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 livingEnglishmen, to select one to whom I might fitly dedicate this work, --onewho, in his life as in his genius, might illustrate the principle I havesought to convey; elevated by the ideal which he exalts, andserenely dwelling in a glorious existence with the images born of hisimagination, --in looking round for some such man, my thoughts restedupon you. Afar from our turbulent cabals; from the ignoble jealousy andthe sordid strife which degrade and acerbate the ambition of Genius, --inyour Roman Home, you have lived amidst all that is loveliest and leastperishable in the past, and contributed with the noblest aims, and inthe purest spirit, to the mighty heirlooms of the future. Your youth hasbeen devoted to toil, that your manhood may be consecrated to fame: afame unsullied by one desire of gold. You have escaped the two worstperils that beset the artist in our time and land, --the debasingtendencies of commerce, and the angry rivalries of competition. You havenot wrought your marble for the market, --you have not been tempted, bythe praises which our vicious criticism has showered upon exaggerationand distortion, to lower your taste to the level of the hour; youhave lived, and you have laboured, as if you had no rivals but in thedead, --no purchasers, save in judges of what is best. In the divinepriesthood of the beautiful, you have sought only to increase herworshippers and enrich her temples. The pupil of Canova, you haveinherited his excellences, while you have shunned his errors, --yours hisdelicacy, not his affectation. Your heart resembles him even morethan your genius: you have the same noble enthusiasm for your sublimeprofession; the same lofty freedom from envy, and the spirit thatdepreciates; the same generous desire not to war with but to serveartists in your art; aiding, strengthening, advising, elevating thetimidity of inexperience, and the vague aspirations of youth. Bythe intuition of a kindred mind, you have equalled the learningof Winckelman, and the plastic poetry of Goethe, in the intimatecomprehension of the antique. Each work of yours, rightly studied, is initself a CRITICISM, illustrating the sublime secrets of the GrecianArt, which, without the servility of plagiarism, you have contributed torevive amongst us; in you we behold its three great and long-undetectedprinciples, --simplicity, calm, and concentration. 

But your admiration of the Greeks has not led you to the bigotry ofthe mere antiquarian, nor made you less sensible of the unappreciatedexcellence of the mighty modern, worthy to be your countryman, --thoughtill his statue is in the streets of our capital, we show ourselves notworthy of the glory he has shed upon our land. You have not sufferedeven your gratitude to Canova to blind you to the superiority ofFlaxman. When we become sensible of our title-deeds to renown in thatsingle name, we may look for an English public capable of real patronageto English Art, --and not till then. 

I, artist in words, dedicate, then, to you, artist whose ideas speak inmarble, this well-loved work of my matured manhood. I love it not theless because it has been little understood and superficially judgedby the common herd: it was not meant for them. I love it not the morebecause it has found enthusiastic favorers amongst the Few. My affectionfor my work is rooted in the solemn and pure delight which it gave meto 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 thesentiment with which he whose Art is born of faith in the truth andbeauty of the principles he seeks to illustrate, should regard his work. Your serener existence, uniform and holy, my lot denies, --if my heartcovets. But our true nature is in our thoughts, not our deeds: andtherefore, in books--which ARE his thoughts--the author's character liesbare to the discerning eye. It is not in the life of cities, --in theturmoil and the crowd; it is in the still, the lonely, and more sacredlife, which for some hours, under every sun, the student lives (hisstolen retreat from the Agora to the Cave), that I feel there is betweenus the bond of that secret sympathy, that magnetic chain, which unitesthe 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 theearnestness which characterised his pursuit of other studies. Hebecame absorbed in wizard lore; he equipped himself with magicalimplements, --with rods for transmitting influence, and crystal ballsin which to discern coming scenes and persons; and communed withspiritualists and mediums. The fruit of these mystic studies is seen in"Zanoni" and "A strange Story, " romances which were a labour of love tothe author, and into which he threw all the power he possessed, --powerre-enforced by multifarious reading and an instinctive appreciationof Oriental thought. These weird stories, in which the author hasformulated his theory of magic, are of a wholly different type from hisprevious fictions, and, in place of the heroes and villains of everyday life, we have beings that belong in part to another sphere, and thatdeal with mysterious and occult agencies. Once more the old forgottenlore of the Cabala is unfolded; the furnace of the alchemist, whosefires have been extinct for centuries, is lighted anew, and the lampof the Rosicrucian re-illumined. No other works of the author, contradictory as have been the opinions of them, have provoked sucha diversity of criticism as these. To some persons they representa temporary aberration of genius rather than any serious thought ordefinite purpose; while others regard them as surpassing in bold andoriginal speculation, profound analysis of character, and thrillinginterest, all of the author's other works. The truth, we believe, lies midway between these extremes. It is questionable whether theintroduction into a novel of such subjects as are discussed in theseromances be not an offence against good sense and good taste; but itis as unreasonable to deny the vigour and originality of their author'sconceptions, 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 witnessedthe rise and triumphs of science, the extent and marvels of which evenBacon's fancy never conceived, simultaneously with superstitions grosserthan any which Bacon's age believed. "The one is, in fact, thenatural reaction from the other. The more science seeks to excludethe miraculous, and reduce all nature, animate and inanimate, to aninvariable law of sequences, the more does the natural instinct of manrebel, and seek an outlet for those obstinate questionings, those 'blankmisgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realised, ' takingrefuge in delusions as degrading as any of the so-called Dark Ages. " Itwas the revolt from the chilling materialism of the age which inspiredthe mystic creations of "Zanoni" and "A Strange Story. " Of these works, which support and supplement each other, one is the contemplation of ouractual life through a spiritual medium, the other is designed to showthat, without some gleams of the supernatural, man is not man, nornature nature. 

In "Zanoni" the author introduces us to two human beings who haveachieved 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 inits utmost perfection, possessing eternal youth, absolute power, andabsolute knowledge, and withal the fullest capacity to enjoy and tolove, and, as a necessity of that love, to sorrow and despair. By hislove for Viola Zanoni is compelled to descend from his exalted state, to lose his eternal calm, and to share in the cares and anxieties ofhumanity; and this degradation is completed by the birth of a child. Finally, he gives up the life which hangs on that of another, in orderto save that other, the loving and beloved wife, who has deliveredhim from his solitude and isolation. Wife and child are mortal, and tooutlive them and his love for them is impossible. But Mejnour, who isthe impersonation of thought, --pure intellect without affection, --liveson. 

Bulwer has himself justly characterised this work, in the Introduction, as a romance and not a romance, as a truth for those who can comprehendit, and an extravagance for those who cannot. The most careless ormatter-of-fact reader must see that the work, like the enigmatical"Faust, " deals in types and symbols; that the writer intends to suggestto the mind something more subtle and impalpable than that which isembodied to the senses. What that something is, hardly two persons willagree. The most obvious interpretation of the types is, that in Zanonithe author depicts to us humanity, perfected, sublimed, which livesnot 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, hopingnothing, trusting and loving nothing; and in the beautiful, artlessViola, an exquisite creation, pure womanhood, loving, trusting andtruthful. As a work of art the romance is one of great power. It isoriginal in its conception, and pervaded by one central idea; butit would have been improved, we think, by a more sparing use of thesupernatural. The inevitable effect of so much hackneyed diablerie--ofsuch an accumulation of wonder upon wonder--is to deaden the impressionthey would naturally make upon us. In Hawthorne's tales we see with whatease a great imaginative artist can produce a deeper thrill by a farslighter use of the weird and the mysterious. 

The chief interest of the story for the ordinary reader centres, not inits ghostly characters and improbable machinery, the scenes in Mejnour'schamber in the ruined castle among the Apennines, the colossal andappalling apparitions on Vesuvius, the hideous phantom with its burningeye that haunted Glyndon, but in the loves of Viola and the mysteriousZanoni, the blissful and the fearful scenes through which they pass, and their final destiny, when the hero of the story sacrifices hisown "charmed life" to save hers, and the Immortal finds the only trueimmortality in death. Among the striking passages in the work are thepathetic sketch of the old violinist and composer, Pisani, with hissympathetic "barbiton" which moaned, groaned, growled, and laughedresponsive to the feelings of its master; the description of Viola's andher father's triumph, when "The Siren, " his masterpiece, is performed atthe 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 inParis, closing with the downfall of Robespierre and his satellites; andperhaps, above all, the thrilling scene where Zanoni leaves Viola asleepin prison when his guards call him to execution, and she, unconscious ofthe terrible sacrifice, but awaking and missing him, has a vision of theprocession to the guillotine, with Zanoni there, radiant in youthand beauty, followed by the sudden vanishing of the headsman, --thehorror, --and the "Welcome" of her loved one to Heaven in a myriad ofmelodies from the choral hosts above. 

"Zanoni" was originally published by Saunders and Otley, London, inthree 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 highestof my prose fictions. In the Poem of "King Arthur, " published many yearsafterwards, I have taken up an analogous design, in the contemplationof our positive life through a spiritual medium; and I have enforced, through a far wider development, and, I believe, with more complete andenduring success, that harmony between the external events which areall that the superficial behold on the surface of human affairs, and thesubtle and intellectual agencies which in reality influence the conductof individuals, and shape out the destinies of the world. As man has twolives, --that of action and that of thought, --so I conceive that workto be the truest representation of humanity which faithfully delineatesboth, and opens some elevating glimpse into the sublimest mysteries ofour being, by establishing the inevitable union that exists betweenthe plain things of the day, in which our earthly bodies perform theirallotted part, and the latent, often uncultivated, often invisible, affinities of the soul with all the powers that eternally breathe andmove throughout the Universe of Spirit. 

I refer those who do me the honour to read "Zanoni" with more attentionthan is given to ordinary romance, to the Poem of "King Arthur, " forsuggestive 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 treatsof the distinctions between type and allegory, the reader will find, from the pen of one of our most eminent living writers, an ingeniousattempt to explain the interior or typical meanings of the work nowbefore him. 

INTRODUCTION. 

It is possible that among my readers there may be a few not unacquaintedwith an old-book shop, existing some years since in the neighbourhoodof Covent Garden; I say a few, for certainly there was little enough toattract the many in those precious volumes which the labour of a lifehad accumulated on the dusty shelves of my old friend D--. There were tobe 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 discoverthe most notable collection, ever amassed by an enthusiast, of the worksof alchemist, cabalist, and astrologer. The owner had lavished a fortunein the purchase of unsalable treasures. But old D-- did not desire tosell. It absolutely went to his heart when a customer entered his shop:he watched the movements of the presumptuous intruder with a vindictiveglare; he fluttered around him with uneasy vigilance, --he frowned, hegroaned, when profane hands dislodged his idols from their niches. Ifit were one of the favourite sultanas of his wizard harem that attractedyou, and the price named were not sufficiently enormous, he would notunfrequently double the sum. Demur, and in brisk delight he snatched thevenerable charmer from your hands; accede, and he became the picture ofdespair, --nor unfrequently, at the dead of night, would he knock at yourdoor, and entreat you to sell him back, at your own terms, what you hadso egregiously bought at his. A believer himself in his Averroes andParacelsus, he was as loth as the philosophers he studied to communicateto the profane the learning he had collected. 

It so chanced that some years ago, in my younger days, whether ofauthorship or life, I felt a desire to make myself acquainted withthe true origin and tenets of the singular sect known by the name ofRosicrucians. Dissatisfied with the scanty and superficial accounts tobe found in the works usually referred to on the subject, it struckme as possible that Mr. D--'s collection, which was rich, not only inblack-letter, but in manuscripts, might contain some more accurate andauthentic records of that famous brotherhood, --written, who knows?by one of their own order, and confirming by authority and detail thepretensions to wisdom and to virtue which Bringaret had arrogated to thesuccessors of the Chaldean and Gymnosophist. Accordingly I repaired towhat, doubtless, I ought to be ashamed to confess, was once one ofmy favourite haunts. But are there no errors and no fallacies, in thechronicles 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 asthe books of the alchemists do to us; not but what the press is the airwe breathe, --and uncommonly foggy the air is too!

On entering the shop, I was struck by the venerable appearance of acustomer whom I had never seen there before. I was struck yet moreby the respect with which he was treated by the disdainful collector. "Sir, " cried the last, emphatically, as I was turning over the leaves ofthe catalogue, --"sir, you are the only man I have met, in five-and-fortyyears that I have spent in these researches, who is worthy to be mycustomer. How--where, in this frivolous age, could you have acquireda knowledge so profound? And this august fraternity, whose doctrines, hinted at by the earliest philosophers, are still a mystery to thelatest; tell me if there really exists upon the earth any book, any manuscript, in which their discoveries, their tenets, are to belearned?"

At the words, "august fraternity, " I need scarcely say that my attentionhad been at once aroused, and I listened eagerly for the stranger'sreply. 

"I do not think, " said the old gentleman, "that the masters of theschool have ever consigned, except by obscure hint and mystical parable, their real doctrines to the world. And I do not blame them for theirdiscretion. "

Here he paused, and seemed about to retire, when I said, somewhatabruptly, to the collector, "I see nothing, Mr. D--, in this cataloguewhich relates to the Rosicrucians!"

"The Rosicrucians!" repeated the old gentleman, and in his turn hesurveyed me with deliberate surprise. "Who but a Rosicrucian couldexplain the Rosicrucian mysteries! And can you imagine that any membersof that sect, the most jealous of all secret societies, would themselveslift the veil that hides the Isis of their wisdom from the world?"

"Aha!" thought I, "this, then, is 'the august fraternity' of whichyou spoke. Heaven be praised! I certainly have stumbled on one of thebrotherhood. "

"But, " I said aloud, "if not in books, sir, where else am I to obtaininformation? 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 meetagain, perhaps, at least, I may direct your researches to the propersource 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, exactlyfour days after our brief conversation in Mr. D--'s bookshop. I wasriding leisurely towards Highgate, when, at the foot of its classichill, I recognised the stranger; he was mounted on a black pony, andbefore him trotted his dog, which was black also. 

If you meet the man whom you wish to know, on horseback, at thecommencement of a long hill, where, unless he has borrowed a friend'sfavourite hack, he cannot, in decent humanity to the brute creation, ride away from you, I apprehend that it is your own fault if you havenot gone far in your object before you have gained the top. In short, sowell did I succeed, that on reaching Highgate the old gentleman invitedme to rest at his house, which was a little apart from the village; andan excellent house it was, --small, but commodious, with a large garden, and commanding from the windows such a prospect as Lucretius wouldrecommend to philosophers: the spires and domes of London, on a clearday, distinctly visible; here the Retreat of the Hermit, and there theMare Magnum of the world. 

The walls of the principal rooms were embellished with pictures ofextraordinary merit, and in that high school of art which is so littleunderstood out of Italy. I was surprised to learn that they were allfrom 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 histheories of art than an adept in the practice. Without fatiguingthe reader with irrelevant criticism, it is necessary, perhaps, aselucidating much of the design and character of the work which theseprefatory pages introduce, that I should briefly observe, that heinsisted as much upon the connection of the arts, as a distinguishedauthor has upon that of the sciences; that he held that in all works ofimagination, whether expressed by words or by colours, the artist of thehigher schools must make the broadest distinction between the real andthe true, --in other words, between the imitation of actual life, and theexaltation 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 simplicityand Betty Foy; and our critics hold it the highest praise of a work ofimagination, to say that its characters are exact to common life, evenin 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 ofthe world, I see. I suppose Shakespeare has ceased to be admired?"

"On the contrary; people make the adoration of Shakespeare the excusefor attacking everybody else. But then our critics have discovered thatShakespeare is so REAL!"

"Real! The poet who has never once drawn a character to be met with inactual 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 perceivedthat my companion was growing a little out of temper. And he who wishesto catch a Rosicrucian, must take care not to disturb the waters. Ithought it better, therefore, to turn the conversation. 

"Revenons a nos moutons, " said I; "you promised to enlighten myignorance as to the Rosicrucians. "

"Well!" quoth he, rather sternly; "but for what purpose? Perhaps youdesire 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 theAbbe de Villars is a sufficient warning to all men not to treat idlyof the realms of the Salamander and the Sylph. Everybody knows howmysteriously that ingenious personage was deprived of his life, inrevenge for the witty mockeries of his 'Comte de Gabalis. '"

"Salamander and Sylph! I see that you fall into the vulgar error, andtranslate literally the allegorical language of the mystics. "

With that the old gentleman condescended to enter into a veryinteresting, and, as it seemed to me, a very erudite relation, of thetenets of the Rosicrucians, some of whom, he asserted, still existed, and still prosecuted, in august secrecy, their profound researches intonatural science and occult philosophy. 

"But this fraternity, " said he, "however respectable andvirtuous, --virtuous I say, for no monastic order is more severe in thepractice of moral precepts, or more ardent in Christian faith, --thisfraternity is but a branch of others yet more transcendent in the powersthey have obtained, and yet more illustrious in their origin. Are youacquainted 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. Theirsublimest works are in manuscript, and constitute the initiatorylearning, not only of the Rosicrucians, but of the nobler brotherhoodsI have referred to. More solemn and sublime still is the knowledge tobe gleaned from the elder Pythagoreans, and the immortal masterpieces ofApollonius. "

"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 ifyou vouch for his character, I will believe him to have been a veryrespectable man, who only spoke the truth when he boasted of his powerto be in two places at the same time. "

"Is that so difficult?" said the old gentleman; "if so, you have neverdreamed!"

Here ended our conversation; but from that time an acquaintance wasformed between us which lasted till my venerable friend departedthis life. Peace to his ashes! He was a person of singular habits andeccentric opinions; but the chief part of his time was occupied in actsof quiet and unostentatious goodness. He was an enthusiast in the dutiesof the Samaritan; and as his virtues were softened by the gentlestcharity, so his hopes were based upon the devoutest belief. He neverconversed upon his own origin and history, nor have I ever been able topenetrate the darkness in which they were concealed. He seemed to haveseen much of the world, and to have been an eye-witness of the firstFrench Revolution, a subject upon which he was equally eloquent andinstructive. At the same time he did not regard the crimes of thatstormy period with the philosophical leniency with which enlightenedwriters (their heads safe upon their shoulders) are, in the present day, inclined to treat the massacres of the past: he spoke not as a studentwho had read and reasoned, but as a man who had seen and suffered. Theold gentleman seemed alone in the world; nor did I know that he had onerelation, till his executor, a distant cousin, residing abroad, informedme of the very handsome legacy which my poor friend had bequeathedme. This consisted, first, of a sum about which I think it best to beguarded, foreseeing the possibility of a new tax upon real and fundedproperty; and, secondly, of certain precious manuscripts, to which thefollowing volumes owe their existence. 

I imagine I trace this latter bequest to a visit I paid the Sage, if soI may be permitted to call him, a few weeks before his death. 

Although he read little of our modern literature, my friend, with theaffable good-nature which belonged to him, graciously permitted meto consult him upon various literary undertakings meditated by thedesultory ambition of a young and inexperienced student. And at thattime I sought his advice upon a work of imagination, intended to depictthe effects of enthusiasm upon different modifications of character. He listened to my conception, which was sufficiently trite andprosaic, with his usual patience; and then, thoughtfully turning to hisbookshelves, 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 tounderstand enthusiasm and the inspiration of the gods: Firstly, themusical; secondly, the telestic or mystic; thirdly, the prophetic; andfourthly, that which belongs to love. "

The author he quoted, after contending that there is something in thesoul above intellect, and stating that there are in our nature distinctenergies, --by the one of which we discover and seize, as it were, on sciences and theorems with almost intuitive rapidity, byanother, through which high art is accomplished, like the statues ofPhidias, --proceeded to state that "enthusiasm, in the true acceptationof the word, is, when that part of the soul which is above intellect isexcited to the gods, and thence derives its inspiration. "

The author, then pursuing his comment upon Plato, observes, that "one ofthese manias may suffice (especially that which belongs to love) to leadback the soul to its first divinity and happiness; but that there isan intimate union with them all; and that the ordinary progress throughwhich the soul ascends is, primarily, through the musical; next, throughthe telestic or mystic; thirdly, through the prophetic; and lastly, through the enthusiasm of love. "

While with a bewildered understanding and a reluctant attention Ilistened to these intricate sublimities, my adviser closed the volume, and said with complacency, "There is the motto for your book, --thethesis 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'tunderstand a word of it. The mysteries of your Rosicrucians, and yourfraternities, are mere child's play to the jargon of the Platonists. "

"Yet, not till you rightly understand this passage, can you understandthe higher theories of the Rosicrucians, or of the still noblerfraternities you speak of with so much levity. "

"Oh, if that be the case, I give up in despair. Why not, since you areso 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, "andwhen I am no more, you will receive the manuscripts. From what you sayof the prevailing taste in literature, I cannot flatter you withthe hope that you will gain much by the undertaking. And I tell youbeforehand 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 whocan comprehend it, and an extravagance for those who cannot. "

At last there arrived the manuscripts, with a brief note from mydeceased friend, reminding me of my imprudent promise. 

With mournful interest, and yet with eager impatience, I opened thepacket and trimmed my lamp. Conceive my dismay when I found the wholewritten in an unintelligible cipher. I present the reader with aspecimen:

(Several strange characters. )

and so on for nine hundred and forty mortal pages in foolscap. I couldscarcely believe my eyes: in fact, I began to think the lamp burnedsingularly blue; and sundry misgivings as to the unhallowed natureof the characters I had so unwittingly opened upon, coupled with thestrange hints and mystical language of the old gentleman, crept throughmy disordered imagination. Certainly, to say no worse of it, the wholething looked UNCANNY! I was about, precipitately, to hurry the papersinto my desk, with a pious determination to have nothing more to do withthem, when my eye fell upon a book, neatly bound in blue morocco, andwhich, in my eagerness, I had hitherto overlooked. I opened this volumewith great precaution, not knowing what might jump out, and--guessmy delight--found that it contained a key or dictionary to thehieroglyphics. Not to weary the reader with an account of my labours, I am contented with saying that at last I imagined myself capable ofconstruing the characters, and set to work in good earnest. Still it wasno easy task, and two years elapsed before I had made much progress. Ithen, by way of experiment on the public, obtained the insertion of afew desultory chapters, in a periodical with which, for a few months, Ihad the honour to be connected. They appeared to excite more curiositythan I had presumed to anticipate; and I renewed, with better heart, mylaborious undertaking. But now a new misfortune befell me: I found, asI proceeded, that the author had made two copies of his work, one muchmore elaborate and detailed than the other; I had stumbled upon theearlier copy, and had my whole task to remodel, and the chapters I hadwritten to retranslate. I may say then, that, exclusive of intervalsdevoted to more pressing occupations, my unlucky promise cost me thetoil of several years before I could bring it to adequate fulfilment. The task was the more difficult, since the style in the original iswritten in a kind of rhythmical prose, as if the author desired that insome degree his work should be regarded as one of poetical conceptionand design. To this it was not possible to do justice, and in theattempt I have doubtless very often need of the reader's indulgentconsideration. My natural respect for the old gentleman's vagaries, with a muse of equivocal character, must be my only excuse wheneverthe language, without luxuriating into verse, borrows flowers scarcelynatural to prose. Truth compels me also to confess, that, with allmy pains, I am by no means sure that I have invariably given the truemeaning of the cipher; nay, that here and there either a gap in thenarrative, or the sudden assumption of a new cipher, to which no key wasafforded, has obliged me to resort to interpolations of my own, no doubteasily discernible, but which, I flatter myself, are not inharmonious tothe general design. This confession leads me to the sentence withwhich I shall conclude: If, reader, in this book there be anything thatpleases you, it is certainly mine; but whenever you come to somethingyou 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) markedthe distinction; where, however, this is omitted, the ingenuity of thereader 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 namedGaetano Pisani lived and flourished. He was a musician of great genius, but not of popular reputation; there was in all his compositionssomething capricious and fantastic which did not please the taste of theDilettanti of Naples. He was fond of unfamiliar subjects into which heintroduced airs and symphonies that excited a kind of terror in thosewho listened. The names of his pieces will probably suggest theirnature. I find, for instance, among his MSS. , these titles: "The Feastof the Harpies, " "The Witches at Benevento, " "The Descent of Orpheusinto Hades, " "The Evil Eye, " "The Eumenides, " and many othersthat evince a powerful imagination delighting in the fearful andsupernatural, but often relieved by an airy and delicate fancy withpassages of exquisite grace and beauty. It is true that in the selectionof his subjects from ancient fable, Gaetano Pisani was much morefaithful than his contemporaries to the remote origin and the earlygenius of Italian Opera. 

That descendant, however effeminate, of the ancient union between Songand Drama, when, after long obscurity and dethronement, it regained apunier sceptre, though a gaudier purple, by the banks of the EtrurianArno, or amidst the lagunes of Venice, had chosen all its primaryinspirations from the unfamiliar and classic sources of heathen legend;and Pisani's "Descent of Orpheus" was but a bolder, darker, and morescientific repetition of the "Euridice" which Jacopi Peri set to musicat 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 thewhole pleasing to ears grown nice and euphuistic in the more dulcetmelodies of the day; and faults and extravagances easily discernible, and often to appearance wilful, served the critics for an excuse fortheir 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 decentsubsistence as one of the orchestra at the Great Theatre of San Carlo. Here formal and appointed tasks necessarily kept his eccentric fanciesin tolerable check, though it is recorded that no less than five timeshe had been deposed from his desk for having shocked the conoscenti, and thrown the whole band into confusion, by impromptu variations of sofrantic and startling a nature that one might well have imagined thatthe harpies or witches who inspired his compositions had clawed hold ofhis instrument. 

The impossibility, however, to find any one of equal excellence as aperformer (that is to say, in his more lucid and orderly moments) hadforced his reinstalment, and he had now, for the most part, reconciledhimself to the narrow sphere of his appointed adagios or allegros. Theaudience, too, aware of his propensity, were quick to perceive the leastdeviation from the text; and if he wandered for a moment, whichmight also be detected by the eye as well as the ear, in some strangecontortion of visage, and some ominous flourish of his bow, a gentle andadmonitory murmur recalled the musician from his Elysium or his Tartarusto the sober regions of his desk. Then he would start as if from adream, cast a hurried, frightened, apologetic glance around, and, witha crestfallen, humbled air, draw his rebellious instrument back to thebeaten track of the glib monotony. But at home he would make himselfamends for this reluctant drudgery. And there, grasping the unhappyviolin with ferocious fingers, he would pour forth, often till themorning rose, strange, wild measures that would startle the earlyfisherman on the shore below with a superstitious awe, and make himcross himself as if mermaid or sprite had wailed no earthly music in hisear. 

 (*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 hisart. 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 hismovements were peculiar, sudden, and abrupt, as the impulse seized him;and in gliding through the streets, or along the beach, he was heardlaughing and talking to himself. Withal, he was a harmless, guileless, gentle creature, and would share his mite with any idle lazzaroni, whomhe often paused to contemplate as they lay lazily basking in the sun. Yet was he thoroughly unsocial. He formed no friends, flattered nopatrons, resorted to none of the merry-makings so dear to the childrenof music and the South. He and his art seemed alone suited to eachother, --both quaint, primitive, unworldly, irregular. You could notseparate the man from his music; it was himself. Without it he wasnothing, 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 inEngland there is a gravestone on which the epitaph records "one ClaudiusPhillips, whose absolute contempt for riches, and inimitable performanceon the violin, made him the admiration of all that knew him!" Logicalconjunction of opposite eulogies! In proportion, O Genius, to thycontempt for riches will be thy performance on thy violin!

Gaetano Pisani's talents as a composer had been chiefly exhibitedin music appropriate to this his favourite instrument, of allunquestionably the most various and royal in its resources and powerover the passions. As Shakespeare among poets is the Cremona amonginstruments. Nevertheless, he had composed other pieces of largerambition and wider accomplishment, and chief of these, his precious, hisunpurchased, his unpublished, his unpublishable and imperishable operaof the "Siren. " This great work had been the dream of his boyhood, themistress of his manhood; in advancing age "it stood beside him likehis youth. " Vainly had he struggled to place it before the world. Evenbland, unjealous Paisiello, Maestro di Capella, shook his gentle headwhen the musician favoured him with a specimen of one of his mostthrilling scenas. And yet, Paisiello, though that music differs from allDurante 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 personagehad yet formed those ties which ordinary mortals are apt to considertheir especial monopoly, --he was married, and had one child. What ismore strange yet, his wife was a daughter of quiet, sober, unfantasticEngland: she was much younger than himself; she was fair and gentle, with a sweet English face; she had married him from choice, and (willyou believe it?) she yet loved him. How she came to marry him, or howthis shy, unsocial, wayward creature ever ventured to propose, I canonly explain by asking you to look round and explain first to ME howhalf the husbands and half the wives you meet ever found a mate! Yet, onreflection, this union was not so extraordinary after all. The girl wasa natural child of parents too noble ever to own and claim her. She wasbrought into Italy to learn the art by which she was to live, for shehad taste and voice; she was a dependant and harshly treated, and poorPisani was her master, and his voice the only one she had heard fromher cradle that seemed without one tone that could scorn or chide. Andso--well, is the rest natural? Natural or not, they married. This youngwife loved her husband; and young and gentle as she was, she mightalmost be said to be the protector of the two. From how many disgraceswith the despots of San Carlo and the Conservatorio had her unknownofficious mediation saved him! In how many ailments--for his frame wasweak--had she nursed and tended him! Often, in the dark nights, shewould wait at the theatre with her lantern to light him and her steadyarm to lean on; otherwise, in his abstract reveries, who knows but themusician would have walked after his "Siren" into the sea! And then shewould so patiently, perhaps (for in true love there is not always thefinest taste) so DELIGHTEDLY, listen to those storms of eccentric andfitful melody, and steal him--whispering praises all the way--from theunwholesome night-watch to rest and sleep!

I said his music was a part of the man, and this gentle creature seemeda part of the music; it was, in fact, when she sat beside him thatwhatever was tender or fairy-like in his motley fantasia crept into theharmony as by stealth. Doubtless her presence acted on the music, andshaped and softened it; but, he, who never examined how or what hisinspiration, knew it not. All that he knew was, that he loved andblessed her. He fancied he told her so twenty times a day; but he neverdid, for he was not of many words, even to his wife. His languagewas his music, --as hers, her cares! He was more communicative to hisbarbiton, as the learned Mersennus teaches us to call all the varietiesof the great viol family. Certainly barbiton sounds better thanfiddle; and barbiton let it be. He would talk to THAT by the hourtogether, --praise it, scold it, coax it, nay (for such is man, even themost guileless), he had been known to swear at it; but for that excesshe was always penitentially remorseful. And the barbiton had a tongue ofhis own, could take his own part, and when HE also scolded, had muchthe best of it. He was a noble fellow, this Violin!--a Tyrolese, thehandiwork of the illustrious Steiner. There was something mysterious inhis great age. How many hands, now dust, had awakened his strings erehe became the Robin Goodfellow and Familiar of Gaetano Pisani! His verycase was venerable, --beautifully painted, it was said, by Caracci. AnEnglish collector had offered more for the case than Pisani had evermade by the violin. But Pisani, who cared not if he had inhabited acabin himself, was proud of a palace for the barbiton. His barbiton, itwas 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 toanswer for in the advent of that young stranger. For both in her formand her character you might have traced a family likeness to thatsingular and spirit-like life of sound which night after night threwitself in airy and goblin sport over the starry seas. .. Beautifulshe was, but of a very uncommon beauty, --a combination, a harmony ofopposite attributes. Her hair of a gold richer and purer than thatwhich is seen even in the North; but the eyes, of all the dark, tender, subduing light of more than Italian--almost of Oriental--splendour. Thecomplexion 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 muchneglected for their daughter by this singular pair. To be sure, neitherof them had much knowledge to bestow; and knowledge was not then thefashion, as it is now. But accident or nature favoured young Viola. Shelearned, as of course, her mother's language with her father's. And shecontrived soon to read and to write; and her mother, who, by theway, was a Roman Catholic, taught her betimes to pray. But then, tocounteract all these acquisitions, the strange habits of Pisani, and theincessant watch and care which he required from his wife, often left thechild alone with an old nurse, who, to be sure, loved her dearly, butwho was in no way calculated to instruct her. 

Dame Gionetta was every inch Italian and Neapolitan. Her youth had beenall love, and her age was all superstition. She was garrulous, fond, --agossip. Now she would prattle to the girl of cavaliers and princes ather 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 thedances round the great walnut-tree at Benevento, and the haunting spellof the Evil Eye. All this helped silently to weave charmed webs overViola's imagination that afterthought and later years might labourvainly to dispel. And all this especially fitted her to hang, with afearful joy, upon her father's music. Those visionary strains, everstruggling to translate into wild and broken sounds the language ofunearthly beings, breathed around her from her birth. Thus you mighthave said that her whole mind was full of music; associations, memories, sensations of pleasure or pain, --all were mixed up inexplicably withthose sounds that now delighted and now terrified; that greeted her whenher eyes opened to the sun, and woke her trembling on her lonely couchin the darkness of the night. The legends and tales of Gionetta onlyserved to make the child better understand the signification of thosemysterious tones; they furnished her with words to the music. It wasnatural that the daughter of such a parent should soon evince some tastein 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--greatalike in the State and the Conservatorio--heard of her gifts, and sentfor her. From that moment her fate was decided: she was to be the futureglory 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 withemulation, his Eminence took her one evening to his own box: it wouldbe something to see the performance, something more to hear the applauselavished upon the glittering signoras she was hereafter to excel! Oh, how gloriously that life of the stage, that fairy world of music andsong, dawned upon her! It was the only world that seemed to correspondwith her strange childish thoughts. It appeared to her as if, casthitherto on a foreign shore, she was brought at last to see the formsand 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 thatopened to thee when for the first time the magic curtain was drawnaside, 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 depictby a gesture, a look, the passions she was to delineate on the boards;lessons dangerous, in truth, to some, but not to the pure enthusiasmthat comes from art; for the mind that rightly conceives art is buta mirror which gives back what is cast on its surface faithfullyonly--while unsullied. She seized on nature and truth intuitively. Herrecitations became full of unconscious power; her voice moved the heartto tears, or warmed it into generous rage. But this arose from thatsympathy which genius ever has, even in its earliest innocence, withwhatever feels, or aspires, or suffers. 

It was no premature woman comprehending the love or the jealousy thatthe words expressed; her art was one of those strange secrets whichthe psychologists may unriddle to us if they please, and tell us whychildren of the simplest minds and the purest hearts are often so acuteto distinguish, in the tales you tell them, or the songs you sing, thedifference between the true art and the false, passion and jargon, Homerand Racine, --echoing back, from hearts that have not yet felt what theyrepeat, the melodious accents of the natural pathos. Apart fromher studies, Viola was a simple, affectionate, but somewhat waywardchild, --wayward, not in temper, for that was sweet and docile; but inher moods, which, as I before hinted, changed from sad to gay and gay tosad without an apparent cause. If cause there were, it must be traced tothe early and mysterious influences I have referred to, when seeking toexplain the effect produced on her imagination by those restless streamsof sound that constantly played around it; for it is noticeable that tothose who are much alive to the effects of music, airs and tunes oftencome back, in the commonest pursuits of life, to vex, as it were, andhaunt them. The music, once admitted to the soul, becomes also a sortof spirit, and never dies. It wanders perturbedly through the halls andgalleries of the memory, and is often heard again, distinct and livingas 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 calla smile from every dimple; if mournful, to throw a shade upon herbrow, --to make her cease from her childishmirth, and sit apart and muse. 

Rightly, then, in a typical sense, might this fair creature, so airy inher shape, so harmonious in her beauty, so unfamiliar in her ways andthoughts, --rightly might she be called a daughter, less of the musicianthan the music, a being for whom you could imagine that some fate wasreserved, less of actual life than the romance which, to eyes that cansee, 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 inchildhood, and yet more as she bloomed into the sweet seriousness ofvirgin youth, should fancy her life ordained for a lot, whether of blissor woe, that should accord with the romance and reverie which made theatmosphere she breathed. Frequently she would climb through the thicketsthat clothed the neighbouring grotto of Posilipo, --the mighty work ofthe old Cimmerians, --and, seated by the haunted Tomb of Virgil, indulgethose visions, the subtle vagueness of which no poetry can renderpalpable and defined; for the Poet that surpasses all who ever sang, isthe heart of dreaming youth! Frequently there, too, beside the thresholdover which the vine-leaves clung, and facing that dark-blue, wavelesssea, she would sit in the autumn noon or summer twilight, and build hercastles in the air. Who doth not do the same, --not in youth alone, butwith the dimmed hopes of age! It is man's prerogative to dream, thecommon royalty of peasant and of king. But those day-dreams of hers weremore 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 beinscribed in the Libro d'Oro, --the Golden Book set apart to the childrenof Art and Song. Yes, but in what character?--to whose genius is sheto give embodiment and form? Ah, there is the secret! Rumours go abroadthat the inexhaustible Paisiello, charmed with her performance of his"Nel cor piu non me sento, " and his "Io son Lindoro, " will produce somenew masterpiece to introduce the debutante. Others insist upon it thather forte is the comic, and that Cimarosa is hard at work at another"Matrimonia Segreto. " But in the meanwhile there is a check in thediplomacy somewhere. The Cardinal is observed to be out of humour. Hehas said publicly, --and the words are portentous, --"The silly girl isas mad as her father; what she asks is preposterous!" Conference followsconference; the Cardinal talks to the poor child very solemnly inhis closet, --all in vain. Naples is distracted with curiosity andconjecture. The lecture ends in a quarrel, and Viola comes home sullenand 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 addcelebrity to his art. The girl's perverseness displeased him. However, he said nothing, --he never scolded in words, but he took up the faithfulbarbiton. Oh, faithful barbiton, how horribly thou didst scold! Itscreeched, it gabbled, it moaned, it growled. And Viola's eyes filledwith 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 awondering stare; and then, as if he felt he had been harsh, he flewagain to his Familiar. And now you thought you heard the lullaby which afairy might sing to some fretful changeling it had adopted and sought tosoothe. Liquid, low, silvery, streamed the tones beneath the enchantedbow. The most stubborn grief would have paused to hear; and withal, at times, out came a wild, merry, ringing note, like a laugh, but notmortal laughter. It was one of his most successful airs from his belovedopera, --the Siren in the act of charming the waves and the winds tosleep. Heaven knows what next would have come, but his arm was arrested. Viola had thrown herself on his breast, and kissed him, with happyeyes that smiled through her sunny hair. At that very moment the dooropened, --a message from the Cardinal. Viola must go to his Eminence atonce. Her mother went with her. All was reconciled and settled; Violahad 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 andthe Agora!--you cannot guess what a stir throughout musical Naples wasoccasioned by the rumour of a new opera and a new singer. But whosethe opera? No cabinet intrigue ever was so secret. Pisani came back onenight from the theatre, evidently disturbed and irate. Woe to thine earshadst thou heard the barbiton that night! They had suspended him fromhis office, --they feared that the new opera, and the first debut ofhis daughter as prima donna, would be too much for his nerves. And hisvariations, his diablerie of sirens and harpies, on such a night, madea hazard not to be contemplated without awe. To be set aside, and on thevery 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 amusician's flesh and blood. For the first time he spoke in words uponthe subject, and gravely asked--for that question the barbiton, eloquentas it was, could not express distinctly--what was to be the opera, andwhat the part? And Viola as gravely answered that she was pledged to theCardinal not to reveal. Pisani said nothing, but disappeared withthe 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 notone of those fond, caressing fathers whose children are ever playinground their knees; his mind and soul were so thoroughly in his art thatdomestic life glided by him, seemingly as if THAT were a dream, andthe heart the substantial form and body of existence. Personsmuch cultivating an abstract study are often thus; mathematiciansproverbially so. When his servant ran to the celebrated Frenchphilosopher, shrieking, "The house is on fire, sir!" "Go and tell mywife then, fool!" said the wise man, settling back to his problems;"do _I_ ever meddle with domestic affairs?" But what are mathematics tomusic--music, that not only composes operas, but plays on the barbiton?Do you know what the illustrious Giardini said when the tyro asked howlong it would take to learn to play on the violin? Hear, and despair, yewho would bend the bow to which that of Ulysses was a plaything, "Twelvehours a day for twenty years together!" Can a man, then, who plays thebarbiton be always playing also with his little ones? No, Pisani; often, with the keen susceptibility of childhood, poor Viola had stolen fromthe room to weep at the thought that thou didst not love her. And yet, underneath this outward abstraction of the artist, the natural fondnessflowed all the same; and as she grew up, the dreamer had understood thedreamer. And now, shut out from all fame himself; to be forbidden tohail even his daughter's fame!--and that daughter herself to be inthe conspiracy against him! Sharper than the serpent's tooth was theingratitude, and sharper than the serpent's tooth was the wail of thepitying barbiton!

The eventful hour is come. Viola is gone to the theatre, --her motherwith her. The indignant musician remains at home. Gionetta bursts intothe room: my Lord Cardinal's carriage is at the door, --the Padrone issent for. He must lay aside his violin; he must put on his brocade coatand his lace ruffles. Here they are, --quick, quick! And quick rolls thegilded coach, and majestic sits the driver, and statelily prance thesteeds. Poor Pisani is lost in a mist of uncomfortable amaze. He arrivesat the theatre; he descends at the great door; he turns round andround, and looks about him and about: he misses something, --where is theviolin? Alas! his soul, his voice, his self of self, is left behind! Itis but an automaton that the lackeys conduct up the stairs, through thetier, into the Cardinal's box. But then, what bursts upon him! Does hedream? The first act is over (they did not send for him till successseemed no longer doubtful); the first act has decided all. He feels THATby the electric sympathy which ever the one heart has at once witha vast audience. He feels it by the breathless stillness of thatmultitude; he feels it even by the lifted finger of the Cardinal. Hesees his Viola on the stage, radiant in her robes and gems, --he hearsher voice thrilling through the single heart of the thousands! But thescene, the part, the music! It is his other child, --his immortal child;the spirit-infant of his soul; his darling of many years of patientobscurity and pining genius; his masterpiece; his opera of the Siren!

This, then, was the mystery that had so galled him, --this the cause ofthe quarrel with the Cardinal; this the secret not to be proclaimed tillthe success was won, and the daughter had united her father's triumphwith her own! And there she stands, as all souls bow before her, --fairerthan the very Siren he had called from the deeps of melody. Oh, long andsweet recompense of toil! Where is on earth the rapture like that whichis known to genius when at last it bursts from its hidden cavern intolight and fame!

He did not speak, he did not move; he stood transfixed, breathless, thetears rolling down his cheeks; only from time to time his hands stillwandered 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 wasshouted. She came on, trembling, pale, and in the whole crowd saw buther father's face. The audience followed those moistened eyes; theyrecognised with a thrill the daughter's impulse and her meaning. Thegood old Cardinal drew him gently forward. Wild musician, thy daughterhas given thee back more than the life thou gavest!

"My poor violin!" said he, wiping his eyes, "they will never hiss theeagain 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, therehad been one moment in the first act, and, consequently, BEFORE thearrival of Pisani, when the scale seemed more than doubtful. It was in achorus replete with all the peculiarities of the composer. And when theMaelstrom of Capricci whirled and foamed, and tore ear and sense throughevery variety of sound, the audience simultaneously recognised thehand of Pisani. A title had been given to the opera which had hithertoprevented all suspicion of its parentage; and the overture and opening, in which the music had been regular and sweet, had led the audienceto fancy they detected the genius of their favourite Paisiello. Longaccustomed to ridicule and almost to despise the pretensions of Pisanias a composer, they now felt as if they had been unduly cheated intothe applause with which they had hailed the overture and the commencingscenas. An ominous buzz circulated round the house: the singers, the orchestra, --electrically sensitive to the impression of theaudience, --grew, themselves, agitated and dismayed, and failed in theenergy and precision which could alone carry off the grotesqueness ofthe music. 

There are always in every theatre many rivals to a new author and a newperformer, --a party impotent while all goes well, but a dangerous ambushthe instant some accident throws into confusion the march of success. Ahiss arose; it was partial, it is true, but the significant silence ofall applause seemed to forebode the coming moment when the displeasurewould grow contagious. It was the breath that stirred the impendingavalanche. At that critical moment Viola, the Siren queen, emerged forthe first time from her ocean cave. As she came forward to thelamps, the novelty of her situation, the chilling apathy of theaudience, --which even the sight of so singular a beauty did not at thefirst arouse, --the whispers of the malignant singers on the stage, theglare 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 andsuspended her voice. And, instead of the grand invocation into whichshe ought rapidly to have burst, the regal Siren, retransformed intothe trembling girl, stood pale and mute before the stern, cold array ofthose 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, sheperceived, in a box near the stage, a countenance which at once, andlike magic, produced on her mind an effect never to be analysednor forgotten. It was one that awakened an indistinct, hauntingreminiscence, as if she had seen it in those day-dreams she had been sowont from infancy to indulge. She could not withdraw her gaze from thatface, 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 indeedso much of gentle encouragement, of benign and compassionateadmiration, --so much that warmed, and animated, and nerved, --that anyone, actor or orator, who has ever observed the effect that a singleearnest and kindly look in the crowd that is to be addressed and won, will produce upon his mind, may readily account for the sudden andinspiriting influence which the eye and smile of the stranger exercisedon the debutante. 

And while yet she gazed, and the glow returned to her heart, thestranger half rose, as if to recall the audience to a sense of thecourtesy due to one so fair and young; and the instant his voice gavethe signal, the audience followed it by a burst of generous applause. For this stranger himself was a marked personage, and his recent arrivalat Naples had divided with the new opera the gossip of the city. Andthen as the applause ceased, clear, full, and freed from every fetter, like a spirit from the clay, the Siren's voice poured forth itsentrancing music. From that time Viola forgot the crowd, the hazard, the whole world, --except the fairy one over with she presided. It seemedthat the stranger's presence only served still more to heighten thatdelusion, in which the artist sees no creation without the circle of hisart, she felt as if that serene brow, and those brilliant eyes, inspiredher with powers never known before: and, as if searching for a languageto express the strange sensations occasioned by his presence, thatpresence itself whispered to her the melody and the song. 

Only when all was over, and she saw her father and felt his joy, didthis wild spell vanish before the sweeter one of the household andfilial love. Yet again, as she turned from the stage, she looked backinvoluntarily, and the stranger's calm and half-melancholy smile sankinto 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, astonishedat finding himself and all Naples had been hitherto in the wrong ona subject of taste, --still more astonished at finding himself and allNaples combining to confess it; pass over the whispered ecstasies ofadmiration which buzzed in the singer's ear, as once more, in her modestveil and quiet dress, she escaped from the crowd of gallants that chokedup every avenue behind the scenes; pass over the sweet embrace of fatherand child, returning through the starlit streets and along the desertedChiaja in the Cardinal's carriage; never pause now to note the tears andejaculations of the good, simple-hearted mother, --see them returned;see the well-known room, venimus ad larem nostrum (We come to our ownhouse. ); see old Gionetta bustling at the supper; and hear Pisani, as herouses the barbiton from its case, communicating all that has happenedto the intelligent Familiar; hark to the mother's merry, low, Englishlaugh. Why, Viola, strange child, sittest thou apart, thy face leaningon thy fair hands, thine eyes fixed on space? Up, rouse thee! Everydimple on the cheek of home must smile to-night. ("Ridete quidquid estdomi cachinnorum. " Catull. "ad Sirm. Penin. ")

And a happy reunion it was round that humble table: a feast Lucullusmight have envied in his Hall of Apollo, in the dried grapes, andthe dainty sardines, and the luxurious polenta, and the old lacrima apresent from the good Cardinal. The barbiton, placed on a chair--a tall, high-backed chair--beside the musician, seemed to take a part in thefestive meal. Its honest varnished face glowed in the light of the lamp;and there was an impish, sly demureness in its very silence, as itsmaster, between every mouthful, turned to talk to it of something he hadforgotten to relate before. The good wife looked on affectionately, andcould not eat for joy; but suddenly she rose, and placed on theartist's temples a laurel wreath, which she had woven beforehand in fondanticipation; 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 bythe lacrima and his triumph, turned to the younger child with so naiveand grotesque a pride, "I don't know which to thank the most. You giveme 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 vanityand triumph, the happiness in the happiness she had caused, all this wasbetter than sleep. But still from all this, again and again her thoughtsflew to those haunting eyes, to that smile with which forever the memoryof the triumph, of the happiness, was to be united. Her feelings, likeher own character, were strange and peculiar. They were not those of agirl whose heart, for the first time reached through the eye, sighsits natural and native language of first love. It was not so muchadmiration, though the face that reflected itself on every wave of herrestless fancies was of the rarest order of majesty and beauty; nor apleased and enamoured recollection that the sight of this stranger hadbequeathed: it was a human sentiment of gratitude and delight, mixedwith something more mysterious, of fear and awe. Certainly she had seenbefore those features; but when and how? Only when her thoughts hadsought to shape out her future, and when, in spite of all the attemptsto vision forth a fate of flowers and sunshine, a dark and chillforeboding made her recoil back into her deepest self. It was asomething found that had long been sought for by a thousand restlessyearnings and vague desires, less of the heart than mind; not as whenyouth discovers the one to be beloved, but rather as when the student, long wandering after the clew to some truth in science, sees it glimmerdimly 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 hazycloud, glinted with a sickly ray across the casement, she heard herfather settled back betimes to his one pursuit, and calling forth fromhis Familiar a low mournful strain, like a dirge over the dead. 

"And why, " she asked, when she descended to the room below, --"why, myfather, 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 ofthee; 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 professionmade special demand on his time, to devote a certain portion of themid-day to sleep, --a habit not so much a luxury as a necessity to a manwho slept very little during the night. In fact, whether to composeor to practice, the hours of noon were precisely those in which Pisanicould not have been active if he would. His genius resembled thosefountains full at dawn and evening, overflowing at night, and perfectlydry at the meridian. During this time, consecrated by her husband torepose, the signora generally stole out to make the purchases necessaryfor the little household, or to enjoy (as what woman does not?) a littlerelaxation in gossip with some of her own sex. And the day followingthis brilliant triumph, how many congratulations would she have toreceive!

At these times it was Viola's habit to seat herself without the doorof the house, under an awning which sheltered from the sun withoutobstructing the view; and there now, with the prompt-book on her knee, on which her eye roves listlessly from time to time, you may beholdher, the vine-leaves clustering from their arching trellis over thedoor behind, and the lazy white-sailed boats skimming along the sea thatstretched before. 

As she thus sat, rather in reverie than thought, a man coming from thedirection of Posilipo, with a slow step and downcast eyes, passed closeby the house, and Viola, looking up abruptly, started in a kind ofterror as she recognised the stranger. She uttered an involuntaryexclamation, and the cavalier turning, saw, and paused. 

He stood a moment or two between her and the sunlit ocean, contemplatingin a silence too serious and gentle for the boldness of gallantry, theblushing 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 thecareer that lies before you? From sixteen to thirty, the music in thebreath of applause is sweeter than all the music your voice can utter!"

"I know not, " replied Viola, falteringly, but encouraged by the liquidsoftness of the accents that addressed her, --"I know not whether I amhappy now, but I was last night. And I feel, too, Excellency, that Ihave you to thank, though, perhaps, you scarce know why!"

"You deceive yourself, " said the cavalier, with a smile. "I am awarethat I assisted to your merited success, and it is you who scarce knowhow. The WHY I will tell you: because I saw in your heart a noblerambition than that of the woman's vanity; it was the daughter thatinterested me. Perhaps you would rather I should have admired thesinger?"

"No; oh, no!"

"Well, I believe you. And now, since we have thus met, I will pause tocounsel you. When next you go to the theatre, you will have at your feetall the young gallants of Naples. Poor infant! the flame that dazzlesthe eye can scorch the wing. Remember that the only homage that does notsully must be that which these gallants will not give thee. And whateverthy dreams of the future, --and I see, while I speak to thee, howwandering they are, and wild, --may only those be fulfilled which centreround the hearth of home. "

He paused, as Viola's breast heaved beneath its robe. And with a burstof natural and innocent emotions, scarcely comprehending, though anItalian, 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. Helooked up at the quiet house buried amidst the vine-leaves, and turnedagain to the vivid, animated face of the young actress. 

"It is well, " said he. "A simple heart may be its own best guide, andso, go on, and prosper. Adieu, fair singer. "

"Adieu, Excellency; but, " and something she could not resist--ananxious, sickening feeling of fear and hope, --impelled her to thequestion, "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 wasgone. 

"And, " said the cavalier, turning back, and gently laying his hand onhers, --"and, perhaps, before we meet, you may have suffered: known thefirst 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 towhat may seem the piety of sorrow. Observe yon tree in your neighbour'sgarden. Look how it grows up, crooked and distorted. Some wind scatteredthe germ from which it sprang, in the clefts of the rock; choked up andwalled round by crags and buildings, by Nature and man, its life hasbeen one struggle for the light, --light which makes to that life thenecessity and the principle: you see how it has writhed and twisted;how, meeting the barrier in one spot, it has laboured and worked, stemand branches, towards the clear skies at last. What has preserved itthrough each disfavour of birth and circumstances, --why are its leavesas green and fair as those of the vine behind you, which, with allits arms, can embrace the open sunshine? My child, because of the veryinstinct that impelled the struggle, --because the labour for the lightwon to the light at length. So with a gallant heart, through everyadverse accident of sorrow and of fate to turn to the sun, to strive forthe heaven; this it is that gives knowledge to the strong and happinessto the weak. Ere we meet again, you will turn sad and heavy eyes tothose quiet boughs, and when you hear the birds sing from them, and seethe sunshine come aslant from crag and housetop to be the playfellowof their leaves, learn the lesson that Nature teaches you, and strivethrough 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 shestretched forth her arms, as if by a gesture to call him back; she wouldhave given worlds to have seen him turn, --to have heard once more hislow, calm, silvery voice; to have felt again the light touch of his handon hers. As moonlight that softens into beauty every angle on which itfalls, seemed his presence, --as moonlight vanishes, and things assumetheir common aspect of the rugged and the mean, he receded from hereyes, and the outward scene was commonplace once more. 

The stranger passed on, through that long and lovely road which reachesat last the palaces that face the public gardens, and conducts to themore populous quarters of the city. 

A group of young, dissipated courtiers, loitering by the gateway of ahouse which was open for the favourite pastime of the day, --the resortof the wealthier and more high-born gamesters, --made way for him, aswith a courteous inclination he passed them by. 

"Per fede, " said one, "is not that the rich Zanoni, of whom the towntalks?"

"Ay; they say his wealth is incalculable!"

"THEY say, --who are THEY?--what is the authority? He has not been manydays at Naples, and I cannot yet find any one who knows aught of hisbirthplace, his parentage, or, what is more important, his estates!"

"That is true; but he arrived in a goodly vessel, which THEY SAY is hisown. 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 theirhands. "

"Whence came he?"

"From some seaport in the East. My valet learned from some of thesailors on the Mole that he had resided many years in the interior ofIndia. "

"Ah, I am told that in India men pick up gold like pebbles, and thatthere are valleys where the birds build their nests with emeralds toattract the moths. Here comes our prince of gamesters, Cetoxa; be surethat 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 hereturns, he has promised me to fix a day to sup with me, and I will thenintroduce him to you, and to the best society of Naples! Diavolo! but heis 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, howsuperb it is, --that poor devil, Pisani; who would have thought it?) anda new singer (what a face, --what a voice!--ah!) had engaged every cornerof 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 placemy 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 havepassed these ten years. "

The cavaliers crowded round to admire the diamond. 

"Signor Count Cetoxa, " said one grave-looking sombre man, who hadcrossed himself two or three times during the Neapolitan's narrative, "are you not aware of the strange reports about this person; and are younot afraid to receive from him a gift which may carry with it the mostfatal consequences? Do you not know that he is said to be a sorcerer; topossess the mal-occhio; to--"

"Prithee, spare us your antiquated superstitions, " interrupted Cetoxa, contemptuously. "They are out of fashion; nothing now goes down butscepticism and philosophy. And what, after all, do these rumours, whensifted, amount to? They have no origin but this, --a silly old man ofeighty-six, quite in his dotage, solemnly avers that he saw this sameZanoni seventy years ago (he himself, the narrator, then a mere boy) atMilan; when this very Zanoni, as you all see, is at least as young asyou or I, Belgioso. "

"But that, " said the grave gentleman, --"THAT is the mystery. Old Avellideclares that Zanoni does not seem a day older than when they met atMilan. He says that even then at Milan--mark this--where, thoughunder another name, this Zanoni appeared in the same splendour, he wasattended also by the same mystery. And that an old man THERE rememberedto have seen him sixty years before, in Sweden. "

"Tush, " returned Cetoxa, "the same thing has been said of the quackCagliostro, --mere fables. I will believe them when I see this diamondturn to a wisp of hay. For the rest, " he added gravely, "I consider thisillustrious gentleman my friend; and a whisper against his honour andrepute will in future be equivalent to an affront to myself. "

Cetoxa was a redoubted swordsman, and excelled in a peculiarly awkwardmanoeuvre, which he himself had added to the variations of the stoccata. The grave gentleman, however anxious for the spiritual weal of thecount, had an equal regard for his own corporeal safety. He contentedhimself 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 mydiamond. Gentlemen, you sup with me to-night. I assure you I never met amore delightful, sociable, entertaining person, than my dear friend theSignor 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 bida short farewell to Naples. Mount behind me, --mount on my hippogriff, reader; settle yourself at your ease. I bought the pillion the otherday of a poet who loves his comfort; it has been newly stuffed foryour special accommodation. So, so, we ascend! Look as we ridealoft, --look!--never fear, hippogriffs never stumble; and everyhippogriff in Italy is warranted to carry elderly gentlemen, --look downon the gliding landscapes! There, near the ruins of the Oscan's oldAtella, rises Aversa, once the stronghold of the Norman; there gleam thecolumns of Capua, above the Vulturnian Stream. Hail to ye, cornfieldsand vineyards famous for the old Falernian! Hail to ye, goldenorange-groves of Mola di Gaeta! Hail to ye, sweet shrubs and wildflowers, omnis copia narium, that clothe the mountain-skirts of thesilent Lautulae! Shall we rest at the Volscian Anxur, --the modernTerracina, --where the lofty rock stands like the giant that guards thelast borders of the southern land of love? Away, away! and hold yourbreath as we flit above the Pontine Marshes. Dreary and desolate, theirmiasma is to the gardens we have passed what the rank commonplace oflife 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; receiveus in silence, amidst ruins! Where is the traveller we pursue? Turn thehippogriff loose to graze: he loves the acanthus that wreathes roundyon broken columns. Yes, that is the arch of Titus, the conqueror ofJerusalem, --that the Colosseum! Through one passed the triumph of thedeified invader; in one fell the butchered gladiators. Monuments ofmurder, how poor the thoughts, how mean the memories ye awaken, comparedwith those that speak to the heart of man on the heights of Phyle, orby thy lone mound, grey Marathon! We stand amidst weeds and bramblesand long waving herbage. Where we stand reigned Nero, --here were histessellated floors; here, "Mighty in the heaven, a second heaven, "

hung the vault of his ivory roofs; here, arch upon arch, pillar onpillar, glittered to the world the golden palace of its master, --theGolden House of Nero. How the lizard watches us with his bright, timorous eye! We disturb his reign. Gather that wild flower: the GoldenHouse is vanished, but the wild flower may have kin to those which thestranger'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 nativepeasant flies the rank vegetation round; but he, a stranger and aforeigner, no associates, no companions, except books and instrumentsof science. He is often seen wandering over the grass-grown hills, orsauntering through the streets of the new city, not with the absent browand incurious air of students, but with observant piercing eyes thatseem to dive into the hearts of the passers-by. An old man, but notinfirm, --erect and stately, as if in his prime. None know whether he berich 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 worldbeyond himself; but appearances are deceitful, and Science, as well asBenevolence, lives in the Universe. This abode, for the first time sincethus occupied, a visitor enters. It is Zanoni. 

You observe those two men seated together, conversing earnestly. Yearslong 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, andspirit spirit, though oceans divide the forms. Death itself divides notthe 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, andrepeople it; but note how differently do such remembrances affect thetwo. On Zanoni's face, despite its habitual calm, the emotions changeand go. HE has acted in the past he surveys; but not a trace of thehumanity that participates in joy and sorrow can be detected on thepassionless visage of his companion; the past, to him, as is nowthe present, has been but as Nature to the sage, the volume to thestudent, --a calm and spiritual life, a study, a contemplation. 

From the past they turn to the future. Ah! at the close of the lastcentury, the future seemed a thing tangible, --it was woven up in allmen'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. " "DieKunstler. ")

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, --thelofty yet touching sadness that darkens the glorious countenance ofZanoni. Is it that one views with contempt the struggle and its issue, and the other with awe or pity? Wisdom contemplating mankind leads butto the two results, --compassion or disdain. He who believes in otherworlds can accustom himself to look on this as the naturalist onthe revolutions of an ant-hill, or of a leaf. What is the Earth toInfinity, --what its duration to the Eternal? Oh, how much greater isthe soul of one man than the vicissitudes of the whole globe! Child ofheaven, and heir of immortality, how from some star hereafter wiltthou look back on the ant-hill and its commotions, from Clovisto Robespierre, from Noah to the Final Fire. The spirit that cancontemplate, that lives only in the intellect, can ascend to its star, even from the midst of the burial-ground called Earth, and while thesarcophagus called Life immures in its clay the everlasting!

But thou, Zanoni, --thou hast refused to live ONLY in the intellect; thouhast not mortified the heart; thy pulse still beats with the sweet musicof mortal passion; thy kind is to thee still something warmer than anabstraction, --thou wouldst look upon this Revolution in its cradle, which the storms rock; thou wouldst see the world while its elements yetstruggle 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 lastchapter, there was a reunion of some of the most eminent wits of thetime, at the house of a personage distinguished alike by noble birth andliberal accomplishments. Nearly all present were of the views thatwere then the mode. For, as came afterwards a time when nothing was sounpopular as the people, so that was the time when nothing was so vulgaras aristocracy. The airiest fine gentleman and the haughtiest nobleprated of equality, and lisped enlightenment. 

Among the more remarkable guests were Condorcet, then in the prime ofhis reputation, the correspondent of the king of Prussia, the intimateof Voltaire, the member of half the academies of Europe, --noble bybirth, polished in manners, republican in opinions. There, too, was thevenerable Malesherbes, "l'amour et les delices de la Nation. " (The idoland delight of the nation (so-called by his historian, Gaillard). ) ThereJean Silvain Bailly, the accomplished scholar, --the aspiring politician. It was one of those petits soupers for which the capital of all socialpleasures was so renowned. The conversation, as might be expected, wasliterary and intellectual, enlivened by graceful pleasantry. Many of theladies of that ancient and proud noblesse--for the noblesse yet existed, though its hours were already numbered--added to the charm of thesociety; and theirs were the boldest criticisms, and often the mostliberal sentiments. 

Vain labour for me--vain labour almost for the grave Englishlanguage--to do justice to the sparkling paradoxes that flew from lipto lip. The favourite theme was the superiority of the moderns to theancients. Condorcet on this head was eloquent, and to some, at least, ofhis audience, most convincing. That Voltaire was greater than Homer fewthere were disposed to deny. Keen was the ridicule lavished on the dullpedantry which finds everything ancient necessarily sublime. 

"Yet, " said the graceful Marquis de --, as the champagne danced to hisglass, "more ridiculous still is the superstition that finds everythingincomprehensible holy! But intelligence circulates, Condorcet; likewater, it finds its level. My hairdresser said to me this morning, 'Though I am but a poor fellow, I believe as little as the finestgentleman!'" "Unquestionably, the great Revolution draws near to itsfinal completion, --a pas de geant, as Montesquieu said of his ownimmortal work. "

Then there rushed from all--wit and noble, courtier and republican--aconfused chorus, harmonious only in its anticipation of the brilliantthings to which "the great Revolution" was to give birth. Here Condrocetis more eloquent than before. 

"Il faut absolument que la Superstition et le Fanatisme fassent placea la Philosophie. (It must necessarily happen that superstition andfanaticism give place to philosophy. ) Kings persecute persons, priestsopinion. Without kings, men must be safe; and without priests, mindsmust 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 ofReason!--equality in instruction, equality in institutions, equalityin wealth! The great impediments to knowledge are, first, the want ofa common language; and next, the short duration of existence. But as tothe first, when all men are brothers, why not a universal language?As to the second, the organic perfectibility of the vegetable world isundisputed, is Nature less powerful in the nobler existence of thinkingman? The very destruction of the two most active causes of physicaldeterioration--here, luxurious wealth; there, abject penury, --mustnecessarily prolong the general term of life. (See Condorcet'sposthumous work on the Progress of the Human Mind. --Ed. ) The art ofmedicine will then be honoured in the place of war, which is the art ofmurder: the noblest study of the acutest minds will be devoted to thediscovery and arrest of the causes of disease. Life, I grant, cannot bemade eternal; but it may be prolonged almost indefinitely. And asthe meaner animal bequeaths its vigour to its offspring, so man shalltransmit 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 consummationmight not come in time for him. The handsome Marquis de -- and theladies, yet handsomer than he, looked conviction and delight. 

But two men there were, seated next to each other, who joined not inthe general talk: the one a stranger newly arrived in Paris, wherehis wealth, his person, and his accomplishments, had already madehim remarked and courted; the other, an old man, somewhere aboutseventy, --the witty and virtuous, brave, and still light-heartedCazotte, the author of "Le Diable Amoureux. "

These two conversed familiarly, and apart from the rest, and only by anoccasional 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 myrecollections of the past. "

"I will assist you. Recall the time when, led by curiosity, orperhaps the nobler desire of knowledge, you sought initiation into themysterious 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. Equallyso the rites, ceremonies, and nature of the cabalistic order heestablished. St. Martin was a disciple of the school, and that, atleast, is in its favour; for in spite of his mysticism, no man morebeneficent, generous, pure, and virtuous than St. Martin adorned thelast century. Above all, no man more distinguished himself from the herdof sceptical philosophers by the gallantry and fervour with which hecombated materialism, and vindicated the necessity of faith amidst achaos of unbelief. It may also be observed, that Cazotte, whateverelse he learned of the brotherhood of Martines, learned nothing thatdiminished the excellence of his life and the sincerity of his religion. At once gentle and brave, he never ceased to oppose the excesses ofthe Revolution. To the last, unlike the Liberals of his time, he was adevout and sincere Christian. Before his execution, he demanded a penand paper to write these words: "Ma femme, mes enfans, ne me pleurezpas; ne m'oubliez pas, mais souvenez-vous surtout de ne jamais offenserDieu. " ("My wife, my children, weep not for me; forget me not, butremember 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 torevive the ancient marvels of the cabala. "

"Such studies please you? I have shaken off the influence they once hadon my own imagination. "

"You have not shaken it off, " returned the stranger, bravely; "it is onyou still, --on you at this hour; it beats in your heart; it kindles inyour reason; it will speak in your tongue!"

And then, with a yet lower voice, the stranger continued to addresshim, to remind him of certain ceremonies and doctrines, --to explain andenforce them by references to the actual experience and history of hislistener, which Cazotte thrilled to find so familiar to a stranger. 

Gradually the old man's pleasing and benevolent countenance grewovercast, and he turned, from time to time, searching, curious, uneasyglances towards his companion. 

The charming Duchesse de G-- archly pointed out to the lively guests theabstracted air and clouded brow of the poet; and Condorcet, who liked noone else to be remarked, when he himself was present, said to Cazotte, "Well, and what do YOU predict of the Revolution, --how, at least, willit affect us?"

At that question Cazotte started; his cheeks grew pale, large dropsstood on his forehead; his lips writhed; his gay companions gazed on himin surprise. 

"Speak!" whispered the stranger, laying his hand gently upon the arm ofthe old wit. 

At that word Cazotte's face grew locked and rigid, his eyes dweltvacantly on space, and in a low, hollow voice, he thus answered

(The following prophecy (not unfamiliar, perhaps, to some of myreaders), with some slight variations, and at greater length, in thetext of the authority I am about to cite, is to be found in LaHarpe's posthumous works. The MS. Is said to exist still in La Harpe'shandwriting, and the story is given on M. Petitot's authority, volumei. Page 62. It is not for me to enquire if there be doubts of itsfoundation on fact. --Ed. ), --

"You ask how it will affect yourselves, --you, its most learned, and itsleast selfish agents. I will answer: you, Marquis de Condorcet, willdie in prison, but not by the hand of the executioner. In the peacefulhappiness of that day, the philosopher will carry about with him not theelixir but the poison. "

"My poor Cazotte, " said Condorcet, with his gentle smile, "what haveprisons, executioners, and poison to do with an age of liberty andbrotherhood?"

"It is in the names of Liberty and Brotherhood that the prisons willreek, and the headsman be glutted. "

"You are thinking of priestcraft, not philosophy, Cazotte, " saidChampfort. 

(Champfort, one of those men of letters who, though misled by the firstfair show of the Revolution, refused to follow the baser men of actioninto its horrible excesses, lived to express the murderous philanthropyof its agents by the best bon mot of the time. Seeing written on thewalls, "Fraternite ou la Mort, " he observed that the sentiment should betranslated thus, "Sois mon frere, ou je te tue. " ("Be my brother, or Ikill thee. ")) "And what of me?"

"You will open your own veins to escape the fraternity of Cain. Becomforted; the last drops will not follow the razor. For you, venerableMalesherbes; for you, Aimar Nicolai; for you, learned Bailly, --I seethem dress the scaffold! And all the while, O great philosophers, yourmurderers will have no word but philosophy on their lips!"

The hush was complete and universal when the pupil of Voltaire--theprince of the academic sceptics, hot La Harpe--cried with a sarcasticlaugh, "Do not flatter me, O prophet, by exemption from the fate ofmy companions. Shall _I_ have no part to play in this drama of yourfantasies. "

At this question, Cazotte's countenance lost its unnatural expression ofawe and sternness; the sardonic humour most common to it came back andplayed in his brightening eyes. 

"Yes, La Harpe, the most wonderful part of all! YOU will become--aChristian!"

This was too much for the audience that a moment before seemed graveand thoughtful, and they burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, whileCazotte, as if exhausted by his predictions, sank back in his chair, andbreathed hard and heavily. 

"Nay, " said Madame de G--, "you who have predicted such grave thingsconcerning us, must prophesy something also about yourself. "

A convulsive tremor shook the involuntary prophet, --it passed, andleft 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 tomyself!'"

"Well, Cazotte, well?"

"And on the seventh day, while he thus spoke, a stone from the machinesof the Romans dashed him into atoms!"

With these words, Cazotte rose; and the guests, awed in spite ofthemselves, 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. Hisapartments were situated in one of those vast abodes which may be calledan epitome of Paris itself, --the cellars rented by mechanics, scarcelyremoved a step from paupers, often by outcasts and fugitives from thelaw, often by some daring writer, who, after scattering amongst thepeople doctrines the most subversive of order, or the most libellous onthe characters of priest, minister, and king, retired amongst the rats, to escape the persecution that attends the virtuous; the ground-flooroccupied by shops; the entresol by artists; the principal stories bynobles; and the garrets by journeymen or grisettes. 

As the stranger passed up the stairs, a young man of a form andcountenance singularly unprepossessing emerged from a door in theentresol, and brushed beside him. His glance was furtive, sinister, savage, and yet timorous; the man's face was of an ashen paleness, andthe features worked convulsively. The stranger paused, and observedhim with thoughtful looks, as he hurried down the stairs. While hethus stood, he heard a groan from the room which the young man had justquitted; the latter had pulled to the door with hasty vehemence, butsome fragment, probably of fuel, had prevented its closing, and it nowstood slightly ajar; the stranger pushed it open and entered. He passeda small anteroom, meanly furnished, and stood in a bedchamber of meagreand sordid discomfort. Stretched on the bed, and writhing in pain, layan old man; a single candle lit the room, and threw its feeble ray overthe furrowed and death-like face of the sick person. No attendantwas by; he seemed left alone, to breathe his last. "Water, " he moanedfeebly, --"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 youngman's sake. " And he sat upright in his bed, and fixed his dim eyesanxiously 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 sixhours. I had scarce drunk it ere these pains began. "

The stranger looked at the basin; some portion of the contents was yetleft there. 

"Who administered this to you?"

"Who? Jean! Who else should? I have no servant, --none! I am poor, verypoor, 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. Thestranger repaired to his own apartments, and returned in a few momentswith some preparation that had the instant result of an antidote. Thepain ceased, the blue and livid colour receded from the lips; the oldman fell into a profound sleep. The stranger drew the curtains round thebed, took up the light, and inspected the apartment. The walls of bothrooms were hung with drawings of masterly excellence. A portfoliowas filled with sketches of equal skill, --but these last were mostlysubjects that appalled the eye and revolted the taste: they displayedthe human figure in every variety of suffering, --the rack, the wheel, the gibbet; all that cruelty has invented to sharpen the pangs of deathseemed yet more dreadful from the passionate gusto and earnest force ofthe designer. And some of the countenances of those thus delineated weresufficiently removed from the ideal to show that they were portraits; ina large, bold, irregular hand was written beneath these drawings, "TheFuture of the Aristocrats. " In a corner of the room, and close by an oldbureau, was a small bundle, over which, as if to hide it, a cloak wasthrown carelessly. Several shelves were filled with books; thesewere almost entirely the works of the philosophers of the time, --thephilosophers of the material school, especially the Encyclopedistes, whom Robespierre afterwards so singularly attacked when the cowarddeemed it unsafe to leave his reign without a God. 

("Cette secte (les Encyclopedistes) propagea avec beaucoup de zelel'opinion du materialisme, qui prevalut parmi les grands et parmiles beaux esprits; on lui doit en partie cette espece de philosophiepratique qui, reduisant l'Egoisme en systeme regarde la societe humainecomme une guerre de ruse, le succes comme la regle du juste et del'injuste, la probite comme une affaire de gout, ou de bienseance, le monde comme le patrimoine des fripons adroits. "--"Discours deRobespierre, " Mai 7, 1794. (This sect (the Encyclopaedists) propagatewith much zeal the doctrine of materialism, which prevails amongthe great and the wits; we owe to it partly that kind of practicalphilosophy which, reducing Egotism to a system, looks upon society asa war of cunning; success the rule of right and wrong, honesty as anaffair of taste or decency: and the world as the patrimony of cleverscoundrels. ))

A volume lay on a table, --it was one of Voltaire, and the page wasopened at his argumentative assertion of the existence of the SupremeBeing. ("Histoire de Jenni. ") The margin was covered with pencillednotes, in the stiff but tremulous hand of old age; all in attempt torefute or to ridicule the logic of the sage of Ferney: Voltaire did notgo far enough for the annotator! The clock struck two, when the soundof steps was heard without. The stranger silently seated himself on thefarther side of the bed, and its drapery screened him, as he sat, fromthe eyes of a man who now entered on tiptoe; it was the same personwho had passed him on the stairs. The new-comer took up the candle andapproached the bed. The old man's face was turned to the pillow; but helay so still, and his breathing was so inaudible, that his sleep mightwell, by that hasty, shrinking, guilty glance, be mistaken for therepose of death. The new-comer drew back, and a grim smile passed overhis face: he replaced the candle on the table, opened the bureau witha key which he took from his pocket, and loaded himself with severalrouleaus of gold that he found in the drawers. At this time the old manbegan to wake. He stirred, he looked up; he turned his eyes towards thelight now waning in its socket; he saw the robber at his work; he saterect for an instant, as if transfixed, more even by astonishment thanterror. At last he sprang from his bed. 

