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A STRANGE STORY
THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERS
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EDWARDYBULWER’ LyTTON -} ºr cº-º-º: ,
(LORD Lytton) | < 0 & -, R. "I Š
NEW YORK
INTERNATIONAL BOOK CO.
3IO-3 18 Sixth Avenue
THE MERSHON COMPANY PREss,
RAHWAY, N. J.
H / 17-7723
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PREFACE.
-- Of the many illustrious thinkers whom the schools of France have contrib-
uted to the intellectual philosophy of our age, Victor Cousin, the most
accomplished, assigns to Maine de Biran the rank of the most original.
in the successive developments of his own mind, Maine de Biran may, in-
‘deed, be said to represent the chańge that has been silently at work through-
out the general mind of Europe since the close of the last century. He
begins his career of philosopher with blind faith in Cóndillac and Material-
ism. As an intellect severely conscientious in the pursuit of truth expands
amidst the perplexities it revolves, phenomena which cannot be accounted
for by Condillac's sensuous theories open to his eye. To the first rudimen-
tary life of man, the animal life, “characterized by impressions, appetites,
movements, organic in their origin and ruled by the Law C f Necessity,” +
he is compelled to add “the second or human life, from which Free-will
and Self-consciousness emerge.” He thus arrives at the union of mind and
matter; but still a something is wanted—some key to the marvels which
neither of these conditions of vital being suffices to explain. And at last the
grand self-completing Thinker attains to the Third Life of Man in Man's
Soul,
“There are not,” says this philosopher, towards the close of his last and
loftiest work—“There are not only two principles opposed to each other in
Man, there are three. For the e are in him three lives and three orders of
faculties. Though all should be in accord and in harmony between the
sensitive and the active faculties which constitute Man, there would still be
a nature superior, a third life which would not be satisfied ; which would
make felt (ſerait sentir) the truth that there is another happiness, another
wisdom, another perfection, at once above the greatest human happiness,
above the highest wisdom, or intellectual and moral perfection of which the
human being is susceptible.” +
Now, as Philosophy and Romance both take their origin in the Principle
of Wonder, so in the Strange Story submitted to the Public, it will be seen
that Romance, through the freest exercise of its wildest vagaries, conducts
its bewildered hero towards the same goal to which Philosophy leads its
luminous Student, through far grander portents of Nature, far higher visions
of Supernatural Power, than Fable can yield to Fancy. That goal is de-
fined in these noble wolds : “The relations (rapports) which exist between
the elements and the products of the three lives of Man are the subjects of
meditation, the fairest and finest, but also the most difficult. The Stoic
Philosophy shows us all which can be most elevated in active life; but it
makes abstraction of the animal nature, and absolutely fails to recognize all
which belongs to the life of the spirit. Its practical morality is beyond the
forces of humanity. Christianity alone embraces the whole Man. It dis-
, simulates none of the sides of his nature, and avails itself of his miseries and
* CEuvres inédites de Maine de Biran, vol. i. See Introduction.
f CEuvres inédites de Maine de Biran, vol. iii., p. 546 (Anthropologie).
iti
421484
iv _*
• PREFACE.
his weakness in order to conduct him to his end in showing him all the want
that he has of a succor more exalted.” ” º
In the passages thus quoted, I imply one of the objects for which this tale
has been written ; and I cite them with a wish to acknowledge one of those
priceless obligations which writings the lightest and most fantastic often in-
cur to reasoners the most serious and profound.
But I here construct a romance which should have, as a romance, some in-
terest for the general reader. I do not elaborate a treatise submitted to the
logic of sages. And it is only when “in fairy fiction drest” that Romance
gives admission to “truths severe.”
I venture to assume that none will question my privilege to avail myself of
the marvellous agencies which have ever been at the legitimate command of
the fabulist.
To the highest form of romantic narrative, the Epic, critics indeed, have
declared that a supernatural machinery is indispensable. That the Diama
has availed itself of the same license as the Epic, it would be unnecessary to
say to the countrymen of Shakespeare, or to the generation that is yet study.
ing the enigmas of Goethe's “Faust.” Prose Romance has immemorially
asserted, no less than the Epic or the Drama, its heritage in the Realm of the
Marvellous. The interest which attaches to the supernatural is sought in
the earliest Prose Romance which modern times take from the ancient, and
which, perhaps, had its origin in the lost Novels of Miletus; + and the light
to invoke such interest has, ever since, been maintained by Romance through
all varieties of form and fancy—from the majestic epopee of Télémaque to
the graceful phantasies of “Undine,” or the mighty mockenics of “Gulliver's
Travels,” down to such comparatively commonplace elements of wonder as
}. preserve from oblivion the “Castle of Otranto” and the “Old English
3 TOI).
Now, to my mind the true reason why a supernatural agency is indispen-
sable to the conception of the Epic, is that the Epic is the highest and the
completest form in which Art can express either Man or Nature, and that
without some gleams of the supernatural, Man is not man, nor Nature,
nature.
It is said, by a writer to whom an eminent philosophical critic justly applies
the epithets of “pious and profound : ” + “It is unreasonable to confess
that we believe in God, not by reason of the Nature which conceals Him,
but by reason of the Supernatural in Man which alone reveals and proves Him
to exist P . . . Man reveals God : for Man, by his intelligence, rises above
Nature : and in virtue of this intelligence is conscious of himself as a power
not only independent of, but opposed to, Nature, and capable of resisting,
conquering, and controlling her.” $
If the meaning involved in the argument of which I have here made but
scanty extracts be carefully studied, I think that we shall find deeper reasons
than the critics who dictated canons of taste to the last century discovered—
why the supernatural is indispensable to the Epic, and why it is allowable to
all works of imagination, in which Art looks on Nature with Man's inner
sense of a something beyond and above her.
But the Writer who, whether in verse or prose, would avail himself of such
sources of pity or terror as flow from the Marvellous, can only attain his ob.
* CEuvres inédites de Maine de Biran, vol. iii. p. 524.
t The Golden Ass of Apuleius.
# Sir William Hamilton. “Lectures on Metaphysics,” p. 4o.
§ Jacobi–Von der Göttlichen Dingen, Werke, p. 424-6.
.# prºRACE. V
ject in proportion as the wonders he narrates are of a kind to excite the
curiosity of the age he addresses.
In the brains of our time, the faculty of Causation is very markedly de-
veloped. People, nowadays, do not delight in the Marvellous accolding to
the old childlike spirit. They say in one breath “Very extraordinary 1” and
in the next breath, ask, “How do you account for it 2 " If the Author of
this work has presumed to borrow from science some elements of interest for
-Romance, he ventures to hope that no thoughtful reader—and certainly no
tlue son of science—will be disposed to reproach him. In fact, such illus-
trations from the masters of Thought were essential to the completion of the
purpose which prevades the work.
That purpose, I trust, will develop itself in proportion as the story ap-
proaches the close ; and whatever may appear violent or melodramatic in the
catastrophe, will perhaps be found, by a reader capable of perceiving the
various symbolical meanings conveyed in the story, essential to the end in
which those meanings converge, and towards which the incidents that give
them the character and interest of fiction have been planned and directed
from the commencement.
Of course, according to the most obvious principles of art, the narrator of
a fiction must be as thoroughly in earnest as if he were the narrator of facts.
One could not tell the most extravagant fairy-tale so as to rouse and sustain
the attention of the most infantine listener, if the tale were told as if the tale-
teller did not believe in it. But when the reader lays down this Strange
Story, perhaps he will detect through all the haze of Romance, the outlines
of these images suggested to his reason : ‘ Firstly, the image of sensuous,
soulless Nature, such as the Materialist had conceived it. Secondly, the
image of Intellect, obstimately separating all its inquiries from the belief in
the spiritual essence and destiny of man, and incurring all kinds of perplex-
ity and resorting to all kinds of visionary speculation before it settles at last
into the simple faith which unites the philosopher and the infant. And,
Thirdly, the image of the erling but pure-thoughted visionary, seeking over
much on this earth to separate soul from mind, till innocence itself is led
astray by a phantom, and reason is lost, in the space between earth and the
stars. Whether in these pictures there may be any truth worth the implying,
every reader must judge for himself; and if he doubt or deny that there be
any such truth, still, in that process of thought which the doubt or denial
enforces, he may chance on a truth which it pleases himself to discover.
“Most of the Fables of AEsop”—thus says Montaigne in his charming
essay “Of Books” *—“have several senses and meanings, of which the
mythologists choose some one that tallies with the fable. But for the most
-part 'tis only what presents itself at the first view, and is superficial ; there
being others more lively, essential, and internal into which they have not
been able to penetrate ; and ”—adds Montaigne—“the case is the very same
with me.”
* Translation, 1776, vol. ii. p. 103.
A STRANGE STORY.
CHAPTER I.
IN the year 18– I settled as a physician at one of the
wealthiest of our great English towns, which I will designate by
the initial L I was yet young, but I had acquired some
reputation by a professional work, which is, I believe, still
amongst the received authorities on the subject of which it
treats. I had studied at-Edinburgh and at Paris, and had
borne away from both those illustrious schools of medicine
whatever guarantees for future distinction the praise of pro-
fessors may concede to the ambition of students. On becom-
ing a member of the College of Physicians, I made a tour of
the principal cities of Europe, taking letters of introduction to
eminent medical men; and gathering from many theories and
modes of treatment, hints to enlarge the foundations of un-
prejudiced and comprehensive practice. I had resolved to fix
my ultimate residence in London. But before this prepara-
tory tour was completed, my resolve was changed by one of
those unexpected events which determine the fate man in vain
would work out for himself. In passing through the Tyrol,
on my way into the north of Italy, I found in a small inn, re-
mote from medical attendance, an English traveller, seized
with acute inflammation of the lungs, and in a state of immi-
nent danger. I devoted myself to him night and day; and,
perhaps, more through careful nursing than active remedies,
I had the happiness to effect his complete recovery. The
traveller proved to be Julius Faber, a physician of great dis-
tinction, contented to reside, where he was born, in the pro-
vincial city of L , but whose reputation as a profound and
original pathologist was widely spread; and whose writings had
formed no unimportant part of my special studies. It was dur-
ing a short holiday excursion, from which he was about to re-
turn with renovated vigor, that he had been thus stricken down.
The patient so accidentally met with became the founder of
* 7
fºx.
3 A STRANGE STORY. •
my professional fortunes. He conceived a warns attachment
for me: perhaps the more affectionate because he was a child-
less bachelor, and the nephew who would succeed to his wealth
evinced no desire to succeed to the toils by which the wealth
had been acquired. Thus, having an heir for the one, he had
long looked about for an heir to the other, and now resolved on
finding that heir in me. So, when we parted, Dr. Faber made
me promise to correspond with him regularly, and it was not
long before he disclosed by letter the plans he had formed in my
favor. He said that he was growing old; his practice was be-
yond his strength; he needed a partner; he was not disposed
to put up to sale the health of patients whom he had learned
to regard as his children; money was no object to him, but it
was an object close at his heart that the humanity he had
served, and the reputation he had acquired, should suffer no
loss in his choice of a successor. In fine, he proposed that I
should at once come to L as his partner, with the view of
succeeding to his entire practice at the end of two years, when
it was his intention to retire.
The opening into fortune thus afforded to me was one that
rarely presents itself to a young man entering upon an over-
crowded profession. And to an aspirant less allured by the
desire of fortune than the hope of distinction, the fame of the
physician who thus generously offered to me the inestimable
benefits of his long experience and his cordial introduction,
was in itself an assurance that a metropolitan practice is not
essential to a national renown.
I went, then, to L , and before the two years of my part-
nership had expired, my success justified my kind friend's
selection, and far more than realized my own expectations.
I was fortunate in effecting some notable cures in the earliest
cases submitted to me, and it is everything in the career of a
physician when good luck, wins betimes for him that confidence
which patients rarely accord except to lengthened experience.
To the rapid facility with which my way was made, some cir-
cumstances apart from professional skill probably contributed.
I was saved from the suspicion of a medical adventurer by the
accidents of birth and fortune. I belonged to an ancient fami-
ly (a branch of the once powerful border clan of the Fenwicks)
that had for many generations held a fair estate in the neigh-
borhood of Windermere. As an only son I had succeeded to
that estate on attaining my majority, and had sold it to pay of
the debts which had been made by my father, who had the
costly tastes of an antiquary and-collector. The residue on
A STRANGE STuxy. 9
- the sale insured me a modest independence apart from the
N profits of a profession; and as I had not been legally bound
to defray my father's debts, so I obtained that character for dis-
interestedness and integrity which always in England tends to
__propitiate the public to the successes achieved by industry or
talent. 'Perhaps, too, any professional ability I might possess
was the more readily conceded, because I had cultivated with
assiduity the sciences and the scholarship which are collaterally
connected with the study of medicine. Thus, in a word, I es-
tablished a social position which came in aid of my professional
repute, and silenced much of that envy which usually embitters
and sometimes impedes success.
Dr Faber retired at the end of the two years agreed upon.
He went abroad; and being, though advanced in years, of a
frame still robust, and habits of mind still inquiring and eager,
he commenced a lengthened course of foreign travel, during
which our correspondence, at first frequent, gradually lan-
guished, and finally died away. -
I succeeded at once to the larger part of the practice which
the labors of thirty years had secured to my predecessor. My
chief rival was a Dr. Lloyd, a benevolent, fervid man, not
without genius, if genius be present where judgment is absent:
not without science, if that may be science which fails in
precision. One of those Clever, desultory men who, in adopt-
ing a profession, do not give up to it the whole force and heat of
their minds. Men of that kind habitually accept a mechanical
routine, because in the exercise of their ostensible calling their
imaginative faculties are drawn away to pursuits more allur-
ing. Therefore, in their proper vocation they are seldom bold
or inventive: out of it they are sometimes both to excess. And
when they do take up a novelty in their own profession they
cherish it with an obstinate tenacity, and an extravagant pas-
sion, unknown to those quiet philosophers who take up novel-
ties every day, examine them with the sobriety of practised eyes,
to lay down altogether, modify in part, or accept in whole, ac-
cording as inductive experiment supports or destroys conjecture.
Dr. Lloyd had been esteemed a learned naturalist long before
he was admitted to be a tolerable physician. Amidst the pri-
vations of his youth he had contrived to form, and with each
succeeding year he had perseveringly increased, a zoological
collection of creatures, not alive, but, happily for the beholder,
stuffed or embalmed. From what I have said, it will be truly
inferred that Dr. Lloyd's earlier career as a physician had not
veen brilliant; but of late years he had gradually rather aged,
*
IO Aºi RANGE STORY.
*.
than worked himself, into that professional authority and sta-
A
tion, which time confers on a thoroughly respectable man,/~
whom no one is disposed to envy, and all are disposed to like.
Now in L there were two distinct social circles, That
of the wealthy merchants and traders, and that of a few privi-
leged families inhabiting a part of the town aloof from the Tº
marts of commerce, and called the Abbey Hill. These superb
Areopagites exercised over the wives and daughters of the
inferior citizens to whom all of L , except the Abbey Hill,
owed its prosperity, the same kind of mysterious influence
which the fine ladies of Mayfair and Belgravia are reported to
hold over the female denizens of Bloomsbury and Marylebone.
Abbey Hill was not opulent; but it was powerful by a con-
centration of its resources in all matters of patronage. Abbey
Hill had its own milliner and its own draper, its own confec-
tioner, butcher, baker, and tea-dealer; and the patronage of
Abbey Hill was like the patronage of royalty, less lucrative in
itself than as a solemn certificate of general merit. The shops
on which Abbey Hill conferred its custom were certainly not the
cheapest, possibly not the best; but they were undeniably the
most imposing. The proprietors were decorously pompous,
the shopmen superciliously polite. They could not be more
so if they had belonged to the State, and been paid by a pub-
lic which they benefited and despised. The ladies of Low
Town (as the city subjacent to the Hill had been styled from
a date remote in the feudal ages) entered those shops with a
certain awe, and left them with a certain pride. There they
had learned what the Hill approved. There they had bought
what the Hill had purchased. It is much in this life to be
quite sure that we are in the right, whatever that conviction
may cost us. Abbey Hill had been in the habit of appointing,
amongst other objects of patronage, its own physician. But
that habit had fallen into disuse during the latter years of my
predecessor's practice. His superiority over all other medical
men in the town had become so incontestable, that, though he
was emphatically the doctor of Low Town, the head of its hos-
pitals and infirmaries, and by birth related to its principal
traders, still as Abbey Hill was occasionally subject to the
physical infirmities of meaner mortals, so on those occasions it
deemed it best not to push the point of honor to the wanton
sacrifice of life. Since Low Town possessed one of the most
famous physicians in England, Abbey Hill magnanimously re-
solved not to crush him by a rival, Abbey Hill let him feel
its pulse,
\ A STRANGE. STORY. II
When my predecessor retired, I had presumptuously expected
that the Hill would have continued to suspend its normal right
to a special physician, and shown to me the same generous fa-
vor it had shown to him, who had declared me worthy to suc-
ceed to his honors. I had the more excuse for this presump-
tion because the Hill had already allowed me to visit a fair
proportion of its invalids, had said some very gracious things
to me about the great respectability of the Fenwick family, and
sent me some invitations to dinner, and a great many invita-
tions to tea.
But my self-conceit received a notable check. Abbey Hill
declared that the time had come to reassert its dormant privi-
lege; it must have a doctor of its own choosing—a doctor who
might, indeed, be permitted to visit Low Town from motives of
humanity or gain, but who must emphatically assert his special.
allegiance to Abbey Hill by fixing his home on that venerable
promontory. Miss Brabazon, a spinster of uncertain age, but
undoubted pedigree, with small fortune, but high nose, which
she would pleasantly observe was a proof of her descent from
Humphrey Duke of Gloucester (with whom, indeed, I have no
doubt, in spite of chronology, that she very often dined), was
commissioned to inquire of me diplomatically, and without
committing Abbey Hill too much by the overture, whether I
would take a large and antiquated mansion, in which abbots
were said to have lived many centuries ago, and which was still
popularly styled Abbots' House, situated on the verge of the
Hill, as in that case the “Hill” would think of me.
“It is a large house for a single man, I allow,” said Miss
Brabazon candidly; and then added, with a sidelong glance
of alarming sweetness, “But when Dr. Fenwick has taken his
true position (so old a family') amongst us, he need not long
remain single, unless he prefer it.”
I replied, with more asperity than the occasion called for,
that I had no thought of changing my residence at present.
And if the Hill wanted me, the Hill must send for me.
Two days afterwards Dr. Lloyd took Abbots' House, and in
less than a week was proclaimed medical adviser to the Hill.
The election had been decided by the fiat of a great lady, who
reigned supreme on the sacred eminence, under the name and
title of Mrs. Colonel Poyntz.
“Dr. Fenwick,” said this lady, “is a clever young man and
a gentleman, but he gives himself airs—the Hill does not allow
any airs but its own. Besides, he is a new-comer: resistance
to new-comers, and, indeed, to all things new, except caps and
*-*. ***
- - *-
I 2 A STRANGE STORY.
novels, is one of the bonds that keep old established societies
together. Accordingly, it is by my advice that Dr. Lloyd has
taken Abbots’ House; the rent would be too high for his
means if the Hill did not feel bound in honor to justify the
trust he has placed in its patronage. I told him that all my
friends, when they were in want of a doctor, would send ſor
him; those who are my friends will do so. What the Hill does,
plenty of common people down there will do also: so that
question is settled !” And it was settled. -
Dr Lloyd, thus taken by the hand, soon extended the range
of his visits beyond the Hill, which was not precisely a moun-
tain of gold to doctors, and shared with myself, though in a
comparatively small degree, the much more lucrative practice-
of Low Town. - - -
I had no cause to grudge his success, nor did I. But to my.
theories of medicine his diagnosis was shallow, and his prescrip-
tions obsolete. When we were summoned to a joint consulta-
tion, our views as to the proper course of treatment seldom
agreed. Doubtless he thought I ought to have deferred to his
seniority in years; but I held the doctrine which youth deems
a truth and age a paradox, namely, that in science the young
men are the practical elders, inasmuch as they are schooled in
the latest experiences science has gathered up, while their sen-
iors are cramped by the dogmas they were schooled to believe
when the world was some decades the younger.
Meanwhile my reputation continued rapidly to advance; it
became more than local; my advice was sought even by pa-
tients from the metropolis. That ambition which, conceived
in early youth, had decided, my career and sweetened all its
labors—the ambition to take a rank and leave a name as one
of the great pathologists, to whom humanity accords a grate-
ful, if calm, renown—saw before it a level field and a certain
goal. / --
, I know not whether a success far beyond that usually attained
at the age I had reached served to increase, but it seemed to
myself to justify, the main characteristic of my moral organiza-
tion,-intellectual pride.
Though mild and gentle to the sufferers under my care, as a
necessary element of professional duty, I was intolerant of
contradiction from those who belonged to my calling, or even
from those who, in general opinion, opposed my favorite theo-
I 162S. -
I had espoused a school of medical philosophy severely rigid
in its inductive logic, My creed was that of stern materialism,
A šTrANGE STORY. 13
I had a contempt for the understanding of men who accepted
with credulity what they could not explain by reason. My
favorite phrase was “common-sense.” At the same time I had
no prejudice against bold discovery, and discovery necessitates
conjecture, but I dismissed as idle all conjecture that could not
be brought to a practical test.
As in medicine I had been the pupil of Broussais, so in
metaphysics I was the disciple of Condillac. I believed with
that philosopher that “all our knowledge we owe to Nature;
that in the beginning we can only instruct ourselves through
her lessons, and that the whole art of reasoning consists in con-
tinuing as she has compelled us to commence.” Keeping
natural philosophy apart from the doctrines of revelation, I
never assailed the last, but I contended that by the first no
accurate reasoner could arrive at the existence of the soul as a
third principle of being equally distinct from mind and body.
That by a miracle man might live again, was a question of faith
and not of understanding. I left faith to religion, and banished
it from philosophy. How define with a precision to satisfy the
logic of philosophy what was to live again? The body? We
know that the body rests in its grave till by the process of de-
composition its elemental parts enter into other forms of matter.
The mind? But the mind was as clearly the result of the
bodily organization as the music of the harpsichord is the result
of the instrumental mechanism. The mind shared the decrepi-
tude of the body in extreme old age, and in the full vigor of
youth a sudden injury to the brain might forever destroy the
intellect of a Plato or a Shakspeare. But the third principle—
the soul—the something lodged within the body, which yet was
to survive it? Where was that soul hidden out of the ken of
the anatomist? When philosophers attempted to define it,
were they not compelled to confound its nature and its actions
with those of the mind? Could they reduce it to the mere
moral sense, varying according to education, circumstances,
and physical constitution? But even the moral sense in the
most virtuous of men may be swept away by a fever. Such at
the time I now speak of were the views I held. Views certain-
ly not original nor pleasing; but I cherished them with as
fond a tenacity as if they had been consolatory truths of which
I was the first discoverer. I was intolerant to those who main-
tained opposite doctrines; despised them as irrational, or dis-
liked them as insincere. Certainly if I had fulfilled the career
which my ambition predicted—become the founder of a new
school in pathology, and summed up my theories in academi-
f4 A STRANGE STORY.
cal lectures, I should have added another authority, however -
feeble, to the sects which circumscribe the interest of man to
the life that has its close in his grave.
Possibly that which I have called my intellectual pride was
more nourished than I should have been willing to grant by the
self-reliance which an unusual degree of physical power is apt
to bestow. Nature had blessed me with the thews of an ath-
Jete. Among the hardy youths of the Northern Athens I had
been pre-eminently distinguished for feats of activity and
strength. My mental labors, and the anxiety which is in-
separable from the conscientious responsiblities of the medical
profession, kept my health below par of the keen enjoy-
ment, but had in no way diminished my rare muscular force.
I walked through the crowd with the firm step and lofty crest
of the mailed knight of old, who felt himself, in his casement
of iron, a match against numbers. Thus the sense of a robust
individuality, strong alike in disciplined reason and animal
vigor, habituated to aid others, needing no aid for itself, con-
tributed to render me imperious in will and arrogant in opinion.
Nor were such defects injurious to me in my profession; on
the contrary, aided as they were by a calm manner, and a pres-
ence not without that kind of dignity which is the livery of
self-esteem, they served to impose respect and to inspire trust.
CHAPTER II.
I HAD been about six years at L when I became sud-
denly involved in a controversy with Dr. Lloyd. Just as this
ill-fated man appeared at the culminating point of his profes-
sional fortunes, he had the imprudence to proclaim himself not
only an enthusiastic advocate of mesmerism, as a curative
process, but an ardent believer of the reality of somnambular
clairvoyance as an invaluable gift of certain privileged organi-
zations. To these doctrines I sternly opposed myself; the
more sternly, perhaps, because on these doctrines Dr. Lloyd
founded an argument for the existence of soul, independent of
mind, as of matter, and built thereon a superstructure of phy-
siological fantasies, which, could it be substantiated, would
replace every system of metaphysics on which recognized
philosophy condescends to dispute.
About two years before he became a disciple rather of Puy--
segur than Mesmer (for Mesmer had little faith in that gift of
..clairvoyance of which Puysegur was, I believe, at least in mod-
.* A ŠTRANGE STORY. i5
ërn times, the first audacious asserter), Dr. Lloyd had been
afflicted with the loss of a wife many years younger than him-
self, and to whom he had been tenderly attached. And this
bereavement, in directing the hopes that consoled him to a
world beyond the grave, had served perhaps to render him more
credulous of the phenomena in which he greeted additional
proofs of purely spiritual existence. Certainly, if, in contro-
verting the notions of another physiologist, I had restricted
myself to that fair antagonism which belongs to scientific dis-
putants, anxious only for the truth, I should need no apology
for singere conviction and honest argument; but when, with
condescending good-nature, as if to a man much younger than
himself, who was ignorant of the phenomena which he never-
theless denied, Dr. Lloyd invited me to attend his séances
and witness his cures, my amour propre became roused and
settled, and it seemed to me necessary to put down what I as-
serted to be too gross an outrage on common-sense to justify
, the ceremony of examination. I wrote, therefore, a small
pamphlet on the subject, in which I exhausted all the weap-
ons that irony can lend to contempt. Dr. Lloyd replied, and
as he was no very skilful arguer, his reply injured him perhaps
more than my assault. Meanwhile, I had made some inquiries
as to the moral character of his favorite clairvoyants. I imag-
ined that I had learned enough to justify me in treating them
as flagrant cheats, and himself as their egregious dupe.
Low, Town soon ranged itself, with very few exceptions, on
my side. The Hill at first seemed disposed to rally round its
insulted physician, and to make the dispute a party question,
in which the Hill would have been signally worsted, when sud-
denly the same lady paramount, who had secured to Dr. Lloyd
the smile of the Eminence, spoke forth against him, and the
Eminence frowned.
“Dr. Lloyd,” said the Queen of the Hill, “is an amiable
creature, but on this subject decidedly cracked. Cracked
poets may be all the better for being cracked; cracked doctors
are dangerous. Besides, in deserting that old-fashioned rou-
time, his adherence to which made his claim to the Hill's ap-
probation, and unsettling the mind of the Hill with wild revolu-
tionary theories, Dr. Lloyd has betrayed the principles on
which the Hill itself rests its social foundations. Of those
principles Dr. Fenwick has made himself champion; and the
FIill is bound to support him. There, the question is settled!”
And it was settled.
From the moment Mrs. Colonel Poyntz thus issued the
16 A STRANGE STORY.
...”
word of command, Dr. Lloyd was demolished, His practice
was gone, as well as his repute. Mortification or anger
brought on him a stroke of paralysis which, disabling my op-
ponent, put an end to our controversy. An obscure Dr. Jones,
who had been the special pupil and protégé of Dr. Lloyd,
offered himself as a candidate for the Hill's tongues, and
pulses. The Hill gave him little encouragement. It once
more suspended its electoral privileges, and, without insisting
on calling me up to it, the Hill quietly called me in whenever
its health needed other advice than that of its visiting apothe-
cary. Again it invited me, sometimes to dinner, often to tea.
And again, Miss Brabazon assured me by a sidelong glance
that it was no fault of hers if I were still single.
I had almost forgotten the dispute which had obtained for
me so conspicuous a triumph, when one winter's night I was
roused from sleep by a summons to attend Dr. Lloyd, who,
attacked by a second stroke a few hours previously, had, on
recovering sense, expressed a vehement desire to consult the
rival by whom he had suffered so severely. I, dressed myself
in haste and hurried to his house. *
A February night, sharp and bitter. An iron-gray frost
below, a spectral, melancholy moon above. I had to ascend
the Abbey Hill by a steep, blind lane between high, walls. I
passed through stately gates, which stood wide open, into
the garden ground that surrounded the old Abbots’ House.
At the end of a short carriage-drive, the dark and gloomy
building cleared itself from leafless, skeleton trees; the moon
resting keen and cold on its abrupt gables and lofty chimney-
stacks. An old woman-servant received me at the door, and,
without saying a word, led me through a long, low hall, and
up dreary oak stairs, to a broad landing at which she paused for
a moment, listening. Round and about hall, staircase, and
landing were ranged the dead specimens of the savage world
which it had been the pride of the naturalist's life to collect.
Close where I stood yawned the open jaws of the fell ana-
conda, its lower coils hidden, as they rested on the floor below,
by the winding of the massive stairs. Against the dull wain-
scot walls were pendent cases stored with grotesque, unfamiliar
mummies, seen imperfectly by the moon that shot through the
window-panes, and the candle in the old woman's hand. And
as now she turned towards me, nodding her signal to follow,
and went on up the shadowy passage, rows of gigantic birds—
ibis and vulture, and huge sea-glaucus—glared at me in the
false light of their hungry eyes.
^ A STRANGE STORY. f;
So I entered the sick-room, and the first glance told me that
my art was powerless there.
The children of the stricken widower were grouped round
his bed, the eldest apparently about fifteen, the youngest four;
one little girl—the only female child—was clinging to her fath-
er's neck, her face pressed to his bosom, and in that room her
sobs alone were loud.
. As I passed the threshold, Dr. Lloyd lifted his face, which
- had been bent over the weeping child, and gazed on me with
an aspect of strange glee, which I failed to interpret. Then,
as I stole towards him softly and slowly, he pressed his lips on
the long fair tresses that streamed wild over his breast,
motioned to a nurse who stood beside his pillow to take the
child away, and, in a voice clearer than I could have expected
in one on whose brow lay the unmistakable hand of death, he
bade the nurse and the children to quit the room. All went
sorrowfully, but silently, save the little girl, who, borne off in
the nurse’s arms, continued to sob as if her heart were
breaking. * §
I was not prepared for a scene so affecting; it moved me to
the quick. My eyes wistfully followed the children so soon to
be orphans, as one after one went out into the dark, chill
shadow, and amidst the bloodless forms of the dumb brute
nature, ranged in grisly vista beyond the death-room of man.
And when the last infant shape had vanished, and the door
closed with a jarring click, my sight wandered loiteringly round
- the chamber before I could bring myself to fix it on the broken
form, beside which I now stood in all that glorious vigor of
frame which had fostered the pride of my mind.
In the moment consumed by my mournful survey, the whole
aspect of the place impressed itself effaceably on lifelong
remembrance. Through the high, deep-sunken casement,
across which the thin, faded curtain was but half drawn, the
moonlight rushed, and then settled on the floor in one shroud of
white glimmer, lost under the gloom of the death-bed. The
-roof was low, and seemed lower still by heavy intersecting
beams, which I might have touched with my lifted hand. And
the tall guttering candle by the bedside, and the flicker from
the fire struggling out through the fuel but newly heaped on it,
threw their reflection on the ceiling just over my head in a
reek of quivering blackness, like an angry cloud.
Suddenly I felt my arm grasped: with his left hand (the
right side was already lifeless) the dying man drew me towards
him nearer and nearer, till his lips almost touched my ear,
,--
.*
.*
18 A ŠTRANGE STORY.
And, in a voice now firm, now splitting into gasp and hiss,
thus he said: *~.
‘‘I have summoned you to gaze on your own work! You
have stricken down my life at the moment when it was most
needed by my children, and most serviceable to mankind.
Had I lived a few years longer, my children would have entered
on manhood, safe from the temptations of want and undejected
by the charity of strangers. Thanks to you, they will be pen-
niless orphans. Fellow-creatures afflicted by maladies your
, pharmacopoeia has failed to reach came to me for relief, and
they found it. ‘The effect of imagination,' you say. What
matters, if I directed the imagination to cure? Now you have
mocked the unhappy ones out of their last chance of life.
They will suffer and perish. Did you believe me in error?
Still you knew that my object was research into truth. You
employed against your brother in art venomous drugs and a
poisoned probe. Look at me! Are you satisfied with your
work?’’ .*
I sought to draw back and pluck my arm from the dying
man's grasp. I could not do so without usifig a force that
would have been inhuman. His lips drew nearer still to
my ear. --a
“Vain pretender, do not boast that you brought a genius for
epigram to the service of science. Science is lenient to all
- who offer experiment as the test of conjecture. You are of
the stuff of which inguisitors are made. You cry that truth is
profaned when your dogmas are questioned. In your shallow
presumption you have meted the dominions of nature, and
where your eye halts its vision, you say, ‘There, nature must
close'; in the bigotry which adds crime to presumption, you
would stone the discoverer who, in annexing new realms to her
chart, unsettles your arbitrary landmarks. Verily, retribution
shall await you. In those spaces which your sight has dis-
dained to explore, you shall yourself be a lost and bewildered
straggler. Hist! I see them already! The gibbering phan-
toms are gathering round you!”
The man’s voice stopped abruptly; his eye fixed in a glaz-
ing stare; his hand relaxed its hold; he fell back on the pil-
low. I stole from the room; on the landing-place I met the
nurse and the old woman-servant. Happily the children were
not there. But I heard the wail of the female child from some
room not far distant.
I whispered hurriedly to the nurse, “All is over !”—passed
again under the jaws of the vast anaconda—and, on through
A STf ANGE STORY, 19
the blind lane between the dead walls—on through the ghastly
streets, under the ghastly moon, went back to my solitary
home. -
**- CHAPTER III.
IT was some time before I could shake off the impression
made on me by the words and the look of that dying man.
It was not that my conscience upbraided me. What had I
done? Denounced that which I held, in common with most
men of sense in or out of my profession, to be one of those
illusions by which quackery draws profit from the wonder of
ignorance. Was I to blame if I refused to treat with the
grave respect due to asserted discovery in legitimate science
pretensions to powers akin to the fables of wizards? Was I to
descend from the Academe of decorous science to examine
whether a slumbering sibyl could read from a book placed at
her back, or tell me at L what at that moment was being
done by my friend at the Antipodes?
And what though Dr. Lloyd himself might be a worthy and
honest man, and a sincere believer in the extravagances for
which he demanded an equal credulity in others, do not hon-
est men every day incur the penalty of ridicule if, from a de-
fect of good sense, they make themselves ridiculous? Could I
have foreseen that a satire so justly provoked would inflict so.
deadly-a wound? Was I inhumanly barbarous because the an-
tagonist destroyed was morbidly sensitive? My conscience,
therefore, made me no reproach, and the public was as little
severe as my conscience. The public had been with me in our
contest; the public knew nothing of my opponent's deathbed
accusations; the public knew only that I had attended him in
his last moments; it saw me walk beside the bier that bore
him to his grave; it admired the respect to his memory which
I evinced in the simple tomb that I placed over his remains,
inscribed with an epitaph that did justice to his unquestionable
benevolence and integrity; above all, it praised the energy with
which I set on foot a subscription for his orphan children, and
the generosity with which I headed that subscription by a sum
that was large in proportion to my means.
To that sum I did not, indeed, limit my contribution. The
sobs of the poor female child rang still on my heart. As her
grief had been keener than that of her brothers, so she might be
subjected to sharper trials than they, when the time came for
her to fight her own way through the world; therefore I
Żó A STRANGE STORY.
secured to her, but with such precautions that the gift could
not be traced to my hand, a sum to accumulate till she was of
marriageable age, and which then might suffice for a small wed-
ding portion; or if she remained single, for an income that
would place her beyond the temptation of want, or the bitter-
ness of a servile dependence.
That Dr. Lloyd should have died in poverty was a matter of
surprise at first, for his profits during the last few years had
been considerable, and his mode of life far from extravagant.
But just before the date of our controversy he had been in-
duced to assist the brother of his lost wife, who was a junior
partner in a London bank, with the loan of his accumulated
savings. This man proved dishonest; he embezzled that and
other sums intrusted to him, and fled the country. The same
sentiment of conjugal affection which had cost Dr. Lloyd his
fortune kept him silent as to the cause of the loss. It was
reserved for his executors to discover the treachery of the
brother-in-law whom he, poor man, would have generously
screened from additional disgrace.
The Mayor of L , a wealthy and public-spirited mer-
chant, purchased the museum which Dr. Lloyd's passion for
natural history had induced him to form; and the sum thus
obtained, together with that raised by subscription, sufficed,
not only to discharge all debts due by the deceased, but to in-
sure to the orphans the benefits of an education that might fit
at least the boys to enter fairly armed into that game, more of
skill than of chance, in which Fortune is really so little blinded
that we see, in each turn of her wheel, wealth and its honors
pass away from the lax fingers of ignorance and sloth, to the
resolute grasp of labor and knowledge.
Meanwhile, a relation in a distant county undertook the
charge of the orphans; they disappeared from the scene, and
the tides of life in a commercial community soon flowed over
the place which the dead man had occupied in the thoughts of
his bustling townsfolk.
One person at L , and only one, appeared to share and
inherit the rancor with which the poor physician had de-
nounced me on his deathbed. It was a gentleman named
Vigors, distantly related to the deceased, and who had been,
in point of station, the most eminent of Dr. Lloyd's partisans
in the controversy with myself; a man of no great scholastic
acquirements, but of respectable abilities. He had that kind
of power which the world concedes to respectable abilities,
when accompanied with a temper more than usually stern, and
A STRANGE STORY. 2 :
istrates L
a moral character more than usually austere. His ruling pas-
sion was to sit in judgment upon others; and, being a magis-
trate, he was the most active and the most rigid of all the mag-
had ever known.
Mr. Vigors at first spoke of me with great bitterness, as having
ruined, and in fact killed, his friend, by the uncharitable and
unfair acerbity which he declared I had brought into what
ought to have been an unprejudiced examination of simple
matter of fact. But finding no sympathy in these charges, he
had the discretion to cease from making them, contenting him-
self with a solemn shake of his head if he heard my name men-
tioned in terms of praise, and an oracular sentence or two,
such as “Time will show”; “All's well that ends well,” etc.
Mr. Vigors, however, mixed very little in the more convivial
intercourse of the townspeople. He called himself domestic;
but, in truth, he was ungenial. A stiff man, starched with
self-esteem. He thought that his dignity of station was not
sufficiently acknowledged by the merchants of Low Town, and
his superiority of intellect not sufficiently recognized by the
exclusives of the Hill. His visits were, therefore, chiefly
confined to the houses of neighboring squires, to whom his repu-
tation as a magistrate, conjoined with his solemn exterior,
made him one of those oracles by which men consent to be
awed on condition that the awe is not often inflicted. And
though he opened his house three times a week, it was only to
a select few, whom he first fed and then biologized. Electro-
biology was very naturally the special entertainment of a man
whom no intercourse ever pleased in which his will was not
imposed upon others. Therefore he only invited to his table
persons whom he could stare into the abnegation of their
senses, willing to say that beef was lamb, or brandy was coffee,
according as he willed them to say. And, no doubt, the per-
sons asked would have said anything he willed, so long as they
had, in substance, as well as in idea, the beef and the brandy,
the lamb and the coffee. I did not, then, often meet Mr.
Vigors at the houses in which I occasionally spent my even-
ings. I heard of his enmity as a man safe in his home hears
the sough of a wind on a common without. If now and then
we chanced to pass in the streets, he looked up at me (he was
a small man walking on tiptoe) with the sullen scowl of dislike.
And, from the height of my stature, I dropped upon the small
man and sullen scowl the affable Smile of Supreme indif.
ference.
22 A STRANGE STORY.
CHAPTER IV.
I HAD now arrived at that age when an ambitious man, sat-
isfied with his progress in the world without, begins to feel, in
the cravings of unsatisfied affection, the void of a solitary
hearth. I resolved to marry, and looked out for a wife. I
had never hitherto admitted into my life the passion of love.
In fact, I had regarded that passion, even in my earlier youth,
with a certain superb contempt, as a malady engendered by an
effeminate idleness, and fostered by a sickly imagination.
I wished to find in a wife a rational companion, an affection-
ate and trustworthy friend. No views of matrimony could be
less romantic, more soberly sensible, than those which I con-
ceived. Nor were my requirements mercenary or presumptuous.
I cared not for fortune; I asked nothing from connections.
My ambition was exclusively professional; it could be served
by no titled kindred, accelerated by no wealthy dower. I was
no slave to beauty. I did not seek in a wife the accomplish-
ments of a finishing school-teacher. 2 *
Having decided that the time had come to select my help-
mate, I imagined that I should find no difficulty in a choice
that my reason would approve. But day upon day, week upon
week, passed away, and though among the families I visited
there were many young ladies who possessed more than the
qualifications with which I conceived that I should be amply
contented, and by whom I might flatter myself that my pro-
posals would not be disdained, I saw not one to whose lifelong
companionship I should not infinitely have preferred the soli-
tude I found so irksome.
One evening, in returning home from visiting a poor female
patient whom I attended gratuitously, and whose case demand-
ed more thought than that of any other in my list—for though
it had been considered hopeless in the hospital, and she had
come home to die, I felt certain that I could save her, and she
seemed recovering under my care—one evening, it was the
fifteenth of May, I found myself just before the gates of the
house that had been inhabited by Dr. Lloyd. Since his death
the house had-been unoccupied; the rent asked for it by the
proprietor was considered high; and from the sacred Hill on
which it was situated, shyness or pride banished the wealthier
traders. The garden gates stood wide open, as they had stood
in the winter night on which I had passed through them to the
chamber of death, The remembrance of that deathhed came
A STRANGE STORY. 23
vividly before me, and the dying man's fantastic threat rang
again in my startled ears. An irresistible impulse, which I
could not then account for, and which I cannot account for
now—an impulse the reverse of that which usually makes us
turn away with quickened step from a spot that recalls associa-
tions of pain—urged me on through the open gates up the neg-
lected grass-grown road, urged me to look, under the western
sun of the joyous spring, at that house which I had never seen
but in the gloom of a winter night, under the melancholy moon.
As the building came in sight, with dark-red bricks, partially
overgrown with ivy, I perceived that it was no longer unoccu-
pied. I saw forms passing athwart the open windows; a van
laden with articles of furniture stood before the door; a ser-
vant in livery was beside it giving directions to the men who
were unloading. Evidently some family was just entering into
possession. I felt somewhat ashamed of my trespass, and
turned round quickly to retrace my steps. I had retreated but
a few yards, when I saw before me, at the entrance gates, Mr.
Vigors, walking beside a lady apparently of middle age; while,
just at hand, a path cut through the shrubs gave view of a small
wicket-gate at the end of the grounds. I felt unwilling not
only to meet the lady, whom I guessed to be the new occupier,
and to whom I should have to make a somewhat awkward apol-
ogy for intrusion, but still-more to encounter the scornful look
of Mr. Vigors, in what appeared to my pride a false or undigni-
fied position. Involuntarily, therefore, I turned down the path
which would favor my escape unobserved. When about half
way between the house and the wicket-gate, the shrubs that
had clothed the path on either side suddenly opened to the left,
bringing into view a circle of Sward, surrounded by irregular
fragments of old brickwork partially covered with ferns, creep-
ers, or rock-plants, weeds, or wild flowers; and, in the centre (
of the circle, a fountain, or rather well, over which was built a
Gothic monastic dome, or canopy, resting on small Norman
columns, , time-worn, dilapidated. A large willow overhung
this unmistakable relic of the ancient abbey. There was an
air of antiquity, romance, legend about this spot, so abruptly
disclosed amidst the delicate green of the young shrubberies.
But it was not the ruined wall nor the Gothic well that chained
my footstep and charmed my eye.
It was a solitary human form, seated amidst the mournful ruins.
The form was so slight, the face so young, that at the first
glance I murmured to myself, “What a lovely child !” But as
my eye lingered it recognized in the upturned, thoughtful brow
- - *.
24 A STRANGE STORY.
in the sweet, serious aspect, in the rounded outlines of that
slender shape, the inexpressible dignity of virgin woman.
A book was on her lap, at her feet a little basket, half filled
with violets and blossoms culled from the rock-plants that
nestled amidst the ruins. Behind her, the willow, like an
emerald waterfall, showered down its arching abundant green,
bough after bough, from the tree-top to the sward, descending
in wavy verdure, bright towards the summit in the smile of the
setting sun, and darkening into shadow as it neared the earth.
She did not notice, she did not see me; her eyes were fixed
upon the horizon where it sloped farthest into space, above the
tree-tops and the ruins; fixed so intently that mechanically I
turned my own gaze to follow the flight of hers. It was as if
she watched for some expected, familiar sign to grow out from
the depths of heaven: perhaps to greet, before other eyes be-
held it, the ray of the earliest star.
The birds dropped from the boughs on the turf around her,
so fearlessly that one alighted amidst the flowers in the little
basket at her feet. There is a famous German poem, which -
I had read in my youth, called the Maiden from Abroad, vari-
ously supposed to be an allegory of Spring, or of Poetry, ac-
cording to the choice of commentators: it seemed to me as if
the poem had been made for her. Verily, indeed, in her, poet or
painter might have seen an image equally true to either of those
adorners of the earth; both outwardly a delight to sense, yet both
wakening up thoughts within us, not sad, but akin to sadness.
I heard now a step behind me, and a voice which I recog-
nized to be that of Mr. Vigors. I broke from the charm by
which I had been so lingeringly spellbound, hurried on con-
fusedly, gained the wicket-gate, from which a short flight of
stairs descended into the common thoroughfare. And there
the every-day life lay again before me. On the opposite side,
houses, shops, church-spires; a few steps more, and the bus-
tling streets! How immeasurably far from, yet how familiarly
near to, the world in which we move and have being is that fairy
land of romance which opens out from the hard earth before
us, when Love steals at first to our side; fading back into the
hard earth again as Love Smiles or sighs its farewell!
CHAPTER V.
AND before that evening I had looked on Mr. Vigors with.
supreme indifference! What importance he now assumed in
* -2. .**
-- *.
A STRAN G.E. STORY. 25
my eyes! The lady with whom I had seen him was doubtless
the new tenant of that house in which the young creature by
whom my heart was so strangely moved evidently had her home.
Most probably the relation between the two ladies was that of
mother and daughter. Mr. Vigors, the friend of one, might
himself be related to both ; might prejudice them against me;
might—here, starting up, I snapped the thread of conjecture,
for right before my eyes, on the table beside which I had seated
myself on entering my room, lay a card of invitation:
MRS. POYNTZ.
*g At Home,
Wednesday, May 15th.
Early.
Mrs. Poyntz—Mrs. Colonel Poyntz? The Queen of the Hill.
There, at her house, I could not fail to learn all about the new-
comers, who could never without her sanction have settled on
her domain.
I hastily changed my dress, and, with beating heart, wound
my way up the venerable eminence.
I did not pass through the lane which led direct to Abbots'
House (for that old building stood solitary amidst its grounds,
a little apart from the spacious platform on which the society
of the Hill was concentrated), but up the broad causeway, with
vistaed gas-lamps; the gayer shops still unclosed, the tide of
busy life only slowly ebbing from the still animated street, on
to a square, in which the four main thoroughfares of the city
converged, and which formed the boundary of Low Town. A
huge dark archway, popularly called Monk’s Gate, at the angle
of this square, made the entrance to Abbey Hill. When the
arch was passed, one felt at once that one was in the town of a
former day. The pavement was narrow, and rugged; the shops
small, their upper stories projecting, with, here and there,
plastered fronts, quaintly arabesqued. An ascent, short, but
steep and tortuous, conducted at once to the old Abbey Church,
nobly situated in a vast quadrangle, round which were the
genteel and gloomy dwellings of the Areopagites of the Hill.
More genteel and less gloomy than the rest—lights at the win-
dows and flowers on the balcony—stood forth, flanked by a
garden wall at either side, the mansion of Mrs. Colonel Poyntz.
As I entered the drawing-room, I heard the voice of the host-
ess; it was a voice clear, decided, metallic, bell-like, uttering
these words: “Taken Abbots' House? I will tell you.”
26 A STRANGE STORY. * P_ts."
CHAPTER VI.
MRS. Poyntz was seated on the sofa; at her right side sat
fat Mrs. Bruce, who was a Scotch lord’s granddaughter; at her
left thin Miss Brabazon, who was an Irish baronet's niece.
Around her—a few seated, many standing—had grouped all
the guests, save two old gentlemen, who remained aloof with
Colonel Poyntz near the whist-table, waiting for the fourth old
gentleman, who was to make up the rubber, but who was at that
moment spellbound in the magic circle which curiosity, that
strongest of social demons, had attracted round the hostess.
“Taken Abbots' House? I will tell you. Ah, Dr. Fen-
wick, charmed to see you. You know Abbots’ House is let at
last? Well, Miss Brabazon, dear, you ask who has taken it. I
will inform you—a particular friend of mine.” -
“Indeed! Dear me!” said Miss Brabazon, looking con-
fused. “I hope I did not say anything to—”
“Wound my feelings. Not in the least. You said your
uncle, Sir Phelim, employed a coachmaker named Ashleigh;
that Ashleigh was an uncommon name, though Ashley was a
common one; you intimated an appalling suspicion that the
Mrs. Ashleigh who had come to the Hill was the coachmaker's
widow. I relieve your mind—she is not; she is the widow of
Gilbert Ashleigh, of Kirby Hall.”
“Gilbert Ashleigh,” said one of the guests, a bachelor, whose
parents had reared him for the Church, but who, like poor
Goldsmith, did not think himself good enough for it—a mistake
of over-modesty, for he matured into a very harmless creature.
“Gilbert Ashleigh. I was at Oxford with him—a gentle-
man commoner of Christ Church. Good-looking man—very:
sapped—”
‘‘Sapped What's that? Oh, studied. That he did all his
life. He married young—Anne Chaloner; she and I were girls
together; married the same year. They settled at Kirby Hall—
nice place, but dull. Poyntz and I spent a Christmas there.
Ashleigh, when he talked was charming, but he talked very little.
Anne, when she talked, was commonplace, and she talked very
much. Naturally, poor thing, she was so happy. Poyntz and
I did not spend another Christmas there. Friendship is long, .
but life is short. Gilbert Ashleigh's life was short indeed; he
died in the seventh year of his marriage, leaving only one child,
a girl. Since then, though I never spent another Christmas at
Kirby Hall, I have frequently spent a day there, doing my best
A STRA N G E STORY. 27
to cheer up Anne. She was no longer talkative, poor dear.
Wrapt up in her child, who has now grown into a beautiful girl
of eighteen—such eyes, her father's—the real dark blue—rare;
Sweet creature, but delicate; not, I hope, consumptive, but deli-
cate; quiet—wants life. My girl Jane adores her. Jane has
life enough for two.”
“Is Miss Ashleigh the heiress to Kirby Hall?” asked Mrs.
Bruce, who had an unmarried son.
“No. Kirby Hall passed to Ashleigh Sumner, the male
heir, a cousin. And the luckiest of cousins! Gilbert's sister,
showy woman (indeed all show), had contrived to marry her
kinsman, Sir Walter Ashleigh Haughton, the head of the Ash-
leigh family—just the man made to be the reflector of a showy
woman He died years ago, leaving an only son, Sir James,
who was killed last winter, by a fall from his horse. And here,
again, Ashleigh Sumner proved to be the male heir-at-law.
During the minority of this fortunate youth Mrs. Ashleigh had
rented Kirby Hall of his guardian. He is now just coming of
age, and that is why she leaves. Lilian Ashleigh will have,
however, a very good fortune; is what we genteel paupers call
an heiress. Is there anything more you want to know?”
Said thin Miss Brabazon, who took advantage of her thinness
to wedge herself into every one's affairs: “A most interesting
account. What a nice place Abbots’ House could be made
with a little taste! So aristocratic Just what I should like
if I could afford it! The drawing-room should be done up in
the Moorish style, with geranium-colored silk curtains, like dear
Lady L 's boudoir at Twickenham. And Mrs Ashleigh has
taken the house! On lease too, I suppose!” Here Miss Bra-
bazon fluttered her fan angrily, and then exclaimed: “But
what on earth brings Mrs. Ashleigh here?”
Answered Mrs. Colonel Poyntz, with the military frankness
by which she kept her company in good humor, as well as awe :
“Why do any of us come here? Can any one tell me?”
There was a blank silence, which the hostess herself was the
first to break.
“None of us present can say why we came here. I can tell
you why Mrs. Ashleigh came. Our neighbor, Mr. Vigors, is
a distant connection of the late Gilbert Ashleigh, one of the
executors to his will, and the guardian to the heir-at-law.
About ten days ago Mr. Vigors called on me, for the first time
since I felt it my duty to express my disapprobation of the
strange vagaries so unhappily conceived by our poor dear friend
Dr. Lloyd. And when he had taken his chair, just where
28 -- A Sºff. Aſ Giº St OR*.
you now sit, Tr. Fenwick, he said, in a sepulchral voice,
stretching out two fingers, so—as if I were one of the what-do-
you-call-'ems who go to sleep when he bids them: ‘Marm,
you know Mrs. Ashleight You correspond with her.’ ‘Yes,
Mr. Vigors; is there any crime in that? You look as if there
were.” “No crime, marm,” said the man, quite seriously.
‘Mrs. Ashleigh is a lady of amiable temper, and you are a
woman of masculine understanding.’”
Here there was a general titter. Mrs. Colonel Poyntz hushed
it with a look of severe surprise. “What is there to laugh at?
All women would be men if they could. If my understanding
.s masculine, so much the better for me. I thanked Mr.
Vigors for his very handsome compliment, and he then went
on to say, ‘that though Mrs. Ashleigh would now have to leave
Kirby Hall in a very few weeks, she seemed quite unable to
make up her mind where to go; that it had 6ccurred to him
that, as Miss Ashleigh was of an age to see a little of the world,
she ought not to remain buried in the country; while, being of
quiet mind, she recoiled from the dissipation of London. Be-
tween the seclusion of the one and the turmoil of the other,
the society of L was a happy medium. He should be glad
of my opinion. He had put off asking for it, because he
owned his belief that I had behaved unkindly to his lamented
friend, Dr. Lloyd: but he now found himself in rather an awk-
ward position. His ward, young Sumner, had prudently re-
solved on fixing his country residence at Kirby Hall, rather
than at Haughton Park, the much larger seat, which had so
suddenly passed to his inheritance, and which he could not
occupy without a vast establishment, that to a single man, so
young, would be but a cumbersome and costly trouble. Mr.
Vigors was pledged to his ward to obtain him possession of
Kirby Hall, the precise day agreed upon, but Mrs. Ashleigh
did not seem disposed to stir; could not decide where else to
go. Mr. Vigors was loth to press hard on his old friend's
widow and child. It was a thousand pities Mrs. Ashleigh
could not make up her mind; she had had ample time for
preparation. A word from me at this moment would be an
effective kindness. Abbots' House was vacant, with a garden
so extensive that the ladies would not miss the country. An-
other party was after it, but—' ‘Say no more,' I cried; “no
party but my dear old friend Anne Ashleigh shall have Abbots’
House. So that question is settled.' I dismissed Mr. Vigors,
sent for my carriage—that is, for Mr. Barker's yellow fly and
his best horses—and drove that very day to Kirby Hall, which,
A STRANGE STORY. 29
~f
though not in this county, is only twenty-five miles distant.
I slept there that night. By nine o'clock the next morning I
had secured Mrs. Ashleigh's consent, on the promise to save
her all trouble; came back, sent for the landlord, settled the
rent, lease, agreement; engaged Forbes's vans to remove the
furniture from Kirby Hall; told Forbes to begin with the beds.
When her own bed came, which was last night, Anne Ashleigh
came too. I have seen her this morning. She likes the place;
so does Lilian. I asked them to meet you all here to-night;
but Mrs Ashleigh was tired. The last of the furniture was to
arrive to-day; and though dear Mrs. Ashleigh is an undecided
character, she is not inactive. But it is not only the planning
where to put tables and chairs that would have tired her to-
day; she has had Mr. Vigors on her hands all the afternoon,
and he has been—here’s her little note—what are the words?
No doubt, ‘most overpowering and oppressive'—no, ‘most
kind and attentive'—different words, but, as applied to Mr.
Vigors, they mean the same thing.
“And now, next Monday—we must leave them in peace till
then—you will call on the Ashleighs. The Hill knows what is
due to itself; it cannot delegate to Mr. Vigors, a respectable
man indeed, but who does not belong to its set, its own proper
course of action towards those who would shelter themselves
on its bosom. The Hill cannot be kind and attentive, over-
powering or oppressive, by proxy. To those new-born into its
ſamily circle it cannot be an indifferent godmother; it has
towards them all the feelings of a mother—or of a stepmother, as
the case may be. Where it says, “ This can be no child of
mine,” it is a stepmother indeed; but, in all those whom I have
presented to its arms, it has hitherto, I am proud to say, rec-
ognized desirable acquaintances, and to them the Hill has been
a mother. And now, my dear Mr. Sloman, go to your rubber;
Poyntz is impatient, though he don't show it. Miss Brabazon,
love, we all long to see you seated at the piano—you play so
divinely . Something gay, if you please; something gay, but
not very noisy—Mr. Leopold Smythe will turn the leaves for
you. Mrs. Bruce, your own favorite set at vingt-un, with four
new recruits. Dr. Fenwick, you are like me, don’t play cards,
and don’t care for music: sit here, and talk or not, as you
please, while I knit.”
The other guests thus disposed of, some at the card-tables,
some round the piano, I placed myself at Mrs. Poyntz's side,
on a seat niched in the recess of a window which an evening
unusually, warm for the month of May permitted to be left
3o A STRANGE STORY.
\
open. I was next to one who had known Lilian as a child, one
from whom I had learned by what sweet name to call the image
which my thoughts had already shrined. How much that I
still longed to know she could tell me! But in what form of
question could I lead to the subject yet not betray my absorb-
ing interest in it? Longing to speak, I felt as if stricken
dumb ; stealing an unquiet glance towards the face beside
me, and deeply impressed with that truth which the Hill had
long ago reverently acknowledged, viz., that Mrs. Colonel
Poyntz was a very superior woman, a very powerful creature.
And there she sat knitting, rapidly, firmly; a woman some-
what on the other side of forty, complexion a bronzed pale-
ness, hair a bronzed brown, in strong ringlets cropped short
behind—handsome hair for a man; lips that, when closed,
showed inflexible decision, when speaking became supple and
flexible with an easy humor and a vigilant finesse; eyes of a
red hazel, quick but steady; observant, piercing, dauntless
eyes; altogether a fine countenance: would have been a very
fine countenance in a man; profile sharp, straight, clear-cut,
with an expression, when in repose, like that of a sphinx; a
frame robust, not corpulent, of middle height, but with an air
and carriage that made her appear tall; peculiarly white firm
hands, indicative of vigorous health, not a vein visible on the
surface.
There she sat knitting, knitting, and I by her side, gazing
now on herself, now on her work, with a vague idea that the
threads in the skein of my own web of love or of life were
passing quick through those noiseless fingers. And, indeed, in
every web of romance, the fondest, one of the Parcae is sure to
be some matter-of-fact She, Social Destiny, as little akin to
romance herself—as was this worldly Queen of the Hill.
CHAPTER VII.
I HAVE given a sketch of the outward woman of Mrs.
Colonel Poyntz. The inner woman was a recondite mystery,
deep as that of the sphinx, whose features her own resembled.
But between the outward and the inward woman there is ever
a third woman—the conventional woman—such as the whole
human being appears to the world, always mantled, sometimes
masked.
I am told that the fine people of London do not recognize
the title of “Mrs. Colonel.” If that be true, the fine people of
|
\
|
A STRANGE STORY: 3?
London must be clearly in the wrong, for no people in the uni-
verse could be finer than the fine people of Abbey Hill; and
they considered their sovereign had as good a right to the title
of Mrs. Colonel as the Queen of England has to that of “our
Gracious Lady.” But Mrs. Poyntz, herself, never assumed
the title of Mrs. Colonel; it never appeared on her cards any
more than the title of “Gracious Lady” appears on the cards
which convey the invitation that a Lord Steward or Lord
Chamberlain is commanded by her Majesty to issue. To titles,
indeed, Mrs. Poyntz evinced no superstitious reverence. Two
peeresses, related to her, not distantly, were in the habit of pay-
ing her a yearly visit, which lasted two or three days. The
Hill considered these visits an honor to its eminence. Mrs.
Poyntz never seemed to esteem them an honor to herself;
never boasted of them; never sought to show off her grand
relations, nor put herself the least out of the way to receive
them. Her mode of life was free from ostentation. She had
the advantage of being a few hundreds a year richer than any
other inhabitant of the Hill; but she did not devote her supe-
rior resources to the invidious exhibition of superior splen-
dor. Like a wise sovereign the revenues of her exchequer
were applied to the benefit of her subjects, and not to the van-
ity of egotistical parade. As no one else on the Hill kept a
carriage, she declined to keep one. Her entertainments were
simple, but numerous. Twice a week she received the Hill,
and was genuinely at home to it. She contrived to make her
parties proverbially agreeable. The refreshments were of the
same kind as those which the poorest of her old maids of honor
might proffer; but they were better of their kind, the best of
their kind—the best tea, the best lemonade, the best cakes.
Her rooms had an air of comfort, which was peculiar to them.
They looked like rooms accustomed to receive, and receive in
a friendly way; well warmed, well lighted, card-tables and piano
each in the place that made cards and music inviting. On the
walls a few old family portraits, and three or four other pictures
said to be valuable and certainly pleasing—two Watteaus, a
Canaletti, a Weenix—plenty of easy-chairs and settees covered
with a cheerful chintz. In the arrangement of the furniture gen-
erally, an indescribable careless elegance. She herself was stu-
diously plain in dress, more conspicuously free from jewellery
and trinkets than any married lady on the Hill. But I have heard
from those who were authorities on such a subject, that she was
never seen in a dress of the last year's fashion. She adopted
the mode as it came out, just enough to show that she was
32 WA STRANGE STORY.
aware it was out; but with a sober reserve, as much as to say:
‘‘I adopt the fashion as far as it suits myself; I do not permit
the fashion to adopt me.” In short, Mrs. Colonel Poyntz was
sometimes rough, sometimes coarse, always masculine, and yet
Somehow or other masculine in a womanly way; but she was
never vulgar because never affected. It was impossible not to
allow that she was a thorough gentlewoman, and she could
do things that lower other gentlewomen, without any loss of
dignity. Thus, she was an admirable mimic, certainly in itself
the least ladylike condescension of humor. But when she
mimicked, it was with so tranquil a gravity, or so royal a good
humor, that one could only say: “What talents for society
dear Mrs. Colonel has 1” As she was a gentlewoman emphat-
ically, so the other colonel, the he-colonel, was emphatically a
gentleman; rather shy, but not cold; hating trouble of every
kind, pleased to seem a cipher in his own house. If the sole
study of Mrs. Colonel had been to make her husband comfort-
able, she could not have succeeded better than by bringing
friends about him and then taking them off his hands. Colonel
Poyntz, the he-colonel, had seen, in his youth, actual ser-
vice; but had retired from his profession many years ago,
shortly after his marriage. He was a younger brother of one
of the principal squires in the county; inherited the house he
lived in, with some other valuable property in and about L 5
from an uncle; was considered a good landlord; and popular
in Low Town, though he never interfered in its affairs. He
was punctiliously neat in his dress; a thin, youthful figure,
crowned with a thick, youthful wig. He never seemed to read
anything but the newspapers and the Meteorological /ournal:
was supposed to be the most weather-wise man in all L º
He had another intellectual predilection—whist. - But in that
he had less reputation for wisdom. Perhaps it requires a rarer
combination of mental faculties to win an odd trick than to
divine a fall in the glass. For the rest, the he-colonel, many
years older than his wife, despite the thin. youthful figure, was
an admirable aide-de-camp to the general in command, Mrs.
Colonel; and she could not have found one more obedient,
more devoted, nor more proud of a distinguished chief.
In giving to Mrs. Colonel Poyntz the appellation of Queen
of the Hill, let there be no mistake. She was not a constitu-
tional sovereign; her monarchy was absolute. All her procla-
mations had the force of laws.
Such ascendancy could not have been attained without con-
siderable talents for acquiring and keeping it. Amidst all her
A STRANGE– STORY. 33
offhand, brisk, imperious frankness, she had the ineffable dis-
crimination of tact. Whether civil or rude, she was never
civil or rude but what she carried public opinion along with
her. Her knowledge of general society must have been lim-
ited, as must be that of all female sovereigns. But she seemed
gifted with an intuitive knowledge of human nature, which she
applied to her special ambition of ruling it. I have not a
doubt that if she had been suddenly transferred, a perfect
stranger, to the world of London, she would have soon forced
her way to its selectest circles, and, when once there, held her
own against a duchess.
I have said that she was not affected: this might be one
cause of her sway over a set in which nearly every other woman
was trying rather to seem, than to be, a somebody.
..But if Mrs. Colonel Poyntz was not artificial, she was artful,
or perhaps I might more justly say—artistic. In all she said
and did there were conduct, system, plan. She could be a
most serviceable friend, most damaging enemy; yet I believe
she seldom indulged in strong likings or strong hatreds. All
was policy—a policy akin to that of a grand party chief, de-
termined to raise up those whom, for any reason of state, it
was prudent to favor, and to put down those whom, for any
reason of state, it was expedient to humble or to crush.
Ever since the controversy with Dr. Lloyd, this lady had
honored me with her benignest countenance. And nothing
could be more adroit than the manner in which, while impos-
ing me on others as an oracular authority, she sought to sub-
ject to her will the oracle itself.
She was in the habit of addressing me in a sort of motherly
way, as if she had the deepest interest in my welfare, happi-
ness, and reputation. And thus, in every compliment, in every
seeming mark of respect, she maintained the superior dignity
of one who takes from responsible station the duty to encour-
age rising merit: so that, somehow or other, despite all that
pride which made me believe that I needed no helping hand to
advance or to clear my way through the world, I could not
shake off from my mind the impression that I was myste-
riously patronized by Mrs. Colonel Poyntz.
We might have sat together five minutes, side by side, in
silence as complete as if in the cave of Trophonius, when,
without looking up from her work, Mrs. Poyntz said abruptly:
“I am thinking about you, Dr. Fenwick. And you—are
thinking about some other woman. Ungrateful man!”
“Unjust accusation : My very silence should prove how
34 A STRANGE STORY.
intently my thoughts were fixed on you, and on the weird web
which springs under your hand in meshes that bewilder the
gaze and snare the attention.”
Mrs. Poyntz looked up at me for a moment—one rapid
glance of the bright red hazel eye—and said:
“Was I really in your thoughts? Answer truly.”
“Truly, I answer, you were.”
“That is strange! Who can it be?”
“Who can it be? What do you mean?”
“If you were thinking of me, it was in connection with some
other person—some other person of my own sex. It is cer-
tainly not poor dear Miss Brabazon. Who else can it be?”
Again the red eye shot over me, and I felt my cheek redden
beneath it.
“Hush ’’ she said, lowering her voice; “You are in love!”
“In love —Iſ Permit me to ask you why you think so?”
“The signs are unmistakable; you are altered in your man-
ner, even in the expression of your face, since I last saw you;
your manner is generally quiet and observant, it is now rest-
less and distracted; your expression of face is generally proud
and serene, it is now humbled and troubled. You have some-
thing on your mind! It is not anxiety for your reputation,
that is established; nor for your fortune, that is made; it is
not anxiety for a patient, or you would scarcely be here. But
anxiety it is, an anxiety that is remote from your profession,
that touches your heart and is new to it!”
I was startled, almost awed. But I tried to cover my con-
fusion with a forced laugh.
“Profound observer! Subtle analyst! You have convinced
me that I must be in love, though I did not suspect it before.
But when I strive to conjecture the object, I am as much per-
plexed as yourself; and with you, I ask, who can it be?”
“Whoever it be,” said Mrs. Poyntz, who had paused, while
I spoke, from her knitting, and now resumed it very slowly and
very carefully, as if her mind and her knitting worked in uni-
son together; “Whoever it be, love in you would be serious;
and, with or without love, marriage is a serious thing to us all.
It is not every pretty girl that would suit Allen Fenwick.”
“Alas! Is there any pretty girl whom Allen Fenwick would
Suit?” §
“Tut! You should be above the fretful vanity that lays
traps for a compliment. Yes; the time has come in your life
and your career when you would do well to marry. I give my
consent to that,” she added with a smile as if in jest, and a
A STRANGE STORY. 35
...”
slight nod as if in earnest. The knitting here went on more
decidedly, more quickly. “But I do not yet see the person.
No! 'Tis a pity, Allen Fenwick (whenever Mrs. Poyntz called
me by my Christian name, she always assumed her majestic
motherly manner)—a pity that, with your birth, energies, per-
severance, talents, and, let me add, your advantages of manner
and person—a pity that you did not choose a career that might
achieve higher fortunes and louder fame than the most brill-
iant success can give to a provincial physician. But in that
very choice you interest me. My choice has been much the
same. A small circle, but the first in it. Yet, had I been a
man, or had my dear colonel been a man whom it was in the
power of a woman’s art to raise one step higher in that meta-
phorical ladder which is not the ladder of the angels, why
then—what then P No matter! I am contented. I transfer
my ambition to Jane. Do you not think her handsome?”
“There can be no doubt of that,” said I, carelessly and
naturally.
“I have settled Jane's lot in my own mind,” resumed Mrs.
Poyntz, striking firm into another row of knitting. “She will
marry a country gentleman of large estate. He will go into
Parliament. She will study his advancement as I study
Poyntz's comfort. If he be clever, she will help to make him
a minister; if he be not clever, his wealth will make her a per-
sonage, and lift him into a personage's husband. And, now
that you see I have no matrimonial designs on you, Allen Fen-
wick, think if it will be worth while to confide in sme. Pos-
sibly I may be useful—” -
“I know not how to thank you. But, as yet, I have nothing
to confide.”
While thus saying, I turned my eyes towards the open win-
.dow beside which I sat. It was a beautiful soft night. The
May moon in all her splendor. The town stretched, far and
wide, below with all its numberless lights; below—but some-
what distant; an intervening space was covered, here, by the
broad quadrangle (in the midst of which stood, massive and
lonely, the grand old church), and, there, by the gardens and
scattered cottages or mansions that clothed the sides of the hill.
‘‘Is not that house,” I said, after a short pause, “yonder,
with the three gables, the one in which—in which poor Dr.
Lloyd lived—Abbots' House?”
I spoke abruptly, as if to intimate my desire to change the
subject of conversation. My hostess stopped her knitting, half-
rose, looked forth.
36 A STRANGE STORY,
“Yes. But what a lovely night! How is it that the moon
blends into harmony things of which the sun only marks the
contrast? That stately old church tower, gray with its thou-
sand years: those vulgar tile-roofs and chimney-pots raw in
the freshness of yesterday: now, under the moonlight, all melt
into one indivisible charm l’’
As my hostess thus spoke, she had left her seat, taking her
work with her, and passed from the window into the balcony.
It was not often that Mrs. Poyntz condescended to admit what
is called “sentiment” into the range of her sharp, practical,
worldly talk, but she did so at times; always, when she did,
giving me the notion of an intellect much too comprehensive
not to allow that sentiment has a place in this life, but keep-
ing it in its proper place, by that mixture of affability and in-
difference with which some high-born beauty allows the genius,
but checks the presumption, of a charming and penniless poet.
For a few minutes her eyes roved over the scene in evident
enjoyment; then, as they slowly settled upon the three gables
of Abbots' House, her face regained that something of hard-
ness which belonged to its decided character; her fingers again
mechanically resumed her knitting, and she said, in her clear,
unsoftened metallic chime of voice: “Can you guess why I
took so much trouble to oblige Mr. Vigors and locate Mrs.
Ashleigh yonder?”
“You favored us with a full explanation of your reasons.”
“Some of my reasons; not the main one. People who un-
dertake the task of governing others, as I do, be their rule a
kingdom or a hamlet, must adopt a principle of government
and adhere to it. The principle that suits best with the Hill
is respect for the Proprieties. We have not much money;
entre mous, we have no great rank. Our policy is, then, to set
up the Proprieties as an influence which money must court and
rank is afraid of. I had learned just before Mr. Vigors called
on me that Lady Sarah Bellasis entertained the idea of hiring.
Abbots' House. London has set its face against her; a pro-
vincial town would be more charitable. An earl's daughter,
with a good income and an awfully bad name, of the best man-
ners and of the worst morals, would have made sad havoc
among the Proprieties. How many of our primmest old maids
would have deserted tea and Mrs. Poyntz for champagne and
her ladyship? The Hill was never in so imminent a danger.
Rather than Lady Sarah Bellasis should have had that house, I
would have taken it myself, and stocked it with owls.
“Mrs. Ashleigh turned up just in the critical moment. Lady
--- A STRANGE STORY. 37
Sarah is foiled, the Proprieties safe, and so that question is
settled.”
“And it will be pleasant to have your early friend so near
ou.’’
y Mrs Poyntz lifted her eyes full upon me.
“Do you know Mrs. Ashleigh?”
‘‘Not in the least.”
“She has many virtues and few ideas. She is commonplace
weak, as I am commonplace strong. But commonplace weak
can be very lovable. Her husband, a man of genius and learn-
ing, gave her his whole heart—a heart worth having, but he
was not ambitious, and he despised the world.”
“I think you said your daughter was very much attached to
- Miss Ashleight Does her character resemble her mother's?”
I was afraid while I spoke that I should again meet Mrs.
Poyntz's searching gaze, but she did not this time look up
from her work.
“No ; Lilian is anything but commonplace.”
“You described her as having delicate health; you implied
a hope that she was not consumptive. I trust that there is no
serious reason for apprehending a constitutional tendency
which at her age would require the most careful watching!”
“I trust not. If she were to die—Dr. Fenwick, what is the
matter?’’
So terrible had been the picture which this woman’s words
had brought before me, that I started as if my own life had re-
ceived a shock.
“I beg pardon,” I said falteringly, pressing my hand to my
heart; “a sudden spasm here—it is over now. You were say-
ing that—that—”
“I was about to say,” and here Mrs. Poyntz laid her hand
lightly on mine,—“I was about to say, that if Lilian Ashleigh
were to die, I should mourn for her less than I might for one
who valued the things of the earth more. But I believe there
is no cause for the alarm my words so inconsiderately excited
—in you. Her mother is watchful and devoted; and if the least
thing ailed Lilian, she would call in medical advice. Mr. Vig-
ors would, I know, recommend Dr. Jones.”
Closing our conference with those stinging words, Mrs.
Poyntz here turned back into the drawing-room.
I remained some minutes on the balcony, disconcerted, en-
raged. With what consummate art had this practised diplo-
matist wound herself into my secret! That she had read my
heart better than myself was evident from that Parthian shaft,
y
wº
38 A STRANGE story.
barbed with Dr. Jones, which she had shot over her shoulder-
in retreat. That from the first moment in which she had de-
coyed me to her side, she had detected “the something” on my
mind, was perhaps but the ordinary quickness of female pene-
tration. But it was with no ordinary craft that her whole con-
versation afterwards had been so shaped as to learn the some-
thing, and lead me to reveal the some one to whom the some-
thing was linked. For what purpose? What was it to her? .
What motive could she have beyond the mere gratification of
curiosity? Perhaps, at first, she thought I had been caught by
her daughter's showy beauty, and hence the half-friendly,
half-cynical frankness with which she had avowed her ambi-
tious projects for that young lady's matrimonial advancement.
Satisfied by my manner that I cherished no presumptuous
hopes in that quarter, her scrutiny was doubtless continued
from that pleasure in the exercise of a wily intellect which im-
pels schemers and politicians to an activity for which, without
that pleasure itself, there would seem no adequate induce-
ment; and besides, the ruling passion of this petty sovereign
was power. And if knowledge be power, there is no better
instrument of power over a contumacious subject than
that hold on his heart which is gained in the knowledge of its
Secret.
But ‘‘secret”! Had it really come to this? Was it possi-
ble that the mere sight of a human face, never beheld before,
could disturb the whole tenor of my life—a stranger of whose
mind and character I knew nothing, whose very voice I had
never heard? It was only by the intolerable pang of anguish
that had rent my heart in the words, carelessly, abruptly spoken,
“if she were to die,” that I had felt how the world would be
changed to me, if indeed that face were seen in it no more!
Yes, secret it was no longer to myself—I loved? And like all
on whom love descends, sometimes softly, slowly, with the
gradual wing of the cushat settling down into its nest, some-
times with the swoop of the eagle on his unsuspecting quarry,
I believed that none ever before loved as I loved; that such
love was an abnormal wonder, made solely for me, and I for
it. Then my mind insensibly hushed its angrier and more
turbulent thoughts, as my gaze rested upon the roof-tops of
Lilian’s home, and the shimmering silver of the moonlit
willow, under which I had seen her gazing into the roseate
heavens.
A STRANGE STORY. 39
CHAPTER VIII.
WHEN I returned to the drawing-room, the party was evi-
dently about to break up. Those who had grouped round the
piano were now assembled round the refreshment-table. The
card-players had risen, and were settling or discussing gains
and losses. While I was searching for my hat, which I had
somewhere mislaid, a poor gentleman, tormented by tic-doulo-
reux, crept timidly up to me—the proudest and the poorest of
all the hidalgos settled on the Hill. He could not afford a
fee for a physician’s advice, but pain had humbled his pride,
and I saw at a glance that he was considering how to take a sur-
reptitious advantage of social intercourse, and obtain the ad-
vice without paying the fee. The old man discovered the hat
before I did, stooped, took it up, extended it to me with the
profound bow of the old school, while the other hand, clenched
and quivering, was pressed into the hollow of his cheek, and
his eyes met mine with wistful mute entreaty. The instinct of
my profession seized me at once. I could never behold suffer-
ing, without forgetting all else in the desire to relieve it.
“You are in pain,” said I softly. “Sit down and describe
the symptoms. Here, it is true, I am no professional doctor,
but I am a friend who is fond of doctoring, and knows some-
thing about it.” tº
So, we sat down a little apart from the other guests, and after
a few questions and answers, I was pleased to find that his ‘‘tic’’
did not belong to the less curable kind of that agonizing neural-
gia. I was especially successful in my treatment of similar
sufferings, for which I had discovered an anodyne that was
almost specific. I wrote on a leaf of my pocket-book a pre-
scription which I felt sure would be efficacious, and as I tore
it out and placed it in his hand, I chanced to look up, and
saw the hazel eyes of my hostess fixed upon me with a kinder
and softer expression than they often condescended to admit
into their cold and penetrating lustre. At that moment, how-
ever, her attention was drawn from me to a servant, who en-
tered with a note, and I heard him say, though in an under-
tone, “From Mrs. Ashleigh.”
She opened the note, read it hastily, ordered the servant to
wait without the door, retired to her writing-table, which stood
near the place at which I still lingered, rested her face on her
hand, and seemed musing. Her meditation was very soon over.
She turned her head, and, to my surprise, beckoned to me.
I approached.
46 A ST RANGE STORY.
“Sit here,” she whispered; “turn your back towards those
people, who are no doubt watching us. Read this.”
She placed in my hand the note she had just received. It
contained but a few words to this effect:
“DEAR MARG ARET : I am so distressed. Since I wrote to
you, a few hours ago, Lilian is taken suddenly ill, and I fear
seriously. What medical man should I send for? Let my ser-
vant have his name and address. A. A.''
I sprang from my seat.
“Stay,” said Mrs. Poyntz. “Would you much care if I sent
the servant to Dr. Jones?”
“Ah, madam, you are cruel! What have I done that you
should become my enemy?”
“Enemy No. You have just befriended one of my
friends. In this world of fools intellect should ally itself with
intellect. No; I am not your enemy! But you have not yet
asked me to be your friend.” *
Here she put into my hands a note she had written while
thus speaking. “Receive your credentials. If there be any
cause for alarm, or if I can be of use, send for me.’’ Resum-
ing the work she had suspended, but with lingering, uncertain
fingers, she added: “So far, then, this is settled. Nay, no
thanks; it is but little that is settled as yet.”
CHAPTER IX.
IN a very few minutes I was once more in the grounds of that
old gable house; the servant, who went before me, entered
them by the stairs and the wicket-gate of the private entrance;
that way was the shortest. So again I passed by the circling
glade and the monastic well—sward, trees, and ruins, all suf-
fused in the limpid moonlight.
And now I was in the house; the servant took upstairs the
note with which I was charged, and a minute or two afterwards
returned and conducted me to the corridor above, in which
Mrs Ashleigh received me. I was the first to speak. “Your
daughter—is—is—not seriously ill, I hope. What is it?”
“liush!” she said, under her breath. “Will you step this
way for a moment?” She passed through a doorway to the
right. I followed her, and as she placed on the table the light
she had been holding, I looked round with a chill at the heart—
it was the room in which Dr. Lloyd had died. Impossible to
A STRANGE STORY. 4 I
mistake. The furniture, indeed, was changed—there was no
bed in the chamber; but the shape of the room, the position
of the high casement, which was now open wide, and
through which the moonlight streamed more softly than on
that drear winter night, the great square beams intersecting the
low ceiling—all were impressed vividly on my memory. The
chair to which Mrs. Ashleigh beckoned me was placed just on
the spot were I had stood by the bed-head of the dying man.
I shrank back; I could not have seated myself there. So
I remained leaning against the chimney-piece, while Mrs. Ash-
leigh told her story. -- *.
She said that on their arrival the day before, Lilian had been
in more than usually good health and spirits, delighted with the
old house, the grounds, and especially the nook by the Monk's
Well, at which Mrs. Ashleigh had left her that evening in order
to make some purchases in the town, in company with Mr.
Vigors. When Mrs. Ashleigh returned, she and Mr. Vigors
had sought Lilian in that nook, and Mrs. Ashleigh then de-
tected, with a mother's eye, some change in Lilian, which
alarmed her. She seemed listless and dejected, and was very
pale; but she denied that she felt unwell. On regaining the
house she had sat down in the room in which we then were—
“Which,” said Mrs. Ashleigh, “as it is not required for a sleep-
ing-room, my daughter, who is fond of reading, wished to fit,
up as her own morning-room, or study. I left her here and
went into the drawing-room below with Mr. Vigors. When he
quitted me, which he did very soon, I remained for nearly an
hour giving directions about the placing of furniture, which
had just arrived from our late residence. I then went upstairs
to join my daughter, and to my terror found her apparently
lifeless in her chair. She had fainted away.”
I interrupted Mrs. Ashleigh here. “Has Miss Ashleigh
been subject to fainting fits?”
“No, never. When she recovered she seemed bewildered—
disinclined to speak. I got her to bed, and as she then fell
quietly to sleep, my mind was relieved. I thought it only a
passing effect of excitement, in a change of abode; or caused
by something like malaria in the atmosphere of that part of the
grounds in which I had found her seated.”
“Very likely. The hour of sunset at this time of year is try-
ing to delicate constitutions. Go on.’’
“About three-quarters of an hour ago she woke up with a
loud cry, and has been ever since in a state of great agitation,
weeping violently, and answering none of my questions. Yet
42 A STRANGE STORY.
she does not seem light-headed, but rather what we call hys-
terical.’’
“You will permit me now to see her. Take comfort—in all
you tell me I see nothing to warrant serious alarm ‘’
~
CHAPTER X.
To the true physician there is an inexpressible sanctity in
the sick-chamber. At its threshold the more human passions
quit their hold on his heart. Love there would be profanation.
Even the grief permitted to others he must put aside. He
must enter that room—a calm intelligence. He is disabled for
his mission if he suffer aught to obscure the keen, quiet glance
of his science. Age or youth, beauty or deformity, innocence
or guilt, merge their distinctions in one common attribute—
human suffering appealing to human skill.
Woe to the households in which the trusted Healer feels not
on his conscience the solemn obligations of his glorious art.
Reverently, as in a temple, I stood in the virgin's chamber.
When her mother placed her hand in mine, and I ſelt the throb
of its pulse, I was aware of no quicker beat of my own heart.
I looked with a steady eye on the face, more beautiful from
the flush that deepened the delicate hues of the young cheek,
and the lustre that brightened the dark blue of the wandering
eyes. She did not at first heed me; did not seem aware of my
presence; but kept murmuring to herself words which I could
not distinguish.
At length, when I spoke to her, in that low, soothing tone
which we learn at the sick-bed, the expression of her face al-
tered suddenly; she passed the hand I did not hold over her
forehead, turned round, looked at me full and long, with un-
mistakable surprise, yet not as if the surprise displeased her;
less the surprise which recoils from the sight of a stranger
than that which seems doubtfully to recognize an unexpected
friend. Yet on the surprise there seemed to creep something
of apprehension—of fear; her hand trembled, her voice quiv-
ered, as she said:
“Can it be? Can it be? Am I awake? Mother, who is
this?’’ -
“Only a kind visitor, Dr. Fenwick, sent by Mrs. Poyntz,
for I was uneasy about you, darling. How are you now?”
“Better. Strangely better.”
She removed her hand gently from mine, and with an in-
A STRANGE STORY. 43
*
voluntary modest shrinking, turned towards Mrs. Ashleigh,
drawing her mother towards herself, so that she became at once
hidden from me.
Satisfied that there was here no delirium, nor even more
than the slight and temporary feeling which often accompanies
a sudden nervous attack in constitutions peculiarly sensitive,
I retired noiselessly from the room, and went, not into that
which had been occupied by the ill-fated naturalist, but down-
stairs into the drawing-room, to write my prescription. I had
already sent the servant off with it to the chemist's before Mrs.
Ashleigh joined me.
“She seems recovering surprisingly; her forehead is cooler;
she is perfectly self-possessed, only she cannot account for her
own seizure; cannot account either for the fainting or the agi-
tation with which she awoke from sleep.”
“I think I can account for both. The first room in which
she entered—that in which she fainted—had its window open;
the sides of the window are overgrown with rank creeping
plants in full blossom. Miss Ashleigh had already predisposed
herself to injurious effects from the effluvia, by fatigue, excite-
ment, imprudence in sitting out at the fall of a heavy dew.
The sleep after the fainting fit was the more disturbed, because
Nature, always alert and active in subjects so young, was
making its own effort to right itself from an injury. Nature
has nearly succeeded. What I have prescribed will a little aid
and accelerate that which Nature has yet to do, and in a day
or two I do not doubt that your daughter will be perſectly re-
stored. Only let me recommend care to avoid exposure to the
open air during the close of the day. Let her avoid also the
room in which she was first seized, for it is a strange phenome-
non in nervous temperaments that a nervous attack may, with-
out visible cause, be repeated in the same place where it was
first experienced. You had better shut up the chamber for at
least some weeks, burn fires in it, repaint and paper it, sprinkle
chloroform. You are not, perhaps, aware that Dr. Lloyd died
in that room after a prolonged illness. Suffer me to wait till
your servant returns with the medicine, and let me employ the
interval in asking you a few questions. Miss Ashleigh, you
say, never had a fainting fit before. I should presume that she
is not what we call strong. But has she ever had any illness
that alarmed you?”
“Never.’’
“No great liability to cold and cough, to attacks of the chest
or lungs?”
44 A STRANGE STORY. S.
*
“Certainly not. Still I have feared that she may have a ten-
dency to consumption. Did you think so? Your questions
alarm me!”
“I do not think so; but before I pronounce a positive opin-
ion, one question more. You say you have feared a tendency
to consumption. Is that disease in her family? She certainly
did not inherit it from you. But on her father's side?”
“Her father,” said Mrs. Ashleigh, with tears in her eyes,
“died young, but of brain fever, which the medical men said
was brought on by overstudy.”
“Enough, my dear madam. What you say confirms my be-
lief that your daughter's constitution is the very opposite to
that in which the seeds of consumption lurk. It is rather that
far nobler constitution, which the keenness of the nervous sus-
ceptibility renders delicate but elastic—as quick to recover as
it is to suffer.’’
“Thank you, thank you, Dr. Fenwick, for what you say.
You take a load from my heart. For Mr. Vigors, I know,
thinks Lilian consumptive, and Mrs. Poyntz has rather fright-
ened me at times by hints to the same effect. But when you
speak of nervous susceptibility, I do not quite understand you.
My daughter is not what is commonly called nervous. Her
temper is singularly even.”
“But if not excitable, should you also say that she is not im-
pressionable? The things which do not disturb her temper
may, perhaps, deject her spirits. Do I make myself under-
stood P’’
“Yes, I think I understand your distinction. But I am not
quite sure if it applies. To most things that affect the spirits
she is not more sensitive than other girls, perhaps less so. But
she is certainly very impressionable in some things.”
‘‘In What?’”
“She is more moved than any one I ever knew by objects in
external nature, rural scenery, rural sounds, by music, by the
books that she reads—even books that are not works of imagin-
ation. Perhaps in all this she takes after her poor father, but
in a more marked degree—at least, I observe it more in her.
For he was very silent and reserved. And perhaps also her
peculiarities have been fostered by the seclusion in which she
has been brought up. It was with a view to make her a little
more like girls of her own age that our friend, Mrs. Poyntz, in-
duced me to come here. Lilian was reconciled to this change;
but she shrank from the thoughts of London, which I should
have preferred, Her poor father could not endure London,”
- A STRANGE STORY. 45
“Miss Ashleigh is fond of reading?”
“Yes, she is fond of reading, but more fond of musing. She
will sit by herself for hours without book or work, and seem as
abstracted as if in a dream. She was so even in her earliest
childhood. Then she would tell me what she had been con-
juring up to herself. She would say that she had seen—posi-
tively seen—beautiful lands far away from earth; flowers and
- trees not like ours. As she grew older this visionary talk dis-
pleased me and I scolded her, and said that if others heard
her, they would think that she was not only silly but very un-
truthful. So of late years she never ventures to tell me what,
in such dreamy moments, she suffers herself to imagine; but
the habit of musing continues still. De you not agree with
Mrs. Poyntz, that the best cure would be a little cheerful so-
ciety amongst other young people?”
“Certainly,” said I honestly, though with a jealous pang.
“But here comes the medicine. Will you take it up to her, and
then sit with her half an hour or so? By that time I expect
she will be asleep. I will wait here till you return. Oh, I can
amuse myself with the newspapers and books on your table.
Stay! One caution: be sure there are no flowers in Miss Ash-
leigh's sleeping-room. I think I saw a treacherous rose-tree
in a stand by the window. If so, banish it.”
Left alone, I examined the room in which, O thought of
joy! I had surely now won the claim to become a privileged
guest. " I touched the books Lilian must have touched; in the
articles of furniture, as yet so hastily disposed that the settled
look of home was not about them, I still knew that I was gaz-
ing on things which her mind must associate with the history
of her young life. That lute-harp must be surely hers, and
the scarf, with a girl's favorite colors—pure white and pale
blue—and the bird-cage, and the childish ivory work-case, with
implements too pretty for use, all spoke of her.
It was a blissful, intoxicating revery, which Mrs. Ashleigh's
entrance disturbed.
Lilian was sleeping calmly. I had no excuse to linger there
any longer. *.
“I leave you, I trust, with your mind quite at ease,” said I.
“You will allow me to call to-morrow, in the afternoon?”
“Oh yes, gratefully.”
Mrs. Ashleigh held out her hand as I made towards the door.
Is there a physician who has not felt at times how that cere-
monious fee throws him back from the garden-land of humanity
into the market-place of money—seems to put him out of the
sº
46 A STRANGE STORY.
pale of equal friendship, and say, “True, you have given health
and life. Adieu! there, you are paid for it.” With a poor
person there would have been no dilemma, but Mrs. Ashleigh
was affluent: to depart from custom here was almost imperti-
nence. But had the penalty of my refusal been the doom of
never again beholding Lilian, I could not have taken her
mother's gold. So I did not appear to notice the hand held
out to me, and passed by with a quickened step.
“But, Dr. Fenwick, stop!” *
“No, ma'am, no! Miss Ashleigh would have recovered as
soon without me. Whenever my aid is really wanted, then—
but Heaven grant that time may never come! We will talk
again about her to-morrow.”
I was gone. Now in the garden ground, odorous with blos-
soms; now in the lane, enclosed by the narrow walls; now in
the deserted streets, over which the moon shone full as in that
winter night when I hurried from the chamber of death. But
the streets were not ghastly now, and the moon was no longer
Hecate, that dreary goddess of awe and spectres, but the sweet,
simple Lady of the Stars, on whose gentle face lovers have
gazed ever since (if that guess of astronomers be true) she was
parted from earth to rule the tides of its deeps from afar, even
as love, from love divided, rules the heart, that yearns towards
it, with mysterious law!
CHAPTER XI.
WITH what increased benignity I listened to the patients who
visited me the next morning. The whole human race seemed
to be worthier of love, and I longed to diffuse amongst all
some rays of the glorious hope that had dawned upon my heart.
My first call, when I went forth, was on the poor young woman
from whom I had been returning the day before, when an im-
pulse, which seemed like a fate, had lured me into the grounds
where I had first seen Lilian. I felt grateful to this poor pa-
tient; without her Lilian herself might be yet unknown to me.
The girl’s brother, a young man employed in the police, and
whose pay supported a widowed mother and the suffering sister,
received me at the threshold of the cottage.
“Oh, sir! she is so much better to-day; almost free from
pain. Will she live now? Can she live?”
“If my treatment has really done the good you say; if she
be really better under it, I think her recovery may be pro-
nounced. But I must first see her.’’
A ŠTRANGE STORY. 47
The girl was indeed wonderfully better. I felt that my skill
was achieving a signal triumph; but that day even my intel-
lectual pride was forgotten in the luxurious unfolding of that
sense of heart which had so newly waked into blossom.
As I recrossed the threshold, I smiled on the brother, who
was still lingering there:
“Your sister is saved, Waby. She needs now chiefly wine,
and good though light nourishment; these you will find at my
house; call there for them every day.”
“God bless you, sir! If ever I can serve you—” His
tongue faltered—he could say no more.
Serve me–Allen Fenwick—that poor policeman! Me, whom
a king could not serve! What did I ask from earth but Fame
and Lilian’s heart? Thrones and bread man wins from the aid
of others. Fame and woman's heart he can only gain through
himself.
So I strode gayly up the hill, through the iron gates, into
the fairy ground, and stood before Lilian’s home.
The man-servant, on opening the door, seemed somewhat
confused, and said hastily, before I spoke:
“Not at home, sir; a note for you.”
I turned the note mechanically in my hand; I felt stunned.
“Not at home! Miss Ashleigh cannot be out. How is
She?”
“Better, sir, thank you.”
I still could not open the note; my eyes turned wistfully tow-
ards the windows of the house, and there—at the drawing-
room 'window—I encountered the scowl of Mr. Vigors. I
colored with resentment, divined that I was dismissed, and
walked away with a proud crest and a firm step.
When I was out of the gates, in the blind lane, I opened the
note. It began formally—“Mrs Ashleigh presents her compli-
ments,’’ and went on to thank me, civilly enough, for my atten-
dance the night before, would not give me the trouble to re-
peat my visit, and enclosed a fee, double the amount of the fee
prescribed by custom. I flung the money, as an asp that had
stung me, over the high wall, and tore the note into shreds.
Having thus idly vented my rage, a dull, gnawing sorrow came
heavily down upon all other emotions, stifling and replacing
them. At the mouth of the lane I halted. I shrank from the
thought of the crowded streets beyond. I shrank yet more
from the routine of duties, which stretched before me in the
desert into which daily life was so suddenly smitten. I sat down
by the roadside, shading my dejected face with a nerveless
48 A STRANGE story.
hand. I looked up as the sound of steps reached my ear, and
saw Dr. Jones coming briskly along the lane, evidently from
Abbots' House. He must have been there at the very time I
had called. I was not only dismissed but supplanted. I rose
before he reached the spot on which I had seated myself, and
went my way into the town, went through my allotted round of
professional visits; but my attentions were not so tenderly de-
voted, my skill so genially quickened by the glow of benevo-
lence, as my poorer patients had found them in the morning.
I have said how the physician should enter the sick-room.
“A Calm Intelligence!” But if you strike a blow on the heart,
the intellect suffers. Little worth, I suspect, was my “calm
intelligence” that day. Bichat, in his famous book upon Life-
and Death, divides life into two classes, animal and organic.
Man's intellect, with the brain for its centre, belongs to life
animal; his passions to life organic, centred in the heart, in
the viscera. Alas! if the noblest passions through which alone
we lift ourselves into the moral realm of the sublime and beauti-
ful really have their centre in the life which the very vegetable,
that lives organically, shares with us! And, alas! if it be that
life which we share with the vegetable, that can cloud, ob-
struct, suspend, annul that life centred in the brain, which we
share with every being howsoever angelic, in every star howso-
ever remote, on whom the Creator bestows the faculty of
thought!
CHAPTER XII.
22° ſº
BUT suddenly I remembered Mrs. Poyntz. I ought to call
on her. So I closed my round of visits at her door. The day
was then far advanced, and the servant politely informed mes
that Mrs. Poyntz was at dinner. I could only leave my card,
with a message that I would pay my respects to her the next
day. That evening I received from her this note:
‘‘DEAR DR. FEN WICK :
“I regret much that I cannot have the pleasure of seeing you
to-morrow. Poyntz and I are going to visit his brother, at the
other end of the county and we start early. We shall be away
some days. Sorry to hear from Mrs. Ashleigh that she has been
persuaded by Mr. Vigors to consult Dr. Jones about Lilian.
Vigors and Jones both frighten the poor mother and insist upon
consumptive tendencies. Unluckily, you seem to have said
there was little the matter. Some doctors gain their practice,
--- A Si RANGE STORY. 49
as some preachers fill their churches, by adroit use of the ap-
peals to terror. You do not want patients, Dr. Jones does.
And, after all, better perhaps as it is.-Yours, etc.
‘‘M. POYNTZ.'”
To my more selfish grief anxiety for Lilian was now added.
I had seen many more patients die from being mistreated for
consumption than from consumption itself. And Dr. Jones
was a mercenary, cunning, needy man with much crafty knowl-
edge of human foibles, but very little skill in the treatment of
human maladies. My fears were soon confirmed. A few days
after I heard from Miss Brabazon that Miss Ashleigh was seri-
ously ill, kept her room. Mrs. Ashleigh made this excuse for
not immediately returning the visits which the Hill had show-
ered upon her. Miss Brabazon had seen Dr. Jones, who had
shaken his head, said it was a serious case; but that time and.
care (his time and his care!) might effect wonders.
How stealthily at the dead of the night I would climb the
Hill, and look towards the windows of the old sombre house
one window, in which a light burnt dim and mournful, the light
of a sick-room—of hers!
At length Mrs. Poyntz came back, and I entered her house,
having fully resolved beforehand on the line of policy to be
adopted towards the potentate whom I hoped to secure as an
ally. It was clear that neither disguise nor half-confidence
would baffle the penetration of So keen an intellect, nor propi-
tiate the good-will of so imperious and resolute a temper. Per-
fect frankness here was the wisest prudence; and, after all, it
was most agreeable to my own nature, and most worthy of my
own honor.
Luckily, I found Mrs. Poyntz alone, and taking in both mine
the hand she somewhat coldly extended to me, I said, with the
earnestness of suppressed emotion:
“You observed when I last saw you, that I had not yet
asked you to be my friend. I ask it now. Listen to me with
all the indulgence you can vouchsafe, and let me at least profit
by your counsel if you refuse to give me your aid.” º
Rapidly, briefly, I went on to say how I had first seen Lil-
ian, and how sudden, how strange to myself, had been the im-
pression which that first sight of her had produced.
“You remarked the change that had come over me,” said I;
“you divined the cause before I divined it myself; divined it
as I sat there beside you, thinking that through you I might
see, in the freedom of social intercourse, the face that was then
50 A Sºf PANGE STORY,
haunting me. You know what has since passed. Miss Ash-
leigh is ill; her case is, I am convinced, wholly misunderstood.
All other feelings are merged in one sense of anxiety, of alarm.
But it has become due to me, due to all, to incur the risk of
your ridicule even more than of your reproof, by stating to you
thus candidly, plainly, bluntly, the sentiment which renders
alarm so poignant, and which, if scarcely admissible to the
romance of some wild, dreamy boy, may seem an unpardonable
folly in a man of my years and my sober calling; due to me,
to you, to Mrs. Ashleigh; because still the dearest thing in life
to me is honor. And if you who know Mrs. Ashleigh so inti-
mately, who must be more or less aware of her plans or wishes
for her daughter's future; if you believe that those plans or
wishes lead to a lot far more ambitious than an alliance with
me could offer to Miss Ashleigh, then aid Mr. Vigors in ex-
cluding me from the house; aid me in suppressing a presump-
tuous, visionary passion. I cannot enter that house without
love and hope at my heart. And the threshold of that house
I must not cross if such love and such hope would be a sin and
a treachery in the eyes of its owner. I might restore Miss
Ashleigh to health ; her gratitude might—I cannot continue.
This danger must not be to me nor to her, if her mother has
views far above such a son-in-law. And I am the more bound
to consider all this while it is yet time, because I heard you
state that Miss Ashleigh had a fortune—was what would be
here termed an heiress. And the full consciousness that what-
ever fame one in my profession may live to acquire, does not
open those vistas of social power and grandeur which are
opened by professions to my eyes less noble in themselves—
that full consciousness, I say, was forced upon me by certain
words of your own. For the rest, you know my descent is
sufficiently recognized as that amidst well-born gentry to have
rendered me no mesa//iance to families the most proud of their
ancestry, if I had kept my hereditary estate and avoided the
career that makes me useful to man. But I acknowledge that
on entering a profession such as mine—entering any profession
except that of arms or the senate—all leave their pedigree at
its door, an erased or dead letter. All must come as equals,
high-born or low-born, into that arena in which men ask aid from
a man as he makes himself; to them his dead forefathers are
idle dust. Therefore, to the advantage of birth I cease to
have a claim. I am but a provincial physician, whose station
would be the same had he been a cobbler's son. But gold
retains its grand privilege in all ranks. He who has gold is
A STRANGE STORY. 5i
removed from the suspicion that attaches to the greedy fortune-
hunter. My private fortune, swelled by my savings, is suffi-
cient to secure to any one I married a larger settlement than
many a wealthy Squire can make. I need no fortune with a
wife; if she have one, it would be settled on herself. Par-
don these vulgar details. Now, have I made myself under-
stood P’’
“Fully,” answered the Queen of the Hill, who had listened
to me quietly, watchfully, and without one interruption.
‘‘Fully. And you have done well to confide in me with so
generous an unreserve. But before I say further, let me ask,
what would be your advice for Lilian, supposing that you
ought not to attend her? You have no trust in Dr. Jones;
neither have I. And Anne Ashleigh's note received to-day,
begging me to call, justifies your alarm. Still you think there
is no tendency to consumption?”
“Of that I am certain so far as my slight glimpse of a case
that to me, however, seems a simple and not uncommon one,
will permit. But in the alternative you put—that my own
skill, whatever its worth, is forbidden—my earnest advice is,
that Mrs. Ashleigh should take her daughter at once to Lon-
don, and consult there those great authorities to whom I can-
not compare my own opinion or experience; and by their
counsel abide.”
Mrs. Poyntz shaded her eyes with her hand for a few mo-
ments, and seemed in deliberation with herself. Then she
said, with her peculiar Smile, half-grave, half-ironical:
“In matters more ordinary you would have won me to your
side long ago. That Mr. Vigors should have presumed to
cancel my recommendation to a settler on the Hill, was an
act of rebellion, and involved the honor of my prerogative.
But I suppressed my indignation at an affront so unusual,
partly out of pique against yourself, but much more, I think,
out of regard for you.”
“I understand. You detected the secret of my heart; you
knew that Mrs. Ashleigh would not wish to see her daughter
the wife of a provincial physician.”
“Am I sure, or are you sure, that the daughter herself would
accept that fate; or if she accepted it, would not repent?”
“Do not think me the vainest of men when I say this—
that I cannot believe I should be so enthralled by a feeling at
war with my reason, infavored by anything I can detect in my
habits of mind, or even by the dreams of a youth which ex-
alted science and excluded love, unless I was intimately con-
*
&=
52 A STRANGE STORY.
*-*.
º,
vinced that Miss Ashleigh's heart was free; that I could wiri,
and that I could keep it! Ask me why I am convinced of
this, and I can tell you no more why I think that she could
love me, than I can tell you why I love her l’’
‘I am of the world, worldly. But I am a woman, womanly—
though I may not care to be thought it. And, therefore,
though what you say is, regarded in a worldly point of view,
sheer nonsense, regarded in a womanly point of view it is
logically sound. But still you cannot know Lilian as I do.
Your nature and hers are in strong contrast. I do not think
she is a safe wife for you. The purest, the most innocent
Creature imaginable, certainly that, but always in the seventh
heaven. And you in the seventh heaven, just at this moment,
but with an irresistible gravitation to the solid earth, which
will have its way again when the honeymoon is over. I do not
believe you two would harmonize by intercourse. I do not
believe Lilian would sympathize with you, and I am sure you
could not sympathize with her throughout the long, dull course
of this workday life. And, therefore, for your sake as well as
hers, I was not displeased to find that Dr. Jones had replaced
you ; and now, in return for your frankness, I say frankly, do
not go again to that house. Conquer this sentiment, fancy,
passion, whatever it be. And I will advise Mrs. Ashleigh to
take Lilian to town. Shall it be so settled?”
I could not speak. I buried my face in my hands—misery,
misery, desolation
I know not how long I remained thus silent, perhaps many
minutes. At length I felt a cold, firm, but not ungentle hand
placed upon mine; and a clear, full, but not discouraging voice
said to me: *
“Leave me to think well over this conversation and to pon-
der well the value of all you have shown that you so deeply
feel. The interests of ‘life do not fill both scales of the bal-
ance. The heart which does not always go in the same scale
with the interests, still has its weight in the scale opposed to
them. I have heard a few wise -men say, as many a silly
woman says, ‘Better be unhappy with one we love, than be
happy with one we love not.’ Do you say that, too?”
“With every thought of my brain, every beat of my pulse I
say it.”
“After that answer, all my questionings cease. You shall
hear from me to-morrow. By that time, I shall have seen
Anne and Lilian. I shall have weighed both scales of the bal-
ance, and the heart here, Allen Fenwick, seems very heavy.
A STRANGE STORY. 53
*.
!
Go, now. I hear feet on the stairs, Poyntz bringing up some
friendly gossiper; gossipers are spies.”
I passed my hand over my eyes, tearless, but how tears
would have relieved the anguish that burdened them and,
without a word, went down the stairs, meeting at the landing-
place Colonel Poyntz and the old man whose pain my pre-
scription had cured. The old man was whistling a merry tune,
perhaps first learned on the playground. He broke from it to
thank, almost to embrace me, as I slid by him. I seized his
jocund blessing as a good omen, and carried it with me as I
passed into the broad sunlight. Solitary—solitary! Should I
be so evermore? &
---. CHAPTER XIII.
THE next day I had just dismissed the last of my visiting
patients, and was about to enter my carriage and commence
my round, when I received a twisted note containing but these
words:
“Call on me to-day, as soon as you can.
‘‘M. POYNT Z.' '
A few minutes afterwards I was in Mrs. Poyntz's drawing-
TOOTOl.
“Well, Allen Fenwick,” said she, “I do not serve friends
by halves. No thanks! I but adhere to a principle I have
laid down for myself. I spent last evening with the Ashleighs.
Lilian is certainly much altered—very weak, I fear very ill, and
I believe very unskilfully treated by Dr. Jones. I felt that it
was my duty to insist on a change of physician, but there was
something else to consider before deciding who that physician
should be. I was bound, as your confidante, to consult your
own scruples of honor. Of course I could not say point-blank
to Mrs. Ashleigh, “Dr. Fenwick admires your daughter, would
you object to him as a son-in-law?" Of course I could not
touch at all on the secret with which you intrusted me; but I
have not the less arrived at a conclusion, in agreement with my
previous belief, that not being a woman of the world, Anne
Ashleigh has none of the ambition which women of the world
would conceive for a daughter who has a good fortune and
considerable beauty; that her predominant anxiety is for her
child's happiness, and her predominant fear is that her child
will die. She would never oppose any attachment which Lil-
ian might form; and if that attachment were for one who had
54 A STRANGE STORY.
t
… º.
preserved her daughter's life, I believe her own heart would
*gratefully go with her daughter's. So far, then, as honor is
ëoncerned, all scruples vanish.”
I sprang from my seat, radiant with joy. Mrs. Poyntz dryly
continued: “You value yourself on your common-sense, and
to that I address a few words of counsel which may not be
welcome to your romance. I said that I did not think you
and Lilian would suit each other in the long run; reflection
confirms me in that supposition. Do not look at me so incred-
ulously and so sadly. Listen, and take heed. Ask yourself
what, as a man whose days are devoted to a laborious profes-
sion, whose ambition is entwined with its success, whose mind
must be absorbed in its pursuits—ask yourself what kind of a
wife you would have sought to win, had not this sudden fancy for
a charming face rushed over your better reason, and obliterated
all previous plans and resolutions. Surely some one with whom
your heart would have been quite at rest; by whom your thoughts
would have been undistracted from the channels into which your
calling should concentrate their flow; in short, a serene compan-
ion in the quiet holiday of a trustful home! Is it not so?”
“You interpret my own thoughts when they have turned
towards marriage. But what is there in Lilian Ashleigh that
should mar the picture you have drawn?”
