles.  Tell me if thou art that
+     fountain of which Bernard Lord Trevizan writ?
+
+     Merc:  I am not that fountain, but I am the water.  The fountain
+     compasseth me about.
+
+     Sandivogius, "New Light of Alchymy."
+
+The Prince di -- was not a man whom Naples could suppose to be addicted
+to superstitious fancies. Still, in the South of Italy, there was then,
+and there still lingers a certain spirit of credulity, which may, ever
+and anon, be visible amidst the boldest dogmas of their philosophers and
+sceptics. In his childhood, the prince had learned strange tales of the
+ambition, the genius, and the career of his grandsire,--and secretly,
+perhaps influenced by ancestral example, in earlier youth he himself
+had followed science, not only through her legitimate course, but her
+antiquated and erratic windings. I have, indeed, been shown in Naples a
+little volume, blazoned with the arms of the Visconti, and ascribed
+to the nobleman I refer to, which treats of alchemy in a spirit
+half-mocking and half-reverential.
+
+Pleasure soon distracted him from such speculations, and his talents,
+which were unquestionably great, were wholly perverted to extravagant
+intrigues, or to the embellishment of a gorgeous ostentation with
+something of classic grace. His immense wealth, his imperious pride,
+his unscrupulous and daring character, made him an object of no
+inconsiderable fear to a feeble and timid court; and the ministers of
+the indolent government willingly connived at excesses which allured him
+at least from ambition. The strange visit and yet more strange departure
+of Mejnour filled the breast of the Neapolitan with awe and wonder,
+against which all the haughty arrogance and learned scepticism of his
+maturer manhood combated in vain. The apparition of Mejnour served,
+indeed, to invest Zanoni with a character in which the prince had not
+hitherto regarded him. He felt a strange alarm at the rival he had
+braved,--at the foe he had provoked. When, a little before his banquet,
+he had resumed his self-possession, it was with a fell and gloomy
+resolution that he brooded over the perfidious schemes he had previously
+formed. He felt as if the death of the mysterious Zanoni were necessary
+for the preservation of his own life; and if at an earlier period of
+their rivalry he had determined on the fate of Zanoni, the warnings of
+Mejnour only served to confirm his resolve.
+
+"We will try if his magic can invent an antidote to the bane," said
+he, half-aloud, and with a stern smile, as he summoned Mascari to his
+presence. The poison which the prince, with his own hands, mixed into
+the wine intended for his guest, was compounded from materials, the
+secret of which had been one of the proudest heir-looms of that able
+and evil race which gave to Italy her wisest and guiltiest tyrants. Its
+operation was quick yet not sudden: it produced no pain,--it left on
+the form no grim convulsion, on the skin no purpling spot, to arouse
+suspicion; you might have cut and carved every membrane and fibre of the
+corpse, but the sharpest eyes of the leech would not have detected the
+presence of the subtle life-queller. For twelve hours the victim felt
+nothing save a joyous and elated exhilaration of the blood; a delicious
+languor followed, the sure forerunner of apoplexy. No lancet then
+could save! Apoplexy had run much in the families of the enemies of the
+Visconti!
+
+The hour of the feast arrived,--the guests assembled. There were the
+flower of the Neapolitan seignorie, the descendants of the Norman, the
+Teuton, the Goth; for Naples had then a nobility, but derived it from
+the North, which has indeed been the Nutrix Leonum,--the nurse of the
+lion-hearted chivalry of the world.
+
+Last of the guests came Zanoni; and the crowd gave way as the dazzling
+foreigner moved along to the lord of the palace. The prince greeted him
+with a meaning smile, to which Zanoni answered by a whisper, "He who
+plays with loaded dice does not always win."
+
+The prince bit his lip, and Zanoni, passing on, seemed deep in
+conversation with the fawning Mascari.
+
+"Who is the prince's heir?" asked the guest.
+
+"A distant relation on the mother's side; with his Excellency dies the
+male line."
+
+"Is the heir present at our host's banquet?"
+
+"No; they are not friends."
+
+"No matter; he will be here to-morrow."
+
+Mascari stared in surprise; but the signal for the banquet was given,
+and the guests were marshalled to the board. As was the custom then, the
+feast took place not long after mid-day. It was a long, oval hall, the
+whole of one side opening by a marble colonnade upon a court or garden,
+in which the eye rested gratefully upon cool fountains and statues of
+whitest marble, half-sheltered by orange-trees. Every art that
+luxury could invent to give freshness and coolness to the languid and
+breezeless heat of the day without (a day on which the breath of the
+sirocco was abroad) had been called into existence. Artificial currents
+of air through invisible tubes, silken blinds waving to and fro, as if
+to cheat the senses into the belief of an April wind, and miniature jets
+d'eau in each corner of the apartment, gave to the Italians the same
+sense of exhilaration and COMFORT (if I may use the word) which the
+well-drawn curtains and the blazing hearth afford to the children of
+colder climes.
+
+The conversation was somewhat more lively and intellectual than is
+common amongst the languid pleasure-hunters of the South; for the
+prince, himself accomplished, sought his acquaintance not only amongst
+the beaux esprits of his own country, but amongst the gay foreigners who
+adorned and relieved the monotony of the Neapolitan circles. There were
+present two or three of the brilliant Frenchmen of the old regime, who
+had already emigrated from the advancing Revolution; and their peculiar
+turn of thought and wit was well calculated for the meridian of a
+society that made the dolce far niente at once its philosophy and its
+faith. The prince, however, was more silent than usual; and when he
+sought to rouse himself, his spirits were forced and exaggerated. To the
+manners of his host, those of Zanoni afforded a striking contrast. The
+bearing of this singular person was at all times characterised by a calm
+and polished ease, which was attributed by the courtiers to the long
+habit of society. He could scarcely be called gay; yet few persons more
+tended to animate the general spirits of a convivial circle. He seemed,
+by a kind of intuition, to elicit from each companion the qualities in
+which he most excelled; and if occasionally a certain tone of latent
+mockery characterised his remarks upon the topics on which the
+conversation fell, it appeared to men who took nothing in earnest to be
+the language both of wit and wisdom. To the Frenchmen, in particular,
+there was something startling in his intimate knowledge of the minutest
+events in their own capital and country, and his profound penetration
+(evinced but in epigrams and sarcasms) into the eminent characters who
+were then playing a part upon the great stage of continental intrigue.
+
+It was while this conversation grew animated, and the feast was at its
+height, that Glyndon arrived at the palace. The porter, perceiving by
+his dress that he was not one of the invited guests, told him that
+his Excellency was engaged, and on no account could be disturbed;
+and Glyndon then, for the first time, became aware how strange and
+embarrassing was the duty he had taken on himself. To force an entrance
+into the banquet-hall of a great and powerful noble, surrounded by the
+rank of Naples, and to arraign him for what to his boon-companions would
+appear but an act of gallantry, was an exploit that could not fail to be
+at once ludicrous and impotent. He mused a moment, and, slipping a piece
+of gold into the porter's hand, said that he was commissioned to seek
+the Signor Zanoni upon an errand of life and death, and easily won his
+way across the court, and into the interior building. He passed up the
+broad staircase, and the voices and merriment of the revellers smote
+his ear at a distance. At the entrance of the reception-rooms he found
+a page, whom he despatched with a message to Zanoni. The page did the
+errand; and Zanoni, on hearing the whispered name of Glyndon, turned to
+his host.
+
+"Pardon me, my lord; an English friend of mine, the Signor Glyndon (not
+unknown by name to your Excellency) waits without,--the business must
+indeed be urgent on which he has sought me in such an hour. You will
+forgive my momentary absence."
+
+"Nay, signor," answered the prince, courteously, but with a sinister
+smile on his countenance, "would it not be better for your friend
+to join us? An Englishman is welcome everywhere; and even were he a
+Dutchman, your friendship would invest his presence with attraction.
+Pray his attendance; we would not spare you even for a moment."
+
+Zanoni bowed; the page was despatched with all flattering messages
+to Glyndon,--a seat next to Zanoni was placed for him, and the young
+Englishman entered.
+
+"You are most welcome, sir. I trust your business to our illustrious
+guest is of good omen and pleasant import. If you bring evil news, defer
+it, I pray you."
+
+Glyndon's brow was sullen; and he was about to startle the guests by
+his reply, when Zanoni, touching his arm significantly, whispered in
+English, "I know why you have sought me. Be silent, and witness what
+ensues."
+
+"You know then that Viola, whom you boasted you had the power to save
+from danger--"
+
+"Is in this house!--yes. I know also that Murder sits at the right hand
+of our host. But his fate is now separated from hers forever; and the
+mirror which glasses it to my eye is clear through the streams of blood.
+Be still, and learn the fate that awaits the wicked!
+
+"My lord," said Zanoni, speaking aloud, "the Signor Glyndon has indeed
+brought me tidings not wholly unexpected. I am compelled to leave
+Naples,--an additional motive to make the most of the present hour."
+
+"And what, if I may venture to ask, may be the cause that brings such
+affliction on the fair dames of Naples?"
+
+"It is the approaching death of one who honoured me with most loyal
+friendship," replied Zanoni, gravely. "Let us not speak of it; grief
+cannot put back the dial. As we supply by new flowers those that fade
+in our vases, so it is the secret of worldly wisdom to replace by fresh
+friendships those that fade from our path."
+
+"True philosophy!" exclaimed the prince. "'Not to admire,' was the
+Roman's maxim; 'Never to mourn,' is mine. There is nothing in life to
+grieve for, save, indeed, Signor Zanoni, when some young beauty, on whom
+we have set our hearts, slips from our grasp. In such a moment we have
+need of all our wisdom, not to succumb to despair, and shake hands with
+death. What say you, signor? You smile! Such never could be your lot.
+Pledge me in a sentiment, 'Long life to the fortunate lover,--a quick
+release to the baffled suitor'?"
+
+"I pledge you," said Zanoni; and, as the fatal wine was poured into his
+glass, he repeated, fixing his eyes on the prince, "I pledge you even in
+this wine!"
+
+He lifted the glass to his lips. The prince seemed ghastly pale,
+while the gaze of his guest bent upon him, with an intent and stern
+brightness, beneath which the conscience-stricken host cowered and
+quailed. Not till he had drained his draft, and replaced the glass upon
+the board, did Zanoni turn his eyes from the prince; and he then said,
+"Your wine has been kept too long; it has lost its virtues. It might
+disagree with many, but do not fear: it will not harm me, prince, Signor
+Mascari, you are a judge of the grape; will you favour us with your
+opinion?"
+
+"Nay," answered Mascari, with well-affected composure, "I like not the
+wines of Cyprus; they are heating. Perhaps Signor Glyndon may not have
+the same distaste? The English are said to love their potations warm and
+pungent."
+
+"Do you wish my friend also to taste the wine, prince?" said Zanoni.
+"Recollect, all cannot drink it with the same impunity as myself."
+
+"No," said the prince, hastily; "if you do not recommend the wine,
+Heaven forbid that we should constrain our guests! My lord duke,"
+turning to one of the Frenchmen, "yours is the true soil of Bacchus.
+What think you of this cask from Burgundy? Has it borne the journey?"
+
+"Ah," said Zanoni, "let us change both the wine and the theme."
+
+With that, Zanoni grew yet more animated and brilliant. Never did wit
+more sparkling, airy, exhilarating, flash from the lips of reveller.
+His spirits fascinated all present--even the prince himself, even
+Glyndon--with a strange and wild contagion. The former, indeed, whom the
+words and gaze of Zanoni, when he drained the poison, had filled with
+fearful misgivings, now hailed in the brilliant eloquence of his wit a
+certain sign of the operation of the bane. The wine circulated fast; but
+none seemed conscious of its effects. One by one the rest of the party
+fell into a charmed and spellbound silence, as Zanoni continued to pour
+forth sally upon sally, tale upon tale. They hung on his words, they
+almost held their breath to listen. Yet, how bitter was his mirth; how
+full of contempt for the triflers present, and for the trifles which
+made their life!
+
+Night came on; the room grew dim, and the feast had lasted several hours
+longer than was the customary duration of similar entertainments at
+that day. Still the guests stirred not, and still Zanoni continued, with
+glittering eye and mocking lip, to lavish his stores of intellect
+and anecdote; when suddenly the moon rose, and shed its rays over the
+flowers and fountains in the court without, leaving the room itself half
+in shadow, and half tinged by a quiet and ghostly light.
+
+It was then that Zanoni rose. "Well, gentlemen," said he, "we have not
+yet wearied our host, I hope; and his garden offers a new temptation to
+protract our stay. Have you no musicians among your train, prince,
+that might regale our ears while we inhale the fragrance of your
+orange-trees?"
+
+"An excellent thought!" said the prince. "Mascari, see to the music."
+
+The party rose simultaneously to adjourn to the garden; and then, for
+the first time, the effect of the wine they had drunk seemed to make
+itself felt.
+
+With flushed cheeks and unsteady steps they came into the open air,
+which tended yet more to stimulate that glowing fever of the grape.
+As if to make up for the silence with which the guests had hitherto
+listened to Zanoni, every tongue was now loosened,--every man talked,
+no man listened. There was something wild and fearful in the contrast
+between the calm beauty of the night and scene, and the hubbub and
+clamour of these disorderly roysters. One of the Frenchmen, in especial,
+the young Duc de R--, a nobleman of the highest rank, and of all the
+quick, vivacious, and irascible temperament of his countrymen, was
+particularly noisy and excited. And as circumstances, the remembrance
+of which is still preserved among certain circles of Naples, rendered it
+afterwards necessary that the duc should himself give evidence of what
+occurred, I will here translate the short account he drew up, and which
+was kindly submitted to me some few years ago by my accomplished and
+lively friend, Il Cavaliere di B--.
+
+"I never remember," writes the duc, "to have felt my spirits so excited
+as on that evening; we were like so many boys released from school,
+jostling each other as we reeled or ran down the flight of seven
+or eight stairs that led from the colonnade into the garden,--some
+laughing, some whooping, some scolding, some babbling. The wine had
+brought out, as it were, each man's inmost character. Some were loud and
+quarrelsome, others sentimental and whining; some, whom we had hitherto
+thought dull, most mirthful; some, whom we had ever regarded as discreet
+and taciturn, most garrulous and uproarious. I remember that in the
+midst of our clamorous gayety, my eye fell upon the cavalier Signor
+Zanoni, whose conversation had so enchanted us all; and I felt a
+certain chill come over me to perceive that he wore the same calm and
+unsympathising smile upon his countenance which had characterised it
+in his singular and curious stories of the court of Louis XIV. I felt,
+indeed, half-inclined to seek a quarrel with one whose composure
+was almost an insult to our disorder. Nor was such an effect of this
+irritating and mocking tranquillity confined to myself alone. Several of
+the party have told me since, that on looking at Zanoni they felt their
+blood yet more heated, and gayety change to resentment. There seemed in
+his icy smile a very charm to wound vanity and provoke rage. It was at
+this moment that the prince came up to me, and, passing his arm into
+mine, led me a little apart from the rest. He had certainly indulged in
+the same excess as ourselves, but it did not produce the same effect of
+noisy excitement. There was, on the contrary, a certain cold arrogance
+and supercilious scorn in his bearing and language, which, even while
+affecting so much caressing courtesy towards me, roused my self-love
+against him. He seemed as if Zanoni had infected him; and in imitating
+the manner of his guest, he surpassed the original. He rallied me on
+some court gossip, which had honoured my name by associating it with a
+certain beautiful and distinguished Sicilian lady, and affected to treat
+with contempt that which, had it been true, I should have regarded as a
+boast. He spoke, indeed, as if he himself had gathered all the flowers
+of Naples, and left us foreigners only the gleanings he had scorned.
+At this my natural and national gallantry was piqued, and I retorted
+by some sarcasms that I should certainly have spared had my blood been
+cooler. He laughed heartily, and left me in a strange fit of resentment
+and anger. Perhaps (I must own the truth) the wine had produced in me a
+wild disposition to take offence and provoke quarrel. As the prince left
+me, I turned, and saw Zanoni at my side.
+
+"'The prince is a braggart,' said he, with the same smile that
+displeased me before. 'He would monopolize all fortune and all love. Let
+us take our revenge.'
+
+"'And how?'
+
+"'He has at this moment, in his house, the most enchanting singer in
+Naples,--the celebrated Viola Pisani. She is here, it is true, not by
+her own choice; he carried her hither by force, but he will pretend that
+she adores him. Let us insist on his producing this secret treasure, and
+when she enters, the Duc de R-- can have no doubt that his flatteries
+and attentions will charm the lady, and provoke all the jealous fears of
+our host. It would be a fair revenge upon his imperious self-conceit.'
+
+"This suggestion delighted me. I hastened to the prince. At that instant
+the musicians had just commenced; I waved my hand, ordered the music to
+stop, and, addressing the prince, who was standing in the centre of one
+of the gayest groups, complained of his want of hospitality in affording
+to us such poor proficients in the art, while he reserved for his own
+solace the lute and voice of the first performer in Naples. I demanded,
+half-laughingly, half-seriously, that he should produce the Pisani. My
+demand was received with shouts of applause by the rest. We drowned the
+replies of our host with uproar, and would hear no denial. 'Gentlemen,'
+at last said the prince, when he could obtain an audience, 'even were
+I to assent to your proposal, I could not induce the signora to present
+herself before an assemblage as riotous as they are noble. You have too
+much chivalry to use compulsion with her, though the Duc de R--forgets
+himself sufficiently to administer it to me.'
+
+"I was stung by this taunt, however well deserved. 'Prince,' said I, 'I
+have for the indelicacy of compulsion so illustrious an example that I
+cannot hesitate to pursue the path honoured by your own footsteps. All
+Naples knows that the Pisani despises at once your gold and your love;
+that force alone could have brought her under your roof; and that you
+refuse to produce her, because you fear her complaints, and know enough
+of the chivalry your vanity sneers at to feel assured that the gentlemen
+of France are not more disposed to worship beauty than to defend it from
+wrong.'
+
+"'You speak well, sir,' said Zanoni, gravely. 'The prince dares not
+produce his prize!'
+
+"The prince remained speechless for a few moments, as if with
+indignation. At last he broke out into expressions the most injurious
+and insulting against Signor Zanoni and myself. Zanoni replied not; I
+was more hot and hasty. The guests appeared to delight in our dispute.
+None, except Mascari, whom we pushed aside and disdained to hear, strove
+to conciliate; some took one side, some another. The issue may be well
+foreseen. Swords were called for and procured. Two were offered me by
+one of the party. I was about to choose one, when Zanoni placed in
+my hand the other, which, from its hilt, appeared of antiquated
+workmanship. At the same moment, looking towards the prince, he said,
+smilingly, 'The duc takes your grandsire's sword. Prince, you are too
+brave a man for superstition; you have forgot the forfeit!' Our host
+seemed to me to recoil and turn pale at those words; nevertheless, he
+returned Zanoni's smile with a look of defiance. The next moment all was
+broil and disorder. There might be some six or eight persons engaged
+in a strange and confused kind of melee, but the prince and myself only
+sought each other. The noise around us, the confusion of the guests,
+the cries of the musicians, the clash of our own swords, only served
+to stimulate our unhappy fury. We feared to be interrupted by the
+attendants, and fought like madmen, without skill or method. I thrust
+and parried mechanically, blind and frantic, as if a demon had entered
+into me, till I saw the prince stretched at my feet, bathed in his
+blood, and Zanoni bending over him, and whispering in his ear. That
+sight cooled us all. The strife ceased; we gathered, in shame, remorse,
+and horror, round our ill-fated host; but it was too late,--his eyes
+rolled fearfully in his head. I have seen many men die, but never one
+who wore such horror on his countenance. At last all was over! Zanoni
+rose from the corpse, and, taking, with great composure, the sword from
+my hand, said calmly, 'Ye are witnesses, gentlemen, that the prince
+brought his fate upon himself. The last of that illustrious house has
+perished in a brawl.'
+
+"I saw no more of Zanoni. I hastened to our envoy to narrate the event,
+and abide the issue. I am grateful to the Neapolitan government, and to
+the illustrious heir of the unfortunate nobleman, for the lenient and
+generous, yet just, interpretation put upon a misfortune the memory of
+which will afflict me to the last hour of my life.
+
+(Signed) "Louis Victor, Duc de R."
+
+In the above memorial, the reader will find the most exact and minute
+account yet given of an event which created the most lively sensation at
+Naples in that day.
+
+Glyndon had taken no part in the affray, neither had he participated
+largely in the excesses of the revel. For his exemption from both he was
+perhaps indebted to the whispered exhortations of Zanoni. When the last
+rose from the corpse, and withdrew from that scene of confusion, Glyndon
+remarked that in passing the crowd he touched Mascari on the shoulder,
+and said something which the Englishman did not overhear. Glyndon
+followed Zanoni into the banquet-room, which, save where the moonlight
+slept on the marble floor, was wrapped in the sad and gloomy shadows of
+the advancing night.
+
+"How could you foretell this fearful event? He fell not by your arm!"
+said Glyndon, in a tremulous and hollow tone.
+
+"The general who calculates on the victory does not fight in person,"
+answered Zanoni; "let the past sleep with the dead. Meet me at midnight
+by the sea-shore, half a mile to the left of your hotel. You will know
+the spot by a rude pillar--the only one near--to which a broken chain
+is attached. There and then, if thou wouldst learn our lore, thou shalt
+find the master. Go; I have business here yet. Remember, Viola is still
+in the house of the dead man!"
+
+Here Mascari approached, and Zanoni, turning to the Italian, and waving
+his hand to Glyndon, drew the former aside. Glyndon slowly departed.
+
+"Mascari," said Zanoni, "your patron is no more; your services will
+be valueless to his heir,--a sober man whom poverty has preserved
+from vice. For yourself, thank me that I do not give you up to the
+executioner; recollect the wine of Cyprus. Well, never tremble, man; it
+could not act on me, though it might react on others; in that it is a
+common type of crime. I forgive you; and if the wine should kill me,
+I promise you that my ghost shall not haunt so worshipful a penitent.
+Enough of this; conduct me to the chamber of Viola Pisani. You have
+no further need of her. The death of the jailer opens the cell of the
+captive. Be quick; I would be gone."
+
+Mascari muttered some inaudible words, bowed low, and led the way to the
+chamber in which Viola was confined.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XVIII.
+
+     Merc:  Tell me, therefore, what thou seekest after, and what thou
+     wilt have.  What dost thou desire to make?
+
+     Alch:  The Philosopher's Stone.
+
+     Sandivogius.
+
+It wanted several minutes of midnight, and Glyndon repaired to the
+appointed spot. The mysterious empire which Zanoni had acquired over
+him, was still more solemnly confirmed by the events of the last few
+hours; the sudden fate of the prince, so deliberately foreshadowed, and
+yet so seemingly accidental, brought out by causes the most commonplace,
+and yet associated with words the most prophetic, impressed him with
+the deepest sentiments of admiration and awe. It was as if this dark and
+wondrous being could convert the most ordinary events and the meanest
+instruments into the agencies of his inscrutable will; yet, if so, why
+have permitted the capture of Viola? Why not have prevented the crime
+rather than punish the criminal? And did Zanoni really feel love for
+Viola? Love, and yet offer to resign her to himself,--to a rival whom
+his arts could not have failed to baffle. He no longer reverted to the
+belief that Zanoni or Viola had sought to dupe him into marriage. His
+fear and reverence for the former now forbade the notion of so poor an
+imposture. Did he any longer love Viola himself? No; when that morning
+he had heard of her danger, he had, it is true, returned to the
+sympathies and the fears of affection; but with the death of the prince
+her image faded from his heart, and he felt no jealous pang at the
+thought that she had been saved by Zanoni,--that at that moment she
+was perhaps beneath his roof. Whoever has, in the course of his life,
+indulged the absorbing passion of the gamester, will remember how all
+other pursuits and objects vanished from his mind; how solely he was
+wrapped in the one wild delusion; with what a sceptre of magic power
+the despot-demon ruled every feeling and every thought. Far more intense
+than the passion of the gamester was the frantic yet sublime desire that
+mastered the breast of Glyndon. He would be the rival of Zanoni, not in
+human and perishable affections, but in preternatural and eternal lore.
+He would have laid down life with content--nay, rapture--as the price of
+learning those solemn secrets which separated the stranger from mankind.
+Enamoured of the goddess of goddesses, he stretched forth his arms--the
+wild Ixion--and embraced a cloud!
+
+The night was most lovely and serene, and the waves scarcely rippled at
+his feet as the Englishman glided on by the cool and starry beach. At
+length he arrived at the spot, and there, leaning against the broken
+pillar, he beheld a man wrapped in a long mantle, and in an attitude
+of profound repose. He approached, and uttered the name of Zanoni. The
+figure turned, and he saw the face of a stranger: a face not stamped by
+the glorious beauty of Zanoni, but equally majestic in its aspect, and
+perhaps still more impressive from the mature age and the passionless
+depth of thought that characterised the expanded forehead, and deep-set
+but piercing eyes.
+
+"You seek Zanoni," said the stranger; "he will be here anon; but,
+perhaps, he whom you see before you is more connected with your destiny,
+and more disposed to realise your dreams."
+
+"Hath the earth, then, another Zanoni?"
+
+"If not," replied the stranger, "why do you cherish the hope and the
+wild faith to be yourself a Zanoni? Think you that none others
+have burned with the same godlike dream? Who, indeed in his first
+youth,--youth when the soul is nearer to the heaven from which it
+sprang, and its divine and primal longings are not all effaced by the
+sordid passions and petty cares that are begot in time,--who is there
+in youth that has not nourished the belief that the universe has
+secrets not known to the common herd, and panted, as the hart for the
+water-springs, for the fountains that lie hid and far away amidst the
+broad wilderness of trackless science? The music of the fountain is
+heard in the soul WITHIN, till the steps, deceived and erring, rove away
+from its waters, and the wanderer dies in the mighty desert. Think you
+that none who have cherished the hope have found the truth, or that the
+yearning after the Ineffable Knowledge was given to us utterly in vain?
+No! Every desire in human hearts is but a glimpse of things that exist,
+alike distant and divine. No! in the world there have been from age to
+age some brighter and happier spirits who have attained to the air in
+which the beings above mankind move and breathe. Zanoni, great though
+he be, stands not alone. He has had his predecessors, and long lines of
+successors may be yet to come."
+
+"And will you tell me," said Glyndon, "that in yourself I behold one
+of that mighty few over whom Zanoni has no superiority in power and
+wisdom?"
+
+"In me," answered the stranger, "you see one from whom Zanoni himself
+learned some of his loftiest secrets. On these shores, on this spot,
+have I stood in ages that your chroniclers but feebly reach. The
+Phoenician, the Greek, the Oscan, the Roman, the Lombard, I have seen
+them all!--leaves gay and glittering on the trunk of the universal life,
+scattered in due season and again renewed; till, indeed, the same race
+that gave its glory to the ancient world bestowed a second youth upon
+the new. For the pure Greeks, the Hellenes, whose origin has bewildered
+your dreaming scholars, were of the same great family as the Norman
+tribe, born to be the lords of the universe, and in no land on earth
+destined to become the hewers of wood. Even the dim traditions of the
+learned, which bring the sons of Hellas from the vast and undetermined
+territories of Northern Thrace, to be the victors of the pastoral
+Pelasgi, and the founders of the line of demi-gods; which assign to a
+population bronzed beneath the suns of the West, the blue-eyed Minerva
+and the yellow-haired Achilles (physical characteristics of the North);
+which introduce, amongst a pastoral people, warlike aristocracies and
+limited monarchies, the feudalism of the classic time,--even these might
+serve you to trace back the primeval settlements of the Hellenes to the
+same region whence, in later times, the Norman warriors broke on
+the dull and savage hordes of the Celt, and became the Greeks of the
+Christian world. But this interests you not, and you are wise in
+your indifference. Not in the knowledge of things without, but in the
+perfection of the soul within, lies the empire of man aspiring to be
+more than man."
+
+"And what books contain that science; from what laboratory is it
+wrought?"
+
+"Nature supplies the materials; they are around you in your daily walks.
+In the herbs that the beast devours and the chemist disdains to cull; in
+the elements from which matter in its meanest and its mightiest shapes
+is deduced; in the wide bosom of the air; in the black abysses of the
+earth; everywhere are given to mortals the resources and libraries
+of immortal lore. But as the simplest problems in the simplest of
+all studies are obscure to one who braces not his mind to their
+comprehension; as the rower in yonder vessel cannot tell you why two
+circles can touch each other only in one point,--so though all earth
+were carved over and inscribed with the letters of diviner knowledge,
+the characters would be valueless to him who does not pause to inquire
+the language and meditate the truth. Young man, if thy imagination is
+vivid, if thy heart is daring, if thy curiosity is insatiate, I will
+accept thee as my pupil. But the first lessons are stern and dread."
+
+"If thou hast mastered them, why not I?" answered Glyndon, boldly. "I
+have felt from my boyhood that strange mysteries were reserved for my
+career; and from the proudest ends of ordinary ambition I have carried
+my gaze into the cloud and darkness that stretch beyond. The instant I
+beheld Zanoni, I felt as if I had discovered the guide and the tutor for
+which my youth had idly languished and vainly burned."
+
+"And to me his duty is transferred," replied the stranger. "Yonder lies,
+anchored in the bay, the vessel in which Zanoni seeks a fairer home;
+a little while and the breeze will rise, the sail will swell; and the
+stranger will have passed, like a wind, away. Still, like the wind, he
+leaves in thy heart the seeds that may bear the blossom and the fruit.
+Zanoni hath performed his task,--he is wanted no more; the perfecter of
+his work is at thy side. He comes! I hear the dash of the oar. You will
+have your choice submitted to you. According as you decide we shall meet
+again." With these words the stranger moved slowly away, and disappeared
+beneath the shadow of the cliffs. A boat glided rapidly across the
+waters: it touched land; a man leaped on shore, and Glyndon recognised
+Zanoni.
+
+"I give thee, Glyndon,--I give thee no more the option of happy love and
+serene enjoyment. That hour is past, and fate has linked the hand that
+might have been thine own to mine. But I have ample gifts to bestow
+upon thee, if thou wilt abandon the hope that gnaws thy heart, and the
+realisation of which even _I_ have not the power to foresee. Be thine
+ambition human, and I can gratify it to the full. Men desire four things
+in life,--love, wealth, fame, power. The first I cannot give thee, the
+rest are at my disposal. Select which of them thou wilt, and let us part
+in peace."
+
+"Such are not the gifts I covet. I choose knowledge; that knowledge must
+be thine own. For this, and for this alone, I surrendered the love of
+Viola; this, and this alone, must be my recompense."
+
+"I cannot gain say thee, though I can warn. The desire to learn does not
+always contain the faculty to acquire. I can give thee, it is true, the
+teacher,--the rest must depend on thee. Be wise in time, and take that
+which I can assure to thee."
+
+"Answer me but these questions, and according to your answer I will
+decide. Is it in the power of man to attain intercourse with the beings
+of other worlds? Is it in the power of man to influence the elements,
+and to insure life against the sword and against disease?"
+
+"All this may be possible," answered Zanoni, evasively, "to the few; but
+for one who attains such secrets, millions may perish in the attempt."
+
+"One question more. Thou--"
+
+"Beware! Of myself, as I have said before, I render no account."
+
+"Well, then, the stranger I have met this night,--are his boasts to be
+believed? Is he in truth one of the chosen seers whom you allow to have
+mastered the mysteries I yearn to fathom?"
+
+"Rash man," said Zanoni, in a tone of compassion, "thy crisis is past,
+and thy choice made! I can only bid thee be bold and prosper; yes, I
+resign thee to a master who HAS the power and the will to open to thee
+the gates of an awful world. Thy weal or woe are as nought in the eyes
+of his relentless wisdom. I would bid him spare thee, but he will heed
+me not. Mejnour, receive thy pupil!" Glyndon turned, and his heart beat
+when he perceived that the stranger, whose footsteps he had not heard
+upon the pebbles, whose approach he had not beheld in the moonlight, was
+once more by his side.
+
+"Farewell," resumed Zanoni; "thy trial commences. When next we meet,
+thou wilt be the victim or the victor."
+
+Glyndon's eyes followed the receding form of the mysterious stranger.
+He saw him enter the boat, and he then for the first time noticed that
+besides the rowers there was a female, who stood up as Zanoni gained the
+boat. Even at the distance he recognised the once-adored form of Viola.
+She waved her hand to him, and across the still and shining air came
+her voice, mournfully and sweetly, in her mother's tongue, "Farewell,
+Clarence,--I forgive thee!--farewell, farewell!"
+
+He strove to answer; but the voice touched a chord at his heart, and
+the words failed him. Viola was then lost forever, gone with this dread
+stranger; darkness was round her lot! And he himself had decided her
+fate and his own! The boat bounded on, the soft waves flashed and
+sparkled beneath the oars, and it was along one sapphire track of
+moonlight that the frail vessel bore away the lovers. Farther and
+farther from his gaze sped the boat, till at last the speck, scarcely
+visible, touched the side of the ship that lay lifeless in the glorious
+bay. At that instant, as if by magic, up sprang, with a glad murmur, the
+playful and freshening wind: and Glyndon turned to Mejnour and broke the
+silence.
+
+"Tell me--if thou canst read the future--tell me that HER lot will be
+fair, and that HER choice at least is wise?"
+
+"My pupil!" answered Mejnour, in a voice the calmness of which well
+accorded with the chilling words, "thy first task must be to withdraw
+all thought, feeling, sympathy from others. The elementary stage of
+knowledge is to make self, and self alone, thy study and thy world.
+Thou hast decided thine own career; thou hast renounced love; thou hast
+rejected wealth, fame, and the vulgar pomps of power. What, then, are
+all mankind to thee? To perfect thy faculties, and concentrate thy
+emotions, is henceforth thy only aim!"
+
+"And will happiness be the end?"
+
+"If happiness exist," answered Mejnour, "it must be centred in a SELF to
+which all passion is unknown. But happiness is the last state of being;
+and as yet thou art on the threshold of the first."
+
+As Mejnour spoke, the distant vessel spread its sails to the wind,
+and moved slowly along the deep. Glyndon sighed, and the pupil and the
+master retraced their steps towards the city.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV. -- THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD.
+
+     Bey hinter ihm was will! Ich heb ihn auf.
+     "Das Verschleierte Bildzu Sais"
+
+     (Be behind what there may,--I raise the veil.)
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.I.
+
+     Come vittima io vengo all' ara.
+     "Metast.," At. ii. Sc. 7.
+
+     (As a victim I go to the altar.)
+
+It was about a month after the date of Zanoni's departure and Glyndon's
+introduction to Mejnour, when two Englishmen were walking, arm-in-arm,
+through the Toledo.
+
+"I tell you," said one (who spoke warmly), "that if you have a particle
+of common-sense left in you, you will accompany me to England. This
+Mejnour is an imposter more dangerous, because more in earnest, than
+Zanoni. After all, what do his promises amount to? You allow that
+nothing can be more equivocal. You say that he has left Naples,--that he
+has selected a retreat more congenial than the crowded thoroughfares of
+men to the studies in which he is to initiate you; and this retreat is
+among the haunts of the fiercest bandits of Italy,--haunts which justice
+itself dares not penetrate. Fitting hermitage for a sage! I tremble for
+you. What if this stranger--of whom nothing is known--be leagued with
+the robbers; and these lures for your credulity bait but the traps
+for your property,--perhaps your life? You might come off cheaply by
+a ransom of half your fortune. You smile indignantly! Well, put
+common-sense out of the question; take your own view of the matter.
+You are to undergo an ordeal which Mejnour himself does not profess to
+describe as a very tempting one. It may, or it may not, succeed: if it
+does not, you are menaced with the darkest evils; and if it does, you
+cannot be better off than the dull and joyless mystic whom you have
+taken for a master. Away with this folly; enjoy youth while it is left
+to you; return with me to England; forget these dreams; enter your
+proper career; form affections more respectable than those which lured
+you awhile to an Italian adventuress. Attend to your fortune, make
+money, and become a happy and distinguished man. This is the advice of
+sober friendship; yet the promises I hold out to you are fairer than
+those of Mejnour."
+
+"Mervale," said Glyndon, doggedly, "I cannot, if I would, yield to
+your wishes. A power that is above me urges me on; I cannot resist
+its influence. I will proceed to the last in the strange career I have
+commenced. Think of me no more. Follow yourself the advice you give to
+me, and be happy."
+
+"This is madness," said Mervale; "your health is already failing; you
+are so changed I should scarcely know you. Come; I have already had your
+name entered in my passport; in another hour I shall be gone, and you,
+boy that you are, will be left, without a friend, to the deceits of your
+own fancy and the machinations of this relentless mountebank."
+
+"Enough," said Glyndon, coldly; "you cease to be an effective counsellor
+when you suffer your prejudices to be thus evident. I have already had
+ample proof," added the Englishman, and his pale cheek grew more pale,
+"of the power of this man,--if man he be, which I sometimes doubt,--and,
+come life, come death, I will not shrink from the paths that allure me.
+Farewell, Mervale; if we never meet again,--if you hear, amidst our old
+and cheerful haunts, that Clarence Glyndon sleeps the last sleep by the
+shores of Naples, or amidst yon distant hills, say to the friends of
+our youth, 'He died worthily, as thousands of martyr-students have died
+before him, in the pursuit of knowledge.'"
+
+He wrung Mervale's hand as he spoke, darted from his side, and
+disappeared amidst the crowd.
+
+By the corner of the Toledo he was arrested by Nicot.
+
+"Ah, Glyndon! I have not seen you this month. Where have you hid
+yourself? Have you been absorbed in your studies?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I am about to leave Naples for Paris. Will you accompany me? Talent of
+all order is eagerly sought for there, and will be sure to rise."
+
+"I thank you; I have other schemes for the present."
+
+"So laconic!--what ails you? Do you grieve for the loss of the
+Pisani? Take example by me. I have already consoled myself with Bianca
+Sacchini,--a handsome woman, enlightened, no prejudices. A valuable
+creature I shall find her, no doubt. But as for this Zanoni!"
+
+"What of him?"
+
+"If ever I paint an allegorical subject, I will take his likeness as
+Satan. Ha, ha! a true painter's revenge,--eh? And the way of the world,
+too! When we can do nothing else against a man whom we hate, we can at
+least paint his effigies as the Devil's. Seriously, though: I abhor that
+man."
+
+"Wherefore?'
+
+"Wherefore! Has he not carried off the wife and the dowry I had marked
+for myself! Yet, after all," added Nicot, musingly, "had he served
+instead of injured me, I should have hated him all the same. His very
+form, and his very face, made me at once envy and detest him. I felt
+that there is something antipathetic in our natures. I feel, too, that
+we shall meet again, when Jean Nicot's hate may be less impotent. We,
+too, cher confrere,--we, too, may meet again! Vive la Republique! I to
+my new world!"
+
+"And I to mine. Farewell!"
+
+That day Mervale left Naples; the next morning Glyndon also quitted
+the City of Delight alone, and on horseback. He bent his way into those
+picturesque but dangerous parts of the country which at that time were
+infested by banditti, and which few travellers dared to pass, even in
+broad daylight, without a strong escort. A road more lonely cannot well
+be conceived than that on which the hoofs of his steed, striking upon
+the fragments of rock that encumbered the neglected way, woke a dull
+and melancholy echo. Large tracts of waste land, varied by the rank and
+profuse foliage of the South, lay before him; occasionally a wild goat
+peeped down from some rocky crag, or the discordant cry of a bird of
+prey, startled in its sombre haunt, was heard above the hills. These
+were the only signs of life; not a human being was met,--not a hut was
+visible. Wrapped in his own ardent and solemn thoughts, the young man
+continued his way, till the sun had spent its noonday heat, and a breeze
+that announced the approach of eve sprung up from the unseen ocean
+which lay far distant to his right. It was then that a turn in the road
+brought before him one of those long, desolate, gloomy villages which
+are found in the interior of the Neapolitan dominions: and now he came
+upon a small chapel on one side the road, with a gaudily painted image
+of the Virgin in the open shrine. Around this spot, which, in the heart
+of a Christian land, retained the vestige of the old idolatry (for
+just such were the chapels that in the pagan age were dedicated to the
+demon-saints of mythology), gathered six or seven miserable and squalid
+wretches, whom the curse of the leper had cut off from mankind. They
+set up a shrill cry as they turned their ghastly visages towards the
+horseman; and, without stirring from the spot, stretched out their gaunt
+arms, and implored charity in the name of the Merciful Mother! Glyndon
+hastily threw them some small coins, and, turning away his face, clapped
+spurs to his horse, and relaxed not his speed till he entered the
+village. On either side the narrow and miry street, fierce and haggard
+forms--some leaning against the ruined walls of blackened huts, some
+seated at the threshold, some lying at full length in the mud--presented
+groups that at once invoked pity and aroused alarm: pity for their
+squalor, alarm for the ferocity imprinted on their savage aspects. They
+gazed at him, grim and sullen, as he rode slowly up the rugged street;
+sometimes whispering significantly to each other, but without attempting
+to stop his way. Even the children hushed their babble, and ragged
+urchins, devouring him with sparkling eyes, muttered to their mothers;
+"We shall feast well to-morrow!" It was, indeed, one of those hamlets
+in which Law sets not its sober step, in which Violence and Murder house
+secure,--hamlets common then in the wilder parts of Italy, in which the
+peasant was but the gentler name for the robber.
+
+Glyndon's heart somewhat failed him as he looked around, and the
+question he desired to ask died upon his lips. At length from one of
+the dismal cabins emerged a form superior to the rest. Instead of the
+patched and ragged over-all, which made the only garment of the men he
+had hitherto seen, the dress of this person was characterised by all the
+trappings of the national bravery. Upon his raven hair, the glossy curls
+of which made a notable contrast to the matted and elfin locks of the
+savages around, was placed a cloth cap, with a gold tassel that hung
+down to his shoulder; his mustaches were trimmed with care, and a silk
+kerchief of gay hues was twisted round a well-shaped but sinewy throat;
+a short jacket of rough cloth was decorated with several rows of gilt
+filagree buttons; his nether garments fitted tight to his limbs, and
+were curiously braided; while in a broad parti-coloured sash were placed
+two silver-hilted pistols, and the sheathed knife, usually worn by
+Italians of the lower order, mounted in ivory elaborately carved. A
+small carbine of handsome workmanship was slung across his shoulder and
+completed his costume. The man himself was of middle size, athletic yet
+slender, with straight and regular features, sunburnt, but not swarthy;
+and an expression of countenance which, though reckless and bold, had in
+it frankness rather than ferocity, and, if defying, was not altogether
+unprepossessing.
+
+Glyndon, after eyeing this figure for some moments with great attention,
+checked his rein, and asked the way to the "Castle of the Mountain."
+
+The man lifted his cap as he heard the question, and, approaching
+Glyndon, laid his hand upon the neck of the horse, and said, in a low
+voice, "Then you are the cavalier whom our patron the signor expected.
+He bade me wait for you here, and lead you to the castle. And indeed,
+signor, it might have been unfortunate if I had neglected to obey the
+command."
+
+The man then, drawing a little aside, called out to the bystanders in a
+loud voice, "Ho, ho! my friends, pay henceforth and forever all respect
+to this worshipful cavalier. He is the expected guest of our blessed
+patron of the Castle of the Mountain. Long life to him! May he, like his
+host, be safe by day and by night; on the hill and in the waste; against
+the dagger and the bullet,--in limb and in life! Cursed be he who
+touches a hair of his head, or a baioccho in his pouch. Now and forever
+we will protect and honour him,--for the law or against the law; with
+the faith and to the death. Amen! Amen!"
+
+"Amen!" responded, in wild chorus, a hundred voices; and the scattered
+and straggling groups pressed up the street, nearer and nearer to the
+horseman.
+
+"And that he may be known," continued the Englishman's strange
+protector, "to the eye and to the ear, I place around him the white
+sash, and I give him the sacred watchword, 'Peace to the Brave.' Signor,
+when you wear this sash, the proudest in these parts will bare the head
+and bend the knee. Signor, when you utter this watchword, the bravest
+hearts will be bound to your bidding. Desire you safety, or ask you
+revenge--to gain a beauty, or to lose a foe,--speak but the word, and we
+are yours: we are yours! Is it not so, comrades?"
+
+And again the hoarse voices shouted, "Amen, Amen!"
+
+"Now, signor," whispered the bravo, "if you have a few coins to spare,
+scatter them amongst the crowd, and let us be gone."
+
+Glyndon, not displeased at the concluding sentence, emptied his purse
+in the streets; and while, with mingled oaths, blessings, shrieks, and
+yells, men, women, and children scrambled for the money, the bravo,
+taking the rein of the horse, led it a few paces through the village at
+a brisk trot, and then, turning up a narrow lane to the left, in a few
+minutes neither houses nor men were visible, and the mountains closed
+their path on either side. It was then that, releasing the bridle and
+slackening his pace, the guide turned his dark eyes on Glyndon with an
+arch expression, and said,--
+
+"Your Excellency was not, perhaps, prepared for the hearty welcome we
+have given you."
+
+"Why, in truth, I OUGHT to have been prepared for it, since the signor,
+to whose house I am bound, did not disguise from me the character of the
+neighbourhood. And your name, my friend, if I may so call you?"
+
+"Oh, no ceremonies with me, Excellency. In the village I am generally
+called Maestro Paolo. I had a surname once, though a very equivocal one;
+and I have forgotten THAT since I retired from the world."
+
+"And was it from disgust, from poverty, or from some--some ebullition
+of passion which entailed punishment, that you betook yourself to the
+mountains?"
+
+"Why, signor," said the bravo, with a gay laugh, "hermits of my class
+seldom love the confessional. However, I have no secrets while my step
+is in these defiles, my whistle in my pouch, and my carbine at my back."
+With that the robber, as if he loved permission to talk at his
+will, hemmed thrice, and began with much humour; though, as his tale
+proceeded, the memories it roused seemed to carry him farther than he
+at first intended, and reckless and light-hearted ease gave way to
+that fierce and varied play of countenance and passion of gesture which
+characterise the emotions of his countrymen.
+
+"I was born at Terracina,--a fair spot, is it not? My father was a
+learned monk of high birth; my mother--Heaven rest her!--an innkeeper's
+pretty daughter. Of course there could be no marriage in the case;
+and when I was born, the monk gravely declared my appearance to be
+miraculous. I was dedicated from my cradle to the altar; and my head was
+universally declared to be the orthodox shape for a cowl. As I grew up,
+the monk took great pains with my education; and I learned Latin and
+psalmody as soon as less miraculous infants learn crowing. Nor did the
+holy man's care stint itself to my interior accomplishments. Although
+vowed to poverty, he always contrived that my mother should have
+her pockets full; and between her pockets and mine there was soon
+established a clandestine communication; accordingly, at fourteen,
+I wore my cap on one side, stuck pistols in my belt, and assumed the
+swagger of a cavalier and a gallant. At that age my poor mother died;
+and about the same period my father, having written a History of the
+Pontifical Bulls, in forty volumes, and being, as I said, of high birth,
+obtained a cardinal's hat. From that time he thought fit to disown your
+humble servant. He bound me over to an honest notary at Naples, and gave
+me two hundred crowns by way of provision. Well, signor, I saw enough of
+the law to convince me that I should never be rogue enough to shine in
+the profession. So, instead of spoiling parchment, I made love to the
+notary's daughter. My master discovered our innocent amusement, and
+turned me out of doors; that was disagreeable. But my Ninetta loved
+me, and took care that I should not lie out in the streets with the
+Lazzaroni. Little jade! I think I see her now with her bare feet, and
+her finger to her lips, opening the door in the summer nights, and
+bidding me creep softly into the kitchen, where, praised be the saints!
+a flask and a manchet always awaited the hungry amoroso. At last,
+however, Ninetta grew cold. It is the way of the sex, signor. Her
+father found her an excellent marriage in the person of a withered old
+picture-dealer. She took the spouse, and very properly clapped the door
+in the face of the lover. I was not disheartened, Excellency; no, not I.
+Women are plentiful while we are young. So, without a ducat in my pocket
+or a crust for my teeth, I set out to seek my fortune on board of a
+Spanish merchantman. That was duller work than I expected; but luckily
+we were attacked by a pirate,--half the crew were butchered, the
+rest captured. I was one of the last: always in luck, you see,
+signor,--monks' sons have a knack that way! The captain of the pirates
+took a fancy to me. 'Serve with us?' said he. 'Too happy,' said I.
+Behold me, then, a pirate! O jolly life! how I blessed the old notary
+for turning me out of doors! What feasting, what fighting, what wooing,
+what quarrelling! Sometimes we ran ashore and enjoyed ourselves like
+princes; sometimes we lay in a calm for days together on the loveliest
+sea that man ever traversed. And then, if the breeze rose and a sail
+came in sight, who so merry as we? I passed three years in that charming
+profession, and then, signor, I grew ambitious. I caballed against the
+captain; I wanted his post. One still night we struck the blow. The ship
+was like a log in the sea, no land to be seen from the mast-head, the
+waves like glass, and the moon at its full. Up we rose, thirty of us and
+more. Up we rose with a shout; we poured into the captain's cabin, I at
+the head. The brave old boy had caught the alarm, and there he stood at
+the doorway, a pistol in each hand; and his one eye (he had only one)
+worse to meet than the pistols were.
+
+"'Yield!' cried I; 'your life shall be safe.'
+
+"'Take that,' said he, and whiz went the pistol; but the saints took
+care of their own, and the ball passed by my cheek, and shot the
+boatswain behind me. I closed with the captain, and the other pistol
+went off without mischief in the struggle. Such a fellow he was,--six
+feet four without his shoes! Over we went, rolling each on the other.
+Santa Maria! no time to get hold of one's knife. Meanwhile all the crew
+were up, some for the captain, some for me,--clashing and firing, and
+swearing and groaning, and now and then a heavy splash in the sea. Fine
+supper for the sharks that night! At last old Bilboa got uppermost; out
+flashed his knife; down it came, but not in my heart. No! I gave my left
+arm as a shield; and the blade went through to the hilt, with the blood
+spurting up like the rain from a whale's nostril! With the weight of the
+blow the stout fellow came down so that his face touched mine; with
+my right hand I caught him by the throat, turned him over like a lamb,
+signor, and faith it was soon all up with him: the boatswain's brother,
+a fat Dutchman, ran him through with a pike.
+
+"'Old fellow,' said I, as he turned his terrible eye to me, 'I bear
+you no malice, but we must try to get on in the world, you know.' The
+captain grinned and gave up the ghost. I went upon deck,--what a sight!
+Twenty bold fellows stark and cold, and the moon sparkling on the
+puddles of blood as calmly as if it were water. Well, signor, the
+victory was ours, and the ship mine; I ruled merrily enough for six
+months. We then attacked a French ship twice our size; what sport it
+was! And we had not had a good fight so long, we were quite like virgins
+at it! We got the best of it, and won ship and cargo. They wanted to
+pistol the captain, but that was against my laws: so we gagged him, for
+he scolded as loud as if we were married to him; left him and the
+rest of his crew on board our own vessel, which was terribly battered;
+clapped our black flag on the Frenchman's, and set off merrily, with a
+brisk wind in our favour. But luck deserted us on forsaking our own dear
+old ship. A storm came on, a plank struck; several of us escaped in a
+boat; we had lots of gold with us, but no water. For two days and two
+nights we suffered horribly; but at last we ran ashore near a French
+seaport. Our sorry plight moved compassion, and as we had money, we were
+not suspected,--people only suspect the poor. Here we soon recovered
+our fatigues, rigged ourselves out gayly, and your humble servant was
+considered as noble a captain as ever walked deck. But now, alas! my
+fate would have it that I should fall in love with a silk-mercer's
+daughter. Ah, how I loved her!--the pretty Clara! Yes, I loved her
+so well that I was seized with horror at my past life! I resolved to
+repent, to marry her, and settle down into an honest man. Accordingly, I
+summoned my messmates, told them my resolution, resigned my command,
+and persuaded them to depart. They were good fellows, engaged with a
+Dutchman, against whom I heard afterwards they made a successful mutiny,
+but I never saw them more. I had two thousand crowns still left; with
+this sum I obtained the consent of the silk-mercer, and it was agreed
+that I should become a partner in the firm. I need not say that no one
+suspected that I had been so great a man, and I passed for a Neapolitan
+goldsmith's son instead of a cardinal's. I was very happy then, signor,
+very,--I could not have harmed a fly! Had I married Clara, I had been as
+gentle a mercer as ever handled a measure."
+
+The bravo paused a moment, and it was easy to see that he felt more than
+his words and tone betokened. "Well, well, we must not look back at the
+past too earnestly,--the sunlight upon it makes one's eyes water. The
+day was fixed for our wedding,--it approached. On the evening before the
+appointed day, Clara, her mother, her little sister, and myself, were
+walking by the port; and as we looked on the sea, I was telling them
+old gossip-tales of mermaids and sea-serpents, when a red-faced,
+bottle-nosed Frenchman clapped himself right before me, and, placing his
+spectacles very deliberately astride his proboscis, echoed out, 'Sacre,
+mille tonnerres! this is the damned pirate who boarded the "Niobe"!'"
+
+"'None of your jests,' said I, mildly. 'Ho, ho!' said he; 'I can't be
+mistaken; help there!' and he griped me by the collar. I replied, as
+you may suppose, by laying him in the kennel; but it would not do. The
+French captain had a French lieutenant at his back, whose memory was as
+good as his chief's. A crowd assembled; other sailors came up: the
+odds were against me. I slept that night in prison; and in a few weeks
+afterwards I was sent to the galleys. They spared my life, because the
+old Frenchman politely averred that I had made my crew spare his. You
+may believe that the oar and the chain were not to my taste. I and two
+others escaped; they took to the road, and have, no doubt, been long
+since broken on the wheel. I, soft soul, would not commit another crime
+to gain my bread, for Clara was still at my heart with her sweet eyes;
+so, limiting my rogueries to the theft of a beggar's rags, which I
+compensated by leaving him my galley attire instead, I begged my way
+to the town where I left Clara. It was a clear winter's day when I
+approached the outskirts of the town. I had no fear of detection, for my
+beard and hair were as good as a mask. Oh, Mother of Mercy! there came
+across my way a funeral procession! There, now you know it; I can tell
+you no more. She had died, perhaps of love, more likely of shame. Can
+you guess how I spent that night?--I stole a pickaxe from a mason's
+shed, and all alone and unseen, under the frosty heavens, I dug the
+fresh mould from the grave; I lifted the coffin, I wrenched the lid, I
+saw her again--again! Decay had not touched her. She was always pale in
+life! I could have sworn she lived! It was a blessed thing to see her
+once more, and all alone too! But then, at dawn, to give her back to the
+earth,--to close the lid, to throw down the mould, to hear the pebbles
+rattle on the coffin: that was dreadful! Signor, I never knew before,
+and I don't wish to think now, how valuable a thing human life is. At
+sunrise I was again a wanderer; but now that Clara was gone, my scruples
+vanished, and again I was at war with my betters. I contrived at last,
+at O--, to get taken on board a vessel bound to Leghorn, working out my
+passage. From Leghorn I went to Rome, and stationed myself at the door
+of the cardinal's palace. Out he came, his gilded coach at the gate.
+
+"'Ho, father!' said I; 'don't you know me?'
+
+"'Who are you?'
+
+"'Your son,' said I, in a whisper.
+
+"The cardinal drew back, looked at me earnestly, and mused a moment.
+'All men are my sons,' quoth he then, very mildly; 'there is gold for
+thee! To him who begs once, alms are due; to him who begs twice, jails
+are open. Take the hint and molest me no more. Heaven bless thee!' With
+that he got into his coach, and drove off to the Vatican. His purse
+which he had left behind was well supplied. I was grateful and
+contented, and took my way to Terracina. I had not long passed the
+marshes when I saw two horsemen approach at a canter.
+
+"'You look poor, friend,' said one of them, halting; 'yet you are
+strong.'
+
+"'Poor men and strong are both serviceable and dangerous, Signor
+Cavalier.'
+
+"'Well said; follow us.'
+
+"I obeyed, and became a bandit. I rose by degrees; and as I have always
+been mild in my calling, and have taken purses without cutting throats,
+I bear an excellent character, and can eat my macaroni at Naples without
+any danger to life and limb. For the last two years I have settled in
+these parts, where I hold sway, and where I have purchased land. I am
+called a farmer, signor; and I myself now only rob for amusement, and to
+keep my hand in. I trust I have satisfied your curiosity. We are within
+a hundred yards of the castle."
+
+"And how," asked the Englishman, whose interest had been much excited
+by his companion's narrative,--"and how came you acquainted with my
+host?--and by what means has he so well conciliated the goodwill of
+yourself and friends?"
+
+Maestro Paolo turned his black eyes very gravely towards his questioner.
+"Why, signor," said he, "you must surely know more of the foreign
+cavalier with the hard name than I do. All I can say is, that about
+a fortnight ago I chanced to be standing by a booth in the Toledo at
+Naples, when a sober-looking gentleman touched me by the arm, and said,
+'Maestro Paolo, I want to make your acquaintance; do me the favour to
+come into yonder tavern, and drink a flask of lacrima.' 'Willingly,'
+said I. So we entered the tavern. When we were seated, my new
+acquaintance thus accosted me: 'The Count d'O-- has offered to let me
+hire his old castle near B--. You know the spot?'
+
+"'Extremely well; no one has inhabited it for a century at least; it
+is half in ruins, signor. A queer place to hire; I hope the rent is not
+heavy.'
+
+"'Maestro Paolo,' said he, 'I am a philosopher, and don't care for
+luxuries. I want a quiet retreat for some scientific experiments.
+The castle will suit me very well, provided you will accept me as a
+neighbour, and place me and my friends under your special protection.
+I am rich; but I shall take nothing to the castle worth robbing. I will
+pay one rent to the count, and another to you.'
+
+"With that we soon came to terms; and as the strange signor doubled the
+sum I myself proposed, he is in high favour with all his neighbours. We
+would guard the whole castle against an army. And now, signor, that I
+have been thus frank, be frank with me. Who is this singular cavalier?"
+
+"Who?--he himself told you, a philosopher."
+
+"Hem! searching for the Philosopher's Stone,--eh, a bit of a magician;
+afraid of the priests?"
+
+"Precisely; you have hit it."
+
+"I thought so; and you are his pupil?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"I wish you well through it," said the robber, seriously, and crossing
+himself with much devotion; "I am not much better than other people,
+but one's soul is one's soul. I do not mind a little honest robbery, or
+knocking a man on the head if need be,--but to make a bargain with the
+devil! Ah, take care, young gentleman, take care!"
+
+"You need not fear," said Glyndon, smiling; "my preceptor is too wise
+and too good for such a compact. But here we are, I suppose. A noble
+ruin,--a glorious prospect!"
+
+Glyndon paused delightedly, and surveyed the scene before and below with
+the eye of a painter. Insensibly, while listening to the bandit, he had
+wound up a considerable ascent, and now he was upon a broad ledge of
+rock covered with mosses and dwarf shrubs. Between this eminence and
+another of equal height, upon which the castle was built, there was a
+deep but narrow fissure, overgrown with the most profuse foliage, so
+that the eye could not penetrate many yards below the rugged surface of
+the abyss; but the profoundness might be well conjectured by the
+hoarse, low, monotonous roar of waters unseen that rolled below, and the
+subsequent course of which was visible at a distance in a perturbed and
+rapid stream that intersected the waste and desolate valleys.
+
+To the left, the prospect seemed almost boundless,--the extreme
+clearness of the purple air serving to render distinct the features of
+a range of country that a conqueror of old might have deemed in itself
+a kingdom. Lonely and desolate as the road which Glyndon had passed that
+day had appeared, the landscape now seemed studded with castles, spires,
+and villages. Afar off, Naples gleamed whitely in the last rays of the
+sun, and the rose-tints of the horizon melted into the azure of her
+glorious bay. Yet more remote, and in another part of the prospect,
+might be caught, dim and shadowy, and backed by the darkest foliage,
+the ruined pillars of the ancient Posidonia. There, in the midst of his
+blackened and sterile realms, rose the dismal Mount of Fire; while on
+the other hand, winding through variegated plains, to which distance
+lent all its magic, glittered many and many a stream by which Etruscan
+and Sybarite, Roman and Saracen and Norman had, at intervals of ages,
+pitched the invading tent. All the visions of the past--the stormy and
+dazzling histories of Southern Italy--rushed over the artist's mind as
+he gazed below. And then, slowly turning to look behind, he saw the grey
+and mouldering walls of the castle in which he sought the secrets that
+were to give to hope in the future a mightier empire than memory owns in
+the past. It was one of those baronial fortresses with which Italy was
+studded in the earlier middle ages, having but little of the Gothic
+grace or grandeur which belongs to the ecclesiastical architecture of
+the same time, but rude, vast, and menacing, even in decay. A wooden
+bridge was thrown over the chasm, wide enough to admit two horsemen
+abreast; and the planks trembled and gave back a hollow sound as Glyndon
+urged his jaded steed across.
+
+A road which had once been broad and paved with rough flags, but which
+now was half-obliterated by long grass and rank weeds, conducted to the
+outer court of the castle hard by; the gates were open, and half the
+building in this part was dismantled; the ruins partially hid by ivy
+that was the growth of centuries. But on entering the inner court,
+Glyndon was not sorry to notice that there was less appearance of
+neglect and decay; some wild roses gave a smile to the grey walls, and
+in the centre there was a fountain in which the waters still trickled
+coolly, and with a pleasing murmur, from the jaws of a gigantic Triton.
+Here he was met by Mejnour with a smile.
+
+"Welcome, my friend and pupil," said he: "he who seeks for Truth can
+find in these solitudes an immortal Academe."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.II.
+
+     And Abaris, so far from esteeming Pythagoras, who taught these
+     things, a necromancer or wizard, rather revered and admired him
+     as something divine.--Iamblich., "Vit. Pythag."
+
+The attendants whom Mejnour had engaged for his strange abode were such
+as might suit a philosopher of few wants. An old Armenian whom Glyndon
+recognised as in the mystic's service at Naples, a tall, hard-featured
+woman from the village, recommended by Maestro Paolo, and two
+long-haired, smooth-spoken, but fierce-visaged youths from the
+same place, and honoured by the same sponsorship, constituted
+the establishment. The rooms used by the sage were commodious and
+weather-proof, with some remains of ancient splendour in the faded
+arras that clothed the walls, and the huge tables of costly marble and
+elaborate carving. Glyndon's sleeping apartment communicated with a kind
+of belvedere, or terrace, that commanded prospects of unrivalled beauty
+and extent, and was separated on the other side by a long gallery, and
+a flight of ten or a dozen stairs, from the private chambers of the
+mystic. There was about the whole place a sombre and yet not displeasing
+depth of repose. It suited well with the studies to which it was now to
+be appropriated.
+
+For several days Mejnour refused to confer with Glyndon on the subjects
+nearest to his heart.
+
+"All without," said he, "is prepared, but not all within; your own
+soul must grow accustomed to the spot, and filled with the surrounding
+nature; for Nature is the source of all inspiration."
+
+With these words Mejnour turned to lighter topics. He made the
+Englishman accompany him in long rambles through the wild scenes
+around, and he smiled approvingly when the young artist gave way to the
+enthusiasm which their fearful beauty could not have failed to rouse in
+a duller breast; and then Mejnour poured forth to his wondering pupil
+the stores of a knowledge that seemed inexhaustible and boundless. He
+gave accounts the most curious, graphic, and minute of the various races
+(their characters, habits, creeds, and manners) by which that fair land
+had been successively overrun. It is true that his descriptions could
+not be found in books, and were unsupported by learned authorities; but
+he possessed the true charm of the tale-teller, and spoke of all with
+the animated confidence of a personal witness. Sometimes, too, he would
+converse upon the more durable and the loftier mysteries of Nature with
+an eloquence and a research which invested them with all the colours
+rather of poetry than science. Insensibly the young artist found himself
+elevated and soothed by the lore of his companion; the fever of his wild
+desires was slaked. His mind became more and more lulled into the divine
+tranquillity of contemplation; he felt himself a nobler being, and in
+the silence of his senses he imagined that he heard the voice of his
+soul.
+
+It was to this state that Mejnour evidently sought to bring the
+neophyte, and in this elementary initiation the mystic was like every
+more ordinary sage. For he who seeks to DISCOVER must first reduce
+himself into a kind of abstract idealism, and be rendered up, in solemn
+and sweet bondage, to the faculties which CONTEMPLATE and IMAGINE.
+
+Glyndon noticed that, in their rambles, Mejnour often paused, where the
+foliage was rifest, to gather some herb or flower; and this reminded him
+that he had seen Zanoni similarly occupied. "Can these humble children
+of Nature," said he one day to Mejnour,--"things that bloom and wither
+in a day, be serviceable to the science of the higher secrets? Is there
+a pharmacy for the soul as well as the body, and do the nurslings of the
+summer minister not only to human health but spiritual immortality?"
+
+"If," answered Mejnour, "a stranger had visited a wandering tribe before
+one property of herbalism was known to them; if he had told the savages
+that the herbs which every day they trampled under foot were endowed
+with the most potent virtues; that one would restore to health a brother
+on the verge of death; that another would paralyse into idiocy their
+wisest sage; that a third would strike lifeless to the dust their most
+stalwart champion; that tears and laughter, vigour and disease, madness
+and reason, wakefulness and sleep, existence and dissolution, were
+coiled up in those unregarded leaves,--would they not have held him a
+sorcerer or a liar? To half the virtues of the vegetable world mankind
+are yet in the darkness of the savages I have supposed. There are
+faculties within us with which certain herbs have affinity, and over
+which they have power. The moly of the ancients is not all a fable."
+
+The apparent character of Mejnour differed in much from that of Zanoni;
+and while it fascinated Glyndon less, it subdued and impressed him
+more. The conversation of Zanoni evinced a deep and general interest for
+mankind,--a feeling approaching to enthusiasm for art and beauty. The
+stories circulated concerning his habits elevated the mystery of his
+life by actions of charity and beneficence. And in all this there
+was something genial and humane that softened the awe he created, and
+tended, perhaps, to raise suspicions as to the loftier secrets that he
+arrogated to himself. But Mejnour seemed wholly indifferent to all the
+actual world. If he committed no evil, he seemed equally apathetic to
+good. His deeds relieved no want, his words pitied no distress. What
+we call the heart appeared to have merged into the intellect. He moved,
+thought, and lived like some regular and calm abstraction, rather than
+one who yet retained, with the form, the feelings and sympathies of his
+kind.
+
+Glyndon once, observing the tone of supreme indifference with which he
+spoke of those changes on the face of earth which he asserted he had
+witnessed, ventured to remark to him the distinction he had noted.
+
+"It is true," said Mejnour, coldly. "My life is the life that
+contemplates,--Zanoni's is the life that enjoys: when I gather the herb,
+I think but of its uses; Zanoni will pause to admire its beauties."
+
+"And you deem your own the superior and the loftier existence?"
+
+"No. His is the existence of youth,--mine of age. We have cultivated
+different faculties. Each has powers the other cannot aspire to. Those
+with whom he associates live better,--those who associate with me know
+more."
+
+"I have heard, in truth," said Glyndon, "that his companions at Naples
+were observed to lead purer and nobler lives after intercourse with
+Zanoni; yet were they not strange companions, at the best, for a sage?
+This terrible power, too, that he exercises at will, as in the death of
+the Prince di --, and that of the Count Ughelli, scarcely becomes the
+tranquil seeker after good."
+
+"True," said Mejnour, with an icy smile; "such must ever be the error of
+those philosophers who would meddle with the active life of mankind. You
+cannot serve some without injuring others; you cannot protect the good
+without warring on the bad; and if you desire to reform the faulty, why,
+you must lower yourself to live with the faulty to know their faults.
+Even so saith Paracelsus, a great man, though often wrong. ('It is as
+necessary to know evil things as good; for who can know what is good
+without the knowing what is evil?' etc.--Paracelsus, 'De Nat. Rer.,'
+lib. 3.) Not mine this folly; I live but in knowledge,--I have no life
+in mankind!"
+
+Another time Glyndon questioned the mystic as to the nature of that
+union or fraternity to which Zanoni had once referred.
+
+"I am right, I suppose," said he, "in conjecturing that you and himself
+profess to be the brothers of the Rosy Cross?"
+
+"Do you imagine," answered Mejnour, "that there were no mystic and
+solemn unions of men seeking the same end through the same means before
+the Arabians of Damus, in 1378, taught to a wandering German the secrets
+which founded the Institution of the Rosicrucians? I allow, however,
+that the Rosicrucians formed a sect descended from the greater and
+earlier school. They were wiser than the Alchemists,--their masters are
+wiser than they."
+
+"And of this early and primary order how many still exist?"
+
+"Zanoni and myself."
+
+"What, two only!--and you profess the power to teach to all the secret
+that baffles Death?"
+
+"Your ancestor attained that secret; he died rather than survive the
+only thing he loved. We have, my pupil, no arts by which we CAN PUT
+DEATH OUT OF OUR OPTION, or out of the will of Heaven. These walls may
+crush me as I stand. All that we profess to do is but this,--to find
+out the secrets of the human frame; to know why the parts ossify and the
+blood stagnates, and to apply continual preventives to the effects of
+time. This is not magic; it is the art of medicine rightly understood.
+In our order we hold most noble,--first, that knowledge which elevates
+the intellect; secondly, that which preserves the body. But the mere art
+(extracted from the juices and simples) which recruits the animal vigour
+and arrests the progress of decay, or that more noble secret, which I
+will only hint to thee at present, by which HEAT, or CALORIC, as ye
+call it, being, as Heraclitus wisely taught, the primordial principle
+of life, can be made its perpetual renovater,--these I say, would not
+suffice for safety. It is ours also to disarm and elude the wrath of
+men, to turn the swords of our foes against each other, to glide (if
+not incorporeal) invisible to eyes over which we can throw a mist and
+darkness. And this some seers have professed to be the virtue of a stone
+of agate. Abaris placed it in his arrow. I will find you an herb in yon
+valley that will give a surer charm than the agate and the arrow. In one
+word, know this, that the humblest and meanest products of Nature are
+those from which the sublimest properties are to be drawn."
+
+"But," said Glyndon, "if possessed of these great secrets, why
+so churlish in withholding their diffusion? Does not the false or
+charlatanic science differ in this from the true and indisputable,--that
+the last communicates to the world the process by which it attains its
+discoveries; the first boasts of marvellous results, and refuses to
+explain the causes?"
+
+"Well said, O Logician of the Schools; but think again. Suppose we were
+to impart all our knowledge to all mankind indiscriminately,--alike to
+the vicious and the virtuous,--should we be benefactors or scourges?
+Imagine the tyrant, the sensualist, the evil and corrupted being
+possessed of these tremendous powers; would he not be a demon let loose
+on earth? Grant that the same privilege be accorded also to the good;
+and in what state would be society? Engaged in a Titan war,--the good
+forever on the defensive, the bad forever in assault. In the present
+condition of the earth, evil is a more active principle than good, and
+the evil would prevail. It is for these reasons that we are not only
+solemnly bound to administer our lore only to those who will not misuse
+and pervert it, but that we place our ordeal in tests that purify
+the passions and elevate the desires. And Nature in this controls and
+assists us: for it places awful guardians and insurmountable barriers
+between the ambition of vice and the heaven of the loftier science."
+
+Such made a small part of the numerous conversations Mejnour held
+with his pupil,--conversations that, while they appeared to address
+themselves to the reason, inflamed yet more the fancy. It was the very
+disclaiming of all powers which Nature, properly investigated, did
+not suffice to create, that gave an air of probability to those which
+Mejnour asserted Nature might bestow.
+
+Thus days and weeks rolled on; and the mind of Glyndon, gradually fitted
+to this sequestered and musing life, forgot at last the vanities and
+chimeras of the world without.
+
+One evening he had lingered alone and late upon the ramparts, watching
+the stars as, one by one, they broke upon the twilight. Never had he
+felt so sensibly the mighty power of the heavens and the earth upon man;
+how much the springs of our intellectual being are moved and acted upon
+by the solemn influences of Nature. As a patient on whom, slowly and by
+degrees, the agencies of mesmerism are brought to bear, he acknowledged
+to his heart the growing force of that vast and universal magnetism
+which is the life of creation, and binds the atom to the whole. A
+strange and ineffable consciousness of power, of the SOMETHING GREAT
+within the perishable clay, appealed to feelings at once dim and
+glorious,--like the faint recognitions of a holier and former being. An
+impulse, that he could not resist, led him to seek the mystic. He would
+demand, that hour, his initiation into the worlds beyond our world,--he
+was prepared to breathe a diviner air. He entered the castle, and strode
+the shadowy and starlit gallery which conducted to Mejnour's apartment.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.III.
+
+     Man is the eye of things.--Euryph, "de Vit. Hum."
+
+     ...There is, therefore, a certain ecstatical or transporting
+     power, which, if at any time it shall be excited or stirred up by
+     an ardent desire and most strong imagination, is able to conduct
+     the spirit of the more outward even to some absent and
+     far-distant object.--Von Helmont.
+
+The rooms that Mejnour occupied consisted of two chambers communicating
+with each other, and a third in which he slept. All these rooms
+were placed in the huge square tower that beetled over the dark and
+bush-grown precipice. The first chamber which Glyndon entered was empty.
+With a noiseless step he passed on, and opened the door that admitted
+into the inner one. He drew back at the threshold, overpowered by a
+strong fragrance which filled the chamber: a kind of mist thickened the
+air rather than obscured it, for this vapour was not dark, but resembled
+a snow-cloud moving slowly, and in heavy undulations, wave upon wave
+regularly over the space. A mortal cold struck to the Englishman's
+heart, and his blood froze. He stood rooted to the spot; and as his eyes
+strained involuntarily through the vapour, he fancied (for he could not
+be sure that it was not the trick of his imagination) that he saw dim,
+spectre-like, but gigantic forms floating through the mist; or was it
+not rather the mist itself that formed its vapours fantastically into
+those moving, impalpable, and bodiless apparitions? A great painter
+of antiquity is said, in a picture of Hades, to have represented the
+monsters that glide through the ghostly River of the Dead, so artfully,
+that the eye perceived at once that the river itself was but a spectre,
+and the bloodless things that tenanted it had no life, their forms
+blending with the dead waters till, as the eye continued to gaze, it
+ceased to discern them from the preternatural element they were supposed
+to inhabit. Such were the moving outlines that coiled and floated
+through the mist; but before Glyndon had even drawn breath in this
+atmosphere--for his life itself seemed arrested or changed into a kind
+of horrid trance--he felt his hand seized, and he was led from that room
+into the outer one. He heard the door close,--his blood rushed again
+through his veins, and he saw Mejnour by his side. Strong convulsions
+then suddenly seized his whole frame,--he fell to the ground insensible.
+When he recovered, he found himself in the open air in a rude balcony of
+stone that jutted from the chamber, the stars shining serenely over the
+dark abyss below, and resting calmly upon the face of the mystic, who
+stood beside him with folded arms.
+
+"Young man," said Mejnour, "judge by what you have just felt, how
+dangerous it is to seek knowledge until prepared to receive it. Another
+moment in the air of that chamber and you had been a corpse."
+
+"Then of what nature was the knowledge that you, once mortal like
+myself, could safely have sought in that icy atmosphere, which it was
+death for me to breathe? Mejnour," continued Glyndon, and his wild
+desire, sharpened by the very danger he had passed, once more animated
+and nerved him, "I am prepared at least for the first steps. I come to
+you as of old the pupil to the Hierophant, and demand the initiation."
+
+Mejnour passed his hand over the young man's heart,--it beat loud,
+regularly, and boldly. He looked at him with something almost like
+admiration in his passionless and frigid features, and muttered, half
+to himself, "Surely, in so much courage the true disciple is found at
+last." Then, speaking aloud, he added, "Be it so; man's first initiation
+is in TRANCE. In dreams commences all human knowledge; in dreams
+hovers over measureless space the first faint bridge between spirit and
+spirit,--this world and the worlds beyond! Look steadfastly on yonder
+star!"
+
+Glyndon obeyed, and Mejnour retired into the chamber, from which there
+then slowly emerged a vapour, somewhat paler and of fainter odour than
+that which had nearly produced so fatal an effect on his frame. This,
+on the contrary, as it coiled around him, and then melted in thin spires
+into the air, breathed a refreshing and healthful fragrance. He still
+kept his eyes on the star, and the star seemed gradually to fix and
+command his gaze. A sort of languor next seized his frame, but without,
+as he thought, communicating itself to the mind; and as this crept over
+him, he felt his temples sprinkled with some volatile and fiery essence.
+At the same moment a slight tremor shook his limbs and thrilled through
+his veins. The languor increased, still he kept his gaze upon the star,
+and now its luminous circumference seemed to expand and dilate. It
+became gradually softer and clearer in its light; spreading wider and
+broader, it diffused all space,--all space seemed swallowed up in it.
+And at last, in the midst of a silver shining atmosphere, he felt as if
+something burst within his brain,--as if a strong chain were broken; and
+at that moment a sense of heavenly liberty, of unutterable delight, of
+freedom from the body, of birdlike lightness, seemed to float him
+into the space itself. "Whom, now upon earth, dost thou wish to see?"
+whispered the voice of Mejnour. "Viola and Zanoni!" answered Glyndon, in
+his heart; but he felt that his lips moved not.
+
+Suddenly at that thought,--through this space, in which nothing save one
+mellow translucent light had been discernible,--a swift succession
+of shadowy landscapes seemed to roll: trees, mountains, cities, seas,
+glided along like the changes of a phantasmagoria; and at last,
+settled and stationary, he saw a cave by the gradual marge of an ocean
+shore,--myrtles and orange-trees clothing the gentle banks. On a height,
+at a distance, gleamed the white but shattered relics of some ruined
+heathen edifice; and the moon, in calm splendour, shining over all,
+literally bathed with its light two forms without the cave, at whose
+feet the blue waters crept, and he thought that he even heard them
+murmur. He recognised both the figures. Zanoni was seated on a fragment
+of stone; Viola, half-reclining by his side, was looking into his face,
+which was bent down to her, and in her countenance was the expression of
+that perfect happiness which belongs to perfect love. "Wouldst thou hear
+them speak?" whispered Mejnour; and again, without sound, Glyndon inly
+answered, "Yes!" Their voices then came to his ear, but in tones that
+seemed to him strange; so subdued were they, and sounding, as it were,
+so far off, that they were as voices heard in the visions of some holier
+men from a distant sphere.
+
+"And how is it," said Viola, "that thou canst find pleasure in listening
+to the ignorant?"
+
+"Because the heart is never ignorant; because the mysteries of the
+feelings are as full of wonder as those of the intellect. If at times
+thou canst not comprehend the language of my thoughts, at times also I
+hear sweet enigmas in that of thy emotions."
+
+"Ah, say not so!" said Viola, winding her arm tenderly round his neck,
+and under that heavenly light her face seemed lovelier for its blushes.
+"For the enigmas are but love's common language, and love should solve
+them. Till I knew thee,--till I lived with thee; till I learned to
+watch for thy footstep when absent: yet even in absence to see
+thee everywhere!--I dreamed not how strong and all-pervading is the
+connection between nature and the human soul!...
+
+"And yet," she continued, "I am now assured of what I at first
+believed,--that the feelings which attracted me towards thee at first
+were not those of love. I know THAT, by comparing the present with the
+past,--it was a sentiment then wholly of the mind or the spirit! I could
+not hear thee now say, 'Viola, be happy with another!'"
+
+"And I could not now tell thee so! Ah, Viola, never be weary of assuring
+me that thou art happy!"
+
+"Happy while thou art so. Yet at times, Zanoni, thou art so sad!"
+
+"Because human life is so short; because we must part at last; because
+yon moon shines on when the nightingale sings to it no more! A little
+while, and thine eyes will grow dim, and thy beauty haggard, and these
+locks that I toy with now will be grey and loveless."
+
+"And thou, cruel one!" said Viola, touchingly, "I shall never see the
+signs of age in thee! But shall we not grow old together, and our eyes
+be accustomed to a change which the heart shall not share!"
+
+Zanoni sighed. He turned away, and seemed to commune with himself.
+
+Glyndon's attention grew yet more earnest.
+
+"But were it so," muttered Zanoni; and then looking steadfastly at
+Viola, he said, with a half-smile, "Hast thou no curiosity to learn more
+of the lover thou once couldst believe the agent of the Evil One?"
+
+"None; all that one wishes to know of the beloved one, I know--THAT THOU
+LOVEST ME!"
+
+"I have told thee that my life is apart from others. Wouldst thou not
+seek to share it?"
+
+"I share it now!"
+
+"But were it possible to be thus young and fair forever, till the world
+blazes round us as one funeral pyre!"
+
+"We shall be so, when we leave the world!"
+
+Zanoni was mute for some moments, and at length he said,--
+
+"Canst thou recall those brilliant and aerial dreams which once visited
+thee, when thou didst fancy that thou wert preordained to some fate
+aloof and afar from the common children of the earth?"
+
+"Zanoni, the fate is found."
+
+"And hast thou no terror of the future?"
+
+"The future! I forget it! Time past and present and to come reposes
+in thy smile. Ah, Zanoni, play not with the foolish credulities of my
+youth! I have been better and humbler since thy presence has dispelled
+the mist of the air. The future!--well, when I have cause to dread it, I
+will look up to heaven, and remember who guides our fate!"
+
+As she lifted her eyes above, a dark cloud swept suddenly over the
+scene. It wrapped the orange-trees, the azure ocean, the dense sands;
+but still the last images that it veiled from the charmed eyes of
+Glyndon were the forms of Viola and Zanoni. The face of the one rapt,
+serene, and radiant; the face of the other, dark, thoughtful, and locked
+in more than its usual rigidness of melancholy beauty and profound
+repose.
+
+"Rouse thyself," said Mejnour; "thy ordeal has commenced! There are
+pretenders to the solemn science who could have shown thee the
+absent, and prated to thee, in their charlatanic jargon, of the secret
+electricities and the magnetic fluid of whose true properties they know
+but the germs and elements. I will lend thee the books of those glorious
+dupes, and thou wilt find, in the dark ages, how many erring steps have
+stumbled upon the threshold of the mighty learning, and fancied they
+had pierced the temple. Hermes and Albert and Paracelsus, I knew ye all;
+but, noble as ye were, ye were fated to be deceived. Ye had not souls
+of faith, and daring fitted for the destinies at which ye aimed! Yet
+Paracelsus--modest Paracelsus--had an arrogance that soared higher than
+all our knowledge. Ho, ho!--he thought he could make a race of men from
+chemistry; he arrogated to himself the Divine gift,--the breath of life.
+(Paracelsus, 'De Nat. Rer.,' lib. i.)
+
+"He would have made men, and, after all, confessed that they could be but
+pygmies! My art is to make men above mankind. But you are impatient of
+my digressions. Forgive me. All these men (they were great dreamers, as
+you desire to be) were intimate friends of mine. But they are dead and
+rotten. They talked of spirits,--but they dreaded to be in other company
+than that of men. Like orators whom I have heard, when I stood by the
+Pnyx of Athens, blazing with words like comets in the assembly, and
+extinguishing their ardour like holiday rockets when they were in the
+field. Ho, ho! Demosthenes, my hero-coward, how nimble were thy heels
+at Chaeronea! And thou art impatient still! Boy, I could tell thee such
+truths of the past as would make thee the luminary of schools. But thou
+lustest only for the shadows of the future. Thou shalt have thy wish.
+But the mind must be first exercised and trained. Go to thy room, and
+sleep; fast austerely, read no books; meditate, imagine, dream, bewilder
+thyself if thou wilt. Thought shapes out its own chaos at last. Before
+midnight, seek me again!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.IV.
+
+     It is fit that we who endeavour to rise to an elevation so
+     sublime, should study first to leave behind carnal affections,
+     the frailty of the senses, the passions that belong to matter;
+     secondly, to learn by what means we may ascend to the climax of
+     pure intellect, united with the powers above, without which never
+     can we gain the lore of secret things, nor the magic that effects
+     true wonders.--Tritemius "On Secret Things and Secret Spirits."
+
+It wanted still many minutes of midnight, and Glyndon was once more in
+the apartment of the mystic. He had rigidly observed the fast ordained
+to him; and in the rapt and intense reveries into which his excited
+fancy had plunged him, he was not only insensible to the wants of the
+flesh,--he felt above them.
+
+Mejnour, seated beside his disciple, thus addressed him:--
+
+"Man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance. Man's natural tendency
+is to egotism. Man, in his infancy of knowledge, thinks that all
+creation was formed for him. For several ages he saw in the countless
+worlds that sparkle through space like the bubbles of a shoreless ocean
+only the petty candles, the household torches, that Providence had
+been pleased to light for no other purpose but to make the night more
+agreeable to man. Astronomy has corrected this delusion of human vanity;
+and man now reluctantly confesses that the stars are worlds larger and
+more glorious than his own,--that the earth on which he crawls is a
+scarce visible speck on the vast chart of creation. But in the small as
+in the vast, God is equally profuse of life. The traveller looks upon
+the tree, and fancies its boughs were formed for his shelter in the
+summer sun, or his fuel in the winter frosts. But in each leaf of these
+boughs the Creator has made a world; it swarms with innumerable races.
+Each drop of the water in yon moat is an orb more populous than a
+kingdom is of men. Everywhere, then, in this immense design, science
+brings new life to light. Life is the one pervading principle, and even
+the thing that seems to die and putrify but engenders new life, and
+changes to fresh forms of matter. Reasoning, then, by evident analogy:
+if not a leaf, if not a drop of water, but is, no less than yonder star,
+a habitable and breathing world,--nay, if even man himself is a world to
+other lives, and millions and myriads dwell in the rivers of his blood,
+and inhabit man's frame as man inhabits earth, commonsense (if your
+schoolmen had it) would suffice to teach that the circumfluent infinite
+which you call space--the countless Impalpable which divides earth
+from the moon and stars--is filled also with its correspondent and
+appropriate life. Is it not a visible absurdity to suppose that being is
+crowded upon every leaf, and yet absent from the immensities of space?
+The law of the Great System forbids the waste even of an atom; it
+knows no spot where something of life does not breathe. In the very
+charnel-house is the nursery of production and animation. Is that true?
+Well, then, can you conceive that space, which is the Infinite itself,
+is alone a waste, is alone lifeless, is less useful to the one design of
+universal being than the dead carcass of a dog, than the peopled leaf,
+than the swarming globule? The microscope shows you the creatures on the
+leaf; no mechanical tube is yet invented to discover the nobler and more
+gifted things that hover in the illimitable air. Yet between these last
+and man is a mysterious and terrible affinity. And hence, by tales and
+legends, not wholly false nor wholly true, have arisen from time to
+time, beliefs in apparitions and spectres. If more common to the earlier
+and simpler tribes than to the men of your duller age, it is but that,
+with the first, the senses are more keen and quick. And as the savage
+can see or scent miles away the traces of a foe, invisible to the gross
+sense of the civilised animal, so the barrier itself between him and
+the creatures of the airy world is less thickened and obscured. Do you
+listen?"
+
+"With my soul!"
+
+"But first, to penetrate this barrier, the soul with which you listen
+must be sharpened by intense enthusiasm, purified from all earthlier
+desires. Not without reason have the so-styled magicians, in all
+lands and times, insisted on chastity and abstemious reverie as the
+communicants of inspiration. When thus prepared, science can be brought
+to aid it; the sight itself may be rendered more subtle, the nerves more
+acute, the spirit more alive and outward, and the element itself--the
+air, the space--may be made, by certain secrets of the higher chemistry,
+more palpable and clear. And this, too, is not magic, as the credulous
+call it; as I have so often said before, magic (or science that violates
+Nature) exists not: it is but the science by which Nature can be
+controlled. Now, in space there are millions of beings not literally
+spiritual, for they have all, like the animalculae unseen by the naked
+eye, certain forms of matter, though matter so delicate, air-drawn, and
+subtle, that it is, as it were, but a film, a gossamer that clothes the
+spirit. Hence the Rosicrucian's lovely phantoms of sylph and gnome. Yet,
+in truth, these races and tribes differ more widely, each from each,
+than the Calmuc from the Greek,--differ in attributes and powers. In the
+drop of water you see how the animalculae vary, how vast and terrible
+are some of those monster mites as compared with others. Equally so with
+the inhabitants of the atmosphere: some of surpassing wisdom, some of
+horrible malignity; some hostile as fiends to men, others gentle as
+messengers between earth and heaven.
+
+"He who would establish intercourse with these varying beings resembles
+the traveller who would penetrate into unknown lands. He is exposed to
+strange dangers and unconjectured terrors. THAT INTERCOURSE ONCE GAINED,
+I CANNOT SECURE THEE FROM THE CHANCES TO WHICH THY JOURNEY IS EXPOSED.
+I cannot direct thee to paths free from the wanderings of the deadliest
+foes. Thou must alone, and of thyself, face and hazard all. But if thou
+art so enamoured of life as to care only to live on, no matter for what
+ends, recruiting the nerves and veins with the alchemist's vivifying
+elixir, why seek these dangers from the intermediate tribes? Because the
+very elixir that pours a more glorious life into the frame, so sharpens
+the senses that those larvae of the air become to thee audible and
+apparent; so that, unless trained by degrees to endure the phantoms and
+subdue their malice, a life thus gifted would be the most awful doom
+man could bring upon himself. Hence it is, that though the elixir be
+compounded of the simplest herbs, his frame only is prepared to receive
+it who has gone through the subtlest trials. Nay, some, scared and
+daunted into the most intolerable horror by the sights that burst upon
+their eyes at the first draft, have found the potion less powerful to
+save than the agony and travail of Nature to destroy. To the unprepared
+the elixir is thus but the deadliest poison. Amidst the dwellers of
+the threshold is ONE, too, surpassing in malignity and hatred all her
+tribe,--one whose eyes have paralyzed the bravest, and whose power
+increases over the spirit precisely in proportion to its fear. Does thy
+courage falter?"
+
+"Nay; thy words but kindle it."
+
+"Follow me, then, and submit to the initiatory labours."
+
+With that, Mejnour led him into the interior chamber, and proceeded
+to explain to him certain chemical operations which, though extremely
+simple in themselves, Glyndon soon perceived were capable of very
+extraordinary results.
+
+"In the remoter times," said Mejnour, smiling, "our brotherhood were
+often compelled to recur to delusions to protect realities; and, as
+dexterous mechanicians or expert chemists, they obtained the name
+of sorcerers. Observe how easy to construct is the Spectre Lion that
+attended the renowned Leonardo da Vinci!"
+
+And Glyndon beheld with delighted surprise the simple means by which the
+wildest cheats of the imagination can be formed. The magical landscapes
+in which Baptista Porta rejoiced; the apparent change of the seasons
+with which Albertus Magnus startled the Earl of Holland; nay, even those
+more dread delusions of the Ghost and Image with which the necromancers
+of Heraclea woke the conscience of the conqueror of Plataea
+(Pausanias,--see Plutarch.),--all these, as the showman enchants
+some trembling children on a Christmas Eve with his lantern and
+phantasmagoria, Mejnour exhibited to his pupil.
+
+....
+
+"And now laugh forever at magic! when these, the very tricks, the very
+sports and frivolities of science, were the very acts which men viewed
+with abhorrence, and inquisitors and kings rewarded with the rack and
+the stake."
+
+"But the alchemist's transmutation of metals--"
+
+"Nature herself is a laboratory in which metals, and all elements, are
+forever at change. Easy to make gold,--easier, more commodious, and
+cheaper still, to make the pearl, the diamond, and the ruby. Oh, yes;
+wise men found sorcery in this too; but they found no sorcery in the
+discovery that by the simplest combination of things of every-day use
+they could raise a devil that would sweep away thousands of their kind
+by the breath of consuming fire. Discover what will destroy life, and
+you are a great man!--what will prolong it, and you are an imposter!
+Discover some invention in machinery that will make the rich more rich
+and the poor more poor, and they will build you a statue! Discover some
+mystery in art that will equalise physical disparities, and they will
+pull down their own houses to stone you! Ha, ha, my pupil! such is
+the world Zanoni still cares for!--you and I will leave this world to
+itself. And now that you have seen some few of the effects of science,
+begin to learn its grammar."
+
+Mejnour then set before his pupil certain tasks, in which the rest of
+the night wore itself away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.V.
+
+     Great travell hath the gentle Calidore
+     And toyle endured...
+     There on a day,--He chaunst to spy a sort of shepheard groomes,
+     Playing on pipes and caroling apace.
+     ...He, there besyde
+     Saw a faire damzell.
+     --Spenser, "Faerie Queene," cant. ix.
+
+For a considerable period the pupil of Mejnour was now absorbed in
+labour dependent on the most vigilant attention, on the most minute and
+subtle calculation. Results astonishing and various rewarded his toils
+and stimulated his interest. Nor were these studies limited to chemical
+discovery,--in which it is permitted me to say that the greatest marvels
+upon the organisation of physical life seemed wrought by experiments
+of the vivifying influence of heat. Mejnour professed to find a
+link between all intellectual beings in the existence of a certain
+all-pervading and invisible fluid resembling electricity, yet distinct
+from the known operations of that mysterious agency--a fluid that
+connected thought to thought with the rapidity and precision of the
+modern telegraph, and the influence of this fluid, according to Mejnour,
+extended to the remotest past,--that is to say, whenever and wheresoever
+man had thought. Thus, if the doctrine were true, all human knowledge
+became attainable through a medium established between the brain of the
+individual inquirer and all the farthest and obscurest regions in the
+universe of ideas. Glyndon was surprised to find Mejnour attached to the
+abstruse mysteries which the Pythagoreans ascribed to the occult science
+of NUMBERS. In this last, new lights glimmered dimly on his eyes; and
+he began to perceive that even the power to predict, or rather to
+calculate, results, might by-- (Here there is an erasure in the MS.)
+
+....
+
+But he observed that the last brief process by which, in each of these
+experiments, the wonder was achieved, Mejnour reserved for himself,
+and refused to communicate the secret. The answer he obtained to his
+remonstrances on this head was more stern than satisfactory:
+
+"Dost thou think," said Mejnour, "that I would give to the mere pupil,
+whose qualities are not yet tried, powers that might change the face of
+the social world? The last secrets are intrusted only to him of whose
+virtue the Master is convinced. Patience! It is labour itself that is
+the great purifier of the mind; and by degrees the secrets will grow
+upon thyself as thy mind becomes riper to receive them."
+
+At last Mejnour professed himself satisfied with the progress made by
+his pupil. "The hour now arrives," he said, "when thou mayst pass the
+great but airy barrier,--when thou mayst gradually confront the terrible
+Dweller of the Threshold. Continue thy labours--continue to surpass
+thine impatience for results until thou canst fathom the causes. I leave
+thee for one month; if at the end of that period, when I return, the
+tasks set thee are completed, and thy mind prepared by contemplation
+and austere thought for the ordeal, I promise thee the ordeal shall
+commence. One caution alone I give thee: regard it as a peremptory
+command, enter not this chamber!" (They were then standing in the room
+where their experiments had been chiefly made, and in which Glyndon, on
+the night he had sought the solitude of the mystic, had nearly fallen a
+victim to his intrusion.)
+
+"Enter not this chamber till my return; or, above all, if by any search
+for materials necessary to thy toils thou shouldst venture hither,
+forbear to light the naphtha in those vessels, and to open the vases on
+yonder shelves. I leave the key of the room in thy keeping, in order to
+try thy abstinence and self-control. Young man, this very temptation is
+a part of thy trial."
+
+With that, Mejnour placed the key in his hands; and at sunset he left
+the castle.
+
+For several days Glyndon continued immersed in employments which
+strained to the utmost all the faculties of his intellect. Even the most
+partial success depended so entirely on the abstraction of the mind, and
+the minuteness of its calculations, that there was scarcely room for any
+other thought than those absorbed in the occupation. And doubtless this
+perpetual strain of the faculties was the object of Mejnour in works
+that did not seem exactly pertinent to the purposes in view. As the
+study of the elementary mathematics, for example, is not so profitable
+in the solving of problems, useless in our after-callings, as it is
+serviceable in training the intellect to the comprehension and analysis
+of general truths.
+
+But in less than half the time which Mejnour had stated for the duration
+of his absence, all that the mystic had appointed to his toils was
+completed by the pupil; and then his mind, thus relieved from the
+drudgery and mechanism of employment, once more sought occupation in dim
+conjecture and restless fancies. His inquisitive and rash nature grew
+excited by the prohibition of Mejnour, and he found himself gazing
+too often, with perturbed and daring curiosity, upon the key of the
+forbidden chamber. He began to feel indignant at a trial of constancy
+which he deemed frivolous and puerile. What nursery tales of Bluebeard
+and his closet were revived to daunt and terrify him! How could the
+mere walls of a chamber, in which he had so often securely pursued his
+labours, start into living danger? If haunted, it could be but by those
+delusions which Mejnour had taught him to despise,--a shadowy lion,--a
+chemical phantasm! Tush! he lost half his awe of Mejnour, when he
+thought that by such tricks the sage could practise upon the very
+intellect he had awakened and instructed! Still he resisted the impulses
+of his curiosity and his pride, and, to escape from their dictation, he
+took long rambles on the hills, or amidst the valleys that surrounded
+the castle,--seeking by bodily fatigue to subdue the unreposing mind.
+One day suddenly emerging from a dark ravine, he came upon one of those
+Italian scenes of rural festivity and mirth in which the classic age
+appears to revive. It was a festival, partly agricultural, partly
+religious, held yearly by the peasants of that district. Assembled
+at the outskirts of a village, animated crowds, just returned from a
+procession to a neighbouring chapel, were now forming themselves into
+groups: the old to taste the vintage, the young to dance,--all to be
+gay and happy. This sudden picture of easy joy and careless ignorance,
+contrasting so forcibly with the intense studies and that parching
+desire for wisdom which had so long made up his own life, and burned at
+his own heart, sensibly affected Glyndon. As he stood aloof and gazing
+on them, the young man felt once more that he was young. The memory of
+all he had been content to sacrifice spoke to him like the sharp voice
+of remorse. The flitting forms of the women in their picturesque attire,
+their happy laughter ringing through the cool, still air of the autumn
+noon, brought back to the heart, or rather perhaps to the senses, the
+images of his past time, the "golden shepherd hours," when to live was
+but to enjoy.
+
+He approached nearer and nearer to the scene, and suddenly a noisy
+group swept round him; and Maestro Paolo, tapping him familiarly on the
+shoulder, exclaimed in a hearty voice, "Welcome, Excellency!--we are
+rejoiced to see you amongst us." Glyndon was about to reply to this
+salutation, when his eyes rested upon the face of a young girl leaning
+on Paolo's arm, of a beauty so attractive that his colour rose and his
+heart beat as he encountered her gaze. Her eyes sparkled with a roguish
+and petulant mirth, her parted lips showed teeth like pearls; as if
+impatient at the pause of her companion from the revel of the rest,
+her little foot beat the ground to a measure that she half-hummed,
+half-chanted. Paolo laughed as he saw the effect the girl had produced
+upon the young foreigner.
+
+"Will you not dance, Excellency? Come, lay aside your greatness, and be
+merry, like us poor devils. See how our pretty Fillide is longing for a
+partner. Take compassion on her."
+
+Fillide pouted at this speech, and, disengaging her arm from Paolo's,
+turned away, but threw over her shoulder a glance half inviting, half
+defying. Glyndon, almost involuntarily, advanced to her, and addressed
+her.
+
+Oh, yes; he addresses her! She looks down, and smiles. Paolo leaves them
+to themselves, sauntering off with a devil-me-carish air. Fillide speaks
+now, and looks up at the scholar's face with arch invitation. He shakes
+his head; Fillide laughs, and her laugh is silvery. She points to a gay
+mountaineer, who is tripping up to her merrily. Why does Glyndon feel
+jealous? Why, when she speaks again, does he shake his head no more? He
+offers his hand; Fillide blushes, and takes it with a demure coquetry.
+What! is it so, indeed! They whirl into the noisy circle of the
+revellers. Ha! ha! is not this better than distilling herbs, and
+breaking thy brains on Pythagorean numbers? How lightly Fillide bounds
+along! How her lithesome waist supples itself to thy circling arm!
+Tara-ra-tara, ta-tara, rara-ra! What the devil is in the measure that
+it makes the blood course like quicksilver through the veins? Was there
+ever a pair of eyes like Fillide's? Nothing of the cold stars there! Yet
+how they twinkle and laugh at thee! And that rosy, pursed-up mouth that
+will answer so sparingly to thy flatteries, as if words were a waste of
+time, and kisses were their proper language. Oh, pupil of Mejnour! Oh,
+would-be Rosicrucian, Platonist, Magian, I know not what! I am ashamed
+of thee! What, in the names of Averroes and Burri and Agrippa and Hermes
+have become of thy austere contemplations? Was it for this thou didst
+resign Viola? I don't think thou hast the smallest recollection of the
+elixir or the Cabala. Take care! What are you about, sir? Why do you
+clasp that small hand locked within your own? Why do you--Tara-rara
+tara-ra tara-rara-ra, rarara, ta-ra, a-ra! Keep your eyes off those
+slender ankles and that crimson bodice! Tara-rara-ra! There they go
+again! And now they rest under the broad trees. The revel has whirled
+away from them. They hear--or do they not hear--the laughter at the
+distance? They see--or if they have their eyes about them, they SHOULD
+see--couple after couple gliding by, love-talking and love-looking. But
+I will lay a wager, as they sit under that tree, and the round sun goes
+down behind the mountains, that they see or hear very little except
+themselves.
+
+"Hollo, Signor Excellency! and how does your partner please you? Come
+and join our feast, loiterers; one dances more merrily after wine."
+
+Down goes the round sun; up comes the autumn moon. Tara, tara, rarara,
+rarara, tarara-ra! Dancing again; is it a dance, or some movement gayer,
+noisier, wilder still? How they glance and gleam through the night
+shadows, those flitting forms! What confusion!--what order! Ha, that is
+the Tarantula dance; Maestro Paolo foots it bravely! Diavolo, what
+fury! the Tarantula has stung them all. Dance or die; it is fury,--the
+Corybantes, the Maenads, the--Ho, ho! more wine! the Sabbat of the
+Witches at Benevento is a joke to this! From cloud to cloud wanders the
+moon,--now shining, now lost. Dimness while the maiden blushes; light
+when the maiden smiles.
+
+"Fillide, thou art an enchantress!"
+
+"Buona notte, Excellency; you will see me again!"
+
+"Ah, young man," said an old, decrepit, hollow-eyed octogenarian,
+leaning on his staff, "make the best of your youth. I, too, once had
+a Fillide! I was handsomer than you then! Alas! if we could be always
+young!"
+
+"Always young!" Glyndon started, as he turned his gaze from the fresh,
+fair, rosy face of the girl, and saw the eyes dropping rheum, the yellow
+wrinkled skin, the tottering frame of the old man.
+
+"Ha, ha!" said the decrepit creature, hobbling near to him, and with a
+malicious laugh. "Yet I, too, was young once! Give me a baioccho for a
+glass of aqua vitae!"
+
+Tara, rara, ra-rara, tara, rara-ra! There dances Youth! Wrap thy rags
+round thee, and totter off, Old Age!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.VI.
+
+     Whilest Calidore does follow that faire mayd,
+     Unmindful of his vow and high beheast
+     Which by the Faerie Queene was on him layd.
+     --Spenser, "Faerie Queene," cant. x. s. 1.
+
+It was that grey, indistinct, struggling interval between the night and
+the dawn, when Clarence stood once more in his chamber. The abstruse
+calculations lying on his table caught his eye, and filled him with a
+sentiment of weariness and distaste. But--"Alas, if we could be
+always young! Oh, thou horrid spectre of the old, rheum-eyed man!
+What apparition can the mystic chamber shadow forth more ugly and more
+hateful than thou? Oh, yes, if we could be always young! But not [thinks
+the neophyte now]--not to labour forever at these crabbed figures and
+these cold compounds of herbs and drugs. No; but to enjoy, to love, to
+revel! What should be the companion of youth but pleasure? And the gift
+of eternal youth may be mine this very hour! What means this prohibition
+of Mejnour's? Is it not of the same complexion as his ungenerous
+reserve even in the minutest secrets of chemistry, or the numbers of
+his Cabala?--compelling me to perform all the toils, and yet withholding
+from me the knowledge of the crowning result? No doubt he will still,
+on his return, show me that the great mystery CAN be attained; but will
+still forbid ME to attain it. Is it not as if he desired to keep my
+youth the slave to his age; to make me dependent solely on himself; to
+bind me to a journeyman's service by perpetual excitement to curiosity,
+and the sight of the fruits he places beyond my lips?" These, and many
+reflections still more repining, disturbed and irritated him. Heated
+with wine--excited by the wild revels he had left--he was unable to
+sleep. The image of that revolting Old Age which Time, unless defeated,
+must bring upon himself, quickened the eagerness of his desire for the
+dazzling and imperishable Youth he ascribed to Zanoni. The prohibition
+only served to create a spirit of defiance. The reviving day, laughing
+jocundly through his lattice, dispelled all the fears and superstitions
+that belong to night. The mystic chamber presented to his imagination
+nothing to differ from any other apartment in the castle. What foul or
+malignant apparition could harm him in the light of that blessed sun!
+It was the peculiar, and on the whole most unhappy, contradiction in
+Glyndon's nature, that while his reasonings led him to doubt,--and doubt
+rendered him in MORAL conduct irresolute and unsteady; he was PHYSICALLY
+brave to rashness. Nor is this uncommon: scepticism and presumption are
+often twins. When a man of this character determines upon any action,
+personal fear never deters him; and for the moral fear, any sophistry
+suffices to self-will. Almost without analysing himself the mental
+process by which his nerves hardened themselves and his limbs moved,
+he traversed the corridor, gained Mejnour's apartment, and opened the
+forbidden door. All was as he had been accustomed to see it, save
+that on a table in the centre of the room lay open a large volume. He
+approached, and gazed on the characters on the page; they were in a
+cipher, the study of which had made a part of his labours. With but
+slight difficulty he imagined that he interpreted the meaning of the
+first sentences, and that they ran thus:--
+
+"To quaff the inner life, is to see the outer life: to live in defiance
+of time, is to live in the whole. He who discovers the elixir discovers
+what lies in space; for the spirit that vivifies the frame strengthens
+the senses. There is attraction in the elementary principle of light.
+In the lamps of Rosicrucius the fire is the pure elementary principle.
+Kindle the lamps while thou openst the vessel that contains the elixir,
+and the light attracts towards thee those beings whose life is that
+light. Beware of Fear. Fear is the deadliest enemy to Knowledge." Here
+the ciphers changed their character, and became incomprehensible. But
+had he not read enough? Did not the last sentence suffice?--"Beware of
+Fear!" It was as if Mejnour had purposely left the page open,--as if the
+trial was, in truth, the reverse of the one pretended; as if the mystic
+had designed to make experiment of his COURAGE while affecting but that
+of his FORBEARANCE. Not Boldness, but Fear, was the deadliest enemy
+to Knowledge. He moved to the shelves on which the crystal vases were
+placed; with an untrembling hand he took from one of them the stopper,
+and a delicious odor suddenly diffused itself through the room. The air
+sparkled as if with a diamond-dust. A sense of unearthly delight,--of an
+existence that seemed all spirit, flashed through his whole frame; and
+a faint, low, but exquisite music crept, thrilling, through the chamber.
+At this moment he heard a voice in the corridor calling on his name;
+and presently there was a knock at the door without. "Are you there,
+signor?" said the clear tones of Maestro Paolo. Glyndon hastily reclosed
+and replaced the vial, and bidding Paolo await him in his own apartment,
+tarried till he heard the intruder's steps depart; he then reluctantly
+quitted the room. As he locked the door, he still heard the dying
+strain of that fairy music; and with a light step and a joyous heart he
+repaired to Paolo, inly resolving to visit again the chamber at an hour
+when his experiment would be safe from interruption.
+
+As he crossed his threshold, Paolo started back, and exclaimed, "Why,
+Excellency! I scarcely recognise you! Amusement, I see, is a great
+beautifier to the young. Yesterday you looked so pale and haggard; but
+Fillide's merry eyes have done more for you than the Philosopher's
+Stone (saints forgive me for naming it) ever did for the wizards."
+And Glyndon, glancing at the old Venetian mirror as Paolo spoke, was
+scarcely less startled than Paolo himself at the change in his own mien
+and bearing. His form, before bent with thought, seemed to him taller by
+half the head, so lithesome and erect rose his slender stature; his
+eyes glowed, his cheeks bloomed with health and the innate and pervading
+pleasure. If the mere fragrance of the elixir was thus potent, well
+might the alchemists have ascribed life and youth to the draught!
+
+"You must forgive me, Excellency, for disturbing you," said Paolo,
+producing a letter from his pouch; "but our Patron has just written to
+me to say that he will be here to-morrow, and desired me to lose not a
+moment in giving to yourself this billet, which he enclosed."
+
+"Who brought the letter?"
+
+"A horseman, who did not wait for any reply."
+
+Glyndon opened the letter, and read as follows:--
+
+"I return a week sooner than I had intended, and you will expect me
+to-morrow. You will then enter on the ordeal you desire, but remember
+that, in doing so, you must reduce Being as far as possible into Mind.
+The senses must be mortified and subdued,--not the whisper of one
+passion heard. Thou mayst be master of the Cabala and the Chemistry; but
+thou must be master also over the Flesh and the Blood,--over Love
+and Vanity, Ambition and Hate. I will trust to find thee so. Fast and
+meditate till we meet!"
+
+Glyndon crumpled the letter in his hand with a smile of disdain. What!
+more drudgery,--more abstinence! Youth without love and pleasure! Ha,
+ha! baffled Mejnour, thy pupil shall gain thy secrets without thine aid!
+
+"And Fillide! I passed her cottage in my way,--she blushed and sighed
+when I jested her about you, Excellency!"
+
+"Well, Paolo! I thank thee for so charming an introduction. Thine must
+be a rare life."
+
+"Ah, Excellency, while we are young, nothing like adventure,--except
+love, wine, and laughter!"
+
+"Very true. Farewell, Maestro Paolo; we will talk more with each other
+in a few days."
+
+All that morning Glyndon was almost overpowered with the new sentiment
+of happiness that had entered into him. He roamed into the woods, and
+he felt a pleasure that resembled his earlier life of an artist, but a
+pleasure yet more subtle and vivid, in the various colours of the
+autumn foliage. Certainly Nature seemed to be brought closer to him; he
+comprehended better all that Mejnour had often preached to him of the
+mystery of sympathies and attractions. He was about to enter into the
+same law as those mute children of the forests. He was to know THE
+RENEWAL OF LIFE; the seasons that chilled to winter should yet bring
+again the bloom and the mirth of spring. Man's common existence is as
+one year to the vegetable world: he has his spring, his summer, his
+autumn, and winter,--but only ONCE. But the giant oaks round him go
+through a revolving series of verdure and youth, and the green of the
+centenarian is as vivid in the beams of May as that of the sapling by
+its side. "Mine shall be your spring, but not your winter!" exclaimed
+the aspirant.
+
+Wrapped in these sanguine and joyous reveries, Glyndon, quitting the
+woods, found himself amidst cultivated fields and vineyards to which his
+footstep had not before wandered; and there stood, by the skirts of a
+green lane that reminded him of verdant England, a modest house,--half
+cottage, half farm. The door was open, and he saw a girl at work with
+her distaff. She looked up, uttered a slight cry, and, tripping gayly
+into the lane to his side, he recognised the dark-eyed Fillide.
+
+"Hist!" she said, archly putting her finger to her lip; "do not speak
+loud,--my mother is asleep within; and I knew you would come to see me.
+It is kind!"
+
+Glyndon, with a little embarrassment, accepted the compliment to his
+kindness, which he did not exactly deserve. "You have thought, then, of
+me, fair Fillide?"
+
+"Yes," answered the girl, colouring, but with that frank, bold
+ingenuousness, which characterises the females of Italy, especially
+of the lower class, and in the southern provinces,--"oh, yes! I have
+thought of little else. Paolo said he knew you would visit me."
+
+"And what relation is Paolo to you?"
+
+"None; but a good friend to us all. My brother is one of his band."
+
+"One of his band!--a robber?"
+
+"We of the mountains do not call a mountaineer 'a robber,' signor."
+
+"I ask pardon. Do you not tremble sometimes for your brother's life? The
+law--"
+
+"Law never ventures into these defiles. Tremble for him! No. My father
+and grandsire were of the same calling. I often wish I were a man!"
+
+"By these lips, I am enchanted that your wish cannot be realised."
+
+"Fie, signor! And do you really love me?"
+
+"With my whole heart!"
+
+"And I thee!" said the girl, with a candour that seemed innocent, as she
+suffered him to clasp her hand.
+
+"But," she added, "thou wilt soon leave us; and I--" She stopped short,
+and the tears stood in her eyes.
+
+There was something dangerous in this, it must be confessed. Certainly
+Fillide had not the seraphic loveliness of Viola; but hers was a beauty
+that equally at least touched the senses. Perhaps Glyndon had never
+really loved Viola; perhaps the feelings with which she had inspired
+him were not of that ardent character which deserves the name of love.
+However that be, he thought, as he gazed on those dark eyes, that he had
+never loved before.
+
+"And couldst thou not leave thy mountains?" he whispered, as he drew yet
+nearer to her.
+
+"Dost thou ask me?" she said, retreating, and looking him steadfastly
+in the face. "Dost thou know what we daughters of the mountains are? You
+gay, smooth cavaliers of cities seldom mean what you speak. With you,
+love is amusement; with us, it is life. Leave these mountains! Well! I
+should not leave my nature."
+
+"Keep thy nature ever,--it is a sweet one."
+
+"Yes, sweet while thou art true; stern, if thou art faithless. Shall I
+tell thee what I--what the girls of this country are? Daughters of men
+whom you call robbers, we aspire to be the companions of our lovers or
+our husbands. We love ardently; we own it boldly. We stand by your side
+in danger; we serve you as slaves in safety: we never change, and we
+resent change. You may reproach, strike us, trample us as a dog,--we
+bear all without a murmur; betray us, and no tiger is more relentless.
+Be true, and our hearts reward you; be false, and our hands revenge!
+Dost thou love me now?"
+
+During this speech the Italian's countenance had most eloquently aided
+her words,--by turns soft, frank, fierce,--and at the last question she
+inclined her head humbly, and stood, as in fear of his reply, before
+him. The stern, brave, wild spirit, in which what seemed unfeminine
+was yet, if I may so say, still womanly, did not recoil, it rather
+captivated Glyndon. He answered readily, briefly, and freely,
+"Fillide,--yes!"
+
+Oh, "yes!" forsooth, Clarence Glyndon! Every light nature answers "yes"
+lightly to such a question from lips so rosy! Have a care,--have a care!
+Why the deuce, Mejnour, do you leave your pupil of four-and-twenty to
+the mercy of these wild cats-a-mountain! Preach fast, and abstinence,
+and sublime renunciation of the cheats of the senses! Very well in
+you, sir, Heaven knows how many ages old; but at four-and-twenty, your
+Hierophant would have kept you out of Fillide's way, or you would have
+had small taste for the Cabala.
+
+And so they stood, and talked, and vowed, and whispered, till the girl's
+mother made some noise within the house, and Fillide bounded back to the
+distaff, her finger once more on her lip.
+
+"There is more magic in Fillide than in Mejnour," said Glyndon to
+himself, walking gayly home; "yet on second thoughts, I know not if I
+quite so well like a character so ready for revenge. But he who has the
+real secret can baffle even the vengeance of a woman, and disarm all
+danger!"
+
+Sirrah! dost thou even already meditate the possibility of treason?
+Oh, well said Zanoni, "to pour pure water into the muddy well does but
+disturb the mud."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.VII.
+
+     Cernis, custodia qualis
+     Vestibulo sedeat? facies quae limina servet?
+     "Aeneid," lib. vi. 574.
+
+     (See you what porter sits within the vestibule?--what face
+     watches at the threshold?)
+
+And it is profound night. All is at rest within the old castle,--all is
+breathless under the melancholy stars. Now is the time. Mejnour with his
+austere wisdom,--Mejnour the enemy to love; Mejnour, whose eye will read
+thy heart, and refuse thee the promised secrets because the sunny face
+of Fillide disturbs the lifeless shadow that he calls repose,--Mejnour
+comes to-morrow! Seize the night! Beware of fear! Never, or this hour!
+So, brave youth,--brave despite all thy errors,--so, with a steady
+pulse, thy hand unlocks once more the forbidden door.
+
+He placed his lamp on the table beside the book, which still lay there
+opened; he turned over the leaves, but could not decipher their meaning
+till he came to the following passage:--
+
+"When, then, the pupil is thus initiated and prepared, let him open the
+casement, light the lamps, and bathe his temples with the elixir. He
+must beware how he presume yet to quaff the volatile and fiery spirit.
+To taste till repeated inhalations have accustomed the frame gradually
+to the ecstatic liquid, is to know not life, but death."
+
+He could penetrate no farther into the instructions; the cipher again
+changed. He now looked steadily and earnestly round the chamber. The
+moonlight came quietly through the lattice as his hand opened it,
+and seemed, as it rested on the floor, and filled the walls, like the
+presence of some ghostly and mournful Power. He ranged the mystic lamps
+(nine in number) round the centre of the room, and lighted them one by
+one. A flame of silvery and azure tints sprung up from each, and lighted
+the apartment with a calm and yet most dazzling splendour; but presently
+this light grew more soft and dim, as a thin, grey cloud, like a mist,
+gradually spread over the room; and an icy thrill shot through the heart
+of the Englishman, and quickly gathered over him like the coldness
+of death. Instinctively aware of his danger, he tottered, though with
+difficulty, for his limbs seemed rigid and stone-like, to the shelf that
+contained the crystal vials; hastily he inhaled the spirit, and laved
+his temples with the sparkling liquid. The same sensation of vigour
+and youth, and joy and airy lightness, that he had felt in the morning,
+instantaneously replaced the deadly numbness that just before had
+invaded the citadel of life. He stood, with his arms folded on his bosom
+erect and dauntless, to watch what should ensue.
+
+The vapour had now assumed almost the thickness and seeming consistency
+of a snow-cloud; the lamps piercing it like stars. And now he distinctly
+saw shapes, somewhat resembling in outline those of the human form,
+gliding slowly and with regular evolutions through the cloud. They
+appeared bloodless; their bodies were transparent, and contracted or
+expanded like the folds of a serpent. As they moved in majestic order,
+he heard a low sound--the ghost, as it were, of voice--which each caught
+and echoed from the other; a low sound, but musical, which seemed the
+chant of some unspeakably tranquil joy. None of these apparitions heeded
+him. His intense longing to accost them, to be of them, to make one of
+this movement of aerial happiness,--for such it seemed to him,--made him
+stretch forth his arms and seek to cry aloud, but only an inarticulate
+whisper passed his lips; and the movement and the music went on the same
+as if the mortal were not there. Slowly they glided round and aloft,
+till, in the same majestic order, one after one, they floated through
+the casement and were lost in the moonlight; then, as his eyes followed
+them, the casement became darkened with some object undistinguishable at
+the first gaze, but which sufficed mysteriously to change into ineffable
+horror the delight he had before experienced. By degrees this object
+shaped itself to his sight. It was as that of a human head covered with
+a dark veil through which glared, with livid and demoniac fire, eyes
+that froze the marrow of his bones. Nothing else of the face was
+distinguishable,--nothing but those intolerable eyes; but his terror,
+that even at the first seemed beyond nature to endure, was increased a
+thousand-fold, when, after a pause, the phantom glided slowly into the
+chamber.
+
+The cloud retreated from it as it advanced; the bright lamps grew wan,
+and flickered restlessly as at the breath of its presence. Its form was
+veiled as the face, but the outline was that of a female; yet it moved
+not as move even the ghosts that simulate the living. It seemed rather
+to crawl as some vast misshapen reptile; and pausing, at length it
+cowered beside the table which held the mystic volume, and again fixed
+its eyes through the filmy veil on the rash invoker. All fancies, the
+most grotesque, of monk or painter in the early North, would have failed
+to give to the visage of imp or fiend that aspect of deadly malignity
+which spoke to the shuddering nature in those eyes alone. All else
+so dark,--shrouded, veiled and larva-like. But that burning glare so
+intense, so livid, yet so living, had in it something that was almost
+HUMAN in its passion of hate and mockery,--something that served to
+show that the shadowy Horror was not all a spirit, but partook of
+matter enough, at least, to make it more deadly and fearful an enemy to
+material forms. As, clinging with the grasp of agony to the wall,--his
+hair erect, his eyeballs starting, he still gazed back upon that
+appalling gaze,--the Image spoke to him: his soul rather than his ear
+comprehended the words it said.
+
+"Thou hast entered the immeasurable region. I am the Dweller of the
+Threshold. What wouldst thou with me? Silent? Dost thou fear me? Am
+I not thy beloved? Is it not for me that thou hast rendered up the
+delights of thy race? Wouldst thou be wise? Mine is the wisdom of the
+countless ages. Kiss me, my mortal lover." And the Horror crawled near
+and nearer to him; it crept to his side, its breath breathed upon his
+cheek! With a sharp cry he fell to the earth insensible, and knew no
+more till, far in the noon of the next day, he opened his eyes and found
+himself in his bed,--the glorious sun streaming through his lattice,
+and the bandit Paolo by his side, engaged in polishing his carbine, and
+whistling a Calabrian love-air.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.VIII.
+
+     Thus man pursues his weary calling,
+     And wrings the hard life from the sky,
+     While happiness unseen is falling
+     Down from God's bosom silently.
+     --Schiller.
+
+In one of those islands whose history the imperishable literature and
+renown of Athens yet invest with melancholy interest, and on which
+Nature, in whom "there is nothing melancholy," still bestows a glory of
+scenery and climate equally radiant for the freeman or the
+slave,--the Ionian, the Venetian, the Gaul, the Turk, or the restless
+Briton,--Zanoni had fixed his bridal home. There the air carries with it
+the perfumes of the plains for miles along the blue, translucent deep.
+(See Dr. Holland's "Travels to the Ionian Isles," etc., page 18.) Seen
+from one of its green sloping heights, the island he had selected seemed
+one delicious garden. The towers and turrets of its capital gleaming
+amidst groves of oranges and lemons; vineyards and olive-woods filling
+up the valleys, and clambering along the hill-sides; and villa, farm,
+and cottage covered with luxuriant trellises of dark-green leaves and
+purple fruit. For there the prodigal beauty yet seems half to justify
+those graceful superstitions of a creed that, too enamoured of earth,
+rather brought the deities to man, than raised the man to their less
+alluring and less voluptuous Olympus.
+
+And still to the fishermen, weaving yet their antique dances on the
+sand; to the maiden, adorning yet, with many a silver fibula, her glossy
+tresses under the tree that overshadows her tranquil cot,--the same
+Great Mother that watched over the wise of Samos, the democracy of
+Corcyra, the graceful and deep-taught loveliness of Miletus, smiles
+as graciously as of yore. For the North, philosophy and freedom are
+essentials to human happiness; in the lands which Aphrodite rose from
+the waves to govern, as the Seasons, hand in hand, stood to welcome her
+on the shores, Nature is all sufficient. (Homeric Hymn.)
+
+The isle which Zanoni had selected was one of the loveliest in that
+divine sea. His abode, at some distance from the city, but near one of
+the creeks on the shore, belonged to a Venetian, and, though small, had
+more of elegance than the natives ordinarily cared for. On the seas, and
+in sight, rode his vessel. His Indians, as before, ministered in
+mute gravity to the service of the household. No spot could be more
+beautiful,--no solitude less invaded. To the mysterious knowledge of
+Zanoni, to the harmless ignorance of Viola, the babbling and garish
+world of civilised man was alike unheeded. The loving sky and the lovely
+earth are companions enough to Wisdom and to Ignorance while they love.
+
+Although, as I have before said, there was nothing in the visible
+occupations of Zanoni that betrayed a cultivator of the occult sciences,
+his habits were those of a man who remembers or reflects. He loved
+to roam alone, chiefly at dawn, or at night, when the moon was clear
+(especially in each month, at its rise and full), miles and miles away
+over the rich inlands of the island, and to cull herbs and flowers,
+which he hoarded with jealous care. Sometimes, at the dead of night,
+Viola would wake by an instinct that told her he was not by her side,
+and, stretching out her arms, find that the instinct had not deceived
+her. But she early saw that he was reserved on his peculiar habits; and
+if at times a chill, a foreboding, a suspicious awe crept over her, she
+forebore to question him.
+
+But his rambles were not always unaccompanied,--he took pleasure in
+excursions less solitary. Often, when the sea lay before them like
+a lake, the barren dreariness of the opposite coast of Cephallenia
+contrasting the smiling shores on which they dwelt, Viola and himself
+would pass days in cruising slowly around the coast, or in visits to
+the neighbouring isles. Every spot of the Greek soil, "that fair
+Fable-Land," seemed to him familiar; and as he conversed of the past and
+its exquisite traditions, he taught Viola to love the race from which
+have descended the poetry and the wisdom of the world. There was much in
+Zanoni, as she knew him better, that deepened the fascination in which
+Viola was from the first enthralled. His love for herself was so tender,
+so vigilant, and had that best and most enduring attribute, that it
+seemed rather grateful for the happiness in its own cares than vain of
+the happiness it created. His habitual mood with all who approached him
+was calm and gentle, almost to apathy. An angry word never passed his
+lips,--an angry gleam never shot from his eyes. Once they had been
+exposed to the danger not uncommon in those then half-savage lands. Some
+pirates who infested the neighbouring coasts had heard of the arrival
+of the strangers, and the seamen Zanoni employed had gossiped of their
+master's wealth. One night, after Viola had retired to rest, she was
+awakened by a slight noise below. Zanoni was not by her side; she
+listened in some alarm. Was that a groan that came upon her ear? She
+started up, she went to the door; all was still. A footstep now slowly
+approached, and Zanoni entered calm as usual, and seemed unconscious of
+her fears.
+
+The next morning three men were found dead at the threshold of the
+principal entrance, the door of which had been forced. They were
+recognised in the neighbourhood as the most sanguinary and terrible
+marauders of the coasts,--men stained with a thousand murders, and who
+had never hitherto failed in any attempt to which the lust of rapine
+had impelled them. The footsteps of many others were tracked to the
+seashore. It seemed that their accomplices must have fled on the death
+of their leaders. But when the Venetian Proveditore, or authority, of
+the island, came to examine into the matter, the most unaccountable
+mystery was the manner in which these ruffians had met their fate.
+Zanoni had not stirred from the apartment in which he ordinarily pursued
+his chemical studies. None of the servants had even been disturbed from
+their slumbers. No marks of human violence were on the bodies of the
+dead. They died, and made no sign. From that moment Zanoni's house--nay,
+the whole vicinity--was sacred. The neighbouring villages, rejoiced
+to be delivered from a scourge, regarded the stranger as one whom the
+Pagiana (or Virgin) held under her especial protection.
+
+In truth, the lively Greeks around, facile to all external impressions,
+and struck with the singular and majestic beauty of the man who knew
+their language as a native, whose voice often cheered them in their
+humble sorrows, and whose hand was never closed to their wants,
+long after he had left their shore preserved his memory by grateful
+traditions, and still point to the lofty platanus beneath which they had
+often seen him seated, alone and thoughtful, in the heats of noon. But
+Zanoni had haunts less open to the gaze than the shade of the platanus.
+In that isle there are the bituminous springs which Herodotus has
+commemorated. Often at night, the moon, at least, beheld him emerging
+from the myrtle and cystus that clothe the hillocks around the marsh
+that imbeds the pools containing the inflammable materia, all the
+medical uses of which, as applied to the nerves of organic life, modern
+science has not yet perhaps explored. Yet more often would he pass
+his hours in a cavern, by the loneliest part of the beach, where the
+stalactites seem almost arranged by the hand of art, and which the
+superstition of the peasants associates, in some ancient legends, with
+the numerous and almost incessant earthquakes to which the island is so
+singularly subjected.
+
+Whatever the pursuits that instigated these wanderings and favoured
+these haunts, either they were linked with, or else subordinate to, one
+main and master desire, which every fresh day passed in the sweet human
+company of Viola confirmed and strengthened.
+
+The scene that Glyndon had witnessed in his trance was faithful to
+truth. And some little time after the date of that night, Viola
+was dimly aware that an influence, she knew not of what nature, was
+struggling to establish itself over her happy life. Visions indistinct
+and beautiful, such as those she had known in her earlier days, but more
+constant and impressive, began to haunt her night and day when Zanoni
+was absent, to fade in his presence, and seem less fair than THAT.
+Zanoni questioned her eagerly and minutely of these visitations, but
+seemed dissatisfied, and at times perplexed, by her answers.
+
+"Tell me not," he said, one day, "of those unconnected images, those
+evolutions of starry shapes in a choral dance, or those delicious
+melodies that seem to thee of the music and the language of the distant
+spheres. Has no ONE shape been to thee more distinct and more beautiful
+than the rest,--no voice uttering, or seeming to utter, thine own
+tongue, and whispering to thee of strange secrets and solemn knowledge?"
+
+"No; all is confused in these dreams, whether of day or night; and when
+at the sound of thy footsteps I recover, my memory retains nothing but
+a vague impression of happiness. How different--how cold--to the rapture
+of hanging on thy smile, and listening to thy voice, when it says, 'I
+love thee!'"
+
+"Yet, how is it that visions less fair than these once seemed to thee
+so alluring? How is it that they then stirred thy fancies and filled
+thy heart? Once thou didst desire a fairy-land, and now thou seemest so
+contented with common life."
+
+"Have I not explained it to thee before? Is it common life, then, to
+love, and to live with the one we love? My true fairy-land is won! Speak
+to me of no other."
+
+And so night surprised them by the lonely beach; and Zanoni, allured
+from his sublimer projects, and bending over that tender face, forgot
+that, in the Harmonious Infinite which spread around, there were other
+worlds than that one human heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.IX.
+
+     There is a principle of the soul, superior to all nature, through
+     which we are capable of surpassing the order and systems of the
+     world.  When the soul is elevated to natures better than itself,
+     THEN it is entirely separated from subordinate natures, exchanges
+     this for another life, and, deserting the order of things with
+     which it was connected, links and mingles itself with another.
+     --Iamblichus.
+
+"Adon-Ai! Adon-Ai!--appear, appear!"
+
+And in the lonely cave, whence once had gone forth the oracles of
+a heathen god, there emerged from the shadows of fantastic rocks a
+luminous and gigantic column, glittering and shifting. It resembled the
+shining but misty spray which, seen afar off, a fountain seems to send
+up on a starry night. The radiance lit the stalactites, the crags,
+the arches of the cave, and shed a pale and tremulous splendour on the
+features of Zanoni.
+
+"Son of Eternal Light," said the invoker, "thou to whose knowledge,
+grade after grade, race after race, I attained at last, on the
+broad Chaldean plains; thou from whom I have drawn so largely of the
+unutterable knowledge that yet eternity alone can suffice to drain; thou
+who, congenial with myself, so far as our various beings will permit,
+hast been for centuries my familiar and my friend,--answer me and
+counsel!"
+
+From the column there emerged a shape of unimaginable glory. Its
+face was that of a man in its first youth, but solemn, as with the
+consciousness of eternity and the tranquillity of wisdom; light, like
+starbeams, flowed through its transparent veins; light made its limbs
+themselves, and undulated, in restless sparkles, through the waves of
+its dazzling hair. With its arms folded on its breast, it stood distant
+a few feet from Zanoni, and its low voice murmured gently, "My counsels
+were sweet to thee once; and once, night after night, thy soul could
+follow my wings through the untroubled splendours of the Infinite. Now
+thou hast bound thyself back to the earth by its strongest chains, and
+the attraction to the clay is more potent than the sympathies that drew
+to thy charms the Dweller of the Starbeam and the Air. When last thy
+soul hearkened to me, the senses already troubled thine intellect and
+obscured thy vision. Once again I come to thee; but thy power even to
+summon me to thy side is fading from thy spirit, as sunshine fades from
+the wave when the winds drive the cloud between the ocean and the sky."
+
+"Alas, Adon-Ai!" answered the seer, mournfully, "I know too well the
+conditions of the being which thy presence was wont to rejoice. I know
+that our wisdom comes but from the indifference to the things of the
+world which the wisdom masters. The mirror of the soul cannot reflect
+both earth and heaven; and the one vanishes from the surface as the
+other is glassed upon its deeps. But it is not to restore me to that
+sublime abstraction in which the intellect, free and disembodied, rises,
+region after region, to the spheres,--that once again, and with the
+agony and travail of enfeebled power I have called thee to mine aid. I
+love; and in love I begin to live in the sweet humanities of another. If
+wise, yet in all which makes danger powerless against myself, or those
+on whom I can gaze from the calm height of indifferent science, I am
+blind as the merest mortal to the destinies of the creature that makes
+my heart beat with the passions which obscure my gaze."
+
+"What matter!" answered Adon-Ai. "Thy love must be but a mockery of the
+name; thou canst not love as they do for whom there are death and the
+grave. A short time,--like a day in thy incalculable life,--and the form
+thou dotest on is dust! Others of the nether world go hand in hand, each
+with each, unto the tomb; hand in hand they ascend from the worm to new
+cycles of existence. For thee, below are ages; for her, but hours. And
+for her and thee--O poor, but mighty one!--will there be even a joint
+hereafter! Through what grades and heavens of spiritualised being will
+her soul have passed when thou, the solitary loiterer, comest from the
+vapours of the earth to the gates of light!"
+
+"Son of the Starbeam, thinkest thou that this thought is not with me
+forever; and seest thou not that I have invoked thee to hearken and
+minister to my design? Readest thou not my desire and dream to raise the
+conditions of her being to my own? Thou, Adon-Ai, bathing the celestial
+joy that makes thy life in the oceans of eternal splendour,--thou,
+save by the sympathies of knowledge, canst conjecture not what I,
+the offspring of mortals, feel--debarred yet from the objects of the
+tremendous and sublime ambition that first winged my desires above the
+clay--when I see myself compelled to stand in this low world alone. I
+have sought amongst my tribe for comrades, and in vain. At last I have
+found a mate. The wild bird and the wild beast have theirs; and my
+mastery over the malignant tribes of terror can banish their larvae from
+the path that shall lead her upward, till the air of eternity fits the
+frame for the elixir that baffles death."
+
+"And thou hast begun the initiation, and thou art foiled! I know it.
+Thou hast conjured to her sleep the fairest visions; thou hast invoked
+the loveliest children of the air to murmur their music to her trance,
+and her soul heeds them not, and, returning to the earth, escapes from
+their control. Blind one, wherefore? canst thou not perceive? Because
+in her soul all is love. There is no intermediate passion with which the
+things thou wouldst charm to her have association and affinities. Their
+attraction is but to the desires and cravings of the INTELLECT. What
+have they with the PASSION that is of earth, and the HOPE that goes
+direct to heaven?"
+
+"But can there be no medium--no link--in which our souls, as our hearts,
+can be united, and so mine may have influence over her own?"
+
+"Ask me not,--thou wilt not comprehend me!"
+
+"I adjure thee!--speak!"
+
+"When two souls are divided, knowest thou not that a third in which both
+meet and live is the link between them!"
+
+"I do comprehend thee, Adon-Ai," said Zanoni, with a light of more human
+joy upon his face than it had ever before been seen to wear; "and if my
+destiny, which here is dark to mine eyes, vouchsafes to me the happy lot
+of the humble,--if ever there be a child that I may clasp to my bosom
+and call my own--"
+
+"And is it to be man at last, that thou hast aspired to be more than
+man?"
+
+"But a child,--a second Viola!" murmured Zanoni, scarcely heeding the
+Son of Light; "a young soul fresh from heaven, that I may rear from the
+first moment it touches earth,--whose wings I may train to follow mine
+through the glories of creation; and through whom the mother herself may
+be led upward over the realm of death!"
+
+"Beware,--reflect! Knowest thou not that thy darkest enemy dwells in the
+Real? Thy wishes bring thee near and nearer to humanity."
+
+"Ah, humanity is sweet!" answered Zanoni.
+
+And as the seer spoke, on the glorious face of Adon-Ai there broke a
+smile.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.X.
+
+     Aeterna aeternus tribuit, mortalia confert
+     Mortalis; divina Deus, peritura caducus.
+     "Aurel. Prud. contra Symmachum," lib. ii.
+
+     (The Eternal gives eternal things, the Mortal gathers mortal
+     things:  God, that which is divine, and the perishable that which
+     is perishable.)
+
+EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS OF ZANONI TO MEJNOUR.
+
+Letter 1.
+
+Thou hast not informed me of the progress of thy pupil; and I fear that
+so differently does circumstance shape the minds of the generations to
+which we are descended, from the intense and earnest children of the
+earlier world, that even thy most careful and elaborate guidance would
+fail, with loftier and purer natures than that of the neophyte thou hast
+admitted within thy gates. Even that third state of being, which the
+Indian sage (The Brahmins, speaking of Brahm, say, "To the Omniscient
+the three modes of being--sleep, waking, and trance--are not;"
+distinctly recognising trance as a third and coequal condition of
+being.) rightly recognises as being between the sleep and the waking,
+and describes imperfectly by the name of TRANCE, is unknown to the
+children of the Northern world; and few but would recoil to indulge it,
+regarding its peopled calm as maya and delusion of the mind. Instead of
+ripening and culturing that airy soil, from which Nature, duly known,
+can evoke fruits so rich and flowers so fair, they strive but to exclude
+it from their gaze; they esteem that struggle of the intellect from
+men's narrow world to the spirit's infinite home, as a disease which the
+leech must extirpate with pharmacy and drugs, and know not even that it
+is from this condition of their being, in its most imperfect and infant
+form, that poetry, music, art--all that belong to an Idea of Beauty
+to which neither SLEEPING nor WAKING can furnish archetype and actual
+semblance--take their immortal birth. When we, O Mejnour in the far
+time, were ourselves the neophytes and aspirants, we were of a class
+to which the actual world was shut and barred. Our forefathers had no
+object in life but knowledge. From the cradle we were predestined and
+reared to wisdom as to a priesthood. We commenced research where modern
+Conjecture closes its faithless wings. And with us, those were common
+elements of science which the sages of to-day disdain as wild
+chimeras, or despair of as unfathomable mysteries. Even the fundamental
+principles, the large yet simple theories of electricity and magnetism,
+rest obscure and dim in the disputes of their blinded schools; yet,
+even in our youth, how few ever attained to the first circle of the
+brotherhood, and, after wearily enjoying the sublime privileges they
+sought, they voluntarily abandoned the light of the sun, and sunk,
+without effort, to the grave, like pilgrims in a trackless desert,
+overawed by the stillness of their solitude, and appalled by the absence
+of a goal. Thou, in whom nothing seems to live BUT THE DESIRE TO KNOW;
+thou, who, indifferent whether it leads to weal or to woe, lendest
+thyself to all who would tread the path of mysterious science, a human
+book, insensate to the precepts it enounces,--thou hast ever sought,
+and often made additions to our number. But to these have only been
+vouchsafed partial secrets; vanity and passion unfitted them for the
+rest; and now, without other interest than that of an experiment in
+science, without love, and without pity, thou exposest this new soul
+to the hazards of the tremendous ordeal! Thou thinkest that a zeal
+so inquisitive, a courage so absolute and dauntless, may suffice to
+conquer, where austerer intellect and purer virtue have so often failed.
+Thou thinkest, too, that the germ of art that lies in the painter's
+mind, as it comprehends in itself the entire embryo of power and beauty,
+may be expanded into the stately flower of the Golden Science. It is a
+new experiment to thee. Be gentle with thy neophyte, and if his nature
+disappoint thee in the first stages of the process, dismiss him back to
+the Real while it is yet time to enjoy the brief and outward life which
+dwells in the senses, and closes with the tomb. And as I thus admonish
+thee, O Mejnour, wilt thou smile at my inconsistent hopes? I, who have
+so invariably refused to initiate others into our mysteries,--I begin at
+last to comprehend why the great law, which binds man to his kind, even
+when seeking most to set himself aloof from their condition, has made
+thy cold and bloodless science the link between thyself and thy race;
+why, THOU has sought converts and pupils; why, in seeing life after life
+voluntarily dropping from our starry order, thou still aspirest to
+renew the vanished, and repair the lost; why, amidst thy calculations,
+restless and unceasing as the wheels of Nature herself, thou recoilest
+from the THOUGHT TO BE ALONE! So with myself; at last I, too, seek a
+convert, an equal,--I, too, shudder to be alone! What thou hast warned
+me of has come to pass. Love reduces all things to itself. Either must I
+be drawn down to the nature of the beloved, or hers must be lifted to
+my own. As whatever belongs to true Art has always necessarily had
+attraction for US, whose very being is in the ideal whence Art descends,
+so in this fair creature I have learned, at last, the secret that bound
+me to her at the first glance. The daughter of music,--music, passing
+into her being, became poetry. It was not the stage that attracted her,
+with its hollow falsehoods; it was the land in her own fancy which
+the stage seemed to centre and represent. There the poetry found a
+voice,--there it struggled into imperfect shape; and then (that land
+insufficient for it) it fell back upon itself. It coloured her thoughts,
+it suffused her soul; it asked not words, it created not things; it gave
+birth but to emotions, and lavished itself on dreams. At last came love;
+and there, as a river into the sea, it poured its restless waves, to
+become mute and deep and still,--the everlasting mirror of the heavens.
+
+And is it not through this poetry which lies within her that she may
+be led into the large poetry of the universe! Often I listen to her
+careless talk, and find oracles in its unconscious beauty, as we find
+strange virtues in some lonely flower. I see her mind ripening under my
+eyes; and in its fair fertility what ever-teeming novelties of thought!
+O Mejnour! how many of our tribe have unravelled the laws of the
+universe,--have solved the riddles of the exterior nature, and deduced
+the light from darkness! And is not the POET, who studies nothing but
+the human heart, a greater philosopher than all? Knowledge and atheism
+are incompatible. To know Nature is to know that there must be a God.
+But does it require this to examine the method and architecture of
+creation? Methinks, when I look upon a pure mind, however ignorant and
+childlike, that I see the August and Immaterial One more clearly than in
+all the orbs of matter which career at His bidding through space.
+
+Rightly is it the fundamental decree of our order, that we must impart
+our secrets only to the pure. The most terrible part of the ordeal is
+in the temptations that our power affords to the criminal. If it were
+possible that a malevolent being could attain to our faculties, what
+disorder it might introduce into the globe! Happy that it is NOT
+possible; the malevolence would disarm the power. It is in the purity of
+Viola that I rely, as thou more vainly hast relied on the courage or the
+genius of thy pupils. Bear me witness, Mejnour! Never since the distant
+day in which I pierced the Arcana of our knowledge, have I ever sought
+to make its mysteries subservient to unworthy objects; though, alas! the
+extension of our existence robs us of a country and a home; though the
+law that places all science, as all art, in the abstraction from the
+noisy passions and turbulent ambition of actual life, forbids us to
+influence the destinies of nations, for which Heaven selects ruder and
+blinder agencies; yet, wherever have been my wanderings, I have sought
+to soften distress, and to convert from sin. My power has been hostile
+only to the guilty; and yet with all our lore, how in each step we are
+reduced to be but the permitted instruments of the Power that vouchsafes
+our own, but only to direct it. How all our wisdom shrinks into nought,
+compared with that which gives the meanest herb its virtues, and peoples
+the smallest globule with its appropriate world. And while we are
+allowed at times to influence the happiness of others, how mysteriously
+the shadows thicken round our own future doom! We cannot be prophets
+to ourselves! With what trembling hope I nurse the thought that I may
+preserve to my solitude the light of a living smile!
+
+....
+
+Extracts from Letter II.
+
+Deeming myself not pure enough to initiate so pure a heart, I invoke to
+her trance those fairest and most tender inhabitants of space that have
+furnished to poetry, which is the instinctive guess into creation, the
+ideas of the Glendoveer and Sylph. And these were less pure than her own
+thoughts, and less tender than her own love! They could not raise her
+above her human heart, for THAT has a heaven of its own.
+
+....
+
+I have just looked on her in sleep,--I have heard her breathe my name.
+Alas! that which is so sweet to others has its bitterness to me; for
+I think how soon the time may come when that sleep will be without a
+dream,--when the heart that dictates the name will be cold, and the
+lips that utter it be dumb. What a twofold shape there is in love! If we
+examine it coarsely,--if we look but on its fleshy ties, its enjoyments
+of a moment, its turbulent fever and its dull reaction,--how strange it
+seems that this passion should be the supreme mover of the world; that
+it is this which has dictated the greatest sacrifices, and influenced
+all societies and all times; that to this the loftiest and loveliest
+genius has ever consecrated its devotion; that, but for love, there
+were no civilisation, no music, no poetry, no beauty, no life beyond the
+brute's.
+
+But examine it in its heavenlier shape,--in its utter abnegation of
+self; in its intimate connection with all that is most delicate and
+subtle in the spirit,--its power above all that is sordid in existence;
+its mastery over the idols of the baser worship; its ability to create
+a palace of the cottage, an oasis in the desert, a summer in the
+Iceland,--where it breathes, and fertilises, and glows; and the wonder
+rather becomes how so few regard it in its holiest nature. What the
+sensual call its enjoyments, are the least of its joys. True love is
+less a passion than a symbol. Mejnour, shall the time come when I can
+speak to thee of Viola as a thing that was?
+
+....
+
+Extract from Letter III.
+
+Knowest thou that of late I have sometimes asked myself, "Is there no
+guilt in the knowledge that has so divided us from our race?" It is true
+that the higher we ascend the more hateful seem to us the vices of the
+short-lived creepers of the earth,--the more the sense of the goodness
+of the All-good penetrates and suffuses us, and the more immediately
+does our happiness seem to emanate from him. But, on the other hand, how
+many virtues must lie dead in those who live in the world of death, and
+refuse to die! Is not this sublime egotism, this state of abstraction
+and reverie,--this self-wrapped and self-dependent majesty of existence,
+a resignation of that nobility which incorporates our own welfare, our
+joys, our hopes, our fears with others? To live on in no dread of foes,
+undegraded by infirmity, secure through the cares, and free from the
+disease of flesh, is a spectacle that captivates our pride. And yet dost
+thou not more admire him who dies for another? Since I have loved her,
+Mejnour, it seems almost cowardice to elude the grave which devours the
+hearts that wrap us in their folds. I feel it,--the earth grows upon
+my spirit. Thou wert right; eternal age, serene and passionless, is a
+happier boon than eternal youth, with its yearnings and desires. Until
+we can be all spirit, the tranquillity of solitude must be indifference.
+
+....
+
+Extracts from Letter IV.
+
+I have received thy communication. What! is it so? Has thy pupil
+disappointed thee? Alas, poor pupil! But--
+
+....
+
+(Here follow comments on those passages in Glyndon's life already known
+to the reader, or about to be made so, with earnest adjurations to
+Mejnour to watch yet over the fate of his scholar.)
+
+....
+
+But I cherish the same desire, with a warmer heart. My pupil! how the
+terrors that shall encompass thine ordeal warn me from the task! Once
+more I will seek the Son of Light.
+
+....
+
+Yes; Adon-Ai, long deaf to my call, at last has descended to my vision,
+and left behind him the glory of his presence in the shape of Hope. Oh,
+not impossible, Viola,--not impossible, that we yet may be united, soul
+with soul!
+
+Extract from Letter V.--(Many months after the last.)
+
+Mejnour, awake from thine apathy,--rejoice! A new soul will be born to
+the world,--a new soul that shall call me father. Ah, if they for whom
+exist all the occupations and resources of human life,--if they can
+thrill with exquisite emotion at the thought of hailing again their own
+childhood in the faces of their children; if in that birth they are born
+once more into the holy Innocence which is the first state of existence;
+if they can feel that on man devolves almost an angel's duty, when
+he has a life to guide from the cradle, and a soul to nurture for the
+heaven,--what to me must be the rapture to welcome an inheritor of all
+the gifts which double themselves in being shared! How sweet the power
+to watch, and to guard,--to instil the knowledge, to avert the evil,
+and to guide back the river of life in a richer and broader and deeper
+stream to the paradise from which it flows! And beside that river our
+souls shall meet, sweet mother. Our child shall supply the sympathy that
+fails as yet; and what shape shall haunt thee, what terror shall dismay,
+when thy initiation is beside the cradle of thy child!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.XI.
+
+     They thus beguile the way
+     Untill the blustring storme is overblowne,
+     When weening to returne whence they did stray,
+     They cannot finde that path which first was showne,
+     But wander to and fro in waies unknowne.
+     --Spenser's "Faerie Queene," book i. canto i. st. x.
+
+Yes, Viola, thou art another being than when, by the threshold of thy
+Italian home, thou didst follow thy dim fancies through the Land of
+Shadow; or when thou didst vainly seek to give voice to an ideal beauty,
+on the boards where illusion counterfeits earth and heaven for an
+hour, till the weary sense, awaking, sees but the tinsel and the
+scene-shifter. Thy spirit reposes in its own happiness. Its wanderings
+have found a goal. In a moment there often dwells the sense of eternity;
+for when profoundly happy, we know that it is impossible to die.
+Whenever the soul FEELS ITSELF, it feels everlasting life.
+
+The initiation is deferred,--thy days and nights are left to no other
+visions than those with which a contented heart enchants a guileless
+fancy. Glendoveers and Sylphs, pardon me if I question whether those
+visions are not lovelier than yourselves.
+
+They stand by the beach, and see the sun sinking into the sea. How long
+now have they dwelt on that island? What matters!--it may be months, or
+years--what matters! Why should I, or they, keep account of that happy
+time? As in the dream of a moment ages may seem to pass, so shall we
+measure transport or woe,--by the length of the dream, or the number of
+emotions that the dream involves?
+
+The sun sinks slowly down; the air is arid and oppressive; on the sea,
+the stately vessel lies motionless; on the shore, no leaf trembles on
+the trees.
+
+Viola drew nearer to Zanoni. A presentiment she could not define made
+her heart beat more quickly; and, looking into his face, she was struck
+with its expression: it was anxious, abstracted, perturbed. "This
+stillness awes me," she whispered.
+
+Zanoni did not seem to hear her. He muttered to himself, and his eyes
+gazed round restlessly. She knew not why, but that gaze, which seemed
+to pierce into space,--that muttered voice in some foreign
+language--revived dimly her earlier superstitions. She was more fearful
+since the hour when she knew that she was to be a mother. Strange crisis
+in the life of woman, and in her love! Something yet unborn begins
+already to divide her heart with that which had been before its only
+monarch.
+
+"Look on me, Zanoni," she said, pressing his hand.
+
+He turned: "Thou art pale, Viola; thy hand trembles!"
+
+"It is true. I feel as if some enemy were creeping near us."
+
+"And the instinct deceives thee not. An enemy is indeed at hand. I see
+it through the heavy air; I hear it through the silence: the Ghostly
+One,--the Destroyer, the PESTILENCE! Ah, seest thou how the leaves swarm
+with insects, only by an effort visible to the eye. They follow the
+breath of the plague!" As he spoke, a bird fell from the boughs at
+Viola's feet; it fluttered, it writhed an instant, and was dead.
+
+"Oh, Viola!" cried Zanoni, passionately, "that is death. Dost thou not
+fear to die?"
+
+"To leave thee? Ah, yes!"
+
+"And if I could teach thee how Death may be defied; if I could arrest
+for thy youth the course of time; if I could--"
+
+He paused abruptly, for Viola's eyes spoke only terror; her cheek and
+lips were pale.
+
+"Speak not thus,--look not thus," she said, recoiling from him. "You
+dismay me. Ah, speak not thus, or I should tremble,--no, not for myself,
+but for thy child."
+
+"Thy child! But wouldst thou reject for thy child the same glorious
+boon?"
+
+"Zanoni!"
+
+"Well!"
+
+"The sun has sunk from our eyes, but to rise on those of others. To
+disappear from this world is to live in the world afar. Oh, lover,--oh,
+husband!" she continued, with sudden energy, "tell me that thou didst
+but jest,--that thou didst but trifle with my folly! There is less
+terror in the pestilence than in thy words."
+
+Zanoni's brow darkened; he looked at her in silence for some moments,
+and then said, almost severely,--
+
+"What hast thou known of me to distrust?"
+
+"Oh, pardon, pardon!--nothing!" cried Viola, throwing herself on his
+breast, and bursting into tears. "I will not believe even thine own
+words, if they seem to wrong thee!" He kissed the tears from her eyes,
+but made no answer.
+
+"And ah!" she resumed, with an enchanting and child-like smile, "if thou
+wouldst give me a charm against the pestilence! see, I will take it from
+thee." And she laid her hand on a small, antique amulet that he wore on
+his breast.
+
+"Thou knowest how often this has made me jealous of the past; surely
+some love-gift, Zanoni? But no, thou didst not love the giver as thou
+dost me. Shall I steal thine amulet?"
+
+"Infant!" said Zanoni, tenderly; "she who placed this round my neck
+deemed it indeed a charm, for she had superstitions like thyself; but
+to me it is more than the wizard's spell,--it is the relic of a sweet
+vanished time when none who loved me could distrust."
+
+He said these words in a tone of such melancholy reproach that it went
+to the heart of Viola; but the tone changed into a solemnity which
+chilled back the gush of her feelings as he resumed: "And this, Viola,
+one day, perhaps, I will transfer from my breast to thine; yes, whenever
+thou shalt comprehend me better,--WHENEVER THE LAWS OF OUR BEING SHALL
+BE THE SAME!"
+
+He moved on gently. They returned slowly home; but fear still was in the
+heart of Viola, though she strove to shake it off. Italian and Catholic
+she was, with all the superstitions of land and sect. She stole to
+her chamber and prayed before a little relic of San Gennaro, which
+the priest of her house had given to her in childhood, and which had
+accompanied her in all her wanderings. She had never deemed it
+possible to part with it before. Now, if there was a charm against the
+pestilence, did she fear the pestilence for herself? The next morning,
+when he awoke, Zanoni found the relic of the saint suspended with his
+mystic amulet round his neck.
+
+"Ah! thou wilt have nothing to fear from the pestilence now," said
+Viola, between tears and smiles; "and when thou wouldst talk to me again
+as thou didst last night, the saint shall rebuke thee."
+
+Well, Zanoni, can there ever indeed be commune of thought and spirit,
+except with equals?
+
+Yes, the plague broke out,--the island home must be abandoned. Mighty
+Seer, THOU HAST NO POWER TO SAVE THOSE WHOM THOU LOVEST! Farewell, thou
+bridal roof!--sweet resting-place from care, farewell! Climates as soft
+may greet ye, O lovers,--skies as serene, and waters as blue and calm;
+but THAT TIME,--can it ever more return? Who shall say that the heart
+does not change with the scene,--the place where we first dwelt with the
+beloved one? Every spot THERE has so many memories which the place only
+can recall. The past that haunts it seems to command such constancy in
+the future. If a thought less kind, less trustful, enter within us, the
+sight of a tree under which a vow has been exchanged, a tear has
+been kissed away, restores us again to the hours of the first divine
+illusion. But in a home where nothing speaks of the first nuptials,
+where there is no eloquence of association, no holy burial-places of
+emotions, whose ghosts are angels!--yes, who that has gone through the
+sad history of affection will tell us that the heart changes not with
+the scene! Blow fair, ye favouring winds; cheerily swell, ye sails; away
+from the land where death has come to snatch the sceptre of Love! The
+shores glide by; new coasts succeed to the green hills and orange-groves
+of the Bridal Isle. From afar now gleam in the moonlight the columns,
+yet extant, of a temple which the Athenian dedicated to wisdom; and,
+standing on the bark that bounded on in the freshening gale, the votary
+who had survived the goddess murmured to himself,--
+
+"Has the wisdom of ages brought me no happier hours than those common
+to the shepherd and the herdsman, with no world beyond their village, no
+aspiration beyond the kiss and the smile of home?"
+
+And the moon, resting alike over the ruins of the temple of the
+departed creed, over the hut of the living peasant, over the immemorial
+mountain-top, and the perishable herbage that clothed its sides, seemed
+to smile back its answer of calm disdain to the being who, perchance,
+might have seen the temple built, and who, in his inscrutable existence,
+might behold the mountain shattered from its base.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V. -- THE EFFECTS OF THE ELIXIR.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.I.
+
+     Frommet's den Schleier aufzuheben,
+     Wo das nahe Schreckness droht?
+     Nur das Irrthum ist das Leben
+     Und das Wissen ist der Tod,
+
+     --Schiller, Kassandro.
+
+     Delusion is the life we live
+     And knowledge death; oh wherefore, then,
+     To sight the coming evils give
+     And lift the veil of Fate to Man?
+
+     Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust.
+
+     (Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast.)
+
+     ....
+
+     Was stehst du so, und blickst erstaunt hinaus?
+
+     (Why standest thou so, and lookest out astonished?)
+
+     --"Faust."
+
+It will be remembered that we left Master Paolo by the bedside of
+Glyndon; and as, waking from that profound slumber, the recollections of
+the past night came horribly back to his mind, the Englishman uttered a
+cry, and covered his face with his hands.
+
+"Good morrow, Excellency!" said Paolo, gayly. "Corpo di Bacco, you have
+slept soundly!"
+
+The sound of this man's voice, so lusty, ringing, and healthful, served
+to scatter before it the phantasma that yet haunted Glyndon's memory.
+
+He rose erect in his bed. "And where did you find me? Why are you here?"
+
+"Where did I find you!" repeated Paolo, in surprise,--"in your bed, to
+be sure. Why am I here!--because the Padrone bade me await your waking,
+and attend your commands."
+
+"The Padrone, Mejnour!--is he arrived?"
+
+"Arrived and departed, signor. He has left this letter for you."
+
+"Give it me, and wait without till I am dressed."
+
+"At your service. I have bespoke an excellent breakfast: you must be
+hungry. I am a very tolerable cook; a monk's son ought to be! You will
+be startled at my genius in the dressing of fish. My singing, I
+trust, will not disturb you. I always sing while I prepare a salad; it
+harmonises the ingredients." And slinging his carbine over his shoulder,
+Paolo sauntered from the room, and closed the door.
+
+Glyndon was already deep in the contents of the following letter:--
+
+"When I first received thee as my pupil, I promised Zanoni, if convinced
+by thy first trials that thou couldst but swell, not the number of our
+order, but the list of the victims who have aspired to it in vain, I
+would not rear thee to thine own wretchedness and doom,--I would dismiss
+thee back to the world. I fulfil my promise. Thine ordeal has been the
+easiest that neophyte ever knew. I asked for nothing but abstinence from
+the sensual, and a brief experiment of thy patience and thy faith. Go
+back to thine own world; thou hast no nature to aspire to ours!
+
+"It was I who prepared Paolo to receive thee at the revel. It was I who
+instigated the old beggar to ask thee for alms. It was I who left open
+the book that thou couldst not read without violating my command. Well,
+thou hast seen what awaits thee at the threshold of knowledge. Thou hast
+confronted the first foe that menaces him whom the senses yet grasp and
+inthrall. Dost thou wonder that I close upon thee the gates forever?
