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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Zicci, Book 1, by Bulwer-Lytton,
+#34 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
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+
+
+Title: Zicci, Book 1.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7606]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on January 21, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZICCI, BOOK 1, BY LYTTON ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Pat Castevens
+and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+ZICCI
+
+
+A TALE.
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+In the gardens at Naples, one summer evening in the last century, some
+four or five gentlemen were seated under a tree drinking their sherbet
+and listening, in the intervals of conversation, to the music which
+enlivened that gay and favorite resort of an indolent population.  One
+of this little party was a young Englishman who had been the life of the
+whole group, but who for the last few moments had sunk into a gloomy and
+abstracted revery.  One of his countrymen observed this sudden gloom,
+and tapping him on the back, said, "Glyndon, why, what ails you?  Are
+you ill?  You have grown quite pale; you tremble: is it a sudden chill?
+You had better go home; these Italian nights are often dangerous to our
+English constitutions."
+
+"No, I am well now,--it was but a passing shudder; I cannot account for
+it myself."
+
+A man apparently of about thirty years of age, and of a mien and
+countenance strikingly superior to those around him, turned abruptly,
+and looked steadfastly at Glyndon.
+
+"I think I understand what you mean," said he,--"and perhaps," he added,
+with a grave smile, "I could explain it better than yourself."  Here,
+turning to the others, he added, "You must often have felt, gentlemen,--
+each and all of you,--especially when sitting alone at night, a strange
+and unaccountable sensation of coldness and awe creep over you; your
+blood curdles, and the heart stands still; the limbs shiver, the hair
+bristles; you are afraid to look up, to turn your eyes to the darker
+corners of the room; you have a horrible fancy that something unearthly
+is at hand.  Presently the whole spell, if I may so call it, passes
+away, and you are ready to laugh at your own weakness.  Have you not
+often felt what I have thus imperfectly described?  If so, you can
+understand what our young friend has just experienced, even amidst the
+delights of this magical scene, and amidst the balmy whispers of a July
+night."
+
+"Sir," replied Glyndon, evidently much surprised, "you have defined
+exactly the nature of that shudder which came over me.  But how could my
+manner be so faithful an index to my impressions?"
+
+"I know the signs of the visitation," returned the stranger, gravely;
+"they are not to be mistaken by one of my experience."
+
+All the gentlemen present then declared that they could comprehend, and
+had felt, what the stranger had described.  "According to one of our
+national superstitions," said Merton, the Englishman who had first
+addressed Glyndon, "the moment you so feel your blood creep, and your
+hair stand on end, some one is walking over the spot which shall be your
+grave."
+
+"There are in all lands different superstitions to account for so common
+an occurrence," replied the stranger; "one sect among the Arabians hold
+that at that instant God is deciding the hour either of your death or
+that of some one dear to you.  The African savage, whose imagination is
+darkened by the hideous rites of his gloomy idolatry, believes that the
+Evil Spirit is pulling you towards him by the hair.  So do the Grotesque
+and the Terrible mingle with each other."
+
+"It is evidently a mere physical accident,--a derangement of the
+stomach; a chill of the blood," said a young Neapolitan.
+
+"Then why is it always coupled, in all nations, with some superstitious
+presentiment or terror,--some connection between the material frame and
+the supposed world without us?" asked the stranger.  "For my part, I
+think--"
+
+"What do you think, sir?" asked Glyndon, curiously.
+
+"I think," continued the stranger, "that it is the repugnance and horror
+of that which is human about us to something indeed invisible, but
+antipathetic to our own nature, and from a knowledge of which we are
+happily secured by the imperfection of our senses."
+
+"You are a believer in spirits, then?" asked Merton, with an incredulous
+smile.
+
+"Nay, I said not so.  I can form no notion of a spirit, as the
+metaphysicians do, and certainly have no fear of one; but there may be
+forms of matter as invisible and impalpable to us as the animalculae to
+which I have compared them.  The monster that lives and dies in a drop
+of water, carniverous, insatiable, subsisting on the creatures minuter
+than himself, is not less deadly in his wrath, less ferocious in his
+nature, than the tiger of the desert.  There may be things around us
+malignant and hostile to men, if Providence had not placed a wall
+between them and us, merely by different modifications of matter."
+
+"And could that wall never be removed?" asked young Glyndon, abruptly.
+"Are the traditions of sorcerer and wizard, universal and immemorial as
+they are, merely fables?"
+
+"Perhaps yes; perhaps no," answered the stranger, indifferently.  "But
+who, in an age in which the reason has chosen its proper bounds, would
+be mad enough to break the partition that divides him from the boa and
+the lion, to repine at and rebel against the law of nature which
+confines the shark to the great deep?  Enough of these idle
+speculations."
+
+Here the stranger rose, summoned the attendant, paid for his sherbet,
+and, bowing slightly to the company, soon disappeared among the trees.
+
+"Who is that gentleman?" asked Glyndon, eagerly.
+
+The rest looked at each other, without replying, for some moments.
+
+"I never saw him before," said Merton, at last.
+
+"Nor I."
+
+"Nor I."
+
+"I have met him often," said the Neapolitan, who was named Count Cetoxa;
+"it was, if you remember, as my companion that he joined you.  He has
+been some months at Naples; he is very rich,--indeed enormously so.  Our
+acquaintance commenced in a strange way."
+
+"How was it?"
+
+"I had been playing at a public gaming-house, and had lost considerably.
+I rose from the table, resolved no longer to tempt Fortune, when this
+gentleman, who had hitherto been a spectator, laying his hand on my arm,
+said with politeness, 'Sir, I see you enjoy play,--I dislike it; but I
+yet wish to have some interest in what is going on.  Will you play this
+sum for me?  The risk is mine,--the half-profits yours.'  I was
+startled, as you may suppose, at such an address; but the stranger had
+an air and tone with him it was impossible to resist.  Besides, I was
+burning to recover my losses, and should not have risen had I had any
+money left about me.  I told him I would accept his offer, provided we
+shared the risk as well as profits.  'As you will,' said he, smiling,
+'we need have no scruple, for you will be sure to win.'  I sat down, the
+stranger stood behind me; my luck rose, I invariably won.  In fact, I
+rose from the table a rich man."
+
+"There can be no foul play at the public tables, especially when foul
+play would make against the bank."
+
+"Certainly not," replied the count.  "But our good fortune was indeed
+marvellous,--so extraordinary that a Sicilian (the Sicilians are all
+ill-bred, bad-tempered fellows) grew angry and insolent.  'Sir,' said
+he, turning to my new friend, 'you have no business to stand so near to
+the table.  I do not understand this; you have not acted fairly.'  The
+spectator replied, with great composure, that he had done nothing
+against the rules; that he was very sorry that one man could not win
+without another man losing; and that he could not act unfairly even if
+disposed to do so.  The Sicilian took the stranger's mildness for
+apprehension,--blustered more loudly, and at length fairly challenged
+him.  'I never seek a quarrel, and I never shun a danger,' returned my
+partner; and six or seven of us adjourned to the garden behind the
+house.  I was of course my partner's second.  He took me aside.  'This
+man will die,' said he; 'see that he is buried privately in the church
+of St. Januario, by the side of his father.'
+
+"'Did you know his family?' I asked with great surprise.  He made no
+answer, but drew his sword and walked deliberately to the spot we had
+selected.  The Sicilian was a renowned swordsman; nevertheless, in the
+third pass he was run through the body.  I went up to him; he could
+scarcely speak.  'Have you any request to make,--any affairs to settle?'
+He shook his head.  'Where would you wish to be interred?'  He pointed
+towards the Sicilian coast.  'What!' said I, in surprise, 'not by the
+side of your father?'  As I spoke, his face altered terribly, he uttered
+a piercing shriek; the blood gushed from his mouth, and he fell dead.
+The most strange part of the story is to come.  We buried him in the
+church of St. Januario.  In doing so, we took up his father's coffin;
+the lid came off in moving it, and the skeleton was visible.  In the
+hollow of the skull we found a very slender wire of sharp steel; this
+caused great surprise and inquiry.  The father, who was rich and a
+miser, had died suddenly and been buried in haste, owing, it was said,
+to the heat of the weather.  Suspicion once awakened, the examination
+became minute.  The old man's servant was questioned, and at last
+confessed that the son had murdered the sire.  The contrivance was
+ingenious; the wire was so slender that it pierced to the brain and drew
+but one drop of blood, which the gray hairs concealed.  The accomplice
+was executed."
+
+"And this stranger, did he give evidence?  Did he account for--"
+
+"No," interrupted the count, "he declared that he had by accident
+visited the church that morning; that he had observed the tombstone of
+the Count Salvolio; that his guide had told him the count's son was in
+Naples,--a spendthrift and a gambler.  While we were at play, he had
+heard the count mentioned by name at the table; and when the challenge
+was given and accepted, it had occured to him to name the place of
+burial, by an instinct he could not account for."
+
+"A very lame story," said Merton.
+
+"Yes, but we Italians are superstitious.  The alleged instinct was
+regarded as the whisper of Providence; the stranger became an object of
+universal interest and curiosity.  His wealth, his manner of living, his
+extraordinary personal beauty, have assisted also to make him the rage."
+
+"What is his name?" asked Glyndon.
+
+"Zicci.  Signor Zicci."
+
+"Is it not an Italian name?  He speaks English like a native."
+
+"So he does French and German, as well as Italian, to my knowledge.  But
+he declares himself a Corsican by birth, though I cannot hear of any
+eminent Corsican family of that name.  However, what matters his birth
+or parentage?  He is rich, generous, and the best swordsman I ever saw
+in my life.  Who would affront him?"
