Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“ Sophy must be resigned; but the sacrifice crushed him to the earth—crushed the very manhood out of him. He threw himself on the floor, sobbing—sobbing, as if the body and soul were torn, each from each, in convulsive spasms. But send this letter to Lady Montfort! A letter so wholly at variance with Darrell's dignity of character—a letter in which rage seemed lashed to unreasoning frenzy! Such bitter language of hate and scorn, and even insult, to a woman, and to the very woman who had seemed to Lionel so reverently to cherish the writer's name—so tenderly to scheme for the writer's happiness! ”

“ What a place, methought, for a honeymoon, if a Gy bride were a little less formidably armed not only with the rights of woman, but with the powers of man! But when one thinks of a Gy, so learned, so tall, so stately, so much above the standard of the creature we call woman as was Zee, no! even if I had felt no fear of being reduced to a cinder, it is not of her I should have dreamed in that bower so constructed for dreams of poetic love. The automata reappeared, serving one of those delicious liquids which form the innocent wines of the Vril-ya. ”

“ Be silent, Gionetta! Why have I only thee and my own terrors to consult 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 could leave you happy,—yes, literally blest,—if I could fancy you less forgiving, less gentle, less angelic!"
"What have I to forgive?"" said Lucy tenderly.
"What! every thing for which one human being can pardon another. Have not deceit and injury been my crimes against you? Your peace of mind, your serenity of heart, your buoyancy of temper, have I marred these or not?"
"Oh Clifford!" said Lucy, rising from herself and from all selfish thoughts, "why,—why will you not trust me? ”

“ I am but a man, unhappily in earnest—a man who placed in those hands his life of life—who said to you, while yet in his prime, 'There is my future—take it, till it vanish out of earth!' You have made that life substanceless as a ghost—that future barren as the grave. And when you dare force yourself again upon my way, and would dictate laws to my very hearth—when I speak as aman what plain men must feel—'Oh, Mr. Darrell!' says your injured ladyship, 'how can you have the heart?' Woman! were you not false as the falsest? Falsehood has no dignity to awe rebuke—falsehood no privilege of sex. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He did not attempt to kiss the hands he held; and though the touch thrilled through every vein and fibre in his frame, his clasp was as light as that in which the first timidity of a boy's love ventures to stamp itself!
"You are pale, Lucy," said he mournfully, "and your cheek is much thinner than it was when I first saw you—when I first saw you! Ah! would for your sake that that had never been! Your spirits were light then, Lucy. Your laugh came from the heart,—your step spurned the earth. Joy broke from your eyes, every thing that breathed around you seemed full of happiness and mirth! ”

“ Lionel stood, expectant, in the centre of the room, and as the two female forms entered, the lights were full upon their faces. That younger face—it is she—it is she, the unforgotten—the long lost. Instinctively, as if no years had rolled between—as if she were still the little child, he the boy who had coveted such a sister—he sprang forward and opened his arms, and as suddenly halted, dropped the arms to his side, blushing, confused, abashed. She! that vagrant child!—she! that form so elegant—that great peeress's pupil—adopted daughter, she! the poor wandering Sophy! ”

“ There appeared, as if in that respect there was a contest in his mind between interest on one hand, and private dislike, or contempt, on the other.
"You judge women wrongly!" said Brandon. "Ladies never know each other; of all persons, Mauleverer is best calculated to win them, and experience has proved my assertion. The proudest lot I know for a woman, would be the thorough conquest of Lord Mauleverer; but it is impossible. He may be gallant, but he will never be subdued. He defies the whole female world, and with justice and impunity. Enough of him. Sing to me, dear Lucy." ”

“ 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." ”

“ How poor, how slight, how insignificant William Losely, the hanger-on of rural Thanes, compared with that William Waife whose entrance into this house, you—despite that felon's brand when you knew it was the martyr's glory—greeted with noble reverence: whom, when the mind itself was stricken down—only the soul left to the wreck of the body—you tended with such pious care as he lay on your father's bed! And do you, who hold Nobleness in such honor—do you, of all men, tell me that you cannot recognize that Celestial tenderness which ennobled a Spirit for all Eternity?"
"George, you are right!" ”