+Dost thou not comprehend, at last, that it needs a soul tempered and
+purified and raised, not by external spells, but by its own sublimity
+and valour, to pass the threshold and disdain the foe? Wretch! all
+my silence avails nothing for the rash, for the sensual,--for him who
+desires our secrets but to pollute them to gross enjoyments and selfish
+vice. How have the imposters and sorcerers of the earlier times perished
+by their very attempt to penetrate the mysteries that should purify, and
+not deprave! They have boasted of the Philosopher's Stone, and died in
+rags; of the immortal elixir, and sunk to their grave, grey before their
+time. Legends tell you that the fiend rent them into fragments. Yes;
+the fiend of their own unholy desires and criminal designs! What they
+coveted, thou covetest; and if thou hadst the wings of a seraph thou
+couldst soar not from the slough of thy mortality. Thy desire for
+knowledge, but petulant presumption; thy thirst for happiness, but
+the diseased longing for the unclean and muddied waters of corporeal
+pleasure; thy very love, which usually elevates even the mean, a passion
+that calculates treason amidst the first glow of lust. THOU one of us;
+thou a brother of the August Order; thou an Aspirant to the Stars that
+shine in the Shemaia of the Chaldean lore! The eagle can raise but the
+eaglet to the sun. I abandon thee to thy twilight!
+
+"But, alas for thee, disobedient and profane! thou hast inhaled the
+elixir; thou hast attracted to thy presence a ghastly and remorseless
+foe. Thou thyself must exorcise the phantom thou hast raised. Thou must
+return to the world; but not without punishment and strong effort canst
+thou regain the calm and the joy of the life thou hast left behind.
+This, for thy comfort, will I tell thee: he who has drawn into his frame
+even so little of the volatile and vital energy of the aerial juices as
+thyself, has awakened faculties that cannot sleep,--faculties that may
+yet, with patient humility, with sound faith, and the courage that
+is not of the body like thine, but of the resolute and virtuous mind,
+attain, if not to the knowledge that reigns above, to high achievement
+in the career of men. Thou wilt find the restless influence in all that
+thou wouldst undertake. Thy heart, amidst vulgar joys will aspire to
+something holier; thy ambition, amidst coarse excitement, to something
+beyond thy reach. But deem not that this of itself will suffice for
+glory. Equally may the craving lead thee to shame and guilt. It is but
+an imperfect and new-born energy which will not suffer thee to repose.
+As thou directest it, must thou believe it to be the emanation of thine
+evil genius or thy good.
+
+"But woe to thee! insect meshed in the web in which thou hast entangled
+limbs and wings! Thou hast not only inhaled the elixir, thou hast
+conjured the spectre; of all the tribes of the space, no foe is so
+malignant to man,--and thou hast lifted the veil from thy gaze. I cannot
+restore to thee the happy dimness of thy vision. Know, at least, that
+all of us--the highest and the wisest--who have, in sober truth, passed
+beyond the threshold, have had, as our first fearful task, to master and
+subdue its grisly and appalling guardian. Know that thou CANST deliver
+thyself from those livid eyes,--know that, while they haunt, they cannot
+harm, if thou resistest the thoughts to which they tempt, and the horror
+they engender. DREAD THEM MOST WHEN THOU BEHOLDEST THEM NOT. And thus,
+son of the worm, we part! All that I can tell thee to encourage, yet to
+warn and to guide, I have told thee in these lines. Not from me, from
+thyself has come the gloomy trial from which I yet trust thou wilt
+emerge into peace. Type of the knowledge that I serve, I withhold no
+lesson from the pure aspirant; I am a dark enigma to the general seeker.
+As man's only indestructible possession is his memory, so it is not in
+mine art to crumble into matter the immaterial thoughts that have sprung
+up within thy breast. The tyro might shatter this castle to the dust,
+and topple down the mountain to the plain. The master has no power to
+say, 'Exist no more,' to one THOUGHT that his knowledge has inspired.
+Thou mayst change the thoughts into new forms; thou mayst rarefy and
+sublimate it into a finer spirit,--but thou canst not annihilate that
+which has no home but in the memory, no substance but the idea. EVERY
+THOUGHT IS A SOUL! Vainly, therefore, would I or thou undo the past,
+or restore to thee the gay blindness of thy youth. Thou must endure the
+influence of the elixir thou hast inhaled; thou must wrestle with the
+spectre thou hast invoked!"
+
+The letter fell from Glyndon's hand. A sort of stupor succeeded to the
+various emotions which had chased each other in the perusal,--a stupor
+resembling that which follows the sudden destruction of any ardent and
+long-nursed hope in the human heart, whether it be of love, of avarice,
+of ambition. The loftier world for which he had so thirsted, sacrificed,
+and toiled, was closed upon him "forever," and by his own faults of
+rashness and presumption. But Glyndon's was not of that nature which
+submits long to condemn itself. His indignation began to kindle against
+Mejnour, who owned he had tempted, and who now abandoned him,--abandoned
+him to the presence of a spectre. The mystic's reproaches stung rather
+than humbled him. What crime had he committed to deserve language so
+harsh and disdainful? Was it so deep a debasement to feel pleasure in
+the smile and the eyes of Fillide? Had not Zanoni himself confessed
+love for Viola; had he not fled with her as his companion? Glyndon never
+paused to consider if there are no distinctions between one kind of
+love and another. Where, too, was the great offence of yielding to a
+temptation which only existed for the brave? Had not the mystic volume
+which Mejnour had purposely left open, bid him but "Beware of fear"? Was
+not, then, every wilful provocative held out to the strongest influences
+of the human mind, in the prohibition to enter the chamber, in the
+possession of the key which excited his curiosity, in the volume which
+seemed to dictate the mode by which the curiosity was to be gratified?
+As rapidly these thoughts passed over him, he began to consider the
+whole conduct of Mejnour either as a perfidious design to entrap him to
+his own misery, or as the trick of an imposter, who knew that he could
+not realise the great professions he had made. On glancing again over
+the more mysterious threats and warnings in Mejnour's letter, they
+seemed to assume the language of mere parable and allegory,--the jargon
+of the Platonists and Pythagoreans. By little and little, he began to
+consider that the very spectra he had seen--even that one phantom so
+horrid in its aspect--were but the delusions which Mejnour's science had
+enable him to raise. The healthful sunlight, filling up every cranny
+in his chamber, seemed to laugh away the terrors of the past night. His
+pride and his resentment nerved his habitual courage; and when, having
+hastily dressed himself, he rejoined Paolo, it was with a flushed cheek
+and a haughty step.
+
+"So, Paolo," said he, "the Padrone, as you call him, told you to expect
+and welcome me at your village feast?"
+
+"He did so by a message from a wretched old cripple. This surprised
+me at the time, for I thought he was far distant; but these great
+philosophers make a joke of two or three hundred leagues."
+
+"Why did you not tell me you had heard from Mejnour?"
+
+"Because the old cripple forbade me."
+
+"Did you not see the man afterwards during the dance?"
+
+"No, Excellency."
+
+"Humph!"
+
+"Allow me to serve you," said Paolo, piling Glyndon's plate, and then
+filling his glass. "I wish, signor, now the Padrone is gone,--not,"
+added Paolo, as he cast rather a frightened and suspicious glance round
+the room, "that I mean to say anything disrespectful of him,--I wish, I
+say, now that he is gone, that you would take pity on yourself, and ask
+your own heart what your youth was meant for? Not to bury yourself alive
+in these old ruins, and endanger body and soul by studies which I am
+sure no saint could approve of."
+
+"Are the saints so partial, then, to your own occupations, Master
+Paolo?"
+
+"Why," answered the bandit, a little confused, "a gentleman with plenty
+of pistoles in his purse need not, of necessity, make it his profession
+to take away the pistoles of other people! It is a different thing for
+us poor rogues. After all, too, I always devote a tithe of my gains
+to the Virgin; and I share the rest charitably with the poor. But eat,
+drink, enjoy yourself; be absolved by your confessor for any little
+peccadilloes and don't run too long scores at a time,--that's my advice.
+Your health, Excellency! Pshaw, signor, fasting, except on the days
+prescribed to a good Catholic, only engenders phantoms."
+
+"Phantoms!"
+
+"Yes; the devil always tempts the empty stomach. To covet, to hate, to
+thieve, to rob, and to murder,--these are the natural desires of a man
+who is famishing. With a full belly, signor, we are at peace with all
+the world. That's right; you like the partridge! Cospetto! when I myself
+have passed two or three days in the mountains, with nothing from sunset
+to sunrise but a black crust and an onion, I grow as fierce as a wolf.
+That's not the worst, too. In these times I see little imps dancing
+before me. Oh, yes; fasting is as full of spectres as a field of
+battle."
+
+Glyndon thought there was some sound philosophy in the reasoning of
+his companion; and certainly the more he ate and drank, the more the
+recollection of the past night and of Mejnour's desertion faded from his
+mind. The casement was open, the breeze blew, the sun shone,--all Nature
+was merry; and merry as Nature herself grew Maestro Paolo. He talked
+of adventures, of travel, of women, with a hearty gusto that had its
+infection. But Glyndon listened yet more complacently when Paolo turned
+with an arch smile to praises of the eye, the teeth, the ankles, and the
+shape of the handsome Fillide.
+
+This man, indeed, seemed the very personation of animal sensual life. He
+would have been to Faust a more dangerous tempter than Mephistopheles.
+There was no sneer on HIS lip at the pleasures which animated his voice.
+To one awaking to a sense of the vanities in knowledge, this reckless
+ignorant joyousness of temper was a worse corrupter than all the icy
+mockeries of a learned Fiend. But when Paolo took his leave, with a
+promise to return the next day, the mind of the Englishman again settled
+back to a graver and more thoughtful mood. The elixir seemed, in truth,
+to have left the refining effects Mejnour had ascribed to it. As Glyndon
+paced to and fro the solitary corridor, or, pausing, gazed upon the
+extended and glorious scenery that stretched below, high thoughts
+of enterprise and ambition--bright visions of glory--passed in rapid
+succession through his soul.
+
+"Mejnour denies me his science. Well," said the painter, proudly, "he
+has not robbed me of my art."
+
+What! Clarence Glyndon, dost thou return to that from which thy career
+commenced? Was Zanoni right after all?
+
+He found himself in the chamber of the mystic; not a vessel,--not an
+herb! the solemn volume is vanished,--the elixir shall sparkle for him
+no more! But still in the room itself seems to linger the atmosphere of
+a charm. Faster and fiercer it burns within thee, the desire to achieve,
+to create! Thou longest for a life beyond the sensual!--but the life
+that is permitted to all genius,--that which breathes through the
+immortal work, and endures in the imperishable name.
+
+Where are the implements for thine art? Tush!--when did the true workman
+ever fail to find his tools? Thou art again in thine own chamber,--the
+white wall thy canvas, a fragment of charcoal for thy pencil. They
+suffice, at least, to give outline to the conception that may otherwise
+vanish with the morrow.
+
+The idea that thus excited the imagination of the artist was
+unquestionably noble and august. It was derived from that Egyptian
+ceremonial which Diodorus has recorded,--the Judgment of the Dead by the
+Living (Diod., lib. i.): when the corpse, duly embalmed, is placed by
+the margin of the Acherusian Lake; and before it may be consigned to the
+bark which is to bear it across the waters to its final resting-place,
+it is permitted to the appointed judges to hear all accusations of the
+past life of the deceased, and, if proved, to deprive the corpse of the
+rites of sepulture.
+
+Unconsciously to himself, it was Mejnour's description of this custom,
+which he had illustrated by several anecdotes not to be found in books,
+that now suggested the design to the artist, and gave it reality and
+force. He supposed a powerful and guilty king whom in life scarce a
+whisper had dared to arraign, but against whom, now the breath was gone,
+came the slave from his fetters, the mutilated victim from his dungeon,
+livid and squalid as if dead themselves, invoking with parched lips the
+justice that outlives the grave.
+
+Strange fervour this, O artist! breaking suddenly forth from the mists
+and darkness which the occult science had spread so long over thy
+fancies,--strange that the reaction of the night's terror and the day's
+disappointment should be back to thine holy art! Oh, how freely goes
+the bold hand over the large outline! How, despite those rude materials,
+speaks forth no more the pupil, but the master! Fresh yet from the
+glorious elixir, how thou givest to thy creatures the finer life denied
+to thyself!--some power not thine own writes the grand symbols on the
+wall. Behind rises the mighty sepulchre, on the building of which repose
+to the dead the lives of thousands had been consumed. There sit in a
+semicircle the solemn judges. Black and sluggish flows the lake. There
+lies the mummied and royal dead. Dost thou quail at the frown on
+his lifelike brow? Ha!--bravely done, O artist!--up rise the haggard
+forms!--pale speak the ghastly faces! Shall not Humanity after death
+avenge itself on Power? Thy conception, Clarence Glyndon, is a sublime
+truth; thy design promises renown to genius. Better this magic than the
+charms of the volume and the vessel. Hour after hour has gone; thou hast
+lighted the lamp; night sees thee yet at thy labour. Merciful Heaven!
+what chills the atmosphere; why does the lamp grow wan; why does thy
+hair bristle? There!--there!--there! at the casement! It gazes on thee,
+the dark, mantled, loathsome thing! There, with their devilish mockery
+and hateful craft, glare on thee those horrid eyes!
+
+He stood and gazed,--it was no delusion. It spoke not, moved not, till,
+unable to bear longer that steady and burning look, he covered his face
+with his hands. With a start, with a thrill, he removed them; he felt
+the nearer presence of the nameless. There it cowered on the floor
+beside his design; and lo! the figures seemed to start from the wall!
+Those pale accusing figures, the shapes he himself had raised, frowned
+at him, and gibbered. With a violent effort that convulsed his whole
+being, and bathed his body in the sweat of agony, the young man mastered
+his horror. He strode towards the phantom; he endured its eyes; he
+accosted it with a steady voice; he demanded its purpose and defied its
+power.
+
+And then, as a wind from a charnel, was heard its voice. What it said,
+what revealed, it is forbidden the lips to repeat, the hand to record.
+Nothing save the subtle life that yet animated the frame to which
+the inhalations of the elixir had given vigour and energy beyond the
+strength of the strongest, could have survived that awful hour. Better
+to wake in the catacombs and see the buried rise from their cerements,
+and hear the ghouls, in their horrid orgies, amongst the festering
+ghastliness of corruption, than to front those features when the veil
+was lifted, and listen to that whispered voice!
+
+....
+
+The next day Glyndon fled from the ruined castle. With what hopes of
+starry light had he crossed the threshold; with what memories to shudder
+evermore at the darkness did he look back at the frown of its time-worn
+towers!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.II.
+
+     Faust:  Wohin soll es nun gehm?
+     Mephist:  Wohin es Dir gefallt.
+     Wir sehn die kleine, dann die grosse Welt.
+     "Faust."
+
+     (Faust:  Whither go now!
+     Mephist:  Whither it pleases thee.
+     We see the small world, then the great.)
+
+Draw your chair to the fireside, brush clean the hearth, and trim the
+lights. Oh, home of sleekness, order, substance, comfort! Oh, excellent
+thing art thou, Matter of Fact!
+
+It is some time after the date of the last chapter. Here we are, not in
+moonlit islands or mouldering castles, but in a room twenty-six feet by
+twenty-two,--well carpeted, well cushioned, solid arm-chairs and eight
+such bad pictures, in such fine frames, upon the walls! Thomas Mervale,
+Esq., merchant, of London, you are an enviable dog!
+
+It was the easiest thing in the world for Mervale, on returning from his
+Continental episode of life, to settle down to his desk,--his heart had
+been always there. The death of his father gave him, as a birthright,
+a high position in a respectable though second-rate firm. To make this
+establishment first-rate was an honourable ambition,--it was his! He had
+lately married, not entirely for money,--no! he was worldly rather than
+mercenary. He had no romantic ideas of love; but he was too sensible
+a man not to know that a wife should be a companion,--not merely a
+speculation. He did not care for beauty and genius, but he liked health
+and good temper, and a certain proportion of useful understanding. He
+chose a wife from his reason, not his heart, and a very good choice he
+made. Mrs. Mervale was an excellent young woman,--bustling, managing,
+economical, but affectionate and good. She had a will of her own, but
+was no shrew. She had a great notion of the rights of a wife, and a
+strong perception of the qualities that insure comfort. She would never
+have forgiven her husband, had she found him guilty of the most passing
+fancy for another; but, in return, she had the most admirable sense of
+propriety herself. She held in abhorrence all levity, all flirtation,
+all coquetry,--small vices which often ruin domestic happiness, but
+which a giddy nature incurs without consideration. But she did not think
+it right to love a husband over much. She left a surplus of affection,
+for all her relations, all her friends, some of her acquaintances, and
+the possibility of a second marriage, should any accident happen to Mr.
+M. She kept a good table, for it suited their station; and her temper
+was considered even, though firm; but she could say a sharp thing
+or two, if Mr. Mervale was not punctual to a moment. She was very
+particular that he should change his shoes on coming home,--the carpets
+were new and expensive. She was not sulky, nor passionate,--Heaven
+bless her for that!--but when displeased she showed it, administered a
+dignified rebuke, alluded to her own virtues, to her uncle who was an
+admiral, and to the thirty thousand pounds which she had brought to the
+object of her choice. But as Mr. Mervale was a good-humoured man, owned
+his faults, and subscribed to her excellence, the displeasure was soon
+over.
+
+Every household has its little disagreements, none fewer than that of
+Mr. and Mrs. Mervale. Mrs. Mervale, without being improperly fond of
+dress, paid due attention to it. She was never seen out of her chamber
+with papers in her hair, nor in that worst of dis-illusions,--a morning
+wrapper. At half-past eight every morning Mrs. Mervale was dressed
+for the day,--that is, till she re-dressed for dinner,--her stays well
+laced, her cap prim, her gowns, winter and summer, of a thick, handsome
+silk. Ladies at that time wore very short waists; so did Mrs. Mervale.
+Her morning ornaments were a thick, gold chain, to which was suspended
+a gold watch,--none of those fragile dwarfs of mechanism that look so
+pretty and go so ill, but a handsome repeater which chronicled Father
+Time to a moment; also a mosaic brooch; also a miniature of her uncle,
+the admiral, set in a bracelet. For the evening she had two handsome
+sets,--necklace, earrings, and bracelets complete,--one of amethysts,
+the other topazes. With these, her costume for the most part was a
+gold-coloured satin and a turban, in which last her picture had been
+taken. Mrs. Mervale had an aquiline nose, good teeth, fair hair, and
+light eyelashes, rather a high complexion, what is generally called a
+fine bust; full cheeks; large useful feet made for walking; large, white
+hands with filbert nails, on which not a speck of dust had, even in
+childhood, ever been known to a light. She looked a little older than
+she really was; but that might arise from a certain air of dignity and
+the aforesaid aquiline nose. She generally wore short mittens. She never
+read any poetry but Goldsmith's and Cowper's. She was not amused by
+novels, though she had no prejudice against them. She liked a play and
+a pantomime, with a slight supper afterwards. She did not like concerts
+nor operas. At the beginning of the winter she selected some book to
+read, and some piece of work to commence. The two lasted her till the
+spring, when, though she continued to work, she left off reading. Her
+favourite study was history, which she read through the medium of Dr.
+Goldsmith. Her favourite author in the belles lettres was, of course,
+Dr. Johnson. A worthier woman, or one more respected, was not to be
+found, except in an epitaph!
+
+It was an autumn night. Mr. and Mrs. Mervale, lately returned from an
+excursion to Weymouth, are in the drawing-room,--"the dame sat on this
+side, the man sat on that."
+
+"Yes, I assure you, my dear, that Glyndon, with all his eccentricities,
+was a very engaging, amiable fellow. You would certainly have liked
+him,--all the women did."
+
+"My dear Thomas, you will forgive the remark,--but that expression of
+yours, 'all the WOMEN'--"
+
+"I beg your pardon,--you are right. I meant to say that he was a general
+favourite with your charming sex."
+
+"I understand,--rather a frivolous character."
+
+"Frivolous! no, not exactly; a little unsteady,--very odd, but certainly
+not frivolous; presumptuous and headstrong in character, but modest and
+shy in his manners, rather too much so,--just what you like. However,
+to return; I am seriously uneasy at the accounts I have heard of him
+to-day. He has been living, it seems, a very strange and irregular life,
+travelling from place to place, and must have spent already a great deal
+of money."
+
+"Apropos of money," said Mrs. Mervale; "I fear we must change our
+butcher; he is certainly in league with the cook."
+
+"That is a pity; his beef is remarkably fine. These London servants are
+as bad as the Carbonari. But, as I was saying, poor Glyndon--"
+
+Here a knock was heard at the door. "Bless me," said Mrs. Mervale, "it
+is past ten! Who can that possibly be?"
+
+"Perhaps your uncle, the admiral," said the husband, with a slight
+peevishness in his accent. "He generally favours us about this hour."
+
+"I hope, my love, that none of my relations are unwelcome visitors at
+your house. The admiral is a most entertaining man, and his fortune is
+entirely at his own disposal."
+
+"No one I respect more," said Mr. Mervale, with emphasis.
+
+The servant threw open the door, and announced Mr. Glyndon.
+
+"Mr. Glyndon!--what an extraordinary--" exclaimed Mrs. Mervale; but
+before she could conclude the sentence, Glyndon was in the room.
+
+The two friends greeted each other with all the warmth of early
+recollection and long absence. An appropriate and proud presentation
+to Mrs. Mervale ensued; and Mrs. Mervale, with a dignified smile, and
+a furtive glance at his boots, bade her husband's friend welcome to
+England.
+
+Glyndon was greatly altered since Mervale had seen him last. Though
+less than two years had elapsed since then, his fair complexion was more
+bronzed and manly. Deep lines of care, or thought, or dissipation, had
+replaced the smooth contour of happy youth. To a manner once gentle
+and polished had succeeded a certain recklessness of mien, tone, and
+bearing, which bespoke the habits of a society that cared little for the
+calm decorums of conventional ease. Still a kind of wild nobleness, not
+before apparent in him, characterised his aspect, and gave something of
+dignity to the freedom of his language and gestures.
+
+"So, then, you are settled, Mervale,--I need not ask you if you are
+happy. Worth, sense, wealth, character, and so fair a companion deserve
+happiness, and command it."
+
+"Would you like some tea, Mr. Glyndon?" asked Mrs. Mervale, kindly.
+
+"Thank you,--no. I propose a more convivial stimulus to my old friend.
+Wine, Mervale,--wine, eh!--or a bowl of old English punch. Your wife
+will excuse us,--we will make a night of it!"
+
+Mrs. Mervale drew back her chair, and tried not to look aghast. Glyndon
+did not give his friend time to reply.
+
+"So at last I am in England," he said, looking round the room, with
+a slight sneer on his lips; "surely this sober air must have its
+influence; surely here I shall be like the rest."
+
+"Have you been ill, Glyndon?"
+
+"Ill, yes. Humph! you have a fine house. Does it contain a spare room
+for a solitary wanderer?"
+
+Mr. Mervale glanced at his wife, and his wife looked steadily on the
+carpet. "Modest and shy in his manners--rather too much so!" Mrs.
+Mervale was in the seventh heaven of indignation and amaze!
+
+"My dear?" said Mr. Mervale at last, meekly and interogatingly.
+
+"My dear!" returned Mrs. Mervale, innocently and sourly.
+
+"We can make up a room for my old friend, Sarah?"
+
+The old friend had sunk back on his chair, and, gazing intently on the
+fire, with his feet at ease upon the fender, seemed to have forgotten
+his question.
+
+Mrs. Mervale bit her lips, looked thoughtful, and at last coldly
+replied, "Certainly, Mr. Mervale; your friends do right to make
+themselves at home."
+
+With that she lighted a candle, and moved majestically from the room.
+When she returned, the two friends had vanished into Mr. Mervale's
+study.
+
+Twelve o'clock struck,--one o'clock, two! Thrice had Mrs. Mervale sent
+into the room to know,--first, if they wanted anything; secondly, if Mr.
+Glyndon slept on a mattress or feather-bed; thirdly, to inquire if Mr.
+Glyndon's trunk, which he had brought with him, should be unpacked. And
+to the answer to all these questions was added, in a loud voice from the
+visitor,--a voice that pierced from the kitchen to the attic,--"Another
+bowl! stronger, if you please, and be quick with it!"
+
+At last Mr. Mervale appeared in the conjugal chamber, not penitent, nor
+apologetic,--no, not a bit of it. His eyes twinkled, his cheek flushed,
+his feet reeled; he sang,--Mr. Thomas Mervale positively sang!
+
+"Mr. Mervale! is it possible, sir--"
+
+"'Old King Cole was a merry old soul--'"
+
+"Mr. Mervale! sir!--leave me alone, sir!"
+
+"'And a merry old soul was he--'"
+
+"What an example to the servants!"
+
+"'And he called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl--'"
+
+"If you don't behave yourself, sir, I shall call--"
+
+"'Call for his fiddlers three!'"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.III.
+
+     In der Welt weit
+     Aus der Einsamkeit
+     Wollen sie Dich locken.
+     --"Faust."
+
+     (In the wide world, out of the solitude, will these allure thee.)
+
+The next morning, at breakfast, Mrs. Mervale looked as if all the wrongs
+of injured woman sat upon her brow. Mr. Mervale seemed the picture of
+remorseful guilt and avenging bile. He said little, except to complain
+of headache, and to request the eggs to be removed from the table.
+Clarence Glyndon--impervious, unconscious, unailing, impenitent--was in
+noisy spirits, and talked for three.
+
+"Poor Mervale! he has lost the habit of good-fellowship, madam. Another
+night or two, and he will be himself again!"
+
+"Sir," said Mrs. Mervale, launching a premeditated sentence with more
+than Johnsonian dignity, "permit me to remind you that Mr. Mervale is
+now a married man, the destined father of a family, and the present
+master of a household."
+
+"Precisely the reasons why I envy him so much. I myself have a great
+mind to marry. Happiness is contagious."
+
+"Do you still take to painting?" asked Mervale, languidly, endeavouring
+to turn the tables on his guest.
+
+"Oh, no; I have adopted your advice. No art, no ideal,--nothing loftier
+than Commonplace for me now. If I were to paint again, I positively
+think YOU would purchase my pictures. Make haste and finish your
+breakfast, man; I wish to consult you. I have come to England to see
+after my affairs. My ambition is to make money; your counsels and
+experience cannot fail to assist me here."
+
+"Ah, you were soon disenchanted of your Philosopher's Stone! You must
+know, Sarah, that when I last left Glyndon, he was bent upon turning
+alchemist and magician."
+
+"You are witty to-day, Mr. Mervale."
+
+"Upon my honour it is true, I told you so before."
+
+Glyndon rose abruptly.
+
+"Why revive those recollections of folly and presumption? Have I not
+said that I have returned to my native land to pursue the healthful
+avocations of my kind! Oh, yes! what so healthful, so noble, so
+fitted to our nature, as what you call the Practical Life? If we
+have faculties, what is their use, but to sell them to advantage! Buy
+knowledge as we do our goods; buy it at the cheapest market, sell it at
+the dearest. Have you not breakfasted yet?"
+
+The friends walked into the streets, and Mervale shrank from the irony
+with which Glyndon complimented him on his respectability, his station,
+his pursuits, his happy marriage, and his eight pictures in their
+handsome frames. Formerly the sober Mervale had commanded an influence
+over his friend: HIS had been the sarcasm; Glyndon's the irresolute
+shame at his own peculiarities. Now this position was reversed. There
+was a fierce earnestness in Glyndon's altered temper which awed and
+silenced the quiet commonplace of his friend's character. He seemed to
+take a malignant delight in persuading himself that the sober life of
+the world was contemptible and base.
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed, "how right you were to tell me to marry respectably;
+to have a solid position; to live in decorous fear of the world and
+one's wife; and to command the envy of the poor, the good opinion of
+the rich. You have practised what you preach. Delicious existence! The
+merchant's desk and the curtain lecture! Ha! ha! Shall we have another
+night of it?"
+
+Mervale, embarrassed and irritated, turned the conversation upon
+Glyndon's affairs. He was surprised at the knowledge of the world which
+the artist seemed to have suddenly acquired, surprised still more at
+the acuteness and energy with which he spoke of the speculations most in
+vogue at the market. Yes; Glyndon was certainly in earnest: he desired
+to be rich and respectable,--and to make at least ten per cent for his
+money!
+
+After spending some days with the merchant, during which time he
+contrived to disorganise all the mechanism of the house, to turn
+night into day, harmony into discord, to drive poor Mrs. Mervale
+half-distracted, and to convince her husband that he was horribly
+hen-pecked, the ill-omened visitor left them as suddenly as he had
+arrived. He took a house of his own; he sought the society of persons
+of substance; he devoted himself to the money-market; he seemed to
+have become a man of business; his schemes were bold and colossal; his
+calculations rapid and profound. He startled Mervale by his energy,
+and dazzled him by his success. Mervale began to envy him,--to be
+discontented with his own regular and slow gains. When Glyndon bought or
+sold in the funds, wealth rolled upon him like the tide of a sea; what
+years of toil could not have done for him in art, a few months, by
+a succession of lucky chances, did for him in speculation. Suddenly,
+however, he relaxed his exertions; new objects of ambition seemed to
+attract him. If he heard a drum in the streets, what glory like the
+soldier's? If a new poem were published, what renown like the poet's?
+He began works in literature, which promised great excellence, to throw
+them aside in disgust. All at once he abandoned the decorous and formal
+society he had courted; he joined himself, with young and riotous
+associates; he plunged into the wildest excesses of the great city,
+where Gold reigns alike over Toil and Pleasure. Through all he carried
+with him a certain power and heat of soul. In all society he aspired
+to command,--in all pursuits to excel. Yet whatever the passion of the
+moment, the reaction was terrible in its gloom. He sank, at times, into
+the most profound and the darkest reveries. His fever was that of a mind
+that would escape memory,--his repose, that of a mind which the memory
+seizes again, and devours as a prey. Mervale now saw little of him; they
+shunned each other. Glyndon had no confidant, and no friend.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.IV.
+
+     Ich fuhle Dich mir nahe;
+     Die Einsamkeit belebt;
+     Wie uber seinen Welten
+     Der Unsichtbare schwebt.
+     Uhland.
+
+     (I feel thee near to me,
+     The loneliness takes life,--As over its world
+     The Invisible hovers.)
+
+From this state of restlessness and agitation rather than continuous
+action, Glyndon was aroused by a visitor who seemed to exercise the most
+salutary influence over him. His sister, an orphan with himself, had
+resided in the country with her aunt. In the early years of hope and
+home he had loved this girl, much younger than himself, with all a
+brother's tenderness. On his return to England, he had seemed to forget
+her existence. She recalled herself to him on her aunt's death by
+a touching and melancholy letter: she had now no home but his,--no
+dependence save on his affection; he wept when he read it, and was
+impatient till Adela arrived.
+
+This girl, then about eighteen, concerned beneath a gentle and calm
+exterior much of the romance or enthusiasm that had, at her own age,
+characterised her brother. But her enthusiasm was of a far purer order,
+and was restrained within proper bounds, partly by the sweetness of a
+very feminine nature, and partly by a strict and methodical education.
+She differed from him especially in a timidity of character which
+exceeded that usual at her age, but which the habit of self-command
+concealed no less carefully than that timidity itself concealed the
+romance I have ascribed to her.
+
+Adela was not handsome: she had the complexion and the form of delicate
+health; and too fine an organisation of the nerves rendered her
+susceptible to every impression that could influence the health of the
+frame through the sympathy of the mind. But as she never complained, and
+as the singular serenity of her manners seemed to betoken an
+equanimity of temperament which, with the vulgar, might have passed for
+indifference, her sufferings had so long been borne unnoticed that it
+ceased to be an effort to disguise them. Though, as I have said, not
+handsome, her countenance was interesting and pleasing; and there
+was that caressing kindness, that winning charm about her smile, her
+manners, her anxiety to please, to comfort, and to soothe which went at
+once to the heart, and made her lovely,--because so loving.
+
+Such was the sister whom Glyndon had so long neglected, and whom he
+now so cordially welcomed. Adela had passed many years a victim to
+the caprices, and a nurse to the maladies, of a selfish and exacting
+relation. The delicate and generous and respectful affection of her
+brother was no less new to her than delightful. He took pleasure in the
+happiness he created; he gradually weaned himself from other society;
+he felt the charm of home. It is not surprising, then, that this
+young creature, free and virgin from every more ardent attachment,
+concentrated all her grateful love on this cherished and protecting
+relative. Her study by day, her dream by night, was to repay him for
+his affection. She was proud of his talents, devoted to his welfare;
+the smallest trifle that could interest him swelled in her eyes to the
+gravest affairs of life. In short, all the long-hoarded enthusiasm,
+which was her perilous and only heritage, she invested in this one
+object of her holy tenderness, her pure ambition.
+
+But in proportion as Glyndon shunned those excitements by which he had
+so long sought to occupy his time or distract his thoughts, the gloom
+of his calmer hours became deeper and more continuous. He ever and
+especially dreaded to be alone; he could not bear his new companion to
+be absent from his eyes: he rode with her, walked with her, and it was
+with visible reluctance, which almost partook of horror, that he retired
+to rest at an hour when even revel grows fatigued. This gloom was not
+that which could be called by the soft name of melancholy,--it was far
+more intense; it seemed rather like despair. Often after a silence as of
+death--so heavy, abstracted, motionless, did it appear--he would start
+abruptly, and cast hurried glances around him,--his limbs trembling, his
+lips livid, his brows bathed in dew. Convinced that some secret sorrow
+preyed upon his mind, and would consume his health, it was the dearest
+as the most natural desire of Adela to become his confidant and
+consoler. She observed, with the quick tact of the delicate, that he
+disliked her to seem affected by, or even sensible of, his darker moods.
+She schooled herself to suppress her fears and her feelings. She would
+not ask his confidence,--she sought to steal into it. By little and
+little she felt that she was succeeding. Too wrapped in his own strange
+existence to be acutely observant of the character of others, Glyndon
+mistook the self-content of a generous and humble affection for
+constitutional fortitude; and this quality pleased and soothed him. It
+is fortitude that the diseased mind requires in the confidant whom
+it selects as its physician. And how irresistible is that desire to
+communicate! How often the lonely man thought to himself, "My heart
+would be lightened of its misery, if once confessed!" He felt, too, that
+in the very youth, the inexperience, the poetical temperament of Adela,
+he could find one who would comprehend and bear with him better than
+any sterner and more practical nature. Mervale would have looked on his
+revelations as the ravings of madness, and most men, at best, as the
+sicklied chimeras, the optical delusions, of disease. Thus gradually
+preparing himself for that relief for which he yearned, the moment for
+his disclosure arrived thus:--
+
+One evening, as they sat alone together, Adela, who inherited some
+portion of her brother's talent in art, was employed in drawing, and
+Glyndon, rousing himself from meditations less gloomy than usual, rose,
+and affectionately passing his arm round her waist, looked over her as
+she sat. An exclamation of dismay broke from his lips,--he snatched the
+drawing from her hand: "What are you about?--what portrait is this?"
+
+"Dear Clarence, do you not remember the original?--it is a copy from
+that portrait of our wise ancestor which our poor mother used to say
+so strongly resembled you. I thought it would please you if I copied it
+from memory."
+
+"Accursed was the likeness!" said Glyndon, gloomily. "Guess you not the
+reason why I have shunned to return to the home of my fathers!--because
+I dreaded to meet that portrait!--because--because--but pardon me; I
+alarm you!"
+
+"Ah, no,--no, Clarence, you never alarm me when you speak: only when you
+are silent! Oh, if you thought me worthy of your trust; oh, if you had
+given me the right to reason with you in the sorrows that I yearn to
+share!"
+
+Glyndon made no answer, but paced the room for some moments with
+disordered strides. He stopped at last, and gazed at her earnestly.
+"Yes, you, too, are his descendant; you know that such men have lived
+and suffered; you will not mock me,--you will not disbelieve! Listen!
+hark!--what sound is that?"
+
+"But the wind on the house-top, Clarence,--but the wind."
+
+"Give me your hand; let me feel its living clasp; and when I have told
+you, never revert to the tale again. Conceal it from all: swear that it
+shall die with us,--the last of our predestined race!"
+
+"Never will I betray your trust; I swear it,--never!" said Adela,
+firmly; and she drew closer to his side. Then Glyndon commenced his
+story. That which, perhaps, in writing, and to minds prepared to
+question and disbelieve, may seem cold and terrorless, became far
+different when told by those blanched lips, with all that truth of
+suffering which convinces and appalls. Much, indeed, he concealed,
+much he involuntarily softened; but he revealed enough to make his
+tale intelligible and distinct to his pale and trembling listener. "At
+daybreak," he said, "I left that unhallowed and abhorred abode. I had
+one hope still,--I would seek Mejnour through the world. I would force
+him to lay at rest the fiend that haunted my soul. With this intent I
+journeyed from city to city. I instituted the most vigilant researches
+through the police of Italy. I even employed the services of the
+Inquisition at Rome, which had lately asserted its ancient powers in the
+trial of the less dangerous Cagliostro. All was in vain; not a trace of
+him could be discovered. I was not alone, Adela." Here Glyndon paused a
+moment, as if embarrassed; for in his recital, I need scarcely say that
+he had only indistinctly alluded to Fillide, whom the reader may
+surmise to be his companion. "I was not alone, but the associate of
+my wanderings was not one in whom my soul could confide,--faithful and
+affectionate, but without education, without faculties to comprehend me,
+with natural instincts rather than cultivated reason; one in whom the
+heart might lean in its careless hours, but with whom the mind could
+have no commune, in whom the bewildered spirit could seek no guide. Yet
+in the society of this person the demon troubled me not. Let me
+explain yet more fully the dread conditions of its presence. In coarse
+excitement, in commonplace life, in the wild riot, in the fierce excess,
+in the torpid lethargy of that animal existence which we share with the
+brutes, its eyes were invisible, its whisper was unheard. But whenever
+the soul would aspire, whenever the imagination kindled to the loftier
+ends, whenever the consciousness of our proper destiny struggled against
+the unworthy life I pursued, then, Adela--then, it cowered by my side
+in the light of noon, or sat by my bed,--a Darkness visible through the
+Dark. If, in the galleries of Divine Art, the dreams of my youth woke
+the early emulation,--if I turned to the thoughts of sages; if the
+example of the great, if the converse of the wise, aroused the silenced
+intellect, the demon was with me as by a spell. At last, one evening, at
+Genoa, to which city I had travelled in pursuit of the mystic, suddenly,
+and when least expected, he appeared before me. It was the time of the
+Carnival. It was in one of those half-frantic scenes of noise and revel,
+call it not gayety, which establish a heathen saturnalia in the midst
+of a Christian festival. Wearied with the dance, I had entered a room in
+which several revellers were seated, drinking, singing, shouting; and
+in their fantastic dresses and hideous masks, their orgy seemed scarcely
+human. I placed myself amongst them, and in that fearful excitement of
+the spirits which the happy never know, I was soon the most riotous of
+all. The conversation fell on the Revolution of France, which had
+always possessed for me an absorbing fascination. The masks spoke of the
+millennium it was to bring on earth, not as philosophers rejoicing in
+the advent of light, but as ruffians exulting in the annihilation of
+law. I know not why it was, but their licentious language infected
+myself; and, always desirous to be foremost in every circle, I soon
+exceeded even these rioters in declamations on the nature of the liberty
+which was about to embrace all the families of the globe,--a liberty
+that should pervade not only public legislation, but domestic life; an
+emancipation from every fetter that men had forged for themselves. In
+the midst of this tirade one of the masks whispered me,--
+
+"'Take care. One listens to you who seems to be a spy!'
+
+"My eyes followed those of the mask, and I observed a man who took
+no part in the conversation, but whose gaze was bent upon me. He was
+disguised like the rest, yet I found by a general whisper that none had
+observed him enter. His silence, his attention, had alarmed the fears of
+the other revellers,--they only excited me the more. Rapt in my subject,
+I pursued it, insensible to the signs of those about me; and, addressing
+myself only to the silent mask who sat alone, apart from the group, I
+did not even observe that, one by one, the revellers slunk off, and that
+I and the silent listener were left alone, until, pausing from my heated
+and impetuous declamations, I said,--
+
+"'And you, signor,--what is your view of this mighty era? Opinion
+without persecution; brotherhood without jealousy; love without
+bondage--'
+
+"'And life without God,' added the mask as I hesitated for new images.
+
+"The sound of that well-known voice changed the current of my thought. I
+sprang forward, and cried,--
+
+"'Imposter or Fiend, we meet at last!'
+
+"The figure rose as I advanced, and, unmasking, showed the features of
+Mejnour. His fixed eye, his majestic aspect, awed and repelled me. I
+stood rooted to the ground.
+
+"'Yes,' he said solemnly, 'we meet, and it is this meeting that I have
+sought. How hast thou followed my admonitions! Are these the scenes in
+which the Aspirant for the Serene Science thinks to escape the Ghastly
+Enemy? Do the thoughts thou hast uttered--thoughts that would strike all
+order from the universe--express the hopes of the sage who would rise to
+the Harmony of the Eternal Spheres?'
+
+"'It is thy fault,--it is thine!' I exclaimed. 'Exorcise the phantom!
+Take the haunting terror from my soul!'
+
+"Mejnour looked at me a moment with a cold and cynical disdain which
+provoked at once my fear and rage, and replied,--
+
+"'No; fool of thine own senses! No; thou must have full and entire
+experience of the illusions to which the Knowledge that is without Faith
+climbs its Titan way. Thou pantest for this Millennium,--thou shalt
+behold it! Thou shalt be one of the agents of the era of Light and
+Reason. I see, while I speak, the Phantom thou fliest, by thy side; it
+marshals thy path; it has power over thee as yet,--a power that defies
+my own. In the last days of that Revolution which thou hailest, amidst
+the wrecks of the Order thou cursest as Oppression, seek the fulfilment
+of thy destiny, and await thy cure.'
+
+"At that instant a troop of masks, clamorous, intoxicated, reeling, and
+rushing, as they reeled, poured into the room, and separated me from the
+mystic. I broke through them, and sought him everywhere, but in vain.
+All my researches the next day were equally fruitless. Weeks were
+consumed in the same pursuit,--not a trace of Mejnour could be
+discovered. Wearied with false pleasures, roused by reproaches I had
+deserved, recoiling from Mejnour's prophecy of the scene in which I was
+to seek deliverance, it occurred to me, at last, that in the sober air
+of my native country, and amidst its orderly and vigorous pursuits, I
+might work out my own emancipation from the spectre. I left all whom
+I had before courted and clung to,--I came hither. Amidst mercenary
+schemes and selfish speculations, I found the same relief as in debauch
+and excess. The Phantom was invisible; but these pursuits soon became
+to me distasteful as the rest. Ever and ever I felt that I was born for
+something nobler than the greed of gain,--that life may be made equally
+worthless, and the soul equally degraded by the icy lust of avarice, as
+by the noisier passions. A higher ambition never ceased to torment
+me. But, but," continued Glyndon, with a whitening lip and a visible
+shudder, "at every attempt to rise into loftier existence, came that
+hideous form. It gloomed beside me at the easel. Before the volumes of
+poet and sage it stood with its burning eyes in the stillness of night,
+and I thought I heard its horrible whispers uttering temptations never
+to be divulged." He paused, and the drops stood upon his brow.
+
+"But I," said Adela, mastering her fears and throwing her arms around
+him,--"but I henceforth will have no life but in thine. And in this love
+so pure, so holy, thy terror shall fade away."
+
+"No, no!" exclaimed Glyndon, starting from her. "The worst revelation is
+to come. Since thou hast been here, since I have sternly and resolutely
+refrained from every haunt, every scene in which this preternatural
+enemy troubled me not, I--I--have--Oh, Heaven! Mercy--mercy! There it
+stands,--there, by thy side,--there, there!" And he fell to the ground
+insensible.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.V.
+
+     Doch wunderbar ergriff mich's diese Nacht;
+     Die Glieder schienen schon in Todes Macht.
+     Uhland.
+
+     (This night it fearfully seized on me; my limbs appeared already
+     in the power of death.)
+
+A fever, attended with delirium, for several days deprived Glyndon of
+consciousness; and when, by Adela's care more than the skill of the
+physicians, he was restored to life and reason, he was unutterably
+shocked by the change in his sister's appearance; at first, he fondly
+imagined that her health, affected by her vigils, would recover with his
+own. But he soon saw, with an anguish which partook of remorse, that the
+malady was deep-seated,--deep, deep, beyond the reach of Aesculapius and
+his drugs. Her imagination, little less lively than his own, was awfully
+impressed by the strange confessions she had heard,--by the ravings
+of his delirium. Again and again had he shrieked forth, "It is
+there,--there, by thy side, my sister!" He had transferred to her fancy
+the spectre, and the horror that cursed himself. He perceived this, not
+by her words, but her silence; by the eyes that strained into space; by
+the shiver that came over her frame; by the start of terror; by the look
+that did not dare to turn behind. Bitterly he repented his confession;
+bitterly he felt that between his sufferings and human sympathy there
+could be no gentle and holy commune; vainly he sought to retract,--to
+undo what he had done, to declare all was but the chimera of an
+overheated brain!
+
+And brave and generous was this denial of himself; for, often and often,
+as he thus spoke, he saw the Thing of Dread gliding to her side, and
+glaring at him as he disowned its being. But what chilled him, if
+possible, yet more than her wasting form and trembling nerves, was the
+change in her love for him; a natural terror had replaced it. She turned
+paler if he approached,--she shuddered if he took her hand. Divided from
+the rest of earth, the gulf of the foul remembrance yawned now between
+his sister and himself. He could endure no more the presence of the one
+whose life HIS life had embittered. He made some excuses for departure,
+and writhed to see that they were greeted eagerly. The first gleam of
+joy he had detected since that fatal night, on Adela's face, he beheld
+when he murmured "Farewell." He travelled for some weeks through the
+wildest parts of Scotland; scenery which MAKES the artist, was loveless
+to his haggard eyes. A letter recalled him to London on the wings of
+new agony and fear; he arrived to find his sister in a condition both of
+mind and health which exceeded his worst apprehensions.
+
+Her vacant look, her lifeless posture, appalled him; it was as one who
+gazed on the Medusa's head, and felt, without a struggle, the human
+being gradually harden to the statue. It was not frenzy, it was not
+idiocy,--it was an abstraction, an apathy, a sleep in waking. Only as
+the night advanced towards the eleventh hour--the hour in which Glyndon
+had concluded his tale--she grew visibly uneasy, anxious, and perturbed.
+Then her lips muttered; her hands writhed; she looked round with a look
+of unspeakable appeal for succour, for protection, and suddenly, as the
+clock struck, fell with a shriek to the ground, cold and lifeless. With
+difficulty, and not until after the most earnest prayers, did she answer
+the agonised questions of Glyndon; at last she owned that at that hour,
+and that hour alone, wherever she was placed, however occupied, she
+distinctly beheld the apparition of an old hag, who, after thrice
+knocking at the door, entered the room, and hobbling up to her with a
+countenance distorted by hideous rage and menace, laid its icy fingers
+on her forehead: from that moment she declared that sense forsook her;
+and when she woke again, it was only to wait, in suspense that froze up
+her blood, the repetition of the ghastly visitation.
+
+The physician who had been summoned before Glyndon's return, and whose
+letter had recalled him to London, was a commonplace practitioner,
+ignorant of the case, and honestly anxious that one more experienced
+should be employed. Clarence called in one of the most eminent of the
+faculty, and to him he recited the optical delusion of his sister. The
+physician listened attentively, and seemed sanguine in his hopes of
+cure. He came to the house two hours before the one so dreaded by the
+patient. He had quietly arranged that the clocks should be put forward
+half an hour, unknown to Adela, and even to her brother. He was a man of
+the most extraordinary powers of conversation, of surpassing wit, of
+all the faculties that interest and amuse. He first administered to the
+patient a harmless potion, which he pledged himself would dispel the
+delusion. His confident tone woke her own hopes,--he continued to excite
+her attention, to rouse her lethargy; he jested, he laughed away the
+time. The hour struck. "Joy, my brother!" she exclaimed, throwing
+herself in his arms; "the time is past!" And then, like one released
+from a spell, she suddenly assumed more than her ancient
+cheerfulness. "Ah, Clarence!" she whispered, "forgive me for my former
+desertion,--forgive me that I feared YOU. I shall live!--I shall live!
+in my turn to banish the spectre that haunts my brother!" And Clarence
+smiled and wiped the tears from his burning eyes. The physician renewed
+his stories, his jests. In the midst of a stream of rich humour that
+seemed to carry away both brother and sister, Glyndon suddenly saw over
+Adela's face the same fearful change, the same anxious look, the same
+restless, straining eye, he had beheld the night before. He rose,--he
+approached her. Adela started up, "look--look--look!" she exclaimed.
+"She comes! Save me,--save me!" and she fell at his feet in strong
+convulsions as the clock, falsely and in vain put forward, struck the
+half-hour.
+
+The physician lifted her in his arms. "My worst fears are confirmed,"
+he said gravely; "the disease is epilepsy." (The most celebrated
+practitioner in Dublin related to the editor a story of optical delusion
+precisely similar in its circumstances and its physical cause to the one
+here narrated.)
+
+The next night, at the same hour, Adela Glyndon died.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.VI.
+
+     La loi, dont le regne vous epouvante, a son glaive leve sur vous:
+     elle vous frappera tous:  le genre humain a besoin de cet
+     exemple.--Couthon.
+
+     (The law, whose reign terrifies you, has its sword raised against
+     you; it will strike you all:  humanity has need of this example.)
+
+"Oh, joy, joy!--thou art come again! This is thy hand--these thy lips.
+Say that thou didst not desert me from the love of another; say it
+again,--say it ever!--and I will pardon thee all the rest!"
+
+"So thou hast mourned for me?"
+
+"Mourned!--and thou wert cruel enough to leave me gold; there it
+is,--there, untouched!"
+
+"Poor child of Nature! how, then, in this strange town of Marseilles,
+hast thou found bread and shelter?"
+
+"Honestly, soul of my soul! honestly, but yet by the face thou didst
+once think so fair; thinkest thou THAT now?"
+
+"Yes, Fillide, more fair than ever. But what meanest thou?"
+
+"There is a painter here--a great man, one of their great men at Paris,
+I know not what they call them; but he rules over all here,--life and
+death; and he has paid me largely but to sit for my portrait. It is for
+a picture to be given to the Nation, for he paints only for glory. Think
+of thy Fillide's renown!" And the girl's wild eyes sparkled; her vanity
+was roused. "And he would have married me if I would!--divorced his wife
+to marry me! But I waited for thee, ungrateful!"
+
+A knock at the door was heard,--a man entered.
+
+"Nicot!"
+
+"Ah, Glyndon!--hum!--welcome! What! thou art twice my rival! But Jean
+Nicot bears no malice. Virtue is my dream,--my country, my mistress.
+Serve my country, citizen; and I forgive thee the preference of beauty.
+Ca ira! ca ira!"
+
+But as the painter spoke, it hymned, it rolled through the streets,--the
+fiery song of the Marseillaise! There was a crowd, a multitude, a people
+up, abroad, with colours and arms, enthusiasm and song,--with song, with
+enthusiasm, with colours and arms! And who could guess that that
+martial movement was one, not of war, but massacre,--Frenchmen against
+Frenchmen? For there are two parties in Marseilles,--and ample work for
+Jourdan Coupe-tete! But this, the Englishman, just arrived, a stranger
+to all factions, did not as yet comprehend. He comprehended nothing but
+the song, the enthusiasm, the arms, and the colours that lifted to the
+sun the glorious lie, "Le peuple Francais, debout contre les tyrans!"
+(Up, Frenchmen, against tyrants!)
+
+The dark brow of the wretched wanderer grew animated; he gazed from the
+window on the throng that marched below, beneath their waving Oriflamme.
+They shouted as they beheld the patriot Nicot, the friend of Liberty and
+relentless Hebert, by the stranger's side, at the casement.
+
+"Ay, shout again!" cried the painter,--"shout for the brave Englishman
+who abjures his Pitts and his Coburgs to be a citizen of Liberty and
+France!"
+
+A thousand voices rent the air, and the hymn of the Marseillaise rose in
+majesty again.
+
+"Well, and if it be among these high hopes and this brave people that
+the phantom is to vanish, and the cure to come!" muttered Glyndon; and
+he thought he felt again the elixir sparkling through his veins.
+
+"Thou shalt be one of the Convention with Paine and Clootz,--I will
+manage it all for thee!" cried Nicot, slapping him on the shoulder: "and
+Paris--"
+
+"Ah, if I could but see Paris!" cried Fillide, in her joyous voice.
+Joyous! the whole time, the town, the air--save where, unheard, rose the
+cry of agony and the yell of murder--were joy! Sleep unhaunting in thy
+grave, cold Adela. Joy, joy! In the Jubilee of Humanity all private
+griefs should cease! Behold, wild mariner, the vast whirlpool draws thee
+to its stormy bosom! There the individual is not. All things are of the
+whole! Open thy gates, fair Paris, for the stranger-citizen! Receive in
+your ranks, O meek Republicans, the new champion of liberty, of reason,
+of mankind! "Mejnour is right; it was in virtue, in valour, in glorious
+struggle for the human race, that the spectre was to shrink to her
+kindred darkness."
+
+And Nicot's shrill voice praised him; and lean Robespierre--"Flambeau,
+colonne, pierre angulaire de l'edifice de la Republique!" ("The light,
+column, and keystone of the Republic."--"Lettre du Citoyen P--; Papiers
+inedits trouves chez Robespierre," tom 11, page 127.)--smiled ominously
+on him from his bloodshot eyes; and Fillide clasped him with passionate
+arms to her tender breast. And at his up-rising and down-sitting, at
+board and in bed, though he saw it not, the Nameless One guided him with
+the demon eyes to the sea whose waves were gore.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VI. -- SUPERSTITION DESERTING FAITH.
+
+     Why do I yield to that suggestion, Whose horrid image doth unfix
+     my hair.--Shakespeare
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.I.
+
+     Therefore the Genii were painted with a platter full of garlands
+     and flowers in one hand, and a whip in the other.--Alexander
+     Ross, "Mystag. Poet."
+
+According to the order of the events related in this narrative, the
+departure of Zanoni and Viola from the Greek isle, in which two happy
+years appear to have been passed, must have been somewhat later in date
+than the arrival of Glyndon at Marseilles. It must have been in the
+course of the year 1791 when Viola fled from Naples with her mysterious
+lover, and when Glyndon sought Mejnour in the fatal castle. It is now
+towards the close of 1793, when our story again returns to Zanoni. The
+stars of winter shone down on the lagunes of Venice. The hum of the
+Rialto was hushed,--the last loiterers had deserted the Place of St.
+Mark's, and only at distant intervals might be heard the oars of the
+rapid gondolas, bearing reveller or lover to his home. But lights still
+flitted to and fro across the windows of one of the Palladian palaces,
+whose shadow slept in the great canal; and within the palace watched the
+twin Eumenides that never sleep for Man,--Fear and Pain.
+
+"I will make thee the richest man in all Venice, if thou savest her."
+
+"Signor," said the leech; "your gold cannot control death, and the will
+of Heaven, signor, unless within the next hour there is some blessed
+change, prepare your courage."
+
+Ho--ho, Zanoni! man of mystery and might, who hast walked amidst the
+passions of the world, with no changes on thy brow, art thou tossed at
+last upon the billows of tempestuous fear? Does thy spirit reel to and
+fro?--knowest thou at last the strength and the majesty of Death?
+
+He fled, trembling, from the pale-faced man of art,--fled through
+stately hall and long-drawn corridor, and gained a remote chamber in the
+palace, which other step than his was not permitted to profane. Out
+with thy herbs and vessels. Break from the enchanted elements, O
+silvery-azure flame! Why comes he not,--the Son of the Starbeam! Why
+is Adon-Ai deaf to thy solemn call? It comes not,--the luminous and
+delightsome Presence! Cabalist! are thy charms in vain? Has thy throne
+vanished from the realms of space? Thou standest pale and trembling.
+Pale trembler! not thus didst thou look when the things of glory
+gathered at thy spell. Never to the pale trembler bow the things of
+glory: the soul, and not the herbs, nor the silvery-azure flame, nor the
+spells of the Cabala, commands the children of the air; and THY soul, by
+Love and Death, is made sceptreless and discrowned!
+
+At length the flame quivers,--the air grows cold as the wind in
+charnels. A thing not of earth is present,--a mistlike, formless thing.
+It cowers in the distance,--a silent Horror! it rises; it creeps; it
+nears thee--dark in its mantle of dusky haze; and under its veil it
+looks on thee with its livid, malignant eyes,--the thing of malignant
+eyes!
+
+"Ha, young Chaldean! young in thy countless ages,--young as when, cold
+to pleasure and to beauty, thou stoodest on the old Firetower, and
+heardest the starry silence whisper to thee the last mystery that
+baffles Death,--fearest thou Death at length? Is thy knowledge but a
+circle that brings thee back whence thy wanderings began! Generations on
+generations have withered since we two met! Lo! thou beholdest me now!"
+
+"But I behold thee without fear! Though beneath thine eyes thousands
+have perished; though, where they burn, spring up the foul poisons of
+the human heart, and to those whom thou canst subject to thy will, thy
+presence glares in the dreams of the raving maniac, or blackens the
+dungeon of despairing crime, thou art not my vanquisher, but my slave!"
+
+"And as a slave will I serve thee! Command thy slave, O beautiful
+Chaldean! Hark, the wail of women!--hark, the sharp shriek of thy
+beloved one! Death is in thy palace! Adon-Ai comes not to thy call. Only
+where no cloud of the passion and the flesh veils the eye of the Serene
+Intelligence can the Sons of the Starbeam glide to man. But _I_ can aid
+thee!--hark!" And Zanoni heard distinctly in his heart, even at that
+distance from the chamber, the voice of Viola calling in delirium on her
+beloved one.
+
+"Oh, Viola, I can save thee not!" exclaimed the seer, passionately; "my
+love for thee has made me powerless!"
+
+"Not powerless; I can gift thee with the art to save her,--I can place
+healing in thy hand!"
+
+"For both?--child and mother,--for both?"
+
+"Both!"
+
+A convulsion shook the limbs of the seer,--a mighty struggle shook him
+as a child: the Humanity and the Hour conquered the repugnant spirit.
+
+"I yield! Mother and child--save both!"
+
+....
+
+In the dark chamber lay Viola, in the sharpest agonies of travail; life
+seemed rending itself away in the groans and cries that spoke of pain in
+the midst of frenzy; and still, in groan and cry, she called on Zanoni,
+her beloved. The physician looked to the clock; on it beat: the Heart
+of Time,--regularly and slowly,--Heart that never sympathised with Life,
+and never flagged for Death! "The cries are fainter," said the leech;
+"in ten minutes more all will be past."
+
+Fool! the minutes laugh at thee; Nature, even now, like a blue sky
+through a shattered temple, is smiling through the tortured frame. The
+breathing grows more calm and hushed; the voice of delirium is dumb,--a
+sweet dream has come to Viola. Is it a dream, or is it the soul that
+sees? She thinks suddenly that she is with Zanoni, that her burning head
+is pillowed on his bosom; she thinks, as he gazes on her, that his eyes
+dispel the tortures that prey upon her,--the touch of his hand cools the
+fever on her brow; she hears his voice in murmurs,--it is a music from
+which the fiends fly. Where is the mountain that seemed to press upon
+her temples? Like a vapour, it rolls away. In the frosts of the winter
+night, she sees the sun laughing in luxurious heaven,--she hears the
+whisper of green leaves; the beautiful world, valley and stream and
+woodland, lie before, and with a common voice speak to her, "We are
+not yet past for thee!" Fool of drugs and formula, look to thy
+dial-plate!--the hand has moved on; the minutes are with Eternity; the
+soul thy sentence would have dismissed, still dwells on the shores of
+Time. She sleeps: the fever abates; the convulsions are gone; the living
+rose blooms upon her cheek; the crisis is past! Husband, thy wife lives;
+lover, thy universe is no solitude! Heart of Time, beat on! A while, a
+little while,--joy! joy! joy!--father, embrace thy child!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.II.
+
+     Tristis Erinnys
+     Praetulit infaustas sanguinolenta faces.
+     Ovid.
+
+     (Erinnys, doleful and bloody, extends the unblessed torches.)
+
+And they placed the child in the father's arms! As silently he bent
+over it, tears--tears, how human!--fell from his eyes like rain! And
+the little one smiled through the tears that bathed its cheeks! Ah, with
+what happy tears we welcome the stranger into our sorrowing world!
+With what agonising tears we dismiss the stranger back to the angels!
+Unselfish joy; but how selfish is the sorrow!
+
+And now through the silent chamber a faint sweet voice is heard,--the
+young mother's voice.
+
+"I am here: I am by thy side!" murmured Zanoni.
+
+The mother smiled, and clasped his hand, and asked no more; she was
+contented.
+
+....
+
+Viola recovered with a rapidity that startled the physician; and the
+young stranger thrived as if it already loved the world to which it had
+descended. From that hour Zanoni seemed to live in the infant's life,
+and in that life the souls of mother and father met as in a new bond.
+Nothing more beautiful than this infant had eye ever dwelt upon. It was
+strange to the nurses that it came not wailing to the light, but smiled
+to the light as a thing familiar to it before. It never uttered one cry
+of childish pain. In its very repose it seemed to be listening to some
+happy voice within its heart: it seemed itself so happy. In its eyes
+you would have thought intellect already kindled, though it had not yet
+found a language. Already it seemed to recognise its parents; already
+it stretched forth its arms when Zanoni bent over the bed, in which
+it breathed and bloomed,--the budding flower! And from that bed he was
+rarely absent: gazing upon it with his serene, delighted eyes, his soul
+seemed to feed its own. At night and in utter darkness he was still
+there; and Viola often heard him murmuring over it as she lay in
+a half-sleep. But the murmur was in a language strange to her; and
+sometimes when she heard she feared, and vague, undefined superstitions
+came back to her,--the superstitions of earlier youth. A mother fears
+everything, even the gods, for her new-born. The mortals shrieked aloud
+when of old they saw the great Demeter seeking to make their child
+immortal.
+
+But Zanoni, wrapped in the sublime designs that animated the human love
+to which he was now awakened, forgot all, even all he had forfeited or
+incurred, in the love that blinded him.
+
+But the dark, formless thing, though he nor invoked nor saw it, crept,
+often, round and round him, and often sat by the infant's couch, with
+its hateful eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.III.
+
+     Fuscis tellurem amplectitur alis.
+     Virgil.
+
+     (Embraces the Earth with gloomy wings.)
+
+Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.
+
+Mejnour, Humanity, with all its sorrows and its joys, is mine once more.
+Day by day, I am forging my own fetters. I live in other lives than my
+own, and in them I have lost more than half my empire. Not lifting them
+aloft, they drag me by the strong bands of the affections to their own
+earth. Exiled from the beings only visible to the most abstract sense,
+the grim Enemy that guards the Threshold has entangled me in its web.
+Canst thou credit me, when I tell thee that I have accepted its gifts,
+and endure the forfeit? Ages must pass ere the brighter beings can again
+obey the spirit that has bowed to the ghastly one! And--
+
+....
+
+In this hope, then, Mejnour, I triumph still; I yet have supreme power
+over this young life. Insensibly and inaudibly my soul speaks to its
+own, and prepares it even now. Thou knowest that for the pure and
+unsullied infant spirit, the ordeal has no terror and no peril. Thus
+unceasingly I nourish it with no unholy light; and ere it yet be
+conscious of the gift, it will gain the privileges it has been mine to
+attain: the child, by slow and scarce-seen degrees, will communicate its
+own attributes to the mother; and content to see Youth forever radiant
+on the brows of the two that now suffice to fill up my whole infinity of
+thought, shall I regret the airier kingdom that vanishes hourly from my
+grasp? But thou, whose vision is still clear and serene, look into the
+far deeps shut from my gaze, and counsel me, or forewarn! I know that
+the gifts of the Being whose race is so hostile to our own are, to the
+common seeker, fatal and perfidious as itself. And hence, when, at the
+outskirts of knowledge, which in earlier ages men called Magic,
+they encountered the things of the hostile tribes, they believed the
+apparitions to be fiends, and, by fancied compacts, imagined they had
+signed away their souls; as if man could give for an eternity that over
+which he has control but while he lives! Dark, and shrouded forever from
+human sight, dwell the demon rebels, in their impenetrable realm; in
+them is no breath of the Divine One. In every human creature the Divine
+One breathes; and He alone can judge His own hereafter, and allot its
+new career and home. Could man sell himself to the fiend, man could
+prejudge himself, and arrogate the disposal of eternity! But these
+creatures, modifications as they are of matter, and some with more
+than the malignanty of man, may well seem, to fear and unreasoning
+superstition, the representatives of fiends. And from the darkest and
+mightiest of them I have accepted a boon,--the secret that startled
+Death from those so dear to me. Can I not trust that enough of power yet
+remains to me to baffle or to daunt the Phantom, if it seek to pervert
+the gift? Answer me, Mejnour, for in the darkness that veils me, I see
+only the pure eyes of the new-born; I hear only the low beating of my
+heart. Answer me, thou whose wisdom is without love!
+
+Mejnour to Zanoni.
+
+Rome.
+
+Fallen One!--I see before thee Evil and Death and Woe! Thou to have
+relinquished Adon-Ai for the nameless Terror,--the heavenly stars for
+those fearful eyes! Thou, at the last to be the victim of the Larva of
+the dreary Threshold, that, in thy first novitiate, fled, withered
+and shrivelled, from thy kingly brow! When, at the primary grades of
+initiation, the pupil I took from thee on the shores of the changed
+Parthenope, fell senseless and cowering before that Phantom-Darkness, I
+knew that his spirit was not formed to front the worlds beyond; for
+FEAR is the attraction of man to earthiest earth, and while he fears, he
+cannot soar. But THOU, seest thou not that to love is but to fear; seest
+thou not that the power of which thou boastest over the malignant one
+is already gone? It awes, it masters thee; it will mock thee and betray.
+Lose not a moment; come to me. If there can yet be sufficient sympathy
+between us, through MY eyes shalt thou see, and perhaps guard against
+the perils that, shapeless yet, and looming through the shadow, marshal
+themselves around thee and those whom thy very love has doomed. Come
+from all the ties of thy fond humanity; they will but obscure thy
+vision! Come forth from thy fears and hopes, thy desires and passions.
+Come, as alone Mind can be the monarch and the seer, shining through the
+home it tenants,--a pure, impressionless, sublime intelligence!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.IV.
+
+     Plus que vous ne pensez ce moment est terrible.
+     La Harpe, "Le Comte de Warwick," Act 3, sc. 5.
+
+     (The moment is more terrible than you think.)
+
+For the first time since their union, Zanoni and Viola were
+separated,--Zanoni went to Rome on important business. "It was," he
+said, "but for a few days;" and he went so suddenly that there was
+little time either for surprise or sorrow. But first parting is always
+more melancholy than it need be: it seems an interruption to the
+existence which Love shares with Love; it makes the heart feel what a
+void life will be when the last parting shall succeed, as succeed it
+must, the first. But Viola had a new companion; she was enjoying that
+most delicious novelty which ever renews the youth and dazzles the eyes
+of woman. As the mistress--the wife--she leans on another; from another
+are reflected her happiness, her being,--as an orb that takes light from
+its sun. But now, in turn, as the mother, she is raised from dependence
+into power; it is another that leans on her,--a star has sprung into
+space, to which she herself has become the sun!
+
+A few days,--but they will be sweet through the sorrow! A few
+days,--every hour of which seems an era to the infant, over whom bend
+watchful the eyes and the heart. From its waking to its sleep, from
+its sleep to its waking, is a revolution in Time. Every gesture to be
+noted,--every smile to seem a new progress into the world it has come
+to bless! Zanoni has gone,--the last dash of the oar is lost, the last
+speck of the gondola has vanished from the ocean-streets of Venice! Her
+infant is sleeping in the cradle at the mother's feet; and she thinks
+through her tears what tales of the fairy-land, that spreads far and
+wide, with a thousand wonders, in that narrow bed, she shall have to
+tell the father! Smile on, weep on, young mother! Already the fairest
+leaf in the wild volume is closed for thee, and the invisible finger
+turns the page!
+
+....
+
+By the bridge of the Rialto stood two Venetians--ardent Republicans and
+Democrats--looking to the Revolution of France as the earthquake which
+must shatter their own expiring and vicious constitution, and give
+equality of ranks and rights to Venice.
+
+"Yes, Cottalto," said one; "my correspondent of Paris has promised to
+elude all obstacles, and baffle all danger. He will arrange with us the
+hour of revolt, when the legions of France shall be within hearing of
+our guns. One day in this week, at this hour, he is to meet me here.
+This is but the fourth day."
+
+He had scarce said these words before a man, wrapped in his roquelaire,
+emerging from one of the narrow streets to the left, halted opposite
+the pair, and eying them for a few moments with an earnest scrutiny,
+whispered, "Salut!"
+
+"Et fraternite," answered the speaker.
+
+"You, then, are the brave Dandolo with whom the Comite deputed me to
+correspond? And this citizen--"
+
+"Is Cottalto, whom my letters have so often mentioned." (I know not if
+the author of the original MSS. designs, under these names, to introduce
+the real Cottalto and the true Dandolo, who, in 1797, distinguished
+themselves by their sympathy with the French, and their democratic
+ardor.--Ed.)
+
+"Health and brotherhood to him! I have much to impart to you both. I
+will meet you at night, Dandolo. But in the streets we may be observed."
+
+"And I dare not appoint my own house; tyranny makes spies of our very
+walls. But the place herein designated is secure;" and he slipped an
+address into the hand of his correspondent.
+
+"To-night, then, at nine! Meanwhile I have other business." The man
+paused, his colour changed, and it was with an eager and passionate
+voice that he resumed,--
+
+"Your last letter mentioned this wealthy and mysterious visitor,--this
+Zanoni. He is still at Venice?"
+
+"I heard that he had left this morning; but his wife is still here."
+
+"His wife!--that is well!"
+
+"What know you of him? Think you that he would join us? His wealth would
+be--"
+
+"His house, his address,--quick!" interrupted the man.
+
+"The Palazzo di --, on the Grand Canal."
+
+"I thank you,--at nine we meet."
+
+The man hurried on through the street from which he had emerged; and,
+passing by the house in which he had taken up his lodging (he had
+arrived at Venice the night before), a woman who stood by the door
+caught his arm.
+
+"Monsieur," she said in French, "I have been watching for your return.
+Do you understand me? I will brave all, risk all, to go back with you to
+France,--to stand, through life or in death, by my husband's side!"
+
+"Citoyenne, I promised your husband that, if such your choice, I would
+hazard my own safety to aid it. But think again! Your husband is one of
+the faction which Robespierre's eyes have already marked; he cannot
+fly. All France is become a prison to the 'suspect.' You do not endanger
+yourself by return. Frankly, citoyenne, the fate you would share may be
+the guillotine. I speak (as you know by his letter) as your husband bade
+me."
+
+"Monsieur, I will return with you," said the woman, with a smile upon
+her pale face.
+
+"And yet you deserted your husband in the fair sunshine of the
+Revolution, to return to him amidst its storms and thunder," said the
+man, in a tone half of wonder, half rebuke.
+
+"Because my father's days were doomed; because he had no safety but in
+flight to a foreign land; because he was old and penniless, and had none
+but me to work for him; because my husband was not then in danger,
+and my father was! HE is dead--dead! My husband is in danger now. The
+daughter's duties are no more,--the wife's return!"
+
+"Be it so, citoyenne; on the third night I depart. Before then you may
+retract your choice."
+
+"Never!"
+
+A dark smile passed over the man's face.
+
+"O guillotine!" he said, "how many virtues hast thou brought to light!
+Well may they call thee 'A Holy Mother!' O gory guillotine!"
+
+He passed on muttering to himself, hailed a gondola, and was soon amidst
+the crowded waters of the Grand Canal.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.V.
+
+     Ce que j'ignore
+     Est plus triste peut-etre et plus affreux encore.
+     La Harpe, "Le Comte de Warwick," Act 5, sc. 1.
+
+     (That which I know not is, perhaps, more sad and fearful still.)
+
+The casement stood open, and Viola was seated by it. Beneath sparkled
+the broad waters in the cold but cloudless sunlight; and to that
+fair form, that half-averted face, turned the eyes of many a gallant
+cavalier, as their gondolas glided by.
+
+But at last, in the centre of the canal, one of these dark vessels
+halted motionless, as a man fixed his gaze from its lattice upon that
+stately palace. He gave the word to the rowers,--the vessel approached
+the marge. The stranger quitted the gondola; he passed up the
+broad stairs; he entered the palace. Weep on, smile no more, young
+mother!--the last page is turned!
+
+An attendant entered the room, and gave to Viola a card, with these
+words in English, "Viola, I must see you! Clarence Glyndon."
+
+Oh, yes, how gladly Viola would see him; how gladly speak to him of her
+happiness, of Zanoni!--how gladly show to him her child! Poor Clarence!
+she had forgotten him till now, as she had all the fever of her earlier
+life,--its dreams, its vanities, its poor excitement, the lamps of the
+gaudy theatre, the applause of the noisy crowd.
+
+He entered. She started to behold him, so changed were his gloomy brow,
+his resolute, careworn features, from the graceful form and careless
+countenance of the artist-lover. His dress, though not mean, was rude,
+neglected, and disordered. A wild, desperate, half-savage air had
+supplanted that ingenuous mien, diffident in its grace, earnest in its
+diffidence, which had once characterised the young worshipper of Art,
+the dreaming aspirant after some starrier lore.
+
+"Is it you?" she said at last. "Poor Clarence, how changed!"
+
+"Changed!" he said abruptly, as he placed himself by her side. "And whom
+am I to thank, but the fiends--the sorcerers--who have seized upon thy
+existence, as upon mine? Viola, hear me. A few weeks since the news
+reached me that you were in Venice. Under other pretences, and through
+innumerable dangers, I have come hither, risking liberty, perhaps
+life, if my name and career are known in Venice, to warn and save you.
+Changed, you call me!--changed without; but what is that to the ravages
+within? Be warned, be warned in time!"
+
+The voice of Glyndon, sounding hollow and sepulchral, alarmed Viola even
+more than his words. Pale, haggard, emaciated, he seemed almost as one
+risen from the dead, to appall and awe her. "What," she said, at last,
+in a faltering voice,--"what wild words do you utter! Can you--"
+
+"Listen!" interrupted Glyndon, laying his hand upon her arm, and its
+touch was as cold as death,--"listen! You have heard of the old stories
+of men who have leagued themselves with devils for the attainment of
+preternatural powers. Those stories are not fables. Such men live.
+Their delight is to increase the unhallowed circle of wretches like
+themselves. If their proselytes fail in the ordeal, the demon seizes
+them, even in this life, as it hath seized me!--if they succeed, woe,
+yea, a more lasting woe! There is another life, where no spells can
+charm the evil one, or allay the torture. I have come from a scene where
+blood flows in rivers,--where Death stands by the side of the bravest
+and the highest, and the one monarch is the Guillotine; but all the
+mortal perils with which men can be beset, are nothing to the dreariness
+of the chamber where the Horror that passes death moves and stirs!"
+
+It was then that Glyndon, with a cold and distinct precision, detailed,
+as he had done to Adela, the initiation through which he had gone. He
+described, in words that froze the blood of his listener, the appearance
+of that formless phantom, with the eyes that seared the brain and
+congealed the marrow of those who beheld. Once seen, it never
+was to be exorcised. It came at its own will, prompting black
+thoughts,--whispering strange temptations. Only in scenes of turbulent
+excitement was it absent! Solitude, serenity, the struggling desires
+after peace and virtue,--THESE were the elements it loved to haunt!
+Bewildered, terror-stricken, the wild account confirmed by the dim
+impressions that never, in the depth and confidence of affection, had
+been closely examined, but rather banished as soon as felt,--that
+the life and attributes of Zanoni were not like those of
+mortals,--impressions which her own love had made her hitherto censure
+as suspicions that wronged, and which, thus mitigated, had perhaps only
+served to rivet the fascinated chains in which he bound her heart and
+senses, but which now, as Glyndon's awful narrative filled her
+with contagious dread, half unbound the very spells they had woven
+before,--Viola started up in fear, not for HERSELF, and clasped her
+child in her arms!
+
+"Unhappiest one!" cried Glyndon, shuddering, "hast thou indeed given
+birth to a victim thou canst not save? Refuse it sustenance,--let it
+look to thee in vain for food! In the grave, at least, there are repose
+and peace!"
+
+Then there came back to Viola's mind the remembrance of Zanoni's
+night-long watches by that cradle, and the fear which even then had
+crept over her as she heard his murmured half-chanted words. And as
+the child looked at her with its clear, steadfast eye, in the strange
+intelligence of that look there was something that only confirmed her
+awe. So there both Mother and Forewarner stood in silence,--the sun
+smiling upon them through the casement, and dark by the cradle, though
+they saw it not, sat the motionless, veiled Thing!
+
+But by degrees better and juster and more grateful memories of the past
+returned to the young mother. The features of the infant, as she gazed,
+took the aspect of the absent father. A voice seemed to break from those
+rosy lips, and say, mournfully, "I speak to thee in thy child. In return
+for all my love for thee and thine, dost thou distrust me, at the first
+sentence of a maniac who accuses?"
+
+Her breast heaved, her stature rose, her eyes shone with a serene and
+holy light.
+
+"Go, poor victim of thine own delusions," she said to Glyndon; "I
+would not believe mine own senses, if they accused ITS father! And
+what knowest thou of Zanoni? What relation have Mejnour and the grisly
+spectres he invoked, with the radiant image with which thou wouldst
+connect them?"
+
+"Thou wilt learn too soon," replied Glyndon, gloomily. "And the very
+phantom that haunts me, whispers, with its bloodless lips, that its
+horrors await both thine and thee! I take not thy decision yet; before I
+leave Venice we shall meet again."
+
+He said, and departed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.VI.
+
+     Quel est l'egarement ou ton ame se livre?
+     La Harpe, "Le Comte de Warwick," Act 4, sc. 4.
+
+     (To what delusion does thy soul abandon itself?)
+
+Alas, Zanoni! the aspirer, the dark, bright one!--didst thou think that
+the bond between the survivor of ages and the daughter of a day could
+endure? Didst thou not foresee that, until the ordeal was past, there
+could be no equality between thy wisdom and her love? Art thou absent
+now seeking amidst thy solemn secrets the solemn safeguards for child
+and mother, and forgettest thou that the phantom that served thee hath
+power over its own gifts,--over the lives it taught thee to rescue from
+the grave? Dost thou not know that Fear and Distrust, once sown in the
+heart of Love, spring up from the seed into a forest that excludes the
+stars? Dark, bright one! the hateful eyes glare beside the mother and
+the child!
+
+All that day Viola was distracted by a thousand thoughts and terrors,
+which fled as she examined them to settle back the darklier. She
+remembered that, as she had once said to Glyndon, her very childhood had
+been haunted with strange forebodings, that she was ordained for some
+preternatural doom. She remembered that, as she had told him this,
+sitting by the seas that slumbered in the arms of the Bay of Naples, he,
+too, had acknowledged the same forebodings, and a mysterious sympathy
+had appeared to unite their fates. She remembered, above all, that,
+comparing their entangled thoughts, both had then said, that with the
+first sight of Zanoni the foreboding, the instinct, had spoken to their
+hearts more audibly than before, whispering that "with HIM was connected
+the secret of the unconjectured life."
+
+And now, when Glyndon and Viola met again, the haunting fears of
+childhood, thus referred to, woke from their enchanted sleep. With
+Glyndon's terror she felt a sympathy, against which her reason and her
+love struggled in vain. And still, when she turned her looks upon her
+child, it watched her with that steady, earnest eye, and its lips moved
+as if it sought to speak to her,--but no sound came. The infant refused
+to sleep. Whenever she gazed upon its face, still those wakeful,
+watchful eyes!--and in their earnestness, there spoke something of pain,
+of upbraiding, of accusation. They chilled her as she looked. Unable
+to endure, of herself, this sudden and complete revulsion of all the
+feelings which had hitherto made up her life, she formed the resolution
+natural to her land and creed; she sent for the priest who had
+habitually attended her at Venice, and to him she confessed, with
+passionate sobs and intense terror, the doubts that had broken upon her.
+The good father, a worthy and pious man, but with little education and
+less sense, one who held (as many of the lower Italians do to this day)
+even a poet to be a sort of sorcerer, seemed to shut the gates of
+hope upon her heart. His remonstrances were urgent, for his horror was
+unfeigned. He joined with Glyndon in imploring her to fly, if she felt
+the smallest doubt that her husband's pursuits were of the nature which
+the Roman Church had benevolently burned so many scholars for adopting.
+And even the little that Viola could communicate seemed, to the ignorant
+ascetic, irrefragable proof of sorcery and witchcraft; he had, indeed,
+previously heard some of the strange rumours which followed the path
+of Zanoni, and was therefore prepared to believe the worst; the worthy
+Bartolomeo would have made no bones of sending Watt to the stake, had he
+heard him speak of the steam-engine. But Viola, as untutored as himself,
+was terrified by his rough and vehement eloquence,--terrified, for
+by that penetration which Catholic priests, however dull, generally
+acquire, in their vast experience of the human heart hourly exposed
+to their probe, Bartolomeo spoke less of danger to herself than to her
+child. "Sorcerers," said he, "have ever sought the most to decoy and
+seduce the souls of the young,--nay, the infant;" and therewith he
+entered into a long catalogue of legendary fables, which he quoted
+as historical facts. All at which an English woman would have smiled,
+appalled the tender but superstitious Neapolitan; and when the priest
+left her, with solemn rebukes and grave accusations of a dereliction of
+her duties to her child, if she hesitated to fly with it from an abode
+polluted by the darker powers and unhallowed arts, Viola, still clinging
+to the image of Zanoni, sank into a passive lethargy which held her very
+reason in suspense.
+
+The hours passed: night came on; the house was hushed; and Viola, slowly
+awakened from the numbness and torpor which had usurped her faculties,
+tossed to and fro on her couch, restless and perturbed. The stillness
+became intolerable; yet more intolerable the sound that alone broke it,
+the voice of the clock, knelling moment after moment to its grave. The
+moments, at last, seemed themselves to find voice,--to gain shape. She
+thought she beheld them springing, wan and fairy-like, from the womb of
+darkness; and ere they fell again, extinguished, into that womb, their
+grave, their low small voices murmured, "Woman, we report to eternity
+all that is done in time! What shall we report of thee, O guardian of a
+new-born soul?" She became sensible that her fancies had brought a sort
+of partial delirium, that she was in a state between sleep and waking,
+when suddenly one thought became more predominant than the rest. The
+chamber which, in that and every house they had inhabited, even that in
+the Greek isles, Zanoni had set apart to a solitude on which none might
+intrude, the threshold of which even Viola's step was forbid to cross,
+and never, hitherto, in that sweet repose of confidence which belongs to
+contented love, had she even felt the curious desire to disobey,--now,
+that chamber drew her towards it. Perhaps THERE might be found a
+somewhat to solve the riddle, to dispel or confirm the doubt: that
+thought grew and deepened in its intenseness; it fastened on her as with
+a palpable and irresistible grasp; it seemed to raise her limbs without
+her will.
+
+And now, through the chamber, along the galleries thou glidest, O lovely
+shape! sleep-walking, yet awake. The moon shines on thee as thou glidest
+by, casement after casement, white-robed and wandering spirit!--thine
+arms crossed upon thy bosom, thine eyes fixed and open, with a calm
+unfearing awe. Mother, it is thy child that leads thee on! The fairy
+moments go before thee; thou hearest still the clock-knell tolling them
+to their graves behind. On, gliding on, thou hast gained the door; no
+lock bars thee, no magic spell drives thee back. Daughter of the
+dust, thou standest alone with night in the chamber where, pale and
+numberless, the hosts of space have gathered round the seer!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.VII.
+
+     Des Erdenlebens
+     Schweres Traumbild sinkt, und sinkt, und sinkt.
+     "Das Ideal und das Lebens."
+
+     (The Dream Shape of the heavy earthly life sinks, and sinks, and
+     sinks.)
+
+She stood within the chamber, and gazed around her; no signs by which an
+inquisitor of old could have detected the scholar of the Black Art were
+visible. No crucibles and caldrons, no brass-bound volumes and ciphered
+girdles, no skulls and cross-bones. Quietly streamed the broad moonlight
+through the desolate chamber with its bare, white walls. A few bunches
+of withered herbs, a few antique vessels of bronze, placed carelessly on
+a wooden form, were all which that curious gaze could identify with the
+pursuits of the absent owner. The magic, if it existed, dwelt in the
+artificer, and the materials, to other hands, were but herbs and bronze.
+So is it ever with thy works and wonders, O Genius,--Seeker of the
+Stars! Words themselves are the common property of all men; yet, from
+words themselves, Thou Architect of Immortalities, pilest up temples
+that shall outlive the Pyramids, and the very leaf of the Papyrus
+becomes a Shinar, stately with towers, round which the Deluge of Ages,
+shall roar in vain!
+
+But in that solitude has the Presence that there had invoked its wonders
+left no enchantment of its own? It seemed so; for as Viola stood in the
+chamber, she became sensible that some mysterious change was at work
+within herself. Her blood coursed rapidly, and with a sensation of
+delight, through her veins,--she felt as if chains were falling from
+her limbs, as if cloud after cloud was rolling from her gaze. All the
+confused thoughts which had moved through her trance settled and centred
+themselves in one intense desire to see the Absent One,--to be with him.
+The monads that make up space and air seemed charged with a spiritual
+attraction,--to become a medium through which her spirit could pass from
+its clay, and confer with the spirit to which the unutterable desire
+compelled it. A faintness seized her; she tottered to the seat on which
+the vessels and herbs were placed, and, as she bent down, she saw in one
+of the vessels a small vase of crystal. By a mechanical and involuntary
+impulse, her hand seized the vase; she opened it, and the volatile
+essence it contained sparkled up, and spread through the room a powerful
+and delicious fragrance. She inhaled the odour, she laved her temples
+with the liquid, and suddenly her life seemed to spring up from the
+previous faintness,--to spring, to soar, to float, to dilate upon the
+wings of a bird. The room vanished from her eyes. Away, away, over lands
+and seas and space on the rushing desire flies the disprisoned mind!
+
+Upon a stratum, not of this world, stood the world-born shapes of the
+sons of Science, upon an embryo world, upon a crude, wan, attenuated
+mass of matter, one of the Nebulae, which the suns of the myriad systems
+throw off as they roll round the Creator's throne*, to become themselves
+new worlds of symmetry and glory,--planets and suns that forever and
+forever shall in their turn multiply their shining race, and be the
+fathers of suns and planets yet to come.
+
+     (*"Astronomy instructs us that, in the original condition of
+     the solar system, the sun was the nucleus of a nebulosity or
+     luminous mass which revolved on its axis, and extended far
+     beyond the orbits of all the planets,--the planets as yet
+     having no existence. Its temperature gradually diminished,
+     and, becoming contracted by cooling, the rotation increased
+     in rapidity, and zones of nebulosity were successively
+     thrown off, in consequence of the centrifugal force
+     overpowering the central attraction. The condensation of
+     these separate masses constituted the planets and
+     satellites. But this view of the conversion of gaseous
+     matter into planetary bodies is not limited to our own
+     system; it extends to the formation of the innumerable suns
+     and worlds which are distributed throughout the universe.
+     The sublime discoveries of modern astronomers have shown
+     that every part of the realms of space abounds in large
+     expansions of attenuated matter termed nebulae, which are
+     irregularly reflective of light, of various figures, and in
+     different states of condensation, from that of a diffused,
+     luminous mass to suns and planets like our own."--From
+     Mantell's eloquent and delightful work, entitled "The
+     Wonders of Geology," volume i. page 22.)
+
+There, in that enormous solitude of an infant world, which thousands and
+thousands of years can alone ripen into form, the spirit of Viola beheld
+the shape of Zanoni, or rather the likeness, the simulacrun, the LEMUR
+of his shape, not its human and corporeal substance,--as if, like hers,
+the Intelligence was parted from the Clay,--and as the sun, while it
+revolves and glows, had cast off into remotest space that nebular image
+of itself, so the thing of earth, in the action of its more luminous and
+enduring being, had thrown its likeness into that new-born stranger of
+the heavens. There stood the phantom,--a phantom Mejnour, by its side.
+In the gigantic chaos around raved and struggled the kindling elements;
+water and fire, darkness and light, at war,--vapour and cloud hardening
+into mountains, and the Breath of Life moving like a steadfast splendour
+over all.
+
+As the dreamer looked, and shivered, she beheld that even there the
+two phantoms of humanity were not alone. Dim monster-forms that that
+disordered chaos alone could engender, the first reptile Colossal race
+that wreathe and crawl through the earliest stratum of a world labouring
+into life, coiled in the oozing matter or hovered through the meteorous
+vapours. But these the two seekers seemed not to heed; their gaze was
+fixed intent upon an object in the farthest space. With the eyes of the
+spirit, Viola followed theirs; with a terror far greater than the chaos
+and its hideous inhabitants produced, she beheld a shadowy likeness
+of the very room in which her form yet dwelt, its white walls, the
+moonshine sleeping on its floor, its open casement, with the quiet roofs
+and domes of Venice looming over the sea that sighed below,--and in that
+room the ghost-like image of herself! This double phantom--here herself
+a phantom, gazing there upon a phantom-self--had in it a horror which no
+words can tell, no length of life forego.
+
+But presently she saw this image of herself rise slowly, leave the room
+with its noiseless feet: it passes the corridor, it kneels by a cradle!
+Heaven of Heaven! She beholds her child!--still with its wondrous,
+child-like beauty and its silent, wakeful eyes. But beside that cradle
+there sits cowering a mantled, shadowy form,--the more fearful and
+ghastly from its indistinct and unsubstantial gloom. The walls of that
+chamber seem to open as the scene of a theatre. A grim dungeon; streets
+through which pour shadowy crowds; wrath and hatred, and the aspect
+of demons in their ghastly visages; a place of death; a murderous
+instrument; a shamble-house of human flesh; herself; her child;--all,
+all, rapid phantasmagoria, chased each other. Suddenly the
+phantom-Zanoni turned, it seemed to perceive herself,--her second self.
+It sprang towards her; her spirit could bear no more. She shrieked,
+she woke. She found that in truth she had left that dismal chamber; the
+cradle was before her, the child! all--all as that trance had seen it;
+and, vanishing into air, even that dark, formless Thing!
+
+"My child! my child! thy mother shall save thee yet!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.VIII.
+
+     Qui?  Toi m'abandonner!  Ou vas-tu?  Non! demeure,
+     Demeure!
+     La Harpe, "Le Comte de Warwick," Act 3, sc. 5.
+
+     (Who?  THOU abandon me!--where goest thou?  No! stay, stay!)
+
+Letter from Viola to Zanoni.
+
+"It has come to this!--I am the first to part! I, the unfaithful one,
+bid thee farewell forever. When thine eyes fall upon this writing thou
+wilt know me as one of the dead. For thou that wert, and still art my
+life,--I am lost to thee! O lover! O husband! O still worshipped and
+adored! if thou hast ever loved me, if thou canst still pity, seek not
+to discover the steps that fly thee. If thy charms can detect and tract
+me, spare me, spare our child! Zanoni, I will rear it to love thee, to
+call thee father! Zanoni, its young lips shall pray for thee! Ah, spare
+thy child, for infants are the saints of earth, and their mediation
+may be heard on high! Shall I tell thee why I part? No; thou, the
+wisely-terrible, canst divine what the hand trembles to record; and
+while I shudder at thy power,--while it is thy power I fly (our child
+upon my bosom),--it comforts me still to think that thy power can read
+the heart! Thou knowest that it is the faithful mother that writes
+to thee, it is not the faithless wife! Is there sin in thy knowledge,
+Zanoni? Sin must have sorrow: and it were sweet--oh, how sweet--to be
+thy comforter. But the child, the infant, the soul that looks to mine
+for its shield!--magician, I wrest from thee that soul! Pardon, pardon,
+if my words wrong thee. See, I fall on my knees to write the rest!
+
+"Why did I never recoil before from thy mysterious lore; why did the
+very strangeness of thine unearthly life only fascinate me with a
+delightful fear? Because, if thou wert sorcerer or angel-demon, there
+was no peril to other but myself: and none to me, for my love was my
+heavenliest part; and my ignorance in all things, except the art to love
+thee, repelled every thought that was not bright and glorious as thine
+image to my eyes. But NOW there is another! Look! why does it watch me
+thus,--why that never-sleeping, earnest, rebuking gaze? Have thy spells
+encompassed it already? Hast thou marked it, cruel one, for the terrors
+of thy unutterable art? Do not madden me,--do not madden me!--unbind the
+spell!
+
+"Hark! the oars without! They come,--they come, to bear me from thee! I
+look round, and methinks that I see thee everywhere. Thou speakest to
+me from every shadow, from every star. There, by the casement, thy lips
+last pressed mine; there, there by that threshold didst thou turn again,
+and thy smile seemed so trustingly to confide in me! Zanoni--husband!--I
+will stay! I cannot part from thee! No, no! I will go to the room
+where thy dear voice, with its gentle music, assuaged the pangs
+of travail!--where, heard through the thrilling darkness, it first
+whispered to my ear, 'Viola, thou art a mother!' A mother!--yes, I rise
+from my knees,--I AM a mother! They come! I am firm; farewell!"
+
+Yes; thus suddenly, thus cruelly, whether in the delirium of blind and
+unreasoning superstition, or in the resolve of that conviction which
+springs from duty, the being for whom he had resigned so much of empire
+and of glory forsook Zanoni. This desertion, never foreseen, never
+anticipated, was yet but the constant fate that attends those who would
+place Mind BEYOND the earth, and yet treasure the Heart WITHIN it.
+Ignorance everlastingly shall recoil from knowledge. But never yet, from
+nobler and purer motives of self-sacrifice, did human love link itself
+to another, than did the forsaking wife now abandon the absent. For
+rightly had she said that it was not the faithless wife, it WAS the
+faithful mother that fled from all in which her earthly happiness was
+centred.
+
+As long as the passion and fervour that impelled the act animated
+her with false fever, she clasped her infant to her breast, and was
+consoled,--resigned. But what bitter doubt of her own conduct, what icy
+pang of remorse shot through her heart, when, as they rested for a
+few hours on the road to Leghorn, she heard the woman who accompanied
+herself and Glyndon pray for safety to reach her husband's side,
+and strength to share the perils that would meet her there! Terrible
+contrast to her own desertion! She shrunk into the darkness of her own
+heart,--and then no voice from within consoled her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.IX.
+
+     Zukunft hast du mir gegeben,
+     Doch du nehmst den Augenblick.
+     "Kassandra."
+
+     (Futurity hast thou given to me,--yet takest from me the Moment.)
+
+"Mejnour, behold thy work! Out, out upon our little vanities of
+wisdom!--out upon our ages of lore and life! To save her from Peril I
+left her presence, and the Peril has seized her in its grasp!"
+
+"Chide not thy wisdom but thy passions! Abandon thine idle hope of the
+love of woman. See, for those who would unite the lofty with the lowly,
+the inevitable curse; thy very nature uncomprehended,--thy sacrifices
+unguessed. The lowly one views but in the lofty a necromancer or a
+fiend. Titan, canst thou weep?"
+
+"I know it now, I see it all! It WAS her spirit that stood beside
+our own, and escaped my airy clasp! O strong desire of motherhood
+and nature! unveiling all our secrets, piercing space and traversing
+worlds!--Mejnour, what awful learning lies hid in the ignorance of the
+heart that loves!"
+
+"The heart," answered the mystic, coldly; "ay, for five thousand years I
+have ransacked the mysteries of creation, but I have not yet discovered
+all the wonders in the heart of the simplest boor!"
+
+"Yet our solemn rites deceived us not; the prophet-shadows, dark with
+terror and red with blood, still foretold that, even in the dungeon, and
+before the deathsman, I,--I had the power to save them both!"
+
+"But at some unconjectured and most fatal sacrifice to thyself."
+
+"To myself! Icy sage, there is no self in love! I go. Nay, alone: I
+want thee not. I want now no other guide but the human instincts of
+affection. No cave so dark, no solitude so vast, as to conceal her.
+Though mine art fail me; though the stars heed me not; though space,
+with its shining myriads, is again to me but the azure void,--I return
+but to love and youth and hope! When have they ever failed to triumph
+and to save!"
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VII. -- THE REIGN OF TERROR.
+
+     Orrida maesta nei fero aspetto
+     Terrore accresce, e piu superbo il rende;
+     Rosseggian gli occhi, e di veneno infetto
+     Come infausta cometa, il guardo splende,
+     Gil involve il mento, e sull 'irsuto petto
+     Ispida efoita la gran barbe scende;
+     E IN GUISA DE VORAGINE PROFONDA
+     SAPRE LA BOCCA A'ATRO SANGUE IMMONDA.
+     (Ger. Lib., Cant. iv. 7.)
+
+
+     A horrible majesty in the fierce aspect increases it terror, and
+     renders it more  superb.  Red glow the eyes, and the aspect
+     infected, like a baleful comet, with  envenomed influences,
+     glares around.  A vast beard covers the chin--and, rough  and
+     thick, descends over the shaggy breast.--And like a profound gulf
+     expand the jaws, foul with black gore.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.I.
+
+     Qui suis-je, moi qu'on accuse?  Un esclave de la Liberte, un
+     martyr vivant de la Republique.
+     --"Discours de Robespierre, 8 Thermidor."
+
+     (Who am I,--_I_ whom they accuse?  A slave of Liberty,--a living
+     martyr for the Republic.)
+
+It roars,--The River of Hell, whose first outbreak was chanted as the
+gush of a channel to Elysium. How burst into blossoming hopes fair
+hearts that had nourished themselves on the diamond dews of the rosy
+dawn, when Liberty came from the dark ocean, and the arms of decrepit
+Thraldom--Aurora from the bed of Tithon! Hopes! ye have ripened into
+fruit, and the fruit is gore and ashes! Beautiful Roland, eloquent
+Vergniaud, visionary Condorcet, high-hearted Malesherbes!--wits,
+philosophers, statesmen, patriots, dreamers! behold the millennium for
+which ye dared and laboured!
+
+I invoke the ghosts! Saturn hath devoured his children ("La Revolution
+est comme Saturne, elle devorera tous ses enfans."--Vergniaud.), and
+lives alone,--I his true name of Moloch!
+
+It is the Reign of Terror, with Robespierre the king. The struggles
+between the boa and the lion are past: the boa has consumed the lion,
+and is heavy with the gorge,--Danton has fallen, and Camille Desmoulins.
+Danton had said before his death, "The poltroon Robespierre,--I alone
+could have saved him." From that hour, indeed, the blood of the dead
+giant clouded the craft of "Maximilien the Incorruptible," as at last,
+amidst the din of the roused Convention, it choked his voice. ("Le sang
+de Danton t'etouffe!" (the blood of Danton chokes thee!) said Garnier
+de l'Aube, when on the fatal 9th of Thermidor, Robespierre gasped feebly
+forth, "Pour la derniere fois, President des Assassins, je te demande
+la parole." (For the last time, President of Assassins, I demand to
+speak.)) If, after that last sacrifice, essential, perhaps, to his
+safety, Robespierre had proclaimed the close of the Reign of Terror,
+and acted upon the mercy which Danton had begun to preach, he might have
+lived and died a monarch. But the prisons continued to reek,--the glaive
+to fall; and Robespierre perceived not that his mobs were glutted to
+satiety with death, and the strongest excitement a chief could give
+would be a return from devils into men.
+
+We are transported to a room in the house of Citizen Dupleix, the
+menuisier, in the month of July, 1794; or, in the calendar of the
+Revolutionists, it was the Thermidor of the Second Year of the Republic,
+One and Indivisible! Though the room was small, it was furnished and
+decorated with a minute and careful effort at elegance and refinement.
+It seemed, indeed, the desire of the owner to avoid at once what was
+mean and rude, and what was luxurious and voluptuous. It was a trim,
+orderly, precise grace that shaped the classic chairs, arranged the
+ample draperies, sank the frameless mirrors into the wall, placed bust
+and bronze on their pedestals, and filled up the niches here and there
+with well-bound books, filed regularly in their appointed ranks. An
+observer would have said, "This man wishes to imply to you,--I am
+not rich; I am not ostentatious; I am not luxurious; I am no indolent
+Sybarite, with couches of down, and pictures that provoke the sense;
+I am no haughty noble, with spacious halls, and galleries that awe the
+echo. But so much the greater is my merit if I disdain these excesses
+of the ease or the pride, since I love the elegant, and have a taste!
+Others may be simple and honest, from the very coarseness of their
+habits; if I, with so much refinement and delicacy, am simple and
+honest,--reflect, and admire me!"
+
+On the walls of this chamber hung many portraits, most of them
+represented but one face; on the formal pedestals were grouped many
+busts, most of them sculptured but one head. In that small chamber
+Egotism sat supreme, and made the Arts its looking-glasses. Erect in
+a chair, before a large table spread with letters, sat the original of
+bust and canvas, the owner of the apartment. He was alone, yet he sat
+erect, formal, stiff, precise, as if in his very home he was not at
+ease. His dress was in harmony with his posture and his chamber; it
+affected a neatness of its own,--foreign both to the sumptuous fashions
+of the deposed nobles, and the filthy ruggedness of the sans-culottes.
+Frizzled and coiffe, not a hair was out of order, not a speck lodged
+on the sleek surface of the blue coat, not a wrinkle crumpled the snowy
+vest, with its under-relief of delicate pink. At the first glance, you
+might have seen in that face nothing but the ill-favoured features of a
+sickly countenance; at a second glance, you would have perceived that
+it had a power, a character of its own. The forehead, though low and
+compressed, was not without that appearance of thought and intelligence
+which, it may be observed, that breadth between the eyebrows almost
+invariably gives; the lips were firm and tightly drawn together, yet
+ever and anon they trembled, and writhed restlessly. The eyes, sullen
+and gloomy, were yet piercing, and full of a concentrated vigour that
+did not seem supported by the thin, feeble frame, or the green lividness
+of the hues, which told of anxiety and disease.
+
+Such was Maximilien Robespierre; such the chamber over the menuisier's
+shop, whence issued the edicts that launched armies on their career of
+glory, and ordained an artificial conduit to carry off the blood that
+deluged the metropolis of the most martial people in the globe! Such was
+the man who had resigned a judicial appointment (the early object of
+his ambition) rather than violate his philanthropical principles by
+subscribing to the death of a single fellow-creature; such was the
+virgin enemy to capital punishments; and such, Butcher-Dictator now, was
+the man whose pure and rigid manners, whose incorruptible honesty, whose
+hatred of the excesses that tempt to love and wine, would, had he died
+five years earlier, have left him the model for prudent fathers and
+careful citizens to place before their sons. Such was the man who seemed
+to have no vice, till circumstance, that hotbed, brought forth the two
+which, in ordinary times, lie ever the deepest and most latent in a
+man's heart,--Cowardice and Envy. To one of these sources is to be
+traced every murder that master-fiend committed. His cowardice was of
+a peculiar and strange sort; for it was accompanied with the most
+unscrupulous and determined WILL,--a will that Napoleon reverenced;
+a will of iron, and yet nerves of aspen. Mentally, he was a
+hero,--physically, a dastard. When the veriest shadow of danger
+threatened his person, the frame cowered, but the will swept the danger
+to the slaughter-house. So there he sat, bolt upright,--his small, lean
+fingers clenched convulsively; his sullen eyes straining into space,
+their whites yellowed with streaks of corrupt blood; his ears literally
+moving to and fro, like the ignobler animals', to catch every sound,--a
+Dionysius in his cave; but his posture decorous and collected, and every
+formal hair in its frizzled place.
+
+"Yes, yes," he said in a muttered tone, "I hear them; my good Jacobins
+are at their post on the stairs. Pity they swear so! I have a law
+against oaths,--the manners of the poor and virtuous people must
+be reformed. When all is safe, an example or two amongst those good
+Jacobins would make effect. Faithful fellows, how they love me!
+Hum!--what an oath was that!--they need not swear so loud,--upon the
+very staircase, too! It detracts from my reputation. Ha! steps!"
+
+The soliloquist glanced at the opposite mirror, and took up a volume;
+he seemed absorbed in its contents, as a tall fellow, a bludgeon in his
+hand, a girdle adorned with pistols round his waist, opened the door,
+and announced two visitors. The one was a young man, said to resemble
+Robespierre in person, but of a far more decided and resolute expression
+of countenance. He entered first, and, looking over the volume in
+Robespierre's hand, for the latter seemed still intent on his lecture,
+exclaimed,--
+
+"What! Rousseau's Heloise? A love-tale!"
+
+"Dear Payan, it is not the love,--it is the philosophy that charms me.
+What noble sentiments!--what ardour of virtue! If Jean Jacques had but
+lived to see this day!"
+
+While the Dictator thus commented on his favourite author, whom in his
+orations he laboured hard to imitate, the second visitor was wheeled
+into the room in a chair. This man was also in what, to most, is the
+prime of life,--namely, about thirty-eight; but he was literally dead in
+the lower limbs: crippled, paralytic, distorted, he was yet, as the time
+soon came to tell him,--a Hercules in Crime! But the sweetest of human
+smiles dwelt upon his lips; a beauty almost angelic characterised his
+features ("Figure d'ange," says one of his contemporaries, in describing
+Couthon. The address, drawn up most probably by Payan (Thermidor 9),
+after the arrest of Robespierre, thus mentions his crippled colleague:
+"Couthon, ce citoyen vertueux, QUI N'A QUE LE COEUR ET LA TETE DE
+VIVANS, mais qui les a brulants de patriotisme" (Couthon, that virtuous
+citizen, who has but the head and the heart of the living, yet possesses
+these all on flame with patriotism.)); an inexpressible aspect of
+kindness, and the resignation of suffering but cheerful benignity, stole
+into the hearts of those who for the first time beheld him. With the
+most caressing, silver, flute-like voice, Citizen Couthon saluted the
+admirer of Jean Jacques.
+
+"Nay,--do not say that it is not the LOVE that attracts thee; it IS the
+love! but not the gross, sensual attachment of man for woman. No! the
+sublime affection for the whole human race, and indeed, for all that
+lives!"
+
+And Citizen Couthon, bending down, fondled the little spaniel that he
+invariably carried in his bosom, even to the Convention, as a vent for
+the exuberant sensibilities which overflowed his affectionate heart.
+(This tenderness for some pet animal was by no means peculiar to
+Couthon; it seems rather a common fashion with the gentle butchers of
+the Revolution. M. George Duval informs us ("Souvenirs de la Terreur,"
+volume iii page 183) that Chaumette had an aviary, to which he devoted
+his harmless leisure; the murderous Fournier carried on his shoulders a
+pretty little squirrel, attached by a silver chain; Panis bestowed the
+superfluity of his affections upon two gold pheasants; and Marat, who
+would not abate one of the three hundred thousand heads he demanded,
+REARED DOVES! Apropos of the spaniel of Couthon, Duval gives us an
+amusing anecdote of Sergent, not one of the least relentless agents of
+the massacre of September. A lady came to implore his protection for one
+of her relations confined in the Abbaye. He scarcely deigned to speak to
+her. As she retired in despair, she trod by accident on the paw of
+his favourite spaniel. Sergent, turning round, enraged and furious,
+exclaimed, "MADAM, HAVE YOU NO HUMANITY?")
+
+"Yes, for all that lives," repeated Robespierre, tenderly.
+"Good Couthon,--poor Couthon! Ah, the malice of men!--how we are
+misrepresented! To be calumniated as the executioners of our colleagues!
+Ah, it is THAT which pierces the heart! To be an object of terror to the
+enemies of our country,--THAT is noble; but to be an object of terror
+to the good, the patriotic, to those one loves and reveres,--THAT is the
+most terrible of human tortures at least, to a susceptible and honest
+heart!" (Not to fatigue the reader with annotations, I may here observe
+that nearly every sentiment ascribed in the text to Robespierre is to be
+found expressed in his various discourses.)
+
+"How I love to hear him!" ejaculated Couthon.
+
+"Hem!" said Payan, with some impatience. "But now to business!"
+
+"Ah, to business!" said Robespierre, with a sinister glance from his
+bloodshot eyes.
+
+"The time has come," said Payan, "when the safety of the Republic
+demands a complete concentration of its power. These brawlers of the
+Comite du Salut Public can only destroy; they cannot construct. They
+hated you, Maximilien, from the moment you attempted to replace anarcy
+by institutions. How they mock at the festival which proclaimed the
+acknowledgment of a Supreme Being: they would have no ruler, even in
+heaven! Your clear and vigorous intellect saw that, having wrecked
+an old world, it became necessary to shape a new one. The first step
+towards construction must be to destroy the destroyers. While we
+deliberate, your enemies act. Better this very night to attack the
+handful of gensdarmes that guard them, than to confront the battalions
+they may raise to-morrow."
+
+"No," said Robespierre, who recoiled before the determined spirit of
+Payan; "I have a better and safer plan. This is the 6th of Thermidor;
+on the 10th--on the 10th, the Convention go in a body to the Fete
+Decadaire. A mob shall form; the canonniers, the troops of Henriot, the
+young pupils de l'Ecole de Mars, shall mix in the crowd. Easy, then, to
+strike the conspirators whom we shall designate to our agents. On the
+same day, too, Fouquier and Dumas shall not rest; and a sufficient
+number of 'the suspect' to maintain salutary awe, and keep up the
+revolutionary excitement, shall perish by the glaive of the law. The
+10th shall be the great day of action. Payan, of these last culprits,
+have you prepared a list?"
+
+"It is here," returned Payan, laconically, presenting a paper.
+
+Robespierre glanced over it rapidly. "Collot d'Herbois!--good!
+Barrere!--ay, it was Barrere who said, 'Let us strike: the dead alone
+never return.' ('Frappons! il n'y a que les morts qui ne revient
+pas.'--Barrere.) Vadier, the savage jester!--good--good! Vadier of the
+Mountain. He has called me 'Mahomet!' Scelerat! blasphemer!"
+
+"Mahomet is coming to the Mountain," said Couthon, with his silvery
+accent, as he caressed his spaniel.
+
+"But how is this? I do not see the name of Tallien? Tallien,--I hate
+that man; that is," said Robespierre, correcting himself with the
+hypocrisy or self-deceit which those who formed the council of this
+phrase-monger exhibited habitually, even among themselves,--"that is,
+Virtue and our Country hate him! There is no man in the whole Convention
+who inspires me with the same horror as Tallien. Couthon, I see a
+thousand Dantons where Tallien sits!"
+
+"Tallien has the only head that belongs to this deformed body," said
+Payan, whose ferocity and crime, like those of St. Just, were not
+unaccompanied by talents of no common order. "Were it not better to
+draw away the head, to win, to buy him, for the time, and dispose of him
+better when left alone? He may hate YOU, but he loves MONEY!"
+
+"No," said Robespierre, writing down the name of Jean Lambert Tallien,
+with a slow hand that shaped each letter with stern distinctness; "that
+one head IS MY NECESSITY!"
+
+"I have a SMALL list here," said Couthon, sweetly,--"a VERY small
+list. You are dealing with the Mountain; it is necessary to make a few
+examples in the Plain. These moderates are as straws which follow the
+wind. They turned against us yesterday in the Convention. A little
+terror will correct the weathercocks. Poor creatures! I owe them no
+ill-will; I could weep for them. But before all, la chere patrie!"
+
+The terrible glance of Robespierre devoured the list which the man of
+sensibility submitted to him. "Ah, these are well chosen; men not of
+mark enough to be regretted, which is the best policy with the relics
+of that party; some foreigners too,--yes, THEY have no parents in
+Paris. These wives and parents are beginning to plead against us. Their
+complaints demoralise the guillotine!"
+
+"Couthon is right," said Payan; "MY list contains those whom it will be
+safer to despatch en masse in the crowd assembled at the Fete. HIS list
+selects those whom we may prudently consign to the law. Shall it not be
+signed at once?"
+
+"It IS signed," said Robespierre, formally replacing his pen upon the
+inkstand. "Now to more important matters. These deaths will create no
+excitement; but Collot d'Herbois, Bourdon De l'Oise, Tallien," the
+last name Robespierre gasped as he pronounced, "THEY are the heads of
+parties. This is life or death to us as well as them."
+
+"Their heads are the footstools to your curule chair," said Payan, in
+a half whisper. "There is no danger if we are bold. Judges, juries, all
+have been your selection. You seize with one hand the army, with the
+other, the law. Your voice yet commands the people--"
+
+"The poor and virtuous people," murmured Robespierre.
+
+"And even," continued Payan, "if our design at the Fete fail us, we must
+not shrink from the resources still at our command. Reflect! Henriot,
+the general of the Parisian army, furnishes you with troops to arrest;
+the Jacobin Club with a public to approve; inexorable Dumas with judges
+who never acquit. We must be bold!"
+
+"And we ARE bold," exclaimed Robespierre, with sudden passion, and
+striking his hand on the table as he rose, with his crest erect, as a
+serpent in the act to strike. "In seeing the multitude of vices that
+the revolutionary torrent mingles with civic virtues, I tremble to be
+sullied in the eyes of posterity by the impure neighbourhood of these
+perverse men who thrust themselves among the sincere defenders of
+humanity. What!--they think to divide the country like a booty! I
+thank them for their hatred to all that is virtuous and worthy! These
+men,"--and he grasped the list of Payan in his hand,--"these!--not
+WE--have drawn the line of demarcation between themselves and the lovers
+of France!"
+
+"True, we must reign alone!" muttered Payan; "in other words, the state
+needs unity of will;" working, with his strong practical mind, the
+corollary from the logic of his word-compelling colleague.
+
+"I will go to the Convention," continued Robespierre. "I have absented
+myself too long,--lest I might seem to overawe the Republic that I have
+created. Away with such scruples! I will prepare the people! I will
+blast the traitors with a look!"
+
+He spoke with the terrible firmness of the orator that had never
+failed,--of the moral will that marched like a warrior on the cannon. At
+that instant he was interrupted; a letter was brought to him: he opened
+it,--his face fell, he shook from limb to limb; it was one of the
+anonymous warnings by which the hate and revenge of those yet left alive
+to threaten tortured the death-giver.
+
+"Thou art smeared," ran the lines, "with the best blood of France. Read
+thy sentence! I await the hour when the people shall knell thee to the
+doomsman. If my hope deceive me, if deferred too long,--hearken, read!
+This hand, which thine eyes shall search in vain to discover, shall
+pierce thy heart. I see thee every day,--I am with thee every day. At
+each hour my arm rises against thy breast. Wretch! live yet awhile,
+though but for few and miserable days--live to think of me; sleep to
+dream of me! Thy terror and thy thought of me are the heralds of thy
+doom. Adieu! this day itself I go forth to riot on thy fears!" (See
+"Papiers inedits trouves chez Robespierre," etc., volume ii. page 155.
+(No. lx.))
+
+"Your lists are not full enough!" said the tyrant, with a hollow voice,
+as the paper dropped from his trembling hand. "Give them to me!--give
+them to me! Think again, think again! Barrere is right--right!
+'Frappons! il n'y a que les morts qui ne revient pas!'"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.II.
+
+     La haine, dans ces lieux, n'a qu'un glaive assassin.
+     Elle marche dans l'ombre.
+     La Harpe, "Jeanne de Naples," Act iv. sc. 1.
+
+     (Hate, in these regions, has but the sword of the assassin.  She
+     moves in the shade.)
+
+While such the designs and fears of Maximilien Robespierre, common
+danger, common hatred, whatever was yet left of mercy or of virtue
+in the agents of the Revolution, served to unite strange opposites in
+hostility to the universal death-dealer. There was, indeed, an actual
+conspiracy at work against him among men little less bespattered than
+himself with innocent blood. But that conspiracy would have been idle of
+itself, despite the abilities of Tallien and Barras (the only men whom
+it comprised, worthy, by foresight and energy, the names of "leaders").
+The sure and destroying elements that gathered round the tyrant were
+Time and Nature; the one, which he no longer suited; the other, which
+he had outraged and stirred up in the human breast. The most atrocious
+party of the Revolution, the followers of Hebert, gone to his last
+account, the butcher-atheists, who, in desecrating heaven and earth,
+still arrogated inviolable sanctity to themselves, were equally enraged
+at the execution of their filthy chief, and the proclamation of a
+Supreme Being. The populace, brutal as it had been, started as from a
+dream of blood, when their huge idol, Danton, no longer filled the
+stage of terror, rendering crime popular by that combination of careless
+frankness and eloquent energy which endears their heroes to the herd.
+The glaive of the guillotine had turned against THEMSELVES. They had
+yelled and shouted, and sung and danced, when the venerable age, or the
+gallant youth, of aristocracy or letters, passed by their streets in
+the dismal tumbrils; but they shut up their shops, and murmured to each
+other, when their own order was invaded, and tailors and cobblers, and
+journeymen and labourers, were huddled off to the embraces of the "Holy
+Mother Guillotine," with as little ceremony as if they had been the
+Montmorencies or the La Tremouilles, the Malesherbes or the Lavoisiers.
+"At this time," said Couthon, justly, "Les ombres de Danton, d'Hebert,
+de Chaumette, se promenent parmi nous!" (The shades of Danton, Hebert,
+and Chaumette walk amongst us.)
+
+Among those who had shared the doctrines, and who now dreaded the
+fate of the atheist Hebert, was the painter, Jean Nicot. Mortified and
+enraged to find that, by the death of his patron, his career was closed;
+and that, in the zenith of the Revolution for which he had laboured,
+he was lurking in caves and cellars, more poor, more obscure, more
+despicable than he had been at the commencement,--not daring to exercise
+even his art, and fearful every hour that his name would swell the lists
+of the condemned,--he was naturally one of the bitterest enemies of
+Robespierre and his government. He held secret meetings with Collot
+d'Herbois, who was animated by the same spirit; and with the creeping
+and furtive craft that characterised his abilities, he contrived,
+undetected, to disseminate tracts and invectives against the Dictator,
+and to prepare, amidst "the poor and virtuous people," the train for
+the grand explosion. But still so firm to the eyes, even of profounder
+politicians than Jean Nicot, appeared the sullen power of the
+incorruptible Maximilien; so timorous was the movement against
+him,--that Nicot, in common with many others, placed his hopes rather in
+the dagger of the assassin than the revolt of the multitude. But Nicot,
+though not actually a coward, shrunk himself from braving the fate of
+the martyr; he had sense enough to see that, though all parties might
+rejoice in the assassination, all parties would probably concur in
+beheading the assassin. He had not the virtue to become a Brutus.
+His object was to inspire a proxy-Brutus; and in the centre of that
+inflammable population this was no improbable hope.
+
+Amongst those loudest and sternest against the reign of blood; amongst
+those most disenchanted of the Revolution; amongst those most appalled
+by its excesses,--was, as might be expected, the Englishman, Clarence
+Glyndon. The wit and accomplishments, the uncertain virtues that
+had lighted with fitful gleams the mind of Camille Desmoulins, had
+fascinated Glyndon more than the qualities of any other agent in the
+Revolution. And when (for Camille Desmoulins had a heart, which seemed
+dead or dormant in most of his contemporaries) that vivid child of
+genius and of error, shocked at the massacre of the Girondins, and
+repentant of his own efforts against them, began to rouse the serpent
+malice of Robespierre by new doctrines of mercy and toleration, Glyndon
+espoused his views with his whole strength and soul. Camille Desmoulins
+perished, and Glyndon, hopeless at once of his own life and the cause
+of humanity, from that time sought only the occasion of flight from the
+devouring Golgotha. He had two lives to heed besides his own; for them
+he trembled, and for them he schemed and plotted the means of escape.
+Though Glyndon hated the principles, the party (None were more opposed
+to the Hebertists than Camille Desmoulins and his friends. It is curious
+and amusing to see these leaders of the mob, calling the mob "the
+people" one day, and the "canaille" the next, according as it suits
+them. "I know," says Camille, "that they (the Hebertists) have all the
+canaille with them."--(Ils ont toute la canaille pour eux.)), and the
+vices of Nicot, he yet extended to the painter's penury the means of
+subsistence; and Jean Nicot, in return, designed to exalt Glyndon
+to that very immortality of a Brutus from which he modestly recoiled
+himself. He founded his designs on the physical courage, on the wild and
+unsettled fancies of the English artist, and on the vehement hate and
+indignant loathing with which he openly regarded the government of
+Maximilien.
+
+At the same hour, on the same day in July, in which Robespierre
+conferred (as we have seen) with his allies, two persons were seated in
+a small room in one of the streets leading out of the Rue St. Honore;
+the one, a man, appeared listening impatiently, and with a sullen
+brow, to his companion, a woman of singular beauty, but with a bold
+and reckless expression, and her face as she spoke was animated by the
+passions of a half-savage and vehement nature.
+
+"Englishman," said the woman, "beware!--you know that, whether in flight
+or at the place of death, I would brave all to be by your side,--you
+know THAT! Speak!"
+
+"Well, Fillide; did I ever doubt your fidelity?"
+
+"Doubt it you cannot,--betray it you may. You tell me that in flight you
+must have a companion besides myself, and that companion is a female. It
+shall not be!"
+
+"Shall not!"
+
+"It shall not!" repeated Fillide, firmly, and folding her arms across
+her breast. Before Glyndon could reply, a slight knock at the door was
+heard, and Nicot opened the latch and entered.
+
+Fillide sank into her chair, and, leaning her face on her hands,
+appeared unheeding of the intruder and the conversation that ensued.
+
+"I cannot bid thee good-day, Glyndon," said Nicot, as in his
+sans-culotte fashion he strode towards the artist, his ragged hat on his
+head, his hands in his pockets, and the beard of a week's growth upon
+his chin,--"I cannot bid thee good-day; for while the tyrant lives, evil
+is every sun that sheds its beams on France."
+
+"It is true; what then? We have sown the wind, we must reap the
+whirlwind."
+
+"And yet," said Nicot, apparently not heeding the reply, and as if
+musingly to himself, "it is strange to think that the butcher is as
+mortal as the butchered; that his life hangs on as slight a thread; that
+between the cuticle and the heart there is as short a passage,--that, in
+short, one blow can free France and redeem mankind!"
+
+Glyndon surveyed the speaker with a careless and haughty scorn, and made
+no answer.
+
+"And," proceeded Nicot, "I have sometimes looked round for the man born
+for this destiny, and whenever I have done so, my steps have led me
+hither!"
+
+"Should they not rather have led thee to the side of Maximilien
+Robespierre?" said Glyndon, with a sneer.
+
+"No," returned Nicot, coldly,--"no; for I am a 'suspect:' I could not
+mix with his train; I could not approach within a hundred yards of his
+person, but I should be seized; YOU, as yet, are safe. Hear me!"--and
+his voice became earnest and expressive,--"hear me! There seems danger
+in this action; there is none. I have been with Collot d'Herbois and
+Bilaud-Varennes; they will hold him harmless who strikes the blow; the
+populace would run to thy support; the Convention would hail thee as
+their deliverer, the--"
+
+"Hold, man! How darest thou couple my name with the act of an assassin?
+Let the tocsin sound from yonder tower, to a war between Humanity and
+the Tyrant, and I will not be the last in the field; but liberty never
+yet acknowledged a defender in a felon."
+
+There was something so brave and noble in Glyndon's voice, mien, and
+manner, as he thus spoke, that Nicot at once was silenced; at once he
+saw that he had misjudged the man.
+
+"No," said Fillide, lifting her face from her hands,--"no! your friend
+has a wiser scheme in preparation; he would leave you wolves to mangle
+each other. He is right; but--"
+
+"Flight!" exclaimed Nicot; "is it possible? Flight; how?--when?--by what
+means? All France begirt with spies and guards! Flight! would to Heaven
+it were in our power!"
+
+"Dost thou, too, desire to escape the blessed Revolution?"
+
+"Desire! Oh!" cried Nicot, suddenly, and, falling down, he clasped
+Glyndon's knees,--"oh, save me with thyself! My life is a torture;
+every moment the guillotine frowns before me. I know that my hours are
+numbered; I know that the tyrant waits but his time to write my name
+in his inexorable list; I know that Rene Dumas, the judge who never
+pardons, has, from the first, resolved upon my death. Oh, Glyndon, by
+our old friendship, by our common art, by thy loyal English faith and
+good English heart, let me share thy flight!"
+
+"If thou wilt, so be it."
+
+"Thanks!--my whole life shall thank thee. But how hast thou prepared the
+means, the passports, the disguise, the--"
+
+"I will tell thee. Thou knowest C--, of the Convention,--he has power,
+and he is covetous. 'Qu'on me meprise, pourvu que je dine' (Let them
+despise me, provided that I dine.), said he, when reproached for his
+avarice."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"By the help of this sturdy republican, who has friends enough in the
+Comite, I have obtained the means necessary for flight; I have purchased
+them. For a consideration I can procure thy passport also."
+
+"Thy riches, then, are not in assignats?"
+
+"No; I have gold enough for us all."
+
+And here Glyndon, beckoning Nicot into the next room, first briefly
+and rapidly detailed to him the plan proposed, and the disguises to be
+assumed conformably to the passports, and then added, "In return for
+the service I render thee, grant me one favour, which I think is in thy
+power. Thou rememberest Viola Pisani?"
+
+"Ah,--remember, yes!--and the lover with whom she fled."
+
+"And FROM whom she is a fugitive now."
+
+"Indeed--what!--I understand. Sacre bleu! but you are a lucky fellow,
+cher confrere."
+
+"Silence, man! with thy eternal prate of brotherhood and virtue, thou
+seemest never to believe in one kindly action, or one virtuous thought!"
+
+Nicot bit his lip, and replied sullenly, "Experience is a great
+undeceiver. Humph! What service can I do thee with regard to the
+Italian?"
+
+"I have been accessory to her arrival in this city of snares and
+pitfalls. I cannot leave her alone amidst dangers from which neither
+innocence nor obscurity is a safeguard. In your blessed Republic, a good
+and unsuspected citizen, who casts a desire on any woman, maid or wife,
+has but to say, 'Be mine, or I denounce you!' In a word, Viola must
+share our flight."
+
+"What so easy? I see your passports provide for her."
+
+"What so easy? What so difficult? This Fillide--would that I had never
+seen her!--would that I had never enslaved my soul to my senses! The
+love of an uneducated, violent, unprincipled woman, opens with a heaven,
+to merge in a hell! She is jealous as all the Furies; she will not hear
+of a female companion; and when once she sees the beauty of Viola!--I
+tremble to think of it. She is capable of any excess in the storm of her
+passions."
+
+"Aha, I know what such women are! My wife, Beatrice Sacchini, whom I
+took from Naples, when I failed with this very Viola, divorced me when
+my money failed, and, as the mistress of a judge, passes me in her
+carriage while I crawl through the streets. Plague on her!--but
+patience, patience! such is the lot of virtue. Would I were Robespierre
+for a day!"
+
+"Cease these tirades!" exclaimed Glyndon, impatiently; "and to the
+point. What would you advise?"
+
+"Leave your Fillide behind."
+
+"Leave her to her own ignorance; leave her unprotected even by the
+mind; leave her in the Saturnalia of Rape and Murder? No! I have sinned
+against her once. But come what may, I will not so basely desert one
+who, with all her errors, trusted her fate to my love."
+
+"You deserted her at Marseilles."
+
+"True; but I left her in safety, and I did not then believe her love to
+be so deep and faithful. I left her gold, and I imagined she would be
+easily consoled; but since THEN WE HAVE KNOWN DANGER TOGETHER! And now
+to leave her alone to that danger which she would never have incurred
+but for devotion to me!--no, that is impossible. A project occurs to
+me. Canst thou not say that thou hast a sister, a relative, or a
+benefactress, whom thou wouldst save? Can we not--till we have left
+France--make Fillide believe that Viola is one in whom THOU only art
+interested; and whom, for thy sake only, I permit to share in our
+escape?"
+
+"Ha, well thought of!--certainly!"
+
+"I will then appear to yield to Fillide's wishes, and resign the
+project, which she so resents, of saving the innocent object of her
+frantic jealousy. You, meanwhile, shall yourself entreat Fillide to
+intercede with me to extend the means of escape to--"
+
+"To a lady (she knows I have no sister) who has aided me in my distress.
+Yes, I will manage all, never fear. One word more,--what has become of
+that Zanoni?"
+
+"Talk not of him,--I know not."
+
+"Does he love this girl still?"
+
+"It would seem so. She is his wife, the mother of his infant, who is
+with her."
+
+"Wife!--mother! He loves her. Aha! And why--"
+
+"No questions now. I will go and prepare Viola for the flight; you,
+meanwhile, return to Fillide."
+
+"But the address of the Neapolitan? It is necessary I should know, lest
+Fillide inquire."
+
+"Rue M-- T--, No. 27. Adieu."
+
+Glyndon seized his hat and hastened from the house.
+
+Nicot, left alone, seemed for a few moments buried in thought. "Oho," he
+muttered to himself, "can I not turn all this to my account? Can I not
+avenge myself on thee, Zanoni, as I have so often sworn,--through thy
+wife and child? Can I not possess myself of thy gold, thy passports,
+and thy Fillide, hot Englishman, who wouldst humble me with thy loathed
+benefits, and who hast chucked me thine alms as to a beggar? And
+Fillide, I love her: and thy gold, I love THAT more! Puppets, I move
+your strings!"
+
+He passed slowly into the chamber where Fillide yet sat, with gloomy
+thought on her brow and tears standing in her dark eyes. She looked up
+eagerly as the door opened, and turned from the rugged face of Nicot
+with an impatient movement of disappointment.
+
+"Glyndon," said the painter, drawing a chair to Fillide's, "has left me
+to enliven your solitude, fair Italian. He is not jealous of the ugly
+Nicot!--ha, ha!--yet Nicot loved thee well once, when his fortunes were
+more fair. But enough of such past follies."
+
+"Your friend, then, has left the house. Whither? Ah, you look away;
+you falter,--you cannot meet my eyes! Speak! I implore, I command thee,
+speak!"
+
+"Enfant! And what dost thou fear?"
+
+"FEAR!--yes, alas, I fear!" said the Italian; and her whole frame seemed
+to shrink into itself as she fell once more back into her seat.
+
+Then, after a pause, she tossed the long hair from her eyes, and,
+starting up abruptly, paced the room with disordered strides. At length
+she stopped opposite to Nicot, laid her hand on his arm, drew him
+towards an escritoire, which she unlocked, and, opening a well, pointed
+to the gold that lay within, and said, "Thou art poor,--thou lovest
+money; take what thou wilt, but undeceive me. Who is this woman whom thy
+friend visits,--and does he love her?"
+
+Nicot's eyes sparkled, and his hands opened and clenched, and clenched
+and opened, as he gazed upon the coins. But reluctantly resisting the
+impulse, he said, with an affected bitterness, "Thinkest thou to bribe
+me?--if so, it cannot be with gold. But what if he does love a rival;
+what if he betrays thee; what if, wearied by thy jealousies, he designs
+in his flight to leave thee behind,--would such knowledge make thee
+happier?"
+
+"Yes!" exclaimed the Italian, fiercely; "yes, for it would be happiness
+to hate and to be avenged! Oh, thou knowest not how sweet is hatred to
+those who have really loved!"
+
+"But wilt thou swear, if I reveal to thee the secret, that thou wilt not
+betray me,--that thou wilt not fall, as women do, into weak tears and
+fond reproaches, when thy betrayer returns?"
+
+"Tears, reproaches! Revenge hides itself in smiles!"
+
+"Thou art a brave creature!" said Nicot, almost admiringly. "One
+condition more: thy lover designs to fly with his new love, to leave
+thee to thy fate; if I prove this to thee, and if I give thee revenge
+against thy rival, wilt thou fly with me? I love thee!--I will wed
+thee!"
+
+Fillide's eyes flashed fire; she looked at him with unutterable disdain,
+and was silent.
+
+Nicot felt he had gone too far; and with that knowledge of the evil part
+of our nature which his own heart and association with crime had taught
+him, he resolved to trust the rest to the passions of the Italian, when
+raised to the height to which he was prepared to lead them.
+
+"Pardon me," he said; "my love made me too presumptuous; and yet it is
+only that love,--my sympathy for thee, beautiful and betrayed, that can
+induce me to wrong, with my revelations, one whom I have regarded as a
+brother. I can depend upon thine oath to conceal all from Glyndon?"
+
+"On my oath and my wrongs and my mountain blood!"
+
+"Enough! get thy hat and mantle, and follow me."
+
+As Fillide left the room, Nicot's eyes again rested on the gold; it was
+much,--much more than he had dared to hope for; and as he peered into
+the well and opened the drawers, he perceived a packet of letters in the
+well-known hand of Camille Desmoulins. He seized--he opened the packet;
+his looks brightened as he glanced over a few sentences. "This would
+give fifty Glyndons to the guillotine!" he muttered, and thrust the
+packet into his bosom.
+
+O artist!--O haunted one!--O erring genius!--behold the two worst
+foes,--the False Ideal that knows no God, and the False Love that burns
+from the corruption of the senses, and takes no lustre from the soul!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.III.
+
+     Liebe sonnt das Reich der Nacht.
+     "Der Triumph der Liebe."
+
+     (Love illumes the realm of Night.)
+
+Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.
+
+Paris.
+
+Dost thou remember in the old time, when the Beautiful yet dwelt in
+Greece, how we two, in the vast Athenian Theatre, witnessed the birth of
+Words as undying as ourselves? Dost thou remember the thrill of terror
+that ran through that mighty audience, when the wild Cassandra burst
+from her awful silence to shriek to her relentless god! How ghastly, at
+the entrance of the House of Atreus, about to become her tomb, rang out
+her exclamations of foreboding woe: "Dwelling abhorred of heaven!--human
+shamble-house and floor blood-bespattered!" (Aesch. "Agam." 1098.)
+Dost thou remember how, amidst the breathless awe of those assembled
+thousands, I drew close to thee, and whispered, "Verily, no prophet like
+the poet! This scene of fabled horror comes to me as a dream, shadowing
+forth some likeness in my own remoter future!" As I enter this
+slaughter-house that scene returns to me, and I hearken to the voice of
+Cassandra ringing in my ears. A solemn and warning dread gathers round
+me, as if I too were come to find a grave, and "the Net of Hades"
+had already entangled me in its web! What dark treasure-houses of
+vicissitude and woe are our memories become! What our lives, but the
+chronicles of unrelenting death! It seems to me as yesterday when I
+stood in the streets of this city of the Gaul, as they shone with plumed
+chivalry, and the air rustled with silken braveries. Young Louis, the
+monarch and the lover, was victor of the Tournament at the Carousel; and
+all France felt herself splendid in the splendour of her gorgeous chief!
+Now there is neither throne nor altar; and what is in their stead? I
+see it yonder--the GUILLOTINE! It is dismal to stand amidst the ruins
+of mouldering cities, to startle the serpent and the lizard amidst
+the wrecks of Persepolis and Thebes; but more dismal still to stand as
+I--the stranger from Empires that have ceased to be--stand now amidst
+the yet ghastlier ruins of Law and Order, the shattering of mankind
+themselves! Yet here, even here, Love, the Beautifier, that hath led my
+steps, can walk with unshrinking hope through the wilderness of Death.
+Strange is the passion that makes a world in itself, that individualises
+the One amidst the Multitude; that, through all the changes of my solemn
+life, yet survives, though ambition and hate and anger are dead; the one
+solitary angel, hovering over a universe of tombs on its two tremulous
+and human wings,--Hope and Fear!
+
+How is it, Mejnour, that, as my diviner art abandoned me,--as, in my
+search for Viola, I was aided but by the ordinary instincts of the
+merest mortal,--how is it that I have never desponded, that I have felt
+in every difficulty the prevailing prescience that we should meet at
+last? So cruelly was every vestige of her flight concealed from
+me,--so suddenly, so secretly had she fled, that all the spies, all the
+authorities of Venice, could give me no clew. All Italy I searched in
+vain! Her young home at Naples!--how still, in its humble chambers,
+there seemed to linger the fragrance of her presence! All the sublimest
+secrets of our lore failed me,--failed to bring her soul visible to
+mine; yet morning and night, thou lone and childless one, morning and
+night, detached from myself, I can commune with my child! There in that
+most blessed, typical, and mysterious of all relations, Nature herself
+appears to supply what Science would refuse. Space cannot separate the
+father's watchful soul from the cradle of his first-born! I know not of
+its resting-place and home,--my visions picture not the land,--only the
+small and tender life to which all space is as yet the heritage! For to
+the infant, before reason dawns,--before man's bad passions can dim
+the essence that it takes from the element it hath left, there is no
+peculiar country, no native city, and no mortal language. Its soul as
+yet is the denizen of all airs and of every world; and in space its
+soul meets with mine,--the child communes with the father! Cruel and
+forsaking one,--thou for whom I left the wisdom of the spheres;
+thou whose fatal dower has been the weakness and terrors of
+humanity,--couldst thou think that young soul less safe on earth because
+I would lead it ever more up to heaven! Didst thou think that I could
+have wronged mine own? Didst thou not know that in its serenest eyes the
+life that I gave it spoke to warn, to upbraid the mother who would bind
+it to the darkness and pangs of the prison-house of clay? Didst thou
+not feel that it was I who, permitted by the Heavens, shielded it from
+suffering and disease? And in its wondrous beauty, I blessed the holy
+medium through which, at last, my spirit might confer with thine!
+
+And how have I tracked them hither? I learned that thy pupil had been at
+Venice. I could not trace the young and gentle neophyte of Parthenope in
+the description of the haggard and savage visitor who had come to Viola
+before she fled; but when I would have summoned his IDEA before me, it
+refused to obey; and I knew then that his fate had become entwined with
+Viola's. I have tracked him, then, to this Lazar House. I arrived but
+yesterday; I have not yet discovered him.
+
+....
+
+I have just returned from their courts of justice,--dens where tigers
+arraign their prey. I find not whom I would seek. They are saved as
+yet; but I recognise in the crimes of mortals the dark wisdom of the
+Everlasting. Mejnour, I see here, for the first time, how majestic and
+beauteous a thing is death! Of what sublime virtues we robbed ourselves,
+when, in the thirst for virtue, we attained the art by which we can
+refuse to die! When in some happy clime, where to breathe is to enjoy,
+the charnel-house swallows up the young and fair; when in the noble
+pursuit of knowledge, Death comes to the student, and shuts out the
+enchanted land which was opening to his gaze,--how natural for us to
+desire to live; how natural to make perpetual life the first object of
+research! But here, from my tower of time, looking over the darksome
+past, and into the starry future, I learn how great hearts feel what
+sweetness and glory there is to die for the things they love! I saw
+a father sacrificing himself for his son; he was subjected to charges
+which a word of his could dispel,--he was mistaken for his boy. With
+what joy he seized the error, confessed the noble crimes of valour
+and fidelity which the son had indeed committed, and went to the doom,
+exulting that his death saved the life he had given, not in vain! I saw
+women, young, delicate, in the bloom of their beauty; they had vowed
+themselves to the cloister. Hands smeared with the blood of saints
+opened the gate that had shut them from the world, and bade them go
+forth, forget their vows, forswear the Divine one these demons would
+depose, find lovers and helpmates, and be free. And some of these young
+hearts had loved, and even, though in struggles, loved yet. Did they
+forswear the vow? Did they abandon the faith? Did even love allure them?
+Mejnour, with one voice, they preferred to die. And whence comes this
+courage?--because such HEARTS LIVE IN SOME MORE ABSTRACT AND HOLIER
+LIFE THAN THEIR OWN. BUT TO LIVE FOREVER UPON THIS EARTH IS TO LIVE IN
+NOTHING DIVINER THAN OURSELVES. Yes, even amidst this gory butcherdom,
+God, the Ever-living, vindicates to man the sanctity of His servant,
+Death!
+
+....
+
+Again I have seen thee in spirit; I have seen and blessed thee, my sweet
+child! Dost thou not know me also in thy dreams? Dost thou not feel the
+beating of my heart through the veil of thy rosy slumbers? Dost thou
+not hear the wings of the brighter beings that I yet can conjure around
+thee, to watch, to nourish, and to save? And when the spell fades at thy
+waking, when thine eyes open to the day, will they not look round for
+me, and ask thy mother, with their mute eloquence, "Why she has robbed
+thee of a father?"
+
+Woman, dost thou not repent thee? Flying from imaginary fears, hast
+thou not come to the very lair of terror, where Danger sits visible
+and incarnate? Oh, if we could but meet, wouldst thou not fall upon the
+bosom thou hast so wronged, and feel, poor wanderer amidst the storms,
+as if thou hadst regained the shelter? Mejnour, still my researches
+fail me. I mingle with all men, even their judges and their spies, but
+I cannot yet gain the clew. I know that she is here. I know it by an
+instinct; the breath of my child seems warmer and more familiar.
+
+They peer at me with venomous looks, as I pass through their streets.
+With a glance I disarm their malice, and fascinate the basilisks.
+Everywhere I see the track and scent the presence of the Ghostly One
+that dwells on the Threshold, and whose victims are the souls that would
+ASPIRE, and can only FEAR. I see its dim shapelessness going before the
+men of blood, and marshalling their way. Robespierre passed me with his
+furtive step. Those eyes of horror were gnawing into his heart. I looked
+down upon their senate; the grim Phantom sat cowering on its floor.
+It hath taken up its abode in the city of Dread. And what in truth
+are these would-be builders of a new world? Like the students who have
+vainly struggled after our supreme science, they have attempted what is
+beyond their power; they have passed from this solid earth of usages and
+forms into the land of shadow, and its loathsome keeper has seized them
+as its prey. I looked into the tyrant's shuddering soul, as it trembled
+past me. There, amidst the ruins of a thousand systems which aimed at
+virtue, sat Crime, and shivered at its desolation. Yet this man is the
+only Thinker, the only Aspirant, amongst them all. He still looks for
+a future of peace and mercy, to begin,--ay! at what date? When he has
+swept away every foe. Fool! new foes spring from every drop of blood.
+Led by the eyes of the Unutterable, he is walking to his doom.
+
+O Viola, thy innocence protects thee! Thou whom the sweet humanities
+of love shut out even from the dreams of aerial and spiritual beauty,
+making thy heart a universe of visions fairer than the wanderer over the
+rosy Hesperus can survey,--shall not the same pure affection encompass
+thee, even here, with a charmed atmosphere, and terror itself fall
+harmless on a life too innocent for wisdom?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.IV.
+
+     Ombra piu che di notte, in cui di luce
+     Raggio misto non e;
+
+     ....
+
+     Ne piu il palagio appar, ne piu le sue
+     Vestigia; ne dir puossi--egli qui fue.
+     --"Ger. Lib.", canto xvi.-lxix.
+
+     (Darkness greater than of night, in which not a ray of light is
+     mixed;...The palace appears no more:  not even a vestige,--nor
+     can one say that it has been.)
+
+The clubs are noisy with clamorous frenzy; the leaders are grim with
+schemes. Black Henriot flies here and there, muttering to his armed
+troops, "Robespierre, your beloved, is in danger!" Robespierre stalks
+perturbed, his list of victims swelling every hour. Tallien, the Macduff
+to the doomed Macbeth, is whispering courage to his pale conspirators.
+Along the streets heavily roll the tumbrils. The shops are closed,--the
+people are gorged with gore, and will lap no more. And night after
+night, to the eighty theatres flock the children of the Revolution, to
+laugh at the quips of comedy, and weep gentle tears over imaginary woes!
+
+In a small chamber, in the heart of the city, sits the mother, watching
+over her child. It is quiet, happy noon; the sunlight, broken by the
+tall roofs in the narrow street, comes yet through the open casement,
+the impartial playfellow of the air, gleesome alike in temple and
+prison, hall and hovel; as golden and as blithe, whether it laugh over
+the first hour of life, or quiver in its gay delight on the terror
+and agony of the last! The child, where it lay at the feet of Viola,
+stretched out its dimpled hands as if to clasp the dancing motes that
+revelled in the beam. The mother turned her eyes from the glory; it
+saddened her yet more. She turned and sighed.
+
+Is this the same Viola who bloomed fairer than their own Idalia under
+the skies of Greece? How changed! How pale and worn! She sat listlessly,
+her arms dropping on her knee; the smile that was habitual to her lips
+was gone. A heavy, dull despondency, as if the life of life were no
+more, seemed to weigh down her youth, and make it weary of that happy
+sun! In truth, her existence had languished away since it had wandered,
+as some melancholy stream, from the source that fed it. The sudden
+enthusiasm of fear or superstition that had almost, as if still in the
+unconscious movements of a dream, led her to fly from Zanoni, had ceased
+from the day which dawned upon her in a foreign land. Then--there--she
+felt that in the smile she had evermore abandoned lived her life. She
+did not repent,--she would not have recalled the impulse that winged her
+flight. Though the enthusiasm was gone, the superstition yet remained;
+she still believed she had saved her child from that dark and guilty
+sorcery, concerning which the traditions of all lands are prodigal, but
+in none do they find such credulity, or excite such dread, as in
+the South of Italy. This impression was confirmed by the mysterious
+conversations of Glyndon, and by her own perception of the fearful
+change that had passed over one who represented himself as the victim
+of the enchanters. She did not, therefore, repent; but her very volition
+seemed gone.
+
+On their arrival at Paris, Viola saw her companion--the faithful
+wife--no more. Ere three weeks were passed, husband and wife had ceased
+to live.
+
+And now, for the first time, the drudgeries of this hard earth claimed
+the beautiful Neapolitan. In that profession, giving voice and shape to
+poetry and song, in which her first years were passed, there is, while
+it lasts, an excitement in the art that lifts it from the labour of a
+calling. Hovering between two lives, the Real and Ideal, dwells the life
+of music and the stage. But that life was lost evermore to the idol of
+the eyes and ears of Naples. Lifted to the higher realm of passionate
+love, it seemed as if the fictitious genius which represents the
+thoughts of others was merged in the genius that grows all thought
+itself. It had been the worst infidelity to the Lost, to have descended
+again to live on the applause of others. And so--for she would not
+accept alms from Glyndon--so, by the commonest arts, the humblest
+industry which the sex knows, alone and unseen, she who had slept on the
+breast of Zanoni found a shelter for their child. As when, in the
+noble verse prefixed to this chapter, Armida herself has destroyed her
+enchanted palace,--not a vestige of that bower, raised of old by Poetry
+and Love, remained to say, "It had been!"
+
+And the child avenged the father; it bloomed, it thrived,--it waxed
+strong in the light of life. But still it seemed haunted and preserved
+by some other being than her own. In its sleep there was that slumber,
+so deep and rigid, which a thunderbolt could not have disturbed; and
+in such sleep often it moved its arms, as to embrace the air: often its
+lips stirred with murmured sounds of indistinct affection,--NOT FOR HER;
+and all the while upon its cheeks a hue of such celestial bloom, upon
+its lips a smile of such mysterious joy! Then, when it waked, its eyes
+did not turn first to HER,--wistful, earnest, wandering, they roved
+around, to fix on her pale face, at last, in mute sorrow and reproach.
+
+Never had Viola felt before how mighty was her love for Zanoni; how
+thought, feeling, heart, soul, life,--all lay crushed and dormant in
+the icy absence to which she had doomed herself! She heard not the
+roar without, she felt not one amidst those stormy millions,--worlds
+of excitement labouring through every hour. Only when Glyndon, haggard,
+wan, and spectre-like, glided in, day after day, to visit her, did the
+fair daughter of the careless South know how heavy and universal was
+the Death-Air that girt her round. Sublime in her passive
+unconsciousness,--her mechanic life,--she sat, and feared not, in the
+den of the Beasts of Prey.
+
+The door of the room opened abruptly, and Glyndon entered. His manner
+was more agitated than usual.
+
+"Is it you, Clarence?" she said in her soft, languid tones. "You are
+before the hour I expected you."
+
+"Who can count on his hours at Paris?" returned Glyndon, with a
+frightful smile. "Is it not enough that I am here! Your apathy in the
+midst of these sorrows appalls me. You say calmly, 'Farewell;' calmly
+you bid me, 'Welcome!'--as if in every corner there was not a spy, and
+as if with every day there was not a massacre!"
+
+"Pardon me! But in these walls lies my world. I can hardly credit all
+the tales you tell me. Everything here, save THAT," and she pointed
+to the infant, "seems already so lifeless, that in the tomb itself one
+could scarcely less heed the crimes that are done without."
+
+Glyndon paused for a few moments, and gazed with strange and mingled
+feelings upon that face and form, still so young, and yet so invested
+with that saddest of all repose,--when the heart feels old.
+
+"O Viola," said he, at last, and in a voice of suppressed passion, "was
+it thus I ever thought to see you,--ever thought to feel for you, when
+we two first met in the gay haunts of Naples? Ah, why then did you
+refuse my love; or why was mine not worthy of you? Nay, shrink not!--let
+me touch your hand. No passion so sweet as that youthful love can return
+to me again. I feel for you but as a brother for some younger and lonely
+sister. With you, in your presence, sad though it be, I seem to breathe
+back the purer air of my early life. Here alone, except in scenes of
+turbulence and tempest, the Phantom ceases to pursue me. I forget even
+the Death that stalks behind, and haunts me as my shadow. But better
+days may be in store for us yet. Viola, I at last begin dimly to
+perceive how to baffle and subdue the Phantom that has cursed my
+life,--it is to brave, and defy it. In sin and in riot, as I have told
+thee, it haunts me not. But I comprehend now what Mejnour said in his
+dark apothegms, 'that I should dread the spectre most WHEN UNSEEN.' In
+virtuous and calm resolution it appears,--ay, I behold it now; there,
+there, with its livid eyes!"--and the drops fell from his brow. "But
+it shall no longer daunt me from that resolution. I face it, and it
+gradually darkens back into the shade." He paused, and his eyes dwelt
+with a terrible exultation upon the sunlit space; then, with a heavy and
+deep-drawn breath, he resumed, "Viola, I have found the means of escape.
+We will leave this city. In some other land we will endeavour to comfort
+each other, and forget the past."
+
+"No," said Viola, calmly; "I have no further wish to stir, till I am
+born hence to the last resting-place. I dreamed of him last night,
+Clarence!--dreamed of him for the first time since we parted; and,
+do not mock me, methought that he forgave the deserter, and called me
+'Wife.' That dream hallows the room. Perhaps it will visit me again
+before I die."
+
+"Talk not of him,--of the demi-fiend!" cried Glyndon, fiercely, and
+stamping his foot. "Thank the Heavens for any fate that hath rescued
+thee from him!"
+
+"Hush!" said Viola, gravely. And as she was about to proceed, her eye
+fell upon the child. It was standing in the very centre of that slanting
+column of light which the sun poured into the chamber; and the rays
+seemed to surround it as a halo, and settled, crown-like, on the gold
+of its shining hair. In its small shape, so exquisitely modelled, in its
+large, steady, tranquil eyes, there was something that awed, while it
+charmed the mother's pride. It gazed on Glyndon as he spoke, with a
+look which almost might have seemed disdain, and which Viola, at least,
+interpreted as a defence of the Absent, stronger than her own lips could
+frame.
+
+Glyndon broke the pause.
+
+"Thou wouldst stay, for what? To betray a mother's duty! If any evil
+happen to thee here, what becomes of thine infant? Shall it be brought
+up an orphan, in a country that has desecrated thy religion, and where
+human charity exists no more? Ah, weep, and clasp it to thy bosom; but
+tears do not protect and save."
+
+"Thou hast conquered, my friend, I will fly with thee."
+
+"To-morrow night, then, be prepared. I will bring thee the necessary
+disguises."
+
+And Glyndon then proceeded to sketch rapidly the outline of the path
+they were to take, and the story they were to tell. Viola listened, but
+scarcely comprehended; he pressed her hand to his heart and departed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.V.
+
+     Van seco pur anco
+     Sdegno ed Amor, quasi due Veltri al fianco.
+     "Ger. Lib." cant. xx. cxvii.
+
+     (There went with him still Disdain and Love, like two greyhounds
+     side by side.)
+
+Glyndon did not perceive, as he hurried from the house, two forms
+crouching by the angle of the wall. He saw still the spectre gliding by
+his side; but he beheld not the yet more poisonous eyes of human envy
+and woman's jealousy that glared on his retreating footsteps.
+
+Nicot advanced to the house; Fillide followed him in silence. The
+painter, an old sans-culotte, knew well what language to assume to the
+porter. He beckoned the latter from his lodge, "How is this, citizen?
+Thou harbourest a 'suspect.'"
+
+"Citizen, you terrify me!--if so, name him."
+
+"It is not a man; a refugee, an Italian woman, lodges here."
+
+"Yes, au troisieme,--the door to the left. But what of her?--she cannot
+be dangerous, poor child!"
+
+"Citizen, beware! Dost thou dare to pity her?"
+
+"I? No, no, indeed. But--"
+
+"Speak the truth! Who visits her?"
+
+"No one but an Englishman."
+
+"That is it,--an Englishman, a spy of Pitt and Coburg."
+
+"Just Heaven! is it possible?"
+
+"How, citizen! dost thou speak of Heaven? Thou must be an aristocrat!"
+
+"No, indeed; it was but an old bad habit, and escaped me unawares."
+
+"How often does the Englishman visit her?"
+
+"Daily."
+
+Fillide uttered an exclamation.
+
+"She never stirs out," said the porter. "Her sole occupations are in
+work, and care of her infant."
+
+"Her infant!"
+
+Fillide made a bound forward. Nicot in vain endeavoured to arrest her.
+She sprang up the stairs; she paused not till she was before the door
+indicated by the porter; it stood ajar, she entered, she stood at the
+threshold, and beheld that face, still so lovely! The sight of so much
+beauty left her hopeless. And the child, over whom the mother bent!--she
+who had never been a mother!--she uttered no sound; the furies were at
+work within her breast. Viola turned, and saw her, and, terrified by the
+strange apparition, with features that expressed the deadliest hate and
+scorn and vengeance, uttered a cry, and snatched the child to her bosom.
+The Italian laughed aloud,--turned, descended, and, gaining the spot
+where Nicot still conversed with the frightened porter drew him from the
+house. When they were in the open street, she halted abruptly, and said,
+"Avenge me, and name thy price!"
+
+"My price, sweet one! is but permission to love thee. Thou wilt fly with
+me to-morrow night; thou wilt possess thyself of the passports and the
+plan."
+
+"And they--"
+
+"Shall, before then, find their asylum in the Conciergerie. The
+guillotine shall requite thy wrongs."
+
+"Do this, and I am satisfied," said Fillide, firmly.
+
+And they spoke no more till they regained the house. But when she there,
+looking up to the dull building, saw the windows of the room which the
+belief of Glyndon's love had once made a paradise, the tiger relented at
+the heart; something of the woman gushed back upon her nature, dark and
+savage as it was. She pressed the arm on which she leaned convulsively,
+and exclaimed, "No, no! not him! denounce her,--let her perish; but I
+have slept on HIS bosom,--not HIM!"
+
+"It shall be as thou wilt," said Nicot, with a devil's sneer; "but he
+must be arrested for the moment. No harm shall happen to him, for no
+accuser shall appear. But her,--thou wilt not relent for her?"
+
+Fillide turned upon him her eyes, and their dark glance was sufficient
+answer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.VI.
+
+     In poppa quella
+     Che guidar gli dovea, fatal Donsella.
+     "Ger. Lib." cant. xv. 3.
+
+     (By the prow was the fatal lady ordained to be the guide.)
+
+The Italian did not overrate that craft of simulation proverbial with
+her country and her sex. Not a word, not a look, that day revealed to
+Glyndon the deadly change that had converted devotion into hate. He
+himself, indeed, absorbed in his own schemes, and in reflections on his
+own strange destiny, was no nice observer. But her manner, milder
+and more subdued than usual, produced a softening effect upon his
+meditations towards the evening; and he then began to converse with her
+on the certain hope of escape, and on the future that would await them
+in less unhallowed lands.
+
+"And thy fair friend," said Fillide, with an averted eye and a false
+smile, "who was to be our companion?--thou hast resigned her, Nicot
+tells me, in favour of one in whom he is interested. Is it so?"
+
+"He told thee this!" returned Glyndon, evasively. "Well! does the change
+content thee?"
+
+"Traitor!" muttered Fillide; and she rose suddenly, approached him,
+parted the long hair from his forehead caressingly, and pressed her lips
+convulsively on his brow.
+
+"This were too fair a head for the doomsman," said she, with a slight
+laugh, and, turning away, appeared occupied in preparations for their
+departure.
+
+The next morning, when he rose, Glyndon did not see the Italian; she was
+absent from the house when he left it. It was necessary that he should
+once more visit C-- before his final Departure, not only to arrange for
+Nicot's participation in the flight, but lest any suspicion should have
+arisen to thwart or endanger the plan he had adopted. C--, though not
+one of the immediate coterie of Robespierre, and indeed secretly hostile
+to him, had possessed the art of keeping well with each faction as
+it rose to power. Sprung from the dregs of the populace, he had,
+nevertheless, the grace and vivacity so often found impartially amongst
+every class in France. He had contrived to enrich himself--none knew
+how--in the course of his rapid career. He became, indeed, ultimately
+one of the wealthiest proprietors of Paris, and at that time kept a
+splendid and hospitable mansion. He was one of those whom, from various
+reasons, Robespierre deigned to favour; and he had often saved the
+proscribed and suspected, by procuring them passports under disguised
+names, and advising their method of escape. But C-- was a man who took
+this trouble only for the rich. "The incorruptible Maximilien," who did
+not want the tyrant's faculty of penetration, probably saw through all
+his manoeuvres, and the avarice which he cloaked beneath his charity.
+But it was noticeable that Robespierre frequently seemed to wink
+at--nay, partially to encourage--such vice in men whom he meant
+hereafter to destroy, as would tend to lower them in the public
+estimation, and to contrast with his own austere and unassailable
+integrity and PURISM. And, doubtless, he often grimly smiled in his
+sleeve at the sumptuous mansion and the griping covetousness of the
+worthy Citizen C--.
+
+To this personage, then, Glyndon musingly bent his way. It was true, as
+he had darkly said to Viola, that in proportion as he had resisted the
+spectre, its terrors had lost their influence. The time had come at
+last, when, seeing crime and vice in all their hideousness, and in so
+vast a theatre, he had found that in vice and crime there are deadlier
+horrors than in the eyes of a phantom-fear. His native nobleness began
+to return to him. As he passed the streets, he revolved in his mind
+projects of future repentance and reformation. He even meditated, as a
+just return for Fillide's devotion, the sacrifice of all the reasonings
+of his birth and education. He would repair whatever errors he had
+committed against her, by the self-immolation of marriage with one
+little congenial with himself. He who had once revolted from marriage
+with the noble and gentle Viola!--he had learned in that world of wrong
+to know that right is right, and that Heaven did not make the one sex to
+be the victim of the other. The young visions of the Beautiful and the
+Good rose once more before him; and along the dark ocean of his mind lay
+the smile of reawakening virtue, as a path of moonlight. Never, perhaps,
+had the condition of his soul been so elevated and unselfish.