+
+"Not I, certainly," said Merton, rising.  "Come, Glyndon, shall we seek
+our hotel?  It is almost daylight.  Adieu, signor."
+
+"What think you of this story?" said Glyndon as the young men walked
+homeward.
+
+"Why, it is very clear that this Zicci is some impostor, some clever
+rogue; and the Neapolitan shares booty, and puffs him off with all the
+hackneyed charlatanism of the marvellous.  An unknown adventurer gets
+into society by being made an object of awe and curiosity; he is
+devilish handsome; and the women are quite content to receive him
+without any other recommendation than his own face and Cetoxa's fables."
+
+"I cannot agree with you.  Cetoxa, though a gambler and a rake, is a
+nobleman of birth and high repute for courage and honor.  Besides, this
+stranger, with his grand features and lofty air,--so calm, so
+unobtrusive,--has nothing in common with the forward garrulity of an
+impostor."
+
+"My dear Glyndon, pardon me, but you have not yet acquired any knowledge
+of the world; the stranger makes the best of a fine person, and his
+grand air is but a trick of the trade.  But to change the subject: how
+gets on the love affair?"
+
+"Oh! Isabel could not see me to-night.  The old woman gave me a note of
+excuse."
+
+"You must not marry her; what would they all say at home?"
+
+"Let us enjoy the present," said Glyndon, with vivacity; "we are young,
+rich, good-looking: let us not think of to-morrow."
+
+"Bravo, Glyndon!  Here we are at the hotel.  Sleep sound, and don't
+dream of Signor Zicci."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Clarence Glyndon was a young man of small but independent fortune.  He
+had, early in life, evinced considerable promise in the art of painting,
+and rather from enthusiasm than the want of a profession, he had
+resolved to devote himself to a career which in England has been seldom
+entered upon by persons who can live on their own means.  Without being
+a poet, Glyndon had also manifested a graceful faculty for verse, which
+had contributed to win his entry into society above his birth.  Spoiled
+and flattered from his youth upward, his natural talents were in some
+measure relaxed by indolence and that worldly and selfish habit of
+thought which frivolous companionship often engenders, and which is
+withering alike to stern virtue and high genius.  The luxuriance of his
+fancy was unabated; but the affections, which are the life of fancy, had
+grown languid and inactive.  His youth, his vanity, and a restless
+daring and thirst of adventure had from time to time involved him in
+dangers and dilemmas, out of which, of late, he had always extricated
+himself with the ingenious felicity of a clever head and cool heart.  He
+had left England for Rome with the avowed purpose and sincere resolution
+of studying the divine masterpieces of art; but pleasure had soon
+allured him from ambition, and he quitted the gloomy palaces of Rome for
+the gay shores and animated revelries of Naples.  Here he had fallen in
+love--deeply in love, as he said and thought--with a young person
+celebrated at Naples, Isabel di Pisani.  She was the only daughter of an
+Italian by an English mother.  The father had known better days; in his
+prosperity he had travelled, and won in England the affections of a lady
+of some fortune.  He had been induced to speculate; he lost his all; he
+settled at Naples, and taught languages and music.  His wife died when
+Isabel, christened from her mother, was ten years old.  At sixteen she
+came out on the stage; two years afterwards her father departed this
+life, and Isabel was an orphan.
+
+Glyndon, a man of pleasure and a regular attendant at the theatre, had
+remarked the young actress behind the scenes; he fell in love with her,
+and he told her so.  The girl listened to him, perhaps from vanity,
+perhaps from ambition, perhaps from coquetry; she listened, and allowed
+but few stolen interviews, in which she permitted no favor to the
+Englishman it was one reason why he loved her so much.
+
+The day following that on which our story opens, Glyndon was riding
+alone by the shores of the Neapolitan sea, on the other side of the
+Cavern of Pausilippo.  It was past noon; the sun had lost its early
+fervor, and a cool breeze sprang voluptuously from the sparkling sea.
+Bending over a fragment of stone near the roadside, he perceived the
+form of a man; and when he approached he recognized Zicci.
+
+The Englishman saluted him courteously.  "Have you discovered some
+antique?" said he, with a smile; "they are as common as pebbles on this
+road."
+
+"No," replied Zicci; "it was but one of those antiques that have their
+date, indeed, from the beginning of the world, but which Nature
+eternally withers and renews."  So saying, he showed Glyndon a small
+herb with a pale blue flower, and then placed it carefully in his bosom.
+
+"You are an herbalist?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"It is, I am told, a study full of interest."
+
+"To those who understand it, doubtless.  But," continued Zicci, looking
+up with a slight and cold smile, "why do you linger on your way to
+converse with me on matters in which you neither have knowledge nor
+desire to obtain it?  I read your heart, young Englishman: your
+curiosity is excited; you wish to know me, and not this humble herb.
+Pass on; your desire never can be satisfied."
+
+"You have not the politeness of your countrymen," said Glyndon, somewhat
+discomposed.  "Suppose I were desirous to cultivate your acquaintance,
+why should you reject my advances?"
+
+"I reject no man's advances," answered Zicci.  "I must know them, if
+they so desire; but me, in return, they can never comprehend.  If you
+ask my acquaintance, it is yours; but I would warn you to shun me."
+
+"And why are you then so dangerous?"
+
+"Some have found me so; if I were to predict your fortune by the vain
+calculations of the astrologer, I should tell you, in their despicable
+jargon, that my planet sat darkly in your house of life.  Cross me not,
+if you can avoid it.  I warn you now for the first time and last."
+
+"You despise the astrologers, yet you utter a jargon as mysterious as
+theirs.  I neither gamble nor quarrel: why then should I fear you?"
+
+"As you will; I have done."
+
+"Let me speak frankly: your conversation last night interested and
+amused me."
+
+"I know it; minds like yours are attracted by mystery."
+
+Glyndon was piqued at those words, though in the tone in which they were
+spoken there was no contempt.
+
+"I see you do not consider me worthy of your friendship be it so.  Good
+day."
+
+Zicci coldly replied to the salutation, and as the Englishman rode on,
+returned to his botanical employment.
+
+The same night Glyndon went, as usual, to the theatre.  He was standing
+behind the scenes watching Isabel, who was on the stage in one of her
+most brilliant parts.  The house resounded with applause.  Glyndon was
+transported with a young man's passion and a young man's pride.  "This
+glorious creature," thought he, "may yet be mine."
+
+He felt, while thus rapt in delicious revery, a slight touch upon his
+shoulder; he turned, and beheld Zicci.  "You are in danger," said the
+latter.  "Do not walk home to-night; or if you do, go not alone."
+
+Before Glyndon recovered from his surprise, Zicci disappeared; and when
+the Englishman saw him again, he was in the box of one of the Neapolitan
+ministers, where Glyndon could not follow him.
+
+Isabel now left the stage, and Glyndon accosted her with impassioned
+gallantry.  The actress was surprisingly beautiful; of fair complexion
+and golden hair, her countenance was relieved from the tame and gentle
+loveliness which the Italians suppose to be the characteristics of
+English beauty, by the contrast of dark eyes and lashes, by a forehead
+of great height, to which the dark outline of the eyebrows gave some
+thing of majesty and command.  In spite of the slightness of virgin
+youth, her proportions had the nobleness, blent with the delicacy, that
+belongs to the masterpieces of ancient sculpture; and there was a
+conscious pride in her step, and in the swanlike bend of her stately
+head, as she turned with an evident impatience from the address of her
+lover.  Taking aside an old woman, who was her constant and confidential
+attendant at the theatre, she said, in an earnest whisper,--
+
+"Oh, Gionetta, he is here again!  I have seen him again!  And again, he
+alone of the whole theatre withholds from me his applause.  He scarcely
+seems to notice me; his indifference mortifies me to the soul,--I could
+weep for rage and sorrow."
+
+"Which is he, my darling?" said the old woman, with fondness in her
+voice.  "He must be dull,--not worth thy thoughts."
+
+The actress drew Gionetta nearer to the stage, and pointed out to her a
+man in one of the nearer boxes, conspicuous amongst all else by the
+simplicity of his dress and the extraordinary beauty of his features.
+
+"Not worth a thought, Gionetta," repeated Isabel,--"not worth a thought!
+Saw you ever one so noble, so godlike?"
+
+"By the Holy Mother!" answered Gionetta, "he is a proper man, and has
+the air of a prince."
+
+The prompter summoned the Signora Pisani.  "Find out his name,
+Gionetta," said she, sweeping on to the stage, and passing by Glyndon,
+who gazed at her with a look of sorrowful reproach.
+
+The scene on which the actress now entered was that of the final
+catastrophe, wherein all her remarkable powers of voice and art were
+pre-eminently called forth.  The house hung on every word with
+breathless worship, but the eyes of Isabel sought only those of one calm
+and unmoved spectator; she exerted herself as if inspired.  The stranger
+listened, and observed her with an attentive gaze, but no approval
+escaped his lips, no emotion changed the expression of his cold and
+half-disdainful aspect.  Isabel, who was in the character of a jealous
+and abandoned mistress, never felt so acutely the part she played.  Her
+tears were truthful; her passion that of nature: it was almost too
+terrible to behold.  She was borne from the stage, exhausted and
+insensible, amidst such a tempest of admiring rapture as Continental
+audiences alone can raise.  The crowd stood up, handkerchiefs waved,
+garlands and flowers were thrown on the stage, men wiped their eyes, and
+women sobbed aloud.