“ That is the exact time, when love has reached its highest point—when all feelings, all thoughts, the whole soul, and the whole mind are seized and engrossed—when every difficulty weighed in the opposite scale seems lighter than dust—when to renounce the object beloved, is the most deadly and lasting sacrifice—and when in so many breasts, where honour, conscience, virtue, are far stronger than we can believe them ever to have been in a criminal like Clifford, honour, conscience, virtue, have perished at once and suddenly into ashes before that mighty and irresistible fire. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lightly, as a wolf enters a sheepfold, he swung himself over the moss-grown fence; he gained the buttresses of the great raw pile; high and clear above, from Darrell's chamber, streamed the light; all the rest of the old house was closed and dark, buried, no doubt, in slumber.
He is now in the hollows of the skeleton pile; he mounts the ladder; the lock of the door before him yields to his rude implements but artful hand. He is in the long gallery; the moonlight comes broad and clear through the large casements. What wealth of art is on the walls! but how profitless to the robber's greed! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Clifford stood his ground, gazing around with a look of angry and defying contempt, which joined to his athletic frame, his dark and fierce eye, and a heavy riding whip, which, as if mechanically, he half raised, effectually kept the murmurers from proceeding to violence.
"Poor pretender to breeding and to sense!" said he, disdainfully turning to Mauleverer, "with one touch of this whip I could shame you for ever, or compel you to descend from the level of your rank to that of mine, and the action would be but a mild return to your language. But I love rather to teach you, than to correct. ”

“ The old smile will sometimes light the eye, and awake the old playfulness of the lip. But what a great and critical sorrow does leave behind is often far worse than the sorrow itself has been. It is a change in the inner man, which strands him, as Guy Darrell seemed stranded, upon the shoal of the Present; which the more he strives manfully to bear his burden warns him the more from dwelling on the Past; and the more impressively it enforces the lesson of the vanity of human wishes strikes the more from his reckoning illusive hopes in the Future. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ I, who loathe the living, can scarcely venerate the unborn. Lucy, believe me, that no man can mix largely with men in political life, and not despise every thing that in youth he adored! Age leaves us only one feeling—contempt!"
"Are you belied, then?" said Lucy, pointing to a newspaper, the organ of the party opposed to Brandon.—"Are you belied when you are here called 'ambitious?'—When they call you 'selfish,' and 'grasping'—I know they wrong you; but I confess that I have thought you ambitious; yet can he who despises men, desire their good opinion?" ”

“ Harkye, Lionel, you are nearer akin to these fine folks than I knew of. Promise me one thing: you may become of their set, by right of your famous Mr. Darrell; if ever you hear an artist, musician, scribbler, no matter what, ridiculed as a tuft-hunter—seeking the great—and so forth—before you join in the laugh, ask some great man's son, with a pedigree that dates from the Ark, 'Are you not a toad-eater too? Do you want political influence?—do you stand contested elections?—do you curry and fawn upon greasy Sam the butcher, and grimy Tom the blacksmith for a vote? ”

“ Oh Sophy—Ay or No?"
"No!" fell from her pale, firm lips—and in a moment more she was at Waife's side, and had drawn him away from George. "Grandfather!—home, home; let us go home at once, or I shall die!"
Darrell has kept his keen sight upon her movements—upon her countenance. He sees her gesture—her look—as she now clings to her grandfather. The blue eyes are not now coldly fixed on level air, but raised upward, as for strength from above. The young face is sublime with its woe, and with its resolve.
"Noble child!" muttered Darrell. "I think I see into her heart. If so, poor Lionel indeed! ”

“ 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. ”

