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ZANONI
BY
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
(PLATE: "Thou art good and fair," said Viola.
Drawn by P. Kauffmann, etched by Deblois.)
DEDICATORY EPISTLE
First prefixed to the Edition of 1845
TO
JOHN GIBSON, R.A., SCULPTOR.
In looking round the wide and luminous circle of our great living
Englishmen, to select one to whom I might fitly dedicate this
work,--one who, in his life as in his genius, might illustrate
the principle I have sought to convey; elevated by the ideal
which he exalts, and serenely dwelling in a glorious existence
with the images born of his imagination,--in looking round for
some such man, my thoughts rested upon you. Afar from our
turbulent cabals; from the ignoble jealousy and the sordid strife
which degrade and acerbate the ambition of Genius,--in your Roman
Home, you have lived amidst all that is loveliest and least
perishable in the past, and contributed with the noblest aims,
and in the purest spirit, to the mighty heirlooms of the future.
Your youth has been devoted to toil, that your manhood may be
consecrated to fame: a fame unsullied by one desire of gold.
You have escaped the two worst perils that beset the artist in
our time and land,--the debasing tendencies of commerce, and the
angry rivalries of competition. You have not wrought your marble
for the market,--you have not been tempted, by the praises which
our vicious criticism has showered upon exaggeration and
distortion, to lower your taste to the level of the hour; you
have lived, and you have laboured, as if you had no rivals but in
the dead,--no purchasers, save in judges of what is best. In the
divine priesthood of the beautiful, you have sought only to
increase her worshippers and enrich her temples. The pupil of
Canova, you have inherited his excellences, while you have
shunned his errors,--yours his delicacy, not his affectation.
Your heart resembles him even more than your genius: you have
the same noble enthusiasm for your sublime profession; the same
lofty freedom from envy, and the spirit that depreciates; the
same generous desire not to war with but to serve artists in your
art; aiding, strengthening, advising, elevating the timidity of
inexperience, and the vague aspirations of youth. By the
intuition of a kindred mind, you have equalled the learning of
Winckelman, and the plastic poetry of Goethe, in the intimate
comprehension of the antique. Each work of yours, rightly
studied, is in itself a CRITICISM, illustrating the sublime
secrets of the Grecian Art, which, without the servility of
plagiarism, you have contributed to revive amongst us; in you we
behold its three great and long-undetected principles,--
simplicity, calm, and concentration.
But your admiration of the Greeks has not led you to the bigotry
of the mere antiquarian, nor made you less sensible of the
unappreciated excellence of the mighty modern, worthy to be your
countryman,--though till his statue is in the streets of our
capital, we show ourselves not worthy of the glory he has shed
upon our land. You have not suffered even your gratitude to
Canova to blind you to the superiority of Flaxman. When we
become sensible of our title-deeds to renown in that single name,
we may look for an English public capable of real patronage to
English Art,--and not till then.
I, artist in words, dedicate, then, to you, artist whose ideas
speak in marble, this well-loved work of my matured manhood. I
love it not the less because it has been little understood and
superficially judged by the common herd: it was not meant for
them. I love it not the more because it has found enthusiastic
favorers amongst the Few. My affection for my work is rooted in
the solemn and pure delight which it gave me to conceive and to
perform. If I had graven it on the rocks of a desert, this
apparition of my own innermost mind, in its least-clouded
moments, would have been to me as dear; and this ought, I
believe, to be the sentiment with which he whose Art is born of
faith in the truth and beauty of the principles he seeks to
illustrate, should regard his work. Your serener existence,
uniform and holy, my lot denies,--if my heart covets. But our
true nature is in our thoughts, not our deeds: and therefore, in
books--which ARE his thoughts--the author's character lies bare
to the discerning eye. It is not in the life of cities,--in the
turmoil and the crowd; it is in the still, the lonely, and more
sacred life, which for some hours, under every sun, the student
lives (his stolen retreat from the Agora to the Cave), that I
feel there is between us the bond of that secret sympathy, that
magnetic chain, which unites the everlasting brotherhood of whose
being Zanoni is the type.
E.B.L.
London, May, 1845.
INTRODUCTION.
One of the peculiarities of Bulwer was his passion for occult
studies. They had a charm for him early in life, and he pursued
them with the earnestness which characterised his pursuit of
other studies. He became absorbed in wizard lore; he equipped
himself with magical implements,--with rods for transmitting
influence, and crystal balls in which to discern coming scenes
and persons; and communed with spiritualists and mediums. The
fruit of these mystic studies is seen in "Zanoni" and "A strange
Story," romances which were a labour of love to the author, and
into which he threw all the power he possessed,--power re-
enforced by multifarious reading and an instinctive appreciation
of Oriental thought. These weird stories, in which the author
has formulated his theory of magic, are of a wholly different
type from his previous fictions, and, in place of the heroes and
villains of every day life, we have beings that belong in part to
another sphere, and that deal with mysterious and occult
agencies. Once more the old forgotten lore of the Cabala is
unfolded; the furnace of the alchemist, whose fires have been
extinct for centuries, is lighted anew, and the lamp of the
Rosicrucian re-illumined. No other works of the author,
contradictory as have been the opinions of them, have provoked
such a diversity of criticism as these. To some persons they
represent a temporary aberration of genius rather than any
serious thought or definite purpose; while others regard them as
surpassing in bold and original speculation, profound analysis of
character, and thrilling interest, all of the author's other
works. The truth, we believe, lies midway between these
extremes. It is questionable whether the introduction into a
novel of such subjects as are discussed in these romances be not
an offence against good sense and good taste; but it is as
unreasonable to deny the vigour and originality of their author's
conceptions, as to deny that the execution is imperfect, and, at
times, bungling and absurd.
It has been justly said that the present half century has
witnessed the rise and triumphs of science, the extent and
marvels of which even Bacon's fancy never conceived,
simultaneously with superstitions grosser than any which Bacon's
age believed. "The one is, in fact, the natural reaction from
the other. The more science seeks to exclude the miraculous, and
reduce all nature, animate and inanimate, to an invariable law of
sequences, the more does the natural instinct of man rebel, and
seek an outlet for those obstinate questionings, those 'blank
misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realised,'
taking refuge in delusions as degrading as any of the so-called
Dark Ages." It was the revolt from the chilling materialism of
the age which inspired the mystic creations of "Zanoni" and "A
Strange Story." Of these works, which support and supplement
each other, one is the contemplation of our actual life through a
spiritual medium, the other is designed to show that, without
some gleams of the supernatural, man is not man, nor nature
nature.
In "Zanoni" the author introduces us to two human beings who have
achieved immortality: one, Mejnour, void of all passion or
feeling, calm, benignant, bloodless, an intellect rather than a
man; the other, Zanoni, the pupil of Mejnour, the representative
of an ideal life in its utmost perfection, possessing eternal
youth, absolute power, and absolute knowledge, and withal the
fullest capacity to enjoy and to love, and, as a necessity of
that love, to sorrow and despair. By his love for Viola Zanoni
is compelled to descend from his exalted state, to lose his
eternal calm, and to share in the cares and anxieties of
humanity; and this degradation is completed by the birth of a
child. Finally, he gives up the life which hangs on that of
another, in order to save that other, the loving and beloved
wife, who has delivered him from his solitude and isolation.
Wife and child are mortal, and to outlive them and his love for
them is impossible. But Mejnour, who is the impersonation of
thought,--pure intellect without affection,--lives on.
Bulwer has himself justly characterised this work, in the
Introduction, as a romance and not a romance, as a truth for
those who can comprehend it, and an extravagance for those who
cannot. The most careless or matter-of-fact reader must see that
the work, like the enigmatical "Faust," deals in types and
symbols; that the writer intends to suggest to the mind something
more subtle and impalpable than that which is embodied to the
senses. What that something is, hardly two persons will agree.
The most obvious interpretation of the types is, that in Zanoni
the author depicts to us humanity, perfected, sublimed, which
lives not for self, but for others; in Mejnour, as we have before
said, cold, passionless, self-sufficing intellect; in Glyndon,
the young Englishman, the mingled strength and weakness of human
nature; in the heartless, selfish artist, Nicot, icy, soulless
atheism, believing nothing, hoping nothing, trusting and loving
nothing; and in the beautiful, artless Viola, an exquisite
creation, pure womanhood, loving, trusting and truthful. As a
work of art the romance is one of great power. It is original in
its conception, and pervaded by one central idea; but it would
have been improved, we think, by a more sparing use of the
supernatural. The inevitable effect of so much hackneyed
diablerie--of such an accumulation of wonder upon wonder--is to
deaden the impression they would naturally make upon us. In
Hawthorne's tales we see with what ease a great imaginative
artist can produce a deeper thrill by a far slighter use of the
weird and the mysterious.
The chief interest of the story for the ordinary reader centres,
not in its ghostly characters and improbable machinery, the
scenes in Mejnour's chamber in the ruined castle among the
Apennines, the colossal and appalling apparitions on Vesuvius,
the hideous phantom with its burning eye that haunted Glyndon,
but in the loves of Viola and the mysterious Zanoni, the blissful
and the fearful scenes through which they pass, and their final
destiny, when the hero of the story sacrifices his own "charmed
life" to save hers, and the Immortal finds the only true
immortality in death. Among the striking passages in the work
are the pathetic sketch of the old violinist and composer,
Pisani, with his sympathetic "barbiton" which moaned, groaned,
growled, and laughed responsive to the feelings of its master;
the description of Viola's and her father's triumph, when "The
Siren," his masterpiece, is performed at the San Carlo in Naples;
Glyndon's adventure at the Carnival in Naples; the death of his
sister; the vivid pictures of the Reign of Terror in Paris,
closing with the downfall of Robespierre and his satellites; and
perhaps, above all, the thrilling scene where Zanoni leaves Viola
asleep in prison when his guards call him to execution, and she,
unconscious of the terrible sacrifice, but awaking and missing
him, has a vision of the procession to the guillotine, with
Zanoni there, radiant in youth and beauty, followed by the sudden
vanishing of the headsman,--the horror,--and the "Welcome" of her
loved one to Heaven in a myriad of melodies from the choral hosts
above.
"Zanoni" was originally published by Saunders and Otley, London,
in three volumes 12mo., in 1842. A translation into French, made
by M. Sheldon under the direction of P. Lorain, was published in
Paris in the "Bibliotheque des Meilleurs Romans Etrangers."
W.M.
PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1853.
As a work of imagination, "Zanoni" ranks, perhaps, amongst the
highest of my prose fictions. In the Poem of "King Arthur,"
published many years afterwards, I have taken up an analogous
design, in the contemplation of our positive life through a
spiritual medium; and I have enforced, through a far wider
development, and, I believe, with more complete and enduring
success, that harmony between the external events which are all
that the superficial behold on the surface of human affairs, and
the subtle and intellectual agencies which in reality influence
the conduct of individuals, and shape out the destinies of the
world. As man has two lives,--that of action and that of
thought,--so I conceive that work to be the truest representation
of humanity which faithfully delineates both, and opens some
elevating glimpse into the sublimest mysteries of our being, by
establishing the inevitable union that exists between the plain
things of the day, in which our earthly bodies perform their
allotted part, and the latent, often uncultivated, often
invisible, affinities of the soul with all the powers that
eternally breathe and move throughout the Universe of Spirit.
I refer those who do me the honour to read "Zanoni" with more
attention than is given to ordinary romance, to the Poem of "King
Arthur," for suggestive conjecture into most of the regions of
speculative research, affecting the higher and more important
condition of our ultimate being, which have engaged the students
of immaterial philosophy in my own age.
Affixed to the "Note" with which this work concludes, and which
treats of the distinctions between type and allegory, the reader
will find, from the pen of one of our most eminent living
writers, an ingenious attempt to explain the interior or typical
meanings of the work now before him.
INTRODUCTION.
It is possible that among my readers there may be a few not
unacquainted with an old-book shop, existing some years since in
the neighbourhood of Covent Garden; I say a few, for certainly
there was little enough to attract the many in those precious
volumes which the labour of a life had accumulated on the dusty
shelves of my old friend D--. There were to be found no popular
treatises, no entertaining romances, no histories, no travels, no
"Library for the People," no "Amusement for the Million." But
there, perhaps, throughout all Europe, the curious might discover
the most notable collection, ever amassed by an enthusiast, of
the works of alchemist, cabalist, and astrologer. The owner had
lavished a fortune in the purchase of unsalable treasures. But
old D-- did not desire to sell. It absolutely went to his heart
when a customer entered his shop: he watched the movements of
the presumptuous intruder with a vindictive glare; he fluttered
around him with uneasy vigilance,--he frowned, he groaned, when
profane hands dislodged his idols from their niches. If it were
one of the favourite sultanas of his wizard harem that attracted
you, and the price named were not sufficiently enormous, he would
not unfrequently double the sum. Demur, and in brisk delight he
snatched the venerable charmer from your hands; accede, and he
became the picture of despair,--nor unfrequently, at the dead of
night, would he knock at your door, and entreat you to sell him
back, at your own terms, what you had so egregiously bought at
his. A believer himself in his Averroes and Paracelsus, he was
as loth as the philosophers he studied to communicate to the
profane the learning he had collected.
It so chanced that some years ago, in my younger days, whether of
authorship or life, I felt a desire to make myself acquainted
with the true origin and tenets of the singular sect known by the
name of Rosicrucians. Dissatisfied with the scanty and
superficial accounts to be found in the works usually referred to
on the subject, it struck me as possible that Mr. D--'s
collection, which was rich, not only in black-letter, but in
manuscripts, might contain some more accurate and authentic
records of that famous brotherhood,--written, who knows? by one
of their own order, and confirming by authority and detail the
pretensions to wisdom and to virtue which Bringaret had arrogated
to the successors of the Chaldean and Gymnosophist. Accordingly
I repaired to what, doubtless, I ought to be ashamed to confess,
was once one of my favourite haunts. But are there no errors and
no fallacies, in the chronicles of our own day, as absurd as
those of the alchemists of old? Our very newspapers may seem to
our posterity as full of delusions as the books of the alchemists
do to us; not but what the press is the air we breathe,--and
uncommonly foggy the air is too!
On entering the shop, I was struck by the venerable appearance of
a customer whom I had never seen there before. I was struck yet
more by the respect with which he was treated by the disdainful
collector. "Sir," cried the last, emphatically, as I was turning
over the leaves of the catalogue,--"sir, you are the only man I
have met, in five-and-forty years that I have spent in these
researches, who is worthy to be my customer. How--where, in this
frivolous age, could you have acquired a knowledge so profound?
And this august fraternity, whose doctrines, hinted at by the
earliest philosophers, are still a mystery to the latest; tell me
if there really exists upon the earth any book, any manuscript,
in which their discoveries, their tenets, are to be learned?"
At the words, "august fraternity," I need scarcely say that my
attention had been at once aroused, and I listened eagerly for
the stranger's reply.
"I do not think," said the old gentleman, "that the masters of
the school have ever consigned, except by obscure hint and
mystical parable, their real doctrines to the world. And I do
not blame them for their discretion."
Here he paused, and seemed about to retire, when I said, somewhat
abruptly, to the collector, "I see nothing, Mr. D--, in this
catalogue which relates to the Rosicrucians!"
"The Rosicrucians!" repeated the old gentleman, and in his turn
he surveyed me with deliberate surprise. "Who but a Rosicrucian
could explain the Rosicrucian mysteries! And can you imagine
that any members of that sect, the most jealous of all secret
societies, would themselves lift the veil that hides the Isis of
their wisdom from the world?"
"Aha!" thought I, "this, then, is 'the august fraternity' of
which you spoke. Heaven be praised! I certainly have stumbled
on one of the brotherhood."
"But," I said aloud, "if not in books, sir, where else am I to
obtain information? Nowadays one can hazard nothing in print
without authority, and one may scarcely quote Shakespeare without
citing chapter and verse. This is the age of facts,--the age of
facts, sir."
"Well," said the old gentleman, with a pleasant smile, "if we
meet again, perhaps, at least, I may direct your researches to
the proper source of intelligence." And with that he buttoned
his greatcoat, whistled to his dog, and departed.
It so happened that I did meet again with the old gentleman,
exactly four days after our brief conversation in Mr. D--'s book-
shop. I was riding leisurely towards Highgate, when, at the foot
of its classic hill, I recognised the stranger; he was mounted on
a black pony, and before him trotted his dog, which was black
also.
If you meet the man whom you wish to know, on horseback, at the
commencement of a long hill, where, unless he has borrowed a
friend's favourite hack, he cannot, in decent humanity to the
brute creation, ride away from you, I apprehend that it is your
own fault if you have not gone far in your object before you have
gained the top. In short, so well did I succeed, that on
reaching Highgate the old gentleman invited me to rest at his
house, which was a little apart from the village; and an
excellent house it was,--small, but commodious, with a large
garden, and commanding from the windows such a prospect as
Lucretius would recommend to philosophers: the spires and domes
of London, on a clear day, distinctly visible; here the Retreat
of the Hermit, and there the Mare Magnum of the world.
The walls of the principal rooms were embellished with pictures
of extraordinary merit, and in that high school of art which is
so little understood out of Italy. I was surprised to learn that
they were all from the hand of the owner. My evident admiration
pleased my new friend, and led to talk upon his part, which
showed him no less elevated in his theories of art than an adept
in the practice. Without fatiguing the reader with irrelevant
criticism, it is necessary, perhaps, as elucidating much of the
design and character of the work which these prefatory pages
introduce, that I should briefly observe, that he insisted as
much upon the connection of the arts, as a distinguished author
has upon that of the sciences; that he held that in all works of
imagination, whether expressed by words or by colours, the artist
of the higher schools must make the broadest distinction between
the real and the true,--in other words, between the imitation of
actual life, and the exaltation of Nature into the Ideal.
"The one," said he, "is the Dutch School, the other is the
Greek."
"Sir," said I, "the Dutch is the most in fashion."
"Yes, in painting, perhaps," answered my host, "but in
literature--"
"It was of literature I spoke. Our growing poets are all for
simplicity and Betty Foy; and our critics hold it the highest
praise of a work of imagination, to say that its characters are
exact to common life, even in sculpture--"
"In sculpture! No, no! THERE the high ideal must at least be
essential!"
"Pardon me; I fear you have not seen Souter Johnny and Tam
O'Shanter."
"Ah!" said the old gentleman, shaking his head, "I live very much
out of the world, I see. I suppose Shakespeare has ceased to be
admired?"
"On the contrary; people make the adoration of Shakespeare the
excuse for attacking everybody else. But then our critics have
discovered that Shakespeare is so REAL!"
"Real! The poet who has never once drawn a character to be met
with in actual life,--who has never once descended to a passion
that is false, or a personage who is real!"
I was about to reply very severely to this paradox, when I
perceived that my companion was growing a little out of temper.
And he who wishes to catch a Rosicrucian, must take care not to
disturb the waters. I thought it better, therefore, to turn the
conversation.
"Revenons a nos moutons," said I; "you promised to enlighten my
ignorance as to the Rosicrucians."
"Well!" quoth he, rather sternly; "but for what purpose? Perhaps
you desire only to enter the temple in order to ridicule the
rites?"
"What do you take me for! Surely, were I so inclined, the fate
of the Abbe de Villars is a sufficient warning to all men not to
treat idly of the realms of the Salamander and the Sylph.
Everybody knows how mysteriously that ingenious personage was
deprived of his life, in revenge for the witty mockeries of his
'Comte de Gabalis.'"
"Salamander and Sylph! I see that you fall into the vulgar
error, and translate literally the allegorical language of the
mystics."
With that the old gentleman condescended to enter into a very
interesting, and, as it seemed to me, a very erudite relation, of
the tenets of the Rosicrucians, some of whom, he asserted, still
existed, and still prosecuted, in august secrecy, their profound
researches into natural science and occult philosophy.
"But this fraternity," said he, "however respectable and
virtuous,--virtuous I say, for no monastic order is more severe
in the practice of moral precepts, or more ardent in Christian
faith,--this fraternity is but a branch of others yet more
transcendent in the powers they have obtained, and yet more
illustrious in their origin. Are you acquainted with the
Platonists?"
"I have occasionally lost my way in their labyrinth," said I.
"Faith, they are rather difficult gentlemen to understand."
"Yet their knottiest problems have never yet been published.
Their sublimest works are in manuscript, and constitute the
initiatory learning, not only of the Rosicrucians, but of the
nobler brotherhoods I have referred to. More solemn and sublime
still is the knowledge to be gleaned from the elder Pythagoreans,
and the immortal masterpieces of Apollonius."
"Apollonius, the imposter of Tyanea! are his writings extant?"
"Imposter!" cried my host; "Apollonius an imposter!"
"I beg your pardon; I did not know he was a friend of yours; and
if you vouch for his character, I will believe him to have been a
very respectable man, who only spoke the truth when he boasted of
his power to be in two places at the same time."
"Is that so difficult?" said the old gentleman; "if so, you have
never dreamed!"
Here ended our conversation; but from that time an acquaintance
was formed between us which lasted till my venerable friend
departed this life. Peace to his ashes! He was a person of
singular habits and eccentric opinions; but the chief part of his
time was occupied in acts of quiet and unostentatious goodness.
He was an enthusiast in the duties of the Samaritan; and as his
virtues were softened by the gentlest charity, so his hopes were
based upon the devoutest belief. He never conversed upon his own
origin and history, nor have I ever been able to penetrate the
darkness in which they were concealed. He seemed to have seen
much of the world, and to have been an eye-witness of the first
French Revolution, a subject upon which he was equally eloquent
and instructive. At the same time he did not regard the crimes
of that stormy period with the philosophical leniency with which
enlightened writers (their heads safe upon their shoulders) are,
in the present day, inclined to treat the massacres of the past:
he spoke not as a student who had read and reasoned, but as a man
who had seen and suffered. The old gentleman seemed alone in the
world; nor did I know that he had one relation, till his
executor, a distant cousin, residing abroad, informed me of the
very handsome legacy which my poor friend had bequeathed me.
This consisted, first, of a sum about which I think it best to be
guarded, foreseeing the possibility of a new tax upon real and
funded property; and, secondly, of certain precious manuscripts,
to which the following volumes owe their existence.
I imagine I trace this latter bequest to a visit I paid the Sage,
if so I may be permitted to call him, a few weeks before his
death.
Although he read little of our modern literature, my friend, with
the affable good-nature which belonged to him, graciously
permitted me to consult him upon various literary undertakings
meditated by the desultory ambition of a young and inexperienced
student. And at that time I sought his advice upon a work of
imagination, intended to depict the effects of enthusiasm upon
different modifications of character. He listened to my
conception, which was sufficiently trite and prosaic, with his
usual patience; and then, thoughtfully turning to his
bookshelves, took down an old volume, and read to me, first, in
Greek, and secondly, in English, some extracts to the following
effect:--
"Plato here expresses four kinds of mania, by which I desire to
understand enthusiasm and the inspiration of the gods: Firstly,
the musical; secondly, the telestic or mystic; thirdly, the
prophetic; and fourthly, that which belongs to love."
The author he quoted, after contending that there is something in
the soul above intellect, and stating that there are in our
nature distinct energies,--by the one of which we discover and
seize, as it were, on sciences and theorems with almost intuitive
rapidity, by another, through which high art is accomplished,
like the statues of Phidias,--proceeded to state that
"enthusiasm, in the true acceptation of the word, is, when that
part of the soul which is above intellect is excited to the gods,
and thence derives its inspiration."
The author, then pursuing his comment upon Plato, observes, that
"one of these manias may suffice (especially that which belongs
to love) to lead back the soul to its first divinity and
happiness; but that there is an intimate union with them all; and
that the ordinary progress through which the soul ascends is,
primarily, through the musical; next, through the telestic or
mystic; thirdly, through the prophetic; and lastly, through the
enthusiasm of love."
While with a bewildered understanding and a reluctant attention I
listened to these intricate sublimities, my adviser closed the
volume, and said with complacency, "There is the motto for your
book,--the thesis for your theme."
"Davus sum, non Oedipus," said I, shaking my head,
discontentedly. "All this may be exceedingly fine, but, Heaven
forgive me,--I don't understand a word of it. The mysteries of
your Rosicrucians, and your fraternities, are mere child's play
to the jargon of the Platonists."
"Yet, not till you rightly understand this passage, can you
understand the higher theories of the Rosicrucians, or of the
still nobler fraternities you speak of with so much levity."
"Oh, if that be the case, I give up in despair. Why not, since
you are so well versed in the matter, take the motto for a book
of your own?"
"But if I have already composed a book with that thesis for its
theme, will you prepare it for the public?"
"With the greatest pleasure," said I,--alas, too rashly!
"I shall hold you to your promise," returned the old gentleman,
"and when I am no more, you will receive the manuscripts. From
what you say of the prevailing taste in literature, I cannot
flatter you with the hope that you will gain much by the
undertaking. And I tell you beforehand that you will find it not
a little laborious."
"Is your work a romance?"
"It is a romance, and it is not a romance. It is a truth for
those who can comprehend it, and an extravagance for those who
cannot."
At last there arrived the manuscripts, with a brief note from my
deceased friend, reminding me of my imprudent promise.
With mournful interest, and yet with eager impatience, I opened
the packet and trimmed my lamp. Conceive my dismay when I found
the whole written in an unintelligible cipher. I present the
reader with a specimen:
(Several strange characters.)
and so on for nine hundred and forty mortal pages in foolscap. I
could scarcely believe my eyes: in fact, I began to think the
lamp burned singularly blue; and sundry misgivings as to the
unhallowed nature of the characters I had so unwittingly opened
upon, coupled with the strange hints and mystical language of the
old gentleman, crept through my disordered imagination.
Certainly, to say no worse of it, the whole thing looked UNCANNY!
I was about, precipitately, to hurry the papers into my desk,
with a pious determination to have nothing more to do with them,
when my eye fell upon a book, neatly bound in blue morocco, and
which, in my eagerness, I had hitherto overlooked. I opened this
volume with great precaution, not knowing what might jump out,
and--guess my delight--found that it contained a key or
dictionary to the hieroglyphics. Not to weary the reader with an
account of my labours, I am contented with saying that at last I
imagined myself capable of construing the characters, and set to
work in good earnest. Still it was no easy task, and two years
elapsed before I had made much progress. I then, by way of
experiment on the public, obtained the insertion of a few
desultory chapters, in a periodical with which, for a few months,
I had the honour to be connected. They appeared to excite more
curiosity than I had presumed to anticipate; and I renewed, with
better heart, my laborious undertaking. But now a new misfortune
befell me: I found, as I proceeded, that the author had made two
copies of his work, one much more elaborate and detailed than the
other; I had stumbled upon the earlier copy, and had my whole
task to remodel, and the chapters I had written to retranslate.
I may say then, that, exclusive of intervals devoted to more
pressing occupations, my unlucky promise cost me the toil of
several years before I could bring it to adequate fulfilment.
The task was the more difficult, since the style in the original
is written in a kind of rhythmical prose, as if the author
desired that in some degree his work should be regarded as one of
poetical conception and design. To this it was not possible to
do justice, and in the attempt I have doubtless very often need
of the reader's indulgent consideration. My natural respect for
the old gentleman's vagaries, with a muse of equivocal character,
must be my only excuse whenever the language, without luxuriating
into verse, borrows flowers scarcely natural to prose. Truth
compels me also to confess, that, with all my pains, I am by no
means sure that I have invariably given the true meaning of the
cipher; nay, that here and there either a gap in the narrative,
or the sudden assumption of a new cipher, to which no key was
afforded, has obliged me to resort to interpolations of my own,
no doubt easily discernible, but which, I flatter myself, are not
inharmonious to the general design. This confession leads me to
the sentence with which I shall conclude: If, reader, in this
book there be anything that pleases you, it is certainly mine;
but whenever you come to something you dislike,--lay the blame
upon the old gentleman!
London, January, 1842.
N.B.--The notes appended to the text are sometimes by the author,
sometimes by the editor. I have occasionally (but not always)
marked the distinction; where, however, this is omitted, the
ingenuity of the reader will be rarely at fault.
ZANONI.
BOOK I.
THE MUSICIAN.
Due Fontane
Chi di diverso effeto hanno liquore!
"Ariosto, Orland. Fur." Canto 1.7.
(Two Founts
That hold a draught of different effects.)
CHAPTER 1.I.
Vergina era
D' alta belta, ma sua belta non cura:
...
Di natura, d' amor, de' cieli amici
Le negligenze sue sono artifici.
"Gerusal. Lib.," canto ii. xiv.-xviii.
(She was a virgin of a glorious beauty, but regarded not her
beauty...Negligence itself is art in those favoured by Nature, by
love, and by the heavens.)
At Naples, in the latter half of the last century, a worthy
artist named Gaetano Pisani lived and flourished. He was a
musician of great genius, but not of popular reputation; there
was in all his compositions something capricious and fantastic
which did not please the taste of the Dilettanti of Naples. He
was fond of unfamiliar subjects into which he introduced airs and
symphonies that excited a kind of terror in those who listened.
The names of his pieces will probably suggest their nature. I
find, for instance, among his MSS., these titles: "The Feast of
the Harpies," "The Witches at Benevento," "The Descent of Orpheus
into Hades," "The Evil Eye," "The Eumenides," and many others
that evince a powerful imagination delighting in the fearful and
supernatural, but often relieved by an airy and delicate fancy
with passages of exquisite grace and beauty. It is true that in
the selection of his subjects from ancient fable, Gaetano Pisani
was much more faithful than his contemporaries to the remote
origin and the early genius of Italian Opera.
That descendant, however effeminate, of the ancient union between
Song and Drama, when, after long obscurity and dethronement, it
regained a punier sceptre, though a gaudier purple, by the banks
of the Etrurian Arno, or amidst the lagunes of Venice, had chosen
all its primary inspirations from the unfamiliar and classic
sources of heathen legend; and Pisani's "Descent of Orpheus" was
but a bolder, darker, and more scientific repetition of the
"Euridice" which Jacopi Peri set to music at the august nuptials
of Henry of Navarre and Mary of Medicis.* Still, as I have said,
the style of the Neapolitan musician was not on the whole
pleasing to ears grown nice and euphuistic in the more dulcet
melodies of the day; and faults and extravagances easily
discernible, and often to appearance wilful, served the critics
for an excuse for their distaste. Fortunately, or the poor
musician might have starved, he was not only a composer, but also
an excellent practical performer, especially on the violin, and
by that instrument he earned a decent subsistence as one of the
orchestra at the Great Theatre of San Carlo. Here formal and
appointed tasks necessarily kept his eccentric fancies in
tolerable check, though it is recorded that no less than five
times he had been deposed from his desk for having shocked the
conoscenti, and thrown the whole band into confusion, by
impromptu variations of so frantic and startling a nature that
one might well have imagined that the harpies or witches who
inspired his compositions had clawed hold of his instrument.
The impossibility, however, to find any one of equal excellence
as a performer (that is to say, in his more lucid and orderly
moments) had forced his reinstalment, and he had now, for the
most part, reconciled himself to the narrow sphere of his
appointed adagios or allegros. The audience, too, aware of his
propensity, were quick to perceive the least deviation from the
text; and if he wandered for a moment, which might also be
detected by the eye as well as the ear, in some strange
contortion of visage, and some ominous flourish of his bow, a
gentle and admonitory murmur recalled the musician from his
Elysium or his Tartarus to the sober regions of his desk. Then
he would start as if from a dream, cast a hurried, frightened,
apologetic glance around, and, with a crestfallen, humbled air,
draw his rebellious instrument back to the beaten track of the
glib monotony. But at home he would make himself amends for this
reluctant drudgery. And there, grasping the unhappy violin with
ferocious fingers, he would pour forth, often till the morning
rose, strange, wild measures that would startle the early
fisherman on the shore below with a superstitious awe, and make
him cross himself as if mermaid or sprite had wailed no earthly
music in his ear.
(*Orpheus was the favourite hero of early Italian Opera, or
Lyrical Drama. The Orfeo of Angelo Politiano was produced in
1475. The Orfeo of Monteverde was performed at Venice in 1667.)
This man's appearance was in keeping with the characteristics of
his art. The features were noble and striking, but worn and
haggard, with black, careless locks tangled into a maze of curls,
and a fixed, speculative, dreamy stare in his large and hollow
eyes. All his movements were peculiar, sudden, and abrupt, as
the impulse seized him; and in gliding through the streets, or
along the beach, he was heard laughing and talking to himself.
Withal, he was a harmless, guileless, gentle creature, and would
share his mite with any idle lazzaroni, whom he often paused to
contemplate as they lay lazily basking in the sun. Yet was he
thoroughly unsocial. He formed no friends, flattered no patrons,
resorted to none of the merry-makings so dear to the children of
music and the South. He and his art seemed alone suited to each
other,--both quaint, primitive, unworldly, irregular. You could
not separate the man from his music; it was himself. Without it
he was nothing, a mere machine! WITH it, he was king over worlds
of his own. Poor man, he had little enough in this! At a
manufacturing town in England there is a gravestone on which the
epitaph records "one Claudius Phillips, whose absolute contempt
for riches, and inimitable performance on the violin, made him
the admiration of all that knew him!" Logical conjunction of
opposite eulogies! In proportion, O Genius, to thy contempt for
riches will be thy performance on thy violin!
Gaetano Pisani's talents as a composer had been chiefly exhibited
in music appropriate to this his favourite instrument, of all
unquestionably the most various and royal in its resources and
power over the passions. As Shakespeare among poets is the
Cremona among instruments. Nevertheless, he had composed other
pieces of larger ambition and wider accomplishment, and chief of
these, his precious, his unpurchased, his unpublished, his
unpublishable and imperishable opera of the "Siren." This great
work had been the dream of his boyhood, the mistress of his
manhood; in advancing age "it stood beside him like his youth."
Vainly had he struggled to place it before the world. Even
bland, unjealous Paisiello, Maestro di Capella, shook his gentle
head when the musician favoured him with a specimen of one of his
most thrilling scenas. And yet, Paisiello, though that music
differs from all Durante taught thee to emulate, there may--but
patience, Gaetano Pisani! bide thy time, and keep thy violin in
tune!
Strange as it may appear to the fairer reader, this grotesque
personage had yet formed those ties which ordinary mortals are
apt to consider their especial monopoly,--he was married, and had
one child. What is more strange yet, his wife was a daughter of
quiet, sober, unfantastic England: she was much younger than
himself; she was fair and gentle, with a sweet English face; she
had married him from choice, and (will you believe it?) she yet
loved him. How she came to marry him, or how this shy, unsocial,
wayward creature ever ventured to propose, I can only explain by
asking you to look round and explain first to ME how half the
husbands and half the wives you meet ever found a mate! Yet, on
reflection, this union was not so extraordinary after all. The
girl was a natural child of parents too noble ever to own and
claim her. She was brought into Italy to learn the art by which
she was to live, for she had taste and voice; she was a dependant
and harshly treated, and poor Pisani was her master, and his
voice the only one she had heard from her cradle that seemed
without one tone that could scorn or chide. And so--well, is the
rest natural? Natural or not, they married. This young wife
loved her husband; and young and gentle as she was, she might
almost be said to be the protector of the two. From how many
disgraces with the despots of San Carlo and the Conservatorio had
her unknown officious mediation saved him! In how many ailments
--for his frame was weak--had she nursed and tended him! Often,
in the dark nights, she would wait at the theatre with her
lantern to light him and her steady arm to lean on; otherwise, in
his abstract reveries, who knows but the musician would have
walked after his "Siren" into the sea! And then she would so
patiently, perhaps (for in true love there is not always the
finest taste) so DELIGHTEDLY, listen to those storms of eccentric
and fitful melody, and steal him--whispering praises all the way
--from the unwholesome night-watch to rest and sleep!
I said his music was a part of the man, and this gentle creature
seemed a part of the music; it was, in fact, when she sat beside
him that whatever was tender or fairy-like in his motley fantasia
crept into the harmony as by stealth. Doubtless her presence
acted on the music, and shaped and softened it; but, he, who
never examined how or what his inspiration, knew it not. All
that he knew was, that he loved and blessed her. He fancied he
told her so twenty times a day; but he never did, for he was not
of many words, even to his wife. His language was his music,--as
hers, her cares! He was more communicative to his barbiton, as
the learned Mersennus teaches us to call all the varieties of the
great viol family. Certainly barbiton sounds better than fiddle;
and barbiton let it be. He would talk to THAT by the hour
together,--praise it, scold it, coax it, nay (for such is man,
even the most guileless), he had been known to swear at it; but
for that excess he was always penitentially remorseful. And the
barbiton had a tongue of his own, could take his own part, and
when HE also scolded, had much the best of it. He was a noble
fellow, this Violin!--a Tyrolese, the handiwork of the
illustrious Steiner. There was something mysterious in his great
age. How many hands, now dust, had awakened his strings ere he
became the Robin Goodfellow and Familiar of Gaetano Pisani! His
very case was venerable,--beautifully painted, it was said, by
Caracci. An English collector had offered more for the case than
Pisani had ever made by the violin. But Pisani, who cared not if
he had inhabited a cabin himself, was proud of a palace for the
barbiton. His barbiton, it was his elder child! He had another
child, and now we must turn to her.
How shall I describe thee, Viola? Certainly the music had
something to answer for in the advent of that young stranger.
For both in her form and her character you might have traced a
family likeness to that singular and spirit-like life of sound
which night after night threw itself in airy and goblin sport
over the starry seas...Beautiful she was, but of a very uncommon
beauty,--a combination, a harmony of opposite attributes. Her
hair of a gold richer and purer than that which is seen even in
the North; but the eyes, of all the dark, tender, subduing light
of more than Italian--almost of Oriental--splendour. The
complexion exquisitely fair, but never the same,--vivid in one
moment, pale the next. And with the complexion, the expression
also varied; nothing now so sad, and nothing now so joyous.
I grieve to say that what we rightly entitle education was much
neglected for their daughter by this singular pair. To be sure,
neither of them had much knowledge to bestow; and knowledge was
not then the fashion, as it is now. But accident or nature
favoured young Viola. She learned, as of course, her mother's
language with her father's. And she contrived soon to read and
to write; and her mother, who, by the way, was a Roman Catholic,
taught her betimes to pray. But then, to counteract all these
acquisitions, the strange habits of Pisani, and the incessant
watch and care which he required from his wife, often left the
child alone with an old nurse, who, to be sure, loved her dearly,
but who was in no way calculated to instruct her.
Dame Gionetta was every inch Italian and Neapolitan. Her youth
had been all love, and her age was all superstition. She was
garrulous, fond,--a gossip. Now she would prattle to the girl of
cavaliers and princes at her feet, and now she would freeze her
blood with tales and legends, perhaps as old as Greek or Etrurian
fable, of demon and vampire,--of the dances round the great
walnut-tree at Benevento, and the haunting spell of the Evil Eye.
All this helped silently to weave charmed webs over Viola's
imagination that afterthought and later years might labour vainly
to dispel. And all this especially fitted her to hang, with a
fearful joy, upon her father's music. Those visionary strains,
ever struggling to translate into wild and broken sounds the
language of unearthly beings, breathed around her from her birth.
Thus you might have said that her whole mind was full of music;
associations, memories, sensations of pleasure or pain,--all were
mixed up inexplicably with those sounds that now delighted and
now terrified; that greeted her when her eyes opened to the sun,
and woke her trembling on her lonely couch in the darkness of the
night. The legends and tales of Gionetta only served to make the
child better understand the signification of those mysterious
tones; they furnished her with words to the music. It was
natural that the daughter of such a parent should soon evince
some taste in his art. But this developed itself chiefly in the
ear and the voice. She was yet a child when she sang divinely.
A great Cardinal--great alike in the State and the Conservatorio
--heard of her gifts, and sent for her. From that moment her
fate was decided: she was to be the future glory of Naples, the
prima donna of San Carlo.
The Cardinal insisted upon the accomplishment of his own
predictions, and provided her with the most renowned masters. To
inspire her with emulation, his Eminence took her one evening to
his own box: it would be something to see the performance,
something more to hear the applause lavished upon the glittering
signoras she was hereafter to excel! Oh, how gloriously that
life of the stage, that fairy world of music and song, dawned
upon her! It was the only world that seemed to correspond with
her strange childish thoughts. It appeared to her as if, cast
hitherto on a foreign shore, she was brought at last to see the
forms and hear the language of her native land. Beautiful and
true enthusiasm, rich with the promise of genius! Boy or man,
thou wilt never be a poet, if thou hast not felt the ideal, the
romance, the Calypso's isle that opened to thee when for the
first time the magic curtain was drawn aside, and let in the
world of poetry on the world of prose!
And now the initiation was begun. She was to read, to study, to
depict by a gesture, a look, the passions she was to delineate on
the boards; lessons dangerous, in truth, to some, but not to the
pure enthusiasm that comes from art; for the mind that rightly
conceives art is but a mirror which gives back what is cast on
its surface faithfully only--while unsullied. She seized on
nature and truth intuitively. Her recitations became full of
unconscious power; her voice moved the heart to tears, or warmed
it into generous rage. But this arose from that sympathy which
genius ever has, even in its earliest innocence, with whatever
feels, or aspires, or suffers.
It was no premature woman comprehending the love or the jealousy
that the words expressed; her art was one of those strange
secrets which the psychologists may unriddle to us if they
please, and tell us why children of the simplest minds and the
purest hearts are often so acute to distinguish, in the tales you
tell them, or the songs you sing, the difference between the true
art and the false, passion and jargon, Homer and Racine,--echoing
back, from hearts that have not yet felt what they repeat, the
melodious accents of the natural pathos. Apart from her studies,
Viola was a simple, affectionate, but somewhat wayward child,--
wayward, not in temper, for that was sweet and docile; but in her
moods, which, as I before hinted, changed from sad to gay and gay
to sad without an apparent cause. If cause there were, it must
be traced to the early and mysterious influences I have referred
to, when seeking to explain the effect produced on her
imagination by those restless streams of sound that constantly
played around it; for it is noticeable that to those who are much
alive to the effects of music, airs and tunes often come back, in
the commonest pursuits of life, to vex, as it were, and haunt
them. The music, once admitted to the soul, becomes also a sort
of spirit, and never dies. It wanders perturbedly through the
halls and galleries of the memory, and is often heard again,
distinct and living as when it first displaced the wavelets of
the air. Now at times, then, these phantoms of sound floated
back upon her fancy; if gay, to call a smile from every dimple;
if mournful, to throw a shade upon her brow,--to make her cease
from her childishmirth, and sit apart and muse.
Rightly, then, in a typical sense, might this fair creature, so
airy in her shape, so harmonious in her beauty, so unfamiliar in
her ways and thoughts,--rightly might she be called a daughter,
less of the musician than the music, a being for whom you could
imagine that some fate was reserved, less of actual life than the
romance which, to eyes that can see, and hearts that can feel,
glides ever along WITH the actual life, stream by stream, to the
Dark Ocean.
And therefore it seemed not strange that Viola herself, even in
childhood, and yet more as she bloomed into the sweet seriousness
of virgin youth, should fancy her life ordained for a lot,
whether of bliss or woe, that should accord with the romance and
reverie which made the atmosphere she breathed. Frequently she
would climb through the thickets that clothed the neighbouring
grotto of Posilipo,--the mighty work of the old Cimmerians,--and,
seated by the haunted Tomb of Virgil, indulge those visions, the
subtle vagueness of which no poetry can render palpable and
defined; for the Poet that surpasses all who ever sang, is the
heart of dreaming youth! Frequently there, too, beside the
threshold over which the vine-leaves clung, and facing that
dark-blue, waveless sea, she would sit in the autumn noon or
summer twilight, and build her castles in the air. Who doth not
do the same,--not in youth alone, but with the dimmed hopes of
age! It is man's prerogative to dream, the common royalty of
peasant and of king. But those day-dreams of hers were more
habitual, distinct, and solemn than the greater part of us
indulge. They seemed like the Orama of the Greeks,--prophets
while phantasma.
CHAPTER 1.II.
Fu stupor, fu vaghezza, fu diletto!
"Gerusal. Lib.," cant. ii. xxi.
("Desire it was, 't was wonder, 't was delight."
Wiffen's Translation.)
Now at last the education is accomplished! Viola is nearly
sixteen. The Cardinal declares that the time is come when the
new name must be inscribed in the Libro d'Oro,--the Golden Book
set apart to the children of Art and Song. Yes, but in what
character?--to whose genius is she to give embodiment and form?
Ah, there is the secret! Rumours go abroad that the
inexhaustible Paisiello, charmed with her performance of his "Nel
cor piu non me sento," and his "Io son Lindoro," will produce
some new masterpiece to introduce the debutante. Others insist
upon it that her forte is the comic, and that Cimarosa is hard at
work at another "Matrimonia Segreto." But in the meanwhile there
is a check in the diplomacy somewhere. The Cardinal is observed
to be out of humour. He has said publicly,--and the words are
portentous,--"The silly girl is as mad as her father; what she
asks is preposterous!" Conference follows conference; the
Cardinal talks to the poor child very solemnly in his closet,--
all in vain. Naples is distracted with curiosity and conjecture.
The lecture ends in a quarrel, and Viola comes home sullen and
pouting: she will not act,--she has renounced the engagement.
Pisani, too inexperienced to be aware of all the dangers of the
stage, had been pleased at the notion that one, at least, of his
name would add celebrity to his art. The girl's perverseness
displeased him. However, he said nothing,--he never scolded in
words, but he took up the faithful barbiton. Oh, faithful
barbiton, how horribly thou didst scold! It screeched, it
gabbled, it moaned, it growled. And Viola's eyes filled with
tears, for she understood that language. She stole to her
mother, and whispered in her ear; and when Pisani turned from his
employment, lo! both mother and daughter were weeping. He looked
at them with a wondering stare; and then, as if he felt he had
been harsh, he flew again to his Familiar. And now you thought
you heard the lullaby which a fairy might sing to some fretful
changeling it had adopted and sought to soothe. Liquid, low,
silvery, streamed the tones beneath the enchanted bow. The most
stubborn grief would have paused to hear; and withal, at times,
out came a wild, merry, ringing note, like a laugh, but not
mortal laughter. It was one of his most successful airs from his
beloved opera,--the Siren in the act of charming the waves and
the winds to sleep. Heaven knows what next would have come, but
his arm was arrested. Viola had thrown herself on his breast,
and kissed him, with happy eyes that smiled through her sunny
hair. At that very moment the door opened,--a message from the
Cardinal. Viola must go to his Eminence at once. Her mother
went with her. All was reconciled and settled; Viola had her
way, and selected her own opera. O ye dull nations of the North,
with your broils and debates,--your bustling lives of the Pnyx
and the Agora!--you cannot guess what a stir throughout musical
Naples was occasioned by the rumour of a new opera and a new
singer. But whose the opera? No cabinet intrigue ever was so
secret. Pisani came back one night from the theatre, evidently
disturbed and irate. Woe to thine ears hadst thou heard the
barbiton that night! They had suspended him from his office,--
they feared that the new opera, and the first debut of his
daughter as prima donna, would be too much for his nerves. And
his variations, his diablerie of sirens and harpies, on such a
night, made a hazard not to be contemplated without awe. To be
set aside, and on the very night that his child, whose melody was
but an emanation of his own, was to perform,--set aside for some
new rival: it was too much for a musician's flesh and blood.