“What is there in Lilian Ashleigh which in the least accords
with the picture? In the first place, the wife of a young phy-
sician should not be his perpetual patient. The more he loves
her, and the more worthy she may be of love, the more her
case will haunt him wherever he goes. When he returns
home, it is not a holiday; the patient he most cares for, the
anxiety that most gnaws him, awaits him there.”
“But, good Heavens! why should Lilian Ashleigh be a per-
petual patient? The sanitary resources of youth are incalcula-
ble. And—”
“Let me stop you; I cannot argue against a physician in
love! I will give up that point in dispute, remaining con-
vinced that there is something in Lilian's constitution which will
perplex, torment, and baffle you. It was so with her father,
whom she resembles in face and in character. He showed no
symptoms of any grave malady. His outward form was, like
Lilian's, a model of symmetry, except in this, that, like hers, it
was too exquisitely delicate; but, when seemingly in the midst
of perfect health, at any slight jar on the nerves he would be-
come alarmingly ill. I was sure that he would die young, and
he did so.”
A STRANGE STORY. 55
“Ay, but Mrs. Ashleigh said that his death was from brain-
fever, brought on by over-study. Rarely, indeed, do women
so fatigue the brain. No female patient, in the range of my
practice, ever died of purely mental exertion.”
“Of purely mental exertion, no; but of heart emotion, many
female patients, perhaps? Oh, you own that! I know noth-
ing about nerves. But I suppose that, whether they act on the
brain or the heart, the result to life is much the same if the
nerves be too finely strung for life’s daily wear and tear. And
this is what I mean, when I say you and Lilian will not suit.
As yet, she is a mere child; her nature undeveloped, and her
affections, therefore, untried. You might suppose that you
had won her heart; she might believe that she gave it to you,
and both be deceived. If fairies nowadays condescended te
exchange their offspring with those of mortals, and if the pop,
ular tradition did not represent a fairy changeling as an ugly,
peevish creature, with none of the grace of its parents, I should
be half inclined to suspect that Lilian was one of the elfin peo-
ple. She never seems at home on earth; and I do not think
she will ever be contented with a prosaic earthly lot. Now I
have told you why I do not think she will suit you. I must
leave it to yourself to conjecture how far you would suit her.
I say this in due season, while you may set a guard upon your
impulse; while you may yet watch, and weigh, and meditate;
and from this moment on that subject I say no more. I lend
advice, but I never throw it away.” *,
She came here to a dead pause, and began putting on her
bonnet and scarf, which lay on the table beside her. I was a
little chilled by her words, and yet more by the blunt, shrewd,
hard look and manner which aided the effect of their delivery.
But the chill melted away in the sudden glow of my heart
when she again turned towards me and said:
“Of course you guess, from these preliminary cautions, that
you are going into danger? Mrs. Ashleigh wishes to consult
you about Lilian, and I propose to take you to her house.”
“Oh, my friend, my dear friend, how can I ever repay you?”
I caught her hand, the white, firm hand, and lifted it to my
lips.
She drew it somewhat hastily away, and laying it gently on
my shoulder, said, in a soft voice: “Poor Allen, how little the
world knows either of us! But how little perhaps we know
ourselves! Come, your carriage is here? That is right; we
smust put down Dr. Jones publicly and in all our state.”
In the carriage Mrs, Poyntz told me the purport of that con-
56 - A STRANGE STORY. sº
-
versation with Mrs. Ashleigh to which I owed my re-introduc-
tion to Abbots' House. It seems that Mr. Vigors had called
early the morning after my first visit; had evinced much dis-
composure on hearing that I had been summoned; dwelt much
on my injurious treatment of Dr. Lloyd, whom, as distantly
related to himself, and he (Mr. Vigors) being distantly con-
nected with the late Gilbert Ashleigh, he endeavored to fasten
upon his listener as one of her husband's family, whose quar-
rel she was bound in honor to take up. He spoke of me as an
infidel “tainted with French doctrines,” and as a practitioner
rash and presumptuous; proving his own freedom from pre-
sumption and rashness by flatly deciding that my opinion must
be wrong. Previously to Mrs. Ashleigh's migration to L–;
Mr. Vigors had interested her in the pretended phenomena of
mesmerism. He had consulted a clairvoyante, much esteemed
by poor Dr. Lloyd, as to Lilian's health, and the clairvoyante
had declared her to be constitutionally predisposed to consump-
tion. Mr. Vigors persuaded Mrs. Ashleigh to come at once
with him and see this clairvoyante herself, armed with a lock
of Lilian’s hair and a glove she had worn, as the media of
mesmerical rapport.
The clairvoyante, one of those I had publicly denounced as
an impostor, naturally enough denounced me in return. On
being asked solemnly by Mr. Vigors “to look at Dr. Fenwick
and see if his influence would be beneficial to the subject,” the
sibyl had become violently agitated, and said that, “when she
looked at us together, we were enveloped in a black cloud;
that this portended affliction and sinister consequences; that
our rapport was antagonistic.” Mr. Vigors then told her to
dismiss my image, and conjure up that of Dr. Jones. There-
with the somnambule became more tranquil and said: “Dr.
Jones would do well if he would be guided by higher lights
than his own skill, and consult herself daily as to the proper
remedies. The best remedy of all would be mesmerism. But
since Dr. Lloyd's death, she did not know of a mesmerist,
sufficiently gifted, in affinity with the patient.” In fine, she
impressed and awed Mrs. Ashleigh, who returned in haste,
summoned Dr. Jones, and dismissed myself.
“I could not have conceived Mrs. Ashleigh to be so utterly
wanting in common-sense,” said I. “She talked rationally
enough when I saw her.”
“She has common-sense in general, and plenty of the sense
most common,” answered Mrs. Poyntz. “But she is easily
led and easily frightened wherever her affections are concerned
A STRANGE STORY. 5%
and therefore, just as easily as she had been persuaded by Mr.
Vigors and terrified by the somnambule, I persuaded her
against the one, and terrified her against the other. I had
positive experience on my side, since it was clear that Lilian
had been getting rapidly worse under Dr. Jones's care. The
main obstacles I had to encounter in inducing Mrs. Ashleigh to
consult you again, were, first, her reluctance to disoblige Mr.
Vigors, as a friend and connection of Lilian's father; and,
secondly, her sentiment of shame in reinviting your opinion
after having treated you with so little respect. Both these
difficulties I took on myself. I bring you to her house, and,
on leaving you, I shall go on to Mr. Vigors, and tell him what
is done is my doing, and not to be undone by him; so that
matter is settled. Indeed, if you were out of the question, I
should not suffer Mr. Vigors to reintroduce all these mummer-
ies of clairvoyance and mesmerism into the precincts of the
Hill. I did not demolish a man I really liked in Dr. Lloyd,
to set up a Dr. Jones, whom I despise, in his stead. Clair-
voyance on Abbey Hill, indeed! I saw enough of it before.”
“True; your strong intellect detected at once the absurdity
of the whole pretence: the falsity of mesmerism, the impossi-
bility of clairvoyance.”
“No, my strong intellect did nothing of the kind. I do not
know whether mesmerism be false or clairvoyance impossible;
and I don’t wish to know. All I do know is that I saw the
Hill in great danger; young ladies allowing themselves to be
put to sleep by gentlemen, and pretending they had no will of
their own against such fascination ' Improper and shocking!
And Miss Brabazon beginning to prophesy, and Mrs. Leopold
Smythe questioning her maid (whom Dr. Lloyd declared to be
highly gifted) as to all the secrets of her friends. When I saw
this, I said, ‘The Hill is becoming demoralized; the Hill is
making itself ridiculous; the Hill must be saved l’ I remon-
strated with Dr. Lloyd, as a friend; he remained obdurate. I
annihilated him as an enemy, not to me but to the State. I
slew my best lover for the good of Rome. Now you know
why I took your part—not because I have any opinion, one
way or the other, as to the truth or falsehood of what Dr.
Lloyd asserted; but I have a strong opinion that, whether they
be true or false, his notions were those which are not to be
allowed on the Hill. And so, Allen Fenwick, that matter was
settled.” *~
Perhaps at another time I might have felt some little humil-
iation to learn that I had been honored with the influence of
58 A STRANGE STORY. *
this great potentate, not as a champion of truth, but as an in-
strument of policy; and I might have owned to some twinge
of conscience in having assisted to sacrifice a fellow-seeker
after science—misled, no doubt, but preferring his indepen-
dent belief to his worldly interest—and sacrifice him to those
deities with whöm science is ever at war, the Prejudices of a
Clique sanctified into the Proprieties of the World. But at
that moment the words I heard made no perceptible impression
on my mind. The gables of Abbots' House were visible above
the evergreens and lilacs; another moment, and the carriage
stopped at the door. 2.
CHAPTER XIV.
MRs. ASHLEIGH received us in the dining-room. Her man-
ner to me, at first, was a little confused and shy. But my
companion soon communicated something of her own happy
ease to her gentler friend. After a short conversation we all
three went to Lilian, who was in a little room on the ground-
floor, fitted up as her study. I was glad to perceive that my
interdict of the death-chamber had been respected.
She reclined on a sofa near the window, which was, how-
ever, jealously closed; the light of the bright May-day ob-
scured by blinds and curtains; a large fire on the hearth; the
air of the room that of a hot-house—the ignorant, senseless,
exploded system of nursing into consumption those who are
confined on suspicion of it! She did not heed us as we en-
tered noiselessly; her eyes were drooped languidly on the
floor, and with difficulty I suppressed the exclamation that rose
to my lips on seeing her. She seemed within the last few days
so changed, and on the aspect of the countenance there was so
profound a melancholy! But as she slowly turned at the
sound of our footsteps, and her eyes met mine, a quick blush
came into the wan cheek, and she half-rose, but sank back as
if the effort exhausted her. There was a struggle for breath,
and a low hollow cough. Was it possible that I had been mis-
taken, and that in that cough was heard the warning knell of
the most insidious enemy to youthful life?
I sat down by her side, I lured her on to talk of indifferent
subjects—the weather, the gardens, the bird in the cage, which
was placed on the table near her. Her voice, at first low and
feeble, became gradually stronger, and her face lighted up with
a child’s innocent, playful smile. No, I had not been mis-
taken! There was no lymphatic, nerveless temperament, on
A STRANGE STORY. 59
}.
#
*
which consumption fastens as its lawful prey; here there was
no hectic pulse, no hurried waste of the vital flame. Quietly
and gently I made my observations, addressed my questions,
applied my stethoscope; and when I turned my face towards
her mother's anxious, eager eyes, that face told my opinion;
for her mother sprang forward, clasped my hand, and said,
through her struggling tears:
“You smile! You see nothing to fear?”
“Fear! No, indeed! You will soon be again yourself,
Miss Ashleigh, will you not?”
“Yes,” she said, with her sweet laugh, “I shall be well now
very soon. But may I not have the window open? May I not
go into the garden? I so long for fresh air.’’
“No, no, darling,” exclaimed Mrs. Ashleigh, “not while
the east winds last. Dr. Jones said on no account. On no
account, Dr. Fenwick, eh?”
“Will you take my arm, Miss Ashleigh, for a few turns up
and down the room?’’ said I. ‘‘We will then see how far we
may rebel against Dr. Jones.” \
. She rose with some little effort, but there was no cough.
At first her step was languid; it became lighter and more elas.
tic after a few moments.
“Let her come out,” said I to Mrs. Ashleigh. “The wind
is not in the east, and, while we are out, pray bid your ser-
vant lower to the last bar in the grate that fire—only fit for
Christmas.”
‘‘But—’’ *=
“Ah, no buts | He is a poor doctor who is not a stern
despot?”
So the straw hat and mantle were sent for. Lilian was
wrapped with unnecessary care, and we all went forth into the
garden. Involuntarily we took the way to the Monk’s Well,
and at every step Lilian seemed to revive under the bracing
air and temperate sun. We paused by the well.
“You do not feel fatigued, Miss Ashleigh’’’
sº “No.”
“But your face seems changed. It is grown sadder.”
“Not sadder.’’
“Sadder than when I first saw it—saw it when you were
seated here!” I said this in a whisper. I felt her hand trem-
ble as it lay on my arm.
“You saw me seated here!”
“Yes. I will tell you how some day.”
Lilian lifted her eyes to mine, and there was in them that
6o A STRANGE STORY. - N
same surprise which I had noticed on my first visit—a surprise
that perplexed me, blended with no displeasure, but yet with a
something of vague alarm.
We soon returned to the house.
Nſrs. Ashleigh made me a sign to follow her into the draw-
ing-room, leaving Mrs. Poyntz with Lilian.
“Well?” said she tremblingly.
“Permit me to see Dr. Jones's prescriptions. Thank you.
Ay, I thought so. My dear madam, the mistake here has been
in depressing nature instead of strengthening; in narcotics
instead of stimulants. The main stimulants which leave no
reaction are air and light. Promise me that I may have my
own way for a week; that all I recommend will be implicitly
heeded?”
“I promise. But that cough; you noticed it?”
“Yes. The nervous system is terribly lowered, and nervous
exhaustion is a strange impostor; it imitates all manner of
complaints with which it has no connection. The cough will
soon disappear! But pardon my question. Mrs. Poyntz tells
me that you consulted a clairvoyante about your daughter.
Does Miss Ashleigh know that you did so?”
“No ; I did not tell her.” *
“I am glad of that. And pray, for Heaven’s sake, guard
her against all that may set her thinking on such subjects.
Above all, guard her against concentring attention on any
malady that your fears erroneously ascribe to her. It is
amongst the phenomena of our organization that you cannot
closely rivet your consciousness on any part of the frame, how-
ever healthy, but it will soon begin to exhibit morbid sensibil-
ity. Try to fix all your attention on your little finger for half
an hour, and before the half-hour is over the little finger will
be uneasy, probably even painful. How serious, then, is the
danger to a young girl, at the age in which imagination is most
active, most intense, if you force upon her a belief that she is
in danger of a mortal disease; it is a peculiarity of youth to
brood over the thought of early death much more resignedly,
much more complacently, than we do in maturer years. Im-
press on a young imaginative girl, as free from pulmonary ten-
dencies as you and I are, the conviction that she must fade
away into the grave, and though she may not actually die of con-
sumption, you instil slow poison into her system. Hope is the
natural aliment of youth. You impoverish nourishment where
you discourage hope. As soon as this temporary illness is
over, reject for your daughter the melancholy care which seems
|
A STRANGE STORY. 61
*
§
º
to her own mind to mark her out from others of her age.
Rear her for the air—which is the kindest life-giver; to sleep
with open windows; to be out at sunrise. Nature will do more
for her than all our drugs can do. You have been hitherto
fearing Nature; now trust to her.”
Here Mrs. Poyntz joined us, and having, while I had been
speaking, written my prescription and some general injunc-
tions, I closed my advice with an appeal to that powerful
protectress.
“This, my dear madam, is a case in which I need your aid,
and I ask it. Miss Ashleigh should not be left with no other
companion than her mother. A change of faces is often as
salutary as a change of air. If you could devote an hour or
two this very evening to sit with Miss Ashleigh, to talk to her
with your usual cheerfulness, and—”
“Anne,’’ interrupted Mrs. Poyntz, “I will come and drink
tea with you at half-past seven, and bring my knitting; and
perhaps, if you ask him, Dr. Fenwick will come too ! He can
be tolerably entertaining when he likes it.”
“It is too great a tax on his kindness, I fear,” said Mrs.
Ashleigh. “But,” she added cordially, “I should be grateful
indeed if he would spare us an hour of his time.”
I murmured an assent, which I endeavored to make not too
joyous.
“So that matter is settled,” said Mrs. Poyntz; “and now I
shall go to Mr. Vigors and prevent his further interference.”
‘‘Oh! but, Margaret, pray don’t offend him—a connection
of my poor dear Gilbert's. And so tetchy! I am sure I do
not know how you’ll manage to—”
“To get rid of him? Never fear. As I manage everything
and everybody,” said Mrs. Poyntz bluntly. So she kissed her
friend on the forehead, gave me a gracious nod, and, declining
the offer of my carriage, walked with her usual brisk, decided
tread down the short path towards the town.
Mrs. Ashleigh timidly approached me, and again the furtive
hand bashfully insinuated the hateful fee.
“Stay,” said I; “this is a case which needs the most con-
stant watching. I wish to call so often that I should seem the
most greedy of doctors if my visits were to be computed at
guineas. Let me be at ease to effect my cure; my pride, of
science is involved in it. And when amongst all the young
ladies of the Hill you can point to none with a fresher bloom,
or a fairer promise of healthful life, than the patient you in-
trust to my care, why, then the fee and the dismissal. Nay,
*- *
~ \ ---
62 A STRANGE STORY.
nay; I must refer you to our friend Mrs. Poyntz. It was so
settled with her before she brought me here to displace Dr.
Jones.” Therewith I escaped.
CHAPTER XV. sº
IN less than a week Lilian was convalescent; in less than a
fortnight she regained her usual health; nay, Mrs. Ashleigh
declared that she had never known her daughter appear so
cheerful and look so well. I had established a familiar inti-
macy at Abbots' House; most of my evenings were spent
there. As horse exercise formed an important part of my ad-
vice, Mrs. Ashleigh had purchased a pretty and quiet horse
for her daughter; and, except the weather was very unfavor-
able, Lilian now rode daily with Colonel Poyntz, who was
a notable equestrian, and often accompanied by Miss Jane
Poyntz, and other young ladies of the Hill. I was generally
relieved from my duties in time to join her as she returned
homewards. Thus we made innocent appointments, openly,
frankly, in her mother’s presence, she telling me beforehand
in what direction excursions had been planned with Colonel
Poyntz, and I promising to fall in with the party, if my avoca-
tions would permit. At my suggestion, Mrs. Ashleigh now
opened her house almost every evening to some of the neigh-
boring families; Lilian was thus habituated to the intercourse
of young persons of her own age. Music and dancing and
childlike games made the old house gay. And the Hill grate-
fully acknowledged to Mrs. Poyntz, “that the Ashleighs were
indeed a great acquisition.”
But my happiness was not uncheckered. In thus unselfishly
surrounding Lilian with others, I felt the anguish of that jeal-
ousy which is inseparable from those eaſſlier stages of love,
when the lover as yet has won no right to that self-confidence
which can only spring from the assurance that he is loved.
In these social reunions I remained aloof from Lilian. I
saw her courted by the gay young admirers whom her beauty
and her fortune drew around her; her soft face brightening in
the exercise of the dance, which the gravity of my profession
rather than my years forbade me to join, and her laugh, so
musically subdued, ravishing my ear and fretting my heart as
if the laugh were a mockery on my sombre self and my pre-
sumptuous dreams. But no, -suddenly, shyly, her eyes would
steal away from those about her, steal to the corner in which I
º
!
A STRANGE STORY. 63
$
sat, as if they missed me, and, meeting my own gaze, their
light softened before they turned away; and the color on her
cheek would deepen, and to her lip there came a smile differ-
ent from the Smile that it shed on others. And then—and
then—all jealousy, all sadness vanished, and I felt the glory
which blends with the growing belief that we are loved.
In that diviner epoch of man's mysterious passion, when
ideas of perfection and purity, vague and fugitive before, start
forth and concentrate themselves round one virgin shape—that
rises out from the séa of creation, welcomed by the Hours and
adorned by the Graces—how the thought that this archetype
of sweetness and beauty singles himself from the millions, sin-
gles himself from her choice, ennobles and lifts up his being!
Though after-experience may rebuke the mortal's illusion, that
mistook for a daughter of Heaven a creature of clay like him-
self, yet for a while the illusion has grandeur. Though it
comes from the senses which shall later oppress and profane it,
the senses at first shrink into shade, awed and hushed by the
presence that charms them. All that is brightest and best in
the man has soared up like long-dormant instincts of Heaven,
to greet and to hallow what to him seems life’s fairest dream
of the heavenly! Take the wings from the image of Love,
and the god disappears from the form
Thus, if at moments jealous doubt made my torture, so the
moment's relief from it sufficed for my rapture. But I had a
cause for disquiet less acute but less varying than jealousy.
Despite Lilian's recovery from the special illness which had
more immediately absorbed my care, I remained perplexed as
to its cause and true nature. To her mother I gave it the con-
venient epithet of “nervous.” But the epithet did not explain
to myself all the symptoms I classified by it. There was still
at times, when no cause was apparent or conjecturable, a sud-
den change in the expression of her countenance, in the beat
of her pulse: the eye would become fixed, the bloom would van-
ish, the pulse would sink feebler and feebler till it could be
scarcely felt; yet there was no indication of heart disease, of
which such sudden lowering of life is in itself sometimes a warn-
ing indication. The change would pass away after a few min-
utes, during which she seemed unconscious, or, at least, never
spoke, never appeared to heed what was said to her. But in the
expression of her countenance there was no character of suffer-
ing or distress; on the contrary a wondrous serenity, that made
her beauty more beauteous, her very youthfulness younger;
and when this spurious or partial kind of syncope passed, she
\
64 A STRANGE STORY.
recovered at once without effort, without acknowledging that
she had felt faint or unwell, but rather with a sense of recruited
vitality, as the weary obtain from a sleep. For the rest her
spirits were more generally light and joyous than I should have
premised from her mother's previous description. She would
enter mirthfully into the mirth of young companions round
her: she had evidently quick perception of the sunny sides of
life; an infantine gratitude for kindness; an infantine joy in
the trifles that amuse only those who delight in tastes pure and
simple. But when talk rose into graver and more contempla-
tive topics, her attention became earnest and absorbed; and,
Sometimes, a rich eloquence, such as I have never before nor
since heard from lips so young, would startle me first into a
wondering silence, and soon into a disapproving alarm: for the
thoughts she then uttered seemed to me too fantastic, too vis-
ionary, too much akin to the vagaries of a wild though beauti-
ful imagination. And then I would seek to check, to sober, to
distract fancies with which my reason had no sympathy, and
the indulgence of which I regarded as injurious to the normal
functions of the brain.
When thus, sometimes with a chilling sentence, sometimes
with a half-sarcastic laugh, I would repress outpourings frank
and musical as the songs of a forest-bird, she would look at me
with a kind of plaintive sorrow—often sigh and shiver as she
turned away. Only in those modes did she show displeasure;
otherwise ever sweet and docile, and ever, if, seeing that I had
pained her, I asked forgiveness, humbling herself rather to ask
mine, and brightening our reconciliation with her angel smile.
As yet I had not dared to speak of love; as yet I gazed on her
as the captive gazes on the flowers and the stars through the
gratings of his cell, murmuring to himself, “When shall the
doors unclose?”
CHAPTER XVI.
It was with a wrath suppressed in the presence of the fair
ambassadress, that Mr. Vigors had received from Mrs. Poyntz
the intelligence that I had replaced Dr. Jones at Abbots' House,
not less abruptly than Dr. Jones had previously supplanted me.
As Mrs. Poyntz took upon herself the whole responsibility of
this change, Mr. Vigors did not venture to condemn it to her
face; for the Administrator of Laws was at heart no little in
awe of the Autocrat of Proprieties; as Authority, howsoever
established, is in awe of Opinion, howsoever capricious,
-4-
A STRAN GE STORY. 65
|
}
|
}
To the mild Mrs. Ashleigh the magistrate’s anger was more
decidedly manifested. He ceased his visits; and in answer to
a long and deprecatory letter with which she endeavored to soft-
en his resentment and win him back to the house, he replied
by an elaborate combination of homily and satire. He began
by excusing himself from accepting her invitations, on the
ground that his time was valuable, his habits domestic; and
though ever willing to sacrifice both time and habits where he
could do good, he owed it to himself and to mankind to sacri.
fice neither where his advice was rejected and his opinion con-
temned. He glanced briefly, but not hastily, at the respect
with which her late husband had deferred to his judgment,
and the benefits which that deference had enabled him to be-
stow. He contrasted the husband's deference with the wid-
ow's contumely, and hinted at the evils which the contumely
would not permit him to prevent. He could not presume to say
what women of the world might think due to deceased hus-
bands, but even women of the world generally allowed the
claims of living children, and did not act with levity where
their interests were concerned, still less where their lives were
at stake. As to Dr. Jones, he, Mr. Vigors, had the fullest con-
fidence in his skill. Mrs. Ashleigh must judge for herself
whether Mrs. Poyntz was as good an authority upon medical
science as he had no doubt she was upon shawls and ribbons.
Dr. Jones was a man of caution and modesty; he did not in-
dulge in the hollow boasts by which charlatans decoy their
dupes; but Dr. Jones had privately assured him that though
the case was one that admitted of no rash experiments, he had
no fear of the result if his own prudent system were persevered
in. What might be the consequences of any other system, Dr.
Tones would not say, because he was too high-minded to ex-
press his distrust of the rival who had made use of underhand
arts to supplant him. But Mr. Vigors was convinced, from
other sources of information (meaning, I presume, the oracular
prescience of his clairvoyants), that the time would come when
the poor young lady would herself insist on discarding Dr. Fen-
wick, and when “that person’’ would appear in a very different
light to many who now so fondly admired and so reverentially
trusted him. When that time arrived, he, Mr. Vigors, might
again be of use; but, meanwhile, though he declined to renew
his intimacy at Abbots' House, or to pay unavailing visits of
mere ceremony, his interest in the daughter of his old friend
remained undiminished, nay, was rather increased by com-
passion; that he should silently keep his eye upon her; and

66 A STRANGE STORY. , -
whenever anything to her advantage suggested itself to him, he ,
should not be deterred by the slight with which Mrs. Ashleigh
had treated his judgment, from calling on her, and placing be-
fore her conscience as a mother his ideas for her child’s benefit,
leaving to herself then, as now, the entire responsibility of f
rejecting the advice which he might say, without vanity, was
deemed of some value by those who could distinguish between
Sterling qualities and specious pretences.
Mrs. Ashleigh's was that thoroughly womanly nature which
instinctively leans upon others. She was diffident, trustful,
meek, affectionate. Not quite justly had Mrs. Poyntz described
her as “commonplace weak,’’ for though she might be called
weak, it was not because she was commonplace; she had a good-
ness of heart, a sweetness of disposition, to which that disparag-
ing definition could not apply. She could only be called
commonplace, inasmuch as in the ordinary daily affairs of life
she had a great deal of ordinary daily commonplace good sense.
Give her a routine to follow, and no routine could be better
adhered to. In the allotted sphere of a woman's duties she
never seemed in fault. No household, not even Mrs. Poyntz's,
was more happily managed. The old Abbots' House had
merged its original antique gloom in the softer character of
pleasing repose. All her servants adored Mrs. Ashleigh; all
found it a pleasure to please her; her establishment had the
harmony of clockwork; comfort diffused itself round her like
quiet sunshine round a sheltered spot. To gaze on her pleas-
ing countenance, to listen to the simple talk that lapsed from
her guileless lips, in even, slow, and lulling murmur, was in
itself a respite from “eating cares.” She was to the mind what
the color of green is to the eye. She had, therefore, excellent
sense in all that relates to every-day life. There, she needed
not to consult another; there, the wisest might have consulted
her with profit. But the moment anything, however trivial in
itself, jarred on the routine to which her mind had grown wed-
ded; the moment an incident hurried her out of the beaten
track of woman's daily life, then her confidence forsook her;
then she needed a confidant, an adviser; and by that confi-
dant or adviser she could be credulously lured or submissively
controlled. Therefore when she lost, in Mr. Vigors, the guide
she had been accustomed to consult whenever she needed guid-
ance, she turned, helplessly and piteously, first to Mrs. Poyntz,
and then yet more imploringly to me, because a woman of that
character is never quite satisfied without the advice of a man.
And where an intimacy more familiar than that of his formal
f

A STRANGE STORY. 67
*
visits is once established with a physician, confidence in him
grows fearless and rapid, as the natural result of sympathy con-
centred on an object of anxiety in common between himself
and the home which opens its sacred recess to his observant
but tender eye. Thus Mrs. Ashleigh had shown me Mr. Vigors's
letter, and, forgetting that I might not be as amiable as herself,
besought me to Counsel her how to conciliate and soften her
lost husband's friend and connection. That character clothed
him with dignity and awe in her soft forgiving eyes. So,
smothering my own resentment, less perhaps at the tone of
offensive insinuation against myself than at the arrogance with
which this prejudiced intermeddler implied to a mother the
necessity of his guardian watch over a child under her own
care, I sketched a reply which seemed to me both dignified and
placatory, apstaining from all discussion, and conveying the
assurance that Mrs. Ashleigh would be at all times glad to hear,
and disposed to respect, whatever suggestion so esteemed a
friend of her husband's would kindly submit to her for the
welfare of her daughter.
There all communication had stopped for about a month
since the date of my reintroduction to Abbots' House. One
afternoon I unexpectedly met Mr. Vigors at the entrance of the
blind lane, I on my way to Abbots' House, and my first glance
at his face told me that he was coming from it, for the expres-
sion of that face was more than usually sinister; the sullen scowl
was lit into significant menace by a sneer of unmistakable tri-
umph. I felt at once that he had suceeded in some machination
against me, and with ominous misgivings quickened my steps.
I found Mrs. Ashleigh seated alone in front of the house,
under a large cedar-tree that formed a natural arbor in the
centre of the sunny lawn. She was perceptibly embarrassed
as I took my seat beside her.
“I hope,” said I, forcing a smile, “that Mr. Vigors has not
been telling you that I shall kill my patient, or that she looks
much worse than she did under Dr. Jones’s care?”
“No,” she said. “He owned cheerfully that Lilian had
grown quite strong, and said, without any displeasure, that he
had heard how gay she had been, riding out and even danc-
ing—which is very kind in him, for he disapproves of dancing,
on principle.’’
“But still, I can see he has said something to vex or annoy
you; and, to judge by his countenance when I met him in the
, lane, I should conjecture that that something was intended to
lower the confidence you So kindly repose in me.’’
68 A STRAN GE STORY.
“I assure you not; he did not mention your name, either to
me or to Lilian. I never knew him more friendly; quite like
old times. He is a good man at heart, very, and was much
attached to my poor husband.”
“Did Mr. Ashleigh profess a very high opinion of Mr.
Vigors?”
“Well, I don’t quite know that, because my dear Gilbert never
spoke to me much about him. Gilbert was naturally very si-
lent. But he shrank from all trouble, all worldly affairs, and
Mr. Vigors managed his estate, and inspected his steward’s
books, and protected him through a long lawsuit which he had
inherited from his father. It killed his father. I don't know
what we should have done without Mr. Vigors, and I am so
glad he has forgiven me.”
“Hem Where is Miss Ashleight Indoors?”
“No; somewhere in the grounds. But, my dear Dr. Fen-
wick, do not leave me yet; you are so very, very kind, and
somehow I have grown to look upon you quite as an old friend.
Something has happened which has put me out—quite put me
out.’’ •
She said this wearily and feebly, closing her eyes as if she
were indeed put out in the sense of extinguished.
“The feeling of friendship you express,” said I, with ear-
nestness, “is reciprocal. On my side it is accompanied by a
peculiar gratitude. I am a lonely man, by a lonely fireside—
no parents, no near kindred, and in this town since Dr. Faber
left it, without cordial intimacy till I knew you. In admitting
me so familiarly to your hearth, you have given me what I have
never known before since I came to man's estate—a glimpse of
the happy domestic life; the charm and relief to eye, heart, and
spirit which is never known but in households cheered by the
face of woman; thus my sentiment for you and yours is in-
deed that of an old friend; and in any private confidence you
show me, I feel as if I were no longer a lonely man, without
kindred, without home.” --
Mrs. Ashleigh seemed much moved by these words, which
my heart had forced from my lips, and, after replying to me
with simple, unaffected warmth of kindness, she rose, took my
arm, and continued thus as we walked slowly to and fro the lawn:
“You know, perhaps, that my poor husband left a sister,
now a widow like myself, Lady Haughton.”
“I remember that Mrs. Poyntz said you had such a sister-
in-law, but I never heard you mention Lady Haughton till
now, Wellſ'’
*- A STRANGE STORY. 69
“Well, Mr. Vigors has brought me a letter from her, and it
is that which has put me out. I dare say you have not heard
me speak before of Lady Haughton, for I am ashamed to say
I had almost forgotten her existence. She is many years older
than my husband was: of a very different character. Only
came once to see him after our marriage. Hurt me by ridicul-
ing him as a bookworm. Offended him by looking a little
down on me, as a nobody without spirit and fashion, which
was quite true. And, except by a cold and unfeeling letter of
formal condolence after I lost my dear Gilbert, I have never
heard from her since I have been a widow, till to-day. But,
after all, she is my poor husband's sister, and his eldest sister,
and Lilian's aunt; and, as Mr. Vigors says, ‘Duty is duty.’”
Had Mrs. Ashleigh said “Duty is torture,” she could not
have uttered the maxim with more mournful and despondent
resignation.
“And what does this lady require of you, which Mr. Vigors
deems it your duty to comply with ?”
“Dear me! What penetration' You have guessed the
exact truth. But I think you will agree with Mr. Vigors.
Certainly I have no option; yes, I must do it.”
“My penetration is in fault now. Do what? Pray explain.”
“Poor Lady Haughton, six months ago, lost her only son,
Sir James. Mr. Vigors says he was a very fine young man, of
whom any mother would have been proud. I had heard he
was wild; Mr. Vigors says, however, that he was just going to
reform, and marry a young lady whom his mother chose for
him, when, unluckily, he would ride a steeplechase, not being
quite sober at the time, and broke his neck. Lady Haughton
has been, of course, in great grief. She has retired to Brighton;
and she wrote to me from thence, and Mr. Vigors brought the
letter. He will go back to her to-day.”
“Will go back to Lady Haughton? What! Has he been to
ther? Is he, then, as intimate with Lady Haughton as he was
with her brother?’’
“No ; but there has been a long and constant correspon-
dence. She had a settlement on the Kirby Estate—a sum
which was not paid off during Gilbert's life; and a very small
part of the property went to Sir James, which part Mr. Ash-
leigh Sumner, the heir-at-law to the rest of the estate, wished
Mr. Vigors, as his guardian, to buy during his minority, and as
it was mixed up with Lady Haughton’s settlement her consent
was necessary as well as Sir James's. So there was much nego-
tiation, and, since then, Ashleigh Sumner has come into the
7o A STRAN G E STORY.
Haughton property, on poor Sir James's decease; so that com.
plicated all affairs between Mr. Vigors and Lady Haughton,
and he has just been to Brighton to see her. And poor Lady
Haughton, in short, wants me and Lilian to go and visit her. I
don’t like it at all. But you said the other day you thought sea
air might be good for Lilian during the heat of the summer,
and she seems well enough now for the change. What do you
think?’’ #y
. “She is well enough, certainly. But Brighton is not the place
I would recommend for the summer; it wants shade and is
much hotter than L .”
“Yes, but unluckily Lady Haughton foresaw that objection,
and she has a jointure-house some miles from Brighton, and
near the sea. She says the grounds are well wooded, and the
place is proverbially cool and healthy, not far from St. Leon-
ard's Forest. And, in short, I have written to say we will
come. So we must, unless, indeed, you positively forbid it.”
“When do you think of going?”
“Next Monday. Mr. Vigors would make me fix the day.
If you knew how I dislike moving when I am once settled:
and I do so dread Lady Haughton, she is so fine, and so satiri-
cal! But Mr. Vigors says she is very much altered, poor thing!
I should like to show you her letter, but I had just sent it to
Margaret—Mrs. Poyntz—a minute or two before you came.
She knows something of Lady Haughton. Margaret knows
everybody. And we shall have to go in mourning for poor Sir
James, I suppose; and Margaret will choose it, for I am sure
I can’t guess to what extent we should be supposed to mourn.
I ought to have gone in mourning before—poor Gilbert's
nephew—but I am so stupid, and I have never seen him.
And—but oh, this is kind Margaret herself—my dear Mar-
garet!”
We had just turned away from the house, in our up-and-
down walk; and Mrs. Poyntz stood immediately fronting us. #
“So, Anne, you have actually accepted this invitation—and
for Monday next?”
“Yes. Did I do wrong?” y
“What does Dr Fenwick say? Can Lilian go with safety?”
I could not honestly say she might not go with safety, but
my heart sank like lead as I answered:
“Miss Ashleigh does not now need merely medical care; but
more than half her cure has depended on keeping her spirits
free from depression. She may miss the cheerful companion-
ship of your daughter, and other young ladies of her own age.
A strange story. 71
t
A very melancholy house, saddened by a recent bereavement,
without other guests; a hostess to whom she is a stranger, and
whom Mrs. Ashleigh herself appears to deem formidable—cer-
tainly these do not make that change of scene which a physi-
cian would recommend. When I spoke of sea air being good
for Miss Ashleigh, I thought of our own northern coasts at a
later time of the year, when I could escape myself for a few
weeks and attend her. The journey to a -northern watering-
place would be also shorter and less fatiguing; the air there
more invigorating.”
“No doubt that would be better,” said Mrs. Poyntz dryly;
“but so far as your objections to visiting Lady Haughton have
been stated, they are groundless. Her house will not be mel-
ancholy; she will have other guests, and Lilian will find com-
panions, young like herself—young ladies, and young gentle-
men too !”
There was something ominous, something compassionate, in
the look which Mrs. Poyntz cast upon me, in concluding her
speech, which in itself was calculated to rouse the fears of a
lover. Lilian away from me, in the house of a worldly fine
lady, such as I judged Lady Haughton to be, surrounded by
young gentlemen, as well as young ladies; by admirers, no
doubt, of a higher rank and more brilliant fashion than she
had yet known I closed my eyes, and with strong effort sup-
pressed a groan.
“My dear Anne, let me satisfy myself that Dr. Fenwick
really does consent to this journey. He will say to me what
he may not to you. Pardon me, then, if I take him aside for
a few minutes. Let me find you here again under this cedar-
tree.’’
Placing her arm in mine, and without waiting for Mrs. Ash-
leigh's answer, Mrs. Poyntz drew me into the more sequestered
walk that belted the lawn ; and, when we were out of Mrs.
Ashleigh's sight and hearing, said:
“From what you have now seen of Lilian Ashleigh, do you
still desire to gain her as your wife?”
“Still? Oh! with an intensity proportioned to the fear with
which I now dread that she is about to pass away from my
eyes—from my life!” s
“Does your judgment confirm the choice of your heart?
Reflect before you answer.”
“Such selfish judgment as I had before I knew her would
not confirm, but oppose it. The nobler judgment that now
expands all my reasonings, approves and seconds my heart.
72 A STRANGE STORY,
No. no; do not smile so sarcastically. This is not the voice
of a blind and egotistical passion. Let me explain myself if I
can. I concede to you that Lilian's character is undeveloped.
I concede to you that, amidst the childlike freshness and inno-
cence of her nature, there is at tinaes a strangeness, a mystery,
which I have not yet traced to its cause. But I am certain
that the intellect is organically as sound as the heart, and that
intellect and heart will ultimately—if under happy auspices—
blend in that felicitous union which constitutes the perfection
of woman. But it is because she does, and may for years, may-
perhaps always, need a more devoted, thoughtful care than
natures less tremulously sensitive, that my judgment sanctions
my choice; for whatever is best for her is best for me. And
who would watch over her as I should?”
“You have never yet spoken to Lilian as lovers speak?”
“Oh, no, indeed.”
“And, nevertheless, you believe that your affection would
not be unreturned?” **.
“I thought so once; I doubt now—yet, in doubting, hope.
But why do you alarm me with these questions? You, too,
forebode that in this visit I may lose her forever?”
“If you fear that, tell her so, and perhaps her answer may
dispel your fear.”
“What now, already, when she has scarcely known me a
month? Might I not risk all if too premature?”
“There is no almanac for love. With many women love is
born the moment they know they are beloved. All wisdom
tells us that a moment once gone is irrevocable. Were I in
your place, I should feel that I approached a moment that I
must not lose. I have said enough; now I shall rejoin Mrs.
Ashleigh.”
“Stay—tell me first what Lady Haughton's letter really con-
tains to prompt the advice with which you so transport, and
yet so daunt, me when you proffer it.”
“Not now—later, perhaps—not now. If you wish to see
Lilian alone, she is by the Old Monk’s Well; I saw her seated
there as I passed that way to the house.”
“One word more—only one. Answer this question frankly,
for it is one of honor. Do you still believe that my suit to her
daughter would not be disapproved of by Mrs. Ashleigh?”
“At this moment, I am sure it would not; a week hence I
might not give you the same answer.”
So she passed on with her quick but measured tread, back
through the shady walk, on to the open lawn, till the last glimpse
--- A STRANGE STORY. 73
t
§
i
of her pale gray robe disappeared under the boughs of the
cedar-tree. Then, with a start, I broke the irresolute, tremu-
lous suspense in which I had vainly endeavored to analyze my
own mind, solve my own doubts, concentrate my own will, and
went the opposite way, skirting the circle of that haunted
ground; as now, on one side its lofty terrace, the houses of the
neighboring city came full and close into view divided from my
fairyland of life but by the trodden murmurous thoroughfare
winding low beneath the ivied parapets; and as now, again,
the world of men abruptly vanished behind the screening foli-
age of luxuriant June.
At last the enchanted glade opened out from the verdure, its
borders fragrant with syringa, and rose, and woodbine; and
there, by the gray memorial of the gone Gothic age, my eyes
seemed to close their unquiet wanderings, resting spellbound
on that image which had become to me the incarnation of
earth’s bloom and youth.
She stood amidst the Past, backed by the fragments of walls
which man had raised to seclude him from human passion,
locking, under those lids so downcast, the secret of the only
knowledge I asked from the boundless Future.
Ah, what mockery there is in that grand world, the world’s
fierce war-cry—Freedom | Who has not known one period of
life, and that so solemn that its shadows may rest over all life
hereafter, when one human creature has over him a sovereign-
ty. more supreme and absolute than Orient servitude adores in
the symbols of diadem and sceptre? What crest so haughty
that has not bowed before a hand which could exalt and hum-
bleſ What heart so dauntless that has not trembled to call
forth the voice at whose sound ope the gates of rapture or
despair! That life alone is free which rules, and suffices for
itself. That life we forfeit when we love!
CHAPTER XVII.
How did I utter it? By what words did my heart make
itself known 2 I remember not. All was as a dream that falls
upon a restless, feverish night, and fades away as the eyes
unclose on the peace of a cloudless heaven, on the bliss of a
golden sun. A new morrow seemed indeed upon the earth
when I awoke from a life-long yesterday—her dear hand in
mine, her sweet face bowed upon my breast.
And then there was that melodious silence in which there is
74 A STRANGE STORY.
no sound audible from without; yet within us there is heard a
lulling celestial music, as if our whole being, grown harmonious
with the universe, joined from its happy deeps in the hymn
that unites the stars.
In that silence our two hearts seemed to make each other
understood, to be drawing nearer and nearer, blending by mys-
terious concord into the completeness of a solemn union, never
henceforth to be rent asunder. /
At length I said softly: “And it was here on this spot that I
first saw you; here that I for the first time knew what power
to change our world and to rule our future goes forth from the
charm of a human face l’’ assº-
Then Lilian asked me timidly, and without lifting her eyes,
how I had so seen her, reminding me that I promised to tell
her, and had never yet done so.
And then I told her of the strange impulse that had led me
into the grounds, and by what chance my steps had been di-
verted down the path that wound to the glade; how suddenly
her form had shone upon my eyes, gathering round itself the
rose hues of the setting sun, and how wistfully those eyes had
followed her own silent gaze into the distant heaven.
As I spoke, her hand pressed mine eagerly, convulsively, and,
raising her face from my breast, she looked at me with an in-
tent, anxious earnestness. That, look! Twice before it had
thrilled and perplexed me.
“What is there in that look, oh, my Lilian, which tells me
that there is something that startles you—something you wish
to confide, and yet shrink from explaining? See how, already,
I study the fair book from which the seal has been lifted, but
as yet you must aid me to construe its language.’’
“If I shrink from explaining, it is only because I fear that I
cannot explain so as to be understood or believed. But you
have a right to know the secrets of a life which you would link
to your own. Turn your face aside from me; a reproving look,
an incredulous smile, chill—oh you cannot guess how they
chill me, when I would approach that which to me is so seri
ous and so solemnly strange.”
I turned my face away, and her voice grew firmer as, after a
brief pause, she resumed:
“As far back as I can remember in my infancy, there have
been moments when there seems to fall a soft, hazy veil be-
tween my sight and the things around it, thickening and deep-
ening till it has the likeness of one of those white, fleecy clouds
which gather on the verge of the horizon when the air is yet
A STRANGE STORY. 75
-
|º
I'
3.
\,
still, but the winds are about to rise; and then this vapor or
veil will suddenly open, as clouds open and let in the blue
sky.”
Y. Go on,” I said gently, for here she came to a stop.
She continued, speaking somewhat more hurriedly:
“Then, in that opening, strange appearances present them-
selves to me, as in a vision. In my childhood these were
chiefly landscapes of wonderful beauty. I could but faintly
describe them then; I could not attempt to describe them
now, for they are almost gone from my memory. My dear
mother chid me for telling her what I saw, so I did not im-
press it on my mind by repeating it. As I grew up, this kind
of vision, if I may so call it, became much less frequent, or
much less distinct; I still saw the soft veil fall, the pale cloud
form and open, but often what may then have appeared was
entirely forgotten when I recovered myself, waking as from a
sleep. Sometimes, however, the recollection would be vivid
and complete; sometimes I saw the face of my lost father;
sometimes I heard his very voice, as I had seen and heard
him in my early childhood, when he would let me rest for
hours beside him as he mused or studied, happy to be so
quietly near him, for I loved him, oh, so dearly and I re-
tmember him so distinctly, though I was only in my sixth year
when he died. Much more recently—indeed, within the last
few months—the images of things to come are reflected on the
space that I gaze into as clearly as in a glass. Thus, for
weeks before I came hither, or knew that such a place existed,
I saw distinctly the old house, yon trees, this sward, this moss-
grown Gothic fount, and, with the sight, an impression was con-
veyed to me that in the scene before me my old childlike life
would pass into some solemn change. So that when I came
here, and recognized the picture in my vision, I took an affec-
tion for the spot—an affection not without awe-a powerful,
perplexing interest, as one who feels under the influence of a
fate of which a prophetic glimpse has been vouchsafed. And
in that evening, when you first saw me, seated here—”
“Yes, Lilian, on that evening—?”
“I saw you also, but in my vision—yonder, far in the deeps
of space—and—and my heart was stirred as it had never been
before; and near where your image grew out from the cloud I
saw my father's face, and I heard his voice, not in my ear, but
as in my heart, whispering—”
“Yes, Lilian, whispering—what?”
“These words—only these: ‘Ye will need one another,'
Yº. “, g"
76 A STRANGE STORY.
But then, suddenly, between my upward eyes and the two
forms they had beheld, there rose from the earth, obscuring the
skies, a vague, dusky vapor, undulous, and coiling like a vast
serpent, nothing, indeed, of its shape, and figure definite, but
of its face one abrupt glare; a flash from two dread luminous
eyes, and a young head, like the Medusa's, changing, more
rapidly than I could have drawn breath, into a grinning skull.
Then my terror made me bow my head, and when I raised if
again, all that I had seen was vanished. But the terror still
remained, even when I felt my mother's arm round me and
heard her voice. And then, when I entered the house, and
sat down again alone, the recollection of what I had seen—
those eyes, that face, that skull—grew on me stronger and
stronger till I fainted, and remember no more, until my eyes,
opening, saw you by my side. And in my wonder there was not
terror. No, a sense of joy, protection, hope, yet still shadowed
by a kind of fear or awe, in recognizing the countenance which
had gleamed on me from the skies before the dark vapor had
risen, and while my father's voice had murmured, ‘Ye will
need one another.’ And now—and now—will you love me
less that you know a secret in my being which I have told to
no other—cannot construe to myself? Only—only, at least,
do not mock me, do not disbelieve me! Nay, turn from me
no longer now: now I ask to meet your eyes. Now, before
our hands can join again, tell me that you do not despise me as
untruthful, do not pity me as insane.” º
“Hush, hush!” I said, drawing her to my breast. “Of all
you tell me we will talk hereafter. The scales of our science
have no weights fine enough for the gossamer threads of a
maiden's pure fancies. Enough for me—for us both—if out
from all such illusions start one truth, told to you, lovely child,
from the heavens; told to me, ruder man, on the earth; re-
peated by each pulse of this heart that woos you to hear and to
trust; now and henceforth through life unto death, ‘Each has
need of the other,' I of you—I of you! my Lilian—my Lilian l’”
CHAPTER XVIII.
IN spite of the previous assurance of Mrs. Poyntz, it was
not without an uneasy apprehension that I approached the
cedar-tree, under which Mrs. Ashleigh still sat, her friend be-
side her. I looked on the fair creature whose arm was linked
in mine. So young, so singularly lovely, and with all the gifts
^.
---
A STRANGE Si. Of Y. -* 77
$º:
****
&".
of birth and fortune which bend avarice and ambition the more
submissively to youth and beauty, I felt as if I had wronged
what a parent might justly deem her natural lot.
“Oh, if your mother should disapprove l’’ said I falter-
ingly.
Lilian leant on my arm less lightly: “If I had thought so,”
she said with her soft blush, “should I be thus by your side?”
So we passed under the boughs of the dark tree, and Lilian
left me, and kissed Mrs. Ashleigh's cheek; then, seating her-
self on the turf, laid her head on her mother's lap. I looked
on the Queen of the Hill, whose keen eye shot over me. I
thought there was a momentary expression of pain or displeas-
ure on her countenance; but it passed. Still there seemed
to me something of irony, as well as of triumph or congratula-
tion, in the half-smile with which she quitted her seat, and
in the tone with which she whispered, as she glided by me to
the open sward, “So, then, it is settled.”
She walked lightly and quickly down the lawn. When she
was out of sight I breathed more freely. I took the seat which
she had left, by Mrs. Ashleigh's side, and said: “A little
while ago I spoke of myself as a man without kindred, without
home, and now I come to you and ask for both.”
Mrs. Ashleigh looked at me benignly, then raised her daugh-
ter’s face from her lap, and whispered, ‘‘Lilian”; and Lilian's
lips moved, but I did not hear her answer. Her mother did.
She took Lilian's hand, simply placed it in mine, and said,
“As she chooses, I choose; whom she loves, I love.”
CHAPTER XIX.
FROM that evening till the day Mrs. Ashleigh and Lilian
went on the dreaded visit, I was always at their house, when
my avocations allowed me to steal to it; and during those few
days, the happiest I had ever known, it seemed to me that
years could not have more deepened my intimacy with Lilian's
exquisite nature, made me more reverential of its purity, or
more enamoured of its sweetness. I could detect in her but
one fault, and I rebuked myself for believing that it was a
fault. We see many who neglect the minor duties of life, who
lack watchful forethought and considerate care for others, and
we recognize the cause of this failing in levity or egotism.
Certainly, neither of those tendencies of character could be
ascribed to Lilian. Yet still in daily trifles there was some-
78 A STRANGE STORY,
thing of that neglect, some lack of that care and forethought.
She loved her mother with fondness and devotion, yet it never
occurred to her to aid in those petty household cares in which
her mother centred so much of habitual interest. She was
full of tenderness and pity to all want and suffering, yet many
a young lady on the Hill was more actively beneficent, visiting
the poor in their sickness, or instructing their children in the
Infant Schools. I was persuaded that her love for me was.
deep and truthful; it was clearly void of all ambition; doubtless
she would have borne, unflinching and contented, whatever the
world considers to be sacrifice and privation—yet I should
never have expected her to take her share in the troubles of
ordinary life. I could never have applied to her the homely
but significant name of helpmate. I reproach myself while I
write for noticing such defect, if defect it were, in what may be
called the practical routine of our positive, trivial, human ex-
istence. No doubt it was this that had caused Mrs. Poyntz's
harsh judgment against the wisdom of my choice. But such
chiller shade upon Lilian's charming nature was reflected from
no inert, unamiable self-love. It was but the consequence of
that self-absorption which the habit of revery had fostered. I
cautiously abstained from all allusion to those visionary decep-
tions, which she had confided to me as the truthful impressions
of spirit, if not of sense. To me any approach to what I
termed superstition was displeasing; any indulgence of phan-
tasies not within the measured and beaten tracks of healthful
imagination, more than displeased me in her—it alarmed. I
would not by a word encourage her in persuasions which I felt
it would be at present premature to reason against, and cruel
indeed to ridicule I was convinced that of themselves these
mists round her native intelligence, engendered by a solitary
and musing childhood, would subside in the fuller daylight of
wedded life. She seemed pained when she saw how resolutely
I shunned a subject dear to her thoughts. She made one or
two timid attempts to renew it, but my grave looks sufficed to
check her. Once or twice indeed, on such occasions, she
would turn away and leave me, but she soon came back; that
gentle heart could not bear one unkindlier shade between itself
and what it loved. It was agreed that our engagement should
be, for the present, confided only to Mrs. Poyntz. When Mrs.
Ashleigh and Lilian returned, which would be in a few weeks
at furthest, it should be proclaimed; and our marriage could
take place in the autumn, when I should be most free for a
brief holiday from professional toils.
^
A ŠTRANGE STORY. 79
\
So we parted—as lovers part. I felt none of those jealous
fears which, before we were affianced, had made me tremble at
the thought of separation, and had conjured up irresistible .
rivals. But it was with a settled heavy gloom that I saw her
depart. From earth was gone a glory: from life a blessing!
CHAPTER XX.
DURING the busy years of my professional career, I had
Snatched leisure for some professional treatises, which had made
more or less sensation, and one of them entitled “The Vital
Principle; its Waste and Supply,” had gained a wide circula-
tion among the general public. This last treatise contained the
results of certain experiments, then new in chemistry, which
were adduced in support of a theory I entertained as to the
reinvigoration of the human system by principles similar to
those which Liebig has applied to the replenishment of an
exhausted soil, viz., the giving back to the frame those es-
sentials to its nutrition which it has lost by the action or
accident of time; or supplying that special pabulum or en-
ergy in which the individual organism is constitutionally
deficient; and neutralizing or counterbalancing that in which
it superabounds—a theory upon which some eminent physi-
cians have more recently improved with signal success. But
on these essays, slight and suggestive, rather than dogmatic,
I set no value. I had been for the last two years engaged on a
work of much wider range, endeared to me by a far bolder
ambition—a work upon which I fondly hoped to found an en-
during reputation as a severe and original physiologist. It was
an “Inquiry into Organic Life,” similar in comprehensiveness
of survey to that by which the illustrious Müller, of Berlin, has
enriched the science of our age; however inferior, alas! to that
august combination of thought and learning, in the judgment
which checks presumption, and the genius which adorns specu-
lation. But at that day I was carried away by the ardor of
composition, and I admired my performance because I loved
my labor. This work had been entirely laid aside for the last
agitated month: now that Lilian was gone, I resumed it earn-
estly, as the sole occupation that had power and charm enough
to rouse me from the aching sense of void and loss.
The very night of the day she went, I reopened my MS. I
had left off at the commencement of a chapter “Upon Knowl-
edge as derived from our Senses.” As my convictions on this
8o A STRANGE STORY.
.
head were founded on the well-known arguments of Locke and
Condillac against innate ideas, and on the reasonings by which
Hume has resolved the combination of sensations into a general
idea to an impulse arising merely out of habit, so I set myself
to oppose, as a dangerous concession to the sentimentalities or
mysticism of a pseudo-philosophy, the doctrine favored by
most of our recent physiologists, and of which some of the
most eminent of German metaphysicians have accepted the
substance, though refining into a subtlety its positive form; I
mean the doctrine which Müller himself has expressed in these
words:
“That innate ideas may exist, cannot in the slightest degree
be denied; it is, indeed, a fact. All the ideas of animals,
which are induced by instinct, are innate and immediate:
Something presented to the mind, a desire to attain which is at
the same time given. The new-born lamb and foal have such
innate ideas, which lead them to follow their mother and suck
the teats. Is it not in some measure the same with the intel-
lectual ideas of man?’”
To this question I answered with an indignant ‘‘No!” A
“Yes” would have shaken my creed of materialism to the dust.
I wrote on rapidly, warmly. I defined the properties and
meted the limits of natural laws, which I would not admit that
a Deity himself could alter. I clamped and soldered dogma to
dogma in the links of my tinkered logic, till out from my page,
to my own complacent eye, grew Intellectual Man, as the
pure formation of his material senses; mind, or what is called
soul, born from and nurtured by them alone; through them to
act, and to perish with the machine they moved. Strange, that
at the very time my love for Lilian might have taught me that
there are mysteries in the core of the feelings which my analy-
sis of ideas could not solve, I should so stubbornly have opposed
as unreal all that could be referred to the spiritualſ Strange,
that at the very time when the thought that I might lose from
this life the being I had known scarce a month had just before
so appalled me, I should thus conaplacently sit down to prove
that, according to the laws of the nature which my passion
obeyed, I must lose for eternity the blessing I now hoped I had
won to my life! But how distinctly dissimilar is man in his
conduct from man in his systems! See the poet reclined under
forest-boughs, conning odes to his mistress; follow him out
into the world; no mistress ever lived for him there!? See the
* Müller's Elements of Physiology, vol. ii., p. 134. Translated by Dr. Baley.
t Cowley, who wrote so elaborate a series of amatory poems, is said “never to have been
|
A STRANG fº STORY. 81
-v
hard man of science, so austere in his passionless problems;
follow him now where the brain rests from its toil, where the
heart finds its Sabbath—what child is so tender, so yielding
and soft?
But I had proved to my own satisfaction that poet and Sage
are dust, and no more, when the pulse ceases to beat. And on
that consolatory conclusion my pen stopped.
Suddenly, beside me I distinctly heard a sigh—a compassion-
ate, mournful sigh. The sound was unmistakable. ~ I started
from my seat, looked round, amazed to discover no one—no
living thing! The windows were closed, the night was still.
That sigh was not the wail of the wind. But thers, in the
darker angle of the room, what was that? A silvery white-
ness, vaguely shaped as a human form, receding, fading, gone!
Why, I know not, for no face was visible, no form, if form it
were, more distinct than the colorless outline—why, I know
not, but I cried aloud, “Lilian | Lilian l’’ My voice came
strangely back to my own ear, I paused, then smiled, and
blushed at my folly. “So I, too, have learned what is super-
stition,” I muttered to myself. “And here is an anecdote
at my own expense (as Müller frankly tells us anecdotes of the
illusions which would haunt his eyes, shut or open)—an anec-
dote I may quote when I come to my Chapter on the Cheats
of the Senses and Spectral Phantasms.” I went on with my
book, and wrote till the lights waned in the gray of the dawn.
And I said then, in the triumph of my pride, as I laid myself
down to rest: “I have written that which allots with precision
man’s place in the region of nature; written that which will
found a school, form disciples; and race after race of those
who cultivate truth through pure reason shall accept my bases
if they enlarge my building.” And again I heard the sigh, but
this time it caused no surprise. “Certainly,” I murmured,
“a very strange thing is the nervous system l’” So I turned
on my pillow, and, wearied out, fell asleep.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE next day, the last of the visiting patients to whom my
forenoons were devoted had just quitted me, when I was sum-
moned in haste to attend the steward of a Sir Philip Derval,
not residing at his family seat, which was about five miles
in love but once, and then he never had resolution to tell his passion.”—Johnson’s “Lives
of the Poets”:—CowLEY.
82 A STR2. NG E STORY.
from L It was rarely indeed that persons so far from the
town, when of no higher rank than this applicant, asked my
services. But it was my principle to go wherever I was sum-
moned; my profession was not gain, it was healing, to which
gain was the incident, not the essential. This case the messen-
ger reported as urgent. I went on horseback, and rode fast;
but swiftly as I cantered through the village that skirted the
approach to Sir Philip Derval's park, the evident care bestowed
on the accommodation of the cottagers forcibly struck me. I
felt that I was on the lands of a rich, intelligent, and beneficent
proprietor. Entering the park, and passing before the manor-
house, the contrast between the neglect and decay of the ab-
sentee’s stately hall and the Smiling homes of his villagers was
disconsolately mournful.
An imposing pile, built apparently by Vanbrugh, with dec-
orated pilasters, pompous portico, and grand perfon (or double
flight of stairs to the entrance), enriched with urns and statues,
but discolored, mildewed, chipped, half-hidden with unpruned
creepers and ivy. Most of the windows were closed with shut-
ters, decaying for want of paint; in some of the casements the
panes were broken; the peacock perched on the shattered bals
ustrade, that fenced a garden overgrown with weeds. The sun
glared hotly on the place, and made its ruinous condition still
more painfully apparent. I was glad when a winding in the
park-road shut the house from my sight. Suddenly I emerged
through a copse of ancient yew-trees, and before me there
gleamed, in abrupt whiteness, a building evidently designed for
the family mausoleum—classical in its outlines, with the blind
iron door niched into stone walls of massive thickness, and
surrounded by a funeral garden of roses and evergreens, fenced
with an iron rail, parti-gilt.
The suddenness with which this House of the Dead came
upon me heightened almost into pain, if not into awe, the dis.
mal impression which the aspect of the deserted home in its
neighborhood had made. I spurred my horse and soon ar-
rived at the door of my patient, who lived in a fair brick
house at the other extremity of the park.
I found my patient, a man somewhat advanced in years, but
of a robust conformation, in bed: he had been seized with a
fit, which was supposed to be apoplectic, a few hours before;
but was already sensible, and out of immediate danger. After I
had prescribed a few simple remedies, I took aside the patient's
wife, and went with her to the parlor below stairs, to make
some inquiry about her husband's ordinary regimen and habits
#
A STRANGE STORY, 83
&
.
3-
of life. These seemed sufficiently regular; I could discover
no apparent cause for the attack, which presented symptoms
not familiar to my experience. “Has your husband ever had
such fits before?”
‘‘Never !”
“Had he experienced any sudden emotion? Had he heard
any unexpected news? Or had anything happened to put him
Out?’”
The woman looked much disturbed at these inquiries. I
pressed them more urgently. At last she burst into tears, and
clasping my hand, said: “Oh! doctor, I ought to tell you—I
sent for you on purpose—yet I fear you will not believe me:
My good, man has seen a ghost!”
“A ghost!” said I, repressing a smile. “Well, tell me all,
that I may prevent the ghost coming again.”
The woman's story was prolix. Its substance was this: Her
husband, habitually an early riser, had left his bed that morn-
ing still earlier than usual, to give directions about some cattle
that were to be sent for sale to a neighboring fair. An hour
afterwards he had been found by a shepherd, near the mauso-
leum, apparently lifeless. On being removed to his own house,
he had recovered speech, and bidding all except his wife leave
the room, he then told her that on walking across the park
towards the cattle-sheds, he had seen what appeared to him at
first a pale light by the iron door of the mausoleum. On ap-
proaching near, this light changed into the distinct and visible
form of his master, Sir Philip Derval, who was then abroad—
supposed to be in the East, where he had resided for many
years. The impression on the steward’s mind was so strong,
that he called out, “Oh! Sir Philip !” when looking still more
intently, he perceived that the face was that of a corpse. As
he continued to gaze the apparition seemed gradually to recede
as if vanishing into the sepulchre itself. He knew no more;
he became unconscious. It was the excess of the poor wom-
an’s alarm, on hearing this strange tale, that made her resolve
to send for me instead of the parish apothecary. She fancied
so astounding a cause for her husband's seizure could only be
properly dealt with by some medical man reputed to have more
than ordinary learning. And the steward himself objected to
the apothecary in the immediate neighborhood, as more likely
to annoy him by gossip than a physician from a comparative
distance. gy
I took care not to lose the confidence of the good wife by
parading too quickly my disbelief in the phantom her husband
84 A strange sföRy.
declared that he had seen; but as the story itself seemed at
once to decide the nature of the fit to be epileptic, I began
to tell her of similar delusions which, in my experience, had
occurred to those subjected to epilepsy, and finally soothed her
into the conviction that the apparition was cleary reducible to
natural causes. Afterwards, I led her on to talk about Sir
Philip Derval, less from any curiosity I felt about the absent
proprietor than from a desire to refamiliarize her own mind to
his image as a living man. The steward had been in the ser-
vice of Sir Philip's father, and had known Sir Philip himself
from a child. He was warmly attached to his master, whom the
old woman described as a man of rare benevolence and great
eccentricity, which last she imputed to his studious habits.
He had succeeded to the title and estates as a minor. For the
first few years after attaining his majority, he had mixed much
in the world. When at Derval Court his house had been filled
with gay companions, and was the scene of lavish hospitality.
But the estate was not in proportion to the grandeur of the
mansion, still less to the expenditure of the owner. He had be-
come greatly embarrassed; and some love disappointment (so
it was rumored) occurring simultaneously with his pecuniary
difficulties, he had suddenly changed his way of life, shut
himself up from his old friends, lived in seclusion, taking to
books and scientific pursuits, and, as the old woman said
vaguely and expressively, “to odd ways.” He had gradually
by an economy that, towards himself, was penurious, but which
did not preclude much judicious generosity to others, cleared
off his debts, and, once more rich, he had suddenly quitted the
country, and taken to a life of travel. He was now about
forty-eight years old, and had been eighteen years abroad. He
wrote frequently to his steward, giving him minute and thought-
ful instructions in regard to the employment, comforts, and
homes of the peasantry, but peremptorily ordering him to spend
no money on the grounds and mansion, stating as a reason why
the latter might be allowed to fall into decay, his intention to
pull it down whenever he returned to England.
I stayed some time longer than my engagements well war-
ranted at my patient's house, not leaving till the sufferer, after
a quiet sleep, had removed from his bed to his arm-chair, taken
food, and seemed perfectly recovered from his attack.
Riding homeward, I mused on the difference that education
makes, even pathologically, between man and man. Here was
a brawny inhabitant of rural fields, leading the healthiest of
lives, not conscious of the faculty we call imagination, stricken
A STRANGE STORY. 85
down almost to Death's door by his fright at an optical illu-
sion, explicable, if examined, by the same simple causes which
had impressed me the night before with a moment's belief in
a sound and a spectre—me who, thanks to sublime education,
went so quietly to sleep a few minutes after, convinced that no
phantom, the ghostliest that ear ever heard or eye ever saw, can
be anything else but a nervous phenomenon.
CHAPTER XXII.
THAT evening I went to Mrs. Poyntz's: it was one of her
ordinary “reception nights,” and I felt that she would natural-
ly expect my attendance as “a proper attention.”
I joined a group engaged in general conversation, of which
Mrs. Pyontz herself made the centre, knitting as usual—rapid-
ly while she talked, slowly when she listened.
Without mentioning the visit I had paid that morning, I turned
the conversation on the different country places in the neigh-
borhood, and then incidentally asked, “What sort of a man is
Sir Philip Derval? Is it not strange that he should suffer so
fine a place to fall into decay?” The answers I received added
little to the information I had already obtained. Mrs. Poyntz
knew nothing of Sir Philip Derval, except as a man of large
estates, whose rental had been greatly increased by a rise in the
value of property he possessed in the town of L , and which
lay contiguous to that of her husband. Two or three of the
older inhabitants of the Hill had remembered Sir Philip in his
early days, when he was gay, high-spirited, hospitable, lavish.
One observed that the only person in L whom he had ad-
mitted to his subsequent seclusion was Dr. Lloyd, who was
then without practice, and whom he had employed as an assist-
ant in certain chemical experiments.
Here a gentleman struck into the conversation. He was a
stranger to me and to L , a visitor to one of the dwellers on
the Hill, who had asked leave to present him to its queen as a
great traveller and an accomplished antiquary.
Said this gentleman: “Sir Philip Derval! I know him. I
met him in the East. He was then still, I believe, very fond
of chemical science; a clever, odd, philanthropical-man; had
studied medicine, or at least practised it; was said to have
made many marvellous cures. I became acquainted with him
in Aleppo. He had come to that town, not much frequented
by English travellers, in order to inquire into the murder of two
86 A STRANGE STORY.
men, of whom one was his friend and the other his country-
man.”
“This is interesting,” said Mrs. Poyntz dryly. “We who
live on this innocent Hill all love stories of crime; murder is
the pleasantest subject you could have hit on. Pray give us
the details.” *
“So encouraged,” said the traveller good-humoredly, “I
will not hesitate to communicate the little I know. In Aleppo,
there had lived for some years a man who was held by the
natives in great reverence. He had the reputation of extraordi-
nary wisdom, but was difficult of access; the lively imagina-
tion of the Orientals invested his character with the fascina-
tions of fable; in short, Haroun of Aleppo was popularly
considered a magician. Wild stories were told of his powers, of
his preternatural age, of his hoarded treasures. Apart from
such disputable titles to homage, there seemed no question,
from all I heard, that his learning was considerable, his chari-
ties extensive, his manner of life irreproachably ascetic. He
appears to have resembled those Arabian sages of the Gothic
age to whom modern science is largely indebted—a mystic
enthusiast, but an earnest scholar. A wealthy and singular Eng-
lishman, long resident in another part of the East, afflicted by
some languishing disease, took a journey to Aleppo to consult
this sage, who, among his other acquirements, was held to
have discovered rare secrets in medicine—his countrymen said
in ‘charms.' One morning, not long after the Englishman's
arrival, Haroun was found dead in his bed, apparently stran-
gled, and the Englishman, who lodged in another part of the
town, had disappeared; but some of his clothes, and a crutch
on which he habitually supported himself, were found a few
miles distant from Aleppo, near the roadside. There ap-
peared no doubt that he, too, had been murdered, but his
corpse could not be discovered. Sir Philip Derval had been
a loving disciple of this Sage of Aleppo, to whom he assured
me he owed not only that knowledge of medicine which, by
report, Sir Philip possessed, but the insight into various
truths of nature, on the promulgation of which, it was evident,
Sir Philip cherished the ambition to found a philosophical
celebrity for himself.”
“Of what description were those truths of nature?” I asked,
somewhat sarcastically.
$
“Sir, I am unable to tell you, for Sir Philip did not inform
me, nor did I much care to ask; for what may be revered as
truths in Asia are usually despised as dreams in Europe. To
A STRANGE STORY. 87
return to my story. Sir Philip had been in Aleppo a little time
before the murder; had left the Englishman under the care of
Haroun; he returned to Aleppo on hearing the tragic events I
have related, and was busied in collecting such evidence as
could be gleaned, and instituting inquiries after our missing
countryman, at the time I myself chanced to arrive in the city.
I assisted in his researches, but without avail. The assassins
remained undiscovered. I do not myself doubt that they were
mere vulgar robbers. Sir Philip had a darker suspicion, of
which he made no secret to me; but as I confess that I
thought the suspicion groundless, you will pardon me if I do
not repeat it. Whether, since I left the East, the English-
man’s remains have been discovered, I know not. Very prob-
ably; for I understand that his heirs have got hold of what
fortune he left—less than was generally supposed. But it was
reported that he had buried great treasures, a rumor, however
absurd, not altogether inconsistent with his character.”
“What was his character?” asked Mrs. Poyntz.
“One of evil and sinister repute. He was regarded with
terror by the attendants who had accompanied him to Aleppo.
But he had lived in a very remote part of the East, little known
to Europeans, and, from all I could learn, had there estab-
lished an extraordinary power, strengthened by superstitious
awe. He was said to have studied deeply that knowledge
which the philosophers of old called ‘occult,” not, like the Sage
of Aleppo, for benevolent, but for malignant, ends. He was
accused of conferring with evil spirits, and filling his barbaric
court (for he lived in a kind of savage royalty) with charmers
and sorcerers. I suspect, after all, that he was only, like my-
self, an ardent antiquary, and cunningly made use of the fear
he inspired in order to secure his authority, and prosecute in
safety researches into ancient sepulchres or temples. His great
passion was, indeed, in excavating such remains, in his neigh-
borhood; with what result I know not, never having penetra-
ted so far into regions infested by robbers and pestiferous
with malaria. He wore the Eastern dress, and always carried
jewels about him. I came to the conclusion that for the sake
of these jewels he was murdered, perhaps by some of his own ser-
vants (and, indeed, two at least of his suite were missing), who
then at once butried his body, and kept their own secret. He
was old, very infirm; could never have got far from the town
without assistance.’’
“You have not yet told us his name,” said Mrs. Poyntz.
“His name was Grayle,”
88 A STRANGE STORY.
“Grayle!” exclaimed Mrs. Poyntz, dropping her work,
“Louis Grayle?”
“Yes; Louis Grayle. You could not have known him?”
“Known him 1 No! But I have often heard my father
speak of him. Such, then, was the tragic end of that strong,
dark Creature, for whom, as a young girl in the nursery, I used
to feel a kind of fearful admiring interest?”
“It is your turn to narrate now,” said the traveller.
And we all drew closer round our hostess, who remained
silent Some moments, her brow thoughtful, her work sus-
pended.
“Well,” said she at last, looking round us with a lofty air,
which seemed half-defying, “force and courage are always fas-
cinating, even when they are quite in the wrong. I go with
the world, because the world goes with me; if it did not—”
Here she stopped for a moment, clenched the firm white hand,
and then scornfully waved it, left the sentence unfinished,
and broke into another:
“Going with the world, of course we must march over those
who stand against it. But when one man stands single-handed
against our march, we do not despise him; it is enough to crush.
I am very glad I did not see Louis Grayle when I was a girl of
sixteen.” Again she paused a moment, and resumed: “Louis
Grayle was the only son of a usurer, infamous for the rapacity
with which he had acquired enormous wealth. Old Grayle
desired to rear his heir as a gentleman; sent him to Eton; boys
are always aristocratic; his birth was soon thrown in his teeth;
he was fierce; he struck boys bigger than himself—fought till
he was half-killed. My father was at school with him; des-
cribed him as a tiger-whelp. One day he—still a fag—struck
a sixth-form boy. Sixth-form boys do not fight fags; they
punish them. Louis Grayle was ordered to hold out his hand
to the came; he received the blow, drew forth his schoolboy
knife, and stabbed the punisher. After that, he left Eton. I
don’t think he was publicly expelled—too mere a child for that
honor—but he was taken or sent away: educated with great
care under the first, masters at home: when he was of age to
enter the University, old Grayle was dead. Louis was sent by
his guardians to Cambridge, with acquirements far exceeding the
average of young men, and with unlimited command of money.
My father was at the same college, and described him again—
haughty, quarrelsome, reckless, handsome, aspiring, brave,
Does that kind of creature interest you, my dears?” (appeal.
ing to the ladies).
As”
A STRANGE STORY. 89
“Lal” said Miss Brabazon; “a horrid usurer's son 1’’
“Ay, true; the vulgar proverb says it is good to be born with
a silver spoon in one's mouth; so it is when one has one’s own
family crest on it; but when it is a spoon on which people
recognize their family crest, and cry out, ‘Stolen from our plate-
chest,’ it is a heritage that outlaws a babe in his cradle. How-
ever, young men at college who want money are less scrupu-
lous about descent than boys at Eton are. Louis Grayle found,
while at college, plenty of well-born acquaintances willing to
recover from him some of the plunder his father had extorted
T from theirs. He was too wild to distinguish himself by aca-
demical honors, but my father said that the tutors of the college
declared, there were not six undergraduates in the University
who knew as much hard and dry science as wild Louis Grayle.
He went into the world, no doubt hoping to shine; but his
father's name was too notorious to admit the son into good
society. The Polite World, it is true, does not examine a
scutcheon with the nice eye of a herald, nor look upon riches
with the stately contempt of a stoic; still the Polite World has
its family pride and its moral sentiment. It does not like to
be cheated—I mean, in money matters; and when the son of
the man who has emptied its purse and foreclosed on its acres
rides by its club-windows, hand on haunch, and head in the
air, no lion has a scowl more awful, no hyena a laugh more
dread, than that same easy, good-tempered, tolerant, polite,
well-bred World which is so pleasant an acquaintance, so lan-
guid a friend, and—so remorseless an enemy. In short, Louis
Grayle claimed the right to be courted—he was shunned; to be
admired—he was loathed. Even his old college acquaintances
were shamed out of knowing him. Perhaps he could have
lived through all this had he sought to glide quietly into posi-
tion; but he wanted the tact of the well-bred, and strove to
storm his way, not to steal it. Reduced for companions to
needy parasites, he braved and he shocked all decorous opin-
ion by that ostentation of excess which made Richelieus and
Lauzuns the rage. But then Richelieus and Lauzuns were
dukes | He now very naturally took the Polite World into
hate; gave it scorn for scorn. He would ally himself with
Democracy; his wealth could not get him into a club, but it
would buy him into Parliament; he could not be a Lauzun,
nor, perhaps, a Mirabeau, but he might be a Danton. He
had plenty of knowledge and audacity, and with knowledge
and audacity a good hater is sure to be eloquent. Possibly,
then, this poor Louis Grayle might have made a great figure,
go A STRANGE STORY.
left his mark on his age and his name in history; but in con-
testing the borough, which he was sure to carry, he had to face
an opponent in a real fine gentleman whom his father had
ruined, cool and high-bred, with a tongue like a rapier, a sneer
like an adder. A quarrel of course; Louis Grayle sent a chal-
lenge. The fine gentleman, known to be no coward (fine gen-
tlemen never are), was at first disposed to refuse with con-
tempt. But Grayle had made himself the idol of the mob;
and at a word from Grayle, the fine gentleman might have been
ducked at a pump, or tossed in a blanket—that woulds have
made him ridiculous; to be shot at is a trifle, to be laughed at
is serious. He therefore condescended to accept the chal-
lenge, and my father was his second. ar *
“It was settled, of course, according to English custom, that
both combatants should fire at the same time, and by signal.
The antagonist fired at the right moment; his ball grazed
Louis Grayle's temple. Louis Grayle had not fired. He now
seemed to the seconds to take slow and deliberate aim. They
called out to him not to fire—they were rushing to prevent
him—when the trigger was pulled, and his opponent fell dead
on the field. The fight was, therefore, considered unfair;
Louis Grayle was tried for his life; he did not stand the trial
in person.” He escaped to the Continent; hurried on to
some distant uncivilized lands; could not be traced; reap-
peared in England no more. The lawyer who conducted his
defence pleaded skilfully. He argued that the delay in firing
was not intentional, therefore not criminal—the effect of the
stun which the wound in the temple had occasioned. The
judge was a gentleman, and summed up the evidence so as to
direct the jury to a verdict against the low wretch who had
murdered a gentleman. But the jurors were not gentlemen,
and Grayle's advocate had of course excited their sympathy
for a son of the people whom a gentleman had wantonly in-
sulted—the verdict was manslaughter. But the sentence em-
phatically marked the aggravated nature of the homicide—
three years' imprisonment. Crayle eluded the prison, but he
was a man disgraced and an exile: his ambition blasted, his
career an outlaw's, and his age, not yet twenty-three. My
father said that he was supposed to have changed his name;
none knew what had become of him. And so this creature,
brilliant and daring, whom if born under better auspices we
might now be all fawning on, cringing to, after living to old
* Mrs. Poyntz here makes a mistake in law which, though very evident, her listeners do
not seem to have noticed. Her mistake will be referred to later.
A STRANGE STORY: : 91
age, no one knows how—dies murdered at Aleppo, no one, .
you say, knows by whom.”
“I saw some account of his death in the papers about three
years ago,” said one of the party; “but the name was mis-
spelt, and I had no idea that it was the same man who had
fought the duel which Mrs. Colonel Poyntz has so graphically
described. I have a very vague recollection of the trial; it
took place when I was a boy, more than forty years since.
The affair made a stir at the time, but was soon forgotten.”
“Soon forgotten,” said Mrs. Poyntz; “Ay, what is not?
Leave your place in the world for ten minutes, and when you
come back somebody else has taken it; but when you leave
the world for good, who remembers that you had ever a place
even in the parish register?”
“Nevertheless,” said I, “a great poet has said, finely and
truly:
“The sun of Homer shines upon us still.’”
“But it does not shine upon Homer; and learned folks tell
me that we know no more who and what Homer was, if there
was ever a single Homer at all, or, rather, a whole herd of
Homers, than we know about the man in the moon—if there
be one man there, or millions of men. Now, my dear Miss
Brabazon, it will be very kind in you to divert our thoughts
into channels less gloomy. Some pretty French air—Dr. Fen-
wick, I have something to say to you.” She drew me towards
the window. “So Anne Ashleigh writes me word that I am
not to mention your engagement. Do you think it quite pru-
dent to keep it a secret?”
“I do not see how prudence is concerned in keeping it
'secret one way or the other: it is a mere matter of feeling.
Most people wish to abridge, as far as they can, the time in which
their private arrangements are the topics of public gossip.”
“Public gossip is sometimes the best security for the due
completion of private arrangements. As long as a girl is not
known to be engaged, her betrothed must be prepared for ri-
vals. Announce the engagement, and rivals are warned off.”
‘‘I fear no rivals.”
“Do you not? Bold man!' I suppose you will write to Lil-
ian P’’
“Certainly.”
“Do so, and constantly. By the way, Mrs. Ashleigh, before
she went, asked me to send her back Lady Haughton’s letter
of invitation. What for? To show to you?”
92 ‘A STRANGE STORY.
“Very likely. Have you the letter still? May I see it?”
“Not just at present. When Lilian or Mrs. Ashleigh writes-
to you, come and tell me how they like their visit, and what
other guests form the party.”
Therewith she turned away and conversed apart with the
traveller.
Her words disquieted me, and I felt that they were meant
to do so; wherefore I could not guess. But there is no lan-
guage on earth which has more words with a double mean-
ing than that spoken by the Clever Woman, who is never so
guarded as when she appears to be frank.
As I walked home thoughtfully, I was accosted by a young
man, the son of one of the wealthiest merchants in the town,
I had attended him with success, some months before, in a
rheumatic fever: he and his family were much attached to me.
“Ah, my dear Fenwick, I am so glad to see you; I owe you
an obligation of which you are not aware: an exceedingly
pleasant travelling companion. I came with him to-day from
London, where I have been sight-seeing and holiday-making
for the last fortnight.”
“I suppose you mean that you kindly bring me a patient?”
“No, only an admirer. I was staying at Fenton’s Hotel.
It so happened one day that I had left in the coffee-room
your last work on the Vital Principle, which, by the by, the
bookseller assures me is selling immensely among readers as
non-professional as myself. Coming into the coffee-room
again, I found a gentleman reading the book. I claimed it
politely; he as politely tendered his excuses for taking it. We
made acquaintance on the spot. The next day we were inti-
mate. He expressed great interest and curiosity about your,
theory and your experiments. I told him I knew you. You
may guess if I described you as less clever in your practice
than you are in your writings. And, in short, he came with
me to L , partly to see our flourishing town, principally on
my promise to introduce him to you. My mother, you know,
has what she calls a déjeuner to-morrow—déſeumer and dance.
You will be there?”
“Thank you for reminding me of her invitation. I will
avail myself of it if I can. Your new friend will be present?
Who and what is he? A medical student?”
“No, a mere gentleman at ease; but seems to have a good
deal of general information. Very young; apparently very
rich; wonderfully good-looking. I am sure you will like him;
everybody must.”
A STRANGE STORY. 93
“It is quite enough to prepare me to like him that he is a
friend of yours.” And so we shook hands and parted.
CHAPTER XXIIl.
IT was late in the afternoon of the following day before I
was able to join the party assembled at the merchant's house;
it was a villa about two miles out of the town, pleasantly situ-
ated, amidst flower-gardens celebrated in the neighborhood
for their beauty. The breakfast had long been over; the com-
pany was scattered over the lawn; some formed into a dance
on the smooth lawn; some seated under shady awnings; oth-
ers gliding amidst parterres, in which all the glow of color
took a glory yet more vivid under the flush of a brilliant sun-
shine, and the ripple of a soft western breeze. Music, loud
and lively, mingled with the laughter of happy children, who
•formed much the larger number of the party.
Standing at the entrance of an arched trellis, that led from
the hardier flowers of the lawn to a rare collecton of tropical
plants under a lofty glass dome (connecting, as it were, the
familiar vegetation of the North with that of the remotest East),
was a form that instantaneously caught and fixed my gaze.
The entrance of the arcade was covered with parasite creepers,
in prodigal luxuriance, of variegated gorgeous tints, scarlet,
golden, purple; and the form, an idealized picture of man's
youth fresh from the hand of Nature, stood literally in a frame
of blooms.
Never have I seen a human face so radiant as that young
man's. There was in the aspect an indescribable something
that literally dazzled. As one continued to gaze, it was with
surprise; one was forced to acknowledge that in the features
themselves there was no faultless regularity; nor was the young
man's stature imposing—about the middle height. But the
effect of the whole was not less transcendent. Large eyes,
unspeakably lustrous; a most harmonious Coloring; an ex-
pression of contagious animation and joyousness; and the
form itself so critically fine, that the welded strength of its
sinews was best shown in the lightness and grace of its move-
ImentS.
He was resting one hand carelessly on the golden locks of
a child that had nestled itself against his knees, looking up to
his face in that silent loving wonder with which children regard
Something too strangely beautiful for noisy admiration; he
*
*
94 A STRANGE STORY.
himself was conversing with the host, an old gray-haired,
gouty man, propped on his Crutched stick, and listening with
a look of mournful envy. To the wealth of the old man all
the flowers in that garden owed their renewed delight in the
summer air and sun. Oh! that his wealth could renew to
himself one hour of the youth whose incarnation stood beside
him, Lord, indeed, of Creation; its splendor woven into his
crown of beauty, its enjoyments subject to his sceptre of hope
and gladness.
I was startled by the hearty voice of the merchant’s son:
“Ah, my dear Fenwick, I was afraid you would not come;
you are late. There is the new friend of whom I spoke to you
last night; let me now make you acquainted with him.” He
drew my arm in his, and led me up to the young man, where
he stood under the arching flowers, and whom he then intro-
duced to me by the name of Margrave.
Nothing could be more frankly cordial than Mr. Margrave's
manner. In a few minutes I found myself conversing with -
him familiarly, as if we had been reared in the same home, and
sported together in the same playground. His vein of talk
was peculiar, off-hand, careless, shifting from topic to topic
with a bright rapidity.
He said that he liked the place; proposed to stay in it some
weeks; asked my address, which I gave to him; promised to
call soon at an early hour, while my time was yet free from
professional visits. I endeavored, when I went away, to ana-
lyze to myself the fascination which this young stranger so
notably exercised over all who approached him; and it seemed
to me, ever seeking to find material causes for all moral effects,
that it rose from the contagious vitality of that rarest of all
rare gifts in highly civilized circles—perfect health; that
health which is in itself the most exquisite luxury; which,
finding happiness in the mere sense of existence, diffuses
round it, like an atmosphere, the harmless hilarity of its bright
animal being. Health, to the utmost perfection, is seldom
known after childhood; health to the utmost cannot be en-
joyed by those who overwork the brain, or admit the sure wear
and tear of the passions. The creature I had just seen gave
me the notion of youth in the golden age of the poets—the
youth of the careless Arcadian, before nymph or shepherdess
had vexed his heart with a sigh.
A STRANGE STORY. 95
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE house I occupied at L was a quaint, old-fashioned
building—a corner-house. One side, in which was the front
entrance, looked upon a street which, as there were no shops
in it, and it was no direct thoroughfare to the busy centres of
the town, was always quiet, and at some hours of the day
almost deserted. The other side of the house fronted a lane;
opposite to it was the long and high wall of the garden to a
Young Ladies' Boarding-School. My stables adjoined the
house, abutting on a row of smaller buildings, with little gar-
dens before them, chiefly occupied by mercantile clerks and
retired tradesmen. By the lane there was a short and ready
access both to the high turnpiké-road, and to some pleasant
walks through green meadows and along the banks of a river.
This house I had inhabited since my arrival at L , and it
had to me so many attractions, in a situation sufficiently cen-
tral to be convenient for patients, and yet free from noise, and
favorable to ready outlet into the country for such foot or
horse exercise as my professional avocations would allow me to
Carve for myself out of what the Latin poet calls the “solid
day,” that I had refused to change it for one better suited to
my increased income; but it was not a house which Mrs. Ash-
leigh would have liked for Lilian. The main objection to it
in the eyes of the “genteel” was, that it had formerly belonged
to a member of the healing profession, who united the shop
of an apothecary to the diploma of a surgeon; but that shop
had given the house a special attraction to me; for it had been
built out on the side of the house which fronted the lane, occu-
pying the greater portion of a small gravel court, fenced from
the road by a low iron palisade, and separated from the body
of the house itself by a short and narrow corridor that commu-
nicated with the entrance-hall. This shop I turned into a rude
study for scientific experiments, in which I generally spent
Some early hours of the morning, before my visiting patients
began to arrive. I enjoyed the stillness of its separation from
the rest of the house; I enjoyed the glimpse of the great
chestnut-trees, which overtopped the wall of the school-garden;
I enjoyed the ease with which, by opening the glazed sash-
door, I could get out if disposed, for a short walk, into the
pleasant fields; and so completely had I made this sanctuary
my own, that not only my man-servant knew that I was never
to be disturbed when in it, except by the summons of a patient,
96 A STRANGE STORY.
but even the housemaid was forbidden to enter it with broom or
duster, except upon special invitation. The last thing at night,
before retiring to rest, it was the man-servant’s business to see
that the sash-window was closed, and the gate to the iron
palisade locked; but during the daytime I so often went out of
the house by that private way that the gate was then very sel-
dom locked, nor the sash-door bolted from within. In the
town of L there was little apprehension of house-robberies,
especially in the daylight; and certainly in this room, cut off
from the main building, there was nothing to attract a vulgar
cupidity. A few of the apothecary’s shelves and cases still
remained on the walls, with, here and there, a bottle of some
chemical preparation for experiment. Two or three worm-
eaten, wooden chairs; two or three shabby old tables; an old
walnut-tree bureau, without a lock, into which odds and ends
were confusedly thrust, and Sundry ugly-looking inventions of
mechanical science, were, assuredly, not *the articles which a
timid proprietor would guard with jealous care from the
chances of robbery. It will be seen later why I have been thus
prolix in description. The morning after I had met the young
stranger by whom I had been so favorably impressed, I was up
as usual, a little before the sun, and long before any of my
servants were astir. I went first into the room I have men-
tioned, and which I shall henceforth designate as my study,
opened the window, unlocked the gate, and sauntered for some
minutes up and down the silent lane skirting the opposite wall,
and overhung by the chestnut-trees rich in the garniture of a glo-
rious summer; then, refreshed for work, I re-entered my
study, and was soon absorbed in the examination of that now
well-known machine, which was then, to me at least, a novelty;
invented, if I remember right, by Du Bois-Reymond, so distin-
guished by his researches into the mysteries of organic electric-
ity. It is a wooden cylinder fixed against the edge of a table;
on the table two vessels filled with salt and water are so placed
that, as you close your hands on the cylinder, the forefinger
of each hand can drop into the water; each of the vessels has
a metallic plate, and communicates by wires with a galvano-
meter with its needle. Now the theory is, that if you clutch
the cylinder firmly with the right hand, leaving the left per-
fectly passive, the needle in the galvanometer will move from
west to south; if, in like manner, you exert the left arm, leav-
ing the right arm passive, the needle will deflect from west to
north. Hence, it is argued that the electric current is induced
through the agency of the nervous system, and that, as human
A. STRANGE STORY 97
Will produces the muscular contraction requisite, so is it
human Will that causes the deflection of the needle. I imag-
ined that if this theory were substantiated by experiment, the
discovery might lead to some sublime and unconjectured
secrets of science. For human Will, thus actively effective on
the electric current, and all matter, animate or inanimate, hav-
ing more or less of electricity, a vast field became opened to
conjecture. By what series of patient experimental deduction
might not science arrive at the solution of problems which the
Newtonian law of gravitation does not suffice to solve; and—
But here I halt. At the date which my story has reached my
mind never lost itself long in the Cloudland of Guess.
I was dissatisfied with my experiment. The needle stirred,
indeed, but erratically, and not in directions which, according
to the theory, should correspond to my movement. I was
- about to dismiss the trial with some uncharitable contempt of
the foreign philosopher's dogmas; when I heard a loud ring at
my street door. While I paused to conjecture whether my
servant was yet up to attend to the door, and which of my
patients was the most likely to summon me at so unreasonable
an hour, a shadow darkened my window. I looked up, and to
my astonishment beheld the brilliant face of Mr. Margrave.
The sash to the door was already partially opened; he raised
it higher, and walked into the room. “Was it you who rang
at the street door, and at this hour?’’ said I.
“Yes; and observing, after I had rung, that all the shutters
were still closed, I felt ashamed of my own rash action, and
made off rather than brave the reproachful face of some injured
housemaid, robbed of her morning dreams. I turned down
that pretty lane, lured by the green of the chestnut-trees,
caught sight of you through the window, took Courage, and
here I am! You forgive me?” While thus speaking, he con
tinued to move along the littered floor of the dingy room, with
the undulating restlessness of some wild animal in the confines
of its den, and he now went on, in short fragmentary sen-
tences, very slightly linked together, but smoothed, as it were,
into harmony by a voice musical and fresh as a skylark's war-
ble. “Morning dreams, indeed! Dreams that waste the life
of such a morning. Rosy magnificence of a summer dawn!
Do you not pity the fool who prefers to lie abed, and to dream
rather than to live? What! And you, strong man, with
those noble limbs, in this den! Do you not long for a rush
through the green of the fields, a bath in the blue of the river?”
Here he came to a pause, standing, still in the gray light of
98 A STRANGE STORY.
the growing day, with eyes whose joyous lustre forestalled the
Sun's, and lips which seemed to laugh even, in repose.
But presently those eyes, as quick as they were bright,
glanced over the walls, the floor, the shelves, the phials, the
mechanical inventions, and then rested full on my cylinder
fixed to the table. He approached, examined it curiously,
asked what it was? I explained. To gratify him, I sat down
and renewed my experiment, with equally ill success. The
needle, which should have moved from west to south, describ-
ing an angle of from 30 deg. to 40 or even 50 deg., only made
a few troubled, undecided oscillations. _*
“Tut,” Cried the young man, “I see what it is; you have a
wound in your right hand.”
That was true. I had burnt my hand a few days before in a
chemical experiment, and the sore had not healed.
“Well,” said I, ‘‘and what does that matter?”
“Everything; the least scratch in the skin of the hand pro-
duces chemical actions on the electric current, independently
of your will. Let me try.”
He took my place, and in a moment the needle in the gal-
vanometer responded to his grasp on the cylinder, exactly as
the inventive philosopher had stated to be the due result of the
experiment.
I was startled.
“But how came you, Mr. Margrave, to be so well acquainted
with a scientific process little known, and but recently discov-
ered P’’
“I well acquainted | Not so. But I am fond of all experi-
ments that relate to animal life. Electricity, especially, is full
of interest.”
On that I drew him out (as I thought), and he talked volus
bly. I was amazed to find this young man, in whose brain I
had conceived thought kept one careless holiday, was evidently
familiar with the physical sciences, and especially with chemis-
try, which was my own study by predilection. But never had I
met with a student in whom a knowledge so extensive was
mixed up with notions so obsolete or so crotchety. In one
sentence he showed that he had mastered some late discovery
by Faraday or Liebig; in the next sentence he was talking the
wild fallacies of Cardan or Van Helmont. I burst out laugh-
ing at some paradox about sympathetic powders, which he
enounced as if it were a recognized truth. *
“Pray tell me,” said I, “who was your master in physics,
for a cleverer pupil never had a more crack-brained teacher.”
A STRANGE STORY. - 9
“No,” he answered, with his merry laugh, “it is not the
teacher's fault. I am a mere parrot; just cry out a few scraps
of learning picked up here and there. But, however, I am
fond of all researches into Nature; all guesses at her riddles.
To tell you the truth, one reason why I have taken to you so
heartily is not only that your published work caught my fancy
in the dip which I took into its contents (pardon me if I say
dip, I never do more than dip into any book), but also because
young tells me that which all whom I have met in the
town confirm; viz., that you are one of those few practical
chemists who are at once exceedingly cautious and exceedingly
bold; willing to try every new experiment, but submitting ex-
periment to rigid tests. Well, I have an experiment running
wild in this giddy head of mine, and I want you, some day
when at leisure, to catch it, fix it as you have fixed that cylin-
der: make something of it. I am sure you can.”
“What is it?”
“Something akin to the theories in your work. You would
replenish or preserve to each special constitution the special
substance that may fail to the equilibrium of its health. But
you own that in a large proportion of cases the best cure of dis-
ease is less to deal with the disease itself than to support and
stimulate the whole system, so as to enable Nature to cure
the disease and restore the impaired equilibrium by her own
agencies. Thus, if you find that in certain cases of nervous
debility a substance like nitric acid is efficacious, it is because
the nitric acid has a virtue in locking up, as it were, the ner-
vous energy—that is, preventing all undue waste. Again, in
some cases of what is commonly called feverish cold, stimu-
lants like ammonia assist Nature itself to get rid of the disor-
der that oppresses its normal action; and, on the same princi-
ple, I apprehend, it is contended that a large average of human
lives is saved in those hospitals which have adopted the sup-
porting system of ample nourishment and alcoholic stimulants.’’
“Your medical learning surprises me,” said I, smiling, ‘‘and
without pausing to notice where it deals somewhat superfi-
cially with disputable points in general, and my own theory in
particular, I ask you for the deduction you draw from your
premises.” º
“It is simply this: that to all animate bodies, however vari-
ous, there must be one principle in common, the vital prin-
ciple itself. What if there be one certain means of recruiting
that principle? And what if that secret can be discovered?'
“Pshaw! The old illusion of the mediaeval empirics.”:
*
J.
º
as ‘e
• *
e
* *
;

IOO A STRANGE STORY.
: gºt-aid in ornament of their lofty cause,
& p
tº
“Not so. But the mediaeval empirics were-great discover-
ers. You sneer at Van Helmont, who sought, in water, the
principle of all things; but Van Helmont discovered in his
search those invisible bodies called gases. Now the principle
of life must be certainly ascribed to a gas.” . And whatever is
a gas, chemistry should not despair of producing! But I can
argue no longer now—never can argue long at a stretch—we
are wasting the morning; and joy! the sun is up ! Seel Out!
Come out! Out! and greet the great Life-giver face to face.”
I could not resist the young man's invitation. In a few
minutes we were in the quiet lane under the glinting chestnut-
trees. Margrave was chanting low, a wild tune—words in a
Strange language. *
“What words are those? No European language, I think;
for I know a little of most of the languages which are spoken
in our quarter of the globe, at least by its more civilized races.”
“Civilized race | What is civilization? Those words were
uttered by men who founded empires when Europe itself was
not civilized Hush, is it not a grand old air?’’ and lifting
his eyes towards the sun, he gave vent to a voice clear and
deep as a mighty bell! The air was grand; the words had a
sonorous swell that suited it, and they seemed to me jubilant
and yet solemn. He stopped abruptly, as a path from the lane
had led us into the fields, already half-bathed in sunlight—
dews glittering on the hedgerows.
2k According to the views we have mentioned, we must ascribe life to a gas, that is, to an
aeriform body.”—Liebig, “Organic Chemistry,” Playfair's translation, p. 363. It is perhaps
not less superfluous to add that Liebig does not support the views “according to which
life must be ascribed to a gas,” than it would be to state had Dugald Stewart been quoted
as writing, “According to the views we have mentioned the mind is but a bundle of im-
ressions,” that Dugald Stewart was not supporting, but opposing, the views of David
ume. The quotation is merely meant to show, in the shortest possible compass, that
there are views entertained by speculative reasoners of our day which, according to Liebig,
would lead to the inference at which Margrave so boldly arrives. Margrave is, however,
no doubt, led to his belief by his reminiscences of Van Helmont, to whose discovery of gas
he is referring. Van Helmont plainly affirms “ that the arterial spirit of our life is of the
nature of a gas”; and in the same chapter (on the fiction of elementary complexions and
mixtures) says, “Seeing that the spirit of our life, since it is a gas, is most mightily and
swiftly affected by any other gas,” etc. He repeats the same dogma in his treatise on
Long Life, and indeed very generally throughout his writings, observing, in his Chapter on
Vital Air,” that the spirit of life is a salt sharp vapor, made of the arterial blood, etc.
Liebig, therefore, in confuting some modern notions as to the nature of contagion by
masma, is leading their reasonings back to that assumption in the dawn of physiological
science by which the discoverer of gas exalted into the principle of life the substance to
which he first gave the name now so familiarly known. It is nevertheless just to Van Hel-
mont to add that "his conception of the vital principle was very far from being as purely
materialistic as it would seem to those unacquainted with his writings; for he carefully dis-
tinguishes that principle of life which he ascribes to a gas, and by which he means the
sensuous animal life, from the intellectual immortal principle of soul. Van Helmont, in-
deed, was a sincere believer in Divine Revelation. “The Lord Jesus is the way, the truth,
and the life,” says with earnest humility this daring genius, in that noble Chapter “on the
completing of the mind by the ‘prayer of silence and the loving offering up of the heart,
sout, and strength to the obedience of the Divine will,” from which some of the most elo-
ent ºf recent philosophers, arguing against materialism, have borrowed largely in sup:
.*


A STRANGE STORY. - f() i
*.
“Your song,” said I, “would go well with the clash of cym-
bals or the peal of the organ. I am no judge of melody, but
this strikes me as that of a religious hymn.”
“I compliment you on the guess. It is a Persian fire-wor-
shipper's hymn to the sun. The dialect is very different from
- modern Persian. Cyrus the Great might have chanted it on
his march upon Babylon.’’
“And where did you learn it?”
‘‘In Persia itself.”
“You have travelled much—learned much—and are so
young and so fresh. Is it an impertinent question if I ask
whether your parents are yet living, or are you wholly lord of
yourself?”
“Thank you for the question; pray make my answer known
in the town. Parents I have not—never had.”
“Never had parents!”
“Well, I ought rather to say that no parents ever owned
me. I am a natural son—a vagabond—a nobody. When I
came of age I received an anonymous letter, informing me that
a sum—I need not say what—but more than enough for all I
need, was lodged at an English banker's in my name; that my
mother had died in my infancy; that my father was also dead—
but recently; that as I was a child of love, and he was unwill-
ing that the secret of my birth should ever be traced, he had
provided for me, not by will, but in his life, by a sum con-
signed to the trust of the friend who now wrote to me; I need
give myself no trouble to learn more; faith, I never did. I am
young, healthy, rich—yes, rich Now you know all, and you
had better tell it, that I may win no man's courtesy and no
maiden's love upon false pretences. I have not even a right,
you see, to the name I bear. Hist! Let me catch that
squirrel.” s
With what a panther-like bound he sprang! The squirrel
eluded his grasp, and was up the oak-tree; in a moment he
was up the oak-tree too. In amazement I saw him rising from
bough to bough; saw his bright eyes and glittering teeth
through the green leaves; presently I heard the sharp piteous
cry of the squirrel, echoed by the youth’s merry laugh, -and
down, through that maze of green Margrave came, dropping
on the grass and bounding up, as Mercury might have
bounded with his wings at his heels.
“I have caught him—what pretty brown eyes!”
Suddenly the gay expression of his face changed to that of
a savage; the squirrel had wrenched itself half-loose and bitten
- .*-**
* *
f O2 - A STRANGE STURY.
him. The poor brute! In an instant its neck was wrung, its
body dashed on the ground; and that fair young creature,
every feature quivering with rage, was stamping his foot on his
victim again and again! It was horrible. I caught him by
the arm indignantly. He turned round on me like a wild beast
disturbed from its prey. His teeth set, his hand lifted, his
eyes like balls of fire.
“Shame!” said I calmly; “Shame on you!”
He continued to gaze on me a moment or so; his eye glar-
ing, his breath panting; and then, as if mastering himself with
an involuntary effort, his arm dropped to his side, and he
said quite humbly: “I beg your pardon; indeed I do. I
was beside myself for a moment; I cannot bear pain’’; and
he looked in deep compassion for himself at his wounded
hand. “Venomous brute!” And he stamped again on the
body of the squirrel, already crushed out of shape.
I moved away in disgust, and walked on.
But presently I felt my arm softly drawn aside, and a voice,
dulcet as the coo of a dove, stole its way into my ears. There
was no resisting the charm with which this extraordinary mortal
could fascinate even the hard and the cold; nor them, perhaps,
the least. For as you see in extreme old age, when the heart
seems to have shrunk into itself, and to leave but meagre and
nipped affections for the nearest relations if grown up, the indu-
rated egotism softens at once towards a playful child; or as you
see in middle life, some misanthrope, whose nature has been
soured by wrong and sorrow, shrink from his own species, yet
make friends with inferior races and respond to the caress of
a dog, so, for the worldling or the cynic, there was an attrac-
tion in the freshness of this joyous favorite of Nature; an at-
traction like that of a beautiful child, spoilt and wayward, or
of a graceful animal, half-docile, half-fierce.
“But,” said I, with a smile, as I felt all displeasure gone,
“such indulgence of passion for such a trifle is surely unworthy
a student of philosophy!”
“Trifle,” he said dolorously. “But I tell you it is pain;
pain is no trifle. I suffer. Look!”
I looked at the hand, which I took in mine. The bite no
doubt had been sharp; but the hand that lay in my own was
that which the Greek sculptor gives to a gladiator; not large
(the extremities are never large in persons whose strength
comes from the just proportion of all the members, rather than
the factitious and partial force which continued muscular exer-
tion will give to one part of the frame, to the comparative weak-
`s.
* *
* A STRANGE STORY, Io3
ening of the rest), but with the firm-knit joints, the solid fingers,
the finished nails, the massive palm, the supple polished skin,
in which we recognize what Nature designs the human hand to
be—the skilled, swift, mighty doer of all those marvels which
win Nature herself from the wilderness. º
“It is strange,” said I thoughtfully “but your susceptibility to
suffering confirms my opinion, which is different from the popu-
lar belief, viz., that pain is most acutely felt by those in whom the
animal organization being perfect, and the sense of vitality ex-
quisitely keen, every injury or lesion finds the whole system
rise, as it were, to repel the mischief and communicate the con-
sciousness of it to all those nerves which are the sentinels to the
garrison of life. Yet my theory is scarcely borne out by gen-
eral fact. The Indian savages must have a health as perfect
as yours; a nervous system as fine. Witness their marvellous
accuracy of ear, of eye, of scent, probably also of touch, yet
they are indifferent to physical pain; or must I mortify your
pride by saying that they have some moral quality defective in
you-which enables them to rise superior to it?”
“The Indian savages,” said Margrave sullenly, “have not a
health as perfect as mine, and in what you call vitality—the
blissful consciousness of life—they are as sticks and stones
compared to me.’’
“How do you know?” . -
“Because I have lived with them. It is a fallacy to suppose
that the savage has a health superior to that of the civilized
man,—if the civilized man be but temperate; and even if not,
he has the stamina that can resist for years the effect of excess
which would destroy the savage in a month. As to the sav-
age's fine perceptions of sense, such do not come from exquis-
ite equilibrium of system, but are hereditary attributes trans-
mitted from race to race, and strengthened by training from in-
fancy. But is a pointer stronger and healthier than a mastiff,
because the pointer through long and early teaching creeps
stealthily to his game and stands to it motionless? I will talk of
this later; now I suffer! Pain pain Has life any ill but pain?”
It so happened that I had about me some roots of the white
lily, which I meant, before returning home, to leave with a pa-
tient suffering from one of those acute local inflammations, in
which that simple remedy often affords great relief. I cut up
one of these roots, and bound the cooling leaves to the wound-
ed hand with my handkerchief,
“There,” said I. “Fortunately, if you feel pain more sen-
sibly than others, you will recover from it more quickly.”


O4.
A STRANGE. SiORY. **.
And in a few minutes my companion felt perfectly relieved,
and poured out his gratitude with an extravagance of expression
and a beaming delight of countenance which positively touched
Iſle.
‘‘I almost feel,” said I, “as I do when I have stilled an
infant's wailing, and restored it smiling to its mother's breast.”
“You have done so. I am an infant, and Nature is my
mother. Oh, to be restored to the full joy of life, the scent of
wild flowers, the song of birds, and this air—summer air—sum-
mer air!”
I know not why it was, but at that moment, looking at him
and hearing him, I rejoiced that Lilian was not at L
“But I came out to bathe. Can we not bathe in that
stream?’’ & •º-
“No. You would derange the bandage round your hand:
and for all bodily ills, from the least to the gravest, there is
nothing like leaving Nature at rest the moment we have hit on
the means which assist her own efforts at cure.”
“I obey, then; but I so love the water.”
“You swim, of course?”
“Ask the fish if it swim. Ask the fish if it can escape me!
I delight to dive down—down; to plunge after the startled
trout, as an otter does; and then to get amongst those cool,
fragrant reeds and bulrushes, or that forest of emerald weed
which one sometimes finds waving under clear rivers. Man
man could you live but an hour of my life you would know
how horrible a thing it is to die!”
“Yet the dying do not think so; they pass away calm and
smiling as you will one day.”
“I—I Die one day—die!” and he sank on the grass, and
buried his face amongst the herbage, sobbing aloud.
Before I could get through half a dozen words, meant to
soothe, he had once more bounded up, dashed the tears from
his eyes, and was again singing some wild, barbaric chant.
Abstracting itself from the appeal to its outward sense by melo-
dies of which the language was unknown, my mind soon grew
absorbed in meditative conjectures on the singular nature, so
wayward, so impulsive, which had forced intimacy on a man
grave and practical as myself.
I was puzzled how to reconcile so passionate a childishness,
so undisciplined a want of self-control, with an experience of
mankind so extended by travel, with an education, desultory
and irregular indeed, but which must, at some time or other,
have been familiarized to severe reasonings and laborious


**.
A STRANGE story. IoS
studies. In Margrave there seemed to be wanting that mys-
terious something which is needed to keep our faculties, however
severally brilliant, harmoniously linked together—as the string
by which a child mechanically binds the wild flowers it gathers;
shaping them at choice into the garland or the chain.
Ae
CHAPTER XXV.
My intercourse with Margrave grew habitual and familiar.