“ The goddess whose boons adorn the outward shell of the human spirit, came back to her favorite's death-couch as she had come to the cradle—not now as the Venus Erycina, goddess of Smile and Jest, but as the warning Venus Libitina, the goddess of Doom and the Funeral.
"I'm a very poor creature," said Jasper, after a pause. "I can't rise—I can't move without help. Very strange!—supernatural! She always said that if I raised my hand against her, it would fall palsied!" He turned his eyes toward Arabella with a glare of angry terror. "She is a witch!" ”

“ 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! ”

“ Now you see, I am not what is called Demonstrative,—a long word, Sophy, which means, that I don't show to you always how fond I am of you; and, indeed," he added ingenuously, "I am not always aware of it myself. I like acting,—I like the applause, and the lights, and the excitement, and the illusion,—the make-belief of the whole thing: it takes me out of memory and thought; it is a world that has neither past, present, nor future, an interlude in time,-an escape from space. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ Most boys of great ability and strong passion write verses—it is nature's relief to brain and heart at the critical turning-age. Most boys thus gifted do so; a few do not, and out of those few Fate selects the great men of action—those large, luminous characters that stamp poetry on the world's prosaic surface. Lionel had in him the pith and substance of Fortune's grand nobodies, who become Fame's abrupt somebodies when the chances of life throw suddenly in their way a noble something, to be ardently coveted and boldly won. ”

“ 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 painter, not an artist. ”

“ What shall we do if we give up acting altogether?"
"Give up acting altogether, when you like it so! No, no. I will like it too, Grandy. But—but—" she stopped short, afraid to imply blame or to give pain.
"But what? let us make clean breasts, one to the other; tell truth, and shame the Father of Lies."
"Tell truth," said Sophy, lifting up to him her pure eyes with such heavenly, loving kindness that, if the words did imply reproof, the eyes stole it away. "Could we but manage to tell truth off the stage, I should not dislike acting! ”

“ 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!" ”

“ Lionel. "Is it scorn—is it pity? Is it but serene indifference?"
Darrell. "As we ourselves interpret; if scorn be present in our own hearts, it will be seen in the disc of Jupiter. Man, egotist though he be, exacts sympathy from all the universe. Joyous, he says to the sun, 'Lifegiver, rejoice with me.' Grieving, he says to the moon, ' Pensive one, thou sharest my sorrow.' Hope for fame; a star is its promise! Mourn for the dead; a star is the land of reunion! ”

“ Ah, Vance, could I but be of some comfort to him! Now that I am older, I think I understand in him much that perplexed me as a boy, when we parted. Darrell is one of those men who require a home. Between the great world and solitude, he needs the intermediate filling up which the life domestic alone supplies: a wife to realize the sweet word helpmate—children, with whose future he could knit his own toils and his ancestral remembrances. That intermediate space annihilated, the great world and the solitude are left, each frowning on the other. ”

“ 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 impostor 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. ”

“ Lionel sprang to the breast that opened to him; and if Darrell had planned how best to remove from the young man's mind forever the possibility of one selfish pang, no craft could have attained his object like that touching confidence before which the disparities between youth and age literally vanished. And, both made equal, both elevated alike, verily I know not which at the moment felt the elder or the younger! Two noble hearts, intermingled in one emotion, are set free from all time save the present; par each with each, they meet as brothers twin-born. ”

“ Prom 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, [2] 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. ”

“ Lady Montfort, you know that this man loves you—as, verily. I believe, never man in our cold century loved woman—through desertion—through change—amidst grief—amidst resentment—despite pride; dead to another love—shrinking from all other ties—on, constant on—carrying in the depth of his soul to the verge of age, secret and locked up, the hopeless passion of his manhood. Do you not see that it is through you, and you alone, that Guy Darrell has for seventeen years, been lost to the country he was intended to serve and to adorn? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Behind that group, shadowed by the Thorn-tree, stands the Preacher, thoughtful and grave, foreseeing the grief that must come to the old man with the morrow, when he will learn that a guilty son nears his end, and will hasten to comfort Jasper's last days with pardon. But the Preacher looks not down to the death-couch alone; on and high over death looks the Preacher! By what words heavenly mercy may lend to his lips shall he steal away, yet in time, to the soul of the dying, and justify murmurs of hope to the close of a life so dark with the shades of its past? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Don't talk to me of heiresses, Dolly, I have been the victim of heiresses. But a rich widow is an estimable creature. Against widows, if rich, I have not a word to say; and to tell you the truth, there is a widow whom I suspect I have fascinated, and whose connection I have a particular private reason for deeming desirable! She has a whelp of a son, who is a spoke in my wheel—were I his father-in-law would not I be a spoke in his? I'd teach the boy life, Dolly." Here all trace of beauty vanished from Jasper's face, and Poole, staring at him, pushed away his chair. ”