For the first time he spoke in words upon the subject, and
gravely asked--for that question the barbiton, eloquent as it
was, could not express distinctly--what was to be the opera, and
what the part? And Viola as gravely answered that she was
pledged to the Cardinal not to reveal. Pisani said nothing, but
disappeared with the violin; and presently they heard the
Familiar from the house-top (whither, when thoroughly out of
humour, the musician sometimes fled), whining and sighing as if
its heart were broken.
The affections of Pisani were little visible on the surface. He
was not one of those fond, caressing fathers whose children are
ever playing round their knees; his mind and soul were so
thoroughly in his art that domestic life glided by him, seemingly
as if THAT were a dream, and the heart the substantial form and
body of existence. Persons much cultivating an abstract study
are often thus; mathematicians proverbially so. When his servant
ran to the celebrated French philosopher, shrieking, "The house
is on fire, sir!" "Go and tell my wife then, fool!" said the
wise man, settling back to his problems; "do _I_ ever meddle with
domestic affairs?" But what are mathematics to music--music,
that not only composes operas, but plays on the barbiton? Do you
know what the illustrious Giardini said when the tyro asked how
long it would take to learn to play on the violin? Hear, and
despair, ye who would bend the bow to which that of Ulysses was a
plaything, "Twelve hours a day for twenty years together!" Can a
man, then, who plays the barbiton be always playing also with his
little ones? No, Pisani; often, with the keen susceptibility of
childhood, poor Viola had stolen from the room to weep at the
thought that thou didst not love her. And yet, underneath this
outward abstraction of the artist, the natural fondness flowed
all the same; and as she grew up, the dreamer had understood the
dreamer. And now, shut out from all fame himself; to be
forbidden to hail even his daughter's fame!--and that daughter
herself to be in the conspiracy against him! Sharper than the
serpent's tooth was the ingratitude, and sharper than the
serpent's tooth was the wail of the pitying barbiton!
The eventful hour is come. Viola is gone to the theatre,--her
mother with her. The indignant musician remains at home.
Gionetta bursts into the room: my Lord Cardinal's carriage is at
the door,--the Padrone is sent for. He must lay aside his
violin; he must put on his brocade coat and his lace ruffles.
Here they are,--quick, quick! And quick rolls the gilded coach,
and majestic sits the driver, and statelily prance the steeds.
Poor Pisani is lost in a mist of uncomfortable amaze. He arrives
at the theatre; he descends at the great door; he turns round and
round, and looks about him and about: he misses something,--
where is the violin? Alas! his soul, his voice, his self of
self, is left behind! It is but an automaton that the lackeys
conduct up the stairs, through the tier, into the Cardinal's box.
But then, what bursts upon him! Does he dream? The first act
is over (they did not send for him till success seemed no longer
doubtful); the first act has decided all. He feels THAT by the
electric sympathy which ever the one heart has at once with a
vast audience. He feels it by the breathless stillness of that
multitude; he feels it even by the lifted finger of the Cardinal.
He sees his Viola on the stage, radiant in her robes and gems,--
he hears her voice thrilling through the single heart of the
thousands! But the scene, the part, the music! It is his other
child,--his immortal child; the spirit-infant of his soul; his
darling of many years of patient obscurity and pining genius; his
masterpiece; his opera of the Siren!
This, then, was the mystery that had so galled him,--this the
cause of the quarrel with the Cardinal; this the secret not to be
proclaimed till the success was won, and the daughter had united
her father's triumph with her own!
And there she stands, as all souls bow before her,--fairer than
the very Siren he had called from the deeps of melody. Oh, long
and sweet recompense of toil! Where is on earth the rapture like
that which is known to genius when at last it bursts from its
hidden cavern into light and fame!
He did not speak, he did not move; he stood transfixed,
breathless, the tears rolling down his cheeks; only from time to
time his hands still wandered about,--mechanically they sought
for the faithful instrument, why was it not there to share his
triumph?
At last the curtain fell; but on such a storm and diapason of
applause! Up rose the audience as one man, as with one voice
that dear name was shouted. She came on, trembling, pale, and in
the whole crowd saw but her father's face. The audience followed
those moistened eyes; they recognised with a thrill the
daughter's impulse and her meaning. The good old Cardinal drew
him gently forward. Wild musician, thy daughter has given thee
back more than the life thou gavest!
"My poor violin!" said he, wiping his eyes, "they will never hiss
thee again now!"
CHAPTER 1.III.
Fra si contrarie tempre in ghiaccio e in foco,
In riso e in pianto, e fra paura e speme
L'ingannatrice Donna--
"Gerusal. Lib.," cant. iv. xciv.
(Between such contrarious mixtures of ice and fire, laughter and
tears,--fear and hope, the deceiving dame.)
Now notwithstanding the triumph both of the singer and the opera,
there had been one moment in the first act, and, consequently,
BEFORE the arrival of Pisani, when the scale seemed more than
doubtful. It was in a chorus replete with all the peculiarities
of the composer. And when the Maelstrom of Capricci whirled and
foamed, and tore ear and sense through every variety of sound,
the audience simultaneously recognised the hand of Pisani. A
title had been given to the opera which had hitherto prevented
all suspicion of its parentage; and the overture and opening, in
which the music had been regular and sweet, had led the audience
to fancy they detected the genius of their favourite Paisiello.
Long accustomed to ridicule and almost to despise the pretensions
of Pisani as a composer, they now felt as if they had been unduly
cheated into the applause with which they had hailed the overture
and the commencing scenas. An ominous buzz circulated round the
house: the singers, the orchestra,--electrically sensitive to
the impression of the audience,--grew, themselves, agitated and
dismayed, and failed in the energy and precision which could
alone carry off the grotesqueness of the music.
There are always in every theatre many rivals to a new author and
a new performer,--a party impotent while all goes well, but a
dangerous ambush the instant some accident throws into confusion
the march of success. A hiss arose; it was partial, it is true,
but the significant silence of all applause seemed to forebode
the coming moment when the displeasure would grow contagious. It
was the breath that stirred the impending avalanche. At that
critical moment Viola, the Siren queen, emerged for the first
time from her ocean cave. As she came forward to the lamps, the
novelty of her situation, the chilling apathy of the audience,--
which even the sight of so singular a beauty did not at the first
arouse,--the whispers of the malignant singers on the stage, the
glare of the lights, and more--far more than the rest--that
recent hiss, which had reached her in her concealment, all froze
up her faculties and suspended her voice. And, instead of the
grand invocation into which she ought rapidly to have burst, the
regal Siren, retransformed into the trembling girl, stood pale
and mute before the stern, cold array of those countless eyes.
At that instant, and when consciousness itself seemed about to
fail her, as she turned a timid beseeching glance around the
still multitude, she perceived, in a box near the stage, a
countenance which at once, and like magic, produced on her mind
an effect never to be analysed nor forgotten. It was one that
awakened an indistinct, haunting reminiscence, as if she had seen
it in those day-dreams she had been so wont from infancy to
indulge. She could not withdraw her gaze from that face, and as
she gazed, the awe and coldness that had before seized her,
vanished like a mist from before the sun.
In the dark splendour of the eyes that met her own there was
indeed so much of gentle encouragement, of benign and
compassionate admiration,--so much that warmed, and animated, and
nerved,--that any one, actor or orator, who has ever observed the
effect that a single earnest and kindly look in the crowd that is
to be addressed and won, will produce upon his mind, may readily
account for the sudden and inspiriting influence which the eye
and smile of the stranger exercised on the debutante.
And while yet she gazed, and the glow returned to her heart, the
stranger half rose, as if to recall the audience to a sense of
the courtesy due to one so fair and young; and the instant his
voice gave the signal, the audience followed it by a burst of
generous applause. For this stranger himself was a marked
personage, and his recent arrival at Naples had divided with the
new opera the gossip of the city. And then as the applause
ceased, clear, full, and freed from every fetter, like a spirit
from the clay, the Siren's voice poured forth its entrancing
music. From that time Viola forgot the crowd, the hazard, the
whole world,--except the fairy one over with she presided. It
seemed that the stranger's presence only served still more to
heighten that delusion, in which the artist sees no creation
without the circle of his art, she felt as if that serene brow,
and those brilliant eyes, inspired her with powers never known
before: and, as if searching for a language to express the
strange sensations occasioned by his presence, that presence
itself whispered to her the melody and the song.
Only when all was over, and she saw her father and felt his joy,
did this wild spell vanish before the sweeter one of the
household and filial love. Yet again, as she turned from the
stage, she looked back involuntarily, and the stranger's calm and
half-melancholy smile sank into her heart,--to live there, to be
recalled with confused memories, half of pleasure, and half of
pain.
Pass over the congratulations of the good Cardinal-Virtuoso,
astonished at finding himself and all Naples had been hitherto in
the wrong on a subject of taste,--still more astonished at
finding himself and all Naples combining to confess it; pass over
the whispered ecstasies of admiration which buzzed in the
singer's ear, as once more, in her modest veil and quiet dress,
she escaped from the crowd of gallants that choked up every
avenue behind the scenes; pass over the sweet embrace of father
and child, returning through the starlit streets and along the
deserted Chiaja in the Cardinal's carriage; never pause now to
note the tears and ejaculations of the good, simple-hearted
mother,--see them returned; see the well-known room, venimus ad
larem nostrum (We come to our own house.); see old Gionetta
bustling at the supper; and hear Pisani, as he rouses the
barbiton from its case, communicating all that has happened to
the intelligent Familiar; hark to the mother's merry, low,
English laugh. Why, Viola, strange child, sittest thou apart,
thy face leaning on thy fair hands, thine eyes fixed on space?
Up, rouse thee! Every dimple on the cheek of home must smile
to-night. ("Ridete quidquid est domi cachinnorum." Catull. "ad
Sirm. Penin.")
And a happy reunion it was round that humble table: a feast
Lucullus might have envied in his Hall of Apollo, in the dried
grapes, and the dainty sardines, and the luxurious polenta, and
the old lacrima a present from the good Cardinal. The barbiton,
placed on a chair--a tall, high-backed chair--beside the
musician, seemed to take a part in the festive meal. Its honest
varnished face glowed in the light of the lamp; and there was an
impish, sly demureness in its very silence, as its master,
between every mouthful, turned to talk to it of something he had
forgotten to relate before. The good wife looked on
affectionately, and could not eat for joy; but suddenly she rose,
and placed on the artist's temples a laurel wreath, which she had
woven beforehand in fond anticipation; and Viola, on the other
side her brother, the barbiton, rearranged the chaplet, and,
smoothing back her father's hair, whispered, "Caro Padre, you
will not let HIM scold me again!"
Then poor Pisani, rather distracted between the two, and excited
both by the lacrima and his triumph, turned to the younger child
with so naive and grotesque a pride, "I don't know which to thank
the most. You give me so much joy, child,--I am so proud of thee
and myself. But he and I, poor fellow, have been so often
unhappy together!"
Viola's sleep was broken,--that was natural. The intoxication of
vanity and triumph, the happiness in the happiness she had
caused, all this was better than sleep. But still from all this,
again and again her thoughts flew to those haunting eyes, to that
smile with which forever the memory of the triumph, of the
happiness, was to be united. Her feelings, like her own
character, were strange and peculiar. They were not those of a
girl whose heart, for the first time reached through the eye,
sighs its natural and native language of first love. It was not
so much admiration, though the face that reflected itself on
every wave of her restless fancies was of the rarest order of
majesty and beauty; nor a pleased and enamoured recollection that
the sight of this stranger had bequeathed: it was a human
sentiment of gratitude and delight, mixed with something more
mysterious, of fear and awe. Certainly she had seen before those
features; but when and how? Only when her thoughts had sought to
shape out her future, and when, in spite of all the attempts to
vision forth a fate of flowers and sunshine, a dark and chill
foreboding made her recoil back into her deepest self. It was a
something found that had long been sought for by a thousand
restless yearnings and vague desires, less of the heart than
mind; not as when youth discovers the one to be beloved, but
rather as when the student, long wandering after the clew to some
truth in science, sees it glimmer dimly before him, to beckon, to
recede, to allure, and to wane again. She fell at last into
unquiet slumber, vexed by deformed, fleeting, shapeless phantoms;
and, waking, as the sun, through a veil of hazy cloud, glinted
with a sickly ray across the casement, she heard her father
settled back betimes to his one pursuit, and calling forth from
his Familiar a low mournful strain, like a dirge over the dead.
"And why," she asked, when she descended to the room below,--
"why, my father, was your inspiration so sad, after the joy of
last night?"
"I know not, child. I meant to be merry, and compose an air in
honour of thee; but he is an obstinate fellow, this,--and he
would have it so."
CHAPTER 1.IV.
E cosi i pigri e timidi desiri
Sprona.
"Gerusal. Lib.," cant. iv. lxxxviii.
(And thus the slow and timid passions urged.)
It was the custom of Pisani, except when the duties of his
profession made special demand on his time, to devote a certain
portion of the mid-day to sleep,--a habit not so much a luxury as
a necessity to a man who slept very little during the night. In
fact, whether to compose or to practice, the hours of noon were
precisely those in which Pisani could not have been active if he
would. His genius resembled those fountains full at dawn and
evening, overflowing at night, and perfectly dry at the meridian.
During this time, consecrated by her husband to repose, the
signora generally stole out to make the purchases necessary for
the little household, or to enjoy (as what woman does not?) a
little relaxation in gossip with some of her own sex. And the
day following this brilliant triumph, how many congratulations
would she have to receive!
At these times it was Viola's habit to seat herself without the
door of the house, under an awning which sheltered from the sun
without obstructing the view; and there now, with the prompt-book
on her knee, on which her eye roves listlessly from time to time,
you may behold her, the vine-leaves clustering from their arching
trellis over the door behind, and the lazy white-sailed boats
skimming along the sea that stretched before.
As she thus sat, rather in reverie than thought, a man coming
from the direction of Posilipo, with a slow step and downcast
eyes, passed close by the house, and Viola, looking up abruptly,
started in a kind of terror as she recognised the stranger. She
uttered an involuntary exclamation, and the cavalier turning,
saw, and paused.
He stood a moment or two between her and the sunlit ocean,
contemplating in a silence too serious and gentle for the
boldness of gallantry, the blushing face and the young slight
form before him; at length he spoke.
"Are you happy, my child," he said, in almost a paternal tone,
"at the career that lies before you? From sixteen to thirty, the
music in the breath of applause is sweeter than all the music
your voice can utter!"
"I know not," replied Viola, falteringly, but encouraged by the
liquid softness of the accents that addressed her,--"I know not
whether I am happy now, but I was last night. And I feel, too,
Excellency, that I have you to thank, though, perhaps, you scarce
know why!"
"You deceive yourself," said the cavalier, with a smile. "I am
aware that I assisted to your merited success, and it is you who
scarce know how. The WHY I will tell you: because I saw in your
heart a nobler ambition than that of the woman's vanity; it was
the daughter that interested me. Perhaps you would rather I
should have admired the singer?"
"No; oh, no!"
"Well, I believe you. And now, since we have thus met, I will
pause to counsel you. When next you go to the theatre, you will
have at your feet all the young gallants of Naples. Poor infant!
the flame that dazzles the eye can scorch the wing. Remember
that the only homage that does not sully must be that which these
gallants will not give thee. And whatever thy dreams of the
future,--and I see, while I speak to thee, how wandering they
are, and wild,--may only those be fulfilled which centre round
the hearth of home."
He paused, as Viola's breast heaved beneath its robe. And with a
burst of natural and innocent emotions, scarcely comprehending,
though an Italian, the grave nature of his advice, she
exclaimed,--
"Ah, Excellency, you cannot know how dear to me that home is
already. And my father,--there would be no home, signor, without
him!"
A deep and melancholy shade settled over the face of the
cavalier. He looked up at the quiet house buried amidst the
vine-leaves, and turned again to the vivid, animated face of the
young actress.
"It is well," said he. "A simple heart may be its own best
guide, and so, go on, and prosper. Adieu, fair singer."
"Adieu, Excellency; but," and something she could not resist--an
anxious, sickening feeling of fear and hope,--impelled her to the
question, "I shall see you again, shall I not, at San Carlo?"
"Not, at least, for some time. I leave Naples to-day."
"Indeed!" and Viola's heart sank within her; the poetry of the
stage was gone.
"And," said the cavalier, turning back, and gently laying his
hand on hers,--"and, perhaps, before we meet, you may have
suffered: known the first sharp griefs of human life,--known how
little what fame can gain, repays what the heart can lose; but be
brave and yield not,--not even to what may seem the piety of
sorrow. Observe yon tree in your neighbour's garden. Look how
it grows up, crooked and distorted. Some wind scattered the germ
from which it sprang, in the clefts of the rock; choked up and
walled round by crags and buildings, by Nature and man, its life
has been one struggle for the light,--light which makes to that
life the necessity and the principle: you see how it has writhed
and twisted; how, meeting the barrier in one spot, it has
laboured and worked, stem and branches, towards the clear skies
at last. What has preserved it through each disfavour of birth
and circumstances,--why are its leaves as green and fair as those
of the vine behind you, which, with all its arms, can embrace the
open sunshine? My child, because of the very instinct that
impelled the struggle,--because the labour for the light won to
the light at length. So with a gallant heart, through every
adverse accident of sorrow and of fate to turn to the sun, to
strive for the heaven; this it is that gives knowledge to the
strong and happiness to the weak. Ere we meet again, you will
turn sad and heavy eyes to those quiet boughs, and when you hear
the birds sing from them, and see the sunshine come aslant from
crag and housetop to be the playfellow of their leaves, learn the
lesson that Nature teaches you, and strive through darkness to
the light!"
As he spoke he moved on slowly, and left Viola wondering, silent,
saddened with his dim prophecy of coming evil, and yet, through
sadness, charmed. Involuntarily her eyes followed him,--
involuntarily she stretched forth her arms, as if by a gesture to
call him back; she would have given worlds to have seen him
turn,--to have heard once more his low, calm, silvery voice; to
have felt again the light touch of his hand on hers. As
moonlight that softens into beauty every angle on which it falls,
seemed his presence,--as moonlight vanishes, and things assume
their common aspect of the rugged and the mean, he receded from
her eyes, and the outward scene was commonplace once more.
The stranger passed on, through that long and lovely road which
reaches at last the palaces that face the public gardens, and
conducts to the more populous quarters of the city.
A group of young, dissipated courtiers, loitering by the gateway
of a house which was open for the favourite pastime of the day,--
the resort of the wealthier and more high-born gamesters,--made
way for him, as with a courteous inclination he passed them by.
"Per fede," said one, "is not that the rich Zanoni, of whom the
town talks?"
"Ay; they say his wealth is incalculable!"
"THEY say,--who are THEY?--what is the authority? He has not
been many days at Naples, and I cannot yet find any one who knows
aught of his birthplace, his parentage, or, what is more
important, his estates!"
"That is true; but he arrived in a goodly vessel, which THEY SAY
is his own. See,--no, you cannot see it here; but it rides
yonder in the bay. The bankers he deals with speak with awe of
the sums placed in their hands."
"Whence came he?"
"From some seaport in the East. My valet learned from some of
the sailors on the Mole that he had resided many years in the
interior of India."
"Ah, I am told that in India men pick up gold like pebbles, and
that there are valleys where the birds build their nests with
emeralds to attract the moths. Here comes our prince of
gamesters, Cetoxa; be sure that he already must have made
acquaintance with so wealthy a cavalier; he has that attraction
to gold which the magnet has to steel. Well, Cetoxa, what fresh
news of the ducats of Signor Zanoni?"
"Oh," said Cetoxa, carelessly, "my friend--"
"Ha! ha! hear him; his friend--"
"Yes; my friend Zanoni is going to Rome for a short time; when he
returns, he has promised me to fix a day to sup with me, and I
will then introduce him to you, and to the best society of
Naples! Diavolo! but he is a most agreeable and witty
gentleman!"
"Pray tell us how you came so suddenly to be his friend."
"My dear Belgioso, nothing more natural. He desired a box at San
Carlo; but I need not tell you that the expectation of a new
opera (ah, how superb it is,--that poor devil, Pisani; who would
have thought it?) and a new singer (what a face,--what a voice!--
ah!) had engaged every corner of the house. I heard of Zanoni's
desire to honour the talent of Naples, and, with my usual
courtesy to distinguished strangers, I sent to place my box at
his disposal. He accepts it,--I wait on him between the acts; he
is most charming; he invites me to supper. Cospetto, what a
retinue! We sit late,--I tell him all the news of Naples; we
grow bosom friends; he presses on me this diamond before we
part,--is a trifle, he tells me: the jewellers value it at 5000
pistoles!--the merriest evening I have passed these ten years."
The cavaliers crowded round to admire the diamond.
"Signor Count Cetoxa," said one grave-looking sombre man, who had
crossed himself two or three times during the Neapolitan's
narrative, "are you not aware of the strange reports about this
person; and are you not afraid to receive from him a gift which
may carry with it the most fatal consequences? Do you not know
that he is said to be a sorcerer; to possess the mal-occhio;
to--"
"Prithee, spare us your antiquated superstitions," interrupted
Cetoxa, contemptuously. "They are out of fashion; nothing now
goes down but scepticism and philosophy. And what, after all, do
these rumours, when sifted, amount to? They have no origin but
this,--a silly old man of eighty-six, quite in his dotage,
solemnly avers that he saw this same Zanoni seventy years ago (he
himself, the narrator, then a mere boy) at Milan; when this very
Zanoni, as you all see, is at least as young as you or I,
Belgioso."
"But that," said the grave gentleman,--"THAT is the mystery. Old
Avelli declares that Zanoni does not seem a day older than when
they met at Milan. He says that even then at Milan--mark this--
where, though under another name, this Zanoni appeared in the
same splendour, he was attended also by the same mystery. And
that an old man THERE remembered to have seen him sixty years
before, in Sweden."
"Tush," returned Cetoxa, "the same thing has been said of the
quack Cagliostro,--mere fables. I will believe them when I see
this diamond turn to a wisp of hay. For the rest," he added
gravely, "I consider this illustrious gentleman my friend; and a
whisper against his honour and repute will in future be
equivalent to an affront to myself."
Cetoxa was a redoubted swordsman, and excelled in a peculiarly
awkward manoeuvre, which he himself had added to the variations
of the stoccata. The grave gentleman, however anxious for the
spiritual weal of the count, had an equal regard for his own
corporeal safety. He contented himself with a look of
compassion, and, turning through the gateway, ascended the stairs
to the gaming-tables.
"Ha, ha!" said Cetoxa, laughing, "our good Loredano is envious of
my diamond. Gentlemen, you sup with me to-night. I assure you I
never met a more delightful, sociable, entertaining person, than
my dear friend the Signor Zanoni."
CHAPTER 1.V.
Quello Ippogifo, grande e strano augello
Lo porta via.
"Orlando Furioso," c. vi. xviii.
(That hippogriff, great and marvellous bird, bears him away.)
And now, accompanying this mysterious Zanoni, am I compelled to
bid a short farewell to Naples. Mount behind me,--mount on my
hippogriff, reader; settle yourself at your ease. I bought the
pillion the other day of a poet who loves his comfort; it has
been newly stuffed for your special accommodation. So, so, we
ascend! Look as we ride aloft,--look!--never fear, hippogriffs
never stumble; and every hippogriff in Italy is warranted to
carry elderly gentlemen,--look down on the gliding landscapes!
There, near the ruins of the Oscan's old Atella, rises Aversa,
once the stronghold of the Norman; there gleam the columns of
Capua, above the Vulturnian Stream. Hail to ye, cornfields and
vineyards famous for the old Falernian! Hail to ye, golden
orange-groves of Mola di Gaeta! Hail to ye, sweet shrubs and
wild flowers, omnis copia narium, that clothe the mountain-skirts
of the silent Lautulae! Shall we rest at the Volscian Anxur,--
the modern Terracina,--where the lofty rock stands like the giant
that guards the last borders of the southern land of love? Away,
away! and hold your breath as we flit above the Pontine Marshes.
Dreary and desolate, their miasma is to the gardens we have
passed what the rank commonplace of life is to the heart when it
has left love behind.
Mournful Campagna, thou openest on us in majestic sadness. Rome,
seven-hilled Rome! receive us as Memory receives the way-worn;
receive us in silence, amidst ruins! Where is the traveller we
pursue? Turn the hippogriff loose to graze: he loves the
acanthus that wreathes round yon broken columns. Yes, that is
the arch of Titus, the conqueror of Jerusalem,--that the
Colosseum! Through one passed the triumph of the deified
invader; in one fell the butchered gladiators. Monuments of
murder, how poor the thoughts, how mean the memories ye awaken,
compared with those that speak to the heart of man on the heights
of Phyle, or by thy lone mound, grey Marathon! We stand amidst
weeds and brambles and long waving herbage. Where we stand
reigned Nero,--here were his tessellated floors; here,
"Mighty in the heaven, a second heaven,"
hung the vault of his ivory roofs; here, arch upon arch, pillar
on pillar, glittered to the world the golden palace of its
master,--the Golden House of Nero. How the lizard watches us
with his bright, timorous eye! We disturb his reign. Gather
that wild flower: the Golden House is vanished, but the wild
flower may have kin to those which the stranger's hand scattered
over the tyrant's grave; see, over this soil, the grave of Rome,
Nature strews the wild flowers still!
In the midst of this desolation is an old building of the middle
ages. Here dwells a singular recluse. In the season of the
malaria the native peasant flies the rank vegetation round; but
he, a stranger and a foreigner, no associates, no companions,
except books and instruments of science. He is often seen
wandering over the grass-grown hills, or sauntering through the
streets of the new city, not with the absent brow and incurious
air of students, but with observant piercing eyes that seem to
dive into the hearts of the passers-by. An old man, but not
infirm,--erect and stately, as if in his prime. None know
whether he be rich or poor. He asks no charity, and he gives
none,--he does no evil, and seems to confer no good. He is a man
who appears to have no world beyond himself; but appearances are
deceitful, and Science, as well as Benevolence, lives in the
Universe. This abode, for the first time since thus occupied, a
visitor enters. It is Zanoni.
You observe those two men seated together, conversing earnestly.
Years long and many have flown away since they met last,--at
least, bodily, and face to face. But if they are sages, thought
can meet thought, and spirit spirit, though oceans divide the
forms. Death itself divides not the wise. Thou meetest Plato
when thine eyes moisten over the Phaedo. May Homer live with all
men forever!
They converse; they confess to each other; they conjure up the
past, and repeople it; but note how differently do such
remembrances affect the two. On Zanoni's face, despite its
habitual calm, the emotions change and go. HE has acted in the
past he surveys; but not a trace of the humanity that
participates in joy and sorrow can be detected on the passionless
visage of his companion; the past, to him, as is now the present,
has been but as Nature to the sage, the volume to the student,--a
calm and spiritual life, a study, a contemplation.
From the past they turn to the future. Ah! at the close of the
last century, the future seemed a thing tangible,--it was woven
up in all men's fears and hopes of the present.
At the verge of that hundred years, Man, the ripest born of Time,
("An des Jahrhunderts Neige,
Der reifste Sohn der Zeit."
"Die Kunstler.")
stood as at the deathbed of the Old World, and beheld the New
Orb, blood-red amidst cloud and vapour,--uncertain if a comet or
a sun. Behold the icy and profound disdain on the brow of the
old man,--the lofty yet touching sadness that darkens the
glorious countenance of Zanoni. Is it that one views with
contempt the struggle and its issue, and the other with awe or
pity? Wisdom contemplating mankind leads but to the two
results,--compassion or disdain. He who believes in other worlds
can accustom himself to look on this as the naturalist on the
revolutions of an ant-hill, or of a leaf. What is the Earth to
Infinity,--what its duration to the Eternal? Oh, how much
greater is the soul of one man than the vicissitudes of the whole
globe! Child of heaven, and heir of immortality, how from some
star hereafter wilt thou look back on the ant-hill and its
commotions, from Clovis to Robespierre, from Noah to the Final
Fire. The spirit that can contemplate, that lives only in the
intellect, can ascend to its star, even from the midst of the
burial-ground called Earth, and while the sarcophagus called Life
immures in its clay the everlasting!
But thou, Zanoni,--thou hast refused to live ONLY in the
intellect; thou hast not mortified the heart; thy pulse still
beats with the sweet music of mortal passion; thy kind is to thee
still something warmer than an abstraction,--thou wouldst look
upon this Revolution in its cradle, which the storms rock; thou
wouldst see the world while its elements yet struggle through the
chaos!
Go!
CHAPTER 1.VI.
Precepteurs ignorans de ce faible univers.--Voltaire.
(Ignorant teachers of this weak world.)
Nous etions a table chez un de nos confreres a l'Academie,
Grand Seigneur et homme d'esprit.--La Harpe.
(We supped with one of our confreres of the Academy,--a great
nobleman and wit.)
One evening, at Paris, several months after the date of our last
chapter, there was a reunion of some of the most eminent wits of
the time, at the house of a personage distinguished alike by
noble birth and liberal accomplishments. Nearly all present were
of the views that were then the mode. For, as came afterwards a
time when nothing was so unpopular as the people, so that was the
time when nothing was so vulgar as aristocracy. The airiest fine
gentleman and the haughtiest noble prated of equality, and lisped
enlightenment.
Among the more remarkable guests were Condorcet, then in the
prime of his reputation, the correspondent of the king of
Prussia, the intimate of Voltaire, the member of half the
academies of Europe,--noble by birth, polished in manners,
republican in opinions. There, too, was the venerable
Malesherbes, "l'amour et les delices de la Nation." (The idol
and delight of the nation (so-called by his historian,
Gaillard).) There Jean Silvain Bailly, the accomplished
scholar,--the aspiring politician. It was one of those petits
soupers for which the capital of all social pleasures was so
renowned. The conversation, as might be expected, was literary
and intellectual, enlivened by graceful pleasantry. Many of the
ladies of that ancient and proud noblesse--for the noblesse yet
existed, though its hours were already numbered--added to the
charm of the society; and theirs were the boldest criticisms, and
often the most liberal sentiments.
Vain labour for me--vain labour almost for the grave English
language--to do justice to the sparkling paradoxes that flew from
lip to lip. The favourite theme was the superiority of the
moderns to the ancients. Condorcet on this head was eloquent,
and to some, at least, of his audience, most convincing. That
Voltaire was greater than Homer few there were disposed to deny.
Keen was the ridicule lavished on the dull pedantry which finds
everything ancient necessarily sublime.
"Yet," said the graceful Marquis de --, as the champagne danced
to his glass, "more ridiculous still is the superstition that
finds everything incomprehensible holy! But intelligence
circulates, Condorcet; like water, it finds its level. My
hairdresser said to me this morning, 'Though I am but a poor
fellow, I believe as little as the finest gentleman!'"
"Unquestionably, the great Revolution draws near to its final
completion,--a pas de geant, as Montesquieu said of his own
immortal work."
Then there rushed from all--wit and noble, courtier and
republican--a confused chorus, harmonious only in its
anticipation of the brilliant things to which "the great
Revolution" was to give birth. Here Condrocet is more eloquent
than before.
"Il faut absolument que la Superstition et le Fanatisme fassent
place a la Philosophie. (It must necessarily happen that
superstition and fanaticism give place to philosophy.) Kings
persecute persons, priests opinion. Without kings, men must be
safe; and without priests, minds must be free."
"Ah," murmured the marquis, "and as ce cher Diderot has so well
sung,--
'Et des boyaux du dernier pretre
Serrez le cou du dernier roi.'"
(And throttle the neck of the last king with the string from the
bowels of the last priest.)
"And then," resumed Condorcet,--"then commences the Age of
Reason!--equality in instruction, equality in institutions,
equality in wealth! The great impediments to knowledge are,
first, the want of a common language; and next, the short
duration of existence. But as to the first, when all men are
brothers, why not a universal language? As to the second, the
organic perfectibility of the vegetable world is undisputed, is
Nature less powerful in the nobler existence of thinking man?
The very destruction of the two most active causes of physical
deterioration--here, luxurious wealth; there, abject penury,--
must necessarily prolong the general term of life. (See
Condorcet's posthumous work on the Progress of the Human Mind.--
Ed.) The art of medicine will then be honoured in the place of
war, which is the art of murder: the noblest study of the
acutest minds will be devoted to the discovery and arrest of the
causes of disease. Life, I grant, cannot be made eternal; but it
may be prolonged almost indefinitely. And as the meaner animal
bequeaths its vigour to its offspring, so man shall transmit his
improved organisation, mental and physical, to his sons. Oh,
yes, to such a consummation does our age approach!"
The venerable Malesherbes sighed. Perhaps he feared the
consummation might not come in time for him. The handsome
Marquis de -- and the ladies, yet handsomer than he, looked
conviction and delight.
But two men there were, seated next to each other, who joined not
in the general talk: the one a stranger newly arrived in Paris,
where his wealth, his person, and his accomplishments, had
already made him remarked and courted; the other, an old man,
somewhere about seventy,--the witty and virtuous, brave, and
still light-hearted Cazotte, the author of "Le Diable Amoureux."
These two conversed familiarly, and apart from the rest, and only
by an occasional smile testified their attention to the general
conversation.
"Yes," said the stranger,--"yes, we have met before."
"I thought I could not forget your countenance; yet I task in
vain my recollections of the past."
"I will assist you. Recall the time when, led by curiosity, or
perhaps the nobler desire of knowledge, you sought initiation
into the mysterious order of Martines de Pasqualis."
(It is so recorded of Cazotte. Of Martines de Pasqualis little
is known; even the country to which he belonged is matter of
conjecture. Equally so the rites, ceremonies, and nature of the
cabalistic order he established. St. Martin was a disciple of
the school, and that, at least, is in its favour; for in spite of
his mysticism, no man more beneficent, generous, pure, and
virtuous than St. Martin adorned the last century. Above all, no
man more distinguished himself from the herd of sceptical
philosophers by the gallantry and fervour with which he combated
materialism, and vindicated the necessity of faith amidst a chaos
of unbelief. It may also be observed, that Cazotte, whatever
else he learned of the brotherhood of Martines, learned nothing
that diminished the excellence of his life and the sincerity of
his religion. At once gentle and brave, he never ceased to
oppose the excesses of the Revolution. To the last, unlike the
Liberals of his time, he was a devout and sincere Christian.
Before his execution, he demanded a pen and paper to write these
words: "Ma femme, mes enfans, ne me pleurez pas; ne m'oubliez
pas, mais souvenez-vous surtout de ne jamais offenser Dieu."
("My wife, my children, weep not for me; forget me not, but
remember above everything never to offend God.)--Ed.)
"Ah, is it possible! You are one of that theurgic brotherhood?"
"Nay, I attended their ceremonies but to see how vainly they
sought to revive the ancient marvels of the cabala."
"Such studies please you? I have shaken off the influence they
once had on my own imagination."
"You have not shaken it off," returned the stranger, bravely; "it
is on you still,--on you at this hour; it beats in your heart; it
kindles in your reason; it will speak in your tongue!"
And then, with a yet lower voice, the stranger continued to
address him, to remind him of certain ceremonies and doctrines,--
to explain and enforce them by references to the actual
experience and history of his listener, which Cazotte thrilled to
find so familiar to a stranger.
Gradually the old man's pleasing and benevolent countenance grew
overcast, and he turned, from time to time, searching, curious,
uneasy glances towards his companion.
The charming Duchesse de G-- archly pointed out to the lively
guests the abstracted air and clouded brow of the poet; and
Condorcet, who liked no one else to be remarked, when he himself
was present, said to Cazotte, "Well, and what do YOU predict of
the Revolution,--how, at least, will it affect us?"
At that question Cazotte started; his cheeks grew pale, large
drops stood on his forehead; his lips writhed; his gay companions
gazed on him in surprise.
"Speak!" whispered the stranger, laying his hand gently upon the
arm of the old wit.
At that word Cazotte's face grew locked and rigid, his eyes dwelt
vacantly on space, and in a low, hollow voice, he thus answered
(The following prophecy (not unfamiliar, perhaps, to some of my
readers), with some slight variations, and at greater length, in
the text of the authority I am about to cite, is to be found in
La Harpe's posthumous works. The MS. is said to exist still in
La Harpe's handwriting, and the story is given on M. Petitot's
authority, volume i. page 62. It is not for me to enquire if
there be doubts of its foundation on fact.--Ed.),--
"You ask how it will affect yourselves,--you, its most learned,
and its least selfish agents. I will answer: you, Marquis de
Condorcet, will die in prison, but not by the hand of the
executioner. In the peaceful happiness of that day, the
philosopher will carry about with him not the elixir but the
poison."
"My poor Cazotte," said Condorcet, with his gentle smile, "what
have prisons, executioners, and poison to do with an age of
liberty and brotherhood?"
"It is in the names of Liberty and Brotherhood that the prisons
will reek, and the headsman be glutted."
"You are thinking of priestcraft, not philosophy, Cazotte," said
Champfort.
(Champfort, one of those men of letters who, though misled by the
first fair show of the Revolution, refused to follow the baser
men of action into its horrible excesses, lived to express the
murderous philanthropy of its agents by the best bon mot of the
time. Seeing written on the walls, "Fraternite ou la Mort," he
observed that the sentiment should be translated thus, "Sois mon
frere, ou je te tue." ("Be my brother, or I kill thee.")) "And
what of me?"
"You will open your own veins to escape the fraternity of Cain.
Be comforted; the last drops will not follow the razor. For you,
venerable Malesherbes; for you, Aimar Nicolai; for you, learned
Bailly,--I see them dress the scaffold! And all the while, O
great philosophers, your murderers will have no word but
philosophy on their lips!"
The hush was complete and universal when the pupil of Voltaire--
the prince of the academic sceptics, hot La Harpe--cried with a
sarcastic laugh, "Do not flatter me, O prophet, by exemption from
the fate of my companions. Shall _I_ have no part to play in
this drama of your fantasies."
At this question, Cazotte's countenance lost its unnatural
expression of awe and sternness; the sardonic humour most common
to it came back and played in his brightening eyes.
"Yes, La Harpe, the most wonderful part of all! YOU will
become--a Christian!"
This was too much for the audience that a moment before seemed
grave and thoughtful, and they burst into an immoderate fit of
laughter, while Cazotte, as if exhausted by his predictions, sank
back in his chair, and breathed hard and heavily.
"Nay, said Madame de G--, "you who have predicted such grave
things concerning us, must prophesy something also about
yourself."
A convulsive tremor shook the involuntary prophet,--it passed,
and left his countenance elevated by an expression of resignation
and calm. "Madame," said he, after a long pause, "during the
siege of Jerusalem, we are told by its historian that a man, for
seven successive days, went round the ramparts, exclaiming, 'Woe
to thee, Jerusalem,--woe to myself!'"
"Well, Cazotte, well?"
"And on the seventh day, while he thus spoke, a stone from the
machines of the Romans dashed him into atoms!"
With these words, Cazotte rose; and the guests, awed in spite of
themselves, shortly afterwards broke up and retired.
CHAPTER 1.VII.
Qui donc t'a donne la mission s'annoncer au peuple que la
divinite n'existe pas? Quel avantage trouves-tu a persuader a
l'homme qu'une force aveugle preside a ses destinees et frappe au
hasard le crime et la vertu?--Robespierre, "Discours," Mai 7,
1794.
(Who then invested you with the mission to announce to the people
that there is no God? What advantage find you in persuading man
that nothing but blind force presides over his destinies, and
strikes haphazard both crime and virtue?)
It was some time before midnight when the stranger returned home.
His apartments were situated in one of those vast abodes which
may be called an epitome of Paris itself,--the cellars rented by
mechanics, scarcely removed a step from paupers, often by
outcasts and fugitives from the law, often by some daring writer,
who, after scattering amongst the people doctrines the most
subversive of order, or the most libellous on the characters of
priest, minister, and king, retired amongst the rats, to escape
the persecution that attends the virtuous; the ground-floor
occupied by shops; the entresol by artists; the principal stories
by nobles; and the garrets by journeymen or grisettes.
As the stranger passed up the stairs, a young man of a form and
countenance singularly unprepossessing emerged from a door in the
entresol, and brushed beside him. His glance was furtive,
sinister, savage, and yet timorous; the man's face was of an
ashen paleness, and the features worked convulsively. The
stranger paused, and observed him with thoughtful looks, as he
hurried down the stairs. While he thus stood, he heard a groan
from the room which the young man had just quitted; the latter
had pulled to the door with hasty vehemence, but some fragment,
probably of fuel, had prevented its closing, and it now stood
slightly ajar; the stranger pushed it open and entered. He
passed a small anteroom, meanly furnished, and stood in a
bedchamber of meagre and sordid discomfort. Stretched on the
bed, and writhing in pain, lay an old man; a single candle lit
the room, and threw its feeble ray over the furrowed and
death-like face of the sick person. No attendant was by; he
seemed left alone, to breathe his last. "Water," he moaned
feebly,--"water:--I parch,--I burn!" The intruder approached the
bed, bent over him, and took his hand. "Oh, bless thee, Jean,
bless thee!" said the sufferer; "hast thou brought back the
physician already? Sir, I am poor, but I can pay you well. I
would not die yet, for that young man's sake." And he sat
upright in his bed, and fixed his dim eyes anxiously on his
visitor.
"What are your symptoms, your disease?"
"Fire, fire, fire in the heart, the entrails: I burn!"
"How long is it since you have taken food?"
"Food! only this broth. There is the basin, all I have taken
these six hours. I had scarce drunk it ere these pains began."
The stranger looked at the basin; some portion of the contents
was yet left there.
"Who administered this to you?"
"Who? Jean! Who else should? I have no servant,--none! I am
poor, very poor, sir. But no! you physicians do not care for the
poor. I AM RICH! can you cure me?"
"Yes, if Heaven permit. Wait but a few moments."
The old man was fast sinking under the rapid effects of poison.
The stranger repaired to his own apartments, and returned in a
few moments with some preparation that had the instant result of
an antidote. The pain ceased, the blue and livid colour receded
from the lips; the old man fell into a profound sleep. The
stranger drew the curtains round the bed, took up the light, and
inspected the apartment. The walls of both rooms were hung with
drawings of masterly excellence. A portfolio was filled with
sketches of equal skill,--but these last were mostly subjects
that appalled the eye and revolted the taste: they displayed the
human figure in every variety of suffering,--the rack, the wheel,
the gibbet; all that cruelty has invented to sharpen the pangs of
death seemed yet more dreadful from the passionate gusto and
earnest force of the designer. And some of the countenances of
those thus delineated were sufficiently removed from the ideal to
show that they were portraits; in a large, bold, irregular hand
was written beneath these drawings, "The Future of the
Aristocrats." In a corner of the room, and close by an old
bureau, was a small bundle, over which, as if to hide it, a cloak
was thrown carelessly. Several shelves were filled with books;
these were almost entirely the works of the philosophers of the
time,--the philosophers of the material school, especially the
Encyclopedistes, whom Robespierre afterwards so singularly
attacked when the coward deemed it unsafe to leave his reign
without a God.
("Cette secte (les Encyclopedistes) propagea avec beaucoup de
zele l'opinion du materialisme, qui prevalut parmi les grands et
parmi les beaux esprits; on lui doit en partie cette espece de
philosophie pratique qui, reduisant l'Egoisme en systeme regarde
la societe humaine comme une guerre de ruse, le succes comme la
regle du juste et de l'injuste, la probite comme une affaire de
gout, ou de bienseance, le monde comme le patrimoine des fripons
adroits."--"Discours de Robespierre," Mai 7, 1794. (This sect
(the Encyclopaedists) propagate with much zeal the doctrine of
materialism, which prevails among the great and the wits; we owe
to it partly that kind of practical philosophy which, reducing
Egotism to a system, looks upon society as a war of cunning;
success the rule of right and wrong, honesty as an affair of
taste or decency: and the world as the patrimony of clever
scoundrels.))
A volume lay on a table,--it was one of Voltaire, and the page
was opened at his argumentative assertion of the existence of the
Supreme Being. ("Histoire de Jenni.") The margin was covered
with pencilled notes, in the stiff but tremulous hand of old age;
all in attempt to refute or to ridicule the logic of the sage of
Ferney: Voltaire did not go far enough for the annotator! The
clock struck two, when the sound of steps was heard without. The
stranger silently seated himself on the farther side of the bed,
and its drapery screened him, as he sat, from the eyes of a man
who now entered on tiptoe; it was the same person who had passed
him on the stairs. The new-comer took up the candle and
approached the bed. The old man's face was turned to the pillow;
but he lay so still, and his breathing was so inaudible, that his
sleep might well, by that hasty, shrinking, guilty glance, be
mistaken for the repose of death. The new-comer drew back, and a
grim smile passed over his face: he replaced the candle on the
table, opened the bureau with a key which he took from his
pocket, and loaded himself with several rouleaus of gold that he
found in the drawers. At this time the old man began to wake.
He stirred, he looked up; he turned his eyes towards the light
now waning in its socket; he saw the robber at his work; he sat
erect for an instant, as if transfixed, more even by astonishment
than terror. At last he sprang from his bed.
"Just Heaven! do I dream! Thou--thou--thou, for whom I toiled
and starved!--THOU!"
The robber started; the gold fell from his hand, and rolled on
the floor.
"What!" he said, "art thou not dead yet? Has the poison failed?"
"Poison, boy! Ah!" shrieked the old man, and covered his face
with his hands; then, with sudden energy, he exclaimed, "Jean!
Jean! recall that word. Rob, plunder me if thou wilt, but do not
say thou couldst murder one who only lived for thee! There,
there, take the gold; I hoarded it but for thee. Go! go!" and
the old man, who in his passion had quitted his bed, fell at the
feet of the foiled assassin, and writhed on the ground,--the
mental agony more intolerable than that of the body, which he had
so lately undergone. The robber looked at him with a hard
disdain.
"What have I ever done to thee, wretch?" cried the old man,--
"what but loved and cherished thee? Thou wert an orphan,--an
outcast. I nurtured, nursed, adopted thee as my son. If men
call me a miser, it was but that none might despise thee, my
heir, because Nature has stunted and deformed thee, when I was no
more. Thou wouldst have had all when I was dead. Couldst thou
not spare me a few months or days,--nothing to thy youth, all
that is left to my age? What have I done to thee?"
"Thou hast continued to live, and thou wouldst make no will."
"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!"
"TON DIEU! Thy God! Fool! Hast thou not told me, from my
childhood, that there is NO God? Hast thou not fed me on
philosophy? Hast thou not said, 'Be virtuous, be good, be just,
for the sake of mankind: but there is no life after this life'?
Mankind! why should I love mankind? Hideous and misshapen,
mankind jeer at me as I pass the streets. What hast thou done to
me? Thou hast taken away from me, who am the scoff of this
world, the hopes of another! Is there no other life? Well,
then, I want thy gold, that at least I may hasten to make the
best of this!"
"Monster! Curses light on thy ingratitude, thy--"
"And who hears thy curses? Thou knowest there is no God! Mark
me; I have prepared all to fly. See,--I have my passport; my
horses wait without; relays are ordered. I have thy gold." (And
the wretch, as he spoke, continued coldly to load his person with
the rouleaus). "And now, if I spare thy life, how shall I be
sure that thou wilt not inform against mine?" He advanced with a
gloomy scowl and a menacing gesture as he spoke.
The old man's anger changed to fear. He cowered before the
savage. "Let me live! let me live!--that--that--"
"That--what?"
"I may pardon thee! Yes, thou hast nothing to fear from me. I
swear it!"
"Swear! But by whom and what, old man? I cannot believe thee,
if thou believest not in any God! Ha, ha! behold the result of
thy lessons."