+
+"By heavens!" said a Neapolitan of great rank, "she has fired me beyond
+endurance.  To-night, this very night, she shall be mine!  You have
+arranged all, Mascari?"
+
+"All, signor.  And if this young Englishman should accompany her home?"
+
+"The presuming barbarian!  At all events let him bleed for his folly.  I
+hear that she admits him to secret interviews.  I will have no rival."
+
+"But an Englishman!  There is always a search after the bodies of the
+English."
+
+"Fool!  Is not the sea deep enough, or the earth secret enough, to hide
+one dead man?  Our ruffians are silent as the grave itself.  And I,--who
+would dare to suspect, to arraign, the Prince di --?  See to it,--let
+him be watched, and the fitting occasion taken.  I trust him to you,--
+robbers murder him; you understand: the country swarms with them.
+Plunder and strip him.  Take three men; the rest shall be my escort."
+
+Mascari shrugged his shoulders, and bowed submissively.  Meanwhile
+Glyndon besought Isabel, who recovered but slowly, to return home in his
+carriage. (1)  She had done so once or twice before, though she had
+never permitted him to accompany her.  This time she refused, and with
+some petulance.  Glyndon, offended, was retiring sullenly, when Gionetta
+stopped him.  "Stay, signor," said she, coaxingly, "the dear signora is
+not well: do not be angry with her; I will make her accept your offer."
+
+Glyndon stayed, and after a few moments spent in expostulation on the
+part of Gionetta, and resistance on that of Isabel, the offer was
+accepted; the actress, with a mixture of naivete and coquetry, gave her
+handy to her lover, who kissed it with delight.  Gionetta and her charge
+entered the carriage, and Glyndon was left at the door of the theatre,
+to return home on foot.  The mysterious warning of Zicci then suddenly
+occurred to him; he had forgotten it in the interest of his lover's
+quarrel with Isabel.  He thought it now advisable to guard against
+danger foretold by lips so mysterious; he looked round for some one he
+knew.  The theatre was disgorging its crowds, who hustled and jostled
+and pressed upon him; but he recognized no familiar countenances.  While
+pausing irresolute, he heard Merton's voice calling on him, and to his
+great relief discovered his friend making his way through the throng.
+
+"I have secured you a place in the Count Cetoxa's carriage," said he.
+"Come along, he is waiting for us."
+
+"How kind in you!  How did you find me out?"
+
+"I met Zicci in the passage.  'Your friend is at the door of the
+theatre,' said he; 'do not let him go home alone to-night the streets of
+Naples are not always safe.'  I immediately remembered that some of the
+Calabrian bravos had been busy within the city the last few weeks, and
+asked Cetoxa, who was with me, to accompany you."
+
+Further explanation was forbidden, for they now joined the count.  As
+Glyndon entered the carriage and drew up the glass, he saw four men
+standing apart by the pavement, who seemed to eye him with attention.
+
+"Cospetto!" cried  one; "ecco Inglese!"  Glyndon imperfectly heard the
+exclamation as the carriage drove on.  He reached home in safety.
+
+"Have you discovered who he is?" asked the actress, as she was now alone
+in the carriage with Gionetta.
+
+"Yes, he is the celebrated Signor Zicci, about whom the court has run
+mad.  They say he is so rich,--oh, so much richer than any of the
+Inglese!  But a bird in the hand, my angel, is better than--"
+
+"Cease," interrupted the young actress.  "Zicci!  Speak of the
+Englishman no more."
+
+The carriage was now entering that more lonely and remote part of the
+city in which Isabel's house was situated, when it suddenly stopped.
+
+Gionetta, in alarm, thrust her head out of window, and perceived by the
+pale light of the moon that the driver, torn from his seat, was already
+pinioned in the arms of two men; the next moment the door was opened
+violently, and a tall figure, masked and mantled, appeared.
+
+"Fear not, fairest Pisani," said he, gently, "no ill shall befall you."
+As he spoke, he wound his arms round the form of the fair actress, and
+endeavored to lift her from the carriage.  But the Signora Pisani was
+not an ordinary person; she had been before exposed to all the dangers
+to which the beauty of the low-born was subjected amongst a lawless and
+profligate nobility.  She thrust back the assailant with a power that
+surprised him, and in the next moment the blade of a dagger gleamed
+before his eyes.  "Touch me," said she, drawing herself to the farther
+end of the carriage, "and I strike!"
+
+The mask drew back.
+
+"By the body of Bacchus, a bold spirit!" said he, half laughing and half
+alarmed.  "Here, Luigi, Giovanni! disarm and seize her.  Harm her not."
+
+The mask retired from the door, and another and yet taller form
+presented itself.  "Be calm, Isabel di Pisani," said he, in a low voice;
+"with me you are indeed safe!"  He lifted his mask as he spoke, and
+showed the noble features of Zicci.  "Be calm, be hushed; I can save
+you."  He vanished, leaving Isabel lost in surprise, agitation, and
+delight.  There were in all nine masks: two were engaged with the
+driver; one stood at the head of the carriage-horses; a third guarded
+the well-trained steeds of the party; three others, besides Zicci and
+the one who had first accosted Isabel, stood apart by a carriage drawn
+to the side of the road.  To these Zicci motioned: they advanced; he
+pointed towards the first mask, who was in fact the Prince di --, and to
+his unspeakable astonishment the Prince was suddenly seized from behind.
+
+"Treason," he cried, "treason among my own men!  What means this?"
+
+"Place him in his carriage.  If he resist, shoot him!" said Zicci,
+calmly.
+
+He approached the men who had detained the coachman.  "You are
+outnumbered and outwitted," said he.  "Join your lord; you are three
+men,--we six, armed to the teeth.  Thank our mercy that we spare your
+lives.  Go!"
+
+The men gave way, dismayed.  The driver remounted.  "Cut the traces of
+their carriage and the bridles of their horses," said Zicci, as he
+entered the vehicle containing Isabel, and which now drove on rapidly,
+leaving the discomfited ravisher in a state of rage and stupor
+impossible to describe.
+
+"Allow me to explain this mystery to you," said Zicci.  "I discovered
+the plot against you,--no matter how.  I frustrated it thus: the head of
+this design is a nobleman who has long persecuted you in vain.  He and
+two of his creatures watched you from the entrance of the theatre,
+having directed six others to await him on the spot where you were
+attacked; myself and five of my servants supplied their place, and were
+mistaken for his own followers.  I had previously ridden alone to the
+spot where the men were waiting, and informed them that their master
+would not require their services that night.  They believed me, for I
+showed them his signet-ring, and accordingly dispersed; I then joined my
+own band, whom I had left in the rear.  You know all.  We are at your
+door."
+
+(1) At that time in Naples carriages were both cheaper to hire, and more
+necessary for strangers than they are now.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Zicci was left alone with the young Italian.  She had thrown aside her
+cloak and head-gear; her hair, somewhat dishevelled, fell down her ivory
+neck, which the dress partially displayed; she seemed, as she sat in
+that low and humble chamber, a very vision of light and glory.
+
+Zicci gazed at her with an admiration mingled with compassion; he
+muttered a few words to himself, and then addressed her aloud:--
+
+"Isabel di Pisani, I have saved you from a great peril,--not from
+dishonor only, but perhaps from death.  The Prince di --, under the weak
+government of a royal child and a venal administration, is a man above
+the law.  He is capable of every crime; but amongst his passions he has
+such prudence as belongs to ambition: if you were not to reconcile
+yourself to your shame, you would never enter the world again to tell
+your tale.  The ravisher has no heart for repentance, but he has a
+hand that can murder.  I have saved thee, Isabel di Pisani.  Perhaps
+you would ask me wherefore?"  Zicci paused, and smiled mournfully as he
+added: "My life is not that of others, but I am still human,--I know
+pity; and more, Isabel, I can feel gratitude for affection.  You love
+me; it was my fate to fascinate your eye, to arouse your vanity, to
+inflame your imagination.  It was to warn you from this folly that I
+consented for a few minutes to become your guest.  The Englishman,
+Glyndon, loves thee well,--better than I can ever love; he may wed thee,
+he may bear thee to his own free and happy land,--the land of thy
+mother's kin.  Forget me, teach thyself to return and to deserve his
+love; and I tell thee that thou wilt be honored and be happy."
+
+Isabel listened with silent wonder and deep blushes to this strange
+address; and when the voice ceased, she covered her face with her hands
+and wept.
+
+Zicci rose.  "I have fulfilled my duty to you, and I depart.  Remember
+that you are still in danger from the prince; be wary, and be cautious.
+Your best precaution is in flight; farewell."
+
+"Oh, do not leave me yet!  You have read a secret of which I myself was
+scarcely conscious: you despise me,--you, my preserver!  Ah! do not
+misjudge me; I am better, higher than I seem.  Since I saw thee I have
+been a new being."  The poor girl clasped her hands passionately as she
+spoke, and her tears streamed down her cheeks.
+
+"What would you that I should answer?" said Zicci, pausing, but with a
+cold severity in his eye.
+
+"Say that you do not despise,--say that you do not think me light and
+shameless."
+
+"Willingly, Isabel.  I know your heart and your history you are capable
+of great virtues; you have the seeds of a rare and powerful genius.  You
+may pass through the brief period of your human life with a proud step
+and a cheerful heart, if you listen to my advice.  You have been
+neglected from your childhood; you have been thrown among nations at
+once frivolous and coarse; your nobler dispositions, your higher
+qualities, are not developed.  You were pleased with the admiration of
+Glyndon; you thought that the passionate stranger might marry you, while
+others had only uttered the vows that dishonor.  Poor child, it was the
+instinctive desire of right within thee that made thee listen to him;
+and if my fatal shadow had not crossed thy path, thou wouldst have loved
+him well enough, at least, for content.  Return to that hope, and nurse
+again that innocent affection: this is my answer to thee.  Art thou
+contented?"