+
+In the meanwhile Jean Nicot, equally absorbed in dreams of the future,
+and already in his own mind laying out to the best advantage the gold of
+the friend he was about to betray, took his way to the house honoured
+by the residence of Robespierre. He had no intention to comply with the
+relenting prayer of Fillide, that the life of Glyndon should be spared.
+He thought with Barrere, "Il n'y a que les morts qui ne revient pas."
+In all men who have devoted themselves to any study, or any art, with
+sufficient pains to attain a certain degree of excellence, there must be
+a fund of energy immeasurably above that of the ordinary herd. Usually
+this energy is concentrated on the objects of their professional
+ambition, and leaves them, therefore, apathetic to the other pursuits
+of men. But where those objects are denied, where the stream has not its
+legitimate vent, the energy, irritated and aroused, possesses the whole
+being, and if not wasted on desultory schemes, or if not purified by
+conscience and principle, becomes a dangerous and destructive element in
+the social system, through which it wanders in riot and disorder. Hence,
+in all wise monarchies,--nay, in all well-constituted states,--the
+peculiar care with which channels are opened for every art and every
+science; hence the honour paid to their cultivators by subtle and
+thoughtful statesmen, who, perhaps, for themselves, see nothing in a
+picture but coloured canvas,--nothing in a problem but an ingenious
+puzzle. No state is ever more in danger than when the talent that should
+be consecrated to peace has no occupation but political intrigue or
+personal advancement. Talent unhonoured is talent at war with men. And
+here it is noticeable, that the class of actors having been the most
+degraded by the public opinion of the old regime, their very dust
+deprived of Christian burial, no men (with certain exceptions in the
+company especially favoured by the Court) were more relentless and
+revengeful among the scourges of the Revolution. In the savage Collot
+d'Herbois, mauvais comedien, were embodied the wrongs and the vengeance
+of a class.
+
+Now the energy of Jean Nicot had never been sufficiently directed to
+the art he professed. Even in his earliest youth, the political
+disquisitions of his master, David, had distracted him from the more
+tedious labours of the easel. The defects of his person had embittered
+his mind; the atheism of his benefactor had deadened his conscience.
+For one great excellence of religion--above all, the Religion of the
+Cross--is, that it raises PATIENCE first into a virtue, and next into a
+hope. Take away the doctrine of another life, of requital hereafter, of
+the smile of a Father upon our sufferings and trials in our ordeal here,
+and what becomes of patience? But without patience, what is man?--and
+what a people? Without patience, art never can be high; without
+patience, liberty never can be perfected. By wild throes, and impetuous,
+aimless struggles, Intellect seeks to soar from Penury, and a nation
+to struggle into Freedom. And woe, thus unfortified, guideless, and
+unenduring,--woe to both!
+
+Nicot was a villain as a boy. In most criminals, however abandoned,
+there are touches of humanity,--relics of virtue; and the true
+delineator of mankind often incurs the taunt of bad hearts and dull
+minds, for showing that even the worst alloy has some particles of gold,
+and even the best that come stamped from the mint of Nature have some
+adulteration of the dross. But there are exceptions, though few, to the
+general rule,--exceptions, when the conscience lies utterly dead, and
+when good or bad are things indifferent but as means to some selfish
+end. So was it with the protege of the atheist. Envy and hate filled up
+his whole being, and the consciousness of superior talent only made him
+curse the more all who passed him in the sunlight with a fairer form or
+happier fortunes. But, monster though he was, when his murderous fingers
+griped the throat of his benefactor, Time, and that ferment of all evil
+passions--the Reign of Blood--had made in the deep hell of his heart a
+deeper still. Unable to exercise his calling (for even had he dared to
+make his name prominent, revolutions are no season for painters; and no
+man--no! not the richest and proudest magnate of the land, has so great
+an interest in peace and order, has so high and essential a stake in the
+well being of society, as the poet and the artist), his whole intellect,
+ever restless and unguided, was left to ponder over the images of guilt
+most congenial to it. He had no future but in this life; and how in this
+life had the men of power around him, the great wrestlers for dominion,
+thriven? All that was good, pure, unselfish,--whether among Royalists or
+Republicans,--swept to the shambles, and the deathsmen left alone in the
+pomp and purple of their victims! Nobler paupers than Jean Nicot would
+despair; and Poverty would rise in its ghastly multitudes to cut the
+throat of Wealth, and then gash itself limb by limb, if Patience, the
+Angel of the Poor, sat not by its side, pointing with solemn finger to
+the life to come! And now, as Nicot neared the house of the Dictator, he
+began to meditate a reversal of his plans of the previous day: not
+that he faltered in his resolution to denounce Glyndon, and Viola would
+necessarily share his fate, as a companion and accomplice,--no, THERE
+he was resolved! for he hated both (to say nothing of his old but
+never-to-be-forgotten grudge against Zanoni). Viola had scorned him,
+Glyndon had served, and the thought of gratitude was as intolerable
+to him as the memory of insult. But why, now, should he fly from
+France?--he could possess himself of Glyndon's gold; he doubted not
+that he could so master Fillide by her wrath and jealousy that he
+could command her acquiescence in all he proposed. The papers he had
+purloined--Desmoulins' correspondence with Glyndon--while it insured the
+fate of the latter, might be eminently serviceable to Robespierre, might
+induce the tyrant to forget his own old liaisons with Hebert, and
+enlist him among the allies and tools of the King of Terror. Hopes
+of advancement, of wealth, of a career, again rose before him. This
+correspondence, dated shortly before Camille Desmoulins' death, was
+written with that careless and daring imprudence which characterised the
+spoiled child of Danton. It spoke openly of designs against Robespierre;
+it named confederates whom the tyrant desired only a popular pretext
+to crush. It was a new instrument of death in the hands of the
+Death-compeller. What greater gift could he bestow on Maximilien the
+Incorruptible?
+
+Nursing these thoughts, he arrived at last before the door of Citizen
+Dupleix. Around the threshold were grouped, in admired confusion,
+some eight or ten sturdy Jacobins, the voluntary body-guard of
+Robespierre,--tall fellows, well armed, and insolent with the power that
+reflects power, mingled with women, young and fair, and gayly dressed,
+who had come, upon the rumour that Maximilien had had an attack of bile,
+to inquire tenderly of his health; for Robespierre, strange though it
+seem, was the idol of the sex!
+
+Through this cortege stationed without the door, and reaching up the
+stairs to the landing-place,--for Robespierre's apartments were not
+spacious enough to afford sufficient antechamber for levees so numerous
+and miscellaneous,--Nicot forced his way; and far from friendly or
+flattering were the expressions that regaled his ears.
+
+"Aha, le joli Polichinelle!" said a comely matron, whose robe his
+obtrusive and angular elbows cruelly discomposed. "But how could one
+expect gallantry from such a scarecrow!"
+
+"Citizen, I beg to advise thee (The courteous use of the plural was
+proscribed at Paris. The Societies Populaires had decided that whoever
+used it should be prosecuted as suspect et adulateur! At the door of
+the public administrations and popular societies was written up, "Ici on
+s'honore du Citoyen, et on se tutoye"!!! ("Here they respect the title
+of Citizen, and they 'thee' and 'thou' one another.") Take away Murder
+from the French Revolution and it becomes the greatest farce ever played
+before the angels!) that thou art treading on my feet. I beg thy pardon,
+but now I look at thine, I see the hall is not wide enough for them."
+
+"Ho! Citizen Nicot," cried a Jacobin, shouldering his formidable
+bludgeon, "and what brings thee hither?--thinkest thou that Hebert's
+crimes are forgotten already? Off, sport of Nature! and thank the Etre
+Supreme that he made thee insignificant enough to be forgiven."
+
+"A pretty face to look out of the National Window" (The Guillotine.),
+said the woman whose robe the painter had ruffled.
+
+"Citizens," said Nicot, white with passion, but constraining himself so
+that his words seemed to come from grinded teeth, "I have the honour
+to inform you that I seek the Representant upon business of the
+utmost importance to the public and himself; and," he added slowly and
+malignantly, glaring round, "I call all good citizens to be my witnesses
+when I shall complain to Robespierre of the reception bestowed on me by
+some amongst you."
+
+There was in the man's look and his tone of voice so much of deep
+and concentrated malignity, that the idlers drew back, and as the
+remembrance of the sudden ups and downs of revolutionary life occurred
+to them, several voices were lifted to assure the squalid and ragged
+painter that nothing was farther from their thoughts than to offer
+affront to a citizen whose very appearance proved him to be an exemplary
+sans-culotte. Nicot received these apologies in sullen silence, and,
+folding his arms, leaned against the wall, waiting in grim patience for
+his admission.
+
+The loiterers talked to each other in separate knots of two and three;
+and through the general hum rang the clear, loud, careless whistle of
+the tall Jacobin who stood guard by the stairs. Next to Nicot, an old
+woman and a young virgin were muttering in earnest whispers, and the
+atheist painter chuckled inly to overhear their discourse.
+
+"I assure thee, my dear," said the crone, with a mysterious shake of
+head, "that the divine Catherine Theot, whom the impious now persecute,
+is really inspired. There can be no doubt that the elect, of whom Dom
+Gerle and the virtuous Robespierre are destined to be the two grand
+prophets, will enjoy eternal life here, and exterminate all their
+enemies. There is no doubt of it,--not the least!"
+
+"How delightful!" said the girl; "ce cher Robespierre!--he does not look
+very long-lived either!"
+
+"The greater the miracle," said the old woman. "I am just eighty-one,
+and I don't feel a day older since Catherine Theot promised me I should
+be one of the elect!"
+
+Here the women were jostled aside by some newcomers, who talked loud and
+eagerly.
+
+"Yes," cried a brawny man, whose garb denoted him to be a butcher,
+with bare arms, and a cap of liberty on his head; "I am come to warn
+Robespierre. They lay a snare for him; they offer him the Palais
+National. 'On ne peut etre ami du peuple et habiter un palais.'" ("No
+one can be a friend of the people, and dwell in a palace."--"Papiers
+inedits trouves chez Robespierre," etc., volume ii. page 132.)
+
+"No, indeed," answered a cordonnier; "I like him best in his little
+lodging with the menuisier: it looks like one of US."
+
+Another rush of the crowd, and a new group were thrown forward in the
+vicinity of Nicot. And these men gabbled and chattered faster and louder
+than the rest.
+
+"But my plan is--"
+
+"Au diable with YOUR plan! I tell you MY scheme is--"
+
+"Nonsense!" cried a third. "When Robespierre understands MY new method
+of making gunpowder, the enemies of France shall--"
+
+"Bah! who fears foreign enemies?" interrupted a fourth; "the enemies
+to be feared are at home. MY new guillotine takes off fifty heads at a
+time!"
+
+"But MY new Constitution!" exclaimed a fifth.
+
+"MY new Religion, citizen!" murmured, complacently, a sixth.
+
+"Sacre mille tonnerres, silence!" roared forth one of the Jacobin guard.
+
+And the crowd suddenly parted as a fierce-looking man, buttoned up to
+the chin, his sword rattling by his side, his spurs clinking at
+his heel, descended the stairs,--his cheeks swollen and purple with
+intemperance, his eyes dead and savage as a vulture's. There was a still
+pause, as all, with pale cheeks, made way for the relentless Henriot.
+(Or H_a_nriot. It is singular how undetermined are not only the
+characters of the French Revolution, but even the spelling of their
+names. With the historians it is Vergniau_d_,--with the journalists of
+the time it is Vorgniau_x_. With one authority it is Robespierre,--with
+another Robe_r_spierre.) Scarce had this gruff and iron minion of the
+tyrant stalked through the throng, than a new movement of respect and
+agitation and fear swayed the increasing crowd, as there glided in, with
+the noiselessness of a shadow, a smiling, sober citizen, plainly but
+neatly clad, with a downcast humble eye. A milder, meeker face no
+pastoral poet could assign to Corydon or Thyrsis,--why did the crowd
+shrink and hold their breath? As the ferret in a burrow crept that
+slight form amongst the larger and rougher creatures that huddled and
+pressed back on each other as he passed. A wink of his stealthy eye, and
+the huge Jacobins left the passage clear, without sound or question. On
+he went to the apartment of the tyrant, and thither will we follow him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.VII.
+
+     Constitutum est, ut quisquis eum HOMINEM dixisset fuisse,
+     capitalem penderet poenam.
+     --St. Augustine, "Of the God Serapis," l. 18, "de Civ. Dei," c. 5.
+
+     (It was decreed, that whoso should say that he had been a MAN,
+     should suffer the punishment of a capital offence.)
+
+Robespierre was reclining languidly in his fauteuil, his cadaverous
+countenance more jaded and fatigued than usual. He to whom Catherine
+Theot assured immortal life, looked, indeed, like a man at death's door.
+On the table before him was a dish heaped with oranges, with the juice
+of which it is said that he could alone assuage the acrid bile that
+overflowed his system; and an old woman, richly dressed (she had been a
+Marquise in the old regime) was employed in peeling the Hesperian fruits
+for the sick Dragon, with delicate fingers covered with jewels. I
+have before said that Robespierre was the idol of the women. Strange
+certainly!--but then they were French women! The old Marquise, who, like
+Catherine Theot, called him "son," really seemed to love him piously and
+disinterestedly as a mother; and as she peeled the oranges, and heaped
+on him the most caressing and soothing expressions, the livid ghost of a
+smile fluttered about his meagre lips. At a distance, Payan and Couthon,
+seated at another table, were writing rapidly, and occasionally pausing
+from their work to consult with each other in brief whispers.
+
+Suddenly one of the Jacobins opened the door, and, approaching
+Robespierre, whispered to him the name of Guerin. (See for the espionage
+on which Guerin was employed, "Les Papiers inedits," etc., volume i.
+page 366, No. xxviii.) At that word the sick man started up, as if new
+life were in the sound.
+
+"My kind friend," he said to the Marquise, "forgive me; I must dispense
+with thy tender cares. France demands me. I am never ill when I can
+serve my country!"
+
+The old Marquise lifted up her eyes to heaven and murmured, "Quel ange!"
+
+Robespierre waved his hand impatiently; and the old woman, with a sigh,
+patted his pale cheek, kissed his forehead, and submissively withdrew.
+The next moment, the smiling, sober man we have before described, stood,
+bending low, before the tyrant. And well might Robespierre welcome one
+of the subtlest agents of his power,--one on whom he relied more than
+the clubs of his Jacobins, the tongues of his orators, the bayonets of
+his armies; Guerin, the most renowned of his ecouteurs,--the searching,
+prying, universal, omnipresent spy, who glided like a sunbeam through
+chink and crevice, and brought to him intelligence not only of the
+deeds, but the hearts of men!
+
+"Well, citizen, well!--and what of Tallien?"
+
+"This morning, early, two minutes after eight, he went out."
+
+"So early?--hem!"
+
+"He passed Rue des Quatre Fils, Rue de Temple, Rue de la Reunion, au
+Marais, Rue Martin; nothing observable, except that--"
+
+"That what?"
+
+"He amused himself at a stall in bargaining for some books."
+
+"Bargaining for books! Aha, the charlatan!--he would cloak the
+intriguant under the savant! Well!"
+
+"At last, in the Rue des Fosses Montmartre, an individual in a blue
+surtout (unknown) accosted him. They walked together about the street
+some minutes, and were joined by Legendre."
+
+"Legendre! approach, Payan! Legendre, thou hearest!"
+
+"I went into a fruit-stall, and hired two little girls to go and play
+at ball within hearing. They heard Legendre say, 'I believe his power is
+wearing itself out.' And Tallien answered, 'And HIMSELF too. I would not
+give three months' purchase for his life.' I do not know, citizen, if
+they meant THEE?"
+
+"Nor I, citizen," answered Robespierre, with a fell smile, succeeded by
+an expression of gloomy thought. "Ha!" he muttered; "I am young yet,--in
+the prime of life. I commit no excess. No; my constitution is sound,
+sound. Anything farther of Tallien?"
+
+"Yes. The woman whom he loves--Teresa de Fontenai--who lies in prison,
+still continues to correspond with him; to urge him to save her by thy
+destruction: this my listeners overheard. His servant is the messenger
+between the prisoner and himself."
+
+"So! The servant shall be seized in the open streets of Paris. The Reign
+of Terror is not over yet. With the letters found on him, if such their
+context, I will pluck Tallien from his benches in the Convention."
+
+Robespierre rose, and after walking a few moments to and fro the room
+in thought, opened the door and summoned one of the Jacobins without.
+To him he gave his orders for the watch and arrest of Tallien's servant,
+and then threw himself again into his chair. As the Jacobin departed,
+Guerin whispered,--
+
+"Is not that the Citizen Aristides?"
+
+"Yes; a faithful fellow, if he would wash himself, and not swear so
+much."
+
+"Didst thou not guillotine his brother?"
+
+"But Aristides denounced him."
+
+"Nevertheless, are such men safe about thy person?"
+
+"Humph! that is true." And Robespierre, drawing out his pocketbook,
+wrote a memorandum in it, replaced it in his vest, and resumed,--
+
+"What else of Tallien?"
+
+"Nothing more. He and Legendre, with the unknown, walked to the Jardin
+Egalite, and there parted. I saw Tallien to his house. But I have
+other news. Thou badest me watch for those who threaten thee in secret
+letters."
+
+"Guerin! hast thou detected them? Hast thou--hast thou--"
+
+And the tyrant, as he spoke, opened and shut both his hands, as if
+already grasping the lives of the writers, and one of those convulsive
+grimaces that seemed like an epileptic affection, to which he was
+subject, distorted his features.
+
+"Citizen, I think I have found one. Thou must know that amongst those
+most disaffected is the painter Nicot."
+
+"Stay, stay!" said Robespierre, opening a manuscript book, bound in red
+morocco (for Robespierre was neat and precise, even in his death-lists),
+and turning to an alphabetical index,--"Nicot!--I have him,--atheist,
+sans-culotte (I hate slovens), friend of Hebert! Aha! N.B.--Rene Dumas
+knows of his early career and crimes. Proceed!"
+
+"This Nicot has been suspected of diffusing tracts and pamphlets against
+thyself and the Comite. Yesterday evening, when he was out, his porter
+admitted me into his apartment, Rue Beau Repaire. With my master-key I
+opened his desk and escritoire. I found herein a drawing of thyself at
+the guillotine; and underneath was written, 'Bourreau de ton pays, lis
+l'arret de ton chatiment!' (Executioner of thy country, read the decree
+of thy punishment!) I compared the words with the fragments of the
+various letters thou gavest me: the handwriting tallies with one. See, I
+tore off the writing."
+
+Robespierre looked, smiled, and, as if his vengeance were already
+satisfied, threw himself on his chair. "It is well! I feared it was a
+more powerful enemy. This man must be arrested at once."
+
+"And he waits below. I brushed by him as I ascended the stairs."
+
+"Does he so?--admit!--nay,--hold! hold! Guerin, withdraw into the
+inner chamber till I summon thee again. Dear Payan, see that this Nicot
+conceals no weapons."
+
+Payan, who was as brave as Robespierre was pusillanimous, repressed the
+smile of disdain that quivered on his lips a moment, and left the room.
+
+Meanwhile Robespierre, with his head buried in his bosom, seemed
+plunged in deep thought. "Life is a melancholy thing, Couthon!" said he,
+suddenly.
+
+"Begging your pardon, I think death worse," answered the philanthropist,
+gently.
+
+Robespierre made no rejoinder, but took from his portefeuille that
+singular letter, which was found afterwards amongst his papers, and
+is marked LXI. in the published collection. ("Papiers inedits,' etc.,
+volume ii. page 156.)
+
+"Without doubt," it began, "you are uneasy at not having earlier
+received news from me. Be not alarmed; you know that I ought only to
+reply by our ordinary courier; and as he has been interrupted, dans sa
+derniere course, that is the cause of my delay. When you receive this,
+employ all diligence to fly a theatre where you are about to appear
+and disappear for the last time. It were idle to recall to you all the
+reasons that expose you to peril. The last step that should place you
+sur le sopha de la presidence, but brings you to the scaffold; and the
+mob will spit on your face as it has spat on those whom you have
+judged. Since, then, you have accumulated here a sufficient treasure for
+existence, I await you with great impatience, to laugh with you at the
+part you have played in the troubles of a nation as credulous as it is
+avid of novelties. Take your part according to our arrangements,--all is
+prepared. I conclude,--our courier waits. I expect your reply."
+
+Musingly and slowly the Dictator devoured the contents of this epistle.
+"No," he said to himself,--"no; he who has tasted power can no longer
+enjoy repose. Yet, Danton, Danton! thou wert right; better to be a poor
+fisherman than to govern men." ("Il vaudrait mieux," said Danton, in his
+dungeon, "etre un pauvre pecheur que de gouverner les hommes.")
+
+The door opened, and Payan reappeared and whispered Robespierre, "All is
+safe! See the man."
+
+The Dictator, satisfied, summoned his attendant Jacobin to conduct Nicot
+to his presence. The painter entered with a fearless expression in his
+deformed features, and stood erect before Robespierre, who scanned him
+with a sidelong eye.
+
+It is remarkable that most of the principal actors of the Revolution
+were singularly hideous in appearance,--from the colossal ugliness of
+Mirabeau and Danton, or the villanous ferocity in the countenances
+of David and Simon, to the filthy squalor of Marat, the sinister and
+bilious meanness of the Dictator's features. But Robespierre, who was
+said to resemble a cat, had also a cat's cleanness; and his prim and
+dainty dress, his shaven smoothness, the womanly whiteness of his
+lean hands, made yet more remarkable the disorderly ruffianism that
+characterised the attire and mien of the painter-sans-culotte.
+
+"And so, citizen," said Robespierre, mildly, "thou wouldst speak with
+me? I know thy merits and civism have been overlooked too long. Thou
+wouldst ask some suitable provision in the state? Scruple not--say on!"
+
+"Virtuous Robespierre, toi qui eclaires l'univers (Thou who enlightenest
+the world.), I come not to ask a favour, but to render service to the
+state. I have discovered a correspondence that lays open a conspiracy of
+which many of the actors are yet unsuspected." And he placed the papers
+on the table. Robespierre seized, and ran his eye over them rapidly and
+eagerly.
+
+"Good!--good!" he muttered to himself: "this is all I wanted. Barrere,
+Legendre! I have them! Camille Desmoulins was but their dupe. I loved
+him once; I never loved them! Citizen Nicot, I thank thee. I observe
+these letters are addressed to an Englishman. What Frenchman but must
+distrust these English wolves in sheep's clothing! France wants no
+longer citizens of the world; that farce ended with Anarcharsis Clootz.
+I beg pardon, Citizen Nicot; but Clootz and Hebert were THY friends."
+
+"Nay," said Nicot, apologetically, "we are all liable to be deceived. I
+ceased to honour them whom thou didst declare against; for I disown my
+own senses rather than thy justice."
+
+"Yes, I pretend to justice; that IS the virtue I affect," said
+Robespierre, meekly; and with his feline propensities he enjoyed, even
+in that critical hour of vast schemes, of imminent danger, of meditated
+revenge, the pleasure of playing with a solitary victim. (The most
+detestable anecdote of this peculiar hypocrisy in Robespierre is that
+in which he is recorded to have tenderly pressed the hand of his old
+school-friend, Camille Desmoulins, the day that he signed the warrant
+for his arrest.) "And my justice shall no longer be blind to thy
+services, good Nicot. Thou knowest this Glyndon?"
+
+"Yes, well,--intimately. He WAS my friend, but I would give up my
+brother if he were one of the 'indulgents.' I am not ashamed to say that
+I have received favours from this man."
+
+"Aha!--and thou dost honestly hold the doctrine that where a man
+threatens my life all personal favours are to be forgotten?"
+
+"All!"
+
+"Good citizen!--kind Nicot!--oblige me by writing the address of this
+Glyndon."
+
+Nicot stooped to the table; and suddenly when the pen was in his hand, a
+thought flashed across him, and he paused, embarrassed and confused.
+
+"Write on, KIND Nicot!"
+
+The painter slowly obeyed.
+
+"Who are the other familiars of Glyndon?"
+
+"It was on that point I was about to speak to thee, Representant," said
+Nicot. "He visits daily a woman, a foreigner, who knows all his secrets;
+she affects to be poor, and to support her child by industry. But she is
+the wife of an Italian of immense wealth, and there is no doubt that
+she has moneys which are spent in corrupting the citizens. She should be
+seized and arrested."
+
+"Write down her name also."
+
+"But no time is to be lost; for I know that both have a design to escape
+from Paris this very night."
+
+"Our government is prompt, good Nicot,--never fear. Humph!--humph!" and
+Robespierre took the paper on which Nicot had written, and stooping over
+it--for he was near-sighted--added, smilingly, "Dost thou always write
+the same hand, citizen? This seems almost like a disguised character."
+
+"I should not like them to know who denounced them, Representant."
+
+"Good! good! Thy virtue shall be rewarded, trust me. Salut et
+fraternite!"
+
+Robespierre half rose as he spoke, and Nicot withdrew.
+
+"Ho, there!--without!" cried the Dictator, ringing his bell; and as the
+ready Jacobin attended the summons, "Follow that man, Jean Nicot. The
+instant he has cleared the house seize him. At once to the Conciergerie
+with him. Stay!--nothing against the law; there is thy warrant. The
+public accuser shall have my instruction. Away!--quick!"
+
+The Jacobin vanished. All trace of illness, of infirmity, had gone from
+the valetudinarian; he stood erect on the floor, his face
+twitching convulsively, and his arms folded. "Ho! Guerin!" the spy
+reappeared--"take these addresses! Within an hour this Englishman and
+his woman must be in prison; their revelations will aid me against
+worthier foes. They shall die: they shall perish with the rest on the
+10th,--the third day from this. There!" and he wrote hastily,--"there,
+also, is thy warrant! Off!
+
+"And now, Couthon, Payan, we will dally no longer with Tallien and his
+crew. I have information that the Convention will NOT attend the Fete on
+the 10th. We must trust only to the sword of the law. I must compose
+my thoughts,--prepare my harangue. To-morrow, I will reappear at the
+Convention; to-morrow, bold St. Just joins us, fresh from our victorious
+armies; to-morrow, from the tribune, I will dart the thunderbolt on the
+masked enemies of France; to-morrow, I will demand, in the face of the
+country, the heads of the conspirators."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.VIII.
+
+     Le glaive est contre toi tourne de toutes parties.
+     La Harpe, "Jeanne de Naples," Act iv. sc. 4.
+
+     (The sword is raised against you on all sides.)
+
+In the mean time Glyndon, after an audience of some length with C--,
+in which the final preparations were arranged, sanguine of safety,
+and foreseeing no obstacle to escape, bent his way back to Fillide.
+Suddenly, in the midst of his cheerful thoughts, he fancied he heard a
+voice too well and too terribly recognised, hissing in his ear, "What!
+thou wouldst defy and escape me! thou wouldst go back to virtue and
+content. It is in vain,--it is too late. No, _I_ will not haunt thee;
+HUMAN footsteps, no less inexorable, dog thee now. Me thou shalt not see
+again till in the dungeon, at midnight, before thy doom! Behold--"
+
+And Glyndon, mechanically turning his head, saw, close behind him, the
+stealthy figure of a man whom he had observed before, but with little
+heed, pass and repass him, as he quitted the house of Citizen C--.
+Instantly and instinctively he knew that he was watched,--that he was
+pursued. The street he was in was obscure and deserted, for the day was
+oppressively sultry, and it was the hour when few were abroad, either
+on business or pleasure. Bold as he was, an icy chill shot through his
+heart, he knew too well the tremendous system that then reigned in Paris
+not to be aware of his danger. As the sight of the first plague-boil to
+the victim of the pestilence, was the first sight of the shadowy spy
+to that of the Revolution: the watch, the arrest, the trial, the
+guillotine,--these made the regular and rapid steps of the monster that
+the anarchists called Law! He breathed hard, he heard distinctly the
+loud beating of his heart. And so he paused, still and motionless,
+gazing upon the shadow that halted also behind him.
+
+Presently, the absence of all allies to the spy, the solitude of the
+streets, reanimated his courage; he made a step towards his pursuer, who
+retreated as he advanced. "Citizen, thou followest me," he said. "Thy
+business?"
+
+"Surely," answered the man, with a deprecating smile, "the streets are
+broad enough for both? Thou art not so bad a republican as to arrogate
+all Paris to thyself!"
+
+"Go on first, then. I make way for thee."
+
+The man bowed, doffed his hat politely, and passed forward. The next
+moment Glyndon plunged into a winding lane, and fled fast through a
+labyrinth of streets, passages, and alleys. By degrees he composed
+himself, and, looking behind, imagined that he had baffled the pursuer;
+he then, by a circuitous route, bent his way once more to his home. As
+he emerged into one of the broader streets, a passenger, wrapped in
+a mantle, brushing so quickly by him that he did not observe his
+countenance, whispered, "Clarence Glyndon, you are dogged,--follow
+me!" and the stranger walked quickly before him. Clarence turned, and
+sickened once more to see at his heels, with the same servile smile
+on his face, the pursuer he fancied he had escaped. He forgot the
+injunction of the stranger to follow him, and perceiving a crowd
+gathered close at hand, round a caricature-shop, dived amidst them, and,
+gaining another street, altered the direction he had before taken, and,
+after a long and breathless course, gained without once more seeing the
+spy, a distant quartier of the city.
+
+Here, indeed, all seemed so serene and fair that his artist eye, even
+in that imminent hour, rested with pleasure on the scene. It was a
+comparatively broad space, formed by one of the noble quays. The Seine
+flowed majestically along, with boats and craft resting on its surface.
+The sun gilt a thousand spires and domes, and gleamed on the white
+palaces of a fallen chivalry. Here fatigued and panting, he paused an
+instant, and a cooler air from the river fanned his brow. "Awhile, at
+least, I am safe here," he murmured; and as he spoke, some thirty paces
+behind him, he beheld the spy. He stood rooted to the spot; wearied and
+spent as he was, escape seemed no longer possible,--the river on one
+side (no bridge at hand), and the long row of mansions closing up the
+other. As he halted, he heard laughter and obscene songs from a house a
+little in his rear, between himself and the spy. It was a cafe fearfully
+known in that quarter. Hither often resorted the black troop of
+Henriot,--the minions and huissiers of Robespierre. The spy, then,
+had hunted the victim within the jaws of the hounds. The man slowly
+advanced, and, pausing before the open window of the cafe, put his head
+through the aperture, as to address and summon forth its armed inmates.
+
+At that very instant, and while the spy's head was thus turned from him,
+standing in the half-open gateway of the house immediately before
+him, he perceived the stranger who had warned; the figure, scarcely
+distinguishable through the mantle that wrapped it, motioned to him
+to enter. He sprang noiselessly through the friendly opening: the door
+closed; breathlessly he followed the stranger up a flight of broad
+stairs and through a suite of empty rooms, until, having gained a small
+cabinet, his conductor doffed the large hat and the long mantle that had
+hitherto concealed his shape and features, and Glyndon beheld Zanoni!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.IX.
+
+     Think not my magic wonders wrought by aid
+     Of Stygian angels summoned up from hell;
+     Scorned and accursed be those who have essayed
+     Her gloomy Dives and Afrites to compel.
+     But by perception of the secret powers
+     Of mineral springs in Nature's inmost cell,
+     Of herbs in curtain of her greenest bowers,
+     And of the moving stars o'er mountain tops and towers.
+     Wiffen's "Translation of Tasso," cant. xiv. xliii.
+
+"You are safe here, young Englishman!" said Zanoni, motioning Glyndon to
+a seat. "Fortunate for you that I come on your track at last!"
+
+"Far happier had it been if we had never met! Yet even in these last
+hours of my fate, I rejoice to look once more on the face of that
+ominous and mysterious being to whom I can ascribe all the sufferings
+I have known. Here, then, thou shalt not palter with or elude me. Here,
+before we part, thou shalt unravel to me the dark enigma, if not of thy
+life, of my own!"
+
+"Hast thou suffered? Poor neophyte!" said Zanoni, pityingly. "Yes; I see
+it on thy brow. But wherefore wouldst thou blame me? Did I not warn thee
+against the whispers of thy spirit; did I not warn thee to forbear? Did
+I not tell thee that the ordeal was one of awful hazard and tremendous
+fears,--nay, did I not offer to resign to thee the heart that was mighty
+enough, while mine, Glyndon, to content me? Was it not thine own daring
+and resolute choice to brave the initiation! Of thine own free will
+didst thou make Mejnour thy master, and his lore thy study!"
+
+"But whence came the irresistible desires of that wild and unholy
+knowledge? I knew them not till thine evil eye fell upon me, and I was
+drawn into the magic atmosphere of thy being!"
+
+"Thou errest!--the desires were in thee; and, whether in one direction
+or the other, would have forced their way! Man! thou askest me the
+enigma of thy fate and my own! Look round all being, is there not
+mystery everywhere? Can thine eye trace the ripening of the grain
+beneath the earth? In the moral and the physical world alike, lie dark
+portents, far more wondrous than the powers thou wouldst ascribe to me!"
+
+"Dost thou disown those powers; dost thou confess thyself an
+imposter?--or wilt thou dare to tell me that thou art indeed sold to the
+Evil one,--a magician whose familiar has haunted me night and day?"
+
+"It matters not what I am," returned Zanoni; "it matters only whether I
+can aid thee to exorcise thy dismal phantom, and return once more to the
+wholesome air of this common life. Something, however, will I tell thee,
+not to vindicate myself, but the Heaven and the Nature that thy doubts
+malign."
+
+Zanoni paused a moment, and resumed with a slight smile,--
+
+"In thy younger days thou hast doubtless read with delight the great
+Christian poet, whose muse, like the morning it celebrated, came to
+earth, 'crowned with flowers culled in Paradise.' ('L'aurea testa Di
+rose colte in Paradiso infiora.' Tasso, "Ger. Lib." iv. l.)
+
+"No spirit was more imbued with the knightly superstitions of the time;
+and surely the Poet of Jerusalem hath sufficiently, to satisfy even the
+Inquisitor he consulted, execrated all the practitioners of the unlawful
+spells invoked,--
+
+'Per isforzar Cocito o Flegetonte.' (To constrain Cocytus or
+Phlegethon.)
+
+"But in his sorrows and his wrongs, in the prison of his madhouse,
+know you not that Tasso himself found his solace, his escape, in the
+recognition of a holy and spiritual Theurgia,--of a magic that could
+summon the Angel, or the Good Genius, not the Fiend? And do you not
+remember how he, deeply versed as he was for his age, in the mysteries
+of the nobler Platonism, which hints at the secrets of all the starry
+brotherhoods, from the Chaldean to the later Rosicrucian, discriminates
+in his lovely verse, between the black art of Ismeno and the glorious
+lore of the Enchanter who counsels and guides upon their errand the
+champions of the Holy Land? HIS, not the charms wrought by the aid of
+the Stygian Rebels (See this remarkable passage, which does indeed
+not unfaithfully represent the doctrine of the Pythagorean and the
+Platonist, in Tasso, cant. xiv. stanzas xli. to xlvii. ("Ger. Lib.")
+They are beautifully translated by Wiffen.), but the perception of the
+secret powers of the fountain and the herb,--the Arcana of the unknown
+nature and the various motions of the stars. His, the holy haunts of
+Lebanon and Carmel,--beneath his feet he saw the clouds, the snows, the
+hues of Iris, the generations of the rains and dews. Did the Christian
+Hermit who converted that Enchanter (no fabulous being, but the type of
+all spirit that would aspire through Nature up to God) command him to
+lay aside these sublime studies, 'Le solite arte e l' uso mio'? No! but
+to cherish and direct them to worthy ends. And in this grand conception
+of the poet lies the secret of the true Theurgia, which startles your
+ignorance in a more learned day with puerile apprehensions, and the
+nightmares of a sick man's dreams."
+
+Again Zanoni paused, and again resumed:--
+
+"In ages far remote,--of a civilisation far different from that which
+now merges the individual in the state,--there existed men of ardent
+minds, and an intense desire of knowledge. In the mighty and solemn
+kingdoms in which they dwelt, there were no turbulent and earthly
+channels to work off the fever of their minds. Set in the antique mould
+of casts through which no intellect could pierce, no valour could force
+its way, the thirst for wisdom alone reigned in the hearts of those who
+received its study as a heritage from sire to son. Hence, even in your
+imperfect records of the progress of human knowledge, you find that, in
+the earliest ages, Philosophy descended not to the business and homes of
+men. It dwelt amidst the wonders of the loftier creation; it sought to
+analyse the formation of matter,--the essentials of the prevailing soul;
+to read the mysteries of the starry orbs; to dive into those depths
+of Nature in which Zoroaster is said by the schoolmen first to have
+discovered the arts which your ignorance classes under the name of
+magic. In such an age, then, arose some men, who, amidst the vanities
+and delusions of their class, imagined that they detected gleams of a
+brighter and steadier lore. They fancied an affinity existing among all
+the works of Nature, and that in the lowliest lay the secret attraction
+that might conduct them upward to the loftiest. (Agreeably, it would
+seem, to the notion of Iamblichus and Plotinus, that the universe is as
+an animal; so that there is sympathy and communication between one part
+and the other; in the smallest part may be the subtlest nerve. And hence
+the universal magnetism of Nature. But man contemplates the universe as
+an animalcule would an elephant. The animalcule, seeing scarcely the tip
+of the hoof, would be incapable of comprehending that the trunk belonged
+to the same creature,--that the effect produced upon one extremity would
+be felt in an instant by the other.) Centuries passed, and lives were
+wasted in these discoveries; but step after step was chronicled and
+marked, and became the guide to the few who alone had the hereditary
+privilege to track their path.
+
+"At last from this dimness upon some eyes the light broke; but think not,
+young visionary, that to those who nursed unholy thoughts, over whom
+the Origin of Evil held a sway, that dawning was vouchsafed. It could
+be given then, as now, only to the purest ecstasies of imagination and
+intellect, undistracted by the cares of a vulgar life, or the appetites
+of the common clay. Far from descending to the assistance of a fiend,
+theirs was but the august ambition to approach nearer to the Fount
+of Good; the more they emancipated themselves from this limbo of the
+planets, the more they were penetrated by the splendour and beneficence
+of God. And if they sought, and at last discovered, how to the eye of
+the Spirit all the subtler modifications of being and of matter might be
+made apparent; if they discovered how, for the wings of the Spirit, all
+space might be annihilated, and while the body stood heavy and solid
+here, as a deserted tomb, the freed IDEA might wander from star to
+star,--if such discoveries became in truth their own, the sublimest
+luxury of their knowledge was but this, to wonder, to venerate, and
+adore! For, as one not unlearned in these high matters has expressed it,
+'There is a principle of the soul superior to all external nature,
+and through this principle we are capable of surpassing the order and
+systems of the world, and participating the immortal life and the energy
+of the Sublime Celestials. When the soul is elevated to natures above
+itself, it deserts the order to which it is awhile compelled, and by a
+religious magnetism is attracted to another and a loftier, with which it
+blends and mingles.' (From Iamblichus, "On the Mysteries," c. 7, sect.
+7.) Grant, then, that such beings found at last the secret to arrest
+death; to fascinate danger and the foe; to walk the revolutions of the
+earth unharmed,--think you that this life could teach them other desire
+than to yearn the more for the Immortal, and to fit their intellect the
+better for the higher being to which they might, when Time and Death
+exist no longer, be transferred? Away with your gloomy fantasies of
+sorcerer and demon!--the soul can aspire only to the light; and even the
+error of our lofty knowledge was but the forgetfulness of the weakness,
+the passions, and the bonds which the death we so vainly conquered only
+can purge away!"
+
+This address was so different from what Glyndon had anticipated, that he
+remained for some moments speechless, and at length faltered out,--
+
+"But why, then, to me--"
+
+"Why," added Zanoni,--"why to thee have been only the penance and the
+terror,--the Threshold and the Phantom? Vain man! look to the commonest
+elements of the common learning. Can every tyro at his mere wish and
+will become the master; can the student, when he has bought his Euclid,
+become a Newton; can the youth whom the Muses haunt, say, 'I will equal
+Homer;' yea, can yon pale tyrant, with all the parchment laws of a
+hundred system-shapers, and the pikes of his dauntless multitude, carve,
+at his will, a constitution not more vicious than the one which the
+madness of a mob could overthrow? When, in that far time to which I have
+referred, the student aspired to the heights to which thou wouldst have
+sprung at a single bound, he was trained from his very cradle to the
+career he was to run. The internal and the outward nature were made
+clear to his eyes, year after year, as they opened on the day. He was
+not admitted to the practical initiation till not one earthly wish
+chained that sublimest faculty which you call the IMAGINATION, one
+carnal desire clouded the penetrative essence that you call the
+INTELLECT. And even then, and at the best, how few attained to the
+last mystery! Happier inasmuch as they attained the earlier to the holy
+glories for which Death is the heavenliest gate."
+
+Zanoni paused, and a shade of thought and sorrow darkened his celestial
+beauty.
+
+"And are there, indeed, others, besides thee and Mejnour, who lay claim
+to thine attributes, and have attained to thy secrets?"
+
+"Others there have been before us, but we two now are alone on earth."
+
+"Imposter, thou betrayest thyself! If they could conquer Death, why
+live they not yet?" (Glyndon appears to forget that Mejnour had before
+answered the very question which his doubts here a second time suggest.)
+
+"Child of a day!" answered Zanoni, mournfully, "have I not told thee the
+error of our knowledge was the forgetfulness of the desires and passions
+which the spirit never can wholly and permanently conquer while this
+matter cloaks it? Canst thou think that it is no sorrow, either to
+reject all human ties, all friendship, and all love, or to see, day
+after day, friendship and love wither from our life, as blossoms from
+the stem? Canst thou wonder how, with the power to live while the world
+shall last, ere even our ordinary date be finished we yet may prefer to
+die? Wonder rather that there are two who have clung so faithfully to
+earth! Me, I confess, that earth can enamour yet. Attaining to the last
+secret while youth was in its bloom, youth still colours all around me
+with its own luxuriant beauty; to me, yet, to breathe is to enjoy. The
+freshness has not faded from the face of Nature, and not an herb in
+which I cannot discover a new charm,--an undetected wonder.
+
+"As with my youth, so with Mejnour's age: he will tell you that life to
+him is but a power to examine; and not till he has exhausted all
+the marvels which the Creator has sown on earth, would he desire new
+habitations for the renewed Spirit to explore. We are the types of the
+two essences of what is imperishable,--'ART, that enjoys; and SCIENCE,
+that contemplates!' And now, that thou mayest be contented that the
+secrets are not vouchsafed to thee, learn that so utterly must the idea
+detach itself from what makes up the occupation and excitement of men;
+so must it be void of whatever would covet, or love, or hate,--that for
+the ambitious man, for the lover, the hater, the power avails not. And
+I, at last, bound and blinded by the most common of household ties; I,
+darkened and helpless, adjure thee, the baffled and discontented,--I
+adjure thee to direct, to guide me; where are they? Oh, tell me,--speak!
+My wife,--my child? Silent!--oh, thou knowest now that I am no sorcerer,
+no enemy. I cannot give thee what thy faculties deny,--I cannot achieve
+what the passionless Mejnour failed to accomplish; but I can give thee
+the next-best boon, perhaps the fairest,--I can reconcile thee to the
+daily world, and place peace between thy conscience and thyself."
+
+"Wilt thou promise?"
+
+"By their sweet lives, I promise!"
+
+Glyndon looked and believed. He whispered the address to the house
+whither his fatal step already had brought woe and doom.
+
+"Bless thee for this," exclaimed Zanoni, passionately, "and thou shalt
+be blessed! What! couldst thou not perceive that at the entrance to all
+the grander worlds dwell the race that intimidate and awe? Who in thy
+daily world ever left the old regions of Custom and Prescription,
+and felt not the first seizure of the shapeless and nameless Fear?
+Everywhere around thee where men aspire and labour, though they see it
+not,--in the closet of the sage, in the council of the demagogue, in
+the camp of the warrior,--everywhere cowers and darkens the Unutterable
+Horror. But there, where thou hast ventured, alone is the Phantom
+VISIBLE; and never will it cease to haunt, till thou canst pass to the
+Infinite, as the seraph; or return to the Familiar, as a child! But
+answer me this: when, seeking to adhere to some calm resolve of virtue,
+the Phantom hath stalked suddenly to thy side; when its voice hath
+whispered thee despair; when its ghastly eyes would scare thee back to
+those scenes of earthly craft or riotous excitement from which, as
+it leaves thee to worse foes to the soul, its presence is ever
+absent,--hast thou never bravely resisted the spectre and thine own
+horror; hast thou never said, 'Come what may, to Virtue I will cling?'"
+
+"Alas!" answered Glyndon, "only of late have I dared to do so."
+
+"And thou hast felt then that the Phantom grew more dim and its power
+more faint?"
+
+"It is true."
+
+"Rejoice, then!--thou hast overcome the true terror and mystery of the
+ordeal. Resolve is the first success. Rejoice, for the exorcism is sure!
+Thou art not of those who, denying a life to come, are the victims of
+the Inexorable Horror. Oh, when shall men learn, at last, that if the
+Great Religion inculcates so rigidly the necessity of FAITH, it is not
+alone that FAITH leads to the world to be; but that without faith there
+is no excellence in this,--faith in something wiser, happier, diviner,
+than we see on earth!--the artist calls it the Ideal,--the priest,
+Faith. The Ideal and Faith are one and the same. Return, O wanderer,
+return! Feel what beauty and holiness dwell in the Customary and the
+Old. Back to thy gateway glide, thou Horror! and calm, on the childlike
+heart, smile again, O azure Heaven, with thy night and thy morning star
+but as one, though under its double name of Memory and Hope!"
+
+As he thus spoke, Zanoni laid his hand gently on the burning temples of
+his excited and wondering listener; and presently a sort of trance came
+over him: he imagined that he was returned to the home of his infancy;
+that he was in the small chamber where, over his early slumbers,
+his mother had watched and prayed. There it was,--visible, palpable,
+solitary, unaltered. In the recess, the homely bed; on the walls, the
+shelves filled with holy books; the very easel on which he had first
+sought to call the ideal to the canvas, dust-covered, broken, in the
+corner. Below the window lay the old churchyard: he saw it green in the
+distance, the sun glancing through the yew-trees; he saw the tomb where
+father and mother lay united, and the spire pointing up to heaven, the
+symbol of the hopes of those who consigned the ashes to the dust; in
+his ear rang the bells, pealing, as on a Sabbath day. Far fled all
+the visions of anxiety and awe that had haunted and convulsed; youth,
+boyhood, childhood came back to him with innocent desires and hopes; he
+thought he fell upon his knees to pray. He woke,--he woke in
+delicious tears, he felt that the Phantom was fled forever. He looked
+round,--Zanoni was gone. On the table lay these lines, the ink yet
+wet:--
+
+"I will find ways and means for thy escape. At nightfall, as the clock
+strikes nine, a boat shall wait thee on the river before this house;
+the boatman will guide thee to a retreat where thou mayst rest in safety
+till the Reign of Terror, which nears its close, be past. Think no more
+of the sensual love that lured, and wellnigh lost thee. It betrayed, and
+would have destroyed. Thou wilt regain thy land in safety,--long years
+yet spared to thee to muse over the past, and to redeem it. For thy
+future, be thy dream thy guide, and thy tears thy baptism."
+
+The Englishman obeyed the injunctions of the letter, and found their
+truth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.X.
+
+     Quid mirare meas tot in uno corpore formas?
+     Propert.
+
+     (Why wonder that I have so many forms in a single body?)
+
+Zanoni to Mejnour.
+
+.....
+
+"She is in one of their prisons,--their inexorable prisons. It is
+Robespierre's order,--I have tracked the cause to Glyndon. This, then,
+made that terrible connection between their fates which I could not
+unravel, but which (till severed as it now is) wrapped Glyndon himself
+in the same cloud that concealed her. In prison,--in prison!--it is the
+gate of the grave! Her trial, and the inevitable execution that follows
+such trial, is the third day from this. The tyrant has fixed all his
+schemes of slaughter for the 10th of Thermidor. While the deaths of the
+unoffending strike awe to the city, his satellites are to massacre his
+foes. There is but one hope left,--that the Power which now dooms the
+doomer, may render me an instrument to expedite his fall. But two
+days left,--two days! In all my wealth of time I see but two days; all
+beyond,--darkness, solitude. I may save her yet. The tyrant shall fall
+the day before that which he has set apart for slaughter! For the first
+time I mix among the broils and stratagems of men, and my mind leaps up
+from my despair, armed and eager for the contest."
+
+....
+
+A crowd had gathered round the Rue St. Honore; a young man was just
+arrested by the order of Robespierre. He was known to be in the service
+of Tallien, that hostile leader in the Convention, whom the tyrant had
+hitherto trembled to attack. This incident had therefore produced a
+greater excitement than a circumstance so customary as an arrest in the
+Reign of Terror might be supposed to create. Amongst the crowd were many
+friends of Tallien, many foes to the tyrant, many weary of beholding
+the tiger dragging victim after victim to its den. Hoarse, foreboding
+murmurs were heard; fierce eyes glared upon the officers as they seized
+their prisoner; and though they did not yet dare openly to resist, those
+in the rear pressed on those behind, and encumbered the path of the
+captive and his captors. The young man struggled hard for escape, and,
+by a violent effort, at last wrenched himself from the grasp. The
+crowd made way, and closed round to protect him, as he dived and darted
+through their ranks; but suddenly the trampling of horses was heard at
+hand,--the savage Henriot and his troop were bearing down upon the mob.
+The crowd gave way in alarm, and the prisoner was again seized by one
+of the partisans of the Dictator. At that moment a voice whispered the
+prisoner, "Thou hast a letter which, if found on thee, ruins thy last
+hope. Give it to me! I will bear it to Tallien." The prisoner turned in
+amaze, read something that encouraged him in the eyes of the stranger
+who thus accosted him. The troop were now on the spot; the Jacobin who
+had seized the prisoner released hold of him for a moment to escape
+the hoofs of the horses: in that moment the opportunity was found,--the
+stranger had disappeared.
+
+....
+
+At the house of Tallien the principal foes of the tyrant were assembled.
+Common danger made common fellowship. All factions laid aside their
+feuds for the hour to unite against the formidable man who was marching
+over all factions to his gory throne. There was bold Lecointre, the
+declared enemy; there, creeping Barrere, who would reconcile all
+extremes, the hero of the cowards; Barras, calm and collected; Collet
+d'Herbois, breathing wrath and vengeance, and seeing not that the crimes
+of Robespierre alone sheltered his own.
+
+The council was agitated and irresolute. The awe which the uniform
+success and the prodigious energy of Robespierre excited still held the
+greater part under its control. Tallien, whom the tyrant most feared,
+and who alone could give head and substance and direction to so many
+contradictory passions, was too sullied by the memory of his own
+cruelties not to feel embarrassed by his position as the champion
+of mercy. "It is true," he said, after an animating harangue from
+Lecointre, "that the Usurper menaces us all. But he is still so beloved
+by his mobs,--still so supported by his Jacobins: better delay open
+hostilities till the hour is more ripe. To attempt and not succeed is
+to give us, bound hand and foot, to the guillotine. Every day his power
+must decline. Procrastination is our best ally--" While yet speaking,
+and while yet producing the effect of water on the fire, it was
+announced that a stranger demanded to see him instantly on business that
+brooked no delay.
+
+"I am not at leisure," said the orator, impatiently. The servant placed
+a note on the table. Tallien opened it, and found these words in pencil,
+"From the prison of Teresa de Fontenai." He turned pale, started up,
+and hastened to the anteroom, where he beheld a face entirely strange to
+him.
+
+"Hope of France!" said the visitor to him, and the very sound of his
+voice went straight to the heart,--"your servant is arrested in the
+streets. I have saved your life, and that of your wife who will be. I
+bring to you this letter from Teresa de Fontenai."
+
+Tallien, with a trembling hand, opened the letter, and read,--
+
+"Am I forever to implore you in vain? Again and again I say, 'Lose not
+an hour if you value my life and your own.' My trial and death are fixed
+the third day from this,--the 10th Thermidor. Strike while it is yet
+time,--strike the monster!--you have two days yet. If you fail,--if you
+procrastinate,--see me for the last time as I pass your windows to the
+guillotine!"
+
+"Her trial will give proof against you," said the stranger. "Her death
+is the herald of your own. Fear not the populace,--the populace would
+have rescued your servant. Fear not Robespierre,--he gives himself to
+your hands. To-morrow he comes to the Convention,--to-morrow you must
+cast the last throw for his head or your own."
+
+"To-morrow he comes to the Convention! And who are you that know so well
+what is concealed from me?"
+
+"A man like you, who would save the woman he loves."
+
+Before Tallien could recover his surprise, the visitor was gone.
+
+Back went the Avenger to his conclave an altered man. "I have heard
+tidings,--no matter what," he cried,--"that have changed my purpose.
+On the 10th we are destined to the guillotine. I revoke my counsel for
+delay. Robespierre comes to the Convention to-morrow; THERE we must
+confront and crush him. From the Mountain shall frown against him
+the grim shade of Danton,--from the Plain shall rise, in their bloody
+cerements, the spectres of Vergniaud and Condorcet. Frappons!"
+
+"Frappons!" cried even Barrere, startled into energy by the new daring
+of his colleague,--"frappons! il n'y a que les morts qui ne reviennent
+pas."
+
+It was observable (and the fact may be found in one of the memoirs
+of the time) that, during that day and night (the 7th Thermidor), a
+stranger to all the previous events of that stormy time was seen in
+various parts of the city,--in the cafes, the clubs, the haunts of the
+various factions; that, to the astonishment and dismay of his hearers,
+he talked aloud of the crimes of Robespierre, and predicted his coming
+fall; and, as he spoke, he stirred up the hearts of men, he loosed the
+bonds of their fear,--he inflamed them with unwonted rage and daring.
+But what surprised them most was, that no voice replied, no hand was
+lifted against him, no minion, even of the tyrant, cried, "Arrest the
+traitor." In that impunity men read, as in a book, that the populace had
+deserted the man of blood.
+
+Once only a fierce, brawny Jacobin sprang up from the table at which he
+sat, drinking deep, and, approaching the stranger, said, "I seize thee,
+in the name of the Republic."
+
+"Citizen Aristides," answered the stranger, in a whisper, "go to the
+lodgings of Robespierre,--he is from home; and in the left pocket of the
+vest which he cast off not an hour since thou wilt find a paper; when
+thou hast read that, return. I will await thee; and if thou wouldst then
+seize me, I will go without a struggle. Look round on those lowering
+brows; touch me NOW, and thou wilt be torn to pieces."
+
+The Jacobin felt as if compelled to obey against his will. He went
+forth muttering; he returned,--the stranger was still there. "Mille
+tonnerres," he said to him, "I thank thee; the poltroon had my name in
+his list for the guillotine."
+
+With that the Jacobin Aristides sprang upon the table and shouted,
+"Death to the Tyrant!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XI.
+
+     Le lendemain, 8 Thermidor, Robespierre se decida a prononcer son
+     fameux discours.
+     --Thiers, "Hist. de la Revolution."
+
+     (The next day, 8th Thermidor, Robespierre resolved to deliver his
+     celebrated discourse.)
+
+The morning rose,--the 8th of Thermidor (July 26). Robespierre has gone
+to the Convention. He has gone with his laboured speech; he has gone
+with his phrases of philanthropy and virtue; he has gone to single out
+his prey. All his agents are prepared for his reception; the fierce St.
+Just has arrived from the armies to second his courage and inflame his
+wrath. His ominous apparition prepares the audience for the crisis.
+"Citizens!" screeched the shrill voice of Robespierre "others have
+placed before you flattering pictures; I come to announce to you useful
+truths.
+
+....
+
+"And they attribute to me,--to me alone!--whatever of harsh or evil
+is committed: it is Robespierre who wishes it; it is Robespierre who
+ordains it. Is there a new tax?--it is Robespierre who ruins you. They
+call me tyrant!--and why? Because I have acquired some influence; but
+how?--in speaking truth; and who pretends that truth is to be without
+force in the mouths of the Representatives of the French people?
+Doubtless, truth has its power, its rage, its despotism, its accents,
+touching, terrible, which resound in the pure heart as in the guilty
+conscience; and which Falsehood can no more imitate than Salmoneus could
+forge the thunderbolts of Heaven. What am I whom they accuse? A slave
+of liberty,--a living martyr of the Republic; the victim as the enemy of
+crime! All ruffianism affronts me, and actions legitimate in others are
+crimes in me. It is enough to know me to be calumniated. It is in my
+very zeal that they discover my guilt. Take from me my conscience, and I
+should be the most miserable of men!"
+
+He paused; and Couthon wiped his eyes, and St. Just murmured applause
+as with stern looks he gazed on the rebellious Mountain; and there was a
+dead, mournful, and chilling silence through the audience. The touching
+sentiment woke no echo.
+
+The orator cast his eyes around. Ho! he will soon arouse that apathy.
+He proceeds, he praises, he pities himself no more. He denounces,--he
+accuses. Overflooded with his venom, he vomits it forth on all. At home,
+abroad, finances, war,--on all! Shriller and sharper rose his voice,--
+
+"A conspiracy exists against the public liberty. It owes its strength
+to a criminal coalition in the very bosom of the Convention; it has
+accomplices in the bosom of the Committee of Public Safety...What is the
+remedy to this evil? To punish the traitors; to purify this committee;
+to crush all factions by the weight of the National Authority; to
+raise upon their ruins the power of Liberty and Justice. Such are the
+principles of that Reform. Must I be ambitious to profess them?--then
+the principles are proscribed, and Tyranny reigns amongst us! For what
+can you object to a man who is in the right, and has at least this
+knowledge,--he knows how to die for his native land! I am made to combat
+crime, and not to govern it. The time, alas! is not yet arrived when men
+of worth can serve with impunity their country. So long as the knaves
+rule, the defenders of liberty will be only the proscribed."
+
+For two hours, through that cold and gloomy audience, shrilled the
+Death-speech. In silence it began, in silence closed. The enemies of the
+orator were afraid to express resentment; they knew not yet the exact
+balance of power. His partisans were afraid to approve; they knew not
+whom of their own friends and relations the accusations were designed to
+single forth. "Take care!" whispered each to each; "it is thou whom
+he threatens." But silent though the audience, it was, at the first,
+wellnigh subdued. There was still about this terrible man the spell
+of an overmastering will. Always--though not what is called a great
+orator--resolute, and sovereign in the use of words; words seemed as
+things when uttered by one who with a nod moved the troops of Henriot,
+and influenced the judgment of Rene Dumas, grim President of the
+Tribunal. Lecointre of Versailles rose, and there was an anxious
+movement of attention; for Lecointre was one of the fiercest foes of the
+tyrant. What was the dismay of the Tallien faction; what the complacent
+smile of Couthon,--when Lecointre demanded only that the oration should
+be printed! All seemed paralyzed. At length Bourdon de l'Oise, whose
+name was doubly marked in the black list of the Dictator, stalked to the
+tribune, and moved the bold counter-resolution, that the speech should
+be referred to the two committees whom that very speech accused. Still
+no applause from the conspirators; they sat torpid as frozen men. The
+shrinking Barrere, ever on the prudent side, looked round before he
+rose. He rises, and sides with Lecointre! Then Couthon seized the
+occasion, and from his seat (a privilege permitted only to the paralytic
+philanthropist) (M. Thiers in his History, volume iv. page 79, makes
+a curious blunder: he says, "Couthon s'elance a la tribune." (Couthon
+darted towards the tribune.) Poor Couthon! whose half body was dead,
+and who was always wheeled in his chair into the Convention, and spoke
+sitting.), and with his melodious voice sought to convert the crisis
+into a triumph.
+
+He demanded, not only that the harangue should be printed, but sent
+to all the communes and all the armies. It was necessary to soothe
+a wronged and ulcerated heart. Deputies, the most faithful, had been
+accused of shedding blood. "Ah! if HE had contributed to the death of
+one innocent man, he should immolate himself with grief." Beautiful
+tenderness!--and while he spoke, he fondled the spaniel in his bosom.
+Bravo, Couthon! Robespierre triumphs! The reign of Terror shall endure!
+The old submission settles dovelike back in the assembly! They vote
+the printing of the Death-speech, and its transmission to all the
+municipalities. From the benches of the Mountain, Tallien, alarmed,
+dismayed, impatient, and indignant, cast his gaze where sat the
+strangers admitted to hear the debates; and suddenly he met the eyes of
+the Unknown who had brought to him the letter from Teresa de Fontenai
+the preceding day. The eyes fascinated him as he gazed. In aftertimes he
+often said that their regard, fixed, earnest, half-reproachful, and
+yet cheering and triumphant, filled him with new life and courage. They
+spoke to his heart as the trumpet speaks to the war-horse. He moved from
+his seat; he whispered with his allies: the spirit he had drawn in was
+contagious; the men whom Robespierre especially had denounced, and who
+saw the sword over their heads, woke from their torpid trance. Vadier,
+Cambon, Billaud-Varennes, Panis, Amar, rose at once,--all at once
+demanded speech. Vadier is first heard, the rest succeed. It burst
+forth, the Mountain, with its fires and consuming lava; flood upon flood
+they rush, a legion of Ciceros upon the startled Catiline! Robespierre
+falters, hesitates,--would qualify, retract. They gather new courage
+from his new fears; they interrupt him; they drown his voice; they
+demand the reversal of the motion. Amar moves again that the speech
+be referred to the Committees, to the Committees,--to his enemies!
+Confusion and noise and clamour! Robespierre wraps himself in silent
+and superb disdain. Pale, defeated, but not yet destroyed, he
+stands,--a storm in the midst of storm!
+
+The motion is carried. All men foresee in that defeat the Dictator's
+downfall. A solitary cry rose from the galleries; it was caught up;
+it circled through the hall, the audience: "A bas le tyrant! Vive la
+republique!" (Down with the tyrant! Hurrah for the republic!)
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XII.
+
+     Aupres d'un corps aussi avili que la Convention, il restait des
+     chances pour que Robespierre sortit vainqueur de cette lutte.
+     Lacretelle, volume xii.
+
+     (Amongst a body so debased as the Convention, there still
+     remained some chances that Robespierre would come off victor in
+     the struggle.)
+
+As Robespierre left the hall, there was a dead and ominous silence in
+the crowd without. The herd, in every country, side with success;
+and the rats run from the falling tower. But Robespierre, who wanted
+courage, never wanted pride, and the last often supplied the place
+of the first; thoughtfully, and with an impenetrable brow, he passed
+through the throng, leaning on St. Just, Payan and his brother following
+him.
+
+As they got into the open space, Robespierre abruptly broke the silence.
+
+"How many heads were to fall upon the tenth?"
+
+"Eighty," replied Payan.
+
+"Ah, we must not tarry so long; a day may lose an empire: terrorism must
+serve us yet!"
+
+He was silent a few moments, and his eyes roved suspiciously through the
+street.
+
+"St. Just," he said abruptly, "they have not found this Englishman
+whose revelations, or whose trial, would have crushed the Amars and the
+Talliens. No, no! my Jacobins themselves are growing dull and blind. But
+they have seized a woman,--only a woman!"
+
+"A woman's hand stabbed Marat," said St. Just. Robespierre stopped
+short, and breathed hard.
+
+"St. Just," said he, "when this peril is past, we will found the Reign
+of Peace. There shall be homes and gardens set apart for the old. David
+is already designing the porticos. Virtuous men shall be appointed to
+instruct the young. All vice and disorder shall be NOT exterminated--no,
+no! only banished! We must not die yet. Posterity cannot judge us till
+our work is done. We have recalled L'Etre Supreme; we must now remodel
+this corrupted world. All shall be love and brotherhood; and--ho! Simon!
+Simon!--hold! Your pencil, St. Just!" And Robespierre wrote hastily.
+"This to Citizen President Dumas. Go with it quick, Simon. These eighty
+heads must fall TO-MORROW,--TO-MORROW, Simon. Dumas will advance their
+trial a day. I will write to Fouquier-Tinville, the public accuser.
+We meet at the Jacobins to-night, Simon; there we will denounce the
+Convention itself; there we will rally round us the last friends of
+liberty and France."
+
+A shout was heard in the distance behind, "Vive la republique!"
+
+The tyrant's eye shot a vindictive gleam. "The republic!--faugh! We did
+not destroy the throne of a thousand years for that canaille!"
+
+THE TRIAL, THE EXECUTION, OF THE VICTIMS IS ADVANCED A DAY! By the
+aid of the mysterious intelligence that had guided and animated him
+hitherto, Zanoni learned that his arts had been in vain. He knew that
+Viola was safe, if she could but survive an hour the life of the
+tyrant. He knew that Robespierre's hours were numbered; that the 10th of
+Thermidor, on which he had originally designed the execution of his
+last victims, would see himself at the scaffold. Zanoni had toiled, had
+schemed for the fall of the Butcher and his reign. To what end? A single
+word from the tyrant had baffled the result of all. The execution
+of Viola is advanced a day. Vain seer, who wouldst make thyself the
+instrument of the Eternal, the very dangers that now beset the tyrant
+but expedite the doom of his victims! To-morrow, eighty heads, and
+hers whose pillow has been thy heart! To-morrow! and Maximilien is safe
+to-night!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XIII.
+
+     Erde mag zuruck in Erde stauben;
+     Fliegt der Geist doch aus dem morschen Haus.
+     Seine Asche mag der Sturmwind treiben,
+     Sein Leben dauert ewig aus!
+     Elegie.
+
+     (Earth may crumble back into earth; the Spirit will still escape
+     from its frail tenement.  The wind of the storm may scatter his
+     ashes; his being endures forever.)
+
+To-morrow!--and it is already twilight. One after one, the gentle stars
+come smiling through the heaven. The Seine, in its slow waters, yet
+trembles with the last kiss of the rosy day; and still in the blue sky
+gleams the spire of Notre Dame; and still in the blue sky looms the
+guillotine by the Barriere du Trone. Turn to that time-worn building,
+once the church and the convent of the Freres-Precheurs, known by the
+then holy name of Jacobins; there the new Jacobins hold their club.
+There, in that oblong hall, once the library of the peaceful monks,
+assemble the idolaters of St. Robespierre. Two immense tribunes,
+raised at either end, contain the lees and dregs of the atrocious
+populace,--the majority of that audience consisting of the furies of
+the guillotine (furies de guillotine). In the midst of the hall are
+the bureau and chair of the president,--the chair long preserved by the
+piety of the monks as the relic of St. Thomas Aquinas! Above this seat
+scowls the harsh bust of Brutus. An iron lamp and two branches scatter
+over the vast room a murky, fuliginous ray, beneath the light of which
+the fierce faces of that Pandemonium seem more grim and haggard. There,
+from the orator's tribune, shrieks the shrill wrath of Robespierre!
+
+Meanwhile all is chaos, disorder, half daring and half cowardice, in the
+Committee of his foes. Rumours fly from street to street, from haunt to
+haunt, from house to house. The swallows flit low, and the cattle group
+together before the storm. And above this roar of the lives and things
+of the little hour, alone in his chamber stood he on whose starry
+youth--symbol of the imperishable bloom of the calm Ideal amidst the
+mouldering Actual--the clouds of ages had rolled in vain.
+
+All those exertions which ordinary wit and courage could suggest had
+been tried in vain. All such exertions WERE in vain, where, in that
+Saturnalia of death, a life was the object. Nothing but the fall of
+Robespierre could have saved his victims; now, too late, that fall would
+only serve to avenge.
+
+Once more, in that last agony of excitement and despair, the seer had
+plunged into solitude, to invoke again the aid or counsel of those
+mysterious intermediates between earth and heaven who had renounced the
+intercourse of the spirit when subjected to the common bondage of the
+mortal. In the intense desire and anguish of his heart, perhaps, lay a
+power not yet called forth; for who has not felt that the sharpness
+of extreme grief cuts and grinds away many of those strongest bonds
+of infirmity and doubt which bind down the souls of men to the cabined
+darkness of the hour; and that from the cloud and thunderstorm often
+swoops the Olympian eagle that can ravish us aloft!
+
+And the invocation was heard,--the bondage of sense was rent away from
+the visual mind. He looked, and saw,--no, not the being he had called,
+with its limbs of light and unutterably tranquil smile--not his
+familiar, Adon-Ai, the Son of Glory and the Star, but the Evil Omen, the
+dark Chimera, the implacable Foe, with exultation and malice burning in
+its hell-lit eyes. The Spectre, no longer cowering and retreating into
+shadow, rose before him, gigantic and erect; the face, whose veil no
+mortal hand had ever raised, was still concealed, but the form was more
+distinct, corporeal, and cast from it, as an atmosphere, horror and rage
+and awe. As an iceberg, the breath of that presence froze the air; as a
+cloud, it filled the chamber and blackened the stars from heaven.
+
+"Lo!" said its voice, "I am here once more. Thou hast robbed me of a
+meaner prey. Now exorcise THYSELF from my power! Thy life has left thee,
+to live in the heart of a daughter of the charnel and the worm. In that
+life I come to thee with my inexorable tread. Thou art returned to the
+Threshold,--thou, whose steps have trodden the verges of the Infinite!
+And as the goblin of its fantasy seizes on a child in the dark,--mighty
+one, who wouldst conquer Death,--I seize on thee!"
+
+"Back to thy thraldom, slave! If thou art come to the voice that called
+thee not, it is again not to command, but to obey! Thou, from whose
+whisper I gained the boons of the lives lovelier and dearer than my own;
+thou--I command thee, not by spell and charm, but by the force of a soul
+mightier than the malice of thy being,--thou serve me yet, and speak
+again the secret that can rescue the lives thou hast, by permission of
+the Universal Master, permitted me to retain awhile in the temple of the
+clay!"
+
+Brighter and more devouringly burned the glare from those lurid eyes;
+more visible and colossal yet rose the dilating shape; a yet fiercer and
+more disdainful hate spoke in the voice that answered, "Didst thou think
+that my boon would be other than thy curse? Happy for thee hadst thou
+mourned over the deaths which come by the gentle hand of Nature,--hadst
+thou never known how the name of mother consecrates the face of Beauty,
+and never, bending over thy first-born, felt the imperishable sweetness
+of a father's love! They are saved, for what?--the mother, for the death
+of violence and shame and blood, for the doomsman's hand to put aside
+that shining hair which has entangled thy bridegroom kisses; the child,
+first and last of thine offspring, in whom thou didst hope to found a
+race that should hear with thee the music of celestial harps, and
+float, by the side of thy familiar, Adon-Ai, through the azure rivers of
+joy,--the child, to live on a few days as a fungus in a burial-vault, a
+thing of the loathsome dungeon, dying of cruelty and neglect and famine.
+Ha! ha! thou who wouldst baffle Death, learn how the deathless die if
+they dare to love the mortal. Now, Chaldean, behold my boons! Now I
+seize and wrap thee with the pestilence of my presence; now, evermore,
+till thy long race is run, mine eyes shall glow into thy brain, and mine
+arms shall clasp thee, when thou wouldst take the wings of the Morning
+and flee from the embrace of Night!"
+
+"I tell thee, no! And again I compel thee, speak and answer to the lord
+who can command his slave. I know, though my lore fails me, and the
+reeds on which I leaned pierce my side,--I know yet that it is written
+that the life of which I question can be saved from the headsman. Thou
+wrappest her future in the darkness of thy shadow, but thou canst not
+shape it. Thou mayest foreshow the antidote; thou canst not effect the
+bane. From thee I wring the secret, though it torture thee to name it.
+I approach thee,--I look dauntless into thine eyes. The soul that loves
+can dare all things. Shadow, I defy thee, and compel!"
+
+The spectre waned and recoiled. Like a vapour that lessens as the sun
+pierces and pervades it, the form shrank cowering and dwarfed in the
+dimmer distance, and through the casement again rushed the stars.
+
+"Yes," said the Voice, with a faint and hollow accent, "thou CANST save
+her from the headsman; for it is written, that sacrifice can save. Ha!
+ha!" And the shape again suddenly dilated into the gloom of its giant
+stature, and its ghastly laugh exulted, as if the Foe, a moment baffled,
+had regained its might. "Ha! ha!--thou canst save her life, if thou wilt
+sacrifice thine own! Is it for this thou hast lived on through crumbling
+empires and countless generations of thy race? At last shall Death
+reclaim thee? Wouldst thou save her?--DIE FOR HER! Fall, O stately
+column, over which stars yet unformed may gleam,--fall, that the herb at
+thy base may drink a few hours longer the sunlight and the dews! Silent!
+Art thou ready for the sacrifice? See, the moon moves up through
+heaven. Beautiful and wise one, wilt thou bid her smile to-morrow on thy
+headless clay?"
+
+"Back! for my soul, in answering thee from depths where thou canst not
+hear it, has regained its glory; and I hear the wings of Adon-Ai gliding
+musical through the air."
+
+He spoke; and, with a low shriek of baffled rage and hate, the Thing was
+gone, and through the room rushed, luminous and sudden, the Presence of
+silvery light.
+
+As the heavenly visitor stood in the atmosphere of his own lustre,
+and looked upon the face of the Theurgist with an aspect of ineffable
+tenderness and love, all space seemed lighted from his smile. Along the
+blue air without, from that chamber in which his wings had halted, to
+the farthest star in the azure distance, it seemed as if the track of
+his flight were visible, by a lengthened splendour in the air, like the
+column of moonlight on the sea. Like the flower that diffuses perfume as
+the very breath of its life, so the emanation of that presence was joy.
+Over the world, as a million times swifter than light, than electricity,
+the Son of Glory had sped his way to the side of love, his wings had
+scattered delight as the morning scatters dew. For that brief moment,
+Poverty had ceased to mourn, Disease fled from its prey, and Hope
+breathed a dream of Heaven into the darkness of Despair.
+
+"Thou art right," said the melodious Voice. "Thy courage has restored
+thy power. Once more, in the haunts of earth, thy soul charms me to thy
+side. Wiser now, in the moment when thou comprehendest Death, than when
+thy unfettered spirit learned the solemn mystery of Life; the human
+affections that thralled and humbled thee awhile bring to thee, in these
+last hours of thy mortality, the sublimest heritage of thy race,--the
+eternity that commences from the grave."
+
+"O Adon-Ai," said the Chaldean, as, circumfused in the splendour of the
+visitant, a glory more radiant than human beauty settled round his form,
+and seemed already to belong to the eternity of which the Bright One
+spoke, "as men, before they die, see and comprehend the enigmas hidden
+from them before (The greatest poet, and one of the noblest thinkers, of
+the last age, said, on his deathbed, "Many things obscure to me before,
+now clear up, and become visible."--See the 'Life of Schiller.'), "so in
+this hour, when the sacrifice of self to another brings the course of
+ages to its goal, I see the littleness of Life, compared to the majesty
+of Death; but oh, Divine Consoler, even here, even in thy presence,
+the affections that inspire me, sadden. To leave behind me in this
+bad world, unaided, unprotected, those for whom I die! the wife! the
+child!--oh, speak comfort to me in this!"
+
+"And what," said the visitor, with a slight accent of reproof in the
+tone of celestial pity,--"what, with all thy wisdom and thy starry
+secrets, with all thy empire of the past, and thy visions of the future;
+what art thou to the All-Directing and Omniscient? Canst thou yet
+imagine that thy presence on earth can give to the hearts thou lovest
+the shelter which the humblest take from the wings of the Presence that
+lives in heaven? Fear not thou for their future. Whether thou live or
+die, their future is the care of the Most High! In the dungeon and on
+the scaffold looks everlasting the Eye of HIM, tenderer than thou to
+love, wiser than thou to guide, mightier than thou to save!"
+
+Zanoni bowed his head; and when he looked up again, the last shadow had
+left his brow. The visitor was gone; but still the glory of his presence
+seemed to shine upon the spot, still the solitary air seemed to murmur
+with tremulous delight. And thus ever shall it be with those who have
+once, detaching themselves utterly from life, received the visit of the
+Angel FAITH. Solitude and space retain the splendour, and it settles
+like a halo round their graves.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XIV.
+
+     Dann zur Blumenflor der Sterne
+     Aufgeschauet liebewarm,
+     Fass' ihn freundlich Arm in Arm
+     Trag' ihn in die blaue Ferne.
+     --Uhland, "An den Tod."
+
+     Then towards the Garden of the Star
+     Lift up thine aspect warm with love,
+     And, friendlike link'd through space afar,
+     Mount with him, arm in arm, above.
+     --Uhland, "Poem to Death."
+
+He stood upon the lofty balcony that overlooked the quiet city. Though
+afar, the fiercest passions of men were at work on the web of strife and
+doom, all that gave itself to his view was calm and still in the rays
+of the summer moon, for his soul was wrapped from man and man's narrow
+sphere, and only the serener glories of creation were present to the
+vision of the seer. There he stood, alone and thoughtful, to take the
+last farewell of the wondrous life that he had known.
+
+Coursing through the fields of space, he beheld the gossamer shapes,
+whose choral joys his spirit had so often shared. There, group upon
+group, they circled in the starry silence multiform in the unimaginable
+beauty of a being fed by ambrosial dews and serenest light. In his
+trance, all the universe stretched visible beyond; in the green valleys
+afar, he saw the dances of the fairies; in the bowels of the mountains,
+he beheld the race that breathe the lurid air of the volcanoes, and hide
+from the light of heaven; on every leaf in the numberless forests, in
+every drop of the unmeasured seas, he surveyed its separate and swarming
+world; far up, in the farthest blue, he saw orb upon orb ripening into
+shape, and planets starting from the central fire, to run their day
+of ten thousand years. For everywhere in creation is the breath of the
+Creator, and in every spot where the breath breathes is life! And alone,
+in the distance, the lonely man beheld his Magian brother. There,
+at work with his numbers and his Cabala, amidst the wrecks of Rome,
+passionless and calm, sat in his cell the mystic Mejnour,--living on,
+living ever while the world lasts, indifferent whether his knowledge
+produces weal or woe; a mechanical agent of a more tender and a wiser
+will, that guides every spring to its inscrutable designs. Living
+on,--living ever,--as science that cares alone for knowledge, and halts
+not to consider how knowledge advances happiness; how Human Improvement,
+rushing through civilisation, crushes in its march all who cannot
+grapple to its wheels ("You colonise the lands of the savage with the
+Anglo-Saxon,--you civilise that portion of THE EARTH; but is the SAVAGE
+civilised? He is exterminated! You accumulate machinery,--you increase
+the total of wealth; but what becomes of the labour you displace? One
+generation is sacrificed to the next. You diffuse knowledge,--and
+the world seems to grow brighter; but Discontent at Poverty replaces
+Ignorance, happy with its crust. Every improvement, every advancement in
+civilisation, injures some, to benefit others, and either cherishes
+the want of to-day, or prepares the revolution of to-morrow."--Stephen
+Montague.); ever, with its Cabala and its number, lives on to change, in
+its bloodless movements, the face of the habitable world!
+
+And, "Oh, farewell to life!" murmured the glorious dreamer. "Sweet, O
+life! hast thou been to me. How fathomless thy joys,--how rapturously
+has my soul bounded forth upon the upward paths! To him who forever
+renews his youth in the clear fount of Nature, how exquisite is the mere
+happiness TO BE! Farewell, ye lamps of heaven, and ye million tribes,
+the Populace of Air. Not a mote in the beam, not an herb on the
+mountain, not a pebble on the shore, not a seed far-blown into the
+wilderness, but contributed to the lore that sought in all the true
+principle of life, the Beautiful, the Joyous, the Immortal. To others,
+a land, a city, a hearth, has been a home; MY home has been wherever the
+intellect could pierce, or the spirit could breathe the air."
+
+He paused, and through the immeasurable space his eyes and his
+heart, penetrating the dismal dungeon, rested on his child. He saw it
+slumbering in the arms of the pale mother, and HIS soul spoke to the
+sleeping soul. "Forgive me, if my desire was sin; I dreamed to have
+reared and nurtured thee to the divinest destinies my visions could
+foresee. Betimes, as the mortal part was strengthened against disease,
+to have purified the spiritual from every sin; to have led thee, heaven
+upon heaven, through the holy ecstasies which make up the existence
+of the orders that dwell on high; to have formed, from thy sublime
+affections, the pure and ever-living communication between thy mother
+and myself. The dream was but a dream--it is no more! In sight myself of
+the grave, I feel, at last, that through the portals of the grave lies
+the true initiation into the holy and the wise. Beyond those portals I
+await ye both, beloved pilgrims!"
+
+From his numbers and his Cabala, in his cell, amidst the wrecks of Rome,
+Mejnour, startled, looked up, and through the spirit, felt that the
+spirit of his distant friend addressed him.
+
+"Fare thee well forever upon this earth! Thy last companion forsakes thy
+side. Thine age survives the youth of all; and the Final Day shall find
+thee still the contemplator of our tombs. I go with my free will into
+the land of darkness; but new suns and systems blaze around us from the
+grave. I go where the souls of those for whom I resign the clay shall be
+my co-mates through eternal youth. At last I recognise the true ordeal
+and the real victory. Mejnour, cast down thy elixir; lay by thy load
+of years! Wherever the soul can wander, the Eternal Soul of all things
+protects it still!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XV.
+
+     Il ne veulent plus perdre un moment d'une nuit si precieuse.
+     Lacretelle, tom. xii.
+
+     (They would not lose another moment of so precious a night.)
+
+It was late that night, and Rene-Francois Dumas, President of the
+Revolutionary Tribunal, had re-entered his cabinet, on his return from
+the Jacobin Club. With him were two men who might be said to represent,
+the one the moral, the other the physical force of the Reign of Terror:
+Fouquier-Tinville, the Public Accuser, and Francois Henriot, the
+General of the Parisian National Guard. This formidable triumvirate were
+assembled to debate on the proceedings of the next day; and the three
+sister-witches over their hellish caldron were scarcely animated by a
+more fiend-like spirit, or engaged in more execrable designs, than these
+three heroes of the Revolution in their premeditated massacre of the
+morrow.
+
+Dumas was but little altered in appearance since, in the earlier part of
+this narrative, he was presented to the reader, except that his manner
+was somewhat more short and severe, and his eye yet more restless. But
+he seemed almost a superior being by the side of his associates. Rene
+Dumas, born of respectable parents, and well educated, despite his
+ferocity, was not without a certain refinement, which perhaps rendered
+him the more acceptable to the precise and formal Robespierre. (Dumas
+was a beau in his way. His gala-dress was a BLOOD-RED COAT, with the
+finest ruffles.) But Henriot had been a lackey, a thief, a spy of the
+police; he had drunk the blood of Madame de Lamballe, and had risen
+to his present rank for no quality but his ruffianism; and
+Fouquier-Tinville, the son of a provincial agriculturist, and afterwards
+a clerk at the Bureau of the Police, was little less base in his
+manners, and yet more, from a certain loathsome buffoonery, revolting
+in his speech,--bull-headed, with black, sleek hair, with a narrow and
+livid forehead, with small eyes, that twinkled with a sinister malice;
+strongly and coarsely built, he looked what he was, the audacious bully
+of a lawless and relentless Bar.
+
+Dumas trimmed the candles, and bent over the list of the victims for the
+morrow.
+
+"It is a long catalogue," said the president; "eighty trials for
+one day! And Robespierre's orders to despatch the whole fournee are
+unequivocal."
+
+"Pooh!" said Fouquier, with a coarse, loud laugh; "we must try them en
+masse. I know how to deal with our jury. 'Je pense, citoyens, que vous
+etes convaincus du crime des accuses?' (I think, citizens, that you are
+convinced of the crime of the accused.) Ha! ha!--the longer the list,
+the shorter the work."
+
+"Oh, yes," growled out Henriot, with an oath,--as usual, half-drunk,
+and lolling on his chair, with his spurred heels on the table,--"little
+Tinville is the man for despatch."
+
+"Citizen Henriot," said Dumas, gravely, "permit me to request thee
+to select another footstool; and for the rest, let me warn thee that
+to-morrow is a critical and important day; one that will decide the fate
+of France."
+
+"A fig for little France! Vive le Vertueux Robespierre, la Colonne de
+la Republique! (Long life to the virtuous Robespierre, the pillar of the
+Republic!) Plague on this talking; it is dry work. Hast thou no eau de
+vie in that little cupboard?"
+
+Dumas and Fouquier exchanged looks of disgust. Dumas shrugged his
+shoulders, and replied,--
+
+"It is to guard thee against eau de vie, Citizen General Henriot, that I
+have requested thee to meet me here. Listen if thou canst!"
+
+"Oh, talk away! thy metier is to talk, mine to fight and to drink."
+
+"To-morrow, I tell thee then, the populace will be abroad; all factions
+will be astir. It is probable enough that they will even seek to arrest
+our tumbrils on their way to the guillotine. Have thy men armed and
+ready; keep the streets clear; cut down without mercy whomsoever may
+obstruct the ways."
+
+"I understand," said Henriot, striking his sword so loudly that Dumas
+half-started at the clank,--"Black Henriot is no 'Indulgent.'"
+
+"Look to it, then, citizen,--look to it! And hark thee," he added, with
+a grave and sombre brow, "if thou wouldst keep thine own head on thy
+shoulders, beware of the eau de vie."
+
+"My own head!--sacre mille tonnerres! Dost thou threaten the general of
+the Parisian army?"
+
+Dumas, like Robespierre, a precise atrabilious, and arrogant man, was
+about to retort, when the craftier Tinville laid his hand on his arm,
+and, turning to the general, said, "My dear Henriot, thy dauntless
+republicanism, which is too ready to give offence, must learn to take
+a reprimand from the representative of Republican Law. Seriously, mon
+cher, thou must be sober for the next three or four days; after the
+crisis is over, thou and I will drink a bottle together. Come, Dumas
+relax thine austerity, and shake hands with our friend. No quarrels
+amongst ourselves!"
+
+Dumas hesitated, and extended his hand, which the ruffian clasped; and,
+maudlin tears succeeding his ferocity, he half-sobbed, half-hiccoughed
+forth his protestations of civism and his promises of sobriety.
+
+"Well, we depend on thee, mon general," said Dumas; "and now, since we
+shall all have need of vigour for to-morrow, go home and sleep soundly."
+
+"Yes, I forgive thee, Dumas,--I forgive thee. I am not vindictive,--I!
+but still, if a man threatens me; if a man insults me--" and, with the
+quick changes of intoxication, again his eyes gleamed fire through their
+foul tears. With some difficulty Fouquier succeeded at last in soothing
+the brute, and leading him from the chamber. But still, as some wild
+beast disappointed of a prey, he growled and snarled as his heavy tread
+descended the stairs. A tall trooper, mounted, was leading Henriot's
+horse to and fro the streets; and as the general waited at the porch
+till his attendant turned, a stranger stationed by the wall accosted
+him:
+
+"General Henriot, I have desired to speak with thee. Next to
+Robespierre, thou art, or shouldst be, the most powerful man in France."
+
+"Hem!--yes, I ought to be. What then?--every man has not his deserts!"
+
+"Hist!" said the stranger; "thy pay is scarcely suitable to thy rank and
+thy wants."
+
+"That is true."
+
+"Even in a revolution, a man takes care of his fortunes!"
+
+"Diable! speak out, citizen."
+
+"I have a thousand pieces of gold with me,--they are thine, if thou wilt
+grant me one small favour."
+
+"Citizen, I grant it!" said Henriot, waving his hand majestically. "Is
+it to denounce some rascal who has offended thee?"
+
+"No; it is simply this: write these words to President Dumas, 'Admit
+the bearer to thy presence; and, if thou canst, grant him the request
+he will make to thee, it will be an inestimable obligation to Francois
+Henriot.'" The stranger, as he spoke, placed pencil and tablets in the
+shaking hands of the soldier.
+
+"And where is the gold?"
+
+"Here."
+
+With some difficulty, Henriot scrawled the words dictated to him,
+clutched the gold, mounted his horse, and was gone.
+
+Meanwhile Fouquier, when he had closed the door upon Henriot, said
+sharply, "How canst thou be so mad as to incense that brigand? Knowest
+thou not that our laws are nothing without the physical force of the
+National Guard, and that he is their leader?"
+
+"I know this, that Robespierre must have been mad to place that drunkard
+at their head; and mark my words, Fouquier, if the struggle come, it
+is that man's incapacity and cowardice that will destroy us. Yes, thou
+mayst live thyself to accuse thy beloved Robespierre, and to perish in
+his fall."
+
+"For all that, we must keep well with Henriot till we can find the
+occasion to seize and behead him. To be safe, we must fawn on those who
+are still in power; and fawn the more, the more we would depose them.
+Do not think this Henriot, when he wakes to-morrow, will forget thy
+threats. He is the most revengeful of human beings. Thou must send and
+soothe him in the morning!"
+
+"Right," said Dumas, convinced. "I was too hasty; and now I think we
+have nothing further to do, since we have arranged to make short work
+with our fournee of to-morrow. I see in the list a knave I have long
+marked out, though his crime once procured me a legacy,--Nicot, the
+Hebertist."
+
+"And young Andre Chenier, the poet? Ah, I forgot; we be headed HIM
+to-day! Revolutionary virtue is at its acme. His own brother abandoned
+him." (His brother is said, indeed, to have contributed to the
+condemnation of this virtuous and illustrious person. He was heard to
+cry aloud, "Si mon frere est coupable, qu'il perisse" (If my brother be
+culpable, let him die). This brother, Marie-Joseph, also a poet, and
+the author of "Charles IX.," so celebrated in the earlier days of the
+Revolution, enjoyed, of course, according to the wonted justice of the
+world, a triumphant career, and was proclaimed in the Champ de Mars "le
+premier de poetes Francais," a title due to his murdered brother.)
+
+"There is a foreigner,--an Italian woman in the list; but I can find no
+charge made out against her."
+
+"All the same we must execute her for the sake of the round number;
+eighty sounds better than seventy-nine!"
+
+Here a huissier brought a paper on which was written the request of
+Henriot.
+
+"Ah! this is fortunate," said Tinville, to whom Dumas chucked the
+scroll,--"grant the prayer by all means; so at least that it does not
+lessen our bead-roll. But I will do Henriot the justice to say that
+he never asks to let off, but to put on. Good-night! I am worn out--my
+escort waits below. Only on such an occasion would I venture forth in
+the streets at night." (During the latter part of the Reign of Terror,
+Fouquier rarely stirred out at night, and never without an escort. In
+the Reign of Terror those most terrified were its kings.) And Fouquier,
+with a long yawn, quitted the room.
+
+"Admit the bearer!" said Dumas, who, withered and dried, as lawyers
+in practice mostly are, seemed to require as little sleep as his
+parchments.
+
+The stranger entered.
+
+"Rene-Francois Dumas," said he, seating himself opposite to the
+president, and markedly adopting the plural, as if in contempt of the
+revolutionary jargon, "amidst the excitement and occupations of your
+later life, I know not if you can remember that we have met before?"
+
+The judge scanned the features of his visitor, and a pale blush settled
+on his sallow cheeks, "Yes, citizen, I remember!"
+
+"And you recall the words I then uttered! You spoke tenderly and
+philanthropically of your horror of capital executions; you exulted
+in the approaching Revolution as the termination of all sanguinary
+punishments; you quoted reverently the saying of Maximilien Robespierre,
+the rising statesman, 'The executioner is the invention of the tyrant:'
+and I replied, that while you spoke, a foreboding seized me that
+we should meet again when your ideas of death and the philosophy of
+revolutions might be changed! Was I right, Citizen Rene-Francois Dumas,
+President of the Revolutionary Tribunal?"
+
+"Pooh!" said Dumas, with some confusion on his brazen brow, "I spoke
+then as men speak who have not acted. Revolutions are not made with
+rose-water! But truce to the gossip of the long-ago. I remember, also,
+that thou didst then save the life of my relation, and it will please
+thee to learn that his intended murderer will be guillotined to-morrow."
+
+"That concerns yourself,--your justice or your revenge. Permit me the
+egotism to remind you that you then promised that if ever a day should
+come when you could serve me, your life--yes, the phrase was, 'your
+heart's blood'--was at my bidding. Think not, austere judge, that I
+come to ask a boon that can affect yourself,--I come but to ask a day's
+respite for another!"
+
+"Citizen, it is impossible! I have the order of Robespierre that not one
+less than the total on my list must undergo their trial for to-morrow.
+As for the verdict, that rests with the jury!"
+
+"I do not ask you to diminish the catalogue. Listen still! In your
+death-roll there is the name of an Italian woman whose youth, whose
+beauty, and whose freedom not only from every crime, but every tangible
+charge, will excite only compassion, and not terror. Even YOU would
+tremble to pronounce her sentence. It will be dangerous on a day when
+the populace will be excited, when your tumbrils may be arrested, to
+expose youth and innocence and beauty to the pity and courage of a
+revolted crowd."
+
+Dumas looked up and shrunk from the eye of the stranger.
+
+"I do not deny, citizen, that there is reason in what thou urgest. But
+my orders are positive."
+
+"Positive only as to the number of the victims. I offer you a substitute
+for this one. I offer you the head of a man who knows all of the very
+conspiracy which now threatens Robespierre and yourself, and compared
+with one clew to which, you would think even eighty ordinary lives a
+cheap purchase."
+
+"That alters the case," said Dumas, eagerly; "if thou canst do this, on
+my own responsibility I will postpone the trial of the Italian. Now name
+the proxy!"
+
+"You behold him!"
+
+"Thou!" exclaimed Dumas, while a fear he could not conceal betrayed
+itself through his surprise. "Thou!--and thou comest to me alone at
+night, to offer thyself to justice. Ha!--this is a snare. Tremble,
+fool!--thou art in my power, and I can have BOTH!"
+
+"You can," said the stranger, with a calm smile of disdain; "but my life
+is valueless without my revelations. Sit still, I command you,--hear
+me!" and the light in those dauntless eyes spell-bound and awed the
+judge. "You will remove me to the Conciergerie,--you will fix my trial,
+under the name of Zanoni, amidst your fournee of to-morrow. If I do
+not satisfy you by my speech, you hold the woman I die to save as your
+hostage. It is but the reprieve for her of a single day that I demand.
+The day following the morrow I shall be dust, and you may wreak your
+vengeance on the life that remains. Tush! judge and condemner of
+thousands, do you hesitate,--do you imagine that the man who voluntarily
+offers himself to death will be daunted into uttering one syllable at
+your Bar against his will? Have you not had experience enough of the
+inflexibility of pride and courage? President, I place before you the
+ink and implements! Write to the jailer a reprieve of one day for the
+woman whose life can avail you nothing, and I will bear the order to my
+own prison: I, who can now tell this much as an earnest of what I can
+communicate,--while I speak, your own name, judge, is in a list of
+death. I can tell you by whose hand it is written down; I can tell you
+in what quarter to look for danger; I can tell you from what cloud, in
+this lurid atmosphere, hangs the storm that shall burst on Robespierre
+and his reign!"
+
+Dumas grew pale; and his eyes vainly sought to escape the magnetic gaze
+that overpowered and mastered him. Mechanically, and as if under an
+agency not his own, he wrote while the stranger dictated.
+
+"Well," he said then, forcing a smile to his lips, "I promised I would
+serve you; see, I am faithful to my word. I suppose that you are one of
+those fools of feeling,--those professors of anti-revolutionary virtue,
+of whom I have seen not a few before my Bar. Faugh! it sickens me to see
+those who make a merit of incivism, and perish to save some bad patriot,
+because it is a son, or a father, or a wife, or a daughter, who is
+saved."
+
+"I AM one of those fools of feeling," said the stranger, rising. "You
+have divined aright."
+
+"And wilt thou not, in return for my mercy, utter to-night the
+revelations thou wouldst proclaim to-morrow? Come; and perhaps thou
+too--nay, the woman also--may receive, not reprieve, but pardon."
+
+"Before your tribunal, and there alone! Nor will I deceive you,
+president. My information may avail you not; and even while I show the
+cloud, the bolt may fall."
+
+"Tush! prophet, look to thyself! Go, madman, go. I know too well the
+contumacious obstinacy of the class to which I suspect thou belongest,
+to waste further words. Diable! but ye grow so accustomed to look on
+death, that ye forget the respect ye owe to it. Since thou offerest
+me thy head, I accept it. To-morrow thou mayst repent; it will be too
+late."
+
+"Ay, too late, president!" echoed the calm visitor.
+
+"But, remember, it is not pardon, it is but a day's reprieve, I have
+promised to this woman. According as thou dost satisfy me to-morrow,
+she lives or dies. I am frank, citizen; thy ghost shall not haunt me for
+want of faith."
+
+"It is but a day that I have asked; the rest I leave to justice and to
+Heaven. Your huissiers wait below."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XVI.
+
+     Und den Mordstahl seh' ich blinken;
+     Und das Morderauge gluhn!
+     "Kassandra."
+
+     (And I see the steel of Murder glitter,
+     And the eye of Murder glow.)
+
+Viola was in the prison that opened not but for those already condemned
+before adjudged. Since her exile from Zanoni, her very intellect had
+seemed paralysed. All that beautiful exuberance of fancy which, if not
+the fruit of genius, seemed its blossoms; all that gush of exquisite
+thought which Zanoni had justly told her flowed with mysteries and
+subtleties ever new to him, the wise one,--all were gone, annihilated;
+the blossom withered, the fount dried up. From something almost above
+womanhood, she seemed listlessly to sink into something below childhood.
+With the inspirer the inspirations had ceased; and, in deserting love,
+genius also was left behind.
+
+She scarcely comprehended why she had been thus torn from her home and
+the mechanism of her dull tasks. She scarcely knew what meant those
+kindly groups, that, struck with her exceeding loveliness, had gathered
+round her in the prison, with mournful looks, but with words of comfort.
+She, who had hitherto been taught to abhor those whom Law condemns for
+crime, was amazed to hear that beings thus compassionate and tender,
+with cloudless and lofty brows, with gallant and gentle mien, were
+criminals for whom Law had no punishment short of death. But they, the
+savages, gaunt and menacing, who had dragged her from her home, who
+had attempted to snatch from her the infant while she clasped it in her
+arms, and laughed fierce scorn at her mute, quivering lips,--THEY were
+the chosen citizens, the men of virtue, the favourites of Power, the
+ministers of Law! Such thy black caprices, O thou, the ever-shifting and
+calumnious,--Human Judgment!
+
+A squalid, and yet a gay world, did the prison-houses of that day
+present. There, as in the sepulchre to which they led, all ranks were
+cast with an even-handed scorn. And yet there, the reverence that comes
+from great emotions restored Nature's first and imperishable, and most
+lovely, and most noble Law,--THE INEQUALITY BETWEEN MAN AND MAN! There,
+place was given by the prisoners, whether royalists or sans-culottes,
+to Age, to Learning, to Renown, to Beauty; and Strength, with its own
+inborn chivalry, raised into rank the helpless and the weak. The iron
+sinews and the Herculean shoulders made way for the woman and the child;
+and the graces of Humanity, lost elsewhere, sought their refuge in the
+abode of Terror.
+
+"And wherefore, my child, do they bring thee hither?" asked an old,
+grey-haired priest.
+
+"I cannot guess."
+
+"Ah, if you know not your offence, fear the worst!"
+
+"And my child?"--for the infant was still suffered to rest upon her
+bosom.
+
+"Alas, young mother, they will suffer thy child to live.'
+
+"And for this,--an orphan in the dungeon!" murmured the accusing heart
+of Viola,--"have I reserved his offspring! Zanoni, even in thought, ask
+not--ask not what I have done with the child I bore thee!"
+
+Night came; the crowd rushed to the grate to hear the muster-roll.
+(Called, in the mocking jargon of the day, "The Evening Gazette.") Her
+name was with the doomed. And the old priest, better prepared to die,
+but reserved from the death-list, laid his hands on her head, and
+blessed her while he wept. She heard, and wondered; but she did not
+weep. With downcast eyes, with arms folded on her bosom, she bent
+submissively to the call. But now another name was uttered; and a man,
+who had pushed rudely past her to gaze or to listen, shrieked out a
+howl of despair and rage. She turned, and their eyes met. Through
+the distance of time she recognised that hideous aspect. Nicot's face
+settled back into its devilish sneer. "At least, gentle Neapolitan, the
+guillotine will unite us. Oh, we shall sleep well our wedding-night!"
+And, with a laugh, he strode away through the crowd, and vanished into
+his lair.
+
+....
+
+She was placed in her gloomy cell, to await the morrow. But the child
+was still spared her; and she thought it seemed as if conscious of the
+awful present. In their way to the prison it had not moaned or wept. It
+had looked with its clear eyes, unshrinking, on the gleaming pikes and
+savage brows of the huissiers. And now, alone in the dungeon, it put its
+arms round her neck, and murmured its indistinct sounds, low and sweet
+as some unknown language of consolation and of heaven. And of heaven it
+was!--for, at the murmur, the terror melted from her soul; upward, from
+the dungeon and the death,--upward, where the happy cherubim chant the
+mercy of the All-loving, whispered that cherub's voice. She fell upon
+her knees and prayed. The despoilers of all that beautifies and hallows
+life had desecrated the altar, and denied the God!--they had removed
+from the last hour of their victims the Priest, the Scripture, and the
+Cross! But Faith builds in the dungeon and the lazar-house its sublimest
+shrines; and up, through roofs of stone, that shut out the eye of
+Heaven, ascends the ladder where the angels glide to and fro,--PRAYER.
+
+And there, in the very cell beside her own, the atheist Nicot sits
+stolid amidst the darkness, and hugs the thought of Danton, that death
+is nothingness. ("Ma demeure sera bientot LE NEANT" (My abode will soon
+be nothingness), said Danton before his judges.)) His, no spectacle
+of an appalled and perturbed conscience! Remorse is the echo of a lost
+virtue, and virtue he never knew. Had he to live again, he would live
+the same. But more terrible than the death-bed of a believing and
+despairing sinner that blank gloom of apathy,--that contemplation of
+the worm and the rat of the charnel-house; that grim and loathsome
+NOTHINGNESS which, for his eye, falls like a pall over the universe of
+life. Still, staring into space, gnawing his livid lip, he looks upon
+the darkness, convinced that darkness is forever and forever!
+
+....
+
+Place, there! place! Room yet in your crowded cells. Another has come to
+the slaughter-house.
+
+As the jailer, lamp in hand, ushered in the stranger, the latter touched
+him and whispered. The stranger drew a jewel from his finger. Diantre,
+how the diamond flashed in the ray of the lamp! Value each head of your
+eighty at a thousand francs, and the jewel is more worth than all!
+The jailer paused, and the diamond laughed in his dazzled eyes. O thou
+Cerberus, thou hast mastered all else that seems human in that fell
+employ! Thou hast no pity, no love, and no remorse. But Avarice survives
+the rest, and the foul heart's master-serpent swallows up the tribe.
+Ha! ha! crafty stranger, thou hast conquered! They tread the gloomy
+corridor; they arrive at the door where the jailer has placed the fatal
+mark, now to be erased, for the prisoner within is to be reprieved a
+day. The key grates in the lock; the door yawns,--the stranger takes the
+lamp and enters.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XVII. The Seventeenth and Last.
+
+     Cosi vince Goffredo!
+     "Ger. Lib." cant. xx.-xliv.
+
+     (Thus conquered Godfrey.)
+
+And Viola was in prayer. She heard not the opening of the door; she saw
+not the dark shadow that fell along the floor. HIS power, HIS arts were
+gone; but the mystery and the spell known to HER simple heart did not
+desert her in the hours of trial and despair. When Science falls as a
+firework from the sky it would invade; when Genius withers as a flower
+in the breath of the icy charnel,--the hope of a child-like soul wraps
+the air in light, and the innocence of unquestioning Belief covers the
+grave with blossoms.
+
+In the farthest corner of the cell she knelt; and the infant, as if to
+imitate what it could not comprehend, bent its little limbs, and bowed
+its smiling face, and knelt with her also, by her side.
+
+He stood and gazed upon them as the light of the lamp fell calmly on
+their forms. It fell over those clouds of golden hair, dishevelled,
+parted, thrown back from the rapt, candid brow; the dark eyes raised
+on high, where, through the human tears, a light as from above was
+mirrored; the hands clasped, the lips apart, the form all animate and
+holy with the sad serenity of innocence and the touching humility of
+woman. And he heard her voice, though it scarcely left her lips: the low
+voice that the heart speaks,--loud enough for God to hear!
+
+"And if never more to see him, O Father! Canst Thou not make the love
+that will not die, minister, even beyond the grave, to his earthly fate?
+Canst Thou not yet permit it, as a living spirit, to hover over him,--a
+spirit fairer than all his science can conjure? Oh, whatever lot be
+ordained to either, grant--even though a thousand ages may roll between
+us--grant, when at last purified and regenerate, and fitted for the
+transport of such reunion--grant that we may meet once more! And for his
+child,--it kneels to Thee from the dungeon floor! To-morrow, and whose
+breast shall cradle it; whose hand shall feed; whose lips shall pray for
+its weal below and its soul hereafter!" She paused,--her voice choked
+with sobs.
+
+"Thou Viola!--thou, thyself. He whom thou hast deserted is here to
+preserve the mother to the child!"
+
+She started!--those accents, tremulous as her own! She started to
+her feet!--he was there,--in all the pride of his unwaning youth and
+superhuman beauty; there, in the house of dread, and in the hour of
+travail; there, image and personation of the love that can pierce the
+Valley of the Shadow, and can glide, the unscathed wanderer from the
+heaven, through the roaring abyss of hell!
+
+With a cry never, perhaps, heard before in that gloomy vault,--a cry of
+delight and rapture, she sprang forward, and fell at his feet.
+
+He bent down to raise her; but she slid from his arms. He called her by
+the familiar epithets of the old endearment, and she only answered him
+by sobs. Wildly, passionately, she kissed his hands, the hem of his
+garment, but voice was gone.
+
+"Look up, look up!--I am here,--I am here to save thee! Wilt thou deny
+to me thy sweet face? Truant, wouldst thou fly me still?"
+
+"Fly thee!" she said, at last, and in a broken voice; "oh, if
+my thoughts wronged thee,--oh, if my dream, that awful dream,
+deceived,--kneel down with me, and pray for our child!" Then springing
+to her feet with a sudden impulse, she caught up the infant, and,
+placing it in his arms, sobbed forth, with deprecating and humble tones,
+"Not for my sake,--not for mine, did I abandon thee, but--"
+
+"Hush!" said Zanoni; "I know all the thoughts that thy confused and
+struggling senses can scarcely analyse themselves. And see how, with a
+look, thy child answers them!"
+
+And in truth the face of that strange infant seemed radiant with its
+silent and unfathomable joy. It seemed as if it recognised the father;
+it clung--it forced itself to his breast, and there, nestling, turned
+its bright, clear eyes upon Viola, and smiled.
+
+"Pray for my child!" said Zanoni, mournfully. "The thoughts of souls
+that would aspire as mine are All PRAYER!" And, seating himself by her
+side, he began to reveal to her some of the holier secrets of his lofty
+being. He spoke of the sublime and intense faith from which alone the
+diviner knowledge can arise,--the faith which, seeing the immortal
+everywhere, purifies and exalts the mortal that beholds, the glorious
+ambition that dwells not in the cabals and crimes of earth, but amidst
+those solemn wonders that speak not of men, but of God; of that power to
+abstract the soul from the clay which gives to the eye of the soul its
+subtle vision, and to the soul's wing the unlimited realm; of that
+pure, severe, and daring initiation from which the mind emerges, as from
+death, into clear perceptions of its kindred with the Father-Principles
+of life and light, so that in its own sense of the Beautiful it finds
+its joy; in the serenity of its will, its power; in its sympathy with
+the youthfulness of the Infinite Creation, of which itself is an essence
+and a part, the secrets that embalm the very clay which they consecrate,
+and renew the strength of life with the ambrosia of mysterious and
+celestial sleep. And while he spoke, Viola listened, breathless. If she
+could not comprehend, she no longer dared to distrust. She felt that in
+that enthusiasm, self-deceiving or not, no fiend could lurk; and by an
+intuition, rather than an effort of the reason, she saw before her, like
+a starry ocean, the depth and mysterious beauty of the soul which
+her fears had wronged. Yet, when he said (concluding his strange
+confessions) that to this life WITHIN life and ABOVE life he had dreamed
+to raise her own, the fear of humanity crept over her, and he read in
+her silence how vain, with all his science, would the dream have been.
+
+But now, as he closed, and, leaning on his breast, she felt the clasp of
+his protecting arms,--when, in one holy kiss, the past was forgiven and
+the present lost,--then there returned to her the sweet and warm hopes
+of the natural life, of the loving woman. He was come to save her! She
+asked not how,--she believed it without a question. They should be at
+last again united. They would fly far from those scenes of violence and
+blood. Their happy Ionian isle, their fearless solitudes, would once
+more receive them. She laughed, with a child's joy, as this picture rose
+up amidst the gloom of the dungeon. Her mind, faithful to its sweet,
+simple instincts, refused to receive the lofty images that flitted
+confusedly by it, and settled back to its human visions, yet more
+baseless, of the earthly happiness and the tranquil home.
+
+"Talk not now to me, beloved,--talk not more now to me of the past! Thou
+art here,--thou wilt save me; we shall live yet the common happy life,
+that life with thee is happiness and glory enough to me. Traverse, if
+thou wilt, in thy pride of soul, the universe; thy heart again is the
+universe to mine. I thought but now that I was prepared to die; I see
+thee, touch thee, and again I know how beautiful a thing is life! See
+through the grate the stars are fading from the sky; the morrow will
+soon be here,--The MORROW which will open the prison doors! Thou sayest
+thou canst save me,--I will not doubt it now. Oh, let us dwell no more
+in cities! I never doubted thee in our lovely isle; no dreams haunted
+me there, except dreams of joy and beauty; and thine eyes made yet more
+beautiful and joyous the world in waking. To-morrow!--why do you not
+smile? To-morrow, love! is not TO-MORROW a blessed word! Cruel! you
+would punish me still, that you will not share my joy. Aha! see our
+little one, how it laughs to my eyes! I will talk to THAT. Child, thy
+father is come back!"
+
+And taking the infant in her arms, and seating herself at a little
+distance, she rocked it to and fro on her bosom, and prattled to it, and
+kissed it between every word, and laughed and wept by fits, as ever and
+anon she cast over her shoulder her playful, mirthful glance upon the
+father to whom those fading stars smiled sadly their last farewell. How
+beautiful she seemed as she thus sat, unconscious of the future! Still
+half a child herself, her child laughing to her laughter,--two soft
+triflers on the brink of the grave! Over her throat, as she bent, fell,
+like a golden cloud, her redundant hair; it covered her treasure like
+a veil of light, and the child's little hands put it aside from time to
+time, to smile through the parted tresses, and then to cover its face
+and peep and smile again. It were cruel to damp that joy, more cruel
+still to share it.
+
+"Viola," said Zanoni, at last, "dost thou remember that, seated by the
+cave on the moonlit beach, in our bridal isle, thou once didst ask me
+for this amulet?--the charm of a superstition long vanished from the
+world, with the creed to which it belonged. It is the last relic of my
+native land, and my mother, on her deathbed, placed it round my neck.
+I told thee then I would give it thee on that day WHEN THE LAWS OF OUR
+BEING SHOULD BECOME THE SAME."
+
+"I remember it well."
+
+"To-morrow it shall be thine!"
+
+"Ah, that dear to-morrow!" And, gently laying down her child,--for it
+slept now,--she threw herself on his breast, and pointed to the dawn
+that began greyly to creep along the skies.
+
+There, in those horror-breathing walls, the day-star looked through the
+dismal bars upon those three beings, in whom were concentrated whatever
+is most tender in human ties; whatever is most mysterious in the
+combinations of the human mind; the sleeping Innocence; the trustful
+Affection, that, contented with a touch, a breath, can foresee no
+sorrow; the weary Science that, traversing all the secrets of creation,
+comes at last to Death for their solution, and still clings, as it
+nears the threshold, to the breast of Love. Thus, within, THE WITHIN,--a
+dungeon; without, the WITHOUT,--stately with marts and halls, with
+palaces and temples; Revenge and Terror, at their dark schemes and
+counter-schemes; to and fro, upon the tide of the shifting passions,
+reeled the destinies of men and nations; and hard at hand that day-star,
+waning into space, looked with impartial eye on the church tower and
+the guillotine. Up springs the blithesome morn. In yon gardens the
+birds renew their familiar song. The fishes are sporting through the
+freshening waters of the Seine. The gladness of divine nature, the
+roar and dissonance of mortal life, awake again: the trader unbars his
+windows; the flower-girls troop gayly to their haunts; busy feet are
+tramping to the daily drudgeries that revolutions which strike down
+kings and kaisars, leave the same Cain's heritage to the boor; the
+wagons groan and reel to the mart; Tyranny, up betimes, holds its pallid
+levee; Conspiracy, that hath not slept, hears the clock, and whispers to
+its own heart, "The hour draws near." A group gather, eager-eyed, round
+the purlieus of the Convention Hall; to-day decides the sovereignty of
+France,--about the courts of the Tribunal their customary hum and stir.
+No matter what the hazard of the die, or who the ruler, this day eighty
+heads shall fall!
+
+....
+
+And she slept so sweetly. Wearied out with joy, secure in the presence
+of the eyes regained, she had laughed and wept herself to sleep; and
+still in that slumber there seemed a happy consciousness that the loved
+was by,--the lost was found. For she smiled and murmured to herself, and
+breathed his name often, and stretched out her arms, and sighed if
+they touched him not. He gazed upon her as he stood apart,--with what
+emotions it were vain to say. She would wake no more to him; she could
+not know how dearly the safety of that sleep was purchased. That morrow
+she had so yearned for,--it had come at last. HOW WOULD SHE GREET
+THE EVE? Amidst all the exquisite hopes with which love and youth
+contemplate the future, her eyes had closed. Those hopes still lent
+their iris-colours to her dreams. She would wake to live! To-morrow, and
+the Reign of Terror was no more; the prison gates would be opened,--she
+would go forth, with their child, into that summer-world of light. And
+HE?--he turned, and his eye fell upon the child; it was broad awake, and
+that clear, serious, thoughtful look which it mostly wore, watched him
+with a solemn steadiness. He bent over and kissed its lips.
+
+"Never more," he murmured, "O heritor of love and grief,--never more
+wilt thou see me in thy visions; never more will the light of those
+eyes be fed by celestial commune; never more can my soul guard from
+thy pillow the trouble and the disease. Not such as I would have vainly
+shaped it, must be thy lot. In common with thy race, it must be thine
+to suffer, to struggle, and to err. But mild be thy human trials, and
+strong be thy spirit to love and to believe! And thus, as I gaze upon
+thee,--thus may my nature breathe into thine its last and most intense
+desire; may my love for thy mother pass to thee, and in thy looks may
+she hear my spirit comfort and console her. Hark! they come! Yes! I
+await ye both beyond the grave!"
+
+The door slowly opened; the jailer appeared, and through the aperture
+rushed, at the same instant, a ray of sunlight: it streamed over the
+fair, hushed face of the happy sleeper,--it played like a smile upon
+the lips of the child that, still, mute, and steadfast, watched the
+movements of its father. At that moment Viola muttered in her sleep,
+"The day is come,--the gates are open! Give me thy hand; we will go
+forth! To sea, to sea! How the sunshine plays upon the waters!--to home,
+beloved one, to home again!"
+
+"Citizen, thine hour is come!"
+
+"Hist! she sleeps! A moment! There, it is done! thank Heaven!--and STILL
+she sleeps!" He would not kiss, lest he should awaken her, but gently
+placed round her neck the amulet that would speak to her, hereafter,
+the farewell,--and promise, in that farewell, reunion! He is at the
+threshold,--he turns again, and again. The door closes! He is gone
+forever!
+
+She woke at last,--she gazed round. "Zanoni, it is day!" No answer but
+the low wail of her child. Merciful Heaven! was it then all a dream?
+She tossed back the long tresses that must veil her sight; she felt
+the amulet on her bosom,--it was NO dream! "O God! and he is gone!" She
+sprang to the door,--she shrieked aloud. The jailer comes. "My husband,
+my child's father?"
+
+"He is gone before thee, woman!"
+
+"Whither? Speak--speak!"
+
+"To the guillotine!"--and the black door closed again.
+
+It closed upon the senseless! As a lightning-flash, Zanoni's words, his
+sadness, the true meaning of his mystic gift, the very sacrifice he
+made for her, all became distinct for a moment to her mind,--and then
+darkness swept on it like a storm, yet darkness which had its light. And
+while she sat there, mute, rigid, voiceless, as congealed to stone, A
+VISION, like a wind, glided over the deeps within,--the grim court, the
+judge, the jury, the accuser; and amidst the victims the one dauntless
+and radiant form.
+
+"Thou knowest the danger to the State,--confess!"
+
+"I know; and I keep my promise. Judge, I reveal thy doom! I know that
+the Anarchy thou callest a State expires with the setting of this sun.
+Hark, to the tramp without; hark to the roar of voices! Room there, ye
+dead!--room in hell for Robespierre and his crew!"
+
+They hurry into the court,--the hasty and pale messengers; there is
+confusion and fear and dismay! "Off with the conspirator, and to-morrow
+the woman thou wouldst have saved shall die!"
+
+"To-morrow, president, the steel falls on THEE!"
+
+On, through the crowded and roaring streets, on moves the Procession of
+Death. Ha, brave people! thou art aroused at last. They shall not die!
+Death is dethroned!--Robespierre has fallen!--they rush to the rescue!
+Hideous in the tumbril, by the side of Zanoni, raved and gesticulated
+that form which, in his prophetic dreams, he had seen his companion at
+the place of death. "Save us!--save us!" howled the atheist Nicot. "On,
+brave populace! we SHALL be saved!" And through the crowd, her dark
+hair streaming wild, her eyes flashing fire, pressed a female form, "My
+Clarence!" she shrieked, in the soft Southern language native to the
+ears of Viola; "butcher! what hast thou done with Clarence?" Her eyes
+roved over the eager faces of the prisoners; she saw not the one she
+sought. "Thank Heaven!--thank Heaven! I am not thy murderess!"
+
+Nearer and nearer press the populace,--another moment, and the deathsman
+is defrauded. O Zanoni! why still upon THY brow the resignation that
+speaks no hope? Tramp! tramp! through the streets dash the armed troop;
+faithful to his orders, Black Henriot leads them on. Tramp! tramp!
+over the craven and scattered crowd! Here, flying in disorder,--there,
+trampled in the mire, the shrieking rescuers! And amidst them, stricken
+by the sabres of the guard, her long hair blood-bedabbled, lies the
+Italian woman; and still upon her writhing lips sits joy, as they
+murmur, "Clarence! I have not destroyed thee!"
+
+On to the Barriere du Trone. It frowns dark in the air,--the giant
+instrument of murder! One after one to the glaive,--another and another
+and another! Mercy! O mercy! Is the bridge between the sun and the
+shades so brief,--brief as a sigh? There, there,--HIS turn has come.
+"Die not yet; leave me not behind; hear me--hear me!" shrieked the
+inspired sleeper. "What! and thou smilest still!" They smiled,--those
+pale lips,--and WITH the smile, the place of doom, the headsman, the
+horror vanished. With that smile, all space seemed suffused in eternal
+sunshine. Up from the earth he rose; he hovered over her,--a thing not
+of matter, an IDEA of joy and light! Behind, Heaven opened, deep after
+deep; and the Hosts of Beauty were seen, rank upon rank, afar; and
+"Welcome!" in a myriad melodies, broke from your choral multitude, ye
+People of the Skies,--"welcome! O purified by sacrifice, and immortal
+only through the grave,--this it is to die." And radiant amidst the
+radiant, the IMAGE stretched forth its arms, and murmured to the
+sleeper: "Companion of Eternity!--THIS it is to die!"
+
+....
+
+"Ho! wherefore do they make us signs from the house-tops? Wherefore
+gather the crowds through the street? Why sounds the bell? Why shrieks
+the tocsin? Hark to the guns!--the armed clash! Fellow-captives, is
+there hope for us at last?"
+
+So gasp out the prisoners, each to each. Day wanes--evening closes;
+still they press their white faces to the bars, and still from window
+and from house-top they see the smiles of friends,--the waving signals!
+"Hurrah!" at last,--"Hurrah! Robespierre is fallen! The Reign of Terror
+is no more! God hath permitted us to live!"
+
+Yes; cast thine eyes into the hall where the tyrant and his conclave
+hearkened to the roar without! Fulfilling the prophecy of Dumas,
+Henriot, drunk with blood and alcohol, reels within, and chucks his gory
+sabre on the floor. "All is lost!"
+
+"Wretch! thy cowardice hath destroyed us!" yelled the fierce Coffinhal,
+as he hurled the coward from the window.
+
+Calm as despair stands the stern St. Just; the palsied Couthon crawls,
+grovelling, beneath table; a shot,--an explosion! Robespierre would
+destroy himself! The trembling hand has mangled, and failed to kill! The
+clock of the Hotel de Ville strikes the third hour. Through the battered
+door, along the gloomy passages, into the Death-hall, burst the crowd.
+Mangled, livid, blood-stained, speechless but not unconscious, sits
+haughty yet, in his seat erect, the Master-Murderer! Around him they
+throng; they hoot,--they execrate, their faces gleaming in the tossing
+torches! HE, and not the starry Magian, the REAL Sorcerer! And round HIS
+last hours gather the Fiends he raised!
+
+They drag him forth! Open thy gates, inexorable prison! The Conciergerie
+receives its prey! Never a word again on earth spoke Maximilien
+Robespierre! Pour forth thy thousands, and tens of thousands,
+emancipated Paris! To the Place de la Revolution rolls the tumbril of
+the King of Terror,--St. Just, Dumas, Couthon, his companions to the
+grave! A woman--a childless woman, with hoary hair--springs to his
+side, "Thy death makes me drunk with joy!" He opened his bloodshot
+eyes,--"Descend to hell with the curses of wives and mothers!"
+
+The headsmen wrench the rag from the shattered jaw; a shriek, and the
+crowd laugh, and the axe descends amidst the shout of the countless
+thousands, and blackness rushes on thy soul, Maximilien Robespierre! So
+ended the Reign of Terror.
+
+....
+
+Daylight in the prison. From cell to cell they hurry with the
+news,--crowd upon crowd; the joyous captives mingled with the very
+jailers, who, for fear, would fain seem joyous too; they stream through
+the dens and alleys of the grim house they will shortly leave. They
+burst into a cell, forgotten since the previous morning. They found
+there a young female, sitting upon her wretched bed; her arms crossed
+upon her bosom, her face raised upward; the eyes unclosed, and a smile
+of more than serenity--of bliss--upon her lips. Even in the riot of
+their joy, they drew back in astonishment and awe. Never had they seen
+life so beautiful; and as they crept nearer, and with noiseless feet,
+they saw that the lips breathed not, that the repose was of marble,
+that the beauty and the ecstasy were of death. They gathered round in
+silence; and lo! at her feet there was a young infant, who, wakened
+by their tread, looked at them steadfastly, and with its rosy fingers
+played with its dead mother's robe. An orphan there in a dungeon vault!
+
+"Poor one!" said a female (herself a parent), "and they say the father
+fell yesterday; and now the mother! Alone in the world, what can be its
+fate?"
+
+The infant smiled fearlessly on the crowd, as the woman spoke thus. And
+the old priest, who stood amongst them, said gently, "Woman, see! the
+orphan smiles! THE FATHERLESS ARE THE CARE OF GOD!"
+
+
+*****
+
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+The curiosity which Zanoni has excited among those who think it worth
+while to dive into the subtler meanings they believe it intended to
+convey, may excuse me in adding a few words, not in explanation of its
+mysteries, but upon the principles which permit them. Zanoni is not, as
+some have supposed, an allegory; but beneath the narrative it relates,
+TYPICAL meanings are concealed. It is to be regarded in two characters,
+distinct yet harmonious,--1st, that of the simple and objective fiction,
+in which (once granting the license of the author to select a subject
+which is, or appears to be, preternatural) the reader judges the writer
+by the usual canons,--namely, by the consistency of his characters
+under such admitted circumstances, the interest of his story, and the
+coherence of his plot; of the work regarded in this view, it is not my
+intention to say anything, whether in exposition of the design, or in
+defence of the execution. No typical meanings (which, in plain terms are
+but moral suggestions, more or less numerous, more or less subtle) can
+afford just excuse to a writer of fiction, for the errors he should
+avoid in the most ordinary novel. We have no right to expect the most
+ingenious reader to search for the inner meaning, if the obvious course
+of the narrative be tedious and displeasing. It is, on the contrary,
+in proportion as we are satisfied with the objective sense of a work of
+imagination, that we are inclined to search into its depths for the more
+secret intentions of the author. Were we not so divinely charmed with
+"Faust," and "Hamlet," and "Prometheus," so ardently carried on by
+the interest of the story told to the common understanding, we should
+trouble ourselves little with the types in each which all of us can
+detect,--none of us can elucidate; none elucidate, for the essence of
+type is mystery. We behold the figure, we cannot lift the veil. The
+author himself is not called upon to explain what he designed. An
+allegory is a personation of distinct and definite things,--virtues or
+qualities,--and the key can be given easily; but a writer who conveys
+typical meanings, may express them in myriads. He cannot disentangle all
+the hues which commingle into the light he seeks to cast upon truth;
+and therefore the great masters of this enchanted soil,--Fairyland of
+Fairyland, Poetry imbedded beneath Poetry,--wisely leave to each mind to
+guess at such truths as best please or instruct it. To have asked Goethe
+to explain the "Faust" would have entailed as complex and puzzling an
+answer as to have asked Mephistopheles to explain what is beneath the
+earth we tread on. The stores beneath may differ for every passenger;
+each step may require a new description; and what is treasure to the
+geologist may be rubbish to the miner. Six worlds may lie under a sod,
+but to the common eye they are but six layers of stone.
+
+Art in itself, if not necessarily typical, is essentially a suggester of
+something subtler than that which it embodies to the sense. What Pliny
+tells us of a great painter of old, is true of most great painters;
+"their works express something beyond the works,"--"more felt than
+understood." This belongs to the concentration of intellect which high
+art demands, and which, of all the arts, sculpture best illustrates.
+Take Thorwaldsen's Statue of Mercury,--it is but a single figure, yet
+it tells to those conversant with mythology a whole legend. The god has
+removed the pipe from his lips, because he has already lulled to sleep
+the Argus, whom you do not see. He is pressing his heel against his
+sword, because the moment is come when he may slay his victim. Apply the
+principle of this noble concentration of art to the moral writer: he,
+too, gives to your eye but a single figure; yet each attitude, each
+expression, may refer to events and truths you must have the learning to
+remember, the acuteness to penetrate, or the imagination to conjecture.
+But to a classical judge of sculpture, would not the exquisite pleasure
+of discovering the all not told in Thorwaldsen's masterpiece be
+destroyed if the artist had engraved in detail his meaning at the base
+of the statue? Is it not the same with the typical sense which the
+artist in words conveys? The pleasure of divining art in each is the
+noble exercise of all by whom art is worthily regarded.
+
+We of the humbler race not unreasonably shelter ourselves under the
+authority of the masters, on whom the world's judgment is pronounced;
+and great names are cited, not with the arrogance of equals, but with
+the humility of inferiors.
+
+The author of Zanoni gives, then, no key to mysteries, be they trivial
+or important, which may be found in the secret chambers by those who
+lift the tapestry from the wall; but out of the many solutions of the
+main enigma--if enigma, indeed, there be--which have been sent to him,
+he ventures to select the one which he subjoins, from the ingenuity and
+thought which it displays, and from respect for the distinguished writer
+(one of the most eminent our time has produced) who deemed him worthy
+of an honour he is proud to display. He leaves it to the reader to agree
+with, or dissent from the explanation. "A hundred men," says the old
+Platonist, "may read the book by the help of the same lamp, yet all may
+differ on the text, for the lamp only lights the characters,--the mind
+must divine the meaning." The object of a parable is not that of a
+problem; it does not seek to convince, but to suggest. It takes
+the thought below the surface of the understanding to the deeper
+intelligence which the world rarely tasks. It is not sunlight on the
+water; it is a hymn chanted to the nymph who hearkens and awakes below.
+
+....
+
+
+
+
+"ZANONI EXPLAINED.
+
+BY--."
+
+MEJNOUR:--Contemplation of the Actual,--SCIENCE. Always old, and must
+last as long as the Actual. Less fallible than Idealism, but less
+practically potent, from its ignorance of the human heart.
+
+ZANONI:--Contemplation of the Ideal,--IDEALISM. Always necessarily
+sympathetic: lives by enjoyment; and is therefore typified by eternal
+youth. ("I do not understand the making Idealism less undying (on this
+scene of existence) than Science."--Commentator. Because, granting
+the above premises, Idealism is more subjected than Science to the
+Affections, or to Instinct, because the Affections, sooner or later,
+force Idealism into the Actual, and in the Actual its immortality
+departs. The only absolutely Actual portion of the work is found in the
+concluding scenes that depict the Reign of Terror. The introduction of
+this part was objected to by some as out of keeping with the fanciful
+portions that preceded it. But if the writer of the solution has rightly
+shown or suggested the intention of the author, the most strongly
+and rudely actual scene of the age in which the story is cast was the
+necessary and harmonious completion of the whole. The excesses and
+crimes of Humanity are the grave of the Ideal.--Author.) Idealism is the
+potent Interpreter and Prophet of the Real; but its powers are impaired
+in proportion to their exposure to human passion.
+
+VIOLA:--Human INSTINCT. (Hardly worthy to be called LOVE, as Love would
+not forsake its object at the bidding of Superstition.) Resorts, first
+in its aspiration after the Ideal, to tinsel shows; then relinquishes
+these for a higher love; but is still, from the conditions of its
+nature, inadequate to this, and liable to suspicion and mistrust. Its
+greatest force (Maternal Instinct) has power to penetrate some secrets,
+to trace some movements of the Ideal, but, too feeble to command them,
+yields to Superstition, sees sin where there is none, while committing
+sin, under a false guidance; weakly seeking refuge amidst the very
+tumults of the warring passions of the Actual, while deserting the
+serene Ideal,--pining, nevertheless, in the absence of the Ideal, and
+expiring (not perishing, but becoming transmuted) in the aspiration
+after having the laws of the two natures reconciled.
+
+(It might best suit popular apprehension to call these three the
+Understanding, the Imagination, and the Heart.)
+
+CHILD:--NEW-BORN INSTINCT, while trained and informed by Idealism,
+promises a preter-human result by its early, incommunicable vigilance
+and intelligence, but is compelled, by inevitable orphanhood, and
+the one-half of the laws of its existence, to lapse into ordinary
+conditions.
+
+AIDON-AI:--FAITH, which manifests its splendour, and delivers its
+oracles, and imparts its marvels, only to the higher moods of the soul,
+and whose directed antagonism is with Fear; so that those who employ
+the resources of Fear must dispense with those of Faith. Yet aspiration
+holds open a way of restoration, and may summon Faith, even when the cry
+issues from beneath the yoke of fear.
+
+DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD:--FEAR (or HORROR), from whose ghastliness men
+are protected by the opacity of the region of Prescription and Custom.
+The moment this protection is relinquished, and the human spirit pierces
+the cloud, and enters alone on the unexplored regions of Nature, this
+Natural Horror haunts it, and is to be successfully encountered only
+by defiance,--by aspiration towards, and reliance on, the Former and
+Director of Nature, whose Messenger and Instrument of reassurance is
+Faith.
+
+MERVALE:--CONVENTIONALISM.
+
+NICOT:--Base, grovelling, malignant PASSION.
+
+GLYNDON:--UNSUSTAINED ASPIRATION: Would follow Instinct, but is
+deterred by Conventionalism, is overawed by Idealism, yet attracted,
+and transiently inspired, but has not steadiness for the initiatory
+contemplation of the Actual. He conjoins its snatched privileges with a
+besetting sensualism, and suffers at once from the horror of the one and
+the disgust of the other, involving the innocent in the fatal conflict
+of his spirit. When on the point of perishing, he is rescued by
+Idealism, and, unable to rise to that species of existence, is grateful
+to be replunged into the region of the Familiar, and takes up his rest
+henceforth in Custom. (Mirror of Young Manhood.)
+
+....
+
+ARGUMENT.
+
+Human Existence subject to, and exempt from, ordinary conditions
+(Sickness, Poverty, Ignorance, Death).
+
+SCIENCE is ever striving to carry the most gifted beyond ordinary
+conditions,--the result being as many victims as efforts, and the
+striver being finally left a solitary,--for his object is unsuitable to
+the natures he has to deal with.
+
+The pursuit of the Ideal involves so much emotion as to render the
+Idealist vulnerable by human passion, however long and well guarded,
+still vulnerable,--liable, at last, to a union with Instinct. Passion
+obscures both Insight and Forecast. All effort to elevate Instinct to
+Idealism is abortive, the laws of their being not coinciding (in the
+early stage of the existence of the one). Instinct is either alarmed,
+and takes refuge in Superstition or Custom, or is left helpless to human
+charity, or given over to providential care.
+
+Idealism, stripped of in sight and forecast, loses its serenity, becomes
+subject once more to the horror from which it had escaped, and by
+accepting its aids, forfeits the higher help of Faith; aspiration,
+however, remaining still possible, and, thereby, slow restoration; and
+also, SOMETHING BETTER.
+
+Summoned by aspiration, Faith extorts from Fear itself the saving truth
+to which Science continues blind, and which Idealism itself hails as its
+crowning acquisition,--the inestimable PROOF wrought out by all labours
+and all conflicts.
+
+Pending the elaboration of this proof,
+
+CONVENTIONALISM plods on, safe and complacent;
+
+SELFISH PASSION perishes, grovelling and hopeless;
+
+INSTINCT sleeps, in order to a loftier waking; and
+
+IDEALISM learns, as its ultimate lesson, that self-sacrifice is true
+redemption; that the region beyond the grave is the fitting one for
+exemption from mortal conditions; and that Death is the everlasting
+portal, indicated by the finger of God,--the broad avenue through
+which man does not issue solitary and stealthy into the region of Free
+Existence, but enters triumphant, hailed by a hierarchy of immortal
+natures.
+
+The result is (in other words), THAT THE UNIVERSAL HUMAN LOT IS, AFTER
+ALL, THAT OF THE HIGHEST PRIVILEGE.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Zanoni, by Edward Bulwer Lytton
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Zanoni, by Edward Bulwer Lytton
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+Title:  Zanoni
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+Author:  Edward Bulwer Lytton
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+
+ZANONI
+
+BY
+
+EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
+
+
+(PLATE:  "Thou art good and fair," said Viola.
+Drawn by P. Kauffmann, etched by Deblois.)
+
+
+DEDICATORY EPISTLE
+First prefixed to the Edition of 1845
+
+
+TO
+
+JOHN GIBSON, R.A., SCULPTOR.
+
+In looking round the wide and luminous circle of our great living
+Englishmen, to select one to whom I might fitly dedicate this
+work,--one who, in his life as in his genius, might illustrate
+the principle I have sought to convey; elevated by the ideal
+which he exalts, and serenely dwelling in a glorious existence
+with the images born of his imagination,--in looking round for
+some such man, my thoughts rested upon you.  Afar from our
+turbulent cabals; from the ignoble jealousy and the sordid strife
+which degrade and acerbate the ambition of Genius,--in your Roman
+Home, you have lived amidst all that is loveliest and least
+perishable in the past, and contributed with the noblest aims,
+and in the purest spirit, to the mighty heirlooms of the future.
+Your youth has been devoted to toil, that your manhood may be
+consecrated to fame:  a fame unsullied by one desire of gold.
+You have escaped the two worst perils that beset the artist in
+our time and land,--the debasing tendencies of commerce, and the
+angry rivalries of competition.  You have not wrought your marble
+for the market,--you have not been tempted, by the praises which
+our vicious criticism has showered upon exaggeration and
+distortion, to lower your taste to the level of the hour; you
+have lived, and you have laboured, as if you had no rivals but in
+the dead,--no purchasers, save in judges of what is best.  In the
+divine priesthood of the beautiful, you have sought only to
+increase her worshippers and enrich her temples.  The pupil of
+Canova, you have inherited his excellences, while you have
+shunned his errors,--yours his delicacy, not his affectation.
+Your heart resembles him even more than your genius:  you have
+the same noble enthusiasm for your sublime profession; the same
+lofty freedom from envy, and the spirit that depreciates; the
+same generous desire not to war with but to serve artists in your
+art; aiding, strengthening, advising, elevating the timidity of
+inexperience, and the vague aspirations of youth.  By the
+intuition of a kindred mind, you have equalled the learning of
+Winckelman, and the plastic poetry of Goethe, in the intimate
+comprehension of the antique.  Each work of yours, rightly
+studied, is in itself a CRITICISM, illustrating the sublime
+secrets of the Grecian Art, which, without the servility of
+plagiarism, you have contributed to revive amongst us; in you we
+behold its three great and long-undetected principles,--
+simplicity, calm, and concentration.
+
+But your admiration of the Greeks has not led you to the bigotry
+of the mere antiquarian, nor made you less sensible of the
+unappreciated excellence of the mighty modern, worthy to be your
+countryman,--though till his statue is in the streets of our
+capital, we show ourselves not worthy of the glory he has shed
+upon our land.  You have not suffered even your gratitude to
+Canova to blind you to the superiority of Flaxman.  When we
+become sensible of our title-deeds to renown in that single name,
+we may look for an English public capable of real patronage to
+English Art,--and not till then.
+
+I, artist in words, dedicate, then, to you, artist whose ideas
+speak in marble, this well-loved work of my matured manhood.  I
+love it not the less because it has been little understood and
+superficially judged by the common herd:  it was not meant for
+them.  I love it not the more because it has found enthusiastic
+favorers amongst the Few.  My affection for my work is rooted in
+the solemn and pure delight which it gave me to conceive and to
+perform.  If I had graven it on the rocks of a desert, this
+apparition of my own innermost mind, in its least-clouded
+moments, would have been to me as dear; and this ought, I
+believe, to be the sentiment with which he whose Art is born of
+faith in the truth and beauty of the principles he seeks to
+illustrate, should regard his work.  Your serener existence,
+uniform and holy, my lot denies,--if my heart covets.  But our
+true nature is in our thoughts, not our deeds:  and therefore, in
+books--which ARE his thoughts--the author's character lies bare
+to the discerning eye.  It is not in the life of cities,--in the
+turmoil and the crowd; it is in the still, the lonely, and more
+sacred life, which for some hours, under every sun, the student
+lives (his stolen retreat from the Agora to the Cave), that I
+feel there is between us the bond of that secret sympathy, that
+magnetic chain, which unites the everlasting brotherhood of whose
+being Zanoni is the type.
+
+E.B.L.
+London, May, 1845.
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+One of the peculiarities of Bulwer was his passion for occult
+studies.  They had a charm for him early in life, and he pursued
+them with the earnestness which characterised his pursuit of
+other studies.  He became absorbed in wizard lore; he equipped
+himself with magical implements,--with rods for transmitting
+influence, and crystal balls in which to discern coming scenes
+and persons; and communed with spiritualists and mediums.  The
+fruit of these mystic studies is seen in "Zanoni" and "A strange
+Story," romances which were a labour of love to the author, and
+into which he threw all the power he possessed,--power re-
+enforced by multifarious reading and an instinctive appreciation
+of Oriental thought.  These weird stories, in which the author
+has formulated his theory of magic, are of a wholly different
+type from his previous fictions, and, in place of the heroes and
+villains of every day life, we have beings that belong in part to
+another sphere, and that deal with mysterious and occult
+agencies.  Once more the old forgotten lore of the Cabala is
+unfolded; the furnace of the alchemist, whose fires have been
+extinct for centuries, is lighted anew, and the lamp of the
+Rosicrucian re-illumined.  No other works of the author,
+contradictory as have been the opinions of them, have provoked
+such a diversity of criticism as these.  To some persons they
+represent a temporary aberration of genius rather than any
+serious thought or definite purpose; while others regard them as
+surpassing in bold and original speculation, profound analysis of
+character, and thrilling interest, all of the author's other
+works.  The truth, we believe, lies midway between these
+extremes.  It is questionable whether the introduction into a
+novel of such subjects as are discussed in these romances be not
+an offence against good sense and good taste; but it is as
+unreasonable to deny the vigour and originality of their author's
+conceptions, as to deny that the execution is imperfect, and, at
+times, bungling and absurd.
+
+It has been justly said that the present half century has
+witnessed the rise and triumphs of science, the extent and
+marvels of which even Bacon's fancy never conceived,
+simultaneously with superstitions grosser than any which Bacon's
+age believed.  "The one is, in fact, the natural reaction from
+the other.  The more science seeks to exclude the miraculous, and
+reduce all nature, animate and inanimate, to an invariable law of
+sequences, the more does the natural instinct of man rebel, and
+seek an outlet for those obstinate questionings, those 'blank
+misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realised,'
+taking refuge in delusions as degrading as any of the so-called
+Dark Ages."  It was the revolt from the chilling materialism of
+the age which inspired the mystic creations of "Zanoni" and "A
+Strange Story."  Of these works, which support and supplement
+each other, one is the contemplation of our actual life through a
+spiritual medium, the other is designed to show that, without
+some gleams of the supernatural, man is not man, nor nature
+nature.
+
+In "Zanoni" the author introduces us to two human beings who have
+achieved immortality:  one, Mejnour, void of all passion or
+feeling, calm, benignant, bloodless, an intellect rather than a
+man; the other, Zanoni, the pupil of Mejnour, the representative
+of an ideal life in its utmost perfection, possessing eternal
+youth, absolute power, and absolute knowledge, and withal the
+fullest capacity to enjoy and to love, and, as a necessity of
+that love, to sorrow and despair.  By his love for Viola Zanoni
+is compelled to descend from his exalted state, to lose his
+eternal calm, and to share in the cares and anxieties of
+humanity; and this degradation is completed by the birth of a
+child.  Finally, he gives up the life which hangs on that of
+another, in order to save that other, the loving and beloved
+wife, who has delivered him from his solitude and isolation.
+Wife and child are mortal, and to outlive them and his love for
+them is impossible.  But Mejnour, who is the impersonation of
+thought,--pure intellect without affection,--lives on.
+
+Bulwer has himself justly characterised this work, in the
+Introduction, as a romance and not a romance, as a truth for
+those who can comprehend it, and an extravagance for those who
+cannot.  The most careless or matter-of-fact reader must see that
+the work, like the enigmatical "Faust," deals in types and
+symbols; that the writer intends to suggest to the mind something
+more subtle and impalpable than that which is embodied to the
+senses.  What that something is, hardly two persons will agree.
+The most obvious interpretation of the types is, that in Zanoni
+the author depicts to us humanity, perfected, sublimed, which
+lives not for self, but for others; in Mejnour, as we have before
+said, cold, passionless, self-sufficing intellect; in Glyndon,
+the young Englishman, the mingled strength and weakness of human
+nature; in the heartless, selfish artist, Nicot, icy, soulless
+atheism, believing nothing, hoping nothing, trusting and loving
+nothing; and in the beautiful, artless Viola, an exquisite
+creation, pure womanhood, loving, trusting and truthful.  As a
+work of art the romance is one of great power.  It is original in
+its conception, and pervaded by one central idea; but it would
+have been improved, we think, by a more sparing use of the
+supernatural.  The inevitable effect of so much hackneyed
+diablerie--of such an accumulation of wonder upon wonder--is to
+deaden the impression they would naturally make upon us.  In
+Hawthorne's tales we see with what ease a great imaginative
+artist can produce a deeper thrill by a far slighter use of the
+weird and the mysterious.
+
+The chief interest of the story for the ordinary reader centres,
+not in its ghostly characters and improbable machinery, the
+scenes in Mejnour's chamber in the ruined castle among the
+Apennines, the colossal and appalling apparitions on Vesuvius,
+the hideous phantom with its burning eye that haunted Glyndon,
+but in the loves of Viola and the mysterious Zanoni, the blissful
+and the fearful scenes through which they pass, and their final
+destiny, when the hero of the story sacrifices his own "charmed
+life" to save hers, and the Immortal finds the only true
+immortality in death.  Among the striking passages in the work
+are the pathetic sketch of the old violinist and composer,
+Pisani, with his sympathetic "barbiton" which moaned, groaned,
+growled, and laughed responsive to the feelings of its master;
+the description of Viola's and her father's triumph, when "The
+Siren," his masterpiece, is performed at the San Carlo in Naples;
+Glyndon's adventure at the Carnival in Naples; the death of his
+sister; the vivid pictures of the Reign of Terror in Paris,
+closing with the downfall of Robespierre and his satellites; and
+perhaps, above all, the thrilling scene where Zanoni leaves Viola
+asleep in prison when his guards call him to execution, and she,
+unconscious of the terrible sacrifice, but awaking and missing
+him, has a vision of the procession to the guillotine, with
+Zanoni there, radiant in youth and beauty, followed by the sudden
+vanishing of the headsman,--the horror,--and the "Welcome" of her
+loved one to Heaven in a myriad of melodies from the choral hosts
+above.
+
+"Zanoni" was originally published by Saunders and Otley, London,
+in three volumes 12mo., in 1842.  A translation into French, made
+by M.  Sheldon under the direction of P. Lorain, was published in
+Paris in the "Bibliotheque des Meilleurs Romans Etrangers."
+
+W.M.
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1853.
+
+As a work of imagination, "Zanoni" ranks, perhaps, amongst the
+highest of my prose fictions.  In the Poem of "King Arthur,"
+published many years afterwards, I have taken up an analogous
+design, in the contemplation of our positive life through a
+spiritual medium; and I have enforced, through a far wider
+development, and, I believe, with more complete and enduring
+success, that harmony between the external events which are all
+that the superficial behold on the surface of human affairs, and
+the subtle and intellectual agencies which in reality influence
+the conduct of individuals, and shape out the destinies of the
+world.  As man has two lives,--that of action and that of
+thought,--so I conceive that work to be the truest representation
+of humanity which faithfully delineates both, and opens some
+elevating glimpse into the sublimest mysteries of our being, by
+establishing the inevitable union that exists between the plain
+things of the day, in which our earthly bodies perform their
+allotted part, and the latent, often uncultivated, often
+invisible, affinities of the soul with all the powers that
+eternally breathe and move throughout the Universe of Spirit.
+
+I refer those who do me the honour to read "Zanoni" with more
+attention than is given to ordinary romance, to the Poem of "King
+Arthur," for suggestive conjecture into most of the regions of
+speculative research, affecting the higher and more important
+condition of our ultimate being, which have engaged the students
+of immaterial philosophy in my own age.
+
+Affixed to the "Note" with which this work concludes, and which
+treats of the distinctions between type and allegory, the reader
+will find, from the pen of one of our most eminent living
+writers, an ingenious attempt to explain the interior or typical
+meanings of the work now before him.
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+It is possible that among my readers there may be a few not
+unacquainted with an old-book shop, existing some years since in
+the neighbourhood of Covent Garden; I say a few, for certainly
+there was little enough to attract the many in those precious
+volumes which the labour of a life had accumulated on the dusty
+shelves of my old friend D--.  There were to be found no popular
+treatises, no entertaining romances, no histories, no travels, no
+"Library for the People," no "Amusement for the Million."  But
+there, perhaps, throughout all Europe, the curious might discover
+the most notable collection, ever amassed by an enthusiast, of
+the works of alchemist, cabalist, and astrologer.  The owner had
+lavished a fortune in the purchase of unsalable treasures.  But
+old D-- did not desire to sell.  It absolutely went to his heart
+when a customer entered his shop:  he watched the movements of
+the presumptuous intruder with a vindictive glare; he fluttered
+around him with uneasy vigilance,--he frowned, he groaned, when
+profane hands dislodged his idols from their niches.  If it were
+one of the favourite sultanas of his wizard harem that attracted
+you, and the price named were not sufficiently enormous, he would
+not unfrequently double the sum.  Demur, and in brisk delight he
+snatched the venerable charmer from your hands; accede, and he
+became the picture of despair,--nor unfrequently, at the dead of
+night, would he knock at your door, and entreat you to sell him
+back, at your own terms, what you had so egregiously bought at
+his.  A believer himself in his Averroes and Paracelsus, he was
+as loth as the philosophers he studied to communicate to the
+profane the learning he had collected.
+
+It so chanced that some years ago, in my younger days, whether of
+authorship or life, I felt a desire to make myself acquainted
+with the true origin and tenets of the singular sect known by the
+name of Rosicrucians.  Dissatisfied with the scanty and
+superficial accounts to be found in the works usually referred to
+on the subject, it struck me as possible that Mr. D--'s
+collection, which was rich, not only in black-letter, but in
+manuscripts, might contain some more accurate and authentic
+records of that famous brotherhood,--written, who knows? by one
+of their own order, and confirming by authority and detail the
+pretensions to wisdom and to virtue which Bringaret had arrogated
+to the successors of the Chaldean and Gymnosophist.  Accordingly
+I repaired to what, doubtless, I ought to be ashamed to confess,
+was once one of my favourite haunts.  But are there no errors and
+no fallacies, in the chronicles of our own day, as absurd as
+those of the alchemists of old?  Our very newspapers may seem to
+our posterity as full of delusions as the books of the alchemists
+do to us; not but what the press is the air we breathe,--and
+uncommonly foggy the air is too!
+
+On entering the shop, I was struck by the venerable appearance of
+a customer whom I had never seen there before.  I was struck yet
+more by the respect with which he was treated by the disdainful
+collector.  "Sir," cried the last, emphatically, as I was turning
+over the leaves of the catalogue,--"sir, you are the only man I
+have met, in five-and-forty years that I have spent in these
+researches, who is worthy to be my customer.  How--where, in this
+frivolous age, could you have acquired a knowledge so profound?
+And this august fraternity, whose doctrines, hinted at by the
+earliest philosophers, are still a mystery to the latest; tell me
+if there really exists upon the earth any book, any manuscript,
+in which their discoveries, their tenets, are to be learned?"
+
+At the words, "august fraternity," I need scarcely say that my
+attention had been at once aroused, and I listened eagerly for
+the stranger's reply.
+
+"I do not think," said the old gentleman, "that the masters of
+the school have ever consigned, except by obscure hint and
+mystical parable, their real doctrines to the world.  And I do
+not blame them for their discretion."
+
+Here he paused, and seemed about to retire, when I said, somewhat
+abruptly, to the collector, "I see nothing, Mr. D--, in this
+catalogue which relates to the Rosicrucians!"
+
+"The Rosicrucians!" repeated the old gentleman, and in his turn
+he surveyed me with deliberate surprise.  "Who but a Rosicrucian
+could explain the Rosicrucian mysteries!  And can you imagine
+that any members of that sect, the most jealous of all secret
+societies, would themselves lift the veil that hides the Isis of
+their wisdom from the world?"
+
+"Aha!" thought I, "this, then, is 'the august fraternity' of
+which you spoke.  Heaven be praised!  I certainly have stumbled
+on one of the brotherhood."
+
+"But," I said aloud, "if not in books, sir, where else am I to
+obtain information?  Nowadays one can hazard nothing in print
+without authority, and one may scarcely quote Shakespeare without
+citing chapter and verse.  This is the age of facts,--the age of
+facts, sir."
+
+"Well," said the old gentleman, with a pleasant smile, "if we
+meet again, perhaps, at least, I may direct your researches to
+the proper source of intelligence."  And with that he buttoned
+his greatcoat, whistled to his dog, and departed.
+
+It so happened that I did meet again with the old gentleman,
+exactly four days after our brief conversation in Mr. D--'s book-
+shop.  I was riding leisurely towards Highgate, when, at the foot
+of its classic hill, I recognised the stranger; he was mounted on
+a black pony, and before him trotted his dog, which was black
+also.
+
+If you meet the man whom you wish to know, on horseback, at the
+commencement of a long hill, where, unless he has borrowed a
+friend's favourite hack, he cannot, in decent humanity to the
+brute creation, ride away from you, I apprehend that it is your
+own fault if you have not gone far in your object before you have
+gained the top.  In short, so well did I succeed, that on
+reaching Highgate the old gentleman invited me to rest at his
+house, which was a little apart from the village; and an
+excellent house it was,--small, but commodious, with a large
+garden, and commanding from the windows such a prospect as
+Lucretius would recommend to philosophers:  the spires and domes
+of London, on a clear day, distinctly visible; here the Retreat
+of the Hermit, and there the Mare Magnum of the world.
+
+The walls of the principal rooms were embellished with pictures
+of extraordinary merit, and in that high school of art which is
+so little understood out of Italy.  I was surprised to learn that
+they were all from the hand of the owner.  My evident admiration
+pleased my new friend, and led to talk upon his part, which
+showed him no less elevated in his theories of art than an adept
+in the practice.  Without fatiguing the reader with irrelevant
+criticism, it is necessary, perhaps, as elucidating much of the
+design and character of the work which these prefatory pages
+introduce, that I should briefly observe, that he insisted as
+much upon the connection of the arts, as a distinguished author
+has upon that of the sciences; that he held that in all works of
+imagination, whether expressed by words or by colours, the artist
+of the higher schools must make the broadest distinction between
+the real and the true,--in other words, between the imitation of
+actual life, and the exaltation of Nature into the Ideal.
+
+"The one," said he, "is the Dutch School, the other is the
+Greek."
+
+"Sir," said I, "the Dutch is the most in fashion."
+
+"Yes, in painting, perhaps," answered my host, "but in
+literature--"
+
+"It was of literature I spoke.  Our growing poets are all for
+simplicity and Betty Foy; and our critics hold it the highest
+praise of a work of imagination, to say that its characters are
+exact to common life, even in sculpture--"
+
+"In sculpture!  No, no! THERE the high ideal must at least be
+essential!"
+
+"Pardon me; I fear you have not seen Souter Johnny and Tam
+O'Shanter."
+
+"Ah!" said the old gentleman, shaking his head, "I live very much
+out of the world, I see.  I suppose Shakespeare has ceased to be
+admired?"
+
+"On the contrary; people make the adoration of Shakespeare the
+excuse for attacking everybody else.  But then our critics have
+discovered that Shakespeare is so REAL!"
+
+"Real!  The poet who has never once drawn a character to be met
+with in actual life,--who has never once descended to a passion
+that is false, or a personage who is real!"
+
+I was about to reply very severely to this paradox, when I
+perceived that my companion was growing a little out of temper.
+And he who wishes to catch a Rosicrucian, must take care not to
+disturb the waters.  I thought it better, therefore, to turn the
+conversation.
+
+"Revenons a nos moutons," said I; "you promised to enlighten my
+ignorance as to the Rosicrucians."
+
+"Well!" quoth he, rather sternly; "but for what purpose?  Perhaps
+you desire only to enter the temple in order to ridicule the
+rites?"
+
+"What do you take me for!  Surely, were I so inclined, the fate
+of the Abbe de Villars is a sufficient warning to all men not to
+treat idly of the realms of the Salamander and the Sylph.
+Everybody knows how mysteriously that ingenious personage was
+deprived of his life, in revenge for the witty mockeries of his
+'Comte de Gabalis.'"
+
+"Salamander and Sylph!  I see that you fall into the vulgar
+error, and translate literally the allegorical language of the
+mystics."
+
+With that the old gentleman condescended to enter into a very
+interesting, and, as it seemed to me, a very erudite relation, of
+the tenets of the Rosicrucians, some of whom, he asserted, still
+existed, and still prosecuted, in august secrecy, their profound
+researches into natural science and occult philosophy.
+
+"But this fraternity," said he, "however respectable and
+virtuous,--virtuous I say, for no monastic order is more severe
+in the practice of moral precepts, or more ardent in Christian
+faith,--this fraternity is but a branch of others yet more
+transcendent in the powers they have obtained, and yet more
+illustrious in their origin.  Are you acquainted with the
+Platonists?"
+
+"I have occasionally lost my way in their labyrinth," said I.
+"Faith, they are rather difficult gentlemen to understand."
+
+"Yet their knottiest problems have never yet been published.
+Their sublimest works are in manuscript, and constitute the
+initiatory learning, not only of the Rosicrucians, but of the
+nobler brotherhoods I have referred to.  More solemn and sublime
+still is the knowledge to be gleaned from the elder Pythagoreans,
+and the immortal masterpieces of Apollonius."
+
+"Apollonius, the imposter of Tyanea! are his writings extant?"
+
+"Imposter!" cried my host; "Apollonius an imposter!"
+
+"I beg your pardon; I did not know he was a friend of yours; and
+if you vouch for his character, I will believe him to have been a
+very respectable man, who only spoke the truth when he boasted of
+his power to be in two places at the same time."
+
+"Is that so difficult?" said the old gentleman; "if so, you have
+never dreamed!"
+
+Here ended our conversation; but from that time an acquaintance
+was formed between us which lasted till my venerable friend
+departed this life.  Peace to his ashes!  He was a person of
+singular habits and eccentric opinions; but the chief part of his
+time was occupied in acts of quiet and unostentatious goodness.
+He was an enthusiast in the duties of the Samaritan; and as his
+virtues were softened by the gentlest charity, so his hopes were
+based upon the devoutest belief.  He never conversed upon his own
+origin and history, nor have I ever been able to penetrate the
+darkness in which they were concealed.  He seemed to have seen
+much of the world, and to have been an eye-witness of the first
+French Revolution, a subject upon which he was equally eloquent
+and instructive.  At the same time he did not regard the crimes
+of that stormy period with the philosophical leniency with which
+enlightened writers (their heads safe upon their shoulders) are,
+in the present day, inclined to treat the massacres of the past:
+he spoke not as a student who had read and reasoned, but as a man
+who had seen and suffered.  The old gentleman seemed alone in the
+world; nor did I know that he had one relation, till his
+executor, a distant cousin, residing abroad, informed me of the
+very handsome legacy which my poor friend had bequeathed me.
+This consisted, first, of a sum about which I think it best to be
+guarded, foreseeing the possibility of a new tax upon real and
+funded property; and, secondly, of certain precious manuscripts,
+to which the following volumes owe their existence.
+
+I imagine I trace this latter bequest to a visit I paid the Sage,
+if so I may be permitted to call him, a few weeks before his
+death.
+
+Although he read little of our modern literature, my friend, with
+the affable good-nature which belonged to him, graciously
+permitted me to consult him upon various literary undertakings
+meditated by the desultory ambition of a young and inexperienced
+student.  And at that time I sought his advice upon a work of
+imagination, intended to depict the effects of enthusiasm upon
+different modifications of character.  He listened to my
+conception, which was sufficiently trite and prosaic, with his
+usual patience; and then, thoughtfully turning to his
+bookshelves, took down an old volume, and read to me, first, in
+Greek, and secondly, in English, some extracts to the following
+effect:--
+
+"Plato here expresses four kinds of mania, by which I desire to
+understand enthusiasm and the inspiration of the gods:  Firstly,
+the musical; secondly, the telestic or mystic; thirdly, the
+prophetic; and fourthly, that which belongs to love."