Another moment and those murderous fingers would have strangled
their prey. But between the assassin and his victim rose a form
that seemed almost to both a visitor from the world that both
denied,--stately with majestic strength, glorious with awful
beauty.
The ruffian recoiled, looked, trembled, and then turned and fled
from the chamber. The old man fell again to the ground
insensible.
CHAPTER 1.VIII.
To know how a bad man will act when in power, reverse all the
doctrines he preaches when obscure.--S. Montague.
Antipathies also form a part of magic (falsely) so-called. Man
naturally has the same instinct as the animals, which warns them
involuntarily against the creatures that are hostile or fatal to
their existence. But HE so often neglects it, that it becomes
dormant. Not so the true cultivator of the Great Science, etc.--
Trismegistus the Fourth (a Rosicrucian).
When he again saw the old man the next day, the stranger found
him calm, and surprisingly recovered from the scene and
sufferings of the night. He expressed his gratitude to his
preserver with tearful fervour, and stated that he had already
sent for a relation who would make arrangements for his future
safety and mode of life. "For I have money yet left," said the
old man; "and henceforth have no motive to be a miser." He
proceeded then briefly to relate the origin and circumstances of
his connection with his intended murderer.
It seems that in earlier life he had quarrelled with his
relations,--from a difference in opinions of belief. Rejecting
all religion as a fable, he yet cultivated feelings that inclined
him--for though his intellect was weak, his dispositions were
good--to that false and exaggerated sensibility which its dupes
so often mistake for benevolence. He had no children; he
resolved to adopt an enfant du peuple. He resolved to educate
this boy according to "reason." He selected an orphan of the
lowest extraction, whose defects of person and constitution only
yet the more moved his pity, and finally engrossed his affection.
In this outcast he not only loved a son, he loved a theory! He
brought him up most philosophically. Helvetius had proved to him
that education can do all; and before he was eight years old, the
little Jean's favourite expressions were, "La lumiere et la
vertu." (Light and virtue.) The boy showed talents, especially
in art.
The protector sought for a master who was as free from
"superstition" as himself, and selected the painter David. That
person, as hideous as his pupil, and whose dispositions were as
vicious as his professional abilities were undeniable, was
certainly as free from "superstition" as the protector could
desire. It was reserved for Robespierre hereafter to make the
sanguinary painter believe in the Etre Supreme. The boy was
early sensible of his ugliness, which was almost preternatural.
His benefactor found it in vain to reconcile him to the malice of
Nature by his philosophical aphorisms; but when he pointed out to
him that in this world money, like charity, covers a multitude of
defects, the boy listened eagerly and was consoled. To save
money for his protege,--for the only thing in the world he
loved,--this became the patron's passion. Verily, he had met
with his reward.
"But I am thankful he has escaped," said the old man, wiping his
eyes. "Had he left me a beggar, I could never have accused him."
"No, for you are the author of his crimes."
"How! I, who never ceased to inculcate the beauty of virtue?
Explain yourself."
"Alas! if thy pupil did not make this clear to thee last night
from his own lips, an angel might come from heaven to preach to
thee in vain."
The old man moved uneasily, and was about to reply, when the
relative he had sent for--and who, a native of Nancy, happened to
be at Paris at the time--entered the room. He was a man somewhat
past thirty, and of a dry, saturnine, meagre countenance,
restless eyes, and compressed lips. He listened, with many
ejaculations of horror, to his relation's recital, and sought
earnestly, but in vain, to induce him to give information against
his protege.
"Tush, tush, Rene Dumas!" said the old man, "you are a lawyer.
You are bred to regard human life with contempt. Let any man
break a law, and you shout, 'Execute him!'"
"I!" cried Dumas, lifting up his hands and eyes: "venerable
sage, how you misjudge me! I lament more than any one the
severity of our code. I think the state never should take away
life,--no, not even the life of a murderer. I agree with that
young statesman,--Maximilien Robespierre,--that the executioner
is the invention of the tyrant. My very attachment to our
advancing revolution is, that it must sweep away this legal
butchery."
The lawyer paused, out of breath. The stranger regarded him
fixedly and turned pale.
"You change countenance, sir," said Dumas; "you do not agree with
me."
"Pardon me, I was at that moment repressing a vague fear which
seemed prophetic."
"And that--"
"Was that we should meet again, when your opinions on Death and
the philosophy of Revolutions might be different."
"Never!"
"You enchant me, Cousin Rene," said the old man, who had listened
to his relation with delight. "Ah, I see you have proper
sentiments of justice and philanthropy. Why did I not seek to
know you before? You admire the Revolution;--you, equally with
me, detest the barbarity of kings and the fraud of priests?"
"Detest! How could I love mankind if I did not?"
"And," said the old man, hesitatingly, "you do not think, with
this noble gentleman, that I erred in the precepts I instilled
into that wretched man?"
"Erred! Was Socrates to blame if Alcibiades was an adulterer and
a traitor?"
"You hear him, you hear him! But Socrates had also a Plato;
henceforth you shall be a Plato to me. You hear him?" exclaimed
the old man, turning to the stranger.
But the latter was at the threshold. Who shall argue with the
most stubborn of all bigotries,--the fanaticism of unbelief?
"Are you going?" exclaimed Dumas, "and before I have thanked you,
blessed you, for the life of this dear and venerable man? Oh, if
ever I can repay you,--if ever you want the heart's blood of Rene
Dumas!" Thus volubly delivering himself, he followed the
stranger to the threshold of the second chamber, and there,
gently detaining him, and after looking over his shoulder, to be
sure that he was not heard by the owner, he whispered, "I ought
to return to Nancy. One would not lose one's time,--you don't
think, sir, that that scoundrel took away ALL the old fool's
money?"
"Was it thus Plato spoke of Socrates, Monsieur Dumas?"
"Ha, ha!--you are caustic. Well, you have a right. Sir, we
shall meet again."
"AGAIN!" muttered the stranger, and his brow darkened. He
hastened to his chamber; he passed the day and the night alone,
and in studies, no matter of what nature,--they served to
increase his gloom.
What could ever connect his fate with Rene Dumas, or the fugitive
assassin? Why did the buoyant air of Paris seem to him heavy
with the steams of blood; why did an instinct urge him to fly
from those sparkling circles, from that focus of the world's
awakened hopes, warning him from return?--he, whose lofty
existence defied--but away these dreams and omens! He leaves
France behind. Back, O Italy, to thy majestic wrecks! On the
Alps his soul breathes the free air once more. Free air! Alas!
let the world-healers exhaust their chemistry; man never shall be
as free in the marketplace as on the mountain. But we, reader,
we too escape from these scenes of false wisdom clothing godless
crime. Away, once more
"In den heitern Regionen
Wo die reinen Formen wohnen."
Away, to the loftier realm where the pure dwellers are.
Unpolluted by the Actual, the Ideal lives only with Art and
Beauty. Sweet Viola, by the shores of the blue Parthenope, by
Virgil's tomb, and the Cimmerian cavern, we return to thee once
more.
CHAPTER 1.IX.
Che non vuol che 'l destrier piu vada in alto,
Poi lo lega nel margine marino
A un verde mirto in mezzo un lauro E UN PINO.
"Orlando Furioso," c. vi. xxiii.
(As he did not wish that his charger (the hippogriff) should take
any further excursions into the higher regions for the present,
he bound him at the sea-shore to a green myrtle between a laurel
and a pine.)
O Musician! art thou happy now? Thou art reinstalled at thy
stately desk,--thy faithful barbiton has its share in the
triumph. It is thy masterpiece which fills thy ear; it is thy
daughter who fills the scene,--the music, the actress, so united,
that applause to one is applause to both. They make way for
thee, at the orchestra,--they no longer jeer and wink, when, with
a fierce fondness, thou dost caress thy Familiar, that plains,
and wails, and chides, and growls, under thy remorseless hand.
They understand now how irregular is ever the symmetry of real
genius. The inequalities in its surface make the moon luminous
to man. Giovanni Paisiello, Maestro di Capella, if thy gentle
soul could know envy, thou must sicken to see thy Elfrida and thy
Pirro laid aside, and all Naples turned fanatic to the Siren, at
whose measures shook querulously thy gentle head! But thou,
Paisiello, calm in the long prosperity of fame, knowest that the
New will have its day, and comfortest thyself that the Elfrida
and the Pirro will live forever. Perhaps a mistake, but it is by
such mistakes that true genius conquers envy. "To be immortal,"
says Schiller, "live in the whole." To be superior to the hour,
live in thy self-esteem. The audience now would give their ears
for those variations and flights they were once wont to hiss.
No!--Pisani has been two-thirds of a life at silent work on his
masterpiece: there is nothing he can add to THAT, however he
might have sought to improve on the masterpieces of others. Is
not this common? The least little critic, in reviewing some work
of art, will say, "pity this, and pity that;" "this should have
been altered,--that omitted." Yea, with his wiry fiddlestring
will he creak out his accursed variations. But let him sit down
and compose himself. He sees no improvement in variations THEN!
Every man can control his fiddle when it is his own work with
which its vagaries would play the devil.
And Viola is the idol, the theme of Naples. She is the spoiled
sultana of the boards. To spoil her acting may be easy enough,--
shall they spoil her nature? No, I think not. There, at home,
she is still good and simple; and there, under the awning by the
doorway,--there she still sits, divinely musing. How often,
crook-trunked tree, she looks to thy green boughs; how often,
like thee, in her dreams, and fancies, does she struggle for the
light,--not the light of the stage-lamps. Pooh, child! be
contented with the lamps, even with the rush-lights. A farthing
candle is more convenient for household purposes than the stars.
Weeks passed, and the stranger did not reappear; months had
passed, and his prophecy of sorrow was not yet fulfilled. One
evening Pisani was taken ill. His success had brought on the
long-neglected composer pressing applications for concerti and
sonata, adapted to his more peculiar science on the violin. He
had been employed for some weeks, day and night, on a piece in
which he hoped to excel himself. He took, as usual, one of those
seemingly impracticable subjects which it was his pride to
subject to the expressive powers of his art,--the terrible legend
connected with the transformation of Philomel. The pantomime of
sound opened with the gay merriment of a feast. The monarch of
Thrace is at his banquet; a sudden discord brays through the
joyous notes,--the string seems to screech with horror. The king
learns the murder of his son by the hands of the avenging
sisters. Swift rage the chords, through the passions of fear, of
horror, of fury, and dismay. The father pursues the sisters.
Hark! what changes the dread--the discord--into that long,
silvery, mournful music? The transformation is completed; and
Philomel, now the nightingale, pours from the myrtle-bough the
full, liquid, subduing notes that are to tell evermore to the
world the history of her woes and wrongs. Now, it was in the
midst of this complicated and difficult attempt that the health
of the over-tasked musician, excited alike by past triumph and
new ambition, suddenly gave way. He was taken ill at night. The
next morning the doctor pronounced that his disease was a
malignant and infectious fever. His wife and Viola shared in
their tender watch; but soon that task was left to the last
alone. The Signora Pisani caught the infection, and in a few
hours was even in a state more alarming than that of her husband.
The Neapolitans, in common with the inhabitants of all warm
climates, are apt to become selfish and brutal in their dread of
infectious disorders. Gionetta herself pretended to be ill, to
avoid the sick-chamber. The whole labour of love and sorrow fell
on Viola. It was a terrible trial,--I am willing to hurry over
the details. The wife died first!
One day, a little before sunset, Pisani woke partially recovered
from the delirium which had preyed upon him, with few intervals,
since the second day of the disease; and casting about him his
dizzy and feeble eyes, he recognised Viola, and smiled. He
faltered her name as he rose and stretched his arms. She fell
upon his breast, and strove to suppress her tears.
"Thy mother?" he said. "Does she sleep?"
"She sleeps,--ah, yes!" and the tears gushed forth.
"I thought--eh! I know not WHAT I have thought. But do not
weep: I shall be well now,--quite well. She will come to me
when she wakes,--will she?"
Viola could not speak; but she busied herself in pouring forth an
anodyne, which she had been directed to give the sufferer as soon
as the delirium should cease. The doctor had told her, too, to
send for him the instant so important a change should occur.
She went to the door and called to the woman who, during
Gionetta's pretended illness, had been induced to supply her
place; but the hireling answered not. She flew through the
chambers to search for her in vain,--the hireling had caught
Gionetta's fears, and vanished. What was to be done? The case
was urgent,--the doctor had declared not a moment should be lost
in obtaining his attendance; she must leave her father,--she must
go herself! She crept back into the room,--the anodyne seemed
already to have taken benign effect; the patient's eyes were
closed, and he breathed regularly, as in sleep. She stole away,
threw her veil over her face, and hurried from the house.
Now the anodyne had not produced the effect which it appeared to
have done; instead of healthful sleep, it had brought on a kind
of light-headed somnolence, in which the mind, preternaturally
restless, wandered about its accustomed haunts, waking up its old
familiar instincts and inclinations. It was not sleep,--it was
not delirium; it was the dream-wakefulness which opium sometimes
induces, when every nerve grows tremulously alive, and creates a
corresponding activity in the frame, to which it gives a false
and hectic vigour. Pisani missed something,--what, he scarcely
knew; it was a combination of the two wants most essential to his
mental life,--the voice of his wife, the touch of his Familiar.
He rose,--he left his bed, he leisurely put on his old
dressing-robe, in which he had been wont to compose. He smiled
complacently as the associations connected with the garment came
over his memory; he walked tremulously across the room, and
entered the small cabinet next to his chamber, in which his wife
had been accustomed more often to watch than sleep, when illness
separated her from his side. The room was desolate and void. He
looked round wistfully, and muttered to himself, and then
proceeded regularly, and with a noiseless step, through the
chambers of the silent house, one by one.
He came at last to that in which old Gionetta--faithful to her
own safety, if nothing else--nursed herself, in the remotest
corner of the house, from the danger of infection. As he glided
in,--wan, emaciated, with an uneasy, anxious, searching look in
his haggard eyes,--the old woman shrieked aloud, and fell at his
feet. He bent over her, passed his thin hands along her averted
face, shook his head, and said in a hollow voice,--
"I cannot find them; where are they?"
"Who, dear master? Oh, have compassion on yourself; they are not
here. Blessed saints! this is terrible; he has touched me; I am
dead!"
"Dead! who is dead? Is any one dead?"
"Ah! don't talk so; you must know it well: my poor mistress,--
she caught the fever from you; it is infectious enough to kill a
whole city. San Gennaro protect me! My poor mistress, she is
dead,--buried, too; and I, your faithful Gionetta, woe is me!
Go, go--to--to bed again, dearest master,--go!"
The poor musician stood for one moment mute and unmoving, then a
slight shiver ran through his frame; he turned and glided back,
silent and spectre-like, as he had entered. He came into the
room where he had been accustomed to compose,--where his wife, in
her sweet patience, had so often sat by his side, and praised and
flattered when the world had but jeered and scorned. In one
corner he found the laurel-wreath she had placed on his brows
that happy night of fame and triumph; and near it, half hid by
her mantilla, lay in its case the neglected instrument.
Viola was not long gone: she had found the physician; she
returned with him; and as they gained the threshold, they heard a
strain of music from within,--a strain of piercing, heart-rending
anguish. It was not like some senseless instrument, mechanical
in its obedience to a human hand,--it was as some spirit calling,
in wail and agony from the forlorn shades, to the angels it
beheld afar beyond the Eternal Gulf. They exchanged glances of
dismay. They hurried into the house; they hastened into the
room. Pisani turned, and his look, full of ghastly intelligence
and stern command, awed them back. The black mantilla, the faded
laurel-leaf, lay there before him. Viola's heart guessed all at
a single glance; she sprung to his knees; she clasped them,--
"Father, father, _I_ am left thee still!"
The wail ceased,--the note changed; with a confused association--
half of the man, half of the artist--the anguish, still a melody,
was connected with sweeter sounds and thoughts. The nightingale
had escaped the pursuit,--soft, airy, bird-like, thrilled the
delicious notes a moment, and then died away. The instrument
fell to the floor, and its chords snapped. You heard that sound
through the silence. The artist looked on his kneeling child,
and then on the broken chords..."Bury me by her side," he said,
in a very calm, low voice; "and THAT by mine." And with these
words his whole frame became rigid, as if turned to stone. The
last change passed over his face. He fell to the ground, sudden
and heavy. The chords THERE, too,--the chords of the human
instrument were snapped asunder. As he fell, his robe brushed
the laurel-wreath, and that fell also, near but not in reach of
the dead man's nerveless hand.
Broken instrument, broken heart, withered laurel-wreath!--the
setting sun through the vine-clad lattice streamed on all! So
smiles the eternal Nature on the wrecks of all that make life
glorious! And not a sun that sets not somewhere on the silenced
music,--on the faded laurel!
CHAPTER 1.X.
Che difesa miglior ch' usbergo e scudo,
E la santa innocenza al petto ignudo!
"Ger. Lib.," c. viii. xli.
(Better defence than shield or breastplate is holy innocence
to the naked breast.)
And they buried the musician and his barbiton together, in the
same coffin. That famous Steiner--primeval Titan of the great
Tyrolese race--often hast thou sought to scale the heavens, and
therefore must thou, like the meaner children of men, descend to
the dismal Hades! Harder fate for thee than thy mortal master.
For THY soul sleeps with thee in the coffin. And the music that
belongs to HIS, separate from the instrument, ascends on high, to
be heard often by a daughter's pious ears when the heaven is
serene and the earth sad. For there is a sense of hearing that
the vulgar know not. And the voices of the dead breathe soft and
frequent to those who can unite the memory with the faith.
And now Viola is alone in the world,--alone in the home where
loneliness had seemed from the cradle a thing that was not of
nature. And at first the solitude and the stillness were
insupportable. Have you, ye mourners, to whom these sibyl
leaves, weird with many a dark enigma, shall be borne, have you
not felt that when the death of some best-loved one has made the
hearth desolate,--have you not felt as if the gloom of the
altered home was too heavy for thought to bear?--you would leave
it, though a palace, even for a cabin. And yet,--sad to say,--
when you obey the impulse, when you fly from the walls, when in
the strange place in which you seek your refuge nothing speaks to
you of the lost, have ye not felt again a yearning for that very
food to memory which was just before but bitterness and gall? Is
it not almost impious and profane to abandon that dear hearth to
strangers? And the desertion of the home where your parents
dwelt, and blessed you, upbraids your conscience as if you had
sold their tombs.
Beautiful was the Etruscan superstition that the ancestors become
the household gods. Deaf is the heart to which the Lares call
from the desolate floors in vain. At first Viola had, in her
intolerable anguish, gratefully welcomed the refuge which the
house and family of a kindly neighbour, much attached to her
father, and who was one of the orchestra that Pisani shall
perplex no more, had proffered to the orphan. But the company of
the unfamiliar in our grief, the consolation of the stranger, how
it irritates the wound! And then, to hear elsewhere the name of
father, mother, child,--as if death came alone to you,--to see
elsewhere the calm regularity of those lives united in love and
order, keeping account of happy hours, the unbroken timepiece of
home, as if nowhere else the wheels were arrested, the chain
shattered, the hands motionless, the chime still! No, the grave
itself does not remind us of our loss like the company of those
who have no loss to mourn. Go back to thy solitude, young
orphan,--go back to thy home: the sorrow that meets thee on the
threshold can greet thee, even in its sadness, like the smile
upon the face of the dead. And there, from thy casement, and
there, from without thy door, thou seest still the tree, solitary
as thyself, and springing from the clefts of the rock, but
forcing its way to light,--as, through all sorrow, while the
seasons yet can renew the verdure and bloom of youth, strives the
instinct of the human heart! Only when the sap is dried up, only
when age comes on, does the sun shine in vain for man and for the
tree.
Weeks and months--months sad and many--again passed, and Naples
will not longer suffer its idol to seclude itself from homage.
The world ever plucks us back from ourselves with a thousand
arms. And again Viola's voice is heard upon the stage, which,
mystically faithful to life, is in nought more faithful than
this, that it is the appearances that fill the scene; and we
pause not to ask of what realities they are the proxies. When
the actor of Athens moved all hearts as he clasped the burial
urn, and burst into broken sobs; how few, there, knew that it
held the ashes of his son! Gold, as well as fame, was showered
upon the young actress; but she still kept to her simple mode of
life, to her lowly home, to the one servant whose faults, selfish
as they were, Viola was too inexperienced to perceive. And it
was Gionetta who had placed her when first born in her father's
arms! She was surrounded by every snare, wooed by every
solicitation that could beset her unguarded beauty and her
dangerous calling. But her modest virtue passed unsullied
through them all. It is true that she had been taught by lips
now mute the maiden duties enjoined by honour and religion. And
all love that spoke not of the altar only shocked and repelled
her. But besides that, as grief and solitude ripened her heart,
and made her tremble at times to think how deeply it could feel,
her vague and early visions shaped themselves into an ideal of
love. And till the ideal is found, how the shadow that it throws
before it chills us to the actual! With that ideal, ever and
ever, unconsciously, and with a certain awe and shrinking, came
the shape and voice of the warning stranger. Nearly two years
had passed since he had appeared at Naples. Nothing had been
heard of him, save that his vessel had been directed, some months
after his departure, to sail for Leghorn. By the gossips of
Naples, his existence, supposed so extraordinary, was wellnigh
forgotten; but the heart of Viola was more faithful. Often he
glided through her dreams, and when the wind sighed through that
fantastic tree, associated with his remembrance, she started with
a tremor and a blush, as if she had heard him speak.
But amongst the train of her suitors was one to whom she listened
more gently than to the rest; partly because, perhaps, he spoke
in her mother's native tongue; partly because in his diffidence
there was little to alarm and displease; partly because his rank,
nearer to her own than that of lordlier wooers, prevented his
admiration from appearing insult; partly because he himself,
eloquent and a dreamer, often uttered thoughts that were kindred
to those buried deepest in her mind. She began to like, perhaps
to love him, but as a sister loves; a sort of privileged
familiarity sprung up between them. If in the Englishman's
breast arose wild and unworthy hopes, he had not yet expressed
them. Is there danger to thee here, lone Viola, or is the danger
greater in thy unfound ideal?
And now, as the overture to some strange and wizard spectacle,
closes this opening prelude. Wilt thou hear more? Come with thy
faith prepared. I ask not the blinded eyes, but the awakened
sense. As the enchanted Isle, remote from the homes of men,--
"Ove alcun legno
Rado, o non mai va dalle nostre sponde,"--
"Ger.Lib.," cant. xiv. 69.
(Where ship seldom or never comes from our coasts.)
is the space in the weary ocean of actual life to which the Muse
or Sibyl (ancient in years, but ever young in aspect), offers
thee no unhallowed sail,--
"Quinci ella in cima a una montagna ascende
Disabitata, e d' ombre oscura e bruna;
E par incanto a lei nevose rende
Le spalle e i fianchi; e sensa neve alcuna
Gli lascia il capo verdeggiante e vago;
E vi fonda un palagio appresso un lago."
(There, she a mountain's lofty peak ascends,
Unpeopled, shady, shagg'd with forests brown,
Whose sides, by power of magic, half-way down
She heaps with slippery ice and frost and snow,
But sunshiny and verdant leaves the crown
With orange-woods and myrtles,--speaks, and lo!
Rich from the bordering lake a palace rises slow.
Wiffin's "Translation."
BOOK II.
ART, LOVE, AND WONDER.
Diversi aspetti in un confusi e misti.
"Ger. Lib," cant. iv. 7.
Different appearances, confused and mixt in one.
CHAPTER 2.I.
Centauri, e Sfingi, e pallide Gorgoni.
"Ger. Lib.," c. iv. v.
(Centaurs and Sphinxes and pallid Gorgons.)
One moonlit night, in the Gardens at Naples, some four or five
gentleman were seated under a tree, drinking their sherbet, and
listening, in the intervals of conversation, to the music which
enlivened that gay and favourite resort of an indolent
population. One of this little party was a young Englishman, who
had been the life of the whole group, but who, for the last few
moments, had sunk into a gloomy and abstracted reverie. One of
his countrymen observed this sudden gloom, and, tapping him on
the back, said, "What ails you, Glyndon? Are you ill? You have
grown quite pale,--you tremble. Is it a sudden chill? You had
better go home: these Italian nights are often dangerous to our
English constitutions."
"No, I am well now; it was a passing shudder. I cannot account
for it myself."
A man, apparently of about thirty years of age, and of a mien and
countenance strikingly superior to those around him, turned
abruptly, and looked steadfastly at Glyndon.
"I think I understand what you mean," said he; "and perhaps," he
added, with a grave smile, "I could explain it better than
yourself." Here, turning to the others, he added, "You must
often have felt, gentlemen, each and all of you, especially when
sitting alone at night, a strange and unaccountable sensation of
coldness and awe creep over you; your blood curdles, and the
heart stands still; the limbs shiver; the hair bristles; you are
afraid to look up, to turn your eyes to the darker corners of the
room; you have a horrible fancy that something unearthly is at
hand; presently the whole spell, if I may so call it, passes
away, and you are ready to laugh at your own weakness. Have you
not often felt what I have thus imperfectly described?--if so,
you can understand what our young friend has just experienced,
even amidst the delights of this magical scene, and amidst the
balmy whispers of a July night."
"Sir," replied Glyndon, evidently much surprised, "you have
defined exactly the nature of that shudder which came over me.
But how could my manner be so faithful an index to my
impressions?"
"I know the signs of the visitation," returned the stranger,
gravely; "they are not to be mistaken by one of my experience."
All the gentleman present then declared that they could
comprehend, and had felt, what the stranger had described.
"According to one of our national superstitions," said Mervale,
the Englishman who had first addressed Glyndon, "the moment you
so feel your blood creep, and your hair stand on end, some one is
walking over the spot which shall be your grave."
"There are in all lands different superstitions to account for so
common an occurrence," replied the stranger: "one sect among the
Arabians holds that at that instant God is deciding the hour
either of your death, or of some one dear to you. The African
savage, whose imagination is darkened by the hideous rites of his
gloomy idolatry, believes that the Evil Spirit is pulling you
towards him by the hair: so do the Grotesque and the Terrible
mingle with each other."
"It is evidently a mere physical accident,--a derangement of the
stomach, a chill of the blood," said a young Neapolitan, with
whom Glyndon had formed a slight acquaintance.
"Then why is it always coupled in all nations with some
superstitious presentiment or terror,--some connection between
the material frame and the supposed world without us? For my
part, I think--"
"Ay, what do you think, sir?" asked Glyndon, curiously.
"I think," continued the stranger, "that it is the repugnance and
horror with which our more human elements recoil from something,
indeed, invisible, but antipathetic to our own nature; and from a
knowledge of which we are happily secured by the imperfection of
our senses."
"You are a believer in spirits, then?" said Mervale, with an
incredulous smile.
"Nay, it was not precisely of spirits that I spoke; but there may
be forms of matter as invisible and impalpable to us as the
animalculae in the air we breathe,--in the water that plays in
yonder basin. Such beings may have passions and powers like our
own--as the animalculae to which I have compared them. The
monster that lives and dies in a drop of water--carnivorous,
insatiable, subsisting on the creatures minuter than himself--is
not less deadly in his wrath, less ferocious in his nature, than
the tiger of the desert. There may be things around us that would
be dangerous and hostile to men, if Providence had not placed a
wall between them and us, merely by different modifications of
matter."
"And think you that wall never can be removed?" asked young
Glyndon, abruptly. "Are the traditions of sorcerer and wizard,
universal and immemorial as they are, merely fables?"
"Perhaps yes,--perhaps no," answered the stranger, indifferently.
"But who, in an age in which the reason has chosen its proper
bounds, would be mad enough to break the partition that divides
him from the boa and the lion,--to repine at and rebel against
the law which confines the shark to the great deep? Enough of
these idle speculations."
Here the stranger rose, summoned the attendant, paid for his
sherbet, and, bowing slightly to the company, soon disappeared
among the trees.
"Who is that gentleman?" asked Glyndon, eagerly.
The rest looked at each other, without replying, for some
moments.
"I never saw him before," said Mervale, at last.
"Nor I."
"Nor I."
"I know him well," said the Neapolitan, who was, indeed, the
Count Cetoxa. "If you remember, it was as my companion that he
joined you. He visited Naples about two years ago, and has
recently returned; he is very rich,--indeed, enormously so. A
most agreeable person. I am sorry to hear him talk so strangely
to-night; it serves to encourage the various foolish reports that
are circulated concerning him."
"And surely," said another Neapolitan, "the circumstance that
occurred but the other day, so well known to yourself, Cetoxa,
justifies the reports you pretend to deprecate."
"Myself and my countryman," said Glyndon, "mix so little in
Neapolitan society, that we lose much that appears well worthy of
lively interest. May I enquire what are the reports, and what is
the circumstance you refer to?"
"As to the reports, gentlemen," said Cetoxa, courteously,
addressing himself to the two Englishmen, "it may suffice to
observe, that they attribute to the Signor Zanoni certain
qualities which everybody desires for himself, but damns any one
else for possessing. The incident Signor Belgioso alludes to,
illustrates these qualities, and is, I must own, somewhat
startling. You probably play, gentlemen?" (Here Cetoxa paused;
and as both Englishmen had occasionally staked a few scudi at
the public gaming-tables, they bowed assent to the conjecture.)
Cetoxa continued. "Well, then, not many days since, and on the
very day that Zanoni returned to Naples, it so happened that I
had been playing pretty high, and had lost considerably. I rose
from the table, resolved no longer to tempt fortune, when I
suddenly perceived Zanoni, whose acquaintance I had before made
(and who, I may say, was under some slight obligation to me),
standing by, a spectator. Ere I could express my gratification
at this unexpected recognition, he laid his hand on my arm. 'You
have lost much,' said he; 'more than you can afford. For my
part, I dislike play; yet I wish to have some interest in what is
going on. Will you play this sum for me? the risk is mine,--the
half profits yours.' I was startled, as you may suppose, at such
an address; but Zanoni had an air and tone with him it was
impossible to resist; besides, I was burning to recover my
losses, and should not have risen had I had any money left about
me. I told him I would accept his offer, provided we shared the
risk as well as profits. 'As you will,' said he, smiling; 'we
need have no scruple, for you will be sure to win.' I sat down;
Zanoni stood behind me; my luck rose,--I invariably won. In
fact, I rose from the table a rich man."
"There can be no foul play at the public tables, especially when
foul play would make against the bank?" This question was put by
Glyndon.
"Certainly not," replied the count. "But our good fortune was,
indeed, marvellous,--so extraordinary that a Sicilian (the
Sicilians are all ill-bred, bad-tempered fellows) grew angry and
insolent. 'Sir,' said he, turning to my new friend, 'you have no
business to stand so near to the table. I do not understand
this; you have not acted fairly.' Zanoni replied, with great
composure, that he had done nothing against the rules,--that he
was very sorry that one man could not win without another man
losing; and that he could not act unfairly, even if disposed to
do so. The Sicilian took the stranger's mildness for
apprehension, and blustered more loudly. In fact, he rose from
the table, and confronted Zanoni in a manner that, to say the
least of it, was provoking to any gentleman who has some
quickness of temper, or some skill with the small-sword."
"And," interrupted Belgioso, "the most singular part of the whole
to me was, that this Zanoni, who stood opposite to where I sat,
and whose face I distinctly saw, made no remark, showed no
resentment. He fixed his eyes steadfastly on the Sicilian; never
shall I forget that look! it is impossible to describe it,--it
froze the blood in my veins. The Sicilian staggered back as if
struck. I saw him tremble; he sank on the bench. And then--"
"Yes, then," said Cetoxa, "to my infinite surprise, our
gentleman, thus disarmed by a look from Zanoni, turned his whole
anger upon me, THE -- but perhaps you do not know, gentlemen,
that I have some repute with my weapon?"
"The best swordsman in Italy," said Belgioso.
"Before I could guess why or wherefore," resumed Cetoxa, "I found
myself in the garden behind the house, with Ughelli (that was the
Sicilian's name) facing me, and five or six gentlemen, the
witnesses of the duel about to take place, around. Zanoni
beckoned me aside. 'This man will fall,' said he. 'When he is
on the ground, go to him, and ask whether he will be buried by
the side of his father in the church of San Gennaro?' 'Do you
then know his family?' I asked with great surprise. Zanoni made
me no answer, and the next moment I was engaged with the
Sicilian. To do him justice, his imbrogliato was magnificent,
and a swifter lounger never crossed a sword; nevertheless," added
Cetoxa, with a pleasing modesty, "he was run through the body. I
went up to him; he could scarcely speak. 'Have you any request
to make,--any affairs to settle?' He shook his head. 'Where
would you wish to be interred?' He pointed towards the Sicilian
coast. 'What!' said I, in surprise, 'NOT by the side of your
father, in the church of San Gennaro?' As I spoke, his face
altered terribly; he uttered a piercing shriek,--the blood gushed
from his mouth, and he fell dead. The most strange part of the
story is to come. We buried him in the church of San Gennaro.
In doing so, we took up his father's coffin; the lid came off in
moving it, and the skeleton was visible. In the hollow of the
skull we found a very slender wire of sharp steel; this caused
surprise and inquiry. The father, who was rich and a miser, had
died suddenly, and been buried in haste, owing, it was said, to
the heat of the weather. Suspicion once awakened, the
examination became minute. The old man's servant was questioned,
and at last confessed that the son had murdered the sire. The
contrivance was ingenious: the wire was so slender that it
pierced to the brain, and drew but one drop of blood, which the
grey hairs concealed. The accomplice will be executed."
"And Zanoni,--did he give evidence, did he account for--"
"No," interrupted the count: "he declared that he had by
accident visited the church that morning; that he had observed
the tombstone of the Count Ughelli; that his guide had told him
the count's son was in Naples,--a spendthrift and a gambler.
While we were at play, he had heard the count mentioned by name
at the table; and when the challenge was given and accepted, it
had occurred to him to name the place of burial, by an instinct
which he either could not or would not account for."
"A very lame story," said Mervale.
"Yes! but we Italians are superstitious,--the alleged instinct
was regarded by many as the whisper of Providence. The next day
the stranger became an object of universal interest and
curiosity. His wealth, his manner of living, his extraordinary
personal beauty, have assisted also to make him the rage;
besides, I have had the pleasure in introducing so eminent a
person to our gayest cavaliers and our fairest ladies."
"A most interesting narrative," said Mervale, rising. "Come,
Glyndon; shall we seek our hotel? It is almost daylight. Adieu,
signor!"
"What think you of this story?" said Glyndon, as the young men
walked homeward.
"Why, it is very clear that this Zanoni is some imposter,--some
clever rogue; and the Neapolitan shares the booty, and puffs him
off with all the hackneyed charlatanism of the marvellous. An
unknown adventurer gets into society by being made an object of
awe and curiosity; he is more than ordinarily handsome, and the
women are quite content to receive him without any other
recommendation than his own face and Cetoxa's fables."
"I cannot agree with you. Cetoxa, though a gambler and a rake,
is a nobleman of birth and high repute for courage and honour.
Besides, this stranger, with his noble presence and lofty air,--
so calm, so unobtrusive,--has nothing in common with the forward
garrulity of an imposter."
"My dear Glyndon, pardon me; but you have not yet acquired any
knowledge of the world! The stranger makes the best of a fine
person, and his grand air is but a trick of the trade. But to
change the subject,--how advances the love affair?"
"Oh, Viola could not see me to-day."
"You must not marry her. What would they all say at home?"
"Let us enjoy the present," said Glyndon, with vivacity; "we are
young, rich, good-looking; let us not think of to-morrow."
"Bravo, Glyndon! Here we are at the hotel. Sleep sound, and
don't dream of Signor Zanoni."
CHAPTER 2.II.
Prende, giovine audace e impaziente,
L'occasione offerta avidamente.
"Ger. Lib.," c. vi. xxix.
(Take, youth, bold and impatient, the offered occasion eagerly.)
Clarence Glyndon was a young man of fortune, not large, but easy
and independent. His parents were dead, and his nearest relation
was an only sister, left in England under the care of her aunt,
and many years younger than himself. Early in life he had
evinced considerable promise in the art of painting, and rather
from enthusiasm than any pecuniary necessity for a profession, he
determined to devote himself to a career in which the English
artist generally commences with rapture and historical
composition, to conclude with avaricious calculation and
portraits of Alderman Simpkins. Glyndon was supposed by his
friends to possess no inconsiderable genius; but it was of a rash
and presumptuous order. He was averse from continuous and steady
labour, and his ambition rather sought to gather the fruit than
to plant the tree. In common with many artists in their youth,
he was fond of pleasure and excitement, yielding with little
forethought to whatever impressed his fancy or appealed to his
passions. He had travelled through the more celebrated cities of
Europe, with the avowed purpose and sincere resolution of
studying the divine masterpieces of his art. But in each,
pleasure had too often allured him from ambition, and living
beauty distracted his worship from the senseless canvas. Brave,
adventurous, vain, restless, inquisitive, he was ever involved in
wild projects and pleasant dangers,--the creature of impulse and
the slave of imagination.
It was then the period when a feverish spirit of change was
working its way to that hideous mockery of human aspirations, the
Revolution of France; and from the chaos into which were already
jarring the sanctities of the World's Venerable Belief, arose
many shapeless and unformed chimeras. Need I remind the reader
that, while that was the day for polished scepticism and affected
wisdom, it was the day also for the most egregious credulity and
the most mystical superstitions,--the day in which magnetism and
magic found converts amongst the disciples of Diderot; when
prophecies were current in every mouth; when the salon of a
philosophical deist was converted into an Heraclea, in which
necromancy professed to conjure up the shadows of the dead; when
the Crosier and the Book were ridiculed, and Mesmer and
Cagliostro were believed. In that Heliacal Rising, heralding the
new sun before which all vapours were to vanish, stalked from
their graves in the feudal ages all the phantoms that had flitted
before the eyes of Paracelsus and Agrippa. Dazzled by the dawn
of the Revolution, Glyndon was yet more attracted by its strange
accompaniments; and natural it was with him, as with others, that
the fancy which ran riot amidst the hopes of a social Utopia,
should grasp with avidity all that promised, out of the dusty
tracks of the beaten science, the bold discoveries of some
marvellous Elysium.
In his travels he had listened with vivid interest, at least, if
not with implicit belief, to the wonders told of each more
renowned Ghost-seer, and his mind was therefore prepared for the
impression which the mysterious Zanoni at first sight had
produced upon it.
There might be another cause for this disposition to credulity.
A remote ancestor of Glyndon's on the mother's side, had achieved
no inconsiderable reputation as a philosopher and alchemist.
Strange stories were afloat concerning this wise progenitor. He
was said to have lived to an age far exceeding the allotted
boundaries of mortal existence, and to have preserved to the last
the appearance of middle life. He had died at length, it was
supposed, of grief for the sudden death of a great-grandchild,
the only creature he had ever appeared to love. The works of
this philosopher, though rare, were extant, and found in the
library of Glyndon's home. Their Platonic mysticism, their bold
assertions, the high promises that might be detected through
their figurative and typical phraseology, had early made a deep
impression on the young imagination of Clarence Glyndon. His
parents, not alive to the consequences of encouraging fancies
which the very enlightenment of the age appeared to them
sufficient to prevent or dispel, were fond, in the long winter
nights, of conversing on the traditional history of this
distinguished progenitor. And Clarence thrilled with a fearful
pleasure when his mother playfully detected a striking likeness
between the features of the young heir and the faded portrait of
the alchemist that overhung their mantelpiece, and was the boast
of their household and the admiration of their friends,--the
child is, indeed, more often than we think for, "the father of
the man."
I have said that Glyndon was fond of pleasure. Facile, as genius
ever must be, to cheerful impression, his careless artist-life,
ere artist-life settles down to labour, had wandered from flower
to flower. He had enjoyed, almost to the reaction of satiety,
the gay revelries of Naples, when he fell in love with the face
and voice of Viola Pisani. But his love, like his ambition, was
vague and desultory. It did not satisfy his whole heart and fill
up his whole nature; not from want of strong and noble passions,
but because his mind was not yet matured and settled enough for
their development. As there is one season for the blossom,
another for the fruit; so it is not till the bloom of fancy
begins to fade, that the heart ripens to the passions that the
bloom precedes and foretells. Joyous alike at his lonely easel
or amidst his boon companions, he had not yet known enough of
sorrow to love deeply. For man must be disappointed with the
lesser things of life before he can comprehend the full value of
the greatest. It is the shallow sensualists of France, who, in
their salon-language, call love "a folly,"--love, better
understood, is wisdom. Besides, the world was too much with
Clarence Glyndon. His ambition of art was associated with the
applause and estimation of that miserable minority of the surface
that we call the Public.
Like those who deceive, he was ever fearful of being himself the
dupe. He distrusted the sweet innocence of Viola. He could not
venture the hazard of seriously proposing marriage to an Italian
actress; but the modest dignity of the girl, and something good
and generous in his own nature, had hitherto made him shrink from
any more worldly but less honourable designs. Thus the
familiarity between them seemed rather that of kindness and
regard than passion. He attended the theatre; he stole behind
the scenes to converse with her; he filled his portfolio with
countless sketches of a beauty that charmed him as an artist as
well as lover; and day after day he floated on through a changing
sea of doubt and irresolution, of affection and distrust. The
last, indeed, constantly sustained against his better reason by
the sober admonitions of Mervale, a matter-of-fact man!
The day following that eve on which this section of my story
opens, Glyndon was riding alone by the shores of the Neapolitan
sea, on the other side of the Cavern of Posilipo. It was past
noon; the sun had lost its early fervour, and a cool breeze
sprung up voluptuously from the sparkling sea. Bending over a
fragment of stone near the roadside, he perceived the form of a
man; and when he approached, he recognised Zanoni.
The Englishman saluted him courteously. "Have you discovered
some antique?" said he, with a smile; "they are common as pebbles
on this road."
"No," replied Zanoni; "it was but one of those antiques that have
their date, indeed, from the beginning of the world, but which
Nature eternally withers and renews." So saying, he showed
Glyndon a small herb with a pale-blue flower, and then placed it
carefully in his bosom.
"You are an herbalist?"
"I am."
"It is, I am told, a study full of interest."
"To those who understand it, doubtless."
"Is the knowledge, then, so rare?"
"Rare! The deeper knowledge is perhaps rather, among the arts,
LOST to the modern philosophy of commonplace and surface! Do you
imagine there was no foundation for those traditions which come
dimly down from remoter ages,--as shells now found on the
mountain-tops inform us where the seas have been? What was the
old Colchian magic, but the minute study of Nature in her
lowliest works? What the fable of Medea, but a proof of the
powers that may be extracted from the germ and leaf? The most
gifted of all the Priestcrafts, the mysterious sisterhoods of
Cuth, concerning whose incantations Learning vainly bewilders
itself amidst the maze of legends, sought in the meanest herbs
what, perhaps, the Babylonian Sages explored in vain amidst the
loftiest stars. Tradition yet tells you that there existed a
race ("Plut. Symp." l. 5. c. 7.) who could slay their enemies
from afar, without weapon, without movement. The herb that ye
tread on may have deadlier powers than your engineers can give to
their mightiest instruments of war. Can you guess that to these
Italian shores, to the old Circaean Promontory, came the Wise
from the farthest East, to search for plants and simples which
your Pharmacists of the Counter would fling from them as weeds?
The first herbalists--the master chemists of the world--were the
tribe that the ancient reverence called by the name of Titans.
(Syncellus, page 14.--"Chemistry the Invention of the Giants.")
I remember once, by the Hebrus, in the reign of -- But this
talk," said Zanoni, checking himself abruptly, and with a cold
smile, "serves only to waste your time and my own." He paused,
looked steadily at Glyndon, and continued, "Young man, think you
that vague curiosity will supply the place of earnest labour? I
read your heart. You wish to know me, and not this humble herb:
but pass on; your desire cannot be satisfied."
"You have not the politeness of your countrymen," said Glyndon,
somewhat discomposed. "Suppose I were desirous to cultivate your
acquaintance, why should you reject my advances?"
"I reject no man's advances," answered Zanoni; "I must know them
if they so desire; but ME, in return, they can never comprehend.
If you ask my acquaintance, it is yours; but I would warn you to
shun me."
"And why are you, then, so dangerous?"
"On this earth, men are often, without their own agency, fated to
be dangerous to others. If I were to predict your fortune by the
vain calculations of the astrologer, I should tell you, in their
despicable jargon, that my planet sat darkly in your house of
life. Cross me not, if you can avoid it. I warn you now for the
first time and last."
"You despise the astrologers, yet you utter a jargon as
mysterious as theirs. I neither gamble nor quarrel; why, then,
should I fear you?"
"As you will; I have done."
"Let me speak frankly,--your conversation last night interested
and perplexed me."
"I know it: minds like yours are attracted by mystery."
Glyndon was piqued at these words, though in the tone in which
they were spoken there was no contempt.
"I see you do not consider me worthy of your friendship. Be it
so. Good-day!"
Zanoni coldly replied to the salutation; and as the Englishman
rode on, returned to his botanical employment.
The same night, Glyndon went, as usual, to the theatre. He was
standing behind the scenes watching Viola, who was on the stage
in one of her most brilliant parts. The house resounded with
applause. Glyndon was transported with a young man's passion and
a young man's pride: "This glorious creature," thought he, "may
yet be mine."
He felt, while thus wrapped in delicious reverie, a slight touch
upon his shoulder; he turned, and beheld Zanoni. "You are in
danger," said the latter. "Do not walk home to-night; or if you
do, go not alone."
Before Glyndon recovered from his surprise, Zanoni disappeared;
and when the Englishman saw him again, he was in the box of one
of the Neapolitan nobles, where Glyndon could not follow him.
Viola now left the stage, and Glyndon accosted her with an
unaccustomed warmth of gallantry. But Viola, contrary to her
gentle habit, turned with an evident impatience from the address
of her lover. Taking aside Gionetta, who was her constant
attendant at the theatre, she said, in an earnest whisper,--
"Oh, Gionetta! He is here again!--the stranger of whom I spoke
to thee!--and again, he alone, of the whole theatre, withholds
from me his applause."
"Which is he, my darling?" said the old woman, with fondness in
her voice. "He must indeed be dull--not worth a thought."
The actress drew Gionetta nearer to the stage, and pointed out to
her a man in one of the boxes, conspicuous amongst all else by
the simplicity of his dress, and the extraordinary beauty of his
features.
"Not worth a thought, Gionetta!" repeated Viola,--"Not worth a
thought! Alas, not to think of him, seems the absence of thought
itself!"
The prompter summoned the Signora Pisani. "Find out his name,
Gionetta," said she, moving slowly to the stage, and passing by
Glyndon, who gazed at her with a look of sorrowful reproach.
The scene on which the actress now entered was that of the final
catastrophe, wherein all her remarkable powers of voice and art
were pre-eminently called forth. The house hung on every word
with breathless worship; but the eyes of Viola sought only those
of one calm and unmoved spectator; she exerted herself as if
inspired. Zanoni listened, and observed her with an attentive
gaze, but no approval escaped his lips; no emotion changed the
expression of his cold and half-disdainful aspect. Viola, who
was in the character of one who loved, but without return, never
felt so acutely the part she played. Her tears were truthful;
her passion that of nature: it was almost too terrible to
behold. She was borne from the stage exhausted and insensible,
amidst such a tempest of admiring rapture as Continental
audiences alone can raise. The crowd stood up, handkerchiefs
waved, garlands and flowers were thrown on the stage,--men wiped
their eyes, and women sobbed aloud.