"Just Heaven! do I dream! Thou--thou--thou, for whom I toiled andstarved!--THOU!"

The robber started; the gold fell from his hand, and rolled on thefloor. 

"What!" he said, "art thou not dead yet? Has the poison failed?"

"Poison, boy! Ah!" shrieked the old man, and covered his face with hishands; then, with sudden energy, he exclaimed, "Jean! Jean! recall thatword. Rob, plunder me if thou wilt, but do not say thou couldst murderone who only lived for thee! There, there, take the gold; I hoarded itbut for thee. Go! go!" and the old man, who in his passion had quittedhis bed, fell at the feet of the foiled assassin, and writhed on theground, --the mental agony more intolerable than that of the body, which he had so lately undergone. The robber looked at him with ahard disdain. "What have I ever done to thee, wretch?" cried the oldman, --"what but loved and cherished thee? Thou wert an orphan, --anoutcast. I nurtured, nursed, adopted thee as my son. If men call me amiser, it was but that none might despise thee, my heir, because Naturehas stunted and deformed thee, when I was no more. Thou wouldst havehad all when I was dead. Couldst thou not spare me a few months ordays, --nothing to thy youth, all that is left to my age? What have Idone 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, thatthere 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 nolife after this life'? Mankind! why should I love mankind? Hideous andmisshapen, mankind jeer at me as I pass the streets. What hast thou doneto me? Thou hast taken away from me, who am the scoff of this world, thehopes 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 haveprepared 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 Ispare thy life, how shall I be sure that thou wilt not inform againstmine?" He advanced with a gloomy scowl and a menacing gesture as hespoke. 

The old man's anger changed to fear. He cowered before the savage. "Letme 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 thoubelievest not in any God! Ha, ha! behold the result of thy lessons. "

Another moment and those murderous fingers would have strangled theirprey. But between the assassin and his victim rose a form that seemedalmost to both a visitor from the world that both denied, --stately withmajestic strength, glorious with awful beauty. 

The ruffian recoiled, looked, trembled, and then turned and fled fromthe 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 makearrangements for his future safety and mode of life. "For I have moneyyet left, " said the old man; "and henceforth have no motive to be amiser. " He proceeded then briefly to relate the origin and circumstancesof his connection with his intended murderer. 

It seems that in earlier life he had quarrelled with hisrelations, --from a difference in opinions of belief. Rejecting allreligion as a fable, he yet cultivated feelings that inclined him--forthough his intellect was weak, his dispositions were good--to thatfalse and exaggerated sensibility which its dupes so often mistakefor benevolence. He had no children; he resolved to adopt an enfantdu peuple. He resolved to educate this boy according to "reason. " Heselected an orphan of the lowest extraction, whose defects of person andconstitution only yet the more moved his pity, and finally engrossed hisaffection. In this outcast he not only loved a son, he loved a theory!He brought him up most philosophically. Helvetius had proved to himthat education can do all; and before he was eight years old, the littleJean's favourite expressions were, "La lumiere et la vertu. " (Light andvirtue. ) The boy showed talents, especially in art. 

The protector sought for a master who was as free from "superstition" ashimself, and selected the painter David. That person, as hideous ashis pupil, and whose dispositions were as vicious as his professionalabilities were undeniable, was certainly as free from "superstition" asthe protector could desire. It was reserved for Robespierre hereafterto make the sanguinary painter believe in the Etre Supreme. The boywas early sensible of his ugliness, which was almost preternatural. Hisbenefactor found it in vain to reconcile him to the malice of Nature byhis philosophical aphorisms; but when he pointed out to him that inthis world money, like charity, covers a multitude of defects, the boylistened eagerly and was consoled. To save money for his protege, --forthe 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? Explainyourself. "

"Alas! if thy pupil did not make this clear to thee last night from hisown 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 hehad sent for--and who, a native of Nancy, happened to be at Paris at thetime--entered the room. He was a man somewhat past thirty, and of a dry, saturnine, meagre countenance, restless eyes, and compressed lips. Helistened, with many ejaculations of horror, to his relation's recital, and sought earnestly, but in vain, to induce him to give informationagainst his protege. 

"Tush, tush, Rene Dumas!" said the old man, "you are a lawyer. You arebred to regard human life with contempt. Let any man break a law, andyou shout, 'Execute him!'"

"I!" cried Dumas, lifting up his hands and eyes: "venerable sage, howyou misjudge me! I lament more than any one the severity of our code. Ithink the state never should take away life, --no, not even the life ofa murderer. I agree with that young statesman, --MaximilienRobespierre, --that the executioner is the invention of the tyrant. Myvery attachment to our advancing revolution is, that it must sweep awaythis legal butchery. "

The lawyer paused, out of breath. The stranger regarded him fixedly andturned 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 seemedprophetic. "

"And that--"

"Was that we should meet again, when your opinions on Death and thephilosophy of Revolutions might be different. "

"Never!"

"You enchant me, Cousin Rene, " said the old man, who had listened to hisrelation with delight. "Ah, I see you have proper sentiments of justiceand philanthropy. Why did I not seek to know you before? You admire theRevolution;--you, equally with me, detest the barbarity of kings and thefraud of priests?"

"Detest! How could I love mankind if I did not?"

"And, " said the old man, hesitatingly, "you do not think, with thisnoble gentleman, that I erred in the precepts I instilled into thatwretched man?"

"Erred! Was Socrates to blame if Alcibiades was an adulterer and atraitor?"

"You hear him, you hear him! But Socrates had also a Plato; henceforthyou 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 moststubborn 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 Ican repay you, --if ever you want the heart's blood of Rene Dumas!" Thusvolubly delivering himself, he followed the stranger to the threshold ofthe second chamber, and there, gently detaining him, and after lookingover 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'stime, --you don't think, sir, that that scoundrel took away ALL the oldfool's money?"

"Was it thus Plato spoke of Socrates, Monsieur Dumas?"

"Ha, ha!--you are caustic. Well, you have a right. Sir, we shall meetagain. "

"AGAIN!" muttered the stranger, and his brow darkened. He hastened tohis chamber; he passed the day and the night alone, and in studies, nomatter of what nature, --they served to increase his gloom. 

What could ever connect his fate with Rene Dumas, or the fugitiveassassin? Why did the buoyant air of Paris seem to him heavy withthe steams of blood; why did an instinct urge him to fly from thosesparkling circles, from that focus of the world's awakened hopes, warning him from return?--he, whose lofty existence defied--but awaythese dreams and omens! He leaves France behind. Back, O Italy, to thymajestic wrecks! On the Alps his soul breathes the free air once more. Free air! Alas! let the world-healers exhaust their chemistry; man nevershall 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 bythe Actual, the Ideal lives only with Art and Beauty. Sweet Viola, bythe shores of the blue Parthenope, by Virgil's tomb, and the Cimmeriancavern, 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 statelydesk, --thy faithful barbiton has its share in the triumph. It is thymasterpiece which fills thy ear; it is thy daughter who fills thescene, --the music, the actress, so united, that applause to one isapplause to both. They make way for thee, at the orchestra, --they nolonger jeer and wink, when, with a fierce fondness, thou dost caressthy Familiar, that plains, and wails, and chides, and growls, under thyremorseless hand. They understand now how irregular is ever the symmetryof real genius. The inequalities in its surface make the moon luminousto man. Giovanni Paisiello, Maestro di Capella, if thy gentle soul couldknow envy, thou must sicken to see thy Elfrida and thy Pirro laid aside, and all Naples turned fanatic to the Siren, at whose measures shookquerulously thy gentle head! But thou, Paisiello, calm in the longprosperity of fame, knowest that the New will have its day, andcomfortest thyself that the Elfrida and the Pirro will live forever. Perhaps a mistake, but it is by such mistakes that true genius conquersenvy. "To be immortal, " says Schiller, "live in the whole. " To besuperior to the hour, live in thy self-esteem. The audience now wouldgive their ears for those variations and flights they were once wont tohiss. No!--Pisani has been two-thirds of a life at silent work on hismasterpiece: there is nothing he can add to THAT, however he might havesought to improve on the masterpieces of others. Is not this common?The least little critic, in reviewing some work of art, will say, "pitythis, and pity that;" "this should have been altered, --that omitted. "Yea, with his wiry fiddlestring will he creak out his accursedvariations. But let him sit down and compose himself. He sees noimprovement in variations THEN! Every man can control his fiddle when itis his own work with which its vagaries would play the devil. 

And Viola is the idol, the theme of Naples. She is the spoiled sultanaof the boards. To spoil her acting may be easy enough, --shall theyspoil her nature? No, I think not. There, at home, she is still goodand simple; and there, under the awning by the doorway, --there she stillsits, divinely musing. How often, crook-trunked tree, she looks to thygreen boughs; how often, like thee, in her dreams, and fancies, does shestruggle for the light, --not the light of the stage-lamps. Pooh, child!be contented with the lamps, even with the rush-lights. A farthingcandle is more convenient for household purposes than the stars. 

Weeks passed, and the stranger did not reappear; months had passed, andhis prophecy of sorrow was not yet fulfilled. One evening Pisani wastaken ill. His success had brought on the long-neglected composerpressing applications for concerti and sonata, adapted to his morepeculiar science on the violin. He had been employed for some weeks, dayand night, on a piece in which he hoped to excel himself. He took, asusual, one of those seemingly impracticable subjects which it was hispride to subject to the expressive powers of his art, --the terriblelegend connected with the transformation of Philomel. The pantomime ofsound opened with the gay merriment of a feast. The monarch of Thraceis at his banquet; a sudden discord brays through the joyous notes, --thestring seems to screech with horror. The king learns the murder of hisson by the hands of the avenging sisters. Swift rage the chords, throughthe passions of fear, of horror, of fury, and dismay. The father pursuesthe 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 ofher woes and wrongs. Now, it was in the midst of this complicated anddifficult attempt that the health of the over-tasked musician, excitedalike by past triumph and new ambition, suddenly gave way. He was takenill at night. The next morning the doctor pronounced that his diseasewas a malignant and infectious fever. His wife and Viola shared in theirtender watch; but soon that task was left to the last alone. The SignoraPisani caught the infection, and in a few hours was even in a state morealarming than that of her husband. The Neapolitans, in common with theinhabitants of all warm climates, are apt to become selfish and brutalin their dread of infectious disorders. Gionetta herself pretended to beill, to avoid the sick-chamber. The whole labour of love and sorrowfell on Viola. It was a terrible trial, --I am willing to hurry over thedetails. The wife died first!

One day, a little before sunset, Pisani woke partially recovered fromthe delirium which had preyed upon him, with few intervals, since thesecond day of the disease; and casting about him his dizzy and feebleeyes, he recognised Viola, and smiled. He faltered her name as he roseand stretched his arms. She fell upon his breast, and strove to suppressher 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 shallbe well now, --quite well. She will come to me when she wakes, --willshe?"

Viola could not speak; but she busied herself in pouring forth ananodyne, which she had been directed to give the sufferer as soon as thedelirium should cease. The doctor had told her, too, to send for him theinstant so important a change should occur. 

She went to the door and called to the woman who, during Gionetta'spretended illness, had been induced to supply her place; but thehireling answered not. She flew through the chambers to search for herin vain, --the hireling had caught Gionetta's fears, and vanished. Whatwas to be done? The case was urgent, --the doctor had declared not amoment should be lost in obtaining his attendance; she must leave herfather, --she must go herself! She crept back into the room, --the anodyneseemed already to have taken benign effect; the patient's eyes wereclosed, and he breathed regularly, as in sleep. She stole away, threwher veil over her face, and hurried from the house. 

Now the anodyne had not produced the effect which it appeared tohave done; instead of healthful sleep, it had brought on a kind oflight-headed somnolence, in which the mind, preternaturally restless, wandered about its accustomed haunts, waking up its old familiarinstincts and inclinations. It was not sleep, --it was not delirium;it was the dream-wakefulness which opium sometimes induces, when everynerve grows tremulously alive, and creates a corresponding activity inthe frame, to which it gives a false and hectic vigour. Pisani missedsomething, --what, he scarcely knew; it was a combination of the twowants most essential to his mental life, --the voice of his wife, thetouch of his Familiar. He rose, --he left his bed, he leisurely put onhis old dressing-robe, in which he had been wont to compose. He smiledcomplacently as the associations connected with the garment came overhis memory; he walked tremulously across the room, and entered the smallcabinet next to his chamber, in which his wife had been accustomed moreoften to watch than sleep, when illness separated her from his side. Theroom was desolate and void. He looked round wistfully, and mutteredto 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 ownsafety, if nothing else--nursed herself, in the remotest corner of thehouse, from the danger of infection. As he glided in, --wan, emaciated, with an uneasy, anxious, searching look in his haggard eyes, --the oldwoman shrieked aloud, and fell at his feet. He bent over her, passed histhin hands along her averted face, shook his head, and said in a hollowvoice, --

"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 caughtthe fever from you; it is infectious enough to kill a whole city. SanGennaro protect me! My poor mistress, she is dead, --buried, too; andI, your faithful Gionetta, woe is me! Go, go--to--to bed again, dearestmaster, --go!"

The poor musician stood for one moment mute and unmoving, then a slightshiver ran through his frame; he turned and glided back, silent andspectre-like, as he had entered. He came into the room where he had beenaccustomed to compose, --where his wife, in her sweet patience, had sooften sat by his side, and praised and flattered when the world had butjeered and scorned. In one corner he found the laurel-wreath she hadplaced 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 withhim; and as they gained the threshold, they heard a strain of music fromwithin, --a strain of piercing, heart-rending anguish. It was not likesome senseless instrument, mechanical in its obedience to a humanhand, --it was as some spirit calling, in wail and agony from the forlornshades, to the angels it beheld afar beyond the Eternal Gulf. Theyexchanged glances of dismay. They hurried into the house; they hastenedinto the room. Pisani turned, and his look, full of ghastly intelligenceand stern command, awed them back. The black mantilla, the fadedlaurel-leaf, lay there before him. Viola's heart guessed all at a singleglance; 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 ofthe man, half of the artist--the anguish, still a melody, was connectedwith sweeter sounds and thoughts. The nightingale had escaped thepursuit, --soft, airy, bird-like, thrilled the delicious notes a moment, and then died away. The instrument fell to the floor, and its chordssnapped. You heard that sound through the silence. The artist lookedon his kneeling child, and then on the broken chords. .. "Bury me by herside, " he said, in a very calm, low voice; "and THAT by mine. " And withthese words his whole frame became rigid, as if turned to stone. Thelast change passed over his face. He fell to the ground, sudden andheavy. The chords THERE, too, --the chords of the human instrument weresnapped asunder. As he fell, his robe brushed the laurel-wreath, andthat fell also, near but not in reach of the dead man's nerveless hand. 

Broken instrument, broken heart, withered laurel-wreath!--the settingsun through the vine-clad lattice streamed on all! So smiles the eternalNature on the wrecks of all that make life glorious! And not a sun thatsets 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 samecoffin. That famous Steiner--primeval Titan of the great Tyroleserace--often hast thou sought to scale the heavens, and therefore mustthou, like the meaner children of men, descend to the dismal Hades!Harder fate for thee than thy mortal master. For THY soul sleeps withthee in the coffin. And the music that belongs to HIS, separate fromthe instrument, ascends on high, to be heard often by a daughter's piousears when the heaven is serene and the earth sad. For there is a senseof hearing that the vulgar know not. And the voices of the dead breathesoft 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 lonelinesshad seemed from the cradle a thing that was not of nature. And atfirst the solitude and the stillness were insupportable. Have you, yemourners, 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-lovedone has made the hearth desolate, --have you not felt as if the gloom ofthe 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 obeythe impulse, when you fly from the walls, when in the strange place inwhich you seek your refuge nothing speaks to you of the lost, have yenot felt again a yearning for that very food to memory which was justbefore but bitterness and gall? Is it not almost impious and profaneto abandon that dear hearth to strangers? And the desertion of the homewhere your parents dwelt, and blessed you, upbraids your conscience asif you had sold their tombs. 

Beautiful was the Etruscan superstition that the ancestors become thehousehold gods. Deaf is the heart to which the Lares call from thedesolate floors in vain. At first Viola had, in her intolerable anguish, gratefully welcomed the refuge which the house and family of a kindlyneighbour, much attached to her father, and who was one of the orchestrathat Pisani shall perplex no more, had proffered to the orphan. But thecompany of the unfamiliar in our grief, the consolation of the stranger, how it irritates the wound! And then, to hear elsewhere the name offather, mother, child, --as if death came alone to you, --to see elsewherethe calm regularity of those lives united in love and order, keepingaccount of happy hours, the unbroken timepiece of home, as ifnowhere else the wheels were arrested, the chain shattered, the handsmotionless, the chime still! No, the grave itself does not remind us ofour loss like the company of those who have no loss to mourn. Go back tothy solitude, young orphan, --go back to thy home: the sorrow that meetsthee on the threshold can greet thee, even in its sadness, like thesmile upon the face of the dead. And there, from thy casement, andthere, from without thy door, thou seest still the tree, solitary asthyself, and springing from the clefts of the rock, but forcing its wayto light, --as, through all sorrow, while the seasons yet can renew theverdure 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 sunshine in vain for man and for the tree. 

Weeks and months--months sad and many--again passed, and Naples willnot longer suffer its idol to seclude itself from homage. The world everplucks us back from ourselves with a thousand arms. And again Viola'svoice is heard upon the stage, which, mystically faithful to life, is innought more faithful than this, that it is the appearances that fill thescene; 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 ashesof 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, tothe one servant whose faults, selfish as they were, Viola was tooinexperienced to perceive. And it was Gionetta who had placed her whenfirst born in her father's arms! She was surrounded by every snare, wooed by every solicitation that could beset her unguarded beauty andher dangerous calling. But her modest virtue passed unsullied throughthem all. It is true that she had been taught by lips now mute themaiden duties enjoined by honour and religion. And all love that spokenot of the altar only shocked and repelled her. But besides that, asgrief and solitude ripened her heart, and made her tremble at timesto think how deeply it could feel, her vague and early visions shapedthemselves into an ideal of love. And till the ideal is found, howthe shadow that it throws before it chills us to the actual! Withthat ideal, ever and ever, unconsciously, and with a certain awe andshrinking, came the shape and voice of the warning stranger. Nearly twoyears had passed since he had appeared at Naples. Nothing had been heardof him, save that his vessel had been directed, some months after hisdeparture, to sail for Leghorn. By the gossips of Naples, his existence, supposed so extraordinary, was wellnigh forgotten; but the heart ofViola was more faithful. Often he glided through her dreams, andwhen the wind sighed through that fantastic tree, associated with hisremembrance, she started with a tremor and a blush, as if she had heardhim speak. 

But amongst the train of her suitors was one to whom she listenedmore gently than to the rest; partly because, perhaps, he spoke inher mother's native tongue; partly because in his diffidence there waslittle to alarm and displease; partly because his rank, nearer toher own than that of lordlier wooers, prevented his admiration fromappearing insult; partly because he himself, eloquent and a dreamer, often uttered thoughts that were kindred to those buried deepest in hermind. She began to like, perhaps to love him, but as a sister loves;a sort of privileged familiarity sprung up between them. If in theEnglishman's breast arose wild and unworthy hopes, he had not yetexpressed them. Is there danger to thee here, lone Viola, or is thedanger greater in thy unfound ideal?

And now, as the overture to some strange and wizard spectacle, closesthis opening prelude. Wilt thou hear more? Come with thy faith prepared. I ask not the blinded eyes, but the awakened sense. As the enchantedIsle, 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 orSibyl (ancient in years, but ever young in aspect), offers thee nounhallowed 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 gentlemanwere seated under a tree, drinking their sherbet, and listening, in theintervals of conversation, to the music which enlivened that gay andfavourite resort of an indolent population. One of this little party wasa 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 onthe back, said, "What ails you, Glyndon? Are you ill? You have grownquite 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 itmyself. "

A man, apparently of about thirty years of age, and of a mien andcountenance 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 strangeand unaccountable sensation of coldness and awe creep over you; yourblood curdles, and the heart stands still; the limbs shiver; the hairbristles; you are afraid to look up, to turn your eyes to the darkercorners of the room; you have a horrible fancy that something unearthlyis 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 feltwhat I have thus imperfectly described?--if so, you can understand whatour young friend has just experienced, even amidst the delights of thismagical scene, and amidst the balmy whispers of a July night. "

"Sir, " replied Glyndon, evidently much surprised, "you have definedexactly the nature of that shudder which came over me. But how could mymanner 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, andhad felt, what the stranger had described. 

"According to one of our national superstitions, " said Mervale, theEnglishman who had first addressed Glyndon, "the moment you so feel yourblood creep, and your hair stand on end, some one is walking over thespot which shall be your grave. "

"There are in all lands different superstitions to account for so commonan occurrence, " replied the stranger: "one sect among the Arabians holdsthat at that instant God is deciding the hour either of your death, or of some one dear to you. The African savage, whose imagination isdarkened by the hideous rites of his gloomy idolatry, believes that theEvil Spirit is pulling you towards him by the hair: so do the Grotesqueand the Terrible mingle with each other. "

"It is evidently a mere physical accident, --a derangement of thestomach, a chill of the blood, " said a young Neapolitan, with whomGlyndon had formed a slight acquaintance. 

"Then why is it always coupled in all nations with some superstitiouspresentiment or terror, --some connection between the material frame andthe 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 andhorror with which our more human elements recoil from something, indeed, invisible, but antipathetic to our own nature; and from a knowledge ofwhich we are happily secured by the imperfection of our senses. "

"You are a believer in spirits, then?" said Mervale, with an increduloussmile. 

"Nay, it was not precisely of spirits that I spoke; but there may beforms of matter as invisible and impalpable to us as the animalculaein the air we breathe, --in the water that plays in yonder basin. Suchbeings may have passions and powers like our own--as the animalculae towhich I have compared them. The monster that lives and dies in a drop ofwater--carnivorous, insatiable, subsisting on the creatures minuter thanhimself--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 wouldbe dangerous and hostile to men, if Providence had not placed a wallbetween 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 andimmemorial as they are, merely fables?"

"Perhaps yes, --perhaps no, " answered the stranger, indifferently. "Butwho, in an age in which the reason has chosen its proper bounds, wouldbe mad enough to break the partition that divides him from the boa andthe lion, --to repine at and rebel against the law which confines theshark 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 CountCetoxa. "If you remember, it was as my companion that he joined you. He visited Naples about two years ago, and has recently returned; he isvery rich, --indeed, enormously so. A most agreeable person. I am sorryto hear him talk so strangely to-night; it serves to encourage thevarious foolish reports that are circulated concerning him. "

"And surely, " said another Neapolitan, "the circumstance that occurredbut the other day, so well known to yourself, Cetoxa, justifies thereports you pretend to deprecate. "

"Myself and my countryman, " said Glyndon, "mix so little in Neapolitansociety, that we lose much that appears well worthy of lively interest. May I enquire what are the reports, and what is the circumstance yourefer to?"

"As to the reports, gentlemen, " said Cetoxa, courteously, addressinghimself to the two Englishmen, "it may suffice to observe, that theyattribute to the Signor Zanoni certain qualities which everybody desiresfor himself, but damns any one else for possessing. The incident SignorBelgioso 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 publicgaming-tables, they bowed assent to the conjecture. ) Cetoxa continued. "Well, then, not many days since, and on the very day that Zanonireturned to Naples, it so happened that I had been playing pretty high, and had lost considerably. I rose from the table, resolved no longer totempt fortune, when I suddenly perceived Zanoni, whose acquaintance Ihad before made (and who, I may say, was under some slight obligation tome), standing by, a spectator. Ere I could express my gratification atthis unexpected recognition, he laid his hand on my arm. 'You have lostmuch, ' 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 thissum 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 tonewith him it was impossible to resist; besides, I was burning to recovermy 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 wellas 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; myluck rose, --I invariably won. In fact, I rose from the table a richman. "

"There can be no foul play at the public tables, especially when foulplay 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 allill-bred, bad-tempered fellows) grew angry and insolent. 'Sir, ' said he, turning to my new friend, 'you have no business to stand so near tothe table. I do not understand this; you have not acted fairly. ' Zanonireplied, with great composure, that he had done nothing against therules, --that he was very sorry that one man could not win withoutanother man losing; and that he could not act unfairly, even if disposedto do so. The Sicilian took the stranger's mildness for apprehension, and blustered more loudly. In fact, he rose from the table, andconfronted Zanoni in a manner that, to say the least of it, wasprovoking to any gentleman who has some quickness of temper, or someskill with the small-sword. "

"And, " interrupted Belgioso, "the most singular part of the whole to mewas, that this Zanoni, who stood opposite to where I sat, and whose faceI distinctly saw, made no remark, showed no resentment. He fixed hiseyes steadfastly on the Sicilian; never shall I forget that look! it isimpossible to describe it, --it froze the blood in my veins. The Sicilianstaggered 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, thusdisarmed by a look from Zanoni, turned his whole anger upon me, THE--butperhaps you do not know, gentlemen, that I have some repute with myweapon?"

"The best swordsman in Italy, " said Belgioso. 

"Before I could guess why or wherefore, " resumed Cetoxa, "I found myselfin the garden behind the house, with Ughelli (that was the Sicilian'sname) facing me, and five or six gentlemen, the witnesses of the duelabout to take place, around. Zanoni beckoned me aside. 'This man willfall, ' said he. 'When he is on the ground, go to him, and ask whether hewill 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 mademe no answer, and the next moment I was engaged with the Sicilian. Todo him justice, his imbrogliato was magnificent, and a swifter loungernever crossed a sword; nevertheless, " added Cetoxa, with a pleasingmodesty, "he was run through the body. I went up to him; he couldscarcely speak. 'Have you any request to make, --any affairs to settle?'He shook his head. 'Where would you wish to be interred?' He pointedtowards the Sicilian coast. 'What!' said I, in surprise, 'NOT by theside of your father, in the church of San Gennaro?' As I spoke, his facealtered terribly; he uttered a piercing shriek, --the blood gushed fromhis mouth, and he fell dead. The most strange part of the story is tocome. We buried him in the church of San Gennaro. In doing so, we tookup his father's coffin; the lid came off in moving it, and the skeletonwas visible. In the hollow of the skull we found a very slender wire ofsharp steel; this caused surprise and inquiry. The father, who was richand a miser, had died suddenly, and been buried in haste, owing, itwas said, to the heat of the weather. Suspicion once awakened, theexamination became minute. The old man's servant was questioned, and atlast confessed that the son had murdered the sire. The contrivance wasingenious: the wire was so slender that it pierced to the brain, and drew but one drop of blood, which the grey hairs concealed. Theaccomplice will be executed. "

"And Zanoni, --did he give evidence, did he account for--"

"No, " interrupted the count: "he declared that he had by accidentvisited the church that morning; that he had observed the tombstone ofthe Count Ughelli; that his guide had told him the count's son was inNaples, --a spendthrift and a gambler. While we were at play, he hadheard the count mentioned by name at the table; and when the challengewas given and accepted, it had occurred to him to name the place ofburial, by an instinct which he either could not or would not accountfor. "

"A very lame story, " said Mervale. 

"Yes! but we Italians are superstitious, --the alleged instinct wasregarded by many as the whisper of Providence. The next day the strangerbecame an object of universal interest and curiosity. His wealth, hismanner of living, his extraordinary personal beauty, have assisted alsoto make him the rage; besides, I have had the pleasure in introducing soeminent 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 walkedhomeward. 

"Why, it is very clear that this Zanoni is some imposter, --some cleverrogue; and the Neapolitan shares the booty, and puffs him off with allthe hackneyed charlatanism of the marvellous. An unknown adventurer getsinto society by being made an object of awe and curiosity; he is morethan ordinarily handsome, and the women are quite content to receive himwithout any other recommendation than his own face and Cetoxa's fables. "

"I cannot agree with you. Cetoxa, though a gambler and a rake, is anobleman of birth and high repute for courage and honour. Besides, this stranger, with his noble presence and lofty air, --so calm, sounobtrusive, --has nothing in common with the forward garrulity of animposter. "

"My dear Glyndon, pardon me; but you have not yet acquired any knowledgeof the world! The stranger makes the best of a fine person, and hisgrand air is but a trick of the trade. But to change the subject, --howadvances 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 dreamof 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 andindependent. His parents were dead, and his nearest relation was anonly sister, left in England under the care of her aunt, and many yearsyounger than himself. Early in life he had evinced considerable promisein the art of painting, and rather from enthusiasm than any pecuniarynecessity for a profession, he determined to devote himself to acareer in which the English artist generally commences with raptureand historical composition, to conclude with avaricious calculation andportraits of Alderman Simpkins. Glyndon was supposed by his friends topossess no inconsiderable genius; but it was of a rash and presumptuousorder. He was averse from continuous and steady labour, and his ambitionrather sought to gather the fruit than to plant the tree. In common withmany artists in their youth, he was fond of pleasure and excitement, yielding with little forethought to whatever impressed his fancy orappealed to his passions. He had travelled through the more celebratedcities of Europe, with the avowed purpose and sincere resolution ofstudying the divine masterpieces of his art. But in each, pleasure hadtoo often allured him from ambition, and living beauty distracted hisworship from the senseless canvas. Brave, adventurous, vain, restless, inquisitive, he was ever involved in wild projects and pleasantdangers, --the creature of impulse and the slave of imagination. 

It was then the period when a feverish spirit of change was workingits way to that hideous mockery of human aspirations, the Revolutionof France; and from the chaos into which were already jarring thesanctities of the World's Venerable Belief, arose many shapeless andunformed chimeras. Need I remind the reader that, while that was the dayfor polished scepticism and affected wisdom, it was the day also for themost egregious credulity and the most mystical superstitions, --the dayin which magnetism and magic found converts amongst the disciples ofDiderot; when prophecies were current in every mouth; when the salonof a philosophical deist was converted into an Heraclea, in whichnecromancy professed to conjure up the shadows of the dead; when theCrosier and the Book were ridiculed, and Mesmer and Cagliostro werebelieved. In that Heliacal Rising, heralding the new sun before whichall vapours were to vanish, stalked from their graves in the feudalages all the phantoms that had flitted before the eyes of Paracelsusand Agrippa. Dazzled by the dawn of the Revolution, Glyndon was yet moreattracted by its strange accompaniments; and natural it was with him, aswith others, that the fancy which ran riot amidst the hopes of a socialUtopia, should grasp with avidity all that promised, out of the dustytracks of the beaten science, the bold discoveries of some marvellousElysium. 

In his travels he had listened with vivid interest, at least, ifnot with implicit belief, to the wonders told of each more renownedGhost-seer, and his mind was therefore prepared for the impression whichthe mysterious Zanoni at first sight had produced upon it. 

There might be another cause for this disposition to credulity. Aremote ancestor of Glyndon's on the mother's side, had achieved noinconsiderable reputation as a philosopher and alchemist. Strangestories were afloat concerning this wise progenitor. He was said tohave lived to an age far exceeding the allotted boundaries of mortalexistence, and to have preserved to the last the appearance of middlelife. He had died at length, it was supposed, of grief for the suddendeath of a great-grandchild, the only creature he had ever appeared tolove. The works of this philosopher, though rare, were extant, and foundin the library of Glyndon's home. Their Platonic mysticism, their boldassertions, the high promises that might be detected through theirfigurative and typical phraseology, had early made a deep impression onthe young imagination of Clarence Glyndon. His parents, not alive to theconsequences of encouraging fancies which the very enlightenment of theage appeared to them sufficient to prevent or dispel, were fond, in thelong winter nights, of conversing on the traditional history of thisdistinguished progenitor. And Clarence thrilled with a fearful pleasurewhen his mother playfully detected a striking likeness between thefeatures of the young heir and the faded portrait of the alchemist thatoverhung their mantelpiece, and was the boast of their household and theadmiration of their friends, --the child is, indeed, more often than wethink for, "the father of the man. "

I have said that Glyndon was fond of pleasure. Facile, as geniusever must be, to cheerful impression, his careless artist-life, ereartist-life settles down to labour, had wandered from flower to flower. He had enjoyed, almost to the reaction of satiety, the gay revelries ofNaples, 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 notsatisfy his whole heart and fill up his whole nature; not from want ofstrong and noble passions, but because his mind was not yet matured andsettled enough for their development. As there is one season for theblossom, another for the fruit; so it is not till the bloom of fancybegins to fade, that the heart ripens to the passions that the bloomprecedes and foretells. Joyous alike at his lonely easel or amidst hisboon companions, he had not yet known enough of sorrow to love deeply. For man must be disappointed with the lesser things of life beforehe can comprehend the full value of the greatest. It is the shallowsensualists of France, who, in their salon-language, call love "afolly, "--love, better understood, is wisdom. Besides, the world was toomuch with Clarence Glyndon. His ambition of art was associated with theapplause and estimation of that miserable minority of the surface thatwe 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 thehazard of seriously proposing marriage to an Italian actress; but themodest dignity of the girl, and something good and generous in his ownnature, had hitherto made him shrink from any more worldly but lesshonourable designs. Thus the familiarity between them seemed rather thatof kindness and regard than passion. He attended the theatre; he stolebehind the scenes to converse with her; he filled his portfolio withcountless sketches of a beauty that charmed him as an artist as well aslover; and day after day he floated on through a changing sea ofdoubt and irresolution, of affection and distrust. The last, indeed, constantly sustained against his better reason by the sober admonitionsof 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 theother side of the Cavern of Posilipo. It was past noon; the sun had lostits early fervour, and a cool breeze sprung up voluptuously from thesparkling sea. Bending over a fragment of stone near the roadside, he perceived the form of a man; and when he approached, he recognisedZanoni. 

The Englishman saluted him courteously. "Have you discovered someantique?" said he, with a smile; "they are common as pebbles on thisroad. "

"No, " replied Zanoni; "it was but one of those antiques that havetheir date, indeed, from the beginning of the world, but which Natureeternally withers and renews. " So saying, he showed Glyndon a small herbwith 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 tothe modern philosophy of commonplace and surface! Do you imagine therewas no foundation for those traditions which come dimly down fromremoter ages, --as shells now found on the mountain-tops inform us wherethe seas have been? What was the old Colchian magic, but the minutestudy of Nature in her lowliest works? What the fable of Medea, but aproof of the powers that may be extracted from the germ and leaf? Themost gifted of all the Priestcrafts, the mysterious sisterhoods of Cuth, concerning whose incantations Learning vainly bewilders itself amidstthe maze of legends, sought in the meanest herbs what, perhaps, theBabylonian Sages explored in vain amidst the loftiest stars. Traditionyet tells you that there existed a race ("Plut. Symp. " l. 5. C. 7. ) whocould slay their enemies from afar, without weapon, without movement. The herb that ye tread on may have deadlier powers than your engineerscan give to their mightiest instruments of war. Can you guess that tothese Italian shores, to the old Circaean Promontory, came the Wisefrom the farthest East, to search for plants and simples which yourPharmacists of the Counter would fling from them as weeds? The firstherbalists--the master chemists of the world--were the tribe thatthe ancient reverence called by the name of Titans. (Syncellus, page14. --"Chemistry the Invention of the Giants. ") I remember once, by theHebrus, in the reign of -- But this talk, " said Zanoni, checking himselfabruptly, and with a cold smile, "serves only to waste your time and myown. " 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: butpass on; your desire cannot be satisfied. "

"You have not the politeness of your countrymen, " said Glyndon, somewhatdiscomposed. "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 theyso desire; but ME, in return, they can never comprehend. If you ask myacquaintance, 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 bedangerous to others. If I were to predict your fortune by the vaincalculations of the astrologer, I should tell you, in their despicablejargon, 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 astheirs. 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 andperplexed me. "

"I know it: minds like yours are attracted by mystery. "

Glyndon was piqued at these words, though in the tone in which they werespoken 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 standingbehind the scenes watching Viola, who was on the stage in one of hermost brilliant parts. The house resounded with applause. Glyndon wastransported with a young man's passion and a young man's pride: "Thisglorious creature, " thought he, "may yet be mine. "

He felt, while thus wrapped in delicious reverie, a slight touch uponhis shoulder; he turned, and beheld Zanoni. "You are in danger, " saidthe latter. "Do not walk home to-night; or if you do, go not alone. "

Before Glyndon recovered from his surprise, Zanoni disappeared; and whenthe Englishman saw him again, he was in the box of one of the Neapolitannobles, where Glyndon could not follow him. 

Viola now left the stage, and Glyndon accosted her with an unaccustomedwarmth of gallantry. But Viola, contrary to her gentle habit, turnedwith an evident impatience from the address of her lover. Taking asideGionetta, who was her constant attendant at the theatre, she said, in anearnest whisper, --

"Oh, Gionetta! He is here again!--the stranger of whom I spoke tothee!--and again, he alone, of the whole theatre, withholds from me hisapplause. "

"Which is he, my darling?" said the old woman, with fondness in hervoice. "He must indeed be dull--not worth a thought. "

The actress drew Gionetta nearer to the stage, and pointed out to her aman in one of the boxes, conspicuous amongst all else by the simplicityof 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 gazedat her with a look of sorrowful reproach. 

The scene on which the actress now entered was that of the finalcatastrophe, wherein all her remarkable powers of voice and art werepre-eminently called forth. The house hung on every word with breathlessworship; but the eyes of Viola sought only those of one calm and unmovedspectator; she exerted herself as if inspired. Zanoni listened, andobserved her with an attentive gaze, but no approval escaped his lips;no emotion changed the expression of his cold and half-disdainfulaspect. Viola, who was in the character of one who loved, but withoutreturn, never felt so acutely the part she played. Her tears weretruthful; her passion that of nature: it was almost too terrible tobehold. She was borne from the stage exhausted and insensible, amidstsuch a tempest of admiring rapture as Continental audiences alone canraise. The crowd stood up, handkerchiefs waved, garlands and flowerswere thrown on the stage, --men wiped their eyes, and women sobbed aloud. 

"By heavens!" said a Neapolitan of great rank, "She has fired me beyondendurance. To-night--this very night--she shall be mine! You havearranged all, Mascari?"

"All, signor. And the young Englishman?"

"The presuming barbarian! As I before told thee, let him bleed for hisfolly. I will have no rival. "

"But an Englishman! There is always a search after the bodies of theEnglish. "

"Fool! is not the sea deep enough, or the earth secret enough, to hideone dead man? Our ruffians are silent as the grave itself; and I!--whowould dare to suspect, to arraign the Prince di --? See to it, --thisnight. I trust him to you. Robbers murder him, you understand, --thecountry swarms with them; plunder and strip him, the better to favoursuch 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 wereboth less expensive and more necessary. The vehicle which was regularlyengaged by the young actress was not to be found. Gionetta, too aware ofthe beauty of her mistress and the number of her admirers to contemplatewithout alarm the idea of their return on foot, communicated herdistress to Glyndon, and he besought Viola, who recovered but slowly, to accept his own carriage. Perhaps before that night she would nothave rejected so slight a service. Now, for some reason or other, sherefused. Glyndon, offended, was retiring sullenly, when Gionetta stoppedhim. "Stay, signor, " said she, coaxingly: "the dear signora is notwell, --do not be angry with her; I will make her accept your offer. "

Glyndon stayed, and after a few moments spent in expostulation onthe part of Gionetta, and resistance on that of Viola, the offer wasaccepted. Gionetta and her charge entered the carriage, and Glyndon wasleft at the door of the theatre to return home on foot. The mysteriouswarning of Zanoni then suddenly occurred to him; he had forgotten itin the interest of his lover's quarrel with Viola. He thought it nowadvisable to guard against danger foretold by lips so mysterious. He looked round for some one he knew: the theatre was disgorgingits crowds; they hustled, and jostled, and pressed upon him; but herecognised no familiar countenance. While pausing irresolute, he heardMervale's voice calling on him, and, to his great relief, discovered hisfriend 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 thetheatre, ' said he; 'do not let him go home on foot to-night; the streetsof Naples are not always safe. ' I immediately remembered that some ofthe 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. AsGlyndon entered the carriage and drew up the glass, he saw four menstanding apart by the pavement, who seemed to eye him with attention. 

"Cospetto!" cried one; "that is the Englishman!" Glyndon imperfectlyheard the exclamation as the carriage drove on. He reached home insafety. 

The familiar and endearing intimacy which always exists in Italy betweenthe 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 closerthan usual, in a situation so friendless as that of the orphan-actress. In all that concerned the weaknesses of the heart, Gionetta had largeexperience; and when, three nights before, Viola, on returning from thetheatre, had wept bitterly, the nurse had succeeded in extracting fromher a confession that she had seen one, --not seen for two weary andeventful years, --but never forgotten, and who, alas! had not evinced theslightest recognition of herself. Gionetta could not comprehend all thevague and innocent emotions that swelled this sorrow; but she resolvedthem all, with her plain, blunt understanding, to the one sentimentof love. And here, she was well fitted to sympathise and console. Confidante to Viola's entire and deep heart she never could be, --forthat heart never could have words for all its secrets. But suchconfidence as she could obtain, she was ready to repay by the mostunreproving pity and the most ready service. 

"Have you discovered who he is?" asked Viola, as she was now alone inthe carriage with Gionetta. 

"Yes; he is the celebrated Signor Zanoni, about whom all the greatladies have gone mad. They say he is so rich!--oh! so much richer thanany of the Inglesi!--not but what the Signor Glyndon--"

"Cease!" interrupted the young actress. "Zanoni! Speak of the Englishmanno more. "

The carriage was now entering that more lonely and remote part of thecity 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, wasalready pinioned in the arms of two men; the next moment the door wasopened 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, andendeavoured to lift her from the carriage. But Gionetta was no ordinaryally, --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 wellprotected. Here, Luigi, Giovanni! seize the hag!--quick!--why loiterye?"

The mask retired from the door, and another and yet taller formpresented itself. "Be calm, Viola Pisani, " said he, in a low voice;"with me you are indeed safe!" He lifted his mask as he spoke, andshowed the noble features of Zanoni. 

"Be calm, be hushed, --I can save you. " He vanished, leaving Viola lostin surprise, agitation, and delight. There were, in all, nine masks:two were engaged with the driver; one stood at the head of thecarriage-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 threeZanoni motioned; they advanced; he pointed towards the first mask, whowas in fact the Prince di --, and to his unspeakable astonishment theprince 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 arethree men, --we six, armed to the teeth. Thank our mercy that we spareyour lives. Go!"

The men gave way, dismayed. The driver remounted. 

"Cut the traces of their carriage and the bridles of their horses, " saidZanoni, as he entered the vehicle containing Viola, which now drove onrapidly, leaving the discomfited ravisher in a state of rage and stuporimpossible to describe. 

"Allow me to explain this mystery to you, " said Zanoni. "I discoveredthe plot against you, --no matter how; I frustrated it thus: The head ofthis design is a nobleman, who has long persecuted you in vain. Heand two of his creatures watched you from the entrance of the theatre, having directed six others to await him on the spot where you wereattacked; myself and five of my servants supplied their place, and weremistaken for his own followers. I had previously ridden alone to thespot where the men were waiting, and informed them that their masterwould not require their services that night. They believed me, andaccordingly dispersed. I then joined my own band, whom I had left in therear; 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 thewild melodies of Pisani; and now, as she saw this mysterious, haunting, yet beautiful and stately stranger, standing on the very spot whereshe had sat at her father's feet, thrilled and spellbound, --she almostthought, in her fantastic way of personifying her own airy notions, that that spiritual Music had taken shape and life, and stood before herglorious in the image it assumed. She was unconscious all the while ofher own loveliness. She had thrown aside her hood and veil; her hair, somewhat disordered, fell over the ivory neck which the dress partiallydisplayed; and as her dark eyes swam with grateful tears, and her cheekflushed with its late excitement, the god of light and music himselfnever, amidst his Arcadian valleys, wooed, in his mortal guise, maidenor nymph more fair. 

Zanoni gazed at her with a look in which admiration seemed not unmingledwith compassion. He muttered a few words to himself, and then addressedher 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 avenal administration, is a man above the law. He is capable of everycrime; but amongst his passions he has such prudence as belongs toambition; if you were not to reconcile yourself to your shame, you wouldnever enter the world again to tell your tale. The ravisher has no heartfor repentance, but he has a hand that can murder. I have saved you, Viola. Perhaps you would ask me wherefore?" Zanoni paused, and smiledmournfully, as he added, "You will not wrong me by the thought that hewho 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; enoughthat I know pity, and am not ungrateful for affection. Why blush, whytremble at the word? I read your heart while I speak, and I see notone 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 yourimagination. 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 yourguest. The Englishman, Glyndon, loves thee well, --better, perhaps, thanI can ever love; if not worthy of thee, yet, he has but to know theemore to deserve thee better. He may wed thee, he may bear thee to hisown free and happy land, --the land of thy mother's kin. Forget me; teachthyself to return and deserve his love; and I tell thee that thou wiltbe 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 facewith her hands, and wept. And yet, much as his words were calculated tohumble or irritate, to produce indignation or excite shame, those werenot the feelings with which her eyes streamed and her heart swelled. Thewoman at that moment was lost in the child; and AS a child, with all itsexacting, craving, yet innocent desire to be loved, weeps in unrebukingsadness 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 itsredundant tresses, bent before him; and after a moment's pause he drewnear to her, and said, in a voice of the most soothing sweetness, andwith a half smile upon his lip, --

"Do you remember, when I told you to struggle for the light, that Ipointed for example to the resolute and earnest tree? I did not tellyou, fair child, to take example by the moth, that would soar to thestar, 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 himin the same grave in death! And I--but THAT view of the future shouldconcern us not. Look into thy heart, and thou wilt see that till againmy shadow crossed thy path, there had grown up for this thine equal apure and calm affection that would have ripened into love. Hast thounever pictured to thyself a home in which thy partner was thy youngwooer?"

"Never!" said Viola, with sudden energy, --"never but to feel that suchwas not the fate ordained me. And, oh!" she continued, rising suddenly, and, putting aside the tresses that veiled her face, she fixed her eyesupon the questioner, --"and, oh! whoever thou art that thus wouldst readmy soul and shape my future, do not mistake the sentiment that, that--"she faltered an instant, and went on with downcast eyes, --"that hasfascinated my thoughts to thee. Do not think that I could nourish a loveunsought 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, towound!" Again she paused, again her voice faltered; the tears trembledon her eyelids; she brushed them away and resumed. "No, not love, --ifthat be love which I have heard and read of, and sought to simulateon the stage, --but a more solemn, fearful, and, it seems to me, almostpreternatural attraction, which makes me associate thee, waking ordreaming, with images that at once charm and awe. Thinkest thou, if itwere love, that I could speak to thee thus; that, " she raised her lookssuddenly 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 tome of others. Forewarn, rebuke, bruise my heart, reject the not unworthygratitude it offers thee, if thou wilt, but come not always to me asan omen of grief and trouble. Sometimes have I seen thee in my dreamssurrounded by shapes of glory and light; thy looks radiant with acelestial joy which they wear not now. Stranger, thou hast saved me, andI thank and bless thee! Is that also a homage thou wouldst reject?"With these words, she crossed her arms meekly on her bosom, and inclinedlowlily before him. Nor did her humility seem unwomanly or abject, northat of mistress to lover, of slave to master, but rather of a child toits guardian, of a neophyte of the old religion to her priest. Zanoni'sbrow was melancholy and thoughtful. He looked at her with a strangeexpression 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 toyourself--perhaps to both of us--which you court? Do you know that mylife, separated from the turbulent herd of men, is one worship of theBeautiful, from which I seek to banish what the Beautiful inspires inmost? As a calamity, I shun what to man seems the fairest fate, --thelove of the daughters of earth. At present I can warn and save thee frommany 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 tocomprehend. I bid thee banish from thy heart all thought of me, butas one whom the Future cries aloud to thee to avoid. Glyndon, if thouacceptest 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, shewould have given worlds to recall the exclamation. 

"Yes, Viola, I might love thee; but in that love what sorrow and whatchange! The flower gives perfume to the rock on whose heart it grows. Alittle while, and the flower is dead; but the rock still endures, --thesnow at its breast, the sunshine on its summit. Pause, --think well. Danger besets thee yet. For some days thou shalt be safe from thyremorseless persecutor; but the hour soon comes when thy only securitywill be in flight. If the Englishman love thee worthily, thy honour willbe dear to him as his own; if not, there are yet other lands where lovewill 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 Gionettadiscreetly stood. Zanoni lightly laid his hand on her arm. With the gayaccent of a jesting cavalier, he said, --

"The Signor Glyndon woos your mistress; he may wed her. I know your lovefor her. Disabuse her of any caprice for me. I am a bird ever on thewing. "

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 quartersof the city. It still stands, now ruined and dismantled, a monument ofthe splendour of a chivalry long since vanished from Naples, with thelordly races of the Norman and the Spaniard. 

As he entered the rooms reserved for his private hours, two Indians, inthe dress of their country, received him at the threshold with the gravesalutations of the East. They had accompanied him from the far lands inwhich, according to rumour, he had for many years fixed his home. But they could communicate nothing to gratify curiosity or justifysuspicion. They spoke no language but their own. With the exception ofthese two his princely retinue was composed of the native hirelings ofthe city, whom his lavish but imperious generosity made the implicitcreatures of his will. In his house, and in his habits, so far as theywere seen, there was nothing to account for the rumours which werecirculated abroad. He was not, as we are told of Albertus Magnus or thegreat Leonardo da Vinci, served by airy forms; and no brazen image, theinvention of magic mechanism, communicated to him the influences ofthe stars. None of the apparatus of the alchemist--the crucible and themetals--gave solemnity to his chambers, or accounted for his wealth;nor did he even seem to interest himself in those serener studies whichmight be supposed to colour his peculiar conversation with abstractnotions, and often with recondite learning. No books spoke to him in hissolitude; and if ever he had drawn from them his knowledge, it seemednow that the only page he read was the wide one of Nature, and thata capacious and startling memory supplied the rest. Yet was there oneexception to what in all else seemed customary and commonplace, andwhich, according to the authority we have prefixed to this chapter, might indicate the follower of the occult sciences. Whether at Rome orNaples, or, in fact, wherever his abode, he selected one room remotefrom the rest of the house, which was fastened by a lock scarcely largerthan the seal of a ring, yet which sufficed to baffle the most cunninginstruments of the locksmith: at least, one of his servants, prompted byirresistible curiosity, had made the attempt in vain; and though he hadfancied it was tried in the most favourable time for secrecy, --not asoul near, in the dead of night, Zanoni himself absent from home, --yethis superstition, or his conscience, told him the reason why the nextday the Major Domo quietly dismissed him. He compensated himself forthis misfortune by spreading his own story, with a thousand amusingexaggerations. He declared that, as he approached the door, invisiblehands seemed to pluck him away; and that when he touched the lock, hewas struck, as by a palsy, to the ground. One surgeon, who heard thetale, observed, to the distaste of the wonder-mongers, that possiblyZanoni made a dexterous use of electricity. Howbeit, this room, once sosecured, was never entered save by Zanoni himself. 

The solemn voice of Time, from the neighbouring church at last arousedthe lord of the palace from the deep and motionless reverie, ratherresembling 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 inthe Infinite! Soul of mine, the luminous, the Augoeides (Augoeides, --aword favoured by the mystical Platonists, sphaira psuches augoeides, otan mete ekteinetai epi ti, mete eso suntreche mete sunizane, allaphoti lampetai, o ten aletheian opa ten panton, kai ten en aute. --Marc. Ant. , lib. 2. --The sense of which beautiful sentence of the oldphilosophy, which, as Bayle well observes, in his article on CorneliusAgrippa, the modern Quietists have (however impotently) sought toimitate, is to the effect that 'the sphere of the soul is luminous whennothing external has contact with the soul itself; but when lit by itsown light, it sees the truth of all things and the truth centred initself. '), why descendest thou from thy sphere, --why from the eternal, starlike, and passionless Serene, shrinkest thou back to the mists ofthe dark sarcophagus? How long, too austerely taught that companionshipwith 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 dawnbroke into sudden song from amidst the orange-trees in the garden belowhis casement; and as suddenly, song answered song; the mate, awakened atthe note, gave back its happy answer to the bird. He listened; and notthe soul he had questioned, but the heart replied. He rose, and withrestless strides paced the narrow floor. "Away from this world!" heexclaimed at length, with an impatient tone. "Can no time loosen itsfatal ties? As the attraction that holds the earth in space, is theattraction 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, andentered 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 youngman's imagination, naturally inflammable, was singularly excited by thelittle he had seen and heard of this strange being, --a spell, he couldneither master nor account for, attracted him towards the stranger. Zanoni's power seemed mysterious and great, his motives kindly andbenevolent, yet his manners chilling and repellent. Why at one momentreject Glyndon's acquaintance, at another save him from danger? Howhad Zanoni thus acquired the knowledge of enemies unknown to Glyndonhimself? His interest was deeply roused, his gratitude appealed to; heresolved 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 toentreat you to complete my obligation by informing me of the quarter towhich I may look for enmity and peril. "

"You are a gallant, " said Zanoni, with a smile, and in the Englishlanguage, "and do you know so little of the South as not to be awarethat gallants have always rivals?"

"Are you serious?" said Glyndon, colouring. 

"Most serious. You love Viola Pisani; you have for rival one of the mostpowerful and relentless of the Neapolitan princes. Your danger is indeedgreat. "

"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 whatto do. "

"Would you follow my advice?"

"Why not?"

"Because you are constitutionally brave; you are fond of excitement andmystery; you like to be the hero of a romance. Were I to advise you toleave Naples, would you do so while Naples contains a foe to confront ora mistress to pursue?"

"You are right, " said the young Englishman, with energy. "No! and youcannot reproach me for such a resolution. "

"But there is another course left to you: do you love Viola Pisani trulyand fervently?--if so, marry her, and take a bride to your native land. "

"Nay, " answered Glyndon, embarrassed; "Viola is not of my rank. Herprofession, too, is--in short, I am enslaved by her beauty, but I cannotwed her. "

Zanoni frowned. 

"Your love, then, is but selfish lust, and I advise you to your ownhappiness no more. Young man, Destiny is less inexorable than itappears. The resources of the great Ruler of the Universe are not soscanty and so stern as to deny to men the divine privilege of FreeWill; all of us can carve out our own way, and God can make our verycontradictions harmonise with His solemn ends. You have before youan option. Honourable and generous love may even now work out yourhappiness, and effect your escape; a frantic and selfish passion willbut 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, witha smile, "are you yourself so indifferent to youth and beauty as to actthe 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 theindividual can affect but a small circle beyond himself; the permanentgood or evil that he works to others lies rather in the sentiments hecan diffuse. His acts are limited and momentary; his sentiments maypervade the universe, and inspire generations till the day of doom. Allour virtues, all our laws, are drawn from books and maxims, which AREsentiments, not from deeds. In conduct, Julian had the virtues of aChristian, and Constantine the vices of a Pagan. The sentiments ofJulian 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 inthe miracles of San Gennaro, may be a better man than Luther; to thesentiments of Luther the mind of modern Europe is indebted for thenoblest revolution it has known. Our opinions, young Englishman, are theangel 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 anative, I--"

"Tush!" interrupted Zanoni, impatiently turning away. Then, after apause, he resumed in a mild voice, "Glyndon, do you renounce ViolaPisani? 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 themost mournful dejection. Glyndon was enraged, confounded, and yetawed. However, he had a brave English heart within his breast, and herecovered himself quickly. 

"Signor, " said he, calmly, "I am not to be duped by these solemn phrasesand these mystical assumptions. You may have powers which I cannotcomprehend or emulate, or you may be but a keen imposter. "

"Well, proceed!"

"I mean, then, " continued Glyndon, resolutely, though somewhatdisconcerted, --"I mean you to understand, that, though I am not to bepersuaded or compelled by a stranger to marry Viola Pisani, I am not theless determined never tamely to yield her to another. "

Zanoni looked gravely at the young man, whose sparkling eyes andheightened colour testified the spirit to support his words, andreplied, "So bold! well; it becomes you. But take my advice; wait yetnine days, and tell me then if you will marry the fairest and the purestcreature 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 herthe seeds of the most lofty qualities and virtues. She can be all to theman she loves, --all that man can desire in wife. Her soul, developed byaffection, will elevate your own; it will influence your fortunes, exaltyour destiny; you will become a great and a prosperous man. If, on thecontrary, she fall to me, I know not what may be her lot; but I knowthat there is an ordeal which few can pass, and which hitherto no womanhas survived. "

As Zanoni spoke, his face became colourless, and there was something inhis voice that froze the warm blood of the listener. 

"What is this mystery which surrounds you?" exclaimed Glyndon, unable torepress his emotion. "Are you, in truth, different from other men? Haveyou passed the boundary of lawful knowledge? Are you, as some declare, asorcerer, or only a--"

"Hush!" interrupted Zanoni, gently, and with a smile of singularbut melancholy sweetness; "have you earned the right to ask me thesequestions? Though Italy still boast an Inquisition, its power isrivelled as a leaf which the first wind shall scatter. The days oftorture and persecution are over; and a man may live as he pleases, andtalk as it suits him, without fear of the stake and the rack. Since Ican defy persecution, pardon me if I do not yield to curiosity. "

Glyndon blushed, and rose. In spite of his love for Viola, and hisnatural terror of such a rival, he felt himself irresistibly drawntowards the very man he had most cause to suspect and dread. He heldout his hand to Zanoni, saying, "Well, then, if we are to be rivals, ourswords 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 superhumanwisdom, " said Glyndon, and his countenance was lighted up with wild andintense enthusiasm. 

Zanoni observed him in thoughtful silence. 

"The seeds of the ancestor live in the son, " he muttered; "hemay--yet--" He broke off abruptly; then, speaking aloud, "Go, Glyndon, "said he; "we shall meet again, but I will not ask your answer till thehour 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 thatthey are more apt to ridicule than the tendency to believe. And ofall the signs of a corrupt heart and a feeble head, the tendency ofincredulity is the surest. 

Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny. While we hear, everyday, the small pretenders to science talk of the absurdities of alchemyand the dream of the Philosopher's Stone, a more erudite knowledge isaware that by alchemists the greatest discoveries in science have beenmade, and much which still seems abstruse, had we the key to the mysticphraseology they were compelled to adopt, might open the way to yetmore noble acquisitions. The Philosopher's Stone itself has seemed novisionary chimera to some of the soundest chemists that even the presentcentury has produced. (Mr. Disraeli, in his "Curiosities of Literature"(article "Alchem"), after quoting the sanguine judgments of modernchemists as to the transmutation of metals, observes of one yet greaterand more recent than those to which Glyndon's thoughts could havereferred, "Sir Humphry Davy told me that he did not consider thisundiscovered art as impossible; but should it ever be discovered, itwould 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 haveseen the effect, I will endeavour, with you, to ascertain the causes. "

Somewhat to the above effect were the first thoughts of Clarence Glyndonon quitting Zanoni. But Clarence Glyndon was no "rational inquirer. " Themore vague and mysterious the language of Zanoni, the more it imposedupon him. A proof would have been something tangible, with which hewould have sought to grapple. And it would have only disappointed hiscuriosity to find the supernatural reduced to Nature. He endeavoured invain, at some moments rousing himself from credulity to the scepticismhe deprecated, to reconcile what he had heard with the probable motivesand designs of an imposter. Unlike Mesmer and Cagliostro, Zanoni, whatever his pretensions, did not make them a source of profit; nor wasGlyndon's position or rank in life sufficient to render any influenceobtained over his mind, subservient to schemes, whether of avarice orambition. Yet, ever and anon, with the suspicion of worldly knowledge, he strove to persuade himself that Zanoni had at least some sinisterobject in inducing him to what his English pride and manner of thoughtconsidered a derogatory marriage with the poor actress. Might not Violaand the Mystic be in league with each other? Might not all this jargonof prophecy and menace be but artifices to dupe him?

He felt an unjust resentment towards Viola at having secured such anally. But with that resentment was mingled a natural jealousy. Zanonithreatened him with rivalry. Zanoni, who, whatever his character or hisarts, possessed at least all the external attributes that dazzle andcommand. Impatient of his own doubts, he plunged into the society ofsuch acquaintances as he had made at Naples--chiefly artists, likehimself, men of letters, and the rich commercialists, who were alreadyvying with the splendour, though debarred from the privileges, of thenobles. From these he heard much of Zanoni, already with them, as withthe idler classes, an object of curiosity and speculation. 

He had noticed, as a thing remarkable, that Zanoni had conversed withhim in English, and with a command of the language so complete that hemight have passed for a native. On the other hand, in Italian, Zanoniwas equally at ease. Glyndon found that it was the same in languagesless usually learned by foreigners. A painter from Sweden, who hadconversed with him, was positive that he was a Swede; and a merchantfrom Constantinople, who had sold some of his goods to Zanoni, professedhis conviction that none but a Turk, or at least a native of the East, could have so thoroughly mastered the soft Oriental intonations. Yetin all these languages, when they came to compare their severalrecollections, there was a slight, scarce perceptible distinction, notin 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 whichGlyndon called to mind, that sect, whose tenets and powers have neverbeen more than most partially explored, the Rosicrucians, especiallyarrogated. He remembered to have heard in Germany of the work of JohnBringeret (Printed in 1615. ), asserting that all the languages of theearth were known to the genuine Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. DidZanoni 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 fromall the darker Sons of Magic in the virtue of their lives, the purity oftheir doctrines, and their insisting, as the foundation of all wisdom, on the subjugation of the senses, and the intensity of ReligiousFaith?--a glorious sect, if they lied not! And, in truth, if Zanonihad powers beyond the race of worldly sages, they seemed not unworthilyexercised. The little known of his life was in his favour. Some acts, not of indiscriminate, but judicious generosity and beneficence, wererecorded; in repeating which, still, however, the narrators shook theirheads, and expressed surprise how a stranger should have possessed sominute a knowledge of the quiet and obscure distresses he had relieved. Two or three sick persons, when abandoned by their physicians, he hadvisited, and conferred with alone. They had recovered: they ascribed tohim their recovery; yet they could not tell by what medicines they hadbeen healed. They could only depose that he came, conversed with them, and they were cured; it usually, however, happened that a deep sleep hadpreceded the recovery. 

Another circumstance was also beginning to be remarked, and spoke yetmore in his commendation. Those with whom he principally associated--thegay, the dissipated, the thoughtless, the sinners and publicans of themore polished world--all appeared rapidly, yet insensibly to themselves, to awaken to purer thoughts and more regulated lives. Even Cetoxa, theprince of gallants, duellists, and gamesters, was no longer the same mansince the night of the singular events which he had related toGlyndon. The first trace of his reform was in his retirement from thegaming-houses; the next was his reconciliation with an hereditary enemyof his house, whom it had been his constant object for the last sixyears to entangle in such a quarrel as might call forth his inimitablemanoeuvre of the stoccata. Nor when Cetoxa and his young companions wereheard to speak of Zanoni, did it seem that this change had been broughtabout by any sober lectures or admonitions. They all described Zanoni asa man keenly alive to enjoyment: of manners the reverse of formal, --notprecisely gay, but equable, serene, and cheerful; ever ready to listento the talk of others, however idle, or to charm all ears with aninexhaustible fund of brilliant anecdote and worldly experience. Allmanners, all nations, all grades of men, seemed familiar to him. He wasreserved only if allusion were ever ventured to his birth or history. 

The more general opinion of his origin certainly seemed the moreplausible. His riches, his familiarity with the languages of the East, his residence in India, a certain gravity which never deserted his mostcheerful and familiar hours, the lustrous darkness of his eyes and hair, and even the peculiarities of his shape, in the delicate smallness ofthe hands, and the Arab-like turn of the stately head, appeared to fixhim as belonging to one at least of the Oriental races. And a dabblerin the Eastern tongues even sought to reduce the simple name of Zanoni, which a century before had been borne by an inoffensive naturalist ofBologna (The author of two works on botany and rare plants. ), to theradicals of the extinct language. Zan was unquestionably the Chaldeanappellation for the sun. Even the Greeks, who mutilated every Orientalname, had retained the right one in this case, as the Cretan inscriptionon the tomb of Zeus (Ode megas keitai Zan. --"Cyril contra Julian. " (Herelies great Jove. )) significantly showed. As to the rest, the Zan, orZaun, was, with the Sidonians, no uncommon prefix to On. Adonis was butanother name for Zanonas, whose worship in Sidon Hesychius records. Tothis profound and unanswerable derivation Mervale listened with greatattention, and observed that he now ventured to announce an eruditediscovery he himself had long since made, --namely, that the numerousfamily of Smiths in England were undoubtedly the ancient priests of thePhrygian Apollo. "For, " said he, "was not Apollo's surname, inPhrygia, Smintheus? How clear all the ensuing corruptions of the augustname, --Smintheus, Smitheus, Smithe, Smith! And even now, I may remarkthat the more ancient branches of that illustrious family, unconsciouslyanxious 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 beggedMervale's permission to note it down as an illustration suitable to awork 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 variouslounging-places and resorts that he frequented, were unsatisfactory toGlyndon. That night Viola did not perform at the theatre; and the nextday, still disturbed by bewildered fancies, and averse to the sober andsarcastic companionship of Mervale, Glyndon sauntered musingly into thepublic gardens, and paused under the very tree under which he hadfirst heard the voice that had exercised upon his mind so singular aninfluence. The gardens were deserted. He threw himself on one of theseats placed beneath the shade; and again, in the midst of his reverie, the same cold shudder came over him which Zanoni had so distinctlydefined, and to which he had ascribed so extraordinary a cause. 

He roused himself with a sudden effort, and started to see, seated nexthim, a figure hideous enough to have personated one of the malignantbeings of whom Zanoni had spoken. It was a small man, dressed in afashion strikingly at variance with the elaborate costume of the day:an affectation of homeliness and poverty approaching to squalor, inthe loose trousers, coarse as a ship's sail; in the rough jacket, whichappeared rent wilfully into holes; and the black, ragged, tangled locksthat streamed from their confinement under a woollen cap, accorded butill with other details which spoke of comparative wealth. The shirt, open at the throat, was fastened by a brooch of gaudy stones; and twopendent massive gold chains announced the foppery of two watches. 

The man's figure, if not absolutely deformed, was yet marvellouslyill-favoured; his shoulders high and square; his chest flattened, as ifcrushed in; his gloveless hands were knotted at the joints, and, large, bony, and muscular, dangled from lean, emaciated wrists, as if notbelonging to them. His features had the painful distortion sometimesseen in the countenance of a cripple, --large, exaggerated, with the nosenearly touching the chin; the eyes small, but glowing with a cunningfire as they dwelt on Glyndon; and the mouth was twisted into a grinthat displayed rows of jagged, black, broken teeth. Yet over thisfrightful face there still played a kind of disagreeable intelligence, an expression at once astute and bold; and as Glyndon, recovering fromthe first impression, looked again at his neighbour, he blushed at hisown dismay, and recognised a French artist, with whom he had formed anacquaintance, and who was possessed of no inconsiderable talents in hiscalling. 

Indeed, it was to be remarked that this creature, whose externals wereso deserted by the Graces, particularly delighted in designs aspiring tomajesty and grandeur. Though his colouring was hard and shallow, aswas that generally of the French school at the time, his DRAWINGS wereadmirable for symmetry, simple elegance, and classic vigour; at the sametime they unquestionably wanted ideal grace. He was fond of selectingsubjects from Roman history, rather than from the copious world ofGrecian beauty, or those still more sublime stories of scriptural recordfrom which Raphael and Michael Angelo borrowed their inspirations. Hisgrandeur was that not of gods and saints, but mortals. His delineationof beauty was that which the eye cannot blame and the soul doesnot acknowledge. In a word, as it was said of Dionysius, he was anAnthropographos, or Painter of Men. It was also a notable contradictionin this person, who was addicted to the most extravagant excesses inevery passion, whether of hate or love, implacable in revenge, andinsatiable in debauch, that he was in the habit of uttering the mostbeautiful sentiments of exalted purity and genial philanthropy. Theworld was not good enough for him; he was, to use the expressive Germanphrase, A WORLD-BETTERER! Nevertheless, his sarcastic lip often seemedto mock the sentiments he uttered, as if it sought to insinuate that hewas above even the world he would construct. 

Finally, this painter was in close correspondence with the Republicansof Paris, and was held to be one of those missionaries whom, from theearliest period of the Revolution, the regenerators of mankind werepleased to despatch to the various states yet shackled, whether byactual tyranny or wholesome laws. Certainly, as the historian of Italy(Botta. ) has observed, there was no city in Italy where these newdoctrines would be received with greater favour than Naples, partly fromthe lively temper of the people, principally because the most hatefulfeudal privileges, however partially curtailed some years before by thegreat minister, Tanuccini, still presented so many daily and practicalevils as to make change wear a more substantial charm than the mere andmeretricious bloom on the cheek of the harlot, Novelty. This man, whomI will call Jean Nicot, was, therefore, an oracle among the younger andbolder spirits of Naples; and before Glyndon had met Zanoni, the formerhad not been among the least dazzled by the eloquent aspirations of thehideous philanthropist. 

"It is so long since we have met, cher confrere, " said Nicot, drawinghis seat nearer to Glyndon's, "that you cannot be surprised that Isee you with delight, and even take the liberty to intrude on yourmeditations. 

"They were of no agreeable nature, " said Glyndon; "and never wasintrusion more welcome. "

"You will be charmed to hear, " said Nicot, drawing several lettersfrom his bosom, "that the good work proceeds with marvellous rapidity. Mirabeau, indeed, is no more; but, mort Diable! the French people arenow a Mirabeau themselves. " With this remark, Monsieur Nicot proceededto read and to comment upon several animated and interesting passages inhis correspondence, in which the word virtue was introduced twenty-seventimes, and God not once. And then, warmed by the cheering prospects thusopened to him, he began to indulge in those anticipations of the future, the outline of which we have already seen in the eloquent extravaganceof 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 thePole as for the hearth of home, was worthy the breast of a generousman. Opinion was to be free as air; and in order to make it so, it wasnecessary to exterminate all those whose opinions were not the same asMons. Jean Nicot's. Much of this amused, much revolted Glyndon; but whenthe painter turned to dwell upon a science that all should comprehend, and the results of which all should enjoy, --a science that, springingfrom the soil of equal institutions and equal mental cultivation, shouldgive to all the races of men wealth without labour, and a life longerthan the Patriarchs', without care, --then Glyndon listened with interestand admiration, not unmixed with awe. "Observe, " said Nicot, "how muchthat we now cherish as a virtue will then be rejected as meanness. Ouroppressors, for instance, preach to us of the excellence of gratitude. Gratitude, the confession of inferiority! What so hateful to a noblespirit as the humiliating sense of obligation? But where there isequality there can be no means for power thus to enslave merit. Thebenefactor 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 togetheras he sat, looked up at him askew, and with an expression of fear anddismay upon his distorted countenance. 

Ho, ho! Messire Jean Nicot, thou who fearest neither God nor Devil, whyfearest thou the eye of a man?

"It is not the first time I have been a witness to your opinions on theinfirmity of gratitude, " said Zanoni. 

Nicot suppressed an exclamation, and, after gloomily surveying Zanoniwith an eye villanous and sinister, but full of hate impotent andunutterable, 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 teethfrom ear to ear, like a wild beast incensed. Zanoni stood motionless, and smiled at him in scorn. Nicot halted abruptly, as if fixed andfascinated by the look, shivered from head to foot, and sullenly, andwith a visible effort, as if impelled by a power not his own, turnedaway. 

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 towarn 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 thedawning Revolution. Perhaps you are prejudiced against the man becauseyou 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 thedoctrine that preaches the infinite improvement of the human species. "

"You are right; the few in every age improve the many; the many now maybe as wise as the few were; but improvement is at a standstill, if youtell 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 couldnot make it LAW. Level all conditions to-day, and you only smooth awayall obstacles to tyranny to-morrow. A nation that aspires to EQUALITYis unfit for FREEDOM. Throughout all creation, from the archangel to theworm, from Olympus to the pebble, from the radiant and completed planetto the nebula that hardens through ages of mist and slime into thehabitable world, the first law of Nature is inequality. "

"Harsh doctrine, if applied to states. Are the cruel disparities of lifenever to be removed?"

"Disparities of the PHYSICAL life? Oh, let us hope so. But disparitiesof the INTELLECTUAL and the MORAL, never! Universal equality ofintelligence, of mind, of genius, of virtue!--no teacher left to theworld! no men wiser, better than others, --were it not an impossiblecondition, WHAT A HOPELESS PROSPECT FOR HUMANITY! No, while the worldlasts, the sun will gild the mountain-top before it shines upon theplain. Diffuse all the knowledge the earth contains equally over allmankind to-day, and some men will be wiser than the rest to-morrow. AndTHIS 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 thenext!"

As Zanoni thus spoke, they moved on through the smiling gardens, and thebeautiful bay lay sparkling in the noontide. A gentle breeze just cooledthe sunbeam, and stirred the ocean; and in the inexpressible clearnessof the atmosphere there was something that rejoiced the senses. The verysoul seemed to grow lighter and purer in that lucid air. 

"And these men, to commence their era of improvement and equality, arejealous even of the Creator. They would deny an intelligence, --a God!"said Zanoni, as if involuntarily. "Are you an artist, and, looking onthe world, can you listen to such a dogma? Between God and genius thereis a necessary link, --there is almost a correspondent language. Wellsaid the Pythagorean (Sextus, the Pythagorean. ), 'A good intellect isthe chorus of divinity. '"

Struck and touched with these sentiments, which he little expected tofall from one to whom he ascribed those powers which the superstitionsof childhood ascribe to the darker agencies, Glyndon said: "And yet youhave confessed that your life, separated from that of others, is onethat man should dread to share. Is there, then, a connection betweenmagic and religion?"

"Magic!" And what is magic! When the traveller beholds in Persia theruins of palaces and temples, the ignorant inhabitants inform him theywere the work of magicians. What is beyond their own power, the vulgarcannot comprehend to be lawfully in the power of others. But if bymagic you mean a perpetual research amongst all that is more latent andobscure in Nature, I answer, I profess that magic, and that he who doesso comes but nearer to the fountain of all belief. Knowest thou not thatmagic was taught in the schools of old? But how, and by whom? As thelast and most solemn lesson, by the Priests who ministered to theTemple. (Psellus de Daemon (MS. )) And you, who would be a painter, isnot 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 airycombinations of a beauty that is to be? See you not that the granderart, whether of poet or of painter, ever seeking for the TRUE, abhorsthe REAL; that you must seize Nature as her master, not lackey her asher slave?

