Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон
Zanoni
CHAPTER 7.VII
Constitutum est, ut quisquis eum HOMINEM dixisset fuisse, capitalem penderet poenam.
—St. Augustine, “Of the God Serapis,” l. 18, “de Civ. Dei,” c. 5.
(It was decreed, that whoso should say that he had been a MAN, should suffer the punishment of a capital offence.)
Robespierre was reclining languidly in his fauteuil, his cadaverous countenance more jaded and fatigued than usual. He to whom Catherine Theot assured immortal life, looked, indeed, like a man at death’s door. On the table before him was a dish heaped with oranges, with the juice of which it is said that he could alone assuage the acrid bile that overflowed his system; and an old woman, richly dressed (she had been a Marquise in the old regime) was employed in peeling the Hesperian fruits for the sick Dragon, with delicate fingers covered with jewels. I have before said that Robespierre was the idol of the women. Strange certainly!—but then they were French women! The old Marquise, who, like Catherine Theot, called him “son,” really seemed to love him piously and disinterestedly as a mother; and as she peeled the oranges, and heaped on him the most caressing and soothing expressions, the livid ghost of a smile fluttered about his meagre lips. At a distance, Payan and Couthon, seated at another table, were writing rapidly, and occasionally pausing from their work to consult with each other in brief whispers.
Suddenly one of the Jacobins opened the door, and, approaching Robespierre, whispered to him the name of Guerin. (See for the espionage on which Guerin was employed, “Les Papiers inedits,” etc., volume i. page 366, No. xxviii.) At that word the sick man started up, as if new life were in the sound.
“My kind friend,” he said to the Marquise, “forgive me; I must dispense with thy tender cares. France demands me. I am never ill when I can serve my country!”
The old Marquise lifted up her eyes to heaven and murmured, “Quel ange!”
Robespierre waved his hand impatiently; and the old woman, with a sigh, patted his pale cheek, kissed his forehead, and submissively withdrew. The next moment, the smiling, sober man we have before described, stood, bending low, before the tyrant. And well might Robespierre welcome one of the subtlest agents of his power,—one on whom he relied more than the clubs of his Jacobins, the tongues of his orators, the bayonets of his armies; Guerin, the most renowned of his ecouteurs,—the searching, prying, universal, omnipresent spy, who glided like a sunbeam through chink and crevice, and brought to him intelligence not only of the deeds, but the hearts of men!
“Well, citizen, well!—and what of Tallien?”
“This morning, early, two minutes after eight, he went out.”
“So early?—hem!”
“He passed Rue des Quatre Fils, Rue de Temple, Rue de la Reunion, au Marais, Rue Martin; nothing observable, except that—”
“That what?”
“He amused himself at a stall in bargaining for some books.”
“Bargaining for books! Aha, the charlatan!—he would cloak the intriguant under the savant! Well!”
“At last, in the Rue des Fosses Montmartre, an individual in a blue surtout (unknown) accosted him. They walked together about the street some minutes, and were joined by Legendre.”
“Legendre! approach, Payan! Legendre, thou hearest!”
“I went into a fruit-stall, and hired two little girls to go and play at ball within hearing. They heard Legendre say, ‘I believe his power is wearing itself out.’ And Tallien answered, ‘And HIMSELF too. I would not give three months’ purchase for his life.’ I do not know, citizen, if they meant THEE?”
“Nor I, citizen,” answered Robespierre, with a fell smile, succeeded by an expression of gloomy thought. “Ha!” he muttered; “I am young yet,—in the prime of life. I commit no excess. No; my constitution is sound, sound. Anything farther of Tallien?”
“Yes. The woman whom he loves—Teresa de Fontenai—who lies in prison, still continues to correspond with him; to urge him to save her by thy destruction: this my listeners overheard. His servant is the messenger between the prisoner and himself.”
“So! The servant shall be seized in the open streets of Paris. The Reign of Terror is not over yet. With the letters found on him, if such their context, I will pluck Tallien from his benches in the Convention.”
Robespierre rose, and after walking a few moments to and fro the room in thought, opened the door and summoned one of the Jacobins without. To him he gave his orders for the watch and arrest of Tallien’s servant, and then threw himself again into his chair. As the Jacobin departed, Guerin whispered,—
“Is not that the Citizen Aristides?”
“Yes; a faithful fellow, if he would wash himself, and not swear so much.”
“Didst thou not guillotine his brother?”
“But Aristides denounced him.”
“Nevertheless, are such men safe about thy person?”