"By heavens!" said a Neapolitan of great rank, "She has fired me
beyond endurance. To-night--this very night--she shall be mine!
You have arranged all, Mascari?"
"All, signor. And the young Englishman?"
"The presuming barbarian! As I before told thee, let him bleed
for his folly. I will have no rival."
"But an Englishman! There is always a search after the bodies of
the English."
"Fool! is not the sea deep enough, or the earth secret enough, to
hide one dead man? Our ruffians are silent as the grave itself;
and I!--who would dare to suspect, to arraign the Prince di --?
See to it,--this night. I trust him to you. Robbers murder him,
you understand,--the country swarms with them; plunder and strip
him, the better to favour such report. Take three men; the rest
shall be my escort."
Mascari shrugged his shoulders, and bowed submissively.
The streets of Naples were not then so safe as now, and carriages
were both less expensive and more necessary. The vehicle which
was regularly engaged by the young actress was not to be found.
Gionetta, too aware of the beauty of her mistress and the number
of her admirers to contemplate without alarm the idea of their
return on foot, communicated her distress to Glyndon, and he
besought Viola, who recovered but slowly, to accept his own
carriage. Perhaps before that night she would not have rejected
so slight a service. Now, for some reason or other, she refused.
Glyndon, offended, was retiring sullenly, when Gionetta stopped
him. "Stay, signor," said she, coaxingly: "the dear signora is
not well,--do not be angry with her; I will make her accept your
offer."
Glyndon stayed, and after a few moments spent in expostulation on
the part of Gionetta, and resistance on that of Viola, the offer
was accepted. Gionetta and her charge entered the carriage, and
Glyndon was left at the door of the theatre to return home on
foot. The mysterious warning of Zanoni then suddenly occurred to
him; he had forgotten it in the interest of his lover's quarrel
with Viola. He thought it now advisable to guard against danger
foretold by lips so mysterious. He looked round for some one he
knew: the theatre was disgorging its crowds; they hustled, and
jostled, and pressed upon him; but he recognised no familiar
countenance. While pausing irresolute, he heard Mervale's voice
calling on him, and, to his great relief, discovered his friend
making his way through the throng.
"I have secured you," said he, "a place in the Count Cetoxa's
carriage. Come along, he is waiting for us."
"How kind in you! how did you find me out?"
"I met Zanoni in the passage,--'Your friend is at the door of the
theatre,' said he; 'do not let him go home on foot to-night; the
streets of Naples are not always safe.' I immediately remembered
that some of the Calabrian bravos had been busy within the city
the last few weeks, and suddenly meeting Cetoxa--but here he is."
Further explanation was forbidden, for they now joined the count.
As Glyndon entered the carriage and drew up the glass, he saw
four men standing apart by the pavement, who seemed to eye him
with attention.
"Cospetto!" cried one; "that is the Englishman!" Glyndon
imperfectly heard the exclamation as the carriage drove on. He
reached home in safety.
The familiar and endearing intimacy which always exists in Italy
between the nurse and the child she has reared, and which the
"Romeo and Juliet" of Shakespeare in no way exaggerates, could
not but be drawn yet closer than usual, in a situation so
friendless as that of the orphan-actress. In all that concerned
the weaknesses of the heart, Gionetta had large experience; and
when, three nights before, Viola, on returning from the theatre,
had wept bitterly, the nurse had succeeded in extracting from her
a confession that she had seen one,--not seen for two weary and
eventful years,--but never forgotten, and who, alas! had not
evinced the slightest recognition of herself. Gionetta could not
comprehend all the vague and innocent emotions that swelled this
sorrow; but she resolved them all, with her plain, blunt
understanding, to the one sentiment of love. And here, she was
well fitted to sympathise and console. Confidante to Viola's
entire and deep heart she never could be,--for that heart never
could have words for all its secrets. But such confidence as she
could obtain, she was ready to repay by the most unreproving pity
and the most ready service.
"Have you discovered who he is?" asked Viola, as she was now
alone in the carriage with Gionetta.
"Yes; he is the celebrated Signor Zanoni, about whom all the
great ladies have gone mad. They say he is so rich!--oh! so much
richer than any of the Inglesi!--not but what the Signor
Glyndon--"
"Cease!" interrupted the young actress. "Zanoni! Speak of the
Englishman no more."
The carriage was now entering that more lonely and remote part of
the city in which Viola's house was situated, when it suddenly
stopped.
Gionetta, in alarm, thrust her head out of the window, and
perceived, by the pale light of the moon, that the driver, torn
from his seat, was already pinioned in the arms of two men; the
next moment the door was opened violently, and a tall figure,
masked and mantled, appeared.
"Fear not, fairest Pisani," said he, gently; "no ill shall befall
you." As he spoke, he wound his arm round the form of the fair
actress, and endeavoured to lift her from the carriage. But
Gionetta was no ordinary ally,--she thrust back the assailant
with a force that astonished him, and followed the shock by a
volley of the most energetic reprobation.
The mask drew back, and composed his disordered mantle.
"By the body of Bacchus!" said he, half laughing, "she is well
protected. Here, Luigi, Giovanni! seize the hag!--quick!--why
loiter ye?"
The mask retired from the door, and another and yet taller form
presented itself. "Be calm, Viola Pisani," said he, in a low
voice; "with me you are indeed safe!" He lifted his mask as he
spoke, and showed the noble features of Zanoni.
"Be calm, be hushed,--I can save you." He vanished, leaving
Viola lost in surprise, agitation, and delight. There were, in
all, nine masks: two were engaged with the driver; one stood at
the head of the carriage-horses; a fourth guarded the
well-trained steeds of the party; three others (besides Zanoni
and the one who had first accosted Viola) stood apart by a
carriage drawn to the side of the road. To these three Zanoni
motioned; they advanced; he pointed towards the first mask, who
was in fact the Prince di --, and to his unspeakable astonishment
the prince was suddenly seized from behind.
"Treason!" he cried. "Treason among my own men! What means
this?"
"Place him in his carriage! If he resist, his blood be on his
own head!" said Zanoni, calmly.
He approached the men who had detained the coachman.
"You are outnumbered and outwitted," said he; "join your lord;
you are three men,--we six, armed to the teeth. Thank our mercy
that we spare your lives. Go!"
The men gave way, dismayed. The driver remounted.
"Cut the traces of their carriage and the bridles of their
horses," said Zanoni, as he entered the vehicle containing Viola,
which now drove on rapidly, leaving the discomfited ravisher in a
state of rage and stupor impossible to describe.
"Allow me to explain this mystery to you," said Zanoni. "I
discovered the plot against you,--no matter how; I frustrated it
thus: The head of this design is a nobleman, who has long
persecuted you in vain. He and two of his creatures watched you
from the entrance of the theatre, having directed six others to
await him on the spot where you were attacked; myself and five of
my servants supplied their place, and were mistaken for his own
followers. I had previously ridden alone to the spot where the
men were waiting, and informed them that their master would not
require their services that night. They believed me, and
accordingly dispersed. I then joined my own band, whom I had
left in the rear; you know all. We are at your door."
CHAPTER 2.III.
When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And, darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.
Shakespeare.
Zanoni followed the young Neapolitan into her house; Gionetta
vanished,--they were left alone.
Alone, in that room so often filled, in the old happy days, with
the wild melodies of Pisani; and now, as she saw this mysterious,
haunting, yet beautiful and stately stranger, standing on the
very spot where she had sat at her father's feet, thrilled and
spellbound,--she almost thought, in her fantastic way of
personifying her own airy notions, that that spiritual Music had
taken shape and life, and stood before her glorious in the image
it assumed. She was unconscious all the while of her own
loveliness. She had thrown aside her hood and veil; her hair,
somewhat disordered, fell over the ivory neck which the dress
partially displayed; and as her dark eyes swam with grateful
tears, and her cheek flushed with its late excitement, the god of
light and music himself never, amidst his Arcadian valleys,
wooed, in his mortal guise, maiden or nymph more fair.
Zanoni gazed at her with a look in which admiration seemed not
unmingled with compassion. He muttered a few words to himself,
and then addressed her aloud.
"Viola, I have saved you from a great peril; not from dishonour
only, but perhaps from death. The Prince di --, under a weak
despot and a venal administration, is a man above the law. He is
capable of every crime; but amongst his passions he has such
prudence as belongs to ambition; if you were not to reconcile
yourself to your shame, you would never enter the world again to
tell your tale. The ravisher has no heart for repentance, but he
has a hand that can murder. I have saved you, Viola. Perhaps
you would ask me wherefore?" Zanoni paused, and smiled
mournfully, as he added, "You will not wrong me by the thought
that he who has preserved is not less selfish than he who would
have injured. Orphan, I do not speak to you in the language of
your wooers; enough that I know pity, and am not ungrateful for
affection. Why blush, why tremble at the word? I read your
heart while I speak, and I see not one thought that should give
you shame. I say not that you love me yet; happily, the fancy
may be roused long before the heart is touched. But it has been
my fate to fascinate your eye, to influence your imagination. It
is to warn you against what could bring you but sorrow, as I
warned you once to prepare for sorrow itself, that I am now your
guest. The Englishman, Glyndon, loves thee well,--better,
perhaps, than I can ever love; if not worthy of thee, yet, he has
but to know thee more to deserve thee better. He may wed thee,
he may bear thee to his own free and happy land,--the land of thy
mother's kin. Forget me; teach thyself to return and deserve his
love; and I tell thee that thou wilt be honoured and be happy."
Viola listened with silent, inexpressible emotion, and burning
blushes, to this strange address, and when he had concluded, she
covered her face with her hands, and wept. And yet, much as his
words were calculated to humble or irritate, to produce
indignation or excite shame, those were not the feelings with
which her eyes streamed and her heart swelled. The woman at that
moment was lost in the child; and AS a child, with all its
exacting, craving, yet innocent desire to be loved, weeps in
unrebuking sadness when its affection is thrown austerely back
upon itself,--so, without anger and without shame, wept Viola.
Zanoni contemplated her thus, as her graceful head, shadowed by
its redundant tresses, bent before him; and after a moment's
pause he drew near to her, and said, in a voice of the most
soothing sweetness, and with a half smile upon his lip,--
"Do you remember, when I told you to struggle for the light, that
I pointed for example to the resolute and earnest tree? I did
not tell you, fair child, to take example by the moth, that would
soar to the star, but falls scorched beside the lamp. Come, I
will talk to thee. This Englishman--"
Viola drew herself away, and wept yet more passionately.
"This Englishman is of thine own years, not far above thine own
rank. Thou mayst share his thoughts in life,--thou mayst sleep
beside him in the same grave in death! And I--but THAT view of
the future should concern us not. Look into thy heart, and thou
wilt see that till again my shadow crossed thy path, there had
grown up for this thine equal a pure and calm affection that
would have ripened into love. Hast thou never pictured to
thyself a home in which thy partner was thy young wooer?"
"Never!" said Viola, with sudden energy,--"never but to feel that
such was not the fate ordained me. And, oh!" she continued,
rising suddenly, and, putting aside the tresses that veiled her
face, she fixed her eyes upon the questioner,--"and, oh! whoever
thou art that thus wouldst read my soul and shape my future, do
not mistake the sentiment that, that--" she faltered an instant,
and went on with downcast eyes,--"that has fascinated my thoughts
to thee. Do not think that I could nourish a love unsought and
unreturned. It is not love that I feel for thee, stranger. Why
should I? Thou hast never spoken to me but to admonish,--and
now, to wound!" Again she paused, again her voice faltered; the
tears trembled on her eyelids; she brushed them away and resumed.
"No, not love,--if that be love which I have heard and read of,
and sought to simulate on the stage,--but a more solemn, fearful,
and, it seems to me, almost preternatural attraction, which makes
me associate thee, waking or dreaming, with images that at once
charm and awe. Thinkest thou, if it were love, that I could
speak to thee thus; that," she raised her looks suddenly to his,
"mine eyes could thus search and confront thine own? Stranger, I
ask but at times to see, to hear thee! Stranger, talk not to me
of others. Forewarn, rebuke, bruise my heart, reject the not
unworthy gratitude it offers thee, if thou wilt, but come not
always to me as an omen of grief and trouble. Sometimes have I
seen thee in my dreams surrounded by shapes of glory and light;
thy looks radiant with a celestial joy which they wear not now.
Stranger, thou hast saved me, and I thank and bless thee! Is
that also a homage thou wouldst reject?" With these words, she
crossed her arms meekly on her bosom, and inclined lowlily before
him. Nor did her humility seem unwomanly or abject, nor that of
mistress to lover, of slave to master, but rather of a child to
its guardian, of a neophyte of the old religion to her priest.
Zanoni's brow was melancholy and thoughtful. He looked at her
with a strange expression of kindness, of sorrow, yet of tender
affection, in his eyes; but his lips were stern, and his voice
cold, as he replied,--
"Do you know what you ask, Viola? Do you guess the danger to
yourself--perhaps to both of us--which you court? Do you know
that my life, separated from the turbulent herd of men, is one
worship of the Beautiful, from which I seek to banish what the
Beautiful inspires in most? As a calamity, I shun what to man
seems the fairest fate,--the love of the daughters of earth. At
present I can warn and save thee from many evils; if I saw more
of thee, would the power still be mine? You understand me not.
What I am about to add, it will be easier to comprehend. I bid
thee banish from thy heart all thought of me, but as one whom the
Future cries aloud to thee to avoid. Glyndon, if thou acceptest
his homage, will love thee till the tomb closes upon both. I,
too," he added with emotion,--"I, too, might love thee!"
"You!" cried Viola, with the vehemence of a sudden impulse of
delight, of rapture, which she could not suppress; but the
instant after, she would have given worlds to recall the
exclamation.
"Yes, Viola, I might love thee; but in that love what sorrow and
what change! The flower gives perfume to the rock on whose heart
it grows. A little while, and the flower is dead; but the rock
still endures,--the snow at its breast, the sunshine on its
summit. Pause,--think well. Danger besets thee yet. For some
days thou shalt be safe from thy remorseless persecutor; but the
hour soon comes when thy only security will be in flight. If the
Englishman love thee worthily, thy honour will be dear to him as
his own; if not, there are yet other lands where love will be
truer, and virtue less in danger from fraud and force. Farewell;
my own destiny I cannot foresee except through cloud and shadow.
I know, at least, that we shall meet again; but learn ere then,
sweet flower, that there are more genial resting-places than the
rock."
He turned as he spoke, and gained the outer door where Gionetta
discreetly stood. Zanoni lightly laid his hand on her arm. With
the gay accent of a jesting cavalier, he said,--
"The Signor Glyndon woos your mistress; he may wed her. I know
your love for her. Disabuse her of any caprice for me. I am a
bird ever on the wing."
He dropped a purse into Gionetta's hand as he spoke, and was
gone.
CHAPTER 2.IV.
Les Intelligences Celestes se font voir, et see communiquent plus
volontiers, dans le silence et dans la tranquillite de la
solitude. On aura donc une petite chambre ou un cabinet secret,
etc.
"Les Clavicules de Rabbi Salomon," chapter 3; traduites
exactement du texte Hebreu par M. Pierre Morissoneau, Professeur
des Langues Orientales, et Sectateur de la Philosophie des Sages
Cabalistes. (Manuscript Translation.)
(The Celestial Intelligences exhibit and explain themselves most
freely in silence and the tranquillity of solitude. One will
have then a little chamber, or a secret cabinet, etc.)
The palace retained by Zanoni was in one of the less frequented
quarters of the city. It still stands, now ruined and
dismantled, a monument of the splendour of a chivalry long since
vanished from Naples, with the lordly races of the Norman and the
Spaniard.
As he entered the rooms reserved for his private hours, two
Indians, in the dress of their country, received him at the
threshold with the grave salutations of the East. They had
accompanied him from the far lands in which, according to rumour,
he had for many years fixed his home. But they could communicate
nothing to gratify curiosity or justify suspicion. They spoke no
language but their own. With the exception of these two his
princely retinue was composed of the native hirelings of the
city, whom his lavish but imperious generosity made the implicit
creatures of his will. In his house, and in his habits, so far
as they were seen, there was nothing to account for the rumours
which were circulated abroad. He was not, as we are told of
Albertus Magnus or the great Leonardo da Vinci, served by airy
forms; and no brazen image, the invention of magic mechanism,
communicated to him the influences of the stars. None of the
apparatus of the alchemist--the crucible and the metals--gave
solemnity to his chambers, or accounted for his wealth; nor did
he even seem to interest himself in those serener studies which
might be supposed to colour his peculiar conversation with
abstract notions, and often with recondite learning. No books
spoke to him in his solitude; and if ever he had drawn from them
his knowledge, it seemed now that the only page he read was the
wide one of Nature, and that a capacious and startling memory
supplied the rest. Yet was there one exception to what in all
else seemed customary and commonplace, and which, according to
the authority we have prefixed to this chapter, might indicate
the follower of the occult sciences. Whether at Rome or Naples,
or, in fact, wherever his abode, he selected one room remote from
the rest of the house, which was fastened by a lock scarcely
larger than the seal of a ring, yet which sufficed to baffle the
most cunning instruments of the locksmith: at least, one of his
servants, prompted by irresistible curiosity, had made the
attempt in vain; and though he had fancied it was tried in the
most favourable time for secrecy,--not a soul near, in the dead
of night, Zanoni himself absent from home,--yet his superstition,
or his conscience, told him the reason why the next day the Major
Domo quietly dismissed him. He compensated himself for this
misfortune by spreading his own story, with a thousand amusing
exaggerations. He declared that, as he approached the door,
invisible hands seemed to pluck him away; and that when he
touched the lock, he was struck, as by a palsy, to the ground.
One surgeon, who heard the tale, observed, to the distaste of the
wonder-mongers, that possibly Zanoni made a dexterous use of
electricity. Howbeit, this room, once so secured, was never
entered save by Zanoni himself.
The solemn voice of Time, from the neighbouring church at last
aroused the lord of the palace from the deep and motionless
reverie, rather resembling a trance than thought, in which his
mind was absorbed.
"It is one more sand out of the mighty hour-glass," said he,
murmuringly, "and yet time neither adds to, nor steals from, an
atom in the Infinite! Soul of mine, the luminous, the Augoeides
(Augoeides,--a word favoured by the mystical Platonists, sphaira
psuches augoeides, otan mete ekteinetai epi ti, mete eso
suntreche mete sunizane, alla photi lampetai, o ten aletheian opa
ten panton, kai ten en aute.--Marc. Ant., lib. 2.--The sense of
which beautiful sentence of the old philosophy, which, as Bayle
well observes, in his article on Cornelius Agrippa, the modern
Quietists have (however impotently) sought to imitate, is to the
effect that "the sphere of the soul is luminous when nothing
external has contact with the soul itself; but when lit by its
own light, it sees the truth of all things and the truth centred
in itself."), why descendest thou from thy sphere,--why from the
eternal, starlike, and passionless Serene, shrinkest thou back to
the mists of the dark sarcophagus? How long, too austerely
taught that companionship with the things that die brings with it
but sorrow in its sweetness, hast thou dwelt contented with thy
majestic solitude?"
As he thus murmured, one of the earliest birds that salute the
dawn broke into sudden song from amidst the orange-trees in the
garden below his casement; and as suddenly, song answered song;
the mate, awakened at the note, gave back its happy answer to the
bird. He listened; and not the soul he had questioned, but the
heart replied. He rose, and with restless strides paced the
narrow floor. "Away from this world!" he exclaimed at length,
with an impatient tone. "Can no time loosen its fatal ties? As
the attraction that holds the earth in space, is the attraction
that fixes the soul to earth. Away from the dark grey planet!
Break, ye fetters: arise, ye wings!"
He passed through the silent galleries, and up the lofty stairs,
and entered the secret chamber.
...
CHAPTER 2.V.
I and my fellows
Are ministers of Fate.
"The Tempest."
The next day Glyndon bent his steps towards Zanoni's palace. The
young man's imagination, naturally inflammable, was singularly
excited by the little he had seen and heard of this strange
being,--a spell, he could neither master nor account for,
attracted him towards the stranger. Zanoni's power seemed
mysterious and great, his motives kindly and benevolent, yet his
manners chilling and repellent. Why at one moment reject
Glyndon's acquaintance, at another save him from danger? How had
Zanoni thus acquired the knowledge of enemies unknown to Glyndon
himself? His interest was deeply roused, his gratitude appealed
to; he resolved to make another effort to conciliate the
ungracious herbalist.
The signor was at home, and Glyndon was admitted into a lofty
saloon, where in a few moments Zanoni joined him.
"I am come to thank you for your warning last night," said he,
"and to entreat you to complete my obligation by informing me of
the quarter to which I may look for enmity and peril."
"You are a gallant," said Zanoni, with a smile, and in the
English language, "and do you know so little of the South as not
to be aware that gallants have always rivals?"
"Are you serious?" said Glyndon, colouring.
"Most serious. You love Viola Pisani; you have for rival one of
the most powerful and relentless of the Neapolitan princes. Your
danger is indeed great."
"But pardon me!--how came it known to you?"
"I give no account of myself to mortal man," replied Zanoni,
haughtily; "and to me it matters nothing whether you regard or
scorn my warning."
"Well, if I may not question you, be it so; but at least advise
me what to do."
"Would you follow my advice?"
"Why not?"
"Because you are constitutionally brave; you are fond of
excitement and mystery; you like to be the hero of a romance.
Were I to advise you to leave Naples, would you do so while
Naples contains a foe to confront or a mistress to pursue?"
"You are right," said the young Englishman, with energy. "No!
and you cannot reproach me for such a resolution."
"But there is another course left to you: do you love Viola
Pisani truly and fervently?--if so, marry her, and take a bride
to your native land."
"Nay," answered Glyndon, embarrassed; "Viola is not of my rank.
Her profession, too, is--in short, I am enslaved by her beauty,
but I cannot wed her."
Zanoni frowned.
"Your love, then, is but selfish lust, and I advise you to your
own happiness no more. Young man, Destiny is less inexorable
than it appears. The resources of the great Ruler of the
Universe are not so scanty and so stern as to deny to men the
divine privilege of Free Will; all of us can carve out our own
way, and God can make our very contradictions harmonise with His
solemn ends. You have before you an option. Honourable and
generous love may even now work out your happiness, and effect
your escape; a frantic and selfish passion will but lead you to
misery and doom."
"Do you pretend, then, to read the future?"
"I have said all that it pleases me to utter."
"While you assume the moralist to me, Signor Zanoni," said
Glyndon, with a smile, "are you yourself so indifferent to youth
and beauty as to act the stoic to its allurements?"
"If it were necessary that practice square with precept," said
Zanoni, with a bitter smile, "our monitors would be but few. The
conduct of the individual can affect but a small circle beyond
himself; the permanent good or evil that he works to others lies
rather in the sentiments he can diffuse. His acts are limited
and momentary; his sentiments may pervade the universe, and
inspire generations till the day of doom. All our virtues, all
our laws, are drawn from books and maxims, which ARE sentiments,
not from deeds. In conduct, Julian had the virtues of a
Christian, and Constantine the vices of a Pagan. The sentiments
of Julian reconverted thousands to Paganism; those of Constantine
helped, under Heaven's will, to bow to Christianity the nations
of the earth. In conduct, the humblest fisherman on yonder sea,
who believes in the miracles of San Gennaro, may be a better man
than Luther; to the sentiments of Luther the mind of modern
Europe is indebted for the noblest revolution it has known. Our
opinions, young Englishman, are the angel part of us; our acts,
the earthly."
"You have reflected deeply for an Italian," said Glyndon.
"Who told you that I was an Italian?"
"Are you not? And yet, when I hear you speak my own language as
a native, I--"
"Tush!" interrupted Zanoni, impatiently turning away. Then,
after a pause, he resumed in a mild voice, "Glyndon, do you
renounce Viola Pisani? Will you take some days to consider what
I have said?"
"Renounce her,--never!"
"Then you will marry her?"
"Impossible!"
"Be it so; she will then renounce you. I tell you that you have
rivals."
"Yes; the Prince di --; but I do not fear him."
"You have another whom you will fear more."
"And who is he?"
"Myself."
Glyndon turned pale, and started from his seat.
"You, Signor Zanoni!--you,--and you dare to tell me so?"
"Dare! Alas! there are times when I wish that I could fear."
These arrogant words were not uttered arrogantly, but in a tone
of the most mournful dejection. Glyndon was enraged, confounded,
and yet awed. However, he had a brave English heart within his
breast, and he recovered himself quickly.
"Signor," said he, calmly, "I am not to be duped by these solemn
phrases and these mystical assumptions. You may have powers
which I cannot comprehend or emulate, or you may be but a keen
imposter."
"Well, proceed!"
"I mean, then," continued Glyndon, resolutely, though somewhat
disconcerted,--"I mean you to understand, that, though I am not
to be persuaded or compelled by a stranger to marry Viola Pisani,
I am not the less determined never tamely to yield her to
another."
Zanoni looked gravely at the young man, whose sparkling eyes and
heightened colour testified the spirit to support his words, and
replied, "So bold! well; it becomes you. But take my advice;
wait yet nine days, and tell me then if you will marry the
fairest and the purest creature that ever crossed your path."
"But if you love her, why--why--"
"Why am I anxious that she should wed another?--to save her from
myself! Listen to me. That girl, humble and uneducated though
she be, has in her the seeds of the most lofty qualities and
virtues. She can be all to the man she loves,--all that man can
desire in wife. Her soul, developed by affection, will elevate
your own; it will influence your fortunes, exalt your destiny;
you will become a great and a prosperous man. If, on the
contrary, she fall to me, I know not what may be her lot; but I
know that there is an ordeal which few can pass, and which
hitherto no woman has survived."
As Zanoni spoke, his face became colourless, and there was
something in his voice that froze the warm blood of the listener.
"What is this mystery which surrounds you?" exclaimed Glyndon,
unable to repress his emotion. "Are you, in truth, different
from other men? Have you passed the boundary of lawful
knowledge? Are you, as some declare, a sorcerer, or only a--"
"Hush!" interrupted Zanoni, gently, and with a smile of singular
but melancholy sweetness; "have you earned the right to ask me
these questions? Though Italy still boast an Inquisition, its
power is rivelled as a leaf which the first wind shall scatter.
The days of torture and persecution are over; and a man may live
as he pleases, and talk as it suits him, without fear of the
stake and the rack. Since I can defy persecution, pardon me if I
do not yield to curiosity."
Glyndon blushed, and rose. In spite of his love for Viola, and
his natural terror of such a rival, he felt himself irresistibly
drawn towards the very man he had most cause to suspect and
dread. He held out his hand to Zanoni, saying, "Well, then, if
we are to be rivals, our swords must settle our rights; till then
I would fain be friends."
"Friends! You know not what you ask."
"Enigmas again!"
"Enigmas!" cried Zanoni, passionately; "ay! can you dare to solve
them? Not till then could I give you my right hand, and call you
friend."
"I could dare everything and all things for the attainment of
superhuman wisdom," said Glyndon, and his countenance was lighted
up with wild and intense enthusiasm.
Zanoni observed him in thoughtful silence.
"The seeds of the ancestor live in the son," he muttered; "he
may--yet--" He broke off abruptly; then, speaking aloud, "Go,
Glyndon," said he; "we shall meet again, but I will not ask your
answer till the hour presses for decision."
CHAPTER 2.VI.
'Tis certain that this man has an estate of fifty thousand
livres, and seems to be a person of very great accomplishments.
But, then, if he's a wizard, are wizards so devoutly given as
this man seems to be? In short, I could make neither head nor
tail on't--The Count de Gabalis, Translation affixed to the
second edition of the "Rape of the Lock."
Of all the weaknesses which little men rail against, there is
none that they are more apt to ridicule than the tendency to
believe. And of all the signs of a corrupt heart and a feeble
head, the tendency of incredulity is the surest.
Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny. While we
hear, every day, the small pretenders to science talk of the
absurdities of alchemy and the dream of the Philosopher's Stone,
a more erudite knowledge is aware that by alchemists the greatest
discoveries in science have been made, and much which still seems
abstruse, had we the key to the mystic phraseology they were
compelled to adopt, might open the way to yet more noble
acquisitions. The Philosopher's Stone itself has seemed no
visionary chimera to some of the soundest chemists that even the
present century has produced. (Mr. Disraeli, in his "Curiosities
of Literature" (article "Alchem"), after quoting the sanguine
judgments of modern chemists as to the transmutation of metals,
observes of one yet greater and more recent than those to which
Glyndon's thoughts could have referred, "Sir Humphry Davy told me
that he did not consider this undiscovered art as impossible; but
should it ever be discovered, it would certainly be useless.")
Man cannot contradict the Laws of Nature. But are all the laws
of Nature yet discovered?
"Give me a proof of your art," says the rational inquirer. "When
I have seen the effect, I will endeavour, with you, to ascertain
the causes."
Somewhat to the above effect were the first thoughts of Clarence
Glyndon on quitting Zanoni. But Clarence Glyndon was no
"rational inquirer." The more vague and mysterious the language
of Zanoni, the more it imposed upon him. A proof would have been
something tangible, with which he would have sought to grapple.
And it would have only disappointed his curiosity to find the
supernatural reduced to Nature. He endeavoured in vain, at some
moments rousing himself from credulity to the scepticism he
deprecated, to reconcile what he had heard with the probable
motives and designs of an imposter. Unlike Mesmer and
Cagliostro, Zanoni, whatever his pretensions, did not make them a
source of profit; nor was Glyndon's position or rank in life
sufficient to render any influence obtained over his mind,
subservient to schemes, whether of avarice or ambition. Yet,
ever and anon, with the suspicion of worldly knowledge, he strove
to persuade himself that Zanoni had at least some sinister object
in inducing him to what his English pride and manner of thought
considered a derogatory marriage with the poor actress. Might
not Viola and the Mystic be in league with each other? Might not
all this jargon of prophecy and menace be but artifices to dupe
him?
He felt an unjust resentment towards Viola at having secured such
an ally. But with that resentment was mingled a natural
jealousy. Zanoni threatened him with rivalry. Zanoni, who,
whatever his character or his arts, possessed at least all the
external attributes that dazzle and command. Impatient of his
own doubts, he plunged into the society of such acquaintances as
he had made at Naples--chiefly artists, like himself, men of
letters, and the rich commercialists, who were already vying with
the splendour, though debarred from the privileges, of the
nobles. From these he heard much of Zanoni, already with them,
as with the idler classes, an object of curiosity and
speculation.
He had noticed, as a thing remarkable, that Zanoni had conversed
with him in English, and with a command of the language so
complete that he might have passed for a native. On the other
hand, in Italian, Zanoni was equally at ease. Glyndon found that
it was the same in languages less usually learned by foreigners.
A painter from Sweden, who had conversed with him, was positive
that he was a Swede; and a merchant from Constantinople, who had
sold some of his goods to Zanoni, professed his conviction that
none but a Turk, or at least a native of the East, could have so
thoroughly mastered the soft Oriental intonations. Yet in all
these languages, when they came to compare their several
recollections, there was a slight, scarce perceptible
distinction, not in pronunciation, nor even accent, but in the
key and chime, as it were, of the voice, between himself and a
native. This faculty was one which Glyndon called to mind, that
sect, whose tenets and powers have never been more than most
partially explored, the Rosicrucians, especially arrogated. He
remembered to have heard in Germany of the work of John Bringeret
(Printed in 1615.), asserting that all the languages of the earth
were known to the genuine Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. Did
Zanoni belong to this mystical Fraternity, who, in an earlier
age, boasted of secrets of which the Philosopher's Stone was but
the least; who considered themselves the heirs of all that the
Chaldeans, the Magi, the Gymnosophists, and the Platonists had
taught; and who differed from all the darker Sons of Magic in the
virtue of their lives, the purity of their doctrines, and their
insisting, as the foundation of all wisdom, on the subjugation of
the senses, and the intensity of Religious Faith?--a glorious
sect, if they lied not! And, in truth, if Zanoni had powers
beyond the race of worldly sages, they seemed not unworthily
exercised. The little known of his life was in his favour. Some
acts, not of indiscriminate, but judicious generosity and
beneficence, were recorded; in repeating which, still, however,
the narrators shook their heads, and expressed surprise how a
stranger should have possessed so minute a knowledge of the quiet
and obscure distresses he had relieved. Two or three sick
persons, when abandoned by their physicians, he had visited, and
conferred with alone. They had recovered: they ascribed to him
their recovery; yet they could not tell by what medicines they
had been healed. They could only depose that he came, conversed
with them, and they were cured; it usually, however, happened
that a deep sleep had preceded the recovery.
Another circumstance was also beginning to be remarked, and spoke
yet more in his commendation. Those with whom he principally
associated--the gay, the dissipated, the thoughtless, the sinners
and publicans of the more polished world--all appeared rapidly,
yet insensibly to themselves, to awaken to purer thoughts and
more regulated lives. Even Cetoxa, the prince of gallants,
duellists, and gamesters, was no longer the same man since the
night of the singular events which he had related to Glyndon.
The first trace of his reform was in his retirement from the
gaming-houses; the next was his reconciliation with an hereditary
enemy of his house, whom it had been his constant object for the
last six years to entangle in such a quarrel as might call forth
his inimitable manoeuvre of the stoccata. Nor when Cetoxa and
his young companions were heard to speak of Zanoni, did it seem
that this change had been brought about by any sober lectures or
admonitions. They all described Zanoni as a man keenly alive to
enjoyment: of manners the reverse of formal,--not precisely gay,
but equable, serene, and cheerful; ever ready to listen to the
talk of others, however idle, or to charm all ears with an
inexhaustible fund of brilliant anecdote and worldly experience.
All manners, all nations, all grades of men, seemed familiar to
him. He was reserved only if allusion were ever ventured to his
birth or history.
The more general opinion of his origin certainly seemed the more
plausible. His riches, his familiarity with the languages of the
East, his residence in India, a certain gravity which never
deserted his most cheerful and familiar hours, the lustrous
darkness of his eyes and hair, and even the peculiarities of his
shape, in the delicate smallness of the hands, and the Arab-like
turn of the stately head, appeared to fix him as belonging to one
at least of the Oriental races. And a dabbler in the Eastern
tongues even sought to reduce the simple name of Zanoni, which a
century before had been borne by an inoffensive naturalist of
Bologna (The author of two works on botany and rare plants.), to
the radicals of the extinct language. Zan was unquestionably the
Chaldean appellation for the sun. Even the Greeks, who mutilated
every Oriental name, had retained the right one in this case, as
the Cretan inscription on the tomb of Zeus (Ode megas keitai
Zan.--"Cyril contra Julian." (Here lies great Jove.))
significantly showed. As to the rest, the Zan, or Zaun, was,
with the Sidonians, no uncommon prefix to On. Adonis was but
another name for Zanonas, whose worship in Sidon Hesychius
records. To this profound and unanswerable derivation Mervale
listened with great attention, and observed that he now ventured
to announce an erudite discovery he himself had long since made,-
-namely, that the numerous family of Smiths in England were
undoubtedly the ancient priests of the Phrygian Apollo. "For,"
said he, "was not Apollo's surname, in Phrygia, Smintheus? How
clear all the ensuing corruptions of the august name,--Smintheus,
Smitheus, Smithe, Smith! And even now, I may remark that the
more ancient branches of that illustrious family, unconsciously
anxious to approximate at least by a letter nearer to the true
title, take a pious pleasure in writing their names Smith_e_!"
The philologist was much struck with this discovery, and begged
Mervale's permission to note it down as an illustration suitable
to a work he was about to publish on the origin of languages, to
be called "Babel," and published in three quartos by
subscription.
CHAPTER 2.VII.
Learn to be poor in spirit, my son, if you would penetrate that
sacred night which environs truth. Learn of the Sages to allow
to the Devils no power in Nature, since the fatal stone has shut
'em up in the depth of the abyss. Learn of the Philosophers
always to look for natural causes in all extraordinary events;
and when such natural causes are wanting, recur to God.--The
Count de Gabalis.
All these additions to his knowledge of Zanoni, picked up in the
various lounging-places and resorts that he frequented, were
unsatisfactory to Glyndon. That night Viola did not perform at
the theatre; and the next day, still disturbed by bewildered
fancies, and averse to the sober and sarcastic companionship of
Mervale, Glyndon sauntered musingly into the public gardens, and
paused under the very tree under which he had first heard the
voice that had exercised upon his mind so singular an influence.
The gardens were deserted. He threw himself on one of the seats
placed beneath the shade; and again, in the midst of his reverie,
the same cold shudder came over him which Zanoni had so
distinctly defined, and to which he had ascribed so extraordinary
a cause.
He roused himself with a sudden effort, and started to see,
seated next him, a figure hideous enough to have personated one
of the malignant beings of whom Zanoni had spoken. It was a
small man, dressed in a fashion strikingly at variance with the
elaborate costume of the day: an affectation of homeliness and
poverty approaching to squalor, in the loose trousers, coarse as
a ship's sail; in the rough jacket, which appeared rent wilfully
into holes; and the black, ragged, tangled locks that streamed
from their confinement under a woollen cap, accorded but ill with
other details which spoke of comparative wealth. The shirt, open
at the throat, was fastened by a brooch of gaudy stones; and two
pendent massive gold chains announced the foppery of two watches.
The man's figure, if not absolutely deformed, was yet
marvellously ill-favoured; his shoulders high and square; his
chest flattened, as if crushed in; his gloveless hands were
knotted at the joints, and, large, bony, and muscular, dangled
from lean, emaciated wrists, as if not belonging to them. His
features had the painful distortion sometimes seen in the
countenance of a cripple,--large, exaggerated, with the nose
nearly touching the chin; the eyes small, but glowing with a
cunning fire as they dwelt on Glyndon; and the mouth was twisted
into a grin that displayed rows of jagged, black, broken teeth.
Yet over this frightful face there still played a kind of
disagreeable intelligence, an expression at once astute and bold;
and as Glyndon, recovering from the first impression, looked
again at his neighbour, he blushed at his own dismay, and
recognised a French artist, with whom he had formed an
acquaintance, and who was possessed of no inconsiderable talents
in his calling.
Indeed, it was to be remarked that this creature, whose externals
were so deserted by the Graces, particularly delighted in designs
aspiring to majesty and grandeur. Though his colouring was hard
and shallow, as was that generally of the French school at the
time, his DRAWINGS were admirable for symmetry, simple elegance,
and classic vigour; at the same time they unquestionably wanted
ideal grace. He was fond of selecting subjects from Roman
history, rather than from the copious world of Grecian beauty, or
those still more sublime stories of scriptural record from which
Raphael and Michael Angelo borrowed their inspirations. His
grandeur was that not of gods and saints, but mortals. His
delineation of beauty was that which the eye cannot blame and the
soul does not acknowledge. In a word, as it was said of
Dionysius, he was an Anthropographos, or Painter of Men. It was
also a notable contradiction in this person, who was addicted to
the most extravagant excesses in every passion, whether of hate
or love, implacable in revenge, and insatiable in debauch, that
he was in the habit of uttering the most beautiful sentiments of
exalted purity and genial philanthropy. The world was not good
enough for him; he was, to use the expressive German phrase, A
WORLD-BETTERER! Nevertheless, his sarcastic lip often seemed to
mock the sentiments he uttered, as if it sought to insinuate that
he was above even the world he would construct.
Finally, this painter was in close correspondence with the
Republicans of Paris, and was held to be one of those
missionaries whom, from the earliest period of the Revolution,
the regenerators of mankind were pleased to despatch to the
various states yet shackled, whether by actual tyranny or
wholesome laws. Certainly, as the historian of Italy (Botta.)
has observed, there was no city in Italy where these new
doctrines would be received with greater favour than Naples,
partly from the lively temper of the people, principally because
the most hateful feudal privileges, however partially curtailed
some years before by the great minister, Tanuccini, still
presented so many daily and practical evils as to make change
wear a more substantial charm than the mere and meretricious
bloom on the cheek of the harlot, Novelty. This man, whom I will
call Jean Nicot, was, therefore, an oracle among the younger and
bolder spirits of Naples; and before Glyndon had met Zanoni, the
former had not been among the least dazzled by the eloquent
aspirations of the hideous philanthropist.
"It is so long since we have met, cher confrere," said Nicot,
drawing his seat nearer to Glyndon's, "that you cannot be
surprised that I see you with delight, and even take the liberty
to intrude on your meditations.
"They were of no agreeable nature," said Glyndon; "and never was
intrusion more welcome."
"You will be charmed to hear," said Nicot, drawing several
letters from his bosom, "that the good work proceeds with
marvellous rapidity. Mirabeau, indeed, is no more; but, mort
Diable! the French people are now a Mirabeau themselves." With
this remark, Monsieur Nicot proceeded to read and to comment upon
several animated and interesting passages in his correspondence,
in which the word virtue was introduced twenty-seven times, and
God not once. And then, warmed by the cheering prospects thus
opened to him, he began to indulge in those anticipations of the
future, the outline of which we have already seen in the eloquent
extravagance of Condorcet. All the old virtues were dethroned
for a new Pantheon: patriotism was a narrow sentiment;
philanthropy was to be its successor. No love that did not
embrace all mankind, as warm for Indus and the Pole as for the
hearth of home, was worthy the breast of a generous man. Opinion
was to be free as air; and in order to make it so, it was
necessary to exterminate all those whose opinions were not the
same as Mons. Jean Nicot's. Much of this amused, much revolted
Glyndon; but when the painter turned to dwell upon a science that
all should comprehend, and the results of which all should
enjoy,--a science that, springing from the soil of equal
institutions and equal mental cultivation, should give to all the
races of men wealth without labour, and a life longer than the
Patriarchs', without care,--then Glyndon listened with interest
and admiration, not unmixed with awe. "Observe," said Nicot,
"how much that we now cherish as a virtue will then be rejected
as meanness. Our oppressors, for instance, preach to us of the
excellence of gratitude. Gratitude, the confession of
inferiority! What so hateful to a noble spirit as the
humiliating sense of obligation? But where there is equality
there can be no means for power thus to enslave merit. The
benefactor and the client will alike cease, and--"
"And in the mean time," said a low voice, at hand,--"in the mean
time, Jean Nicot?"
The two artists started, and Glyndon recognised Zanoni.
He gazed with a brow of unusual sternness on Nicot, who, lumped
together as he sat, looked up at him askew, and with an
expression of fear and dismay upon his distorted countenance.
Ho, ho! Messire Jean Nicot, thou who fearest neither God nor
Devil, why fearest thou the eye of a man?
"It is not the first time I have been a witness to your opinions
on the infirmity of gratitude," said Zanoni.
Nicot suppressed an exclamation, and, after gloomily surveying
Zanoni with an eye villanous and sinister, but full of hate
impotent and unutterable, said, "I know you not,--what would you
of me?"
"Your absence. Leave us!"
Nicot sprang forward a step, with hands clenched, and showing his
teeth from ear to ear, like a wild beast incensed. Zanoni stood
motionless, and smiled at him in scorn. Nicot halted abruptly,
as if fixed and fascinated by the look, shivered from head to
foot, and sullenly, and with a visible effort, as if impelled by
a power not his own, turned away.
Glyndon's eyes followed him in surprise.
"And what know you of this man?" said Zanoni.
"I know him as one like myself,--a follower of art."
"Of ART! Do not so profane that glorious word. What Nature is
to God, art should be to man,--a sublime, beneficent, genial, and
warm creation. That wretch may be a PAINTER, not an ARTIST."
"And pardon me if I ask what YOU know of one you thus disparage?"
"I know thus much, that you are beneath my care if it be
necessary to warn you against him; his own lips show the
hideousness of his heart. Why should I tell you of the crimes he
has committed? He SPEAKS crime!"
"You do not seem, Signor Zanoni, to be one of the admirers of the
dawning Revolution. Perhaps you are prejudiced against the man
because you dislike the opinions?"
"What opinions?"
Glyndon paused, somewhat puzzled to define; but at length he
said, "Nay, I must wrong you; for you, of all men, I suppose,
cannot discredit the doctrine that preaches the infinite
improvement of the human species."
"You are right; the few in every age improve the many; the many
now may be as wise as the few were; but improvement is at a
standstill, if you tell me that the many now are as wise as the
few ARE."
"I comprehend you; you will not allow the law of universal
equality!"
"Law! If the whole world conspired to enforce the falsehood they
could not make it LAW. Level all conditions to-day, and you only
smooth away all obstacles to tyranny to-morrow. A nation that
aspires to EQUALITY is unfit for FREEDOM. Throughout all
creation, from the archangel to the worm, from Olympus to the
pebble, from the radiant and completed planet to the nebula that
hardens through ages of mist and slime into the habitable world,
the first law of Nature is inequality."
"Harsh doctrine, if applied to states. Are the cruel disparities
of life never to be removed?"
"Disparities of the PHYSICAL life? Oh, let us hope so. But
disparities of the INTELLECTUAL and the MORAL, never! Universal
equality of intelligence, of mind, of genius, of virtue!--no
teacher left to the world! no men wiser, better than others,--
were it not an impossible condition, WHAT A HOPELESS PROSPECT FOR
HUMANITY! No, while the world lasts, the sun will gild the
mountain-top before it shines upon the plain. Diffuse all the
knowledge the earth contains equally over all mankind to-day, and
some men will be wiser than the rest to-morrow. And THIS is not
a harsh, but a loving law,--the REAL law of improvement; the
wiser the few in one generation, the wiser will be the multitude
the next!"
As Zanoni thus spoke, they moved on through the smiling gardens,
and the beautiful bay lay sparkling in the noontide. A gentle
breeze just cooled the sunbeam, and stirred the ocean; and in the
inexpressible clearness of the atmosphere there was something
that rejoiced the senses. The very soul seemed to grow lighter
and purer in that lucid air.
"And these men, to commence their era of improvement and
equality, are jealous even of the Creator. They would deny an
intelligence,--a God!" said Zanoni, as if involuntarily. "Are
you an artist, and, looking on the world, can you listen to such
a dogma? Between God and genius there is a necessary link,--
there is almost a correspondent language. Well said the
Pythagorean (Sextus, the Pythagorean.), 'A good intellect is the
chorus of divinity.'"
Struck and touched with these sentiments, which he little
expected to fall from one to whom he ascribed those powers which
the superstitions of childhood ascribe to the darker agencies,
Glyndon said: "And yet you have confessed that your life,
separated from that of others, is one that man should dread to
share. Is there, then, a connection between magic and religion?"
"Magic! And what is magic! When the traveller beholds in Persia
the ruins of palaces and temples, the ignorant inhabitants inform
him they were the work of magicians. What is beyond their own
power, the vulgar cannot comprehend to be lawfully in the power
of others. But if by magic you mean a perpetual research amongst
all that is more latent and obscure in Nature, I answer, I
profess that magic, and that he who does so comes but nearer to
the fountain of all belief. Knowest thou not that magic was
taught in the schools of old? But how, and by whom? As the last
and most solemn lesson, by the Priests who ministered to the
Temple. (Psellus de Daemon (MS.)) And you, who would be a
painter, is not there a magic also in that art you would advance?
Must you not, after long study of the Beautiful that has been,
seize upon new and airy combinations of a beauty that is to be?
See you not that the grander art, whether of poet or of painter,
ever seeking for the TRUE, abhors the REAL; that you must seize
Nature as her master, not lackey her as her slave?
You demand mastery over the past, a conception of the future.
Has not the art that is truly noble for its domain the future and
the past? You would conjure the invisible beings to your charm;
and what is painting but the fixing into substance the Invisible?