+
+The author he quoted, after contending that there is something in
+the soul above intellect, and stating that there are in our
+nature distinct energies,--by the one of which we discover and
+seize, as it were, on sciences and theorems with almost intuitive
+rapidity, by another, through which high art is accomplished,
+like the statues of Phidias,--proceeded to state that
+"enthusiasm, in the true acceptation of the word, is, when that
+part of the soul which is above intellect is excited to the gods,
+and thence derives its inspiration."
+
+The author, then pursuing his comment upon Plato, observes, that
+"one of these manias may suffice (especially that which belongs
+to love) to lead back the soul to its first divinity and
+happiness; but that there is an intimate union with them all; and
+that the ordinary progress through which the soul ascends is,
+primarily, through the musical; next, through the telestic or
+mystic; thirdly, through the prophetic; and lastly, through the
+enthusiasm of love."
+
+While with a bewildered understanding and a reluctant attention I
+listened to these intricate sublimities, my adviser closed the
+volume, and said with complacency, "There is the motto for your
+book,--the thesis for your theme."
+
+"Davus sum, non Oedipus," said I, shaking my head,
+discontentedly.  "All this may be exceedingly fine, but, Heaven
+forgive me,--I don't understand a word of it.  The mysteries of
+your Rosicrucians, and your fraternities, are mere child's play
+to the jargon of the Platonists."
+
+"Yet, not till you rightly understand this passage, can you
+understand the higher theories of the Rosicrucians, or of the
+still nobler fraternities you speak of with so much levity."
+
+"Oh, if that be the case, I give up in despair.  Why not, since
+you are so well versed in the matter, take the motto for a book
+of your own?"
+
+"But if I have already composed a book with that thesis for its
+theme, will you prepare it for the public?"
+
+"With the greatest pleasure," said I,--alas, too rashly!
+
+"I shall hold you to your promise," returned the old gentleman,
+"and when I am no more, you will receive the manuscripts.  From
+what you say of the prevailing taste in literature, I cannot
+flatter you with the hope that you will gain much by the
+undertaking.  And I tell you beforehand that you will find it not
+a little laborious."
+
+"Is your work a romance?"
+
+"It is a romance, and it is not a romance.  It is a truth for
+those who can comprehend it, and an extravagance for those who
+cannot."
+
+At last there arrived the manuscripts, with a brief note from my
+deceased friend, reminding me of my imprudent promise.
+
+With mournful interest, and yet with eager impatience, I opened
+the packet and trimmed my lamp.  Conceive my dismay when I found
+the whole written in an unintelligible cipher.  I present the
+reader with a specimen:
+
+(Several strange characters.)
+
+and so on for nine hundred and forty mortal pages in foolscap.  I
+could scarcely believe my eyes:  in fact, I began to think the
+lamp burned singularly blue; and sundry misgivings as to the
+unhallowed nature of the characters I had so unwittingly opened
+upon, coupled with the strange hints and mystical language of the
+old gentleman, crept through my disordered imagination.
+Certainly, to say no worse of it, the whole thing looked UNCANNY!
+I was about, precipitately, to hurry the papers into my desk,
+with a pious determination to have nothing more to do with them,
+when my eye fell upon a book, neatly bound in blue morocco, and
+which, in my eagerness, I had hitherto overlooked.  I opened this
+volume with great precaution, not knowing what might jump out,
+and--guess my delight--found that it contained a key or
+dictionary to the hieroglyphics.  Not to weary the reader with an
+account of my labours, I am contented with saying that at last I
+imagined myself capable of construing the characters, and set to
+work in good earnest.  Still it was no easy task, and two years
+elapsed before I had made much progress.  I then, by way of
+experiment on the public, obtained the insertion of a few
+desultory chapters, in a periodical with which, for a few months,
+I had the honour to be connected.  They appeared to excite more
+curiosity than I had presumed to anticipate; and I renewed, with
+better heart, my laborious undertaking.  But now a new misfortune
+befell me:  I found, as I proceeded, that the author had made two
+copies of his work, one much more elaborate and detailed than the
+other; I had stumbled upon the earlier copy, and had my whole
+task to remodel, and the chapters I had written to retranslate.
+I may say then, that, exclusive of intervals devoted to more
+pressing occupations, my unlucky promise cost me the toil of
+several years before I could bring it to adequate fulfilment.
+The task was the more difficult, since the style in the original
+is written in a kind of rhythmical prose, as if the author
+desired that in some degree his work should be regarded as one of
+poetical conception and design.  To this it was not possible to
+do justice, and in the attempt I have doubtless very often need
+of the reader's indulgent consideration.  My natural respect for
+the old gentleman's vagaries, with a muse of equivocal character,
+must be my only excuse whenever the language, without luxuriating
+into verse, borrows flowers scarcely natural to prose.  Truth
+compels me also to confess, that, with all my pains, I am by no
+means sure that I have invariably given the true meaning of the
+cipher; nay, that here and there either a gap in the narrative,
+or the sudden assumption of a new cipher, to which no key was
+afforded, has obliged me to resort to interpolations of my own,
+no doubt easily discernible, but which, I flatter myself, are not
+inharmonious to the general design.  This confession leads me to
+the sentence with which I shall conclude:  If, reader, in this
+book there be anything that pleases you, it is certainly mine;
+but whenever you come to something you dislike,--lay the blame
+upon the old gentleman!
+
+London, January, 1842.
+
+N.B.--The notes appended to the text are sometimes by the author,
+sometimes by the editor.  I have occasionally (but not always)
+marked the distinction; where, however, this is omitted, the
+ingenuity of the reader will be rarely at fault.
+
+
+
+
+ZANONI.
+
+BOOK I.
+
+THE MUSICIAN.
+
+Due Fontane
+Chi di diverso effeto hanno liquore!
+
+"Ariosto, Orland. Fur." Canto 1.7.
+
+(Two Founts
+That hold a draught of different effects.)
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.I.
+
+Vergina era
+D' alta belta, ma sua belta non cura:
+...
+Di natura, d' amor, de' cieli amici
+Le negligenze sue sono artifici.
+
+"Gerusal. Lib.," canto ii. xiv.-xviii.
+
+(She was a virgin of a glorious beauty, but regarded not her
+beauty...Negligence itself is art in those favoured by Nature, by
+love, and by the heavens.)
+
+At Naples, in the latter half of the last century, a worthy
+artist named Gaetano Pisani lived and flourished.  He was a
+musician of great genius, but not of popular reputation; there
+was in all his compositions something capricious and fantastic
+which did not please the taste of the Dilettanti of Naples.  He
+was fond of unfamiliar subjects into which he introduced airs and
+symphonies that excited a kind of terror in those who listened.
+The names of his pieces will probably suggest their nature.  I
+find, for instance, among his MSS., these titles:  "The Feast of
+the Harpies," "The Witches at Benevento," "The Descent of Orpheus
+into Hades," "The Evil Eye," "The Eumenides," and many others
+that evince a powerful imagination delighting in the fearful and
+supernatural, but often relieved by an airy and delicate fancy
+with passages of exquisite grace and beauty.  It is true that in
+the selection of his subjects from ancient fable, Gaetano Pisani
+was much more faithful than his contemporaries to the remote
+origin and the early genius of Italian Opera.
+
+That descendant, however effeminate, of the ancient union between
+Song and Drama, when, after long obscurity and dethronement, it
+regained a punier sceptre, though a gaudier purple, by the banks
+of the Etrurian Arno, or amidst the lagunes of Venice, had chosen
+all its primary inspirations from the unfamiliar and classic
+sources of heathen legend; and Pisani's "Descent of Orpheus" was
+but a bolder, darker, and more scientific repetition of the
+"Euridice" which Jacopi Peri set to music at the august nuptials
+of Henry of Navarre and Mary of Medicis.*  Still, as I have said,
+the style of the Neapolitan musician was not on the whole
+pleasing to ears grown nice and euphuistic in the more dulcet
+melodies of the day; and faults and extravagances easily
+discernible, and often to appearance wilful, served the critics
+for an excuse for their distaste.  Fortunately, or the poor
+musician might have starved, he was not only a composer, but also
+an excellent practical performer, especially on the violin, and
+by that instrument he earned a decent subsistence as one of the
+orchestra at the Great Theatre of San Carlo.  Here formal and
+appointed tasks necessarily kept his eccentric fancies in
+tolerable check, though it is recorded that no less than five
+times he had been deposed from his desk for having shocked the
+conoscenti, and thrown the whole band into confusion, by
+impromptu variations of so frantic and startling a nature that
+one might well have imagined that the harpies or witches who
+inspired his compositions had clawed hold of his instrument.
+
+The impossibility, however, to find any one of equal excellence
+as a performer (that is to say, in his more lucid and orderly
+moments) had forced his reinstalment, and he had now, for the
+most part, reconciled himself to the narrow sphere of his
+appointed adagios or allegros.  The audience, too, aware of his
+propensity, were quick to perceive the least deviation from the
+text; and if he wandered for a moment, which might also be
+detected by the eye as well as the ear, in some strange
+contortion of visage, and some ominous flourish of his bow, a
+gentle and admonitory murmur recalled the musician from his
+Elysium or his Tartarus to the sober regions of his desk.  Then
+he would start as if from a dream, cast a hurried, frightened,
+apologetic glance around, and, with a crestfallen, humbled air,
+draw his rebellious instrument back to the beaten track of the
+glib monotony.  But at home he would make himself amends for this
+reluctant drudgery.  And there, grasping the unhappy violin with
+ferocious fingers, he would pour forth, often till the morning
+rose, strange, wild measures that would startle the early
+fisherman on the shore below with a superstitious awe, and make
+him cross himself as if mermaid or sprite had wailed no earthly
+music in his ear.
+
+(*Orpheus was the favourite hero of early Italian Opera, or
+Lyrical Drama.  The Orfeo of Angelo Politiano was produced in
+1475.  The Orfeo of Monteverde was performed at Venice in 1667.)
+
+This man's appearance was in keeping with the characteristics of
+his art.  The features were noble and striking, but worn and
+haggard, with black, careless locks tangled into a maze of curls,
+and a fixed, speculative, dreamy stare in his large and hollow
+eyes.  All his movements were peculiar, sudden, and abrupt, as
+the impulse seized him; and in gliding through the streets, or
+along the beach, he was heard laughing and talking to himself.
+Withal, he was a harmless, guileless, gentle creature, and would
+share his mite with any idle lazzaroni, whom he often paused to
+contemplate as they lay lazily basking in the sun.  Yet was he
+thoroughly unsocial.  He formed no friends, flattered no patrons,
+resorted to none of the merry-makings so dear to the children of
+music and the South.  He and his art seemed alone suited to each
+other,--both quaint, primitive, unworldly, irregular.  You could
+not separate the man from his music; it was himself.  Without it
+he was nothing, a mere machine!  WITH it, he was king over worlds
+of his own.  Poor man, he had little enough in this!  At a
+manufacturing town in England there is a gravestone on which the
+epitaph records "one Claudius Phillips, whose absolute contempt
+for riches, and inimitable performance on the violin, made him
+the admiration of all that knew him!"  Logical conjunction of
+opposite eulogies!  In proportion, O Genius, to thy contempt for
+riches will be thy performance on thy violin!
+
+Gaetano Pisani's talents as a composer had been chiefly exhibited
+in music appropriate to this his favourite instrument, of all
+unquestionably the most various and royal in its resources and
+power over the passions.  As Shakespeare among poets is the
+Cremona among instruments.  Nevertheless, he had composed other
+pieces of larger ambition and wider accomplishment, and chief of
+these, his precious, his unpurchased, his unpublished, his
+unpublishable and imperishable opera of the "Siren."  This great
+work had been the dream of his boyhood, the mistress of his
+manhood; in advancing age "it stood beside him like his youth."
+Vainly had he struggled to place it before the world.  Even
+bland, unjealous Paisiello, Maestro di Capella, shook his gentle
+head when the musician favoured him with a specimen of one of his
+most thrilling scenas.  And yet, Paisiello, though that music
+differs from all Durante taught thee to emulate, there may--but
+patience, Gaetano Pisani! bide thy time, and keep thy violin in
+tune!
+
+Strange as it may appear to the fairer reader, this grotesque
+personage had yet formed those ties which ordinary mortals are
+apt to consider their especial monopoly,--he was married, and had
+one child.  What is more strange yet, his wife was a daughter of
+quiet, sober, unfantastic England:  she was much younger than
+himself; she was fair and gentle, with a sweet English face; she
+had married him from choice, and (will you believe it?) she yet
+loved him.  How she came to marry him, or how this shy, unsocial,
+wayward creature ever ventured to propose, I can only explain by
+asking you to look round and explain first to ME how half the
+husbands and half the wives you meet ever found a mate!  Yet, on
+reflection, this union was not so extraordinary after all.  The
+girl was a natural child of parents too noble ever to own and
+claim her.  She was brought into Italy to learn the art by which
+she was to live, for she had taste and voice; she was a dependant
+and harshly treated, and poor Pisani was her master, and his
+voice the only one she had heard from her cradle that seemed
+without one tone that could scorn or chide.  And so--well, is the
+rest natural?  Natural or not, they married.  This young wife
+loved her husband; and young and gentle as she was, she might
+almost be said to be the protector of the two.  From how many
+disgraces with the despots of San Carlo and the Conservatorio had
+her unknown officious mediation saved him!  In how many ailments
+--for his frame was weak--had she nursed and tended him!  Often,
+in the dark nights, she would wait at the theatre with her
+lantern to light him and her steady arm to lean on; otherwise, in
+his abstract reveries, who knows but the musician would have
+walked after his "Siren" into the sea!  And then she would so
+patiently, perhaps (for in true love there is not always the
+finest taste) so DELIGHTEDLY, listen to those storms of eccentric
+and fitful melody, and steal him--whispering praises all the way
+--from the unwholesome night-watch to rest and sleep!
+
+I said his music was a part of the man, and this gentle creature
+seemed a part of the music; it was, in fact, when she sat beside
+him that whatever was tender or fairy-like in his motley fantasia
+crept into the harmony as by stealth.  Doubtless her presence
+acted on the music, and shaped and softened it; but, he, who
+never examined how or what his inspiration, knew it not.  All
+that he knew was, that he loved and blessed her.  He fancied he
+told her so twenty times a day; but he never did, for he was not
+of many words, even to his wife.  His language was his music,--as
+hers, her cares!  He was more communicative to his barbiton, as
+the learned Mersennus teaches us to call all the varieties of the
+great viol family.  Certainly barbiton sounds better than fiddle;
+and barbiton let it be.  He would talk to THAT by the hour
+together,--praise it, scold it, coax it, nay (for such is man,
+even the most guileless), he had been known to swear at it; but
+for that excess he was always penitentially remorseful.  And the
+barbiton had a tongue of his own, could take his own part, and
+when HE also scolded, had much the best of it.  He was a noble
+fellow, this Violin!--a Tyrolese, the handiwork of the
+illustrious Steiner.  There was something mysterious in his great
+age.  How many hands, now dust, had awakened his strings ere he
+became the Robin Goodfellow and Familiar of Gaetano Pisani!  His
+very case was venerable,--beautifully painted, it was said, by
+Caracci.  An English collector had offered more for the case than
+Pisani had ever made by the violin.  But Pisani, who cared not if
+he had inhabited a cabin himself, was proud of a palace for the
+barbiton.  His barbiton, it was his elder child!  He had another
+child, and now we must turn to her.
+
+How shall I describe thee, Viola?  Certainly the music had
+something to answer for in the advent of that young stranger.
+For both in her form and her character you might have traced a
+family likeness to that singular and spirit-like life of sound
+which night after night threw itself in airy and goblin sport
+over the starry seas...Beautiful she was, but of a very uncommon
+beauty,--a combination, a harmony of opposite attributes.  Her
+hair of a gold richer and purer than that which is seen even in
+the North; but the eyes, of all the dark, tender, subduing light
+of more than Italian--almost of Oriental--splendour.  The
+complexion exquisitely fair, but never the same,--vivid in one
+moment, pale the next.  And with the complexion, the expression
+also varied; nothing now so sad, and nothing now so joyous.
+
+I grieve to say that what we rightly entitle education was much
+neglected for their daughter by this singular pair.  To be sure,
+neither of them had much knowledge to bestow; and knowledge was
+not then the fashion, as it is now.  But accident or nature
+favoured young Viola.  She learned, as of course, her mother's
+language with her father's.  And she contrived soon to read and
+to write; and her mother, who, by the way, was a Roman Catholic,
+taught her betimes to pray.  But then, to counteract all these
+acquisitions, the strange habits of Pisani, and the incessant
+watch and care which he required from his wife, often left the
+child alone with an old nurse, who, to be sure, loved her dearly,
+but who was in no way calculated to instruct her.
+
+Dame Gionetta was every inch Italian and Neapolitan.  Her youth
+had been all love, and her age was all superstition.  She was
+garrulous, fond,--a gossip.  Now she would prattle to the girl of
+cavaliers and princes at her feet, and now she would freeze her
+blood with tales and legends, perhaps as old as Greek or Etrurian
+fable, of demon and vampire,--of the dances round the great
+walnut-tree at Benevento, and the haunting spell of the Evil Eye.
+All this helped silently to weave charmed webs over Viola's
+imagination that afterthought and later years might labour vainly
+to dispel. And all this especially fitted her to hang, with a
+fearful joy, upon her father's music.  Those visionary strains,
+ever struggling to translate into wild and broken sounds the
+language of unearthly beings, breathed around her from her birth.
+Thus you might have said that her whole mind was full of music;
+associations, memories, sensations of pleasure or pain,--all were
+mixed up inexplicably with those sounds that now delighted and
+now terrified; that greeted her when her eyes opened to the sun,
+and woke her trembling on her lonely couch in the darkness of the
+night.  The legends and tales of Gionetta only served to make the
+child better understand the signification of those mysterious
+tones; they furnished her with words to the music.  It was
+natural that the daughter of such a parent should soon evince
+some taste in his art.  But this developed itself chiefly in the
+ear and the voice.  She was yet a child when she sang divinely.
+A great Cardinal--great alike in the State and the Conservatorio
+--heard of her gifts, and sent for her.  From that moment her
+fate was decided:  she was to be the future glory of Naples, the
+prima donna of San Carlo.
+
+The Cardinal insisted upon the accomplishment of his own
+predictions, and provided her with the most renowned masters.  To
+inspire her with emulation, his Eminence took her one evening to
+his own box:  it would be something to see the performance,
+something more to hear the applause lavished upon the glittering
+signoras she was hereafter to excel!  Oh, how gloriously that
+life of the stage, that fairy world of music and song, dawned
+upon her!  It was the only world that seemed to correspond with
+her strange childish thoughts.  It appeared to her as if, cast
+hitherto on a foreign shore, she was brought at last to see the
+forms and hear the language of her native land.  Beautiful and
+true enthusiasm, rich with the promise of genius!  Boy or man,
+thou wilt never be a poet, if thou hast not felt the ideal, the
+romance, the Calypso's isle that opened to thee when for the
+first time the magic curtain was drawn aside, and let in the
+world of poetry on the world of prose!
+
+And now the initiation was begun.  She was to read, to study, to
+depict by a gesture, a look, the passions she was to delineate on
+the boards; lessons dangerous, in truth, to some, but not to the
+pure enthusiasm that comes from art; for the mind that rightly
+conceives art is but a mirror which gives back what is cast on
+its surface faithfully only--while unsullied.  She seized on
+nature and truth intuitively.  Her recitations became full of
+unconscious power; her voice moved the heart to tears, or warmed
+it into generous rage.  But this arose from that sympathy which
+genius ever has, even in its earliest innocence, with whatever
+feels, or aspires, or suffers.
+
+It was no premature woman comprehending the love or the jealousy
+that the words expressed; her art was one of those strange
+secrets which the psychologists may unriddle to us if they
+please, and tell us why children of the simplest minds and the
+purest hearts are often so acute to distinguish, in the tales you
+tell them, or the songs you sing, the difference between the true
+art and the false, passion and jargon, Homer and Racine,--echoing
+back, from hearts that have not yet felt what they repeat, the
+melodious accents of the natural pathos.  Apart from her studies,
+Viola was a simple, affectionate, but somewhat wayward child,--
+wayward, not in temper, for that was sweet and docile; but in her
+moods, which, as I before hinted, changed from sad to gay and gay
+to sad without an apparent cause.  If cause there were, it must
+be traced to the early and mysterious influences I have referred
+to, when seeking to explain the effect produced on her
+imagination by those restless streams of sound that constantly
+played around it; for it is noticeable that to those who are much
+alive to the effects of music, airs and tunes often come back, in
+the commonest pursuits of life, to vex, as it were, and haunt
+them.  The music, once admitted to the soul, becomes also a sort
+of spirit, and never dies.  It wanders perturbedly through the
+halls and galleries of the memory, and is often heard again,
+distinct and living as when it first displaced the wavelets of
+the air.  Now at times, then, these phantoms of sound floated
+back upon her fancy; if gay, to call a smile from every dimple;
+if mournful, to throw a shade upon her brow,--to make her cease
+from her childishmirth, and sit apart and muse.
+
+Rightly, then, in a typical sense, might this fair creature, so
+airy in her shape, so harmonious in her beauty, so unfamiliar in
+her ways and thoughts,--rightly might she be called a daughter,
+less of the musician than the music, a being for whom you could
+imagine that some fate was reserved, less of actual life than the
+romance which, to eyes that can see, and hearts that can feel,
+glides ever along WITH the actual life, stream by stream, to the
+Dark Ocean.
+
+And therefore it seemed not strange that Viola herself, even in
+childhood, and yet more as she bloomed into the sweet seriousness
+of virgin youth, should fancy her life ordained for a lot,
+whether of bliss or woe, that should accord with the romance and
+reverie which made the atmosphere she breathed.  Frequently she
+would climb through the thickets that clothed the neighbouring
+grotto of Posilipo,--the mighty work of the old Cimmerians,--and,
+seated by the haunted Tomb of Virgil, indulge those visions, the
+subtle vagueness of which no poetry can render palpable and
+defined; for the Poet that surpasses all who ever sang, is the
+heart of dreaming youth!  Frequently there, too, beside the
+threshold over which the vine-leaves clung, and facing that
+dark-blue, waveless sea, she would sit in the autumn noon or
+summer twilight, and build her castles in the air.  Who doth not
+do the same,--not in youth alone, but with the dimmed hopes of
+age!  It is man's prerogative to dream, the common royalty of
+peasant and of king.  But those day-dreams of hers were more
+habitual, distinct, and solemn than the greater part of us
+indulge.  They seemed like the Orama of the Greeks,--prophets
+while phantasma.
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.II.
+
+Fu stupor, fu vaghezza, fu diletto!
+"Gerusal. Lib.," cant. ii. xxi.
+
+("Desire it was, 't was wonder, 't was delight."
+Wiffen's Translation.)
+
+Now at last the education is accomplished!  Viola is nearly
+sixteen.  The Cardinal declares that the time is come when the
+new name must be inscribed in the Libro d'Oro,--the Golden Book
+set apart to the children of Art and Song.  Yes, but in what
+character?--to whose genius is she to give embodiment and form?
+Ah, there is the secret!  Rumours go abroad that the
+inexhaustible Paisiello, charmed with her performance of his "Nel
+cor piu non me sento," and his "Io son Lindoro," will produce
+some new masterpiece to introduce the debutante.  Others insist
+upon it that her forte is the comic, and that Cimarosa is hard at
+work at another "Matrimonia Segreto."  But in the meanwhile there
+is a check in the diplomacy somewhere.  The Cardinal is observed
+to be out of humour.  He has said publicly,--and the words are
+portentous,--"The silly girl is as mad as her father; what she
+asks is preposterous!"  Conference follows conference; the
+Cardinal talks to the poor child very solemnly in his closet,--
+all in vain.  Naples is distracted with curiosity and conjecture.
+The lecture ends in a quarrel, and Viola comes home sullen and
+pouting:  she will not act,--she has renounced the engagement.
+
+Pisani, too inexperienced to be aware of all the dangers of the
+stage, had been pleased at the notion that one, at least, of his
+name would add celebrity to his art.  The girl's perverseness
+displeased him.  However, he said nothing,--he never scolded in
+words, but he took up the faithful barbiton.  Oh, faithful
+barbiton, how horribly thou didst scold!  It screeched, it
+gabbled, it moaned, it growled.  And Viola's eyes filled with
+tears, for she understood that language.  She stole to her
+mother, and whispered in her ear; and when Pisani turned from his
+employment, lo! both mother and daughter were weeping.  He looked
+at them with a wondering stare; and then, as if he felt he had
+been harsh, he flew again to his Familiar.  And now you thought
+you heard the lullaby which a fairy might sing to some fretful
+changeling it had adopted and sought to soothe.  Liquid, low,
+silvery, streamed the tones beneath the enchanted bow.  The most
+stubborn grief would have paused to hear; and withal, at times,
+out came a wild, merry, ringing note, like a laugh, but not
+mortal laughter.  It was one of his most successful airs from his
+beloved opera,--the Siren in the act of charming the waves and
+the winds to sleep.  Heaven knows what next would have come, but
+his arm was arrested.  Viola had thrown herself on his breast,
+and kissed him, with happy eyes that smiled through her sunny
+hair.  At that very moment the door opened,--a message from the
+Cardinal.  Viola must go to his Eminence at once.  Her mother
+went with her.  All was reconciled and settled; Viola had her
+way, and selected her own opera.  O ye dull nations of the North,
+with your broils and debates,--your bustling lives of the Pnyx
+and the Agora!--you cannot guess what a stir throughout musical
+Naples was occasioned by the rumour of a new opera and a new
+singer.  But whose the opera?  No cabinet intrigue ever was so
+secret.  Pisani came back one night from the theatre, evidently
+disturbed and irate.  Woe to thine ears hadst thou heard the
+barbiton that night!  They had suspended him from his office,--
+they feared that the new opera, and the first debut of his
+daughter as prima donna, would be too much for his nerves.  And
+his variations, his diablerie of sirens and harpies, on such a
+night, made a hazard not to be contemplated without awe.  To be
+set aside, and on the very night that his child, whose melody was
+but an emanation of his own, was to perform,--set aside for some
+new rival:  it was too much for a musician's flesh and blood.
+For the first time he spoke in words upon the subject, and
+gravely asked--for that question the barbiton, eloquent as it
+was, could not express distinctly--what was to be the opera, and
+what the part?  And Viola as gravely answered that she was
+pledged to the Cardinal not to reveal.  Pisani said nothing, but
+disappeared with the violin; and presently they heard the
+Familiar from the house-top (whither, when thoroughly out of
+humour, the musician sometimes fled), whining and sighing as if
+its heart were broken.
+
+The affections of Pisani were little visible on the surface.  He
+was not one of those fond, caressing fathers whose children are
+ever playing round their knees; his mind and soul were so
+thoroughly in his art that domestic life glided by him, seemingly
+as if THAT were a dream, and the heart the substantial form and
+body of existence.  Persons much cultivating an abstract study
+are often thus; mathematicians proverbially so.  When his servant
+ran to the celebrated French philosopher, shrieking, "The house
+is on fire, sir!"  "Go and tell my wife then, fool!" said the
+wise man, settling back to his problems; "do _I_ ever meddle with
+domestic affairs?"  But what are mathematics to music--music,
+that not only composes operas, but plays on the barbiton?  Do you
+know what the illustrious Giardini said when the tyro asked how
+long it would take to learn to play on the violin?  Hear, and
+despair, ye who would bend the bow to which that of Ulysses was a
+plaything, "Twelve hours a day for twenty years together!"  Can a
+man, then, who plays the barbiton be always playing also with his
+little ones?  No, Pisani; often, with the keen susceptibility of
+childhood, poor Viola had stolen from the room to weep at the
+thought that thou didst not love her.  And yet, underneath this
+outward abstraction of the artist, the natural fondness flowed
+all the same; and as she grew up, the dreamer had understood the
+dreamer.  And now, shut out from all fame himself; to be
+forbidden to hail even his daughter's fame!--and that daughter
+herself to be in the conspiracy against him!  Sharper than the
+serpent's tooth was the ingratitude, and sharper than the
+serpent's tooth was the wail of the pitying barbiton!
+
+The eventful hour is come.  Viola is gone to the theatre,--her
+mother with her.  The indignant musician remains at home.
+Gionetta bursts into the room:  my Lord Cardinal's carriage is at
+the door,--the Padrone is sent for.  He must lay aside his
+violin; he must put on his brocade coat and his lace ruffles.
+Here they are,--quick, quick!  And quick rolls the gilded coach,
+and majestic sits the driver, and statelily prance the steeds.
+Poor Pisani is lost in a mist of uncomfortable amaze.  He arrives
+at the theatre; he descends at the great door; he turns round and
+round, and looks about him and about:  he misses something,--
+where is the violin?  Alas! his soul, his voice, his self of
+self, is left behind!  It is but an automaton that the lackeys
+conduct up the stairs, through the tier, into the Cardinal's box.
+ But then, what bursts upon him!  Does he dream?  The first act
+is over (they did not send for him till success seemed no longer
+doubtful); the first act has decided all.  He feels THAT by the
+electric sympathy which ever the one heart has at once with a
+vast audience.  He feels it by the breathless stillness of that
+multitude; he feels it even by the lifted finger of the Cardinal.
+ He sees his Viola on the stage, radiant in her robes and gems,--
+he hears her voice thrilling through the single heart of the
+thousands!  But the scene, the part, the music!  It is his other
+child,--his immortal child; the spirit-infant of his soul; his
+darling of many years of patient obscurity and pining genius; his
+masterpiece; his opera of the Siren!
+
+This, then, was the mystery that had so galled him,--this the
+cause of the quarrel with the Cardinal; this the secret not to be
+proclaimed till the success was won, and the daughter had united
+her father's triumph with her own!
+And there she stands, as all souls bow before her,--fairer than
+the very Siren he had called from the deeps of melody.  Oh, long
+and sweet recompense of toil!  Where is on earth the rapture like
+that which is known to genius when at last it bursts from its
+hidden cavern into light and fame!
+
+He did not speak, he did not move; he stood transfixed,
+breathless, the tears rolling down his cheeks; only from time to
+time his hands still wandered about,--mechanically they sought
+for the faithful instrument, why was it not there to share his
+triumph?
+
+At last the curtain fell; but on such a storm and diapason of
+applause!  Up rose the audience as one man, as with one voice
+that dear name was shouted.  She came on, trembling, pale, and in
+the whole crowd saw but her father's face.  The audience followed
+those moistened eyes; they recognised with a thrill the
+daughter's impulse and her meaning.  The good old Cardinal drew
+him gently forward.  Wild musician, thy daughter has given thee
+back more than the life thou gavest!
+
+"My poor violin!" said he, wiping his eyes, "they will never hiss
+thee again now!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.III.
+
+Fra si contrarie tempre in ghiaccio e in foco,
+In riso e in pianto, e fra paura e speme
+L'ingannatrice Donna--
+"Gerusal. Lib.," cant. iv. xciv.
+
+(Between such contrarious mixtures of ice and fire, laughter and
+tears,--fear and hope, the deceiving dame.)
+
+Now notwithstanding the triumph both of the singer and the opera,
+there had been one moment in the first act, and, consequently,
+BEFORE the arrival of Pisani, when the scale seemed more than
+doubtful.  It was in a chorus replete with all the peculiarities
+of the composer.  And when the Maelstrom of Capricci whirled and
+foamed, and tore ear and sense through every variety of sound,
+the audience simultaneously recognised the hand of Pisani.  A
+title had been given to the opera which had hitherto prevented
+all suspicion of its parentage; and the overture and opening, in
+which the music had been regular and sweet, had led the audience
+to fancy they detected the genius of their favourite Paisiello.
+Long accustomed to ridicule and almost to despise the pretensions
+of Pisani as a composer, they now felt as if they had been unduly
+cheated into the applause with which they had hailed the overture
+and the commencing scenas.  An ominous buzz circulated round the
+house:  the singers, the orchestra,--electrically sensitive to
+the impression of the audience,--grew, themselves, agitated and
+dismayed, and failed in the energy and precision which could
+alone carry off the grotesqueness of the music.
+
+There are always in every theatre many rivals to a new author and
+a new performer,--a party impotent while all goes well, but a
+dangerous ambush the instant some accident throws into confusion
+the march of success.  A hiss arose; it was partial, it is true,
+but the significant silence of all applause seemed to forebode
+the coming moment when the displeasure would grow contagious.  It
+was the breath that stirred the impending avalanche.  At that
+critical moment Viola, the Siren queen, emerged for the first
+time from her ocean cave.  As she came forward to the lamps, the
+novelty of her situation, the chilling apathy of the audience,--
+which even the sight of so singular a beauty did not at the first
+arouse,--the whispers of the malignant singers on the stage, the
+glare of the lights, and more--far more than the rest--that
+recent hiss, which had reached her in her concealment, all froze
+up her faculties and suspended her voice.  And, instead of the
+grand invocation into which she ought rapidly to have burst, the
+regal Siren, retransformed into the trembling girl, stood pale
+and mute before the stern, cold array of those countless eyes.
+
+At that instant, and when consciousness itself seemed about to
+fail her, as she turned a timid beseeching glance around the
+still multitude, she perceived, in a box near the stage, a
+countenance which at once, and like magic, produced on her mind
+an effect never to be analysed nor forgotten.  It was one that
+awakened an indistinct, haunting reminiscence, as if she had seen
+it in those day-dreams she had been so wont from infancy to
+indulge.  She could not withdraw her gaze from that face, and as
+she gazed, the awe and coldness that had before seized her,
+vanished like a mist from before the sun.
+
+In the dark splendour of the eyes that met her own there was
+indeed so much of gentle encouragement, of benign and
+compassionate admiration,--so much that warmed, and animated, and
+nerved,--that any one, actor or orator, who has ever observed the
+effect that a single earnest and kindly look in the crowd that is
+to be addressed and won, will produce upon his mind, may readily
+account for the sudden and inspiriting influence which the eye
+and smile of the stranger exercised on the debutante.
+
+And while yet she gazed, and the glow returned to her heart, the
+stranger half rose, as if to recall the audience to a sense of
+the courtesy due to one so fair and young; and the instant his
+voice gave the signal, the audience followed it by a burst of
+generous applause.  For this stranger himself was a marked
+personage, and his recent arrival at Naples had divided with the
+new opera the gossip of the city.  And then as the applause
+ceased, clear, full, and freed from every fetter, like a spirit
+from the clay, the Siren's voice poured forth its entrancing
+music.  From that time Viola forgot the crowd, the hazard, the
+whole world,--except the fairy one over with she presided.  It
+seemed that the stranger's presence only served still more to
+heighten that delusion, in which the artist sees no creation
+without the circle of his art, she felt as if that serene brow,
+and those brilliant eyes, inspired her with powers never known
+before:  and, as if searching for a language to express the
+strange sensations occasioned by his presence, that presence
+itself whispered to her the melody and the song.
+
+Only when all was over, and she saw her father and felt his joy,
+did this wild spell vanish before the sweeter one of the
+household and filial love.  Yet again, as she turned from the
+stage, she looked back involuntarily, and the stranger's calm and
+half-melancholy smile sank into her heart,--to live there, to be
+recalled with confused memories, half of pleasure, and half of
+pain.
+
+Pass over the congratulations of the good Cardinal-Virtuoso,
+astonished at finding himself and all Naples had been hitherto in
+the wrong on a subject of taste,--still more astonished at
+finding himself and all Naples combining to confess it; pass over
+the whispered ecstasies of admiration which buzzed in the
+singer's ear, as once more, in her modest veil and quiet dress,
+she escaped from the crowd of gallants that choked up every
+avenue behind the scenes; pass over the sweet embrace of father
+and child, returning through the starlit streets and along the
+deserted Chiaja in the Cardinal's carriage; never pause now to
+note the tears and ejaculations of the good, simple-hearted
+mother,--see them returned; see the well-known room, venimus ad
+larem nostrum (We come to our own house.); see old Gionetta
+bustling at the supper; and hear Pisani, as he rouses the
+barbiton from its case, communicating all that has happened to
+the intelligent Familiar; hark to the mother's merry, low,
+English laugh.  Why, Viola, strange child, sittest thou apart,
+thy face leaning on thy fair hands, thine eyes fixed on space?
+Up, rouse thee!  Every dimple on the cheek of home must smile
+to-night.  ("Ridete quidquid est domi cachinnorum."  Catull. "ad
+Sirm. Penin.")
+
+And a happy reunion it was round that humble table:  a feast
+Lucullus might have envied in his Hall of Apollo, in the dried
+grapes, and the dainty sardines, and the luxurious polenta, and
+the old lacrima a present from the good Cardinal.  The barbiton,
+placed on a chair--a tall, high-backed chair--beside the
+musician, seemed to take a part in the festive meal.  Its honest
+varnished face glowed in the light of the lamp; and there was an
+impish, sly demureness in its very silence, as its master,
+between every mouthful, turned to talk to it of something he had
+forgotten to relate before.  The good wife looked on
+affectionately, and could not eat for joy; but suddenly she rose,
+and placed on the artist's temples a laurel wreath, which she had
+woven beforehand in fond anticipation; and Viola, on the other
+side her brother, the barbiton, rearranged the chaplet, and,
+smoothing back her father's hair, whispered, "Caro Padre, you
+will not let HIM scold me again!"
+
+Then poor Pisani, rather distracted between the two, and excited
+both by the lacrima and his triumph, turned to the younger child
+with so naive and grotesque a pride, "I don't know which to thank
+the most.  You give me so much joy, child,--I am so proud of thee
+and myself.  But he and I, poor fellow, have been so often
+unhappy together!"
+
+Viola's sleep was broken,--that was natural.  The intoxication of
+vanity and triumph, the happiness in the happiness she had
+caused, all this was better than sleep.  But still from all this,
+again and again her thoughts flew to those haunting eyes, to that
+smile with which forever the memory of the triumph, of the
+happiness, was to be united.  Her feelings, like her own
+character, were strange and peculiar.  They were not those of a
+girl whose heart, for the first time reached through the eye,
+sighs its natural and native language of first love.  It was not
+so much admiration, though the face that reflected itself on
+every wave of her restless fancies was of the rarest order of
+majesty and beauty; nor a pleased and enamoured recollection that
+the sight of this stranger had bequeathed:  it was a human
+sentiment of gratitude and delight, mixed with something more
+mysterious, of fear and awe.  Certainly she had seen before those
+features; but when and how?  Only when her thoughts had sought to
+shape out her future, and when, in spite of all the attempts to
+vision forth a fate of flowers and sunshine, a dark and chill
+foreboding made her recoil back into her deepest self.  It was a
+something found that had long been sought for by a thousand
+restless yearnings and vague desires, less of the heart than
+mind; not as when youth discovers the one to be beloved, but
+rather as when the student, long wandering after the clew to some
+truth in science, sees it glimmer dimly before him, to beckon, to
+recede, to allure, and to wane again.  She fell at last into
+unquiet slumber, vexed by deformed, fleeting, shapeless phantoms;
+and, waking, as the sun, through a veil of hazy cloud, glinted
+with a sickly ray across the casement, she heard her father
+settled back betimes to his one pursuit, and calling forth from
+his Familiar a low mournful strain, like a dirge over the dead.
+
+"And why," she asked, when she descended to the room below,--
+"why, my father, was your inspiration so sad, after the joy of
+last night?"
+
+"I know not, child.  I meant to be merry, and compose an air in
+honour of thee; but he is an obstinate fellow, this,--and he
+would have it so."
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.IV.
+
+E cosi i pigri e timidi desiri
+Sprona.
+"Gerusal. Lib.," cant. iv. lxxxviii.
+
+(And thus the slow and timid passions urged.)
+
+It was the custom of Pisani, except when the duties of his
+profession made special demand on his time, to devote a certain
+portion of the mid-day to sleep,--a habit not so much a luxury as
+a necessity to a man who slept very little during the night.  In
+fact, whether to compose or to practice, the hours of noon were
+precisely those in which Pisani could not have been active if he
+would.  His genius resembled those fountains full at dawn and
+evening, overflowing at night, and perfectly dry at the meridian.
+ During this time, consecrated by her husband to repose, the
+signora generally stole out to make the purchases necessary for
+the little household, or to enjoy (as what woman does not?) a
+little relaxation in gossip with some of her own sex.  And the
+day following this brilliant triumph, how many congratulations
+would she have to receive!
+
+At these times it was Viola's habit to seat herself without the
+door of the house, under an awning which sheltered from the sun
+without obstructing the view; and there now, with the prompt-book
+on her knee, on which her eye roves listlessly from time to time,
+you may behold her, the vine-leaves clustering from their arching
+trellis over the door behind, and the lazy white-sailed boats
+skimming along the sea that stretched before.
+
+As she thus sat, rather in reverie than thought, a man coming
+from the direction of Posilipo, with a slow step and downcast
+eyes, passed close by the house, and Viola, looking up abruptly,
+started in a kind of terror as she recognised the stranger.  She
+uttered an involuntary exclamation, and the cavalier turning,
+saw, and paused.
+
+He stood a moment or two between her and the sunlit ocean,
+contemplating in a silence too serious and gentle for the
+boldness of gallantry, the blushing face and the young slight
+form before him; at length he spoke.
+
+"Are you happy, my child," he said, in almost a paternal tone,
+"at the career that lies before you?  From sixteen to thirty, the
+music in the breath of applause is sweeter than all the music
+your voice can utter!"
+
+"I know not," replied Viola, falteringly, but encouraged by the
+liquid softness of the accents that addressed her,--"I know not
+whether I am happy now, but I was last night.  And I feel, too,
+Excellency, that I have you to thank, though, perhaps, you scarce
+know why!"
+
+"You deceive yourself," said the cavalier, with a smile.  "I am
+aware that I assisted to your merited success, and it is you who
+scarce know how.  The WHY I will tell you:  because I saw in your
+heart a nobler ambition than that of the woman's vanity; it was
+the daughter that interested me.  Perhaps you would rather I
+should have admired the singer?"
+
+"No; oh, no!"
+
+"Well, I believe you.  And now, since we have thus met, I will
+pause to counsel you.  When next you go to the theatre, you will
+have at your feet all the young gallants of Naples.  Poor infant!
+the flame that dazzles the eye can scorch the wing.  Remember
+that the only homage that does not sully must be that which these
+gallants will not give thee.  And whatever thy dreams of the
+future,--and I see, while I speak to thee, how wandering they
+are, and wild,--may only those be fulfilled which centre round
+the hearth of home."
+
+He paused, as Viola's breast heaved beneath its robe.  And with a
+burst of natural and innocent emotions, scarcely comprehending,
+though an Italian, the grave nature of his advice, she
+exclaimed,--
+
+"Ah, Excellency, you cannot know how dear to me that home is
+already.  And my father,--there would be no home, signor, without
+him!"
+
+A deep and melancholy shade settled over the face of the
+cavalier.  He looked up at the quiet house buried amidst the
+vine-leaves, and turned again to the vivid, animated face of the
+young actress.
+
+"It is well," said he.  "A simple heart may be its own best
+guide, and so, go on, and prosper.  Adieu, fair singer."
+
+"Adieu, Excellency; but," and something she could not resist--an
+anxious, sickening feeling of fear and hope,--impelled her to the
+question, "I shall see you again, shall I not, at San Carlo?"
+
+"Not, at least, for some time.  I leave Naples to-day."
+
+"Indeed!" and Viola's heart sank within her; the poetry of the
+stage was gone.
+
+"And," said the cavalier, turning back, and gently laying his
+hand on hers,--"and, perhaps, before we meet, you may have
+suffered:  known the first sharp griefs of human life,--known how
+little what fame can gain, repays what the heart can lose; but be
+brave and yield not,--not even to what may seem the piety of
+sorrow.  Observe yon tree in your neighbour's garden.  Look how
+it grows up, crooked and distorted.  Some wind scattered the germ
+from which it sprang, in the clefts of the rock; choked up and
+walled round by crags and buildings, by Nature and man, its life
+has been one struggle for the light,--light which makes to that
+life the necessity and the principle:  you see how it has writhed
+and twisted; how, meeting the barrier in one spot, it has
+laboured and worked, stem and branches, towards the clear skies
+at last.  What has preserved it through each disfavour of birth
+and circumstances,--why are its leaves as green and fair as those
+of the vine behind you, which, with all its arms, can embrace the
+open sunshine?  My child, because of the very instinct that
+impelled the struggle,--because the labour for the light won to
+the light at length.  So with a gallant heart, through every
+adverse accident of sorrow and of fate to turn to the sun, to
+strive for the heaven; this it is that gives knowledge to the
+strong and happiness to the weak.  Ere we meet again, you will
+turn sad and heavy eyes to those quiet boughs, and when you hear
+the birds sing from them, and see the sunshine come aslant from
+crag and housetop to be the playfellow of their leaves, learn the
+lesson that Nature teaches you, and strive through darkness to
+the light!"
+
+As he spoke he moved on slowly, and left Viola wondering, silent,
+saddened with his dim prophecy of coming evil, and yet, through
+sadness, charmed.  Involuntarily her eyes followed him,--
+involuntarily she stretched forth her arms, as if by a gesture to
+call him back; she would have given worlds to have seen him
+turn,--to have heard once more his low, calm, silvery voice; to
+have felt again the light touch of his hand on hers.  As
+moonlight that softens into beauty every angle on which it falls,
+seemed his presence,--as moonlight vanishes, and things assume
+their common aspect of the rugged and the mean, he receded from
+her eyes, and the outward scene was commonplace once more.
+
+The stranger passed on, through that long and lovely road which
+reaches at last the palaces that face the public gardens, and
+conducts to the more populous quarters of the city.
+
+A group of young, dissipated courtiers, loitering by the gateway
+of a house which was open for the favourite pastime of the day,--
+the resort of the wealthier and more high-born gamesters,--made
+way for him, as with a courteous inclination he passed them by.
+
+"Per fede," said one, "is not that the rich Zanoni, of whom the
+town talks?"
+
+"Ay; they say his wealth is incalculable!"
+
+"THEY say,--who are THEY?--what is the authority?  He has not
+been many days at Naples, and I cannot yet find any one who knows
+aught of his birthplace, his parentage, or, what is more
+important, his estates!"
+
+"That is true; but he arrived in a goodly vessel, which THEY SAY
+is his own.  See,--no, you cannot see it here; but it rides
+yonder in the bay.  The bankers he deals with speak with awe of
+the sums placed in their hands."
+
+"Whence came he?"
+
+"From some seaport in the East.  My valet learned from some of
+the sailors on the Mole that he had resided many years in the
+interior of India."
+
+"Ah, I am told that in India men pick up gold like pebbles, and
+that there are valleys where the birds build their nests with
+emeralds to attract the moths.  Here comes our prince of
+gamesters, Cetoxa; be sure that he already must have made
+acquaintance with so wealthy a cavalier; he has that attraction
+to gold which the magnet has to steel.  Well, Cetoxa, what fresh
+news of the ducats of Signor Zanoni?"
+
+"Oh," said Cetoxa, carelessly, "my friend--"
+
+"Ha! ha! hear him; his friend--"
+
+"Yes; my friend Zanoni is going to Rome for a short time; when he
+returns, he has promised me to fix a day to sup with me, and I
+will then introduce him to you, and to the best society of
+Naples!  Diavolo! but he is a most agreeable and witty
+gentleman!"
+
+"Pray tell us how you came so suddenly to be his friend."
+
+"My dear Belgioso, nothing more natural.  He desired a box at San
+Carlo; but I need not tell you that the expectation of a new
+opera (ah, how superb it is,--that poor devil, Pisani; who would
+have thought it?) and a new singer (what a face,--what a voice!--
+ah!) had engaged every corner of the house.  I heard of Zanoni's
+desire to honour the talent of Naples, and, with my usual
+courtesy to distinguished strangers, I sent to place my box at
+his disposal.  He accepts it,--I wait on him between the acts; he
+is most charming; he invites me to supper.  Cospetto, what a
+retinue!  We sit late,--I tell him all the news of Naples; we
+grow bosom friends; he presses on me this diamond before we
+part,--is a trifle, he tells me:  the jewellers value it at 5000
+pistoles!--the merriest evening I have passed these ten years."
+
+The cavaliers crowded round to admire the diamond.
+
+"Signor Count Cetoxa," said one grave-looking sombre man, who had
+crossed himself two or three times during the Neapolitan's
+narrative, "are you not aware of the strange reports about this
+person; and are you not afraid to receive from him a gift which
+may carry with it the most fatal consequences?  Do you not know
+that he is said to be a sorcerer; to possess the mal-occhio;
+to--"
+
+"Prithee, spare us your antiquated superstitions," interrupted
+Cetoxa, contemptuously.  "They are out of fashion; nothing now
+goes down but scepticism and philosophy.  And what, after all, do
+these rumours, when sifted, amount to?  They have no origin but
+this,--a silly old man of eighty-six, quite in his dotage,
+solemnly avers that he saw this same Zanoni seventy years ago (he
+himself, the narrator, then a mere boy) at Milan; when this very
+Zanoni, as you all see, is at least as young as you or I,
+Belgioso."
+
+"But that," said the grave gentleman,--"THAT is the mystery.  Old
+Avelli declares that Zanoni does not seem a day older than when
+they met at Milan.  He says that even then at Milan--mark this--
+where, though under another name, this Zanoni appeared in the
+same splendour, he was attended also by the same mystery.  And
+that an old man THERE remembered to have seen him sixty years
+before, in Sweden."
+
+"Tush," returned Cetoxa, "the same thing has been said of the
+quack Cagliostro,--mere fables.  I will believe them when I see
+this diamond turn to a wisp of hay.  For the rest," he added
+gravely, "I consider this illustrious gentleman my friend; and a
+whisper against his honour and repute will in future be
+equivalent to an affront to myself."
+
+Cetoxa was a redoubted swordsman, and excelled in a peculiarly
+awkward manoeuvre, which he himself had added to the variations
+of the stoccata.  The grave gentleman, however anxious for the
+spiritual weal of the count, had an equal regard for his own
+corporeal safety.  He contented  himself with a look of
+compassion, and, turning through the gateway, ascended the stairs
+to the gaming-tables.
+
+"Ha, ha!" said Cetoxa, laughing, "our good Loredano is envious of
+my diamond.  Gentlemen, you sup with me to-night.  I assure you I
+never met a more delightful, sociable, entertaining person, than
+my dear friend the Signor Zanoni."
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.V.
+
+Quello Ippogifo, grande e strano augello
+Lo porta via.
+"Orlando Furioso," c. vi. xviii.
+
+(That hippogriff, great and marvellous bird, bears him away.)
+
+And now, accompanying this mysterious Zanoni, am I compelled to
+bid a short farewell to Naples.  Mount behind me,--mount on my
+hippogriff, reader; settle yourself at your ease.  I bought the
+pillion the other day of a poet who loves his comfort; it has
+been newly stuffed for your special accommodation.  So, so, we
+ascend!  Look as we ride aloft,--look!--never fear, hippogriffs
+never stumble; and every hippogriff in Italy is warranted to
+carry elderly gentlemen,--look down on the gliding landscapes!
+There, near the ruins of the Oscan's old Atella, rises Aversa,
+once the stronghold of the Norman; there gleam the columns of
+Capua, above the Vulturnian Stream.  Hail to ye, cornfields and
+vineyards famous for the old Falernian!  Hail to ye, golden
+orange-groves of Mola di Gaeta!  Hail to ye, sweet shrubs and
+wild flowers, omnis copia narium, that clothe the mountain-skirts
+of the silent Lautulae!  Shall we rest at the Volscian Anxur,--
+the modern Terracina,--where the lofty rock stands like the giant
+that guards the last borders of the southern land of love?  Away,
+away! and hold your breath as we flit above the Pontine Marshes.
+ Dreary and desolate, their miasma is to the gardens we have
+passed what the rank commonplace of life is to the heart when it
+has left love behind.
+
+Mournful Campagna, thou openest on us in majestic sadness.  Rome,
+seven-hilled Rome! receive us as Memory receives the way-worn;
+receive us in silence, amidst ruins!  Where is the traveller we
+pursue?  Turn the hippogriff loose to graze:  he loves the
+acanthus that wreathes round yon broken columns.  Yes, that is
+the arch of Titus, the conqueror of Jerusalem,--that the
+Colosseum!  Through one passed the triumph of the deified
+invader; in one fell the butchered gladiators.  Monuments of
+murder, how poor the thoughts, how mean the memories ye awaken,
+compared with those that speak to the heart of man on the heights
+of Phyle, or by thy lone mound, grey Marathon!  We stand amidst
+weeds and brambles and long waving herbage.  Where we stand
+reigned Nero,--here were his tessellated floors; here,
+
+"Mighty in the heaven, a second heaven,"
+
+hung the vault of his ivory roofs; here, arch upon arch, pillar
+on pillar, glittered to the world the golden palace of its
+master,--the Golden House of Nero.  How the lizard watches us
+with his bright, timorous eye!  We disturb his reign.  Gather
+that wild flower:  the Golden House is vanished, but the wild
+flower may have kin to those which the stranger's hand scattered
+over the tyrant's grave; see, over this soil, the grave of Rome,
+Nature strews the wild flowers still!
+
+In the midst of this desolation is an old building of the middle
+ages.  Here dwells a singular recluse.  In the season of the
+malaria the native peasant flies the rank vegetation round; but
+he, a stranger and a foreigner, no associates, no companions,
+except books and instruments of science.  He is often seen
+wandering over the grass-grown hills, or sauntering through the
+streets of the new city, not with the absent brow and incurious
+air of students, but with observant piercing eyes that seem to
+dive into the hearts of the passers-by.  An old man, but not
+infirm,--erect and stately, as if in his prime.  None know
+whether he be rich or poor.  He asks no charity, and he gives
+none,--he does no evil, and seems to confer no good.  He is a man
+who appears to have no world beyond himself; but appearances are
+deceitful, and Science, as well as Benevolence, lives in the
+Universe.  This abode, for the first time since thus occupied, a
+visitor enters.  It is Zanoni.
+
+You observe those two men seated together, conversing earnestly.
+Years long and many have flown away since they met last,--at
+least, bodily, and face to face.  But if they are sages, thought
+can meet thought, and spirit spirit, though oceans divide the
+forms.  Death itself divides not the wise.  Thou meetest Plato
+when thine eyes moisten over the Phaedo.  May Homer live with all
+men forever!
+
+They converse; they confess to each other; they conjure up the
+past, and repeople it; but note how differently do such
+remembrances affect the two.  On Zanoni's face, despite its
+habitual calm, the emotions change and go.  HE has acted in the
+past he surveys; but not a trace of the humanity that
+participates in joy and sorrow can be detected on the passionless
+visage of his companion; the past, to him, as is now the present,
+has been but as Nature to the sage, the volume to the student,--a
+calm and spiritual life, a study, a contemplation.
+
+From the past they turn to the future.  Ah! at the close of the
+last century, the future seemed a thing tangible,--it was woven
+up in all men's fears and hopes of the present.
+
+At the verge of that hundred years, Man, the ripest born of Time,
+
+("An des Jahrhunderts Neige,
+Der reifste Sohn der Zeit."
+"Die Kunstler.")
+
+stood as at the deathbed of the Old World, and beheld the New
+Orb, blood-red amidst cloud and vapour,--uncertain if a comet or
+a sun.  Behold the icy and profound disdain on the brow of the
+old man,--the lofty yet touching sadness that darkens the
+glorious countenance of Zanoni.  Is it that one views with
+contempt the struggle and its issue, and the other with awe or
+pity?  Wisdom contemplating mankind leads but to the two
+results,--compassion or disdain.  He who believes in other worlds
+can accustom himself to look on this as the naturalist on the
+revolutions of an ant-hill, or of a leaf.  What is the Earth to
+Infinity,--what its duration to the Eternal?  Oh, how much
+greater is the soul of one man than the vicissitudes of the whole
+globe!  Child of heaven, and heir of immortality, how from some
+star hereafter wilt thou look back on the ant-hill and its
+commotions, from Clovis to Robespierre, from Noah to the Final
+Fire.  The spirit that can contemplate, that lives only in the
+intellect, can ascend to its star, even from the midst of the
+burial-ground called Earth, and while the sarcophagus called Life
+immures in its clay the everlasting!
+
+But thou, Zanoni,--thou hast refused to live ONLY in the
+intellect; thou hast not mortified the heart; thy pulse still
+beats with the sweet music of mortal passion; thy kind is to thee
+still something warmer than an abstraction,--thou wouldst look
+upon this Revolution in its cradle, which the storms rock; thou
+wouldst see the world while its elements yet struggle through the
+chaos!
+
+Go!
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.VI.
+
+Precepteurs ignorans de ce faible univers.--Voltaire.
+(Ignorant teachers of this weak world.)
+
+Nous etions a table chez un de nos confreres a l'Academie,
+Grand Seigneur et homme d'esprit.--La Harpe.
+(We supped with one of our confreres of the Academy,--a great
+nobleman and wit.)
+
+One evening, at Paris, several months after the date of our last
+chapter, there was a reunion of some of the most eminent wits of
+the time, at the house of a personage distinguished alike by
+noble birth and liberal accomplishments.  Nearly all present were
+of the views that were then the mode.  For, as came afterwards a
+time when nothing was so unpopular as the people, so that was the
+time when nothing was so vulgar as aristocracy.  The airiest fine
+gentleman and the haughtiest noble prated of equality, and lisped
+enlightenment.
+
+Among the more remarkable guests were Condorcet, then in the
+prime of his reputation, the correspondent of the king of
+Prussia, the intimate of Voltaire, the member of half the
+academies of Europe,--noble by birth, polished in manners,
+republican in opinions.  There, too, was the venerable
+Malesherbes, "l'amour et les delices de la Nation."  (The idol
+and delight of the nation (so-called by his historian,
+Gaillard).)  There Jean Silvain Bailly, the accomplished
+scholar,--the aspiring politician.  It was one of those petits
+soupers for which the capital of all social pleasures was so
+renowned.  The conversation, as might be expected, was literary
+and intellectual, enlivened by graceful pleasantry.  Many of the
+ladies of that ancient and proud noblesse--for the noblesse yet
+existed, though its hours were already numbered--added to the
+charm of the society; and theirs were the boldest criticisms, and
+often the most liberal sentiments.
+
+Vain labour for me--vain labour almost for the grave English
+language--to do justice to the sparkling paradoxes that flew from
+lip to lip.  The favourite theme was the superiority of the
+moderns to the ancients.  Condorcet on this head was eloquent,
+and to some, at least, of his audience, most convincing.  That
+Voltaire was greater than Homer few there were disposed to deny.
+Keen was the ridicule lavished on the dull pedantry which finds
+everything ancient necessarily sublime.
+
+"Yet," said the graceful Marquis de --, as the champagne danced
+to his glass, "more ridiculous still is the superstition that
+finds everything incomprehensible holy!  But intelligence
+circulates, Condorcet; like water, it finds its level.  My
+hairdresser said to me this morning, 'Though I am but a poor
+fellow, I believe as little as the finest gentleman!'"
+"Unquestionably, the great Revolution draws near to its final
+completion,--a pas de geant, as Montesquieu said of his own
+immortal work."
+
+Then there rushed from all--wit and noble, courtier and
+republican--a confused chorus, harmonious only in its
+anticipation of the brilliant things to which "the great
+Revolution" was to give birth.  Here Condrocet is more eloquent
+than before.
+
+"Il faut absolument que la Superstition et le Fanatisme fassent
+place a la Philosophie.  (It must necessarily happen that
+superstition and fanaticism give place to philosophy.)  Kings
+persecute persons, priests opinion.  Without kings, men must be
+safe; and without priests, minds must be free."
+
+"Ah," murmured the marquis, "and as ce cher Diderot has so well
+sung,--
+
+'Et des boyaux du dernier pretre
+Serrez le cou du dernier roi.'"
+(And throttle the neck of the last king with the string from the
+bowels of the last priest.)
+
+"And then," resumed Condorcet,--"then commences the Age of
+Reason!--equality in instruction, equality in institutions,
+equality in wealth!  The great impediments to knowledge are,
+first, the want of a common language; and next, the short
+duration of existence.  But as to the first, when all men are
+brothers, why not a universal language?  As to the second, the
+organic perfectibility of the vegetable world is undisputed, is
+Nature less powerful in the nobler existence of thinking man?
+The very destruction of the two most active causes of physical
+deterioration--here, luxurious wealth; there, abject penury,--
+must necessarily prolong the general term of life.  (See
+Condorcet's posthumous work on the Progress of the Human Mind.--
+Ed.)  The art of medicine will then be honoured in the place of
+war, which is the art of murder:  the noblest study of the
+acutest minds will be devoted to the discovery and arrest of the
+causes of disease.  Life, I grant, cannot be made eternal; but it
+may be prolonged almost indefinitely.  And as the meaner animal
+bequeaths its vigour to its offspring, so man shall transmit his
+improved organisation, mental and physical, to his sons.  Oh,
+yes, to such a consummation does our age approach!"
+
+The venerable Malesherbes sighed.  Perhaps he feared the
+consummation might not come in time for him.  The handsome
+Marquis de -- and the ladies, yet handsomer than he, looked
+conviction and delight.
+
+But two men there were, seated next to each other, who joined not
+in the general talk:  the one a stranger newly arrived in Paris,
+where his wealth, his person, and his accomplishments, had
+already made him remarked and courted; the other, an old man,
+somewhere about seventy,--the witty and virtuous, brave, and
+still light-hearted Cazotte, the author of "Le Diable Amoureux."
+
+These two conversed familiarly, and apart from the rest, and only
+by an occasional smile testified their attention to the general
+conversation.
+
+"Yes," said the stranger,--"yes, we have met before."
+
+"I thought I could not forget your countenance; yet I task in
+vain my recollections of the past."
+
+"I will assist you.  Recall the time when, led by curiosity, or
+perhaps the nobler desire of knowledge, you sought initiation
+into the mysterious order of Martines de Pasqualis."
+
+(It is so recorded of Cazotte.  Of Martines de Pasqualis little
+is known; even the country to which he belonged is matter of
+conjecture.  Equally so the rites, ceremonies, and nature of the
+cabalistic order he established.  St. Martin was a disciple of
+the school, and that, at least, is in its favour; for in spite of
+his mysticism, no man more beneficent, generous, pure, and
+virtuous than St. Martin adorned the last century.  Above all, no
+man more distinguished himself from the herd of sceptical
+philosophers by the gallantry and fervour with which he combated
+materialism, and vindicated the necessity of faith amidst a chaos
+of unbelief.  It may also be observed, that Cazotte, whatever
+else he learned of the brotherhood of Martines, learned nothing
+that diminished the excellence of his life and the sincerity of
+his religion.  At once gentle and brave, he never ceased to
+oppose the excesses of the Revolution.  To the last, unlike the
+Liberals of his time, he was a devout and sincere Christian.
+Before his execution, he demanded a pen and paper to write these
+words:  "Ma femme, mes enfans, ne me pleurez pas; ne m'oubliez
+pas, mais souvenez-vous surtout de ne jamais offenser Dieu."
+("My wife, my children, weep not for me; forget me not, but
+remember above everything never to offend God.)--Ed.)
+
+"Ah, is it possible!  You are one of that theurgic brotherhood?"
+
+"Nay, I attended their ceremonies but to see how vainly they
+sought to revive the ancient marvels of the cabala."
+
+"Such studies please you?  I have shaken off the influence they
+once had on my own imagination."
+
+"You have not shaken it off," returned the stranger, bravely; "it
+is on you still,--on you at this hour; it beats in your heart; it
+kindles in your reason; it will speak in your tongue!"
+
+And then, with a yet lower voice, the stranger continued to
+address him, to remind him of certain ceremonies and doctrines,--
+to explain and enforce them by references to the actual
+experience and history of his listener, which Cazotte thrilled to
+find so familiar to a stranger.
+
+Gradually the old man's pleasing and benevolent countenance grew
+overcast, and he turned, from time to time, searching, curious,
+uneasy glances towards his companion.
+
+The charming Duchesse de G-- archly pointed out to the lively
+guests the abstracted air and clouded brow of the poet; and
+Condorcet, who liked no one else to be remarked, when he himself
+was present, said to Cazotte, "Well, and what do YOU predict of
+the Revolution,--how, at least, will it affect us?"
+
+At that question Cazotte started; his cheeks grew pale, large
+drops stood on his forehead; his lips writhed; his gay companions
+gazed on him in surprise.
+
+"Speak!" whispered the stranger, laying his hand gently upon the
+arm of the old wit.
+
+At that word Cazotte's face grew locked and rigid, his eyes dwelt
+vacantly on space, and in a low, hollow voice, he thus answered
+
+(The following prophecy (not unfamiliar, perhaps, to some of my
+readers), with some slight variations, and at greater length, in
+the text of the authority I am about to cite, is to be found in
+La Harpe's posthumous works.  The MS. is said to exist still in
+La Harpe's handwriting, and the story is given on M. Petitot's
+authority, volume i. page 62.  It is not for me to enquire if
+there be doubts of its foundation on fact.--Ed.),--
+
+"You ask how it will affect yourselves,--you, its most learned,
+and its least selfish agents.  I will answer:  you, Marquis de
+Condorcet, will die in prison, but not by the hand of the
+executioner.  In the peaceful happiness of that day, the
+philosopher will carry about with him not the elixir but the
+poison."
+
+"My poor Cazotte," said Condorcet, with his gentle smile, "what
+have prisons, executioners, and poison to do with an age of
+liberty and brotherhood?"
+
+"It is in the names of Liberty and Brotherhood that the prisons
+will reek, and the headsman be glutted."
+
+"You are thinking of priestcraft, not philosophy, Cazotte," said
+Champfort.
+
+(Champfort, one of those men of letters who, though misled by the
+first fair show of the Revolution, refused to follow the baser
+men of action into its horrible excesses, lived to express the
+murderous philanthropy of its agents by the best bon mot of the
+time.  Seeing written on the walls, "Fraternite ou la Mort," he
+observed that the sentiment should be translated thus, "Sois mon
+frere, ou je te tue."  ("Be my brother, or I kill thee."))  "And
+what of me?"
+
+"You will open your own veins to escape the fraternity of Cain.
+Be comforted; the last drops will not follow the razor.  For you,
+venerable Malesherbes; for you, Aimar Nicolai; for you, learned
+Bailly,--I see them dress the scaffold!  And all the while, O
+great philosophers, your murderers will have no word but
+philosophy on their lips!"
+
+The hush was complete and universal when the pupil of Voltaire--
+the prince of the academic sceptics, hot La Harpe--cried with a
+sarcastic laugh, "Do not flatter me, O prophet, by exemption from
+the fate of my companions.  Shall _I_ have no part to play in
+this drama of your fantasies."
+
+At this question, Cazotte's countenance lost its unnatural
+expression of awe and sternness; the sardonic humour most common
+to it came back and played in his brightening eyes.
+
+"Yes, La Harpe, the most wonderful part of all!  YOU will
+become--a Christian!"
+
+This was too much for the audience that a moment before seemed
+grave and thoughtful, and they burst into an immoderate fit of
+laughter, while Cazotte, as if exhausted by his predictions, sank
+back in his chair, and breathed hard and heavily.
+
+"Nay, said Madame de G--, "you who have predicted such grave
+things concerning us, must prophesy something also about
+yourself."
+
+A convulsive tremor shook the involuntary prophet,--it passed,
+and left his countenance elevated by an expression of resignation
+and calm.  "Madame," said he, after a long pause, "during the
+siege of Jerusalem, we are told by its historian that a man, for
+seven successive days, went round the ramparts, exclaiming, 'Woe
+to thee, Jerusalem,--woe to myself!'"
+
+"Well, Cazotte, well?"
+
+"And on the seventh day, while he thus spoke, a stone from the
+machines of the Romans dashed him into atoms!"
+
+With these words, Cazotte rose; and the guests, awed in spite of
+themselves, shortly afterwards broke up and retired.
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.VII.
+
+Qui donc t'a donne la mission s'annoncer au peuple que la
+divinite n'existe pas?  Quel avantage trouves-tu a persuader a
+l'homme qu'une force aveugle preside a ses destinees et frappe au
+hasard le crime et la vertu?--Robespierre, "Discours," Mai 7,
+1794.
+
+(Who then invested you with the mission to announce to the people
+that there is no God?  What advantage find you in persuading man
+that nothing but blind force presides over his destinies, and
+strikes haphazard both crime and virtue?)
+
+It was some time before midnight when the stranger returned home.
+His apartments were situated in one of those vast abodes which
+may be called an epitome of Paris itself,--the cellars rented by
+mechanics, scarcely removed a step from paupers, often by
+outcasts and fugitives from the law, often by some daring writer,
+who, after scattering amongst the people doctrines the most
+subversive of order, or the most libellous on the characters of
+priest, minister, and king, retired amongst the rats, to escape
+the persecution that attends the virtuous; the ground-floor
+occupied by shops; the entresol by artists; the principal stories
+by nobles; and the garrets by journeymen or grisettes.
+
+As the stranger passed up the stairs, a young man of a form and
+countenance singularly unprepossessing emerged from a door in the
+entresol, and brushed beside him.  His glance was furtive,
+sinister, savage, and yet timorous; the man's face was of an
+ashen paleness, and the features worked convulsively.  The
+stranger paused, and observed him with thoughtful looks, as he
+hurried down the stairs.  While he thus stood, he heard a groan
+from the room which the young man had just quitted; the latter
+had pulled to the door with hasty vehemence, but some fragment,
+probably of fuel, had prevented its closing, and it now stood
+slightly ajar; the stranger pushed it open and entered.  He
+passed a small anteroom, meanly furnished, and stood in a
+bedchamber of meagre and sordid discomfort.  Stretched on the
+bed, and writhing in pain, lay an old man; a single candle lit
+the room, and threw its feeble ray over the furrowed and
+death-like face of the sick person.  No attendant was by; he
+seemed left alone, to breathe his last.  "Water," he moaned
+feebly,--"water:--I parch,--I burn!"  The intruder approached the
+bed, bent over him, and took his hand.  "Oh, bless thee, Jean,
+bless thee!" said the sufferer; "hast thou brought back the
+physician already?  Sir, I am poor, but I can pay you well.  I
+would not die yet, for that young man's sake."  And he sat
+upright in his bed, and fixed his dim eyes anxiously on his
+visitor.
+
+"What are your symptoms, your disease?"
+
+"Fire, fire, fire in the heart, the entrails:  I burn!"
+
+"How long is it since you have taken food?"
+
+"Food! only this broth.  There is the basin, all I have taken
+these six hours.  I had scarce drunk it ere these pains began."
+
+The stranger looked at the basin; some portion of the contents
+was yet left there.
+
+"Who administered this to you?"
+
+"Who?  Jean!  Who else should?  I have no servant,--none!  I am
+poor, very poor, sir.  But no! you physicians do not care for the
+poor.  I AM RICH! can you cure me?"
+
+"Yes, if Heaven permit.  Wait but a few moments."
+
+The old man was fast sinking under the rapid effects of poison.
+The stranger repaired to his own apartments, and returned in a
+few moments with some preparation that had the instant result of
+an antidote.  The pain ceased, the blue and livid colour receded
+from the lips; the old man fell into a profound sleep.  The
+stranger drew the curtains round the bed, took up the light, and
+inspected the apartment.  The walls of both rooms were hung with
+drawings of masterly excellence.  A portfolio was filled with
+sketches of equal skill,--but these last were mostly subjects
+that appalled the eye and revolted the taste:  they displayed the
+human figure in every variety of suffering,--the rack, the wheel,
+the gibbet; all that cruelty has invented to sharpen the pangs of
+death seemed yet more dreadful from the passionate gusto and
+earnest force of the designer.  And some of the countenances of
+those thus delineated were sufficiently removed from the ideal to
+show that they were portraits; in a large, bold, irregular hand
+was written beneath these drawings, "The Future of the
+Aristocrats."  In a corner of the room, and close by an old
+bureau, was a small bundle, over which, as if to hide it, a cloak
+was thrown carelessly.  Several shelves were filled with books;
+these were almost entirely the works of the philosophers of the
+time,--the philosophers of the material school, especially the
+Encyclopedistes, whom Robespierre afterwards so singularly
+attacked when the coward deemed it unsafe to leave his reign
+without a God.
+
+("Cette secte (les Encyclopedistes) propagea avec beaucoup de
+zele l'opinion du materialisme, qui prevalut parmi les grands et
+parmi les beaux esprits; on lui doit en partie cette espece de
+philosophie pratique qui, reduisant l'Egoisme en systeme regarde
+la societe humaine comme une guerre de ruse, le succes comme la
+regle du juste et de l'injuste, la probite comme une affaire de
+gout, ou de bienseance, le monde comme le patrimoine des fripons
+adroits."--"Discours de Robespierre," Mai 7, 1794.  (This sect
+(the Encyclopaedists) propagate with much zeal the doctrine of
+materialism, which prevails among the great and the wits; we owe
+to it partly that kind of practical philosophy which, reducing
+Egotism to a system, looks upon society as a war of cunning;
+success the rule of right and wrong, honesty as an affair of
+taste or decency:  and the world as the patrimony of clever
+scoundrels.))
+
+A volume lay on a table,--it was one of Voltaire, and the page
+was opened at his argumentative assertion of the existence of the
+Supreme Being.  ("Histoire de Jenni.")  The margin was covered
+with pencilled notes, in the stiff but tremulous hand of old age;
+all in attempt to refute or to ridicule the logic of the sage of
+Ferney:  Voltaire did not go far enough for the annotator!  The
+clock struck two, when the sound of steps was heard without.  The
+stranger silently seated himself on the farther side of the bed,
+and its drapery screened him, as he sat, from the eyes of a man
+who now entered on tiptoe; it was the same person who had passed
+him on the stairs.  The new-comer took up the candle and
+approached the bed.  The old man's face was turned to the pillow;
+but he lay so still, and his breathing was so inaudible, that his
+sleep might well, by that hasty, shrinking, guilty glance, be
+mistaken for the repose of death.  The new-comer drew back, and a
+grim smile passed over his face:  he replaced the candle on the
+table, opened the bureau with a key which he took from his
+pocket, and loaded himself with several rouleaus of gold that he
+found in the drawers.  At this time the old man began to wake.
+He stirred, he looked up; he turned his eyes towards the light
+now waning in its socket; he saw the robber at his work; he sat
+erect for an instant, as if transfixed, more even by astonishment
+than terror.  At last he sprang from his bed.
+
+"Just Heaven! do I dream!  Thou--thou--thou, for whom I toiled
+and starved!--THOU!"
+
+The robber started; the gold fell from his hand, and rolled on
+the floor.
+
+"What!" he said, "art thou not dead yet?  Has the poison failed?"
+
+"Poison, boy!  Ah!" shrieked the old man, and covered his face
+with his hands; then, with sudden energy, he exclaimed, "Jean!
+Jean! recall that word.  Rob, plunder me if thou wilt, but do not
+say thou couldst murder one who only lived for thee!  There,
+there, take the gold; I hoarded it but for thee.  Go! go!" and
+the old man, who in his passion had quitted his bed, fell at the
+feet of the foiled assassin, and writhed on the ground,--the
+mental agony more intolerable than that of the body, which he had
+so lately undergone.  The robber looked at him with a hard
+disdain.
+"What have I ever done to thee, wretch?" cried the old man,--
+"what but loved and cherished thee?  Thou wert an orphan,--an
+outcast.  I nurtured, nursed, adopted thee as my son.  If men
+call me a miser, it was but that none might despise thee, my
+heir, because Nature has stunted and deformed thee, when I was no
+more.  Thou wouldst have had all when I was dead.  Couldst thou
+not spare me a few months or days,--nothing to thy youth, all
+that is left to my age?  What have I done to thee?"
+
+"Thou hast continued to live, and thou wouldst make no will."
+
+"Mon Dieu!  Mon Dieu!"
+
+"TON DIEU!  Thy God!  Fool!  Hast thou not told me, from my
+childhood, that there is NO God?  Hast thou not fed me on
+philosophy?  Hast thou not said, 'Be virtuous, be good, be just,
+for the sake of mankind:  but there is no life after this life'?
+ Mankind! why should I love mankind?  Hideous and misshapen,
+mankind jeer at me as I pass the streets.  What hast thou done to
+me?  Thou hast taken away from me, who am the scoff of this
+world, the hopes of another!  Is there no other life?  Well,
+then, I want thy gold, that at least I may hasten to make the
+best of this!"
+
+"Monster!  Curses light on thy ingratitude, thy--"
+
+"And who hears thy curses?  Thou knowest there is no God!  Mark
+me; I have prepared all to fly.  See,--I have my passport; my
+horses wait without; relays are ordered.  I have thy gold."  (And
+the wretch, as he spoke, continued coldly to load his person with
+the rouleaus).  "And now, if I spare thy life, how shall I be
+sure that thou wilt not inform against mine?"  He advanced with a
+gloomy scowl and a menacing gesture as he spoke.
+
+The old man's anger changed to fear.  He cowered before the
+savage.  "Let me live! let me live!--that--that--"
+
+"That--what?"
+
+"I may pardon thee!  Yes, thou hast nothing to fear from me.  I
+swear it!"
+
+"Swear!  But by whom and what, old man?  I cannot believe thee,
+if thou believest not in any God!  Ha, ha! behold the result of
+thy lessons."
+
+Another moment and those murderous fingers would have strangled
+their prey.  But between the assassin and his victim rose a form
+that seemed almost to both a visitor from the world that both
+denied,--stately with majestic strength, glorious with awful
+beauty.
+
+The ruffian recoiled, looked, trembled, and then turned and fled
+from the chamber.  The old man fell again to the ground
+insensible.
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.VIII.
+
+To know how a bad man will act when in power, reverse all the
+doctrines he preaches when obscure.--S. Montague.
+
+Antipathies also form a part of magic (falsely) so-called.  Man
+naturally has the same instinct as the animals, which warns them
+involuntarily against the creatures that are hostile or fatal to
+their existence.  But HE so often neglects it, that it becomes
+dormant.  Not so the true cultivator of the Great Science, etc.--
+Trismegistus the Fourth (a Rosicrucian).
+
+When he again saw the old man the next day, the stranger found
+him calm, and surprisingly recovered from the scene and
+sufferings of the night.  He expressed his gratitude to his
+preserver with tearful fervour, and stated that he had already
+sent for a relation who would make arrangements for his future
+safety and mode of life.  "For I have money yet left," said the
+old man; "and henceforth have no motive to be a miser."  He
+proceeded then briefly to relate the origin and circumstances of
+his connection with his intended murderer.
+
+It seems that in earlier life he had quarrelled with his
+relations,--from a difference in opinions of belief.  Rejecting
+all religion as a fable, he yet cultivated feelings that inclined
+him--for though his intellect was weak, his dispositions were
+good--to that false and exaggerated sensibility which its dupes
+so often mistake for benevolence.  He had no children; he
+resolved to adopt an enfant du peuple.  He resolved to educate
+this boy according to "reason."  He selected an orphan of the
+lowest extraction, whose defects of person and constitution only
+yet the more moved his pity, and finally engrossed his affection.
+In this outcast he not only loved a son, he loved a theory!  He
+brought him up most philosophically.  Helvetius had proved to him
+that education can do all; and before he was eight years old, the
+little Jean's favourite expressions were, "La lumiere et la
+vertu."  (Light and virtue.)  The boy showed talents, especially
+in art.
+
+The protector sought for a master who was as free from
+"superstition" as himself, and selected the painter David.  That
+person, as hideous as his pupil, and whose dispositions were as
+vicious as his professional abilities were undeniable, was
+certainly as free from "superstition" as the protector could
+desire.  It was reserved for Robespierre hereafter to make the
+sanguinary painter believe in the Etre Supreme.  The boy was
+early sensible of his ugliness, which was almost preternatural.
+His benefactor found it in vain to reconcile him to the malice of
+Nature by his philosophical aphorisms; but when he pointed out to
+him that in this world money, like charity, covers a multitude of
+defects, the boy listened eagerly and was consoled.  To save
+money for his protege,--for the only thing in the world he
+loved,--this became the patron's passion.  Verily, he had met
+with his reward.
+
+"But I am thankful he has escaped," said the old man, wiping his
+eyes.  "Had he left me a beggar, I could never have accused him."
+
+"No, for you are the author of his crimes."
+
+"How!  I, who never ceased to inculcate the beauty of virtue?
+Explain yourself."
+
+"Alas! if thy pupil did not make this clear to thee last night
+from his own lips, an angel might come from heaven to preach to
+thee in vain."
+
+The old man moved uneasily, and was about to reply, when the
+relative he had sent for--and who, a native of Nancy, happened to
+be at Paris at the time--entered the room.  He was a man somewhat
+past thirty, and of a dry, saturnine, meagre countenance,
+restless eyes, and compressed lips.  He listened, with many
+ejaculations of horror, to his relation's recital, and sought
+earnestly, but in vain, to induce him to give information against
+his protege.
+
+"Tush, tush, Rene Dumas!" said the old man, "you are a lawyer.
+You are bred to regard human life with contempt.  Let any man
+break a law, and you shout, 'Execute him!'"
+
+"I!" cried Dumas, lifting up his hands and eyes:  "venerable
+sage, how you misjudge me!  I lament more than any one the
+severity of our code.  I think the state never should take away
+life,--no, not even the life of a murderer.  I agree with that
+young statesman,--Maximilien Robespierre,--that the executioner
+is the invention of the tyrant.  My very attachment to our
+advancing revolution is, that it must sweep away this legal
+butchery."
+
+The lawyer paused, out of breath.  The stranger regarded him
+fixedly and turned pale.
+
+"You change countenance, sir," said Dumas; "you do not agree with
+me."
+
+"Pardon me, I was at that moment repressing a vague fear which
+seemed prophetic."
+
+"And that--"
+
+"Was that we should meet again, when your opinions on Death and
+the philosophy of Revolutions might be different."
+
+"Never!"
+
+"You enchant me, Cousin Rene," said the old man, who had listened
+to his relation with delight.  "Ah, I see you have proper
+sentiments of justice and philanthropy.  Why did I not seek to
+know you before?  You admire the Revolution;--you, equally with
+me, detest the barbarity of kings and the fraud of priests?"
+
+"Detest!  How could I love mankind if I did not?"
+
+"And," said the old man, hesitatingly, "you do not think, with
+this noble gentleman, that I erred in the precepts I instilled
+into that wretched man?"
+
+"Erred!  Was Socrates to blame if Alcibiades was an adulterer and
+a traitor?"
+
+"You hear him, you hear him!  But Socrates had also a Plato;
+henceforth you shall be a Plato to me.  You hear him?" exclaimed
+the old man, turning to the stranger.
+
+But the latter was at the threshold.  Who shall argue with the
+most stubborn of all bigotries,--the fanaticism of unbelief?
+
+"Are you going?" exclaimed Dumas, "and before I have thanked you,
+blessed you, for the life of this dear and venerable man?  Oh, if
+ever I can repay you,--if ever you want the heart's blood of Rene
+Dumas!"  Thus volubly delivering himself, he followed the
+stranger to the threshold of the second chamber, and there,
+gently detaining him, and after looking over his shoulder, to be
+sure that he was not heard by the owner, he whispered, "I ought
+to return to Nancy.  One would not lose one's time,--you don't
+think, sir, that that scoundrel took away ALL the old fool's
+money?"
+
+"Was it thus Plato spoke of Socrates, Monsieur Dumas?"
+
+"Ha, ha!--you are caustic.  Well, you have a right.  Sir, we
+shall meet again."
+
+"AGAIN!" muttered the stranger, and his brow darkened.  He
+hastened to his chamber; he passed the day and the night alone,
+and in studies, no matter of what nature,--they served to
+increase his gloom.
+
+What could ever connect his fate with Rene Dumas, or the fugitive
+assassin?  Why did the buoyant air of Paris seem to him heavy
+with the steams of blood; why did an instinct urge him to fly
+from those sparkling circles, from that focus of the world's
+awakened hopes, warning him from return?--he, whose lofty
+existence defied--but away these dreams and omens!  He leaves
+France behind.  Back, O Italy, to thy majestic wrecks!  On the
+Alps his soul breathes the free air once more.  Free air!  Alas!
+let the world-healers exhaust their chemistry; man never shall be
+as free in the marketplace as on the mountain.  But we, reader,
+we too escape from these scenes of false wisdom clothing godless
+crime.  Away, once more
+
+"In den heitern Regionen
+Wo die reinen Formen wohnen."
+
+Away, to the loftier realm where the pure dwellers are.
+Unpolluted by the Actual, the Ideal lives only with Art and
+Beauty.  Sweet Viola, by the shores of the blue Parthenope, by
+Virgil's tomb, and the Cimmerian cavern, we return to thee once
+more.
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.IX.
+
+Che non vuol che 'l destrier piu vada in alto,
+Poi lo lega nel margine marino
+A un verde mirto in mezzo un lauro E UN PINO.
+"Orlando Furioso," c. vi. xxiii.
+
+(As he did not wish that his charger (the hippogriff) should take
+any further excursions into the higher regions for the present,
+he bound him at the sea-shore to a green myrtle between a laurel
+and a pine.)
+
+O Musician! art thou happy now?  Thou art reinstalled at thy
+stately desk,--thy faithful barbiton has its share in the
+triumph.  It is thy masterpiece which fills thy ear; it is thy
+daughter who fills the scene,--the music, the actress, so united,
+that applause to one is applause to both.  They make way for
+thee, at the orchestra,--they no longer jeer and wink, when, with
+a fierce fondness, thou dost caress thy Familiar, that plains,
+and wails, and chides, and growls, under thy remorseless hand.
+They understand now how irregular is ever the symmetry of real
+genius.  The inequalities in its surface make the moon luminous
+to man.  Giovanni Paisiello, Maestro di Capella, if thy gentle
+soul could know envy, thou must sicken to see thy Elfrida and thy
+Pirro laid aside, and all Naples turned fanatic to the Siren, at
+whose measures shook querulously thy gentle head!  But thou,
+Paisiello, calm in the long prosperity of fame, knowest that the
+New will have its day, and comfortest thyself that the Elfrida
+and the Pirro will live forever.  Perhaps a mistake, but it is by
+such mistakes that true genius conquers envy.  "To be immortal,"
+says Schiller, "live in the whole."  To be superior to the hour,
+live in thy self-esteem.  The audience now would give their ears
+for those variations and flights they were once wont to hiss.
+No!--Pisani has been two-thirds of a life at silent work on his
+masterpiece:  there is nothing he can add to THAT, however he
+might have sought to improve on the masterpieces of others.  Is
+not this common?  The least little critic, in reviewing some work
+of art, will say, "pity this, and pity that;" "this should have
+been altered,--that omitted."  Yea, with his wiry fiddlestring
+will he creak out his accursed variations.  But let him sit down
+and compose himself.  He sees no improvement in variations THEN!
+Every man can control his fiddle when it is his own work with
+which its vagaries would play the devil.
+
+And Viola is the idol, the theme of Naples.  She is the spoiled
+sultana of the boards.  To spoil her acting may be easy enough,--
+shall they spoil her nature?  No, I think not.  There, at home,
+she is still good and simple; and there, under the awning by the
+doorway,--there she still sits, divinely musing.  How often,
+crook-trunked tree, she looks to thy green boughs; how often,
+like thee, in her dreams, and fancies, does she struggle for the
+light,--not the light of the stage-lamps.  Pooh, child! be
+contented with the lamps, even with the rush-lights.  A farthing
+candle is more convenient for household purposes than the stars.
+
+Weeks passed, and the stranger did not reappear; months had
+passed, and his prophecy of sorrow was not yet fulfilled.  One
+evening Pisani was taken ill.  His success had brought on the
+long-neglected composer pressing applications for concerti and
+sonata, adapted to his more peculiar science on the violin.  He
+had been employed for some weeks, day and night, on a piece in
+which he hoped to excel himself.  He took, as usual, one of those
+seemingly impracticable subjects which it was his pride to
+subject to the expressive powers of his art,--the terrible legend
+connected with the transformation of Philomel.  The pantomime of
+sound opened with the gay merriment of a feast.  The monarch of
+Thrace is at his banquet; a sudden discord brays through the
+joyous notes,--the string seems to screech with horror.  The king
+learns the murder of his son by the hands of the avenging
+sisters.  Swift rage the chords, through the passions of fear, of
+horror, of fury, and dismay.  The father pursues the sisters.
+Hark! what changes the dread--the discord--into that long,
+silvery, mournful music?  The transformation is completed; and
+Philomel, now the nightingale, pours from the myrtle-bough the
+full, liquid, subduing notes that are to tell evermore to the
+world the history of her woes and wrongs.  Now, it was in the
+midst of this complicated and difficult attempt that the health
+of the over-tasked musician, excited alike by past triumph and
+new ambition, suddenly gave way.  He was taken ill at night.  The
+next morning the doctor pronounced that his disease was a
+malignant and infectious fever.  His wife and Viola shared in
+their tender watch; but soon that task was left to the last
+alone.  The Signora Pisani caught the infection, and in a few
+hours was even in a state more alarming than that of her husband.
+The Neapolitans, in common with the inhabitants of all warm
+climates, are apt to become selfish and brutal in their dread of
+infectious disorders.  Gionetta herself pretended to be ill, to
+avoid the sick-chamber.  The whole labour of love and sorrow fell
+on Viola.  It was a terrible trial,--I am willing to hurry over
+the details.  The wife died first!
+
+One day, a little before sunset, Pisani woke partially recovered
+from the delirium which had preyed upon him, with few intervals,
+since the second day of the disease; and casting about him his
+dizzy and feeble eyes, he recognised Viola, and smiled.  He
+faltered her name as he rose and stretched his arms.  She fell
+upon his breast, and strove to suppress her tears.
+
+"Thy mother?" he said.  "Does she sleep?"
+
+"She sleeps,--ah, yes!" and the tears gushed forth.
+
+"I thought--eh!  I know not WHAT I have thought.  But do not
+weep:  I shall be well now,--quite well.  She will come to me
+when she wakes,--will she?"
+
+Viola could not speak; but she busied herself in pouring forth an
+anodyne, which she had been directed to give the sufferer as soon
+as the delirium should cease.  The doctor had told her, too, to
+send for him the instant so important a change should occur.
+
+She went to the door and called to the woman who, during
+Gionetta's pretended illness, had been induced to supply her
+place; but the hireling answered not.  She flew through the
+chambers to search for her in vain,--the hireling had caught
+Gionetta's fears, and vanished.  What was to be done?  The case
+was urgent,--the doctor had declared not a moment should be lost
+in obtaining his attendance; she must leave her father,--she must
+go herself!  She crept back into the room,--the anodyne seemed
+already to have taken benign effect; the patient's eyes were
+closed, and he breathed regularly, as in sleep.  She stole away,
+threw her veil over her face, and hurried from the house.
+
+Now the anodyne had not produced the effect which it appeared to
+have done; instead of healthful sleep, it had brought on a kind
+of light-headed somnolence, in which the mind, preternaturally
+restless, wandered about its accustomed haunts, waking up its old
+familiar instincts and inclinations.  It was not sleep,--it was
+not delirium; it was the dream-wakefulness which opium sometimes
+induces, when every nerve grows tremulously alive, and creates a
+corresponding activity in the frame, to which it gives a false
+and hectic vigour.  Pisani missed something,--what, he scarcely
+knew; it was a combination of the two wants most essential to his
+mental life,--the voice of his wife, the touch of his Familiar.
+He rose,--he left his bed, he leisurely put on his old
+dressing-robe, in which he had been wont to compose.  He smiled
+complacently as the associations connected with the garment came
+over his memory; he walked tremulously across the room, and
+entered the small cabinet next to his chamber, in which his wife
+had been accustomed more often to watch than sleep, when illness
+separated her from his side.  The room was desolate and void.  He
+looked round wistfully, and muttered to himself, and then
+proceeded regularly, and with a noiseless step, through the
+chambers of the silent house, one by one.
+
+He came at last to that in which old Gionetta--faithful to her
+own safety, if nothing else--nursed herself, in the remotest
+corner of the house, from the danger of infection.  As he glided
+in,--wan, emaciated, with an uneasy, anxious, searching look in
+his haggard eyes,--the old woman shrieked aloud, and fell at his
+feet.  He bent over her, passed his thin hands along her averted
+face, shook his head, and said in a hollow voice,--
+
+"I cannot find them; where are they?"
+
+"Who, dear master?  Oh, have compassion on yourself; they are not
+here.  Blessed saints! this is terrible; he has touched me; I am
+dead!"
+
+"Dead! who is dead?  Is any one dead?"
+
+"Ah! don't talk so; you must know it well:  my poor mistress,--
+she caught the fever from you; it is infectious enough to kill a
+whole city.  San Gennaro protect me!  My poor mistress, she is
+dead,--buried, too; and I, your faithful Gionetta, woe is me!
+Go, go--to--to bed again, dearest master,--go!"
+
+The poor musician stood for one moment mute and unmoving, then a
+slight shiver ran through his frame; he turned and glided back,
+silent and spectre-like, as he had entered.  He came into the
+room where he had been accustomed to compose,--where his wife, in
+her sweet patience, had so often sat by his side, and praised and
+flattered when the world had but jeered and scorned.  In one
+corner he found the laurel-wreath she had placed on his brows
+that happy night of fame and triumph; and near it, half hid by
+her mantilla, lay in its case the neglected instrument.
+
+Viola was not long gone:  she had found the physician; she
+returned with him; and as they gained the threshold, they heard a
+strain of music from within,--a strain of piercing, heart-rending
+anguish.  It was not like some senseless instrument, mechanical
+in its obedience to a human hand,--it was as some spirit calling,
+in wail and agony from the forlorn shades, to the angels it
+beheld afar beyond the Eternal Gulf.  They exchanged glances of
+dismay.  They hurried into the house; they hastened into the
+room.  Pisani turned, and his look, full of ghastly intelligence
+and stern command, awed them back.  The black mantilla, the faded
+laurel-leaf, lay there before him.  Viola's heart guessed all at
+a single glance; she sprung to his knees; she clasped them,--
+"Father, father, _I_ am left thee still!"
+
+The wail ceased,--the note changed; with a confused association--
+half of the man, half of the artist--the anguish, still a melody,
+was connected with sweeter sounds and thoughts.  The nightingale
+had escaped the pursuit,--soft, airy, bird-like, thrilled the
+delicious notes a moment, and then died away.  The instrument
+fell to the floor, and its chords snapped.  You heard that sound
+through the silence.  The artist looked on his kneeling child,
+and then on the broken chords..."Bury me by her side," he said,
+in a very calm, low voice; "and THAT by mine."  And with these
+words his whole frame became rigid, as if turned to stone.  The
+last change passed over his face.  He fell to the ground, sudden
+and heavy.  The chords THERE, too,--the chords of the human
+instrument were snapped asunder.  As he fell, his robe brushed
+the laurel-wreath, and that fell also, near but not in reach of
+the dead man's nerveless hand.
+
+Broken instrument, broken heart, withered laurel-wreath!--the
+setting sun through the vine-clad lattice streamed on all!  So
+smiles the eternal Nature on the wrecks of all that make life
+glorious!  And not a sun that sets not somewhere on the silenced
+music,--on the faded laurel!
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.X.
+
+Che difesa miglior ch' usbergo e scudo,
+E la santa innocenza al petto ignudo!
+"Ger. Lib.," c. viii. xli.
+
+(Better defence than shield or breastplate is holy innocence
+to the naked breast.)
+
+And they buried the musician and his barbiton together, in the
+same coffin.  That famous Steiner--primeval Titan of the great
+Tyrolese race--often hast thou sought to scale the heavens, and
+therefore must thou, like the meaner children of men, descend to
+the dismal Hades!  Harder fate for thee than thy mortal master.
+For THY soul sleeps with thee in the coffin.  And the music that
+belongs to HIS, separate from the instrument, ascends on high, to
+be heard often by a daughter's pious ears when the heaven is
+serene and the earth sad.  For there is a sense of hearing that
+the vulgar know not.  And the voices of the dead breathe soft and
+frequent to those who can unite the memory with the faith.
+
+And now Viola is alone in the world,--alone in the home where
+loneliness had seemed from the cradle a thing that was not of
+nature.  And at first the solitude and the stillness were
+insupportable.  Have you, ye mourners, to whom these sibyl
+leaves, weird with many a dark enigma, shall be borne, have you
+not felt that when the death of some best-loved one has made the
+hearth desolate,--have you not felt as if the gloom of the
+altered home was too heavy for thought to bear?--you would leave
+it, though a palace, even for a cabin.  And yet,--sad to say,--
+when you obey the impulse, when you fly from the walls, when in
+the strange place in which you seek your refuge nothing speaks to
+you of the lost, have ye not felt again a yearning for that very
+food to memory which was just before but bitterness and gall?  Is
+it not almost impious and profane to abandon that dear hearth to
+strangers?  And the desertion of the home where your parents
+dwelt, and blessed you, upbraids your conscience as if you had
+sold their tombs.
+
+Beautiful was the Etruscan superstition that the ancestors become
+the household gods.  Deaf is the heart to which the Lares call
+from the desolate floors in vain.  At first Viola had, in her
+intolerable anguish, gratefully welcomed the refuge which the
+house and family of a kindly neighbour, much attached to her
+father, and who was one of the orchestra that Pisani shall
+perplex no more, had proffered to the orphan.  But the company of
+the unfamiliar in our grief, the consolation of the stranger, how
+it irritates the wound!  And then, to hear elsewhere the name of
+father, mother, child,--as if death came alone to you,--to see
+elsewhere the calm regularity of those lives united in love and
+order, keeping account of happy hours, the unbroken timepiece of
+home, as if nowhere else the wheels were arrested, the chain
+shattered, the hands motionless, the chime still!  No, the grave
+itself does not remind us of our loss like the company of those
+who have no loss to mourn.  Go back to thy solitude, young
+orphan,--go back to thy home:  the sorrow that meets thee on the
+threshold can greet thee, even in its sadness, like the smile
+upon the face of the dead.  And there, from thy casement, and
+there, from without thy door, thou seest still the tree, solitary
+as thyself, and springing from the clefts of the rock, but
+forcing its way to light,--as, through all sorrow, while the
+seasons yet can renew the verdure and bloom of youth, strives the
+instinct of the human heart!  Only when the sap is dried up, only
+when age comes on, does the sun shine in vain for man and for the
+tree.
+
+Weeks and months--months sad and many--again passed, and Naples
+will not longer suffer its idol to seclude itself from homage.
+The world ever plucks us back from ourselves with a thousand
+arms.  And again Viola's voice is heard upon the stage, which,
+mystically faithful to life, is in nought more faithful than
+this, that it is the appearances that fill the scene; and we
+pause not to ask of what realities they are the proxies.  When
+the actor of Athens moved all hearts as he clasped the burial
+urn, and burst into broken sobs; how few, there, knew that it
+held the ashes of his son!  Gold, as well as fame, was showered
+upon the young actress; but she still kept to her simple mode of
+life, to her lowly home, to the one servant whose faults, selfish
+as they were, Viola was too inexperienced to perceive.  And it
+was Gionetta who had placed her when first born in her father's
+arms!  She was surrounded by every snare, wooed by every
+solicitation that could beset her unguarded beauty and her
+dangerous calling.  But her modest virtue passed unsullied
+through them all.  It is true that she had been taught by lips
+now mute the maiden duties enjoined by honour and religion.  And
+all love that spoke not of the altar only shocked and repelled
+her.  But besides that, as grief and solitude ripened her heart,
+and made her tremble at times to think how deeply it could feel,
+her vague and early visions shaped themselves into an ideal of
+love.  And till the ideal is found, how the shadow that it throws
+before it chills us to the actual!  With that ideal, ever and
+ever, unconsciously, and with a certain awe and shrinking, came
+the shape and voice of the warning stranger.  Nearly two years
+had passed since he had appeared at Naples.  Nothing had been
+heard of him, save that his vessel had been directed, some months
+after his departure, to sail for Leghorn.  By the gossips of
+Naples, his existence, supposed so extraordinary, was wellnigh
+forgotten; but the heart of Viola was more faithful.  Often he
+glided through her dreams, and when the wind sighed through that
+fantastic tree, associated with his remembrance, she started with
+a tremor and a blush, as if she had heard him speak.
+
+But amongst the train of her suitors was one to whom she listened
+more gently than to the rest; partly because, perhaps, he spoke
+in her mother's native tongue; partly because in his diffidence
+there was little to alarm and displease; partly because his rank,
+nearer to her own than that of lordlier wooers, prevented his
+admiration from appearing insult; partly because he himself,
+eloquent and a dreamer, often uttered thoughts that were kindred
+to those buried deepest in her mind.  She began to like, perhaps
+to love him, but as a sister loves; a sort of privileged
+familiarity sprung up between them.  If in the Englishman's
+breast arose wild and unworthy hopes, he had not yet expressed
+them.  Is there danger to thee here, lone Viola, or is the danger
+greater in thy unfound ideal?
+
+And now, as the overture to some strange and wizard spectacle,
+closes this opening prelude.  Wilt thou hear more?  Come with thy
+faith prepared.  I ask not the blinded eyes, but the awakened
+sense.  As the enchanted Isle, remote from the homes of men,--
+
+"Ove alcun legno
+Rado, o non mai va dalle nostre sponde,"--
+"Ger.Lib.," cant. xiv. 69.
+
+(Where ship seldom or never comes from our coasts.)
+
+is the space in the weary ocean of actual life to which the Muse
+or Sibyl (ancient in years, but ever young in aspect), offers
+thee no unhallowed sail,--
+
+"Quinci ella in cima a una montagna ascende
+Disabitata, e d' ombre oscura e bruna;
+E par incanto a lei nevose rende
+Le spalle e i fianchi; e sensa neve alcuna
+Gli lascia il capo verdeggiante e vago;
+E vi fonda un palagio appresso un lago."
+
+(There, she a mountain's lofty peak ascends,
+Unpeopled, shady, shagg'd with forests brown,
+Whose sides, by power of magic, half-way down
+She heaps with slippery ice and frost and snow,
+But sunshiny and verdant leaves the crown
+With orange-woods and myrtles,--speaks, and lo!
+Rich from the bordering lake a palace rises slow.
+Wiffin's "Translation."
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+ART, LOVE, AND WONDER.
+
+Diversi aspetti in un confusi e misti.
+"Ger. Lib," cant. iv. 7.
+
+Different appearances, confused and mixt in one.
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.I.
+
+Centauri, e Sfingi, e pallide Gorgoni.
+"Ger. Lib.," c. iv. v.
+
+(Centaurs and Sphinxes and pallid Gorgons.)
+
+One moonlit night, in the Gardens at Naples, some four or five
+gentleman were seated under a tree, drinking their sherbet, and
+listening, in the intervals of conversation, to the music which
+enlivened that gay and favourite resort of an indolent
+population.  One of this little party was a young Englishman, who
+had been the life of the whole group, but who, for the last few
+moments, had sunk into a gloomy and abstracted reverie.  One of
+his countrymen observed this sudden gloom, and, tapping him on
+the back, said, "What ails you, Glyndon?  Are you ill?  You have
+grown quite pale,--you tremble.  Is it a sudden chill?  You had
+better go home:  these Italian nights are often dangerous to our
+English constitutions."
+
+"No, I am well now; it was a passing shudder.  I cannot account
+for it myself."
+
+A man, apparently of about thirty years of age, and of a mien and
+countenance strikingly superior to those around him, turned
+abruptly, and looked steadfastly at Glyndon.
+
+"I think I understand what you mean," said he; "and perhaps," he
+added, with a grave smile, "I could explain it better than
+yourself."  Here, turning to the others, he added, "You must
+often have felt, gentlemen, each and all of you, especially when
+sitting alone at night, a strange and unaccountable sensation of
+coldness and awe creep over you; your blood curdles, and the
+heart stands still; the limbs shiver; the hair bristles; you are
+afraid to look up, to turn your eyes to the darker corners of the
+room; you have a horrible fancy that something unearthly is at
+hand; presently the whole spell, if I may so call it, passes
+away, and you are ready to laugh at your own weakness.  Have you
+not often felt what I have thus imperfectly described?--if so,
+you can understand what our young friend has just experienced,
+even amidst the delights of this magical scene, and amidst the
+balmy whispers of a July night."
+
+"Sir," replied Glyndon, evidently much surprised, "you have
+defined exactly the nature of that shudder which came over me.
+But how could my manner be so faithful an index to my
+impressions?"
+
+"I know the signs of the visitation," returned the stranger,
+gravely; "they are not to be mistaken by one of my experience."
+
+All the gentleman present then declared that they could
+comprehend, and had felt, what the stranger had described.
+
+"According to one of our national superstitions," said Mervale,
+the Englishman who had first addressed Glyndon, "the moment you
+so feel your blood creep, and your hair stand on end, some one is
+walking over the spot which shall be your grave."
+
+"There are in all lands different superstitions to account for so
+common an occurrence," replied the stranger:  "one sect among the
+Arabians holds that at that instant God is deciding the hour
+either of your death, or of some one dear to you.  The African
+savage, whose imagination is darkened by the hideous rites of his
+gloomy idolatry, believes that the Evil Spirit is pulling you
+towards him by the hair:  so do the Grotesque and the Terrible
+mingle with each other."
+
+"It is evidently a mere physical accident,--a derangement of the
+stomach, a chill of the blood," said a young Neapolitan, with
+whom Glyndon had formed a slight acquaintance.
+
+"Then why is it always coupled in all nations with some
+superstitious presentiment or terror,--some connection between
+the material frame and the supposed world without us?  For my
+part, I think--"
+
+"Ay, what do you think, sir?" asked Glyndon, curiously.
+
+"I think," continued the stranger, "that it is the repugnance and
+horror with which our more human elements recoil from something,
+indeed, invisible, but antipathetic to our own nature; and from a
+knowledge of which we are happily secured by the imperfection of
+our senses."
+
+"You are a believer in spirits, then?" said Mervale, with an
+incredulous smile.
+
+"Nay, it was not precisely of spirits that I spoke; but there may
+be forms of matter as invisible and impalpable to us as the
+animalculae in the air we breathe,--in the water that plays in
+yonder basin.  Such beings may have passions and powers like our
+own--as the animalculae to which I have compared them.  The
+monster that lives and dies in a drop of water--carnivorous,
+insatiable, subsisting on the creatures minuter than himself--is
+not less deadly in his wrath, less ferocious in his nature, than
+the tiger of the desert. There may be things around us that would
+be dangerous and hostile to men, if Providence had not placed a
+wall between them and us, merely by different modifications of
+matter."
+
+"And think you that wall never can be removed?" asked young
+Glyndon, abruptly.  "Are the traditions of sorcerer and wizard,
+universal and immemorial as they are, merely fables?"
+
+"Perhaps yes,--perhaps no," answered the stranger, indifferently.
+"But who, in an age in which the reason has chosen its proper
+bounds, would be mad enough to break the partition that divides
+him from the boa and the lion,--to repine at and rebel against
+the law which confines the shark to the great deep?  Enough of
+these idle speculations."
+
+Here the stranger rose, summoned the attendant, paid for his
+sherbet, and, bowing slightly to the company, soon disappeared
+among the trees.
+
+"Who is that gentleman?" asked Glyndon, eagerly.
+
+The rest looked at each other, without replying, for some
+moments.
+
+"I never saw him before," said Mervale, at last.
+
+"Nor I."
+
+"Nor I."
+
+"I know him well," said the Neapolitan, who was, indeed, the
+Count Cetoxa.  "If you remember, it was as my companion that he
+joined you.  He visited Naples about two years ago, and has
+recently returned; he is very rich,--indeed, enormously so.  A
+most agreeable person.  I am sorry to hear him talk so strangely
+to-night; it serves to encourage the various foolish reports that
+are circulated concerning him."
+
+"And surely," said another Neapolitan, "the circumstance that
+occurred but the other day, so well known to yourself, Cetoxa,
+justifies the reports you pretend to deprecate."
+
+"Myself and my countryman," said Glyndon, "mix so little in
+Neapolitan society, that we lose much that appears well worthy of
+lively interest.  May I enquire what are the reports, and what is
+the circumstance you refer to?"
+
+"As to the reports, gentlemen," said Cetoxa, courteously,
+addressing himself to the two Englishmen, "it may suffice to
+observe, that they attribute to the Signor Zanoni certain
+qualities which everybody desires for himself, but damns any one
+else for possessing.  The incident Signor Belgioso alludes to,
+illustrates these qualities, and is, I must own, somewhat
+startling.  You probably play, gentlemen?"  (Here Cetoxa paused;
+and as both Englishmen had occasionally staked a few scudi at
+the public gaming-tables, they bowed assent to the conjecture.)
+Cetoxa continued.  "Well, then, not many days since, and on the
+very day that Zanoni returned to Naples, it so happened that I
+had been playing pretty high, and had lost considerably.  I rose
+from the table, resolved no longer to tempt fortune, when I
+suddenly perceived Zanoni, whose acquaintance I had before made
+(and who, I may say, was under some slight obligation to me),
+standing by, a spectator.  Ere I could express my gratification
+at this unexpected recognition, he laid his hand on my arm.  'You
+have lost much,' said he; 'more than you can afford.  For my
+part, I dislike play; yet I wish to have some interest in what is
+going on.  Will you play this sum for me? the risk is mine,--the
+half profits yours.'  I was startled, as you may suppose, at such
+an address; but Zanoni had an air and tone with him it was
+impossible to resist; besides, I was burning to recover my
+losses, and should not have risen had I had any money left about
+me.  I told him I would accept his offer, provided we shared the
+risk as well as profits. 'As you will,' said he, smiling; 'we
+need have no scruple, for you will be sure to win.'  I sat down;
+Zanoni stood behind me; my luck rose,--I invariably won.  In
+fact, I rose from the table a rich man."
+
+"There can be no foul play at the public tables, especially when
+foul play would make against the bank?"  This question was put by
+Glyndon.
+
+"Certainly not," replied the count.  "But our good fortune was,
+indeed, marvellous,--so extraordinary that a Sicilian (the
+Sicilians are all ill-bred, bad-tempered fellows) grew angry and
+insolent.  'Sir,' said he, turning to my new friend, 'you have no
+business to stand so near to the table.  I do not understand
+this; you have not acted fairly.'  Zanoni replied, with great
+composure, that he had done nothing against the rules,--that he
+was very sorry that one man could not win without another man
+losing; and that he could not act unfairly, even if disposed to
+do so.  The Sicilian took the stranger's mildness for
+apprehension, and blustered more loudly.  In fact, he rose from
+the table, and confronted Zanoni in a manner that, to say the
+least of it, was provoking to any gentleman who has some
+quickness of temper, or some skill with the small-sword."
+
+"And," interrupted Belgioso, "the most singular part of the whole
+to me was, that this Zanoni, who stood opposite to where I sat,
+and whose face I distinctly saw, made no remark, showed no
+resentment.  He fixed his eyes steadfastly on the Sicilian; never
+shall I forget that look! it is impossible to describe it,--it
+froze the blood in my veins.  The Sicilian staggered back as if
+struck.  I saw him tremble; he sank on the bench.  And then--"
+
+"Yes, then," said Cetoxa, "to my infinite surprise, our
+gentleman, thus disarmed by a look from Zanoni, turned his whole
+anger upon me, THE -- but perhaps you do not know, gentlemen,
+that I have some repute with my weapon?"
+
+"The best swordsman in Italy," said Belgioso.
+
+"Before I could guess why or wherefore," resumed Cetoxa, "I found
+myself in the garden behind the house, with Ughelli (that was the
+Sicilian's name) facing me, and five or six gentlemen, the
+witnesses of the duel about to take place, around.  Zanoni
+beckoned me aside.  'This man will fall,' said he.  'When he is
+on the ground, go to him, and ask whether he will be buried by
+the side of his father in the church of San Gennaro?'  'Do you
+then know his family?' I asked with great surprise.  Zanoni made
+me no answer, and the next moment I was engaged with the
+Sicilian.  To do him justice, his imbrogliato was magnificent,
+and a swifter lounger never crossed a sword; nevertheless," added
+Cetoxa, with a pleasing modesty, "he was run through the body.  I
+went up to him; he could scarcely speak.  'Have you any request
+to make,--any affairs to settle?'  He shook his head.  'Where
+would you wish to be interred?'  He pointed towards the Sicilian
+coast.  'What!' said I, in surprise, 'NOT by the side of your
+father, in the church of San Gennaro?'  As I spoke, his face
+altered terribly; he uttered a piercing shriek,--the blood gushed
+from his mouth, and he fell dead.  The most strange part of the
+story is to come.  We buried him in the church of San Gennaro.
+In doing so, we took up his father's coffin; the lid came off in
+moving it, and the skeleton was visible.  In the hollow of the
+skull we found a very slender wire of sharp steel; this caused
+surprise and inquiry.  The father, who was rich and a miser, had
+died suddenly, and been buried in haste, owing, it was said, to
+the heat of the weather.  Suspicion once awakened, the
+examination became minute.  The old man's servant was questioned,
+and at last confessed that the son had murdered the sire.  The
+contrivance was ingenious:  the wire was so slender that it
+pierced to the brain, and drew but one drop of blood, which the
+grey hairs concealed.  The accomplice will be executed."
+
+"And Zanoni,--did he give evidence, did he account for--"
+
+"No," interrupted the count:  "he declared that he had by
+accident visited the church that morning; that he had observed
+the tombstone of the Count Ughelli; that his guide had told him
+the count's son was in Naples,--a spendthrift and a gambler.
+While we were at play, he had heard the count mentioned by name
+at the table; and when the challenge was given and accepted, it
+had occurred to him to name the place of burial, by an instinct
+which he either could not or would not account for."
+
+"A very lame story," said Mervale.
+
+"Yes! but we Italians are superstitious,--the alleged instinct
+was regarded by many as the whisper of Providence.  The next day
+the stranger became an object of universal interest and
+curiosity.  His wealth, his manner of living, his extraordinary
+personal beauty, have assisted also to make him the rage;
+besides, I have had the pleasure in introducing so eminent a
+person to our gayest cavaliers and our fairest ladies."
+
+"A most interesting narrative," said Mervale, rising.  "Come,
+Glyndon; shall we seek our hotel?  It is almost daylight.  Adieu,
+signor!"
+
+"What think you of this story?" said Glyndon, as the young men
+walked homeward.
+
+"Why, it is very clear that this Zanoni is some imposter,--some
+clever rogue; and the Neapolitan shares the booty, and puffs him
+off with all the hackneyed charlatanism of the marvellous.  An
+unknown adventurer gets into society by being made an object of
+awe and curiosity; he is more than ordinarily handsome, and the
+women are quite content to receive him without any other
+recommendation than his own face and Cetoxa's fables."
+
+"I cannot agree with you.  Cetoxa, though a gambler and a rake,
+is a nobleman of birth and high repute for courage and honour.
+Besides, this stranger, with his noble presence and lofty air,--
+so calm, so unobtrusive,--has nothing in common with the forward
+garrulity of an imposter."
+
+"My dear Glyndon, pardon me; but you have not yet acquired any
+knowledge of the world!  The stranger makes the best of a fine
+person, and his grand air is but a trick of the trade.  But to
+change the subject,--how advances the love affair?"
+
+"Oh, Viola could not see me to-day."
+
+"You must not marry her.  What would they all say at home?"
+
+"Let us enjoy the present," said Glyndon, with vivacity; "we are
+young, rich, good-looking; let us not think of to-morrow."
+
+"Bravo, Glyndon!  Here we are at the hotel.  Sleep sound, and
+don't dream of Signor Zanoni."
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.II.
+
+Prende, giovine audace e impaziente,
+L'occasione offerta avidamente.
+"Ger. Lib.," c. vi. xxix.
+
+(Take, youth, bold and impatient, the offered occasion eagerly.)
+
+Clarence Glyndon was a young man of fortune, not large, but easy
+and independent.  His parents were dead, and his nearest relation
+was an only sister, left in England under the care of her aunt,
+and many years younger than himself.  Early in life he had
+evinced considerable promise in the art of painting, and rather
+from enthusiasm than any pecuniary necessity for a profession, he
+determined to devote himself to a career in which the English
+artist generally commences with rapture and historical
+composition, to conclude with avaricious calculation and
+portraits of Alderman Simpkins.  Glyndon was supposed by his
+friends to possess no inconsiderable genius; but it was of a rash
+and presumptuous order.  He was averse from continuous and steady
+labour, and his ambition rather sought to gather the fruit than
+to plant the tree.  In common with many artists in their youth,
+he was fond of pleasure and excitement, yielding with little
+forethought to whatever impressed his fancy or appealed to his
+passions.  He had travelled through the more celebrated cities of
+Europe, with the avowed purpose and sincere resolution of
+studying the divine masterpieces of his art.  But in each,
+pleasure had too often allured him from ambition, and living
+beauty distracted his worship from the senseless canvas.  Brave,
+adventurous, vain, restless, inquisitive, he was ever involved in
+wild projects and pleasant dangers,--the creature of impulse and
+the slave of imagination.
+
+It was then the period when a feverish spirit of change was
+working its way to that hideous mockery of human aspirations, the
+Revolution of France; and from the chaos into which were already
+jarring the sanctities of the World's Venerable Belief, arose
+many shapeless and unformed chimeras.  Need I remind the reader
+that, while that was the day for polished scepticism and affected
+wisdom, it was the day also for the most egregious credulity and
+the most mystical superstitions,--the day in which magnetism and
+magic found converts amongst the disciples of Diderot; when
+prophecies were current in every mouth; when the salon of a
+philosophical deist was converted into an Heraclea, in which
+necromancy professed to conjure up the shadows of the dead; when
+the Crosier and the Book were ridiculed, and Mesmer and
+Cagliostro were believed.  In that Heliacal Rising, heralding the
+new sun before which all vapours were to vanish, stalked from
+their graves in the feudal ages all the phantoms that had flitted
+before the eyes of Paracelsus and Agrippa.  Dazzled by the dawn
+of the Revolution, Glyndon was yet more attracted by its strange
+accompaniments; and natural it was with him, as with others, that
+the fancy which ran riot amidst the hopes of a social Utopia,
+should grasp with avidity all that promised, out of the dusty
+tracks of the beaten science, the bold discoveries of some
+marvellous Elysium.
+
+In his travels he had listened with vivid interest, at least, if
+not with implicit belief, to the wonders told of each more
+renowned Ghost-seer, and his mind was therefore prepared for the
+impression which the mysterious Zanoni at first sight had
+produced upon it.
+
+There might be another cause for this disposition to credulity.
+A remote ancestor of Glyndon's on the mother's side, had achieved
+no inconsiderable reputation as a philosopher and alchemist.
+Strange stories were afloat concerning this wise progenitor.  He
+was said to have lived to an age far exceeding the allotted
+boundaries of mortal existence, and to have preserved to the last
+the appearance of middle life.  He had died at length, it was
+supposed, of grief for the sudden death of a great-grandchild,
+the only creature he had ever appeared to love.  The works of
+this philosopher, though rare, were extant, and found in the
+library of Glyndon's home.  Their Platonic mysticism, their bold
+assertions, the high promises that might be detected through
+their figurative and typical phraseology, had early made a deep
+impression on the young imagination of Clarence Glyndon.  His
+parents, not alive to the consequences of encouraging fancies
+which the very enlightenment of the age appeared to them
+sufficient to prevent or dispel, were fond, in the long winter
+nights, of conversing on the traditional history of this
+distinguished progenitor.  And Clarence thrilled with a fearful
+pleasure when his mother playfully detected a striking likeness
+between the features of the young heir and the faded portrait of
+the alchemist that overhung their mantelpiece, and was the boast
+of their household and the admiration of their friends,--the
+child is, indeed, more often than we think for, "the father of
+the man."
+
+I have said that Glyndon was fond of pleasure.  Facile, as genius
+ever must be, to cheerful impression, his careless artist-life,
+ere artist-life settles down to labour, had wandered from flower
+to flower.  He had enjoyed, almost to the reaction of satiety,
+the gay revelries of Naples, when he fell in love with the face
+and voice of Viola Pisani.  But his love, like his ambition, was
+vague and desultory.  It did not satisfy his whole heart and fill
+up his whole nature; not from want of strong and noble passions,
+but because his mind was not yet matured and settled enough for
+their development.  As there is one season for the blossom,
+another for the fruit; so it is not till the bloom of fancy
+begins to fade, that the heart ripens to the passions that the
+bloom precedes and foretells.  Joyous alike at his lonely easel
+or amidst his boon companions, he had not yet known enough of
+sorrow to love deeply.  For man must be disappointed with the
+lesser things of life before he can comprehend the full value of
+the greatest.  It is the shallow sensualists of France, who, in
+their salon-language, call love "a folly,"--love, better
+understood, is wisdom.  Besides, the world was too much with
+Clarence Glyndon.  His ambition of art was associated with the
+applause and estimation of that miserable minority of the surface
+that we call the Public.
+
+Like those who deceive, he was ever fearful of being himself the
+dupe.  He distrusted the sweet innocence of Viola.  He could not
+venture the hazard of seriously proposing marriage to an Italian
+actress; but the modest dignity of the girl, and something good
+and generous in his own nature, had hitherto made him shrink from
+any more worldly but less honourable designs.  Thus the
+familiarity between them seemed rather that of kindness and
+regard than passion.  He attended the theatre; he stole behind
+the scenes to converse with her; he filled his portfolio with
+countless sketches of a beauty that charmed him as an artist as
+well as lover; and day after day he floated on through a changing
+sea of doubt and irresolution, of affection and distrust.  The
+last, indeed, constantly sustained against his better reason by
+the sober admonitions of Mervale, a matter-of-fact man!
+
+The day following that eve on which this section of my story
+opens, Glyndon was riding alone by the shores of the Neapolitan
+sea, on the other side of the Cavern of Posilipo.  It was past
+noon; the sun had lost its early fervour, and a cool breeze
+sprung up voluptuously from the sparkling sea.  Bending over a
+fragment of stone near the roadside, he perceived the form of a
+man; and when he approached, he recognised Zanoni.
+
+The Englishman saluted him courteously.  "Have you discovered
+some antique?" said he, with a smile; "they are common as pebbles
+on this road."
+
+"No," replied Zanoni; "it was but one of those antiques that have
+their date, indeed, from the beginning of the world, but which
+Nature eternally withers and renews."  So saying, he showed
+Glyndon a small herb with a pale-blue flower, and then placed it
+carefully in his bosom.
+
+"You are an herbalist?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"It is, I am told, a study full of interest."
+
+"To those who understand it, doubtless."
+
+"Is the knowledge, then, so rare?"
+
+"Rare!  The deeper knowledge is perhaps rather, among the arts,
+LOST to the modern philosophy of commonplace and surface!  Do you
+imagine there was no foundation for those traditions which come
+dimly down from remoter ages,--as shells now found on the
+mountain-tops inform us where the seas have been?  What was the
+old Colchian magic, but the minute study of Nature in her
+lowliest works?  What the fable of Medea, but a proof of the
+powers that may be extracted from the germ and leaf?  The most
+gifted of all the Priestcrafts, the mysterious sisterhoods of
+Cuth, concerning whose incantations Learning vainly bewilders
+itself amidst the maze of legends, sought in the meanest herbs
+what, perhaps, the Babylonian Sages explored in vain amidst the
+loftiest stars.  Tradition yet tells you that there existed a
+race ("Plut.  Symp." l. 5. c. 7.) who could slay their enemies
+from afar, without weapon, without movement.  The herb that ye
+tread on may have deadlier powers than your engineers can give to
+their mightiest instruments of war.  Can you guess that to these
+Italian shores, to the old Circaean Promontory, came the Wise
+from the farthest East, to search for plants and simples which
+your Pharmacists of the Counter would fling from them as weeds?
+The first herbalists--the master chemists of the world--were the
+tribe that the ancient reverence called by the name of Titans.
+(Syncellus, page 14.--"Chemistry the Invention of the Giants.")
+I remember once, by the Hebrus, in the reign of --  But this
+talk," said Zanoni, checking himself abruptly, and with a cold
+smile, "serves only to waste your time and my own."  He paused,
+looked steadily at Glyndon, and continued, "Young man, think you
+that vague curiosity will supply the place of earnest labour?  I
+read your heart.  You wish to know me, and not this humble herb:
+but pass on; your desire cannot be satisfied."
+
+"You have not the politeness of your countrymen," said Glyndon,
+somewhat discomposed.  "Suppose I were desirous to cultivate your
+acquaintance, why should you reject my advances?"
+
+"I reject no man's advances," answered Zanoni; "I must know them
+if they so desire; but ME, in return, they can never comprehend.
+If you ask my acquaintance, it is yours; but I would warn you to
+shun me."
+
+"And why are you, then, so dangerous?"
+
+"On this earth, men are often, without their own agency, fated to
+be dangerous to others.  If I were to predict your fortune by the
+vain calculations of the astrologer, I should tell you, in their
+despicable jargon, that my planet sat darkly in your house of
+life.  Cross me not, if you can avoid it.  I warn you now for the
+first time and last."
+
+"You despise the astrologers, yet you utter a jargon as
+mysterious as theirs.  I neither gamble nor quarrel; why, then,
+should I fear you?"
+
+"As you will; I have done."
+
+"Let me speak frankly,--your conversation last night interested
+and perplexed me."
+
+"I know it:  minds like yours are attracted by mystery."
+
+Glyndon was piqued at these words, though in the tone in which
+they were spoken there was no contempt.
+
+"I see you do not consider me worthy of your friendship.  Be it
+so.  Good-day!"
+
+Zanoni coldly replied to the salutation; and as the Englishman
+rode on, returned to his botanical employment.
+
+The same night, Glyndon went, as usual, to the theatre.  He was
+standing behind the scenes watching Viola, who was on the stage
+in one of her most brilliant parts.  The house resounded with
+applause.  Glyndon was transported with a young man's passion and
+a young man's pride:  "This glorious creature," thought he, "may
+yet be mine."
+
+He felt, while thus wrapped in delicious reverie, a slight touch
+upon his shoulder; he turned, and beheld Zanoni.  "You are in
+danger," said the latter.  "Do not walk home to-night; or if you
+do, go not alone."
+
+Before Glyndon recovered from his surprise, Zanoni disappeared;
+and when the Englishman saw him again, he was in the box of one
+of the Neapolitan nobles, where Glyndon could not follow him.
+
+Viola now left the stage, and Glyndon accosted her with an
+unaccustomed warmth of gallantry.  But Viola, contrary to her
+gentle habit, turned with an evident impatience from the address
+of her lover.  Taking aside Gionetta, who was her constant
+attendant at the theatre, she said, in an earnest whisper,--
+
+"Oh, Gionetta!  He is here again!--the stranger of whom I spoke
+to thee!--and again, he alone, of the whole theatre, withholds
+from me his applause."
+
+"Which is he, my darling?" said the old woman, with fondness in
+her voice.  "He must indeed be dull--not worth a thought."
+
+The actress drew Gionetta nearer to the stage, and pointed out to
+her a man in one of the boxes, conspicuous amongst all else by
+the simplicity of his dress, and the extraordinary beauty of his
+features.
+
+"Not worth a thought, Gionetta!" repeated Viola,--"Not worth a
+thought!  Alas, not to think of him, seems the absence of thought
+itself!"
+
+The prompter summoned the Signora Pisani.  "Find out his name,
+Gionetta," said she, moving slowly to the stage, and passing by
+Glyndon, who gazed at her with a look of sorrowful reproach.
+
+The scene on which the actress now entered was that of the final
+catastrophe, wherein all her remarkable powers of voice and art
+were pre-eminently called forth.  The house hung on every word
+with breathless worship; but the eyes of Viola sought only those
+of one calm and unmoved spectator; she exerted herself as if
+inspired.  Zanoni listened, and observed her with an attentive
+gaze, but no approval escaped his lips; no emotion changed the
+expression of his cold and half-disdainful aspect.  Viola, who
+was in the character of one who loved, but without return, never
+felt so acutely the part she played.  Her tears were truthful;
+her passion that of nature:  it was almost too terrible to
+behold.  She was borne from the stage exhausted and insensible,
+amidst such a tempest of admiring rapture as Continental
+audiences alone can raise.  The crowd stood up, handkerchiefs
+waved, garlands and flowers were thrown on the stage,--men wiped
+their eyes, and women sobbed aloud.
+
+"By heavens!" said a Neapolitan of great rank, "She has fired me
+beyond endurance.  To-night--this very night--she shall be mine!
+You have arranged all, Mascari?"
+
+"All, signor.  And the young Englishman?"
+
+"The presuming barbarian!  As I before told thee, let him bleed
+for his folly.  I will have no rival."
+
+"But an Englishman!  There is always a search after the bodies of
+the English."
+
+"Fool! is not the sea deep enough, or the earth secret enough, to
+hide one dead man?  Our ruffians are silent as the grave itself;
+and I!--who would dare to suspect, to arraign the Prince di --?
+See to it,--this night.  I trust him to you.  Robbers murder him,
+you understand,--the country swarms with them; plunder and strip
+him, the better to favour such report.  Take three men; the rest
+shall be my escort."
+
+Mascari shrugged his shoulders, and bowed submissively.
+
+The streets of Naples were not then so safe as now, and carriages
+were both less expensive and more necessary.  The vehicle which
+was regularly engaged by the young actress was not to be found.
+Gionetta, too aware of the beauty of her mistress and the number
+of her admirers to contemplate without alarm the idea of their
+return on foot, communicated her distress to Glyndon, and he
+besought Viola, who recovered but slowly, to accept his own
+carriage.  Perhaps before that night she would not have rejected
+so slight a service.  Now, for some reason or other, she refused.
+Glyndon, offended, was retiring sullenly, when Gionetta stopped
+him.  "Stay, signor," said she, coaxingly:  "the dear signora is
+not well,--do not be angry with her; I will make her accept your
+offer."
+
+Glyndon stayed, and after a few moments spent in expostulation on
+the part of Gionetta, and resistance on that of Viola, the offer
+was accepted.  Gionetta and her charge entered the carriage, and
+Glyndon was left at the door of the theatre to return home on
+foot.  The mysterious warning of Zanoni then suddenly occurred to
+him; he had forgotten it in the interest of his lover's quarrel
+with Viola.  He thought it now advisable to guard against danger
+foretold by lips so mysterious.  He looked round for some one he
+knew:  the theatre was disgorging its crowds; they hustled, and
+jostled, and pressed upon him; but he recognised no familiar
+countenance.  While pausing irresolute, he heard Mervale's voice
+calling on him, and, to his great relief, discovered his friend
+making his way through the throng.
+
+"I have secured you," said he, "a place in the Count Cetoxa's
+carriage.  Come along, he is waiting for us."
+
+"How kind in you! how did you find me out?"
+
+"I met Zanoni in the passage,--'Your friend is at the door of the
+theatre,' said he; 'do not let him go home on foot to-night; the
+streets of Naples are not always safe.'  I immediately remembered
+that some of the Calabrian bravos had been busy within the city
+the last few weeks, and suddenly meeting Cetoxa--but here he is."
+
+Further explanation was forbidden, for they now joined the count.
+As Glyndon entered the carriage and drew up the glass, he saw
+four men standing apart by the pavement, who seemed to eye him
+with attention.
+
+"Cospetto!" cried one; "that is the Englishman!"  Glyndon
+imperfectly heard the exclamation as the carriage drove on.  He
+reached home in safety.
+
+The familiar and endearing intimacy which always exists in Italy
+between the nurse and the child she has reared, and which the
+"Romeo and Juliet" of Shakespeare in no way exaggerates, could
+not but be drawn yet closer than usual, in a situation so
+friendless as that of the orphan-actress.  In all that concerned
+the weaknesses of the heart, Gionetta had large experience; and
+when, three nights before, Viola, on returning from the theatre,
+had wept bitterly, the nurse had succeeded in extracting from her
+a confession that she had seen one,--not seen for two weary and
+eventful years,--but never forgotten, and who, alas! had not
+evinced the slightest recognition of herself.  Gionetta could not
+comprehend all the vague and innocent emotions that swelled this
+sorrow; but she resolved them all, with her plain, blunt
+understanding, to the one sentiment of love.  And here, she was
+well fitted to sympathise and console.  Confidante to Viola's
+entire and deep heart she never could be,--for that heart never
+could have words for all its secrets.  But such confidence as she
+could obtain, she was ready to repay by the most unreproving pity
+and the most ready service.
+
+"Have you discovered who he is?" asked Viola, as she was now
+alone in the carriage with Gionetta.
+
+"Yes; he is the celebrated Signor Zanoni, about whom all the
+great ladies have gone mad.  They say he is so rich!--oh! so much
+richer than any of the Inglesi!--not but what the Signor
+Glyndon--"
+
+"Cease!" interrupted the young actress.  "Zanoni!  Speak of the
+Englishman no more."
+
+The carriage was now entering that more lonely and remote part of
+the city in which Viola's house was situated, when it suddenly
+stopped.
+
+Gionetta, in alarm, thrust her head out of the window, and
+perceived, by the pale light of the moon, that the driver, torn
+from his seat, was already pinioned in the arms of two men; the
+next moment the door was opened violently, and a tall figure,
+masked and mantled, appeared.
+
+"Fear not, fairest Pisani," said he, gently; "no ill shall befall
+you."  As he spoke, he wound his arm round the form of the fair
+actress, and endeavoured to lift her from the carriage.  But
+Gionetta was no ordinary ally,--she thrust back the assailant
+with a force that astonished him, and followed the shock by a
+volley of the most energetic reprobation.
+
+The mask drew back, and composed his disordered mantle.
+
+"By the body of Bacchus!" said he, half laughing, "she is well
+protected.  Here, Luigi, Giovanni! seize the hag!--quick!--why
+loiter ye?"
+
+The mask retired from the door, and another and yet taller form
+presented itself.  "Be calm, Viola Pisani," said he, in a low
+voice; "with me you are indeed safe!"  He lifted his mask as he
+spoke, and showed the noble features of Zanoni.
+
+"Be calm, be hushed,--I can save you."  He vanished, leaving
+Viola lost in surprise, agitation, and delight.  There were, in
+all, nine masks:  two were engaged with the driver; one stood at
+the head of the carriage-horses; a fourth guarded the
+well-trained steeds of the party; three others (besides Zanoni
+and the one who had first accosted Viola) stood apart by a
+carriage drawn to the side of the road.  To these three Zanoni
+motioned; they advanced; he pointed towards the first mask, who
+was in fact the Prince di --, and to his unspeakable astonishment
+the prince was suddenly seized from behind.
+
+"Treason!" he cried.  "Treason among my own men!  What means
+this?"
+
+"Place him in his carriage!  If he resist, his blood be on his
+own head!" said Zanoni, calmly.
+
+He approached the men who had detained the coachman.
+
+"You are outnumbered and outwitted," said he; "join your lord;
+you are three men,--we six, armed to the teeth.  Thank our mercy
+that we spare your lives.  Go!"
+
+The men gave way, dismayed.  The driver remounted.
+
+"Cut the traces of their carriage and the bridles of their
+horses," said Zanoni, as he entered the vehicle containing Viola,
+which now drove on rapidly, leaving the discomfited ravisher in a
+state of rage and stupor impossible to describe.
+
+"Allow me to explain this mystery to you," said Zanoni.  "I
+discovered the plot against you,--no matter how; I frustrated it
+thus:  The head of this design is a nobleman, who has long
+persecuted you in vain.  He and two of his creatures watched you
+from the entrance of the theatre, having directed six others to
+await him on the spot where you were attacked; myself and five of
+my servants supplied their place, and were mistaken for his own
+followers.  I had previously ridden alone to the spot where the
+men were waiting, and informed them that their master would not
+require their services that night.  They believed me, and
+accordingly dispersed.  I then joined my own band, whom I had
+left in the rear; you know all.  We are at your door."
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.III.
+
+When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
+For all the day they view things unrespected;
+But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
+And, darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
+Shakespeare.
+
+Zanoni followed the young Neapolitan into her house; Gionetta
+vanished,--they were left alone.
+
+Alone, in that room so often filled, in the old happy days, with
+the wild melodies of Pisani; and now, as she saw this mysterious,
+haunting, yet beautiful and stately stranger, standing on the
+very spot where she had sat at her father's feet, thrilled and
+spellbound,--she almost thought, in her fantastic way of
+personifying her own airy notions, that that spiritual Music had
+taken shape and life, and stood before her glorious in the image
+it assumed.  She was unconscious all the while of her own
+loveliness.  She had thrown aside her hood and veil; her hair,
+somewhat disordered, fell over the ivory neck which the dress
+partially displayed; and as her dark eyes swam with grateful
+tears, and her cheek flushed with its late excitement, the god of
+light and music himself never, amidst his Arcadian valleys,
+wooed, in his mortal guise, maiden or nymph more fair.
+
+Zanoni gazed at her with a look in which admiration seemed not
+unmingled with compassion.  He muttered a few words to himself,
+and then addressed her aloud.
+
+"Viola, I have saved you from a great peril; not from dishonour
+only, but perhaps from death.  The Prince di --, under a weak
+despot and a venal administration, is a man above the law.  He is
+capable of every crime; but amongst his passions he has such
+prudence as belongs to ambition; if you were not to reconcile
+yourself to your shame, you would never enter the world again to
+tell your tale.  The ravisher has no heart for repentance, but he
+has a hand that can murder.  I have saved you, Viola.  Perhaps
+you would ask me wherefore?"  Zanoni paused, and smiled
+mournfully, as he added, "You will not wrong me by the thought
+that he who has preserved is not less selfish than he who would
+have injured.  Orphan, I do not speak to you in the language of
+your wooers; enough that I know pity, and am not ungrateful for
+affection.  Why blush, why tremble at the word?  I read your
+heart while I speak, and I see not one thought that should give
+you shame.  I say not that you love me yet; happily, the fancy
+may be roused long before the heart is touched.  But it has been
+my fate to fascinate your eye, to influence your imagination.  It
+is to warn you against what could bring you but sorrow, as I
+warned you once to prepare for sorrow itself, that I am now your
+guest.  The Englishman, Glyndon, loves thee well,--better,
+perhaps, than I can ever love; if not worthy of thee, yet, he has
+but to know thee more to deserve thee better.  He may wed thee,
+he may bear thee to his own free and happy land,--the land of thy
+mother's kin.  Forget me; teach thyself to return and deserve his
+love; and I tell thee that thou wilt be honoured and be happy."
+
+Viola listened with silent, inexpressible emotion, and burning
+blushes, to this strange address, and when he had concluded, she
+covered her face with her hands, and wept.  And yet, much as his
+words were calculated to humble or irritate, to produce
+indignation or excite shame, those were not the feelings with
+which her eyes streamed and her heart swelled.  The woman at that
+moment was lost in the child; and AS a child, with all its
+exacting, craving, yet innocent desire to be loved, weeps in
+unrebuking sadness when its affection is thrown austerely back
+upon itself,--so, without anger and without shame, wept Viola.
+
+Zanoni contemplated her thus, as her graceful head, shadowed by
+its redundant tresses, bent before him; and after a moment's
+pause he drew near to her, and said, in a voice of the most
+soothing sweetness, and with a half smile upon his lip,--
+
+"Do you remember, when I told you to struggle for the light, that
+I pointed for example to the resolute and earnest tree?  I did
+not tell you, fair child, to take example by the moth, that would
+soar to the star, but falls scorched beside the lamp.  Come, I
+will talk to thee.  This Englishman--"
+
+Viola drew herself away, and wept yet more passionately.
+
+"This Englishman is of thine own years, not far above thine own
+rank.  Thou mayst share his thoughts in life,--thou mayst sleep
+beside him in the same grave in death!  And I--but THAT view of
+the future should concern us not.  Look into thy heart, and thou
+wilt see that till again my shadow crossed thy path, there had
+grown up for this thine equal a pure and calm affection that
+would have ripened into love.  Hast thou never pictured to
+thyself a home in which thy partner was thy young wooer?"
+
+"Never!" said Viola, with sudden energy,--"never but to feel that
+such was not the fate ordained me.  And, oh!" she continued,
+rising suddenly, and, putting aside the tresses that veiled her
+face, she fixed her eyes upon the questioner,--"and, oh! whoever
+thou art that thus wouldst read my soul and shape my future, do
+not mistake the sentiment that, that--" she faltered an instant,
+and went on with downcast eyes,--"that has fascinated my thoughts
+to thee.  Do not think that I could nourish a love unsought and
+unreturned.  It is not love that I feel for thee, stranger.  Why
+should I?  Thou hast never spoken to me but to admonish,--and
+now, to wound!"  Again she paused, again her voice faltered; the
+tears trembled on her eyelids; she brushed them away and resumed.
+"No, not love,--if that be love which I have heard and read of,
+and sought to simulate on the stage,--but a more solemn, fearful,
+and, it seems to me, almost preternatural attraction, which makes
+me associate thee, waking or dreaming, with images that at once
+charm and awe.  Thinkest thou, if it were love, that I could
+speak to thee thus; that," she raised her looks suddenly to his,
+"mine eyes could thus search and confront thine own?  Stranger, I
+ask but at times to see, to hear thee!  Stranger, talk not to me
+of others.  Forewarn, rebuke, bruise my heart, reject the not
+unworthy gratitude it offers thee, if thou wilt, but come not
+always to me as an omen of grief and trouble.  Sometimes have I
+seen thee in my dreams surrounded by shapes of glory and light;
+thy looks radiant with a celestial joy which they wear not now.
+Stranger, thou hast saved me, and I thank and bless thee!  Is
+that also a homage thou wouldst reject?"  With these words, she
+crossed her arms meekly on her bosom, and inclined lowlily before
+him.  Nor did her humility seem unwomanly or abject, nor that of
+mistress to lover, of slave to master, but rather of a child to
+its guardian, of a neophyte of the old religion to her priest.
+Zanoni's brow was melancholy and thoughtful.  He looked at her
+with a strange expression of kindness, of sorrow, yet of tender
+affection, in his eyes; but his lips were stern, and his voice
+cold, as he replied,--
+
+"Do you know what you ask, Viola?  Do you guess the danger to
+yourself--perhaps to both of us--which you court?  Do you know
+that my life, separated from the turbulent herd of men, is one
+worship of the Beautiful, from which I seek to banish what the
+Beautiful inspires in most?  As a calamity, I shun what to man
+seems the fairest fate,--the love of the daughters of earth.  At
+present I can warn and save thee from many evils; if I saw more
+of thee, would the power still be mine?  You understand me not.
+What I am about to add, it will be easier to comprehend.  I bid
+thee banish from thy heart all thought of me, but as one whom the
+Future cries aloud to thee to avoid.  Glyndon, if thou acceptest
+his homage, will love thee till the tomb closes upon both.  I,
+too," he added with emotion,--"I, too, might love thee!"
+
+"You!" cried Viola, with the vehemence of a sudden impulse of
+delight, of rapture, which she could not suppress; but the
+instant after, she would have given worlds to recall the
+exclamation.
+
+"Yes, Viola, I might love thee; but in that love what sorrow and
+what change!  The flower gives perfume to the rock on whose heart
+it grows.  A little while, and the flower is dead; but the rock
+still endures,--the snow at its breast, the sunshine on its
+summit.  Pause,--think well.  Danger besets thee yet.  For some
+days thou shalt be safe from thy remorseless persecutor; but the
+hour soon comes when thy only security will be in flight.  If the
+Englishman love thee worthily, thy honour will be dear to him as
+his own; if not, there are yet other lands where love will be
+truer, and virtue less in danger from fraud and force.  Farewell;
+my own destiny I cannot foresee except through cloud and shadow.
+I know, at least, that we shall meet again; but learn ere then,
+sweet flower, that there are more genial resting-places than the
+rock."
+
+He turned as he spoke, and gained the outer door where Gionetta
+discreetly stood.  Zanoni lightly laid his hand on her arm.  With
+the gay accent of a jesting cavalier, he said,--
+
+"The Signor Glyndon woos your mistress; he may wed her.  I know
+your love for her.  Disabuse her of any caprice for me.  I am a
+bird ever on the wing."
+
+He dropped a purse into Gionetta's hand as he spoke, and was
+gone.
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.IV.
+
+Les Intelligences Celestes se font voir, et see communiquent plus
+volontiers, dans le silence et dans la tranquillite de la
+solitude.  On aura donc une petite chambre ou un cabinet secret,
+etc.
+"Les Clavicules de Rabbi Salomon," chapter 3; traduites
+exactement du texte Hebreu par M. Pierre Morissoneau, Professeur
+des Langues Orientales, et Sectateur de la Philosophie des Sages
+Cabalistes.  (Manuscript Translation.)
+
+(The Celestial Intelligences exhibit and explain themselves most
+freely in silence and the tranquillity of solitude.  One will
+have then a little chamber, or a secret cabinet, etc.)
+
+The palace retained by Zanoni was in one of the less frequented
+quarters of the city.  It still stands, now ruined and
+dismantled, a monument of the splendour of a chivalry long since
+vanished from Naples, with the lordly races of the Norman and the
+Spaniard.
+
+As he entered the rooms reserved for his private hours, two
+Indians, in the dress of their country, received him at the
+threshold with the grave salutations of the East.  They had
+accompanied him from the far lands in which, according to rumour,
+he had for many years fixed his home.  But they could communicate
+nothing to gratify curiosity or justify suspicion.  They spoke no
+language but their own.  With the exception of these two his
+princely retinue was composed of the native hirelings of the
+city, whom his lavish but imperious generosity made the implicit
+creatures of his will.  In his house, and in his habits, so far
+as they were seen, there was nothing to account for the rumours
+which were circulated abroad.  He was not, as we are told of
+Albertus Magnus or the great Leonardo da Vinci, served by airy
+forms; and no brazen image, the invention of magic mechanism,
+communicated to him the influences of the stars.  None of the
+apparatus of the alchemist--the crucible and the metals--gave
+solemnity to his chambers, or accounted for his wealth; nor did
+he even seem to interest himself in those serener studies which
+might be supposed to colour his peculiar conversation with
+abstract notions, and often with recondite learning.  No books
+spoke to him in his solitude; and if ever he had drawn from them
+his knowledge, it seemed now that the only page he read was the
+wide one of Nature, and that a capacious and startling memory
+supplied the rest.  Yet was there one exception to what in all
+else seemed customary and commonplace, and which, according to
+the authority we have prefixed to this chapter, might indicate
+the follower of the occult sciences.  Whether at Rome or Naples,
+or, in fact, wherever his abode, he selected one room remote from
+the rest of the house, which was fastened by a lock scarcely
+larger than the seal of a ring, yet which sufficed to baffle the
+most cunning instruments of the locksmith:  at least, one of his
+servants, prompted by irresistible curiosity, had made the
+attempt in vain; and though he had fancied it was tried in the
+most favourable time for secrecy,--not a soul near, in the dead
+of night, Zanoni himself absent from home,--yet his superstition,
+or his conscience, told him the reason why the next day the Major
+Domo quietly dismissed him.  He compensated himself for this
+misfortune by spreading his own story, with a thousand amusing
+exaggerations.  He declared that, as he approached the door,
+invisible hands seemed to pluck him away; and that when he
+touched the lock, he was struck, as by a palsy, to the ground.
+One surgeon, who heard the tale, observed, to the distaste of the
+wonder-mongers, that possibly Zanoni made a dexterous use of
+electricity.  Howbeit, this room, once so secured, was never
+entered save by Zanoni himself.
+
+The solemn voice of Time, from the neighbouring church at last
+aroused the lord of the palace from the deep and motionless
+reverie, rather resembling a trance than thought, in which his
+mind was absorbed.
+
+"It is one more sand out of the mighty hour-glass," said he,
+murmuringly, "and yet time neither adds to, nor steals from, an
+atom in the Infinite!  Soul of mine, the luminous, the Augoeides
+(Augoeides,--a word favoured by the mystical Platonists, sphaira
+psuches augoeides, otan mete ekteinetai epi ti, mete eso
+suntreche mete sunizane, alla photi lampetai, o ten aletheian opa
+ten panton, kai ten en aute.--Marc. Ant., lib. 2.--The sense of
+which beautiful sentence of the old philosophy, which, as Bayle
+well observes, in his article on Cornelius Agrippa, the modern
+Quietists have (however impotently) sought to imitate, is to the
+effect that "the sphere of the soul is luminous when nothing
+external has contact with the soul itself; but when lit by its
+own light, it sees the truth of all things and the truth centred
+in itself."), why descendest thou from thy sphere,--why from the
+eternal, starlike, and passionless Serene, shrinkest thou back to
+the mists of the dark sarcophagus?  How long, too austerely
+taught that companionship with the things that die brings with it
+but sorrow in its sweetness, hast thou dwelt contented with thy
+majestic solitude?"
+
+As he thus murmured, one of the earliest birds that salute the
+dawn broke into sudden song from amidst the orange-trees in the
+garden below his casement; and as suddenly, song answered song;
+the mate, awakened at the note, gave back its happy answer to the
+bird.  He listened; and not the soul he had questioned, but the
+heart replied.  He rose, and with restless strides paced the
+narrow floor.  "Away from this world!" he exclaimed at length,
+with an impatient tone.  "Can no time loosen its fatal ties?  As
+the attraction that holds the earth in space, is the attraction
+that fixes the soul to earth.  Away from the dark grey planet!
+Break, ye fetters:  arise, ye wings!"
+
+He passed through the silent galleries, and up the lofty stairs,
+and entered the secret chamber.
+
+...
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.V.
+
+I and my fellows
+Are ministers of Fate.
+"The Tempest."
+
+The next day Glyndon bent his steps towards Zanoni's palace.  The
+young man's imagination, naturally inflammable, was singularly
+excited by the little he had seen and heard of this strange
+being,--a spell, he could neither master nor account for,
+attracted him towards the stranger.  Zanoni's power seemed
+mysterious and great, his motives kindly and benevolent, yet his
+manners chilling and repellent.  Why at one moment reject
+Glyndon's acquaintance, at another save him from danger?  How had
+Zanoni thus acquired the knowledge of enemies unknown to Glyndon
+himself?  His interest was deeply roused, his gratitude appealed
+to; he resolved to make another effort to conciliate the
+ungracious herbalist.
+
+The signor was at home, and Glyndon was admitted into a lofty
+saloon, where in a few moments Zanoni joined him.
+
+"I am come to thank you for your warning last night," said he,
+"and to entreat you to complete my obligation by informing me of
+the quarter to which I may look for enmity and peril."
+
+"You are a gallant," said Zanoni, with a smile, and in the
+English language, "and do you know so little of the South as not
+to be aware that gallants have always rivals?"
+
+"Are you serious?" said Glyndon, colouring.
+
+"Most serious.  You love Viola Pisani; you have for rival one of
+the most powerful and relentless of the Neapolitan princes.  Your
+danger is indeed great."
+
+"But pardon me!--how came it known to you?"
+
+"I give no account of myself to mortal man," replied Zanoni,
+haughtily; "and to me it matters nothing whether you regard or
+scorn my warning."
+
+"Well, if I may not question you, be it so; but at least advise
+me what to do."
+
+"Would you follow my advice?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because you are constitutionally brave; you are fond of
+excitement and mystery; you like to be the hero of a romance.
+Were I to advise you to leave Naples, would you do so while
+Naples contains a foe to confront or a mistress to pursue?"
+
+"You are right," said the young Englishman, with energy.  "No!
+and you cannot reproach me for such a resolution."
+
+"But there is another course left to you:  do you love Viola
+Pisani truly and fervently?--if so, marry her, and take a bride
+to your native land."
+
+"Nay," answered Glyndon, embarrassed; "Viola is not of my rank.
+Her profession, too, is--in short, I am enslaved by her beauty,
+but I cannot wed her."
+
+Zanoni frowned.
+
+"Your love, then, is but selfish lust, and I advise you to your
+own happiness no more.  Young man, Destiny is less inexorable
+than it appears.  The resources of the great Ruler of the
+Universe are not so scanty and so stern as to deny to men the
+divine privilege of Free Will; all of us can carve out our own
+way, and God can make our very contradictions harmonise with His
+solemn ends.  You have before you an option.  Honourable and
+generous love may even now work out your happiness, and effect
+your escape; a frantic and selfish passion will but lead you to
+misery and doom."
+
+"Do you pretend, then, to read the future?"
+
+"I have said all that it pleases me to utter."
+
+"While you assume the moralist to me, Signor Zanoni," said
+Glyndon, with a smile, "are you yourself so indifferent to youth
+and beauty as to act the stoic to its allurements?"
+
+"If it were necessary that practice square with precept," said
+Zanoni, with a bitter smile, "our monitors would be but few.  The
+conduct of the individual can affect but a small circle beyond
+himself; the permanent good or evil that he works to others lies
+rather in the sentiments he can diffuse.  His acts are limited
+and momentary; his sentiments may pervade the universe, and
+inspire generations till the day of doom.  All our virtues, all
+our laws, are drawn from books and maxims, which ARE sentiments,
+not from deeds.  In conduct, Julian had the virtues of a
+Christian, and Constantine the vices of a Pagan.  The sentiments
+of Julian reconverted thousands to Paganism; those of Constantine
+helped, under Heaven's will, to bow to Christianity the nations
+of the earth.  In conduct, the humblest fisherman on yonder sea,
+who believes in the miracles of San Gennaro, may be a better man
+than Luther; to the sentiments of Luther the mind of modern
+Europe is indebted for the noblest revolution it has known.  Our
+opinions, young Englishman, are the angel part of us; our acts,
+the earthly."
+
+"You have reflected deeply for an Italian," said Glyndon.
+
+"Who told you that I was an Italian?"
+
+"Are you not?  And yet, when I hear you speak my own language as
+a native, I--"
+
+"Tush!" interrupted Zanoni, impatiently turning away.  Then,
+after a pause, he resumed in a mild voice, "Glyndon, do you
+renounce Viola Pisani?  Will you take some days to consider what
+I have said?"
+
+"Renounce her,--never!"
+
+"Then you will marry her?"
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"Be it so; she will then renounce you.  I tell you that you have
+rivals."
+
+"Yes; the Prince di --; but I do not fear him."
+
+"You have another whom you will fear more."
+
+"And who is he?"
+
+"Myself."
+
+Glyndon turned pale, and started from his seat.
+
+"You, Signor Zanoni!--you,--and you dare to tell me so?"
+
+"Dare!  Alas! there are times when I wish that I could fear."
+
+These arrogant words were not uttered arrogantly, but in a tone
+of the most mournful dejection.  Glyndon was enraged, confounded,
+and yet awed.  However, he had a brave English heart within his
+breast, and he recovered himself quickly.
+
+"Signor," said he, calmly, "I am not to be duped by these solemn
+phrases and these mystical assumptions.  You may have powers
+which I cannot comprehend or emulate, or you may be but a keen
+imposter."
+
+"Well, proceed!"
+
+"I mean, then," continued Glyndon, resolutely, though somewhat
+disconcerted,--"I mean you to understand, that, though I am not
+to be persuaded or compelled by a stranger to marry Viola Pisani,
+I am not the less determined never tamely to yield her to
+another."
+
+Zanoni looked gravely at the young man, whose sparkling eyes and
+heightened colour testified the spirit to support his words, and
+replied, "So bold! well; it becomes you.  But take my advice;
+wait yet nine days, and tell me then if you will marry the
+fairest and the purest creature that ever crossed your path."
+
+"But if you love her, why--why--"
+
+"Why am I anxious that she should wed another?--to save her from
+myself!  Listen to me.  That girl, humble and uneducated though
+she be, has in her the seeds of the most lofty qualities and
+virtues.  She can be all to the man she loves,--all that man can
+desire in wife.  Her soul, developed by affection, will elevate
+your own; it will influence your fortunes, exalt your destiny;
+you will become a great and a prosperous man.  If, on the
+contrary, she fall to me, I know not what may be her lot; but I
+know that there is an ordeal which few can pass, and which
+hitherto no woman has survived."
+
+As Zanoni spoke, his face became colourless, and there was
+something in his voice that froze the warm blood of the listener.
+
+"What is this mystery which surrounds you?" exclaimed Glyndon,
+unable to repress his emotion.  "Are you, in truth, different
+from other men?  Have you passed the boundary of lawful
+knowledge?  Are you, as some declare, a sorcerer, or only a--"
+
+"Hush!" interrupted Zanoni, gently, and with a smile of singular
+but melancholy sweetness; "have you earned the right to ask me
+these questions?  Though Italy still boast an Inquisition, its
+power is rivelled as a leaf which the first wind shall scatter.
+The days of torture and persecution are over; and a man may live
+as he pleases, and talk as it suits him, without fear of the
+stake and the rack.  Since I can defy persecution, pardon me if I
+do not yield to curiosity."
+
+Glyndon blushed, and rose.  In spite of his love for Viola, and
+his natural terror of such a rival, he felt himself irresistibly
+drawn towards the very man he had most cause to suspect and
+dread.  He held out his hand to Zanoni, saying, "Well, then, if
+we are to be rivals, our swords must settle our rights; till then
+I would fain be friends."
+
+"Friends!  You know not what you ask."
+
+"Enigmas again!"
+
+"Enigmas!" cried Zanoni, passionately; "ay! can you dare to solve
+them?  Not till then could I give you my right hand, and call you
+friend."
+
+"I could dare everything and all things for the attainment of
+superhuman wisdom," said Glyndon, and his countenance was lighted
+up with wild and intense enthusiasm.
+
+Zanoni observed him in thoughtful silence.
+
+"The seeds of the ancestor live in the son," he muttered; "he
+may--yet--"  He broke off abruptly; then, speaking aloud, "Go,
+Glyndon," said he; "we shall meet again, but I will not ask your
+answer till the hour presses for decision."
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.VI.
+
+'Tis certain that this man has an estate of fifty thousand
+livres, and seems to be a person of very great accomplishments.
+But, then, if he's a wizard, are wizards so devoutly given as
+this man seems to be?  In short, I could make neither head nor
+tail on't--The Count de Gabalis, Translation affixed to the
+second edition of the "Rape of the Lock."
+
+Of all the weaknesses which little men rail against, there is
+none that they are more apt to ridicule than the tendency to
+believe.  And of all the signs of a corrupt heart and a feeble
+head, the tendency of incredulity is the surest.
+
+Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny.  While we
+hear, every day, the small pretenders to science talk of the
+absurdities of alchemy and the dream of the Philosopher's Stone,
+a more erudite knowledge is aware that by alchemists the greatest
+discoveries in science have been made, and much which still seems
+abstruse, had we the key to the mystic phraseology they were
+compelled to adopt, might open the way to yet more noble
+acquisitions.  The Philosopher's Stone itself has seemed no
+visionary chimera to some of the soundest chemists that even the
+present century has produced.  (Mr. Disraeli, in his "Curiosities
+of Literature" (article "Alchem"), after quoting the sanguine
+judgments of modern chemists as to the transmutation of metals,
+observes of one yet greater and more recent than those to which
+Glyndon's thoughts could have referred, "Sir Humphry Davy told me
+that he did not consider this undiscovered art as impossible; but
+should it ever be discovered, it would certainly be useless.")