“Humph! that is true.” And Robespierre, drawing out his pocketbook, wrote a memorandum in it, replaced it in his vest, and resumed,—
“What else of Tallien?”
“Nothing more. He and Legendre, with the unknown, walked to the Jardin Egalite, and there parted. I saw Tallien to his house. But I have other news. Thou badest me watch for those who threaten thee in secret letters.”
“Guerin! hast thou detected them? Hast thou—hast thou—”
And the tyrant, as he spoke, opened and shut both his hands, as if already grasping the lives of the writers, and one of those convulsive grimaces that seemed like an epileptic affection, to which he was subject, distorted his features.
“Citizen, I think I have found one. Thou must know that amongst those most disaffected is the painter Nicot.”
“Stay, stay!” said Robespierre, opening a manuscript book, bound in red morocco (for Robespierre was neat and precise, even in his death-lists), and turning to an alphabetical index,—“Nicot!—I have him,—atheist, sans-culotte (I hate slovens), friend of Hebert! Aha! N.B.—Rene Dumas knows of his early career and crimes. Proceed!”
“This Nicot has been suspected of diffusing tracts and pamphlets against thyself and the Comite. Yesterday evening, when he was out, his porter admitted me into his apartment, Rue Beau Repaire. With my master-key I opened his desk and escritoire. I found herein a drawing of thyself at the guillotine; and underneath was written, ‘Bourreau de ton pays, lis l’arret de ton chatiment!’ (Executioner of thy country, read the decree of thy punishment!) I compared the words with the fragments of the various letters thou gavest me: the handwriting tallies with one. See, I tore off the writing.”
Robespierre looked, smiled, and, as if his vengeance were already satisfied, threw himself on his chair. “It is well! I feared it was a more powerful enemy. This man must be arrested at once.”
“And he waits below. I brushed by him as I ascended the stairs.”
“Does he so?—admit!—nay,—hold! hold! Guerin, withdraw into the inner chamber till I summon thee again. Dear Payan, see that this Nicot conceals no weapons.”
Payan, who was as brave as Robespierre was pusillanimous, repressed the smile of disdain that quivered on his lips a moment, and left the room.
Meanwhile Robespierre, with his head buried in his bosom, seemed plunged in deep thought. “Life is a melancholy thing, Couthon!” said he, suddenly.
“Begging your pardon, I think death worse,” answered the philanthropist, gently.
Robespierre made no rejoinder, but took from his portefeuille that singular letter, which was found afterwards amongst his papers, and is marked LXI. in the published collection. (“Papiers inedits,’ etc., volume ii. page 156.)
“Without doubt,” it began, “you are uneasy at not having earlier received news from me. Be not alarmed; you know that I ought only to reply by our ordinary courier; and as he has been interrupted, dans sa derniere course, that is the cause of my delay. When you receive this, employ all diligence to fly a theatre where you are about to appear and disappear for the last time. It were idle to recall to you all the reasons that expose you to peril. The last step that should place you sur le sopha de la presidence, but brings you to the scaffold; and the mob will spit on your face as it has spat on those whom you have judged. Since, then, you have accumulated here a sufficient treasure for existence, I await you with great impatience, to laugh with you at the part you have played in the troubles of a nation as credulous as it is avid of novelties. Take your part according to our arrangements,—all is prepared. I conclude,—our courier waits. I expect your reply.”
Musingly and slowly the Dictator devoured the contents of this epistle. “No,” he said to himself,—“no; he who has tasted power can no longer enjoy repose. Yet, Danton, Danton! thou wert right; better to be a poor fisherman than to govern men.” (“Il vaudrait mieux,” said Danton, in his dungeon, “etre un pauvre pecheur que de gouverner les hommes.”)
The door opened, and Payan reappeared and whispered Robespierre, “All is safe! See the man.”
The Dictator, satisfied, summoned his attendant Jacobin to conduct Nicot to his presence. The painter entered with a fearless expression in his deformed features, and stood erect before Robespierre, who scanned him with a sidelong eye.
It is remarkable that most of the principal actors of the Revolution were singularly hideous in appearance,—from the colossal ugliness of Mirabeau and Danton, or the villanous ferocity in the countenances of David and Simon, to the filthy squalor of Marat, the sinister and bilious meanness of the Dictator’s features. But Robespierre, who was said to resemble a cat, had also a cat’s cleanness; and his prim and dainty dress, his shaven smoothness, the womanly whiteness of his lean hands, made yet more remarkable the disorderly ruffianism that characterised the attire and mien of the painter-sans-culotte.