"You demand mastery over the past, a conception of the future. Has notthe art that is truly noble for its domain the future and the past? Youwould conjure the invisible beings to your charm; and what is paintingbut the fixing into substance the Invisible? Are you discontented withthis world? This world was never meant for genius! To exist, it mustcreate another. What magician can do more; nay, what science can doas much? There are two avenues from the little passions and the drearcalamities of earth; both lead to heaven and away from hell, --art andscience. But art is more godlike than science; science discovers, artcreates. You have faculties that may command art; be contented with yourlot. The astronomer who catalogues the stars cannot add one atom to theuniverse; the poet can call a universe from the atom; the chemist mayheal with his drugs the infirmities of the human form; the painter, or the sculptor, fixes into everlasting youth forms divine, whichno disease can ravage, and no years impair. Renounce those wanderingfancies that lead you now to myself, and now to yon orator of the humanrace; to us two, who are the antipodes of each other! Your pencil isyour wand; your canvas may raise Utopias fairer than Condorcet dreamsof. I press not yet for your decision; but what man of genius ever askedmore to cheer his path to the grave than love and glory?"

"But, " said Glyndon, fixing his eyes earnestly on Zanoni, "if there be apower 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 fromevery human tie? Perhaps the fairest immortality on earth is that of anoble name. "

"You do not answer me, --you equivocate. I have read of the long livesfar beyond the date common experience assigns to man, " persistedGlyndon, "which some of the alchemists enjoyed. Is the golden elixir buta fable?"

"If not, and these men discovered it, they died, because they refused tolive! There may be a mournful warning in your conjecture. Turn once moreto the easel and the canvas!"

So saying, Zanoni waved his hand, and, with downcast eyes and a slowstep, 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 atranquillising 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 theair, to illumine the space like rays that kindle from the sun. And withthese projects mingled also the vision of a love purer and serener thanhis life yet had known. His mind went back into that fair childhood ofgenius, when the forbidden fruit is not yet tasted, and we know of noland beyond the Eden which is gladdened by an Eve. Insensibly beforehim there rose the scenes of a home, with his art sufficing for allexcitement, and Viola's love circling occupation with happiness andcontent; and in the midst of these fantasies of a future that mightbe at his command, he was recalled to the present by the clear, strongvoice of Mervale, the man of common-sense. 

Whoever has studied the lives of persons in whom the imagination isstronger than the will, who suspect their own knowledge of actual life, and are aware of their facility to impressions, will have observed theinfluence which a homely, vigorous, worldly understanding obtains oversuch natures. It was thus with Glyndon. His friend had often extricatedhim from danger, and saved him from the consequences of imprudence; andthere 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 withthe extravagance of generosity any more than with that of presumptionand credulity. He walked the straight line of life, and felt an equalcontempt for the man who wandered up the hill-sides, no matter whetherto 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 fairperdition, --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 foryourself. One may dislike the duper, but it is the dupe that onedespises. "

"Are you sure that I should be the dupe in such a union? Where can Ifind one so lovely and so innocent, --where one whose virtue has beentried by such temptation? Does even a single breath of slander sully thename of Viola Pisani?"

"I know not all the gossip of Naples, and therefore cannot answer; but Iknow this, that in England no one would believe that a young Englishman, of good fortune and respectable birth, who marries a singer from thetheatre of Naples, has not been lamentably taken in. I would save youfrom a fall of position so irretrievable. Think how many mortificationsyou will be subjected to; how many young men will visit at yourhouse, --and how many young wives will as carefully avoid it. "

"I can choose my own career, to which commonplace society is notessential. I can owe the respect of the world to my art, and not to theaccidents of birth and fortune. "

"That is, you still persist in your second folly, --the absurd ambitionof daubing canvas. Heaven forbid I should say anything against thelaudable industry of one who follows such a profession for the sake ofsubsistence; but with means and connections that will raise you in life, why voluntarily sink into a mere artist? As an accomplishment in leisuremoments, it is all very well in its way; but as the occupation ofexistence, it is a frenzy. "

"Artists have been the friends of princes. "

"Very rarely so, I fancy, in sober England. There in the great centre ofpolitical aristocracy, what men respect is the practical, not the ideal. Just suffer me to draw two pictures of my own. Clarence Glyndon returnsto England; he marries a lady of fortune equal to his own, of friendsand parentage that advance rational ambition. Clarence Glyndon, thus awealthy and respectable man, of good talents, of bustling energies thenconcentrated, enters into practical life. He has a house at which he canreceive those whose acquaintance is both advantage and honour; he hasleisure which he can devote to useful studies; his reputation, built ona solid base, grows in men's mouths. He attaches himself to a party; heenters political life; and new connections serve to promote his objects. At the age of five-and-forty, what, in all probability, may ClarenceGlyndon be? Since you are ambitious I leave that question for you todecide! Now turn to the other picture. Clarence Glyndon returns toEngland with a wife who can bring him no money, unless he lets her outon the stage; so handsome, that every one asks who she is, and every onehears, --the celebrated singer, Pisani. Clarence Glyndon shuts himselfup to grind colours and paint pictures in the grand historical school, which nobody buys. There is even a prejudice against him, as not havingstudied in the Academy, --as being an amateur. Who is Mr. ClarenceGlyndon? Oh, the celebrated Pisani's husband! What else? Oh, he exhibitsthose large pictures! Poor man! they have merit in their way; butTeniers and Watteau are more convenient, and almost as cheap. ClarenceGlyndon, with an easy fortune while single, has a large family which hisfortune, unaided by marriage, can just rear up to callings more plebeianthan his own. He retires into the country, to save and to paint; hegrows slovenly and discontented; 'the world does not appreciate him, 'he says, and he runs away from the world. At the age of forty-fivewhat will be Clarence Glyndon? Your ambition shall decide that questionalso!"

"If all men were as worldly as you, " said Glyndon, rising, "there wouldnever have been an artist or a poet!"

"Perhaps we should do just as well without them, " answered Mervale. "Isit 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 studentby fixing his attention to what he falsely calls the Natural, but which, in reality, is the Commonplace, and understands not that beauty inart is created by what Raphael so well describes, --namely, THE IDEA OFBEAUTY IN THE PAINTER'S OWN MIND; and that in every art, whether itsplastic expression be found in words or marble, colours or sounds, theservile imitation of Nature is the work of journeymen and tyros, --so inconduct the man of the world vitiates and lowers the bold enthusiasm ofloftier natures by the perpetual reduction of whatever is generous andtrustful to all that is trite and coarse. A great German poet has welldefined the distinction between discretion and the larger wisdom. In thelast there is a certain rashness which the first disdains, --

"The purblind see but the receding shore, Not that to which the boldwave wafts them o'er. "

Yet in this logic of the prudent and the worldly there is often areasoning unanswerable of its kind. 

You must have a feeling, --a faith in whatever is self-sacrificingand divine, whether in religion or in art, in glory or in love; orCommon-sense will reason you out of the sacrifice, and a syllogism willdebase the Divine to an article in the market. 

Every true critic in art, from Aristotle and Pliny, from Winkelman andVasari to Reynolds and Fuseli, has sought to instruct the painter thatNature is not to be copied, but EXALTED; that the loftiest order of art, selecting only the loftiest combinations, is the perpetual struggle ofHumanity to approach the gods. The great painter, as the great author, embodies what is POSSIBLE to MAN, it is true, but what is not COMMONto MANKIND. There is truth in Hamlet; in Macbeth, and his witches; inDesdemona; in Othello; in Prospero, and in Caliban; there is truth inthe cartoons of Raphael; there is truth in the Apollo, the Antinous, and the Laocoon. But you do not meet the originals of the words, thecartoons, or the marble, in Oxford Street or St. James's. All these, toreturn 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 thatstudy has been of the ideal that can be raised from the positive andthe actual into grandeur and beauty. The commonest model becomes full ofexquisite suggestions to him who has formed this idea; a Venus of fleshand blood would be vulgarised by the imitation of him who has not. 

When asked where he got his models, Guido summoned a common porter fromhis calling, and drew from a mean original a head of surpassing beauty. It resembled the porter, but idealised the porter to the hero. It wastrue, but it was not real. There are critics who will tell you that theBoor of Teniers is more true to Nature than the Porter of Guido! Thecommonplace public scarcely understand the idealising principle, even inart; for high art is an acquired taste. 

But to come to my comparison. Still less is the kindred principlecomprehended in conduct. And the advice of worldly prudence would asoften 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. NowGlyndon felt the sober prudence of Mervale's reasonings; he recoiledfrom the probable picture placed before him, in his devotion to the onemaster-talent he possessed, and the one master-passion that, rightlydirected, might purify his whole being as a strong wind purifies theair. 

But though he could not bring himself to decide in the teeth of sorational a judgment, neither could he resolve at once to abandon thepursuit of Viola. Fearful of being influenced by Zanoni's counsels andhis own heart, he had for the last two days shunned an interview withthe young actress. But after a night following his last conversationwith Zanoni, and that we have just recorded with Mervale, --a nightcoloured by dreams so distinct as to seem prophetic, dreams thatappeared so to shape his future according to the hints of Zanoni that hecould have fancied Zanoni himself had sent them from the house of sleepto haunt his pillow, --he resolved once more to seek Viola; and thoughwithout a definite or distinct object, he yielded himself up to theimpulse 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 herin 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 towhich the traveller of to-day is duly brought to gaze on the tomb ofVirgil, or compare with the cavern of Posilipo the archway of HighgateHill. There were a few fisherman loitering by the cliffs, on which theirnets 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 thebells of the lazy mules, broke the voluptuous silence, --the silence ofdeclining noon on the shores of Naples; never, till you have enjoyed it, never, till you have felt its enervating but delicious charm, believethat you can comprehend all the meaning of the Dolce far niente (Thepleasure of doing nothing. ); and when that luxury has been known, whenyou have breathed that atmosphere of fairy-land, then you will no longerwonder why the heart ripens into fruit so sudden and so rich beneath therosy skies and the glorious sunshine of the South. 

The eyes of the actress were fixed on the broad blue deep beyond. In theunwonted negligence of her dress might be traced the abstraction of hermind. Her beautiful hair was gathered up loosely, and partially bandagedby a kerchief whose purple colour served to deepen the golden hue of hertresses. A stray curl escaped and fell down the graceful neck. A loosemorning-robe, girded by a sash, left the breeze. That came ever and anonfrom 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 tinyfoot which it scarcely covered. It might be the heat of the day thatdeepened the soft bloom of the cheeks, and gave an unwonted languor tothe large, dark eyes. In all the pomp of her stage attire, --in all theflush of excitement before the intoxicating lamps, --never had Violalooked so lovely. 

By the side of the actress, and filling up the threshold, --stoodGionetta, with her arms thrust to the elbow in two huge pockets oneither side of her gown. 

"But I assure you, " said the nurse, in that sharp, quick, ear-splittingtone in which the old women of the South are more than a match for thoseof the North, --"but I assure you, my darling, that there is not a finercavalier in all Naples, nor a more beautiful, than this Inglese; and Iam told that all these Inglesi are much richer than they seem. Thoughthey have no trees in their country, poor people! and instead oftwenty-four they have only twelve hours to the day, yet I hear that theyshoe their horses with scudi; and since they cannot (the poor heretics!)turn grapes into wine, for they have no grapes, they turn gold intophysic, and take a glass or two of pistoles whenever they are troubledwith the colic. But you don't hear me, little pupil of my eyes, --youdon'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 surethat his beautiful face, like his yet more beautiful pistoles, isonly witchcraft. I look at the money he gave me the other night, everyquarter of an hour, to see whether it has not turned into pebbles. "

"Do you then really believe, " said Viola, with timid earnestness, "thatsorcery still exists?"

"Believe! Do I believe in the blessed San Gennaro? How do you think hecured old Filippo the fisherman, when the doctor gave him up? How do youthink 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, asthe vampires do?"

"Ah, is this only witchcraft? It is like it, --it must be!" murmuredViola, turning very pale. Gionetta herself was scarcely moresuperstitious than the daughter of the musician. And her very innocence, chilled at the strangeness of virgin passion, might well ascribe tomagic what hearts more experienced would have resolved to love. 

"And then, why has this great Prince di -- been so terrified by him? Whyhas he ceased to persecute us? Why has he been so quiet and still? Isthere no sorcery in all that?"

"Think you, then, " said Viola, with sweet inconsistency, "that I owethat happiness and safety to his protection? Oh, let me so believe! Besilent, 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 wildenergy; "thou lightest every spot but this. Go, Gionetta! leave mealone, --leave me!"

"And indeed it is time I should leave you; for the polenta will bespoiled, and you have eat nothing all day. If you don't eat you willlose your beauty, my darling, and then nobody will care for you. Nobodycares for us when we grow ugly, --I know that; and then you must, likeold Gionetta, get some Viola of your own to spoil. I'll go and see tothe polenta. "

"Since I have known this man, " said the girl, half aloud, --"since hisdark eyes have haunted me, I am no longer the same. I long to escapefrom myself, --to glide with the sunbeam over the hill-tops; to becomesomething that is not of earth. Phantoms float before me at night; anda fluttering, like the wing of a bird, within my heart, seems as if thespirit were terrified, and would break its cage. "

While murmuring these incoherent rhapsodies, a step that she did nothear 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 herat once. His presence gave her pleasure. 

"Viola, " said the Englishman, taking her hand, and drawing her againto 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 hasnot been pity or admiration alone that has led me ever and ever to thydear side; reasons there may have been why I have not spoken, save bymy eyes, before; but this day--I know not how it is--I feel a moresustained and settled courage to address thee, and learn the happiest orthe worst. I have rivals, I know, --rivals who are more powerful than thepoor 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 withthe point of her slipper, she said, with some hesitation, and a vainattempt to be gay, "Signor, whoever wastes his thoughts on an actressmust submit to have rivals. It is our unhappy destiny not to be sacredeven to ourselves. "

"But you do not love this destiny, glittering though it seem; your heartis not in the vocation which your gifts adorn. "

"Ah, no!" said the actress, her eyes filling with tears. "Once I lovedto be the priestess of song and music; now I feel only that it is amiserable lot to be slave to a multitude. "

"Fly, then, with me, " said the artist, passionately; "quit forever thecalling that divides that heart I would have all my own. Share my fatenow and forever, --my pride, my delight, my ideal! Thou shalt inspire mycanvas 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 aVenus 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 pressednearer to her, and clasped her hand in his; "but what should I give theein 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 yourface, when I hear your voice, a certain serene and tranquil calm creepsover and lulls thoughts, --oh, how feverish, how wild! When thou artgone, the day seems a shade more dark; but the shadow soon flies. Imiss thee not; I think not of thee: no, I love thee not; and I will givemyself only where I love. "

"But I would teach thee to love me; fear it not. Nay, such love asthou describest, in our tranquil climates, is the love of innocence andyouth. "

"Of innocence!" said Viola. "Is it so? Perhaps--" She paused, and added, with an effort, "Foreigner! and wouldst thou wed the orphan? Ah, THOU atleast 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 thethoughts, half of shame, half suspicion, that passed through the mindof her lover. "Leave me, and forget me. You do not understand, youcould not comprehend, the nature of her whom you think to love. From mychildhood upward, I have felt as if I were marked out for some strangeand 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 othersof the darkest gloom) deepens within me day by day. It is like theshadow of twilight, spreading slowly and solemnly around. My hourapproaches: 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 enchainme to you. As you feel, I feel. I, too, have been ever haunted with achill and unearthly foreboding. Amidst the crowds of men I have feltalone. In all my pleasures, my toils, my pursuits, a warning voice hasmurmured 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 asmarble; and those features, so divine in their rare symmetry, might haveserved the Greek with a study for the Pythoness, when, from the mysticcavern and the bubbling spring, she first hears the voice of theinspiring god. Gradually the rigour and tension of that wonderful facerelaxed, the colour returned, the pulse beat: the heart animated theframe. 

"Tell me, " she said, turning partially aside, --"tell me, have youseen--do you know--a stranger in this city, --one of whom wild storiesare 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 foryou: 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, theforeboding, the instinct, of which you spoke, came on you morefearfully, more intelligibly than before; whether you felt at oncerepelled from him, yet attracted towards him; whether you felt, " and theactress spoke with hurried animation, "that with HIM was connected thesecret of your life?"

"All this I felt, " answered Glyndon, in a trembling voice, "the firsttime I was in his presence. Though all around me was gay, --music, amidst lamp-lit trees, light converse near, and heaven without a cloudabove, --my knees knocked together, my hair bristled, and my bloodcurdled like ice. Since then he has divided my thoughts with thee. "

"No more, no more!" said Viola, in a stifled tone; "there must be thehand of fate in this. I can speak to you no more now. Farewell!" Shesprung past him into the house, and closed the door. Glyndon did notfollow her, nor, strange as it may seem, was he so inclined. The thoughtand recollection of that moonlit hour in the gardens, of the strangeaddress of Zanoni, froze up all human passion. Viola herself, if notforgotten, shrunk back like a shadow into the recesses of his breast. He shivered as he stepped into the sunlight, and musingly retraced hissteps 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 thekindness shown to her by the friendly musician whose house had receivedand sheltered her when first left an orphan on the world. Old Bernardihad brought up three sons to the same profession as himself, and theyhad lately left Naples to seek their fortunes in the wealthier citiesof Northern Europe, where the musical market was less overstocked. Therewas only left to glad the household of his aged wife and himself, alively, prattling, dark-eyed girl of some eight years old, the childof his second son, whose mother had died in giving her birth. It sohappened that, about a month previous to the date on which our story hasnow entered, a paralytic affection had disabled Bernardi from the dutiesof his calling. He had been always a social, harmless, improvident, generous fellow--living on his gains from day to day, as if the day ofsickness and old age never was to arrive. Though he received a smallallowance for his past services, it ill sufficed for his wants, ; neitherwas he free from debt. Poverty stood at his hearth, --when Viola'sgrateful smile and liberal hand came to chase the grim fiend away. Butit is not enough to a heart truly kind to send and give; more charitableis it to visit and console. "Forget not thy father's friend. " So almostdaily went the bright idol of Naples to the house of Bernardi. Suddenlya heavier affliction than either poverty or the palsy befell the oldmusician. His grandchild, his little Beatrice, fell ill, suddenly anddangerously ill, of one of those rapid fevers common to the South; andViola was summoned from her strange and fearful reveries of love orfancy, to the sick-bed of the young sufferer. 

The child was exceedingly fond of Viola, and the old people thought thather mere presence would bring healing; but when Viola arrived, Beatricewas insensible. Fortunately there was no performance that evening at SanCarlo, and she resolved to stay the night and partake its fearful caresand dangerous vigil. 

But during the night the child grew worse, the physician (the leechcrafthas never been very skilful at Naples) shook his powdered head, kept hisaromatics at his nostrils, administered his palliatives, and departed. Old Bernardi seated himself by the bedside in stern silence; here wasthe last tie that bound him to life. Well, let the anchor break and thebattered 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 dyingchild, is one of the most awful spectacles in human calamities. The wifewas more active, more bustling, more hopeful, and more tearful. Violatook heed of all three. But towards dawn, Beatrice's state became soobviously alarming, that Viola herself began to despair. At this timeshe saw the old woman suddenly rise from before the image of the saintat which she had been kneeling, wrap herself in her cloak and hood, andquietly quit the chamber. Viola stole after her. 

"It is cold for thee, good mother, to brave the air; let me go for thephysician?"

"Child, I am not going to him. I have heard of one in the city who hasbeen tender to the poor, and who, they say, has cured the sick whenphysicians failed. I will go and say to him, 'Signor, we are beggarsin all else, but yesterday we were rich in love. We are at the closeof life, but we lived in our grandchild's childhood. Give us back ourwealth, --give us back our youth. Let us die blessing God that the thingwe love survives us. '"

She was gone. Why did thy heart beat, Viola? The infant's sharp cryof 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 fastas they watched the agonies of that slight frame. By degrees the wailof pain died into a low moan, --the convulsions grew feebler, but morefrequent; the glow of fever faded into the blue, pale tinge that settlesinto the last bloodless marble. 

The daylight came broader and clearer through the casement; steps wereheard on the stairs, --the old woman entered hastily; she rushed to thebed, 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, --andshe 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 bendingsilently over that pale face, a superstitious fear mingled with herhopes. "Was it by lawful--by holy art that--" her self-questioningceased 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 spokereproach not unmingled with disdain. 

"Be comforted, " he said, gently turning to the old man, "the danger isnot beyond the reach of human skill;" and, taking from his bosom a smallcrystal vase, he mingled a few drops with water. No sooner did thismedicine moisten the infant's lips, than it seemed to produce anastonishing effect. The colour revived rapidly on the lips and cheeks;in a few moments the sufferer slept calmly, and with the regularbreathing of painless sleep. And then the old man rose, rigidly, as acorpse 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 hadnever before led him aloft from earth. Old as he was, he had neverbefore thought as the old should think of death, --that endangered lifeof the young had wakened up the careless soul of age. Zanoni whisperedto the wife, and she drew the old man quietly from the room. 

"Dost thou fear to leave me an hour with thy charge, Viola? Thinkestthou 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 nevershall wrong thee more!"

Before the sun rose, Beatrice was out of danger; at noon Zanoni escapedfrom the blessings of the aged pair, and as he closed the door of thehouse, he found Viola awaiting him without. 

She stood before him timidly, her hands crossed meekly on her bosom, herdowncast 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 canstso 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, andcomforter of the sad, I should rather approve than chide thee. Forgivethee! Life, that ever needs forgiveness, has, for its first duty, toforgive. "

"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 injuriousand false to my preserver, my tears flow from happiness, not remorse. Oh!" she continued, with a simple fervour, unconscious, in her innocenceand her generous emotions, of all the secrets she betrayed, --"thouknowest 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 ofthe hovel, --when I heard those blessings of the poor breathed upon thyparting 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 somuch virtue? The commonest leech will tend the sick for his fee. Areprayers 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 herface with blushes, "thou only, methinks, on all the earth, hast thepower to wound or delight me!" He checked himself, and his face becamegrave and sad. "And this, " he added, in an altered tone, "because, ifthou wouldst heed my counsels, methinks I could guide a guileless heartto a happy fate. "

"Thy counsels! I will obey them all. Mould me to what thou wilt. Inthine absence, I am as a child that fears every shadow in the dark; inthy presence, my soul expands, and the whole world seems calm with acelestial noonday. Do not deny to me that presence. I am fatherless andignorant and alone!"

Zanoni averted his face, and, after a moment's silence, repliedcalmly, --

"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: herstep seemed to tread on air; she would have sung for very delight as shewent gayly home. It is such happiness to the pure to love, --but oh, suchmore than happiness to believe in the worth of the one beloved. Betweenthem there might be human obstacles, --wealth, rank, man's little world. But there was no longer that dark gulf which the imagination recoils todwell on, and which separates forever soul from soul. He did not loveher 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. Howmerrily the ocean murmured in her ear; how radiant an aspect thecommonest passer-by seemed to wear! She gained her home, --she lookedupon the tree, glancing, with fantastic branches, in the sun. "Yes, brother mine!" she said, laughing in her joy, "like thee, I HAVEstruggled to the light!"

She had never hitherto, like the more instructed Daughters of the North, accustomed herself to that delicious Confessional, the transfusion ofthought to writing. Now, suddenly, her heart felt an impulse; a new-borninstinct, that bade it commune with itself, bade it disentangle its webof golden fancies, --made her wish to look upon her inmost self as ina glass. Upsprung from the embrace of Love and Soul--the Eros and thePsyche--their beautiful offspring, Genius! She blushed, she sighed, shetrembled as she wrote. And from the fresh world that she had built forherself, she was awakened to prepare for the glittering stage. How dullbecame 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 thenext and again the next, --days that to her seemed like a special timeset apart from the rest of life. And yet he never spoke to her in thelanguage of flattery, and almost of adoration, to which she had beenaccustomed. Perhaps his very coldness, so gentle as it was, assisted tothis mysterious charm. He talked to her much of her past life, and shewas scarcely surprised (she now never thought of TERROR) to perceive howmuch of that past seemed known to him. 

He made her speak to him of her father; he made her recall some of theairs of Pisani's wild music. And those airs seemed to charm and lull himinto 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 finesympathies that he felt with the harmonies that daily and nightly floatto the throne of Heaven. Life, with its noisy ambition and its meanpassions, is so poor and base! Out of his soul he created the life andthe world for which his soul was fitted. Viola, thou art the daughter ofthat life, and wilt be the denizen of that world. "

In his earlier visits he did not speak of Glyndon. The day soon came onwhich he renewed the subject. And so trustful, obedient, and entire wasthe allegiance that Viola now owned to his dominion, that, unwelcomeas that subject was, she restrained her heart, and listened to him insilence. 

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 thourefuse?"

And then she pressed back the tears that gushed to her eyes; and witha strange pleasure in the midst of pain, --the pleasure of one whosacrifices heart itself to the one who commands that heart, --sheanswered 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 whichthe girl thought she concealed so well; he made an involuntary movementtowards her, and pressed her hand to his lips; it was the first timehe had ever departed even so far from a certain austerity which perhapsmade her fear him and her own thoughts the less. 

"Viola, " said he, and his voice trembled, "the danger that I can avertno more, if thou linger still in Naples, comes hourly near and near tothee! On the third day from this thy fate must be decided. I accept thypromise. Before the last hour of that day, come what may, I shall seethee 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 thesecond division of this work, he was absorbed again in those mysticaldesires and conjectures which the haunting recollection of Zanonialways served to create. And as he wandered through the streets, hewas scarcely conscious of his own movements till, in the mechanism ofcustom, he found himself in the midst of one of the noble collections ofpictures which form the boast of those Italian cities whose glory isin the past. Thither he had been wont, almost daily, to repair, for thegallery contained some of the finest specimens of a master especiallythe object of his enthusiasm and study. There, before the works ofSalvator, he had often paused in deep and earnest reverence. Thestriking characteristic of that artist is the "Vigour of Will;" voidof the elevated idea of abstract beauty, which furnishes a model andarchetype to the genius of more illustrious order, the singular energyof the man hews out of the rock a dignity of his own. His images havethe majesty, not of the god, but the savage; utterly free, like thesublimer schools, from the common-place of imitation, --apart, withthem, from the conventional littleness of the Real, --he grasps theimagination, and compels it to follow him, not to the heaven, butthrough all that is most wild and fantastic upon earth; a sorcery, notof the starry magian, but of the gloomy wizard, --a man of romance whoseheart beat strongly, griping art with a hand of iron, and forcing itto idealise the scenes of his actual life. Before this powerful will, Glyndon drew back more awed and admiring than before the calmer beautywhich rose from the soul of Raphael, like Venus from the deep. 

And now, as awaking from his reverie, he stood opposite to that wild andmagnificent gloom of Nature which frowned on him from the canvas, the very leaves on those gnome-like, distorted trees seemed to rustlesibylline secrets in his ear. Those rugged and sombre Apennines, thecataract that dashed between, suited, more than the actual scenes wouldhave done, the mood and temper of his mind. The stern, uncouth formsat rest on the crags below, and dwarfed by the giant size of the Matterthat reigned around them, impressed him with the might of Nature and thelittleness of Man. As in genius of the more spiritual cast, the livingman, and the soul that lives in him, are studiously made the prominentimage; and the mere accessories of scene kept down, and cast back, as ifto show that the exile from paradise is yet the monarch of the outwardworld, --so, in the landscapes of Salvator, the tree, the mountain, the waterfall, become the principal, and man himself dwindles to theaccessory. The Matter seems to reign supreme, and its true lord tocreep beneath its stupendous shadow. Inert matter giving interest tothe immortal man, not the immortal man to the inert matter. A terriblephilosophy in art!

While something of these thoughts passed through the mind of thepainter, 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 asuperstition. The nursery, with its tales of ghosts and goblins, is thecradle of many of our impressions in the world. But art should not seekto pander to our ignorance; art should represent only truths. I confessthat Raphael pleases me less, because I have no sympathy with hissubjects. 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, --"thosegreat Roman actions which inspire men with sentiments of liberty andvalour, with the virtues of a republic. I wish the cartoons of Raphaelhad illustrated the story of the Horatii; but it remains for France andher Republic to give to posterity the new and the true school, whichcould 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, andscarcely hearing the deductions the Frenchman drew from his proposition. 

"Assuredly. Ha, ha!" and Nicot laughed hideously, "do you ask me tobelieve in the calendar, or what?"

"But the ideal?"

"The ideal!" interrupted Nicot. "Stuff! The Italian critics, and yourEnglish Reynolds, have turned your head. They are so fond oftheir 'gusto grande, ' and their 'ideal beauty that speaks to thesoul!'--soul!--IS there a soul? I understand a man when he talks ofcomposing for a refined taste, --for an educated and intelligent reason;for a sense that comprehends truths. But as for the soul, --bah!--weare but modifications of matter, and painting is modification of matteralso. "

Glyndon turned his eyes from the picture before him to Nicot, and fromNicot to the picture. The dogmatist gave a voice to the thoughts whichthe sight of the picture had awakened. He shook his head without reply. 

"Tell me, " said Nicot, abruptly, "that imposter, --Zanoni!--oh! I havenow learned his name and quackeries, forsooth, --what did he say to theeof 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 retaliateby some tale of slander. "

"Unmasked his delusions!--how?"

"A dull and long story: he wished to teach an old doting friend of minehis secrets of prolonged life and philosophical alchemy. I advise theeto renounce so discreditable an acquaintance. "

With that Nicot nodded significantly, and, not wishing to be furtherquestioned, went his way. 

Glyndon's mind at that moment had escaped to his art, and the commentsand presence of Nicot had been no welcome interruption. He turnedfrom the landscape of Salvator, and his eye falling on a Nativity byCoreggio, the contrast between the two ranks of genius struck him asa discovery. That exquisite repose, that perfect sense of beauty, thatstrength without effort, that breathing moral of high art, which speaksto the mind through the eye, and raises the thoughts, by the aid oftenderness and love, to the regions of awe and wonder, --ay! THAT was thetrue school. He quitted the gallery with reluctant steps and inspiredideas; he sought his own home. Here, pleased not to find the soberMervale, he leaned his face on his hands, and endeavoured to recall thewords of Zanoni in their last meeting. Yes, he felt Nicot's talk even onart was crime; it debased the imagination itself to mechanism. Couldhe, who saw nothing in the soul but a combination of matter, prate ofschools that should excel a Raphael? Yes, art was magic; and as he ownedthe truth of the aphorism, he could comprehend that in magic there maybe religion, for religion is an essential to art. His old ambition, freeing itself from the frigid prudence with which Mervale sought todesecrate all images less substantial than the golden calf of the world, revived, and stirred, and kindled. The subtle detection of what heconceived to be an error in the school he had hitherto adopted, mademore manifest to him by the grinning commentary of Nicot, seemed to opento him a new world of invention. He seized the happy moment, --he placedbefore him the colours and the canvas. Lost in his conceptions of afresh ideal, his mind was lifted aloft into the airy realms of beauty;dark thoughts, unhallowed desires, vanished. Zanoni was right: thematerial world shrunk from his gaze; he viewed Nature as from amountain-top afar; and as the waves of his unquiet heart became calm andstill, 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 forthree days, and almost nights, absorbed in his employment; but on thefourth morning came that reaction to which all labour is exposed. Hewoke listless and fatigued; and as he cast his eyes on the canvas, theglory seemed to have gone from it. Humiliating recollections of thegreat masters he aspired to rival forced themselves upon him; defectsbefore unseen magnified themselves to deformities in his languid anddiscontented eyes. He touched and retouched, but his hand failed him; hethrew down his instruments in despair; he opened his casement: the daywithout was bright and lovely; the street was crowded with that lifewhich is ever so joyous and affluent in the animated population ofNaples. He saw the lover, as he passed, conversing with his mistress bythose mute gestures which have survived all changes of languages, thesame 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 andearth, seemed now cabined and confined as a felon's prison. He welcomedthe step of Mervale at his threshold, and unbarred the door. 

"And is that all you have done?" said Mervale, glancing disdainfullyat the canvas. "Is it for this that you have shut yourself out from thesunny days and moonlit nights of Naples?"

"While the fit was on me, I basked in a brighter sun, and imbibed thevoluptuous luxury of a softer moon. "

"You own that the fit is over. Well, that is some sign of returningsense. After all, it is better to daub canvas for three days than make afool 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 hisbreeches-pockets, stretched his legs, and was about to begin a seriousstrain 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 havebeen at work, I see. This is well, --very well! A bold outline, --greatfreedom in that right hand. But, hold! is the composition good? You havenot got the great pyramidal form. Don't you think, too, that you havelost the advantage of contrast in this figure; since the right leg isput forward, surely the right arm should be put back? Peste! but thatlittle finger is very fine!"

Mervale detested Nicot. For all speculators, Utopians, alterers of theworld, and wanderers from the high road, were equally hateful tohim; but he could have hugged the Frenchman at that moment. He sawin Glyndon's expressive countenance all the weariness and disgust heendured. After so wrapped a study, to be prated to about pyramidalforms and right arms and right legs, the accidence of the art, the wholeconception to be overlooked, and the criticism to end in approval of thelittle 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 upona stool, --"in the first place, this Signor Zanoni, --this secondCagliostro, --who disputes my doctrines! (no doubt a spy of the manCapet) I am not vindictive; as Helvetius says, 'our errors arise fromour passions. ' I keep mine in order; but it is virtuous to hate in thecause of mankind; I would I had the denouncing and the judging of SignorZanoni at Paris. " And Nicot's small eyes shot fire, and he gnashed histeeth. 

"Have you any new cause to hate him?"

"Yes, " said Nicot, fiercely. "Yes, I hear he is courting the girl I meanto marry. "

"You! Whom do you speak of?"

"The celebrated Pisani! She is divinely handsome. She would make myfortune in a republic. And a republic we shall have before the year isout. "

Mervale rubbed his hands, and chuckled. Glyndon coloured with rage andshame. 

"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. Iam about to return to Paris. They write me word that a handsome wifeadvances the career of a patriot. The age of prejudice is over. The sublimer virtues begin to be understood. I shall take back thehandsomest wife in Europe. "

"Be quiet! What are you about?" said Mervale, seizing Glyndon as he sawhim advance towards the Frenchman, his eyes sparkling, and his handsclenched. 

"Sir!" said Glyndon, between his teeth, "you know not of whom you thusspeak. Do you affect to suppose that Viola Pisani would accept YOU?"

"Not if she could get a better offer, " said Mervale, looking up to theceiling. 

"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 liberaloffers, but no one, I apprehend, would make one so honourable. I alonehave pity on her friendless situation. Besides, according to the dawningstate of things, one will always, in France, be able to get rid of awife whenever one wishes. We shall have new laws of divorce. Do youimagine that an Italian girl--and in no country in the world aremaidens, it seems, more chaste (though wives may console themselves withvirtues more philosophical)--would refuse the hand of an artist for thesettlements of a prince? No; I think better of the Pisani than you do. Ishall hasten to introduce myself to her. "

"I wish you all success, Monsieur Nicot, " said Mervale, rising, andshaking him heartily by the hand. 

Glyndon cast at them both a disdainful glance. 

"Perhaps, Monsieur Nicot, " said he, at length, constraining his lipsinto a bitter smile, --"perhaps you may have rivals. "

"So much the better, " replied Monsieur Nicot, carelessly, kicking hisheels together, and appearing absorbed in admiration at the size of hislarge 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 knowhow to draw profit from the speculation! Cher confrere, you haveprejudices. "

"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 Icannot do better than imitate Cato. But to be serious, --I do notfear you as a rival. You are good-looking, and I am ugly. But you areirresolute, and I decisive. While you are uttering fine phrases, I shallsay, 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, yawnedtill he showed all his ragged teeth from ear to ear, pressed down hiscap on his shaggy head with an air of defiance, and casting over hisleft 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 isestimated by your friend. A fine victory, to carry her off from theugliest dog between Lapland and the Calmucks. "

Glyndon was yet too indignant to answer, when a new visitor arrived. Itwas Zanoni himself. Mervale, on whom the appearance and aspect of thispersonage imposed a kind of reluctant deference, which he was unwillingto acknowledge, and still more to betray, nodded to Glyndon, and saying, simply, "More when I see you again, " left the painter and his unexpectedvisitor. 

"I see, " said Zanoni, lifting the cloth from the canvas, "that you havenot slighted the advice I gave you. Courage, young artist; this is anescape from the schools: this is full of the bold self-confidence ofreal genius. You had no Nicot--no Mervale--at your elbow when this imageof true beauty was conceived!"

Charmed back to his art by this unlooked-for praise, Glyndon repliedmodestly, "I thought well of my design till this morning; and then I wasdisenchanted of my happy persuasion. "

"Say, rather, that, unaccustomed to continuous labour, you were fatiguedwith your employment. "

"That is true. Shall I confess it? I began to miss the world without. Itseemed to me as if, while I lavished my heart and my youth upon visionsof beauty, I was losing the beautiful realities of actual life. And Ienvied the merry fisherman, singing as he passed below my casement, andthe lover conversing with his mistress. "

"And, " said Zanoni, with an encouraging smile, "do you blame yourselffor the natural and necessary return to earth, in which even the mosthabitual visitor of the Heavens of Invention seeks his relaxation andrepose? Man's genius is a bird that cannot be always on the wing; whenthe craving for the actual world is felt, it is a hunger that must beappeased. 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 greatestof the complicated truths of existence; descending to what pedants wouldcall the trivial and the frivolous. From every mesh in the social web, he can disentangle a grace. And for him each airy gossamer floats inthe gold of the sunlight. Know you not that around the animalcule thatsports in the water there shines a halo, as around the star (The monasmica, found in the purest pools, is encompassed with a halo. And thisis frequent amongst many other species of animalcule. ) that revolves inbright pastime through the space? True art finds beauty everywhere. Inthe street, in the market-place, in the hovel, it gathers food for thehive of its thoughts. In the mire of politics, Dante and Milton selectedpearls for the wreath of song. 

"Who ever told you that Raphael did not enjoy the life without, carryingeverywhere with him the one inward idea of beauty which attracted andimbedded in its own amber every straw that the feet of the dull mantrampled into mud? As some lord of the forest wanders abroad for itsprey, and scents and follows it over plain and hill, through brake andjungle, but, seizing it at last, bears the quarry to its unwitnessedcave, --so Genius searches through wood and waste, untiringly andeagerly, every sense awake, every nerve strained to speed and strength, for the scattered and flying images of matter, that it seizes atlast with its mighty talons, and bears away with it into solitudesno footstep can invade. Go, seek the world without; it is for art theinexhaustible pasture-ground and harvest to the world within!"

"You comfort me, " said Glyndon, brightening. "I had imagined myweariness a proof of my deficiency! But not now would I speak to youof 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, inthe judgment of the sober world, would only darken its prospects andobstruct 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 whocan 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, forit is upon this very point that I have sought you. Listen to me!"Zanoni fixed his eyes earnestly on his listener, and continued: "For theaccomplishment of whatever is great and lofty, the clear perception oftruths is the first requisite, --truths adapted to the object desired. The warrior thus reduces the chances of battle to combinations almostof mathematics. He can predict a result, if he can but depend uponthe materials he is forced to employ. At such a loss he can cross thatbridge; in such a time he can reduce that fort. Still more accurately, for he depends less on material causes than ideas at his command, canthe commander of the purer science or diviner art, if he once perceivethe 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 isdisturbed by many causes, --vanity, passion, fear, indolence in himself, ignorance of the fitting means without to accomplish what he designs. Hemay miscalculate his own forces; he may have no chart of the countryhe would invade. It is only in a peculiar state of the mind that it iscapable of perceiving truth; and that state is profound serenity. Yourmind is fevered by a desire for truth: you would compel it to yourembraces; you would ask me to impart to you, without ordeal orpreparation, the grandest secrets that exist in Nature. But truth can nomore be seen by the mind unprepared for it, than the sun can dawn uponthe midst of night. Such a mind receives truth only to pollute it: touse the simile of one who has wandered near to the secret of the sublimeGoetia (or the magic that lies within Nature, as electricity within thecloud), 'He who pours water into the muddy well, does but disturb themud. '" ("Iamb. De Vit. Pythag. ")

"What do you tend to?"

"This: that you have faculties that may attain to surpassing power, thatmay rank you among those enchanters who, greater than the magian, leave behind them an enduring influence, worshipped wherever beauty iscomprehended, wherever the soul is sensible of a higher world than thatin which matter struggles for crude and incomplete existence. 

"But to make available those faculties, need I be a prophet to tell youthat you must learn to concentre upon great objects all your desires?The heart must rest, that the mind may be active. At present you wanderfrom aim to aim. As the ballast to the ship, so to the spirit are faithand love. With your whole heart, affections, humanity, centred in oneobject, your mind and aspirations will become equally steadfast and inearnest. Viola is a child as yet; you do not perceive the high naturethe 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 hymncarries aloft the spirits of the world. Your nature wants the harmony, the music which, as the Pythagoreans wisely taught, at once elevates andsoothes. 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 ofanother. But if I could transfer to you, as the loadstone transfers itsattraction to the magnet, the love that she has now for me, --if I couldcause 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 andyourself be deep and loyal; if not, think you that I would disenchanther with truth to make her adore a falsehood?"

"But if, " persisted Glyndon, --"if she be all that you tell me, and ifshe love you, how can you rob yourself of so priceless a treasure?"

"Oh, shallow and mean heart of man!" exclaimed Zanoni, with unaccustomedpassion and vehemence, "dost thou conceive so little of love as not toknow that it sacrifices all--love itself--for the happiness of the thingit loves? Hear me!" And Zanoni's face grew pale. "Hear me! I press thisupon you, because I love her, and because I fear that with me her fatewill be less fair than with yourself. Why, --ask not, for I will nottell you. Enough! Time presses now for your answer; it cannot long bedelayed. Before the night of the third day from this, all choice will beforbid you!"

"But, " said Glyndon, still doubting and suspicious, --"but why thishaste?"

"Man, you are not worthy of her when you ask me. All I can tell youhere, you should have known yourself. This ravisher, this man of will, this son of the old Visconti, unlike you, --steadfast, resolute, earnesteven in his crimes, --never relinquishes an object. But one passioncontrols his lust, --it is his avarice. The day after his attempt onViola, his uncle, the Cardinal --, from whom he has large expectationsof land and gold, sent for him, and forbade him, on pain of forfeitingall the possessions which his schemes already had parcelled out, topursue with dishonourable designs one whom the Cardinal had heeded andloved from childhood. This is the cause of his present pause from hispursuit. While we speak, the cause expires. Before the hand of the clockreaches the hour of noon, the Cardinal -- will be no more. At this verymoment thy friend, Jean Nicot, is with the Prince di --. "

"He! wherefore?"

"To ask what dower shall go with Viola Pisani, the morning that sheleaves 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 thethird 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 strangefascination you exert upon my mind? What interest can you have in me, astranger, that you should thus dictate to me the gravest action in thelife 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 forme?'"

"And yet, " said Zanoni, "if I told thee that I could initiate thee intothe secrets of that magic which the philosophy of the whole existingworld treats as a chimera, or imposture; if I promised to show thee howto command the beings of air and ocean, how to accumulate wealth moreeasily than a child can gather pebbles on the shore, to place in thyhands the essence of the herbs which prolong life from age to age, themystery of that attraction by which to awe all danger and disarm allviolence and subdue man as the serpent charms the bird, --if I told theethat all these it was mine to possess and to communicate, thou wouldstlisten to me then, and obey me without a doubt!"

"It is true; and I can account for this only by the imperfectassociations of my childhood, --by traditions in our house of--"

"Your forefather, who, in the revival of science, sought the secrets ofApollonius and Paracelsus. "

"What!" said Glyndon, amazed, "are you so well acquainted with theannals of an obscure lineage?"

"To the man who aspires to know, no man who has been the meaneststudent of knowledge should be unknown. You ask me why I have shown thisinterest in your fate? There is one reason which I have not yet toldyou. There is a fraternity as to whose laws and whose mysteries the mostinquisitive schoolmen are in the dark. By those laws all are pledged towarn, to aid, and to guide even the remotest descendants of men whohave toiled, though vainly, like your ancestor, in the mysteries of theOrder. We are bound to advise them to their welfare; nay, more, --if theycommand us to it, we must accept them as our pupils. I am a survivorof that most ancient and immemorial union. This it was that bound me tothee at the first; this, perhaps, attracted thyself unconsciously, Sonof our Brotherhood, to me. "

"If this be so, I command thee, in the name of the laws thou obeyest, toreceive me as thy pupil!"

"What do you ask?" said Zanoni, passionately. "Learn, first, theconditions. No neophyte must have, at his initiation, one affection ordesire that chains him to the world. He must be pure from the love ofwoman, free from avarice and ambition, free from the dreams even ofart, or the hope of earthly fame. The first sacrifice thou must makeis--Viola herself. And for what? For an ordeal that the most daringcourage only can encounter, the most ethereal natures alone survive!Thou art unfit for the science that has made me and others what we areor have been; for thy whole nature is one fear!"

"Fear!" cried Glyndon, colouring with resentment, and rising to the fullheight of his stature. 

"Fear! and the worst fear, --fear of the world's opinion; fear of theNicots and the Mervales; fear of thine own impulses when most generous;fear of thine own powers when thy genius is most bold; fear that virtueis not eternal; fear that God does not live in heaven to keep watch onearth; fear, the fear of little men; and that fear is never known to thegreat. "

With these words Zanoni abruptly left the artist, humbled, bewildered, and not convinced. He remained alone with his thoughts till he wasaroused by the striking of the clock; he then suddenly rememberedZanoni's prediction of the Cardinal's death; and, seized with an intensedesire to learn its truth, he hurried into the streets, --he gained theCardinal's palace. Five minutes before noon his Eminence had expired, after an illness of less than an hour. Zanoni's visit had occupied moretime than the illness of the Cardinal. Awed and perplexed, he turnedfrom the palace, and as he walked through the Chiaja, he saw Jean Nicotemerge 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 secretand precious archives the materials for this history have been drawn; yewho have retained, from century to century, all that time has spared ofthe august and venerable science, --thanks to you, if now, for thefirst time, some record of the thoughts and actions of no false andself-styled luminary of your Order be given, however imperfectly, tothe world. Many have called themselves of your band; many spuriouspretenders have been so-called by the learned ignorance which still, baffled and perplexed, is driven to confess that it knows nothing ofyour origin, your ceremonies or doctrines, nor even if you still havelocal habitation on the earth. Thanks to you if I, the only one ofmy country, in this age, admitted, with a profane footstep, into yourmysterious Academe (The reader will have the goodness to remember thatthis is said by the author of the original MS. , not by the editor. ), have been by you empowered and instructed to adapt to the comprehensionof the uninitiated, some few of the starry truths which shone on thegreat Shemaia of the Chaldean Lore, and gleamed dimly through thedarkened knowledge of latter disciples, labouring, like Psellus andIamblichus, to revive the embers of the fire which burned in the Hamarinof the East. Though not to us of an aged and hoary world is vouchsafedthe NAME which, so say the earliest oracles of the earth, "rushes intothe infinite worlds, " yet is it ours to trace the reviving truths, through each new discovery of the philosopher and chemist. The laws ofattraction, of electricity, and of the yet more mysterious agency ofthat great principal of life, which, if drawn from the universe, wouldleave the universe a grave, were but the code in which the Theurgy ofold sought the guides that led it to a legislation and science of itsown. To rebuild on words the fragments of this history, it seems to meas if, in a solemn trance, I was led through the ruins of a city whoseonly remains were tombs. From the sarcophagus and the urn I awake thegenius (The Greek Genius of Death. ) of the extinguished Torch, and soclosely does its shape resemble Eros, that at moments I scarcely knowwhich of ye dictates to me, --O Love! O Death!

And it stirred in the virgin's heart, --this new, unfathomable, anddivine emotion! Was it only the ordinary affection of the pulse and thefancy, of the eye to the Beautiful, of the ear to the Eloquent, or didit not justify the notion she herself conceived of it, --that it was bornnot of the senses, that it was less of earthly and human love than theeffect of some wondrous but not unholy charm? I said that, from that dayin which, no longer with awe and trembling, she surrendered herself tothe 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 thattrembles on the water, that smiles upon the leaves, I behold but alikeness to thine eyes. What is this change, that alters not onlymyself, but the face of the whole universe?

. .. . 

"How instantaneously leaped into life the power with which thou swayestmy heart in its ebb and flow. Thousands were around me, and I saw butthee. That was the night in which I first entered upon the world whichcrowds life into a drama, and has no language but music. How strangelyand how suddenly with thee became that world evermore connected! Whatthe delusion of the stage was to others, thy presence was to me. Mylife, too, seemed to centre into those short hours, and from thy lipsI heard a music, mute to all ears but mine. I sit in the room where myfather dwelt. Here, on that happy night, forgetting why THEY were sohappy, I shrunk into the shadow, and sought to guess what thou wert tome; 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 meof the future. An orphan now, --what is there that lives for me to thinkof, to dream upon, to revere, but thou!

"How tenderly thou hast rebuked me for the grievous wrong that mythoughts did thee! Why should I have shuddered to feel thee glancingupon my thoughts like the beam on the solitary tree, to which thou didstonce liken me so well? It was--it was, that, like the tree, I struggledfor the light, and the light came. They tell me of love, and my verylife of the stage breathes the language of love into my lips. No; againand again, I know THAT is not the love that I feel for thee!--it is nota passion, it is a thought! I ask not to be loved again. I murmur notthat thy words are stern and thy looks are cold. I ask not if I haverivals; I sigh not to be fair in thine eyes. It is my SPIRIT that wouldblend itself with thine. I would give worlds, though we were apart, though oceans rolled between us, to know the hour in which thy gaze waslifted to the stars, --in which thy heart poured itself in prayer. Theytell me thou art more beautiful than the marble images that are fairerthan all human forms; but I have never dared to gaze steadfastly on thyface, that memory might compare thee with the rest. Only thine eyes andthy soft, calm smile haunt me; as when I look upon the moon, all thatpasses into my heart is her silent light. 

. .. . 

"Often, when the air is calm, I have thought that I hear the strains ofmy father's music; often, though long stilled in the grave, have theywaked me from the dreams of the solemn night. Methinks, ere thou comestto me that I hear them herald thy approach. Methinks I hear them wailand moan, when I sink back into myself on seeing thee depart. Thou artOF that music, --its spirit, its genius. My father must have guessedat thee and thy native regions, when the winds hushed to listen to histones, and the world deemed him mad! I hear where I sit, the far murmurof the sea. Murmur on, ye blessed waters! The waves are the pulses ofthe shore. They beat with the gladness of the morning wind, --so beats myheart 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; andmy soul answered my heart and said, 'THOU WERT BORN TO WORSHIP!' Yes; Iknow why the real world has ever seemed to me so false and cold. I knowwhy the world of the stage charmed and dazzled me. I know why it was sosweet 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 toothers. It is its very want to have ever before it some image loftierthan 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 itthis morning after sunrise. How it sprung up, with its eager spray, tothe 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 fromthe skies. 

. .. . 

"I HAVE seen, I have LISTENED to thee again. How bold I have become! Iran on with my childlike thoughts and stories, my recollections of thepast, as if I had known thee from an infant. Suddenly the idea of mypresumption 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 calmand earnest!--'Viola, the darkness of a child's heart is often but theshadow of a star. Speak on! And thy nightingale, when they caught andcaged it, refused to sing?'

"'And I placed the cage yonder, amidst the vine-leaves, and took up mylute, and spoke to it on the strings; for I thought that all music wasits native language, and it would understand that I sought to comfortit. '

"'Yes, ' saidst thou. 'And at last it answered thee, but not withsong, --in a sharp, brief cry; so mournful, that thy hands let fall thelute, and the tears gushed from thine eyes. So softly didst thou unbarthe cage, and the nightingale flew into yonder thicket; and thou heardstthe foliage rustle, and, looking through the moonlight, thine eyes sawthat 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 thevine-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 thanI knew myself! How is the humble life of my past years, with itsmean events, so mysteriously familiar to thee, bright stranger! Iwonder, --but I do not again dare to fear thee!

. .. . 

"Once the thought of him oppressed and weighed me down. As an infantthat longs for the moon, my being was one vague desire for somethingnever to be attained. Now I feel rather as if to think of thee sufficedto remove every fetter from my spirit. I float in the still seas oflight, and nothing seems too high for my wings, too glorious for myeyes. It was mine ignorance that made me fear thee. A knowledge that isnot in books seems to breathe around thee as an atmosphere. How littlehave 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. Istartle when I look even at the words I have written; they seem not tocome from myself, but are the signs of another language which thou hasttaught 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 wingshovering around me, and saw dim shapes of beauty floating round, andvanishing as they smiled upon me. No unquiet and fearful dream evercomes to me now in sleep, yet sleep and waking are alike but as onedream. In sleep I wander with thee, not through the paths of earth, butthrough 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 aslave 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 moreloudly. I trembled to encounter the audience, whose breath gave shame orrenown; and now I have no fear of them. I see them, heed them, hear themnot! I know that there will be music in my voice, for it is a hymn thatI pour to thee. Thou never comest to the theatre; and that no longergrieves me. Thou art become too sacred to appear a part of the commonworld, and I feel glad that thou art not by when crowds have a right tojudge me. 

. .. . 

"And he spoke to me of ANOTHER: to another he would consign me! No, itis not love that I feel for thee, Zanoni; or why did I hear thee withoutanger, why did thy command seem to me not a thing impossible? Asthe strings of the instrument obey the hand of the master, thy lookmodulates the wildest chords of my heart to thy will. If it pleasethee, --yes, let it be so. Thou art lord of my destinies; they cannotrebel against thee! I almost think I could love him, whoever it be, onwhom thou wouldst shed the rays that circumfuse thyself. Whatever thouhast touched, I love; whatever thou speakest of, I love. Thy hand playedwith these vine leaves; I wear them in my bosom. Thou seemest to me thesource of all love; too high and too bright to be loved thyself, but darting light into other objects, on which the eye can gaze lessdazzled. No, no; it is not love that I feel for thee, and thereforeit is that I do not blush to nourish and confess it. Shame on me if Iloved, knowing myself so worthless a thing to thee!

. .. . 

"ANOTHER!--my memory echoes back that word. Another! Dost thou mean thatI shall see thee no more? It is not sadness, --it is not despair thatseizes me. I cannot weep. It is an utter sense of desolation. I amplunged 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 beyondthe 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 thelife I knew before I gave life itself away to thee. Give me back thecareless dreams of my youth, ---my liberty of heart that sung aloud as itwalked the earth. Thou hast disenchanted me of everything that is notof 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 kissclaimed 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 methat since the sleep of the last night, a deep calm has settled upon mybreast. 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 inthis conviction I repose, and smile even at thy words and my ownfears. Thou art fond of one maxim, which thou repeatest in a thousandforms, --that the beauty of the soul is faith; that as ideal lovelinessto the sculptor, faith is to the heart; that faith, rightly understood, extends over all the works of the Creator, whom we can know but throughbelief; that it embraces a tranquil confidence in ourselves, and aserene repose as to our future; that it is the moonlight that sways thetides 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 makesthe inner life to thee; and thou canst not tear me from thee, ifthou wouldst! And this change from struggle into calm came to mewith sleep, --a sleep without a dream; but when I woke, it was witha mysterious sense of happiness, --an indistinct memory of somethingblessed, --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, asif never more to open to the sun; and the night itself, in the heartas on the earth, has ripened the blossoms into flowers. The world isbeautiful once more, but beautiful in repose, --not a breeze stirs thytree, 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 ofwhich 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 atleast wrings from his crucible is no delusion. A Venetian noble might bea fribble, or an assassin, --a scoundrel, or a dolt; worthless, or worsethan worthless, yet he might have sat to Titian, and his portrait maybe inestimable, --a few inches of painted canvas a thousand times morevaluable than a man with his veins and muscles, brain, will, heart, andintellect!

In this cabinet sat a man of about three-and-forty, --dark-eyed, sallow, with short, prominent features, a massive conformation of jaw, andthick, sensual, but resolute lips; this man was the Prince di --. Hisform, above the middle height, and rather inclined to corpulence, wasclad in a loose dressing-robe of rich brocade. On a table before him layan 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, whostood by the embrasure of the deep-set barricadoed window, --"well! theCardinal sleeps with his fathers. I require comfort for the loss ofso excellent a relation; and where a more dulcet voice than ViolaPisani'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 thouascertained the name of the insolent who baffled us that night, andadvised 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 canmistake; so clear, and so commanding, when I hear it I almost fancythere is such a thing as conscience. However, we must rid ourselves ofan impertinent. Mascari, Signor Zanoni hath not yet honoured our poorhouse with his presence. He is a distinguished stranger, --we must give abanquet 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 ofZanoni'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 veinsrolls the blood of the old Visconti--of those who boasted that no womanever escaped their lust, and no man their resentment. The crown of myfathers has shrunk into a gewgaw and a toy, --their ambition and theirspirit are undecayed! My honour is now enlisted in this pursuit, --Violamust be mine!"

"Another ambuscade?" said Mascari, inquiringly. 

"Nay, why not enter the house itself?--the situation is lonely, and thedoor is not made of iron. "

"But what if, on her return home, she tell the tale of our violence? Ahouse forced, --a virgin stolen! Reflect; though the feudal privilegesare 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 Madmenof France succeed in their chimeras, will the iron of law not benditself, like an osier twig, to the strong hand of power and gold? Butlook not so pale, Mascari; I have foreplanned all things. The day thatshe leaves this palace, she will leave it for France, with Monsieur JeanNicot. "

Before Mascari could reply, the gentleman of the chamber announced theSignor Zanoni. 

The prince involuntarily laid his hand upon the sword placed on thetable, then with a smile at his own impulse, rose, and met his visitorat the threshold, with all the profuse and respectful courtesy ofItalian simulation. 

"This is an honour highly prized, " said the prince. "I have long desiredto 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 ashiver came over him, and his heart stood still. Zanoni bent on him hisdark, smiling eyes, and then seated himself with a familiar air. 

"Thus it is signed and sealed; I mean our friendship, noble prince. Andnow I will tell you the object of my visit. I find, Excellency, that, unconsciously perhaps, we are rivals. Can we not accommodate outpretensions!"

"Ah!" said the prince, carelessly, "you, then, were the cavalier whorobbed me of the reward of my chase. All stratagems fair in love, as inwar. Reconcile our pretensions! Well, here is the dice-box; let us throwfor 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 theforfeit?"

"The sword lies next to the dice-box, Signor Zanoni. Let him who standsnot 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 hewas, could not suppress the glow of triumph and satisfaction that spreaditself over his features. Mascari took up the three dice, and rattledthem noisily in the box. Zanoni, leaning his cheek on his hand, andbending over the table, fixed his eyes steadfastly on the parasite;Mascari in vain struggled to extricate from that searching gaze; he grewpale, and trembled, he put down the box. 

"I give the first throw to your Excellency. Signor Mascari, be pleasedto terminate our suspense. "

Again Mascari took up the box; again his hand shook so that the dicerattled within. He threw; the numbers were sixteen. 

"It is a high throw, " said Zanoni, calmly; "nevertheless, SignorMascari, I do not despond. "

Mascari gathered up the dice, shook the box, and rolled the contentsonce more on the table: the number was the highest that can bethrown, --eighteen. 

The prince darted a glance of fire at his minion, who stood with gapingmouth, 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 andconfusion, "the victory is yours. But pardon me, you have spoken lightlyof this young girl, --will anything tempt you to yield your claim?"

"Ah, do not think so ill of my gallantry; and, " resumed Zanoni, with astern meaning in his voice, "forget not the forfeit your own lips havenamed. "

The prince knit his brow, but constrained the haughty answer that washis first impulse. 

"Enough!" he said, forcing a smile; "I yield. Let me prove that I do notyield ungraciously; will you favour me with your presence at a littlefeast I propose to give in honour, " he added, with a sardonic mockery, "of the elevation of my kinsman, the late Cardinal, of pious memory, tothe 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 soonafterwards departed. 

"Villain!" then exclaimed the prince, grasping Mascari by the collar, "you betrayed me!"

"I assure your Excellency that the dice were properly arranged; heshould have thrown twelve; but he is the Devil, and that's the end ofit. "

"There is no time to be lost, " said the prince, quitting his hold of hisparasite, who quietly resettled his cravat. 

"My blood is up, --I will win this girl, if I die for it! What noise isthat?"

"It is but the sword of your illustrious ancestor that has fallen fromthe 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 whichis power. I cannot influence the decisions of those whom I would mostguide to the shore; I see them wander farther and deeper into theinfinite ocean where our barks sail evermore to the horizon that fliesbefore us! Amazed and awed to find that I can only warn where I wouldcontrol, I have looked into my own soul. It is true that the desires ofearth chain me to the present, and shut me from the solemn secrets whichIntellect, purified from all the dross of the clay, alone can examineand survey. The stern condition on which we hold our nobler and divinergifts darkens our vision towards the future of those for whom we knowthe human infirmities of jealousy or hate or love. Mejnour, all aroundme is mist and haze; I have gone back in our sublime existence; andfrom 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 natureare the seeds of good and greatness, if the tares and weeds of worldlyvanities and fears would suffer them to grow. If she were his, and I hadthus transplanted to another soil the passion that obscures my gaze anddisarms my power, unseen, unheard, unrecognised, I could watch over hisfate, and secretly prompt his deeds, and minister to her welfare throughhis own. But time rushes on! Through the shadows that encircle me, Isee, gathering round her, the darkest dangers. No choice but flight, --noescape save with him or me. With me!--the rapturous thought, --theterrible conviction! With me! Mejnour, canst thou wonder that I wouldsave her from myself? A moment in the life of ages, --a bubble on theshoreless sea. What else to me can be human love? And in this exquisitenature of hers, --more pure, more spiritual, even in its young affectionsthan ever heretofore the countless volumes of the heart, race afterrace, have given to my gaze: there is yet a deep-buried feelingthat warns me of inevitable woe. Thou austere and remorselessHierophant, --thou who hast sought to convert to our brotherhood everyspirit that seemed to thee most high and bold, --even thou knowest, byhorrible experience, how vain the hope to banish FEAR from the heart ofwoman. 

My life would be to her one marvel. Even if, on the other hand, I soughtto guide her path through the realms of terror to the light, think ofthe Haunter of the Threshold, and shudder with me at the awful hazard!I have endeavoured to fill the Englishman's ambition with the trueglory of his art; but the restless spirit of his ancestor still seems towhisper in him, and to attract to the spheres in which it lost its ownwandering way. There is a mystery in man's inheritance from his fathers. Peculiarities of the mind, as diseases of the body, rest dormant forgenerations, to revive in some distant descendant, baffle all treatmentand elude all skill. Come to me from thy solitude amidst the wrecks ofRome! I pant for a living confidant, --for one who in the old time hashimself known jealousy and love. I have sought commune with Adon-Ai; buthis presence, that once inspired such heavenly content with knowledge, and so serene a confidence in destiny, now only troubles and perplexesme. From the height from which I strive to search into the shadows ofthings to come, I see confused spectres of menace and wrath. Methinks Ibehold a ghastly limit to the wondrous existence I have held, --methinksthat, after ages of the Ideal Life, I see my course merge into the moststormy 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 falseideal of common men, --body and mind, a hideous mockery of the art thatshapes the Beautiful, and the desires that seek the Perfect, ever hauntsmy vision amidst these perturbed and broken clouds of the fate to be. By that shadowy scaffold it stands and gibbers at me, with lips droppingslime and gore. Come, O friend of the far-time; for me, at least, thywisdom has not purged away thy human affections. According to the bondsof our solemn order, reduced now to thee and myself, lone survivors ofso many haughty and glorious aspirants, thou art pledged, too, to warnthe descendant of those whom thy counsels sought to initiate into thegreat secret in a former age. The last of that bold Visconti who wasonce thy pupil is the relentless persecutor of this fair child. Withthoughts of lust and murder, he is digging his own grave; thou mayestyet 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 abaffled but nobler student. If he reject my counsel, and insist uponthe pledge, Mejnour, thou wilt have another neophyte. Beware of anothervictim! Come to me! This will reach thee with all speed. Answer it bythe 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, isreverenced, not with the feelings that should hallow the memory of thepoet, but the awe that wraps the memory of the magician. To his charmsthey ascribe the hollowing of that mountain passage; and tradition yetguards his tomb by the spirits he had raised to construct the cavern. This spot, in the immediate vicinity of Viola's home, had oftenattracted her solitary footsteps. She had loved the dim and solemnfancies that beset her as she looked into the lengthened gloom of thegrotto, or, ascending to the tomb, gazed from the rock on the dwarfedfigures of the busy crowd that seemed to creep like insects along thewindings of the soil below; and now, at noon, she bent thither herthoughtful way. She threaded the narrow path, she passed the gloomyvineyard that clambers up the rock, and gained the lofty spot, greenwith moss and luxuriant foliage, where the dust of him who yet soothesand elevates the minds of men is believed to rest. From afar rose thehuge fortress of St. Elmo, frowning darkly amidst spires and domes thatglittered in the sun. Lulled in its azure splendour lay the Siren's sea;and the grey smoke of Vesuvius, in the clear distance, soared likea moving pillar into the lucid sky. Motionless on the brink of theprecipice, Viola looked upon the lovely and living world that stretchedbelow; and the sullen vapour of Vesuvius fascinated her eye yet morethan the scattered gardens, or the gleaming Caprea, smiling amidst thesmiles of the sea. She heard not a step that had followed her on herpath and started to hear a voice at hand. So sudden was the apparitionof the form that stood by her side, emerging from the bushes that cladthe crags, and so singularly did it harmonise in its uncouth uglinesswith the wild nature of the scene immediately around her, and the wizardtraditions of the place, that the colour left her cheek, and a faint crybroke from her lips. 

"Tush, pretty trembler!--do not be frightened at my face, " said theman, with a bitter smile. "After three months' marriage, there is nodifferent between ugliness and beauty. Custom is a great leveller. I wascoming to your house when I saw you leave it; so, as I have matters ofimportance to communicate, I ventured to follow your footsteps. My nameis Jean Nicot, a name already favourably known as a French artist. Theart of painting and the art of music are nearly connected, and the stageis an altar that unites the two. "

There was something frank and unembarrassed in the man's address thatserved to dispel the fear his appearance had occasioned. He seatedhimself, as he spoke, on a crag beside her, and, looking up steadilyinto her face, continued:--

"You are very beautiful, Viola Pisani, and I am not surprised at thenumber of your admirers. If I presume to place myself in the list, it isbecause 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 -- everspoken to thee of marriage; or the beautiful imposter Zanoni, or theyoung blue-eyed Englishman, Clarence Glyndon? It is marriage, --it is ahome, it is safety, it is reputation, that I offer to thee; and theselast when the straight form grows crooked, and the bright eyes dim. Whatsay you?" and he attempted to seize her hand. 

Viola shrunk from him, and silently turned to depart. He rose abruptlyand placed himself on her path. 

"Actress, you must hear me! Do you know what this calling of the stageis 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 thepuppet that they consent to trick out with tinsel for their amusement, not an idol for their worship. Are you so enamoured of this careerthat you scorn even to think of security and honour? Perhaps you aredifferent from what you seem. Perhaps you laugh at the prejudice thatwould degrade you, and would wisely turn it to advantage. Speak franklyto 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 seenall the perils of her forelorn condition and her fearful renown. Nicotcontinued:--

"Zanoni would but amuse himself with thy vanity; Glyndon would despisehimself, if he offered thee his name, and thee, if thou wouldst acceptit; but the Prince di -- is in earnest, and he is wealthy. Listen!"

And Nicot approached his lips to her, and hissed a sentence which shedid not suffer him to complete. She darted from him with one glance ofunutterable disdain. As he strove to regain his hold of her arm, helost his footing, and fell down the sides of the rock till, bruised andlacerated, a pine-branch saved him from the yawning abyss below. Sheheard his exclamation of rage and pain as she bounded down the path, and, without once turning to look behind, regained her home. By theporch stood Glyndon, conversing with Gionetta. She passed himabruptly, entered the house, and, sinking on the floor, wept loud andpassionately. 

Glyndon, who had followed her in surprise, vainly sought to soothe andcalm her. She would not reply to his questions; she did not seem tolisten to his protestations of love, till suddenly, as Nicot's terriblepicture of the world's judgment of that profession which to her youngerthoughts had seemed the service of Song and the Beautiful, forced itselfupon her, she raised her face from her hands, and, looking steadily uponthe 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 havecounselled, perhaps, in that revolution of her whole mind which thewords of Nicot had effected, which made her despise her very self, sicken of her lofty dreams, despair of the future, and distrust herwhole ideal, --perhaps, I say, in restoring her self-esteem, --he wouldhave won her confidence, and ultimately secured her love. But againstthe prompting of his nobler nature rose up at that sudden question allthose doubts which, as Zanoni had so well implied, made the true enemiesof his soul. Was he thus suddenly to be entangled into a snare laid forhis credulity by deceivers? Was she not instructed to seize the momentto force him into an avowal which prudence must repent? Was not thegreat actress rehearsing a premeditated part? He turned round, as thesethoughts, the children of the world, passed across him, for he literallyfancied that he heard the sarcastic laugh of Mervale without. Nor washe deceived. Mervale was passing by the threshold, and Gionetta had toldhim his friend was within. Who does not know the effect of the world'slaugh? Mervale was the personation of the world. The whole world seemedto shout derision in those ringing tones. He drew back, --he recoiled. Viola followed him with her earnest, impatient eyes. At last, hefaltered forth, "Do all of thy profession, beautiful Viola, exactmarriage as the sole condition of love?" Oh, bitter question! Oh, poisoned taunt! He repented it the moment after. He was seized withremorse of reason, of feeling, and of conscience. He saw her formshrink, 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, gentlelook of self-pity, rather than reproach, she pressed her hands tightlyto her bosom, and said, --

"He was right! Pardon me, Englishman; I see now, indeed, that I am thePariah 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 himby, 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, stillloitering at the door, seized his arm. Glyndon shook him off abruptly. 

"Thou and thy counsels, " said he, bitterly, "have made me a coward anda wretch. But I will go home, --I will write to her. I will pour out mywhole 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 tillGlyndon had exhausted himself awhile by passionate exclamations andreproaches, did the experienced angler begin to tighten the line. Hethen drew from Glyndon the explanation of what had passed, and artfullysought not to irritate, but soothe him. Mervale, indeed, was by no meansa bad man; he had stronger moral notions than are common amongst theyoung. He sincerely reproved his friend for harbouring dishonourableintentions with regard to the actress. "Because I would not have her thywife, I never dreamed that thou shouldst degrade her to thy mistress. Better of the two an imprudent match than an illicit connection. Butpause 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 myanswer 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 whathad passed between himself and Zanoni, --suppressing only, he scarce knewwhy, 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 somecharlatanic coalition between the actress, and perhaps, --who knows?--herclandestine protector, sated with possession! How equivocal thecharacter of one, --the position of the other! What cunning in thequestion of the actress! How profoundly had Glyndon, at the firstsuggestion of his sober reason, seen through the snare. What! was heto be thus mystically cajoled and hurried into a rash marriage, becauseZanoni, a mere stranger, told him with a grave face that he must decidebefore the clock struck a certain hour?

"Do this at least, " said Mervale, reasonably enough, --"wait till thetime expires; it is but another day. Baffle Zanoni. He tells thee thathe will meet thee before midnight to-morrow, and defies thee to avoidhim. Pooh! let us quit Naples for some neighbouring place, where, unlesshe be indeed the Devil, he cannot possibly find us. Show him that youwill 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 allI 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 passedthem. 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 thisday week! I am going to the cafe, in the Toledo; and hark ye, when nextyou meet your friend Signor Zanoni, tell him that he has twice crossedmy path. Jean Nicot, though a painter, is a plain, honest man, andalways 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 lovethat Zanoni has crossed your path? How that, if your suit prosper sowell?"

"Ask Viola Pisani that question. Bah! Glyndon, she is a prude only tothee. 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 asigh. I will watch her closely; and, at all events, Zanoni shall not bethe master of my fate. Let us, as you advise, leave Naples at daybreakto-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, andtook the road towards Baiae. Glyndon left word at his hotel, that ifSignor Zanoni sought him, it was in the neighbourhood of that oncecelebrated watering-place of the ancients that he should be found. 

They passed by Viola's house, but Glyndon resisted the temptation ofpausing there; and after threading the grotto of Posilipo, they woundby a circuitous route back into the suburbs of the city, and took theopposite road, which conducts to Portici and Pompeii. It was late atnoon when they arrived at the former of these places. Here they haltedto dine; for Mervale had heard much of the excellence of the macaroni atPortici, and Mervale was a bon vivant. 

They put up at an inn of very humble pretensions, and dined under anawning. Mervale was more than usually gay; he pressed the lacrima uponhis friend, and conversed gayly. 

"Well, my dear friend, we have foiled Signor Zanoni in one of hispredictions 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 yourvanity that makes you credulous. Thank Heaven, I do not think myself ofsuch importance that the operations of Nature should be changed in orderto frighten me. "

"But why should the operations of Nature be changed? There may be adeeper philosophy than we dream of, --a philosophy that discovers thesecrets of Nature, but does not alter, by penetrating, its courses. "

"Ah, you relapse into your heretical credulity; you seriously supposeZanoni to be a prophet, --a reader of the future; perhaps an associate ofgenii and spirits!"

Here the landlord, a little, fat, oily fellow, came up with a freshbottle of lacrima. He hoped their Excellencies were pleased. He was mosttouched--touched to the heart, that they liked the macaroni. Were theirExcellencies going to Vesuvius? There was a slight eruption; they couldnot see it where they were, but it was pretty, and would be prettierstill 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 alittle, just to amuse their Excellencies the English. "

"Well, order the horses, and bring the bill; we will go before it isdark. Clarence, my friend, --nunc est bibendum; but take care of the pedelibero, which will scarce do for walking on lava!"

The bottle was finished, the bill paid; the gentlemen mounted, thelandlord bowed, and they bent their way, in the cool of the delightfulevening, towards Resina. 

The wine, perhaps the excitement of his thoughts, animated Glyndon, whose unequal spirits were, at times, high and brilliant as those of aschoolboy released; and the laughter of the Northern tourists soundedoft and merrily along the melancholy domains of buried cities. 

Hesperus had lighted his lamp amidst the rosy skies as they arrived atResina. Here they quitted their horses, and took mules and a guide. As the sky grew darker and more dark, the mountain fire burned with anintense lustre. In various streaks and streamlets, the fountain of flamerolled down the dark summit, and the Englishmen began to feel increaseupon them, as they ascended, that sensation of solemnity and awe whichmakes the very atmosphere that surrounds the Giant of the Plains of theAntique Hades. 

It was night, when, leaving the mules, they ascended on foot, accompanied by their guide, and a peasant who bore a rude torch. Theguide was a conversable, garrulous fellow, like most of his countryand his calling; and Mervale, who possessed a sociable temper, loved toamuse or to instruct himself on every incidental occasion. 