+
+"No! ah, no!  Severe as thou art, I love better to hear thee
+than, than--What am I saying?  And now you have saved me, I shall pray
+for you, bless you, think of you; and am I never to see you more?  Alas!
+the moment you leave me, danger and dread will darken round me.  Let me
+be your servant, your slave; with you I should have no fear."
+
+A dark shade fell over Zicci's brow; he looked from the ground, on which
+his eyes had rested while she spoke, upon the earnest and imploring face
+of the beautiful creature that now knelt before him, with all the
+passions of an ardent and pure, but wholly untutored and half-savage,
+nature speaking from the tearful eyes and trembling lips.  He looked at
+her with an aspect she could not interpret; in his eyes were kindness,
+sorrow, and even something, she thought, of love: yet the brow frowned,
+and the lip was stern.
+
+"It is in vain that we struggle with our doom," said he, calmly; "listen
+to me yet.  I am a man, Isabel, in whom there are some good impulses yet
+left, but whose life is, on the whole, devoted to a systematic and
+selfish desire to enjoy whatever life can afford.  To me it is given to
+warn: the warning neglected, I interfere no more; I leave her victories
+to that Fate that I cannot baffle of her prey.  You do not understand
+me; no matter: what I am now about to say will be more easy to
+comprehend.  I tell thee to tear from thy heart all thought of me: thou
+hast yet the power.  If thou wilt not obey me, thou must reap the seeds
+that thou wilt sow.  Glyndon, if thou acceptest his homage, will love
+thee throughout life; I, too, can love thee."
+
+"You, you--"
+
+"But with a lukewarm and selfish love, and one that cannot last.  Thou
+wilt be a flower in my path; I inhale thy sweetness and pass on, caring
+not what wind shall sup thee, or what step shall tread thee to the dust.
+Which is the love thou wouldst prefer?"
+
+"But do you, can you love me,--you, you, Zicci,--even for an hour?  Say
+it again."
+
+"Yes, Isabel; I am not dead to beauty, and yours is that rarely given to
+the daughters of men.  Yes, Isabel, I could love thee"
+
+Isabel uttered a cry of joy, seized his hand, and kissed it through
+burning and impassioned tears.  Zicci raised her in his arms and
+imprinted one kiss upon her forehead.
+
+"Do not deceive thyself," he said; "consider well.  I tell thee again
+that my love is subjected to the certain curse of change.  For my part,
+I shall seek thee no more.  Thy fate shall be thine own, and not mine.
+For the rest, fear not the Prince di --.  At present, I can save thee
+from every harm."  With these words he withdrew himself from her
+embrace, and had gained the outer door just as Gionetta came from the
+kitchen with her hands full of such cheer as she had managed to collect
+together.  Zicci laid his hand on the old woman's arm.
+
+"Signor Glyndon," said he, "loves Isabel; he may wed her.  You love your
+mistress: plead for him.  Disabuse her, if you can, of any caprice for
+me.  I am a bird ever on the wing."  He dropped a purse, heavy with
+gold, into Gionetta's bosom, and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+The palace of Zicci was among the noblest in Naples.  It still stands,
+though ruined and dismantled, in one of those antique streets from which
+the old races of the Norman and the Spaniard have long since vanished.
+
+He ascended the vast staircase, and entered the rooms reserved for his
+private hours.  They were no wise remarkable except for their luxury and
+splendor, and the absence of what men so learned as Zicci was reputed,
+generally prize, namely, books.  Zicci seemed to know everything that
+books can teach; yet of books themselves he spoke and thought with the
+most profound contempt.
+
+He threw himself on a sofa, and dismissed his attendants for the night;
+and here it may be observed that Zicci had no one servant who knew
+anything of his origin, birth, or history.  Some of his attendants he
+had brought with him from other cities; the rest he had engaged at
+Naples.  He hired those only whom wealth can make subservient.  His
+expenditure was most lavish, his generosity, regal; but his orders were
+ever given as those of a general to his army.  The least disobedience,
+the least hesitation, and the offender was at once dismissed.  He was a
+man who sought tools, and never made confidants.
+
+Zicci remained for a considerable time motionless and thoughtful.  The
+hand of the clock before him pointed to the first hour of morning.  The
+solemn voice of the timepiece aroused him from his revery.
+
+"One sand more out of the mighty hour-glass," said he, rising; "one hour
+nearer to the last!  I am weary of humanity.  I will enter into one of
+the countless worlds around me."  He lifted the arras that clothed the
+walls, and touching a strong iron door (then made visible) with a minute
+key which he wore in a ring, passed into an inner apartment lighted by a
+single lamp of extraordinary lustre.  The room was small; a few phials
+and some dried herbs were ranged in shelves on the wall, which was hung
+with snow-white cloth of coarse texture.  From the shelves Zicci
+selected one of the phials, and poured the contents into a crystal cup.
+The liquid was colorless, and sparkled rapidly up in bubbles of light;
+it almost seemed to evaporate ere it reached his lips.  But when the
+strange beverage was quaffed, a sudden change was visible in the
+countenance of Zicci: his beauty became yet more dazzling, his eyes
+shone with intense fire, and his form seemed to grow more youthful and
+ethereal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+The next day, Glyndon bent his steps towards Zicci's palace.  The young
+man's imagination, naturally inflammable, was singularly excited by the
+little he had seen and heard of this strange being; a spell he could
+neither master nor account for, attracted him towards the stranger.
+Zicci's power seemed mysterious and great, his motives kindly and
+benevolent, yet his manners chilling and repellant.  Why at one moment
+reject Glyndon's acquaintance, at another save him from danger?  How had
+Zicci thus acquired the knowledge of enemies unknown to Glyndon himself?
+His interest was deeply roused, his gratitude appealed to; he resolved
+to make another effort to conciliate Zicci.
+
+The signor was at home, and Glyndon was admitted into a lofty saloon,
+where in a few moments Zicci joined him.
+
+"I am come to thank you for your warning last night," said he, "and to
+entreat you to complete my obligation by informing me of the quarter to
+which I may look for enmity and peril."
+
+"You are a gallant, Mr. Glyndon," said Zicci, with a smile; "and do you
+know so little of the South as not to be aware that gallants have always
+rivals?"
+
+"Are you serious?" said Glyndon, coloring.
+
+"Most serious.  You love Isabel di Pisani; you have for rival one of the
+most powerful and relentless of the Neapolitan princes.  Your danger is
+indeed great."
+
+"But, pardon me, how came it known to you?"
+
+"I give no account of myself to mortal man," replied Zicci, haughtily;
+"and to me it matters not whether you regard or scorn my warning."
+
+"Well, if I may not question you, be it so; but at least advise me what
+to do."
+
+"You will not follow my advice."
+
+"You wrong me!  Why?"
+
+"Because you are constitutionally brave; you are fond of excitement and
+mystery; you like to be the hero of a romance.  I should advise you to
+leave Naples, and you will disdain to do so while Naples contains a foe
+to shun or a mistress to pursue."
+
+"You are right," said the young Englishman, with energy; "and you cannot
+reproach me for such a resolution."
+
+"No, there is another course left to you.  Do you love Isabel di Pisani
+truly and fervently?  If so, marry her, and take a bride to your native
+land."
+
+"Nay," answered Glyndon, embarrassed.  "Isabel is not of my rank; her
+character is strange and self-willed; her education neglected.  I am
+enslaved by her beauty, but I cannot wed her."
+
+Zicci frowned.
+
+"Your love, then, is but selfish lust; and by that love you will be
+betrayed.  Young man, Destiny is less inexorable than it appears.  The
+resources of the great Ruler of the Universe are not so scanty and so
+stern as to deny to men the divine privilege of Free Will; all of us can
+carve out our own way, and God can make our very contradictions
+harmonize with His solemn ends.  You have before you an option.
+Honorable and generous love may even now work out your happiness and
+effect your escape; a frantic and interested passion will but lead you
+to misery and doom."
+
+"Do you pretend, then, to read the Future?"
+
+"I have said all that it pleases me to utter."
+
+"While you assume the moralist to me, Signor Zicci," said Glyndon, with
+a smile, "if report says true you do not yourself reject the allurements
+of unfettered love."
+
+"If it were necessary that practice square with precept," said Zicci,
+with a sneer, "our pulpits would be empty.  Do you think it matters, in
+the great aggregate of human destinies, what one man's conduct may be?
+Nothing,--not a grain of dust; but it matters much what are the
+sentiments he propagates.  His acts are limited and momentary; his
+sentiments may pervade the universe, and inspire generations till the
+day of doom.  All our virtues, all our laws, are drawn from books and
+maxims, which are sentiments, not from deeds.  Our opinions, young
+Englishman, are the angel part of us; our acts the earthly."
+
+"You have reflected deeply, for an Italian," said Glyndon.
+
+"Who told you I was an Italian?"
+
+"Are you not of Corsica?"
+
+"Tush!" said Zicci, impatiently turning away.  Then, after a pause, he
+resumed, in a mild voice: "Glyndon, do you renounce Isabel di Pisani?
+Will you take three days to consider of what I have said?"
+
+"Renounce her,--never!"
+
+"Then you will marry her?"
+
+"Impossible."
+
+"Be it so; she will then renounce you.  I tell you that you have
+rivals."