He came to my house every morning before sunrise; in the
evenings we were again brought together: sometimes in the
houses to which we were both invited, sometimes at his hotel,
sometimes in my own home.
Nothing more perplexed me than his aspect of extreme youth-
fulness, contrasted with the extent of the travels, which, if he
were to be believed, had left little of the known world unex-
plored. One day I asked him, bluntly, how old he was?
“How old do I look? How old should you suppose me to
be?”
“I should have guessed you to be about twenty, till you
spoke of having come of age some years ago.”
“Is it a sign of longevity when a man looks much younger
than he is?’’
“Conjoined with other signs, certainly 1"
“Have I the other signs?”
“Yes, a magnificent, perhaps a matchless, constitutional
organization. But you have evaded my question as to your
age; was it an impertinence to put it?”
“No, I came of age—let me see—three years ago.”
“So long since? Is it possible? I wish I had your secret!”
“Secret! What secret?’’
“The secret of preserving so much of boyish freshness in the
wear and tear of man-like passions and man-like thoughts.”
“You are still young yourself—under forty?”
“Oh, yes! Some years under forty.”
“And Nature gave you a grander frame and a finer sym-
metry of feature than she bestowed on me,”
“Pooh! Pooh! You have the beauty that must-charm the
eyes of woman, and that beauty in its sunny forenoon of youth.
Happy man! if you love—and wish to be sure that you are
loved again.”
“What you call love—the unhealthy sentiment, the feverish
folly—I left behind me, I think forever, when—”
w
Ioč A STRANGE STORY.
“Ay, indeed—when?”
“I came of age!” -º-,
“Hoary cynic! and you despise love! So did I once. Your
time may come.’’
“I think not. Does any animal, except man, love its fellow
she-animal as man loves woman?”
“As man loves woman? No, I suppose not.”
“And why should the subject animals be wiser than their
king! But, to return—you would like to have my youth and
my careless enjoyment of youth?’”
“Can you ask—who would not?” Margrave looked at me
for a moment with unusual seriousness, and then, in the abrupt
changes common to his capricious temperament, began to sing
softly one of his barbaric chants—a chant, different from any
I had heard him sing before; made either by the modulation
of his voice or the nature of the tune, so sweet that, little as
music generally affected me, this thrilled to my very heart's
core. I drew closer and closer to him, and murmured when
he paused:
‘‘Is not that a love-song?”
“No,” said he, “it is the song by which the serpent-charmer
charms the serpent.” *
*,
CHAPTER XXVI.
INCREASED intimacy with my new acquaintance did not
diminish the charm of his society, though it brought to light
Some startling defects, both in his mental and moral organiza-
tion. I have before said that his knowledge, though it had
swept over a wide circuit and dipped into curious, unfrequented
recesses, was desultory and erratic. It certainly was not that
knowledge, sustained and aspiring, which the poet assures us
is “the wing on which we mount to heaven.” So, in his fac-
ulties themselves there were singular inequalities, or contradic-
tions. His power of memory in some things seemed prodigious,
but when examined it was seldom accurate; it could apprehend
but did not hold together with a binding grasp what metaphy-
sicians call “complex ideas.” He thus seemed unable to put
it to any steadfast purpose in the sciences of which it retained,
vaguely and loosely, many recondite principles. For the sublime
and beautiful in literature he had no taste whatever, A pas-
sionate lover of nature, his imagination had no response to the
arts by which nature is expressed or idealized; wholly unaf-
A STRANGE STORY. Io?
fected by poetry or painting. Of the fine arts, music alone at-
tracted and pleased him. His conversation was often eminent-
ly suggestive, touching on much, whether in books or man-
kind, that set one thinking, but I never remember him to have
uttered any of those lofty or tender sentiments wh ch form the
Connecting lines between youth and genius. For if poets sing
to the young, and the young hail their own interpreters in poets,
it is because the tendency of both is to idealize the realities of
life; finding everywhere in the Real a something that is noble
or fair, and making the fair yet fairer, and the noble nobler
still.
In Margrave's character there seemed no special vices, no
special virtues; but a wonderful vivacity, joyousness, animal
good humor. He was singularly temperate, having a dislike to
wine, perhaps from that purity of taste which belongs to health
absolutely perfect. No healthful child likes alcohols, no animal,
except man, prefers wine to water.
But his main moral defect seemed to me in a want of sympa-
thy, even where he professed attachment. He who could feel
so acutely for himself, be unmanned by the bite of a squirrel,
ahd sob at the thought that he should one day die, was as cal-
lous to the sufferings of another as a deer who deserts and butts
from him a wounded comrade.
I give an instance of this hardness of heart where I should
have least expected to find it in him.
He had met and joined me as I was walking to visit a patient
on the outskirts of the town, when we fell in with a group of
children, just let loose for an hour or two from their day-school.
Some of these children joyously recognized him as having
played with them at their homes; they ran up to him, and he
seemed as glad as themselves at the meeting.
He suffered them to drag him along with them, and became
as merry and sportive as the youngest of the troup.
“Well,” said I, laughing, “if you are going to play at leap-
frog, pray don’t let it be on the high road, or you will be run
over by carts and draymen; see that meadow just in front to
the left—off with you there!”
“With all my heart,” cried Margrave, “while you pay your
visit. Come along, boys.”
A little urchin, not above six years old, but who was lame,
began to cry, he could not run—he should be left behind.
Margrave stooped. “Climb on my shoulder, little one, and
I'll be your horse.”
The child dried its tears, and delightedly obeyed.
Io& A STRANGE STORY.
“Certainly,” said I to myself, “Margrave, after all, must have
a nature as gentle as it is simple. What other young man, so
courted by all the allurements that steal innocence from pleas.
ure, would stop in the thoroughfares to play with children?”
The thought had scarcely passed through my mind when I
heard a scream of agony. Margrave had leaped the railing
that divided the meadow from the road, and, in so doing, the
poor child, perched on his shoulder, had, perhaps from surprise
or fright, loosened its hold and fallen heavily—its cries were
piteous. Margrave clapped his hands to his ears: uttered an
exclamation of anger; and not even stopping to lift up the boy, to
examine what the hurt was, called to the other children to come
on, and was soon relling with them on the grass, and pelting
them with daisies. When I came up, only one child remained
by the sufferer—his little brother, a year older than himself.
The child had fallen on his arm, which was not broken, but
violently contused. The pain must have been intense. I car-
ried the child to his home, and had to remain there some time.
I did not see Margrave till the next morning. When he then
called, I felt so indignant that I could scarcely speak to him.
When at last I rebuked him for his inhumanity, he seemed sur-
prised; with difficulty remembered the circumstance, and then
merely said, as if it were the most natural confession in the
World:
“Oh, nothing so discordant as a child’s wail. I hate dis-
cords. I am pleased with the company of children; but they
must be children who laugh and play. Well, why do you look
at me so sternly? What have I said to shock you?”
“Shock me—you shock manhood itself! Go! I cannot talk
to you now. I am busy.”
But he did not go; and his voice was so sweet, and his ways
so winning, that disgust insensibly melted into that sort of for-
giveness one accords (let me repeat the illustration) to the deer
that forsakes its comrade. The poor thing knows no better.
And what a graceful, beautiful thing this was
The fascination—I can give it no other name—which Mar-
grave exercised was not confined to me, it was universal;
old, young, high, low, man, woman, child, all felt it. Never in
Low Town had stranger, even the most distinguished by fame,
met with a reception so cordial, so flattering. His frank con-
fession that he was a natural son, far from being to his injury,
served to interest people more in him, and to prevent all those
inquiries in regard to his connections and antecedents which
would otherwise have been afloat. To be sure, he was evident-
Å ŠTRANGE STORY. ió9
ly rich; at least he had plenty of money. He lived in the best
rooms in the principal hotel; was very hospitable; entertained
the families with whom he had grown intimate; made them
bring their children—music and dancing after dinner. Among
the houses in which he had established familiar acquaintance
was that of the mayor of the town, who had bought Dr. Lloyd's
collection of subjects in natural history. To that collection
the mayor had added largely by a very recent purchase. He
had arranged these various specimens, which his last acquisi-
tions had enriched by the interesting carcasses of an elephant
and a hippopotamus, in a large wooden building contiguous to
his dwelling, which had been constructed by a former proprie-
tor (a retired fox-hunter) as a riding-house. And being a man
who much affected the diffusion of knowledge, he proposed to
open this museum to the admiration of the general public, and,
at his death, to bequeath it to the Athenaeum or Literary Insti-
tute of his native town. Margrave, seconded by the influence
of the mayor's daughters, had scarcely been three days at L
before he had persuaded this excellent and public functionary
to inagurate the opening of his museum by the popular cere-
mony of a ball. A temporary corridor should unite the draw-
ing-rooms, which were on the ground floor, with the building
that contained the collection ; and thus the fête would be ele-
vated above the frivolous character of a fashionable amusement,
and consecrated to the solemnization of an intellectual insti-
tute. Dazzled by the brilliancy of this idea, the mayor an-
nounced his intention to give a ball that should include the sur-
vounding neighborhood, and be worthy, in all expensive re-
spects, of the dignity of himself and the occasion. A night
had been fixed for the ball—a night that became memorable
indeed to me! The entertainment was anticipated with a live-
ly interest, in which even the Hill condescended to share. The
Hill did not much patronize mayors in general; but when a
mayor gave a ball for a purpose so patriotic, and on a scale so
splendid, the Hill liberally acknowledged that Commerce was,
on the whole, a thing which the Eminence might, now and
then, condescend to acknowledge without absolutely derogat-
ing from the rank which Providence had assigned to it amongst
the High Places of earth. Accordingly, the Hill was permitted
by its Queen to honor the first magistrate of Low Town by a
promise to attend his ball. Now, as this festivity had originated
in the suggestion of Margrave, so, by a natural association of
ideas, every one, in talking of the ball, talked also of Mar-
grave.
I IO A STRANGE STORY.
The Hill had at first affected to ignore a stranger whose
début had been made in the mercantile circle of Low Town.
But the Queen of the Hill now said, sententiously: “This new
man in a few days has become a Celebrity. It is the policy of
the Hill to adopt Celebrities, if the Celebrities pay respect to
the Proprieties. Dr. Fenwick is requested to procure Mr.
Margrave the advantage of being known to the Hill.”
I found it somewhat difficult to persuade Margrave to accept
the Hill's condescending overture. He seemed to have a dis-
like to all societies pretending to aristocratic distinction—a dis-
like expressed with a fierceness so unwonted that it made one
suppose he had, at some time or other, been subjected to mor-
tification by the supercilious airs that blow upon heights so
elevated. However, he yielded to my instances, and accom-
panied me one evening to Mrs. Poyntz's house. The Hill was
encamped there for the occasion. Mrs. Poyntz was exceed-
ingly civil to him, and after a few commonplace speeches,
hearing that he was fond of music, consigned him to the car-
essing care of Miss Brabazon, who was at the head of the mu-
sical department in the Queen of the Hill's administration.
Mrs. Poyntz retired to her favorite seat near the window,
inviting me to sit beside her; and while she knitted in silence,
in silence my eye glanced towards Margrave in the midst of
the group assembled round the piano.
Whether he was in more than usually high spirits, or
whether he was actuated by a malign and impish desire to up-
set the established laws of decorum by which the gayeties of the
Hill were habitually subdued into a serene and somewhat pen-
sive pleasantness, I know not; but it was not many minutes
before the orderly aspect of the place was grotesquely changed.
Miss Brabazon having come to the close of a complicated
and dreary Sonata, I heard Margrave abruptly ask her if she
could play the Tarantella, that famous Neapolitan air which is
founded on the legendary belief that the bite of the tarantula
excites an irresistible desire to dance. On that highbred
spinster’s confession that she was ignorant of the air, and had
not even heard of the legend, Margrave said, “Let me play it
to you, with variations of my own.” Miss Brabazon graciously
yielded her place at the instrument, Margrave seated himself;
there was great curiosity to hear his performance. Mar-
grave's fingers rushed over the keys, and there was a general
start, the prelude was so unlike any known combination of
harmonious sounds. Then he began a chant—song I can
scarcely call it—words certainly not in Italian, perhaps in some
A ŠTRANGE STORY. II i
uncivilized tongue, perhaps an impromptu gibberish. And
the torture of the instrument now commenced in good earnest:
it shrieked, it groaned, wilder and noisier. Beethoven's Storm,
roused by the fell touch of a German pianist, were mild in
comparison; and the mighty voice, dominating the anguish of
the cracking keys, had the full diapason of a chorus. Cer-
tainly I am no judge of music, but to my ear the discord was
terrific; to the ears of better informed amateurs it seemed rav-
ishing. All were spellbound; even Mrs. Poyntz paused from
her knitting, as the Fates paused from their web at the lyre of
Orpheus. To this breathless delight, however, soon succeeded
a general desire for movement. To my amazement, I beheld
these formal matrons and sober fathers of families forming them-
selves into a dance, turbulent as a children’s ball at Christmas.
And when, suddenly desisting from his music, Margrave started
up, caught the skeleton hand of lean Miss Brabazon, and whirled
her into the centre of the dance, I could have fancied myself
at a witches' sabbat. My eye turned in scandalized alarm to
Mrs. Poyntz. That great creature seemed as much astounded
as myself. Her eyes were fixed on the scene in a stare of
positive stupor. For the first time, no doubt, in her life, she
was overcome, deposed, dethroned. The awe of her presence
was literally whirled away. The dance ceased as suddenly as
it had begun. Darting from the galvanized mummy whom
he had selected as his partner, Margrave shot to Mrs. Poyntz's
side, and said: “Ten thousand pardons for quitting you so
soon, but the clock warns me that I have an engagement else-
where.” In another moment he was gone.
The dance halted, people seemed slowly returning to their
senses, looking at each other bashfully and ashamed.
“I could not help it, dear,” sighed Miss Brabazon at last,
sinking into a chair, and casting her deprecating, fainting eyes
upon the hostess.
“It is witchcraft,” said fat Mrs. Bruce, wiping her fore-
head,
“Witchcraft!” echoed Mrs. Poyntz; “it does indeed look
like it. An amazing and portentous exhibition of animal spir-
its, and not to be endured by the Proprieties. Where on earth
can that young savage have come from ?”
“From savage lands,” said I. “So he says.”
“Do not bring him here again,” said Mrs. Poyntz. “He
would soon turn the Hill topsy-turvy. But how charming! I
should like to see more of him,” she added, in an under voice,
“if he would call on me some morning, and not in the pres-
II 2 A STRANGE STORY.
ence of those for whose Proprieties I am responsible. Jané
must be out in her ride with the Colonel.’’
Margrave never- again attended the patrician festivities of
the Hill. Invitations were poured upon him, especially by
Miss Brabazon and other old maids, but in vain.
“Those people,” said he, “are too tamed and civilized for
me; and so few young persons among them. Even that girl
Jane is only young on the surface; inside, as old as the World
or her mother. I like youth, real youth—I am young, I am
young!”
And indeed, I observed he would attach himself to some
young person, often to some child, as if with cordial and spe-
cial favor, yet, for not more than an hour or so, never distin-
guishing them by the same preference when he next met them.
I made that remark to him, in rebuke of his fickleness, one
evening when he found me at work on my Ambitious Book,
reducing to rule and measure the Laws of Nature.
‘‘It is not fickleness,” said he, “it is necessity.”
“Necessity' Explain yourself.”
“I seek to find what I have not found,” said he; “it is my
necessity to seek it, and among the young; and disappointed
in one, I turn to the other. Necessity again. But find it at
last I must.”
“I suppose you mean what the young usually seek in the
young; and if, as you said the other day, you have left love
behind you, you now wander back to re-find it.”
“Tush | If I may judge by the talk of young fools, love
may be found every day by him who looks out for it. What I
seek is among the rarest of all discoveries. You might aid me
to find it, and in so doing aid yourself to a knowledge far be-
yond all that your former experiments can bestow.” *
“Prove your words, and command my services,” said I,
smiling somewhat disdainfully.
“You told me that you had examined into the alleged phe-
nomena of animal magnetism, and proved some persons who
pretend to the gift which the Scotch call second sight to be
bungling impostors. You were right. I have seen the clair-
voyants who drive their trade in this town; a common gypsy
could beat them in their own calling. But your experience
must have shown you that there are certain temperaments in
which the gift of the Pythoness is stored, unknown to the pos-
sessor, undetected by the common observer; but the signs of
which should be as apparent to the modern physiologist as they
were to the ancient priest.”
A STRANGE STORY. 113
“I at least, as a physiologist, am ignorant of the signs—what
are they?”
“I should despair of making you comprehend them by mere
verbal description. I could guide your observation to distin-
guish them unerringly were living subjects before us. But not
one in a million has the gift to an extent available for the pur-
poses to which the wise would apply it. Many have imperfect
glimpses, few, few indeed, the unveiled, lucent sight. They
who have but the imperfect glimpses mislead and dupe the
minds that consult them, because, being sometimes marvel-
lously right, they excite a credulous belief in their general
accuracy; and as they are but translators of dreams in their
own brain, their assurances are no more to be trusted than are
the dreams of commonplace sleepers. But where the gift ex-
ists to perfection, he who knows how to direct and to profit by
it should be able to discover all that he desires to know for the
guidance and preservation of his own life. He will be fore-
warned of every danger, forearmed in the means by which
danger is avoided. For the eye of the true Pythoness matter
has no obstruction, space no confines, time no measurement.”
“My dear Margrave, you may well say that creatures so
gifted are rare; and, for my part, I would as soon search for a
unicorn, as, to use your affected expression, ſor a Pythoness.”
“Nevertheless, whenever there come across the course of
your practice some young creature to whom all the evil of the
world is as yet unknown, to whom the ordinary cares and
duties of the world are strange and unwelcome; who from the
earliest dawn of reason has loved to sit apart and to muse;
before whose eyes visions pass unsolicited; who converses with
those who are not dwellers on the earth, and beholds in the
space landscapes which the earth does not reflect—”
“Margrave, Margrave! Of whom do you speak?”
“Whose frame, though exquisitely sensitive, has still a health
and a soundness in which you recognize no disease; whose
mind has a truthfulness that you know cannot deceive you,
and a simple intelligence too clear to deceive itself; who is
moved to a mysterious degree by all the varying aspects of ex-
ternal nature—innocently joyous, or unaccountably sad—
when, I say, such a being comes across your experience, in-
form me; and the chances are that the true Pythoness is
found.”
I had listened with vague terror, and with more than one
exclamation of amazement, to descriptions which brought Lil-
ian Ashleigh before me; and I now sat mute, bewildered,
fiz; A STRANGE STORY,
breathless, gazing upon Margrave, and rejoicing that, at least,
Lilian he had never seen. º
He returned my own gaze steadily, searchingly, and then,
breaking into a slight laugh, resumed:
“You call my word ‘Pythoness’ affected. I know of no
better. My recollections of classic anecdote and history are
confused and dim; but somewhere I have read or heard that
the priests of Delphi were accustomed to travel chiefly into
Thrace or Thessaly, in search of the virgins who might fitly
administer their oracles, and that the oracles gradually ceased
in repute as the priests became unable to discover the organi-
zation requisite in the priestesses, and supplied by craft and
imposture, or by such imperfect fragmentary developments as
belong now to professional clairvoyants, the gifts which Nature
failed to afford. Indeed, the demand was one that must have
rapidly exhausted so limited a supply. The constant strain
upon faculties so wearing to the vital functions in their relent-
less exercise, under the artful stimulants by which the priests
heightened their power, was mortal, and no Pythoness ever
retained her life more than three years from the time that her
gift was elaborately trained and developed.”
“Pooh! I know of no classical authority for the details you
so confidently cite. Perhaps some such legends may be found
in the Alexandrian Platonists, but those mystics are no author-
ity on such a subject. After all,” I added, recovering from
my first surprise, or awe, ‘‘the Delphic oracles were proverbi-
ally ambiguous, and their responses might be read either way;
a proof that the priests dictated the verses, though their arts on
the unhappy priestess might throw her into real convulsions,
and the real convulsions, not the false gift, might shorten her
life. Enough of such idle subjects. Yet no One question
more. If you found your Pythoness, what then?”
“What then? Why, through her aid I might discover the
process of an experiment which your practical science would
assist me to complete.”
“Tell me of what kind is your experiment; and precisely
because such little Science as I possess is exclusively practical,
I may assist you without the help of the Pythoness.”
Margrave was silent for some minutes, passing his hand
several times, across his forehead, which was a frequent gesture
of his, and then rising, he answered, in listless accents:
“I cannot say more now, my brain is fatigued; and you are
not yet in the right mood to hear me. By the way, how close
and reserved you are with me!”
A STRANGE STORY. 115
“How so?”
“You never told me that you were engaged to be married.
You leave me, who thought to have won your friendship, to hear
what concerns you intimately from a comparative stranger.”
“Who told you?” *
“That woman wrth eyes that pry and lips that scheme, to
whose house you took me.”
“Mrs. Poyntz' Is it possible? When?'
“This afternoon. I met her in the street; she stopped me,
and, after some unmeaning talk, asked ‘if I had seen you
lately; if I did not find you very absent and distracted: no
wonder—you were in love. The young lady was away on a
visit, and wooed by a dangerous rival.’”
“Wooed by a dangerous rival!”
“Very rich, good-looking, young. Do you fear him? You
turn pale.”
“I do not fear, except so far as he who loves truly, loves
humbly, and fears not that another may be preferred, but that
another may be worthier of preference than himself. But that
Mrs. Poyntz should tell you all this does amaze me. Did she
mention the name of the young lady?”
“Yes; Lilian Ashleigh. Henceforth be more frank with me.
Who knows?—I may help you. Adieu !”
CHAPTERS XXVII.
WHEN Margrave had gone, I glanced at the clock—not yet
nine. I resolved to go at once to Mrs. Poyntz. It was not an
evening on which she received, but doubtless she would see
me. She owed me an explanation. How thus carelessly di-
vulge a secret she had been enjoined to keep? And this rival,
of whom I was ignorant? It was no longer a matter of won-
der that Margrave should have described Lilian's peculian
idiosyncrasies in his sketch of his fabulous Pythoness. Doubts
less, Mrs. Poyntz had, with unpardonable levity of indiscre-
tion, revealed all of which she disapproved in my choice. But
for what object? Was this her boasted friendship for me?
Was it consistent with the regard she professed for Mrs. Ash-
leigh and Lilian? Occupied by these perplexed and indignant
thoughts, I arrived at Mrs. Poyntz's house, and was admitted
to her presence. She was fortunately alone; her daughter and
the Colonel had gone to some party on the Hill. I would not
take the hand she held out to me on entrance; seated myself
If 6 A STRANGE STORY.
in stern displeasure, and proceeded at once to inquire if she
had really betrayed to Mr. Margrave the secret of my engage-
ment to Lilian.
“Yes, Allen Fenwick; I have this day told, not only Mr.
Margrave, but every person I met who is likely to tell it to
, some one else, the secret of your engagement to Lilian Ash-
leigh. I never promised to conceal it; on the contrary, I
wrote word to Anne Ashleigh that I would theréin act as my
own judgment counselled me. I think my words to you were
that ‘public gossip was sometimes the best security for the com-
pletion of private engagements.’’’
“Do you mean that Mrs. or Miss Ashleigh recoils from the
engagement with me, and that I should meanly compel them
both to fulfil it by calling in the public to censure them—if-
if-Oh, madam, this is worldly artifice indeed!”
“Be good enough to listen to me quietly. I have never yet
showed you the letter to Mrs. Ashleigh, written by Lady
Haughton, and delivered by Mr. Vigors. That letter I will
now show to you; but before doing so I must enter into a pre-
liminary explanation. Lady Haughton is one of those women
who love power, and cannot obtain it except through wealth
and station—by her own intellect never obtain it. When her
husband died she was reduced from an income of twelve thou-
sand a year to a jointure of twelve hundred, but with the ex-
clusive guardianship of a young son, a minor, and adequate
allowances for the charge; she continued, therefore, to preside
as mistress over the establishments in town and country; still
had the administration of her son's wealth and rank. She
stinted his education, in order to maintain her ascendency over
him. He became a brainless prodigal—spendthrift alike of
health and fortune. Alarmed, she saw that, probably, he
would die young and a beggar; his only hope of reform was in
marriage. She reluctantly resolved to marry him to a penni-
less, well-born, soft-minded young lady whom she knew she
could control; just before this marriage was to take place he
was killed by a fall from his horse. The Haughton estate
passed to his cousin, the luckiest young man alive; the same
Ashleigh Sumner who had already succeeded, in default of
male issue, to poor Gilbert Ashleigh's landed possessions.
Over this young man Lady Haughton could expect no influ-
ence. She would be a stranger in his house. But she had a
niece! Mr. Vigors assured her the niece was beautiful. And
if the niece could become Mrs. Ashleigh Sumner, then Lady
Haughton would be a less unimportant Nobody in the world,
*>
A STRANGE STORY. . 117
a’
because she would still have her nearest re.ation in a Some-
body at Haughton Park. Mr. Vigors had his own pompous
reasons for approving an alliance which he might help to ac-
complish. The first step towards that alliance was obviously to
bring into reciprocal attraction the natural charms of the young
lady and the acquired merits of the young gentleman. Mr.
Vigors could easily induce his ward to pay a visit to Lady
Haughton, and Lady Haughton had only to extend her invita-
tions to her niece; hence the letter to Mrs. Ashleigh, of which
Mr. Vigors was the bearer, and hence my advice to you, of
which you can now understand the motive. Since you thought
Lilian Ashleigh the only woman you could love, and since I
thought there were other women in the world who might do as
well for Ashleigh Sumner, it seemed to me fair for all parties that
Lilian should not go to Lady Haughton's in ignorance of the
sentiments with which she had inspired you. A girl can sel-
dom be sure that she loves until she is sure that she is loved.
And now,” added Mrs. Poyntz, rising and walking across the
room to her bureau—“now I will show you Lady Haughton's
invitation to Mrs. Ashleigh. Here it is!”
I ran my eye over the letter, which she thrust into my hand,
resuming her knitwork while I read. ,
The letter was short, couched in conventional terms of hol-
low affection. The writer blamed herself for having so long
neglected her brother's widow and child; her heart had been
wrapped up too much in the son she had lost; that loss had
made her turn to the ties of blood still left to her; she had
heard much of Lilian from their common friend, Mr. Vigors;
she longed to embrace so charming a niece. Then followed
the invitation and the postscript. The postscript ran thus, so
far as I can remember: “Whatever my own grief at my irre-
parable bereavement, I am no egotist, I keep my sorrow to my-
self. You will find some pleasant guests at my house, among
others our joint connection, young Ashleigh Sumner.”
“Women's postscripts are proverbial for their significance,”
said Mrs. Poyntz, when I had concluded the letter and laid it
on the table; “and if I did not at once show you this hypo-
critical effusion, it was simply because at the name Ashleigh
Sumner its object became transparent, not perhaps to poor
Anne Ashleigh nor to innocent Lilian, but to my knowledge of
the parties concerned, as it ought to be to that shrewd intelli-
gence which you derive partly from nature, partly from the in-
sight into life which a true physician cannot fail to acquire.
And if I know anything of you, you would have romantically
II.8 A STRANGE STORY.
A
said, had you seen the letter at first, and understood its covert
intention: ‘Let me not shackle the choice of the woman I
love, and to whom an alliance so coveted in the eyes of the
world might, if she were left free, be proffered.’”
‘‘I should not have gathered from the postscript all that you
See in it, but had its purport been so suggested to me, you are
right, I should have so said. Well, and as Mr. Margrave tells
me that you informed him that I have a rival, I am now to
conclude that the rival is Mr. Ashleigh Sumner?”
“Has not Mrs. Ashleigh or Lilian mentioned him in writing
to you?”
“Yes, both; Lilian very slightly; Mrs. Ashleigh with some
praise, as a young man of high character and very courteous
to her.’’
“Yet, though I asked you to come and tell me who were the
guests at Lady Haughton’s, you never did so.”
“Pardon me; but of the guests I thought nothing, and let-
ters addressed to my heart seemed to me too sacred to talk
about. And Ashleigh Sumner then courts Lilian How do
you know?”
‘‘I know everything that concerns me; and here, the ex-
plantion is simple. My aunt, Lady Delafield, is staying with
Lady Haughton. Lady Delafield is one of the women of fash-
ion who shine by their own light; Lady Haughton shines by
borrowed light, and borrows every ray she can find.”
“And Lady Delafield writes you word—”
“That Ashleigh Sumner is caught by Lilian's beauty.”
“And Lilian herself—’’
“Women like Lady Delafield do not readily believe that any
girl could refuse Ashleigh Sumner; considered in himself, he
is steady and good-looking; considered as owner of Kirby
Hall and Haughton Park, he has, in the eyes of any sensible
mother, the virtues of Cato and the beauty of Antinous.”
I pressed my hand to my heart—close to my heart lay a
letter from Lilian—and there was no word in that letter which
showed that her heart was gone from mine. I shook my head
gently, and Smiled in confiding triumph.
Mrs. Poyntz surveyed me with a bent brow and a com-
pressed lip. -
“I understand your smile,” she said ironically. ‘‘Very
likely Lilian may be quite untouched by this young man's
admiration, but Anne Ashleigh may be dazzled by so brilliant
a prospect for her daughter. And, in short, I thought it desir-
able to let your engagement be publicly known throughout the
y
A STRANGE STORY. II9
town º: that information will travel—it will reach Ashleigh
Sumner through Mr. Vigors, or others in this neighborhood,
with whom I know he corresponds. It will bring affairs to a
crisis, and before it may be too late. I think it well that Ash-
leigh Summer should leave that house; if he leave it for good,
So much the better, And, perhaps, the sooner Lilian returns
to L the lighter your own heart will be.”
“And for these reasons you have published the secret of-"
“Your engagement? Yes. Prepare to be congratulated
wherever you go. And now, if you hear either from mother
or daughter, that Ashleigh Sumner has proposed, and been, let
us say, refused, I do not doubt, that, in the pride of your
heart, you will come and tell me.’’ -
“Rely upon it, I will; but before I take leave, allow me to
ask, why you described to a young man like Mr. Margrave—
whose wild and strange humors you have witnessed and not
approved—any of those traits of character in Miss Ashleigh
which distinguish her from other girls of her age?”
“I? You mistake. I said nothing to him of her character.
I mentioned her name, and said she was beautiful, that was
all.”
“Nay, you said she was fond of musing, of solitude; that in
her fancies she believed in the reality of visions which might
flit before her eyes as they flit before the eyes of all imagina-
tive dreamers.”
“Not a word did I say to Mr. Margrave of such peculiarities
in Lilian; not a word more than what I have told you, on my
honor!”
Still incredulous, but disguising my incredulity with that
convenient smile by which we accomplish so much of the polite
dissimulation indispensable to the decencies of civilized life, I
took my departure, returned home, and wrote to Lilian,
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE conversation with Mrs. Poyntz left my mind restless and
disquieted. I had no doubt, indeed, of Lilian's truth, but could
I be sure that the attentions of a young man, with advantages
of fortune so brilliant, would not force on her thoughts the
contrast of the humbler lot and the duller walk of life in which
she had accepted as companion a man removed from her
romantic youth less by disparity of years than by gravity of
pursuits? And would my suit now be welcomed as it had been
p
I 2 O A STRANGE STORY.
*~-
by a mother even so unworldly as Mrs. Ashleigh? Why, too,
should both mother and daughter have left me so unprepared
to hear that I had a rival? Why not have implied some con-
soling assurance that such rivalry need not cause me alarm 2
Lilian's letters, it is true, touched but little on any of the per-
sons round her; they were filled with the outpourings of an
ingenuous heart, colored by the glow of a golden fancy. They
were written as if in the wide world we two stood apart alone,
consecrated from the crowd by the love that, in linking us
together, had hallowed each to the other. Mrs. Ashleigh's .
letters were more general and diffusive, detailed the habits of
the household, sketched the guests, intimated her continued
fear of Lady Haughton, but had said nothing more of Mr.
Ashleigh Sumner than I had repeated to Mrs. Poyntz. How-
ever, in my letter to Lilian I related the -intelligence that had
reached me, and impatiently I awaited her reply.
Three days after the interview with Mrs. Poyntz, and two
days before the long-anticipated event of the mayor's ball, I
was summoned to attend a nobleman who had lately been
added to my list of patients, and whose residence was about
twelve miles from L The nearest way was through Sir
Philip Derval’s park. I went on horseback, and proposed to
stop on the way to inquire after the steward, whom I had seen
but once since his fit, and that was two days after it, when he
called himself at my house to thank me for my attendance, and
to declare that he was quite recovered.
As I rode somewhat fast through the park, I came, however,
upon the steward, just in front of the house. I reined in my
horse and accosted him. He looked very cheerful.
“Sir,” said he, in a whisper, “I have heard from Sir Philip;
his letter is dated since—since—my good woman teld you what
I saw—well, since then. So that it must have been all a delu-
sion of mine, as you told her. And yet, well—well—we will
not talk of it, doctor. But I hope you have kept the secret.
Sir Philip would not like to hear of it, if he comes back.”
“Your secret is quite safe with me. But is Sir Philip likely
to come back?”
“I hope so, doctor. His letter is dated Paris, and that's
nearer home than he has been for many years; and—but bless
me—some one is coming out of the house? A young gentle-
man! Who can it be?” *
I looked, and to my surprise I saw Margrave descending
the stately stairs that led from the front door. The steward
turned towards him, and I mechanically followed, for I was
A Sºfº RANGE STORY. I 2 r
curious to know what had brought Margrave to the house of
the long-absent traveller,
It was easily explained. Mr. Margrave had heard at L
much of the pictures and internal decorations of the mansion.
He had, by dint of coaxing (he said, with his enchanting
laugh), persuaded the old housekeeper to show him the rooms.
“It is against Sir Philip's positive orders to show the house
to any stranger, sir; and the housekeeper has done very
wrong,” said the steward.
“Pray don’t scold her. I dare say Sir Philip would not
have refused me a permission he might not give to every idle
sight-seer. Fellow-travellers have a freemasonry with each
other; and I have been much in the same far countries as him-
self. I heard of him there, and could tell you more about him,
I dare say, than you know yourself.”
“You, sir! Pray do then.”
“The next time I come,” said Margrave gayly; and, with a
nod to me, he glided off through the trees of the neighboring
grove, along the winding footpath that led to the lodge.
“A very cool gentleman,” muttered the steward; “but what
pleasant ways he has You seem to know him, sir. Who is
he—may I ask?” *:
“Mr. Margrave. A visitor at L , and he has been a
great traveller, as he says; perhaps he met Sir Philip abroad.”
“I must go and hear what he said to Mrs. Gates; excuse
me, sir, but I am so anxious about Sir Philip.”
“If it be not too great a favor, may I be allowed the same
privilege granted to Mr. Margrave? To judge by the outside
of the house, the inside must be worth seeing; still, if it be
against Sir Philip's positive orders—”
“His orders were, not to let the Court become a show-
house—to admit none without my consent—but I should be
ungrateful indeed, doctor, if I refused that consent to you.”
I tied my horse to the rusty gate of the terrace-walk, and
followed the steward up the broad stairs of the terrace. The
great doors were unlocked. We entered a lofty hall with a
domed ceiling; at the back of the hall the grand staircase
ascended by a double flight. The design was undoubtedly
Vanbrugh's, an architect who, beyond all others, sought the
effect of grandeur less in space than in proportion. But Van-
brugh's designs need the relief of costume and movement, and
the forms of a more pompous generation, in the bravery of vel-
vets and laces, glancing amid those gilded columns, or de-
scending with stately tread those broad palatial stairs. His
*
1 22 A STRAN GE STORY,
X---
halls and chambers are so made for festival and throng, that
they become like deserted theatres, inexpressibly desolate, as
we miss the glitter of the lamps and the movement of the
aCtorS.
The housekeeper had now appeared; a quiet, timid old
woman. She excused herself for admitting Margrave—not
very intelligibly. It was plain to see that she had, in truth,
been unable to resist what the steward termed his “pleasant
ways.”
As if to escape from a scolding, she talked volubly all the
time, bustling nervously through the rooms, along which I fol-
lowed her guidance with a hushed footstep. The principal
apartments were on the ground-floor, or, rather, a floor raised
some ten or fifteen feet above the ground; they had not been
modernized since the date in which they were built. Hang-
ings of faded silk; tables of rare marble, and mouldered gild-
ing; comfortless chairs at drill against the wall; pictures, of
which connoisseurs alone could estimate the value, darkened
by dust or blistered by sun and damp, made a general charac-
ter of discomfort. On not one room, on not one nook, still
lingered some old smile of home. *
Meanwhile, I gathered from the housekeeper's rambling an-
swers to questions put to her by the steward, as I moved on,
glancing at the pictures, that Margrave's visit that day was not
his first. He had been to the house twice before; his ostensi-
ble excuse that he was an amateur in pictures (though, as I
had before observed, for that department of art he had no
taste); but each time he had talked much of Sir Philip. He
said that, though not personally known to him, he had resided
in the same towns abroad, and had friends equally intimate
with Sir Philip : but when the steward inquired if the visitor
had given any information as to the absentee, it became very
clear that Margrave had been rather asking questions than vol-
unteering intelligence.
We had now come to the end of the state apartments, the
last of which was a library. “And,” said the old woman, “I
don’t wonder the gentleman knew Sir Philip, for he seemed a
scholar, and looked very hard over the books, especially those
old ones by the fireplace, which Sir Philip, Heaven bless him,
was always poring into.” {
Mechanically I turned to the shelves by the fireplace, and
examined the volumes ranged in that department. I found
they contained the works of those writers whom we may class
together under the title of mystics—Iamblichus and Plotinus;
A STRANGE STORY. Í 23
-
Swedenborg and Behmen; Sandivogius, Van Helmont, Para-
celsus, Cardan. Works, too, were there, by writers less re-
nowned, on astrology, geomancy, chiromancy, etc. I began
to understand among what class of authors Margrave had
picked up the strange notions with which he was apt to interpo-
late the doctrines of practical philosophy.
“I suppose this library was Sir Philip's usual sitting-room?”
said I.
‘‘No, sir; he seldom sat here. This was his study”; and the
old woman opened a small door, masked by false book-backs.
I followed her into a room of moderate size, and evidently of
much earlier date than the rest of the house. “It is the only
room left of an older mansion,” said the steward, in answer to
my remark. “I have heard it was spared on account of the
chimney-piece. But there is a Latin inscription which will tell
you all about it. I don’t know Latin myself.”
The chimney-piece reached to the ceiling. The frieze of the
lower part rested on rude stone caryatides; the upper part was
formed of oak panels very curiously carved in the geometrical
designs favored by the taste prevalent in the reigns of Eliza-
beth and James, but different from any I had ever seen in the
drawings of old houses. And I was not quite unlearned in
Such matters, for my poor father was a passionate antiquary in
all that relates to mediaeval art. The design in the oak panels
was composed of triangles interlaced with varied ingenuity,
and enclosed in circular bands inscribed with the signs of the
Zodiac. &
On the stone frieze supported by the caryatides, immediate-
ly under the wood-work, was inserted a metal plate, on which
was written, in Latin, a few lines to the effect that “in this
room, Simon Forman, the seeker of hidden truth, taking refuge
from unjust persecution, made those discoveries in nature
which he committed, for the benefit of a wiser age, to the charge
of his protector and patron, the worshipful Sir Miles Derval,
knight.” º
Forman The name was not quite unfamiliar to me; but
it was not without an effort that my memory enabled me to
assign it to one of the most notorious of those astrologers or
soothsayers whom the superstition of an earlier age alternately
persecuted and honored.
The general character of the room was more cheerful than
the statelier chambers I had hitherto passed through, for it had
still the look of habitation. The arm-chair by the fireplace;
the knee-hole writing-table beside it; the sofa neal the recess
I 24 A STRANGE STORY.
º
of a large bay-window, with book-prop and candlestick screwed
to its back; maps, coiled in their cylinders, ranged under the
cornice; low, strong safes, skirting two sides of the room and
apparently intended to hold papers and title-deeds; seals care-
fully affixed to their jealous locks. Placed on the top of these
old-fashioned receptacles were articles familiar to modern use;
a fowling-piece here; fishing-rods there; two or three simple
flower-vases; a pile of music books; a box of crayons. All in
this room seemed to speak of residence and ownership; of the
idiosyncrasies of a lone single man, it is true, but of a man of
one’s own time—a country gentleman of plain habits but not
uncultivated tastes.
I moved to the window; it opened by a sash upon a large
balcony, from which a wooden stair wound to a little garden,
not visible in front of the house, surrounded by a thick grove
of evergreens, through which one broad vista was cut; and
that vista was closed by a view of the mausoleum.
I stepped out into the garden—a patch of sward with a
fountain in the centre, and parterres, now more filled with
weeds than flowers. At the left corner was a tall wooden sum-
mer-house or pavilion—its door wide open. “Oh, that’s where
Sir Philip used to study many a long summer's night,” said
the steward.
“What! in that damp pavilion?”
“It was a pretty place enough then, sir; but it is very old.
They say as old as the room you have just left.”
“Indeed, I must look at it, then.”
The walls of this summer-house had once been painted in
the arabesques of the Renaissance period; but the figures were
now scarcely traceable. The wood-work had started in some
places, and the sunbeams stole through the chinks and played
on the floor, which was formed from old tiles quaintly tesselated
and in triangular patterns, similar to those I had observed in
the chimney-piece. The room in the pavilion was large, fur-
nished with old worm-eaten tables and settles.
“It was not only here that Sir Philip studied, but sometimes
in the room above,” said the steward.
“How do you get to the room above? Oh! I see; a stair-
case in the angle.” I ascended the stairs with some caution,
for they were crooked and decayed; and, on entering the room
above, comprehended at once why Sir Philip had favored it.
The cornice of the ceiling rested on pilasters, within which
the compartments were formed into open unglazed arches, sur-
rounded by a railed balcony. Through these arches, on three
- A STRANGE STORY. I 25
~.
sides of the room the eye commanded a magnificent extent of
prospect. On the fourth side the view was bounded by the
mausoleum. In this room was a large telescope, and on step-
ping into the balcony, I saw that a winding stair mounted
thence to a platform on the top of the pavilion—perhaps once
used as an observatory by Forman himself.
“The gentleman who was here to-day was very much pleased
with this look-out, sir,” said the housekeeper.
“Who would not be 2 I suppose Sir Philip has a taste for
astronomy.”
“I dare say, sir,” said the steward, looking grave; “he likes
most out-of-the-way things.”
The position of the sun now warned me that my time pressed,
and that I should have to ride fast to reach my new patient at
the hour appointed. I therefore hastened back to my horse, and
spurred on, wondering whether, in the chain of association which
so subtly links our pursuits in manhood to our impressions in
childhood, it was the Latin inscription on the chimney-piece
that had originally biassed Philip Derval’s literary taste
towards the mystic jargon of the books at which I had contemp-
tuously glanced.
CHAPTER XXIX.
– I DID not see Margrave the following day, but the next morn-
ing, a little after sunrise, he walked into my study, according
to his ordinary habit.
“So you know something about Sir Philip Derval?” said I.
“What sort of a man is he?”
“Hateful!” cried Margrave; and then checking himself,
burst out into his merry laugh. “Just like my exaggerations!
I am not acquainted with anything to his prejudice. I came
across his track once or twice in the East. Travellers are al-
ways apt to be jealous of each other.’’
“You are a strange compound of cynicism and credulity.
But I should have fancied you and Sir Philip would have been
congenial spirits, when I found, among his favorite books, Van
Helmont and Paracelsus. Perhaps you, too, study Sweden
borg, or, worse still, Ptolemy and Lilly?”
“Astrologers? No! They deal with the future! I live
for the day; only I wish the day never had a morrow !”
“Have you not, then, that vague desire for the something
beyond; that not unhappy, but grand discontent with the
limits of the immediate Present, from which man takes his pas-
126 A STRANGE STORY.
sion for improvement and progress, and from which some sen-
timental philosophers have deduced an argument in favor of .
his destined immortality?”
“Eh!” said Margrave, with as vacant a stare as that of a
peasant whom one has addressed in Hebrew. “What farrago
of words is this? I do not comprehend you.”
“With your natural abilities,” I asked with interest, “do you
never feel a desire for fame?’’
“Fame? Certainly not. I cannot even understand it!”
“Well, then, would you have no pleasure in the thought that
you had rendered a service to humanity?”
Margrave looked bewildered: after a moment's pause, he
took from the table a piece of bread that chanced to be there,
opened the window, and threw the crumbs into the lane. The
sparrows gathered round the crumbs.
“Now,” said Margrave, “the sparrows come to that dull
pavement for the bread that recruits their lives in this world;
do you believe that one sparrow would be silly enough to fly to
a house-top for the sake of some benefit to other sparrows, or
to be chirruped about after he was dead? I care for science
as a sparrow cares for bread; it may help to something good
for my own life; and as for fame and humanity, I care for them
as the sparrow cares for the general interest and posthumous
approbation of sparrows!”
“Margrave, there is one thing in you that perplexes me more
than all else—human puzzle as you are—in your many eccen-
tricities and self-contradictions.”
“What is that one thing in me most perplexing?”
“This; that in your enjoyment of Nature you have all the
freshness of a child, but when you speak of Mah and his ob-
jects in the world, you talk in the vein of some worn-out and
hoary cynic. At such times, were I to close my eyes, I should
say to myself, ‘What weary old man is thus venting his spleen
against the ambition which has failed, and the love which has
forsaken him?” Outwardly the very personation of youth, and
revelling like a butterfly in the warmth of the sun and, the tints
of the herbage, why have you none of the golden passions of
the young? their bright dreams of some impossible love? their
sublime enthusiasm for some unattainable glory? The senti-
ment you have just clothed in the illustration by which you
place yourself on a level with the sparrows is too mean and too
gloomy to be genuine at your age. Misanthropy is among the
dismal fallacies of graybeards. No man, till man's energies
leave him, can divorce himself from the bonds of our social kind.”
A STRANGE STORY. 127
Wa
“Our kind—your kind, possibly But I—” He swept his
hand over his brow, and resumed, in strange, absent, and wist-
ful accents: “I wonder what it is that is wanting here, and of
which at moments I have a dim reminiscence.” Again he
paused, and gazing on me, said with more appearance of friend-
ly interest than I had ever before remarked in his countenance:
“You are not looking well. Despite your great physical
strength, you suffer like your own sickly patients.”
“True! I suffer at this moment, but not from bodily pain.”
“You have some cause of mental disquietude?”
“Who in this world has not?”
‘‘I never have.’’ --
“Because you own you have never loved; certainly, you
never seem to care for any one but yourself; and in yourself
you find an unbroken s sunny holiday—high spirits, youth,
health, beauty, wealth. Happy boy!”
At that moment my heart was heavy within me.
Margrave resumed:
“Among the secrets which your knowledge places at the
command of your art, what would you give for one which
would enable you to defy and to deride a rival where you place
your affections, which could lock to yourself, and imperiously
control, the will of the being whom you desire to fascinate, by
an influence paramount, transcendent?”
“Love has that secret,” said I, “and love alone.”
“A power stronger than love can suspend, can change love
itself. But if love be the object or dream of your life, love is
the rosy associate of youth and beauty. Beauty soon fades,
youth soon departs. What if in nature there were means by
which beauty and youth can be fixed into blooming duration—
means that could arrest the course, nay, repair the effects, of
time on the elements that make up the human frame?”
“Silly boy! Have the Rosicrucians bequeathed to you a
prescription for the elixir of life?”
“If I had the prescription I should not ask your aid to
discover its ingredients.”
“And is it in the hope of that notable discovery you have
studied chemistry, electricity, and magnetism? Again I say,
Silly boy!”
Margrave did not heed my reply. His face was overcast,
gloomy, troubled.
“That the vital principle is a gas,” said he abruptly, “I am
fully convinced. Can that gas be the one which combines ca-
lorie with oxygen?’”
I 28 A STRANGE STORY.
“Phosoxygen? Sir Humphry Davy demonstrates that gas
not to be, as Lavoisier supposed, caloric, but light, combined
with oxygen; and he suggests, not indeed that it is the vital
principle itself, but the pabulum of life to organic beings.” ”
“Does he?” said Margrave, his face clearing up. “Possibly,
possibly then, here we approach the great secret of secrets.
Look you, Allen Fenwick, I promise to secure to you unfailing
security from all the jealous fears that now torture your heart;
if you care for that fame which to me is not worth the scent of
a flower, the balm of a breeze, I will impart to you a knowl-
edge which, in the hands of ambition, would dwarf into com-
monplace the boasted wonders of recognized science. I will
do all this, if, in return, but for one month you will give your-
self up to my guidance in whatever experiments I ask, no mat-
ter how wild they may seem to you.”
“My dear Margrave, I reject your bribes as I would reject
the moon and the stars which a child might offer to me in ex-
change for a toy. But I may give the child its toy for nothing,
and I may test your experiments for nothing some day when I
have leisure.” --
I did not hear Margrave's answer, for at that moment my
servant entered with letters. Lilian's hand Tremblingly,
breathlessly, I broke the seal. Such a loving, bright, happy let-
ter; so sweet in its gentle chiding of my wrongful fears. It was
implied rather than said that Ashleigh Sumner had proposed
and been refused. He had now left the house. Lilian and
her mother were coming back; in a few days we should meet.
In this letter were enclosed a few lines from Mrs. Ashleigh.
She was more explicit about my rival than Lilian had been. If
no allusion to his attentions had been made to me before, it
was from a delicate consideration for myself. Mrs. Ashleigh
said that “the young man had heard from L of Our engage-
ment, and—disbelieved it”; but, as Mrs. Poyntz had so shrewdly
predicted, hurried at once to the avowal of his own attachment,
and the offer of his own hand. On Lilian's refusal his pride
had been deeply mortified. He had gone away manifestly in
more anger than sorrow. “Lady Delafield, dear Margaret
Poyntz's aunt, had been most kind in trying to soothe Lady
Haughton's disappointment, which was rudely expressed—so
rudely,” added Mrs. Ashleigh, “that it gives us an excuse to
leave sooner than had been proposed—which I am very glad ,
of. Lady Delafield feels much for Mr. Sumner; has invited
him to visit her at a place she has near Worthing: she leaves
* See Sir Humphry Davy on Heat, Light, and the Combinations of Light
A STRANGE STOI&Y. I29
to-morrow in order to receive him; promises to reconcile him to
our rejection, which, as he was my poor Gilbert's heir, and was
very friendly at first, would be a great relief to my mind. Lil-
ian is well, and so happy at the thoughts of coming back.”
When I lifted my eyes from these letters I was a new man,
and the earth seemed a new earth. I felt as if I had realized
Margrave's idle dreams—as if youth could never fade, love
could never grow cold.
“You care for no secrets of mine at this moment,” said Mar-
grave abruptly.
“Secrets,” I murmured; “none now are worth knowing. I
am loved—I am loved ''' * .
“I bide my time,” said Margrave; and as my eyes met his,
I saw there a look I had never seen in those eyes before—sinis-
ter, wrathful, menacing. He turned away, went out through
the sash door of the study; and as he passed towards the fields
under the luxuriant chestnut-trees, I heard his musical, bar-
baric chant—the song by which the serpent-charmer charms the
serpent, sweet, so sweet—the very birds on the boughs hushed
their carol as if to listen.
CHAPTER XXX.
I CALLED that day on Mrs. Poyntz, and communicated to her
the purport of the glad news I had received. She was still
at work on the everlasting knitting, her firm fingers linking
mesh inté mesh as she listened; and when I had done, she
laid her skein deliberately down, and said, in her favorite char-
acteristic formula: -
“So at last?—that is settled !”
She rose and paced the room as men are apt to do in reflec-
tion—women rarely need such movement to aid their thoughts—
her eyes were fixed on the floor, and one hand was lightly pressed
on the palm of the other—the gesture of a musing reasoner who
is approaching the close of a difficult calculation.
At length she paused, fronting me, and said, dryly:
“Accept my congratulations; life Smiles on you now—guard
that smile, and when we meet next, may we be even firmer
friends than we are now !”
“When we meet next—that will be to-night—you surely go
to the mayor's great ball? All the Hill descends to Low Town
to-night.”
“No ; we are obliged to leave L this afternoon; in less
than two hours we shall be gone—a family engagement. We
13o A STRANGE STORY.
may be weeks away; you will excuse me, then, if I take leave'
of you so unceremoniously. Stay, a motherly word of caution.
That friend of yours, Mr. Margrave! Moderate your inti-
macy with him; and especially after you are married. There is
in that stranger, of whom so little is known, a something which
I cannot comprehend—a something that captivates, and yet re-
volts. I find him disturbing my thoughts, perplexing my con-
jectures, haunting my fancies—I, plain woman of the world!
Lilian is imaginative; beware of her imagination, even when
sure of her heart. Beware of Margrave. The sooner he quits
L , the better, believe me, for your peace of mind. Adieu !
I must prepare for our journey.”
“That woman,” muttered I, on quittting her house, “seems
to have some spite against my poor Lilian, ever seeking to
rouse my own distrust of that exquisite nature which has just
given me such proof of its truth. And yet—and yet—is that
woman so wrong here? True! Margrave with his wild no-
tions, his strange beauty!—true—true—he might dangerously
encourage that turn for the mystic and visionary which distresses
me in Lilian. Lilian should not know him. How induce him
to leave L * Ah—those experiments on which he asks my
"assistance' I might commence them when he comes again,
and then invent some excuse to send him for completer tests to
the famous chemists of Paris or Berlin.” . te
CHAPTER XXXI.
It is the night of the mayor's ball ! The guests are assem-
bling fast; county families twelve miles round have been in-
vited, as well as the principal families of the town. All, before
proceeding to the room set apart for the dance, moved in
procession through the museum—homage to science before
pleasure!
The building was brilliantly lighted, and the effect was strik-
ing, perhaps because singular and grotesque. There, amidst
stands of flowers and evergreens, lit up with colored lamps,
were grouped the dead representatives of races, all inferior,
some deadly, to man. The fancy of the ladies had been per-
mitted to decorate and arrange these types of the animal
world. The tiger glared with glass eyes from amidst artificial
reeds and herbage, as from his native jungle; the grisly white
bear peered from a mimic iceberg. There, in front, stood the
sage elephant, facing a hideous hippopotamus; whilst an ana-
A STi. R A N G i. ºn"I Q Y. I3 I
conda twined its long spire round the stems of some tropical
tree in zinc. In glass cases, brought into full light by fes-
tooned lamps, were dread specimens of the reptile race—scor-
pion and vampire, and cobra-capella, with insects of gorgeous
hues, not a few of them with venomed stings.
But the chief boast of the collection was in the varieties
of the Genus Simia—baboons and apes, chimpanzees, with
their human visage, mockeries of man, from the dwarf mon-
keys perched on boughs lopped from the mayor's shrubberies,
to the formidable Ourang-Outang, leaning on his huge club.
Every one expressed to the mayor admiration; to each other
atipathy, for this unwonted and somewhat ghastly, though in-
structive, addition to the revels of a ball-room.
Margrave, of course, was there, and seemingly quite at
home, gliding from group to group of gayly-dressed ladies, and
brilliant with a childish eagerness to play off the showman.
Many of these grim fellow-creatures he declared he had seen,
played, or fought with. He had something true or false to
say about each. In his high spirits he contrived to make the
tiger move, and imitated the hiss of the terrible anaconda. All
that he did had its grace, its charm; and the buzz of admira-
tion and the flattering glances of ladies' eyes followed him
wherever he moved.
However, there was a general feeling of relief when the
mayor led the way from the museum into the ball-room. In
provincial parties guests arrive pretty much within the same
hour, and so few who had once paid their respects to the apes
and serpents, the hippopotamus and the tiger, were disposed
to repeat the visit, that long before eleven o'clock the museum
was as free from the intrusion of human life as the wilderness
in which its dead occupants had been born.
I had gone my round through the rooms, and, little disposed
to be social, had crept into the retreat of a window-niche,
pleased to think myself screened by its draperies; not that I
was melancholy, far from it—for the letter I had received that
morning from Lilian had raised my whole being into a sove-
reignty of happiness high beyond the reach of the young pleas-
ure-hunters, whose voices and laughter blended with that vul-
gar music. g
To read her letter again I had stolen to my nook—and, now,
sure that none saw me kiss it, I replaced it in my bosom, I
looked through the parted curtain; the room was compara-
tively empty; but there, through the open folding-doors, I saw
the gay crowd gathered round the dancers, and there again, at
I32 A STRANGE STORY. \
§
right angles, a vista along the corridor afforded a glimpse of
the great Elephant in the deserted museum.
Presently I heard, close beside me, my host's voice.
“Here’s a cool corner, a pleasant sofa, you can have it all to
yourself: what an honor to receive you under my roof, and on
this interesting occasion! Yes, as you say, there are great
changes in L since you left us. Society has much im-
proved. I must look about and find some persons to introduce
to you. Clever! Oh, I know your tastes. We have a wonder-
ful man—a new doctor. Carries all before him—very high
character, too—good old family—greatly looked up to, even
apart from his profession. Dogmatic a little—a Sir Oracle—
‘Lets no dog bark’; you remember the quotation—Shakspeare.
Where on earth is he? My dear Sir Philip, I am sure you
would enjoy his conversation.’’
Sir Philip ! Could it be Sir Philip Derval to whom the
mayor was giving a flattering, yet scarcely propitiatory, descrip-
tion of myself? Curiosity combined with a sense of propriety
in not keeping myself an unsuspected listener: I emerged from
the curtain, but silently, and reached the centre of the room
before the mayor perceived me. He then came up to me
eagerly, linked his arm in mine, and leading me to a gentleman
seated on a sofa, close by the window I had quitted, said:
“Doctor, I must present you to Sir Philip Derval, just re-
turned to England, and not six hours in L . If you would
like to see the museum again, Sir Philip, the doctor, I am sure,
will accompany you.’’
“No, I thank you; it is painful to me at present, to see,
even under your roof, the collection which my poor dear
friend, Dr. Lloyd, was so proudly beginning to form when I
left these parts.”
“Ay, Sir Philip—Dr. Lloyd was a worthy man in his way,
but sadly duped in his latter years; took to mesmerism, only
think! But our young doctor here showed him up, I can tell
you.”
Sir Philip, who had acknowledged my first introduction to
his acquaintance by the quiet courtesy with which a well-bred
man goes through a ceremony that custom enables him to en-
dure with equal ease and indifference, now evinced by a slight
change of manner how little the mayor's deference to my dis-
pute with Dr. Lloyd advanced me in his good opinion. He
turned away with a bow more formal than his first one, and
said calmly:
“I regret to hear that a man so simple-minded and so sen-
A STRANGE STORY. 133
sitive as Dr. Lloyd should have provoked an encounter in
which I can well conceive him to have been worsted. With
your leave, Mr. Mayor, I will look into your ball-room. I
may perhaps find there some old acquaintances.”
He walked towards the dancers, and the mayor, linking his
arm in mine, followed close behind, saying in his loud hearty
tones :
“Come along, you too, Dr. Fenwick, my girls are there;
you have not spoken to them yet.”
Sir Philip, who was then half-way across the room, turned
round abruptly, and, looking me full in the face, said:
“Fenwick, is your name Fenwick?—Allen Fenwick?”
“That is my name, Sir Philip.” sº
“Then permit me to shake you by the hand; you are no
stranger, and no mere acquaintance to me. Mr. Mayor, we
will look into your ball-room later: do not let us keep you now
from your other guests.” *
The mayor, not in the least offended by being thus summar-
ily dismissed, smiled, walked on, and was soon lost amongst
the crowd.
Sir Philip, still retaining my hand, reseated himself on the
sofa, and I took my place by his side. The room was still
deserted; now and then a straggler from the ball-room looked
in for a moment, and then sauntered back to the central place
of attraction.
“I am trying to guess,” said I, “how my name should be
known to you. Possibly you may, in some visit to the Lakes,
have known my father?”
‘‘No; I know none of your name but yourself—if, indeed,
as I doubt not, you are the Allen Fenwick to whom I owe no
small obligation. You were a medical student at Edinburgh
in the year p'
“Yes.” º *
“So! At that time there was also at Edinburgh a young
man, named Richard Strahan. He lodged in a fourth flat in
the Old Town.”
“I remember him very well.”
“And you remember, also, that a fire broke out at night in
the house in which he lodged; that when it was discovered,
there seemed no hope of saving him. The flames wrapt the
lower part of the house; the staircase had given way. A boy,
scarcely so old as himself, was the only human bevng in the
crowd who dared to scale the ladder, that even then scarcely
reached the windows from which the smoke rolled in volumes;
y
tº
134 A STRAN Giº STORY,
*
that boy penetrated into the room—found the inmate almost
insensible—rallied, supported, dragged him to the window—
got him on the ladder—saved his life then—and his life later,
by nursing with a woman's tenderness, through the fever
caused by terror and excitement, the fellow-creature he had
rescued by a man's daring. The name of that gallant student
was Allen Fenwick, and Richard Strahan is my nearest living
relation. Are we friends now?”
I answered confusedly. H had almost forgotten the circum-
stances referred to. Richard Strahan had not been one of my
more intimate companions; and I had never seen nor heard of
him since leaving college. I inquired what had become of
him. *.
“He is at the Scotch bar,” said Sir Philip, “and of course
without practice. I understand that he has fair average abil-
ities, but no application. If I am rightly informed, he is,
however, a thoroughly honorable, upright man, and of an affec-
tionate and grateful disposition.”
“I can answer for all you have said in his praise. He had
the qualities you name too deeply rooted in youth to have lost
them now.’’ *
Sir Philip remained for some moments in a musing silence.
And I took advantage of that silence to examine him with more
minute attention than I had done beſore, much as the first
sight of him had struck me.
He was somewhat below the common height. So delicately
formed that one might call him rather fragile than slight. But
in his carriage and air there was remarkable dignity. His
countenance was at direct variance with his figure. For as
delicacy was the attribute of the last, so power was unmistak-
ably the characteristic of the first. He looked fully the age
his steward had ascribed to him—about forty-eight; at a super-
ficial, glance, more; for his hair was prematurely white—not
gray, but white as snow. But his eyebrows were still jet black,
and his eyes, equally dark, were serenely bright. His forehead
was magnificent; lofty, and spacious, and with only one slight
wrinkle between the brows. His complexion was sunburnt,
showing no sign of weak health. The outline of his lips was
that which I have often remarked in men accustomed to great
dangers, and contracting in such dangers the habit of self-
reliance; firm and quiet, compressed without an effort. And
the power of this very noble countenance was not intimidating,
not aggressive; it was mild, it was benignant. A man op-
pressed by some formidable tyranny, and despairing to find a
A STRANGE STORY. f35
protector, would, on seeing that face, have said: “Here is one
who can protect me, and who will!”
Sir Philip was the first to break the silence.
‘‘I have so many relations scattered over England, that for-
tunately not one of them can venture to calculate on my prop-
erty if I die childless, and therefore not one of them can feel
himself injured, when, a few weeks hence, he shall read in the
newspapers that Philip Derval is married. But for Richard
Strahan, at least, though I never saw him, I must do some-
thing before the newspapers make that announcement. His
sister was very dear to me.”
“Your neighbors, Sir Philip, will rejoice at your marriage,
since, I presume, it may induce you to settle amongst them
at Derval Court.”
“At Derval Court! No! I shall not settle there.” Again he
paused a moment or so, and then went on: “I have long lived
a wandering life, and in it learned much that the wisdom of
cities cannot teach. I return to my native land with a pro-
found conviction that the happiest life is the life most in com-
mon with all. I have gone out of my way to do what I deemed
good, and to avert or mitigate what appeared to me evil. I
pause now and ask myself, whether the most virtuous existence
be not that in which virtue flows spontaneously from the springs
of quiet every day action—when a man does good without rest-
lessly seeking it, does good unconsciously, simply because he
is good and he lives? Better, perhaps, for me, if I had thought
So long ago! And now I come back to England with the in-
tention of marrying, late in life though it be, and with such
hopes of happiness as any matter-of-fact man may form. But
my hope will not be at Derval Court. I shall reside either in
London or its immediate neighborhood, and seek to gather
round me minds by which I can correct, if I cannot confide to
them, the knowledge I myself have acquired.”
“Nay, if, as I have accidentally heard, you are fond of scien-
tific pursuits, I cannot wonder that, after so long an absence
from England, you should feel interest in learning what new
discoveries have been made, what new ideas are unfolding the
germs of discoveries yet to be. But, pardon me, if in answer
to your concluding remark, I venture to say that no man can
hope to correct any error in his own knowledge, unless he has
the courage to confide the error to those who can correct. La
Place has said, ‘Tout se tient dans le chaíne immense des véri-
tes'; and the mistake we make in some science we have spe-
cially cultivated is often to be seen by the light of a separate
136 A STRANGE STORY.
science as specially cultivated by another. Thus, in the inves-
tigation of truth, frank exposition to congenial minds is essen-
tial to the earnest seeker.’’
“I am pleased with what you say,” said Sir Philip, “and I
shall be still more pleased to find in you the very confidant I
require. But what was your controversy with my old friend,
Dr. Lloyd? Do I understand our host rightly, that it related
to what in Europe has of late days obtained the name of mes-
merism 2’’
I had conceived a strong desire to conciliate the good opin-
ion of a man who had treated me withso singular and so famil-
iar a kindness, and it was sincerely that I expressed my regret
at the acerbity with which I had assailed Dr. Lloyd; but of his
theories and pretensions I could not disguise my contempt. I
enlarged on the extravagant fallacies involved in a fabulous
‘‘clairvoyance,” which always failed when put to plain test by
sober-minded examiners. I did not deny the effects of imag-
ination on certain nervous constitutions. “Mesmerism could
cure nobody; credulity could cure many. There was the well-
known story of the old woman tried as a witch; she cured
agues by a charm; she owned the impeachment, and was ready
to endure gibbet or stake for the truth of her talisman; more
than a mesmerist would for the truth of his passes! And the
charm was a scroll of gibberish sewn in an old bag and given
to the woman in a freak by the judge himself when a young
scamp on the circuit. But the charm cured? Certainly; just
as mesmerism cures. Fools believed in it. Faith, that moves
mountains, may well cure agues.”
Thus I ran on, supporting my views with anecdote and
facts, to which Sir Philip listened with placid gravity.
When I had come to an end, he said; “Of mesmerism, as
practised in Europe I know nothing, except by report. I can
well understand that medical men may hesitate to admit it
amongst the legitimate resources of Orthodox pathology; be-
cause, as I gather from what you and others say of its practice,
it must, at the best, be far too uncertain in its application to
satisfy the requirements of science. Yet an examination of its
pretensions may enable you to perceive the truth that lies hid
in the powers ascribed to witchcraft; benevolence is but a weak
agency compared to malignity; magnetism perverted to evil
may solve half the riddles of sorcery. On this, however, I say
no more at present. But as to that which you appear to reject
as the most preposterous and incredible pretension of the mes-
merists, and which you designate by the word ‘clairvoyance,'
A STRANGE STORY. I37
it is clear to me that you have never yourself witnessed even
those very imperfect exhibitions which you decide at once to
be imposture. I say imperfect, because it is only a limited
number of persons whom the eye or the passes of the mesmer-
ist can affect, and by such means, unaided by other means, it
is rarely indeed that the magnetic sleep advances beyond the
first vague shadowy twilight dawn of that condition to which
only in its fuller developments I would apply the name of
‘trance.’ But still trance is as essential a condition of being
as sleep or as waking, having privileges peculiar to itself. By
means within the range of the science that explores its nature
and its laws, trance, unlike the clairvoyance you describe, is
producible in every human being, however unimpressible to
mere mesmerism.”
“Producible in every human being! Pardon me if I say
that I will give any enchanter his own terms who will produce
that effect upon me.”
“Will you? You consent to have the experiment tried on
yourself?”
“Consent most readily.”
“I will remember that promise. But to return to the sub-
ject. By the word trance I do not mean exclusively the spiri-
tual trance of the Alexandrian Platonists. There is one kind
of trance—that to which all human beings are susceptible—in
which the soul has no share; for of this kind of trance, and it
was of this I spoke, some of the inferior animals are suscepti-
ble: and, therefore, trance is no more a proof of soul than is
the clairvoyance of the mesmerists, or the dream of our ordi-
nary sleep, which last has been called a proof of soul, though
any man who has kept a dog must have observed that dogs
dream as vividly as we do. But in this trance there is an ex-
traordinary cerebral activity—a projectile force given to the
mind, distinct from the soul—by which it sends forth its own
emanations to a distance in spite of material obstacles, just as
a flower, in an altered condition of atmosphere, sends forth the
particles of its aroma. This should not surprise you. Your
thought travels over land and sea in your waking state;
thought, too, can travel in trance, and in trance may acquire
an intensified force. There is, however, another kind of trance
which is truly called spiritual, a trance much more rare, and in
which the soul entirely supersedes the mere action of the mind.”
“Stay,” said I; “you speak of the soul as something dis-
tinct from the mind. What the soul may be, I cannot pretend
to conjecture. But I cannot separate it from the intelligence!”
138 A STRANGE STORY.
“Can you not? A blow on the brain can destroy the intel-
ligence! Do you think it can destroy the soul?
“From Marlbro's eyes the tears of dotage flow,
And Swift expires, a driveller and a show.’
Towards the close of his life even Kant's giant intellect left
him. Do you suppose that in these various archetypes of in-
tellectual man the soul was worn out by the years that loosened
the strings, or made tuneless the keys, of the perishing in-
strument on which the mind must rely for all notes of its
music? If you cannot distinguish the operations of the mind
from the essence of the soul, I know not by what rational induc-
tions you arrive at the conclusion that the soul is imperishable.”
I remained silent. Sir Philip fixed on me his dark eyes
quietly and searchingly, and, after a short pause, said:
“Almost every known body in nature is susceptible of three
several states of existence—the solid, the liquid, the aëriform.
These conditions depend on the quantity of heat they contain.
The same object at one moment may be liquid; at the next
moment solid; at the next, ačriform. The water that flows
before your gaze may stop consolidated into ice, or ascend into
air as a vapor. Thus is man susceptible of three estates of ex-
istence—the animal, the mental, the spiritual—and according
as he is brought into relation or affinity with that occult agency
of the whole natural world, which we familiarly call HEAT,
and which no science has yet explained; which no scale can
weigh, and no eye discern; one or the other of these three
states of beings prevails, or is subjected.”
I still continued silent, for I was unwilling discourteously
to say to a stranger, so much older than myself, that he seemed
to me to reverse all the maxims of the philosophy to which he
made pretence, in founding speculations audacious and ab-
struse upon unanalogous comparisons that would have been
fantastic even in a poet. And Sir Philip, after another pause,
resumed with a half-smile:
“After what I have said, it will perhaps not very much sur-
prise you when I add that but for my belief in the powers I as-
cribe to trance, we should not be known to each other at this
moment.’’
“How—pray explain!” ---
“Certain circumstances which I trust to relate to you in de-
tail hereafter, have imposed on me the duty to discover, and to
bring human laws to bear upon, a creature armed with terrible
powers of evil. This monster, for, without metaphor, monster
* A STRANGE STORY. I39
it is, not man like ourselves, has, by arts superior to those of
ordinary fugitives, however dexterous in concealment, hitherto
for years eluded my search. Through the trance of an Arab
child, who, in her waking state, never heard of his existence,
I have learned that this being is in England—is in L ... I
am here to encounter him. I expect to do so this very night,
and under this very roof.” &
“Sir Philip!”
“And if you wonder, as you well may, why I have been talking
to you with this startling unreserve, know that the same Arab
child, on whom I thus implicitly rely, informs me that your life
is mixed up with that of the being I seek to unmask and dis-
arm—to be destroyed by his arts or his agents, or to combine in
the causes by which the destroyer himself shall be brought to
destruction.’’
“My life—your Arab child named me, Allen Fenwick?”
“My Arab child told me that the person in whom I should
thus naturally seek an ally was he who had saved the life of the
man whom I then meant for my heir, if I died unmarried and
childless. She told me that I should not be many hours in this
town, which she described minutely, before you would be made
known to me. She described this house, with yonder lights,
and yon dancers. In her trance she saw us sitting together, as
we now sit. I accepted the invitation of our host, when he
suddenly accosted me on entering the town, confident that I
should meet you here, without even asking whether a person of
your name were a resident in the place; and now you know
why I have so freely unbosomed myself of much that might
well make you, a physician, doubt the soundness of my under-
standing. The same infant, whose vision has been realized up
to this moment, has warned me also that I am here at great
peril. What that peril may be I have declined to learn, as I
have ever declined to ask from the future, what affects only
my own life on this earth. That life I regard with supreme in-
difference, conscious that I have only to discharge, while it
lasts, the duties for which it is bestowed on me, to the best of
my imperfect power; and aware that minds the strongest and
souls the purest may fall into the sloth habitual to predestina-
rians, if they suffer the action due to the present hour to be
awed and paralyzed by some grim shadow on the future It
is only where, irrespectively of aught that can menace myself,
a light not struck out of my own reason can guide me to dis-
arm evil or minister to good, that I feel privileged to avail my-
self of those mirrors on which things, near and far, reflect them,
*
I 4o A STRANGE STORY.
selves calm and distinct as the banks and the mountain peak
are reflected in the glass of a lake. Here, then, under this
roof, and by your side, I shall behold him who—Lo the
moment has come —I behold him now !”
As he spoke these last words, Sir Philip had risen, and,
stratled by his action and voice, I involuntarily rose too.
Resting one hand dm my shoulder, he pointed with the other
towards the threshold of the ball-room. There, the prominent
figure of a gay group, the sole male amidst a fluttering circle of
silks and lawn, of flowery wreaths, of female loveliness, and
female frippery, stood the radiant image of Margrave. His
eyes were not turned towards us. He was looking down, and
his light laugh came soft, yet ringing, through the general
IIllllſ Inlli.
I turned my astonished gaze back to Sir Philip—yes, unmis-
takably it was on Margrave that his look was fixed.
Impossible to associate crime with the image of that fair youth!
Eccentric notions, fantastic speculations, vivacious egotism,
defective benevolence—yes. But crime !—No—impossible.
‘‘Impossible,” I said, aloud. As I spoke, the group had
moved on. Margrave was no longer in sight. At the same
moment some other guests came from the ball-room, and seated
themselves near us. -
Sir Philip looked round, and observing the deserted museum
at the end of the corridor, drew me into it.
When we were alone, he said in a voice quick and low, but
decided: i
“It is of importance that I should convince you at once of
the nature of that prodigy which is more hostile to mankind
than the wolf is to the sheepfold. No words of mine could at
present suffice to clear your sight from the deception which
cheats it. I must enable you to judge for yourself. It must
be now and here. He will learn this night, if he has not
learned already, that I am in the town. Dim and confused
though his memories of myself may be, they are memories still;
and he well knows what cause he has to dread me. I must put
another in possession of his secret. Another, and at once! For
all his arts will be brought to bear against me, and I cannot
foretell their issue. Go, then ; enter that giddy crowd—select
that seeming young man—bring him hither. Take care only
not to mention my name; and when here, turn the key in the
door, so as to prevent interruption—five minutes will suffice.”
“Am I sure that I guess whom you mean? The young light-
hearted man, known in this place under the name of Mar-
A STRANGE STORY. f4i
grave? The young man with the radiant eyes, and the curls
of a Grecian statue?”
“The same; him whom I pointed out; quick, bring him
hither.’’
My curiosity was too much roused to disobey. Had I con-
ceived that Margrave, in the heat of youth, had committed
some offence which placed him in danger of the law and in
the power of Sir Philip Derval, I possessed enough of the old
borderers’ blackmail loyalty to have given the man whose hand
I had familiarly clasped a hint and a help to escape. But all
Sir Philip's talk had been so out of the reach of common-sense,
that I rather expected to see him confounded by some egre-
gious illusion than Margrave exposed to any well-grounded accu-
sation. All, then, that I felt as I walked into the ball-room and
approached Margrave, was that curiosity which, I think, any
one of my readers will acknowledge that, in my position, him-
self would have felt.
- Margrave was standing near the dancers, not joining them,
but talking with a young couple in the ring. I drew him
- aside.
“Come with me for a few minutes into the museum; I wish
to talk to you.”
“What about?—an experiment?”
“Yes, an experiment.”
“Then I am at your service.”
In a minute more, he had followed me into the desolate
dead museum. I looked round, but did not see Sir Philip.
CHAPTER XXXII.
MARGRAVE threw himself on a seat just under the great ana-
conda; I closed and locked the door. When I had done so,
my eye fell on the young man's face, and I was surprised to see
that it had lost its color; that it showed great anxiety, great
distress; that his hands were visibly trembling.
“What is this?” he said, in feeble tones, and raising him-
self half from his seat as if with great effort. “Help me up—
come away ! Something in this room is hostile to me—hostile,
overpowering! What can it be?”
“Truth and my presence,” answered a stern, low voice; and
Sir Philip Derval, whose slight form the huge bulk of the dead
elephant had before obscured from my view, came suddenly
out from the shadow into the full rays of the lamps which lit
142 A STRANGE STORY.
up, as if for Man's revel, that mocking catacomb for the play-
mates of Nature which he enslaves for his service or slays for
his sport. As Sir Philip spoke and advanced, Margrave sank
back into his seat, shrinking collapsing, nerveless; terror
the most abject expressed in his staring eyes and parted lips.
On the other hand, the simple dignity of Sir Philip Derval's
bearing, and the mild power of his countenance, were alike in-
conceivably heightened. A change had come over the whole
man, the more impressive because wholly undefinable.
Halting opposite Margrave he uttered some words in a lan-
guage unknown to me, and stretched one hand over the young
man's head. Margrave at once became stiff and rigid as if
turned to stone. Sir Philip said to me:
“Place one of those lamps on the floor—there, by his feet.”
I took down one of the colored lamps from the mimic tree
round which the huge anaconda coiled its spires, and placed it
as I was told.
“Take the seat opposite to him and watch.”
I obeyed. .
Meanwhile, Sir Philip had drawn from his breast-pocket a
small steel casket, and I observed, as he opened it, that the in-
terior was subdivided into several compartments, each with its
separate lid; from one of these he took and sprinkled over the
flame of the lamp a few grains of a powder, colorless and sparkl-
ing as diamond dust; in a second or so, a delicate perfume,
wholly unfamiliar to my sense, rose from the lamp.
“You would test the condition of trance; test it, and in the
spirit.”
And, as he spoke, his hand rested lightly on my head.
Hitherto, amidst a surprise not unmixed with awe, I had pre-
served a certain defiance, a certain distrust. I had been as it
were, on my guard. -
But as those words were spoken, as that hand rested on my
head, as that perfume arose from the lamp, all power of will
deserted me. My first sensation "was that of passive subjuga-
tion; but soon I was aware of a strange intoxicating effect
from the odor of the lamp, round which there now played a
dazzling vapor. The room swam before me. Like a man op-
pressed by a nightmare, I tried to move, to cry out; feeling
that to do so would suffice to burst the thrall that bound me:
in vain.
A time that seemed to me inexorably long, but which, as I
found afterwards, could only have occupied a few seconds,
elapsed in this preliminary state, which, however powerless,
A STRANGE STORY. f43
was not without a vague, luxurious sense of delight. And then
suddenly came pain—pain, that in rapid gradations passed
into a rending agony. Every bone, sinew, nerve, fibre of the
body seemed as if wrenched open, and as if some hitherto
unconjectured Presence in the vital organization were forcing
itself to light with all the pangs of travail. The veins seemed
swollen to bursting, the heart laboring to maintain its action
by fierce spasms. I feel in this description how language fails
me. Enough that the anguish I then endured surpassed all
that I have ever experienced of physical pain. This dreadful
interval subsided as suddenly as it had commenced. I felt as if
a something undefinable by any name had rushed from me,
and in that rush that a struggle was over. I was sensible of
the passive bliss which attends the release from torture, and
then there grew on me a wonderful calm, and, in that calm, a con-
sciousness of some lofty intelligence immeasurably beyond that
which human memory gathers from earthly knowledge. I saw
before me the still rigid form of Margrave, and my sight
seemed, with ease, to penetrate through its covering of flesh,
and to survey the mechanism of the whole interior being.
‘‘View that tenement of clay which now seems so fair, as it
was when I last beheld it, three years ago, in the house of
Haroun of Aleppo!”
I looked, and gradually, and as shade after shade falls on
the mountain-side, while the clouds gather, and the sun van-
ishes at last, so the form and face on which I looked changed
from exuberant youth into infirm old age. The discolored,
wrinkled skin, the bleared, dim eye, the flaccid muscles, the
brittle, sapless bones. Nor was the change that of age alone;
the expression of the countenance had passed into gloomy dis-
content, and in every furrow a passion or a vice had sown the
seeds of grief.
And the brain now opened on my sight, with all its labyrinth
of cells. I seemed to have the clue to every winding in the
IY la Zè. A
I saw therein a moral world, charred and ruined, as, in some
fable I have read, the world of the moon is described to be;
yet withal it was a brain of magnificent formation. The powers
abused to evil had been originally of rare order; imagination
and scope; the energies that dare; the faculties that discover.
But the moral part of the brain had failed to dominate the
mental. Defective veneration of what is good or great; Cyn-
ical disdain of what is right and just; in fine, a great intellect,
first misguided, then perverted, and now falling with the decay of
I44 A strange story.
the body into ghastly but imposing ruins. Such was the world
of that brain as it had been three years ago. And still continus
ing to gaze thereon, I observed three separate emanations of
light; the one of a pale red hue, the second of a pale azure,
the third a silvery spark. --
The red light, which grew paler and paler as I looked, undu-
lated from the brain along the arteries, the veins, the nerves.
And I murmured to myself: “Is this the principle of animal
life?”
The azure light equally permeated the frame, crossing and
uniting with the red, but in a separate and distinct ray, exactly
as, in the outer world, a ray.of light crosses or unites with a
ray of heat, though in itself a separate individual agency.
And again I murmured to myself: “Is this the principle of
intellectual being, directing or influencing that of animal life;
with it, yet not of it?”
But the silvery spark! What was that? Its centre seemed
the brain. But I could fix it to no single organ. Nay, where-
ever I looked through the system, it reflected itself as ā star re-
flects itself upon water. And I observed that while the red
light was growing feebler and feebler, and the azure light was
confused, irregular—now obstructed, now hurrying, now almost
lost—the silvery spark was unaltered, undisturbed. So inde-
pendent of all which agitated and vexed the frame, that I be-
came strangely aware that if the heart stopped in its action,
and the red light died out, if the brain were paralyzed, that
energetic mind smitten into idiotcy and the azure light wander-
ing objectless as a meteor wanders over the morass, still that
silver spark would shine the same, indestructible by aught that
shattered its tabernacle. And I murmured to myself: “Can
that starry spark speak the presence of the soul? Does the
silver light shine within creatures to which no life immortal has
been promised by Divine Revelation?”
Involuntarily I turned my sight towards the dead forms in
the motley collection, and lo, in my trance or my vision, life
returned to them all! To the elephant and the serpent; to
the tiger, the vulture, the beetle, the moth; to the fish and the
polypus, and to yon mockery of man in the giant ape.
I seemed to see each as it lived in its native realm of earth,
or of air, or of water; and the red light played more or less
warm, through the structure of each, and the azure light, though
duller of hue, seemed to shoot through the red, and communi-
cate to the creatures an intelligence far inferior indeed to that
of man, but sufficing to conduct the current of their will, and
A STRANGE STORY. 145
influence the cunning of their instincts. But in none, from the
elephant to the moth, from the bird in which brain was the
largest, to the hybrid in which life seemed to live as in plants—
in none was visible the starry silver spark. I turned my eyes
from the creatures around, back again to the form cowering
under the huge anaconda, and in terror at the animation which
the carcases took in the awful illusions of that marvellous trance.
For the tiger moved as if scenting blood, and to the eyes of the
serpent the dread fascination seemed slowly returning.
Again I gazed on the starry spark in the form of the man.
And I murmured to myself: “But if this be the soul, why is it
so undisturbed and undarkened by the sins which have left
such trace and such ravage in the world of the brain?” And
gazing yet more intently on the spark, I became vaguely aware
that it was not the soul, but the halo around the soul, as the
star we see in heaven is not the star itself, but its circle of rays.
And if the light itself was undisturbed and undarkened it was
because no sins done in the body could annihilate its essence,
nor affect the eternity of its duration. The light was clear
within the ruins of its lodgment, because it might pass away,
but could not be extinguished.
But the soul itself in the heart of the light reflected back on
my own soul within me its ineffable trouble, humiliation, and
sorrow; for those ghastly wrecks of power placed at its sove-
reign command it was responsible; and, appalled by its own
sublime fate of duration, was about to carry into eternity the
account of its mission in time. Yet it seemed that while the
soul was still there, though so forlorn and so guilty, even the
wrecks around it were majestic. And the soul, whatever sen-
tence it might merit, was not among the hopelessly lost. For in
its remorse and its shame, it might still have retained what
could serve for redemption. And I saw that the mind was
storming the soul in some terrible rebellious war—all of thought,
of passion, of desire, through which the azure light poured its
restless flow, were surging up round the starry Spark, as in
siege. And I could not comprehend the war, nor guess what
it was that the mind demanded the soul to yield. Only the dis-
tinction between the two was made intelligible by their antag-
onism. And I saw that the soul, Sorely tempted, looked afar
for escape from the subjects it had ever so ill controlled, and
who sought to reduce to their vassal the power which had lost
authority as their king. I could feel its terror in the sympa-
thy of my own terror, the keenness of my own supplicating pity,
I knew that it was imploring release from the perils it confessed
146 A STRANGE STORY.
its want of strength to encounter. And suddenly the starry
spark rose from the ruins and the tumult around it—rose into
space and vanished. And where my soul had recognized the
presence of soul, there was a void. But the red light burned
still, becoming more and more vivid; and as it thus repaired
and recruited its lustre, the whole animal form which had been
so decrepit, grew restored from decay, grew into vigor and
youth; and I saw Margrave as I had seen him in the waking
world, the radiant image of animal life in the beauty of its
fairest bloom.
And over this rich vitality and this symmetric mechanism
now reigned only, with the animal life, the mind. The starry
light fled and the soul vanished, still was left visible the mind:
mind, by which sensations convey and cumulate ideas, and mus-
cles obey volition; mind, as in those animals that have more than
the elementary instincts; mind, as it might be in men, were men
not immortal. As my eyes, in the Vision, followed the azure
light, undulating, as before, through the cells of the brain, and
crossing the red amidst the labyrinth of the nerves, I perceived
that the essence of that azure light had undergone a change: it
had lost that faculty of continuous and concentred power by
which man improves on the works of the past, and weaves
schemes to be developed in the future of remote generations;
it had lost all sympathy in the past, because it had lost all con-
ception of a future beyond the grave; it had lost conscience, it
had lost remorse; the being it informed was no longer account-
able through eternity for the employment of time. The azure
light was even more vivid in certain organs useful to the con-
servation of existence, as in those organs I had observed it
more vivid among some of the inferior animals than it is in
man—secretiveness, destructiveness, and the ready perception
of things immediate to the wants of the day. And the azure
light was brilliant in cerebral cells, where before it had been
dark, such as those which harbor mirthfulness and hope, for
there the light was recruited by the exuberant health of the
joyous animal being. But it was lead-like, or dim, in the great
social organs through which man subordinates his own interest
to that of his species, and utterly lost in those through which
man is reminded of his duties to the throne of his Maker.
In that marvellous penetration with which the Vision en-
dowed me, I perceived that in this mind, though in energy far
superior to many; though retaining, from memories of the for-
mer existence, the relics of a culture wide and in some things
profound; though sharpened and quickened into formidable,
A STRANGE STORY. t47
if desultory, force whenever it schemed or aimed at the animal
self-conservation which now made its master impulse or in-
stinct; and though among the reminiscences of its state before
its change were arts which I could not comprehend, but which
I felt were dark and terrible, lending to a will never checked
by remorse, arms that no healthful philosophy has placed in
the arsenal of disciplined genius; though the mind in itself had
an ally in a body as perfect in strength and elasticity as man
can take from the favor of nature—still, I say, I felt that that
mind wanted the something, without which men never could
found cities, frame laws, bind together, beautify, exalt the ele-
ments of this world, by creeds that habitually subject them to
a reference to another. The ant, and the bee, and the beaver
congregate and construct; but they do not improve. Man im-
proves because the future impels onward that which is not
found in the ant, the bee, and the beaver—that which was gone
from the being before me. , -
I shrank appalled into myself, covered my face with my
hands, and groaned aloud: “Have I ever then doubted that
soul is distinct from mind?”
A hand here again touched my forehead, the light in the lamp
was extinguished, I became insensible, and when I recovered I
found myself back in the room in which I had first conversed
with Sir Philip Derval, and seated, as before, on the sofa, by
his side. -
CHAPTER XXXIII.
My recollections of all which I have just attempted to de-
scribe were distinct and vivid; except with respect to time, it
seemed to me as if many hours must have elapsed since I had
entered the museum with Margrave; but the clock on the man-
telpiece met my eyes as I turned them wistfully round the
room; and I was indeed amazed to perceive that five minutes
had sufficed for all which it had taken me so long to narrate,
and which in their transit had hurried me through ideas and
emotions so remote from anterior experience. w
To my astonishment now succeeded shame and indigna-
tion—shame that I, who had scoffed at the possibility of the
comparatively credible influences of mesmeric action, should
have been so helpless a puppet under the hand of the slight
fellow-man beside me, and so morbidly impressed by phan-
tasmagorical illusions; indignation that, by some fumes which
had special potency over the brain, I had thus been, as it were,
148 A ŠTRANGE STORY.
conjured out of my senses; and, looking full into the calm facé
at my side, I said, with a smile to which I sought to convey
disdain:
“I congratulate you, Sir Philip Derval, on having learned in
your travels in the East so expert a familiarity with the tricks
of its jugglers.”
“The East has a proverb,” answered Sir Philip, quietly,
“that the juggler may learn much from the dervish, but the
dervish can learn nothing from the juggler. You will pardon
me, however, for the effect produced on you for a few minutes,
whatever the cause of it may be, since it may serve to guard
your whole life from calamities, to which it might otherwise
have been exposed. And however you may consider that
which you have just experienced to be a mere optical illusion,
or the figment of a brain super-excited by the fumes of a vapor,
look within yourself and tell me if you do not feel an inward
and unanswerable conviction that there is more reason to shun
and to fear the creature you left asleep under the dead jaws of
the giant serpent, than there would be in the serpent itself, could
hunger again move its coils, and venom again arm its fangs.”
I was silent, for I could not deny that that conviction had
COme to me.
“Henceforth, when you recover from the confusion or anger
which now disturbs your impressions, you will be prepared to
listen to my explanations and my recital, in a spirit far different
from that with which you would have received them before you
were subjected to the experiment, which, allow me to remind
you, you invited and defied. You will now, I trust, be fitted
to become my confidant and my assistant; you will advise with
me how, for the sake of humanity, we should act together against
the incarnate lie, the anomalous prodigy which glides through
the crowd in the image of joyous beauty. For the present I quit
you. I have an engagement, on worldly affairs, in the town
this night. I am staying at L-I-, which I shall leave for
Derval Court to-morrow evening. Come to me there the day
after to-morrow; at any hour that may suit you the best.
Adieu !”.'
Here, Sir Philip Derval rose and left the room. I made no
effort to detain him. My mind was too occupied in striving to
recompose itself, and account for the phenomena that had
scared it, and for the strength of the impressions it still
retained.
I sought to find natural and accountable causes for effects
so abnormal.
; ,
*
A STRANGE STORY. I49
Lord Bacon suggests that the ointments with which witches
anointed themselves might have had the effect of stopping
the pores and congesting the brain, and thus impressing the
sleep of the unhappy dupes of their own imagination with
dreams so vivid that, on waking, they were firmly convinced
that they had been borne through the air to the Sabbat.
I remember also having heard a distinguished French trav-
eller, whose veracity was unquestionable, say, that he had wit-
nessed extraordinary effects produced on the sensorium by
certain fumigations used by an African pretender to magic.
A person, of however healthy a brain, subjected to the influ-
ence of these fumigations, was induced to believe that he saw
the most frightful apparitions.
However extraordinary such effects, they were not incredi-
ble—not at variance with our notions of the known laws of
nature. And to the vapor or the odors which a powder ap-
plied to a lamp had called forth, I was, therefore, prepared to
ascribe properties similar to those which Bacon's conjecture
ascribed to the witches' ointment; and the French traveller to
the fumigations of the African conjuror.
But, as I came to that conclusion, I was seized with an in-
tense curiosity to examine for myself those chemical agencies
with which Sir Philip Derval appeared so familiar; to test the
contents in that mysterious casket of steel. I also felt a curi-
osity no less eager, but more, in spite of myself, intermingled
with fear, to learn all that Sir Philip had to communicate of
the past history of Margrave. I could but suppose that the
young man must indeed be a terrible criminal, for a person of
years so grave, and station so high, to intimate accusations so
vaguely dark, and to use means so extraordinary, in order to
enlist my imagination rather than my reason against a youth in
whom there appeared none of the signs which suspicion inter-
prets into guilt.
While thus musing, I lifted my eyes and saw Margrave him-
self there, at the threshold of the ball-room—there, where Sir
Philip had first pointed him out as the criminal he had come to
L to seek and disarm ; and now, as then, Margrave was
the radiant centre of a joyous group; not the young boy-god
Iacchus, amidst his nymphs, could, in Grecian frieze or pic-
ture, have seemed more the type of the sportive, hilarious
vitality of sensuous nature. He must have passed, unobserved
by me in my preoccupation of thought, from the museum and
across the room in which I sat; and now there was as little
trace in that animated countenance of the terror it had exhib-
I5o A STRANGE STORY.
ited at Sir Philip's approach, as of the change it had under-
gone in my trance or my phantasy.
But he caught sight of me—left his young companions—
came gayly to my side.
“Did you not, ask me to go with you into that museum
about half an hour ago, or did I dream that I went with you?”
“Yes; you went with me into that museum.”
“Then pray what dull theme did you select to set me asleep
there?’’
I looked hard at him, and made no reply. Somewhat to my
relief, I now heard my host's voice:
“Why, Fenwick, what has become of Sir Philip Derval?”
“He has left; he had business.” And, as I spoke, again I
looked hard on Margrave.
His countenance now showed a change; not surprise, not
dismay, but rather a play of the lip, a flash of the eye, that
indicated complacency—even triumph.
“So | Sir Philip Derval! He is in L
here to-night? So ! as I expected.”
“Did you expect it?” said our host. “No one else did.
Who could have told you?”
“The movements of men so distinguished need never take us
by surprise. I knew he was in Paris the other day. It is nat-
ural eno' that he should come here. I was prepared for his
coming.”
Margrave here turned away towards the window, which he
threw open and looked out.
“There is a storm in the air,'
gaze into the night.
Was it possible that Margrave was so wholly unconscious of
what had passed in the museum, as to include in oblivion even
the remembrance of Sir Philip Derval's presence before he had
been rendered insensible, or laid asleep? Was it now only for
the first time that he learned of Sir Philip's arrival in L 3.
and visit to that house? Was there any intimation of menace
in his words and his aspect?
I felt that the trouble of my thoughts communicated itself
to my countenance and manner; and, longing for solitude
and fresh air, I quitted the house. When I found myself in
the street, I turned round and saw Margrave still standing at
the open window, but he did not appear to notice me; his
eyes seemed fixed abstractedly on space.
; he has been
y
said he, as he continued to
A STRANGE STORY. I5 I
CHAPTER XXXIV.
I w ALKED on slowly and with the downcast brow of a man
absorbed in meditation. I had gained the broad place in
which the main streets of the town converged, when I was over-
taken by a violent storm of rain. I sought shelter under the
dark archway of that entrance to the district of Abbey Hill,
which was still called Monk’s Gate. The shadow within the
arch was so deep that I was not aware that I had a compan-
ion till I heard my own name, close at my side. I recognized
the voice before I could distinguish the form of Sir Philip
Derval.
“The storm will soon be over,” said he quietly. “I saw it
coming on in time. I fear you neglected the first warning of
those sable clouds, and must be already drenched.”
I made no reply, but moved involuntarily away towards the
mouth of the arch.
“I see that you cherish a grudge against me!” resumed Sir
Philip. “Are you, then, by nature vindictive?”
Somewhat softened by the friendly tone of this reproach, I
answered, half in jest, half in earnest:
“You must own, Sir Philip, that I have some little reason
for the uncharitable anger your question imputes to me. But
I can forgive you on one condition.”
‘‘What is that?’”
“The possession, for half an hour, of that mysterious steel
casket which you carry about with you, and full permission to
analyze and test its contents.”
“Your analysis of the contents,” returned Sir Philip dryly,
“would leave you as ignorant as before of the uses to which
they can be applied. But I will own to you frankly, that it is
my intention to select some confidant among men of science,
to whom I may safely communicate the wonderful properties
which certain essences in that casket possess. I invite your
acquaintance, nay, your friendship, in the hope that I may
find such a confidant in you. But the casket contains other
combinations, which, if wasted, could not be re-supplied; at
least by any process which the great Master from whom I re-
ceived them placed within reach of my knowledge. In this
they resemble the diamond; when the chemist has found that
the diamond affords no other substance by its combustion than
pure carbonic acid gas, and that the only chemical difference
between the costliest diamond and a lump of pure charcoal is
3 3
I52 -- A STRANGE STORY. -
a proportion of hydrogen less than fºrm part of the weight of
the substance—can the chemist make you a diamond?”
“These, then, the more potent, but also the more perilous,
of the casket’s contents, shall be explored by no science, sub-
mitted to no test. They are the keys to masked doors in the
ramparts of Nature, which no mortal can pass through with-
out rousing dread sentries never seen upon this side her wall.
The powers they confer are secrets locked in my breast, to be
lost in my grave; as the casket which lies on my breast shall
not be transferred to the hands of another, till all the rest of
my earthly possessions pass away with my last breath in life,
and my first in eternity.”
‘‘Sir Philip Derval,” said I, struggling against the appeals
to fancy or to awe, made in words so strange, uttered in a
tone of earnest conviction, and heard amidst the glare of the
lightning, the howl of the winds, and the roll of the thunder;
“Sir Philip Derval, you accost me in language which, but for
my experience of the powers at your command, I should hear
with the contempt that is due to the vaunts of a mountebank,
or the pity we give to the morbid beliefs of his dupe. As it
is, I decline the confidence with which you would favor me,
subject to the conditions which it seems you would impose.
My profession abandons to quacks all drugs which may not be
analyzed, all secrets which may not be fearlessly told. I can-
not visit you at Derval Court. I cannot trust myself, volun-
tarily, again in the power of a man, who has arts of which I
may not examine the nature, by which he can impose on my
imagination and steal away my reason.’’
“Reflect well before you decide,” said Sir Philip, with a
solemnity that was stern. “If you refuse to be warned and to
be armed by me, your reason and your imagination will alike
be subjected to influences which I can only explain by telling
you that there is truth in those immemorial legends which dis-
pose to the existence of magic.” **
“Magic!”
“There is magic of two kinds—the dark and evil, appertain-
ing to witchcraft and necromancy; the pure and beneficent,
which is but philosophy, applied to certain mysteries in Nature
remote from the beaten tracks of science, but which deepened
the wisdom of ancient sages, and can yet unriddle the myths
of departed races.”
“Sir Philip,” I said, with impatient and angry interruption,
“if you think that a jargon of this kind be worthy a man of
your acquirements and station, it is at least a waste of time to
*:
~~~~
A STRANGE STORY. f53
address it to me. I am led to conclude that you desire to
make use of me for some purpose which I have a right to sup-
pose honest and blameless, because all you know of me is, that
I rendered to your relation services which cannot lower my
character in your eyes. If your object be, as you have intimat-
ed, to aid you in exposing and disabling a man whose ante-
cedents have been those of guilt, and who threatens with dan.
ger the society which receives him, you must give me proofs
that are not reducible to magic; and you must prepossess me
against the person you accuse, not by powders and fumes that
disorder the brain, but by substantial statements, such as jus-
tify one man in condemning another. And, since you have
thought fit to convince me that there are chemical means at
your disposal, by which the imagination can be so affected as
to accept, temporarily, illusions for realities, so I again de-
mand, and now still more decidedly than before, that while
you address yourself to my reason, whether to explain your
object or to vindicate your charges against a man whom I
have admitted to my acquaintance, you will divest yourself of
all means and agencies to warp my judgment, so illicit and
fraudulent as those which you own yourself to possess. Let the
casket, with all its contents, be transferred to my hands, and
pledge me your word that, in giving that casket, you reserve to
yourself no other means by which chemistry can be abused to
those influences over physical organization, which ignorance or
imposture may ascribe to—magic.”
“I accept no conditions for my confidence, though I think
the better of you for attempting to make them. If I live, you
will seek me yourself, and implore my aid. Meanwhile, listen
to me, and—”
“No; I prefer the rain and the thunder to the whispers that
steal to my ear in the dark from one of whom I have reason to
beware.’’
So saying, I stepped forth, and at that moment the lightning
flashed through the arch, and brought into full view the face
of the man beside me. Seen by that glare, it was pale as the
face of a corpse, but its expression was compassionate and serene.
I hesitated, for the expression of that hueless countenance
touched me; it was not the face which inspires distrust or fear.
“Come,” said I gently; “grant my demand. The casket—”
“It is no scruple of distrust that now makes that demand;
it is a curiosity which in itself is a fearful tempter. Did you
now possess what at this moment you desire, how bitterly you
would repent l’’
154 A STRANGE STORY.
“Do you still refuse my demand ”
‘‘I refuse.’’
“If then you really need me, it is you who will repent.”
I passed from the arch into the open space. The rain had
passed, the thunder was more distant. I looked back when I
had gained the opposite side of the way, at the angle of a
street which led to my own house. As I did so, again the
skies lightened, but the flash was comparatively slight and
evanescent; it did not penetrate the gloom of the arch; it did
not bring the form of Sir Philip into view; but, just under the
base of the outer buttress to the gateway, I descried the out-
line of a dark figure, cowering down, huddled up for shelter,
the outline so indistinct, and so soon lost to sight as the flash
faded, that I could not distinguish if it were man or brute. If
it were some chance passer-by, who had sought refuge from the
rain, and overheard any part of our strange talk, “the listener,”
thought I, with a half-smile, “must have been mightily per-
plexed.”
CHAPTER XXXV.
ON reaching my own home, I found my servant sitting up
for me with the information that my attendance was immedi-
ately required. The little boy whom Margrave's carelessness
had so injured, and for whose injury he had shown so little
feeling, had been weakened by the confinement which the
nature of the injury required, and for the last few days had
been generally ailing. The father had come to may house a few
minutes before I reached it, in great distress of mind, saying
that his child had been seized with fever, and had become de
lirious. Hearing that I was at the mayor's house, he had hur-
ried thither in search of me. s
I felt as if it were almost a relief to the troubled and haunt-
ing thoughts which tormented me, to be summoned to the ex-
ercise of a familiar knowledge. I hastened to the bedside of the
little sufferer, and soon forgot all else in the anxious struggle
for a human life. The struggle promised to be successful; the
worst symptoms began to yield to remedies prompt and ener-
getic, if simple. I remained at the house, rather to comfort and
support the parents than because my continued attendance was
absolutely needed, till the night was well-nigh gone; and all
cause of immediate danger having subsided, I then found my-
self once more in the streets. An atmosphere palely clear in
the gray of dawn had succeeded to the thunder-clouds of the
A STRANGE STORY. 155
stormy night; the street-lamps, here and there, burned wan
- and still. I was walking slowly and wearily, so tired out that
I was scarcely conscious of my own thoughts, when in a nar-
row lane, my feet stopped almost mechanically before a human
form stretched at full length in the centre of the road, right in
my path. The form was dark in the shadow thrown from the
neighboring houses. “Some poor drunkard,” thought I, and
the humanity inseparable from my calling not allowng me to
leave a fellow-creature thus exposed to the risk of being run
over by the first drowsy wagoner who might pass along the
thoroughfare, I stooped to rouse and to lift the form. What
was my horror when my eyes met the rigid stare of a dead
man's. I started, looked again; it was the face of Sir Philip
Derval He was lying on his back, the countenance up-
turned, a dark stream oozing from the breast—murdered by
two ghastly wounds—murdered not long since; the blood was
still warm. Stunned and terror-stricken, I stood bending over
the body. Suddenly I was touched on the shoulder.
“Hollo! what is this!” said a gruff voice.
“Murder!” I answered in hollow accents, which sounded
Strangely to my own ear. ſº
“Murder so it seems.” And the policeman who had
thus accosted me lifted the body.
“A gentleman by his dress. How did this happen? How did
you come here?” and the policeman glanced suspiciously at me.
At this moment, however, here came up another policeman,
in whom I recognized the young man whose sister I had
attended and cured.
“Dr. Fenwick,” said the last, lifting his hat respectfully,
and at the sound of my name his fellow-policeman changed his
manner, and muttered an apology.
I now collected myself sufficiently to state the name and
rank of the murdered man. The policeman bore the body to
their station, to which I accompanied them. I then returned to
Amy own house, and had scarcely sunk on my bed when sleep
came over me. But what a sleep! Never till then had I
known how awfully distinct dreams can be. The phantasma-
goria of the naturalist's collection revived. Life again awoke
in the serpent and the tiger, the scorpion moved, and the vul-
, ture flapped its wing. And there was Margrave, and there Sir
Philip; but their position of power was reversed. And Mar-
grave's foot was on the breast of the dead man. Still I slept
on till I was roused by the summons to attend on Mr. Vigors,
the magistrate to whom the police had reported the murder.
156 A STRANGE STORY.
I dressed hastily and went forth. As I passed through the
street, I found that the dismal news had already spread. I
was accosted on my way to the magistrate by a hundred eager,
tremulous, inquiring tongues.
The scanty evidence I Gould impart was soon given.
My introduction to Sir Philip at the mayor's house, our ac-
cidental meeting under the arch, my discovery of the corpse
some hours afterwards on my return from my patient, my pro-
fessional belief that the deed must have been done a very short
time, perhaps but a few minutes, before I chanced upon its vic-
tim. But, in that case, how account for the long interval that
had elapsed between the time in which I had left Sir Philip
under the arch, and the time in which the murder must have
been committed? Sir Philip could not have been wandering
through the streets all those hours. This doubt, however, was
easily and speedily cleared up. A Mr. Jeeves, who was one of
the principal solicitors in the town, stated that he had acted as
Sir Philip's legal agent and adviser ever since Sir Philip came
of age, and was charged with the exclusive management of
some valuable house property which the deceased had pos-
sessed in L ; that when Sir Philip had arrived in the town
late in the afternoon of the previous day, he had sent for Mr.
Jeeves; informed him that he, Sir Philip, was engaged to be
married; that he wished to have full and minute information
as to the details of his house property (which had greatly in-
creased in value since his absence from England), in connec-
tion with the settlements his marriage would render necessary;
and that this information was also required by him in respect
to a codicil he desired to add to his will.
He had, accordingly, requested Mr. Jeeves to have all the
books and statements concerning the property ready for his
inspection that night, when he would call, after leaving the ball
which he had promised the mayor, whom he had accidentally
met on entering the town, to attend. Sir Philip had also asked
Mr. Jeeves to detain one of his clerks in his office, in order to
serve, conjointly with Mr. Jeeves, as a witness to the codicil he
desired to add to his will. Sir Philip had accordingly come to
Mr. Jeeves's house a little before midnight; had gone carefully
through all the statements prepared for him, and had executed
the fresh codicil to his testament, which testament he had in
their previous interview given to Mr. Jeeves's care sealed up.
Mr. Jeeves stated that Sir Philip, though a man of remarkable
talents and great acquirements, was extremely eccentric, and
of a very peremptory temper, and that the importance attached
A STRANGE STORY. I57
to a promptitude for which there seemed no pressing occasion,
did not surprise him in Sir Philip as it might have done in an
ordinary client. Sir Philip said, indeed, that he should devote
the next morning to the draft for his wedding settlements,
according to the information of his property which he had
acquired; and after a visit of very brief duration to Derval
Court, should quit the neighborhood and return to Paris,
where his intended bride then was, and in which city it had
been settled that the marriage ceremony should take place.
Mr. Jeeves had, however, observed to him, that if he were
so soon to be married, it was better to postpone any revision of
testamentary bequests, since after marriage he would have to
make a new will altogether.
And Sir Philip had simply answered:
“Life is uncertain; who can be sure of the morrow?”
Sir Philip's visit to Mr. Jeeves's house had lasted some
hours, for the conversation between them had branched off
from actual business to various topics. Mr. Jeeves had not
noticed the hour when Sir Philip went; he could only say that
as he attended him to the street-door, he observed, rather to
his own surprise, that it was close upon daybreak.
Sir Philip's body had been found not many yards distant
from the hotel at which he had put up, and to which, there-
fore, he was evidently returning when he left Mr. Jeeves: an
old-fashioned hotel, which had been the principal one at
L when Sir Philip left England, though now outrivalled
by the new and more central establishment in which Margrave
was domiciled.
The primary and natural supposition was that Sir Philip had
been murdered for the sake of plunder; and this supposition
was borne out by the fact to which his valet deposed, viz:
That Sir Philip had about his person, on going to the may-
or's house, a purse containing notes and Sovereigns; and this
purse was now missing.
The valet, who, though an Albanian, spoke English fluently,
said that the purse had a gold clasp, on which Sir Philip's
crest and initials were engraved. Sir Philip's watch was,
however, not taken.