“And so, citizen,” said Robespierre, mildly, “thou wouldst speak with me? I know thy merits and civism have been overlooked too long. Thou wouldst ask some suitable provision in the state? Scruple not—say on!”
“Virtuous Robespierre, toi qui eclaires l’univers (Thou who enlightenest the world.), I come not to ask a favour, but to render service to the state. I have discovered a correspondence that lays open a conspiracy of which many of the actors are yet unsuspected.” And he placed the papers on the table. Robespierre seized, and ran his eye over them rapidly and eagerly.
“Good!—good!” he muttered to himself: “this is all I wanted. Barrere, Legendre! I have them! Camille Desmoulins was but their dupe. I loved him once; I never loved them! Citizen Nicot, I thank thee. I observe these letters are addressed to an Englishman. What Frenchman but must distrust these English wolves in sheep’s clothing! France wants no longer citizens of the world; that farce ended with Anarcharsis Clootz. I beg pardon, Citizen Nicot; but Clootz and Hebert were THY friends.”
“Nay,” said Nicot, apologetically, “we are all liable to be deceived. I ceased to honour them whom thou didst declare against; for I disown my own senses rather than thy justice.”
“Yes, I pretend to justice; that IS the virtue I affect,” said Robespierre, meekly; and with his feline propensities he enjoyed, even in that critical hour of vast schemes, of imminent danger, of meditated revenge, the pleasure of playing with a solitary victim. (The most detestable anecdote of this peculiar hypocrisy in Robespierre is that in which he is recorded to have tenderly pressed the hand of his old school-friend, Camille Desmoulins, the day that he signed the warrant for his arrest.) “And my justice shall no longer be blind to thy services, good Nicot. Thou knowest this Glyndon?”
“Yes, well,—intimately. He WAS my friend, but I would give up my brother if he were one of the ‘indulgents.’ I am not ashamed to say that I have received favours from this man.”
“Aha!—and thou dost honestly hold the doctrine that where a man threatens my life all personal favours are to be forgotten?”
“All!”
“Good citizen!—kind Nicot!—oblige me by writing the address of this Glyndon.”
Nicot stooped to the table; and suddenly when the pen was in his hand, a thought flashed across him, and he paused, embarrassed and confused.
“Write on, KIND Nicot!”
The painter slowly obeyed.
“Who are the other familiars of Glyndon?”
“It was on that point I was about to speak to thee, Representant,” said Nicot. “He visits daily a woman, a foreigner, who knows all his secrets; she affects to be poor, and to support her child by industry. But she is the wife of an Italian of immense wealth, and there is no doubt that she has moneys which are spent in corrupting the citizens. She should be seized and arrested.”
“Write down her name also.”
“But no time is to be lost; for I know that both have a design to escape from Paris this very night.”
“Our government is prompt, good Nicot,—never fear. Humph!—humph!” and Robespierre took the paper on which Nicot had written, and stooping over it—for he was near-sighted—added, smilingly, “Dost thou always write the same hand, citizen? This seems almost like a disguised character.”
“I should not like them to know who denounced them, Representant.”
“Good! good! Thy virtue shall be rewarded, trust me. Salut et fraternite!”
Robespierre half rose as he spoke, and Nicot withdrew.
“Ho, there!—without!” cried the Dictator, ringing his bell; and as the ready Jacobin attended the summons, “Follow that man, Jean Nicot. The instant he has cleared the house seize him. At once to the Conciergerie with him. Stay!—nothing against the law; there is thy warrant. The public accuser shall have my instruction. Away!—quick!”
The Jacobin vanished. All trace of illness, of infirmity, had gone from the valetudinarian; he stood erect on the floor, his face twitching convulsively, and his arms folded. “Ho! Guerin!” the spy reappeared—“take these addresses! Within an hour this Englishman and his woman must be in prison; their revelations will aid me against worthier foes. They shall die: they shall perish with the rest on the 10th,—the third day from this. There!” and he wrote hastily,—“there, also, is thy warrant! Off!
“And now, Couthon, Payan, we will dally no longer with Tallien and his crew. I have information that the Convention will NOT attend the Fete on the 10th. We must trust only to the sword of the law. I must compose my thoughts,—prepare my harangue. To-morrow, I will reappear at the Convention; to-morrow, bold St. Just joins us, fresh from our victorious armies; to-morrow, from the tribune, I will dart the thunderbolt on the masked enemies of France; to-morrow, I will demand, in the face of the country, the heads of the conspirators.”