+Man cannot contradict the Laws of Nature.  But are all the laws
+of Nature yet discovered?
+
+"Give me a proof of your art," says the rational inquirer.  "When
+I have seen the effect, I will endeavour, with you, to ascertain
+the causes."
+
+Somewhat to the above effect were the first thoughts of Clarence
+Glyndon on quitting Zanoni.  But Clarence Glyndon was no
+"rational inquirer."  The more vague and mysterious the language
+of Zanoni, the more it imposed upon him.  A proof would have been
+something tangible, with which he would have sought to grapple.
+And it would have only disappointed his curiosity to find the
+supernatural reduced to Nature.  He endeavoured in vain, at some
+moments rousing himself from credulity to the scepticism he
+deprecated, to reconcile what he had heard with the probable
+motives and designs of an imposter.  Unlike Mesmer and
+Cagliostro, Zanoni, whatever his pretensions, did not make them a
+source of profit; nor was Glyndon's position or rank in life
+sufficient to render any influence obtained over his mind,
+subservient to schemes, whether of avarice or ambition.  Yet,
+ever and anon, with the suspicion of worldly knowledge, he strove
+to persuade himself that Zanoni had at least some sinister object
+in inducing him to what his English pride and manner of thought
+considered a derogatory marriage with the poor actress.  Might
+not Viola and the Mystic be in league with each other?  Might not
+all this jargon of prophecy and menace be but artifices to dupe
+him?
+
+He felt an unjust resentment towards Viola at having secured such
+an ally.  But with that resentment was mingled a natural
+jealousy.  Zanoni threatened him with rivalry.  Zanoni, who,
+whatever his character or his arts, possessed at least all the
+external attributes that dazzle and command.  Impatient of his
+own doubts, he plunged into the society of such acquaintances as
+he had made at Naples--chiefly artists, like himself, men of
+letters, and the rich commercialists, who were already vying with
+the splendour, though debarred from the privileges, of the
+nobles.  From these he heard much of Zanoni, already with them,
+as with the idler classes, an object of curiosity and
+speculation.
+
+He had noticed, as a thing remarkable, that Zanoni had conversed
+with him in English, and with a command of the language so
+complete that he might have passed for a native.  On the other
+hand, in Italian, Zanoni was equally at ease.  Glyndon found that
+it was the same in languages less usually learned by foreigners.
+A painter from Sweden, who had conversed with him, was positive
+that he was a Swede; and a merchant from Constantinople, who had
+sold some of his goods to Zanoni, professed his conviction that
+none but a Turk, or at least a native of the East, could have so
+thoroughly mastered the soft Oriental intonations.  Yet in all
+these languages, when they came to compare their several
+recollections, there was a slight, scarce perceptible
+distinction, not in pronunciation, nor even accent, but in the
+key and chime, as it were, of the voice, between himself and a
+native.  This faculty was one which Glyndon called to mind, that
+sect, whose tenets and powers have never been more than most
+partially explored, the Rosicrucians, especially arrogated.  He
+remembered to have heard in Germany of the work of John Bringeret
+(Printed in 1615.), asserting that all the languages of the earth
+were known to the genuine Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross.  Did
+Zanoni belong to this mystical Fraternity, who, in an earlier
+age, boasted of secrets of which the Philosopher's Stone was but
+the least; who considered themselves the heirs of all that the
+Chaldeans, the Magi, the Gymnosophists, and the Platonists had
+taught; and who differed from all the darker Sons of Magic in the
+virtue of their lives, the purity of their doctrines, and their
+insisting, as the foundation of all wisdom, on the subjugation of
+the senses, and the intensity of Religious Faith?--a glorious
+sect, if they lied not!  And, in truth, if Zanoni had powers
+beyond the race of worldly sages, they seemed not unworthily
+exercised.  The little known of his life was in his favour.  Some
+acts, not of indiscriminate, but judicious generosity and
+beneficence, were recorded; in repeating which, still, however,
+the narrators shook their heads, and expressed surprise how a
+stranger should have possessed so minute a knowledge of the quiet
+and obscure distresses he had relieved.  Two or three sick
+persons, when abandoned by their physicians, he had visited, and
+conferred with alone.  They had recovered:  they ascribed to him
+their recovery; yet they could not tell by what medicines they
+had been healed.  They could only depose that he came, conversed
+with them, and they were cured; it usually, however, happened
+that a deep sleep had preceded the recovery.
+
+Another circumstance was also beginning to be remarked, and spoke
+yet more in his commendation.  Those with whom he principally
+associated--the gay, the dissipated, the thoughtless, the sinners
+and publicans of the more polished world--all appeared rapidly,
+yet insensibly to themselves, to awaken to purer thoughts and
+more regulated lives.  Even Cetoxa, the prince of gallants,
+duellists, and gamesters, was no longer the same man since the
+night of the singular events which he had related to Glyndon.
+The first trace of his reform was in his retirement from the
+gaming-houses; the next was his reconciliation with an hereditary
+enemy of his house, whom it had been his constant object for the
+last six years to entangle in such a quarrel as might call forth
+his inimitable manoeuvre of the stoccata.  Nor when Cetoxa and
+his young companions were heard to speak of Zanoni, did it seem
+that this change had been brought about by any sober lectures or
+admonitions.  They all described Zanoni as a man keenly alive to
+enjoyment:  of manners the reverse of formal,--not precisely gay,
+but equable, serene, and cheerful; ever ready to listen to the
+talk of others, however idle, or to charm all ears with an
+inexhaustible fund of brilliant anecdote and worldly experience.
+All manners, all nations, all grades of men, seemed familiar to
+him.  He was reserved only if allusion were ever ventured to his
+birth or history.
+
+The more general opinion of his origin certainly seemed the more
+plausible.  His riches, his familiarity with the languages of the
+East, his residence in India, a certain gravity which never
+deserted his most cheerful and familiar hours, the lustrous
+darkness of his eyes and hair, and even the peculiarities of his
+shape, in the delicate smallness of the hands, and the Arab-like
+turn of the stately head, appeared to fix him as belonging to one
+at least of the Oriental races.  And a dabbler in the Eastern
+tongues even sought to reduce the simple name of Zanoni, which a
+century before had been borne by an inoffensive naturalist of
+Bologna (The author of two works on botany and rare plants.), to
+the radicals of the extinct language.  Zan was unquestionably the
+Chaldean appellation for the sun.  Even the Greeks, who mutilated
+every Oriental name, had retained the right one in this case, as
+the Cretan inscription on the tomb of Zeus (Ode megas keitai
+Zan.--"Cyril contra Julian."  (Here lies great Jove.))
+significantly showed.  As to the rest, the Zan, or Zaun, was,
+with the Sidonians, no uncommon prefix to On.  Adonis was but
+another name for Zanonas, whose worship in Sidon Hesychius
+records.  To this profound and unanswerable derivation Mervale
+listened with great attention, and observed that he now ventured
+to announce an erudite discovery he himself had long since made,-
+-namely, that the numerous family of Smiths in England were
+undoubtedly the ancient priests of the Phrygian Apollo.  "For,"
+said he, "was not Apollo's surname, in Phrygia, Smintheus?  How
+clear all the ensuing corruptions of the august name,--Smintheus,
+Smitheus, Smithe, Smith!  And even now, I may remark that the
+more ancient branches of that illustrious family, unconsciously
+anxious to approximate at least by a letter nearer to the true
+title, take a pious pleasure in writing their names Smith_e_!"
+
+The philologist was much struck with this discovery, and begged
+Mervale's permission to note it down as an illustration suitable
+to a work he was about to publish on the origin of languages, to
+be called "Babel," and published in three quartos by
+subscription.
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.VII.
+
+Learn to be poor in spirit, my son, if you would penetrate that
+sacred night which environs truth.  Learn of the Sages to allow
+to the Devils no power in Nature, since the fatal stone has shut
+'em up in the depth of the abyss.  Learn of the Philosophers
+always to look for natural causes in all extraordinary events;
+and when such natural causes are wanting, recur to God.--The
+Count de Gabalis.
+
+All these additions to his knowledge of Zanoni, picked up in the
+various lounging-places and resorts that he frequented, were
+unsatisfactory to Glyndon.  That night Viola did not perform at
+the theatre; and the next day, still disturbed by bewildered
+fancies, and averse to the sober and sarcastic companionship of
+Mervale, Glyndon sauntered musingly into the public gardens, and
+paused under the very tree under which he had first heard the
+voice that had exercised upon his mind so singular an influence.
+The gardens were deserted.  He threw himself on one of the seats
+placed beneath the shade; and again, in the midst of his reverie,
+the same cold shudder came over him which Zanoni had so
+distinctly defined, and to which he had ascribed so extraordinary
+a cause.
+
+He roused himself with a sudden effort, and started to see,
+seated next him, a figure hideous enough to have personated one
+of the malignant beings of whom Zanoni had spoken.  It was a
+small man, dressed in a fashion strikingly at variance with the
+elaborate costume of the day:  an affectation of homeliness and
+poverty approaching to squalor, in the loose trousers, coarse as
+a ship's sail; in the rough jacket, which appeared rent wilfully
+into holes; and the black, ragged, tangled locks that streamed
+from their confinement under a woollen cap, accorded but ill with
+other details which spoke of comparative wealth.  The shirt, open
+at the throat, was fastened by a brooch of gaudy stones; and two
+pendent massive gold chains announced the foppery of two watches.
+
+The man's figure, if not absolutely deformed, was yet
+marvellously ill-favoured; his shoulders high and square; his
+chest flattened, as if crushed in; his gloveless hands were
+knotted at the joints, and, large, bony, and muscular, dangled
+from lean, emaciated wrists, as if not belonging to them.  His
+features had the painful distortion sometimes seen in the
+countenance of a cripple,--large, exaggerated, with the nose
+nearly touching the chin; the eyes small, but glowing with a
+cunning fire as they dwelt on Glyndon; and the mouth was twisted
+into a grin that displayed rows of jagged, black, broken teeth.
+Yet over this frightful face there still played a kind of
+disagreeable intelligence, an expression at once astute and bold;
+and as Glyndon, recovering from the first impression, looked
+again at his neighbour, he blushed at his own dismay, and
+recognised a French artist, with whom he had formed an
+acquaintance, and who was possessed of no inconsiderable talents
+in his calling.
+
+Indeed, it was to be remarked that this creature, whose externals
+were so deserted by the Graces, particularly delighted in designs
+aspiring to majesty and grandeur.  Though his colouring was hard
+and shallow, as was that generally of the French school at the
+time, his DRAWINGS were admirable for symmetry, simple elegance,
+and classic vigour; at the same time they unquestionably wanted
+ideal grace.  He was fond of selecting subjects from Roman
+history, rather than from the copious world of Grecian beauty, or
+those still more sublime stories of scriptural record from which
+Raphael and Michael Angelo borrowed their inspirations.  His
+grandeur was that not of gods and saints, but mortals.  His
+delineation of beauty was that which the eye cannot blame and the
+soul does not acknowledge.  In a word, as it was said of
+Dionysius, he was an Anthropographos, or Painter of Men.  It was
+also a notable contradiction in this person, who was addicted to
+the most extravagant excesses in every passion, whether of hate
+or love, implacable in revenge, and insatiable in debauch, that
+he was in the habit of uttering the most beautiful sentiments of
+exalted purity and genial philanthropy.  The world was not good
+enough for him; he was, to use the expressive German phrase, A
+WORLD-BETTERER!  Nevertheless, his sarcastic lip often seemed to
+mock the sentiments he uttered, as if it sought to insinuate that
+he was above even the world he would construct.
+
+Finally, this painter was in close correspondence with the
+Republicans of Paris, and was held to be one of those
+missionaries whom, from the earliest period of the Revolution,
+the regenerators of mankind were pleased to despatch to the
+various states yet shackled, whether by actual tyranny or
+wholesome laws.  Certainly, as the historian of Italy (Botta.)
+has observed, there was no city in Italy where these new
+doctrines would be received with greater favour than Naples,
+partly from the lively temper of the people, principally because
+the most hateful feudal privileges, however partially curtailed
+some years before by the great minister, Tanuccini, still
+presented so many daily and practical evils as to make change
+wear a more substantial charm than the mere and meretricious
+bloom on the cheek of the harlot, Novelty.  This man, whom I will
+call Jean Nicot, was, therefore, an oracle among the younger and
+bolder spirits of Naples; and before Glyndon had met Zanoni, the
+former had not been among the least dazzled by the eloquent
+aspirations of the hideous philanthropist.
+
+"It is so long since we have met, cher confrere," said Nicot,
+drawing his seat nearer to Glyndon's, "that you cannot be
+surprised that I see you with delight, and even take the liberty
+to intrude on your meditations.
+
+"They were of no agreeable nature," said Glyndon; "and never was
+intrusion more welcome."
+
+"You will be charmed to hear," said Nicot, drawing several
+letters from his bosom, "that the good work proceeds with
+marvellous rapidity.  Mirabeau, indeed, is no more; but, mort
+Diable! the French people are now a Mirabeau themselves."  With
+this remark, Monsieur Nicot proceeded to read and to comment upon
+several animated and interesting passages in his correspondence,
+in which the word virtue was introduced twenty-seven times, and
+God not once.  And then, warmed by the cheering prospects thus
+opened to him, he began to indulge in those anticipations of the
+future, the outline of which we have already seen in the eloquent
+extravagance of Condorcet.  All the old virtues were dethroned
+for a new Pantheon:  patriotism was a narrow sentiment;
+philanthropy was to be its successor.  No love that did not
+embrace all mankind, as warm for Indus and the Pole as for the
+hearth of home, was worthy the breast of a generous man.  Opinion
+was to be free as air; and in order to make it so, it was
+necessary to exterminate all those whose opinions were not the
+same as Mons. Jean Nicot's.  Much of this amused, much revolted
+Glyndon; but when the painter turned to dwell upon a science that
+all should comprehend, and the results of which all should
+enjoy,--a science that, springing from the soil of equal
+institutions and equal mental cultivation, should give to all the
+races of men wealth without labour, and a life longer than the
+Patriarchs', without care,--then Glyndon listened with interest
+and admiration, not unmixed with awe.  "Observe," said Nicot,
+"how much that we now cherish as a virtue will then be rejected
+as meanness.  Our oppressors, for instance, preach to us of the
+excellence of gratitude.  Gratitude, the confession of
+inferiority!  What so hateful to a noble spirit as the
+humiliating sense of obligation?  But where there is equality
+there can be no means for power thus to enslave merit.  The
+benefactor and the client will alike cease, and--"
+
+"And in the mean time," said a low voice, at hand,--"in the mean
+time, Jean Nicot?"
+
+The two artists started, and Glyndon recognised Zanoni.
+
+He gazed with a brow of unusual sternness on Nicot, who, lumped
+together as he sat, looked up at him askew, and with an
+expression of fear and dismay upon his distorted countenance.
+
+Ho, ho!  Messire Jean Nicot, thou who fearest neither God nor
+Devil, why fearest thou the eye of a man?
+
+"It is not the first time I have been a witness to your opinions
+on the infirmity of gratitude," said Zanoni.
+
+Nicot suppressed an exclamation, and, after gloomily surveying
+Zanoni with an eye villanous and sinister, but full of hate
+impotent and unutterable, said, "I know you not,--what would you
+of me?"
+
+"Your absence.  Leave us!"
+
+Nicot sprang forward a step, with hands clenched, and showing his
+teeth from ear to ear, like a wild beast incensed.  Zanoni stood
+motionless, and smiled at him in scorn.  Nicot halted abruptly,
+as if fixed and fascinated by the look, shivered from head to
+foot, and sullenly, and with a visible effort, as if impelled by
+a power not his own, turned away.
+
+Glyndon's eyes followed him in surprise.
+
+"And what know you of this man?" said Zanoni.
+
+"I know him as one like myself,--a follower of art."
+
+"Of ART!  Do not so profane that glorious word.  What Nature is
+to God, art should be to man,--a sublime, beneficent, genial, and
+warm creation.  That wretch may be a PAINTER, not an ARTIST."
+
+"And pardon me if I ask what YOU know of one you thus disparage?"
+
+"I know thus much, that you are beneath my care if it be
+necessary to warn you against him; his own lips show the
+hideousness of his heart.  Why should I tell you of the crimes he
+has committed?  He SPEAKS crime!"
+
+"You do not seem, Signor Zanoni, to be one of the admirers of the
+dawning Revolution.  Perhaps you are prejudiced against the man
+because you dislike the opinions?"
+
+"What opinions?"
+
+Glyndon paused, somewhat puzzled to define; but at length he
+said, "Nay, I must wrong you; for you, of all men, I suppose,
+cannot discredit the doctrine that preaches the infinite
+improvement of the human species."
+
+"You are right; the few in every age improve the many; the many
+now may be as wise as the few were; but improvement is at a
+standstill, if you tell me that the many now are as wise as the
+few ARE."
+
+"I comprehend you; you will not allow the law of universal
+equality!"
+
+"Law!  If the whole world conspired to enforce the falsehood they
+could not make it LAW.  Level all conditions to-day, and you only
+smooth away all obstacles to tyranny to-morrow.  A nation that
+aspires to EQUALITY is unfit for FREEDOM.  Throughout all
+creation, from the archangel to the worm, from Olympus to the
+pebble, from the radiant and completed planet to the nebula that
+hardens through ages of mist and slime into the habitable world,
+the first law of Nature is inequality."
+
+"Harsh doctrine, if applied to states.  Are the cruel disparities
+of life never to be removed?"
+
+"Disparities of the PHYSICAL life?  Oh, let us hope so.  But
+disparities of the INTELLECTUAL and the MORAL, never!  Universal
+equality of intelligence, of mind, of genius, of virtue!--no
+teacher left to the world! no men wiser, better than others,--
+were it not an impossible condition, WHAT A HOPELESS PROSPECT FOR
+HUMANITY!  No, while the world lasts, the sun will gild the
+mountain-top before it shines upon the plain.  Diffuse all the
+knowledge the earth contains equally over all mankind to-day, and
+some men will be wiser than the rest to-morrow.  And THIS is not
+a harsh, but a loving law,--the REAL law of improvement; the
+wiser the few in one generation, the wiser will be the multitude
+the next!"
+
+As Zanoni thus spoke, they moved on through the smiling gardens,
+and the beautiful bay lay sparkling in the noontide.  A gentle
+breeze just cooled the sunbeam, and stirred the ocean; and in the
+inexpressible clearness of the atmosphere there was something
+that rejoiced the senses.  The very soul seemed to grow lighter
+and purer in that lucid air.
+
+"And these men, to commence their era of improvement and
+equality, are jealous even of the Creator.  They would deny an
+intelligence,--a God!" said Zanoni, as if involuntarily.  "Are
+you an artist, and, looking on the world, can you listen to such
+a dogma?  Between God and genius there is a necessary link,--
+there is almost a correspondent language.  Well said the
+Pythagorean (Sextus, the Pythagorean.), 'A good intellect is the
+chorus of divinity.'"
+
+Struck and touched with these sentiments, which he little
+expected to fall from one to whom he ascribed those powers which
+the superstitions of childhood ascribe to the darker agencies,
+Glyndon said:  "And yet you have confessed that your life,
+separated from that of others, is one that man should dread to
+share.  Is there, then, a connection between magic and religion?"
+
+"Magic!  And what is magic!  When the traveller beholds in Persia
+the ruins of palaces and temples, the ignorant inhabitants inform
+him they were the work of magicians.  What is beyond their own
+power, the vulgar cannot comprehend to be lawfully in the power
+of others.  But if by magic you mean a perpetual research amongst
+all that is more latent and obscure in Nature, I answer, I
+profess that magic, and that he who does so comes but nearer to
+the fountain of all belief.  Knowest thou not that magic was
+taught in the schools of old?  But how, and by whom?  As the last
+and most solemn lesson, by the Priests who ministered to the
+Temple.  (Psellus de Daemon (MS.))  And you, who would be a
+painter, is not there a magic also in that art you would advance?
+Must you not, after long study of the Beautiful that has been,
+seize upon new and airy combinations of a beauty that is to be?
+See you not that the grander art, whether of poet or of painter,
+ever seeking for the TRUE, abhors the REAL; that you must seize
+Nature as her master, not lackey her as her slave?
+
+You demand mastery over the past, a conception of the future.
+Has not the art that is truly noble for its domain the future and
+the past?  You would conjure the invisible beings to your charm;
+and what is painting but the fixing into substance the Invisible?
+Are you discontented with this world?  This world was never meant
+for genius!  To exist, it must create another.  What magician can
+do more; nay, what science can do as much?  There are two avenues
+from the little passions and the drear calamities of earth; both
+lead to heaven and away from hell,--art and science.  But art is
+more godlike than science; science discovers, art creates.  You
+have faculties that may command art; be contented with your lot.
+The astronomer who catalogues the stars cannot add one atom to
+the universe; the poet can call a universe from the atom; the
+chemist may heal with his drugs the infirmities of the human
+form; the painter, or the sculptor, fixes into everlasting youth
+forms divine, which no disease can ravage, and no years impair.
+Renounce those wandering fancies that lead you now to myself, and
+now to yon orator of the human race; to us two, who are the
+antipodes of each other!  Your pencil is your wand; your canvas
+may raise Utopias fairer than Condorcet dreams of.  I press not
+yet for your decision; but what man of genius ever asked more to
+cheer his path to the grave than love and glory?"
+
+"But," said Glyndon, fixing his eyes earnestly on Zanoni, "if
+there be a power to baffle the grave itself--"
+
+Zanoni's brow darkened.  "And were this so," he said, after a
+pause, "would it be so sweet a lot to outlive all you loved, and
+to recoil from every human tie?  Perhaps the fairest immortality
+on earth is that of a noble name."
+
+"You do not answer me,--you equivocate.  I have read of the long
+lives far beyond the date common experience assigns to man,"
+persisted Glyndon, "which some of the alchemists enjoyed.  Is the
+golden elixir but a fable?"
+
+"If not, and these men discovered it, they died, because they
+refused to live!  There may be a mournful warning in your
+conjecture.  Turn once more to the easel and the canvas!"
+
+So saying, Zanoni waved his hand, and, with downcast eyes and a
+slow step, bent his way back into the city.
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.VIII.
+
+The Goddess Wisdom.
+
+To some she is the goddess great;
+To some the milch cow of the field;
+Their care is but to calculate
+What butter she will yield.
+From Schiller.
+
+This last conversation with Zanoni left upon the mind of Glyndon
+a tranquillising and salutary effect.
+
+From the confused mists of his fancy glittered forth again those
+happy, golden schemes which part from the young ambition of art,
+to play in the air, to illumine the space like rays that kindle
+from the sun.  And with these projects mingled also the vision of
+a love purer and serener than his life yet had known.  His mind
+went back into that fair childhood of genius, when the forbidden
+fruit is not yet tasted, and we know of no land beyond the Eden
+which is gladdened by an Eve.  Insensibly before him there rose
+the scenes of a home, with his art sufficing for all excitement,
+and Viola's love circling occupation with happiness and content;
+and in the midst of these fantasies of a future that might be at
+his command, he was recalled to the present by the clear, strong
+voice of Mervale, the man of common-sense.
+
+Whoever has studied the lives of persons in whom the imagination
+is stronger than the will, who suspect their own knowledge of
+actual life, and are aware of their facility to impressions, will
+have observed the influence which a homely, vigorous, worldly
+understanding obtains over such natures.  It was thus with
+Glyndon.  His friend had often extricated him from danger, and
+saved him from the consequences of imprudence; and there was
+something in Mervale's voice alone that damped his enthusiasm,
+and often made him yet more ashamed of noble impulses than weak
+conduct.  For Mervale, though a downright honest man, could not
+sympathise with the extravagance of generosity any more than with
+that of presumption and credulity.  He walked the straight line
+of life, and felt an equal contempt for the man who wandered up
+the hill-sides, no matter whether to chase a butterfly, or to
+catch a prospect of the ocean.
+
+"I will tell you your thoughts, Clarence," said Mervale,
+laughing, "though I am no Zanoni.  I know them by the moisture of
+your eyes, and the half-smile on your lips.  You are musing upon
+that fair perdition,--the little singer of San Carlo."
+
+The little singer of San Carlo!  Glyndon coloured as he
+answered,--
+
+"Would you speak thus of her if she were my wife?"
+
+"No! for then any contempt I might venture to feel would be for
+yourself.  One may dislike the duper, but it is the dupe that one
+despises."
+
+"Are you sure that I should be the dupe in such a union?  Where
+can I find one so lovely and so innocent,--where one whose virtue
+has been tried by such temptation?  Does even a single breath of
+slander sully the name of Viola Pisani?"
+
+"I know not all the gossip of Naples, and therefore cannot
+answer; but I know this, that in England no one would believe
+that a young Englishman, of good fortune and respectable birth,
+who marries a singer from the theatre of Naples, has not been
+lamentably taken in.  I would save you from a fall of position so
+irretrievable.  Think how many mortifications you will be
+subjected to; how many young men will visit at your house,--and
+how many young wives will as carefully avoid it."
+
+"I can choose my own career, to which commonplace society is not
+essential.  I can owe the respect of the world to my art, and not
+to the accidents of birth and fortune."
+
+"That is, you still persist in your second folly,--the absurd
+ambition of daubing canvas.  Heaven forbid I should say anything
+against the laudable industry of one who follows such a
+profession for the sake of subsistence; but with means and
+connections that will raise you in life, why voluntarily sink
+into a mere artist?  As an accomplishment in leisure moments, it
+is all very well in its way; but as the occupation of existence,
+it is a frenzy."
+
+"Artists have been the friends of princes."
+
+"Very rarely so, I fancy, in sober England.  There in the great
+centre of political aristocracy, what men respect is the
+practical, not the ideal.  Just suffer me to draw two pictures of
+my own.  Clarence Glyndon returns to England; he marries a lady
+of fortune equal to his own, of friends and parentage that
+advance rational ambition.  Clarence Glyndon, thus a wealthy and
+respectable man, of good talents, of bustling energies then
+concentrated, enters into practical life.  He has a house at
+which he can receive those whose acquaintance is both advantage
+and honour; he has leisure which he can devote to useful studies;
+his reputation, built on a solid base, grows in men's mouths.  He
+attaches himself to a party; he enters political life; and new
+connections serve to promote his objects.  At the age of
+five-and-forty, what, in all probability, may Clarence Glyndon
+be?  Since you are ambitious I leave that question for you to
+decide!  Now turn to the other picture.  Clarence Glyndon returns
+to England with a wife who can bring him no money, unless he lets
+her out on the stage; so handsome, that every one asks who she
+is, and every one hears,--the celebrated singer, Pisani.
+Clarence Glyndon shuts himself up to grind colours and paint
+pictures in the grand historical school, which nobody buys.
+There is even a prejudice against him, as not having studied in
+the Academy,--as being an amateur.  Who is Mr. Clarence Glyndon?
+Oh, the celebrated Pisani's husband!  What else?  Oh, he exhibits
+those large pictures!  Poor man! they have merit in their way;
+but Teniers and Watteau are more convenient, and almost as cheap.
+Clarence Glyndon, with an easy fortune while single, has a large
+family which his fortune, unaided by marriage, can just rear up
+to callings more plebeian than his own.  He retires into the
+country, to save and to paint; he grows slovenly and
+discontented; 'the world does not appreciate him,' he says, and
+he runs away from the world.  At the age of forty-five what will
+be Clarence Glyndon?  Your ambition shall decide that question
+also!"
+
+"If all men were as worldly as you," said Glyndon, rising, "there
+would never have been an artist or a poet!"
+
+"Perhaps we should do just as well without them," answered
+Mervale.  "Is it not time to think of dinner?  The mullets here
+are remarkably fine!"
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.IX.
+
+Wollt ihr hoch auf ihren Flugeln schweben,
+Werft die Angst des Irdischen von euch!
+Fliehet aus dem engen dumpfen Leben
+In des Ideales Reich!
+"Das Ideal und das Leben."
+
+Wouldst thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing?
+Cast off the earthly burden of the Real;
+High from this cramped and dungeoned being, spring
+Into the realm of the Ideal.
+
+As some injudicious master lowers and vitiates the taste of the
+student by fixing his attention to what he falsely calls the
+Natural, but which, in reality, is the Commonplace, and
+understands not that beauty in art is created by what Raphael so
+well describes,--namely, THE IDEA OF BEAUTY IN THE PAINTER'S OWN
+MIND; and that in every art, whether its plastic expression be
+found in words or marble, colours or sounds, the servile
+imitation of Nature is the work of journeymen and tyros,--so in
+conduct the man of the world vitiates and lowers the bold
+enthusiasm of loftier natures by the perpetual reduction of
+whatever is generous and trustful to all that is trite and
+coarse.  A great German poet has well defined the distinction
+between discretion and the larger wisdom.  In the last there is a
+certain rashness which the first disdains,--
+
+"The purblind see but the receding shore,
+Not that to which the bold wave wafts them o'er."
+
+Yet in this logic of the prudent and the worldly there is often a
+reasoning unanswerable of its kind.
+
+You must have a feeling,--a faith in whatever is self-sacrificing
+and divine, whether in religion or in art, in glory or in love;
+or Common-sense will reason you out of the sacrifice, and a
+syllogism will debase the Divine to an article in the market.
+
+Every true critic in art, from Aristotle and Pliny, from
+Winkelman and Vasari to Reynolds and Fuseli, has sought to
+instruct the painter that Nature is not to be copied, but
+EXALTED; that the loftiest order of art, selecting only the
+loftiest combinations, is the perpetual struggle of Humanity to
+approach the gods.  The great painter, as the great author,
+embodies what is POSSIBLE to MAN, it is true, but what is not
+COMMON to MANKIND.  There is truth in Hamlet; in Macbeth, and his
+witches; in Desdemona; in Othello; in Prospero, and in Caliban;
+there is truth in the cartoons of Raphael; there is truth in the
+Apollo, the Antinous, and the Laocoon.  But you do not meet the
+originals of the words, the cartoons, or the marble, in Oxford
+Street or St. James's.  All these, to return to Raphael, are the
+creatures of the idea in the artist's mind.  This idea is not
+inborn, it has come from an intense study.  But that study has
+been of the ideal that can be raised from the positive and the
+actual into grandeur and beauty.  The commonest model becomes
+full of exquisite suggestions to him who has formed this idea; a
+Venus of flesh and blood would be vulgarised by the imitation of
+him who has not.
+
+When asked where he got his models, Guido summoned a common
+porter from his calling, and drew from a mean original a head of
+surpassing beauty.  It resembled the porter, but idealised the
+porter to the hero.  It was true, but it was not real.  There are
+critics who will tell you that the Boor of Teniers is more true
+to Nature than the Porter of Guido!  The commonplace public
+scarcely understand the idealising principle, even in art; for
+high art is an acquired taste.
+
+But to come to my comparison.  Still less is the kindred
+principle comprehended in conduct.  And the advice of worldly
+prudence would as often deter from the risks of virtue as from
+the punishments of vice; yet in conduct, as in art, there is an
+idea of the great and beautiful, by which men should exalt the
+hackneyed and the trite of life.  Now Glyndon felt the sober
+prudence of Mervale's reasonings; he recoiled from the probable
+picture placed before him, in his devotion to the one
+master-talent he possessed, and the one master-passion that,
+rightly directed, might purify his whole being as a strong wind
+purifies the air.
+
+But though he could not bring himself to decide in the teeth of
+so rational a judgment, neither could he resolve at once to
+abandon the pursuit of Viola.  Fearful of being influenced by
+Zanoni's counsels and his own heart, he had for the last two days
+shunned an interview with the young actress.  But after a night
+following his last conversation with Zanoni, and that we have
+just recorded with Mervale,--a night coloured by dreams so
+distinct as to seem prophetic, dreams that appeared so to shape
+his future according to the hints of Zanoni that he could have
+fancied Zanoni himself had sent them from the house of sleep to
+haunt his pillow,--he resolved once more to seek Viola; and
+though without a definite or distinct object, he yielded himself
+up to the impulse of his heart.
+
+
+CHAPTER 2.X.
+
+O sollecito dubbio e fredda tema
+Che pensando l'accresci.
+Tasso, Canzone vi.
+
+(O anxious doubt and chilling fear that grows by thinking.)
+
+She was seated outside her door,--the young actress!  The sea
+before her in that heavenly bay seemed literally to sleep in the
+arms of the shore; while, to the right, not far off, rose the
+dark and tangled crags to which the traveller of to-day is duly
+brought to gaze on the tomb of Virgil, or compare with the cavern
+of Posilipo the archway of Highgate Hill.  There were a few
+fisherman loitering by the cliffs, on which their nets were hung
+to dry; and at a distance the sound of some rustic pipe (more
+common at that day than at this), mingled now and then with the
+bells of the lazy mules, broke the voluptuous silence,--the
+silence of declining noon on the shores of Naples; never, till
+you have enjoyed it, never, till you have felt its enervating but
+delicious charm, believe that you can comprehend all the meaning
+of the Dolce far niente (The pleasure of doing nothing.); and
+when that luxury has been known, when you have breathed that
+atmosphere of fairy-land, then you will no longer wonder why the
+heart ripens into fruit so sudden and so rich beneath the rosy
+skies and the glorious sunshine of the South.
+
+The eyes of the actress were fixed on the broad blue deep beyond.
+In the unwonted negligence of her dress might be traced the
+abstraction of her mind.  Her beautiful hair was gathered up
+loosely, and partially bandaged by a kerchief whose purple colour
+served to deepen the golden hue of her tresses.  A stray curl
+escaped and fell down the graceful neck.  A loose morning-robe,
+girded by a sash, left the breeze.  That came ever and anon from
+the sea, to die upon the bust half disclosed; and the tiny
+slipper, that Cinderella might have worn, seemed a world too wide
+for the tiny foot which it scarcely covered.  It might be the
+heat of the day that deepened the soft bloom of the cheeks, and
+gave an unwonted languor to the large, dark eyes.  In all the
+pomp of her stage attire,--in all the flush of excitement before
+the intoxicating lamps,--never had Viola looked so lovely.
+
+By the side of the actress, and filling up the threshold,--stood
+Gionetta, with her arms thrust to the elbow in two huge pockets
+on either side of her gown.
+
+"But I assure you," said the nurse, in that sharp, quick, ear-
+splitting tone in which the old women of the South are more than
+a match for those of the North,--"but I assure you, my darling,
+that there is not a finer cavalier in all Naples, nor a more
+beautiful, than this Inglese; and I am told that all these
+Inglesi are much richer than they seem.  Though they have no
+trees in their country, poor people! and instead of twenty-four
+they have only twelve hours to the day, yet I hear that they shoe
+their horses with scudi; and since they cannot (the poor
+heretics!) turn grapes into wine, for they have no grapes, they
+turn gold into physic, and take a glass or two of pistoles
+whenever they are troubled with the colic.  But you don't hear
+me, little pupil of my eyes,--you don't hear me!"
+
+"And these things are whispered of Zanoni!" said Viola, half to
+herself, and unheeding Gionetta's eulogies on Glyndon and the
+English.
+
+"Blessed Maria! do not talk of this terrible Zanoni.  You may be
+sure that his beautiful face, like his yet more beautiful
+pistoles, is only witchcraft.  I look at the money he gave me the
+other night, every quarter of an hour, to see whether it has not
+turned into pebbles."
+
+"Do you then really believe," said Viola, with timid earnestness,
+"that sorcery still exists?"
+
+"Believe!  Do I believe in the blessed San Gennaro?  How do you
+think he cured old Filippo the fisherman, when the doctor gave
+him up?  How do you think he has managed himself to live at least
+these three hundred years?  How do you think he fascinates every
+one to his bidding with a look, as the vampires do?"
+
+"Ah, is this only witchcraft?  It is like it,--it must be!"
+murmured Viola, turning very pale.  Gionetta herself was scarcely
+more superstitious than the daughter of the musician.  And her
+very innocence, chilled at the strangeness of virgin passion,
+might well ascribe to magic what hearts more experienced would
+have resolved to love.
+
+"And then, why has this great Prince di -- been so terrified by
+him?  Why has he ceased to persecute us?  Why has he been so
+quiet and still?  Is there no sorcery in all that?"
+
+"Think you, then," said Viola, with sweet inconsistency, "that I
+owe that happiness and safety to his protection?  Oh, let me so
+believe!  Be silent, Gionetta!  Why have I only thee and my own
+terrors to consult?  O beautiful sun!" and the girl pressed her
+hand to her heart with wild energy; "thou lightest every spot but
+this.  Go, Gionetta! leave me alone,--leave me!"
+
+"And indeed it is time I should leave you; for the polenta will
+be spoiled, and you have eat nothing all day.  If you don't eat
+you will lose your beauty, my darling, and then nobody will care
+for you.  Nobody cares for us when we grow ugly,--I know that;
+and then you must, like old Gionetta, get some Viola of your own
+to spoil.  I'll go and see to the polenta."
+
+"Since I have known this man," said the girl, half aloud,--"since
+his dark eyes have haunted me, I am no longer the same.  I long
+to escape from myself,--to glide with the sunbeam over the
+hill-tops; to become something that is not of earth.  Phantoms
+float before me at night; and a fluttering, like the wing of a
+bird, within my heart, seems as if the spirit were terrified, and
+would break its cage."
+
+While murmuring these incoherent rhapsodies, a step that she did
+not hear approached the actress, and a light hand touched her
+arm.
+
+"Viola!--bellissima!--Viola!"
+
+She turned, and saw Glyndon.  The sight of his fair young face
+calmed her at once.  His presence gave her pleasure.
+
+"Viola," said the Englishman, taking her hand, and drawing her
+again to the bench from which she had risen, as he seated himself
+beside her, "you shall hear me speak!  You must know already that
+I love thee!  It has not been pity or admiration alone that has
+led me ever and ever to thy dear side; reasons there may have
+been why I have not spoken, save by my eyes, before; but this
+day--I know not how it is--I feel a more sustained and settled
+courage to address thee, and learn the happiest or the worst.  I
+have rivals, I know,--rivals who are more powerful than the poor
+artist; are they also more favoured?"
+
+Viola blushed faintly; but her countenance was grave and
+distressed.  Looking down, and marking some hieroglyphical
+figures in the dust with the point of her slipper, she said, with
+some hesitation, and a vain attempt to be gay, "Signor, whoever
+wastes his thoughts on an actress must submit to have rivals.  It
+is our unhappy destiny not to be sacred even to ourselves."
+
+"But you do not love this destiny, glittering though it seem;
+your heart is not in the vocation which your gifts adorn."
+
+"Ah, no!" said the actress, her eyes filling with tears.  "Once I
+loved to be the priestess of song and music; now I feel only that
+it is a miserable lot to be slave to a multitude."
+
+"Fly, then, with me," said the artist, passionately; "quit
+forever the calling that divides that heart I would have all my
+own.  Share my fate now and forever,--my pride, my delight, my
+ideal!  Thou shalt inspire my canvas and my song; thy beauty
+shall be made at once holy and renowned.  In the galleries of
+princes, crowds shall gather round the effigy of a Venus or a
+Saint, and a whisper shall break forth, 'It is Viola Pisani!'
+Ah! Viola, I adore thee; tell me that I do not worship in vain."
+
+"Thou art good and fair," said Viola, gazing on her lover, as he
+pressed nearer to her, and clasped her hand in his; "but what
+should I give thee in return?"
+
+"Love, love,--only love!"
+
+"A sister's love?"
+
+"Ah, speak not with such cruel coldness!"
+
+"It is all I have for thee.  Listen to me, signor:  when I look
+on your face, when I hear your voice, a certain serene and
+tranquil calm creeps over and lulls thoughts,--oh, how feverish,
+how wild!  When thou art gone, the day seems a shade more dark;
+but the shadow soon flies.  I miss thee not; I think not of thee:
+no, I love thee not; and I will give myself only where I love."
+
+"But I would teach thee to love me; fear it not.  Nay, such love
+as thou describest, in our tranquil climates, is the love of
+innocence and youth."
+
+"Of innocence!" said Viola.  "Is it so?  Perhaps--"  She paused,
+and added, with an effort, "Foreigner! and wouldst thou wed the
+orphan?  Ah, THOU at least art generous!  It is not the innocence
+thou wouldst destroy!"
+
+Glyndon drew back, conscience-stricken.
+
+"No, it may not be!" she said, rising, but not conscious of the
+thoughts, half of shame, half suspicion, that passed through the
+mind of her lover.  "Leave me, and forget me.  You do not
+understand, you could not comprehend, the nature of her whom you
+think to love.  From my childhood upward, I have felt as if I
+were marked out for some strange and preternatural doom; as if I
+were singled from my kind.  This feeling (and, oh! at times it is
+one of delirious and vague delight, at others of the darkest
+gloom) deepens within me day by day.  It is like the shadow of
+twilight, spreading slowly and solemnly around.  My hour
+approaches:  a little while, and it will be night!"
+
+As she spoke, Glyndon listened with visible emotion and
+perturbation.  "Viola!" he exclaimed, as she ceased, "your words
+more than ever enchain me to you.  As you feel, I feel.  I, too,
+have been ever haunted with a chill and unearthly foreboding.
+Amidst the crowds of men I have felt alone.  In all my pleasures,
+my toils, my pursuits, a warning voice has murmured in my ear,
+'Time has a dark mystery in store for thy manhood.'  When you
+spoke, it was as the voice of my own soul."
+
+Viola gazed upon him in wonder and fear.  Her countenance was as
+white as marble; and those features, so divine in their rare
+symmetry, might have served the Greek with a study for the
+Pythoness, when, from the mystic cavern and the bubbling spring,
+she first hears the voice of the inspiring god.  Gradually the
+rigour and tension of that wonderful face relaxed, the colour
+returned, the pulse beat:  the heart animated the frame.
+
+"Tell me," she said, turning partially aside,--"tell me, have you
+seen--do you know--a stranger in this city,--one of whom wild
+stories are afloat?"
+
+"You speak of Zanoni?  I have seen him:  I know him,--and you?
+Ah, he, too, would be my rival!--he, too, would bear thee from
+me!"
+
+"You err," said Viola, hastily, and with a deep sigh; "he pleads
+for you:  he informed me of your love; he besought me not--not to
+reject it."
+
+"Strange being! incomprehensible enigma!  Why did you name him?"
+
+"Why! ah, I would have asked whether, when you first saw him, the
+foreboding, the instinct, of which you spoke, came on you more
+fearfully, more intelligibly than before; whether you felt at
+once repelled from him, yet attracted towards him; whether you
+felt," and the actress spoke with hurried animation, "that with
+HIM was connected the secret of your life?"
+
+"All this I felt," answered Glyndon, in a trembling voice, "the
+first time I was in his presence.  Though all around me was gay,
+--music, amidst lamp-lit trees, light converse near, and heaven
+without a cloud above,--my knees knocked together, my hair
+bristled, and my blood curdled like ice.  Since then he has
+divided my thoughts with thee."
+
+"No more, no more!" said Viola, in a stifled tone; "there must be
+the hand of fate in this.  I can speak to you no more now.
+Farewell!"  She sprung past him into the house, and closed the
+door.  Glyndon did not follow her, nor, strange as it may seem,
+was he so inclined.  The thought and recollection of that moonlit
+hour in the gardens, of the strange address of Zanoni, froze up
+all human passion.  Viola herself, if not forgotten, shrunk back
+like a shadow into the recesses of his breast.  He shivered as he
+stepped into the sunlight, and musingly retraced his steps into
+the more populous parts of that liveliest of Italian cities.
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+THEURGIA.
+
+--i cavalier sen vanno
+dove il pino fatal gli attende in porto.
+Gerus. Lib., cant. xv (Argomento.)
+
+The knights came where the fatal bark
+Awaited them in the port.
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.I.
+
+But that which especially distinguishes the brotherhood is their
+marvellous knowledge of all the resources of medical art.  They
+work not by charms, but simples.--"MS.  Account of the Origin and
+Attributes of the true Rosicrucians," by J. Von D--.
+
+At this time it chanced that Viola had the opportunity to return
+the kindness shown to her by the friendly musician whose house
+had received and sheltered her when first left an orphan on the
+world.  Old Bernardi had brought up three sons to the same
+profession as himself, and they had lately left Naples to seek
+their fortunes in the wealthier cities of Northern Europe, where
+the musical market was less overstocked.  There was only left to
+glad the household of his aged wife and himself, a lively,
+prattling, dark-eyed girl of some eight years old, the child of
+his second son, whose mother had died in giving her birth.  It so
+happened that, about a month previous to the date on which our
+story has now entered, a paralytic affection had disabled
+Bernardi from the duties of his calling.  He had been always a
+social, harmless, improvident, generous fellow--living on his
+gains from day to day, as if the day of sickness and old age
+never was to arrive.  Though he received a small allowance for
+his past services, it ill sufficed for his wants,; neither was he
+free from debt.  Poverty stood at his hearth,--when Viola's
+grateful smile and liberal hand came to chase the grim fiend
+away.  But it is not enough to a heart truly kind to send and
+give; more charitable is it to visit and console.  "Forget not
+thy father's friend."  So almost daily went the bright idol of
+Naples to the house of Bernardi.  Suddenly a heavier affliction
+than either poverty or the palsy befell the old musician.  His
+grandchild, his little Beatrice, fell ill, suddenly and
+dangerously ill, of one of those rapid fevers common to the
+South; and Viola was summoned from her strange and fearful
+reveries of love or fancy, to the sick-bed of the young sufferer.
+
+The child was exceedingly fond of Viola, and the old people
+thought that her mere presence would bring healing; but when
+Viola arrived, Beatrice was insensible.  Fortunately there was no
+performance that evening at San Carlo, and she resolved to stay
+the night and partake its fearful cares and dangerous vigil.
+
+But during the night the child grew worse, the physician (the
+leechcraft has never been very skilful at Naples) shook his
+powdered head, kept his aromatics at his nostrils, administered
+his palliatives, and departed.  Old Bernardi seated himself by
+the bedside in stern silence; here was the last tie that bound
+him to life.  Well, let the anchor break and the battered ship go
+down!  It was an iron resolve, more fearful than sorrow.  An old
+man, with one foot in the grave, watching by the couch of a dying
+child, is one of the most awful spectacles in human calamities.
+The wife was more active, more bustling, more hopeful, and more
+tearful.  Viola took heed of all three.  But towards dawn,
+Beatrice's state became so obviously alarming, that Viola herself
+began to despair.  At this time she saw the old woman suddenly
+rise from before the image of the saint at which she had been
+kneeling, wrap herself in her cloak and hood, and quietly quit
+the chamber.  Viola stole after her.
+
+"It is cold for thee, good mother, to brave the air; let me go
+for the physician?"
+
+"Child, I am not going to him.  I have heard of one in the city
+who has been tender to the poor, and who, they say, has cured the
+sick when physicians failed.  I will go and say to him, 'Signor,
+we are beggars in all else, but yesterday we were rich in love.
+We are at the close of life, but we lived in our grandchild's
+childhood.  Give us back our wealth,--give us back our youth.
+Let us die blessing God that the thing we love survives us.'"
+
+She was gone.  Why did thy heart beat, Viola?  The infant's sharp
+cry of pain called her back to the couch; and there still sat the
+old man, unconscious of his wife's movements, not stirring, his
+eyes glazing fast as they watched the agonies of that slight
+frame.  By degrees the wail of pain died into a low moan,--the
+convulsions grew feebler, but more frequent; the glow of fever
+faded into the blue, pale tinge that settles into the last
+bloodless marble.
+
+The daylight came broader and clearer through the casement; steps
+were heard on the stairs,--the old woman entered hastily; she
+rushed to the bed, cast a glance on the patient, "She lives yet,
+signor, she lives!"
+
+Viola raised her eyes,--the child's head was pillowed on her
+bosom,--and she beheld Zanoni.  He smiled on her with a tender
+and soft approval, and took the infant from her arms.  Yet even
+then, as she saw him bending silently over that pale face, a
+superstitious fear mingled with her hopes.  "Was it by lawful--by
+holy art that--" her self-questioning ceased abruptly; for his
+dark eye turned to her as if he read her soul, and his aspect
+accused her conscience for its suspicion, for it spoke reproach
+not unmingled with disdain.
+
+"Be comforted," he said, gently turning to the old man, "the
+danger is not beyond the reach of human skill;" and, taking from
+his bosom a small crystal vase, he mingled a few drops with
+water.  No sooner did this medicine moisten the infant's lips,
+than it seemed to produce an astonishing effect.  The colour
+revived rapidly on the lips and cheeks; in a few moments the
+sufferer slept calmly, and with the regular breathing of painless
+sleep.  And then the old man rose, rigidly, as a corpse might
+rise,--looked down, listened, and creeping gently away, stole to
+the corner of the room, and wept, and thanked Heaven!
+
+Now, old Bernardi had been, hitherto, but a cold believer; sorrow
+had never before led him aloft from earth.  Old as he was, he had
+never before thought as the old should think of death,--that
+endangered life of the young had wakened up the careless soul of
+age.  Zanoni whispered to the wife, and she drew the old man
+quietly from the room.
+
+"Dost thou fear to leave me an hour with thy charge, Viola?
+Thinkest thou still that this knowledge is of the Fiend?"
+
+"Ah," said Viola, humbled and yet rejoiced, "forgive me, forgive
+me, signor.  Thou biddest the young live and the old pray.  My
+thoughts never shall wrong thee more!"
+
+Before the sun rose, Beatrice was out of danger; at noon Zanoni
+escaped from the blessings of the aged pair, and as he closed the
+door of the house, he found Viola awaiting him without.
+
+She stood before him timidly, her hands crossed meekly on her
+bosom, her downcast eyes swimming with tears.
+
+"Do not let me be the only one you leave unhappy!"
+
+"And what cure can the herbs and anodynes effect for thee?  If
+thou canst so readily believe ill of those who have aided and yet
+would serve thee, thy disease is of the heart; and--nay, weep
+not! nurse of the sick, and comforter of the sad, I should rather
+approve than chide thee.  Forgive thee!  Life, that ever needs
+forgiveness, has, for its first duty, to forgive."
+
+"No, do not forgive me yet.  I do not deserve a pardon; for even
+now, while I feel how ungrateful I was to believe, suspect, aught
+injurious and false to my preserver, my tears flow from
+happiness, not remorse.  Oh!" she continued, with a simple
+fervour, unconscious, in her innocence and her generous emotions,
+of all the secrets she betrayed,--"thou knowest not how bitter it
+was to believe thee not more good, more pure, more sacred than
+all the world.  And when I saw thee,--the wealthy, the noble,
+coming from thy palace to minister to the sufferings of the
+hovel,--when I heard those blessings of the poor breathed upon
+thy parting footsteps, I felt my very self exalted,--good in thy
+goodness, noble at least in those thoughts that did NOT wrong
+thee."
+
+"And thinkest thou, Viola, that in a mere act of science there is
+so much virtue?  The commonest leech will tend the sick for his
+fee.  Are prayers and blessings a less reward than gold?"
+
+"And mine, then, are not worthless?  Thou wilt accept of mine?"
+
+"Ah, Viola!" exclaimed Zanoni, with a sudden passion, that
+covered her face with blushes, "thou only, methinks, on all the
+earth, hast the power to wound or delight me!"  He checked
+himself, and his face became grave and sad.  "And this," he
+added, in an altered tone, "because, if thou wouldst heed my
+counsels, methinks I could guide a guileless heart to a happy
+fate."
+
+"Thy counsels!  I will obey them all.  Mould me to what thou
+wilt.  In thine absence, I am as a child that fears every shadow
+in the dark; in thy presence, my soul expands, and the whole
+world seems calm with a celestial noonday.  Do not deny to me
+that presence.  I am fatherless and ignorant and alone!"
+
+Zanoni averted his face, and, after a moment's silence, replied
+calmly,--
+
+"Be it so.  Sister, I will visit thee again!"
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.II.
+
+Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.
+Shakespeare.
+
+Who so happy as Viola now!  A dark load was lifted from her
+heart:  her step seemed to tread on air; she would have sung for
+very delight as she went gayly home.  It is such happiness to the
+pure to love,--but oh, such more than happiness to believe in the
+worth of the one beloved.  Between them there might be human
+obstacles,--wealth, rank, man's little world.  But there was no
+longer that dark gulf which the imagination recoils to dwell on,
+and which separates forever soul from soul.  He did not love her
+in return.  Love her!  But did she ask for love?  Did she herself
+love?  No; or she would never have been at once so humble and so
+bold.  How merrily the ocean murmured in her ear; how radiant an
+aspect the commonest passer-by seemed to wear!  She gained her
+home,--she looked upon the tree, glancing, with fantastic
+branches, in the sun.  "Yes, brother mine!" she said, laughing in
+her joy, "like thee, I HAVE struggled to the light!"
+
+She had never hitherto, like the more instructed Daughters of the
+North, accustomed herself to that delicious Confessional, the
+transfusion of thought to writing.  Now, suddenly, her heart felt
+an impulse; a new-born instinct, that bade it commune with
+itself, bade it disentangle its web of golden fancies,--made her
+wish to look upon her inmost self as in a glass.  Upsprung from
+the embrace of Love and Soul--the Eros and the Psyche--their
+beautiful offspring, Genius!  She blushed, she sighed, she
+trembled as she wrote.  And from the fresh world that she had
+built for herself, she was awakened to prepare for the glittering
+stage.  How dull became the music, how dim the scene, so
+exquisite and so bright of old.  Stage, thou art the Fairy Land
+to the vision of the worldly.  Fancy, whose music is not heard by
+men, whose scenes shift not by mortal hand, as the stage to the
+present world, art thou to the future and the past!
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.III.
+
+In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes.
+Shakespeare.
+
+The next day, at noon, Zanoni visited Viola; and the next day and
+the next and again the next,--days that to her seemed like a
+special time set apart from the rest of life.  And yet he never
+spoke to her in the language of flattery, and almost of
+adoration, to which she had been accustomed.  Perhaps his very
+coldness, so gentle as it was, assisted to this mysterious charm.
+He talked to her much of her past life, and she was scarcely
+surprised (she now never thought of TERROR) to perceive how much
+of that past seemed known to him.
+
+He made her speak to him of her father; he made her recall some
+of the airs of Pisani's wild music.  And those airs seemed to
+charm and lull him into reverie.
+
+"As music was to the musician," said he, "may science be to the
+wise.  Your father looked abroad in the world; all was discord to
+the fine sympathies that he felt with the harmonies that daily
+and nightly float to the throne of Heaven.  Life, with its noisy
+ambition and its mean passions, is so poor and base!  Out of his
+soul he created the life and the world for which his soul was
+fitted.  Viola, thou art the daughter of that life, and wilt be
+the denizen of that world."
+
+In his earlier visits he did not speak of Glyndon.  The day soon
+came on which he renewed the subject.  And so trustful, obedient,
+and entire was the allegiance that Viola now owned to his
+dominion, that, unwelcome as that subject was, she restrained her
+heart, and listened to him in silence.
+
+At last he said, "Thou hast promised thou wilt obey my counsels,
+and if, Viola, I should ask thee, nay adjure, to accept this
+stranger's hand, and share his fate, should he offer to thee such
+a lot,--wouldst thou refuse?"
+
+And then she pressed back the tears that gushed to her eyes; and
+with a strange pleasure in the midst of pain,--the pleasure of
+one who sacrifices heart itself to the one who commands that
+heart,--she answered falteringly, "If thou CANST ordain it,
+why--"
+
+"Speak on."
+
+"Dispose of me as thou wilt!"
+
+Zanoni stood in silence for some moments:  he saw the struggle
+which the girl thought she concealed so well; he made an
+involuntary movement towards her, and pressed her hand to his
+lips; it was the first time he had ever departed even so far from
+a certain austerity which perhaps made her fear him and her own
+thoughts the less.
+
+"Viola," said he, and his voice trembled, "the danger that I can
+avert no more, if thou linger still in Naples, comes hourly near
+and near to thee!  On the third day from this thy fate must be
+decided.  I accept thy promise.  Before the last hour of that
+day, come what may, I shall see thee again, HERE, at thine own
+house.  Till then, farewell!"
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.IV.
+
+Between two worlds life hovers like a star
+'Twixt night and morn.
+Byron.
+
+When Glyndon left Viola, as recorded in the concluding chapter of
+the second division of this work, he was absorbed again in those
+mystical desires and conjectures which the haunting recollection
+of Zanoni always served to create.  And as he wandered through
+the streets, he was scarcely conscious of his own movements till,
+in the mechanism of custom, he found himself in the midst of one
+of the noble collections of pictures which form the boast of
+those Italian cities whose glory is in the past.  Thither he had
+been wont, almost daily, to repair, for the gallery contained
+some of the finest specimens of a master especially the object of
+his enthusiasm and study.  There, before the works of Salvator,
+he had often paused in deep and earnest reverence.  The striking
+characteristic of that artist is the "Vigour of Will;" void of
+the elevated idea of abstract beauty, which furnishes a model and
+archetype to the genius of more illustrious order, the singular
+energy of the man hews out of the rock a dignity of his own.  His
+images have the majesty, not of the god, but the savage; utterly
+free, like the sublimer schools, from the common-place of
+imitation,--apart, with them, from the conventional littleness of
+the Real,--he grasps the imagination, and compels it to follow
+him, not to the heaven, but through all that is most wild and
+fantastic upon earth; a sorcery, not of the starry magian, but of
+the gloomy wizard,--a man of romance whose heart beat strongly,
+griping art with a hand of iron, and forcing it to idealise the
+scenes of his actual life.  Before this powerful will, Glyndon
+drew back more awed and admiring than before the calmer beauty
+which rose from the soul of Raphael, like Venus from the deep.
+
+And now, as awaking from his reverie, he stood opposite to that
+wild and magnificent gloom of Nature which frowned on him from
+the canvas, the very leaves on those gnome-like, distorted trees
+seemed to rustle sibylline secrets in his ear.  Those rugged and
+sombre Apennines, the cataract that dashed between, suited, more
+than the actual scenes would have done, the mood and temper of
+his mind.  The stern, uncouth forms at rest on the crags below,
+and dwarfed by the giant size of the Matter that reigned around
+them, impressed him with the might of Nature and the littleness
+of Man.  As in genius of the more spiritual cast, the living man,
+and the soul that lives in him, are studiously made the prominent
+image; and the mere accessories of scene kept down, and cast
+back, as if to show that the exile from paradise is yet the
+monarch of the outward world,--so, in the landscapes of Salvator,
+the tree, the mountain, the waterfall, become the principal, and
+man himself dwindles to the accessory.  The Matter seems to reign
+supreme, and its true lord to creep beneath its stupendous
+shadow.  Inert matter giving interest to the immortal man, not
+the immortal man to the inert matter.  A terrible philosophy in
+art!
+
+While something of these thoughts passed through the mind of the
+painter, he felt his arm touched, and saw Nicot by his side.
+
+"A great master," said Nicot, "but I do not love the school."
+
+"I do not love, but I am awed by it.  We love the beautiful and
+serene, but we have a feeling as deep as love for the terrible
+and dark."
+
+"True," said Nicot, thoughtfully.  "And yet that feeling is only
+a superstition.  The nursery, with its tales of ghosts and
+goblins, is the cradle of many of our impressions in the world.
+But art should not seek to pander to our ignorance; art should
+represent only truths.  I confess that Raphael pleases me less,
+because I have no sympathy with his subjects.  His saints and
+virgins are to me only men and women."
+
+"And from what source should painting, then, take its themes?"
+
+"From history, without doubt," returned Nicot, pragmatically,--
+"those great Roman actions which inspire men with sentiments of
+liberty and valour, with the virtues of a republic.  I wish the
+cartoons of Raphael had illustrated the story of the Horatii; but
+it remains for France and her Republic to give to posterity the
+new and the true school, which could never have arisen in a
+country of priestcraft and delusion."
+
+"And the saints and virgins of Raphael are to you only men and
+women?" repeated Glyndon, going back to Nicot's candid confession
+in amaze, and scarcely hearing the deductions the Frenchman drew
+from his proposition.
+
+"Assuredly.  Ha, ha!" and Nicot laughed hideously, "do you ask me
+to believe in the calendar, or what?"
+
+"But the ideal?"
+
+"The ideal!" interrupted Nicot.  "Stuff!  The Italian critics,
+and your English Reynolds, have turned your head.  They are so
+fond of their 'gusto grande,' and their 'ideal beauty that speaks
+to the soul!'--soul!--IS there a soul?  I understand a man when
+he talks of composing for a refined taste,--for an educated and
+intelligent reason; for a sense that comprehends truths.  But as
+for the soul,--bah!--we are but modifications of matter, and
+painting is modification of matter also."
+
+Glyndon turned his eyes from the picture before him to Nicot, and
+from Nicot to the picture.  The dogmatist gave a voice to the
+thoughts which the sight of the picture had awakened.  He shook
+his head without reply.
+
+"Tell me," said Nicot, abruptly, "that imposter,--Zanoni!--oh!  I
+have now learned his name and quackeries, forsooth,--what did he
+say to thee of me?"
+
+"Of thee?  Nothing; but to warn me against thy doctrines."
+
+"Aha! was that all?" said Nicot.  "He is a notable inventor, and
+since, when we met last, I unmasked his delusions, I thought he
+might retaliate by some tale of slander."
+
+"Unmasked his delusions!--how?"
+
+"A dull and long story:  he wished to teach an old doting friend
+of mine his secrets of prolonged life and philosophical alchemy.
+I advise thee to renounce so discreditable an acquaintance."
+
+With that Nicot nodded significantly, and, not wishing to be
+further questioned, went his way.
+
+Glyndon's mind at that moment had escaped to his art, and the
+comments and presence of Nicot had been no welcome interruption.
+He turned from the landscape of Salvator, and his eye falling on
+a Nativity by Coreggio, the contrast between the two ranks of
+genius struck him as a discovery.  That exquisite repose, that
+perfect sense of beauty, that strength without effort, that
+breathing moral of high art, which speaks to the mind through the
+eye, and raises the thoughts, by the aid of tenderness and love,
+to the regions of awe and wonder,--ay! THAT was the true school.
+He quitted the gallery with reluctant steps and inspired ideas;
+he sought his own home.  Here, pleased not to find the sober
+Mervale, he leaned his face on his hands, and endeavoured to
+recall the words of Zanoni in their last meeting.  Yes, he felt
+Nicot's talk even on art was crime; it debased the imagination
+itself to mechanism.  Could he, who saw nothing in the soul but a
+combination of matter, prate of schools that should excel a
+Raphael?  Yes, art was magic; and as he owned the truth of the
+aphorism, he could comprehend that in magic there may be
+religion, for religion is an essential to art.  His old ambition,
+freeing itself from the frigid prudence with which Mervale sought
+to desecrate all images less substantial than the golden calf of
+the world, revived, and stirred, and kindled.  The subtle
+detection of what he conceived to be an error in the school he
+had hitherto adopted, made more manifest to him by the grinning
+commentary of Nicot, seemed to open to him a new world of
+invention.  He seized the happy moment,--he placed before him the
+colours and the canvas.  Lost in his conceptions of a fresh
+ideal, his mind was lifted aloft into the airy realms of beauty;
+dark thoughts, unhallowed desires, vanished.  Zanoni was right:
+the material world shrunk from his gaze; he viewed Nature as from
+a mountain-top afar; and as the waves of his unquiet heart became
+calm and still, again the angel eyes of Viola beamed on them as a
+holy star.
+
+Locking himself in his chamber, he refused even the visits of
+Mervale.  Intoxicated with the pure air of his fresh existence,
+he remained for three days, and almost nights, absorbed in his
+employment; but on the fourth morning came that reaction to which
+all labour is exposed.  He woke listless and fatigued; and as he
+cast his eyes on the canvas, the glory seemed to have gone from
+it.  Humiliating recollections of the great masters he aspired to
+rival forced themselves upon him; defects before unseen magnified
+themselves to deformities in his languid and discontented eyes.
+He touched and retouched, but his hand failed him; he threw down
+his instruments in despair; he opened his casement:  the day
+without was bright and lovely; the street was crowded with that
+life which is ever so joyous and affluent in the animated
+population of Naples.  He saw the lover, as he passed, conversing
+with his mistress by those mute gestures which have survived all
+changes of languages, the same now as when the Etruscan painted
+yon vases in the Museo Borbonico.  Light from without beckoned
+his youth to its mirth and its pleasures; and the dull walls
+within, lately large enough to comprise heaven and earth, seemed
+now cabined and confined as a felon's prison.  He welcomed the
+step of Mervale at his threshold, and unbarred the door.
+
+"And is that all you have done?" said Mervale, glancing
+disdainfully at the canvas.  "Is it for this that you have shut
+yourself out from the sunny days and moonlit nights of Naples?"
+
+"While the fit was on me, I basked in a brighter sun, and imbibed
+the voluptuous luxury of a softer moon."
+
+"You own that the fit is over.  Well, that is some sign of
+returning sense.  After all, it is better to daub canvas for
+three days than make a fool of yourself for life.  This little
+siren?"
+
+"Be dumb!  I hate to hear you name her."
+
+Mervale drew his chair nearer to Glyndon's, thrust his hands deep
+in his breeches-pockets, stretched his legs, and was about to
+begin a serious strain of expostulation, when a knock was heard
+at the door, and Nicot, without waiting for leave, obtruded his
+ugly head.
+
+"Good-day, mon cher confrere.  I wished to speak to you.  Hein!
+you have been at work, I see.  This is well,--very well!  A bold
+outline,--great freedom in that right hand.  But, hold! is the
+composition good?  You have not got the great pyramidal form.
+Don't you think, too, that you have lost the advantage of
+contrast in this figure; since the right leg is put forward,
+surely the right arm should be put back?  Peste! but that little
+finger is very fine!"
+
+Mervale detested Nicot.  For all speculators, Utopians, alterers
+of the world, and wanderers from the high road, were equally
+hateful to him; but he could have hugged the Frenchman at that
+moment.  He saw in Glyndon's expressive countenance all the
+weariness and disgust he endured.  After so wrapped a study, to
+be prated to about pyramidal forms and right arms and right legs,
+the accidence of the art, the whole conception to be overlooked,
+and the criticism to end in approval of the little finger!
+
+"Oh," said Glyndon, peevishly, throwing the cloth over his
+design, "enough of my poor performance.  What is it you have to
+say to me?"
+
+"In the first place," said Nicot, huddling himself together upon
+a stool,--"in the first place, this Signor Zanoni,--this second
+Cagliostro,--who disputes my doctrines! (no doubt a spy of the
+man Capet) I am not vindictive; as Helvetius says, 'our errors
+arise from our passions.'  I keep mine in order; but it is
+virtuous to hate in the cause of mankind; I would I had the
+denouncing and the judging of Signor Zanoni at Paris."  And
+Nicot's small eyes shot fire, and he gnashed his teeth.
+
+"Have you any new cause to hate him?"
+
+"Yes," said Nicot, fiercely.  "Yes, I hear he is courting the
+girl I mean to marry."
+
+"You!  Whom do you speak of?"
+
+"The celebrated Pisani!  She is divinely handsome.  She would
+make my fortune in a republic.  And a republic we shall have
+before the year is out."
+
+Mervale rubbed his hands, and chuckled.  Glyndon coloured with
+rage and shame.
+
+"Do you know the Signora Pisani?  Have you ever spoken to her?"
+
+"Not yet.  But when I make up my mind to anything, it is soon
+done.  I am about to return to Paris.  They write me word that a
+handsome wife advances the career of a patriot.  The age of
+prejudice is over.  The sublimer virtues begin to be understood.
+I shall take back the handsomest wife in Europe."
+
+"Be quiet!  What are you about?" said Mervale, seizing Glyndon as
+he saw him advance towards the Frenchman, his eyes sparkling, and
+his hands clenched.
+
+"Sir!" said Glyndon, between his teeth, "you know not of whom you
+thus speak.  Do you affect to suppose that Viola Pisani would
+accept YOU?"
+
+"Not if she could get a better offer," said Mervale, looking up
+to the ceiling.
+
+"A better offer?  You don't understand me," said Nicot.  "I, Jean
+Nicot, propose to marry the girl; marry her!  Others may make her
+more liberal offers, but no one, I apprehend, would make one so
+honourable.  I alone have pity on her friendless situation.
+Besides, according to the dawning state of things, one will
+always, in France, be able to get rid of a wife whenever one
+wishes.  We shall have new laws of divorce.  Do you imagine that
+an Italian girl--and in no country in the world are maidens, it
+seems, more chaste (though wives may console themselves with
+virtues more philosophical)--would refuse the hand of an artist
+for the settlements of a prince?  No; I think better of the
+Pisani than you do.  I shall hasten to introduce myself to her."
+
+"I wish you all success, Monsieur Nicot," said Mervale, rising,
+and shaking him heartily by the hand.
+
+Glyndon cast at them both a disdainful glance.
+
+"Perhaps, Monsieur Nicot," said he, at length, constraining his
+lips into a bitter smile,--"perhaps you may have rivals."
+
+"So much the better," replied Monsieur Nicot, carelessly, kicking
+his heels together, and appearing absorbed in admiration at the
+size of his large feet.
+
+"I myself admire Viola Pisani."
+
+"Every painter must!"
+
+"I may offer her marriage as well as yourself."
+
+"That would be folly in you, though wisdom in me.  You would not
+know how to draw profit from the speculation!  Cher confrere, you
+have prejudices."
+
+"You do not dare to say you would make profit from your own
+wife?"
+
+"The virtuous Cato lent his wife to a friend.  I love virtue, and
+I cannot do better than imitate Cato.  But to be serious,--I do
+not fear you as a rival.  You are good-looking, and I am ugly.
+But you are irresolute, and I decisive.  While you are uttering
+fine phrases, I shall say, simply, 'I have a bon etat.  Will you
+marry me?'  So do your worst, cher confrere.  Au revoir, behind
+the scenes!"
+
+So saying, Nicot rose, stretched his long arms and short legs,
+yawned till he showed all his ragged teeth from ear to ear,
+pressed down his cap on his shaggy head with an air of defiance,
+and casting over his left shoulder a glance of triumph and malice
+at the indignant Glyndon, sauntered out of the room.
+
+Mervale burst into a violent fit of laughter.  "See how your
+Viola is estimated by your friend.  A fine victory, to carry her
+off from the ugliest dog between Lapland and the Calmucks."
+
+Glyndon was yet too indignant to answer, when a new visitor
+arrived.  It was Zanoni himself.  Mervale, on whom the appearance
+and aspect of this personage imposed a kind of reluctant
+deference, which he was unwilling to acknowledge, and still more
+to betray, nodded to Glyndon, and saying, simply, "More when I
+see you again," left the painter and his unexpected visitor.
+
+"I see," said Zanoni, lifting the cloth from the canvas, "that
+you have not slighted the advice I gave you.  Courage, young
+artist; this is an escape from the schools:  this is full of the
+bold self-confidence of real genius.  You had no Nicot--no
+Mervale--at your elbow when this image of true beauty was
+conceived!"
+
+Charmed back to his art by this unlooked-for praise, Glyndon
+replied modestly, "I thought well of my design till this morning;
+and then I was disenchanted of my happy persuasion."
+
+"Say, rather, that, unaccustomed to continuous labour, you were
+fatigued with your employment."
+
+"That is true.  Shall I confess it?  I began to miss the world
+without.  It seemed to me as if, while I lavished my heart and my
+youth upon visions of beauty, I was losing the beautiful
+realities of actual life.  And I envied the merry fisherman,
+singing as he passed below my casement, and the lover conversing
+with his mistress."
+
+"And," said Zanoni, with an encouraging smile, "do you blame
+yourself for the natural and necessary return to earth, in which
+even the most habitual visitor of the Heavens of Invention seeks
+his relaxation and repose?  Man's genius is a bird that cannot be
+always on the wing; when the craving for the actual world is
+felt, it is a hunger that must be appeased.  They who command
+best the ideal, enjoy ever most the real.  See the true artist,
+when abroad in men's thoroughfares, ever observant, ever diving
+into the heart, ever alive to the least as to the greatest of the
+complicated truths of existence; descending to what pedants would
+call the trivial and the frivolous.  From every mesh in the
+social web, he can disentangle a grace.  And for him each airy
+gossamer floats in the gold of the sunlight.  Know you not that
+around the animalcule that sports in the water there shines a
+halo, as around the star (The monas mica, found in the purest
+pools, is encompassed with a halo.  And this is frequent amongst
+many other species of animalcule.) that revolves in bright
+pastime through the space?  True art finds beauty everywhere.  In
+the street, in the market-place, in the hovel, it gathers food
+for the hive of its thoughts.  In the mire of politics, Dante and
+Milton selected pearls for the wreath of song.
+
+"Who ever told you that Raphael did not enjoy the life without,
+carrying everywhere with him the one inward idea of beauty which
+attracted and imbedded in its own amber every straw that the feet
+of the dull man trampled into mud?  As some lord of the forest
+wanders abroad for its prey, and scents and follows it over plain
+and hill, through brake and jungle, but, seizing it at last,
+bears the quarry to its unwitnessed cave,--so Genius searches
+through wood and waste, untiringly and eagerly, every sense
+awake, every nerve strained to speed and strength, for the
+scattered and flying images of matter, that it seizes at last
+with its mighty talons, and bears away with it into solitudes no
+footstep can invade.  Go, seek the world without; it is for art
+the inexhaustible pasture-ground and harvest to the world
+within!"
+
+"You comfort me," said Glyndon, brightening.  "I had imagined my
+weariness a proof of my deficiency!  But not now would I speak to
+you of these labours.  Pardon me, if I pass from the toil to the
+reward.  You have uttered dim prophecies of my future, if I wed
+one who, in the judgment of the sober world, would only darken
+its prospects and obstruct its ambition.  Do you speak from the
+wisdom which is experience, or that which aspires to prediction?"
+
+"Are they not allied?  Is it not he best accustomed to
+calculation who can solve at a glance any new problem in the
+arithmetic of chances?"
+
+"You evade my question."
+
+"No; but I will adapt my answer the better to your comprehension,
+for it is upon this very point that I have sought you.  Listen to
+me!"  Zanoni fixed his eyes earnestly on his listener, and
+continued:  "For the accomplishment of whatever is great and
+lofty, the clear perception of truths is the first requisite,--
+truths adapted to the object desired.  The warrior thus reduces
+the chances of battle to combinations almost of mathematics.  He
+can predict a result, if he can but depend upon the materials he
+is forced to employ.  At such a loss he can cross that bridge; in
+such a time he can reduce that fort.  Still more accurately, for
+he depends less on material causes than ideas at his command, can
+the commander of the purer science or diviner art, if he once
+perceive the truths that are in him and around, foretell what he
+can achieve, and in what he is condemned to fail.  But this
+perception of truths is disturbed by many causes,--vanity,
+passion, fear, indolence in himself, ignorance of the fitting
+means without to accomplish what he designs.  He may miscalculate
+his own forces; he may have no chart of the country he would
+invade.  It is only in a peculiar state of the mind that it is
+capable of perceiving truth; and that state is profound serenity.
+Your mind is fevered by a desire for truth:  you would compel it
+to your embraces; you would ask me to impart to you, without
+ordeal or preparation, the grandest secrets that exist in Nature.
+But truth can no more be seen by the mind unprepared for it, than
+the sun can dawn upon the midst of night.  Such a mind receives
+truth only to pollute it:  to use the simile of one who has
+wandered near to the secret of the sublime Goetia (or the magic
+that lies within Nature, as electricity within the cloud), 'He
+who pours water into the muddy well, does but disturb the mud.'"
+("Iamb. de Vit. Pythag.")
+
+"What do you tend to?"
+
+"This:  that you have faculties that may attain to surpassing
+power, that may rank you among those enchanters who, greater than
+the magian, leave behind them an enduring influence, worshipped
+wherever beauty is comprehended, wherever the soul is sensible of
+a higher world than that in which matter struggles for crude and
+incomplete existence.
+
+"But to make available those faculties, need I be a prophet to
+tell you that you must learn to concentre upon great objects all
+your desires?  The heart must rest, that the mind may be active.
+At present you wander from aim to aim.  As the ballast to the
+ship, so to the spirit are faith and love.  With your whole
+heart, affections, humanity, centred in one object, your mind and
+aspirations will become equally steadfast and in earnest.  Viola
+is a child as yet; you do not perceive the high nature the trials
+of life will develop.  Pardon me, if I say that her soul, purer
+and loftier than your own, will bear it upward, as a secret hymn
+carries aloft the spirits of the world.  Your nature wants the
+harmony, the music which, as the Pythagoreans wisely taught, at
+once elevates and soothes.  I offer you that music in her love."
+
+"But am I sure that she does love me?"
+
+"Artist, no; she loves you not at present; her affections are
+full of another.  But if I could transfer to you, as the
+loadstone transfers its attraction to the magnet, the love that
+she has now for me,--if I could cause her to see in you the ideal
+of her dreams--"
+
+"Is such a gift in the power of man?"
+
+"I offer it to you, if your love be lawful, if your faith in
+virtue and yourself be deep and loyal; if not, think you that I
+would disenchant her with truth to make her adore a falsehood?"
+
+"But if," persisted Glyndon,--"if she be all that you tell me,
+and if she love you, how can you rob yourself of so priceless a
+treasure?"
+
+"Oh, shallow and mean heart of man!" exclaimed Zanoni, with
+unaccustomed passion and vehemence, "dost thou conceive so little
+of love as not to know that it sacrifices all--love itself--for
+the happiness of the thing it loves?  Hear me!"  And Zanoni's
+face grew pale.  "Hear me!  I press this upon you, because I love
+her, and because I fear that with me her fate will be less fair
+than with yourself.  Why,--ask not, for I will not tell you.
+Enough!  Time presses now for your answer; it cannot long be
+delayed.  Before the night of the third day from this, all choice
+will be forbid you!"
+
+"But," said Glyndon, still doubting and suspicious,--"but why
+this haste?"
+
+"Man, you are not worthy of her when you ask me.  All I can tell
+you here, you should have known yourself.  This ravisher, this
+man of will, this son of the old Visconti, unlike you,--
+steadfast, resolute, earnest even in his crimes,--never
+relinquishes an object.  But one passion controls his lust,--it
+is his avarice.  The day after his attempt on Viola, his uncle,
+the Cardinal --, from whom he has large expectations of land and
+gold, sent for him, and forbade him, on pain of forfeiting all
+the possessions which his schemes already had parcelled out, to
+pursue with dishonourable designs one whom the Cardinal had
+heeded and loved from childhood.  This is the cause of his
+present pause from his pursuit.  While we speak, the cause
+expires.  Before the hand of the clock reaches the hour of noon,
+the Cardinal -- will be no more.  At this very moment thy friend,
+Jean Nicot, is with the Prince di --."
+
+"He! wherefore?"
+
+"To ask what dower shall go with Viola Pisani, the morning that
+she leaves the palace of the prince."
+
+"And how do you know all this?"
+
+"Fool!  I tell thee again, because a lover is a watcher by night
+and day; because love never sleeps when danger menaces the
+beloved one!"
+
+"And you it was that informed the Cardinal --?"
+
+"Yes; and what has been my task might as easily have been thine.
+ Speak,--thine answer!"
+
+"You shall have it on the third day from this."
+
+"Be it so.  Put off, poor waverer, thy happiness to the last
+hour.  On the third day from this, I will ask thee thy resolve."
+
+"And where shall we meet?"
+
+"Before midnight, where you may least expect me.  You cannot shun
+me, though you may seek to do so!"
+
+"Stay one moment!  You condemn me as doubtful, irresolute,
+suspicious.  Have I no cause?  Can I yield without a struggle to
+the strange fascination you exert upon my mind?  What interest
+can you have in me, a stranger, that you should thus dictate to
+me the gravest action in the life of man?  Do you suppose that
+any one in his senses would not pause, and deliberate, and ask
+himself, 'Why should this stranger care thus for me?'"
+
+"And yet," said Zanoni, "if I told thee that I could initiate
+thee into the secrets of that magic which the philosophy of the
+whole existing world treats as a chimera, or imposture; if I
+promised to show thee how to command the beings of air and ocean,
+how to accumulate wealth more easily than a child can gather
+pebbles on the shore, to place in thy hands the essence of the
+herbs which prolong life from age to age, the mystery of that
+attraction by which to awe all danger and disarm all violence and
+subdue man as the serpent charms the bird,--if I told thee that
+all these it was mine to possess and to communicate, thou wouldst
+listen to me then, and obey me without a doubt!"
+
+"It is true; and I can account for this only by the imperfect
+associations of my childhood,--by traditions in our house of--"
+
+"Your forefather, who, in the revival of science, sought the
+secrets of Apollonius and Paracelsus."
+
+"What!" said Glyndon, amazed, "are you so well acquainted with
+the annals of an obscure lineage?"
+
+"To the man who aspires to know, no man who has been the meanest
+student of knowledge should be unknown.  You ask me why I have
+shown this interest in your fate?  There is one reason which I
+have not yet told you.  There is a fraternity as to whose laws
+and whose mysteries the most inquisitive schoolmen are in the
+dark.  By those laws all are pledged to warn, to aid, and to
+guide even the remotest descendants of men who have toiled,
+though vainly, like your ancestor, in the mysteries of the Order.
+We are bound to advise them to their welfare; nay, more,--if they
+command us to it, we must accept them as our pupils.  I am a
+survivor of that most ancient and immemorial union.  This it was
+that bound me to thee at the first; this, perhaps, attracted
+thyself unconsciously, Son of our Brotherhood, to me."
+
+"If this be so, I command thee, in the name of the laws thou
+obeyest, to receive me as thy pupil!"
+
+"What do you ask?" said Zanoni, passionately.  "Learn, first, the
+conditions.  No neophyte must have, at his initiation, one
+affection or desire that chains him to the world.  He must be
+pure from the love of woman, free from avarice and ambition, free
+from the dreams even of art, or the hope of earthly fame.  The
+first sacrifice thou must make is--Viola herself.  And for what?
+For an ordeal that the most daring courage only can encounter,
+the most ethereal natures alone survive!  Thou art unfit for the
+science that has made me and others what we are or have been; for
+thy whole nature is one fear!"
+
+"Fear!" cried Glyndon, colouring with resentment, and rising to
+the full height of his stature.
+
+"Fear! and the worst fear,--fear of the world's opinion; fear of
+the Nicots and the Mervales; fear of thine own impulses when most
+generous; fear of thine own powers when thy genius is most bold;
+fear that virtue is not eternal; fear that God does not live in
+heaven to keep watch on earth; fear, the fear of little men; and
+that fear is never known to the great."
+
+With these words Zanoni abruptly left the artist, humbled,
+bewildered, and not convinced.  He remained alone with his
+thoughts till he was aroused by the striking of the clock; he
+then suddenly remembered Zanoni's prediction of the Cardinal's
+death; and, seized with an intense desire to learn its truth, he
+hurried into the streets,--he gained the Cardinal's palace.  Five
+minutes before noon his Eminence had expired, after an illness of
+less than an hour.  Zanoni's visit had occupied more time than
+the illness of the Cardinal.  Awed and perplexed, he turned from
+the palace, and as he walked through the Chiaja, he saw Jean
+Nicot emerge from the portals of the Prince di --.
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.V.
+
+Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
+Which like two spirits do suggest me still.
+Shakespeare.
+
+Venerable Brotherhood, so sacred and so little known, from whose
+secret and precious archives the materials for this history have
+been drawn; ye who have retained, from century to century, all
+that time has spared of the august and venerable science,--thanks
+to you, if now, for the first time, some record of the thoughts
+and actions of no false and self-styled luminary of your Order be
+given, however imperfectly, to the world.  Many have called
+themselves of your band; many spurious pretenders have been
+so-called by the learned ignorance which still, baffled and
+perplexed, is driven to confess that it knows nothing of your
+origin, your ceremonies or doctrines, nor even if you still have
+local habitation on the earth.  Thanks to you if I, the only one
+of my country, in this age, admitted, with a profane footstep,
+into your mysterious Academe (The reader will have the goodness
+to remember that this is said by the author of the original MS.,
+not by the editor.), have been by you empowered and instructed to
+adapt to the comprehension of the uninitiated, some few of the
+starry truths which shone on the great Shemaia of the Chaldean
+Lore, and gleamed dimly through the darkened knowledge of latter
+disciples, labouring, like Psellus and Iamblichus, to revive the
+embers of the fire which burned in the Hamarin of the East.
+Though not to us of an aged and hoary world is vouchsafed the
+NAME which, so say the earliest oracles of the earth, "rushes
+into the infinite worlds," yet is it ours to trace the reviving
+truths, through each new discovery of the philosopher and
+chemist.  The laws of attraction, of electricity, and of the yet
+more mysterious agency of that great principal of life, which, if
+drawn from the universe, would leave the universe a grave, were
+but the code in which the Theurgy of old sought the guides that
+led it to a legislation and science of its own.  To rebuild on
+words the fragments of this history, it seems to me as if, in a
+solemn trance, I was led through the ruins of a city whose only
+remains were tombs.  From the sarcophagus and the urn I awake the
+genius (The Greek Genius of Death.) of the extinguished Torch,
+and so closely does its shape resemble Eros, that at moments I
+scarcely know which of ye dictates to me,--O Love!  O Death!
+
+And it stirred in the virgin's heart,--this new, unfathomable,
+and divine emotion!  Was it only the ordinary affection of the
+pulse and the fancy, of the eye to the Beautiful, of the ear to
+the Eloquent, or did it not justify the notion she herself
+conceived of it,--that it was born not of the senses, that it was
+less of earthly and human love than the effect of some wondrous
+but not unholy charm?  I said that, from that day in which, no
+longer with awe and trembling, she surrendered herself to the
+influence of Zanoni, she had sought to put her thoughts into
+words.  Let the thoughts attest their own nature.
+
+THE SELF CONFESSIONAL.
+
+"Is it the daylight that shines on me, or the memory of thy
+presence?  Wherever I look, the world seems full of thee; in
+every ray that trembles on the water, that smiles upon the
+leaves, I behold but a likeness to thine eyes.  What is this
+change, that alters not only myself, but the face of the whole
+universe?
+
+...
+
+How instantaneously leaped into life the power with which thou
+swayest my heart in its ebb and flow.  Thousands were around me,
+and I saw but thee.  That was the night in which I first entered
+upon the world which crowds life into a drama, and has no
+language but music.  How strangely and how suddenly with thee
+became that world evermore connected!  What the delusion of the
+stage was to others, thy presence was to me.  My life, too,
+seemed to centre into those short hours, and from thy lips I
+heard a music, mute to all ears but mine.  I sit in the room
+where my father dwelt.  Here, on that happy night, forgetting why
+THEY were so happy, I shrunk into the shadow, and sought to guess
+what thou wert to me; and my mother's low voice woke me, and I
+crept to my father's side, close--close, from fear of my own
+thoughts.
+
+"Ah! sweet and sad was the morrow to that night, when thy lips
+warned me of the future.  An orphan now,--what is there that
+lives for me to think of, to dream upon, to revere, but thou!
+
+"How tenderly thou hast rebuked me for the grievous wrong that my
+thoughts did thee!  Why should I have shuddered to feel thee
+glancing upon my thoughts like the beam on the solitary tree, to
+which thou didst once liken me so well?  It was--it was, that,
+like the tree, I struggled for the light, and the light came.
+They tell me of love, and my very life of the stage breathes the
+language of love into my lips.  No; again and again, I know THAT
+is not the love that I feel for thee!--it is not a passion, it is
+a thought!  I ask not to be loved again.  I murmur not that thy
+words are stern and thy looks are cold.  I ask not if I have
+rivals; I sigh not to be fair in thine eyes.  It is my SPIRIT
+that would blend itself with thine.  I would give worlds, though
+we were apart, though oceans rolled between us, to know the hour
+in which thy gaze was lifted to the stars,--in which thy heart
+poured itself in prayer.  They tell me thou art more beautiful
+than the marble images that are fairer than all human forms; but
+I have never dared to gaze steadfastly on thy face, that memory
+might compare thee with the rest.  Only thine eyes and thy soft,
+calm smile haunt me; as when I look upon the moon, all that
+passes into my heart is her silent light.
+
+...
+
+"Often, when the air is calm, I have thought that I hear the
+strains of my father's music; often, though long stilled in the
+grave, have they waked me from the dreams of the solemn night.
+Methinks, ere thou comest to me that I hear them herald thy
+approach.  Methinks I hear them wail and moan, when I sink back
+into myself on seeing thee depart.  Thou art OF that music,--its
+spirit, its genius.  My father must have guessed at thee and thy
+native regions, when the winds hushed to listen to his tones, and
+the world deemed him mad!  I hear where I sit, the far murmur of
+the sea.  Murmur on, ye blessed waters!  The waves are the pulses
+of the shore.  They beat with the gladness of the morning wind,--
+so beats my heart in the freshness and light that make up the
+thoughts of thee!
+
+...
+
+"Often in my childhood I have mused and asked for what I was
+born; and my soul answered my heart and said, 'THOU WERT BORN TO
+WORSHIP!'  Yes; I know why the real world has ever seemed to me
+so false and cold.  I know why the world of the stage charmed and
+dazzled me.  I know why it was so sweet to sit apart and gaze my
+whole being into the distant heavens.  My  nature is not formed
+for this life, happy though that life seem to others.  It is its
+very want to have ever before it some image loftier than itself!
+ Stranger, in what realm above, when the grave is past, shall my
+soul, hour after hour, worship at the same source as thine?
+
+...
+
+"In the gardens of my neighbour there is a small fountain.  I
+stood by it this morning after sunrise.  How it sprung up, with
+its eager spray, to the sunbeams!  And then I thought that I
+should see thee again this day, and so sprung my heart to the new
+morning which thou bringest me from the skies.
+
+...
+
+"I HAVE seen, I have LISTENED to thee again.  How bold I have
+become!  I ran on with my childlike thoughts and stories, my
+recollections of the past, as if I had known thee from an infant.
+Suddenly the idea of my presumption struck me.  I stopped, and
+timidly sought thine eyes.
+
+"'Well, and when you found that the nightingale refused to
+sing?'--
+
+"'Ah!' I said, 'what to thee this history of the heart of a
+child?'
+
+"'Viola,' didst thou answer, with that voice, so inexpressibly
+calm and earnest!--'Viola, the darkness of a child's heart is
+often but the shadow of a star.  Speak on!  And thy nightingale,
+when they caught and caged it, refused to sing?'
+
+"'And I placed the cage yonder, amidst the vine-leaves, and took
+up my lute, and spoke to it on the strings; for I thought that
+all music was its native language, and it would understand that I
+sought to comfort it.'
+
+"'Yes,' saidst thou.  'And at last it answered thee, but not with
+song,--in a sharp, brief cry; so mournful, that thy hands let
+fall the lute, and the tears gushed from thine eyes.  So softly
+didst thou unbar the cage, and the nightingale flew into yonder
+thicket; and thou heardst the foliage rustle, and, looking
+through the moonlight, thine eyes saw that it had found its mate.
+It sang to thee then from the boughs a long, loud, joyous
+jubilee.  And musing, thou didst feel that it was not the vine-
+leaves or the moonlight that made the bird give melody to night,
+and that the secret of its music was the presence of a thing
+beloved.'
+
+"How didst thou know my thoughts in that childlike time better
+than I knew myself!  How is the humble life of my past years,
+with its mean events, so mysteriously familiar to thee, bright
+stranger!  I wonder,--but I do not again dare to fear thee!
+
+...
+
+"Once the thought of him oppressed and weighed me down.  As an
+infant that longs for the moon, my being was one vague desire for
+something never to be attained.  Now I feel rather as if to think
+of thee sufficed to remove every fetter from my spirit.  I float
+in the still seas of light, and nothing seems too high for my
+wings, too glorious for my eyes.  It was mine ignorance that made
+me fear thee.  A knowledge that is not in books seems to breathe
+around thee as an atmosphere.  How little have I read!--how
+little have I learned!  Yet when thou art by my side, it seems as
+if the veil were lifted from all wisdom and all Nature.  I
+startle when I look even at the words I have written; they seem
+not to come from myself, but are the signs of another language
+which thou hast taught my heart, and which my hand traces
+rapidly, as at thy dictation.  Sometimes, while I write or muse,
+I could fancy that I heard light wings hovering around me, and
+saw dim shapes of beauty floating round, and vanishing as they
+smiled upon me.  No unquiet and fearful dream ever comes to me
+now in sleep, yet sleep and waking are alike but as one dream.
+In sleep I wander with thee, not through the paths of earth, but
+through impalpable air--an air which seems a music--upward and
+upward, as the soul mounts on the tones of a lyre!  Till I knew
+thee, I was as a slave to the earth.  Thou hast given to me the
+liberty of the universe!  Before, it was life; it seems to me now
+as if I had commenced eternity!
+
+...
+
+"Formerly, when I was to appear upon the stage, my heart beat
+more loudly.  I trembled to encounter the audience, whose breath
+gave shame or renown; and now I have no fear of them.  I see
+them, heed them, hear them not!  I know that there will be music
+in my voice, for it is a hymn that I pour to thee.  Thou never
+comest to the theatre; and that no longer grieves me.  Thou art
+become too sacred to appear a part of the common world, and I
+feel glad that thou art not by when crowds have a right to judge
+me.
+
+...
+
+"And he spoke to me of ANOTHER:  to another he would consign me!
+No, it is not love that I feel for thee, Zanoni; or why did I
+hear thee without anger, why did thy command seem to me not a
+thing impossible?  As the strings of the instrument obey the hand
+of the master, thy look modulates the wildest chords of my heart
+to thy will.  If it please thee,--yes, let it be so.  Thou art
+lord of my destinies; they cannot rebel against thee!  I almost
+think I could love him, whoever it be, on whom thou wouldst shed
+the rays that circumfuse thyself.  Whatever thou hast touched, I
+love; whatever thou speakest of, I love.  Thy hand played with
+these vine leaves; I wear them in my bosom.  Thou seemest to me
+the source of all love; too high and too bright to be loved
+thyself, but darting light into other objects, on which the eye
+can gaze less dazzled.  No, no; it is not love that I feel for
+thee, and therefore it is that I do not blush to nourish and
+confess it.  Shame on me if I loved, knowing myself so worthless
+a thing to thee!
+
+...
+
+"ANOTHER!--my memory echoes back that word.  Another!  Dost thou
+mean that I shall see thee no more?  It is not sadness,--it is
+not despair that seizes me.  I cannot weep.  It is an utter sense
+of desolation.  I am plunged back into the common life; and I
+shudder coldly at the solitude.  But I will obey thee, if thou
+wilt.  Shall I not see thee again beyond the grave?  O how sweet
+it were to die!
+
+"Why do I not struggle from the web in which my will is thus
+entangled?  Hast thou a right to dispose of me thus?  Give me
+back--give me back the life I knew before I gave life itself away
+to thee.  Give me back the careless dreams of my youth,---my
+liberty of heart that sung aloud as it walked the earth.  Thou
+hast disenchanted me of everything that is not of thyself.  Where
+was the sin, at least, to think of thee,--to see thee?  Thy kiss
+still glows upon my hand; is that hand mine to bestow?  Thy kiss
+claimed and hallowed it to thyself.  Stranger, I will NOT obey
+thee.
+
+...
+
+"Another day,--one day of the fatal three is gone!  It is strange
+to me that since the sleep of the last night, a deep calm has
+settled upon my breast.  I feel so assured that my very being is
+become a part of thee, that I cannot believe that my life can be
+separated from thine; and in this conviction I repose, and smile
+even at thy words and my own fears.  Thou art fond of one maxim,
+which thou repeatest in a thousand forms,--that the beauty of the
+soul is faith; that as ideal loveliness to the sculptor, faith is
+to the heart; that faith, rightly understood, extends over all
+the works of the Creator, whom we can know but through belief;
+that it embraces a tranquil confidence in ourselves, and a serene
+repose as to our future; that it is the moonlight that sways the
+tides of the human sea.  That faith I comprehend now.  I reject
+all doubt, all fear.  I know that I have inextricably linked the
+whole that makes the inner life to thee; and thou canst not tear
+me from thee, if thou wouldst!  And this change from struggle
+into calm came to me with sleep,--a sleep without a dream; but
+when I woke, it was with a mysterious sense of happiness,--an
+indistinct memory of something blessed,--as if thou hadst cast
+from afar off a smile upon my slumber.  At night I was so sad;
+not a blossom that had not closed itself up, as if never more to
+open to the sun; and the night itself, in the heart as on the
+earth, has ripened the blossoms into flowers.  The world is
+beautiful once more, but beautiful in repose,--not a breeze stirs
+thy tree, not a doubt my soul!"
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.VI.
+
+Tu vegga o per violenzia o per inganno
+Patire o disonore o mortal danno.
+"Orlando Furioso," Cant. xlii. i.
+
+(Thou art about, either through violence or artifice, to suffer
+either dishonour or mortal loss.)
+
+It was a small cabinet; the walls were covered with pictures, one
+of which was worth more than the whole lineage of the owner of
+the palace.  Oh, yes! Zanoni was right.  The painter IS a
+magician; the gold he at least wrings from his crucible is no
+delusion.  A Venetian noble might be a fribble, or an assassin,--
+a scoundrel, or a dolt; worthless, or worse than worthless, yet
+he might have sat to Titian, and his portrait may be
+inestimable,--a few inches of painted canvas a thousand times
+more valuable than a man with his veins and muscles, brain, will,
+heart, and intellect!
+
+In this cabinet sat a man of about three-and-forty,--dark-eyed,
+sallow, with short, prominent features, a massive conformation of
+jaw, and thick, sensual, but resolute lips; this man was the
+Prince di --.  His form, above the middle height, and rather
+inclined to corpulence, was clad in a loose dressing-robe of rich
+brocade.  On a table before him lay an old-fashioned sword and
+hat, a mask, dice and dice-box, a portfolio, and an inkstand of
+silver curiously carved.
+
+"Well, Mascari," said the prince, looking up towards his
+parasite, who stood by the embrasure of the deep-set barricadoed
+window,--"well! the Cardinal sleeps with his fathers.  I require
+comfort for the loss of so excellent a relation; and where a more
+dulcet voice than Viola Pisani's?"
+
+"Is your Excellency serious?  So soon after the death of his
+Eminence?"
+
+"It will be the less talked of, and I the less suspected.  Hast
+thou ascertained the name of the insolent who baffled us that
+night, and advised the Cardinal the next day?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Sapient Mascari!  I will inform thee.  It was the strange
+Unknown."
+
+"The Signor Zanoni!  Are you sure, my prince?"
+
+"Mascari, yes.  There is a tone in that man's voice that I never
+can mistake; so clear, and so commanding, when I hear it I almost
+fancy there is such a thing as conscience.  However, we must rid
+ourselves of an impertinent.  Mascari, Signor Zanoni hath not yet
+honoured our poor house with his presence.  He is a distinguished
+stranger,--we must give a banquet in his honour."
+
+"Ah, and the Cyprus wine!  The cypress is a proper emblem of the
+grave."
+
+"But this anon.  I am superstitious; there are strange stories of
+Zanoni's power and foresight; remember the death of Ughelli.  No
+matter, though the Fiend were his ally, he should not rob me of
+my prize; no, nor my revenge."
+
+"Your Excellency is infatuated; the actress has bewitched you."
+
+"Mascari," said the prince, with a haughty smile, "through these
+veins rolls the blood of the old Visconti--of those who boasted
+that no woman ever escaped their lust, and no man their
+resentment.  The crown of my fathers has shrunk into a gewgaw and
+a toy,--their ambition and their spirit are undecayed!  My honour
+is now enlisted in this pursuit,--Viola must be mine!"
+
+"Another ambuscade?" said Mascari, inquiringly.
+
+"Nay, why not enter the house itself?--the situation is lonely,
+and the door is not made of iron."
+
+"But what if, on her return home, she tell the tale of our
+violence?  A house forced,--a virgin stolen!  Reflect; though the
+feudal privileges are not destroyed, even a Visconti is not now
+above the law."
+
+"Is he not, Mascari?  Fool! in what age of the world, even if the
+Madmen of France succeed in their chimeras, will the iron of law
+not bend itself, like an osier twig, to the strong hand of power
+and gold?  But look not so pale, Mascari; I have foreplanned all
+things.  The day that she leaves this palace, she will leave it
+for France, with Monsieur Jean Nicot."
+
+Before Mascari could reply, the gentleman of the chamber
+announced the Signor Zanoni.
+
+The prince involuntarily laid his hand upon the sword placed on
+the table, then with a smile at his own impulse, rose, and met
+his visitor at the threshold, with all the profuse and respectful
+courtesy of Italian simulation.
+
+"This is an honour highly prized," said the prince.  "I have long
+desired to clasp the hand of one so distinguished."
+
+"And I give it in the spirit with which you seek it," replied
+Zanoni.
+
+The Neapolitan bowed over the hand he pressed; but as he touched
+it a shiver came over him, and his heart stood still.  Zanoni
+bent on him his dark, smiling eyes, and then seated himself with
+a familiar air.
+
+"Thus it is signed and sealed; I mean our friendship, noble
+prince.  And now I will tell you the object of my visit.  I find,
+Excellency, that, unconsciously perhaps, we are rivals.  Can we
+not accommodate out pretensions!"
+
+"Ah!" said the prince, carelessly, "you, then, were the cavalier
+who robbed me of the reward of my chase.  All stratagems fair in
+love, as in war.  Reconcile our pretensions!  Well, here is the
+dice-box; let us throw for her.  He who casts the lowest shall
+resign his claim."
+
+"Is this a decision by which you will promise to be bound?"
+
+"Yes, on my faith."
+
+"And for him who breaks his word so plighted, what shall be the
+forfeit?"
+
+"The sword lies next to the dice-box, Signor Zanoni.  Let him who
+stands not by his honour fall by the sword."
+
+"And you invoke that sentence if either of us fail his word?  Be
+it so; let Signor Mascari cast for us."
+
+"Well said!--Mascari, the dice!"
+
+The prince threw himself back in his chair; and, world-hardened
+as he was, could not suppress the glow of triumph and
+satisfaction that spread itself over his features.  Mascari took
+up the three dice, and rattled them noisily in the box.  Zanoni,
+leaning his cheek on his hand, and bending over the table, fixed
+his eyes steadfastly on the parasite; Mascari in vain struggled
+to extricate from that searching gaze; he grew pale, and
+trembled, he put down the box.
+
+"I give the first throw to your Excellency.  Signor Mascari, be
+pleased to terminate our suspense."
+
+Again Mascari took up the box; again his hand shook so that the
+dice rattled within.  He threw; the numbers were sixteen.
+
+"It is a high throw," said Zanoni, calmly; "nevertheless, Signor
+Mascari, I do not despond."
+
+Mascari gathered up the dice, shook the box, and rolled the
+contents once more on the table:  the number was the highest that
+can be thrown,--eighteen.
+
+The prince darted a glance of fire at his minion, who stood with
+gaping mouth, staring at the dice, and trembling from head to
+foot.
+
+"I have won, you see," said Zanoni; "may we be friends still?"
+
+"Signor," said the prince, obviously struggling with anger and
+confusion, "the victory is yours.  But pardon me, you have spoken
+lightly of this young girl,--will anything tempt you to yield
+your claim?"
+
+"Ah, do not think so ill of my gallantry; and," resumed Zanoni,
+with a stern meaning in his voice, "forget not the forfeit your
+own lips have named."
+
+The prince knit his brow, but constrained the haughty answer that
+was his first impulse.
+
+"Enough!" he said, forcing a smile; "I yield.  Let me prove that
+I do not yield ungraciously; will you favour me with your
+presence at a little feast I propose to give in honour," he
+added, with a sardonic mockery, "of the elevation of my kinsman,
+the late Cardinal, of pious memory, to the true seat of St.
+Peter?"
+
+"It is, indeed, a happiness to hear one command of yours I can
+obey."
+
+Zanoni then turned the conversation, talked lightly and gayly,
+and soon afterwards departed.
+
+"Villain!" then exclaimed the prince, grasping Mascari by the
+collar, "you betrayed me!"
+
+"I assure your Excellency that the dice were properly arranged;
+he should have thrown twelve; but he is the Devil, and that's the
+end of it."
+
+"There is no time to be lost," said the prince, quitting his hold
+of his parasite, who quietly resettled his cravat.
+
+"My blood is up,--I will win this girl, if I die for it!  What
+noise is that?"
+
+"It is but the sword of your illustrious ancestor that has fallen
+from the table."
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.VII.
+
+Il ne faut appeler aucun ordre si ce n'est en tems clair et
+serein.
+"Les Clavicules du Rabbi Salomon."
+
+(No order of spirits must be invoked unless the weather be clear
+and serene.)
+
+Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.
+
+My art is already dim and troubled.  I have lost the tranquillity
+which is power.  I cannot influence the decisions of those whom I
+would most guide to the shore; I see them wander farther and
+deeper into the infinite ocean where our barks sail evermore to
+the horizon that flies before us!  Amazed and awed to find that I
+can only warn where I would control, I have looked into my own
+soul.  It is true that the desires of earth chain me to the
+present, and shut me from the solemn secrets which Intellect,
+purified from all the dross of the clay, alone can examine and
+survey.  The stern condition on which we hold our nobler and
+diviner gifts darkens our vision towards the future of those for
+whom we know the human infirmities of jealousy or hate or love.
+Mejnour, all around me is mist and haze; I have gone back in our
+sublime existence; and from the bosom of the imperishable youth
+that blooms only in the spirit, springs up the dark poison-flower
+of human love.
+
+This man is not worthy of her,--I know that truth; yet in his
+nature are the seeds of good and greatness, if the tares and
+weeds of worldly vanities and fears would suffer them to grow.
+If she were his, and I had thus transplanted to another soil the
+passion that obscures my gaze and disarms my power, unseen,
+unheard, unrecognised, I could watch over his fate, and secretly
+prompt his deeds, and minister to her welfare through his own.
+But time rushes on!  Through the shadows that encircle me, I see,
+gathering round her, the darkest dangers.  No choice but flight,
+--no escape save with him or me.  With me!--the rapturous
+thought,--the terrible conviction!  With me!  Mejnour, canst thou
+wonder that I would save her from myself?  A moment in the life
+of ages,--a bubble on the shoreless sea.  What else to me can be
+human love?  And in this exquisite nature of hers,--more pure,
+more spiritual, even in its young affections than ever heretofore
+the countless volumes of the heart, race after race, have given
+to my gaze:  there is yet a deep-buried feeling that warns me of
+inevitable woe.  Thou austere and remorseless Hierophant,--thou
+who hast sought to convert to our brotherhood every spirit that
+seemed to thee most high and bold,--even thou knowest, by
+horrible experience, how vain the hope to banish FEAR from the
+heart of woman.
+
+My life would be to her one marvel.  Even if, on the other hand,
+I sought to guide her path through the realms of terror to the
+light, think of the Haunter of the Threshold, and shudder with me
+at the awful hazard!  I have endeavoured to fill the Englishman's
+ambition with the true glory of his art; but the restless spirit
+of his ancestor still seems to whisper in him, and to attract to
+the spheres in which it lost its own wandering way.  There is a
+mystery in man's inheritance from his fathers.  Peculiarities of
+the mind, as diseases of the body, rest dormant for generations,
+to revive in some distant descendant, baffle all treatment and
+elude all skill.  Come to me from thy solitude amidst the wrecks
+of Rome!  I pant for a living confidant,--for one who in the old
+time has himself known jealousy and love.  I have sought commune
+with Adon-Ai; but his presence, that once inspired such heavenly
+content with knowledge, and so serene a confidence in destiny,
+now only troubles and perplexes me.  From the height from which I
+strive to search into the shadows of things to come, I see
+confused spectres of menace and wrath.  Methinks I behold a
+ghastly limit to the wondrous existence I have held,--methinks
+that, after ages of the Ideal Life, I see my course merge into
+the most stormy whirlpool of the Real.  Where the stars opened to
+me their gates, there looms a scaffold,--thick steams of blood
+rise as from a shambles.  What is more strange to me, a creature
+here, a very type of the false ideal of common men,--body and
+mind, a hideous mockery of the art that shapes the Beautiful, and
+the desires that seek the Perfect, ever haunts my vision amidst
+these perturbed and broken clouds of the fate to be.  By that
+shadowy scaffold it stands and gibbers at me, with lips dropping
+slime and gore.  Come, O friend of the far-time; for me, at
+least, thy wisdom has not purged away thy human affections.
+According to the bonds of our solemn order, reduced now to thee
+and myself, lone survivors of so many haughty and glorious
+aspirants, thou art pledged, too, to warn the descendant of those
+whom thy counsels sought to initiate into the great secret in a
+former age.  The last of that bold Visconti who was once thy
+pupil is the relentless persecutor of this fair child.  With
+thoughts of lust and murder, he is digging his own grave; thou
+mayest yet daunt him from his doom.  And I also mysteriously, by
+the same bond, am pledged to obey, if he so command, a less
+guilty descendant of a baffled but nobler student.  If he reject
+my counsel, and insist upon the pledge, Mejnour, thou wilt have
+another neophyte.  Beware of another victim!  Come to me!  This
+will reach thee with all speed.  Answer it by the pressure of one
+hand that I can dare to clasp!
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.VIII.
+
+Il lupo
+Ferito, credo, mi conobbe e 'ncontro
+Mi venne con la bocca sanguinosa.
+"Aminta," At. iv. Sc. i.
+
+(The wounded wolf, I think, knew me, and came to meet me with its
+bloody mouth.)
+
+At Naples, the tomb of Virgil, beetling over the cave of
+Posilipo, is reverenced, not with the feelings that should hallow
+the memory of the poet, but the awe that wraps the memory of the
+magician.  To his charms they ascribe the hollowing of that
+mountain passage; and tradition yet guards his tomb by the
+spirits he had raised to construct the cavern.  This spot, in the
+immediate vicinity of Viola's home, had often attracted her
+solitary footsteps.  She had loved the dim and solemn fancies
+that beset her as she looked into the lengthened gloom of the
+grotto, or, ascending to the tomb, gazed from the rock on the
+dwarfed figures of the busy crowd that seemed to creep like
+insects along the windings of the soil below; and now, at noon,
+she bent thither her thoughtful way.  She threaded the narrow
+path, she passed the gloomy vineyard that clambers up the rock,
+and gained the lofty spot, green with moss and luxuriant foliage,
+where the dust of him who yet soothes and elevates the minds of
+men is believed to rest.  From afar rose the huge fortress of St.
+Elmo, frowning darkly amidst spires and domes that glittered in
+the sun.  Lulled in its azure splendour lay the Siren's sea; and
+the grey smoke of Vesuvius, in the clear distance, soared like a
+moving pillar into the lucid sky.  Motionless on the brink of the
+precipice, Viola looked upon the lovely and living world that
+stretched below; and the sullen vapour of Vesuvius fascinated her
+eye yet more than the scattered gardens, or the gleaming Caprea,
+smiling amidst the smiles of the sea.  She heard not a step that
+had followed her on her path and started to hear a voice at hand.
+So sudden was the apparition of the form that stood by her side,
+emerging from the bushes that clad the crags, and so singularly
+did it harmonise in its uncouth ugliness with the wild nature of
+the scene immediately around her, and the wizard traditions of
+the place, that the colour left her cheek, and a faint cry broke
+from her lips.
+
+"Tush, pretty trembler!--do not be frightened at my face," said
+the man, with a bitter smile.  "After three months' marriage,
+there is no different between ugliness and beauty.  Custom is a
+great leveller.  I was coming to your house when I saw you leave
+it; so, as I have matters of importance to communicate, I
+ventured to follow your footsteps.  My name is Jean Nicot, a name
+already favourably known as a French artist.  The art of painting
+and the art of music are nearly connected, and the stage is an
+altar that unites the two."
+
+There was something frank and unembarrassed in the man's address
+that served to dispel the fear his appearance had occasioned.  He
+seated himself, as he spoke, on a crag beside her, and, looking
+up steadily into her face, continued:--
+
+"You are very beautiful, Viola Pisani, and I am not surprised at
+the number of your admirers.  If I presume to place myself in the
+list, it is because I am the only one who loves thee honestly,
+and woos thee fairly.  Nay, look not so indignant!  Listen to me.
+Has the Prince di -- ever spoken to thee of marriage; or the
+beautiful imposter Zanoni, or the young blue-eyed Englishman,
+Clarence Glyndon?  It is marriage,--it is a home, it is safety,
+it is reputation, that I offer to thee; and these last when the
+straight form grows crooked, and the bright eyes dim.  What say
+you?" and he attempted to seize her hand.
+
+Viola shrunk from him, and silently turned to depart.  He rose
+abruptly and placed himself on her path.
+
+"Actress, you must hear me!  Do you know what this calling of the
+stage is in the eyes of prejudice,--that is, of the common
+opinion of mankind?  It is to be a princess before the lamps, and
+a Pariah before the day.  No man believes in your virtue, no man
+credits your vows; you are the puppet that they consent to trick
+out with tinsel for their amusement, not an idol for their
+worship.  Are you so enamoured of this career that you scorn even
+to think of security and honour?  Perhaps you are different from
+what you seem.  Perhaps you laugh at the prejudice that would
+degrade you, and would wisely turn it to advantage.  Speak
+frankly to me; I have no prejudice either.  Sweet one, I am sure
+we should agree.  Now, this Prince di --, I have a message from
+him.  Shall I deliver it?"
+
+Never had Viola felt as she felt then, never had she so
+thoroughly seen all the perils of her forelorn condition and her
+fearful renown.  Nicot continued:--
+
+"Zanoni would but amuse himself with thy vanity; Glyndon would
+despise himself, if he offered thee his name, and thee, if thou
+wouldst accept it; but the Prince di -- is in earnest, and he is
+wealthy.  Listen!"
+
+And Nicot approached his lips to her, and hissed a sentence which
+she did not suffer him to complete.  She darted from him with one
+glance of unutterable disdain.  As he strove to regain his hold
+of her arm, he lost his footing, and fell down the sides of the
+rock till, bruised and lacerated, a pine-branch saved him from
+the yawning abyss below.  She heard his exclamation of rage and
+pain as she bounded down the path, and, without once turning to
+look behind, regained her home.  By the porch stood Glyndon,
+conversing with Gionetta.  She passed him abruptly, entered the
+house, and, sinking on the floor, wept loud and passionately.
+
+Glyndon, who had followed her in surprise, vainly sought to
+soothe and calm her.  She would not reply to his questions; she
+did not seem to listen to his protestations of love, till
+suddenly, as Nicot's terrible picture of the world's judgment of
+that profession which to her younger thoughts had seemed the
+service of Song and the Beautiful, forced itself upon her, she
+raised her face from her hands, and, looking steadily upon the
+Englishman, said, "False one, dost thou talk of me of love?"
+
+"By my honour, words fail to tell thee how I love!"
+
+"Wilt thou give me thy home, thy name?  Dost thou woo me as thy
+wife?"  And at that moment, had Glyndon answered as his better
+angel would have counselled, perhaps, in that revolution of her
+whole mind which the words of Nicot had effected, which made her
+despise her very self, sicken of her lofty dreams, despair of the
+future, and distrust her whole ideal,--perhaps, I say, in
+restoring her self-esteem,--he would have won her confidence, and
+ultimately secured her love.  But against the prompting of his
+nobler nature rose up at that sudden question all those doubts
+which, as Zanoni had so well implied, made the true enemies of
+his soul.  Was he thus suddenly to be entangled into a snare laid
+for his credulity by deceivers?  Was she not instructed to seize
+the moment to force him into an avowal which prudence must
+repent?  Was not the great actress rehearsing a premeditated
+part?  He turned round, as these thoughts, the children of the
+world, passed across him, for he literally fancied that he heard
+the sarcastic laugh of Mervale without.  Nor was he deceived.
+Mervale was passing by the threshold, and Gionetta had told him
+his friend was within.  Who does not know the effect of the
+world's laugh?  Mervale was the personation of the world.  The
+whole world seemed to shout derision in those ringing tones.  He
+drew back,--he recoiled.  Viola followed him with her earnest,
+impatient eyes.  At last, he faltered forth, "Do all of thy
+profession, beautiful Viola, exact marriage as the sole condition
+of love?"  Oh, bitter question!  Oh, poisoned taunt!  He repented
+it the moment after.  He was seized with remorse of reason, of
+feeling, and of conscience.  He saw her form shrink, as it were,
+at his cruel words.  He saw the colour come and go, to leave the
+writhing lips like marble; and then, with a sad, gentle look of
+self-pity, rather than reproach, she pressed her hands tightly to
+her bosom, and said,--
+
+"He was right!  Pardon me, Englishman; I see now, indeed, that I
+am the Pariah and the outcast."
+
+"Hear me.  I retract.  Viola, Viola! it is for you to forgive!"
+
+But Viola waved him from her, and, smiling mournfully as she
+passed him by, glided from the chamber; and he did not dare to
+detain her.
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.IX.
+
+Dafne:  Ma, chi lung' e d'Amor?
+Tirsi:  Chi teme e fugge.
+Dafne:  E che giova fuggir da lui ch' ha l' ali?
+Tirsi:  AMOR NASCENTE HA CORTE L' ALI!
+"Aminta," At. ii. Sc. ii.
+
+(Dafne:  But, who is far from Love?
+Tirsi:  He who fears and flies.
+Dafne:  What use to flee from one who has wings?
+Tirsi:  The wings of Love, while he yet grows, are short.)
+
+When Glyndon found himself without Viola's house, Mervale, still
+loitering at the door, seized his arm.  Glyndon shook him off
+abruptly.
+
+"Thou and thy counsels," said he, bitterly, "have made me a
+coward and a wretch.  But I will go home,--I will write to her.
+I will pour out my whole soul; she will forgive me yet."
+
+Mervale, who was a man of imperturbable temper, arranged his
+ruffles, which his friend's angry gesture had a little
+discomposed, and not till Glyndon had exhausted himself awhile by
+passionate exclamations and reproaches, did the experienced
+angler begin to tighten the line.  He then drew from Glyndon the
+explanation of what had passed, and artfully sought not to
+irritate, but soothe him.  Mervale, indeed, was by no means a bad
+man; he had stronger moral notions than are common amongst the
+young.  He sincerely reproved his friend for harbouring
+dishonourable intentions with regard to the actress.  "Because I
+would not have her thy wife, I never dreamed that thou shouldst
+degrade her to thy mistress.  Better of the two an imprudent
+match than an illicit connection.  But pause yet, do not act on
+the impulse of the moment."
+
+"But there is no time to lose.  I have promised to Zanoni to give
+him my answer by to-morrow night.  Later than that time, all
+option ceases."
+
+"Ah!" said Mervale, "this seems suspicious.  Explain yourself."
+
+And Glyndon, in the earnestness of his passion, told his friend
+what had passed between himself and Zanoni,--suppressing only, he
+scarce knew why, the reference to his ancestor and the mysterious
+brotherhood.
+
+This recital gave to Mervale all the advantage he could desire.
+Heavens! with what sound, shrewd common-sense he talked.  How
+evidently some charlatanic coalition between the actress, and
+perhaps,--who knows?--her clandestine protector, sated with
+possession!  How equivocal the character of one,--the position of
+the other!  What cunning in the question of the actress!  How
+profoundly had Glyndon, at the first suggestion of his sober
+reason, seen through the snare.  What! was he to be thus
+mystically cajoled and hurried into a rash marriage, because
+Zanoni, a mere stranger, told him with a grave face that he must
+decide before the clock struck a certain hour?
+
+"Do this at least," said Mervale, reasonably enough,--"wait till
+the time expires; it is but another day.  Baffle Zanoni.  He
+tells thee that he will meet thee before midnight to-morrow, and
+defies thee to avoid him.  Pooh! let us quit Naples for some
+neighbouring place, where, unless he be indeed the Devil, he
+cannot possibly find us.  Show him that you will not be led
+blindfold even into an act that you meditate yourself.  Defer to
+write to her, or to see her, till after to-morrow.  This is all I
+ask.  Then visit her, and decide for yourself."
+
+Glyndon was staggered.  He could not combat the reasonings of his
+friend; he was not convinced, but he hesitated; and at that
+moment Nicot passed them.  He turned round, and stopped, as he
+saw Glyndon.
+
+"Well, and do you think still of the Pisani?"
+
+"Yes; and you--"
+
+"Have seen and conversed with her.  She shall be Madame Nicot
+before this day week!  I am going to the cafe, in the Toledo; and
+hark ye, when next you meet your friend Signor Zanoni, tell him
+that he has twice crossed my path.  Jean Nicot, though a painter,
+is a plain, honest man, and always pays his debts."
+
+"It is a good doctrine in money matters," said Mervale; "as to
+revenge, it is not so moral, and certainly not so wise.  But is
+it in your love that Zanoni has crossed your path?  How that, if
+your suit prosper so well?"
+
+"Ask Viola Pisani that question.  Bah! Glyndon, she is a prude
+only to thee.  But I have no prejudices.  Once more, farewell."
+
+"Rouse thyself, man!" said Mervale, slapping Glyndon on the
+shoulder.  "What think you of your fair one now?"
+
+"This man must lie."
+
+"Will you write to her at once?"
+
+"No; if she be really playing a game, I could renounce her
+without a sigh.  I will watch her closely; and, at all events,
+Zanoni shall not be the master of my fate.  Let us, as you
+advise, leave Naples at daybreak to-morrow."
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.X.
+
+O chiunque tu sia, che fuor d'ogni uso
+Pieghi Natura ad opre altere e strane,
+E, spiando i segreti, entri al piu chiuso
+Spazi' a tua voglia delle menti umane--
+Deh, Dimmi!
+"Gerus. Lib.," Cant. x. xviii.
+
+(O thou, whoever thou art, who through every use bendest Nature
+to works foreign and strange; and by spying into her secrets,
+enterest at thy will into the closest recesses of the human
+mind,--O speak!  O tell me!)
+
+Early the next morning the young Englishmen mounted their horses,
+and took the road towards Baiae.  Glyndon left word at his hotel,
+that if Signor Zanoni sought him, it was in the neighbourhood of
+that once celebrated watering-place of the ancients that he
+should be found.
+
+They passed by Viola's house, but Glyndon resisted the temptation
+of pausing there; and after threading the grotto of Posilipo,
+they wound by a circuitous route back into the suburbs of the
+city, and took the opposite road, which conducts to Portici and
+Pompeii.  It was late at noon when they arrived at the former of
+these places.  Here they halted to dine; for Mervale had heard
+much of the excellence of the macaroni at Portici, and Mervale
+was a bon vivant.
+
+They put up at an inn of very humble pretensions, and dined under
+an awning.  Mervale was more than usually gay; he pressed the
+lacrima upon his friend, and conversed gayly.
+
+"Well, my dear friend, we have foiled Signor Zanoni in one of his
+predictions at least.  You will have no faith in him hereafter."
+
+"The ides are come, not gone."
+
+"Tush!  If he be the soothsayer, you are not the Caesar.  It is
+your vanity that makes you credulous.  Thank Heaven, I do not
+think myself of such importance that the operations of Nature
+should be changed in order to frighten me."
+
+"But why should the operations of Nature be changed?  There may
+be a deeper philosophy than we dream of,--a philosophy that
+discovers the secrets of Nature, but does not alter, by
+penetrating, its courses."
+
+"Ah, you relapse into your heretical credulity; you seriously
+suppose Zanoni to be a prophet,--a reader of the future; perhaps
+an associate of genii and spirits!"
+
+Here the landlord, a little, fat, oily fellow, came up with a
+fresh bottle of lacrima.  He hoped their Excellencies were
+pleased.  He was most touched--touched to the heart, that they
+liked the macaroni.  Were their Excellencies going to Vesuvius?
+There was a slight eruption; they could not see it where they
+were, but it was pretty, and would be prettier still after
+sunset.
+
+"A capital idea!" cried Mervale.  "What say you, Glyndon?"
+
+"I have not yet seen an eruption; I should like it much."
+
+"But is there no danger?" asked the prudent Mervale.
+
+"Oh, not at all; the mountain is very civil at present.  It only
+plays a little, just to amuse their Excellencies the English."
+
+"Well, order the horses, and bring the bill; we will go before it
+is dark.  Clarence, my friend,--nunc est bibendum; but take care
+of the pede libero, which will scarce do for walking on lava!"
+
+The bottle was finished, the bill paid; the gentlemen mounted,
+the landlord bowed, and they bent their way, in the cool of the
+delightful evening, towards Resina.
+
+The wine, perhaps the excitement of his thoughts, animated
+Glyndon, whose unequal spirits were, at times, high and brilliant
+as those of a schoolboy released; and the laughter of the
+Northern tourists sounded oft and merrily along the melancholy
+domains of buried cities.
+
+Hesperus had lighted his lamp amidst the rosy skies as they
+arrived at Resina.  Here they quitted their horses, and took
+mules and a guide.  As the sky grew darker and more dark, the
+mountain fire burned with an intense lustre.  In various streaks
+and streamlets, the fountain of flame rolled down the dark
+summit, and the Englishmen began to feel increase upon them, as
+they ascended, that sensation of solemnity and awe which makes
+the very atmosphere that surrounds the Giant of the Plains of the
+Antique Hades.
+
+It was night, when, leaving the mules, they ascended on foot,
+accompanied by their guide, and a peasant who bore a rude torch.
+The guide was a conversable, garrulous fellow, like most of his
+country and his calling; and Mervale, who possessed a sociable
+temper, loved to amuse or to instruct himself on every incidental
+occasion.
+
+"Ah, Excellency," said the guide, "your countrymen have a strong
+passion for the volcano.  Long life to them, they bring us plenty
+of money!  If our fortunes depended on the Neapolitans, we should
+starve."
+
+"True, they have no curiosity," said Mervale.  "Do you remember,
+Glyndon, the contempt with which that old count said to us, 'You
+will go to Vesuvius, I suppose?  I have never been; why should I
+go?  You have cold, you have hunger, you have fatigue, you have
+danger, and all for nothing but to see fire, which looks just as
+well in a brazier as on a mountain.'  Ha! ha! the old fellow was
+right."
+
+"But, Excellency," said the guide, "that is not all:  some
+cavaliers think to ascend the mountain without our help.  I am
+sure they deserve to tumble into the crater."
+
+"They must be bold fellows to go alone; you don't often find
+such."
+
+"Sometimes among the French, signor.  But the other night--I
+never was so frightened--I had been with an English party, and a
+lady had left a pocket-book on the mountain, where she had been
+sketching.  She offered me a handsome sum to return for it, and
+bring it to her at Naples.  So I went in the evening.  I found
+it, sure enough, and was about to return, when I saw a figure
+that seemed to emerge from the crater itself.  The air there was
+so pestiferous that I could not have conceived a human creature
+could breathe it, and live.  I was so astounded that I stood
+still as a stone, till the figure came over the hot ashes, and
+stood before me, face to face.  Santa Maria, what a head!"
+
+"What! hideous?"
+
+"No; so beautiful, but so terrible.  It had nothing human in its
+aspect."
+
+"And what said the salamander?"
+
+"Nothing!  It did not even seem to perceive me, though I was near
+as I am to you; but its eyes seemed to emerge prying into the
+air.  It passed by me quickly, and, walking across a stream of
+burning lava, soon vanished on the other side of the mountain.  I
+was curious and foolhardy, and resolved to see if I could bear
+the atmosphere which this visitor had left; but though I did not
+advance within thirty yards of the spot at which he had first
+appeared, I was driven back by a vapour that wellnigh stifled me.
+Cospetto!  I have spat blood ever since."
+
+"Now will I lay a wager that you fancy this fire-king must be
+Zanoni," whispered Mervale, laughing.
+
+The little party had now arrived nearly at the summit of the
+mountain; and unspeakably grand was the spectacle on which they
+gazed.  From the crater arose a vapour, intensely dark, that
+overspread the whole background of the heavens; in the centre
+whereof rose a flame that assumed a form singularly beautiful.
+It might have been compared to a crest of gigantic feathers, the
+diadem of the mountain, high-arched, and drooping downward, with
+the hues delicately shaded off, and the whole shifting and
+tremulous as the plumage on a warrior's helmet.
+
+The glare of the flame spread, luminous and crimson, over the
+dark and rugged ground on which they stood, and drew an
+innumerable variety of shadows from crag and hollow.  An
+oppressive and sulphureous exhalation served to increase the
+gloomy and sublime terror of the place.  But on turning from the
+mountain, and towards the distant and unseen ocean, the contrast
+was wonderfully great; the heavens serene and blue, the stars
+still and calm as the eyes of Divine Love.  It was as if the
+realms of the opposing principles of Evil and of Good were
+brought in one view before the gaze of man!  Glyndon--once more
+the enthusiast, the artist--was enchained and entranced by
+emotions vague and undefinable, half of delight and half of pain.
+Leaning on the shoulder of his friend, he gazed around him, and
+heard with deepening awe the rumbling of the earth below, the
+wheels and voices of the Ministry of Nature in her darkest and
+most inscrutable recess.  Suddenly, as a bomb from a shell, a
+huge stone was flung hundreds of yards up from the jaws of the
+crater, and falling with a mighty crash upon the rock below,
+split into ten thousand fragments, which bounded down the sides
+of the mountain, sparkling and groaning as they went.  One of
+these, the largest fragment, struck the narrow space of soil
+between the Englishmen and the guide, not three feet from the
+spot where the former stood.  Mervale uttered an exclamation of
+terror, and Glyndon held his breath, and shuddered.
+
+"Diavolo!" cried the guide.  "Descend, Excellencies,--descend! we
+have not a moment to lose; follow me close!"
+
+So saying, the guide and the peasant fled with as much swiftness
+as they were able to bring to bear.  Mervale, ever more prompt
+and ready than his friend, imitated their example; and Glyndon,
+more confused than alarmed, followed close.  But they had not
+gone many yards, before, with a rushing and sudden blast, came
+from the crater an enormous volume of vapour.  It pursued,--it
+overtook, it overspread them.  It swept the light from the
+heavens.  All was abrupt and utter darkness; and through the
+gloom was heard the shout of the guide, already distant, and lost
+in an instant amidst the sound of the rushing gust and the groans
+of the earth beneath.  Glyndon paused.  He was separated from his
+friend, from the guide.  He was alone,--with the Darkness and the
+Terror.  The vapour rolled sullenly away; the form of the plumed
+fire was again dimly visible, and its struggling and perturbed
+reflection again shed a glow over the horrors of the path.
+Glyndon recovered himself, and sped onward.  Below, he heard the
+voice of Mervale calling on him, though he no longer saw his
+form.  The sound served as a guide.  Dizzy and breathless, he
+bounded forward; when--hark!--a sullen, slow rolling sounded in
+his ear!  He halted,--and turned back to gaze.  The fire had
+overflowed its course; it had opened itself a channel amidst the
+furrows of the mountain.  The stream pursued him fast--fast; and
+the hot breath of the chasing and preternatural foe came closer
+and closer upon his cheek!  He turned aside; he climbed
+desperately with hands and feet upon a crag that, to the right,
+broke the scathed and blasted level of the soil.  The stream
+rolled beside and beneath him, and then taking a sudden wind
+round the spot on which he stood, interposed its liquid fire,--a
+broad and impassable barrier between his resting-place and
+escape.  There he stood, cut off from descent, and with no
+alternative but to retrace his steps towards the crater, and
+thence seek, without guide or clew, some other pathway.
+
+For a moment his courage left him; he cried in despair, and in
+that overstrained pitch of voice which is never heard afar off,
+to the guide, to Mervale, to return to aid him.
+
+No answer came; and the Englishman, thus abandoned solely to his
+own resources, felt his spirit and energy rise against the
+danger.  He turned back, and ventured as far towards the crater
+as the noxious exhalation would permit; then, gazing below,
+carefully and deliberately he chalked out for himself a path by
+which he trusted to shun the direction the fire-stream had taken,
+and trod firmly and quickly over the crumbling and heated strata.
+
+He had proceeded about fifty yards, when he halted abruptly; an
+unspeakable and unaccountable horror, not hitherto experienced
+amidst all his peril, came over him.  He shook in every limb; his
+muscles refused his will,--he felt, as it were, palsied and
+death-stricken.  The horror, I say, was unaccountable, for the
+path seemed clear and safe.  The fire, above and behind, burned
+clear and far; and beyond, the stars lent him their cheering
+guidance.  No obstacle was visible,--no danger seemed at hand.
+As thus, spell-bound, and panic-stricken, he stood chained to the
+soil,--his breast heaving, large drops rolling down his brow, and
+his eyes starting wildly from their sockets,--he saw before him,
+at some distance, gradually shaping itself more and more
+distinctly to his gaze, a colossal shadow; a shadow that seemed
+partially borrowed from the human shape, but immeasurably above
+the human stature; vague, dark, almost formless; and differing,
+he could not tell where or why, not only from the proportions,
+but also from the limbs and outline of man.
+
+The glare of the volcano, that seemed to shrink and collapse from
+this gigantic and appalling apparition, nevertheless threw its
+light, redly and steadily, upon another shape that stood beside,
+quiet and motionless; and it was, perhaps, the contrast of these
+two things--the Being and the Shadow--that impressed the beholder
+with the difference between them,--the Man and the Superhuman.
+It was but for a moment--nay, for the tenth part of a moment--
+that this sight was permitted to the wanderer.  A second eddy of
+sulphureous vapours from the volcano, yet more rapidly, yet more
+densely than its predecessor, rolled over the mountain; and
+either the nature of the exhalation, or the excess of his own
+dread, was such, that Glyndon, after one wild gasp for breath,
+fell senseless on the earth.
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XI.
+
+Was hab'ich,
+Wenn ich nicht Alles habe?--sprach der Jungling.
+"Das Verschleierte Bild zu Sais."
+
+("What have I, if I possess not All?" said the youth.)
+
+Mervale and the Italians arrived in safety at the spot where they
+had left the mules; and not till they had recovered their own
+alarm and breath did they think of Glyndon.  But then, as the
+minutes passed, and he appeared not, Mervale, whose heart was as
+good at least as human hearts are in general, grew seriously
+alarmed.  He insisted on returning to search for his friend; and
+by dint of prodigal promises prevailed at last on the guide to
+accompany him.  The lower part of the mountain lay calm and white
+in the starlight; and the guide's practised eye could discern all
+objects on the surface at a considerable distance.  They had not,
+however, gone very far, before they perceived two forms slowly
+approaching them.
+
+As they came near, Mervale recognised the form of his friend.
+"Thank Heaven, he is safe!" he cried, turning to the guide.
+
+"Holy angels befriend us!" said the Italian, trembling,--"behold
+the very being that crossed me last Friday night.  It is he, but
+his face is human now!"
+
+"Signor Inglese," said the voice of Zanoni, as Glyndon--pale,
+wan, and silent--returned passively the joyous greeting of
+Mervale,--"Signor Inglese, I told your friend that we should meet
+to-night.  You see you have NOT foiled my prediction."
+
+"But how?--but where?" stammered Mervale, in great confusion and
+surprise.
+
+"I found your friend stretched on the ground, overpowered by the
+mephitic exhalation of the crater.  I bore him to a purer
+atmosphere; and as I know the mountain well, I have conducted him
+safely to you.  This is all our history.  You see, sir, that were
+it not for that prophecy which you desired to frustrate, your
+friend would ere this time have been a corpse; one minute more,
+and the vapour had done its work.  Adieu; goodnight, and pleasant
+dreams."
+
+"But, my preserver, you will not leave us?" said Glyndon,
+anxiously, and speaking for the first time.  "Will you not return
+with us?"
+
+Zanoni paused, and drew Glyndon aside.  "Young man," said he,
+gravely, "it is necessary that we should again meet to-night.  It
+is necessary that you should, ere the first hour of morning,
+decide on your own fate.  I know that you have insulted her whom
+you profess to love.  It is not too late to repent.  Consult not
+your friend:  he is sensible and wise; but not now is his wisdom
+needed.  There are times in life when, from the imagination, and
+not the reason, should wisdom come,--this, for you, is one of
+them.  I ask not your answer now.  Collect your thoughts,--
+recover your jaded and scattered spirits.  It wants two hours of
+midnight.  Before midnight I will be with you."
+
+"Incomprehensible being!" replied the Englishman, "I would leave
+the life you have preserved in your own hands; but what I have
+seen this night has swept even Viola from my thoughts.  A fiercer
+desire than that of love burns in my veins,--the desire not to
+resemble but to surpass my kind; the desire to penetrate and to
+share the secret of your own existence--the desire of a
+preternatural knowledge and unearthly power.  I make my choice.
+In my ancestor's name, I adjure and remind thee of thy pledge.
+Instruct me; school me; make me thine; and I surrender to thee
+at once, and without a murmur, the woman whom, till I saw thee, I
+would have defied a world to obtain."
+
+"I bid thee consider well:  on the one hand, Viola, a tranquil
+home, a happy and serene life; on the other hand, all is
+darkness,--darkness, that even these eyes cannot penetrate."
+
+"But thou hast told me, that if I wed Viola, I must be contented
+with the common existence,--if I refuse, it is to aspire to thy
+knowledge and thy power."
+
+"Vain man, knowledge and power are not happiness."
+
+"But they are better than happiness.  Say!--if I marry Viola,
+wilt thou be my master,--my guide?  Say this, and I am resolved.
+
+"It were impossible."
+
+"Then I renounce her?  I renounce love.  I renounce happiness.
+Welcome solitude,--welcome despair; if they are the entrances to
+thy dark and sublime secret."
+
+"I will not take thy answer now.  Before the last hour of night
+thou shalt give it in one word,--ay or no!  Farewell till then."
+
+Zanoni waved his hand, and, descending rapidly, was seen no more.
+
+Glyndon rejoined his impatient and wondering friend; but Mervale,
+gazing on his face, saw that a great change had passed there.
+The flexile and dubious expression of youth was forever gone.
+The features were locked, rigid, and stern; and so faded was the
+natural bloom, that an hour seemed to have done the work of
+years.
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XII.
+
+Was ist's
+Das hinter diesem Schleier sich verbirgt?
+"Das Verschleierte Bild zu Sais."
+
+(What is it that conceals itself behind this veil?)
+
+On returning from Vesuvius or Pompeii, you enter Naples through
+its most animated, its most Neapolitan quarter,--through that
+quarter in which modern life most closely resembles the ancient;
+and in which, when, on a fair-day, the thoroughfare swarms alike
+with Indolence and Trade, you are impressed at once with the
+recollection of that restless, lively race from which the
+population of Naples derives its origin; so that in one day you
+may see at Pompeii the habitations of a remote age; and on the
+Mole, at Naples, you may imagine you behold the very beings with
+whom those habitations had been peopled.
+
+But now, as the Englishmen rode slowly through the deserted
+streets, lighted but by the lamps of heaven, all the gayety of
+day was hushed and breathless.  Here and there, stretched under a
+portico or a dingy booth, were sleeping groups of houseless
+Lazzaroni,--a tribe now merging its indolent individuality amidst
+an energetic and active population.
+
+The Englishman rode on in silence; for Glyndon neither appeared
+to heed nor hear the questions and comments of Mervale, and
+Mervale himself was almost as weary as the jaded animal he
+bestrode.
+
+Suddenly the silence of earth and ocean was broken by the sound
+of a distant clock that proclaimed the quarter preceding the last
+hour of night.  Glyndon started from his reverie, and looked
+anxiously round.  As the final stroke died, the noise of hoofs
+rung on the broad stones of the pavement, and from a narrow
+street to the right emerged the form of a solitary horseman.  He
+neared the Englishmen, and Glyndon recognised the features and
+mien of Zanoni.
+
+"What! do we meet again, signor?" said Mervale, in a vexed but
+drowsy tone.
+
+"Your friend and I have business together," replied Zanoni, as he
+wheeled his steed to the side of Glyndon.  "But it will be soon
+transacted.  Perhaps you, sir, will ride on to your hotel."
+
+"Alone!"
+
+"There is no danger!" returned Zanoni, with a slight expression
+of disdain in his voice.
+
+"None to me; but to Glyndon?"
+
+"Danger from me!  Ah, perhaps you are right."
+
+"Go on, my dear Mervale," said Glyndon; "I will join you before
+you reach the hotel."
+
+Mervale nodded, whistled, and pushed his horse into a kind of
+amble.
+
+"Now your answer,--quick?"
+
+"I have decided.  The love of Viola has vanished from my heart.
+The pursuit is over."
+
+"You have decided?"
+
+"I have; and now my reward."
+
+"Thy reward!  Well; ere this hour to-morrow it shall await thee."
+
+Zanoni gave the rein to his horse; it sprang forward with a
+bound:  the sparks flew from its hoofs, and horse and rider
+disappeared amidst the shadows of the street whence they had
+emerged.
+
+Mervale was surprised to see his friend by his side, a minute
+after they had parted.
+
+"What has passed between you and Zanoni?"
+
+"Mervale, do not ask me to-night!  I am in a dream."
+
+"I do not wonder at it, for even I am in a sleep.  Let us push
+on."
+
+In the retirement of his chamber, Glyndon sought to recollect his
+thoughts.  He sat down on the foot of his bed, and pressed his
+hands tightly to his throbbing temples.  The events of the last
+few hours; the apparition of the gigantic and shadowy Companion
+of the Mystic, amidst the fires and clouds of Vesuvius; the
+strange encounter with Zanoni himself, on a spot in which he
+could never, by ordinary reasoning, have calculated on finding
+Glyndon, filled his mind with emotions, in which terror and awe
+the least prevailed.  A fire, the train of which had been long
+laid, was lighted at his heart,--the asbestos-fire that, once
+lit, is never to be quenched.  All his early aspirations--his
+young ambition, his longings for the laurel--were merged in one
+passionate yearning to surpass the bounds of the common knowledge
+of man, and reach that solemn spot, between two worlds, on which
+the mysterious stranger appeared to have fixed his home.
+
+Far from recalling with renewed affright the remembrance of the
+apparition that had so appalled him, the recollection only served
+to kindle and concentrate his curiosity into a burning focus.  He
+had said aright,--LOVE HAD VANISHED FROM HIS HEART; there was no
+longer a serene space amidst its disordered elements for human
+affection to move and breathe.  The enthusiast was rapt from this
+earth; and he would have surrendered all that mortal beauty ever
+promised, that mortal hope ever whispered, for one hour with
+Zanoni beyond the portals of the visible world.
+
+He rose, oppressed and fevered with the new thoughts that raged
+within him, and threw open his casement for air.  The ocean lay
+suffused in the starry light, and the stillness of the heavens
+never more eloquently preached the morality of repose to the
+madness of earthly passions.  But such was Glyndon's mood that
+their very hush only served to deepen the wild desires that
+preyed upon his soul; and the solemn stars, that are mysteries in
+themselves, seemed, by a kindred sympathy, to agitate the wings
+of the spirit no longer contented with its cage.  As he gazed, a
+star shot from its brethren, and vanished from the depth of
+space!
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XIII.
+
+O, be gone!
+By Heaven, I love thee better than myself,
+For I came hither armed against myself.
+"Romeo and Juliet."
+
+The young actress and Gionetta had returned from the theatre; and
+Viola fatigued and exhausted, had thrown herself on a sofa, while
+Gionetta busied herself with the long tresses which, released
+from the fillet that bound them, half-concealed the form of the
+actress, like a veil of threads of gold.  As she smoothed the
+luxuriant locks, the old nurse ran gossiping on about the little
+events of the night, the scandal and politics of the scenes and
+the tireroom.  Gionetta was a worthy soul.  Almanzor, in Dryden's
+tragedy of "Almahide," did not change sides with more gallant
+indifference than the exemplary nurse.  She was at last grieved
+and scandalised that Viola had not selected one chosen cavalier.
+But the choice she left wholly to her fair charge.  Zegri or
+Abencerrage, Glyndon or Zanoni, it had been the same to her,
+except that the rumours she had collected respecting the latter,
+combined with his own recommendations of his rival, had given her
+preference to the Englishman.  She interpreted ill the impatient
+and heavy sigh with which Viola greeted her praises of Glyndon,
+and her wonder that he had of late so neglected his attentions
+behind the scenes, and she exhausted all her powers of panegyric
+upon the supposed object of the sigh.  "And then, too," she said,
+"if nothing else were to be said against the other signor, it is
+enough that he is about to leave Naples."
+
+"Leave Naples!--Zanoni?"
+
+"Yes, darling!  In passing by the Mole to-day, there was a crowd
+round some outlandish-looking sailors.  His ship arrived this
+morning, and anchors in the bay.  The sailors say that they are
+to be prepared to sail with the first wind; they were taking in
+fresh stores.  They--"
+
+"Leave me, Gionetta!  Leave me!"
+
+The time had already passed when the girl could confide in
+Gionetta.  Her thoughts had advanced to that point when the heart
+recoils from all confidence, and feels that it cannot be
+comprehended.  Alone now, in the principal apartment of the
+house, she paced its narrow boundaries with tremulous and
+agitated steps:  she recalled the frightful suit of Nicot,--the
+injurious taunt of Glyndon; and she sickened at the remembrance
+of the hollow applauses which, bestowed on the actress, not the
+woman, only subjected her to contumely and insult.  In that room
+the recollection of her father's death, the withered laurel and
+the broken chords, rose chillingly before her.  Hers, she felt,
+was a yet gloomier fate,--the chords may break while the laurel
+is yet green.  The lamp, waning in its socket, burned pale and
+dim, and her eyes instinctively turned from the darker corner of
+the room.  Orphan, by the hearth of thy parent, dost thou fear
+the presence of the dead!
+
+And was Zanoni indeed about to quit Naples?  Should she see him
+no more?  Oh, fool, to think that there was grief in any other
+thought!  The past!--that was gone!  The future!--there was no
+future to her, Zanoni absent!  But this was the night of the
+third day on which Zanoni had told her that, come what might, he
+would visit her again.  It was, then, if she might believe him,
+some appointed crisis in her fate; and how should she tell him of
+Glyndon's hateful words?  The pure and the proud mind can never
+confide its wrongs to another, only its triumphs and its
+happiness.  But at that late hour would Zanoni visit her,--could
+she receive him?  Midnight was at hand.  Still in undefined
+suspense, in intense anxiety, she lingered in the room.  The
+quarter before midnight sounded, dull and distant.  All was
+still, and she was about to pass to her sleeping-room, when she
+heard the hoofs of a horse at full speed; the sound ceased, there
+was a knock at the door.  Her heart beat violently; but fear gave
+way to another sentiment when she heard a voice, too well known,
+calling on her name.  She paused, and then, with the fearlessness
+of innocence, descended and unbarred the door.
+
+Zanoni entered with a light and hasty step.  His horseman's cloak
+fitted tightly to his noble form, and his broad hat threw a
+gloomy shade over his commanding features.
+
+The girl followed him into the room she had just left, trembling
+and blushing deeply, and stood before him with the lamp she held
+shining upward on her cheek and the long hair that fell like a
+shower of light over the half-clad shoulders and heaving bust.
+
+"Viola," said Zanoni, in a voice that spoke deep emotion, "I am
+by thy side once more to save thee.  Not a moment is to be lost.
+Thou must fly with me, or remain the victim of the Prince di --.
+I would have made the charge I now undertake another's; thou
+knowest I would,--thou knowest it!--but he is not worthy of thee,
+the cold Englishman!  I throw myself at thy feet; have trust in
+me, and fly."
+
+He grasped her hand passionately as he dropped on his knee, and
+looked up into her face with his bright, beseeching eyes.
+
+"Fly with thee!" said Viola, scarce believing her senses.
+
+"With me.  Name, fame, honour,--all will be sacrificed if thou
+dost not."
+
+"Then--then," said the wild girl, falteringly, and turning aside
+her face,--"then I am not indifferent to thee; thou wouldst not
+give me to another?"
+
+Zanoni was silent; but his breast heaved, his cheeks flushed, his
+eyes darted dark and impassioned fire.
+
+"Speak!" exclaimed Viola, in jealous suspicion of his silence.
+
+"Indifferent to me!  No; but I dare not yet say that I love
+thee."
+
+"Then what matters my fate?" said Viola, turning pale, and
+shrinking from his side; "leave me,--I fear no danger.  My life,
+and therefore my honour, is in mine own hands."
+
+"Be not so mad," said Zanoni.  "Hark! do you hear the neigh of my
+steed?--it is an alarm that warns us of the approaching peril.
+Haste, or you are lost!"
+
+"Why dost thou care for me?" said the girl, bitterly.  "Thou hast
+read my heart; thou knowest that thou art become the lord of my
+destiny.  But to be bound beneath the weight of a cold
+obligation; to be the beggar on the eyes of indifference; to cast
+myself on one who loves me not,--THAT were indeed the vilest sin
+of my sex.  Ah, Zanoni, rather let me die!"
+
+She had thrown back her clustering hair from her face while she
+spoke; and as she now stood, with her arms drooping mournfully,
+and her hands clasped together with the proud bitterness of her
+wayward spirit, giving new zest and charm to her singular beauty,
+it was impossible to conceive a sight more irresistible to the
+eye and the heart.
+
+"Tempt me not to thine own danger,--perhaps destruction!"
+exclaimed Zanoni, in faltering accents.  "Thou canst not dream of
+what thou wouldst demand,--come!" and, advancing, he wound his
+arm round her waist.  "Come, Viola; believe at least in my
+friendship, my honour, my protection--"
+
+"And not thy love," said the Italian, turning on him her
+reproachful eyes.  Those eyes met his, and he could not withdraw
+from the charm of their gaze.  He felt her heart throbbing
+beneath his own; her breath came warm upon his cheek.  He
+trembled,--HE! the lofty, the mysterious Zanoni, who seemed to
+stand aloof from his race.  With a deep and burning sigh, he
+murmured, "Viola, I love thee!  Oh!" he continued passionately,
+and, releasing his hold, he threw himself abruptly at her feet,
+"I no more command,--as woman should be wooed, I woo thee.  From
+the first glance of those eyes, from the first sound of thy
+voice, thou becamest too fatally dear to me.  Thou speakest of
+fascination,--it lives and it breathes in thee!  I fled from
+Naples to fly from thy presence,--it pursued me.  Months, years
+passed, and thy sweet face still shone upon my heart.  I
+returned, because I pictured thee alone and sorrowful in the
+world, and knew that dangers, from which I might save thee, were
+gathering near thee and around.  Beautiful Soul! whose leaves I
+have read with reverence, it was for thy sake, thine alone, that
+I would have given thee to one who might make thee happier on
+earth than I can.  Viola!  Viola! thou knowest not--never canst
+thou know--how dear thou art to me!"
+
+It is in vain to seek for words to describe the delight--the
+proud, the full, the complete, and the entire delight--that
+filled the heart of the Neapolitan.  He whom she had considered
+too lofty even for love,--more humble to her than those she had
+half-despised!  She was silent, but her eyes spoke to him; and
+then slowly, as aware, at last, that the human love had advanced
+on the ideal, she shrank into the terrors of a modest and
+virtuous nature.  She did not dare,--she did not dream to ask him
+the question she had so fearlessly made to Glyndon; but she felt
+a sudden coldness,--a sense that a barrier was yet between love
+and love.  "Oh, Zanoni!" she murmured, with downcast eyes, "ask
+me not to fly with thee; tempt me not to my shame.  Thou wouldst
+protect me from others.  Oh, protect me from thyself!"
+
+"Poor orphan!" said he, tenderly, "and canst thou think that I
+ask from thee one sacrifice,--still less the greatest that woman
+can give to love?  As my wife I woo thee, and by every tie, and
+by every vow that can hallow and endear affection.  Alas! they
+have belied love to thee indeed, if thou dost not know the
+religion that belongs to it!  They who truly love would seek, for
+the treasure they obtain, every bond that can make it lasting and
+secure.  Viola, weep not, unless thou givest me the holy right to
+kiss away thy tears!"
+
+And that beautiful face, no more averted, drooped upon his bosom;
+and as he bent down, his lips sought the rosy mouth:  a long and
+burning kiss,--danger, life, the world was forgotten!  Suddenly
+Zanoni tore himself from her.
+
+"Hearest thou the wind that sighs, and dies away?  As that wind,
+my power to preserve thee, to guard thee, to foresee the storm in
+thy skies, is gone.  No matter.  Haste, haste; and may love
+supply the loss of all that it has dared to sacrifice!  Come."
+
+Viola hesitated no more.  She threw her mantle over her
+shoulders, and gathered up her dishevelled hair; a moment, and
+she was prepared, when a sudden crash was heard below.
+
+"Too late!--fool that I was, too late!" cried Zanoni, in a sharp
+tone of agony, as he hurried to the door.  He opened it, only to
+be borne back by the press of armed men.  The room literally
+swarmed with the followers of the ravisher, masked, and armed to
+the teeth.
+
+Viola was already in the grasp of two of the myrmidons.  Her
+shriek smote the ear of Zanoni.  He sprang forward; and Viola
+heard his wild cry in a foreign tongue.  She saw the blades of
+the ruffians pointed at his breast!  She lost her senses; and
+when she recovered, she found herself gagged, and in a carriage
+that was driven rapidly, by the side of a masked and motionless
+figure.  The carriage stopped at the portals of a gloomy mansion.
+The gates opened noiselessly; a broad flight of steps,
+brilliantly illumined, was before her.  She was in the palace of
+the Prince di --.
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XIV.
+
+Ma lasciamo, per Dio, Signore, ormai
+Di parlar d' ira, e di cantar di morte.
+"Orlando Furioso," Canto xvii. xvii.
+
+(But leave me, I solemnly conjure thee, signor, to speak of
+wrath, and to sing of death.)
+
+The young actress was led to, and left alone in a chamber adorned
+with all the luxurious and half-Eastern taste that at one time
+characterised the palaces of the great seigneurs of Italy.  Her
+first thought was for Zanoni.  Was he yet living?  Had he escaped
+unscathed the blades of the foe,--her new treasure, the new light
+of her life, her lord, at last her lover?
+
+She had short time for reflection.  She heard steps approaching
+the chamber; she drew back, but trembled not.  A courage not of
+herself, never known before, sparkled in her eyes, and dilated
+her stature.  Living or dead, she would be faithful still to
+Zanoni!  There was a new motive to the preservation of honour.
+The door opened, and the prince entered in the gorgeous and gaudy
+custume still worn at that time in Naples.
+
+"Fair and cruel one," said he, advancing with a half-sneer upon
+his lip, "thou wilt not too harshly blame the violence of love."
+He attempted to take her hand as he spoke.
+
+"Nay," said he, as she recoiled, "reflect that thou art now in
+the power of one that never faltered in the pursuit of an object
+less dear to him than thou art.  Thy lover, presumptuous though
+he be, is not by to save thee.  Mine thou art; but instead of thy
+master, suffer me to be thy slave."
+
+"Prince," said Viola, with a stern gravity, "your boast is in
+vain.  Your power!  I am NOT in your power.  Life and death are
+in my own hands.  I will not defy; but I do not fear you.  I
+feel--and in some feelings," added Viola, with a solemnity almost
+thrilling, "there is all the strength, and all the divinity of
+knowledge--I feel that I am safe even here; but you--you, Prince
+di --, have brought danger to your home and hearth!"
+
+The Neapolitan seemed startled by an earnestness and boldness he
+was but little prepared for.  He was not, however, a man easily
+intimidated or deterred from any purpose he had formed; and,
+approaching Viola, he was about to reply with much warmth, real
+or affected, when a knock was heard at the door of the chamber.
+The sound was repeated, and the prince, chafed at the
+interruption, opened the door and demanded impatiently who had
+ventured to disobey his orders, and invade his leisure.  Mascari
+presented himself, pale and agitated:  "My lord," said he, in a
+whisper, "pardon me; but a stranger is below, who insists on
+seeing you; and, from some words he let fall, I judged it
+advisable even to infringe your commands."
+
+"A stranger!--and at this hour!  What business can he pretend?
+Why was he even admitted?"
+
+"He asserts that your life is in imminent danger.  The source
+whence it proceeds he will relate to your Excellency alone."
+
+The prince frowned; but his colour changed.  He mused a moment,
+and then, re-entering the chamber and advancing towards Viola, he
+said,--
+
+"Believe me, fair creature, I have no wish to take advantage of
+my power.  I would fain trust alone to the gentler authorities of
+affection.  Hold yourself queen within these walls more
+absolutely than you have ever enacted that part on the stage.
+To-night, farewell!  May your sleep be calm, and your dreams
+propitious to my hopes."
+
+With these words he retired, and in a few moments Viola was
+surrounded by officious attendants, whom she at length, with some
+difficulty, dismissed; and, refusing to retire to rest, she spent
+the night in examining the chamber, which she found was secured,
+and in thoughts of Zanoni, in whose power she felt an almost
+preternatural confidence.
+
+Meanwhile the prince descended the stairs and sought the room
+into which the stranger had been shown.
+
+He found the visitor wrapped from head to foot in a long robe,
+half-gown, half-mantle, such as was sometimes worn by
+ecclesiastics.  The face of this stranger was remarkable.  So
+sunburnt and swarthy were his hues, that he must, apparently,
+have derived his origin amongst the races of the farthest East.
+His forehead was lofty, and his eyes so penetrating yet so calm
+in their gaze that the prince shrank from them as we shrink from
+a questioner who is drawing forth the guiltiest secret of our
+hearts.
+
+"What would you with me?" asked the prince, motioning his visitor
+to a seat.
+
+"Prince of --," said the stranger, in a voice deep and sweet, but
+foreign in its accent,--"son of the most energetic and masculine
+race that ever applied godlike genius to the service of Human
+Will, with its winding wickedness and its stubborn grandeur;
+descendant of the great Visconti in whose chronicles lies the
+history of Italy in her palmy day, and in whose rise was the
+development of the mightiest intellect, ripened by the most
+restless ambition,--I come to gaze upon the last star in a
+darkening firmament.  By this hour to-morrow space shall know it
+not.  Man, unless thy whole nature change, thy days are
+numbered!"
+
+"What means this jargon?" said the prince, in visible
+astonishment and secret awe.  "Comest thou to menace me in my own
+halls, or wouldst thou warn me of a danger?  Art thou some
+itinerant mountebank, or some unguessed-of friend?  Speak out,
+and plainly.  What danger threatens me?"
+
+"Zanoni and thy ancestor's sword," replied the stranger.
+
+"Ha! ha!" said the prince, laughing scournfully; "I
+half-suspected thee from the first.  Thou art then the accomplice
+or the tool of that most dexterous, but, at present, defeated
+charlatan?  And I suppose thou wilt tell me that if I were to
+release a certain captive I have made, the danger would vanish,
+and the hand of the dial would be put back?"
+
+"Judge of me as thou wilt, Prince di --.  I confess my knowledge
+of Zanoni.  Thou, too, wilt know his power, but not till it
+consume thee.  I would save, therefore I warn thee.  Dost thou
+ask me why?  I will tell thee.  Canst thou remember to have heard
+wild tales of thy grandsire; of his desire for a knowledge that
+passes that of the schools and cloisters; of a strange man from
+the East who was his familiar and master in lore against which
+the Vatican has, from age to age, launched its mimic thunder?