And now, it was not without a quick beat of the heart that
I heard the valet declare that a steel casket, to which Sir
Philip attached extraordinary value and always carried about
with him, was also missing. tº
The Albanian described this casket as of ancient Byzantine
workmanship, opening with a peculiar spring, only known to
158 A STRANGE STORY.
Sir Philip, in whose possession it had been, so far as the ser-
vant knew, about three years; when, after a visit to Aleppo, in
which the servant had not accompanied him, he had first ob-
served it in his master's hands. He was asked if this casket
contained articles to account for the value Sir Philip set on it—
such as jewels, banknotes, letters of credit, etc. The man
replied that it might possibly do so; he had never been allowed
the opportunity of examining its contents; but that he was
certain the casket held medicines, for he had seen Sir Phil-
ip take from it some small phials, by which he had per-
formed great cures in the East, and especially during a pesti-
lence which had visited Damascus, just after Sir Philip had
arrived at that city on quitting Aleppo. Almost every Euro-
pean traveller is supposed to be a physician; and Sir Philip
was a man of great benevolence, and the servant firmly be-
lieved him also to be of great medical skill. After this state-
ment, it was very naturally and generally conjectured that Sir
Philip was an amateur disciple of homoeopathy, and that the
casket contained the phials or globules in use among homoeop-
athists.
Whether or not Mr. Vigors enjoyed a vindictive triumph in
making me feel the weight of his authority, or whether his
temper was ruffled in the excitement of so grave a case, I can-
not say, but his manner was stern and his tone discourteous in
the questions which he addressed to me. Nor did the ques-
tions themselves seem very pertinent to the object of inves-
tigation.
“Pray, Dr. Fenwick,” said he, knitting his brows, and fixing
his eyes on me rudely, “did Sir Philip Derval, in his conversa-
tion with you, mention the steel casket which it seems he car-
ried about with him P’’
I felt my countenance change slightly as I answered “Yes.”
“Did he tell you what it contained?”
“He said it contained secrets.’’
“Secrets of what nature? Medicinal or chemical? Secrets
which a physician might be curious to learn and covetous to
possess?”
This question seemed to me so offensively significant that it
roused my indignation, and ºf answered haughtily, that “a phy-
sician of any degree of merited reputation did not much believe
in, and still less covet, those secrets in his art which were the
boast of quacks and pretenders.”
“My question need not offend you, Dr. Fenwick. I put it
in another shape: Did Sir Philip Derval so boast of the secrets
- A STRANGE STORY. I59
contained in his casket, that a quack or pretender might deem
such secrets of use to him?”
“Possibly he might, if he believed in such a boast.”
“Humph!—he might if he so believed. I have no more
questions to put to you, at present, Dr. Fenwick.”
Little of any importance in connection with the deceased,
or his murder, transpired in the course of that day’s examina-
tion and inquiries.
The next day, a gentleman distantly related to the young
lady to whom Sir Philip was engaged, and who had been for
some time in correspondence with the deceased, arrived at
L He had been sent for at the suggestion of the Alba-
nian servant, who said that Sir Philip had stayed a day at this
gentleman's house in London, on his way to L-, from Dover.
The new-comer, whose name was Danvers, gave a more
touching pathos to the horror which the murder had excited.
It seemed that the motives which had swayed Sir Philip in the
choice of his betrothed were singularly pure and noble. The
young lady's father—an intimate college friend—had been vis-
ited by a sudden reverse of fortune, which had brought on a
fever that proved mortal. He had died some years ago, leav-
ing his only child penniless, and had bequeathed her to the
care and guardianship of Sir Philip.
The orphan received her education at a convent near Paris;
and when Sir Philip, a few weeks since, arrived in that city
from the East, he offered her his hand and fortune.
“I know,” said Mr. Danvers, “from the conversation I held
with him when he came to me in London, that he was induced
to this offer by the conscientious desire to discharge the trust
consigned to him by his old friend. Sir Philip was still of an
age that could not permit him to take under his own roof a
female ward of eighteen, without injury to her good name. He
could only get over that difficulty by making the ward his
wife. “She will be safer and happier with the man she will
love and honor for her father's sake,” said the chivalrous gen-
tleman, ‘than she will be under any other roof I could find
for her.’’’
And now there arrived another stranger to L , sent for
by Mr. Jeeves, the lawyer—a stranger to I, , but not to
me; my old Edinburgh acquaintance, Richard Strahan.
The will in Mr. Jeeves's keeping, with its recent codicil, was
opened and read. The will itself bore date about six years
anterior to the testator's tragic death: it was very short, and,
with the exception of a ſew legacies, of which the most impor-
*
16o A STRANGE STORY. , *
tant was ten thousand pounds to his ward, the whole of his
property was left to Richard Strahan, on the condition that he
took the name and arms of Derval within a year from the date
of Sir Philip's decease. The codicil, added to the will the
night before his death, increased the legacy to the young lady
from ten to thirty thousand pounds, and bequeathed an annu-
ity of one hundred pounds a year to his Albanian servant.
Accompanying the will, and within the same envelope, was a
sealed letter, addressed to Richard Strahan, and dated at Paris
two weeks before Sir Philip's decease. Strahan brought that
letter to me. It ran thus: “Richard Strahan, I advise you to
pull down the house called Derval Court, and to build another
on a better site, the plans of which, to be modified according to
your own taste and requirements, will be found among my
papers. This is a recommendation, not a command. But I
strictly enjoin you entirely to demolish the more ancient part,
which was chiefly occupied by myself, and to destroy by fire,
without perusal, all the books and manuscripts found in the
safes in my study. I have appointed you my sole executor, as
well as my heir, because I have no personal friends in whom I
can confide as I trust I may do in the man I have never seen,
simply because he will bear my name and represent my lineage.
There will be found in my writing-desk, which always accom-
panies me in my travels, an autobiographical work, a record of
my own life, comprising discoveries, or hints at discovery, in
science, through means little cultivated in our age. You will
not be surprised that before selecting you as my heir and
executor, from a crowd of relations not more distant, I should
have made inquiries in order to justify my selection. The re-
sult of those inquiries informs me that you have not yourself
the peculiar knowledge nor the habits of mind that could
enable you to judge of matters which demand the attainments
and the practice of science; but that you are of an honest,
affectionate nature, and will regard as sacred the last injunc-
tions of a benefactor. I enjoin you, then, to submit the afore-
said manuscript memoir to some man on whose character for
humanity and honor you can place confidential reliance, and
who is accustomed to the sturdy of the positive sciences, more
especially chemistry, in connection with electricity and mag-
netism. My desire is that he shall edit and arrange this me-
moir for publication; and that, wherever he feels a conscientious
doubt whether any discovery, or hint of discovery, therein
contained, would not prove more dangerous than useful to
mankind, he shall consult with any other three men of science
A STRANGE STORY. I61
whose names are a guarantee for probity and knowledge, and
according to the best of his judgment, after such consultation,
suppress or publish the passage of which he has so doubted.
I own the ambition which first directed me towards studies of
a very unusual character, and which has encouraged me in their
pursuit through many years of voluntary exile, in lands where
they could be best facilitated or aided—the ambition of leaving
behind me the renown of a bold discoverer in those recesses of
nature which philosophy has hitherto abandoned to supersti-
tion. But I feel, at the moment in which I trace these lines, a
fear lest, in the absorbing interest of researches which tend to
increase to a marvellous degree the power of man over all mat-
ter, animate or inanimate, I may have blunted my own moral
perceptions; and that there may be much in the knowledge
which I sought and acquired from the pure desire of investi-
gating hidden truths, that could be more abused to purposes of
tremendous evil than be likely to conduce to benignant good.
And of this a mind disciplined to severe reasoning, and uninflu-
enced by the enthusiasm which has probably obscured my own
judgment, should be the unprejudiced arbiter. Much as I have
coveted and still do covet that fame which makes the memory
of one man the common inheritance of all, I would infinitely
rather that my name should pass away with my breath, than
that I should transmit to my fellow-men any portion of a knowl-
edge which the good might forbear to exercise and the bad
might unscrupulously pervert. I bear about with me, wherever
I wander, a certain steel casket. I received this casket, with
its contents, from a man whose memory I hold in profound
veneration. Should I live to find a person whom, after minute
and intimate trial of his character, I should deem worthy of
such confidence, it is my intention to communicate to him the
secret how to prepare and how to use such of the powders and
essences stored within that casket as I myself have ventured to
employ. Others I have never tested nor do I know how they
could be re-supplied if lost or wasted. But as the contents of
this casket, in the hands of any one not duly instructed as to
the mode of applying them, would either be useless, or con-
duce, through inadvertent and ignorant misapplication, to the
most dangerous consequences, so, if I die without having
found, and in writing named, such a confidant as I have de-
scribed above, I command you immediately to empty all the
powders and essences found therein into any running stream
of water, which will at once harmlessly dissolve them. On no
account must they be cast into fire!
\
I62 A ST RAN GE $ i O RY.
“This letter, Richard Strahan, will only come under your
eyes in case the plans and the hopes which I have formed for
my earthly future should be frustrated by the death on which I
do not calculate, but against the chances of which this will and
this letter provide. I am about to revisit England, in defiance
of a warning that I shall be there subjected to some peril which
I refuse to have defined, because I am unwilling that any mean
apprehension of personal danger should enfeeble my nerves in
the discharge of a stern and solemn duty. If I overcome that
peril, you will not be my heir; my testament will be remodelled;
this letter will be recalled and destroyed. I shall form ties
which promise me the happiness I have never hitherto found,
though it is common to all men—the affections of home, the
caresses of children, among whom I may find one to whom here-
after I may bequeath, in my knowledge, a far nobler heritage
than my lands. In that case, however, my first care would be to
assure your own fortunes. And the sum which this codicil as-
sures to my betrothed would be transferrred to yourself on my
wedding-day. Do you know why, never having seen you, I thus
select you for preference to all my other kindred?—why my
heart, in writing thus, warms to your image? Richard Strahan,
your only sister, many years older than yourself—you were then
a child—was the object of my first love. We were to have been
wedded, for her parents deceived me into the belief that she re-
turned my affection. With a rare and noble candor, she herself
informed me that her heart was given to another, who possessed
not my worldly gifts of wealth and station. In resigning my
claims to her hand, I succeeded in propitiating her parents to
her own choice. I obtained for her husband the living which he
held, and I settled on your sister the dower which, at her death,
passed to you as the brother to whom she had shown a mother’s
love, and the interest of which has secured you a modest inde-
pendence.
“If these lines ever reach you, recognize my title to rev-
erential obedience to commands which may seem to you wild,
perhaps irrational; and repay, as if a debt due from your own
lost sister, the affection I have borne to you for her sake.”
While I read this long and strange letter, Strahan sat by my
side, covering his face with his hands, and weeping with honest
tears for the man whose death had made him powerful and
rich.
“You will undertake the trust ordained to me in this letter,”
said he, struggling to compose himself. “You will read and
edit this memoir; you are the very man he himself would have
ſ
A STRANGE STORY. 163
selected. Of your honor and humanity there can be no doubt,
and you have studied with success the sciences which he speci-
fies as requisite for the discharge of the task he commands.”
At this request, though I could not be wholly unprepared
for it, my first impulse was that of a vague terror. It seemed
to me as if I were becoming more and more entangled in a mys-
terious and fatal web. But this impulse soon faded in the eager
yearnings of an ardent and irresistible curiosity.
I promised to read the manuscript, and in order that I might
fully imbue my mind with the object and wish of the deceased,
I asked leave to make a copy of the letter I had just read. To
this Strahan readily assented, and that copy I have transcribed
in the preceding pages.
I asked Strahan if he had yet found the manuscript; he said,
“No, he had not yet had the heart to inspect the papers left
by the deceased. He would now do so. He should go in a
day or two to Derval Court, and reside there till the murderer
was discovered, as doubtless he soon must be through the vigi-
lance of the police. Not till that discovery was made should
Sir Philip's remains, though already placed in their coffin, be
consigned to the family vault.” * -
Strahan seemed to have some superstitious notion that the
murderer might be more secure from justice if his victim were
thrust, unavenged, into the tomb.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE belief prevalent in the town ascribed the murder of Sir
Philip to the violence of some vulgar robber, probably not an
inhabitant of L Mr. Vigors did not favor that belief.
He intimated an opinion, which seemed extravagant and
groundless, that Sir Philip had been murdered, for the sake not
of the missing purse, but of the missing casket. It was cur-
rently believed that the solemn magistrate had consulted one
of his pretended clairvoyants, and that this impostor had gulled
him with assurances, to which he attached a credit that per-
verted into egregiously absurd directions his characteristic
activity and zeal. *--
Be that as it may, the coroner's inquest closed without cast-
ing any light on so mysterious a tragedy.
What were my own conjectures I scarcely dared to admit—
I certainly could not venture to utter them. But my suspi-
cions centred upon Margrave. That for some reason or other
164 • A STRANGE STORY.
he had cause to dread Sir Philip's presence in L was clear,
even to my reason. And how could my reason reject all the
influences which had been brought to bear on my imagination,
whether by the scene in the museum or my conversation with
the deceased? But it was impossible to act on such suspi-
cions—impossible even to confide them. Could I have told to
any man the effect produced on me in the museum, he would
have considered me a liar or a madman. And in Sir Philip's
accusations against Margrave, there was nothing tangible—
nothing that could bear repetition. Those accusations, if ana-
lyzed, vanished into air. What did they imply? That Mar-
grave was a magician, a monstrous prodigy, a creature excep-
tional to the ordinary conditions of humanity. Would the
most reckless of mortals have ventured to bring against the worst
of characters such a charge, on the authority of a deceased wit-
ness, and to found on evidence so fantastic the awful accusa-
tion of murder. But of all men, certainly I, a sober, practical
physician, was the last whom the public could excuse for such
incredible implications—and certainly, of all men, the last
against whom any suspicion of heinous crime would be readily
entertained was that joyous youth in whose sunny aspect life
and conscience alike seemed to keep careless holiday. But I
could not overcome, nor did I attempt to reason against, the
horror akin to detestation, that had succeeded to the fascinat-
ing attraction by which Margrave had before conciliated a lik-
ing founded rather on admiration than esteem.
In order to avoid his visits I kept away from the study in
which I had habitually spent my mornings, and to which he
had been accustomed to so ready an access. And if he called
at the front door, I directed my servant to tell him that I was
either from home or engaged. He did attempt for the first few
days to visit me as before, but when my intention to shun him
became thus manifest, desisted; naturally enough, as any other
man so pointedly repelled would have done.
I abstained from all those houses in which I was likely to meet
him; and went my professional round of visits in a close car-
riage; so that I might not be accosted by him in his walks.
One morning a very few days after Strahan had shown me
Sir Philip Derval's letter, I received a note from my old college
acquaintance stating that he was going to Derval Court that
afternoon; that he should take with him the memoir which he
had found, and begging me to visit him at his new home the
next day, and commence my inspection of the manuscript.
I consented eagerly.
A STRANGE STORY. tó5
That morning, on going my round, my carriage passed by:
another drawn up to the pavement, and I recognized the figure
of Margrave standing beside the vehicle, and talking to some
one seated within it. I looked back, as my own carriage whirled
rapidly by, and saw with uneasiness and alarm that it was
Richard Strahan to whom Margrave was thus familiarly ad-
dressing himself. How had the two made acquaintance? Was
it not an outrage on Sir Philip Derval’s memory, that the heir
he had selected should be thus apparently intimate with the
man whom he had so sternly denounced? I became still more
impatient to read the memoir; in all probability it would give
such explanations with respect to Margrave's antecedents, as,
if not sufficing to criminate him of legal offences, would at least
effectually terminate any acquaintance between Sir Philip's
successor and himself.
All my thoughts were, however, diverted to channels of far
deeper interest even than those in which my mind had of late
been so tumultuously whirled along, when, on returning home,
I found a note from Mrs. Ashleigh. She and Lilian had just
come back to L , sooner than she had led me to anticipate.
Lilian had not seemed quite well the last day or two, and had
been anxious to return.
CHAPTER XXXVII. .
LET me recall it—softly—softly | Let me recall that even-
ing spent with her!—that evening, the last before darkness rose
between us like a solid wall.
It was evening at the close of summer. The sun had set,
the twilight was lingering still. We were in the old monastic
garden—garden so quiet, so cool, so fragrant. She was seated
on a bench under the one great cedar-tree that rose sombre in
the midst of the grassy lawn with its little paradise of flowers. I
had thrown myself on the sward at her feet; her hand so con-
fidingly lay in the clasp of mine. I see her still—how young,
how fair, how innocent!
Strange, strange | So inexpressibly English; so thoroughly
the creature of our sober, homely life! The pretty, delicate
white robe that I touch so timorously, and the ribbon-knots of
blue that so well become the soft color of the fair cheek, the
wavy silk of the brown hair! She is murmuring low her an-
swer to my trembling question.
166 A STRANGE story.
“As well as when last we parted? Do you love me as well
still P’’
“There is no ‘still' written here,’
9
said she, softly pressing
her hand to her heart. “Yesterday is as to-morrow in the
Forever.’’
“Ah, Lilian if I could reply to you in words akin to poetry
as your own.”
“Fie! you who affect not to care for poetry l’’
“That was before you went away—before I missed you from
my eyes, from my life—before I was quite conscious how pre-
cious you were to me, more precious than common words can
tell! Yes, there is one period in love when all men are poets,
however the penury of their language may belie the luxuriance
of their fancies. What would become of me if you ceased to
love me?’’
“Or of me, if you could cease to love?”
“And somehow it seems to me this evening as if my heart
drew nearer to you—nearer as if for shelter.”
“It is sympathy,” said she, with tremulous eagerness; “that
sort of mysterious sympathy which I have often heard you deny
to deride; for I, too, feel drawn nearer to you, as if there were
a storm at hand. I was oppressed by an indescribable terror
in returning home, and the moment I saw you there came a
sense of protection.”
Her head sank on my shoulder; we were silent some mo-
ments; then we both rose by the same involuntary impulse,
and round her slight form I twined my strong arm of man.
And now we are winding slow under the lilacs and acacias that
belt the lawn. Lilian has not yet heard of the murder, which
forms the one topic of the town, for all tales of violence and
blood affected her as they affect a fearful child. Mrs. Ash-
leigh, therefore, had judiciously concealed from her the letters
and the journals by which the dismal news had been carried to
herself. I need scarcely say that the grim subject was not
broached by me. In fact, my own mind escaped from the
events which had of late so perplexed and tormented it; the
tranquillity of the scene, the bliss of Lilian’s presence, had be-
gun to chase away even that melancholy foreboding which had
overshadowed me in the first moments of our reunion. So we
came gradually to converse of the future—of the day, not far
distant, when we two should be as one. We planned our bri-
dal excursion. We would visit the scenes endeared to her by,
song, to me by childhood—the bank and waves of my native
Windermere—our one brief holiday before life returned to

_ A STRANGE STORY. 167
labor, and hearts now so disquieted by hope and joy settled
down to the calm serenity of home.
As we thus talked, the moon, nearly rounded to her full,
rose amidst skies without a cloud. We paused to gaze on her
solemn, haunting beauty, as where are the lovers who have not
paused to gaze? We were then on the terrace walk, which
commanded a view of the town below. Before us was a para-
pet wall, low on the garden side, but inaccessible on the outer
side, forming part of a straggling, irregular street that made
one of the boundaries dividing Abbey Hill from Low Town.
The lamps of the thoroughfares, in many a line and row be-
neath us, stretched far away, obscured, here and there, by in-
tervening roofs and tall church towers. The hum of the city
came to our ears, low and mellowed into a lulling sound. It
was not displeasing to be reminded that there was a world with-
out, as close and closer we drew each to each--worlds to one
another! Suddenly, there carolled forth the song of a human
voice—a wild, irregular, half-savage melody—foreign, uncom-
prehended words—air and words not new to me. I recog-
nized the voice and chant of Margrave. I started, and uttered
an angry exclamation.
‘‘Hush l’’ whispered Lilian, and I felt her frame shiver within
my encircling arm. “Hush ! listen! Yes; I have heard that
voice before—last night—”
“Last night! you were not here; you were more than a hun-
dred miles away.”
“I heard it in a dream! Hush, hush!”
The song rose louder; impossible to describe its effect, in the
midst of the tranquil night, chiming over the serried roof-tops,
and under the solitary moon. It was not like the artful song
of man, for it was defective in the methodical harmony of tune;
it was not like the song of the wild bird, for it had no monot-
ony in its sweetness: it was wandering and various as the
sounds from an AEolian harp. But it affected the senses to a
powerful degree, as in remote lands and in vast solitudes I
have since found the note of the mocking-bird, suddenly heard,
affect the listener half with delight, half with awe, as if some
demon creature of the desert were mimicking man for its own
merriment. The chant now had changed into an air of defy-
ing glee, of menacing exultation; it might have been the tri-
umphant war-song of some antique barbarian race. The note
was sinister; a shadow passed through me, and Lilian had
closed her eyes, and was sighing heavily; then with a rapid
change, sweet as the coo with which an Arab mother lulls her
168 A STRANGE STORY,
babe to sleep, the melody died away. “There, there, look,”
murmured Lilian, moving from me, “the same I saw last night
in sleep; the same I saw in the space above, on the evening I
first knew you!”
Her eyes were fixed, her hand raised; my look followed hers,
and rested on the face and form of Margrave. The moon
shone full upon him, so full as if concentrating all its light upon
his image. The place on which he stood (a balcony to the up-
per story of a house about fifty yards distant) was considera-
bly above the level of the terrace from which we gazed on him.
His arms were folded on his breast, and he appeared to be look-
ing straight towards us. Even at that distance; the lustrous
youth of his countenance appeared to me terribly distinct,
and the light of his wondrous eye seemed to rest upon us in
One lengthened, steady ray through the limpid moonshine. In-
voluntarily I seized Lilian's hand, and drew her away almost
by force, for she was unwilling to move, and as I led her back,
she turned her head to look round; I too, turned in jealous
rage I breathed more freely. Margrave had disappeared
“How came he there? It is not his hotel. Whose house is
it?” I said aloud, though speaking to myself.
Lilian remained silent; her eyes fixed upon the ground as in
deep revery. I took her hand; it did not return my pressure.
I felt cut to the heart when she drew coldly from me that
hand, till then so frankly cordial. I stopped short; “Lilian,
what is this? You are chilled towards me. Can the mere
sound of that man's voice, the mere glimpse of that man's face,
have—“I paused; I did not dare to complete my question.
Lilian lifted her eyes to mine, and I saw at once in those
eyes a change. Their look was cold; not haughty, but abstract-
ed. “I do not understand you,” she said, in a weary, list-
less accent. “It is growing late; I must go in.”
So we walked on moodily, no longer arm in arm, nor hand
in hand. Then it occurred to me that, the next day, Lilian
would be in that narrow world of society; that there she could
scarcely fail to hear of Margrave, to meet, to know him. Jeal-
ousy seized me with all its imaginary terrors, and, amidst that
jealousy, a nobler, purer apprehension for herself. Had I
been Lilian's brother instead of her betrothed, I should not
have trembled less to foresee the shadow of Margrave's mys-
terious influence passing over a mind so predisposed to the
charm which Mystery itself has for those whose thoughts fuse
their outlines in fancies—whose world melts away into Dream-
land. Therefore I spoke.
A STRANGE STORY. I69
“Lilian, at the risk of offending you—alas! I have never
done so before this night—I must address to you a prayer
which I implore you not to regard as the dictate of a suspicion
unworthy you and myself. The person whom you have just
heard and seen is, at present, much courted in the circles of
this town. I entreat you not to permit any one to introduce
him to you. I entreat you not to know him. I cannot tell you
all my reasons for this petition; enough that I pledge you my
honor that those reasons are grave. Trust, then, in my truth,
as I trust in yours. Be assured that I stretch not the rights
which your heart has bestowed upon mine in the promise I ask,
as I shall be freed from all fear by a promise which I know will
be sacred when once it is given.” *
“What promise?” asked Lilian absently, as if she had not
heard my words.
“What promise? Why, to refuse all acquaintance with that
man; his name is Margrave. Promise me, dearest, promise me.”
“Why is your voice so changed?” said Lilian. “Its tone
jars on my ear,” she added, with a peevishness so unlike her,
that it startled me more than it offended; and without a word
further, she quickened her pace, and entered the house.
For the rest of the evening we were both taciturn and distant
towards each other. In vain Mrs. Ashleigh kindly sought to
break down our mutual reserve. I felt that I had the right to
be resentful, and I clung to that right the more because Lilian
made no attempt at reconciliation. This, too, was wholly un-
like herself, for her temper was ordinarily sweet—sweet to the
extreme of meekness; saddened if the slightest misunderstand-
ing between us had ever vexed me, and yearning to ask for-
giveness if a look or a word had pained me. I was in hopes,
that, before I went away, peace between us would be restored.
But long ere her usual hour for retiring to rest she rose
abruptly, and, complaining of fatigue and headache, wished me
good-night, and avoided the hand I sorrowfully held out to
her as I opened the door.
“You must have been very unkind to poor Lilian,” said
Mrs. Ashleigh, between jest and earnest, “for I never saw her
so cross to you before. And the first day of her return, too!”
“The fault is not mine,” said I, somewhat sullenly; “I did
but ask Lilian, and that as a humble prayer, not to make the
acquaintance of a stranger in this town against whom I have
reasons for distrust and aversion. I know rºot why that prayer
should displease her.’’
“Nor I, Who is the stranger?”
17o A STRANGE STORY.
*
“A person who calls himself Margrave. Let me at least
entreat you to avoid him '''
“Oh, I have no desire to make acquaintance with strangers.
But, now Lilian is gone, do tell me all about this dreadful
murder? The servants are full of it, and I cannot keep it long
concealed from Lilian. I was in hopes that you would have
broken it to her.’’
I rose impatiently; I could not bear to talk thus of an event
the tragedy of which was associated in my mind with circum-
stances so mysterious. I became agitated and even angry
when Mrs. Ashleigh persisted in rambling, woman-like inqui-
ries: “Who was suspected of the deed? Who did I think had
committed it? What sort of a man was Sir Philip? What was
that strange story about a casket?” Breaking from such inter-
rogations, to which I could give but abrupt and evasive an-
swers, I seized my hat, and took my departure.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
LETTER FROM ALLEN FEN WICK TO LILIAN ASHLEIGH.
“I HAVE promised to go to Derval Court to-day, and shall
not return till to-morrow. I cannot bear the thought that so
many hours should pass away with one feeling less kind than
usual resting like a cloud upon you and me. Lilian, if I
offended you, forgive me! Send me one line to say so!—one
line which I can place next to my heart and cover with grate-
ful kisses till we meet again!”
REPLY.
“I scarcely know what you mean, nor do I quite understand
my own state of mind at this moment. It cannot be that I
love you less—and yet—but I will not write more now. I feel
glad that we shall not meet for the next day or so, and then I
hope to be quite recovered. I am not well at this moment.
Do not ask me to forgive you—but if it is I who am in fault—
forgive me, oh forgive me, Allen.”
And with this unsatisfactory note—not worn next to my
heart, not covered with kisses, but thrust crumpled into my
desk like a creditor's unwelcome bill, I flung myself on my
horse and rode to Derval Court. I am naturally proud; my
pride came now to my aid. I felt bitterly indignant against
Lilian—so indignant that I resolved, on my return to say to
A STRANGE STORY. 171
her, “If in those words, “And yet,' you implied a doubt
whether you loved me less, I cancel your vows, I give you back
your freedom.” And I could have passed from her threshold
with a firm foot, though with the certainty that I should never
Smile again.
Does her note seem to you who may read these pages to jus-
tify such resentment? Perhaps not. But there is an atmos-
phere in the letters of the one we love, which we alone—we
who love—can feel, and in the atmosphere of that letter I felt
the chill of the coming winter.
I reached the park lodge of Derval Court late in the day.
I had occasion to visit some patients whose houses lay scattered
many miles apart, and for that reason, as well as from the
desire for some quick bodily exercise which is so natural an
effect of irritable perturbation of mind, I had made the jour-
ney on horseback instead of using a carriage, that I could not
have got through the lanes and field-paths by which alone the
work set to myself could be accomplished in time.
Just as I entered the park, an uneasy thought seized hold of
me with the strength which is ascribed to presentiments. I
had passed through my study (which has been so elaborately
described) to my stables, as I generally did when I wanted my
saddle-horse, and, in so doing, had, doubtless, left open the
gate to the iron palisade, and probably the window of the
study itself. I had been in this careless habit for several years,
without ever once having cause for self-reproach. As I before
said, there was nothing in my study to tempt a thief; the
study shut out from the body of the house, and the servant
sure at nightfall both to close the window and lock the gate;
yet now, for the first time, I felt an impulse, urgent, keen, and
disquieting, to ride back to the town and see those precautions
taken. I could not guess why, but something whispered to me
that my neglect had exposed me to some great danger. I
even checked my horse and looked at my watch; too late 1–
already just on the stroke of Strahan’s dinner-hour as fixed in
his note; my horse, too, was fatigued and spent: besides, what
folly! What bearded man can believe in the warnings of a
“presentiment”? I pushed on, and soon halted before the
old-fashioned flight of stairs that led up to the hall. Here I
was accosted by the old steward; he had just descended the
stairs, and, as I dismounted, he thrust his arm into mine uncere-
moniously, and drew me a little aside.
“Doctor, I was right; it was his ghost that I saw by the iron
door of the mausoleum, I saw it again at the same place last
172 A STRANGE STORY.
~,
night, but I had no fit then. Justice on his murderer! Blood
for blood ''
“Ay!” said I sternly; for if I suspected Margrave before, I
felt convinced now that the inexpiable deed was his. Where-
fore convinced? Simply because I now hated him more, and
hate is so easily convinced “Lilian Lilian l’” I murmured
to myself that name; the flame of my hate was fed by my jeal-
ousy. “Ay!” said I sternly, “murder will out.”
“What are the police about?” said the old man querulously;
“days pass on days, and no nearer the truth. But what does
the new owner care? He has the rents and acres; what does
he care for the dead? I will never serve another master. I
have just told Mr. Strahan so. How do I know whether he
did not do the deed? Who else had an interest in it?’"
“Hush, hush!” I cried; “you do not know how wildly you
are talking.”
The old man stared at me, shook his head, released my arm,
and strode away.
A laboring man came out of the garden, and having un-
buckled the saddle-bags, which contained the few things re-
quired for so short a visit, I consigned my horse to his care,
and ascended the perron. The old housekeeper met me in
the hall, conducted me up the great staircase, showed me into
a bedroom prepared for me, and told me that Mr. Strahan was
already waiting dinner for me. I should find him in the
study. I hastened to join him. He began apologizing, very
unnecessarily, for the state of his establishment. He had, as
yet, engaged no new servants. The housekeeper, with the help
of a housemaid, did all the work.
Richard Strahan at college had been as little distinguishable
from other young men as a youth neither rich nor poor, neither
clever nor stupid, neither handsome nor ugly, neither auda-
cious sinner nor formal saint, possibly could be.
Yet, to those who understood him well, he was not without
some of those moral qualities by which a youth of mediocre
intellect often matures into a superior man. *
He was, as Sir Philip had been rightly informed, thoroughly
honest and upright. But with a strong sense of duty, there
was also a certain latent hardness. He was not indulgent.
He had outward frankness with acquaintances, but was easily
roused to suspicion. He had much of the thriftiness and self-
denial of the North countryman, and I have no doubt that he
had lived with calm content and systematic economy on an in-
come which made him, as a bachelor, independent of his nom-
A Š’ī'RANGE STORY. I 73
inal profession, but would not have sufficed, in itself, for the
fitting maintenance of a wife and family. He was, therefore,
still single.
It seemed to me, even during the few minutes in which we
conversed before dinner was announced, that his character
showed a new phase with his new fortunes. He talked in a
grandiose style of the duties of station and the woes of wealth.
He seemed to be very much afraid of spending, and still more
appalled at the idea of being cheated. His temper, too, was
ruffled; the steward had given him notice to quit. Mr. Jeeves,
who had spent the morning with him, had said the steward
would be a great loss, and a steward, at once sharp and hon-
est, was not to be easily found.
What trifles can embitter the possession of great goods!
Strahan had taken a fancy to the old house; it was comfort-
able to his notions, both of comfort and pomp, and Sir Philip
had expressed a desire that the old house should be pulled
down. Strahan had inspected the plans for the new mansion
to which Sir Philip had referred, and the plans did not please
him; on the contrary, they terrified.
“Jeeves says that I could not build such a house under sev-
enty or eighty thousand pounds, and then it will require
twice the establishment which will suffice for this. I shall be
ruined,’’ cried the man who had just come into possession of
at least ten thousand a year.
“Sir Philip did not enjoin you to pull down the old house;
he only advised you to do so. Perhaps he thought the site
less healthy than that which he proposes for a new building,
or was aware of some other drawback to the house, which you
may discover later. Wait a little and see before deciding.”
“But, at all events, I suppose I must pull down this curious
old room—the nicest part of the whole house !”
Strahan, as he spoke, looked wistfully round at the quaint
oak chimney-piece; the carved ceiling; the well-built solid
walls, with the large mullion casement, opening so pleasantly
on the sequestered gardens. He had ensconced himself in Sir
Philip's study, the chamber in which the once famous mystic,
Forman, had found a refuge.
“So cozy a room for a single man l’’ sighed Strahan.
‘‘Near the stables and dog-kennels, too! But I suppose I
must pull it down. I am not bound to do so legally; it is no
condition of the will. But in honor and gratitude I ought not
to disobey poor Sir Philip's positive injunction.”
“Of that,” said I gravely, “there cannot be a doubt.”
174 A STRANGE STORY.
Here our conversation was interrupetd by Mrs. Gates, who
informed us that dinner was served in the library. Wine of
great age was brought from the long-neglected cellars; Strahan
filled and refilled his glass, and, warmed into hilarity, began to
talk of bringing old college friends around him in the winter
season, and making the rooftree ring with laughter and song
On Ce Iſl Ore.
Time wore away, and night had long set in, when Strahan
at last rose from the table, his speech thick and his tongue un-
steady. We returned to the study, and I reminded my host of
the special object of my visit to him, viz., the inspection of Sir
Philip's manuscript.
“It is tough reading,” said Strahan; “better put it off till
to-morrow. You will stay here two or three days.”
“No ; I must return to L to-morrow. I cannot absent
myself from my patients. And it is the more desirable that no
time should be lost before examining the contents of the manu-
script, because probably they may give some clue to the de-
tection of the murderer.’’
“Why do you think that?” cried Strahan, startled from the
drowsiness that was creeping over him.
“Because the manuscript may show that Sir Philip had some
enemy—and who but an enemy could have had a motive for
such a crime? Come, bring forth the book. You of all men
are bound to be alert in every research that may guide the
retribution of justice to the assassin of your benefactor.”
“Yes, yes. I will offer a reward of five thousand pounds
for the discovery. Allen, that wretched old steward had the
insolence to tell me that I was the only man in the world who
could have an interest in the death of his master; and he
looked at me as if he thought-that I had committed the crime.
You are right; it becomes me, of all men, to be alert. The
assassin must be found. He must hang.”
While thus speaking, Strahan had risen, unlocked a desk
which stood on one of the safes, and drawn forth a thick
volume, the contents of which were protected by a clasp and
lock. Strahan proceeded to open this lock by one of a
bunch of keys, which he said had been found on Sir Philip's
person.
“There, Allen, this is the memoir. I need not tell you
what store I place on it; not, between you and me, that I ex-
pect it will warrant poor Sir Philip's high opinion of his own
scientific discoveries. That part of his letter seems to me very
queer, and very flighty. But he evidently set his heart on
A STRANGE story. 175
the publication of his work, in part if not in whole. And,
naturally, I must desire to comply with a wish so distinctly
intimated by one to whom I owe so much. I beg you, there-
fore, not to be too fastidious. Some valuable hints in medicine,
I have reason to believe, the manuscript will contain, and
those may help you in your profession, Allen.”
“You have reason to believe! Why?”
“Oh, a charming young fellow, who, with most of the other
gentry resident at L , called on me at my hotel, told me
that he had travelled in the East, and had there heard much
of Sir Philip's knowledge of chemistry, and the cures it had
enabled him to perform.”
“You speak of Mr. Margrave. He called on you?”
“Yes.”
“You did not, I trust, mention to him the existence of Sir
Philip's manuscript.”
“Indeed I did; and I said you had promised to examine it.
He seemed delighted at that, and spoke most highly of your
peculiar fitness for the task.”
“Give me the manuscript,” said I abruptly, “and, after I
have looked at it to-night, I may have something to say to you
to-morrow in reference to Mr. Margrave.”
‘‘There is the book,” said Strahan; “I have just glanced at
it, and find much of it written in Latin; and I am ashamed to
say that I have so neglected the little Latin I learned in our
college days, that I could not construe what I looked at.”
I sat down and placed the book before me; Strahan fell
into a doze, from which he was wakened by the housekeeper,
who brought in the tea-things.
“Well,” said Strahan languidly, “do you find much in the
book that explains the many puzzling riddles in poor Sir
Philip's eccentric life and pursuits?”
“Yes,” said I. “Do not interrupt me.”
Strahan again began to doze, and the housekeeper asked
if we should want anything more that night, and if I thought I
could find my way to my bedroom.
I dismissed her impatiently, and continued to read.
Strahan woke up again as the clock struck eleven, and find-
ing me still absorbed in the manuscript, and disinclined to con-
verse, lighted his candle, and telling me to replace the manu-
script in the desk when I had done with it, and be sure to
lock the desk and take charge of the key, which he took off the
bunch and gave me, went upstairs, yawning.
I was alone in the wizard Forman's chamber, and bending
176 A Sºf RANGE STORY.
over a stranger record than had ever excited my infant wonder,
Or, in later years, provoked my sceptic smile.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE manuscript was written in a small and peculiar hand-
writing, which, though evidently by the same person whose
letter to Strahan I had read, was, whether from haste or some
imperfection in the ink, much more hard to decipher. Those
parts of the Memoir which related to experiments, or alleged
secrets in Nature, that the writer intimated a desire to submit
exclusively to scholars or men of science, were in Latin—and
Latin which, though grammatically correct, was frequently
obscure. But all that detained the eye and attention on the
page, necessarily served to impress the contents more deeply
on remembrance.
The narrative commenced with the writer's sketch of his
childhood. Both his parents had died before he attained his
seventh year. The orphan had been sent by his guardians to a
private school, and his holidays had been passed at Derval
Court. Here his earliest reminiscences were those of the
quaint old room, in which I now sat, and of his childish won-
der at the inscription on the chimney-piece—who and what
was the Simon Forman who had there found a refuge from
persecution? Of what nature were the studies he had culti-
vated, and the discoveries he boasted to have made?
When he was about sixteen, Philip Derval had begun to
read the many mystic books which the library contained; but
without other result on his mind than the sentiment of disap-
pointment and disgust. The impressions produced on the
credulous imagination of childhood vanished. He went to the
university; was sent abroad to travel: and on his return took
that place in the circles of London- which is so readily con-
ceded to a young idler of birth and fortune. He passed
quickly over that period of his life, as one of extravagance and
dissipation, from which he was first drawn by the attachment
for his cousin to which his letter to Strahan referred. Disap-
pointed in the hopes which that affection had conceived, and
his fortune impaired, partly by some years of reckless profu-
sion, and partly by the pecuniary sacrifices at which he had
effected his cousin's marriage with another, he retired to Der-
val Court, to live there in solitude and seclusion. On search-
ing for some old title-deeds required for a mortgage, he
A STRANGE STORY. 177
chanced upon a collection of manuscripts much discolored,
and, in part, eaten away by moth or damp. These, on ex-
amination, proved to be the writings of Forman. Some of
them were astrological observations and predictions; some
were upon the nature of the Cabbala; some upon the invoca-
tion of Spirits and the magic of the dark ages. All had a cer-
tain interest, for they were interspersed with personal remarks,
anecdotes of eminent actors in a very stirring time, and were
composed as Colloquies, in imitation of Erasmus; the second
person in the dialogue being Sir Miles Derval, the patron and
pupil; the first person being Forman, the philosopher and
expounder.
But along with these shadowy lucubrations were treatises of
a more uncommon and a more startling character; discussions
on various occult laws of nature, and detailed accounts of ana-
lytical experiments. These opened a new, and what seemed
to Sir Philip a practical, field of inquiry—a true border-land
between natural science and imaginative speculation. Sir
Philip had cultivated philosophical science at the university;
he resumed the study, and tested himself the truth of various
experiments suggested by Forman. Some, to his surprise,
proved successful, some wholly failed. These lucubrations
first tempted the writer of the memoir towards the studies in
which the remainder of his life had been consumed. But he
spoke of the lucubrations themselves as valuable only where
suggestive of some truth which Forman had accidentally ap-
proached, without being aware of their true nature and impor-
tance. They were debased by absurd puerilities, and vitiated
by the vain and presumptuous ignorance which characterized
the astrology of the middle ages. For these reasons the writer
intimated his intention (if he lived to return to England) to
destroy Forman's manuscripts, together with sundry other
books, and a few commentaries of his own upon studies which
had for a while misled him—all now deposited in the safes of
the room in which I sat.
After some years passed in the retirement of Derval Court,
Sir Philip was seized with the desire to travel, and the taste he
had imbibed for occult studies led him towards those Eastern
lands in which they took their origin, and still retain their pro-
fessors.
Several pages of the manuscript were now occupied with min-
ute statements of the writer's earliest disappointment in the
objects of his singular research. The so-called magicians,
accessible to the curiosity of European travellers, were either
f78 A STRANGE story.
but ingenious jugglers, or produced effects that perplexed him
by practices they had mechanically learned, but of the rationale
of which they were as ignorant as himself. It was not till he
had resided some considerable time in the East, and acquired
a familiar knowledge of its current languages and the social
habits of its various populations, that he became acquainted
with men in whom he recognized earnest cultivators of the lore
which tradition ascribes to the colleges and priesthoods of the
ancient world; men generally living remote from others, and
seldom to be bribed by money to exhibit their marvels or di-
vulge their secrets. In his intercourse with these sages, Sir
Philip arrived at the conviction that there does exist an art
of magic, distinct from the guile of the conjuror, and applying to
certain latent powers and affinities in nature a philosophy akin
to that which we receive in our acknowledged schools, inas-
much as it is equally based upon experiment, and produces
from definite causes definite results. In support of this startl-
ing proposition, Sir Philip now devoted more than half his
volume to the detail of various experiments, to the process and
result of which he pledged his guarantee as the actual opera-
tor. As most of these alleged experiments appeared to me
wholly incredible, and as all of them were unfamiliar to my
practical experience, and could only be verified or falsified by
tests that would require no inconsiderable amount of time and
care, I passed, with little heed, over the pages in which they
were set forth. I was impatient to arrive at that part of the
manuscript which might throw light on the mystery in which
my interest was the keenest. What were the links which con-
nected the existence of Margrave with the history of Sir Philip
Derval? Thus hurrying on, page after page, I suddenly,
towards the end of the volume, came upon a name that arrested
all my intention—Haroun of Aleppo. He who has read the
words addressed to me in my trance may well conceive the thrill
that shot through my heart when I came upon that name, and
will readily understand how much more vividly my memory
retains that part of the manuscript to which I now proceed,
than all which had gone before.
“It was,” wrote Sir Philip, “in an obscure suburb of Aleppo
that I at length met with the wonderful man from whom I have
acquired a knowledge immeasurably more profound and occult
than that which may be tested in the experiments to which I
have devoted so large a share of this memoir. Haroun of
Aleppo had, indeed, mastered every secret in nature which the
nobler, or theurgic, magic seeks to fathom.
- A STRANGE STORY. i.79
“He had discovered the great Principle of Animal Life,
which had hitherto baffled the subtlest anatomist; provided
only that the great organs were not irreparably destroyed,
there was no disease that he could not cure, no decrepitude to
which he could not restore vigor; yet his science was based on
the same theory as that espoused by the best professional prac-
titioners of medicine, viz., that the true art of healing is to
assist nature to throw off the disease—to summon, as it were,
the whole system to eject the enemy that has fastened on a
part. And thus his processes, though occasionally varying in
the means employed, all combined in this, viz., the reinvig-
orating and recruiting of the principle of life.”
No one knew the birth or origin of Haroun; no one knew
his age. In outward appearance he was in the strength and
prime of mature manhood. But, according to testimonies
in which the writer of the memoir expressed a belief that, I
need scarcely say, appeared to me egregiously credulous,
Haroun’s existence under the same name, and known by the
same repute, could be traced back to more than a hundred years.
He told Sir Philip that he had thrice renewed his own life, and
had resolved to do so no more—he had grown weary of living
on. With all his gifts, Haroun owned himself to be consumed
by a profound melancholy. He complained that there was
nothing new to him under the sun; he said that, while he had
at his command unlimited wealth, wealth had ceased to bestow
enjoyment; and he preferred living as simply as a peasant: he
had tired out all the affections and all the passions of the
human heart; he was in the universe as in solitude. In a word,
Haroun would often repeat, with mournful solemnity, “The
soul is not meant to inhabit this earth, and in fleshy taberna-
cle, for more than the period usually assigned to mortals; and
when by art in repairing the walls of the body, we so retain it,
the soul repines, becomes inert or dejected.” “He only,” said
Haroun, “would feel continued joy in continued existence who
could preserve in perfection the sensual part of man, with such
mind or reason as may be independent of the spiritual essence;
but whom soul itself has quitted Man, in short, as the
grandest of the animals, but without the sublime discontent of
earth, which is the peculiar attribute of soul.”
One evening Sir Philip was surprised to find at Haroun’s
house another European. He paused in his narrative to de-
scribe this man. He said that for three or four years pre-
viously he had heard frequent mention amongst the cultivators
of magic, of an orientalized Englishman engaged in researches
&
*~
N.
Y
i86 * A STRANGE STORY.
similar to his own, and to whom was ascribed a terrible knowl.
edge in those branches of the art which, even in the East, are
condemned as instrumental to evil. Sir Philip here distin-
guished at length, as he had so briefly distinguished in his con-
versation with me, between the two kinds of magic—that
which he alleged to be as pure from sin as any other species of
experimental knowledge, and that by which the agencies of
witchcraft are invoked for the purposes of guilt.
The Englishman, to whom the culture of this latter and
darker kind of magic was ascribed, Sir Philip Derval had never
hitherto come across. He now met him at the house of Haroun;
decrepit, emaciated, bowed down with infirmities, and racked
with pain. Though little more than sixty, his aspect was that
of extreme old age, but still on his face there were seen the
ruins of a once singular beauty; and still, in his mind, there
was a force that contrasted the decay of the body. Sir Philip
had never met with an intellect more powerful and more cor-
rupt. The son of a notorious usurer, heir to immense wealth,
and endowed with the talents which justify ambition, he had
entered upon life burdened with the odium of his father's
name. A duel, to which he had been provoked by an ungen-
erous taunt on his origin, but in which a temperament fiercely
vindictive had led him to violate the usages prescribed by the
social laws that regulate such encounters, had subjected him to
a trial in which he escaped conviction, either by a flaw in the
technicalities of legal procedure, or by the compassion of the
jury;” but the moral presumptions against him were sufficiently
strong to set an indelible brand on his honor and an insur-
mountable barrier to the hopes which his early ambition had
conceived. After this trial he had quitted his country to re-
turn to it no more. Thenceforth, much of his life had been
passed out of sight or conjecture of civilized men in remote
* The reader will here observe a discrepancy between Mrs. Poyntz's account and Sir
Philip Derval’s narrative. According to the former, Louis Grayle was tried in his absence
from England, and sentenced to three years' imprisonment, which his flight enabled him
to evade. According to the latter, Louis Grayle stood his trial, and obtained an acquittal.
Sir Philip's account must, at least, be nearer the truth than the lady's, because Louis
Grayle could not, according to English law, have been tried on a capital charge without
being present in court. Mrs. Poyntz tells her story as a woman generally does tell a story—
sure to make a mistake whºre she touches on a question of law ; and unconsciously per-
haps to herself the Woman of the World warps, the facts in her narrative so as to save the
personal dignity of her he o, who has captivated her interest, not from the moral odium of
a great crime, but the debasing position of a prisoner at the bar. Allen Fenwick, no doubt,
purposely omits to notice the discrepancy between these two. statements, or to animadvert
on the mistake which, in the eyes of a lawyer, would discredit Mrs. Poyntz's. It is con-
sistent with some of the objects for which Allen Fenwick makes public his Strange Story,
to invite the reader to draw his own inferences from the contradictions by which, even in the
most commonplace matters (and how much more in any tale of wonder ), a fact stated by
one person is made to differ from the same fact stated by another. . The rapidity with
which a truth becomes transformed into fable, when it is once sent on its travels from lip to
;
A STRANGE STORY. I8I
regions and amongst barbarous tribes. At intervals, however,
he had reappeared in European capitals; shunned by and shun-
ning his equals, surrounded by parasites, amongst whom were
always to be found men of considerable learning, whom avarice
or poverty subjected to the influences of his wealth. For the last
nine or ten years he had settled in Persia, purchased extensive
lands, maintained the retinue, and exercised more than the
power, of an Oriental prince. Such was the man who, pre-
maturely worn out, and assured by physicians that he had not
six weeks of life, had come to Aleppo with the gaudy escort of
an Eastern satrap, had caused himself to be borne in his litter
to the mud-hut of Haroun the Sage, and now called on the
magician, in whose art was his last hope, to reprieve him from
the—grave.
He turned round to Sir Philip, when the latter entered the
room, and exclaimed in English, “I am here because you are.
Your intimacy with this man was known to me. I took your
character as the guarantee of his own. Tell me that I am no
credulous dupe. Tell him that I, Louis Grayle, am no needy
petitioner. Tell me of his wisdom; assure him of my wealth.”
Sir Philip looked inquiringly at Haroun, who remained seated
on his carpet in profound silence.
“What is it you ask of Haroun?”
- “To live on—to live on. For every year of life he can give
me, I will load these floors with gold.”
“Gold will not tempt Haroun.”
‘‘What Will?”
“Ask him yourself; you speak his language.”
“I have asked him; he vouchsafes me no answer.”
Haroun here suddenly roused himself as from a revery.
He drew from under his robe a small phial, from which he let
fall a single drop into a cup of water, and said: “Drink this.
lip, is illustrated by an amusement at this moment in fashion. The amusement is this : In
a party of eight or ten persons, let one ... to another an account of some supposed
transaction, or a piece of invented gossip relating to absent persons, dead or alive ; let the
s person, who thus first hears the story, proceed to whisper it, as exactly as he can lemen-
ber what he has just heard, to the next; the next does the same to his neighbor, and so
on, till the tale has run the round of the party. Each nal rator, as soon as he has whispel ed
his version of the tale, writes down what he has whispered. And though, in this game, no
one has had any interest to misrepresent, but, on the contrary, each for his own credit's sake
strives to repeat what he has heard as faithfully as he can, it will be almost invariably
found that the story told by the first person has received the most material alterations be-
fore it has reached the eighth or the tenth. Sometimes, the most important feature of the
whole narrative is altogether omitted ; sometimes, a feature altogether new and preposter-
ously absurd has been added. At the close of the experiment one is tempted to exclaim,
“How after this, can any of those portions of history which the chronicler took from hear-
say be believed P’’ But, above all, does not every anecdote of scandal which has passed,
not through ten lips, but perhaps through ten thousand, before it has reached us, become
quite as perplexing to him who would get at the truth, as the marvels he recounts are to the
bewildered reason of Fenwick the Sceptic * *
182 g A STRA N G E STORY.
Send to me to-morrow for such medicaments as I may prescribe.
Return hither yourself in three days; not before l’’
When Grayle was gone, Sir Philip, moved to pity, asked
Haroun if, indeed, it were within the compass of his art to pre-
serve life in a frame that appeared so thoroughly exhausted.
Haroun answered: “A fever may so waste the lamp of life
that one ruder gust of air could extinguish the flame, yet the
sick man recovers. This sick man's existence has been one
long fever; this sick man can recover.”
“You will aid him to do so?’’
“Three days hence I will tell you.” .*
On the third day Grayle revisited Haroun, and, at Haroun’s
request, Sir Philip came also. Grayle declared that he had
already derived unspeakable relief from the remedies adminis-
tered; he was lavish in expressions of gratitude; pressed large
gifts on Haroun, and seemed pained when they were refused.
This time Haroun conversed freely, drawing forth Grayle's
own irregular, perverted, stormy, but powerful intellect.
I can best convey the general nature of Grayle's share in
the dialogue between himself, Haroun, and Derval—recorded
in the narrative in words which I cannot trust my memory to
repeat in detail—by stating the effect it produced on my own
mind. It seemed while I read, as if there passed before me
some convulsion of Nature—a storm, an earthquake. Outcries
of rage, of scorn, of despair; a despot's vehemence of will; a
rebel’s scoff at authority. Yet, ever and anon, some swell of
lofty thought, some burst of passionate genius—abrupt varia,
tions from the vaunt of superb defiance to the wail of intense
Telin OrSe.
The whole had in it, I know not what, of uncouth but colos-
sal—like the chant, in the old lyrical tragedy, of one of those
mythical giants, who, proud of descent from Night and Chaos,
had held sway over the elements, while still crude and conflict-
ing, to be crushed under the rocks, upheaved in their struggle,
as Order and Harmony subjected a brightening Creation to the
milder influences throned in Olympus. But it was not till the
later passages of the dialogue in which my interest was now ab-
sorbed, that the language ascribed to this sinister personage
lost a gloomy pathos not the less impressive for the awe with
which it was mingled. For, till then, it seemed to me as if in
... that tempestuous nature there were still broken glimpses of
starry light; that a character originally lofty, if irregular and
fierce, had been embittered by early and continuous war with
the Social world, and had, in that war, become maimed and
A STRANGE STORY. 183
distorted; that, under happier circumstances, its fiery strength
might have been disciplined to good; that even now, where re-
morse was so evidently poignant, evil could not be irredeem-
ably confirmed.
At length all the dreary compassion previously inspired van-
ished in one unqualified abhorrence.
The subjects discussed changed from those which, relating
to the common world of men, were within the scope of my rea-
son. Haroun led his wild guest to boast of his own proficiency
in magic, and, despite my incredulity, I could not overcome
the shudder with which fictions, however extravagant, that deal
with that dark Unknown abandoned to the chimeras of poets,
will, at night and in solitude, send through the veins of men
the least accessible to imaginary terrors.
Grayle spoke of the power he had exercised through the
agency of evil spirits—a power to fascinate and to destroy. He
spoke of the aid revealed to him, now too late, which such dire-
ful allies could afford, not only to a private revenge, but to a
kingly ambition. Had he acquired the knowledge he declared
himself to possess, before the feebleness of the decaying body
made it valueless, how he could have triumphed over that
world, which had expelled his youth from its pale ! He spoke
of means by which his influence could work undetected on the
minds of others, control agencies that could never betray,
and baffle the justice that could never discover. He spoke
vaguely of a power by which a spectral reflection of the ma-
terial body could be cast, like a shadow, to a distance; glide
through the walls of a prison, elude the sentinels of a camp—
a power that he asserted to be—when enforced by concentred
will, and acting on the mind, wherein each individual tempta-
tion found mind the weakest—almost infallible in its effect to
seduce or to appal. And he closed these and similar boasts
of demoniacal arts, which I remember too obscurely to repeat,
with a tumultuous imprecation on their nothingness to avail
against the gripe of death. All this lore he would communi-
cate to Haroun, in return for what? A boon shared by the
meanest peasant-life, common life; to breathe yet a while the
air, feel yet a while the sun.
Then Haroun replied. He said, with a quiet disdain, that
the dark art to which Grayle made such boastful pretence was
the meanest of all abuses of knowledge, rightly abandoned, in
all ages, to the vilest natures. And then, suddenly changing
his tone, he spoke, so far as I can remember the word as-
signed to him in the manuscript, to this effect;
\
184 A straNGE STORY.
“Fallen and unhappy wretch, and you ask me for pro-
longed life!—a prolonged curse to the world and to yourself.
Shall I employ spells to lengthen the term of the Pestilence, or
profane the secrets of Nature to restore vigor and youth to the
failing energies of Crime?”
Grayle, as if stunned by the rebuke, fell on his knees with
despairing entreaties that strangely contrasted his previous ar-
rogance, “And it was,” he said, “because his life had been
evil that he dreaded death. If life could be renewed he would
repent, he would change; he retracted his vaunts, he would
forsake the arts he had boasted, he would re-enter the world as
its benefactor.”
“So ever the wicked man lies to himself when appalled by the
shadow of death,” answered Haroun. “But know, by the
remorse which preys on thy soul that it is not thy soul that ad-
dresses its prayer to me. Couldst thou hear, through the storms
of the Mind, the soul’s melancholy whisper, it would dissuade
thee from a wish to live on. While I speak, I behold it, that
SouL | Sad for the stains on its essence, awed by the account
it must render, but dreading, as the direst calamity, a renewal
of years below—darker stains and yet heavier accounts. What-
ever the sentence it may now undergo, it has a hope for mercy
in the remorse which the mind vainly struggles to quell. But
darker its doom if longer retained to earth, yoked to the mind
that corrupts it, and enslaved to the senses which thou bidst me
restore to their tyrannous forces.”
And Grayle bowed his head and covered his face with his
hands in silence and in trembling.
Then Sir Philip, seized with compassion, pleaded for him,
“At least, could not the soul have longer time on earth for
repentance?” And while Sir Philip was so pleading, Grayle
fell prostrate in a swoon like that of death. When he recov-
ered, his head was leaning on Haroun’s knee, and his opening
eyes fixed on the glittering phial which Haroun held, and from
which his lips had been moistened.
“Wondrous !” he murmured ; “how I feel life flowing back
to me. And that, then, is the elixir! It is no fable!”
His hands stretched greedily as to seize the phial, and he
cried imploringly, “More, more!” Haroun replaced the vessel
in the folds of his robe, and answered:
“I will not renew thy youth, but I will release thee from
bodily suffering: I will leave the mind and the soul free from
the pangs of the flesh, to reconcile, if yet possible, their long
war, My skill may afford thee months yet for repentance; see,
“.…. ."
** • *.
* * ~ *
A Sºf RAN GE STORY. 185
in that interval, to atone for the evil of sixty years; apply thy
wealth where it may most compensate for injury done, most
relieve the indigent, and most aid the virtuous. Listen to thy
remorse. Humble thyself in prayer.”
Grayle departed, sighed heavily, and muttering to himself.
The next day Haroun summoned Sir Philip Derval, and said
to him :
“Depart to Damascus. In that city the Pestilence has ap-
peared. Go thither thou, to heal and to save. In this casket
are stored the surest antidotes to the poison of the plague. Of
that essence, undiluted and pure, which tempts to the undue
prolongation of Soul in the prison of flesh, this casket contains
not a drop. I curse not my friend with so mournful a boon.
Thou hast learned enough of my art to know by what simples
the health of the temperate is easily restored to its balance, and
their path to the grave smoothed from pain. Not more should
Man covet from Nature for the solace and weal of the
body. Nobler gifts far than aught for the body this casket con-
tains. Herein are the essences which quicken the life of those
duplicate senses that lie dormant and coiled in their chrysalis
web, awaiting the wings of a future development—the senses
by which we can see, though not with the eye, and hear, but
not by the ear. Herein are the links between Man's mind and
Nature's; herein are secrets more precious even than these—
those extracts of light which enable the Soul to distinguish itself
from the Mind, and discriminate the spiritual life, not more
from life carnal than life intellectual. Where thou seest some
noble intellect, studious of Nature, intent upon Truth, yet ig-
noring the fact that all animal life has a mind, and Man alone
on the earth ever asked, and has asked, from the hour his step
trod the Earth and his eye sought the Heaven, ‘Have I not a
soul—can it perish!"—there, such aids to the soul, in the inner-
most vision vouchsafed to the mind, thou mayst lawfully use.
But the treasures contained in this casket are like all which a
mortal can win from the mines he explores—good or ill in their
uses as they pass to the hands of the good or the evil. Thou
wilt never confide them but to those who will not abuse; and
even then, thou art an adept too versed in the mysteries of
Nature not to discriminate between the powers that may serve
the good to good ends, and the powers that may tempt the
good, where less wise than experience has made thee and me,
to the ends that are evil; and not even to thy friend, the most
virtuous—if less proof against passion, than thou and I have
become—wilt thou confide such contents of the casket as may
186 A STRANGE STORY.
work on the fancy, to deafen the conscience, and imperil the
soul.” *A.
Sir Philip took the casket, and with it directions for use,
which he did not detail. He then spoke to Haroun about
Louis Grayle, who had inspired him with a mingled sentiment
of admiration and abhorrence; of pity and terror. And Haroun
answered thus, repeating the words ascribed to him, so far as
I can trust, in regard to them as to all else in this marvellous
narrative to a memory habitually tenacious even in ordinary
matters, and strained to the utmost extent of its power, by
the strangeness of the ideas presented to it, and the intensity
of my personal interest in whatever admitted a ray into that
cloud which, gathering fast over my reason, now threatened
storm to my affections:
“When the mortal deliberately allies himself to the spirits of
evil, he surrenders the citadel of his being to the guard of its
enemies; and those who look from without can only dimly guess
what passes within the precincts abandoned to Powers whose
very nature we shrink to contemplate, lest our mere gaze should
invite them. This man, whom thou pitiest, is not yet everlast-
ingly consigned to the fiends; because his soul still struggles
against them. His life has been one long war between his intel-
lect, which is mighty, and his spirit, which is feeble. The in-
tellect, armed and winged by the passions, has besieged and
oppressed the soul; but the soul 'aas never ceased to repine
and to repent. And at moments it has gained its inherent as-
cendency, persuaded revenge to drop the prey it had seized,
turned the mind astray from hatred and wrath into unwonted
paths of charity and love. In the long desert of guilt, there
have been green spots and fountains of good, The fiends have
occupied the intellect which invoked them, but they have never
yet thoroughly mastered the soul which their presence appals.
In the struggle that now passes within that breast, amidst the
flickers of waning mortality, only Allah, whose eye never slum-
bers, can aid.’’
Haroun then continued, in words yet more strange and yet
more deeply graved in my memory:
“There have been men (thou mayst have known such), who,
after an illness in which life itself seemed suspended, have
arisen, as out of a sleep, with characters wholly changed. Be-
fore, perhaps gentle and good and truthful, they now become
bitter, maligant, and false. To the persons and the things
they had before loved, they evince repugnance and loathing.
Sometimes this change is so marked and irrational, that their
A STRANGE STORY. 187
kindred ascribe it to madness. Not the madness which affects
them in the ordinary business of life, but that which turns into
harshness and discord the moral harmony that results from na-
£ures whole and complete. But there are dervishes who hold
that in that illness, which had for its time the likeness of death,
the soul itself has passed away, and an evil genius has fixed
itself into the body and the brain, thus left void of their former
tenant, and animates them in the unaccountable change from
the past to the present existence. Such mysteries have formed
no part of my study, and I tell you the conjecture received in
the East without hazarding a comment whether of incredulity
or belief. But if, in this war between the mind which the fiends
have seized, and the soul which implores refuge of Allah; if,
while the mind of yon traveller now covets life lengthened on
earth for the enjoyments it had perverted its faculties to seek
and to find in sin, and covets so eagerly that it would shrink
from no crime, and revolt from no fiend, that could promise
the gift—the soul shudderingly implores to be saved from new
guilt, and would rather abide by the judgment of Allah on the
sins that have darkened it, than pass forever irredeemably away
to the demons: if this be so, what if the soul's petition be
heard? What if it rise from the ruins around it? What if the
ruins be left to the witchcraft that seeks to rebuild them?
There, if demons might enter, that which they sought as
their prize has escaped them: that which they find would
mock them by its own incompleteness even in evil. In vain
might animal life the most perfect be given to the machine of
the flesh; in vain might the mind, freed from the check of
the soul; be left to roam at will through a brain stored with
memories of knowledge and skilled in the command of its fac-
ulties; in vain, in addition to all that body and brain bestow on
the normal condition of man, might unhallowed reminiscences
gather all the arts and the charms of the sorcery by which the
fiends tempted the soul, before it fled, through the passions of
flesh and the cravings of mind: the Thing, thus devoid of a
soul, Swould be an instrument of evil, doubtless; but an in-
strument that of itself could not design, invent, and com-
plete. The demons themselves could have no permanent hold
on the perishable materials. They might enter it for some
gloomy end which Allah permits in his inscrutable wisdom;
but they could leave it no trace when they pass from it, be-
cause there is no conscience where soul is wanting. The human
animal without soul, but otherwise made felicitously perfect
in its mere vital organization, might ravage and destroy, as the
I 88 g A STRANGE STORY. *sa
tiger and the serpent may destroy and ravage, and, the mo-
ment after, would sport in the sunlight harmless and rejoicing,
because, like the serpent and the tiger, it is incapable of re-
morse.”
“Why startle my wonder,” said Derval, “with so fantastic
an image?” -
“Because, possibly, the image may come into palpable form
I know, while I speak to thee, that this miserable man is call-
ing to his aid the evil sorcery over which he boasts his control.
To gain the end he desires, he must pass through a crime.
Sorcery whispers to him how to pass through it, secure from
the detection of man. The soul resists, but in resisting is
weak against the tyranny of the mind to which it has submitted
so long. Question me no more. But if I vanish from thine
eyes; if thou hear that the death which, to my sorrow and in
y
my foolishness I have failed to recognize as the merciful min--
ister of Heaven, has removed me at last from the earth, believe
that the Pale Visitant was welcome, and that I humbly accept
as a blessed release the lot of our common humanity.”
Sir Philip went to Damascus. There he found the pesti-
lence raging; there, he devoted himself to the cure of the
afflicted; in no single instance, so at least he declared, did the
antidotes stored in the casket fail in their effect. The pesti-
lence had passed; his medicaments were exhausted; when the
news reached him that Haroun was no more. The Sage had
been found, one morning, lifeless in his solitary home, and,
according to popular rumor, marks on his throat betrayed the
murderous hand of the strangler. Simultaneously, Louis
Grayle had disappeared from the city, and was stipposed to
have shared the fate of Haroun, and been secretly buried by the
assassins who had deprived him of life. Sir Philip hastened to
Aleppo. There, he ascertained that on the night in which
Haroun died, Grayle did not disappear alone; with him were
also missing two of his numerous suite; the one, an Arab
woman, named Ayesha, who had for some years been his con-
stant companion, his pupil and associate in the mystic practices
to which his intellect had been debased, and who was said to
have acquired a singular influence Qver him, partly by her
beauty and partly by the tenderness with which she had nursed
him through his long decline; the other, an Indian, specially
assigned to her service, of whom all the wild retainers of
Grayle spoke with detestation and terror. He was believed by
them to belong to that murderous sect of fanatics whose ex-
istence as a community has only recently been made known to
**
|
A STRANGE STORY. 189
Europe, and who strangle their unsuspecting victim in the firm
belief that they thereby propitiate the favor of the goddess they
i serve. The current opinion at Aleppo was, that if those two
persons had conspired to murder Haroun, perhaps for the sake
of the treasures he was said to possess, it was still more certain
that they had made away with their own English lord, whether
for the sake of the jewels he wore about him, or for the sake of
treasures less doubtful than those imputed to Haroun, and of
which the hiding-place would to them be much better known.
“I did not share that opinion,” wrote the narrator; for I as-
sured myself that Ayesha sincerely loved her awful master;
and that love need excite no wonder, for Louis Grayle was one
whom if a woman, and especially a woman of the East, had
once loved, before old age and infirmity fell on him, she would
love and cherish still more devotedly when it became her task
to protect the being who, in his day of power and command,
had exalted his slave into the rank of his pupil and companion.
And the Indian whom Grayle had assigned to her service was
—allowed to have that brute kind of fidelity which, though it
recoils from no crime for a master, refuses all crime against him.
‘‘I came to the conclusion that Haroun had been murdered
by order of Louis Grayle—for the sake of the elixir of life—
murdered by Juma the Strangler; and that Grayle himself had
been aided in his flight from Aleppo, and tended, through the
effects of the life-giving drug thus murderously obtained, by
the womanly love of the Arab woman, Ayesha. These con-
victions (since I could not—without being ridiculed as the
wildest of dupes—even hint at the vital elixir.) I failed to im-
press on the Eastern officials, or even on a countryman of my
own whom I chanced to find at Aleppo. They only arrived at
what seemed the common-sense verdict, viz., that Haroun
might have been strangled, or might have died in a fit (the
body, little examined, was buried long before I came to
Aleppo); and that Louis Grayle was murdered by his own
treacherous dependents. But all trace of the fugitives was
lost.
“And now,” wrote Sir Philip, “I will state by what means
I discovered that Louis Grayle still lived—changed from age
into youth; a new form, a new being; realizing, I verily be-
lieve, the image which Haroun’s words had raised up, in what
then seemed to me the metaphysics of phantasy; criminal,
without consciousness of crime; the dreadest of the mere ani-
mal race; an incarnation of the blind powers of Nature—beau-
tiful and joyous, wanton, and terrible, and destroying! Such
190 A STRANGE STORY.
as ancient myths have personified in the idols of Oriental
creeds; such as Nature, of herself, might form man in her
moments of favor, if man were wholly the animal, and spirit
were no longer the essential distinction between himself and
the races to which by superior formation and subtler percep-
tions he would still be the king.
“But this being is yet more dire and portentous than the
mere animal man, for in him are not only the fragmentary
memories of a pristine intelligence which no mind, unaided by
the presence of soul, could have originally compassed, but
amidst that intelligence are the secrets of the magic which is
learned through the agencies of spirits the most hostile to our
race. And who shall say whether the fiends do not enter at
their will this void and deserted temple whence the soul has
departed, and use as their tools, passive and unconscious, all
the faculties which, skillful in sorcery, still place a mind at the
control of their malice?
“It was in the interest excited in me by the strange and ter-
rible fate that befel an Armenian family with which I was
slightly acquainted, that I first traced, in the creature I am
now about to describe, and whose course I devote myself to
watch, and trust to bring to a close, the murderer of Haroun
for the sake of the elixir of youth.
“In this Armenian family there were three daughters; one
of them—’’
I had just read thus far when a dim shadow fell over the
page, and a cold air seemed to breathe on me. Cold—so
cold, that my blood halted in my veins as if suddenly frozen
Involuntarily I started, and looked up, sure that some ghastly
presence was in the room. And then, on the opposite side of
the wall, I beheld an unsubstantial likeness of a human form.
Shadow I call it, but the word is not strictly correct, for it was
luminous, though with a pale shine. In some exhibition in
London there is shown a curious instance of optical illusion;
at the end of a corridor you see, apparently in strong light, a
human skull. You are convinced it is there as you approach;
it is, however, only a reflection from a skull at a distance. The
image before me was less vivid, less seemingly prominent than
is the illusion I speak of. I was not deceived. I felt it was a
spectrum, a phantasm, but I felt no less Surely that it was a
reflection from an animate form—the form and the face of
Margrave; it was there, distinct, unmistakable. Conceiving
that he himself must be behind me, I sought to rise, to turn
round, to examine. I could not move: limb and muscle were
A STRANGE STORY. I9 I
overmastered by some incomprehensible spell. Gradually my
senses forsook, me, I became unconscious as well as motion-
less. When I recovered, I heard the clock strike three. I
must have been nearly two hours insensible; the candles be-
fore me were burning low; my eyes rested on the table; the
dead man’s manuscript was gone!
CHAPTER XL.
THE dead man's manuscript was gone. But how? A phan-
tom might delude my eye, a human will, though exerted at a
distance, might, if the tales of mesmerism be true, deprive me
of movement and of consciousness; but neither phantom nor
mesmeric will could surely remove from the table before me
the material substance of the book that had vanished Was I
to seek explanation in the arts of sorcery ascribed to Louis
Grayle in the narrative? I would not pursue that conjecture.
Against it my reason rose up half-alarmed, half-disdainful.
Some one must have entered the room, some one have removed
the manuscript. I looked round. The windows were closed,
the curtains partly drawn over the shutters, as they were be-
fore my consciousness had left me: all seemed undisturbed.
Snatching up one of the candles, fast dying out, I went into the
adjoining library, the desolate state-rooms, into the entrance-
hall, and examined the outer door. Barred and locked!
The robber had left no vestige of his stealthy presence.
I resolved to go at once to Strahan's room and tell him of
the loss sustained. A deposit had been confided to me, and
I felt as if there were a slur on my honor every moment in
which I kept its abstraction concealed from him to whom I was
responsible for the trust. I hastily ascended the great stair-
case, grim with faded portraits, and found myself in a long cor-
ridor opening on my own bed-room; no doubt also on Stra-
han's. Which was his? I knew not. I opened rapidly door
after door, peered into empty chambers, went blundering on,
when, to the right, down a narrow passage, I recognized the
signs of my host's whereabouts—signs familiarly commonplace
and vulgar, signs by which the inmate of any chamber in
lodging-house or inn makes himself known—a chair before a
doorway, clothes negligently thrown on it, beside it a pair of
shoes. ' And so ludicrous did such testimony of common
every-day life, of the habits which Strahan would necessarily
have contracted in his desultory, unluxurious bachelor’s exis-
I 92 A STRANGE STORY.
tence—so ludicrous, I say, did these homely details seem to
me, so grotesquely at variance with the wonders of which I
had been reading, with the wonders yet more incredible of
which I myself had been witness and victim, that as I turned
down the passage, I heard my own unconscious, half-hysterical
laugh; and, startled by the Sound of that laugh as if it came
from some one else I paused, my hand on the door, and asked
myself: “Do I dream? Am I awake? And if awake, what
am I to say to the commonplace mortal I am about to rouse?
Speak to him of a phantom" Speak to him of some weird spell
over this strong frame ! Speak to him of a mystic trance in
which has been stolen what he confided to me, without my
knowledge ' What will he say? What should I have said a
few days ago to any man who told such a tale to me?” I did
not wait to resolve these questions. I entered the room.
There was Strahan sound asleep on his bed. I shook him
roughly. He started up, rubbed his eyes: “You, Allen—
you! What the deuce?—what's the matter?”
“Strahan, I have been robbed!—robbed of the manuscript
you lent me. I could not rest till I had told you.”
“Robbed, robbed! Are you serious?”
By this time Strahan had thrown off the bed-clothes, and
sat upright, staring at me.
And then those questions which my mind had suggested while
I was standing at his door repeated themselves with double force.
Tell this man, this unimaginative, hard-headed, raw-boned,
sandy-haired North-countryman—tell this man a story which
the most credulous school-girl would have rejected as a fable!
Impossible.
‘‘I fell asleep,” said I, coloring and stammering, for the
slightest deviation from truth was painful to me, “and—
and—when I woke—the manuscript was gone. Some one
must have entered, and committed the theft—”
“Some one entered the house at this hour of the night, and
then only stolen a manuscript which could be of no value to
him! Absurd . If thieves have come in, it must be for other
objects—for plate, for money. I will dress; we will see!”
Strahan hurried on his clothes, muttering to himself, and
avoiding my eye. He was embarrassed. He did not like to
say to an old friend what was on his mind, but I saw at once
that he suspected I had resolved to deprive him of the manu-
script, and had invented a wild tale in order to conceal my
own dishonesty.
Nevertheless, he proceeded to search the house. I followed
5
A STRANGE STORY. I93
him in silence, oppressed with my own thoughts, and longing
for solitude in my own chamber. We found no one, no trace
of any one, nothing to excite suspicion. There were but two
female servants sleeping in the house—the old housekeeper,
and a country girl who assisted her. It was not possible to
suspect either of these persons, but in the course of our search
we opened the doors of their rooms. We saw that they were
both in bed, both seemingly asleep; it seemed idle to wake
and question them. When the formality of our futile investi-
gation was concluded, Strahan stopped at the door of my bed.
room, and for the first time fixing his eyes on me steadily, said:
“Allen Fenwick, I would have given half the fortune I have
come into rather than this had happened. The manuscript, as
you know, was bequeathed to me as a sacred trust by a bene-
factor whose slightest wish it is my duty to observe religiously.
If it contained aught valuable to a man of your knowledge and
profession—why, you were free to use its contents. Let me
hope, Allen, that the book will reappear to-morrow.”
He said no more, drew himself away from the hand I invol-
untarily extended, and walked quickly back towards his own
I’OOIſ).
Alone once more, I sank on a seat, buried my face in my
hands, and strove in vain to collect into some definite shape my
own tumultuous and disordered thoughts. Could I attach seri-
ous credit to the marvellous narrative I had read? Were there,
indeed, such powers given to man? Such influences latent in
the calm routine of Nature? I could not believe it; I must
have some morbid affection of the brain; I must be under an
hallucination. Hallucination? The phantom, yes—the trance,
yes. But still, how came the book gone? That, at least, was
not hallucination.
I left my room the next morning with a vague hope that I
should find the manuscript somewhere in the study; that, in
my own trance, I might have secreted it, as sleep-walkers are
said to secrete things, without remembrance of their acts in
their waking state.
I searched minutely in every conceivable place. Strahan
found me still employed in that hopeless task. He had break-
fasted in his own room, and it was past eleven o’clock when he
joined me. His manner was now hard, cold, and distant, and
his suspicion so bluntly shown, that my distress gave way to
resentment.
“Is it possible,” I cried indignantly, “that you who have
known me so well can suspect me of an act so base, and so
I94 A STRANGE STORY.
gratuitously base? Purloin, conceal a book confided to me,
with full power to copy from it whatever I might desire, use
its contents in any way that might seem to me serviceable to
science, or useful to me in my own calling!”
“I have not accused you,” answered Strahan sullenly
“But what are we to say to Mr. Jeeves; to all others who know
that this manuscript existed? Will they believe what you tell
me?’’
“Mr. Jeeves,” I said, “cannot suspect a fellow-townsman,
whose character is as high as mine, of untruth and theft. And
to whom else have you communicated the facts connected with
a memoir and a request of so extraordinary a nature?”
“To young Margrave; I told you sol”
“True, true. We need not go further to find the thief.
Margrave has been in this house more than once. He knows
the position of the rooms. You have named the robber!”
“Tut! what on earth could a gay young fellow like Mar-
grave want with a work of such dry and recondite nature as I
presume my poor kinsman’s memoir must be?”
I was about to answer, when the door was abruptly opened,
and the servant girl entered, followed by two men, in whom I
recognized the superintendent of the L police and the same
subordinate who had found me by Sir Philip's corpse.
The superintendent came up to me with a grave face, and
whispered in my ear. I did not at first comprehend him.
“Come with you,” I said, “and to Mr. Vigors, the magis-
trate? I thought my deposition was closed.”
The superintendent shook his head. “I have the authority
here, Dr. Fenwick.” -
“Well, I will come, of course. Has anything new trans-
pired?”
The superintendent turned to the servant-girl, who was
standing with gaping mouth and staring eyes. “Show us Dr.
Fenwick's room. You had better put up, sir, whatever things
you have brought here. I will go upstairs with you,” he whis-
pered again. “Come, Dr. Fenwick, I am in the discharge of
my duty.”
Something in the man’s manner was so sinister and menac-
ing that I felt at once that some new and strange Calam-
ity had befallen me. I turned towards Strahan. He was at
the threshold, speaking in a low voice to the subordinate
policeman, and there was an expression of amazement and
horror in his countenance. As I came towards him he darted
away without a word.
A STRANGE STORY. I95
I went up the stairs, entered my bedroom, the superinten-
dent close behind me. As I took up mechanically the few
things I had brought with me, the police-officer drew them
from me with an abruptness that appeared insolent, and delib-
erately searched the pockets of the coat which I had worn the
evening before, then opened the drawers in the room, and even
pried into the bed. f
“What do you mean?” I asked haughtily.
“Excuse me, sir. Duty. You are—”
“Well, I am what?”
“My prisoner; here is the warrant.”
“Warrant! on what charge?”
“The murder of Sir Philip Derval.”
“I—Iſ Murder!” I could say no more.
I must hurry over this awful passage in my marvellous
record. It is torture to dwell on the details, and indeed I
have so sought to chase them from my recollection, that they
only come back to me in hideous fragments, like the incohe-
rent remains of a horrible dream.
All that I need state is as follows: Early on the very morn-
ing on which I had been arrested, a man, a stranger in the
town, had privately sought Mr. Vigors, and deposed that on
the night of the murder he had been taking refuge from a
sudden storm under shelter of the eaves and buttresses of a
wall adjoining an old archway; that he had heard men talking
within the archway; had heard one say to the other, “You still
bear me a grudge.” The other had replied, “I can forgive
you on one condition.” That he then lost much of the con-
versation that ensued, which was in a lower voice; but he gath-
ered enough to know that the condition demanded by the one
was the possession of a casket which the other carried about
with him. That there seemed an altercation on this matter
between the two men, which, to judge by the tones of voice,
was angry on the part of the man demanding the casket; that,
finally, this man said in a loud key, “Do you still refuse?” and
on receiving the answer which the witness did not overhear,
exclaimed threateningly, “It is you who will repent’’; and
then stepped forth from the arch into the street. The rain had
– then ceased, but by a broad flash of lightning the witness saw
distinctly the figure of the person thus quitting the shelter of
the arch; a man of tall stature, powerful frame, erect carriage.
A little time afterwards, witness saw a slighter and older man
come forth from the arch, whom he could only examine by the
flickering ray of the gas-lamp near the wall, the lightning hav-
196 A STRANGE STORY. *
ing ceased, but whom he fully believed to be the person he
afterwards discovered to be Sir Philip Derval.
He said that he himself had only arrived at the town a few
hours before; a stranger to L , and indeed to England;
having come from the United States of America, where he had
passed his life from childhood. He had journeyed on foot to
L , in the hope of finding there some distant relatives. He
had put up at a small inn, after which he had strolled through
the town, when the storm had driven him to seek shelter. He
had then failed to find his way back to the inn, and after wan-
dering about in vain, and seeing no one at that late hour of
night of whom he could ask the way, he had crept under a
portico and slept for two or three hours. Waking towards the
dawn, he had then got up, and again sought to find his way
to the inn, when he saw, in a narrow street before him, two
men, one of whom he recognized as the taller of the two, to
whose conversation he had listened under the arch, the other
he did not recognize at the moment. The taller man seemed
angry and agitated, and he heard him say, “The casket; I will
have it.” There then seemed to be a struggle between these
two persons, when the taller one struck down the shorter,
knelt on his breast, and he caught distinctly the gleam of some
steel instrument. That he was so frightened that he could not
stir from the place, and that though, he cried out, he believed
his voice was not heard. He then saw the taller man rise, the
other resting on the pavement motionless; and a minute or
so afterwards beheld policemen coming to the place, on which
he, the witness, walked away. He did not know that a mur-
der had been committed; it might be only an assault; it was
no business of his, he was a stranger. He thought it best not
to interfere, the police having cognizance of the affair. He
found out his inn; for the next few days he was absent from
|L , in search of his relations, who had left the town, many
years ago, to fix their residence in one of the neighboring
villages.
He was, however, disappointed, none of these relations now
survived. He had now returned to L , heard of the mur-
der, was in doubt what to do, might get himself into-trouble if,
a mere stranger, he gave an unsupported testimony. But, on .
the day before the evidence was volunteered, as he was loung-
ing in the streets, he had seen a gentleman pass by on horse-
back, in whom he immediately recognized the man who, in
his belief, was the murderer of Sir Philip Derval. He inquired
of a bystander the name of the gentleman; the answer was
A STRANGE story. 197
“Dr. Fenwick.” That, the rest of the day, he felt much dis-
turbed in his mind, not liking to volunteer such a charge
against a man of apparent respectability and station. But that
his conscience would not let him sleep that night, and he had
resolved at morning to go to the magistrate and make a clean
breast of it.
The story was in itself so improbable that any other magis-
trate but Mr. Vigors would perhaps have dismissed it in con-
tempt. But Mr. Vigors, already so bitterly prejudiced against
me, and not sorry, perhaps, to subject me to the humiliation of
so horrible a charge, immediately issued his warrant to search
my house. I was absent at Derval Court; the house was
searched. In the bureau in my favorite study, which was left
unlocked, the steel casket was discovered, and a large case-
knife, on the blade of which the stains of blood were still per-
ceptible. On this discovery I was apprehended, and on these
evidences, and on the deposition of this vagrant stranger, I
was, not indeed committed to take my trial for murder, but
placed in confinement; all bail for my appearance refused,
and the examination adjourned to give time for further evi-
dence and inquiries. I had requested the professional aid of
Mr. Jeeves. To my surprise and dismay Mr. Jeeves begged me
to excuse him. He said he was pre-engaged by Mr. Strahan
to detect and prosecute the murderer of Sir Philip Derval,
and could not assist one accused of the murder. I gathered
from the little he said that Strahan had already been to him
that morning and told him of the missing manuscript; that
Strahan had ceased to be my friend. I engaged another solic-
itor, a young man of ability, and who professed personal es-
teem for me. Mr. Stanton (such was the lawyer's name ) be-
lieved in my innocence; but he warned me that appearances
were grave, he implored me to be perfectly frank with him.
Had I held conversation with Sir Philip under the archway as
reported by the witness? Had I used such or similar words?
Had the deceased said, “I had a grudge against him”? Had
I demanded the casket? Had I threatened Sir Philip that he
would repent? And of what?. His refusal?
I felt myself grow pale as I answered “Yes, I thought such
or similar expressions had occurred in my conversation with
the deceased.” -
“What was the reason of the grudge? What was the nature
of this casket, that I should so desire its possession?”
There, I became terribly embarrassed. What could I say to
a keen, sensible, worldly man of law? Tell him of the powder
*
f
198 *. A STRANGE STORY.
}
and the fumes, of the scene in the museum, of Sir Philip's tale,
of the implied identity of the youthful Margrave with the aged
Grayle, of the elixir of life, and of magic arts? I—I tell such
a romance! ... I the noted adversary of all pretended mysticism.
I—I a sceptical practitioner of medicine! Had that manu-
Script of Sir Philip's been available—a substantial record of
marvellous events by a man of repute for intellect and learn-
Äng—I might, perhaps, have ventured to startle the solicitor of
L with my revelations. But the sole proof that all which
the Solicitor urged me to confide was not a monstrous fiction or
an insane delusion had disappeared; and its disappearance
was a part of the terrible mystery that enveloped the whole. I
answered, therefore, as composedly as I could, that “I could
have no serious grudge against Sir Philip, whom I had never
seen before that evening; that the words, which applied to my
supposed grudge, were lightly said by Sir Philip, in reference
to a physiological dispute on matters connected with mesmer-
ical phenomena; that the deceased had declared his casket,
which he had shown me at the mayor’s house, contained drugs
of great potency in medicine; that I had asked permission to
test those drugs myself; and that when I said he would repent
of his refusal, I merely meant that he would repent of his reli-
ance on drugs not warranted by the experiments of profes-
sional science.
My replies seemed to satisfy the lawyer so far, but “how
could I account for the casket and the knife being found in
my room?”
“In no way but this; the window of my study is a door-
window opening on the lane, from which any one might enter
the room. I was in the habit, not only of going out myself
that way, but of admitting through that door any more familiar
private acquaintance.”
“Whom, for instance?”
I hesitated a moment, and then said, with a significance
I could not forbear: “Mr. Margrave! He would know the
Zocale perfectly; he would know that the door was rarely
bolted from within during the day-time: he could enter at all
hours; he could place, or instruct any one to deposit the knife
and casket in my bureau, which he knew I never kept locked;
it contained no secrets, no private correspondence—chiefly
surgical implements, or such things as I might want for pro-
fessional experiments.”
“Mr. Margrave! But you cannot suspect him—a lively,
charming young man, against whose character not a whisper
* A STRANGE STORY. 199
e
was ever heard—of connivance with such a charge against
you; a connivance that would implicate him in the murder
itself, for if you are accused wrongfully, he who accuses you is
either the criminal or the criminal's accomplice; his instigator
or his tool.’’
“Mr. Stanton,” I said firmly, after a moment's pause, “I
do suspect Mr. Margrave of a hand in this crime. Sir Philip,
on seeing him at the mayor's house, expressed a strong abhor-
rence of him, more than hinted at crimes he had committed;
appointed me to come to Derval Court the day after that on
which the murder was committed. Sir Philip had known
something of this Margrave in the East—Margrave might dread
exposure, revelations—of what I know not; but, strange as it
may seem to you, it is my conviction that this young man,
apparently so gay and so thoughtless, is the real criminal, and
in some way, which I cannot conjecture, has employed this
lying vagabond in the fabrication of a charge against myself.
Reflect: of Mr. Margrave's antecedents we know nothing; of
them nothing was known even by the young gentleman who
first introduced him to the society of this town. If you would
serve and save me, it is to that quarter that you will direct
your vigilant and unrelaxing researches.”
I had scarcely so said when I repented my candor, for I
observed in the face of Mr. Stanton a sudden revulsion of feel-
ing, an utter incredulity of the accusation I had thus haz-
arded, and for the first time a doubt of my own innocence.
The fascination exercised by Margrave was universal; nor
was it to be wondered at ; for, besides the charm of his joyous
presence, he seemed so singularly free from even the errors
common enough with the young. So gay and boon a compan-
ion, yet a shunner of wine; SO dazzling in aspect, so more
than beautiful, so courted, so idolized by women, yet no tale
of seduction, of profligacy, attached to his name ! As to his
antecedents, he had so frankly owned himself a natural son, a
nobody, a traveller, an idler; his expenses, though lavish, were
so unostentatious, so regularly defrayed. He was so wholly
the reverse of the character assigned to criminals, that it
seemed as absurd to bring a charge of homicide against a but-
terfly or a goldfinch as against this seemingly innocent and de-
lightful favorite of humanity and nature.
However, Mr. Stanton said little or nothing, and shortly
afterwards left me, with a dry expression of hope that my in-
nocence would be cleared in spite of evidence that, he was
bound to say, was of the most serious character.
2OC) A STRANGE STORY.
I was exhausted. I fell into a profound sleep early that
night; it might be a little after twelve when I woke, and woke
as fully, as completely, as much restored to life and conscious-
ness, as it was then my habit to be at the break of day. And,
so waking, I saw, on the wall opposite my bed, the same lumi-
nous phantom I had seen in the wizard’s study at Derval
Court. I have read in Scandinavian legends of an apparition
called the Scin-Laeca, or shining corpse. It is supposed, in the
northern Superstition, sometimes to haunt sepulchres, some-
times to foretell doom. It is the spectre of a human body
seen in a phosphoric light, and so exactly did this phantom cor-
respond to the description of such an apparition in Scandina-
vian fable that I know not how to give it a better name than
that of Scin-Laeca—the shining corpse.
There it was before me, corpse-like, yet not dead; there, as in
the haunted study of the wizard Forman —the form and the
face of Margrave. Constitutionally, my nerves are strong,
and my temper hardy, and now I was resolved to battle against
any impression which my senses might receive from my own
deluding fancies. Things that witnessed for the first time
daunt us, witnessed for the second time lose their terror. I
rose from my bed with a bold aspect, I approached the phan-
tom with a firm step; but when within two paces of it, and my
hand outstretched to touch it, my arm became fixed in air, my
feet locked to the ground. I did not experience fear; I felt
that my heart beat regularly, but an invincible something op-
posed itself to me. I stood as if turned to stone, and then
from the lips of this phantom there came a voice, but a voice
which seemed borne from a great distance—very low, muffled,
and yet distinct: I could not even be sure that my ear heard it,
or whether the sound was not conveyed to me by an inner sense.
“I, and I alone, can save and deliver you,” said the voice.
“I will do so; and the conditions I ask, in return, are simple
and easy.”
“Fiend or spectre, or mere delusion of my own brain,”
cried I, “there can be no compact between thee and me. I
despise thy malice, I reject thy services; I accept no condi-
tions to escape from the one or to obtain the other.”
“You may give a different answer when I ask again.”
The Scin-Laeca slowly waned, and, fading first into a paler
shadow, then vanished. I rejoiced at the reply I had given.
Two days elapsed before Mr. Stanton again came to me; in
the interval the Scin-Laeca did not reappear. I had mustered
all my courage, all my common-sense, noted down all the weak
A STRANGE STORY. 2C) i
points of the false evidence against me, and felt calm and sup-
ported by the strength of my innocence. ^
The first few words of the solicitor dashed all my courage to
the ground. For I was anxious to hear news of Lilian,—an x-
ious to have some message from her that might cheer and
stengthen me, and my first question was this:
“Mr. Stanton, you are aware that I am engaged in marriage
to Miss Ashleigh. Your family are not unacquainted with her.
What says, what thinks she of this monstrous charge against
her betrothed?”
‘‘I was for two hours at Mrs. Ashleigh's house last evening,”
replied the lawyer; “she was naturally anxious to see me as em-
ployed in your defence. Who do you think was there? Who,
eager to defend you, to express his persuasion of your inno-
cence, to declare his conviction that the real criminal would be
soon discovered—who but that same Mr. Margrave, whom, par-
don me my frankness, you so rashly and groundlessly suspected.”
“Heavens! Do you say that he is received in that house?
That he—he is familiarly admitted to her presence?”
“My good sir, why these unjust prepossessions against a
true friend? It was as your friend that, as soon as the charge
against you amazed and shocked the town of L , Mr. Mar-
grave called on Mrs. Ashleigh—presented to her by Miss Bra-
bazon—and was so cheering and hopeful that—”
“Enough 1” I exclaimed—“enough 1”
I paced the room in a state of excitement and rage, which
the lawyer in vain endeavored to calm, until at length I halted
abruptly: “Well,—and you saw Miss Ashleigh P What mes-
sage does she send to me—her betrothed?”
Mr. Stanton looked confused. “Message! Consider, sir—
Miss Ashleigh's situation—the delicacy—and—and—”
“I understand No message, no word, from a young lady
so respectable to a man accused of murder.”
Mr. Stanton was silent for some moments; and then said
quietly: ‘‘Let us change this subject; let us think of what
more immediately presses. I see you have been making some
notes; may I look at them?”
I composed myself and sat down. “This accuser! Have
inquiries really been made as to himself, and his statement of
his own proceedings? He comes, he says, from America—in
what ship? At what port did he land? Is there any evidence
to corroborate his story of the relations he tried to discover—
of the inn at which he first put up, and to which he could not
find his way?"
2O2 A STRANGE STORY. .* *~~
“Your suggestions are sensible, Dr. Fenwick. I have fores
stalled them. It is true that the man lodged at a small inn—
the Rising Sun—true that he made inquiries about some rela-
tions of the name of Walls, who formerly resided at L 3.
and afterwards removed to a village ten miles distant—two
brothers—tradesmen of small means but respectable character.
He at first refused to say at what seaport he landed, in what
ship he sailed. I suspect that he has now told a falsehood as
to these matters. I have sent my clerk to Southampton—for
it is there he said that he was put on shore; we shall see—the
man himself is detained in close custody. I hear that his man-
ner is strange and excitable; but that he preserves silence as
much as possible. It is generally believed that he is a bad
character, perhaps a returned convict, and that this is the true
reason why he so long delayed giving evidence, and has been
since so reluctant to account for himself. But even if his tes-
timony should be impugned, should break down, still we
should have to account for the fact that the casket and the
case-knife were found in your bureau. For, granting that a
person could, in your absence, have entered your study and
placed the articles in your bureau, it is clear that such a person
must have been well acquainted with your house; and this
stranger to L could not have possessed that knowledge.”
“Of course not—Mr. Margrave did possess it!”
“Mr. Margrave again!—oh, sir.”
I arose and moved away, with an impatient gesture. I could
not trust myself to speak. That night I did not sleep; I
watched impatiently, gazing on the opposite wall, for the gleam
of the Scin-Laeca. But the night passed away, and the spectre
did not appear *
CHAPTER XLI.
THE lawyer came the next day, and with something like a
smile on his lips. He brought me a few lines in pencil from
Mrs. Ashleigh; they were kindly expressed, bade me be of
good cheer; “she never for a moment believed in my guilt;
Lilian bore up wonderfully under so terrible a trial; it was an
unspeakable comfort to both to receive the visits of a friend so
attached to me, and so confident of a triumphant refutation
of the hideous calumny, under which I now suffered, as Mr.
Margrave!” &
The lawyer had seen Margrave again—seen him in that
house, Margrave seemed almost domiciled there!
A STRANGE STORY. 2O3
I remained sullen and taciturn during this visit. I longed
again for the night. " Night came. I heard the distant clock
strike twelve, when again the icy wind passed through my hair,
and against the wall stood the Luminous Shadow.
“Have you considered?” whispered the voice, still as from
afar. “I repeat it—I alone can save you.”
“Is it among the conditions which you ask, in return, that I
shall resign to you the woman I love.”
‘‘No.” * .
“Is it one of the conditions that I should commit some
crime—a crime perhaps heinous as that of which I am
accused?''
‘‘No.”
“With such reservations, I accept the conditions you may
name, provided I, in my turn, may demand one condition
from yourself.”
‘‘Name it.”
“I ask you to quit this town. I ask you, meanwhile, to
cease your visits to the house that holds the woman betrothed
to me.’’
“I will cease those visits. And before many days are over,
I will quit this town.”
“Now, then, say what you ask from me. I am prepared to
concede it. And not from fear for myself, but because I fear
for the pure and innocent being who is under the spell of your
deadly fascination. This is your power over me. You com-
mand me through my love for another. Speak.”
“My conditions are simple. You will pledge yourself to
desist from all charges of insinuation against myself, of what
nature soever. You will not, when you meet me in the flesh,
refer to what you have known of my likeness in the Shadow.
You will be invited to the house at which I may be also a
guest; you will come; you will meet and converse with me as
guest speaks with guest in the house of a host.”
‘‘IS that all?’"
‘‘It is all.”
“Then I pledge you my faith; keep your own.”
“Fear not; sleep secure in the certainty that you will soon
be released from these walls.’’
The Shadow waned and faded. Darkness settled back, and
a sleep, profound and calm, fell over me.
The next day Mr. Stanton again visited me. He had re.
ceived that morning a note from Mr. Margrave, stating that he
had left L-- to pursue, in person, an investigation which he
--- *-
* ~
2O4 A STRANGE STORY.
had already commenced through another, affecting the man
who had given evidence against me, and that, if his hope
should prove well founded, he trusted to establish my inno-
cence, and convict the real murderer of Sir Philip Derval. In
the research he thus volunteered, he had asked for, and ob-
tained, the assistance of the policeman. Waby, who, grateful to
me for saving the life of his sister, had expressed a strong
desire to be employed in my service. $
Meanwhile, my most cruel assailant was my old college
friend Richard Strahan. For Jeeves had spread abroad Stra-
han's charge of purloining the memoir which had been in-
trusted to me; and that accusation had done me great injury
in public opinion, because it seemed to give probability to the
only motive which ingenuity could ascribe to the foul deed
imputed to me. That motive had been first suggested by Mr.
Vigors. Cases are on record of men whose life had been pre-
viously blameless, who have committed a crime, which seemed
to belie their nature, in the monomania of some intense desire.
In Spain a scholar reputed of austere morals murdered and
robbed a traveller for money in order to purchase books;
books written, too, by Fathers of his Church He was intent
on solving some problem of theologcal casuistry. In France
an antiquary esteemed not more for his learning than for amia-
ble and gentle qualities, murdered his most intimate friend for
the possession of a medal, without which his own collection
was incomplete. These, and similar anecdotes, tending to
prove how fatally any vehement desire, morbidly cherished,
may suspend the normal operations of reason and conscience,
were whispered about by Dr. Lloyd’s vindictive partisan, and
the inference drawn from them and applied to the assumptions
against myself was the more credulously received, because of
that over-refining speculation on motive and act which the
shallow accept, in their eagerness to show how readily they
understand the profound.
I was known to be fond of scientific, especially of chemical,
experiments; to be eager in testing the truth of any novel in-
vention. Strahan, catching hold of the magistrate’s fantastic
hypothesis, went about repeating anecdotes of the absorbing
passion for analysis and discovery which had characterized me
in youth as a medical student, and to which, indeed, I owed
the precocious reputation I had obtained.
Sir Philip Derval, according not only to report, but to the
direct testimony of his servant, had acquired in the course of
his travels many secrets in natural Science, especially as con-
*
A §Tír ANGE STORY. Żó5
flected with the healing art—his servant had deposed to the
remarkable cures he had effected by the medicinals stored in
the stolen casket—doubtless Sir Philip, in boasting of these
medicinals in the course of our conversation, had excited my
curiosity, inflamed my imagination, and thus, when I after-
wards suddenly met him in a lone spot, a passionate impulse
had acted on a brain heated into madness by Curiosity and
covetous desire.
All these suppositions, reduced into system, were corrobor-
ated by Strahan's charge that I had made away with the manu-
script supposed to contain the explanations of the medical
agencies employed by Sir Philip, and had sought to shelter my
theft by a tale so improbable, that a man of my reputed talent
could not have hazarded it if in his sound senses. I saw the
web that had thus been spread around me by hostile prepos-
sessions and ignorant gossip: how could the arts of Margrave
scatter that web to the winds? I knew not, but I felt confi-
dence in his promise and his power. Still, so great had been
my alarm for Lilian, that the hope of clearing my own inno-
cence was almost lost in my joy that Margrave, at least, was no
longer in her presence, and that I had received his pledge to
quit the town in which she lived. dº
Thus, hours rolled on hours, till, I think, on the third day
from that night in which I had last beheld the mysterious
Shadow, my door was hastily thrown open, a confused crowd
presented itself at the threshold—the governor of the prison,
the police superintendent, Mr. Stanton, and other familiar
faces shut out from me since my imprisonment. I knew at the
first glance that I was no longer an outlaw beyond the pale of
human friendship. And proudly, sternly, as I had supported
myself hitherto in solitude and suspense, when I felt warm
hands clasping mine, heard joyous voices proffering congratu-
lations, saw in the eyes of all that my innocence had been
cleared, the revulsion of emotion was too strong for me—the
room reeled on my sight—I fainted. I pass, as quickly as I
can, over the explanations that crowded on me when I recov-
ered, and that were publicly given in evidence" in Court next
morning. I had owed all to Margrave. It seems that he had
construed to my favor the very supposition which had been
bruited abroad to my prejudice. “For,” said he, “it is con-
jectured that Fenwick committed the crime of which he is
accused in the impulse of a disordered reason. That conject-
ure is based upon the probability that a madman alone could
have committed a crime without adequate motive. But it
2O6 A STRANGE STORY.
seems quite clear that the accused is not mad; and I see
cause to suspect that the accuser is.” Grounding this assump-
tion on the current reports of the witness's manner and bearing
since he had been placed under official surveillance, Mar-
grave had commissioned the policeman, Waby, to make inqui-
ries in the village to which the accuser asserted he had gone in
quest of his relations, and Waby had, there, found persons
who remembered to have heard that the two brothers named
Walls lived less by the gains of the petty shop which they kept
than by the proceeds of some property consigned to them as
the nearest of kin to a lunatic who had once been tried for his
life. Margrave had then examined the advertisements in the
daily newspapers. One of them, warning the public against a
dangerous maniac, who had effected his escape from an asylum
in the west of England, caught his attention. To that asylum
he had repaired.
There he learned that the patient advertised was one whose
propensity was homicide, consigned for life to the asylum on
account of a murder, for which he had been tried. The de-
scription of this person exactly tallied with that of the pretended
American. The medical superintendent of the asylum, hearing
all particulars from Margrave, expressed a strong persuasion
that the witness was his missing patient, and had himself com-
mitted the crime of which he had accused another. If so, the
superintendent undertook to coax from him the full confession
of all the circumstances. Like many other madmen, and not
least those whose propensity is to crime, the fugitive maniac
was exceedingly cunning, treacherous, secret, and habituated
to trick and stratagem. More subtle than even the astute in
possession of all their faculties, whether to achieve his purpose
or to conceal it, and fabricate appearances against another.
But while, in ordinary conversation, he seemed rational enough
to those who were not accustomed to study him, he had one
hallucination which, when humored, led him always, not only
to betray himself, but to glory in any crime proposed or com-
mitted. He was under the belief that he had made a bargain
with Satan, who, in return for implicit obedience, would bear
him harmless through all the consequences of such submission,
and finally raise him to great power and authority. It is no un-
frequent illusion of homicidal maniacs to suppose they are
under the influence of the Evil One, or possessed by a Demon.
Murderers have assigned as the only reason they themselves
could give for their crime, that “the Devil got into them,” and
urged the deed. But the insane have, perhaps, no attribute
, ºf A Sºff ANGE STORY. 267
more in common than that of superweening self-esteem. The
maniac who has been removed from a garret sticks straws in
his hair and calls them a crown. So much does inordinate
arrogance characterize mental aberration, that in the course of
my own practice I have detected, in that infirmity, the certain
symptom of insanity, long before the brain had made its dis-
ease manifest even to the most familiar kindred.
Morbid self-esteem accordingly pervaded the dreadful illusion
by which the man I now speak of was possessed He was proud
to be the protected agent of the Fallen Angel. And if that
-self-esteem were artfully appealed to he would exult superbly
in the evil he held himself ordered to perform, as if a special
prerogative, an official rank and privilege; then he would be
led on to boast gleefully of thoughts which the most cynical of
criminals, in whom intelligence was not ruined, would shrink
from owning. Then he would reveal himself in all his de-
formity with as complacent and frank a self-glorying as some
vain good man displays in parading his amiable sentiments and
his beneficent deeds.
“If,” said the superintendent, “this be the patient who has
escaped from me, and if his propensity to homicide has been, in
some way, directed towards the person who has been murdered,
I shall not be with him a quarter of an hour before he will in-
form me how it happened, and detail the arts he employed in
shifting his crime upon another—all will be told as minutely as
a child tells the tale of some school-boy exploit, in which he
counts on your sympathy, and feels sure of your applause.”
Margrave brought this gentleman back to L , took him to
the mayor, who was one of my warmest supporters: the mayor
had sufficient influence to dictate and arrange the rest. The
superintendent was introduced to the room in which the pre-
tended American was lodged. At his own desire a select num-
ber of witnesses were admitted with him—Margrave excused
himself; he said candidly that he was too intimate a friend of
mine to be an impartial listener to aught that concerned me so
nearly. *
The superintendent proved right in his suspicions, and veri-
fied his promises. My false accuser was his missing patient;
the man recognized Dr. with no apparent terror, rather
with an air of condescension, and in a very few minutes was led
to tell his own tale, with a gloating complacency both at the
agency by which he deemed himself exalted, and at the dex-
terous cunning with which he had acquitted himself of the
task, that increased the horror of his narrative.
208 A STRANGE STORY.
~
He spoke of the mode of his escape, which was extremely in-
genious, but of which the details, long in themselves, did” not
interest me, and I understood them too imperfectly to repeat.
He had encountered a seafaring traveller on the road, whom
he had knocked down with a stone, and robbed of his glazed
hat and pea-jacket, as well as of a small sum in coin, which last
enabled him to pay his fare in a railway that conveyed him
eighty miles away from the asylum. Some trifling remnant of
this money still in his pocket, he then travelled on foot along
the high road till he came to a town about twenty miles distant
from L ; there he had stayed a day or two, and there he
said ‘‘that the Devil had told him to buy a case-knife, which
he did.” “He knew by that order that the Devil meant him
to do something great.” “His Master,” as he called the fiend,
then directed him the road he should take. He came to L y
put up, as he had correctly stated before, at a small inn, wan-
dered at night about the town, was surprised by the sudden
storm, took shelter under the convent arch, overheard somewhat
more of my conversation with Sir Philip than he had previous-
ly deposed—heard enough to excite his curiosity as to the cas-
ket: “While he listened his Master told him that he must get
possession of that casket.” Sir Philip had quitted the archway
almost immediately after I had done so, and he would then
have attacked him if he had not caught sight of a policeman
going his rounds. He had followed Sir Philip to a house (Mr.
Jeeves's). “His Master told him to wait and watch.” He did
so. When Sir Philip came forth, towards the dawn, he ſol-
lowed him, saw him enter a narrow street, came up to him,
seized him by the arm, demanded all he had about him. Sir
Philip tried to shake him off—struck at him. What follows,
I spare the reader. The deed was done. He robbed the dead
man, both of the casket and of the purse that he found in the
pockets; had scarcely done so when he heard footsteps. He
had just time to get behind the portico of a detached house at
angles with the street, when I came up. He witnessed, from
his hiding-place the brief conference between myself and the
policemen, and when they moved on, bearing the body, stole
unobserved away. He was going back towards the inn, when
it occurred to him that it would be safer if the casket and purse
were not about his person; that he asked his Master to direct
him how to dispose of them; that his Master guided him to an
open yard (a stone-mason's) at a very little distance from the
inn: that in this yard there stood an old wych-elm tree, from
the gnarled roots of which the earth was worn away, leaving
...”
A STRANGE STORY. 269
**,
*.
chinks and hollows, in one of which he placed the casket and
purse, taking from the latter only two sovereigns and some sil-
ver, and then heaping loose mould over the hiding-place. That
he then repaired to his inn, and left it late in the morning, on
the pretence of seeking for his relations—persons, indeed, who
really had been related to him, but of whose death years ago
he was aware. He returned to L a few days afterwards,
and in the dead of the night went to take up the casket and the
money. He found the purse with its contents undisturbed; but
the lid of the casket was unclosed. From the hasty glance he
had taken of it before burying it, it had seemed to him firmly
locked—he was alarmed lest some one had been to the spot.
But his Master whispered to him not to mind, told him that
he might now take the casket, and would be guided what to do
with it; that he did so, and, opening the lid, found the casket
empty; that he took the rest of the money out of the purse,
but that he did not take the purse itself, for it had a crest and
initials on it, which might lead to the discovery of what had
been done; that he therefore left it in the hollow amongst the
roots, heaping the mould over it as before; that, in the course
of the day, he heard the people at the inn talk of the murder,
and that his own first impulse was to get out of the town im-
mediately, but that his Master “made him too wise for that,”
and bade him stay; that passing through the streets, he saw me
come out of the sash-window door, go to a stable yard on the
other side of the house, mount on horseback and ride away;
that he observed the sash-door was left partially open; that he
walked by it and saw the room empty; there was only a dead
wall opposite; the place was solitary, unobserved; that his Mas-
ter directed him to lift up the sash gently, enter the room,
and deposit the knife and the casket in a large walnut-tree
bureau which stood unlocked near the window. All that fol-
lowed—his visit to Mr Vigors, his accusation against myself,
his whole tale—was, he said, dictated by his Master, who was
highly pleased with him, and promised to bring him safely
through. And here he turned round with a hideous smile, as
if for approbation of his notable cleverness and respect for his
high employ.