CHAPTER 7.VIII
Le glaive est contre toi tourne de toutes parties.
La Harpe, “Jeanne de Naples,” Act iv. sc. 4.
(The sword is raised against you on all sides.)
In the mean time Glyndon, after an audience of some length with C—, in which the final preparations were arranged, sanguine of safety, and foreseeing no obstacle to escape, bent his way back to Fillide. Suddenly, in the midst of his cheerful thoughts, he fancied he heard a voice too well and too terribly recognised, hissing in his ear, “What! thou wouldst defy and escape me! thou wouldst go back to virtue and content. It is in vain,—it is too late. No, I will not haunt thee; HUMAN footsteps, no less inexorable, dog thee now. Me thou shalt not see again till in the dungeon, at midnight, before thy doom! Behold—”
And Glyndon, mechanically turning his head, saw, close behind him, the stealthy figure of a man whom he had observed before, but with little heed, pass and repass him, as he quitted the house of Citizen C—. Instantly and instinctively he knew that he was watched,—that he was pursued. The street he was in was obscure and deserted, for the day was oppressively sultry, and it was the hour when few were abroad, either on business or pleasure. Bold as he was, an icy chill shot through his heart, he knew too well the tremendous system that then reigned in Paris not to be aware of his danger. As the sight of the first plague-boil to the victim of the pestilence, was the first sight of the shadowy spy to that of the Revolution: the watch, the arrest, the trial, the guillotine,—these made the regular and rapid steps of the monster that the anarchists called Law! He breathed hard, he heard distinctly the loud beating of his heart. And so he paused, still and motionless, gazing upon the shadow that halted also behind him.
Presently, the absence of all allies to the spy, the solitude of the streets, reanimated his courage; he made a step towards his pursuer, who retreated as he advanced. “Citizen, thou followest me,” he said. “Thy business?”
“Surely,” answered the man, with a deprecating smile, “the streets are broad enough for both? Thou art not so bad a republican as to arrogate all Paris to thyself!”
“Go on first, then. I make way for thee.”
The man bowed, doffed his hat politely, and passed forward. The next moment Glyndon plunged into a winding lane, and fled fast through a labyrinth of streets, passages, and alleys. By degrees he composed himself, and, looking behind, imagined that he had baffled the pursuer; he then, by a circuitous route, bent his way once more to his home. As he emerged into one of the broader streets, a passenger, wrapped in a mantle, brushing so quickly by him that he did not observe his countenance, whispered, “Clarence Glyndon, you are dogged,—follow me!” and the stranger walked quickly before him. Clarence turned, and sickened once more to see at his heels, with the same servile smile on his face, the pursuer he fancied he had escaped. He forgot the injunction of the stranger to follow him, and perceiving a crowd gathered close at hand, round a caricature-shop, dived amidst them, and, gaining another street, altered the direction he had before taken, and, after a long and breathless course, gained without once more seeing the spy, a distant quartier of the city.
Here, indeed, all seemed so serene and fair that his artist eye, even in that imminent hour, rested with pleasure on the scene. It was a comparatively broad space, formed by one of the noble quays. The Seine flowed majestically along, with boats and craft resting on its surface. The sun gilt a thousand spires and domes, and gleamed on the white palaces of a fallen chivalry. Here fatigued and panting, he paused an instant, and a cooler air from the river fanned his brow. “Awhile, at least, I am safe here,” he murmured; and as he spoke, some thirty paces behind him, he beheld the spy. He stood rooted to the spot; wearied and spent as he was, escape seemed no longer possible,—the river on one side (no bridge at hand), and the long row of mansions closing up the other. As he halted, he heard laughter and obscene songs from a house a little in his rear, between himself and the spy. It was a cafe fearfully known in that quarter. Hither often resorted the black troop of Henriot,—the minions and huissiers of Robespierre. The spy, then, had hunted the victim within the jaws of the hounds. The man slowly advanced, and, pausing before the open window of the cafe, put his head through the aperture, as to address and summon forth its armed inmates.
At that very instant, and while the spy’s head was thus turned from him, standing in the half-open gateway of the house immediately before him, he perceived the stranger who had warned; the figure, scarcely distinguishable through the mantle that wrapped it, motioned to him to enter. He sprang noiselessly through the friendly opening: the door closed; breathlessly he followed the stranger up a flight of broad stairs and through a suite of empty rooms, until, having gained a small cabinet, his conductor doffed the large hat and the long mantle that had hitherto concealed his shape and features, and Glyndon beheld Zanoni!