"Ah, Excellency, " said the guide, "your countrymen have a strong passionfor the volcano. Long life to them, they bring us plenty of money! Ifour 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 toVesuvius, I suppose? I have never been; why should I go? You have cold, you have hunger, you have fatigue, you have danger, and all fornothing but to see fire, which looks just as well in a brazier as on amountain. ' Ha! ha! the old fellow was right. "

"But, Excellency, " said the guide, "that is not all: some cavaliersthink to ascend the mountain without our help. I am sure they deserve totumble 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 wasso frightened--I had been with an English party, and a lady had left apocket-book on the mountain, where she had been sketching. She offeredme a handsome sum to return for it, and bring it to her at Naples. So Iwent 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. Theair there was so pestiferous that I could not have conceived a humancreature could breathe it, and live. I was so astounded that I stoodstill as a stone, till the figure came over the hot ashes, and stoodbefore 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 amto you; but its eyes seemed to emerge prying into the air. It passed byme quickly, and, walking across a stream of burning lava, soon vanishedon the other side of the mountain. I was curious and foolhardy, andresolved to see if I could bear the atmosphere which this visitor hadleft; but though I did not advance within thirty yards of the spot atwhich he had first appeared, I was driven back by a vapour that wellnighstifled 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. Fromthe crater arose a vapour, intensely dark, that overspread the wholebackground of the heavens; in the centre whereof rose a flame thatassumed a form singularly beautiful. It might have been compared to acrest of gigantic feathers, the diadem of the mountain, high-arched, anddrooping downward, with the hues delicately shaded off, and the wholeshifting and tremulous as the plumage on a warrior's helmet. 

The glare of the flame spread, luminous and crimson, over the dark andrugged ground on which they stood, and drew an innumerable variety ofshadows from crag and hollow. An oppressive and sulphureous exhalationserved to increase the gloomy and sublime terror of the place. But onturning from the mountain, and towards the distant and unseen ocean, thecontrast was wonderfully great; the heavens serene and blue, the starsstill and calm as the eyes of Divine Love. It was as if the realms ofthe opposing principles of Evil and of Good were brought in oneview before the gaze of man! Glyndon--once more the enthusiast, theartist--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 theearth below, the wheels and voices of the Ministry of Nature in herdarkest 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 tenthousand 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 anexclamation of terror, and Glyndon held his breath, and shuddered. 

"Diavolo!" cried the guide. "Descend, Excellencies, --descend! we havenot a moment to lose; follow me close!"

So saying, the guide and the peasant fled with as much swiftness as theywere able to bring to bear. Mervale, ever more prompt and ready than hisfriend, imitated their example; and Glyndon, more confused than alarmed, followed close. But they had not gone many yards, before, with a rushingand sudden blast, came from the crater an enormous volume of vapour. Itpursued, --it overtook, it overspread them. It swept the light from theheavens. All was abrupt and utter darkness; and through the gloom washeard the shout of the guide, already distant, and lost in an instantamidst the sound of the rushing gust and the groans of the earthbeneath. Glyndon paused. He was separated from his friend, from theguide. He was alone, --with the Darkness and the Terror. The vapourrolled sullenly away; the form of the plumed fire was again dimlyvisible, and its struggling and perturbed reflection again shed aglow over the horrors of the path. Glyndon recovered himself, and spedonward. Below, he heard the voice of Mervale calling on him, thoughhe no longer saw his form. The sound served as a guide. Dizzy andbreathless, he bounded forward; when--hark!--a sullen, slow rollingsounded in his ear! He halted, --and turned back to gaze. The fire hadoverflowed its course; it had opened itself a channel amidst the furrowsof the mountain. The stream pursued him fast--fast; and the hot breathof the chasing and preternatural foe came closer and closer upon hischeek! He turned aside; he climbed desperately with hands and feet upona crag that, to the right, broke the scathed and blasted level of thesoil. The stream rolled beside and beneath him, and then taking a suddenwind round the spot on which he stood, interposed its liquid fire, --abroad and impassable barrier between his resting-place and escape. Therehe stood, cut off from descent, and with no alternative but to retracehis 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 thatoverstrained 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 ownresources, felt his spirit and energy rise against the danger. He turnedback, and ventured as far towards the crater as the noxious exhalationwould permit; then, gazing below, carefully and deliberately he chalkedout for himself a path by which he trusted to shun the direction thefire-stream had taken, and trod firmly and quickly over the crumblingand heated strata. 

He had proceeded about fifty yards, when he halted abruptly; anunspeakable and unaccountable horror, not hitherto experienced amidstall his peril, came over him. He shook in every limb; his musclesrefused his will, --he felt, as it were, palsied and death-stricken. Thehorror, I say, was unaccountable, for the path seemed clear and safe. The fire, above and behind, burned clear and far; and beyond, the starslent him their cheering guidance. No obstacle was visible, --no dangerseemed at hand. As thus, spell-bound, and panic-stricken, he stoodchained to the soil, --his breast heaving, large drops rolling down hisbrow, and his eyes starting wildly from their sockets, --he saw beforehim, at some distance, gradually shaping itself more and more distinctlyto his gaze, a colossal shadow; a shadow that seemed partially borrowedfrom 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 ofman. 

The glare of the volcano, that seemed to shrink and collapse from thisgigantic and appalling apparition, nevertheless threw its light, redly and steadily, upon another shape that stood beside, quiet andmotionless; and it was, perhaps, the contrast of these two things--theBeing and the Shadow--that impressed the beholder with the differencebetween 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 thewanderer. A second eddy of sulphureous vapours from the volcano, yetmore rapidly, yet more densely than its predecessor, rolled over themountain; and either the nature of the exhalation, or the excess of hisown dread, was such, that Glyndon, after one wild gasp for breath, fellsenseless 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 hadleft the mules; and not till they had recovered their own alarm andbreath did they think of Glyndon. But then, as the minutes passed, andhe appeared not, Mervale, whose heart was as good at least as humanhearts are in general, grew seriously alarmed. He insisted on returningto search for his friend; and by dint of prodigal promises prevailed atlast on the guide to accompany him. The lower part of the mountain laycalm and white in the starlight; and the guide's practised eye coulddiscern all objects on the surface at a considerable distance. Theyhad not, however, gone very far, before they perceived two forms slowlyapproaching them. 

As they came near, Mervale recognised the form of his friend. "ThankHeaven, he is safe!" he cried, turning to the guide. 

"Holy angels befriend us!" said the Italian, trembling, --"behold thevery being that crossed me last Friday night. It is he, but his face ishuman now!"

"Signor Inglese, " said the voice of Zanoni, as Glyndon--pale, wan, andsilent--returned passively the joyous greeting of Mervale, --"SignorInglese, I told your friend that we should meet to-night. You see youhave NOT foiled my prediction. "

"But how?--but where?" stammered Mervale, in great confusion andsurprise. 

"I found your friend stretched on the ground, overpowered by themephitic exhalation of the crater. I bore him to a purer atmosphere; andas I know the mountain well, I have conducted him safely to you. This isall our history. You see, sir, that were it not for that prophecy whichyou desired to frustrate, your friend would ere this time have beena 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, andspeaking 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 necessarythat 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 nottoo 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 theimagination, and not the reason, should wisdom come, --this, for you, isone of them. I ask not your answer now. Collect your thoughts, --recoveryour jaded and scattered spirits. It wants two hours of midnight. Beforemidnight I will be with you. "

"Incomprehensible being!" replied the Englishman, "I would leave thelife you have preserved in your own hands; but what I have seen thisnight has swept even Viola from my thoughts. A fiercer desire than thatof love burns in my veins, --the desire not to resemble but to surpassmy kind; the desire to penetrate and to share the secret of your ownexistence--the desire of a preternatural knowledge and unearthly power. I make my choice. In my ancestor's name, I adjure and remind thee of thypledge. Instruct me; school me; make me thine; and I surrender to theeat once, and without a murmur, the woman whom, till I saw thee, I wouldhave defied a world to obtain. "

"I bid thee consider well: on the one hand, Viola, a tranquil home, ahappy 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 withthe common existence, --if I refuse, it is to aspire to thy knowledge andthy power. "

"Vain man, knowledge and power are not happiness. "

"But they are better than happiness. Say!--if I marry Viola, wilt thoube my master, --my guide? Say this, and I am resolved. 

"It were impossible. "

"Then I renounce her? I renounce love. I renounce happiness. Welcomesolitude, --welcome despair; if they are the entrances to thy dark andsublime secret. "

"I will not take thy answer now. Before the last hour of night thoushalt 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, gazingon his face, saw that a great change had passed there. The flexile anddubious expression of youth was forever gone. The features were locked, rigid, and stern; and so faded was the natural bloom, that an hourseemed 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 mostanimated, its most Neapolitan quarter, --through that quarter in whichmodern life most closely resembles the ancient; and in which, when, ona fair-day, the thoroughfare swarms alike with Indolence and Trade, youare impressed at once with the recollection of that restless, livelyrace from which the population of Naples derives its origin; so that inone day you may see at Pompeii the habitations of a remote age; and onthe Mole, at Naples, you may imagine you behold the very beings withwhom 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 andbreathless. Here and there, stretched under a portico or a dingy booth, were sleeping groups of houseless Lazzaroni, --a tribe now merging itsindolent individuality amidst an energetic and active population. 

The Englishman rode on in silence; for Glyndon neither appeared to heednor hear the questions and comments of Mervale, and Mervale himself wasalmost as weary as the jaded animal he bestrode. 

Suddenly the silence of earth and ocean was broken by the sound of adistant clock that proclaimed the quarter preceding the last hour ofnight. Glyndon started from his reverie, and looked anxiously round. Asthe final stroke died, the noise of hoofs rung on the broad stones ofthe pavement, and from a narrow street to the right emerged the form ofa solitary horseman. He neared the Englishmen, and Glyndon recognisedthe features and mien of Zanoni. 

"What! do we meet again, signor?" said Mervale, in a vexed but drowsytone. 

"Your friend and I have business together, " replied Zanoni, ashe wheeled his steed to the side of Glyndon. "But it will be soontransacted. Perhaps you, sir, will ride on to your hotel. "

"Alone!"

"There is no danger!" returned Zanoni, with a slight expression ofdisdain 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 youreach 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. Thepursuit 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: thesparks flew from its hoofs, and horse and rider disappeared amidst theshadows of the street whence they had emerged. 

Mervale was surprised to see his friend by his side, a minute after theyhad 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 histhoughts. He sat down on the foot of his bed, and pressed his handstightly to his throbbing temples. The events of the last few hours; theapparition of the gigantic and shadowy Companion of the Mystic, amidstthe fires and clouds of Vesuvius; the strange encounter with Zanonihimself, on a spot in which he could never, by ordinary reasoning, havecalculated on finding Glyndon, filled his mind with emotions, in whichterror and awe the least prevailed. A fire, the train of which had beenlong 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 tosurpass the bounds of the common knowledge of man, and reach that solemnspot, between two worlds, on which the mysterious stranger appeared tohave fixed his home. 

Far from recalling with renewed affright the remembrance of theapparition that had so appalled him, the recollection only served tokindle and concentrate his curiosity into a burning focus. He had saidaright, --LOVE HAD VANISHED FROM HIS HEART; there was no longer a serenespace amidst its disordered elements for human affection to move andbreathe. The enthusiast was rapt from this earth; and he would havesurrendered all that mortal beauty ever promised, that mortal hope everwhispered, for one hour with Zanoni beyond the portals of the visibleworld. 

He rose, oppressed and fevered with the new thoughts that raged withinhim, and threw open his casement for air. The ocean lay suffused in thestarry light, and the stillness of the heavens never more eloquentlypreached the morality of repose to the madness of earthly passions. Butsuch was Glyndon's mood that their very hush only served to deepen thewild desires that preyed upon his soul; and the solemn stars, that aremysteries in themselves, seemed, by a kindred sympathy, to agitate thewings of the spirit no longer contented with its cage. As he gazed, astar 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 Violafatigued and exhausted, had thrown herself on a sofa, while Gionettabusied herself with the long tresses which, released from the filletthat bound them, half-concealed the form of the actress, like a veil ofthreads of gold. As she smoothed the luxuriant locks, the old nurseran gossiping on about the little events of the night, the scandal andpolitics of the scenes and the tireroom. Gionetta was a worthy soul. Almanzor, in Dryden's tragedy of "Almahide, " did not change sides withmore gallant indifference than the exemplary nurse. She was at lastgrieved 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 therumours she had collected respecting the latter, combined with hisown recommendations of his rival, had given her preference to theEnglishman. She interpreted ill the impatient and heavy sigh with whichViola greeted her praises of Glyndon, and her wonder that he had of lateso neglected his attentions behind the scenes, and she exhausted allher powers of panegyric upon the supposed object of the sigh. "Andthen, too, " she said, "if nothing else were to be said against the othersignor, 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 roundsome outlandish-looking sailors. His ship arrived this morning, andanchors in the bay. The sailors say that they are to be prepared to sailwith 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 allconfidence, and feels that it cannot be comprehended. Alone now, in theprincipal apartment of the house, she paced its narrow boundarieswith tremulous and agitated steps: she recalled the frightful suitof Nicot, --the injurious taunt of Glyndon; and she sickened at theremembrance of the hollow applauses which, bestowed on the actress, notthe woman, only subjected her to contumely and insult. In that room therecollection of her father's death, the withered laurel and the brokenchords, rose chillingly before her. Hers, she felt, was a yet gloomierfate, --the chords may break while the laurel is yet green. The lamp, waning in its socket, burned pale and dim, and her eyes instinctivelyturned from the darker corner of the room. Orphan, by the hearth of thyparent, dost thou fear the presence of the dead!

And was Zanoni indeed about to quit Naples? Should she see him nomore? Oh, fool, to think that there was grief in any other thought! Thepast!--that was gone! The future!--there was no future to her, Zanoniabsent! But this was the night of the third day on which Zanoni had toldher that, come what might, he would visit her again. It was, then, ifshe might believe him, some appointed crisis in her fate; and how shouldshe tell him of Glyndon's hateful words? The pure and the proud mindcan never confide its wrongs to another, only its triumphs and itshappiness. But at that late hour would Zanoni visit her, --could shereceive him? Midnight was at hand. Still in undefined suspense, inintense anxiety, she lingered in the room. The quarter before midnightsounded, dull and distant. All was still, and she was about to pass toher 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 beatviolently; but fear gave way to another sentiment when she heard avoice, too well known, calling on her name. She paused, and then, withthe fearlessness of innocence, descended and unbarred the door. 

Zanoni entered with a light and hasty step. His horseman's cloak fittedtightly to his noble form, and his broad hat threw a gloomy shade overhis commanding features. 

The girl followed him into the room she had just left, trembling andblushing deeply, and stood before him with the lamp she held shiningupward on her cheek and the long hair that fell like a shower of lightover the half-clad shoulders and heaving bust. 

"Viola, " said Zanoni, in a voice that spoke deep emotion, "I am by thyside once more to save thee. Not a moment is to be lost. Thou must flywith me, or remain the victim of the Prince di --. I would have made thecharge I now undertake another's; thou knowest I would, --thou knowestit!--but he is not worthy of thee, the cold Englishman! I throw myselfat thy feet; have trust in me, and fly. "

He grasped her hand passionately as he dropped on his knee, and lookedup 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 herface, --"then I am not indifferent to thee; thou wouldst not give me toanother?"

Zanoni was silent; but his breast heaved, his cheeks flushed, his eyesdarted 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 shrinkingfrom his side; "leave me, --I fear no danger. My life, and therefore myhonour, is in mine own hands. "

"Be not so mad, " said Zanoni. "Hark! do you hear the neigh of mysteed?--it is an alarm that warns us of the approaching peril. Haste, oryou are lost!"

"Why dost thou care for me?" said the girl, bitterly. "Thou hast read myheart; thou knowest that thou art become the lord of my destiny. But tobe bound beneath the weight of a cold obligation; to be the beggar onthe eyes of indifference; to cast myself on one who loves me not, --THATwere 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 handsclasped together with the proud bitterness of her wayward spirit, givingnew zest and charm to her singular beauty, it was impossible to conceivea sight more irresistible to the eye and the heart. 

"Tempt me not to thine own danger, --perhaps destruction!" exclaimedZanoni, in faltering accents. "Thou canst not dream of what thou wouldstdemand, --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 reproachfuleyes. Those eyes met his, and he could not withdraw from the charm oftheir gaze. He felt her heart throbbing beneath his own; her breath camewarm 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 morecommand, --as woman should be wooed, I woo thee. From the first glance ofthose eyes, from the first sound of thy voice, thou becamest too fatallydear to me. Thou speakest of fascination, --it lives and it breathesin 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. Ireturned, because I pictured thee alone and sorrowful in the world, andknew that dangers, from which I might save thee, were gatheringnear thee and around. Beautiful Soul! whose leaves I have read withreverence, it was for thy sake, thine alone, that I would have giventhee 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 tome!"

It is in vain to seek for words to describe the delight--the proud, thefull, the complete, and the entire delight--that filled the heart of theNeapolitan. He whom she had considered too lofty even for love, --morehumble to her than those she had half-despised! She was silent, but hereyes spoke to him; and then slowly, as aware, at last, that the humanlove had advanced on the ideal, she shrank into the terrors of a modestand virtuous nature. She did not dare, --she did not dream to ask him thequestion she had so fearlessly made to Glyndon; but she felt a suddencoldness, --a sense that a barrier was yet between love and love. "Oh, Zanoni!" she murmured, with downcast eyes, "ask me not to fly withthee; 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 fromthee one sacrifice, --still less the greatest that woman can give tolove? As my wife I woo thee, and by every tie, and by every vow that canhallow and endear affection. Alas! they have belied love to thee indeed, if thou dost not know the religion that belongs to it! They who trulylove would seek, for the treasure they obtain, every bond that can makeit lasting and secure. Viola, weep not, unless thou givest me the holyright to kiss away thy tears!"

And that beautiful face, no more averted, drooped upon his bosom; andas he bent down, his lips sought the rosy mouth: a long and burningkiss, --danger, life, the world was forgotten! Suddenly Zanoni torehimself from her. 

"Hearest thou the wind that sighs, and dies away? As that wind, my powerto preserve thee, to guard thee, to foresee the storm in thy skies, isgone. No matter. Haste, haste; and may love supply the loss of all thatit has dared to sacrifice! Come. "

Viola hesitated no more. She threw her mantle over her shoulders, andgathered up her dishevelled hair; a moment, and she was prepared, when asudden crash was heard below. 

"Too late!--fool that I was, too late!" cried Zanoni, in a sharp tone ofagony, as he hurried to the door. He opened it, only to be borne back bythe press of armed men. The room literally swarmed with the followers ofthe ravisher, masked, and armed to the teeth. 

Viola was already in the grasp of two of the myrmidons. Her shriek smotethe ear of Zanoni. He sprang forward; and Viola heard his wild cry ina foreign tongue. She saw the blades of the ruffians pointed at hisbreast! She lost her senses; and when she recovered, she found herselfgagged, and in a carriage that was driven rapidly, by the side of amasked and motionless figure. The carriage stopped at the portals of agloomy mansion. The gates opened noiselessly; a broad flight of steps, brilliantly illumined, was before her. She was in the palace of thePrince 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 withall the luxurious and half-Eastern taste that at one time characterisedthe palaces of the great seigneurs of Italy. Her first thought was forZanoni. Was he yet living? Had he escaped unscathed the blades of thefoe, --her new treasure, the new light of her life, her lord, at last herlover?

She had short time for reflection. She heard steps approaching thechamber; 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 newmotive to the preservation of honour. The door opened, and the princeentered in the gorgeous and gaudy custume still worn at that time inNaples. 

"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 totake her hand as he spoke. 

"Nay, " said he, as she recoiled, "reflect that thou art now in the powerof one that never faltered in the pursuit of an object less dear to himthan thou art. Thy lover, presumptuous though he be, is not by to savethee. Mine thou art; but instead of thy master, suffer me to be thyslave. "

"Prince, " said Viola, with a stern gravity, "your boast is in vain. Yourpower! I am NOT in your power. Life and death are in my own hands. Iwill not defy; but I do not fear you. I feel--and in some feelings, "added Viola, with a solemnity almost thrilling, "there is all thestrength, and all the divinity of knowledge--I feel that I am safe evenhere; but you--you, Prince di --, have brought danger to your home andhearth!"

The Neapolitan seemed startled by an earnestness and boldness he was butlittle prepared for. He was not, however, a man easily intimidated ordeterred from any purpose he had formed; and, approaching Viola, hewas about to reply with much warmth, real or affected, when a knockwas heard at the door of the chamber. The sound was repeated, andthe prince, chafed at the interruption, opened the door and demandedimpatiently who had ventured to disobey his orders, and invade hisleisure. Mascari presented himself, pale and agitated: "My lord, " saidhe, in a whisper, "pardon me; but a stranger is below, who insists onseeing you; and, from some words he let fall, I judged it advisable evento infringe your commands. "

"A stranger!--and at this hour! What business can he pretend? Why was heeven admitted?"

"He asserts that your life is in imminent danger. The source whence itproceeds 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 mypower. I would fain trust alone to the gentler authorities of affection. Hold yourself queen within these walls more absolutely than you haveever enacted that part on the stage. To-night, farewell! May your sleepbe calm, and your dreams propitious to my hopes. "

With these words he retired, and in a few moments Viola was surroundedby officious attendants, whom she at length, with some difficulty, dismissed; and, refusing to retire to rest, she spent the night inexamining the chamber, which she found was secured, and in thoughts ofZanoni, in whose power she felt an almost preternatural confidence. 

Meanwhile the prince descended the stairs and sought the room into whichthe 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. Theface of this stranger was remarkable. So sunburnt and swarthy were hishues, that he must, apparently, have derived his origin amongst theraces of the farthest East. His forehead was lofty, and his eyes sopenetrating yet so calm in their gaze that the prince shrank from themas we shrink from a questioner who is drawing forth the guiltiest secretof our hearts. 

"What would you with me?" asked the prince, motioning his visitor to aseat. 

"Prince of --, " said the stranger, in a voice deep and sweet, butforeign in its accent, --"son of the most energetic and masculine racethat ever applied godlike genius to the service of Human Will, with itswinding wickedness and its stubborn grandeur; descendant of the greatVisconti in whose chronicles lies the history of Italy in her palmyday, and in whose rise was the development of the mightiest intellect, ripened by the most restless ambition, --I come to gaze upon the laststar in a darkening firmament. By this hour to-morrow space shall knowit not. Man, unless thy whole nature change, thy days are numbered!"

"What means this jargon?" said the prince, in visible astonishment andsecret awe. "Comest thou to menace me in my own halls, or wouldstthou warn me of a danger? Art thou some itinerant mountebank, or someunguessed-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 theefrom the first. Thou art then the accomplice or the tool of that mostdexterous, but, at present, defeated charlatan? And I suppose thou wilttell me that if I were to release a certain captive I have made, thedanger would vanish, and the hand of the dial would be put back?"

"Judge of me as thou wilt, Prince di --. I confess my knowledge ofZanoni. 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 tellthee. Canst thou remember to have heard wild tales of thy grandsire;of his desire for a knowledge that passes that of the schools andcloisters; of a strange man from the East who was his familiar andmaster in lore against which the Vatican has, from age to age, launched its mimic thunder? Dost thou call to mind the fortunes of thyancestor?--how he succeeded in youth to little but a name; how, after acareer wild and dissolute as thine, he disappeared from Milan, a pauper, and a self-exile; how, after years spent, none knew in what climes orin what pursuits, he again revisited the city where his progenitors hadreigned; 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 hadploughed 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 hisfortunes rose? Kinsmen the most remote died; estate upon estate fellinto the hands of the ruined noble. He became the guide of princes, thefirst magnate of Italy. He founded anew the house of which thou art thelast lineal upholder, and transferred his splendour from Milan to theSicilian realms. Visions of high ambition were then present with himnightly and daily. Had he lived, Italy would have known a new dynasty, and the Visconti would have reigned over Magna-Graecia. He was a mansuch as the world rarely sees; but his ends, too earthly, were at warwith the means he sought. Had his ambition been more or less, he hadbeen worthy of a realm mightier than the Caesars swayed; worthy of oursolemn order; worthy of the fellowship of Mejnour, whom you now beholdbefore you. "

The prince, who had listened with deep and breathless attention to thewords 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 hadpassed his hundred and twentieth year; and you, whose old age iserect and vigorous, have the assurance to pretend to have been hiscontemporary! But you have imperfectly learned your tale. You know not, it seems, that my grandsire, wise and illustrious indeed, in all savehis faith in a charlatan, was found dead in his bed, in the very hourwhen his colossal plans were ripe for execution, and that Mejnour wasguilty of his murder. "

"Alas!" answered the stranger, in a voice of great sadness, "had hebut listened to Mejnour, --had he but delayed the last and most perilousordeal of daring wisdom until the requisite training and initiation hadbeen completed, --your ancestor would have stood with me upon aneminence which the waters of Death itself wash everlastingly, but cannotoverflow. Your grandsire resisted my fervent prayers, disobeyed my mostabsolute commands, and in the sublime rashness of a soul that pantedfor 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 notfly from danger; for to him danger is a thing long left behind. It wasthe day before the duke took the fatal draft which he believed was toconfer on the mortal the immortal boon, that, finding my power over himwas gone, I abandoned him to his doom. But a truce with this: I lovedyour grandsire! I would save the last of his race. Oppose not thyselfto Zanoni. Yield not thy soul to thine evil passions. Draw back from theprecipice while there is yet time. In thy front, and in thine eyes, Idetect some of that diviner glory which belonged to thy race. Thou hastin thee some germs of their hereditary genius, but they are choked upby worse than thy hereditary vices. Recollect that by genius thy houserose; by vice it ever failed to perpetuate its power. In the lawswhich regulate the universe, it is decreed that nothing wicked can longendure. Be wise, and let history warn thee. Thou standest on the vergeof two worlds, the past and the future; and voices from either shriekomen in thy ear. I have done. I bid thee farewell!"

"Not so; thou shalt not quit these walls. I will make experiment of thyboasted 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 filledby the form of Mejnour. To his inconceivable amaze and horror, the spotwas vacant. The mysterious stranger had vanished like a dream; but athin and fragrant mist undulated, in pale volumes, round the walls ofthe chamber. "Look to my lord, " cried Mascari. The prince had fallen tothe floor insensible. For many hours he seemed in a kind of trance. Whenhe recovered, he dismissed his attendants, and his step was heard in hischamber, pacing to and fro, with heavy and disordered strides. Not tillan hour before his banquet the next day did he seem restored to hiswonted 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 heopened them to the day. He rose refreshed, and with a strange sentimentof calmness that seemed more the result of resolution than exhaustion. The incidents and emotions of the past night had settled into distinctand clear impressions. He thought of them but slightly, --he thoughtrather of the future. He was as one of the initiated in the old Egyptianmysteries who have crossed the gate only to long more ardently for thepenetralia. 

He dressed himself, and was relieved to find that Mervale had joined aparty of his countrymen on an excursion to Ischia. He spent the heat ofnoon in thoughtful solitude, and gradually the image of Viola returnedto his heart. It was a holy--for it was a HUMAN--image. He had resignedher; and though he repented not, he was troubled at the thought thatrepentance would have come too late. 

He started impatiently from his seat, and strode with rapid steps to thehumble abode of the actress. 

The distance was considerable, and the air oppressive. Glyndon arrivedat the door breathless and heated. He knocked; no answer came. He liftedthe latch and entered. He ascended the stairs; no sound, no sight oflife met his ear and eye. In the front chamber, on a table, lay theguitar of the actress, and some manuscript parts in the favouriteoperas. He paused, and, summoning courage, tapped at the door whichseemed to lead into the inner apartment. The door was ajar; and, hearingno sound within, he pushed it open. It was the sleeping-chamber of theyoung actress, that holiest ground to a lover; and well did the placebecome the presiding deity: none of the tawdry finery of the professionwas visible, on the one hand; none of the slovenly disorder common tothe 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 earthenvase, which was modelled and painted in the Etruscan fashion. Thesunlight streamed over the snowy draperies of the bed, and a fewarticles of clothing on the chair beside it. Viola was not there; butthe nurse!--was she gone also? He made the house resound with the nameof Gionetta, but there was not even an echo to reply. At last, as hereluctantly quitted the desolate abode, he perceived Gionetta comingtowards 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 orsatisfactory explanation to afford the other. Gionetta had been arousedfrom her slumber the night before by the noise in the rooms below; butere she could muster courage to descend, Viola was gone! She found themarks of violence on the door without; and all she had since been ableto learn in the neighbourhood was, that a Lazzarone, from his nocturnalresting-place on the Chiaja, had seen by the moonlight a carriage, whichhe recognised as belonging to the Prince di --, pass and repass thatroad about the first hour of morning. Glyndon, on gathering from theconfused words and broken sobs of the old nurse the heads of thisaccount, abruptly left her, and repaired to the palace of Zanoni. Therehe was informed that the signor was gone to the banquet of the Princedi --, and would not return till late. Glyndon stood motionless withperplexity and dismay; he knew not what to believe, or how to act. Even Mervale was not at hand to advise him. His conscience smote himbitterly. He had had the power to save the woman he had loved, and hadforegone that power; but how was it that in this Zanoni himself hadfailed? 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 amoment in apprising him? Though mentally irresolute, no man was morephysically brave. He would repair at once to the palace of the princehimself; and if Zanoni failed in the trust he had half-appeared toarrogate, he, the humble foreigner, would demand the captive of fraudand force, in the very halls and before the assembled guests of thePrince 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 thefirst faint and gradual break of the summer dawn; and two men stood ina balcony overhanging a garden fragrant with the scents of the awakeningflowers. The stars had not yet left the sky, --the birds were yet silenton the boughs: all was still, hushed, and tranquil; but how differentthe tranquillity of reviving day from the solemn repose of night! In themusic of silence there are a thousand variations. These men, who aloneseemed awake in Naples, were Zanoni and the mysterious stranger whohad but an hour or two ago startled the Prince di -- in his voluptuouspalace. 

"No, " said the latter; "hadst thou delayed the acceptance of theArch-gift until thou hadst attained to the years, and passed throughall the desolate bereavements that chilled and seared myself ere myresearches had made it mine, thou wouldst have escaped the curse ofwhich thou complainest now, --thou wouldst not have mourned over thebrevity of human affection as compared to the duration of thine ownexistence; for thou wouldst have survived the very desire and dreamof the love of woman. Brightest, and, but for that error, perhaps theloftiest, of the secret and solemn race that fills up the interval increation between mankind and the children of the Empyreal, age after agewilt thou rue the splendid folly which made thee ask to carry thebeauty and the passions of youth into the dreary grandeur of earthlyimmortality. "

"I do not repent, nor shall I, " answered Zanoni. "The transport and thesorrow, 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 theworld with the noiseless and joyless footsteps of a dream!"

"You mistake, " replied he who had owned the name of Mejnour, --"though Icare not for love, and am dead to every PASSION that agitates the sonsof clay, I am not dead to their more serene enjoyments. I carry down thestream of the countless years, not the turbulent desires of youth, but the calm and spiritual delights of age. Wisely and deliberately Iabandoned youth forever when I separated my lot from men. Let us notenvy or reproach each other. I would have saved this Neapolitan, Zanoni (since so it now pleases thee to be called), partly becausehis grandsire was but divided by the last airy barrier from our ownbrotherhood, partly because I know that in the man himself lurk theelements of ancestral courage and power, which in earlier life wouldhave fitted him for one of us. Earth holds but few to whom Nature hasgiven the qualities that can bear the ordeal. But time and excess, that have quickened his grosser senses, have blunted his imagination. Irelinquish him to his doom. "

"And still, then, Mejnour, you cherish the desire to revive ourorder, limited now to ourselves alone, by new converts and allies. Surely--surely--thy experience might have taught thee, that scarcelyonce in a thousand years is born the being who can pass through thehorrible gates that lead into the worlds without! Is not thy pathalready strewed with thy victims? Do not their ghastly faces of agonyand fear--the blood-stained suicide, the raving maniac--rise beforethee, and warn what is yet left to thee of human sympathy from thyinsane ambition?"

"Nay, " answered Mejnour; "have I not had success to counterbalancefailure? And can I forego this lofty and august hope, worthy alone ofour high condition, --the hope to form a mighty and numerous race witha force and power sufficient to permit them to acknowledge to mankindtheir majestic conquests and dominion, to become the true lords of thisplanet, invaders, perchance, of others, masters of the inimical andmalignant tribes by which at this moment we are surrounded: a racethat may proceed, in their deathless destinies, from stage to stage ofcelestial glory, and rank at last amongst the nearest ministrants andagents gathered round the Throne of Thrones? What matter a thousandvictims for one convert to our band? And you, Zanoni, " continuedMejnour, after a pause, --"you, even you, should this affection for amortal beauty that you have dared, despite yourself, to cherish, be morethan a passing fancy; should it, once admitted into your inmost nature, partake of its bright and enduring essence, --even you may brave allthings 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 isyours to--"

"Cease!" cried Zanoni, fiercely. "What is all other fate as comparedto the death of terror? What, when the coldest sage, the most heatedenthusiast, the hardiest warrior with his nerves of iron, have beenfound dead in their beds, with straining eyeballs and horrent hair, at the first step of the Dread Progress, --thinkest thou that thisweak woman--from whose cheek a sound at the window, the screech of thenight-owl, the sight of a drop of blood on a man's sword, would startthe colour--could brave one glance of--Away! the very thought of suchsights 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 fromharm. 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 maylearn and her courage brave? But enough of this, --you are bent on yourpursuit?"

"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 compassionatethee, 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 addictedto superstitious fancies. Still, in the South of Italy, there was then, and there still lingers a certain spirit of credulity, which may, everand anon, be visible amidst the boldest dogmas of their philosophers andsceptics. In his childhood, the prince had learned strange tales of theambition, the genius, and the career of his grandsire, --and secretly, perhaps influenced by ancestral example, in earlier youth he himselfhad followed science, not only through her legitimate course, but herantiquated and erratic windings. I have, indeed, been shown in Naples alittle volume, blazoned with the arms of the Visconti, and ascribedto the nobleman I refer to, which treats of alchemy in a spirithalf-mocking and half-reverential. 

Pleasure soon distracted him from such speculations, and his talents, which were unquestionably great, were wholly perverted to extravagantintrigues, or to the embellishment of a gorgeous ostentation withsomething of classic grace. His immense wealth, his imperious pride, his unscrupulous and daring character, made him an object of noinconsiderable fear to a feeble and timid court; and the ministers ofthe indolent government willingly connived at excesses which allured himat least from ambition. The strange visit and yet more strange departureof Mejnour filled the breast of the Neapolitan with awe and wonder, against which all the haughty arrogance and learned scepticism of hismaturer manhood combated in vain. The apparition of Mejnour served, indeed, to invest Zanoni with a character in which the prince had nothitherto regarded him. He felt a strange alarm at the rival he hadbraved, --at the foe he had provoked. When, a little before his banquet, he had resumed his self-possession, it was with a fell and gloomyresolution that he brooded over the perfidious schemes he had previouslyformed. He felt as if the death of the mysterious Zanoni were necessaryfor the preservation of his own life; and if at an earlier period oftheir rivalry he had determined on the fate of Zanoni, the warnings ofMejnour only served to confirm his resolve. 

"We will try if his magic can invent an antidote to the bane, " saidhe, half-aloud, and with a stern smile, as he summoned Mascari to hispresence. The poison which the prince, with his own hands, mixed intothe wine intended for his guest, was compounded from materials, thesecret of which had been one of the proudest heir-looms of that ableand evil race which gave to Italy her wisest and guiltiest tyrants. Itsoperation was quick yet not sudden: it produced no pain, --it left onthe form no grim convulsion, on the skin no purpling spot, to arousesuspicion; you might have cut and carved every membrane and fibre of thecorpse, but the sharpest eyes of the leech would not have detected thepresence of the subtle life-queller. For twelve hours the victim feltnothing save a joyous and elated exhilaration of the blood; a deliciouslanguor followed, the sure forerunner of apoplexy. No lancet thencould save! Apoplexy had run much in the families of the enemies of theVisconti!

The hour of the feast arrived, --the guests assembled. There were theflower of the Neapolitan seignorie, the descendants of the Norman, theTeuton, the Goth; for Naples had then a nobility, but derived it fromthe North, which has indeed been the Nutrix Leonum, --the nurse of thelion-hearted chivalry of the world. 

Last of the guests came Zanoni; and the crowd gave way as the dazzlingforeigner moved along to the lord of the palace. The prince greeted himwith a meaning smile, to which Zanoni answered by a whisper, "He whoplays with loaded dice does not always win. "

The prince bit his lip, and Zanoni, passing on, seemed deep inconversation 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 themale 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, thefeast took place not long after mid-day. It was a long, oval hall, thewhole of one side opening by a marble colonnade upon a court or garden, in which the eye rested gratefully upon cool fountains and statues ofwhitest marble, half-sheltered by orange-trees. Every art thatluxury could invent to give freshness and coolness to the languid andbreezeless heat of the day without (a day on which the breath of thesirocco was abroad) had been called into existence. Artificial currentsof air through invisible tubes, silken blinds waving to and fro, as ifto cheat the senses into the belief of an April wind, and miniature jetsd'eau in each corner of the apartment, gave to the Italians the samesense of exhilaration and COMFORT (if I may use the word) which thewell-drawn curtains and the blazing hearth afford to the children ofcolder climes. 

The conversation was somewhat more lively and intellectual than iscommon amongst the languid pleasure-hunters of the South; for theprince, himself accomplished, sought his acquaintance not only amongstthe beaux esprits of his own country, but amongst the gay foreigners whoadorned and relieved the monotony of the Neapolitan circles. There werepresent two or three of the brilliant Frenchmen of the old regime, whohad already emigrated from the advancing Revolution; and their peculiarturn of thought and wit was well calculated for the meridian of asociety that made the dolce far niente at once its philosophy and itsfaith. The prince, however, was more silent than usual; and when hesought to rouse himself, his spirits were forced and exaggerated. To themanners of his host, those of Zanoni afforded a striking contrast. Thebearing of this singular person was at all times characterised by a calmand polished ease, which was attributed by the courtiers to the longhabit of society. He could scarcely be called gay; yet few persons moretended to animate the general spirits of a convivial circle. He seemed, by a kind of intuition, to elicit from each companion the qualities inwhich he most excelled; and if occasionally a certain tone of latentmockery characterised his remarks upon the topics on which theconversation fell, it appeared to men who took nothing in earnest to bethe language both of wit and wisdom. To the Frenchmen, in particular, there was something startling in his intimate knowledge of the minutestevents in their own capital and country, and his profound penetration(evinced but in epigrams and sarcasms) into the eminent characters whowere then playing a part upon the great stage of continental intrigue. 

It was while this conversation grew animated, and the feast was at itsheight, that Glyndon arrived at the palace. The porter, perceiving byhis dress that he was not one of the invited guests, told him thathis Excellency was engaged, and on no account could be disturbed;and Glyndon then, for the first time, became aware how strange andembarrassing was the duty he had taken on himself. To force an entranceinto the banquet-hall of a great and powerful noble, surrounded by therank of Naples, and to arraign him for what to his boon-companions wouldappear but an act of gallantry, was an exploit that could not fail to beat once ludicrous and impotent. He mused a moment, and, slipping a pieceof gold into the porter's hand, said that he was commissioned to seekthe Signor Zanoni upon an errand of life and death, and easily won hisway across the court, and into the interior building. He passed up thebroad staircase, and the voices and merriment of the revellers smotehis ear at a distance. At the entrance of the reception-rooms he founda page, whom he despatched with a message to Zanoni. The page did theerrand; and Zanoni, on hearing the whispered name of Glyndon, turned tohis host. 

"Pardon me, my lord; an English friend of mine, the Signor Glyndon (notunknown by name to your Excellency) waits without, --the business mustindeed be urgent on which he has sought me in such an hour. You willforgive my momentary absence. "

"Nay, signor, " answered the prince, courteously, but with a sinistersmile on his countenance, "would it not be better for your friendto join us? An Englishman is welcome everywhere; and even were he aDutchman, 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 messagesto Glyndon, --a seat next to Zanoni was placed for him, and the youngEnglishman entered. 

"You are most welcome, sir. I trust your business to our illustriousguest is of good omen and pleasant import. If you bring evil news, deferit, I pray you. "

Glyndon's brow was sullen; and he was about to startle the guests byhis reply, when Zanoni, touching his arm significantly, whispered inEnglish, "I know why you have sought me. Be silent, and witness whatensues. "

"You know then that Viola, whom you boasted you had the power to savefrom danger--"

"Is in this house!--yes. I know also that Murder sits at the right handof our host. But his fate is now separated from hers forever; and themirror 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 indeedbrought me tidings not wholly unexpected. I am compelled to leaveNaples, --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 suchaffliction on the fair dames of Naples?"

"It is the approaching death of one who honoured me with most loyalfriendship, " replied Zanoni, gravely. "Let us not speak of it; griefcannot put back the dial. As we supply by new flowers those that fadein our vases, so it is the secret of worldly wisdom to replace by freshfriendships those that fade from our path. "

"True philosophy!" exclaimed the prince. "'Not to admire, ' was theRoman's maxim; 'Never to mourn, ' is mine. There is nothing in life togrieve for, save, indeed, Signor Zanoni, when some young beauty, on whomwe have set our hearts, slips from our grasp. In such a moment we haveneed of all our wisdom, not to succumb to despair, and shake hands withdeath. What say you, signor? You smile! Such never could be your lot. Pledge me in a sentiment, 'Long life to the fortunate lover, --a quickrelease to the baffled suitor'?"

"I pledge you, " said Zanoni; and, as the fatal wine was poured into hisglass, he repeated, fixing his eyes on the prince, "I pledge you even inthis 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 sternbrightness, beneath which the conscience-stricken host cowered andquailed. Not till he had drained his draft, and replaced the glass uponthe 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 mightdisagree with many, but do not fear: it will not harm me, prince, SignorMascari, you are a judge of the grape; will you favour us with youropinion?"

"Nay, " answered Mascari, with well-affected composure, "I like not thewines of Cyprus; they are heating. Perhaps Signor Glyndon may not havethe same distaste? The English are said to love their potations warm andpungent. "

"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 witmore sparkling, airy, exhilarating, flash from the lips of reveller. His spirits fascinated all present--even the prince himself, evenGlyndon--with a strange and wild contagion. The former, indeed, whom thewords and gaze of Zanoni, when he drained the poison, had filled withfearful misgivings, now hailed in the brilliant eloquence of his wit acertain sign of the operation of the bane. The wine circulated fast; butnone seemed conscious of its effects. One by one the rest of the partyfell into a charmed and spellbound silence, as Zanoni continued to pourforth sally upon sally, tale upon tale. They hung on his words, theyalmost held their breath to listen. Yet, how bitter was his mirth; howfull of contempt for the triflers present, and for the trifles whichmade their life!

Night came on; the room grew dim, and the feast had lasted several hourslonger than was the customary duration of similar entertainments atthat day. Still the guests stirred not, and still Zanoni continued, withglittering eye and mocking lip, to lavish his stores of intellectand anecdote; when suddenly the moon rose, and shed its rays over theflowers and fountains in the court without, leaving the room itself halfin shadow, and half tinged by a quiet and ghostly light. 

It was then that Zanoni rose. "Well, gentlemen, " said he, "we have notyet wearied our host, I hope; and his garden offers a new temptation toprotract our stay. Have you no musicians among your train, prince, that might regale our ears while we inhale the fragrance of yourorange-trees?"

"An excellent thought!" said the prince. "Mascari, see to the music. "

The party rose simultaneously to adjourn to the garden; and then, forthe first time, the effect of the wine they had drunk seemed to makeitself 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 hithertolistened to Zanoni, every tongue was now loosened, --every man talked, no man listened. There was something wild and fearful in the contrastbetween the calm beauty of the night and scene, and the hubbub andclamour of these disorderly roysters. One of the Frenchmen, in especial, the young Duc de R--, a nobleman of the highest rank, and of all thequick, vivacious, and irascible temperament of his countrymen, wasparticularly noisy and excited. And as circumstances, the remembranceof which is still preserved among certain circles of Naples, rendered itafterwards necessary that the duc should himself give evidence of whatoccurred, I will here translate the short account he drew up, and whichwas kindly submitted to me some few years ago by my accomplished andlively friend, Il Cavaliere di B--. 

"I never remember, " writes the duc, "to have felt my spirits so excitedas on that evening; we were like so many boys released from school, jostling each other as we reeled or ran down the flight of sevenor eight stairs that led from the colonnade into the garden, --somelaughing, some whooping, some scolding, some babbling. The wine hadbrought out, as it were, each man's inmost character. Some were loud andquarrelsome, others sentimental and whining; some, whom we had hithertothought dull, most mirthful; some, whom we had ever regarded as discreetand taciturn, most garrulous and uproarious. I remember that in themidst of our clamorous gayety, my eye fell upon the cavalier SignorZanoni, whose conversation had so enchanted us all; and I felt acertain chill come over me to perceive that he wore the same calm andunsympathising smile upon his countenance which had characterised itin his singular and curious stories of the court of Louis XIV. I felt, indeed, half-inclined to seek a quarrel with one whose composurewas almost an insult to our disorder. Nor was such an effect of thisirritating and mocking tranquillity confined to myself alone. Several ofthe party have told me since, that on looking at Zanoni they felt theirblood yet more heated, and gayety change to resentment. There seemed inhis icy smile a very charm to wound vanity and provoke rage. It was atthis moment that the prince came up to me, and, passing his arm intomine, led me a little apart from the rest. He had certainly indulged inthe same excess as ourselves, but it did not produce the same effect ofnoisy excitement. There was, on the contrary, a certain cold arroganceand supercilious scorn in his bearing and language, which, even whileaffecting so much caressing courtesy towards me, roused my self-loveagainst him. He seemed as if Zanoni had infected him; and in imitatingthe manner of his guest, he surpassed the original. He rallied me onsome court gossip, which had honoured my name by associating it with acertain beautiful and distinguished Sicilian lady, and affected to treatwith contempt that which, had it been true, I should have regarded as aboast. He spoke, indeed, as if he himself had gathered all the flowersof Naples, and left us foreigners only the gleanings he had scorned. At this my natural and national gallantry was piqued, and I retortedby some sarcasms that I should certainly have spared had my blood beencooler. He laughed heartily, and left me in a strange fit of resentmentand anger. Perhaps (I must own the truth) the wine had produced in me awild disposition to take offence and provoke quarrel. As the prince leftme, I turned, and saw Zanoni at my side. 

"'The prince is a braggart, ' said he, with the same smile thatdispleased me before. 'He would monopolize all fortune and all love. Letus take our revenge. '

"'And how?'

"'He has at this moment, in his house, the most enchanting singer inNaples, --the celebrated Viola Pisani. She is here, it is true, not byher own choice; he carried her hither by force, but he will pretend thatshe adores him. Let us insist on his producing this secret treasure, andwhen she enters, the Duc de R-- can have no doubt that his flatteriesand attentions will charm the lady, and provoke all the jealous fears ofour host. It would be a fair revenge upon his imperious self-conceit. '

"This suggestion delighted me. I hastened to the prince. At that instantthe musicians had just commenced; I waved my hand, ordered the music tostop, and, addressing the prince, who was standing in the centre of oneof the gayest groups, complained of his want of hospitality in affordingto us such poor proficients in the art, while he reserved for his ownsolace the lute and voice of the first performer in Naples. I demanded, half-laughingly, half-seriously, that he should produce the Pisani. Mydemand was received with shouts of applause by the rest. We drowned thereplies of our host with uproar, and would hear no denial. 'Gentlemen, 'at last said the prince, when he could obtain an audience, 'even wereI to assent to your proposal, I could not induce the signora to presentherself before an assemblage as riotous as they are noble. You have toomuch chivalry to use compulsion with her, though the Duc de R--forgetshimself sufficiently to administer it to me. '

"I was stung by this taunt, however well deserved. 'Prince, ' said I, 'Ihave for the indelicacy of compulsion so illustrious an example that Icannot hesitate to pursue the path honoured by your own footsteps. AllNaples knows that the Pisani despises at once your gold and your love;that force alone could have brought her under your roof; and that yourefuse to produce her, because you fear her complaints, and know enoughof the chivalry your vanity sneers at to feel assured that the gentlemenof France are not more disposed to worship beauty than to defend it fromwrong. '

"'You speak well, sir, ' said Zanoni, gravely. 'The prince dares notproduce his prize!'

"The prince remained speechless for a few moments, as if withindignation. At last he broke out into expressions the most injuriousand insulting against Signor Zanoni and myself. Zanoni replied not; Iwas more hot and hasty. The guests appeared to delight in our dispute. None, except Mascari, whom we pushed aside and disdained to hear, stroveto conciliate; some took one side, some another. The issue may be wellforeseen. Swords were called for and procured. Two were offered me byone of the party. I was about to choose one, when Zanoni placed inmy hand the other, which, from its hilt, appeared of antiquatedworkmanship. At the same moment, looking towards the prince, he said, smilingly, 'The duc takes your grandsire's sword. Prince, you are toobrave a man for superstition; you have forgot the forfeit!' Our hostseemed to me to recoil and turn pale at those words; nevertheless, hereturned Zanoni's smile with a look of defiance. The next moment all wasbroil and disorder. There might be some six or eight persons engagedin a strange and confused kind of melee, but the prince and myself onlysought each other. The noise around us, the confusion of the guests, the cries of the musicians, the clash of our own swords, only servedto stimulate our unhappy fury. We feared to be interrupted by theattendants, and fought like madmen, without skill or method. I thrustand parried mechanically, blind and frantic, as if a demon had enteredinto me, till I saw the prince stretched at my feet, bathed in hisblood, and Zanoni bending over him, and whispering in his ear. Thatsight cooled us all. The strife ceased; we gathered, in shame, remorse, and horror, round our ill-fated host; but it was too late, --his eyesrolled fearfully in his head. I have seen many men die, but never onewho wore such horror on his countenance. At last all was over! Zanonirose from the corpse, and, taking, with great composure, the sword frommy hand, said calmly, 'Ye are witnesses, gentlemen, that the princebrought his fate upon himself. The last of that illustrious house hasperished 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 tothe illustrious heir of the unfortunate nobleman, for the lenient andgenerous, yet just, interpretation put upon a misfortune the memory ofwhich 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 minuteaccount yet given of an event which created the most lively sensation atNaples in that day. 

Glyndon had taken no part in the affray, neither had he participatedlargely in the excesses of the revel. For his exemption from both he wasperhaps indebted to the whispered exhortations of Zanoni. When the lastrose from the corpse, and withdrew from that scene of confusion, Glyndonremarked that in passing the crowd he touched Mascari on the shoulder, and said something which the Englishman did not overhear. Glyndonfollowed Zanoni into the banquet-room, which, save where the moonlightslept on the marble floor, was wrapped in the sad and gloomy shadows ofthe 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 midnightby the sea-shore, half a mile to the left of your hotel. You will knowthe spot by a rude pillar--the only one near--to which a broken chainis attached. There and then, if thou wouldst learn our lore, thou shaltfind the master. Go; I have business here yet. Remember, Viola is stillin the house of the dead man!"

Here Mascari approached, and Zanoni, turning to the Italian, and wavinghis hand to Glyndon, drew the former aside. Glyndon slowly departed. 

"Mascari, " said Zanoni, "your patron is no more; your services willbe valueless to his heir, --a sober man whom poverty has preservedfrom vice. For yourself, thank me that I do not give you up to theexecutioner; recollect the wine of Cyprus. Well, never tremble, man; itcould not act on me, though it might react on others; in that it is acommon 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 haveno further need of her. The death of the jailer opens the cell of thecaptive. Be quick; I would be gone. "

Mascari muttered some inaudible words, bowed low, and led the way to thechamber 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 theappointed spot. The mysterious empire which Zanoni had acquired overhim, was still more solemnly confirmed by the events of the last fewhours; the sudden fate of the prince, so deliberately foreshadowed, andyet so seemingly accidental, brought out by causes the most commonplace, and yet associated with words the most prophetic, impressed him withthe deepest sentiments of admiration and awe. It was as if this dark andwondrous being could convert the most ordinary events and the meanestinstruments into the agencies of his inscrutable will; yet, if so, whyhave permitted the capture of Viola? Why not have prevented the crimerather than punish the criminal? And did Zanoni really feel love forViola? Love, and yet offer to resign her to himself, --to a rival whomhis arts could not have failed to baffle. He no longer reverted to thebelief that Zanoni or Viola had sought to dupe him into marriage. Hisfear and reverence for the former now forbade the notion of so poor animposture. Did he any longer love Viola himself? No; when that morninghe had heard of her danger, he had, it is true, returned to thesympathies and the fears of affection; but with the death of the princeher image faded from his heart, and he felt no jealous pang at thethought that she had been saved by Zanoni, --that at that moment shewas perhaps beneath his roof. Whoever has, in the course of his life, indulged the absorbing passion of the gamester, will remember how allother pursuits and objects vanished from his mind; how solely he waswrapped in the one wild delusion; with what a sceptre of magic powerthe despot-demon ruled every feeling and every thought. Far more intensethan the passion of the gamester was the frantic yet sublime desire thatmastered the breast of Glyndon. He would be the rival of Zanoni, not inhuman and perishable affections, but in preternatural and eternal lore. He would have laid down life with content--nay, rapture--as the price oflearning those solemn secrets which separated the stranger from mankind. Enamoured of the goddess of goddesses, he stretched forth his arms--thewild Ixion--and embraced a cloud!

The night was most lovely and serene, and the waves scarcely rippled athis feet as the Englishman glided on by the cool and starry beach. Atlength he arrived at the spot, and there, leaning against the brokenpillar, he beheld a man wrapped in a long mantle, and in an attitudeof profound repose. He approached, and uttered the name of Zanoni. Thefigure turned, and he saw the face of a stranger: a face not stamped bythe glorious beauty of Zanoni, but equally majestic in its aspect, andperhaps still more impressive from the mature age and the passionlessdepth of thought that characterised the expanded forehead, and deep-setbut 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 thewild faith to be yourself a Zanoni? Think you that none othershave burned with the same godlike dream? Who, indeed in his firstyouth, --youth when the soul is nearer to the heaven from which itsprang, and its divine and primal longings are not all effaced by thesordid passions and petty cares that are begot in time, --who is therein youth that has not nourished the belief that the universe hassecrets not known to the common herd, and panted, as the hart for thewater-springs, for the fountains that lie hid and far away amidst thebroad wilderness of trackless science? The music of the fountain isheard in the soul WITHIN, till the steps, deceived and erring, rove awayfrom its waters, and the wanderer dies in the mighty desert. Think youthat none who have cherished the hope have found the truth, or that theyearning 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 toage some brighter and happier spirits who have attained to the air inwhich the beings above mankind move and breathe. Zanoni, great thoughhe be, stands not alone. He has had his predecessors, and long lines ofsuccessors may be yet to come. "

"And will you tell me, " said Glyndon, "that in yourself I behold oneof that mighty few over whom Zanoni has no superiority in power andwisdom?"

"In me, " answered the stranger, "you see one from whom Zanoni himselflearned some of his loftiest secrets. On these shores, on this spot, have I stood in ages that your chroniclers but feebly reach. ThePhoenician, the Greek, the Oscan, the Roman, the Lombard, I have seenthem all!--leaves gay and glittering on the trunk of the universal life, scattered in due season and again renewed; till, indeed, the same racethat gave its glory to the ancient world bestowed a second youth uponthe new. For the pure Greeks, the Hellenes, whose origin has bewilderedyour dreaming scholars, were of the same great family as the Normantribe, born to be the lords of the universe, and in no land on earthdestined to become the hewers of wood. Even the dim traditions of thelearned, which bring the sons of Hellas from the vast and undeterminedterritories of Northern Thrace, to be the victors of the pastoralPelasgi, and the founders of the line of demi-gods; which assign to apopulation bronzed beneath the suns of the West, the blue-eyed Minervaand the yellow-haired Achilles (physical characteristics of the North);which introduce, amongst a pastoral people, warlike aristocracies andlimited monarchies, the feudalism of the classic time, --even these mightserve you to trace back the primeval settlements of the Hellenes to thesame region whence, in later times, the Norman warriors broke onthe dull and savage hordes of the Celt, and became the Greeks of theChristian world. But this interests you not, and you are wise inyour indifference. Not in the knowledge of things without, but in theperfection of the soul within, lies the empire of man aspiring to bemore than man. "

"And what books contain that science; from what laboratory is itwrought?"

"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; inthe elements from which matter in its meanest and its mightiest shapesis deduced; in the wide bosom of the air; in the black abysses of theearth; everywhere are given to mortals the resources and librariesof immortal lore. But as the simplest problems in the simplest ofall studies are obscure to one who braces not his mind to theircomprehension; as the rower in yonder vessel cannot tell you why twocircles can touch each other only in one point, --so though all earthwere carved over and inscribed with the letters of diviner knowledge, the characters would be valueless to him who does not pause to inquirethe language and meditate the truth. Young man, if thy imagination isvivid, if thy heart is daring, if thy curiosity is insatiate, I willaccept thee as my pupil. But the first lessons are stern and dread. "

"If thou hast mastered them, why not I?" answered Glyndon, boldly. "Ihave felt from my boyhood that strange mysteries were reserved for mycareer; and from the proudest ends of ordinary ambition I have carriedmy gaze into the cloud and darkness that stretch beyond. The instant Ibeheld Zanoni, I felt as if I had discovered the guide and the tutor forwhich 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 thestranger will have passed, like a wind, away. Still, like the wind, heleaves 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 ofhis work is at thy side. He comes! I hear the dash of the oar. You willhave your choice submitted to you. According as you decide we shall meetagain. " With these words the stranger moved slowly away, and disappearedbeneath the shadow of the cliffs. A boat glided rapidly across thewaters: it touched land; a man leaped on shore, and Glyndon recognisedZanoni. 

"I give thee, Glyndon, --I give thee no more the option of happy love andserene enjoyment. That hour is past, and fate has linked the hand thatmight have been thine own to mine. But I have ample gifts to bestowupon thee, if thou wilt abandon the hope that gnaws thy heart, and therealisation of which even _I_ have not the power to foresee. Be thineambition human, and I can gratify it to the full. Men desire four thingsin life, --love, wealth, fame, power. The first I cannot give thee, therest are at my disposal. Select which of them thou wilt, and let us partin peace. "

"Such are not the gifts I covet. I choose knowledge; that knowledge mustbe thine own. For this, and for this alone, I surrendered the love ofViola; this, and this alone, must be my recompense. "

"I cannot gain say thee, though I can warn. The desire to learn does notalways contain the faculty to acquire. I can give thee, it is true, theteacher, --the rest must depend on thee. Be wise in time, and take thatwhich I can assure to thee. "

"Answer me but these questions, and according to your answer I willdecide. Is it in the power of man to attain intercourse with the beingsof 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; butfor 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 bebelieved? Is he in truth one of the chosen seers whom you allow to havemastered 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, Iresign thee to a master who HAS the power and the will to open to theethe gates of an awful world. Thy weal or woe are as nought in the eyesof his relentless wisdom. I would bid him spare thee, but he will heedme not. Mejnour, receive thy pupil!" Glyndon turned, and his heart beatwhen he perceived that the stranger, whose footsteps he had not heardupon the pebbles, whose approach he had not beheld in the moonlight, wasonce 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 thatbesides the rowers there was a female, who stood up as Zanoni gained theboat. 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 cameher 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, andthe words failed him. Viola was then lost forever, gone with this dreadstranger; darkness was round her lot! And he himself had decided herfate and his own! The boat bounded on, the soft waves flashed andsparkled beneath the oars, and it was along one sapphire track ofmoonlight that the frail vessel bore away the lovers. Farther andfarther from his gaze sped the boat, till at last the speck, scarcelyvisible, touched the side of the ship that lay lifeless in the gloriousbay. At that instant, as if by magic, up sprang, with a glad murmur, theplayful and freshening wind: and Glyndon turned to Mejnour and broke thesilence. 

"Tell me--if thou canst read the future--tell me that HER lot will befair, and that HER choice at least is wise?"

"My pupil!" answered Mejnour, in a voice the calmness of which wellaccorded with the chilling words, "thy first task must be to withdrawall thought, feeling, sympathy from others. The elementary stage ofknowledge is to make self, and self alone, thy study and thy world. Thou hast decided thine own career; thou hast renounced love; thou hastrejected wealth, fame, and the vulgar pomps of power. What, then, areall mankind to thee? To perfect thy faculties, and concentrate thyemotions, is henceforth thy only aim!"

"And will happiness be the end?"

"If happiness exist, " answered Mejnour, "it must be centred in a SELF towhich 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 themaster 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'sintroduction 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 particleof common-sense left in you, you will accompany me to England. ThisMejnour is an imposter more dangerous, because more in earnest, thanZanoni. After all, what do his promises amount to? You allow thatnothing can be more equivocal. You say that he has left Naples, --that hehas selected a retreat more congenial than the crowded thoroughfares ofmen to the studies in which he is to initiate you; and this retreat isamong the haunts of the fiercest bandits of Italy, --haunts which justiceitself dares not penetrate. Fitting hermitage for a sage! I tremble foryou. What if this stranger--of whom nothing is known--be leagued withthe robbers; and these lures for your credulity bait but the trapsfor your property, --perhaps your life? You might come off cheaply bya ransom of half your fortune. You smile indignantly! Well, putcommon-sense out of the question; take your own view of the matter. You are to undergo an ordeal which Mejnour himself does not profess todescribe as a very tempting one. It may, or it may not, succeed: if itdoes not, you are menaced with the darkest evils; and if it does, youcannot be better off than the dull and joyless mystic whom you havetaken for a master. Away with this folly; enjoy youth while it is leftto you; return with me to England; forget these dreams; enter yourproper career; form affections more respectable than those which luredyou awhile to an Italian adventuress. Attend to your fortune, makemoney, and become a happy and distinguished man. This is the advice ofsober friendship; yet the promises I hold out to you are fairer thanthose of Mejnour. "

"Mervale, " said Glyndon, doggedly, "I cannot, if I would, yield toyour wishes. A power that is above me urges me on; I cannot resistits influence. I will proceed to the last in the strange career I havecommenced. Think of me no more. Follow yourself the advice you give tome, and be happy. "

"This is madness, " said Mervale; "your health is already failing; youare so changed I should scarcely know you. Come; I have already had yourname 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 yourown fancy and the machinations of this relentless mountebank. "

"Enough, " said Glyndon, coldly; "you cease to be an effective counsellorwhen you suffer your prejudices to be thus evident. I have already hadample 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 oldand cheerful haunts, that Clarence Glyndon sleeps the last sleep by theshores of Naples, or amidst yon distant hills, say to the friends ofour youth, 'He died worthily, as thousands of martyr-students have diedbefore him, in the pursuit of knowledge. '"

He wrung Mervale's hand as he spoke, darted from his side, anddisappeared 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 hidyourself? Have you been absorbed in your studies?"

"Yes. "

"I am about to leave Naples for Paris. Will you accompany me? Talent ofall 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 thePisani? Take example by me. I have already consoled myself with BiancaSacchini, --a handsome woman, enlightened, no prejudices. A valuablecreature 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 asSatan. 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 atleast paint his effigies as the Devil's. Seriously, though: I abhor thatman. "

"Wherefore?'

"Wherefore! Has he not carried off the wife and the dowry I had markedfor myself! Yet, after all, " added Nicot, musingly, "had he servedinstead of injured me, I should have hated him all the same. His veryform, and his very face, made me at once envy and detest him. I feltthat there is something antipathetic in our natures. I feel, too, thatwe 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 tomy new world!"

"And I to mine. Farewell!"

That day Mervale left Naples; the next morning Glyndon also quittedthe City of Delight alone, and on horseback. He bent his way into thosepicturesque but dangerous parts of the country which at that time wereinfested by banditti, and which few travellers dared to pass, even inbroad daylight, without a strong escort. A road more lonely cannot wellbe conceived than that on which the hoofs of his steed, striking uponthe fragments of rock that encumbered the neglected way, woke a dulland melancholy echo. Large tracts of waste land, varied by the rank andprofuse foliage of the South, lay before him; occasionally a wild goatpeeped down from some rocky crag, or the discordant cry of a bird ofprey, startled in its sombre haunt, was heard above the hills. Thesewere the only signs of life; not a human being was met, --not a hut wasvisible. Wrapped in his own ardent and solemn thoughts, the young mancontinued his way, till the sun had spent its noonday heat, and a breezethat announced the approach of eve sprung up from the unseen oceanwhich lay far distant to his right. It was then that a turn in the roadbrought before him one of those long, desolate, gloomy villages whichare found in the interior of the Neapolitan dominions: and now he cameupon a small chapel on one side the road, with a gaudily painted imageof the Virgin in the open shrine. Around this spot, which, in the heartof a Christian land, retained the vestige of the old idolatry (forjust such were the chapels that in the pagan age were dedicated to thedemon-saints of mythology), gathered six or seven miserable and squalidwretches, whom the curse of the leper had cut off from mankind. Theyset up a shrill cry as they turned their ghastly visages towards thehorseman; and, without stirring from the spot, stretched out their gauntarms, and implored charity in the name of the Merciful Mother! Glyndonhastily threw them some small coins, and, turning away his face, clappedspurs to his horse, and relaxed not his speed till he entered thevillage. On either side the narrow and miry street, fierce and haggardforms--some leaning against the ruined walls of blackened huts, someseated at the threshold, some lying at full length in the mud--presentedgroups that at once invoked pity and aroused alarm: pity for theirsqualor, alarm for the ferocity imprinted on their savage aspects. Theygazed at him, grim and sullen, as he rode slowly up the rugged street;sometimes whispering significantly to each other, but without attemptingto stop his way. Even the children hushed their babble, and raggedurchins, devouring him with sparkling eyes, muttered to their mothers;"We shall feast well to-morrow!" It was, indeed, one of those hamletsin which Law sets not its sober step, in which Violence and Murder housesecure, --hamlets common then in the wilder parts of Italy, in which thepeasant was but the gentler name for the robber. 

Glyndon's heart somewhat failed him as he looked around, and thequestion he desired to ask died upon his lips. At length from one ofthe dismal cabins emerged a form superior to the rest. Instead of thepatched and ragged over-all, which made the only garment of the men hehad hitherto seen, the dress of this person was characterised by all thetrappings of the national bravery. Upon his raven hair, the glossy curlsof which made a notable contrast to the matted and elfin locks of thesavages around, was placed a cloth cap, with a gold tassel that hungdown to his shoulder; his mustaches were trimmed with care, and a silkkerchief of gay hues was twisted round a well-shaped but sinewy throat;a short jacket of rough cloth was decorated with several rows of giltfilagree buttons; his nether garments fitted tight to his limbs, andwere curiously braided; while in a broad parti-coloured sash were placedtwo silver-hilted pistols, and the sheathed knife, usually worn byItalians of the lower order, mounted in ivory elaborately carved. Asmall carbine of handsome workmanship was slung across his shoulder andcompleted his costume. The man himself was of middle size, athletic yetslender, with straight and regular features, sunburnt, but not swarthy;and an expression of countenance which, though reckless and bold, had init frankness rather than ferocity, and, if defying, was not altogetherunprepossessing. 

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, approachingGlyndon, laid his hand upon the neck of the horse, and said, in a lowvoice, "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 thecommand. "

The man then, drawing a little aside, called out to the bystanders in aloud voice, "Ho, ho! my friends, pay henceforth and forever all respectto this worshipful cavalier. He is the expected guest of our blessedpatron of the Castle of the Mountain. Long life to him! May he, like hishost, be safe by day and by night; on the hill and in the waste; againstthe dagger and the bullet, --in limb and in life! Cursed be he whotouches a hair of his head, or a baioccho in his pouch. Now and foreverwe will protect and honour him, --for the law or against the law; withthe faith and to the death. Amen! Amen!"

"Amen!" responded, in wild chorus, a hundred voices; and the scatteredand straggling groups pressed up the street, nearer and nearer to thehorseman. 

"And that he may be known, " continued the Englishman's strangeprotector, "to the eye and to the ear, I place around him the whitesash, 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 headand bend the knee. Signor, when you utter this watchword, the bravesthearts will be bound to your bidding. Desire you safety, or ask yourevenge--to gain a beauty, or to lose a foe, --speak but the word, and weare 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 pursein the streets; and while, with mingled oaths, blessings, shrieks, andyells, men, women, and children scrambled for the money, the bravo, taking the rein of the horse, led it a few paces through the village ata brisk trot, and then, turning up a narrow lane to the left, in a fewminutes neither houses nor men were visible, and the mountains closedtheir path on either side. It was then that, releasing the bridle andslackening his pace, the guide turned his dark eyes on Glyndon with anarch expression, and said, --

"Your Excellency was not, perhaps, prepared for the hearty welcome wehave 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 theneighbourhood. And your name, my friend, if I may so call you?"

"Oh, no ceremonies with me, Excellency. In the village I am generallycalled 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 ebullitionof passion which entailed punishment, that you betook yourself to themountains?"

"Why, signor, " said the bravo, with a gay laugh, "hermits of my classseldom love the confessional. However, I have no secrets while my stepis 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 hiswill, hemmed thrice, and began with much humour; though, as his taleproceeded, the memories it roused seemed to carry him farther than heat first intended, and reckless and light-hearted ease gave way tothat fierce and varied play of countenance and passion of gesture whichcharacterise the emotions of his countrymen. 

"I was born at Terracina, --a fair spot, is it not? My father was alearned monk of high birth; my mother--Heaven rest her!--an innkeeper'spretty daughter. Of course there could be no marriage in the case;and when I was born, the monk gravely declared my appearance to bemiraculous. I was dedicated from my cradle to the altar; and my head wasuniversally 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 andpsalmody as soon as less miraculous infants learn crowing. Nor did theholy man's care stint itself to my interior accomplishments. Althoughvowed to poverty, he always contrived that my mother should haveher pockets full; and between her pockets and mine there was soonestablished a clandestine communication; accordingly, at fourteen, I wore my cap on one side, stuck pistols in my belt, and assumed theswagger 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 thePontifical 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 yourhumble servant. He bound me over to an honest notary at Naples, and gaveme two hundred crowns by way of provision. Well, signor, I saw enough ofthe law to convince me that I should never be rogue enough to shine inthe profession. So, instead of spoiling parchment, I made love to thenotary's daughter. My master discovered our innocent amusement, andturned me out of doors; that was disagreeable. But my Ninetta lovedme, and took care that I should not lie out in the streets with theLazzaroni. Little jade! I think I see her now with her bare feet, andher finger to her lips, opening the door in the summer nights, andbidding 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. Herfather found her an excellent marriage in the person of a withered oldpicture-dealer. She took the spouse, and very properly clapped the doorin 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 pocketor a crust for my teeth, I set out to seek my fortune on board of aSpanish merchantman. That was duller work than I expected; but luckilywe were attacked by a pirate, --half the crew were butchered, therest captured. I was one of the last: always in luck, you see, signor, --monks' sons have a knack that way! The captain of the piratestook 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 notaryfor turning me out of doors! What feasting, what fighting, what wooing, what quarrelling! Sometimes we ran ashore and enjoyed ourselves likeprinces; sometimes we lay in a calm for days together on the loveliestsea that man ever traversed. And then, if the breeze rose and a sailcame in sight, who so merry as we? I passed three years in that charmingprofession, and then, signor, I grew ambitious. I caballed against thecaptain; I wanted his post. One still night we struck the blow. The shipwas like a log in the sea, no land to be seen from the mast-head, thewaves like glass, and the moon at its full. Up we rose, thirty of us andmore. Up we rose with a shout; we poured into the captain's cabin, I atthe head. The brave old boy had caught the alarm, and there he stood atthe 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 tookcare of their own, and the ball passed by my cheek, and shot theboatswain behind me. I closed with the captain, and the other pistolwent off without mischief in the struggle. Such a fellow he was, --sixfeet 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 crewwere up, some for the captain, some for me, --clashing and firing, andswearing and groaning, and now and then a heavy splash in the sea. Finesupper for the sharks that night! At last old Bilboa got uppermost; outflashed his knife; down it came, but not in my heart. No! I gave my leftarm as a shield; and the blade went through to the hilt, with the bloodspurting up like the rain from a whale's nostril! With the weight of theblow the stout fellow came down so that his face touched mine; withmy 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 bearyou no malice, but we must try to get on in the world, you know. ' Thecaptain grinned and gave up the ghost. I went upon deck, --what a sight!Twenty bold fellows stark and cold, and the moon sparkling on thepuddles of blood as calmly as if it were water. Well, signor, thevictory was ours, and the ship mine; I ruled merrily enough for sixmonths. We then attacked a French ship twice our size; what sport itwas! And we had not had a good fight so long, we were quite like virginsat it! We got the best of it, and won ship and cargo. They wanted topistol the captain, but that was against my laws: so we gagged him, forhe scolded as loud as if we were married to him; left him and therest 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 abrisk wind in our favour. But luck deserted us on forsaking our own dearold ship. A storm came on, a plank struck; several of us escaped in aboat; we had lots of gold with us, but no water. For two days and twonights we suffered horribly; but at last we ran ashore near a Frenchseaport. Our sorry plight moved compassion, and as we had money, we werenot suspected, --people only suspect the poor. Here we soon recoveredour fatigues, rigged ourselves out gayly, and your humble servant wasconsidered as noble a captain as ever walked deck. But now, alas! myfate would have it that I should fall in love with a silk-mercer'sdaughter. Ah, how I loved her!--the pretty Clara! Yes, I loved herso well that I was seized with horror at my past life! I resolved torepent, to marry her, and settle down into an honest man. Accordingly, Isummoned my messmates, told them my resolution, resigned my command, and persuaded them to depart. They were good fellows, engaged with aDutchman, against whom I heard afterwards they made a successful mutiny, but I never saw them more. I had two thousand crowns still left; withthis sum I obtained the consent of the silk-mercer, and it was agreedthat I should become a partner in the firm. I need not say that no onesuspected that I had been so great a man, and I passed for a Neapolitangoldsmith'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 asgentle a mercer as ever handled a measure. "

The bravo paused a moment, and it was easy to see that he felt more thanhis words and tone betokened. "Well, well, we must not look back at thepast too earnestly, --the sunlight upon it makes one's eyes water. Theday was fixed for our wedding, --it approached. On the evening before theappointed day, Clara, her mother, her little sister, and myself, werewalking by the port; and as we looked on the sea, I was telling themold gossip-tales of mermaids and sea-serpents, when a red-faced, bottle-nosed Frenchman clapped himself right before me, and, placing hisspectacles 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 bemistaken; help there!' and he griped me by the collar. I replied, asyou may suppose, by laying him in the kennel; but it would not do. TheFrench captain had a French lieutenant at his back, whose memory was asgood as his chief's. A crowd assembled; other sailors came up: theodds were against me. I slept that night in prison; and in a few weeksafterwards I was sent to the galleys. They spared my life, because theold Frenchman politely averred that I had made my crew spare his. Youmay believe that the oar and the chain were not to my taste. I and twoothers escaped; they took to the road, and have, no doubt, been longsince broken on the wheel. I, soft soul, would not commit another crimeto 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 Icompensated by leaving him my galley attire instead, I begged my wayto the town where I left Clara. It was a clear winter's day when Iapproached the outskirts of the town. I had no fear of detection, for mybeard and hair were as good as a mask. Oh, Mother of Mercy! there cameacross my way a funeral procession! There, now you know it; I can tellyou no more. She had died, perhaps of love, more likely of shame. Canyou guess how I spent that night?--I stole a pickaxe from a mason'sshed, and all alone and unseen, under the frosty heavens, I dug thefresh mould from the grave; I lifted the coffin, I wrenched the lid, Isaw her again--again! Decay had not touched her. She was always pale inlife! I could have sworn she lived! It was a blessed thing to see heronce more, and all alone too! But then, at dawn, to give her back to theearth, --to close the lid, to throw down the mould, to hear the pebblesrattle 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. Atsunrise I was again a wanderer; but now that Clara was gone, my scruplesvanished, 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 mypassage. From Leghorn I went to Rome, and stationed myself at the doorof 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 forthee! To him who begs once, alms are due; to him who begs twice, jailsare open. Take the hint and molest me no more. Heaven bless thee!' Withthat he got into his coach, and drove off to the Vatican. His pursewhich he had left behind was well supplied. I was grateful andcontented, and took my way to Terracina. I had not long passed themarshes when I saw two horsemen approach at a canter. 