Are you discontented with this world? This world was never meant
for genius! To exist, it must create another. What magician can
do more; nay, what science can do as much? There are two avenues
from the little passions and the drear calamities of earth; both
lead to heaven and away from hell,--art and science. But art is
more godlike than science; science discovers, art creates. You
have faculties that may command art; be contented with your lot.
The astronomer who catalogues the stars cannot add one atom to
the universe; the poet can call a universe from the atom; the
chemist may heal with his drugs the infirmities of the human
form; the painter, or the sculptor, fixes into everlasting youth
forms divine, which no disease can ravage, and no years impair.
Renounce those wandering fancies that lead you now to myself, and
now to yon orator of the human race; to us two, who are the
antipodes of each other! Your pencil is your wand; your canvas
may raise Utopias fairer than Condorcet dreams of. I press not
yet for your decision; but what man of genius ever asked more to
cheer his path to the grave than love and glory?"
"But," said Glyndon, fixing his eyes earnestly on Zanoni, "if
there be a power to baffle the grave itself--"
Zanoni's brow darkened. "And were this so," he said, after a
pause, "would it be so sweet a lot to outlive all you loved, and
to recoil from every human tie? Perhaps the fairest immortality
on earth is that of a noble name."
"You do not answer me,--you equivocate. I have read of the long
lives far beyond the date common experience assigns to man,"
persisted Glyndon, "which some of the alchemists enjoyed. Is the
golden elixir but a fable?"
"If not, and these men discovered it, they died, because they
refused to live! There may be a mournful warning in your
conjecture. Turn once more to the easel and the canvas!"
So saying, Zanoni waved his hand, and, with downcast eyes and a
slow step, bent his way back into the city.
CHAPTER 2.VIII.
The Goddess Wisdom.
To some she is the goddess great;
To some the milch cow of the field;
Their care is but to calculate
What butter she will yield.
From Schiller.
This last conversation with Zanoni left upon the mind of Glyndon
a tranquillising and salutary effect.
From the confused mists of his fancy glittered forth again those
happy, golden schemes which part from the young ambition of art,
to play in the air, to illumine the space like rays that kindle
from the sun. And with these projects mingled also the vision of
a love purer and serener than his life yet had known. His mind
went back into that fair childhood of genius, when the forbidden
fruit is not yet tasted, and we know of no land beyond the Eden
which is gladdened by an Eve. Insensibly before him there rose
the scenes of a home, with his art sufficing for all excitement,
and Viola's love circling occupation with happiness and content;
and in the midst of these fantasies of a future that might be at
his command, he was recalled to the present by the clear, strong
voice of Mervale, the man of common-sense.
Whoever has studied the lives of persons in whom the imagination
is stronger than the will, who suspect their own knowledge of
actual life, and are aware of their facility to impressions, will
have observed the influence which a homely, vigorous, worldly
understanding obtains over such natures. It was thus with
Glyndon. His friend had often extricated him from danger, and
saved him from the consequences of imprudence; and there was
something in Mervale's voice alone that damped his enthusiasm,
and often made him yet more ashamed of noble impulses than weak
conduct. For Mervale, though a downright honest man, could not
sympathise with the extravagance of generosity any more than with
that of presumption and credulity. He walked the straight line
of life, and felt an equal contempt for the man who wandered up
the hill-sides, no matter whether to chase a butterfly, or to
catch a prospect of the ocean.
"I will tell you your thoughts, Clarence," said Mervale,
laughing, "though I am no Zanoni. I know them by the moisture of
your eyes, and the half-smile on your lips. You are musing upon
that fair perdition,--the little singer of San Carlo."
The little singer of San Carlo! Glyndon coloured as he
answered,--
"Would you speak thus of her if she were my wife?"
"No! for then any contempt I might venture to feel would be for
yourself. One may dislike the duper, but it is the dupe that one
despises."
"Are you sure that I should be the dupe in such a union? Where
can I find one so lovely and so innocent,--where one whose virtue
has been tried by such temptation? Does even a single breath of
slander sully the name of Viola Pisani?"
"I know not all the gossip of Naples, and therefore cannot
answer; but I know this, that in England no one would believe
that a young Englishman, of good fortune and respectable birth,
who marries a singer from the theatre of Naples, has not been
lamentably taken in. I would save you from a fall of position so
irretrievable. Think how many mortifications you will be
subjected to; how many young men will visit at your house,--and
how many young wives will as carefully avoid it."
"I can choose my own career, to which commonplace society is not
essential. I can owe the respect of the world to my art, and not
to the accidents of birth and fortune."
"That is, you still persist in your second folly,--the absurd
ambition of daubing canvas. Heaven forbid I should say anything
against the laudable industry of one who follows such a
profession for the sake of subsistence; but with means and
connections that will raise you in life, why voluntarily sink
into a mere artist? As an accomplishment in leisure moments, it
is all very well in its way; but as the occupation of existence,
it is a frenzy."
"Artists have been the friends of princes."
"Very rarely so, I fancy, in sober England. There in the great
centre of political aristocracy, what men respect is the
practical, not the ideal. Just suffer me to draw two pictures of
my own. Clarence Glyndon returns to England; he marries a lady
of fortune equal to his own, of friends and parentage that
advance rational ambition. Clarence Glyndon, thus a wealthy and
respectable man, of good talents, of bustling energies then
concentrated, enters into practical life. He has a house at
which he can receive those whose acquaintance is both advantage
and honour; he has leisure which he can devote to useful studies;
his reputation, built on a solid base, grows in men's mouths. He
attaches himself to a party; he enters political life; and new
connections serve to promote his objects. At the age of
five-and-forty, what, in all probability, may Clarence Glyndon
be? Since you are ambitious I leave that question for you to
decide! Now turn to the other picture. Clarence Glyndon returns
to England with a wife who can bring him no money, unless he lets
her out on the stage; so handsome, that every one asks who she
is, and every one hears,--the celebrated singer, Pisani.
Clarence Glyndon shuts himself up to grind colours and paint
pictures in the grand historical school, which nobody buys.
There is even a prejudice against him, as not having studied in
the Academy,--as being an amateur. Who is Mr. Clarence Glyndon?
Oh, the celebrated Pisani's husband! What else? Oh, he exhibits
those large pictures! Poor man! they have merit in their way;
but Teniers and Watteau are more convenient, and almost as cheap.
Clarence Glyndon, with an easy fortune while single, has a large
family which his fortune, unaided by marriage, can just rear up
to callings more plebeian than his own. He retires into the
country, to save and to paint; he grows slovenly and
discontented; 'the world does not appreciate him,' he says, and
he runs away from the world. At the age of forty-five what will
be Clarence Glyndon? Your ambition shall decide that question
also!"
"If all men were as worldly as you," said Glyndon, rising, "there
would never have been an artist or a poet!"
"Perhaps we should do just as well without them," answered
Mervale. "Is it not time to think of dinner? The mullets here
are remarkably fine!"
CHAPTER 2.IX.
Wollt ihr hoch auf ihren Flugeln schweben,
Werft die Angst des Irdischen von euch!
Fliehet aus dem engen dumpfen Leben
In des Ideales Reich!
"Das Ideal und das Leben."
Wouldst thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing?
Cast off the earthly burden of the Real;
High from this cramped and dungeoned being, spring
Into the realm of the Ideal.
As some injudicious master lowers and vitiates the taste of the
student by fixing his attention to what he falsely calls the
Natural, but which, in reality, is the Commonplace, and
understands not that beauty in art is created by what Raphael so
well describes,--namely, THE IDEA OF BEAUTY IN THE PAINTER'S OWN
MIND; and that in every art, whether its plastic expression be
found in words or marble, colours or sounds, the servile
imitation of Nature is the work of journeymen and tyros,--so in
conduct the man of the world vitiates and lowers the bold
enthusiasm of loftier natures by the perpetual reduction of
whatever is generous and trustful to all that is trite and
coarse. A great German poet has well defined the distinction
between discretion and the larger wisdom. In the last there is a
certain rashness which the first disdains,--
"The purblind see but the receding shore,
Not that to which the bold wave wafts them o'er."
Yet in this logic of the prudent and the worldly there is often a
reasoning unanswerable of its kind.
You must have a feeling,--a faith in whatever is self-sacrificing
and divine, whether in religion or in art, in glory or in love;
or Common-sense will reason you out of the sacrifice, and a
syllogism will debase the Divine to an article in the market.
Every true critic in art, from Aristotle and Pliny, from
Winkelman and Vasari to Reynolds and Fuseli, has sought to
instruct the painter that Nature is not to be copied, but
EXALTED; that the loftiest order of art, selecting only the
loftiest combinations, is the perpetual struggle of Humanity to
approach the gods. The great painter, as the great author,
embodies what is POSSIBLE to MAN, it is true, but what is not
COMMON to MANKIND. There is truth in Hamlet; in Macbeth, and his
witches; in Desdemona; in Othello; in Prospero, and in Caliban;
there is truth in the cartoons of Raphael; there is truth in the
Apollo, the Antinous, and the Laocoon. But you do not meet the
originals of the words, the cartoons, or the marble, in Oxford
Street or St. James's. All these, to return to Raphael, are the
creatures of the idea in the artist's mind. This idea is not
inborn, it has come from an intense study. But that study has
been of the ideal that can be raised from the positive and the
actual into grandeur and beauty. The commonest model becomes
full of exquisite suggestions to him who has formed this idea; a
Venus of flesh and blood would be vulgarised by the imitation of
him who has not.
When asked where he got his models, Guido summoned a common
porter from his calling, and drew from a mean original a head of
surpassing beauty. It resembled the porter, but idealised the
porter to the hero. It was true, but it was not real. There are
critics who will tell you that the Boor of Teniers is more true
to Nature than the Porter of Guido! The commonplace public
scarcely understand the idealising principle, even in art; for
high art is an acquired taste.
But to come to my comparison. Still less is the kindred
principle comprehended in conduct. And the advice of worldly
prudence would as often deter from the risks of virtue as from
the punishments of vice; yet in conduct, as in art, there is an
idea of the great and beautiful, by which men should exalt the
hackneyed and the trite of life. Now Glyndon felt the sober
prudence of Mervale's reasonings; he recoiled from the probable
picture placed before him, in his devotion to the one
master-talent he possessed, and the one master-passion that,
rightly directed, might purify his whole being as a strong wind
purifies the air.
But though he could not bring himself to decide in the teeth of
so rational a judgment, neither could he resolve at once to
abandon the pursuit of Viola. Fearful of being influenced by
Zanoni's counsels and his own heart, he had for the last two days
shunned an interview with the young actress. But after a night
following his last conversation with Zanoni, and that we have
just recorded with Mervale,--a night coloured by dreams so
distinct as to seem prophetic, dreams that appeared so to shape
his future according to the hints of Zanoni that he could have
fancied Zanoni himself had sent them from the house of sleep to
haunt his pillow,--he resolved once more to seek Viola; and
though without a definite or distinct object, he yielded himself
up to the impulse of his heart.
CHAPTER 2.X.
O sollecito dubbio e fredda tema
Che pensando l'accresci.
Tasso, Canzone vi.
(O anxious doubt and chilling fear that grows by thinking.)
She was seated outside her door,--the young actress! The sea
before her in that heavenly bay seemed literally to sleep in the
arms of the shore; while, to the right, not far off, rose the
dark and tangled crags to which the traveller of to-day is duly
brought to gaze on the tomb of Virgil, or compare with the cavern
of Posilipo the archway of Highgate Hill. There were a few
fisherman loitering by the cliffs, on which their nets were hung
to dry; and at a distance the sound of some rustic pipe (more
common at that day than at this), mingled now and then with the
bells of the lazy mules, broke the voluptuous silence,--the
silence of declining noon on the shores of Naples; never, till
you have enjoyed it, never, till you have felt its enervating but
delicious charm, believe that you can comprehend all the meaning
of the Dolce far niente (The pleasure of doing nothing.); and
when that luxury has been known, when you have breathed that
atmosphere of fairy-land, then you will no longer wonder why the
heart ripens into fruit so sudden and so rich beneath the rosy
skies and the glorious sunshine of the South.
The eyes of the actress were fixed on the broad blue deep beyond.
In the unwonted negligence of her dress might be traced the
abstraction of her mind. Her beautiful hair was gathered up
loosely, and partially bandaged by a kerchief whose purple colour
served to deepen the golden hue of her tresses. A stray curl
escaped and fell down the graceful neck. A loose morning-robe,
girded by a sash, left the breeze. That came ever and anon from
the sea, to die upon the bust half disclosed; and the tiny
slipper, that Cinderella might have worn, seemed a world too wide
for the tiny foot which it scarcely covered. It might be the
heat of the day that deepened the soft bloom of the cheeks, and
gave an unwonted languor to the large, dark eyes. In all the
pomp of her stage attire,--in all the flush of excitement before
the intoxicating lamps,--never had Viola looked so lovely.
By the side of the actress, and filling up the threshold,--stood
Gionetta, with her arms thrust to the elbow in two huge pockets
on either side of her gown.
"But I assure you," said the nurse, in that sharp, quick, ear-
splitting tone in which the old women of the South are more than
a match for those of the North,--"but I assure you, my darling,
that there is not a finer cavalier in all Naples, nor a more
beautiful, than this Inglese; and I am told that all these
Inglesi are much richer than they seem. Though they have no
trees in their country, poor people! and instead of twenty-four
they have only twelve hours to the day, yet I hear that they shoe
their horses with scudi; and since they cannot (the poor
heretics!) turn grapes into wine, for they have no grapes, they
turn gold into physic, and take a glass or two of pistoles
whenever they are troubled with the colic. But you don't hear
me, little pupil of my eyes,--you don't hear me!"
"And these things are whispered of Zanoni!" said Viola, half to
herself, and unheeding Gionetta's eulogies on Glyndon and the
English.
"Blessed Maria! do not talk of this terrible Zanoni. You may be
sure that his beautiful face, like his yet more beautiful
pistoles, is only witchcraft. I look at the money he gave me the
other night, every quarter of an hour, to see whether it has not
turned into pebbles."
"Do you then really believe," said Viola, with timid earnestness,
"that sorcery still exists?"
"Believe! Do I believe in the blessed San Gennaro? How do you
think he cured old Filippo the fisherman, when the doctor gave
him up? How do you think he has managed himself to live at least
these three hundred years? How do you think he fascinates every
one to his bidding with a look, as the vampires do?"
"Ah, is this only witchcraft? It is like it,--it must be!"
murmured Viola, turning very pale. Gionetta herself was scarcely
more superstitious than the daughter of the musician. And her
very innocence, chilled at the strangeness of virgin passion,
might well ascribe to magic what hearts more experienced would
have resolved to love.
"And then, why has this great Prince di -- been so terrified by
him? Why has he ceased to persecute us? Why has he been so
quiet and still? Is there no sorcery in all that?"
"Think you, then," said Viola, with sweet inconsistency, "that I
owe that happiness and safety to his protection? Oh, let me so
believe! Be silent, Gionetta! Why have I only thee and my own
terrors to consult? O beautiful sun!" and the girl pressed her
hand to her heart with wild energy; "thou lightest every spot but
this. Go, Gionetta! leave me alone,--leave me!"
"And indeed it is time I should leave you; for the polenta will
be spoiled, and you have eat nothing all day. If you don't eat
you will lose your beauty, my darling, and then nobody will care
for you. Nobody cares for us when we grow ugly,--I know that;
and then you must, like old Gionetta, get some Viola of your own
to spoil. I'll go and see to the polenta."
"Since I have known this man," said the girl, half aloud,--"since
his dark eyes have haunted me, I am no longer the same. I long
to escape from myself,--to glide with the sunbeam over the
hill-tops; to become something that is not of earth. Phantoms
float before me at night; and a fluttering, like the wing of a
bird, within my heart, seems as if the spirit were terrified, and
would break its cage."
While murmuring these incoherent rhapsodies, a step that she did
not hear approached the actress, and a light hand touched her
arm.
"Viola!--bellissima!--Viola!"
She turned, and saw Glyndon. The sight of his fair young face
calmed her at once. His presence gave her pleasure.
"Viola," said the Englishman, taking her hand, and drawing her
again to the bench from which she had risen, as he seated himself
beside her, "you shall hear me speak! You must know already that
I love thee! It has not been pity or admiration alone that has
led me ever and ever to thy dear side; reasons there may have
been why I have not spoken, save by my eyes, before; but this
day--I know not how it is--I feel a more sustained and settled
courage to address thee, and learn the happiest or the worst. I
have rivals, I know,--rivals who are more powerful than the poor
artist; are they also more favoured?"
Viola blushed faintly; but her countenance was grave and
distressed. Looking down, and marking some hieroglyphical
figures in the dust with the point of her slipper, she said, with
some hesitation, and a vain attempt to be gay, "Signor, whoever
wastes his thoughts on an actress must submit to have rivals. It
is our unhappy destiny not to be sacred even to ourselves."
"But you do not love this destiny, glittering though it seem;
your heart is not in the vocation which your gifts adorn."
"Ah, no!" said the actress, her eyes filling with tears. "Once I
loved to be the priestess of song and music; now I feel only that
it is a miserable lot to be slave to a multitude."
"Fly, then, with me," said the artist, passionately; "quit
forever the calling that divides that heart I would have all my
own. Share my fate now and forever,--my pride, my delight, my
ideal! Thou shalt inspire my canvas and my song; thy beauty
shall be made at once holy and renowned. In the galleries of
princes, crowds shall gather round the effigy of a Venus or a
Saint, and a whisper shall break forth, 'It is Viola Pisani!'
Ah! Viola, I adore thee; tell me that I do not worship in vain."
"Thou art good and fair," said Viola, gazing on her lover, as he
pressed nearer to her, and clasped her hand in his; "but what
should I give thee in return?"
"Love, love,--only love!"
"A sister's love?"
"Ah, speak not with such cruel coldness!"
"It is all I have for thee. Listen to me, signor: when I look
on your face, when I hear your voice, a certain serene and
tranquil calm creeps over and lulls thoughts,--oh, how feverish,
how wild! When thou art gone, the day seems a shade more dark;
but the shadow soon flies. I miss thee not; I think not of thee:
no, I love thee not; and I will give myself only where I love."
"But I would teach thee to love me; fear it not. Nay, such love
as thou describest, in our tranquil climates, is the love of
innocence and youth."
"Of innocence!" said Viola. "Is it so? Perhaps--" She paused,
and added, with an effort, "Foreigner! and wouldst thou wed the
orphan? Ah, THOU at least art generous! It is not the innocence
thou wouldst destroy!"
Glyndon drew back, conscience-stricken.
"No, it may not be!" she said, rising, but not conscious of the
thoughts, half of shame, half suspicion, that passed through the
mind of her lover. "Leave me, and forget me. You do not
understand, you could not comprehend, the nature of her whom you
think to love. From my childhood upward, I have felt as if I
were marked out for some strange and preternatural doom; as if I
were singled from my kind. This feeling (and, oh! at times it is
one of delirious and vague delight, at others of the darkest
gloom) deepens within me day by day. It is like the shadow of
twilight, spreading slowly and solemnly around. My hour
approaches: a little while, and it will be night!"
As she spoke, Glyndon listened with visible emotion and
perturbation. "Viola!" he exclaimed, as she ceased, "your words
more than ever enchain me to you. As you feel, I feel. I, too,
have been ever haunted with a chill and unearthly foreboding.
Amidst the crowds of men I have felt alone. In all my pleasures,
my toils, my pursuits, a warning voice has murmured in my ear,
'Time has a dark mystery in store for thy manhood.' When you
spoke, it was as the voice of my own soul."
Viola gazed upon him in wonder and fear. Her countenance was as
white as marble; and those features, so divine in their rare
symmetry, might have served the Greek with a study for the
Pythoness, when, from the mystic cavern and the bubbling spring,
she first hears the voice of the inspiring god. Gradually the
rigour and tension of that wonderful face relaxed, the colour
returned, the pulse beat: the heart animated the frame.
"Tell me," she said, turning partially aside,--"tell me, have you
seen--do you know--a stranger in this city,--one of whom wild
stories are afloat?"
"You speak of Zanoni? I have seen him: I know him,--and you?
Ah, he, too, would be my rival!--he, too, would bear thee from
me!"
"You err," said Viola, hastily, and with a deep sigh; "he pleads
for you: he informed me of your love; he besought me not--not to
reject it."
"Strange being! incomprehensible enigma! Why did you name him?"
"Why! ah, I would have asked whether, when you first saw him, the
foreboding, the instinct, of which you spoke, came on you more
fearfully, more intelligibly than before; whether you felt at
once repelled from him, yet attracted towards him; whether you
felt," and the actress spoke with hurried animation, "that with
HIM was connected the secret of your life?"
"All this I felt," answered Glyndon, in a trembling voice, "the
first time I was in his presence. Though all around me was gay,
--music, amidst lamp-lit trees, light converse near, and heaven
without a cloud above,--my knees knocked together, my hair
bristled, and my blood curdled like ice. Since then he has
divided my thoughts with thee."
"No more, no more!" said Viola, in a stifled tone; "there must be
the hand of fate in this. I can speak to you no more now.
Farewell!" She sprung past him into the house, and closed the
door. Glyndon did not follow her, nor, strange as it may seem,
was he so inclined. The thought and recollection of that moonlit
hour in the gardens, of the strange address of Zanoni, froze up
all human passion. Viola herself, if not forgotten, shrunk back
like a shadow into the recesses of his breast. He shivered as he
stepped into the sunlight, and musingly retraced his steps into
the more populous parts of that liveliest of Italian cities.
BOOK III.
THEURGIA.
--i cavalier sen vanno
dove il pino fatal gli attende in porto.
Gerus. Lib., cant. xv (Argomento.)
The knights came where the fatal bark
Awaited them in the port.
CHAPTER 3.I.
But that which especially distinguishes the brotherhood is their
marvellous knowledge of all the resources of medical art. They
work not by charms, but simples.--"MS. Account of the Origin and
Attributes of the true Rosicrucians," by J. Von D--.
At this time it chanced that Viola had the opportunity to return
the kindness shown to her by the friendly musician whose house
had received and sheltered her when first left an orphan on the
world. Old Bernardi had brought up three sons to the same
profession as himself, and they had lately left Naples to seek
their fortunes in the wealthier cities of Northern Europe, where
the musical market was less overstocked. There was only left to
glad the household of his aged wife and himself, a lively,
prattling, dark-eyed girl of some eight years old, the child of
his second son, whose mother had died in giving her birth. It so
happened that, about a month previous to the date on which our
story has now entered, a paralytic affection had disabled
Bernardi from the duties of his calling. He had been always a
social, harmless, improvident, generous fellow--living on his
gains from day to day, as if the day of sickness and old age
never was to arrive. Though he received a small allowance for
his past services, it ill sufficed for his wants,; neither was he
free from debt. Poverty stood at his hearth,--when Viola's
grateful smile and liberal hand came to chase the grim fiend
away. But it is not enough to a heart truly kind to send and
give; more charitable is it to visit and console. "Forget not
thy father's friend." So almost daily went the bright idol of
Naples to the house of Bernardi. Suddenly a heavier affliction
than either poverty or the palsy befell the old musician. His
grandchild, his little Beatrice, fell ill, suddenly and
dangerously ill, of one of those rapid fevers common to the
South; and Viola was summoned from her strange and fearful
reveries of love or fancy, to the sick-bed of the young sufferer.
The child was exceedingly fond of Viola, and the old people
thought that her mere presence would bring healing; but when
Viola arrived, Beatrice was insensible. Fortunately there was no
performance that evening at San Carlo, and she resolved to stay
the night and partake its fearful cares and dangerous vigil.
But during the night the child grew worse, the physician (the
leechcraft has never been very skilful at Naples) shook his
powdered head, kept his aromatics at his nostrils, administered
his palliatives, and departed. Old Bernardi seated himself by
the bedside in stern silence; here was the last tie that bound
him to life. Well, let the anchor break and the battered ship go
down! It was an iron resolve, more fearful than sorrow. An old
man, with one foot in the grave, watching by the couch of a dying
child, is one of the most awful spectacles in human calamities.
The wife was more active, more bustling, more hopeful, and more
tearful. Viola took heed of all three. But towards dawn,
Beatrice's state became so obviously alarming, that Viola herself
began to despair. At this time she saw the old woman suddenly
rise from before the image of the saint at which she had been
kneeling, wrap herself in her cloak and hood, and quietly quit
the chamber. Viola stole after her.
"It is cold for thee, good mother, to brave the air; let me go
for the physician?"
"Child, I am not going to him. I have heard of one in the city
who has been tender to the poor, and who, they say, has cured the
sick when physicians failed. I will go and say to him, 'Signor,
we are beggars in all else, but yesterday we were rich in love.
We are at the close of life, but we lived in our grandchild's
childhood. Give us back our wealth,--give us back our youth.
Let us die blessing God that the thing we love survives us.'"
She was gone. Why did thy heart beat, Viola? The infant's sharp
cry of pain called her back to the couch; and there still sat the
old man, unconscious of his wife's movements, not stirring, his
eyes glazing fast as they watched the agonies of that slight
frame. By degrees the wail of pain died into a low moan,--the
convulsions grew feebler, but more frequent; the glow of fever
faded into the blue, pale tinge that settles into the last
bloodless marble.
The daylight came broader and clearer through the casement; steps
were heard on the stairs,--the old woman entered hastily; she
rushed to the bed, cast a glance on the patient, "She lives yet,
signor, she lives!"
Viola raised her eyes,--the child's head was pillowed on her
bosom,--and she beheld Zanoni. He smiled on her with a tender
and soft approval, and took the infant from her arms. Yet even
then, as she saw him bending silently over that pale face, a
superstitious fear mingled with her hopes. "Was it by lawful--by
holy art that--" her self-questioning ceased abruptly; for his
dark eye turned to her as if he read her soul, and his aspect
accused her conscience for its suspicion, for it spoke reproach
not unmingled with disdain.
"Be comforted," he said, gently turning to the old man, "the
danger is not beyond the reach of human skill;" and, taking from
his bosom a small crystal vase, he mingled a few drops with
water. No sooner did this medicine moisten the infant's lips,
than it seemed to produce an astonishing effect. The colour
revived rapidly on the lips and cheeks; in a few moments the
sufferer slept calmly, and with the regular breathing of painless
sleep. And then the old man rose, rigidly, as a corpse might
rise,--looked down, listened, and creeping gently away, stole to
the corner of the room, and wept, and thanked Heaven!
Now, old Bernardi had been, hitherto, but a cold believer; sorrow
had never before led him aloft from earth. Old as he was, he had
never before thought as the old should think of death,--that
endangered life of the young had wakened up the careless soul of
age. Zanoni whispered to the wife, and she drew the old man
quietly from the room.
"Dost thou fear to leave me an hour with thy charge, Viola?
Thinkest thou still that this knowledge is of the Fiend?"
"Ah," said Viola, humbled and yet rejoiced, "forgive me, forgive
me, signor. Thou biddest the young live and the old pray. My
thoughts never shall wrong thee more!"
Before the sun rose, Beatrice was out of danger; at noon Zanoni
escaped from the blessings of the aged pair, and as he closed the
door of the house, he found Viola awaiting him without.
She stood before him timidly, her hands crossed meekly on her
bosom, her downcast eyes swimming with tears.
"Do not let me be the only one you leave unhappy!"
"And what cure can the herbs and anodynes effect for thee? If
thou canst so readily believe ill of those who have aided and yet
would serve thee, thy disease is of the heart; and--nay, weep
not! nurse of the sick, and comforter of the sad, I should rather
approve than chide thee. Forgive thee! Life, that ever needs
forgiveness, has, for its first duty, to forgive."
"No, do not forgive me yet. I do not deserve a pardon; for even
now, while I feel how ungrateful I was to believe, suspect, aught
injurious and false to my preserver, my tears flow from
happiness, not remorse. Oh!" she continued, with a simple
fervour, unconscious, in her innocence and her generous emotions,
of all the secrets she betrayed,--"thou knowest not how bitter it
was to believe thee not more good, more pure, more sacred than
all the world. And when I saw thee,--the wealthy, the noble,
coming from thy palace to minister to the sufferings of the
hovel,--when I heard those blessings of the poor breathed upon
thy parting footsteps, I felt my very self exalted,--good in thy
goodness, noble at least in those thoughts that did NOT wrong
thee."
"And thinkest thou, Viola, that in a mere act of science there is
so much virtue? The commonest leech will tend the sick for his
fee. Are prayers and blessings a less reward than gold?"
"And mine, then, are not worthless? Thou wilt accept of mine?"
"Ah, Viola!" exclaimed Zanoni, with a sudden passion, that
covered her face with blushes, "thou only, methinks, on all the
earth, hast the power to wound or delight me!" He checked
himself, and his face became grave and sad. "And this," he
added, in an altered tone, "because, if thou wouldst heed my
counsels, methinks I could guide a guileless heart to a happy
fate."
"Thy counsels! I will obey them all. Mould me to what thou
wilt. In thine absence, I am as a child that fears every shadow
in the dark; in thy presence, my soul expands, and the whole
world seems calm with a celestial noonday. Do not deny to me
that presence. I am fatherless and ignorant and alone!"
Zanoni averted his face, and, after a moment's silence, replied
calmly,--
"Be it so. Sister, I will visit thee again!"
CHAPTER 3.II.
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.
Shakespeare.
Who so happy as Viola now! A dark load was lifted from her
heart: her step seemed to tread on air; she would have sung for
very delight as she went gayly home. It is such happiness to the
pure to love,--but oh, such more than happiness to believe in the
worth of the one beloved. Between them there might be human
obstacles,--wealth, rank, man's little world. But there was no
longer that dark gulf which the imagination recoils to dwell on,
and which separates forever soul from soul. He did not love her
in return. Love her! But did she ask for love? Did she herself
love? No; or she would never have been at once so humble and so
bold. How merrily the ocean murmured in her ear; how radiant an
aspect the commonest passer-by seemed to wear! She gained her
home,--she looked upon the tree, glancing, with fantastic
branches, in the sun. "Yes, brother mine!" she said, laughing in
her joy, "like thee, I HAVE struggled to the light!"
She had never hitherto, like the more instructed Daughters of the
North, accustomed herself to that delicious Confessional, the
transfusion of thought to writing. Now, suddenly, her heart felt
an impulse; a new-born instinct, that bade it commune with
itself, bade it disentangle its web of golden fancies,--made her
wish to look upon her inmost self as in a glass. Upsprung from
the embrace of Love and Soul--the Eros and the Psyche--their
beautiful offspring, Genius! She blushed, she sighed, she
trembled as she wrote. And from the fresh world that she had
built for herself, she was awakened to prepare for the glittering
stage. How dull became the music, how dim the scene, so
exquisite and so bright of old. Stage, thou art the Fairy Land
to the vision of the worldly. Fancy, whose music is not heard by
men, whose scenes shift not by mortal hand, as the stage to the
present world, art thou to the future and the past!
CHAPTER 3.III.
In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes.
Shakespeare.
The next day, at noon, Zanoni visited Viola; and the next day and
the next and again the next,--days that to her seemed like a
special time set apart from the rest of life. And yet he never
spoke to her in the language of flattery, and almost of
adoration, to which she had been accustomed. Perhaps his very
coldness, so gentle as it was, assisted to this mysterious charm.
He talked to her much of her past life, and she was scarcely
surprised (she now never thought of TERROR) to perceive how much
of that past seemed known to him.
He made her speak to him of her father; he made her recall some
of the airs of Pisani's wild music. And those airs seemed to
charm and lull him into reverie.
"As music was to the musician," said he, "may science be to the
wise. Your father looked abroad in the world; all was discord to
the fine sympathies that he felt with the harmonies that daily
and nightly float to the throne of Heaven. Life, with its noisy
ambition and its mean passions, is so poor and base! Out of his
soul he created the life and the world for which his soul was
fitted. Viola, thou art the daughter of that life, and wilt be
the denizen of that world."
In his earlier visits he did not speak of Glyndon. The day soon
came on which he renewed the subject. And so trustful, obedient,
and entire was the allegiance that Viola now owned to his
dominion, that, unwelcome as that subject was, she restrained her
heart, and listened to him in silence.
At last he said, "Thou hast promised thou wilt obey my counsels,
and if, Viola, I should ask thee, nay adjure, to accept this
stranger's hand, and share his fate, should he offer to thee such
a lot,--wouldst thou refuse?"
And then she pressed back the tears that gushed to her eyes; and
with a strange pleasure in the midst of pain,--the pleasure of
one who sacrifices heart itself to the one who commands that
heart,--she answered falteringly, "If thou CANST ordain it,
why--"
"Speak on."
"Dispose of me as thou wilt!"
Zanoni stood in silence for some moments: he saw the struggle
which the girl thought she concealed so well; he made an
involuntary movement towards her, and pressed her hand to his
lips; it was the first time he had ever departed even so far from
a certain austerity which perhaps made her fear him and her own
thoughts the less.
"Viola," said he, and his voice trembled, "the danger that I can
avert no more, if thou linger still in Naples, comes hourly near
and near to thee! On the third day from this thy fate must be
decided. I accept thy promise. Before the last hour of that
day, come what may, I shall see thee again, HERE, at thine own
house. Till then, farewell!"
CHAPTER 3.IV.
Between two worlds life hovers like a star
'Twixt night and morn.
Byron.
When Glyndon left Viola, as recorded in the concluding chapter of
the second division of this work, he was absorbed again in those
mystical desires and conjectures which the haunting recollection
of Zanoni always served to create. And as he wandered through
the streets, he was scarcely conscious of his own movements till,
in the mechanism of custom, he found himself in the midst of one
of the noble collections of pictures which form the boast of
those Italian cities whose glory is in the past. Thither he had
been wont, almost daily, to repair, for the gallery contained
some of the finest specimens of a master especially the object of
his enthusiasm and study. There, before the works of Salvator,
he had often paused in deep and earnest reverence. The striking
characteristic of that artist is the "Vigour of Will;" void of
the elevated idea of abstract beauty, which furnishes a model and
archetype to the genius of more illustrious order, the singular
energy of the man hews out of the rock a dignity of his own. His
images have the majesty, not of the god, but the savage; utterly
free, like the sublimer schools, from the common-place of
imitation,--apart, with them, from the conventional littleness of
the Real,--he grasps the imagination, and compels it to follow
him, not to the heaven, but through all that is most wild and
fantastic upon earth; a sorcery, not of the starry magian, but of
the gloomy wizard,--a man of romance whose heart beat strongly,
griping art with a hand of iron, and forcing it to idealise the
scenes of his actual life. Before this powerful will, Glyndon
drew back more awed and admiring than before the calmer beauty
which rose from the soul of Raphael, like Venus from the deep.
And now, as awaking from his reverie, he stood opposite to that
wild and magnificent gloom of Nature which frowned on him from
the canvas, the very leaves on those gnome-like, distorted trees
seemed to rustle sibylline secrets in his ear. Those rugged and
sombre Apennines, the cataract that dashed between, suited, more
than the actual scenes would have done, the mood and temper of
his mind. The stern, uncouth forms at rest on the crags below,
and dwarfed by the giant size of the Matter that reigned around
them, impressed him with the might of Nature and the littleness
of Man. As in genius of the more spiritual cast, the living man,
and the soul that lives in him, are studiously made the prominent
image; and the mere accessories of scene kept down, and cast
back, as if to show that the exile from paradise is yet the
monarch of the outward world,--so, in the landscapes of Salvator,
the tree, the mountain, the waterfall, become the principal, and
man himself dwindles to the accessory. The Matter seems to reign
supreme, and its true lord to creep beneath its stupendous
shadow. Inert matter giving interest to the immortal man, not
the immortal man to the inert matter. A terrible philosophy in
art!
While something of these thoughts passed through the mind of the
painter, he felt his arm touched, and saw Nicot by his side.
"A great master," said Nicot, "but I do not love the school."
"I do not love, but I am awed by it. We love the beautiful and
serene, but we have a feeling as deep as love for the terrible
and dark."
"True," said Nicot, thoughtfully. "And yet that feeling is only
a superstition. The nursery, with its tales of ghosts and
goblins, is the cradle of many of our impressions in the world.
But art should not seek to pander to our ignorance; art should
represent only truths. I confess that Raphael pleases me less,
because I have no sympathy with his subjects. His saints and
virgins are to me only men and women."
"And from what source should painting, then, take its themes?"
"From history, without doubt," returned Nicot, pragmatically,--
"those great Roman actions which inspire men with sentiments of
liberty and valour, with the virtues of a republic. I wish the
cartoons of Raphael had illustrated the story of the Horatii; but
it remains for France and her Republic to give to posterity the
new and the true school, which could never have arisen in a
country of priestcraft and delusion."
"And the saints and virgins of Raphael are to you only men and
women?" repeated Glyndon, going back to Nicot's candid confession
in amaze, and scarcely hearing the deductions the Frenchman drew
from his proposition.
"Assuredly. Ha, ha!" and Nicot laughed hideously, "do you ask me
to believe in the calendar, or what?"
"But the ideal?"
"The ideal!" interrupted Nicot. "Stuff! The Italian critics,
and your English Reynolds, have turned your head. They are so
fond of their 'gusto grande,' and their 'ideal beauty that speaks
to the soul!'--soul!--IS there a soul? I understand a man when
he talks of composing for a refined taste,--for an educated and
intelligent reason; for a sense that comprehends truths. But as
for the soul,--bah!--we are but modifications of matter, and
painting is modification of matter also."
Glyndon turned his eyes from the picture before him to Nicot, and
from Nicot to the picture. The dogmatist gave a voice to the
thoughts which the sight of the picture had awakened. He shook
his head without reply.
"Tell me," said Nicot, abruptly, "that imposter,--Zanoni!--oh! I
have now learned his name and quackeries, forsooth,--what did he
say to thee of me?"
"Of thee? Nothing; but to warn me against thy doctrines."
"Aha! was that all?" said Nicot. "He is a notable inventor, and
since, when we met last, I unmasked his delusions, I thought he
might retaliate by some tale of slander."
"Unmasked his delusions!--how?"
"A dull and long story: he wished to teach an old doting friend
of mine his secrets of prolonged life and philosophical alchemy.
I advise thee to renounce so discreditable an acquaintance."
With that Nicot nodded significantly, and, not wishing to be
further questioned, went his way.
Glyndon's mind at that moment had escaped to his art, and the
comments and presence of Nicot had been no welcome interruption.
He turned from the landscape of Salvator, and his eye falling on
a Nativity by Coreggio, the contrast between the two ranks of
genius struck him as a discovery. That exquisite repose, that
perfect sense of beauty, that strength without effort, that
breathing moral of high art, which speaks to the mind through the
eye, and raises the thoughts, by the aid of tenderness and love,
to the regions of awe and wonder,--ay! THAT was the true school.
He quitted the gallery with reluctant steps and inspired ideas;
he sought his own home. Here, pleased not to find the sober
Mervale, he leaned his face on his hands, and endeavoured to
recall the words of Zanoni in their last meeting. Yes, he felt
Nicot's talk even on art was crime; it debased the imagination
itself to mechanism. Could he, who saw nothing in the soul but a
combination of matter, prate of schools that should excel a
Raphael? Yes, art was magic; and as he owned the truth of the
aphorism, he could comprehend that in magic there may be
religion, for religion is an essential to art. His old ambition,
freeing itself from the frigid prudence with which Mervale sought
to desecrate all images less substantial than the golden calf of
the world, revived, and stirred, and kindled. The subtle
detection of what he conceived to be an error in the school he
had hitherto adopted, made more manifest to him by the grinning
commentary of Nicot, seemed to open to him a new world of
invention. He seized the happy moment,--he placed before him the
colours and the canvas. Lost in his conceptions of a fresh
ideal, his mind was lifted aloft into the airy realms of beauty;
dark thoughts, unhallowed desires, vanished. Zanoni was right:
the material world shrunk from his gaze; he viewed Nature as from
a mountain-top afar; and as the waves of his unquiet heart became
calm and still, again the angel eyes of Viola beamed on them as a
holy star.
Locking himself in his chamber, he refused even the visits of
Mervale. Intoxicated with the pure air of his fresh existence,
he remained for three days, and almost nights, absorbed in his
employment; but on the fourth morning came that reaction to which
all labour is exposed. He woke listless and fatigued; and as he
cast his eyes on the canvas, the glory seemed to have gone from
it. Humiliating recollections of the great masters he aspired to
rival forced themselves upon him; defects before unseen magnified
themselves to deformities in his languid and discontented eyes.
He touched and retouched, but his hand failed him; he threw down
his instruments in despair; he opened his casement: the day
without was bright and lovely; the street was crowded with that
life which is ever so joyous and affluent in the animated
population of Naples. He saw the lover, as he passed, conversing
with his mistress by those mute gestures which have survived all
changes of languages, the same now as when the Etruscan painted
yon vases in the Museo Borbonico. Light from without beckoned
his youth to its mirth and its pleasures; and the dull walls
within, lately large enough to comprise heaven and earth, seemed
now cabined and confined as a felon's prison. He welcomed the
step of Mervale at his threshold, and unbarred the door.
"And is that all you have done?" said Mervale, glancing
disdainfully at the canvas. "Is it for this that you have shut
yourself out from the sunny days and moonlit nights of Naples?"
"While the fit was on me, I basked in a brighter sun, and imbibed
the voluptuous luxury of a softer moon."
"You own that the fit is over. Well, that is some sign of
returning sense. After all, it is better to daub canvas for
three days than make a fool of yourself for life. This little
siren?"
"Be dumb! I hate to hear you name her."
Mervale drew his chair nearer to Glyndon's, thrust his hands deep
in his breeches-pockets, stretched his legs, and was about to
begin a serious strain of expostulation, when a knock was heard
at the door, and Nicot, without waiting for leave, obtruded his
ugly head.
"Good-day, mon cher confrere. I wished to speak to you. Hein!
you have been at work, I see. This is well,--very well! A bold
outline,--great freedom in that right hand. But, hold! is the
composition good? You have not got the great pyramidal form.
Don't you think, too, that you have lost the advantage of
contrast in this figure; since the right leg is put forward,
surely the right arm should be put back? Peste! but that little
finger is very fine!"
Mervale detested Nicot. For all speculators, Utopians, alterers
of the world, and wanderers from the high road, were equally
hateful to him; but he could have hugged the Frenchman at that
moment. He saw in Glyndon's expressive countenance all the
weariness and disgust he endured. After so wrapped a study, to
be prated to about pyramidal forms and right arms and right legs,
the accidence of the art, the whole conception to be overlooked,
and the criticism to end in approval of the little finger!
"Oh," said Glyndon, peevishly, throwing the cloth over his
design, "enough of my poor performance. What is it you have to
say to me?"
"In the first place," said Nicot, huddling himself together upon
a stool,--"in the first place, this Signor Zanoni,--this second
Cagliostro,--who disputes my doctrines! (no doubt a spy of the
man Capet) I am not vindictive; as Helvetius says, 'our errors
arise from our passions.' I keep mine in order; but it is
virtuous to hate in the cause of mankind; I would I had the
denouncing and the judging of Signor Zanoni at Paris." And
Nicot's small eyes shot fire, and he gnashed his teeth.
"Have you any new cause to hate him?"
"Yes," said Nicot, fiercely. "Yes, I hear he is courting the
girl I mean to marry."
"You! Whom do you speak of?"
"The celebrated Pisani! She is divinely handsome. She would
make my fortune in a republic. And a republic we shall have
before the year is out."
Mervale rubbed his hands, and chuckled. Glyndon coloured with
rage and shame.
"Do you know the Signora Pisani? Have you ever spoken to her?"
"Not yet. But when I make up my mind to anything, it is soon
done. I am about to return to Paris. They write me word that a
handsome wife advances the career of a patriot. The age of
prejudice is over. The sublimer virtues begin to be understood.
I shall take back the handsomest wife in Europe."
"Be quiet! What are you about?" said Mervale, seizing Glyndon as
he saw him advance towards the Frenchman, his eyes sparkling, and
his hands clenched.
"Sir!" said Glyndon, between his teeth, "you know not of whom you
thus speak. Do you affect to suppose that Viola Pisani would
accept YOU?"
"Not if she could get a better offer," said Mervale, looking up
to the ceiling.
"A better offer? You don't understand me," said Nicot. "I, Jean
Nicot, propose to marry the girl; marry her! Others may make her
more liberal offers, but no one, I apprehend, would make one so
honourable. I alone have pity on her friendless situation.
Besides, according to the dawning state of things, one will
always, in France, be able to get rid of a wife whenever one
wishes. We shall have new laws of divorce. Do you imagine that
an Italian girl--and in no country in the world are maidens, it
seems, more chaste (though wives may console themselves with
virtues more philosophical)--would refuse the hand of an artist
for the settlements of a prince? No; I think better of the
Pisani than you do. I shall hasten to introduce myself to her."
"I wish you all success, Monsieur Nicot," said Mervale, rising,
and shaking him heartily by the hand.
Glyndon cast at them both a disdainful glance.
"Perhaps, Monsieur Nicot," said he, at length, constraining his
lips into a bitter smile,--"perhaps you may have rivals."
"So much the better," replied Monsieur Nicot, carelessly, kicking
his heels together, and appearing absorbed in admiration at the
size of his large feet.
"I myself admire Viola Pisani."
"Every painter must!"
"I may offer her marriage as well as yourself."
"That would be folly in you, though wisdom in me. You would not
know how to draw profit from the speculation! Cher confrere, you
have prejudices."
"You do not dare to say you would make profit from your own
wife?"
"The virtuous Cato lent his wife to a friend. I love virtue, and
I cannot do better than imitate Cato. But to be serious,--I do
not fear you as a rival. You are good-looking, and I am ugly.
But you are irresolute, and I decisive. While you are uttering
fine phrases, I shall say, simply, 'I have a bon etat. Will you
marry me?' So do your worst, cher confrere. Au revoir, behind
the scenes!"
So saying, Nicot rose, stretched his long arms and short legs,
yawned till he showed all his ragged teeth from ear to ear,
pressed down his cap on his shaggy head with an air of defiance,
and casting over his left shoulder a glance of triumph and malice
at the indignant Glyndon, sauntered out of the room.
Mervale burst into a violent fit of laughter. "See how your
Viola is estimated by your friend. A fine victory, to carry her
off from the ugliest dog between Lapland and the Calmucks."
Glyndon was yet too indignant to answer, when a new visitor
arrived. It was Zanoni himself. Mervale, on whom the appearance
and aspect of this personage imposed a kind of reluctant
deference, which he was unwilling to acknowledge, and still more
to betray, nodded to Glyndon, and saying, simply, "More when I
see you again," left the painter and his unexpected visitor.
"I see," said Zanoni, lifting the cloth from the canvas, "that
you have not slighted the advice I gave you. Courage, young
artist; this is an escape from the schools: this is full of the
bold self-confidence of real genius. You had no Nicot--no
Mervale--at your elbow when this image of true beauty was
conceived!"
Charmed back to his art by this unlooked-for praise, Glyndon
replied modestly, "I thought well of my design till this morning;
and then I was disenchanted of my happy persuasion."
"Say, rather, that, unaccustomed to continuous labour, you were
fatigued with your employment."
"That is true. Shall I confess it? I began to miss the world
without. It seemed to me as if, while I lavished my heart and my
youth upon visions of beauty, I was losing the beautiful
realities of actual life. And I envied the merry fisherman,
singing as he passed below my casement, and the lover conversing
with his mistress."