+
+"Yes, the Prince di --; but I do not fear him."
+
+"You have another, whom you will fear more."
+
+"And who is he?"
+
+"Myself."
+
+Glyndon turned pale, and started from his seat.
+
+"You, Signor Zicci, you,--and you dare to tell me so?"
+
+"Dare!  Alas! you know there is nothing on earth left me to fear!"
+
+These words were not uttered arrogantly, but in a tone of the most
+mournful dejection.  Glyndon was enraged, confounded, and yet awed.
+However, he had a brave English heart within his breast, and he
+recovered himself quickly.
+
+"Signor," said he, calmly, "I am not to be duped by these solemn phrases
+and these mystical sympathies.  You may have power which I cannot
+comprehend or emulate, or you may be but a keen impostor."
+
+"Well, sir, your logical position is not ill-taken; proceed."
+
+"I mean  then," continued  Glyndon, resolutely, though somewhat
+disconcerted, "I mean you to understand, that, though I am not to be
+persuaded or compelled by a stranger to marry Isabel di Pisani, I am not
+the less determined never tamely to yield her to another."
+
+Zicci looked gravely at the young man, whose sparkling eyes and
+heightened color testified the spirit to support his words, and replied:
+"So bold! well, it becomes you.  You have courage, then; I thought it.
+Perhaps it may be put to a sharper test than you dream of.  But take my
+advice: wait three days, and tell me then if you will marry this young
+person."
+
+"But if you love her, why, why--"
+
+"Why am I anxious that she should wed another?  To save her from myself!
+Listen to me.  That girl, humble and uneducated though she be, has in
+her the seeds of the most lofty qualities and virtues.  She can be all
+to the man she loves,--all that man can desire in wife or mistress.  Her
+soul, developed by affection, will elevate your own; it will influence
+your fortunes, exalt your destiny; you will become a great and
+prosperous man.  If, on the contrary, she fall to me, I know not what
+may be her lot; but I know that few can pass the ordeal, and hitherto no
+woman has survived the struggle."
+
+As Zicci spoke, his face became livid, and there was something in his
+voice that froze the warm blood of his listener.
+
+"What is this mystery which surrounds you?" exclaimed Glyndon, unable to
+repress his emotion.  "Are you, in truth, different from other men?
+Have you passed the boundary of lawful knowledge?  Are you, as some
+declare, a sorcerer, only a--"
+
+"Hush!" interrupted Zicci, gently, and with a smile of singular but
+melancholy sweetness: "have you earned the right to ask me these
+questions?  The clays of torture and persecution are over; and a man may
+live as he pleases, and talk as it suits him, without fear of the stake
+and the rack.  Since I can defy persecution, pardon me if I do not
+succumb to curiosity."
+
+Glyndon blushed, and rose.  In spite of his love for Isabel, and his
+natural terror of such a rival, he felt himself irresistibly drawn
+towards the very man he had most cause to suspect and dread.  It was
+like the fascination of the basilisk.  He held out his hand to Zicci,
+saying, "Well, then, if we are to be rivals, our swords must settle our
+rights; till then I would fain be friends."
+
+"Friends!  Pardon me, I like you too well to give you my friendship.
+You know not what you ask."
+
+"Enigmas again!"
+
+"Enigmas!" cried Zicci, passionately, "Nay: can you dare to solve them!
+Would you brave all that human heart can conceive of peril and of
+horror, so that you at last might stand separated from this visible
+universe side by side with me?  When you can dare this, and when you are
+fit to dare it, I may give you my right hand and call you friend."
+
+"I could dare everything and all things for the attainment of superhuman
+wisdom," said Glyndon; and his countenance was lighted up with wild and
+intense enthusiasm.
+
+Zicci observed him in thoughtful silence.
+
+"He may be worthy," he muttered; "he may, yet--"  He broke off abruptly;
+then, speaking aloud, "Go, Glyndon," said he; "in three days we shall
+meet again."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Perhaps where you can least anticipate.  In any case, we shall meet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Glyndon thought seriously and deeply over all that the mysterious Zicci
+had said to him relative to Isabel.  His imagination was inflamed by the
+vague and splendid promises that were connected with his marriage with
+the poor actress.  His fears, too, were naturally aroused by the threat
+that by marriage alone could he save himself from the rivalry of Zicci,
+--Zicci, born to dazzle and command; Zicci, who united to the apparent
+wealth of a monarch the beauty of a god; Zicci, whose eye seemed to
+foresee, whose hand to frustrate, every danger.  What a rival, and what
+a foe!
+
+But Glyndon's pride, as well as jealousy, was aroused.  He was brave
+comme son epee.  Should he shrink from the power or the enmity of a man
+mortal as himself?  And why should Zicci desire him to give his name and
+station to one of a calling so equivocal?  Might there not be motives he
+could not fathom?  Might not the actress and the Corsican be in league
+with each other?  Might not all this jargon of prophecy--and menace be
+but artifices to dupe him,--the tool, perhaps, of a mountebank and his
+mistress!  Mistress,--ah, no!  If ever maidenhood wrote its modest
+characters externally, that pure eye, that noble forehead, that mien and
+manner so ingenuous even in their coquetry, their pride, assured him
+that Isabel was not the base and guilty thing he had dared for a moment
+to suspect her.  Lost in a labyrinth of doubts and surmises, Glyndon
+turned on the practical sense of the sober Merton to assist and
+enlighten him.
+
+As may be well supposed, his friend listened to his account of his
+interview with Zicci with a half-suppressed and ironical smile.
+
+"Excellent, my dear friend!  This Zicci is another Apollonius of Tyana,
+--nothing less will satisfy you.  What! is it possible that you are the
+Clarence Glyndon of whose career such glowing hopes are entertained,--
+you the man whose genius has been extolled by all the graybeards?  Not a
+boy turned out from a village school but would laugh you to scorn.  And
+so because Signor Zicci tells you that you will be a marvellously great
+man if you revolt all your friends and blight all your prospects by
+marrying a Neapolitan actress, you begin already to think of--
+By Jupiter!  I cannot talk patiently on the subject.  Let the girl
+alone,--that would be the proper plan; or else--"
+
+"You talk very sensibly," interrupted Glyndon, "but you distract me.  I
+will go to Isabel's house; I will see her; I will judge for myself."
+
+"That is certainly the best way to forget her," said Merton.  Glyndon
+seized his hat and sword, and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+She was seated outside her door, the young actress.  The sea, which in
+that heavenly bay literally seems to sleep in the arms of the shore,
+bounded the view in front; while to the right, not far off, rose the
+dark and tangled crags to which the traveller of to-day is daily brought
+to gaze on the tomb of Virgil, or compare with the Cavern of Pausilippo
+the archway of Highgate Hill.  There were a few fishermen loitering by
+the cliffs, on which their nets were hung up to dry; and, at a distance,
+the sound of some rustic pipe (more common at that day than in this),
+mingled now and then with the bells of the lazy mules, broke the
+voluptuous silence,--the silence of declining noon on the shores of
+Naples.  Never till you have enjoyed it, never till you have felt its
+enervating but delicious charm, believe that you can comprehend all the
+meaning of the dolce far niente; and when that luxury has been known,
+when you have breathed the atmosphere of fairy land, then you will no
+longer wonder why the heart ripens with so sudden and wild a power
+beneath the rosy skies and amidst the glorious foliage of the South.
+
+The young actress was seated by the door of her house; overhead a rude
+canvas awning sheltered her from the sun; on her lap lay the manuscript
+of a new part in which she was shortly to appear.  By her side was the
+guitar on which she had been practising the airs that were to ravish the
+ears of the cognoscenti.  But the guitar had been thrown aside in
+despair; her voice this morning did not obey her will.  The manuscript
+lay unheeded, and the eyes of the actress were fixed on the broad, blue
+deep beyond.  In the unwonted negligence of her dress might be traced
+the abstraction of her mind.  Her beautiful hair was gathered up
+loosely, and partially bandaged by a kerchief, whose purple color seemed
+to deepen the golden hue of the tresses.  A stray curl escaped, and fell
+down the graceful neck.  A loose morning robe, girded by a sash, left
+the breeze that came ever and anon from the sea to die upon the bust
+half disclosed, and the tiny slipper, that Cinderella might have worn,
+seemed a world too wide for the tiny foot which it scarcely covered.  It
+might be the heat of the day that deepened the soft bloom of the cheeks
+and gave an unwonted languor to the large dark eyes.  In all the pomp of
+her stage attire, in all the flush of excitement before the intoxicating
+lamps, never had Isabel looked so lovely.
+
+By the side of the actress, and filling up the threshold, stood
+Gionetta, with her hands thrust up to the elbow in two huge recesses on
+either side her gown,--pockets, indeed, they might be called by
+courtesy; such pockets as Beelzebub's grandmother might have shaped for
+herself, bottomless pits in miniature.
+
+"But I assure you," said the nurse, in that sharp, quick, earsplitting
+tone in which the old women of the South are more than a match for those
+of the North,--"but I assure you, my darling, that there is not a finer
+cavalier in all Naples, nor a more beautiful, than this Inglese; and I
+am told that all the Inglesi are much richer than they seem.  Though
+they have no trees in their country, poor people, and instead of twenty-
+four they have only twelve hours to the day, yet I hear, cospetto! that
+they shoe their horses with steak; and since they cannot (the poor
+heretics!) turn grapes into wine, for they have no grapes, they turn
+gold into physic, and take a glass or two of pistoles whenever they are
+troubled with the colic.  But you don't hear me!  Little pupil of my
+eyes, you don't hear me!"