Mr. Jeeves had the curiosity to request the keeper to inquire
how, in what form, or in what manner, the Fiend appeared to
the narrator, or conveyed his infernal dictates. The man at
first refused to say; but it was gradually drawn from him that
the Demon had no certain and invariable form; sometimes it
appeared to him in the form of a rat, sometimes even of a leaf,
{
2 to A ŠTRANGE STORY. ---
or a fragment of wood, or a rusty nail; but that his Master's
voice always came to him distinctly, whatever shape he ap-
peared in ; only, he said, with an air of great importance, his
Master, this time, had graciously condescended, ever since he
left the asylum, to communicate with him in a much more pleas-
ing and imposing aspect than he had ever done before—in the
form of a beautiful youth, or, rather, like a bright rose-colored
shadow, in which the features of a young man were visible,
and that he had heard the voice more distinctly than usual,
though in a milder tone, and seeming to come to him from a
great distance.
After these revelations the man became suddenly disturbed,
He shook from limb to limb; he seemed convulsed with terror;
he cried out that he had betrayed the secret of his Master, who
had warned him not to describe his appearance and mode of
communication, or he would surrender his servant to the tor-
mentors. Then the maniac's terror gave way to fury; his more
direful propensity made itself declared; he sprang into the
midst of his frightened listeners, seized Mr. Vigors by the
throat, and would have strangled him but for the prompt rush ,
of the superintendent and his satellites. Foaming at the mouth,
and horribly raving, he was then manacled, a strait-waistcoat
thrust upon him, and the group so left him in charge of his
captors. Inquiries were immediately directed towards such
circumstantial evidence as might corroborate the details he had
so minutely set forth. The purse, recognized as Sir Philip's
by the valet of the deceased, was found buried under the wych-
elm. A policeman despatched, express, to the town in which
the maniac declared the knife to have been purchased, brought
back word that a cutler in the place remembered perfectly to
have sold such a knife to a seafaring, man, and identified the
instrument when it was shown to him. From the chink of a
door ajar, in the wall opposite my sash window, a maid-servant,
watching for her sweetheart (a journeyman carpenter, who ha-
bitually passed that way on going home to dine), had, though
unobserved by the murderer, seen him come out of my window
at a time that corresponded with the dates of his-own story,
though she had thought nothing of it at the moment. He might
be a patient, or have called on business; she did not know that
I was from home. The only point of importance not cleared
up was that which related to the opening of the casket—the
disappearance of the contents; the lock had been unquestiona-
bly forced. No one, however, could suppose that some third
person had discovered the hiding-place and forced open the
A STRANGE STORY. 2 f iſ
casket to abstract its contents and then rebury it. The only
probable supposition was, that the man himself had forced it
Open, and, deeming the contents of no value, had thrown them
away before he had hidden the casket and purse, and, in the
chaos of his reason, had forgotten that he had so done. Who
could expect that every link in a madman's tale would be found
integral and perfect? In short, little importance was attached
to this solitary doubt. Crowds accompanied me to my door
when I was set free, in open court, stainless—it was a triumphal
procession. The popularity I had previously enjoyed, super-
seded for a moment by so horrible a charge, came back to me
tenfold, as with the reaction of generous repentance for a mo- .
mentary doubt. One man shared the public favor—the young
man whose acuteness had delivered me from the peril, and
cleared the truth from so awful a mystery; but Margrave had
escaped from congratulation and compliment; he had gone on
à visit to Strahan, at Derval Court.
Alone, at last, in the welcome sanctuary of my own home, .
what were my thoughts? Prominent amongst them all was that
assertion of the madman, which had made me shudder when re-
peated to me: he had been guided to the murder and to all the
subsequent proceedings by the luminous shadow of the beauti-
ful youth—the Scin-Laeca to which I had pledged myself. If
Sir Philip Derval could be believed, Margrave was possessed of
powers, derived from fragmentary recollections of a knowledge
acquired in a former state of being, which would render his re-
morseless intelligence infinitely dire, and frustrate the endeavors
of a reason, unassisted by similar powers, to thwart his designs
or bring the law against his crimes. Had he then the arts that
could thus influence the minds of others to serve his fell pur-
poses, and achieve securely his own evil ends through agen-
cies that could not be traced home to himself?
But for what conceivable purpose had I been subjected as a
victim to influences as much beyond my control as the Fate or
Demoniac Necessity of a Greek Myth? In the legends of the
> classic world some august sufferer is oppresed by powers more
than mortal, but with an ethical if gloomy vindication of his
chastisement—he pays the penalty of crime committed by his
ancestors or himself, or he, has braved, by arrogating equality
with the gods, the mysterious calamity which the gods alone
can 1, flict. But I, no descendant of Pelops, no CEqipus boast-
ful of a wisdom which could interpret the enigmas of the
Sphynx, while ignorant even of his own birth—what had I
done to be singled out from the herd of men for trials and visi-
21 2 A STRANGE STORY.
*
tations from the Shadowland of ghosts and sorcerers? It would
be ludicrously absurd to suppose that Dr. Lloyd's dying impre-
cation could have had a prophetic effect upon my destiny; to
believe that the pretences of mesmerizers were specially fav-
ored by Providence, and that to question their assumptions was
an offence of profanation to be punished by exposure to pre-
ternatural agencies. There was not even that congruity be-
tween cause and effect which fable seeks in excuse for its
inventions. Of all men living, I, unimaginative disciple of aus-
tere science, should be the last to become the sport of that
witchcraft which even imagination reluctantly allows to the
machinery of poets, and science casts aside into the mouldy
lumber-room of obsolete superstition.
Rousing my mind from enigmas impossible to solve, it was
with intense and yet most melancholy satisfaction that I turned
to the image of Lilian, rejoicing, though with a thrill of awe,
that the promise so mysteriously conveyed to my senses had here
* too, been already fulfilled—Margrave had left the town; Lilian
was no longer subjected to his evil fascination. But an instinct
told me that that fascination had already produced an effect
adverse to all hope of happiness for me. Lilian’s love for
myself was gone. Impossible otherwise that she, in whose
nature I had always admired that generous devotion which
is more or less inseparable from the romance of youth, should
have never conveyed to me one word of consolation in the
hour of my agony and trial: that she who, till the last even-
ing we had met, had ever been so docile, in the sweetness of
a nature femininely submissive to my slightest wish, should
have disregarded my solemn injunction, and admitted Mar-
grave to acquaintance, nay, to familiar intimacy; at the very
time, too, when to disobey my injunctions was to embitter my
ordeal, and add her own contempt to the degradation imposed
upon my honor No, her heart must be wholly gone from
me; her very nature wholly warped. An union between us had
become impossible. My love for her remained unshattered;
the "more tender, perhaps, for a sentiment of compassion. But
my pride was shocked, my heart was wounded. My love was
not mean and servile. Enough for me to think that she would
be at least saved from Margrave. Her life associated with his l—
contemplation horrible and ghastly lº–from that fate she was
saved. Later, she would recover the effect of an influence
happily so brief. She might form some new attachment, some
new tie. But love once withdrawn is never to be restored—and
her love was withdrawn from me. I had bit to release her,
A STRANGE STORY. 2 I3
with my own lips, from our engagement—she would welcome
that release. Mournful but firm in these thoughts and these
resolutions, I sought Mrs. Ashleigh's house.
&
CHAPTER XLII. *-
IT was twilight when I entered, unannounced (as had been
my wont in our familiar intercourse), the quiet sitting-room in
which I expected to find mother and child. But Lilian was
there alone, seated by the open window, her hands crossed and
drooping on her knee, her eyes fixed upon the darkening sum-
mer skies, in which the evening star had just stolen forth,
bright and steadfast, near the pale sickle of a half-moon that
was dimly visible, but gave as yet no light.
Let any lover imagine the reception he would expect to meet
from his betrothed, coming into her presence after he had
passed triumphant through a terrible peril to life and fame, and
conceive what ice froze my blood, what anguish weighed down
my heart when Lilian, turning towards me, rose not, spoke not—
gazed at me heedlessly as if at some indifferent stranger—and—
and But no matter. I cannot bear to recall it even now, at
the distance of years! I sat down beside her, and took her
hand, without pressing it; it rested languidly, passively in
mine—one moment; I dropped it then, with a bitter sigh.
“Lilian,” I said quietly, “you love me no longer. Is it
not so?”
She raised her eyes to mine, looked at me wistfully, and
pressed her hand on her forehead, then said, in a strange voice:
“Did I ever love you? What do you mean?”
“Lilian, Lilian, rouse yourself; are you not, while you speak,
under some spell, some influence which you cannot describe
nor account for?’’
She paused a moment before she answered calmly: “No
Again I ask what do you mean?”
“What do I mean? Do you forget that we are betrothed?
Do you forget how often, and how recently, our vows of affec-
tion and constancy have been exchanged?”
“No, I do not forget; but I must have deceived you and
myself—”
“It is true, then, that you love me no more?”
“I suppose so.”
“But, oh, Lilian, is it that your heart is only closed to me?
Or is it—oh, answer truthfully—is it given to another? To
…e"
2I4 A STRANGE STORY.
him—to him—against whom I warned you, whom I implored
you not to receive? Tell me, at least, that your love is not
gone to Margrave—”
‘‘To him—love to him. Oh no—no—”
“What, then, is your feeling towards him?”
Lilian's face grew visibly paler, even in that dim light. “I
know not,” she said, almost in a whisper; “but it is partly
awe-partly—”
“What ‘’
“Abhorrence 1” she said, almost fiercely, and rose to her
feet, with a wild defying start.
“If that be so,” I said gently, “you would not grieve were
you never again to see him—” * **
“But I shall see him again,” she murmured, in a tone of
weary sadness, and sank back once more into her chair.
“I think not,” said I, ‘‘and I hope not. And now hear me
and heed me, Lilian. It is enough for me, no matter what your
feelings towards another, to learn from yourself that the affec-
tion you once professed ſor me is gone. I release you from
your troth. If folks ask why we two henceforth separate the
lives we had agreed to join, you may say, if you please, that
you could not give your hand to a man who had known the taint
of a felon’s prison, even on a false charge. If that seems to
you an ungenerous reason, we will leave it to your mother to
find a better. Farewell! For your own sake I can yet feel
happiness—happiness to hear that you do not love the man
against whom I warn you still more solemnly than before
Will you not give me 'your hand in parting—and have I not
spoken your own wish?”
She turned away her face, and resigned her hand to me in
silence. Silently I held it in mine, and my emotions nearly
stified me. One symptom of regret, of reluctance, on her part,
and I should have fallen at her feet, and cried: “Do not let us
break a tie which our vows should have made indissoluble;
heed not my offers—wrung from a tortured heart! You can-
not have ceased to love me!” But no such symptom of re-
lenting showed itself in her, and with a groan I left the room.
y
CHAPTER XLIII.
I was just outside the garden-door, when I felt an arm thrown
round me, my cheek kissed and wetted with tears. Could it be
Lilian? Alas, no! It was her mother's yoice, that, between
A STRANGE STORY. 215
laughing and crying, exclaimed hysterically: “This is joy, to
see you again, and on these thresholds. I have just come from
your house; I went there on purpose to congratulate you, and
to talk to you about Lilian. But you have seen her?”
“Yes; I have but this moment left her. Come this way.”
I drew Mrs. Ashleigh back into the garden, along the old wind-
ing walk, which the shrubs concealed from view of the house.
We sat down on a rustic seat where I had often sat with Lilian,
midway between the house and the Monks’ Well. I told the
mother what had passed between me and her daughter; I
made no complaint of Lilian's coldness and change; I did not
hint at its cause. “Girls of her age will change,” said I, “and
all that now remains is for us two to agree on such a tale to
our curious neighbors, as may rest the whole blame on me.
Man's Name is of robust fibre; it could not push its way to a
place in the world, if it could not bear, without sinking, the
load idle tongues may lay on it. Not so Woman's Name—
what is but gossip against Man, is scandal against Woman.”
“Do not be rash, my dear Allen,” said Mrs. Ashleigh, in
great distress. “I feel for you; I understand you ; in your
case I might act as you do. I cannot blame you. Lilian is
changed—changed unaccountably. Yet sure I am that the
change is only on the surface, that her heart is really yours, as
entirely and as faithfully as ever it was; and that later, when
she recovers from the strange, dreamy kind of torpor which
appears to have come over all her faculties and all her affec-
tions, she would awake with a despair which you cannot con-
jecture, to the knowledge that you had renounced her.’’
“ſ have not renounced her,” said I impatiently; “I did but
restore her freedom of choice. But pass by this now, and ex-
plain to me more fully the change in your daughter, which I
gather from your words is not confined to me.”
“I wished to speak of it before you saw her, and for that
reason came to your house. It was on the morning in which
we left her aunt's to return hither that I first noticed some-
thing peculiar in her look and manner. She seemed absorbed
and absent, so much so that I asked her several times to tell
me what made her so grave, but I could only get from her that
she had had a confused dream which she could not recall dis-
tinctly enough to relate, but that she was sure that it boded
evil. During the journey she became gradually more herself,
and began to look forward with delight to the idea of seeing
you again. Well, you came that evening. What passed be-
tween you and her you know best, You complained that she
2 I6 A STRANGE STORY.
slighted your request to shun all acquaintance with Mr. Mar-
grave. I was surprised that, whether your wish were reason-
able or not, she could have hesitated to comply with it. I spoke
to her about it after you had gone, and she wept bitterly at
thinking she had displeased you.’’
“She wept! You amaze me. Yet the next day what a note
she returned to mine!”
“The next day the change in her became very visible to me.
She told me, in an excited manner, that she was convinced she
ought not to marry you. Then came, the following day, the
news of your Committal. I heard of it, but dared not break
it to her. I went to our friend the mayor, to consult with him
what to say, what do; and to learn more distinctly than I had
done from terrified, incoherent servants, the rights of so dread-
ful a story. When I returned, I found, to my amazement, a
young stranger in the drawing-room; it was Mr. Margrave—
Miss Brabazon had brought him at his request. Lilian was in
the room, too, and my astonishment was increased, when she
said to me with a singular Smile, vague but tranquil: ‘I know
all about Allen Fenwick; Mrs Margrave has told me all. He
is a friend of Allen's. He says there is no cause for fear.’
Mr. Margrave then apologized to me for his intrusion in a
caressing, kindly manner, as if one of the family. He said he
was so intimate with you that he felt that he could best break
to Miss Ashleigh an information she might receive elsewhere,
for that he was the only man in the town who treated the
charge with ridicule. You know the wonderful charm of this
young man’s manner. I cannot explain to you how it was,
but in a few moments I was as much at home with him as if he
had been your brother. To be brief, having once come, he
came constantly. He had moved, two days before you went to
Derval Court, from his hotel to apartments in Mr. 's house,
just opposite. We could see him on his balcony from our ter-
race; he would smile to us and come across. I did wrong in
slighting your injunction, and suffering Lilian to do so. I
could not help it, he was such a comfort to me—to her, too—
in her tribulation. He alone had no doleful words, wore no long
*…,
face; he alone was invariably cheerful. “Everything,' he said,
‘would come right in a day or two.’”
“And Lilian could not but admire this young man, he is so
beaut ful.” A &
“Beautiful? Well, perhaps. But if you have a jealous feel-
ing you were never more mistaken. Lilian, I am convinced,
does more than dislike him; he has inspired her with repug-
A
...”
A strange story. 217
nance, with terror. And much as I own I like him, in his .
wild, joyous, careless, harmless way, do not think I flatter
you if I say that Mr. Margrave is not the man to make any
girl untrue to you—untrue to a lover with infinitely less advan-
tages than you may pretend to. He would be an universal
favorite, I grant; but there is something in him, or a some-
thing wanting in him, which makes liking and admiration stop
short of love. I know not why; perhaps, because, with all his
good humor, he is so absorbed in himself, so intensely egotisti-
cal, so light; were he less clever, I should say so frivolous.
He could not make love, he could not say in the serious tone
of a man in earnest, “I love you.’ He owned as much to me,
and owned, too, that he knew not even what love was. As to
myself—Mr. Margrave appears rich; no whisper against his
character or his honor ever reached me. Yet were you out of
the question, and were there no stain on his birth, nay, were
he as high in rank and wealth as he is favored by Nature in
personal advantages, I confess I could never consent to trust
him with my daughter's fate. A voice at my heart would cry,
‘No!' It may be an unreasonable prejudice, but I could not
bear to see him touch Lilian's hand l’’
“Did she never, then—never suffer him even to take her
hand?”
“Never. Do not think so meanly of her as to suppose that
she could be caught by a fair face, a graceful manner. Re-
flect; just before, she had refused, for your sake, Ashleigh
Sumner, whom Lady Haughton said “no girl in her senses
could refuse'; and this change in Lilian really began before
we returned to L–; before she had ever seen Mr. Mar-
grave. I am convinced it is something in the reach of your
skill as physician—it is on the nerves, the system. I will give
you a proof of what I say, only do not betray me to her. It
was during your imprisonment, the night before your release,
that I was awakened by her coming to my bedside. She was
sobbing as if her heart would break. ‘Oh, mother, mother l'
she cried, ‘pity me, help me—I am so wretched.” “What is
the matter, darling?” “I have been so cruel to Allen, and I
know I shall be so again. I cannot help it. Do not question
me; only if we are separated, if he cast me off, or I reject
him, tell him some day—perhaps when I am in my grave—not
to believe appearances; and that I, in my heart of hearts,
never ceased to love him l’’’ - w
“She said that! You are not deceiving me?”
“Oh no! how can you think so?” - -

2 I 8 A STRANGE story.
“There is hope still,” I murmured; and I-bowed my head
upon my hands, hot tears forcing their way through the
clasped fingers.
“One word more,” said I; “you tell me that Lilian has a
repugnance to this Margrave, and yet that she found comfort
in his visits—a comfort that could not be wholly ascribed to
cheering words he might say about myself, since it is all but
certain that I was not, at that time, uppermost in her mind.
Can you explain this apparent contradiction?”
“I cannot, otherwise than by a conjecture, which you would
ridicule.’’
“I can ridicule nothing now. What is your conjecture?”
“I know how much you disbelieve in the stories one hears
of animal magnetism and electro-biology, otherwise—”
“You think that Margrave exercises some power of that
kind over Lilian? Has he spoken of such a power?”
“Not exactly; but he said that he was sure Lilian possessed
a faculty that he called by some hard name, not clairvoyance,
but a faculty, which he said, when I asked him to explain, was
akin to prevision—to second sight. Then he talked of the
priestesses who had administered the ancient oracles. Lilian,
he said, reminded him of them, with her deep eyes and mys-
terious smile.’’
“And Lilian heard him? What said she?”
“Nothing; she seemed in fear while she listened.”
“He did not offer to try any of those arts practised by pro-
fessional mesmerists and other charlatans?”
“I thought he was about to do so, but I forestalled him;
saying I never would consent to any experiment of that kind,
either on myself or my daughter.”
“And he replied—?”
“With his gay laugh, “that I was very foolish; that a person
possessed of such a faculty as he attributed to Lilian would,
if the faculty were developed, be an invaluable adviser.” He
would have said more, but I begged him to desist. Still I
fancy at times—do not be angry—that he does somehow or
other bewitch her, unconsciously to herself; for she always
knows when he is coming. Indeed, I am not sure that he does
not bewitch myself, for I by no means justify my conduct in
admitting him to an intimacy so familiar, and in spite of your
wish; I have reproached myself, resolved to shut my door on
him, or to show by my manner that his visits were unwelcome;
yet when Lilian has said, in the drowsy, lethargic tone which
has come into her voice (her voice naturally earnest and im-
*:
*
&
A STRANGE STORY. 219
*J
pressive, though always low), “Mother, he will be here in two
minutes—I wish to leave the room and cannot'—I, too, have
felt as if something constrained me against my will; as if, in
short, I were under that influence which Mr. Vigors—whom I
will never forgive for his conduct to you—would ascribe to
mesmerism. But will you not come in and see Lilian again?”
“No, not to-night; but watch and heed her, and if you see
aught to make you honestly believe that she regrets the rupture
of the old tie from which I have released her—why, you know,
Mrs. Ashleigh, that—that—” My voice failed—I wrung the
good woman's hand, and went my way.
I had always till then considered Mrs. Ashleigh—if not as
Mrs. Poyntz described her, “commonplace weak,” still of an
intelligence somewhat below mediocrity. I now regarded her
with respect as well as grateful tenderness; her plain sense had
divined, what all my boasted knowledge had failed to detect
in my earlier intimacy with Margrave, viz., that in him there
was a something present, or a something wanting, which for-
bade love and excited fear. Young, beautiful, wealthy, seem-
ingly blameless in life as he was, she would not have given her
daughter’s hand to him
CHAPTER XLIV.
THE next day my house was filled with visitors. I had no
notion that I had so many friends. Mr. Vigors wrote me a
generous and handsome letter, owning his prejudices against
me on account of his sympathy with poor Dr. Lloyd, and beg-
ging my pardon for what he now felt to have been harshness,
if not distorted justice. But what most moved me was the en-
trance of Strahan, who rushed up to me with the heartiness of
old college days. “Oh, my dear Allen, can you ever forgive
me; that I should have disbelieved your word—should have
suspected you of abstracting my poor cousin's memoir?’’
“Is it found, then?”
“Oh, yes; you must thank Margrave. He, clever fellow,
you know, came to me on a visit yesterday. He put me at
once on the right scent. Only guess; but you never can It
was that wretched old housekeeper who purloined the manu-
script. You remember she came into the room while you were
looking at the memoir. She heard us talk about it; her curi-
osity was roused; she longed to know the history of her old
master, under his own hand; she could not sleep; she heard
22ó A $TRANGE STORY.
&
me go up to bed; she thought you might leave the book on the
table when you, too, went to rest. She stole downstairs,
peeped through the keyhole of the library, saw you asleep, the
book lying before you, entered, took away the book softly,
meant to glance at its contents and to return it. You were
sleeping so soundly she thought you would not wake for an
hour; she carried it into the library, leaving the door open,
and there began to pore over it; she stumbled first on one of
the passages in Latin; she hoped to find some part in plain
English, turned over the leaves, putting her candle close to
them, for the old woman's eyes were dim, when she heard you
make some sound in your sleep. Alarmed, she looked round;
you were moving uneasily in your seat, and muttering to your-
self. From watching you she was soon diverted by the conse-
quence of her own confounded curiosity and folly. In mov-
ing, she had unconsciously brought the poor manuscript close
to the candle; the leaves caught the flame; her own cap and
hand birning first made her aware of the mischief done. She
threw down the book; her sleeve was in flames; she had first
to tear off the sleeve, which was, luckily for her, not sewn to
her dress. By the time she recovered presence of mind to
attend to the book, half its leaves were reduced to tinder.
She did not dare then to replace what was left of the manuscript
on your table; returned with it to her room, hid it, and re-
solved to keep her own secret. I should never have guessed it;
I had never even spoken to her of the occurrence; but when I
talked over the disappearance of the book to Margrave last
night, and expressed my disbelief of your story, he said in his
merry way: “But do you think that Fenwick is the only per-
son curious about your cousin’s odd ways and strange history?
Why, every servant in the household would have been equally
curious. You, have examined your servants, of course?’ ‘No,
I never thought of it.” “Examine them now, then. Examine
especially that old housekeeper. I observe a great change in
her manner since I came here, weeks ago, to look over the
house. She has something on her mind—I see it in her eyes.”
Then it occurred to me, too, that the woman’s manner had
altered, and that she seemed always in a tremble and a fidget.
I went at once to her room, and charged her with stealing the
book. She fell on her knees, and told the whole story as I
have told it you, and as I shall take care to tell it to all to
whom I have so foolishly blabbed my yet more foolish sus.
picions of yourself. But can you forgive me, old friend?”
“Heartily, heartily And the book is burned?”
-**
A STRANGE STORY. 22 I
“See"; and he produced a mutilated manuscript. Strange,
the part burned—reduced indeed, to tinder—was the conclud-
ing part that related to Haroun—to Grayle: no vestige of that
part was left; the earlier portions were scorched and mutilated,
though in some places still decipherable; but as my eye hastily
ran over those places, I saw only mangled sentences of the
experimental problems which the writer had so minutely elab-
orated. '
“Will you keep the manuscript as it is, and as long as you
like?” said Strahan.
“No, no; I will have nothing more to do with it. Consult
some other man of science. And so this is the old woman’s
whole story? No accomplice—none? No one else shared her
curiosity and her task?”
“No. Oddly enough, though, she made much the same
excuse for her pitiful folly that the madman made for his terri-
ble crime; she said, ‘the Devil put it into her head.” Of
course he did, as he puts everything wrong into any one's
head. That does not mend the matter.’’
“How ! did she, too, say she saw a Shadow and heard a
voice?” we
“No ; not such a liar as that, and not mad enough for such
a lie. But she said that when she was in bed, thinking over
the book, something irresistible urged her to get up and go
down into the study; swore she felt something lead her by the
hand; swore, too, that when she first discovered the manu-
script was not in English, something whispered in her to turn
over the leaves and approach them to the candle. But I had
no patience to listen to all this rubbish. I sent her out of the
house, bag and baggage. But, alas! is this to be the end of all
my wise cousin's grand discoveries?”
True, of labors that aspired to bring into the chart of science
new worlds, of which even the traditionary rumor was but a
voice from the land of fable—nought left but broken vestiges
of a daring footstep. The hope of a name imperishable amidst
the loftiest hierarchy of Nature's secret temple, with all the
pomp of recorded experiment, that applied to the mysteries
of Egypt and Chaldaea the inductions of Bacon, the tests of
Liebig—was there nothing left of this but what, here and
there, some puzzled student might extract, garbled, mutilated,
perhaps unintelligible, from shreds of sentences, wrecks of
problems! O mind of man, can the works, on which thou
wouldst found immortality below, be annulled into smoke and
tinder by an inch of candle in the hand of an old woman!
222 A STRAN GE STORY.
When Strahans left me, I went out, but not yet to visit pa-
tients. I stole through bypaths into the fields; I needed soli-
tude to bring my thoughts into shape and order. What was
delusion, and what not? Was I right or the Public? Was
Margrave really the most innocent and serviceable of human
beings, kindly affectionate, employing a wonderful acuteness
for benignant ends? Was I, in truth, indebted to him for the
greatest boon one man can bestow on another? For life res-
cued, for fair name justified? Or had he, by some demoniac
sorcery, guided the hand of the murderer against the life of the
person who alone could imperil his own? Had he, by the
same dark spells, urged the woman to the act that, had de-
stroyed the only record of his monstrous being—the only evi-
dence that I was not the sport of an illusion in the horror with
which he inspired me? --- *
But if the latter supposition could be admissible, did he use
his agents only to betray them afterwards to exposure, and that
without any possible clue to his own detection as the instigator?
Then, there came over me confused recollections of tales of
mediaeval witchcraft, which I had read in boyhood. Were
there not on judicial record, attestation and evidence solemn
and circumstantial, of powers analogous to those now exercised
by Margrave? Of sorcerers instigating to sin through influ-
ences ascribed to Demons—making their apparitions glide
through guarded walls, their voices heard from afar in the soli.
tude of dungeons or monastic cells? subjugating victims to
their will, by means which no vigilance could have detected, if
the victims themselves had not confessed the witchcraft that
had ensnared—courting a sure and infamous death in that
confession—preferring such death to a life so haunted? Were
stories so gravely set forth in the pomp of judicial evidence,
and in the history of times comparatively recent, indeed, to be
massed pell-mell together, as a moles indigesta of senseless
superstition—all the witnesses to be deemed liars? All the vic-
tims and tools of the sorcerers, lunatics? All the examiners
or judges, with their solemn gradations—lay and clerical—
from Commissions of Inquiry to Courts of Appeal—to be de-
spised for credulity, loathed for cruelty; or, amidst records so
numerous, so imposingly attested, were there the fragments of
a terrible truth? And had our ancestors been so unwise in
those laws we now deem so savage, by which the world was
rid of scourges more awful and more potent than the felon
with his candid dagger? Fell instigators of the evil in men's
secret hearts—shaping into action the vague, half-formed desire,
A STRANGE STORY. 223
and guiding with agencies, impalpable, unseen, their spell-
bound instruments of calamity and death.
Such were the gloomy questions that I–by repute, the
sternest advocate of common-sense against fantastic errors,
by profession, the searcher into flesh and blood, and tissue,
and nerve, and sinew, for the causes of all that disease the
mechanism of the universal human frame, LI, self-boasting
physician, Sceptic, philosopher, materialist—revolved, not
amidst gloomy pines, under grim winter skies, but as I paced
slow through laughing meadows, and by the banks of merry
streams in the ripeness of the golden August: the hum of in-
sects in the fragrant grass, the flutter of birds amid the deli-
cate green of boughs checkered by playful sunbeams and gen-
tle shadows, and ever in sight of the resorts of busy work-day
man. Walls, roof-tops, church-spires rising high. There,
white and modern, the handwriting of our race, in this practi-
cal nineteenth century, on its square plain masonry and Doric
shafts, the Town Hall, central in the animated market-place.
And I–I—prying into long-neglected corners and dust-holes
of memory for what my reason had flung there as worthless
rubbish; reviving the jargon of French law, in the proces
verbal, against a Gille de Retz, or an Urbain Grandier, and
sifting the equity of sentences on witchcraft!
Bursting the links of this ghastly soliloquy with a laugh at
my own folly, I struck into a narrow path that led back
towards the city, by a quiet and rural suburb: the path wound
on through a wide and solitary churchyard, at the base of the
Abbey Hill. Many of the former dwellers on that eminence
now slept in the lowly burial-ground at its foot. And the
place, mournfully decorated with the tombs which still jeal-
ously mark distinctions of rank amidst the levelling democracy
of the grave, was kept trim with the care which comes half
from piety, and half from pride.
I seated myself on a bench, placed between the clipped yew-
trees that bordered the path from the entrance to the church
porch; deeming vaguely that my own perplexing thoughts
might imbibe a quiet from the quiet of the place.
“And oh,” I murmured to myself, “oh that I had one
bosom friend to whom I might freely confide all these torturing
riddles which I cannot solve—one who could read my heart;
light up its darkness; exorcise its spectres—one in whose wis-
dom. I could welcome a guide through the Nature which now
suddenly changes her aspect, opening out from the walls with
which I had fenced and enclosed her as mine own formal gar.
!
224 A STRANGE STORY. ~~~~
den; all her pathways, therein, trimmed to my footstep; all
her blooms grouped and harmonized to my own taste in color;
all her groves, all her Caverns, but the soothing retreats of a
Muse or a Science; opening out—opening out, desert on des-
ert, into clueless and measureless space! Gone is the garden?
Were its confines too narrow for Nature? Be it so | The
Desert replaces the garden, but where ends the Desert? Reft
from my senses are the laws which gave order and place to
their old questionless realm. I stand lost and appalled amidst
Chaos. Did my Mind misconstrue the laws it deemed fixed
and immutable? Be it so! But still Nature cannot be lawless;
Creation is not a Chaos. If my senses deceive me in some
things, they are still unerring in others; if thus, in some
things, fallacious, still, in other things, truthful. Are there
within me senses finer than those I have cultured, or without
me vistas of knowledge which instincts, apart from my senses,
divine? So long as I deal with the Finite alone, my senses
suffice me; but when the Infinite is obtruded upon me, there
are my senses faithless deserters? If so, is there aught else in
my royal resources of Man—whose ambition it is, from the
first dawn of his glory as Thinker, to invade, and to subju-
gate Nature—is there aught else to supply the place of those
traitors the senses, who report to my Reason, their judge and
their sovereign, as truths, seen and heard, tales which my Rea-
son forfeits her sceptre if she does not disdain as lies? Oh,
for a friend Oh, for a guide."
And as I so murmured, my eye fell upon the form of a
kneeling child—at the farther end of the burial-ground, beside
a grave with its new headstone gleaming white amidst the older
moss-grown tombs,-a female child, her head bowed, her hands
clasped. I could see but the outline of her small form in its
sable dress—an infant beside the dead.
My eye and my thoughts were turned from that silent figure,
too absorbed in my own restless tumult of doubt and dread,
for sympathy with the grief or the consolation of a kneeling
child. And yet I should have remembered that tomb! Again
I murmured with a fierce impatience: “Oh, for a friend! Oh,
for a guide l’’
I heard steps on the walk under the yews; and an old man
came in sight, slightly bent, with long gray hair, but still with
enough of vigor for years to come—in his tread, firm, though,
slow; in the unshrunken muscle of his limbs and the steady
light of his clear blue eye. I started. Was it possible? That
countenance, marked, indeed, with the lines of laborious
|
A STRANGE STORY. 225
thought, but sweet in the mildness of humanity, and serene in
the peace of conscienceſ I could not be mistaken. Julius
Faber was before me. The profound pathologist, to whom my
own proud self esteem acknowledged inferiority, without humil-
iation; the generous benefactor to whom I owed my own
smoothed entrance into the arduous road of fame and fortune.
I had longed for a friend, a guide; what I sought stood sud-
denly at my side.
CHAPTER XLV.
ExPLANATION, on Faber’s part, was short and simple. The
nephew whom he designed as the heir to his wealth had large-
ly outstripped the liberal allowance made to him—had incurred
heavy debts and in order to extricate himself from the debts,
had plunged into ruinous speculations. Faber had come back
to England to save his heir from prison or outlawry, at the ex-
pense of more than three-fourths of the destined inheritance.
To add to all, the young man had married a young lady with-
out fortune; the uncle only heard of this marriage on arriv-
ing in England. The spendthrift was hiding from his creditors
in the house of his father-in-law, in one of the western counties.
Faber there sought him; and, on becoming acquainted with his
wife, grew reconciled to the marriage, and formed hopes of his
nephew’s future redemption. He spoke, indeed, of the young
wife with great affection. She was good and sensible; willing
and anxious to encounter any privation by which her husband
might retrieve the effects of his folly. “So,” said Faber, “on
consultation with this excellent creature, for my poor nephew is
so broken down by repentance, that others must think for him
how to exalt repentance into reform, my plans were deter-
mined. I shall remove my prodigal from all scenes of temp-
tation. He has youth, strength, plenty of energy, hitherto mis-
directed. I shall take him from the Old World into the New.
I have decided on Australia. The fortune still left to me, small
here, will be ample capital there. It is not enough to main-
tain us separately, so we must all live together. Besides, I feel
that, though I have neither the strength nor the experience
which could best serve a young settler on a strange soil, still,
under my eye, my poor boy will be at once more prudent and
more persevering. We sail next week.”
Faber spoke so cheerfully that I knew not how to express
compassion; yet, at his age, after a career of such prolonged
and distinguished labor, to resign the ease and comforts of the
*
226 A STRANGE STORY.
civilized state for the hardships and rudeness of an infant colony,
seemed to me a dreary prospect; and, as delicately, as tender-
ly as I could to one whom I loved and honored as a father, I
placed at his disposal the fortune which, in great part, I owed
to him—pressing him at least to take from it enough to secure
to himself, in his own country, a home suited to his years and
worthy of his station. He rejected all my offers, however earn-
estly urged on him, with his usual modest and gentle dignity; and
assuring me that he looked forward with great interest to a,
residence in lands new to his experience, and affording ample
scope for the hardy enjoyments which had always most allured
his tastes, he hastened to change the subject.
“And who, think you, is the admirable helpmate my scape-
grace has had the saving good luck to find? A daughter of the
worthy man who undertook the care of poor Dr. Lloyd's or-
phans—the orphans who owed so much to your generous exer-
tions to secure a provision for them—and that child, now just
risen from her father's grave, is my pet companion, my darling
ewe-lamb–Dr. Lloyd's daughter Amy.”
Here the child joined us, quickening her pace as she recog-
nized the old man, and nestling to his side as she glanced wist-
fully towards myself. A winning, candid, lovable child’s face,
somewhat melancholy, somewhat more thoughtful than is com-
mon to the face of childhood, but calm, intelligent, and ineffably
mild. Presently she stole from the old man, and put her hand
in mine:
“Are you not the kind gentleman who came to see Him that
night when he passed away from us, and who, they all say at
home, was so good to my brothers and me? Yes I recollect
you now.” And she put her pure face to mine, wooing me to
kiss it.
I kind I good! I—I Alas! she little knew, little guessed,
the wrathful imprecation her father had bequeathed to me that
fatal night!
I did not dare to kiss Dr. Lloyd’s orphan daughter, but my
tears fell over her hand. She took them as signs of pity, and,
in her infant thankfulness, silently kissed me.
‘‘Oh, my friend!” I murmured to Faber, “I have much
that I yearn to say to you—alone—alone—come to my house
with me; be at least my guest as long as you stay in this town.”
“Willingly,” said Faber, looking at me more intently than
he had done before, and, with the true eye of the practised
Healer, at once soft and penetrating.
He rose, took my arm, and whispering a word in the ear of
A STRANGE STORY. 227
the little girl, she went on before us, turning her head, as she
gained the gate, for another look at her father’s grave. As we
walked to my house, Julius Faber spoke to me much of this
child. Her brothers were all at school; she was greatly at-
tached to his nephew's wife; she had become yet more attached
to Faber himself, though on so short an acquaintance; it had
been settled that she was to accompany the emigrants to Aus.
tralia.
“There,” said he, “the sum that some munificent, but un-
known, friend of her father has settled on her, will provide
her no mean dower for a colonist’s wife, when the time comes
for her to bring a blessing to some other hearth than ours.”
He went on to say that she had wished to accompany him to
L in order to visit her father’s grave before crossing the
wide seas; “and she has taken such fond care of me all the
way, that you might fancy I were the child of the two. I come
back to this town, partly to dispose of a few poor houses in it
which still belong to me, principally to bid you farewell before
quitting the Old World, no doubt forever. So, on arriving to-
day, I left Amy by herself in the churchyard while I went to
your house, but you were from home. And now I must con-
gratulate you on the reputation you have so rapidly acquired,
which has even surpassed my predictions.”
“You are aware,” said I falteringly, “of the extraordinary
charge from which that part of my reputation dearest to all
men has just emerged?”
He had but seen a short account in a weekly journal, written
after my release. He asked details, which I postponed.
Reaching my home, I hastened to provide for the comfort of
y two unexpected guests; strove to rally myself—to be cheer-
Tful. Not till night, when Julius Faber and I were alone to-
gether, did I touch on what was weighing at my heart. Then,
drawing to his side, I told him all—all of which the substance
is herein written, from the death-scene in Dr. Lloyd’s chamber
to the hour in which I had seen Dr. Lloyd's child at her
father's grave. Some of the incidents and conversations which
had most impressed me, I had already committed to writing,
in the fear that, otherwise, my fancy might forge for its own
thraldom the links of reminiscence which my memory might
let fall from its chain. Faber listened with a silence only inter-
rupted by short pertinent questions; and when I had done, he
remained thoughtful for some moments; then the great physi-
cian replied thus:
“I take for granted your conviction of the reality of all you
* * **.
228 A STRANGE STORY
tell me, even of the Luminous Shadow, of the bodiless Voice;
but, before admitting the reality itself, we must abide by the
old maxim, not to accept as cause to effect those agencies which
belong to the Marvellous, when causes less improbable for the
effect can be rationally conjectured. In this case are there not
such causes? Certainly there are—”
‘‘There are?”
“Listen; you are one of those men who attempt to stifle
their own-imagination. But in all completed intellect, imagi-
nation exists, and will force its way; deny it healthful vents,
and it may stray into morbid channels. The death-room of Dr.
Lloyd deeply impressed your heart, far more than your pride
would own. This is clear, from the pains you took to exoner-
ate your conscience in your generosity to the orphans. As the
heart was moved, so was the imagination stirred; and, unaware
to yourself, prepared for much that subsequently appealed to
it. Your sudden love, conceived in the very grounds of the
house so associated with recollections in themselves strange and
romantic; the peculiar temperament and nature of the girl to
whom your love was attracted; her own visionary beliefs, and
the keen anxiety which infused into your love a deeper poetry
of sentiment—all insensibly tended to induce the imagination
to dwell on the Wonderful; and, in overstriving to reconcile
each rarer phenomenon to the most positive laws of Nature,
your very intellect could discover no solution but in the Preter-
natural.
“You visit a man who tells you he has seen Sir Philip Der-
val's ghost: on that very evening, you hear a strange story, in
which Sir Philip's name is mixed up with a tale of murder, im-
^
plicating two mysterious pretenders to magic—Louis Graylessº
and the sage of Aleppo. The tale so interests your fancy that
even the glaring impossibility of a not unimportant part of it
escapes your notice,—viz., the account of a criminal trial in
which the circumstantial evidence was more easily attainable
than in all the rest of the narrative, but which could not legally
have taken place as told. Thus it is whenever the mind be-
gins, unconsciously, to admit the shadow of the Supernatural;
the Obvious is lost to the eye that plunges its gaze into the
Obscure. Almost immediately afterwards you become ac-
quainted with a young stranger, whose traits of character in-
terest and perplex, attract yet revolt you. All this time you
are engaged in a physiological work which severely tasks the
brain, and in which you examine the intricate question of
Soul distinct from mind.
Ar
*.
A STRANGE STORY. y 229
“And, here, I can conceive a cause deep-hid amongst what
metaphysicians would call latent associations, for a train of
thought which disposed you to accept the fantastic impressions
afterwards made on you by the scene in the Museum and the
visionary talk of Sir Philip Derval. Doubtless, when, at col-
lege, you first studied metaphysical speculation, you would
have glanced over Beattie's Essay on Truth as one of the works
written in opposition to your favorite, David Hume.”
“Yes I read the book, but I have long since forgotten its
arguments.’’ --- *
“Well, in that essay, Beattie * cites the extraordinary instance
of Simon Browne, a learned and pious clergyman, who seriously
disbelieved the existence of his own soul; and imagined that,
by interposition of Divine power, his soul was annulled, and
nothing left but a principle of animal life, which he held in
common with the brutes! When, years ago, a thoughtful, im-
aginative student, you came on that story, probably enough you
would have paused, revolved in your own mind and fancy what
kind of a creature a man might be, if, retaining human life and
merely human understanding, he was deprived of the powers
and properties which reasoners have ascribed to the existence
of Soul. Something in this young man, unconsciously to your-
self, revives that forgotten train of meditative ideas. His dread
of death as the final cessation of being, his brute-like want of
sympathy with his kind, his incapacity to comprehend the mo-
tives which carry man on to scheme and to build for a future
that extends beyond his grave, all start up before you at the
very moment your reason is overtasked, your imagination fe-
vered, in seeking the solution of problems which, to a philoso-
phy based upon your system, must always remain insoluble.
The young man's conversation not only thus excites your fan-
cies, it disturbs your affections. He speaks not only of drugs
that renew youth, but of charms that secure love. You trem-
ble for your Lilian while you hear him And the brain thus
tasked, the imagination thus inflamed, the heart thus agitated,
you are presented to Sir Philip Derval, whose ghost your pa-
tient had supposed he saw weeks ago.
“This person, a seeker after an occult philosophy, which had
possibly acquainted him with some secrets in nature beyond
the pale of our conventional experience, though, when analyzed,
they might prove to be quite reconcilable with sober science,
startles you with an undefined mysterious charge against the
* Beattie’s “Essay on Truth,” part i. c. ii. 3. The story of Simon Browne is to be found
in The Adventurer.
230 A STRANGE STORY, *
*
young man who had previously seemed to you different from
ordinary mortals. In a room stored with the dead things of
the brute soulless world, your brain becomes intoxicated with
the ſumes of some vapor which produces effects not uncommon
in the superstitious practices of the East; your brain, thus ex-
cited, brings distinctly before you the vague impressions it had
before received. Margrave becomes identified with the Louis
Grayle of whom you had previously heard an obscure and leg-
endary tale, and all the anomalies in his character are explained
by his being that which you had contended, in your physiologi-
cal work, it was quite possible for man to be, viz., mind and
body without soul! You were startled by the monster which
man would be were your own theory possible; and in order to
reconcile the contradictions in this very monster, you account
for knowledge and for powers that mind without soul could
not have attained, by ascribing to this prodigy broken mem-
ories of a former existence, demon attributes from former pro-
ficiency in evil magic. My friend, there is nothing here which
your own study of morbid idiosyncrasies should not suffice to
solve.’’
“So then,” said I, “you would reduce all that have affected
my senses as realities into the deceit of illusions?' But,” I
added, in a whisper, terrified by my own question, “do not
physiologists agree in this: viz., that though illusory phantasms
may haunt the sane as well as the insane, the sane know that
they are only illusions, and the insane do not?’’
“Such a distinction,” answered Faber, “is far too arbitrary
and rigid for more than a very general and qualified acceptance.
Müller, indeed, who is, perhaps, the highest authority on such
a subject, says, with prudent reserve: “When a person who is
not insane sees spectres and believes them to be real, his intel-
lect must be imperfectly exercised.’” He would, indeed, be a
bold physician who maintained that every man who believed
he had really seen a ghost was of unsound mind. In Dr. Aber-
crombie's interesting account of spectral illusions, he tells us
of a servant-girl who believed she saw, at the foot of her bed,
the apparition of Curran, in a sailor’s jacket and an immense
pair of whiskers.f No doubt the spectre was an illusion, and
Dr. Abercrombie very ingeniously suggests the association of
ideas by which the apparition was conjured up with the gro-
tesque adjuncts of the jacket and the whiskers; but the ser-
vant-girl, in believing the reality of the apparition, was cer-
* Muller's “Physiology of the Senses,” p 394.
f Abercrombie on the Intellectual Powers, p. 281. (15th edition )
N.
A STRANGE STORY, 231
tainly not insane. When I read in the American public jour-
nals” of ‘spirit manifestations,’ in which large numbers of
persons, of at least the average degree of education, declare
that they have actually witnessed various phantasms, much
more extraordinary than all which you have confided to me,
and arrive, at once, at the conclusion that they are thus put
into direct communication with departed souls, I must as-
sume that they are under an illusion, but I should be utterly
r unwarranted in supposing that, because they credited that illu-
sion, they were insane. I should only say with Müller, that in
their reasoning on the phenomena presented to them, ‘their in-
tellect was imperfectly exercised.’ And an impression made
s on the senses, being in itself sufficiently rare to excite our
wonder, may be strengthened till it takes the form of a positive
fact, by various coincidences which are accepted as corrobora-
tive testimony, yet which are, nevertheless, nothing more than
coincidences found in every-day matters of business, but
only emphatically noticed when, we can exclaim, ‘How aston-
ishing!' In your case such coincidences have been, indeed,
very signal, and might well aggravate the perplexities into
which your reason was thrown. Sir Philip Derval’s murder,
the missing casket, the exciting nature of the manuscript, in
which a superstitious interest is already enlisted by your ex-
pectation to find in it the key to the narrator’s boasted pow-
ers, and his reasons for the astounding denunciation of the
man whom you suspect to be his murderer; in all this there is
much to confirm, nay, to cause, an illusion, and for that very
reason, when examined by strict laws of evidence, in all this
there is but additional proof that the illusion was—only illu-
sion. . Your affections contribute to strengthen your fancy in
its war on your reason. The girl you so passionately love de-
velops, to your disquietude and terror, the visionary tempera-
ment which, at her age, is ever liable to fantastic caprices. She
hears Margrave's song, which, you say, has a wildness of charm
that affects and thrills even you. Who does not know the
power of music? And of all music, there is none so potential
as that of the human voice. Thus, in some languages, charm
and song are identical expressions; and even when a critic, in
our own sober newspapers, extols a Malibran or a Grisi, you
* may be sure that he will call her ‘enchantress.’ Well, this
lady, your betrothed, in whom the nervous system is extremely
impressionable, hears a voice which, even to your ear, is strange-
-
* At the date of Faber's conversation with Allen Fenwick, the (so-called) spirit manifes.
\- tations had not spread from America over Europe. But if they had, Faber's views would,
no doubt, have remained the same.
º
s
232 A STRAN (; E STORY.
ly melodious, and sees a form and face which, even to your eye,
are endowed with a singular character of beauty. Her fancy
is impressed by what she thus hears and sees; and impressed
the more because, by a coincidence not very uncommon, a face
like that which she beholds has before been presented to her in
a dream or a revery. In the nobleness of genuine, confiding, -
reverential love, rather than impute to your beloved a levity of
sentiment that would seem to you a treason, you accept the
chimera of ‘magical fascination.” In this frame of mind you
sit down to read the memoir of a mystical enthusiast. Do you
begin now to account for the Luminous Shadow? A dream
And a dream no less because your eyes were open and you be-
lieved yourself awake. The diseased imagination resembles
those mirrors which, being themselves distorted, represent dis-
torted pictures as correct.
“And even this Memoir of Sir Philip Derval's—can you be
quite sure that you actually read the part which relates to
Haroun and Louis Grayle? You say that, while perusing the
manuscript, you saw the Luminous Shadow and became insensi-
ble. The old woman says you were fast asleep. May you not
really have fallen into a slumber, and in that slumber have
dreamed the parts of the tale that relate to Grayle? Dreamed
that you beheld the Shadow? Do you remember what is said
so well by Dr. Abercrombie, to authorize the explanation I
suggest to you : ‘A person under the influence of some strong
mental impression falls asleep for a few seconds, perhaps with-
out being sensible of it: some scene or person appears in a
dream, and he starts up under the conviction that it was a
spectral appearance.’ ” ”
“But,” said I, ‘‘the apparition was seen by me again, and
when, certainly, I was not sleeping.”
“True; and who should know better than a physician so
well read as yourself that a spectral illusion once beheld is al-
* Abercrombie on the Intellectual Powers, p. 278. (15th edition.) . This author, not
more to be admired for his intelligence than his candor, and who is entitled to, praise for
a higher degree of original thought than that to which he modestly pretends, relates a cu-
rious anecdote illustrating “the analogy between dreaming and spectral illusign, which he
received from the gentleman to whom it occurred—an eminent medical friend": “Having
sat up late one evening, under considerable anxiety for one of his children, who was ill, he
fell asleep in his chair, and had a frightful dream, in which the prominent, figure was an
immense baboon. He awoke with the fright, got up instantly, and walked to a table
which was in the middle of the room. He was then quite awake, and quite conscious of
the articles around him ; but close by the wall in the end of the apartment he distinctly saw
the baboon making the same grimaces which he had scen in his dream ; and this spectre Con-
tinued visible for about half a minute.” Now, a man who saw only a baboon would be
quite ready to admit that it was but an optical illusion; but if, instead of a baboon, he
had seen an intimate friend, and that friend, by some coincidence of time, had died about
that date, he would be a very strong-minded man if he admitted for the mystery, of seeing
his friend the same natural solution which he would readily admit for seeing a baboon.
* *
A STRANGE STORY. 233
ways apt to return again in the same form 2 Thus, Goethe
was long haunted by one image; the phantom of a flower un-
folding itself, and developing new flowers.” Thus, one of our
most distinguished philosophers tells us of a lady known to
himself, who would see her husband, hear him move and speak,
when he was not even in the house. But instances of the
facility with which phantasms, once admitted, repeat them-
selves to the senses, are numberless. Many are recorded by
Hibbert and Abercrombie, and every physician in extensive
practice can add largely, from his own experience, to the list.
Intense self-concentration is, in itself, a mighty magician. The
magicians of the East inculcate the necessity of fast, solitude,
and meditation for the due development of their imaginary
powers. And I have no doubt with effect; because fast, soli-
tude, and meditation—in other words, thought or fancy in-
tensely concentred, will both raise apparitions and produce
the invoker's belief in them. Spinello, striving to conceive the
image of Lucifer for his picture of the Fallen Angels, was at
last actually haunted by the Shadow of the Fiend. Newton
himself has been subjected to a phantom, though to him, Son
of Light, the spectre presented was that of the sun' You re-
member the account that Newton gives to Locke of this visionary
appearance. He says that ‘though he had looked at the sun with
his right eye only, and not with the left, yet his fancy began to
make an impression upon his left eye as well as his right, for
if he shut his right and looked upon the clouds, or a book, or
any bright object with his left eye, he could see the sun almost
as plain as with the right, if he did but intend his fancy a little
while on it’; nay, ‘for some months after, as often as he began
to meditate on the phenomena, the spectrum of the sun began
to return, even though he lay in bed at midnight, with his cur-
tains drawn '' Seeing, then, how any vivid impression once
made will recur, what wonder that you should behold in your
prison the Shining Shadow that had first startled you in a wiz-
ard's chamber when poring over the records of a murdered
visionary? The more minutely you analyze your own halluci-
nations—pardon me the word—the more they assume the usual
characteristics of a dream; contradictory, illogical, even in the
marvels they represent. Can any two persons be more totally
unlike each other, not merely as to form and years, but as to
all the elements of character, than the Grayle of whom you
* See Muller's observations on this phenomenon, “Physiology of the Senses,” Baley's
translation, p. 1395.
# Sir David Brewster's “Letters on Natural Magic,” p, 39.
234 A STRANGE STORY.
\
read, or believe you read, and the Margrave in whom you evi-
dently think that Grayle is existent still? The one represented,
you say, as gloomy, saturnine, with vehement passions, but
with an original grandeur of thought and will, consumed by an
internal remorse; the other you paint to me as a joyous and
wayward darling of Nature, acute yet frivolous, free from even
the ordinary passions of youth, taking delight in innocent
amusements, incapable of continuous study, without a single
pang of repentance for the crimes you so fancifully impute to
him. And now, when your suspicions, so romantically con-
ceived, are dispelled by positive facts, now, when it is clear
that Margrave neither murdered Sir Philip Derval nor ab-
stracted the memoir, you still, unconsciously to yourself, draw
on your imagination in order to excuse the suspicion your
pride of intellect declines to banish, and suppose that this
youthful sorcerer tempted the madman to the murder, the
woman to the theft—’’
“But you forget the madman said “that he was led on
by the Luminous Shadow of a beautiful youth,’ that the
woman said also that she was impelled by some mysterious
agency.”
“I do not forget those coincidences; but how your learning
would dismiss them as nugatory were your imagination not dis-
posed to exaggerate them. When you read the authentic his-
tories of any popular illusion, such as the spurious inspirations
of the Jansenist Convulsionaries, the apparitions that invaded
convents, as deposed in the trial of Urbain Grandier, the con-
fessions of witches and wizards in places the most remote from
each other, or, at this day, the tales of ‘spirit-manifestation’
recorded in half the towns and villages of America—do not all
the superstitious impressions of a particular time have a com-
mon family likeness? What one sees another sees, though
there has been no communication between the two. I can-
not tell you why these phantasms thus partake of the nature
of an atmospheric epidemic; the fact remains incontestable.
And strange as may be the coincidence between your impres-
sions of a mystic agency and those of some other brains not
cognizant of the chimeras of your own, still, is it not sim-
pler philosophy to say: “They are coincidences of the same
nature which made witches in the same epoch all tell much
the same story of the broomsticks they rode and the sabbats at
which they danced to the fiend's piping,’ and there leave the
matter, as in science we must leave many of the most elemen-
tary and familiar phenomena inexplicable as to their causes—is
^
A STRANGE STOR
tº 235
not this, I say, more philosophical than to insist upon an ex-
planation which accepts the supernatural rather than leave the
extraordinary unaccounted for?’’
“As you speak,” said I, resting my downcast face upon my
hand, “I should speak to any patient who had confided to me
the tale I have told to you.” ,'
“And yet the explanation does not wholly satisfy you?
Very likely: to some phenomena there is, as yet, no explana.
tion. Perhaps Newton himself could not explain quite to his
own satisfaction why he was haunted at midnight by the spec-
trum of a Sun ; though I have no doubt that some later philos-
opher, whose ingenuity has been stimulated by Newton's ac-
Count, has, by this time, suggested a rational solution of that
enigma.” To return to your own case. I have offered such
interpretations of the mysteries that confound you, as appear
to me authorized by physiological science. Should you adduce
other facts which physiological science wants the data to resolve
into phenomena always natural, however rare, still hold fast to
that simple saying of Goethe's: “Mysteries are not necessarily
miracles.' And, if all which physiological science comprehends
in its experience wholly fails us, I may then hazard certain con-
jectures which, by acknowledging ignorance, is compelled to rec-
ognize the Marvellous (for as where knowledge enters the
Marvellous recedes, so where knowledge falters the Marvellous
advances)—yet still, even in those conjectures, I will distin-
guish the Marvellous from the Supernatural. But, for the
present, I advise you to accept the guess that may best quiet
* Newton's explanation is as follows: “ This story I tell you to let you understand, that
in the observation related by Mr. Boyle, the man's fancy probably concurred with the im-
'pression made by the sun's light to produce that phantasm of the sun which he constantly
saw in bright objects, and so your question about the cause of this phantasm 7777.0/ves an-
other abozz the Žower of the fancy, which / midst confess is too hard a ſºn of ſor ºte to
zantie. To place this effect in a constant motion is hard, because the sun ought then to
appear perpetually. It seems rather to consist in a disposition of the sensorium to move
the imagination strongly, and to be easily moved both by the imagination and by the light
as often as bright objects are looked upon.”—Letter /rome Sir I. Nezvéon to Locke, Lord
King's “Life of Locke,” vol. i., pp. 405-8. tº- -
Dr. Roget (“Animal and Vegetable Physiology considered with reference to Natural
Theology,” Bridgewater Treatise, pp. 524, 525) thus refers to this phenomenon, which he
states “all of us may experience ’’:
“When the impressions are very vivid’’ (Dr. Roget is speaking of visual impressions),
“another phenomenon often takes place, namely, their szósegreenſ reczerºence after a
certain intezzaz, during which they are no? /e/#, and 7: 3 &e independezz/y of a way 7:c-
newed application of the cause zv/, fo/, had originally excited them.” (I mark by italics
the words which more precisely coincide with Julius Faber's explanations.), “.. If, for ex-
ample, we look steadfastly at the sun for a second or two, and then immediately close our
eves, the image or spectrum of the sun remains for a long time present to the mind, as if the
light were still acting on the retina. It then gradually fades and disappears ; but if we
continue to keep the eyes shut, the same imgºession wild, a/#er a certa #2, #77te, reczer
and again zanish ; and this phenomenon will be repeated at intervals, the sensation be-
coming fainter at each renewal. It then gradually fades and disappears; but if we con-
tinue to keep the eyes shut, the same impression will after a time recur, and then vanish,
and this phenomenon will be repeated at intervals, the sensation becoming fainter at each
*



236 - A •
the fevered imagination which any bolder guess would only
more excite.” º
“You are right,” said I, rising proudly to the full height of
my stature, my head erect and my heart defying. “And so
let this subject be renewed no more between us. I will brood
over it no more myself. I regain the unclouded realm of my
human intelligence; and, in that intelligence, I'mock the sor-
cerer and disdain the spectre.”
CHAPTER XLVI.
JULIUS FABER and Amy Lloyd stayed in my house three
days, and in their presence I felt a healthful sense of security
and peace. Amy wished to visit her father's house, and I
asked Faber, in taking her there, to seize the occasion to see
Lilian, that he might communicate to me his impression of a
case so peculiar. I prepared Mrs. Ashleigh for this visit by a
previous note. When the old man and the child came back,
both brought me comfort. Amy was charmed with Lilian,
who had received her with the sweetness natural to her real
character, and I loved to hear Lilian's praise from those inno-
cent lips.
Faber’s report was still more calculated to console me:
“I have seen, I have conversed with her long and familiarly.
You were quite right, there is no tendency to consumption in
that exquisite, if delicate, organization; nor do I see cause for
renewal. It is probable that these reappearances of the image, after the light which pro-
duced the original impression has been withdrawn, are occasioned by spontaneous affec-
tions of the retina itself which are conveyed to the sensorium. In other cases, where the
impressions are less strong, the physical changes producing these changes are perhaps con-
fined to the sensorium.” -
It may be said that there is this difference between the spectrum of the sun and such a
phantom as that which perplexed Allen Fenwick, viz., that the sun has been actually be-
held before its visionary appearance can be reproduced, and that Allen Fenwick only im- .
agines he has seen the apparition which repeats itself to his fancy. “But there are grounds
for the suspicion ” (says Dr. Hibbert, “Philosophy of Apparitions,” p. 250), “that when
ideas of z/ision are vizi/ied to the height of sensation, a corresponding affection of the
oA:ic mezze accompanies the illusion.” Müller (“Physiology of the Senses,” p. 1392, Ba-
ley's translation) states the same opinion still more strongly, and Sir David Brewster, quoted
by Dr. Hibbert (p. 251), says: “In examining these mental impressions, I have found that
they follow the motions of the eyeball exactly like the spectral impressions of luminous ob-
jects. and that they resemble them also in their apparent immobility when the eye is dis-
placed by an external force. If this result (which. I state with much diffidence, from having
only my own experience in its favor) shall be found generally true by others, it will follow
that the objects of mental contemplation may be seem as distinctly as external oã7ects,
and will occzęży the sa”ze local Aosition ºn the aris of zwision, as ºf they had beeze formeed
ôy 4% e agency of light.” Hence the impression of an image or:ce conveyed to the senses,
no master how, whether by actual or illusory vision, is liable to renewal, “independently
of any renewed application of the cause which had originally excited it,” and the image
can be seen in that renewal “as distinctly as external objects,” for indeed “the revival of
the fantastic figure really does affect those points of the retina which had been previously
impressed,” *

A ŠºffANGE STORY. 237
the fear to which your statement had pre-inclined me. That
head is too nobly formed for any constitutional cerebral in-
firmity. In its organization, ideality, wonder, veneration are
large, it is true, but they are balanced by other organs, now
perhaps almost dormant, but which will come into play as life
passes from romance into duty. Something at this moment
evidently oppresses her mind. In conversing with her, I ob-
served abstraction, listlessness; but I am so convinced of her
truthfulness, that if she has once told you she returned your
affection, and pledged to you her faith, I should, in your place,
rest perfectly satisfied that whatever be the cloud that now
rests on her imagination, and for the time obscures the idea of
yourself, it will pass away.”
Faber was a believer in the main divisions of phrenology,
though he did not accept all the dogmas of Gall and Spurz-
heim; while, to my mind, the refutation of phrenology in its
fundamental propositions had been triumphantly established by
the lucid arguments of Sir W. Hamilton.” But when Faber
rested on phrenological observations assurances in honor of
Lilian, I forgot Sir W. Hamilton, and believed in phrenology.
As iron girders and pillars expand and contract with the mere
variations of temperature, so will the strongest conviction on
which the human intellect rests its judgment, vary with the
changes of the human heart; and the building is only safe
where these variations are foreseen and allowed for by a wis-
dom intent on self-knowledge. }
There was much in the affcetion that had sprung up between
Julius Faber and Amy Lloyd which touched my heart and
softened all its emotions. This man, unblessed, like myself,
by conjugal and parental ties, had, in his solitary age, turned
for solace to the love of a child, as I, in the pride of manhood,
had turned to the love of woman. But his love was without
fear, without jealousy, without trouble. My sunshine came to
me, in a fitful ray, through clouds that had gathered over my
noon; his sunshine covered all his landscape, hallowed, and
hallowing, by the calm of declining day.
And Amy was no common child. She had no exuberant
imagination; she was haunted by no whispers from Afar; she
was a creature fitted for the earth, to accept its duties and to
. *The summary of this distinguished lecturer's objections to phrenology is...to be found
in the Appendix to vol. i. of “Lectures on Metaphysics,” p. 404, et seq Edition 1859.
t The change of length in iron girders caused by variations of temperature has not un-
frequently brought down, the , whole edifice into , which they were admitted, Good
engineers and architects allow for such changes produced by temperature. In , the tubu-
lar bridge across the Menai Straits, a self-acting record of the daily amount of its contrac-
tion and expansion is ingeniously contrived. -
&
238 A STRANGE STORY.
gladden its cares. Her tender observation, fine and tranquil,
was alive to all the important household trifles by which, at the
earliest age, man’s allotted soother asserts her privilege to tend
and to comfort. It was pleasant to see her moving so noise-
lessly through the rooms I had devoted to her venerable pro-
tector, knowing all his simple wants, and providing for them as
if by the mechanism of a heart exquisitely moulded to the
loving uses of life. Sometimes when I saw her setting his
chair by the window (knowing, as I did, how much he habitu-
ally loved to be near the light) and smoothing his papers (in
which he was apt to be unmethodical), placing the mark in his
book when he ceased to read, divining, almost without his
glance, some wish passing through his mind, and then seating
herself at his feet, often with her work—which was always des-
tined for him or for one of her absent brothers—now and then,
with the one small book that she had carried with her, a selec-
tion of Bible stories compiled for children—sometimes when I
saw her thus, how I wished that Lilian, too, could have seen
her, and have compared her own ideal phantasies with those
young developments of the natural heavenly Woman
But was there nothing in that sight from which I, proud of
my arid reason even in its perplexities, might have taken les-
sons for myself? \
On the second evening of Faber's visit I brought to him the
draft of deeds for the sale of his property. He had never been
a man of business out of his profession; he was impatient to
sell his property, and disposed to accept an offer at half its
value. I insisted on taking on myself the task of negotiator;
perhaps, too, in this office I was egotistically anxious to prove to
the great physician that that which he believed to be my “hal-
lucination” had in no way obscured my common-sense in the
daily affairs of life. So I concluded, and in a few hours, terms
for his property that were only just, but were infinitely more
advantageous than had appeared to himself to be possible.
But, as I approached him with the papers, he put his finger to
his lips. Amy was standing by him with her little book in her
hand, and his own Bible lay open on the table. He was read-
ing to her from the Sacred Volume itself, and impressing on
her the force and beauty of one of the Parables, the adapta-
tion of which had perplexed her; when he had done, she kissed
him, bade him good-night, and went away to rest. Then said
Faber thoughtfully, and as if to himself more than me:
“What a lovely bridge between old age and childhood is
religion. How intuitively the child begins with prayer and
A ŠTRANGE STORY. 239
worship on entering life, and how intuitively on quitting life
the-old man turns back to prayer and worship, putting himself
again side by side with the infant.”
I made no answer, but, after a pause, spoke of fines and
freeholds, title-deeds and money; and when the business on
hand was concluded, asked my learned guest if, before he de-
parted, he would deign to look over the pages of my ambitious
Physiological Work. There were parts of it on which I much
desired his opinion, touching on subjects in which his special
studies made him an authority as high as our land possessed.
He made me bring him the manuscript, and devoted much
of that night and the next day to its perusal.
When he gave it me back, which was not till the morning of
his departure, he commenced with eulogies on the scope of its
design, and the manner of its execution, which flattered my
vanity so much that I could not help exclaiming: “Then, at
least, there is no trace of ‘hallucination' here!”
“Alas, my poor Allen here, perhaps, hallucination, or self-
deception, is more apparent than in all the strange tales you
confided to me. For here is the hallucination of the man
seated on the shores of Nature, and who would say to its meas-
ureless sea : ‘So far shalt thou go and no farther'; here is the
hallucination of the creature, who, not content with exploring
the laws of the Creator, ends with submitting to his interpreta-
tion of some three or four laws, in the midst of a code of which
all the rest are in language unknown to him—the powers and
free-will of the Lawgiver Himself; here is the hallucination
by which Nature is left Godless, because Man is left soulless.
What would matter all our speculations on a Deity who would
cease to exist for us when we are in the grave Why mete out,
like Archytas, the earth and the sea, and number the sands on
the shore that divides them, if the end of this wisdom be a
handful of dust sprinkled over a skull!
“Nec quidquam tibi prodest
Aerias tentasse domos, animoque rotundum
Percurrisse polum morituro.’
Your book is a proof of the soul that you fail to discover.
Without a soul, no man would work for a Future that begins
for his fame when the breath is gone from his body. Do you
remember how you saw that little child praying at the grave of
her father? Shall I tell you that in her simple orisons she
prayed for the benefactor, who had cared for the orphan; who
had reared over dust that tomb which, in a Christian burial-
34ó A ŠTRANGE STORY,
ground, is a mute but perceptible memorial of Christian hopes;
that the child prayed, haughty man, for you? And you sat
by, knowing nought of this; sat by, amongst the graves,
troubled and tortured with ghastly doubts, vain of a reason
that was sceptical of eternity, and yet shaken like a reed by a
moment's marvel. Shall I tell the child to pray for you no
more? That you disbelieve in a soul? If you do so, what is
the efficacy of prayer? Speak—shall I tell her this? Shall the
infant pray for you never more?” *
I was silent—I was thrilled.
“Has it never occurred to you, who, in denying all innate
perceptions as well as ideas, have passed on to deductions from
which poor Locke, humble Christian that he was, would have
shrunk in dismay; has it never occurred to you as a wonderful
fact, that the easiest thing in the world to teach a child is that
which seems to metaphysical school-men the abstrusest of all
problems? Read all those philosophers wrangling about a
First Cause, deciding on what are miracles, and then again de-
ciding that such miracles cannot be; and when one has an-
swered another, and left in the crucible of wisdom a caput
ſmortuum of ignorance, then turn your eyes, and look at the
infant praying to the invisible God at his mother's knees.
This idea, so miraculously abstract, of a Power that the infant has
never seen, that cannot be symbolled forth and explained to him
by the most erudite sage—a Power, nevertheless, that watches
over him, that hears him, that sees him, that will carry him across
the grave, that will enable him to live on forever—this double
mystery of a Divinity and of a Soul the infant learns with the
most facile readiness, at the first glimpse of his reasoning facul-
ty. Before you can teach him a rule in addition, before you
can venture to drill him into his horn-book, he leaps, with one
intuitive spring of all his ideas, to the comprehension of the
truths which are only incomprehensible to blundering sages!
And you, as you stand before me, dare not say: ‘Let the child
pray for me no more!’ But will the Creator accept the child's
prayer for the man who refuses prayer for himself? Take my
advice—pray! And in this counsel I do not overstep my
province. I speak not as a preacher, but as a physician. For
health is a word that comprehends our whole organization, and
a just equilibrium of all faculties and functions is the condi-
tion of health. As in your Lilian, the equilibrium is deranged
by the over-indulgence of a spiritual mysticism which with-
draws from the nutriment of duty the essential pabulum of
sober sense, so in you, the resolute negation of disciplined
A STRANGE STORY. 24f
spiritual communion between Thought and Divinity robs imag-
ination of its noblest and safest vent. Thus, from opposite
extremes, you and your Lilian meet in the same region of mist
and cloud, losing sight of each other and of the true ends of
life, as her eyes only gaze on the stars and yours only bend to
the earth, Were I advising her, I should say: ‘Your Creator
has placed the scene of your trial below, and not in the stars.”
Advising you, I say: “But in the trial below, man should rec-
ognize education for Heaven.” In a word, I would draw some-
what more downward her fancy, raise somewhat more upward
your reason. Take my advice then—Pray. Your mental sys-
tem needs the support of prayer in order to preserve its bal-
ance. In the embarrassment and confusion of your senses,
clearness of perception will come with habitual and tranquil con-
fidence in Him who alike rules the universe and reads the heart.
I only say here what has been said much better before by a
reasoner in whom all students of Nature recognize a guide. I
see on your table the very volume of Bacon which contains the
passage I commend to your reflection. Here it is. Listen:
"Take an example of a dog, and mark what a generosity and
courage he will put on when he finds himself maintained by a
man who, to him, is instead of a God, or melior matura,
which courage is manifestly such as that creature without that
confidence of a better nature than his own, could never attain.
So man, when he resteth and assureth himself upon Divine
protection and favor, gathereth a force and faith which human
nature could not obtain.' * You are silent, but your gesture
tells me your doubt—a doubt which your heart, so femininely
tender, will not speak aloud lest you should rob the old man
of a hope with which your strength of manhood dispenses—
you doubt the efficacy of prayer! Pause and reflect, bold but
candid inquirer into the laws of that guide you call Nature.
If there were no efficacy in prayer; if prayer were as mere an
illusion of superstitious phantasy as aught against which your
reason now struggles; do you think that Nature herself would
have made it amongst the most common and facile of all her
dictates? Do you believe that if there really did not exist that
tie between Man and his Maker—that link between life here and
life hereafter which is found in what we call Soul, alone—that
wherever you look through the universe, you would behold a
child at prayer?" Nature inculcates nothing that is superflu-
ous. Nature does not impel the leviathan or the lion, the eagle
* Bacon’s “Fssay on Atheism.” . This quotation is made with admirable felicity and
force by Dr. Whewell, page 378 of Bridgewater Treatise on “Astronomy and General
Physics considered with reference to Natural Theology.”
242 A Šf RANGE STORY,
or the moth, to pray; she impels only man. Why? Because
man only has soul, and Soul seeks to commune with the Ever-
lasting, as a 'fountain struggles up to its source. Burn your
book. It would found you a reputation for learning and intel-
lect and courage, I allow; but learning and intellect and cour-
age wasted against a truth—like spray against a rock! A
truth valuable to the world, the world will never part with.
You will not injure the truth, but you will mislead and may
destroy many, whose best security is in the truth which you so
eruditely insinuate to be a fable. Soul and Hereafter are the
heritage of all men; the humblest journeyman in those streets,
the pettiest trader behind those counters, have in those beliefs
their prerogatives of royalty. You would dethrone and em-
brute the lords of the earth by your theories. For my part,
having given the greater part of my life to the study and analy-
sis of facts, I would rather be the author of the tritest homily, ,
or the baldest poem, that inculcated that imperishable essence
of the soul to which I have neither scalpel nor probe, than be
the founder of the subtlest school, or the framer of the loftiest
verse, that robbed my fellow-men of their faith in a spirit that
eludés the dissecting-knife, in a being that escapes the grave-
digger. Burn your book—Accept This BOOK instead; Read
and Pray.” #
He placed his Bible in my hand, embraced me, and, an hour
afterwards, the old man and the child left my hearth solitary
Oln Ce In Ore.
CHAPTER XLVII.
THAT night, as I sat in my study, very thoughtful and very
mournful, I revolved all that Julius Faber had said; and the
impression his words had produced became gradually weaker
and weaker, as my reason, naturally combative, rose up with
all the replies which my philosophy suggested. No; if my
imagination had really seduced and betrayed me into mon-
strous credulities, it was clear that the best remedy to such mor-
bid tendencies towards the Superstitious was in the severe exer-
cise of the faculties most opposed to Superstition—in the cul-
ture of pure reasoning, in the science of absolute fact. Accord-
ingly, I placed before me the very book which Julius Faber
had advised me to burn; I forced all my powers of mind to go
again over the passages which contained the doctrines that his
admonition had censured; and before daybreak, I had stated
the substance of his argument, and the logical reply to it, in an
\ A STRANGE STORY. 243
elaborate addition to my chapter on “Sentimental Phil-
osophers.” While thus rejecting the purport of his parting
counsels, I embodied in another portion of my work his views
on my own “illusions,” and as here my common-sense was in
concord with his, I disposed of all my own previous doubts in
an addition to my favorite chapter “On the Cheats of the Im-
agination.” And when the pen dropped from my hand, and
the day-Star gleamed through the window, my heart escaped
from the labor of my mind, and flew back to the image of Lil-
ian. The pride of the philosopher died out of me, the sorrow
of the man reigned supreme, and I shrank from the coming of
the sun, despondent.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Not till the law had completed its proceedings, and satisfied
the public mind as to the murder of Sir Philip Derval, were the
remains of the deceased consigned to the family mausoleum.
The funeral was, as may be supposed, strictly private, and
when it was over, the excitement caused by an event so tragi-
cal and singular, subsided. New topics engaged the public
talk, and in my presence, at least, the delicate consideration
due to one whose name had been so painfully mixed up in the
dismal story, forbore a topic which I could not be expected to
hear without distressful emotion. Mrs. Ashleigh I saw fre-
quently at my own house; she honestly confessed that Lilian
had not shown that grief at the cancelling of our engagement
which would alone justify Mrs. Ashleigh in asking me again to
see her daughter, and retract my conclusions against our
union. She said that Lilian was quiet, not uncheerful, never
spoke of me nor of Margrave, but seemed absent and pre-
occupied as before, taking pleasure in nothing that had been
wont to please her; not in music, nor books, nor that tran-
quil pastime which women call work, and in which they find
,excuse to meditate, in idleness, their own fancies. She rarely
stirred out, even in the garden; when she did, her eyes seemed
to avoid the house in which Margrave had lodged, and her
steps the old favorite haunt by the Monks’ Well. She would
remain silent for long hours together, but the silence did not
appear melancholy. For the rest, her health was more than
usually good. Still, Mrs. Ashleigh persisted in her belief that,
sooner or later, Lilian would return to her former self, her
former sentiments for me; and she entreated me not, as yet, to
let the world know that our engagement was broken off. “For
244 A STRANGE STORY.
if,” said she, with good sense, “if it should prove not to be
broken off, only suspended, and afterwards happily renewed,
there will be two stories to tell when no story be needed.
Besides, I should dread the effect on Lilian, if offensive gos-
sips babbled to her on a matter that would excite so much
curiosity as the rupture of a union in which our neighbors
have taken so general an interest.” -
I had no reason to refuse acquiescence in Mrs. Ashleigh's
request, but I did not share in her hopes; I felt that the fair
prospects of my life were blasted; I could never love another,
never wed another; I resigned myself to a solitary hearth,
rejoiced, at least, that Margrave had not revisited at Mrs.
Ashleigh's—had not, indeed, reappeared in the town. He was
still staying with Strahan, who told me that his guest had
ensconced himself in Forman’s old study, and amused himself
with reading—though not for long at a time—the curious old
books and manuscripts found in the library, or climbing trees
like a schoolboy, and familiarizing-himself with the deer and
the cattle, which would group round him quite tame, and feed
from his hand. Was this the description of a criminal? But if
Sir Philip's assertion were really true; if the criminal were
man without soul; if without soul, man would have no con-
science, never be troubled by repentance, and the vague dread
of a future world—why then, should not the criminal be gay
despite his crimes, as the white bear gambols as friskly after
his meal on human flesh? These questions would haunt me,
despite my determination to accept as the right solution of all
marvels the construction put on my narrative by Julius Faber.
Days passed; I saw and heard nothing of Margrave. I be-
gan half to hope that, in the desultory and rapid changes of
mood and mind which characterized his restless nature, he had
forgotten my existence.
One morning I went out early on my rounds, when I met
Strahan unexpectedly.
“I was in search of you,” he said, “for more than one per-
son has told me that you are looking ill and jaded. So you are
And the town now is hot and unhealthy. You must come to
Derval Court for a week or so. You can ride into town every
day to see your patients. Don't refuse. Margrave, who is
still with me, sends all kind messages and bade me say that he
entreats you to come to the house at which he also is a guest!”
I started. What had the Scin-Laeca required of me, and
obtained to that condition my promise? “If you are asked to
the house at which I am also a guest, you will come; you will
.*
•ºr
A STRANGE STORY. 245
meet and converse with me as guest speaks to guest in the
house of a host!” Was this one of the coincidences which my
reason was bound to accept as coincidences, and nothing more?
Tut, tut! Was I returning again to my “hallucinations” ”
Granting that Faber and common-sense were in the right, what
was this Margrave? A man to whose friendship, acuteness,
and energy I was under the deepest obligations; to whom I
was indebted for active services that had saved my life from a
serious danger, acquitted my honor of a horrible suspicion.
“I thank you,” I said to Strahan, “I will come; not, indeed,
for a week, but, at all events, for a day or two.”
“That's right; I will call for you in the carriage at six
o'clock. You will have done your day’s work by then?”
“Yes; I will so arrange.”
On our way to Derval Court that evening, Strahan talked
much about Margrave, of whom, nevertheless, he seemed to be
growing weary.
“His high spirits are too much for one,” said he “and then
so restless, so incapable of sustained quiet conversation. And,
clever though he is, he can’t help me in the least about the
new house I shall build. He has no notion of construction.
I don’t think he could build a barn.”
“I thought you did not like to demolish the old house, and
would content yourself with pulling down the more ancient
part of it?”
“True. At first it seemed a pity to destroy so handsome a
mansion; but you see, since poor Sir Philip's manuscript, on
which he set such store, has been too mutilated, I fear, to
allow me to effect his wish with regard to it, I think I ought,
at least, scrupulously to obey his other whims. And besides,
I don't know, there are odd noises about the old house. I
don’t believe in haunted houses, still there is something dreary
in strange sounds at the dead of night, even if made by rats,
or winds through decaying rafters. You, I remember at col-
lege, had a taste for architecture, and can draw plans. I wish
to follow out Sir Philip's design, but on a smaller scale, and
with more attention to comfort.” *
Thus he continued to run on, satisfied to find me a silent and
attentive listener. We arrived at the mansion an hour before
sunset, the westering light shining full against the many win-
dows cased in mouldering pilasters, and making the general
dilapidation of the old place yet more mournfully evident.
It was but a few minutes to the dinner-hour. I went up at
once to the room appropriated to me—not the one I had be-
246 A STRANGE STORY.
ºr
--->
fore occupied. Strahan had already got together a new estab-
lishment. I was glad to find in the servant who attended me an
old acquaintance. He had been in my own employ when I first
settled at L , and left me to get married. He and his wife
were now both in Strahan's service. He spoke warmly of his
new master and his contentment with his situation, while he
unpacked my carpet-bag and assisted me to change my dress.
But the chief object of his talk and his praise was Mr. Mar-
grave.
“Such a bright young gentleman, like the first fine day in
May !”
When I entered the drawing-room, Margrave and Strahan
were both there. The former was blithe and genial, as usual, .
in his welcome. At dinner, and during the whole evening till
we retired severally to our own rooms, he was the principal
talker; recounting incidents of travel, always very loosely
strung together, jesting, good-humoredly enough, at Strahan's
sudden hobby for building, then putting questions to me about
mutual acquaintances, but never waiting for an answer; and
every now and then, as if at random, startling us with some
brilliant aphorism, or some suggestion drawn from abstract
science or unfamiliar erudition. The whole effect was sparkl-
ing, but I could well understand that, if long continued, it
would become oppressive. The soul has need of pauses of
repose— ntervals of escape, not only from the flesh, but even
from the mind. A man of the loftiest intellect will experience
times when mere intellect not only fatigues him, but amidst its
most original conceptions, amidst its proudest triumphs, has a
something trite and commonplace compared with one of those
vague intimations of a spiritual destiny which are not within
the ordinary domain of reason; and, gazing abstractedly into
space, will leave suspended some problem of severest thought,
or uncompleted some golden palace of imperial poetry, to in-
dulge in hazy reveries, that do not differ from those of an inno-
cent, quiet child ! The soul has a long road to travel—from
time through eternity. It demands its halting hours of con
templation. Contemplation is serene. But with such wants
of an immortal immaterial spirit, Margrave had no fellowship,
no sympathy; and for myself, I need scarcely add that the
lines I have just traced I should not have written at the date
at which my narrative has now arrived,
A STRANGE STORY. 247
*
º CHAPTER XLIX.
I HAD no case that necessitated my return to L the fol-
lowing day. The earlier hours of the fgrenoon I devoted to
Strahan and his building plans. Margrave flitted in and out
of the room, fitfully as an April Sunbeam, sometimes flinging
himself on a sofa, and reading for a few minutes one of the
Twolumes of the ancient mystics, in which Sir Philip's library
was so rich. I remember it was a volume of Proclus. He
read that crabbed and difficult Greek with a fluency that sur-
prised me. “I picked up the ancient Greek,” said he, “years
ago, in learning the moders.” But the book soon tired him;
then he would come and disturb us, archly enjoying Strahan's
peevishness at interruption; then he would throw open the
window and leap down, chanting one of his wild savage airs;
and in another moment he was half-hid under the drooping
boughs of a broad lime-tree, amidst the antlers of deer that
gathered fondly round him. In the afternoon my host was
called away to attend some visitors of importance, and I found
myself on the sward before the house, right in view of the
mausoleum and alone with Margrave.
I turned my eyes from that dumb House of Death wherein
rested the corpse of the last lord of the soil, so strangely mur-
* dered, with a strong desire to. Speak out to Margrave the
doubts respecting himself that tortured me. But, setting aside
the promise to the contrary, which I had given, or dreamed I
had given, to the Luminous Shadow, to fulfil that desire would
have been impossible—impossible to any one gazing on that
radiant youthful face! I think I see him now as I saw him
then: a white doe, that even my presence could not scare
away from him, clung lovingly to his side, looking up at him
with her soft eyes. He stood there like the incarnate principle
of mythological sensuous life. I have before applied to him
that illustration; let the repetition be pardoned. Impossible,
I repeat it, to say to that creature, face to face: “Art thou the
master of demoniac arts, and the instigator of secret murder?”
As if from redundant happiness within himself, he was hum-
ming, or rather cooing, a strain of music, so sweet, so wildly
sweet, and so unlike the music one hears from tutored lips in
crowded rooms'. I passed my hand over my forehead in be-
wilderment and awe.
“Are there,” I said unconsciously—“are there, indeed, such
prodigies in Naſure?"
A
#
248 A STRANGE STORY.-
*~.
“Nature!” he cried, catching up the word; “talk to me of
Nature | Talk of her, the wondrous blissful mother Mother
I may well call her. I am her spoiled child, her darling.—But
oh, to die, ever to die, ever to lose sight of Nature—to rot, sense-
less, whether under these turfs or within those dead walls—”
I could not resistºthe answer.
“Like yon murdered man murdered, and by whom?”
“By whom? I thought that was clearly proved.”
“The hand was proved; what influence moved the hand?” ..
“Tush the poor wretch spoke of a Demon. Who can tell?
Nature herself is a grand destroyer. See that pretty bird, in
its beak a writhing worm 1 All Nature’s children live to take
life; none, indeed, so lavishly as man. What hecatombs
slaughtered, not to satisfy the irresistible sting of hunger, but
for the wanton ostentation of a feast, which he may scarcely
taste, or for the mere sport that he finds in destroying. We
speak with dread of the beasts of prey: what beast of prey is
so dire a ravager as man?—so cruel and so treacherous? Look
at yon flock of sheep, bred and fattened for the shambles; and
this hind that I caress—if I were the park-keeper, and her time
for my bullet had come, would you think her life was the safer
because, in my own idle whim, I had tamed her to trust to the
hand raised to slay her?”
“It is true,” said I–“a grim truth. Nature, on the surface
so loving and so gentle, is full of terror in her deeps when our
thought descends into their abyss!”
Strahan now joined us with a party of country visitors.
“Margrave is the man to show you the beauties of this
park,” said he. “Margrave knows every bosk and dingle,
twisted old thorn-tree, or opening glade, in its intricate, undu-
lating ground.”
Margrave seemed delighted at this proposition; and as he
led us through the park, though the way was long, though the
sun was fierce, no one seemed fatigued. For the pleasure he
felt in pointing out detached beauties which escaped an ordi-
nary eye was contagious. He did not talk as talks the poet or
the painter: but at some lovely effect of light amongst the
tremulous leaves, some sudden glimpse of a sportive rivulet
below, he would halt, point it out to us in silence, and with a
kind of childlike ecstasy in his own bright face, that seemed to
reflect the life and the bliss of the blithe summer-day itself.
Thus seen, all my doubts in his dark secret nature faded
away—all my horror, all my hate; it was impossible to resist
the charm that breathed round him, not to feel a tender, affec-
&
#
*
$
*
}
A STRANGE STORY. 249
tionate yearning towards him as to some fair happy child.
Well might he call himself the darling of Nature. Was he not
the mysterious likeness of that awful Mother, beautiful as
Apollo in one aspect, direful as Typhon in another?
CHAPTER L.
‘‘WHAT a strange-looking cane you have, sir!” said a little
girl, who was one of the party, and who had entwined her arm
round Margrave’s. “Let me look at it.”
“Yes,” said Strahan; “that cane, or rather walking-staff,
is worth looking at. Margrave bought it in Egypt, and de-
clares that it is very ancient.”
This staff seemed constructed from a reed: looked at, it
seemed light, in the hand it felt heavy; it was of a pale, faded
yellow, wrought with black rings at equal distances, and graven
with half-obliterated characters that seemed hieroglyphic. I
remembered to have seen Margrave with it before, but I had
never noticed it with any attention until now, when it was
passed from hand to hand. At the head of the cane there was
a large unpolished stone of a dark blue.
“Is this a pebble or a jewel?” asked one of the party.
“I cannot tell you its name or nature,” said Margrave;
“but it is said to cure the bite of serpents,” and has other
supposed virtues—a talisman, in short.”
* The following description of a stone at Corfu, celebrated as an antidote to the venom
of the serpent's bite, was given to me by an eminent scholar and legal functionary in that
Island :
“DEscRIPTION of THE BLUE STONE.-This stone is of an oval shape, one and two-
tenths inches long, seven-tenths broad, three-tenths thick, and having been broken for-
merly is now set in gold.
“When a person is bitten by a poisonous snake, the bite must be opened by a cut of a
lancet or razor longways, and the stone applied within twenty-four hours. The stone then
attaches itself firmly on the wound, and when it has done its office falls off ; the cure is
then complete. The stone must then be thrown into milk, whereupon it vomits the poi-
son it has absorbed, which remains green on the top of the milk, and the stone is then
again fit for use.
“ This stone has been from fime immemorial in the family of Ventura of Corfu, a house
of Italian origin, and is notorious, so that peasants immediately apply for its aid. Its vir–
tue has not been impailed by the fracture. Its nature or composition is unknown.
“ In a case where two were stung at the same time by serpents, the stone was applied to
one, who recovered ; but the other, for whom it could not be used, died.
“It never failed but once, and then it was applied after the twenty-four hours.
“Its color is so dark as not to be distinguished from black.
“Corfu, 7th Nov., 1860.”
Sir Emerson Tennent, in his popular and excellent work on Ceylon, gives an account of
“snake stones’’ apparently similar to the one at Corfu, except that they are “intensely
black and highly polished,” and which are applied, in much the same manner, to the
wounds inflicted by the cobra-capella.
§.” ight it not be worth while to ascertain the chemical properties of these stones,
and, if they be efficacious in the extraction of venom conveyed by a bite, might they not
be as successful if applied to the bite of a mad dog as to that of a cobra-capella 2
“P. M. Colquhoun.
25o A STRANGE STORY,
He here placed the staff in my hands, and bade me look at
it with care. Then he changed the conversation and renewed
the way, leaving the staff with me, till suddenly I forced it back
on him. I could not have explained why, but its touch as it
, warmed in my clasp seemed to send through my whole frame a
singular thrill, and a sensation as if I no longer felt my own
weight—as if I walked on air.
Our rambles came to a close; the visitors went away; I re-
entered the house through the sash-window of Forman's study;
Margrave threw his hat and staff on the table, and amused
himself with examining minutely the tracery on the mantel-
piece. Strahan and myself left him thus occupied and going
into the adjoining library resumed our task of examining the
plans for the new house. I continued to draw out lines and
sketches of various alterations, tending to simplify and con-
tract Sir Philip's general design. Margrave soon joined us
and, this time, took his seat patiently beside our table, watch-
ing me use ruler and compass with unwonted attention.
“I wish I could draw,” he said, “but I can do nothing
useful.”
“Rich men like you,” said Strahan peevishly, “can engage
others, and are better employed in rewarding good artists than
in making bad drawings themselves.”
“Yes, I can employ others; and—Fenwick, when you have
finished with Strahan, I will ask permission to employ you,
though without reward; the task I would impose will not take
you a minute.” _*
He then threw himself back in his chair, and seemed to fall
into a doze.
The dressing-bell rang; Strahan put away the plans—
indeed, they were now pretty well finished and decided on.
Margrave woke up as our host left the room to dress, and
drawing me towards another table in the room, placed before
me one of his favorite mystic books, and, pointing to an old
woodcut, said:
“I will ask you to copy this for me; it pretends to be a fac-
simile of Solomon’s famous seal. I have a whimsical desire to
have a copy of it. You observe two triangles interlaced and
inserted in a circle?—the pentacle, in short. Yes, just so.
You need not add the astrological characters; they are the
senseless superfluous accessories of the dreamer who wrote the
book. But the pentacle itself has an intelligible meaning; it
belongs to the only universal language, the language of symbol,
in which all races that think—around, and above, and below
ſ
A STRANGE STORY. & 251
us—can establish communion of thought. If ..n the external
universe any one constructive principle can be detected, it is
the geometrical; and in every part of the world in which
magic pretends to a written character, I find that its hiero-
glyphics are geometrical figures. Is it not laughable that the
most positive of all the sciences should thus lend its angles
and circles to the use of what shall I call it?—the ignor-
ance?—ay, that is the word—the ignorance of dealers in magic?”
He took up the paper, on which I had hastily described the
triangles and the circle, and left the room chanting the
serpent-charmer's song.
CHAPTER LI.
WHEN we separated for the night, which we did at eleven
o'clock, Margrave said:
“Good-night and good-bye. I must leave you to-morrow,
Strahan, and before your usual hour for rising. I took the lib-
erty of requesting one of your men to order me a chaise from
L Pardon my seeming abruptness, but I always avoid
long leave-takings, and I had fixed the date of my departure
almost as soon as I accepted your invitation.’’
“I have no right to complain. The place must be dull in-
deed to a gay young fellow like you. It is dull even to me.
I am meditating flight already. Are you going back to
L–—?’’
“Not even for such things as I left at my lodgings. When
I settle somewhere and can give an address, I shall direct them
to be sent to me. There are, I hear, beautiful patches of
scenery towards the north, only known to pedestrian tourists.
I am a good walker; and you know, Fenwick, that I am also
a child of Nature. Adieu to you both ; and many thanks to
you, Strahan, for your hospitality.’’
He left the room.
“I am not sorry he is going,” said Strahan, after a pause,
and with a quick breath as if of relief. “Do you not feel that
he exhausts one? An excess of oxygen, as you would say in a
lecture.’’
I was alone in my own chamber; I felt indisposed for bed
and for sleep; the curious conversation I had held with Mar-
grave weighed on me. In that conversation, we had indirectly
touched upon the prodigies which I had not brought myself to
speak of with frank courage, and certainly nothing in Mar-
252 • A strange story.
grave's manner had betrayed consciousness of my suspicions;
on the contrary, the open frankness with which he evinced his
predilection for mystic speculation, or uttered his more un-
amiable sentiments, rather tended to disarm than encourage be-
lief in gloomy secrets or sinister powers. And as he was about
to quit the neighborhood, he would not again see Lilian, not
even enter the town of L Was I to ascribe this relief from
his presence to the promise of the Shadow, or was I not rather
right in battling firmly against any grotesque illusion, and ac-
cepting his departure as a simple proof that my jealous fears
had been amongst my other chimeras, and that as he had really
only visited Lilian out of friendship to me, in my peril, so he
might, with his characteristic acuteness, have guessed my jeal-
ousy, and ceased his visits from a kindly motive delicately
concealed? And might not the same motive now have dictated
the words which were intended to assure me that L COI)-
tained no attractions to tempt him to return to it? Thus,
gradually soothed and cheered by the course to which my re-
flections led me, I continued to muse for hours. At length,
looking at my watch, I was surprised to find it was the second
hour after midnight. I was just about to rise from my chair to
undress, and secure some hours of sleep, when the well-remem-
bered cold wind passed through the room, stirring the roots of
my hair; and before me stood, against the wall, the Luminous
Shadow. -
“Rise and follow me,” said the voice, sounding much nearer
than it had ever done before.
And at those words I rose mechanically, and like a sleep-
walker.
“Take up the light.”
I took it.
The Scin-Laeca glided along the wall towards the threshold,
and motioned me to open the door. I did so. The Shadow
flitted on through the corridor. I followed, with hushed foot-
steps, down a small stair into Forman’s study. In all my sub-
sequent proceedings, about to be narrated, the Shadow guided
me, sometimes by voice, sometimes by sign. I obeyed the
guidance not only unresistingly, but without a desire to resist.
I was unconscious either of curiosity or of awe; only of a calm
and passive indifference, neither pleasurable nor painful. In
this obedience, from which all will seemed extracted, I took
into my hands the staff which I had examined the day before,
and which lay on the table just where Margrave had cast it on
re-entering the house. I unclosed the shutter to the casement,
A STRANGE STORY. 253
lifted the sash, and, with the light in my left hand, the staff in
my right stepped forth into the garden. The night was still;
the flame of the candle scarcely trembled in the air; the Shadow
moved on before me towards the old pavilion described in an
earlier part of this narrative, and of which the mouldering
doors stood wide open. I followed the Shadow into the pavil-
ion, up the crazy stair to the room above, with its four great
blank unglazed windows, or rather arcades, north, south, east,
and west. I halted on the middle of the floor: right before
my eyes, through the vista made by breathless boughs, stood
out from the moonlit air the dreary mausoleum. Then, at the
command conveyed to me, I placed the candle on a wooden
settle, touched a spring in the handle of the staff, a lid flew
back, and I drew from the hollow, first a lump of some dark
bituminous substance, next a smaller slender wand of polished
steel, of which the point was tipped with a translucent material,
which appeared to me like crystal. Bending down, still obe-
dient to the direction conveyed to me, I described on the floor
with the lump of bitumen (if I may so call it) the figure of the
pentacle with the interlaced triangles, in a circle nine feet in
diameter, just as I had drawn it for Margrave the evening be-
fore. The material used made the figure perceptible, in a dark
color of mingled black and red. I applied the flame of the
candle to the circle, and immediately it became lambent with a
low steady splendor that rose about an inch from the floor, and
gradually from this light there emanated a soft gray transparent
mist and a faint but exquisite odor. I stood in the midst of
the circle, and within the circle also, close by my side, stood the
Scin-Laeca; no longer reflected on the wall, but apart from it,
erect, rounded into more integral and distinct form, yet impal-
pable, and from it there breathed an icy air. Then lifting the
wand, the broader end of which rested in the palm of my hand,
the two forefingers closing lightly over it in a line parallel with
the point, I directed it towards the wide aperture before me,
fronting the mausoleum. I repeated aloud some words whis-
pered to me in a language I knew not: those words I would
not trace on this paper, could I remember them. As they
came to a close, I heard a howl from the watch-dog in the
yard—a dismal, lugubrious howl. Other dogs in the distant
village caught up the sound, and bayed in a dirge-like cho-
rus; and the howling went on louder and louder. Again
strange words were whispered to me, and I repeated them in
mechanical submission; and when they, too, were ended, I felt
the ground tremble beneath me, and as my eyes looked straight
254 A STRANGE STORY.
forward down the vista, that, stretching from the casement, was
bounded by the solitary mausoleum, vague formless shadows
seemed to pass across the moonlight—below, along the sward—
above, in the air; and then suddenly a terror, not before con-
ceived, came upon me.
And a third time words were whispered; but, though I knew
no more of their meaning than I did of those that had preceded
-them, I felt a repugnance to utter them aloud. Mutely I turned
towards the Scin-Laeca, and the expression of its face was
menacing and terrible; my will became yet more compelled
to the control imposed upon it, and my lips commenced the
formula again whispered into my ear, when I heard distinctly a
voice of warning and of anguish, that murmured “Hold !” I
knew the voice; it was Lilian's. I paused—I turned towards
the quarter from which the voice had come, and in the space
afar I saw the features, the form of Lilian. Her arms were
stretched towards me in supplication, her countenance was
deadly pale and anxious with unutterable distress. The whole
image seemed in unison with the voice; the look, the attitude,
the gesture of one who sees another in deadly peril, and cries,
‘‘Beware l’’
This apparition vanished in a moment; but that moment
sufficed to free my mind from the constraint which had before
enslaved it. I dashed the wand to the ground, sprang from the
circle, rushed from the place. How I got into my own room I
can remember not—I know not; I have a vague. reminiscence
of some intervening wanderings, of giant trees, of shroud-like
moonlight, of the Shining Shadow and its angry aspect, of the
blind walls and the iron door of the House of the Dead, of
spectral images—a confused and dreary phantasmagoria. But
all I can recall with distinctness is the sight of my own hue-
less face in the mirror in my own still room, by the light of the
white moon through the window; and sinking down I said to
myself: “This, at least, is an hallucination or a dream!”
CHAPTER LII.
A HEAvy sleep came over me at daybreak, but I did not un-
dress nor go to bed. The sun was high in the heavens when,
on waking, I saw the servant who had attended me bustling
about the room. \
“I beg your pardon, sir, I am afraid I disturbed you; but I
have been three times to see if you were not coming down, and
{
A STRANGE STORY. 255
I found you so soundly asleep I did not like to wake you, Mr.
Strahan has finished breakfast, and gone out riding; Mr. Mar-
grave has left—left before six o'clock.”
“Ah, he said he was going early.” sº
“Yes, sir; and he seemed so cross when he went. I could
never have supposed so pleasant a gentleman could put himself
into such a passion '''
‘‘What was the matter?’’
“Why, his walking-stick could not be found; it was not in
the hall. He said he had left it in the study; we could not
find it there. At last he found it himself in the old summer-
house, and said—I beg pardon, he said—“he was sure you
had taken it there: that some one, at all events, had been
meddling with it.” However, I am very glad it was found,
since he seems to set such store on it.”
“Did Mr. Margrave go himself into the summer-house to
look for it?”
“Yes, sir; no one else would have thought of such a place:
no one likes to go there, even in the daytime.”
“Why?”
“Why, sir, they say it is haunted since poor Sir Philip's
death: and, indeed, there are strange noises in every part of
the house. I am afraid you had a bad night, sir,” continued
the servant, with evident curiosity glancing towards the bed,
which I had not pressed, and towards the evening-dress, which,
while he spoke, I was rapidly changing for that which I habitu-
aly wore in the morning. ‘"I hope you did not feel yourself
ill?”"
“No! but it seems I fell asleep in my chair.
“Did you hear, sir, how the dogs howled about two o'clock
in the morning? They woke me. Very frightful!”
“The moon was at her full. Dogs will bay the moon.”
I felt relieved to think that I should not find Strahan in the
breakfast-room, and hastening through the ceremony of a meal
which I scarcely touched, I went out into the park unobserved,
and creeping round the copses and into the neglected gardens,
made my way to the pavilion. I mounted the stairs—I looked
on the floor of the upper room; yes, there still was the black
figure of the pentacle—the circle. So, then, it was not a
dream! Till then I had doubted. Or might it not still be so
far a dream, that I had walked in my sleep, and with an imagi-
nation preoccupied by my conversation with Margrave; by the
hieroglyphics on the staff I had handled; by the very figure
associated with superstitious practices which I had copied from
* 5
256 A STRANGE STORY.
some weird book at his request; by-all the strange impressions
previously stamped on my mind; might I not, in truth, have
carried thither in sleep the staff, described the circle, and all
the rest been but visionary delusion? Surely—surely, so com-
mon-sense and so Julius Faber would interpret the riddles that
perplexed me! Be that as it may, my first thought was to efface
the marks on the floor. I found this easier than I had ventured
to hope. I rubbed the circle and the pentacle away from the
boards with the sole of my foot, leaving but an undistinguishable
smudge behind. I know not why, but I felt the more nervously
anxious to remove all such evidences of my nocturnal visit to
that room, because Margrave had so openly gone thither to
seek for the staff, and had so rudely named me to the servant
as having meddled with it. Might he not awake some suspicion
against me? Suspicion, what of? I knew not, but I feared! .
The healthful air of day gradually nerved my spirits and re-
lieved my thoughts. But the place had become hateful to me.
I resolved not to wait for Strahan’s return, but to walk back
to L , and leave a message for my host. It was sufficient
excuse that I could not longer absent myself from my patients;
accordingly, I gave directions to have the few things which I
had brought with me sent to my house by any servant who
might be going to L-, and was soon pleased to find myself
outside the park gates and on the high-road.
I had not gone a mile before I met Strahan on horseback.
He received my apologies for not waiting his return to bid him
farewell, without observation, and, dismounting, led his horse
and walked beside me on my road. I saw that there was some-
thing on his mind; at last he said, looking down:
“Did you hear the dogs howl last night?”
‘‘Yes! the full moon l’’ -*.
“You were awake, then, at the time. Did you hear any
other sound? Did you see anything?”
“What should I hear or see?”
Strahan was silent for some moments; then he said, with
great seriousness:
“I could not sleep when I went to bed last night; I felt fe-
verish and restless. Somehow or other, Margrave got into my
head, mixed up in some strange way with Sir Philip Derval.
I heard the dogs howl, and at the same time, or rather a few
minutes later, I felt the whole house tremble, as a frail corner-
house in London seems to tremble at night when a carriage is
driven past it. The howling had then ceased, and ceased as Sud-
denly as it had begun. I felt a vague superstitious alarm; I got
|;
A STRANGE STORY. - 257
up, and went to my window, which was unclosed (it is my habit
to sleep with my windows open)—the moon was very bright, and
I saw, I declare I saw, along the green alley that leads from
the old part of the house to the mausoleum—No, I will not say
what I saw or believed I saw—you would ridicule me, and
justly. But, whatever it might be, on the earth without or in
fancy within my brain, I was so terrified that I rushed back to
my bed and buried my face in my pillew. I would have come
to you; but I did not dare to stir. I have been riding hard
all the morning in order to recover my nerves. But I dread
sleeping again under that roof, and now that you and Margrave
leave me, I shall go this very day to London. I hope all that
I have told you is no bad sign of any coming disease; blood to
the head, eh?” *
“No ; but imagination overstrained can produce wondrous
effects. You do right to change the scene. Go to London at
once; amuse yourself, and—”
“Not return, till the old house is razed to the ground. That.
is my resolve. You approve? That's well. All success to
you, Fenwick. I will canter back and get my portmanteau
ready and the carriage out, in time for the five o’clock train.”
So then he, too, had seen—what? I did not dare and I
did not desire to ask him. But he, at least, was not walking in
his sleep! Did we both dream, or neither?
CHAPTER LIII.
THERE is an instance of the absorbing tyranny of every-day
life which must have struck all such of my readers as have ever
experienced one of those portents which are so at variance with
every-day life, that the ordinary epithet bestowed on them is
“supernatural.”
And be my readers few or many, there will be no small pro-
portion of them to whom, once at least in the course of their
existence, a something strange and eerie has occurred—a some-
thing which perplexed and baffled rational conjecture, and
struck on those chords which vibrate to superstition. It may
have been only a dream unaccountably verified, an undefinable
presentiment or forewarning; but up from such slighter and
vaguer tokens of the realm of marvel, up to the portents of ghostly
apparitions or haunted chambers, I believe that the greater num-
ber of persons arrived at middle age, however instructed the
class, however civilized the land, however sceptical the period,
258 A STRANGE STORY.
&
to which they belong, have either in themselves experienced,
or heard recorded by intimate associates whose veracity they
accept as indisputable in all ordinary transactions of life, phe-
nomena which are not to be solved by the wit that mocks them,
nor, perhaps, always and entirely, to the contentment of the
reason or the philosophy that explains them away. Such phe-
nomena, I say, are infinitely more numerous than would appear
from the instances currefftly quoted and dismissed with a jest;
for few of those who have witnessed them are disposed to own
it, and they who only hear them through others, however trust-
worthy, would not impugn their character for common-sense
by professing a belief to which common-sense is a merciless
persecutor. But he who reads my assertion in the quiet of
his own room will, perhaps, pause, ransack his memory, and
find there, in some dark corner which he excludes from ‘‘the
babbling and remorseless day,” a pale recollection that proves
the assertion not untrue.
And it is, I say, an instance of the absorbing tyranny of
every-day life, that whenever some such startling incident dis-
turbs its regular tenor, of thought and occupation, that same
every-day life hastens to bury in its sands the object which .
has troubled its surface; the more unaccountable, the more
prodigious has been the phenomenon which has scared and as-
tounded us; the more, with involuntary effort, the mind seeks to
rid itself of an enigma which might disease the reason that tries
to solve it. We go about our mundane business with renewed
avidity; we feel the necessity of proving to ourselves that we
are still sober, practical men, and refuse to be unfitted for the
world which we know, by unsolicited visitations from worlds
into which every glimpse is soon lost amid shadows. And it
amazes us to think how soon such incidents, though not actually
forgotten, though they can be recalled, and recalled too vivid-
ly for health, at our will, are nevertheless thrust, as it were,
out of the mind's sight as we cast into lumber-rooms the
crutches and splints that remind us of a broken limb which has
recovered its strength and tone. It is a felicitous peculiarity
in our organization, which all members of my profession will
have noticed, how soon, when a bodily pain is once past, it be-
comes erased from the recollection—how soon and how invaria-
bly the mind refuses to linger over and recall it. No man
freed an hour before from a raging toothache, the rack of “a
neuralgia, seats himself in his arm-chair to recollect and ponder
upon the anguish he has undergone. It is the same with cer-
tain afflictions of the mind,-not with those that strike on our
A STRANGE STORY. 259
-
}
affections, or blast our fortunes, overshadowing our whole fu-
ture with a sense of loss; but where a trouble or calamity has
been an accident, an episode in our wonted life; where it af-
fects ourselves alone; where it is attended with a sense of
shame and humiliation; where the pain of recalling it seems
idle, and if indulged would almost madden us—agonies of that
kind we do not brood over as we do over the death or falsehood
of beloved friends, or the train of evéhts by which we are re-
duced from wealth to penury. No one, for instance, who has
escaped from a shipwreck, from the brink of a precipice, from
the jaws of a tiger, spends his days and nights in reviving his
terrors past, re-imagining dangers not to occur again, or, if
they do occur, from which the experience undergone can sug-
gest no additional safeguards. The current of our life, indeed,
like that of the rivers, is most rapid in the midmost channel,
where all streams are alike comparatively slow in the depth and
along the shores in which each life, as each river, has a char-
acter peculiar to itself. And hence, those who sail with the
tide of the world, as those who sail with the tide of a river,
hasten to take the middle of the stream, as those who sail
against the tide are found clinging to the shore. I returned to
my habitual duties and avocations with renewed energy; I did
not suffer my thoughts to dwell on the dreary wonders that had
haunted me, from the evening I first met Sir Philip Derval to
the morning on which I had quitted the house of his heir:
whether realities or hallucinations, no guess of mine could un-
ravel such marvels, and no prudence of mine guard me against
their repetition But I had no fear that they would be re-
peated, any more than the man who had gone through ship-
wreck, or the hairbreadth escape from a fall down a glacier,
fears again to be found in a similar peril. Margrave had de-
parted, whither I knew not, and with his departure ceased ali
sense of his influence. A certain calm within me, a tranquil-
lizing feeling of relief, seemed to me like a pledge of perma-
nent delivery. **--- *-
But that which did accompany and haunt me, through all my
occupations and pursuits, was the melancholy remembrance of
the love I had lost in Lilian. I heard from Mrs. Ashleigh,
who still frequently visited me, that her daughter seemed much
in the same quiet state of mind—perfectly reconciled to our
separation—seldom mentioning my name—if mentioning it,
with indifference; the only thing remarkable in her state was
her aversion to all society, and a kind of lethargy that would
come over her, often in the daytime. She would suddenly fall
26o A STRANGE STORY.