"And," said Zanoni, with an encouraging smile, "do you blame
yourself for the natural and necessary return to earth, in which
even the most habitual visitor of the Heavens of Invention seeks
his relaxation and repose? Man's genius is a bird that cannot be
always on the wing; when the craving for the actual world is
felt, it is a hunger that must be appeased. They who command
best the ideal, enjoy ever most the real. See the true artist,
when abroad in men's thoroughfares, ever observant, ever diving
into the heart, ever alive to the least as to the greatest of the
complicated truths of existence; descending to what pedants would
call the trivial and the frivolous. From every mesh in the
social web, he can disentangle a grace. And for him each airy
gossamer floats in the gold of the sunlight. Know you not that
around the animalcule that sports in the water there shines a
halo, as around the star (The monas mica, found in the purest
pools, is encompassed with a halo. And this is frequent amongst
many other species of animalcule.) that revolves in bright
pastime through the space? True art finds beauty everywhere. In
the street, in the market-place, in the hovel, it gathers food
for the hive of its thoughts. In the mire of politics, Dante and
Milton selected pearls for the wreath of song.
"Who ever told you that Raphael did not enjoy the life without,
carrying everywhere with him the one inward idea of beauty which
attracted and imbedded in its own amber every straw that the feet
of the dull man trampled into mud? As some lord of the forest
wanders abroad for its prey, and scents and follows it over plain
and hill, through brake and jungle, but, seizing it at last,
bears the quarry to its unwitnessed cave,--so Genius searches
through wood and waste, untiringly and eagerly, every sense
awake, every nerve strained to speed and strength, for the
scattered and flying images of matter, that it seizes at last
with its mighty talons, and bears away with it into solitudes no
footstep can invade. Go, seek the world without; it is for art
the inexhaustible pasture-ground and harvest to the world
within!"
"You comfort me," said Glyndon, brightening. "I had imagined my
weariness a proof of my deficiency! But not now would I speak to
you of these labours. Pardon me, if I pass from the toil to the
reward. You have uttered dim prophecies of my future, if I wed
one who, in the judgment of the sober world, would only darken
its prospects and obstruct its ambition. Do you speak from the
wisdom which is experience, or that which aspires to prediction?"
"Are they not allied? Is it not he best accustomed to
calculation who can solve at a glance any new problem in the
arithmetic of chances?"
"You evade my question."
"No; but I will adapt my answer the better to your comprehension,
for it is upon this very point that I have sought you. Listen to
me!" Zanoni fixed his eyes earnestly on his listener, and
continued: "For the accomplishment of whatever is great and
lofty, the clear perception of truths is the first requisite,--
truths adapted to the object desired. The warrior thus reduces
the chances of battle to combinations almost of mathematics. He
can predict a result, if he can but depend upon the materials he
is forced to employ. At such a loss he can cross that bridge; in
such a time he can reduce that fort. Still more accurately, for
he depends less on material causes than ideas at his command, can
the commander of the purer science or diviner art, if he once
perceive the truths that are in him and around, foretell what he
can achieve, and in what he is condemned to fail. But this
perception of truths is disturbed by many causes,--vanity,
passion, fear, indolence in himself, ignorance of the fitting
means without to accomplish what he designs. He may miscalculate
his own forces; he may have no chart of the country he would
invade. It is only in a peculiar state of the mind that it is
capable of perceiving truth; and that state is profound serenity.
Your mind is fevered by a desire for truth: you would compel it
to your embraces; you would ask me to impart to you, without
ordeal or preparation, the grandest secrets that exist in Nature.
But truth can no more be seen by the mind unprepared for it, than
the sun can dawn upon the midst of night. Such a mind receives
truth only to pollute it: to use the simile of one who has
wandered near to the secret of the sublime Goetia (or the magic
that lies within Nature, as electricity within the cloud), 'He
who pours water into the muddy well, does but disturb the mud.'"
("Iamb. de Vit. Pythag.")
"What do you tend to?"
"This: that you have faculties that may attain to surpassing
power, that may rank you among those enchanters who, greater than
the magian, leave behind them an enduring influence, worshipped
wherever beauty is comprehended, wherever the soul is sensible of
a higher world than that in which matter struggles for crude and
incomplete existence.
"But to make available those faculties, need I be a prophet to
tell you that you must learn to concentre upon great objects all
your desires? The heart must rest, that the mind may be active.
At present you wander from aim to aim. As the ballast to the
ship, so to the spirit are faith and love. With your whole
heart, affections, humanity, centred in one object, your mind and
aspirations will become equally steadfast and in earnest. Viola
is a child as yet; you do not perceive the high nature the trials
of life will develop. Pardon me, if I say that her soul, purer
and loftier than your own, will bear it upward, as a secret hymn
carries aloft the spirits of the world. Your nature wants the
harmony, the music which, as the Pythagoreans wisely taught, at
once elevates and soothes. I offer you that music in her love."
"But am I sure that she does love me?"
"Artist, no; she loves you not at present; her affections are
full of another. But if I could transfer to you, as the
loadstone transfers its attraction to the magnet, the love that
she has now for me,--if I could cause her to see in you the ideal
of her dreams--"
"Is such a gift in the power of man?"
"I offer it to you, if your love be lawful, if your faith in
virtue and yourself be deep and loyal; if not, think you that I
would disenchant her with truth to make her adore a falsehood?"
"But if," persisted Glyndon,--"if she be all that you tell me,
and if she love you, how can you rob yourself of so priceless a
treasure?"
"Oh, shallow and mean heart of man!" exclaimed Zanoni, with
unaccustomed passion and vehemence, "dost thou conceive so little
of love as not to know that it sacrifices all--love itself--for
the happiness of the thing it loves? Hear me!" And Zanoni's
face grew pale. "Hear me! I press this upon you, because I love
her, and because I fear that with me her fate will be less fair
than with yourself. Why,--ask not, for I will not tell you.
Enough! Time presses now for your answer; it cannot long be
delayed. Before the night of the third day from this, all choice
will be forbid you!"
"But," said Glyndon, still doubting and suspicious,--"but why
this haste?"
"Man, you are not worthy of her when you ask me. All I can tell
you here, you should have known yourself. This ravisher, this
man of will, this son of the old Visconti, unlike you,--
steadfast, resolute, earnest even in his crimes,--never
relinquishes an object. But one passion controls his lust,--it
is his avarice. The day after his attempt on Viola, his uncle,
the Cardinal --, from whom he has large expectations of land and
gold, sent for him, and forbade him, on pain of forfeiting all
the possessions which his schemes already had parcelled out, to
pursue with dishonourable designs one whom the Cardinal had
heeded and loved from childhood. This is the cause of his
present pause from his pursuit. While we speak, the cause
expires. Before the hand of the clock reaches the hour of noon,
the Cardinal -- will be no more. At this very moment thy friend,
Jean Nicot, is with the Prince di --."
"He! wherefore?"
"To ask what dower shall go with Viola Pisani, the morning that
she leaves the palace of the prince."
"And how do you know all this?"
"Fool! I tell thee again, because a lover is a watcher by night
and day; because love never sleeps when danger menaces the
beloved one!"
"And you it was that informed the Cardinal --?"
"Yes; and what has been my task might as easily have been thine.
Speak,--thine answer!"
"You shall have it on the third day from this."
"Be it so. Put off, poor waverer, thy happiness to the last
hour. On the third day from this, I will ask thee thy resolve."
"And where shall we meet?"
"Before midnight, where you may least expect me. You cannot shun
me, though you may seek to do so!"
"Stay one moment! You condemn me as doubtful, irresolute,
suspicious. Have I no cause? Can I yield without a struggle to
the strange fascination you exert upon my mind? What interest
can you have in me, a stranger, that you should thus dictate to
me the gravest action in the life of man? Do you suppose that
any one in his senses would not pause, and deliberate, and ask
himself, 'Why should this stranger care thus for me?'"
"And yet," said Zanoni, "if I told thee that I could initiate
thee into the secrets of that magic which the philosophy of the
whole existing world treats as a chimera, or imposture; if I
promised to show thee how to command the beings of air and ocean,
how to accumulate wealth more easily than a child can gather
pebbles on the shore, to place in thy hands the essence of the
herbs which prolong life from age to age, the mystery of that
attraction by which to awe all danger and disarm all violence and
subdue man as the serpent charms the bird,--if I told thee that
all these it was mine to possess and to communicate, thou wouldst
listen to me then, and obey me without a doubt!"
"It is true; and I can account for this only by the imperfect
associations of my childhood,--by traditions in our house of--"
"Your forefather, who, in the revival of science, sought the
secrets of Apollonius and Paracelsus."
"What!" said Glyndon, amazed, "are you so well acquainted with
the annals of an obscure lineage?"
"To the man who aspires to know, no man who has been the meanest
student of knowledge should be unknown. You ask me why I have
shown this interest in your fate? There is one reason which I
have not yet told you. There is a fraternity as to whose laws
and whose mysteries the most inquisitive schoolmen are in the
dark. By those laws all are pledged to warn, to aid, and to
guide even the remotest descendants of men who have toiled,
though vainly, like your ancestor, in the mysteries of the Order.
We are bound to advise them to their welfare; nay, more,--if they
command us to it, we must accept them as our pupils. I am a
survivor of that most ancient and immemorial union. This it was
that bound me to thee at the first; this, perhaps, attracted
thyself unconsciously, Son of our Brotherhood, to me."
"If this be so, I command thee, in the name of the laws thou
obeyest, to receive me as thy pupil!"
"What do you ask?" said Zanoni, passionately. "Learn, first, the
conditions. No neophyte must have, at his initiation, one
affection or desire that chains him to the world. He must be
pure from the love of woman, free from avarice and ambition, free
from the dreams even of art, or the hope of earthly fame. The
first sacrifice thou must make is--Viola herself. And for what?
For an ordeal that the most daring courage only can encounter,
the most ethereal natures alone survive! Thou art unfit for the
science that has made me and others what we are or have been; for
thy whole nature is one fear!"
"Fear!" cried Glyndon, colouring with resentment, and rising to
the full height of his stature.
"Fear! and the worst fear,--fear of the world's opinion; fear of
the Nicots and the Mervales; fear of thine own impulses when most
generous; fear of thine own powers when thy genius is most bold;
fear that virtue is not eternal; fear that God does not live in
heaven to keep watch on earth; fear, the fear of little men; and
that fear is never known to the great."
With these words Zanoni abruptly left the artist, humbled,
bewildered, and not convinced. He remained alone with his
thoughts till he was aroused by the striking of the clock; he
then suddenly remembered Zanoni's prediction of the Cardinal's
death; and, seized with an intense desire to learn its truth, he
hurried into the streets,--he gained the Cardinal's palace. Five
minutes before noon his Eminence had expired, after an illness of
less than an hour. Zanoni's visit had occupied more time than
the illness of the Cardinal. Awed and perplexed, he turned from
the palace, and as he walked through the Chiaja, he saw Jean
Nicot emerge from the portals of the Prince di --.
CHAPTER 3.V.
Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still.
Shakespeare.
Venerable Brotherhood, so sacred and so little known, from whose
secret and precious archives the materials for this history have
been drawn; ye who have retained, from century to century, all
that time has spared of the august and venerable science,--thanks
to you, if now, for the first time, some record of the thoughts
and actions of no false and self-styled luminary of your Order be
given, however imperfectly, to the world. Many have called
themselves of your band; many spurious pretenders have been
so-called by the learned ignorance which still, baffled and
perplexed, is driven to confess that it knows nothing of your
origin, your ceremonies or doctrines, nor even if you still have
local habitation on the earth. Thanks to you if I, the only one
of my country, in this age, admitted, with a profane footstep,
into your mysterious Academe (The reader will have the goodness
to remember that this is said by the author of the original MS.,
not by the editor.), have been by you empowered and instructed to
adapt to the comprehension of the uninitiated, some few of the
starry truths which shone on the great Shemaia of the Chaldean
Lore, and gleamed dimly through the darkened knowledge of latter
disciples, labouring, like Psellus and Iamblichus, to revive the
embers of the fire which burned in the Hamarin of the East.
Though not to us of an aged and hoary world is vouchsafed the
NAME which, so say the earliest oracles of the earth, "rushes
into the infinite worlds," yet is it ours to trace the reviving
truths, through each new discovery of the philosopher and
chemist. The laws of attraction, of electricity, and of the yet
more mysterious agency of that great principal of life, which, if
drawn from the universe, would leave the universe a grave, were
but the code in which the Theurgy of old sought the guides that
led it to a legislation and science of its own. To rebuild on
words the fragments of this history, it seems to me as if, in a
solemn trance, I was led through the ruins of a city whose only
remains were tombs. From the sarcophagus and the urn I awake the
genius (The Greek Genius of Death.) of the extinguished Torch,
and so closely does its shape resemble Eros, that at moments I
scarcely know which of ye dictates to me,--O Love! O Death!
And it stirred in the virgin's heart,--this new, unfathomable,
and divine emotion! Was it only the ordinary affection of the
pulse and the fancy, of the eye to the Beautiful, of the ear to
the Eloquent, or did it not justify the notion she herself
conceived of it,--that it was born not of the senses, that it was
less of earthly and human love than the effect of some wondrous
but not unholy charm? I said that, from that day in which, no
longer with awe and trembling, she surrendered herself to the
influence of Zanoni, she had sought to put her thoughts into
words. Let the thoughts attest their own nature.
THE SELF CONFESSIONAL.
"Is it the daylight that shines on me, or the memory of thy
presence? Wherever I look, the world seems full of thee; in
every ray that trembles on the water, that smiles upon the
leaves, I behold but a likeness to thine eyes. What is this
change, that alters not only myself, but the face of the whole
universe?
...
How instantaneously leaped into life the power with which thou
swayest my heart in its ebb and flow. Thousands were around me,
and I saw but thee. That was the night in which I first entered
upon the world which crowds life into a drama, and has no
language but music. How strangely and how suddenly with thee
became that world evermore connected! What the delusion of the
stage was to others, thy presence was to me. My life, too,
seemed to centre into those short hours, and from thy lips I
heard a music, mute to all ears but mine. I sit in the room
where my father dwelt. Here, on that happy night, forgetting why
THEY were so happy, I shrunk into the shadow, and sought to guess
what thou wert to me; and my mother's low voice woke me, and I
crept to my father's side, close--close, from fear of my own
thoughts.
"Ah! sweet and sad was the morrow to that night, when thy lips
warned me of the future. An orphan now,--what is there that
lives for me to think of, to dream upon, to revere, but thou!
"How tenderly thou hast rebuked me for the grievous wrong that my
thoughts did thee! Why should I have shuddered to feel thee
glancing upon my thoughts like the beam on the solitary tree, to
which thou didst once liken me so well? It was--it was, that,
like the tree, I struggled for the light, and the light came.
They tell me of love, and my very life of the stage breathes the
language of love into my lips. No; again and again, I know THAT
is not the love that I feel for thee!--it is not a passion, it is
a thought! I ask not to be loved again. I murmur not that thy
words are stern and thy looks are cold. I ask not if I have
rivals; I sigh not to be fair in thine eyes. It is my SPIRIT
that would blend itself with thine. I would give worlds, though
we were apart, though oceans rolled between us, to know the hour
in which thy gaze was lifted to the stars,--in which thy heart
poured itself in prayer. They tell me thou art more beautiful
than the marble images that are fairer than all human forms; but
I have never dared to gaze steadfastly on thy face, that memory
might compare thee with the rest. Only thine eyes and thy soft,
calm smile haunt me; as when I look upon the moon, all that
passes into my heart is her silent light.
...
"Often, when the air is calm, I have thought that I hear the
strains of my father's music; often, though long stilled in the
grave, have they waked me from the dreams of the solemn night.
Methinks, ere thou comest to me that I hear them herald thy
approach. Methinks I hear them wail and moan, when I sink back
into myself on seeing thee depart. Thou art OF that music,--its
spirit, its genius. My father must have guessed at thee and thy
native regions, when the winds hushed to listen to his tones, and
the world deemed him mad! I hear where I sit, the far murmur of
the sea. Murmur on, ye blessed waters! The waves are the pulses
of the shore. They beat with the gladness of the morning wind,--
so beats my heart in the freshness and light that make up the
thoughts of thee!
...
"Often in my childhood I have mused and asked for what I was
born; and my soul answered my heart and said, 'THOU WERT BORN TO
WORSHIP!' Yes; I know why the real world has ever seemed to me
so false and cold. I know why the world of the stage charmed and
dazzled me. I know why it was so sweet to sit apart and gaze my
whole being into the distant heavens. My nature is not formed
for this life, happy though that life seem to others. It is its
very want to have ever before it some image loftier than itself!
Stranger, in what realm above, when the grave is past, shall my
soul, hour after hour, worship at the same source as thine?
...
"In the gardens of my neighbour there is a small fountain. I
stood by it this morning after sunrise. How it sprung up, with
its eager spray, to the sunbeams! And then I thought that I
should see thee again this day, and so sprung my heart to the new
morning which thou bringest me from the skies.
...
"I HAVE seen, I have LISTENED to thee again. How bold I have
become! I ran on with my childlike thoughts and stories, my
recollections of the past, as if I had known thee from an infant.
Suddenly the idea of my presumption struck me. I stopped, and
timidly sought thine eyes.
"'Well, and when you found that the nightingale refused to
sing?'--
"'Ah!' I said, 'what to thee this history of the heart of a
child?'
"'Viola,' didst thou answer, with that voice, so inexpressibly
calm and earnest!--'Viola, the darkness of a child's heart is
often but the shadow of a star. Speak on! And thy nightingale,
when they caught and caged it, refused to sing?'
"'And I placed the cage yonder, amidst the vine-leaves, and took
up my lute, and spoke to it on the strings; for I thought that
all music was its native language, and it would understand that I
sought to comfort it.'
"'Yes,' saidst thou. 'And at last it answered thee, but not with
song,--in a sharp, brief cry; so mournful, that thy hands let
fall the lute, and the tears gushed from thine eyes. So softly
didst thou unbar the cage, and the nightingale flew into yonder
thicket; and thou heardst the foliage rustle, and, looking
through the moonlight, thine eyes saw that it had found its mate.
It sang to thee then from the boughs a long, loud, joyous
jubilee. And musing, thou didst feel that it was not the vine-
leaves or the moonlight that made the bird give melody to night,
and that the secret of its music was the presence of a thing
beloved.'
"How didst thou know my thoughts in that childlike time better
than I knew myself! How is the humble life of my past years,
with its mean events, so mysteriously familiar to thee, bright
stranger! I wonder,--but I do not again dare to fear thee!
...
"Once the thought of him oppressed and weighed me down. As an
infant that longs for the moon, my being was one vague desire for
something never to be attained. Now I feel rather as if to think
of thee sufficed to remove every fetter from my spirit. I float
in the still seas of light, and nothing seems too high for my
wings, too glorious for my eyes. It was mine ignorance that made
me fear thee. A knowledge that is not in books seems to breathe
around thee as an atmosphere. How little have I read!--how
little have I learned! Yet when thou art by my side, it seems as
if the veil were lifted from all wisdom and all Nature. I
startle when I look even at the words I have written; they seem
not to come from myself, but are the signs of another language
which thou hast taught my heart, and which my hand traces
rapidly, as at thy dictation. Sometimes, while I write or muse,
I could fancy that I heard light wings hovering around me, and
saw dim shapes of beauty floating round, and vanishing as they
smiled upon me. No unquiet and fearful dream ever comes to me
now in sleep, yet sleep and waking are alike but as one dream.
In sleep I wander with thee, not through the paths of earth, but
through impalpable air--an air which seems a music--upward and
upward, as the soul mounts on the tones of a lyre! Till I knew
thee, I was as a slave to the earth. Thou hast given to me the
liberty of the universe! Before, it was life; it seems to me now
as if I had commenced eternity!
...
"Formerly, when I was to appear upon the stage, my heart beat
more loudly. I trembled to encounter the audience, whose breath
gave shame or renown; and now I have no fear of them. I see
them, heed them, hear them not! I know that there will be music
in my voice, for it is a hymn that I pour to thee. Thou never
comest to the theatre; and that no longer grieves me. Thou art
become too sacred to appear a part of the common world, and I
feel glad that thou art not by when crowds have a right to judge
me.
...
"And he spoke to me of ANOTHER: to another he would consign me!
No, it is not love that I feel for thee, Zanoni; or why did I
hear thee without anger, why did thy command seem to me not a
thing impossible? As the strings of the instrument obey the hand
of the master, thy look modulates the wildest chords of my heart
to thy will. If it please thee,--yes, let it be so. Thou art
lord of my destinies; they cannot rebel against thee! I almost
think I could love him, whoever it be, on whom thou wouldst shed
the rays that circumfuse thyself. Whatever thou hast touched, I
love; whatever thou speakest of, I love. Thy hand played with
these vine leaves; I wear them in my bosom. Thou seemest to me
the source of all love; too high and too bright to be loved
thyself, but darting light into other objects, on which the eye
can gaze less dazzled. No, no; it is not love that I feel for
thee, and therefore it is that I do not blush to nourish and
confess it. Shame on me if I loved, knowing myself so worthless
a thing to thee!
...
"ANOTHER!--my memory echoes back that word. Another! Dost thou
mean that I shall see thee no more? It is not sadness,--it is
not despair that seizes me. I cannot weep. It is an utter sense
of desolation. I am plunged back into the common life; and I
shudder coldly at the solitude. But I will obey thee, if thou
wilt. Shall I not see thee again beyond the grave? O how sweet
it were to die!
"Why do I not struggle from the web in which my will is thus
entangled? Hast thou a right to dispose of me thus? Give me
back--give me back the life I knew before I gave life itself away
to thee. Give me back the careless dreams of my youth,---my
liberty of heart that sung aloud as it walked the earth. Thou
hast disenchanted me of everything that is not of thyself. Where
was the sin, at least, to think of thee,--to see thee? Thy kiss
still glows upon my hand; is that hand mine to bestow? Thy kiss
claimed and hallowed it to thyself. Stranger, I will NOT obey
thee.
...
"Another day,--one day of the fatal three is gone! It is strange
to me that since the sleep of the last night, a deep calm has
settled upon my breast. I feel so assured that my very being is
become a part of thee, that I cannot believe that my life can be
separated from thine; and in this conviction I repose, and smile
even at thy words and my own fears. Thou art fond of one maxim,
which thou repeatest in a thousand forms,--that the beauty of the
soul is faith; that as ideal loveliness to the sculptor, faith is
to the heart; that faith, rightly understood, extends over all
the works of the Creator, whom we can know but through belief;
that it embraces a tranquil confidence in ourselves, and a serene
repose as to our future; that it is the moonlight that sways the
tides of the human sea. That faith I comprehend now. I reject
all doubt, all fear. I know that I have inextricably linked the
whole that makes the inner life to thee; and thou canst not tear
me from thee, if thou wouldst! And this change from struggle
into calm came to me with sleep,--a sleep without a dream; but
when I woke, it was with a mysterious sense of happiness,--an
indistinct memory of something blessed,--as if thou hadst cast
from afar off a smile upon my slumber. At night I was so sad;
not a blossom that had not closed itself up, as if never more to
open to the sun; and the night itself, in the heart as on the
earth, has ripened the blossoms into flowers. The world is
beautiful once more, but beautiful in repose,--not a breeze stirs
thy tree, not a doubt my soul!"
CHAPTER 3.VI.
Tu vegga o per violenzia o per inganno
Patire o disonore o mortal danno.
"Orlando Furioso," Cant. xlii. i.
(Thou art about, either through violence or artifice, to suffer
either dishonour or mortal loss.)
It was a small cabinet; the walls were covered with pictures, one
of which was worth more than the whole lineage of the owner of
the palace. Oh, yes! Zanoni was right. The painter IS a
magician; the gold he at least wrings from his crucible is no
delusion. A Venetian noble might be a fribble, or an assassin,--
a scoundrel, or a dolt; worthless, or worse than worthless, yet
he might have sat to Titian, and his portrait may be
inestimable,--a few inches of painted canvas a thousand times
more valuable than a man with his veins and muscles, brain, will,
heart, and intellect!
In this cabinet sat a man of about three-and-forty,--dark-eyed,
sallow, with short, prominent features, a massive conformation of
jaw, and thick, sensual, but resolute lips; this man was the
Prince di --. His form, above the middle height, and rather
inclined to corpulence, was clad in a loose dressing-robe of rich
brocade. On a table before him lay an old-fashioned sword and
hat, a mask, dice and dice-box, a portfolio, and an inkstand of
silver curiously carved.
"Well, Mascari," said the prince, looking up towards his
parasite, who stood by the embrasure of the deep-set barricadoed
window,--"well! the Cardinal sleeps with his fathers. I require
comfort for the loss of so excellent a relation; and where a more
dulcet voice than Viola Pisani's?"
"Is your Excellency serious? So soon after the death of his
Eminence?"
"It will be the less talked of, and I the less suspected. Hast
thou ascertained the name of the insolent who baffled us that
night, and advised the Cardinal the next day?"
"Not yet."
"Sapient Mascari! I will inform thee. It was the strange
Unknown."
"The Signor Zanoni! Are you sure, my prince?"
"Mascari, yes. There is a tone in that man's voice that I never
can mistake; so clear, and so commanding, when I hear it I almost
fancy there is such a thing as conscience. However, we must rid
ourselves of an impertinent. Mascari, Signor Zanoni hath not yet
honoured our poor house with his presence. He is a distinguished
stranger,--we must give a banquet in his honour."
"Ah, and the Cyprus wine! The cypress is a proper emblem of the
grave."
"But this anon. I am superstitious; there are strange stories of
Zanoni's power and foresight; remember the death of Ughelli. No
matter, though the Fiend were his ally, he should not rob me of
my prize; no, nor my revenge."
"Your Excellency is infatuated; the actress has bewitched you."
"Mascari," said the prince, with a haughty smile, "through these
veins rolls the blood of the old Visconti--of those who boasted
that no woman ever escaped their lust, and no man their
resentment. The crown of my fathers has shrunk into a gewgaw and
a toy,--their ambition and their spirit are undecayed! My honour
is now enlisted in this pursuit,--Viola must be mine!"
"Another ambuscade?" said Mascari, inquiringly.
"Nay, why not enter the house itself?--the situation is lonely,
and the door is not made of iron."
"But what if, on her return home, she tell the tale of our
violence? A house forced,--a virgin stolen! Reflect; though the
feudal privileges are not destroyed, even a Visconti is not now
above the law."
"Is he not, Mascari? Fool! in what age of the world, even if the
Madmen of France succeed in their chimeras, will the iron of law
not bend itself, like an osier twig, to the strong hand of power
and gold? But look not so pale, Mascari; I have foreplanned all
things. The day that she leaves this palace, she will leave it
for France, with Monsieur Jean Nicot."
Before Mascari could reply, the gentleman of the chamber
announced the Signor Zanoni.
The prince involuntarily laid his hand upon the sword placed on
the table, then with a smile at his own impulse, rose, and met
his visitor at the threshold, with all the profuse and respectful
courtesy of Italian simulation.
"This is an honour highly prized," said the prince. "I have long
desired to clasp the hand of one so distinguished."
"And I give it in the spirit with which you seek it," replied
Zanoni.
The Neapolitan bowed over the hand he pressed; but as he touched
it a shiver came over him, and his heart stood still. Zanoni
bent on him his dark, smiling eyes, and then seated himself with
a familiar air.
"Thus it is signed and sealed; I mean our friendship, noble
prince. And now I will tell you the object of my visit. I find,
Excellency, that, unconsciously perhaps, we are rivals. Can we
not accommodate out pretensions!"
"Ah!" said the prince, carelessly, "you, then, were the cavalier
who robbed me of the reward of my chase. All stratagems fair in
love, as in war. Reconcile our pretensions! Well, here is the
dice-box; let us throw for her. He who casts the lowest shall
resign his claim."
"Is this a decision by which you will promise to be bound?"
"Yes, on my faith."
"And for him who breaks his word so plighted, what shall be the
forfeit?"
"The sword lies next to the dice-box, Signor Zanoni. Let him who
stands not by his honour fall by the sword."
"And you invoke that sentence if either of us fail his word? Be
it so; let Signor Mascari cast for us."
"Well said!--Mascari, the dice!"
The prince threw himself back in his chair; and, world-hardened
as he was, could not suppress the glow of triumph and
satisfaction that spread itself over his features. Mascari took
up the three dice, and rattled them noisily in the box. Zanoni,
leaning his cheek on his hand, and bending over the table, fixed
his eyes steadfastly on the parasite; Mascari in vain struggled
to extricate from that searching gaze; he grew pale, and
trembled, he put down the box.
"I give the first throw to your Excellency. Signor Mascari, be
pleased to terminate our suspense."
Again Mascari took up the box; again his hand shook so that the
dice rattled within. He threw; the numbers were sixteen.
"It is a high throw," said Zanoni, calmly; "nevertheless, Signor
Mascari, I do not despond."
Mascari gathered up the dice, shook the box, and rolled the
contents once more on the table: the number was the highest that
can be thrown,--eighteen.
The prince darted a glance of fire at his minion, who stood with
gaping mouth, staring at the dice, and trembling from head to
foot.
"I have won, you see," said Zanoni; "may we be friends still?"
"Signor," said the prince, obviously struggling with anger and
confusion, "the victory is yours. But pardon me, you have spoken
lightly of this young girl,--will anything tempt you to yield
your claim?"
"Ah, do not think so ill of my gallantry; and," resumed Zanoni,
with a stern meaning in his voice, "forget not the forfeit your
own lips have named."
The prince knit his brow, but constrained the haughty answer that
was his first impulse.
"Enough!" he said, forcing a smile; "I yield. Let me prove that
I do not yield ungraciously; will you favour me with your
presence at a little feast I propose to give in honour," he
added, with a sardonic mockery, "of the elevation of my kinsman,
the late Cardinal, of pious memory, to the true seat of St.
Peter?"
"It is, indeed, a happiness to hear one command of yours I can
obey."
Zanoni then turned the conversation, talked lightly and gayly,
and soon afterwards departed.
"Villain!" then exclaimed the prince, grasping Mascari by the
collar, "you betrayed me!"
"I assure your Excellency that the dice were properly arranged;
he should have thrown twelve; but he is the Devil, and that's the
end of it."
"There is no time to be lost," said the prince, quitting his hold
of his parasite, who quietly resettled his cravat.
"My blood is up,--I will win this girl, if I die for it! What
noise is that?"
"It is but the sword of your illustrious ancestor that has fallen
from the table."
CHAPTER 3.VII.
Il ne faut appeler aucun ordre si ce n'est en tems clair et
serein.
"Les Clavicules du Rabbi Salomon."
(No order of spirits must be invoked unless the weather be clear
and serene.)
Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.
My art is already dim and troubled. I have lost the tranquillity
which is power. I cannot influence the decisions of those whom I
would most guide to the shore; I see them wander farther and
deeper into the infinite ocean where our barks sail evermore to
the horizon that flies before us! Amazed and awed to find that I
can only warn where I would control, I have looked into my own
soul. It is true that the desires of earth chain me to the
present, and shut me from the solemn secrets which Intellect,
purified from all the dross of the clay, alone can examine and
survey. The stern condition on which we hold our nobler and
diviner gifts darkens our vision towards the future of those for
whom we know the human infirmities of jealousy or hate or love.
Mejnour, all around me is mist and haze; I have gone back in our
sublime existence; and from the bosom of the imperishable youth
that blooms only in the spirit, springs up the dark poison-flower
of human love.
This man is not worthy of her,--I know that truth; yet in his
nature are the seeds of good and greatness, if the tares and
weeds of worldly vanities and fears would suffer them to grow.
If she were his, and I had thus transplanted to another soil the
passion that obscures my gaze and disarms my power, unseen,
unheard, unrecognised, I could watch over his fate, and secretly
prompt his deeds, and minister to her welfare through his own.
But time rushes on! Through the shadows that encircle me, I see,
gathering round her, the darkest dangers. No choice but flight,
--no escape save with him or me. With me!--the rapturous
thought,--the terrible conviction! With me! Mejnour, canst thou
wonder that I would save her from myself? A moment in the life
of ages,--a bubble on the shoreless sea. What else to me can be
human love? And in this exquisite nature of hers,--more pure,
more spiritual, even in its young affections than ever heretofore
the countless volumes of the heart, race after race, have given
to my gaze: there is yet a deep-buried feeling that warns me of
inevitable woe. Thou austere and remorseless Hierophant,--thou
who hast sought to convert to our brotherhood every spirit that
seemed to thee most high and bold,--even thou knowest, by
horrible experience, how vain the hope to banish FEAR from the
heart of woman.
My life would be to her one marvel. Even if, on the other hand,
I sought to guide her path through the realms of terror to the
light, think of the Haunter of the Threshold, and shudder with me
at the awful hazard! I have endeavoured to fill the Englishman's
ambition with the true glory of his art; but the restless spirit
of his ancestor still seems to whisper in him, and to attract to
the spheres in which it lost its own wandering way. There is a
mystery in man's inheritance from his fathers. Peculiarities of
the mind, as diseases of the body, rest dormant for generations,
to revive in some distant descendant, baffle all treatment and
elude all skill. Come to me from thy solitude amidst the wrecks
of Rome! I pant for a living confidant,--for one who in the old
time has himself known jealousy and love. I have sought commune
with Adon-Ai; but his presence, that once inspired such heavenly
content with knowledge, and so serene a confidence in destiny,
now only troubles and perplexes me. From the height from which I
strive to search into the shadows of things to come, I see
confused spectres of menace and wrath. Methinks I behold a
ghastly limit to the wondrous existence I have held,--methinks
that, after ages of the Ideal Life, I see my course merge into
the most stormy whirlpool of the Real. Where the stars opened to
me their gates, there looms a scaffold,--thick steams of blood
rise as from a shambles. What is more strange to me, a creature
here, a very type of the false ideal of common men,--body and
mind, a hideous mockery of the art that shapes the Beautiful, and
the desires that seek the Perfect, ever haunts my vision amidst
these perturbed and broken clouds of the fate to be. By that
shadowy scaffold it stands and gibbers at me, with lips dropping
slime and gore. Come, O friend of the far-time; for me, at
least, thy wisdom has not purged away thy human affections.
According to the bonds of our solemn order, reduced now to thee
and myself, lone survivors of so many haughty and glorious
aspirants, thou art pledged, too, to warn the descendant of those
whom thy counsels sought to initiate into the great secret in a
former age. The last of that bold Visconti who was once thy
pupil is the relentless persecutor of this fair child. With
thoughts of lust and murder, he is digging his own grave; thou
mayest yet daunt him from his doom. And I also mysteriously, by
the same bond, am pledged to obey, if he so command, a less
guilty descendant of a baffled but nobler student. If he reject
my counsel, and insist upon the pledge, Mejnour, thou wilt have
another neophyte. Beware of another victim! Come to me! This
will reach thee with all speed. Answer it by the pressure of one
hand that I can dare to clasp!
CHAPTER 3.VIII.
Il lupo
Ferito, credo, mi conobbe e 'ncontro
Mi venne con la bocca sanguinosa.
"Aminta," At. iv. Sc. i.
(The wounded wolf, I think, knew me, and came to meet me with its
bloody mouth.)
At Naples, the tomb of Virgil, beetling over the cave of
Posilipo, is reverenced, not with the feelings that should hallow
the memory of the poet, but the awe that wraps the memory of the
magician. To his charms they ascribe the hollowing of that
mountain passage; and tradition yet guards his tomb by the
spirits he had raised to construct the cavern. This spot, in the
immediate vicinity of Viola's home, had often attracted her
solitary footsteps. She had loved the dim and solemn fancies
that beset her as she looked into the lengthened gloom of the
grotto, or, ascending to the tomb, gazed from the rock on the
dwarfed figures of the busy crowd that seemed to creep like
insects along the windings of the soil below; and now, at noon,
she bent thither her thoughtful way. She threaded the narrow
path, she passed the gloomy vineyard that clambers up the rock,
and gained the lofty spot, green with moss and luxuriant foliage,
where the dust of him who yet soothes and elevates the minds of
men is believed to rest. From afar rose the huge fortress of St.
Elmo, frowning darkly amidst spires and domes that glittered in
the sun. Lulled in its azure splendour lay the Siren's sea; and
the grey smoke of Vesuvius, in the clear distance, soared like a
moving pillar into the lucid sky. Motionless on the brink of the
precipice, Viola looked upon the lovely and living world that
stretched below; and the sullen vapour of Vesuvius fascinated her
eye yet more than the scattered gardens, or the gleaming Caprea,
smiling amidst the smiles of the sea. She heard not a step that
had followed her on her path and started to hear a voice at hand.
So sudden was the apparition of the form that stood by her side,
emerging from the bushes that clad the crags, and so singularly
did it harmonise in its uncouth ugliness with the wild nature of
the scene immediately around her, and the wizard traditions of
the place, that the colour left her cheek, and a faint cry broke
from her lips.
"Tush, pretty trembler!--do not be frightened at my face," said
the man, with a bitter smile. "After three months' marriage,
there is no different between ugliness and beauty. Custom is a
great leveller. I was coming to your house when I saw you leave
it; so, as I have matters of importance to communicate, I
ventured to follow your footsteps. My name is Jean Nicot, a name
already favourably known as a French artist. The art of painting
and the art of music are nearly connected, and the stage is an
altar that unites the two."
There was something frank and unembarrassed in the man's address
that served to dispel the fear his appearance had occasioned. He
seated himself, as he spoke, on a crag beside her, and, looking
up steadily into her face, continued:--
"You are very beautiful, Viola Pisani, and I am not surprised at
the number of your admirers. If I presume to place myself in the
list, it is because I am the only one who loves thee honestly,
and woos thee fairly. Nay, look not so indignant! Listen to me.
Has the Prince di -- ever spoken to thee of marriage; or the
beautiful imposter Zanoni, or the young blue-eyed Englishman,
Clarence Glyndon? It is marriage,--it is a home, it is safety,
it is reputation, that I offer to thee; and these last when the
straight form grows crooked, and the bright eyes dim. What say
you?" and he attempted to seize her hand.
Viola shrunk from him, and silently turned to depart. He rose
abruptly and placed himself on her path.
"Actress, you must hear me! Do you know what this calling of the
stage is in the eyes of prejudice,--that is, of the common
opinion of mankind? It is to be a princess before the lamps, and
a Pariah before the day. No man believes in your virtue, no man
credits your vows; you are the puppet that they consent to trick
out with tinsel for their amusement, not an idol for their
worship. Are you so enamoured of this career that you scorn even
to think of security and honour? Perhaps you are different from
what you seem. Perhaps you laugh at the prejudice that would
degrade you, and would wisely turn it to advantage. Speak
frankly to me; I have no prejudice either. Sweet one, I am sure
we should agree. Now, this Prince di --, I have a message from
him. Shall I deliver it?"
Never had Viola felt as she felt then, never had she so
thoroughly seen all the perils of her forelorn condition and her
fearful renown. Nicot continued:--
"Zanoni would but amuse himself with thy vanity; Glyndon would
despise himself, if he offered thee his name, and thee, if thou
wouldst accept it; but the Prince di -- is in earnest, and he is
wealthy. Listen!"
And Nicot approached his lips to her, and hissed a sentence which
she did not suffer him to complete. She darted from him with one
glance of unutterable disdain. As he strove to regain his hold
of her arm, he lost his footing, and fell down the sides of the
rock till, bruised and lacerated, a pine-branch saved him from
the yawning abyss below. She heard his exclamation of rage and
pain as she bounded down the path, and, without once turning to
look behind, regained her home. By the porch stood Glyndon,
conversing with Gionetta. She passed him abruptly, entered the
house, and, sinking on the floor, wept loud and passionately.
Glyndon, who had followed her in surprise, vainly sought to
soothe and calm her. She would not reply to his questions; she
did not seem to listen to his protestations of love, till
suddenly, as Nicot's terrible picture of the world's judgment of
that profession which to her younger thoughts had seemed the
service of Song and the Beautiful, forced itself upon her, she
raised her face from her hands, and, looking steadily upon the
Englishman, said, "False one, dost thou talk of me of love?"
"By my honour, words fail to tell thee how I love!"
"Wilt thou give me thy home, thy name? Dost thou woo me as thy
wife?" And at that moment, had Glyndon answered as his better
angel would have counselled, perhaps, in that revolution of her
whole mind which the words of Nicot had effected, which made her
despise her very self, sicken of her lofty dreams, despair of the
future, and distrust her whole ideal,--perhaps, I say, in
restoring her self-esteem,--he would have won her confidence, and
ultimately secured her love. But against the prompting of his
nobler nature rose up at that sudden question all those doubts
which, as Zanoni had so well implied, made the true enemies of
his soul. Was he thus suddenly to be entangled into a snare laid
for his credulity by deceivers? Was she not instructed to seize
the moment to force him into an avowal which prudence must
repent? Was not the great actress rehearsing a premeditated
part? He turned round, as these thoughts, the children of the
world, passed across him, for he literally fancied that he heard
the sarcastic laugh of Mervale without. Nor was he deceived.
Mervale was passing by the threshold, and Gionetta had told him
his friend was within. Who does not know the effect of the
world's laugh? Mervale was the personation of the world. The
whole world seemed to shout derision in those ringing tones. He
drew back,--he recoiled. Viola followed him with her earnest,
impatient eyes. At last, he faltered forth, "Do all of thy
profession, beautiful Viola, exact marriage as the sole condition
of love?" Oh, bitter question! Oh, poisoned taunt! He repented
it the moment after. He was seized with remorse of reason, of
feeling, and of conscience. He saw her form shrink, as it were,
at his cruel words. He saw the colour come and go, to leave the
writhing lips like marble; and then, with a sad, gentle look of
self-pity, rather than reproach, she pressed her hands tightly to
her bosom, and said,--
"He was right! Pardon me, Englishman; I see now, indeed, that I
am the Pariah and the outcast."
"Hear me. I retract. Viola, Viola! it is for you to forgive!"
But Viola waved him from her, and, smiling mournfully as she
passed him by, glided from the chamber; and he did not dare to
detain her.
CHAPTER 3.IX.
Dafne: Ma, chi lung' e d'Amor?
Tirsi: Chi teme e fugge.
Dafne: E che giova fuggir da lui ch' ha l' ali?
Tirsi: AMOR NASCENTE HA CORTE L' ALI!
"Aminta," At. ii. Sc. ii.
(Dafne: But, who is far from Love?
Tirsi: He who fears and flies.
Dafne: What use to flee from one who has wings?
Tirsi: The wings of Love, while he yet grows, are short.)
When Glyndon found himself without Viola's house, Mervale, still
loitering at the door, seized his arm. Glyndon shook him off
abruptly.
"Thou and thy counsels," said he, bitterly, "have made me a
coward and a wretch. But I will go home,--I will write to her.
I will pour out my whole soul; she will forgive me yet."
Mervale, who was a man of imperturbable temper, arranged his
ruffles, which his friend's angry gesture had a little
discomposed, and not till Glyndon had exhausted himself awhile by
passionate exclamations and reproaches, did the experienced
angler begin to tighten the line. He then drew from Glyndon the
explanation of what had passed, and artfully sought not to
irritate, but soothe him. Mervale, indeed, was by no means a bad
man; he had stronger moral notions than are common amongst the
young. He sincerely reproved his friend for harbouring
dishonourable intentions with regard to the actress. "Because I
would not have her thy wife, I never dreamed that thou shouldst
degrade her to thy mistress. Better of the two an imprudent
match than an illicit connection. But pause yet, do not act on
the impulse of the moment."
"But there is no time to lose. I have promised to Zanoni to give
him my answer by to-morrow night. Later than that time, all
option ceases."
"Ah!" said Mervale, "this seems suspicious. Explain yourself."
And Glyndon, in the earnestness of his passion, told his friend
what had passed between himself and Zanoni,--suppressing only, he
scarce knew why, the reference to his ancestor and the mysterious
brotherhood.
This recital gave to Mervale all the advantage he could desire.
Heavens! with what sound, shrewd common-sense he talked. How
evidently some charlatanic coalition between the actress, and
perhaps,--who knows?--her clandestine protector, sated with
possession! How equivocal the character of one,--the position of
the other! What cunning in the question of the actress! How
profoundly had Glyndon, at the first suggestion of his sober
reason, seen through the snare. What! was he to be thus
mystically cajoled and hurried into a rash marriage, because
Zanoni, a mere stranger, told him with a grave face that he must
decide before the clock struck a certain hour?
"Do this at least," said Mervale, reasonably enough,--"wait till
the time expires; it is but another day. Baffle Zanoni. He
tells thee that he will meet thee before midnight to-morrow, and
defies thee to avoid him. Pooh! let us quit Naples for some
neighbouring place, where, unless he be indeed the Devil, he
cannot possibly find us. Show him that you will not be led
blindfold even into an act that you meditate yourself. Defer to
write to her, or to see her, till after to-morrow. This is all I
ask. Then visit her, and decide for yourself."
Glyndon was staggered. He could not combat the reasonings of his
friend; he was not convinced, but he hesitated; and at that
moment Nicot passed them. He turned round, and stopped, as he
saw Glyndon.
"Well, and do you think still of the Pisani?"
"Yes; and you--"
"Have seen and conversed with her. She shall be Madame Nicot
before this day week! I am going to the cafe, in the Toledo; and
hark ye, when next you meet your friend Signor Zanoni, tell him
that he has twice crossed my path. Jean Nicot, though a painter,
is a plain, honest man, and always pays his debts."
"It is a good doctrine in money matters," said Mervale; "as to
revenge, it is not so moral, and certainly not so wise. But is
it in your love that Zanoni has crossed your path? How that, if
your suit prosper so well?"
"Ask Viola Pisani that question. Bah! Glyndon, she is a prude
only to thee. But I have no prejudices. Once more, farewell."
"Rouse thyself, man!" said Mervale, slapping Glyndon on the
shoulder. "What think you of your fair one now?"
"This man must lie."
"Will you write to her at once?"
"No; if she be really playing a game, I could renounce her
without a sigh. I will watch her closely; and, at all events,
Zanoni shall not be the master of my fate. Let us, as you
advise, leave Naples at daybreak to-morrow."
CHAPTER 3.X.
O chiunque tu sia, che fuor d'ogni uso
Pieghi Natura ad opre altere e strane,
E, spiando i segreti, entri al piu chiuso
Spazi' a tua voglia delle menti umane--
Deh, Dimmi!
"Gerus. Lib.," Cant. x. xviii.
(O thou, whoever thou art, who through every use bendest Nature
to works foreign and strange; and by spying into her secrets,
enterest at thy will into the closest recesses of the human
mind,--O speak! O tell me!)
Early the next morning the young Englishmen mounted their horses,
and took the road towards Baiae. Glyndon left word at his hotel,
that if Signor Zanoni sought him, it was in the neighbourhood of
that once celebrated watering-place of the ancients that he
should be found.
They passed by Viola's house, but Glyndon resisted the temptation
of pausing there; and after threading the grotto of Posilipo,
they wound by a circuitous route back into the suburbs of the
city, and took the opposite road, which conducts to Portici and
Pompeii. It was late at noon when they arrived at the former of
these places. Here they halted to dine; for Mervale had heard
much of the excellence of the macaroni at Portici, and Mervale
was a bon vivant.
They put up at an inn of very humble pretensions, and dined under
an awning. Mervale was more than usually gay; he pressed the
lacrima upon his friend, and conversed gayly.