+
+"Gionetta, is he not god-like?"
+
+"Sancta Maria!  he is handsome, bellissimo; and when you are his wife,--
+for they say these English are never satisfied unless they marry--"
+
+"Wife!  English!  Whom are you talking of?"
+
+"Why, the young English signor, to be sure."
+
+"Chut!  I thought you spoke of Zicci."
+
+"Oh!  Signor Zicci is very rich and very generous; but he
+wants to be your cavalier, not your husband.  I see that,--leave me
+alone.  When you are married, then you will see how amiable Signor Zicci
+will be.  Oh, per fede! but he will be as close to your husband as the
+yolk to the white; that he will.
+
+"Silence, Gionetta!  How wretched I am to have no one else to speak to--
+to advise me.  Oh, beautiful sun!" and the girl pressed her hand to her
+heart with wild energy, "why do you light every spot but this?  Dark,
+dark!  And a little while ago I was so calm, so innocent, so gay.  I did
+not hate you then, Gionetta, hateful as your talk was; I hate you now.
+Go in; leave me alone--leave me."
+
+"And indeed it is time I should leave you, for the polenta will be
+spoiled, and you have eaten nothing all day.  If you don't eat you will
+lose your beauty, my darling, and then nobody will care for you.  Nobody
+cares for us when we grow ugly,--I know that; and then you must, like
+old Gionetta, get some Isabel of your own to spoil.  I'll go and see to
+the polenta."
+
+"Since I have known this man," said the actress, half aloud, "since his
+dark eyes have fascinated me, I am no longer the same.  I long to escape
+from myself,--to glide with the sunbeam over the hill-tops; to become
+something that is not of earth.  Is it, indeed, that he is a sorcerer,
+as I have heard?  Phantoms float before me at night, and a fluttering
+like the wing of a bird within my heart seems as if the spirit were
+terrified, and would break its cage."
+
+While murmuring these incoherent rhapsodies, a step that she did not
+hear approached the actress, and a light hand touched her arm.
+
+"Isabella! carissima! Isabella!"
+
+She turned, and saw Glyndon.  The sight of his fair young face calmed
+her at once.  She did not love him, yet his sight gave her pleasure.
+She had for him a kind and grateful feeling.  Ah, if she had never
+beheld Zicci!
+
+"Isabel," said the Englishman, drawing her again to the bench from which
+she had risen, and seating himself beside her, "you know how
+passionately I love thee.  Hitherto thou hast played with my impatience
+and my ardor, thou hast sometimes smiled, sometimes frowned away my
+importunities for a reply to my suit; but this day--I know not how it
+is--I feel a more sustained and settled courage to address thee, and
+learn the happiest or the worst.  I have rivals, I know,--rivals who are
+more powerful than the poor artist.  Are they also more favored?"
+
+Isabel blushed faintly, but her countenance was grave and distressed.
+Looking down, and marking some hieroglyphical figures in the dust with
+the point of her slipper, she said, with some hesitation and a vain
+attempt to be gay, "Signor, whoever wastes his thoughts on an actress
+must submit to have rivals.  It is our unhappy destiny not to be sacred
+even to ourselves."
+
+"But you have told me, Isabel, that you do not love this destiny,
+glittering though it seem,--that your heart is not in the vocation which
+your talents adorn."
+
+"Ah, no!" said the actress, her eyes filling with tears, "it is a
+miserable lot to be slave to a multitude."
+
+"Fly then with me," said the artist, passionately.  "Quit forever the
+calling that divides that heart I would have all my own.  Share my fate
+now and forever,--my pride, my delight, my ideal!  Thou shalt inspire my
+canvas and my song, thy beauty shall be made at once holy and renowned.
+In the galleries of princes crowds shall gather round the effigy of a
+Venus or a saint, and a whisper shall break forth, 'It is Isabel di
+Pisani!'  Ah! Isabel, I adore thee: tell me that I do not worship in
+vain."
+
+"Thou art good and fair," said Isabel, gazing on her lover as he pressed
+his cheek nearer to hers, and clasped her hand in his.  "But what should
+I give thee in return?"
+
+"Love, love; only love!"
+
+"A sister's love?"
+
+"Ah, speak not with such cruel coldness!"
+
+"It is all I have for thee.  Listen to me, signor.  When I look on your
+face, when I hear your voice, a certain serene and tranquil calm creeps
+over and lulls thoughts, oh, how feverish, how wild!  When thou art
+gone, the day seems a shade more dark; but the shadow soon flies.  I
+miss thee not, I think not of thee,--no, I love thee not; and I will
+give myself only where I love."
+
+"But I would teach thee to love me,--fear it not.  Nay, such love as
+thou now describest in our tranquil climates is the love of innocence
+and youth."
+
+"And it is the innocence he would destroy," said Isabel, rather to
+herself than to him.
+
+Glyndon drew back, conscience-stricken.
+
+"No, it may not be!" she said, rising, and extricating her hand gently
+from his grasp.  "Leave me, and forget me.  You do not understand, you
+could not comprehend, the nature of her whom you think to love.  From my
+childhood upward, I have felt as if I were marked out for some strange
+and preternatural doom; as if I were singled from my kind.  This feeling
+(and, oh! at times it is one of delirious and vague delight, at others
+of the darkest gloom) deepens with me day by day.  It is like the shadow
+of twilight, spreading slowly and solemnly round.  My hour approaches; a
+little while, and it will be night!"
+
+As she spoke, Glyndon listened with visible emotion and perturbation.
+"Isabel!" he exclaimed, as she ceased, "your words more than ever
+enchain me to you.  As you feel, I feel.  I, too, have been ever haunted
+with a chill and unearthly foreboding.  Amidst the crowds of men I have
+felt alone.  In all my pleasures, my toils, my pursuits, a warning voice
+has murmured in my ear, 'Time has a dark mystery in store for thy
+manhood.'  When you spoke it was as the voice of my own soul."
+
+Isabel gazed upon him in wonder and fear.  Her countenance was as white
+as marble, and those features, so divine in their rare symmetry, might
+have served the Greek with a study for the Pythoness when, from the
+mystic cavern and the bubbling spring, she first hears the voice of the
+inspiring god.  Gradually the rigor and tension of that wonderful face
+relaxed, the color returned, the pulse beat, the heart animated the
+frame.
+
+"Tell me," she said, turning partially aside, "tell me, have you seen,
+do you know, a stranger in this city,--one of whom wild stories are
+afloat?"
+
+"You speak of Zicci.  I have seen him; I know him!  And you?  Ah! he,
+too, would be my rival,--he, too, would bear thee from me!"
+
+"You err," said Isabel, hastily and with a deep sigh,--"he pleads for
+you; he informed me of your love; he besought me not--not to reject it."
+
+"Strange being, incomprehensible enigma, why did you name him?"
+
+"Why?  Ah! I would have asked whether, when you first saw him, the
+foreboding, the instinct, of which you spoke came on you more fearfully,
+more intelligibly than before; whether you felt at once repelled from
+him, yet attracted towards him; whether you felt [and the actress spoke
+with hurried animation] that with Him was connected the secret of your
+life!"
+
+"All this I felt," answered Glyndon, in a trembling voice, "the first
+time I was in his presence.  Though all around me was gay,--music,
+amidst lamp-lit trees, light converse near, and heaven without a cloud
+above,--my knees knocked together, my hair bristled, and my blood
+curdled like ice; since then he has divided my thoughts with thee."
+
+"No more, no more," said Isabel, in a stifled tone; "there must be the
+hand of Fate in this.  I can speak no more to you now; farewell."
+
+She sprang past him into the house and closed the door.  Glyndon did not
+dare to follow her, nor, strange as it may seem, was he so inclined.
+The thought and recollection of that moonlight hour in the gardens, of
+the strange address of Zicci, froze up all human passion; Isabel
+herself, if not forgotten, shrank back like a shadow into the recesses
+of his breast.  He shivered as he stepped into the sunlight, and
+musingly retraced his steps into the more populous parts of that
+liveliest of Italian cities.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+It was a small cabinet; the walls were covered with pictures, one of
+which was worth more than the whole lineage of the owner of the palace.
+Is not Art a wonderful thing?  A Venetian noble might be a fribble or an
+assassin, a scoundrel, or a dolt, worthless, or worse than worthless;
+yet he might have sat to Titian, and his portrait may be inestimable,--a
+few inches of painted canvas a thousand times more valuable than a man
+with his veins and muscles, brain, will, heart, and intellect!
+
+In this cabinet sat a man of about three and forty,--dark-eyed, sallow,
+with short, prominent features, a massive conformation of jaw, and
+thick, sensual, but resolute lips; this man was the Prince di --.  His
+form, middle-sized, but rather inclined to corpulence, was clothed in a
+loose dressing-robe of rich brocade; on a table before him lay his sword
+and hat, a mask, dice and dice-box, a portfolio, and an inkstand of
+silver curiously carved.
+
+"Well, Mascari," said the Prince, looking up towards his parasite, who
+stood by the embrasure of the deep-set barricaded window, "well, you
+cannot even guess who this insolent meddler was?  A pretty person you to
+act the part of a Prince's Ruffiano!"
+
+"Am I to be blamed for dulness in not being able to conjecture who had
+the courage to thwart the projects of the Prince di --.  As well blame
+me for not accounting for miracles."
+
+"I will tell thee who it was, most sapient Mascari."
+
+"Who, your Excellency?"
+
+"Zicci."
+
+"Ah! he has the daring of the devil.  But why does your Excellency feel
+so assured,--does he court the actress?"