"'You look poor, friend, ' said one of them, halting; 'yet you arestrong. '

"'Poor men and strong are both serviceable and dangerous, SignorCavalier. '

"'Well said; follow us. '

"I obeyed, and became a bandit. I rose by degrees; and as I have alwaysbeen mild in my calling, and have taken purses without cutting throats, I bear an excellent character, and can eat my macaroni at Naples withoutany danger to life and limb. For the last two years I have settled inthese parts, where I hold sway, and where I have purchased land. I amcalled a farmer, signor; and I myself now only rob for amusement, and tokeep my hand in. I trust I have satisfied your curiosity. We are withina hundred yards of the castle. "

"And how, " asked the Englishman, whose interest had been much excitedby his companion's narrative, --"and how came you acquainted with myhost?--and by what means has he so well conciliated the goodwill ofyourself and friends?"

Maestro Paolo turned his black eyes very gravely towards his questioner. "Why, signor, " said he, "you must surely know more of the foreigncavalier with the hard name than I do. All I can say is, that abouta fortnight ago I chanced to be standing by a booth in the Toledo atNaples, when a sober-looking gentleman touched me by the arm, and said, 'Maestro Paolo, I want to make your acquaintance; do me the favour tocome into yonder tavern, and drink a flask of lacrima. ' 'Willingly, 'said I. So we entered the tavern. When we were seated, my newacquaintance thus accosted me: 'The Count d'O-- has offered to let mehire his old castle near B--. You know the spot?'

"'Extremely well; no one has inhabited it for a century at least; itis half in ruins, signor. A queer place to hire; I hope the rent is notheavy. '

"'Maestro Paolo, ' said he, 'I am a philosopher, and don't care forluxuries. I want a quiet retreat for some scientific experiments. The castle will suit me very well, provided you will accept me as aneighbour, and place me and my friends under your special protection. I am rich; but I shall take nothing to the castle worth robbing. I willpay one rent to the count, and another to you. '

"With that we soon came to terms; and as the strange signor doubled thesum I myself proposed, he is in high favour with all his neighbours. Wewould guard the whole castle against an army. And now, signor, that Ihave 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 crossinghimself 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, orknocking a man on the head if need be, --but to make a bargain with thedevil! Ah, take care, young gentleman, take care!"

"You need not fear, " said Glyndon, smiling; "my preceptor is too wiseand too good for such a compact. But here we are, I suppose. A nobleruin, --a glorious prospect!"

Glyndon paused delightedly, and surveyed the scene before and below withthe eye of a painter. Insensibly, while listening to the bandit, he hadwound up a considerable ascent, and now he was upon a broad ledge ofrock covered with mosses and dwarf shrubs. Between this eminence andanother of equal height, upon which the castle was built, there was adeep but narrow fissure, overgrown with the most profuse foliage, sothat the eye could not penetrate many yards below the rugged surface ofthe abyss; but the profoundness might be well conjectured by thehoarse, low, monotonous roar of waters unseen that rolled below, and thesubsequent course of which was visible at a distance in a perturbed andrapid stream that intersected the waste and desolate valleys. 

To the left, the prospect seemed almost boundless, --the extremeclearness of the purple air serving to render distinct the features ofa range of country that a conqueror of old might have deemed in itselfa kingdom. Lonely and desolate as the road which Glyndon had passed thatday had appeared, the landscape now seemed studded with castles, spires, and villages. Afar off, Naples gleamed whitely in the last rays of thesun, and the rose-tints of the horizon melted into the azure of herglorious 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 hisblackened and sterile realms, rose the dismal Mount of Fire; while onthe other hand, winding through variegated plains, to which distancelent all its magic, glittered many and many a stream by which Etruscanand Sybarite, Roman and Saracen and Norman had, at intervals of ages, pitched the invading tent. All the visions of the past--the stormy anddazzling histories of Southern Italy--rushed over the artist's mind ashe gazed below. And then, slowly turning to look behind, he saw the greyand mouldering walls of the castle in which he sought the secrets thatwere to give to hope in the future a mightier empire than memory owns inthe past. It was one of those baronial fortresses with which Italy wasstudded in the earlier middle ages, having but little of the Gothicgrace or grandeur which belongs to the ecclesiastical architecture ofthe same time, but rude, vast, and menacing, even in decay. A woodenbridge was thrown over the chasm, wide enough to admit two horsemenabreast; and the planks trembled and gave back a hollow sound as Glyndonurged his jaded steed across. 

A road which had once been broad and paved with rough flags, but whichnow was half-obliterated by long grass and rank weeds, conducted to theouter court of the castle hard by; the gates were open, and half thebuilding in this part was dismantled; the ruins partially hid by ivythat was the growth of centuries. But on entering the inner court, Glyndon was not sorry to notice that there was less appearance ofneglect and decay; some wild roses gave a smile to the grey walls, andin the centre there was a fountain in which the waters still trickledcoolly, 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 canfind 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 suchas might suit a philosopher of few wants. An old Armenian whom Glyndonrecognised as in the mystic's service at Naples, a tall, hard-featuredwoman from the village, recommended by Maestro Paolo, and twolong-haired, smooth-spoken, but fierce-visaged youths from thesame place, and honoured by the same sponsorship, constitutedthe establishment. The rooms used by the sage were commodious andweather-proof, with some remains of ancient splendour in the fadedarras that clothed the walls, and the huge tables of costly marble andelaborate carving. Glyndon's sleeping apartment communicated with a kindof belvedere, or terrace, that commanded prospects of unrivalled beautyand extent, and was separated on the other side by a long gallery, anda flight of ten or a dozen stairs, from the private chambers of themystic. There was about the whole place a sombre and yet not displeasingdepth of repose. It suited well with the studies to which it was now tobe appropriated. 

For several days Mejnour refused to confer with Glyndon on the subjectsnearest to his heart. 

"All without, " said he, "is prepared, but not all within; your ownsoul must grow accustomed to the spot, and filled with the surroundingnature; for Nature is the source of all inspiration. "

With these words Mejnour turned to lighter topics. He made theEnglishman accompany him in long rambles through the wild scenesaround, and he smiled approvingly when the young artist gave way to theenthusiasm which their fearful beauty could not have failed to rouse ina duller breast; and then Mejnour poured forth to his wondering pupilthe stores of a knowledge that seemed inexhaustible and boundless. Hegave accounts the most curious, graphic, and minute of the various races(their characters, habits, creeds, and manners) by which that fair landhad been successively overrun. It is true that his descriptions couldnot be found in books, and were unsupported by learned authorities; buthe possessed the true charm of the tale-teller, and spoke of all withthe animated confidence of a personal witness. Sometimes, too, he wouldconverse upon the more durable and the loftier mysteries of Nature withan eloquence and a research which invested them with all the coloursrather of poetry than science. Insensibly the young artist found himselfelevated and soothed by the lore of his companion; the fever of his wilddesires was slaked. His mind became more and more lulled into the divinetranquillity of contemplation; he felt himself a nobler being, and inthe silence of his senses he imagined that he heard the voice of hissoul. 

It was to this state that Mejnour evidently sought to bring theneophyte, and in this elementary initiation the mystic was like everymore ordinary sage. For he who seeks to DISCOVER must first reducehimself into a kind of abstract idealism, and be rendered up, in solemnand sweet bondage, to the faculties which CONTEMPLATE and IMAGINE. 

Glyndon noticed that, in their rambles, Mejnour often paused, where thefoliage was rifest, to gather some herb or flower; and this reminded himthat he had seen Zanoni similarly occupied. "Can these humble childrenof Nature, " said he one day to Mejnour, --"things that bloom and witherin a day, be serviceable to the science of the higher secrets? Is therea pharmacy for the soul as well as the body, and do the nurslings of thesummer minister not only to human health but spiritual immortality?"

"If, " answered Mejnour, "a stranger had visited a wandering tribe beforeone property of herbalism was known to them; if he had told the savagesthat the herbs which every day they trampled under foot were endowedwith the most potent virtues; that one would restore to health a brotheron the verge of death; that another would paralyse into idiocy theirwisest sage; that a third would strike lifeless to the dust their moststalwart champion; that tears and laughter, vigour and disease, madnessand reason, wakefulness and sleep, existence and dissolution, werecoiled up in those unregarded leaves, --would they not have held him asorcerer or a liar? To half the virtues of the vegetable world mankindare yet in the darkness of the savages I have supposed. There arefaculties within us with which certain herbs have affinity, and overwhich 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 himmore. The conversation of Zanoni evinced a deep and general interest formankind, --a feeling approaching to enthusiasm for art and beauty. Thestories circulated concerning his habits elevated the mystery of hislife by actions of charity and beneficence. And in all this therewas something genial and humane that softened the awe he created, andtended, perhaps, to raise suspicions as to the loftier secrets that hearrogated to himself. But Mejnour seemed wholly indifferent to all theactual world. If he committed no evil, he seemed equally apathetic togood. His deeds relieved no want, his words pitied no distress. Whatwe call the heart appeared to have merged into the intellect. He moved, thought, and lived like some regular and calm abstraction, rather thanone who yet retained, with the form, the feelings and sympathies of hiskind. 

Glyndon once, observing the tone of supreme indifference with which hespoke of those changes on the face of earth which he asserted he hadwitnessed, ventured to remark to him the distinction he had noted. 

"It is true, " said Mejnour, coldly. "My life is the life thatcontemplates, --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 cultivateddifferent faculties. Each has powers the other cannot aspire to. Thosewith whom he associates live better, --those who associate with me knowmore. "

"I have heard, in truth, " said Glyndon, "that his companions at Napleswere observed to lead purer and nobler lives after intercourse withZanoni; 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 ofthe Prince di --, and that of the Count Ughelli, scarcely becomes thetranquil seeker after good. "

"True, " said Mejnour, with an icy smile; "such must ever be the error ofthose philosophers who would meddle with the active life of mankind. Youcannot serve some without injuring others; you cannot protect the goodwithout 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 asnecessary to know evil things as good; for who can know what is goodwithout the knowing what is evil?' etc. --Paracelsus, 'De Nat. Rer. , 'lib. 3. ) Not mine this folly; I live but in knowledge, --I have no lifein mankind!"

Another time Glyndon questioned the mystic as to the nature of thatunion or fraternity to which Zanoni had once referred. 

"I am right, I suppose, " said he, "in conjecturing that you and himselfprofess to be the brothers of the Rosy Cross?"

"Do you imagine, " answered Mejnour, "that there were no mystic andsolemn unions of men seeking the same end through the same means beforethe Arabians of Damus, in 1378, taught to a wandering German the secretswhich founded the Institution of the Rosicrucians? I allow, however, that the Rosicrucians formed a sect descended from the greater andearlier school. They were wiser than the Alchemists, --their masters arewiser 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 secretthat baffles Death?"

"Your ancestor attained that secret; he died rather than survive theonly thing he loved. We have, my pupil, no arts by which we CAN PUTDEATH OUT OF OUR OPTION, or out of the will of Heaven. These walls maycrush me as I stand. All that we profess to do is but this, --to findout the secrets of the human frame; to know why the parts ossify and theblood stagnates, and to apply continual preventives to the effects oftime. This is not magic; it is the art of medicine rightly understood. In our order we hold most noble, --first, that knowledge which elevatesthe intellect; secondly, that which preserves the body. But the mere art(extracted from the juices and simples) which recruits the animal vigourand arrests the progress of decay, or that more noble secret, which Iwill only hint to thee at present, by which HEAT, or CALORIC, as yecall it, being, as Heraclitus wisely taught, the primordial principleof life, can be made its perpetual renovater, --these I say, would notsuffice for safety. It is ours also to disarm and elude the wrath ofmen, to turn the swords of our foes against each other, to glide (ifnot incorporeal) invisible to eyes over which we can throw a mist anddarkness. And this some seers have professed to be the virtue of a stoneof agate. Abaris placed it in his arrow. I will find you an herb in yonvalley that will give a surer charm than the agate and the arrow. In oneword, know this, that the humblest and meanest products of Nature arethose from which the sublimest properties are to be drawn. "

"But, " said Glyndon, "if possessed of these great secrets, whyso churlish in withholding their diffusion? Does not the false orcharlatanic science differ in this from the true and indisputable, --thatthe last communicates to the world the process by which it attains itsdiscoveries; the first boasts of marvellous results, and refuses toexplain the causes?"

"Well said, O Logician of the Schools; but think again. Suppose we wereto impart all our knowledge to all mankind indiscriminately, --alike tothe vicious and the virtuous, --should we be benefactors or scourges?Imagine the tyrant, the sensualist, the evil and corrupted beingpossessed of these tremendous powers; would he not be a demon let looseon 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 goodforever on the defensive, the bad forever in assault. In the presentcondition of the earth, evil is a more active principle than good, andthe evil would prevail. It is for these reasons that we are not onlysolemnly bound to administer our lore only to those who will not misuseand pervert it, but that we place our ordeal in tests that purifythe passions and elevate the desires. And Nature in this controls andassists us: for it places awful guardians and insurmountable barriersbetween the ambition of vice and the heaven of the loftier science. "

Such made a small part of the numerous conversations Mejnour heldwith his pupil, --conversations that, while they appeared to addressthemselves to the reason, inflamed yet more the fancy. It was the verydisclaiming of all powers which Nature, properly investigated, didnot suffice to create, that gave an air of probability to those whichMejnour asserted Nature might bestow. 

Thus days and weeks rolled on; and the mind of Glyndon, gradually fittedto this sequestered and musing life, forgot at last the vanities andchimeras of the world without. 

One evening he had lingered alone and late upon the ramparts, watchingthe stars as, one by one, they broke upon the twilight. Never had hefelt 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 uponby the solemn influences of Nature. As a patient on whom, slowly and bydegrees, the agencies of mesmerism are brought to bear, he acknowledgedto his heart the growing force of that vast and universal magnetismwhich is the life of creation, and binds the atom to the whole. Astrange and ineffable consciousness of power, of the SOMETHING GREATwithin the perishable clay, appealed to feelings at once dim andglorious, --like the faint recognitions of a holier and former being. Animpulse, that he could not resist, led him to seek the mystic. He woulddemand, that hour, his initiation into the worlds beyond our world, --hewas prepared to breathe a diviner air. He entered the castle, and strodethe 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 communicatingwith each other, and a third in which he slept. All these roomswere placed in the huge square tower that beetled over the dark andbush-grown precipice. The first chamber which Glyndon entered was empty. With a noiseless step he passed on, and opened the door that admittedinto the inner one. He drew back at the threshold, overpowered by astrong fragrance which filled the chamber: a kind of mist thickened theair rather than obscured it, for this vapour was not dark, but resembleda snow-cloud moving slowly, and in heavy undulations, wave upon waveregularly over the space. A mortal cold struck to the Englishman'sheart, and his blood froze. He stood rooted to the spot; and as his eyesstrained involuntarily through the vapour, he fancied (for he could notbe 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 itnot rather the mist itself that formed its vapours fantastically intothose moving, impalpable, and bodiless apparitions? A great painterof antiquity is said, in a picture of Hades, to have represented themonsters 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 formsblending with the dead waters till, as the eye continued to gaze, itceased to discern them from the preternatural element they were supposedto inhabit. Such were the moving outlines that coiled and floatedthrough the mist; but before Glyndon had even drawn breath in thisatmosphere--for his life itself seemed arrested or changed into a kindof horrid trance--he felt his hand seized, and he was led from that roominto the outer one. He heard the door close, --his blood rushed againthrough his veins, and he saw Mejnour by his side. Strong convulsionsthen 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 ofstone that jutted from the chamber, the stars shining serenely over thedark abyss below, and resting calmly upon the face of the mystic, whostood beside him with folded arms. 

"Young man, " said Mejnour, "judge by what you have just felt, howdangerous it is to seek knowledge until prepared to receive it. Anothermoment in the air of that chamber and you had been a corpse. "

"Then of what nature was the knowledge that you, once mortal likemyself, could safely have sought in that icy atmosphere, which it wasdeath for me to breathe? Mejnour, " continued Glyndon, and his wilddesire, sharpened by the very danger he had passed, once more animatedand nerved him, "I am prepared at least for the first steps. I come toyou 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 likeadmiration in his passionless and frigid features, and muttered, halfto himself, "Surely, in so much courage the true disciple is found atlast. " Then, speaking aloud, he added, "Be it so; man's first initiationis in TRANCE. In dreams commences all human knowledge; in dreamshovers over measureless space the first faint bridge between spirit andspirit, --this world and the worlds beyond! Look steadfastly on yonderstar!"

Glyndon obeyed, and Mejnour retired into the chamber, from which therethen slowly emerged a vapour, somewhat paler and of fainter odour thanthat 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 spiresinto the air, breathed a refreshing and healthful fragrance. He stillkept his eyes on the star, and the star seemed gradually to fix andcommand his gaze. A sort of languor next seized his frame, but without, as he thought, communicating itself to the mind; and as this crept overhim, he felt his temples sprinkled with some volatile and fiery essence. At the same moment a slight tremor shook his limbs and thrilled throughhis veins. The languor increased, still he kept his gaze upon the star, and now its luminous circumference seemed to expand and dilate. Itbecame gradually softer and clearer in its light; spreading wider andbroader, 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 ifsomething burst within his brain, --as if a strong chain were broken; andat that moment a sense of heavenly liberty, of unutterable delight, offreedom from the body, of birdlike lightness, seemed to float himinto the space itself. "Whom, now upon earth, dost thou wish to see?"whispered the voice of Mejnour. "Viola and Zanoni!" answered Glyndon, inhis heart; but he felt that his lips moved not. 

Suddenly at that thought, --through this space, in which nothing save onemellow translucent light had been discernible, --a swift successionof 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 oceanshore, --myrtles and orange-trees clothing the gentle banks. On a height, at a distance, gleamed the white but shattered relics of some ruinedheathen edifice; and the moon, in calm splendour, shining over all, literally bathed with its light two forms without the cave, at whosefeet the blue waters crept, and he thought that he even heard themmurmur. He recognised both the figures. Zanoni was seated on a fragmentof 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 ofthat perfect happiness which belongs to perfect love. "Wouldst thou hearthem speak?" whispered Mejnour; and again, without sound, Glyndon inlyanswered, "Yes!" Their voices then came to his ear, but in tones thatseemed 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 holiermen from a distant sphere. 

"And how is it, " said Viola, "that thou canst find pleasure in listeningto the ignorant?"

"Because the heart is never ignorant; because the mysteries of thefeelings are as full of wonder as those of the intellect. If at timesthou canst not comprehend the language of my thoughts, at times also Ihear 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 solvethem. Till I knew thee, --till I lived with thee; till I learned towatch for thy footstep when absent: yet even in absence to seethee everywhere!--I dreamed not how strong and all-pervading is theconnection between nature and the human soul!. .. 

"And yet, " she continued, "I am now assured of what I at firstbelieved, --that the feelings which attracted me towards thee at firstwere not those of love. I know THAT, by comparing the present with thepast, --it was a sentiment then wholly of the mind or the spirit! I couldnot hear thee now say, 'Viola, be happy with another!'"

"And I could not now tell thee so! Ah, Viola, never be weary of assuringme 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; becauseyon moon shines on when the nightingale sings to it no more! A littlewhile, and thine eyes will grow dim, and thy beauty haggard, and theselocks that I toy with now will be grey and loveless. "

"And thou, cruel one!" said Viola, touchingly, "I shall never see thesigns of age in thee! But shall we not grow old together, and our eyesbe 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 atViola, he said, with a half-smile, "Hast thou no curiosity to learn moreof 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 THOULOVEST ME!"

"I have told thee that my life is apart from others. Wouldst thou notseek to share it?"

"I share it now!"

"But were it possible to be thus young and fair forever, till the worldblazes 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 visitedthee, when thou didst fancy that thou wert preordained to some fatealoof 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 reposesin thy smile. Ah, Zanoni, play not with the foolish credulities of myyouth! I have been better and humbler since thy presence has dispelledthe mist of the air. The future!--well, when I have cause to dread it, Iwill look up to heaven, and remember who guides our fate!"

As she lifted her eyes above, a dark cloud swept suddenly over thescene. It wrapped the orange-trees, the azure ocean, the dense sands;but still the last images that it veiled from the charmed eyes ofGlyndon were the forms of Viola and Zanoni. The face of the one rapt, serene, and radiant; the face of the other, dark, thoughtful, and lockedin more than its usual rigidness of melancholy beauty and profoundrepose. 

"Rouse thyself, " said Mejnour; "thy ordeal has commenced! There arepretenders to the solemn science who could have shown thee theabsent, and prated to thee, in their charlatanic jargon, of the secretelectricities and the magnetic fluid of whose true properties they knowbut the germs and elements. I will lend thee the books of those gloriousdupes, and thou wilt find, in the dark ages, how many erring steps havestumbled upon the threshold of the mighty learning, and fancied theyhad 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 soulsof faith, and daring fitted for the destinies at which ye aimed! YetParacelsus--modest Paracelsus--had an arrogance that soared higher thanall our knowledge. Ho, ho!--he thought he could make a race of men fromchemistry; 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 butpygmies! My art is to make men above mankind. But you are impatient ofmy digressions. Forgive me. All these men (they were great dreamers, asyou desire to be) were intimate friends of mine. But they are dead androtten. They talked of spirits, --but they dreaded to be in other companythan that of men. Like orators whom I have heard, when I stood by thePnyx of Athens, blazing with words like comets in the assembly, andextinguishing their ardour like holiday rockets when they were in thefield. Ho, ho! Demosthenes, my hero-coward, how nimble were thy heelsat Chaeronea! And thou art impatient still! Boy, I could tell thee suchtruths of the past as would make thee the luminary of schools. But thoulustest 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, andsleep; fast austerely, read no books; meditate, imagine, dream, bewilderthyself if thou wilt. Thought shapes out its own chaos at last. Beforemidnight, 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 inthe apartment of the mystic. He had rigidly observed the fast ordainedto him; and in the rapt and intense reveries into which his excitedfancy had plunged him, he was not only insensible to the wants of theflesh, --he felt above them. 

Mejnour, seated beside his disciple, thus addressed him:--

"Man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance. Man's natural tendencyis to egotism. Man, in his infancy of knowledge, thinks that allcreation was formed for him. For several ages he saw in the countlessworlds that sparkle through space like the bubbles of a shoreless oceanonly the petty candles, the household torches, that Providence hadbeen pleased to light for no other purpose but to make the night moreagreeable to man. Astronomy has corrected this delusion of human vanity;and man now reluctantly confesses that the stars are worlds larger andmore glorious than his own, --that the earth on which he crawls is ascarce visible speck on the vast chart of creation. But in the small asin the vast, God is equally profuse of life. The traveller looks uponthe tree, and fancies its boughs were formed for his shelter in thesummer sun, or his fuel in the winter frosts. But in each leaf of theseboughs 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 akingdom is of men. Everywhere, then, in this immense design, sciencebrings new life to light. Life is the one pervading principle, and eventhe thing that seems to die and putrify but engenders new life, andchanges 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 toother lives, and millions and myriads dwell in the rivers of his blood, and inhabit man's frame as man inhabits earth, commonsense (if yourschoolmen had it) would suffice to teach that the circumfluent infinitewhich you call space--the countless Impalpable which divides earthfrom the moon and stars--is filled also with its correspondent andappropriate life. Is it not a visible absurdity to suppose that being iscrowded upon every leaf, and yet absent from the immensities of space?The law of the Great System forbids the waste even of an atom; itknows no spot where something of life does not breathe. In the verycharnel-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 ofuniversal being than the dead carcass of a dog, than the peopled leaf, than the swarming globule? The microscope shows you the creatures on theleaf; no mechanical tube is yet invented to discover the nobler and moregifted things that hover in the illimitable air. Yet between these lastand man is a mysterious and terrible affinity. And hence, by tales andlegends, not wholly false nor wholly true, have arisen from time totime, beliefs in apparitions and spectres. If more common to the earlierand 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 savagecan see or scent miles away the traces of a foe, invisible to the grosssense of the civilised animal, so the barrier itself between him andthe creatures of the airy world is less thickened and obscured. Do youlisten?"

"With my soul!"

"But first, to penetrate this barrier, the soul with which you listenmust be sharpened by intense enthusiasm, purified from all earthlierdesires. Not without reason have the so-styled magicians, in alllands and times, insisted on chastity and abstemious reverie as thecommunicants of inspiration. When thus prepared, science can be broughtto aid it; the sight itself may be rendered more subtle, the nerves moreacute, the spirit more alive and outward, and the element itself--theair, the space--may be made, by certain secrets of the higher chemistry, more palpable and clear. And this, too, is not magic, as the credulouscall it; as I have so often said before, magic (or science that violatesNature) exists not: it is but the science by which Nature can becontrolled. Now, in space there are millions of beings not literallyspiritual, for they have all, like the animalculae unseen by the nakedeye, certain forms of matter, though matter so delicate, air-drawn, andsubtle, that it is, as it were, but a film, a gossamer that clothes thespirit. 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 thedrop of water you see how the animalculae vary, how vast and terribleare some of those monster mites as compared with others. Equally so withthe inhabitants of the atmosphere: some of surpassing wisdom, some ofhorrible malignity; some hostile as fiends to men, others gentle asmessengers between earth and heaven. 

"He who would establish intercourse with these varying beings resemblesthe traveller who would penetrate into unknown lands. He is exposed tostrange 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 deadliestfoes. Thou must alone, and of thyself, face and hazard all. But if thouart so enamoured of life as to care only to live on, no matter for whatends, recruiting the nerves and veins with the alchemist's vivifyingelixir, why seek these dangers from the intermediate tribes? Because thevery elixir that pours a more glorious life into the frame, so sharpensthe senses that those larvae of the air become to thee audible andapparent; so that, unless trained by degrees to endure the phantoms andsubdue their malice, a life thus gifted would be the most awful doomman could bring upon himself. Hence it is, that though the elixir becompounded of the simplest herbs, his frame only is prepared to receiveit who has gone through the subtlest trials. Nay, some, scared anddaunted into the most intolerable horror by the sights that burst upontheir eyes at the first draft, have found the potion less powerful tosave than the agony and travail of Nature to destroy. To the unpreparedthe elixir is thus but the deadliest poison. Amidst the dwellers ofthe threshold is ONE, too, surpassing in malignity and hatred all hertribe, --one whose eyes have paralyzed the bravest, and whose powerincreases over the spirit precisely in proportion to its fear. Does thycourage 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 proceededto explain to him certain chemical operations which, though extremelysimple in themselves, Glyndon soon perceived were capable of veryextraordinary results. 

"In the remoter times, " said Mejnour, smiling, "our brotherhood wereoften compelled to recur to delusions to protect realities; and, asdexterous mechanicians or expert chemists, they obtained the nameof sorcerers. Observe how easy to construct is the Spectre Lion thatattended the renowned Leonardo da Vinci!"

And Glyndon beheld with delighted surprise the simple means by which thewildest cheats of the imagination can be formed. The magical landscapesin which Baptista Porta rejoiced; the apparent change of the seasonswith which Albertus Magnus startled the Earl of Holland; nay, even thosemore dread delusions of the Ghost and Image with which the necromancersof Heraclea woke the conscience of the conqueror of Plataea(Pausanias, --see Plutarch. ), --all these, as the showman enchantssome trembling children on a Christmas Eve with his lantern andphantasmagoria, Mejnour exhibited to his pupil. 

. .. . 

"And now laugh forever at magic! when these, the very tricks, the verysports and frivolities of science, were the very acts which men viewedwith abhorrence, and inquisitors and kings rewarded with the rack andthe stake. "

"But the alchemist's transmutation of metals--"

"Nature herself is a laboratory in which metals, and all elements, areforever at change. Easy to make gold, --easier, more commodious, andcheaper 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 thediscovery that by the simplest combination of things of every-day usethey could raise a devil that would sweep away thousands of their kindby the breath of consuming fire. Discover what will destroy life, andyou are a great man!--what will prolong it, and you are an imposter!Discover some invention in machinery that will make the rich more richand the poor more poor, and they will build you a statue! Discover somemystery in art that will equalise physical disparities, and they willpull down their own houses to stone you! Ha, ha, my pupil! such isthe world Zanoni still cares for!--you and I will leave this world toitself. 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 ofthe 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 inlabour dependent on the most vigilant attention, on the most minute andsubtle calculation. Results astonishing and various rewarded his toilsand stimulated his interest. Nor were these studies limited to chemicaldiscovery, --in which it is permitted me to say that the greatest marvelsupon the organisation of physical life seemed wrought by experimentsof the vivifying influence of heat. Mejnour professed to find alink between all intellectual beings in the existence of a certainall-pervading and invisible fluid resembling electricity, yet distinctfrom the known operations of that mysterious agency--a fluid thatconnected thought to thought with the rapidity and precision of themodern telegraph, and the influence of this fluid, according to Mejnour, extended to the remotest past, --that is to say, whenever and wheresoeverman had thought. Thus, if the doctrine were true, all human knowledgebecame attainable through a medium established between the brain of theindividual inquirer and all the farthest and obscurest regions in theuniverse of ideas. Glyndon was surprised to find Mejnour attached to theabstruse mysteries which the Pythagoreans ascribed to the occult scienceof NUMBERS. In this last, new lights glimmered dimly on his eyes; andhe began to perceive that even the power to predict, or rather tocalculate, results, might by-- (Here there is an erasure in the MS. )

. .. . 

But he observed that the last brief process by which, in each of theseexperiments, the wonder was achieved, Mejnour reserved for himself, and refused to communicate the secret. The answer he obtained to hisremonstrances 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 ofthe social world? The last secrets are intrusted only to him of whosevirtue the Master is convinced. Patience! It is labour itself that isthe great purifier of the mind; and by degrees the secrets will growupon thyself as thy mind becomes riper to receive them. "

At last Mejnour professed himself satisfied with the progress made byhis pupil. "The hour now arrives, " he said, "when thou mayst pass thegreat but airy barrier, --when thou mayst gradually confront the terribleDweller of the Threshold. Continue thy labours--continue to surpassthine impatience for results until thou canst fathom the causes. I leavethee for one month; if at the end of that period, when I return, thetasks set thee are completed, and thy mind prepared by contemplationand austere thought for the ordeal, I promise thee the ordeal shallcommence. One caution alone I give thee: regard it as a peremptorycommand, enter not this chamber!" (They were then standing in the roomwhere their experiments had been chiefly made, and in which Glyndon, onthe night he had sought the solitude of the mystic, had nearly fallen avictim to his intrusion. )

"Enter not this chamber till my return; or, above all, if by any searchfor materials necessary to thy toils thou shouldst venture hither, forbear to light the naphtha in those vessels, and to open the vases onyonder shelves. I leave the key of the room in thy keeping, in order totry thy abstinence and self-control. Young man, this very temptation isa part of thy trial. "

With that, Mejnour placed the key in his hands; and at sunset he leftthe castle. 

For several days Glyndon continued immersed in employments whichstrained to the utmost all the faculties of his intellect. Even the mostpartial success depended so entirely on the abstraction of the mind, andthe minuteness of its calculations, that there was scarcely room for anyother thought than those absorbed in the occupation. And doubtless thisperpetual strain of the faculties was the object of Mejnour in worksthat did not seem exactly pertinent to the purposes in view. As thestudy of the elementary mathematics, for example, is not so profitablein the solving of problems, useless in our after-callings, as it isserviceable in training the intellect to the comprehension and analysisof general truths. 

But in less than half the time which Mejnour had stated for the durationof his absence, all that the mystic had appointed to his toils wascompleted by the pupil; and then his mind, thus relieved from thedrudgery and mechanism of employment, once more sought occupation in dimconjecture and restless fancies. His inquisitive and rash nature grewexcited by the prohibition of Mejnour, and he found himself gazingtoo often, with perturbed and daring curiosity, upon the key of theforbidden chamber. He began to feel indignant at a trial of constancywhich he deemed frivolous and puerile. What nursery tales of Bluebeardand his closet were revived to daunt and terrify him! How could themere walls of a chamber, in which he had so often securely pursued hislabours, start into living danger? If haunted, it could be but by thosedelusions which Mejnour had taught him to despise, --a shadowy lion, --achemical phantasm! Tush! he lost half his awe of Mejnour, when hethought that by such tricks the sage could practise upon the veryintellect he had awakened and instructed! Still he resisted the impulsesof his curiosity and his pride, and, to escape from their dictation, hetook long rambles on the hills, or amidst the valleys that surroundedthe castle, --seeking by bodily fatigue to subdue the unreposing mind. One day suddenly emerging from a dark ravine, he came upon one of thoseItalian scenes of rural festivity and mirth in which the classic ageappears to revive. It was a festival, partly agricultural, partlyreligious, held yearly by the peasants of that district. Assembledat the outskirts of a village, animated crowds, just returned from aprocession to a neighbouring chapel, were now forming themselves intogroups: the old to taste the vintage, the young to dance, --all to begay and happy. This sudden picture of easy joy and careless ignorance, contrasting so forcibly with the intense studies and that parchingdesire for wisdom which had so long made up his own life, and burned athis own heart, sensibly affected Glyndon. As he stood aloof and gazingon them, the young man felt once more that he was young. The memory ofall he had been content to sacrifice spoke to him like the sharp voiceof remorse. The flitting forms of the women in their picturesque attire, their happy laughter ringing through the cool, still air of the autumnnoon, brought back to the heart, or rather perhaps to the senses, theimages of his past time, the "golden shepherd hours, " when to live wasbut to enjoy. 

He approached nearer and nearer to the scene, and suddenly a noisygroup swept round him; and Maestro Paolo, tapping him familiarly on theshoulder, exclaimed in a hearty voice, "Welcome, Excellency!--we arerejoiced to see you amongst us. " Glyndon was about to reply to thissalutation, when his eyes rested upon the face of a young girl leaningon Paolo's arm, of a beauty so attractive that his colour rose and hisheart beat as he encountered her gaze. Her eyes sparkled with a roguishand petulant mirth, her parted lips showed teeth like pearls; as ifimpatient 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 producedupon the young foreigner. 

"Will you not dance, Excellency? Come, lay aside your greatness, and bemerry, like us poor devils. See how our pretty Fillide is longing for apartner. 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, halfdefying. Glyndon, almost involuntarily, advanced to her, and addressedher. 

Oh, yes; he addresses her! She looks down, and smiles. Paolo leaves themto themselves, sauntering off with a devil-me-carish air. Fillide speaksnow, and looks up at the scholar's face with arch invitation. He shakeshis head; Fillide laughs, and her laugh is silvery. She points to a gaymountaineer, who is tripping up to her merrily. Why does Glyndon feeljealous? Why, when she speaks again, does he shake his head no more? Heoffers his hand; Fillide blushes, and takes it with a demure coquetry. What! is it so, indeed! They whirl into the noisy circle of therevellers. Ha! ha! is not this better than distilling herbs, andbreaking thy brains on Pythagorean numbers? How lightly Fillide boundsalong! How her lithesome waist supples itself to thy circling arm!Tara-ra-tara, ta-tara, rara-ra! What the devil is in the measure thatit makes the blood course like quicksilver through the veins? Was thereever a pair of eyes like Fillide's? Nothing of the cold stars there! Yethow they twinkle and laugh at thee! And that rosy, pursed-up mouth thatwill answer so sparingly to thy flatteries, as if words were a waste oftime, and kisses were their proper language. Oh, pupil of Mejnour! Oh, would-be Rosicrucian, Platonist, Magian, I know not what! I am ashamedof thee! What, in the names of Averroes and Burri and Agrippa and Hermeshave become of thy austere contemplations? Was it for this thou didstresign Viola? I don't think thou hast the smallest recollection of theelixir or the Cabala. Take care! What are you about, sir? Why do youclasp that small hand locked within your own? Why do you--Tara-raratara-ra tara-rara-ra, rarara, ta-ra, a-ra! Keep your eyes off thoseslender ankles and that crimson bodice! Tara-rara-ra! There they goagain! And now they rest under the broad trees. The revel has whirledaway from them. They hear--or do they not hear--the laughter at thedistance? They see--or if they have their eyes about them, they SHOULDsee--couple after couple gliding by, love-talking and love-looking. ButI will lay a wager, as they sit under that tree, and the round sun goesdown behind the mountains, that they see or hear very little exceptthemselves. 

"Hollo, Signor Excellency! and how does your partner please you? Comeand 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 nightshadows, those flitting forms! What confusion!--what order! Ha, that isthe Tarantula dance; Maestro Paolo foots it bravely! Diavolo, whatfury! the Tarantula has stung them all. Dance or die; it is fury, --theCorybantes, the Maenads, the--Ho, ho! more wine! the Sabbat of theWitches at Benevento is a joke to this! From cloud to cloud wanders themoon, --now shining, now lost. Dimness while the maiden blushes; lightwhen 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 hada Fillide! I was handsomer than you then! Alas! if we could be alwaysyoung!"

"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 yellowwrinkled skin, the tottering frame of the old man. 

"Ha, ha!" said the decrepit creature, hobbling near to him, and with amalicious laugh. "Yet I, too, was young once! Give me a baioccho for aglass of aqua vitae!"

Tara, rara, ra-rara, tara, rara-ra! There dances Youth! Wrap thy ragsround 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 andthe dawn, when Clarence stood once more in his chamber. The abstrusecalculations lying on his table caught his eye, and filled him with asentiment of weariness and distaste. But--"Alas, if we could bealways young! Oh, thou horrid spectre of the old, rheum-eyed man!What apparition can the mystic chamber shadow forth more ugly and morehateful than thou? Oh, yes, if we could be always young! But not [thinksthe neophyte now]--not to labour forever at these crabbed figures andthese cold compounds of herbs and drugs. No; but to enjoy, to love, torevel! What should be the companion of youth but pleasure? And the giftof eternal youth may be mine this very hour! What means this prohibitionof Mejnour's? Is it not of the same complexion as his ungenerousreserve even in the minutest secrets of chemistry, or the numbers ofhis Cabala?--compelling me to perform all the toils, and yet withholdingfrom 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 willstill forbid ME to attain it. Is it not as if he desired to keep myyouth the slave to his age; to make me dependent solely on himself; tobind me to a journeyman's service by perpetual excitement to curiosity, and the sight of the fruits he places beyond my lips?" These, and manyreflections still more repining, disturbed and irritated him. Heatedwith wine--excited by the wild revels he had left--he was unable tosleep. The image of that revolting Old Age which Time, unless defeated, must bring upon himself, quickened the eagerness of his desire for thedazzling and imperishable Youth he ascribed to Zanoni. The prohibitiononly served to create a spirit of defiance. The reviving day, laughingjocundly through his lattice, dispelled all the fears and superstitionsthat belong to night. The mystic chamber presented to his imaginationnothing to differ from any other apartment in the castle. What foul ormalignant apparition could harm him in the light of that blessed sun!It was the peculiar, and on the whole most unhappy, contradiction inGlyndon's nature, that while his reasonings led him to doubt, --and doubtrendered him in MORAL conduct irresolute and unsteady; he was PHYSICALLYbrave to rashness. Nor is this uncommon: scepticism and presumption areoften twins. When a man of this character determines upon any action, personal fear never deters him; and for the moral fear, any sophistrysuffices to self-will. Almost without analysing himself the mentalprocess by which his nerves hardened themselves and his limbs moved, he traversed the corridor, gained Mejnour's apartment, and opened theforbidden door. All was as he had been accustomed to see it, savethat on a table in the centre of the room lay open a large volume. Heapproached, and gazed on the characters on the page; they were in acipher, the study of which had made a part of his labours. With butslight difficulty he imagined that he interpreted the meaning of thefirst sentences, and that they ran thus:--

"To quaff the inner life, is to see the outer life: to live in defianceof time, is to live in the whole. He who discovers the elixir discoverswhat lies in space; for the spirit that vivifies the frame strengthensthe 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 thatlight. Beware of Fear. Fear is the deadliest enemy to Knowledge. " Herethe ciphers changed their character, and became incomprehensible. Buthad he not read enough? Did not the last sentence suffice?--"Beware ofFear!" It was as if Mejnour had purposely left the page open, --as if thetrial was, in truth, the reverse of the one pretended; as if the mystichad designed to make experiment of his COURAGE while affecting but thatof his FORBEARANCE. Not Boldness, but Fear, was the deadliest enemyto Knowledge. He moved to the shelves on which the crystal vases wereplaced; with an untrembling hand he took from one of them the stopper, and a delicious odor suddenly diffused itself through the room. The airsparkled as if with a diamond-dust. A sense of unearthly delight, --of anexistence that seemed all spirit, flashed through his whole frame; anda 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 reclosedand replaced the vial, and bidding Paolo await him in his own apartment, tarried till he heard the intruder's steps depart; he then reluctantlyquitted the room. As he locked the door, he still heard the dyingstrain of that fairy music; and with a light step and a joyous heart herepaired to Paolo, inly resolving to visit again the chamber at an hourwhen 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 greatbeautifier to the young. Yesterday you looked so pale and haggard; butFillide's merry eyes have done more for you than the Philosopher'sStone (saints forgive me for naming it) ever did for the wizards. "And Glyndon, glancing at the old Venetian mirror as Paolo spoke, wasscarcely less startled than Paolo himself at the change in his own mienand bearing. His form, before bent with thought, seemed to him taller byhalf the head, so lithesome and erect rose his slender stature; hiseyes glowed, his cheeks bloomed with health and the innate and pervadingpleasure. If the mere fragrance of the elixir was thus potent, wellmight 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 tome to say that he will be here to-morrow, and desired me to lose not amoment 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 meto-morrow. You will then enter on the ordeal you desire, but rememberthat, in doing so, you must reduce Being as far as possible into Mind. The senses must be mortified and subdued, --not the whisper of onepassion heard. Thou mayst be master of the Cabala and the Chemistry; butthou must be master also over the Flesh and the Blood, --over Loveand Vanity, Ambition and Hate. I will trust to find thee so. Fast andmeditate 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 sighedwhen I jested her about you, Excellency!"

"Well, Paolo! I thank thee for so charming an introduction. Thine mustbe a rare life. "

"Ah, Excellency, while we are young, nothing like adventure, --exceptlove, wine, and laughter!"

"Very true. Farewell, Maestro Paolo; we will talk more with each otherin a few days. "

All that morning Glyndon was almost overpowered with the new sentimentof happiness that had entered into him. He roamed into the woods, andhe felt a pleasure that resembled his earlier life of an artist, but apleasure yet more subtle and vivid, in the various colours of theautumn foliage. Certainly Nature seemed to be brought closer to him; hecomprehended better all that Mejnour had often preached to him of themystery of sympathies and attractions. He was about to enter into thesame law as those mute children of the forests. He was to know THERENEWAL OF LIFE; the seasons that chilled to winter should yet bringagain the bloom and the mirth of spring. Man's common existence is asone year to the vegetable world: he has his spring, his summer, hisautumn, and winter, --but only ONCE. But the giant oaks round him gothrough a revolving series of verdure and youth, and the green of thecentenarian is as vivid in the beams of May as that of the sapling byits side. "Mine shall be your spring, but not your winter!" exclaimedthe aspirant. 

Wrapped in these sanguine and joyous reveries, Glyndon, quitting thewoods, found himself amidst cultivated fields and vineyards to which hisfootstep had not before wandered; and there stood, by the skirts of agreen lane that reminded him of verdant England, a modest house, --halfcottage, half farm. The door was open, and he saw a girl at work withher distaff. She looked up, uttered a slight cry, and, tripping gaylyinto the lane to his side, he recognised the dark-eyed Fillide. 

"Hist!" she said, archly putting her finger to her lip; "do not speakloud, --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 hiskindness, which he did not exactly deserve. "You have thought, then, ofme, fair Fillide?"

"Yes, " answered the girl, colouring, but with that frank, boldingenuousness, which characterises the females of Italy, especiallyof the lower class, and in the southern provinces, --"oh, yes! I havethought 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? Thelaw--"

"Law never ventures into these defiles. Tremble for him! No. My fatherand 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 shesuffered 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. CertainlyFillide had not the seraphic loveliness of Viola; but hers was a beautythat equally at least touched the senses. Perhaps Glyndon had neverreally loved Viola; perhaps the feelings with which she had inspiredhim 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 hadnever loved before. 

"And couldst thou not leave thy mountains?" he whispered, as he drew yetnearer to her. 

"Dost thou ask me?" she said, retreating, and looking him steadfastlyin the face. "Dost thou know what we daughters of the mountains are? Yougay, smooth cavaliers of cities seldom mean what you speak. With you, love is amusement; with us, it is life. Leave these mountains! Well! Ishould 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 Itell thee what I--what the girls of this country are? Daughters of menwhom you call robbers, we aspire to be the companions of our lovers orour husbands. We love ardently; we own it boldly. We stand by your sidein danger; we serve you as slaves in safety: we never change, and weresent change. You may reproach, strike us, trample us as a dog, --webear 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 aidedher words, --by turns soft, frank, fierce, --and at the last question sheinclined her head humbly, and stood, as in fear of his reply, beforehim. The stern, brave, wild spirit, in which what seemed unfemininewas yet, if I may so say, still womanly, did not recoil, it rathercaptivated 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 tothe mercy of these wild cats-a-mountain! Preach fast, and abstinence, and sublime renunciation of the cheats of the senses! Very well inyou, sir, Heaven knows how many ages old; but at four-and-twenty, yourHierophant would have kept you out of Fillide's way, or you would havehad small taste for the Cabala. 

And so they stood, and talked, and vowed, and whispered, till the girl'smother made some noise within the house, and Fillide bounded back to thedistaff, her finger once more on her lip. 

"There is more magic in Fillide than in Mejnour, " said Glyndon tohimself, walking gayly home; "yet on second thoughts, I know not if Iquite so well like a character so ready for revenge. But he who has thereal secret can baffle even the vengeance of a woman, and disarm alldanger!"

Sirrah! dost thou even already meditate the possibility of treason?Oh, well said Zanoni, "to pour pure water into the muddy well does butdisturb 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 isbreathless under the melancholy stars. Now is the time. Mejnour with hisaustere wisdom, --Mejnour the enemy to love; Mejnour, whose eye will readthy heart, and refuse thee the promised secrets because the sunny faceof Fillide disturbs the lifeless shadow that he calls repose, --Mejnourcomes to-morrow! Seize the night! Beware of fear! Never, or this hour!So, brave youth, --brave despite all thy errors, --so, with a steadypulse, thy hand unlocks once more the forbidden door. 

He placed his lamp on the table beside the book, which still lay thereopened; he turned over the leaves, but could not decipher their meaningtill he came to the following passage:--

"When, then, the pupil is thus initiated and prepared, let him open thecasement, light the lamps, and bathe his temples with the elixir. Hemust beware how he presume yet to quaff the volatile and fiery spirit. To taste till repeated inhalations have accustomed the frame graduallyto the ecstatic liquid, is to know not life, but death. "

He could penetrate no farther into the instructions; the cipher againchanged. He now looked steadily and earnestly round the chamber. Themoonlight came quietly through the lattice as his hand opened it, and seemed, as it rested on the floor, and filled the walls, like thepresence of some ghostly and mournful Power. He ranged the mystic lamps(nine in number) round the centre of the room, and lighted them one byone. A flame of silvery and azure tints sprung up from each, and lightedthe apartment with a calm and yet most dazzling splendour; but presentlythis 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 heartof the Englishman, and quickly gathered over him like the coldnessof death. Instinctively aware of his danger, he tottered, though withdifficulty, for his limbs seemed rigid and stone-like, to the shelf thatcontained the crystal vials; hastily he inhaled the spirit, and lavedhis temples with the sparkling liquid. The same sensation of vigourand youth, and joy and airy lightness, that he had felt in the morning, instantaneously replaced the deadly numbness that just before hadinvaded the citadel of life. He stood, with his arms folded on his bosomerect and dauntless, to watch what should ensue. 

The vapour had now assumed almost the thickness and seeming consistencyof a snow-cloud; the lamps piercing it like stars. And now he distinctlysaw shapes, somewhat resembling in outline those of the human form, gliding slowly and with regular evolutions through the cloud. Theyappeared bloodless; their bodies were transparent, and contracted orexpanded 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 caughtand echoed from the other; a low sound, but musical, which seemed thechant of some unspeakably tranquil joy. None of these apparitions heededhim. His intense longing to accost them, to be of them, to make one ofthis movement of aerial happiness, --for such it seemed to him, --made himstretch forth his arms and seek to cry aloud, but only an inarticulatewhisper passed his lips; and the movement and the music went on the sameas if the mortal were not there. Slowly they glided round and aloft, till, in the same majestic order, one after one, they floated throughthe casement and were lost in the moonlight; then, as his eyes followedthem, the casement became darkened with some object undistinguishable atthe first gaze, but which sufficed mysteriously to change into ineffablehorror the delight he had before experienced. By degrees this objectshaped itself to his sight. It was as that of a human head covered witha dark veil through which glared, with livid and demoniac fire, eyesthat froze the marrow of his bones. Nothing else of the face wasdistinguishable, --nothing but those intolerable eyes; but his terror, that even at the first seemed beyond nature to endure, was increased athousand-fold, when, after a pause, the phantom glided slowly into thechamber. 

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 wasveiled as the face, but the outline was that of a female; yet it movednot as move even the ghosts that simulate the living. It seemed ratherto crawl as some vast misshapen reptile; and pausing, at length itcowered beside the table which held the mystic volume, and again fixedits eyes through the filmy veil on the rash invoker. All fancies, themost grotesque, of monk or painter in the early North, would have failedto give to the visage of imp or fiend that aspect of deadly malignitywhich spoke to the shuddering nature in those eyes alone. All elseso dark, --shrouded, veiled and larva-like. But that burning glare sointense, so livid, yet so living, had in it something that was almostHUMAN in its passion of hate and mockery, --something that served toshow that the shadowy Horror was not all a spirit, but partook ofmatter enough, at least, to make it more deadly and fearful an enemy tomaterial forms. As, clinging with the grasp of agony to the wall, --hishair erect, his eyeballs starting, he still gazed back upon thatappalling gaze, --the Image spoke to him: his soul rather than his earcomprehended the words it said. 

"Thou hast entered the immeasurable region. I am the Dweller of theThreshold. What wouldst thou with me? Silent? Dost thou fear me? AmI not thy beloved? Is it not for me that thou hast rendered up thedelights of thy race? Wouldst thou be wise? Mine is the wisdom of thecountless ages. Kiss me, my mortal lover. " And the Horror crawled nearand nearer to him; it crept to his side, its breath breathed upon hischeek! With a sharp cry he fell to the earth insensible, and knew nomore till, far in the noon of the next day, he opened his eyes and foundhimself in his bed, --the glorious sun streaming through his lattice, and the bandit Paolo by his side, engaged in polishing his carbine, andwhistling 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 andrenown of Athens yet invest with melancholy interest, and on whichNature, in whom "there is nothing melancholy, " still bestows a glory ofscenery and climate equally radiant for the freeman or theslave, --the Ionian, the Venetian, the Gaul, the Turk, or the restlessBriton, --Zanoni had fixed his bridal home. There the air carries with itthe perfumes of the plains for miles along the blue, translucent deep. (See Dr. Holland's "Travels to the Ionian Isles, " etc. , page 18. ) Seenfrom one of its green sloping heights, the island he had selected seemedone delicious garden. The towers and turrets of its capital gleamingamidst groves of oranges and lemons; vineyards and olive-woods fillingup the valleys, and clambering along the hill-sides; and villa, farm, and cottage covered with luxuriant trellises of dark-green leaves andpurple fruit. For there the prodigal beauty yet seems half to justifythose graceful superstitions of a creed that, too enamoured of earth, rather brought the deities to man, than raised the man to their lessalluring and less voluptuous Olympus. 

And still to the fishermen, weaving yet their antique dances on thesand; to the maiden, adorning yet, with many a silver fibula, her glossytresses under the tree that overshadows her tranquil cot, --the sameGreat Mother that watched over the wise of Samos, the democracy ofCorcyra, the graceful and deep-taught loveliness of Miletus, smilesas graciously as of yore. For the North, philosophy and freedom areessentials to human happiness; in the lands which Aphrodite rose fromthe waves to govern, as the Seasons, hand in hand, stood to welcome heron the shores, Nature is all sufficient. (Homeric Hymn. )

The isle which Zanoni had selected was one of the loveliest in thatdivine sea. His abode, at some distance from the city, but near one ofthe creeks on the shore, belonged to a Venetian, and, though small, hadmore of elegance than the natives ordinarily cared for. On the seas, andin sight, rode his vessel. His Indians, as before, ministered inmute gravity to the service of the household. No spot could be morebeautiful, --no solitude less invaded. To the mysterious knowledge ofZanoni, to the harmless ignorance of Viola, the babbling and garishworld of civilised man was alike unheeded. The loving sky and the lovelyearth are companions enough to Wisdom and to Ignorance while they love. 

Although, as I have before said, there was nothing in the visibleoccupations of Zanoni that betrayed a cultivator of the occult sciences, his habits were those of a man who remembers or reflects. He lovedto 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 awayover 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 deceivedher. But she early saw that he was reserved on his peculiar habits; andif at times a chill, a foreboding, a suspicious awe crept over her, sheforebore to question him. 

But his rambles were not always unaccompanied, --he took pleasure inexcursions less solitary. Often, when the sea lay before them likea lake, the barren dreariness of the opposite coast of Cephalleniacontrasting the smiling shores on which they dwelt, Viola and himselfwould pass days in cruising slowly around the coast, or in visits tothe neighbouring isles. Every spot of the Greek soil, "that fairFable-Land, " seemed to him familiar; and as he conversed of the past andits exquisite traditions, he taught Viola to love the race from whichhave descended the poetry and the wisdom of the world. There was much inZanoni, as she knew him better, that deepened the fascination in whichViola was from the first enthralled. His love for herself was so tender, so vigilant, and had that best and most enduring attribute, that itseemed rather grateful for the happiness in its own cares than vain ofthe happiness it created. His habitual mood with all who approached himwas calm and gentle, almost to apathy. An angry word never passed hislips, --an angry gleam never shot from his eyes. Once they had beenexposed to the danger not uncommon in those then half-savage lands. Somepirates who infested the neighbouring coasts had heard of the arrivalof the strangers, and the seamen Zanoni employed had gossiped of theirmaster's wealth. One night, after Viola had retired to rest, she wasawakened by a slight noise below. Zanoni was not by her side; shelistened in some alarm. Was that a groan that came upon her ear? Shestarted up, she went to the door; all was still. A footstep now slowlyapproached, and Zanoni entered calm as usual, and seemed unconscious ofher fears. 

The next morning three men were found dead at the threshold of theprincipal entrance, the door of which had been forced. They wererecognised in the neighbourhood as the most sanguinary and terriblemarauders of the coasts, --men stained with a thousand murders, and whohad never hitherto failed in any attempt to which the lust of rapinehad impelled them. The footsteps of many others were tracked to theseashore. It seemed that their accomplices must have fled on the deathof their leaders. But when the Venetian Proveditore, or authority, ofthe island, came to examine into the matter, the most unaccountablemystery was the manner in which these ruffians had met their fate. Zanoni had not stirred from the apartment in which he ordinarily pursuedhis chemical studies. None of the servants had even been disturbed fromtheir slumbers. No marks of human violence were on the bodies of thedead. They died, and made no sign. From that moment Zanoni's house--nay, the whole vicinity--was sacred. The neighbouring villages, rejoicedto be delivered from a scourge, regarded the stranger as one whom thePagiana (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 knewtheir language as a native, whose voice often cheered them in theirhumble sorrows, and whose hand was never closed to their wants, long after he had left their shore preserved his memory by gratefultraditions, and still point to the lofty platanus beneath which they hadoften seen him seated, alone and thoughtful, in the heats of noon. ButZanoni had haunts less open to the gaze than the shade of the platanus. In that isle there are the bituminous springs which Herodotus hascommemorated. Often at night, the moon, at least, beheld him emergingfrom the myrtle and cystus that clothe the hillocks around the marshthat imbeds the pools containing the inflammable materia, all themedical uses of which, as applied to the nerves of organic life, modernscience has not yet perhaps explored. Yet more often would he passhis hours in a cavern, by the loneliest part of the beach, where thestalactites seem almost arranged by the hand of art, and which thesuperstition of the peasants associates, in some ancient legends, withthe numerous and almost incessant earthquakes to which the island is sosingularly subjected. 

Whatever the pursuits that instigated these wanderings and favouredthese haunts, either they were linked with, or else subordinate to, onemain and master desire, which every fresh day passed in the sweet humancompany of Viola confirmed and strengthened. 

The scene that Glyndon had witnessed in his trance was faithful totruth. And some little time after the date of that night, Violawas dimly aware that an influence, she knew not of what nature, wasstruggling to establish itself over her happy life. Visions indistinctand beautiful, such as those she had known in her earlier days, but moreconstant and impressive, began to haunt her night and day when Zanoniwas absent, to fade in his presence, and seem less fair than THAT. Zanoni questioned her eagerly and minutely of these visitations, butseemed dissatisfied, and at times perplexed, by her answers. 

"Tell me not, " he said, one day, "of those unconnected images, thoseevolutions of starry shapes in a choral dance, or those deliciousmelodies that seem to thee of the music and the language of the distantspheres. Has no ONE shape been to thee more distinct and more beautifulthan the rest, --no voice uttering, or seeming to utter, thine owntongue, and whispering to thee of strange secrets and solemn knowledge?"

"No; all is confused in these dreams, whether of day or night; and whenat the sound of thy footsteps I recover, my memory retains nothing buta vague impression of happiness. How different--how cold--to the raptureof hanging on thy smile, and listening to thy voice, when it says, 'Ilove thee!'"

"Yet, how is it that visions less fair than these once seemed to theeso alluring? How is it that they then stirred thy fancies and filledthy heart? Once thou didst desire a fairy-land, and now thou seemest socontented with common life. "

"Have I not explained it to thee before? Is it common life, then, tolove, and to live with the one we love? My true fairy-land is won! Speakto me of no other. "

And so night surprised them by the lonely beach; and Zanoni, alluredfrom his sublimer projects, and bending over that tender face, forgotthat, in the Harmonious Infinite which spread around, there were otherworlds 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 ofa heathen god, there emerged from the shadows of fantastic rocks aluminous and gigantic column, glittering and shifting. It resembled theshining but misty spray which, seen afar off, a fountain seems to sendup on a starry night. The radiance lit the stalactites, the crags, the arches of the cave, and shed a pale and tremulous splendour on thefeatures of Zanoni. 

"Son of Eternal Light, " said the invoker, "thou to whose knowledge, grade after grade, race after race, I attained at last, on thebroad Chaldean plains; thou from whom I have drawn so largely of theunutterable knowledge that yet eternity alone can suffice to drain; thouwho, congenial with myself, so far as our various beings will permit, hast been for centuries my familiar and my friend, --answer me andcounsel!"

From the column there emerged a shape of unimaginable glory. Itsface was that of a man in its first youth, but solemn, as with theconsciousness of eternity and the tranquillity of wisdom; light, likestarbeams, flowed through its transparent veins; light made its limbsthemselves, and undulated, in restless sparkles, through the waves ofits dazzling hair. With its arms folded on its breast, it stood distanta few feet from Zanoni, and its low voice murmured gently, "My counselswere sweet to thee once; and once, night after night, thy soul couldfollow my wings through the untroubled splendours of the Infinite. Nowthou hast bound thyself back to the earth by its strongest chains, andthe attraction to the clay is more potent than the sympathies that drewto thy charms the Dweller of the Starbeam and the Air. When last thysoul hearkened to me, the senses already troubled thine intellect andobscured thy vision. Once again I come to thee; but thy power even tosummon me to thy side is fading from thy spirit, as sunshine fades fromthe wave when the winds drive the cloud between the ocean and the sky. "

"Alas, Adon-Ai!" answered the seer, mournfully, "I know too well theconditions of the being which thy presence was wont to rejoice. I knowthat our wisdom comes but from the indifference to the things of theworld which the wisdom masters. The mirror of the soul cannot reflectboth earth and heaven; and the one vanishes from the surface as theother is glassed upon its deeps. But it is not to restore me to thatsublime abstraction in which the intellect, free and disembodied, rises, region after region, to the spheres, --that once again, and with theagony and travail of enfeebled power I have called thee to mine aid. Ilove; and in love I begin to live in the sweet humanities of another. Ifwise, yet in all which makes danger powerless against myself, or thoseon whom I can gaze from the calm height of indifferent science, I amblind as the merest mortal to the destinies of the creature that makesmy heart beat with the passions which obscure my gaze. "

"What matter!" answered Adon-Ai. "Thy love must be but a mockery of thename; thou canst not love as they do for whom there are death and thegrave. A short time, --like a day in thy incalculable life, --and the formthou dotest on is dust! Others of the nether world go hand in hand, eachwith each, unto the tomb; hand in hand they ascend from the worm to newcycles of existence. For thee, below are ages; for her, but hours. Andfor her and thee--O poor, but mighty one!--will there be even a jointhereafter! Through what grades and heavens of spiritualised being willher soul have passed when thou, the solitary loiterer, comest from thevapours of the earth to the gates of light!"

"Son of the Starbeam, thinkest thou that this thought is not with meforever; and seest thou not that I have invoked thee to hearken andminister to my design? Readest thou not my desire and dream to raise theconditions of her being to my own? Thou, Adon-Ai, bathing the celestialjoy 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 thetremendous and sublime ambition that first winged my desires above theclay--when I see myself compelled to stand in this low world alone. Ihave sought amongst my tribe for comrades, and in vain. At last I havefound a mate. The wild bird and the wild beast have theirs; and mymastery over the malignant tribes of terror can banish their larvae fromthe path that shall lead her upward, till the air of eternity fits theframe 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 invokedthe loveliest children of the air to murmur their music to her trance, and her soul heeds them not, and, returning to the earth, escapes fromtheir control. Blind one, wherefore? canst thou not perceive? Becausein her soul all is love. There is no intermediate passion with which thethings thou wouldst charm to her have association and affinities. Theirattraction is but to the desires and cravings of the INTELLECT. Whathave they with the PASSION that is of earth, and the HOPE that goesdirect 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 bothmeet and live is the link between them!"

"I do comprehend thee, Adon-Ai, " said Zanoni, with a light of more humanjoy upon his face than it had ever before been seen to wear; "and if mydestiny, which here is dark to mine eyes, vouchsafes to me the happy lotof the humble, --if ever there be a child that I may clasp to my bosomand call my own--"

"And is it to be man at last, that thou hast aspired to be more thanman?"

"But a child, --a second Viola!" murmured Zanoni, scarcely heeding theSon of Light; "a young soul fresh from heaven, that I may rear from thefirst moment it touches earth, --whose wings I may train to follow minethrough the glories of creation; and through whom the mother herself maybe led upward over the realm of death!"

"Beware, --reflect! Knowest thou not that thy darkest enemy dwells in theReal? 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 asmile. 

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 thatso differently does circumstance shape the minds of the generations towhich we are descended, from the intense and earnest children of theearlier world, that even thy most careful and elaborate guidance wouldfail, with loftier and purer natures than that of the neophyte thou hastadmitted within thy gates. Even that third state of being, which theIndian sage (The Brahmins, speaking of Brahm, say, "To the Omniscientthe three modes of being--sleep, waking, and trance--are not;"distinctly recognising trance as a third and coequal condition ofbeing. ) rightly recognises as being between the sleep and the waking, and describes imperfectly by the name of TRANCE, is unknown to thechildren of the Northern world; and few but would recoil to indulge it, regarding its peopled calm as maya and delusion of the mind. Instead ofripening and culturing that airy soil, from which Nature, duly known, can evoke fruits so rich and flowers so fair, they strive but to excludeit from their gaze; they esteem that struggle of the intellect frommen's narrow world to the spirit's infinite home, as a disease which theleech must extirpate with pharmacy and drugs, and know not even that itis from this condition of their being, in its most imperfect and infantform, that poetry, music, art--all that belong to an Idea of Beautyto which neither SLEEPING nor WAKING can furnish archetype and actualsemblance--take their immortal birth. When we, O Mejnour in the fartime, were ourselves the neophytes and aspirants, we were of a classto which the actual world was shut and barred. Our forefathers had noobject in life but knowledge. From the cradle we were predestined andreared to wisdom as to a priesthood. We commenced research where modernConjecture closes its faithless wings. And with us, those were commonelements of science which the sages of to-day disdain as wildchimeras, or despair of as unfathomable mysteries. Even the fundamentalprinciples, 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 thebrotherhood, and, after wearily enjoying the sublime privileges theysought, 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 absenceof 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, lendestthyself to all who would tread the path of mysterious science, a humanbook, insensate to the precepts it enounces, --thou hast ever sought, and often made additions to our number. But to these have only beenvouchsafed partial secrets; vanity and passion unfitted them for therest; and now, without other interest than that of an experiment inscience, without love, and without pity, thou exposest this new soulto the hazards of the tremendous ordeal! Thou thinkest that a zealso inquisitive, a courage so absolute and dauntless, may suffice toconquer, where austerer intellect and purer virtue have so often failed. Thou thinkest, too, that the germ of art that lies in the painter'smind, 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 anew experiment to thee. Be gentle with thy neophyte, and if his naturedisappoint thee in the first stages of the process, dismiss him back tothe Real while it is yet time to enjoy the brief and outward life whichdwells in the senses, and closes with the tomb. And as I thus admonishthee, O Mejnour, wilt thou smile at my inconsistent hopes? I, who haveso invariably refused to initiate others into our mysteries, --I begin atlast to comprehend why the great law, which binds man to his kind, evenwhen seeking most to set himself aloof from their condition, has madethy cold and bloodless science the link between thyself and thy race;why, THOU has sought converts and pupils; why, in seeing life after lifevoluntarily dropping from our starry order, thou still aspirest torenew the vanished, and repair the lost; why, amidst thy calculations, restless and unceasing as the wheels of Nature herself, thou recoilestfrom the THOUGHT TO BE ALONE! So with myself; at last I, too, seek aconvert, an equal, --I, too, shudder to be alone! What thou hast warnedme of has come to pass. Love reduces all things to itself. Either must Ibe drawn down to the nature of the beloved, or hers must be lifted tomy own. As whatever belongs to true Art has always necessarily hadattraction 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 boundme to her at the first glance. The daughter of music, --music, passinginto her being, became poetry. It was not the stage that attracted her, with its hollow falsehoods; it was the land in her own fancy whichthe stage seemed to centre and represent. There the poetry found avoice, --there it struggled into imperfect shape; and then (that landinsufficient for it) it fell back upon itself. It coloured her thoughts, it suffused her soul; it asked not words, it created not things; it gavebirth 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, tobecome mute and deep and still, --the everlasting mirror of the heavens. 

And is it not through this poetry which lies within her that she maybe led into the large poetry of the universe! Often I listen to hercareless talk, and find oracles in its unconscious beauty, as we findstrange virtues in some lonely flower. I see her mind ripening under myeyes; and in its fair fertility what ever-teeming novelties of thought!O Mejnour! how many of our tribe have unravelled the laws of theuniverse, --have solved the riddles of the exterior nature, and deducedthe light from darkness! And is not the POET, who studies nothing butthe human heart, a greater philosopher than all? Knowledge and atheismare incompatible. To know Nature is to know that there must be a God. But does it require this to examine the method and architecture ofcreation? Methinks, when I look upon a pure mind, however ignorant andchildlike, that I see the August and Immaterial One more clearly than inall the orbs of matter which career at His bidding through space. 

Rightly is it the fundamental decree of our order, that we must impartour secrets only to the pure. The most terrible part of the ordeal isin the temptations that our power affords to the criminal. If it werepossible that a malevolent being could attain to our faculties, whatdisorder it might introduce into the globe! Happy that it is NOTpossible; the malevolence would disarm the power. It is in the purity ofViola that I rely, as thou more vainly hast relied on the courage or thegenius of thy pupils. Bear me witness, Mejnour! Never since the distantday in which I pierced the Arcana of our knowledge, have I ever soughtto make its mysteries subservient to unworthy objects; though, alas! theextension of our existence robs us of a country and a home; though thelaw that places all science, as all art, in the abstraction from thenoisy passions and turbulent ambition of actual life, forbids us toinfluence the destinies of nations, for which Heaven selects ruder andblinder agencies; yet, wherever have been my wanderings, I have soughtto soften distress, and to convert from sin. My power has been hostileonly to the guilty; and yet with all our lore, how in each step we arereduced to be but the permitted instruments of the Power that vouchsafesour own, but only to direct it. How all our wisdom shrinks into nought, compared with that which gives the meanest herb its virtues, and peoplesthe smallest globule with its appropriate world. And while we areallowed at times to influence the happiness of others, how mysteriouslythe shadows thicken round our own future doom! We cannot be prophetsto ourselves! With what trembling hope I nurse the thought that I maypreserve 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 toher trance those fairest and most tender inhabitants of space that havefurnished to poetry, which is the instinctive guess into creation, theideas of the Glendoveer and Sylph. And these were less pure than her ownthoughts, and less tender than her own love! They could not raise herabove 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; forI think how soon the time may come when that sleep will be without adream, --when the heart that dictates the name will be cold, and thelips that utter it be dumb. What a twofold shape there is in love! If weexamine it coarsely, --if we look but on its fleshy ties, its enjoymentsof a moment, its turbulent fever and its dull reaction, --how strange itseems that this passion should be the supreme mover of the world; thatit is this which has dictated the greatest sacrifices, and influencedall societies and all times; that to this the loftiest and loveliestgenius has ever consecrated its devotion; that, but for love, therewere no civilisation, no music, no poetry, no beauty, no life beyond thebrute's. 

But examine it in its heavenlier shape, --in its utter abnegation ofself; in its intimate connection with all that is most delicate andsubtle in the spirit, --its power above all that is sordid in existence;its mastery over the idols of the baser worship; its ability to createa palace of the cottage, an oasis in the desert, a summer in theIceland, --where it breathes, and fertilises, and glows; and the wonderrather becomes how so few regard it in its holiest nature. What thesensual call its enjoyments, are the least of its joys. True love isless a passion than a symbol. Mejnour, shall the time come when I canspeak 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 noguilt in the knowledge that has so divided us from our race?" It is truethat the higher we ascend the more hateful seem to us the vices of theshort-lived creepers of the earth, --the more the sense of the goodnessof the All-good penetrates and suffuses us, and the more immediatelydoes our happiness seem to emanate from him. But, on the other hand, howmany virtues must lie dead in those who live in the world of death, andrefuse to die! Is not this sublime egotism, this state of abstractionand reverie, --this self-wrapped and self-dependent majesty of existence, a resignation of that nobility which incorporates our own welfare, ourjoys, our hopes, our fears with others? To live on in no dread of foes, undegraded by infirmity, secure through the cares, and free from thedisease of flesh, is a spectacle that captivates our pride. And yet dostthou not more admire him who dies for another? Since I have loved her, Mejnour, it seems almost cowardice to elude the grave which devours thehearts that wrap us in their folds. I feel it, --the earth grows uponmy spirit. Thou wert right; eternal age, serene and passionless, is ahappier boon than eternal youth, with its yearnings and desires. Untilwe 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 pupildisappointed thee? Alas, poor pupil! But--

. .. . 

(Here follow comments on those passages in Glyndon's life already knownto the reader, or about to be made so, with earnest adjurations toMejnour to watch yet over the fate of his scholar. )

. .. . 

But I cherish the same desire, with a warmer heart. My pupil! how theterrors that shall encompass thine ordeal warn me from the task! Oncemore 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, soulwith soul!

Extract from Letter V. --(Many months after the last. )

Mejnour, awake from thine apathy, --rejoice! A new soul will be born tothe world, --a new soul that shall call me father. Ah, if they for whomexist all the occupations and resources of human life, --if they canthrill with exquisite emotion at the thought of hailing again their ownchildhood in the faces of their children; if in that birth they are bornonce 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, whenhe has a life to guide from the cradle, and a soul to nurture for theheaven, --what to me must be the rapture to welcome an inheritor of allthe gifts which double themselves in being shared! How sweet the powerto 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 deeperstream to the paradise from which it flows! And beside that river oursouls shall meet, sweet mother. Our child shall supply the sympathy thatfails 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 thyItalian home, thou didst follow thy dim fancies through the Land ofShadow; or when thou didst vainly seek to give voice to an ideal beauty, on the boards where illusion counterfeits earth and heaven for anhour, till the weary sense, awaking, sees but the tinsel and thescene-shifter. Thy spirit reposes in its own happiness. Its wanderingshave 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 othervisions than those with which a contented heart enchants a guilelessfancy. Glendoveers and Sylphs, pardon me if I question whether thosevisions are not lovelier than yourselves. 

They stand by the beach, and see the sun sinking into the sea. How longnow have they dwelt on that island? What matters!--it may be months, oryears--what matters! Why should I, or they, keep account of that happytime? As in the dream of a moment ages may seem to pass, so shall wemeasure transport or woe, --by the length of the dream, or the number ofemotions 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 onthe trees. 

Viola drew nearer to Zanoni. A presentiment she could not define madeher heart beat more quickly; and, looking into his face, she was struckwith its expression: it was anxious, abstracted, perturbed. "Thisstillness awes me, " she whispered. 

Zanoni did not seem to hear her. He muttered to himself, and his eyesgazed round restlessly. She knew not why, but that gaze, which seemedto pierce into space, --that muttered voice in some foreignlanguage--revived dimly her earlier superstitions. She was more fearfulsince the hour when she knew that she was to be a mother. Strange crisisin the life of woman, and in her love! Something yet unborn beginsalready to divide her heart with that which had been before its onlymonarch. 

"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 seeit through the heavy air; I hear it through the silence: the GhostlyOne, --the Destroyer, the PESTILENCE! Ah, seest thou how the leaves swarmwith insects, only by an effort visible to the eye. They follow thebreath of the plague!" As he spoke, a bird fell from the boughs atViola's feet; it fluttered, it writhed an instant, and was dead. 

"Oh, Viola!" cried Zanoni, passionately, "that is death. Dost thou notfear to die?"

"To leave thee? Ah, yes!"

"And if I could teach thee how Death may be defied; if I could arrestfor thy youth the course of time; if I could--"

He paused abruptly, for Viola's eyes spoke only terror; her cheek andlips were pale. 