$
into sleep and so remain for hours, but a sleep that seemed
very serene and tranquil, and from which she woke of herself.
She kept much within her own room, and always retired to it
when visitors were announced.
Mrs. Ashleigh began reluctantly to relinquish the persuasion
she had so long and so obstinately maintained, that this state
of feeling towards myself—and, indeed, this general change in
Lilian—was but temporary and abnormal; she began to allow
that it was best to drop all thoughts of a renewed engagement,
a future union. I proposed to see Lilian in her presence and
in my professional capacity; perhaps some physical cause, es-
pecially for this lethargy, might be detected and removed.
Mrs. Ashleigh owned to me that the idea had occurred to her-
self: she had sounded Lilian upon it; but her daughter had so
resolutely opposed it—had said with so quiet a firmness “that
all being over between us, a visit from me would be unwel-
come and painful,” that Mrs. Ashleigh felt that an interview
thus deprecated would only confirm estrangement. One day,
in calling, she asked my advice whether it would not be better
to try the effect of change of air and scene, and, in some other
place, some other medical opinion might be taken I ap-
proved of this suggestion with unspeakable sadness.
“And,” said Mrs. Ashleigh, shedding tears, “if that experi-
ment prove unsuccessful, I will write and let you know; and
we must then consider what to say to the world as a reason why
the marriage is broken off. I can render this more easy by
staying away. I will not return to L–– till the matter has
ceased to be the topic of talk, and at a distance any excuse
will be less questioned, and seem more natural. But still—
still—let us hope still.”
“Have you one ground for hope?”
“Perhaps so; but you will think it very frail and falla-
cious.”
“Name it, and let me judge.”
“One night—in which you were on a visit to Derval Court—”
“Ay, that night.”
“Lilian woke me by a loud cry (she sleeps in the next room
to me, and the door was left open); I hastened to her bedside
in alarm; she was asleep, but appeared extremely agitated and
convulsed. She kept calling on your name in a tone of pas-
sionate fondness, but as if in great terror. She cried: “Do
not go, Allen!—do not go! You know not what you brave!—
what you do!” Then she rose in her bed, clasping her hands.
Her face was set and rigid: I tried to awake her, but could
*
*
^*
A STRANGE STORY. 261
2.
not. After a little time, she breathed a deep sigh, and mur.
mured: “Allen, Allen! dear love! did you not hear?—did you
not see me? What could thus baffle matter and traverse space
but love and soul? Can you still doubt me, Allen?—doubt
that I love you now, shall love you evermore? Yonder, yon-
der, as here below?' She then sank back on her pillow, weep-
ing, and then I woke her.”
“And what did she say on waking?”
“She did not remember what she had dreamed, except that
she had passed through some great terror; but added, with a
vague smile: ‘It is over, and I feel happy now.’ Then she
turned round and fell asleep again, but quietly as a child, the
tears dried, the smile resting.”
“Go, my dear friend, go; take Lilian away from this place
as soon as you can; divert her mind with fresh scenes. I hope!
I do hope! Let me know where you fix yourself. I will seize a
holiday—I need one; I will arrange as to my patients; I will
come to the same place; she need not know of it, but I must
be by to watch, to hear your news of her. Heaven bless you
for what you have said! I hope! I do hopel”
CHAPTER LIV.
SoME days after, I received a few lines from Mrs. Ashleigh.
Her arrangements for departure were made. They were to
start the next morning. She had fixed on going into the north
of Devonshire, and staying some weeks either at Ilfracombe or
Lynton, whichever place Lilian preferred. She would write
as soon as they were settled.
I was up at my usual hour the next morning. I resolved to
go out towards Mrs. Ashleigh's house, and watch, unnoticed,
where I might, perhaps, catch a glimpse of Lilian as the car-
riage that would convey her to the railway passed my hiding-
lace.
p I was looking impatiently at the clock; it was yet two hours
before the train by which Mrs. Ashleigh proposed to leave.
A loud ring at my bell! I opened the door. Mrs. Ashleigh
rushed in, falling on my breast.
‘‘Lilian | Lilian!”
, “Heavens! What has happened?”
-“She has left—she is gone—gone away! Oh, Allen! how?—
whither? Advise me. What is to be done?”
“Come in—compose yourself—tell me all—clearly, quickly.
262 A STRANGE STORY.
Lilian gone?—gone away? Impossible ! She must be hid
somewhere in the house—the garden; she, perhaps, did not
like the journey. She may have crept away to some young
friend's house. But I talk when you should talk: tell me all.”
Little enough to tell! Lilian had seemed unusually cheerful
the night before, and pleased at the thought of the excursion.
Mother and daughter retired to rest early: Mrs. Ashleigh saw
Lilian sleeping quietly before she herself went to bed. She
woke betimes in the morning, dressed herself, went into the
next room to call Lilian–Lilian was not there. No suspicion
of flight occurred to her. Perhaps her daughter might be up
already, and gone downstairs, remembering something she
might wish to pack and take with her on the journey. Mrs.
Ashleigh was confirmed in this idea when she noticed that her
own room door was left open. She went downstairs, met a
maidservant in the hall, who told her, with alarm and surprise,
that both the street and garden doors were found unclosed.
No one had seen Lilian. Mrs. Ashleigh now became seriously
uneasy. On remounting to her daughter's room, she missed
Lilian's bonnet and mantle. The house and garden were both
searched in vain. There could be no doubt that Lilian had
gone—must have stolen noiselessly at night through her moth-
er’s room, and let herself out of the house and through the
garden.
“Do you think she could have received any letter, any mes-
sage, any visitor unknown to you?”
“I cannot think it. Why do you ask? Oh, Allen, you do
not believe there is any accomplice in this disappearance! No,
you do not believe it. But my child's honorſ What will the
world think?” .*
Not for the world, cared I at that moment. . I could think
only of Lilian, and without one suspicion that imputed blame
to her. w
“Be quiet, be silent; perhaps she has gone on some visit,
and will return. Meanwhile, leave inquiry to me.”
CHAPTER LV.
IT seemed incredible that Lilian could wander far without
being observed. I soon ascertained that she had not gone
away by the railway, by any public conveyance; had hired ho
carriage; she must therefore be still in the town, or have left
it on foot. The greater part of the day was consumed in un-
g
A STRA N G E STORY. g 263
successful inquiries, and faint hopes that she would return;
meanwhile, the news of her disappearance had spread; how
could such news fail to do so?
An acquaintance of mine met me under the archway of
Monks' Gate. He wrung my hand, and looked at me with
great compassion.
“I fear,” said he, “that we were all deceived in that young
Margrave. He seemed so well conducted, in spite of his lively
manners. But—”
‘‘But what?’”
“Mrs. Ashleigh was, perhaps, imprudent to admit, him into
her house so familiarly. He was certainly very handsome.
Young ladies will be romantic.”
“How dare you, sir!” I cried, choked with rage. “And
without any coloring to so calumnious a suggestion! Mar-
grave has not been in the town for many days. No one knows
even where he is.”
“Oh, yes, it is known where he is. He wrote to order the
effects which he had left here to be sent to Penrith.”
“When?”
“The letter arrived the day before yesterday. I happened
to be calling at the house where he last lodged, when at L }
the house opposite Mrs. Ashleigh's garden. No doubt the
servants in both houses gossip with each other. Miss Ashleigh
could scarcely fail to hear of Mr. Margrave's address from
her maid; and since servants will exchange gossip, they may
also convey letters. Pardon me, you know I am your
friend.”
“Not from the moment you breathe a word against my be-
trothed wife,” said I fiercely.
I wrenched myself from the clasp of the man's hand, but his
words still rang in my ears. I mounted my horse; I rode into
the adjoining suburbs, the neighboring villages; there, how-
ever, I learned nothing till, just at nightfall, in a hamlet about
ten miles from L , a laborer declared he had seen a young
lady dressed as I described, who passed by him in a path
through the fields a little before noon; that he was surprised
to see one so young, so well dressed, and a stranger to the
neighborhood (for he knew by sight the ladies of the few fam-
ilies scattered round), walking alone; that as he stepped out
of the path to make way for her, he looked hard into her face,
and she did not heed him—seemed to gaze right before her,
into space. If her expression had been less quiet and gentle,
he should have thought, he could scarcely say why, that she
264 $ A STRANGE STORY.
was not quite right in her mind—there was a strange uncon-
scious stare in her eyes, as if she were walking in her sleep.
Her pace was very steady—neither quick nor slow. He had
watched her till she passed out of sight, amidst a wood through
which the path wound its way to a village at some distance.
I followed up this clue. I arrived at the village to which
my informant directed me, but hight had set in. Most of the
houses were closed, so I could glean no further information
from the cottages or at the inn. But the police superintendent
of the district lived in the village, and to him I gave instruc-
tions which I had not given, and, indeed, would have been
disinclined to give, to the police at L He was intelligent
and kindly; he promised to communicate at once with the
different police-stations for miles round, and with all delicacy
and privacy. It was not probable that Lilian could have wan-
dered in one day much farther than the place at which I then
was ; it was scarcely to be conceived that she could baffle my
pursuit and the practised skill of the police. I rested but a
few hours, at a small public-house, and was on horseback again
at dawn. A little after sunrise I again heard of the wanderer.
At a lonely cottage, by a brick-kiln, in the midst of a wide
common, she had stopped the previous evening, and asked for
a draught of milk. The woman who gave it to her inquired
if she had lost her way? She said “No”; and, only tarrying
a few minutes, had gone across the common; and the woman
supposed she was a visitor at a gentleman's house which was
at the farther end of the waste, for the path she took led to no
town, no village. It occurred to me then, that Lilian avoided
all highroads, all places, even the humblest, where men con-
gregated together. But where could she have passed the night?
Not to fatigue the reader with the fruitless result of frequent
inquiries, I will but say that at the end of the second day I
had succeeded in ascertaining that I was still on her track;
and though I had ridden to and fro nearly double the dis-
tance—coming back again to places I had left behind—it was
at the distance of forty miles from L-- that I last heard of
her that second day. She had been seen sitting alone by a
little brook only an hour before. I was led to the very spot by
a woodman—it was at the hour of twilight when he beheld her—
she was leaning her face on her hand, and seemed weary.
He spoke to her; she did not answer, but rose, and resumed
her way along the banks of the streamlet. That night I put up
at no inn; I followed the course of the brook for miles, then
struck into every path that I could conceive her to have
A STRANGE STORY. 265
-
taken—in vain. Thus I consumed the night on foot, tying my
horse to a tree, for he was tired out, and returning to him at
Sunrise. At noon, the third day, I again heard of her, and in
a remote, Savage part of the country. The features of the
landscape were changed; there was little foliage and little cul-
ture, but the ground was broken into mounds and hollows, and
Covered with patches of heath and stunted brushwood. She had
been seen by a shepherd, and he made the same observation as
the first who had guided me on her track—she looked to him
“like some one walking in her sleep.” An hour or two later, in
a dell, amongst the furze-bushes, I chanced on a knot of ribbon.
I recognized the color Lilian habitually wore; I felt certain
that the ribbon was hers. Calculating the utmost speed I
could ascribe to her, she could not be far off, yet still I failed
to discover. The scene now was as solitary as a desert; I met
no one on my way. At length, a little after sunset, I found
myself in view of the sea. A small town nestled below the
cliffs, on which I was guiding my weary horse. I entered the
town, and while my horse was baiting went in search of the
resident policeman. The information I had directed to be sent
round the country had reached him; he had acted on it, but
without result. I was surprised to hear him address me by
name, and looking at him more narrowly, I recognized him for
the policeman Waby. This young man had always expressed
so grateful a sense of my attendance on his sister, and had,
indeed, so notably evinced his gratitude in prosecuting with
Margrave the inquiries which terminated in the discovery of
Sir Philip Derval's murderer, that I confided to him the name
of the wanderer, of which he had not been previously in-
formed; but which it would be, indeed, impossible to conceal
from him should the search in which his aid was asked prove
successful—as he knew Miss Ashleigh by sight. His face
immediately became thoughtful. He paused a minute or two,
and then said:
‘‘I think I have it, but I do not like to say; I may pain
you, sir.”
“Not by confidence; you pain me by concealment.”
The man hesitated still; I encouraged him, and then he
spoke out frankly. º
“Sir, did you never think it strange that Mr. Margrave
should move from his handsome rooms in the hotel to a some-
what uncomfortable lodging, from the window of which he
could look down on Mrs. Ashleigh's garden? I have seen him
at night in the balcony of that window, and when I noticed
266 A STRANGE STORY.
him going so frequently into Mrs. Ashleigh's house during
your unjust detention, I own, sir, I felt for you—”
“Nonsense! Mr. Margrave went to Mrs. Ashleigh's house
as my friend. He has left L weeks ago. What has all
this to do with—?’’
“Patience, sir; hear me out. I was s sent from L tC)
this station (on promotion, sir) a fortnight since last Friday,
for there had been a good deal of crime hereabouts; it is a bad
neighborhood, and full of smugglers; some days ago, in
watching quietly near a lonely house, of which the owner is a
suspicious character down in my books, I saw to my amaze-
ment, Mr. Margrave come out of that house—come out of a
private door in it, which belongs to a part of the building not
inhabited by the owner, but which used formerly, when the
house was a sort of inn, to be let to night lodgers of the hum-
A blest description. I followed him; he went down to the sea-
shore, walked about, singing to himself; then returned to the
house, and re-entered by the same door. I soon learned that
he lodged in the house—had lodged there for several days.
The next morning, a fine yacht arrived at a tolerably conven-
ient creek about a mile from the house, and there anchored.
Sailors came ashore, rambling down to this town. The yacht
belonged to Mr. Margrave; he had purchased it by commis-
sion in London. It is stored for a long voyage. He had
directed it to come to him in this out-of-the-way place, where
no gentleman's yacht ever put in before, though the creek, or
bay, is handy enough for such craft. Well, sir, is it not
strange that a rich young gentleman should come to this un-
frequented seashore, put up with accommodation that must
be of the rudest kind, in the house of a man known as a des-
perate smtggler, suspected to be worse—order a yacht to meet
him here; is not all this strange? But would it be strange if
he were waiting for a young lady? And if a young lady has
fled at night from her home, and has come secretly along by-
paths, which must have been very fully explained to her
beforehand, and is now near that young gentleman's lodging, if
not actually in it—if this be so, why the affair is not so very
strange after all. And now do you forgive me, sir?’’
‘‘Where is this house? Lead me to it.”
“You can hardly get to it except on foot; rough walking,
sir, and about seven miles off by the shortest cut.” "
“Come, and at once; come quickly. We must be there
before—before—’’
“Before the young lady can get to the place. Well, from
A STRANGE STORY. ,” 267
|
what you say of the spot in which she was last seen, I think,
on reflection, we may easily do that. I am at your service, sir.
But I should warn you that the owners of the house, man and
wife, are both of villanous character—would do anything for
money. Mr. Margrave, no doubt, has money enough ; and
if the young lady chooses to go away with Mr. Margrave, you
know I have no power to help it.”
“Leave all that to me; all I ask of you is to show me the
house.’’ ſ
We were soon out of the town; the night had closed in ; it
was very dark, in spite of a few stars; the path was rugged and
precipitous, sometimes skirting the very brink of perilous cliffs;
sometimes delving down to the seashore—there stopped by
rock or wave—and painfully rewinding up the ascent.
“It is an ugly path, sir, but it saves four miles; and anyhow
the road is a bad one.’’
We came, at last, to a few wretched fishermen’s huts. The
moon had now risen, and revealed the squalor of poverty-
stricken ruinous hovels; a couple of boats moored to the
shore; a moaning, fretful sea; and at a distance, a vessel,
with lights on board, lying perfectly still at anchor in a shel-
tered curve of the bold, rude shore. The policeman pointed
to the vessel.
“The yacht, sir; the wind will be in her favor if she sails
to-night.”
We quickened our pace as well as the nature of the path
would permit, left the huts behind us, and, about a mile farther
on, came to a solitary house, larger than, from the policeman's
description, of Margrave's lodgment, I should have presup-
posed: a house that in the wilder parts of Scotland might be
almost a laird's; but even in the moonlight it looked very
dilapidated and desolate. Most of the windows were closed,
some with panes broken, stuffed with wisps of straw; there
were the remains of a wall round the house; it was broken in
some parts (only its foundation left). On approaching the
house, I observed two doors: one on the side fronting the sea,
one on the other side facing a patch of broken ground that
might once have been a garden, and lay waste within the en-
closure of the ruined wall, encumbered with various litter—
heaps of rubbish, a ruined shed, the carcase of a worn-out boat.
This latter door stood wide open, the other was closed. The
house was still and dark, as if either deserted, or all within it
retired to rest. º
“I think that open door leads at once to the rooms Mr.
Ws
268 A STRANGE STORY.
X,
Margrave hires; he can go in and out without disturbing the
other inmates. They used to keep, on the side which they
inhabit, a beer-house, but the magistrates shut it up; still,
it is a resort for bad characters. Now, sir what shall we
do?’’
“Watch separately. You wait within the enclosure of the
wall, hid by those heaps of rubbish, near the door; none can
enter but what you will observe them. If you see her, you
will accost and stop her, and call aloud for me; I shall be in
hearing. I will go back to the high part of the ground yon-
der—it seems to me that she must pass that way; and I would
desire, if possible, to save her from the humiliation, the—the
shame of coming within the precincts of that man’s abode. I
feel I may trust you now and hereafter. It is a great thing
for the happiness and honor of this poor young lady and her
mother, that I may be able to declare that I did not take her
from that man, from any man—from that house, from any
house. You comprehend me, and will obey? I speak to you
as a confidant and—a friend.”
“I thank you with my whole heart, sir, for so doing. You
saved my sister's life, and the least I can do is to keep secret
all that would pain your life if blabbed abroad. I know what
mischief folks' tongues can make. I will wait by the door,
never fear, and will rather lose my place than not strain all
the legal power I possess to keep the young lady back from
sorrow.”
This dialogue was interchanged in close, hurried whisper
behind the broken wall, and out of all hearing. Waby now
crept through a wide gap into the enclosure, and nestled him-
self silently amidst the wrecks of the broken boat, not six feet
from the open door, and close to the wall of the house itself.
I went back some thirty yards up the road, to the rising ground
which I had pointed out to him. According to the best calcu-
lation I could make—considering the pace at which I had
cleared the precipitous pathway, and reckoning from the place
and time at which Lilian had been last seen—she could not
possibly have yet entered that house. I might presume it
would be more than half an hour before she could arrive; I
was in hopes that, during the interval, Margrave might show
himself, perhaps at the door, or from the windows, or I might
even by some light from the latter be guided to the room in
which to find him. If, after waiting a reasonable time, Lilian
should fail to appear, I had formed my plan of action; but it
was important for the success of that plan that I should not
-er
A STRANGE STORY. 269
lose myself in the strange house, nor bring its owners to Mar-
grave's aid—that I should surprise him alone and unawares.
Half an hour, three-quarters, a whole hour thus passed—no
sign of my poor wanderer; but signs there were of the enemy,
from whom I resolved, at whatever risk, to free and to save
her. A window on the ground-floor to the left of the door,
which had long fixed my attention because I had seen light
through the chinks of the shutters, slowly unclosed, the shut-
ters fell back, the casement opened, and I beheld Margrave
distinctly; he held something in his hand that gleamed in the
moonlight, directed not towards the mound on which I stood,
nor towards the path I had taken, but towards an open space
beyond the ruined wall, to the right. Hid by a cluster of
stunted shrubs, I watched him with a heart that beat with rage,
not with terror. He seemed so intent in his own gaze, as to
be unheeding or unconscious of all else. I stole from my
post, and, still under cover, sometimes of the broken wall,
sometimes of the shaggy ridges that skirted the path, crept on,
on till I reached the side of the house itself; then, there secure
from his eyes, should he turn them, I stepped over the ruined
wall, scarcely two feet high in that place, on—on towards the
door. I passed the spot on which the policeman had shrouded
himself; he was seated, his back against the ribs of the broken
boat. I put my hand to his mouth that he might not cry out
in surprise, and whispered in his ear; he stirred not. I shook
him by the arm: still he stirred not. A ray of the moon fell
on his face. I saw that he was in a profound slumber. Per-
suaded that it was no natural sleep, and that he had become
useless to me, I passed him by. I was at the threshold of the
open door; the light from the window close by falling on the
ground; I was in the passage; a glimmer came through the
chinks of a door to the left; I turned the handle noise-
lessly, and, the next moment, Margrave was locked in my
9 Iſa,SIO.
8 ºël out,” I hissed in his ear, “and I strangle you before
any one can come to your help!”
He did not call out; his eye, fixed on mine as he writhed
round, saw, perhaps, his peril if he did. His countenance be-
trayed fear, but as I tightened my grasp that expression gave
way to one of wrath and fierceness; and as, in turn, I felt the
grip of his hand, I knew that the struggle between us would be
that of two strong men, each equally bent on the mastery of
the other.
I was, as I have said before, endowed with an unusual de-
27o A STRANGE STORY.
gree of physical power, disciplined in early youth by athletic
exercise and contest. In height and in muscle I had greatly
the advantage over my antagonist, but such was the nervous
vigor, the elastic energy of his incomparable frame, in which
sinews seemed springs of steel, that had our encounter beer.
one in which my strength was less heightened by rage, I be-
lieve that I could no more have coped with him than the
bison can cope with the boa; but I was animated by that
passion which trebles for a time all our forces, which makes
even the weak man a match for the strong. I felt that if I
were worsted, disabled, stricken down, Lilian might be lost in
losing her sole protector; and on the other hand, Margrave
had been taken at the disadvantage of that surprise which
will half-unnerve the fiercest of the wild beasts; while as we
grappled, reeling and rocking to and fro in our struggle, I soon
observed that his attention was distracted, that his eye was
turned towards an object which he had dropped involuntarily
when I first seized him. He sought to drag me towards that
object, and when near it stooped to seize. It was a bright,
slender, short wand of steel. I remembered when and where
I had seen it, whether in my waking state or in vision; and as
his hand stole down to take it from the floor, I set on the wand
my strong foot. I cannot tell by what rapid process of thought
and association I came to the belief that the possession of a
little piece of blunted steel would decide the conflict in favor
of the possessor, but the struggle now was concentred on the
attainment of that seemingly idle weapon. I was becoming
breathless and exhausted, while Margrave seemed every mo-
ment to gather up new force, when, collecting all my strength
for one final effort, I lifted him suddenly high in the air, and
hurled him to the farthest end of the cramped arena to which
our contest was confined. He fell, and with a force by which
most men would have been stunned; but he recovered him-
self with a quick rebound, and, as he stood facing me, there
was something grand as well as terrible in his aspect. His eyes
literally flamed, as those of a tiger; his rich hair, flung back
from his knitted forehead, seemed to erect itself as an angry
mane; his lips, slightly parted, showed the glitter of his set
teeth; his whole frame seemed larger in the tension of the
muscles, and as, gradually relaxing his first defying and
haughty attitude, he crouched as the panther crouches for its
deadly spring, I felt as if it were a wild beast whose rush was
coming upon me—wild beast, but still Man, the king of the
animals, fashioned forth from no mixture of humbler races by
*.
A STRANGE STORY. 271
}
the slow revolutions of time, but his royalty stamped on his
form when the earth became fit for his coming.”
At that moment I snatched up the wand, directed it towards
him, and advancing with a fearless stride, cried:
“Down to my feet, miserable sorcerer!”
To my own amaze, the effect was instantaneous. My terri-
ble antagonist dropped to the floor as a dog drops at the word of
his master. The muscles of his frowning countenance relaxed,
the glare of his wrathful eyes grew dull and rayless; his limbs
lay prostrate and unnerved, his head rested against the wall,
his arms limp and drooping by his side. I approached him
slowly and cautiously; he seemed cast into a profound slumber.
“You are at my mercy now !” said I.
He moved his head as in sign of deprecating submission.
“You hear and understand me? Speak!”
His lips faintly muttered: “Yes.”
“I command you to answer truly the questions I shall
address to you.”
“I must while yet sensible of the power that has passed to
your hand.”
“Is it by some occult magnetic property in this wand that
you have exercised so demoniac an influence over a creature
so pure as Lilian Ashleigh?’”
“By that wand and by other arts which you could not com-
prehend.”
“And for what infamous object? Her seduction, her dis-
honor?’’
“No! I sought in her the aid of a gift which would cease,
did she cease to be pure. At first I but cast my influence upon
her that through her I might influence yourself. I needed
your help to discover a secret. Circumstances steeled your
mind against me. I could no longer hope that you would in-
voluntarily lend yourself to my will. Meanwhile, I had found
in her the light of a loftier knowledge than that of your science;
through that knowledge, duly heeded and cultivated, I hoped
to divine what I cannot of myself discover. Therefore I deep-
ened over her mind the spells I command; therefore I have
drawn her hither as the loadstone draws the steel, and there-
fore I would have borne her with me to the shores to which I
was about this night to sail. I had cast the inmates of the
house and all around it, into slumber, in Order that none
* “And yet, even if we entirely omit the consideration of the soul, that immaterial and
immortal principle which is for a time united to his body, and view him only in his men ely
animal character, man is still the most excellent of animals.”-Dr Kidd on the Adaptation
of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man (sect. iii., p. 18).
272 A STRANGE STORY.
might witness-her departure; had I not done so, I should have
summoned others to my aid, in spite of your threat.” *…*
“And would Lilian Ashleigh have passively accompanied
you, to her own irretrievable disgrace?”
“She could not have helped it; she would have been uncon- .
scious of her acts; she was, and is, in a trance; nor, had she
gone with me, would she have waked from that state while she
lived; that would not have been long.”
“Wretch and for what object of unhallowed curiosity do
you exert an influence which withers away the life of its vic-
tim P’’
“Not curiosity, but the instinct of self-preservation. I count
on no life beyond the grave. I would defy the grave, and live
on.”
“And was it to learn, through some ghastly agencies, the
secret of renewing existence, that you lured me by the shadow
of your own image on the night when we met last?”
The voice of Margrave here became very faint as he answered
ine, and his countenance began to exhibit the signs of an ex-
haustion almost mortal.
“Be quick,” he murmured, “or I die. The fluid which
emanates from that wand, in the hand of one who envenoms
the fluid with his own hatred and rage, will prove fatal to my
life. Lower the wand from my forehead; low—low—lower
Still l’’
“What was the nature of that rite in which you constrained
me to share?’’ t
“I cannot say. You are killing me. Enough that you were
saved from a great danger by the apparition of the protecting
image vouchsafed to your eye; otherwise you would—you
would—Oh, release me! Away! away !”
The foam gathered to his lips; his limbs became fearfully
convulsed. <3
“One question more: where is Lilian at this moment? An-
swer that question, and I depart.”
He raised his head, made a visible effort to rally his strength,
and gasped out: *.
“Yonder. Pass through the open space up the cliff, beside
a thorn-tree—you will find her there, where she halted when
the wand dropped from my hand. But—but—beware! Ha!
you will serve me yet, and through her! They said so that
night, though you heard them not. THEY said it!” Here his
face became death-like; he pressed his hand on his heart,
and shrieked out “Away—away ! or you are my murderer!”
A STRANGE STORY. 273
I retreated to the other end of the room, turning the wand
from him, and when I gained the door, looked back; his con-
vulsions had ceased, but he seemed locked in a profound swoon.
I left the room, the house—paused by Waby; he was still sleep-
ing. “Awake!” I said, and touched him with the wand.
He started up at once, rubbed his eyes, began stammering out
excuses. I checked them, and bade him follow me. I took
the way up the open ground towards which Margrave had pointed
the wand, and there, motionless, beside a gnarled fantastic
thorn-tree, stood Lilian. Her arms were folded across her
breast; her face, seen by the moonlight, looked so innocent
and so infantine, that I needed no other evidence to tell me
how unconscious she was of the peril to which her steps had
been drawn. I took her gently by the hand. “Come with
me,” I said in a whisper, and she obeyed me silently, and with
a placid smile.
Rough though the way, she seemed unconscious of fatigue.
I placed her arm in mine, but she did not lean on it. We got
back to the town. I obtained there an old chaise and a pair
of horses. At morning Lilian was under her mother's roof.
About the noon of that day fever seized her: she became rapid-
ly worse, and, to all appearance in imminent danger. Delirium
set in ; I watched beside her night and day supported by an
inward conviction of her recovery, but tortured by the sight of
her sufferings. On the third day a change for the better be-
came visible; her sleep was calm, her breathing regular.
Shortly afterwards she woke out of danger. Her eyes fell
at once on me with all their old ineffable tender sweetness.
“Oh, Allen, beloved, have I not been very ill? But I am al-
most well now. Do not weep; I shall live for you—for your
sake.” And she bent forward, drawing my hand from my
streaming eyes, and kissing me with a child's guileless kiss on
my burning forehead.
CHAPTER LVI.
LILIAN recovered, but the strange thing was this: all mem-
ory of the weeks that had elapsed since her return from visit-
ing her aunt was completely obliterated; she seemed in pro-
found ignorance of the charge on which I had been confined,
perfectly ignorant even of the existence of Margrave. She
had, indeed, a very vague reminiscence of her conversation
with me in the garden—the first conversation which had ever
been embittered by a disagreement—but that disagreement
274 A STRANGE STORY.
itself she did not recollect. Her belief was that she had
been ill and light-headed since that evening. From that even-
ing to the hour of her waking, conscious and revived, all was
a blank. Her love for me was restored, as if its thread had
never been broken. Some such instances of oblivion after
bodily illness or mental shock are familiar enough to the prac-
tice of all medical men;” and I was therefore enabled to ap-
pease the anxiety and wonder of Mrs. Ashleigh, by quoting
various examples of loss, or suspension, of memory. We agreed
that it would be necessary to break to Lilian, though very cau-
tiously, the story of Sir Philip Derval’s murder, and the charge
to which I had been subjected. She could not fail to hear of
those events from others. How shall I express her womanly
terror, her loving, sympathizing pity, on hearing the tale which
I softened as well as I could 2
“And to think that I knew nothing of this!” she cried,
clasping my hand; “to think that you were in peril, and that
I was not by your side!”
Her mother spoke of Margrave as a visitor—an agreeable,
lively stranger; Lilian could not even recollect his name, but
she seemed shocked to think that any visitor had been admitted
while I was in circumstances so awful! Need I say that our
engagement was renewed? Renewed! To her knowledge and
to her heart it had never been interrupted for a moment. But
oh! the malignity of the wrong world ! Oh! that strange lust
of mangling reputations, which seizes on hearts the least wan-
tonly cruel! Let two idle tongues utter a tale against some
third person, who never offended the babblers, and how the
tale spreads, like fire, lighted none know how, in the herbage
of an American prairie ' Who shall put it out?
What right have we to pry into the secrets of other men's
hearths? True or false, the tale that is gabbled to us, what
concern of ours can it be? I speak not of cases to which the
law has been summoned, which law has sifted, on which law
has pronounced. But how, when the law is silent, can we as-
* Stich instances of suspense of memory are recorded in most physiological and in some
metaphysical works. Dr. Abercrombie notices some, more or less similar to that related in
the text: “A young lady who was present at a catastrophe in Scotland, in which many
people lost their lives by the fall of the gallery of a church, escaped without any injury, but
with the complete loss of the recollection of any of the circumstances ; and this extended
not only to the accident, but to everything that had occurred to her for a certain time be-
fore going to church. A lady whom I attended some years ago in a protracted illness, in
which her memory became much impaired, lost the recollection of a period of about ten or
- twelve years, but spoke with perfect consistency of things as they stood before that time.”
Dr. Abercrombie adds: “As far as I have been able to trace it, the principle in such cases
seems to be, that when the memory is impaired to a certain degree, the loss of it extends
backward to some event or some period by which a particularly deep impression had been
made upon the mind.”—Abercrombie on the Intellectual Powers, pp. 118, 119 (15th edition).
A STRANGE STORY. 275
`--~
Sume its verdicts? How be all judges, where there has been no
witness-box, no cross-examination, no jury? Yet, every day
we put on our ermine, and make ourselves judges—judges sure
to condemn and on what evidence? That which no court of
law will receive. Somebody has said something to somebody,
which somebody repeats to everybody!
The gossip of L- had set in full current against Lilian's
fair name. No ladies had called or sent to congratulate Mrs.
Ashleigh on her return or to inquire after Lilian herself dur-
ing her struggle between life and death.
How I missed the Queen of the Hill at this critical moment!
How I longed for aid to crush the slander, with which I knew
not how to grapple—aid in her knowledge of the world, and
her ascendency over its judgments I had heard from her
once since her absence, briefly but kindly expressing her amaze-
ment at the ineffable stupidity which could for a moment have
subjected me to a suspicion of Sir Philip Derval's strange mur-
der, and congratulating me heartily on my complete vindica-
tion from so monstrous a charge. To this letter no address
was given. I supposed the omission to be accidental, but on
calling at her house to inquire her direction, I found that her
servants did not know it.
What, then, was my joy when, just at this juncture, I re-
ceived a note from Mrs. Poyntz, stating that she had returned
the night before, and would be glad to see me.
I hastened to her house. “Ah,’’ thought I, as I sprang
lightly up the ascent to the Hill, “how the tattlers will be si-
lenced by a word from her imperial lips!” And only just as
I approached her door did it strike me how difficult, nay, how
impossible to explain to her, the hard, positive woman—her
who had, less ostensibly but more ruthlessly than myself, de-
stroyed Dr. Lloyd for his belief in the comparatively rational
pretensions of clairvoyance—all the mystical excuses for Lilian’s
flight from her home? How speak to her—or, indeed, to any
one—about an occult fascination and a magic wand? No mat-
ter: surely it would be enough to say that, at the time, Lilian
had been light-headed, under the influence of the fever which
had afterwards nearly proved fatal. The early friend of
Anne Ashleigh would not be a severe critic on any tale that
might right the good name of Anne Ashleigh's daughter. So
assured, with a light heart and cheerful face, I followed the ser-
vant into the great lady's pleasant but decorous presence-
chamber. *.
276 A STRANGE story. *
CHAPTER LVII.
MRS. Poyntz was on her favorite seat by the window, and,
for a wonder, not knitting—that classic task seemed done;
but she was smoothing and folding the completed work with
her white comely hand, and smiling over it, as if in compla-
cent approval, when I entered the room. At the fireside sat
the he-colonel, inspecting a newly-invented barometer; at an-
other window, in the farthest recess of the room, stood Miss
Jane Poyntz, with a young gentleman whom I had never before
seen, but who turned his eyes full upon me with a haughty look
as the servant announced my name. He was tall, well pro-
portioned, decidedly handsome, but with that expression of
cold and concentred self-esteem in his very attitude, as well
as his countenance, which makes a man of merit unpopular,
a man without merit ridiculous.
The he-colonel, always punctiliqusly civil, rose from his seat,
shook hands with me cordially, and said: “Coldish weather
to-day; but we shall have rain to-morrow. Rainy seasons
come in cycles. We are about to commence a cycle of them
with heavy showers.” He sighed, and returned to his barome-
ter. -º
Miss Jane bowed to me graciously enough, but was evident-
ly a little confused, a circumstance which might well attract my
notice, for I had never before seen that high-bred young lady
deviate a hair's breadth from the even tenor of a manner ad-
mirable for a cheerful and courteous ease, which, one felt con-
vinced would be unaltered to those around her, if an earth-
quake swallowed one up an inch before her feet.
The young gentleman continued to eye me loftily, as the
heir-apparent to some celestial planet might eye an inferior
creature from a half-formed nebula suddenly dropped upon his
sublime and perfected star.
Mrs. Poyntz extended to me two fingers, and said, frigidly:
“Delighted to see you again How kind to attend so soon
to my note!” Motioning me to a seat beside her, she here
turned to her husband, and said: “Poyntz, since a cycle of
rain begins to-morrow, better secure your ride to-day. Take
these young people with you. I want to talk with Dr. Fen-
wick.’’
The colonel carefully put away his barometer, and saying to
his daughter “Come!” went forth. Jane followed her father;
the young gentleman followed Jane.
*~
A STRANGE STORY. 277
The reception I had met chilled and disappointed me. I
felt that Mrs. Poyntz was changed, and in her change the
whole house seemed changed. The very chairs looked civilly
unfriendly, as if preparing to turn their backs on me. How-
ever, I was not in the false position of an intruder; I had
been summoned; it was for Mrs. Poyntz to speak first, and I
waited quietly for her to do so.
She finished the careful folding of her work, and then laid it
at rest in the drawer of the table at which she sat. Having
So done, she turned to me, and said:
“By the way, I ought to have introduced to you my young
guest, Mr. Ashleigh Sumner. You would like him. He has
talents—not showy, but solid. He will succeed in public life.”
“So that young man is Mr. Ashleigh Sumner? I do not
wonder that Miss Ashleigh rejected him.”
I said this, for I was nettled, as well as surprised, at the
coolness with which a lady who had professed a friendship for
me mentioned that fortunate young gentleman, with so com-
plete an oblivion of all the antecedents that had once made his
name painful to my ear.
In turn, my answer seemed to nettle Mrs. Poyntz.
“I am not so sure that she did reject; perhaps she rather mis-
understood him; gallant compliments are not always proposals
of marriage. However that be, his spirits were not much
damped by Miss Ashleigh's disdain, nor his heart deeply smit-
ten by her charms; for he is now very happy, very much at-
tached to another young lady, to whom he proposed, three days
ago, at Lady Delafield's, and not to make a mystery of what
all our little world will know before to-morrow, that young lady
is my daughter Jane.”
“Were I acquainted with Mr Sumner, I should offer to him
my sincere congratulations.”
Mrs. Poyntz resumed, without heeding a reply more compli-
mentary to Miss Jane than to the object of her choice:
“I told you that I meant Jane to marry a rich country gentle-
man, and Ashleigh Sumner is the very country gentleman I had
then in my thoughts. He is cleverer and more ambitious than
I could have hoped: he will be a minister some day, in right
of his talents, and a peer, if he wishes it, in right of his lands.
So that matter is settled.”
There was a pause, during which my mind passed rapidly
through links of reminiscence and reasoning, which led me to a
mingled sentiment of admiration for Mrs. Poyntz as a diploma-
tist and of distrust for Mrs. Poyntz as a friend. It was now
278 A STRANGE. STORY.
clear why Mrs. Poyntz, before so little disposed to approve my
love, had urged me at once to offer my hand to Lilian, in order
that she might depart affianced and engaged to the house in
which she would meet Mr. Ashleigh Sumner. Hence Mrs.
Poyntz's anxiety to obtain all the information I could afford
her of the sayings and doings at Lady Haughton's; hence the
publicity she had so suddenly given to my engagement; hence,
when Mr. Sumner had gone away a rejected suitor, her own
departure from L ; she had seized the very moment when
a vain and proud man, piqued by the mortification received
from one lady, falls the easier prey to the arts which allure his
suit to another. All was so far clear to me. And I-was my
self-conceit less egregious and less readily duped than that of
yon gilded popinjay's How skilfully this woman had knitted
me into her work with the noiseless turn of her white hands!
And yet, forsooth, I must vaunt the superior scope of my intel-
lect, and plumb all the fountains of Nature—I, who could not
fathom the little pool of this female schemer's mind!
But that was no time for resentment to her or rebuke to my-
self. She was now the woman who could best protect and save
from slander my innocent, beloved Lilian. But how approach
that perplexing subject?
Mrs. Poyntz approached it, and with her usual decision of
purpose, which bore so deceitful a likeness to candor of mind.
“But it was not to talk of my affairs that I asked you to call,
Allen Fenwick.” As she uttered my name, her voice softened,
and her manner took that maternal, caressing tenderness which
had sometimes amused and sometimes misled me. “No, I do
not forget that you asked me to be your friend, and I take,
without scruple, the license of friendship. What are these
stories that I have heard already about Lilian Ashleigh, to
whom you were once engaged.”
“To whom I am still engaged.”
“Is it possible? Oh, then, of course the stories I have heard
are all false. Very likely; no fiction in scandal ever surprises
me. Poor dear Lilian, then, never ran away from her mother's
house?”
I smothered the angry pain which this mode of questioning
caused me; I knew how important it was to Lilian to secure
to her the countenance and support of this absolute autocrat;
I spoke of Lilian's long previous distemper of mind; I ac-
counted for it as any intelligent physician, unacquainted with all
that I could "not reveal, would account. Heaven forgive me
for the venial falsehood, but I spoke of the terrible charge
A STRANGE STORY. . 279
f
against myself as enough to unhinge, for a time, the intellect of
a girl so acutely sensitive as Lilian; I sought to create that im-
, pression as to the origin of all that might otherwise seem strange;
and in this state of cerebral excitement she had wandered from
home—but alone. I had tracked every step of her way; I had
found and restored her to her home. A critical delirium had
followed, from which she now rose, cured in health, unsuspi-
cious that there could be a whisper against her name. And
then, with all the eloquence I could command, and in words as
adapted as I could frame them to soften the heart of a woman,
herself a mother, I implored Mrs. Poyntz's aid to silence all
the cruelties of Calumny, and extend her shield over the child
of her own early friend.
When I came to an end, I had taken, with caressing force,
Mrs. Poyntz's reluctant hands in mine. There were tears in
my voice, tears in my eyes. And the sound of her voice in
reply gave me hope, for it was unusually gentle. She was evi-
dently moved. The hope was soon quelled.
“Allen Fenwick,” she said “you have a noble heart; I
grieve to see how it abuses your reason. I cannot aid Lilian
Ashleigh in the way you ask. Do not start back so indignant-
ly. Listen to me as patiently as I have listened to you. That
when you brought back the unfortunate young woman to her
poor mother, her mind was disordered, and became yet more
dangerously so, I can well believe; that she is now recovered
and thinks with shame, or refuses to think at all, of her impru-
dent flight, I can believe also; but I do not believe, the World
cannot believe, that she did not, knowingly and purposely,
quit her mother's roof, and in quest of that young stranger so
incautiously, so unfeelingly admitted to her mother's house dur-
ing the very time you were detained on the most awful of
human accusations. Every one in the town knows that Mr.
Margrave visited daily at Mrs. Ashleigh's during that painful
period; every one in the town knows in what strange out-of-the-
way place this young man had niched himself; and that a
yacht was bought, and lying in wait there. What for? It is
said that the chaise in which you brought Miss Ashleigh back to
her home was hired in a village within an easy reach of Mr.
Margrave's lodging—of Mr. Margrave's yacht. I rejoice that
you saved the poor girl from ruin; but her good name is tar-
nished, and if Anne Ashleigh, whom I sincerely pity, asks me my
advice, I can but give her this: ‘Leave L , take your daugh-
ter abroad; and if she is not to marry Mr. Margrave, marry her
as quietly and as quickly as possible to some foreigner.’”
28o . A STRANGE STORY.
“Madam ſ madam this, then, is your friendship to her—to
me! Oh, shame on you to insult thus an affianced husband 1
Shame on me ever to have thought you had a heart!” º
^
* * A * *
heart, man!” she exclaimed, almost fiercely, springing S-
up, and startling me with the change in her countenance and
voice. “And little you would have valued, and pitilessly have
crushed this heart, if I had suffered myself to show it to you!
What right have you to reproach me? I felt a warm interest
in your career, an unusual attraction in your conversation and
society. Do you blame me for that, or should I blame myself?
Condemned to live amongst brainless puppets, my dull occupa-
tion to pull the strings that moved them, it was a new charm to
my life to establish friendship and intercourse with intellect,
and spirit, and courage. Ah! I understand that look, half-
incredulous, half-inquisitive.”
“Inquisitive, no! Incredulous, yes! You desired my
friendship, and how does your harsh judgment of my be-
trothed wife prove either to me or to her mother, whom
you have known from your girlhood, the first duty of a
friend, which is surely not that of leaving a friend’s side the
moment that he needs countenance in Calumny, succor in
trouble ’’ -
“It is a better duty to prevent the calumny and avert the
trouble. Leave aside Anne Ashleigh, a cipher that I can add
or abstract from my sum of life as I please. What is my duty to
yourself? It is plain. It is to tell you that your honor com-
mands you to abandon all thoughts of Lilian Ashleigh as your
wife. Ungrateful that you are Do you suppose it was no
mortification to my pride of woman and friend, that you never
approached me in confidence except to ask my good offices in
promoting your courtship to another? No shock to the quiet
plans I had formed as to our familiar though harmless intimacy,
to hear that you were bent on a marriage in which my friend
would be lost to me?’"
“Not lost!—not lost! On the contrary, the regard I must
suppose you had for Lilian would have been a new link between
our homes.”
“Pooh! Between me and that dreamy girl there could have
been no sympathy, there could have grown up no regard. You
would have been chained to your fireside, and—and—but no
matter- I stifled my disappointment as soon as I felt it—stifled
it, as all my life I have stifled that which either destiny or duty—
duty to myself as to others—forbids me to indulge. Ah! do
not fancy me one of the weak criminals who can suffer a
-
--- A STRANGE STORY. 281
*
|
worthy liking to grow into a debasing love! I was not in
loye with you, Allen Fenwick.”
“Do you think I was ever so presumptuous a coxcomb as to
fancy it?” *
“No,” she said, more softly; “I was not so false to my
household ties and to my own nature. But there are some
friendships which are as jealous as love. I could have cheer-
fully aided you in any choice which my sense could have ap-
proved for you as wise; I should have been pleased to have
found in such a wife my most intimate companion. But that
silly child!—absurd . Nevertheless, the freshness and enthu-
siasm of your love touched me; you asked my aid, and I gave
it; perhaps I did believe that when you saw more of Lilian
Ashleigh you would be cured of a fancy conceived by the eye;
I should have known better what dupes the wisest men can be
to the witcheries of a fair face and eighteen | When I found
your illusion obstinate I wrenched myself away from a vain re-
gret, turned to my own schemes and my own ambition, and
smiled bitterly to think that, in pressing you to propose so
hastily to Lilian, I made your blind passion an agent in my
own plans. Enough of this. I speak thus openly and boldly
to you now, because now I have not a sentiment that can in-
terfere with the dispassionate soundness of my counsels. I
repeat, you cannot now marry Lilian Ashleigh; I cannot take
my daughter to visit her; I cannot destroy the social laws
that I myself have set in my petty kingdom.”
“Be it as you will. I have pleaded for her while she is still
Lilian Ashleigh. I plead for no one to whom I have once given
my name. Before the woman whom I have taken from the
altar, I can place, as a shield sufficient, my strong breast of
man. Who has so deep an interest in Lilian's purity as I
have? Who is so fitted to know the exact truth of every whis-
per against her? Yet when I, whom you admit to have some
reputation for shrewd intelligence, I, who tracked her way—I,
who restored her to her home—when I, Allen Fenwick, am so
assured of her inviolable innocence in thought as in deed, that
I trust my honor to her keeping, surely, surely, I confute the
scandal which you yourself do not believe, though you refuse
to reject and to annul it?”
“Do not deceive yourself, Allen Fenwick,” said she, still
standing beside me, her countenance now hard and stern.
“Look, where I stand, I am the WoRLD!. The World, not as
satirists depreciate or as optimists extol its immutable proper-
ties, its all-persuasive authority. I am the World! And my
282 A STRANGE STORY.
voice is the World’s voice when it thus warns you. Should you
make this marriage, your dignity of character and position
would be gone! If you look only to lucre and professional suc-
Cess, possibly they may not ultimately suffer. You have skill,
which men need; their need may still draw patients to your
door and pour guineas into your purse. But you have the
pride, as well as the birth; of a gentleman, and the wounds to
that pride will be hourly chafed and never healed. Your strong
breast of man has no shelter to the frail name of woman. The
World, in its health, will look down on your wife, though its
sick may look up to you. This is not all. The World, in its
gentlest mood of indulgence, will say, compassionately, “Poor
man how weak, and how deceived ' What an unfortunate
marriage!’ But the World is not often indulgent; it looks most
to the motives most seen on the surface. And the World will
more frequéntly say: ‘No, much too clever a man to be duped!
Miss Ashleigh had money. A good match to the man who
liked gold better than honor.’” *
I Sprang to my feet, with difficulty suppressing my rage; and,
remembering it was a woman who spoke to me. “Farewell,
madam,” said I, through my grinded teeth. “Were you, in-
deed, the Personation of The World, whose mean notions you
mouth so calmly, I could not disdain you more.” I turned to
the door, and left her still standing erect and menacing, the
hard sneer on her resolute lip, the red glitter in her remorse-
less eye.
CHAPTER LVIII.
IF ever my heart vowed itself to Lilian, the vow was now the
most trustful and the most sacred. I had relinquished our
engagement before, but then her affection seemed, no matter
from what cause, so estranged from me, that though I might
be miserable to lose her, I deemed that she would be unhappy
in our union. Then, to, she was the gem and darling of the
little world in which she lived; no whisper assailed her: now,
I knew that she loved me; I knew that her estrangement had
been involuntary; I knew that appearances wronged her, and
that they never could be explained. I was in the true position
of man to woman: I was the shield, the bulwark, the fearless,
confiding protector | Resign her now because the world
babbled, because my career might be impeded, because my
good name might be impeached—resign her, and, in that resig-
A STRANGE STORY. 283
nation, confirm all that was said against her | Could I do so, I
should be the most Craven of gentlemen, the meanest of men :
I went to Mrs. Ashleigh, and entreated her to hasten my
union with her daughter, and fix the marriage-day,
I found the poor lady dejected and distressed. She was
now sufficiently relieved from the absorbing anxiety for Lilian
to be aware of the change on the face of that World which the
woman I had just quitted personified and concentred; she
had learned the cause from the bloodless lips of Miss Bra-
bazon.
“My child—my poor child !” murmured the mother. “And
she so guileless—so sensitive! Could she know what is said,
it would kill her. She would never marry you, Allen; she
would never bring shame to you!”
“She never need learn the barbarous calumny. Give her to
me, and at once; patients, fortune, fame, are not found only
at L-. Give her to me at once. But let me name a condi-
tion: I have a patrimonial independence; I have amassed large
savings; I have my profession and my repute. I cannot touch
her fortune—I cannot—never can Take it while you live;
when you die, leave it to accumulate for her children, if chil-
dren she have; not to me; not to her—unless I am dead or
ruined l’’ .
“Oh, Allen, what a heart! What a heart! No, not heart,
Allen—that bird in its cage has a heart: soul—what a soul!”
***
CHAPTER LIX.
How innocent was Lilian's virgin blush when I knelt to her,
and prayed that she would forestall the date that had been
fixed for our union, and be my bride before the breath of the
autumn had withered the pomp of the woodland and silenced
the song of the birds! Meanwhile, I was so fearfully anxious
that she should risk no danger of hearing, even of surmising,
the cruel slander against her; should meet no cold, contemptu-
ous looks; above all, should be safe from the barbed talk of
Mrs. Poyntz, that I insisted on the necessity of immediate
change of air and scene. I proposed that we should all three
depart, the next day, for the banks of my own beloved and
native Windermere. By that pure mountain air, Lilian's
health would be soon re-established: in the church hallowed to
me by the graves of my fathers our vows could be plighted.
No calumny had ever cast a shadow over those graves. I felt
284 A STRANGE STORY.
as if my bride would be safer in the neighborhood of my moth-
er's tomb. --
I carried my point: it was so arranged. Mrs. Ashleigh,
however, was reluctant to leave before she had seen her dear
friend, Margaret Poyntz. I had not the courage to tell her
what she might expect to hear from that dear friend, but, as
delicately as I could, I informed her that I had already seen
the Queen of the Hill, and contradicted the gossip that had
reached her; but that as yet, like other absolute sovereigns,
the Queen of the Hill thought it politic to go with the popular
stream, reserving all check on its direction till the rush of its
torrent might slacken; and that it would be infinitely wiser in
Mrs. Ashleigh to postpone conversation with Mrs. Poyntz
until Lilian's return to L as my wife. Slander by that
time would have wearied itself out, and Mrs. Poyntz (assum-
ing her friendship to Mrs. Ashleigh to be sincere) would then
be enabled to say with authority to her subjects: “Dr. Fenwick
alone knows the facts of the story, and his marriage with Miss
Ashleigh refutes all the gossip to her prejudice.”
I made that evening arrangements with a young and rising
practitioner to secure attendance on my patients during my ab-
sence. I passed the greater part of the night in drawing up
memoranda to guide-my proxy in each case, however humble.
the sufferer. This task finished, I chanced, in searching for
a small microscope, the wonders of which I thought might in-
terest and amuse Lilian, to open a drawer in which I kept the
manuscript of my cherished Physiological Work, and, in so
doing, my eye fell upon the wand which I had taken from Mar-
grave. I had thrown it into that drawer on my return home,
after restoring Lilian to her mother's house, and, in the anxi-
ety which had subsequently preyed upon my mind, had almost
forgotten the strange possession I had as strangely acquired.
There it now lay, the instrument of agencies over the mechan-
ism of nature which no doctrine admitted by my philosophy
could accept, side by side with the presumptuous work which
had analyzed the springs by which nature is moved, and decided
the principles by which reason metes out, from the inch of its
knowledge, the plan of the Infinite Unknown.
I took up the wand and examined it curiously. It was evi-
dently the work of an age far remote from our own, scored
over with half-obliterated characters in some Eastern tongue,
perhaps no longer extant. I found that it was hollow within.
A more accurate observation showed, in the centre of this hol-
low, an exceedingly fine thread-like wire, the unattached end
A STRANGE STORY. 285
of which would slightly touch the palm when the wand was
taken into the hand. Was it possible that there might be a
natural and even a simple cause for the effects which this in-
strument produced? Could it serve to collect, from that great
focus of animal heat and nervous energy which is placed in the
palm of the human hand, some such latent fluid as that which
Reichenbach calls the “odic,” and which, according to him,
“rushes through and pervades universal Nature” . After all,
why not? For how many centuries lay unknown all the virtues
of the loadstone and the amber? It is but as yesterday that
the forces of vapor have become to men genii more powerful
than those conjured up by Aladdin; that light, at a touch,
springs forth from invisible air; that thought finds a messenger
swifter than the wings of the fabled Afrite. As thus musing,
my hand closed over the wand, I felt a wild thrill through my
frame; I recoiled; I was alarmed lest (according to the plain
common-sense theory of Julius Faber) I might be preparing
my imagination to form and to credit its own illusions. Has-
tily I laid down the wand. But then it occurred to me, that
whatever its properties, it had so served the purposes of the
dread Fascinator from whom it had been taken, that he might
probably seek to repossess himself of it; he might contrive to
enter my house in my absence; more prudent to guard in my
own watchful keeping the incomprehensible instrument of
incomprehensible arts. I resolved, therefore, to take the wand
with me, and placed it in my travelling-trunk, with such effects
as I selected for use in the excursion that was to commence
with the morrow. I now lay down to rest, but I could not
, sleep. The recollections of the painful interview with Mrs.
Poyntz became vivid and haunting. It was clear that the sen-
timent she had conceived for me was that of no simple friend-
ship—something more or something less—but certainly some-
thing else; and this conviction brought before me that proud,
hard face, disturbed by a pang wrestled against but not sub-
dued, and that clear metallic voice, troubled by the quiver of
an emotion which, perhaps, she had never analyzed to herself.
I did not need her own assurance to know that this sentiment
was not to be confounded with a love which she would have
despised as a weakness and repelled as a crime; it was an in-
clination of the intellect, not a passion of the heart. But still
it admitted a jealousy little less keen than that which has love
for its cause, so true it is that jealousy is never absent where
self-love is always present. Certainly, it was no susceptibility
of sober friendship which had made the stern arbitress of a
286 A STRANGE STORY.
*
coterie ascribe to her interest in me her pitiless judgment of
Lilian. Strangely enough, with the image of this archetype of
conventional usages and the trite social life, came that of the
mysterious Margrave, surrounded by all the attributes with
which superstition clothes the being of the shadowy border-
land that lies beyond the chart of our visual world itself. By
what link were creatures so dissimilar riveted together in the
metaphysical chain of association? Both had entered into the
record of my life when my life admitted its own first romance
of love. Through the aid of this cynical schemer I had been
made known to Lilian. At her house I had heard the dark
story of that Louis Grayle, with whom, in mocking spite of my
reason, conjectures, which that very reason must depose itself
before it could resolve into distempered fancies, identified the
enigmatical Margrave. Now both she, the representative of
the formal world most opposed to visionary creeds, and he,
who gathered round him all the terrors which haunt the realm
of fable, stood united against me–foes with whom the intellect
I had so haughtily cultured knew not how to cope. Whatever
assault I might expect from either, I was unable to assail again.
Alike, then, in this, are the Slander and the Phantom; that
which appals us most in their power over us is our impotence
against them. Q
But up rose the sun, chasing the shadows from the earth,
and brightening insensibly the thoughts of man. After all,
Margrave had been baffled and defeated, whatever the arts he
had practised and the secrets he possessed. It was, at least, .
doubtful whether his evil machinations could be renewed. He
had seemed so incapable of long-sustained fixity of purpose,
that it was probable he was already in pursuit of some new
agent or victim; and as to this commonplace and conventional
spectre, the so-called World, if it is everywhere to him whom
it awes, it is nowhere to him who despises it. What was the
good or bad word of a Mrs. Poyntz to me? Ay, but to Lilian?
There, indeed, I trembled; but still, even in trembling, it was
sweet to think that my home would be her shelter, my choice her
vindication. Ah! how unutterably tender and reverential Love
becomes when it assumes the duties of the guardian, and hallows
its own heart into a sanctuary of refuge for the beloved
CHAPTER LX.
THE beautiful lake We two are on its grassy margin—twi-
light melting into night; the stars stealing forth, one after one.
> - A STRANGE STORY. 287
What a wonderful change is made within us when we come
from our callings amongst men, chafed, wearied, wounded;
gnawed by our cares, perplexed by the doubts of our very wis-
dom, stung by the adder that dwells in cities—Slander; nay,
even if renowned, fatigued with the burden of the very names
that we have won! What a change is made within us when
suddenly we find ourselves transported into the calm solitudes
of Nature; into scenes familiar to our happy, dreaming child-
hood; back, back from the dusty thoroughfares of our toil-worn
manhood to the golden fountain of our youth! Blessed is the
change, even when we have no companion beside us to whom
the heart can whisper its sense of relief and joy. But if the
one, in whom all our future is garnered up be with us there,
instead of that weary World which has so magically vanished
away from the eye and the thought, then does the change make
one of those rare epochs of life in which the charm is the still-
ness. In the pause from all by which our own turbulent strug-
gles for happiness trouble existence, we feel with a rapt amaze-
ment how calm a thing it is to be happy. And so as the night,
in deepening, brightened, Lilian and I wandered by the starry
lake. Conscious of no evil in ourselves, how secure we felt
from evil! A few days more—a few days more, and we two
should be as one! And that thought we uttered in many
forms of words, brooding over it in the long intervals of enam-
oured silence.
And when we turned back to the quiet inn at which we had
taken up our abode, and her mother, with her soft face, ad-
vanced to meet us, I said to Lilian: w
‘‘Would that in these scenes we could fix our home for life,
away and afar from the dull town we have left behind us, with
the fret of its wearying cares and the jar of its idle babble!”
“And why not, Allen? Why not? But no, you would not
be happy.”
“Not be happy, and with you? Sceptic, by what reasonings
do you arrive at that ungracious conclusion?”
“The heart loves repose and the soul contempkation, but the
mind needs action. Is it not so?”
“Where learned you that aphorism, out of place on such
rosy lips?”
“I learned it in studying you,” murmured Lilian tenderly.
Here Mrs. Ashleigh joined us. For, the first time I slept
under the same roof as Lilian. And I forgot that the universe
contained an enigma to solve or an enemy to fear.
y
288 - A STRANGE STORY: «
CHAPTER LXI.
Twenty days—the happiest my life had sever known—
thus glided on. Apart from the charm which love bestows on
the beloved, there was that in Lilian's conversation which
made her a delightful companion. Whether it was that, in this
pause from the toils of my career, my mind could more pliantly
supple itself to her graceful imagination, or that her imagina-
tion was less vague and dreamy amidst those rural scenes,
which realized in their loveliness and grandeur its long-
conceived ideals, than it had been in the petty garden-ground
neighbored by the stir and hubbub of the busy town—in much
that I had once slighted or contemned as the vagaries of undis-
ciplined fancy, I now recognized the sparkle and play of an
intuitive genius, lighting up many a depth obscure to instructed
thought. It is with some characters as with the subtler and
more ethereal order of poets. To appreciate them we must
suspend the course of artificial life. In the city we call them
dreamers, on the mountain-top we find them interpreters.
In Lilian, the sympathy with Nature was not, as in Mar-
grave, from the joyous sense of Nature's lavish vitality; it was
refined into exquisite perception of the diviner spirit by which
that vitality is informed. Thus, like the artist, from outward
forms of beauty she drew forth the covert types, lending to
things the most familiar exquisite meanings unconceived before.
For it is truly said by a wise critic of old, that “the attribute
of Art is to suggest infinitely more than it expresses’’; and
such suggestions, passifig from the artist's innermost thought
into the mind that receives them, open on and on into the In-
finite of Ideas, as a moonlit wave struck by a passing oar im-
pels wave upon wave along one track of light.
So the days glided by, and brought the eve of our bridal
morn. It had been settled that, after the ceremony (which
was to be performed by license in the village church, at no
great distance, which adjoined my paternal home, now passed
away to strangers), we should make a short excursion into
Scotland, leaving Mrs. Ashleigh to await our return at the little
II] Il.
I had retired to my own room to answer some letters from
anxious patients, and having finished these, I looked into my
trunk for a Guide-Boök to the North, which I had brought
with me. My hand came upon, Margrave's wand, and, remem-
bering that strange thrill which had passed through me when I
*
A STRANGE STORY. 289
last handled it, I drew it forth, resolved to examine calmly if I
could detect the cause of the sensation. It was not now the
time of night in which the imagination is most liable to credus'
lous impressions, nor was I now in the anxious and jaded state
of mind in which such impressions may be the more readily con-
ceived. The Sun was slowly setting over the delicious land-
scape; the air cool and serene; my thoughts collected—heart
and conscience alike at peace. I took, then, the wand, and
adjusted it to the palm of the hand as I had done before. I
felt the slight touch of the delicate wire within, and again the
thrill! I did not this time recoil; I continued to grasp the
wand, and sought deliberately to analyze my own sensations in
the contact. There came over me an increased consciousness
of vital power; a certain exhilaration, elasticity, vigor, such as
a strong cordial may produce on a fainting man. All the
forces of my frame seemed refreshed, redoubled; and as such
effects on the physical system are ordinarily accompanied by
correspondent effects on the mind, so I was sensible of a proud
elation of spirits, a kind of defying, superb self-glorying. All
fear seemed blotted out from my thought, as a weakness im-
possible to the grandeur and might which belong to Intellectual
Man; I felt as if it were a royal delight to scorn Earth and its
opinions, brave Hades and its spectres. Rapidly this new-
born arrogance enlarged itself into desires vague but daring.
My mind reverting to the wild phenomena associated with its
memories of Margrave, I said, half-aloud: “If a creature so
beneath myself in constancy of will and completion of thought
can wrest from Nature favors so marvellous, what could not be
won from her by me, her patient, persevering seeker? What
if there be spirits around and about, invisible to the common
eye, but whom we can submit to our control; and what if this
rod be charged with some occult fluid, that runs through all
creation, and can be so disciplined as to establish communica-
tion wherever life and thought can reach to beings that live
and think? So would the mystics of old explain what per-
plexes me. Am I sure that the mystics of old duped them-
selves or their pupils? This, then, this slight wand, light as
a reed in my grasp-this, then, was the instrument by which Mar-
grave sent his irresistible will through air and space, and by
which I smote himself, in the midst of his tiger-like wrath,
into the helplessness of a sick man's swoon? Can the instru-
ment at this distance still control him; if now meditating evil,
disarm and disable his purpose?” Involuntarily, as I revolved
these ideas, I stretched forth the wand, with a concentred
290 A STRANGE STORY.
energy of desire that its influence should reach Margrave and
command him. And since I knew not his whereabout, yet was
(vaguely aware that, according to any conceivable theory by
which the wand could be supposed to carry its imagined vir-
tues to definite goals in distant space, it should be pointed in
the direction of the object it was intended to affect; so I slowly
moved the wand as ifi describing a circle, and thus, in some
point of the circle—east, west, north, or south—the direction
could not fail to be true. Before I had performed half the
circle, the wand of itself stopped, resisting palpably the move-
ment of my hand to impel it onward Had it, then, found the
point to which my will was guiding it, obeying my will by some
magnetic sympathy never yet comprehended by any recognized
science? I know not; but I had not held it thus fixed for
many seconds, before a cold air, well remembered, passed by
me, stirring the roots of my hair; and, reflected against the
opposite wall, stood the hateful Scin-Laeca. The Shadow was
dimmer in its light than when before beheld, and the outline
of the features was less distinct—still it was the unmistakable
Zemur, or image, of Margrave.
And a voice was conveyed to my senses, saying, as from a
great distance, and in weary yet angry accents:
“You have summoned me? Wherefore?”
I overcame the startled shudder with which, at first, I be.
held the Shadow and heard the Voice.
“I summoned you not,’” said I; “I, sought but to impose
upon you my will, that you should persecute, with your
ghastly influences, me and mine no more. And now, by what-
ever authority this wand bestows on me, I so adjure and com-
mand you!” *
I thought there was a sneer of disdain on the lip through
which the answer seemed to come:
“Vain and ignorant; it is but a shadow you command.
My body you have cast into a sleep, and it knows not that the
shadow is here; nor, when it wakes, will the brain be aware of
one reminiscence of the words that you utter or the words that
ou hear.’’ s
“What, then, is this shadow that simulates the body? Is it
that which in popular language is called the Soul?”
“It is not: soul is no shadow.”
‘‘What then P’’
“Ask not me. Use the wand to invoke Intelligences higher
than mine.”
“And how P” b
.*
A STRANGE STORY. 29I
:
“I will tell you not. Of yourself you may learn, if you
guide the wand by your own pride of will and desire; but in
the hands of him who has learned not the art, the wand has its
dangers. Again, I say you have summoned me! Wherefore?”
“Lying shade, I summoned thee not.”
“So wouldst thou say to the demons, did they come in their
terrible wrath, when the bungler, who knows not the springs
that he moves, calls them up unawares, and can neither con-
trol nor dispel. Less revengeful than they, I leave thee un-
harmed, and depart.”
“Stay. If, as thou sayest, no command I address to thee—
to thee, who art only the image or shadow—can have effect on
the body and mind of the being whose likeness thou art, still
thou canst tell me what passes now in his brain. Does it now
harbor Schemes against me through the woman I love? An-
swer truly.” sº
“I reply for the sleeper, of whom I am more than a likeness,
though only the shadow. His thought speaks thus: ‘I know,
Allen Fenwick, that in thee is the agent I need for achieving
the end that I seek. Through the woman thou lovest I hope
to subject thee. A grief that will harrow thy heart is at hand;
when that grief shall befall, thou wilt welcome my coming.
In me alone thy hope will be placed; through me alone wilt
thou seek a path out of thy sorrow. I shall ask my condi-
tions: they will make thee my tool and my slave!’”
The shadow waned—it was gone. I did not seek to detain
it, nor, had I sought, could I have known by what process.
But a new idea now possessed me. This Shadow, then, that
had once so appalled and controlled me, was, by its own con-
fession, nothing more than a shadow ! It had spoken of higher
Intelligences; from them I might learn what the Shadow could
not reveal. As I still held the wand firmer and firmer in my
grasp, my thoughts grew haughtier and bolder. Could the
wand, then, bring those loftier beings thus darkly referred to
before me? With that thought, intense and engrossing, I
guided, the wand towards the space, opening boundless and
blue from the casement that let in the skies. The wand no
longer resisted my hand.
In a few moments I felt the floors of the room vibrate; the
air was darkened: a vaporous, hazy cloud seemed to rise from
the ground without the casement; an awe, infinitely more deep
and solemn than that which the Scin-Laeca had caused in its
earliest apparition, curdled through my veins, and stilled the
very beat of my heart.
292 A STRANGE STORY. ---
*
At that moment I heard, without, the voice of Lilian, sing-
ing a simple, sacred song which I had learned at my mother’s
knees, and taught to her the day before: singing low, and as :
with a warning angel's voice. By an irresistible impulse I
dashed the wand to the ground, and bowed my head as I had
bowed it when my infant mind comprehended, without an
effort, mysteries more solemn than those which perplexed me
now. Slowly I raised my eyes, and looked round: the vapor-
Ous, hazy cloud had passed away, or melted into the ambient
rose-tints amidst which the sun had sunk.
Then, by one of those common reactions from a period of
Over-strained excitement, there succeeded to that sentiment of
arrogance and daring with which these wild, half-conscious in-
vocations had been fostered and sustained, a profound humil-
ity, a warning fear. -
“What!” said I inly, “have all those sound resolutions,
which my reason founded on the wise talk of Julius Faber,
melted away in the wrack of haggard, dissolving fancies! Is
this my boasted intellect, my vaunted science! I–I, Allen
Fenwick, not only the credulous believer, but the blundering
practitioner, of an evil magic! Grant what may be possible,
however uncomprehended—grant that in this accursed instru-
ment of antique superstition there be some real powers—chem-
ical, magnetic, no matter what—by which the imagination can
be aroused, inflamed, deluded, so that it shapes the things I
have seen, speaks in the tones I have heard—grant this, shall
I keep ever ready, at the caprice of will, a constant tempter to
steal away my reason and fool my senses? Or if, on the other
hand, I force my sense to admit what all sober men must re-
ject; if I unschool myself to believe that in what I have just
experienced there is no mental illusion, that sorcery is a fact,
and a demon world has gates which open to a key that a mor-
tal can forge, who but a saint would not shrink from the prac-
tice of powers by which each passing thought of ill might find
in a fiend its abettor? In either case—in any case—while I
keep this direful relic of obsolete arts, I am haunted—cheated
out of my senses—unfitted for the uses of life. If, as my ear
or my fancy informs me, grief—human grief—is about to be-
fall me, shall I, in the sting of impatient sorrow, have re-
course to an aid which, the same voice declares, will reduce me
to a tool and a slave? Tool and slave to a being I dread as a
foe! Out on these nightmares! And away with the thing
that bewitches the brain to conceive them l’’
I rose; I took up the wand, holding it so that its hollow
A STRANGE STORY. •+. 293
**
should not rest on the palm of the hand. I stole from the
house by the back way, in order to avoid Lilian, whose voice I
still heard, singing low, on the lawn in front. I came to a
creek, to the bank of which a boat was moored, undid its
chain, rowed on to a deep part of the lake, and dropped the
wand into its waves. It sank at once; scarcely a ripple fur-
rowed the surface, not a bubble arose from the deep. And,
as the boat glided on, the star mirrored itself on the spot
where the placid waters had closed over the tempter to evil.
Light at heart I sprang again on the shore, and hastening to
Lilian, where she stood on the silvered, shining sward, clasped
her to my breast. g
“Spirit of my life!” I murmured, “no enchantments for me
but thine! Thine are the spells by which creation is beauti-
fied, and, in that beauty, hallowed. What though we can see
not into the measureless future from the verge of the moment!
What though sorrow may smite us while we are dreaming of
bliss, let the future not rob me of thee, and a balm will be
found for each wound ! Love me ever as now, oh, my Lilian;
troth to troth, side by side, till the grave!”
“And beyond the grave,” answered Lilian softly.
CHAPTER LXII.
OUR vows are exchanged at the altar; the rite which made
Lilian my wife is performed; we are returned from the
church, amongst the hills, in which my fathers had wor-
shipped; the joy-bells that had pealed for my birth had rung
for my marriage. Lilian has gone to her room to prepare for
our bridal excursion; while the carriage we have hired is wait-
ing at the door. I am detaining her mother on the lawn, seek-
ing to cheer and compose her spirits, painfully affected by that
sense of change in the relations of child and parent which
makes itself suddenly felt by the parent's heart on the day
that secures to the child another heart on which to lean.
But Mrs. Ashleigh's was one of those gentle-womanly na-
tures which, if easily afflicted, are easily consoled. And
already smiling through her tears, she was about to quit me
and join her daughter, when one of the inn-servants came to
me with some letters, which had just been delivered by the
postman. As I took them from the servant, Mrs. Ashleigh
asked if there were any for her? She expected one from her
housekeeper at L–, who had been taken ill in her absence,
3.
...”
294 A STRANGE STORY. S. ~ jº,
and about whom the kind mistress felt anxious." The servant
replied that there was no letter for her, but one, directed to
Miss Ashleigh, which he had just sent up to the young lady.
Mrs. Ashleigh did not doubt that her housekeeper had writ-
ten to Lilian, whom she had known from the cradle, and to
whom she was tenderly attached, instead of to her mistress;
and, saying something to me to that effect, quickened her steps
towards the house.
I was glancing over my own letters, chiefly from patients,
with a rapid eye, when a cry of agony, a cry as if of one sudden-
ly stricken to the heart, pierced my ear—a cry from within the
house. “Heavens ! was not that Lilian’s voice?” The same
doubt struck Mrs. Ashleigh, who had already gained the door.
She rushed on, disappearing within the threshold, and calling
to me to follow. I bounded forward—passed her on the
stairs—was in Lilian’s room before her.
My bride was on the floor, prostrate, insensible: so still, so
colorless! that my first dreadful thought was that life had
gone. In her hand was a letter, crushed as with a convulsive,
sudden grasp. ſº
It was long before the color came back to her cheek, before
the breath was perceptible on her lip. She woke, but not to
health, not to sense. Hours were passed in violent convul-
sions, in which I momentarily feared her death. To these
succeeded stupor, lethargy, not benignant sleep. . That night—
my bridal night—I passed as in some chamber to which I had
been summoned to save youth from the grave. At length—at
length, life was rescued, was assured! Life came back, but
the mind was gone. She knew me not, nor her mother. She
spoke little and faintly; in the words she uttered there was no
TeaSOI). * *
I pass hurriedly on ; my experience here was in fault, my
skill ineffectual. Day followed day, and no ray came back to
the darkened brain. We bore, her, by gentle stages, to Lon-
don. I was sanguine of good result from skill more consum-
mate than mine, and more specially devoted to diseases of the
mind. I summoned the first advisers. In vain In vain
CHAPTER LXIII.
AND the cause of this direful shock? Not this time could it
be traced to some evil spell, some phantasmal influence. The
cause was clear, and might have produced effects as sinister on
A STRANGE STORY. 295
nerves of stronger fibre if accompanied by a heart as delicately
sensitive, an honor as exquisitely pure.
The letter found in her hand was without name; it was
dated from L , and bore the postmark of that town. It
conveyed to Lilian, in the biting words which female malice
can make so sharp, the tale we had sought sedulously to guard
from her ear—her flight, the construction that scandal put
, upon it. It affected for my blind infatuation a contemptuous
pity; it asked her to pause before she brought on the name I
offered to her an indelible disgrace. If she so decided, she was
warned not to return to L , or to prepare there for the sen-
tence that would exclude her from the society of her own sex.
I cannot repeat more, I cannot minute down all that the letter
expressed or implied, to wither the orange blossoms in a
bride's wreath. The heart that took in the venom cast its
poison on the brain, and the mind fled before the presence of
a thought so deadly to all the ideas which its innocence had
heretofore-conceived.
I knew not whom to suspect of the malignity of this mean
and miserable outrage, nor did I much care to know. The
handwriting, though evidently disguised, was that of a woman,
and, therefore, had I discovered the author, my manhood
would have forbidden me the idle solace of revenge. Mrs.
Poyntz, however resolute and pitiless her hostility when once
aroused, was not without a certain largeness of nature irrecon-
cilable with the most dastardly of all the weapons that envy or
hatred can supply to the vile. She had too lofty a self-esteem
and too decorous a regard for the moral sentiment of the world
that she typified, to do, or connive at, an act which degrades
the gentlewoman. Putting her aside, what other female enemy
had Lilian provoked? No -matter! What other woman at
L was worth the condescension of a conjecture
After listening to all that the ablest of my professional breth-
ren in the metropolis could suggest to guide me, and trying in
vain their remedies, I brought back my charge to L Re-
taining my former residence for the visits of patients, I en-
gaged, for the privacy of my home, a house two miles from the
town, secluded in its own grounds and guarded by high walls.
Lilian’s mother removed to my mournful dwelling-place.
Abbots' House, in the centre of that tattling coterie, had be-
come distasteful to her, and to me it was associated with
thoughts of anguish and of terror. I could not, without a shud-
der, have entered its grounds; could not, without a stab at the
heart, have seen again the old fairy-land round the Monks'
*~.
296 A STRANGE STORY.
f
º
Well, nor the dark cedar-tree under which Lilian's hand had
been placed in mine: and a superstitious remembrance, 'ban-
ished while Lilian's angel face had brightened the fatal pre-
cincts, now revived in full force. The dying man’s curse—
had it not been fulfilled?
A new occupant for the ord house was found within a week
after Mrs. Ashleigh had written from London to a house-agent
at L , intimating her desire to dispose of the lease. Shortly,
before we had gone to Windermere Miss Brabazon had become
enriched by a liberal life-annuity bequeathed to her by her
uncle, Sir Phelim. Her means thus enabled her to move, from
the comparatively humble lodging she had hitherto occupied,
to Abbots' House; but just as she had there commenced a
series of ostentatious entertainments, implying an ambitious
desire to dispute with Mrs. Poyntz the sovereignty of the Hill,
she was attacked by some severe malady which appeared com-
plicated with spinal disease, and after my return to L I
sometimes met her, on the spacious platform of the Hill, drawn
along slowly in a Bath chair, her livid face peering forth from
piles of Indian shawls and Siberian furs, and the gaunt figure
of Dr. Jones stalking by her side, taciturn and gloomy as some
sincere mourner who conducts to the grave the patron on
whose life he himself had conveniently lived. It was in the
dismal month of February that I returned to L , and I took
possession of my blighted nuptial home on the anniversary of
the very day in which I had passed through the dead dumb
world from the naturalist’s gloomy death-room.
CHAPTER LXIV.
LILIAN’s wondrous gentleness of nature did not desert her
in the suspension of her reason. She was habitually calm—
very silent; when she spoke it was rarely on earthly things—
on things familiar to her past—things one could comprehend.
Her thought seemed to have quitted the earth, seeking refuge
in some imaginary heaven. She spoke of wanderings with her
father as if he were living still; she did not seem to under-
stand the meaning we attach to the word Death. She would
sit for hours murmuring to herself: when one sought to catch
the words, they seemed in converse with invisible spirits. We
found it cruel to disturb her at such times, for if left unmo-
lested, her face was serene—more serenely beautiful than I had
seen it even in our happiest hours; but when we called her.
&. A STRANGE STORY. 297
back to the wrecks of her real life, her eye became troubled,
restless, anxious, and she would sigh—oh, so heavily At
times, if we did not seem to observe her, she would quietly
resume her once favorite accomplishments—drawing, music.
And in these her young excellence was still apparent, only the
drawings were strange and fantastic; they had a resemblance
to those with which the painter Blake, himself a visionary,
illustrated the Poems of the “Night Thoughts” and “The
Grave.” Faces of exquisite loveliness, forms of ačrial grace,
coming forth from the bells of flowers, or floating upwards
amidst the spray of fountains, their outlines melting away in
fountain or in flower. So with her music: her mother could
not recognize the airs she played, for a while so sweetly and
with so ineffable a pathos, that one could scarcely hear her
without weeping; and then would come, as if involuntarily, an
abrupt discord, and, starting, she would cease and look
around, disquieted, aghast.
And still she did not recognize Mrs. Ashleigh nor myself as
her mother, her husband; but she had by degrees learned to
distinguish us both from others. To her mother she gave no
name, seemed pleased to see her, but not sensibly to miss her
when away; me she called her brother: if longer absent than
usual, me she missed. When, after the toils of the day, I
came to join her, even if she spoke not, her sweet face bright-
ened. When she sang, she beckoned me to come near to her,
and looked at me fixedly, with eyes ever tender, often tearful;
when she drew, she would pause and glance over her shoulder
to see that I was watching her, and point to the drawings with
a smile of strange significance, as if they conveyed, in some
covert allegory, messages meant for me; SO at least, I inter-
preted her smile, and taught myself to say: “Yes, Lilian, I
understand '''
And more than once, when I had so answered, she rose and
kissed my forehead. I thought my heart would have broken
when I felt that spirit-like melancholy kiss.
And yet how marvellously the human mind teaches itself to
extract consolations from its sorrows. The least wretched of
my hours were those I passed in that saddened room, seeking
how to establish fragments of intercourse, invent signs, by
which each might interpret each, between the intellect I had so
laboriously cultured, so arrogantly vaunted, and the fancies
wandering through the dark, deprived of their guide in reason.
It was something even of joy to feel myself needed for her
guardianship, endeared and yearned for still by some unshat.
t;
.#
&
N.
298 A STRANGE STORY.
tered instinct of her heart; and when parting from her for the
night, I stole the moment in which on her soft face seemed
resting least of shadow, to ask, in a trembling whisper: ‘‘Lil-
ian, are the angels watching over you?” and she would answer
“Yes,’’ sometimes in words, sometimes with a mysterious-
happy Smile—then—then I went to my lonely room, comforted
and thankful. *--
}
CHAPTER LXV.
THE blow that had fallen on my hearth effectually, inevitably
killed all the slander that might have troubled me in joy."
Before the awe of a great calamity the small passions of a mean
malignity slink abashed. I had requested Mrs. Ashleigh not
to mention the vile letter which Lilian had received. I would
not give a triumph to the unknown calumniator, nor wring
forth her vain remorse, by the pain of acknowledging an indig-
nity to my darling's honor; yet, somehow or other, the true
cause of Lilian's affliction had crept out—perhaps through the
talk of servants—and the public shock was universal. By one
of those instincts of justice that lie deep in human hearts,
though in ordinary moments overlaid by many a worldly
layer, all felt (all mothers felt, especially) that innocence alone
could have been so unprepared for reproach. The explanation
I had previously given, discredited then, was now accepted
without a question. Lilian's present state accounted for all
that ill nature had before misconstrued. Her good name was
restored to its maiden whiteness by the fate that had severed
the ties of the bride. The formal dwellers on the Hill vied
with the franker, warmer-hearted household of Low Town in
the nameless attentions by which sympathy and respect are
rather delicately indicated than noisily proclaimed. Could
Lilian have then recovered and been sensible of its repentant
homage, how reverently that petty world would have thronged
around her And, ah! could fortune and man's esteem have
atoned for the blight of hopes that had been planted and cher-
ished on ground beyond their reach, ambition and pride might
have been well contented with the largeness of the exchange
that courted their acceptance. Patients on patients crowded
on me. Sympathy with my sorrow seemed to create and en-
dear a more trustful belief in my skill. But the profession I
had once so enthusiastically loved became to me wearisome, .
insipid, distasteful; the kindness heaped on me gave no com-
fort, it but brought before me more vividly the conviction that
§
A STRANGE STORY. 299
it came too late to avail me: it could not restore to me the
mind, the love, the life of my life, which lay dark and shattered
in the brain of my guileless Lilian. Secretly I felt a sullen re
sentment. I knew that to the crowd the resentment was un-
just. The world itself is but an appearance; who can blame it
If appearances guide its laws? But to those who had been
detached from the crowd by the professions of friendship—
those who, when the slander was yet new, and might have been
awed into silence had they stood by my side—to the pressure
of their hands, nozo, I had no response.
Against Mrs. Poyntz, above all others, I bore a remembrance
of unrelaxed, unmitigable indignation. Her schemes for her
daughter's marriage had triumphed: Jane was Mrs. Ashleigh
Sumner. Her mind was, perhaps, softened now that the ob-
ject which had sharpened its worldly faculties was accom-
plished; but in vain, on first hearing of my affliction, had this
she-Machiavel owned a humane remorse, and, with all her keen
comprehension of each facility that circumstance gave to her
will, availed herself of the general compassion to strengthen the
popular reaction in favor of Lilian's assaulted honor; in vain
had she written to me with a gentleness of sympathy foreign to
her habitual characteristics; in vain besought me to call on
her; in vain waylaid and accosted me with a humility that al-
most implored forgiveness; I vouchsafed no reproach, but I
could imply no pardon. I put between her and my great sor-
row the impenetrable wall of my freezing silence.
One word of hers at the time that I had so pathetically be-
sought her aid, and the parrot-flock that repeated her very
whisper in noisy shrillness, would have been as loud to defend
as it had been to defame; that vile letter might never have
been written. Whoever its writer, it surely was one of the
babblers who took their malice itself from the jest or the nod of
their female despot; and the writer might have justified her-
self in saying she did but coarsely proclaim what the oracle of
worldly opinion, and the early friend of Lilian's own mother,
had authorized her to believe.
By degrees, the bitterness at my heart diffused itself to the
circumference of the circle in which my life went its cheerless
mechanical round. That cordial brotherhood with his patients,
which is the true physician's happiest gift and humanest duty,
forsook my breast. The warning words of Mrs. Poyntz had
come true. A patient that monopolized my thoughts awaited
me at my own hearth! My conscience became troubled; I
felt that my skill was lessened. I said to myself: “The phy.
3oo A STRANGE STORY.
sician who, on entering the sick room, feels, while there,
something that distracts the finest powers of his intellect from
the sufferer's case, is unfit for his calling.” A year had scarce-
ly passed since my fatal wedding-day, before I had formed a
resolution to quit L and abandon my profession: and my
resolution was confirmed, and my goal determined, by a letter
I received from Julius Faber.
I had written at length to him, not many days after the blow
that had fallen on me, stating all circumstances as calmly and
clearly as my grief would allow, for I held his skill at a higher
estimate than that of any living brother of my art, and I was
not without hope in the efficacy of his advice. The letter I
now received from him had been begun and continued at some
length, before my communication reached him. And this ear-
lier portion contained animated and cheerful descriptions of
his Australian life and home which contrasted with the sorrow-
ful tone of the supplement written in reply to the tidings with
which I had wrung his friendly and tender heart. In this, the
latter part of his letter, he suggested that if time had wrought
no material change for the better, it might be advisable to try
the effect of foreign travel. Scenes entirely new might stimu-
late observation, and the observation of things external with-
draw the sense from that brooding over images delusively
formed within, which characterized the kind of mental aliena-
tion I had described. “Let any intellect create for itself a
visionary world, and all reasonings built on it are fallacious:
the visionary world vanishes in proportion as we can arouse a
predominant interest in the actual.”
This grand authority, who owed half his consummate skill
as a practitioner to the scope of his knowledge as a philoso-
pher, then proceeded to give me a hope which I had not dared,
of myself, to form. He said: “I distinguish the case you so
minutely detail from that insanity which is reason lost; here it
seems rather to be reason held in suspense. Where there is
hereditary predisposition, where there is organic change of
structure in the brain—nay, where there is that kind of insanity
which takes the epithet of moral, whereby the whole character
becomes so transformed that the prime element of sound un-
derstanding, conscience itself, is either erased or warped into
the sanction of what, in a healthful state, it would most dis-
approve, it is only charlatans who promise effectual cure. But
here I assume that there is no hereditary taint; here I am con-
vinced, from my own observation, that the nobility of the or-
gans, all fresh as yet in the vigor of youth, would rather submit
*
A Sºfik Af{GF STORY. 361
to death than to the permanent overthrow of their equilibrium
in reason; here, where you tell me the character preserves all
its moral attributes of gentleness and purity, and but – over-
indulges its own early habit of estranged contemplation;
here, without deceiving you in false kindness, I give you the
guarantee of my experience when I bid you ‘hope!’ I am per-
Suaded that, sooner or later, the mind, thus for a time affected,
will right itself; because here, in the cause of the malady we
do but deal with the nervous system. And that, once righted,
and the mind once disciplined in those practical duties which
conjugal life necessitates, the malady itself will never return;
never be transmitted to the children on whom your wife's res-
toration to health may permit you to count hereafter. If the
course of travel I recommend and the prescriptions I conjoin
with that course fail you, let me know; and though I would
fain close my days in this land, I will come to you. I love
you as my son, I will tend your wife as my daughter.”
Foreign travel! The idea smiled on me. Julius Faber's
companionship, sympathy, matchless skill! The very thought
seemed as a raft to a drowning mariner. I now read more at-
tentively the earlier portions of his letter. They described, in
glowing colors, the wondrous country in which he had fixed
his home; the joyous elasticity of its atmosphere; the freshness
of its primitive, pastoral life; the strangeness of its scenery, with
a Flora and a Fauna which have no similitudes in the ran-
sacked quarters of the Old World. And the strong impulse
seized me to transfer to the solitudes of that blithesome and
hardy Nature a spirit no longer at home in the civilized haunts
of men, and household gods that shrunk from all social eyes,
and would fain have found a wilderness for the desolate hearth,
on which they had ceased to be sacred if unveiled. As if to
give practical excuse and reason for the idea that seized me,
Julius Faber mentioned, incidentally, that the house and prop-
erty of a wealthy speculator in his immediate neighborhood
were on sale at a price which seemed to me alluringly trivial,
and, according to his judgment, far below the value they would
soon reach in the hands of a more patient capitalist. He wrote
at the period of the agricultural panic in the colony which pre-
ceded the discovery of its earliest gold-fields. But his geo-
logical science had convinced him that strata within and
around the property now for sale were auriferous, and his in-
telligence enabled him to predict how inevitably man would be
attracted towards the gold, and how surely the gold would fer-
tilize the soil and enrich its owners. He described the house
* -º- sº. *
3O2 - A STRAN GE STORY.
*~
thus to be sold—in case I might know of a purchaser. It had
been built at a cost unusual in those early times, and by one
who clung to English tastes amidst Australian wilds, so that in
this purchase a settler would escape the hardships he had then
ordinarily to encounter: it was, in short, a home to which a
man more luxurious than I might bear a bride with wants
less simple than those which now sufficed for my darling Lilian.
This communication dwelt on my mind through the avoca-
tions of the day on which I received it, and in the evening I
read all, except the supplement, aloud to Mrs. Ashleigh in
her daughter's presence. I desired to see if Faber’s descrip-
tions of the country and its life, which in themselves were ex-
tremely spirited and striking, would arouse Lilian's interest.
At first she did not seem to heed me while I read, but when I
came to Faber's loving account of ſittle Amy, Lilian turned
her eyes towards me, and evidently listened with attention.
He wrote how the child had already become the most useful
person in the simple household. How watchful the quickness
of the heart had made the service of the eye: all their associa-
tions of comfort had grown round her active, noiseless move-
ments; it was she who had contrived to monopolize the manage-
ment, or supervision of all that added to home the nameless,
interior charm. Under her eyes the rude furniture of the log-
house grew inviting with English neatness; she took charge of
the dairy; she had made the garden gay with flowers selected
from the wild, and suggested the trellised walk, already covered
with hardy vine. She was their confidant in every plan of im-
provement, their comforter in every anxious doubt, their nurse
in every passing ailment, her very smile a refreshment in the
weariness of daily toil. “How all that is best in womanhood,”
wrote the old man, with the enthusiasm which no time had reft
from his hearty, healthful genius, -“How all that is best in
womanhood is here opening fast into flower from the bud of the
infant’s soul! The atmosphere seems to suit it—the child-
woman in the child-world !” *
I heard Lilian sigh; I looked towards her furtively; tears
stood in her softened eyes; her lip was quivering. Presently,
, she began to rub her right hand over the left—over the wed-
ding-ring—at first, slowly; then with quicker movement.
“It is not here,” she said impatiently; “it is not here!”
“What is not here?” asked Mrs. Ashleigh, hanging over
her.
Lilian lent back her head on her mother's bosom, and an-
swered faintly: *
l
:
A STRANGE STORY. 303
“The stain' Some one said there was a stain on this hand.
I do not see it—do you?”
“There is no stain, never was,” said I; ‘‘the hand is white
as your own innocence, or the lily from which you take your
name.’’
‘‘Hush you do not know my name. I will whisper it.
Soft!—my name is Nightshadeſ Do you want to know where
the lily is now, brother? I will tell you. There, in that letter—
you call her Amy—she is the lily—take her to your breast—
hide her. Hist! what are those bells? Marriage-bells. Do
not let her hear them. For there is a cruel wind that whispers
the bells, and the bells ring out what it whispers, louder and
louder, ^
“Stain on lily, **
Shame on lily, \
Wither lily.” *
S.
If she hears what the wind whispers to the bells, she will creep
away into the dark, and then she, too, will turn to Nightshade.”
“Lilian, look up, awake! You have been in a long, long
dream: it is passing away. Lilian, my beloved, my blessed
Lilian ſ”
Never till then had I heard from her even so vague an illu-
sion to the fatal calumny, and its dreadful effect, and while her
words now pierced my heart, it beat, amongst its pangs, with a
thrilling hope. w
But alas! the idea that had gleamed upon her had vanished
already. She murmured something about Circles of Fire, and
a Veiled Woman in black garments; became restless, agitated,
and unconscious of our presence, and finally sank into a heavy
sleep.
That night (my room was next to hers with the intervening
door open), I heard her cry out. I hastened to her side. She
was still asleep, but there was an anxious laboring expression
on her young face, and yet not an expression wholly of pain,
for her lips were parted with a smile—that glad yet troubled
smile with which one who has been revolving some subject of
perplexity or fear, greets a sudden thought that seems to solve
the riddle, or prompt the escape from danger; and as I softly
took her hand she returned my gentle pressure, and inclining
towards me said, still in sleep: º
“Let us go.” f
“Whither?” I answered, under my breath, so as not to awake
her; “Is it to see the child of whom I read, and the land that
is blooming out of the earth's childhood?”
304 A STRANGE STORY.
s
sº--~~ *
**
“Out of the dark into the light; where the leaves do not
change; where the night is our day, and the winter our sum-
mer. Let us go—let us go!”
“We will go. Dream on undisturbed, my bride. Oh, that
the dream could tell you that my love has not changed in our
sorrow, holier and deeper than on the day in which our vows
were exchanged In you still all my hopes fold their wings:
where you are, there still I myself have my dreamland!”
The Sweet face grew bright as I spoke; all trouble left the
Smile; softly she drew her hand from my clasp, and rested it
for a moment on my bended head, as if in blessing. **
I rose; stole back to my own room, closing the door, lest
the Sob I could not stifle should mar her sleep.
_2 CHAPTER LXVI.
I UNFOLDED my new prospects to Mrs. Ashleigh. . She was
more easily reconciled to them than I could have supposed,
judging by her habits, which were naturally indolent, and
averse to all that disturbed their even tenor. But the great
grief which had befallen her had roused up that strength of de-
votion which lies dormant in all hearts that are capable of low-
ing another more than self. With her full consent I wrote to
Faber, communicating my intentions, instructing him to pur-
chase the property he had so commended, and inclosing my
banker's order for the amount, on an Australian firm. I now
announced my intention to retire from my profession; made
prompt arrangements with a successor to my practice; disposed
of my two houses at L ; fixed the day of my departure.
Vanity was dead within me, or I might have been gratified by the
sensation which the news of my design created. My faults be-
came at once forgotten: such good qualities as I might possess
were exaggerated. The public regret vented and consoled itself
in a costly testimonial, to which even the poorest of my patients-
insisted on the privilege to contribute, graced with an inscrip-
tion flattering enough to have served for the epitaph on some
great man's tomb. No one who has served an art and striven
for a name, is a stoic to the esteem of others, and sweet indeed
would such honors have been to me had not publicity itself
seemed a wrong to the sanctity of that affliction which set
Lilian apart from the movement and the glories of the world.
The two persons most active in “getting up” this testimonial
were, nominally, Colonel Poyntz—in truth, his wife—and my
A STRANGE STORY. / 305
old disparager, Mr. Vigors! It is long since my narrative has
referred to Mr. Vigors. It is due to him now to state that, in
his capacity of magistrate, and in his own way, he had been
both active and delicate in the inquiries set on foot for Lilian
during the unhappy time in which she had wandered, spell-
bound, from her home. He, alone, of all the more influential
magnates of the town, had upheld her innocence against the gos-
sip that aspersed it; and during the last trying year of my resi-
dence at L , he had sought me, with frank and manly con-
fessions of his regret for his former prejudice against me, and
assurances of the respect in which he had held me ever since
my marriage—marriage but in rite—with Lilian. He had then,
strong in his ruling passion, besought me to consult his clair-
voyants as to her case. I declined this invitation, so as not to
affront him—declined it, not as I should once have done, but
with no word nor look of incredulous disdain. The fact was,
that I had conceived a solemn terror of all practices and theo-
ries out of the beaten track of sense and science. Perhaps in
my refusal I did wrong. . I know not. I was afraid of my own
imagination. He continued not less friendly in spite of my
refusal. And, such are the vicissitudes in human feeling, I
parted from him whom I had regarded as my most bigoted foe
with a warmer sentiment of kindness than for any of those on
whom I had counted on friendship. He had not deserted
Lilian. It was not so with Mrs. Poyntz. I would have paid
tenfold the value of the testimonial to have erased, from the
list of those who subscribed to it, her husband's name.
The day before I quitted L , and some weeks after I had,
in fact, renounced my practice, I received an urgent entreaty
from Miss Brabazon to call on her. She wrote in lines so
blurred that I could with difficulty decipher them, that she was
very ill, given over by Dr. Jones, who had been attending her.
She implored my opinion.
CHAPTER LXVII.
ON reaching the house, a formal man-servant, with indiffer-
ent face, transferred me to the guidance of a hired nurse, who
led me up the stairs, and, before I was well aware of it, into
the room in which Dr. Lloyd had died. Widely different, in-
deed, the aspect of the walls, the character of the furniture.
The dingy paper-hangings were replaced by airy muslins, show-
ing a rose-colored ground through their fanciful openwork;
luxurious fauteuils, gilded wardrobes, full-length mirrors, a
306 \ A STRANGE STORY,
Aºy
toilet-table tricked out with lace and ribbons and glittering
with an array of silver gewgaws and jewelled trinkets—all trans-
formed the sick chamber of the simple man of science to a
boudoir of death for the vain coquette. But the room itself,
in its high lattice and heavy ceiling, was the same—as the coffin
itself has the same confines whether it be rich in velvets and
bright with blazoning, or rude as a pauper's shell. -
And the bed, with its silken coverlid, and its pillows edged
with the thread-work of Louvain, stood in the same sharp angle
as that over which had flickered the frowning smoke-reek
- above the dying resentful foe. As I approached, a man, who
was seated beside the sufferer, turned round his face, and gave
me a silent, kindly nod of recognition. He was Mr. C., one of
the clergy of the town, the one with whom I had the most fre-
quently come into contact wherever the physician resigns to
the priest the language that bids man hope. Mr. C., as a
preacher, was renowned for his touching eloquence; as a pas-
tor, revered for his benignant piety; as friend and neighbor,
beloved for a sweetness of nature which seemed to regulate all
the movements of a mind eminently masculine by the beat of a
heart tender as the gentlest woman's.
This good man, then whispering something to the sufferer
which I did not overhear, stole towards me, took me by the
hand, and said, also in a whisper: “Be merciful as Christians
are.” He led me to the bedside, there left me, went out, and
closed the door.
“Do you think I am really dying, Dr. Fenwick,” said a
feeble voice, “I fear Dr. Jones has misunderstood my case.
I wish I had called you in at the first—but—but I could not—
I could not! Will you feel my pulse? Don't you think you
could do me good P” P
I had no need to feel the pulse in that skeleton wrist; the
aspect of the face sufficed to tell me that death was drawing
In 622.ſ.
Mechanically, however, I went through the hackneyed formu-
late of professional questions. This vain ceremony done, as
gently and delicately as I could, I implied the expediency of
concluding, if not yet settled, those affairs which relate to this,
world. e
“This duty,” I said, “in relieving the mind from care for
others to whom we owe the forethought of affection, often re-
lieves the body also of many a gnawing pain, and sometimes,
to the surprise of the most experienced physician, prolongs life
itself.” *
*** A STRANGE STORY. 307
“Ah,” said the old maid peevishly, “I understand But it
is not my will that troubles me. I should not be left to a nurse
from a hospital if my relations did not know that my annuity
dies with me; and I forestalled it in furnishing this house, Dr.
Fenwick, and all these pretty things will be sold to pay those
horrid tradesmen Very hard! so hard!—just as I had got
things about me in the way I always said I would have them if
I could ever afford it! I always said I would have my bedroom
hung with muslin, like dear Lady L.'s; and the drawing-room
in geranium-colored silk; so pretty. You have not seen it:
you would not know the house, Dr. Fenwick. And just when all
is finished, to be taken away and thrust into the grave. It is
so cruel!” And she began to weep. Her emotion brought on
a violent paroxysm, which when she recovered from it, had
produced one of these startling changes of mind that are some-
.times witnessed before death; changes whereby the whole char-
acter of a life seems to undergo solemn transformation. The
hard will become gentle, the proud meek, the frivolous earnest.
That awful moment when the things of earth pass away like
dissolving scenes, leaving death visible on the background by
the glare that shoots up in the last flicker of life's lamp.
And when she lifted her haggard face from my shoulder, and
heard my pitying, soothing voice, it was not the grief of a trifier
at the loss of fondled toys that spoke in the fallen lines of her
lip, in the woe of her pleading eyes.
“So this is death,” she said. “I feel it hurrying on. I
must speak. I promised Mr. C. that I would. Forgive me,
can you—can you? That letter—that letter to Lilian Ashleigh,
I wrote it! Oh, do not look at me so terribly; I never thought
it could do such evil! And am I not punished enough? I truly
believed when I wrote that Miss Ashleigh was deceiving you,
and once I was silly enough to fancy that you might have liked
me. But I had another motive; I had been so poor all my
life—I had become rich unexpectedly; I set my heart on this—
I had always fancied it—and I thought if I could prevent Miss
Ashleigh marrying you, and scare her and her mother from
coming back to L , I could get the house. And I did get
it. What for?—to die. I had not been here a week before I
got the hurt that is killing me—a fall down the stairs—coming
out of this very room; the stairs had been polished. If I had
stayed in my old lodging, it would not have happened. Oh,
say you forgive me! Say, say it, even if you do not feel you
can I Say it!” And the miserable woman grasped me by the
arm as Dr. Lloyd had grasped me.
\\
Aer --
308 A STRANGE STORY.
I shaded my averted face with my hands; my heart heaved
with the agony of my suppressed passion. A wrong, however
deep, only to myself, I could have pardoned without effort;
such a wrong to Lilian—no | I could not say, “I forgive.”
The dying wretch was perhaps more appalled by my silence
than she would have been by my reproach. Her voice grew
shrill in her despair.
“You will not pardon me! I shall die with your curse on
my head. , Mercy! mercy! That good man, Mr. C., assured
me you would be merciful. Have you never wronged another?
Has the Evil One never tempted you ?”
Then I spoke in broken accents: “Me! Oh, had it been I
whom you defamed—but a young creature so harmless, so un-
offending, and for so miserable a motive l’’
“But I tell you, I swear to you. I never dreamed I could
cause such sorrow; and that young man, that Margrave, put it
into my head '''
“Margrave! He had left L– long before that letter was
written.”
“But he came back for a day just before I wrote: it was the
very day. I met him in the lane yonder. He asked after
you—after Miss Ashleigh; and when he spoke he laughed, and
I said: ‘Miss Ashleigh had been ill, and was gone away,’ and
he laughed again. And I thought he knew more than he would
tell me, so I asked him if he supposed Mrs. Ashleigh would
come back, and said how much I should like to take this house
if she did not; and again he laughed, and said, ‘Birds never
stay in the nest after the young ones are hurt,’ and went away
singing. When I got home, his laugh and his song haunted
me. I thought I saw him still in my room, prompting me to
write, and I sat down and wrote. Oh, pardon, pardon me!
I have been a foolish poor creature, but never meant to do such
harm. The Evil One tempted me! There he is near me
now ! I see him yonder! there, at the doorway. He comes
to claim me! As you hope for mercy yourself, free-me from
him Forgive me!”
I made an effort over myself. In naming Margrave as her
tempter, the woman had suggested an excuse, echoed from that
innermost cell of my mind, which I recoiled from gazing into,
for there I should behold his image. Inexpiable though the
injury she had wrought against me, and mine, still the woman
was human—fellow-creature—like myself—but HEP
I took the pale hand that still pressed my arm, and said, with
firm voice:
A STRANGE STORY. *. 3og
#
“Be comforted. In the name of Lilian my wife, I forgive
you for her and for me as freely and as fully as we are enjoinéd
by Him, against whose precepts the best of us daily sin, to for-
give—we children of wrath—to forgive one another!”
. “Heaven bless you!—oh, bless you!” she murmured, sinking
back upon her pillow.
“Ah!” thought I, “what if the pardon I grant for a wrong
£ar deeper than I inflicted on him whose imprecation smote me
in this chamber, should indeed be received as atonement, and
this blessing on the lips of the dying annul the dark curse that
the dead has left on my path through the Valley of the Shadow!”
I left my patient sleeping quietly—the sleep that precedes
the last. As I went down the stairs into the hall, I saw Mrs.
Poyntz standing at the threshold, speaking to the man-servant
and the nurse.
I would have passed her with a formal bow, but she stopped
Iſle. -
“I came to inquire after poor Miss Brabazon,” said she.
“You can tell me more than the servants can : is there no
hope?” *
“Let the nurse go up and watch beside her. She may pass
away in the sleep into which she has fallen.”
“Allen Fenwick, I must speak with you—nay, but for a few
minutes. I hear that you leave L to-morrow. It is scarce-
ly among the chances of life that we should meet again.”
While thus saying, she drew me along the lawn down the path
that led towards her own home. “I wish,” said she earnest-
ly, “that you could part with a kindlier feeling towards me;
but I can scarcely expect it. Could I put myself in your
place, and be moved by your feelings, I know that I should be
implacable; but I—” *
“But you, madam, are The World! and the World governs
itself, and dictates to others, by laws which seem harsh to those
who ask from its favor the services which the World cannot
tender, for the World admits favorites but ignores friends.
You did but act to me as the World ever acts to those who
mistake its favor for its friendship.”
“It is true,” said Mrs. Poyntz, with blunt candor; and we
continued to walk on silently. At length, she said, abruptly:
“But do you not rashly deprive yourself of your only consola-
tion in sorrow? When the heart suffers, does your skill admit
any remedy like occupation to the mind? Yet you abandon
that occupation to which your mind is most accustomed; you
desert your cafeer; you turn aside, in the midst of the race.
3IO AT STRANGE STORY.
from the fame which awaits at the goal; you go back from civ-
ilization itself, and dream that all your intellectual cravings
can find content in the life of a herdsman, amidst the mo-
notony of a wild ! No, you will repent, for you are untrue to
your mind!” º
“I am sick of the word “mind’” said I bitterly. And
therewith I relapsed into musing. *.
The enigmas which had foiled my intelligence in the unrav-
elled Sibyl Book of Nature were mysteries strange to every
man's normal practice of thought, even if reducible to the
fraudulent impressions of outward sense; for illusions in a
brain otherwise healthy, suggest problems in our human organi-
zation which the colleges that record them rather guess at
than solve. But the blow which had shattered my life had been
dealt by the hand of a fool. Here, there were no mystic en-
chantments. Motives the most commonplace and paltry, sug-
gested to a brain as trivial and shallow as ever made the friv-
olity of woman a theme for the satire of poets, had sufficed, in
devastating the field of my affections, to blast the uses for
which I had cultured my mind; and had my intellect been as
great as heaven ever gave to man, it would have been as vain a
shield as mine against the shaft that had lodged in my heart.
While I had, indeed, been preparing my reason and my forti-
tude to meet such perils, weird and marvellous, as those by
which tales round the winter fireside scare the credulous child,
a contrivance so vulgar and hackneyed that not a day passes
but what some hearth is vexed by an anonymous libel, had
wrought a calamity more dread than aught which my dark
guess into the Shadow-Land unpierced by Philosophy could
trace to the prompting of malignant witchcraft. So, ever this
truth runs through all legends of ghost and demon—through
the uniform records of what wonder accredits and science re-
jects as the supernatural—lo! the dread machinery whose
wheels roll through Hades! What need such awful engines
for such mean results? The first blockhead we meet in our
walk to our grocer’s can tell us more than the ghost tells us;
the poorest envy we ever aroused hurts us more than the
demon. How true an interpreter is Genius to Hell as to
‘Earth ! The Fiend comes to Faust, the tired seeker of knowl-
edge; Heaven and Hell stake their cause in the Mortal's
temptation. And what does the Fiend to astonish the Mortal?
Turn wine into fire, turn love into crime. We need no Meph-
istopheles to accomplish these marvels every day !
Thus silently thinking, I walked by the side of the world.