"Well, my dear friend, we have foiled Signor Zanoni in one of his
predictions at least. You will have no faith in him hereafter."
"The ides are come, not gone."
"Tush! If he be the soothsayer, you are not the Caesar. It is
your vanity that makes you credulous. Thank Heaven, I do not
think myself of such importance that the operations of Nature
should be changed in order to frighten me."
"But why should the operations of Nature be changed? There may
be a deeper philosophy than we dream of,--a philosophy that
discovers the secrets of Nature, but does not alter, by
penetrating, its courses."
"Ah, you relapse into your heretical credulity; you seriously
suppose Zanoni to be a prophet,--a reader of the future; perhaps
an associate of genii and spirits!"
Here the landlord, a little, fat, oily fellow, came up with a
fresh bottle of lacrima. He hoped their Excellencies were
pleased. He was most touched--touched to the heart, that they
liked the macaroni. Were their Excellencies going to Vesuvius?
There was a slight eruption; they could not see it where they
were, but it was pretty, and would be prettier still after
sunset.
"A capital idea!" cried Mervale. "What say you, Glyndon?"
"I have not yet seen an eruption; I should like it much."
"But is there no danger?" asked the prudent Mervale.
"Oh, not at all; the mountain is very civil at present. It only
plays a little, just to amuse their Excellencies the English."
"Well, order the horses, and bring the bill; we will go before it
is dark. Clarence, my friend,--nunc est bibendum; but take care
of the pede libero, which will scarce do for walking on lava!"
The bottle was finished, the bill paid; the gentlemen mounted,
the landlord bowed, and they bent their way, in the cool of the
delightful evening, towards Resina.
The wine, perhaps the excitement of his thoughts, animated
Glyndon, whose unequal spirits were, at times, high and brilliant
as those of a schoolboy released; and the laughter of the
Northern tourists sounded oft and merrily along the melancholy
domains of buried cities.
Hesperus had lighted his lamp amidst the rosy skies as they
arrived at Resina. Here they quitted their horses, and took
mules and a guide. As the sky grew darker and more dark, the
mountain fire burned with an intense lustre. In various streaks
and streamlets, the fountain of flame rolled down the dark
summit, and the Englishmen began to feel increase upon them, as
they ascended, that sensation of solemnity and awe which makes
the very atmosphere that surrounds the Giant of the Plains of the
Antique Hades.
It was night, when, leaving the mules, they ascended on foot,
accompanied by their guide, and a peasant who bore a rude torch.
The guide was a conversable, garrulous fellow, like most of his
country and his calling; and Mervale, who possessed a sociable
temper, loved to amuse or to instruct himself on every incidental
occasion.
"Ah, Excellency," said the guide, "your countrymen have a strong
passion for the volcano. Long life to them, they bring us plenty
of money! If our fortunes depended on the Neapolitans, we should
starve."
"True, they have no curiosity," said Mervale. "Do you remember,
Glyndon, the contempt with which that old count said to us, 'You
will go to Vesuvius, I suppose? I have never been; why should I
go? You have cold, you have hunger, you have fatigue, you have
danger, and all for nothing but to see fire, which looks just as
well in a brazier as on a mountain.' Ha! ha! the old fellow was
right."
"But, Excellency," said the guide, "that is not all: some
cavaliers think to ascend the mountain without our help. I am
sure they deserve to tumble into the crater."
"They must be bold fellows to go alone; you don't often find
such."
"Sometimes among the French, signor. But the other night--I
never was so frightened--I had been with an English party, and a
lady had left a pocket-book on the mountain, where she had been
sketching. She offered me a handsome sum to return for it, and
bring it to her at Naples. So I went in the evening. I found
it, sure enough, and was about to return, when I saw a figure
that seemed to emerge from the crater itself. The air there was
so pestiferous that I could not have conceived a human creature
could breathe it, and live. I was so astounded that I stood
still as a stone, till the figure came over the hot ashes, and
stood before me, face to face. Santa Maria, what a head!"
"What! hideous?"
"No; so beautiful, but so terrible. It had nothing human in its
aspect."
"And what said the salamander?"
"Nothing! It did not even seem to perceive me, though I was near
as I am to you; but its eyes seemed to emerge prying into the
air. It passed by me quickly, and, walking across a stream of
burning lava, soon vanished on the other side of the mountain. I
was curious and foolhardy, and resolved to see if I could bear
the atmosphere which this visitor had left; but though I did not
advance within thirty yards of the spot at which he had first
appeared, I was driven back by a vapour that wellnigh stifled me.
Cospetto! I have spat blood ever since."
"Now will I lay a wager that you fancy this fire-king must be
Zanoni," whispered Mervale, laughing.
The little party had now arrived nearly at the summit of the
mountain; and unspeakably grand was the spectacle on which they
gazed. From the crater arose a vapour, intensely dark, that
overspread the whole background of the heavens; in the centre
whereof rose a flame that assumed a form singularly beautiful.
It might have been compared to a crest of gigantic feathers, the
diadem of the mountain, high-arched, and drooping downward, with
the hues delicately shaded off, and the whole shifting and
tremulous as the plumage on a warrior's helmet.
The glare of the flame spread, luminous and crimson, over the
dark and rugged ground on which they stood, and drew an
innumerable variety of shadows from crag and hollow. An
oppressive and sulphureous exhalation served to increase the
gloomy and sublime terror of the place. But on turning from the
mountain, and towards the distant and unseen ocean, the contrast
was wonderfully great; the heavens serene and blue, the stars
still and calm as the eyes of Divine Love. It was as if the
realms of the opposing principles of Evil and of Good were
brought in one view before the gaze of man! Glyndon--once more
the enthusiast, the artist--was enchained and entranced by
emotions vague and undefinable, half of delight and half of pain.
Leaning on the shoulder of his friend, he gazed around him, and
heard with deepening awe the rumbling of the earth below, the
wheels and voices of the Ministry of Nature in her darkest and
most inscrutable recess. Suddenly, as a bomb from a shell, a
huge stone was flung hundreds of yards up from the jaws of the
crater, and falling with a mighty crash upon the rock below,
split into ten thousand fragments, which bounded down the sides
of the mountain, sparkling and groaning as they went. One of
these, the largest fragment, struck the narrow space of soil
between the Englishmen and the guide, not three feet from the
spot where the former stood. Mervale uttered an exclamation of
terror, and Glyndon held his breath, and shuddered.
"Diavolo!" cried the guide. "Descend, Excellencies,--descend! we
have not a moment to lose; follow me close!"
So saying, the guide and the peasant fled with as much swiftness
as they were able to bring to bear. Mervale, ever more prompt
and ready than his friend, imitated their example; and Glyndon,
more confused than alarmed, followed close. But they had not
gone many yards, before, with a rushing and sudden blast, came
from the crater an enormous volume of vapour. It pursued,--it
overtook, it overspread them. It swept the light from the
heavens. All was abrupt and utter darkness; and through the
gloom was heard the shout of the guide, already distant, and lost
in an instant amidst the sound of the rushing gust and the groans
of the earth beneath. Glyndon paused. He was separated from his
friend, from the guide. He was alone,--with the Darkness and the
Terror. The vapour rolled sullenly away; the form of the plumed
fire was again dimly visible, and its struggling and perturbed
reflection again shed a glow over the horrors of the path.
Glyndon recovered himself, and sped onward. Below, he heard the
voice of Mervale calling on him, though he no longer saw his
form. The sound served as a guide. Dizzy and breathless, he
bounded forward; when--hark!--a sullen, slow rolling sounded in
his ear! He halted,--and turned back to gaze. The fire had
overflowed its course; it had opened itself a channel amidst the
furrows of the mountain. The stream pursued him fast--fast; and
the hot breath of the chasing and preternatural foe came closer
and closer upon his cheek! He turned aside; he climbed
desperately with hands and feet upon a crag that, to the right,
broke the scathed and blasted level of the soil. The stream
rolled beside and beneath him, and then taking a sudden wind
round the spot on which he stood, interposed its liquid fire,--a
broad and impassable barrier between his resting-place and
escape. There he stood, cut off from descent, and with no
alternative but to retrace his steps towards the crater, and
thence seek, without guide or clew, some other pathway.
For a moment his courage left him; he cried in despair, and in
that overstrained pitch of voice which is never heard afar off,
to the guide, to Mervale, to return to aid him.
No answer came; and the Englishman, thus abandoned solely to his
own resources, felt his spirit and energy rise against the
danger. He turned back, and ventured as far towards the crater
as the noxious exhalation would permit; then, gazing below,
carefully and deliberately he chalked out for himself a path by
which he trusted to shun the direction the fire-stream had taken,
and trod firmly and quickly over the crumbling and heated strata.
He had proceeded about fifty yards, when he halted abruptly; an
unspeakable and unaccountable horror, not hitherto experienced
amidst all his peril, came over him. He shook in every limb; his
muscles refused his will,--he felt, as it were, palsied and
death-stricken. The horror, I say, was unaccountable, for the
path seemed clear and safe. The fire, above and behind, burned
clear and far; and beyond, the stars lent him their cheering
guidance. No obstacle was visible,--no danger seemed at hand.
As thus, spell-bound, and panic-stricken, he stood chained to the
soil,--his breast heaving, large drops rolling down his brow, and
his eyes starting wildly from their sockets,--he saw before him,
at some distance, gradually shaping itself more and more
distinctly to his gaze, a colossal shadow; a shadow that seemed
partially borrowed from the human shape, but immeasurably above
the human stature; vague, dark, almost formless; and differing,
he could not tell where or why, not only from the proportions,
but also from the limbs and outline of man.
The glare of the volcano, that seemed to shrink and collapse from
this gigantic and appalling apparition, nevertheless threw its
light, redly and steadily, upon another shape that stood beside,
quiet and motionless; and it was, perhaps, the contrast of these
two things--the Being and the Shadow--that impressed the beholder
with the difference between them,--the Man and the Superhuman.
It was but for a moment--nay, for the tenth part of a moment--
that this sight was permitted to the wanderer. A second eddy of
sulphureous vapours from the volcano, yet more rapidly, yet more
densely than its predecessor, rolled over the mountain; and
either the nature of the exhalation, or the excess of his own
dread, was such, that Glyndon, after one wild gasp for breath,
fell senseless on the earth.
CHAPTER 3.XI.
Was hab'ich,
Wenn ich nicht Alles habe?--sprach der Jungling.
"Das Verschleierte Bild zu Sais."
("What have I, if I possess not All?" said the youth.)
Mervale and the Italians arrived in safety at the spot where they
had left the mules; and not till they had recovered their own
alarm and breath did they think of Glyndon. But then, as the
minutes passed, and he appeared not, Mervale, whose heart was as
good at least as human hearts are in general, grew seriously
alarmed. He insisted on returning to search for his friend; and
by dint of prodigal promises prevailed at last on the guide to
accompany him. The lower part of the mountain lay calm and white
in the starlight; and the guide's practised eye could discern all
objects on the surface at a considerable distance. They had not,
however, gone very far, before they perceived two forms slowly
approaching them.
As they came near, Mervale recognised the form of his friend.
"Thank Heaven, he is safe!" he cried, turning to the guide.
"Holy angels befriend us!" said the Italian, trembling,--"behold
the very being that crossed me last Friday night. It is he, but
his face is human now!"
"Signor Inglese," said the voice of Zanoni, as Glyndon--pale,
wan, and silent--returned passively the joyous greeting of
Mervale,--"Signor Inglese, I told your friend that we should meet
to-night. You see you have NOT foiled my prediction."
"But how?--but where?" stammered Mervale, in great confusion and
surprise.
"I found your friend stretched on the ground, overpowered by the
mephitic exhalation of the crater. I bore him to a purer
atmosphere; and as I know the mountain well, I have conducted him
safely to you. This is all our history. You see, sir, that were
it not for that prophecy which you desired to frustrate, your
friend would ere this time have been a corpse; one minute more,
and the vapour had done its work. Adieu; goodnight, and pleasant
dreams."
"But, my preserver, you will not leave us?" said Glyndon,
anxiously, and speaking for the first time. "Will you not return
with us?"
Zanoni paused, and drew Glyndon aside. "Young man," said he,
gravely, "it is necessary that we should again meet to-night. It
is necessary that you should, ere the first hour of morning,
decide on your own fate. I know that you have insulted her whom
you profess to love. It is not too late to repent. Consult not
your friend: he is sensible and wise; but not now is his wisdom
needed. There are times in life when, from the imagination, and
not the reason, should wisdom come,--this, for you, is one of
them. I ask not your answer now. Collect your thoughts,--
recover your jaded and scattered spirits. It wants two hours of
midnight. Before midnight I will be with you."
"Incomprehensible being!" replied the Englishman, "I would leave
the life you have preserved in your own hands; but what I have
seen this night has swept even Viola from my thoughts. A fiercer
desire than that of love burns in my veins,--the desire not to
resemble but to surpass my kind; the desire to penetrate and to
share the secret of your own existence--the desire of a
preternatural knowledge and unearthly power. I make my choice.
In my ancestor's name, I adjure and remind thee of thy pledge.
Instruct me; school me; make me thine; and I surrender to thee
at once, and without a murmur, the woman whom, till I saw thee, I
would have defied a world to obtain."
"I bid thee consider well: on the one hand, Viola, a tranquil
home, a happy and serene life; on the other hand, all is
darkness,--darkness, that even these eyes cannot penetrate."
"But thou hast told me, that if I wed Viola, I must be contented
with the common existence,--if I refuse, it is to aspire to thy
knowledge and thy power."
"Vain man, knowledge and power are not happiness."
"But they are better than happiness. Say!--if I marry Viola,
wilt thou be my master,--my guide? Say this, and I am resolved.
"It were impossible."
"Then I renounce her? I renounce love. I renounce happiness.
Welcome solitude,--welcome despair; if they are the entrances to
thy dark and sublime secret."
"I will not take thy answer now. Before the last hour of night
thou shalt give it in one word,--ay or no! Farewell till then."
Zanoni waved his hand, and, descending rapidly, was seen no more.
Glyndon rejoined his impatient and wondering friend; but Mervale,
gazing on his face, saw that a great change had passed there.
The flexile and dubious expression of youth was forever gone.
The features were locked, rigid, and stern; and so faded was the
natural bloom, that an hour seemed to have done the work of
years.
CHAPTER 3.XII.
Was ist's
Das hinter diesem Schleier sich verbirgt?
"Das Verschleierte Bild zu Sais."
(What is it that conceals itself behind this veil?)
On returning from Vesuvius or Pompeii, you enter Naples through
its most animated, its most Neapolitan quarter,--through that
quarter in which modern life most closely resembles the ancient;
and in which, when, on a fair-day, the thoroughfare swarms alike
with Indolence and Trade, you are impressed at once with the
recollection of that restless, lively race from which the
population of Naples derives its origin; so that in one day you
may see at Pompeii the habitations of a remote age; and on the
Mole, at Naples, you may imagine you behold the very beings with
whom those habitations had been peopled.
But now, as the Englishmen rode slowly through the deserted
streets, lighted but by the lamps of heaven, all the gayety of
day was hushed and breathless. Here and there, stretched under a
portico or a dingy booth, were sleeping groups of houseless
Lazzaroni,--a tribe now merging its indolent individuality amidst
an energetic and active population.
The Englishman rode on in silence; for Glyndon neither appeared
to heed nor hear the questions and comments of Mervale, and
Mervale himself was almost as weary as the jaded animal he
bestrode.
Suddenly the silence of earth and ocean was broken by the sound
of a distant clock that proclaimed the quarter preceding the last
hour of night. Glyndon started from his reverie, and looked
anxiously round. As the final stroke died, the noise of hoofs
rung on the broad stones of the pavement, and from a narrow
street to the right emerged the form of a solitary horseman. He
neared the Englishmen, and Glyndon recognised the features and
mien of Zanoni.
"What! do we meet again, signor?" said Mervale, in a vexed but
drowsy tone.
"Your friend and I have business together," replied Zanoni, as he
wheeled his steed to the side of Glyndon. "But it will be soon
transacted. Perhaps you, sir, will ride on to your hotel."
"Alone!"
"There is no danger!" returned Zanoni, with a slight expression
of disdain in his voice.
"None to me; but to Glyndon?"
"Danger from me! Ah, perhaps you are right."
"Go on, my dear Mervale," said Glyndon; "I will join you before
you reach the hotel."
Mervale nodded, whistled, and pushed his horse into a kind of
amble.
"Now your answer,--quick?"
"I have decided. The love of Viola has vanished from my heart.
The pursuit is over."
"You have decided?"
"I have; and now my reward."
"Thy reward! Well; ere this hour to-morrow it shall await thee."
Zanoni gave the rein to his horse; it sprang forward with a
bound: the sparks flew from its hoofs, and horse and rider
disappeared amidst the shadows of the street whence they had
emerged.
Mervale was surprised to see his friend by his side, a minute
after they had parted.
"What has passed between you and Zanoni?"
"Mervale, do not ask me to-night! I am in a dream."
"I do not wonder at it, for even I am in a sleep. Let us push
on."
In the retirement of his chamber, Glyndon sought to recollect his
thoughts. He sat down on the foot of his bed, and pressed his
hands tightly to his throbbing temples. The events of the last
few hours; the apparition of the gigantic and shadowy Companion
of the Mystic, amidst the fires and clouds of Vesuvius; the
strange encounter with Zanoni himself, on a spot in which he
could never, by ordinary reasoning, have calculated on finding
Glyndon, filled his mind with emotions, in which terror and awe
the least prevailed. A fire, the train of which had been long
laid, was lighted at his heart,--the asbestos-fire that, once
lit, is never to be quenched. All his early aspirations--his
young ambition, his longings for the laurel--were merged in one
passionate yearning to surpass the bounds of the common knowledge
of man, and reach that solemn spot, between two worlds, on which
the mysterious stranger appeared to have fixed his home.
Far from recalling with renewed affright the remembrance of the
apparition that had so appalled him, the recollection only served
to kindle and concentrate his curiosity into a burning focus. He
had said aright,--LOVE HAD VANISHED FROM HIS HEART; there was no
longer a serene space amidst its disordered elements for human
affection to move and breathe. The enthusiast was rapt from this
earth; and he would have surrendered all that mortal beauty ever
promised, that mortal hope ever whispered, for one hour with
Zanoni beyond the portals of the visible world.
He rose, oppressed and fevered with the new thoughts that raged
within him, and threw open his casement for air. The ocean lay
suffused in the starry light, and the stillness of the heavens
never more eloquently preached the morality of repose to the
madness of earthly passions. But such was Glyndon's mood that
their very hush only served to deepen the wild desires that
preyed upon his soul; and the solemn stars, that are mysteries in
themselves, seemed, by a kindred sympathy, to agitate the wings
of the spirit no longer contented with its cage. As he gazed, a
star shot from its brethren, and vanished from the depth of
space!
CHAPTER 3.XIII.
O, be gone!
By Heaven, I love thee better than myself,
For I came hither armed against myself.
"Romeo and Juliet."
The young actress and Gionetta had returned from the theatre; and
Viola fatigued and exhausted, had thrown herself on a sofa, while
Gionetta busied herself with the long tresses which, released
from the fillet that bound them, half-concealed the form of the
actress, like a veil of threads of gold. As she smoothed the
luxuriant locks, the old nurse ran gossiping on about the little
events of the night, the scandal and politics of the scenes and
the tireroom. Gionetta was a worthy soul. Almanzor, in Dryden's
tragedy of "Almahide," did not change sides with more gallant
indifference than the exemplary nurse. She was at last grieved
and scandalised that Viola had not selected one chosen cavalier.
But the choice she left wholly to her fair charge. Zegri or
Abencerrage, Glyndon or Zanoni, it had been the same to her,
except that the rumours she had collected respecting the latter,
combined with his own recommendations of his rival, had given her
preference to the Englishman. She interpreted ill the impatient
and heavy sigh with which Viola greeted her praises of Glyndon,
and her wonder that he had of late so neglected his attentions
behind the scenes, and she exhausted all her powers of panegyric
upon the supposed object of the sigh. "And then, too," she said,
"if nothing else were to be said against the other signor, it is
enough that he is about to leave Naples."
"Leave Naples!--Zanoni?"
"Yes, darling! In passing by the Mole to-day, there was a crowd
round some outlandish-looking sailors. His ship arrived this
morning, and anchors in the bay. The sailors say that they are
to be prepared to sail with the first wind; they were taking in
fresh stores. They--"
"Leave me, Gionetta! Leave me!"
The time had already passed when the girl could confide in
Gionetta. Her thoughts had advanced to that point when the heart
recoils from all confidence, and feels that it cannot be
comprehended. Alone now, in the principal apartment of the
house, she paced its narrow boundaries with tremulous and
agitated steps: she recalled the frightful suit of Nicot,--the
injurious taunt of Glyndon; and she sickened at the remembrance
of the hollow applauses which, bestowed on the actress, not the
woman, only subjected her to contumely and insult. In that room
the recollection of her father's death, the withered laurel and
the broken chords, rose chillingly before her. Hers, she felt,
was a yet gloomier fate,--the chords may break while the laurel
is yet green. The lamp, waning in its socket, burned pale and
dim, and her eyes instinctively turned from the darker corner of
the room. Orphan, by the hearth of thy parent, dost thou fear
the presence of the dead!
And was Zanoni indeed about to quit Naples? Should she see him
no more? Oh, fool, to think that there was grief in any other
thought! The past!--that was gone! The future!--there was no
future to her, Zanoni absent! But this was the night of the
third day on which Zanoni had told her that, come what might, he
would visit her again. It was, then, if she might believe him,
some appointed crisis in her fate; and how should she tell him of
Glyndon's hateful words? The pure and the proud mind can never
confide its wrongs to another, only its triumphs and its
happiness. But at that late hour would Zanoni visit her,--could
she receive him? Midnight was at hand. Still in undefined
suspense, in intense anxiety, she lingered in the room. The
quarter before midnight sounded, dull and distant. All was
still, and she was about to pass to her sleeping-room, when she
heard the hoofs of a horse at full speed; the sound ceased, there
was a knock at the door. Her heart beat violently; but fear gave
way to another sentiment when she heard a voice, too well known,
calling on her name. She paused, and then, with the fearlessness
of innocence, descended and unbarred the door.
Zanoni entered with a light and hasty step. His horseman's cloak
fitted tightly to his noble form, and his broad hat threw a
gloomy shade over his commanding features.
The girl followed him into the room she had just left, trembling
and blushing deeply, and stood before him with the lamp she held
shining upward on her cheek and the long hair that fell like a
shower of light over the half-clad shoulders and heaving bust.
"Viola," said Zanoni, in a voice that spoke deep emotion, "I am
by thy side once more to save thee. Not a moment is to be lost.
Thou must fly with me, or remain the victim of the Prince di --.
I would have made the charge I now undertake another's; thou
knowest I would,--thou knowest it!--but he is not worthy of thee,
the cold Englishman! I throw myself at thy feet; have trust in
me, and fly."
He grasped her hand passionately as he dropped on his knee, and
looked up into her face with his bright, beseeching eyes.
"Fly with thee!" said Viola, scarce believing her senses.
"With me. Name, fame, honour,--all will be sacrificed if thou
dost not."
"Then--then," said the wild girl, falteringly, and turning aside
her face,--"then I am not indifferent to thee; thou wouldst not
give me to another?"
Zanoni was silent; but his breast heaved, his cheeks flushed, his
eyes darted dark and impassioned fire.
"Speak!" exclaimed Viola, in jealous suspicion of his silence.
"Indifferent to me! No; but I dare not yet say that I love
thee."
"Then what matters my fate?" said Viola, turning pale, and
shrinking from his side; "leave me,--I fear no danger. My life,
and therefore my honour, is in mine own hands."
"Be not so mad," said Zanoni. "Hark! do you hear the neigh of my
steed?--it is an alarm that warns us of the approaching peril.
Haste, or you are lost!"
"Why dost thou care for me?" said the girl, bitterly. "Thou hast
read my heart; thou knowest that thou art become the lord of my
destiny. But to be bound beneath the weight of a cold
obligation; to be the beggar on the eyes of indifference; to cast
myself on one who loves me not,--THAT were indeed the vilest sin
of my sex. Ah, Zanoni, rather let me die!"
She had thrown back her clustering hair from her face while she
spoke; and as she now stood, with her arms drooping mournfully,
and her hands clasped together with the proud bitterness of her
wayward spirit, giving new zest and charm to her singular beauty,
it was impossible to conceive a sight more irresistible to the
eye and the heart.
"Tempt me not to thine own danger,--perhaps destruction!"
exclaimed Zanoni, in faltering accents. "Thou canst not dream of
what thou wouldst demand,--come!" and, advancing, he wound his
arm round her waist. "Come, Viola; believe at least in my
friendship, my honour, my protection--"
"And not thy love," said the Italian, turning on him her
reproachful eyes. Those eyes met his, and he could not withdraw
from the charm of their gaze. He felt her heart throbbing
beneath his own; her breath came warm upon his cheek. He
trembled,--HE! the lofty, the mysterious Zanoni, who seemed to
stand aloof from his race. With a deep and burning sigh, he
murmured, "Viola, I love thee! Oh!" he continued passionately,
and, releasing his hold, he threw himself abruptly at her feet,
"I no more command,--as woman should be wooed, I woo thee. From
the first glance of those eyes, from the first sound of thy
voice, thou becamest too fatally dear to me. Thou speakest of
fascination,--it lives and it breathes in thee! I fled from
Naples to fly from thy presence,--it pursued me. Months, years
passed, and thy sweet face still shone upon my heart. I
returned, because I pictured thee alone and sorrowful in the
world, and knew that dangers, from which I might save thee, were
gathering near thee and around. Beautiful Soul! whose leaves I
have read with reverence, it was for thy sake, thine alone, that
I would have given thee to one who might make thee happier on
earth than I can. Viola! Viola! thou knowest not--never canst
thou know--how dear thou art to me!"
It is in vain to seek for words to describe the delight--the
proud, the full, the complete, and the entire delight--that
filled the heart of the Neapolitan. He whom she had considered
too lofty even for love,--more humble to her than those she had
half-despised! She was silent, but her eyes spoke to him; and
then slowly, as aware, at last, that the human love had advanced
on the ideal, she shrank into the terrors of a modest and
virtuous nature. She did not dare,--she did not dream to ask him
the question she had so fearlessly made to Glyndon; but she felt
a sudden coldness,--a sense that a barrier was yet between love
and love. "Oh, Zanoni!" she murmured, with downcast eyes, "ask
me not to fly with thee; tempt me not to my shame. Thou wouldst
protect me from others. Oh, protect me from thyself!"
"Poor orphan!" said he, tenderly, "and canst thou think that I
ask from thee one sacrifice,--still less the greatest that woman
can give to love? As my wife I woo thee, and by every tie, and
by every vow that can hallow and endear affection. Alas! they
have belied love to thee indeed, if thou dost not know the
religion that belongs to it! They who truly love would seek, for
the treasure they obtain, every bond that can make it lasting and
secure. Viola, weep not, unless thou givest me the holy right to
kiss away thy tears!"
And that beautiful face, no more averted, drooped upon his bosom;
and as he bent down, his lips sought the rosy mouth: a long and
burning kiss,--danger, life, the world was forgotten! Suddenly
Zanoni tore himself from her.
"Hearest thou the wind that sighs, and dies away? As that wind,
my power to preserve thee, to guard thee, to foresee the storm in
thy skies, is gone. No matter. Haste, haste; and may love
supply the loss of all that it has dared to sacrifice! Come."
Viola hesitated no more. She threw her mantle over her
shoulders, and gathered up her dishevelled hair; a moment, and
she was prepared, when a sudden crash was heard below.
"Too late!--fool that I was, too late!" cried Zanoni, in a sharp
tone of agony, as he hurried to the door. He opened it, only to
be borne back by the press of armed men. The room literally
swarmed with the followers of the ravisher, masked, and armed to
the teeth.
Viola was already in the grasp of two of the myrmidons. Her
shriek smote the ear of Zanoni. He sprang forward; and Viola
heard his wild cry in a foreign tongue. She saw the blades of
the ruffians pointed at his breast! She lost her senses; and
when she recovered, she found herself gagged, and in a carriage
that was driven rapidly, by the side of a masked and motionless
figure. The carriage stopped at the portals of a gloomy mansion.
The gates opened noiselessly; a broad flight of steps,
brilliantly illumined, was before her. She was in the palace of
the Prince di --.
CHAPTER 3.XIV.
Ma lasciamo, per Dio, Signore, ormai
Di parlar d' ira, e di cantar di morte.
"Orlando Furioso," Canto xvii. xvii.
(But leave me, I solemnly conjure thee, signor, to speak of
wrath, and to sing of death.)
The young actress was led to, and left alone in a chamber adorned
with all the luxurious and half-Eastern taste that at one time
characterised the palaces of the great seigneurs of Italy. Her
first thought was for Zanoni. Was he yet living? Had he escaped
unscathed the blades of the foe,--her new treasure, the new light
of her life, her lord, at last her lover?
She had short time for reflection. She heard steps approaching
the chamber; she drew back, but trembled not. A courage not of
herself, never known before, sparkled in her eyes, and dilated
her stature. Living or dead, she would be faithful still to
Zanoni! There was a new motive to the preservation of honour.
The door opened, and the prince entered in the gorgeous and gaudy
custume still worn at that time in Naples.
"Fair and cruel one," said he, advancing with a half-sneer upon
his lip, "thou wilt not too harshly blame the violence of love."
He attempted to take her hand as he spoke.
"Nay," said he, as she recoiled, "reflect that thou art now in
the power of one that never faltered in the pursuit of an object
less dear to him than thou art. Thy lover, presumptuous though
he be, is not by to save thee. Mine thou art; but instead of thy
master, suffer me to be thy slave."
"Prince," said Viola, with a stern gravity, "your boast is in
vain. Your power! I am NOT in your power. Life and death are
in my own hands. I will not defy; but I do not fear you. I
feel--and in some feelings," added Viola, with a solemnity almost
thrilling, "there is all the strength, and all the divinity of
knowledge--I feel that I am safe even here; but you--you, Prince
di --, have brought danger to your home and hearth!"
The Neapolitan seemed startled by an earnestness and boldness he
was but little prepared for. He was not, however, a man easily
intimidated or deterred from any purpose he had formed; and,
approaching Viola, he was about to reply with much warmth, real
or affected, when a knock was heard at the door of the chamber.
The sound was repeated, and the prince, chafed at the
interruption, opened the door and demanded impatiently who had
ventured to disobey his orders, and invade his leisure. Mascari
presented himself, pale and agitated: "My lord," said he, in a
whisper, "pardon me; but a stranger is below, who insists on
seeing you; and, from some words he let fall, I judged it
advisable even to infringe your commands."
"A stranger!--and at this hour! What business can he pretend?
Why was he even admitted?"
"He asserts that your life is in imminent danger. The source
whence it proceeds he will relate to your Excellency alone."
The prince frowned; but his colour changed. He mused a moment,
and then, re-entering the chamber and advancing towards Viola, he
said,--
"Believe me, fair creature, I have no wish to take advantage of
my power. I would fain trust alone to the gentler authorities of
affection. Hold yourself queen within these walls more
absolutely than you have ever enacted that part on the stage.
To-night, farewell! May your sleep be calm, and your dreams
propitious to my hopes."
With these words he retired, and in a few moments Viola was
surrounded by officious attendants, whom she at length, with some
difficulty, dismissed; and, refusing to retire to rest, she spent
the night in examining the chamber, which she found was secured,
and in thoughts of Zanoni, in whose power she felt an almost
preternatural confidence.
Meanwhile the prince descended the stairs and sought the room
into which the stranger had been shown.
He found the visitor wrapped from head to foot in a long robe,
half-gown, half-mantle, such as was sometimes worn by
ecclesiastics. The face of this stranger was remarkable. So
sunburnt and swarthy were his hues, that he must, apparently,
have derived his origin amongst the races of the farthest East.
His forehead was lofty, and his eyes so penetrating yet so calm
in their gaze that the prince shrank from them as we shrink from
a questioner who is drawing forth the guiltiest secret of our
hearts.
"What would you with me?" asked the prince, motioning his visitor
to a seat.
"Prince of --," said the stranger, in a voice deep and sweet, but
foreign in its accent,--"son of the most energetic and masculine
race that ever applied godlike genius to the service of Human
Will, with its winding wickedness and its stubborn grandeur;
descendant of the great Visconti in whose chronicles lies the
history of Italy in her palmy day, and in whose rise was the
development of the mightiest intellect, ripened by the most
restless ambition,--I come to gaze upon the last star in a
darkening firmament. By this hour to-morrow space shall know it
not. Man, unless thy whole nature change, thy days are
numbered!"
"What means this jargon?" said the prince, in visible
astonishment and secret awe. "Comest thou to menace me in my own
halls, or wouldst thou warn me of a danger? Art thou some
itinerant mountebank, or some unguessed-of friend? Speak out,
and plainly. What danger threatens me?"
"Zanoni and thy ancestor's sword," replied the stranger.
"Ha! ha!" said the prince, laughing scournfully; "I
half-suspected thee from the first. Thou art then the accomplice
or the tool of that most dexterous, but, at present, defeated
charlatan? And I suppose thou wilt tell me that if I were to
release a certain captive I have made, the danger would vanish,
and the hand of the dial would be put back?"
"Judge of me as thou wilt, Prince di --. I confess my knowledge
of Zanoni. Thou, too, wilt know his power, but not till it
consume thee. I would save, therefore I warn thee. Dost thou
ask me why? I will tell thee. Canst thou remember to have heard
wild tales of thy grandsire; of his desire for a knowledge that
passes that of the schools and cloisters; of a strange man from
the East who was his familiar and master in lore against which
the Vatican has, from age to age, launched its mimic thunder?
Dost thou call to mind the fortunes of thy ancestor?--how he
succeeded in youth to little but a name; how, after a career wild
and dissolute as thine, he disappeared from Milan, a pauper, and
a self-exile; how, after years spent, none knew in what climes or
in what pursuits, he again revisited the city where his
progenitors had reigned; how with him came the wise man of the
East, the mystic Mejnour; how they who beheld him, beheld with
amaze and fear that time had ploughed no furrow on his brow; that
youth seemed fixed, as by a spell, upon his face and form? Dost
thou not know that from that hour his fortunes rose? Kinsmen the
most remote died; estate upon estate fell into the hands of the
ruined noble. He became the guide of princes, the first magnate
of Italy. He founded anew the house of which thou art the last
lineal upholder, and transferred his splendour from Milan to the
Sicilian realms. Visions of high ambition were then present with
him nightly and daily. Had he lived, Italy would have known a
new dynasty, and the Visconti would have reigned over Magna-
Graecia. He was a man such as the world rarely sees; but his
ends, too earthly, were at war with the means he sought. Had his
ambition been more or less, he had been worthy of a realm
mightier than the Caesars swayed; worthy of our solemn order;
worthy of the fellowship of Mejnour, whom you now behold before
you."
The prince, who had listened with deep and breathless attention
to the words of his singular guest, started from his seat at his
last words. "Imposter!" he cried, "can you dare thus to play
with my credulity? Sixty years have flown since my grandsire
died; were he living, he had passed his hundred and twentieth
year; and you, whose old age is erect and vigorous, have the
assurance to pretend to have been his contemporary! But you have
imperfectly learned your tale. You know not, it seems, that my
grandsire, wise and illustrious indeed, in all save his faith in
a charlatan, was found dead in his bed, in the very hour when his
colossal plans were ripe for execution, and that Mejnour was
guilty of his murder."
"Alas!" answered the stranger, in a voice of great sadness, "had
he but listened to Mejnour,--had he but delayed the last and most
perilous ordeal of daring wisdom until the requisite training and
initiation had been completed,--your ancestor would have stood
with me upon an eminence which the waters of Death itself wash
everlastingly, but cannot overflow. Your grandsire resisted my
fervent prayers, disobeyed my most absolute commands, and in the
sublime rashness of a soul that panted for secrets, which he who
desires orbs and sceptres never can obtain, perished, the victim
of his own frenzy."
"He was poisoned, and Mejnour fled."
"Mejnour fled not," answered the stranger, proudly--"Mejnour
could not fly from danger; for to him danger is a thing long left
behind. It was the day before the duke took the fatal draft
which he believed was to confer on the mortal the immortal boon,
that, finding my power over him was gone, I abandoned him to his
doom. But a truce with this: I loved your grandsire! I would
save the last of his race. Oppose not thyself to Zanoni. Yield
not thy soul to thine evil passions. Draw back from the
precipice while there is yet time. In thy front, and in thine
eyes, I detect some of that diviner glory which belonged to thy
race. Thou hast in thee some germs of their hereditary genius,
but they are choked up by worse than thy hereditary vices.
Recollect that by genius thy house rose; by vice it ever failed
to perpetuate its power. In the laws which regulate the
universe, it is decreed that nothing wicked can long endure. Be
wise, and let history warn thee. Thou standest on the verge of
two worlds, the past and the future; and voices from either
shriek omen in thy ear. I have done. I bid thee farewell!"
"Not so; thou shalt not quit these walls. I will make experiment
of thy boasted power. What, ho there!--ho!"
The prince shouted; the room was filled with his minions.
"Seize that man!" he cried, pointing to the spot which had been
filled by the form of Mejnour. To his inconceivable amaze and
horror, the spot was vacant. The mysterious stranger had
vanished like a dream; but a thin and fragrant mist undulated, in
pale volumes, round the walls of the chamber. "Look to my lord,"
cried Mascari. The prince had fallen to the floor insensible.
For many hours he seemed in a kind of trance. When he recovered,
he dismissed his attendants, and his step was heard in his
chamber, pacing to and fro, with heavy and disordered strides.
Not till an hour before his banquet the next day did he seem
restored to his wonted self.
CHAPTER 3.XV.
Oime! come poss' io
Altri trovar, se me trovar non posso.
"Amint.," At. i. Sc. ii.
(Alas! how can I find another when I cannot find myself?)
The sleep of Glyndon, the night after his last interview with
Zanoni, was unusually profound; and the sun streamed full upon
his eyes as he opened them to the day. He rose refreshed, and
with a strange sentiment of calmness that seemed more the result
of resolution than exhaustion. The incidents and emotions of the
past night had settled into distinct and clear impressions. He
thought of them but slightly,--he thought rather of the future.
He was as one of the initiated in the old Egyptian mysteries who
have crossed the gate only to long more ardently for the
penetralia.
He dressed himself, and was relieved to find that Mervale had
joined a party of his countrymen on an excursion to Ischia. He
spent the heat of noon in thoughtful solitude, and gradually the
image of Viola returned to his heart. It was a holy--for it was
a HUMAN--image. He had resigned her; and though he repented not,
he was troubled at the thought that repentance would have come
too late.
He started impatiently from his seat, and strode with rapid steps
to the humble abode of the actress.
The distance was considerable, and the air oppressive. Glyndon
arrived at the door breathless and heated. He knocked; no answer
came. He lifted the latch and entered. He ascended the stairs;
no sound, no sight of life met his ear and eye. In the front
chamber, on a table, lay the guitar of the actress, and some
manuscript parts in the favourite operas. He paused, and,
summoning courage, tapped at the door which seemed to lead into
the inner apartment. The door was ajar; and, hearing no sound
within, he pushed it open. It was the sleeping-chamber of the
young actress, that holiest ground to a lover; and well did the
place become the presiding deity: none of the tawdry finery of
the profession was visible, on the one hand; none of the slovenly
disorder common to the humbler classes of the South, on the
other. All was pure and simple; even the ornaments were those of
an innocent refinement,--a few books, placed carefully on
shelves, a few half-faded flowers in an earthen vase, which was
modelled and painted in the Etruscan fashion. The sunlight
streamed over the snowy draperies of the bed, and a few articles
of clothing on the chair beside it. Viola was not there; but the
nurse!--was she gone also? He made the house resound with the
name of Gionetta, but there was not even an echo to reply. At
last, as he reluctantly quitted the desolate abode, he perceived
Gionetta coming towards him from the street.
The poor old woman uttered an exclamation of joy on seeing him;
but, to their mutual disappointment, neither had any cheerful
tidings or satisfactory explanation to afford the other.
Gionetta had been aroused from her slumber the night before by
the noise in the rooms below; but ere she could muster courage to
descend, Viola was gone! She found the marks of violence on the
door without; and all she had since been able to learn in the
neighbourhood was, that a Lazzarone, from his nocturnal resting-
place on the Chiaja, had seen by the moonlight a carriage, which
he recognised as belonging to the Prince di --, pass and repass
that road about the first hour of morning. Glyndon, on gathering
from the confused words and broken sobs of the old nurse the
heads of this account, abruptly left her, and repaired to the
palace of Zanoni. There he was informed that the signor was gone
to the banquet of the Prince di --, and would not return till
late. Glyndon stood motionless with perplexity and dismay; he
knew not what to believe, or how to act. Even Mervale was not at
hand to advise him. His conscience smote him bitterly. He had
had the power to save the woman he had loved, and had foregone
that power; but how was it that in this Zanoni himself had
failed? How was it that he was gone to the very banquet of the
ravisher? Could Zanoni be aware of what had passed? If not,
should he lose a moment in apprising him? Though mentally
irresolute, no man was more physically brave. He would repair at
once to the palace of the prince himself; and if Zanoni failed in
the trust he had half-appeared to arrogate, he, the humble
foreigner, would demand the captive of fraud and force, in the
very halls and before the assembled guests of the Prince di --.
CHAPTER 3.XVI.
Ardua vallatur duris sapientia scrupis.
Hadr. Jun., "Emblem." xxxvii.
(Lofty wisdom is circled round with rugged rocks.)
We must go back some hours in the progress of this narrative. It
was the first faint and gradual break of the summer dawn; and two
men stood in a balcony overhanging a garden fragrant with the
scents of the awakening flowers. The stars had not yet left the
sky,--the birds were yet silent on the boughs: all was still,
hushed, and tranquil; but how different the tranquillity of
reviving day from the solemn repose of night! In the music of
silence there are a thousand variations. These men, who alone
seemed awake in Naples, were Zanoni and the mysterious stranger
who had but an hour or two ago startled the Prince di -- in his
voluptuous palace.
"No," said the latter; "hadst thou delayed the acceptance of the
Arch-gift until thou hadst attained to the years, and passed
through all the desolate bereavements that chilled and seared
myself ere my researches had made it mine, thou wouldst have
escaped the curse of which thou complainest now,--thou wouldst
not have mourned over the brevity of human affection as compared
to the duration of thine own existence; for thou wouldst have
survived the very desire and dream of the love of woman.
Brightest, and, but for that error, perhaps the loftiest, of the
secret and solemn race that fills up the interval in creation
between mankind and the children of the Empyreal, age after age
wilt thou rue the splendid folly which made thee ask to carry the
beauty and the passions of youth into the dreary grandeur of
earthly immortality."
"I do not repent, nor shall I," answered Zanoni. "The transport
and the sorrow, so wildly blended, which have at intervals
diversified my doom, are better than the calm and bloodless tenor
of thy solitary way--thou, who lovest nothing, hatest nothing,
feelest nothing, and walkest the world with the noiseless and
joyless footsteps of a dream!"
"You mistake," replied he who had owned the name of Mejnour,--
"though I care not for love, and am dead to every PASSION that
agitates the sons of clay, I am not dead to their more serene
enjoyments. I carry down the stream of the countless years, not
the turbulent desires of youth, but the calm and spiritual
delights of age. Wisely and deliberately I abandoned youth
forever when I separated my lot from men. Let us not envy or
reproach each other. I would have saved this Neapolitan, Zanoni
(since so it now pleases thee to be called), partly because his
grandsire was but divided by the last airy barrier from our own
brotherhood, partly because I know that in the man himself lurk
the elements of ancestral courage and power, which in earlier
life would have fitted him for one of us. Earth holds but few to
whom Nature has given the qualities that can bear the ordeal.
But time and excess, that have quickened his grosser senses, have
blunted his imagination. I relinquish him to his doom."
"And still, then, Mejnour, you cherish the desire to revive our
order, limited now to ourselves alone, by new converts and
allies. Surely--surely--thy experience might have taught thee,
that scarcely once in a thousand years is born the being who can
pass through the horrible gates that lead into the worlds
without! Is not thy path already strewed with thy victims? Do
not their ghastly faces of agony and fear--the blood-stained
suicide, the raving maniac--rise before thee, and warn what is
yet left to thee of human sympathy from thy insane ambition?"
"Nay," answered Mejnour; "have I not had success to
counterbalance failure? And can I forego this lofty and august
hope, worthy alone of our high condition,--the hope to form a
mighty and numerous race with a force and power sufficient to
permit them to acknowledge to mankind their majestic conquests
and dominion, to become the true lords of this planet, invaders,
perchance, of others, masters of the inimical and malignant
tribes by which at this moment we are surrounded: a race that
may proceed, in their deathless destinies, from stage to stage of
celestial glory, and rank at last amongst the nearest ministrants
and agents gathered round the Throne of Thrones? What matter a
thousand victims for one convert to our band? And you, Zanoni,"
continued Mejnour, after a pause,--"you, even you, should this
affection for a mortal beauty that you have dared, despite
yourself, to cherish, be more than a passing fancy; should it,
once admitted into your inmost nature, partake of its bright and
enduring essence,--even you may brave all things to raise the
beloved one into your equal. Nay, interrupt me not. Can you see
sickness menace her; danger hover around; years creep on; the
eyes grow dim; the beauty fade, while the heart, youthful still,
clings and fastens round your own,--can you see this, and know it
is yours to--"
"Cease!" cried Zanoni, fiercely. "What is all other fate as
compared to the death of terror? What, when the coldest sage,
the most heated enthusiast, the hardiest warrior with his nerves
of iron, have been found dead in their beds, with straining
eyeballs and horrent hair, at the first step of the Dread
Progress,--thinkest thou that this weak woman--from whose cheek a
sound at the window, the screech of the night-owl, the sight of a
drop of blood on a man's sword, would start the colour--could
brave one glance of--Away! the very thought of such sights for
her makes even myself a coward!"
"When you told her you loved her,--when you clasped her to your
breast, you renounced all power to foresee her future lot, or
protect her from harm. Henceforth to her you are human, and
human only. How know you, then, to what you may be tempted; how
know you what her curiosity may learn and her courage brave? But
enough of this,--you are bent on your pursuit?"
"The fiat has gone forth."
"And to-morrow?"
"To-morrow, at this hour, our bark will be bounding over yonder
ocean, and the weight of ages will have fallen from my heart! I
compassionate thee, O foolish sage,--THOU hast given up THY
youth!"
CHAPTER 3.XVII.
Alch: Thou always speakest riddles. Tell me if thou art that
fountain of which Bernard Lord Trevizan writ?
Merc: I am not that fountain, but I am the water. The fountain
compasseth me about.
Sandivogius, "New Light of Alchymy."
The Prince di -- was not a man whom Naples could suppose to be
addicted to superstitious fancies. Still, in the South of Italy,
there was then, and there still lingers a certain spirit of
credulity, which may, ever and anon, be visible amidst the
boldest dogmas of their philosophers and sceptics. In his
childhood, the prince had learned strange tales of the ambition,
the genius, and the career of his grandsire,--and secretly,
perhaps influenced by ancestral example, in earlier youth he
himself had followed science, not only through her legitimate
course, but her antiquated and erratic windings. I have, indeed,
been shown in Naples a little volume, blazoned with the arms of
the Visconti, and ascribed to the nobleman I refer to, which
treats of alchemy in a spirit half-mocking and half-reverential.