+
+"I know not; but there is a tone in that foreigner's voice that I never
+can mistake,--so clear, and yet so hollow; when I hear it I almost fancy
+there is such a thing as conscience.  However, we must rid ourselves of
+an impertinent.  Mascari, Signor Zicci hath not yet honored our poor
+house with his presence.  He is a distinguished stranger,--we must give
+a banquet in his honor."
+
+"Ah! and the cypress wine!  The cypress is the proper emblem of the
+grave."
+
+"But this anon.  I am superstitious; there are strange stories of his
+power and foresight,--remember the Sicilian quackery!  But meanwhile the
+Pisani--"
+
+"Your Excellency is infatuated.  The actress has bewitched you."
+
+"Mascari," said the Prince, with a haughty smile, "through these veins
+rolls the blood of the old Visconti,--of those who boasted that no woman
+ever escaped their lust, and no man their resentment.  The crown of my
+fathers has shrunk into a gewgaw and a toy,--their ambition and their
+spirit are undecayed.  My honor is now enlisted in this pursuit: Isabel
+must be mine."
+
+"Another ambuscade?" said Mascari, inquiringly.
+
+"Nay, why not enter the house itself?  The situation is lonely, and the
+door is not made of iron."
+
+Before Mascari could reply, the gentleman of the chamber announced the
+Signor Zicci.
+
+The Prince involuntarily laid his hand on the sword placed on the table;
+then, with a smile at his own impulse, rose, and met the foreigner at
+the threshold with all the profuse and respectful courtesy of Italian
+simulation.
+
+"This is an honor highly prized," said the Prince; "I have long desired
+the friendship of one so distinguished--"
+
+"And I have come to give you that friendship," replied Zicci, in a sweet
+but chilling voice.  "To no man yet in Naples have I extended this hand:
+permit it, Prince, to grasp your own."
+
+The Neapolitan bowed over the hand he pressed; but as he touched it, a
+shiver came over him, and his heart stood still.
+
+Zicci bent on him his dark, smiling eyes, and then seated himself with a
+familiar air.
+
+"Thus it is signed and sealed,--I mean our friendship, noble Prince.
+And now I will tell you the object of my visit.  I find, your
+Excellency, that, unconsciously perhaps, we are rivals.  Can we not
+accommodate our pretensions?  A girl of no moment, an actress, bah! it
+is not worth a quarrel.  Shall we throw for her?  He who casts the
+lowest shall resign his claim?"
+
+Mascari opened his small eyes to their widest extent; the Prince, no
+less surprised, but far too well world-read even to show what he felt,
+laughed aloud.
+
+"And were you, then, the cavalier who spoiled my night's chase and
+robbed me of my white doe?  By Bacchus, it was prettily done."
+
+"You must forgive me, my Prince; I knew not who it was, or my respect
+would have silenced my gallantry."
+
+"All stratagems fair in love, as in war.  Of course you profited by my
+defeat, and did not content yourself with leaving the little actress at
+her threshold?"
+
+"She is Diana for me," answered Zicci, lightly; "whoever wins the wreath
+will not find a flower faded."
+
+"And now you would cast for her,--well; but they tell me you are ever a
+sure player."
+
+"Let Signor Mascari cast for us."
+
+"Be it so.  Mascari, the dice."
+
+Surprised and perplexed, the parasite took up the three dice, deposited
+them gravely in the box, and rattled them noisily, while Zicci threw
+himself back carelessly in his chair and said, "I give the first chance
+to your Excellency."
+
+Mascari interchanged a glance with his patron and threw the numbers were
+sixteen.
+
+"It is a high throw," said Zicci, calmly; "nevertheless, Signor Mascari,
+I do not despond."
+
+Mascari gathered up the dice, shook the box, and rolled the contents
+once more upon the table; the number was the highest that can be
+thrown,--eighteen.
+
+The Prince darted a glance of fire at his minion, who stood
+with gaping mouth staring at the dice, and shaking his head in puzzled
+wonder.
+
+"I have won, you see," said Zicci: "may we be friends still?"
+
+"Signor," said the Prince, obviously struggling with angel and
+confusion, "the victory is already yours.  But, pardon me, you have
+spoken lightly of this young girl,--will anything tempt you to yield
+your claim?"
+
+"Ah, do not think so ill of my gallantry."
+
+"Enough," said the Prince, forcing a smile, "I yield.  Let me prove that
+I do not yield ungraciously: will you honor me with your presence at a
+little feast I propose to give on the royal birthday?"
+
+"It is indeed a happiness to hear one command of yours which I can
+obey."
+
+Zicci then turned the conversation, talked lightly and gayly and soon
+afterwards departed.
+
+"Villain," then exclaimed the Prince, grasping Mascari by the collar,
+"you have betrayed me!"
+
+"I assure your Excellency that the dice were properly arranged,--he
+should have thrown twelve; but he is the Devil, and that's the end of
+it."
+
+"There is no time to be lost," said the Prince, quitting hold of his
+parasite, who quietly resettled his cravat.
+
+"My blood is up!  I will win this girl, if I die for it.  Who laughed?
+Mascari, didst thou laugh?"
+
+"I, your Excellency,--I laugh?"
+
+"It sounded behind me," said the Prince, gazing round.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+It was the day on which Zicci had told Glyndon that he should ask for
+his decision in respect to Isabel,--the third day since their last
+meeting.  The Englishman could not come to a resolution.  Ambition,
+hitherto the leading passion of his soul, could not yet be silenced by
+love, and that love, such as it was, unreturned, beset by suspicions and
+doubts which vanished in the presence of Isabel, and returned when her
+bright face shone on his eyes no more, for les absents ont toujours
+tort.  Perhaps had he been quite alone, his feelings of honor, of
+compassion, of virtue, might have triumphed, and he would have resolved
+either to fly from Isabel or to offer the love that has no shame.  But
+Merton, cold, cautious, experienced, wary (such a nature has ever power
+over the imaginative and the impassioned), was at hand to ridicule the
+impression produced by Zicci, and the notion of delicacy and honor
+towards an Italian actress.  It is true that Merton, who was no
+profligate, advised him to quit all pursuit of Isabel; but then the
+advice was precisely of that character which, if it deadens love,
+stimulates passion.  By representing Isabel as one who sought to play a
+part with him, he excused to Glyndon his own selfishness,--he enlisted
+the Englishman's vanity and pride on the side of his pursuit.  Why
+should not he beat an adventuress at her own weapons?
+
+Glyndon not only felt indisposed on that day to meet Zicci, but he felt
+also a strong desire to defeat the mysterious prophecy that the meeting
+should take place.  Into this wish Merton readily entered.  The young
+men agreed to be absent from Naples that day.  Early in the morning they
+mounted their horses and took the road to Baiae.  Glyndon left word at
+his hotel that if Signor Zicci sought him, it was in the neighborhood of
+the once celebrated watering-place of the ancients that he should be
+found.
+
+They passed by Isabel's house; but Glyndon resisted the temptation of
+pausing there, and threading the grotto of Pausilippo, they wound by a
+circuitous route back into the suburbs of the city, and took the
+opposite road, which conducts to Portici and Pompeii.  It was late at
+noon when they arrived at the former of these places.  Here they halted
+to dine; for Merton had heard much of the excellence of the macaroni at
+Portici, and Merton was a bon vivant.
+
+They put up at an inn of very humble pretensions, and dined under an
+awning.  Merton was more than usually gay; he pressed the lacryma upon
+his friend, and conversed gayly.  "Well, my dear friend, we have foiled
+Signor Zicci in one of his predictions at least.  You will have no faith
+in him hereafter."
+
+"The Ides are come, not gone."
+
+"Tush! if he is a soothsayer, you are not Caesar.  It is your vanity
+that makes you credulous.  Thank Heaven, I do not think myself of such
+importance that the operations of Nature should be changed in order to
+frighten me."
+
+"But why should the operations of Nature be changed?  There may be a
+deeper philosophy than we dream of,--a philosophy that discovers the
+secrets of Nature, but does not alter, by penetrating, its courses."
+
+"Ah! you suppose Zicci to be a prophet,--a reader of the future; perhaps
+an associate of Genii and Spirits!"
+
+"I know not what to conjecture; but I see no reason why he should seek,
+even if an impostor, to impose on me.  An impostor must have some motive
+for deluding us,--either ambition or avarice.  I am neither rich nor
+powerful; Zicci spends more in a week than I do in a year.  Nay, a
+Neapolitan banker told me that the sums invested by Zicci in his hands,
+were enough to purchase half the lands of the Neapolitan noblesse."
+
+"Grant this to be true: do you suppose the love to dazzle and mystify is
+not as strong with some natures as that of gold and power with others?
+Zicci has a moral ostentation; and the same character that makes him
+rival kings in expenditure makes him not disdain to be wondered at even
+by a humble Englishman."
+
+Here the landlord, a little, fat, oily fellow, came up with a fresh
+bottle of lacryma.  He hoped their Excellencies were pleased.  He was
+most touched,--touched to the heart that they liked the macaroni.  Were
+their Excellencies going to Vesuvius?  There was a slight eruption; they
+could not see it where they were, but it was pretty, and would be
+prettier still after sunset.
+
+"A capital idea," cried Merton.  "What say you, Glyndon?"
+
+"I have not yet seen an eruption; I should like it much."
+
+"But is there no danger?" said the prudent Merton.
+
+"Oh! not at all; the mountain is very civil at present.  It only plays a
+little, just to amuse their Excellencies the English."