A STRANGE STORY. 3 II
wise woman; and when she next spoke, I looked up, and saw
that we were at the Monks’ Well, where I had first seen Lilian
gazing into heaven!
Mrs. Poyntz had, as we walked, placed her hand on my
arm, and, turning abruptly from the path into the glade, I
found myself standing by her side in the scene where a new
sense of being had first disclosed to my sight the hues with
which Love, the passionate beautifier, turns into purple and
gold the gray of the common air. Thus, when romance has
ended in sorrow, and the Beautiful fades from the landscape,
the trite and positive forms of life banished for a time, reap-
pear, and deepen our mournful remembrance of the glories
they replace. And the Woman of the World, finding how lit-
tle I was induced to respond to her when she had talked of
myself, began to speak, in her habitual, clear ringing accents,
of her own social schemes and devices:
“I shall miss you when you are gone, Allen Fenwick, for
though, during the last year or so, all actual intercourse be-
tween us has ceased, yet my interest in you gave some occupa-
tion to my thoughts when I sat alone, having lost my main
object of ambition in settling my daughter, and having no
longer any one in the house with whom I could talk of the
future, or for whom I could form a project. It is so weari-
some to count the changes which pass within us, that we take
interest in the changes that pass without. Poyntz still has his
weather-glass; I have no longer my Jane.” *
“I cannot linger with you on this spot,” said I impatiently,
turning back into the path; she followed, treading over fallen
leaves. And unheeding my interrpution, she thus continued
her hard talk:
“But I am not sick of my mind as you seem to be of yours;
I am only somewhat tired of the little cage in which, since it
has been alone, it ruffles its plumes against the flimsy wires
that confine it from wider space. I shall take up my home for
a time with the new-married couple: they want me. Ashleigh
Sumner has come into Parliament. He means to attend regu-
larly and work hard, but he does not like Jane to go into the
world by herself, and he wishes her to go into the world,
because he wants a wife to display his wealth for the improve-
ment of his position. In Ashleigh Sumner's house, I shall
have ample scope for my energies, such as they are. I
have a curiosity to see the few that perch on the wheels of the
State, and say “It is we who move the wheels'' It will amuse
me to learn if I can maintain in a capital the authority I have *
y
f
312 A STRANGE STORY.
won in a country town; if not, I can but return to my small
principality. Wherever I live I must sway, not serve. If I
succeed, as I ought, for in Jane's beauty and Ashleigh's for-
tune I have materials for the woof of ambition, wanting which
here, I fall asleep over my knitting—if I succeed, there will be
enough to occupy the rest of my life. Ashleigh Sumner must
be a power; the power will be represented and enjoyed by my
child, and created and maintained by me! Allen Fenwick,
do as I do. Be world with the world, and it will only be in
moments of spleen and chagrin that you will sigh to think that
the heart may be void when the mind is full. Confess you
envy me while you listen.”
“Not so; all that to you seems so great, appears to me so
small ! Nature alone is always grand, in her terrors as well as
her charms. The World for you, Nature for me. Farewell!”
“Nature,” said Mrs. Poyntz compassionately. “Poor Allen
Fenwick! Nature indeed—intellectual suicide! Nay, shake
hands, then, if for the last time.’’
So we shook hands and parted, where the wicket-gate and
the stone stairs separated my blighted fairy-land from the com-
mon thoroughfare.
CHAPTER LXVIII.
THAT night as I was employed in collecting the books and
manuscripts which I proposed to take with me, including my
long-suspended physiological work, and such standard authori-
ties as I might want to consult or refer to in the portions yet
incompleted, my servant entered to inform me, in answer to
the inquiries I had sent him to make, that Miss Brabazon had
peacefully breathed her last an hour before. Well! my pardon
had perhaps soothed her last moments: but how unavailing her
death-bed repentance to undo the wrong she had done!
I turned from that thought, and, glancing at the work into
which I had thrown all my learning, methodized into system
with all my art, I recalled the pity which Mrs. Poyntz had ex-
pressed for my meditated waste of mind. The tone of superi-
ority which this incarnation of common-sense, accompanied by
uncommon will, assumed over all that was too deep or too high
for her comprehension, had sometimes amused me; thinking
over it now, it piqued. I said to myself: “After all, I shall
bear with me such solace as intellectual occupation can afford.
I shall have leisure to complete this labor, and a record that
I have lived and thought may outlast all the honors which
A STRATNGE STORY. 3I.3
worldly ambition may bestow upon an Ashleigh Sumner!”
And, as I so murmured, my hand, mechanically, selecting the
books I needed, fell on the Bible that Julius Faber had given
to me.
It opened at the Second Book of Esdras, which our Church
places amongst the Apocrypha, and is generally considered by
scholars to have been written in the first or second century of
the Christian era.” But in which the questions raised by man
- in the remotest ages, to which we can trace back his desire “to
comprehend the ways of the Most High,” are invested with a
grandeur of thought and sublimity of word to which I know of
no parallel in writers we call profane.
My eye fell on this passage in the lofty argument between
the Angel whose name was Uriel, and the Prophet, perplexed
by his own cravings for knowledge:
“He (the Angel) answered me, and said, I went into a for-
est into a plain, and the trees took counsel,
“And said, Come, let us go and make war against the sea,
that it may depart away before us, and that we may make us
more woods.
“The floods of the sea also in like manner took counsel, and
said, Come, let us go up and subdue the woods of the plain,
that there also we may make us another country.
“The thought of the wood was in vain, for the fire came and
consumed it. }
“The thought of the floods of the sea came likewise to
nought, for the sand stood up and stopped them.
“If thou wert judge now betwixt the two, whom wouldst
thou begin to justify? or whom wouldst thou condemn?
‘‘I answered and said, Verily it is a foolish thought that they
both have devised; for the ground is given unto the wood, and
the sea also hath his place to bear his floods.
“Then answered he me, and said, Thou hast given a right
judgment; but why judgest thou not thyself also?
“For like as the ground is given unto the wood, and the sea
to his floods: even so they that dwell upon the earth may un-
derstand nothing but which is upon the earth: and He that
dwelleth above the heavens may only understand the things
that are above the height of the heavens.”
I paused at those words, and closing the Sacred Volume fell
into deep, unquiet thought.
* Such is the supposition of Jahn, Dr. Lee, however, is of opinion that the -author was
contemporary, and, indeed, identical, with the author of the Book of Enoch.

3I4 f A STRANGE STORY.
CHAPTER LXIX.
I HAD hoped that the voyage would produce some beneficial
effect upon Lilian ; but no effect, good or bad, was percepti-
ble, except, perhaps, a deeper silence, a gentler calm. She
loved to sit on deck when the nights were fair, and the stars
mirrored on the deep. And once, thus, as I stood beside her,
bending over the rail of the vessel, and gazing on the long
wake of light which the moon made amidst the darkness of an
ocean to which no shore could be seen, I said to myself:
“Where is my track of light through the measureless future?
Would that I could believe as I did when a child Woe is
me, that all the reasonings I take from my knowledge should
lead me away from the comfort which the peasant who mourns
finds in faith ! Why should riddles so dark have been thrust
upon me?—me, no fond child of fancy; me, sober pupil of
schools the severest. Yet what marvel—the strangest my
senses have witnessed or feigned in the fraud they have palmed
on me—is greater than that by which a simple affection, that all
men profess to have known, has changed the courses of life
prearranged by my hopes and confirmed by my judgment?
How calmly before I knew love I have anatomized its mechan-
ism, as the tyro who dissects the webwork of tissues and nerves
in the dead! Lo! it lives, lives in me; and, in living, escapes
from my scalpel and mocks all my knowledge. Can love be
reduced to the realm of the senses? No; what nun is more
barred by her grate from the realm of the senses than my bride
by her solemn affliction? Is love, then, the union of kindred,
harmonious minds? No, my beloved one sits by my side, and
I guess not her thoughts, and my mind is to her a sealed
fountain. Yet I love her more—oh, ineffably more! for the
doom which destroys the two causes philosophy assigns to
love—in the form, in the mind! How can I now, in my vain
physiology, say what is love—what is not? Is it love which
must tell me that man has a soul, and that in soul will be found
the solution of problems, never to be solved in body or mind
alone?’’
My self-questionings halted here as Lilian's hand touched
my shoulder. She had risen from her seat, and had come
to me.
“Are not the stars very far from earth?” she said.
“Very far.”
“Are they seen for the first time to-night?”
A STRANGE STORY. 315
“They were seen, I presume, as we see them, by the fathers
of all human races!”
“Yet close below us they shine reflected in the waters; and
yet, see, wave flows on wave before we can count it!”
“Lilian, by what sympathy do you read and answer my
thought?”
Her reply was incoherent and meaningless. If a gleam of
intelligence had mysteriously lighted my heart to her view, it
was gone. But drawing her nearer towards me, my eye long
followed wistfully the path of light, dividing the darkness on
either hand, till it closed in the sloping horizon.
CHAPTER LXX.
THE voyage is over. At the seaport at which we landed I
found a letter from Faber. My instructions had reached him
in time to effect the purchase on which his descriptions had
fixed my desire. The stock, the implements of husbandry,
the furniture of the house, were included in the purchase. All
was prepared for my arrival, and I hastened from the then
miserable village, which may some day rise into one of the
mightiest capitals of the world, to my lodge in the wilderness.
It was the burst of the Australian spring, which commences
in our autumn month of October. The air was loaded with the
perfume of the acacias. Amidst the glades of the open forest
land, or climbing the craggy banks of winding silvery Creeks,”
creepers and flowers of dazzling hue contrasted the olive-green
of the surrounding foliage. The exhilarating effect of the
climate in that season heightens the charm of the strange scen-
ery. In the brilliancy of the sky, in the lights of the atmos-
phere, the sense of life is wondrously quickened. With the
very breath the Adventurer draws in from the racy air, he feels
as if inhaling hope.
We have reached our home; we are settled in it; the early
unfamiliar impressions are worn away. We have learned to
dispense with much that we at first missed, and are reconciled
to much that at first disappointed or displeased.
The house is built but of logs—the late proprietor had com-
menced, upon a rising ground, a mile distant, a more imposing
edifice of stone; but it is not half-finished.
This log-house is commodious, and much has been done,
within and without, to conceal or adorn its primitive rudeness.
* Creek is the name given by Australian colonists to precarious watercourses and tribu-
tary streams.
316 A STRANGE STORY.
It is of irregular, picturesque form, with verandahs round three
sides of it, to which the grape-vine has been trained, with
glossy leaves that clamber up to the gabled roof. There is a
large garden in front, in which many English fruit-trees have
been set, and grow fast amongst the plants of the tropics and
the Orange-trees of Southern Europe. Beyond, stretch undu-
lous pastures, studded not only with sheep, but with herds of
cattle, which my speculative predecessor had bred from pa-
rents of famous stock, and imported from England at mighty
cost; but as yet the herds had been of little profit, and they
range their luxuriant expanse of pasture with as little heed.
To the left, Soar up, in long range, the many-colored hills; to
the right meanders a creek, belted by feathery trees; and on
its opposite bank a forest opens, through frequent breaks, into
park-like glades and alleys. The territory, of which I so sud-
denly find myself the lord, is vast, even for a colonial capitalist.
It had been originally purchased as a “special survey,”
comprising twenty thousand acres, with the privilege, of pas-
ture over forty thousand more. In very little of this land,
though it includes some of the most fertile districts in the
known world, has cultivation been even commenced. At the
time I entered into possession even sheep were barely profit-
able; labor was scarce and costly. Regarded as a speculation,
I could not wonder that my predecessor fled in fear from his
domain. Had I invested the bulk of my capital in this lordly
purchase, I should have deemed myself a ruined man; but a
villa near London, with a hundred acres, would have cost me
as much to buy, and thrice as much to keep up. I could
afford the investment I had made. I found a Scotch. bailiff
already on the estate, and I was contented to escape from rural
occupations, to which I brought no experience, by making it
worth his while to serve me with zeal. Two domestics of my
own, and two who had been for many years with Mrs. Ash-
leigh, had accompanied us: they remained faithful and seemed
contented. So the clockwork of our mere household arrange-
ments went on much the same as in our native home. Lilian
was not subjected to the ordinary privations and discomforts
that await the wife even of the wealthy emigrant. Alas!
would she have heeded them if she had been 2
The change of scene wrought a decided change for the bet-
ter in her health and spirits, but not such as implied a dawn of
reviving reason. But her countenance was now more rarely
overcast. Its usual aspect was glad with a soft, mysterious
smile. She would murmur snatches of songs, that were partly
A STRANGE STORY. 3I 7
borrowed from English poets, and partly glided away into
what seemed spontaneous additions of her own—wanting intel-
ligible meaning, but never melody nor rhyme. Strange, that
memory and imitation—the two earliest parents of all inventive
knowledge—should still be so active, and judgment—the after
faculty, that combines the rest into purpose and method—be
annulled !
Julius Faber I see continually, though his residence is a
few miles distant. He is sanguine as to Lilian's ultimate re-
covery; and, to my amazement and to my envy, he has con-
trived, by some art which I cannot attain, to establish between
her and himself intelligible communion. She comprehends his
questions, when mine, though the simplest, seem to her in un-
known language; and he construes into sense her words, that
to me are meaningless riddles.
“I was right,” he said to me one day, leaving her seated in
the garden beside her quiet, patient mother, and joining me
where I lay, listless yet fretful, under the shadeless gum-trees,
gazing not on the flocks and fields that I could call my own,
but on the far mountain range, from which the arch of the
horizon seemed to spring—“I was right,” said the great phy-
sician; ‘‘this is reason suspended, not reason lost. Your wife
will recover; but—”
“But what? '’ -
“Give me your arm as I walk homeward, and I will tell you
the conclusion to which I have come.’’
I rose, the old man leant on me, and we went down the
valley, along the craggy ridges of the winding creek. The
woodland on the opposite bank was vocal with the chirp, and
croak, and chatter of Australian birds—all mirthful, all song-
less, save that sweetest of warblers, which some early irrever-
ent emigrant degraded to the name of magpie, but whose note
is sweeter than the nightingale's, and trills through the lucent
air with a distinct ecstatic melody of joy that dominates all the
discords—so ravishing the sense, that, while it sings, the ear
scarcely heeds the scream of the parrots. *
CHAPTÉR LXXI.
“You may remember,” said Julius Faber, “Sir Humphrey
Davy's eloquent description of the effect produced on him by
the inhalation of nitrous oxide. He states that he began to
lose the perception of external things: trains of vivid visible
images rapidly passed through his mind, and were connected
3.18 A STRANGE STORY. .*
with words in such a manner as to produce perceptions per-
fectly novel. “I existed,” he says, ‘in a world of newly
connected and newly modified ideas.” When he recovered,
he exclaimed: “Nothing exists but thoughts; the universe is
composed of impressions, ideas, pleasures, and pains !’
“Now observe, that thus a cultivator of positive science,
endowed with one of the healthiest of human brains, is by the
inhalation of a gas abstracted from all external life—enters
into a new world, which consists of images he himself creates,
and animates so vividly, that, on waking, he resolves the uni-
verse itself into thoughts.”
“Well,” said I, “but what inference do you draw from that
voluntary experiment, applicable to the malady of which you
bid me hope the cure?” /
“Simply this: that the effect produced on a healthful brain
by the nitrous oxide may be produced also by moral causes
operating on the blood, or on the nerves. There is a degree of
mental excitement in which ideas are more vivid than sensa-
tions, and then the world of external things gives way to the
world within the brain.” But this, though a suspension of
that reason which comprehends accuracy of judgment, is no
more a permanent aberration of reason than were Sir Humphry
Davy's visionary ecstasies under the influence of the gas. The
difference between the two states of suspension is that of time,
and it is but an affair of time with our beloved patient. Yet
prepare yourself. I fear that the mind will not recover with-
out some critical malady of the body l’’
“Critical! but not dangerous?—say not dangerous. I can
endure the pause of her reason; I could not endure the void
in the universe if her life were to fade from the earth.”
“Poor friend! would not you yourself rather lose life than
reason P’’
“I–yes! • But we men are taught to set cheap value on our
own lives; we do not estimate at the same rate the lives of
those we love. Did we do so, Humanity would lose its
virtues.”
“What, then Love teaches that there is something of
nobler value than mere mind? Yet surely it cannot be the mere
body? What is it, if not that continuance of being which your
philosophy declines to acknowledge, viz., SOULP If you fear
so painfully that your Lilian should die, is it not that you fear
to lose her forever?” ?
* See, on the theory elaborated from this principle, Dr. Hibbert's interesting and valu-
able work on the Philosophy of Apparitions.
A STRANGE STORY. 3I9
“Oh, cease, cease!” I cried impatiently. “I cannot now
argue on metaphysics. What is it that you anticipate of harm
to her life? Her health has been stronger ever since her afflic-
tion. She never seems to know ailment now. Do you not
perceive that her cheek has a more hardy bloom, her frame a
more rounded symmetry, than when you saw her in England?”
“Unguestionably. Her physical forces have been silently
recruiting themselves in the dreams which half-lull, half-amuse
her imagination. IMAGINATION | that faculty, the most glori-
ous which is bestowed on the human mind, because it is the facul-
ty which enables thought to create, is of all others the most
exhausting to life when unduly stimulated, and consciously reas-
oning on its own creations. I think it probable that, had this
Sorrow not befallen you, you would have known a sorrow yet
graver, you would have long survived your Lilian. As it is
now, when she recovers, her whole organization, physical and
mental, will have undergone a beneficent change. But, I repeat
my prediction: some severe malady of the body will precede the
restoration of the mind ; and it is my hope that the present sus-
pense or aberration of the more wearing powers of the mind
may fit the body to endure and surmount the physical crisis.
I remember a case, within my own professional experience, in
many respects similar to this, but in other respects it was less
hopeful. I was consulted by a young student of a very deli-
cate physical frame, of great mental emergies, and consumed by
an intense ambition. He was reading for university honors.
He would not listen to me when I entreated him to rest his'
mind. I thought that he was certain to obtain the distinction
for which he toiled, and equally certain to die a few months
after obtaining it. He falsified both my prognostics. He so
overworked himself that, on the day of examination, his nerves
were agitated, his memory failed him; he passed, not without
a certain credit, but fell far short of the rank amongst his
fellow-competitors to which he aspired. Here, then, the irri-
tated mind acted on the disappointed heart, and raised a new
train of emotions. He was first visited by spectral illusions;
then he sank to a state in which the external world seemed
quite blotted out. He heeded nothing that was said to him;
seemed to see nothing that was placed before his eyes; in a
word, sensations became dormant, ideas preconceived usurped
their place, and those ideas gave him pleasure. He believed
that his genius was recognized, and lived amongst its supposed
Creations enjoying an imaginary fame. So it went on for two
years; during which suspense of his reason, his frail form be-
32O A STRANGE STORY.
came robust and vigorous. At the end of that time he was
seized with a fever, which would have swept him in three days
to the grave had it occurred when I was first called in to at-
tend him. He conquered the fever, and in recovering, ac-
quired the full possession of the intellectual faculties so long
suspended. When I last saw him, many years afterwards, he
was in perfect health, and the object of his young ambition
was realized; the body had supported the mind—he had
achieved distinction. Now, what had so, for a time, laid this
strong intellect into visionary sleep? The most agonizing of
human emotions in a noble spirit—shame! What has so
stricken down your Lilian? You have told me the story:
shame!—the shame of a nature pre-eminently pure. But ob-
serve that, in his case as in hers, the shock inflicted does not
produce a succession of painful illusions: on the contrary, in
both, the illusions are generally pleasing. Had the illusions
been painful, the body would have suffered, the patient died.
Why did a painful shock produce pleasing illusions? Because,
no matter how a shock on the nerves may originate, if it affects
the reason, it does but make more vivid, than impressions from
actual external objects, the ideas previously most cherished.
Such ideas in the young student were ideas of earthly fame;
such ideas in the young maiden are ideas of angel comforters
and heavenly Edens. You miss her mind on the earth, and,
while we speak, it is in paradise.” -
- “Much that you say, my friend, is authorized by the specu-
lations of great writers, with whom I am not unfamiliar; but
in none of those writers, nor in your encouraging words, do I
find a solution for much that has no precedents in my experi-
ence—much, indeed, that has analogies in my reading, but
analogies which I have hitherto despised as old wives' fables.
I have bared to your searching eye the weird mysteries of my
life. How do you account for facts which you cannot resolve
into illusions? For the influence which that strange being,
Margrave, exercised over Lilian’s mind or fancy, so that for a
time her love for me was as dormant as is her reason now; so that
he could draw her—her whose nature you admit to be singular-
ly pure and modest—from her mother's home. The magic
wand! The trance into which that wand threw Margrave him-
self; the apparition which it conjured up in my own quiet
chamber, when my mind was without a care and my health
without a flaw. How account for all this—as you endeavored,
and perhaps successfully, to account for all my impressions of
the Vision in the Museum, of the luminous, haunting shadow
y
A STRANGE STORY. 32 I
in its earlier appāritions, when my fancy was heated, my heart
tormented, and, it might be, even the physical forces of this
strong frame disordered?”
“Allen,” said the old pathologist, “here we approach a
ground which few physicians have dared to examine. Honor
to those who, like our bold contemporary Elliotson have braved
scoff and sacrificed dross in seeking to extract what is practical
in uses, what can be tested by experiment, from those excep-
tional phenomena on which magic sought to found a philosophy,
and to which philosophy tracks the origin of magic.”
“What! Do I understand you? Is it you, Julius Faber,
who attach faith to the wonders attributed to animal magnetism
and electro-biology, or subscribe to the doctrines which their
practitioners teach?”
. “I have not examined into those doctrines, nor seen with my
own eyes the wonders recorded, upon evidence too respectable,
nevertheless, to permit me peremptorily to deny what I have
not witnessed.* But wherever I look through the History of
Mankind in all ages and all races, I find a concurrence in cer-
tain beliefs which seems to countenance the theory that there
is in some peculiar and rare temperaments a power over forms
*
* What Faber here says is expressed with more authority by one of the most accom—
plished metaphysicians of our time (Sir W. Hamilton):
“Somnambulism is a phenomenon still more astonishing (than dreaming). In this singu-
lar state a person performs a regular series of rational actions, and those frequently of the
most difficult and delicate nature ; and what is still more marvellous, with a talent to
which he could make no pretension when awake. (Cr, Ancilen, Essais Philos. ii. 161.)
His mernory and reminiscence supply him with recollections of words and things which,
perhaps, never were at his disposal in the ordinary state; he speaks more fluently a more
refined language. And if we are to credit what the evidence on which it rests hardly allows
us to disbelieve, he has not only perception of things through other channels than the
common organs of sense, but the sphere of his cognition is amplified to an extent far be-
yond the limits to which sensible perception is confined. This subject is one of the most
perplexing in the whole compass of philosophy : for, on the one hand, the phenomena are
so remarkable that they cannot be believed, and yet, on the other, they are of so umam-
biguous and palpable a character, and the witnesses to their reality are so numerous, so in-
telligent, and so high above every suspicion of deceit, that it is equally impossible to deny
credit to what is attested by such ample and unexceptionable evidence.”—Sir W Hamilton's
Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic, vol. ii. p. 274.
This perplexity, in which the distinguished philosopher leaves the judgment so equakly
balanced that it finds it impossible to believe, and yet impossible to disbelieve, forms the
right state of mind in which a candid thinker should come to the examination of those
more extraordinary phenomena which he has not himself yet witnessed, but the fair inquiry
into which may be tendered to him by persons above the imputation of quackery and fraud.
Muller, who is not the least determined, as he is certainly one of the most distinguished
disbelievers of mesmeric phenomena, does not appear to have witnessed, or at least to have
carefully examined, them, or he would, perhaps, have seen that even the more extraordi-
nary of those phenomena confirm, rather than contradict, his own general theories, and ma
be explained by the sympathies one sense has with another—“the laws of reflexion º
the medium of the brain.” (“Physiology of Senses,” p. 1311.) And again by the maxim
“that the mental principle, or cause of the mental phenomena, cannot be confined to the
_brain, but that it exists in a latent state in every part of the organism.” (Ib. p. 1355.)
The “nerve power,” contended for by Mr. Bain, also may suggest a rational solution of
much that has seemed incredible to those physiologists who have not condescended to sift
the genuine phenomena of mesmerism from the imposture to which, in all ages, the pher
momena exhibited by what may be called the ecstatic temperament have been applied,
*
322 A STRANGE STORY.
of animated organization, with which they establish some un-
accountable affinity; and even, though much more rarely, a
power over inanimate matter. You are familiar with the theory
of Descartes, ‘that those particles of the blood which penetrate to
the brain do not only serve to nourish and sustain its substance,
but to produce there a certain very subtle Aura; or rather a
flame very vivid and pure that obtains the name of the Animal
Spirits’;” and at the close of his great fragment upon Man, he
asserts that ‘this flame is of no other nature than all the fires
which are in inanimate bodies.” This notion does but fore-
stall the more recent doctrine that electricity is more or less in
all, or nearly all, known matter. Now, whether in the elec-
tric fluid or some other fluid akin to it of which we know still
less, thus equally pervading all matter, there may be a certain
magnetic property more active, more operative upon sympa-
thy in some human constitutions than in others, and which can
account for the mysterious power I have spoken of, is a query
I might suggest, but not an opinion I would hazard. For an
opinion I must have that basis of experience or authority which
I do not need when I submit a query to the experience and
authority of others. Still the supposition conveyed in the
query is so far worthy of notice, that the ecstatic temperament
(in which phrase I comprehend all constitutional mystics) is
peculiarly sensitive to electric atmospheric influences. This is
a fact which most medical observers will have remarked in the
range of their practice. Accordingly, I was prepared to find
Mr. Hare Townshend, in his interesting work, state that he
himself was of ‘the electric temperament,’ sparks flying from
his hair when combed in the dark, etc. That accomplished
writer, whose veracity no one would impugn, affirms that ‘be-
tween this electrical endowment and whatever mesmeric proper-
ties he might possess, there is a remarkable relationship and
parallelism. Whatever state of the atmosphere tends to ac-
cumulate and insulate electricity in the body, promotes equally
(says Mr. Townshend) the power and facility with which I in-
fluence others mesmerically. What Mr. Townshend thus ob-
serves in himself, American physicians and professors of
chemistry depose to have observed in those modern magicians,
the mediums of (so-called) ‘spirit manifestation.” They state
that all such mediums are of the electric temperament, thus
everywhere found allied with the ecstatic, and their power
varies in proportion as the state of the atmosphere serves to
* Descartes, “L’Homme,” vol. iv. p. 345. Cousin's edition.
$ tº id., P. 428. &
† “Facts in Mesmerism."
A STRANGE STORY. 323
depress or augment the electricity stored in themselves. Here,
then, in the midst of vagrant phenomena, either too hastily
dismissed as altogether the tricks of fraudful imposture, or too
credulously accepted as supernatural portent—here, at least, in
one generalized fact, we may, perhaps, find a starting-point, from
which inductive experiment may arrive, soon or late, at a rational
theory. But, however the power of which we are speaking (a
power accorded to special physical temperament) may or may
not be accounted for by some patient student of nature, I am
persuaded that it is in that power we are to seek for whatever
is not wholly imposture, in the attributes assigned to magic or
witchcraft. It is well said, by a writer who has gone into the
depth of these subjects with the research of a scholar and the
science of a pathologist, ‘that if magic had exclusively reposed
on credulity and falsehood its reign would never have endured
so long. But that its art took its origin in singular phenomena,
proper to certain affections of the nerves, or manifested in the
conditions of sleep. These phenomena, the principle of which
was at first unknown, served to root faith in magic, and often
abused even enlightened minds. The enchanters and ma-
gicians arrived, by divers practices, at the faculty of provoking
in other brains a determined order of dreams, of engendering
hallucinations of all kinds, of inducing fits of hypnotism, trance,
mania, during which the persons so affected imagined that they
saw, heard, touched supernatural beings, conversed with them,
proved their influences, assisted at prodigies" of which magic
proclaimed itself to possess the secret. The public, the en-
chanters, and the enchanted were equally dupes.’ ” Accept-
ing this explanation, unintelligible to no physician of a prac-
tice so lengthened as mine has been, I draw from it the corol-
lary, that as these phenomena are exhibited only by certain
special affections, to which only certain special constitutions
are susceptible, so not in any superior faculties of intellect, or
of spiritual endowment, but in peculiar physical temperaments,
often strangely disordered, the power of the sorcerer in affect-
ing the imagination of others is to be sought. In the native
tribes of Australasia the elders are instructed in the arts of this so-
called sorcery, but only in a very few constitutions does instruc-
tion avail to produce effects in which the Savages recognize the
power of a sorcerer: it is so with the Obi of the negroes. The
fascination of Obi is an unquestionable fact, but the Obi man
cannot be trained by formal lessons: he is born a fascinator,
* “La Magie et l'Astrologie dans l’Antiquité et au Moyen-Age.” Par L. F. Alfred
Maury, Membre de l’Institut. P. 225.
324 A STRANGE STORY.
*
*
as a poet is born a poet. It is so with the Laplanders, of
whom Tornaeus reports that of those instructed in the magical
art “only a few are capable of it.’ “Some’ he says, “are naturally
magicians.’ And this fact is emphatically insisted upon by the
mystics of our own middle ages, who state that a man must be
born a magician; in other words that the gift is constitutional,
though developed by practice and art. Now, that this gift and
its practice should principally obtain in imperfect states of civili-
zation and fade into insignificance in the busy social enlighten-
ment of cities, may be accounted for by reference to the known
influences of imagination. In the cruder state of social life
not only is imagination more frequently predominant over all
other faculties, but it has not the healthful vents which the in-
tellectual competition of cities and civilization affords. The
man who in a savage tribe, or in the dark feudal ages, would
be a magician is in our century a poet, an orator, a daring
speculator, an inventive philosopher. In other words, his
imagination is drawn to pursuits congenial to those amongst
whom it works. It is the tendency of all intellect to follow the
directions of the public opinion amidst which it is trained.
Where a magician is held in reverence or āwe, there will be
more practitioners of magic than where a magician is despised
as an impostor or shut up as a lunatic. In Scandinavia, before
the introduction of Christianity, all tradition records the wonder-
ful powers of the Vala, or witch, who was then held in reverence
and honor. Christianity was introduced, and the early Church
denounced the Vala as the instrument of Satan, and from that
moment down dropped the majestic prophetess into a misera-
ble and execrated old hag!”
“The ideas you broach,” said I musingly, “have at moments
crossed me, though I have shrunk from reducing them to a
theory which is but one of pure hypothesis. But this magic,
after all, then, you would place in the imagination of the opera-
tor, acting on the imagination of those whom it affects? Here
at least, I can follow you, to a certain extent, for here we get
back into the legitimate realm of physiology.”
“And possibly,” said Faber, “we may find hints to guide us
to useful examination, if not to complete solution, of problems
that, once demonstrated, may lead to discoveries of infinite
value—hints, I say, in two writers of widely opposite genius,
Van Helmont and Bacon. Van Helmont, of all the mediaeval
mystics, is in spite of his many extravagant whims the one whose
intellect is the most suggestive to the disciplined reasoners of
our day. He supposed that the faculty which he calls Phan-
A STRANGE STORY. 325
tasy, and which we familiarly call Imagination, is invested with
the power of creating for itself ideas independent of the senses,
each idea clothed in a form fabricated by the imagination, and
becoming an operative entity. This notion is so far favored
by modern physiologists, that Lincke reports a case where the
eye itself was extirpated; yet the extirpation was followed by
the appearance- of luminous figures before the orbit. And
again, a woman stone-blind complained of “luminous images,
with pale colors, before her eyes.” Abercrombie mentions the
case “of a lady quite blind, her eyes being also disorganized
and sunk, who never walked out without seeing a little old
woman in a red cloak who seemed to walk before her.' * Your
favorite authority, the illustrious Müller, who was himself in
the habit of ‘seeing different images in the field of vision when
be lay quietly down to sleep, asserts that these images are not
merely presented to the fancy, but that even the images of
dreams are really seen,' and that ‘any one may satisfy himself
of this by accustoming himself regularly to open his eyes when
waking after a dream—the images seen in the dream are then
sometimes visible, and can be observed to disappear gradually.”
He confirms this statement, not only by the result of his own
experience, but by the observations made by Spinoza, and the .
yet higher authority of Aristotle, who accounts for spectral
appearance as the internal action of the sense of vision. † And
this opinion is favored by Sir David Brewster, whose experi-
ence leads him to suggest ‘that the objects of mental contem-
plation may be seen as distinctly as external objects, and will
occupy the same local position in the axis of vision as if they
had been formed by the agency of light.' Be this as it may,
one fact remains, that images can be seen even by the blind as
distinctly and vividly as you and I now see the stream below
our feet and the opossums at play upon yonder boughs. Let
us come next to some remarkable suggestions of Lord Bacon.
In his Natural History, treating of the force of the imagination,
and the help it receives ‘by one man working by another,' he
cites an instance he had witnessed of a kind of juggler, who
could tell a person what card he thought of. He mentioned this,
‘to a pretended learned man, curious in such things,’ and this
sage said to him: ‘It is not the knowledge of the man's thought,
* She had no illusions when within doors.-Abercrombie on the Intellectual Powers, P.
277. (15th edition.)
t Muller, “Physiology of the Senses,”. Raley's translation, pp. 1068–1395, and elsewhere.
Mr. Bain, in his thoughtful and suggestive work on the Senses and Intellect, makes YºY
powerful use of these statements in support of his proposition, whigh Faber advances .
other words, viz., “the return of the nervous currents exactly on their old track in revivº
sensations.”
326 - A STRANGE STORY.. "
for that is proper to God, but the enforcing of a thought upon
him, and binding his imagination by a stronger, so that he
could think of no other card.’ You see this sage anticipated
our modern electro-biologists! And the learned man then
shrewdly asked Lord Bacon: ‘Did the juggler tell the card to
the man himself who had thought of it, or bid another tell it?’
‘He bade another tell it,’ aswered Lord Bacon. “I thought
so,' returned his learned acquaintance, ‘for the juggler himself
could not have put on so strong an imagination; but by telling
the card to the other, who believed the juggler was some strange
man who could do strange things, that other -man caught a
strong imagination.' * The whole story is worth reading, be-
cause Lord Bacon evidently thinks it conveys a guess worth
examining. And Lord Bacon, were he now living, would be
the man to solve the mysteries that branch out of mesmerism.
or (so-called) spiritual manifestation, for he would not pretend
to despise their phenomena for fear of hurting his reputation
for good sense. Bacon then goes on to state that there are three
ways to fortify the imagination: ‘First, authority derived from
belief in an art and in the man who exercises it; secondly,
means to quicken and corroborate the imagination; thirdly,
means to repeat and refresh it.' For the second and the third
he refers to the practices of magic, and proceeds afterwards to
state on what things imagination has most force: “upon things
that have the lightest and easiest motions, and, therefore, above
all, upon the spirits of men, and, in them, on such affections
as move lightest—in love, in fear, in resolution. And,’ adds
Bacon, earnestly, in a different spirit from that which dictates
to the sages of our time the philosophy of rejecting without
trial that which belongs to the Marvellous, ‘and whatsoever is
of this kind, should be thoroughly inquired into.’ And this
great founder or renovator of the sober inductive system of in-
vestigation, even so far leaves it a matter of speculative inquiry,
whether imagination may not be so powerful that it can actually
operate upon a plant, that he says: ‘This likewise should be
made upon plants, and that diligently, as if you should tell a man
that such a tree would die this year, and will him, at these and
these times, to go unto it and see how it thriveth.’ I presume
* Perhaps it is for the reason suggested in the text, viz., that the magician requires the
interposition of a third imagination between his own and that of the consulting believer,
and that any learned adept in (so-called) magic will invariably refuse to exhibit without
the presence of a third person. Hence the author of “Dogme et Riteul de la Haute Magie,”
printed at Paris, 1852–53—a book less remarkable for its learning than for the earnest belief
of a scholar of our own day in the reality of the art of which he records the history—insists
much on the necessity of rigidly observing Le Ternaire, in the number of persons who
assist in an enchanter's experiments.
º
A STIRANGE STORY. 327
that no philosopher has followed such recommendations: had s-
Some great philosopher done so, possibly we should by this
time know all the secrets of what is popularly called witch-
Craft.”
And as Faber here paused there came a strange laugh from
the fantastic she-oak-tree overhanging the stream—a wild,
impish laugh.
“Pooh! it is but the great kingfisher, the laughing-bird of
the Australian bush,” said Julius Faber, amused at my start of
Superstitious alarm. -
We walked on for some minutes in musing silence, and the
rude log-hut in which my wise companion had his home came
in view—the flocks grazing on undulous pastures, the kine
drinking at a watercourse fringed by the slender gum-trees,
and a few fields, laboriously won from the luxuriant grass-land,
rippling with the wave of corn.
I halted, and said: “Rest here for a few moments till I
gather up the conclusions to which your speculative reasoning
seems to invite me.’’
We sat down on a rocky crag, half-mantled by luxuriant
creepers with vermilion buds. , <>
“From the guesses,” said I, “which you have drawn from the
erudition of others and your own ingenious and reflective induc-
tions, I collect this solution of the mysteries, by which the ex-
perience I gain from my senses confounds, all the dogmas ap-
proved by my judgment. To the rational conjectures by which,
when we first conversed on the marvels that perplexed me, you
ascribed to my imagination, predisposed by mental excitement,
physical fatigue or derangement, and a concurrence of singular
events tending to strengthen such predisposition, the phantas-
mal impressions produced on my senses; to these conjectures
you now add a new one, more startling and less admitted by
sober physiologists. You conceive it possible that persons
endowed with a rare and peculiar temperament can so operate
on the imagination, and, through the imagination, on the senses
of others, as to exceed even the powers ascribed to the practi-
tioners of mesmerism and electro-biology, and give a certain
foundation of truth to the old tales of magic and witchcraft.
You imply that Margrave may be a person thus gifted, and
hence the influence he unquestionably exercised over Lilian,
and over, perhaps, less innocent agents, charmed or impelled
by his will. And not discarding, as I own I should have been
originally induced to do, the queries or suggestions adventured
by Bacon in his discursive speculations on Nature, to wit ‘that
'-
T*-*. 4
*
328 A STRAN (; E STORY.
*
there be many things, some of them inanimate, that operate
upon the spirits of men by secret sympathy and antipathy,'
and to which Bacon gave the quaint name of ‘imaginants'; so
even that wand, of which I have described to you the magic-
like effects, may have had -properties communicated to it by
which it performs the work of the magician, as mesmerists pre-
tend that some substance mesmerized by them can act on the
patient as sensibly as if it were the mesmerizer himself. Do I
state your suppositions correctly?”
“Yes; always remembering that they are only suppositions,
and volunteered with the utmost diffidence. But since, thus
seated in the early wilderness, we permit ourselves the indul-
gence of childlike guess, may it not be possible, apart from the
doubtful question whether a man can communicate to an in-
animate material substance a power to act upon the mind or imag-
ination of another man—may it not, I say, be possible that such
a substance may contain in itself such a virtue or property potent
over certain constitutions, though not over all? For instance,
it is in my experience that the common hazel-wood will strongly
affect some nervous temperaments, though wholly without
effect on others. I remember a young girl who, having taken
up a hazel-stick freshly cut, could not relax her hold of it; and
when it was wrenched away from her by force was irresistibly
attracted towards it, repossessed herself of it, and, after holding
it a few minutes, was cast into a kind of trance, in which she
beheld phantasmal visions. Mentioning this curious case,
which I supposed unique, to a learned brother of our profes-
sion, he told me that he had known other instances of the ef-
fect of the hazel upon nervous temperaments in persons of
both sexes. Possibly it was some such peculiar property in the
hazel that made it the wood selected for the old divining-
rod. Again, we know that the bay-tree, or laurel, was dedicated
to the oracular Pythian Apollo. Now wherever, in the world,
we find that the learning of the priests enabled them to exhibit
exceptional phenomena, which imposed upon popular credulity,
there was a something or other which it is worth a philosopher’s
while to explore. And, accordingly, I always suspected that
there was in the laurel some property favorable to ecstatic vis-
ion in highly impressionable temperaments. My Suspicion, a
few years ago, was justified by the experience of a German
physician, who had under his care a cataleptic or ecstatic
patient, and who assured me that he found nothing in this pa-
tient so stimulated the state of ‘sleep-waking,' or so disposed
that state to indulge in the hallucinations of prevision, as the
Ar STRANGE STORY. 329
berry of the laurel.” Well, we do not know what this wand
that produced a seemingly magical effect upon you was really
composed of. You did not notice the metal employed in the wire
which you say communicated a thrill to the sensitive nerves in
the palm of the hand. You cannot tell how far it might have
been the vehicle of some fluid force in nature. Or still more
probably, whether the pores of your hand insensibly imbibed,
and communicated to the brain, some of those powerful narcotics
from which the Boudhists and the Arabs make unguents that
induce visionary hallucinations, and in which substances unde-
tected in the hollow of the wand, or the handle of the wand itself,
might be steeped. † One thing we do know, viz., that amongst
the ancients, and especially in the East, the construction of
wands for magical purposes was no commonplace mechanical
craft, but a special and secret art appropriated to men who culti-
vated with assiduity all that was then known of natural science in
order to extract from it agencies that might appear supernatural.
Possibly, then, the rods or wands of the East, of which Scripture
makes mention, were framed upon some principles of which we in
our day are very naturally ignorant, since we do not ransack
science for the same secrets. And thus, in the selection or prep-
aration of the material employed mainly consisted whatever
may be referable to natural philosophical causes, in the antique
science of Rhabdomancy, or divination and enchantment by
wands. The staff or wand of which you tell me, was, you say,
made of iron or steel and tipped with crystal. Possibly iron and
crystal do really contain some properties not hitherto scientific-
ally analyzed, and only, indeed, potential over exceptional
temperaments, which may account for the fact that iron and
crystal have been favorites with all professed mystics, ancient
and modern. The Delphic Pythoness had her iron tripod,
Mesmer his iron bed; and many persons, indisputably honest,
cannot gaze long upon a ball of Crystal but what they begin to
see visions. I suspect that a philosophical cause for such
seemingly preternatural effects of crystal and iron will be found
in connection with the extreme impressionability to changes in
temperature which is the characteristic both of crystal and iron.
But if these materials do contain certain powers over excep-
tional constitutions, we do not arrive at a supernatural, but at
a natural phenomenon.”
‘‘Still,” said I, “even granting that your explanatory hypo-
* I may add that Dr. Kerner instances the effect of laurel-berries on the Seeress of Pre-
worst, corresponding with that asserted by Julius Faber in the text, e
+ See for these unguents the work of M. Maury, before quoted, “La Magie et l'Astrolo-
gie,” etc., p. 417.
33O A STRANGE STORY.
theses hit or approach the truth—still what a terrible power
you would assign to man's will over men's reason and deeds!”,
“Man’s will,” answered Faber, ‘‘has over men's deeds and
reason; habitually and daily, power infinitely greater, and, when
uncounterbalanced, infinitely more dangerous than that which
superstition exaggerates in magic. Man’s will moves a war
that decimates a race, and leaves behind it calamities little less
dire than slaughter. Man's will frames, but it also corrupts
laws; exalts, but also demoralizes opinion; sets the world mad
with fanaticism, as often as it curbs the heart's fierce instincts
by the wisdom of brother-like mercy. You revolt at the excep-
tional, limited sway over some two or three individuals which
the arts of a sorcerer (if sorcerer there be) can effect; and yet,
at the very moment in which you were perplexed and appalled
by such sway, or by your reluctant belief in it, your will was
devising an engine to unsettle the reason and wither the hopes
of millions !”
“My will! What engine?”
“A book conceived by your intellect, adorned by your learn-
ing, and directed by your will, to steal from the minds of other
men their persuasion of the soul’s everlasting Hereafter.”
I bowed my head and felt myself grow pale.
“And if we accept Bacon’s theory of ‘secret sympathy,' or
the plainer physiological maxim that there must be in the
imagination, morbidly impressed by the will of another, some
trains of idea in affinity with such influence and preinclined to
receive it, no magician could warp you to evil, except through
thoughts that themselves went astray. Grant that the Mar-
grave who still haunts your mind did really, by some occult,
sinister magnetism, guide the madman to murder, did influence
the servant-woman’s vulgar desire to pry into the secrets of her
ill-fated master, or the old maid’s covetous wish and envious
malignity, what could this awful magician do more than any
commonplace guilty adviser, to a mind predisposed to accept
the advice?’’
“You forget one example which destroys your argument, the
spell which this mysterious, fascinator could cast upon a crea-
ture so pure from all guilt as Lilian!” *
“Will you forgive me if I answer frankly?”
“Speak.”
“Your Lilian is spotless and pure as you deem her, and the
fascination, therefore, attempts no lure through a sinful desire;
it blends with its attraction no sentiment of affection untrue to
yourself. Nay, it is justice to your Lilian, and may be a melan-
A STRANGE STORY. $ 33I
choly comfort to you, to state my conviction, based on the
answers my questions have drawn from her, that you were never
more cherished by her love than when that love seemed to
forsake you. Her imagination impressed her with the illusion
that through love for her you were threatened with a great
peril. What seemed the levity of her desertion was the devo-
tion of self-sacrifice. And, in her strange, dream-led wander-
ings, do not think that she was conscious of the fascination you
impute to this mysterious Margrave; in her belief it was your
own guardian angel that guided her steps, and her pilgrimage
was ordained to disarm the foe that menaced you, and dis-
solve the spell that divided her life from yours! But had she
not, long before this, wilfully prepared herself to be so de-
ceived? Had not her fancies been deliberately encouraged to
dwell remote from the duties we are placed on the earth to
perform 2 The loftiest faculties in our nature are those that
demand the finest poise, not to fall from their height and crush
all the walls that they crown. With exquisite beauty of illus-
tration, Hume says of the dreamers of ‘bright fancies,’ ‘that
they may be compared to those angels whom the Scriptures
represent as covering their eyes with their wings.’ Had you
been, like my nephew, a wrestler for bread with the wilderness,
what helpmate would your Lilian have been to you? How
often would you have cried out in justifiable anger: “I, son of
Adam, am on earth, not in paradise? Oh, that my Eve were at
home on my hearth, and not in the skies with the seraphs!’
No Margrave, I venture to say, could have suspended the
healthful affections, or charmed into danger, the wide-awake
soul of my Amy. When she rocks in its cradle the babe the
young parents intrust to her heed; when she calls the kine to
the milking, the chicks to their corn; when she but flits through
my room to renew the flowers on the stand, or range in neat
order the books that I read—no spell on her fancy could lead
her a step from the range of her provident cares! At day she
is contented to be on the commonplace earth; at evening she
and I knock together at the one door of heaven which opes to
thanksgiving and prayer; and thanksgiving and prayer send us
back, calm and hopeful, to the task that each morrow renews.’’
I looked, up as the old man paused, and in the limpid clear-
ness of the Australian atmosphere, I saw the child he thus praised
standing by the garden-gate, looking towards us, and though still
distant, she seemed near. I felt wroth with her. My heart so
cherished my harmless, defenceless Lilian, that I was jealous of
the praise taken from her to be bestowed on another,
332 A STRANGE STORY. tº
--
£
*-
“Each of us,” said I coldly; “has his or her own nature,
and the uses harmonious to that nature's idiosyncrasy. The
world, I grant, would get on very ill if women were not, more or
less, actively useful and quietly good, like your Amy. But the
world would lose standards that exalt and refine, if no woman
were permitted to gain, through the indulgence of fancy,
thoughts exquisite as those which my Lilian conceived, while
thought, alas! flowed out of fancy. I do not wound you by
citing your Amy as a type of the mediocre. I do not claim for
Lilian the rank we accord to the type of genius. But both
are alike to such types in this—viz., that the uses of mediocrity
are for every-day life, and the uses of genius, amidst a thousand
mistakes which mediocrity never commits, are to suggest and
perpetuate ideas which raise the standard of the mediocre to
a nobler level. There would be fewer Amys in life if there
were no Lilian ||—as there would be far fewer good men of
sense if there were no err ng dreamers of genius!”
“You say well, Allen Fenwick. And who should be so indul-
gent to the vagaries of the imagination as the philosophers who
taught your youth to doubt everything in the Maker's plan of
creation which could not be mathematically proved? ‘The
human mind,” said Luther, ‘is like a drunkard on horseback:
prop it on one side, and it falls on the other.’ So the man who
is much too enlightened to believe in a peasant's religion, is
always sure to set up some inane superstition of his own. Open
biographical volumes wherever you please, and the man who
has no faith in religion is a man who has faith in a nightmare.
See that type of the elegant sceptics—Lord Herbert of Cher-
bury. He is writing a book against Revelation; he asks a sign
from heaven to tell him if his book is approved by his Maker,
and the man who cannot believe in the miracles performed by
his Saviour, gravely tells us of a miracle vouchsafed to himself.
Take the hardest and strongest intellect which the hardest and
strongest race of mankind ever schooled and accomplished.
See the greatest of great men, the great Julius Caesar! Publicly
he asserts in the Senate that the immortality of the soul is
a vain chimera. He professes the creed which Roman-volup-
tuaries deduced from Epicurus, and denies all Divine inter-
ference in the affairs of the earth. A great authority for the
Materialists—they have none greater! They can show on their
side no intellect equal to Caesar's And yet this magnificent
free-thinker, rejecting a soul and a "Deity, habitually entered
his chariot in muttering a charm; crawled on his knees up the
steps of a temple to propitiate the abstraction called ‘Nemesis,'
w
A STRANGE STORY. 333
-.
and did not cross the Rubicon till he had consulted the omens.
What does all this prove? a very simple truth. Man has some
instincts with the brutes; for instance, hunger and sexual
love. Man has one instinct peculiar to himself, found univer-
sally (or with alleged exceptions in Savage states so rare, that
they do not affect the general law “)—an instinct of an invisible
power without this earth, and of a life beyond the grave, which
that power vouchsafes to his spirit. But the best of us cannot
violate an instinct with impunity. Resist hunger as long as you
can, and, rather than die of starvation, your instinct will make
you a cannibal; resist love when youth and nature impel to it,
and what pathologist does not track one broad path into mad-
ness or crime? So with the noblest instinct of all. Reject the
internal conviction by which the grandest thinkers have sanc-
...tioned the hope of the humblest Christian, and you are servile
at once to some faith inconceivably more hard to believe. The
imagination will not be withheld from its yearnings for vistas
beyond the walls of the flesh and the span of the present hour.
Philosophy itself, in rejecting the healthful creeds by which
man finds his safeguards in Sober prayer, and his guide through
the wilderness of visionary doubt, invents systems compared to
which the mysteries of theology are simple. Suppose any man
of strong, plain understanding had never heard of a Deity like
Him whom we Christians adore, then ask this man which he
can the better comprehend in his mind, and accept as a natural
faith, viz., the simple Christianity of his shepherd or the Pan-
theism of Spinoza? Place before an accomplished critic (who
comes with a perfectly unprejudiced mind to either inquiry),
first, the arguments of David Hume against the Gospel mira-
cles, and then the metaphysical crochets of David Hume himself.
This subtle philosopher, not content, with Berkeley, to get rid
of matter—not content, with Condillac, to get rid of spirit or
mind—proceeds to a miracle greater than any his Maker has
yet vouchsafed to reveal. He, being then alive and in the act
of writing, gets rid of himself altogether. Nay, he confesses he
cannot reason with any one who is stupid enough to think he
has a self. His words are: ‘What we call a mind is nothing
* It seems extremely doubtful whether the very few instances in which it has been as-
serted that a savage race has been found without recognition of a Deity and a future state
would bear searching examination. It is set forth, for example, in most of the popular
works on Australia, that the Australian savages have no notion of a Deity or a Hereafter,
that they only worship a devil, or evil spirit. . This assumption, though made more per-
emptorily, and by a greater number of writers than any similar one legarding other savages,
is altogether erroneous, and has no other foundation than the ignorance of the writers.
The Australian savages recognize a Deity, but He is too august for a name in their own
language ; in English they call Him The Great Master—an expression synonymous with
“The Great Lord.” They believe in a hereafter of eternal joy, and place it amongst the
stars.—See Strzelecki's “Physical Description of New South Wales.”
&
334 - A STRANGE STORY.
but a heap or collection of different perceptions or objects
united together by certain relations, and supposed, though
falsely, to be endowed with perfect simplicity and identity.
If any one, upon serious and candid reflection, thinks he has a
different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason with
him no longer.’ Certainly I would rather believe all the ghost
stories upon record, than believe that I am not even a ghost,
distinct and apart from the perceptions conveyed to me, no
matter how—just as I am distinct and apart from the furniture
in my room, no matter whether I found it there or whether
I bought it. If some old cosmogonist asked you to believe
that the primitive cause of the solar system was not to be traced
to a Divine Intelligence, but to a nebulosity, originally so
diffused that its existence can with difficulty be conceived, and
that the origin of the present system of organized beings equally
dispensed with the agency of a creative mind, and could be
referred to molecules formed in the water by the power of
attraction, till by modifications of cellular tissue in the gradual
lapse of ages, one monad became an oyster and another a Man—
would you not say this cosmogony could scarcely have misleds
the human understanding even in the earliest dawn of specula-
tive inquiry 2 Yet such are the hypotheses to which the desire
to philosophize away that simple proposition of a Divine First
Cause, which every child can comprehend, led two of the great-
est geniuses and profoundest reasoners of modern times—La
Place and La Marck.” Certainly the more you examine those
arch phantasmagorists, the philosophers who would leave noth-
ing in the universe but their own delusions, the more your
intellectual pride may be humbled. The wildest phenomena
which have startled you are not more extravagant than the
grave explanations which intellectual presumption adventures
on the elements of our organism and the relations between the
world of matter and the world of ideas.”
Here our conversation stopped, for Amy had now joined us,
and, looking up to reply, I saw the child’s innocent face between
me and the furrowed brow of the old man.
CHAPTER LXXII.
I TURNED back alone. The Sun was reddening the summits
of the distant mountain-range, but dark clouds, that portended
rain, were gathering behind my way and deepening the shad-
* See the observations on La Place and La Marck in the Introduction to Kirby's Bridge.
water Treatise.
A STRANGE STORY. 335
ows in many a Chasm and hollow which volcanic fires had
wrought on the surface of uplands undulating like diluvian
billows fixed into stone in the midst of their stormy swell. I
wandered on and away from the beaten track, absorbed in
thought. Could I acknowledge in Julius Faber’s conjectures
any basis for logical ratiocination? Or were they not the in-
genious fancies of that empirical Philosophy of Sentiment by
which the aged, in the decline of severer faculties, sometimes
assimilate their theories to the hazy romance of youth? I can
well conceive that the story I tell will be regarded by most as
a wild and fantastic fable; that by some it may be considered
..a vehicle for guesses at various riddles of Nature, without or
within us, which are free to the license of romance, though
forbidden to the caution of science. But I–I—know unmis-
takably my own identity, my own positive place in a substan-
tial' universe. And beyond that knowledge, what do I know?
Yet had Faber no ground for his startling parallels between
the chimeras of superstition and the alternatives to faith volun-
teered by the metaphysical speculations of knowledge? On
the theorems of Condillac, I, in common with numberless con-
temporaneous students (for, in my youth, Condillac held sway
in the schools, as now, driven forth from the schools, his opin-
ions float loose through the talk and the scribble of men of the
world, who perhaps never opened his page)—on the theorems
of Condillac I had built up a system of thought designed to
immure the swathed form of material philosophy from all rays
and all sounds of a world not material, as the walls of some
blind mausoleum shut out, from the mummy within, the whis-
per of winds and the gleaming of stars.
And did not those very theorems, when carried out to their
strict and completing results by the close reasonings of Hume,
resolve my own living identity, the one conscious indivisible ME,
into a bundle of memories derived from the senses which had
bubbled and duped my experience, and reduce into a phan-
tom, as spectral as that of the Luminous Shadow, the whole
solid frame of creation?
While pondering these questions, the storm, whose forewarn-
ings I had neglected to heed, burst forth with all the sudden-
ness peculiar to the Australian climes. The rains descended
like the rushing of floods. In the beds of watercourses,
which at noon, seemed dried up and exhausted, the torrents
began to swell and to rave; the gray crags around them were
animated into living waterfalls. I looked round and the land-
- scape was as changed as a scene that replaces a scene on the
336 A STRANGE STORY.
player's stage. I was aware that I had wandered far from my
home, and I knew not what direction I should take to regain it.
Close at hand, and raised above the torrents that now rushed in
many a gulley and tributary creek, around and before me, the
mouth of a deep cave, overgrown with bushes and creeping
flowers tossed wildly to and fro between the rain from above
and the spray of cascades below, offered a shelter from the
storm. I entered; scaring innumerable flocks of bats striking
against me, blinded by the glare of the lightning that followed
me into the cavern; and hastening to re-settle themselves on
the pendants of stalactites, or the jagged, buttresses of primae-
val wall.
From time to time lightning darted into the gloom and lin-
gered amongst its shadows; and I saw, by the flash, that the
floors on which I stood were strewed with strange bones, some
amongst them the fossilized relics of races destroyed by the
Deluge. The rain continued for more than two hours with
unabated violence; then it ceased almost as suddenly as it
had come on. And the lustrous moon of Australia burst from
the clouds, shining, bright as an English dawn, into the hol-
lows of the cave. And then simultaneously arose all the choral
Songs of the wilderness—creatures whose voices are heard at
night—the loud whirr of the locusts, the musical boom of the
_bullfrog, the cuckoo note of the morepork, and, mournful
amidst all those merrier sounds, the hoot of the owl, through
the wizard she oaks and the pale green of the gum-trees.
. I stepped forth into the open air and gazed, first instinc-
tively, on the heavens, next, with more heedful eye, upon the
earth. The nature of the soil bore the evidence of volcanic
fires long since extinguished. Just before my feet, the rays
fell full upon a bright yellow streak in the block of quartz half
embedded in the soft moist soil. In the midst of all the sol-
emn thoughts and the intense sorrows which weighed upon heart
and mind, that yellow gleam startled the mind into a direction re-
mote from philosophy, quickened the heart to a beat that
chimed with no household affections. Involuntarily I stooped;
impulsively I struck the block with the hatchet, or tomahawk.
I carried habitually about me, for the purpose of marking the
trees that I wished to clear from the waste of my broad
domain. The quartz was shattered by the stroke, and left dis-
buried its glittering treasure. My first glance had not deceived
me. I, vain seeker after knowledge, had, at least, discov-
ered gold. I took up the bright metal—gold ! I paused; I
looked round; the land that just before had seemed to me so
A STRANGE STORY. 337
worthless, took the value of Ophir. Its features had before
been as unknown to me as the Mountains of the Moon, and
now my memory became wonderfully quickened. I recalled
- the rough map of my possessions, the first careless ride round
their boundaries. Yes, the land on which I stood—for miles,
to the spur of those farther mountains—the land was mine,
and, beneath its surface, there was gold! I closed my eyes;
for some moments, visions of boundless wealth, and of the
royal power which such wealth could command, swept athwart
my brain. But my heart rapidly settled back to its real treas-
ure. “What matters,” I sighed, “all this dross? Could
Ophir itself buy back to my Lilian's smile one ray of the light
which gave “glory to the grass and splendor to the flower’?”
So muttering, I flung the gold into the torrent that raged
below, and went on through the moonlight, sorrowing si-
lently—only thankful for the discovery that had quickened my
reminiscence of the landmarks by which to steer my way
through the wilderness.
The night was half gone, for even when I had gained the
familiar track through the pastures, the swell of the many
winding creeks that now intersected the way obliged me often
to retrace my steps; to find, sometimes, the bridge of a felled
tree which had been providently left unremoved over the now
foaming torrent, and, more than once, to swim across the cur-
rent, in which swimmers less strong or less practised would
have been dashed down the falls, where loose logs and torn
trees went clattering and whirled: for I was in danger of life.
A band of the savage natives were stealthily creeping on my
track—the natives in those parts were not then so much awed
by the white man as now. A boomerang * had whirred by
me, burying itself amongst the herbage close before my feet. I
had turned, sought to find and to face these dastardly foes;
they contrived to elude me. But when I moved on, my ear,
sharpened by danger, heard them moving, too, in my rear.
Once only three hideous forms, suddenly faced me, springing
up from a thicket, all tangled with honeysuckles and creepers
of blue and vermilion. I walked steadily up to them; they
halted a moment or so in suspense, but perhaps they were
scared by my stature or awed by my aspect; and the Unfa-
miliar, though Human, had terror for them, as the Unfamiliar,
although but a Shadow, had had terror for me. They van-
ished, and as quickly as if they had crept into the earth.
At length the air brought me the soft perfume of my well-
* A missile weapon peculiar to the Australian savages.
338 A STRANGE STORY.
known acacias, and my house stood before me, amidst English
flowers and English fruit-trees, under the effulgent Australian
moon. Just as I was opening the little gate which gave access
from the pasture-land into the garden, a figure in white rose.
up from under light, feathery boughs, and a hand was laid on
my arm. I started; but my surprise was changed into fear
when I saw the pale face and Sweet eyes of Lilian.
“Heavens' you here! you! at this hour! Lilian, what is
this?’’ *
‘‘Hush!” she whispered, clinging to me; “Hush! do not
tell: no one knows. I missed you when the storm came on; I
have missed you ever since." Others went in search of you
and came back. I could not sleep, but the rest are sleeping,
so I stole down to watch for you. Brother, brother, if any
harm chanced to you, even the angels could not comfort me;
all would be dark, dark But you are safe, safe, safe!” And
she clung to me yet closer.
“Ah! Lilian, Lilian, your vision in the hour I first beheld
you was indeed prophetic—‘Each has need of the other.' Do
you remember?”
“Softly, softly,” she said, “let me think!” She stood
quietly by my side, looking up into the sky, with all its num-
berless stars, and its solitary moon now sinking slow behind
the verge of the forest. “It comes back to me,” she mur-
mured softly—‘‘the Long ago—the Sweet Long ago!”
I held my breath to listen.
“There—there!” she resumed, pointing to the heavens;
“Do you see? You are there, and my father, and—and—Oh!
that terrible face—those serpent eyes—the dead man’s skull!
Save me—save me!” -
She bowed her head upon my bosom, and I led her gently
back towards the house. As we gained the door which she
had left open, the starlight shining across the shadowy gloom
within, she lifted her face from my breast, and cast a hurried,
fearful look round the shining garden, then into the dim recess
beyond the threshold. \
“It is there—there!—the Shadow that lured me on, whisper.
ing that if I followed it I should join my beloved. False,
dreadful Shadow ! it will fade soon—fade into the grinning,
horrible skull. Brother, brother, where is my Allen? Is he
dead—dead—or is it I who am dead to him?”
I could but clasp her again to my breast, and seek to mantle
her shivering form with my dripping garments, all the while
my eyes—following the direction which hers had taken—dwelt
A STRANGE STORY. 339
on the walls of the nook within the threshold, half-lost in dark-
ness, half-white in starlight. And there I, too, beheld the
haunting Luminous Shadow, the spectral effigies of the myste-
rious being whose very existence in the flesh was a riddle un-
solved by my reason. Distinctly I saw the Shadow, but its
light was far paler, its outline far more vague, than when I had
beheld it before. I took courage as I felt Lilian’s heart beat-
ing against my own. I advanced, I crossed the threshold—the
Shadow was gone.
“There is no Shadow here—no phantom to daunt thee, my
life's life,” said I, bending over Lilian.
‘‘It has touched me in passing; I feel it—cold, cold, cold !”
she answered faintly. *
I bore her to her room, placed her on her bed, struck a light,
watched over her. At dawn there was a change in her face,
and from that time health gradually left her; strength slowly,
slowly, yet to me perceptibly, ebbed from her life away.
CHAPTER LXXIII.
Mont Hs upon months have rolled on since the night in
which Lilian had watched for my coming amidst the chilling
airs under the haunting moon. I have said that from the date
of that night her health began gradually to fail, but in her mind
there was evidently at work some slow revolution. Her vision-
ary abstractions were less frequent; when they occurred, less
prolonged. There was no longer in her soft face that celestial
serenity which spoke her content in her dreams, but often a
look of anxiety and trouble. She was even more silent than
before; but when she did speak, there were now evident some
struggling gleams of memory. She startled us, at times, by a
distinct allusion to the events and scenes of her early child-
hood. More than once she spoke of commonplace incidents
and mere acquaintances at L. At last she seemed to rec-
ognize Mrs. Ashleigh as her mother; but me, as Allen Fen-
wick, her betrothed, her bridegroom, no! Once or twice she
spoke to me of her beloved as of a stranger to myself, and
asked me not to deceive her—should she ever see him again?
There was one change in this new phase of her state that
wounded me to the quick. She had always previously seemed
to welcome my presence; now there were hours, sometimes
days together, in which my presence was evidently painful to
her. e would become agitated when I stole into her room—
34o A STRANGE STORY.
make signs to me to leave her—grow yet more disturbed if I
did not immediately obey, and become calm again when I was
gone. -
Faber sought constantly to sustain my courage and admin-
istered to my hopes by reminding me of the prediction he had
hazarded, viz., that through some malady to the frame the
reason would be ultimately restored.
He said: “Observel her mind was first roused from its
slum')er by the affectionate, unconquered impulse of her heart.
You were absent—the storm alarmed her—she missed you—
feared for you. The love within her, not alienated, though
latent, drew her thoughts into definite human tracks. And
thus, the words that you tell me she uttered when you ap-
peared before her were words of love, stricken, though as yet
irregularly, as the winds strike the harp-strings, from chords of
awakened memory. The same unwonted excitement, together
with lengthened exposure to the cold night-air, will account
for the shock to her physical system, and the languor and
waste of strength by which it has been succeeded.”
“Ay, and the Shadow that we both saw within the threshold.
What of that?’”
“Are there no records on evidence, which most physicians
of very extended practice will perhaps allow that their ex-
perience more or less tends to confirm—no records of the
singular coincidences between individual impressions which
are produced by sympathy? Now, whether you or your Lilian
were first haunted by this Shadow I know not. Perhaps before
it appeared to you in the wizard's chamber, it had appeared to
her by the Monks’ Well. Perhaps, as it came to you in the
prison, so it lured her through the solitudes, associating its
illusory guidance with dreams of you. And again, when she
saw it within your threshold, your phantasy, so abruptly in-
voked, made you see with the eyes of your Lilian I Does this
doctrine of sympathy, though by that very mystery you two
loved each other at first—though, without it, love at first sight
were in itself an incredible miracle—does, I say, this doctrine
of sympathy seem to you inadmissible? Then nothing is left
for us but to revolve the conjecture I before threw out. Have
certain organizations like that of Margrave the power to im-
press, through space, the imaginations of those over whom
they have forced a control? I know not, But if they have, it
is not supernatural; it is but one of those operations in Nature
so rare and exceptional, and of which testimony and eyidence
are so imperfect and so liable to superstitious illusions, that
*-
A STRANGE STORY. 34I
*.
they have not yet been traced—as, if truthful, no doubt they
can be by the patient genius of science—to one of those sec-
ondary causes by which the Creator ordains that Nature shall
act on Man.’’
By degrees I became dissatisfied with my conversations with
Faber. I yearned for explanations; all guesses but bewildered
me more. In his family, with one exception, I found no con-
genial association. His nephew seemed to me an ordinary
specimen of a very trite human nature—a young man of lim-
ited ideas, fair moral tendencies, going mechanically right
where not tempted to wrong. The same desire of gain which
had urged him to gamble and speculate when thrown in soci-
eties rife with such example, led him, now, in the Bush, to
healthful, industrious, persevering labor. Spes foºet agrico-
/as, says the poet; the same Hope which entices the fish to the
hook, impels the plough of the husbandman. The young
farmer's young wife was somewhat superior to him; she had
more refinement of taste, more culture of mind, but, living
in his life, she was inevitably levelled to his ends and pursuits.
And, next to the babe in the cradle, no object seemed to her
so important as that of guarding the sheep from the scab and
the dingoes. I was amazed to see how quietly a man whose
mind was so stored by life and by books as that of Julius
Faber—a man who had loved the clash of conflicting intellects,
and acquired the rewards of fame—could accommodate himself
to the cabined range of his kinsfolks' half-civilized existence,
take interest in their trivial talk, find varying excitement in the
monotonous household of a peasant-like farmer. I could not
help saying as much to him once. “My friend,” replied the
old man, “believe me that the happiest art of intellect, how-
ever lofty, is that which enables it to be cheerfully at home
with the Real!”
The only one of the family in which Faber was domesticated
in whom I found an interest, to whose talk I could listen with-
out fatigue, was the child Amy. Simple though she was in
language, patient of labor as the most laborious, I recognized
in her a quiet nobleness of sentiment, which exalted above the
commonplace the acts of her commonplace life. She had no
precocious intellect, no enthusiastic fancies, but she had an
exquisite activity of heart. It was her heart that animated her
sense of duty, and made duty a sweetness and a joy. She felt
to the core the kindness of those around her; exaggerated,
with the warmth of her gratitude, the claims which that kind-
ness imposed, Even for the blessing of life, which she shared
*
342 A STRANGE STORY.
.*
with all creation, she felt as if singled out by the undeserved
favor of the Creator, and thus was filled with religion because
she was filled with love.
My interest in this child was increased and deepened by my
saddened and not wholly unremorseful remembrance of the
night on which her sobs had pierced my ear—the night from
which I Secretly dated the mysterious agencies that had
wrenched from their proper field and career both my mind and
my life. But a gentler interest endeared her to my thoughts
in the pleasure that Lilian felt in her visits, in the affectionate
intercourse that sprang up between the afflicted sufferer and
the harmless infant. Often when we failed to comprehend
some meaning which Lilian evidently wished to convey to us—
zºne, her mother and her husband—she was understood with as
much ease by Amy, the unlettered child, as by Faber, the
gray-haired thinker.
“How is it—how is it?” I asked, impatiently and jealously,
of Faber. ‘ ‘‘Love is said to interpret where wisdom fails, and
you, yourself, talk of the marvels which sympathy may effect
between lover and beloved; yet when, for days together, I
cannot succeed in unravelling Lilian's wish or her thought—
and her own mother is equally in fault—you or Amy, closeted
alone with her for five minutes, comprehend and are com-
prehended.”
“Allen,” answered Faber, “Amy and I believe in spirit, and
she, in whom mind is dormant but spirit awake, feels in
such belief a sympathy which she has not, in that respect, with .
yourself nor even with her mother. You seek only through
your mind to conjecture hers. Her mother has sense clear
enough where habitual experience can guide it, but that sense
is confused, and forsakes her when forced from the regular
pathway in which it has been accustomed to tread. Amy and
I through soul guess at soul, and though mostly contented
with earth, we can both rise at times into heaven. We pray.”
“Alas!” said I, half-mournfully, half-angrily: “when you
thus speak of Mind as distinct from Soul, it was only in that
Vision which you bid me regard as the illusion of a fancy stimu-
lated by chemical vapors, producing on the brain an effect simi-
lar to that of opium or the inhalation of the oxide gas, that I
have ever seen the silver spark of the Soul, distinct from the light
of the Mind. And holding, as I do, that all intellectual ideas
are derived from the experiences of the body, whether I ac-
cept the theory of Locke, or that of Condillac, or that into
which their propositions reach their final development in the
*
A STRANGE STORY. 343
a'
wonderful subtlety of Hume, I cannot detect the immaterial
spirit in the material substance, much less follow its escape
from the organic matter in which the principle of thought
ceases with the principle of life. When the metaphysician, con-
tending for the immortality of the thinking faculty, analyzes
Mind, his analysis comprehends the mind of the brute, nay, of
the insect, as well as that of man. Take Reid’s definition of
Mind, as the most comprehensive which I can at the moment
remember: “By the mind of a man we understand that in him
which thinks, remembers, reasons, and wills.’ But this defini-
tion only distinguishes the mind of man from that of the brute
by superiority in the same attributes, and not by attributes
denied to the brute. An animal, even an insect, thinks, re-
members, reasons, and wills.” Few naturalists will now sup-
port the doctrine that all the mental operations of brute or
insect are to be exclusively referred to instincts; and, even if
they do, the word instinct is a very vague word—loose and
large enough to cover an abyss which our knowledge has not
sounded. And, indeed, in proportion as an animal, like the
dog, becomes cultivated by intercourse, his instincts grow weak-
er, and his ideas formed by experience (viz., his mind) more
developed, often to the conquest of the instincts themselves.
Hence, with his usual candor, Dr. Abercrombie, in contending
‘that everything mental ceases to exist after death, when we
know that everything corporeal continues to exist, is a gratui-
tous assumption contrary to every rule of philosophical in-
quiry,’ feels compelled, by his reasoning, to admit the proba-
bility of a future life even to the lower animals. His words
are: ‘To this mode of reasoning it has been objected that it
would go to establish an immaterial principle in the lower ani-
mals, which in them exhibits many of the phenomena of mind.
I have only to answer, Be it so. There are in the lower ani-
mals many of the phenomena of mind, and with regard to
these, we also contend that they are entirely distinct from any-
thing we know of the properties of matter, which is all that we
* “Are intelligence and instinct, thus differing in their relative proportion in man as
compared with all other animals, yet the same in ii. and manner of operation in both 2
To this question we must give at once, an affirmative answer. The expression of Cuvier,
regarding the faculty of reasoning in lower animals, ‘Leur intelligence exécute des opéra-
tions du mème genre,' is true in its full sense. We can in no manner define reason so as to
exclude acts which are at every moment present to our observation, and which we find in
many, instances to contravene the natural instincts of the species. The demeanor and acts
of the dog in reference to his master, or the various uses to which he is put by man, are as
strictly logical as those we witness in the ordinary transactions of life.”—(Sir Henry Hol-
land, chapters on Mental Physiology, p. 220.) The whole of the chapter on Instincts and
Habits in this work should be read in connection with the passage just quoted. The work
itselſ, at once cautious and suggestive, is not one of the least obligations which philosophy
and eligion alike owe to the lucubrations of English medical men.
344 - *** A STRANGE STORY.
•
*. *
*
mean, or can mean, by being immaterial.” Am I then-driven
to admit that if man’s mind is immaterial and imperishable,
so also is that of the ape and the ant?”
“I own,” said Faber, with his peculiar smile, arch and
genial, ‘that if I were compelled to make that admission, it
would not shock my pride. I do not presume to set any limit
to the goodness of the Creator; and should be as humbly
pleased as the Indian, if in
6. yonder sky,
My faithful dog should bear me company.’
You are too familair with the works of that Titan in wisdom
and error, Descartes, not to recollect the interesting correspon-
dence between the urbane philosopher and our combative
countryman, Henry More, f on this very subject; in which
certainly More has the best of it when Descartes insists on
reducing what he calls the soul ("dme) of brutes into the
same kind of machines as man constructs from inorganized
matter. The learning, indeed, lavished on the insoluble ques-
tion involved in the psychology of the inferior animals, is a
proof at least of the all-inquisitive, redundant spirit of man.j
We have almost a literature in itself devoted to endeavors to
interpret the language of brutes. $ Dupont de Nemours has
discovered that dogs talk in vowels, using only two conson-
ants, G, z, when they are angry. He asserts that cats employ
the same vowels as dogs; but their language is more affluent
in consonants, including M, N, B, R, V, F. How many labori-
ous efforts have been made to define and to construe the song
of the nightingale! One version of that song by Beckstein, the
naturalist, published in 1840, I remember to have seen. And
I heard a lady, gifted with a singularly charming voice, chant
the mysterious vowels with so exquisite a pathos, that one
could not refuse to believe her when she declared that she fully
comprehended the bird’s meaning, and gave to the nightin-
gale's warble the tender interpretation of her own woman’s
heart.
“But leaving all such discussions to their proper place
* Abercrombie's “Intellectual Powers,” p. 26. Fifteenth edition.
t CEuvres de Descartes, vol. x. p. 178, et seq. (Cousin's edition.)
M. Tissot, the distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Dijon, in his recent work,
“La Vie dans l’Homme,” p. 255, gives a long, and illustrious list of philosophers who
assign a rational soul (&me) to the inferior animals, though he truly adds, “that they have
not always the courage of their opinion.”
§ Some idea of the extent of research and imagination bestowed on this subject may be
gleaned from the sprightly work of Pierquin de Gemblouz, “Idiomologie des Animaux,”
published at Paris, 1844.
A STRANGE STORY. 345
/
** .* *
amongst the Curiosities of Literature, I come in earnest to the
question you have so earnestly raised; and to me the distinction
between man and the lower animals in reference to a spiritual
nature designed for a future existence, and the mental opera-
tions whose uses are bounded to an existence on earth, seems
ineffaceably clear. Whether ideas or even perceptions be in-
nate or all formed by experience is a speculation for metaphy.
sicians, which, so far as it affects the question of an immaterial
principle, I am quite willing to lay aside. I can well under-
stand that a materialist may admit innate ideas in Man, as he
must admit them in the instinct of brutes, tracing them to he-
reditary predispositions. On the other hand, we know that
the most devout believers in our spiritual nature have insisted,
with Locke, in denying any idea, even of the Deity, to be
innate.
“But here comes my argument. I care not how ideas are
formed, the material point is, how are the capacities to receive
ideas formed Ž The ideas may all come from experience, but the
capacity to receive the ideas must be inherent. I take the word
capacity as a good plain English word, rather than the more
technical word ‘receptivity,” employed by Kant. And by
capacity I mean the passive power * to receive ideas, whether
in man or in any living thing by which ideas are received. A
man and an elephant is each formed with capacities to receive
ideas suited to the several place in the universe held by each.
“The more I look through nature the more I find that on
all varieties of organized life is carefully bestowed the capacity
to receive the impressions, be they called perceptions or ideas,
which are adapted to the uses eačh creature is intended to de-
rive from them. I find, then, that Man alone is endowed with
the capacity to receive the ideas of a God, of Soul, of Wor-
ship, of a Hereafter. I see no trace. of such a capacity in the
inferior races; nor, however their intelligence may be refined
by culture, is such capacity ever apparent in them.
“But wherever capacities to receive impressions are suffi.
ciently general in any given species of creature to be called
universal to that species, and yet not given to another species,
then, from all analogy throughout Nature, those capacities are
surely designed by Providence for the distinct use and con-
servation of the species to which they are given.
“It is no answer to me to say that the inherent capacities
thus bestowed on Man do not suffice in themselves to make
4. “Faculty is active power; capacity is passive power.”—Sir W. Hamilton, “Lectures on
ſ
/
etaphysics and Logic,”vol. i. p. 178.
346 A STRANGE STORY.
him form right notions of a Deity or a Hereafter; because it is
plainly the design of Providence that Man must learn to cor-
rect and improve all his notions by his own study and observa-
tion. He must build a hut before he can build a Parthenon;
he must believe with the savage or the heathen before he can
believe with the philosopher or Christian. In a word, in all
his capacities, Man has only given to him, not the immediate
knowledge of the Perfect, but the means to strive towards the
Perfect. And thus one of the most accomplished of modern
reasoners, to whose lectures you must have listened with
delight in your college days, says well: “Accordingly, the
Sciences always studied with keenest interest are those in a
State of progress and uncertainty; absolute certainty and abso-
lute completion would be the paralysis of any study, and the
last worst calamity that could befall Man, as he is at present
constituted, would be that full and final possession of specula-
tive truth which he now vainly anticipates as the consumma-
tion of his intellectual happiness.' * th
“Well, then, in all those capacities for the reception of im-
pressions from external Nature which are given to Man and
not to the brutes, I see the evidence of Man's Soul. I can
understand why the inferior animal has no capacity to receive
the idea of a Deity and of Worship—simply because the in-
ferior animal, even if graciously admitted to a future life, may
not therein preserve the sense of its identity. I can under-
stand even why that sympathy with each other which we men.
possess, and which constitutes the great virtue we emphatically
call Humanity, is not possessed by the lesser animals (or, at
least, in a very rare and exceptional degree) even where they
live in communities, like beavers, or bees, or ants; because
men are destined to meet, to know, and to love each other in
the life to come, and the bond between the brutes ceases here.
“Now the more, then, we examine the inherent capacities
bestowed distinctly and solely on Man, the more they seem to
distinguish him from the other races by their comprehension of .
objects beyond his life upon this earth. ‘Man alone,’ says
Müller, ‘can conceive abstract notions’; and it is in abstract
notions, such as time, space, matter, Spirit, light, form, quan-
tity, essence, that man grounds, not only all philosophy, all
science, but all that practically improves one generation for the
benefit of the next. And why? Because all these abstract no-
tions unconsciously lead the mind away from the material into
the immaterial, from the present into the future. But if man
* Sir W. Hamilton's Lectures, vol. i. p. Io,
A STRANGE STORY. 347
*-
ceases to exist when he disappears in the grave, you must be
compelled to affirm that he is the only creature in existence
whom Nature or Providence has condescended to deceive and
cheat by capacities for which there are no available objects.
How nobly and how truly has Chalmers said: ‘What inference
shall we draw from this remarkable law in Nature that there is
nothing waste and ºnothing meaningless in the feelings and
faculties wherewith living creatures are endowed? For each
desire there is a counterpart object; for each faculty there is
room and opportunity for exercise, either in the present or the
coming futurity. S Now, but for the doctrine of immortality,
Man would be an exception to this law; he would stand forth
as an anomaly in Nature, with aspirations in his heart for which
the universe had no antitype to offer, with capacities of
understanding and thought that never were to be followed by
objects of corresponding greatness through the whole history
of his being ! . . . .
“With the inferior animals there is a certain squareness of
adjustment, if we may so term it, between each desire and its
correspondent gratification. The one is evenly met by the
other, and there is a fulness and definiteness of enjoyment up to
the capacity of enjoyment. Not so with Man who, both from
the vastness of his propensities and the vastness of his powers,
feels himself chained and beset in a field too narrow for him.
He alone labors under the discomfort of an incongruity between
his circumstances and his powers; and unless there be new
circumstances awaiting him in a more advanced state of being,
he, the noblest of Nature's products here, would turn out to be
the greatest of her failures.’”
“This, then, I take to be the proof of Soul in Man, not that
he has a mind, because, as you justly say, inferior animals
have that, though in a lesser degree, but because he has the
capacities to comprehend, as soon as he is capable of any ab-
stract ideas whatsoever, the very truths not needed for self-
conservation on earth, and therefore not given to yonder ox
and opossum, viz., the nature of Deity—Soul—Hereafter.
And in the recognition of these truths, the Human society,
that excels the Society of beavers, bees, and ants, by perpetual
and progressive improvement on the emotions inherited from
its progenitors, rests its basis. Thus, in fact, this world is
benefited for men by their belief in the next, while the society
* Chalmers, Bridgewater Treatise, vol. ii. pp. 28, 30. Perhaps I should observe, that
here and elsewhere in the dialºgues between Faber and Fenwick, it has generally been
thought better to substitute the words of the author quoted for the mere outline or purport
of the quotation which memory afforded to the interlocutor. 2
348 - A STRANGE • STO1&Y.
--
sº
of brutes remains age after age the same. Neither the bee
nor the beaver has, in all probability, improved since the
Deluge. -
“But, inseparable from the conviction of these truths is the
impulse of prayer and worship... It does not touch my argu-
ment when a philosopher of the school of . Bolingbroke or Lu-
Cretius says, “that the origin of prayer is in Man’s ignorance
of the phenomena of Nature.' That it is fear or ignorance
which, “when rocked the mountains or when groaned the
ground, taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray,’ my an-
swer is—the brutes are much more forcibly impressed by natural
phenomena than Man is; the bird and the beast know before
you and I do when the mountain will rock and the ground
groan, and their instinct leads them to shelter; but it does not
lead them to prayer. If my theory be right that Soul is to be
sought not in the question whether mental ideas be innate or
formed by experience, by the sense, by association or habit,
but in the in/lerent capacity to receive ideas, then, the capacity
bestowed on Man alone, to be impressed by Nature herself
with the idea of a Power superior to Nature, with which Power
he can establish commune, is a proof that to Man alone the
Maker has made Nature itself proclaim His existence—that to
Man alone the Deity vouchsafes the communion with. Himself
which comes from prayer.”
“Even were this so,” said I, “is not the Creator omniscient?
If all-wise, all-foreseeing? If all-foreseeing, all-preordaining?
Can the prayer of His creature alter the ways of His will?”
“For the answer to a question,” returned Faber, “which is
not unfrequently asked by the clever men of the world, I
ought to refer you to the skilled theologians who have so tri-
umphantly carried the reasoner over that ford of doubt which is
crossed every day by the infant. But as we have not their
books in the wilderness, I am contented to draw my reply as a
necessary and logical sequence from the propositions I have
sought to ground on the plain observation of Nature. I can
only guess at the Deity's Omniscience, or His modes of enforc-
ing His power, by the observation of His general laws; and of
all His laws, I know of none more general than the impulse
which bids men pray—which makes Nature so act, that all the
phenomena of Nature we can conceive, however startling and
inexperienced, do not make the brute pray; but there is not a
trouble that can happen to Man, but what his impulse is to
pray—always provided, indeed, that he is not a philosopher.
I say not this in scorn of the philosopher, to whose wildest
A STRANGE STORY. 349
guess our obligations are infinite, but simply. because for all
which is impulsive to Man, there is a reason in Nature which
no philosophy can explain away. I do not, then, bewilder
myself by seeking to bind and limit the Omniscience of the
Deity to my finite ideas. I content myself with supposing
that, somehow or other, He has made it quite compatible with
His Omniscience that. Man should obey the impulse which
leads him to believe that, in addressing a Deity, he is address.
ing a tender, compassionate, benignant Father, and in that
obedience shall obtain beneficial results. If that impulse be an
illusion, then we must say that Heaven governs the earth by a
lie; and that is impossible, because, reasoning by analogy, all
Nature is truthful—that is, Nature gives to no species instincts
or impulses which are not of service to it. Should I not be
a shallow physician if, where I find in the human organization
a principle or a property so general that I must believe it nor-
mal to the healthful conditions of that organization, I should
refuse to admit that Nature intended it for use? Reasoning by
all analogy, must I not say the habitual neglect of its use must
more or less injure the harmonious wellbeing of the whole
human system?, I could have much to add upon the point in
dispute by which the creed implied in your question would
enthral the Divine mercy by the necessities of its Divine wisdom,
and substitute for a benignant Deity a relentless Fate. But
here I should exceed my province. I am no theologian.
Enough for me that in all my afflictions, all my perplexities, an
impulse, that I obey as an instinct, moves me at once to
prayer. Do I find by experience that the prayer is heard, that
the affliction is removed, the doubt is solved? That, indeed,
would be presumptuous to say. But it is not presumptuous to
think that by the efficacy of prayer my heart becomes fortified
against the sorrow, and my reason more Serene amidst the
doubt.”
I listened, and ceased to argue. I felt as if in that solitude,
and in the pause of my wonted mental occupations, my intellect
was growing languid, and its old weapons rusting in disuse.
My pride took alarm. I had so from my boyhood cherished
the idea of fame, and so glorified the search after knowledge,
that I recoiled in dismay from the thought that I had relin-
quished knowledge, and cut myself off from fame. I resolved
to resume my once favorite philosophical pursuits, re-examine
and complete the Work to which I had once committed my
hopes of renown; and, simultaneously, a restless desire seized
me to communicate, though but at brief intervals, with other
*-
35o A STRANGE STORY.
minds than those immediately within my reach—minds fresh
from the old world, and reviving the memories of its vivid civ-
ilization. Emigrants frequently passed my doors, but I had
hitherto shrunk from tendering the hospitalities so universally
accorded in the colony. I could not endure to expose to
such rough strangers my Lilian's mournful affliction, and that
thought was not less intolerable to Mrse Ashleigh. I now has-
tily constructed a log-building a few hundred yards from the
house, and near the main track taken by travellers through
the spacious pastures. I transported to this building my
books and scientific instruments. In an upper story I placed
my telescopes and lenses, my crucibles and retorts. I renewed
my chemical experiments; I sought to invigorate my mind by
other branches of science which I had hitherto less cultured:
meditated new theories on Light and Color; collected speci-
mens in Natural History; subjected animalcules to my micro-
scope, geological fossils to my hammer. With all these quick-
ened occupations of thought, I strove to distract myself from
Sorrow, and strengthen my reason against the illusions of my
fantasy. The Luminous Shadow was not seen again on my
wall, and the thought of Margrave himself was banished. --
In this building I passed many hours of each day; more
and more earnestly plunging my thoughts into the depths of
abstract study, as Lilian’s unaccountable dislike to my pres-
ence became more and more decided. When I thus ceased to
think that my life cheered and comforted hers, my heart's
occupation was gone. I had annexed to the apartment re-
served for myself in this log-hut a couple of spare rooms, in
which I could accommodate passing strangers. I learned to
look forward to their coming with interest, and to see them
depart with regret; yet, for the most part, they were of the
ordinary class of colonial adventurers: bankrupt tradesmen,
unlucky farmers, forlorn mechanics, hordes of unskilled labor-
ers, now and then a briefless barrister, or a sporting collegian
who had lost his all on the Derby. One day, however, a
young man of education and manners that unmistakably pro-
claimed the cultured gentleman of Europe, stopped at my
door. He was a cadet of a noble Prussian ſamily, which for
some political reasons had settled itself in Paris; there he had be-
come intimate with young French nobles, and, living the life of
a young French noble, had soon scandalized his German parents,
forestalled his slender inheritance, and been compelled to fly
his father’s frown and his tailor's bills. All this he told me
with a lively frankness which proved how much the wit of a
*
A STRANGE story. 35 I
German can be quickened in the atmosphere of Paris. An old
college friend, of birth inferior to his own, had been as unfor-
tunate in seeking to make money as this young prodigal had
been an adept in spending it. The friend, a few years pre-
viously, had accompanied other Germans in emigration to
Australia, and was already thriving; the spendthrift noble was
on his way to join the bankrupt trader, at a German settlement
fifty miles distant from my house. This young man was unlike
any German I ever met. He had all the exquisite levity by
which the well-bred Frenchman gives to the doctrines of the
Cynic the grace of the Epicurean. He owned himself to be
good for nothing with an elegance of candor which not only
disarmed censure, but seemed to challenge admiration ; and,
withal, the happy spendthrift was so inebriate with hope—sure
that he should be rich before he was thirty. How and where-
fore rich? He could have no more explained than I can
square the circle. When the grand serious German nature
does Frenchify itself, it can become so extravagantly French!
I listened, almost enviously, to this light-hearted profligate's
babble, as we sat by my rude fireside—I, sombre man of
science and sorrow, he, smiling child of idleness and pleasure,
so much one of Nature's courtier-like nobles, that there, as he
smoked his villanous pipe, in his dust-soiled shabby garments,
and with his ruffianly revolver stuck into his belt, I would defy
the daintiest Aristarch who ever presided as critic over the
holiday world not to have said: “There smiles the genius be-
yond my laws, the born darling of the Graces, who in every
circumstance, in every age, like Aristippus, would have so-
cially charmed—would have been welcome to the orgies of a
Caesar or a Clodius, to the boudoirs of a Montespan or a Pom-
padour—have lounged through the Mulberry Gardens with a
Rochester and a Buckingham, or smiled from the death-cart,
with a Richelieu and a Lauzun, a gentleman's disdain of a
mob l’’
I was so thinking as we sat, his light talk frothing up from his
careless lips, when suddenly from the spray and the sparkle of
that light talk was flung forth the name of Margrave.
“Margrave!” I exclaimed. “Pardon me. What of him?”
“What of him! I asked if, by chance, you knew the only
Englishman I ever had the meanness to envy.”
“Perhaps you speak of one person, and I thought of
another.”
“Pardieu, my dear host, there can scarcely be two Mar-
graves! The one of whom I speak flashed like a meteor upon
352 A STRANG Fºº STORY.
Paris, bought from a prince of the Bourse a palace that might
have lodged a prince of the blood-royal, eclipsed our Jew
bankers in splendor, our ſeunesse dorée in good looks and
hair-brain adventures, and, strangest of all, filled his salons
with philosophers and charlatans, chemists and spirit-rappers;
insulting the gravest dons of the schools by bringing them face
to face with the most impudent quacks, the most ridiculous
dreamers—and yet, withal, himself so racy and charming, so
bon prince, so bon enfant / For six months he was the rage at
Paris: perhaps he might have continued to be the rage there for
six years, but all at once the meteor vanished as suddenly as it
had flashed. Is this the Margrave whom you know?”
“I should not have thought the Margrave whom I knew
could have reconciled his tastes to the life of cities.”
“Nor could this man: cities were too tame for him. He
has gone to some far-remote wilds in the East—some say in
search of the Philosopher's Stone; for he actually maintained
in his house a Sicilian adventurer, who, when at work on that
famous discovery, was stified by the fumes of his own crucible.
After that misfortune, Margrave took Paris in disgust, and we
lost him.” ^gs
“So this is the only Englishman whom you envy Envy
him? Why?” **
“Because he is the only Englishman I ever met who con-
trived to be rich and yet free from the spleen; I envied him
because one had only to look at his face and see how thor-
oughly he enjoyed the life of which your countrymen seem to
be so heartily tired! But now that I have satisfied your curi-
osity, pray satisfy mine. Who and what is this Englishman?”
“Who and what was he supposed at Paris to be?” 2
“Conjectures were numberless. One of your countrymen
suggested that which was most generally favored. This gen-
tleman, whose name I forget, but who was one of those old
roués who fancy themselves young because they live with the
young, no sooner set eyes upon Margrave, than he exclaimed:
‘Louis Grayle come to life again, as I saw him forty-four years
ago! But no—still younger, still handsomer—it must be his
Son ('''
“Louis Grayle, who was said to be murdered at Aleppo’’’
“The same. That strange old man was enormously rich;
but it seems that he hated his lawful heirs, and left behind him
a fortune so far below that which he was known to possess,
that he must certainly have disposed of it secretly before his
death. Why so dispose of it, if not to enrich some natural son,
f
A STRANGE STORY. 353
whom, for private reasons, he might not have wished to ac-
knowledge, or point out to the world by the signal bequest of
his will? All that Margrave ever said of himself and the
source of his wealth confirmed this belief. He frankly pro-
claimed himself a natural son, enriched by a father whose
name he knew not nor cared to know.”
“It is true. And Margrave quitted Paris for the East.
When P’’
“I can tell you the date within a day or two, for his flight
preceded mine by a week; and, happily, all Paris was so busy
in talking of it, that I slipped away without notice.”
And the Prussian then named a date which it thrilled me to -
hear, for it was in that very month, and about that very day,
that the Luminous Shadow had stood within my threshold.
The young Count now struck off into other subjects of talk:
nothing more was said of Margrave. An hour or two after-
wards he went on his way, and I remained long gazing mus-
ingly on the embers of the fire dying low on my hearth.
CHAPTER LXXIV.
1My Work, my Philosophical Work—the ambitious hope of
my intellectual life—how eagerly I returned to it again! Far
away from my household grief, far away from my haggard per-
plexities—neither a Lilian nor a Margrave there!
As I went over what I had before written, each link in its
chain of reasoning seemed so serried, that to alter one were to
derange all; and the whole reasoning was so opposed to the
possibility of the wonders I myself had experienced, so hostile
to the subtle hypotheses of a Faber, or the childlike belief of
an Amy, that I must have destroyed the entire work if I had
admitted such contradictions to its design!
But the Work was I myself!—I, in my solid, sober, health-
ful mind, before the brain had been perplexed by a phantom.
Were phantoms to be allowed as testimonies against science?
No; in returning to my Book, I returned to my former Me!
How strange is that contradiction between our being as man
and our being as Author! Take any writer enamoured of a
system—a thousand things may happen to him every day."
which might shake his faith in that system; and while he
moves about as mere man, his faith is shaken. But when he
settles himself back into the phase of his-being as author, the
mere act of taking pen in hand and Smoothing the paper be-
sº
354 A STRANGE STORY.
fore him, restores his speculations to their ancient mechanical
train. The system, the beloved system, re-asserts its tyrannic
sway, and he either ignores, or moulds into fresh proofs of his
theory as author, all which, an hour before, had given his
theory the lie in his living perceptions as man.
I adhered to my system; I continued my work. Here, in
the barbarous desert, was a link between me and the Cities of
Europe. All else might break down under me. The love I
had dreamed of was blotted out from the world and might
never be restored; my heart might be lonely, my life be an
exile's. My reason might, at last, give way before the spec-
tres which awed my senses, or the sorrows which stormed my
heart. But here, at least, was a monument of my rational,
thoughtful Me—of my individualized identity in multiform
creation. And my mind, in the noon of its force, would shed
its light on the earth when my form was resolved to its ele-
ments. Alas! in this very yearning for the Hereafter, though
but the Hereafter of a Name, could I see only the craving of
Mind, and hear not the whisper of Soul!
The avocation of a colonist, usually so active, had little
interest for me. This vast territorial lordship, in which, could
I have endeared its possession by the hopes that animate a
Tounder, I should have felt all the zest and the pride of owner-
ship, was but the run of a common to the passing emigrant,
who would leave no son to inherit the tardy products of his
labor. I was not goaded to industry by the stimulus of need,
I could only be ruined if I risked all my capital in the attempt
to improve. I lived, therefore, amongst my fertile pastures, as
careless of culture as the English occupant of the Highland
moor, which he rents for the range of its solitudes.
I knew, indeed, that if ever I became avaricious, I might
swell my modest affluence into absolute wealth. I had revis-
ited the spot in which I had discovered the nugget of gold,
and had found the precious metal in rich abundance just under
the first coverings of the alluvial soil. I concealed my discov-
ery from all. I knew that, did I proclaim it, the charm of my
bush-life would be gone. My fields would be invested by all
the wild adventurers who gather to gold as the vultures of
prey round a carcase; my servants would desert me, my very
flocks would be shepherdless! -
Months again rolled on months. I had just approached the
close of my beloved Work, when it was again suspended, and
by an anguish keener than all which I had previously known.
Lilian became alarmingly ill. Her state of health, long
*
... t. A A STRANGE STORY. 355
gradually declining, had hitherto admitted checkered intervals
of improvement, and exhibited no symptoms of actual danger.
But now she was seized with a kind of chronic fever, attended
with absolute privation of sleep, an aversion to even the light-
est nourishment, and an acute nervous susceptibility to all the
outward impressions of which she had long seemed so uncon-
scious; morbidly alive to the faintest sound, shrinking from
the light as from a torture. Her previous impatience at my
entrance into her room became aggravated into vehement emo-
tions, convulsive paroxysms of distress; so that Faber ban-
ished me from her chamber, and, with a heart bleeding at
every fibre, I submitted to the cruel sentence.
Faber had taken up his abode in my house and brought Amy
with him; one or the other never left Lilian, night or day.
The great physician spoke doubtfully of the case, but not
despairingly.
“Remember,” he said, “that in spite of the want of sleep,
the abstinence from food, the form has not wasted as it would
do were this fever inevitably mortal. It is upon that phenom-
enon I build a hope that I have not been mistaken in the opin-
ion I hazarded from the first. We are now in the midst of the
critical struggle between life and reason; if she preserve the
one, my conviction is that she will regain the other. That
seeming antipathy to yourself is a good omen. You are insep-
arably associated with her intellectual world; in proportion as
she revives to it, must become vivid and powerful the reminis-
cences of the shock that annulled, for a time, that world to her.
So I welcome, rather than fear, the over-susceptibility of the
awakening senses to external sights and sounds. A few days
will decide if I am right. In this climate the progress of acute
maladies is swift, but the recovery from them is yet more startl-
ingly rapid. Wait—endure—be prepared to submit to the will
of Heaven; but do not despond of its mercy.”
I rushed away from the consoler—away into the thick of the
forests, the heart of the solitude. All around me, there, was
joyous with life; the locust sang amidst the herbage; the
cranes gamboled on the banks of the creek; the squirrel-like
opossums frolicked on the feathery boughs. “And what,”
said I to myself—“what if that which seems so fabulous in the
distant being whose existence has bewitched my own, be sub-
stantially true? What if to some potent medicament Margrave
owes his glorious vitality, his radiant youth? Oh! that I had
not so disdainfully turned away from his hinted solicitations—
to what?—to nothing guiltier than lawful experiment. Had I
356 A STRANGE STORY. ºf
.* *-*.
been less devoted a bigot to this vain school-craft, which we
call the Medical Art, and which, alone in this age of science,
has made no perceptible progress since the days of its earliest
teachers—had I said, in the true humility of genuine knowl-
edge, ‘these alchemists were men of genius and thought; we
owe to them nearly all the grand hints of our chemical science—
is it likely that they would have been wholly drivellers and
idiots in the one faith they clung to the most?”—had I said
that, I might now have no fear of losing my Lilian. Why,
after all, should there not be in Nature one primary essence,
one master substance, in which is stored the specific nutriment
of life?” {
Thus incoherently muttering to the woods what my pride of
reason would not have suffered me gravely to say to my fellow-
men, I fatigued my tormented Spirits into a gloomy calm, and
mechanically retraced my steps at the decline of day. I seated
myself at the door of my solitary log-hut, leaning my cheek
upon my hand, and musing. Wearily I looked up, roused by
a discord of clattering hoofs and lumbering wheels on the
hollow-sounding grass-track. A crazy, groaning vehicle, drawn
by four horses, emerged from the copse of gum-trees—fast,
fast along the road, which no such pompous vehicle had trav-
ersed since that which had borne me—luxurious satrap for an
early colonist—to my lodge in the wilderness. What emigrant,
rich enough to Squander in the hire of such an equipage more
than its cost in England, could thus be entering on my waste
domain? An ominous thrill shot through me.
The driver—perhaps some broken-down son of luxury in the
Old World, fit for nothing in the New World but to ply, for
hire, the task that might have led to his ruin when piled in
sport—stopped at the door of my hut, and called out: “Friend,
is not this the great Fenwick Section, and is not yonder long
pile of building the Master's house?”
Before I could answer I heard a faint voice, within the vehi-
cle, speaking to the driver; the last nodded, descended from
his seat, opened the carriage-door, and offered his arm to a
man, who, waving aside the proffered aid, descended slowly
and feebly; paused a moment as if for breath, and then, lean-
ing on his staff, walked from the road, across the Sward rank
with luxuriant herbage, through the little gate in the new-set
fragrant wattle-fence, wearily, languidly, halting often, till he
stood facing me, leaning both wan and emaciated hands upon
his staff, and his meagre form shrinking deep within the folds of
a cloak lined thick with costly sables. His face was sharp, his
A STRANGE STORY. 357
*-
eomplexion of a livid yellow, his eyes shone out from their hol-
low orbits, unnaturally enlarged and fatally bright. Thus, in
ghastly contrast to his former splendor of youth and opulence
of life, Margrave stood before me.
“I come to you,” said Margrave, in accents hoarse and
broken, “from the shores of the East. Give me shelter and
rest. I have that to say which will more than repay you.”
Whatever, till that moment, my hate and my fear of this un-
expected visitant, hate would have been inhumanity, fear a
meanness—conceived for a creature so awfully stricken down.
Silently, involuntarily, I led him into the house. There he
rested a few minutes, with closed eyes and painful gasps for
breath. Meanwhile, the driver brought from the carriage a
travelling-bag and a small wooden chest or coffer, strongly
banded with iron clamps. Margrave, looking up as the man
drew near, exclaimed fiercely: “Who told you to touch that
chest? How dare you? Take it from that man, Fenwick!
Place it here—here by my side!”
I took the chest from the driver, whose rising anger, at being
so imperiously rated in the land of democratic equality, was
appeased by the gold which Margrave lavishly flung to him.
‘‘Take care of the poor gentleman, squire,” he whispered to
'me, in the spontaneous impulse of gratitude—“I fear he will
not trouble you long. He must be monstrous rich. Arrived
in a vessel hired all to himself, and a train of outlandish atten-
dants, whom he has left behind in the town yonder! May I
bait my horses in your stables? They have come a long way.”
-I pointed to the neighboring stables, and the man nodded
his thanks, remounted his box, and drove off.
I returned to Margrave. A faint smile came to his lips as I
placed the chest beside him.
“Ay, ay,” he muttered, “Safe! safe! I shall, soon be
well again—very soon | And now I can sleep in peace!”
I led him into an inner room, in which there was a bed.
He threw himself on it with a loud sigh of relief. Soon, half
raising himself on his elbow, he exclaimed: “The chest—bring
it hither! I need it always beside me! There! there! Now
for a few hours of sleep; and then, if I can take food, or some
such restoring cordial as your skill may suggest, I shall be
strong enough to talk. We will talk!—we will talk.”
His eyes closed heavily as his voice fell into a drowsy mut-
ter: a moment more and he was asleep,
I watched beside him, in mingled wonder and compassion.
Looking into that face, so altered yet still so young, I could
358 A STRAN G. E. STORY.
not sternly question what had been the evil of that mystic life,
which seemed now oozing away through the last sands in the
hour-glass. I placed my hand Softly on his pulse; it scarcely
beat. I put my ear to his breast, and involuntarily sighed, as
I distinguished in its fluttering heave that dull, dumb sound, in
which the heart seems knelling itself to the greedy grave!
Was this, indeed, the potent magician whom I had so
feared 1–this the guide to the Rosicrucian's secret of life's
renewal, in whom, but an hour or two ago, my fancies gulled
my credulous trust !
But suddenly, even while thus chiding my wild supersti-
tions, a fear, that to most will seem scarcely less superstitious,
shot across me. Could Lilian be affected by the near neigh-
borhood of one to whose magnetic influence she had once been
so strangely subjected? I left Margrave still sleeping, closed
and locked the door of the hut, went back to my dwelling, and
met Amy at the threshold. Her smile was so cheering that I
felt at Once relieved.
. “Hush!” said the child, putting her finger to her lips, “she
is so quiet! I was coming in search of you, with a message
from her.’’
“From Lilian to me—what! to me?”
“Hush! About an hour ago she beckoned me to draw near to
her, and then said very softly: ‘Tell Allen that light is coming
back to me, and it all settles on him—on him. Tell him that
I pray to be spared to walk by his side on earth, hand-in-hand
to that heaven which is no dream, Amy. Tell him that—no
dream l’’’
While the child spoke my tears gushed, and the strong hands
in which I veiled my face quivered like the eaf of the aspen.
And when I could command my voice, I said plaintively:
“May I not, then, see her?—only for a moment, and answer
her message, though but by a look?”
“No, no!”
“NO! Where is Faber?’’
“Gone into the forest, in search of some herbs, but he gave
me this note for you.” -
I wiped the blinding tears from my eyes, and read these
lines:
“I have, though with hesitation, permitted Amy to tell you
the cheering words, by which our beloved patient confirms my
belief that reason is coming back to her—slowly, laboringly,
but if she survive, for permanent restoration. On no account,
attempt to precipitate or disturb the work of Nature. As
A STRANGE STORY. 359
**.
dangerous as a sudden glare of light to eyes long blind and
newly regaining vision in the friendly and soothing dark, would
be the agitation that your presence at this crisis would cause.
Confide in me.’’
I remained brooding over these lines and over Lilian's mes-
sage, long and silently, while Amy's soothing whispers stole in-
to my ear, soft as the murmurs of a rill heard in the gloom of
forests. Rousing myself at length, my thoughts returned to
Margrave. Doubtless he would soon awake. I bade Amy
bring me such slight nutriment as I thought best suited to his
enfeebled state, telling her it was for a sick traveller, resting
himself in my hut. When Amy returned, I took from her the
little basket, with which she was charged, and having, mean-
while, made a careful selection from the contents of my medi-
cine-chest, went back to the hut. I had not long resumed my
place beside Margrave's pillow before he awoke.
“What o'clock is it?” he asked, with an anxious voice.
‘‘About seven.’’
“Not later? That is well; my time is precious.”
“Compose yourself, and eat.”
I placed the food before him, and he partook of it, though
sparingly, and as if with effort. He then dozed for a short
time, again woke up, and impatiently demanded the cordial,
which I had prepared in the mean while. Its effect was greater
and more immediate than I could have anticipated, proving,
perhaps, how much of youth there was still left in his system,
however undermined and ravaged by disease. Color came
back to his cheek, his voice grew perceptibly stronger. And
as I lighted the lamp on the table near us—for it was growing
dark—he gathered himself up, and spoke thus:
“You remember that I once pressed on you certain experi-
ments. My object then was to discover the materials from
which is extracted the specific that enables the organs of life
to expel disease and regain vigor. In that hope, I sought
your intimacy. An intimacy you gave, but withdrew.”
“Dare you complain? Who and what was the being from
whose intimacy I shrunk appalled?”
“Ask what questions you please,” cried Margrave impa-
tiently, “later—if I have strength left to answer them. But do
not interrupt me, while I husband my force to say what alone
is important to me and to you. Disappointed in the hopes I
had placed in you, I resolved to repair to Paris, that great
furnace of all bold ideas. I questioned learned formalists; I
listened to audacious empirics. The first, with all their boasted
y
360 A STRANGE STORY.
knowledge, were too timid to concede my premises; the second,
with all their speculative daring, too knavish to let me trust to
their conclusions. I found but one man, a Sicilian, who com-
prehended the secrets that are called occult, and had the
courage to meet Nature and all her agencies face to face. He
believed, and sincerely, that he was approaching the grand
result, at the very moment when he perished from want of the
common precautions which a tyro in chemistry would have
taken. At his death the gaudy city became hateful; all its
pretended pleasures only served to exhaust life the faster.
The true joys of youth are those of the wild bird and wild
brute, in the healthful enjoyment of Nature. In cities, youth
is but old age with a varnish. I fled to the East; I passed
through the tents of the Arabs; I was guided—no matter by
whom or by what—to the house of a Dervish, who had had
for his teacher the most erudite master of secrets occult, whom
I knew years ago at Aleppo-why that exclamation?”
“Proceed. What I have to say will come—later.”
“From this Dervish I half-forced and half-purchased the se-
crets I sought to obtain. I now know from what peculiar sub-
stance the so-called elixir of life is extracted; I know also the
steps of the process through which that task is accomplished.