+Dost thou call to mind the fortunes of thy ancestor?--how he
+succeeded in youth to little but a name; how, after a career wild
+and dissolute as thine, he disappeared from Milan, a pauper, and
+a self-exile; how, after years spent, none knew in what climes or
+in what pursuits, he again revisited the city where his
+progenitors had reigned; how with him came the wise man of the
+East, the mystic Mejnour; how they who beheld him, beheld with
+amaze and fear that time had ploughed no furrow on his brow; that
+youth seemed fixed, as by a spell, upon his face and form?  Dost
+thou not know that from that hour his fortunes rose?  Kinsmen the
+most remote died; estate upon estate fell into the hands of the
+ruined noble.  He became the guide of princes, the first magnate
+of Italy.  He founded anew the house of which thou art the last
+lineal upholder, and transferred his splendour from Milan to the
+Sicilian realms.  Visions of high ambition were then present with
+him nightly and daily.  Had he lived, Italy would have known a
+new dynasty, and the Visconti would have reigned over Magna-
+Graecia.  He was a man such as the world rarely sees; but his
+ends, too earthly, were at war with the means he sought.  Had his
+ambition been more or less, he had been worthy of a realm
+mightier than the Caesars swayed; worthy of our solemn order;
+worthy of the fellowship of Mejnour, whom you now behold before
+you."
+
+The prince, who had listened with deep and breathless attention
+to the words of his singular guest, started from his seat at his
+last words.  "Imposter!" he cried, "can you dare thus to play
+with my credulity?  Sixty years have flown since my grandsire
+died; were he living, he had passed his hundred and twentieth
+year; and you, whose old age is erect and vigorous, have the
+assurance to pretend to have been his contemporary!  But you have
+imperfectly learned your tale.  You know not, it seems, that my
+grandsire, wise and illustrious indeed, in all save his faith in
+a charlatan, was found dead in his bed, in the very hour when his
+colossal plans were ripe for execution, and that Mejnour was
+guilty of his murder."
+
+"Alas!" answered the stranger, in a voice of great sadness, "had
+he but listened to Mejnour,--had he but delayed the last and most
+perilous ordeal of daring wisdom until the requisite training and
+initiation had been completed,--your ancestor would have stood
+with me upon an eminence which the waters of Death itself wash
+everlastingly, but cannot overflow.  Your grandsire resisted my
+fervent prayers, disobeyed my most absolute commands, and in the
+sublime rashness of a soul that panted for secrets, which he who
+desires orbs and sceptres never can obtain, perished, the victim
+of his own frenzy."
+
+"He was poisoned, and Mejnour fled."
+
+"Mejnour fled not," answered the stranger, proudly--"Mejnour
+could not fly from danger; for to him danger is a thing long left
+behind.  It was the day before the duke took the fatal draft
+which he believed was to confer on the mortal the immortal boon,
+that, finding my power over him was gone, I abandoned him to his
+doom.  But a truce with this:  I loved your grandsire!  I would
+save the last of his race.  Oppose not thyself to Zanoni.  Yield
+not thy soul to thine evil passions.  Draw back from the
+precipice while there is yet time.  In thy front, and in thine
+eyes, I detect some of that diviner glory which belonged to thy
+race.  Thou hast in thee some germs of their hereditary genius,
+but they are choked up by worse than thy hereditary vices.
+Recollect that by genius thy house rose; by vice it ever failed
+to perpetuate its power.  In the laws which regulate the
+universe, it is decreed that nothing wicked can long endure.  Be
+wise, and let history warn thee.  Thou standest on the verge of
+two worlds, the past and the future; and voices from either
+shriek omen in thy ear.  I have done.  I bid thee farewell!"
+
+"Not so; thou shalt not quit these walls.  I will make experiment
+of thy boasted power.  What, ho there!--ho!"
+
+The prince shouted; the room was filled with his minions.
+
+"Seize that man!" he cried, pointing to the spot which had been
+filled by the form of Mejnour.  To his inconceivable amaze and
+horror, the spot was vacant.  The mysterious stranger had
+vanished like a dream; but a thin and fragrant mist undulated, in
+pale volumes, round the walls of the chamber.  "Look to my lord,"
+cried Mascari.  The prince had fallen to the floor insensible.
+For many hours he seemed in a kind of trance.  When he recovered,
+he dismissed his attendants, and his step was heard in his
+chamber, pacing to and fro, with heavy and disordered strides.
+Not till an hour before his banquet the next day did he seem
+restored to his wonted self.
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XV.
+
+Oime! come poss' io
+Altri trovar, se me trovar non posso.
+"Amint.," At. i. Sc. ii.
+
+(Alas! how can I find another when I cannot find myself?)
+
+The sleep of Glyndon, the night after his last interview with
+Zanoni, was unusually profound; and the sun streamed full upon
+his eyes as he opened them to the day.  He rose refreshed, and
+with a strange sentiment of calmness that seemed more the result
+of resolution than exhaustion.  The incidents and emotions of the
+past night had settled into distinct and clear impressions.  He
+thought of them but slightly,--he thought rather of the future.
+He was as one of the initiated in the old Egyptian mysteries who
+have crossed the gate only to long more ardently for the
+penetralia.
+
+He dressed himself, and was relieved to find that Mervale had
+joined a party of his countrymen on an excursion to Ischia.  He
+spent the heat of noon in thoughtful solitude, and gradually the
+image of Viola returned to his heart.  It was a holy--for it was
+a HUMAN--image.  He had resigned her; and though he repented not,
+he was troubled at the thought that repentance would have come
+too late.
+
+He started impatiently from his seat, and strode with rapid steps
+to the humble abode of the actress.
+
+The distance was considerable, and the air oppressive.  Glyndon
+arrived at the door breathless and heated.  He knocked; no answer
+came.  He lifted the latch and entered.  He ascended the stairs;
+no sound, no sight of life met his ear and eye.  In the front
+chamber, on a table, lay the guitar of the actress, and some
+manuscript parts in the favourite operas.  He paused, and,
+summoning courage, tapped at the door which seemed to lead into
+the inner apartment.  The door was ajar; and, hearing no sound
+within, he pushed it open.  It was the sleeping-chamber of the
+young actress, that holiest ground to a lover; and well did the
+place become the presiding deity:  none of the tawdry finery of
+the profession was visible, on the one hand; none of the slovenly
+disorder common to the humbler classes of the South, on the
+other.  All was pure and simple; even the ornaments were those of
+an innocent refinement,--a few books, placed carefully on
+shelves, a few half-faded flowers in an earthen vase, which was
+modelled and painted in the Etruscan fashion.  The sunlight
+streamed over the snowy draperies of the bed, and a few articles
+of clothing on the chair beside it.  Viola was not there; but the
+nurse!--was she gone also?  He made the house resound with the
+name of Gionetta, but there was not even an echo to reply.  At
+last, as he reluctantly quitted the desolate abode, he perceived
+Gionetta coming towards him from the street.
+
+The poor old woman uttered an exclamation of joy on seeing him;
+but, to their mutual disappointment, neither had any cheerful
+tidings or satisfactory explanation to afford the other.
+Gionetta had been aroused from her slumber the night before by
+the noise in the rooms below; but ere she could muster courage to
+descend, Viola was gone!  She found the marks of violence on the
+door without; and all she had since been able to learn in the
+neighbourhood was, that a Lazzarone, from his nocturnal resting-
+place on the Chiaja, had seen by the moonlight a carriage, which
+he recognised as belonging to the Prince di --, pass and repass
+that road about the first hour of morning.  Glyndon, on gathering
+from the confused words and broken sobs of the old nurse the
+heads of this account, abruptly left her, and repaired to the
+palace of Zanoni. There he was informed that the signor was gone
+to the banquet of the Prince di --, and would not return till
+late.  Glyndon stood motionless with perplexity and dismay; he
+knew not what to believe, or how to act.  Even Mervale was not at
+hand to advise him.  His conscience smote him bitterly.  He had
+had the power to save the woman he had loved, and had foregone
+that power; but how was it that in this Zanoni himself had
+failed?  How was it that he was gone to the very banquet of the
+ravisher?  Could Zanoni be aware of what had passed?  If not,
+should he lose a moment in apprising him?  Though mentally
+irresolute, no man was more physically brave.  He would repair at
+once to the palace of the prince himself; and if Zanoni failed in
+the trust he had half-appeared to arrogate, he, the humble
+foreigner, would demand the captive of fraud and force, in the
+very halls and before the assembled guests of the Prince di --.
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XVI.
+
+Ardua vallatur duris sapientia scrupis.
+Hadr. Jun., "Emblem." xxxvii.
+
+(Lofty wisdom is circled round with rugged rocks.)
+
+We must go back some hours in the progress of this narrative.  It
+was the first faint and gradual break of the summer dawn; and two
+men stood in a balcony overhanging a garden fragrant with the
+scents of the awakening flowers.  The stars had not yet left the
+sky,--the birds were yet silent on the boughs:  all was still,
+hushed, and tranquil; but how different the tranquillity of
+reviving day from the solemn repose of night!  In the music of
+silence there are a thousand variations.  These men, who alone
+seemed awake in Naples, were Zanoni and the mysterious stranger
+who had but an hour or two ago startled the Prince di -- in his
+voluptuous palace.
+
+"No," said the latter; "hadst thou delayed the acceptance of the
+Arch-gift until thou hadst attained to the years, and passed
+through all the desolate bereavements that chilled and seared
+myself ere my researches had made it mine, thou wouldst have
+escaped the curse of which thou complainest now,--thou wouldst
+not have mourned over the brevity of human affection as compared
+to the duration of thine own existence; for thou wouldst have
+survived the very desire and dream of the love of woman.
+Brightest, and, but for that error, perhaps the loftiest, of the
+secret and solemn race that fills up the interval in creation
+between mankind and the children of the Empyreal, age after age
+wilt thou rue the splendid folly which made thee ask to carry the
+beauty and the passions of youth into the dreary grandeur of
+earthly immortality."
+
+"I do not repent, nor shall I," answered Zanoni.  "The transport
+and the sorrow, so wildly blended, which have at intervals
+diversified my doom, are better than the calm and bloodless tenor
+of thy solitary way--thou, who lovest nothing, hatest nothing,
+feelest nothing, and walkest the world with the noiseless and
+joyless footsteps of a dream!"
+
+"You mistake," replied he who had owned the name of Mejnour,--
+"though I care not for love, and am dead to every PASSION that
+agitates the sons of clay, I am not dead to their more serene
+enjoyments.  I carry down the stream of the countless years, not
+the turbulent desires of youth, but the calm and spiritual
+delights of age.  Wisely and deliberately I abandoned youth
+forever when I separated my lot from men.  Let us not envy or
+reproach each other.  I would have saved this Neapolitan, Zanoni
+(since so it now pleases thee to be called), partly because his
+grandsire was but divided by the last airy barrier from our own
+brotherhood, partly because I know that in the man himself lurk
+the elements of ancestral courage and power, which in earlier
+life would have fitted him for one of us.  Earth holds but few to
+whom Nature has given the qualities that can bear the ordeal.
+But time and excess, that have quickened his grosser senses, have
+blunted his imagination.  I relinquish him to his doom."
+
+"And still, then, Mejnour, you cherish the desire to revive our
+order, limited now to ourselves alone, by new converts and
+allies.  Surely--surely--thy experience might have taught thee,
+that scarcely once in a thousand years is born the being who can
+pass through the horrible gates that lead into the worlds
+without!  Is not thy path already strewed with thy victims?  Do
+not their ghastly faces of agony and fear--the blood-stained
+suicide, the raving maniac--rise before thee, and warn what is
+yet left to thee of human sympathy from thy insane ambition?"
+
+"Nay," answered Mejnour; "have I not had success to
+counterbalance failure?  And can I forego this lofty and august
+hope, worthy alone of our high condition,--the hope to form a
+mighty and numerous race with a force and power sufficient to
+permit them to acknowledge to mankind their majestic conquests
+and dominion, to become the true lords of this planet, invaders,
+perchance, of others, masters of the inimical and malignant
+tribes by which at this moment we are surrounded:  a race that
+may proceed, in their deathless destinies, from stage to stage of
+celestial glory, and rank at last amongst the nearest ministrants
+and agents gathered round the Throne of Thrones?  What matter a
+thousand victims for one convert to our band?  And you, Zanoni,"
+continued Mejnour, after a pause,--"you, even you, should this
+affection for a mortal beauty that you have dared, despite
+yourself, to cherish, be more than a passing fancy; should it,
+once admitted into your inmost nature, partake of its bright and
+enduring essence,--even you may brave all things to raise the
+beloved one into your equal.  Nay, interrupt me not.  Can you see
+sickness menace her; danger hover around; years creep on; the
+eyes grow dim; the beauty fade, while the heart, youthful still,
+clings and fastens round your own,--can you see this, and know it
+is yours to--"
+
+"Cease!" cried Zanoni, fiercely.  "What is all other fate as
+compared to the death of terror?  What, when the coldest sage,
+the most heated enthusiast, the hardiest warrior with his nerves
+of iron, have been found dead in their beds, with straining
+eyeballs and horrent hair, at the first step of the Dread
+Progress,--thinkest thou that this weak woman--from whose cheek a
+sound at the window, the screech of the night-owl, the sight of a
+drop of blood on a man's sword, would start the colour--could
+brave one glance of--Away! the very thought of such sights for
+her makes even myself a coward!"
+
+"When you told her you loved her,--when you clasped her to your
+breast, you renounced all power to foresee her future lot, or
+protect her from harm.  Henceforth to her you are human, and
+human only.  How know you, then, to what you may be tempted; how
+know you what her curiosity may learn and her courage brave?  But
+enough of this,--you are bent on your pursuit?"
+
+"The fiat has gone forth."
+
+"And to-morrow?"
+
+"To-morrow, at this hour, our bark will be bounding over yonder
+ocean, and the weight of ages will have fallen from my heart!  I
+compassionate thee, O foolish sage,--THOU hast given up THY
+youth!"
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XVII.
+
+Alch:  Thou always speakest riddles.  Tell me if thou art that
+fountain of which Bernard Lord Trevizan writ?
+
+Merc:  I am not that fountain, but I am the water.  The fountain
+compasseth me about.
+
+Sandivogius, "New Light of Alchymy."
+
+The Prince di -- was not a man whom Naples could suppose to be
+addicted to superstitious fancies.  Still, in the South of Italy,
+there was then, and there still lingers a certain spirit of
+credulity, which may, ever and anon, be visible amidst the
+boldest dogmas of their philosophers and sceptics.  In his
+childhood, the prince had learned strange tales of the ambition,
+the genius, and the career of his grandsire,--and secretly,
+perhaps influenced by ancestral example, in earlier youth he
+himself had followed science, not only through her legitimate
+course, but her antiquated and erratic windings.  I have, indeed,
+been shown in Naples a little volume, blazoned with the arms of
+the Visconti, and ascribed to the nobleman I refer to, which
+treats of alchemy in a spirit half-mocking and half-reverential.
+
+Pleasure soon distracted him from such speculations, and his
+talents, which were unquestionably great, were wholly perverted
+to extravagant intrigues, or to the embellishment of a gorgeous
+ostentation with something of classic grace.  His immense wealth,
+his imperious pride, his unscrupulous and daring character, made
+him an object of no inconsiderable fear to a feeble and timid
+court; and the ministers of the indolent government willingly
+connived at excesses which allured him at least from ambition.
+The strange visit and yet more strange departure of Mejnour
+filled the breast of the Neapolitan with awe and wonder, against
+which all the haughty arrogance and learned scepticism of his
+maturer manhood combated in vain.  The apparition of Mejnour
+served, indeed, to invest Zanoni with a character in which the
+prince had not hitherto regarded him.  He felt a strange alarm at
+the rival he had braved,--at the foe he had provoked.  When, a
+little before his banquet, he had resumed his self-possession, it
+was with a fell and gloomy resolution that he brooded over the
+perfidious schemes he had previously formed.  He felt as if the
+death of the mysterious Zanoni were necessary for the
+preservation of his own life; and if at an earlier period of
+their rivalry he had determined on the fate of Zanoni, the
+warnings of Mejnour only served to confirm his resolve.
+
+"We will try if his magic can invent an antidote to the bane,"
+said he, half-aloud, and with a stern smile, as he summoned
+Mascari to his presence.  The poison which the prince, with his
+own hands, mixed into the wine intended for his guest, was
+compounded from materials, the secret of which had been one of
+the proudest heir-looms of that able and evil race which gave to
+Italy her wisest and guiltiest tyrants.  Its operation was quick
+yet not sudden:  it produced no pain,--it left on the form no
+grim convulsion, on the skin no purpling spot, to arouse
+suspicion; you might have cut and carved every membrane and fibre
+of the corpse, but the sharpest eyes of the leech would not have
+detected the presence of the subtle life-queller.  For twelve
+hours the victim felt nothing save a joyous and elated
+exhilaration of the blood; a delicious languor followed, the sure
+forerunner of apoplexy.  No lancet then could save!  Apoplexy had
+run much in the families of the enemies of the Visconti!
+
+The hour of the feast arrived,--the guests assembled.  There were
+the flower of the Neapolitan seignorie, the descendants of the
+Norman, the Teuton, the Goth; for Naples had then a nobility, but
+derived it from the North, which has indeed been the Nutrix
+Leonum,--the nurse of the lion-hearted chivalry of the world.
+
+Last of the guests came Zanoni; and the crowd gave way as the
+dazzling foreigner moved along to the lord of the palace.  The
+prince greeted him with a meaning smile, to which Zanoni answered
+by a whisper, "He who plays with loaded dice does not always
+win."
+
+The prince bit his lip, and Zanoni, passing on, seemed deep in
+conversation with the fawning Mascari.
+
+"Who is the prince's heir?" asked the guest.
+
+"A distant relation on the mother's side; with his Excellency
+dies the male line."
+
+"Is the heir present at our host's banquet?"
+
+"No; they are not friends."
+
+"No matter; he will be here to-morrow."
+
+Mascari stared in surprise; but the signal for the banquet was
+given, and the guests were marshalled to the board.  As was the
+custom then, the feast took place not long after mid-day.  It was
+a long, oval hall, the whole of one side opening by a marble
+colonnade upon a court or garden, in which the eye rested
+gratefully upon cool fountains and statues of whitest marble,
+half-sheltered by orange-trees.  Every art that luxury could
+invent to give freshness and coolness to the languid and
+breezeless heat of the day without (a day on which the breath of
+the sirocco was abroad) had been called into existence.
+Artificial currents of air through invisible tubes, silken blinds
+waving to and fro, as if to cheat the senses into the belief of
+an April wind, and miniature jets d'eau in each corner of the
+apartment, gave to the Italians the same sense of exhilaration
+and COMFORT (if I may use the word) which the well-drawn curtains
+and the blazing hearth afford to the children of colder climes.
+
+The conversation was somewhat more lively and intellectual than
+is common amongst the languid pleasure-hunters of the South; for
+the prince, himself accomplished, sought his acquaintance not
+only amongst the beaux esprits of his own country, but amongst
+the gay foreigners who adorned and relieved the monotony of the
+Neapolitan circles.  There were present two or three of the
+brilliant Frenchmen of the old regime, who had already emigrated
+from the advancing Revolution; and their peculiar turn of thought
+and wit was well calculated for the meridian of a society that
+made the dolce far niente at once its philosophy and its faith.
+The prince, however, was more silent than usual; and when he
+sought to rouse himself, his spirits were forced and exaggerated.
+To the manners of his host, those of Zanoni afforded a striking
+contrast.  The bearing of this singular person was at all times
+characterised by a calm and polished ease, which was attributed
+by the courtiers to the long habit of society.  He could scarcely
+be called gay; yet few persons more tended to animate the general
+spirits of a convivial circle.  He seemed, by a kind of
+intuition, to elicit from each companion the qualities in which
+he most excelled; and if occasionally a certain tone of latent
+mockery characterised his remarks upon the topics on which the
+conversation fell, it appeared to men who took nothing in earnest
+to be the language both of wit and wisdom.  To the Frenchmen, in
+particular, there was something startling in his intimate
+knowledge of the minutest events in their own capital and
+country, and his profound penetration (evinced but in epigrams
+and sarcasms) into the eminent characters who were then playing a
+part upon the great stage of continental intrigue.
+
+It was while this conversation grew animated, and the feast was
+at its height, that Glyndon arrived at the palace.  The porter,
+perceiving by his dress that he was not one of the invited
+guests, told him that his Excellency was engaged, and on no
+account could be disturbed; and Glyndon then, for the first time,
+became aware how strange and embarrassing was the duty he had
+taken on himself.  To force an entrance into the banquet-hall of
+a great and powerful noble, surrounded by the rank of Naples, and
+to arraign him for what to his boon-companions would appear but
+an act of gallantry, was an exploit that could not fail to be at
+once ludicrous and impotent.  He mused a moment, and, slipping a
+piece of gold into the porter's hand, said that he was
+commissioned to seek the Signor Zanoni upon an errand of life and
+death, and easily won his way across the court, and into the
+interior building.  He passed up the broad staircase, and the
+voices and merriment of the revellers smote his ear at a
+distance.  At the entrance of the reception-rooms he found a
+page, whom he despatched with a message to Zanoni.  The page did
+the errand; and Zanoni, on hearing the whispered name of Glyndon,
+turned to his host.
+
+"Pardon me, my lord; an English friend of mine, the Signor
+Glyndon (not unknown by name to your Excellency) waits without,--
+the business must indeed be urgent on which he has sought me in
+such an hour.  You will forgive my momentary absence."
+
+"Nay, signor," answered the prince, courteously, but with a
+sinister smile on his countenance, "would it not be better for
+your friend to join us?  An Englishman is welcome everywhere; and
+even were he a Dutchman, your friendship would invest his
+presence with attraction.  Pray his attendance; we would not
+spare you even for a moment."
+
+Zanoni bowed; the page was despatched with all flattering
+messages to Glyndon,--a seat next to Zanoni was placed for him,
+and the young Englishman entered.
+
+"You are most welcome, sir.  I trust your business to our
+illustrious guest is of good omen and pleasant import.  If you
+bring evil news, defer it, I pray you."
+
+Glyndon's brow was sullen; and he was about to startle the guests
+by his reply, when Zanoni, touching his arm significantly,
+whispered in English, "I know why you have sought me.  Be silent,
+and witness what ensues."
+
+"You know then that Viola, whom you boasted you had the power to
+save from danger--"
+
+"Is in this house!--yes.  I know also that Murder sits at the
+right hand of our host.  But his fate is now separated from hers
+forever; and the mirror which glasses it to my eye is clear
+through the streams of blood.  Be still, and learn the fate that
+awaits the wicked!
+
+"My lord," said Zanoni, speaking aloud, "the Signor Glyndon has
+indeed brought me tidings not wholly unexpected.  I am compelled
+to leave Naples,--an additional motive to make the most of the
+present hour."
+
+"And what, if I may venture to ask, may be the cause that brings
+such affliction on the fair dames of Naples?"
+
+"It is the approaching death of one who honoured me with most
+loyal friendship," replied Zanoni, gravely.  "Let us not speak of
+it; grief cannot put back the dial.  As we supply by new flowers
+those that fade in our vases, so it is the secret of worldly
+wisdom to replace by fresh friendships those that fade from our
+path."
+
+"True philosophy!" exclaimed the prince.  "'Not to admire,' was
+the Roman's maxim; 'Never to mourn,' is mine.  There is nothing
+in life to grieve for, save, indeed, Signor Zanoni, when some
+young beauty, on whom we have set our hearts, slips from our
+grasp.  In such a moment we have need of all our wisdom, not to
+succumb to despair, and shake hands with death.  What say you,
+signor?  You smile!  Such never could be your lot.  Pledge me in
+a sentiment, 'Long life to the fortunate lover,--a quick release
+to the baffled suitor'?"
+
+"I pledge you," said Zanoni; and, as the fatal wine was poured
+into his glass, he repeated, fixing his eyes on the prince, "I
+pledge you even in this wine!"
+
+He lifted the glass to his lips.  The prince seemed ghastly pale,
+while the gaze of his guest bent upon him, with an intent and
+stern brightness, beneath which the conscience-stricken host
+cowered and quailed.  Not till he had drained his draft, and
+replaced the glass upon the board, did Zanoni turn his eyes from
+the prince; and he then said, "Your wine has been kept too long;
+it has lost its virtues.  It might disagree with many, but do not
+fear: it will not harm me, prince, Signor Mascari, you are a
+judge of the grape; will you favour us with your opinion?"
+
+"Nay," answered Mascari, with well-affected composure, "I like
+not the wines of Cyprus; they are heating.  Perhaps Signor
+Glyndon may not have the same distaste?  The English are said to
+love their potations warm and pungent."
+
+"Do you wish my friend also to taste the wine, prince?" said
+Zanoni.  "Recollect, all cannot drink it with the same impunity
+as myself."
+
+"No," said the prince, hastily; "if you do not recommend the
+wine, Heaven forbid that we should constrain our guests!  My lord
+duke," turning to one of the Frenchmen, "yours is the true soil
+of Bacchus.  What think you of this cask from Burgundy?  Has it
+borne the journey?"
+
+"Ah," said Zanoni, "let us change both the wine and the theme."
+
+With that, Zanoni grew yet more animated and brilliant.  Never
+did wit more sparkling, airy, exhilarating, flash from the lips
+of reveller.  His spirits fascinated all present--even the prince
+himself, even Glyndon--with a strange and wild contagion.  The
+former, indeed, whom the words and gaze of Zanoni, when he
+drained the poison, had filled with fearful misgivings, now
+hailed in the brilliant eloquence of his wit a certain sign of
+the operation of the bane.  The wine circulated fast; but none
+seemed conscious of its effects.  One by one the rest of the
+party fell into a charmed and spellbound silence, as Zanoni
+continued to pour forth sally upon sally, tale upon tale.  They
+hung on his words, they almost held their breath to listen.  Yet,
+how bitter was his mirth; how full of contempt for the triflers
+present, and for the trifles which made their life!
+
+Night came on; the room grew dim, and the feast had lasted
+several hours longer than was the customary duration of similar
+entertainments at that day.  Still the guests stirred not, and
+still Zanoni continued, with glittering eye and mocking lip, to
+lavish his stores of intellect and anecdote; when suddenly the
+moon rose, and shed its rays over the flowers and fountains in
+the court without, leaving the room itself half in shadow, and
+half tinged by a quiet and ghostly light.
+
+It was then that Zanoni rose.  "Well, gentlemen," said he, "we
+have not yet wearied our host, I hope; and his garden offers a
+new temptation to protract our stay.  Have you no musicians among
+your train, prince, that might regale our ears while we inhale
+the fragrance of your orange-trees?"
+
+"An excellent thought!" said the prince.  "Mascari, see to the
+music."
+
+The party rose simultaneously to adjourn to the garden; and then,
+for the first time, the effect of the wine they had drunk seemed
+to make itself felt.
+
+With flushed cheeks and unsteady steps they came into the open
+air, which tended yet more to stimulate that glowing fever of the
+grape.  As if to make up for the silence with which the guests
+had hitherto listened to Zanoni, every tongue was now loosened,--
+every man talked, no man listened.  There was something wild and
+fearful in the contrast between the calm beauty of the night and
+scene, and the hubbub and clamour of these disorderly roysters.
+One of the Frenchmen, in especial, the young Duc de R--, a
+nobleman of the highest rank, and of all the quick, vivacious,
+and irascible temperament of his countrymen, was particularly
+noisy and excited.  And as circumstances, the remembrance of
+which is still preserved among certain circles of Naples,
+rendered it afterwards necessary that the duc should himself give
+evidence of what occurred, I will here translate the short
+account he drew up, and which was kindly submitted to me some few
+years ago by my accomplished and lively friend, Il Cavaliere di
+B--.
+
+"I never remember," writes the duc, "to have felt my spirits so
+excited as on that evening; we were like so many boys released
+from school, jostling each other as we reeled or ran down the
+flight of seven or eight stairs that led from the colonnade into
+the garden,--some laughing, some whooping, some scolding, some
+babbling.  The wine had brought out, as it were, each man's
+inmost character.  Some were loud and quarrelsome, others
+sentimental and whining; some, whom we had hitherto thought dull,
+most mirthful; some, whom we had ever regarded as discreet and
+taciturn, most garrulous and uproarious.  I remember that in the
+midst of our clamorous gayety, my eye fell upon the cavalier
+Signor Zanoni, whose conversation had so enchanted us all; and I
+felt a certain chill come over me to perceive that he wore the
+same calm and unsympathising smile upon his countenance which had
+characterised it in his singular and curious stories of the court
+of Louis XIV.  I felt, indeed, half-inclined to seek a quarrel
+with one whose composure was almost an insult to our disorder.
+Nor was such an effect of this irritating and mocking
+tranquillity confined to myself alone.  Several of the party have
+told me since, that on looking at Zanoni they felt their blood
+yet more heated, and gayety change to resentment.  There seemed
+in his icy smile a very charm to wound vanity and provoke rage.
+It was at this moment that the prince came up to me, and, passing
+his arm into mine, led me a little apart from the rest.  He had
+certainly indulged in the same excess as ourselves, but it did
+not produce the same effect of noisy excitement.  There was, on
+the contrary, a certain cold arrogance and supercilious scorn in
+his bearing and language, which, even while affecting so much
+caressing courtesy towards me, roused my self-love against him.
+He seemed as if Zanoni had infected him; and in imitating the
+manner of his guest, he surpassed the original.  He rallied me on
+some court gossip, which had honoured my name by associating it
+with a certain beautiful and distinguished Sicilian lady, and
+affected to treat with contempt that which, had it been true, I
+should have regarded as a boast.  He spoke, indeed, as if he
+himself had gathered all the flowers of Naples, and left us
+foreigners only the gleanings he had scorned.  At this my natural
+and national gallantry was piqued, and I retorted by some
+sarcasms that I should certainly have spared had my blood been
+cooler.  He laughed heartily, and left me in a strange fit of
+resentment and anger.  Perhaps (I must own the truth) the wine
+had produced in me a wild disposition to take offence and provoke
+quarrel.  As the prince left me, I turned, and saw Zanoni at my
+side.
+
+"'The prince is a braggart,' said he, with the same smile that
+displeased me before.  'He would monopolize all fortune and all
+love.  Let us take our revenge.'
+
+"'And how?'
+
+"'He has at this moment, in his house, the most enchanting singer
+in Naples,--the celebrated Viola Pisani.  She is here, it is
+true, not by her own choice; he carried her hither by force, but
+he will pretend that she adores him.  Let us insist on his
+producing this secret treasure, and when she enters, the Duc de
+R-- can have no doubt that his flatteries and attentions will
+charm the lady, and provoke all the jealous fears of our host.
+It would be a fair revenge upon his imperious self-conceit.'
+
+"This suggestion delighted me.  I hastened to the prince.  At
+that instant the musicians had just commenced; I waved my hand,
+ordered the music to stop, and, addressing the prince, who was
+standing in the centre of one of the gayest groups, complained of
+his want of hospitality in affording to us such poor proficients
+in the art, while he reserved for his own solace the lute and
+voice of the first performer in Naples.  I demanded,
+half-laughingly, half-seriously, that he should produce the
+Pisani.  My demand was received with shouts of applause by the
+rest.  We drowned the replies of our host with uproar, and would
+hear no denial.  'Gentlemen,' at last said the prince, when he
+could obtain an audience, 'even were I to assent to your
+proposal, I could not induce the signora to present herself
+before an assemblage as riotous as they are noble.  You have too
+much chivalry to use compulsion with her, though the Duc de R--
+forgets himself sufficiently to administer it to me.'
+
+"I was stung by this taunt, however well deserved.  'Prince,'
+said I, 'I have for the indelicacy of compulsion so illustrious
+an example that I cannot hesitate to pursue the path honoured by
+your own footsteps.  All Naples knows that the Pisani despises at
+once your gold and your love; that force alone could have brought
+her under your roof; and that you refuse to produce her, because
+you fear her complaints, and know enough of the chivalry your
+vanity sneers at to feel assured that the gentlemen of France are
+not more disposed to worship beauty than to defend it from
+wrong.'
+
+"'You speak well, sir,' said Zanoni, gravely.  'The prince dares
+not produce his prize!'
+
+"The prince remained speechless for a few moments, as if with
+indignation.  At last he broke out into expressions the most
+injurious and insulting against Signor Zanoni and myself.  Zanoni
+replied not; I was more hot and hasty.  The guests appeared to
+delight in our dispute.  None, except Mascari, whom we pushed
+aside and disdained to hear, strove to conciliate; some took one
+side, some another.  The issue may be well foreseen.  Swords were
+called for and procured.  Two were offered me by one of the
+party.  I was about to choose one, when Zanoni placed in my hand
+the other, which, from its hilt, appeared of antiquated
+workmanship.  At the same moment, looking towards the prince, he
+said, smilingly, 'The duc takes your grandsire's sword.  Prince,
+you are too brave a man for superstition; you have forgot the
+forfeit!'  Our host seemed to me to recoil and turn pale at those
+words; nevertheless, he returned Zanoni's smile with a look of
+defiance.  The next moment all was broil and disorder.  There
+might be some six or eight persons engaged in a strange and
+confused kind of melee, but the prince and myself only sought
+each other.  The noise around us, the confusion of the guests,
+the cries of the musicians, the clash of our own swords, only
+served to stimulate our unhappy fury.  We feared to be
+interrupted by the attendants, and fought like madmen, without
+skill or method.  I thrust and parried mechanically, blind and
+frantic, as if a demon had entered into me, till I saw the prince
+stretched at my feet, bathed in his blood, and Zanoni bending
+over him, and whispering in his ear.  That sight cooled us all.
+The strife ceased; we gathered, in shame, remorse, and horror,
+round our ill-fated host; but it was too late,--his eyes rolled
+fearfully in his head.  I have seen many men die, but never one
+who wore such horror on his countenance.  At last all was over!
+Zanoni rose from the corpse, and, taking, with great composure,
+the sword from my hand, said calmly, 'Ye are witnesses,
+gentlemen, that the prince brought his fate upon himself.  The
+last of that illustrious house has perished in a brawl.'
+
+"I saw no more of Zanoni.  I hastened to our envoy to narrate the
+event, and abide the issue.  I am grateful to the Neapolitan
+government, and to the illustrious heir of the unfortunate
+nobleman, for the lenient and generous, yet just, interpretation
+put upon a misfortune the memory of which will afflict me to the
+last hour of my life.
+
+(Signed) "Louis Victor, Duc de R."
+
+In the above memorial, the reader will find the most exact and
+minute account yet given of an event which created the most
+lively sensation at Naples in that day.
+
+Glyndon had taken no part in the affray, neither had he
+participated largely in the excesses of the revel.  For his
+exemption from both he was perhaps indebted to the whispered
+exhortations of Zanoni.  When the last rose from the corpse, and
+withdrew from that scene of confusion, Glyndon remarked that in
+passing the crowd he touched Mascari on the shoulder, and said
+something which the Englishman did not overhear.  Glyndon
+followed Zanoni into the banquet-room, which, save where the
+moonlight slept on the marble floor, was wrapped in the sad and
+gloomy shadows of the advancing night.
+
+"How could you foretell this fearful event?  He fell not by your
+arm!" said Glyndon, in a tremulous and hollow tone.
+
+"The general who calculates on the victory does not fight in
+person," answered Zanoni; "let the past sleep with the dead.
+Meet me at midnight by the sea-shore, half a mile to the left of
+your hotel.  You will know the spot by a rude pillar--the only
+one near--to which a broken chain is attached.  There and then,
+if thou wouldst learn our lore, thou shalt find the master.  Go;
+I have business here yet.  Remember, Viola is still in the house
+of the dead man!"
+
+Here Mascari approached, and Zanoni, turning to the Italian, and
+waving his hand to Glyndon, drew the former aside.  Glyndon
+slowly departed.
+
+"Mascari," said Zanoni, "your patron is no more; your services
+will be valueless to his heir,--a sober man whom poverty has
+preserved from vice.  For yourself, thank me that I do not give
+you up to the executioner; recollect the wine of Cyprus.  Well,
+never tremble, man; it could not act on me, though it might react
+on others; in that it is a common type of crime.  I forgive you;
+and if the wine should kill me, I promise you that my ghost shall
+not haunt so worshipful a penitent.  Enough of this; conduct me
+to the chamber of Viola Pisani.  You have no further need of her.
+The death of the jailer opens the cell of the captive.  Be quick;
+I would be gone."
+
+Mascari muttered some inaudible words, bowed low, and led the way
+to the chamber in which Viola was confined.
+
+
+CHAPTER 3.XVIII.
+
+Merc:  Tell me, therefore, what thou seekest after, and what thou
+wilt have.  What dost thou desire to make?
+
+Alch:  The Philosopher's Stone.
+
+Sandivogius.
+
+It wanted several minutes of midnight, and Glyndon repaired to
+the appointed spot.  The mysterious empire which Zanoni had
+acquired over him, was still more solemnly confirmed by the
+events of the last few hours; the sudden fate of the prince, so
+deliberately foreshadowed, and yet so seemingly accidental,
+brought out by causes the most commonplace, and yet associated
+with words the most prophetic, impressed him with the deepest
+sentiments of admiration and awe.  It was as if this dark and
+wondrous being could convert the most ordinary events and the
+meanest instruments into the agencies of his inscrutable will;
+yet, if so, why have permitted the capture of Viola?  Why not
+have prevented the crime rather than punish the criminal?  And
+did Zanoni really feel love for Viola?  Love, and yet offer to
+resign her to himself,--to a rival whom his arts could not have
+failed to baffle.  He no longer reverted to the belief that
+Zanoni or Viola had sought to dupe him into marriage.  His fear
+and reverence for the former now forbade the notion of so poor an
+imposture.  Did he any longer love Viola himself?  No; when that
+morning he had heard of her danger, he had, it is true, returned
+to the sympathies and the fears of affection; but with the death
+of the prince her image faded from his heart, and he felt no
+jealous pang at the thought that she had been saved by Zanoni,--
+that at that moment she was perhaps beneath his roof.  Whoever
+has, in the course of his life, indulged the absorbing passion of
+the gamester, will remember how all other pursuits and objects
+vanished from his mind; how solely he was wrapped in the one wild
+delusion; with what a sceptre of magic power the despot-demon
+ruled every feeling and every thought.  Far more intense than the
+passion of the gamester was the frantic yet sublime desire that
+mastered the breast of Glyndon.  He would be the rival of Zanoni,
+not in human and perishable affections, but in preternatural and
+eternal lore.  He would have laid down life with content--nay,
+rapture--as the price of learning those solemn secrets which
+separated the stranger from mankind.  Enamoured of the goddess of
+goddesses, he stretched forth his arms--the wild Ixion--and
+embraced a cloud!
+
+The night was most lovely and serene, and the waves scarcely
+rippled at his feet as the Englishman glided on by the cool and
+starry beach.  At length he arrived at the spot, and there,
+leaning against the broken pillar, he beheld a man wrapped in a
+long mantle, and in an attitude of profound repose.  He
+approached, and uttered the name of Zanoni.  The figure turned,
+and he saw the face of a stranger:  a face not stamped by the
+glorious beauty of Zanoni, but equally majestic in its aspect,
+and perhaps still more impressive from the mature age and the
+passionless depth of thought that characterised the expanded
+forehead, and deep-set but piercing eyes.
+
+"You seek Zanoni," said the stranger; "he will be here anon; but,
+perhaps, he whom you see before you is more connected with your
+destiny, and more disposed to realise your dreams."
+
+"Hath the earth, then, another Zanoni?"
+
+"If not," replied the stranger, "why do you cherish the hope and
+the wild faith to be yourself a Zanoni?  Think you that none
+others have burned with the same godlike dream?  Who, indeed in
+his first youth,--youth when the soul is nearer to the heaven
+from which it sprang, and its divine and primal longings are not
+all effaced by the sordid passions and petty cares that are begot
+in time,--who is there in youth that has not nourished the belief
+that the universe has secrets not known to the common herd, and
+panted, as the hart for the water-springs, for the fountains that
+lie hid and far away amidst the broad wilderness of trackless
+science?  The music of the fountain is heard in the soul WITHIN,
+till the steps, deceived and erring, rove away from its waters,
+and the wanderer dies in the mighty desert.  Think you that none
+who have cherished the hope have found the truth, or that the
+yearning after the Ineffable Knowledge was given to us utterly in
+vain?  No!  Every desire in human hearts is but a glimpse of
+things that exist, alike distant and divine.  No! in the world
+there have been from age to age some brighter and happier spirits
+who have attained to the air in which the beings above mankind
+move and breathe.  Zanoni, great though he be, stands not alone.
+He has had his predecessors, and long lines of successors may be
+yet to come."
+
+"And will you tell me," said Glyndon, "that in yourself I behold
+one of that mighty few over whom Zanoni has no superiority in
+power and wisdom?"
+
+"In me," answered the stranger, "you see one from whom Zanoni
+himself learned some of his loftiest secrets.  On these shores,
+on this spot, have I stood in ages that your chroniclers but
+feebly reach.  The Phoenician, the Greek, the Oscan, the Roman,
+the Lombard, I have seen them all!--leaves gay and glittering on
+the trunk of the universal life, scattered in due season and
+again renewed; till, indeed, the same race that gave its glory to
+the ancient world bestowed a second youth upon the new.  For the
+pure Greeks, the Hellenes, whose origin has bewildered your
+dreaming scholars, were of the same great family as the Norman
+tribe, born to be the lords of the universe, and in no land on
+earth destined to become the hewers of wood.  Even the dim
+traditions of the learned, which bring the sons of Hellas from
+the vast and undetermined territories of Northern Thrace, to be
+the victors of the pastoral Pelasgi, and the founders of the line
+of demi-gods; which assign to a population bronzed beneath the
+suns of the West, the blue-eyed Minerva and the yellow-haired
+Achilles (physical characteristics of the North); which
+introduce, amongst a pastoral people, warlike aristocracies and
+limited monarchies, the feudalism of the classic time,--even
+these might serve you to trace back the primeval settlements of
+the Hellenes to the same region whence, in later times, the
+Norman warriors broke on the dull and savage hordes of the Celt,
+and became the Greeks of the Christian world.  But this interests
+you not, and you are wise in your indifference.  Not in the
+knowledge of things without, but in the perfection of the soul
+within, lies the empire of man aspiring to be more than man."
+
+"And what books contain that science; from what laboratory is it
+wrought?"
+
+"Nature supplies the materials; they are around you in your daily
+walks.  In the herbs that the beast devours and the chemist
+disdains to cull; in the elements from which matter in its
+meanest and its mightiest shapes is deduced; in the wide bosom of
+the air; in the black abysses of the earth; everywhere are given
+to mortals the resources and libraries of immortal lore.  But as
+the simplest problems in the simplest of all studies are obscure
+to one who braces not his mind to their comprehension; as the
+rower in yonder vessel cannot tell you why two circles can touch
+each other only in one point,--so though all earth were carved
+over and inscribed with the letters of diviner knowledge, the
+characters would be valueless to him who does not pause to
+inquire the language and meditate the truth.  Young man, if thy
+imagination is vivid, if thy heart is daring, if thy curiosity is
+insatiate, I will accept thee as my  pupil.  But the first
+lessons are stern and dread."
+
+"If thou hast mastered them, why not I?" answered Glyndon,
+boldly.  "I have felt from my boyhood that strange mysteries were
+reserved for my career; and from the proudest ends of ordinary
+ambition I have carried my gaze into the cloud and darkness that
+stretch beyond.  The instant I beheld Zanoni, I felt as if I had
+discovered the guide and the tutor for which my youth had idly
+languished and vainly burned."
+
+"And to me his duty is transferred," replied the stranger.
+"Yonder lies, anchored in the bay, the vessel in which Zanoni
+seeks a fairer home; a little while and the breeze will rise, the
+sail will swell; and the stranger will have passed, like a wind,
+away.  Still, like the wind, he leaves in thy heart the seeds
+that may bear the blossom and the fruit.  Zanoni hath performed
+his task,--he is wanted no more; the perfecter of his work is at
+thy side.  He comes!  I hear the dash of the oar.  You will have
+your choice submitted to you.  According as you decide we shall
+meet again."  With these words the stranger moved slowly away,
+and disappeared beneath the shadow of the cliffs.  A boat glided
+rapidly across the waters:  it touched land; a man leaped on
+shore, and Glyndon recognised Zanoni.
+
+"I give thee, Glyndon,--I give thee no more the option of happy
+love and serene enjoyment.  That hour is past, and fate has
+linked the hand that might have been thine own to mine.  But I
+have ample gifts to bestow upon thee, if thou wilt abandon the
+hope that gnaws thy heart, and the realisation of which even _I_
+have not the power to foresee.  Be thine ambition human, and I
+can gratify it to the full.  Men desire four things in life,--
+love, wealth, fame, power.  The first I cannot give thee, the
+rest are at my disposal.  Select which of them thou wilt, and let
+us part in peace."
+
+"Such are not the gifts I covet.  I choose knowledge; that
+knowledge must be thine own.  For this, and for this alone, I
+surrendered the love of Viola; this, and this alone, must be my
+recompense."
+
+"I cannot gain say thee, though I can warn.  The desire to learn
+does not always contain the faculty to acquire.  I can give thee,
+it is true, the teacher,--the rest must depend on thee.  Be wise
+in time, and take that which I can assure to thee."
+
+"Answer me but these questions, and according to your answer I
+will decide.  Is it in the power of man to attain intercourse
+with the beings of other worlds?  Is it in the power of man to
+influence the elements, and to insure life against the sword and
+against disease?"
+
+"All this may be possible," answered Zanoni, evasively, "to the
+few; but for one who attains such secrets, millions may perish in
+the attempt."
+
+"One question more.  Thou--"
+
+"Beware!  Of myself, as I have said before, I render no account."
+
+"Well, then, the stranger I have met this night,--are his boasts
+to be believed?  Is he in truth one of the chosen seers whom you
+allow to have mastered the mysteries I yearn to fathom?"
+
+"Rash man," said Zanoni, in a tone of compassion, "thy crisis is
+past, and thy choice made!  I can only bid thee be bold and
+prosper; yes, I resign thee to a master who HAS the power and the
+will to open to thee the gates of an awful world.  Thy weal or
+woe are as nought in the eyes of his relentless wisdom.  I would
+bid him spare thee, but he will heed me not.  Mejnour, receive
+thy pupil!"  Glyndon turned, and his heart beat when he perceived
+that the stranger, whose footsteps he had not heard upon the
+pebbles, whose approach he had not beheld in the moonlight, was
+once more by his side.
+
+"Farewell," resumed Zanoni; "thy trial commences.  When next we
+meet, thou wilt be the victim or the victor."
+
+Glyndon's eyes followed the receding form of the mysterious
+stranger.  He saw him enter the boat, and he then for the first
+time noticed that besides the rowers there was a female, who
+stood up as Zanoni gained the boat.  Even at the distance he
+recognised the once-adored form of Viola.  She waved her hand to
+him, and across the still and shining air came her voice,
+mournfully and sweetly, in her mother's tongue, "Farewell,
+Clarence,--I forgive thee!--farewell, farewell!"
+
+He strove to answer; but the voice touched a chord at his heart,
+and the words failed him.  Viola was then lost forever, gone with
+this dread stranger; darkness was round her lot!  And he himself
+had decided her fate and his own!  The boat bounded on, the soft
+waves flashed and sparkled beneath the oars, and it was along one
+sapphire track of moonlight that the frail vessel bore away the
+lovers.  Farther and farther from his gaze sped the boat, till at
+last the speck, scarcely visible, touched the side of the ship
+that lay lifeless in the glorious bay.  At that instant, as if by
+magic, up sprang, with a glad murmur, the playful and freshening
+wind:  and Glyndon turned to Mejnour and broke the silence.
+
+"Tell me--if thou canst read the future--tell me that HER lot
+will be fair, and that HER choice at least is wise?"
+
+"My pupil!" answered Mejnour, in a voice the calmness of which
+well accorded with the chilling words, "thy first task must be to
+withdraw all thought, feeling, sympathy from others.  The
+elementary stage of knowledge is to make self, and self alone,
+thy study and thy world.  Thou hast decided thine own career;
+thou hast renounced love; thou hast rejected wealth, fame, and
+the vulgar pomps of power.  What, then, are all mankind to thee?
+To perfect thy faculties, and concentrate thy emotions, is
+henceforth thy only aim!"
+
+"And will happiness be the end?"
+
+"If happiness exist," answered Mejnour, "it must be centred in a
+SELF to which all passion is unknown.  But happiness is the last
+state of being; and as yet thou art on the threshold of the
+first."
+
+As Mejnour spoke, the distant vessel spread its sails to the
+wind, and moved slowly along the deep.  Glyndon sighed, and the
+pupil and the master retraced their steps towards the city.
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD.
+
+Bey hinter ihm was will! Ich heb ihn auf.
+"Das Verschleierte Bildzu Sais"
+
+(Be behind what there may, - I raise the veil.)
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.I.
+
+Come vittima io vengo all' ara.
+"Metast.," At. ii. Sc. 7.
+
+(As a victim I go to the altar.)
+
+It was about a month after the date of Zanoni's departure and
+Glyndon's introduction to Mejnour, when two Englishmen were
+walking, arm-in-arm, through the Toledo.
+
+"I tell you," said one (who spoke warmly), "that if you have a
+particle of common-sense left in you, you will accompany me to
+England.  This Mejnour is an imposter more dangerous, because
+more in earnest, than Zanoni.  After all, what do his promises
+amount to?  You allow that nothing can be more equivocal.  You
+say that he has left Naples,--that he has selected a retreat more
+congenial than the crowded thoroughfares of men to the studies in
+which he is to initiate you; and this retreat is among the haunts
+of the fiercest bandits of Italy,--haunts which justice itself
+dares not penetrate.  Fitting hermitage for a sage!  I tremble
+for you.  What if this stranger--of whom nothing is known--be
+leagued with the robbers; and these lures for your credulity bait
+but the traps for your property,--perhaps your life?  You might
+come off cheaply by a ransom of half your fortune.  You smile
+indignantly!  Well, put common-sense out of the question; take
+your own view of the matter.  You are to undergo an ordeal which
+Mejnour himself does not profess to describe as a very tempting
+one.  It may, or it may not, succeed:  if it does not, you are
+menaced with the darkest evils; and if it does, you cannot be
+better off than the dull and joyless mystic whom you have taken
+for a master.  Away with this folly; enjoy youth while it is left
+to you; return with me to England; forget these dreams; enter
+your proper career; form affections more respectable than those
+which lured you awhile to an Italian adventuress.  Attend to your
+fortune, make money, and become a happy and distinguished man.
+This is the advice of sober friendship; yet the promises I hold
+out to you are fairer than those of Mejnour."
+
+"Mervale," said Glyndon, doggedly, "I cannot, if I would, yield
+to your wishes.  A power that is above me urges me on; I cannot
+resist its influence.  I will proceed to the last in the strange
+career I have commenced.  Think of me no more.  Follow yourself
+the advice you give to me, and be happy."
+
+"This is madness," said Mervale; "your health is already failing;
+you are so changed I should scarcely know you.  Come; I have
+already had your name entered in my passport; in another hour I
+shall be gone, and you, boy that you are, will be left, without a
+friend, to the deceits of your own fancy and the machinations of
+this relentless mountebank."
+
+"Enough," said Glyndon, coldly; "you cease to be an effective
+counsellor when you suffer your prejudices to be thus evident.  I
+have already had ample proof," added the Englishman, and his pale
+cheek grew more pale, "of the power of this man,--if man he be,
+which I sometimes doubt,--and, come life, come death, I will not
+shrink from the paths that allure me.  Farewell, Mervale; if we
+never meet again,--if you hear, amidst our old and cheerful
+haunts, that Clarence Glyndon sleeps the last sleep by the shores
+of Naples, or amidst yon distant hills, say to the friends of our
+youth, 'He died worthily, as thousands of martyr-students have
+died before him, in the pursuit of knowledge.'"
+
+He wrung Mervale's hand as he spoke, darted from his side, and
+disappeared amidst the crowd.
+
+By the corner of the Toledo he was arrested by Nicot.
+
+"Ah, Glyndon!  I have not seen you this month.  Where have you
+hid yourself?  Have you been absorbed in your studies?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I am about to leave Naples for Paris.  Will you accompany me?
+Talent of all order is eagerly sought for there, and will be sure
+to rise."
+
+"I thank you; I have other schemes for the present."
+
+"So laconic!--what ails you?  Do you grieve for the loss of the
+Pisani?  Take example by me.  I have already consoled myself with
+Bianca Sacchini,--a handsome woman, enlightened, no prejudices.
+A valuable creature I shall find her, no doubt.  But as for this
+Zanoni!"
+
+"What of him?"
+
+"If ever I paint an allegorical subject, I will take his likeness
+as Satan.  Ha, ha! a true painter's revenge,--eh?  And the way of
+the world, too!  When we can do nothing else against a man whom
+we hate, we can at least paint his effigies as the Devil's.
+Seriously, though:  I abhor that man."
+
+"Wherefore?'
+
+"Wherefore!  Has he not carried off the wife and the dowry I had
+marked for myself!  Yet, after all," added Nicot, musingly, "had
+he served instead of injured me, I should have hated him all the
+same.  His very form, and his very face, made me at once envy and
+detest him.  I felt that there is something antipathetic in our
+natures.  I feel, too, that we shall meet again, when Jean
+Nicot's hate may be less impotent.  We, too, cher confrere,--we,
+too, may meet again!  Vive la Republique!  I to my new world!"
+
+"And I to mine.  Farewell!"
+
+That day Mervale left Naples; the next morning Glyndon also
+quitted the City of Delight alone, and on horseback.  He bent his
+way into those picturesque but dangerous parts of the country
+which at that time were infested by banditti, and which few
+travellers dared to pass, even in broad daylight, without a
+strong escort.  A road more lonely cannot well be conceived than
+that on which the hoofs of his steed, striking upon the fragments
+of rock that encumbered the neglected way, woke a dull and
+melancholy echo.  Large tracts of waste land, varied by the rank
+and profuse foliage of the South, lay before him; occasionally a
+wild goat peeped down from some rocky crag, or the discordant cry
+of a bird of prey, startled in its sombre haunt, was heard above
+the hills.  These were the only signs of life; not a human being
+was met,--not a hut was visible.  Wrapped in his own ardent and
+solemn thoughts, the young man continued his way, till the sun
+had spent its noonday heat, and a breeze that announced the
+approach of eve sprung up from the unseen ocean which lay far
+distant to his right.  It was then that a turn in the road
+brought before him one of those long, desolate, gloomy villages
+which are found in the interior of the Neapolitan dominions:  and
+now he came upon a small chapel on one side the road, with a
+gaudily painted image of the Virgin in the open shrine.  Around
+this spot, which, in the heart of a Christian land, retained the
+vestige of the old idolatry (for just such were the chapels that
+in the pagan age were dedicated to the demon-saints of
+mythology), gathered six or seven miserable and squalid wretches,
+whom the curse of the leper had cut off from mankind.  They set
+up a shrill cry as they turned their ghastly visages towards the
+horseman; and, without stirring from the spot, stretched out
+their gaunt arms, and implored charity in the name of the
+Merciful Mother!  Glyndon hastily threw them some small coins,
+and, turning away his face, clapped spurs to his horse, and
+relaxed not his speed till he entered the village.  On either
+side the narrow and miry street, fierce and haggard forms--some
+leaning against the ruined walls of blackened huts, some seated
+at the threshold, some lying at full length in the mud--presented
+groups that at once invoked pity and aroused alarm:  pity for
+their squalor, alarm for the ferocity imprinted on their savage
+aspects.  They gazed at him, grim and sullen, as he rode slowly
+up the rugged street; sometimes whispering significantly to each
+other, but without attempting to stop his way.  Even the children
+hushed their babble, and ragged urchins, devouring him with
+sparkling eyes, muttered to their mothers; "We shall feast well
+to-morrow!"  It was, indeed, one of those hamlets in which Law
+sets not its sober step, in which Violence and Murder house
+secure,--hamlets common then in the wilder parts of Italy, in
+which the peasant was but the gentler name for the robber.
+
+Glyndon's heart somewhat failed him as he looked around, and the
+question he desired to ask died upon his lips.  At length from
+one of the dismal cabins emerged a form superior to the rest.
+Instead of the patched and ragged over-all, which made the only
+garment of the men he had hitherto seen, the dress of this person
+was characterised by all the trappings of the national bravery.
+Upon his raven hair, the glossy curls of which made a notable
+contrast to the matted and elfin locks of the savages around, was
+placed a cloth cap, with a gold tassel that hung down to his
+shoulder; his mustaches were trimmed with care, and a silk
+kerchief of gay hues was twisted round a well-shaped but sinewy
+throat; a short jacket of rough cloth was decorated with several
+rows of gilt filagree buttons; his nether garments fitted tight
+to his limbs, and were curiously braided; while in a broad parti-
+coloured sash were placed two silver-hilted pistols, and the
+sheathed knife, usually worn by Italians of the lower order,
+mounted in ivory elaborately carved.  A small carbine of handsome
+workmanship was slung across his shoulder and completed his
+costume.  The man himself was of middle size, athletic yet
+slender, with straight and regular features, sunburnt, but not
+swarthy; and an expression of countenance which, though reckless
+and bold, had in it frankness rather than ferocity, and, if
+defying, was not altogether unprepossessing.
+
+Glyndon, after eyeing this figure for some moments with great
+attention, checked his rein, and asked the way to the "Castle of
+the Mountain."
+
+The man lifted his cap as he heard the question, and, approaching
+Glyndon, laid his hand upon the neck of the horse, and said, in a
+low voice, "Then you are the cavalier whom our patron the signor
+expected.  He bade me wait for you here, and lead you to the
+castle.  And indeed, signor, it might have been unfortunate if I
+had neglected to obey the command."
+
+The man then, drawing a little aside, called out to the
+bystanders in a loud voice, "Ho, ho! my friends, pay henceforth
+and forever all respect to this worshipful cavalier.  He is the
+expected guest of our blessed patron of the Castle of the
+Mountain.  Long life to him!  May he, like his host, be safe by
+day and by night; on the hill and in the waste; against the
+dagger and the bullet,--in limb and in life!  Cursed be he who
+touches a hair of his head, or a baioccho in his pouch.  Now and
+forever we will protect and honour him,--for the law or against
+the law; with the faith and to the death.  Amen!  Amen!"
+
+"Amen!" responded, in wild chorus, a hundred voices; and the
+scattered and straggling groups pressed up the street, nearer and
+nearer to the horseman.
+
+"And that he may be known," continued the Englishman's strange
+protector, "to the eye and to the ear, I place around him the
+white sash, and I give him the sacred watchword, 'Peace to the
+Brave.'  Signor, when you wear this sash, the proudest in these
+parts will bare the head and bend the knee.  Signor, when you
+utter this watchword, the bravest hearts will be bound to your
+bidding.  Desire you safety, or ask you revenge--to gain a
+beauty, or to lose a foe,--speak but the word, and we are yours:
+we are yours!  Is it not so, comrades?"
+
+And again the hoarse voices shouted, "Amen, Amen!"
+
+"Now, signor," whispered the bravo, "if you have a few coins to
+spare, scatter them amongst the crowd, and let us be gone."
+
+Glyndon, not displeased at the concluding sentence, emptied his
+purse in the streets; and while, with mingled oaths, blessings,
+shrieks, and yells, men, women, and children scrambled for the
+money, the bravo, taking the rein of the horse, led it a few
+paces through the village at a brisk trot, and then, turning up a
+narrow lane to the left, in a few minutes neither houses nor men
+were visible, and the mountains closed their path on either side.
+It was then that, releasing the bridle and slackening his pace,
+the guide turned his dark eyes on Glyndon with an arch
+expression, and said,--
+
+"Your Excellency was not, perhaps, prepared for the hearty
+welcome we have given you."
+
+"Why, in truth, I OUGHT to have been prepared for it, since the
+signor, to whose house I am bound, did not disguise from me the
+character of the neighbourhood.  And your name, my friend, if I
+may so call you?"
+
+"Oh, no ceremonies with me, Excellency.  In the village I am
+generally called Maestro Paolo.  I had a surname once, though a
+very equivocal one; and I have forgotten THAT since I retired
+from the world."
+
+"And was it from disgust, from poverty, or from some--some
+ebullition of passion which entailed punishment, that you betook
+yourself to the mountains?"
+
+"Why, signor," said the bravo, with a gay laugh, "hermits of my
+class seldom love the confessional.  However, I have no secrets
+while my step is in these defiles, my whistle in my pouch, and my
+carbine at my back."  With that the robber, as if he loved
+permission to talk at his will, hemmed thrice, and began with
+much humour; though, as his tale proceeded, the memories it
+roused seemed to carry him farther than he at first intended, and
+reckless and light-hearted ease gave way to that fierce and
+varied play of countenance and passion of gesture which
+characterise the emotions of his countrymen.
+
+"I was born at Terracina,--a fair spot, is it not?  My father was
+a learned monk of high birth; my mother--Heaven rest her!--an
+innkeeper's pretty daughter.  Of course there could be no
+marriage in the case; and when I was born, the monk gravely
+declared my appearance to be miraculous.  I was dedicated from my
+cradle to the altar; and my head was universally declared to be
+the orthodox shape for a cowl.  As I grew up, the monk took great
+pains with my education; and I learned Latin and psalmody as soon
+as less miraculous infants learn crowing.  Nor did the holy man's
+care stint itself to my interior accomplishments.  Although vowed
+to poverty, he always contrived that my mother should have her
+pockets full; and between her pockets and mine there was soon
+established a clandestine communication; accordingly, at
+fourteen, I wore my cap on one side, stuck pistols in my belt,
+and assumed the swagger of a cavalier and a gallant.  At that age
+my poor mother died; and about the same period my father, having
+written a History of the Pontifical Bulls, in forty volumes, and
+being, as I said, of high birth, obtained a cardinal's hat.  From
+that time he thought fit to disown your humble servant.  He bound
+me over to an honest notary at Naples, and gave me two hundred
+crowns by way of provision.  Well, signor, I saw enough of the
+law to convince me that I should never be rogue enough to shine
+in the profession.  So, instead of spoiling parchment, I made
+love to the notary's daughter.  My master discovered our innocent
+amusement, and turned me out of doors; that was disagreeable.
+But my Ninetta loved me, and took care that I should not lie out
+in the streets with the Lazzaroni.  Little jade!  I think I see
+her now with her bare feet, and her finger to her lips, opening
+the door in the summer nights, and bidding me creep softly into
+the kitchen, where, praised be the saints! a flask and a manchet
+always awaited the hungry amoroso.  At last, however, Ninetta
+grew cold.  It is the way of the sex, signor.  Her father found
+her an excellent marriage in the person of a withered old
+picture-dealer.  She took the spouse, and very properly clapped
+the door in the face of the lover.  I was not disheartened,
+Excellency; no, not I.  Women are plentiful while we are young.
+So, without a ducat in my pocket or a crust for my teeth, I set
+out to seek my fortune on board of a Spanish merchantman.  That
+was duller work than I expected; but luckily we were attacked by
+a pirate,--half the crew were butchered, the rest captured.  I
+was one of the last:  always in luck, you see, signor,--monks'
+sons have a knack that way!  The captain of the pirates took a
+fancy to me.  'Serve with us?' said he.  'Too happy,' said I.
+Behold me, then, a pirate!  O jolly life! how I blessed the old
+notary for turning me out of doors!  What feasting, what
+fighting, what wooing, what quarrelling!  Sometimes we ran ashore
+and enjoyed ourselves like princes; sometimes we lay in a calm
+for days together on the loveliest sea that man ever traversed.
+And then, if the breeze rose and a sail came in sight, who so
+merry as we?  I passed three years in that charming profession,
+and then, signor, I grew ambitious.  I caballed against the
+captain; I wanted his post.  One still night we struck the blow.
+The ship was like a log in the sea, no land to be seen from the
+mast-head, the waves like glass, and the moon at its full.  Up we
+rose, thirty of us and more.  Up we rose with a shout; we poured
+into the captain's cabin, I at the head.  The brave old boy had
+caught the alarm, and there he stood at the doorway, a pistol in
+each hand; and his one eye (he had only one) worse to meet than
+the pistols were.
+
+"'Yield!' cried I; 'your life shall be safe.'
+
+"'Take that,' said he, and whiz went the pistol; but the saints
+took care of their own, and the ball passed by my cheek, and shot
+the boatswain behind me.  I closed with the captain, and the
+other pistol went off without mischief in the struggle.  Such a
+fellow he was,--six feet four without his shoes!  Over we went,
+rolling each on the other.  Santa Maria! no time to get hold of
+one's knife.  Meanwhile all the crew were up, some for the
+captain, some for me,--clashing and firing, and swearing and
+groaning, and now and then a heavy splash in the sea.  Fine
+supper for the sharks that night!  At last old Bilboa got
+uppermost; out flashed his knife; down it came, but not in my
+heart.  No! I gave my left arm as a shield; and the blade went
+through to the hilt, with the blood spurting up like the rain
+from a whale's nostril!  With the weight of the blow the stout
+fellow came down so that his face touched mine; with my right
+hand I caught him by the throat, turned him over like a lamb,
+signor, and faith it was soon all up with him:  the boatswain's
+brother, a fat Dutchman, ran him through with a pike.
+
+"'Old fellow,' said I, as he turned his terrible eye to me, 'I
+bear you no malice, but we must try to get on in the world, you
+know.'  The captain grinned and gave up the ghost.  I went upon
+deck,--what a sight!  Twenty bold fellows stark and cold, and the
+moon sparkling on the puddles of blood as calmly as if it were
+water.  Well, signor, the victory was ours, and the ship mine; I
+ruled merrily enough for six months.  We then attacked a French
+ship twice our size; what sport it was!  And we had not had a
+good fight so long, we were quite like virgins at it!  We got the
+best of it, and won ship and cargo.  They wanted to pistol the
+captain, but that was against my laws:  so we gagged him, for he
+scolded as loud as if we were married to him; left him and the
+rest of his crew on board our own vessel, which was terribly
+battered; clapped our black flag on the Frenchman's, and set off
+merrily, with a brisk wind in our favour.  But luck deserted us
+on forsaking our own dear old ship.  A storm came on, a plank
+struck; several of us escaped in a boat; we had lots of gold with
+us, but no water.  For two days and two nights we suffered
+horribly; but at last we ran ashore near a French seaport.  Our
+sorry plight moved compassion, and as we had money, we were not
+suspected,--people only suspect the poor.  Here we soon recovered
+our fatigues, rigged ourselves out gayly, and your humble servant
+was considered as noble a captain as ever walked deck.  But now,
+alas! my fate would have it that I should fall in love with a
+silk-mercer's daughter.  Ah, how I loved her!--the pretty Clara!
+Yes, I loved her so well that I was seized with horror at my past
+life!  I resolved to repent, to marry her, and settle down into
+an honest man.  Accordingly, I summoned my messmates, told them
+my resolution, resigned my command, and persuaded them to depart.
+They were good fellows, engaged with a Dutchman, against whom I
+heard afterwards they made a successful mutiny, but I never saw
+them more.  I had two thousand crowns still left; with this sum I
+obtained the consent of the silk-mercer, and it was agreed that I
+should become a partner in the firm.  I need not say that no one
+suspected that I had been so great a man, and I passed for a
+Neapolitan goldsmith's son instead of a cardinal's.  I was very
+happy then, signor, very,--I could not have harmed a fly!  Had I
+married Clara, I had been as gentle a mercer as ever handled a
+measure."
+
+The bravo paused a moment, and it was easy to see that he felt
+more than his words and tone betokened.  "Well, well, we must not
+look back at the past too earnestly,--the sunlight upon it makes
+one's eyes water.  The day was fixed for our wedding,--it
+approached.  On the evening before the appointed day, Clara, her
+mother, her little sister, and myself, were walking by the port;
+and as we looked on the sea, I was telling them old gossip-tales
+of mermaids and sea-serpents, when a red-faced, bottle-nosed
+Frenchman clapped himself right before me, and, placing his
+spectacles very deliberately astride his proboscis, echoed out,
+'Sacre, mille tonnerres! this is the damned pirate who boarded
+the "Niobe"!'
+
+"'None of your jests,' said I, mildly.  'Ho, ho!' said he; 'I
+can't be mistaken; help there!' and he griped me by the collar.
+I replied, as you may suppose, by laying him in the kennel; but
+it would not do.  The French captain had a French lieutenant at
+his back, whose memory was as good as his chief's.  A crowd
+assembled; other sailors came up:  the odds were against me.  I
+slept that night in prison; and in a few weeks afterwards I was
+sent to the galleys.  They spared my life, because the old
+Frenchman politely averred that I had made my crew spare his.
+You may believe that the oar and the chain were not to my taste.
+I and two others escaped; they took to the road, and have, no
+doubt, been long since broken on the wheel.  I, soft soul, would
+not commit another crime to gain my bread, for Clara was still at
+my heart with her sweet eyes; so, limiting my rogueries to the
+theft of a beggar's rags, which I compensated by leaving him my
+galley attire instead, I begged my way to the town where I left
+Clara.  It was a clear winter's day when I approached the
+outskirts of the town.  I had no fear of detection, for my beard
+and hair were as good as a mask.  Oh, Mother of Mercy! there came
+across my way a funeral procession!  There, now you know it; I
+can tell you no more.  She had died, perhaps of love, more likely
+of shame.  Can you guess how I spent that night?--I stole a
+pickaxe from a mason's shed, and all alone and unseen, under the
+frosty heavens, I dug the fresh mould from the grave; I lifted
+the coffin, I wrenched the lid, I saw her again--again!  Decay
+had not touched her.  She was always pale in life!  I could have
+sworn she lived!  It was a blessed thing to see her once more,
+and all alone too!  But then, at dawn, to give her back to the
+earth,--to close the lid, to throw down the mould, to hear the
+pebbles rattle on the coffin:  that was dreadful!  Signor, I
+never knew before, and I don't wish to think now, how valuable a
+thing human life is.  At sunrise I was again a wanderer; but now
+that Clara was gone, my scruples vanished, and again I was at war
+with my betters.  I contrived at last, at O--, to get taken on
+board a vessel bound to Leghorn, working out my passage.  From
+Leghorn I went to Rome, and stationed myself at the door of the
+cardinal's palace.  Out he came, his gilded coach at the gate.
+
+"'Ho, father!' said I; 'don't you know me?'
+
+"'Who are you?'
+
+"'Your son,' said I, in a whisper.
+
+"The cardinal drew back, looked at me earnestly, and mused a
+moment.  'All men are my sons,' quoth he then, very mildly;
+'there is gold for thee!  To him who begs once, alms are due; to
+him who begs twice, jails are open.  Take the hint and molest me
+no more.  Heaven bless thee!'  With that he got into his coach,
+and drove off to the Vatican.  His purse which he had left behind
+was well supplied.  I was grateful and contented, and took my way
+to Terracina.  I had not long passed the marshes when I saw two
+horsemen approach at a canter.
+
+"'You look poor, friend,' said one of them, halting; 'yet you are
+strong.'
+
+"'Poor men and strong are both serviceable and dangerous, Signor
+Cavalier.'
+
+"'Well said; follow us.'
+
+"I obeyed, and became a bandit.  I rose by degrees; and as I have
+always been mild in my calling, and have taken purses without
+cutting throats, I bear an excellent character, and can eat my
+macaroni at Naples without any danger to life and limb.  For the
+last two years I have settled in these parts, where I hold sway,
+and where I have purchased land.  I am called a farmer, signor;
+and I myself now only rob for amusement, and to keep my hand in.
+I trust I have satisfied your curiosity.  We are within a hundred
+yards of the castle."
+
+"And how," asked the Englishman, whose interest had been much
+excited by his companion's narrative,--"and how came you
+acquainted with my host?--and by what means has he so well
+conciliated the goodwill of yourself and friends?"
+
+Maestro Paolo turned his black eyes very gravely towards his
+questioner.  "Why, signor," said he, "you must surely know more
+of the foreign cavalier with the hard name than I do.  All I can
+say is, that about a fortnight ago I chanced to be standing by a
+booth in the Toledo at Naples, when a sober-looking gentleman
+touched me by the arm, and said, 'Maestro Paolo, I want to make
+your acquaintance; do me the favour to come into yonder tavern,
+and drink a flask of lacrima.'  'Willingly,' said I.  So we
+entered the tavern.  When we were seated, my new acquaintance
+thus accosted me:  'The Count d'O-- has offered to let me hire
+his old castle near B--.  You know the spot?'
+
+"'Extremely well; no one has inhabited it for a century at least;
+it is half in ruins, signor.  A queer place to hire; I hope the
+rent is not heavy.'
+
+"'Maestro Paolo,' said he, 'I am a philosopher, and don't care
+for luxuries.  I want a quiet retreat for some scientific
+experiments.  The castle will suit me very well, provided you
+will accept me as a neighbour, and place me and my friends under
+your special protection.  I am rich; but I shall take nothing to
+the castle worth robbing.  I will pay one rent to the count, and
+another to you.'
+
+"With that we soon came to terms; and as the strange signor
+doubled the sum I myself proposed, he is in high favour with all
+his neighbours.  We would guard the whole castle against an army.
+And now, signor, that I have been thus frank, be frank with me.
+Who is this singular cavalier?"
+
+"Who?--he himself told you, a philosopher."
+
+"Hem! searching for the Philosopher's Stone,--eh, a bit of a
+magician; afraid of the priests?"
+
+"Precisely; you have hit it."
+
+"I thought so; and you are his pupil?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"I wish you well through it," said the robber, seriously, and
+crossing himself with much devotion; "I am not much better than
+other people, but one's soul is one's soul.  I do not mind a
+little honest robbery, or knocking a man on the head if need be,
+--but to make a bargain with the devil!  Ah, take care, young
+gentleman, take care!"
+
+"You need not fear," said Glyndon, smiling; "my preceptor is too
+wise and too good for such a compact.  But here we are, I
+suppose.  A noble ruin,--a glorious prospect!"
+
+Glyndon paused delightedly, and surveyed the scene before and
+below with the eye of a painter.  Insensibly, while listening to
+the bandit, he had wound up a considerable ascent, and now he was
+upon a broad ledge of rock covered with mosses and dwarf shrubs.
+Between this eminence and another of equal height, upon which the
+castle was built, there was a deep but narrow fissure, overgrown
+with the most profuse foliage, so that the eye could not
+penetrate many yards below the rugged surface of the abyss; but
+the profoundness might be well conjectured by the hoarse, low,
+monotonous roar of waters unseen that rolled below, and the
+subsequent course of which was visible at a distance in a
+perturbed and rapid stream that intersected the waste and
+desolate valleys.
+
+To the left, the prospect seemed almost boundless,--the extreme
+clearness of the purple air serving to render distinct the
+features of a range of country that a conqueror of old might have
+deemed in itself a kingdom.  Lonely and desolate as the road
+which Glyndon had passed that day had appeared, the landscape now
+seemed studded with castles, spires, and villages.  Afar off,
+Naples gleamed whitely in the last rays of the sun, and the
+rose-tints of the horizon melted into the azure of her glorious
+bay.  Yet more remote, and in another part of the prospect, might
+be caught, dim and shadowy, and backed by the darkest foliage,
+the ruined pillars of the ancient Posidonia. There, in the midst
+of his blackened and sterile realms, rose the dismal Mount of
+Fire; while on the other hand, winding through variegated plains,
+to which distance lent all its magic, glittered many and many a
+stream by which Etruscan and Sybarite, Roman and Saracen and
+Norman had, at intervals of ages, pitched the invading tent.  All
+the visions of the past--the stormy and dazzling histories of
+Southern Italy--rushed over the artist's mind as he gazed below.
+ And then, slowly turning to look behind, he saw the grey and
+mouldering walls of the castle in which he sought the secrets
+that were to give to hope in the future a mightier empire than
+memory owns in the past.  It was one of those baronial fortresses
+with which Italy was studded in the earlier middle ages, having
+but little of the Gothic grace or grandeur which belongs to the
+ecclesiastical architecture of the same time, but rude, vast, and
+menacing, even in decay.  A wooden bridge was thrown over the
+chasm, wide enough to admit two horsemen abreast; and the planks
+trembled and gave back a hollow sound as Glyndon urged his jaded
+steed across.
+
+A road which had once been broad and paved with rough flags, but
+which now was half-obliterated by long grass and rank weeds,
+conducted to the outer court of the castle hard by; the gates
+were open, and half the building in this part was dismantled; the
+ruins partially hid by ivy that was the growth of centuries.  But
+on entering the inner court, Glyndon was not sorry to notice that
+there was less appearance of neglect and decay; some wild roses
+gave a smile to the grey walls, and in the centre there was a
+fountain in which the waters still trickled coolly, and with a
+pleasing murmur, from the jaws of a gigantic Triton.  Here he was
+met by Mejnour with a smile.
+
+"Welcome, my friend and pupil," said he:  "he who seeks for Truth
+can find in these solitudes an immortal Academe."
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.II.
+
+And Abaris, so far from esteeming Pythagoras, who taught these
+things, a necromancer or wizard, rather revered and admired him
+as something divine.--Iamblich., "Vit. Pythag."
+
+The attendants whom Mejnour had engaged for his strange abode
+were such as might suit a philosopher of few wants.  An old
+Armenian whom Glyndon recognised as in the mystic's service at
+Naples, a tall, hard-featured woman from the village, recommended
+by Maestro Paolo, and two long-haired, smooth-spoken, but
+fierce-visaged youths from the same place, and honoured by the
+same sponsorship, constituted the establishment.  The rooms used
+by the sage were commodious and weather-proof, with some remains
+of ancient splendour in the faded arras that clothed the walls,
+and the huge tables of costly marble and elaborate carving.
+Glyndon's sleeping apartment communicated with a kind of
+belvedere, or terrace, that commanded prospects of unrivalled
+beauty and extent, and was separated on the other side by a long
+gallery, and a flight of ten or a dozen stairs, from the private
+chambers of the mystic.  There was about the whole place a sombre
+and yet not displeasing depth of repose.  It suited well with the
+studies to which it was now to be appropriated.
+
+For several days Mejnour refused to confer with Glyndon on the
+subjects nearest to his heart.
+
+"All without," said he, "is prepared, but not all within; your
+own soul must grow accustomed to the spot, and filled with the
+surrounding nature; for Nature is the source of all inspiration."
+
+With these words Mejnour turned to lighter topics.  He made the
+Englishman accompany him in long rambles through the wild scenes
+around, and he smiled approvingly when the young artist gave way
+to the enthusiasm which their fearful beauty could not have
+failed to rouse in a duller breast; and then Mejnour poured forth
+to his wondering pupil the stores of a knowledge that seemed
+inexhaustible and boundless.  He gave accounts the most curious,
+graphic, and minute of the various races (their characters,
+habits, creeds, and manners) by which that fair land had been
+successively overrun.  It is true that his descriptions could not
+be found in books, and were unsupported by learned authorities;
+but he possessed the true charm of the tale-teller, and spoke of
+all with the animated confidence of a personal witness.
+Sometimes, too, he would converse upon the more durable and the
+loftier mysteries of Nature with an eloquence and a research
+which invested them with all the colours rather of poetry than
+science.  Insensibly the young artist found himself elevated and
+soothed by the lore of his companion; the fever of his wild
+desires was slaked.  His mind became more and more lulled into
+the divine tranquillity of contemplation; he felt himself a
+nobler being, and in the silence of his senses he imagined that
+he heard the voice of his soul.
+
+It was to this state that Mejnour evidently sought to bring the
+neophyte, and in this elementary initiation the mystic was like
+every more ordinary sage.  For he who seeks to DISCOVER must
+first reduce himself into a kind of abstract idealism, and be
+rendered up, in solemn and sweet bondage, to the faculties which
+CONTEMPLATE and IMAGINE.
+
+Glyndon noticed that, in their rambles, Mejnour often paused,
+where the foliage was rifest, to gather some herb or flower; and
+this reminded him that he had seen Zanoni similarly occupied.
+"Can these humble children of Nature," said he one day to
+Mejnour,--"things that bloom and wither in a day, be serviceable
+to the science of the higher secrets?  Is there a pharmacy for
+the soul as well as the body, and do the nurslings of the summer
+minister not only to human health but spiritual immortality?"
+
+"If," answered Mejnour, "a stranger had visited a wandering tribe
+before one property of herbalism was known to them; if he had
+told the savages that the herbs which every day they trampled
+under foot were endowed with the most potent virtues; that one
+would restore to health a brother on the verge of death; that
+another would paralyse into idiocy their wisest sage; that a
+third would strike lifeless to the dust their most stalwart
+champion; that tears and laughter, vigour and disease, madness
+and reason, wakefulness and sleep, existence and dissolution,
+were coiled up in those unregarded leaves,--would they not have
+held him a sorcerer or a liar?  To half the virtues of the
+vegetable world mankind are yet in the darkness of the savages I
+have supposed.  There are faculties within us with which certain
+herbs have affinity, and over which they have power.  The moly of
+the ancients is not all a fable."
+
+The apparent character of Mejnour differed in much from that of
+Zanoni; and while it fascinated Glyndon less, it subdued and
+impressed him more.  The conversation of Zanoni evinced a deep
+and general interest for mankind,--a feeling approaching to
+enthusiasm for art and beauty.  The stories circulated concerning
+his habits elevated the mystery of his life by actions of charity
+and beneficence.  And in all this there was something genial and
+humane that softened the awe he created, and tended, perhaps, to
+raise suspicions as to the loftier secrets that he arrogated to
+himself.  But Mejnour seemed wholly indifferent to all the actual
+world.  If he committed no evil, he seemed equally apathetic to
+good.  His deeds relieved no want, his words pitied no distress.
+What we call the heart appeared to have merged into the
+intellect.  He moved, thought, and lived like some regular and
+calm abstraction, rather than one who yet retained, with the
+form, the feelings and sympathies of his kind.
+
+Glyndon once, observing the tone of supreme indifference with
+which he spoke of those changes on the face of earth which he
+asserted he had witnessed, ventured to remark to him the
+distinction he had noted.
+
+"It is true," said Mejnour, coldly.  "My life is the life that
+contemplates,--Zanoni's is the life that enjoys:  when I gather
+the herb, I think but of its uses; Zanoni will pause to admire
+its beauties."
+
+"And you deem your own the superior and the loftier existence?"
+
+"No.  His is the existence of youth,--mine of age.  We have
+cultivated different faculties.  Each has powers the other cannot
+aspire to.  Those with whom he associates live better,--those who
+associate with me know more."
+
+"I have heard, in truth," said Glyndon, "that his companions at
+Naples were observed to lead purer and nobler lives after
+intercourse with Zanoni; yet were they not strange companions, at
+the best, for a sage?  This terrible power, too, that he
+exercises at will, as in the death of the Prince di --, and that
+of the Count Ughelli, scarcely becomes the tranquil seeker after
+good."
+
+"True," said Mejnour, with an icy smile; "such must ever be the
+error of those philosophers who would meddle with the active life
+of mankind.  You cannot serve some without injuring others; you
+cannot protect the good without warring on the bad; and if you
+desire to reform the faulty, why, you must lower yourself to live
+with the faulty to know their faults.  Even so saith Paracelsus,
+a great man, though often wrong.  ("It is as necessary to know
+evil things as good; for who can know what is good without the
+knowing what is evil?" etc.--Paracelsus, "De Nat. Rer.," lib. 3.)
+Not mine this folly; I live but in knowledge,--I have no life in
+mankind!"
+
+Another time Glyndon questioned the mystic as to the nature of
+that union or fraternity to which Zanoni had once referred.
+
+"I am right, I suppose," said he, "in conjecturing that you and
+himself profess to be the brothers of the Rosy Cross?"
+
+"Do you imagine," answered Mejnour, "that there were no mystic
+and solemn unions of men seeking the same end through the same
+means before the Arabians of Damus, in 1378, taught to a
+wandering German the secrets which founded the Institution of the
+Rosicrucians?  I allow, however, that the Rosicrucians formed a
+sect descended from the greater and earlier school.  They were
+wiser than the Alchemists,--their masters are wiser than they."
+
+"And of this early and primary order how many still exist?"
+
+"Zanoni and myself."
+
+"What, two only!--and you profess the power to teach to all the
+secret that baffles Death?"
+
+"Your ancestor attained that secret; he died rather than survive
+the only thing he loved.  We have, my pupil, no arts by which we
+CAN PUT DEATH OUT OF OUR OPTION, or out of the will of Heaven.
+These walls may crush me as I stand.  All that we profess to do
+is but this,--to find out the secrets of the human frame; to know
+why the parts ossify and the blood stagnates, and to apply
+continual preventives to the effects of time.  This is not magic;
+it is the art of medicine rightly understood.  In our order we
+hold most noble,--first, that knowledge which elevates the
+intellect; secondly, that which preserves the body.  But the mere
+art (extracted from the juices and simples) which recruits the
+animal vigour and arrests the progress of decay, or that more
+noble secret, which I will only hint to thee at present, by which
+HEAT, or CALORIC, as ye call it, being, as Heraclitus wisely
+taught, the primordial principle of life, can be made its
+perpetual renovater,--these I say, would not suffice for safety.
+It is ours also to disarm and elude the wrath of men, to turn the
+swords of our foes against each other, to glide (if not
+incorporeal) invisible to eyes over which we can throw a mist and
+darkness.  And this some seers have professed to be the virtue of
+a stone of agate.  Abaris placed it in his arrow.  I will find
+you an herb in yon valley that will give a surer charm than the
+agate and the arrow.  In one word, know this, that the humblest
+and meanest products of Nature are those from which the sublimest
+properties are to be drawn."
+
+"But," said Glyndon, "if possessed of these great secrets, why so
+churlish in withholding their diffusion?  Does not the false or
+charlatanic science differ in this from the true and
+indisputable,--that the last communicates to the world the
+process by which it attains its discoveries; the first boasts of
+marvellous results, and refuses to explain the causes?"
+
+"Well said, O Logician of the Schools; but think again.  Suppose
+we were to impart all our knowledge to all mankind
+indiscriminately,--alike to the vicious and the virtuous,--should
+we be benefactors or scourges?  Imagine the tyrant, the
+sensualist, the evil and corrupted being possessed of these
+tremendous powers; would he not be a demon let loose on earth?
+Grant that the same privilege be accorded also to the good; and
+in what state would be society?  Engaged in a Titan war,--the
+good forever on the defensive, the bad forever in assault.  In
+the present condition of the earth, evil is a more active
+principle than good, and the evil would prevail.  It is for these
+reasons that we are not only solemnly bound to administer our
+lore only to those who will not misuse and pervert it, but that
+we place our ordeal in tests that purify the passions and elevate
+the desires.  And Nature in this controls and assists us:  for it
+places awful guardians and insurmountable barriers between the
+ambition of vice and the heaven of the loftier science."
+
+Such made a small part of the numerous conversations Mejnour held
+with his pupil,--conversations that, while they appeared to
+address themselves to the reason, inflamed yet more the fancy.
+It was the very disclaiming of all powers which Nature, properly
+investigated, did not suffice to create, that gave an air of
+probability to those which Mejnour asserted Nature might bestow.
+
+Thus days and weeks rolled on; and the mind of Glyndon, gradually
+fitted to this sequestered and musing life, forgot at last the
+vanities and chimeras of the world without.
+
+One evening he had lingered alone and late upon the ramparts,
+watching the stars as, one by one, they broke upon the twilight.
+Never had he felt so sensibly the mighty power of the heavens and
+the earth upon man; how much the springs of our intellectual
+being are moved and acted upon by the solemn influences of
+Nature.  As a patient on whom, slowly and by degrees, the
+agencies of mesmerism are brought to bear, he acknowledged to his
+heart the growing force of that vast and universal magnetism
+which is the life of creation, and binds the atom to the whole.
+A strange and ineffable consciousness of power, of the SOMETHING
+GREAT within the perishable clay, appealed to feelings at once
+dim and glorious,--like the faint recognitions of a holier and
+former being.  An impulse, that he could not resist, led him to
+seek the mystic.  He would demand, that hour, his initiation into
+the worlds beyond our world,--he was prepared to breathe a
+diviner air.  He entered the castle, and strode the shadowy and
+starlit gallery which conducted to Mejnour's apartment.
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.III.
+
+Man is the eye of things.--Euryph, "de Vit. Hum."
+
+...There is, therefore, a certain ecstatical or transporting
+power, which, if at any time it shall be excited or stirred up by
+an ardent desire and most strong imagination, is able to conduct
+the spirit of the more outward even to some absent and
+far-distant object.--Von Helmont.
+
+The rooms that Mejnour occupied consisted of two chambers
+communicating with each other, and a third in which he slept.
+All these rooms were placed in the huge square tower that beetled
+over the dark and bush-grown precipice.  The first chamber which
+Glyndon entered was empty.  With a noiseless step he passed on,
+and opened the door that admitted into the inner one.  He drew
+back at the threshold, overpowered by a strong fragrance which
+filled the chamber:  a kind of mist thickened the air rather than
+obscured it, for this vapour was not dark, but resembled a snow-
+cloud moving slowly, and in heavy undulations, wave upon wave
+regularly over the space.  A mortal cold struck to the
+Englishman's heart, and his blood froze.  He stood rooted to the
+spot; and as his eyes strained involuntarily through the vapour,
+he fancied (for he could not be sure that it was not the trick of
+his imagination) that he saw dim, spectre-like, but gigantic
+forms floating through the mist; or was it not rather the mist
+itself that formed its vapours fantastically into those moving,
+impalpable, and bodiless apparitions?  A great painter of
+antiquity is said, in a picture of Hades, to have represented the
+monsters that glide through the ghostly River of the Dead, so
+artfully, that the eye perceived at once that the river itself
+was but a spectre, and the bloodless things that tenanted it had
+no life, their forms blending with the dead waters till, as the
+eye continued to gaze, it ceased to discern them from the
+preternatural element they were supposed to inhabit.  Such were
+the moving outlines that coiled and floated through the mist; but
+before Glyndon had even drawn breath in this atmosphere--for his
+life itself seemed arrested or changed into a kind of horrid
+trance--he felt his hand seized, and he was led from that room
+into the outer one.  He heard the door close,--his blood rushed
+again through his veins, and he saw Mejnour by his side.  Strong
+convulsions then suddenly seized his whole frame,--he fell to the
+ground insensible.  When he recovered, he found himself in the
+open air in a rude balcony of stone that jutted from the chamber,
+the stars shining serenely over the dark abyss below, and resting
+calmly upon the face of the mystic, who stood beside him with
+folded arms.
+
+"Young man," said Mejnour, "judge by what you have just felt, how
+dangerous it is to seek knowledge until prepared to receive it.
+Another moment in the air of that chamber and you had been a
+corpse."
+
+"Then of what nature was the knowledge that you, once mortal like
+myself, could safely have sought in that icy atmosphere, which it
+was death for me to breathe?  Mejnour," continued Glyndon, and
+his wild desire, sharpened by the very danger he had passed, once
+more animated and nerved him, "I am prepared at least for the
+first steps.  I come to you as of old the pupil to the
+Hierophant, and demand the initiation."
+
+Mejnour passed his hand over the young man's heart,--it beat
+loud, regularly, and boldly.  He looked at him with something
+almost like admiration in his passionless and frigid features,
+and muttered, half to himself, "Surely, in so much courage the
+true disciple is found at last."  Then, speaking aloud, he added,
+"Be it so; man's first initiation is in TRANCE.  In dreams
+commences all human knowledge; in dreams hovers over measureless
+space the first faint bridge between spirit and spirit,--this
+world and the worlds beyond!  Look steadfastly on yonder star!"
+
+Glyndon obeyed, and Mejnour retired into the chamber, from which
+there then slowly emerged a vapour, somewhat paler and of fainter
+odour than that which had nearly produced so fatal an effect on
+his frame.  This, on the contrary, as it coiled around him, and
+then melted in thin spires into the air, breathed a refreshing
+and healthful fragrance.  He still kept his eyes on the star, and
+the star seemed gradually to fix and command his gaze.  A sort of
+languor next seized his frame, but without, as he thought,
+communicating itself to the mind; and as this crept over him, he
+felt his temples sprinkled with some volatile and fiery essence.
+At the same moment a slight tremor shook his limbs and thrilled
+through his veins.  The languor increased, still he kept his gaze
+upon the star, and now its luminous circumference seemed to
+expand and dilate.  It became gradually softer and clearer in its
+light; spreading wider and broader, it diffused all space,--all
+space seemed swallowed up in it.  And at last, in the midst of a
+silver shining atmosphere, he felt as if something burst within
+his brain,--as if a strong chain were broken; and at that moment
+a sense of heavenly liberty, of unutterable delight, of freedom
+from the body, of birdlike lightness, seemed to float him into
+the space itself.  "Whom, now upon earth, dost thou wish to see?"
+whispered the voice of Mejnour.  "Viola and Zanoni!" answered
+Glyndon, in his heart; but he felt that his lips moved not.
+
+Suddenly at that thought,--through this space, in which nothing
+save one mellow translucent light had been discernible,--a swift
+succession of shadowy landscapes seemed to roll:  trees,
+mountains, cities, seas, glided along like the changes of a
+phantasmagoria; and at last, settled and stationary, he saw a
+cave by the gradual marge of an ocean shore,--myrtles and
+orange-trees clothing the gentle banks.  On a height, at a
+distance, gleamed the white but shattered relics of some ruined
+heathen edifice; and the moon, in calm splendour, shining over
+all, literally bathed with its light two forms without the cave,
+at whose feet the blue waters crept, and he thought that he even
+heard them murmur.  He recognised both the figures.  Zanoni was
+seated on a fragment of stone; Viola, half-reclining by his side,
+was looking into his face, which was bent down to her, and in her
+countenance was the expression of that perfect happiness which
+belongs to perfect love.  "Wouldst thou hear them speak?"
+whispered Mejnour; and again, without sound, Glyndon inly
+answered, "Yes!"  Their voices then came to his ear, but in tones
+that seemed to him strange; so subdued were they, and sounding,
+as it were, so far off, that they were as voices heard in the
+visions of some holier men from a distant sphere.
+
+"And how is it," said Viola, "that thou canst find pleasure in
+listening to the ignorant?"
+
+"Because the heart is never ignorant; because the mysteries of
+the feelings are as full of wonder as those of the intellect.  If
+at times thou canst not comprehend the language of my thoughts,
+at times also I hear sweet enigmas in that of thy emotions."
+
+"Ah, say not so!" said Viola, winding her arm tenderly round his
+neck, and under that heavenly light her face seemed lovelier for
+its blushes.  "For the enigmas are but love's common language,
+and love should solve them.  Till I knew thee,--till I lived with
+thee; till I learned to watch for thy footstep when absent:  yet
+even in absence to see thee everywhere!--I dreamed not how strong
+and all-pervading is the connection between nature and the human
+soul!...
+
+"And yet," she continued, "I am now assured of what I at first
+believed,--that the feelings which attracted me towards thee at
+first were not those of love.  I know THAT, by comparing the
+present with the past,--it was a sentiment then wholly of the
+mind or the spirit!  I could not hear thee now say, 'Viola, be
+happy with another!'"
+
+"And I could not now tell thee so!  Ah, Viola, never be weary of
+assuring me that thou art happy!"
+
+"Happy while thou art so.  Yet at times, Zanoni, thou art so
+sad!"
+
+"Because human life is so short; because we must part at last;
+because yon moon shines on when the nightingale sings to it no
+more!  A little while, and thine eyes will grow dim, and thy
+beauty haggard, and these locks that I toy with now will be grey
+and loveless."
+
+"And thou, cruel one!" said Viola, touchingly, "I shall never see
+the signs of age in thee!  But shall we not grow old together,
+and our eyes be accustomed to a change which the heart shall not
+share!"
+
+Zanoni sighed.  He turned away, and seemed to commune with
+himself.
+
+Glyndon's attention grew yet more earnest.
+
+"But were it so," muttered Zanoni; and then looking steadfastly
+at Viola, he said, with a half-smile, "Hast thou no curiosity to
+learn more of the lover thou once couldst believe the agent of
+the Evil One?"
+
+"None; all that one wishes to know of the beloved one, I know--
+THAT THOU LOVEST ME!"
+
+"I have told thee that my life is apart from others.  Wouldst
+thou not seek to share it?"
+
+"I share it now!"
+
+"But were it possible to be thus young and fair forever, till the
+world blazes round us as one funeral pyre!"
+
+"We shall be so, when we leave the world!"
+
+Zanoni was mute for some moments, and at length he said,--
+
+"Canst thou recall those brilliant and aerial dreams which once
+visited thee, when thou didst fancy that thou wert preordained to
+some fate aloof and afar from the common children of the earth?"
+
+"Zanoni, the fate is found."
+
+"And hast thou no terror of the future?"
+
+"The future!  I forget it!  Time past and present and to come
+reposes in thy smile.  Ah, Zanoni, play not with the foolish
+credulities of my youth!  I have been better and humbler since
+thy presence has dispelled the mist of the air.  The future!--
+well, when I have cause to dread it, I will look up to heaven,
+and remember who guides our fate!"
+
+As she lifted her eyes above, a dark cloud swept suddenly over
+the scene.  It wrapped the orange-trees, the azure ocean, the
+dense sands; but still the last images that it veiled from the
+charmed eyes of Glyndon were the forms of Viola and Zanoni.  The
+face of the one rapt, serene, and radiant; the face of the other,
+dark, thoughtful, and locked in more than its usual rigidness of
+melancholy beauty and profound repose.
+
+"Rouse thyself," said Mejnour; "thy ordeal has commenced!  There
+are pretenders to the solemn science who could have shown thee
+the absent, and prated to thee, in their charlatanic jargon, of
+the secret electricities and the magnetic fluid of whose true
+properties they know but the germs and elements.  I will lend
+thee the books of those glorious dupes, and thou wilt find, in
+the dark ages, how many erring steps have stumbled upon the
+threshold of the mighty learning, and fancied they had pierced
+the temple.  Hermes and Albert and Paracelsus, I knew ye all;
+but, noble as ye were, ye were fated to be deceived.  Ye had not
+souls of faith, and daring fitted for the destinies at which ye
+aimed!  Yet Paracelsus--modest Paracelsus--had an arrogance that
+soared higher than all our knowledge.  Ho, ho!--he thought he
+could make a race of men from chemistry; he arrogated to himself
+the Divine gift,--the breath of life.  (Paracelsus, "De Nat.
+Rer.," lib. i.)
+
+He would have made men, and, after all, confessed that they could
+be but pygmies!  My art is to make men above mankind.  But you
+are impatient of my digressions.  Forgive me.  All these men
+(they were great dreamers, as you desire to be) were intimate
+friends of mine.  But they are dead and rotten. They talked of
+spirits,--but they dreaded to be in other company than that of
+men.  Like orators whom I have heard, when I stood by the Pnyx of
+Athens, blazing with words like comets in the assembly, and
+extinguishing their ardour like holiday rockets when they were in
+the field.  Ho, ho! Demosthenes, my hero-coward, how nimble were
+thy heels at Chaeronea!  And thou art impatient still!  Boy, I
+could tell thee such truths of the past as would make thee the
+luminary of schools.  But thou lustest only for the shadows of
+the future.  Thou shalt have thy wish.  But the mind must be
+first exercised and trained.  Go to thy room, and sleep; fast
+austerely, read no books; meditate, imagine, dream, bewilder
+thyself if thou wilt.  Thought shapes out its own chaos at last.
+Before midnight, seek me again!"
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.IV.
+
+It is fit that we who endeavour to rise to an elevation so
+sublime, should study first to leave behind carnal affections,
+the frailty of the senses, the passions that belong to matter;
+secondly, to learn by what means we may ascend to the climax of
+pure intellect, united with the powers above, without which never
+can we gain the lore of secret things, nor the magic that effects
+true wonders.--Tritemius "On Secret Things and Secret Spirits."
+
+It wanted still many minutes of midnight, and Glyndon was once
+more in the apartment of the mystic.  He had rigidly observed the
+fast ordained to him; and in the rapt and intense reveries into
+which his excited fancy had plunged him, he was not only
+insensible to the wants of the flesh,--he felt above them.
+
+Mejnour, seated beside his disciple, thus addressed him:--
+
+"Man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance.  Man's natural
+tendency is to egotism.  Man, in his infancy of knowledge, thinks
+that all creation was formed for him.  For several ages he saw in
+the countless worlds that sparkle through space like the bubbles
+of a shoreless ocean only the petty candles, the household
+torches, that Providence had been pleased to light for no other
+purpose but to make the night more agreeable to man.  Astronomy
+has corrected this delusion of human vanity; and man now
+reluctantly confesses that the stars are worlds larger and more
+glorious than his own,--that the earth on which he crawls is a
+scarce visible speck on the vast chart of creation.  But in the
+small as in the vast, God is equally profuse of life.  The
+traveller looks upon the tree, and fancies its boughs were formed
+for his shelter in the summer sun, or his fuel in the winter
+frosts.  But in each leaf of these boughs the Creator has made a
+world; it swarms with innumerable races.  Each drop of the water
+in yon moat is an orb more populous than a kingdom is of men.
+Everywhere, then, in this immense design, science brings new life
+to light.  Life is the one pervading principle, and even the
+thing that seems to die and putrify but engenders new life, and
+changes to fresh forms of matter.  Reasoning, then, by evident
+analogy:  if not a leaf, if not a drop of water, but is, no less
+than yonder star, a habitable and breathing world,--nay, if even
+man himself is a world to other lives, and millions and myriads
+dwell in the rivers of his blood, and inhabit man's frame as man
+inhabits earth, commonsense (if your schoolmen had it) would
+suffice to teach that the circumfluent infinite which you call
+space--the countless Impalpable which divides earth from the moon
+and stars--is filled also with its correspondent and appropriate
+life.  Is it not a visible absurdity to suppose that being is
+crowded upon every leaf, and yet absent from the immensities of
+space?  The law of the Great System forbids the waste even of an
+atom; it knows no spot where something of life does not breathe.
+In the very charnel-house is the nursery of production and
+animation.  Is that true?  Well, then, can you conceive that
+space, which is the Infinite itself, is alone a waste, is alone
+lifeless, is less useful to the one design of universal being
+than the dead carcass of a dog, than the peopled leaf, than the
+swarming globule?  The microscope shows you the creatures on the
+leaf; no mechanical tube is yet invented to discover the nobler
+and more gifted things that hover in the illimitable air.  Yet
+between these last and man is a mysterious and terrible affinity.
+And hence, by tales and legends, not wholly false nor wholly
+true, have arisen from time to time, beliefs in apparitions and
+spectres.  If more common to the earlier and simpler tribes than
+to the men of your duller age, it is but that, with the first,
+the senses are more keen and quick.  And as the savage can see or
+scent miles away the traces of a foe, invisible to the gross
+sense of the civilised animal, so the barrier itself between him
+and the creatures of the airy world is less thickened and
+obscured.  Do you listen?"
+
+"With my soul!"
+
+"But first, to penetrate this barrier, the soul with which you
+listen must be sharpened by intense enthusiasm, purified from all
+earthlier desires.  Not without reason have the so-styled
+magicians, in all lands and times, insisted on chastity and
+abstemious reverie as the communicants of inspiration.  When thus
+prepared, science can be brought to aid it; the sight itself may
+be rendered more subtle, the nerves more acute, the spirit more
+alive and outward, and the element itself--the air, the space--
+may be made, by certain secrets of the higher chemistry, more
+palpable and clear.  And this, too, is not magic, as the
+credulous call it; as I have so often said before, magic (or
+science that violates Nature) exists not:  it is but the science
+by which Nature can be controlled.  Now, in space there are
+millions of beings not literally spiritual, for they have all,
+like the animalculae unseen by the naked eye, certain forms of
+matter, though matter so delicate, air-drawn, and subtle, that it
+is, as it were, but a film, a gossamer that clothes the spirit.
+Hence the Rosicrucian's lovely phantoms of sylph and gnome.  Yet,
+in truth, these races and tribes differ more widely, each from
+each, than the Calmuc from the Greek,--differ in attributes and
+powers.  In the drop of water you see how the animalculae vary,
+how vast and terrible are some of those monster mites as compared
+with others.  Equally so with the inhabitants of the atmosphere:
+some of surpassing wisdom, some of horrible malignity; some
+hostile as fiends to men, others gentle as messengers between
+earth and heaven.
+
+He who would establish intercourse with these varying beings
+resembles the traveller who would penetrate into unknown lands.
+He is exposed to strange dangers and unconjectured terrors.  THAT
+INTERCOURSE ONCE GAINED, I CANNOT SECURE THEE FROM THE CHANCES TO
+WHICH THY JOURNEY IS EXPOSED.  I cannot direct thee to paths free
+from the wanderings of the deadliest foes.  Thou must alone, and
+of thyself, face and hazard all.  But if thou art so enamoured of
+life as to care only to live on, no matter for what ends,
+recruiting the nerves and veins with the alchemist's vivifying
+elixir, why seek these dangers from the intermediate tribes?
+Because the very elixir that pours a more glorious life into the
+frame, so sharpens the senses that those larvae of the air become
+to thee audible and apparent; so that, unless trained by degrees
+to endure the phantoms and subdue their malice, a life thus
+gifted would be the most awful doom man could bring upon himself.
+Hence it is, that though the elixir be compounded of the simplest
+herbs, his frame only is prepared to receive it who has gone
+through the subtlest trials.  Nay, some, scared and daunted into
+the most intolerable horror by the sights that burst upon their
+eyes at the first draft, have found the potion less powerful to
+save than the agony and travail of Nature to destroy.  To the
+unprepared the elixir is thus but the deadliest poison.  Amidst
+the dwellers of the threshold is ONE, too, surpassing in
+malignity and hatred all her tribe,--one whose eyes have
+paralyzed the bravest, and whose power increases over the spirit
+precisely in proportion to its fear.  Does thy courage falter?"
+
+"Nay; thy words but kindle it."
+
+"Follow me, then, and submit to the initiatory labours."
+
+With that, Mejnour led him into the interior chamber, and
+proceeded to explain to him certain chemical operations which,
+though extremely simple in themselves, Glyndon soon perceived
+were capable of very extraordinary results.
+
+"In the remoter times," said Mejnour, smiling, "our brotherhood
+were often compelled to recur to delusions to protect realities;
+and, as dexterous mechanicians or expert chemists, they obtained
+the name of sorcerers.  Observe how easy to construct is the
+Spectre Lion that attended the renowned Leonardo da Vinci!"
+
+And Glyndon beheld with delighted surprise the simple means by
+which the wildest cheats of the imagination can be formed.  The
+magical landscapes in which Baptista Porta rejoiced; the apparent
+change of the seasons with which Albertus Magnus startled the
+Earl of Holland; nay, even those more dread delusions of the
+Ghost and Image with which the necromancers of Heraclea woke the
+conscience of the conqueror of Plataea (Pausanias,--see
+Plutarch.),--all these, as the showman enchants some trembling
+children on a Christmas Eve with his lantern and phantasmagoria,
+Mejnour exhibited to his pupil.
+
+...
+
+"And now laugh forever at magic! when these, the very tricks, the
+very sports and frivolities of science, were the very acts which
+men viewed with abhorrence, and inquisitors and kings rewarded
+with the rack and the stake."
+
+"But the alchemist's transmutation of metals--"
+
+"Nature herself is a laboratory in which metals, and all
+elements, are forever at change.  Easy to make gold,--easier,
+more commodious, and cheaper still, to make the pearl, the
+diamond, and the ruby.  Oh, yes; wise men found sorcery in this
+too; but they found no sorcery in the discovery that by the
+simplest combination of things of every-day use they could raise
+a devil that would sweep away thousands of their kind by the
+breath of consuming fire.  Discover what will destroy life, and
+you are a great man!--what will prolong it, and you are an
+imposter!  Discover some invention in machinery that will make
+the rich more rich and the poor more poor, and they will build
+you a statue!  Discover some mystery in art that will equalise
+physical disparities, and they will pull down their own houses to
+stone you!  Ha, ha, my pupil! such is the world Zanoni still
+cares for!--you and I will leave this world to itself.  And now
+that you have seen some few of the effects of science, begin to
+learn its grammar."
+
+Mejnour then set before his pupil certain tasks, in which the
+rest of the night wore itself away.
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.V.
+
+Great travell hath the gentle Calidore
+And toyle endured...
+There on a day,--
+He chaunst to spy a sort of shepheard groomes,
+Playing on pipes and caroling apace.
+...He, there besyde
+Saw a faire damzell.
+Spenser, "Faerie Queene," cant. ix.
+
+For a considerable period the pupil of Mejnour was now absorbed
+in labour dependent on the most vigilant attention, on the most
+minute and subtle calculation.  Results astonishing and various
+rewarded his toils and stimulated his interest.  Nor were these
+studies limited to chemical discovery,--in which it is permitted
+me to say that the greatest marvels upon the organisation of
+physical life seemed wrought by experiments of the vivifying
+influence of heat.  Mejnour professed to find a link between all
+intellectual beings in the existence of a certain all-pervading
+and invisible fluid resembling electricity, yet distinct from the
+known operations of that mysterious agency--a fluid that
+connected thought to thought with the rapidity and precision of
+the modern telegraph, and the influence of this fluid, according
+to Mejnour, extended to the remotest past,--that is to say,
+whenever and wheresoever man had thought.  Thus, if the doctrine
+were true, all human knowledge became attainable through a medium
+established between the brain of the individual inquirer and all
+the farthest and obscurest regions in the universe of ideas.
+Glyndon was surprised to find Mejnour attached to the abstruse
+mysteries which the Pythagoreans ascribed to the occult science
+of NUMBERS.  In this last, new lights glimmered dimly on his
+eyes; and he began to perceive that even the power to predict, or
+rather to calculate, results, might by-- (Here there is an
+erasure in the MS.)
+
+...
+
+But he observed that the last brief process by which, in each of
+these experiments, the wonder was achieved, Mejnour reserved for
+himself, and refused to communicate the secret.  The answer he
+obtained to his remonstrances on this head was more stern than
+satisfactory:
+
+"Dost thou think," said Mejnour, "that I would give to the mere
+pupil, whose qualities are not yet tried, powers that might
+change the face of the social world?  The last secrets are
+intrusted only to him of whose virtue the Master is convinced.
+Patience!  It is labour itself that is the great purifier of the
+mind; and by degrees the secrets will grow upon thyself as thy
+mind becomes riper to receive them."
+
+At last Mejnour professed himself satisfied with the progress
+made by his pupil.  "The hour now arrives," he said, "when thou
+mayst pass the great but airy barrier,--when thou mayst gradually
+confront the terrible Dweller of the Threshold.  Continue thy
+labours--continue to surpass thine impatience for results until
+thou canst fathom the causes.  I leave thee for one month; if at
+the end of that period, when I return, the tasks set thee are
+completed, and thy mind prepared by contemplation and austere
+thought for the ordeal, I promise thee the ordeal shall commence.
+One caution alone I give thee:  regard it as a peremptory
+command, enter not this chamber!"  (They were then standing in
+the room where their experiments had been chiefly made, and in
+which Glyndon, on the night he had sought the solitude of the
+mystic, had nearly fallen a victim to his intrusion.)
+
+"Enter not this chamber till my return; or, above all, if by any
+search for materials necessary to thy toils thou shouldst venture
+hither, forbear to light the naphtha in those vessels, and to
+open the vases on yonder shelves.  I leave the key of the room in
+thy keeping, in order to try thy abstinence and self-control.
+Young man, this very temptation is a part of thy trial."
+
+With that, Mejnour placed the key in his hands; and at sunset he
+left the castle.
+
+For several days Glyndon continued immersed in employments which
+strained to the utmost all the faculties of his intellect.  Even
+the most partial success depended so entirely on the abstraction
+of the mind, and the minuteness of its calculations, that there
+was scarcely room for any other thought than those absorbed in
+the occupation.  And doubtless this perpetual strain of the
+faculties was the object of Mejnour in works that did not seem
+exactly pertinent to the purposes in view.  As the study of the
+elementary mathematics, for example, is not so profitable in the
+solving of problems, useless in our after-callings, as it is
+serviceable in training the intellect to the comprehension and
+analysis of general truths.
+
+But in less than half the time which Mejnour had stated for the
+duration of his absence, all that the mystic had appointed to his
+toils was completed by the pupil; and then his mind, thus
+relieved from the drudgery and mechanism of employment, once more
+sought occupation in dim conjecture and restless fancies.  His
+inquisitive and rash nature grew excited by the prohibition of
+Mejnour, and he found himself gazing too often, with perturbed
+and daring curiosity, upon the key of the forbidden chamber.  He
+began to feel indignant at a trial of constancy which he deemed
+frivolous and puerile.  What nursery tales of Bluebeard and his
+closet were revived to daunt and terrify him!  How could the mere
+walls of a chamber, in which he had so often securely pursued his
+labours, start into living danger?  If haunted, it could be but
+by those delusions which Mejnour had taught him to despise,--a
+shadowy lion,--a chemical phantasm!  Tush! he lost half his awe
+of Mejnour, when he thought that by such tricks the sage could
+practise upon the very intellect he had awakened and instructed!
+ Still he resisted the impulses of his curiosity and his pride,
+and, to escape from their dictation, he took long rambles on the
+hills, or amidst the valleys that surrounded the castle,--seeking
+by bodily fatigue to subdue the unreposing mind.  One day
+suddenly emerging from a dark ravine, he came upon one of those
+Italian scenes of rural festivity and mirth in which the classic
+age appears to revive.  It was a festival, partly agricultural,
+partly religious, held yearly by the peasants of that district.
+Assembled at the outskirts of a village, animated crowds, just
+returned from a procession to a neighbouring chapel, were now
+forming themselves into groups:  the old to taste the vintage,
+the young to dance,--all to be gay and happy.  This sudden
+picture of easy joy and careless ignorance, contrasting so
+forcibly with the intense studies and that parching desire for
+wisdom which had so long made up his own life, and burned at his
+own heart, sensibly affected Glyndon.  As he stood aloof and
+gazing on them, the young man felt once more that he was young.
+The memory of all he had been content to sacrifice spoke to him
+like the sharp voice of remorse.  The flitting forms of the women
+in their picturesque attire, their happy laughter ringing through
+the cool, still air of the autumn noon, brought back to the
+heart, or rather perhaps to the senses, the images of his past
+time, the "golden shepherd hours," when to live was but to enjoy.
+
+He approached nearer and nearer to the scene, and suddenly a
+noisy group swept round him; and Maestro Paolo, tapping him
+familiarly on the shoulder, exclaimed in a hearty voice,
+"Welcome, Excellency!--we are rejoiced to see you amongst us."
+Glyndon was about to reply to this salutation, when his eyes
+rested upon the face of a young girl leaning on Paolo's arm, of a
+beauty so attractive that his colour rose and his heart beat as
+he encountered her gaze.  Her eyes sparkled with a roguish and
+petulant mirth, her parted lips showed teeth like pearls; as if
+impatient at the pause of her companion from the revel of the
+rest, her little foot beat the ground to a measure that she
+half-hummed, half-chanted.  Paolo laughed as he saw the effect
+the girl had produced upon the young foreigner.
+
+"Will you not dance, Excellency?  Come, lay aside your greatness,
+and be merry, like us poor devils.  See how our pretty Fillide is
+longing for a partner.  Take compassion on her."
+
+Fillide pouted at this speech, and, disengaging her arm from
+Paolo's, turned away, but threw over her shoulder a glance half
+inviting, half defying.  Glyndon, almost involuntarily, advanced
+to her, and addressed her.
+
+Oh, yes; he addresses her!  She looks down, and smiles.  Paolo
+leaves them to themselves, sauntering off with a devil-me-carish
+air.  Fillide speaks now, and looks up at the scholar's face with
+arch invitation.  He shakes his head; Fillide laughs, and her
+laugh is silvery.  She points to a gay mountaineer, who is
+tripping up to her merrily.  Why does Glyndon feel jealous?  Why,
+when she speaks again, does he shake his head no more?  He offers
+his hand; Fillide blushes, and takes it with a demure coquetry.
+What! is it so, indeed!  They whirl into the noisy circle of the
+revellers.  Ha! ha! is not this better than distilling herbs, and
+breaking thy brains on Pythagorean numbers?  How lightly Fillide
+bounds along!  How her lithesome waist supples itself to thy
+circling arm!  Tara-ra-tara, ta-tara, rara-ra!  What the devil is
+in the measure that it makes the blood course like quicksilver
+through the veins?  Was there ever a pair of eyes like Fillide's?
+Nothing of the cold stars there!  Yet how they twinkle and laugh
+at thee!  And that rosy, pursed-up mouth that will answer so
+sparingly to thy flatteries, as if words were a waste of time,
+and kisses were their proper language.  Oh, pupil of Mejnour!
+Oh, would-be Rosicrucian, Platonist, Magian, I know not what!  I
+am ashamed of thee!  What, in the names of Averroes and Burri and
+Agrippa and Hermes have become of thy austere contemplations?
+Was it for this thou didst resign Viola?  I don't think thou hast
+the smallest recollection of the elixir or the Cabala.  Take
+care!  What are you about, sir?  Why do you clasp that small hand
+locked within your own?  Why do you--Tara-rara tara-ra tara-rara-
+ra, rarara, ta-ra, a-ra!  Keep your eyes off those slender ankles
+and that crimson bodice!  Tara-rara-ra!  There they go again!
+And now they rest under the broad trees.  The revel has whirled
+away from them.  They hear--or do they not hear--the laughter at
+the distance?  They see--or if they have their eyes about them,
+they SHOULD see--couple after couple gliding by, love-talking and
+love-looking.  But I will lay a wager, as they sit under that
+tree, and the round sun goes down behind the mountains, that they
+see or hear very little except themselves.
+
+"Hollo, Signor Excellency! and how does your partner please you?
+Come and join our feast, loiterers; one dances more merrily after
+wine."
+
+Down goes the round sun; up comes the autumn moon.  Tara, tara,
+rarara, rarara, tarara-ra!  Dancing again; is it a dance, or some
+movement gayer, noisier, wilder still?  How they glance and gleam
+through the night shadows, those flitting forms!  What
+confusion!--what order!  Ha, that is the Tarantula dance; Maestro
+Paolo foots it bravely!  Diavolo, what fury! the Tarantula has
+stung them all.  Dance or die; it is fury,--the Corybantes, the
+Maenads, the--Ho, ho! more wine! the Sabbat of the Witches at
+Benevento is a joke to this!  From cloud to cloud wanders the
+moon,--now shining, now lost.  Dimness while the maiden blushes;
+light when the maiden smiles.
+
+"Fillide, thou art an enchantress!"
+
+"Buona notte, Excellency; you will see me again!"
+
+"Ah, young man," said an old, decrepit, hollow-eyed octogenarian,
+leaning on his staff, "make the best of your youth.  I, too, once
+had a Fillide!  I was handsomer than you then!  Alas! if we could
+be always young!"
+
+"Always young!" Glyndon started, as he turned his gaze from the
+fresh, fair, rosy face of the girl, and saw the eyes dropping
+rheum, the yellow wrinkled skin, the tottering frame of the old
+man.
+
+"Ha, ha!" said the decrepit creature, hobbling near to him, and
+with a malicious laugh.  "Yet I, too, was young once!  Give me a
+baioccho for a glass of aqua vitae!"
+
+Tara, rara, ra-rara, tara, rara-ra!  There dances Youth!  Wrap
+thy rags round thee, and totter off, Old Age!
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.VI.
+
+Whilest Calidore does follow that faire mayd,
+Unmindful of his vow and high beheast
+Which by the Faerie Queene was on him layd.
+Spenser, "Faerie Queene," cant. x. s. 1.
+
+It was that grey, indistinct, struggling interval between the
+night and the dawn, when Clarence stood once more in his chamber.
+The abstruse calculations lying on his table caught his eye, and
+filled him with a sentiment of weariness and distaste.  But--
+"Alas, if we could be always young!  Oh, thou horrid spectre of
+the old, rheum-eyed man!  What apparition can the mystic chamber
+shadow forth more ugly and more hateful than thou?  Oh, yes, if
+we could be always young!  But not [thinks the neophyte now]--not
+to labour forever at these crabbed figures and these cold
+compounds of herbs and drugs.  No; but to enjoy, to love, to
+revel!  What should be the companion of youth but pleasure?  And
+the gift of eternal youth may be mine this very hour!  What means
+this prohibition of Mejnour's?  Is it not of the same complexion
+as his ungenerous reserve even in the minutest secrets of
+chemistry, or the numbers of his Cabala?--compelling me to
+perform all the toils, and yet withholding from me the knowledge
+of the crowning result?  No doubt he will still, on his return,
+show me that the great mystery CAN be attained; but will still
+forbid ME to attain it.  Is it not as if he desired to keep my
+youth the slave to his age; to make me dependent solely on
+himself; to bind me to a journeyman's service by perpetual
+excitement to curiosity, and the sight of the fruits he places
+beyond my lips?"  These, and many reflections still more
+repining, disturbed and irritated him.  Heated with wine--excited
+by the wild revels he had left--he was unable to sleep.  The
+image of that revolting Old Age which Time, unless defeated, must
+bring upon himself, quickened the eagerness of his desire for the
+dazzling and imperishable Youth he ascribed to Zanoni.  The
+prohibition only served to create a spirit of defiance.  The
+reviving day, laughing jocundly through his lattice, dispelled
+all the fears and superstitions that belong to night.  The mystic
+chamber presented to his imagination nothing to differ from any
+other apartment in the castle.  What foul or malignant apparition
+could harm him in the light of that blessed sun!  It was the
+peculiar, and on the whole most unhappy, contradiction in
+Glyndon's nature, that while his reasonings led him to doubt,--
+and doubt rendered him in MORAL conduct irresolute and unsteady;
+he was PHYSICALLY brave to rashness.  Nor is this uncommon:
+scepticism and presumption are often twins.  When a man of this
+character determines upon any action, personal fear never deters
+him; and for the moral fear, any sophistry suffices to self-will.
+Almost without analysing himself the mental process by which his
+nerves hardened themselves and his limbs moved, he traversed the
+corridor, gained Mejnour's apartment, and opened the forbidden
+door.  All was as he had been accustomed to see it, save that on
+a table in the centre of the room lay open a large volume.  He
+approached, and gazed on the characters on the page; they were in
+a cipher, the study of which had made a part of his labours.
+With but slight difficulty he imagined that he interpreted the
+meaning of the first sentences, and that they ran thus:--
+
+"To quaff the inner life, is to see the outer life:  to live in
+defiance of time, is to live in the whole.  He who discovers the
+elixir discovers what lies in space; for the spirit that vivifies
+the frame strengthens the senses.  There is attraction in the
+elementary principle of light.  In the lamps of Rosicrucius the
+fire is the pure elementary principle.  Kindle the lamps while
+thou openst the vessel that contains the elixir, and the light
+attracts towards thee those beings whose life is that light.
+Beware of Fear.  Fear is the deadliest enemy to Knowledge."  Here
+the ciphers changed their character, and became incomprehensible.
+But had he not read enough?  Did not the last sentence suffice?--
+"Beware of Fear!"  It was as if Mejnour had purposely left the
+page open,--as if the trial was, in truth, the reverse of the one
+pretended; as if the mystic had designed to make experiment of
+his COURAGE while affecting but that of his FORBEARANCE.  Not
+Boldness, but Fear, was the deadliest enemy to Knowledge.  He
+moved to the shelves on which the crystal vases were placed; with
+an untrembling hand he took from one of them the stopper, and a
+delicious odor suddenly diffused itself through the room.  The
+air sparkled as if with a diamond-dust.  A sense of unearthly
+delight,--of an existence that seemed all spirit, flashed through
+his whole frame; and a faint, low, but exquisite music crept,
+thrilling, through the chamber.  At this moment he heard a voice
+in the corridor calling on his name; and presently there was a
+knock at the door without.  "Are you there, signor?" said the
+clear tones of Maestro Paolo.  Glyndon hastily reclosed and
+replaced the vial, and bidding Paolo await him in his own
+apartment, tarried till he heard the intruder's steps depart; he
+then reluctantly quitted the room.  As he locked the door, he
+still heard the dying strain of that fairy music; and with a
+light step and a joyous heart he repaired to Paolo, inly
+resolving to visit again the chamber at an hour when his
+experiment would be safe from interruption.
+
+As he crossed his threshold, Paolo started back, and exclaimed,
+"Why, Excellency!  I scarcely recognise you!  Amusement, I see,
+is a great beautifier to the young.  Yesterday you looked so pale
+and haggard; but Fillide's merry eyes have done more for you than
+the Philosopher's Stone (saints forgive me for naming it) ever
+did for the wizards."  And Glyndon, glancing at the old Venetian
+mirror as Paolo spoke, was scarcely less startled than Paolo
+himself at the change in his own mien and bearing.  His form,
+before bent with thought, seemed to him taller by half the head,
+so lithesome and erect rose his slender stature; his eyes glowed,
+his cheeks bloomed with health and the innate and pervading
+pleasure.  If the mere fragrance of the elixir was thus potent,
+well might the alchemists have ascribed life and youth to the
+draught!
+
+"You must forgive me, Excellency, for disturbing you," said
+Paolo, producing a letter from his pouch; "but our Patron has
+just written to me to say that he will be here to-morrow, and
+desired me to lose not a moment in giving to yourself this
+billet, which he enclosed."
+
+"Who brought the letter?"
+
+"A horseman, who did not wait for any reply."
+
+Glyndon opened the letter, and read as follows:--
+
+"I return a week sooner than I had intended, and you will expect
+me to-morrow.  You will then enter on the ordeal you desire, but
+remember that, in doing so, you must reduce Being as far as
+possible into Mind.  The senses must be mortified and subdued,--
+not the whisper of one passion heard.  Thou mayst be master of
+the Cabala and the Chemistry; but thou must be master also over
+the Flesh and the Blood,--over Love and Vanity, Ambition and
+Hate.  I will trust to find thee so.  Fast and meditate till we
+meet!"
+
+Glyndon crumpled the letter in his hand with a smile of disdain.
+What! more drudgery,--more abstinence!  Youth without love and
+pleasure!  Ha, ha! baffled Mejnour, thy pupil shall gain thy
+secrets without thine aid!
+
+"And Fillide!  I passed her cottage in my way,--she blushed and
+sighed when I jested her about you, Excellency!"
+
+"Well, Paolo!  I thank thee for so charming an introduction.
+Thine must be a rare life."
+
+"Ah, Excellency, while we are young, nothing like adventure,--
+except love, wine, and laughter!"
+
+"Very true.  Farewell, Maestro Paolo; we will talk more with each
+other in a few days."
+
+All that morning Glyndon was almost overpowered with the new
+sentiment of happiness that had entered into him.  He roamed into
+the woods, and he felt a pleasure that resembled his earlier life
+of an artist, but a pleasure yet more subtle and vivid, in the
+various colours of the autumn foliage.  Certainly Nature seemed
+to be brought closer to him; he comprehended better all that
+Mejnour had often preached to him of the mystery of sympathies
+and attractions.  He was about to enter into the same law as
+those mute children of the forests.  He was to know THE RENEWAL
+OF LIFE; the seasons that chilled to winter should yet bring
+again the bloom and the mirth of spring.  Man's common existence
+is as one year to the vegetable world:  he has his spring, his
+summer, his autumn, and winter,--but only ONCE.  But the giant
+oaks round him go through a revolving series of verdure and
+youth, and the green of the centenarian is as vivid in the beams
+of  May as that of the sapling by its side.  "Mine shall be your
+spring, but not your winter!" exclaimed the aspirant.
+
+Wrapped in these sanguine and joyous reveries, Glyndon, quitting
+the woods, found himself amidst cultivated fields and vineyards
+to which his footstep had not before wandered; and there stood,
+by the skirts of a green lane that reminded him of verdant
+England, a modest house,--half cottage, half farm.  The door was
+open, and he saw a girl at work with her distaff.  She looked up,
+uttered a slight cry, and, tripping gayly into the lane to his
+side, he recognised the dark-eyed Fillide.
+
+"Hist!" she said, archly putting her finger to her lip; "do not
+speak loud,--my mother is asleep within; and I knew you would
+come to see me.  It is kind!"
+
+Glyndon, with a little embarrassment, accepted the compliment to
+his kindness, which he did not exactly deserve.  "You have
+thought, then, of me, fair Fillide?"
+
+"Yes," answered the girl, colouring, but with that frank, bold
+ingenuousness, which characterises the females of Italy,
+especially of the lower class, and in the southern provinces,--
+"oh, yes!  I have thought of little else.  Paolo said he knew you
+would visit me."
+
+"And what relation is Paolo to you?"
+
+"None; but a good friend to us all.  My brother is one of his
+band."
+
+"One of his band!--a robber?"
+
+"We of the mountains do not call a mountaineer 'a robber,'
+signor."
+
+"I ask pardon.  Do you not tremble sometimes for your brother's
+life?  The law--"
+
+"Law never ventures into these defiles.  Tremble for him!  No.
+My father and grandsire were of the same calling.  I often wish I
+were a man!"
+
+"By these lips, I am enchanted that your wish cannot be
+realised."
+
+"Fie, signor!  And do you really love me?"
+
+"With my whole heart!"
+
+"And I thee!" said the girl, with a candour that seemed innocent,
+as she suffered him to clasp her hand.
+
+"But," she added, "thou wilt soon leave us; and I--"  She stopped
+short, and the tears stood in her eyes.
+
+There was something dangerous in this, it must be confessed.
+Certainly Fillide had not the seraphic loveliness of Viola; but
+hers was a beauty that equally at least touched the senses.
+Perhaps Glyndon had never really loved Viola; perhaps the
+feelings with which she had inspired him were not of that ardent
+character which deserves the name of love.  However that be, he
+thought, as he gazed on those dark eyes, that he had never loved
+before.
+
+"And couldst thou not leave thy mountains?" he whispered, as he
+drew yet nearer to her.
+
+"Dost thou ask me?" she said, retreating, and looking him
+steadfastly in the face.  "Dost thou know what we daughters of
+the mountains are?  You gay, smooth cavaliers of cities seldom
+mean what you speak.  With you, love is amusement; with us, it is
+life.  Leave these mountains!  Well!  I should not leave my
+nature."
+
+"Keep thy nature ever,--it is a sweet one."
+
+"Yes, sweet while thou art true; stern, if thou art faithless.
+Shall I tell thee what I--what the girls of this country are?
+Daughters of men whom you call robbers, we aspire to be the
+companions of our lovers or our husbands.  We love ardently; we
+own it boldly.  We stand by your side in danger; we serve you as
+slaves in safety:  we never change, and we resent change.  You
+may reproach, strike us, trample us as a dog,--we bear all
+without a murmur; betray us, and no tiger is more relentless.  Be
+true, and our hearts reward you; be false, and our hands revenge!
+Dost thou love me now?"
+
+During this speech the Italian's countenance had most eloquently
+aided her words,--by turns soft, frank, fierce,--and at the last
+question she inclined her head humbly, and stood, as in fear of
+his reply, before him.  The stern, brave, wild spirit, in which
+what seemed unfeminine was yet, if I may so say, still womanly,
+did not recoil, it rather captivated Glyndon.  He answered
+readily, briefly, and freely, "Fillide,--yes!"
+
+Oh, "yes!" forsooth, Clarence Glyndon!  Every light nature
+answers "yes" lightly to such a question from lips so rosy!  Have
+a care,--have a care!  Why the deuce, Mejnour, do you leave your
+pupil of four-and-twenty to the mercy of these wild cats-a-
+mountain!  Preach fast, and abstinence, and sublime renunciation
+of the cheats of the senses!  Very well in you, sir, Heaven knows
+how many ages old; but at four-and-twenty, your Hierophant would
+have kept you out of Fillide's way, or you would have had small
+taste for the Cabala.
+
+And so they stood, and talked, and vowed, and whispered, till the
+girl's mother made some noise within the house, and Fillide
+bounded back to the distaff, her finger once more on her lip.
+
+"There is more magic in Fillide than in Mejnour," said Glyndon to
+himself, walking gayly home; "yet on second thoughts, I know not
+if I quite so well like a character so ready for revenge.  But he
+who has the real secret can baffle even the vengeance of a woman,
+and disarm all danger!"
+
+Sirrah! dost thou even already meditate the possibility of
+treason?  Oh, well said Zanoni, "to pour pure water into the
+muddy well does but disturb the mud."
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.VII.
+
+Cernis, custodia qualis
+Vestibulo sedeat? facies quae limina servet?
+"Aeneid," lib. vi. 574.
+
+(See you what porter sits within the vestibule?--what face
+watches at the threshold?)
+
+And it is profound night.  All is at rest within the old castle,
+--all is breathless under the melancholy stars.  Now is the time.
+Mejnour with his austere wisdom,--Mejnour the enemy to love;
+Mejnour, whose eye will read thy heart, and refuse thee the
+promised secrets because the sunny face of Fillide disturbs the
+lifeless shadow that he calls repose,--Mejnour comes to-morrow!
+Seize the night!  Beware of fear!  Never, or this hour!  So,
+brave youth,--brave despite all thy errors,--so, with a steady
+pulse, thy hand unlocks once more the forbidden door.
+
+He placed his lamp on the table beside the book, which still lay
+there opened; he turned over the leaves, but could not decipher
+their meaning till he came to the following passage:--
+
+"When, then, the pupil is thus initiated and prepared, let him
+open the casement, light the lamps, and bathe his temples with
+the elixir.  He must beware how he presume yet to quaff the
+volatile and fiery spirit.  To taste till repeated inhalations
+have accustomed the frame gradually to the ecstatic liquid, is to
+know not life, but death."
+
+He could penetrate no farther into the instructions; the cipher
+again changed.  He now looked steadily and earnestly round the
+chamber.  The moonlight came quietly through the lattice as his
+hand opened it, and seemed, as it rested on the floor, and filled
+the walls, like the presence of some ghostly and mournful Power.
+He ranged the mystic lamps (nine in number) round the centre of
+the room, and lighted them one by one.  A flame of silvery and
+azure tints sprung up from each, and lighted the apartment with a
+calm and yet most dazzling splendour; but presently this light
+grew more soft and dim, as a thin, grey cloud, like a mist,
+gradually spread over the room; and an icy thrill shot through
+the heart of the Englishman, and quickly gathered over him like
+the coldness of death.  Instinctively aware of his danger, he
+tottered, though with difficulty, for his limbs seemed rigid and
+stone-like, to the shelf that contained the crystal vials;
+hastily he inhaled the spirit, and laved his temples with the
+sparkling liquid.  The same sensation of vigour and youth, and
+joy and airy lightness, that he had felt in the morning,
+instantaneously replaced the deadly numbness that just before had
+invaded the citadel of life.  He stood, with his arms folded on
+his bosom erect and dauntless, to watch what should ensue.
+
+The vapour had now assumed almost the thickness and seeming
+consistency of a snow-cloud; the lamps piercing it like stars.
+And now he distinctly saw shapes, somewhat resembling in outline
+those of the human form, gliding slowly and with regular
+evolutions through the cloud.  They appeared bloodless; their
+bodies were transparent, and contracted or expanded like the
+folds of a serpent.  As they moved in majestic order, he heard a
+low sound--the ghost, as it were, of voice--which each caught and
+echoed from the other; a low sound, but musical, which seemed the
+chant of some unspeakably tranquil joy.  None of these
+apparitions heeded him.  His intense longing to accost them, to
+be of them, to make one of this movement of aerial happiness,--
+for such it seemed to him,--made him stretch forth his arms and
+seek to cry aloud, but only an inarticulate whisper passed his
+lips; and the movement and the music went on the same as if the
+mortal were not there.  Slowly they glided round and aloft, till,
+in the same majestic order, one after one, they floated through
+the casement and were lost in the moonlight; then, as his eyes
+followed them, the casement became darkened with some object
+undistinguishable at the first gaze, but which sufficed
+mysteriously to change into ineffable horror the delight he had
+before experienced.  By degrees this object shaped itself to his
+sight.  It was as that of a human head covered with a dark veil
+through which glared, with livid and demoniac fire, eyes that
+froze the marrow of his bones.  Nothing else of the face was
+distinguishable,--nothing but those intolerable eyes; but his
+terror, that even at the first seemed beyond nature to endure,
+was increased a thousand-fold, when, after a pause, the phantom
+glided slowly into the chamber.
+
+The cloud retreated from it as it advanced; the bright lamps grew
+wan, and flickered restlessly as at the breath of its presence.
+Its form was veiled as the face, but the outline was that of a
+female; yet it moved not as move even the ghosts that simulate
+the living.  It seemed rather to crawl as some vast misshapen
+reptile; and pausing, at length it cowered beside the table which
+held the mystic volume, and again fixed its eyes through the
+filmy veil on the rash invoker. All fancies, the most grotesque,
+of monk or painter in the early North, would have failed to give
+to the visage of imp or fiend that aspect of deadly malignity
+which spoke to the shuddering nature in those eyes alone.  All
+else so dark,--shrouded, veiled and larva-like.  But that burning
+glare so intense, so livid, yet so living, had in it something
+that was almost HUMAN in its passion of hate and mockery,--
+something that served to show that the shadowy Horror was not all
+a spirit, but partook of matter enough, at least, to make it more
+deadly and fearful an enemy to material forms.  As, clinging with
+the grasp of agony to the wall,--his hair erect, his eyeballs
+starting, he still gazed back upon that appalling gaze,--the
+Image spoke to him:  his soul rather than his ear comprehended
+the words it said.
+
+"Thou hast entered the immeasurable region.  I am the Dweller of
+the Threshold.  What wouldst thou with me?  Silent?  Dost thou
+fear me?  Am I not thy beloved?  Is it not for me that thou hast
+rendered up the delights of thy race?  Wouldst thou be wise?
+Mine is the wisdom of the countless ages.  Kiss me, my mortal
+lover."  And the Horror crawled near and nearer to him; it crept
+to his side, its breath breathed upon his cheek!  With a sharp
+cry he fell to the earth insensible, and knew no more till, far
+in the noon of the next day, he opened his eyes and found himself
+in his bed,--the glorious sun streaming through his lattice, and
+the bandit Paolo by his side, engaged in polishing his carbine,
+and whistling a Calabrian love-air.
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.VIII.
+
+Thus man pursues his weary calling,
+And wrings the hard life from the sky,
+While happiness unseen is falling
+Down from God's bosom silently.
+Schiller.
+
+In one of those islands whose history the imperishable literature
+and renown of Athens yet invest with melancholy interest, and on
+which Nature, in whom "there is nothing melancholy," still
+bestows a glory of scenery and climate equally radiant for the
+freeman or the slave,--the Ionian, the Venetian, the Gaul, the
+Turk, or the restless Briton,--Zanoni had fixed his bridal home.
+There the air carries with it the perfumes of the plains for
+miles along the blue, translucent deep.  (See Dr. Holland's
+"Travels to the Ionian Isles," etc., page 18.)  Seen from one of
+its green sloping heights, the island he had selected seemed one
+delicious garden.  The towers and turrets of its capital gleaming
+amidst groves of oranges and lemons; vineyards and olive-woods
+filling up the valleys, and clambering along the hill-sides; and
+villa, farm, and cottage covered with luxuriant trellises of
+dark-green leaves and purple fruit.  For there the prodigal
+beauty yet seems half to justify those graceful superstitions of
+a creed that, too enamoured of earth, rather brought the deities
+to man, than raised the man to their less alluring and less
+voluptuous Olympus.
+
+And still to the fishermen, weaving yet their antique dances on
+the sand; to the maiden, adorning yet, with many a silver fibula,
+her glossy tresses under the tree that overshadows her tranquil
+cot,--the same Great Mother that watched over the wise of Samos,
+the democracy of Corcyra, the graceful and deep-taught loveliness
+of Miletus, smiles as graciously as of yore.  For the North,
+philosophy and freedom are essentials to human happiness; in the
+lands which Aphrodite rose from the waves to govern, as the
+Seasons, hand in hand, stood to welcome her on the shores, Nature
+is all sufficient.  (Homeric Hymn.)
+
+The isle which Zanoni had selected was one of the loveliest in
+that divine sea.  His abode, at some distance from the city, but
+near one of the creeks on the shore, belonged to a Venetian, and,
+though small, had more of elegance than the natives ordinarily
+cared for.  On the seas, and in sight, rode his vessel.  His
+Indians, as before, ministered in mute gravity to the service of
+the household.  No spot could be more beautiful,--no solitude
+less invaded.  To the mysterious knowledge of Zanoni, to the
+harmless ignorance of Viola, the babbling and garish world of
+civilised man was alike unheeded.  The loving sky and the lovely
+earth are companions enough to Wisdom and to Ignorance while they
+love.
+
+Although, as I have before said, there was nothing in the visible
+occupations of Zanoni that betrayed a cultivator of the occult
+sciences, his habits were those of a man who remembers or
+reflects.  He loved to roam alone, chiefly at dawn, or at night,
+when the moon was clear (especially in each month, at its rise
+and full), miles and miles away over the rich inlands of the
+island, and to cull herbs and flowers, which he hoarded with
+jealous care.  Sometimes, at the dead of night, Viola would wake
+by an instinct that told her he was not by her side, and,
+stretching out her arms, find that the instinct had not deceived
+her.  But she early saw that he was reserved on his peculiar
+habits; and if at times a chill, a foreboding, a suspicious awe
+crept over her, she forebore to question him.
+
+But his rambles were not always unaccompanied,--he took pleasure
+in excursions less solitary.  Often, when the sea lay before them
+like a lake, the barren dreariness of the opposite coast of
+Cephallenia contrasting the smiling shores on which they dwelt,
+Viola and himself would pass days in cruising slowly around the
+coast, or  in visits to the neighbouring isles.  Every spot of
+the Greek soil, "that fair Fable-Land," seemed to him familiar;
+and as he conversed of the past and its exquisite traditions, he
+taught Viola to love the race from which have descended the
+poetry and the wisdom of the world.  There was much in Zanoni, as
+she knew him better, that deepened the fascination in which Viola
+was from the first enthralled.  His love for herself was so
+tender, so vigilant, and had that best and most enduring
+attribute, that it seemed rather grateful for the happiness in
+its own cares than vain of the happiness it created.  His
+habitual mood with all who approached him was calm and gentle,
+almost to apathy.  An angry word never passed his lips,--an angry
+gleam never shot from his eyes.  Once they had been exposed to
+the danger not uncommon in those then half-savage lands.  Some
+pirates who infested the neighbouring coasts had heard of the
+arrival of the strangers, and the seamen Zanoni employed had
+gossiped of their master's wealth.  One night, after Viola had
+retired to rest, she was awakened by a slight noise below.
+Zanoni was not by her side; she listened in some alarm.  Was that
+a groan that came upon her ear?  She started up, she went to the
+door; all was still.  A footstep now slowly approached, and
+Zanoni entered calm as usual, and seemed unconscious of her
+fears.
+
+The next morning three men were found dead at the threshold of
+the principal entrance, the door of which had been forced.  They
+were recognised in the neighbourhood as the most sanguinary and
+terrible marauders of the coasts,--men stained with a thousand
+murders, and who had never hitherto failed in any attempt to
+which the lust of rapine had impelled them.  The footsteps of
+many others were tracked to the seashore.  It seemed that their
+accomplices must have fled on the death of their leaders.  But
+when the Venetian Proveditore, or authority, of the island, came
+to examine into the matter, the most unaccountable mystery was
+the manner in which these ruffians had met their fate.  Zanoni
+had not stirred from the apartment in which he ordinarily pursued
+his chemical studies.  None of the servants had even been
+disturbed from their slumbers.  No marks of human violence were
+on the bodies of the dead.  They died, and made no sign.  From
+that moment Zanoni's house--nay, the whole vicinity--was sacred.
+The neighbouring villages, rejoiced to be delivered from a
+scourge, regarded the stranger as one whom the Pagiana (or
+Virgin) held under her especial protection.
+
+In truth, the lively Greeks around, facile to all external
+impressions, and struck with the singular and majestic beauty of
+the man who knew their language as a native, whose voice often
+cheered them in their humble sorrows, and whose hand was never
+closed to their wants, long after he had left their shore
+preserved his memory by grateful traditions, and still point to
+the lofty platanus beneath which they had often seen him seated,
+alone and thoughtful, in the heats of noon.  But Zanoni had
+haunts less open to the gaze than the shade of the platanus.  In
+that isle there are the bituminous springs which Herodotus has
+commemorated.  Often at night, the moon, at least, beheld him
+emerging from the myrtle and cystus that clothe the hillocks
+around the marsh that imbeds the pools containing the inflammable
+materia, all the medical uses of which, as applied to the nerves
+of organic life, modern science has not yet perhaps explored.
+Yet more often would he pass his hours in a cavern, by the
+loneliest part of the beach, where the stalactites seem almost
+arranged by the hand of art, and which the superstition of the
+peasants associates, in some ancient legends, with the numerous
+and almost incessant earthquakes to which the island is so
+singularly subjected.
+
+Whatever the pursuits that instigated these wanderings and
+favoured these haunts, either they were linked with, or else
+subordinate to, one main and master desire, which every fresh day
+passed in the sweet human company of Viola confirmed and
+strengthened.
+
+The scene that Glyndon had witnessed in his trance was faithful
+to truth.  And some little time after the date of that night,
+Viola was dimly aware that an influence, she knew not of what
+nature, was struggling to establish itself over her happy life.
+Visions indistinct and beautiful, such as those she had known in
+her earlier days, but more constant and impressive, began to
+haunt her night and day when Zanoni was absent, to fade in his
+presence, and seem less fair than THAT.  Zanoni questioned her
+eagerly and minutely of these visitations, but seemed
+dissatisfied, and at times perplexed, by her answers.
+
+"Tell me not," he said, one day, "of those unconnected images,
+those evolutions of starry shapes in a choral dance, or those
+delicious melodies that seem to thee of the music and the
+language of the distant spheres.  Has no ONE shape been to thee
+more distinct and more beautiful than the rest,--no voice
+uttering, or seeming to utter, thine own tongue, and whispering
+to thee of strange secrets and solemn knowledge?"
+
+"No; all is confused in these dreams, whether of day or night;
+and when at the sound of thy footsteps I recover, my memory
+retains nothing but a vague impression of happiness.  How
+different--how cold--to the rapture of hanging on thy smile, and
+listening to thy voice, when it says, 'I love thee!'"
+
+"Yet, how is it that visions less fair than these once seemed to
+thee so alluring?  How is it that they then stirred thy fancies
+and filled thy heart?  Once thou didst desire a fairy-land, and
+now thou seemest so contented with common life."
+
+"Have I not explained it to thee before?  Is it common life,
+then, to love, and to live with the one we love?  My true
+fairy-land is won!  Speak to me of no other."
+
+And so night surprised them by the lonely beach; and Zanoni,
+allured from his sublimer projects, and bending over that tender
+face, forgot that, in the Harmonious Infinite which spread
+around, there were other worlds than that one human heart.
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.IX.
+
+There is a principle of the soul, superior to all nature, through
+which we are capable of surpassing the order and systems of the
+world.  When the soul is elevated to natures better than itself,
+THEN it is entirely separated from subordinate natures, exchanges
+this for another life, and, deserting the order of things with
+which it was connected, links and mingles itself with another.--
+Iamblichus.
+
+"Adon-Ai!  Adon-Ai!--appear, appear!"
+
+And in the lonely cave, whence once had gone forth the oracles of
+a heathen god, there emerged from the shadows of fantastic rocks
+a luminous and gigantic column, glittering and shifting.  It
+resembled the shining but misty spray which, seen afar off, a
+fountain seems to send up on a starry night.  The radiance lit
+the stalactites, the crags, the arches of the cave, and shed a
+pale and tremulous splendour on the features of Zanoni.
+
+"Son of Eternal Light," said the invoker, "thou to whose
+knowledge, grade after grade, race after race, I attained at
+last, on the broad Chaldean plains; thou from whom I have drawn
+so largely of the unutterable knowledge that yet eternity alone
+can suffice to drain; thou who, congenial with myself, so far as
+our various beings will permit, hast been for centuries my
+familiar and my friend,--answer me and counsel!"
+
+From the column there emerged a shape of unimaginable glory.  Its
+face was that of a man in its first youth, but solemn, as with
+the consciousness of eternity and the tranquillity of wisdom;
+light, like starbeams, flowed through its transparent veins;
+light made its limbs themselves, and undulated, in restless
+sparkles, through the waves of its dazzling hair.  With its arms
+folded on its breast, it stood distant a few feet from Zanoni,
+and its low voice murmured gently, "My counsels were sweet to
+thee once; and once, night after night, thy soul could follow my
+wings through the untroubled splendours of the Infinite.  Now
+thou hast bound thyself back to the earth by its strongest
+chains, and the attraction to the clay is more potent than the
+sympathies that drew to thy charms the Dweller of the Starbeam
+and the Air.  When last thy soul hearkened to me, the senses
+already troubled thine intellect and obscured thy vision.  Once
+again I come to thee; but thy power even to summon me to thy side
+is fading from thy spirit, as sunshine fades from the wave when
+the winds drive the cloud between the ocean and the sky."
+
+"Alas, Adon-Ai!" answered the seer, mournfully, "I know too well
+the conditions of the being which thy presence was wont to
+rejoice.  I know that our wisdom comes but from the indifference
+to the things of the world which the wisdom masters.  The mirror
+of the soul cannot reflect both earth and heaven; and the one
+vanishes from the surface as the other is glassed upon its deeps.
+But it is not to restore me to that sublime abstraction in which
+the intellect, free and disembodied, rises, region after region,
+to the spheres,--that once again, and with the agony and travail
+of enfeebled power I have called thee to mine aid.  I love; and
+in love I begin to live in the sweet humanities of another.  If
+wise, yet in all which makes danger powerless against myself, or
+those on whom I can gaze from the calm height of indifferent
+science, I am blind as the merest mortal to the destinies of the
+creature that makes my heart beat with the passions which obscure
+my gaze."
+
+"What matter!" answered Adon-Ai.  "Thy love must be but a mockery
+of the name; thou canst not love as they do for whom there are
+death and the grave.  A short time,--like a day in thy
+incalculable life,--and the form thou dotest on is dust!  Others
+of the nether world go hand in hand, each with each, unto the
+tomb; hand in hand they ascend from the worm to new cycles of
+existence.  For thee, below are ages; for her, but hours.  And
+for her and thee--O poor, but mighty one!--will there be even a
+joint hereafter!  Through what grades and heavens of
+spiritualised being will her soul have passed when thou, the
+solitary loiterer, comest from the vapours of the earth to the
+gates of light!"
+
+"Son of the Starbeam, thinkest thou that this thought is not with
+me forever; and seest thou not that I have invoked thee to
+hearken and minister to my design?  Readest thou not my desire
+and dream to raise the conditions of her being to my own?  Thou,
+Adon-Ai, bathing the celestial joy that makes thy life in the
+oceans of eternal splendour,--thou, save by the sympathies of
+knowledge, canst conjecture not what I, the offspring of mortals,
+feel--debarred yet from the objects of the tremendous and sublime
+ambition that first winged my desires above the clay--when I see
+myself compelled to stand in this low world alone.  I have sought
+amongst my tribe for comrades, and in vain.  At last I have found
+a mate.  The wild bird and the wild beast have theirs; and my
+mastery over the malignant tribes of terror can banish their
+larvae from the path that shall lead her upward, till the air of
+eternity fits the frame for the elixir that baffles death."
+
+"And thou hast begun the initiation, and thou art foiled!  I know
+it.  Thou hast conjured to her sleep the fairest visions; thou
+hast invoked the loveliest children of the air to murmur their
+music to her trance, and her soul heeds them not, and, returning
+to the earth, escapes from their control.  Blind one, wherefore?
+canst thou not perceive?  Because in her soul all is love.  There
+is no intermediate passion with which the things thou wouldst
+charm to her have association and affinities.  Their attraction
+is but to the desires and cravings of the INTELLECT.  What have
+they with the PASSION that is of earth, and the HOPE that goes
+direct to heaven?"
+
+"But can there be no medium--no link--in which our souls, as our
+hearts, can be united, and so mine may have influence over her
+own?"
+
+"Ask me not,--thou wilt not comprehend me!"
+
+"I adjure thee!--speak!"
+
+"When two souls are divided, knowest thou not that a third in
+which both meet and live is the link between them!"
+
+"I do comprehend thee, Adon-Ai," said Zanoni, with a light of
+more human joy upon his face than it had ever before been seen to
+wear; "and if my destiny, which here is dark to mine eyes,
+vouchsafes to me the happy lot of the humble,--if ever there be a
+child that I may clasp to my bosom and call my own--"
+
+"And is it to be man at last, that thou hast aspired to be more
+than man?"
+
+"But a child,--a second Viola!" murmured Zanoni, scarcely heeding
+the Son of Light; "a young soul fresh from heaven, that I may
+rear from the first moment it touches earth,--whose wings I may
+train to follow mine through the glories of creation; and through
+whom the mother herself may be led upward over the realm of
+death!"
+
+"Beware,--reflect!  Knowest thou not that thy darkest enemy
+dwells in the Real?  Thy wishes bring thee near and nearer to
+humanity."
+
+"Ah, humanity is sweet!" answered Zanoni.
+
+And as the seer spoke, on the glorious face of Adon-Ai there
+broke a smile.
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.X.
+
+Aeterna aeternus tribuit, mortalia confert
+Mortalis; divina Deus, peritura caducus.
+"Aurel. Prud. contra Symmachum," lib. ii.
+
+(The Eternal gives eternal things, the Mortal gathers mortal
+things:  God, that which is divine, and the perishable that which
+is perishable.)
+
+EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS OF ZANONI TO MEJNOUR.
+
+Letter 1.
+
+Thou hast not informed me of the progress of thy pupil; and I
+fear that so differently does circumstance shape the minds of the
+generations to which we are descended, from the intense and
+earnest children of the earlier world, that even thy most careful
+and elaborate guidance would fail, with loftier and purer natures
+than that of the neophyte thou hast admitted within thy gates.
+Even that third state of being, which the Indian sage (The
+Brahmins, speaking of Brahm, say, "To the Omniscient the three
+modes of being--sleep, waking, and trance--are not;" distinctly
+recognising trance as a third and coequal condition of being.)
+rightly recognises as being between the sleep and the waking, and
+describes imperfectly by the name of TRANCE, is unknown to the
+children of the Northern world; and few but would recoil to
+indulge it, regarding its peopled calm as maya and delusion of
+the mind.  Instead of ripening and culturing that airy soil, from
+which Nature, duly known, can evoke fruits so rich and flowers so
+fair, they strive but to exclude it from their gaze; they esteem
+that struggle of the intellect from men's narrow world to the
+spirit's infinite home, as a disease which the leech must
+extirpate with pharmacy and drugs, and know not even that it is
+from this condition of their being, in its most imperfect and
+infant form, that poetry, music, art--all that belong to an Idea
+of Beauty to which neither SLEEPING nor WAKING can furnish
+archetype and actual semblance--take their immortal birth.  When
+we, O Mejnour in the far time, were ourselves the neophytes and
+aspirants, we were of a class to which the actual world was shut
+and barred.  Our forefathers had no object in life but knowledge.
+From the cradle we were predestined and reared to wisdom as to a
+priesthood.  We commenced research where modern Conjecture closes
+its faithless wings.  And with us, those were common elements of
+science which the sages of to-day disdain as wild chimeras, or
+despair of as unfathomable mysteries.  Even the fundamental
+principles, the large yet simple theories of electricity and
+magnetism, rest obscure and dim in the disputes of their blinded
+schools; yet, even in our youth, how few ever attained to the
+first circle of the brotherhood, and, after wearily enjoying the
+sublime privileges they sought, they voluntarily abandoned the
+light of the sun, and sunk, without effort, to the grave, like
+pilgrims in a trackless desert, overawed by the stillness of
+their solitude, and appalled by the absence of a goal.  Thou, in
+whom nothing seems to live BUT THE DESIRE TO KNOW; thou, who,
+indifferent whether it leads to weal or to woe, lendest thyself
+to all who would tread the path of mysterious science, a human
+book, insensate to the precepts it enounces,--thou hast ever
+sought, and often made additions to our number.  But to these
+have only been vouchsafed partial secrets; vanity and passion
+unfitted them for the rest; and now, without other interest than
+that of an experiment in science, without love, and without pity,
+thou exposest this new soul to the hazards of the tremendous
+ordeal!  Thou thinkest that a zeal so inquisitive, a courage so
+absolute and dauntless, may suffice to conquer, where austerer
+intellect and purer virtue have so often failed.  Thou thinkest,
+too, that the germ of art that lies in the painter's mind, as it
+comprehends in itself the entire embryo of power and beauty, may
+be expanded into the stately flower of the Golden Science.  It is
+a new experiment to thee.  Be gentle with thy neophyte, and if
+his nature disappoint thee in the first stages of the process,
+dismiss him back to the Real while it is yet time to enjoy the
+brief and outward life which dwells in the senses, and closes
+with the tomb.  And as I thus admonish thee, O Mejnour, wilt thou
+smile at my inconsistent hopes?  I, who have so invariably
+refused to initiate others into our mysteries,--I begin at last
+to comprehend why the great law, which binds man to his kind,
+even when seeking most to set himself aloof from their condition,
+has made thy cold and bloodless science the link between thyself
+and thy race; why, THOU has sought converts and pupils; why, in
+seeing life after life voluntarily dropping from our starry
+order, thou still aspirest to renew the vanished, and repair the
+lost; why, amidst thy calculations, restless and unceasing as the
+wheels of Nature herself, thou recoilest from the THOUGHT TO BE
+ALONE!  So with myself; at last I, too, seek a convert, an
+equal,--I, too, shudder to be alone!  What thou hast warned me of
+has come to pass.  Love reduces all things to itself.  Either
+must I be drawn down to the nature of the beloved, or hers must
+be lifted to my own.  As whatever belongs to true Art has always
+necessarily had attraction for US, whose very being is in the
+ideal whence Art descends, so in this fair creature I have
+learned, at last, the secret that bound me to her at the first
+glance.  The daughter of music,--music, passing into her being,
+became poetry.  It was not the stage that attracted her, with its
+hollow falsehoods; it was the land in her own fancy which the
+stage seemed to centre and represent.  There the poetry found a
+voice,--there it struggled into imperfect shape; and then (that
+land insufficient for it) it fell back upon itself.  It coloured
+her thoughts, it suffused her soul; it asked not words, it
+created not things; it gave birth but to emotions, and lavished
+itself on dreams.  At last came love; and there, as a river into
+the sea, it poured its restless waves, to become mute and deep
+and still,--the everlasting mirror of the heavens.
+
+And is it not through this poetry which lies within her that she
+may be led into the large poetry of the universe!  Often I listen
+to her careless talk, and find oracles in its unconscious beauty,
+as we find strange virtues in some lonely flower.  I see her mind
+ripening under my eyes; and in its fair fertility what ever-
+teeming novelties of thought!  O Mejnour! how many of our tribe
+have unravelled the laws of the universe,--have solved the
+riddles of the exterior nature, and deduced the light from
+darkness!  And is not the POET, who studies nothing but the human
+heart, a greater philosopher than all?  Knowledge and atheism are
+incompatible.  To know Nature is to know that there must be a
+God.  But does it require this to examine the method and
+architecture of creation?  Methinks, when I look upon a pure
+mind, however ignorant and childlike, that I see the August and
+Immaterial One more clearly than in all the orbs of matter which
+career at His bidding through space.