CHAPTER 7.IX
Think not my magic wonders wrought by aid
Of Stygian angels summoned up from hell;
Scorned and accursed be those who have essayed
Her gloomy Dives and Afrites to compel.
But by perception of the secret powers
Of mineral springs in Nature’s inmost cell,
Of herbs in curtain of her greenest bowers,
And of the moving stars o’er mountain tops and towers.
Wiffen’s “Translation of Tasso,” cant. xiv. xliii.
“You are safe here, young Englishman!” said Zanoni, motioning Glyndon to a seat. “Fortunate for you that I come on your track at last!”
“Far happier had it been if we had never met! Yet even in these last hours of my fate, I rejoice to look once more on the face of that ominous and mysterious being to whom I can ascribe all the sufferings I have known. Here, then, thou shalt not palter with or elude me. Here, before we part, thou shalt unravel to me the dark enigma, if not of thy life, of my own!”
“Hast thou suffered? Poor neophyte!” said Zanoni, pityingly. “Yes; I see it on thy brow. But wherefore wouldst thou blame me? Did I not warn thee against the whispers of thy spirit; did I not warn thee to forbear? Did I not tell thee that the ordeal was one of awful hazard and tremendous fears,—nay, did I not offer to resign to thee the heart that was mighty enough, while mine, Glyndon, to content me? Was it not thine own daring and resolute choice to brave the initiation! Of thine own free will didst thou make Mejnour thy master, and his lore thy study!”
“But whence came the irresistible desires of that wild and unholy knowledge? I knew them not till thine evil eye fell upon me, and I was drawn into the magic atmosphere of thy being!”
“Thou errest!—the desires were in thee; and, whether in one direction or the other, would have forced their way! Man! thou askest me the enigma of thy fate and my own! Look round all being, is there not mystery everywhere? 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. Something, however, will I tell thee, not to vindicate myself, but the Heaven and the Nature that thy doubts malign.”
Zanoni paused a moment, and resumed with a slight smile,—
“In thy younger days thou hast doubtless read with delight the great Christian poet, whose muse, like the morning it celebrated, came to earth, ‘crowned with flowers culled in Paradise.’ [‘L’aurea testa Di rose colte in Paradiso infiora.’ Tasso, “Ger. Lib.” iv. l.)
“No spirit was more imbued with the knightly superstitions of the time; and surely the Poet of Jerusalem hath sufficiently, to satisfy even the Inquisitor he consulted, execrated all the practitioners of the unlawful spells invoked,—
‘Per isforzar Cocito o Flegetonte.’ (To constrain Cocytus or Phlegethon.)
“But in his sorrows and his wrongs, in the prison of his madhouse, know you not that Tasso himself found his solace, his escape, in the recognition of a holy and spiritual Theurgia,—of a magic that could summon the Angel, or the Good Genius, not the Fiend? And do you not remember how he, deeply versed as he was for his age, in the mysteries of the nobler Platonism, which hints at the secrets of all the starry brotherhoods, from the Chaldean to the later Rosicrucian, discriminates in his lovely verse, between the black art of Ismeno and the glorious lore of the Enchanter who counsels and guides upon their errand the champions of the Holy Land? HIS, not the charms wrought by the aid of the Stygian Rebels (See this remarkable passage, which does indeed not unfaithfully represent the doctrine of the Pythagorean and the Platonist, in Tasso, cant. xiv. stanzas xli. to xlvii. (“Ger. Lib.”) They are beautifully translated by Wiffen.), but the perception of the secret powers of the fountain and the herb,—the Arcana of the unknown nature and the various motions of the stars. His, the holy haunts of Lebanon and Carmel,—beneath his feet he saw the clouds, the snows, the hues of Iris, the generations of the rains and dews. Did the Christian Hermit who converted that Enchanter (no fabulous being, but the type of all spirit that would aspire through Nature up to God) command him to lay aside these sublime studies, ‘Le solite arte e l’ uso mio’? No! but to cherish and direct them to worthy ends. And in this grand conception of the poet lies the secret of the true Theurgia, which startles your ignorance in a more learned day with puerile apprehensions, and the nightmares of a sick man’s dreams.”
