Zanoni

“ 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!" ”

“ No spot could be more beautiful,—no solitude less invaded. To the mysterious knowledge of Zanoni, to the harmless ignorance of Viola, the babbling and garish world of civilised man was alike unheeded. The loving sky and the lovely earth are companions enough to Wisdom and to Ignorance while they love. ”

“ Ho—ho, Zanoni! man of mystery and might, who hast walked amidst the passions of the world, with no changes on thy brow, art thou tossed at last upon the billows of tempestuous fear? Does thy spirit reel to and fro?—knowest thou at last the strength and the majesty of Death?
He fled, trembling, from the pale-faced man of art,—fled through stately hall and long-drawn corridor, and gained a remote chamber in the palace, which other step than his was not permitted to profane. Out with thy herbs and vessels. Break from the enchanted elements, O silvery-azure flame! ”

“ When I first received thee as my pupil, I promised Zanoni, if convinced by thy first trials that thou couldst but swell, not the number of our order, but the list of the victims who have aspired to it in vain, I would not rear thee to thine own wretchedness and doom,—I would dismiss thee back to the world. I fulfil my promise. Thine ordeal has been the easiest that neophyte ever knew. I asked for nothing but abstinence from the sensual, and a brief experiment of thy patience and thy faith. Go back to thine own world; thou hast no nature to aspire to ours! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ With its arms folded on its breast, it stood distant a few feet from Zanoni, and its low voice murmured gently, “My counsels were sweet to thee once; and once, night after night, thy soul could follow my wings through the untroubled splendours of the Infinite. Now thou hast bound thyself back to the earth by its strongest chains, and the attraction to the clay is more potent than the sympathies that drew to thy charms the Dweller of the Starbeam and the Air. ”

“ Command thy slave, O beautiful Chaldean! Hark, the wail of women!—hark, the sharp shriek of thy beloved one! Death is in thy palace! Adon-Ai comes not to thy call. Only where no cloud of the passion and the flesh veils the eye of the Serene Intelligence can the Sons of the Starbeam glide to man. But I can aid thee!—hark!” And Zanoni heard distinctly in his heart, even at that distance from the chamber, the voice of Viola calling in delirium on her beloved one. ”

“ 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 Due 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. ”

“ Can thine eye trace the ripening of the grain beneath the earth? In the moral and the physical world alike, lie dark portents, far more wondrous than the powers thou wouldst ascribe to me!”
“Dost thou disown those powers; dost thou confess thyself an imposter?—or wilt thou dare to tell me that thou art indeed sold to the Evil one,—a magician whose familiar has haunted me night and day?”
“It matters not what I am,” returned Zanoni; “it matters only whether I can aid thee to exorcise thy dismal phantom, and return once more to the wholesome air of this common life. ”

“ Why, it is very clear that this Zanoni is some impostor — 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. ”

“ Glyndon looked and believed. He whispered the address to the house whither his fatal step already had brought woe and doom.
“Bless thee for this,” exclaimed Zanoni, passionately, “and thou shalt be blessed! What! couldst thou not perceive that at the entrance to all the grander worlds dwell the race that intimidate and awe? Who in thy daily world ever left the old regions of Custom and Prescription, and felt not the first seizure of the shapeless and nameless Fear? ”

“ 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 ”

“ When thine eyes fall upon this writing thou wilt know me as one of the dead. For thou that wert, and still art my life,—I am lost to thee! O lover! O husband! O still worshipped and adored! if thou hast ever loved me, if thou canst still pity, seek not to discover the steps that fly thee. If thy charms can detect and tract me, spare me, spare our child! Zanoni, I will rear it to love thee, to call thee father! Zanoni, its young lips shall pray for thee! Ah, spare thy child, for infants are the saints of earth, and their mediation may be heard on high! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ But beside that cradle there sits cowering a mantled, shadowy form,—the more fearful and ghastly from its indistinct and unsubstantial gloom. The walls of that chamber seem to open as the scene of a theatre. A grim dungeon; streets through which pour shadowy crowds; wrath and hatred, and the aspect of demons in their ghastly visages; a place of death; a murderous instrument; a shamble-house of human flesh; herself; her child;—all, all, rapid phantasmagoria, chased each other. Suddenly the phantom-Zanoni turned, it seemed to perceive herself,—her second self. ”

“ From its waking to its sleep, from its sleep to its waking, is a revolution in Time. Every gesture to be noted,—every smile to seem a new progress into the world it has come to bless! Zanoni has gone,—the last dash of the oar is lost, the last speck of the gondola has vanished from the ocean-streets of Venice! Her infant is sleeping in the cradle at the mother’s feet; and she thinks through her tears what tales of the fairy-land, that spreads far and wide, with a thousand wonders, in that narrow bed, she shall have to tell the father! ”

“ 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 ”

“ Fool! the minutes laugh at thee; Nature, even now, like a blue sky through a shattered temple, is smiling through the tortured frame. The breathing grows more calm and hushed; the voice of delirium is dumb,—a sweet dream has come to Viola. Is it a dream, or is it the soul that sees? She thinks suddenly that she is with Zanoni, that her burning head is pillowed on his bosom; she thinks, as he gazes on her, that his eyes dispel the tortures that prey upon her,—the touch of his hand cools the fever on her brow ”

“ 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. ”

“ Bending over a fragment of stone near the roadside, lie perceived the form of a man; and when he approached, he recognised Zanoni.
The Englishman sainted 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. ”

“ Shall I tell thee why I part? No; thou, the wisely-terrible, canst divine what the hand trembles to record; and while I shudder at thy power,—while it is thy power I fly (our child upon my bosom) ,—it comforts me still to think that thy power can read the heart! Thou knowest that it is the faithful mother that writes to thee, it is not the faithless wife! Is there sin in thy knowledge, Zanoni? Sin must have sorrow: and it were sweet—oh, how sweet—to be thy comforter. But the child, the infant, the soul that looks to mine for its shield!—magician, I wrest from thee that soul! ”