+
+Rightly is it the fundamental decree of our order, that we must
+impart our secrets only to the pure.  The most terrible part of
+the ordeal is in the temptations that our power affords to the
+criminal.  If it were possible that a malevolent being could
+attain to our faculties, what disorder it might introduce into
+the globe!  Happy that it is NOT possible; the malevolence would
+disarm the power.  It is in the purity of Viola that I rely, as
+thou more vainly hast relied on the courage or the genius of thy
+pupils.  Bear me witness, Mejnour!  Never since the distant day
+in which I pierced the Arcana of our knowledge, have I ever
+sought to make its mysteries subservient to unworthy objects;
+though, alas! the extension of our existence robs us of a country
+and a home; though the law that places all science, as all art,
+in the abstraction from the noisy passions and turbulent ambition
+of actual life, forbids us to influence the destinies of nations,
+for which Heaven selects ruder and blinder agencies; yet,
+wherever have been my wanderings, I have sought to soften
+distress, and to convert from sin.  My power has been hostile
+only to the guilty; and yet with all our lore, how in each step
+we are reduced to be but the permitted instruments of the Power
+that vouchsafes our own, but only to direct it.  How all our
+wisdom shrinks into nought, compared with that which gives the
+meanest herb its virtues, and peoples the smallest globule with
+its appropriate world.  And while we are allowed at times to
+influence the happiness of others, how mysteriously the shadows
+thicken round our own future doom!  We cannot be prophets to
+ourselves!  With what trembling hope I nurse the thought that I
+may preserve to my solitude the light of a living smile!
+
+...
+
+Extracts from Letter II.
+
+Deeming myself not pure enough to initiate so pure a heart, I
+invoke to her trance those fairest and most tender inhabitants of
+space that have furnished to poetry, which is the instinctive
+guess into creation, the ideas of the Glendoveer and Sylph.  And
+these were less pure than her own thoughts, and less tender than
+her own love!  They could not raise her above her human heart,
+for THAT has a heaven of its own.
+
+...
+
+I have just looked on her in sleep,--I have heard her breathe my
+name.  Alas! that which is so sweet to others has its bitterness
+to me; for I think how soon the time may come when that sleep
+will be without a dream,--when the heart that dictates the name
+will be cold, and the lips that utter it be dumb.  What a twofold
+shape there is in love!  If we examine it coarsely,--if we look
+but on its fleshy ties, its enjoyments of a moment, its turbulent
+fever and its dull reaction,--how strange it seems that this
+passion should be the supreme mover of the world; that it is this
+which has dictated the greatest sacrifices, and influenced all
+societies and all times; that to this the loftiest and loveliest
+genius has ever consecrated its devotion; that, but for love,
+there were no civilisation, no music, no poetry, no beauty, no
+life beyond the brute's.
+
+But examine it in its heavenlier shape,--in its utter abnegation
+of self; in its intimate connection with all that is most
+delicate and subtle in the spirit,--its power above all that is
+sordid in existence; its mastery over the idols of the baser
+worship; its ability to create a palace of the cottage, an oasis
+in the desert, a summer in the Iceland,--where it breathes, and
+fertilises, and glows; and the wonder rather becomes how so few
+regard it in its holiest nature.  What the sensual call its
+enjoyments, are the least of its joys.  True love is less a
+passion than a symbol.  Mejnour, shall the time come when I can
+speak to thee of Viola as a thing that was?
+
+...
+
+Extract from Letter III.
+
+Knowest thou that of late I have sometimes asked myself, "Is
+there no guilt in the knowledge that has so divided us from our
+race?"  It is true that the higher we ascend the more hateful
+seem to us the vices of the short-lived creepers of the earth,--
+the more the sense of the goodness of the All-good penetrates and
+suffuses us, and the more immediately does our happiness seem to
+emanate from him.  But, on the other hand, how many virtues must
+lie dead in those who live in the world of death, and refuse to
+die!  Is not this sublime egotism, this state of abstraction and
+reverie,--this self-wrapped and self-dependent majesty of
+existence, a resignation of that nobility which incorporates our
+own welfare, our joys, our hopes, our fears with others?  To live
+on in no dread of foes, undegraded by infirmity, secure through
+the cares, and free from the disease of flesh, is a spectacle
+that captivates our pride.  And yet dost thou not more admire him
+who dies for another?  Since I have loved her, Mejnour, it seems
+almost cowardice to elude the grave which devours the hearts that
+wrap us in their folds.  I feel it,--the earth grows upon my
+spirit.  Thou wert right; eternal age, serene and passionless, is
+a happier boon than eternal youth, with its yearnings and
+desires.  Until we can be all spirit, the tranquillity of
+solitude must be indifference.
+
+...
+
+Extracts from Letter IV.
+
+I have received thy communication.  What! is it so?  Has thy
+pupil disappointed thee?  Alas, poor pupil!  But--
+
+...
+
+(Here follow comments on those passages in Glyndon's life already
+known to the reader, or about to be made so, with earnest
+adjurations to Mejnour to watch yet over the fate of his
+scholar.)
+
+...
+
+But I cherish the same desire, with a warmer heart.  My pupil!
+how the terrors that shall encompass thine ordeal warn me from
+the task!  Once more I will seek the Son of Light.
+
+...
+
+Yes; Adon-Ai, long deaf to my call, at last has descended to my
+vision, and left behind him the glory of his presence in the
+shape of Hope.  Oh, not impossible, Viola,--not impossible, that
+we yet may be united, soul with soul!
+
+Extract from Letter V.--(Many months after the last.)
+
+Mejnour, awake from thine apathy,--rejoice!  A new soul will be
+born to the world,--a new soul that shall call me father.  Ah, if
+they for whom exist all the occupations and resources of human
+life,--if they can thrill with exquisite emotion at the thought
+of hailing again their own childhood in the faces of their
+children; if in that birth they are born once more into the holy
+Innocence which is the first state of existence; if they can feel
+that on man devolves almost an angel's duty, when he has a life
+to guide from the cradle, and a soul to nurture for the heaven,--
+what to me must be the rapture to welcome an inheritor of all the
+gifts which double themselves in being shared!  How sweet the
+power to watch, and to guard,--to instil the knowledge, to avert
+the evil, and to guide back the river of life in a richer and
+broader and deeper stream to the paradise from which it flows!
+And beside that river our souls shall meet, sweet mother.  Our
+child shall supply the sympathy that fails as yet; and what shape
+shall haunt thee, what terror shall dismay, when thy initiation
+is beside the cradle of thy child!
+
+
+CHAPTER 4.XI.
+
+They thus beguile the way
+Untill the blustring storme is overblowne,
+When weening to returne whence they did stray,
+They cannot finde that path which first was showne,
+But wander to and fro in waies unknowne.
+Spenser's "Faerie Queene," book i. canto i. st. x.
+
+Yes, Viola, thou art another being than when, by the threshold of
+thy Italian home, thou didst follow thy dim fancies through the
+Land of Shadow; or when thou didst vainly seek to give voice to
+an ideal beauty, on the boards where illusion counterfeits earth
+and heaven for an hour, till the weary sense, awaking, sees but
+the tinsel and the scene-shifter.  Thy spirit reposes in its own
+happiness.  Its wanderings have found a goal.  In a moment there
+often dwells the sense of eternity; for when profoundly happy, we
+know that it is impossible to die.  Whenever the soul FEELS
+ITSELF, it feels everlasting life.
+
+The initiation is deferred,--thy days and nights are left to no
+other visions than those with which a contented heart enchants a
+guileless fancy.  Glendoveers and Sylphs, pardon me if I question
+whether those visions are not lovelier than yourselves.
+
+They stand by the beach, and see the sun sinking into the sea.
+How long now have they dwelt on that island?  What matters!--it
+may be months, or years--what matters!  Why should I, or they,
+keep account of that happy time?  As in the dream of a moment
+ages may seem to pass, so shall we measure transport or woe,--by
+the length of the dream, or the number of emotions that the dream
+involves?
+
+The sun sinks slowly down; the air is arid and oppressive; on the
+sea, the stately vessel lies motionless; on the shore, no leaf
+trembles on the trees.
+
+Viola drew nearer to Zanoni.  A presentiment she could not define
+made her heart beat more quickly; and, looking into his face, she
+was struck with its expression:  it was anxious, abstracted,
+perturbed.  "This stillness awes me," she whispered.
+
+Zanoni did not seem to hear her.  He muttered to himself, and his
+eyes gazed round restlessly.  She knew not why, but that gaze,
+which seemed to pierce into space,--that muttered voice in some
+foreign language--revived dimly her earlier superstitions.  She
+was more fearful since the hour when she knew that she was to be
+a mother.  Strange crisis in the life of woman, and in her love!
+ Something yet unborn begins already to divide her heart with
+that which had been before its only monarch.
+
+"Look on me, Zanoni," she said, pressing his hand.
+
+He turned:  "Thou art pale, Viola; thy hand trembles!"
+
+"It is true.  I feel as if some enemy were creeping near us."
+
+"And the instinct deceives thee not.  An enemy is indeed at hand.
+I see it through the heavy air; I hear it through the silence:
+the Ghostly One,--the Destroyer, the PESTILENCE!  Ah, seest thou
+how the leaves swarm with insects, only by an effort visible to
+the eye.  They follow the breath of the plague!"  As he spoke, a
+bird fell from the boughs at Viola's feet; it fluttered, it
+writhed an instant, and was dead.
+
+"Oh, Viola!" cried Zanoni, passionately, "that is death.  Dost
+thou not fear to die?"
+
+"To leave thee?  Ah, yes!"
+
+"And if I could teach thee how Death may be defied; if I could
+arrest for thy youth the course of time; if I could--"
+
+He paused abruptly, for Viola's eyes spoke only terror; her cheek
+and lips were pale.
+
+"Speak not thus,--look not thus," she said, recoiling from him.
+"You dismay me.  Ah, speak not thus, or I should tremble,--no,
+not for myself, but for thy child."
+
+"Thy child!  But wouldst thou reject for thy child the same
+glorious boon?"
+
+"Zanoni!"
+
+"Well!"
+
+"The sun has sunk from our eyes, but to rise on those of others.
+To disappear from this world is to live in the world afar.  Oh,
+lover,--oh, husband!" she continued, with sudden energy, "tell me
+that thou didst but jest,--that thou didst but trifle with my
+folly!  There is less terror in the pestilence than in thy
+words."
+
+Zanoni's brow darkened; he looked at her in silence for some
+moments, and then said, almost severely ,--
+
+"What hast thou known of me to distrust?"
+
+"Oh, pardon, pardon!--nothing!" cried Viola, throwing herself on
+his breast, and bursting into tears.  "I will not believe even
+thine own words, if they seem to wrong thee!"  He kissed the
+tears from her eyes, but made no answer.
+
+"And ah!" she resumed, with an enchanting and child-like smile,
+"if thou wouldst give me a charm against the pestilence! see, I
+will take it from thee."  And she laid her hand on a small,
+antique amulet that he wore on his breast.
+
+"Thou knowest how often this has made me jealous of the past;
+surely some love-gift, Zanoni?  But no, thou didst not love the
+giver as thou dost me.  Shall I steal thine amulet?"
+
+"Infant!" said Zanoni, tenderly; "she who placed this round my
+neck deemed it indeed a charm, for she had superstitions like
+thyself; but to me it is more than the wizard's spell,--it is the
+relic of a sweet vanished time when none who loved me could
+distrust."
+
+He said these words in a tone of such melancholy reproach that it
+went to the heart of Viola; but the tone changed into a solemnity
+which chilled back the gush of her feelings as he resumed:  "And
+this, Viola, one day, perhaps, I will transfer from my breast to
+thine; yes, whenever thou shalt comprehend me better,--WHENEVER
+THE LAWS OF OUR BEING SHALL BE THE SAME!"
+
+He moved on gently.  They returned slowly home; but fear still
+was in the heart of Viola, though she strove to shake it off.
+Italian and Catholic she was, with all the superstitions of land
+and sect.  She stole to her chamber and prayed before a little
+relic of San Gennaro, which the priest of her house had given to
+her in childhood, and which had accompanied her in all her
+wanderings.  She had never deemed it possible to part with it
+before.  Now, if there was a charm against the pestilence, did
+she fear the pestilence for herself?  The next morning, when he
+awoke, Zanoni found the relic of the saint suspended with his
+mystic amulet round his neck.
+
+"Ah! thou wilt have nothing to fear from the pestilence now,"
+said Viola, between tears and smiles; "and when thou wouldst talk
+to me again as thou didst last night, the saint shall rebuke
+thee."
+
+Well, Zanoni, can there ever indeed be commune of thought and
+spirit, except with equals?
+
+Yes, the plague broke out,--the island home must be abandoned.
+Mighty Seer, THOU HAST NO POWER TO SAVE THOSE WHOM THOU LOVEST!
+Farewell, thou bridal roof!--sweet resting-place from care,
+farewell!  Climates as soft may greet ye, O lovers,--skies as
+serene, and waters as blue and calm; but THAT TIME,--can it ever
+more return?  Who shall say that the heart does not change with
+the scene,--the place where we first dwelt with the beloved one?
+Every spot THERE has so many memories which the place only can
+recall.  The past that haunts it seems to command such constancy
+in the future.  If a thought less kind, less trustful, enter
+within us, the sight of a tree under which a vow has been
+exchanged, a tear has been kissed away, restores us again to the
+hours of the first divine illusion.  But in a home where nothing
+speaks of the first nuptials, where there is no eloquence of
+association, no holy burial-places of emotions, whose ghosts are
+angels!--yes, who that has gone through the sad history of
+affection will tell us that the heart changes not with the scene!
+Blow fair, ye favouring winds; cheerily swell, ye sails; away
+from the land where death has come to snatch the sceptre of Love!
+The shores glide by; new coasts succeed to the green hills and
+orange-groves of the Bridal Isle.  From afar now gleam in the
+moonlight the columns, yet extant, of a temple which the Athenian
+dedicated to wisdom; and, standing on the bark that bounded on in
+the freshening gale, the votary who had survived the goddess
+murmured to himself,--
+
+"Has the wisdom of ages brought me no happier hours than those
+common to the shepherd and the herdsman, with no world beyond
+their village, no aspiration beyond the kiss and the smile of
+home?"
+
+And the moon, resting alike over the ruins of the temple of the
+departed creed, over the hut of the living peasant, over the
+immemorial mountain-top, and the perishable herbage that clothed
+its sides, seemed to smile back its answer of calm disdain to the
+being who, perchance, might have seen the temple built, and who,
+in his inscrutable existence, might behold the mountain shattered
+from its base.
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+THE EFFECTS OF THE ELIXIR.
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.I.
+
+Frommet's den Schleier aufzuheben,
+Wo das nahe Schreckness droht?
+Nur das Irrthum ist das Leben
+Und das Wissen ist der Tod,
+
+--Schiller, Kassandro.
+
+Delusion is the life we live
+And knowledge death; oh wherefore, then,
+To sight the coming evils give
+And lift the veil of Fate to Man?
+
+Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust.
+
+(Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast.)
+
+...
+
+Was stehst du so, und blickst erstaunt hinaus?
+
+(Why standest thou so, and lookest out astonished?)
+
+"Faust."
+
+It will be remembered that we left Master Paolo by the bedside of
+Glyndon; and as, waking from that profound slumber, the
+recollections of the past night came horribly back to his mind,
+the Englishman uttered a cry, and covered his face with his
+hands.
+
+"Good morrow, Excellency!" said Paolo, gayly.  "Corpo di Bacco,
+you have slept soundly!"
+
+The sound of this man's voice, so lusty, ringing, and healthful,
+served to scatter before it the phantasma that yet haunted
+Glyndon's memory.
+
+He rose erect in his bed.  "And where did you find me?  Why are
+you here?"
+
+"Where did I find you!" repeated Paolo, in surprise,--"in your
+bed, to be sure.  Why am I here!--because the Padrone bade me
+await your waking, and attend your commands."
+
+"The Padrone, Mejnour!--is he arrived?"
+
+"Arrived and departed, signor.  He has left this letter for you."
+
+"Give it me, and wait without till I am dressed."
+
+"At your service.  I have bespoke an excellent breakfast:  you
+must be hungry.  I am a very tolerable cook; a monk's son ought
+to be!  You will be startled at my genius in the dressing of
+fish.  My singing, I trust, will not disturb you.  I always sing
+while I prepare a salad; it harmonises the ingredients."  And
+slinging his carbine over his shoulder, Paolo sauntered from the
+room, and closed the door.
+
+Glyndon was already deep in the contents of the following
+letter:--
+
+"When I first received thee as my pupil, I promised Zanoni, if
+convinced by thy first trials that thou couldst but swell, not
+the number of our order, but the list of the victims who have
+aspired to it in vain, I would not rear thee to thine own
+wretchedness and doom,--I would dismiss thee back to the world.
+I fulfil my promise.  Thine ordeal has been the easiest that
+neophyte ever knew.  I asked for nothing but abstinence from the
+sensual, and a brief experiment of thy patience and thy faith.
+Go back to thine own world; thou hast no nature to aspire to
+ours!
+
+"It was I who prepared Paolo to receive thee at the revel.  It
+was I who instigated the old beggar to ask thee for alms.  It was
+I who left open the book that thou couldst not read without
+violating my command.  Well, thou hast seen what awaits thee at
+the threshold of knowledge.  Thou hast confronted the first foe
+that menaces him whom the senses yet grasp and inthrall.  Dost
+thou wonder that I close upon thee the gates forever?  Dost thou
+not comprehend, at last, that it needs a soul tempered and
+purified and raised, not by external spells, but by its own
+sublimity and valour, to pass the threshold and disdain the foe?
+Wretch! all my silence avails nothing for the rash, for the
+sensual,--for him who desires our secrets but to pollute them to
+gross enjoyments and selfish vice.  How have the imposters and
+sorcerers of the earlier times perished by their very attempt to
+penetrate the mysteries that should purify, and not deprave!
+They have boasted of the Philosopher's Stone, and died in rags;
+of the immortal elixir, and sunk to their grave, grey before
+their time.  Legends tell you that the fiend rent them into
+fragments.  Yes; the fiend of their own unholy desires and
+criminal designs!  What they coveted, thou covetest; and if thou
+hadst the wings of a seraph thou couldst soar not from the slough
+of thy mortality.  Thy desire for knowledge, but petulant
+presumption; thy thirst for happiness, but the diseased longing
+for the unclean and muddied waters of corporeal pleasure; thy
+very love, which usually elevates even the mean, a passion that
+calculates treason amidst the first glow of lust.  THOU one of
+us; thou a brother of the August Order; thou an Aspirant to the
+Stars that shine in the Shemaia of the Chaldean lore!  The eagle
+can raise but the eaglet to the sun.  I abandon thee to thy
+twilight!
+
+"But, alas for thee, disobedient and profane! thou hast inhaled
+the elixir; thou hast attracted to thy presence a ghastly and
+remorseless foe.  Thou thyself must exorcise the phantom thou
+hast raised.  Thou must return to the world; but not without
+punishment and strong effort canst thou regain the calm and the
+joy of the life thou hast left behind.  This, for thy comfort,
+will I tell thee:  he who has drawn into his frame even so little
+of the volatile and vital energy of the aerial juices as thyself,
+has awakened faculties that cannot sleep,--faculties that may
+yet, with patient humility, with sound faith, and the courage
+that is not of the body like thine, but of the resolute and
+virtuous mind, attain, if not to the knowledge that reigns above,
+to high achievement in the career of men.  Thou wilt find the
+restless influence in all that thou wouldst undertake.  Thy
+heart, amidst vulgar joys will aspire to something holier; thy
+ambition, amidst coarse excitement, to something beyond thy
+reach.  But deem not that this of itself will suffice for glory.
+Equally may the craving lead thee to shame and guilt.  It is but
+an imperfect and new-born energy which will not suffer thee to
+repose.  As thou directest it, must thou believe it to be the
+emanation of thine evil genius or thy good.
+
+"But woe to thee! insect meshed in the web in which thou hast
+entangled limbs and wings!  Thou hast not only inhaled the
+elixir, thou hast conjured the spectre; of all the tribes of the
+space, no foe is so malignant to man,--and thou hast lifted the
+veil from thy gaze.  I cannot restore to thee the happy dimness
+of thy vision.  Know, at least, that all of us--the highest and
+the wisest--who have, in sober truth, passed beyond the
+threshold, have had, as our first fearful task, to master and
+subdue its grisly and appalling guardian.  Know that thou CANST
+deliver thyself from those livid eyes,--know that, while they
+haunt, they cannot harm, if thou resistest the thoughts to which
+they tempt, and the horror they engender.  DREAD THEM MOST WHEN
+THOU BEHOLDEST THEM NOT.  And thus, son of the worm, we part!
+All that I can tell thee to encourage, yet to warn and to guide,
+I have told thee in these lines.  Not from me, from thyself has
+come the gloomy trial from which I yet trust thou wilt emerge
+into peace.  Type of the knowledge that I serve, I withhold no
+lesson from the pure aspirant; I am a dark enigma to the general
+seeker.  As man's only indestructible possession is his memory,
+so it is not in mine art to crumble into matter the immaterial
+thoughts that have sprung up within thy breast.  The tyro might
+shatter this castle to the dust, and topple down the mountain to
+the plain.  The master has no power to say, 'Exist no more,' to
+one THOUGHT that his knowledge has inspired.  Thou mayst change
+the thoughts into new forms; thou mayst rarefy and sublimate it
+into a finer spirit,--but thou canst not annihilate that which
+has no home but in the memory, no substance but the idea.  EVERY
+THOUGHT IS A SOUL!  Vainly, therefore, would I or thou undo the
+past, or restore to thee the gay blindness of thy youth.  Thou
+must endure the influence of the elixir thou hast inhaled; thou
+must wrestle with the spectre thou hast invoked!"
+
+The letter fell from Glyndon's hand.  A sort of stupor succeeded
+to the various emotions which had chased each other in the
+perusal,--a stupor resembling that which follows the sudden
+destruction of any ardent and long-nursed hope in the human
+heart, whether it be of love, of avarice, of ambition.  The
+loftier world for which he had so thirsted, sacrificed, and
+toiled, was closed upon him "forever," and by his own faults of
+rashness and presumption.  But Glyndon's was not of that nature
+which submits long to condemn itself.  His indignation began to
+kindle against Mejnour, who owned he had tempted, and who now
+abandoned him,--abandoned him to the presence of a spectre.  The
+mystic's reproaches stung rather than humbled him.  What crime
+had he committed to deserve language so harsh and disdainful?
+Was it so deep a debasement to feel pleasure in the smile and the
+eyes of Fillide?  Had not Zanoni himself confessed love for
+Viola; had he not fled with her as his companion?  Glyndon never
+paused to consider if there are no distinctions between one kind
+of love and another.  Where, too, was the great offence of
+yielding to a temptation which only existed for the brave?  Had
+not the mystic volume which Mejnour had purposely left open, bid
+him but "Beware of fear"?  Was not, then, every wilful
+provocative held out to the strongest influences of the human
+mind, in the prohibition to enter the chamber, in the possession
+of the key which excited his curiosity, in the volume which
+seemed to dictate the mode by which the curiosity was to be
+gratified?  As rapidly these thoughts passed over him, he began
+to consider the whole conduct of Mejnour either as a perfidious
+design to entrap him to his own misery, or as the trick of an
+imposter, who knew that he could not realise the great
+professions he had made.  On glancing again over the more
+mysterious threats and warnings in Mejnour's letter, they seemed
+to assume the language of mere parable and allegory,--the jargon
+of the Platonists and Pythagoreans.  By little and little, he
+began to consider that the very spectra he had seen--even that
+one phantom so horrid in its aspect--were but the delusions which
+Mejnour's science had enable him to raise.  The healthful
+sunlight, filling up every cranny in his chamber, seemed to laugh
+away the terrors of the past night.  His pride and his resentment
+nerved his habitual courage; and when, having hastily dressed
+himself, he rejoined Paolo, it was with a flushed cheek and a
+haughty step.
+
+"So, Paolo," said he, "the Padrone, as you call him, told you to
+expect and welcome me at your village feast?"
+
+"He did so by a message from a wretched old cripple.  This
+surprised me at the time, for I thought he was far distant; but
+these great philosophers make a joke of two or three hundred
+leagues."
+
+"Why did you not tell me you had heard from Mejnour?"
+
+"Because the old cripple forbade me."
+
+"Did you not see the man afterwards during the dance?"
+
+"No, Excellency."
+
+"Humph!"
+
+"Allow me to serve you," said Paolo, piling Glyndon's plate, and
+then filling his glass.  "I wish, signor, now the Padrone is
+gone,--not," added Paolo, as he cast rather a frightened and
+suspicious glance round the room, "that I mean to say anything
+disrespectful of him,--I wish, I say, now that he is gone, that
+you would take pity on yourself, and ask your own heart what your
+youth was meant for?  Not to bury yourself alive in these old
+ruins, and endanger body and soul by studies which I am sure no
+saint could approve of."
+
+"Are the saints so partial, then, to your own occupations, Master
+Paolo?"
+
+"Why," answered the bandit, a little confused, "a gentleman with
+plenty of pistoles in his purse need not, of necessity, make it
+his profession to take away the pistoles of other people!  It is
+a different thing for us poor rogues.  After all, too, I always
+devote a tithe of my gains to the Virgin; and I share the rest
+charitably with the poor.  But eat, drink, enjoy yourself; be
+absolved by your confessor for any little peccadilloes and don't
+run too long scores at a time,--that's my advice.  Your health,
+Excellency!  Pshaw, signor, fasting, except on the days
+prescribed to a good Catholic, only engenders phantoms."
+
+"Phantoms!"
+
+"Yes; the devil always tempts the empty stomach.  To covet, to
+hate, to thieve, to rob, and to murder,--these are the natural
+desires of a man who is famishing.  With a full belly, signor, we
+are at peace with all the world.  That's right; you like the
+partridge!  Cospetto! when I myself have passed two or three days
+in the mountains, with nothing from sunset to sunrise but a black
+crust and an onion, I grow as fierce as a wolf.  That's not the
+worst, too.  In these times I see little imps dancing before me.
+Oh, yes; fasting is as full of spectres as a field of battle."
+
+Glyndon thought there was some sound philosophy in the reasoning
+of his companion; and certainly the more he ate and drank, the
+more the recollection of the past night and of Mejnour's
+desertion faded from his mind.  The casement was open, the breeze
+blew, the sun shone,--all Nature was merry; and merry as Nature
+herself grew Maestro Paolo.  He talked of adventures, of travel,
+of women, with a hearty gusto that had its infection.  But
+Glyndon listened yet more complacently when Paolo turned with an
+arch smile to praises of the eye, the teeth, the ankles, and the
+shape of the handsome Fillide.
+
+This man, indeed, seemed the very personation of animal sensual
+life.  He would have been to Faust a more dangerous tempter than
+Mephistopheles.  There was no sneer on HIS lip at the pleasures
+which animated his voice.  To one awaking to a sense of the
+vanities in knowledge, this reckless ignorant joyousness of
+temper was a worse corrupter than all the icy mockeries of a
+learned Fiend.  But when Paolo took his leave, with a promise to
+return the next day, the mind of the Englishman again settled
+back to a graver and more thoughtful mood.  The elixir seemed, in
+truth, to have left the refining effects Mejnour had ascribed to
+it.  As Glyndon paced to and fro the solitary corridor, or,
+pausing, gazed upon the extended and glorious scenery that
+stretched below, high thoughts of enterprise and ambition--bright
+visions of glory--passed in rapid succession through his soul.
+
+"Mejnour denies me his science.  Well," said the painter,
+proudly, "he has not robbed me of my art."
+
+What!  Clarence Glyndon, dost thou return to that from which thy
+career commenced?  Was Zanoni right after all?
+
+He found himself in the chamber of the mystic; not a vessel,--not
+an herb! the solemn volume is vanished,--the elixir shall sparkle
+for him no more!  But still in the room itself seems to linger
+the atmosphere of a charm.  Faster and fiercer it burns within
+thee, the desire to achieve, to create!  Thou longest for a life
+beyond the sensual!--but the life that is permitted to all
+genius,--that which breathes through the immortal work, and
+endures in the imperishable name.
+
+Where are the implements for thine art?  Tush!--when did the true
+workman ever fail to find his tools?  Thou art again in thine own
+chamber,--the white wall thy canvas, a fragment of charcoal for
+thy pencil.  They suffice, at least, to give outline to the
+conception that may otherwise vanish with the morrow.
+
+The idea that thus excited the imagination of the artist was
+unquestionably noble and august.  It was derived from that
+Egyptian ceremonial which Diodorus has recorded,--the Judgment of
+the Dead by the Living (Diod., lib. i.):  when the corpse, duly
+embalmed, is placed by the margin of the Acherusian Lake; and
+before it may be consigned to the bark which is to bear it across
+the waters to its final resting-place, it is permitted to the
+appointed judges to hear all accusations of the past life of the
+deceased, and, if proved, to deprive the corpse of the rites of
+sepulture.
+
+Unconsciously to himself, it was Mejnour's description of this
+custom, which he had illustrated by several anecdotes not to be
+found in books, that now suggested the design to the artist, and
+gave it reality and force.  He supposed a powerful and guilty
+king whom in life scarce a whisper had dared to arraign, but
+against whom, now the breath was gone, came the slave from his
+fetters, the mutilated victim from his dungeon, livid and squalid
+as if dead themselves, invoking with parched lips the justice
+that outlives the grave.
+
+Strange fervour this, O artist! breaking suddenly forth from the
+mists and darkness which the occult science had spread so long
+over thy fancies,--strange that the reaction of the night's
+terror and the day's disappointment should be back to thine holy
+art!  Oh, how freely goes the bold hand over the large outline!
+How, despite those rude materials, speaks forth no more the
+pupil, but the master!  Fresh yet from the glorious elixir, how
+thou givest to thy creatures the finer life denied to thyself!--
+some power not thine own writes the grand symbols on the wall.
+Behind rises the mighty sepulchre, on the building of which
+repose to the dead the lives of thousands had been consumed.
+There sit in a semicircle the solemn judges.  Black and sluggish
+flows the lake.  There lies the mummied and royal dead.  Dost
+thou quail at the frown on his lifelike brow?  Ha!--bravely done,
+O artist!--up rise the haggard forms!--pale speak the ghastly
+faces!  Shall not Humanity after death avenge itself on Power?
+Thy conception, Clarence Glyndon, is a sublime truth; thy design
+promises renown to genius.  Better this magic than the charms of
+the volume and the vessel.  Hour after hour has gone; thou hast
+lighted the lamp; night sees thee yet at thy labour.  Merciful
+Heaven! what chills the atmosphere; why does the lamp grow wan;
+why does thy hair bristle?  There!--there!--there! at the
+casement!  It gazes on thee, the dark, mantled, loathsome thing!
+There, with their devilish mockery and hateful craft, glare on
+thee those horrid eyes!
+
+He stood and gazed,--it was no delusion.  It spoke not, moved
+not, till, unable to bear longer that steady and burning look, he
+covered his face with his hands.  With a start, with a thrill, he
+removed them; he felt the nearer presence of the nameless.  There
+it cowered on the floor beside his design; and lo! the figures
+seemed to start from the wall!  Those pale accusing figures, the
+shapes he himself had raised, frowned at him, and gibbered.  With
+a violent effort that convulsed his whole being, and bathed his
+body in the sweat of agony, the young man mastered his horror.
+He strode towards the phantom; he endured its eyes; he accosted
+it with a steady voice; he demanded its purpose and defied its
+power.
+
+And then, as a wind from a charnel, was heard its voice.  What it
+said, what revealed, it is forbidden the lips to repeat, the hand
+to record.  Nothing save the subtle life that yet animated the
+frame to which the inhalations of the elixir had given vigour and
+energy beyond the strength of the strongest, could have survived
+that awful hour.  Better to wake in the catacombs and see the
+buried rise from their cerements, and hear the ghouls, in their
+horrid orgies, amongst the festering ghastliness of corruption,
+than to front those features when the veil was lifted, and listen
+to that whispered voice!
+
+...
+
+The next day Glyndon fled from the ruined castle.  With what
+hopes of starry light had he crossed the threshold; with what
+memories to shudder evermore at the darkness did he look back at
+the frown of its time-worn towers!
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.II.
+
+Faust:  Wohin soll es nun gehm?
+Mephist:  Wohin es Dir gefallt.
+Wir sehn die kleine, dann die grosse Welt.
+"Faust."
+
+(Faust:  Whither go now!
+Mephist:  Whither it pleases thee.
+We see the small world, then the great.)
+
+Draw your chair to the fireside, brush clean the hearth, and trim
+the lights.  Oh, home of sleekness, order, substance, comfort!
+Oh, excellent thing art thou, Matter of Fact!
+
+It is some time after the date of the last chapter.  Here we are,
+not in moonlit islands or mouldering castles, but in a room
+twenty-six feet by twenty-two,--well carpeted, well cushioned,
+solid arm-chairs and eight such bad pictures, in such fine
+frames, upon the walls!  Thomas Mervale, Esq., merchant, of
+London, you are an enviable dog!
+
+It was the easiest thing in the world for Mervale, on returning
+from his Continental episode of life, to settle down to his
+desk,--his heart had been always there.  The death of his father
+gave him, as a birthright, a high position in a respectable
+though second-rate firm.  To make this establishment first-rate
+was an honourable ambition,--it was his!  He had lately married,
+not entirely for money,--no! he was worldly rather than
+mercenary.  He had no romantic ideas of love; but he was too
+sensible a man not to know that a wife should be a companion,--
+not merely a speculation.  He did not care for beauty and genius,
+but he liked health and good temper, and a certain proportion of
+useful understanding.  He chose a wife from his reason, not his
+heart, and a very good choice he made.  Mrs. Mervale was an
+excellent young woman,--bustling, managing, economical, but
+affectionate and good.  She had a will of her own, but was no
+shrew.  She had a great notion of the rights of a wife, and a
+strong perception of the qualities that insure comfort.  She
+would never have forgiven her husband, had she found him guilty
+of the most passing fancy for another; but, in return, she had
+the most admirable sense of propriety herself.  She held in
+abhorrence all levity, all flirtation, all coquetry,--small vices
+which often ruin domestic happiness, but which a giddy nature
+incurs without consideration.  But she did not think it right to
+love a husband over much.  She left a surplus of affection, for
+all her relations, all her friends, some of her acquaintances,
+and the possibility of a second marriage, should any accident
+happen to Mr. M.  She kept a good table, for it suited their
+station; and her temper was considered even, though firm; but she
+could say a sharp thing or two, if Mr. Mervale was not punctual
+to a moment.  She was very particular that he should change his
+shoes on coming home,--the carpets were new and expensive.  She
+was not sulky, nor passionate,--Heaven bless her for that!--but
+when displeased she showed it, administered a dignified rebuke,
+alluded to her own virtues, to her uncle who was an admiral, and
+to the thirty thousand pounds which she had brought to the object
+of her choice.  But as Mr. Mervale was a good-humoured man, owned
+his faults, and subscribed to her excellence, the displeasure was
+soon over.
+
+Every household has its little disagreements, none fewer than
+that of Mr. and Mrs. Mervale.  Mrs. Mervale, without being
+improperly fond of dress, paid due attention to it.  She was
+never seen out of her chamber with papers in her hair, nor in
+that worst of dis-illusions,--a morning wrapper.  At half-past
+eight every morning Mrs. Mervale was dressed for the day,--that
+is, till she re-dressed for dinner,--her stays well laced, her
+cap prim, her gowns, winter and summer, of a thick, handsome
+silk.  Ladies at that time wore very short waists; so did Mrs.
+Mervale.  Her morning ornaments were a thick, gold chain, to
+which was suspended a gold watch,--none of those fragile dwarfs
+of mechanism that look so pretty and go so ill, but a handsome
+repeater which chronicled Father Time to a moment; also a mosaic
+brooch; also a miniature of her uncle, the admiral, set in a
+bracelet.  For the evening she had two handsome sets,--necklace,
+earrings, and bracelets complete,--one of amethysts, the other
+topazes.  With these, her costume for the most part was a gold-
+coloured satin and a turban, in which last her picture had been
+taken.  Mrs. Mervale had an aquiline nose, good teeth, fair hair,
+and light eyelashes, rather a high complexion, what is generally
+called a fine bust; full cheeks; large useful feet made for
+walking; large, white hands with filbert nails, on which not a
+speck of dust had, even in childhood, ever been known to a light.
+She looked a little older than she really was; but that might
+arise from a certain air of dignity and the aforesaid aquiline
+nose.  She generally wore short mittens.  She never read any
+poetry but Goldsmith's and Cowper's.  She was not amused by
+novels, though she had no prejudice against them.  She liked a
+play and a pantomime, with a slight supper afterwards.  She did
+not like concerts nor operas.  At the beginning of the winter she
+selected some book to read, and some piece of work to commence.
+The two lasted her till the spring, when, though she continued to
+work, she left off reading.  Her favourite study was history,
+which she read through the medium of Dr. Goldsmith.  Her
+favourite author in the belles lettres was, of course, Dr.
+Johnson.  A worthier woman, or one more respected, was not to be
+found, except in an epitaph!
+
+It was an autumn night.  Mr. and Mrs. Mervale, lately returned
+from an excursion to Weymouth, are in the drawing-room,--"the
+dame sat on this side, the man sat on that."
+
+"Yes, I assure you, my dear, that Glyndon, with all his
+eccentricities, was a very engaging, amiable fellow.  You would
+certainly have liked him,--all the women did."
+
+"My dear Thomas, you will forgive the remark,--but that
+expression of yours, 'all the WOMEN'--"
+
+"I beg your pardon,--you are right.  I meant to say that he was a
+general favourite with your charming sex."
+
+"I understand,--rather a frivolous character."
+
+"Frivolous! no, not exactly; a little unsteady,--very odd, but
+certainly not frivolous; presumptuous and headstrong in
+character, but modest and shy in his manners, rather too much
+so,--just what you like.  However, to return; I am seriously
+uneasy at the accounts I have heard of him to-day.  He has been
+living, it seems, a very strange and irregular life, travelling
+from place to place, and must have spent already a great deal of
+money."
+
+"Apropos of money," said Mrs. Mervale; "I fear we must change our
+butcher; he is certainly in league with the cook."
+
+"That is a pity; his beef is remarkably fine.  These London
+servants are as bad as the Carbonari.  But, as I was saying, poor
+Glyndon--"
+
+Here a knock was heard at the door.  "Bless me," said Mrs.
+Mervale, "it is past ten!  Who can that possibly be?"
+
+"Perhaps your uncle, the admiral," said the husband, with a
+slight peevishness in his accent.  "He generally favours us about
+this hour."
+
+"I hope, my love, that none of my relations are unwelcome
+visitors at your house.  The admiral is a most entertaining man,
+and his fortune is entirely at his own disposal."
+
+"No one I respect more," said Mr. Mervale, with emphasis.
+
+The servant threw open the door, and announced Mr. Glyndon.
+
+"Mr. Glyndon!--what an extraordinary--" exclaimed Mrs. Mervale;
+but before she could conclude the sentence, Glyndon was in the
+room.
+
+The two friends greeted each other with all the warmth of early
+recollection and long absence.  An appropriate and proud
+presentation to Mrs. Mervale ensued; and Mrs. Mervale, with a
+dignified smile, and a furtive glance at his boots, bade her
+husband's friend welcome to England.
+
+Glyndon was greatly altered since Mervale had seen him last.
+Though less than two years had elapsed since then, his fair
+complexion was more bronzed and manly.  Deep lines of care, or
+thought, or dissipation, had replaced the smooth contour of happy
+youth.  To a manner once gentle and polished had succeeded a
+certain recklessness of mien, tone, and bearing, which bespoke
+the habits of a society that cared little for the calm decorums
+of conventional ease.  Still a kind of wild nobleness, not before
+apparent in him, characterised his aspect, and gave something of
+dignity to the freedom of his language and gestures.
+
+"So, then, you are settled, Mervale,--I need not ask you if you
+are happy.  Worth, sense, wealth, character, and so fair a
+companion deserve happiness, and command it."
+
+"Would you like some tea, Mr. Glyndon?" asked Mrs. Mervale,
+kindly.
+
+"Thank you,--no.  I propose a more convivial stimulus to my old
+friend.  Wine, Mervale,--wine, eh!--or a bowl of old English
+punch.  Your wife will excuse us,--we will make a night of it!"
+
+Mrs. Mervale drew back her chair, and tried not to look aghast.
+Glyndon did not give his friend time to reply.
+
+"So at last I am in England," he said, looking round the room,
+with a slight sneer on his lips; "surely this sober air must have
+its influence; surely here I shall be like the rest."
+
+"Have you been ill, Glyndon?"
+
+"Ill, yes.  Humph! you have a fine house.  Does it contain a
+spare room for a solitary wanderer?"
+
+Mr. Mervale glanced at his wife, and his wife looked steadily on
+the carpet.  "Modest and shy in his manners--rather too much so!"
+Mrs. Mervale was in the seventh heaven of indignation and amaze!
+
+"My dear?" said Mr. Mervale at last, meekly and interogatingly.
+
+"My dear!" returned Mrs. Mervale, innocently and sourly.
+
+"We can make up a room for my old friend, Sarah?"
+
+The old friend had sunk back on his chair, and, gazing intently
+on the fire, with his feet at ease upon the fender, seemed to
+have forgotten his question.
+
+Mrs. Mervale bit her lips, looked thoughtful, and at last coldly
+replied, "Certainly, Mr. Mervale; your friends do right to make
+themselves at home."
+
+With that she lighted a candle, and moved majestically from the
+room.  When she returned, the two friends had vanished into Mr.
+Mervale's study.
+
+Twelve o'clock struck,--one o'clock, two!  Thrice had Mrs.
+Mervale sent into the room to know,--first, if they wanted
+anything; secondly, if Mr. Glyndon slept on a mattress or
+feather-bed; thirdly, to inquire if Mr. Glyndon's trunk, which he
+had brought with him, should be unpacked.  And to the answer to
+all these questions was added, in a loud voice from the visitor,
+--a voice that pierced from the kitchen to the attic,--"Another
+bowl! stronger, if you please, and be quick with it!"
+
+At last Mr. Mervale appeared in the conjugal chamber, not
+penitent, nor apologetic,--no, not a bit of it.  His eyes
+twinkled, his cheek flushed, his feet reeled; he sang,--Mr.
+Thomas Mervale positively sang!
+
+"Mr. Mervale! is it possible, sir--"
+
+"'Old King Cole was a merry old soul--'"
+
+"Mr. Mervale! sir!--leave me alone, sir!"
+
+"'And a merry old soul was he--'"
+
+"What an example to the servants!"
+
+"'And he called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl--'"
+
+"If you don't behave yourself, sir, I shall call--"
+
+"'Call for his fiddlers three!'"
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.III.
+
+In der Welt weit
+Aus der Einsamkeit
+Wollen sie Dich locken.
+"Faust."
+
+(In the wide world, out of the solitude, will these allure thee.)
+
+The next morning, at breakfast, Mrs. Mervale looked as if all the
+wrongs of injured woman sat upon her brow.  Mr. Mervale seemed
+the picture of remorseful guilt and avenging bile.  He said
+little, except to complain of headache, and to request the eggs
+to be removed from the table.  Clarence Glyndon--impervious,
+unconscious, unailing, impenitent--was in noisy spirits, and
+talked for three.
+
+"Poor Mervale! he has lost the habit of good-fellowship, madam.
+Another night or two, and he will be himself again!"
+
+"Sir," said Mrs. Mervale, launching a premeditated sentence with
+more than Johnsonian dignity, "permit me to remind you that Mr.
+Mervale is now a married man, the destined father of a family,
+and the present master of a household."
+
+"Precisely the reasons why I envy him so much.  I myself have a
+great mind to marry.  Happiness is contagious."
+
+"Do you still take to painting?" asked Mervale, languidly,
+endeavouring to turn the tables on his guest.
+
+"Oh, no; I have adopted your advice.  No art, no ideal,-- nothing
+loftier than Commonplace for me now.  If I were to paint again, I
+positively think YOU would purchase my pictures.  Make haste and
+finish your breakfast, man; I wish to consult you.  I have come
+to England to see after my affairs.  My ambition is to make
+money; your counsels and experience cannot fail to assist me
+here."
+
+"Ah, you were soon disenchanted of your Philosopher's Stone!  You
+must know, Sarah, that when I last left Glyndon, he was bent upon
+turning alchemist and magician."
+
+"You are witty to-day, Mr. Mervale."
+
+"Upon my honour it is true, I told you so before."
+
+Glyndon rose abruptly.
+
+"Why revive those recollections of folly and presumption?  Have I
+not said that I have returned to my native land to pursue the
+healthful avocations of my kind!  Oh, yes! what so healthful, so
+noble, so fitted to our nature, as what you call the Practical
+Life?  If we have faculties, what is their use, but to sell them
+to advantage!  Buy knowledge as we do our goods; buy it at the
+cheapest market, sell it at the dearest.  Have you not
+breakfasted yet?"
+
+The friends walked into the streets, and Mervale shrank from the
+irony with which Glyndon complimented him on his respectability,
+his station, his pursuits, his happy marriage, and his eight
+pictures in their handsome frames.  Formerly the sober Mervale
+had commanded an influence over his friend:  HIS had been the
+sarcasm; Glyndon's the irresolute shame at his own peculiarities.
+Now this position was reversed.  There was a fierce earnestness
+in Glyndon's altered temper which awed and silenced the quiet
+commonplace of his friend's character.  He seemed to take a
+malignant delight in persuading himself that the sober life of
+the world was contemptible and base.
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed, "how right you were to tell me to marry
+respectably; to have a solid position; to live in decorous fear
+of the world and one's wife; and to command the envy of the poor,
+the good opinion of the rich.  You have practised what you
+preach.  Delicious existence!  The merchant's desk and the
+curtain lecture!  Ha! ha!  Shall we have another night of it?"
+
+Mervale, embarrassed and irritated, turned the conversation upon
+Glyndon's affairs.  He was surprised at the knowledge of the
+world which the artist seemed to have suddenly acquired,
+surprised still more at the acuteness and energy with which he
+spoke of the speculations most in vogue at the market.  Yes;
+Glyndon was certainly in earnest:  he desired to be rich and
+respectable,--and to make at least ten per cent for his money!
+
+After spending some days with the merchant, during which time he
+contrived to disorganise all the mechanism of the house, to turn
+night into day, harmony into discord, to drive poor Mrs. Mervale
+half-distracted, and to convince her husband that he was horribly
+hen-pecked, the ill-omened visitor left them as suddenly as he
+had arrived.  He took a house of his own; he sought the society
+of persons of substance; he devoted himself to the money-market;
+he seemed to have become a man of business; his schemes were bold
+and colossal; his calculations rapid and profound.  He startled
+Mervale by his energy, and dazzled him by his success.  Mervale
+began to envy him,--to be discontented with his own regular and
+slow gains.  When Glyndon bought or sold in the funds, wealth
+rolled upon him like the tide of a sea; what years of toil could
+not have done for him in art, a few months, by a succession of
+lucky chances, did for him in speculation.  Suddenly, however, he
+relaxed his exertions; new objects of ambition seemed to attract
+him.  If he heard a drum in the streets, what glory like the
+soldier's?  If a new poem were published, what renown like the
+poet's?  He began works in literature, which promised great
+excellence, to throw them aside in disgust.  All at once he
+abandoned the decorous and formal society he had courted; he
+joined himself, with young and riotous associates; he plunged
+into the wildest excesses of the great city, where Gold reigns
+alike over Toil and Pleasure.  Through all he carried with him a
+certain power and heat of soul.  In all society he aspired to
+command,--in all pursuits to excel.  Yet whatever the passion of
+the moment, the reaction was terrible in its gloom.  He sank, at
+times, into the most profound and the darkest reveries.  His
+fever was that of a mind that would escape memory,--his repose,
+that of a mind which the memory seizes again, and devours as a
+prey.  Mervale now saw little of him; they shunned each other.
+Glyndon had no confidant, and no friend.
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.IV.
+
+Ich fuhle Dich mir nahe;
+Die Einsamkeit belebt;
+Wie uber seinen Welten
+Der Unsichtbare schwebt.
+Uhland.
+
+(I feel thee near to me,
+The loneliness takes life,--
+As over its world
+The Invisible hovers.)
+
+From this state of restlessness and agitation rather than
+continuous action, Glyndon was aroused by a visitor who seemed to
+exercise the most salutary influence over him.  His sister, an
+orphan with himself, had resided in the country with her aunt.
+In the early years of hope and home he had loved this girl, much
+younger than himself, with all a brother's tenderness.  On his
+return to England, he had seemed to forget her existence.  She
+recalled herself to him on her aunt's death by a touching and
+melancholy letter:  she had now no home but his,--no dependence
+save on his affection; he wept when he read it, and was impatient
+till Adela arrived.
+
+This girl, then about eighteen, concerned beneath a gentle and
+calm exterior much of the romance or enthusiasm that had, at her
+own age, characterised her brother.  But her enthusiasm was of a
+far purer order, and was restrained within proper bounds, partly
+by the sweetness of a very feminine nature, and partly by a
+strict and methodical education.  She differed from him
+especially in a timidity of character which exceeded that usual
+at her age, but which the habit of self-command concealed no less
+carefully than that timidity itself concealed the romance I have
+ascribed to her.
+
+Adela was not handsome:  she had the complexion and the form of
+delicate health; and too fine an organisation of the nerves
+rendered her susceptible to every impression that could influence
+the health of the frame through the sympathy of the mind.  But as
+she never complained, and as the singular serenity of her manners
+seemed to betoken an equanimity of temperament which, with the
+vulgar, might have passed for indifference, her sufferings had so
+long been borne unnoticed that it ceased to be an effort to
+disguise them.  Though, as I have said, not handsome, her
+countenance was interesting and pleasing; and there was that
+caressing kindness, that winning charm about her smile, her
+manners, her anxiety to please, to comfort, and to soothe which
+went at once to the heart, and made her lovely,--because so
+loving.
+
+Such was the sister whom Glyndon had so long neglected, and whom
+he now so cordially welcomed.  Adela had passed many years a
+victim to the caprices, and a nurse to the maladies, of a selfish
+and exacting relation.  The delicate and generous and respectful
+affection of her brother was no less new to her than delightful.
+He took pleasure in the happiness he created; he gradually weaned
+himself from other society; he felt the charm of home.  It is not
+surprising, then, that this young creature, free and virgin from
+every more ardent attachment, concentrated all her grateful love
+on this cherished and protecting relative.  Her study by day, her
+dream by night, was to repay him for his affection.  She was
+proud of his talents, devoted to his welfare; the smallest trifle
+that could interest him swelled in her eyes to the gravest
+affairs of life.  In short, all the long-hoarded enthusiasm,
+which was her perilous and only heritage, she invested in this
+one object of her holy tenderness, her pure ambition.
+
+But in proportion as Glyndon shunned those excitements by which
+he had so long sought to occupy his time or distract his
+thoughts, the gloom of his calmer hours became deeper and more
+continuous.  He ever and especially dreaded to be alone; he could
+not bear his new companion to be absent from his eyes:  he rode
+with her, walked with her, and it was with visible reluctance,
+which almost partook of horror, that he retired to rest at an
+hour when even revel grows fatigued.  This gloom was not that
+which could be called by the soft name of melancholy,--it was far
+more intense; it seemed rather like despair.  Often after a
+silence as of death--so heavy, abstracted, motionless, did it
+appear--he would start abruptly, and cast hurried glances around
+him,--his limbs trembling, his lips livid, his brows bathed in
+dew.  Convinced that some secret sorrow preyed upon his mind, and
+would consume his health, it was the dearest as the most natural
+desire of Adela to become his confidant and consoler.  She
+observed, with the quick tact of the delicate, that he disliked
+her to seem affected by, or even sensible of, his darker moods.
+She schooled herself to suppress her fears and her feelings.  She
+would not ask his confidence,--she sought to steal into it.  By
+little and little she felt that she was succeeding.  Too wrapped
+in his own strange existence to be acutely observant of the
+character of others, Glyndon mistook the self-content of a
+generous and humble affection for constitutional fortitude; and
+this quality pleased and soothed him.  It is fortitude that the
+diseased mind requires in the confidant whom it selects as its
+physician.  And how irresistible is that desire to communicate!
+How often the lonely man thought to himself, "My heart would be
+lightened of its misery, if once confessed!"  He felt, too, that
+in the very youth, the inexperience, the poetical temperament of
+Adela, he could find one who would comprehend and bear with him
+better than any sterner and more practical nature.  Mervale would
+have looked on his revelations as the ravings of madness, and
+most men, at best, as the sicklied chimeras, the optical
+delusions, of disease.  Thus gradually preparing himself for that
+relief for which he yearned, the moment for his disclosure
+arrived thus:--
+
+One evening, as they sat alone together, Adela, who inherited
+some portion of her brother's talent in art, was employed in
+drawing, and Glyndon, rousing himself from meditations less
+gloomy than usual, rose, and affectionately passing his arm round
+her waist, looked over her as she sat.  An exclamation of dismay
+broke from his lips,--he snatched the drawing from her hand:
+"What are you about?--what portrait is this?"
+
+"Dear Clarence, do you not remember the original?--it is a copy
+from that portrait of our wise ancestor which our poor mother
+used to say so strongly resembled you.  I thought it would please
+you if I copied it from memory."
+
+"Accursed was the likeness!" said Glyndon, gloomily.  "Guess you
+not the reason why I have shunned to return to the home of my
+fathers!--because I dreaded to meet that portrait!--because--
+because--but pardon me; I alarm you!"
+
+"Ah, no,--no, Clarence, you never alarm me when you speak:  only
+when you are silent!  Oh, if you thought me worthy of your trust;
+oh, if you had given me the right to reason with you in the
+sorrows that I yearn to share!"
+
+Glyndon made no answer, but paced the room for some moments with
+disordered strides.  He stopped at last, and gazed at her
+earnestly.  "Yes, you, too, are his descendant; you know that
+such men have lived and suffered; you will not mock me,-- you
+will not disbelieve!  Listen! hark!--what sound is that?"
+
+"But the wind on the house-top, Clarence,--but the wind."
+
+"Give me your hand; let me feel its living clasp; and when I have
+told you, never revert to the tale again.  Conceal it from all:
+swear that it shall die with us,--the last of our predestined
+race!"
+
+"Never will I betray your trust; I swear it,--never!" said Adela,
+firmly; and she drew closer to his side.  Then Glyndon commenced
+his story.  That which, perhaps, in writing, and to minds
+prepared to question and disbelieve, may seem cold and
+terrorless, became far different when told by those blanched
+lips, with all that truth of suffering which convinces and
+appalls.  Much, indeed, he concealed, much he involuntarily
+softened; but he revealed enough to make his tale intelligible
+and distinct to his pale and trembling listener.  "At daybreak,"
+he said, "I left that unhallowed and abhorred abode.  I had one
+hope still,--I would seek Mejnour through the world.  I would
+force him to lay at rest the fiend that haunted my soul.  With
+this intent I journeyed from city to city.  I instituted the most
+vigilant researches through the police of Italy.  I even employed
+the services of the Inquisition at Rome, which had lately
+asserted its ancient powers in the trial of the less dangerous
+Cagliostro.  All was in vain; not a trace of him could be
+discovered.  I was not alone, Adela."  Here Glyndon paused a
+moment, as if embarrassed; for in his recital, I need scarcely
+say that he had only indistinctly alluded to Fillide, whom the
+reader may surmise to be his companion.  "I was not alone, but
+the associate of my wanderings was not one in whom my soul could
+confide,--faithful and affectionate, but without education,
+without faculties to comprehend me, with natural instincts rather
+than cultivated reason; one in whom the heart might lean in its
+careless hours, but with whom the mind could have no commune, in
+whom the bewildered spirit could seek no guide.  Yet in the
+society of this person the demon troubled me not.  Let me explain
+yet more fully the dread conditions of its presence.  In coarse
+excitement, in commonplace life, in the wild riot, in the fierce
+excess, in the torpid lethargy of that animal existence which we
+share with the brutes, its eyes were invisible, its whisper was
+unheard.  But whenever the soul would aspire, whenever the
+imagination kindled to the loftier ends, whenever the
+consciousness of our proper destiny struggled against the
+unworthy life I pursued, then, Adela--then, it cowered by my side
+in the light of noon, or sat by my bed,--a Darkness visible
+through the Dark.  If, in the galleries of Divine Art, the dreams
+of my youth woke the early emulation,--if I turned to the
+thoughts of sages; if the example of the great, if the converse
+of the wise, aroused the silenced intellect, the demon was with
+me as by a spell.  At last, one evening, at Genoa, to which city
+I had travelled in pursuit of the mystic, suddenly, and when
+least expected, he appeared before me.  It was the time of the
+Carnival.  It was in one of those half-frantic scenes of noise
+and revel, call it not gayety, which establish a heathen
+saturnalia in the midst of a Christian festival.  Wearied with
+the dance, I had entered a room in which several revellers were
+seated, drinking, singing, shouting; and in their fantastic
+dresses and hideous masks, their orgy seemed scarcely human.  I
+placed myself amongst them, and in that fearful excitement of the
+spirits which the happy never know, I was soon the most riotous
+of all.  The conversation fell on the Revolution of France, which
+had always possessed for me an absorbing fascination.  The masks
+spoke of the millennium it was to bring on earth, not as
+philosophers rejoicing in the advent of light, but as ruffians
+exulting in the annihilation of law.  I know not why it was, but
+their licentious language infected myself; and, always desirous
+to be foremost in every circle, I soon exceeded even these
+rioters in declamations on the nature of the liberty which was
+about to embrace all the families of the globe,--a liberty that
+should pervade not only public legislation, but domestic life; an
+emancipation from every fetter that men had forged for
+themselves.  In the midst of this tirade one of the masks
+whispered me,--
+
+"'Take care.  One listens to you who seems to be a spy!'
+
+"My eyes followed those of the mask, and I observed a man who
+took no part in the conversation, but whose gaze was bent upon
+me.  He was disguised like the rest, yet I found by a general
+whisper that none had observed him enter.  His silence, his
+attention, had alarmed the fears of the other revellers,--they
+only excited me the more.  Rapt in my subject, I pursued it,
+insensible to the signs of those about me; and, addressing myself
+only to the silent mask who sat alone, apart from the group, I
+did not even observe that, one by one, the revellers slunk off,
+and that I and the silent listener were left alone, until,
+pausing from my heated and impetuous declamations, I said,--
+
+"'And you, signor,--what is your view of this mighty era?
+Opinion without persecution; brotherhood without jealousy; love
+without bondage--'
+
+"'And life without God,' added the mask as I hesitated for new
+images.
+
+"The sound of that well-known voice changed the current of my
+thought.  I sprang forward, and cried,--
+
+"'Imposter or Fiend, we meet at last!'
+
+"The figure rose as I advanced, and, unmasking, showed the
+features of Mejnour.  His fixed eye, his majestic aspect, awed
+and repelled me.  I stood rooted to the ground.
+
+"'Yes,' he said solemnly, 'we meet, and it is this meeting that I
+have sought.  How hast thou followed my admonitions!  Are these
+the scenes in which the Aspirant for the Serene Science thinks to
+escape the Ghastly Enemy?  Do the thoughts thou hast uttered--
+thoughts that would strike all order from the universe--express
+the hopes of the sage who would rise to the Harmony of the
+Eternal Spheres?'
+
+"'It is thy fault,--it is thine!' I exclaimed.  'Exorcise the
+phantom!  Take the haunting terror from my soul!'
+
+Mejnour looked at me a moment with a cold and cynical disdain
+which provoked at once my fear and rage, and replied,--
+
+"'No; fool of thine own senses!  No; thou must have full and
+entire experience of the illusions to which the Knowledge that is
+without Faith climbs its Titan way.  Thou pantest for this
+Millennium,--thou shalt behold it!  Thou shalt be one of the
+agents of the era of Light and Reason.  I see, while I speak, the
+Phantom thou fliest, by thy side; it marshals thy path; it has
+power over thee as yet,--a power that defies my own.  In the last
+days of that Revolution which thou hailest, amidst the wrecks of
+the Order thou cursest as Oppression, seek the fulfilment of thy
+destiny, and await thy cure.'
+
+"At that instant a troop of masks, clamorous, intoxicated,
+reeling, and rushing, as they reeled, poured into the room, and
+separated me from the mystic.  I broke through them, and sought
+him everywhere, but in vain.  All my researches the next day were
+equally fruitless.  Weeks were consumed in the same pursuit,--not
+a trace of Mejnour could be discovered.  Wearied with false
+pleasures, roused by reproaches I had deserved, recoiling from
+Mejnour's prophecy of the scene in which I was to seek
+deliverance, it occurred to me, at last, that in the sober air of
+my native country, and amidst its orderly and vigorous pursuits,
+I might work out my own emancipation from the spectre.  I left
+all whom I had before courted and clung to,--I came hither.
+Amidst mercenary schemes and selfish speculations, I found the
+same relief as in debauch and excess.  The Phantom was invisible;
+but these pursuits soon became to me distasteful as the rest.
+Ever and ever I felt that I was born for something nobler than
+the greed of gain,--that life may be made equally worthless, and
+the soul equally degraded by the icy lust of avarice, as by the
+noisier passions.  A higher ambition never ceased to torment me.
+But, but," continued Glyndon, with a whitening lip and a visible
+shudder, "at every attempt to rise into loftier existence, came
+that hideous form.  It gloomed beside me at the easel.  Before
+the volumes of poet and sage it stood with its burning eyes in
+the stillness of night, and I thought I heard its horrible
+whispers uttering temptations never to be divulged."  He paused,
+and the drops stood upon his brow.
+
+"But I," said Adela, mastering her fears and throwing her arms
+around him,--"but I henceforth will have no life but in thine.
+And in this love so pure, so holy, thy terror shall fade away."
+
+"No, no!" exclaimed Glyndon, starting from her.  "The worst
+revelation is to come.  Since thou hast been here, since I have
+sternly and resolutely refrained from every haunt, every scene in
+which this preternatural enemy troubled me not, I--I--have--  Oh,
+Heaven!  Mercy--mercy!  There it stands,--there, by thy side,--
+there, there!"  And he fell to the ground insensible.
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.V.
+
+Doch wunderbar ergriff mich's diese Nacht;
+Die Glieder schienen schon in Todes Macht.
+Uhland.
+
+(This night it fearfully seized on me; my limbs appeared already
+in the power of death.)
+
+A fever, attended with delirium, for several days deprived
+Glyndon of consciousness; and when, by Adela's care more than the
+skill of the physicians, he was restored to life and reason, he
+was unutterably shocked by the change in his sister's appearance;
+at first, he fondly imagined that her health, affected by her
+vigils, would recover with his own.  But he soon saw, with an
+anguish which partook of remorse, that the malady was deep-
+seated,--deep, deep, beyond the reach of Aesculapius and his
+drugs.  Her imagination, little less lively than his own, was
+awfully impressed by the strange confessions she had heard,--by
+the ravings of his delirium.  Again and again had he shrieked
+forth, "It is there,--there, by thy side, my sister!"  He had
+transferred to her fancy the spectre, and the horror that cursed
+himself.  He perceived this, not by her words, but her silence;
+by the eyes that strained into space; by the shiver that came
+over her frame; by the start of terror; by the look that did not
+dare to turn behind.  Bitterly he repented his confession;
+bitterly he felt that between his sufferings and human sympathy
+there could be no gentle and holy commune; vainly he sought to
+retract,--to undo what he had done, to declare all was but the
+chimera of an overheated brain!
+
+And brave and generous was this denial of himself; for, often and
+often, as he thus spoke, he saw the Thing of Dread gliding to her
+side, and glaring at him as he disowned its being.  But what
+chilled him, if possible, yet more than her wasting form and
+trembling nerves, was the change in her love for him; a natural
+terror had replaced it.  She turned paler if he approached,--she
+shuddered if he took her hand.  Divided from the rest of earth,
+the gulf of the foul remembrance yawned now between his sister
+and himself.  He could endure no more the presence of the one
+whose life HIS life had embittered.  He made some excuses for
+departure, and writhed to see that they were greeted eagerly.
+The first gleam of joy he had detected since that fatal night, on
+Adela's face, he beheld when he murmured "Farewell."  He
+travelled for some weeks through the wildest parts of Scotland;
+scenery which MAKES the artist, was loveless to his haggard eyes.
+A letter recalled him to London on the wings of new agony and
+fear; he arrived to find his sister in a condition both of mind
+and health which exceeded his worst apprehensions.
+
+Her vacant look, her lifeless posture, appalled him; it was as
+one who gazed on the Medusa's head, and felt, without a struggle,
+the human being gradually harden to the statue.  It was not
+frenzy, it was not idiocy,--it was an abstraction, an apathy, a
+sleep in waking.  Only as the night advanced towards the eleventh
+hour--the hour in which Glyndon had concluded his tale--she grew
+visibly uneasy, anxious, and perturbed.  Then her lips muttered;
+her hands writhed; she looked round with a look of unspeakable
+appeal for succour, for protection, and suddenly, as the clock
+struck, fell with a shriek to the ground, cold and lifeless.
+With difficulty, and not until after the most earnest prayers,
+did she answer the agonised questions of Glyndon; at last she
+owned that at that hour, and that hour alone, wherever she was
+placed, however occupied, she distinctly beheld the apparition of
+an old hag, who, after thrice knocking at the door, entered the
+room, and hobbling up to her with a countenance distorted by
+hideous rage and menace, laid its icy fingers on her forehead:
+from that moment she declared that sense forsook her; and when
+she woke again, it was only to wait, in suspense that froze up
+her blood, the repetition of the ghastly visitation.
+
+The physician who had been summoned before Glyndon's return, and
+whose letter had recalled him to London, was a commonplace
+practitioner, ignorant of the case, and honestly anxious that one
+more experienced should be employed.  Clarence called in one of
+the most eminent of the faculty, and to him he recited the
+optical delusion of his sister.  The physician listened
+attentively, and seemed sanguine in his hopes of cure.  He came
+to the house two hours before the one so dreaded by the patient.
+He had quietly arranged that the clocks should be put forward
+half an hour, unknown to Adela, and even to her brother.  He was
+a man of the most extraordinary powers of conversation, of
+surpassing wit, of all the faculties that interest and amuse.  He
+first administered to the patient a harmless potion, which he
+pledged himself would dispel the delusion.  His confident tone
+woke her own hopes,-- he continued to excite her attention, to
+rouse her lethargy; he jested, he laughed away the time.  The
+hour struck.  "Joy, my brother!" she exclaimed, throwing herself
+in his arms; "the time is past!"  And then, like one released
+from a spell, she suddenly assumed more than her ancient
+cheerfulness.  "Ah, Clarence!" she whispered, "forgive me for my
+former desertion,--forgive me that I feared YOU.  I shall live!--
+I shall live! in my turn to banish the spectre that haunts my
+brother!"  And Clarence smiled and wiped the tears from his
+burning eyes.  The physician renewed his stories, his jests.  In
+the midst of a stream of rich humour that seemed to carry away
+both brother and sister, Glyndon suddenly saw over Adela's face
+the same fearful change, the same anxious look, the same
+restless, straining eye, he had beheld the night before.  He
+rose,--he approached her.  Adela started up.  "look--look--look!"
+she exclaimed.  "She comes!  Save me,--save me!" and she fell at
+his feet in strong convulsions as the clock, falsely and in vain
+put forward, struck the half-hour.
+
+The physician lifted her in his arms.  "My worst fears are
+confirmed," he said gravely; "the disease is epilepsy."  (The
+most celebrated practitioner in Dublin related to the editor a
+story of optical delusion precisely similar in its circumstances
+and its physical cause to the one here narrated.)
+
+The next night, at the same hour, Adela Glyndon died.
+
+
+CHAPTER 5.VI.
+
+La loi, dont le regne vous epouvante, a son glaive leve sur vous:
+elle vous frappera tous:  le genre humain a besoin de cet
+exemple.--Couthon.
+
+(The law, whose reign terrifies you, has its sword raised against
+you; it will strike you all:  humanity has need of this example.)
+
+"Oh, joy, joy!--thou art come again!  This is thy hand--these thy
+lips.  Say that thou didst not desert me from the love of
+another; say it again,--say it ever!--and I will pardon thee all
+the rest!"
+
+"So thou hast mourned for me?"
+
+"Mourned!--and thou wert cruel enough to leave me gold; there it
+is,--there, untouched!"
+
+"Poor child of Nature! how, then, in this strange town of
+Marseilles, hast thou found bread and shelter?"
+
+"Honestly, soul of my soul! honestly, but yet by the face thou
+didst once think so fair; thinkest thou THAT now?"
+
+"Yes, Fillide, more fair than ever.  But what meanest thou?"
+
+"There is a painter here--a great man, one of their great men at
+Paris, I know not what they call them; but he rules over all
+here,--life and death; and he has paid me largely but to sit for
+my portrait.  It is for a picture to be given to the Nation, for
+he paints only for glory.  Think of thy Fillide's renown!"  And
+the girl's wild eyes sparkled; her vanity was roused.  "And he
+would have married me if I would!--divorced his wife to marry me!
+But I waited for thee, ungrateful!"
+
+A knock at the door was heard,--a man entered.
+
+"Nicot!"
+
+"Ah, Glyndon!--hum!--welcome!  What! thou art twice my rival!
+But Jean Nicot bears no malice.  Virtue is my dream,--my country,
+my mistress.  Serve my country, citizen; and I forgive thee the
+preference of beauty.  Ca ira! ca ira!"
+
+But as the painter spoke, it hymned, it rolled through the
+streets,--the fiery song of the Marseillaise!  There was a crowd,
+a multitude, a people up, abroad, with colours and arms,
+enthusiasm and song,--with song, with enthusiasm, with colours
+and arms!  And who could guess that that martial movement was
+one, not of war, but massacre,--Frenchmen against Frenchmen?  For
+there are two parties in Marseilles,--and ample work for Jourdan
+Coupe-tete!  But this, the Englishman, just arrived, a stranger
+to all factions, did not as yet comprehend.  He comprehended
+nothing but the song, the enthusiasm, the arms, and the colours
+that lifted to the sun the glorious lie, "Le peuple Francais,
+debout contre les tyrans!"  (Up, Frenchmen, against tyrants!)
+
+The dark brow of the wretched wanderer grew animated; he gazed
+from the window on the throng that marched below, beneath their
+waving Oriflamme.  They shouted as they beheld the patriot Nicot,
+the friend of Liberty and relentless Hebert, by the stranger's
+side, at the casement.
+
+"Ay, shout again!" cried the painter,--"shout for the brave
+Englishman who abjures his Pitts and his Coburgs to be a citizen
+of Liberty and France!"
+
+A thousand voices rent the air, and the hymn of the Marseillaise
+rose in majesty again.
+
+"Well, and if it be among these high hopes and this brave people
+that the phantom is to vanish, and the cure to come!" muttered
+Glyndon; and he thought he felt again the elixir sparkling
+through his veins.
+
+"Thou shalt be one of the Convention with Paine and Clootz,--I
+will manage it all for thee!" cried Nicot, slapping him on the
+shoulder: "and Paris--"
+
+"Ah, if I could but see Paris!" cried Fillide, in her joyous
+voice.  Joyous! the whole time, the town, the air--save where,
+unheard, rose the cry of agony and the yell of murder--were joy!
+Sleep unhaunting in thy grave, cold Adela.  Joy, joy!  In the
+Jubilee of Humanity all private griefs should cease!  Behold,
+wild mariner, the vast whirlpool draws thee to its stormy bosom!
+There the individual is not.  All things are of the whole!  Open
+thy gates, fair Paris, for the stranger-citizen!  Receive in your
+ranks, O meek Republicans, the new champion of liberty, of
+reason, of mankind!  "Mejnour is right; it was in virtue, in
+valour, in glorious struggle for the human race, that the spectre
+was to shrink to her kindred darkness."
+
+And Nicot's shrill voice praised him; and lean Robespierre--
+"Flambeau, colonne, pierre angulaire de l'edifice de la
+Republique!"  ("The light, column, and keystone of the
+Republic."--"Lettre du Citoyen P--; Papiers inedits trouves chez
+Robespierre," tom 11, page 127.)--smiled ominously on him from
+his bloodshot eyes; and Fillide clasped him with passionate arms
+to her tender breast.  And at his up-rising and down-sitting, at
+board and in bed, though he saw it not, the Nameless One guided
+him with the demon eyes to the sea whose waves were gore.
+
+
+BOOK VI.
+
+SUPERSTITION DESERTING FAITH.
+
+Why do I yield to that suggestion, Whose horrid image doth unfix
+my hair.--Shakespeare
+
+CHAPTER 6.I.
+
+Therefore the Genii were painted with a platter full of garlands
+and flowers in one hand, and a whip in the other.--Alexander
+Ross, "Mystag. Poet."
+
+According to the order of the events related in this narrative,
+the departure of Zanoni and Viola from the Greek isle, in which
+two happy years appear to have been passed, must have been
+somewhat later in date than the arrival of Glyndon at Marseilles.
+It must have been in the course of the year 1791 when Viola fled
+from Naples with her mysterious lover, and when Glyndon sought
+Mejnour in the fatal castle.  It is now towards the close of
+1793, when our story again returns to Zanoni.  The stars of
+winter shone down on the lagunes of Venice.  The hum of the
+Rialto was hushed,--the last loiterers had deserted the Place of
+St. Mark's, and only at distant intervals might be heard the oars
+of the rapid gondolas, bearing reveller or lover to his home.
+But lights still flitted to and fro across the windows of one of
+the Palladian palaces, whose shadow slept in the great canal; and
+within the palace watched the twin Eumenides that never sleep for
+Man,--Fear and Pain.
+
+"I will make thee the richest man in all Venice, if thou savest
+her."
+
+"Signor," said the leech; "your gold cannot control death, and
+the will of Heaven, signor, unless within the next hour there is
+some blessed change, prepare your courage."
+
+Ho--ho, Zanoni! man of mystery and might, who hast walked amidst
+the passions of the world, with no changes on thy brow, art thou
+tossed at last upon the billows of tempestuous fear?  Does thy
+spirit reel to and fro?--knowest thou at last the strength and
+the majesty of Death?
+
+He fled, trembling, from the pale-faced man of art,--fled through
+stately hall and long-drawn corridor, and gained a remote chamber
+in the palace, which other step than his was not permitted to
+profane.  Out with thy herbs and vessels.  Break from the
+enchanted elements, O silvery-azure flame!  Why comes he not,--
+the Son of the Starbeam!  Why is Adon-Ai deaf to thy solemn call?
+It comes not,--the luminous and delightsome Presence!  Cabalist!
+are thy charms in vain?  Has thy throne vanished from the realms
+of space?  Thou standest pale and trembling.  Pale trembler! not
+thus didst thou look when the things of glory gathered at thy
+spell.  Never to the pale trembler bow the things of glory:  the
+soul, and not the herbs, nor the silvery-azure flame, nor the
+spells of the Cabala, commands the children of the air; and THY
+soul, by Love and Death, is made sceptreless and discrowned!
+
+At length the flame quivers,--the air grows cold as the wind in
+charnels.  A thing not of earth is present,--a mistlike, formless
+thing.  It cowers in the distance,--a silent Horror! it rises; it
+creeps; it nears thee--dark in its mantle of dusky haze; and
+under its veil it looks on thee with its livid, malignant eyes,--
+the thing of malignant eyes!
+
+"Ha, young Chaldean! young in thy countless ages,--young as when,
+cold to pleasure and to beauty, thou stoodest on the old Fire-
+tower, and heardest the starry silence whisper to thee the last
+mystery that baffles Death,--fearest thou Death at length?  Is
+thy knowledge but a circle that brings thee back whence thy
+wanderings began!  Generations on generations have withered since
+we two met!  Lo! thou beholdest me now!"
+
+"But I behold thee without fear!  Though beneath thine eyes
+thousands have perished; though, where they burn, spring up the
+foul poisons of the human heart, and to those whom thou canst
+subject to thy will, thy presence glares in the dreams of the
+raving maniac, or blackens the dungeon of despairing crime, thou
+art not my vanquisher, but my slave!"
+
+"And as a slave will I serve thee!  Command thy slave, O
+beautiful Chaldean!  Hark, the wail of women!--hark, the sharp
+shriek of thy beloved one!  Death is in thy palace!  Adon-Ai
+comes not to thy call.  Only where no cloud of the passion and
+the flesh veils the eye of the Serene Intelligence can the Sons
+of the Starbeam glide to man.  But _I_ can aid thee!--hark!"  And
+Zanoni heard distinctly in his heart, even at that distance from
+the chamber, the voice of Viola calling in delirium on her
+beloved one.
+
+"Oh, Viola, I can save thee not!" exclaimed the seer,
+passionately; "my love for thee has made me powerless!"
+
+"Not powerless; I can gift thee with the art to save her,--I can
+place healing in thy hand!"
+
+"For both?--child and mother,--for both?"
+
+"Both!"
+
+A convulsion shook the limbs of the seer,--a mighty struggle
+shook him as a child:  the Humanity and the Hour conquered the
+repugnant spirit.
+
+"I yield!  Mother and child--save both!"
+
+...
+
+In the dark chamber lay Viola, in the sharpest agonies of
+travail; life seemed rending itself away in the groans and cries
+that spoke of pain in the midst of frenzy; and still, in groan
+and cry, she called on Zanoni, her beloved.  The physician looked
+to the clock; on it beat:  the Heart of Time,--regularly and
+slowly,--Heart that never sympathised with Life, and never
+flagged for Death!  "The cries are fainter," said the leech; "in
+ten minutes more all will be past."
+
+Fool! the minutes laugh at thee; Nature, even now, like a blue
+sky through a shattered temple, is smiling through the tortured
+frame.  The breathing grows more calm and hushed; the voice of
+delirium is dumb,--a sweet dream has come to Viola.  Is it a
+dream, or is it the soul that sees?  She thinks suddenly that she
+is with Zanoni, that her burning head is pillowed on his bosom;
+she thinks, as he gazes on her, that his eyes dispel the tortures
+that prey upon her,--the touch of his hand cools the fever on her
+brow; she hears his voice in murmurs,--it is a music from which
+the fiends fly.  Where is the mountain that seemed to press upon
+her temples?  Like a vapour, it rolls away.  In the frosts of the
+winter night, she sees the sun laughing in luxurious heaven,--she
+hears the whisper of green leaves; the beautiful world, valley
+and stream and woodland, lie before, and with a common voice
+speak to her, "We are not yet past for thee!" Fool of drugs and
+formula, look to thy dial-plate!--the hand has moved on; the
+minutes are with Eternity; the soul thy sentence would have
+dismissed, still dwells on the shores of Time.  She sleeps: the
+fever abates; the convulsions are gone; the living rose blooms
+upon her cheek; the crisis is past!  Husband, thy wife lives;
+lover, thy universe is no solitude!  Heart of Time, beat on!  A
+while, a little while,--joy! joy! joy!--father, embrace thy
+child!
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.II.
+
+Tristis Erinnys
+Praetulit infaustas sanguinolenta faces.
+Ovid.
+
+(Erinnys, doleful and bloody, extends the unblessed torches.)
+
+And they placed the child in the father's arms!  As silently he
+bent over it, tears--tears, how human!--fell from his eyes like
+rain!  And the little one smiled through the tears that bathed
+its cheeks!  Ah, with what happy tears we welcome the stranger
+into our sorrowing world!  With what agonising tears we dismiss
+the stranger back to the angels!  Unselfish joy; but how selfish
+is the sorrow!
+
+And now through the silent chamber a faint sweet voice is heard,
+--the young mother's voice.
+
+"I am here:  I am by thy side!" murmured Zanoni.
+
+The mother smiled, and clasped his hand, and asked no more; she
+was contented.
+
+...
+
+Viola recovered with a rapidity that startled the physician; and
+the young stranger thrived as if it already loved the world to
+which it had descended.  From that hour Zanoni seemed to live in
+the infant's life, and in that life the souls of mother and
+father met as in a new bond.  Nothing more beautiful than this
+infant had eye ever dwelt upon.  It was strange to the nurses
+that it came not wailing to the light, but smiled to the light as
+a thing familiar to it before.  It never uttered one cry of
+childish pain.  In its very repose it seemed to be listening to
+some happy voice within its heart: it seemed itself so happy.  In
+its eyes you would have thought intellect already kindled, though
+it had not yet found a language.  Already it seemed to recognise
+its parents; already it stretched forth its arms when Zanoni bent
+over the bed, in which it breathed and bloomed,--the budding
+flower!  And from that bed he was rarely absent:  gazing upon it
+with his serene, delighted eyes, his soul seemed to feed its own.
+At night and in utter darkness he was still there; and Viola
+often heard him murmuring over it as she lay in a half-sleep.
+But the murmur was in a language strange to her; and sometimes
+when she heard she feared, and vague, undefined superstitions
+came back to her,--the superstitions of earlier youth.  A mother
+fears everything, even the gods, for her new-born.  The mortals
+shrieked aloud when of old they saw the great Demeter seeking to
+make their child immortal.
+
+But Zanoni, wrapped in the sublime designs that animated the
+human love to which he was now awakened, forgot all, even all he
+had forfeited or incurred, in the love that blinded him.
+
+But the dark, formless thing, though he nor invoked nor saw it,
+crept, often, round and round him, and often sat by the infant's
+couch, with its hateful eyes.
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.III.
+
+Fuscis tellurem amplectitur alis.
+Virgil.
+
+(Embraces the Earth with gloomy wings.)
+
+Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.
+
+Mejnour, Humanity, with all its sorrows and its joys, is mine
+once more.  Day by day, I am forging my own fetters.  I live in
+other lives than my own, and in them I have lost more than half
+my empire.  Not lifting them aloft, they drag me by the strong
+bands of the affections to their own earth.  Exiled from the
+beings only visible to the most abstract sense, the grim Enemy
+that guards the Threshold has entangled me in its web.  Canst
+thou credit me, when I tell thee that I have accepted its gifts,
+and endure the forfeit?  Ages must pass ere the brighter beings
+can again obey the spirit that has bowed to the ghastly one!
+And--
+
+...
+
+In this hope, then, Mejnour, I triumph still; I yet have supreme
+power over this young life.  Insensibly and inaudibly my soul
+speaks to its own, and prepares it even now.  Thou knowest that
+for the pure and unsullied infant spirit, the ordeal has no
+terror and no peril.  Thus unceasingly I nourish it with no
+unholy light; and ere it yet be conscious of the gift, it will
+gain the privileges it has been mine to attain:  the child, by
+slow and scarce-seen degrees, will communicate its own attributes
+to the mother; and content to see Youth forever radiant on the
+brows of the two that now suffice to fill up my whole infinity of
+thought, shall I regret the airier kingdom that vanishes hourly
+from my grasp?  But thou, whose vision is still clear and serene,
+look into the far deeps shut from my gaze, and counsel me, or
+forewarn!  I know that the gifts of the Being whose race is so
+hostile to our own are, to the ccommon seeker, fatal and
+perfidious as itself.  And hence, when, at the outskirts of
+knowledge, which in earlier ages men called Magic, they
+encountered the things of the hostile tribes, they believed the
+apparitions to be fiends, and, by fancied compacts, imagined they
+had signed away their souls; as if man could give for an eternity
+that over which he has control but while he lives!  Dark, and
+shrouded forever from human sight, dwell the demon rebels, in
+their impenetrable realm; in them is no breath of the Divine One.
+In every human creature the Divine One breathes; and He alone can
+judge His own hereafter, and allot its new career and home.
+Could man sell himself to the fiend, man could prejudge himself,
+and arrogate the disposal of eternity!  But these creatures,
+modifications as they are of matter, and some with more than the
+malignanty of man, may well seem, to fear and unreasoning
+superstition, the representatives of fiends.  And from the
+darkest and mightiest of them I have accepted a boon,--the secret
+that startled Death from those so dear to me.  Can I not trust
+that enough of power yet remains to me to baffle or to daunt the
+Phantom, if it seek to pervert the gift?  Answer me, Mejnour, for
+in the darkness that veils me, I see only the pure eyes of the
+new-born; I hear only the low beating of my heart.  Answer me,
+thou whose wisdom is without love!
+
+Mejnour to Zanoni.
+
+Rome.
+
+Fallen One!--I see before thee Evil and Death and Woe!  Thou to
+have relinquished Adon-Ai for the nameless Terror,--the heavenly
+stars for those fearful eyes!  Thou, at the last to be the victim
+of the Larva of the dreary Threshold, that, in thy first
+novitiate, fled, withered and shrivelled, from thy kingly brow!
+When, at the primary grades of initiation, the pupil I took from
+thee on the shores of the changed Parthenope, fell senseless and
+cowering before that Phantom-Darkness, I knew that his spirit was
+not formed to front the worlds beyond; for FEAR is the attraction
+of man to earthiest earth, and while he fears, he cannot soar.
+But THOU, seest thou not that to love is but to fear; seest thou
+not that the power of which thou boastest over the malignant one
+is already gone?  It awes, it masters thee; it will mock thee and
+betray.  Lose not a moment; come to me.  If there can yet be
+sufficient sympathy between us, through MY eyes shalt thou see,
+and perhaps guard against the perils that, shapeless yet, and
+looming through the shadow, marshal themselves around thee and
+those whom thy very love has doomed.  Come from all the ties of
+thy fond humanity; they will but obscure thy vision!  Come forth
+from thy fears and hopes, thy desires and passions.  Come, as
+alone Mind can be the monarch and the seer, shining through the
+home it tenants,--a pure, impressionless, sublime intelligence!
+
+
+Chapter 6.IV.
+
+Plus que vous ne pensez ce moment est terrible.
+La Harpe, "Le Comte de Warwick," Act 3, sc. 5.
+
+(The moment is more terrible than you think.)
+
+For the first time since their union, Zanoni and Viola were
+separated,--Zanoni went to Rome on important business.  "It was,"
+he said, "but for a few days;" and he went so suddenly that there
+was little time either for surprise or sorrow.  But first parting
+is always more melancholy than it need be:  it seems an
+interruption to the existence which Love shares with Love; it
+makes the heart feel what a void life will be when the last
+parting shall succeed, as succeed it must, the first.  But Viola
+had a new companion; she was enjoying that most delicious novelty
+which ever renews the youth and dazzles the eyes of woman.  As
+the mistress--the wife--she leans on another; from another are
+reflected her happiness, her being,--as an orb that takes light
+from its sun.  But now, in turn, as the mother, she is raised
+from dependence into power; it is another that leans on her,--a
+star has sprung into space, to which she herself has become the
+sun!
+
+A few days,--but they will be sweet through the sorrow!  A few
+days,--every hour of which seems an era to the infant, over whom
+bend watchful the eyes and the heart.  From its waking to its
+sleep, from its sleep to its waking, is a revolution in Time.
+Every gesture to be noted,--every smile to seem a new progress
+into the world it has come to bless!  Zanoni has gone,--the last
+dash of the oar is lost, the last speck of the gondola has
+vanished from the ocean-streets of Venice!  Her infant is
+sleeping in the cradle at the mother's feet; and she thinks
+through her tears what tales of the fairy-land, that spreads far
+and wide, with a thousand wonders, in that narrow bed, she shall
+have to tell the father!  Smile on, weep on, young mother!
+Already the fairest leaf in the wild volume is closed for thee,
+and the invisible finger turns the page!
+
+...
+
+By the bridge of the Rialto stood two Venetians--ardent
+Republicans and Democrats--looking to the Revolution of France as
+the earthquake which must shatter their own expiring and vicious
+constitution, and give equality of ranks and rights to Venice.
+
+"Yes, Cottalto," said one; "my correspondent of Paris has
+promised to elude all obstacles, and baffle all danger.  He will
+arrange with us the hour of revolt, when the legions of France
+shall be within hearing of our guns.  One day in this week, at
+this hour, he is to meet me here.  This is but the fourth day."
+
+He had scarce said these words before a man, wrapped in his
+roquelaire, emerging from one of the narrow streets to the left,
+halted opposite the pair, and eying them for a few moments with
+an earnest scrutiny, whispered, "Salut!"
+
+"Et fraternite," answered the speaker.
+
+"You, then, are the brave Dandolo with whom the Comite deputed me
+to correspond?  And this citizen--"
+
+"Is Cottalto, whom my letters have so often mentioned."  (I know
+not if the author of the original MSS. designs, under these
+names, to introduce the real Cottalto and the true Dandolo, who,
+in 1797, distinguished themselves by their sympathy with the
+French, and their democratic ardor.--Ed.)
+
+"Health and brotherhood to him!  I have much to impart to you
+both.  I will meet you at night, Dandolo.  But in the streets we
+may be observed."
+
+"And I dare not appoint my own house; tyranny makes spies of our
+very walls.  But the place herein designated is secure;" and he
+slipped an address into the hand of his correspondent.
+
+"To-night, then, at nine!  Meanwhile I have other business."  The
+man paused, his colour changed, and it was with an eager and
+passionate voice that he resumed,--
+
+"Your last letter mentioned this wealthy and mysterious visitor,
+--this Zanoni.  He is still at Venice?"
+
+"I heard that he had left this morning; but his wife is still
+here."
+
+"His wife!--that is well!"
+
+"What know you of him?  Think you that he would join us?  His
+wealth would be--"
+
+"His house, his address,--quick!" interrupted the man.
+
+"The Palazzo di --, on the Grand Canal."
+
+"I thank you,--at nine we meet."
+
+The man hurried on through the street from which he had emerged;
+and, passing by the house in which he had taken up his lodging
+(he had arrived at Venice the night before), a woman who stood by
+the door caught his arm.
+
+"Monsieur," she said in French, "I have been watching for your
+return.  Do you understand me?  I will brave all, risk all, to go
+back with you to France,--to stand, through life or in death, by
+my husband's side!"
+
+"Citoyenne, I promised your husband that, if such your choice, I
+would hazard my own safety to aid it.  But think again!  Your
+husband is one of the faction which Robespierre's eyes have
+already marked; he cannot fly.  All France is become a prison to
+the 'suspect.'  You do not endanger yourself by return.  Frankly,
+citoyenne, the fate you would share may be the guillotine.  I
+speak (as you know by his letter) as your husband bade me."
+
+"Monsieur, I will return with you," said the woman, with a smile
+upon her pale face.
+
+"And yet you deserted your husband in the fair sunshine of the
+Revolution, to return to him amidst its storms and thunder," said
+the man, in a tone half of wonder, half rebuke.
+
+"Because my father's days were doomed; because he had no safety
+but in flight to a foreign land; because he was old and
+penniless, and had none but me to work for him; because my
+husband was not then in danger, and my father was! HE is dead--
+dead!  My husband is in danger now.  The daughter's duties are no
+more,--the wife's return!"
+
+"Be it so, citoyenne; on the third night I depart.  Before then
+you may retract your choice."
+
+"Never!"
+
+A dark smile passed over the man's face.
+
+"O guillotine!" he said, "how many virtues hast thou brought to
+light!  Well may they call thee 'A Holy Mother!'  O gory
+guillotine!"
+
+He passed on muttering to himself, hailed a gondola, and was soon
+amidst the crowded waters of the Grand Canal.
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.V.
+
+Ce que j'ignore
+Est plus triste peut-etre et plus affreux encore.
+La Harpe, "Le Comte de Warwick," Act 5, sc. 1.
+
+(That which I know not is, perhaps, more sad and fearful still.)
+
+The casement stood open, and Viola was seated by it.  Beneath
+sparkled the broad waters in the cold but cloudless sunlight; and
+to that fair form, that half-averted face, turned the eyes of
+many a gallant cavalier, as their gondolas glided by.
+
+But at last, in the centre of the canal, one of these dark
+vessels halted motionless, as a man fixed his gaze from its
+lattice upon that stately palace.  He gave the word to the
+rowers,--the vessel approached the marge.  The stranger quitted
+the gondola; he passed up the broad stairs; he entered the
+palace.  Weep on, smile no more, young mother!--the last page is
+turned!
+
+An attendant entered the room, and gave to Viola a card, with
+these words in English, "Viola, I must see you!  Clarence
+Glyndon."
+
+Oh, yes, how gladly Viola would see him; how gladly speak to him
+of her happiness, of Zanoni!--how gladly show to him her child!
+Poor Clarence! she had forgotten him till now, as she had all the
+fever of her earlier life,--its dreams, its vanities, its poor
+excitement, the lamps of the gaudy theatre, the applause of the
+noisy crowd.
+
+He entered.  She started to behold him, so changed were his
+gloomy brow, his resolute, careworn features, from the graceful
+form and careless countenance of the artist-lover.  His dress,
+though not mean, was rude, neglected, and disordered.  A wild,
+desperate, half-savage air had supplanted that ingenuous mien,
+diffident in its grace, earnest in its diffidence, which had once
+characterised the young worshipper of Art, the dreaming aspirant
+after some starrier lore.
+
+"Is it you?" she said at last.  "Poor Clarence, how changed!"
+
+"Changed!" he said abruptly, as he placed himself by her side.
+"And whom am I to thank, but the fiends--the sorcerers--who have
+seized upon thy existence, as upon mine?  Viola, hear me.  A few
+weeks since the news reached me that you were in Venice.  Under
+other pretences, and through innumerable dangers, I have come
+hither, risking liberty, perhaps life, if my name and career are
+known in Venice, to warn and save you.  Changed, you call me!--
+changed without; but what is that to the ravages within?  Be
+warned, be warned in time!"
+
+The voice of Glyndon, sounding hollow and sepulchral, alarmed
+Viola even more than his words.  Pale, haggard, emaciated, he
+seemed almost as one risen from the dead, to appall and awe her.
+"What," she said, at last, in a faltering voice,--"what wild
+words do you utter!  Can you--"
+
+"Listen!" interrupted Glyndon, laying his hand upon her arm, and
+its touch was as cold as death,--"listen!  You have heard of the
+old stories of men who have leagued themselves with devils for
+the attainment of preternatural powers.  Those stories are not
+fables.  Such men live.  Their delight is to increase the
+unhallowed circle of wretches like themselves.  If their
+proselytes fail in the ordeal, the demon seizes them, even in
+this life, as it hath seized me!--if they succeed, woe, yea, a
+more lasting woe!  There is another life, where no spells can
+charm the evil one, or allay the torture.  I have come from a
+scene where blood flows in rivers,--where Death stands by the
+side of the bravest and the highest, and the one monarch is the
+Guillotine; but all the mortal perils with which men can be
+beset, are nothing to the dreariness of the chamber where the
+Horror that passes death moves and stirs!"
+
+It was then that Glyndon, with a cold and distinct precision,
+detailed, as he had done to Adela, the initiation through which
+he had gone.  He described, in words that froze the blood of his
+listener, the appearance of that formless phantom, with the eyes
+that seared the brain and congealed the marrow of those who
+beheld.  Once seen, it never was to be exorcised.  It came at its
+own will, prompting black thoughts,--whispering strange
+temptations.  Only in scenes of turbulent excitement was it
+absent!  Solitude, serenity, the struggling desires after peace
+and virtue,--THESE were the elements it loved to haunt!
+Bewildered, terror-stricken, the wild account confirmed by the
+dim impressions that never, in the depth and confidence of
+affection, had been closely examined, but rather banished as soon
+as felt,--that the life and attributes of Zanoni were not like
+those of mortals,--impressions which her own love had made her
+hitherto censure as suspicions that wronged, and which, thus
+mitigated, had perhaps only served to rivet the fascinated chains
+in which he bound her heart and senses, but which now, as
+Glyndon's awful narrative filled her with contagious dread, half
+unbound the very spells they had woven before,--Viola started up
+in fear, not for HERSELF, and clasped her child in her arms!
+
+"Unhappiest one!" cried Glyndon, shuddering, "hast thou indeed
+given birth to a victim thou canst not save?  Refuse it
+sustenance,--let it look to thee in vain for food!  In the grave,
+at least, there are repose and peace!"
+
+Then there came back to Viola's mind the remembrance of Zanoni's
+night-long watches by that cradle, and the fear which even then
+had crept over her as she heard his murmured half-chanted words.
+And as the child looked at her with its clear, steadfast eye, in
+the strange intelligence of that look there was something that
+only confirmed her awe.  So there both Mother and Forewarner
+stood in silence,--the sun smiling upon them through the
+casement, and dark by the cradle, though they saw it not, sat the
+motionless, veiled Thing!
+
+But by degrees better and juster and more grateful memories of
+the past returned to the young mother.  The features of the
+infant, as she gazed, took the aspect of the absent father.  A
+voice seemed to break from those rosy lips, and say, mournfully,
+"I speak to thee in thy child.  In return for all my love for
+thee and thine, dost thou distrust me, at the first sentence of a
+maniac who accuses?"
+
+Her breast heaved, her stature rose, her eyes shone with a serene
+and holy light.
+
+"Go, poor victim of thine own delusions," she said to Glyndon; "I
+would not believe mine own senses, if they accused ITS father!
+And what knowest thou of Zanoni?  What relation have Mejnour and
+the grisly spectres he invoked, with the radiant image with which
+thou wouldst connect them?"
+
+"Thou wilt learn too soon," replied Glyndon, gloomily.  "And the
+very phantom that haunts me, whispers, with its bloodless lips,
+that its horrors await both thine and thee!  I take not thy
+decision yet; before I leave Venice we shall meet again."
+
+He said, and departed.
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.VI.
+
+Quel est l'egarement ou ton ame se livre?
+La Harpe, "Le Comte de Warwick," Act 4, sc. 4.
+
+(To what delusion does thy soul abandon itself?)
+
+Alas, Zanoni! the aspirer, the dark, bright one!--didst thou
+think that the bond between the survivor of ages and the daughter
+of a day could endure?  Didst thou not foresee that, until the
+ordeal was past, there could be no equality between thy wisdom
+and her love?  Art thou absent now seeking amidst thy solemn
+secrets the solemn safeguards for child and mother, and
+forgettest thou that the phantom that served thee hath power over
+its own gifts,--over the lives it taught thee to rescue from the
+grave?  Dost thou not know that Fear and Distrust, once sown in
+the heart of Love, spring up from the seed into a forest that
+excludes the stars?  Dark, bright one! the hateful eyes glare
+beside the mother and the child!
+
+All that day Viola was distracted by a thousand thoughts and
+terrors, which fled as she examined them to settle back the
+darklier.  She remembered that, as she had once said to Glyndon,
+her very childhood had been haunted with strange forebodings,
+that she was ordained for some preternatural doom.  She
+remembered that, as she had told him this, sitting by the seas
+that slumbered in the arms of the Bay of Naples, he, too, had
+acknowledged the same forebodings, and a mysterious sympathy had
+appeared to unite their fates.  She remembered, above all, that,
+comparing their entangled thoughts, both had then said, that with
+the first sight of Zanoni the foreboding, the instinct, had
+spoken to their hearts more audibly than before, whispering that
+"with HIM was connected the secret of the unconjectured life."
+
+And now, when Glyndon and Viola met again, the haunting fears of
+childhood, thus referred to, woke from their enchanted sleep.
+With Glyndon's terror she felt a sympathy, against which her
+reason and her love struggled in vain.  And still, when she
+turned her looks upon her child, it watched her with that steady,
+earnest eye, and its lips moved as if it sought to speak to her,
+--but no sound came.  The infant refused to sleep.  Whenever she
+gazed upon its face, still those wakeful, watchful eyes!--and in
+their earnestness, there spoke something of pain, of upbraiding,
+of accusation.  They chilled her as she looked.  Unable to
+endure, of herself, this sudden and complete revulsion of all the
+feelings which had hitherto made up her life, she formed the
+resolution natural to her land and creed; she sent for the priest
+who had habitually attended her at Venice, and to him she
+confessed, with passionate sobs and intense terror, the doubts
+that had broken upon her.  The good father, a worthy and pious
+man, but with little education and less sense, one who held (as
+many of the lower Italians do to this day) even a poet to be a
+sort of sorcerer, seemed to shut the gates of hope upon her
+heart.  His remonstrances were urgent, for his horror was
+unfeigned.  He joined with Glyndon in imploring her to fly, if
+she felt the smallest doubt that her husband's pursuits were of
+the nature which the Roman Church had benevolently burned so many
+scholars for adopting.  And even the little that Viola could
+communicate seemed, to the ignorant ascetic, irrefragable proof
+of sorcery and witchcraft; he had, indeed, previously heard some
+of the strange rumours which followed the path of Zanoni, and was
+therefore prepared to believe the worst; the worthy Bartolomeo
+would have made no bones of sending Watt to the stake, had he
+heard him speak of the steam-engine.  But Viola, as untutored as
+himself, was terrified by his rough and vehement eloquence,--
+terrified, for by that penetration which Catholic priests,
+however dull, generally acquire, in their vast experience of the
+human heart hourly exposed to their probe, Bartolomeo spoke less
+of danger to herself than to her child.  "Sorcerers," said he,
+"have ever sought the most to decoy and seduce the souls of the
+young,--nay, the infant;" and therewith he entered into a long
+catalogue of legendary fables, which he quoted as historical
+facts.  All at which an English woman would have smiled, appalled
+the tender but superstitious Neapolitan; and when the priest left
+her, with solemn rebukes and grave accusations of a dereliction
+of her duties to her child, if she hesitated to fly with it from
+an abode polluted by the darker powers and unhallowed arts,
+Viola, still clinging to the image of Zanoni, sank into a passive
+lethargy which held her very reason in suspense.
+
+The hours passed:  night came on; the house was hushed; and
+Viola, slowly awakened from the numbness and torpor which had
+usurped her faculties, tossed to and fro on her couch, restless
+and perturbed.  The stillness became intolerable; yet more
+intolerable the sound that alone broke it, the voice of the
+clock, knelling moment after moment to its grave.  The moments,
+at last, seemed themselves to find voice,--to gain shape.  She
+thought she beheld them springing, wan and fairy-like, from the
+womb of darkness; and ere they fell again, extinguished, into
+that womb, their grave, their low small voices murmured, "Woman,
+we report to eternity all that is done in time!  What shall we
+report of thee, O guardian of a new-born soul?"  She became
+sensible that her fancies had brought a sort of partial delirium,
+that she was in a state between sleep and waking, when suddenly
+one thought became more predominant than the rest.  The chamber
+which, in that and every house they had inhabited, even that in
+the Greek isles, Zanoni had set apart to a solitude on which none
+might intrude, the threshold of which even Viola's step was
+forbid to cross, and never, hitherto, in that sweet repose of
+confidence which belongs to contented love, had she even felt the
+curious desire to disobey,--now, that chamber drew her towards
+it.  Perhaps THERE might be found a somewhat to solve the riddle,
+to dispel or confirm the doubt:  that thought grew and deepened
+in its intenseness; it fastened on her as with a palpable and
+irresistible grasp; it seemed to raise her limbs without her
+will.
+
+And now, through the chamber, along the galleries thou glidest, O
+lovely shape! sleep-walking, yet awake.  The moon shines on thee
+as thou glidest by, casement after casement, white-robed and
+wandering spirit!--thine arms crossed upon thy bosom, thine eyes
+fixed and open, with a calm unfearing awe.  Mother, it is thy
+child that leads thee on!  The fairy moments go before thee; thou
+hearest still the clock-knell tolling them to their graves
+behind.  On, gliding on, thou hast gained the door; no lock bars
+thee, no magic spell drives thee back.  Daughter of the dust,
+thou standest alone with night in the chamber where, pale and
+numberless, the hosts of space have gathered round the seer!
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.VII.
+
+Des Erdenlebens
+Schweres Traumbild sinkt, und sinkt, und sinkt.
+"Das Ideal und das Lebens."
+
+(The Dream Shape of the heavy earthly life sinks, and sinks, and
+sinks.)
+
+She stood within the chamber, and gazed around her; no signs by
+which an inquisitor of old could have detected the scholar of the
+Black Art were visible.  No crucibles and caldrons, no brass-
+bound volumes and ciphered girdles, no skulls and cross-bones.
+Quietly streamed the broad moonlight through the desolate chamber
+with its bare, white walls.  A few bunches of withered herbs, a
+few antique vessels of bronze, placed carelessly on a wooden
+form, were all which that curious gaze could identify with the
+pursuits of the absent owner.  The magic, if it existed, dwelt in
+the artificer, and the materials, to other hands, were but herbs
+and bronze.  So is it ever with thy works and wonders, O Genius,
+--Seeker of the Stars!  Words themselves are the common property
+of all men; yet, from words themselves, Thou Architect of
+Immortalities, pilest up temples that shall outlive the Pyramids,
+and the very leaf of the Papyrus becomes a Shinar, stately with
+towers, round which the Deluge of Ages, shall roar in vain!
+
+But in that solitude has the Presence that there had invoked its
+wonders left no enchantment of its own?  It seemed so; for as
+Viola stood in the chamber, she became sensible that some
+mysterious change was at work within herself.  Her blood coursed
+rapidly, and with a sensation of delight, through her veins,--she
+felt as if chains were falling from her limbs, as if cloud after
+cloud was rolling from her gaze.  All the confused thoughts which
+had moved through her trance settled and centred themselves in
+one intense desire to see the Absent One,--to be with him.  The
+monads that make up space and air seemed charged with a spiritual
+attraction,--to become a medium through which her spirit could
+pass from its clay, and confer with the spirit to which the
+unutterable desire compelled it.  A faintness seized her; she
+tottered to the seat on which the vessels and herbs were placed,
+and, as she bent down, she saw in one of the vessels a small vase
+of crystal.  By a mechanical and involuntary impulse, her hand
+seized the vase; she opened it, and the volatile essence it
+contained sparkled up, and spread through the room a powerful and
+delicious fragrance.  She inhaled the odour, she laved her
+temples with the liquid, and suddenly her life seemed to spring
+up from the previous faintness,--to spring, to soar, to float, to
+dilate upon the wings of a bird.  The room vanished from her
+eyes.  Away, away, over lands and seas and space on the rushing
+desire flies the disprisoned mind!
+
+Upon a stratum, not of this world, stood the world-born shapes of
+the sons of Science, upon an embryo world, upon a crude, wan,
+attenuated mass of matter, one of the Nebulae, which the suns of
+the myriad systems throw off as they roll round the Creator's
+throne*, to become themselves new worlds of symmetry and glory,--
+planets and suns that forever and forever shall in their turn
+multiply their shining race, and be the fathers of suns and
+planets yet to come.
+
+(*"Astronomy instructs us that, in the original condition of the
+solar system, the sun was the nucleus of a nebulosity or luminous
+mass which revolved on its axis, and extended far beyond the
+orbits of all the planets,--the planets as yet having no
+existence.  Its temperature gradually diminished, and, becoming
+contracted by cooling, the rotation increased in rapidity, and
+zones of nebulosity were successively thrown off, in consequence
+of the centrifugal force overpowering the central attraction.
+The condensation of these separate masses constituted the planets
+and satellites.  But this view of the conversion of gaseous
+matter into planetary bodies is not limited to our own system; it
+extends to the formation of the innumerable suns and worlds which
+are distributed throughout the universe.  The sublime discoveries
+of modern astronomers have shown that every part of the realms of
+space abounds in large expansions of attenuated matter termed
+nebulae, which are irregularly reflective of light, of various
+figures, and in different states of condensation, from that of a
+diffused, luminous mass to suns and planets like our own."--From
+Mantell's eloquent and delightful work, entitled "The Wonders of
+Geology," volume i. page 22.)
+
+There, in that enormous solitude of an infant world, which
+thousands and thousands of years can alone ripen into form, the
+spirit of Viola beheld the shape of Zanoni, or rather the
+likeness, the simulacrun, the LEMUR of his shape, not its human
+and corporeal substance,--as if, like hers, the Intelligence was
+parted from the Clay,--and as the sun, while it revolves and
+glows, had cast off into remotest space that nebular image of
+itself, so the thing of earth, in the action of its more luminous
+and enduring being, had thrown its likeness into that new-born
+stranger of the heavens.  There stood the phantom,--a phantom
+Mejnour, by its side.  In the gigantic chaos around raved and
+struggled the kindling elements; water and fire, darkness and
+light, at war,--vapour and cloud hardening into mountains, and
+the Breath of Life moving like a steadfast splendour over all.
+
+As the dreamer looked, and shivered, she beheld that even there
+the two phantoms of humanity were not alone.  Dim monster-forms
+that that disordered chaos alone could engender, the first
+reptile Colossal race that wreathe and crawl through the earliest
+stratum of a world labouring into life, coiled in the oozing
+matter or hovered through the meteorous vapours.  But these the
+two seekers seemed not to heed; their gaze was fixed intent upon
+an object in the farthest space.  With the eyes of the spirit,
+Viola followed theirs; with a terror far greater than the chaos
+and its hideous inhabitants produced, she beheld a shadowy
+likeness of the very room in which her form yet dwelt, its white
+walls, the moonshine sleeping on its floor, its open casement,
+with the quiet roofs and domes of Venice looming over the sea
+that sighed below,--and in that room the ghost-like image of
+herself!  This double phantom--here herself a phantom, gazing
+there upon a phantom-self--had in it a horror which no words can
+tell, no length of life forego.
+
+But presently she saw this image of herself rise slowly, leave
+the room with its noiseless feet:  it passes the corridor, it
+kneels by a cradle!  Heaven of Heaven!  She beholds her child!--
+still with its wondrous, child-like beauty and its silent,
+wakeful eyes.  But beside that cradle there sits cowering a
+mantled, shadowy form,--the more fearful and ghastly from its
+indistinct and unsubstantial gloom.  The walls of that chamber
+seem to open as the scene of a theatre.  A grim dungeon; streets
+through which pour shadowy crowds; wrath and hatred, and the
+aspect of demons in their ghastly visages; a place of death; a
+murderous instrument; a shamble-house of human flesh; herself;
+her child;--all, all, rapid phantasmagoria, chased each other.
+Suddenly the phantom-Zanoni turned, it seemed to perceive
+herself,--her second self.  It sprang towards her; her spirit
+could bear no more.  She shrieked, she woke.  She found that in
+truth she had left that dismal chamber; the cradle was before
+her, the child! all--all as that trance had seen it; and,
+vanishing into air, even that dark, formless Thing!
+
+"My child! my child! thy mother shall save thee yet!"
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.VIII.
+
+Qui?  Toi m'abandonner!  Ou vas-tu?  Non! demeure,
+Demeure!
+La Harpe, "Le Comte de Warwick," Act 3, sc. 5.
+
+(Who?  THOU abandon me!--where goest thou?  No! stay, stay!)
+
+Letter from Viola to Zanoni.
+
+"It has come to this!--I am the first to part!  I, the unfaithful
+one, bid thee farewell forever.  When thine eyes fall upon this
+writing thou wilt know me as one of the dead.  For thou that
+wert, and still art my life,--I am lost to thee!  O lover!  O
+husband!  O still worshipped and adored! if thou hast ever loved
+me, if thou canst still pity, seek not to discover the steps that
+fly thee.  If thy charms can detect and tract me, spare me, spare
+our child!  Zanoni, I will rear it to love thee, to call thee
+father!  Zanoni, its young lips shall pray for thee!  Ah, spare
+thy child, for infants are the saints of earth, and their
+mediation may be heard on high!  Shall I tell thee why I part?
+No; thou, the wisely-terrible, canst divine what the hand
+trembles to record; and while I shudder at thy power,--while it
+is thy power I fly (our child upon my bosom),--it comforts me
+still to think that thy power can read the heart!  Thou knowest
+that it is the faithful mother that writes to thee, it is not the
+faithless wife!  Is there sin in thy knowledge, Zanoni?  Sin must
+have sorrow:  and it were sweet--oh, how sweet--to be thy
+comforter.  But the child, the infant, the soul that looks to
+mine for its shield!--magician, I wrest from thee that soul!
+Pardon, pardon, if my words wrong thee.  See, I fall on my knees
+to write the rest!
+
+"Why did I never recoil before from thy mysterious lore; why did
+the very strangeness of thine unearthly life only fascinate me
+with a delightful fear?  Because, if thou wert sorcerer or angel-
+demon, there was no peril to other but myself:  and none to me,
+for my love was my heavenliest part; and my ignorance in all
+things, except the art to love thee, repelled every thought that
+was not bright and glorious as thine image to my eyes.  But NOW
+there is another!  Look! why does it watch me thus,--why that
+never-sleeping, earnest, rebuking gaze?  Have thy spells
+encompassed it already?  Hast thou marked it, cruel one, for the
+terrors of thy unutterable art?  Do not madden me,--do not madden
+me!--unbind the spell!
+
+"Hark! the oars without!  They come,--they come, to bear me from
+thee!  I look round, and methinks that I see thee everywhere.
+Thou speakest to me from every shadow, from every star.  There,
+by the casement, thy lips last pressed mine; there, there by that
+threshold didst thou turn again, and thy smile seemed so
+trustingly to confide in me!  Zanoni--husband!--I will stay!  I
+cannot part from thee!  No, no!  I will go to the room where thy
+dear voice, with its gentle music, assuaged the pangs of
+travail!--where, heard through the thrilling darkness, it first
+whispered to my ear, 'Viola, thou art a mother!'  A mother!--yes,
+I rise from my knees,--I AM a mother!  They come!  I am firm;
+farewell!"
+
+Yes; thus suddenly, thus cruelly, whether in the delirium of
+blind and unreasoning superstition, or in the resolve of that
+conviction which springs from duty, the being for whom he had
+resigned so much of empire and of glory forsook Zanoni.  This
+desertion, never foreseen, never anticipated, was yet but the
+constant fate that attends those who would place Mind BEYOND the
+earth, and yet treasure the Heart WITHIN it.  Ignorance
+everlastingly shall recoil from knowledge.  But never yet, from
+nobler and purer motives of self-sacrifice, did human love link
+itself to another, than did the forsaking wife now abandon the
+absent.  For rightly had she said that it was not the faithless
+wife, it WAS the faithful mother that fled from all in which her
+earthly happiness was centred.
+
+As long as the passion and fervour that impelled the act animated
+her with false fever, she clasped her infant to her breast, and
+was consoled,--resigned.  But what bitter doubt of her own
+conduct, what icy pang of remorse shot through her heart, when,
+as they rested for a few hours on the road to Leghorn, she heard
+the woman who accompanied herself and Glyndon pray for safety to
+reach her husband's side, and strength to share the perils that
+would meet her there!  Terrible contrast to her own desertion!
+She shrunk into the darkness of her own heart,--and then no voice
+from within consoled her.
+
+
+CHAPTER 6.IX.
+
+Zukunft hast du mir gegeben,
+Doch du nehmst den Augenblick.
+"Kassandra."
+
+(Futurity hast thou given to me,--yet takest from me the Moment.)
+
+"Mejnour, behold thy work!  Out, out upon our little vanities of
+wisdom!--out upon our ages of lore and life!  To save her from
+Peril I left her presence, and the Peril has seized her in its
+grasp!"
+
+"Chide not thy wisdom but thy passions!  Abandon thine idle hope
+of the love of woman.  See, for those who would unite the lofty
+with the lowly, the inevitable curse; thy very nature
+uncomprehended,--thy sacrifices unguessed.  The lowly one views
+but in the lofty a necromancer or a fiend.  Titan, canst thou
+weep?"
+
+"I know it now, I see it all!  It WAS her spirit that stood
+beside our own, and escaped my airy clasp!  O strong desire of
+motherhood and nature! unveiling all our secrets, piercing space
+and traversing worlds!--Mejnour, what awful learning lies hid in
+the ignorance of the heart that loves!"
+
+"The heart," answered the mystic, coldly; "ay, for five thousand
+years I have ransacked the mysteries of creation, but I have not
+yet discovered all the wonders in the heart of the simplest
+boor!"
+
+"Yet our solemn rites deceived us not; the prophet-shadows, dark
+with terror and red with blood, still foretold that, even in the
+dungeon, and before the deathsman, I,--I had the power to save
+them both!"
+
+"But at some unconjectured and most fatal sacrifice to thyself."
+
+"To myself!  Icy sage, there is no self in love!  I go.  Nay,
+alone:  I want thee not.  I want now no other guide but the human
+instincts of affection.  No cave so dark, no solitude so vast, as
+to conceal her.  Though mine art fail me; though the stars heed
+me not; though space, with its shining myriads, is again to me
+but the azure void,--I return but to love and youth and hope!
+When have they ever failed to triumph and to save!"
+
+
+
+BOOK VII.
+
+THE REIGN OF TERROR.
+
+Orrida maesta nei fero aspetto
+Terrore accresce, e piu superbo il rende;
+Rosseggian gli occhi, e di veneno infetto
+Come infausta cometa, il guardo splende,
+Gil involve il mento, e sull 'irsuto petto
+Ispida efoita la gran barbe scende;
+E IN GUISA DE VORAGINE PROFONDA
+SAPRE LA BOCCA A'ATRO SANGUE IMMONDA.
+(Ger. Lib., Cant. iv. 7.)
+
+A horrible majesty in the fierce aspect increases it terror, and
+renders it more  superb.  Red glow the eyes, and the aspect
+infected, like a baleful comet, with  envenomed influences,
+glares around.  A vast beard covers the chin--and, rough  and
+thick, descends over the shaggy breast.--And like a profound gulf
+expand the jaws, foul with black gore.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.I.
+
+Qui suis-je, moi qu'on accuse?  Un esclave de la Liberte, un
+martyr vivant de la Republique.
+"Discours de Robespierre, 8 Thermidor."
+
+(Who am I,--_I_ whom they accuse?  A slave of Liberty,--a living
+martyr for the Republic.)
+
+It roars,--The River of Hell, whose first outbreak was chanted as
+the gush of a channel to Elysium.  How burst into blossoming
+hopes fair hearts that had nourished themselves on the diamond
+dews of the rosy dawn, when Liberty came from the dark ocean, and
+the arms of decrepit Thraldom--Aurora from the bed of Tithon!
+Hopes! ye have ripened into fruit, and the fruit is gore and
+ashes!  Beautiful Roland, eloquent Vergniaud, visionary
+Condorcet, high-hearted Malesherbes!--wits, philosophers,
+statesmen, patriots, dreamers! behold the millennium for which ye
+dared and laboured!
+
+I invoke the ghosts!  Saturn hath devoured his children ("La
+Revolution est comme Saturne, elle devorera tous ses enfans."--
+Vergniaud.), and lives alone,--I his true name of Moloch!
+
+It is the Reign of Terror, with Robespierre the king.  The
+struggles between the boa and the lion are past:  the boa has
+consumed the lion, and is heavy with the gorge,--Danton has
+fallen, and Camille Desmoulins.  Danton had said before his
+death, "The poltroon Robespierre,--I alone could have saved him."
+From that hour, indeed, the blood of the dead giant clouded the
+craft of "Maximilien the Incorruptible," as at last, amidst the
+din of the roused Convention, it choked his voice.  (Le sang de
+Danton t'etouffe!" (the blood of Danton chokes thee!) said
+Garnier de l'Aube, when on the fatal 9th of Thermidor,
+Robespierre gasped feebly forth, "Pour la derniere fois,
+President des Assassins, je te demande la parole."  (For the last
+time, President of Assassins, I demand to speak.))  If, after
+that last sacrifice, essential, perhaps, to his safety,
+Robespierre had proclaimed the close of the Reign of Terror, and
+acted upon the mercy which Danton had begun to preach, he might
+have lived and died a monarch.  But the prisons continued to
+reek,--the glaive to fall; and Robespierre perceived not that his
+mobs were glutted to satiety with death, and the strongest
+excitement a chief could give would be a return from devils into
+men.
+
+We are transported to a room in the house of Citizen Dupleix, the
+menuisier, in the month of July, 1794; or, in the calendar of the
+Revolutionists, it was the Thermidor of the Second Year of the
+Republic, One and Indivisible!  Though the room was small, it was
+furnished and decorated with a minute and careful effort at
+elegance and refinement.  It seemed, indeed, the desire of the
+owner to avoid at once what was mean and rude, and what was
+luxurious and voluptuous.  It was a trim, orderly, precise grace
+that shaped the classic chairs, arranged the ample draperies,
+sank the frameless mirrors into the wall, placed bust and bronze
+on their pedestals, and filled up the niches here and there with
+well-bound books, filed regularly in their appointed ranks.  An
+observer would have said, "This man wishes to imply to you,--I am
+not rich; I am not ostentatious; I am not luxurious; I am no
+indolent Sybarite, with couches of down, and pictures that
+provoke the sense; I am no haughty noble, with spacious halls,
+and galleries that awe the echo.  But so much the greater is my
+merit if I disdain these excesses of the ease or the pride, since
+I love the elegant, and have a taste!  Others may be simple and
+honest, from the very coarseness of their habits; if I, with so
+much refinement and delicacy, am simple and honest,--reflect, and
+admire me!"
+
+On the walls of this chamber hung many portraits, most of them
+represented but one face; on the formal pedestals were grouped
+many busts, most of them sculptured but one head.  In that small
+chamber Egotism sat supreme, and made the Arts its looking-
+glasses.  Erect in a chair, before a large table spread with
+letters, sat the original of bust and canvas, the owner of the
+apartment.  He was alone, yet he sat erect, formal, stiff,
+precise, as if in his very home he was not at ease.  His dress
+was in harmony with his posture and his chamber; it affected a
+neatness of its own,--foreign both to the sumptuous fashions of
+the deposed nobles, and the filthy ruggedness of the sans-
+culottes.  Frizzled and coiffe, not a hair was out of order, not
+a speck lodged on the sleek surface of the blue coat, not a
+wrinkle crumpled the snowy vest, with its under-relief of
+delicate pink.  At the first glance, you might have seen in that
+face nothing but the ill-favoured features of a sickly
+countenance; at a second glance, you would have perceived that it
+had a power, a character of its own.  The forehead, though low
+and compressed, was not without that appearance of thought and
+intelligence which, it may be observed, that breadth between the
+eyebrows almost invariably gives; the lips were firm and tightly
+drawn together, yet ever and anon they trembled, and writhed
+restlessly.  The eyes, sullen and gloomy, were yet piercing, and
+full of a concentrated vigour that did not seem supported by the
+thin, feeble frame, or the green lividness of the hues, which
+told of anxiety and disease.
+
+Such was Maximilien Robespierre; such the chamber over the
+menuisier's shop, whence issued the edicts that launched armies
+on their career of glory, and ordained an artificial conduit to
+carry off the blood that deluged the metropolis of the most
+martial people in the globe!  Such was the man who had resigned a
+judicial appointment (the early object of his ambition) rather
+than violate his philanthropical principles by subscribing to the
+death of a single fellow-creature; such was the virgin enemy to
+capital punishments; and such, Butcher-Dictator now, was the man
+whose pure and rigid manners, whose incorruptible honesty, whose
+hatred of the excesses that tempt to love and wine, would, had he
+died five years earlier, have left him the model for prudent
+fathers and careful citizens to place before their sons.  Such
+was the man who seemed to have no vice, till circumstance, that
+hotbed, brought forth the two which, in ordinary times, lie ever
+the deepest and most latent in a man's heart,--Cowardice and
+Envy.  To one of these sources is to be traced every murder that
+master-fiend committed.  His cowardice was of a peculiar and
+strange sort; for it was accompanied with the most unscrupulous
+and determined WILL,--a will that Napoleon reverenced; a will of
+iron, and yet nerves of aspen.  Mentally, he was a hero,--
+physically, a dastard.  When the veriest shadow of danger
+threatened his person, the frame cowered, but the will swept the
+danger to the slaughter-house.  So there he sat, bolt upright,--
+his small, lean fingers clenched convulsively; his sullen eyes
+straining into space, their whites yellowed with streaks of
+corrupt blood; his ears literally moving to and fro, like the
+ignobler animals', to catch every sound,--a Dionysius in his
+cave; but his posture decorous and collected, and every formal
+hair in its frizzled place.
+
+"Yes, yes," he said in a muttered tone, "I hear them; my good
+Jacobins are at their post on the stairs.  Pity they swear so!  I
+have a law against oaths,--the manners of the poor and virtuous
+people must be reformed.  When all is safe, an example or two
+amongst those good Jacobins would make effect.  Faithful fellows,
+how they love me!  Hum!--what an oath was that!--they need not
+swear so loud,--upon the very staircase, too!  It detracts from
+my reputation.  Ha! steps!"
+
+The soliloquist glanced at the opposite mirror, and took up a
+volume; he seemed absorbed in its contents, as a tall fellow, a
+bludgeon in his hand, a girdle adorned with pistols round his
+waist, opened the door, and announced two visitors.  The one was
+a young man, said to resemble Robespierre in person, but of a far
+more decided and resolute expression of countenance.  He entered
+first, and, looking over the volume in Robespierre's hand, for
+the latter seemed still intent on his lecture, exclaimed,--
+
+"What!  Rousseau's Heloise?  A love-tale!"
+
+"Dear Payan, it is not the love,--it is the philosophy that
+charms me.  What noble sentiments!--what ardour of virtue!  If
+Jean Jacques had but lived to see this day!"
+
+While the Dictator thus commented on his favourite author, whom
+in his orations he laboured hard to imitate, the second visitor
+was wheeled into the room in a chair.  This man was also in what,
+to most, is the prime of life,--namely, about thirty-eight; but
+he was literally dead in the lower limbs:  crippled, paralytic,
+distorted, he was yet, as the time soon came to tell him,--a
+Hercules in Crime!  But the sweetest of human smiles dwelt upon
+his lips; a beauty almost angelic characterised his features
+("Figure d'ange," says one of his contemporaries, in describing
+Couthon.  The address, drawn up most probably by Payan (Thermidor
+9), after the arrest of Robespierre, thus mentions his crippled
+colleague:  "Couthon, ce citoyen vertueux, QUI N'A QUE LE COEUR
+ET LA TETE DE VIVANS, mais qui les a brulants de patriotisme"
+(Couthon, that virtuous citizen, who has but the head and the
+heart of the living, yet possesses these all on flame with
+patriotism.)); an inexpressible aspect of kindness, and the
+resignation of suffering but cheerful benignity, stole into the
+hearts of those who for the first time beheld him.  With the most
+caressing, silver, flute-like voice, Citizen Couthon saluted the
+admirer of Jean Jacques.
+
+"Nay,--do not say that it is not the LOVE that attracts thee; it
+IS the love! but not the gross, sensual attachment of man for
+woman.  No! the sublime affection for the whole human race, and
+indeed, for all that lives!"
+
+And Citizen Couthon, bending down, fondled the little spaniel
+that he invariably carried in his bosom, even to the Convention,
+as a vent for the exuberant sensibilities which overflowed his
+affectionate heart.  (This tenderness for some pet animal was by
+no means peculiar to Couthon; it seems rather a common fashion
+with the gentle butchers of the Revolution.  M. George Duval
+informs us ("Souvenirs de la Terreur," volume iii page 183) that
+Chaumette had an aviary, to which he devoted his harmless
+leisure; the murderous Fournier carried on his shoulders a pretty
+little squirrel, attached by a silver chain; Panis bestowed the
+superfluity of his affections upon two gold pheasants; and Marat,
+who would not abate one of the three hundred thousand heads he
+demanded, REARED DOVES!  Apropos of the spaniel of Couthon, Duval
+gives us an amusing anecdote of Sergent, not one of the least
+relentless agents of the massacre of September.  A lady came to
+implore his protection for one of her relations confined in the
+Abbaye.  He scarcely deigned to speak to her.  As she retired in
+despair, she trod by accident on the paw of his favourite
+spaniel.  Sergent, turning round, enraged and furious, exclaimed,
+"MADAM, HAVE YOU NO HUMANITY?")
+
+"Yes, for all that lives," repeated Robespierre, tenderly.  "Good
+Couthon,--poor Couthon!  Ah, the malice of men!--how we are
+misrepresented!  To be calumniated as the executioners of our
+colleagues!  Ah, it is THAT which pierces the heart!  To be an
+object of terror to the enemies of our country,--THAT is noble;
+but to be an object of terror to the good, the patriotic, to
+those one loves and reveres,--THAT is the most terrible of human
+tortures at least, to a susceptible and honest heart!"  (Not to
+fatigue the reader with annotations, I may here observe that
+nearly every sentiment ascribed in the text to Robespierre is to
+be found expressed in his various discourses.)
+
+"How I love to hear him!" ejaculated Couthon.
+
+"Hem!" said Payan, with some impatience.  "But now to business!"
+
+"Ah, to business!" said Robespierre, with a sinister glance from
+his bloodshot eyes.
+
+"The time has come," said Payan, "when the safety of the Republic
+demands a complete concentration of its power.  These brawlers of
+the Comite du Salut Public can only destroy; they cannot
+construct.  They hated you, Maximilien, from the moment you
+attempted to replace anarcy by institutions.  How they mock at
+the festival which proclaimed the acknowledgment of a Supreme
+Being:  they would have no ruler, even in heaven!  Your clear and
+vigorous intellect saw that, having wrecked an old world, it
+became necessary to shape a new one.  The first step towards
+construction must be to destroy the destroyers.  While we
+deliberate, your enemies act.  Better this very night to attack
+the handful of gensdarmes that guard them, than to confront the
+battalions they may raise to-morrow."
+
+"No," said Robespierre, who recoiled before the determined spirit
+of Payan; "I have a better and safer plan.  This is the 6th of
+Thermidor; on the 10th--on the 10th, the Convention go in a body
+to the Fete Decadaire.  A mob shall form; the canonniers, the
+troops of Henriot, the young pupils de l'Ecole de Mars, shall mix
+in the crowd.  Easy, then, to strike the conspirators whom we
+shall designate to our agents.  On the same day, too, Fouquier
+and Dumas shall not rest; and a sufficient number of 'the
+suspect' to maintain salutary awe, and keep up the revolutionary
+excitement, shall perish by the glaive of the law.  The 10th
+shall be the great day of action.  Payan, of these last culprits,
+have you prepared a list?"
+
+"It is here," returned Payan, laconically, presenting a paper.
+
+Robespierre glanced over it rapidly.  "Collot d'Herbois!--good!
+Barrere!--ay, it was Barrere who said, 'Let us strike:  the dead
+alone never return.'  ("Frappons! il n'y a que les morts qui ne
+revient pas."--Barrere.)  Vadier, the savage jester!--good--good!
+Vadier of the Mountain.  He has called me 'Mahomet!'  Scelerat!
+blasphemer!"
+
+"Mahomet is coming to the Mountain," said Couthon, with his
+silvery accent, as he caressed his spaniel.
+
+"But how is this?  I do not see the name of Tallien?  Tallien,--I
+hate that man; that is," said Robespierre, correcting himself
+with the hypocrisy or self-deceit which those who formed the
+council of this phrase-monger exhibited habitually, even among
+themselves,--"that is, Virtue and our Country hate him!  There is
+no man in the whole Convention who inspires me with the same
+horror as Tallien.  Couthon, I see a thousand Dantons where
+Tallien sits!"
+
+"Tallien has the only head that belongs to this deformed body,"
+said Payan, whose ferocity and crime, like those of St. Just,
+were not unaccompanied by talents of no common order.  "Were it
+not better to draw away the head, to win, to buy him, for the
+time, and dispose of him better when left alone?  He may hate
+YOU, but he loves MONEY!"
+
+"No," said Robespierre, writing down the name of Jean Lambert
+Tallien, with a slow hand that shaped each letter with stern
+distinctness; "that one head IS MY NECESSITY!"
+
+"I have a SMALL list here," said Couthon, sweetly,--"a VERY small
+list.  You are dealing with the Mountain; it is necessary to make
+a few examples in the Plain.  These moderates are as straws which
+follow the wind.  They turned against us yesterday in the
+Convention.  A little terror will correct the weathercocks.  Poor
+creatures!  I owe them no ill-will; I could weep for them.  But
+before all, la chere patrie!"
+
+The terrible glance of Robespierre devoured the list which the
+man of sensibility submitted to him.  "Ah, these are well chosen;
+men not of mark enough to be regretted, which is the best policy
+with the relics of that party; some foreigners too,--yes, THEY
+have no parents in Paris.  These wives and parents are beginning
+to plead against us.  Their complaints demoralise the
+guillotine!"
+
+"Couthon is right," said Payan; "MY list contains those whom it
+will be safer to despatch en masse in the crowd assembled at the
+Fete.  HIS list selects those whom we may prudently consign to
+the law.  Shall it not be signed at once?"
+
+"It IS signed," said Robespierre, formally replacing his pen upon
+the inkstand.  "Now to more important matters.  These deaths will
+create no excitement; but Collot d'Herbois, Bourdon De l'Oise,
+Tallien," the last name Robespierre gasped as he pronounced,
+"THEY are the heads of parties.  This is life or death to us as
+well as them."
+
+"Their heads are the footstools to your curule chair," said
+Payan, in a half whisper.  "There is no danger if we are bold.
+Judges, juries, all have been your selection.  You seize with one
+hand the army, with the other, the law.  Your voice yet commands
+the people--"
+
+"The poor and virtuous people," murmured Robespierre.
+
+"And even," continued Payan, "if our design at the Fete fail us,
+we must not shrink from the resources still at our command.
+Reflect!  Henriot, the general of the Parisian army, furnishes
+you with troops to arrest; the Jacobin Club with a public to
+approve; inexorable Dumas with judges who never acquit.  We must
+be bold!"
+
+"And we ARE bold," exclaimed Robespierre, with sudden passion,
+and striking his hand on the table as he rose, with his crest
+erect, as a serpent in the act to strike.  "In seeing the
+multitude of vices that the revolutionary torrent mingles with
+civic virtues, I tremble to be sullied in the eyes of posterity
+by the impure neighbourhood of these perverse men who thrust
+themselves among the sincere defenders of humanity.  What!--they
+think to divide the country like a booty!  I thank them for their
+hatred to all that is virtuous and worthy!  These men,"--and he
+grasped the list of Payan in his hand,--"these!--not WE--have
+drawn the line of demarcation between themselves and the lovers
+of France!"
+
+"True, we must reign alone!" muttered Payan; "in other words, the
+state needs unity of will;" working, with his strong practical
+mind, the corollary from the logic of his word-compelling
+colleague.
+
+"I will go to the Convention," continued Robespierre.  "I have
+absented myself too long,--lest I might seem to overawe the
+Republic that I have created.  Away with such scruples!  I will
+prepare the people!  I will blast the traitors with a look!"
+
+He spoke with the terrible firmness of the orator that had never
+failed,--of the moral will that marched like a warrior on the
+cannon.  At that instant he was interrupted; a letter was brought
+to him:  he opened it,--his face fell, he shook from limb to
+limb; it was one of the anonymous warnings by which the hate and
+revenge of those yet left alive to threaten tortured the death-
+giver.
+
+"Thou art smeared," ran the lines, "with the best blood of
+France.  Read thy sentence!  I await the hour when the people
+shall knell thee to the doomsman.  If my hope deceive me, if
+deferred too long,--hearken, read!  This hand, which thine eyes
+shall search in vain to discover, shall pierce thy heart.  I see
+thee every day,--I am with thee every day.  At each hour my arm
+rises against thy breast.  Wretch! live yet awhile, though but
+for few and miserable days--live to think of me; sleep to dream
+of me!  Thy terror and thy thought of me are the heralds of thy
+doom.  Adieu! this day itself I go forth to riot on thy fears!"
+(See "Papiers inedits trouves chez Robespierre," etc., volume ii.
+page 155.  (No. lx.))
+
+"Your lists are not full enough!" said the tyrant, with a hollow
+voice, as the paper dropped from his trembling hand.  "Give them
+to me!--give them to me!  Think again, think again!  Barrere is
+right--right! 'Frappons! il n'y a que les morts qui ne revient
+pas!'"
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.II.
+
+La haine, dans ces lieux, n'a qu'un glaive assassin.
+Elle marche dans l'ombre.
+La Harpe, "Jeanne de Naples," Act iv. sc. 1.
+
+(Hate, in these regions, has but the sword of the assassin.  She
+moves in the shade.)
+
+While such the designs and fears of Maximilien Robespierre,
+common danger, common hatred, whatever was yet left of mercy or
+of virtue in the agents of the Revolution, served to unite
+strange opposites in hostility to the universal death-dealer.
+There was, indeed, an actual conspiracy at work against him among
+men little less bespattered than himself with innocent blood.
+But that conspiracy would have been idle of itself, despite the
+abilities of Tallien and Barras (the only men whom it comprised,
+worthy, by foresight and energy, the names of "leaders").  The
+sure and destroying elements that gathered round the tyrant were
+Time and Nature; the one, which he no longer suited; the other,
+which he had outraged and stirred up in the human breast.  The
+most atrocious party of the Revolution, the followers of Hebert,
+gone to his last account, the butcher-atheists, who, in
+desecrating heaven and earth, still arrogated inviolable sanctity
+to themselves, were equally enraged at the execution of their
+filthy chief, and the proclamation of a Supreme Being.  The
+populace, brutal as it had been, started as from a dream of
+blood, when their huge idol, Danton, no longer filled the stage
+of terror, rendering crime popular by that combination of
+careless frankness and eloquent energy which endears their heroes
+to the herd.  The glaive of the guillotine had turned against
+THEMSELVES.  They had yelled and shouted, and sung and danced,
+when the venerable age, or the gallant youth, of aristocracy or
+letters, passed by their streets in the dismal tumbrils; but they
+shut up their shops, and murmured to each other, when their own
+order was invaded, and tailors and cobblers, and journeymen and
+labourers, were huddled off to the embraces of the "Holy Mother
+Guillotine," with as little ceremony as if they had been the
+Montmorencies or the La Tremouilles, the Malesherbes or the
+Lavoisiers.  "At this time," said Couthon, justly, "Les ombres de
+Danton, d'Hebert, de Chaumette, se promenent parmi nous!" (The
+shades of Danton, Hebert, and Chaumette walk amongst us.)
+
+Among those who had shared the doctrines, and who now dreaded the
+fate of the atheist Hebert, was the painter, Jean Nicot.
+Mortified and enraged to find that, by the death of his patron,
+his career was closed; and that, in the zenith of the Revolution
+for which he had laboured, he was lurking in caves and cellars,
+more poor, more obscure, more despicable than he had been at the
+commencement,--not daring to exercise even his art, and fearful
+every hour that his name would swell the lists of the condemned,
+--he was naturally one of the bitterest enemies of Robespierre
+and his government.  He held secret meetings with Collot
+d'Herbois, who was animated by the same spirit; and with the
+creeping and furtive craft that characterised his abilities, he
+contrived, undetected, to disseminate tracts and invectives
+against the Dictator, and to prepare, amidst "the poor and
+virtuous people," the train for the grand explosion.  But still
+so firm to the eyes, even of profounder politicians than Jean
+Nicot, appeared the sullen power of the incorruptible Maximilien;
+so timorous was the movement against him,--that Nicot, in common
+with many others, placed his hopes rather in the dagger of the
+assassin than the revolt of the multitude.  But Nicot, though not
+actually a coward, shrunk himself from braving the fate of the
+martyr; he had sense enough to see that, though all parties might
+rejoice in the assassination, all parties would probably concur
+in beheading the assassin.  He had not the virtue to become a
+Brutus.  His object was to inspire a proxy-Brutus; and in the
+centre of that inflammable population this was no improbable
+hope.
+
+Amongst those loudest and sternest against the reign of blood;
+amongst those most disenchanted of the Revolution; amongst those
+most appalled by its excesses,--was, as might be expected, the
+Englishman, Clarence Glyndon.  The wit and accomplishments, the
+uncertain virtues that had lighted with fitful gleams the mind of
+Camille Desmoulins, had fascinated Glyndon more than the
+qualities of any other agent in the Revolution.  And when (for
+Camille Desmoulins had a heart, which seemed dead or dormant in
+most of his contemporaries) that vivid child of genius and of
+error, shocked at the massacre of the Girondins, and repentant of
+his own efforts against them, began to rouse the serpent malice
+of Robespierre by new doctrines of mercy and toleration, Glyndon
+espoused his views with his whole strength and soul.  Camille
+Desmoulins perished, and Glyndon, hopeless at once of his own
+life and the cause of humanity, from that time sought only the
+occasion of flight from the devouring Golgotha.  He had two lives
+to heed besides his own; for them he trembled, and for them he
+schemed and plotted the means of escape.  Though Glyndon hated
+the principles, the party (None were more opposed to the
+Hebertists than Camille Desmoulins and his friends.  It is
+curious and amusing to see these leaders of the mob, calling the
+mob "the people" one day, and the "canaille" the next, according
+as it suits them.  "I know," says Camille, "that they (the
+Hebertists) have all the canaille with them."--(Ils ont toute la
+canaille pour eux.)), and the vices of Nicot, he yet extended to
+the painter's penury the means of subsistence; and Jean Nicot, in
+return, designed to exalt Glyndon to that very immortality of a
+Brutus from which he modestly recoiled himself.  He founded his
+designs on the physical courage, on the wild and unsettled
+fancies of the English artist, and on the vehement hate and
+indignant loathing with which he openly regarded the government
+of Maximilien.
+
+At the same hour, on the same day in July, in which Robespierre
+conferred (as we have seen) with his allies, two persons were
+seated in a small room in one of the streets leading out of the
+Rue St. Honore; the one, a man, appeared listening impatiently,
+and with a sullen brow, to his companion, a woman of singular
+beauty, but with a bold and reckless expression, and her face as
+she spoke was animated by the passions of a half-savage and
+vehement nature.
+
+"Englishman," said the woman, "beware!--you know that, whether in
+flight or at the place of death, I would brave all to be by your
+side,--you know THAT!  Speak!"
+
+"Well, Fillide; did I ever doubt your fidelity?"
+
+"Doubt it you cannot,-- betray it you may.  You tell me that in
+flight you must have a companion besides myself, and that
+companion is a female.  It shall not be!"
+
+"Shall not!"
+
+"It shall not!" repeated Fillide, firmly, and folding her arms
+across her breast.  Before Glyndon could reply, a slight knock at
+the door was heard, and Nicot opened the latch and entered.
+
+Fillide sank into her chair, and, leaning her face on her hands,
+appeared unheeding of the intruder and the conversation that
+ensued.
+
+"I cannot bid thee good-day, Glyndon," said Nicot, as in his
+sans-culotte fashion he strode towards the artist, his ragged hat
+on his head, his hands in his pockets, and the beard of a week's
+growth upon his chin,--"I cannot bid thee good-day; for while the
+tyrant lives, evil is every sun that sheds its beams on France."
+
+"It is true; what then?  We have sown the wind, we must reap the
+whirlwind."
+
+"And yet," said Nicot, apparently not heeding the reply, and as
+if musingly to himself, "it is strange to think that the butcher
+is as mortal as the butchered; that his life hangs on as slight a
+thread; that between the cuticle and the heart there is as short
+a passage,--that, in short, one blow can free France and redeem
+mankind!"
+
+Glyndon surveyed the speaker with a careless and haughty scorn,
+and made no answer.
+
+"And," proceeded Nicot, "I have sometimes looked round for the
+man born for this destiny, and whenever I have done so, my steps
+have led me hither!"
+
+"Should they not rather have led thee to the side of Maximilien
+Robespierre?" said Glyndon, with a sneer.
+
+"No," returned Nicot, coldly,--"no; for I am a 'suspect:'  I
+could not mix with his train; I could not approach within a
+hundred yards of his person, but I should be seized; YOU, as yet,
+are safe.  Hear me!"--and his voice became earnest and
+expressive,--"hear me!  There seems danger in this action; there
+is none.  I have been with Collot d'Herbois and Bilaud-Varennes;
+they will hold him harmless who strikes the blow; the populace
+would run to thy support; the Convention would hail thee as their
+deliverer, the--"
+
+"Hold, man!  How darest thou couple my name with the act of an
+assassin?  Let the tocsin sound from yonder tower, to a war
+between Humanity and the Tyrant, and I will not be the last in
+the field; but liberty never yet acknowledged a defender in a
+felon."
+
+There was something so brave and noble in Glyndon's voice, mien,
+and manner, as he thus spoke, that Nicot at once was silenced; at
+once he saw that he had misjudged the man.
+
+"No," said Fillide, lifting her face from her hands,--"no! your
+friend has a wiser scheme in preparation; he would leave you
+wolves to mangle each other.  He is right; but--"
+
+"Flight!" exclaimed Nicot; "is it possible?  Flight; how?--when?
+--by what means?  All France begirt with spies and guards!
+Flight! would to Heaven it were in our power!"
+
+"Dost thou, too, desire to escape the blessed Revolution?"
+
+"Desire!  Oh!" cried Nicot, suddenly, and, falling down, he
+clasped Glyndon's knees,--"oh, save me with thyself!  My life is
+a torture; every moment the guillotine frowns before me.  I know
+that my hours are numbered; I know that the tyrant waits but his
+time to write my name in his inexorable list; I know that Rene
+Dumas, the judge who never pardons, has, from the first, resolved
+upon my death.  Oh, Glyndon, by our old friendship, by our common
+art, by thy loyal English faith and good English heart, let me
+share thy flight!"
+
+"If thou wilt, so be it."
+
+"Thanks!--my whole life shall thank thee.  But how hast thou
+prepared the means, the passports, the disguise, the--"
+
+"I will tell thee.  Thou knowest C--, of the Convention,--he has
+power, and he is covetous.  'Qu'on me meprise, pourvu que je
+dine' (Let them despise me, provided that I dine.), said he, when
+reproached for his avarice."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"By the help of this sturdy republican, who has friends enough in
+the Comite, I have obtained the means necessary for flight; I
+have purchased them.  For a consideration I can procure thy
+passport also."
+
+"Thy riches, then, are not in assignats?"
+
+"No; I have gold enough for us all."
+
+And here Glyndon, beckoning Nicot into the next room, first
+briefly and rapidly detailed to him the plan proposed, and the
+disguises to be assumed conformably to the passports, and then
+added, "In return for the service I render thee, grant me one
+favour, which I think is in thy power.  Thou rememberest Viola
+Pisani?"
+
+"Ah,--remember, yes!--and the lover with whom she fled."
+
+"And FROM whom she is a fugitive now."
+
+"Indeed--what!--I understand.  Sacre bleu! but you are a lucky
+fellow, cher confrere."
+
+"Silence, man! with thy eternal prate of brotherhood and virtue,
+thou seemest never to believe in one kindly action, or one
+virtuous thought!"
+
+Nicot bit his lip, and replied sullenly, "Experience is a great
+undeceiver.  Humph!  What service can I do thee with regard to
+the Italian?"
+
+"I have been accessory to her arrival in this city of snares and
+pitfalls.  I cannot leave her alone amidst dangers from which
+neither innocence nor obscurity is a safeguard.  In your blessed
+Republic, a good and unsuspected citizen, who casts a desire on
+any woman, maid or wife, has but to say, 'Be mine, or I denounce
+you!'  In a word, Viola must share our flight."
+
+"What so easy?  I see your passports provide for her."
+
+"What so easy?  What so difficult?  This Fillide--would that I
+had never seen her!--would that I had never enslaved my soul to
+my senses!  The love of an uneducated, violent, unprincipled
+woman, opens with a heaven, to merge in a hell!  She is jealous
+as all the Furies; she will not hear of a female companion; and
+when once she sees the beauty of Viola!--I tremble to think of
+it.  She is capable of any excess in the storm of her passions."
+
+"Aha, I know what such women are!  My wife, Beatrice Sacchini,
+whom I took from Naples, when I failed with this very Viola,
+divorced me when my money failed, and, as the mistress of a
+judge, passes me in her carriage while I crawl through the
+streets.  Plague on her!--but patience, patience! such is the lot
+of virtue.  Would I were Robespierre for a day!"
+
+"Cease these tirades!" exclaimed Glyndon, impatiently; "and to
+the point.  What would you advise?"
+
+"Leave your Fillide behind."
+
+"Leave her to her own ignorance; leave her unprotected even by
+the mind; leave her in the Saturnalia of Rape and Murder?  No!  I
+have sinned against her once.  But come what may, I will not so
+basely desert one who, with all her errors, trusted her fate to
+my love."
+
+"You deserted her at Marseilles."
+
+"True; but I left her in safety, and I did not then believe her
+love to be so deep and faithful.  I left her gold, and I imagined
+she would be easily consoled; but since THEN WE HAVE KNOWN DANGER
+TOGETHER!  And now to leave her alone to that danger which she
+would never have incurred but for devotion to me!--no, that is
+impossible.  A project occurs to me.  Canst thou not say that
+thou hast a sister, a relative, or a benefactress, whom thou
+wouldst save?  Can we not--till we have left France--make Fillide
+believe that Viola is one in whom THOU only art interested; and
+whom, for thy sake only, I permit to share in our escape?"
+
+"Ha, well thought of!--certainly!"
+
+"I will then appear to yield to Fillide's wishes, and resign the
+project, which she so resents, of saving the innocent object of
+her frantic jealousy.  You, meanwhile, shall yourself entreat
+Fillide to intercede with me to extend the means of escape to--"
+
+"To a lady (she knows I have no sister) who has aided me in my
+distress.  Yes, I will manage all, never fear.  One word more,--
+what has become of that Zanoni?"
+
+"Talk not of him,--I know not."
+
+"Does he love this girl still?"
+
+"It would seem so.  She is his wife, the mother of his infant,
+who is with her."
+
+"Wife!--mother!  He loves her.  Aha!  And why--"
+
+"No questions now.  I will go and prepare Viola for the flight;
+you, meanwhile, return to Fillide."
+
+"But the address of the Neapolitan?  It is necessary I should
+know, lest Fillide inquire."
+
+"Rue M-- T--, No. 27.  Adieu."
+
+Glyndon seized his hat and hastened from the house.
+
+Nicot, left alone, seemed for a few moments buried in thought.
+"Oho," he muttered to himself, "can I not turn all this to my
+account?  Can I not avenge myself on thee, Zanoni, as I have so
+often sworn,--through thy wife and child?  Can I not possess
+myself of thy gold, thy passports, and thy Fillide, hot
+Englishman, who wouldst humble me with thy loathed benefits, and
+who hast chucked me thine alms as to a beggar?  And Fillide, I
+love her:  and thy gold, I love THAT more!  Puppets, I move your
+strings!"
+
+He passed slowly into the chamber where Fillide yet sat, with
+gloomy thought on her brow and tears standing in her dark eyes.
+She looked up eagerly as the door opened, and turned from the
+rugged face of Nicot with an impatient movement of
+disappointment.
+
+"Glyndon," said the painter, drawing a chair to Fillide's, "has
+left me to enliven your solitude, fair Italian.  He is not
+jealous of the ugly Nicot!--ha, ha!--yet Nicot loved thee well
+once, when his fortunes were more fair.  But enough of such past
+follies."
+
+"Your friend, then, has left the house.  Whither?  Ah, you look
+away; you falter,--you cannot meet my eyes!  Speak!  I implore, I
+command thee, speak!"
+
+"Enfant!  And what dost thou fear?"
+
+"FEAR!--yes, alas, I fear!" said the Italian; and her whole frame
+seemed to shrink into itself as she fell once more back into her
+seat.
+
+Then, after a pause, she tossed the long hair from her eyes, and,
+starting up abruptly, paced the room with disordered strides.  At
+length she stopped opposite to Nicot, laid her hand on his arm,
+drew him towards an escritoire, which she unlocked, and, opening
+a well, pointed to the gold that lay within, and said, "Thou art
+poor,--thou lovest money; take what thou wilt, but undeceive me.
+Who is this woman whom thy friend visits,--and does he love her?"
+
+Nicot's eyes sparkled, and his hands opened and clenched, and
+clenched and opened, as he gazed upon the coins.  But reluctantly
+resisting the impulse, he said, with an affected bitterness,
+"Thinkest thou to bribe me?--if so, it cannot be with gold.  But
+what if he does love a rival; what if he betrays thee; what if,
+wearied by thy jealousies, he designs in his flight to leave thee
+behind,--would such knowledge make thee happier?"
+
+"Yes!" exclaimed the Italian, fiercely; "yes, for it would be
+happiness to hate and to be avenged!  Oh, thou knowest not how
+sweet is hatred to those who have really loved!"
+
+"But wilt thou swear, if I reveal to thee the secret, that thou
+wilt not betray me,--that thou wilt not fall, as women do, into
+weak tears and fond reproaches, when thy betrayer returns?"
+
+"Tears, reproaches!  Revenge hides itself in smiles!"
+
+"Thou art a brave creature!" said Nicot, almost admiringly.  "One
+condition more:  thy lover designs to fly with his new love, to
+leave thee to thy fate; if I prove this to thee, and if I give
+thee revenge against thy rival, wilt thou fly with me?  I love
+thee!--I will wed thee!"
+
+Fillide's eyes flashed fire; she looked at him with unutterable
+disdain, and was silent.
+
+Nicot felt he had gone too far; and with that knowledge of the
+evil part of our nature which his own heart and association with
+crime had taught him, he resolved to trust the rest to the
+passions of the Italian, when raised to the height to which he
+was prepared to lead them.
+
+"Pardon me," he said; "my love made me too presumptuous; and yet
+it is only that love,--my sympathy for thee, beautiful and
+betrayed, that can induce me to wrong, with my revelations, one
+whom I have regarded as a brother.  I can depend upon thine oath
+to conceal all from Glyndon?"
+
+"On my oath and my wrongs and my mountain blood!"
+
+"Enough! get thy hat and mantle, and follow me."
+
+As Fillide left the room, Nicot's eyes again rested on the gold;
+it was much,--much more than he had dared to hope for; and as he
+peered into the well and opened the drawers, he perceived a
+packet of letters in the well-known hand of Camille Desmoulins.
+He seized--he opened the packet; his looks brightened as he
+glanced over a few sentences.  "This would give fifty Glyndons to
+the guillotine!" he muttered, and thrust the packet into his
+bosom.
+
+O artist!--O haunted one!--O erring genius!--behold the two worst
+foes,--the False Ideal that knows no God, and the False Love that
+burns from the corruption of the senses, and takes no lustre from
+the soul!
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.III.
+
+Liebe sonnt das Reich der Nacht.
+"Der Triumph der Liebe."
+
+(Love illumes the realm of Night.)
+
+Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.
+
+Paris.
+
+Dost thou remember in the old time, when the Beautiful yet dwelt
+in Greece, how we two, in the vast Athenian Theatre, witnessed
+the birth of Words as undying as ourselves?  Dost thou remember
+the thrill of terror that ran through that mighty audience, when
+the wild Cassandra burst from her awful silence to shriek to her
+relentless god!  How ghastly, at the entrance of the House of
+Atreus, about to become her tomb, rang out her exclamations of
+foreboding woe:  "Dwelling abhorred of heaven!--human shamble-
+house and floor blood-bespattered!" (Aesch. "Agam." 1098.)  Dost
+thou remember how, amidst the breathless awe of those assembled
+thousands, I drew close to thee, and whispered, "Verily, no
+prophet like the poet!  This scene of fabled horror comes to me
+as a dream, shadowing forth some likeness in my own remoter
+future!"  As I enter this slaughter-house that scene returns to
+me, and I hearken to the voice of Cassandra ringing in my ears.
+A solemn and warning dread gathers round me, as if I too were
+come to find a grave, and "the Net of Hades" had already
+entangled me in its web!  What dark treasure-houses of
+vicissitude and woe are our memories become!  What our lives, but
+the chronicles of unrelenting death!  It seems to me as yesterday
+when I stood in the streets of this city of the Gaul, as they
+shone with plumed chivalry, and the air rustled with silken
+braveries.  Young Louis, the monarch and the lover, was victor of
+the Tournament at the Carousel; and all France felt herself
+splendid in the splendour of her gorgeous chief!  Now there is
+neither throne nor altar; and what is in their stead?  I see it
+yonder--the GUILLOTINE!  It is dismal to stand amidst the ruins
+of mouldering cities, to startle the serpent and the lizard
+amidst the wrecks of Persepolis and Thebes; but more dismal still
+to stand as I--the stranger from Empires that have ceased to be--
+stand now amidst the yet ghastlier ruins of Law and Order, the
+shattering of mankind themselves!  Yet here, even here, Love, the
+Beautifier, that hath led my steps, can walk with unshrinking
+hope through the wilderness of Death.  Strange is the passion
+that makes a world in itself, that individualises the One amidst
+the Multitude; that, through all the changes of my solemn life,
+yet survives, though ambition and hate and anger are dead; the
+one solitary angel, hovering over a universe of tombs on its two
+tremulous and human wings,--Hope and Fear!
+
+How is it, Mejnour, that, as my diviner art abandoned me,--as, in
+my search for Viola, I was aided but by the ordinary instincts of
+the merest mortal,--how is it that I have never desponded, that I
+have felt in every difficulty the prevailing prescience that we
+should meet at last?  So cruelly was every vestige of her flight
+concealed from me,--so suddenly, so secretly had she fled, that
+all the spies, all the authorities of Venice, could give me no
+clew.  All Italy I searched in vain!  Her young home at Naples!--
+how still, in its humble chambers, there seemed to linger the
+fragrance of her presence!  All the sublimest secrets of our lore
+failed me,--failed to bring her soul visible to mine; yet morning
+and night, thou lone and childless one, morning and night,
+detached from myself, I can commune with my child!  There in that
+most blessed, typical, and mysterious of all relations, Nature
+herself appears to supply what Science would refuse.  Space
+cannot separate the father's watchful soul from the cradle of his
+first-born!  I know not of its resting-place and home,--my
+visions picture not the land,--only the small and tender life to
+which all space is as yet the heritage!  For to the infant,
+before reason dawns,--before man's bad passions can dim the
+essence that it takes from the element it hath left, there is no
+peculiar country, no native city, and no mortal language.  Its
+soul as yet is the denizen of all airs and of every world; and in
+space its soul meets with mine,--the child communes with the
+father!  Cruel and forsaking one,--thou for whom I left the
+wisdom of the spheres; thou whose fatal dower has been the
+weakness and terrors of humanity,--couldst thou think that young
+soul less safe on earth because I would lead it ever more up to
+heaven!  Didst thou think that I could have wronged mine own?
+Didst thou not know that in its serenest eyes the life that I
+gave it spoke to warn, to upbraid the mother who would bind it to
+the darkness and pangs of the prison-house of clay?  Didst thou
+not feel that it was I who, permitted by the Heavens, shielded it
+from suffering and disease?  And in its wondrous beauty, I
+blessed the holy medium through which, at last, my spirit might
+confer with thine!
+
+And how have I tracked them hither?  I learned that thy pupil had
+been at Venice.  I could not trace the young and gentle neophyte
+of Parthenope in the description of the haggard and savage
+visitor who had come to Viola before she fled; but when I would
+have summoned his IDEA before me, it refused to obey; and I knew
+then that his fate had become entwined with Viola's.  I have
+tracked him, then, to this Lazar House.  I arrived but yesterday;
+I have not yet discovered him.
+
+...