"Speak not thus, --look not thus, " she said, recoiling from him. "Youdismay 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 gloriousboon?"

"Zanoni!"

"Well!"

"The sun has sunk from our eyes, but to rise on those of others. Todisappear from this world is to live in the world afar. Oh, lover, --oh, husband!" she continued, with sudden energy, "tell me that thou didstbut jest, --that thou didst but trifle with my folly! There is lessterror 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 hisbreast, and bursting into tears. "I will not believe even thine ownwords, 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 thouwouldst give me a charm against the pestilence! see, I will take it fromthee. " And she laid her hand on a small, antique amulet that he wore onhis breast. 

"Thou knowest how often this has made me jealous of the past; surelysome love-gift, Zanoni? But no, thou didst not love the giver as thoudost me. Shall I steal thine amulet?"

"Infant!" said Zanoni, tenderly; "she who placed this round my neckdeemed it indeed a charm, for she had superstitions like thyself; butto me it is more than the wizard's spell, --it is the relic of a sweetvanished time when none who loved me could distrust. "

He said these words in a tone of such melancholy reproach that it wentto the heart of Viola; but the tone changed into a solemnity whichchilled back the gush of her feelings as he resumed: "And this, Viola, one day, perhaps, I will transfer from my breast to thine; yes, wheneverthou shalt comprehend me better, --WHENEVER THE LAWS OF OUR BEING SHALLBE THE SAME!"

He moved on gently. They returned slowly home; but fear still was in theheart of Viola, though she strove to shake it off. Italian and Catholicshe was, with all the superstitions of land and sect. She stole toher chamber and prayed before a little relic of San Gennaro, whichthe priest of her house had given to her in childhood, and which hadaccompanied her in all her wanderings. She had never deemed itpossible to part with it before. Now, if there was a charm against thepestilence, did she fear the pestilence for herself? The next morning, when he awoke, Zanoni found the relic of the saint suspended with hismystic amulet round his neck. 

"Ah! thou wilt have nothing to fear from the pestilence now, " saidViola, between tears and smiles; "and when thou wouldst talk to me againas 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. MightySeer, THOU HAST NO POWER TO SAVE THOSE WHOM THOU LOVEST! Farewell, thoubridal roof!--sweet resting-place from care, farewell! Climates as softmay 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 heartdoes not change with the scene, --the place where we first dwelt with thebeloved one? Every spot THERE has so many memories which the place onlycan recall. The past that haunts it seems to command such constancy inthe future. If a thought less kind, less trustful, enter within us, thesight of a tree under which a vow has been exchanged, a tear hasbeen kissed away, restores us again to the hours of the first divineillusion. But in a home where nothing speaks of the first nuptials, where there is no eloquence of association, no holy burial-places ofemotions, whose ghosts are angels!--yes, who that has gone through thesad history of affection will tell us that the heart changes not withthe scene! Blow fair, ye favouring winds; cheerily swell, ye sails; awayfrom the land where death has come to snatch the sceptre of Love! Theshores glide by; new coasts succeed to the green hills and orange-grovesof 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 votarywho had survived the goddess murmured to himself, --

"Has the wisdom of ages brought me no happier hours than those commonto the shepherd and the herdsman, with no world beyond their village, noaspiration beyond the kiss and the smile of home?"

And the moon, resting alike over the ruins of the temple of thedeparted creed, over the hut of the living peasant, over the immemorialmountain-top, and the perishable herbage that clothed its sides, seemedto 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 ofGlyndon; and as, waking from that profound slumber, the recollections ofthe past night came horribly back to his mind, the Englishman uttered acry, and covered his face with his hands. 

"Good morrow, Excellency!" said Paolo, gayly. "Corpo di Bacco, you haveslept soundly!"

The sound of this man's voice, so lusty, ringing, and healthful, servedto 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, tobe 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 behungry. I am a very tolerable cook; a monk's son ought to be! You willbe startled at my genius in the dressing of fish. My singing, Itrust, will not disturb you. I always sing while I prepare a salad; itharmonises 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 convincedby thy first trials that thou couldst but swell, not the number of ourorder, but the list of the victims who have aspired to it in vain, Iwould not rear thee to thine own wretchedness and doom, --I would dismissthee back to the world. I fulfil my promise. Thine ordeal has been theeasiest that neophyte ever knew. I asked for nothing but abstinence fromthe sensual, and a brief experiment of thy patience and thy faith. Goback 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 whoinstigated the old beggar to ask thee for alms. It was I who left openthe book that thou couldst not read without violating my command. Well, thou hast seen what awaits thee at the threshold of knowledge. Thou hastconfronted the first foe that menaces him whom the senses yet grasp andinthrall. Dost thou wonder that I close upon thee the gates forever?Dost thou not comprehend, at last, that it needs a soul tempered andpurified and raised, not by external spells, but by its own sublimityand valour, to pass the threshold and disdain the foe? Wretch! allmy silence avails nothing for the rash, for the sensual, --for him whodesires our secrets but to pollute them to gross enjoyments and selfishvice. How have the imposters and sorcerers of the earlier times perishedby their very attempt to penetrate the mysteries that should purify, andnot deprave! They have boasted of the Philosopher's Stone, and died inrags; of the immortal elixir, and sunk to their grave, grey before theirtime. Legends tell you that the fiend rent them into fragments. Yes;the fiend of their own unholy desires and criminal designs! What theycoveted, thou covetest; and if thou hadst the wings of a seraph thoucouldst soar not from the slough of thy mortality. Thy desire forknowledge, but petulant presumption; thy thirst for happiness, butthe diseased longing for the unclean and muddied waters of corporealpleasure; thy very love, which usually elevates even the mean, a passionthat 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 thatshine in the Shemaia of the Chaldean lore! The eagle can raise but theeaglet to the sun. I abandon thee to thy twilight!

"But, alas for thee, disobedient and profane! thou hast inhaled theelixir; thou hast attracted to thy presence a ghastly and remorselessfoe. Thou thyself must exorcise the phantom thou hast raised. Thou mustreturn to the world; but not without punishment and strong effort canstthou 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 frameeven so little of the volatile and vital energy of the aerial juices asthyself, has awakened faculties that cannot sleep, --faculties that mayyet, with patient humility, with sound faith, and the courage thatis not of the body like thine, but of the resolute and virtuous mind, attain, if not to the knowledge that reigns above, to high achievementin the career of men. Thou wilt find the restless influence in all thatthou wouldst undertake. Thy heart, amidst vulgar joys will aspire tosomething holier; thy ambition, amidst coarse excitement, to somethingbeyond thy reach. But deem not that this of itself will suffice forglory. Equally may the craving lead thee to shame and guilt. It is butan 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 thineevil genius or thy good. 

"But woe to thee! insect meshed in the web in which thou hast entangledlimbs and wings! Thou hast not only inhaled the elixir, thou hastconjured the spectre; of all the tribes of the space, no foe is somalignant to man, --and thou hast lifted the veil from thy gaze. I cannotrestore to thee the happy dimness of thy vision. Know, at least, thatall of us--the highest and the wisest--who have, in sober truth, passedbeyond the threshold, have had, as our first fearful task, to master andsubdue its grisly and appalling guardian. Know that thou CANST deliverthyself from those livid eyes, --know that, while they haunt, they cannotharm, if thou resistest the thoughts to which they tempt, and the horrorthey 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 towarn and to guide, I have told thee in these lines. Not from me, fromthyself has come the gloomy trial from which I yet trust thou wiltemerge into peace. Type of the knowledge that I serve, I withhold nolesson 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 inmine art to crumble into matter the immaterial thoughts that have sprungup 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 tosay, 'Exist no more, ' to one THOUGHT that his knowledge has inspired. Thou mayst change the thoughts into new forms; thou mayst rarefy andsublimate it into a finer spirit, --but thou canst not annihilate thatwhich has no home but in the memory, no substance but the idea. EVERYTHOUGHT 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 theinfluence of the elixir thou hast inhaled; thou must wrestle with thespectre thou hast invoked!"

The letter fell from Glyndon's hand. A sort of stupor succeeded to thevarious emotions which had chased each other in the perusal, --a stuporresembling that which follows the sudden destruction of any ardent andlong-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 ofrashness and presumption. But Glyndon's was not of that nature whichsubmits long to condemn itself. His indignation began to kindle againstMejnour, who owned he had tempted, and who now abandoned him, --abandonedhim to the presence of a spectre. The mystic's reproaches stung ratherthan humbled him. What crime had he committed to deserve language soharsh and disdainful? Was it so deep a debasement to feel pleasure inthe smile and the eyes of Fillide? Had not Zanoni himself confessedlove for Viola; had he not fled with her as his companion? Glyndon neverpaused to consider if there are no distinctions between one kind oflove and another. Where, too, was the great offence of yielding to atemptation which only existed for the brave? Had not the mystic volumewhich Mejnour had purposely left open, bid him but "Beware of fear"? Wasnot, then, every wilful provocative held out to the strongest influencesof the human mind, in the prohibition to enter the chamber, in thepossession of the key which excited his curiosity, in the volume whichseemed to dictate the mode by which the curiosity was to be gratified?As rapidly these thoughts passed over him, he began to consider thewhole conduct of Mejnour either as a perfidious design to entrap him tohis own misery, or as the trick of an imposter, who knew that he couldnot realise the great professions he had made. On glancing again overthe more mysterious threats and warnings in Mejnour's letter, theyseemed to assume the language of mere parable and allegory, --the jargonof the Platonists and Pythagoreans. By little and little, he began toconsider that the very spectra he had seen--even that one phantom sohorrid in its aspect--were but the delusions which Mejnour's science hadenable him to raise. The healthful sunlight, filling up every crannyin his chamber, seemed to laugh away the terrors of the past night. Hispride and his resentment nerved his habitual courage; and when, havinghastily dressed himself, he rejoined Paolo, it was with a flushed cheekand a haughty step. 

"So, Paolo, " said he, "the Padrone, as you call him, told you to expectand welcome me at your village feast?"

"He did so by a message from a wretched old cripple. This surprisedme at the time, for I thought he was far distant; but these greatphilosophers 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 thenfilling his glass. "I wish, signor, now the Padrone is gone, --not, "added Paolo, as he cast rather a frightened and suspicious glance roundthe room, "that I mean to say anything disrespectful of him, --I wish, Isay, now that he is gone, that you would take pity on yourself, and askyour own heart what your youth was meant for? Not to bury yourself alivein these old ruins, and endanger body and soul by studies which I amsure no saint could approve of. "

"Are the saints so partial, then, to your own occupations, MasterPaolo?"

"Why, " answered the bandit, a little confused, "a gentleman with plentyof pistoles in his purse need not, of necessity, make it his professionto take away the pistoles of other people! It is a different thing forus poor rogues. After all, too, I always devote a tithe of my gainsto the Virgin; and I share the rest charitably with the poor. But eat, drink, enjoy yourself; be absolved by your confessor for any littlepeccadilloes and don't run too long scores at a time, --that's my advice. Your health, Excellency! Pshaw, signor, fasting, except on the daysprescribed to a good Catholic, only engenders phantoms. "

"Phantoms!"

"Yes; the devil always tempts the empty stomach. To covet, to hate, tothieve, to rob, and to murder, --these are the natural desires of a manwho is famishing. With a full belly, signor, we are at peace with allthe world. That's right; you like the partridge! Cospetto! when I myselfhave passed two or three days in the mountains, with nothing from sunsetto 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 dancingbefore me. Oh, yes; fasting is as full of spectres as a field ofbattle. "

Glyndon thought there was some sound philosophy in the reasoning ofhis companion; and certainly the more he ate and drank, the more therecollection of the past night and of Mejnour's desertion faded from hismind. The casement was open, the breeze blew, the sun shone, --all Naturewas merry; and merry as Nature herself grew Maestro Paolo. He talkedof adventures, of travel, of women, with a hearty gusto that had itsinfection. But Glyndon listened yet more complacently when Paolo turnedwith an arch smile to praises of the eye, the teeth, the ankles, and theshape of the handsome Fillide. 

This man, indeed, seemed the very personation of animal sensual life. Hewould 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 recklessignorant joyousness of temper was a worse corrupter than all the icymockeries of a learned Fiend. But when Paolo took his leave, with apromise to return the next day, the mind of the Englishman again settledback to a graver and more thoughtful mood. The elixir seemed, in truth, to have left the refining effects Mejnour had ascribed to it. As Glyndonpaced to and fro the solitary corridor, or, pausing, gazed upon theextended and glorious scenery that stretched below, high thoughtsof enterprise and ambition--bright visions of glory--passed in rapidsuccession through his soul. 

"Mejnour denies me his science. Well, " said the painter, proudly, "hehas not robbed me of my art. "

What! Clarence Glyndon, dost thou return to that from which thy careercommenced? Was Zanoni right after all?

He found himself in the chamber of the mystic; not a vessel, --not anherb! the solemn volume is vanished, --the elixir shall sparkle for himno more! But still in the room itself seems to linger the atmosphere ofa charm. Faster and fiercer it burns within thee, the desire to achieve, to create! Thou longest for a life beyond the sensual!--but the lifethat is permitted to all genius, --that which breathes through theimmortal work, and endures in the imperishable name. 

Where are the implements for thine art? Tush!--when did the true workmanever fail to find his tools? Thou art again in thine own chamber, --thewhite wall thy canvas, a fragment of charcoal for thy pencil. Theysuffice, at least, to give outline to the conception that may otherwisevanish with the morrow. 

The idea that thus excited the imagination of the artist wasunquestionably noble and august. It was derived from that Egyptianceremonial which Diodorus has recorded, --the Judgment of the Dead by theLiving (Diod. , lib. I. ): when the corpse, duly embalmed, is placed bythe margin of the Acherusian Lake; and before it may be consigned to thebark 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 thepast life of the deceased, and, if proved, to deprive the corpse of therites 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 andforce. He supposed a powerful and guilty king whom in life scarce awhisper 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 thejustice that outlives the grave. 

Strange fervour this, O artist! breaking suddenly forth from the mistsand darkness which the occult science had spread so long over thyfancies, --strange that the reaction of the night's terror and the day'sdisappointment should be back to thine holy art! Oh, how freely goesthe bold hand over the large outline! How, despite those rude materials, speaks forth no more the pupil, but the master! Fresh yet from theglorious elixir, how thou givest to thy creatures the finer life deniedto thyself!--some power not thine own writes the grand symbols on thewall. Behind rises the mighty sepulchre, on the building of which reposeto the dead the lives of thousands had been consumed. There sit in asemicircle the solemn judges. Black and sluggish flows the lake. Therelies the mummied and royal dead. Dost thou quail at the frown onhis lifelike brow? Ha!--bravely done, O artist!--up rise the haggardforms!--pale speak the ghastly faces! Shall not Humanity after deathavenge itself on Power? Thy conception, Clarence Glyndon, is a sublimetruth; thy design promises renown to genius. Better this magic than thecharms of the volume and the vessel. Hour after hour has gone; thou hastlighted the lamp; night sees thee yet at thy labour. Merciful Heaven!what chills the atmosphere; why does the lamp grow wan; why does thyhair bristle? There!--there!--there! at the casement! It gazes on thee, the dark, mantled, loathsome thing! There, with their devilish mockeryand 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 facewith his hands. With a start, with a thrill, he removed them; he feltthe nearer presence of the nameless. There it cowered on the floorbeside his design; and lo! the figures seemed to start from the wall!Those pale accusing figures, the shapes he himself had raised, frownedat him, and gibbered. With a violent effort that convulsed his wholebeing, and bathed his body in the sweat of agony, the young man masteredhis horror. He strode towards the phantom; he endured its eyes; heaccosted it with a steady voice; he demanded its purpose and defied itspower. 

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 whichthe inhalations of the elixir had given vigour and energy beyond thestrength of the strongest, could have survived that awful hour. Betterto wake in the catacombs and see the buried rise from their cerements, and hear the ghouls, in their horrid orgies, amongst the festeringghastliness of corruption, than to front those features when the veilwas lifted, and listen to that whispered voice!

. .. . 

The next day Glyndon fled from the ruined castle. With what hopes ofstarry light had he crossed the threshold; with what memories to shudderevermore at the darkness did he look back at the frown of its time-worntowers!

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 thelights. Oh, home of sleekness, order, substance, comfort! Oh, excellentthing art thou, Matter of Fact!

It is some time after the date of the last chapter. Here we are, not inmoonlit islands or mouldering castles, but in a room twenty-six feet bytwenty-two, --well carpeted, well cushioned, solid arm-chairs and eightsuch 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 hisContinental episode of life, to settle down to his desk, --his heart hadbeen always there. The death of his father gave him, as a birthright, a high position in a respectable though second-rate firm. To make thisestablishment first-rate was an honourable ambition, --it was his! He hadlately married, not entirely for money, --no! he was worldly rather thanmercenary. He had no romantic ideas of love; but he was too sensiblea man not to know that a wife should be a companion, --not merely aspeculation. He did not care for beauty and genius, but he liked healthand good temper, and a certain proportion of useful understanding. Hechose a wife from his reason, not his heart, and a very good choice hemade. Mrs. Mervale was an excellent young woman, --bustling, managing, economical, but affectionate and good. She had a will of her own, butwas no shrew. She had a great notion of the rights of a wife, and astrong perception of the qualities that insure comfort. She would neverhave forgiven her husband, had she found him guilty of the most passingfancy for another; but, in return, she had the most admirable sense ofpropriety herself. She held in abhorrence all levity, all flirtation, all coquetry, --small vices which often ruin domestic happiness, butwhich a giddy nature incurs without consideration. But she did not thinkit right to love a husband over much. She left a surplus of affection, for all her relations, all her friends, some of her acquaintances, andthe possibility of a second marriage, should any accident happen to Mr. M. She kept a good table, for it suited their station; and her temperwas considered even, though firm; but she could say a sharp thingor two, if Mr. Mervale was not punctual to a moment. She was veryparticular that he should change his shoes on coming home, --the carpetswere new and expensive. She was not sulky, nor passionate, --Heavenbless her for that!--but when displeased she showed it, administered adignified rebuke, alluded to her own virtues, to her uncle who was anadmiral, and to the thirty thousand pounds which she had brought to theobject of her choice. But as Mr. Mervale was a good-humoured man, ownedhis faults, and subscribed to her excellence, the displeasure was soonover. 

Every household has its little disagreements, none fewer than that ofMr. And Mrs. Mervale. Mrs. Mervale, without being improperly fond ofdress, paid due attention to it. She was never seen out of her chamberwith papers in her hair, nor in that worst of dis-illusions, --a morningwrapper. At half-past eight every morning Mrs. Mervale was dressedfor the day, --that is, till she re-dressed for dinner, --her stays welllaced, her cap prim, her gowns, winter and summer, of a thick, handsomesilk. Ladies at that time wore very short waists; so did Mrs. Mervale. Her morning ornaments were a thick, gold chain, to which was suspendeda gold watch, --none of those fragile dwarfs of mechanism that look sopretty and go so ill, but a handsome repeater which chronicled FatherTime 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 handsomesets, --necklace, earrings, and bracelets complete, --one of amethysts, the other topazes. With these, her costume for the most part was agold-coloured satin and a turban, in which last her picture had beentaken. Mrs. Mervale had an aquiline nose, good teeth, fair hair, andlight eyelashes, rather a high complexion, what is generally called afine bust; full cheeks; large useful feet made for walking; large, whitehands with filbert nails, on which not a speck of dust had, even inchildhood, ever been known to a light. She looked a little older thanshe really was; but that might arise from a certain air of dignity andthe aforesaid aquiline nose. She generally wore short mittens. She neverread any poetry but Goldsmith's and Cowper's. She was not amused bynovels, though she had no prejudice against them. She liked a play anda pantomime, with a slight supper afterwards. She did not like concertsnor operas. At the beginning of the winter she selected some book toread, and some piece of work to commence. The two lasted her till thespring, when, though she continued to work, she left off reading. Herfavourite 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 befound, except in an epitaph!

It was an autumn night. Mr. And Mrs. Mervale, lately returned from anexcursion to Weymouth, are in the drawing-room, --"the dame sat on thisside, 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 likedhim, --all the women did. "

"My dear Thomas, you will forgive the remark, --but that expression ofyours, 'all the WOMEN'--"

"I beg your pardon, --you are right. I meant to say that he was a generalfavourite with your charming sex. "

"I understand, --rather a frivolous character. "

"Frivolous! no, not exactly; a little unsteady, --very odd, but certainlynot frivolous; presumptuous and headstrong in character, but modest andshy 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 himto-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 dealof money. "

"Apropos of money, " said Mrs. Mervale; "I fear we must change ourbutcher; he is certainly in league with the cook. "

"That is a pity; his beef is remarkably fine. These London servants areas bad as the Carbonari. But, as I was saying, poor Glyndon--"

Here a knock was heard at the door. "Bless me, " said Mrs. Mervale, "itis past ten! Who can that possibly be?"

"Perhaps your uncle, the admiral, " said the husband, with a slightpeevishness in his accent. "He generally favours us about this hour. "

"I hope, my love, that none of my relations are unwelcome visitors atyour house. The admiral is a most entertaining man, and his fortune isentirely 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; butbefore she could conclude the sentence, Glyndon was in the room. 

The two friends greeted each other with all the warmth of earlyrecollection and long absence. An appropriate and proud presentationto Mrs. Mervale ensued; and Mrs. Mervale, with a dignified smile, anda furtive glance at his boots, bade her husband's friend welcome toEngland. 

Glyndon was greatly altered since Mervale had seen him last. Thoughless than two years had elapsed since then, his fair complexion was morebronzed and manly. Deep lines of care, or thought, or dissipation, hadreplaced the smooth contour of happy youth. To a manner once gentleand polished had succeeded a certain recklessness of mien, tone, andbearing, which bespoke the habits of a society that cared little for thecalm decorums of conventional ease. Still a kind of wild nobleness, notbefore apparent in him, characterised his aspect, and gave something ofdignity to the freedom of his language and gestures. 

"So, then, you are settled, Mervale, --I need not ask you if you arehappy. Worth, sense, wealth, character, and so fair a companion deservehappiness, 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 wifewill excuse us, --we will make a night of it!"

Mrs. Mervale drew back her chair, and tried not to look aghast. Glyndondid not give his friend time to reply. 

"So at last I am in England, " he said, looking round the room, witha slight sneer on his lips; "surely this sober air must have itsinfluence; 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 roomfor a solitary wanderer?"

Mr. Mervale glanced at his wife, and his wife looked steadily on thecarpet. "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 thefire, with his feet at ease upon the fender, seemed to have forgottenhis question. 

Mrs. Mervale bit her lips, looked thoughtful, and at last coldlyreplied, "Certainly, Mr. Mervale; your friends do right to makethemselves 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'sstudy. 

Twelve o'clock struck, --one o'clock, two! Thrice had Mrs. Mervale sentinto 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. Andto the answer to all these questions was added, in a loud voice from thevisitor, --a voice that pierced from the kitchen to the attic, --"Anotherbowl! stronger, if you please, and be quick with it!"

At last Mr. Mervale appeared in the conjugal chamber, not penitent, norapologetic, --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 wrongsof injured woman sat upon her brow. Mr. Mervale seemed the picture ofremorseful guilt and avenging bile. He said little, except to complainof headache, and to request the eggs to be removed from the table. Clarence Glyndon--impervious, unconscious, unailing, impenitent--was innoisy spirits, and talked for three. 

"Poor Mervale! he has lost the habit of good-fellowship, madam. Anothernight or two, and he will be himself again!"

"Sir, " said Mrs. Mervale, launching a premeditated sentence with morethan Johnsonian dignity, "permit me to remind you that Mr. Mervale isnow a married man, the destined father of a family, and the presentmaster of a household. "

"Precisely the reasons why I envy him so much. I myself have a greatmind to marry. Happiness is contagious. "

"Do you still take to painting?" asked Mervale, languidly, endeavouringto turn the tables on his guest. 

"Oh, no; I have adopted your advice. No art, no ideal, --nothing loftierthan Commonplace for me now. If I were to paint again, I positivelythink YOU would purchase my pictures. Make haste and finish yourbreakfast, man; I wish to consult you. I have come to England to seeafter my affairs. My ambition is to make money; your counsels andexperience cannot fail to assist me here. "

"Ah, you were soon disenchanted of your Philosopher's Stone! You mustknow, Sarah, that when I last left Glyndon, he was bent upon turningalchemist 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 notsaid that I have returned to my native land to pursue the healthfulavocations of my kind! Oh, yes! what so healthful, so noble, sofitted to our nature, as what you call the Practical Life? If wehave faculties, what is their use, but to sell them to advantage! Buyknowledge as we do our goods; buy it at the cheapest market, sell it atthe dearest. Have you not breakfasted yet?"

The friends walked into the streets, and Mervale shrank from the ironywith which Glyndon complimented him on his respectability, his station, his pursuits, his happy marriage, and his eight pictures in theirhandsome frames. Formerly the sober Mervale had commanded an influenceover his friend: HIS had been the sarcasm; Glyndon's the irresoluteshame at his own peculiarities. Now this position was reversed. Therewas a fierce earnestness in Glyndon's altered temper which awed andsilenced the quiet commonplace of his friend's character. He seemed totake a malignant delight in persuading himself that the sober life ofthe 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 andone's wife; and to command the envy of the poor, the good opinion ofthe rich. You have practised what you preach. Delicious existence! Themerchant's desk and the curtain lecture! Ha! ha! Shall we have anothernight of it?"

Mervale, embarrassed and irritated, turned the conversation uponGlyndon's affairs. He was surprised at the knowledge of the world whichthe artist seemed to have suddenly acquired, surprised still more atthe acuteness and energy with which he spoke of the speculations most invogue at the market. Yes; Glyndon was certainly in earnest: he desiredto be rich and respectable, --and to make at least ten per cent for hismoney!

After spending some days with the merchant, during which time hecontrived to disorganise all the mechanism of the house, to turnnight into day, harmony into discord, to drive poor Mrs. Mervalehalf-distracted, and to convince her husband that he was horriblyhen-pecked, the ill-omened visitor left them as suddenly as he hadarrived. He took a house of his own; he sought the society of personsof substance; he devoted himself to the money-market; he seemed tohave become a man of business; his schemes were bold and colossal; hiscalculations rapid and profound. He startled Mervale by his energy, and dazzled him by his success. Mervale began to envy him, --to bediscontented with his own regular and slow gains. When Glyndon bought orsold in the funds, wealth rolled upon him like the tide of a sea; whatyears of toil could not have done for him in art, a few months, bya succession of lucky chances, did for him in speculation. Suddenly, however, he relaxed his exertions; new objects of ambition seemed toattract him. If he heard a drum in the streets, what glory like thesoldier's? If a new poem were published, what renown like the poet's?He began works in literature, which promised great excellence, to throwthem aside in disgust. All at once he abandoned the decorous and formalsociety he had courted; he joined himself, with young and riotousassociates; he plunged into the wildest excesses of the great city, where Gold reigns alike over Toil and Pleasure. Through all he carriedwith him a certain power and heat of soul. In all society he aspiredto command, --in all pursuits to excel. Yet whatever the passion of themoment, the reaction was terrible in its gloom. He sank, at times, intothe most profound and the darkest reveries. His fever was that of a mindthat would escape memory, --his repose, that of a mind which the memoryseizes again, and devours as a prey. Mervale now saw little of him; theyshunned 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 continuousaction, Glyndon was aroused by a visitor who seemed to exercise the mostsalutary influence over him. His sister, an orphan with himself, hadresided in the country with her aunt. In the early years of hope andhome he had loved this girl, much younger than himself, with all abrother's tenderness. On his return to England, he had seemed to forgether existence. She recalled herself to him on her aunt's death bya touching and melancholy letter: she had now no home but his, --nodependence save on his affection; he wept when he read it, and wasimpatient till Adela arrived. 

This girl, then about eighteen, concerned beneath a gentle and calmexterior 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 avery feminine nature, and partly by a strict and methodical education. She differed from him especially in a timidity of character whichexceeded that usual at her age, but which the habit of self-commandconcealed no less carefully than that timidity itself concealed theromance I have ascribed to her. 

Adela was not handsome: she had the complexion and the form of delicatehealth; and too fine an organisation of the nerves rendered hersusceptible to every impression that could influence the health of theframe through the sympathy of the mind. But as she never complained, andas the singular serenity of her manners seemed to betoken anequanimity of temperament which, with the vulgar, might have passed forindifference, her sufferings had so long been borne unnoticed that itceased to be an effort to disguise them. Though, as I have said, nothandsome, her countenance was interesting and pleasing; and therewas that caressing kindness, that winning charm about her smile, hermanners, her anxiety to please, to comfort, and to soothe which went atonce to the heart, and made her lovely, --because so loving. 

Such was the sister whom Glyndon had so long neglected, and whom henow so cordially welcomed. Adela had passed many years a victim tothe caprices, and a nurse to the maladies, of a selfish and exactingrelation. The delicate and generous and respectful affection of herbrother was no less new to her than delightful. He took pleasure in thehappiness he created; he gradually weaned himself from other society;he felt the charm of home. It is not surprising, then, that thisyoung creature, free and virgin from every more ardent attachment, concentrated all her grateful love on this cherished and protectingrelative. Her study by day, her dream by night, was to repay him forhis affection. She was proud of his talents, devoted to his welfare;the smallest trifle that could interest him swelled in her eyes to thegravest affairs of life. In short, all the long-hoarded enthusiasm, which was her perilous and only heritage, she invested in this oneobject of her holy tenderness, her pure ambition. 

But in proportion as Glyndon shunned those excitements by which he hadso long sought to occupy his time or distract his thoughts, the gloomof his calmer hours became deeper and more continuous. He ever andespecially dreaded to be alone; he could not bear his new companion tobe absent from his eyes: he rode with her, walked with her, and it waswith visible reluctance, which almost partook of horror, that he retiredto rest at an hour when even revel grows fatigued. This gloom was notthat which could be called by the soft name of melancholy, --it was farmore intense; it seemed rather like despair. Often after a silence as ofdeath--so heavy, abstracted, motionless, did it appear--he would startabruptly, and cast hurried glances around him, --his limbs trembling, hislips livid, his brows bathed in dew. Convinced that some secret sorrowpreyed upon his mind, and would consume his health, it was the dearestas the most natural desire of Adela to become his confidant andconsoler. She observed, with the quick tact of the delicate, that hedisliked her to seem affected by, or even sensible of, his darker moods. She schooled herself to suppress her fears and her feelings. She wouldnot ask his confidence, --she sought to steal into it. By little andlittle she felt that she was succeeding. Too wrapped in his own strangeexistence to be acutely observant of the character of others, Glyndonmistook the self-content of a generous and humble affection forconstitutional fortitude; and this quality pleased and soothed him. Itis fortitude that the diseased mind requires in the confidant whomit selects as its physician. And how irresistible is that desire tocommunicate! How often the lonely man thought to himself, "My heartwould be lightened of its misery, if once confessed!" He felt, too, thatin the very youth, the inexperience, the poetical temperament of Adela, he could find one who would comprehend and bear with him better thanany sterner and more practical nature. Mervale would have looked on hisrevelations as the ravings of madness, and most men, at best, as thesicklied chimeras, the optical delusions, of disease. Thus graduallypreparing himself for that relief for which he yearned, the moment forhis disclosure arrived thus:--

One evening, as they sat alone together, Adela, who inherited someportion of her brother's talent in art, was employed in drawing, andGlyndon, rousing himself from meditations less gloomy than usual, rose, and affectionately passing his arm round her waist, looked over her asshe sat. An exclamation of dismay broke from his lips, --he snatched thedrawing from her hand: "What are you about?--what portrait is this?"

"Dear Clarence, do you not remember the original?--it is a copy fromthat portrait of our wise ancestor which our poor mother used to sayso strongly resembled you. I thought it would please you if I copied itfrom memory. "

"Accursed was the likeness!" said Glyndon, gloomily. "Guess you not thereason why I have shunned to return to the home of my fathers!--becauseI dreaded to meet that portrait!--because--because--but pardon me; Ialarm you!"

"Ah, no, --no, Clarence, you never alarm me when you speak: only when youare silent! Oh, if you thought me worthy of your trust; oh, if you hadgiven me the right to reason with you in the sorrows that I yearn toshare!"

Glyndon made no answer, but paced the room for some moments withdisordered strides. He stopped at last, and gazed at her earnestly. "Yes, you, too, are his descendant; you know that such men have livedand 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 toldyou, never revert to the tale again. Conceal it from all: swear that itshall 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 hisstory. That which, perhaps, in writing, and to minds prepared toquestion and disbelieve, may seem cold and terrorless, became fardifferent when told by those blanched lips, with all that truth ofsuffering which convinces and appalls. Much, indeed, he concealed, much he involuntarily softened; but he revealed enough to make histale intelligible and distinct to his pale and trembling listener. "Atdaybreak, " he said, "I left that unhallowed and abhorred abode. I hadone hope still, --I would seek Mejnour through the world. I would forcehim to lay at rest the fiend that haunted my soul. With this intent Ijourneyed from city to city. I instituted the most vigilant researchesthrough the police of Italy. I even employed the services of theInquisition at Rome, which had lately asserted its ancient powers in thetrial of the less dangerous Cagliostro. All was in vain; not a trace ofhim could be discovered. I was not alone, Adela. " Here Glyndon paused amoment, as if embarrassed; for in his recital, I need scarcely say thathe had only indistinctly alluded to Fillide, whom the reader maysurmise to be his companion. "I was not alone, but the associate ofmy wanderings was not one in whom my soul could confide, --faithful andaffectionate, but without education, without faculties to comprehend me, with natural instincts rather than cultivated reason; one in whom theheart might lean in its careless hours, but with whom the mind couldhave no commune, in whom the bewildered spirit could seek no guide. Yetin the society of this person the demon troubled me not. Let meexplain yet more fully the dread conditions of its presence. In coarseexcitement, in commonplace life, in the wild riot, in the fierce excess, in the torpid lethargy of that animal existence which we share with thebrutes, its eyes were invisible, its whisper was unheard. But wheneverthe soul would aspire, whenever the imagination kindled to the loftierends, whenever the consciousness of our proper destiny struggled againstthe unworthy life I pursued, then, Adela--then, it cowered by my sidein the light of noon, or sat by my bed, --a Darkness visible through theDark. If, in the galleries of Divine Art, the dreams of my youth wokethe early emulation, --if I turned to the thoughts of sages; if theexample of the great, if the converse of the wise, aroused the silencedintellect, the demon was with me as by a spell. At last, one evening, atGenoa, 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 theCarnival. It was in one of those half-frantic scenes of noise and revel, call it not gayety, which establish a heathen saturnalia in the midstof a Christian festival. Wearied with the dance, I had entered a room inwhich several revellers were seated, drinking, singing, shouting; andin their fantastic dresses and hideous masks, their orgy seemed scarcelyhuman. I placed myself amongst them, and in that fearful excitement ofthe spirits which the happy never know, I was soon the most riotous ofall. The conversation fell on the Revolution of France, which hadalways possessed for me an absorbing fascination. The masks spoke of themillennium it was to bring on earth, not as philosophers rejoicing inthe advent of light, but as ruffians exulting in the annihilation oflaw. I know not why it was, but their licentious language infectedmyself; and, always desirous to be foremost in every circle, I soonexceeded even these rioters in declamations on the nature of the libertywhich was about to embrace all the families of the globe, --a libertythat should pervade not only public legislation, but domestic life; anemancipation from every fetter that men had forged for themselves. Inthe 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 tookno part in the conversation, but whose gaze was bent upon me. He wasdisguised like the rest, yet I found by a general whisper that none hadobserved him enter. His silence, his attention, had alarmed the fears ofthe other revellers, --they only excited me the more. Rapt in my subject, I pursued it, insensible to the signs of those about me; and, addressingmyself only to the silent mask who sat alone, apart from the group, Idid not even observe that, one by one, the revellers slunk off, and thatI and the silent listener were left alone, until, pausing from my heatedand impetuous declamations, I said, --

"'And you, signor, --what is your view of this mighty era? Opinionwithout persecution; brotherhood without jealousy; love withoutbondage--'

"'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. Isprang forward, and cried, --

"'Imposter or Fiend, we meet at last!'

"The figure rose as I advanced, and, unmasking, showed the features ofMejnour. His fixed eye, his majestic aspect, awed and repelled me. Istood rooted to the ground. 

"'Yes, ' he said solemnly, 'we meet, and it is this meeting that I havesought. How hast thou followed my admonitions! Are these the scenes inwhich the Aspirant for the Serene Science thinks to escape the GhastlyEnemy? Do the thoughts thou hast uttered--thoughts that would strike allorder from the universe--express the hopes of the sage who would rise tothe 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 whichprovoked at once my fear and rage, and replied, --

"'No; fool of thine own senses! No; thou must have full and entireexperience of the illusions to which the Knowledge that is without Faithclimbs its Titan way. Thou pantest for this Millennium, --thou shaltbehold it! Thou shalt be one of the agents of the era of Light andReason. I see, while I speak, the Phantom thou fliest, by thy side; itmarshals thy path; it has power over thee as yet, --a power that defiesmy own. In the last days of that Revolution which thou hailest, amidstthe wrecks of the Order thou cursest as Oppression, seek the fulfilmentof thy destiny, and await thy cure. '

"At that instant a troop of masks, clamorous, intoxicated, reeling, andrushing, as they reeled, poured into the room, and separated me from themystic. I broke through them, and sought him everywhere, but in vain. All my researches the next day were equally fruitless. Weeks wereconsumed in the same pursuit, --not a trace of Mejnour could bediscovered. Wearied with false pleasures, roused by reproaches I haddeserved, recoiling from Mejnour's prophecy of the scene in which I wasto seek deliverance, it occurred to me, at last, that in the sober airof my native country, and amidst its orderly and vigorous pursuits, Imight work out my own emancipation from the spectre. I left all whomI had before courted and clung to, --I came hither. Amidst mercenaryschemes and selfish speculations, I found the same relief as in debauchand excess. The Phantom was invisible; but these pursuits soon becameto me distasteful as the rest. Ever and ever I felt that I was born forsomething nobler than the greed of gain, --that life may be made equallyworthless, and the soul equally degraded by the icy lust of avarice, asby the noisier passions. A higher ambition never ceased to tormentme. But, but, " continued Glyndon, with a whitening lip and a visibleshudder, "at every attempt to rise into loftier existence, came thathideous form. It gloomed beside me at the easel. Before the volumes ofpoet and sage it stood with its burning eyes in the stillness of night, and I thought I heard its horrible whispers uttering temptations neverto be divulged. " He paused, and the drops stood upon his brow. 

"But I, " said Adela, mastering her fears and throwing her arms aroundhim, --"but I henceforth will have no life but in thine. And in this loveso pure, so holy, thy terror shall fade away. "

"No, no!" exclaimed Glyndon, starting from her. "The worst revelation isto come. Since thou hast been here, since I have sternly and resolutelyrefrained from every haunt, every scene in which this preternaturalenemy troubled me not, I--I--have--Oh, Heaven! Mercy--mercy! There itstands, --there, by thy side, --there, there!" And he fell to the groundinsensible. 

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 ofconsciousness; and when, by Adela's care more than the skill of thephysicians, he was restored to life and reason, he was unutterablyshocked by the change in his sister's appearance; at first, he fondlyimagined that her health, affected by her vigils, would recover with hisown. But he soon saw, with an anguish which partook of remorse, that themalady was deep-seated, --deep, deep, beyond the reach of Aesculapius andhis drugs. Her imagination, little less lively than his own, was awfullyimpressed by the strange confessions she had heard, --by the ravingsof his delirium. Again and again had he shrieked forth, "It isthere, --there, by thy side, my sister!" He had transferred to her fancythe spectre, and the horror that cursed himself. He perceived this, notby her words, but her silence; by the eyes that strained into space; bythe shiver that came over her frame; by the start of terror; by the lookthat did not dare to turn behind. Bitterly he repented his confession;bitterly he felt that between his sufferings and human sympathy therecould be no gentle and holy commune; vainly he sought to retract, --toundo what he had done, to declare all was but the chimera of anoverheated 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, andglaring at him as he disowned its being. But what chilled him, ifpossible, yet more than her wasting form and trembling nerves, was thechange in her love for him; a natural terror had replaced it. She turnedpaler if he approached, --she shuddered if he took her hand. Divided fromthe rest of earth, the gulf of the foul remembrance yawned now betweenhis sister and himself. He could endure no more the presence of the onewhose life HIS life had embittered. He made some excuses for departure, and writhed to see that they were greeted eagerly. The first gleam ofjoy he had detected since that fatal night, on Adela's face, he beheldwhen he murmured "Farewell. " He travelled for some weeks through thewildest parts of Scotland; scenery which MAKES the artist, was lovelessto his haggard eyes. A letter recalled him to London on the wings ofnew agony and fear; he arrived to find his sister in a condition both ofmind and health which exceeded his worst apprehensions. 

Her vacant look, her lifeless posture, appalled him; it was as one whogazed on the Medusa's head, and felt, without a struggle, the humanbeing gradually harden to the statue. It was not frenzy, it was notidiocy, --it was an abstraction, an apathy, a sleep in waking. Only asthe night advanced towards the eleventh hour--the hour in which Glyndonhad concluded his tale--she grew visibly uneasy, anxious, and perturbed. Then her lips muttered; her hands writhed; she looked round with a lookof unspeakable appeal for succour, for protection, and suddenly, as theclock struck, fell with a shriek to the ground, cold and lifeless. Withdifficulty, and not until after the most earnest prayers, did she answerthe agonised questions of Glyndon; at last she owned that at that hour, and that hour alone, wherever she was placed, however occupied, shedistinctly beheld the apparition of an old hag, who, after thriceknocking at the door, entered the room, and hobbling up to her with acountenance distorted by hideous rage and menace, laid its icy fingerson 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 upher blood, the repetition of the ghastly visitation. 

The physician who had been summoned before Glyndon's return, and whoseletter had recalled him to London, was a commonplace practitioner, ignorant of the case, and honestly anxious that one more experiencedshould be employed. Clarence called in one of the most eminent of thefaculty, and to him he recited the optical delusion of his sister. Thephysician listened attentively, and seemed sanguine in his hopes ofcure. He came to the house two hours before the one so dreaded by thepatient. He had quietly arranged that the clocks should be put forwardhalf an hour, unknown to Adela, and even to her brother. He was a man ofthe most extraordinary powers of conversation, of surpassing wit, ofall the faculties that interest and amuse. He first administered to thepatient a harmless potion, which he pledged himself would dispel thedelusion. His confident tone woke her own hopes, --he continued to exciteher attention, to rouse her lethargy; he jested, he laughed away thetime. The hour struck. "Joy, my brother!" she exclaimed, throwingherself in his arms; "the time is past!" And then, like one releasedfrom a spell, she suddenly assumed more than her ancientcheerfulness. "Ah, Clarence!" she whispered, "forgive me for my formerdesertion, --forgive me that I feared YOU. I shall live!--I shall live!in my turn to banish the spectre that haunts my brother!" And Clarencesmiled and wiped the tears from his burning eyes. The physician renewedhis stories, his jests. In the midst of a stream of rich humour thatseemed to carry away both brother and sister, Glyndon suddenly saw overAdela's face the same fearful change, the same anxious look, the samerestless, straining eye, he had beheld the night before. He rose, --heapproached her. Adela started up, "look--look--look!" she exclaimed. "She comes! Save me, --save me!" and she fell at his feet in strongconvulsions as the clock, falsely and in vain put forward, struck thehalf-hour. 

The physician lifted her in his arms. "My worst fears are confirmed, "he said gravely; "the disease is epilepsy. " (The most celebratedpractitioner in Dublin related to the editor a story of optical delusionprecisely similar in its circumstances and its physical cause to the onehere 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 itagain, --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 itis, --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 didstonce 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 anddeath; and he has paid me largely but to sit for my portrait. It is fora picture to be given to the Nation, for he paints only for glory. Thinkof thy Fillide's renown!" And the girl's wild eyes sparkled; her vanitywas roused. "And he would have married me if I would!--divorced his wifeto 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 JeanNicot 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, --thefiery song of the Marseillaise! There was a crowd, a multitude, a peopleup, abroad, with colours and arms, enthusiasm and song, --with song, withenthusiasm, with colours and arms! And who could guess that thatmartial movement was one, not of war, but massacre, --Frenchmen againstFrenchmen? For there are two parties in Marseilles, --and ample work forJourdan Coupe-tete! But this, the Englishman, just arrived, a strangerto all factions, did not as yet comprehend. He comprehended nothing butthe song, the enthusiasm, the arms, and the colours that lifted to thesun 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 thewindow on the throng that marched below, beneath their waving Oriflamme. They shouted as they beheld the patriot Nicot, the friend of Liberty andrelentless Hebert, by the stranger's side, at the casement. 

"Ay, shout again!" cried the painter, --"shout for the brave Englishmanwho abjures his Pitts and his Coburgs to be a citizen of Liberty andFrance!"

A thousand voices rent the air, and the hymn of the Marseillaise rose inmajesty again. 

"Well, and if it be among these high hopes and this brave people thatthe phantom is to vanish, and the cure to come!" muttered Glyndon; andhe thought he felt again the elixir sparkling through his veins. 

"Thou shalt be one of the Convention with Paine and Clootz, --I willmanage it all for thee!" cried Nicot, slapping him on the shoulder: "andParis--"

"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 thecry of agony and the yell of murder--were joy! Sleep unhaunting in thygrave, cold Adela. Joy, joy! In the Jubilee of Humanity all privategriefs should cease! Behold, wild mariner, the vast whirlpool draws theeto its stormy bosom! There the individual is not. All things are of thewhole! Open thy gates, fair Paris, for the stranger-citizen! Receive inyour ranks, O meek Republicans, the new champion of liberty, of reason, of mankind! "Mejnour is right; it was in virtue, in valour, in gloriousstruggle for the human race, that the spectre was to shrink to herkindred 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--; Papiersinedits trouves chez Robespierre, " tom 11, page 127. )--smiled ominouslyon him from his bloodshot eyes; and Fillide clasped him with passionatearms to her tender breast. And at his up-rising and down-sitting, atboard and in bed, though he saw it not, the Nameless One guided him withthe 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, thedeparture of Zanoni and Viola from the Greek isle, in which two happyyears appear to have been passed, must have been somewhat later in datethan the arrival of Glyndon at Marseilles. It must have been in thecourse of the year 1791 when Viola fled from Naples with her mysteriouslover, and when Glyndon sought Mejnour in the fatal castle. It is nowtowards the close of 1793, when our story again returns to Zanoni. Thestars of winter shone down on the lagunes of Venice. The hum of theRialto was hushed, --the last loiterers had deserted the Place of St. Mark's, and only at distant intervals might be heard the oars of therapid gondolas, bearing reveller or lover to his home. But lights stillflitted to and fro across the windows of one of the Palladian palaces, whose shadow slept in the great canal; and within the palace watched thetwin 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 willof Heaven, signor, unless within the next hour there is some blessedchange, prepare your courage. "

Ho--ho, Zanoni! man of mystery and might, who hast walked amidst thepassions of the world, with no changes on thy brow, art thou tossed atlast upon the billows of tempestuous fear? Does thy spirit reel to andfro?--knowest thou at last the strength and the majesty of Death?

He fled, trembling, from the pale-faced man of art, --fled throughstately hall and long-drawn corridor, and gained a remote chamber in thepalace, which other step than his was not permitted to profane. Outwith thy herbs and vessels. Break from the enchanted elements, Osilvery-azure flame! Why comes he not, --the Son of the Starbeam! Whyis Adon-Ai deaf to thy solemn call? It comes not, --the luminous anddelightsome Presence! Cabalist! are thy charms in vain? Has thy thronevanished from the realms of space? Thou standest pale and trembling. Pale trembler! not thus didst thou look when the things of glorygathered at thy spell. Never to the pale trembler bow the things ofglory: the soul, and not the herbs, nor the silvery-azure flame, nor thespells of the Cabala, commands the children of the air; and THY soul, byLove and Death, is made sceptreless and discrowned!

At length the flame quivers, --the air grows cold as the wind incharnels. A thing not of earth is present, --a mistlike, formless thing. It cowers in the distance, --a silent Horror! it rises; it creeps; itnears thee--dark in its mantle of dusky haze; and under its veil itlooks on thee with its livid, malignant eyes, --the thing of malignanteyes!

"Ha, young Chaldean! young in thy countless ages, --young as when, coldto pleasure and to beauty, thou stoodest on the old Firetower, andheardest the starry silence whisper to thee the last mystery thatbaffles Death, --fearest thou Death at length? Is thy knowledge but acircle that brings thee back whence thy wanderings began! Generations ongenerations have withered since we two met! Lo! thou beholdest me now!"

"But I behold thee without fear! Though beneath thine eyes thousandshave perished; though, where they burn, spring up the foul poisons ofthe human heart, and to those whom thou canst subject to thy will, thypresence glares in the dreams of the raving maniac, or blackens thedungeon of despairing crime, thou art not my vanquisher, but my slave!"

"And as a slave will I serve thee! Command thy slave, O beautifulChaldean! Hark, the wail of women!--hark, the sharp shriek of thybeloved one! Death is in thy palace! Adon-Ai comes not to thy call. Onlywhere no cloud of the passion and the flesh veils the eye of the SereneIntelligence can the Sons of the Starbeam glide to man. But _I_ can aidthee!--hark!" And Zanoni heard distinctly in his heart, even at thatdistance from the chamber, the voice of Viola calling in delirium on herbeloved one. 

"Oh, Viola, I can save thee not!" exclaimed the seer, passionately; "mylove for thee has made me powerless!"

"Not powerless; I can gift thee with the art to save her, --I can placehealing in thy hand!"

"For both?--child and mother, --for both?"

"Both!"

A convulsion shook the limbs of the seer, --a mighty struggle shook himas 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; lifeseemed rending itself away in the groans and cries that spoke of pain inthe 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 Heartof 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 skythrough a shattered temple, is smiling through the tortured frame. Thebreathing grows more calm and hushed; the voice of delirium is dumb, --asweet dream has come to Viola. Is it a dream, or is it the soul thatsees? She thinks suddenly that she is with Zanoni, that her burning headis pillowed on his bosom; she thinks, as he gazes on her, that his eyesdispel the tortures that prey upon her, --the touch of his hand cools thefever on her brow; she hears his voice in murmurs, --it is a music fromwhich the fiends fly. Where is the mountain that seemed to press uponher temples? Like a vapour, it rolls away. In the frosts of the winternight, she sees the sun laughing in luxurious heaven, --she hears thewhisper of green leaves; the beautiful world, valley and stream andwoodland, lie before, and with a common voice speak to her, "We arenot yet past for thee!" Fool of drugs and formula, look to thydial-plate!--the hand has moved on; the minutes are with Eternity; thesoul thy sentence would have dismissed, still dwells on the shores ofTime. She sleeps: the fever abates; the convulsions are gone; the livingrose 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, alittle 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 bentover it, tears--tears, how human!--fell from his eyes like rain! Andthe little one smiled through the tears that bathed its cheeks! Ah, withwhat 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, --theyoung 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 wascontented. 

. .. . 

Viola recovered with a rapidity that startled the physician; and theyoung stranger thrived as if it already loved the world to which it haddescended. 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 wasstrange to the nurses that it came not wailing to the light, but smiledto the light as a thing familiar to it before. It never uttered one cryof childish pain. In its very repose it seemed to be listening to somehappy voice within its heart: it seemed itself so happy. In its eyesyou would have thought intellect already kindled, though it had not yetfound a language. Already it seemed to recognise its parents; alreadyit stretched forth its arms when Zanoni bent over the bed, in whichit breathed and bloomed, --the budding flower! And from that bed he wasrarely absent: gazing upon it with his serene, delighted eyes, his soulseemed to feed its own. At night and in utter darkness he was stillthere; and Viola often heard him murmuring over it as she lay ina half-sleep. But the murmur was in a language strange to her; andsometimes when she heard she feared, and vague, undefined superstitionscame back to her, --the superstitions of earlier youth. A mother fearseverything, even the gods, for her new-born. The mortals shrieked aloudwhen of old they saw the great Demeter seeking to make their childimmortal. 

But Zanoni, wrapped in the sublime designs that animated the human loveto which he was now awakened, forgot all, even all he had forfeited orincurred, 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, withits 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 myown, and in them I have lost more than half my empire. Not lifting themaloft, they drag me by the strong bands of the affections to their ownearth. 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 againobey the spirit that has bowed to the ghastly one! And--

. .. . 

In this hope, then, Mejnour, I triumph still; I yet have supreme powerover this young life. Insensibly and inaudibly my soul speaks to itsown, and prepares it even now. Thou knowest that for the pure andunsullied infant spirit, the ordeal has no terror and no peril. Thusunceasingly I nourish it with no unholy light; and ere it yet beconscious of the gift, it will gain the privileges it has been mine toattain: the child, by slow and scarce-seen degrees, will communicate itsown attributes to the mother; and content to see Youth forever radianton the brows of the two that now suffice to fill up my whole infinity ofthought, shall I regret the airier kingdom that vanishes hourly from mygrasp? But thou, whose vision is still clear and serene, look into thefar deeps shut from my gaze, and counsel me, or forewarn! I know thatthe gifts of the Being whose race is so hostile to our own are, to thecommon seeker, fatal and perfidious as itself. And hence, when, at theoutskirts of knowledge, which in earlier ages men called Magic, they encountered the things of the hostile tribes, they believed theapparitions to be fiends, and, by fancied compacts, imagined they hadsigned away their souls; as if man could give for an eternity that overwhich he has control but while he lives! Dark, and shrouded forever fromhuman sight, dwell the demon rebels, in their impenetrable realm; inthem is no breath of the Divine One. In every human creature the DivineOne breathes; and He alone can judge His own hereafter, and allot itsnew career and home. Could man sell himself to the fiend, man couldprejudge himself, and arrogate the disposal of eternity! But thesecreatures, modifications as they are of matter, and some with morethan the malignanty of man, may well seem, to fear and unreasoningsuperstition, the representatives of fiends. And from the darkest andmightiest of them I have accepted a boon, --the secret that startledDeath from those so dear to me. Can I not trust that enough of power yetremains to me to baffle or to daunt the Phantom, if it seek to pervertthe gift? Answer me, Mejnour, for in the darkness that veils me, I seeonly the pure eyes of the new-born; I hear only the low beating of myheart. 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 haverelinquished Adon-Ai for the nameless Terror, --the heavenly stars forthose fearful eyes! Thou, at the last to be the victim of the Larva ofthe dreary Threshold, that, in thy first novitiate, fled, witheredand shrivelled, from thy kingly brow! When, at the primary grades ofinitiation, the pupil I took from thee on the shores of the changedParthenope, fell senseless and cowering before that Phantom-Darkness, Iknew that his spirit was not formed to front the worlds beyond; forFEAR is the attraction of man to earthiest earth, and while he fears, hecannot soar. But THOU, seest thou not that to love is but to fear; seestthou not that the power of which thou boastest over the malignant oneis 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 sympathybetween us, through MY eyes shalt thou see, and perhaps guard againstthe perils that, shapeless yet, and looming through the shadow, marshalthemselves around thee and those whom thy very love has doomed. Comefrom all the ties of thy fond humanity; they will but obscure thyvision! Come forth from thy fears and hopes, thy desires and passions. Come, as alone Mind can be the monarch and the seer, shining through thehome 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 wereseparated, --Zanoni went to Rome on important business. "It was, " hesaid, "but for a few days;" and he went so suddenly that there waslittle time either for surprise or sorrow. But first parting is alwaysmore melancholy than it need be: it seems an interruption to theexistence which Love shares with Love; it makes the heart feel what avoid life will be when the last parting shall succeed, as succeed itmust, the first. But Viola had a new companion; she was enjoying thatmost delicious novelty which ever renews the youth and dazzles the eyesof woman. As the mistress--the wife--she leans on another; from anotherare reflected her happiness, her being, --as an orb that takes light fromits sun. But now, in turn, as the mother, she is raised from dependenceinto power; it is another that leans on her, --a star has sprung intospace, to which she herself has become the sun!

A few days, --but they will be sweet through the sorrow! A fewdays, --every hour of which seems an era to the infant, over whom bendwatchful the eyes and the heart. From its waking to its sleep, fromits sleep to its waking, is a revolution in Time. Every gesture to benoted, --every smile to seem a new progress into the world it has cometo bless! Zanoni has gone, --the last dash of the oar is lost, the lastspeck of the gondola has vanished from the ocean-streets of Venice! Herinfant is sleeping in the cradle at the mother's feet; and she thinksthrough her tears what tales of the fairy-land, that spreads far andwide, with a thousand wonders, in that narrow bed, she shall have totell the father! Smile on, weep on, young mother! Already the fairestleaf in the wild volume is closed for thee, and the invisible fingerturns the page!

. .. . 

By the bridge of the Rialto stood two Venetians--ardent Republicans andDemocrats--looking to the Revolution of France as the earthquake whichmust shatter their own expiring and vicious constitution, and giveequality of ranks and rights to Venice. 

"Yes, Cottalto, " said one; "my correspondent of Paris has promised toelude all obstacles, and baffle all danger. He will arrange with us thehour of revolt, when the legions of France shall be within hearing ofour 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 oppositethe 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 tocorrespond? And this citizen--"

"Is Cottalto, whom my letters have so often mentioned. " (I know not ifthe author of the original MSS. Designs, under these names, to introducethe real Cottalto and the true Dandolo, who, in 1797, distinguishedthemselves by their sympathy with the French, and their democraticardor. --Ed. )

"Health and brotherhood to him! I have much to impart to you both. Iwill 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 verywalls. But the place herein designated is secure;" and he slipped anaddress into the hand of his correspondent. 

"To-night, then, at nine! Meanwhile I have other business. " The manpaused, his colour changed, and it was with an eager and passionatevoice that he resumed, --

"Your last letter mentioned this wealthy and mysterious visitor, --thisZanoni. 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 wouldbe--"

"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 hadarrived at Venice the night before), a woman who stood by the doorcaught 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 toFrance, --to stand, through life or in death, by my husband's side!"

"Citoyenne, I promised your husband that, if such your choice, I wouldhazard my own safety to aid it. But think again! Your husband is one ofthe faction which Robespierre's eyes have already marked; he cannotfly. All France is become a prison to the 'suspect. ' You do not endangeryourself by return. Frankly, citoyenne, the fate you would share may bethe guillotine. I speak (as you know by his letter) as your husband bademe. "

"Monsieur, I will return with you, " said the woman, with a smile uponher pale face. 

"And yet you deserted your husband in the fair sunshine of theRevolution, to return to him amidst its storms and thunder, " said theman, in a tone half of wonder, half rebuke. 

"Because my father's days were doomed; because he had no safety but inflight to a foreign land; because he was old and penniless, and had nonebut 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. Thedaughter's duties are no more, --the wife's return!"

"Be it so, citoyenne; on the third night I depart. Before then you mayretract 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 amidstthe 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 sparkledthe broad waters in the cold but cloudless sunlight; and to thatfair form, that half-averted face, turned the eyes of many a gallantcavalier, as their gondolas glided by. 

But at last, in the centre of the canal, one of these dark vesselshalted motionless, as a man fixed his gaze from its lattice upon thatstately palace. He gave the word to the rowers, --the vessel approachedthe marge. The stranger quitted the gondola; he passed up thebroad stairs; he entered the palace. Weep on, smile no more, youngmother!--the last page is turned!

An attendant entered the room, and gave to Viola a card, with thesewords in English, "Viola, I must see you! Clarence Glyndon. "

Oh, yes, how gladly Viola would see him; how gladly speak to him of herhappiness, 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 earlierlife, --its dreams, its vanities, its poor excitement, the lamps of thegaudy 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 carelesscountenance of the artist-lover. His dress, though not mean, was rude, neglected, and disordered. A wild, desperate, half-savage air hadsupplanted that ingenuous mien, diffident in its grace, earnest in itsdiffidence, 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 whomam I to thank, but the fiends--the sorcerers--who have seized upon thyexistence, as upon mine? Viola, hear me. A few weeks since the newsreached me that you were in Venice. Under other pretences, and throughinnumerable dangers, I have come hither, risking liberty, perhapslife, 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 ravageswithin? Be warned, be warned in time!"

The voice of Glyndon, sounding hollow and sepulchral, alarmed Viola evenmore than his words. Pale, haggard, emaciated, he seemed almost as onerisen 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 itstouch was as cold as death, --"listen! You have heard of the old storiesof men who have leagued themselves with devils for the attainment ofpreternatural powers. Those stories are not fables. Such men live. Their delight is to increase the unhallowed circle of wretches likethemselves. If their proselytes fail in the ordeal, the demon seizesthem, 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 cancharm the evil one, or allay the torture. I have come from a scene whereblood flows in rivers, --where Death stands by the side of the bravestand the highest, and the one monarch is the Guillotine; but all themortal perils with which men can be beset, are nothing to the drearinessof 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. Hedescribed, in words that froze the blood of his listener, the appearanceof that formless phantom, with the eyes that seared the brain andcongealed the marrow of those who beheld. Once seen, it neverwas to be exorcised. It came at its own will, prompting blackthoughts, --whispering strange temptations. Only in scenes of turbulentexcitement was it absent! Solitude, serenity, the struggling desiresafter peace and virtue, --THESE were the elements it loved to haunt!Bewildered, terror-stricken, the wild account confirmed by the dimimpressions that never, in the depth and confidence of affection, hadbeen closely examined, but rather banished as soon as felt, --thatthe life and attributes of Zanoni were not like those ofmortals, --impressions which her own love had made her hitherto censureas suspicions that wronged, and which, thus mitigated, had perhaps onlyserved to rivet the fascinated chains in which he bound her heart andsenses, but which now, as Glyndon's awful narrative filled herwith contagious dread, half unbound the very spells they had wovenbefore, --Viola started up in fear, not for HERSELF, and clasped herchild in her arms!

"Unhappiest one!" cried Glyndon, shuddering, "hast thou indeed givenbirth to a victim thou canst not save? Refuse it sustenance, --let itlook to thee in vain for food! In the grave, at least, there are reposeand peace!"

Then there came back to Viola's mind the remembrance of Zanoni'snight-long watches by that cradle, and the fear which even then hadcrept over her as she heard his murmured half-chanted words. And asthe child looked at her with its clear, steadfast eye, in the strangeintelligence of that look there was something that only confirmed herawe. So there both Mother and Forewarner stood in silence, --the sunsmiling upon them through the casement, and dark by the cradle, thoughthey saw it not, sat the motionless, veiled Thing!

But by degrees better and juster and more grateful memories of the pastreturned 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 thoserosy lips, and say, mournfully, "I speak to thee in thy child. In returnfor all my love for thee and thine, dost thou distrust me, at the firstsentence of a maniac who accuses?"

Her breast heaved, her stature rose, her eyes shone with a serene andholy light. 

"Go, poor victim of thine own delusions, " she said to Glyndon; "Iwould not believe mine own senses, if they accused ITS father! Andwhat knowest thou of Zanoni? What relation have Mejnour and the grislyspectres he invoked, with the radiant image with which thou wouldstconnect them?"

"Thou wilt learn too soon, " replied Glyndon, gloomily. "And the veryphantom that haunts me, whispers, with its bloodless lips, that itshorrors await both thine and thee! I take not thy decision yet; before Ileave 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 thatthe bond between the survivor of ages and the daughter of a day couldendure? Didst thou not foresee that, until the ordeal was past, therecould be no equality between thy wisdom and her love? Art thou absentnow seeking amidst thy solemn secrets the solemn safeguards for childand mother, and forgettest thou that the phantom that served thee hathpower over its own gifts, --over the lives it taught thee to rescue fromthe grave? Dost thou not know that Fear and Distrust, once sown in theheart of Love, spring up from the seed into a forest that excludes thestars? Dark, bright one! the hateful eyes glare beside the mother andthe child!

All that day Viola was distracted by a thousand thoughts and terrors, which fled as she examined them to settle back the darklier. Sheremembered that, as she had once said to Glyndon, her very childhood hadbeen haunted with strange forebodings, that she was ordained for somepreternatural 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 sympathyhad appeared to unite their fates. She remembered, above all, that, comparing their entangled thoughts, both had then said, that with thefirst sight of Zanoni the foreboding, the instinct, had spoken to theirhearts more audibly than before, whispering that "with HIM was connectedthe secret of the unconjectured life. "

And now, when Glyndon and Viola met again, the haunting fears ofchildhood, thus referred to, woke from their enchanted sleep. WithGlyndon's terror she felt a sympathy, against which her reason and herlove struggled in vain. And still, when she turned her looks upon herchild, it watched her with that steady, earnest eye, and its lips movedas if it sought to speak to her, --but no sound came. The infant refusedto 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. Unableto endure, of herself, this sudden and complete revulsion of all thefeelings which had hitherto made up her life, she formed the resolutionnatural to her land and creed; she sent for the priest who hadhabitually attended her at Venice, and to him she confessed, withpassionate sobs and intense terror, the doubts that had broken upon her. The good father, a worthy and pious man, but with little education andless 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 ofhope upon her heart. His remonstrances were urgent, for his horror wasunfeigned. He joined with Glyndon in imploring her to fly, if she feltthe smallest doubt that her husband's pursuits were of the nature whichthe Roman Church had benevolently burned so many scholars for adopting. And even the little that Viola could communicate seemed, to the ignorantascetic, irrefragable proof of sorcery and witchcraft; he had, indeed, previously heard some of the strange rumours which followed the pathof Zanoni, and was therefore prepared to believe the worst; the worthyBartolomeo would have made no bones of sending Watt to the stake, had heheard him speak of the steam-engine. But Viola, as untutored as himself, was terrified by his rough and vehement eloquence, --terrified, forby that penetration which Catholic priests, however dull, generallyacquire, in their vast experience of the human heart hourly exposedto their probe, Bartolomeo spoke less of danger to herself than to herchild. "Sorcerers, " said he, "have ever sought the most to decoy andseduce the souls of the young, --nay, the infant;" and therewith heentered into a long catalogue of legendary fables, which he quotedas historical facts. All at which an English woman would have smiled, appalled the tender but superstitious Neapolitan; and when the priestleft her, with solemn rebukes and grave accusations of a dereliction ofher duties to her child, if she hesitated to fly with it from an abodepolluted by the darker powers and unhallowed arts, Viola, still clingingto the image of Zanoni, sank into a passive lethargy which held her veryreason in suspense. 

The hours passed: night came on; the house was hushed; and Viola, slowlyawakened from the numbness and torpor which had usurped her faculties, tossed to and fro on her couch, restless and perturbed. The stillnessbecame intolerable; yet more intolerable the sound that alone broke it, the voice of the clock, knelling moment after moment to its grave. Themoments, at last, seemed themselves to find voice, --to gain shape. Shethought she beheld them springing, wan and fairy-like, from the womb ofdarkness; and ere they fell again, extinguished, into that womb, theirgrave, their low small voices murmured, "Woman, we report to eternityall that is done in time! What shall we report of thee, O guardian of anew-born soul?" She became sensible that her fancies had brought a sortof partial delirium, that she was in a state between sleep and waking, when suddenly one thought became more predominant than the rest. Thechamber which, in that and every house they had inhabited, even that inthe Greek isles, Zanoni had set apart to a solitude on which none mightintrude, the threshold of which even Viola's step was forbid to cross, and never, hitherto, in that sweet repose of confidence which belongs tocontented love, had she even felt the curious desire to disobey, --now, that chamber drew her towards it. Perhaps THERE might be found asomewhat to solve the riddle, to dispel or confirm the doubt: thatthought grew and deepened in its intenseness; it fastened on her as witha palpable and irresistible grasp; it seemed to raise her limbs withouther will. 

And now, through the chamber, along the galleries thou glidest, O lovelyshape! sleep-walking, yet awake. The moon shines on thee as thou glidestby, casement after casement, white-robed and wandering spirit!--thinearms crossed upon thy bosom, thine eyes fixed and open, with a calmunfearing awe. Mother, it is thy child that leads thee on! The fairymoments go before thee; thou hearest still the clock-knell tolling themto their graves behind. On, gliding on, thou hast gained the door; nolock bars thee, no magic spell drives thee back. Daughter of thedust, thou standest alone with night in the chamber where, pale andnumberless, 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 aninquisitor of old could have detected the scholar of the Black Art werevisible. No crucibles and caldrons, no brass-bound volumes and cipheredgirdles, no skulls and cross-bones. Quietly streamed the broad moonlightthrough the desolate chamber with its bare, white walls. A few bunchesof withered herbs, a few antique vessels of bronze, placed carelessly ona wooden form, were all which that curious gaze could identify with thepursuits of the absent owner. The magic, if it existed, dwelt in theartificer, and the materials, to other hands, were but herbs and bronze. So is it ever with thy works and wonders, O Genius, --Seeker of theStars! Words themselves are the common property of all men; yet, fromwords themselves, Thou Architect of Immortalities, pilest up templesthat shall outlive the Pyramids, and the very leaf of the Papyrusbecomes 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 wondersleft no enchantment of its own? It seemed so; for as Viola stood in thechamber, she became sensible that some mysterious change was at workwithin herself. Her blood coursed rapidly, and with a sensation ofdelight, through her veins, --she felt as if chains were falling fromher limbs, as if cloud after cloud was rolling from her gaze. All theconfused thoughts which had moved through her trance settled and centredthemselves 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 spiritualattraction, --to become a medium through which her spirit could pass fromits clay, and confer with the spirit to which the unutterable desirecompelled it. A faintness seized her; she tottered to the seat on whichthe vessels and herbs were placed, and, as she bent down, she saw in oneof the vessels a small vase of crystal. By a mechanical and involuntaryimpulse, her hand seized the vase; she opened it, and the volatileessence it contained sparkled up, and spread through the room a powerfuland delicious fragrance. She inhaled the odour, she laved her templeswith the liquid, and suddenly her life seemed to spring up from theprevious faintness, --to spring, to soar, to float, to dilate upon thewings of a bird. The room vanished from her eyes. Away, away, over landsand seas and space on the rushing desire flies the disprisoned mind!

Upon a stratum, not of this world, stood the world-born shapes of thesons of Science, upon an embryo world, upon a crude, wan, attenuatedmass of matter, one of the Nebulae, which the suns of the myriad systemsthrow off as they roll round the Creator's throne*, to become themselvesnew worlds of symmetry and glory, --planets and suns that forever andforever shall in their turn multiply their shining race, and be thefathers 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 andthousands of years can alone ripen into form, the spirit of Viola beheldthe shape of Zanoni, or rather the likeness, the simulacrun, the LEMURof his shape, not its human and corporeal substance, --as if, like hers, the Intelligence was parted from the Clay, --and as the sun, while itrevolves and glows, had cast off into remotest space that nebular imageof itself, so the thing of earth, in the action of its more luminous andenduring being, had thrown its likeness into that new-born stranger ofthe 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 hardeninginto mountains, and the Breath of Life moving like a steadfast splendourover all. 

As the dreamer looked, and shivered, she beheld that even there thetwo phantoms of humanity were not alone. Dim monster-forms that thatdisordered chaos alone could engender, the first reptile Colossal racethat wreathe and crawl through the earliest stratum of a world labouringinto life, coiled in the oozing matter or hovered through the meteorousvapours. But these the two seekers seemed not to heed; their gaze wasfixed intent upon an object in the farthest space. With the eyes of thespirit, Viola followed theirs; with a terror far greater than the chaosand its hideous inhabitants produced, she beheld a shadowy likenessof the very room in which her form yet dwelt, its white walls, themoonshine sleeping on its floor, its open casement, with the quiet roofsand domes of Venice looming over the sea that sighed below, --and in thatroom the ghost-like image of herself! This double phantom--here herselfa phantom, gazing there upon a phantom-self--had in it a horror which nowords can tell, no length of life forego. 

But presently she saw this image of herself rise slowly, leave the roomwith 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 cradlethere sits cowering a mantled, shadowy form, --the more fearful andghastly from its indistinct and unsubstantial gloom. The walls of thatchamber seem to open as the scene of a theatre. A grim dungeon; streetsthrough which pour shadowy crowds; wrath and hatred, and the aspectof demons in their ghastly visages; a place of death; a murderousinstrument; a shamble-house of human flesh; herself; her child;--all, all, rapid phantasmagoria, chased each other. Suddenly thephantom-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; thecradle 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 thouwilt know me as one of the dead. For thou that wert, and still art mylife, --I am lost to thee! O lover! O husband! O still worshipped andadored! if thou hast ever loved me, if thou canst still pity, seek notto discover the steps that fly thee. If thy charms can detect and tractme, spare me, spare our child! Zanoni, I will rear it to love thee, tocall thee father! Zanoni, its young lips shall pray for thee! Ah, sparethy child, for infants are the saints of earth, and their mediationmay be heard on high! Shall I tell thee why I part? No; thou, thewisely-terrible, canst divine what the hand trembles to record; andwhile I shudder at thy power, --while it is thy power I fly (our childupon my bosom), --it comforts me still to think that thy power can readthe heart! Thou knowest that it is the faithful mother that writesto 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 bethy comforter. But the child, the infant, the soul that looks to minefor 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 thevery strangeness of thine unearthly life only fascinate me with adelightful fear? Because, if thou wert sorcerer or angel-demon, therewas no peril to other but myself: and none to me, for my love was myheavenliest part; and my ignorance in all things, except the art to lovethee, repelled every thought that was not bright and glorious as thineimage to my eyes. But NOW there is another! Look! why does it watch methus, --why that never-sleeping, earnest, rebuking gaze? Have thy spellsencompassed it already? Hast thou marked it, cruel one, for the terrorsof thy unutterable art? Do not madden me, --do not madden me!--unbind thespell!

"Hark! the oars without! They come, --they come, to bear me from thee! Ilook round, and methinks that I see thee everywhere. Thou speakest tome from every shadow, from every star. There, by the casement, thy lipslast pressed mine; there, there by that threshold didst thou turn again, and thy smile seemed so trustingly to confide in me! Zanoni--husband!--Iwill stay! I cannot part from thee! No, no! I will go to the roomwhere thy dear voice, with its gentle music, assuaged the pangsof travail!--where, heard through the thrilling darkness, it firstwhispered to my ear, 'Viola, thou art a mother!' A mother!--yes, I risefrom my knees, --I AM a mother! They come! I am firm; farewell!"

Yes; thus suddenly, thus cruelly, whether in the delirium of blind andunreasoning superstition, or in the resolve of that conviction whichsprings from duty, the being for whom he had resigned so much of empireand of glory forsook Zanoni. This desertion, never foreseen, neveranticipated, was yet but the constant fate that attends those who wouldplace Mind BEYOND the earth, and yet treasure the Heart WITHIN it. Ignorance everlastingly shall recoil from knowledge. But never yet, fromnobler and purer motives of self-sacrifice, did human love link itselfto another, than did the forsaking wife now abandon the absent. Forrightly had she said that it was not the faithless wife, it WAS thefaithful mother that fled from all in which her earthly happiness wascentred. 