Again Zanoni paused, and again resumed:—
“In ages far remote,—of a civilisation far different from that which now merges the individual in the state,—there existed men of ardent minds, and an intense desire of knowledge. In the mighty and solemn kingdoms in which they dwelt, there were no turbulent and earthly channels to work off the fever of their minds. Set in the antique mould of casts through which no intellect could pierce, no valour could force its way, the thirst for wisdom alone reigned in the hearts of those who received its study as a heritage from sire to son. Hence, even in your imperfect records of the progress of human knowledge, you find that, in the earliest ages, Philosophy descended not to the business and homes of men. It dwelt amidst the wonders of the loftier creation; it sought to analyse the formation of matter,—the essentials of the prevailing soul; to read the mysteries of the starry orbs; to dive into those depths of Nature in which Zoroaster is said by the schoolmen first to have discovered the arts which your ignorance classes under the name of magic. In such an age, then, arose some men, who, amidst the vanities and delusions of their class, imagined that they detected gleams of a brighter and steadier lore. They fancied an affinity existing among all the works of Nature, and that in the lowliest lay the secret attraction that might conduct them upward to the loftiest. (Agreeably, it would seem, to the notion of Iamblichus and Plotinus, that the universe is as an animal; so that there is sympathy and communication between one part and the other; in the smallest part may be the subtlest nerve. And hence the universal magnetism of Nature. But man contemplates the universe as an animalcule would an elephant. The animalcule, seeing scarcely the tip of the hoof, would be incapable of comprehending that the trunk belonged to the same creature,—that the effect produced upon one extremity would be felt in an instant by the other.) Centuries passed, and lives were wasted in these discoveries; but step after step was chronicled and marked, and became the guide to the few who alone had the hereditary privilege to track their path.
“At last from this dimness upon some eyes the light broke; but think not, young visionary, that to those who nursed unholy thoughts, over whom the Origin of Evil held a sway, that dawning was vouchsafed. It could be given then, as now, only to the purest ecstasies of imagination and intellect, undistracted by the cares of a vulgar life, or the appetites of the common clay. Far from descending to the assistance of a fiend, theirs was but the august ambition to approach nearer to the Fount of Good; the more they emancipated themselves from this limbo of the planets, the more they were penetrated by the splendour and beneficence of God. And if they sought, and at last discovered, how to the eye of the Spirit all the subtler modifications of being and of matter might be made apparent; if they discovered how, for the wings of the Spirit, all space might be annihilated, and while the body stood heavy and solid here, as a deserted tomb, the freed IDEA might wander from star to star,—if such discoveries became in truth their own, the sublimest luxury of their knowledge was but this, to wonder, to venerate, and adore! For, as one not unlearned in these high matters has expressed it, ‘There is a principle of the soul superior to all external nature, and through this principle we are capable of surpassing the order and systems of the world, and participating the immortal life and the energy of the Sublime Celestials. When the soul is elevated to natures above itself, it deserts the order to which it is awhile compelled, and by a religious magnetism is attracted to another and a loftier, with which it blends and mingles.’ (From Iamblichus, “On the Mysteries,” c. 7, sect. 7.) Grant, then, that such beings found at last the secret to arrest death; to fascinate danger and the foe; to walk the revolutions of the earth unharmed,—think you that this life could teach them other desire than to yearn the more for the Immortal, and to fit their intellect the better for the higher being to which they might, when Time and Death exist no longer, be transferred? Away with your gloomy fantasies of sorcerer and demon!—the soul can aspire only to the light; and even the error of our lofty knowledge was but the forgetfulness of the weakness, the passions, and the bonds which the death we so vainly conquered only can purge away!”
This address was so different from what Glyndon had anticipated, that he remained for some moments speechless, and at length faltered out,—
“But why, then, to me—”
“Why,” added Zanoni,—“why to thee have been only the penance and the terror,—the Threshold and the Phantom? Vain man! look to the commonest elements of the common learning. Can every tyro at his mere wish and will become the master; can the student, when he has bought his Euclid, become a Newton; can the youth whom the Muses haunt, say, ‘I will equal Homer;’ yea, can yon pale tyrant, with all the parchment laws of a hundred system-shapers, and the pikes of his dauntless multitude, carve, at his will, a constitution not more vicious than the one which the madness of a mob could overthrow? When, in that far time to which I have referred, the student aspired to the heights to which thou wouldst have sprung at a single bound, he was trained from his very cradle to the career he was to run. The internal and the outward nature were made clear to his eyes, year after year, as they opened on the day. He was not admitted to the practical initiation till not one earthly wish chained that sublimest faculty which you call the IMAGINATION, one carnal desire clouded the penetrative essence that you call the INTELLECT. And even then, and at the best, how few attained to the last mystery! Happier inasmuch as they attained the earlier to the holy glories for which Death is the heavenliest gate.”