+
+I have just returned from their courts of justice,--dens where
+tigers arraign their prey.  I find not whom I would seek.  They
+are saved as yet; but I recognise in the crimes of mortals the
+dark wisdom of the Everlasting.  Mejnour, I see here, for the
+first time, how majestic and beauteous a thing is death!  Of what
+sublime virtues we robbed ourselves, when, in the thirst for
+virtue, we attained the art by which we can refuse to die!  When
+in some happy clime, where to breathe is to enjoy, the charnel-
+house swallows up the young and fair; when in the noble pursuit
+of knowledge, Death comes to the student, and shuts out the
+enchanted land which was opening to his gaze,--how natural for us
+to desire to live; how natural to make perpetual life the first
+object of research!  But here, from my tower of time, looking
+over the darksome past, and into the starry future, I learn how
+great hearts feel what sweetness and glory there is to die for
+the things they love!  I saw a father sacrificing himself for his
+son; he was subjected to charges which a word of his could
+dispel,--he was mistaken for his boy.  With what joy he seized
+the error, confessed the noble crimes of valour and fidelity
+which the son had indeed committed, and went to the doom,
+exulting that his death saved the life he had given, not in vain!
+I saw women, young, delicate, in the bloom of their beauty; they
+had vowed themselves to the cloister.  Hands smeared with the
+blood of saints opened the gate that had shut them from the
+world, and bade them go forth, forget their vows, forswear the
+Divine one these demons would depose, find lovers and helpmates,
+and be free.  And some of these young hearts had loved, and even,
+though in struggles, loved yet.  Did they forswear the vow?  Did
+they abandon the faith?  Did even love allure them?  Mejnour,
+with one voice, they preferred to die.  And whence comes this
+courage?--because such HEARTS LIVE IN SOME MORE ABSTRACT AND
+HOLIER LIFE THAN THEIR OWN.  BUT TO LIVE FOREVER UPON THIS EARTH
+IS TO LIVE IN NOTHING DIVINER THAN OURSELVES.  Yes, even amidst
+this gory butcherdom, God, the Ever-living, vindicates to man the
+sanctity of His servant, Death!
+
+...
+
+Again I have seen thee in spirit; I have seen and blessed thee,
+my sweet child!  Dost thou not know me also in thy dreams?  Dost
+thou not feel the beating of my heart through the veil of thy
+rosy slumbers?  Dost thou not hear the wings of the brighter
+beings that I yet can conjure around thee, to watch, to nourish,
+and to save?  And when the spell fades at thy waking, when thine
+eyes open to the day, will they not look round for me, and ask
+thy mother, with their mute eloquence, "Why she has robbed thee
+of a father?"
+
+Woman, dost thou not repent thee?  Flying from imaginary fears,
+hast thou not come to the very lair of terror, where Danger sits
+visible and incarnate?  Oh, if we could but meet, wouldst thou
+not fall upon the bosom thou hast so wronged, and feel, poor
+wanderer amidst the storms, as if thou hadst regained the
+shelter?  Mejnour, still my researches fail me.  I mingle with
+all men, even their judges and their spies, but I cannot yet gain
+the clew.  I know that she is here.  I know it by an instinct;
+the breath of my child seems warmer and more familiar.
+
+They peer at me with venomous looks, as I pass through their
+streets.  With a glance I disarm their malice, and fascinate the
+basilisks.  Everywhere I see the track and scent the presence of
+the Ghostly One that dwells on the Threshold, and whose victims
+are the souls that would ASPIRE, and can only FEAR.  I see its
+dim shapelessness going before the men of blood, and marshalling
+their way.  Robespierre passed me with his furtive step.  Those
+eyes of horror were gnawing into his heart.  I looked down upon
+their senate; the grim Phantom sat cowering on its floor.  It
+hath taken up its abode in the city of Dread.  And what in truth
+are these would-be builders of a new world?  Like the students
+who have vainly struggled after our supreme science, they have
+attempted what is beyond their power; they have passed from this
+solid earth of usages and forms into the land of shadow, and its
+loathsome keeper has seized them as its prey.  I looked into the
+tyrant's shuddering soul, as it trembled past me.  There, amidst
+the ruins of a thousand systems which aimed at virtue, sat Crime,
+and shivered at its desolation.  Yet this man is the only
+Thinker, the only Aspirant, amongst them all.  He still looks for
+a future of peace and mercy, to begin,--ay! at what date?  When
+he has swept away every foe.  Fool! new foes spring from every
+drop of blood.  Led by the eyes of the Unutterable, he is walking
+to his doom.
+
+O Viola, thy innocence protects thee!  Thou whom the sweet
+humanities of love shut out even from the dreams of aerial and
+spiritual beauty, making thy heart a universe of visions fairer
+than the wanderer over the rosy Hesperus can survey,--shall not
+the same pure affection encompass thee, even here, with a charmed
+atmosphere, and terror itself fall harmless on a life too
+innocent for wisdom?
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.IV.
+
+Ombra piu che di notte, in cui di luce
+Raggio misto non e;
+
+...
+
+Ne piu il palagio appar, ne piu le sue
+Vestigia; ne dir puossi--egli qui fue.
+"Ger. Lib., canto xvi.-lxix.
+
+(Darkness greater than of night, in which not a ray of light is
+mixed;...The palace appears no more:  not even a vestige,--nor
+can one say that it has been.)
+
+The clubs are noisy with clamorous frenzy; the leaders are grim
+with schemes.  Black Henriot flies here and there, muttering to
+his armed troops, "Robespierre, your beloved, is in danger!"
+Robespierre stalks perturbed, his list of victims swelling every
+hour.  Tallien, the Macduff to the doomed Macbeth, is whispering
+courage to his pale conspirators.  Along the streets heavily roll
+the tumbrils.  The shops are closed,--the people are gorged with
+gore, and will lap no more.  And night after night, to the eighty
+theatres flock the children of the Revolution, to laugh at the
+quips of comedy, and weep gentle tears over imaginary woes!
+
+In a small chamber, in the heart of the city, sits the mother,
+watching over her child.  It is quiet, happy noon; the sunlight,
+broken by the tall roofs in the narrow street, comes yet through
+the open casement, the impartial playfellow of the air, gleesome
+alike in temple and prison, hall and hovel; as golden and as
+blithe, whether it laugh over the first hour of life, or quiver
+in its gay delight on the terror and agony of the last!  The
+child, where it lay at the feet of Viola, stretched out its
+dimpled hands as if to clasp the dancing motes that revelled in
+the beam.  The mother turned her eyes from the glory; it saddened
+her yet more.  She turned and sighed.
+
+Is this the same Viola who bloomed fairer than their own Idalia
+under the skies of Greece?  How changed!  How pale and worn!  She
+sat listlessly, her arms dropping on her knee; the smile that was
+habitual to her lips was gone.  A heavy, dull despondency, as if
+the life of life were no more, seemed to weigh down her youth,
+and make it weary of that happy sun!  In truth, her existence had
+languished away since it had wandered, as some melancholy stream,
+from the source that fed it.  The sudden enthusiasm of fear or
+superstition that had almost, as if still in the unconscious
+movements of a dream, led her to fly from Zanoni, had ceased from
+the day which dawned upon her in a foreign land.  Then--there--
+she felt that in the smile she had evermore abandoned lived her
+life.  She did not repent,--she would not have recalled the
+impulse that winged her flight.  Though the enthusiasm was gone,
+the superstition yet remained; she still believed she had saved
+her child from that dark and guilty sorcery, concerning which the
+traditions of all lands are prodigal, but in none do they find
+such credulity, or excite such dread, as in the South of Italy.
+This impression was confirmed by the mysterious conversations of
+Glyndon, and by her own perception of the fearful change that had
+passed over one who represented himself as the victim of the
+enchanters.  She did not, therefore, repent; but her very
+volition seemed gone.
+
+On their arrival at Paris, Viola saw her companion--the faithful
+wife--no more.  Ere three weeks were passed, husband and wife had
+ceased to live.
+
+And now, for the first time, the drudgeries of this hard earth
+claimed the beautiful Neapolitan.  In that profession, giving
+voice and shape to poetry and song, in which her first years were
+passed, there is, while it lasts, an excitement in the art that
+lifts it from the labour of a calling.  Hovering between two
+lives, the Real and Ideal, dwells the life of music and the
+stage.  But that life was lost evermore to the idol of the eyes
+and ears of Naples.  Lifted to the higher realm of passionate
+love, it seemed as if the fictitious genius which represents the
+thoughts of others was merged in the genius that grows all
+thought itself.  It had been the worst infidelity to the Lost, to
+have descended again to live on the applause of others.  And so--
+for she would not accept alms from Glyndon--so, by the commonest
+arts, the humblest industry which the sex knows, alone and
+unseen, she who had slept on the breast of Zanoni found a shelter
+for their child.  As when, in the noble verse prefixed to this
+chapter, Armida herself has destroyed her enchanted palace,--not
+a vestige of that bower, raised of old by Poetry and Love,
+remained to say, "It had been!"
+
+And the child avenged the father; it bloomed, it thrived,--it
+waxed strong in the light of life.  But still it seemed haunted
+and preserved by some other being than her own.  In its sleep
+there was that slumber, so deep and rigid, which a thunderbolt
+could not have disturbed; and in such sleep often it moved its
+arms, as to embrace the air:  often its lips stirred with
+murmured sounds of indistinct affection,--NOT FOR HER; and all
+the while upon its cheeks a hue of such celestial bloom, upon its
+lips a smile of such mysterious joy!  Then, when it waked, its
+eyes did not turn first to HER,--wistful, earnest, wandering,
+they roved around, to fix on her pale face, at last, in mute
+sorrow and reproach.
+
+Never had Viola felt before how mighty was her love for Zanoni;
+how thought, feeling, heart, soul, life,--all lay crushed and
+dormant in the icy absence to which she had doomed herself!  She
+heard not the roar without, she felt not one amidst those stormy
+millions,--worlds of excitement labouring through every hour.
+Only when Glyndon, haggard, wan, and spectre-like, glided in, day
+after day, to visit her, did the fair daughter of the careless
+South know how heavy and universal was the Death-Air that girt
+her round.  Sublime in her passive unconsciousness,--her mechanic
+life,--she sat, and feared not, in the den of the Beasts of Prey.
+
+The door of the room opened abruptly, and Glyndon entered.  His
+manner was more agitated than usual.
+
+"Is it you, Clarence?" she said in her soft, languid tones.  "You
+are before the hour I expected you."
+
+"Who can count on his hours at Paris?" returned Glyndon, with a
+frightful smile.  "Is it not enough that I am here!  Your apathy
+in the midst of these sorrows appalls me.  You say calmly,
+'Farewell;' calmly you bid me, 'Welcome!'--as if in every corner
+there was not a spy, and as if with every day there was not a
+massacre!"
+
+"Pardon me!  But in these walls lies my world.  I can hardly
+credit all the tales you tell me.  Everything here, save THAT,"
+and she pointed to the infant, "seems already so lifeless, that
+in the tomb itself one could scarcely less heed the crimes that
+are done without."
+
+Glyndon paused for a few moments, and gazed with strange and
+mingled feelings upon that face and form, still so young, and yet
+so invested with that saddest of all repose,--when the heart
+feels old.
+
+"O Viola," said he, at last, and in a voice of suppressed
+passion, "was it thus I ever thought to see you,--ever thought to
+feel for you, when we two first met in the gay haunts of Naples?
+Ah, why then did you refuse my love; or why was mine not worthy
+of you?  Nay, shrink not!--let me touch your hand.  No passion so
+sweet as that youthful love can return to me again.  I feel for
+you but as a brother for some younger and lonely sister.  With
+you, in your presence, sad though it be, I seem to breathe back
+the purer air of my early life.  Here alone, except in scenes of
+turbulence and tempest, the Phantom ceases to pursue me.  I
+forget even the Death that stalks behind, and haunts me as my
+shadow.  But better days may be in store for us yet.  Viola, I at
+last begin dimly to perceive how to baffle and subdue the Phantom
+that has cursed my life,--it is to brave, and defy it.  In sin
+and in riot, as I have told thee, it haunts me not.  But I
+comprehend now what Mejnour said in his dark apothegms, 'that I
+should dread the spectre most WHEN UNSEEN.'  In virtuous and calm
+resolution it appears,--ay, I behold it now; there, there, with
+its livid eyes!"--and the drops fell from his brow.  "But it
+shall no longer daunt me from that resolution.  I face it, and it
+gradually darkens back into the shade."  He paused, and his eyes
+dwelt with a terrible exultation upon the sunlit space; then,
+with a heavy and deep-drawn breath, he resumed, "Viola, I have
+found the means of escape.  We will leave this city.  In some
+other land we will endeavour to comfort each other, and forget
+the past."
+
+"No," said Viola, calmly; "I have no further wish to stir, till I
+am born hence to the last resting-place.  I dreamed of him last
+night, Clarence!--dreamed of him for the first time since we
+parted; and, do not mock me, methought that he forgave the
+deserter, and called me 'Wife.'  That dream hallows the room.
+Perhaps it will visit me again before I die."
+
+"Talk not of him,--of the demi-fiend!" cried Glyndon, fiercely,
+and stamping his foot.  "Thank the Heavens for any fate that hath
+rescued thee from him!"
+
+"Hush!" said Viola, gravely.  And as she was about to proceed,
+her eye fell upon the child.  It was standing in the very centre
+of that slanting column of light which the sun poured into the
+chamber; and the rays seemed to surround it as a halo, and
+settled, crown-like, on the gold of its shining hair.  In its
+small shape, so exquisitely modelled, in its large, steady,
+tranquil eyes, there was something that awed, while it charmed
+the mother's pride.  It gazed on Glyndon as he spoke, with a look
+which almost might have seemed disdain, and which Viola, at
+least, interpreted as a defence of the Absent, stronger than her
+own lips could frame.
+
+Glyndon broke the pause.
+
+"Thou wouldst stay, for what?  To betray a mother's duty!  If any
+evil happen to thee here, what becomes of thine infant?  Shall it
+be brought up an orphan, in a country that has desecrated thy
+religion, and where human charity exists no more?  Ah, weep, and
+clasp it to thy bosom; but tears do not protect and save."
+
+"Thou hast conquered, my friend, I will fly with thee."
+
+"To-morrow night, then, be prepared.  I will bring thee the
+necessary disguises."
+
+And Glyndon then proceeded to sketch rapidly the outline of the
+path they were to take, and the story they were to tell.  Viola
+listened, but scarcely comprehended; he pressed her hand to his
+heart and departed.
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.V.
+
+Van seco pur anco
+Sdegno ed Amor, quasi due Veltri al fianco.
+"Ger. Lib." cant. xx. cxvii.
+
+(There went with him still Disdain and Love, like two greyhounds
+side by side.)
+
+Glyndon did not perceive, as he hurried from the house, two forms
+crouching by the angle of the wall.  He saw still the spectre
+gliding by his side; but he beheld not the yet more poisonous
+eyes of human envy and woman's jealousy that glared on his
+retreating footsteps.
+
+Nicot advanced to the house; Fillide followed him in silence.
+The painter, an old sans-culotte, knew well what language to
+assume to the porter.  He beckoned the latter from his lodge,
+"How is this, citizen?  Thou harbourest a 'suspect.'"
+
+"Citizen, you terrify me!--if so, name him."
+
+"It is not a man; a refugee, an Italian woman, lodges here."
+
+"Yes, au troisieme,--the door to the left.  But what of her?--she
+cannot be dangerous, poor child!"
+
+"Citizen, beware!  Dost thou dare to pity her?"
+
+"I?  No, no, indeed.  But--"
+
+"Speak the truth!  Who visits her?"
+
+"No one but an Englishman."
+
+"That is it,--an Englishman, a spy of Pitt and Coburg."
+
+"Just Heaven! is it possible?"
+
+"How, citizen! dost thou speak of Heaven?  Thou must be an
+aristocrat!"
+
+"No, indeed; it was but an old bad habit, and escaped me
+unawares."
+
+"How often does the Englishman visit her?"
+
+"Daily."
+
+Fillide uttered an exclamation.
+
+She never stirs out," said the porter.  "Her sole occupations are
+in work, and care of her infant."
+
+"Her infant!"
+
+Fillide made a bound forward.  Nicot in vain endeavoured to
+arrest her.  She sprang up the stairs; she paused not till she
+was before the door indicated by the porter; it stood ajar, she
+entered, she stood at the threshold, and beheld that face, still
+so lovely!  The sight of so much beauty left her hopeless.  And
+the child, over whom the mother bent!--she who had never been a
+mother!--she uttered no sound; the furies were at work within her
+breast.  Viola turned, and saw her, and, terrified by the strange
+apparition, with features that expressed the deadliest hate and
+scorn and vengeance, uttered a cry, and snatched the child to her
+bosom.  The Italian laughed aloud,--turned, descended, and,
+gaining the spot where Nicot still conversed with the frightened
+porter drew him from the house.  When they were in the open
+street, she halted abruptly, and said, "Avenge me, and name thy
+price!"
+
+"My price, sweet one! is but permission to love thee.  Thou wilt
+fly with me to-morrow night; thou wilt possess thyself of the
+passports and the plan."
+
+"And they--"
+
+"Shall, before then, find their asylum in the Conciergerie.  The
+guillotine shall requite thy wrongs."
+
+"Do this, and I am satisfied," said Fillide, firmly.
+
+And they spoke no more till they regained the house.  But when
+she there, looking up to the dull building, saw the windows of
+the room which the belief of Glyndon's love had once made a
+paradise, the tiger relented at the heart; something of the woman
+gushed back upon her nature, dark and savage as it was.  She
+pressed the arm on which she leaned convulsively, and exclaimed,
+"No, no! not him! denounce her,--let her perish; but I have slept
+on HIS bosom,--not HIM!"
+
+"It shall be as thou wilt," said Nicot, with a devil's sneer;
+"but he must be arrested for the moment.  No harm shall happen to
+him, for no accuser shall appear.  But her,--thou wilt not relent
+for her?"
+
+Fillide turned upon him her eyes, and their dark glance was
+sufficient answer.
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.VI.
+
+In poppa quella
+Che guidar gli dovea, fatal Donsella.
+"Ger. Lib." cant. xv. 3.
+
+(By the prow was the fatal lady ordained to be the guide.)
+
+The Italian did not overrate that craft of simulation proverbial
+with her country and her sex.  Not a word, not a look, that day
+revealed to Glyndon the deadly change that had converted devotion
+into hate.  He himself, indeed, absorbed in his own schemes, and
+in reflections on his own strange destiny, was no nice observer.
+But her manner, milder and more subdued than usual, produced a
+softening effect upon his meditations towards the evening; and he
+then began to converse with her on the certain hope of escape,
+and on the future that would await them in less unhallowed lands.
+
+"And thy fair friend," said Fillide, with an averted eye and a
+false smile, "who was to be our companion?--thou hast resigned
+her, Nicot tells me, in favour of one in whom he is interested.
+Is it so?"
+
+"He told thee this!" returned Glyndon, evasively.  "Well! does
+the change content thee?"
+
+"Traitor!" muttered Fillide; and she rose suddenly, approached
+him, parted the long hair from his forehead caressingly, and
+pressed her lips convulsively on his brow.
+
+"This were too fair a head for the doomsman," said she, with a
+slight laugh, and, turning away, appeared occupied in
+preparations for their departure.
+
+The next morning, when he rose, Glyndon did not see the Italian;
+she was absent from the house when he left it.  It was necessary
+that he should once more visit C-- before his final Departure,
+not only to arrange for Nicot's participation in the flight, but
+lest any suspicion should have arisen to thwart or endanger the
+plan he had adopted.  C--, though not one of the immediate
+coterie of Robespierre, and indeed secretly hostile to him, had
+possessed the art of keeping well with each faction as it rose to
+power.  Sprung from the dregs of the populace, he had,
+nevertheless, the grace and vivacity so often found impartially
+amongst every class in France.  He had contrived to enrich
+himself--none knew how--in the course of his rapid career.  He
+became, indeed, ultimately one of the wealthiest proprietors of
+Paris, and at that time kept a splendid and hospitable mansion.
+He was one of those whom, from various reasons, Robespierre
+deigned to favour; and he had often saved the proscribed and
+suspected, by procuring them passports under disguised names, and
+advising their method of escape.  But C-- was a man who took this
+trouble only for the rich.  "The incorruptible Maximilien," who
+did not want the tyrant's faculty of penetration, probably saw
+through all his manoeuvres, and the avarice which he cloaked
+beneath his charity.  But it was noticeable that Robespierre
+frequently seemed to wink at--nay, partially to encourage--such
+vice in men whom he meant hereafter to destroy, as would tend to
+lower them in the public estimation, and to contrast with his own
+austere and unassailable integrity and PURISM.  And, doubtless,
+he often grimly smiled in his sleeve at the sumptuous mansion and
+the griping covetousness of the worthy Citizen C--.
+
+To this personage, then, Glyndon musingly bent his way.  It was
+true, as he had darkly said to Viola, that in proportion as he
+had resisted the spectre, its terrors had lost their influence.
+The time had come at last, when, seeing crime and vice in all
+their hideousness, and in so vast a theatre, he had found that in
+vice and crime there are deadlier horrors than in the eyes of a
+phantom-fear.  His native nobleness began to return to him.  As
+he passed the streets, he revolved in his mind projects of future
+repentance and reformation.  He even meditated, as a just return
+for Fillide's devotion, the sacrifice of all the reasonings of
+his birth and education.  He would repair whatever errors he had
+committed against her, by the self-immolation of marriage with
+one little congenial with himself.  He who had once revolted from
+marriage with the noble and gentle Viola!--he had learned in that
+world of wrong to know that right is right, and that Heaven did
+not make the one sex to be the victim of the other.  The young
+visions of the Beautiful and the Good rose once more before him;
+and along the dark ocean of his mind lay the smile of reawakening
+virtue, as a path of moonlight.  Never, perhaps, had the
+condition of his soul been so elevated and unselfish.
+
+In the meanwhile Jean Nicot, equally absorbed in dreams of the
+future, and already in his own mind laying out to the best
+advantage the gold of the friend he was about to betray, took his
+way to the house honoured by the residence of Robespierre.  He
+had no intention to comply with the relenting prayer of Fillide,
+that the life of Glyndon should be spared.  He thought with
+Barrere, "Il n'y a que les morts qui ne revient pas."  In all men
+who have devoted themselves to any study, or any art, with
+sufficient pains to attain a certain degree of excellence, there
+must be a fund of energy immeasurably above that of the ordinary
+herd.  Usually this energy is concentrated on the objects of
+their professional ambition, and leaves them, therefore,
+apathetic to the other pursuits of men.  But where those objects
+are denied, where the stream has not its legitimate vent, the
+energy, irritated and aroused, possesses the whole being, and if
+not wasted on desultory schemes, or if not purified by conscience
+and principle, becomes a dangerous and destructive element in the
+social system, through which it wanders in riot and disorder.
+Hence, in all wise monarchies,--nay, in all well-constituted
+states,--the peculiar care with which channels are opened for
+every art and every science; hence the honour paid to their
+cultivators by subtle and thoughtful statesmen, who, perhaps, for
+themselves, see nothing in a picture but coloured canvas,--
+nothing in a problem but an ingenious puzzle.  No state is ever
+more in danger than when the talent that should be consecrated to
+peace has no occupation but political intrigue or personal
+advancement.  Talent unhonoured is talent at war with men.  And
+here it is noticeable, that the class of actors having been the
+most degraded by the public opinion of the old regime, their very
+dust deprived of Christian burial, no men (with certain
+exceptions in the company especially favoured by the Court) were
+more relentless and revengeful among the scourges of the
+Revolution.  In the savage Collot d'Herbois, mauvais comedien,
+were embodied the wrongs and the vengeance of a class.
+
+Now the energy of Jean Nicot had never been sufficiently directed
+to the art he professed.  Even in his earliest youth, the
+political disquisitions of his master, David, had distracted him
+from the more tedious labours of the easel.  The defects of his
+person had embittered his mind; the atheism of his benefactor had
+deadened his conscience.  For one great excellence of religion--
+above all, the Religion of the Cross--is, that it raises PATIENCE
+first into a virtue, and next into a hope.  Take away the
+doctrine of another life, of requital hereafter, of the smile of
+a Father upon our sufferings and trials in our ordeal here, and
+what becomes of patience?  But without patience, what is man?--
+and what a people?  Without patience, art never can be high;
+without patience, liberty never can be perfected.  By wild
+throes, and impetuous, aimless struggles, Intellect seeks to soar
+from Penury, and a nation to struggle into Freedom.  And woe,
+thus unfortified, guideless, and unenduring,--woe to both!
+
+Nicot was a villain as a boy.  In most criminals, however
+abandoned, there are touches of humanity,--relics of virtue; and
+the true delineator of mankind often incurs the taunt of bad
+hearts and dull minds, for showing that even the worst alloy has
+some particles of gold, and even the best that come stamped from
+the mint of Nature have some adulteration of the dross.  But
+there are exceptions, though few, to the general rule,--
+exceptions, when the conscience lies utterly dead, and when good
+or bad are things indifferent but as means to some selfish end.
+So was it with the protege of the atheist.  Envy and hate filled
+up his whole being, and the consciousness of superior talent only
+made him curse the more all who passed him in the sunlight with a
+fairer form or happier fortunes.  But, monster though he was,
+when his murderous fingers griped the throat of his benefactor,
+Time, and that ferment of all evil passions--the Reign of Blood--
+had made in the deep hell of his heart a deeper still.  Unable to
+exercise his calling (for even had he dared to make his name
+prominent, revolutions are no season for painters; and no man--
+no! not the richest and proudest magnate of the land, has so
+great an interest in peace and order, has so high and essential a
+stake in the well being of society, as the poet and the artist),
+his whole intellect, ever restless and unguided, was left to
+ponder over the images of guilt most congenial to it.  He had no
+future but in this life; and how in this life had the men of
+power around him, the great wrestlers for dominion, thriven?  All
+that was good, pure, unselfish,--whether among Royalists or
+Republicans,--swept to the shambles, and the deathsmen left alone
+in the pomp and purple of their victims!  Nobler paupers than
+Jean Nicot would despair; and Poverty would rise in its ghastly
+multitudes to cut the throat of Wealth, and then gash itself limb
+by limb, if Patience, the Angel of the Poor, sat not by its side,
+pointing with solemn finger to the life to come!  And now, as
+Nicot neared the house of the Dictator, he began to meditate a
+reversal of his plans of the previous day:  not that he faltered
+in his resolution to denounce Glyndon, and Viola would
+necessarily share his fate, as a companion and accomplice,--no,
+THERE he was resolved! for he hated both (to say nothing of his
+old but never-to-be-forgotten grudge against Zanoni).  Viola had
+scorned him, Glyndon had served, and the thought of gratitude was
+as intolerable to him as the memory of insult.  But why, now,
+should he fly from France?--he could possess himself of Glyndon's
+gold; he doubted not that he could so master Fillide by her wrath
+and jealousy that he could command her acquiescence in all he
+proposed.  The papers he had purloined--Desmoulins'
+correspondence with Glyndon--while it insured the fate of the
+latter, might be eminently serviceable to Robespierre, might
+induce the tyrant to forget his own old liaisons with Hebert, and
+enlist him among the allies and tools of the King of Terror.
+Hopes of advancement, of wealth, of a career, again rose before
+him.  This correspondence, dated shortly before Camille
+Desmoulins' death, was written with that careless and daring
+imprudence which characterised the spoiled child of Danton.  It
+spoke openly of designs against Robespierre; it named
+confederates whom the tyrant desired only a popular pretext to
+crush.  It was a new instrument of death in the hands of the
+Death-compeller.  What greater gift could he bestow on Maximilien
+the Incorruptible?
+
+Nursing these thoughts, he arrived at last before the door of
+Citizen Dupleix.  Around the threshold were grouped, in admired
+confusion, some eight or ten sturdy Jacobins, the voluntary body-
+guard of Robespierre,--tall fellows, well armed, and insolent
+with the power that reflects power, mingled with women, young and
+fair, and gayly dressed, who had come, upon the rumour that
+Maximilien had had an attack of bile, to inquire tenderly of his
+health; for Robespierre, strange though it seem, was the idol of
+the sex!
+
+Through this cortege stationed without the door, and reaching up
+the stairs to the landing-place,--for Robespierre's apartments
+were not spacious enough to afford sufficient antechamber for
+levees so numerous and miscellaneous,--Nicot forced his way; and
+far from friendly or flattering were the expressions that regaled
+his ears.
+
+"Aha, le joli Polichinelle!" said a comely matron, whose robe his
+obtrusive and angular elbows cruelly discomposed.  "But how could
+one expect gallantry from such a scarecrow!"
+
+"Citizen, I beg to advise thee (The courteous use of the plural
+was proscribed at Paris.  The Societies Populaires had decided
+that whoever used it should be prosecuted as suspect et
+adulateur!  At the door of the public administrations and popular
+societies was written up, "Ici on s'honore du Citoyen, et on se
+tutoye"!!! ("Here they respect the title of Citizen, and they
+'thee' and 'thou' one another.")  Take away Murder from the
+French Revolution and it becomes the greatest farce ever played
+before the angels!) that thou art treading on my feet.  I beg thy
+pardon, but now I look at thine, I see the hall is not wide
+enough for them."
+
+"Ho! Citizen Nicot," cried a Jacobin, shouldering his formidable
+bludgeon, "and what brings thee hither?--thinkest thou that
+Hebert's crimes are forgotten already?  Off, sport of Nature! and
+thank the Etre Supreme that he made thee insignificant enough to
+be forgiven."
+
+"A pretty face to look out of the National Window" (The
+Guillotine.), said the woman whose robe the painter had ruffled.
+
+"Citizens," said Nicot, white with passion, but constraining
+himself so that his words seemed to come from grinded teeth, "I
+have the honour to inform you that I seek the Representant upon
+business of the utmost importance to the public and himself;
+and," he added slowly and malignantly, glaring round, "I call all
+good citizens to be my witnesses when I shall complain to
+Robespierre of the reception bestowed on me by some amongst you."
+
+There was in the man's look and his tone of voice so much of deep
+and concentrated malignity, that the idlers drew back, and as the
+remembrance of the sudden ups and downs of revolutionary life
+occurred to them, several voices were lifted to assure the
+squalid and ragged painter that nothing was farther from their
+thoughts than to offer affront to a citizen whose very appearance
+proved him to be an exemplary sans-culotte.  Nicot received these
+apologies in sullen silence, and, folding his arms, leaned
+against the wall, waiting in grim patience for his admission.
+
+The loiterers talked to each other in separate knots of two and
+three; and through the general hum rang the clear, loud, careless
+whistle of the tall Jacobin who stood guard by the stairs.  Next
+to Nicot, an old woman and a young virgin were muttering in
+earnest whispers, and the atheist painter chuckled inly to
+overhear their discourse.
+
+"I assure thee, my dear," said the crone, with a mysterious shake
+of head, "that the divine Catherine Theot, whom the impious now
+persecute, is really inspired.  There can be no doubt that the
+elect, of whom Dom Gerle and the virtuous Robespierre are
+destined to be the two grand prophets, will enjoy eternal life
+here, and exterminate all their enemies.  There is no doubt of
+it,--not the least!"
+
+"How delightful!" said the girl; "ce cher Robespierre!--he does
+not look very long-lived either!"
+
+"The greater the miracle," said the old woman.  "I am just
+eighty-one, and I don't feel a day older since Catherine Theot
+promised me I should be one of the elect!"
+
+Here the women were jostled aside by some newcomers, who talked
+loud and eagerly.
+
+"Yes," cried a brawny man, whose garb denoted him to be a
+butcher, with bare arms, and a cap of liberty on his head; "I am
+come to warn Robespierre.  They lay a snare for him; they offer
+him the Palais National.  'On ne peut etre ami du peuple et
+habiter un palais.'" ("No one can be a friend of the people, and
+dwell in a palace."--"Papiers inedits trouves chez Robespierre,"
+etc., volume ii. page 132.)
+
+"No, indeed," answered a cordonnier; "I like him best in his
+little lodging with the menuisier:  it looks like one of US."
+
+Another rush of the crowd, and a new group were thrown forward in
+the vicinity of Nicot.  And these men gabbled and chattered
+faster and louder than the rest.
+
+"But my plan is--"
+
+"Au diable with YOUR plan!  I tell you MY scheme is--"
+
+"Nonsense!" cried a third.  "When Robespierre understands MY new
+method of making gunpowder, the enemies of France shall--"
+
+"Bah! who fears foreign enemies?" interrupted a fourth; "the
+enemies to be feared are at home.  MY new guillotine takes off
+fifty heads at a time!"
+
+"But MY new Constitution!" exclaimed a fifth.
+
+"MY new Religion, citizen!" murmured, complacently, a sixth.
+
+"Sacre mille tonnerres, silence!" roared forth one of the Jacobin
+guard.
+
+And the crowd suddenly parted as a fierce-looking man, buttoned
+up to the chin, his sword rattling by his side, his spurs
+clinking at his heel, descended the stairs,--his cheeks swollen
+and purple with intemperance, his eyes dead and savage as a
+vulture's.  There was a still pause, as all, with pale cheeks,
+made way for the relentless Henriot.  (Or H_a_nriot.  It is
+singular how undetermined are not only the characters of the
+French Revolution, but even the spelling of their names.  With
+the historians it is Vergniau_d_,--with the journalists of the
+time it is Vorgniau_x_.  With one authority it is Robespierre,--
+with another Robe_r_spierre.)  Scarce had this gruff and iron
+minion of the tyrant stalked through the throng, than a new
+movement of respect and agitation and fear swayed the increasing
+crowd, as there glided in, with the noiselessness of a shadow, a
+smiling, sober citizen, plainly but neatly clad, with a downcast
+humble eye.  A milder, meeker face no pastoral poet could assign
+to Corydon or Thyrsis,--why did the crowd shrink and hold their
+breath?  As the ferret in a burrow crept that slight form amongst
+the larger and rougher creatures that huddled and pressed back on
+each other as he passed.  A wink of his stealthy eye, and the
+huge Jacobins left the passage clear, without sound or question.
+On he went to the apartment of the tyrant, and thither will we
+follow him.
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.VII.
+
+Constitutum est, ut quisquis eum HOMINEM dixisset fuisse,
+capitalem penderet poenam.
+St. Augustine, "Of the God Serapis," l. 18, "de Civ. Dei," c. 5.)
+
+(It was decreed, that whoso should say that he had been a MAN,
+should suffer the punishment of a capital offence.)
+
+Robespierre was reclining languidly in his fauteuil, his
+cadaverous countenance more jaded and fatigued than usual.  He to
+whom Catherine Theot assured immortal life, looked, indeed, like
+a man at death's door.  On the table before him was a dish heaped
+with oranges, with the juice of which it is said that he could
+alone assuage the acrid bile that overflowed his system; and an
+old woman, richly dressed (she had been a Marquise in the old
+regime) was employed in peeling the Hesperian fruits for the sick
+Dragon, with delicate fingers covered with jewels.  I have before
+said that Robespierre was the idol of the women.  Strange
+certainly!--but then they were French women!  The old Marquise,
+who, like Catherine Theot, called him "son," really seemed to
+love him piously and disinterestedly as a mother; and as she
+peeled the oranges, and heaped on him the most caressing and
+soothing expressions, the livid ghost of a smile fluttered about
+his meagre lips.  At a distance, Payan and Couthon, seated at
+another table, were writing rapidly, and occasionally pausing
+from their work to consult with each other in brief whispers.
+
+Suddenly one of the Jacobins opened the door, and, approaching
+Robespierre, whispered to him the name of Guerin.  (See for the
+espionage on which Guerin was employed, "Les Papiers inedits,"
+etc., volume i. page 366, No. xxviii.)  At that word the sick man
+started up, as if new life were in the sound.
+
+"My kind friend," he said to the Marquise, "forgive me; I must
+dispense with thy tender cares.  France demands me.  I am never
+ill when I can serve my country!"
+
+The old Marquise lifted up her eyes to heaven and murmured, "Quel
+ange!"
+
+Robespierre waved his hand impatiently; and the old woman, with a
+sigh, patted his pale cheek, kissed his forehead, and
+submissively withdrew.  The next moment, the smiling, sober man
+we have before described, stood, bending low, before the tyrant.
+And well might Robespierre welcome one of the subtlest agents of
+his power,--one on whom he relied more than the clubs of his
+Jacobins, the tongues of his orators, the bayonets of his armies;
+Guerin, the most renowned of his ecouteurs,--the searching,
+prying, universal, omnipresent spy, who glided like a sunbeam
+through chink and crevice, and brought to him intelligence not
+only of the deeds, but the hearts of men!
+
+"Well, citizen, well!--and what of Tallien?"
+
+"This morning, early, two minutes after eight, he went out."
+
+"So early?--hem!"
+
+"He passed Rue des Quatre Fils, Rue de Temple, Rue de la Reunion,
+au Marais, Rue Martin; nothing observable, except that--"
+
+"That what?"
+
+"He amused himself at a stall in bargaining for some books."
+
+"Bargaining for books!  Aha, the charlatan!--he would cloak the
+intriguant under the savant!  Well!"
+
+"At last, in the Rue des Fosses Montmartre, an individual in a
+blue surtout (unknown) accosted him.  They walked together about
+the street some minutes, and were joined by Legendre."
+
+"Legendre! approach, Payan!  Legendre, thou hearest!"
+
+"I went into a fruit-stall, and hired two little girls to go and
+play at ball within hearing.  They heard Legendre say, 'I believe
+his power is wearing itself out.'  And Tallien answered, 'And
+HIMSELF too.  I would not give three months' purchase for his
+life.'  I do not know, citizen, if they meant THEE?"
+
+"Nor I, citizen," answered Robespierre, with a fell smile,
+succeeded by an expression of gloomy thought.  "Ha!" he muttered;
+"I am young yet,--in the prime of life.  I commit no excess.  No;
+my constitution is sound, sound.  Anything farther of Tallien?"
+
+"Yes.  The woman whom he loves--Teresa de Fontenai--who lies in
+prison, still continues to correspond with him; to urge him to
+save her by thy destruction:  this my listeners overheard.  His
+servant is the messenger between the prisoner and himself."
+
+"So!  The servant shall be seized in the open streets of Paris.
+The Reign of Terror is not over yet.  With the letters found on
+him, if such their context, I will pluck Tallien from his benches
+in the Convention."
+
+Robespierre rose, and after walking a few moments to and fro the
+room in thought, opened the door and summoned one of the Jacobins
+without.  To him he gave his orders for the watch and arrest of
+Tallien's servant, and then threw himself again into his chair.
+As the Jacobin departed, Guerin whispered,--
+
+"Is not that the Citizen Aristides?"
+
+"Yes; a faithful fellow, if he would wash himself, and not swear
+so much."
+
+"Didst thou not guillotine his brother?"
+
+"But Aristides denounced him."
+
+"Nevertheless, are such men safe about thy person?"
+
+"Humph! that is true."  And Robespierre, drawing out his pocket-
+book, wrote a memorandum in it, replaced it in his vest, and
+resumed,--
+
+"What else of Tallien?"
+
+"Nothing more.  He and Legendre, with the unknown, walked to the
+Jardin Egalite, and there parted.  I saw Tallien to his house.
+But I have other news.  Thou badest me watch for those who
+threaten thee in secret letters."
+
+"Guerin! hast thou detected them?  Hast thou--hast thou--"
+
+And the tyrant, as he spoke, opened and shut both his hands, as
+if already grasping the lives of the writers, and one of those
+convulsive grimaces that seemed like an epileptic affection, to
+which he was subject, distorted his features.
+
+"Citizen, I think I have found one.  Thou must know that amongst
+those most disaffected is the painter Nicot."
+
+"Stay, stay!" said Robespierre, opening a manuscript book, bound
+in red morocco (for Robespierre was neat and precise, even in his
+death-lists), and turning to an alphabetical index,--"Nicot!--I
+have him,--atheist, sans-culotte (I hate slovens), friend of
+Hebert!  Aha!  N.B.--Rene Dumas knows of his early career and
+crimes.  Proceed!"
+
+"This Nicot has been suspected of diffusing tracts and pamphlets
+against thyself and the Comite.  Yesterday evening, when he was
+out, his porter admitted me into his apartment, Rue Beau Repaire.
+With my master-key I opened his desk and escritoire.  I found
+herein a drawing of thyself at the guillotine; and underneath was
+written, 'Bourreau de ton pays, lis l'arret de ton chatiment!'
+(Executioner of thy country, read the decree of thy punishment!)
+I compared the words with the fragments of the various letters
+thou gavest me:  the handwriting tallies with one.  See, I tore
+off the writing."
+
+Robespierre looked, smiled, and, as if his vengeance were already
+satisfied, threw himself on his chair.  "It is well!  I feared it
+was a more powerful enemy.  This man must be arrested at once."
+
+"And he waits below.  I brushed by him as I ascended the stairs."
+
+"Does he so?--admit!--nay,--hold! hold!  Guerin, withdraw into
+the inner chamber till I summon thee again.  Dear Payan, see that
+this Nicot conceals no weapons."
+
+Payan, who was as brave as Robespierre was pusillanimous,
+repressed the smile of disdain that quivered on his lips a
+moment, and left the room.
+
+Meanwhile Robespierre, with his head buried in his bosom, seemed
+plunged in deep thought.  "Life is a melancholy thing, Couthon!"
+said he, suddenly.
+
+"Begging your pardon, I think death worse," answered the
+philanthropist, gently.
+
+Robespierre made no rejoinder, but took from his portefeuille
+that singular letter, which was found afterwards amongst his
+papers, and is marked LXI. in the published collection.
+("Papiers inedits,' etc., volume ii. page 156.)
+
+"Without doubt," it began, "you are uneasy at not having earlier
+received news from me.  Be not alarmed; you know that I ought
+only to reply by our ordinary courier; and as he has been
+interrupted, dans sa derniere course, that is the cause of my
+delay.  When you receive this, employ all diligence to fly a
+theatre where you are about to appear and disappear for the last
+time.  It were idle to recall to you all the reasons that expose
+you to peril.  The last step that should place you sur le sopha
+de la presidence, but brings you to the scaffold; and the mob
+will spit on your face as it has spat on those whom you have
+judged.  Since, then, you have accumulated here a sufficient
+treasure for existence, I await you with great impatience, to
+laugh with you at the part you have played in the troubles of a
+nation as credulous as it is avid of novelties.  Take your part
+according to our arrangements,--all is prepared.  I conclude,--
+our courier waits.  I expect your reply."
+
+Musingly and slowly the Dictator devoured the contents of this
+epistle.  "No," he said to himself,--"no; he who has tasted power
+can no longer enjoy repose.  Yet, Danton, Danton! thou wert
+right; better to be a poor fisherman than to govern men."  ("Il
+vaudrait mieux," said Danton, in his dungeon, "etre un pauvre
+pecheur que de gouverner les hommes.")
+
+The door opened, and Payan reappeared and whispered Robespierre,
+"All is safe!  See the man."
+
+The Dictator, satisfied, summoned his attendant Jacobin to
+conduct Nicot to his presence.  The painter entered with a
+fearless expression in his deformed features, and stood erect
+before Robespierre, who scanned him with a sidelong eye.
+
+It is remarkable that most of the principal actors of the
+Revolution were singularly hideous in appearance,--from the
+colossal ugliness of Mirabeau and Danton, or the villanous
+ferocity in the countenances of David and Simon, to the filthy
+squalor of Marat, the sinister and bilious meanness of the
+Dictator's features.  But Robespierre, who was said to resemble a
+cat, had also a cat's cleanness; and his prim and dainty dress,
+his shaven smoothness, the womanly whiteness of his lean hands,
+made yet more remarkable the disorderly ruffianism that
+characterised the attire and mien of the painter-sans-culotte.
+
+"And so, citizen," said Robespierre, mildly, "thou wouldst speak
+with me?  I know thy merits and civism have been overlooked too
+long.  Thou wouldst ask some suitable provision in the state?
+Scruple not--say on!"
+
+"Virtuous Robespierre, toi qui eclaires l'univers (Thou who
+enlightenest the world.), I come not to ask a favour, but to
+render service to the state.  I have discovered a correspondence
+that lays open a conspiracy of which many of the actors are yet
+unsuspected."  And he placed the papers on the table.
+Robespierre seized, and ran his eye over them rapidly and
+eagerly.
+
+"Good!--good!" he muttered to himself:  "this is all I wanted.
+Barrere, Legendre!  I have them!  Camille Desmoulins was but
+their dupe.  I loved him once; I never loved them!  Citizen
+Nicot, I thank thee.  I observe these letters are addressed to an
+Englishman.  What Frenchman but must distrust these English
+wolves in sheep's clothing!  France wants no longer citizens of
+the world; that farce ended with Anarcharsis Clootz.  I beg
+pardon, Citizen Nicot; but Clootz and Hebert were THY friends."
+
+"Nay," said Nicot, apologetically, "we are all liable to be
+deceived.  I ceased to honour them whom thou didst declare
+against; for I disown my own senses rather than thy justice."
+
+"Yes, I pretend to justice; that IS the virtue I affect," said
+Robespierre, meekly; and with his feline propensities he enjoyed,
+even in that critical hour of vast schemes, of imminent danger,
+of meditated revenge, the pleasure of playing with a solitary
+victim.  (The most detestable anecdote of this peculiar hypocrisy
+in Robespierre is that in which he is recorded to have tenderly
+pressed the hand of his old school-friend, Camille Desmoulins,
+the day that he signed the warrant for his arrest.)  "And my
+justice shall no longer be blind to thy services, good Nicot.
+Thou knowest this Glyndon?"
+
+"Yes, well,--intimately.  He WAS my friend, but I would give up
+my brother if he were one of the 'indulgents.'  I am not ashamed
+to say that I have received favours from this man."
+
+"Aha!--and thou dost honestly hold the doctrine that where a man
+threatens my life all personal favours are to be forgotten?"
+
+"All!"
+
+"Good citizen!--kind Nicot!--oblige me by writing the address of
+this Glyndon."
+
+Nicot stooped to the table; and suddenly when the pen was in his
+hand, a thought flashed across him, and he paused, embarrassed
+and confused.
+
+"Write on, KIND Nicot!"
+
+The painter slowly obeyed.
+
+"Who are the other familiars of Glyndon?"
+
+"It was on that point I was about to speak to thee,
+Representant," said Nicot.  "He visits daily a woman, a
+foreigner, who knows all his secrets; she affects to be poor, and
+to support her child by industry.  But she is the wife of an
+Italian of immense wealth, and there is no doubt that she has
+moneys which are spent in corrupting the citizens.  She should be
+seized and arrested."
+
+"Write down her name also."
+
+"But no time is to be lost; for I know that both have a design to
+escape from Paris this very night."
+
+"Our government is prompt, good Nicot,--never fear.  Humph!--
+humph!" and Robespierre took the paper on which Nicot had
+written, and stooping over it--for he was near-sighted--added,
+smilingly, "Dost thou always write the same hand, citizen?  This
+seems almost like a disguised character."
+
+"I should not like them to know who denounced them,
+Representant."
+
+"Good! good!  Thy virtue shall be rewarded, trust me.  Salut et
+fraternite!"
+
+Robespierre half rose as he spoke, and Nicot withdrew.
+
+"Ho, there!--without!" cried the Dictator, ringing his bell; and
+as the ready Jacobin attended the summons, "Follow that man, Jean
+Nicot.  The instant he has cleared the house seize him.  At once
+to the Conciergerie with him.  Stay!--nothing against the law;
+there is thy warrant.  The public accuser shall have my
+instruction.  Away!--quick!"
+
+The Jacobin vanished.  All trace of illness, of infirmity, had
+gone from the valetudinarian; he stood erect on the floor, his
+face twitching convulsively, and his arms folded.  "Ho! Guerin!"
+the spy reappeared--"take these addresses!  Within an hour this
+Englishman and his woman must be in prison; their revelations
+will aid me against worthier foes.  They shall die:  they shall
+perish with the rest on the 10th,--the third day from this.
+There!" and he wrote hastily,--"there, also, is thy warrant!
+Off!
+
+"And now, Couthon, Payan, we will dally no longer with Tallien
+and his crew.  I have information that the Convention will NOT
+attend the Fete on the 10th.  We must trust only to the sword of
+the law.  I must compose my thoughts,--prepare my harangue.  To-
+morrow, I will reappear at the Convention; to-morrow, bold St.
+Just joins us, fresh from our victorious armies; to-morrow, from
+the tribune, I will dart the thunderbolt on the masked enemies of
+France; to-morrow, I will demand, in the face of the country, the
+heads of the conspirators."
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.VIII.
+
+Le glaive est contre toi tourne de toutes parties.
+La Harpe, "Jeanne de Naples," Act iv. sc. 4.
+
+(The sword is raised against you on all sides.)
+
+In the mean time Glyndon, after an audience of some length with
+C--, in which the final preparations were arranged, sanguine of
+safety, and foreseeing no obstacle to escape, bent his way back
+to Fillide.  Suddenly, in the midst of his cheerful thoughts, he
+fancied he heard a voice too well and too terribly recognised,
+hissing in his ear, "What! thou wouldst defy and escape me! thou
+wouldst go back to virtue and content.  It is in vain,--it is too
+late.  No, _I_ will not haunt thee; HUMAN footsteps, no less
+inexorable, dog thee now.  Me thou shalt not see again till in
+the dungeon, at midnight, before thy doom!  Behold--"
+
+And Glyndon, mechanically turning his head, saw, close behind
+him, the stealthy figure of a man whom he had observed before,
+but with little heed, pass and repass him, as he quitted the
+house of Citizen C--.  Instantly and instinctively he knew that
+he was watched,--that he was pursued.  The street he was in was
+obscure and deserted, for the day was oppressively sultry, and it
+was the hour when few were abroad, either on business or
+pleasure.  Bold as he was, an icy chill shot through his heart,
+he knew too well the tremendous system that then reigned in Paris
+not to be aware of his danger.  As the sight of the first plague-
+boil to the victim of the pestilence, was the first sight of the
+shadowy spy to that of the Revolution:  the watch, the arrest,
+the trial, the guillotine,--these made the regular and rapid
+steps of the monster that the anarchists called Law!  He breathed
+hard, he heard distinctly the loud beating of his heart.  And so
+he paused, still and motionless, gazing upon the shadow that
+halted also behind him.
+
+Presently, the absence of all allies to the spy, the solitude of
+the streets, reanimated his courage; he made a step towards his
+pursuer, who retreated as he advanced.  "Citizen, thou followest
+me," he said.  "Thy business?"
+
+"Surely," answered the man, with a deprecating smile, "the
+streets are broad enough for both?  Thou art not so bad a
+republican as to arrogate all Paris to thyself!"
+
+"Go on first, then.  I make way for thee."
+
+The man bowed, doffed his hat politely, and passed forward.  The
+next moment Glyndon plunged into a winding lane, and fled fast
+through a labyrinth of streets, passages, and alleys.  By degrees
+he composed himself, and, looking behind, imagined that he had
+baffled the pursuer; he then, by a circuitous route, bent his way
+once more to his home.  As he emerged into one of the broader
+streets, a passenger, wrapped in a mantle, brushing so quickly by
+him that he did not observe his countenance, whispered, "Clarence
+Glyndon, you are dogged,--follow me!" and the stranger walked
+quickly before him.  Clarence turned, and sickened once more to
+see at his heels, with the same servile smile on his face, the
+pursuer he fancied he had escaped.  He forgot the injunction of
+the stranger to follow him, and perceiving a crowd gathered close
+at hand, round a caricature-shop, dived amidst them, and, gaining
+another street, altered the direction he had before taken, and,
+after a long and breathless course, gained without once more
+seeing the spy, a distant quartier of the city.
+
+Here, indeed, all seemed so serene and fair that his artist eye,
+even in that imminent hour, rested with pleasure on the scene.
+It was a comparatively broad space, formed by one of the noble
+quays.  The Seine flowed majestically along, with boats and craft
+resting on its surface.  The sun gilt a thousand spires and
+domes, and gleamed on the white palaces of a fallen chivalry.
+Here fatigued and panting, he paused an instant, and a cooler air
+from the river fanned his brow.  "Awhile, at least, I am safe
+here," he murmured; and as he spoke, some thirty paces behind
+him, he beheld the spy.  He stood rooted to the spot; wearied
+and spent as he was, escape seemed no longer possible,--the river
+on one  side (no bridge at hand), and the long row of mansions
+closing up the other.  As he halted, he heard laughter and
+obscene songs from a house a little in his rear, between himself
+and the spy.  It was a cafe fearfully known in that quarter.
+Hither often resorted the black troop of Henriot,--the minions
+and huissiers of Robespierre.  The spy, then, had hunted the
+victim within the jaws of the hounds.  The man slowly advanced,
+and, pausing before the open window of the cafe, put his head
+through the aperture, as to address and summon forth its armed
+inmates.
+
+At that very instant, and while the spy's head was thus turned
+from him, standing in the half-open gateway of the house
+immediately before him, he perceived the stranger who had warned;
+the figure, scarcely distinguishable through the mantle that
+wrapped it, motioned to him to enter.  He sprang noiselessly
+through the friendly opening:  the door closed; breathlessly he
+followed the stranger up a flight of broad stairs and through a
+suite of empty rooms, until, having gained a small cabinet, his
+conductor doffed the large hat and the long mantle that had
+hitherto concealed his shape and features, and Glyndon beheld
+Zanoni!
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.IX.
+
+Think not my magic wonders wrought by aid
+Of Stygian angels summoned up from hell;
+Scorned and accursed be those who have essayed
+Her gloomy Dives and Afrites to compel.
+But by perception of the secret powers
+Of mineral springs in Nature's inmost cell,
+Of herbs in curtain of her greenest bowers,
+And of the moving stars o'er mountain tops and towers.
+Wiffen's "Translation of Tasso," cant. xiv. xliii.
+
+"You are safe here, young Englishman!" said Zanoni, motioning
+Glyndon to a seat.  "Fortunate for you that I come on your track
+at last!"
+
+"Far happier had it been if we had never met!  Yet even in these
+last hours of my fate, I rejoice to look once more on the face of
+that ominous and mysterious being to whom I can ascribe all the
+sufferings I have known.  Here, then, thou shalt not palter with
+or elude me.  Here, before we part, thou shalt unravel to me the
+dark enigma, if not of thy life, of my own!"
+
+"Hast thou suffered?  Poor neophyte!" said Zanoni, pityingly.
+"Yes; I see it on thy brow.  But wherefore wouldst thou blame me?
+Did I not warn thee against the whispers of thy spirit; did I not
+warn thee to forbear?  Did I not tell thee that the ordeal was
+one of awful hazard and tremendous fears,--nay, did I not offer
+to resign to thee the heart that was mighty enough, while mine,
+Glyndon, to content me?  Was it not thine own daring and resolute
+choice to brave the initiation!  Of thine own free will didst
+thou make Mejnour thy master, and his lore thy study!"
+
+"But whence came the irresistible desires of that wild and unholy
+knowledge?  I knew them not till thine evil eye fell upon me, and
+I was drawn into the magic atmosphere of thy being!"
+
+"Thou errest!--the desires were in thee; and, whether in one
+direction or the other, would have forced their way!  Man! thou
+askest me the enigma of thy fate and my own!  Look round all
+being, is there not mystery everywhere?  Can thine eye trace the
+ripening of the grain beneath the earth?  In the moral and the
+physical world alike, lie dark portents, far more wondrous than
+the powers thou wouldst ascribe to me!"
+
+"Dost thou disown those powers; dost thou confess thyself an
+imposter?--or wilt thou dare to tell me that thou art indeed sold
+to the Evil one,--a magician whose familiar has haunted me night
+and day?"
+
+"It matters not what I am," returned Zanoni; "it matters only
+whether I can aid thee to exorcise thy dismal phantom, and return
+once more to the wholesome air of this common life.  Something,
+however, will I tell thee, not to vindicate myself, but the
+Heaven and the Nature that thy doubts malign."
+
+Zanoni paused a moment, and resumed with a slight smile,--
+
+"In thy younger days thou hast doubtless read with delight the
+great Christian poet, whose muse, like the morning it celebrated,
+came to earth, 'crowned with flowers culled in Paradise.'
+('L'aurea testa
+Di rose colte in Paradiso infiora.'
+Tasso, "Ger. Lib." iv. l.)
+"No spirit was more imbued with the knightly superstitions of the
+time; and surely the Poet of Jerusalem hath sufficiently, to
+satisfy even the Inquisitor he consulted, execrated all the
+practitioners of the unlawful spells invoked,--
+
+'Per isforzar Cocito o Flegetonte.'
+(To constrain Cocytus or Phlegethon.)
+
+But in his sorrows and his wrongs, in the prison of his madhouse,
+know you not that Tasso himself found his solace, his escape, in
+the recognition of a holy and spiritual Theurgia,--of a magic
+that could summon the Angel, or the Good Genius, not the Fiend?
+And do you not remember how he, deeply versed as he was for his
+age, in the mysteries of the nobler Platonism, which hints at the
+secrets of all the starry brotherhoods, from the Chaldean to the
+later Rosicrucian, discriminates in his lovely verse, between the
+black art of Ismeno and the glorious lore of the Enchanter who
+counsels and guides upon their errand the champions of the Holy
+Land?  HIS, not the charms wrought by the aid of the Stygian
+Rebels (See this remarkable passage, which does indeed not
+unfaithfully represent the doctrine of the Pythagorean and the
+Platonist, in Tasso, cant. xiv. stanzas xli. to xlvii. ("Ger.
+Lib.")  They are beautifully translated by Wiffen.), but the
+perception of the secret powers of the fountain and the herb,--
+the Arcana of the unknown nature and the various motions of the
+stars.  His, the holy haunts of Lebanon and Carmel,--beneath his
+feet he saw the clouds, the snows, the hues of Iris, the
+generations of the rains and dews.  Did the Christian Hermit who
+converted that Enchanter (no fabulous being, but the type of all
+spirit that would aspire through Nature up to God) command him to
+lay aside these sublime studies, 'Le solite arte e l' uso mio'?
+No! but to cherish and direct them to worthy ends.  And in this
+grand conception of the poet lies the secret of the true
+Theurgia, which startles your ignorance in a more learned day
+with puerile apprehensions, and the nightmares of a sick man's
+dreams."
+
+Again Zanoni paused, and again resumed:--
+
+"In ages far remote,--of a civilisation far different from that
+which now merges the individual in the state,--there existed men
+of ardent minds, and an intense desire of knowledge.  In the
+mighty and solemn kingdoms in which they dwelt, there were no
+turbulent and earthly channels to work off the fever of their
+minds.  Set in the antique mould of casts through which no
+intellect could pierce, no valour could force its way, the thirst
+for wisdom alone reigned in the hearts of those who received its
+study as a heritage from sire to son.  Hence, even in your
+imperfect records of the progress of human knowledge, you find
+that, in the earliest ages, Philosophy descended not to the
+business and homes of men.  It dwelt amidst the wonders of the
+loftier creation; it sought to analyse the formation of matter,--
+the essentials of the prevailing soul; to read the mysteries of
+the starry orbs; to dive into those depths of Nature in which
+Zoroaster is said by the schoolmen first to have discovered the
+arts which your ignorance classes under the name of magic.  In
+such an age, then, arose some men, who, amidst the vanities and
+delusions of their class, imagined that they detected gleams of a
+brighter and steadier lore.  They fancied an affinity existing
+among all the works of Nature, and that in the lowliest lay the
+secret attraction that might conduct them upward to the loftiest.
+(Agreeably, it would seem, to the notion of Iamblichus and
+Plotinus, that the universe is as an animal; so that there is
+sympathy and communication between one part and the other; in the
+smallest part may be the subtlest nerve.  And hence the universal
+magnetism of Nature.  But man contemplates the universe as an
+animalcule would an elephant.  The animalcule, seeing scarcely
+the tip of the hoof, would be incapable of comprehending that the
+trunk belonged to the same creature,--that the effect produced
+upon one extremity would be felt in an instant by the other.)
+Centuries passed, and lives were wasted in these discoveries; but
+step after step was chronicled and marked, and became the guide
+to the few who alone had the hereditary privilege to track their
+path.
+
+At last from this dimness upon some eyes the light broke; but
+think not, young visionary, that to those who nursed unholy
+thoughts, over whom the Origin of Evil held a sway, that dawning
+was vouchsafed.  It could be given then, as now, only to the
+purest ecstasies of imagination and intellect, undistracted by
+the cares of a vulgar life, or the appetites of the common clay.
+Far from descending to the assistance of a fiend, theirs was but
+the august ambition to approach nearer to the Fount of Good; the
+more they emancipated themselves from this limbo of the planets,
+the more they were penetrated by the splendour and beneficence of
+God.  And if they sought, and at last discovered, how to the eye
+of the Spirit all the subtler modifications of being and of
+matter might be made apparent; if they discovered how, for the
+wings of the Spirit, all space might be annihilated, and while
+the body stood heavy and solid here, as a deserted tomb, the
+freed IDEA might wander from star to star,--if such discoveries
+became in truth their own, the sublimest luxury of their
+knowledge was but this, to wonder, to venerate, and adore!  For,
+as one not unlearned in these high matters has expressed it,
+'There is a principle of the soul superior to all external
+nature, and through this principle we are capable of surpassing
+the order and systems of the world, and participating the
+immortal life and the energy of the Sublime Celestials.  When the
+soul is elevated to natures above itself, it deserts the order to
+which it is awhile compelled, and by a religious magnetism is
+attracted to another and a loftier, with which it blends and
+mingles.'  (From Iamblichus, "On the Mysteries," c. 7, sect. 7.)
+Grant, then, that such beings found at last the secret to arrest
+death; to fascinate danger and the foe; to walk the revolutions
+of the earth unharmed,--think you that this life could teach them
+other desire than to yearn the more for the Immortal, and to fit
+their intellect the better for the higher being to which they
+might, when Time and Death exist no longer, be transferred?  Away
+with your gloomy fantasies of sorcerer and demon!--the soul can
+aspire only to the light; and even the error of our lofty
+knowledge was but the forgetfulness of the weakness, the
+passions, and the bonds which the death we so vainly conquered
+only can purge away!"
+
+This address was so different from what Glyndon had anticipated,
+that he remained for some moments speechless, and at length
+faltered out,--
+
+"But why, then, to me--"
+
+"Why," added Zanoni,--"why to thee have been only the penance and
+the terror,--the Threshold and the Phantom?  Vain man! look to
+the commonest elements of the common learning.  Can every tyro at
+his mere wish and will become the master; can the student, when
+he has bought his Euclid, become a Newton; can the youth whom the
+Muses haunt, say, 'I will equal Homer;' yea, can yon pale tyrant,
+with all the parchment laws of a hundred system-shapers, and the
+pikes of his dauntless multitude, carve, at his will, a
+constitution not more vicious than the one which the madness of a
+mob could overthrow?  When, in that far time to which I have
+referred, the student aspired to the heights to which thou
+wouldst have sprung at a single bound, he was trained from his
+very cradle to the career he was to run.  The internal and the
+outward nature were made clear to his eyes, year after year, as
+they opened on the day.  He was not admitted to the practical
+initiation till not one earthly wish chained that sublimest
+faculty which you call the IMAGINATION, one carnal desire clouded
+the penetrative essence that you call the INTELLECT.  And even
+then, and at the best, how few attained to the last mystery!
+Happier inasmuch as they attained the earlier to the holy glories
+for which Death is the heavenliest gate."
+
+Zanoni paused, and a shade of thought and sorrow darkened his
+celestial beauty.
+
+"And are there, indeed, others, besides thee and Mejnour, who lay
+claim to thine attributes, and have attained to thy secrets?"
+
+"Others there have been before us, but we two now are alone on
+earth."
+
+"Imposter, thou betrayest thyself!  If they could conquer Death,
+why live they not yet?" (Glyndon appears to forget that Mejnour
+had before answered the very question which his doubts here a
+second time suggest.)
+
+"Child of a day!" answered Zanoni, mournfully, "have I not told
+thee the error of our knowledge was the forgetfulness of the
+desires and passions which the spirit never can wholly and
+permanently conquer while this matter cloaks it?  Canst thou
+think that it is no sorrow, either to reject all human ties, all
+friendship, and all love, or to see, day after day, friendship
+and love wither from our life, as blossoms from the stem?  Canst
+thou wonder how, with the power to live while the world shall
+last, ere even our ordinary date be finished we yet may prefer to
+die?  Wonder rather that there are two who have clung so
+faithfully to earth!  Me, I confess, that earth can enamour yet.
+Attaining to the last secret while youth was in its bloom, youth
+still colours all around me with its own luxuriant beauty; to me,
+yet, to breathe is to enjoy.  The freshness has not faded from
+the face of Nature, and not an herb in which I cannot discover a
+new charm,--an undetected wonder.
+
+As with my youth, so with Mejnour's age:  he will tell you that
+life to him is but a power to examine; and not till he has
+exhausted all the marvels which the Creator has sown on earth,
+would he desire new habitations for the renewed Spirit to
+explore.  We are the types of the two essences of what is
+imperishable,--'ART, that enjoys; and SCIENCE, that
+contemplates!'  And now, that thou mayest be contented that the
+secrets are not vouchsafed to thee, learn that so utterly must
+the idea detach itself from what makes up the occupation and
+excitement of men; so must it be void of whatever would covet, or
+love, or hate,--that for the ambitious man, for the lover, the
+hater, the power avails not.  And I, at last, bound and blinded
+by the most common of household ties; I, darkened and helpless,
+adjure thee, the baffled and discontented,--I adjure thee to
+direct, to guide me; where are they?  Oh, tell me,--speak!  My
+wife,--my child?  Silent!--oh, thou knowest now that I am no
+sorcerer, no enemy.  I cannot give thee what thy faculties deny,
+--I cannot achieve what the passionless Mejnour failed to
+accomplish; but I can give thee the next-best boon, perhaps the
+fairest,--I can reconcile thee to the daily world, and place
+peace between thy conscience and thyself."
+
+"Wilt thou promise?"
+
+"By their sweet lives, I promise!"
+
+Glyndon looked and believed.  He whispered the address to the
+house whither his fatal step already had brought woe and doom.
+
+"Bless thee for this," exclaimed Zanoni, passionately, "and thou
+shalt be blessed!  What! couldst thou not perceive that at the
+entrance to all the grander worlds dwell the race that intimidate
+and awe?  Who in thy daily world ever left the old regions of
+Custom and Prescription, and felt not the first seizure of the
+shapeless and nameless Fear?  Everywhere around thee where men
+aspire and labour, though they see it not,--in the closet of the
+sage, in the council of the demagogue, in the camp of the
+warrior,--everywhere cowers and darkens the Unutterable Horror.
+But there, where thou hast ventured, alone is the Phantom
+VISIBLE; and never will it cease to haunt, till thou canst pass
+to the Infinite, as the seraph; or return to the Familiar, as a
+child!  But answer me this:  when, seeking to adhere to some calm
+resolve of virtue, the Phantom hath stalked suddenly to thy side;
+when its voice hath whispered thee despair; when its ghastly eyes
+would scare thee back to those scenes of earthly craft or riotous
+excitement from which, as it leaves thee to worse foes to the
+soul, its presence is ever absent,--hast thou never bravely
+resisted the spectre and thine own horror; hast thou never said,
+'Come what may, to Virtue I will cling?'"
+
+"Alas!" answered Glyndon, "only of late have I dared to do so."
+
+"And thou hast felt then that the Phantom grew more dim and its
+power more faint?"
+
+"It is true."
+
+"Rejoice, then!--thou hast overcome the true terror and mystery
+of the ordeal.  Resolve is the first success.  Rejoice, for the
+exorcism is sure!  Thou art not of those who, denying a life to
+come, are the victims of the Inexorable Horror.  Oh, when shall
+men learn, at last, that if the Great Religion inculcates so
+rigidly the necessity of FAITH, it is not alone that FAITH leads
+to the world to be; but that without faith there is no excellence
+in this,--faith in something wiser, happier, diviner, than we see
+on earth!--the artist calls it the Ideal,--the priest, Faith.
+The Ideal and Faith are one and the same.  Return, O wanderer,
+return!  Feel what beauty and holiness dwell in the Customary and
+the Old.  Back to thy gateway glide, thou Horror! and calm, on
+the childlike heart, smile again, O azure Heaven, with thy night
+and thy morning star but as one, though under its double name of
+Memory and Hope!"
+
+As he thus spoke, Zanoni laid his hand gently on the burning
+temples of his excited and wondering listener; and presently a
+sort of trance came over him:  he imagined that he was returned
+to the home of his infancy; that he was in the small chamber
+where, over his early slumbers, his mother had watched and
+prayed.  There it was,--visible, palpable, solitary, unaltered.
+In the recess, the homely bed; on the walls, the shelves filled
+with holy books; the very easel on which he had first sought to
+call the ideal to the canvas, dust-covered, broken, in the
+corner.  Below the window lay the old churchyard:  he saw it
+green in the distance, the sun glancing through the yew-trees; he
+saw the tomb where father and mother lay united, and the spire
+pointing up to heaven, the symbol of the hopes of those who
+consigned the ashes to the dust; in his ear rang the bells,
+pealing, as on a Sabbath day.  Far fled all the visions of
+anxiety and awe that had haunted and convulsed; youth, boyhood,
+childhood came back to him with innocent desires and hopes; he
+thought he fell upon his knees to pray.  He woke,--he woke in
+delicious tears, he felt that the Phantom was fled forever.  He
+looked round,--Zanoni was gone.  On the table lay these lines,
+the ink yet wet:--
+
+"I will find ways and means for thy escape.  At nightfall, as the
+clock strikes nine, a boat shall wait thee on the river before
+this house; the boatman will guide thee to a retreat where thou
+mayst rest in safety till the Reign of Terror, which nears its
+close, be past.  Think no more of the sensual love that lured,
+and wellnigh lost thee.  It betrayed, and would have destroyed.
+Thou wilt regain thy land in safety,--long years yet spared to
+thee to muse over the past, and to redeem it.  For thy future, be
+thy dream thy guide, and thy tears thy baptism."
+
+The Englishman obeyed the injunctions of the letter, and found
+their truth.
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.X.
+
+Quid mirare meas tot in uno corpore formas?
+Propert.
+
+(Why wonder that I have so many forms in a single body?)
+
+Zanoni to Mejnour.
+
+...
+
+"She is in one of their prisons,--their inexorable prisons.  It
+is Robespierre's order,--I have tracked the cause to Glyndon.
+This, then, made that terrible connection between their fates
+which I could not unravel, but which (till severed as it now is)
+wrapped Glyndon himself in the same cloud that concealed her.  In
+prison,--in prison!--it is the gate of the grave!  Her trial, and
+the inevitable execution that follows such trial, is the third
+day from this.  The tyrant has fixed all his schemes of slaughter
+for the 10th of Thermidor.  While the deaths of the unoffending
+strike awe to the city, his satellites are to massacre his foes.
+There is but one hope left,--that the Power which now dooms the
+doomer, may render me an instrument to expedite his fall.  But
+two days left,--two days!  In all my wealth of time I see but two
+days; all beyond,--darkness, solitude.  I may save her yet.  The
+tyrant shall fall the day before that which he has set apart for
+slaughter!  For the first time I mix among the broils and
+stratagems of men, and my mind leaps up from my despair, armed
+and eager for the contest."
+
+...
+
+A crowd had gathered round the Rue St. Honore; a young man was
+just arrested by the order of Robespierre.  He was known to be in
+the service of Tallien, that hostile leader in the Convention,
+whom the tyrant had hitherto trembled to attack.  This incident
+had therefore produced a greater excitement than a circumstance
+so customary as an arrest in the Reign of Terror might be
+supposed to create.  Amongst the crowd were many friends of
+Tallien, many foes to the tyrant, many weary of beholding the
+tiger dragging victim after victim to its den.  Hoarse,
+foreboding murmurs were heard; fierce eyes glared upon the
+officers as they seized their prisoner; and though they did not
+yet dare openly to resist, those in the rear pressed on those
+behind, and encumbered the path of the captive and his captors.
+The young man struggled hard for escape, and, by a violent
+effort, at last wrenched himself from the grasp.  The crowd made
+way, and closed round to protect him, as he dived and darted
+through their ranks; but suddenly the trampling of horses was
+heard at hand,--the savage Henriot and his troop were bearing
+down upon the mob.  The crowd gave way in alarm, and the prisoner
+was again seized by one of the partisans of the Dictator.  At
+that moment a voice whispered the prisoner, "Thou hast a letter
+which, if found on thee, ruins thy last hope.  Give it to me!  I
+will bear it to Tallien."  The prisoner turned in amaze, read
+something that encouraged him in the eyes of the stranger who
+thus accosted him.  The troop were now on the spot; the Jacobin
+who had seized the prisoner released hold of him for a moment to
+escape the hoofs of the horses:  in that moment the opportunity
+was found,--the stranger had disappeared.
+
+...
+
+At the house of Tallien the principal foes of the tyrant were
+assembled.  Common danger made common fellowship.  All factions
+laid aside their feuds for the hour to unite against the
+formidable man who was marching over all factions to his gory
+throne.  There was bold Lecointre, the declared enemy; there,
+creeping Barrere, who would reconcile all extremes, the hero of
+the cowards; Barras, calm and collected; Collet d'Herbois,
+breathing wrath and vengeance, and seeing not that the crimes of
+Robespierre alone sheltered his own.
+
+The council was agitated and irresolute.  The awe which the
+uniform success and the prodigious energy of Robespierre excited
+still held the greater part under its control.  Tallien, whom the
+tyrant most feared, and who alone could give head and substance
+and direction to so many contradictory passions, was too sullied
+by the memory of his own cruelties not to feel embarrassed by his
+position as the champion of mercy.  "It is true," he said, after
+an animating harangue from Lecointre, "that the Usurper menaces
+us all.  But he is still so beloved by his mobs,--still so
+supported by his Jacobins:  better delay open hostilities till
+the hour is more ripe.  To attempt and not succeed is to give us,
+bound hand and foot, to the guillotine.  Every day his power must
+decline.  Procrastination is our best ally--"  While yet
+speaking, and while yet producing the effect of water on the
+fire, it was announced that a stranger demanded to see him
+instantly on business that brooked no delay.
+
+"I am not at leisure," said the orator, impatiently.  The servant
+placed a note on the table.  Tallien opened it, and found these
+words in pencil, "From the prison of Teresa de Fontenai."  He
+turned pale, started up, and hastened to the anteroom, where he
+beheld a face entirely strange to him.
+
+"Hope of France!" said the visitor to him, and the very sound of
+his voice went straight to the heart,--"your servant is arrested
+in the streets.  I have saved your life, and that of your wife
+who will be.  I bring to you this letter from Teresa de
+Fontenai."
+
+Tallien, with a trembling hand, opened the letter, and read,--
+
+"Am I forever to implore you in vain?  Again and again I say,
+'Lose not an hour if you value my life and your own.'  My trial
+and death are fixed the third day from this,--the 10th Thermidor.
+Strike while it is yet time,--strike the monster!--you have two
+days yet.  If you fail,--if you procrastinate,--see me for the
+last time as I pass your windows to the guillotine!"
+
+"Her trial will give proof against you," said the stranger.  "Her
+death is the herald of your own.  Fear not the populace,--the
+populace would have rescued your servant.  Fear not Robespierre,
+--he gives himself to your hands.  To-morrow he comes to the
+Convention,--to-morrow you must cast the last throw for his head
+or your own."
+
+"To-morrow he comes to the Convention!  And who are you that know
+so well what is concealed from me?"
+
+"A man like you, who would save the woman he loves."
+
+Before Tallien could recover his surprise, the visitor was gone.
+
+Back went the Avenger to his conclave an altered man.  "I have
+heard tidings,--no matter what," he cried,--"that have changed my
+purpose.  On the 10th we are destined to the guillotine.  I
+revoke my counsel for delay.  Robespierre comes to the Convention
+to-morrow; THERE we must confront and crush him.  From the
+Mountain shall frown against him the grim shade of Danton,--from
+the Plain shall rise, in their bloody cerements, the spectres of
+Vergniaud and Condorcet.  Frappons!"
+
+"Frappons!" cried even Barrere, startled into energy by the new
+daring of his colleague,--"frappons! il n'y a que les morts qui
+ne reviennent pas."
+
+It was observable (and the fact may be found in one of the
+memoirs of the time) that, during that day and night (the 7th
+Thermidor), a stranger to all the previous events of that stormy
+time was seen in various parts of the city,--in the cafes, the
+clubs, the haunts of the various factions; that, to the
+astonishment and dismay of his hearers, he talked aloud of the
+crimes of Robespierre, and predicted his coming fall; and, as he
+spoke, he stirred up the hearts of men, he loosed the bonds of
+their fear,--he inflamed them with unwonted rage and daring.  But
+what surprised them most was, that no voice replied, no hand was
+lifted against him, no minion, even of the tyrant, cried, "Arrest
+the traitor."  In that impunity men read, as in a book, that the
+populace had deserted the man of blood.
+
+Once only a fierce, brawny Jacobin sprang up from the table at
+which he sat, drinking deep, and, approaching the stranger, said,
+"I seize thee, in the name of the Republic."
+
+"Citizen Aristides," answered the stranger, in a whisper, "go to
+the lodgings of Robespierre,--he is from home; and in the left
+pocket of the vest which he cast off not an hour since thou wilt
+find a paper; when thou hast read that, return.  I will await
+thee; and if thou wouldst then seize me, I will go without a
+struggle.  Look round on those lowering brows; touch me NOW, and
+thou wilt be torn to pieces."
+
+The Jacobin felt as if compelled to obey against his will.  He
+went forth muttering; he returned,--the stranger was still there.
+"Mille tonnerres," he said to him, "I thank thee; the poltroon
+had my name in his list for the guillotine."
+
+With that the Jacobin Aristides sprang upon the table and
+shouted, "Death to the Tyrant!"
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XI.
+
+Le lendemain, 8 Thermidor, Robespierre se decida a prononcer son
+fameux discours.
+Thiers, "Hist. de la Revolution."
+
+(The next day, 8th Thermidor, Robespierre resolved to deliver his
+celebrated discourse.)
+
+The morning rose,--the 8th of Thermidor (July 26).  Robespierre
+has gone to the Convention.  He has gone with his laboured
+speech; he has gone with his phrases of philanthropy and virtue;
+he has gone to single out his prey.  All his agents are prepared
+for his reception; the fierce St. Just has arrived from the
+armies to second his courage and inflame his wrath.  His ominous
+apparition prepares the audience for the crisis.  "Citizens!"
+screeched the shrill voice of Robespierre "others have placed
+before you flattering pictures; I come to announce to you useful
+truths.
+
+...
+
+And they attribute to me,--to me alone!--whatever of harsh or
+evil is committed:  it is Robespierre who wishes it; it is
+Robespierre who ordains it.  Is there a new tax?--it is
+Robespierre who ruins you.  They call me tyrant!--and why?
+Because I have acquired some influence; but how?--in speaking
+truth; and who pretends that truth is to be without force in the
+mouths of the Representatives of the French people?  Doubtless,
+truth has its power, its rage, its despotism, its accents,
+touching, terrible, which resound in the pure heart as in the
+guilty conscience; and which Falsehood can no more imitate than
+Salmoneus could forge the thunderbolts of Heaven.  What am I whom
+they accuse?  A slave of liberty,--a living martyr of the
+Republic; the victim as the enemy of crime!  All ruffianism
+affronts me, and actions legitimate in others are crimes in me.
+It is enough to know me to be calumniated.  It is in my very zeal
+that they discover my guilt.  Take from me my conscience, and I
+should be the most miserable of men!"
+
+He paused; and Couthon wiped his eyes, and St. Just murmured
+applause as with stern looks he gazed on the rebellious Mountain;
+and there was a dead, mournful, and chilling silence through the
+audience.  The touching sentiment woke no echo.
+
+The orator cast his eyes around.  Ho! he will soon arouse that
+apathy.  He proceeds, he praises, he pities himself no more.  He
+denounces,--he accuses.  Overflooded with his venom, he vomits it
+forth on all.  At home, abroad, finances, war,--on all!  Shriller
+and sharper rose his voice,--
+
+"A conspiracy exists against the public liberty.  It owes its
+strength to a criminal coalition in the very bosom of the
+Convention; it has accomplices in the bosom of the Committee of
+Public Safety...What is the remedy to this evil?  To punish the
+traitors; to purify this committee; to crush all factions by the
+weight of the National Authority; to raise upon their ruins the
+power of Liberty and Justice.  Such are the principles of that
+Reform.  Must I be ambitious to profess them?--then the
+principles are proscribed, and Tyranny reigns amongst us!  For
+what can you object to a man who is in the right, and has at
+least this knowledge,--he knows how to die for his native land!
+I am made to combat crime, and not to govern it.  The time, alas!
+is not yet arrived when men of worth can serve with impunity
+their country.  So long as the knaves rule, the defenders of
+liberty will be only the proscribed."
+
+For two hours, through that cold and gloomy audience, shrilled
+the Death-speech.  In silence it began, in silence closed.  The
+enemies of the orator were afraid to express resentment; they
+knew not yet the exact balance of power.  His partisans were
+afraid to approve; they knew not whom of their own friends and
+relations the accusations were designed to single forth.  "Take
+care!" whispered each to each; "it is thou whom he threatens."
+But silent though the audience, it was, at the first, wellnigh
+subdued.  There was still about this terrible man the spell of an
+overmastering will.  Always--though not what is called a great
+orator--resolute, and sovereign in the use of words; words seemed
+as things when uttered by one who with a nod moved the troops of
+Henriot, and influenced the judgment of Rene Dumas, grim
+President of the Tribunal.  Lecointre of Versailles rose, and
+there was an anxious movement of attention; for Lecointre was one
+of the fiercest foes of the tyrant.  What was the dismay of the
+Tallien faction; what the complacent smile of Couthon,--when
+Lecointre demanded only that the oration should be printed!  All
+seemed paralyzed.  At length Bourdon de l'Oise, whose name was
+doubly marked in the black list of the Dictator, stalked to the
+tribune, and moved the bold counter-resolution, that the speech
+should be referred to the two committees whom that very speech
+accused.  Still no applause from the conspirators; they sat
+torpid as frozen men.  The shrinking Barrere, ever on the prudent
+side, looked round before he rose.  He rises, and sides with
+Lecointre!  Then Couthon seized the occasion, and from his seat
+(a privilege permitted only to the paralytic philanthropist) (M.
+Thiers in his History, volume iv. page 79, makes a curious
+blunder:  he says, "Couthon s'elance a la tribune.'  (Couthon
+darted towards the tribune.)  Poor Couthon! whose half body was
+dead, and who was always wheeled in his chair into the
+Convention, and spoke sitting.), and with his melodious voice
+sought to convert the crisis into a triumph.
+
+He demanded, not only that the harangue should be printed, but
+sent to all the communes and all the armies.  It was necessary to
+soothe a wronged and ulcerated heart.  Deputies, the most
+faithful, had been accused of shedding blood.  "Ah! if HE had
+contributed to the death of one innocent man, he should immolate
+himself with grief."  Beautiful tenderness!--and while he spoke,
+he fondled the spaniel in his bosom.  Bravo, Couthon!
+Robespierre triumphs! The reign of Terror shall endure!  The old
+submission settles dovelike back in the assembly!  They vote the
+printing of the Death-speech, and its transmission to all the
+municipalities.  From the benches of the Mountain, Tallien,
+alarmed, dismayed, impatient, and indignant, cast his gaze where
+sat the strangers admitted to hear the debates; and suddenly he
+met the eyes of the Unknown who had brought to him the letter
+from Teresa de Fontenai the preceding day.  The eyes fascinated
+him as he gazed.  In aftertimes he often said that their regard,
+fixed, earnest, half-reproachful, and yet cheering and
+triumphant, filled him with new life and courage.  They spoke to
+his heart as the trumpet speaks to the war-horse.  He moved from
+his seat; he whispered with his allies:  the spirit he had drawn
+in was contagious; the men whom Robespierre especially  had
+denounced, and who saw the sword over their heads, woke from
+their torpid trance.  Vadier, Cambon, Billaud-Varennes, Panis,
+Amar, rose at once,--all at once demanded speech.  Vadier is
+first heard, the rest succeed.  It burst forth, the Mountain,
+with its fires and consuming lava; flood upon flood they rush, a
+legion of Ciceros upon the startled Catiline!  Robespierre
+falters, hesitates,--would qualify, retract.  They gather new
+courage from his new fears; they interrupt him; they drown his
+voice; they demand the reversal of the motion.  Amar moves again
+that the speech be referred to the Committees, to the
+Committees,--to his enemies!  Confusion and noise and clamour!
+Robespierre wraps himself in silent and superb disdain.  Pale,
+defeated, but not yet destroyed, he stands,--a storm in the midst
+of storm!
+
+The motion is carried.  All men foresee in that defeat the
+Dictator's downfall.  A solitary cry rose from the galleries; it
+was caught up; it circled through the hall, the audience:  "A bas
+le tyrant!  Vive la republique!"  (Down with the tyrant!  Hurrah
+for the republic!)
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XII.
+
+Aupres d'un corps aussi avili que la Convention, il restait des
+chances pour que Robespierre sortit vainqueur de cette lutte.
+Lacretelle, volume xii.
+
+(Amongst a body so debased as the Convention, there still
+remained some chances that Robespierre would come off victor in
+the struggle.)
+
+As Robespierre left the hall, there was a dead and ominous
+silence in the crowd without.  The herd, in every country, side
+with success; and the rats run from the falling tower.  But
+Robespierre, who wanted courage, never wanted pride, and the last
+often supplied the place of the first; thoughtfully, and with an
+impenetrable brow, he passed through the throng, leaning on St.
+Just, Payan and his brother following him.
+
+As they got into the open space, Robespierre abruptly broke the
+silence.
+
+"How many heads were to fall upon the tenth?"
+
+"Eighty," replied Payan.
+
+"Ah, we must not tarry so long; a day may lose an empire:
+terrorism must serve us yet!"
+
+He was silent a few moments, and his eyes roved suspiciously
+through the street.
+
+"St. Just," he said abruptly, "they have not found this
+Englishman whose revelations, or whose trial, would have crushed
+the Amars and the Talliens.  No, no! my Jacobins themselves are
+growing dull and blind.  But they have seized a woman,--only a
+woman!"
+
+"A woman's hand stabbed Marat," said St. Just.  Robespierre
+stopped short, and breathed hard.
+
+"St. Just," said he, "when this peril is past, we will found the
+Reign of Peace.  There shall be homes and gardens set apart for
+the old.  David is already designing the porticos.  Virtuous men
+shall be appointed to instruct the young.  All vice and disorder
+shall be NOT exterminated--no, no! only banished!  We must not
+die yet.  Posterity cannot judge us till our work is done.  We
+have recalled L'Etre Supreme; we must now remodel this corrupted
+world.  All shall be love and brotherhood; and--ho!  Simon!
+Simon!--hold!  Your pencil, St. Just!"  And Robespierre wrote
+hastily.  "This to Citizen President Dumas.  Go with it quick,
+Simon.  These eighty heads must fall TO-MORROW,--TO-MORROW,
+Simon.  Dumas will advance their trial a day.  I will write to
+Fouquier-Tinville, the public accuser.  We meet at the Jacobins
+to-night, Simon; there we will denounce the Convention itself;
+there we will rally round us the last friends of liberty and
+France."
+
+A shout was heard in the distance behind, "Vive la republique!"
+
+The tyrant's eye shot a vindictive gleam.  "The republic!--faugh!
+We did not destroy the throne of a thousand years for that
+canaille!"
+
+THE TRIAL, THE EXECUTION, OF THE VICTIMS IS ADVANCED A DAY!  By
+the aid of the mysterious intelligence that had guided and
+animated him hitherto, Zanoni learned that his arts had been in
+vain.  He knew that Viola was safe, if she could but survive an
+hour the life of the tyrant.  He knew that Robespierre's hours
+were numbered; that the 10th of Thermidor, on which he had
+originally designed the execution of his last victims, would see
+himself at the scaffold. Zanoni had toiled, had schemed for the
+fall of the Butcher and his reign.  To what end?  A single word
+from the tyrant had baffled the result of all.  The execution of
+Viola is advanced a day.  Vain seer, who wouldst make thyself the
+instrument of the Eternal, the very dangers that now beset the
+tyrant but expedite the doom of his victims!  To-morrow, eighty
+heads, and hers whose pillow has been thy heart!  To-morrow! and
+Maximilien is safe to-night!
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XIII.
+
+Erde mag zuruck in Erde stauben;
+Fliegt der Geist doch aus dem morschen Haus.
+Seine Asche mag der Sturmwind treiben,
+Sein Leben dauert ewig aus!
+Elegie.
+
+(Earth may crumble back into earth; the Spirit will still escape
+from its frail tenement.  The wind of the storm may scatter his
+ashes; his being endures forever.)
+
+To-morrow!--and it is already twilight.  One after one, the
+gentle stars come smiling through the heaven.  The Seine, in its
+slow waters, yet trembles with the last kiss of the rosy day; and
+still in the blue sky gleams the spire of Notre Dame; and still
+in the blue sky looms the guillotine by the Barriere du Trone.
+Turn to that time-worn building, once the church and the convent
+of the Freres-Precheurs, known by the then holy name of Jacobins;
+there the new Jacobins hold their club.  There, in that oblong
+hall, once the library of the peaceful monks, assemble the
+idolaters of St. Robespierre.  Two immense tribunes, raised at
+either end, contain the lees and dregs of the atrocious
+populace,--the majority of that audience consisting of the furies
+of the guillotine (furies de guillotine).  In the midst of the
+hall are the bureau and chair of the president,--the chair long
+preserved by the piety of the monks as the relic of St. Thomas
+Aquinas!  Above this seat scowls the harsh bust of Brutus.  An
+iron lamp and two branches scatter over the vast room a murky,
+fuliginous ray, beneath the light of which the fierce faces of
+that Pandemonium seem more grim and haggard.  There, from the
+orator's tribune, shrieks the shrill wrath of Robespierre!
+
+Meanwhile all is chaos, disorder, half daring and half cowardice,
+in the Committee of his foes.  Rumours fly from street to street,
+from haunt to haunt, from house to house.  The swallows flit low,
+and the cattle group together before the storm.  And above this
+roar of the lives and things of the little hour, alone in his
+chamber stood he on whose starry youth--symbol of the
+imperishable bloom of the calm Ideal amidst the mouldering
+Actual--the clouds of ages had rolled in vain.
+
+All those exertions which ordinary wit and courage could suggest
+had been tried in vain.  All such exertions WERE in vain, where,
+in that Saturnalia of death, a life was the object.  Nothing but
+the fall of Robespierre could have saved his victims; now, too
+late, that fall would only serve to avenge.
+
+Once more, in that last agony of excitement and despair, the seer
+had plunged into solitude, to invoke again the aid or counsel of
+those mysterious intermediates between earth and heaven who had
+renounced the intercourse of the spirit when subjected to the
+common bondage of the mortal.  In the intense desire and anguish
+of his heart, perhaps, lay a power not yet called forth; for who
+has not felt that the sharpness of extreme grief cuts and grinds
+away many of those strongest bonds of infirmity and doubt which
+bind down the souls of men to the cabined darkness of the hour;
+and that from the cloud and thunderstorm often swoops the
+Olympian eagle that can ravish us aloft!
+
+And the invocation was heard,--the bondage of sense was rent away
+from the visual mind.  He looked, and saw,--no, not the being he
+had called, with its limbs of light and unutterably tranquil
+smile--not his familiar, Adon-Ai, the Son of Glory and the Star,
+but the Evil Omen, the dark Chimera, the implacable Foe, with
+exultation and malice burning in its hell-lit eyes.  The Spectre,
+no longer cowering and retreating into shadow, rose before him,
+gigantic and erect; the face, whose veil no mortal hand had ever
+raised, was still concealed, but the form was more distinct,
+corporeal, and cast from it, as an atmosphere, horror and rage
+and awe.  As an iceberg, the breath of that presence froze the
+air; as a cloud, it filled the chamber and blackened the stars
+from heaven.
+
+"Lo!" said its voice, "I am here once more.  Thou hast robbed me
+of a meaner prey.  Now exorcise THYSELF from my power!  Thy life
+has left thee, to live in the heart of a daughter of the charnel
+and the worm.  In that life I come to thee with my inexorable
+tread.  Thou art returned to the Threshold,--thou, whose steps
+have trodden the verges of the Infinite!  And as the goblin of
+its fantasy seizes on a child in the dark,--mighty one, who
+wouldst conquer Death,--I seize on thee!"
+
+"Back to thy thraldom, slave!  If thou art come to the voice that
+called thee not, it is again not to command, but to obey!  Thou,
+from whose whisper I gained the boons of the lives lovelier and
+dearer than my own; thou--I command thee, not by spell and charm,
+but by the force of a soul mightier than the malice of thy
+being,--thou serve me yet, and speak again the secret that can
+rescue the lives thou hast, by permission of the Universal
+Master, permitted me to retain awhile in the temple of the clay!"
+
+Brighter and more devouringly burned the glare from those lurid
+eyes; more visible and colossal yet rose the dilating shape; a
+yet fiercer and more disdainful hate spoke in the voice that
+answered, "Didst thou think that my boon would be other than thy
+curse?  Happy for thee hadst thou mourned over the deaths which
+come by the gentle hand of Nature,--hadst thou never known how
+the name of mother consecrates the face of Beauty, and never,
+bending over thy first-born, felt the imperishable sweetness of a
+father's love!  They are saved, for what?--the mother, for the
+death of violence and shame and blood, for the doomsman's hand to
+put aside that shining hair which has entangled thy bridegroom
+kisses; the child, first and last of thine offspring, in whom
+thou didst hope to found a race that should hear with thee the
+music of celestial harps, and float, by the side of thy familiar,
+Adon-Ai, through the azure rivers of joy,--the child, to live on
+a few days as a fungus in a burial-vault, a thing of the
+loathsome dungeon, dying of cruelty and neglect and famine.  Ha!
+ha! thou who wouldst baffle Death, learn how the deathless die if
+they dare to love the mortal.  Now, Chaldean, behold my boons!
+Now I seize and wrap thee with the pestilence of my presence;
+now, evermore, till thy long race is run, mine eyes shall glow
+into thy brain, and mine arms shall clasp thee, when thou wouldst
+take the wings of the Morning and flee from the embrace of
+Night!"
+
+"I tell thee, no!  And again I compel thee, speak and answer to
+the lord who can command his slave.  I know, though my lore fails
+me, and the reeds on which I leaned pierce my side,--I know yet
+that it is written that the life of which I question can be saved
+from the headsman.  Thou wrappest her future in the darkness of
+thy shadow, but thou canst not shape it.  Thou mayest foreshow
+the antidote; thou canst not effect the bane.  From thee I wring
+the secret, though it torture thee to name it.  I approach thee,
+--I look dauntless into thine eyes.  The soul that loves can dare
+all things.  Shadow, I defy thee, and compel!"
+
+The spectre waned and recoiled.  Like a vapour that lessens as
+the sun pierces and pervades it, the form shrank cowering and
+dwarfed in the dimmer distance, and through the casement again
+rushed the stars.
+
+"Yes," said the Voice, with a faint and hollow accent, "thou
+CANST save her from the headsman; for it is written, that
+sacrifice can save.  Ha! ha!"  And the shape again suddenly
+dilated into the gloom of its giant stature, and its ghastly
+laugh exulted, as if the Foe, a moment baffled, had regained its
+might.  "Ha! ha!--thou canst save her life, if thou wilt
+sacrifice thine own!  Is it for this thou hast lived on through
+crumbling empires and countless generations of thy race?  At last
+shall Death reclaim thee?  Wouldst thou save her?--DIE FOR HER!
+Fall, O stately column, over which stars yet unformed may gleam,
+--fall, that the herb at thy base may drink a few hours longer
+the sunlight and the dews!  Silent!  Art thou ready for the
+sacrifice?  See, the moon moves up through heaven.  Beautiful and
+wise one, wilt thou bid her smile to-morrow on thy headless
+clay?"
+
+"Back! for my soul, in answering thee from depths where thou
+canst not hear it, has regained its glory; and I hear the wings
+of Adon-Ai gliding musical through the air."
+
+He spoke; and, with a low shriek of baffled rage and hate, the
+Thing was gone, and through the room rushed, luminous and sudden,
+the Presence of silvery light.
+
+As the heavenly visitor stood in the atmosphere of his own
+lustre, and looked upon the face of the Theurgist with an aspect
+of ineffable tenderness and love, all space seemed lighted from
+his smile.  Along the blue air without, from that chamber in
+which his wings had halted, to the farthest star in the azure
+distance, it seemed as if the track of his flight were visible,
+by a lengthened splendour in the air, like the column of
+moonlight on the sea.  Like the flower that diffuses perfume as
+the very breath of its life, so the emanation of that presence
+was joy.  Over the world, as a million times swifter than light,
+than electricity, the Son of Glory had sped his way to the side
+of love, his wings had scattered delight as the morning scatters
+dew.  For that brief moment, Poverty had ceased to mourn, Disease
+fled from its prey, and Hope breathed a dream of Heaven into the
+darkness of Despair.
+
+"Thou art right," said the melodious Voice.  "Thy courage has
+restored thy power.  Once more, in the haunts of earth, thy soul
+charms me to thy side.  Wiser now, in the moment when thou
+comprehendest Death, than when thy unfettered spirit learned the
+solemn mystery of Life; the human affections that thralled and
+humbled thee awhile bring to thee, in these last hours of thy
+mortality, the sublimest heritage of thy race,--the eternity that
+commences from the grave."
+
+"O Adon-Ai," said the Chaldean, as, circumfused in the splendour
+of the visitant, a glory more radiant than human beauty settled
+round his form, and seemed already to belong to the eternity of
+which the Bright One spoke, "as men, before they die, see and
+comprehend the enigmas hidden from them before (The greatest
+poet, and one of the noblest thinkers, of the last age, said, on
+his deathbed, "Many things obscure to me before, now clear up,
+and become visible."--See the "Life of Schiller."), so in this
+hour, when the sacrifice of self to another brings the course of
+ages to its goal, I see the littleness of Life, compared to the
+majesty of Death; but oh, Divine Consoler, even here, even in thy
+presence, the affections that inspire me, sadden.  To leave
+behind me in this bad world, unaided, unprotected, those for whom
+I die! the wife! the child!--oh, speak comfort to me in this!"
+
+"And what," said the visitor, with a slight accent of reproof in
+the tone of celestial pity,--"what, with all thy wisdom and thy
+starry secrets, with all thy empire of the past, and thy visions
+of the future; what art thou to the All-Directing and Omniscient?
+Canst thou yet imagine that thy presence on earth can give to the
+hearts thou lovest the shelter which the humblest take from the
+wings of the Presence that lives in heaven?  Fear not thou for
+their future.  Whether thou live or die, their future is the care
+of the Most High!  In the dungeon and on the scaffold looks
+everlasting the Eye of HIM, tenderer than thou to love, wiser
+than thou to guide, mightier than thou to save!"
+
+Zanoni bowed his head; and when he looked up again, the last
+shadow had left his brow.  The visitor was gone; but still the
+glory of his presence seemed to shine upon the spot, still the
+solitary air seemed to murmur with tremulous delight.  And thus
+ever shall it be with those who have once, detaching themselves
+utterly from life, received the visit of the Angel FAITH.
+Solitude and space retain the splendour, and it settles like a
+halo round their graves.
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XIV.
+
+Dann zur Blumenflor der Sterne
+Aufgeschauet liebewarm,
+Fass' ihn freundlich Arm in Arm
+Trag' ihn in die blaue Ferne.
+Uhland, "An den Tod."
+
+Then towards the Garden of the Star
+Lift up thine aspect warm with love,
+And, friendlike link'd through space afar,
+Mount with him, arm in arm, above.
+Uhland, "Poem to Death."
+
+He stood upon the lofty balcony that overlooked the quiet city.
+Though afar, the fiercest passions of men were at work on the web
+of strife and doom, all that gave itself to his view was calm and
+still in the rays of the summer moon, for his soul was wrapped
+from man and man's narrow sphere, and only the serener glories of
+creation were present to the vision of the seer.  There he stood,
+alone and thoughtful, to take the last farewell of the wondrous
+life that he had known.
+
+Coursing through the fields of space, he beheld the gossamer
+shapes, whose choral joys his spirit had so often shared.  There,
+group upon group, they circled in the starry silence multiform in
+the unimaginable beauty of a being fed by ambrosial dews and
+serenest light.  In his trance, all the universe stretched
+visible beyond; in the green valleys afar, he saw the dances of
+the fairies; in the bowels of the mountains, he beheld the race
+that breathe the lurid air of the volcanoes, and hide from the
+light of heaven; on every leaf in the numberless forests, in
+every drop of the unmeasured seas, he surveyed its separate and
+swarming world; far up, in the farthest blue, he saw orb upon orb
+ripening into shape, and planets starting from the central fire,
+to run their day of ten thousand years.  For everywhere in
+creation is the breath of the Creator, and in every spot where
+the breath breathes is life!  And alone, in the distance, the
+lonely man beheld his Magian brother.  There, at work with his
+numbers and his Cabala, amidst the wrecks of Rome, passionless
+and calm, sat in his cell the mystic Mejnour,--living on, living
+ever while the world lasts, indifferent whether his knowledge
+produces weal or woe; a mechanical agent of a more tender and a
+wiser will, that guides every spring to its inscrutable designs.
+Living on,--living ever,--as science that cares alone for
+knowledge, and halts not to consider how knowledge advances
+happiness; how Human Improvement, rushing through civilisation,
+crushes in its march all who cannot grapple to its wheels ("You
+colonise the lands of the savage with the Anglo-Saxon,--you
+civilise that portion of THE EARTH; but is the SAVAGE civilised?
+He is exterminated!  You accumulate machinery,--you increase the
+total of wealth; but what becomes of the labour you displace?
+One generation is sacrificed to the next.  You diffuse
+knowledge,--and the world seems to grow brighter; but Discontent
+at Poverty replaces Ignorance, happy with its crust.  Every
+improvement, every advancement in civilisation, injures some, to
+benefit others, and either cherishes the want of to-day, or
+prepares the revolution of to-morrow."--Stephen Montague.); ever,
+with its Cabala and its number, lives on to change, in its
+bloodless movements, the face of the habitable world!
+
+And, "Oh, farewell to life!" murmured the glorious dreamer.
+"Sweet, O life! hast thou been to me.  How fathomless thy joys,--
+how rapturously has my soul bounded forth upon the upward paths!
+To him who forever renews his youth in the clear fount of Nature,
+how exquisite is the mere happiness TO BE!  Farewell, ye lamps of
+heaven, and ye million tribes, the Populace of Air.  Not a mote
+in the beam, not an herb on the mountain, not a pebble on the
+shore, not a seed far-blown into the wilderness, but contributed
+to the lore that sought in all the true principle of life, the
+Beautiful, the Joyous, the Immortal.  To others, a land, a city,
+a hearth, has been a home; MY home has been wherever the
+intellect could pierce, or the spirit could breathe the air."
+
+He paused, and through the immeasurable space his eyes and his
+heart, penetrating the dismal dungeon, rested on his child.  He
+saw it slumbering in the arms of the pale mother, and HIS soul
+spoke to the sleeping soul.  "Forgive me, if my desire was sin; I
+dreamed to have reared and nurtured thee to the divinest
+destinies my visions could foresee.  Betimes, as the mortal part
+was strengthened against disease, to have purified the spiritual
+from every sin; to have led thee, heaven upon heaven, through the
+holy ecstasies which make up the existence of the orders that
+dwell on high; to have formed, from thy sublime affections, the
+pure and ever-living communication between thy mother and myself.
+The dream was but a dream--it is no more!  In sight myself of the
+grave, I feel, at last, that through the portals of the grave
+lies the true initiation into the holy and the wise.  Beyond
+those portals I await ye both, beloved pilgrims!"
+
+From his numbers and his Cabala, in his cell, amidst the wrecks
+of Rome, Mejnour, startled, looked up, and through the spirit,
+felt that the spirit of his distant friend addressed him.
+
+"Fare thee well forever upon this earth!  Thy last companion
+forsakes thy side.  Thine age survives the youth of all; and the
+Final Day shall find thee still the contemplator of our tombs.  I
+go with my free will into the land of darkness; but new suns and
+systems blaze around us from the grave.  I go where the souls of
+those for whom I resign the clay shall be my co-mates through
+eternal youth.  At last I recognise the true ordeal and the real
+victory.  Mejnour, cast down thy elixir; lay by thy load of
+years!  Wherever the soul can wander, the Eternal Soul of all
+things protects it still!"
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XV.
+
+Il ne veulent plus perdre un moment d'une nuit si precieuse.
+Lacretelle, tom. xii.
+
+(They would not lose another moment of so precious a night.)
+
+It was late that night, and Rene-Francois Dumas, President of the
+Revolutionary Tribunal, had re-entered his cabinet, on his return
+from the Jacobin Club.  With him were two men who might be said
+to represent, the one the moral, the other the physical force of
+the Reign of Terror:  Fouquier-Tinville, the Public Accuser, and
+Francois Henriot, the General of the Parisian National Guard.
+This formidable triumvirate were assembled to debate on the
+proceedings of the next day; and the three sister-witches over
+their hellish caldron were scarcely animated by a more fiend-like
+spirit, or engaged in more execrable designs, than these three
+heroes of the Revolution in their premeditated massacre of the
+morrow.
+
+Dumas was but little altered in appearance since, in the earlier
+part of this narrative, he was presented to the reader, except
+that his manner was somewhat more short and severe, and his eye
+yet more restless.  But he seemed almost a superior being by the
+side of his associates.  Rene Dumas, born of respectable parents,
+and well educated, despite his ferocity, was not without a
+certain refinement, which perhaps rendered him the more
+acceptable to the precise and formal Robespierre.  (Dumas was a
+beau in his way.  His gala-dress was a BLOOD-RED COAT, with the
+finest ruffles.)  But Henriot had been a lackey, a thief, a spy
+of the police; he had drunk the blood of Madame de Lamballe, and
+had risen to his present rank for no quality but his ruffianism;
+and Fouquier-Tinville, the son of a provincial agriculturist, and
+afterwards a clerk at the Bureau of the Police, was little less
+base in his manners, and yet more, from a certain loathsome
+buffoonery, revolting in his speech,--bull-headed, with black,
+sleek hair, with a narrow and livid forehead, with small eyes,
+that twinkled with a sinister malice; strongly and coarsely
+built, he looked what he was, the audacious bully of a lawless
+and relentless Bar.
+
+Dumas trimmed the candles, and bent over the list of the victims
+for the morrow.
+
+"It is a long catalogue," said the president; "eighty trials for
+one day!  And Robespierre's orders to despatch the whole fournee
+are unequivocal."
+
+"Pooh!" said Fouquier, with a coarse, loud laugh; "we must try
+them en masse.  I know how to deal with our jury.  'Je pense,
+citoyens, que vous etes convaincus du crime des accuses?' (I
+think, citizens, that you are convinced of the crime of the
+accused.)  Ha! ha!--the longer the list, the shorter the work."
+
+"Oh, yes," growled out Henriot, with an oath,--as usual, half-
+drunk, and lolling on his chair, with his spurred heels on the
+table,--"little Tinville is the man for despatch."
+
+"Citizen Henriot," said Dumas, gravely, "permit me to request
+thee to select another footstool; and for the rest, let me warn
+thee that to-morrow is a critical and important day; one that
+will decide the fate of France."
+
+"A fig for little France!  Vive le Vertueux Robespierre, la
+Colonne de la Republique! (Long life to the virtuous Robespierre,
+the pillar of the Republic!)  Plague on this talking; it is dry
+work.  Hast thou no eau de vie in that little cupboard?"
+
+Dumas and Fouquier exchanged looks of disgust.  Dumas shrugged
+his shoulders, and replied,--
+
+"It is to guard thee against eau de vie, Citizen General Henriot,
+that I have requested thee to meet me here.  Listen if thou
+canst!"
+
+"Oh, talk away! thy metier is to talk, mine to fight and to
+drink."
+
+"To-morrow, I tell thee then, the populace will be abroad; all
+factions will be astir.  It is probable enough that they will
+even seek to arrest our tumbrils on their way to the guillotine.
+Have thy men armed and ready; keep the streets clear; cut down
+without mercy whomsoever may obstruct the ways."
+
+"I understand," said Henriot, striking his sword so loudly that
+Dumas half-started at the clank,--"Black Henriot is no
+'Indulgent.'"
+
+"Look to it, then, citizen,--look to it!  And hark thee," he
+added, with a grave and sombre brow, "if thou wouldst keep thine
+own head on thy shoulders, beware of the eau de vie."
+
+"My own head!--sacre mille tonnerres!  Dost thou threaten the
+general of the Parisian army?"
+
+Dumas, like Robespierre, a precise atrabilious, and arrogant man,
+was about to retort, when the craftier Tinville laid his hand on
+his arm, and, turning to the general, said, "My dear Henriot, thy
+dauntless republicanism, which is too ready to give offence, must
+learn to take a reprimand from the representative of Republican
+Law.  Seriously, mon cher, thou must be sober for the next three
+or four days; after the crisis is over, thou and I will drink a
+bottle together.  Come, Dumas relax thine austerity, and shake
+hands with our friend.  No quarrels amongst ourselves!"
+
+Dumas hesitated, and extended his hand, which the ruffian
+clasped; and, maudlin tears succeeding his ferocity, he half-
+sobbed, half-hiccoughed forth his protestations of civism and his
+promises of sobriety.
+
+"Well, we depend on thee, mon general," said Dumas; "and now,
+since we shall all have need of vigour for to-morrow, go home and
+sleep soundly."
+
+"Yes, I forgive thee, Dumas,--I forgive thee.  I am not
+vindictive,--I! but still, if a man threatens me; if a man
+insults me--" and, with the quick changes of intoxication, again
+his eyes gleamed fire through their foul tears.  With some
+difficulty Fouquier succeeded at last in soothing the brute, and
+leading him from the chamber.  But still, as some wild beast
+disappointed of a prey, he growled and snarled as his heavy tread
+descended the stairs.  A tall trooper, mounted, was leading
+Henriot's horse to and fro the streets; and as the general waited
+at the porch till his attendant turned, a stranger stationed by
+the wall accosted him:
+
+"General Henriot, I have desired to speak with thee.  Next to
+Robespierre, thou art, or shouldst be, the most powerful man in
+France."
+
+"Hem!--yes, I ought to be.  What then?--every man has not his
+deserts!"
+
+"Hist!" said the stranger; "thy pay is scarcely suitable to thy
+rank and thy wants."
+
+"That is true."
+
+"Even in a revolution, a man takes care of his fortunes!"
+
+"Diable! speak out, citizen."
+
+"I have a thousand pieces of gold with me,--they are thine, if
+thou wilt grant me one small favour."
+
+"Citizen, I grant it!" said Henriot, waving his hand
+majestically.  "Is it to denounce some rascal who has offended
+thee?"
+
+"No; it is simply this:  write these words to President Dumas,
+'Admit the bearer to thy presence; and, if thou canst, grant him
+the request he will make to thee, it will be an inestimable
+obligation to Francois Henriot.'"  The stranger, as he spoke,
+placed pencil and tablets in the shaking hands of the soldier.
+
+"And where is the gold?"
+
+"Here."
+
+With some difficulty, Henriot scrawled the words dictated to him,
+clutched the gold, mounted his horse, and was gone.
+
+Meanwhile Fouquier, when he had closed the door upon Henriot,
+said sharply, "How canst thou be so mad as to incense that
+brigand?  Knowest thou not that our laws are nothing without the
+physical force of the National Guard, and that he is their
+leader?"
+
+"I know this, that Robespierre must have been mad to place that
+drunkard at their head; and mark my words, Fouquier, if the
+struggle come, it is that man's incapacity and cowardice that
+will destroy us.  Yes, thou mayst live thyself to accuse thy
+beloved Robespierre, and to perish in his fall."
+
+"For all that, we must keep well with Henriot till we can find
+the occasion to seize and behead him.  To be safe, we must fawn
+on those who are still in power; and fawn the more, the more we
+would depose them.  Do not think this Henriot, when he wakes to-
+morrow, will forget thy threats.  He is the most revengeful of
+human beings.  Thou must send and soothe him in the morning!"
+
+"Right," said Dumas, convinced.  "I was too hasty; and now I
+think we have nothing further to do, since we have arranged to
+make short work with our fournee of to-morrow.  I see in the list
+a knave I have long marked out, though his crime once procured me
+a legacy,--Nicot, the Hebertist."
+
+"And young Andre Chenier, the poet?  Ah, I forgot; we be headed
+HIM to-day!  Revolutionary virtue is at its acme.  His own
+brother abandoned him." (His brother is said, indeed, to have
+contributed to the condemnation of this virtuous and illustrious
+person.  He was heard to cry aloud, "Si mon frere est coupable,
+qu'il perisse" (If my brother be culpable, let him die).  This
+brother, Marie-Joseph, also a poet, and the author of "Charles
+IX.," so celebrated in the earlier days of the Revolution,
+enjoyed, of course, according to the wonted justice of the world,
+a triumphant career, and was proclaimed in the Champ de Mars "le
+premier de poetes Francais," a title due to his murdered
+brother.)
+
+"There is a foreigner,--an Italian woman in the list; but I can
+find no charge made out against her."
+
+"All the same we must execute her for the sake of the round
+number; eighty sounds better than seventy-nine!"
+
+Here a huissier brought a paper on which was written the request
+of Henriot.
+
+"Ah! this is fortunate," said Tinville, to whom Dumas chucked the
+scroll,--"grant the prayer by all means; so at least that it does
+not lessen our bead-roll.  But I will do Henriot the justice to
+say that he never asks to let off, but to put on.  Good-night!  I
+am worn out--my escort waits below.  Only on such an occasion
+would I venture forth in the streets at night."  (During the
+latter part of the Reign of Terror, Fouquier rarely stirred out
+at night, and never without an escort.  In the Reign of Terror
+those most terrified were its kings.)  And Fouquier, with a long
+yawn, quitted the room.
+
+"Admit the bearer!" said Dumas, who, withered and dried, as
+lawyers in practice mostly are, seemed to require as little sleep
+as his parchments.
+
+The stranger entered.
+
+"Rene-Francois Dumas," said he, seating himself opposite to the
+president, and markedly adopting the plural, as if in contempt of
+the revolutionary jargon, "amidst the excitement and occupations
+of your later life, I know not if you can remember that we have
+met before?"
+
+The judge scanned the features of his visitor, and a pale blush
+settled on his sallow cheeks, "Yes, citizen, I remember!"
+
+"And you recall the words I then uttered!  You spoke tenderly and
+philanthropically of your horror of capital executions; you
+exulted in the approaching Revolution as the termination of all
+sanguinary punishments; you quoted reverently the saying of
+Maximilien Robespierre, the rising statesman, 'The executioner is
+the invention of the tyrant:' and I replied, that while you
+spoke, a foreboding seized me that we should meet again when your
+ideas of death and the philosophy of revolutions might be
+changed!  Was I right, Citizen Rene-Francois Dumas, President of
+the Revolutionary Tribunal?"
+
+"Pooh!" said Dumas, with some confusion on his brazen brow, "I
+spoke then as men speak who have not acted.  Revolutions are not
+made with rose-water!  But truce to the gossip of the long-ago.
+I remember, also, that thou didst then save the life of my
+relation, and it will please thee to learn that his intended
+murderer will be guillotined to-morrow."
+
+"That concerns yourself,--your justice or your revenge.  Permit
+me the egotism to remind you that you then promised that if ever
+a day should come when you could serve me, your life--yes, the
+phrase was, 'your heart's blood'--was at my bidding.  Think not,
+austere judge, that I come to ask a boon that can affect
+yourself,--I come but to ask a day's respite for another!"
+
+"Citizen, it is impossible!  I have the order of Robespierre that
+not one less than the total on my list must undergo their trial
+for to-morrow.  As for the verdict, that rests with the jury!"
+
+"I do not ask you to diminish the catalogue.  Listen still!  In
+your death-roll there is the name of an Italian woman whose
+youth, whose beauty, and whose freedom not only from every crime,
+but every tangible charge, will excite only compassion, and not
+terror.  Even YOU would tremble to pronounce her sentence.  It
+will be dangerous on a day when the populace will be excited,
+when your tumbrils may be arrested, to expose youth and innocence
+and beauty to the pity and courage of a revolted crowd."
+
+Dumas looked up and shrunk from the eye of the stranger.
+
+"I do not deny, citizen, that there is reason in what thou
+urgest.  But my orders are positive."
+
+"Positive only as to the number of the victims.  I offer you a
+substitute for this one.  I offer you the head of a man who knows
+all of the very conspiracy which now threatens Robespierre and
+yourself, and compared with one clew to which, you would think
+even eighty ordinary lives a cheap purchase."
+
+"That alters the case," said Dumas, eagerly; "if thou canst do
+this, on my own responsibility I will postpone the trial of the
+Italian.  Now name the proxy!"
+
+"You behold him!"
+
+"Thou!" exclaimed Dumas, while a fear he could not conceal
+betrayed itself through his surprise.  "Thou!--and thou comest to
+me alone at night, to offer thyself to justice.  Ha!--this is a
+snare.  Tremble, fool!--thou art in my power, and I can have
+BOTH!"
+
+"You can," said the stranger, with a calm smile of disdain; "but
+my life is valueless without my revelations.  Sit still, I
+command you,--hear me!" and the light in those dauntless eyes
+spell-bound and awed the judge.  "You will remove me to the
+Conciergerie,--you will fix my trial, under the name of Zanoni,
+amidst your fournee of to-morrow.  If I do not satisfy you by my
+speech, you hold the woman I die to save as your hostage.  It is
+but the reprieve for her of a single day that I demand.  The day
+following the morrow I shall be dust, and you may wreak your
+vengeance on the life that remains.  Tush! judge and condemner of
+thousands, do you hesitate,--do you imagine that the man who
+voluntarily offers himself to death will be daunted into uttering
+one syllable at your Bar against his will?  Have you not had
+experience enough of the inflexibility of pride and courage?
+President, I place before you the ink and implements!  Write to
+the jailer a reprieve of one day for the woman whose life can
+avail you nothing, and I will bear the order to my own prison:
+I, who can now tell this much as an earnest of what I can
+communicate,--while I speak, your own name, judge, is in a list
+of death.  I can tell you by whose hand it is written down; I can
+tell you in what quarter to look for danger; I can tell you from
+what cloud, in this lurid atmosphere, hangs the storm that shall
+burst on Robespierre and his reign!"
+
+Dumas grew pale; and his eyes vainly sought to escape the
+magnetic gaze that overpowered and mastered him.  Mechanically,
+and as if under an agency not his own, he wrote while the
+stranger dictated.
+
+"Well," he said then, forcing a smile to his lips, "I promised I
+would serve you; see, I am faithful to my word.  I suppose that
+you are one of those fools of feeling,--those professors of anti-
+revolutionary virtue, of whom I have seen not a few before my
+Bar.  Faugh! it sickens me to see those who make a merit of
+incivism, and perish to save some bad patriot, because it is a
+son, or a father, or a wife, or a daughter, who is saved."
+
+"I AM one of those fools of feeling," said the stranger, rising.
+"You have divined aright."
+
+"And wilt thou not, in return for my mercy, utter to-night the
+revelations thou wouldst proclaim to-morrow?  Come; and perhaps
+thou too--nay, the woman also--may receive, not reprieve, but
+pardon."
+
+"Before your tribunal, and there alone!  Nor will I deceive you,
+president.  My information may avail you not; and even while I
+show the cloud, the bolt may fall."
+
+"Tush! prophet, look to thyself!  Go, madman, go.  I know too
+well the contumacious obstinacy of the class to which I suspect
+thou belongest, to waste further words.  Diable! but ye grow so
+accustomed to look on death, that ye forget the respect ye owe to
+it.  Since thou offerest me thy head, I accept it.  To-morrow
+thou mayst repent; it will be too late."
+
+"Ay, too late, president!" echoed the calm visitor.
+
+"But, remember, it is not pardon, it is but a day's reprieve, I
+have promised to this woman.  According as thou dost satisfy me
+to-morrow, she lives or dies.  I am frank, citizen; thy ghost
+shall not haunt me for want of faith."
+
+"It is but a day that I have asked; the rest I leave to justice
+and to Heaven.  Your huissiers wait below."
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XVI.
+
+Und den Mordstahl seh' ich blinken;
+Und das Morderauge gluhn!
+"Kassandra."
+
+(And I see the steel of Murder glitter,
+And the eye of Murder glow.)
+
+Viola was in the prison that opened not but for those already
+condemned before adjudged.  Since her exile from Zanoni, her very
+intellect had seemed paralysed.  All that beautiful exuberance of
+fancy which, if not the fruit of genius, seemed its blossoms; all
+that gush of exquisite thought which Zanoni had justly told her
+flowed with mysteries and subtleties ever new to him, the wise
+one,--all were gone, annihilated; the blossom withered, the fount
+dried up.  From something almost above womanhood, she seemed
+listlessly to sink into something below childhood.  With the
+inspirer the inspirations had ceased; and, in deserting love,
+genius also was left behind.
+
+She scarcely comprehended why she had been thus torn from her
+home and the mechanism of her dull tasks.  She scarcely knew what
+meant those kindly groups, that, struck with her exceeding
+loveliness, had gathered round her in the prison, with mournful
+looks, but with words of comfort.  She, who had hitherto been
+taught to abhor those whom Law condemns for crime, was amazed to
+hear that beings thus compassionate and tender, with cloudless
+and lofty brows, with gallant and gentle mien, were criminals for
+whom Law had no punishment short of death.  But they, the
+savages, gaunt and menacing, who had dragged her from her home,
+who had attempted to snatch from her the infant while she clasped
+it in her arms, and laughed fierce scorn at her mute, quivering
+lips,--THEY were the chosen citizens, the men of virtue, the
+favourites of Power, the ministers of Law!  Such thy black
+caprices, O thou, the ever-shifting and calumnious,--Human
+Judgment!
+
+A squalid, and yet a gay world, did the prison-houses of that day
+present.  There, as in the sepulchre to which they led, all ranks
+were cast with an even-handed scorn.  And yet there, the
+reverence that comes from great emotions restored Nature's first
+and imperishable, and most lovely, and most noble Law,--THE
+INEQUALITY BETWEEN MAN AND MAN!  There, place was given by the
+prisoners, whether royalists or sans-culottes, to Age, to
+Learning, to Renown, to Beauty; and Strength, with its own inborn
+chivalry, raised into rank the helpless and the weak.  The iron
+sinews and the Herculean shoulders made way for the woman and the
+child; and the graces of Humanity, lost elsewhere, sought their
+refuge in the abode of Terror.
+
+"And wherefore, my child, do they bring thee hither?" asked an
+old, grey-haired priest.
+
+"I cannot guess."
+
+"Ah, if you know not your offence, fear the worst!"
+
+"And my child?"--for the infant was still suffered to rest upon
+her bosom.
+
+"Alas, young mother, they will suffer thy child to live.'
+
+"And for this,--an orphan in the dungeon!" murmured the accusing
+heart of Viola,--"have I reserved his offspring!  Zanoni, even in
+thought, ask not--ask not what I have done with the child I bore
+thee!"
+
+Night came; the crowd rushed to the grate to hear the muster-
+roll.  (Called, in the mocking jargon of the day, "The Evening
+Gazette.")  Her name was with the doomed.  And the old priest,
+better prepared to die, but reserved from the death-list, laid
+his hands on her head, and blessed her while he wept.  She heard,
+and wondered; but she did not weep.  With downcast eyes, with
+arms folded on her bosom, she bent submissively to the call.  But
+now another name was uttered; and a man, who had pushed rudely
+past her to gaze or to listen, shrieked out a howl of despair and
+rage.  She turned, and their eyes met.  Through the distance of
+time she recognised that hideous aspect.  Nicot's face settled
+back into its devilish sneer.  "At least, gentle Neapolitan, the
+guillotine will unite us.  Oh, we shall sleep well our wedding-
+night!"  And, with a laugh, he strode away through the crowd, and
+vanished into his lair.
+
+...
+
+She was placed in her gloomy cell, to await the morrow.  But the
+child was still spared her; and she thought it seemed as if
+conscious of the awful present.  In their way to the prison it
+had not moaned or wept.  It had looked with its clear eyes,
+unshrinking, on the gleaming pikes and savage brows of the
+huissiers.  And now, alone in the dungeon, it put its arms round
+her neck, and murmured its indistinct sounds, low and sweet as
+some unknown language of consolation and of heaven.  And of
+heaven it was!--for, at the murmur, the terror melted from her
+soul; upward, from the dungeon and the death,--upward, where the
+happy cherubim chant the mercy of the All-loving, whispered that
+cherub's voice.  She fell upon her knees and prayed.  The
+despoilers of all that beautifies and hallows life had desecrated
+the altar, and denied the God!--they had removed from the last
+hour of their victims the Priest, the Scripture, and the Cross!
+But Faith builds in the dungeon and the lazar-house its sublimest
+shrines; and up, through roofs of stone, that shut out the eye of
+Heaven, ascends the ladder where the angels glide to and fro,--
+PRAYER.
+
+And there, in the very cell beside her own, the atheist Nicot
+sits stolid amidst the darkness, and hugs the thought of Danton,
+that death is nothingness.  ("Ma demeure sera bientot LE NEANT"
+(My abode will soon be nothingness), said Danton before his
+judges.))  His, no spectacle of an appalled and perturbed
+conscience!  Remorse is the echo of a lost virtue, and virtue he
+never knew.  Had he to live again, he would live the same.  But
+more terrible than the death-bed of a believing and despairing
+sinner that blank gloom of apathy,--that contemplation of the
+worm and the rat of the charnel-house; that grim and loathsome
+NOTHINGNESS which, for his eye, falls like a pall over the
+universe of life.  Still, staring into space, gnawing his livid
+lip, he looks upon the darkness, convinced that darkness is
+forever and forever!
+
+...
+
+Place, there! place!  Room yet in your crowded cells.  Another
+has come to the slaughter-house.
+
+As the jailer, lamp in hand, ushered in the stranger, the latter
+touched him and whispered.  The stranger drew a jewel from his
+finger.  Diantre, how the diamond flashed in the ray of the lamp!
+Value each head of your eighty at a thousand francs, and the
+jewel is more worth than all!  The jailer paused, and the diamond
+laughed in his dazzled eyes.  O thou Cerberus, thou hast mastered
+all else that seems human in that fell employ!  Thou hast no
+pity, no love, and no remorse.  But Avarice survives the rest,
+and the foul heart's master-serpent swallows up the tribe.  Ha!
+ha! crafty stranger, thou hast conquered!  They tread the gloomy
+corridor; they arrive at the door where the jailer has placed the
+fatal mark, now to be erased, for the prisoner within is to be
+reprieved a day.  The key grates in the lock; the door yawns,--
+the stranger takes the lamp and enters.
+
+
+CHAPTER 7.XVII.  The Seventeenth and Last.
+
+Cosi vince Goffredo!
+"Ger. Lib." cant. xx.-xliv.
+
+(Thus conquered Godfrey.)
+
+And Viola was in prayer.  She heard not the opening of the door;
+she saw not the dark shadow that fell along the floor.  HIS
+power, HIS arts were gone; but the mystery and the spell known to
+HER simple heart did not desert her in the hours of trial and
+despair.  When Science falls as a firework from the sky it would
+invade; when Genius withers as a flower in the breath of the icy
+charnel,--the hope of a child-like soul wraps the air in light,
+and the innocence of unquestioning Belief covers the grave with
+blossoms.
+
+In the farthest corner of the cell she knelt; and the infant, as
+if to imitate what it could not comprehend, bent its little
+limbs, and bowed its smiling face, and knelt with her also, by
+her side.
+
+He stood and gazed upon them as the light of the lamp fell calmly
+on their forms.  It fell over those clouds of golden hair,
+dishevelled, parted, thrown back from the rapt, candid brow; the
+dark eyes raised on high, where, through the human tears, a light
+as from above was mirrored; the hands clasped, the lips apart,
+the form all animate and holy with the sad serenity of innocence
+and the touching humility of woman.  And he heard her voice,
+though it scarcely left her lips:  the low voice that the heart
+speaks,--loud enough for God to hear!
+
+"And if never more to see him, O Father!  Canst Thou not make the
+love that will not die, minister, even beyond the grave, to his
+earthly fate?  Canst Thou not yet permit it, as a living spirit,
+to hover over him,--a spirit fairer than all his science can
+conjure?  Oh, whatever lot be ordained to either, grant--even
+though a thousand ages may roll between us--grant, when at last
+purified and regenerate, and fitted for the transport of such
+reunion--grant that we may meet once more!  And for his child,--
+it kneels to Thee from the dungeon floor!  To-morrow, and whose
+breast shall cradle it; whose hand shall feed; whose lips shall
+pray for its weal below and its soul hereafter!"  She paused,--
+her voice choked with sobs.
+
+"Thou Viola!--thou, thyself.  He whom thou hast deserted is here
+to preserve the mother to the child!"
+
+She started!--those accents, tremulous as her own!  She started
+to her feet!--he was there,--in all the pride of his unwaning
+youth and superhuman beauty; there, in the house of dread, and in
+the hour of travail; there, image and personation of the love
+that can pierce the Valley of the Shadow, and can glide, the
+unscathed wanderer from the heaven, through the roaring abyss of
+hell!
+
+With a cry never, perhaps, heard before in that gloomy vault,--a
+cry of delight and rapture, she sprang forward, and fell at his
+feet.
+
+He bent down to raise her; but she slid from his arms.  He called
+her by the familiar epithets of the old endearment, and she only
+answered him by sobs.  Wildly, passionately, she kissed his
+hands, the hem of his garment, but voice was gone.
+
+"Look up, look up!--I am here,--I am here to save thee!  Wilt
+thou deny to me thy sweet face?  Truant, wouldst thou fly me
+still?"
+
+"Fly thee!" she said, at last, and in a broken voice; "oh, if my
+thoughts wronged thee,--oh, if my dream, that awful dream,
+deceived,--kneel down with me, and pray for our child!"  Then
+springing to her feet with a sudden impulse, she caught up the
+infant, and, placing it in his arms, sobbed forth, with
+deprecating and humble tones, "Not for my sake,--not for mine,
+did I abandon thee, but--"
+
+"Hush!" said Zanoni; "I know all the thoughts that thy confused
+and struggling senses can scarcely analyse themselves.  And see
+how, with a look, thy child answers them!"
+
+And in truth the face of that strange infant seemed radiant with
+its silent and unfathomable joy.  It seemed as if it recognised
+the father; it clung--it forced itself to his breast, and there,
+nestling, turned its bright, clear eyes upon Viola, and smiled.
+
+"Pray for my child!" said Zanoni, mournfully.  "The thoughts of
+souls that would aspire as mine are All PRAYER!"  And, seating
+himself by her side, he began to reveal to her some of the holier
+secrets of his lofty being.  He spoke of the sublime and intense
+faith from which alone the diviner knowledge can arise,--the
+faith which, seeing the immortal everywhere, purifies and exalts
+the mortal that beholds, the glorious ambition that dwells not in
+the cabals and crimes of earth, but amidst those solemn wonders
+that speak not of men, but of God; of that power to abstract the
+soul from the clay which gives to the eye of the soul its subtle
+vision, and to the soul's wing the unlimited realm; of that pure,
+severe, and daring initiation from which the mind emerges, as
+from death, into clear perceptions of its kindred with the
+Father-Principles of life and light, so that in its own sense of
+the Beautiful it finds its joy; in the serenity of its will, its
+power; in its sympathy with the youthfulness of the Infinite
+Creation, of which itself is an essence and a part, the secrets
+that embalm the very clay which they consecrate, and renew the
+strength of life with the ambrosia of mysterious and celestial
+sleep.  And while he spoke, Viola listened, breathless.  If she
+could not comprehend, she no longer dared to distrust.  She felt
+that in that enthusiasm, self-deceiving or not, no fiend could
+lurk; and by an intuition, rather than an effort of the reason,
+she saw before her, like a starry ocean, the depth and mysterious
+beauty of the soul which her fears had wronged.  Yet, when he
+said (concluding his strange confessions) that to this life
+WITHIN life and ABOVE life he had dreamed to raise her own, the
+fear of humanity crept over her, and he read in her silence how
+vain, with all his science, would the dream have been.
+
+But now, as he closed, and, leaning on his breast, she felt the
+clasp of his protecting arms,--when, in one holy kiss, the past
+was forgiven and the present lost,--then there returned to her
+the sweet and warm hopes of the natural life, of the loving
+woman.  He was come to save her!  She asked not how,--she
+believed it without a question.  They should be at last again
+united.  They would fly far from those scenes of violence and
+blood.  Their happy Ionian isle, their fearless solitudes, would
+once more receive them.  She laughed, with a child's joy, as this
+picture rose up amidst the gloom of the dungeon.  Her mind,
+faithful to its sweet, simple instincts, refused to receive the
+lofty images that flitted confusedly by it, and settled back to
+its human visions, yet more baseless, of the earthly happiness
+and the tranquil home.
+
+"Talk not now to me, beloved,--talk not more now to me of the
+past!  Thou art here,--thou wilt save me; we shall live yet the
+common happy life, that life with thee is happiness and glory
+enough to me.  Traverse, if thou wilt, in thy pride of soul, the
+universe; thy heart again is the universe to mine.  I thought but
+now that I was prepared to die; I see thee, touch thee, and again
+I know how beautiful a thing is life!  See through the grate the
+stars are fading from the sky; the morrow will soon be here,--The
+MORROW which will open the prison doors!  Thou sayest thou canst
+save me,--I will not doubt it now.  Oh, let us dwell no more in
+cities!  I never doubted thee in our lovely isle; no dreams
+haunted me there, except dreams of joy and beauty; and thine eyes
+made yet more beautiful and joyous the world in waking.  To-
+morrow!--why do you not smile?  To-morrow, love! is not TO-MORROW
+a blessed word!  Cruel! you would punish me still, that you will
+not share my joy.  Aha! see our little one, how it laughs to my
+eyes!  I will talk to THAT.  Child, thy father is come back!"
+
+And taking the infant in her arms, and seating herself at a
+little distance, she rocked it to and fro on her bosom, and
+prattled to it, and kissed it between every word, and laughed and
+wept by fits, as ever and anon she cast over her shoulder her
+playful, mirthful glance upon the father to whom those fading
+stars smiled sadly their last farewell.  How beautiful she seemed
+as she thus sat, unconscious of the future!  Still half a child
+herself, her child laughing to her laughter,--two soft triflers
+on the brink of the grave!  Over her throat, as she bent, fell,
+like a golden cloud, her redundant hair; it covered her treasure
+like a veil of light, and the child's little hands put it aside
+from time to time, to smile through the parted tresses, and then
+to cover its face and peep and smile again.  It were cruel to
+damp that joy, more cruel still to share it.
+
+"Viola," said Zanoni, at last, "dost thou remember that, seated
+by the cave on the moonlit beach, in our bridal isle, thou once
+didst ask me for this amulet?--the charm of a superstition long
+vanished from the world, with the creed to which it belonged.  It
+is the last relic of my native land, and my mother, on her
+deathbed, placed it round my neck.  I told thee then I would give
+it thee on that day WHEN THE LAWS OF OUR BEING SHOULD BECOME THE
+SAME."
+
+"I remember it well."
+
+"To-morrow it shall be thine!"
+
+"Ah, that dear to-morrow!"  And, gently laying down her child,--
+for it slept now,--she threw herself on his breast, and pointed
+to the dawn that began greyly to creep along the skies.
+
+There, in those horror-breathing walls, the day-star looked
+through the dismal bars upon those three beings, in whom were
+concentrated whatever is most tender in human ties; whatever is
+most mysterious in the combinations of the human mind; the
+sleeping Innocence; the trustful Affection, that, contented with
+a touch, a breath, can foresee no sorrow; the weary Science that,
+traversing all the secrets of creation, comes at last to Death
+for their solution, and still clings, as it nears the threshold,
+to the breast of Love.  Thus, within, THE WITHIN,--a dungeon;
+without, the WITHOUT,--stately with marts and halls, with palaces
+and temples; Revenge and Terror, at their dark schemes and
+counter-schemes; to and fro, upon the tide of the shifting
+passions, reeled the destinies of men and nations; and hard at
+hand that day-star, waning into space, looked with impartial eye
+on the church tower and the guillotine.  Up springs the
+blithesome morn.  In yon gardens the birds renew their familiar
+song.  The fishes are sporting through the freshening waters of
+the Seine.  The gladness of divine nature, the roar and
+dissonance of mortal life, awake again:  the trader unbars his
+windows; the flower-girls troop gayly to their haunts; busy feet
+are tramping to the daily drudgeries that revolutions which
+strike down kings and kaisars, leave the same Cain's heritage to
+the boor; the wagons groan and reel to the mart; Tyranny, up
+betimes, holds its pallid levee; Conspiracy, that hath not slept,
+hears the clock, and whispers to its own heart, "The hour draws
+near."  A group gather, eager-eyed, round the purlieus of the
+Convention Hall; to-day decides the sovereignty of France,--about
+the courts of the Tribunal their customary hum and stir.  No
+matter what the hazard of the die, or who the ruler, this day
+eighty heads shall fall!
+
+...
+
+And she slept so sweetly.  Wearied out with joy, secure in the
+presence of the eyes regained, she had laughed and wept herself
+to sleep; and still in that slumber there seemed a happy
+consciousness that the loved was by,--the lost was found.  For
+she smiled and murmured to herself, and breathed his name often,
+and stretched out her arms, and sighed if they touched him not.
+He gazed upon her as he stood apart,--with what emotions it were
+vain to say.  She would wake no more to him; she could not know
+how dearly the safety of that sleep was purchased.  That morrow
+she had so yearned for,--it had come at last.  HOW WOULD SHE
+GREET THE EVE?  Amidst all the exquisite hopes with which love
+and youth contemplate the future, her eyes had closed.  Those
+hopes still lent their iris-colours to her dreams.  She would
+wake to live!  To-morrow, and the Reign of Terror was no more;
+the prison gates would be opened,--she would go forth, with their
+child, into that summer-world of light.  And HE?--he turned, and
+his eye fell upon the child; it was broad awake, and that clear,
+serious, thoughtful look which it mostly wore, watched him with a
+solemn steadiness.  He bent over and kissed its lips.
+
+"Never more," he murmured, "O heritor of love and grief,--never
+more wilt thou see me in thy visions; never more will the light
+of those eyes be fed by celestial commune; never more can my soul
+guard from thy pillow the trouble and the disease.  Not such as I
+would have vainly shaped it, must be thy lot.  In common with thy
+race, it must be thine to suffer, to struggle, and to err.  But
+mild be thy human trials, and strong be thy spirit to love and to
+believe!  And thus, as I gaze upon thee,--thus may my nature
+breathe into thine its last and most intense desire; may my love
+for thy mother pass to thee, and in thy looks may she hear my
+spirit comfort and console her.  Hark! they come!  Yes! I await
+ye both beyond the grave!"
+
+The door slowly opened; the jailer appeared, and through the
+aperture rushed, at the same instant, a ray of sunlight:  it
+streamed over the fair, hushed face of the happy sleeper,--it
+played like a smile upon the lips of the child that, still, mute,
+and steadfast, watched the movements of its father.  At that
+moment Viola muttered in her sleep, "The day is come,--the gates
+are open!  Give me thy hand; we will go forth!  To sea, to sea!
+How the sunshine plays upon the waters!--to home, beloved one, to
+home again!"
+
+"Citizen, thine hour is come!"
+
+"Hist! she sleeps!  A moment!  There, it is done! thank Heaven!--
+and STILL she sleeps!"  He would not kiss, lest he should awaken
+her, but gently placed round her neck the amulet that would speak
+to her, hereafter, the farewell,--and promise, in that farewell,
+reunion!  He is at the threshold,--he turns again, and again.
+The door closes!  He is gone forever!
+
+She woke at last,--she gazed round.  "Zanoni, it is day!"  No
+answer but the low wail of her child.  Merciful Heaven! was it
+then all a dream?  She tossed back the long tresses that must
+veil her sight; she felt the amulet on her bosom,--it was NO
+dream!  "O God! and he is gone!"  She sprang to the door,-- she
+shrieked aloud.  The jailer comes.  "My husband, my child's
+father?"
+
+"He is gone before thee, woman!"
+
+"Whither?  Speak--speak!"
+
+"To the guillotine!"--and the black door closed again.
+
+It closed upon the senseless!  As a lightning-flash, Zanoni's
+words, his sadness, the true meaning of his mystic gift, the very
+sacrifice he made for her, all became distinct for a moment to
+her mind,--and then darkness swept on it like a storm, yet
+darkness which had its light.  And while she sat there, mute,
+rigid, voiceless, as congealed to stone, A VISION, like a wind,
+glided over the deeps within,--the grim court, the judge, the
+jury, the accuser; and amidst the victims the one dauntless and
+radiant form.
+
+"Thou knowest the danger to the State,--confess!"
+
+"I know; and I keep my promise.  Judge, I reveal thy doom!  I
+know that the Anarchy thou callest a State expires with the
+setting of this sun.  Hark, to the tramp without; hark to the
+roar of voices!  Room there, ye dead!--room in hell for
+Robespierre and his crew!"
+
+They hurry into the court,--the hasty and pale messengers; there
+is confusion and fear and dismay!  "Off with the conspirator, and
+to-morrow the woman thou wouldst have saved shall die!"
+
+"To-morrow, president, the steel falls on THEE!"
+
+On, through the crowded and roaring streets, on moves the
+Procession of Death.  Ha, brave people! thou art aroused at last.
+They shall not die!  Death is dethroned!--Robespierre has
+fallen!--they rush to the rescue!  Hideous in the tumbril, by the
+side of Zanoni, raved and gesticulated that form which, in his
+prophetic dreams, he had seen his companion at the place of
+death.  "Save us!--save us!" howled the atheist Nicot.  "On,
+brave populace! we SHALL be saved!"  And through the crowd, her
+dark hair streaming wild, her eyes flashing fire, pressed a
+female form, "My Clarence!" she shrieked, in the soft Southern
+language native to the ears of Viola; "butcher! what hast thou
+done with Clarence?"  Her eyes roved over the eager faces of the
+prisoners; she saw not the one she sought.  "Thank Heaven!--thank
+Heaven!  I am not thy murderess!"
+
+Nearer and nearer press the populace,--another moment, and the
+deathsman is defrauded.  O Zanoni! why still upon THY brow the
+resignation that speaks no hope?  Tramp! tramp! through the
+streets dash the armed troop; faithful to his orders, Black
+Henriot leads them on.  Tramp! tramp! over the craven and
+scattered crowd!  Here, flying in disorder,--there, trampled in
+the mire, the shrieking rescuers!  And amidst them, stricken by
+the sabres of the guard, her long hair blood-bedabbled, lies the
+Italian woman; and still upon her writhing lips sits joy, as they
+murmur, "Clarence! I have not destroyed thee!"
+
+On to the Barriere du Trone.  It frowns dark in the air,--the
+giant instrument of murder!  One after one to the glaive,--
+another and another and another!  Mercy!  O mercy!  Is the bridge
+between the sun and the shades so brief,--brief as a sigh?
+There, there,--HIS turn has come.  "Die not yet; leave me not
+behind; hear me--hear me!" shrieked the inspired sleeper.  "What!
+and thou smilest still!"  They smiled,--those pale lips,--and
+WITH the smile, the place of doom, the headsman, the horror
+vanished.  With that smile, all space seemed suffused in eternal
+sunshine.  Up from the earth he rose; he hovered over her,--a
+thing not of matter, an IDEA of joy and light!  Behind, Heaven
+opened, deep after deep; and the Hosts of Beauty were seen, rank
+upon rank, afar; and "Welcome!" in a myriad melodies, broke from
+your choral multitude, ye People of the Skies,--"welcome!  O
+purified by sacrifice, and immortal only through the grave,--this
+it is to die."  And radiant amidst the radiant, the IMAGE
+stretched forth its arms, and murmured to the sleeper:
+"Companion of Eternity!--THIS it is to die!"
+
+...
+
+"Ho! wherefore do they make us signs from the house-tops?
+Wherefore gather the crowds through the street?  Why sounds the
+bell?  Why shrieks the tocsin?  Hark to the guns!--the armed
+clash!  Fellow-captives, is there hope for us at last?"
+
+So gasp out the prisoners, each to each.  Day wanes--evening
+closes; still they press their white faces to the bars, and still
+from window and from house-top they see the smiles of friends,--
+the waving signals!  "Hurrah!" at last,--"Hurrah!  Robespierre is
+fallen!  The Reign of Terror is no more!  God hath permitted us
+to live!"
+
+Yes; cast thine eyes into the hall where the tyrant and his
+conclave hearkened to the roar without!  Fulfilling the prophecy
+of Dumas, Henriot, drunk with blood and alcohol, reels within,
+and chucks his gory sabre on the floor.  "All is lost!"
+
+"Wretch! thy cowardice hath destroyed us!" yelled the fierce
+Coffinhal, as he hurled the coward from the window.
+
+Calm as despair stands the stern St. Just; the palsied Couthon
+crawls, grovelling, beneath table; a shot,--an explosion!
+Robespierre would destroy himself!  The trembling hand has
+mangled, and failed to kill!  The clock of the Hotel de Ville
+strikes the third hour.  Through the battered door, along the
+gloomy passages, into the Death-hall, burst the crowd.  Mangled,
+livid, blood-stained, speechless but not unconscious, sits
+haughty yet, in his seat erect, the Master-Murderer!  Around him
+they throng; they hoot,--they execrate, their faces gleaming in
+the tossing torches!  HE, and not the starry Magian, the REAL
+Sorcerer!  And round HIS last hours gather the Fiends he raised!
+
+They drag him forth!  Open thy gates, inexorable prison!  The
+Conciergerie receives its prey!  Never a word again on earth
+spoke Maximilien Robespierre!  Pour forth thy thousands, and tens
+of thousands, emancipated Paris!  To the Place de la Revolution
+rolls the tumbril of the King of Terror,--St. Just, Dumas,
+Couthon, his companions to the grave!  A woman--a childless
+woman, with hoary hair--springs to his side, "Thy death makes me
+drunk with joy!"  He opened his bloodshot eyes,--"Descend to hell
+with the curses of wives and mothers!"
+
+The headsmen wrench the rag from the shattered jaw; a shriek, and
+the crowd laugh, and the axe descends amidst the shout of the
+countless thousands, and blackness rushes on thy soul, Maximilien
+Robespierre!  So ended the Reign of Terror.
+
+...
+
+Daylight in the prison.  From cell to cell they hurry with the
+news,--crowd upon crowd; the joyous captives mingled with the
+very jailers, who, for fear, would fain seem joyous too; they
+stream through the dens and alleys of the grim house they will
+shortly leave.  They burst into a cell, forgotten since the
+previous morning.  They found there a young female, sitting upon
+her wretched bed; her arms crossed upon her bosom, her face
+raised upward; the eyes unclosed, and a smile of more than
+serenity--of bliss--upon her lips.  Even in the riot of their
+joy, they drew back in astonishment and awe.  Never had they seen
+life so beautiful; and as they crept nearer, and with noiseless
+feet, they saw that the lips breathed not, that the repose was of
+marble, that the beauty and the ecstasy were of death.  They
+gathered round in silence; and lo! at her feet there was a young
+infant, who, wakened by their tread, looked at them steadfastly,
+and with its rosy fingers played with its dead mother's robe.  An
+orphan there in a dungeon vault!
+
+"Poor one!" said a female (herself a parent), "and they say the
+father fell yesterday; and now the mother!  Alone in the world,
+what can be its fate?"
+
+The infant smiled fearlessly on the crowd, as the woman spoke
+thus.  And the old priest, who stood amongst them, said gently,
+"Woman, see! the orphan smiles!  THE FATHERLESS ARE THE CARE OF
+GOD!"
+
+---------
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+The curiosity which Zanoni has excited among those who think it
+worth while to dive into the subtler meanings they believe it
+intended to convey, may excuse me in adding a few words, not in
+explanation of its mysteries, but upon the principles which
+permit them.  Zanoni is not, as some have supposed, an allegory;
+but beneath the narrative it relates, TYPICAL meanings are
+concealed.  It is to be regarded in two characters, distinct yet
+harmonious,--1st, that of the simple and objective fiction, in
+which (once granting the license of the author to select a
+subject which is, or appears to be, preternatural) the reader
+judges the writer by the usual canons,--namely, by the
+consistency of his characters under such admitted circumstances,
+the interest of his story, and the coherence of his plot; of the
+work regarded in this view, it is not my intention to say
+anything, whether in exposition of the design, or in defence of
+the execution.  No typical meanings (which, in plain terms are
+but moral suggestions, more or less numerous, more or less
+subtle) can afford just excuse to a writer of fiction, for the
+errors he should avoid in the most ordinary novel.  We have no
+right to expect the most ingenious reader to search for the inner
+meaning, if the obvious course of the narrative be tedious and
+displeasing.  It is, on the contrary, in proportion as we are
+satisfied with the objective sense of a work of imagination, that
+we are inclined to search into its depths for the more secret
+intentions of the author.  Were we not so divinely charmed with
+"Faust," and "Hamlet," and "Prometheus," so ardently carried on
+by the interest of the story told to the common understanding, we
+should trouble ourselves little with the types in each which all
+of us can detect,--none of us can elucidate; none elucidate, for
+the essence of type is mystery.  We behold the figure, we cannot
+lift the veil.  The author himself is not called upon to explain
+what he designed.  An allegory is a personation of distinct and
+definite things,--virtues or qualities,--and the key can be given
+easily; but a writer who conveys typical meanings, may express
+them in myriads.  He cannot disentangle all the hues which
+commingle into the light he seeks to cast upon truth; and
+therefore the great masters of this enchanted soil,--Fairyland of
+Fairyland, Poetry imbedded beneath Poetry,--wisely leave to each
+mind to guess at such truths as best please or instruct it.  To
+have asked Goethe to explain the "Faust" would have entailed as
+complex and puzzling an answer as to have asked Mephistopheles to
+explain what is beneath the earth we tread on.  The stores
+beneath may differ for every passenger; each step may require a
+new description; and what is treasure to the geologist may be
+rubbish to the miner.  Six worlds may lie under a sod, but to the
+common eye they are but six layers of stone.
+
+Art in itself, if not necessarily typical, is essentially a
+suggester of something subtler than that which it embodies to the
+sense.  What Pliny tells us of a great painter of old, is true of
+most great painters; "their works express something beyond the
+works,"--"more felt than understood."  This belongs to the
+concentration of intellect which high art demands, and which, of
+all the arts, sculpture best illustrates.  Take Thorwaldsen's
+Statue of Mercury,--it is but a single figure, yet it tells to
+those conversant with mythology a whole legend.  The god has
+removed the pipe from his lips, because he has already lulled to
+sleep the Argus, whom you do not see.  He is pressing his heel
+against his sword, because the moment is come when he may slay
+his victim.  Apply the principle of this noble concentration of
+art to the moral writer:  he, too, gives to your eye but a single
+figure; yet each attitude, each expression, may refer to events
+and truths you must have the learning to remember, the acuteness
+to penetrate, or the imagination to conjecture.  But to a
+classical judge of sculpture, would not the exquisite pleasure of
+discovering the all not told in Thorwaldsen's masterpiece be
+destroyed if the artist had engraved in detail his meaning at the
+base of the statue?  Is it not the same with the typical sense
+which the artist in words conveys?  The pleasure of divining art
+in each is the noble exercise of all by whom art is worthily
+regarded.
+
+We of the humbler race not unreasonably shelter ourselves under
+the authority of the masters, on whom the world's judgment is
+pronounced; and great names are cited, not with the arrogance of
+equals, but with the humility of inferiors.
+
+The author of Zanoni gives, then, no key to mysteries, be they
+trivial or important, which may be found in the secret chambers
+by those who lift the tapestry from the wall; but out of the many
+solutions of the main enigma--if enigma, indeed, there be--which
+have been sent to him, he ventures to select the one which he
+subjoins, from the ingenuity and thought which it displays, and
+from respect for the distinguished writer (one of the most
+eminent our time has produced) who deemed him worthy of an honour
+he is proud to display.  He leaves it to the reader to agree
+with, or dissent from the explanation.  "A hundred men," says the
+old Platonist, "may read the book by the help of the same lamp,
+yet all may differ on the text, for the lamp only lights the
+characters,--the mind must divine the meaning."  The object of a
+parable is not that of a problem; it does not seek to convince,
+but to suggest.  It takes the thought below the surface of the
+understanding to the deeper intelligence which the world rarely
+tasks.  It is not sunlight on the water; it is a hymn chanted to
+the nymph who hearkens and awakes below.
+
+...
+
+"ZANONI EXPLAINED.
+
+BY--."
+
+MEJNOUR:--Contemplation of the Actual,--SCIENCE.  Always old, and
+must last as long as the Actual.  Less fallible than Idealism,
+but less practically potent, from its ignorance of the human
+heart.
+
+ZANONI:--Contemplation of the Ideal,--IDEALISM.  Always
+necessarily sympathetic:  lives by enjoyment; and is therefore
+typified by eternal youth.  ("I do not understand the making
+Idealism less undying (on this scene of existence) than
+Science."--Commentator.  Because, granting the above premises,
+Idealism is more subjected than Science to the Affections, or to
+Instinct, because the Affections, sooner or later, force Idealism
+into the Actual, and in the Actual its immortality departs.  The
+only absolutely Actual portion of the work is found in the
+concluding scenes that depict the Reign of Terror.  The
+introduction of this part was objected to by some as out of
+keeping with the fanciful portions that preceded it.  But if the
+writer of the solution has rightly shown or suggested the
+intention of the author, the most strongly and rudely actual
+scene of the age in which the story is cast was the necessary and
+harmonious completion of the whole.  The excesses and crimes of
+Humanity are the grave of the Ideal.-- Author.)  Idealism is the
+potent Interpreter and Prophet of the Real; but its powers are
+impaired in proportion to their exposure to human passion.
+
+VIOLA:--Human INSTINCT.  (Hardly worthy to be called LOVE, as
+Love would not forsake its object at the bidding of
+Superstition.)  Resorts, first in its aspiration after the Ideal,
+to tinsel shows; then relinquishes these for a higher love; but
+is still, from the conditions of its nature, inadequate to this,
+and liable to suspicion and mistrust.  Its greatest force
+(Maternal Instinct) has power to penetrate some secrets, to trace
+some movements of the Ideal, but, too feeble to command them,
+yields to Superstition, sees sin where there is none, while
+committing sin, under a false guidance; weakly seeking refuge
+amidst the very tumults of the warring passions of the Actual,
+while deserting the serene Ideal,--pining, nevertheless, in the
+absence of the Ideal, and expiring (not perishing, but becoming
+transmuted) in the aspiration after having the laws of the two
+natures reconciled.
+
+(It might best suit popular apprehension to call these three the
+Understanding, the Imagination, and the Heart.)
+
+CHILD:--NEW-BORN INSTINCT, while trained and informed by
+Idealism, promises a preter-human result by its early,
+incommunicable vigilance and intelligence, but is compelled, by
+inevitable orphanhood, and the one-half of the laws of its
+existence, to lapse into ordinary conditions.
+
+AIDON-AI:--FAITH, which manifests its splendour, and delivers its
+oracles, and imparts its marvels, only to the higher moods of the
+soul, and whose directed antagonism is with Fear; so that those
+who employ the resources of Fear must dispense with those of
+Faith.  Yet aspiration holds open a way of restoration, and may
+summon Faith, even when the cry issues from beneath the yoke of
+fear.
+
+DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD:--FEAR (or HORROR), from whose
+ghastliness men are protected by the opacity of the region of
+Prescription and Custom.  The moment this protection is
+relinquished, and the human spirit pierces the cloud, and enters
+alone on the unexplored regions of Nature, this Natural Horror
+haunts it, and is to be successfully encountered only by
+defiance,--by aspiration towards, and reliance on, the Former and
+Director of Nature, whose Messenger and Instrument of reassurance
+is Faith.
+
+MERVALE:--CONVENTIONALISM.
+
+NICOT:--Base, grovelling, malignant PASSION.
+
+GLYNDON:--UNSUSTAINED ASPIRATION:  Would follow Instinct, but is
+deterred by Conventionalism, is overawed by Idealism, yet
+attracted, and transiently inspired, but has not steadiness for
+the initiatory contemplation of the Actual.  He conjoins its
+snatched privileges with a besetting sensualism, and suffers at
+once from the horror of the one and the disgust of the other,
+involving the innocent in the fatal conflict of his spirit.  When
+on the point of perishing, he is rescued by Idealism, and, unable
+to rise to that species of existence, is grateful to be replunged
+into the region of the Familiar, and takes up his rest henceforth
+in Custom.  (Mirror of Young Manhood.)
+
+...
+
+ARGUMENT.
+
+Human Existence subject to, and exempt from, ordinary conditions
+(Sickness, Poverty, Ignorance, Death).
+
+SCIENCE is ever striving to carry the most gifted beyond ordinary
+conditions,--the result being as many victims as efforts, and the
+striver being finally left a solitary,--for his object is
+unsuitable to the natures he has to deal with.
+
+The pursuit of the Ideal involves so much emotion as to render
+the Idealist vulnerable by human passion, however long and well
+guarded, still vulnerable,--liable, at last, to a union with
+Instinct.  Passion obscures both Insight and Forecast.  All
+effort to elevate Instinct to Idealism is abortive, the laws of
+their being not coinciding (in the early stage of the existence
+of the one).  Instinct is either alarmed, and takes refuge in
+Superstition or Custom, or is left helpless to human charity, or
+given over to providential care.
+
+Idealism, stripped of in sight and forecast, loses its serenity,
+becomes subject once more to the horror from which it had
+escaped, and by accepting its aids, forfeits the higher help of
+Faith; aspiration, however, remaining still possible, and,
+thereby, slow restoration; and also, SOMETHING BETTER.
+
+Summoned by aspiration, Faith extorts from Fear itself the saving
+truth to which Science continues blind, and which Idealism itself
+hails as its crowning acquisition,--the inestimable PROOF wrought
+out by all labours and all conflicts.
+
+Pending the elaboration of this proof,
+
+CONVENTIONALISM plods on, safe and complacent;
+
+SELFISH PASSION perishes, grovelling and hopeless;
+
+INSTINCT sleeps, in order to a loftier waking; and
+
+IDEALISM learns, as its ultimate lesson, that self-sacrifice is
+true redemption; that the region beyond the grave is the fitting
+one for exemption from mortal conditions; and that Death is the
+everlasting portal, indicated by the finger of God,--the broad
+avenue through which man does not issue solitary and stealthy
+into the region of Free Existence, but enters triumphant, hailed
+by a hierarchy of immortal natures.
+
+The result is (in other words), THAT THE UNIVERSAL HUMAN LOT IS,
+AFTER ALL, THAT OF THE HIGHEST PRIVILEGE.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Zanoni, by Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
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