As long as the passion and fervour that impelled the act animatedher with false fever, she clasped her infant to her breast, and wasconsoled, --resigned. But what bitter doubt of her own conduct, what icypang of remorse shot through her heart, when, as they rested for afew hours on the road to Leghorn, she heard the woman who accompaniedherself and Glyndon pray for safety to reach her husband's side, and strength to share the perils that would meet her there! Terriblecontrast to her own desertion! She shrunk into the darkness of her ownheart, --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 ofwisdom!--out upon our ages of lore and life! To save her from Peril Ileft her presence, and the Peril has seized her in its grasp!"

"Chide not thy wisdom but thy passions! Abandon thine idle hope of thelove of woman. See, for those who would unite the lofty with the lowly, the inevitable curse; thy very nature uncomprehended, --thy sacrificesunguessed. The lowly one views but in the lofty a necromancer or afiend. Titan, canst thou weep?"

"I know it now, I see it all! It WAS her spirit that stood besideour own, and escaped my airy clasp! O strong desire of motherhoodand nature! unveiling all our secrets, piercing space and traversingworlds!--Mejnour, what awful learning lies hid in the ignorance of theheart that loves!"

"The heart, " answered the mystic, coldly; "ay, for five thousand years Ihave ransacked the mysteries of creation, but I have not yet discoveredall the wonders in the heart of the simplest boor!"

"Yet our solemn rites deceived us not; the prophet-shadows, dark withterror and red with blood, still foretold that, even in the dungeon, andbefore 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: Iwant thee not. I want now no other guide but the human instincts ofaffection. 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 returnbut to love and youth and hope! When have they ever failed to triumphand 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 thegush of a channel to Elysium. How burst into blossoming hopes fairhearts that had nourished themselves on the diamond dews of the rosydawn, when Liberty came from the dark ocean, and the arms of decrepitThraldom--Aurora from the bed of Tithon! Hopes! ye have ripened intofruit, and the fruit is gore and ashes! Beautiful Roland, eloquentVergniaud, visionary Condorcet, high-hearted Malesherbes!--wits, philosophers, statesmen, patriots, dreamers! behold the millennium forwhich ye dared and laboured!

I invoke the ghosts! Saturn hath devoured his children ("La Revolutionest comme Saturne, elle devorera tous ses enfans. "--Vergniaud. ), andlives alone, --I his true name of Moloch!

It is the Reign of Terror, with Robespierre the king. The strugglesbetween 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 alonecould have saved him. " From that hour, indeed, the blood of the deadgiant clouded the craft of "Maximilien the Incorruptible, " as at last, amidst the din of the roused Convention, it choked his voice. ("Le sangde Danton t'etouffe!" (the blood of Danton chokes thee!) said Garnierde l'Aube, when on the fatal 9th of Thermidor, Robespierre gasped feeblyforth, "Pour la derniere fois, President des Assassins, je te demandela parole. " (For the last time, President of Assassins, I demand tospeak. )) If, after that last sacrifice, essential, perhaps, to hissafety, Robespierre had proclaimed the close of the Reign of Terror, and acted upon the mercy which Danton had begun to preach, he might havelived and died a monarch. But the prisons continued to reek, --the glaiveto fall; and Robespierre perceived not that his mobs were glutted tosatiety with death, and the strongest excitement a chief could givewould be a return from devils into men. 

We are transported to a room in the house of Citizen Dupleix, themenuisier, in the month of July, 1794; or, in the calendar of theRevolutionists, it was the Thermidor of the Second Year of the Republic, One and Indivisible! Though the room was small, it was furnished anddecorated with a minute and careful effort at elegance and refinement. It seemed, indeed, the desire of the owner to avoid at once what wasmean and rude, and what was luxurious and voluptuous. It was a trim, orderly, precise grace that shaped the classic chairs, arranged theample draperies, sank the frameless mirrors into the wall, placed bustand bronze on their pedestals, and filled up the niches here and therewith well-bound books, filed regularly in their appointed ranks. Anobserver would have said, "This man wishes to imply to you, --I amnot rich; I am not ostentatious; I am not luxurious; I am no indolentSybarite, with couches of down, and pictures that provoke the sense;I am no haughty noble, with spacious halls, and galleries that awe theecho. But so much the greater is my merit if I disdain these excessesof 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 theirhabits; if I, with so much refinement and delicacy, am simple andhonest, --reflect, and admire me!"

On the walls of this chamber hung many portraits, most of themrepresented but one face; on the formal pedestals were grouped manybusts, most of them sculptured but one head. In that small chamberEgotism sat supreme, and made the Arts its looking-glasses. Erect ina chair, before a large table spread with letters, sat the original ofbust and canvas, the owner of the apartment. He was alone, yet he saterect, formal, stiff, precise, as if in his very home he was not atease. His dress was in harmony with his posture and his chamber; itaffected a neatness of its own, --foreign both to the sumptuous fashionsof the deposed nobles, and the filthy ruggedness of the sans-culottes. Frizzled and coiffe, not a hair was out of order, not a speck lodgedon the sleek surface of the blue coat, not a wrinkle crumpled the snowyvest, with its under-relief of delicate pink. At the first glance, youmight have seen in that face nothing but the ill-favoured features of asickly countenance; at a second glance, you would have perceived thatit had a power, a character of its own. The forehead, though low andcompressed, was not without that appearance of thought and intelligencewhich, it may be observed, that breadth between the eyebrows almostinvariably gives; the lips were firm and tightly drawn together, yetever and anon they trembled, and writhed restlessly. The eyes, sullenand gloomy, were yet piercing, and full of a concentrated vigour thatdid not seem supported by the thin, feeble frame, or the green lividnessof the hues, which told of anxiety and disease. 

Such was Maximilien Robespierre; such the chamber over the menuisier'sshop, whence issued the edicts that launched armies on their career ofglory, and ordained an artificial conduit to carry off the blood thatdeluged the metropolis of the most martial people in the globe! Such wasthe man who had resigned a judicial appointment (the early object ofhis ambition) rather than violate his philanthropical principles bysubscribing to the death of a single fellow-creature; such was thevirgin enemy to capital punishments; and such, Butcher-Dictator now, wasthe man whose pure and rigid manners, whose incorruptible honesty, whosehatred of the excesses that tempt to love and wine, would, had he diedfive years earlier, have left him the model for prudent fathers andcareful citizens to place before their sons. Such was the man who seemedto have no vice, till circumstance, that hotbed, brought forth the twowhich, in ordinary times, lie ever the deepest and most latent in aman's heart, --Cowardice and Envy. To one of these sources is to betraced every murder that master-fiend committed. His cowardice was ofa peculiar and strange sort; for it was accompanied with the mostunscrupulous and determined WILL, --a will that Napoleon reverenced;a will of iron, and yet nerves of aspen. Mentally, he was ahero, --physically, a dastard. When the veriest shadow of dangerthreatened his person, the frame cowered, but the will swept the dangerto the slaughter-house. So there he sat, bolt upright, --his small, leanfingers clenched convulsively; his sullen eyes straining into space, their whites yellowed with streaks of corrupt blood; his ears literallymoving to and fro, like the ignobler animals', to catch every sound, --aDionysius in his cave; but his posture decorous and collected, and everyformal hair in its frizzled place. 

"Yes, yes, " he said in a muttered tone, "I hear them; my good Jacobinsare at their post on the stairs. Pity they swear so! I have a lawagainst oaths, --the manners of the poor and virtuous people mustbe reformed. When all is safe, an example or two amongst those goodJacobins would make effect. Faithful fellows, how they love me!Hum!--what an oath was that!--they need not swear so loud, --upon thevery 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 hishand, a girdle adorned with pistols round his waist, opened the door, and announced two visitors. The one was a young man, said to resembleRobespierre in person, but of a far more decided and resolute expressionof countenance. He entered first, and, looking over the volume inRobespierre'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 butlived to see this day!"

While the Dictator thus commented on his favourite author, whom in hisorations he laboured hard to imitate, the second visitor was wheeledinto the room in a chair. This man was also in what, to most, is theprime of life, --namely, about thirty-eight; but he was literally dead inthe lower limbs: crippled, paralytic, distorted, he was yet, as the timesoon came to tell him, --a Hercules in Crime! But the sweetest of humansmiles dwelt upon his lips; a beauty almost angelic characterised hisfeatures ("Figure d'ange, " says one of his contemporaries, in describingCouthon. 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 DEVIVANS, mais qui les a brulants de patriotisme" (Couthon, that virtuouscitizen, who has but the head and the heart of the living, yet possessesthese all on flame with patriotism. )); an inexpressible aspect ofkindness, and the resignation of suffering but cheerful benignity, stoleinto the hearts of those who for the first time beheld him. With themost caressing, silver, flute-like voice, Citizen Couthon saluted theadmirer of Jean Jacques. 

"Nay, --do not say that it is not the LOVE that attracts thee; it IS thelove! but not the gross, sensual attachment of man for woman. No! thesublime affection for the whole human race, and indeed, for all thatlives!"

And Citizen Couthon, bending down, fondled the little spaniel that heinvariably carried in his bosom, even to the Convention, as a vent forthe exuberant sensibilities which overflowed his affectionate heart. (This tenderness for some pet animal was by no means peculiar toCouthon; it seems rather a common fashion with the gentle butchers ofthe Revolution. M. George Duval informs us ("Souvenirs de la Terreur, "volume iii page 183) that Chaumette had an aviary, to which he devotedhis harmless leisure; the murderous Fournier carried on his shoulders apretty little squirrel, attached by a silver chain; Panis bestowed thesuperfluity of his affections upon two gold pheasants; and Marat, whowould not abate one of the three hundred thousand heads he demanded, REARED DOVES! Apropos of the spaniel of Couthon, Duval gives us anamusing anecdote of Sergent, not one of the least relentless agents ofthe massacre of September. A lady came to implore his protection for oneof her relations confined in the Abbaye. He scarcely deigned to speak toher. As she retired in despair, she trod by accident on the paw ofhis 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 aremisrepresented! To be calumniated as the executioners of our colleagues!Ah, it is THAT which pierces the heart! To be an object of terror to theenemies of our country, --THAT is noble; but to be an object of terrorto the good, the patriotic, to those one loves and reveres, --THAT is themost terrible of human tortures at least, to a susceptible and honestheart!" (Not to fatigue the reader with annotations, I may here observethat nearly every sentiment ascribed in the text to Robespierre is to befound 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 hisbloodshot eyes. 

"The time has come, " said Payan, "when the safety of the Republicdemands a complete concentration of its power. These brawlers of theComite du Salut Public can only destroy; they cannot construct. Theyhated you, Maximilien, from the moment you attempted to replace anarcyby institutions. How they mock at the festival which proclaimed theacknowledgment of a Supreme Being: they would have no ruler, even inheaven! Your clear and vigorous intellect saw that, having wreckedan old world, it became necessary to shape a new one. The first steptowards construction must be to destroy the destroyers. While wedeliberate, your enemies act. Better this very night to attack thehandful of gensdarmes that guard them, than to confront the battalionsthey may raise to-morrow. "

"No, " said Robespierre, who recoiled before the determined spirit ofPayan; "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 FeteDecadaire. A mob shall form; the canonniers, the troops of Henriot, theyoung pupils de l'Ecole de Mars, shall mix in the crowd. Easy, then, tostrike the conspirators whom we shall designate to our agents. On thesame day, too, Fouquier and Dumas shall not rest; and a sufficientnumber of 'the suspect' to maintain salutary awe, and keep up therevolutionary excitement, shall perish by the glaive of the law. The10th 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 alonenever return. ' ('Frappons! il n'y a que les morts qui ne revientpas. '--Barrere. ) Vadier, the savage jester!--good--good! Vadier of theMountain. He has called me 'Mahomet!' Scelerat! blasphemer!"

"Mahomet is coming to the Mountain, " said Couthon, with his silveryaccent, as he caressed his spaniel. 

"But how is this? I do not see the name of Tallien? Tallien, --I hatethat man; that is, " said Robespierre, correcting himself with thehypocrisy or self-deceit which those who formed the council of thisphrase-monger exhibited habitually, even among themselves, --"that is, Virtue and our Country hate him! There is no man in the whole Conventionwho inspires me with the same horror as Tallien. Couthon, I see athousand Dantons where Tallien sits!"

"Tallien has the only head that belongs to this deformed body, " saidPayan, whose ferocity and crime, like those of St. Just, were notunaccompanied by talents of no common order. "Were it not better todraw away the head, to win, to buy him, for the time, and dispose of himbetter 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; "thatone head IS MY NECESSITY!"

"I have a SMALL list here, " said Couthon, sweetly, --"a VERY smalllist. You are dealing with the Mountain; it is necessary to make a fewexamples in the Plain. These moderates are as straws which follow thewind. They turned against us yesterday in the Convention. A littleterror will correct the weathercocks. Poor creatures! I owe them noill-will; I could weep for them. But before all, la chere patrie!"

The terrible glance of Robespierre devoured the list which the man ofsensibility submitted to him. "Ah, these are well chosen; men not ofmark enough to be regretted, which is the best policy with the relicsof that party; some foreigners too, --yes, THEY have no parents inParis. These wives and parents are beginning to plead against us. Theircomplaints demoralise the guillotine!"

"Couthon is right, " said Payan; "MY list contains those whom it will besafer to despatch en masse in the crowd assembled at the Fete. HIS listselects those whom we may prudently consign to the law. Shall it not besigned at once?"

"It IS signed, " said Robespierre, formally replacing his pen upon theinkstand. "Now to more important matters. These deaths will create noexcitement; but Collot d'Herbois, Bourdon De l'Oise, Tallien, " thelast name Robespierre gasped as he pronounced, "THEY are the heads ofparties. This is life or death to us as well as them. "

"Their heads are the footstools to your curule chair, " said Payan, ina half whisper. "There is no danger if we are bold. Judges, juries, allhave been your selection. You seize with one hand the army, with theother, 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 mustnot 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 judgeswho never acquit. We must be bold!"

"And we ARE bold, " exclaimed Robespierre, with sudden passion, andstriking his hand on the table as he rose, with his crest erect, as aserpent in the act to strike. "In seeing the multitude of vices thatthe revolutionary torrent mingles with civic virtues, I tremble to besullied in the eyes of posterity by the impure neighbourhood of theseperverse men who thrust themselves among the sincere defenders ofhumanity. What!--they think to divide the country like a booty! Ithank them for their hatred to all that is virtuous and worthy! Thesemen, "--and he grasped the list of Payan in his hand, --"these!--notWE--have drawn the line of demarcation between themselves and the loversof France!"

"True, we must reign alone!" muttered Payan; "in other words, the stateneeds unity of will;" working, with his strong practical mind, thecorollary from the logic of his word-compelling colleague. 

"I will go to the Convention, " continued Robespierre. "I have absentedmyself too long, --lest I might seem to overawe the Republic that I havecreated. Away with such scruples! I will prepare the people! I willblast the traitors with a look!"

He spoke with the terrible firmness of the orator that had neverfailed, --of the moral will that marched like a warrior on the cannon. Atthat instant he was interrupted; a letter was brought to him: he openedit, --his face fell, he shook from limb to limb; it was one of theanonymous warnings by which the hate and revenge of those yet left aliveto threaten tortured the death-giver. 

"Thou art smeared, " ran the lines, "with the best blood of France. Readthy sentence! I await the hour when the people shall knell thee to thedoomsman. If my hope deceive me, if deferred too long, --hearken, read!This hand, which thine eyes shall search in vain to discover, shallpierce thy heart. I see thee every day, --I am with thee every day. Ateach hour my arm rises against thy breast. Wretch! live yet awhile, though but for few and miserable days--live to think of me; sleep todream of me! Thy terror and thy thought of me are the heralds of thydoom. 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!--givethem 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, commondanger, common hatred, whatever was yet left of mercy or of virtuein the agents of the Revolution, served to unite strange opposites inhostility to the universal death-dealer. There was, indeed, an actualconspiracy at work against him among men little less bespattered thanhimself with innocent blood. But that conspiracy would have been idle ofitself, despite the abilities of Tallien and Barras (the only men whomit comprised, worthy, by foresight and energy, the names of "leaders"). The sure and destroying elements that gathered round the tyrant wereTime and Nature; the one, which he no longer suited; the other, whichhe had outraged and stirred up in the human breast. The most atrociousparty of the Revolution, the followers of Hebert, gone to his lastaccount, the butcher-atheists, who, in desecrating heaven and earth, still arrogated inviolable sanctity to themselves, were equally enragedat the execution of their filthy chief, and the proclamation of aSupreme Being. The populace, brutal as it had been, started as from adream of blood, when their huge idol, Danton, no longer filled thestage of terror, rendering crime popular by that combination of carelessfrankness and eloquent energy which endears their heroes to the herd. The glaive of the guillotine had turned against THEMSELVES. They hadyelled and shouted, and sung and danced, when the venerable age, or thegallant youth, of aristocracy or letters, passed by their streets inthe dismal tumbrils; but they shut up their shops, and murmured to eachother, when their own order was invaded, and tailors and cobblers, andjourneymen and labourers, were huddled off to the embraces of the "HolyMother Guillotine, " with as little ceremony as if they had been theMontmorencies 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 thefate of the atheist Hebert, was the painter, Jean Nicot. Mortified andenraged 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, moredespicable than he had been at the commencement, --not daring to exerciseeven his art, and fearful every hour that his name would swell the listsof the condemned, --he was naturally one of the bitterest enemies ofRobespierre and his government. He held secret meetings with Collotd'Herbois, who was animated by the same spirit; and with the creepingand 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 forthe grand explosion. But still so firm to the eyes, even of profounderpoliticians than Jean Nicot, appeared the sullen power of theincorruptible Maximilien; so timorous was the movement againsthim, --that Nicot, in common with many others, placed his hopes rather inthe dagger of the assassin than the revolt of the multitude. But Nicot, though not actually a coward, shrunk himself from braving the fate ofthe martyr; he had sense enough to see that, though all parties mightrejoice in the assassination, all parties would probably concur inbeheading the assassin. He had not the virtue to become a Brutus. His object was to inspire a proxy-Brutus; and in the centre of thatinflammable population this was no improbable hope. 

Amongst those loudest and sternest against the reign of blood; amongstthose most disenchanted of the Revolution; amongst those most appalledby its excesses, --was, as might be expected, the Englishman, ClarenceGlyndon. The wit and accomplishments, the uncertain virtues thathad lighted with fitful gleams the mind of Camille Desmoulins, hadfascinated Glyndon more than the qualities of any other agent in theRevolution. And when (for Camille Desmoulins had a heart, which seemeddead or dormant in most of his contemporaries) that vivid child ofgenius and of error, shocked at the massacre of the Girondins, andrepentant of his own efforts against them, began to rouse the serpentmalice of Robespierre by new doctrines of mercy and toleration, Glyndonespoused his views with his whole strength and soul. Camille Desmoulinsperished, and Glyndon, hopeless at once of his own life and the causeof humanity, from that time sought only the occasion of flight from thedevouring Golgotha. He had two lives to heed besides his own; for themhe trembled, and for them he schemed and plotted the means of escape. Though Glyndon hated the principles, the party (None were more opposedto the Hebertists than Camille Desmoulins and his friends. It is curiousand amusing to see these leaders of the mob, calling the mob "thepeople" one day, and the "canaille" the next, according as it suitsthem. "I know, " says Camille, "that they (the Hebertists) have all thecanaille with them. "--(Ils ont toute la canaille pour eux. )), and thevices of Nicot, he yet extended to the painter's penury the means ofsubsistence; and Jean Nicot, in return, designed to exalt Glyndonto that very immortality of a Brutus from which he modestly recoiledhimself. He founded his designs on the physical courage, on the wild andunsettled fancies of the English artist, and on the vehement hate andindignant loathing with which he openly regarded the government ofMaximilien. 

At the same hour, on the same day in July, in which Robespierreconferred (as we have seen) with his allies, two persons were seated ina small room in one of the streets leading out of the Rue St. Honore;the one, a man, appeared listening impatiently, and with a sullenbrow, to his companion, a woman of singular beauty, but with a boldand reckless expression, and her face as she spoke was animated by thepassions of a half-savage and vehement nature. 

"Englishman, " said the woman, "beware!--you know that, whether in flightor at the place of death, I would brave all to be by your side, --youknow THAT! Speak!"

"Well, Fillide; did I ever doubt your fidelity?"

"Doubt it you cannot, --betray it you may. You tell me that in flight youmust have a companion besides myself, and that companion is a female. Itshall not be!"

"Shall not!"

"It shall not!" repeated Fillide, firmly, and folding her arms acrossher breast. Before Glyndon could reply, a slight knock at the door washeard, 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 hissans-culotte fashion he strode towards the artist, his ragged hat on hishead, his hands in his pockets, and the beard of a week's growth uponhis chin, --"I cannot bid thee good-day; for while the tyrant lives, evilis every sun that sheds its beams on France. "

"It is true; what then? We have sown the wind, we must reap thewhirlwind. "

"And yet, " said Nicot, apparently not heeding the reply, and as ifmusingly to himself, "it is strange to think that the butcher is asmortal as the butchered; that his life hangs on as slight a thread; thatbetween the cuticle and the heart there is as short a passage, --that, inshort, one blow can free France and redeem mankind!"

Glyndon surveyed the speaker with a careless and haughty scorn, and madeno answer. 

"And, " proceeded Nicot, "I have sometimes looked round for the man bornfor this destiny, and whenever I have done so, my steps have led mehither!"

"Should they not rather have led thee to the side of MaximilienRobespierre?" said Glyndon, with a sneer. 

"No, " returned Nicot, coldly, --"no; for I am a 'suspect:' I could notmix with his train; I could not approach within a hundred yards of hisperson, but I should be seized; YOU, as yet, are safe. Hear me!"--andhis voice became earnest and expressive, --"hear me! There seems dangerin this action; there is none. I have been with Collot d'Herbois andBilaud-Varennes; they will hold him harmless who strikes the blow; thepopulace would run to thy support; the Convention would hail thee astheir 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 andthe Tyrant, and I will not be the last in the field; but liberty neveryet acknowledged a defender in a felon. "

There was something so brave and noble in Glyndon's voice, mien, andmanner, as he thus spoke, that Nicot at once was silenced; at once hesaw that he had misjudged the man. 

"No, " said Fillide, lifting her face from her hands, --"no! your friendhas a wiser scheme in preparation; he would leave you wolves to mangleeach other. He is right; but--"

"Flight!" exclaimed Nicot; "is it possible? Flight; how?--when?--by whatmeans? All France begirt with spies and guards! Flight! would to Heavenit were in our power!"

"Dost thou, too, desire to escape the blessed Revolution?"

"Desire! Oh!" cried Nicot, suddenly, and, falling down, he claspedGlyndon's knees, --"oh, save me with thyself! My life is a torture;every moment the guillotine frowns before me. I know that my hours arenumbered; I know that the tyrant waits but his time to write my namein his inexorable list; I know that Rene Dumas, the judge who neverpardons, has, from the first, resolved upon my death. Oh, Glyndon, byour old friendship, by our common art, by thy loyal English faith andgood 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 themeans, 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 themdespise me, provided that I dine. ), said he, when reproached for hisavarice. "

"Well?"

"By the help of this sturdy republican, who has friends enough in theComite, I have obtained the means necessary for flight; I have purchasedthem. 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 brieflyand rapidly detailed to him the plan proposed, and the disguises to beassumed conformably to the passports, and then added, "In return forthe service I render thee, grant me one favour, which I think is in thypower. 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, thouseemest never to believe in one kindly action, or one virtuous thought!"

Nicot bit his lip, and replied sullenly, "Experience is a greatundeceiver. Humph! What service can I do thee with regard to theItalian?"

"I have been accessory to her arrival in this city of snares andpitfalls. I cannot leave her alone amidst dangers from which neitherinnocence nor obscurity is a safeguard. In your blessed Republic, a goodand 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 mustshare our flight. "

"What so easy? I see your passports provide for her. "

"What so easy? What so difficult? This Fillide--would that I had neverseen her!--would that I had never enslaved my soul to my senses! Thelove 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 hearof a female companion; and when once she sees the beauty of Viola!--Itremble to think of it. She is capable of any excess in the storm of herpassions. "

"Aha, I know what such women are! My wife, Beatrice Sacchini, whom Itook from Naples, when I failed with this very Viola, divorced me whenmy money failed, and, as the mistress of a judge, passes me in hercarriage while I crawl through the streets. Plague on her!--butpatience, patience! such is the lot of virtue. Would I were Robespierrefor a day!"

"Cease these tirades!" exclaimed Glyndon, impatiently; "and to thepoint. What would you advise?"

"Leave your Fillide behind. "

"Leave her to her own ignorance; leave her unprotected even by themind; leave her in the Saturnalia of Rape and Murder? No! I have sinnedagainst her once. But come what may, I will not so basely desert onewho, 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 tobe so deep and faithful. I left her gold, and I imagined she would beeasily consoled; but since THEN WE HAVE KNOWN DANGER TOGETHER! And nowto leave her alone to that danger which she would never have incurredbut for devotion to me!--no, that is impossible. A project occurs tome. Canst thou not say that thou hast a sister, a relative, or abenefactress, whom thou wouldst save? Can we not--till we have leftFrance--make Fillide believe that Viola is one in whom THOU only artinterested; and whom, for thy sake only, I permit to share in ourescape?"

"Ha, well thought of!--certainly!"

"I will then appear to yield to Fillide's wishes, and resign theproject, which she so resents, of saving the innocent object of herfrantic jealousy. You, meanwhile, shall yourself entreat Fillide tointercede 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 ofthat 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 iswith 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, lestFillide 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, " hemuttered to himself, "can I not turn all this to my account? Can I notavenge myself on thee, Zanoni, as I have so often sworn, --through thywife and child? Can I not possess myself of thy gold, thy passports, and thy Fillide, hot Englishman, who wouldst humble me with thy loathedbenefits, and who hast chucked me thine alms as to a beggar? AndFillide, I love her: and thy gold, I love THAT more! Puppets, I moveyour strings!"

He passed slowly into the chamber where Fillide yet sat, with gloomythought on her brow and tears standing in her dark eyes. She looked upeagerly as the door opened, and turned from the rugged face of Nicotwith an impatient movement of disappointment. 

"Glyndon, " said the painter, drawing a chair to Fillide's, "has left meto enliven your solitude, fair Italian. He is not jealous of the uglyNicot!--ha, ha!--yet Nicot loved thee well once, when his fortunes weremore 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 seemedto 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 lengthshe stopped opposite to Nicot, laid her hand on his arm, drew himtowards an escritoire, which she unlocked, and, opening a well, pointedto the gold that lay within, and said, "Thou art poor, --thou lovestmoney; take what thou wilt, but undeceive me. Who is this woman whom thyfriend visits, --and does he love her?"

Nicot's eyes sparkled, and his hands opened and clenched, and clenchedand opened, as he gazed upon the coins. But reluctantly resisting theimpulse, he said, with an affected bitterness, "Thinkest thou to bribeme?--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 designsin his flight to leave thee behind, --would such knowledge make theehappier?"

"Yes!" exclaimed the Italian, fiercely; "yes, for it would be happinessto hate and to be avenged! Oh, thou knowest not how sweet is hatred tothose who have really loved!"

"But wilt thou swear, if I reveal to thee the secret, that thou wilt notbetray me, --that thou wilt not fall, as women do, into weak tears andfond reproaches, when thy betrayer returns?"

"Tears, reproaches! Revenge hides itself in smiles!"

"Thou art a brave creature!" said Nicot, almost admiringly. "Onecondition more: thy lover designs to fly with his new love, to leavethee to thy fate; if I prove this to thee, and if I give thee revengeagainst thy rival, wilt thou fly with me? I love thee!--I will wedthee!"

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 partof our nature which his own heart and association with crime had taughthim, he resolved to trust the rest to the passions of the Italian, whenraised to the height to which he was prepared to lead them. 

"Pardon me, " he said; "my love made me too presumptuous; and yet it isonly that love, --my sympathy for thee, beautiful and betrayed, that caninduce me to wrong, with my revelations, one whom I have regarded as abrother. 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 wasmuch, --much more than he had dared to hope for; and as he peered intothe well and opened the drawers, he perceived a packet of letters in thewell-known hand of Camille Desmoulins. He seized--he opened the packet;his looks brightened as he glanced over a few sentences. "This wouldgive fifty Glyndons to the guillotine!" he muttered, and thrust thepacket into his bosom. 

O artist!--O haunted one!--O erring genius!--behold the two worstfoes, --the False Ideal that knows no God, and the False Love that burnsfrom 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 inGreece, how we two, in the vast Athenian Theatre, witnessed the birth ofWords as undying as ourselves? Dost thou remember the thrill of terrorthat ran through that mighty audience, when the wild Cassandra burstfrom her awful silence to shriek to her relentless god! How ghastly, atthe entrance of the House of Atreus, about to become her tomb, rang outher exclamations of foreboding woe: "Dwelling abhorred of heaven!--humanshamble-house and floor blood-bespattered!" (Aesch. "Agam. " 1098. )Dost thou remember how, amidst the breathless awe of those assembledthousands, I drew close to thee, and whispered, "Verily, no prophet likethe poet! This scene of fabled horror comes to me as a dream, shadowingforth some likeness in my own remoter future!" As I enter thisslaughter-house that scene returns to me, and I hearken to the voice ofCassandra ringing in my ears. A solemn and warning dread gathers roundme, 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 ofvicissitude and woe are our memories become! What our lives, but thechronicles of unrelenting death! It seems to me as yesterday when Istood in the streets of this city of the Gaul, as they shone with plumedchivalry, and the air rustled with silken braveries. Young Louis, themonarch and the lover, was victor of the Tournament at the Carousel; andall France felt herself splendid in the splendour of her gorgeous chief!Now there is neither throne nor altar; and what is in their stead? Isee it yonder--the GUILLOTINE! It is dismal to stand amidst the ruinsof mouldering cities, to startle the serpent and the lizard amidstthe wrecks of Persepolis and Thebes; but more dismal still to stand asI--the stranger from Empires that have ceased to be--stand now amidstthe yet ghastlier ruins of Law and Order, the shattering of mankindthemselves! Yet here, even here, Love, the Beautifier, that hath led mysteps, can walk with unshrinking hope through the wilderness of Death. Strange is the passion that makes a world in itself, that individualisesthe One amidst the Multitude; that, through all the changes of my solemnlife, yet survives, though ambition and hate and anger are dead; the onesolitary angel, hovering over a universe of tombs on its two tremulousand human wings, --Hope and Fear!

How is it, Mejnour, that, as my diviner art abandoned me, --as, in mysearch for Viola, I was aided but by the ordinary instincts of themerest mortal, --how is it that I have never desponded, that I have feltin every difficulty the prevailing prescience that we should meet atlast? So cruelly was every vestige of her flight concealed fromme, --so suddenly, so secretly had she fled, that all the spies, all theauthorities of Venice, could give me no clew. All Italy I searched invain! Her young home at Naples!--how still, in its humble chambers, there seemed to linger the fragrance of her presence! All the sublimestsecrets of our lore failed me, --failed to bring her soul visible tomine; yet morning and night, thou lone and childless one, morning andnight, detached from myself, I can commune with my child! There in thatmost blessed, typical, and mysterious of all relations, Nature herselfappears to supply what Science would refuse. Space cannot separate thefather's watchful soul from the cradle of his first-born! I know not ofits resting-place and home, --my visions picture not the land, --only thesmall and tender life to which all space is as yet the heritage! For tothe infant, before reason dawns, --before man's bad passions can dimthe essence that it takes from the element it hath left, there is nopeculiar country, no native city, and no mortal language. Its soul asyet is the denizen of all airs and of every world; and in space itssoul meets with mine, --the child communes with the father! Cruel andforsaking one, --thou for whom I left the wisdom of the spheres;thou whose fatal dower has been the weakness and terrors ofhumanity, --couldst thou think that young soul less safe on earth becauseI would lead it ever more up to heaven! Didst thou think that I couldhave wronged mine own? Didst thou not know that in its serenest eyes thelife that I gave it spoke to warn, to upbraid the mother who would bindit to the darkness and pangs of the prison-house of clay? Didst thounot feel that it was I who, permitted by the Heavens, shielded it fromsuffering and disease? And in its wondrous beauty, I blessed the holymedium through which, at last, my spirit might confer with thine!

And how have I tracked them hither? I learned that thy pupil had been atVenice. I could not trace the young and gentle neophyte of Parthenope inthe description of the haggard and savage visitor who had come to Violabefore she fled; but when I would have summoned his IDEA before me, itrefused to obey; and I knew then that his fate had become entwined withViola's. I have tracked him, then, to this Lazar House. I arrived butyesterday; I have not yet discovered him. 

. .. . 

I have just returned from their courts of justice, --dens where tigersarraign their prey. I find not whom I would seek. They are saved asyet; but I recognise in the crimes of mortals the dark wisdom of theEverlasting. Mejnour, I see here, for the first time, how majestic andbeauteous a thing is death! Of what sublime virtues we robbed ourselves, when, in the thirst for virtue, we attained the art by which we canrefuse 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 noblepursuit of knowledge, Death comes to the student, and shuts out theenchanted land which was opening to his gaze, --how natural for us todesire to live; how natural to make perpetual life the first object ofresearch! But here, from my tower of time, looking over the darksomepast, and into the starry future, I learn how great hearts feel whatsweetness and glory there is to die for the things they love! I sawa father sacrificing himself for his son; he was subjected to chargeswhich a word of his could dispel, --he was mistaken for his boy. Withwhat joy he seized the error, confessed the noble crimes of valourand 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 sawwomen, young, delicate, in the bloom of their beauty; they had vowedthemselves to the cloister. Hands smeared with the blood of saintsopened the gate that had shut them from the world, and bade them goforth, forget their vows, forswear the Divine one these demons woulddepose, find lovers and helpmates, and be free. And some of these younghearts had loved, and even, though in struggles, loved yet. Did theyforswear the vow? Did they abandon the faith? Did even love allure them?Mejnour, with one voice, they preferred to die. And whence comes thiscourage?--because such HEARTS LIVE IN SOME MORE ABSTRACT AND HOLIERLIFE THAN THEIR OWN. BUT TO LIVE FOREVER UPON THIS EARTH IS TO LIVE INNOTHING 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 sweetchild! Dost thou not know me also in thy dreams? Dost thou not feel thebeating of my heart through the veil of thy rosy slumbers? Dost thounot hear the wings of the brighter beings that I yet can conjure aroundthee, to watch, to nourish, and to save? And when the spell fades at thywaking, when thine eyes open to the day, will they not look round forme, and ask thy mother, with their mute eloquence, "Why she has robbedthee of a father?"

Woman, dost thou not repent thee? Flying from imaginary fears, hastthou not come to the very lair of terror, where Danger sits visibleand incarnate? Oh, if we could but meet, wouldst thou not fall upon thebosom thou hast so wronged, and feel, poor wanderer amidst the storms, as if thou hadst regained the shelter? Mejnour, still my researchesfail me. I mingle with all men, even their judges and their spies, butI cannot yet gain the clew. I know that she is here. I know it by aninstinct; 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 Onethat dwells on the Threshold, and whose victims are the souls that wouldASPIRE, and can only FEAR. I see its dim shapelessness going before themen of blood, and marshalling their way. Robespierre passed me with hisfurtive step. Those eyes of horror were gnawing into his heart. I lookeddown 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 truthare these would-be builders of a new world? Like the students who havevainly struggled after our supreme science, they have attempted what isbeyond their power; they have passed from this solid earth of usages andforms into the land of shadow, and its loathsome keeper has seized themas its prey. I looked into the tyrant's shuddering soul, as it trembledpast me. There, amidst the ruins of a thousand systems which aimed atvirtue, sat Crime, and shivered at its desolation. Yet this man is theonly Thinker, the only Aspirant, amongst them all. He still looks fora future of peace and mercy, to begin, --ay! at what date? When he hasswept 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 humanitiesof love shut out even from the dreams of aerial and spiritual beauty, making thy heart a universe of visions fairer than the wanderer over therosy Hesperus can survey, --shall not the same pure affection encompassthee, even here, with a charmed atmosphere, and terror itself fallharmless 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 withschemes. Black Henriot flies here and there, muttering to his armedtroops, "Robespierre, your beloved, is in danger!" Robespierre stalksperturbed, his list of victims swelling every hour. Tallien, the Macduffto the doomed Macbeth, is whispering courage to his pale conspirators. Along the streets heavily roll the tumbrils. The shops are closed, --thepeople are gorged with gore, and will lap no more. And night afternight, to the eighty theatres flock the children of the Revolution, tolaugh 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, watchingover her child. It is quiet, happy noon; the sunlight, broken by thetall roofs in the narrow street, comes yet through the open casement, the impartial playfellow of the air, gleesome alike in temple andprison, hall and hovel; as golden and as blithe, whether it laugh overthe first hour of life, or quiver in its gay delight on the terrorand 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 thatrevelled in the beam. The mother turned her eyes from the glory; itsaddened her yet more. She turned and sighed. 

Is this the same Viola who bloomed fairer than their own Idalia underthe 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 lipswas gone. A heavy, dull despondency, as if the life of life were nomore, seemed to weigh down her youth, and make it weary of that happysun! In truth, her existence had languished away since it had wandered, as some melancholy stream, from the source that fed it. The suddenenthusiasm of fear or superstition that had almost, as if still in theunconscious movements of a dream, led her to fly from Zanoni, had ceasedfrom the day which dawned upon her in a foreign land. Then--there--shefelt that in the smile she had evermore abandoned lived her life. Shedid not repent, --she would not have recalled the impulse that winged herflight. Though the enthusiasm was gone, the superstition yet remained;she still believed she had saved her child from that dark and guiltysorcery, concerning which the traditions of all lands are prodigal, butin none do they find such credulity, or excite such dread, as inthe South of Italy. This impression was confirmed by the mysteriousconversations of Glyndon, and by her own perception of the fearfulchange that had passed over one who represented himself as the victimof the enchanters. She did not, therefore, repent; but her very volitionseemed gone. 

On their arrival at Paris, Viola saw her companion--the faithfulwife--no more. Ere three weeks were passed, husband and wife had ceasedto live. 

And now, for the first time, the drudgeries of this hard earth claimedthe beautiful Neapolitan. In that profession, giving voice and shape topoetry and song, in which her first years were passed, there is, whileit lasts, an excitement in the art that lifts it from the labour of acalling. Hovering between two lives, the Real and Ideal, dwells the lifeof music and the stage. But that life was lost evermore to the idol ofthe eyes and ears of Naples. Lifted to the higher realm of passionatelove, it seemed as if the fictitious genius which represents thethoughts of others was merged in the genius that grows all thoughtitself. It had been the worst infidelity to the Lost, to have descendedagain to live on the applause of others. And so--for she would notaccept alms from Glyndon--so, by the commonest arts, the humblestindustry which the sex knows, alone and unseen, she who had slept on thebreast of Zanoni found a shelter for their child. As when, in thenoble verse prefixed to this chapter, Armida herself has destroyed herenchanted palace, --not a vestige of that bower, raised of old by Poetryand Love, remained to say, "It had been!"

And the child avenged the father; it bloomed, it thrived, --it waxedstrong in the light of life. But still it seemed haunted and preservedby some other being than her own. In its sleep there was that slumber, so deep and rigid, which a thunderbolt could not have disturbed; andin such sleep often it moved its arms, as to embrace the air: often itslips stirred with murmured sounds of indistinct affection, --NOT FOR HER;and all the while upon its cheeks a hue of such celestial bloom, uponits lips a smile of such mysterious joy! Then, when it waked, its eyesdid not turn first to HER, --wistful, earnest, wandering, they rovedaround, 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; howthought, feeling, heart, soul, life, --all lay crushed and dormant inthe icy absence to which she had doomed herself! She heard not theroar without, she felt not one amidst those stormy millions, --worldsof excitement labouring through every hour. Only when Glyndon, haggard, wan, and spectre-like, glided in, day after day, to visit her, did thefair daughter of the careless South know how heavy and universal wasthe Death-Air that girt her round. Sublime in her passiveunconsciousness, --her mechanic life, --she sat, and feared not, in theden of the Beasts of Prey. 

The door of the room opened abruptly, and Glyndon entered. His mannerwas more agitated than usual. 

"Is it you, Clarence?" she said in her soft, languid tones. "You arebefore the hour I expected you. "

"Who can count on his hours at Paris?" returned Glyndon, with afrightful smile. "Is it not enough that I am here! Your apathy in themidst of these sorrows appalls me. You say calmly, 'Farewell;' calmlyyou bid me, 'Welcome!'--as if in every corner there was not a spy, andas if with every day there was not a massacre!"

"Pardon me! But in these walls lies my world. I can hardly credit allthe tales you tell me. Everything here, save THAT, " and she pointedto the infant, "seems already so lifeless, that in the tomb itself onecould scarcely less heed the crimes that are done without. "

Glyndon paused for a few moments, and gazed with strange and mingledfeelings upon that face and form, still so young, and yet so investedwith that saddest of all repose, --when the heart feels old. 

"O Viola, " said he, at last, and in a voice of suppressed passion, "wasit thus I ever thought to see you, --ever thought to feel for you, whenwe two first met in the gay haunts of Naples? Ah, why then did yourefuse my love; or why was mine not worthy of you? Nay, shrink not!--letme touch your hand. No passion so sweet as that youthful love can returnto me again. I feel for you but as a brother for some younger and lonelysister. With you, in your presence, sad though it be, I seem to breatheback the purer air of my early life. Here alone, except in scenes ofturbulence and tempest, the Phantom ceases to pursue me. I forget eventhe Death that stalks behind, and haunts me as my shadow. But betterdays may be in store for us yet. Viola, I at last begin dimly toperceive how to baffle and subdue the Phantom that has cursed mylife, --it is to brave, and defy it. In sin and in riot, as I have toldthee, it haunts me not. But I comprehend now what Mejnour said in hisdark apothegms, 'that I should dread the spectre most WHEN UNSEEN. ' Invirtuous and calm resolution it appears, --ay, I behold it now; there, there, with its livid eyes!"--and the drops fell from his brow. "Butit shall no longer daunt me from that resolution. I face it, and itgradually darkens back into the shade. " He paused, and his eyes dweltwith a terrible exultation upon the sunlit space; then, with a heavy anddeep-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 comforteach other, and forget the past. "

"No, " said Viola, calmly; "I have no further wish to stir, till I amborn 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 againbefore I die. "

"Talk not of him, --of the demi-fiend!" cried Glyndon, fiercely, andstamping his foot. "Thank the Heavens for any fate that hath rescuedthee from him!"

"Hush!" said Viola, gravely. And as she was about to proceed, her eyefell upon the child. It was standing in the very centre of that slantingcolumn of light which the sun poured into the chamber; and the raysseemed to surround it as a halo, and settled, crown-like, on the goldof its shining hair. In its small shape, so exquisitely modelled, in itslarge, steady, tranquil eyes, there was something that awed, while itcharmed the mother's pride. It gazed on Glyndon as he spoke, with alook which almost might have seemed disdain, and which Viola, at least, interpreted as a defence of the Absent, stronger than her own lips couldframe. 

Glyndon broke the pause. 

"Thou wouldst stay, for what? To betray a mother's duty! If any evilhappen to thee here, what becomes of thine infant? Shall it be broughtup an orphan, in a country that has desecrated thy religion, and wherehuman charity exists no more? Ah, weep, and clasp it to thy bosom; buttears 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 necessarydisguises. "

And Glyndon then proceeded to sketch rapidly the outline of the paththey were to take, and the story they were to tell. Viola listened, butscarcely 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 formscrouching by the angle of the wall. He saw still the spectre gliding byhis side; but he beheld not the yet more poisonous eyes of human envyand woman's jealousy that glared on his retreating footsteps. 

Nicot advanced to the house; Fillide followed him in silence. Thepainter, an old sans-culotte, knew well what language to assume to theporter. 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 cannotbe 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 inwork, 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 doorindicated by the porter; it stood ajar, she entered, she stood at thethreshold, and beheld that face, still so lovely! The sight of so muchbeauty left her hopeless. And the child, over whom the mother bent!--shewho had never been a mother!--she uttered no sound; the furies were atwork within her breast. Viola turned, and saw her, and, terrified by thestrange apparition, with features that expressed the deadliest hate andscorn and vengeance, uttered a cry, and snatched the child to her bosom. The Italian laughed aloud, --turned, descended, and, gaining the spotwhere Nicot still conversed with the frightened porter drew him from thehouse. 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 withme to-morrow night; thou wilt possess thyself of the passports and theplan. "

"And they--"

"Shall, before then, find their asylum in the Conciergerie. Theguillotine 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 thebelief of Glyndon's love had once made a paradise, the tiger relented atthe heart; something of the woman gushed back upon her nature, dark andsavage as it was. She pressed the arm on which she leaned convulsively, and exclaimed, "No, no! not him! denounce her, --let her perish; but Ihave slept on HIS bosom, --not HIM!"

"It shall be as thou wilt, " said Nicot, with a devil's sneer; "but hemust be arrested for the moment. No harm shall happen to him, for noaccuser shall appear. But her, --thou wilt not relent for her?"

Fillide turned upon him her eyes, and their dark glance was sufficientanswer. 

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 withher country and her sex. Not a word, not a look, that day revealed toGlyndon the deadly change that had converted devotion into hate. Hehimself, indeed, absorbed in his own schemes, and in reflections on hisown strange destiny, was no nice observer. But her manner, milderand more subdued than usual, produced a softening effect upon hismeditations towards the evening; and he then began to converse with heron the certain hope of escape, and on the future that would await themin less unhallowed lands. 

"And thy fair friend, " said Fillide, with an averted eye and a falsesmile, "who was to be our companion?--thou hast resigned her, Nicottells me, in favour of one in whom he is interested. Is it so?"

"He told thee this!" returned Glyndon, evasively. "Well! does the changecontent thee?"

"Traitor!" muttered Fillide; and she rose suddenly, approached him, parted the long hair from his forehead caressingly, and pressed her lipsconvulsively on his brow. 

"This were too fair a head for the doomsman, " said she, with a slightlaugh, and, turning away, appeared occupied in preparations for theirdeparture. 

The next morning, when he rose, Glyndon did not see the Italian; she wasabsent from the house when he left it. It was necessary that he shouldonce more visit C-- before his final Departure, not only to arrange forNicot's participation in the flight, but lest any suspicion should havearisen to thwart or endanger the plan he had adopted. C--, though notone of the immediate coterie of Robespierre, and indeed secretly hostileto him, had possessed the art of keeping well with each faction asit rose to power. Sprung from the dregs of the populace, he had, nevertheless, the grace and vivacity so often found impartially amongstevery class in France. He had contrived to enrich himself--none knewhow--in the course of his rapid career. He became, indeed, ultimatelyone of the wealthiest proprietors of Paris, and at that time kept asplendid and hospitable mansion. He was one of those whom, from variousreasons, Robespierre deigned to favour; and he had often saved theproscribed and suspected, by procuring them passports under disguisednames, and advising their method of escape. But C-- was a man who tookthis trouble only for the rich. "The incorruptible Maximilien, " who didnot want the tyrant's faculty of penetration, probably saw through allhis manoeuvres, and the avarice which he cloaked beneath his charity. But it was noticeable that Robespierre frequently seemed to winkat--nay, partially to encourage--such vice in men whom he meanthereafter to destroy, as would tend to lower them in the publicestimation, and to contrast with his own austere and unassailableintegrity and PURISM. And, doubtless, he often grimly smiled in hissleeve at the sumptuous mansion and the griping covetousness of theworthy Citizen C--. 

To this personage, then, Glyndon musingly bent his way. It was true, ashe had darkly said to Viola, that in proportion as he had resisted thespectre, its terrors had lost their influence. The time had come atlast, when, seeing crime and vice in all their hideousness, and in sovast a theatre, he had found that in vice and crime there are deadlierhorrors than in the eyes of a phantom-fear. His native nobleness beganto return to him. As he passed the streets, he revolved in his mindprojects of future repentance and reformation. He even meditated, as ajust return for Fillide's devotion, the sacrifice of all the reasoningsof his birth and education. He would repair whatever errors he hadcommitted against her, by the self-immolation of marriage with onelittle congenial with himself. He who had once revolted from marriagewith the noble and gentle Viola!--he had learned in that world of wrongto know that right is right, and that Heaven did not make the one sex tobe the victim of the other. The young visions of the Beautiful and theGood rose once more before him; and along the dark ocean of his mind laythe 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 ofthe friend he was about to betray, took his way to the house honouredby the residence of Robespierre. He had no intention to comply with therelenting 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, withsufficient pains to attain a certain degree of excellence, there must bea fund of energy immeasurably above that of the ordinary herd. Usuallythis energy is concentrated on the objects of their professionalambition, and leaves them, therefore, apathetic to the other pursuitsof men. But where those objects are denied, where the stream has not itslegitimate vent, the energy, irritated and aroused, possesses the wholebeing, and if not wasted on desultory schemes, or if not purified byconscience and principle, becomes a dangerous and destructive element inthe social system, through which it wanders in riot and disorder. Hence, in all wise monarchies, --nay, in all well-constituted states, --thepeculiar care with which channels are opened for every art and everyscience; hence the honour paid to their cultivators by subtle andthoughtful statesmen, who, perhaps, for themselves, see nothing in apicture but coloured canvas, --nothing in a problem but an ingeniouspuzzle. No state is ever more in danger than when the talent that shouldbe consecrated to peace has no occupation but political intrigue orpersonal advancement. Talent unhonoured is talent at war with men. Andhere it is noticeable, that the class of actors having been the mostdegraded by the public opinion of the old regime, their very dustdeprived of Christian burial, no men (with certain exceptions in thecompany especially favoured by the Court) were more relentless andrevengeful among the scourges of the Revolution. In the savage Collotd'Herbois, mauvais comedien, were embodied the wrongs and the vengeanceof a class. 

Now the energy of Jean Nicot had never been sufficiently directed tothe art he professed. Even in his earliest youth, the politicaldisquisitions of his master, David, had distracted him from the moretedious labours of the easel. The defects of his person had embitteredhis mind; the atheism of his benefactor had deadened his conscience. For one great excellence of religion--above all, the Religion of theCross--is, that it raises PATIENCE first into a virtue, and next into ahope. Take away the doctrine of another life, of requital hereafter, ofthe smile of a Father upon our sufferings and trials in our ordeal here, and what becomes of patience? But without patience, what is man?--andwhat a people? Without patience, art never can be high; withoutpatience, liberty never can be perfected. By wild throes, and impetuous, aimless struggles, Intellect seeks to soar from Penury, and a nationto struggle into Freedom. And woe, thus unfortified, guideless, andunenduring, --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 truedelineator of mankind often incurs the taunt of bad hearts and dullminds, 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 someadulteration of the dross. But there are exceptions, though few, to thegeneral rule, --exceptions, when the conscience lies utterly dead, andwhen good or bad are things indifferent but as means to some selfishend. So was it with the protege of the atheist. Envy and hate filled uphis whole being, and the consciousness of superior talent only made himcurse the more all who passed him in the sunlight with a fairer form orhappier fortunes. But, monster though he was, when his murderous fingersgriped the throat of his benefactor, Time, and that ferment of all evilpassions--the Reign of Blood--had made in the deep hell of his heart adeeper still. Unable to exercise his calling (for even had he dared tomake his name prominent, revolutions are no season for painters; and noman--no! not the richest and proudest magnate of the land, has so greatan interest in peace and order, has so high and essential a stake in thewell being of society, as the poet and the artist), his whole intellect, ever restless and unguided, was left to ponder over the images of guiltmost congenial to it. He had no future but in this life; and how in thislife had the men of power around him, the great wrestlers for dominion, thriven? All that was good, pure, unselfish, --whether among Royalists orRepublicans, --swept to the shambles, and the deathsmen left alone in thepomp and purple of their victims! Nobler paupers than Jean Nicot woulddespair; and Poverty would rise in its ghastly multitudes to cut thethroat of Wealth, and then gash itself limb by limb, if Patience, theAngel of the Poor, sat not by its side, pointing with solemn finger tothe life to come! And now, as Nicot neared the house of the Dictator, hebegan to meditate a reversal of his plans of the previous day: notthat he faltered in his resolution to denounce Glyndon, and Viola wouldnecessarily share his fate, as a companion and accomplice, --no, THEREhe was resolved! for he hated both (to say nothing of his old butnever-to-be-forgotten grudge against Zanoni). Viola had scorned him, Glyndon had served, and the thought of gratitude was as intolerableto him as the memory of insult. But why, now, should he fly fromFrance?--he could possess himself of Glyndon's gold; he doubted notthat he could so master Fillide by her wrath and jealousy that hecould command her acquiescence in all he proposed. The papers he hadpurloined--Desmoulins' correspondence with Glyndon--while it insured thefate of the latter, might be eminently serviceable to Robespierre, mightinduce the tyrant to forget his own old liaisons with Hebert, andenlist him among the allies and tools of the King of Terror. Hopesof advancement, of wealth, of a career, again rose before him. Thiscorrespondence, dated shortly before Camille Desmoulins' death, waswritten with that careless and daring imprudence which characterised thespoiled child of Danton. It spoke openly of designs against Robespierre;it named confederates whom the tyrant desired only a popular pretextto crush. It was a new instrument of death in the hands of theDeath-compeller. What greater gift could he bestow on Maximilien theIncorruptible?

Nursing these thoughts, he arrived at last before the door of CitizenDupleix. Around the threshold were grouped, in admired confusion, some eight or ten sturdy Jacobins, the voluntary body-guard ofRobespierre, --tall fellows, well armed, and insolent with the power thatreflects 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 itseem, was the idol of the sex!

Through this cortege stationed without the door, and reaching up thestairs to the landing-place, --for Robespierre's apartments were notspacious enough to afford sufficient antechamber for levees so numerousand miscellaneous, --Nicot forced his way; and far from friendly orflattering were the expressions that regaled his ears. 

"Aha, le joli Polichinelle!" said a comely matron, whose robe hisobtrusive and angular elbows cruelly discomposed. "But how could oneexpect gallantry from such a scarecrow!"

"Citizen, I beg to advise thee (The courteous use of the plural wasproscribed at Paris. The Societies Populaires had decided that whoeverused it should be prosecuted as suspect et adulateur! At the door ofthe public administrations and popular societies was written up, "Ici ons'honore du Citoyen, et on se tutoye"!!! ("Here they respect the titleof Citizen, and they 'thee' and 'thou' one another. ") Take away Murderfrom the French Revolution and it becomes the greatest farce ever playedbefore 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 formidablebludgeon, "and what brings thee hither?--thinkest thou that Hebert'scrimes are forgotten already? Off, sport of Nature! and thank the EtreSupreme 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 sothat his words seemed to come from grinded teeth, "I have the honourto inform you that I seek the Representant upon business of theutmost importance to the public and himself; and, " he added slowly andmalignantly, glaring round, "I call all good citizens to be my witnesseswhen I shall complain to Robespierre of the reception bestowed on me bysome amongst you. "

There was in the man's look and his tone of voice so much of deepand concentrated malignity, that the idlers drew back, and as theremembrance of the sudden ups and downs of revolutionary life occurredto them, several voices were lifted to assure the squalid and raggedpainter that nothing was farther from their thoughts than to offeraffront to a citizen whose very appearance proved him to be an exemplarysans-culotte. Nicot received these apologies in sullen silence, and, folding his arms, leaned against the wall, waiting in grim patience forhis 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 ofthe tall Jacobin who stood guard by the stairs. Next to Nicot, an oldwoman and a young virgin were muttering in earnest whispers, and theatheist painter chuckled inly to overhear their discourse. 

"I assure thee, my dear, " said the crone, with a mysterious shake ofhead, "that the divine Catherine Theot, whom the impious now persecute, is really inspired. There can be no doubt that the elect, of whom DomGerle and the virtuous Robespierre are destined to be the two grandprophets, will enjoy eternal life here, and exterminate all theirenemies. There is no doubt of it, --not the least!"

"How delightful!" said the girl; "ce cher Robespierre!--he does not lookvery 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 shouldbe one of the elect!"

Here the women were jostled aside by some newcomers, who talked loud andeagerly. 

"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 warnRobespierre. They lay a snare for him; they offer him the PalaisNational. 'On ne peut etre ami du peuple et habiter un palais. '" ("Noone can be a friend of the people, and dwell in a palace. "--"Papiersinedits trouves chez Robespierre, " etc. , volume ii. Page 132. )

"No, indeed, " answered a cordonnier; "I like him best in his littlelodging with the menuisier: it looks like one of US. "

Another rush of the crowd, and a new group were thrown forward in thevicinity of Nicot. And these men gabbled and chattered faster and louderthan 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 methodof making gunpowder, the enemies of France shall--"

"Bah! who fears foreign enemies?" interrupted a fourth; "the enemiesto be feared are at home. MY new guillotine takes off fifty heads at atime!"

"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 tothe chin, his sword rattling by his side, his spurs clinking athis heel, descended the stairs, --his cheeks swollen and purple withintemperance, his eyes dead and savage as a vulture's. There was a stillpause, as all, with pale cheeks, made way for the relentless Henriot. (Or H_a_nriot. It is singular how undetermined are not only thecharacters of the French Revolution, but even the spelling of theirnames. With the historians it is Vergniau_d_, --with the journalists ofthe time it is Vorgniau_x_. With one authority it is Robespierre, --withanother Robe_r_spierre. ) Scarce had this gruff and iron minion of thetyrant stalked through the throng, than a new movement of respect andagitation and fear swayed the increasing crowd, as there glided in, withthe noiselessness of a shadow, a smiling, sober citizen, plainly butneatly clad, with a downcast humble eye. A milder, meeker face nopastoral poet could assign to Corydon or Thyrsis, --why did the crowdshrink and hold their breath? As the ferret in a burrow crept thatslight form amongst the larger and rougher creatures that huddled andpressed back on each other as he passed. A wink of his stealthy eye, andthe huge Jacobins left the passage clear, without sound or question. Onhe 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 cadaverouscountenance more jaded and fatigued than usual. He to whom CatherineTheot 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 juiceof which it is said that he could alone assuage the acrid bile thatoverflowed his system; and an old woman, richly dressed (she had been aMarquise in the old regime) was employed in peeling the Hesperian fruitsfor the sick Dragon, with delicate fingers covered with jewels. Ihave before said that Robespierre was the idol of the women. Strangecertainly!--but then they were French women! The old Marquise, who, likeCatherine Theot, called him "son, " really seemed to love him piously anddisinterestedly as a mother; and as she peeled the oranges, and heapedon him the most caressing and soothing expressions, the livid ghost of asmile fluttered about his meagre lips. At a distance, Payan and Couthon, seated at another table, were writing rapidly, and occasionally pausingfrom their work to consult with each other in brief whispers. 

Suddenly one of the Jacobins opened the door, and, approachingRobespierre, whispered to him the name of Guerin. (See for the espionageon which Guerin was employed, "Les Papiers inedits, " etc. , volume i. Page 366, No. Xxviii. ) At that word the sick man started up, as if newlife were in the sound. 

"My kind friend, " he said to the Marquise, "forgive me; I must dispensewith thy tender cares. France demands me. I am never ill when I canserve 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 oneof the subtlest agents of his power, --one on whom he relied more thanthe clubs of his Jacobins, the tongues of his orators, the bayonets ofhis armies; Guerin, the most renowned of his ecouteurs, --the searching, prying, universal, omnipresent spy, who glided like a sunbeam throughchink and crevice, and brought to him intelligence not only of thedeeds, 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, auMarais, 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 theintriguant under the savant! Well!"

"At last, in the Rue des Fosses Montmartre, an individual in a bluesurtout (unknown) accosted him. They walked together about the streetsome 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 playat ball within hearing. They heard Legendre say, 'I believe his power iswearing itself out. ' And Tallien answered, 'And HIMSELF too. I would notgive three months' purchase for his life. ' I do not know, citizen, ifthey meant THEE?"

"Nor I, citizen, " answered Robespierre, with a fell smile, succeeded byan expression of gloomy thought. "Ha!" he muttered; "I am young yet, --inthe 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 thydestruction: this my listeners overheard. His servant is the messengerbetween the prisoner and himself. "

"So! The servant shall be seized in the open streets of Paris. The Reignof Terror is not over yet. With the letters found on him, if such theircontext, I will pluck Tallien from his benches in the Convention. "

Robespierre rose, and after walking a few moments to and fro the roomin 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 somuch. "

"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 JardinEgalite, and there parted. I saw Tallien to his house. But I haveother news. Thou badest me watch for those who threaten thee in secretletters. "

"Guerin! hast thou detected them? Hast thou--hast thou--"

And the tyrant, as he spoke, opened and shut both his hands, as ifalready grasping the lives of the writers, and one of those convulsivegrimaces that seemed like an epileptic affection, to which he wassubject, distorted his features. 

"Citizen, I think I have found one. Thou must know that amongst thosemost disaffected is the painter Nicot. "

"Stay, stay!" said Robespierre, opening a manuscript book, bound in redmorocco (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 Dumasknows of his early career and crimes. Proceed!"

"This Nicot has been suspected of diffusing tracts and pamphlets againstthyself and the Comite. Yesterday evening, when he was out, his porteradmitted me into his apartment, Rue Beau Repaire. With my master-key Iopened his desk and escritoire. I found herein a drawing of thyself atthe guillotine; and underneath was written, 'Bourreau de ton pays, lisl'arret de ton chatiment!' (Executioner of thy country, read the decreeof thy punishment!) I compared the words with the fragments of thevarious letters thou gavest me: the handwriting tallies with one. See, Itore off the writing. "

Robespierre looked, smiled, and, as if his vengeance were alreadysatisfied, threw himself on his chair. "It is well! I feared it was amore 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 theinner chamber till I summon thee again. Dear Payan, see that this Nicotconceals no weapons. "

Payan, who was as brave as Robespierre was pusillanimous, repressed thesmile of disdain that quivered on his lips a moment, and left the room. 

Meanwhile Robespierre, with his head buried in his bosom, seemedplunged 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 thatsingular letter, which was found afterwards amongst his papers, andis marked LXI. In the published collection. ("Papiers inedits, ' etc. , volume ii. Page 156. )

"Without doubt, " it began, "you are uneasy at not having earlierreceived news from me. Be not alarmed; you know that I ought only toreply by our ordinary courier; and as he has been interrupted, dans saderniere course, that is the cause of my delay. When you receive this, employ all diligence to fly a theatre where you are about to appearand disappear for the last time. It were idle to recall to you all thereasons that expose you to peril. The last step that should place yousur le sopha de la presidence, but brings you to the scaffold; and themob will spit on your face as it has spat on those whom you havejudged. Since, then, you have accumulated here a sufficient treasure forexistence, I await you with great impatience, to laugh with you at thepart you have played in the troubles of a nation as credulous as it isavid of novelties. Take your part according to our arrangements, --all isprepared. 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 longerenjoy repose. Yet, Danton, Danton! thou wert right; better to be a poorfisherman than to govern men. " ("Il vaudrait mieux, " said Danton, in hisdungeon, "etre un pauvre pecheur que de gouverner les hommes. ")

The door opened, and Payan reappeared and whispered Robespierre, "All issafe! See the man. "

The Dictator, satisfied, summoned his attendant Jacobin to conduct Nicotto his presence. The painter entered with a fearless expression in hisdeformed features, and stood erect before Robespierre, who scanned himwith a sidelong eye. 

It is remarkable that most of the principal actors of the Revolutionwere singularly hideous in appearance, --from the colossal ugliness ofMirabeau and Danton, or the villanous ferocity in the countenancesof David and Simon, to the filthy squalor of Marat, the sinister andbilious meanness of the Dictator's features. But Robespierre, who wassaid to resemble a cat, had also a cat's cleanness; and his prim anddainty dress, his shaven smoothness, the womanly whiteness of hislean hands, made yet more remarkable the disorderly ruffianism thatcharacterised the attire and mien of the painter-sans-culotte. 

"And so, citizen, " said Robespierre, mildly, "thou wouldst speak withme? I know thy merits and civism have been overlooked too long. Thouwouldst ask some suitable provision in the state? Scruple not--say on!"

"Virtuous Robespierre, toi qui eclaires l'univers (Thou who enlightenestthe world. ), I come not to ask a favour, but to render service to thestate. I have discovered a correspondence that lays open a conspiracy ofwhich many of the actors are yet unsuspected. " And he placed the paperson the table. Robespierre seized, and ran his eye over them rapidly andeagerly. 

"Good!--good!" he muttered to himself: "this is all I wanted. Barrere, Legendre! I have them! Camille Desmoulins was but their dupe. I lovedhim once; I never loved them! Citizen Nicot, I thank thee. I observethese letters are addressed to an Englishman. What Frenchman but mustdistrust these English wolves in sheep's clothing! France wants nolonger 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. Iceased to honour them whom thou didst declare against; for I disown myown senses rather than thy justice. "

"Yes, I pretend to justice; that IS the virtue I affect, " saidRobespierre, meekly; and with his feline propensities he enjoyed, evenin that critical hour of vast schemes, of imminent danger, of meditatedrevenge, the pleasure of playing with a solitary victim. (The mostdetestable anecdote of this peculiar hypocrisy in Robespierre is thatin which he is recorded to have tenderly pressed the hand of his oldschool-friend, Camille Desmoulins, the day that he signed the warrantfor his arrest. ) "And my justice shall no longer be blind to thyservices, good Nicot. Thou knowest this Glyndon?"

"Yes, well, --intimately. He WAS my friend, but I would give up mybrother if he were one of the 'indulgents. ' I am not ashamed to say thatI have received favours from this man. "

"Aha!--and thou dost honestly hold the doctrine that where a manthreatens my life all personal favours are to be forgotten?"

"All!"

"Good citizen!--kind Nicot!--oblige me by writing the address of thisGlyndon. "

Nicot stooped to the table; and suddenly when the pen was in his hand, athought 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, " saidNicot. "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 isthe wife of an Italian of immense wealth, and there is no doubt thatshe has moneys which are spent in corrupting the citizens. She should beseized and arrested. "

"Write down her name also. "

"But no time is to be lost; for I know that both have a design to escapefrom Paris this very night. "

"Our government is prompt, good Nicot, --never fear. Humph!--humph!" andRobespierre took the paper on which Nicot had written, and stooping overit--for he was near-sighted--added, smilingly, "Dost thou always writethe 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 etfraternite!"

Robespierre half rose as he spoke, and Nicot withdrew. 

"Ho, there!--without!" cried the Dictator, ringing his bell; and as theready Jacobin attended the summons, "Follow that man, Jean Nicot. Theinstant he has cleared the house seize him. At once to the Conciergeriewith him. Stay!--nothing against the law; there is thy warrant. Thepublic accuser shall have my instruction. Away!--quick!"

The Jacobin vanished. All trace of illness, of infirmity, had gone fromthe valetudinarian; he stood erect on the floor, his facetwitching convulsively, and his arms folded. "Ho! Guerin!" the spyreappeared--"take these addresses! Within an hour this Englishman andhis woman must be in prison; their revelations will aid me againstworthier foes. They shall die: they shall perish with the rest on the10th, --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 hiscrew. I have information that the Convention will NOT attend the Fete onthe 10th. We must trust only to the sword of the law. I must composemy thoughts, --prepare my harangue. To-morrow, I will reappear at theConvention; to-morrow, bold St. Just joins us, fresh from our victoriousarmies; to-morrow, from the tribune, I will dart the thunderbolt on themasked enemies of France; to-morrow, I will demand, in the face of thecountry, 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 avoice too well and too terribly recognised, hissing in his ear, "What!thou wouldst defy and escape me! thou wouldst go back to virtue andcontent. 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 seeagain till in the dungeon, at midnight, before thy doom! Behold--"

And Glyndon, mechanically turning his head, saw, close behind him, thestealthy figure of a man whom he had observed before, but with littleheed, pass and repass him, as he quitted the house of Citizen C--. Instantly and instinctively he knew that he was watched, --that he waspursued. The street he was in was obscure and deserted, for the day wasoppressively sultry, and it was the hour when few were abroad, eitheron business or pleasure. Bold as he was, an icy chill shot through hisheart, he knew too well the tremendous system that then reigned in Parisnot to be aware of his danger. As the sight of the first plague-boil tothe victim of the pestilence, was the first sight of the shadowy spyto that of the Revolution: the watch, the arrest, the trial, theguillotine, --these made the regular and rapid steps of the monster thatthe anarchists called Law! He breathed hard, he heard distinctly theloud 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 thestreets, reanimated his courage; he made a step towards his pursuer, whoretreated as he advanced. "Citizen, thou followest me, " he said. "Thybusiness?"

"Surely, " answered the man, with a deprecating smile, "the streets arebroad enough for both? Thou art not so bad a republican as to arrogateall Paris to thyself!"

"Go on first, then. I make way for thee. "

The man bowed, doffed his hat politely, and passed forward. The nextmoment Glyndon plunged into a winding lane, and fled fast through alabyrinth of streets, passages, and alleys. By degrees he composedhimself, and, looking behind, imagined that he had baffled the pursuer;he then, by a circuitous route, bent his way once more to his home. Ashe emerged into one of the broader streets, a passenger, wrapped ina mantle, brushing so quickly by him that he did not observe hiscountenance, whispered, "Clarence Glyndon, you are dogged, --followme!" and the stranger walked quickly before him. Clarence turned, andsickened once more to see at his heels, with the same servile smileon his face, the pursuer he fancied he had escaped. He forgot theinjunction of the stranger to follow him, and perceiving a crowdgathered 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 thespy, a distant quartier of the city. 

Here, indeed, all seemed so serene and fair that his artist eye, evenin that imminent hour, rested with pleasure on the scene. It was acomparatively broad space, formed by one of the noble quays. The Seineflowed majestically along, with boats and craft resting on its surface. The sun gilt a thousand spires and domes, and gleamed on the whitepalaces of a fallen chivalry. Here fatigued and panting, he paused aninstant, and a cooler air from the river fanned his brow. "Awhile, atleast, I am safe here, " he murmured; and as he spoke, some thirty pacesbehind him, he beheld the spy. He stood rooted to the spot; wearied andspent as he was, escape seemed no longer possible, --the river on oneside (no bridge at hand), and the long row of mansions closing up theother. As he halted, he heard laughter and obscene songs from a house alittle in his rear, between himself and the spy. It was a cafe fearfullyknown in that quarter. Hither often resorted the black troop ofHenriot, --the minions and huissiers of Robespierre. The spy, then, had hunted the victim within the jaws of the hounds. The man slowlyadvanced, and, pausing before the open window of the cafe, put his headthrough 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 beforehim, he perceived the stranger who had warned; the figure, scarcelydistinguishable through the mantle that wrapped it, motioned to himto enter. He sprang noiselessly through the friendly opening: the doorclosed; breathlessly he followed the stranger up a flight of broadstairs and through a suite of empty rooms, until, having gained a smallcabinet, his conductor doffed the large hat and the long mantle that hadhitherto 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 toa 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 lasthours of my fate, I rejoice to look once more on the face of thatominous and mysterious being to whom I can ascribe all the sufferingsI 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 thylife, of my own!"

"Hast thou suffered? Poor neophyte!" said Zanoni, pityingly. "Yes; I seeit on thy brow. But wherefore wouldst thou blame me? Did I not warn theeagainst the whispers of thy spirit; did I not warn thee to forbear? DidI not tell thee that the ordeal was one of awful hazard and tremendousfears, --nay, did I not offer to resign to thee the heart that was mightyenough, while mine, Glyndon, to content me? Was it not thine own daringand resolute choice to brave the initiation! Of thine own free willdidst thou make Mejnour thy master, and his lore thy study!"

"But whence came the irresistible desires of that wild and unholyknowledge? I knew them not till thine evil eye fell upon me, and I wasdrawn into the magic atmosphere of thy being!"

"Thou errest!--the desires were in thee; and, whether in one directionor the other, would have forced their way! Man! thou askest me theenigma of thy fate and my own! Look round all being, is there notmystery everywhere? Can thine eye trace the ripening of the grainbeneath the earth? In the moral and the physical world alike, lie darkportents, far more wondrous than the powers thou wouldst ascribe to me!"

"Dost thou disown those powers; dost thou confess thyself animposter?--or wilt thou dare to tell me that thou art indeed sold to theEvil one, --a magician whose familiar has haunted me night and day?"

"It matters not what I am, " returned Zanoni; "it matters only whether Ican aid thee to exorcise thy dismal phantom, and return once more to thewholesome air of this common life. Something, however, will I tell thee, not to vindicate myself, but the Heaven and the Nature that thy doubtsmalign. "

Zanoni paused a moment, and resumed with a slight smile, --

"In thy younger days thou hast doubtless read with delight the greatChristian poet, whose muse, like the morning it celebrated, came toearth, 'crowned with flowers culled in Paradise. ' ('L'aurea testa Dirose 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 theInquisitor he consulted, execrated all the practitioners of the unlawfulspells invoked, --

'Per isforzar Cocito o Flegetonte. ' (To constrain Cocytus orPhlegethon. )

"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 therecognition of a holy and spiritual Theurgia, --of a magic that couldsummon the Angel, or the Good Genius, not the Fiend? And do you notremember how he, deeply versed as he was for his age, in the mysteriesof the nobler Platonism, which hints at the secrets of all the starrybrotherhoods, from the Chaldean to the later Rosicrucian, discriminatesin his lovely verse, between the black art of Ismeno and the gloriouslore of the Enchanter who counsels and guides upon their errand thechampions of the Holy Land? HIS, not the charms wrought by the aid ofthe Stygian Rebels (See this remarkable passage, which does indeednot unfaithfully represent the doctrine of the Pythagorean and thePlatonist, in Tasso, cant. Xiv. Stanzas xli. To xlvii. ("Ger. Lib. ")They are beautifully translated by Wiffen. ), but the perception of thesecret powers of the fountain and the herb, --the Arcana of the unknownnature and the various motions of the stars. His, the holy haunts ofLebanon and Carmel, --beneath his feet he saw the clouds, the snows, thehues of Iris, the generations of the rains and dews. Did the ChristianHermit who converted that Enchanter (no fabulous being, but the type ofall spirit that would aspire through Nature up to God) command him tolay aside these sublime studies, 'Le solite arte e l' uso mio'? No! butto cherish and direct them to worthy ends. And in this grand conceptionof the poet lies the secret of the true Theurgia, which startles yourignorance in a more learned day with puerile apprehensions, and thenightmares of a sick man's dreams. "

Again Zanoni paused, and again resumed:--

"In ages far remote, --of a civilisation far different from that whichnow merges the individual in the state, --there existed men of ardentminds, and an intense desire of knowledge. In the mighty and solemnkingdoms in which they dwelt, there were no turbulent and earthlychannels to work off the fever of their minds. Set in the antique mouldof casts through which no intellect could pierce, no valour could forceits way, the thirst for wisdom alone reigned in the hearts of those whoreceived its study as a heritage from sire to son. Hence, even in yourimperfect records of the progress of human knowledge, you find that, inthe earliest ages, Philosophy descended not to the business and homes ofmen. It dwelt amidst the wonders of the loftier creation; it sought toanalyse the formation of matter, --the essentials of the prevailing soul;to read the mysteries of the starry orbs; to dive into those depthsof Nature in which Zoroaster is said by the schoolmen first to havediscovered the arts which your ignorance classes under the name ofmagic. In such an age, then, arose some men, who, amidst the vanitiesand delusions of their class, imagined that they detected gleams of abrighter and steadier lore. They fancied an affinity existing among allthe works of Nature, and that in the lowliest lay the secret attractionthat might conduct them upward to the loftiest. (Agreeably, it wouldseem, to the notion of Iamblichus and Plotinus, that the universe is asan animal; so that there is sympathy and communication between one partand the other; in the smallest part may be the subtlest nerve. And hencethe universal magnetism of Nature. But man contemplates the universe asan animalcule would an elephant. The animalcule, seeing scarcely the tipof the hoof, would be incapable of comprehending that the trunk belongedto the same creature, --that the effect produced upon one extremity wouldbe felt in an instant by the other. ) Centuries passed, and lives werewasted in these discoveries; but step after step was chronicled andmarked, and became the guide to the few who alone had the hereditaryprivilege 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 whomthe Origin of Evil held a sway, that dawning was vouchsafed. It couldbe given then, as now, only to the purest ecstasies of imagination andintellect, undistracted by the cares of a vulgar life, or the appetitesof the common clay. Far from descending to the assistance of a fiend, theirs was but the august ambition to approach nearer to the Fountof Good; the more they emancipated themselves from this limbo of theplanets, the more they were penetrated by the splendour and beneficenceof God. And if they sought, and at last discovered, how to the eye ofthe Spirit all the subtler modifications of being and of matter might bemade apparent; if they discovered how, for the wings of the Spirit, allspace might be annihilated, and while the body stood heavy and solidhere, as a deserted tomb, the freed IDEA might wander from star tostar, --if such discoveries became in truth their own, the sublimestluxury of their knowledge was but this, to wonder, to venerate, andadore! 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 andsystems of the world, and participating the immortal life and the energyof the Sublime Celestials. When the soul is elevated to natures aboveitself, it deserts the order to which it is awhile compelled, and by areligious magnetism is attracted to another and a loftier, with which itblends and mingles. ' (From Iamblichus, "On the Mysteries, " c. 7, sect. 7. ) Grant, then, that such beings found at last the secret to arrestdeath; to fascinate danger and the foe; to walk the revolutions of theearth unharmed, --think you that this life could teach them other desirethan to yearn the more for the Immortal, and to fit their intellect thebetter for the higher being to which they might, when Time and Deathexist no longer, be transferred? Away with your gloomy fantasies ofsorcerer and demon!--the soul can aspire only to the light; and even theerror of our lofty knowledge was but the forgetfulness of the weakness, the passions, and the bonds which the death we so vainly conquered onlycan purge away!"