Pleasure soon distracted him from such speculations, and his
talents, which were unquestionably great, were wholly perverted
to extravagant intrigues, or to the embellishment of a gorgeous
ostentation with something of classic grace. His immense wealth,
his imperious pride, his unscrupulous and daring character, made
him an object of no inconsiderable fear to a feeble and timid
court; and the ministers of the indolent government willingly
connived at excesses which allured him at least from ambition.
The strange visit and yet more strange departure of Mejnour
filled the breast of the Neapolitan with awe and wonder, against
which all the haughty arrogance and learned scepticism of his
maturer manhood combated in vain. The apparition of Mejnour
served, indeed, to invest Zanoni with a character in which the
prince had not hitherto regarded him. He felt a strange alarm at
the rival he had braved,--at the foe he had provoked. When, a
little before his banquet, he had resumed his self-possession, it
was with a fell and gloomy resolution that he brooded over the
perfidious schemes he had previously formed. He felt as if the
death of the mysterious Zanoni were necessary for the
preservation of his own life; and if at an earlier period of
their rivalry he had determined on the fate of Zanoni, the
warnings of Mejnour only served to confirm his resolve.
"We will try if his magic can invent an antidote to the bane,"
said he, half-aloud, and with a stern smile, as he summoned
Mascari to his presence. The poison which the prince, with his
own hands, mixed into the wine intended for his guest, was
compounded from materials, the secret of which had been one of
the proudest heir-looms of that able and evil race which gave to
Italy her wisest and guiltiest tyrants. Its operation was quick
yet not sudden: it produced no pain,--it left on the form no
grim convulsion, on the skin no purpling spot, to arouse
suspicion; you might have cut and carved every membrane and fibre
of the corpse, but the sharpest eyes of the leech would not have
detected the presence of the subtle life-queller. For twelve
hours the victim felt nothing save a joyous and elated
exhilaration of the blood; a delicious languor followed, the sure
forerunner of apoplexy. No lancet then could save! Apoplexy had
run much in the families of the enemies of the Visconti!
The hour of the feast arrived,--the guests assembled. There were
the flower of the Neapolitan seignorie, the descendants of the
Norman, the Teuton, the Goth; for Naples had then a nobility, but
derived it from the North, which has indeed been the Nutrix
Leonum,--the nurse of the lion-hearted chivalry of the world.
Last of the guests came Zanoni; and the crowd gave way as the
dazzling foreigner moved along to the lord of the palace. The
prince greeted him with a meaning smile, to which Zanoni answered
by a whisper, "He who plays with loaded dice does not always
win."
The prince bit his lip, and Zanoni, passing on, seemed deep in
conversation with the fawning Mascari.
"Who is the prince's heir?" asked the guest.
"A distant relation on the mother's side; with his Excellency
dies the male line."
"Is the heir present at our host's banquet?"
"No; they are not friends."
"No matter; he will be here to-morrow."
Mascari stared in surprise; but the signal for the banquet was
given, and the guests were marshalled to the board. As was the
custom then, the feast took place not long after mid-day. It was
a long, oval hall, the whole of one side opening by a marble
colonnade upon a court or garden, in which the eye rested
gratefully upon cool fountains and statues of whitest marble,
half-sheltered by orange-trees. Every art that luxury could
invent to give freshness and coolness to the languid and
breezeless heat of the day without (a day on which the breath of
the sirocco was abroad) had been called into existence.
Artificial currents of air through invisible tubes, silken blinds
waving to and fro, as if to cheat the senses into the belief of
an April wind, and miniature jets d'eau in each corner of the
apartment, gave to the Italians the same sense of exhilaration
and COMFORT (if I may use the word) which the well-drawn curtains
and the blazing hearth afford to the children of colder climes.
The conversation was somewhat more lively and intellectual than
is common amongst the languid pleasure-hunters of the South; for
the prince, himself accomplished, sought his acquaintance not
only amongst the beaux esprits of his own country, but amongst
the gay foreigners who adorned and relieved the monotony of the
Neapolitan circles. There were present two or three of the
brilliant Frenchmen of the old regime, who had already emigrated
from the advancing Revolution; and their peculiar turn of thought
and wit was well calculated for the meridian of a society that
made the dolce far niente at once its philosophy and its faith.
The prince, however, was more silent than usual; and when he
sought to rouse himself, his spirits were forced and exaggerated.
To the manners of his host, those of Zanoni afforded a striking
contrast. The bearing of this singular person was at all times
characterised by a calm and polished ease, which was attributed
by the courtiers to the long habit of society. He could scarcely
be called gay; yet few persons more tended to animate the general
spirits of a convivial circle. He seemed, by a kind of
intuition, to elicit from each companion the qualities in which
he most excelled; and if occasionally a certain tone of latent
mockery characterised his remarks upon the topics on which the
conversation fell, it appeared to men who took nothing in earnest
to be the language both of wit and wisdom. To the Frenchmen, in
particular, there was something startling in his intimate
knowledge of the minutest events in their own capital and
country, and his profound penetration (evinced but in epigrams
and sarcasms) into the eminent characters who were then playing a
part upon the great stage of continental intrigue.
It was while this conversation grew animated, and the feast was
at its height, that Glyndon arrived at the palace. The porter,
perceiving by his dress that he was not one of the invited
guests, told him that his Excellency was engaged, and on no
account could be disturbed; and Glyndon then, for the first time,
became aware how strange and embarrassing was the duty he had
taken on himself. To force an entrance into the banquet-hall of
a great and powerful noble, surrounded by the rank of Naples, and
to arraign him for what to his boon-companions would appear but
an act of gallantry, was an exploit that could not fail to be at
once ludicrous and impotent. He mused a moment, and, slipping a
piece of gold into the porter's hand, said that he was
commissioned to seek the Signor Zanoni upon an errand of life and
death, and easily won his way across the court, and into the
interior building. He passed up the broad staircase, and the
voices and merriment of the revellers smote his ear at a
distance. At the entrance of the reception-rooms he found a
page, whom he despatched with a message to Zanoni. The page did
the errand; and Zanoni, on hearing the whispered name of Glyndon,
turned to his host.
"Pardon me, my lord; an English friend of mine, the Signor
Glyndon (not unknown by name to your Excellency) waits without,--
the business must indeed be urgent on which he has sought me in
such an hour. You will forgive my momentary absence."
"Nay, signor," answered the prince, courteously, but with a
sinister smile on his countenance, "would it not be better for
your friend to join us? An Englishman is welcome everywhere; and
even were he a Dutchman, your friendship would invest his
presence with attraction. Pray his attendance; we would not
spare you even for a moment."
Zanoni bowed; the page was despatched with all flattering
messages to Glyndon,--a seat next to Zanoni was placed for him,
and the young Englishman entered.
"You are most welcome, sir. I trust your business to our
illustrious guest is of good omen and pleasant import. If you
bring evil news, defer it, I pray you."
Glyndon's brow was sullen; and he was about to startle the guests
by his reply, when Zanoni, touching his arm significantly,
whispered in English, "I know why you have sought me. Be silent,
and witness what ensues."
"You know then that Viola, whom you boasted you had the power to
save from danger--"
"Is in this house!--yes. I know also that Murder sits at the
right hand of our host. But his fate is now separated from hers
forever; and the mirror which glasses it to my eye is clear
through the streams of blood. Be still, and learn the fate that
awaits the wicked!
"My lord," said Zanoni, speaking aloud, "the Signor Glyndon has
indeed brought me tidings not wholly unexpected. I am compelled
to leave Naples,--an additional motive to make the most of the
present hour."
"And what, if I may venture to ask, may be the cause that brings
such affliction on the fair dames of Naples?"
"It is the approaching death of one who honoured me with most
loyal friendship," replied Zanoni, gravely. "Let us not speak of
it; grief cannot put back the dial. As we supply by new flowers
those that fade in our vases, so it is the secret of worldly
wisdom to replace by fresh friendships those that fade from our
path."
"True philosophy!" exclaimed the prince. "'Not to admire,' was
the Roman's maxim; 'Never to mourn,' is mine. There is nothing
in life to grieve for, save, indeed, Signor Zanoni, when some
young beauty, on whom we have set our hearts, slips from our
grasp. In such a moment we have need of all our wisdom, not to
succumb to despair, and shake hands with death. What say you,
signor? You smile! Such never could be your lot. Pledge me in
a sentiment, 'Long life to the fortunate lover,--a quick release
to the baffled suitor'?"
"I pledge you," said Zanoni; and, as the fatal wine was poured
into his glass, he repeated, fixing his eyes on the prince, "I
pledge you even in this wine!"
He lifted the glass to his lips. The prince seemed ghastly pale,
while the gaze of his guest bent upon him, with an intent and
stern brightness, beneath which the conscience-stricken host
cowered and quailed. Not till he had drained his draft, and
replaced the glass upon the board, did Zanoni turn his eyes from
the prince; and he then said, "Your wine has been kept too long;
it has lost its virtues. It might disagree with many, but do not
fear: it will not harm me, prince, Signor Mascari, you are a
judge of the grape; will you favour us with your opinion?"
"Nay," answered Mascari, with well-affected composure, "I like
not the wines of Cyprus; they are heating. Perhaps Signor
Glyndon may not have the same distaste? The English are said to
love their potations warm and pungent."
"Do you wish my friend also to taste the wine, prince?" said
Zanoni. "Recollect, all cannot drink it with the same impunity
as myself."
"No," said the prince, hastily; "if you do not recommend the
wine, Heaven forbid that we should constrain our guests! My lord
duke," turning to one of the Frenchmen, "yours is the true soil
of Bacchus. What think you of this cask from Burgundy? Has it
borne the journey?"
"Ah," said Zanoni, "let us change both the wine and the theme."
With that, Zanoni grew yet more animated and brilliant. Never
did wit more sparkling, airy, exhilarating, flash from the lips
of reveller. His spirits fascinated all present--even the prince
himself, even Glyndon--with a strange and wild contagion. The
former, indeed, whom the words and gaze of Zanoni, when he
drained the poison, had filled with fearful misgivings, now
hailed in the brilliant eloquence of his wit a certain sign of
the operation of the bane. The wine circulated fast; but none
seemed conscious of its effects. One by one the rest of the
party fell into a charmed and spellbound silence, as Zanoni
continued to pour forth sally upon sally, tale upon tale. They
hung on his words, they almost held their breath to listen. Yet,
how bitter was his mirth; how full of contempt for the triflers
present, and for the trifles which made their life!
Night came on; the room grew dim, and the feast had lasted
several hours longer than was the customary duration of similar
entertainments at that day. Still the guests stirred not, and
still Zanoni continued, with glittering eye and mocking lip, to
lavish his stores of intellect and anecdote; when suddenly the
moon rose, and shed its rays over the flowers and fountains in
the court without, leaving the room itself half in shadow, and
half tinged by a quiet and ghostly light.
It was then that Zanoni rose. "Well, gentlemen," said he, "we
have not yet wearied our host, I hope; and his garden offers a
new temptation to protract our stay. Have you no musicians among
your train, prince, that might regale our ears while we inhale
the fragrance of your orange-trees?"
"An excellent thought!" said the prince. "Mascari, see to the
music."
The party rose simultaneously to adjourn to the garden; and then,
for the first time, the effect of the wine they had drunk seemed
to make itself felt.
With flushed cheeks and unsteady steps they came into the open
air, which tended yet more to stimulate that glowing fever of the
grape. As if to make up for the silence with which the guests
had hitherto listened to Zanoni, every tongue was now loosened,--
every man talked, no man listened. There was something wild and
fearful in the contrast between the calm beauty of the night and
scene, and the hubbub and clamour of these disorderly roysters.
One of the Frenchmen, in especial, the young Duc de R--, a
nobleman of the highest rank, and of all the quick, vivacious,
and irascible temperament of his countrymen, was particularly
noisy and excited. And as circumstances, the remembrance of
which is still preserved among certain circles of Naples,
rendered it afterwards necessary that the duc should himself give
evidence of what occurred, I will here translate the short
account he drew up, and which was kindly submitted to me some few
years ago by my accomplished and lively friend, Il Cavaliere di
B--.
"I never remember," writes the duc, "to have felt my spirits so
excited as on that evening; we were like so many boys released
from school, jostling each other as we reeled or ran down the
flight of seven or eight stairs that led from the colonnade into
the garden,--some laughing, some whooping, some scolding, some
babbling. The wine had brought out, as it were, each man's
inmost character. Some were loud and quarrelsome, others
sentimental and whining; some, whom we had hitherto thought dull,
most mirthful; some, whom we had ever regarded as discreet and
taciturn, most garrulous and uproarious. I remember that in the
midst of our clamorous gayety, my eye fell upon the cavalier
Signor Zanoni, whose conversation had so enchanted us all; and I
felt a certain chill come over me to perceive that he wore the
same calm and unsympathising smile upon his countenance which had
characterised it in his singular and curious stories of the court
of Louis XIV. I felt, indeed, half-inclined to seek a quarrel
with one whose composure was almost an insult to our disorder.
Nor was such an effect of this irritating and mocking
tranquillity confined to myself alone. Several of the party have
told me since, that on looking at Zanoni they felt their blood
yet more heated, and gayety change to resentment. There seemed
in his icy smile a very charm to wound vanity and provoke rage.
It was at this moment that the prince came up to me, and, passing
his arm into mine, led me a little apart from the rest. He had
certainly indulged in the same excess as ourselves, but it did
not produce the same effect of noisy excitement. There was, on
the contrary, a certain cold arrogance and supercilious scorn in
his bearing and language, which, even while affecting so much
caressing courtesy towards me, roused my self-love against him.
He seemed as if Zanoni had infected him; and in imitating the
manner of his guest, he surpassed the original. He rallied me on
some court gossip, which had honoured my name by associating it
with a certain beautiful and distinguished Sicilian lady, and
affected to treat with contempt that which, had it been true, I
should have regarded as a boast. He spoke, indeed, as if he
himself had gathered all the flowers of Naples, and left us
foreigners only the gleanings he had scorned. At this my natural
and national gallantry was piqued, and I retorted by some
sarcasms that I should certainly have spared had my blood been
cooler. He laughed heartily, and left me in a strange fit of
resentment and anger. Perhaps (I must own the truth) the wine
had produced in me a wild disposition to take offence and provoke
quarrel. As the prince left me, I turned, and saw Zanoni at my
side.
"'The prince is a braggart,' said he, with the same smile that
displeased me before. 'He would monopolize all fortune and all
love. Let us take our revenge.'
"'And how?'
"'He has at this moment, in his house, the most enchanting singer
in Naples,--the celebrated Viola Pisani. She is here, it is
true, not by her own choice; he carried her hither by force, but
he will pretend that she adores him. Let us insist on his
producing this secret treasure, and when she enters, the Duc de
R-- can have no doubt that his flatteries and attentions will
charm the lady, and provoke all the jealous fears of our host.
It would be a fair revenge upon his imperious self-conceit.'
"This suggestion delighted me. I hastened to the prince. At
that instant the musicians had just commenced; I waved my hand,
ordered the music to stop, and, addressing the prince, who was
standing in the centre of one of the gayest groups, complained of
his want of hospitality in affording to us such poor proficients
in the art, while he reserved for his own solace the lute and
voice of the first performer in Naples. I demanded,
half-laughingly, half-seriously, that he should produce the
Pisani. My demand was received with shouts of applause by the
rest. We drowned the replies of our host with uproar, and would
hear no denial. 'Gentlemen,' at last said the prince, when he
could obtain an audience, 'even were I to assent to your
proposal, I could not induce the signora to present herself
before an assemblage as riotous as they are noble. You have too
much chivalry to use compulsion with her, though the Duc de R--
forgets himself sufficiently to administer it to me.'
"I was stung by this taunt, however well deserved. 'Prince,'
said I, 'I have for the indelicacy of compulsion so illustrious
an example that I cannot hesitate to pursue the path honoured by
your own footsteps. All Naples knows that the Pisani despises at
once your gold and your love; that force alone could have brought
her under your roof; and that you refuse to produce her, because
you fear her complaints, and know enough of the chivalry your
vanity sneers at to feel assured that the gentlemen of France are
not more disposed to worship beauty than to defend it from
wrong.'
"'You speak well, sir,' said Zanoni, gravely. 'The prince dares
not produce his prize!'
"The prince remained speechless for a few moments, as if with
indignation. At last he broke out into expressions the most
injurious and insulting against Signor Zanoni and myself. Zanoni
replied not; I was more hot and hasty. The guests appeared to
delight in our dispute. None, except Mascari, whom we pushed
aside and disdained to hear, strove to conciliate; some took one
side, some another. The issue may be well foreseen. Swords were
called for and procured. Two were offered me by one of the
party. I was about to choose one, when Zanoni placed in my hand
the other, which, from its hilt, appeared of antiquated
workmanship. At the same moment, looking towards the prince, he
said, smilingly, 'The duc takes your grandsire's sword. Prince,
you are too brave a man for superstition; you have forgot the
forfeit!' Our host seemed to me to recoil and turn pale at those
words; nevertheless, he returned Zanoni's smile with a look of
defiance. The next moment all was broil and disorder. There
might be some six or eight persons engaged in a strange and
confused kind of melee, but the prince and myself only sought
each other. The noise around us, the confusion of the guests,
the cries of the musicians, the clash of our own swords, only
served to stimulate our unhappy fury. We feared to be
interrupted by the attendants, and fought like madmen, without
skill or method. I thrust and parried mechanically, blind and
frantic, as if a demon had entered into me, till I saw the prince
stretched at my feet, bathed in his blood, and Zanoni bending
over him, and whispering in his ear. That sight cooled us all.
The strife ceased; we gathered, in shame, remorse, and horror,
round our ill-fated host; but it was too late,--his eyes rolled
fearfully in his head. I have seen many men die, but never one
who wore such horror on his countenance. At last all was over!
Zanoni rose from the corpse, and, taking, with great composure,
the sword from my hand, said calmly, 'Ye are witnesses,
gentlemen, that the prince brought his fate upon himself. The
last of that illustrious house has perished in a brawl.'
"I saw no more of Zanoni. I hastened to our envoy to narrate the
event, and abide the issue. I am grateful to the Neapolitan
government, and to the illustrious heir of the unfortunate
nobleman, for the lenient and generous, yet just, interpretation
put upon a misfortune the memory of which will afflict me to the
last hour of my life.
(Signed) "Louis Victor, Duc de R."
In the above memorial, the reader will find the most exact and
minute account yet given of an event which created the most
lively sensation at Naples in that day.
Glyndon had taken no part in the affray, neither had he
participated largely in the excesses of the revel. For his
exemption from both he was perhaps indebted to the whispered
exhortations of Zanoni. When the last rose from the corpse, and
withdrew from that scene of confusion, Glyndon remarked that in
passing the crowd he touched Mascari on the shoulder, and said
something which the Englishman did not overhear. Glyndon
followed Zanoni into the banquet-room, which, save where the
moonlight slept on the marble floor, was wrapped in the sad and
gloomy shadows of the advancing night.
"How could you foretell this fearful event? He fell not by your
arm!" said Glyndon, in a tremulous and hollow tone.
"The general who calculates on the victory does not fight in
person," answered Zanoni; "let the past sleep with the dead.
Meet me at midnight by the sea-shore, half a mile to the left of
your hotel. You will know the spot by a rude pillar--the only
one near--to which a broken chain is attached. There and then,
if thou wouldst learn our lore, thou shalt find the master. Go;
I have business here yet. Remember, Viola is still in the house
of the dead man!"
Here Mascari approached, and Zanoni, turning to the Italian, and
waving his hand to Glyndon, drew the former aside. Glyndon
slowly departed.
"Mascari," said Zanoni, "your patron is no more; your services
will be valueless to his heir,--a sober man whom poverty has
preserved from vice. For yourself, thank me that I do not give
you up to the executioner; recollect the wine of Cyprus. Well,
never tremble, man; it could not act on me, though it might react
on others; in that it is a common type of crime. I forgive you;
and if the wine should kill me, I promise you that my ghost shall
not haunt so worshipful a penitent. Enough of this; conduct me
to the chamber of Viola Pisani. You have no further need of her.
The death of the jailer opens the cell of the captive. Be quick;
I would be gone."
Mascari muttered some inaudible words, bowed low, and led the way
to the chamber in which Viola was confined.
CHAPTER 3.XVIII.
Merc: Tell me, therefore, what thou seekest after, and what thou
wilt have. What dost thou desire to make?
Alch: The Philosopher's Stone.
Sandivogius.
It wanted several minutes of midnight, and Glyndon repaired to
the appointed spot. The mysterious empire which Zanoni had
acquired over him, was still more solemnly confirmed by the
events of the last few hours; the sudden fate of the prince, so
deliberately foreshadowed, and yet so seemingly accidental,
brought out by causes the most commonplace, and yet associated
with words the most prophetic, impressed him with the deepest
sentiments of admiration and awe. It was as if this dark and
wondrous being could convert the most ordinary events and the
meanest instruments into the agencies of his inscrutable will;
yet, if so, why have permitted the capture of Viola? Why not
have prevented the crime rather than punish the criminal? And
did Zanoni really feel love for Viola? Love, and yet offer to
resign her to himself,--to a rival whom his arts could not have
failed to baffle. He no longer reverted to the belief that
Zanoni or Viola had sought to dupe him into marriage. His fear
and reverence for the former now forbade the notion of so poor an
imposture. Did he any longer love Viola himself? No; when that
morning he had heard of her danger, he had, it is true, returned
to the sympathies and the fears of affection; but with the death
of the prince her image faded from his heart, and he felt no
jealous pang at the thought that she had been saved by Zanoni,--
that at that moment she was perhaps beneath his roof. Whoever
has, in the course of his life, indulged the absorbing passion of
the gamester, will remember how all other pursuits and objects
vanished from his mind; how solely he was wrapped in the one wild
delusion; with what a sceptre of magic power the despot-demon
ruled every feeling and every thought. Far more intense than the
passion of the gamester was the frantic yet sublime desire that
mastered the breast of Glyndon. He would be the rival of Zanoni,
not in human and perishable affections, but in preternatural and
eternal lore. He would have laid down life with content--nay,
rapture--as the price of learning those solemn secrets which
separated the stranger from mankind. Enamoured of the goddess of
goddesses, he stretched forth his arms--the wild Ixion--and
embraced a cloud!
The night was most lovely and serene, and the waves scarcely
rippled at his feet as the Englishman glided on by the cool and
starry beach. At length he arrived at the spot, and there,
leaning against the broken pillar, he beheld a man wrapped in a
long mantle, and in an attitude of profound repose. He
approached, and uttered the name of Zanoni. The figure turned,
and he saw the face of a stranger: a face not stamped by the
glorious beauty of Zanoni, but equally majestic in its aspect,
and perhaps still more impressive from the mature age and the
passionless depth of thought that characterised the expanded
forehead, and deep-set but piercing eyes.
"You seek Zanoni," said the stranger; "he will be here anon; but,
perhaps, he whom you see before you is more connected with your
destiny, and more disposed to realise your dreams."
"Hath the earth, then, another Zanoni?"
"If not," replied the stranger, "why do you cherish the hope and
the wild faith to be yourself a Zanoni? Think you that none
others have burned with the same godlike dream? Who, indeed in
his first youth,--youth when the soul is nearer to the heaven
from which it sprang, and its divine and primal longings are not
all effaced by the sordid passions and petty cares that are begot
in time,--who is there in youth that has not nourished the belief
that the universe has secrets not known to the common herd, and
panted, as the hart for the water-springs, for the fountains that
lie hid and far away amidst the broad wilderness of trackless
science? The music of the fountain is heard in the soul WITHIN,
till the steps, deceived and erring, rove away from its waters,
and the wanderer dies in the mighty desert. Think you that none
who have cherished the hope have found the truth, or that the
yearning after the Ineffable Knowledge was given to us utterly in
vain? No! Every desire in human hearts is but a glimpse of
things that exist, alike distant and divine. No! in the world
there have been from age to age some brighter and happier spirits
who have attained to the air in which the beings above mankind
move and breathe. Zanoni, great though he be, stands not alone.
He has had his predecessors, and long lines of successors may be
yet to come."
"And will you tell me," said Glyndon, "that in yourself I behold
one of that mighty few over whom Zanoni has no superiority in
power and wisdom?"
"In me," answered the stranger, "you see one from whom Zanoni
himself learned some of his loftiest secrets. On these shores,
on this spot, have I stood in ages that your chroniclers but
feebly reach. The Phoenician, the Greek, the Oscan, the Roman,
the Lombard, I have seen them all!--leaves gay and glittering on
the trunk of the universal life, scattered in due season and
again renewed; till, indeed, the same race that gave its glory to
the ancient world bestowed a second youth upon the new. For the
pure Greeks, the Hellenes, whose origin has bewildered your
dreaming scholars, were of the same great family as the Norman
tribe, born to be the lords of the universe, and in no land on
earth destined to become the hewers of wood. Even the dim
traditions of the learned, which bring the sons of Hellas from
the vast and undetermined territories of Northern Thrace, to be
the victors of the pastoral Pelasgi, and the founders of the line
of demi-gods; which assign to a population bronzed beneath the
suns of the West, the blue-eyed Minerva and the yellow-haired
Achilles (physical characteristics of the North); which
introduce, amongst a pastoral people, warlike aristocracies and
limited monarchies, the feudalism of the classic time,--even
these might serve you to trace back the primeval settlements of
the Hellenes to the same region whence, in later times, the
Norman warriors broke on the dull and savage hordes of the Celt,
and became the Greeks of the Christian world. But this interests
you not, and you are wise in your indifference. Not in the
knowledge of things without, but in the perfection of the soul
within, lies the empire of man aspiring to be more than man."
"And what books contain that science; from what laboratory is it
wrought?"
"Nature supplies the materials; they are around you in your daily
walks. In the herbs that the beast devours and the chemist
disdains to cull; in the elements from which matter in its
meanest and its mightiest shapes is deduced; in the wide bosom of
the air; in the black abysses of the earth; everywhere are given
to mortals the resources and libraries of immortal lore. But as
the simplest problems in the simplest of all studies are obscure
to one who braces not his mind to their comprehension; as the
rower in yonder vessel cannot tell you why two circles can touch
each other only in one point,--so though all earth were carved
over and inscribed with the letters of diviner knowledge, the
characters would be valueless to him who does not pause to
inquire the language and meditate the truth. Young man, if thy
imagination is vivid, if thy heart is daring, if thy curiosity is
insatiate, I will accept thee as my pupil. But the first
lessons are stern and dread."
"If thou hast mastered them, why not I?" answered Glyndon,
boldly. "I have felt from my boyhood that strange mysteries were
reserved for my career; and from the proudest ends of ordinary
ambition I have carried my gaze into the cloud and darkness that
stretch beyond. The instant I beheld Zanoni, I felt as if I had
discovered the guide and the tutor for which my youth had idly
languished and vainly burned."
"And to me his duty is transferred," replied the stranger.
"Yonder lies, anchored in the bay, the vessel in which Zanoni
seeks a fairer home; a little while and the breeze will rise, the
sail will swell; and the stranger will have passed, like a wind,
away. Still, like the wind, he leaves in thy heart the seeds
that may bear the blossom and the fruit. Zanoni hath performed
his task,--he is wanted no more; the perfecter of his work is at
thy side. He comes! I hear the dash of the oar. You will have
your choice submitted to you. According as you decide we shall
meet again." With these words the stranger moved slowly away,
and disappeared beneath the shadow of the cliffs. A boat glided
rapidly across the waters: it touched land; a man leaped on
shore, and Glyndon recognised Zanoni.
"I give thee, Glyndon,--I give thee no more the option of happy
love and serene enjoyment. That hour is past, and fate has
linked the hand that might have been thine own to mine. But I
have ample gifts to bestow upon thee, if thou wilt abandon the
hope that gnaws thy heart, and the realisation of which even _I_
have not the power to foresee. Be thine ambition human, and I
can gratify it to the full. Men desire four things in life,--
love, wealth, fame, power. The first I cannot give thee, the
rest are at my disposal. Select which of them thou wilt, and let
us part in peace."
"Such are not the gifts I covet. I choose knowledge; that
knowledge must be thine own. For this, and for this alone, I
surrendered the love of Viola; this, and this alone, must be my
recompense."
"I cannot gain say thee, though I can warn. The desire to learn
does not always contain the faculty to acquire. I can give thee,
it is true, the teacher,--the rest must depend on thee. Be wise
in time, and take that which I can assure to thee."
"Answer me but these questions, and according to your answer I
will decide. Is it in the power of man to attain intercourse
with the beings of other worlds? Is it in the power of man to
influence the elements, and to insure life against the sword and
against disease?"
"All this may be possible," answered Zanoni, evasively, "to the
few; but for one who attains such secrets, millions may perish in
the attempt."
"One question more. Thou--"
"Beware! Of myself, as I have said before, I render no account."
"Well, then, the stranger I have met this night,--are his boasts
to be believed? Is he in truth one of the chosen seers whom you
allow to have mastered the mysteries I yearn to fathom?"
"Rash man," said Zanoni, in a tone of compassion, "thy crisis is
past, and thy choice made! I can only bid thee be bold and
prosper; yes, I resign thee to a master who HAS the power and the
will to open to thee the gates of an awful world. Thy weal or
woe are as nought in the eyes of his relentless wisdom. I would
bid him spare thee, but he will heed me not. Mejnour, receive
thy pupil!" Glyndon turned, and his heart beat when he perceived
that the stranger, whose footsteps he had not heard upon the
pebbles, whose approach he had not beheld in the moonlight, was
once more by his side.
"Farewell," resumed Zanoni; "thy trial commences. When next we
meet, thou wilt be the victim or the victor."
Glyndon's eyes followed the receding form of the mysterious
stranger. He saw him enter the boat, and he then for the first
time noticed that besides the rowers there was a female, who
stood up as Zanoni gained the boat. Even at the distance he
recognised the once-adored form of Viola. She waved her hand to
him, and across the still and shining air came her voice,
mournfully and sweetly, in her mother's tongue, "Farewell,
Clarence,--I forgive thee!--farewell, farewell!"
He strove to answer; but the voice touched a chord at his heart,
and the words failed him. Viola was then lost forever, gone with
this dread stranger; darkness was round her lot! And he himself
had decided her fate and his own! The boat bounded on, the soft
waves flashed and sparkled beneath the oars, and it was along one
sapphire track of moonlight that the frail vessel bore away the
lovers. Farther and farther from his gaze sped the boat, till at
last the speck, scarcely visible, touched the side of the ship
that lay lifeless in the glorious bay. At that instant, as if by
magic, up sprang, with a glad murmur, the playful and freshening
wind: and Glyndon turned to Mejnour and broke the silence.
"Tell me--if thou canst read the future--tell me that HER lot
will be fair, and that HER choice at least is wise?"
"My pupil!" answered Mejnour, in a voice the calmness of which
well accorded with the chilling words, "thy first task must be to
withdraw all thought, feeling, sympathy from others. The
elementary stage of knowledge is to make self, and self alone,
thy study and thy world. Thou hast decided thine own career;
thou hast renounced love; thou hast rejected wealth, fame, and
the vulgar pomps of power. What, then, are all mankind to thee?
To perfect thy faculties, and concentrate thy emotions, is
henceforth thy only aim!"
"And will happiness be the end?"
"If happiness exist," answered Mejnour, "it must be centred in a
SELF to which all passion is unknown. But happiness is the last
state of being; and as yet thou art on the threshold of the
first."
As Mejnour spoke, the distant vessel spread its sails to the
wind, and moved slowly along the deep. Glyndon sighed, and the
pupil and the master retraced their steps towards the city.
BOOK IV.
THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD.
Bey hinter ihm was will! Ich heb ihn auf.
"Das Verschleierte Bildzu Sais"
(Be behind what there may, - I raise the veil.)
CHAPTER 4.I.
Come vittima io vengo all' ara.
"Metast.," At. ii. Sc. 7.
(As a victim I go to the altar.)
It was about a month after the date of Zanoni's departure and
Glyndon's introduction to Mejnour, when two Englishmen were
walking, arm-in-arm, through the Toledo.
"I tell you," said one (who spoke warmly), "that if you have a
particle of common-sense left in you, you will accompany me to
England. This Mejnour is an imposter more dangerous, because
more in earnest, than Zanoni. After all, what do his promises
amount to? You allow that nothing can be more equivocal. You
say that he has left Naples,--that he has selected a retreat more
congenial than the crowded thoroughfares of men to the studies in
which he is to initiate you; and this retreat is among the haunts
of the fiercest bandits of Italy,--haunts which justice itself
dares not penetrate. Fitting hermitage for a sage! I tremble
for you. What if this stranger--of whom nothing is known--be
leagued with the robbers; and these lures for your credulity bait
but the traps for your property,--perhaps your life? You might
come off cheaply by a ransom of half your fortune. You smile
indignantly! Well, put common-sense out of the question; take
your own view of the matter. You are to undergo an ordeal which
Mejnour himself does not profess to describe as a very tempting
one. It may, or it may not, succeed: if it does not, you are
menaced with the darkest evils; and if it does, you cannot be
better off than the dull and joyless mystic whom you have taken
for a master. Away with this folly; enjoy youth while it is left
to you; return with me to England; forget these dreams; enter
your proper career; form affections more respectable than those
which lured you awhile to an Italian adventuress. Attend to your
fortune, make money, and become a happy and distinguished man.
This is the advice of sober friendship; yet the promises I hold
out to you are fairer than those of Mejnour."
"Mervale," said Glyndon, doggedly, "I cannot, if I would, yield
to your wishes. A power that is above me urges me on; I cannot
resist its influence. I will proceed to the last in the strange
career I have commenced. Think of me no more. Follow yourself
the advice you give to me, and be happy."
"This is madness," said Mervale; "your health is already failing;
you are so changed I should scarcely know you. Come; I have
already had your name entered in my passport; in another hour I
shall be gone, and you, boy that you are, will be left, without a
friend, to the deceits of your own fancy and the machinations of
this relentless mountebank."
"Enough," said Glyndon, coldly; "you cease to be an effective
counsellor when you suffer your prejudices to be thus evident. I
have already had ample proof," added the Englishman, and his pale
cheek grew more pale, "of the power of this man,--if man he be,
which I sometimes doubt,--and, come life, come death, I will not
shrink from the paths that allure me. Farewell, Mervale; if we
never meet again,--if you hear, amidst our old and cheerful
haunts, that Clarence Glyndon sleeps the last sleep by the shores
of Naples, or amidst yon distant hills, say to the friends of our
youth, 'He died worthily, as thousands of martyr-students have
died before him, in the pursuit of knowledge.'"
He wrung Mervale's hand as he spoke, darted from his side, and
disappeared amidst the crowd.
By the corner of the Toledo he was arrested by Nicot.
"Ah, Glyndon! I have not seen you this month. Where have you
hid yourself? Have you been absorbed in your studies?"
"Yes."
"I am about to leave Naples for Paris. Will you accompany me?
Talent of all order is eagerly sought for there, and will be sure
to rise."
"I thank you; I have other schemes for the present."
"So laconic!--what ails you? Do you grieve for the loss of the
Pisani? Take example by me. I have already consoled myself with
Bianca Sacchini,--a handsome woman, enlightened, no prejudices.
A valuable creature I shall find her, no doubt. But as for this
Zanoni!"
"What of him?"
"If ever I paint an allegorical subject, I will take his likeness
as Satan. Ha, ha! a true painter's revenge,--eh? And the way of
the world, too! When we can do nothing else against a man whom
we hate, we can at least paint his effigies as the Devil's.
Seriously, though: I abhor that man."
"Wherefore?'
"Wherefore! Has he not carried off the wife and the dowry I had
marked for myself! Yet, after all," added Nicot, musingly, "had
he served instead of injured me, I should have hated him all the
same. His very form, and his very face, made me at once envy and
detest him. I felt that there is something antipathetic in our
natures. I feel, too, that we shall meet again, when Jean
Nicot's hate may be less impotent. We, too, cher confrere,--we,
too, may meet again! Vive la Republique! I to my new world!"
"And I to mine. Farewell!"
That day Mervale left Naples; the next morning Glyndon also
quitted the City of Delight alone, and on horseback. He bent his
way into those picturesque but dangerous parts of the country
which at that time were infested by banditti, and which few
travellers dared to pass, even in broad daylight, without a
strong escort. A road more lonely cannot well be conceived than
that on which the hoofs of his steed, striking upon the fragments
of rock that encumbered the neglected way, woke a dull and
melancholy echo. Large tracts of waste land, varied by the rank
and profuse foliage of the South, lay before him; occasionally a
wild goat peeped down from some rocky crag, or the discordant cry
of a bird of prey, startled in its sombre haunt, was heard above
the hills. These were the only signs of life; not a human being
was met,--not a hut was visible. Wrapped in his own ardent and
solemn thoughts, the young man continued his way, till the sun
had spent its noonday heat, and a breeze that announced the
approach of eve sprung up from the unseen ocean which lay far
distant to his right. It was then that a turn in the road
brought before him one of those long, desolate, gloomy villages
which are found in the interior of the Neapolitan dominions: and
now he came upon a small chapel on one side the road, with a
gaudily painted image of the Virgin in the open shrine. Around
this spot, which, in the heart of a Christian land, retained the
vestige of the old idolatry (for just such were the chapels that
in the pagan age were dedicated to the demon-saints of
mythology), gathered six or seven miserable and squalid wretches,
whom the curse of the leper had cut off from mankind. They set
up a shrill cry as they turned their ghastly visages towards the
horseman; and, without stirring from the spot, stretched out
their gaunt arms, and implored charity in the name of the
Merciful Mother! Glyndon hastily threw them some small coins,
and, turning away his face, clapped spurs to his horse, and
relaxed not his speed till he entered the village. On either
side the narrow and miry street, fierce and haggard forms--some
leaning against the ruined walls of blackened huts, some seated
at the threshold, some lying at full length in the mud--presented
groups that at once invoked pity and aroused alarm: pity for
their squalor, alarm for the ferocity imprinted on their savage
aspects. They gazed at him, grim and sullen, as he rode slowly
up the rugged street; sometimes whispering significantly to each
other, but without attempting to stop his way. Even the children
hushed their babble, and ragged urchins, devouring him with
sparkling eyes, muttered to their mothers; "We shall feast well
to-morrow!" It was, indeed, one of those hamlets in which Law
sets not its sober step, in which Violence and Murder house
secure,--hamlets common then in the wilder parts of Italy, in
which the peasant was but the gentler name for the robber.
Glyndon's heart somewhat failed him as he looked around, and the
question he desired to ask died upon his lips. At length from
one of the dismal cabins emerged a form superior to the rest.
Instead of the patched and ragged over-all, which made the only
garment of the men he had hitherto seen, the dress of this person
was characterised by all the trappings of the national bravery.
Upon his raven hair, the glossy curls of which made a notable
contrast to the matted and elfin locks of the savages around, was
placed a cloth cap, with a gold tassel that hung down to his
shoulder; his mustaches were trimmed with care, and a silk
kerchief of gay hues was twisted round a well-shaped but sinewy
throat; a short jacket of rough cloth was decorated with several
rows of gilt filagree buttons; his nether garments fitted tight
to his limbs, and were curiously braided; while in a broad parti-
coloured sash were placed two silver-hilted pistols, and the
sheathed knife, usually worn by Italians of the lower order,
mounted in ivory elaborately carved. A small carbine of handsome
workmanship was slung across his shoulder and completed his
costume. The man himself was of middle size, athletic yet
slender, with straight and regular features, sunburnt, but not
swarthy; and an expression of countenance which, though reckless
and bold, had in it frankness rather than ferocity, and, if
defying, was not altogether unprepossessing.
Glyndon, after eyeing this figure for some moments with great
attention, checked his rein, and asked the way to the "Castle of
the Mountain."
The man lifted his cap as he heard the question, and, approaching
Glyndon, laid his hand upon the neck of the horse, and said, in a
low voice, "Then you are the cavalier whom our patron the signor
expected. He bade me wait for you here, and lead you to the
castle. And indeed, signor, it might have been unfortunate if I
had neglected to obey the command."
The man then, drawing a little aside, called out to the
bystanders in a loud voice, "Ho, ho! my friends, pay henceforth
and forever all respect to this worshipful cavalier. He is the
expected guest of our blessed patron of the Castle of the
Mountain. Long life to him! May he, like his host, be safe by
day and by night; on the hill and in the waste; against the
dagger and the bullet,--in limb and in life! Cursed be he who
touches a hair of his head, or a baioccho in his pouch. Now and
forever we will protect and honour him,--for the law or against
the law; with the faith and to the death. Amen! Amen!"
"Amen!" responded, in wild chorus, a hundred voices; and the
scattered and straggling groups pressed up the street, nearer and
nearer to the horseman.
"And that he may be known," continued the Englishman's strange
protector, "to the eye and to the ear, I place around him the
white sash, and I give him the sacred watchword, 'Peace to the
Brave.' Signor, when you wear this sash, the proudest in these
parts will bare the head and bend the knee. Signor, when you
utter this watchword, the bravest hearts will be bound to your
bidding. Desire you safety, or ask you revenge--to gain a
beauty, or to lose a foe,--speak but the word, and we are yours:
we are yours! Is it not so, comrades?"
And again the hoarse voices shouted, "Amen, Amen!"
"Now, signor," whispered the bravo, "if you have a few coins to
spare, scatter them amongst the crowd, and let us be gone."
Glyndon, not displeased at the concluding sentence, emptied his
purse in the streets; and while, with mingled oaths, blessings,
shrieks, and yells, men, women, and children scrambled for the
money, the bravo, taking the rein of the horse, led it a few
paces through the village at a brisk trot, and then, turning up a
narrow lane to the left, in a few minutes neither houses nor men
were visible, and the mountains closed their path on either side.
It was then that, releasing the bridle and slackening his pace,
the guide turned his dark eyes on Glyndon with an arch
expression, and said,--
"Your Excellency was not, perhaps, prepared for the hearty
welcome we have given you."
"Why, in truth, I OUGHT to have been prepared for it, since the
signor, to whose house I am bound, did not disguise from me the
character of the neighbourhood. And your name, my friend, if I
may so call you?"
"Oh, no ceremonies with me, Excellency. In the village I am
generally called Maestro Paolo. I had a surname once, though a
very equivocal one; and I have forgotten THAT since I retired
from the world."
"And was it from disgust, from poverty, or from some--some
ebullition of passion which entailed punishment, that you betook
yourself to the mountains?"
"Why, signor," said the bravo, with a gay laugh, "hermits of my
class seldom love the confessional. However, I have no secrets
while my step is in these defiles, my whistle in my pouch, and my
carbine at my back." With that the robber, as if he loved
permission to talk at his will, hemmed thrice, and began with
much humour; though, as his tale proceeded, the memories it
roused seemed to carry him farther than he at first intended, and
reckless and light-hearted ease gave way to that fierce and
varied play of countenance and passion of gesture which
characterise the emotions of his countrymen.
"I was born at Terracina,--a fair spot, is it not? My father was
a learned monk of high birth; my mother--Heaven rest her!--an
innkeeper's pretty daughter. Of course there could be no
marriage in the case; and when I was born, the monk gravely
declared my appearance to be miraculous. I was dedicated from my
cradle to the altar; and my head was universally declared to be
the orthodox shape for a cowl. As I grew up, the monk took great
pains with my education; and I learned Latin and psalmody as soon
as less miraculous infants learn crowing. Nor did the holy man's
care stint itself to my interior accomplishments. Although vowed
to poverty, he always contrived that my mother should have her
pockets full; and between her pockets and mine there was soon
established a clandestine communication; accordingly, at
fourteen, I wore my cap on one side, stuck pistols in my belt,
and assumed the swagger of a cavalier and a gallant. At that age
my poor mother died; and about the same period my father, having
written a History of the Pontifical Bulls, in forty volumes, and
being, as I said, of high birth, obtained a cardinal's hat. From
that time he thought fit to disown your humble servant. He bound
me over to an honest notary at Naples, and gave me two hundred
crowns by way of provision. Well, signor, I saw enough of the
law to convince me that I should never be rogue enough to shine
in the profession. So, instead of spoiling parchment, I made
love to the notary's daughter. My master discovered our innocent
amusement, and turned me out of doors; that was disagreeable.
But my Ninetta loved me, and took care that I should not lie out
in the streets with the Lazzaroni. Little jade! I think I see
her now with her bare feet, and her finger to her lips, opening
the door in the summer nights, and bidding me creep softly into
the kitchen, where, praised be the saints! a flask and a manchet
always awaited the hungry amoroso. At last, however, Ninetta
grew cold. It is the way of the sex, signor. Her father found
her an excellent marriage in the person of a withered old
picture-dealer. She took the spouse, and very properly clapped
the door in the face of the lover. I was not disheartened,
Excellency; no, not I. Women are plentiful while we are young.
So, without a ducat in my pocket or a crust for my teeth, I set
out to seek my fortune on board of a Spanish merchantman. That
was duller work than I expected; but luckily we were attacked by
a pirate,--half the crew were butchered, the rest captured. I
was one of the last: always in luck, you see, signor,--monks'
sons have a knack that way! The captain of the pirates took a
fancy to me. 'Serve with us?' said he. 'Too happy,' said I.
Behold me, then, a pirate! O jolly life! how I blessed the old
notary for turning me out of doors! What feasting, what
fighting, what wooing, what quarrelling! Sometimes we ran ashore
and enjoyed ourselves like princes; sometimes we lay in a calm
for days together on the loveliest sea that man ever traversed.
And then, if the breeze rose and a sail came in sight, who so
merry as we? I passed three years in that charming profession,
and then, signor, I grew ambitious. I caballed against the
captain; I wanted his post. One still night we struck the blow.
The ship was like a log in the sea, no land to be seen from the
mast-head, the waves like glass, and the moon at its full. Up we
rose, thirty of us and more. Up we rose with a shout; we poured
into the captain's cabin, I at the head. The brave old boy had
caught the alarm, and there he stood at the doorway, a pistol in
each hand; and his one eye (he had only one) worse to meet than
the pistols were.
"'Yield!' cried I; 'your life shall be safe.'
"'Take that,' said he, and whiz went the pistol; but the saints
took care of their own, and the ball passed by my cheek, and shot
the boatswain behind me. I closed with the captain, and the
other pistol went off without mischief in the struggle. Such a
fellow he was,--six feet four without his shoes! Over we went,
rolling each on the other. Santa Maria! no time to get hold of
one's knife. Meanwhile all the crew were up, some for the
captain, some for me,--clashing and firing, and swearing and
groaning, and now and then a heavy splash in the sea. Fine
supper for the sharks that night! At last old Bilboa got
uppermost; out flashed his knife; down it came, but not in my
heart. No! I gave my left arm as a shield; and the blade went
through to the hilt, with the blood spurting up like the rain
from a whale's nostril! With the weight of the blow the stout
fellow came down so that his face touched mine; with my right
hand I caught him by the throat, turned him over like a lamb,
signor, and faith it was soon all up with him: the boatswain's
brother, a fat Dutchman, ran him through with a pike.
"'Old fellow,' said I, as he turned his terrible eye to me, 'I
bear you no malice, but we must try to get on in the world, you
know.' The captain grinned and gave up the ghost. I went upon
deck,--what a sight! Twenty bold fellows stark and cold, and the
moon sparkling on the puddles of blood as calmly as |