“ We can no more say why we like the man than we can say why we fall in love with a woman in whom no one else would discover a charm. "There is," says a Latin love-poet, "no why or wherefore in liking." Hartopp, therefore, had taken, from the first moment, to Waife—the staid, respectable, thriving man, all muffled up from head to foot in the whitest lawn of reputation—to the wandering, shifty, tricksome scatterling, who had not seemingly secured, through the course of a life bordering upon age, a single certificate for good conduct. ”

“ Luck against one—wait! double the capital ere you send the half. Luck with one—how balk the tide? how fritter the capital just at the turn of doubling? Soon it grew irksome even to think of you; yet still, when I did, I said ' Life is long; I shall win riches; he shall share them some day or other!'—Basta, Basta!—what idle twaddle or hollow brag all this must seem to you!"
"No," said Waife, feebly—and his hand drooped till it touched Jasper's bended shoulder, but, at the touch, recoiled as with an electric spasm. ”

“ No; if she pitied, but did not love me, when, eighteen years ago, we parted under yonder beech-tree, I should be a dotard to dream that woman's pity mellows into love as our locks become gray, and Youth turns our vows into ridicule. It is not pride that speaks here; it is rather humility, Dick! But we must not now talk of old age and bygones. Youth and marriage-bells, Dick! Know that I have been for hours pondering how to reconcile with my old-fashioned notions dear Lionel's happiness. We must think of the living as well as the dead, Dick. ”

“ Of all our passions, is not Revenge the one into which enters with the most zest a devil? For what is a devii?—A being whose sole work on earth is some revenge on God!
Jasper Losely was not by temperament vindictive; he was irascible, as the vain are—combative, aggressive, turbulent, by the impulse of animal spirits; but the premeditation of vengeance was foreign to a levity and egotism which abjured the self-sacrifice that is equally necessary to hatred as to love. But Guy Darrell had forced into his moral system a passion not native to it. ”

“ Lionel and Sophy are now seated on yon moss-grown trunk; on either side the old gray-haired man, as if agreeing for a while even to forget each other, that they may make him feel how fondly he is remembered. Sophy is resting both her hands on the old man's shoulder, looking into his face, and murmuring in his ear with voice like the coo of a happy dove. Ah! fear not, Sophy; he is happy too—he, who never thinks of himself. Look—the playful smile round his arch lips; look—now he is showing off Sir Isaac to Vance; with austere solemnity the dog goes through his tricks ”

“ Lionel, however, was not perhaps sorry to be thus compelled to trust to writing his own and Sophy's cause. Darrell was one of those men whose presence inspires a certain awe—one of those men whom we feel, upon great occasions, less embarrassed to address by letter than in person. Lionel's pen moved rapidly—his whole heart and soul suffused with feeling, and, rushing over the page, he reminded Darrell of the day when he had told to the rich man the tale of the lovely wandering child, and how, out of his sympathy for that child, Darrell's approving, fostering tenderness to himself had grown. ”

“ There they are, Love and Youth, Lionel and Sophy, in the arbor round which her slight hands have twined the honey-suckle, fond imitation of that bower endeared by the memory of her earliest holiday—she seated coyly, he on the ground at her feet, as when Titania had watched his sleep. He has been reading to her, the book has fallen from his hand. What book? That volume of poems so unintelligibly obscure to all but the dreaming young, who are so unintelligibly obscure to themselves. But to the merit of those poems, I doubt if even George did justice. ”