This address was so different from what Glyndon had anticipated, that heremained 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 theterror, --the Threshold and the Phantom? Vain man! look to the commonestelements of the common learning. Can every tyro at his mere wish andwill 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 equalHomer;' yea, can yon pale tyrant, with all the parchment laws of ahundred system-shapers, and the pikes of his dauntless multitude, carve, at his will, a constitution not more vicious than the one which themadness of a mob could overthrow? When, in that far time to which I havereferred, the student aspired to the heights to which thou wouldst havesprung at a single bound, he was trained from his very cradle to thecareer he was to run. The internal and the outward nature were madeclear to his eyes, year after year, as they opened on the day. He wasnot admitted to the practical initiation till not one earthly wishchained that sublimest faculty which you call the IMAGINATION, onecarnal desire clouded the penetrative essence that you call theINTELLECT. And even then, and at the best, how few attained to thelast mystery! Happier inasmuch as they attained the earlier to the holyglories for which Death is the heavenliest gate. "

Zanoni paused, and a shade of thought and sorrow darkened his celestialbeauty. 

"And are there, indeed, others, besides thee and Mejnour, who lay claimto 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, whylive they not yet?" (Glyndon appears to forget that Mejnour had beforeanswered the very question which his doubts here a second time suggest. )

"Child of a day!" answered Zanoni, mournfully, "have I not told thee theerror of our knowledge was the forgetfulness of the desires and passionswhich the spirit never can wholly and permanently conquer while thismatter cloaks it? Canst thou think that it is no sorrow, either toreject all human ties, all friendship, and all love, or to see, dayafter day, friendship and love wither from our life, as blossoms fromthe stem? Canst thou wonder how, with the power to live while the worldshall last, ere even our ordinary date be finished we yet may prefer todie? Wonder rather that there are two who have clung so faithfully toearth! Me, I confess, that earth can enamour yet. Attaining to the lastsecret while youth was in its bloom, youth still colours all around mewith its own luxuriant beauty; to me, yet, to breathe is to enjoy. Thefreshness has not faded from the face of Nature, and not an herb inwhich I cannot discover a new charm, --an undetected wonder. 

"As with my youth, so with Mejnour's age: he will tell you that life tohim is but a power to examine; and not till he has exhausted allthe marvels which the Creator has sown on earth, would he desire newhabitations for the renewed Spirit to explore. We are the types of thetwo essences of what is imperishable, --'ART, that enjoys; and SCIENCE, that contemplates!' And now, that thou mayest be contented that thesecrets are not vouchsafed to thee, learn that so utterly must the ideadetach 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 forthe ambitious man, for the lover, the hater, the power avails not. AndI, at last, bound and blinded by the most common of household ties; I, darkened and helpless, adjure thee, the baffled and discontented, --Iadjure 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 achievewhat the passionless Mejnour failed to accomplish; but I can give theethe next-best boon, perhaps the fairest, --I can reconcile thee to thedaily 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 housewhither his fatal step already had brought woe and doom. 

"Bless thee for this, " exclaimed Zanoni, passionately, "and thou shaltbe blessed! What! couldst thou not perceive that at the entrance to allthe grander worlds dwell the race that intimidate and awe? Who in thydaily 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 itnot, --in the closet of the sage, in the council of the demagogue, inthe camp of the warrior, --everywhere cowers and darkens the UnutterableHorror. But there, where thou hast ventured, alone is the PhantomVISIBLE; and never will it cease to haunt, till thou canst pass to theInfinite, as the seraph; or return to the Familiar, as a child! Butanswer me this: when, seeking to adhere to some calm resolve of virtue, the Phantom hath stalked suddenly to thy side; when its voice hathwhispered thee despair; when its ghastly eyes would scare thee back tothose scenes of earthly craft or riotous excitement from which, asit leaves thee to worse foes to the soul, its presence is everabsent, --hast thou never bravely resisted the spectre and thine ownhorror; 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 powermore faint?"

"It is true. "

"Rejoice, then!--thou hast overcome the true terror and mystery of theordeal. 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 ofthe Inexorable Horror. Oh, when shall men learn, at last, that if theGreat Religion inculcates so rigidly the necessity of FAITH, it is notalone that FAITH leads to the world to be; but that without faith thereis 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 theOld. Back to thy gateway glide, thou Horror! and calm, on the childlikeheart, smile again, O azure Heaven, with thy night and thy morning starbut as one, though under its double name of Memory and Hope!"

As he thus spoke, Zanoni laid his hand gently on the burning temples ofhis excited and wondering listener; and presently a sort of trance cameover 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, theshelves filled with holy books; the very easel on which he had firstsought to call the ideal to the canvas, dust-covered, broken, in thecorner. Below the window lay the old churchyard: he saw it green in thedistance, the sun glancing through the yew-trees; he saw the tomb wherefather and mother lay united, and the spire pointing up to heaven, thesymbol of the hopes of those who consigned the ashes to the dust; inhis ear rang the bells, pealing, as on a Sabbath day. Far fled allthe visions of anxiety and awe that had haunted and convulsed; youth, boyhood, childhood came back to him with innocent desires and hopes; hethought he fell upon his knees to pray. He woke, --he woke indelicious tears, he felt that the Phantom was fled forever. He lookedround, --Zanoni was gone. On the table lay these lines, the ink yetwet:--

"I will find ways and means for thy escape. At nightfall, as the clockstrikes 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 safetytill the Reign of Terror, which nears its close, be past. Think no moreof the sensual love that lured, and wellnigh lost thee. It betrayed, andwould have destroyed. Thou wilt regain thy land in safety, --long yearsyet spared to thee to muse over the past, and to redeem it. For thyfuture, be thy dream thy guide, and thy tears thy baptism. "

The Englishman obeyed the injunctions of the letter, and found theirtruth. 

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 isRobespierre's order, --I have tracked the cause to Glyndon. This, then, made that terrible connection between their fates which I could notunravel, but which (till severed as it now is) wrapped Glyndon himselfin the same cloud that concealed her. In prison, --in prison!--it is thegate of the grave! Her trial, and the inevitable execution that followssuch trial, is the third day from this. The tyrant has fixed all hisschemes of slaughter for the 10th of Thermidor. While the deaths of theunoffending strike awe to the city, his satellites are to massacre hisfoes. There is but one hope left, --that the Power which now dooms thedoomer, may render me an instrument to expedite his fall. But twodays left, --two days! In all my wealth of time I see but two days; allbeyond, --darkness, solitude. I may save her yet. The tyrant shall fallthe day before that which he has set apart for slaughter! For the firsttime I mix among the broils and stratagems of men, and my mind leaps upfrom my despair, armed and eager for the contest. "

. .. . 

A crowd had gathered round the Rue St. Honore; a young man was justarrested by the order of Robespierre. He was known to be in the serviceof Tallien, that hostile leader in the Convention, whom the tyrant hadhitherto trembled to attack. This incident had therefore produced agreater excitement than a circumstance so customary as an arrest in theReign of Terror might be supposed to create. Amongst the crowd were manyfriends of Tallien, many foes to the tyrant, many weary of beholdingthe tiger dragging victim after victim to its den. Hoarse, forebodingmurmurs were heard; fierce eyes glared upon the officers as they seizedtheir prisoner; and though they did not yet dare openly to resist, thosein the rear pressed on those behind, and encumbered the path of thecaptive and his captors. The young man struggled hard for escape, and, by a violent effort, at last wrenched himself from the grasp. Thecrowd made way, and closed round to protect him, as he dived and dartedthrough their ranks; but suddenly the trampling of horses was heard athand, --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 oneof the partisans of the Dictator. At that moment a voice whispered theprisoner, "Thou hast a letter which, if found on thee, ruins thy lasthope. Give it to me! I will bear it to Tallien. " The prisoner turned inamaze, read something that encouraged him in the eyes of the strangerwho thus accosted him. The troop were now on the spot; the Jacobin whohad seized the prisoner released hold of him for a moment to escapethe hoofs of the horses: in that moment the opportunity was found, --thestranger had disappeared. 

. .. . 

At the house of Tallien the principal foes of the tyrant were assembled. Common danger made common fellowship. All factions laid aside theirfeuds for the hour to unite against the formidable man who was marchingover all factions to his gory throne. There was bold Lecointre, thedeclared enemy; there, creeping Barrere, who would reconcile allextremes, the hero of the cowards; Barras, calm and collected; Colletd'Herbois, breathing wrath and vengeance, and seeing not that the crimesof Robespierre alone sheltered his own. 

The council was agitated and irresolute. The awe which the uniformsuccess and the prodigious energy of Robespierre excited still held thegreater part under its control. Tallien, whom the tyrant most feared, and who alone could give head and substance and direction to so manycontradictory passions, was too sullied by the memory of his owncruelties not to feel embarrassed by his position as the championof mercy. "It is true, " he said, after an animating harangue fromLecointre, "that the Usurper menaces us all. But he is still so belovedby his mobs, --still so supported by his Jacobins: better delay openhostilities till the hour is more ripe. To attempt and not succeed isto give us, bound hand and foot, to the guillotine. Every day his powermust decline. Procrastination is our best ally--" While yet speaking, and while yet producing the effect of water on the fire, it wasannounced that a stranger demanded to see him instantly on business thatbrooked no delay. 

"I am not at leisure, " said the orator, impatiently. The servant placeda 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 tohim. 

"Hope of France!" said the visitor to him, and the very sound of hisvoice went straight to the heart, --"your servant is arrested in thestreets. I have saved your life, and that of your wife who will be. Ibring 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 notan hour if you value my life and your own. ' My trial and death are fixedthe third day from this, --the 10th Thermidor. Strike while it is yettime, --strike the monster!--you have two days yet. If you fail, --if youprocrastinate, --see me for the last time as I pass your windows to theguillotine!"

"Her trial will give proof against you, " said the stranger. "Her deathis the herald of your own. Fear not the populace, --the populace wouldhave rescued your servant. Fear not Robespierre, --he gives himself toyour hands. To-morrow he comes to the Convention, --to-morrow you mustcast the last throw for his head or your own. "

"To-morrow he comes to the Convention! And who are you that know so wellwhat 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 heardtidings, --no matter what, " he cried, --"that have changed my purpose. On the 10th we are destined to the guillotine. I revoke my counsel fordelay. Robespierre comes to the Convention to-morrow; THERE we mustconfront and crush him. From the Mountain shall frown against himthe grim shade of Danton, --from the Plain shall rise, in their bloodycerements, the spectres of Vergniaud and Condorcet. Frappons!"

"Frappons!" cried even Barrere, startled into energy by the new daringof his colleague, --"frappons! il n'y a que les morts qui ne reviennentpas. "

It was observable (and the fact may be found in one of the memoirsof the time) that, during that day and night (the 7th Thermidor), astranger to all the previous events of that stormy time was seen invarious parts of the city, --in the cafes, the clubs, the haunts of thevarious factions; that, to the astonishment and dismay of his hearers, he talked aloud of the crimes of Robespierre, and predicted his comingfall; and, as he spoke, he stirred up the hearts of men, he loosed thebonds of their fear, --he inflamed them with unwonted rage and daring. But what surprised them most was, that no voice replied, no hand waslifted against him, no minion, even of the tyrant, cried, "Arrest thetraitor. " In that impunity men read, as in a book, that the populace haddeserted the man of blood. 

Once only a fierce, brawny Jacobin sprang up from the table at which hesat, 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 thelodgings of Robespierre, --he is from home; and in the left pocket of thevest which he cast off not an hour since thou wilt find a paper; whenthou hast read that, return. I will await thee; and if thou wouldst thenseize me, I will go without a struggle. Look round on those loweringbrows; touch me NOW, and thou wilt be torn to pieces. "

The Jacobin felt as if compelled to obey against his will. He wentforth muttering; he returned, --the stranger was still there. "Milletonnerres, " he said to him, "I thank thee; the poltroon had my name inhis 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 goneto the Convention. He has gone with his laboured speech; he has gonewith his phrases of philanthropy and virtue; he has gone to single outhis prey. All his agents are prepared for his reception; the fierce St. Just has arrived from the armies to second his courage and inflame hiswrath. His ominous apparition prepares the audience for the crisis. "Citizens!" screeched the shrill voice of Robespierre "others haveplaced before you flattering pictures; I come to announce to you usefultruths. 

. .. . 

"And they attribute to me, --to me alone!--whatever of harsh or evilis committed: it is Robespierre who wishes it; it is Robespierre whoordains it. Is there a new tax?--it is Robespierre who ruins you. Theycall me tyrant!--and why? Because I have acquired some influence; buthow?--in speaking truth; and who pretends that truth is to be withoutforce 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 guiltyconscience; and which Falsehood can no more imitate than Salmoneus couldforge the thunderbolts of Heaven. What am I whom they accuse? A slaveof liberty, --a living martyr of the Republic; the victim as the enemy ofcrime! All ruffianism affronts me, and actions legitimate in others arecrimes in me. It is enough to know me to be calumniated. It is in myvery zeal that they discover my guilt. Take from me my conscience, and Ishould be the most miserable of men!"

He paused; and Couthon wiped his eyes, and St. Just murmured applauseas with stern looks he gazed on the rebellious Mountain; and there was adead, mournful, and chilling silence through the audience. The touchingsentiment 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, --heaccuses. 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 strengthto a criminal coalition in the very bosom of the Convention; it hasaccomplices in the bosom of the Committee of Public Safety. .. What is theremedy to this evil? To punish the traitors; to purify this committee;to crush all factions by the weight of the National Authority; toraise upon their ruins the power of Liberty and Justice. Such are theprinciples of that Reform. Must I be ambitious to profess them?--thenthe principles are proscribed, and Tyranny reigns amongst us! For whatcan you object to a man who is in the right, and has at least thisknowledge, --he knows how to die for his native land! I am made to combatcrime, and not to govern it. The time, alas! is not yet arrived when menof worth can serve with impunity their country. So long as the knavesrule, the defenders of liberty will be only the proscribed. "

For two hours, through that cold and gloomy audience, shrilled theDeath-speech. In silence it began, in silence closed. The enemies of theorator were afraid to express resentment; they knew not yet the exactbalance of power. His partisans were afraid to approve; they knew notwhom of their own friends and relations the accusations were designed tosingle forth. "Take care!" whispered each to each; "it is thou whomhe threatens. " But silent though the audience, it was, at the first, wellnigh subdued. There was still about this terrible man the spellof an overmastering will. Always--though not what is called a greatorator--resolute, and sovereign in the use of words; words seemed asthings when uttered by one who with a nod moved the troops of Henriot, and influenced the judgment of Rene Dumas, grim President of theTribunal. Lecointre of Versailles rose, and there was an anxiousmovement of attention; for Lecointre was one of the fiercest foes of thetyrant. What was the dismay of the Tallien faction; what the complacentsmile of Couthon, --when Lecointre demanded only that the oration shouldbe printed! All seemed paralyzed. At length Bourdon de l'Oise, whosename was doubly marked in the black list of the Dictator, stalked to thetribune, and moved the bold counter-resolution, that the speech shouldbe referred to the two committees whom that very speech accused. Stillno applause from the conspirators; they sat torpid as frozen men. Theshrinking Barrere, ever on the prudent side, looked round before herose. He rises, and sides with Lecointre! Then Couthon seized theoccasion, and from his seat (a privilege permitted only to the paralyticphilanthropist) (M. Thiers in his History, volume iv. Page 79, makesa curious blunder: he says, "Couthon s'elance a la tribune. " (Couthondarted towards the tribune. ) Poor Couthon! whose half body was dead, and who was always wheeled in his chair into the Convention, and spokesitting. ), and with his melodious voice sought to convert the crisisinto a triumph. 

He demanded, not only that the harangue should be printed, but sentto all the communes and all the armies. It was necessary to soothea wronged and ulcerated heart. Deputies, the most faithful, had beenaccused of shedding blood. "Ah! if HE had contributed to the death ofone innocent man, he should immolate himself with grief. " Beautifultenderness!--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 votethe printing of the Death-speech, and its transmission to all themunicipalities. From the benches of the Mountain, Tallien, alarmed, dismayed, impatient, and indignant, cast his gaze where sat thestrangers admitted to hear the debates; and suddenly he met the eyes ofthe Unknown who had brought to him the letter from Teresa de Fontenaithe preceding day. The eyes fascinated him as he gazed. In aftertimes heoften said that their regard, fixed, earnest, half-reproachful, andyet cheering and triumphant, filled him with new life and courage. Theyspoke to his heart as the trumpet speaks to the war-horse. He moved fromhis seat; he whispered with his allies: the spirit he had drawn in wascontagious; the men whom Robespierre especially had denounced, and whosaw the sword over their heads, woke from their torpid trance. Vadier, Cambon, Billaud-Varennes, Panis, Amar, rose at once, --all at oncedemanded speech. Vadier is first heard, the rest succeed. It burstforth, the Mountain, with its fires and consuming lava; flood upon floodthey rush, a legion of Ciceros upon the startled Catiline! Robespierrefalters, hesitates, --would qualify, retract. They gather new couragefrom his new fears; they interrupt him; they drown his voice; theydemand the reversal of the motion. Amar moves again that the speechbe referred to the Committees, to the Committees, --to his enemies!Confusion and noise and clamour! Robespierre wraps himself in silentand superb disdain. Pale, defeated, but not yet destroyed, hestands, --a storm in the midst of storm!

The motion is carried. All men foresee in that defeat the Dictator'sdownfall. A solitary cry rose from the galleries; it was caught up;it circled through the hall, the audience: "A bas le tyrant! Vive larepublique!" (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 inthe crowd without. The herd, in every country, side with success;and the rats run from the falling tower. But Robespierre, who wantedcourage, never wanted pride, and the last often supplied the placeof the first; thoughtfully, and with an impenetrable brow, he passedthrough the throng, leaning on St. Just, Payan and his brother followinghim. 

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 mustserve us yet!"

He was silent a few moments, and his eyes roved suspiciously through thestreet. 

"St. Just, " he said abruptly, "they have not found this Englishmanwhose revelations, or whose trial, would have crushed the Amars and theTalliens. No, no! my Jacobins themselves are growing dull and blind. Butthey have seized a woman, --only a woman!"

"A woman's hand stabbed Marat, " said St. Just. Robespierre stoppedshort, and breathed hard. 

"St. Just, " said he, "when this peril is past, we will found the Reignof Peace. There shall be homes and gardens set apart for the old. Davidis already designing the porticos. Virtuous men shall be appointed toinstruct the young. All vice and disorder shall be NOT exterminated--no, no! only banished! We must not die yet. Posterity cannot judge us tillour work is done. We have recalled L'Etre Supreme; we must now remodelthis 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 eightyheads must fall TO-MORROW, --TO-MORROW, Simon. Dumas will advance theirtrial a day. I will write to Fouquier-Tinville, the public accuser. We meet at the Jacobins to-night, Simon; there we will denounce theConvention itself; there we will rally round us the last friends ofliberty 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 didnot destroy the throne of a thousand years for that canaille!"

THE TRIAL, THE EXECUTION, OF THE VICTIMS IS ADVANCED A DAY! By theaid of the mysterious intelligence that had guided and animated himhitherto, Zanoni learned that his arts had been in vain. He knew thatViola was safe, if she could but survive an hour the life of thetyrant. He knew that Robespierre's hours were numbered; that the 10th ofThermidor, on which he had originally designed the execution of hislast victims, would see himself at the scaffold. Zanoni had toiled, hadschemed for the fall of the Butcher and his reign. To what end? A singleword from the tyrant had baffled the result of all. The executionof Viola is advanced a day. Vain seer, who wouldst make thyself theinstrument of the Eternal, the very dangers that now beset the tyrantbut expedite the doom of his victims! To-morrow, eighty heads, andhers whose pillow has been thy heart! To-morrow! and Maximilien is safeto-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 starscome smiling through the heaven. The Seine, in its slow waters, yettrembles with the last kiss of the rosy day; and still in the blue skygleams the spire of Notre Dame; and still in the blue sky looms theguillotine by the Barriere du Trone. Turn to that time-worn building, once the church and the convent of the Freres-Precheurs, known by thethen 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 atrociouspopulace, --the majority of that audience consisting of the furies ofthe guillotine (furies de guillotine). In the midst of the hall arethe bureau and chair of the president, --the chair long preserved by thepiety of the monks as the relic of St. Thomas Aquinas! Above this seatscowls the harsh bust of Brutus. An iron lamp and two branches scatterover the vast room a murky, fuliginous ray, beneath the light of whichthe 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 theCommittee of his foes. Rumours fly from street to street, from haunt tohaunt, from house to house. The swallows flit low, and the cattle grouptogether before the storm. And above this roar of the lives and thingsof the little hour, alone in his chamber stood he on whose starryyouth--symbol of the imperishable bloom of the calm Ideal amidst themouldering Actual--the clouds of ages had rolled in vain. 

All those exertions which ordinary wit and courage could suggest hadbeen tried in vain. All such exertions WERE in vain, where, in thatSaturnalia of death, a life was the object. Nothing but the fall ofRobespierre could have saved his victims; now, too late, that fall wouldonly serve to avenge. 

Once more, in that last agony of excitement and despair, the seer hadplunged into solitude, to invoke again the aid or counsel of thosemysterious intermediates between earth and heaven who had renounced theintercourse of the spirit when subjected to the common bondage of themortal. In the intense desire and anguish of his heart, perhaps, lay apower not yet called forth; for who has not felt that the sharpnessof extreme grief cuts and grinds away many of those strongest bondsof infirmity and doubt which bind down the souls of men to the cabineddarkness of the hour; and that from the cloud and thunderstorm oftenswoops the Olympian eagle that can ravish us aloft!

And the invocation was heard, --the bondage of sense was rent away fromthe visual mind. He looked, and saw, --no, not the being he had called, with its limbs of light and unutterably tranquil smile--not hisfamiliar, Adon-Ai, the Son of Glory and the Star, but the Evil Omen, thedark Chimera, the implacable Foe, with exultation and malice burning inits hell-lit eyes. The Spectre, no longer cowering and retreating intoshadow, rose before him, gigantic and erect; the face, whose veil nomortal hand had ever raised, was still concealed, but the form was moredistinct, corporeal, and cast from it, as an atmosphere, horror and rageand awe. As an iceberg, the breath of that presence froze the air; as acloud, it filled the chamber and blackened the stars from heaven. 

"Lo!" said its voice, "I am here once more. Thou hast robbed me of ameaner 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 thatlife I come to thee with my inexorable tread. Thou art returned to theThreshold, --thou, whose steps have trodden the verges of the Infinite!And as the goblin of its fantasy seizes on a child in the dark, --mightyone, who wouldst conquer Death, --I seize on thee!"

"Back to thy thraldom, slave! If thou art come to the voice that calledthee not, it is again not to command, but to obey! Thou, from whosewhisper 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 soulmightier than the malice of thy being, --thou serve me yet, and speakagain the secret that can rescue the lives thou hast, by permission ofthe Universal Master, permitted me to retain awhile in the temple of theclay!"

Brighter and more devouringly burned the glare from those lurid eyes;more visible and colossal yet rose the dilating shape; a yet fiercer andmore disdainful hate spoke in the voice that answered, "Didst thou thinkthat my boon would be other than thy curse? Happy for thee hadst thoumourned over the deaths which come by the gentle hand of Nature, --hadstthou never known how the name of mother consecrates the face of Beauty, and never, bending over thy first-born, felt the imperishable sweetnessof a father's love! They are saved, for what?--the mother, for the deathof violence and shame and blood, for the doomsman's hand to put asidethat shining hair which has entangled thy bridegroom kisses; the child, first and last of thine offspring, in whom thou didst hope to found arace that should hear with thee the music of celestial harps, andfloat, by the side of thy familiar, Adon-Ai, through the azure rivers ofjoy, --the child, to live on a few days as a fungus in a burial-vault, athing of the loathsome dungeon, dying of cruelty and neglect and famine. Ha! ha! thou who wouldst baffle Death, learn how the deathless die ifthey dare to love the mortal. Now, Chaldean, behold my boons! Now Iseize 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 minearms shall clasp thee, when thou wouldst take the wings of the Morningand flee from the embrace of Night!"

"I tell thee, no! And again I compel thee, speak and answer to the lordwho can command his slave. I know, though my lore fails me, and thereeds on which I leaned pierce my side, --I know yet that it is writtenthat the life of which I question can be saved from the headsman. Thouwrappest her future in the darkness of thy shadow, but thou canst notshape it. Thou mayest foreshow the antidote; thou canst not effect thebane. 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 lovescan dare all things. Shadow, I defy thee, and compel!"

The spectre waned and recoiled. Like a vapour that lessens as the sunpierces and pervades it, the form shrank cowering and dwarfed in thedimmer distance, and through the casement again rushed the stars. 

"Yes, " said the Voice, with a faint and hollow accent, "thou CANST saveher from the headsman; for it is written, that sacrifice can save. Ha!ha!" And the shape again suddenly dilated into the gloom of its giantstature, 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 wiltsacrifice thine own! Is it for this thou hast lived on through crumblingempires and countless generations of thy race? At last shall Deathreclaim thee? Wouldst thou save her?--DIE FOR HER! Fall, O statelycolumn, over which stars yet unformed may gleam, --fall, that the herb atthy base may drink a few hours longer the sunlight and the dews! Silent!Art thou ready for the sacrifice? See, the moon moves up throughheaven. Beautiful and wise one, wilt thou bid her smile to-morrow on thyheadless clay?"

"Back! for my soul, in answering thee from depths where thou canst nothear it, has regained its glory; and I hear the wings of Adon-Ai glidingmusical through the air. "

He spoke; and, with a low shriek of baffled rage and hate, the Thing wasgone, and through the room rushed, luminous and sudden, the Presence ofsilvery 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 ineffabletenderness and love, all space seemed lighted from his smile. Along theblue air without, from that chamber in which his wings had halted, tothe farthest star in the azure distance, it seemed as if the track ofhis flight were visible, by a lengthened splendour in the air, like thecolumn of moonlight on the sea. Like the flower that diffuses perfume asthe 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 hadscattered delight as the morning scatters dew. For that brief moment, Poverty had ceased to mourn, Disease fled from its prey, and Hopebreathed a dream of Heaven into the darkness of Despair. 

"Thou art right, " said the melodious Voice. "Thy courage has restoredthy power. Once more, in the haunts of earth, thy soul charms me to thyside. Wiser now, in the moment when thou comprehendest Death, than whenthy unfettered spirit learned the solemn mystery of Life; the humanaffections that thralled and humbled thee awhile bring to thee, in theselast hours of thy mortality, the sublimest heritage of thy race, --theeternity that commences from the grave. "

"O Adon-Ai, " said the Chaldean, as, circumfused in the splendour of thevisitant, a glory more radiant than human beauty settled round his form, and seemed already to belong to the eternity of which the Bright Onespoke, "as men, before they die, see and comprehend the enigmas hiddenfrom them before (The greatest poet, and one of the noblest thinkers, ofthe last age, said, on his deathbed, "Many things obscure to me before, now clear up, and become visible. "--See the 'Life of Schiller. '), "so inthis hour, when the sacrifice of self to another brings the course ofages to its goal, I see the littleness of Life, compared to the majestyof Death; but oh, Divine Consoler, even here, even in thy presence, the affections that inspire me, sadden. To leave behind me in thisbad world, unaided, unprotected, those for whom I die! the wife! thechild!--oh, speak comfort to me in this!"

"And what, " said the visitor, with a slight accent of reproof in thetone of celestial pity, --"what, with all thy wisdom and thy starrysecrets, with all thy empire of the past, and thy visions of the future;what art thou to the All-Directing and Omniscient? Canst thou yetimagine that thy presence on earth can give to the hearts thou lovestthe shelter which the humblest take from the wings of the Presence thatlives in heaven? Fear not thou for their future. Whether thou live ordie, their future is the care of the Most High! In the dungeon and onthe scaffold looks everlasting the Eye of HIM, tenderer than thou tolove, wiser than thou to guide, mightier than thou to save!"

Zanoni bowed his head; and when he looked up again, the last shadow hadleft his brow. The visitor was gone; but still the glory of his presenceseemed to shine upon the spot, still the solitary air seemed to murmurwith tremulous delight. And thus ever shall it be with those who haveonce, detaching themselves utterly from life, received the visit of theAngel FAITH. Solitude and space retain the splendour, and it settleslike 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. Thoughafar, the fiercest passions of men were at work on the web of strife anddoom, all that gave itself to his view was calm and still in the raysof the summer moon, for his soul was wrapped from man and man's narrowsphere, and only the serener glories of creation were present to thevision of the seer. There he stood, alone and thoughtful, to take thelast 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 upongroup, they circled in the starry silence multiform in the unimaginablebeauty of a being fed by ambrosial dews and serenest light. In histrance, all the universe stretched visible beyond; in the green valleysafar, 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 hidefrom the light of heaven; on every leaf in the numberless forests, inevery drop of the unmeasured seas, he surveyed its separate and swarmingworld; far up, in the farthest blue, he saw orb upon orb ripening intoshape, and planets starting from the central fire, to run their dayof ten thousand years. For everywhere in creation is the breath of theCreator, 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 knowledgeproduces weal or woe; a mechanical agent of a more tender and a wiserwill, that guides every spring to its inscrutable designs. Livingon, --living ever, --as science that cares alone for knowledge, and haltsnot to consider how knowledge advances happiness; how Human Improvement, rushing through civilisation, crushes in its march all who cannotgrapple to its wheels ("You colonise the lands of the savage with theAnglo-Saxon, --you civilise that portion of THE EARTH; but is the SAVAGEcivilised? He is exterminated! You accumulate machinery, --you increasethe total of wealth; but what becomes of the labour you displace? Onegeneration is sacrificed to the next. You diffuse knowledge, --andthe world seems to grow brighter; but Discontent at Poverty replacesIgnorance, happy with its crust. Every improvement, every advancement incivilisation, injures some, to benefit others, and either cherishesthe want of to-day, or prepares the revolution of to-morrow. "--StephenMontague. ); ever, with its Cabala and its number, lives on to change, inits bloodless movements, the face of the habitable world!

And, "Oh, farewell to life!" murmured the glorious dreamer. "Sweet, Olife! hast thou been to me. How fathomless thy joys, --how rapturouslyhas my soul bounded forth upon the upward paths! To him who foreverrenews his youth in the clear fount of Nature, how exquisite is the merehappiness 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 themountain, not a pebble on the shore, not a seed far-blown into thewilderness, but contributed to the lore that sought in all the trueprinciple 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 theintellect could pierce, or the spirit could breathe the air. "

He paused, and through the immeasurable space his eyes and hisheart, penetrating the dismal dungeon, rested on his child. He saw itslumbering in the arms of the pale mother, and HIS soul spoke to thesleeping soul. "Forgive me, if my desire was sin; I dreamed to havereared and nurtured thee to the divinest destinies my visions couldforesee. Betimes, as the mortal part was strengthened against disease, to have purified the spiritual from every sin; to have led thee, heavenupon heaven, through the holy ecstasies which make up the existenceof the orders that dwell on high; to have formed, from thy sublimeaffections, the pure and ever-living communication between thy motherand myself. The dream was but a dream--it is no more! In sight myself ofthe grave, I feel, at last, that through the portals of the grave liesthe true initiation into the holy and the wise. Beyond those portals Iawait 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 thespirit of his distant friend addressed him. 

"Fare thee well forever upon this earth! Thy last companion forsakes thyside. Thine age survives the youth of all; and the Final Day shall findthee still the contemplator of our tombs. I go with my free will intothe land of darkness; but new suns and systems blaze around us from thegrave. I go where the souls of those for whom I resign the clay shall bemy co-mates through eternal youth. At last I recognise the true ordealand the real victory. Mejnour, cast down thy elixir; lay by thy loadof years! Wherever the soul can wander, the Eternal Soul of all thingsprotects 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 theRevolutionary Tribunal, had re-entered his cabinet, on his return fromthe 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, theGeneral of the Parisian National Guard. This formidable triumvirate wereassembled to debate on the proceedings of the next day; and the threesister-witches over their hellish caldron were scarcely animated by amore fiend-like spirit, or engaged in more execrable designs, than thesethree heroes of the Revolution in their premeditated massacre of themorrow. 

Dumas was but little altered in appearance since, in the earlier part ofthis narrative, he was presented to the reader, except that his mannerwas somewhat more short and severe, and his eye yet more restless. Buthe seemed almost a superior being by the side of his associates. ReneDumas, born of respectable parents, and well educated, despite hisferocity, was not without a certain refinement, which perhaps renderedhim the more acceptable to the precise and formal Robespierre. (Dumaswas a beau in his way. His gala-dress was a BLOOD-RED COAT, with thefinest ruffles. ) But Henriot had been a lackey, a thief, a spy of thepolice; he had drunk the blood of Madame de Lamballe, and had risento his present rank for no quality but his ruffianism; andFouquier-Tinville, the son of a provincial agriculturist, and afterwardsa clerk at the Bureau of the Police, was little less base in hismanners, and yet more, from a certain loathsome buffoonery, revoltingin his speech, --bull-headed, with black, sleek hair, with a narrow andlivid forehead, with small eyes, that twinkled with a sinister malice;strongly and coarsely built, he looked what he was, the audacious bullyof a lawless and relentless Bar. 

Dumas trimmed the candles, and bent over the list of the victims for themorrow. 

"It is a long catalogue, " said the president; "eighty trials forone day! And Robespierre's orders to despatch the whole fournee areunequivocal. "

"Pooh!" said Fouquier, with a coarse, loud laugh; "we must try them enmasse. I know how to deal with our jury. 'Je pense, citoyens, que vousetes convaincus du crime des accuses?' (I think, citizens, that you areconvinced 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, --"littleTinville is the man for despatch. "

"Citizen Henriot, " said Dumas, gravely, "permit me to request theeto select another footstool; and for the rest, let me warn thee thatto-morrow is a critical and important day; one that will decide the fateof France. "

"A fig for little France! Vive le Vertueux Robespierre, la Colonne dela Republique! (Long life to the virtuous Robespierre, the pillar of theRepublic!) Plague on this talking; it is dry work. Hast thou no eau devie in that little cupboard?"

Dumas and Fouquier exchanged looks of disgust. Dumas shrugged hisshoulders, and replied, --

"It is to guard thee against eau de vie, Citizen General Henriot, that Ihave 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 factionswill be astir. It is probable enough that they will even seek to arrestour tumbrils on their way to the guillotine. Have thy men armed andready; keep the streets clear; cut down without mercy whomsoever mayobstruct the ways. "

"I understand, " said Henriot, striking his sword so loudly that Dumashalf-started at the clank, --"Black Henriot is no 'Indulgent. '"

"Look to it, then, citizen, --look to it! And hark thee, " he added, witha grave and sombre brow, "if thou wouldst keep thine own head on thyshoulders, beware of the eau de vie. "

"My own head!--sacre mille tonnerres! Dost thou threaten the general ofthe Parisian army?"

Dumas, like Robespierre, a precise atrabilious, and arrogant man, wasabout to retort, when the craftier Tinville laid his hand on his arm, and, turning to the general, said, "My dear Henriot, thy dauntlessrepublicanism, which is too ready to give offence, must learn to takea reprimand from the representative of Republican Law. Seriously, moncher, thou must be sober for the next three or four days; after thecrisis is over, thou and I will drink a bottle together. Come, Dumasrelax thine austerity, and shake hands with our friend. No quarrelsamongst ourselves!"

Dumas hesitated, and extended his hand, which the ruffian clasped; and, maudlin tears succeeding his ferocity, he half-sobbed, half-hiccoughedforth his protestations of civism and his promises of sobriety. 

"Well, we depend on thee, mon general, " said Dumas; "and now, since weshall 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 thequick changes of intoxication, again his eyes gleamed fire through theirfoul tears. With some difficulty Fouquier succeeded at last in soothingthe brute, and leading him from the chamber. But still, as some wildbeast disappointed of a prey, he growled and snarled as his heavy treaddescended the stairs. A tall trooper, mounted, was leading Henriot'shorse to and fro the streets; and as the general waited at the porchtill his attendant turned, a stranger stationed by the wall accostedhim:

"General Henriot, I have desired to speak with thee. Next toRobespierre, 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 andthy 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 wiltgrant me one small favour. "

"Citizen, I grant it!" said Henriot, waving his hand majestically. "Isit to denounce some rascal who has offended thee?"

"No; it is simply this: write these words to President Dumas, 'Admitthe bearer to thy presence; and, if thou canst, grant him the requesthe will make to thee, it will be an inestimable obligation to FrancoisHenriot. '" The stranger, as he spoke, placed pencil and tablets in theshaking 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, saidsharply, "How canst thou be so mad as to incense that brigand? Knowestthou not that our laws are nothing without the physical force of theNational Guard, and that he is their leader?"

"I know this, that Robespierre must have been mad to place that drunkardat their head; and mark my words, Fouquier, if the struggle come, itis that man's incapacity and cowardice that will destroy us. Yes, thoumayst live thyself to accuse thy beloved Robespierre, and to perish inhis fall. "

"For all that, we must keep well with Henriot till we can find theoccasion to seize and behead him. To be safe, we must fawn on those whoare 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 thythreats. He is the most revengeful of human beings. Thou must send andsoothe him in the morning!"

"Right, " said Dumas, convinced. "I was too hasty; and now I think wehave nothing further to do, since we have arranged to make short workwith our fournee of to-morrow. I see in the list a knave I have longmarked out, though his crime once procured me a legacy, --Nicot, theHebertist. "

"And young Andre Chenier, the poet? Ah, I forgot; we be headed HIMto-day! Revolutionary virtue is at its acme. His own brother abandonedhim. " (His brother is said, indeed, to have contributed to thecondemnation of this virtuous and illustrious person. He was heard tocry aloud, "Si mon frere est coupable, qu'il perisse" (If my brother beculpable, let him die). This brother, Marie-Joseph, also a poet, andthe author of "Charles IX. , " so celebrated in the earlier days of theRevolution, enjoyed, of course, according to the wonted justice of theworld, a triumphant career, and was proclaimed in the Champ de Mars "lepremier de poetes Francais, " a title due to his murdered brother. )

"There is a foreigner, --an Italian woman in the list; but I can find nocharge 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 ofHenriot. 

"Ah! this is fortunate, " said Tinville, to whom Dumas chucked thescroll, --"grant the prayer by all means; so at least that it does notlessen our bead-roll. But I will do Henriot the justice to say thathe never asks to let off, but to put on. Good-night! I am worn out--myescort waits below. Only on such an occasion would I venture forth inthe streets at night. " (During the latter part of the Reign of Terror, Fouquier rarely stirred out at night, and never without an escort. Inthe 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 lawyersin practice mostly are, seemed to require as little sleep as hisparchments. 

The stranger entered. 

"Rene-Francois Dumas, " said he, seating himself opposite to thepresident, and markedly adopting the plural, as if in contempt of therevolutionary jargon, "amidst the excitement and occupations of yourlater 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 settledon his sallow cheeks, "Yes, citizen, I remember!"

"And you recall the words I then uttered! You spoke tenderly andphilanthropically of your horror of capital executions; you exultedin the approaching Revolution as the termination of all sanguinarypunishments; 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 thatwe should meet again when your ideas of death and the philosophy ofrevolutions 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 spokethen as men speak who have not acted. Revolutions are not made withrose-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 pleasethee to learn that his intended murderer will be guillotined to-morrow. "

"That concerns yourself, --your justice or your revenge. Permit me theegotism to remind you that you then promised that if ever a day shouldcome when you could serve me, your life--yes, the phrase was, 'yourheart's blood'--was at my bidding. Think not, austere judge, that Icome to ask a boon that can affect yourself, --I come but to ask a day'srespite for another!"

"Citizen, it is impossible! I have the order of Robespierre that not oneless 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 yourdeath-roll there is the name of an Italian woman whose youth, whosebeauty, and whose freedom not only from every crime, but every tangiblecharge, will excite only compassion, and not terror. Even YOU wouldtremble to pronounce her sentence. It will be dangerous on a day whenthe populace will be excited, when your tumbrils may be arrested, toexpose youth and innocence and beauty to the pity and courage of arevolted 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. Butmy orders are positive. "

"Positive only as to the number of the victims. I offer you a substitutefor this one. I offer you the head of a man who knows all of the veryconspiracy which now threatens Robespierre and yourself, and comparedwith one clew to which, you would think even eighty ordinary lives acheap purchase. "

"That alters the case, " said Dumas, eagerly; "if thou canst do this, onmy own responsibility I will postpone the trial of the Italian. Now namethe proxy!"

"You behold him!"

"Thou!" exclaimed Dumas, while a fear he could not conceal betrayeditself through his surprise. "Thou!--and thou comest to me alone atnight, 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 lifeis valueless without my revelations. Sit still, I command you, --hearme!" and the light in those dauntless eyes spell-bound and awed thejudge. "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 donot satisfy you by my speech, you hold the woman I die to save as yourhostage. 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 yourvengeance on the life that remains. Tush! judge and condemner ofthousands, do you hesitate, --do you imagine that the man who voluntarilyoffers himself to death will be daunted into uttering one syllable atyour Bar against his will? Have you not had experience enough of theinflexibility of pride and courage? President, I place before you theink and implements! Write to the jailer a reprieve of one day for thewoman whose life can avail you nothing, and I will bear the order to myown prison: I, who can now tell this much as an earnest of what I cancommunicate, --while I speak, your own name, judge, is in a list ofdeath. I can tell you by whose hand it is written down; I can tell youin what quarter to look for danger; I can tell you from what cloud, inthis lurid atmosphere, hangs the storm that shall burst on Robespierreand his reign!"

Dumas grew pale; and his eyes vainly sought to escape the magnetic gazethat overpowered and mastered him. Mechanically, and as if under anagency not his own, he wrote while the stranger dictated. 

"Well, " he said then, forcing a smile to his lips, "I promised I wouldserve you; see, I am faithful to my word. I suppose that you are one ofthose 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 seethose 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 issaved. "

"I AM one of those fools of feeling, " said the stranger, rising. "Youhave divined aright. "

"And wilt thou not, in return for my mercy, utter to-night therevelations thou wouldst proclaim to-morrow? Come; and perhaps thoutoo--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 thecloud, the bolt may fall. "

"Tush! prophet, look to thyself! Go, madman, go. I know too well thecontumacious obstinacy of the class to which I suspect thou belongest, to waste further words. Diable! but ye grow so accustomed to look ondeath, that ye forget the respect ye owe to it. Since thou offerestme thy head, I accept it. To-morrow thou mayst repent; it will be toolate. "

"Ay, too late, president!" echoed the calm visitor. 

"But, remember, it is not pardon, it is but a day's reprieve, I havepromised 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 forwant of faith. "

"It is but a day that I have asked; the rest I leave to justice and toHeaven. 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 condemnedbefore adjudged. Since her exile from Zanoni, her very intellect hadseemed paralysed. All that beautiful exuberance of fancy which, if notthe fruit of genius, seemed its blossoms; all that gush of exquisitethought which Zanoni had justly told her flowed with mysteries andsubtleties ever new to him, the wise one, --all were gone, annihilated;the blossom withered, the fount dried up. From something almost abovewomanhood, 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 andthe mechanism of her dull tasks. She scarcely knew what meant thosekindly groups, that, struck with her exceeding loveliness, had gatheredround her in the prison, with mournful looks, but with words of comfort. She, who had hitherto been taught to abhor those whom Law condemns forcrime, was amazed to hear that beings thus compassionate and tender, with cloudless and lofty brows, with gallant and gentle mien, werecriminals for whom Law had no punishment short of death. But they, thesavages, gaunt and menacing, who had dragged her from her home, whohad attempted to snatch from her the infant while she clasped it in herarms, and laughed fierce scorn at her mute, quivering lips, --THEY werethe chosen citizens, the men of virtue, the favourites of Power, theministers of Law! Such thy black caprices, O thou, the ever-shifting andcalumnious, --Human Judgment!

A squalid, and yet a gay world, did the prison-houses of that daypresent. There, as in the sepulchre to which they led, all ranks werecast with an even-handed scorn. And yet there, the reverence that comesfrom great emotions restored Nature's first and imperishable, and mostlovely, 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 owninborn chivalry, raised into rank the helpless and the weak. The ironsinews and the Herculean shoulders made way for the woman and the child;and the graces of Humanity, lost elsewhere, sought their refuge in theabode 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 herbosom. 

"Alas, young mother, they will suffer thy child to live. '

"And for this, --an orphan in the dungeon!" murmured the accusing heartof Viola, --"have I reserved his offspring! Zanoni, even in thought, asknot--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. ") Hername was with the doomed. And the old priest, better prepared to die, but reserved from the death-list, laid his hands on her head, andblessed her while he wept. She heard, and wondered; but she did notweep. With downcast eyes, with arms folded on her bosom, she bentsubmissively 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 ahowl of despair and rage. She turned, and their eyes met. Throughthe distance of time she recognised that hideous aspect. Nicot's facesettled back into its devilish sneer. "At least, gentle Neapolitan, theguillotine will unite us. Oh, we shall sleep well our wedding-night!"And, with a laugh, he strode away through the crowd, and vanished intohis lair. 

. .. . 

She was placed in her gloomy cell, to await the morrow. But the childwas still spared her; and she thought it seemed as if conscious of theawful present. In their way to the prison it had not moaned or wept. Ithad looked with its clear eyes, unshrinking, on the gleaming pikes andsavage brows of the huissiers. And now, alone in the dungeon, it put itsarms round her neck, and murmured its indistinct sounds, low and sweetas some unknown language of consolation and of heaven. And of heaven itwas!--for, at the murmur, the terror melted from her soul; upward, fromthe dungeon and the death, --upward, where the happy cherubim chant themercy of the All-loving, whispered that cherub's voice. She fell uponher knees and prayed. The despoilers of all that beautifies and hallowslife had desecrated the altar, and denied the God!--they had removedfrom the last hour of their victims the Priest, the Scripture, and theCross! But Faith builds in the dungeon and the lazar-house its sublimestshrines; and up, through roofs of stone, that shut out the eye ofHeaven, ascends the ladder where the angels glide to and fro, --PRAYER. 

And there, in the very cell beside her own, the atheist Nicot sitsstolid amidst the darkness, and hugs the thought of Danton, that deathis nothingness. ("Ma demeure sera bientot LE NEANT" (My abode will soonbe nothingness), said Danton before his judges. )) His, no spectacleof an appalled and perturbed conscience! Remorse is the echo of a lostvirtue, and virtue he never knew. Had he to live again, he would livethe same. But more terrible than the death-bed of a believing anddespairing sinner that blank gloom of apathy, --that contemplation ofthe worm and the rat of the charnel-house; that grim and loathsomeNOTHINGNESS which, for his eye, falls like a pall over the universe oflife. Still, staring into space, gnawing his livid lip, he looks uponthe darkness, convinced that darkness is forever and forever!

. .. . 

Place, there! place! Room yet in your crowded cells. Another has come tothe slaughter-house. 

As the jailer, lamp in hand, ushered in the stranger, the latter touchedhim 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 youreighty at a thousand francs, and the jewel is more worth than all!The jailer paused, and the diamond laughed in his dazzled eyes. O thouCerberus, thou hast mastered all else that seems human in that fellemploy! Thou hast no pity, no love, and no remorse. But Avarice survivesthe rest, and the foul heart's master-serpent swallows up the tribe. Ha! ha! crafty stranger, thou hast conquered! They tread the gloomycorridor; they arrive at the door where the jailer has placed the fatalmark, now to be erased, for the prisoner within is to be reprieved aday. The key grates in the lock; the door yawns, --the stranger takes thelamp 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 sawnot the dark shadow that fell along the floor. HIS power, HIS arts weregone; but the mystery and the spell known to HER simple heart did notdesert her in the hours of trial and despair. When Science falls as afirework from the sky it would invade; when Genius withers as a flowerin the breath of the icy charnel, --the hope of a child-like soul wrapsthe air in light, and the innocence of unquestioning Belief covers thegrave with blossoms. 

In the farthest corner of the cell she knelt; and the infant, as if toimitate what it could not comprehend, bent its little limbs, and bowedits smiling face, and knelt with her also, by her side. 

He stood and gazed upon them as the light of the lamp fell calmly ontheir forms. It fell over those clouds of golden hair, dishevelled, parted, thrown back from the rapt, candid brow; the dark eyes raisedon high, where, through the human tears, a light as from above wasmirrored; the hands clasped, the lips apart, the form all animate andholy with the sad serenity of innocence and the touching humility ofwoman. And he heard her voice, though it scarcely left her lips: the lowvoice that the heart speaks, --loud enough for God to hear!

"And if never more to see him, O Father! Canst Thou not make the lovethat 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, --aspirit fairer than all his science can conjure? Oh, whatever lot beordained to either, grant--even though a thousand ages may roll betweenus--grant, when at last purified and regenerate, and fitted for thetransport of such reunion--grant that we may meet once more! And for hischild, --it kneels to Thee from the dungeon floor! To-morrow, and whosebreast shall cradle it; whose hand shall feed; whose lips shall pray forits weal below and its soul hereafter!" She paused, --her voice chokedwith sobs. 

"Thou Viola!--thou, thyself. He whom thou hast deserted is here topreserve the mother to the child!"

She started!--those accents, tremulous as her own! She started toher feet!--he was there, --in all the pride of his unwaning youth andsuperhuman beauty; there, in the house of dread, and in the hour oftravail; there, image and personation of the love that can pierce theValley of the Shadow, and can glide, the unscathed wanderer from theheaven, through the roaring abyss of hell!

With a cry never, perhaps, heard before in that gloomy vault, --a cry ofdelight 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 bythe familiar epithets of the old endearment, and she only answered himby sobs. Wildly, passionately, she kissed his hands, the hem of hisgarment, but voice was gone. 

"Look up, look up!--I am here, --I am here to save thee! Wilt thou denyto me thy sweet face? Truant, wouldst thou fly me still?"

"Fly thee!" she said, at last, and in a broken voice; "oh, ifmy thoughts wronged thee, --oh, if my dream, that awful dream, deceived, --kneel down with me, and pray for our child!" Then springingto 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 andstruggling senses can scarcely analyse themselves. And see how, with alook, thy child answers them!"

And in truth the face of that strange infant seemed radiant with itssilent and unfathomable joy. It seemed as if it recognised the father;it clung--it forced itself to his breast, and there, nestling, turnedits bright, clear eyes upon Viola, and smiled. 

"Pray for my child!" said Zanoni, mournfully. "The thoughts of soulsthat would aspire as mine are All PRAYER!" And, seating himself by herside, he began to reveal to her some of the holier secrets of his loftybeing. He spoke of the sublime and intense faith from which alone thediviner knowledge can arise, --the faith which, seeing the immortaleverywhere, purifies and exalts the mortal that beholds, the gloriousambition that dwells not in the cabals and crimes of earth, but amidstthose solemn wonders that speak not of men, but of God; of that power toabstract the soul from the clay which gives to the eye of the soul itssubtle vision, and to the soul's wing the unlimited realm; of thatpure, severe, and daring initiation from which the mind emerges, as fromdeath, into clear perceptions of its kindred with the Father-Principlesof life and light, so that in its own sense of the Beautiful it findsits joy; in the serenity of its will, its power; in its sympathy withthe youthfulness of the Infinite Creation, of which itself is an essenceand a part, the secrets that embalm the very clay which they consecrate, and renew the strength of life with the ambrosia of mysterious andcelestial sleep. And while he spoke, Viola listened, breathless. If shecould not comprehend, she no longer dared to distrust. She felt that inthat enthusiasm, self-deceiving or not, no fiend could lurk; and by anintuition, rather than an effort of the reason, she saw before her, likea starry ocean, the depth and mysterious beauty of the soul whichher fears had wronged. Yet, when he said (concluding his strangeconfessions) that to this life WITHIN life and ABOVE life he had dreamedto raise her own, the fear of humanity crept over her, and he read inher 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 ofhis protecting arms, --when, in one holy kiss, the past was forgiven andthe present lost, --then there returned to her the sweet and warm hopesof the natural life, of the loving woman. He was come to save her! Sheasked not how, --she believed it without a question. They should be atlast again united. They would fly far from those scenes of violence andblood. Their happy Ionian isle, their fearless solitudes, would oncemore receive them. She laughed, with a child's joy, as this picture roseup amidst the gloom of the dungeon. Her mind, faithful to its sweet, simple instincts, refused to receive the lofty images that flittedconfusedly by it, and settled back to its human visions, yet morebaseless, of the earthly happiness and the tranquil home. 

"Talk not now to me, beloved, --talk not more now to me of the past! Thouart 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, ifthou wilt, in thy pride of soul, the universe; thy heart again is theuniverse to mine. I thought but now that I was prepared to die; I seethee, touch thee, and again I know how beautiful a thing is life! Seethrough the grate the stars are fading from the sky; the morrow willsoon be here, --The MORROW which will open the prison doors! Thou sayestthou canst save me, --I will not doubt it now. Oh, let us dwell no morein cities! I never doubted thee in our lovely isle; no dreams hauntedme there, except dreams of joy and beauty; and thine eyes made yet morebeautiful and joyous the world in waking. To-morrow!--why do you notsmile? To-morrow, love! is not TO-MORROW a blessed word! Cruel! youwould punish me still, that you will not share my joy. Aha! see ourlittle one, how it laughs to my eyes! I will talk to THAT. Child, thyfather is come back!"

And taking the infant in her arms, and seating herself at a littledistance, she rocked it to and fro on her bosom, and prattled to it, andkissed it between every word, and laughed and wept by fits, as ever andanon she cast over her shoulder her playful, mirthful glance upon thefather to whom those fading stars smiled sadly their last farewell. Howbeautiful she seemed as she thus sat, unconscious of the future! Stillhalf a child herself, her child laughing to her laughter, --two softtriflers on the brink of the grave! Over her throat, as she bent, fell, like a golden cloud, her redundant hair; it covered her treasure likea veil of light, and the child's little hands put it aside from time totime, to smile through the parted tresses, and then to cover its faceand peep and smile again. It were cruel to damp that joy, more cruelstill to share it. 

"Viola, " said Zanoni, at last, "dost thou remember that, seated by thecave on the moonlit beach, in our bridal isle, thou once didst ask mefor this amulet?--the charm of a superstition long vanished from theworld, with the creed to which it belonged. It is the last relic of mynative 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 OURBEING 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 itslept now, --she threw herself on his breast, and pointed to the dawnthat began greyly to creep along the skies. 

There, in those horror-breathing walls, the day-star looked through thedismal bars upon those three beings, in whom were concentrated whateveris most tender in human ties; whatever is most mysterious in thecombinations of the human mind; the sleeping Innocence; the trustfulAffection, that, contented with a touch, a breath, can foresee nosorrow; the weary Science that, traversing all the secrets of creation, comes at last to Death for their solution, and still clings, as itnears the threshold, to the breast of Love. Thus, within, THE WITHIN, --adungeon; without, the WITHOUT, --stately with marts and halls, withpalaces and temples; Revenge and Terror, at their dark schemes andcounter-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 andthe guillotine. Up springs the blithesome morn. In yon gardens thebirds renew their familiar song. The fishes are sporting through thefreshening waters of the Seine. The gladness of divine nature, theroar and dissonance of mortal life, awake again: the trader unbars hiswindows; the flower-girls troop gayly to their haunts; busy feet aretramping to the daily drudgeries that revolutions which strike downkings and kaisars, leave the same Cain's heritage to the boor; thewagons groan and reel to the mart; Tyranny, up betimes, holds its pallidlevee; Conspiracy, that hath not slept, hears the clock, and whispers toits own heart, "The hour draws near. " A group gather, eager-eyed, roundthe purlieus of the Convention Hall; to-day decides the sovereignty ofFrance, --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 eightyheads shall fall!

. .. . 

And she slept so sweetly. Wearied out with joy, secure in the presenceof the eyes regained, she had laughed and wept herself to sleep; andstill in that slumber there seemed a happy consciousness that the lovedwas by, --the lost was found. For she smiled and murmured to herself, andbreathed his name often, and stretched out her arms, and sighed ifthey touched him not. He gazed upon her as he stood apart, --with whatemotions it were vain to say. She would wake no more to him; she couldnot know how dearly the safety of that sleep was purchased. That morrowshe had so yearned for, --it had come at last. HOW WOULD SHE GREETTHE EVE? Amidst all the exquisite hopes with which love and youthcontemplate the future, her eyes had closed. Those hopes still lenttheir iris-colours to her dreams. She would wake to live! To-morrow, andthe Reign of Terror was no more; the prison gates would be opened, --shewould go forth, with their child, into that summer-world of light. AndHE?--he turned, and his eye fell upon the child; it was broad awake, andthat clear, serious, thoughtful look which it mostly wore, watched himwith a solemn steadiness. He bent over and kissed its lips. 

"Never more, " he murmured, "O heritor of love and grief, --never morewilt thou see me in thy visions; never more will the light of thoseeyes be fed by celestial commune; never more can my soul guard fromthy pillow the trouble and the disease. Not such as I would have vainlyshaped it, must be thy lot. In common with thy race, it must be thineto suffer, to struggle, and to err. But mild be thy human trials, andstrong be thy spirit to love and to believe! And thus, as I gaze uponthee, --thus may my nature breathe into thine its last and most intensedesire; may my love for thy mother pass to thee, and in thy looks mayshe hear my spirit comfort and console her. Hark! they come! Yes! Iawait ye both beyond the grave!"

The door slowly opened; the jailer appeared, and through the aperturerushed, at the same instant, a ray of sunlight: it streamed over thefair, hushed face of the happy sleeper, --it played like a smile uponthe lips of the child that, still, mute, and steadfast, watched themovements 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 goforth! 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 STILLshe sleeps!" He would not kiss, lest he should awaken her, but gentlyplaced round her neck the amulet that would speak to her, hereafter, the farewell, --and promise, in that farewell, reunion! He is at thethreshold, --he turns again, and again. The door closes! He is goneforever!

She woke at last, --she gazed round. "Zanoni, it is day!" No answer butthe 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 feltthe amulet on her bosom, --it was NO dream! "O God! and he is gone!" Shesprang 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, hissadness, the true meaning of his mystic gift, the very sacrifice hemade for her, all became distinct for a moment to her mind, --and thendarkness swept on it like a storm, yet darkness which had its light. Andwhile she sat there, mute, rigid, voiceless, as congealed to stone, AVISION, like a wind, glided over the deeps within, --the grim court, thejudge, the jury, the accuser; and amidst the victims the one dauntlessand radiant form. 

"Thou knowest the danger to the State, --confess!"

"I know; and I keep my promise. Judge, I reveal thy doom! I know thatthe 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, yedead!--room in hell for Robespierre and his crew!"

They hurry into the court, --the hasty and pale messengers; there isconfusion and fear and dismay! "Off with the conspirator, and to-morrowthe 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 ofDeath. 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 gesticulatedthat form which, in his prophetic dreams, he had seen his companion atthe place of death. "Save us!--save us!" howled the atheist Nicot. "On, brave populace! we SHALL be saved!" And through the crowd, her darkhair streaming wild, her eyes flashing fire, pressed a female form, "MyClarence!" she shrieked, in the soft Southern language native to theears of Viola; "butcher! what hast thou done with Clarence?" Her eyesroved over the eager faces of the prisoners; she saw not the one shesought. "Thank Heaven!--thank Heaven! I am not thy murderess!"

Nearer and nearer press the populace, --another moment, and the deathsmanis defrauded. O Zanoni! why still upon THY brow the resignation thatspeaks 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, strickenby the sabres of the guard, her long hair blood-bedabbled, lies theItalian woman; and still upon her writhing lips sits joy, as theymurmur, "Clarence! I have not destroyed thee!"

On to the Barriere du Trone. It frowns dark in the air, --the giantinstrument of murder! One after one to the glaive, --another and anotherand another! Mercy! O mercy! Is the bridge between the sun and theshades so brief, --brief as a sigh? There, there, --HIS turn has come. "Die not yet; leave me not behind; hear me--hear me!" shrieked theinspired sleeper. "What! and thou smilest still!" They smiled, --thosepale lips, --and WITH the smile, the place of doom, the headsman, thehorror vanished. With that smile, all space seemed suffused in eternalsunshine. Up from the earth he rose; he hovered over her, --a thing notof matter, an IDEA of joy and light! Behind, Heaven opened, deep afterdeep; and the Hosts of Beauty were seen, rank upon rank, afar; and"Welcome!" in a myriad melodies, broke from your choral multitude, yePeople of the Skies, --"welcome! O purified by sacrifice, and immortalonly through the grave, --this it is to die. " And radiant amidst theradiant, the IMAGE stretched forth its arms, and murmured to thesleeper: "Companion of Eternity!--THIS it is to die!"

. .. . 

"Ho! wherefore do they make us signs from the house-tops? Whereforegather the crowds through the street? Why sounds the bell? Why shrieksthe tocsin? Hark to the guns!--the armed clash! Fellow-captives, isthere 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 windowand from house-top they see the smiles of friends, --the waving signals!"Hurrah!" at last, --"Hurrah! Robespierre is fallen! The Reign of Terroris no more! God hath permitted us to live!"

Yes; cast thine eyes into the hall where the tyrant and his conclavehearkened to the roar without! Fulfilling the prophecy of Dumas, Henriot, drunk with blood and alcohol, reels within, and chucks his gorysabre 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 woulddestroy himself! The trembling hand has mangled, and failed to kill! Theclock of the Hotel de Ville strikes the third hour. Through the battereddoor, along the gloomy passages, into the Death-hall, burst the crowd. Mangled, livid, blood-stained, speechless but not unconscious, sitshaughty yet, in his seat erect, the Master-Murderer! Around him theythrong; they hoot, --they execrate, their faces gleaming in the tossingtorches! HE, and not the starry Magian, the REAL Sorcerer! And round HISlast hours gather the Fiends he raised!

They drag him forth! Open thy gates, inexorable prison! The Conciergeriereceives its prey! Never a word again on earth spoke MaximilienRobespierre! Pour forth thy thousands, and tens of thousands, emancipated Paris! To the Place de la Revolution rolls the tumbril ofthe King of Terror, --St. Just, Dumas, Couthon, his companions to thegrave! A woman--a childless woman, with hoary hair--springs to hisside, "Thy death makes me drunk with joy!" He opened his bloodshoteyes, --"Descend to hell with the curses of wives and mothers!"

The headsmen wrench the rag from the shattered jaw; a shriek, and thecrowd laugh, and the axe descends amidst the shout of the countlessthousands, and blackness rushes on thy soul, Maximilien Robespierre! Soended the Reign of Terror. 

. .. . 

Daylight in the prison. From cell to cell they hurry with thenews, --crowd upon crowd; the joyous captives mingled with the veryjailers, who, for fear, would fain seem joyous too; they stream throughthe dens and alleys of the grim house they will shortly leave. Theyburst into a cell, forgotten since the previous morning. They foundthere a young female, sitting upon her wretched bed; her arms crossedupon her bosom, her face raised upward; the eyes unclosed, and a smileof more than serenity--of bliss--upon her lips. Even in the riot oftheir joy, they drew back in astonishment and awe. Never had they seenlife 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 insilence; and lo! at her feet there was a young infant, who, wakenedby their tread, looked at them steadfastly, and with its rosy fingersplayed 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 fatherfell yesterday; and now the mother! Alone in the world, what can be itsfate?"

The infant smiled fearlessly on the crowd, as the woman spoke thus. Andthe old priest, who stood amongst them, said gently, "Woman, see! theorphan smiles! THE FATHERLESS ARE THE CARE OF GOD!"

*****

NOTE. 

The curiosity which Zanoni has excited among those who think it worthwhile to dive into the subtler meanings they believe it intended toconvey, may excuse me in adding a few words, not in explanation of itsmysteries, but upon the principles which permit them. Zanoni is not, assome 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 subjectwhich is, or appears to be, preternatural) the reader judges the writerby the usual canons, --namely, by the consistency of his charactersunder such admitted circumstances, the interest of his story, and thecoherence of his plot; of the work regarded in this view, it is not myintention to say anything, whether in exposition of the design, or indefence of the execution. No typical meanings (which, in plain terms arebut moral suggestions, more or less numerous, more or less subtle) canafford just excuse to a writer of fiction, for the errors he shouldavoid in the most ordinary novel. We have no right to expect the mostingenious reader to search for the inner meaning, if the obvious courseof the narrative be tedious and displeasing. It is, on the contrary, in proportion as we are satisfied with the objective sense of a work ofimagination, that we are inclined to search into its depths for the moresecret intentions of the author. Were we not so divinely charmed with"Faust, " and "Hamlet, " and "Prometheus, " so ardently carried on bythe interest of the story told to the common understanding, we shouldtrouble ourselves little with the types in each which all of us candetect, --none of us can elucidate; none elucidate, for the essence oftype is mystery. We behold the figure, we cannot lift the veil. Theauthor himself is not called upon to explain what he designed. Anallegory is a personation of distinct and definite things, --virtues orqualities, --and the key can be given easily; but a writer who conveystypical meanings, may express them in myriads. He cannot disentangle allthe hues which commingle into the light he seeks to cast upon truth;and therefore the great masters of this enchanted soil, --Fairyland ofFairyland, Poetry imbedded beneath Poetry, --wisely leave to each mind toguess at such truths as best please or instruct it. To have asked Goetheto explain the "Faust" would have entailed as complex and puzzling ananswer as to have asked Mephistopheles to explain what is beneath theearth we tread on. The stores beneath may differ for every passenger;each step may require a new description; and what is treasure to thegeologist 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 ofsomething subtler than that which it embodies to the sense. What Plinytells us of a great painter of old, is true of most great painters;"their works express something beyond the works, "--"more felt thanunderstood. " This belongs to the concentration of intellect which highart demands, and which, of all the arts, sculpture best illustrates. Take Thorwaldsen's Statue of Mercury, --it is but a single figure, yetit tells to those conversant with mythology a whole legend. The god hasremoved the pipe from his lips, because he has already lulled to sleepthe Argus, whom you do not see. He is pressing his heel against hissword, because the moment is come when he may slay his victim. Apply theprinciple of this noble concentration of art to the moral writer: he, too, gives to your eye but a single figure; yet each attitude, eachexpression, may refer to events and truths you must have the learning toremember, the acuteness to penetrate, or the imagination to conjecture. But to a classical judge of sculpture, would not the exquisite pleasureof discovering the all not told in Thorwaldsen's masterpiece bedestroyed if the artist had engraved in detail his meaning at the baseof the statue? Is it not the same with the typical sense which theartist in words conveys? The pleasure of divining art in each is thenoble exercise of all by whom art is worthily regarded. 

We of the humbler race not unreasonably shelter ourselves under theauthority of the masters, on whom the world's judgment is pronounced;and great names are cited, not with the arrogance of equals, but withthe humility of inferiors. 

The author of Zanoni gives, then, no key to mysteries, be they trivialor important, which may be found in the secret chambers by those wholift the tapestry from the wall; but out of the many solutions of themain enigma--if enigma, indeed, there be--which have been sent to him, he ventures to select the one which he subjoins, from the ingenuity andthought which it displays, and from respect for the distinguished writer(one of the most eminent our time has produced) who deemed him worthyof an honour he is proud to display. He leaves it to the reader to agreewith, or dissent from the explanation. "A hundred men, " says the oldPlatonist, "may read the book by the help of the same lamp, yet all maydiffer on the text, for the lamp only lights the characters, --the mindmust divine the meaning. " The object of a parable is not that of aproblem; it does not seek to convince, but to suggest. It takesthe thought below the surface of the understanding to the deeperintelligence which the world rarely tasks. It is not sunlight on thewater; 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 mustlast as long as the Actual. Less fallible than Idealism, but lesspractically potent, from its ignorance of the human heart. 

ZANONI:--Contemplation of the Ideal, --IDEALISM. Always necessarilysympathetic: lives by enjoyment; and is therefore typified by eternalyouth. ("I do not understand the making Idealism less undying (on thisscene of existence) than Science. "--Commentator. Because, grantingthe above premises, Idealism is more subjected than Science to theAffections, or to Instinct, because the Affections, sooner or later, force Idealism into the Actual, and in the Actual its immortalitydeparts. The only absolutely Actual portion of the work is found in theconcluding scenes that depict the Reign of Terror. The introduction ofthis part was objected to by some as out of keeping with the fancifulportions that preceded it. But if the writer of the solution has rightlyshown or suggested the intention of the author, the most stronglyand rudely actual scene of the age in which the story is cast was thenecessary and harmonious completion of the whole. The excesses andcrimes of Humanity are the grave of the Ideal. --Author. ) Idealism is thepotent Interpreter and Prophet of the Real; but its powers are impairedin proportion to their exposure to human passion. 

VIOLA:--Human INSTINCT. (Hardly worthy to be called LOVE, as Love wouldnot forsake its object at the bidding of Superstition. ) Resorts, firstin its aspiration after the Ideal, to tinsel shows; then relinquishesthese for a higher love; but is still, from the conditions of itsnature, inadequate to this, and liable to suspicion and mistrust. Itsgreatest 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 committingsin, under a false guidance; weakly seeking refuge amidst the verytumults of the warring passions of the Actual, while deserting theserene Ideal, --pining, nevertheless, in the absence of the Ideal, andexpiring (not perishing, but becoming transmuted) in the aspirationafter having the laws of the two natures reconciled. 

(It might best suit popular apprehension to call these three theUnderstanding, the Imagination, and the Heart. )

CHILD:--NEW-BORN INSTINCT, while trained and informed by Idealism, promises a preter-human result by its early, incommunicable vigilanceand intelligence, but is compelled, by inevitable orphanhood, andthe one-half of the laws of its existence, to lapse into ordinaryconditions. 

AIDON-AI:--FAITH, which manifests its splendour, and delivers itsoracles, and imparts its marvels, only to the higher moods of the soul, and whose directed antagonism is with Fear; so that those who employthe resources of Fear must dispense with those of Faith. Yet aspirationholds open a way of restoration, and may summon Faith, even when the cryissues from beneath the yoke of fear. 

DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD:--FEAR (or HORROR), from whose ghastliness menare protected by the opacity of the region of Prescription and Custom. The moment this protection is relinquished, and the human spirit piercesthe cloud, and enters alone on the unexplored regions of Nature, thisNatural Horror haunts it, and is to be successfully encountered onlyby defiance, --by aspiration towards, and reliance on, the Former andDirector of Nature, whose Messenger and Instrument of reassurance isFaith. 

MERVALE:--CONVENTIONALISM. 

NICOT:--Base, grovelling, malignant PASSION. 

GLYNDON:--UNSUSTAINED ASPIRATION: Would follow Instinct, but isdeterred by Conventionalism, is overawed by Idealism, yet attracted, and transiently inspired, but has not steadiness for the initiatorycontemplation of the Actual. He conjoins its snatched privileges with abesetting sensualism, and suffers at once from the horror of the one andthe disgust of the other, involving the innocent in the fatal conflictof his spirit. When on the point of perishing, he is rescued byIdealism, and, unable to rise to that species of existence, is gratefulto be replunged into the region of the Familiar, and takes up his resthenceforth 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 ordinaryconditions, --the result being as many victims as efforts, and thestriver being finally left a solitary, --for his object is unsuitable tothe natures he has to deal with. 

The pursuit of the Ideal involves so much emotion as to render theIdealist vulnerable by human passion, however long and well guarded, still vulnerable, --liable, at last, to a union with Instinct. Passionobscures both Insight and Forecast. All effort to elevate Instinct toIdealism is abortive, the laws of their being not coinciding (in theearly stage of the existence of the one). Instinct is either alarmed, and takes refuge in Superstition or Custom, or is left helpless to humancharity, or given over to providential care. 

Idealism, stripped of in sight and forecast, loses its serenity, becomessubject once more to the horror from which it had escaped, and byaccepting its aids, forfeits the higher help of Faith; aspiration, however, remaining still possible, and, thereby, slow restoration; andalso, SOMETHING BETTER. 

Summoned by aspiration, Faith extorts from Fear itself the saving truthto which Science continues blind, and which Idealism itself hails as itscrowning acquisition, --the inestimable PROOF wrought out by all laboursand 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 trueredemption; that the region beyond the grave is the fitting one forexemption from mortal conditions; and that Death is the everlastingportal, indicated by the finger of God, --the broad avenue throughwhich man does not issue solitary and stealthy into the region of FreeExistence, but enters triumphant, hailed by a hierarchy of immortalnatures. 

The result is (in other words), THAT THE UNIVERSAL HUMAN LOT IS, AFTERALL, THAT OF THE HIGHEST PRIVILEGE.