+
+"Well, order the horses, and bring the bill; we will go before it is
+dark.  Clarence, my friend, nunc est bibendum; but take care of the pede
+libero, which won't do for walking on lava!"
+
+The bottle was finished, the bill paid, the gentlemen mounted, the
+landlord bowed, and they bent their way in the cool of the delightful
+evening towards Resina.
+
+The wine animated Glyndon, whose unequal spirits were at times high and
+brilliant as those of a school-boy released; and the laughter of the
+Northern tourists sounded oft and merrily along the melancholy domains
+of buried cities.
+
+Hesperus had lighted his lamp amidst the rosy skies as they arrived at
+Resina.  Here they quitted their horses and took mules and a guide.
+As the sky grew darker and more dark, the Mountain Fire burned with an
+intense lustre.  In various streaks and streamlets the fountain of flame
+rolled down the dark summit, then undiminished by the eruption of 1822,
+and the Englishmen began to feel increase upon them, as they ascended,
+that sensation of solemnity and awe which makes the very atmosphere that
+surrounds the giant of the Plains of the Antique Hades.
+
+It was night when, leaving the mules, they ascended on foot, accompanied
+by their guide and a peasant, who bore a rude torch.  Their guide was a
+conversable, garrulous fellow, like most of his country and his calling;
+and Merton, whose chief characteristics were a sociable temper and a
+hardy commonsense, loved to amuse or to instruct himself on every
+incidental occasion.
+
+"Ah, Excellency," said the guide, "your countrymen have a strong passion
+for the volcano.  Long life to them; they bring us plenty of money.  If
+our fortunes depended on the Neapolitans, we should starve."
+
+"True, they have no curiosity," said Merton.  "Do you remember, Glyndon,
+the contempt with which that old count said to us, 'You will go to
+Vesuvius, I suppose.  I have never been: why should I go?  You have
+cold, you have hunger, you have fatigue, you have danger, and all for
+nothing but to see fire, which looks just as well in a brazier as a
+mountain.' Ha! ha! the old fellow was right."
+
+"But, Excellency," said the guide, "that is not all: some cavaliers
+think to ascend the mountain without our help.  I am sure they deserve
+to tumble into the crater."
+
+"They must be bold fellows to go alone: you don't often find such?"
+
+"Sometimes among the French, signor.  But the other night--I never was
+so frightened.  I had been with an English party, and a lady had left a
+pocket-book on the mountain where she had been sketching.  She offered
+me a handsome sum to return for it, and bring it to her at Naples; so I
+went in the evening.  I found it sure enough, and was about to return,
+when I saw a figure that seemed to emerge from the crater itself.  The
+air was so pestiferous that I could not have conceived a human creature
+could breathe it and live.  I was so astounded that I stood as still as
+a stone, till the figure came over the hot ashes and stood before me
+face to face.  Sancta Maria, what a head!"
+
+"What, hideous?"
+
+"No, so beautiful, but so terrible.  It had nothing human in its
+aspect."
+
+"And what said the salamander?"
+
+"Nothing!  It did not even seem to perceive me, though I was as near as
+I am to you; but its eyes seemed prying into the air.  It passed by me
+quickly, and, walking across a stream of burning lava, soon vanished on
+the other side of the mountain.  I was curious and foolhardy, and
+resolved to see if I could bear the atmosphere which this visitor had
+left; but though I did not advance within thirty yards of the spot at
+which he had first appeared, I was driven back by a vapor that well-nigh
+stifled me.  Cospetto!  I have spit blood ever since."
+
+"It must be Zicci," whispered Glyndon.
+
+"I knew you would say so," returned Merton, laughing.
+
+The little party had now arrived nearly at the summit of the mountain;
+and unspeakably grand was the spectacle on which they gazed.  From the
+crater arose a vapor, intensely dark, that overspread the whole
+background of the heavens, in the centre whereof rose a flame that
+assumed a form singularly beautiful.  It might have been compared to a
+crest of gigantic feathers, the diadem of the mountain, high arched, and
+drooping downward, with the hues delicately shaded off, and the whole
+shifting and tremulous as the plumage on a warrior's helm.  The glare of
+the flame spread, luminous and crimson, over the dark and rugged ground
+on which they stood, and drew an innumerable variety of shadows from
+crag and hollow.  An oppressive and sulphureous exhalation served to
+increase the gloomy and sublime terror of the place.  But on turning
+from the mountain, and towards the distant and unseen ocean, the
+contrast was wonderfully great: the heavens serene and blue, the stars
+still and calm as the eyes of Divine Love.  It was as if the realms of
+the opposing principles of Evil and Good were brought in one view before
+the gaze of man!  Glyndon--the enthusiast, the poet, the artist, the
+dreamer--was enchained and entranced by emotions vague and undefinable,
+half of delight and half of pain.  Leaning on the shoulder of his
+friend, he gazed around him, and heard, with deepening awe, the rumbling
+of the earth below, the wheels and voices of the Ministry of Nature in
+her darkest and most inscrutable recess.  Suddenly, as a bomb from a
+shell, a huge stone was flung hundreds of yards up from the jaws of the
+crater, and falling with a mighty crash upon the rock below, split into
+ten thousand fragments, which bounded down the sides of the mountain,
+sparkling and groaning as they went.  One of these, the largest
+fragment, struck the narrow space of soil between the Englishman and the
+guide, not three feet from the spot where the former stood.  Merton
+uttered an exclamation of terror, and Glyndon held his breath and
+shuddered.  "Diavolo!"  cried the guide; "descend, Excellencies,
+descend!  We have not a moment to lose; follow me close."
+
+So saying, the guide and the peasant fled with as much swiftness as they
+were able to bring to bear.  Merton, ever more prompt and ready than his
+friend, imitated their example; and Glyndon, more confused than alarmed,
+followed close.  But they had not gone many yards before, with a rushing
+and sudden blast, came from the crater an enormous volume of vapor.  It
+pursued, it overtook, it overspread them; it swept the light from the
+heavens.  All was abrupt and utter darkness, and through the gloom was
+heard the shout of the guide, already distant, and lost in an instant
+amidst the sound of the rushing gust and the groans of the earth
+beneath.  Glyndon paused.  He was separated from his friend, from the
+guide.  He was alone with the Darkness and the Terror.  The vapor rolled
+sullenly away; the form of the plumed fire was again dimly visible, and
+its struggling and perturbed reflection again shed a glow over the
+horrors of the path.  Glyndon recovered himself, and sped onward.
+Below, he heard the voice of Merton calling on him, though he no longer
+saw his form.  The sound served as a guide.  Dizzy and breathless, he
+bounded forward, when hark! a sullen, slow, rolling sound in his ear!
+He halted, and turned back to gaze.  The fire had overflowed its course;
+it had opened itself a channel amidst the furrows of the mountain.  The
+stream pursued him fast, fast, and the hot breath of the chasing and
+preternatural foe came closer and closer upon his cheek.  He turned
+aside; he climbed desperately, with hands and feet, upon a crag that, to
+the right, broke the scathed and blasted level of the soil.  The stream
+rolled beside and beneath him, and then, taking a sudden wind round the
+spot on which he stood, interposed its liquid fire--a broad and
+impassable barrier--between his resting-place and escape.  There he
+stood, cut off from descent, and with no alternative but to retrace his
+steps towards the crater, and thence seek--without guide or clew--some
+other pathway.
+
+For a moment his courage left him; he cried in despair, and in that
+over-strained pitch of voice which is never heard afar off, to the
+guide, to Merton, to return, to aid him.
+
+No answer came; and the Englishman, thus abandoned solely to his own
+resources, felt his spirit and energy rise against the danger.  He
+turned back, and ventured as far towards the crater as the noxious
+exhalation would permit; then, gazing below, carefully and deliberately
+he chalked out for himself a path, by which he trusted to shun the
+direction the fire-stream had taken, and trod firmly and quickly over
+the crumbling and heated strata.
+
+He had proceeded about fifty yards when he halted abruptly: an
+unspeakable and unaccountable horror, not hitherto felt amidst all his
+peril, came over him.  He shook in every limb; his muscles refused his
+will; he felt, as it were, palsied and death-stricken.  The horror, I
+say, was unaccountable, for the path seemed clear and safe.  The fire,
+above and behind, burned out clear and far; and beyond, the stars lent
+him their cheering guidance.  No obstacle was visible, no danger seemed
+at hand.  As thus, spell-bound and panic-stricken, he stood chained to
+the soil--his breast heaving, large drops rolling down his brow, and his
+eyes starting wildly from their sockets--he saw before him, at some
+distance, gradually shaping itself more and more distinctly to his gaze,
+a Colossal Shadow,--a shadow that seemed partially borrowed from the
+human shape, but immeasurably above the human stature, vague, dark,
+almost formless and differing--he could not tell where or why--not only
+from the proportions, but also from the limbs and outline of man.
+
+The glare of the volcano, that seemed to shrink and collapse from this
+gigantic and appalling apparition, nevertheless threw its light, redly
+and steadily, upon another shape that stood beside, quiet and
+motionless; and it was perhaps the contrast of these two things--the
+Being and the Shadow--that impressed the beholder with the difference
+between them,--the Man and the Superhuman.  It was but for a moment,
+nay, for the tenth part of a moment, that this sight was permitted to
+the wanderer.  A second eddy of sulphureous vapors from the volcano, yet
+more rapidly, yet more densely than its predecessor, rolled over the
+mountain; and either the nature of the exhalation, or the excess of his
+own dread, was such that Glyndon, after one wild gasp for breath, fell
+senseless on the earth.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZICCI, BOOK 1, BY LYTTON ***
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