You smile incredulously. What is your doubt? State it while
I rest for a moment. My breath labors; give me more of the
cordial.’’
“Need I tell you my doubt? You have, you say, at your com-
mand the elixir of life of which Cagliostro did not leave his
disciples the recipe; and you stretch out your hand for a vul-
gar cordial which any village chemist could give you!”
‘‘I can explain this apparent contradiction. The process by
which the elixir is extracted from the material which hoards
its essence, is one that requires a hardihood of courage which
few possess. This Dervish, who had passed through that pro-
cess once, was deaf to all prayer, and unmoved by all bribes,
to attempt it again. He was poor; for the secret by which
metals may be transmuted is not, as the old alchemists seem
to imply, identical with that by which the elixir of life is ex-
tracted. He had only been enabled to discover, in the niggard
strata of the lands within range of his travel, a few scanty
morsels of the glorious substance. From these he had extracted
scarcely enough of the elixir to fill a third of that little glass
which I have just drained. He guarded every drop for him-
self. Who that holds healthful life as the one boon above all
price to the living, would waste upon others what prolongs and
A STRANGE STORY. 361
recruits his own being? Therefore, though he sold me his
secret, he would not sell me his treasure.”
“Any quack may sell you the information how to make not
only an elixir, but a Sun and a moon, and then scare you from
the experiment by tales of the danger of trying it! How do
you know that this essence which the Dervish possessed was
the elixir of life, since, it seems, you have not tried on your-
self what effect its precious drops could produce. Poor wretch
who once seemed to me so awfully potent, do you come to the
Antipodes in search of a drug that only exists in the fables by
which a child is amused?”
“The elixir of life is no fable,” cried Margrave, with a kindl-
ing of eye, a power of voice, a dilation of form, that startled me
in one just before so feeble. “That elixir was bright in my
veins when we last met. From that golden draught of the life-
spring of joy I took all that can gladden creation. What sage
would not have exchanged his wearisome knowledge for my
lusty revels with Nature? What monarch would not have
bartered his crown, with its brain-ache of care, for the radi-
ance that circled my brows, flashing out from the light that was
in me? Oh again, oh again! to enjoy the freedom of air with
the bird, and the glow of the sun with the lizard; to sport
through the blooms of the earth, Nature's playmate and darl-
ing; to face, in the forest and desert, the pard and the lion—
Nature’s bravest and fiercest—her first-born, the heir of her
realm, with the rest of her children for slaves!”
As these words burst from his lips, there was a wild grandeur
in the aspect of this enigmatical being which I had never
beheld in the former time of his affluent, dazzling youth. And,
indeed, in his language, and in the thoughts it clothed, there
was an earnestness, a concentratign, a directness, a purpose,
which had seemed wanting to his desultory talk in the earlier
days. I expected that reaction of languor and exhaustion
would follow his vehement outbreak of passion; but, after a
short pause, he went on with steady accents. His will was sus-
taining his strength. He was determined to force his convic-
tions on me, and the vitality, once so rich, rallied all its linger-
ing forces to the aid of his intense desire.
“I tell you, then,” he resumed, with deliberate calmness,
“that, years ago, I tested in my own person that essence which
is the sovereign medicament. In me, as you saw me at L––,
you beheld the proof of its virtues. Feeble and ill as I am
now, my state was incalculably more hopeless when formerly re-
stored by the elixir. He from whom I then took the sublime
362 A STRANGE STORY.
restorative, died without revealing the secret of its composition.
What I obtained was only just sufficient to recruit the lamp of
my life, then dying down, and no drop was left for renewing
the light which wastes its own rays in the air that it gilds.
Though the Dervish would not sell me his treasure, he per-
mitted me to see it. The appearance and odor of this essence
are strangely peculiar—unmistakable by one who has once
beheld and partaken of it. In short, I recognized in the hands
of the Dervish the bright life-renewer, as I had borne it away
from the corpse of the Sage of Aleppo.” g
“Hold! Are you then, in truth, the murderer of Haroun,
and is your true name Louis Grayle?”
‘‘I am no murderer, and Louis Grayle did not leave me his
name. I again adjure you to postpone for this night, at least,
the questions you wish to address to me.
“Seeing that this obstinate pauper possessed that for which
the pale owners of millions, at the first touch of palsy or gout,
would consent to be paupers, of course I coveted the possession
of the essence even more than the knowledge of the substance
from which it is extracted. I had no coward fear of the experi-
ment, which this timid driveller had not the nerve to renew.
But still the experiment might fail. I must traverse land and
sea to find the fit place for it. While, in the rags of the Der-
vish, the unfailing result of the experiment was at hand. The
Dervish suspected my design, he dreaded my power. He fled
on the very night in which I had meant to seize what he refused
to sell me. After all, I should have done him no great wrong;
for I should have left him wealth enough to transport himself
to any soil in which the material for the elixir may be most
abundant; and the desire of life would have given his shrink-
ing nerves the courage to, replenish its ravished store. I had
Arabs in my pay, who obeyed me as hounds their master. I
chased the fugitive. I came on his track, reached a house in
a miserable village, in which, I was told, he had entered but an
hour before. The day was declining, the light in the room im-
perfect. I saw in a corner what seemed to me the form of
the Dervish, stooped to seize it, and my hand closed on an asp.
The artful Dervish had so piled his rags that they took the
shape of the form they had clothed, and he had left, as a sub-
stitute for the giver of life, the venomous reptile of death.
“The strength of my system enabled me to survive the effect
of the poison; but during the torpor that numbed me, my
Arabs, alarmed, gave no chase to my quarry. At last, though
enfeebled and languid, I was again on my horse—again the
*
A STRANGE STORY. 363
} º
pursuit—again the track! I learned—but this time by a knowl-
edge surer than man's—that the Dervish had taken his refuge
in a hamlet that had sprung up over the site of a city once
famed through Assyria. The same voice that informed me of
his whereabouts warned me not to pursue. I rejected the warn-
ing. In my eager impatience I sprang on to the chase; in my
fearless resolve I felt sure of the prey. I arrived at the hamlet
wearied out, for my forces were no longer the same since the
bite of the asp. The Dervish eluded me still; he had left the
floors, on which I sank exhausted, but a few minutes before my
horse stopped at the door. The carpet, on which he had rested,
still, lay on the ground. I dismissed the youngest and keenest
of my troop in search of the fugitive. Sure that this time he
would not escape, my eyes closed in sleep.
‘‘How long I slept I know not—a long dream of solitude,
fever, and anguish. Was it the curse of the Dervish's carpet?
Was it a taint in the walls of the house, or of the air, which
broods sickly and rank over places where cities lie buried? I
know not; but the Pest of the East had seized me in slumber.
When my senses recovered I found myself alone, plundered
of my arms, despoiled of such gold as I had carried about me.
All had deserted and left me as the living leave the dead whom
the Plague has claimed for its own. As soon as I could stand
I crawled from the threshold. The moment my voice was
heard, my face seen, the whole squalid populace rose as on a
wild beast—a mad dog. I was driven from the place with im-
precations and stones, as a miscreant whom the Plague had
overtaken while plotting the death of a holy man. Bruised
and bleeding, but still defying, I turned in wrath on that das-
tardly rabble; they slunk away from my path. I knew the
land for miles around. I had been in that land years, long
years, ago. I came at last to the road which the caravans take
on their way to Damascus. There I was found, speechless and
seemingly lifeless, by some European travellers. Conveyed to
Damascus, I languished for weeks between life and death.
But for the virtue of that essence, which lingered yet in my
veins, I could not have survived—even thus feeble and shattered.
I need not say that I now abandoned all thought of discover-
ing the Dervish. I had at least his secret, if I had failed of the
paltry supply he had drawn from its uses. Such appliances as
he had told me were needful, are procured in the East with
more ease than in Europe. To sum up, I am here, instructed
in all the knowledge, and supplied with all the aids, which
warrant me in saying: “Do you care for new life in its richest
364 A STRANGE STORT.
*
*
enjoyments, if not for yourself, for one whom you love and
would reprieve from the grave? Then, share with me in a
task that a single night will accomplish, and ravish a prize by
which the life that you value the most will be saved from the
dust and the worm, to live on, ever young, ever blooming,
when each infant, new-born while I speak, shall have passed
to the grave. Nay, where is the limit, to life, while the earth
hides the substance by which life is renewed?’”
I give as faithfully as I can recall them the words in which
Margrave addressed me. But who can guess by cold words
transcribed, even were they artfully ranged by a master of
language, the effect words produce when warm from the breath
of the speaker? Ask one of an audience which some orator
held enthralled, why his words do not quicken a beat in the
reader's pulse, and the answer of one who had listened will be:
“The words took their charm from the voice and the eye, the
aspect, the manner, the man l’’ So it was with the incompre-
hensible being before me. Though his youth was faded, though
his beauty was dimmed, though my fancies clothed him with
memories of abhorrent dread, though my reason opposed his
audacious beliefs and assumptions, still he charmed and spell-
bound me; still he was the mystical fascinator; still, if the le-
gends of magic had truth for their basis, he was the born
magician ; as genius, in what calling soever, is born with the
gift to enchant and subdue us.
Constraining myself to answer calmly, I said: “You have
told me your story; you have defined the object of the experi-
ment in which you ask me to aid. You do right to bid me
postpone my replies or my questions. Seek to recruit by sleep
the strength you have so sorely tasked. To-morrow—”
“To-morrow, ere night, you will decide whether the man
whom out of all earth I have selected to aid me, shall be the
foe to condemn me to perish! I tel; you plainly I need your
aid, and your prompt aid. Three days from this, and all aid
will be too late l’’
I had already gained the door of the room, when he called
to me to come back.
“You do not live in this hut, but with your family yonder.
Do not tell them that I am here; let no one but yourself see
me as I now am. Lock the door of the hut when you quit it.
I should not close my eyes if I were not secure from intruders.”
“There is but one in my house, or in these parts, whom I
would except from the interdict you impose. You are aware
of your own imminent danger; the life, which you believe the
A STRANGE STORY. 355
discovery of a Dervish will indefinitely prolong, seems to my
eye of physician to hang on a thread. I have already formed
my own conjecture as to the nature of the disease that enfeebles
you. But I would fain compare that conjecture with the
weightier opinion of one whose experience and skill are superior
to mine. Permit me, then, when I return to you to-morrow, to
bring with me the great physician to whom I refer. His name
will not, perhaps, be unknown to you: I speak of Julius Faber.”
“A physician of the schools I can guess well enough how
learnedly he would prate, and how little he could do. But I
will not object to his visit, if it satisfies you that, since I should
die under the hands of the doctors, I may be permitted to in-
dulge my own whim in placing my hopes in a Dervish. Yet
stay. You have doubtless, spoken of me to this Julius Faber,
your fellow-physician and friend? Promise me, if you bring
him here, that you will not name me; that you will not repeat
to him the tale I have told you, or the hope which has led me to
these shores. What I have told to you, no matter whether, at
this moment, you consider me the dupe of a chimera, is still
under the seal of the confidence which a patient reposes in the
physician he himself selects for his confidant. I select you,
and not Julius Faber!”
“Be it as you will,” said I, after a moment’s reflection.
“The moment you make yourself my patient I am bound to
consider what is best for you. And you may more respect, and
profit by, an opinion based upon your purely physical condition
than by one in which you might suppose the advice was directed
rather to the disease of the mind than to that of the body.”
“How amazed and indignant your brother-physician will
be if he ever see me a second time! How learnedly he will
prove that, according to all corrected principles of science and
nature, I ought to be dead!”
He uttered this jest with a faint, dreary echo of his old merry,
melodious laugh, then turned his face to the wall; and so I left
him to repose. *
CHAPTER LXXV.
I FOUND Mrs. Ashleigh waiting for me in our usual sitting-
room. She was in tears. She had begun to despond of Lil-
ian’s recovery, and she infected me with her own alarm.
However, I disguised my participation in her fears, soothed
and sustained her as best I could, and persuaded her to retire
to rest. I saw Faber for a few minutes before I sought my
366 A STRANGE STORY.
own chamber. He assured me that there was no perceptible
change for the worse in Lilian's physical state since he had
seen me, and that her mind, even within the last few hours,
had become decidedly more clear. He thought that, within
the next twenty-four hours, the reason would make a strong
and successful effort for complete recovery; but he declined to
hazard more than a hope that the effort would not exhaust the
enfeebled powers of the frame. He himself was so in need of
a few hours of rest that I ceased to harass him with questions
which he could not answer, and fears which he could not ap-
pease. Before leaving him for the night, I told him briefly
that there was a traveller in my hut smitten by a disease which
seemed to me so grave that I would ask his opinion of the
case, if he could accompany me to the hut the next morning.
My own thoughts that night were not such as would suffer
me to sleep.
Before Margrave's melancholy state much of my former fear
and abhorrence faded away. This being, so exceptional that
fancy might well invest him with preternatural attributes, was
now reduced by human suffering to human sympathy and com-
prehension; yet his utter want of conscience was still as ap-
parent as in his day of joyous animal spirits. With what hide-
ous candor he had related his perfidy and ingratitude to the
man to whom, in his belief, he owed an inestimable obligation,
and with what insensibility to the signal retribution which in
most natures would have awakened remorse !
And by what dark hints and confessions did he seem to con-
firm the incredible memoir of Sir Philip Derval! He owned
that he had borne from the corpse of Haroun the medicament
to which he ascribed his recovery from a state yet more hope-
less than that under which he now labored He had alluded,
rapidly, obscurely, to some knowledge at his command, “surer
than man’s’’. And now, even now, the mere wreck of his
former existence—by what strange charm did he still control
and confuse my reason? And how was it that I felt myself
murmuring, again and again: “But what, after all, if his hope
be no chimera, and if Nature did hide a secret by which I could
save the life of my beloved Lilian?”
And again and again, as that thought would force itself on
me, I rose and crept to Lilian's threshold, listening to catch
the faintest sound of her breathing. All still, all dark In
that sufferer recognized science detects no mortal disease, yet
dares not bid me rely on its amplest resources of skill to turn
aside from her slumber the stealthy advance of death; while
A STRANGE STORY, 367
*=
in yon log-hut one whose malady recognized science could not
doubt to be mortal has composed himself to sleep confident
of life! Recognized scienceſ recognized ignorance! The
science of to-day is the ignorance of to-morrow! Every year
Some bold guess lights up a truth to which, but the year before,
the schoolmen of Science were as blinded as moles.
“What, then,” my lips kept repeating—“what if Nature do
hide a secret by which the life of my life can be saved. What
do we know of the secrets of Nature? What said Newton him-
self of his knowledge? ‘I am like a child picking up pebbles
and shells on the sand, while the great ocean of Truth lies all
undiscovered around me!' And did Newton himself, in the
ripest growth of his matchless intellect, hold the creed of the
alchemists in scorn? Had he not given to one object of their
research, in the transmutation of metals, his days and his
nights? Is there proof that he ever convinced himself that the
research was the dream which we, who are not Newtons, call
it?” And that other great sage, inferior only to Newton, the
calculating doubt-weigher, Descartes, had he- not believed in
the yet nobler hope of the alchémists—believed is some occult
nostrum or process by which human life could attain to the
age of the Patriarchs?”?
* “Besides the three great subjects of Newton's labors—the fluxional calculus, physical
astronomy, and optics—a very large portion of his time, while resident in his college, was
devoted to researches of which scarcely a trace remains. Alchemy, which had fascinated
so many eager and ambitious minds, seems to have tempted Newton with an overwhelming
force. What theories he formed, what experiments he tried, in that laboratoly when e,
it is said, the file was scarcely extinguished for weeks together, will never be known. It is
certain that no success attended his labors; and Newton was not a man—like Kepler—to
detail to the world all the hopes and disappointments, all the clude and mystical fancies,
which mixed themselves up with his career of philosophy. . . . Many years later we find
Newton in correspondence with Locke, with reference to a mysterious red earth by which
Boyle who was then recently dead, had asserted that he could effect the grand desideratum
of multiplying gold. By this time, however, Newton's faith had become somewhat shaken
by the unsatisfactory communications which he had himself received from Boyle on the
subject of the golden recipe, though he did not abandon the idea of giving the experiment
a further trial as soon as the weather should become suitable for furnace experiments.”—
Quarterly Rezyżew, No. 220, pp. 125-6.
| Southey, in his Doctor, vol vi. p. 2, reports the conversation of Sir Kenelm Digby
with Descartes, in which the great goemetrician said: “That as for lendering man immortal,
it was what he could not venture to promise, but that he was very sure he could prolong his
life to the standard of the patriarchs.” And Southey adds, “that St. Evremond, to whom
Digby repeated this, says that this opinion of Descartes was well known both to his fliends
in Holland and in France.” By the stress Southey lays on this hearsay evidence, it is
clear that he was not acquainted with the works and biography of Descartes, or he would
have gone to the fountain-head for authority on Descartes' opinions—viz., Descartes him-
self It is to be wished that Southey had done so, for no one more than he would have
reciated the exquisitely candid and loyable nature of the illustrious Frenchman, and
the sincerity with which he cherished in his heart whatever doctrine he conceived in his
understanding. Descartes, whose knowledge of anatomy was considerable, had that pass
sion for the art of medicine which is almost insepal able from the pursuit of natural phil-
osophy. At the age of twenty-four he had sought (in Germany) to obtain initiation into
the brotherhood of the Rosicrucians, but unluckily could not discover any member of the
society to introduce him. “He desired,” says Cousin, “to assure the health of man,
diminish his ills, extend his existence. He was terrified by the rapid and almost momen-
tary passage of man upon earth. He believed it was not, perhaps, impossible to prolong
368 A STRANGE STORY.
as--
In thoughts like these the night wore away, the moonbeams
that streamed through my windows lighting up the spacious
solitudes beyond—mead and Creek, forest-land, mountain=top—
and the silence without broken by the wild cry of the night-
hawk and the sibilant, melancholy dirge of the shining chry-
sococyx *—bird that never sings but at night, and obstinately
haunts the roofs of the sick and dying, ominous of woe and
death.
But up sprang the Sun, and, chasing these gloomy sounds,
out burst the wonderful chorus of Australian groves, the great
kingfisher opening the jocund, melodious babble with the
glee of his social laugh.
And now I heard Faber's step in Lilian's room—heard through
the door her soft voice, though I could not distinguish the
words. It was not long before I saw the kind physician stand-
ing at the threshold of my chamber. He pressed his finger to:
his lip, and made me a sign to follow him. I obeyed, with
noiseless tread and stifled breathing. He awaited me in the
garden under the flowering acacias, passed his arm in mine,
and drew me into the open pasture-land.
“Compose yourself,” he then said; “I bring you tidings
both of gladness and of fear. Your Lilian's mind is restored:
its duration.” There is a hidden recess of grandeur in this idea, and the means proposed
by Descartes for the execution of his project were not less grand. In his Discourse on
Method, Descartes says, “If it is possible to find some means to render generally men
more wise and more able than they have been till now, it is, I believe, in medicine that
those means must be sought. . . I am sure that there is no one, even in the medical pro-
*fession, who will not avow that all which one knows of the medical art is almost nothing
in comparison to that which remains to learn, and that one could be exempted from an
infinity of maladies, both of body and mind, and even, perhaps, from the decrepitude of
old age, if one had sufficient lore of their causes and of all the remedies which nature pro-
vides for them. Therefore, having a design to engloy all my life in the research of a
science so necessary, and hazing discovered a £ath, which aftears to me such that one
oaght infal/ibly, £7, following, to Zzza! ?:, if one is not hindered permanently by the
brevity of life or by the defects of experience, I consider that there is no better remedy
against those two hindrances than to communicate faithfully to the public the little I have
found,” etc. (Discours de la Méthode, vol. i. CEuvres de Descartes, Cousin's edition.)
And again, in his Correspondence (vol. ix. p. 341), he says: “The conservation of health
has been always the principal object of my studies, and I have no doubt that there is a
means of acquiring much knowledge touching medicine which, up to this time, is ignored.”
He then refers to his meditated Treatise on Animals as only an entrance upon that knowl-
edge. But whatever secrets Descartes may have thought to discover, they are not made
known to the public according to his promise. And in a letter to M. Chanut, written
1646 (four years before he died), he, says ingenuously: “I will tell you in confidence that
the notion, such as it is, which I have endeavored to acquire in physical philosophy, had
greatly assisted me to establish certain, foundations for moral philosophy; and that I am
more easily satisfied upon this point than I am on many others touching medicine, to
which I have, nevertheless, devoted much more time. So that (adds the grand thinker
with a pathetic nobleness)—“so that, instead of /2nding the means to Areserve &/e, I
** found another good, more easy and more sure, which is—not to year death.”
Chrysococyx lucidus—viz., the bird popularly called ‘the shining or bronzed cuckoo.
“Its note is an exceedingly melancholy whistle, heard at night, when it is very annoying
to any sick or nervous person who may be inclined to sleep. I have known many instances
where the bird has been perched on a tree in the vicinity of the room of an invalid, utterin
its mournful notes, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that it could be dislodged
from its position.”—Dr. Bennet's Gatherings of a Naturalist in Australasia.
A STRANGE STORY. 369
even the memories which had been swept away by the fever
that followed her return to her home in L are returning,
though as yet indistinct. She yearns to see you, to bless you
for all your noble devotion, your generous, great-hearted love.
but I forbid such interview now. If, in a few hours, she be
come either decidedly stronger or decidedly more enfeebled,
you shall be summoned to her side. Even if you are con-
demned to a loss for which the sole consolation must be placed
in the life hereafter, you shall have, at least, the last mortal
commune of soul with soul, Courage—courage! You are
man' Bear as man what you have so often bid other men
submit to endure.”
I had flung myself on the ground—writhing worm that had
no home but on earth ! Man, indeed! Man! All, at that
moment, I took from manhood was its acute sensibility to
love and to anguish!
But after all such paroxysms of mortal pain, there comes a
strange lull. Thought itself halts, like the still hush of water
between two descending torrents. I rose in a calm, which
Faber might well mistake for fortitude.
“Well,” I said quietly, “fulfil your promise. If Lilian is
to pass away from me, I shall see her, at least, again; no wall,
you tell me, between our minds; mind to mind once more—
Once more!’’ -
“Allen,” said Faber, mournfully and softly, “why do you
shun to repeat my words—soul to soul?”
“Ay, ay—I understand. Those words mean that you have
resigned all hope that Lilian's life will linger here, when
her mind comes back in full consciousness; I know well
that last lightning flash and the darkness which swallows
it up!”
“You exaggerate my fears. I have not resigned the hope
that Lilian will survive the struggle through which she is pass-
ing, but it will be cruel to deceive you—my hope is weaker
than it was.” "
“Ay, ay. Again, I understand! Your science is in fault—
it desponds. Its last trust is in the wonderful resources of
Nature—the vitality stored in the young!”
“You have said: Those resources of Nature are wondrous.
The vitality of youth is a fountain springing up from the deeps
out of sight, when, a moment before, we had measured the
drops oozing out from the sands, and thought that the well
was exhausted.”
“Come with me—come. I told you of another sufferer yon-
*s-
370 A STRANGE STORY.
der. I want your opinion of his case. But can you be spared
a few minutes from Lilian's side?”
“Yes; I left her asleep. What is the case that perplexes
your eye of physician, which is usually keener than mine,
despite all the length of my practice?”
“The sufferer is young—his organization rare in its vigor.
He has gone through and survived assaults upon life that are
commonly fatal. His system has been poisoned by the fangs
of a venomous asp, and shattered by the blast of the plague.
These alone, I believe, would not suffice to destroy him. But
he is one who has a strong dread of death. And while the
heart was thus languid and feeble, it has been gnawed by emo-
tions of hope or of fear. I suspect that he is dying, not from
the bite of the reptile, not from the taint of the pestilence, but
from the hope and the fear that have overtasked the heart's
functions. Judge for yourself.”
We were now at the door of the hut. I unlocked it: we
entered. Margrave had quitted his bed, and was pacing the
room slowly. His step was less feeble, his countenance less
haggard than on the previous evening.
He submitted himself to Faber's questioning with a quiet
indifference, and evidently cared nothing for any opinion
which the great physician might found on his replies.
When Faber had learned all he could, he said, with a grave
Smile: “I see that my advice will have little weight with you;
such as it is, at least reflect on it. The conclusions to which
your host arrived in his view of your case, and which he
confided to me, are, in my humble judgment, correct. I have
no doubt that the great organ of the heart is involved in the
cause of your sufferings; but the heart is a noble and much-
enduring organ. ; I have known men in whom it has been more
severely and unequivocally affected with disease than it is in
... you, live on for many years, and ultimately die of some other
disorder. But then life was held, as yours must be held, upon
one condition—repose. I enjoin you to abstain from all vio-
lent action; to shun all excitements that cause moral disturb-
ance. You are young: would you live on, you must live as
the old. More than this—it is my duty to warn you that your
tenure on earth is very precarious; you may attain to many
years; you may be suddenly called hence to-morrow. The
best mode to regard this uncertainty with the calm in which is
your only chance of long life, is so to arrange all your worldly
affairs, and so to discipline all your human anxieties, as to feel
always prepared for the summons that may come without warn-
A STRANGE STORY. 37 I
ing. For the rest, quit this climate as soon as you can—it is
the climate in which the blood courses too quickly for one who
should shun all excitement. Seek the most equable atmo-
sphere, choose the most tranquil pursuits, and Fenwick himself,
in his magnificent pride of stature and strength, may be nearer
the grave than you are.” 3.
“Your opinion coincides with that I have just heard?”
asked Margrave, turning to me.
“In much—yes.”
“It is more favorable than I should have supposed. I am
far from disdaining the advice so kindly offered. Permit me,
in turn, two or three questions, Dr. Faber. Do you prescribe
to me no drugs from your pharmacopoeia?”
“Drugs may palliate many sufferings incidental to organic
disease, but drugs cannot reach organic disease itself.”
“Do you believe that, even where disease is plainly organic,
Nature herself has no alternative and reparative powers, by
which the organ assailed may recover itself?”
“A few exceptional instances of such forces in nature are
upon record; but we must go by general laws, and not by
exceptions.”
“Have you never known instances—do you not at this mo-
ment know one—in which a patient whose malady baffles the
doctor's skill, imagines or dreams of a remedy? Call it a whim
if you please, learned sir; do you not listen to the whim, and,
in despair of your own prescriptions, comply with those of the
patient?”
Faber changed countenance, and even started. Margrave
watched him and laughed.
“You grant that there are such cases, in which the patient
gives the law to the physician. Now, apply your experience to
my case. Suppose some strange fancy had seized upon my
imagination—that is the doctor's cant word for all phenomena
which we call exceptional—some strange fancy that I had
thought of a cure for this disease for which you have no drugs;
and suppose this fancy of mine to be so strong, so vivid, that to
deny me its gratification would produce the very emotion from
which you warn me as fatal—storm the heart, that you would
soothe to repose, by the passions of rage and despair—would you,
as my trusted physician, concede or deny me my whim?”
“Can you ask? I should grant it at once, if I had no reason
to know that the thing that you fancied was harmful.”
“Good man and wise doctor! I have no other question to
ask. I thank you.”
37.2 A STRANGE STORY.
Faber looked hard on the young, wan face, over which
played a smile of triumph and irony; then turned away with
an expression of doubt and trouble on his own noble counte-
nance. I followed him silently into the open air.
“Who and what is this visitor of yours?” he asked abruptly.
“Who and what! I cannot tell you.”
Faber remained some moments musing, and muttering
slowly to himself: “Tut! but a chance coincidence—a hap-
hazard allusion to a fact which he could not have known ſ”
“Faber,” said I abruptly, “can it be that Lilian is the pa-
tient in whose self-suggested remedies you confide more than
in the various learning at command of your practised skill?”
“I cannot deny it,” replied Faber reluctantly. “In the
intervals of that suspense from waking sense, which in her is
not sleep, nor yet altogether catalepsy, she has, for the last few
days, stated accurately the precise moment in which the
trance—if I may so call it—would pass away, and prescribed
for herself the remedies that should be then administered. In
every instance, the remedies so self-prescribed, though certainly
not those which would have occurred to my mind, have proved
efficacious. Her rapid progress to reason I ascribe to the
treatment she herself ordained in her trance, without remem-
brance of her own suggestions when she awoke. I had meant
to defer communicating these phenomena in the idiosyncrasy
of her case until our minds could more calmly inquire into the
process by which ideas—not apparently derived, as your meta-
physical school would derive all ideas, from preconceived ex-
periences—will thus sometimes act like an instinct on the
human sufferer for self-preservation, as the bird is directed to
the herb or the berry which heals or assuages its ailments.
We know how the mesmerists would account for this phenom-
enon of hygienic introvision and clairvoyance. But here, there
is no mesmerizer, unless the patient can be supposed to mes-
merize herself. Long, however, before mesmerism was heard
of, medical history attests examples in which patients who
baffled the skill of the ablest physicians have fixed their fan-
cies on some remedy that physicians would call inoperative for
good or for harm, and have recovered by the remedies thus
singularly self-suggested. And Hippocrates himself, if I con-
strue his meaning rightly, recognizes the powers for self-cure
which the condition of trance will sometimes bestow on the
sufferer, where (says the father of our art) the sight being
closed to the external, the soul more truthfully perceives the
affections of the body.” In short—I own it—in this instance,
gººd-
..—ºr A STRANGE STORY. 373
the skill of the physician has been a compliant obedience to
the instinct called forth in the patient. And the hopes I have
hitherto permitted myself to give you were founded on my ex-
perience that her own hopes, conceived in trance, had never
been fallacious or exaggerated. The simples that I gathered
for her yesterday she had described; they are not in our herb-
al. But as they are sometimes used by the natives, I had the
curiosity to analyze their chemical properties shortly after I
came to the colony, and they seemed to me as innocent as
lime-blossoms. They are rare in this part of Australia, but
she told me where I should find them—a remote spot, which
she has certainly never visited. Last night, when you saw me
disturbed, dejected, it was because, for the first time, the
docility with which she had hitherto, in her waking state,
obeyed her own injunctions in the state of trance, forsook me.
She could not be induced to taste the decoction I had made
from the herbs; and if you found me this morning with weaker
hopes than before, this is the real cause, viz., that when I vis-
ited her at Sunrise, she was not in sleep but in trance, and in
that trance she told me that she had nothing more to suggest
or reveal; that on the complete restoration of her senses,
which was at hand, the abnormal faculties vouchsafed to trance
would be withdrawn. “As for my life,” she said quietly, as if
unconscious of our temporary joy or woe in the term of its ten-
ure here—‘as for my life, your aid is now idle; my own vision
obscure; on my life a dark and cold shadow is resting. I
cannot foresee if it will pass away. When I strive to look
around, I see but my Allen—”
“And so,” said I, mastering my emotions, ‘‘in bidding me
hope, you did not rely on your own resources of science, but
on the whisper of nature in the brain of your patient?”
‘‘It is so.”
We both - remained silent some moments, and then, as he
disappeared within my house, I murmured:
“And when she strives to look beyond the shadow, she sees
only me! Is there some prophet-hint of Nature there also,
directing me not to scorn the secret which a wanderer, so
suddenly dropt on my solitude, assures me that Nature will
sometimes reveal to her seeker? And oh! that dark wan-
derer—has Nature a marvel more weird than himself?”
wº ~ *
374 A STRANGE STORY.
CHAPTER LXXVI. º
I strayed through the forest till noon, in debate with my-
self, and strove to shape my wild doubts into purpose, before I
could nerve and compose myself again to face Margrave alone.
I re-entered the hut. To my surprise, Margrave was not
in the room in which I had left him, nor in that which ad-
joined it. I ascended the stairs to the kind of loft in which I
had been accustomed to pursue my studies, but in which I had
not set foot since my alarm for Lilian had suspended my la-
bors. There I saw Margrave quietly seated before the manu-
script of my Ambitious Work, which lay open on the rude table
just as I had left it, in the midst of its concluding summary.
“I have taken the license of former days, you see, ’’ said
Margrave, smiling, ‘‘and have hit by chance on a passage I
can understand without effort. But why such a waste of argu-
ment to prove a fact so simple? In man, as in brute, life once
lost, is lost forever; and that is why life is so precious to man.”
I took the book from his hand, and flung it aside in wrath.
His approval revolted me more with my own theories than all
the argumentative rebukes of Faber.
“And now,” I said sternly, “the time has come for the ex-
planation you promised. Before I can aid you in any experi-
ment that may serve to prolong your life, I must know how far
that life has been a baleful and destroying influence?”
“I have some faint recollection of having saved your life.
from an imminent danger, and if gratitude were the attribute of
man, as it is of the dog, I should claim your aid to serve mine
as a right. Ask me what you will. You must have seen
endugh of me to know that I do not affect either the virtues or
vices of others. I regard both with so supreme an indiffer-
ence, that I believe I am vicious or virtuous unawares. I
know not if I can explain what seems to have perplexed you,
but if I cannot explain I have no intention to lie. Speak—I
listen We have time enough now before us.”
So saying, he reclined back in the chair, stretching out his
limbs wearily. All round this spoilt darling of Material Na-
ture the aids and appliances of Intellectual Scienceſ Books,
and telescopes, and crucibles, with the light of day coming
through a small circular aperture in the boarded casement, as
I had constructed the opening for my experimental observa-
tion of the prismal rays.
While I write, his image is as visible before my remem-
A STRANGE STORY. 375
brance as if before the actual eye—beautiful even in its decay,
awful even in its weakness, mysterious as in Nature herself
amidst all the mechanism by which our fancied know edge at-
tempts to measure her laws and analyze her light.
But at that moment no such subtle reflections delayed my
inquisitive eager mind from its immediate purpose—who and
what was this creature boasting of a secret through which I
might rescue from death the life of her who was my all upon
the earth?
I gathered rapidly and succinctly together all that I knew
and all that I guessed of Margrave's existence and arts. I
commenced from my Vision in that mimic Golgotha of crea-
tures inferior to man, close by the scene of man’s most trivial
and meaningless pastime. I went on–Derval's murder; the
missing contents of the casket; the apparition seen by the
maniac assassin guiding him to the horrid deed; the luminous
haunting Shadow; the positive charge in the murdered man’s
memoir connecting Margrave with Louis Grayle, and accusing
him of the murder of Haroun; the night in the moonlit pavil-
ion at Derval Court; the baneful influence on Lilian; the
struggle between me and himself in the house by the sea-
shore—the strange All that is told in this Strange Story.
But, warming as I spoke, and in a kind of fierce joy to be
enabled thus to free my own heart of the doubts that had bur-
dened it, now that I was fairly face to face with the being by
whom my reason had been so perplexed and my life so tor-
tured, I was restrained by none of the fears lest my own fancy
deceived me, with which in his absence I had striven to reduce to
natural causes the portents of terror and wonder. I stated plain-
ly, directly, the beliefs, the impressions which I had never dared
even to myself to own without seeking to explain them away.
And coming at last to a close, I said: “Such are the, evidences
that seem to me to justify abhorrence of the life that you ask
me to aid in prolonging. Your own tale of last night but con-
firms them. And why to me—to me—do you come with wild
entreaties to lengthen the life that has blighted my own?
How did you ever learn the home in which I sought unavailing
refuge? How—as your hint to Faber clearly revealed—were
you aware that, in yon house, where the sorrow is veiled, where
the groan is suppressed, where the foot-tread falls ghostlike,
there struggles now between life and death my heart's twin, my
world's sunshine? Ah ! through my terror for her, is it a
demon that tells you how to bribe my abhorrence into submis-
sion, and supple my reason into use to your ends?”
376 A STRANGE STORY.
Margrave had listened to me throughout with a fixed atten-
tion, at times with a bewildered stare, at times with exclama-
tions of surprise, but not of denial. And when I had done,
he remained for some moments silent, seemingly stupefied,
passing his hand repeatedly over his brow, in the gesture so
familiar to him in former days.
At length he said quietly, without evincing any sign either
of resentment or humiliation:
“In much that you tell me I recognize myself: in much I
am as lost in amazement as you in wild doubt or fierce wrath.
Of the effect that you say Philip Derval produced on me I
have no recollection. Of himself I have only this—that he
was my foe, that he came to England intent on schemes to
shorten my life or destroy its enjoyments. All my faculties
tend to self-preservation; there, they converge as rays in a
focus; in that focus they illume and—they burn. I willed to
destroy my intended destroyer. Did my will enforce itself on
the agent to which it was guided? Likely enough. Be it so.
Would you blame me for slaying the tiger or serpent—not by
the naked hand, but by weapons that arm it? But what could
tiger and serpent do more against me than the man who would
rob me of life? He had his arts for assault, I had mine for
self-defence. He was to me as the tiger that creeps through
the jungle, or the serpent uncoiling his folds for the spring.
Death to those whose life is destruction to mine, be they ser-
pent, or tiger, or man | Derval perished. Yes! the spot in
which the maniac had buried the casket was revealed to me—
no matter how; the contents of the casket passed into my
hands. I coveted that possession because I believed that Der-
val had learned from Haroun of Aleppo the secret by which
the elixir of life is prepared, and I supposed that some stores
of the essence would be found in his casket. I was deceived—
not a drop! What I there found I knew not how to use or
apply, nor did I care to learn. What I sought was not there.
You see a luminous shadow of myself; it haunts, it accosts, it
compels you. Of this I know nothing. Was it the emanation
of my intense will really producing this spectre of myself? Or
was it the thing of your own imagination—an imagination
which my will impressed and subjugated? I know not. At
the hours when my shadow, real or supposed, was with you,
my senses would have been locked in sleep. It is true, how-
ever, that I intensely desire to learn from races always near to
man, but concealed from his every-day vision, the secret that
I believed Philip Derval had carried with him to the tomb;
A STRANGE STORY. 377
and from some cause or another I cannot now of myself alone,
as I could years ago, subject those races to my command—I
must, in that, act through or with the mind of another. It is
true that I sought to impress upon your waking thoughts the
images of the circle, the powers of the wand, which, in your
trance or sleep-walking, made you the involuntary agent of my
will. I knew by a dream—for by dreams, more or less vivid,
are the results of my waking will sometimes divulged to my-
self—that the spell had been broken, the discovery I sought
not effected. All my hopes were then transferred from your-
self, the dull votary of science, to the girl whom I charmed to
my thraldom through her love for you and through her dreams
of a realm which the science of schools never enters. In her,
imagination was all pure and all potent; and tell me, O prac-
tical reasoner, if reason has ever advanced one step into knowl-
edge except through that imaginative faculty which is strongest
in the wisdom of ignorance, and weakest in the ignorance of
the wise. Ponder this, and those marvels that perplex you will
cease to be marvellous. I pass on to the riddle that puzzles
you most. By Philip Derval’s account I am, in truth, Louis
Grayle restored to youth by the elixir, and while yet infirm,
decrepit, murdered Haroun—a man of a frame as athletic as
yours! By accepting this notion you seem to yourself alone to
unravel the mysteries you ascribe to my life and my powers.
O wise philosopher! O profound logician | you accept that
notion, yet hold my belief in the Dervish's tale a chimera! I
- am Grayle made young by the elixir, and yet the elixir itself is
a fable l’’
He paused and laughed, but the laugh was no longer even an'
echo of its former merriment or playfulness—a sinister and ter-
rible laugh, mocking, threatening, malignant.
Again he swept his hand over his brows and resumed:
“Is it not easier to so accomplished a sage as you to believe
that the idlers of Paris have guessed the true solution of that
problem—my place on this earth? May I not be the love-son .
of Louis Grayle? And when Haroun refused the elixir to him,
or he found that his frame was too far exhausted for even the
elixir to repair organic lesions of structure in the worn frame
of old age, may he not have indulged the common illusion of
fathers, and soothed his death-pangs with the thought that he
should live again in his son? Haroun is found dead on his
-carpet—rumor said strangled. What proof of the truth of that
rumor? Might he not have passed away in a fit? Will it
lessen your perplexity if I state recollections? They are
378 A STRANGE STORY.
vague; they often perplex myself; but so far from a wish to
deceive you, my desire is to relate them so truthfully that you
may aid me to reduce them into more definite form.”
His face now became very troubled, the tone of his voice
very irresolute: the face and the voice of a man who is either
blundering his way through an intricate falsehood, or through
obscure reminiscences. *
“This Louis Grayle! this Louis Grayle! I remember him
well, as one remembers a nightmare. Whenever I look back,
before the illness of which I wil presently speak, the image of
Louis Grayle returns to me. I see myself with him in African
wilds, commanding the fierce Abyssinians. I see myself with
him in the fair Persian valley—lofty snow-covered mountains
encircling the garden of roses. I see myself with him in the
hush of the golden noon, reclined by the spray of cool foun-
tains; now listening to cymbals and lutes, now arguing with
graybeards on secrets bequeathed by the Chaldees. With him,
with him in moonlit nights, stealing into the sepulchres of
mythical kings. I see myself with him in the aisles of dark
caverns, surrounded by awful shapes, which have no likeness
amongst the creatures of earth. Louis Grayle! Louis Grayle!
all my earlier memories go back to Louis Grayle ! All my arts
and powers, all that I have learned of the languages spoken in
Europe, of the sciences taught in her schools, I owe to Louis
Grayle. But am I one and the same with him? No-I am
but a pale reflection of his giant intellect. I have not even a
reflection of his childlike agonies of sorrow. Louis Grayle!
He stands apart from me, as a rock from the tree that grows
out from its chasms. ' Yes, the gossip was right; I must be his
son.”
He leant his face on both hands, rocking himself to and fro.
At length, with a sigh, he resumed: &
“I remember, too, a long and oppressive illness, attended
with racking pains; a dismal journey in a wearisome litter;
the light hand of the woman Ayesha, so sad and so stately,
smoothing my pillow or fanning my brows. I remember the
evening on which my nurse drew the folds of the litter aside,
and said, ‘See Aleppol and the star of thy birth shining over
its walls ''
“I remember a face inexpressibly solemn and mournful. I
remember the chill that the calm of its ominous eye sent
through my veins—the face of Haroun, the Sage of Aleppo. I
remember the vessel of crystal he bore in his hand, and the
blessed relief from my pains that a drop from the essence
A STRANGE STORY. , 379
which flashed through the crystal bestowed! And then—and
then—I remember no more till the night on which Ayesha
came to my couch and said, ‘Rise.”
“And I rose, leaning on her, supported by her. We went
through dim narrow streets, faintly lit by wan stars, disturbing
the prowl of the dogs, that slunk from the look of that woman.
We came to a solitary house, small and low, and my nurse
said, “Wait.”
“She opened the door and went in ; I seated myself on the
threshold. And after a time she came out from the house, and
led me, still leaning on her, into a chamber.
“A man lay, as in sleep, on the carpet, and beside him stood
another man, whom I recognized as Ayesha's special attendant
—an Indian. “Haroun is dead,” said Ayesha. “Search for
that which will give thee new life. Thou hast seen, and wilt
know it, not I.’
“And I put my hand on the breast of Haroun—for the dead
man was he—and drew from it the vessel of crystal.
“Having done so, the frown on his marble brow appalled me.
I staggered back, and swooned away.
“I came to my senses, recovered and rejoicing, miles afar
from the city, the dawn red on its distant walls. Ayesha had
tended me; the elixir had already restored me.
“My first thought, when full consciousness came back to
me, rested on Louis Grayle, for he, also, had been at Aleppo.
I was but one of his numerous train. He too, was enſeebled
and suffering; he had sought the known skill of Haroun for
himself as for me; and this woman loved and had tended him as
she had loved and tended me. And my nurse told me that he
was dead, and forbade me henceforth to breathe his name.
“We traveled on—she and I, and the Indian, her servant—
my strength still renewed by the wondrous elixir. No longer
supported by her, what gazelle ever roved through its pasture
with a bound more elastic than mine?
“We came to a town, and my nurse placed before me a
mirror. I did not recognize myself. In this town we rested,
obscure, till the letter there reached me by which I learned
that I was the offspring of love, and enriched by the care of a
father recently dead. Is it not clear that Louis Grayle was
this father?’’
“If so, was the woman, Ayesha, your mother?”
“The letter said that “my mother had died in my infancy.’
Nevertheless, the care with which Ayesha had tended me in-
duced a suspicion that made me ask her the very question you
-
*
38o A STRANGE STORY.
put. She wept when I asked her, and said: ‘No, only my
nurse. And now I needed a nurse no more.’ The day after
I received the letter which announced an inheritance that al-
lowed me to vie with the nobles of Europe, this woman left me,
and went back to her tribe.”
“Have you never seen her since?”
Margrave hesitated a moment, and then answered, though
with seeming reluctance: “Yes, at Damascus. Not many
days after I was borne to that city by the strangers, who found
me half-dead on their road, I woke one morning to find her by
my side. And she said: ‘In joy and in health you did not
need me. I am needed now.’”
“Did you then deprive yourself of one so devoted? You
have not made this long voyage—from Egypt to Australia—
alone; you, to whom wealth gave no excuse for privation?”
“The woman came with me; and some chosen attendants.
I engaged to ourselves the vessel we sailed in.”
“Where have you left your companions?”
“By this hour,” answered Margrave; “they are in reach of
my summons; and when you and I have achieved the discov-
ery—in the results of which we shall share—I will exact no
more from your aid. I trust all that rests for my cure to my
nurse and her swarthy attendants. You will aid me now, as a
matter of course; the physician whose counsel you needed to
guide your own skill enjoins you to obey my whim—if whim
you still call it; you will obey it, for on that whim rests your
own sole hope of happiness—you, who can love; I love noth-
ing but life. Has my frank narrative solved all the doubts that
stood between you and me, in the great meeting-ground of an
interest in common?” s
“Solved all the doubts! Your wild story but makes some
the darker, leaving others untouched: the occult powers of
which you boast, and some of which I have witnessed—your
very insight into my own household sorrows, into the interest I
have, with yourself, in the truth of a faith so repugnant to
reason—”
“Pardon me,” interrupted Margrave, with that slight curve
of the lip which is half-smile and half-sneer, “if, in my account
of myself, I omitted what I cannot explain, and you cannot
conceive: let me first ask how many of the commonest actions
of the commonest men are purely involuntary and wholly inex-
plicable? When, for instance, you open your lips and utter a
sentence, you have not the faintest idea beforehand what word
will follow another; when you move a muscle, can you tell me
y
A STRANGE STORY. 381
the thought that prompts to the movement? And, wholly un-
able thus to account for your own simple sympathies between
impluse and act, do you believe that there exists a man upon
earth who can read all the riddles in the heart and brain of
another? Is it not true that not one drop of water, one atom
of matter, ever really touches another? Between each and
each there is always a space, however infinitesimally small.
How, then, could the world go on, if every man asked another
to make his whole history and being as lucid as daylight before
he would buy and sell with him? All interchange and alliance
rest but on this—an interest in common. You and I have
established that interest; all else, all you ask more, is superflu-
ous. Could I answer each doubt you would raise, still,
whether the answer should please or revolt you, your reason
would come back to the same starting-point, viz., In one
definite proposal have we two an interest in common?”
And again Margrave laughed, not in mirth, but in mockery.
The laugh and the words that preceded it were not the laugh
and the words of the young. Could it be possible that Louis
Grayle had indeed revived to false youth in the person of Mar-
grave, such might have been his laugh and such his words. The
whole mind of Margrave seemed to have undergone change
since I last saw him; more rich in idea; more crafty even in
candor, more powerful, more concentred. As we see in our
ordinary experience, that some infirmity, threatening dissolu-
tion, brings forth more vividly the reminiscences of early years,
when impressions were vigorously stamped, so I might have
thought that, as Margrave neared the tomb, the memories he
had retained from his former existence, in a being more amply
endowed, more formidably potent, struggled back to the brain;
and the mind that had lived in Louis Grayle moved the lips of
the dying Margrave. . . . *
“For the powers and the arts that it equally puzzles your
reason to assign or deny to me,’’ resumed my terrible guest,
“I will say briefly but this: they come from faculties stored
within myself, and doubtless conduce to my self-preservation—
faculties more or less, perhaps (so Van Helmont asserts),
given to all men, though dormant in most; vivid and active in
_me because in me self-preservation has been and yet is the
strong master-passion, or instinct; and because I have been
taught how to use and direct such faculties by disciplined
teachers—some by Louis Grayle, the enchanter; some by my
nurse, the singer of charmed songs. But in much that I will
to have done, I know no more than yourself how the agency
382 A STRANGE STORY.
acts. Enough for me to will what I wish, and sink calmly into
slumber, sure that the will would work somehow its way. But
when I have willed to know what, when known, should shape
my own courses, I could see, without aid from your pitiful tel-
escopes, all objects howsoever far. What wonder in that?
Have you no learned puzzle-brained metaphysicians, who tell
you that space is but an idea, all this palpable universe an idea
in the mind, and no more ' Why am I an enigma as dark as
the Sibyls, and your metaphysicians as plain as a hornbook?”
Again the sardonic laugh. “Enough: let what I have said
obscure or enlighten your guesses, we come back to the same
link of union, which binds man to man, bids states arise from
the desert, and foemen embrace as brothers. I need you and
you need me; without your aid my life is doomed; without
my secret the breath will have gone from the lips of your
Lilian before the sun of to-morrow is red on yon hilltops.”
“Fiend or juggler,” I cried, in rage, “you shall not so en-
slave and enthrall me by this mystic farrago and jargon.
Make your fantastic experiment on yourself if you will: trust
to your arts and your powers. My Lilian’s life shall not hang
on your fiat. I trust it—to—” -
“To what—to man’s skill? Hear what the sage of the col-
lege shall tell you, běfore I ask you again for your aid. Do
you trust to God's saving mercy? Ah of course you believe
in a God? Who, except a philosopher, can reason a Maker
away? But that the Maker will alter His courses to hear you;
that, whether or not you trust in Him, or in your doctor, it will
change by a hairbreadth the thing that must be—do you believe
this, Allen Fenwick?” -
And there sat this reader of hearts! a boy in his aspect,
mocking me and the graybeards of schools. *
I could listen no more; I turned to the door and fled down
the stairs, and heard, as I fled, a low chant: feeble and faint,
it was still the old barbaric chant, by which the serpent is
drawn from its hole by the charmer. -
CHAPTER LXXVII.
To those of my readers who may seek with Julius Faber to
explore, through intelligible causes, solutions of the marvels
I narrate, Margrave's confession may serve to explain away
much that my own superstitious beliefs had obscured. To
them Margrave is evidently the son of Louis Grayle. The
* - A STRANGE STORY. 383
elixir of life is reduced to some simple restorative, owing much
of its effect to the faith of a credulous patient: youth is so .
soon restored to its joy in the sun, with or without an elixir.
To them Margrave's arts of enchantment are reduced to those
idiosyncrasies of temperament on which the disciples of Mes-
mer build up their theories; exaggerated, in much, by my own
superstitions; aided, in part, by such natural, purely physical
magic as, explored by the ancient priestcrafts, is despised by
the modern philosophies, and only remains occult because
Science delights no more in the slides of the lantern which fas-
cinated her childhood with simulated phantoms. To them
Margrave is, perhaps, an enthusiast but, because an enthusiast,
not less an impostor. “J.' Homme se pique,” says Charron.
Man cogs the dice for himself ere he rattles the box for his
dupes. Was there ever successful impostor who did not com-
mence by a fraud on his own understanding? Cradled in
Orient Fable-land, what though Margrave believes in its le-
gends; in a wand, an elixir; in sorcerers or Afrites? That be-
lief in itself makes him keen to detect, and skilful to profit by,
the latent but kindred credulities of others. In all illustra-
tions of Duper and Duped through the records of supersti-
tion—from the guile of a Cromwell, a Mahomet, down to the
cheats of a gipsy—professional visionaries are amongst the
astutest observers. The knowledge that Margrave had gained
of my abode, of my affliction, or of the innermost thoughts in
my mind, it surely demanded no preternatural aids to acquire.
An Old Bailey attorney could have got at the one, and any quick
student of human hearts have readily mastered the other. In
fine, Margrave, thus rationally criticised, is no other prodigy
(save in degree and concurrence of attributes simple, though
not very common) than may be found in each alley that har-
bors a fortune-teller who has just faith enough in the stars or
the cards to bubble himself while he swindles his victims; ear-
nest, indeed, in the self-conviction that he is really a seer, but
reading the looks of his listeners, divining the thoughts that
induce them to listen, and acquiring by practice a startling
ability to judge what the listeners will deem it most seer-like to
read in the cards or divine from the stars. *
I leave this interpretation unassailed. It is that which is the
most probable; it is clearly that which, in a case not my own,
I should have accepted; and yet I revolved and dismissed it.
The moment we deal with things beyond our comprehension,
and in which our own senses are appealed to and baffled,
we revolt from the Probable, as it seems to the senses of those
384 A STRANGE story,
who have not experienced what we have. And the same prin-
ciple of Wonder that led our philosophy up from inert igno-
rance into restless knowledge, now winding back into Shadow-
land, reverses its rule by the way, and, at last, leaves us lost in
the maze, our knowledge inert, and our ignorance restless.
And putting aside all other reasons for hesitating to believe
that Margrave was the son of Louis Grayle—reasons which his
own narrative might suggest—was it not strange that Sir Philip
Derval, who had instituted inquiries so minute, and reported
them in his memoir with so faithful a care, should not have dis-
covered that a youth, attended by the same woman who had
attended Grayle, had disappeared from the town on the same
night as Grayle himself disappeared? But Derval had related
truthfully, according to Margrave's-account, the flight of Aye-
sha and her Indian servant, yet not alluded to the flight, not
even to the existence, of the boy, who must have been of no
mean importance in the suite of Louis Grayle, if he were, in-
deed, the son whom Grayle had made his constant companion,
and constituted his principal heir. - -
Not many minutes did I give myself up to the cloud of re-
flections through which no Sunbeam of light forced its way.
One thought overmastered all; Margrave had threatened death
to my Lilian, and warned me of what I should learn from the
lips of Faber, “the sage of the college.” I stood, shuddering,
at the door of my home; I did not dare to enter.
“Allen,” said a voice, in which my ear detected an un-
wonted tremulous faltering, “be firm—be calm. I keep my
promise. The hour is come in which you may again see the
Lilian of old—mind to mind, soul to soul.”
Faber’s hand took mine, and led me into the house.
“You do, then, fear that this interview will be too much for
her strength?’” said I whisperingly.
“I cannot say; but she demands the interview, and I dare
not refuse it,”
CHAPTER LXXVIII.
I LEFT Faber on the stairs, and paused at the door of Lil-
ian's room. . The door opened suddenly, noiselessly, and her
mother came out with one hand before her face, and the other
locked in Amy's, who was leading her as a child leads the
blind. Mrs. Ashleigh looked up, as I touched her, with a
vacant, dreary stare. She was not weeping, as was her wom-
anly wont in every pettier grief, but Amy was. No word was
*
A STRANGE STORY. 385
- exchanged between us. I entered, and closed the door; my
eyes turned mechanically to the corner in which was placed
the small virgin, bed, with its curtains white as a shroud. Lil-
ian was not there. I looked around, and saw her half-reclined
on a couch near the window. She was dressed, and with care.
Was not that her bridal robe?
“Allen—Allen,” she murmured. “Again, again my Allen—
again, again your Lilian l’’ And, striving in vain to rise, she
stretched out her arms in the yearning of reunited love. And
as I knelt beside her, those arms closed round me for the first
time in the frank, chaste, holy tenderness of a wife's embrace.
“Ah!” she said, in her low voice (her voice, like Cordelia's,
was ever low), “all has come back to me—all that I owe to
your protecting, noble, trustful, guardian love!”
‘‘Hush hush! the gratitude rests with me—it is so sweet to
love, to trust, to guard! my own, my beautiful—still my beau-
tiful! Suffering has not dimmed the light of those dear eyes
to me! Put your lips to my ear. Whisper but these words:
“I love you, and for your sake I wish to live'! ”
“For your sake, I pray—with my whole weak, human heart—
I pray to live! Listen. Some day hereafter, if I am spared,
under the purple blossoms of yonder waving trees I shall tell
you all, as I see it now ; all that darkened or shone on me in
my long dream, and before the dream closed around me, like a
night in which cloud and star chase each other! Some day
hereafter, some quiet, sunlit, happy, happy day. But now, all
I would say is this: Before that dreadful morning.” Here
she paused, shuddered, and passionately burst forth—“Allen,
Allen you did not believe that slanderous letter! God bless
you! God bless you! Great-hearted, high-souled—God bless
you, my darling! my husband! And He will! Pray to him
humbly as I do, and He will bless you.” She stooped and
kissed away my tears—then she resumed, feebly, meekly,
sorrowfully:
“Before that morning I was not worthy of such a heart, such
a love as yours. No, no; hear me. Not that a thought of
love for another ever crossed me! Never, while conscious
and reasoning, was I untrue to you, even in fancy But I was
a child—wayward as the child who pines for what earth cannot
give, and covets the moon for a toy. Heaven had been so
kind to my lot on earth, and yet with my lot on earth I was
secretly discontented. When I felt that you loved me, and my
heart told me that I loved again, I said to myself, ‘Now the
void that my soul finds on earth will be filled.' I longed for
386 A STRANGE STORY.
your coming, and yet when you went I murmured, “But is this,
the ideal of which I had dréamed?' I asked for an impossible
sympathy. Sympathy with what? Nay, smile on me, dear-
est!—sympathy with what? I could not have said. Ah!
Allen, then, then, I was not worthy of you. Infant that I
was, I asked you to understand me: now I know that I am a
woman, and my task is to study you! Do I make myself
clear? Do you forgive me? I was not untrue to you; I was
untrue to my own duties in life. I believed, in my vain con-
ceit, that a mortal’s dim vision of heaven raised me above the
earth; I did not perceive the truth that earth is a part of the
same universe as heaven! Now, perhaps, in the awful afflic-
tion that darkened my reason, my soul has been made more
clear. As if to chastise but to teach me, my soul has been
permitted to indulge its own presumptuous desire; it has wan-
dered forth from the trammels of mortal duties and destinies;
it comes back, alarmed by the dangers of its own rash and pre-
sumptuous escape from the task which it should desire upon
earth to perform. Allen, Allen, I am less unworthy of you
now ! Perhaps in my darkness one rapid glimpse of the true
world of spirit has been vouchsafed to me. If so, how unlike
to the visions my childhood indulged as divine! Now, while
I know still more deeply that there is a world for the angels, I
know, also, that the mortal must pass through probation in the
world of mortals. Oh! may I pass through it with you—
grieving in your griefs, rejoicing in your joys!” -
Here language failed her. Again the dear arms embraced
me, and the dear face, eloquent with love, hid itself on my
human breast. - *.. - -
CHAPTER LXXIX. t
THAT interview is over! Again I am banished from Lilian's
room; the agitation, the joy of that meeting has overstrained
her enfeebled nerves. Convulsive tremblings of the whole
frame, accompanied with vehement sobs, succeeded our brief
interchange of sweet and bitter thoughts. Faber, in tearing
me from her side, imperiously and sternly warned me that the
sole chance yet left of preserving her life was in the merciful
suspense of the emotions that my presence excited. He and
Amy resumed their place in her chamber. Even her mother
shared my sentence of banishment. So Mrs. Ashleigh and I
sat facing each other in the room below; over me a leaden
T* -, i. A STRANGE STORY. 387
stupor had fallen, and I heard, as a voice from afar or in a
dream, the mother’s murmured wailings:
“She will die—she will die! Her eyes have the same
heavenly look as my Gilbert's on the day on which his closed
forever. Her very words are his last words: “Forgive me all
my faults to you.” She will die—she will die!”
Hours thus passed away. At length, Faber entered the room;
he spoke first to Mrs. Ashleigh—meaningless soothings, familiar
to the lips of all who pass from the chamber of the dying to the
presence of mourners, and know that it is a falsehood to say
“hope,” and a mockery as yet, to say, “endure.”
But he led her away to her own room docile as a wearied
child led to sleep, stayed with her some time, and then re-
turned to me, pressing me to his breast father-like.
“No hope—no hope l’’ said I, recoiling from his embrace.
“You are silent. Speak! speak! Let me know the worst.”
“I have a hope, yet I scarcely dare to bid you share it; for
it grows rather out of my heart as man, than my experience as
physician. I cannot think that her soul would be now so rec-
onciled to earth, so fondly, so earnestly cling to this mortal life,
if it were about to be summoned away. You know how com-
monly even the sufferers who have dreaded death the most be-
come calmly resigned to its coming, when death visibly reveals
itself out from the shadows in which its shape has been guessed
and not seen. As it is a bad sign for life when the patient has
lost all will to live on, so there is hope while the patient, yet
young and with no perceptible breach in the great centres of
life (however violently their forts may be stormed), has still in-
tense faith in recovery, perhaps drawn (who can say?)from the
whispers conveyed from above to the soul. s
“I cannot bring myself to think that all the uses for which a
reason, always so lovely even in its errors, has been restored, are
yet fulfilled. It seems to me as if your union, as yet so imper-
fect, has still for its end that holy life on earth by which two
mortal beings strengthen each other for a sphere of existence
to which this is the spiritual ladder. Through yourself I have
hope yet for her. Gifted with powers that rank you high in
the manifold orders of man; thoughtful, laborious, and brave;
with a heart that makes intellect vibrate to every fine touch of
humanity; in error itself, conscientious; in delusion, still eager
for truth; in anger, for giving; in wrong, seeking how to repair;
and, best of all, strong in a love which the mean would have
|- shrunk to defend from the fangs of the slanderer—a love, rais-
ing passion itself out of the realm of the senses, made sublime
388 A STRANGE STORY.
by the sorrows that tried its devotion—with all these noble
proofs in yourself, of a being not meant to end here, your life
has stopped short in its uses, your mind itself has been drifted,
a bark without rudder or pilot, over seas without shore, under
skies without stars. And wherefore? Because the Mind you
so haughtily vaunted has refused its companion and teacher in
Soul.
“And therefore, through you, I hope that she will be spared
yet to live on—she, in whom soul has been led dimly astray, by
unheeding the checks and the definite goals which the mind is
ordained to prescribe to its wanderings while here; the mind
taking thoughts from the actual and visible world; and the soul
but vague glimpses and hints from the instinct of its ultimate
heritage. Each of you two seems to me as yet incomplete,
and your destinies yet uncompleted. Through the bonds of
the heart, through the trials of time, ye have both to consum-
mate your marriage. I do not—believe me—I do not say this
in the fanciful wisdom of allegory and type, save that, wher-
ever deeply examined, allegory and type run through all the
most commonplace phases of outward and material life. I
hope, then, that she may yet be spared to you; hope it, not
from my skill as physician but my inward belief as a Christian.
To perfect your own being and end, ‘Ye will need one an-
ofhez’ſ ’’
I started—the very words that Lilian had heard in her vision
“But,” resumed Faber, “how can I presume to trace the
numberless links of effect up to the First Cause, far off—oh ;
far off—out of the scope of my reason. I leave that to philoso-
phers, who would laugh my meek hope to scorn. Possibly, prob-
ably, where I, whose calling had been but to save flesh from the
worm, deem that the life of your Lilian is needed yet, to de-
velope and train your own convictions of soul, Heaven in its
wisdom may see that her death would instruct you far more
than her life. I have said: Be prepared for either; wisdom
through joy, or wisdom through grief. Enough that, looking
only through the mechanism by which this moral world is im-
pelled and improved, you know that cruelty is impossible to
wisdom. Even a man, or man’s law, is never wise but when
merciful. But mercy has general conditions; and that which
is mercy to the myriads may seem hard to the one, and that
which seems hard to the one in the pang of a moment may be
mercy when viewed by the eye that looks on through eternity.”
And from all this discourse—of which I now, at calm dis-
tance of time, recall every word—my human, loving heart bore
ſ
A STRANGE STORY. 389
away for the moment but this sentence; “Ye will need one
another”; so that I cried out: “Life, life, life! Is there no
hope for her life? Have you no hope as physician? I am
physician too; I will see her. I will judge. I will not be
banished from my post.”
“Judge, then, as physician, and let the responsibility rest
with you. At this moment, all convulsion, all struggle, has
ceased—the frame is at rest. Look on her, and perhaps only
the physician’s eye could distinguish her state from death. It
is not sleep, it is not trance, it is not the dooming coma from
which there is no awaking. Shall I call it by the name received
in our schools? Is it the catalepsy in which life is suspended, ,
but consciousness acute? She is motionless, rigid; it is but
with a strain of my own sense that I know that the breath still
breathes, and the heart still beats. But I am convinced that
though she can neither speak, nor stir, nor give sign, she is
fully, sensitively conscious of all that passes around her. She
, is like those who have seen the very coffin carried into their
chamber, and been unable to cry out: “Do not bury me alive!’
Judge then for yourself, with this intense consciousness and
this impotence to evince it, what might be the effect of your
presence—first an agony of despair, and then the complete ex-
tinction of life l’’
‘‘I have known but one such case—a mother whose heart
was wrapped up in a suffering infant. She had lain for two
days and two nights, still, as if in her shroud. All, save my-
self, said: ‘Life is gone.' I said: ‘Life still is there.” They
brought in the infant, to try what effect its presence would
produce; then her lips moved, and the hands crossed upon her
bosom trembled.”
“And the result?” exclaimed Faber eagerly. “If the result
of your experience sanction your presence, come; the sight of
the babe rekindled life?”
“No ; extinguished its last spark! I will not enter Lilian's
room. I will go away—away from the house itself. That
acute consciousness! I know it well! She may even hear me
move in the room below, hear me speak at this moment. Go
back to her, go back! But if hers be the state which I have
known in another, which may be yet more familiar to persons
of far ampler experience than mine, there is no immediate dan-
ger of death. The state will last through to-day, through to-
night, perhaps for days to come. Is it so?” t"
“I believe that for at least twelve hours there will be no
change in her state. I believe also that if she recover from it,
*
~ &r -
390 A STRANGE STORY,
calm and refreshed, as from a sleep, the danger of death will
have passed away.”
“And for twelve hours my presence would be hurtful?”
‘‘Rather såy fatal, if my diagnosis be right.”
I wrung my friend's hand, and we parted.
Oh! to lose her now ! now that her love and her reason had
both returned, each more vivid than before Futile, indeed,
might be Margrave's boasted secret; but at least in that secret
was hope. In recognized science I saw only despair.
And, at that thought, all dread of this mysterious visitor
vanished—all anxiety to question more of his attributes or his
history. His life itself became to me dear and precious.
What if it should fail me in the steps of the process, whatever
that was, by which the life of my Lilian might be saved
The shades of evening were now closing in. I remembered
that I had left Margrave without even food for many hours. I
stole round to the back of the house, filled a basket with ail-
ments more generous than those of the former day; extracted
fresh drugs from my store, and, thus laden, hurried back to the
hut. I found Margrave in the room below, seated on his mys-
terious coffer, leaning his face on his hand. When I entered,
he looked up, and said:
“You have neglected me. My strength is waning. Give
me more of the cordial, for we have work before us to-night,
and I need support.”
He took for granted my assent to his wild experiment; and
he was right.
I administered the cordial. I placed food before him, and
this time he did not eat with repugnance. I poured out wine,
and he drank it sparingly, but with ready compliance, saying:
“In perfect health, I looked upon wine as poison; now it is
like a foretaste of the glorious elixir.”
After he had thus recruited himself, he seemed to acquire an
energy that startlingly contrasted his languor the day before;
the effort of breathing was scarcely perceptible; the color came .
back to his cheeks; his bended frame rose elastic and erect.
“If I understood you rightly,” said I, “the experiment you
ask me to aid can be accomplished in a single night?”
“In a single night—this night.”
“Comamnd me. Why not begin at once? What apparatus
or chemical agencies do you need?”
“Ah!” said Margrave. “Formerly, how I was misled!
Formerly, how my conjectures blundered I thought, when I
asked you to give a month to the experiment I wish to make,
ºr- A STRANGE STORY. 391
that I should need the subtlest skill of the chemist. I then
believed, with Van Helmont, that the principle of life is a gas,
and that the secret was but in the mode by which the gas might
be rightly administered. But now, all that I need is con-
tained, in this coffer, save one very simple material—fuel suffi-
cient for a steady fire for six hours. I see even that is at hand,
piled up in your outhouse. And now for the substance itself—
to that you must guide me.”
“Explain.”
-‘‘Near this very spot is there not gold—in mines yet undis-
covered?—and gold of the purest metal?”
“There is. What then? Do you, with the alchemists, blend
in one discovery—gold and life?”
“No. But it is only where the chemistry of earth or of man
produces gold, that the substance from which the great pabu-
lum of life is extracted by ferment can be found. Possibly,
in the attempts at that transmutation of metals, which I think
your own great chemist, Sir Humphry Davy, allowed might be
possible, but held not to be worth the cost of the process—
possibly, in those attempts, some scanty grains of this substance
were found by the alchemists, in the crucible, with grains of
the metal as niggardly yielded by pitiful mimicry of Nature’s
stupendous laboratory; and from such grains enough of the
essence might, perhaps, have been drawn forth, to add a few
years of existence to some feeble graybeard, granting, what
rests on no proofs, that some of the alchemists reached an age
rarely given to man. But it is not in the miserly crucible, it
is in the matrix of Nature herself, that we must seek in prolific
, abundance Nature's grand principle—life. As the loadstone is
rife with the magnetic virtue; as amber contains the electric; so
in this substance, to which we yet want a name, is found the
bright life-giving fluid. In the old gold-mines of Asia and
Europe the substance exists, but can rarely be met with. The
soil for its nutriment may there be well-nigh exhausted. It is
here, where Nature herself is all vital with youth, that the nu-
triment of youth must be sought. Near this spot is gold–
guide me to it.”
“You cannot come with me. The place which I know as
auriferous is some miles distant—the way rugged. You Can-
not walk to it. It is true I have horses, but—’’
“Do you think I have come this distance, and not foreseen
and forestalled all that I want for my object? Trouble your-
self not with conjectures how I can arrive at the place. I have
provided the means to arrive at and leave it. My litter and its
392 A STRANGE STORY.
bearers are in reach of my call. Give me your arm to the ris-
ing ground, fifty yards from your door.” -
I obeyed mechanically, stifling all surprise. I had made my
resolve, and admitted no thought that could shake it.
When we reached the summit of the grassy hillock, which
sloped from the road that led to the seaport, Margrave, after
pausing to recover breath, lifted up his voice in a key not loud,
but shrill, and slow, and prolonged, half-cry and half-chant,
like the night-hawk's. Through that air—so limpid and still,
bringing near far objects, far sounds—the voice pierced its way,
artfully pausing, till wave after wave of the atmosphere bore
and transmitted it on.
In a few minutes the call seemed re-echoed, so exactly, so
cheerily, that for the moment I thought that the note was the
mimicry of the shy mocking Lyre-Bird, which mimics so merri-
ly all that it hears in its coverts, from the whirr of the locust to
the howl of the wild dog.
“What king,” said the mystical charmer, and as he spoke he
carelessly rested his hand on my shoulder, so that I trembled
to feel that this dread son of Naturé, Godless and soulless, who
had been—and, my heart whispered, who still could be—my
bane and mind-darkener, leant upon me for support, as the
spoilt younger-born on his brother; “What king,” said this
cynical mocker, with his beautiful boyish face; “What king in
your civilized Europe has the sway of a chief of the East?
What link is so strong between mortal and mortal, as that be-
tween lord and slave? I transport yon poor fools from the
land of their birth; they preserve here their old habits—obe-
dience and awe. They would wait till they starved in the soli-
tude—wait to hearken and answer my call. And I who thus
rule them, or charm them—I use and despise them. They
know that, and yet serve me! Between you and me, my phil-
osopher, there is but one thing worth living for—life for one- .
Self.’’
Is it age, is it youth, that thus shocks all my sense, in my
solemn completeness of man? Perhaps, in great capitals, young
men of pleasure will answer: “It is youth; and we think what
he says!” Young friends, I do not believe you. *-
-* CHAPTER LXXX.
ALONG the grass-track I saw now, under the moon, just
risen, a strange procession—never seen before in Australian
-** A STRANGE STORY. 393
y
*s *
pastures. It moved on, noiselessly but quickly. We descended
the hillock, and met it on the way; a sable litter, borne by four
men, in unfamiliar Eastern garments; two other Swarthy ser-
vitors, more bravely dressed, with yataghans and silver-hilted
pistols in their belts, preceding this sombre equipage. Perhaps
Margrave divined the disdainful thought that passed through
my mind, vaguely and half-consciously; for he said, with the
hollow, bitter laugh that had replaced the lively peal of his once
melodious mirth:
“A little leisure and a little gold, and your raw colonist, too,
will have the tastes of a pacha.’’
I made no answer. I had ceased to care who and what was
my tempter. To me his whole being was resolved into one
problem: Had he a secret by which Death could be turned
from Lilian?
But now as, the litter halted, from the long dark shadow
which it cast upon the turf, the figure of a woman emerged and
stood before us. The outlines of her shape were lost in the
loose folds of a black mantle, and the features of her face were
hidden by a black veil, except only the dark-bright, solemn
eyes. Her stature was lofty, her bearing majestic, whether in
movement or repose.
Margrave accosted her in some language unknown to me.
She replied in what seemed to my ear the same tongue. The
tones of her voice were sweet, but inexpressibly mournful.
The words that they uttered appeared intended to warn, or de-
preciate, or dissuade; for they called to Margrave's brow a
lowering frown, and drew from his lips a burst of unmistakable
anger. The woman rejoined, in the same melancholy music of
voice. And Margrave then, leaning his arm upon her shoulder
as he had leant it on mine, drew her away from the group into
a neighboring copse of the flowering eucalypti—mystic trees,
never changing the hues of their pale-green leaves, ever shift-
ing the tints of their ash-gray, shedding bark. For some mo-
ments, I gazed on the two human forms, dimly seen by the
glinting moonlight through the gaps in the foliage. Then, turn-
ing away my eyes, I saw, standing close at my side, a man
whom I had not noticed before. His footstep, as it stole to me,
had fallen on the sward without sound. His dress, though
Oriental, differed from that of his companions, both in shape
and color; fitting close to the breast, leaving the arms bare to
the elbow, and of an uniform ghastly white, as are the cere-
ments of the grave. His visage was even darker than those of
the Syrians or Arabs behind him, and his features were those
*
394 - A STRANGE STORY. *-
&
of a bird of prey—the beak of the eagle, but the eye of the vul-
ture. His cheeks were hollow; -the arms, crossed on his breast,
were long ard fleshless. Yet in that skeleton form there was a
something which conveyed the idea of a serpent’s suppleness
and strength; and as the hungry, watchful eyes met my own
startled gaze, I recoiled impulsively, with that inward warning
of danger which is conveyed to man, as to inferior animals, in
the very aspect of the creatures that sting or devour. At my
movement the man inclined his head in the submissive Eastern
salutation, and spoke in his foreign tongue, softly, humbly,
fawningly, to judge by his tone and his gesture.
I moved yet farther away from him with loathing, and now
the human thought flashed upon me: was I, in truth, exposed
to no danger in trusting myself to the mercy of the weird and
remorseless master of those hirelings from the East: seven
men in number, two at least of them formidably armed, and
docile as bloodhounds to the hunter, who has only to show
them their prey? But fear of man like myself is not my
weakness; where fear found its way to my heart, it was
through the doubts or the fancies in which man like myself
disappeared in the attributes, dark and unknown, which we
give to a fiend or a spectre. And, perhaps, if I could have
paused to analyze my own sensations, the very presence of
this escort—creatures of flesh and blood—lessened the dread
of my incomprehensible tempter. Rather, a hundred times,
front and defy those seven Eastern slaves—I, haughty Son of
the Anglo-Saxon who conquers all races because he fears no
odds—than have seen again, on the walls of my threshold, the
luminous, bodiless Shadow ! Besides: Lilian–Lilian for
one chance of saving her life, however wild and chimerical
that chance might be, I would have shrunk not a foot from
the march of an army.
Thus reassured and thus resolved, I advanced, with a smile
of disdain, to meet Margrave and his veiled companion, as
they now came ſrom the moonlit copse.
“Well” I said to him, with an irony that unconsciously
mimicked his own, “have you taken advice with your nurse?
I assume that the dark form by your side is that of Ayeshal’’
The woman looked at me from her sable veil, with her stead-
fast solemn eye, and said, in English, though with a foreign
accent: “The nurse born in Asia is but wise through her love;
the pale son of Europe is wise through his art. The nurse says,
“Forbear!' Do you say, “Adventure’?”
“Peace!” exclaimed Margrave, stamping his foot on the
\
*} & -- z
y
A STRANGE STORY. 395
ground. “I take no counsel from either; it rs or me to re-
solve, for you to obey, and for him to aid. Night’ is come,
and we waste it; move on.”
The woman made no reply, nor did I. He took my arm and
walked back to the hut. The barbaric escort followed. When
we reached the door of the building, Margrave said a few words
to the woman and to the litter-bearers. They entered the hut
with us. Margrave pointed out to the woman his coffer; to
the men the fuel stowed in the outhouse. Both were born
away and placed within the litter. Meanwhile I took from the
table, on which it was carelessly thrown, the light hatchet
that I habitually carried with me in my rambles.
“Do you think that you need that idle weapon?” said Mar-
grave, “Do you fear the good faith of my swarthy attendants?”
“Nay, take the hatchet yourself; its use is to sever the gold
from the quartz in which we may find it imbedded, or to clear,
as this shovel, which will also be needed, from the slight soil
above it, the ore that the mine in the mountain flings forth, as
the sea casts its waifs on the sands.”
“Give me your hand, fellow-laborer!” said, Margrave joy-
fully. “Ah, there is no faltering terror in this pulse! I was
not mistaken in the Man. What rests, but the Place and the
Hour? I shall live—I shall live!”
CHAPTER LXXXI.
MARGRAVE now entered the litter, and the Veiled Woman
drew the black curtains round him. I walked on, as the guide,
some yards in advance. The air was still, heavy, and parched
with the breath of the Australian sirocco,
We passed through the meadow-land, studded with slumber-
ing flocks; we followed the branch of the creek, which was
linked to its source in the mountains by many a trickling water-
fall; we threaded the gloom of stunted, misshapen trees,
gnarled with the stringy bark which makes one of the signs of
the strata that nourish gold; and at length the moon, now in
all her pomp of light, mid-heaven amongst her subject stars,
gleamed through the fissures of the cave, on whose floor lay
the relics of antediluvian races, and rested in one flood of sil-
very splendor upon the hollows of the extinct volcano, with
tufts of dank herbage, and wide spaces of paler sward, cover-
ing the gold below—Gold, the dumb symbol of organized Mat-
ster's great mystery, storing in itself, according as Mind, the
396 A STRANGE STORY. -:
informer of Matter, can distinguish its uses, evil and good,
bane and blessing. *.
Hitherto the Veiled Woman had remained in the rear, with the
white-robed skeleton-like image that had crept to my side un-
awares with its noiseless step. Thus, in each winding turn of
the difficult path at which the convoy following behind me
came into sight, I had seen, first, the two gayly dressed armed
men, next the black bier-like litter, and last the Black-veiled
Woman and the White-robed Skeleton.
But now, as I halted on the table-land, backed by the moun-
tain and fronting the valley, the woman left her companion,
passed by the litter and the armed men, and paused by my
side, at the mouth of the moonlit cavern. *
There for a moment she stood, silent, the procession below
mounting upward laboriously and slow; then she turned to
me, and her veil was withdrawn.
The face on which I gazed was wondrously beautiful, and
severely awful. There, was neither youth nor age, but beauty,
mature and majestic as that of a marble Demeter.
“Do you believe in that which you seek?” she asked, in her
foreign, melodious, melancholy accents. ---
“I have no belief,” was my answer. “True science has
none. True science questions all things, takes nothing upon
credit. It knows but three states of the mind—Denial, Con-
viction, and that vast interval between the two, which is not
belief, but suspense of judgment.”
The woman let fall her veil, moved from me, and seated her-
self on a crag above that cleft between mountain and creek, to
which, when I had first discovered the gold that the land nour-
ished, the rain from the clouds had given the rushing life of
the cataract; but which now, in the drought and the hush of
the skies, was but a dead pile of stones.
The litter now ascended the height: its bearers halted; a
lean hand tore the curtains aside, and Margrave descended,
leaning, this time, not on the Black-veiled Woman, but on the
White-robed Skeleton.
There, as he stood, the moon shone full on his wasted form;
on his face, resolute, cheerful, and proud, despite its hollowed
outlines and sicklied hues. He raised his head, spoke in the
language unknown to me, and the armed men and the litter-
bearers grouped round him, bending low, their eyes fixed on
the ground. The Veiled Woman rose slowly and came to his
side, motioning away, with a mute sign, the ghastly form on
which he leant, and passing round him silently, instead, her
- A STRANGE STORY. 397
own sustaining arm. Margrave spoke again a few sentences of
which I could not even guess the meaning. . When he had
concluded, the armed men and the litter-bearers came nearer
to his feet, knelt down, and kissed his hand. They then rose,
and took from the bier-like vehicle the coffer and the fuel.
This done, they lifted again the litter, and again, preceded by
the armed men, the procession descended down the sloping
hillside, down into the valley below.
Margrave now whispered, for some moments, into the ear of
the hideous creature who had made way for the Veiled Woman.
The grim skeleton bowed his head submissively, and strode
noiselessly away through the long grasses; the slender stems,
trampled under his stealthy feet, relifting themselves, as after
a passing wind. And thus he, too, sank out of sight down into
the valley below. On the table-land of the hill remained only
we three—Margrave, myself, and the Veiled Woman.
She had reseated herself apart, on the gray crag above the
dried torrent. He stood at the entrance of the cavern, round
the sides of which clustered parasital plants, with flowers of all
colors, some amongst them opening their petals and exhaling
their fragrance only in the hours of night; so that, as his
form filled up the jaws of the dull arch, obscuring the mogn-
beam that strove to pierce the shadows that slept within, it
stood now—wan and blighted—as I had seen it, first, radiant
and joyous, literally “framed in blooms.”
CHAPTER LXXXII.
“So,” said Margrave, turning to me, “under the soil that
spreads around us, lies the gold which to you and to me is at
this moment of no value, except as a guide to its twin-born—
the regenerator of life!”
“You have not yet described to me the nature of the sub-
stance which we are to explore, nor of the process by which
the virtues you impute to it are to be extracted.”
“Let us first find the gold, and instead of describing the life-
amber, so let me call it, I will point it out to your own eyes.
As to the process, your share in it is so simple, that you will
ask me why I seek aid from a chemist. The life-amber, when
found, has but to be subjected to heat and fermentation for
six hours; it will be placed, in a small cauldron which that
coffer contains, over the fire which that fuel will feed. To
give effect to the process, certain alkalies and other ingredi-
}
398 A STRANGE STORY.
*
~
-*
$ º-
ents are required. But these rare prepared, and mine is the
– task to commingle them. From your science as chemist I need
and ask nought. In you I have sought only the aid of a man.”
“If that be so, why, indeed, seek me at all? Why not con-
ſide in those Swarthy attendants, who doubtless are slaves to
your orders?”
“Confide in slaves! When the first task enjoined to them
would be to discover, and refrain from purloining, gold. Seven
such unscrupulous knaves, or even one such, and I, thus de-
fenceless and feeble! Such is not the work that wise masters
Confide to fierce slaves. But that is the least of the reasons
which exclude them from my choice, and fix my choice of as-
sistant on you. Do you forget what I told you of the danger
which the Dervish declared no bribe I could offer could tempt
him a second time to brave?”
“I remember now; those words had passed away from my
mind.” N.
“And because they had passed away from your mind, I
chose you for my comrade. I need a man by whom danger
is scorned.” º
“But in the process of which you tell me I see no possible
danger, unless the ingredients you mix in your cauldron have
poisonous fumes.”
“It is not that. The ingredients I use are not poisons.”
“What other danger, except you dread your own Eastern
slaves? But, if so, why lead them to these solitudes?—and iſ
so, why not bid me be armed?”
“The Eastern slaves, fulfilling my commands, wait for my
summons, where their eyes cannot see what we do. The dan-
ger is of a kind in which the boldest son of the East would be
more craven, perhaps, than the daintiest Sybarite of Europe,
who would shrink from a panther and laugh at a ghost. In
the creed of the Dervish, and of all who adventure into that
realm of nature which is closed to philosophy and Open to
magic, there are races in the magnitude of space unseen as ani-
malcules in the world of a drop. For the tribes of the drop,
science has its microscope. Of the hosts of yon azure Infinite
magic gains sight, and through them gains command over fluid
conductors that link all the parts of creation. Of these races,
some are wholly indifferent to man, some benign to him, and
some dreadly hostile. In all the regular and prescribed condi-
tions of mortal being, this magic realm seems as blank and
tenantless as yon vacant air. But when a seeker of powers
beyond the rude functions by which man plies the clockwork
M
}
y
A STRANGE STORY. . . .399
that measures his hours, and stops when its chain reaches the
end of its coil, strives to pass over those boundaries at which
philosophy says, “Knowledge ends,’ then he is like all other
travellers in regions unknown ; he must propitiate or brave the
tribes that are hostile—must depend for his life on the tribes
that are friendly. Though your science discredits the alchem-
ist’s dogmas, your learning informs you that all alchemists
were not ignorant impostors; yet those whose discoveries prove
them to have been the nearest allies to your practical knowl-
edge, ever hint in their mystical work at the reality of that
realm which is open to magic—ever hint that some means less
familiar than furnace and bellows are essential to him who
explores the elixir of life. He who once quaffs that elixir
obtains in his very veins the bright fluid by which he transmits
the force of his will to agencies dormant in nature, to giants
unseen in the space. And here, as he passes the boundary
which divides his allotted and normal mortality from the
regions and races that magic alone can explore, so, here, he
-breaks down the safeguard between himself and the tribes that
are hostile. Is it not ever thus between man and man? Let
a race most gentle and timid and civilized dwell on one side a
river or mountain, and another have home in the region be-
yond, each, if it pass not the intervening barrier, may with
each live in peace. But if ambitious adventurers scale the
mountain, or cross the river, with design to subdue and enslave
the populations they boldly invade, then all the invaded arise
in wrath and defiance—the neighbors are changed into foes.
And therefore this process, by which a simple though rare
material of nature is made to yield to a mortal the boon of a life
which brings, with its glorious resistance to Time, desires and
faculties to subject to its service beings that dwell in the earth,
and the air, and the deep, has ever been one of the same peril
which an invader must brave when he crosses the bounds of
his nation. By this key alone you unlock all the cells of the
alchemist's lore; by this alone understand how a labor, which
a chemist's crudest apprentice could perform, has baffled the
giant fathers of all your dwarfed children of science. Nature,
that stores this priceless boon, seems to shrink from conceding
it to man; the invisible tribes that abhor him oppose them-
selves to the gain that might give them a master. The duller
of those who were the life-seekers of old would have told you
how some chance, trivial, unlooked-for, foiled their grand hope
at the very point of fruition; some doltish mistake, some im-
provident oversight, a defect in the sulphur, a wild overflow in
4O6 A STRANGE STORY.
*
the quicksilver, or a flaw in the bellows, or a pupil who failed
to replenish the fuel, by falling asleep by the furnace. The
invisible foes seldom vouchsafe to make themselves visible
where they can frustrate the bungler, as they mock at his toils
from their ambush. But, the mightier adventurers, equally
foiled in despite of their patience and skill, would have said:
“Not with us rests the fault; we neglected no caution, we failed
from no oversight. But out from the cauldron dread faces
arose, and the spectres or demons dismayed and baffled us.”
Such, then, is the danger which seems so appalling to a son of
the East, as 1t seemed to a seer in the dark age of Europe.
But we can deridé all its threats, you and I. For myself, I
own frankly I take all the safety that the charms and resources
of magic bestow. You, for your safety, have the cultured and
disciplined reason which reduces all phantasies to nervous im-
pressions; and I rely on the courage of one who has ques-
tioned, unquailing, the Luminous Shadow, and wrested from the
hand of the magician himself the wand which concentred the
wonders of will!” *P.
To this strange and long discourse I listened without inter-
ruption, and now quietly answered:
‘‘I do not merit the trust you affect in my ..courage; but I
am now on my guard against the cheats of the fancy, and the
fumes of a vapor can scarcely bewilder the brain in the open air
of this mountain-land. I believe in no races like those which
you tell me lie viewless in space, as do gases. I believe not in
magic; I ask not its aids, and I dread not its terrors. For the
rest, I am confident of one mournful courage—the courage that
Comes from despair: I submit to your guidance whatever it
be, as a sufferer whom colleges doom to the grave submits to
the quack who says, “Take my specific and live!’ My life is
nought in itself; my life lives in another. You and I are both
brave from despair; you would turn death from yourself, J
would turn death from one I love more than myself. Both
know how little aid we can win from the colleges, and both,
therefore, turn to the promises most audaciously cheering:
Dervish or magician, alchemist or phantom, what care you and
I? And if they fail us, what then? They cannot fail us more
than the colleges do!” $
CHAPTER LXXXIII.
THE gold has been gained with an easy labor. I knew
where to seek for it, whether under the turf or in the bed of
* A STRANGE STORY. p AOI
./
the creek. But Margrave's eyes, hungrily gazing round every
spot from which the ore was disburied, could not detect the
substance of which he alone knew the outward appearance. I
had begun to believe that, even in the description given to him
of this material, he had been credulously duped, and that no
such material existed; when, coming back from the bed of the
watercourse, I saw a faint yellow gleam amidst the roots of a
giant parasite plant, the leaves and blossoms of which climbed
up the sides of the cave with its antediluvian relics. The
gleam was the gleam of gold, and on removing the loose earth
round the roots of the plant, we came on–No, I will not, I
dare not, describe it. The gold-digger would cast it aside, the
naturalist would pause not to heed it; and did I describe it,
and chemistry deign to subject it to analysis, could chemistry
alone detach or discover its boasted virtues?
Its particles, indeed, are very minute, not seeming readily to
crystallize with each other; each in itself of uniform shape and
size, spherical as the egg which contains the germ of life, and
small as the egg from which the life of an insect may quicken.
But Margrave's keen eye caught sight of the atoms upcast by
the light of the moon. He exclaimed to me, “Found! I shall
-live!” And then, as he gathered up the grains with tremulous
hands, he called out to the Veiled Woman, hitherto still seated
motionless on the crag. At his word she rose and went to the
place hard by, where the fuel was piled, busying herself there.
I had no leisure to heed her. I continued my search in the
soft and yielding soil that time and the decay of vegetable life
had accumulated over the Pre-Adamite strata on which the arch
of the cave rested its mighty keystone.
When we had collected of these particles about thrice as
much as a man might hold in his hand, we seemed to have ex-
hausted their bed. We continued still to find gold, but no
more of the delicate substance, to which, in our sight, gold
was as dross.
“Enough,” then said Margrave, reluctantly desisting.
“What we have gained already will suffice for a life thrice as
long as legend attributes to Haroun. I shall live—I shall live
through the centuries.”
“Forget not that I claim my share.”
“Your share—yours! True—your half of my life! It is
true.” He paused with a low, ironical, malignant laugh; and
then added, as he rose and turned away: “But the work is
yet to be done.”
402 A STRANGE STORY. \
CHAPTER LXXXIV.
WHILE we had thus labored and found, Ayesha had placed
the fuel where the moonlight fell fullest on the sward of the
table-land—a part of it already piled as for a fire, the rest of it
heaped confusedly close at hand; and by the pile she had
placed the coffer. And there she stood, her arms folded under
her mantle, her dark image seeming darker still as the moon-
light whitened all the ground from which the image rose mo-
tionless. Margrave opened his coffer; the Veiled Woman did
not aid him, and I watched in silence, while he as silently
made his weird and wizard-like preparations.
CHAPTER LXXXV.
ON the ground a wide circle was traced by a small rod,
tipped apparently with sponge saturated with some combusti-
ble naphtha-like fluid, so that a pale lambent flame followed the
course of the rod as Margrave guided it, burning up the her
bage over which it played, and leaving a distinct ring, like that-
which, in our lovely native fable-talk, we call the “Fairy's
Ring,” but yet more visible because marked in phosphorescent
light. On the ring thus formed were placed twelve small
lamps, fed with the fluid from the same vessel, and lighted by
the same rod. The light emitted by the lamps was more vivid
and brilliant than that which circled round the ring.
Within the circumference, and immediately round the
wood-pile, Margrave traced certain geometrical figures, in
which—not without a shudder, that I overcame at once by a
strong effort of will in murmuring to myself the name of “Lil-
ian”—I recognized the interlaced triangles which my own
hand, in the spell enforced on a sleep-walker, had described on
the floor of the wizard’s pavilion. The figures were traced,
like the circle, in flame, and at the point of each triangle (four
in number) was placed a lamp, brilliant as those on the ring.
This task performed, the cauldron, based on an iron tripod,
was placed on the wood-pile. And then the woman, before
inactive and unheeding, slowly advanced, knelt by the pile and
lighted it. The dry wood crackled and the flame burst forth,
licking the rims of the cauldron with tongues of fire.
Margrave flung into the cauldron the particles we had col-
lected, poured over them first a liquid, colorless as water, from
A STRANGB, STORY. 403
the largest of the vessels drawn from his coffer, and then, more
sparingly, drops from Small crystal phials, like the phials I
had seen in the hand of Philip Derval.
Having surmounted my first impulse of awe, I watched these
proceedings, curious yet disdainful, as one who watches the
mummeries of an enchanter on the stage.
“If,” thought I, ‘‘these are but artful devices to inebriate
and fool my own imagination, my imagination is on its guard,
and reason shall not, this time, sleep at her post!”
“And now,” said Margrave, “I consign to you the easy task
by which you are to merit your share of the elixir. It is my
task to feed and replenish the cauldron; it is Ayesha's to heed
the fire, which must not for a moment relax in its measured
and steady heat. Your task is the lightest of all: it is but to
renew from this vessel the fluid that burns in the lamps, and
on the ring. Observe, the contents of the vessel must be
thriftily husbanded; there is enough, but not more than
enough, to sustain the light in the lamps, on the lines traced
round the cauldron, and on the farther ring, for six hours.
The compounds dissolved in this fluid are scarce—only obtain-
able in the East, and even in the East months might have
passed before I could have increased my supply. I had no
months to waste. Replenish, then, the light only when it
begins to flicker or fade. Take heed, above all, that no part of
the outer ring—no, not an inch—and no lamp of the twelve,
that are to its zodiac like stars, fade for one moment in
darkness.”
I took the crystal vessel from his hand.
“The vessel is small,” said I, “and what is yet left of its
contents is but scanty; whether its drops suffice to replenish
the lights I cannot guess—I can but obey your instructions.
But, more important by far than the light to the lamps and the
circle, which in Asia or Africa might scare away the wild
beasts unknown to this land—more important than light to a
lamp, is the strength to your frame, weak magician | What will
-support you through six weary hours of night-watch?’”
“Hope,” answered Margrave, with a ray of his old dazzling
style. “Hope! I shall live—I shall live through the cen-
turies.”
CHAPTER LXXXVI.
... ONE hour passed away; the fagots under the cauldron burned
t- in the sullen, sultry air. The materials within began to
4O4 A STRANGE STORY.
seethe, and their color, at first dull and turbid, changed into a
pale-rose hue; from time to time the Veiled Woman replen-
ished the fire, after she had done so reseating herself close by
the pyre, with her head bowed over her knees, and her face
hid under her veil.
The lights in the lamps and along the ring and the triangles
now began to pale. I resupplied their nutriment from the
crystal vessel. As yet nothing strange startled my eye or my
ear beyond the rim of the circle. , Nothing audible, save, at a
distance, the musical wheel-like click of the locusts, and,
farther still in the forest, the howl of the wild dogs that never
bark. Nothing visible, but the trees and the mountain-range
girding the plains silvered by the moon, and the arch of the
cavern, the flush of wild blooms on its sides, and the gleam of
dry bones on its floor, where the moonlight shot into the gloom.
The second hour passed like the first. I had taken my stand
by the side of Margrave, watching with him the process at
work in the cauldron, when I felt the ground slightly vibrate
beneath my feet, and, looking up, it seemed as if all the plains
beyond the circle were heaving like the swell of the sea, and as
if in the air itself there was a perceptible tremor.
I placed my hand on Margrave's shoulder and whispered:
“To me earth and air seem to vibrate. Do they seem to
vibrate to you?”
“I know not, I care not,” he answered impetuously. “The
essence is bursting the shell that confined it. Here are my
air and my earth ! Trouble me not. Look to the circle—feed
the lamps if they fail.”
I passed by the Veiled Woman as I walked towards a place
in the ring in which the flame was waning dim. And I whis-
pered to her the same question which I had whispered to Mar-
grave. She looked slowly around and answered: “So is it be-
fore the Invisible make themselves visible ! Did I not bid
him forbear?” Her head again dropped on her breast, and
her watch was again fixed on the fire. .
I advanced to the circle and stooped to replenish the light-
where it waned. As I did so, on my arm, which stretched
somewhat beyond the line of the ring, I felt a shock like that
of electricity. The arm fell to my side numbed and nerveless,
and from my hand dropped, but within the ring, the vessel that
contained the fluid. Recovering my surprise or my stun, has-
tily with the other hand I caught up the vessel, but some of
the scanty liquid was already spilled on the sward; and I saw
with a thrill of dismay, that contrasted indeed the tranquil in-,
|
A STRANGE STORY. 4O5
difference with which I had first undertaken my charge, how
small a supply was now left.
I went back to Margrave, and told him of the shock, and of
its consequence in the waste of the liquid.
“Beware,” said he, ‘‘that not a motion of the arm, not an
inch of the foot, pass the verge of the ring; and if the fluid be
, thus unhappily stinted, reserve all that is left for the protec-
ting circle and the twelve outer lamps! - See how the Grand
Work advances! How the hues in the cauldron are glowing
blood-red through the film on the surface!” -
And now four hours of the six were gone; my arm had
gradually, recovered its strength. Neither the ring nor the
lamps had again required replenishing; perhaps their light
was exhausted less quickly, as it was no longer to be exposed
to the rays of the intense Australian moon. Clouds had gath-
ered over the sky, and though the moon gleamed at times in
the gaps that they left in blue air, her beam was more hazy
and dulled. The locusts no longer were heard in the grass,
nor the howl of the dogs in the forest. Out of the circle, the
stillness was profound.
And about this time I saw distinctly in the distance a vast
Eye It drew nearer and nearer, seeming to move from the
ground at the height of some lofty giant. Its gaze riveted
mine; my blood curdled in the blaze from its angry ball; and
now as it advanced larger and larger, other Eyes, as if of
giants in its train, grew out from the space in its rear; num-
bers on numbers, like the spear-heads of some Eastern army,
seen afar by pale warders of battlements doomed to the dust.
My voice long refused an utterance to my awe; at length it
burst forth shrill and loud:
“Look—look! Those terrible Eyes! Legions on legions.
And hark! that tramp of numberless feet! they are not seen,
but the hollows of earth echo the sound of their march 1'.'
Margrave, more than ever intent on the cauldron, in which,
from time to time, too, he kept dropping powders or essences
drawn forth from his coffer, looked up, defyingly, fiercely:
“Ye come,” he said, in a low mutter, his once mighty voice
sounding hollow and laboring, but fearless and firm—“ye
come—not to conquer, vain rebels —ye whose dark chief I
struck down at my feet in the tomb where my spell had raised
up the ghost of your first human master, the Chaldeel Earth
and air have their armies still faithful to me, and still I remem-
ber the war-song that summons them up to confront you!
Ayesha–Ayeshal recall the wild troth that we pledged
406 A STRANGE STORY.
amongst roses; recall the dread bond by which we united our
sway over hosts that yet own thee as queen, though my sceptre
is broken, my diadem reft from my brows!”
The Veiled Woman rose at this adjuration. Her veil was
now withdrawn, and the blaze of the fire between Margrave
and herself flushed, as with the rosy bloom of youth, the grand
beauty of her softened face. It was seen, detached as it were,
from her dark-mantled form; seen through the mist of the
vapors which rose from the cauldron, framing it round like the
clouds that are yieldingly pierced by the light of the evening
Star. &
Through the haze of the vapor came her voice, more musi-
cal, more plaintive than I had heard it before, but far softer,
more tender; still in her foreign tongue; the words unknown
to me, and yet their sense, perhaps, made intelligible by the
love, which has one common language and one common look
to all who have loved—the love unmistakably heard in the
loving tone, unmistakably seen in the loving face.
A moment or so more, and she had come round from the
opposite side of the fire-pile, and bending over Margrave's
upturned brow, kissed it quietly, solemnly; and then her coun-
tenance grew fierce, her crest rose erect; it was the lioness
protecting her young. She stretched forth her arm from the
black mantle, athwart the pale front that now again bent over
the cauldron; stretched it towards the haunted and hollow-
sounding space beyond, in the gesture of one whose right hand
has the sway of the sceptre. And then her voice stole on the
air in the music of a chant, not loud yet far-reaching; so thrill-
ing, so sweet, and yet so solemn, that I could at once compre-
hend how legend united of old the spell of enchantment with
the power of song. All that I recalled of the effects which, in
the former time, Margrave's strange chants had produced on
the ear that they ravished and the thoughts they confused, was
but as the wild bird's imitative carol, compared to the depth,
and the art, and the soul of the singer, whose voice seemed en-
dowed with a charm to enthrall all the tribes of creation, though
the language it used for that charm might to them, as to me,
be unknown. As the song ceased, I heard, from behind,
sounds like those I had heard in the spaces before me; the
tramp of invisible feet, the whirr of invisible wings, as if armies
were marching to aid against armies in march to destroy.
“Look not in front nor around,” said Ayesha. “Look, like
him, on the cauldron below. The circle and the lamps are yet
bright; I will tell thee when the light again fails.”
x
A STRANGE STORY. 4O7
I dropped my eyes on the cauldron.
“See,” whispered Margrave, “the sparkles at last begin to
arise, and the rose-hues to deepen—signs that we near the last
process.”
CHAPTER LXXXVII.
- THE fifth hour had passed away, when Ayesha said to me:
“Lo! the circle is fading; the lamps grow dim. Look now
without fear on the space beyond; the eyes that appalled thee
are again lost in air, as lightnings that fleet back into cloud ''
I looked up, and the spectres had vanished. The sky was
tinged with Sulphurous hues, the red and the black intermixed.
I replenished the lamps and the ring in front; thriftily, heed-
fully; but when I came to the sixth lamp, not a drop in the
vessel that fed them was left. In a vague dismay, I now
looked round the half of the wide circle in rear of the two
bended figures intent on the cauldron. All along that disc the
light was already broken, here and there flickering up, here and
there dying down; the six lamps in that half of the circle still
twinkled, but faintly, as stars shrinking fast from the dawn of
day. But it was not the fading shine in that half of the magical
ring which daunted my eye and quickened with terror the
pulse of my heart; the Bush-land beyond was on fire. From
the background of the forest rose the flame and the smoke—
the smoke, there, still half smothering the flame. But along
the width of the grasses and herbage, between the verge of the
forest and the bed of the water-creek just below the raised
platform from which I beheld the dread conflagration, the fire
was advancing; wave upon wave, clear and red against the
columns of rock behind; as the rush of a flood through the
mists of some Alp crowned with lightnings.
Roused from my stun at the first sight of a danger not foreseen
by the mind I had steeled against far rarer portents of nature,
I cared no more for the lamps and the circle. Hurrying back
to Ayesha, I exclaimed: “The phantoms have gone from the
spaces in front; but what incantation or spell can arrest the red
march of the foe, speeding on in the rear! While we gazed
on the cauldron of life, behind us, unheeded, behold the De-
stroyerſ''
Ayesha looked and made no reply; but, as by involuntary
instinct, bowed her majestic head, then, rearing it erect,
placed herself yet more immediately before the wasted form of
the young magician (he still bending over the cauldron, and
408 A STRANGE STORY.
hearing me not in the absorption and hope of his watch): placed
herself before him, as the bird whose first care is her fledgling.
As we two there stood, fronting the deluge of fire, we heard
Margrave behind us, murmuring low; “See the bubbles of
light, how they sparkle and dance—I shall live, I shall live!”
And his words scarcely died in our ears before, crash upon
crash, came the fall of the age-long trees in the forest; and
nearer, all near us, through the blazing grasses, the hiss of the
serpents, the screams of the birds, and the bellow and tramp of
the herds plunging wild through the billowy red of their pastures.
Ayesha now wound her arms around Margrave, and wrenched
him, reluctant and struggling, from his watch over the Seething
cauldron. In rebuke of his angry exclamations, she pointed to
the march of the fire, spoke in sorrowful tones, a few words in
her own language, and then, appealing to me in English, said:
“I tell him that, here, the Spirits who oppose us have, sum-
moned a foe that is deaf to my voice, and—”
“And,” exclaimed Margrave, no longer with gasp and effort,
but with the swell of a voice which drowned all the discords of ter-
ror and of agony sent forth from the Phlegethon burning below—
‘‘and this witch, whom I trusted, is a vile slave and impostor,
more desiring my death than my life. She thinks that in life I
should scorn and forsake her, that in death I should die in her
arms! Sorceress, avaunt! Art thou useless and powerless
now when I need thee most? Go ! Let the world be one
funeral pyre? What to me is the world? My world is my life!
Thou knowest that my last hope is here—that all the strength
left me this night will die down, like the lamps in the circle,
unless the elixir restore it. - Bold friend, spurn that sorceress
away. Hours yet ere those flames can assail us! A few min-
utes more, and life to your Lilian and me!”
Thus having said, Margrave turned from us, and cast into
the cauldron the last essence yet left in his emptied coffer.
Ayesha silently-drew her black veil over her face; and turned,
with the being she loved, from the terror he scorned, to share
in the hope that he cherished.
Thus left alone, with my reason disenthralled, disenchanted,
I surveyed more calmly the extent of the actual peril with
which we were threatened, and the peril seemed less, so sur-
veyed.
It is true, all the Bush-land behind, almost up to the bed of
the creek, was on fire; but the grasses, through which the
flame spread so rapidly, ceased at the opposite marge of the
creek, Watery pools were still at intervals, left in the bed of
As
A STRANGE STORY. 469
the creek, shining tremulous, like waves of fire, in the glare re-
flected from the burning land; and even, where the water
failed, the stony course of the exhausted rivulet was a barrier
against the march of the conflagration. Thus, unless the wind,
now still, should rise, and waft some sparks to the parched
combustible herbage immediately around us we were saved from
the fire, and our work might yet be achieved.
I whispered to Ayesha the conclusion to which I came.
“Thinkest thou,” she answered, without raising her mournful
head, ‘‘that the Agencies of Nature are the movements of
chance? The Spirits I invoked to his aid are leagued with the
hosts that assail. A mightier than I am has doomed him l’’
Scarcely had she uttered these words before Margrave ex-
claimed: “Behold how the Rose of the alchemist’s dream en-
larges its blooms from the folds of its petals' I shall live, I
shall live!”
I looked, and the liquid which glowed in the cauldron had
now taken a splendor that mocked all comparisons borrowed
from the lustre of gems. In its prevalent color it had, indeed,
the dazzle and flash of the ruby ; but, out from the mass of the
molten red, broke coruscations of all prismal hues, shooting,
shifting, in a play that made the wavelets themselves seem liv-
ing things, sensible of their joy. No longer was there scum
or film upon the surface; only ever and anon a light rosy vapor
floating up, and quick lost in the haggard, heavy, Sulphurous
air, hot with the conflagration rushing towards us from behind.
And these coruscations formed, on the surface of the molten
ruby, literally the shape of a Rose, its leaves made distinct in
their outlines by sparks of emerald, and diamond, and Sapphire.
Even while gazing on this animate liquid lustre, a buoyant
delight seemed infused into my senses; all terrors conceived
before were annulled; the phantoms whose armies had filled
the wide spaces in front were forgotten; the crash of the
forest behind was unheard. In the reflection of that glory,
Margrave's wan cheek seemed already restored to the radiance
it wore when I saw it first in the frame-work of blooms.
As I gazed, thus enchanted, a cold hand touched my own.
“Hush l’’ whispered Ayesha, from the black veil, against
which the rays from the cauldron fell blunt, and absorbed into
Dark. “Behind us, the light of the circle is extinct, but,
there, we are guardéd from all save the brutal and soulless de-
stroyers. But before 1–but before 1–see, two of the lamps
have died out!—see the blank of the gap in the ring! Guard
that breach—there, the demons will enter.”
41 O A STRANGE STORY.
“Not a drop is there left in this vessel by which to replenish
the lamps on the ring.”
“Advance, then; thou hast still the light of the soul, and the
demons may recoil before a soul that is dauntless and guiltless.
If not, Three are lost!—as it is, One is doomed.”
Thus adjured, silently, involuntarily, I passed from the Veiled
Woman's side, over the sere lines on the turf which had been
traced by the triangles of light long since extinguished, and
towards the verge of the circle. As I advanced, overhead rushed
a dark cloud of wings—birds dislodged from the forest on fire,
and screaming, in dissonant terror, as they flew towards the
farthermost mountains; close by my feet hissed and glided the
Snakes, driven forth from their blazing coverts and glancing
through the ring, unscared by its waning lamps; all undulating
by me, bright-eyed and hissing—all made innocuous by fear:
even the terrible Death-adder, which I trampled on as I halted
at the verge of the circle, did not turn to bite, but crept harm-
less away. . I halted at the gap between the two dead lamps,
and bowed my head to look again into the crystal vessel.
Were there, indeed, no lingering drops yet left, if but to recruit
the lamps for some priceless minutes more? As I thus stood,
right into the gap between the two dead lamps, strode a gigan-
tic-Foot. All the rest of the form was unseen; only, as vol-
ume after volume of smoke poured on from the burning land
behind, it seemed if one great column of vapor, eddying round,
settled itself aloft from the circle, and that out from that col-
umn strode the giant Foot. And, as strode the Foot, so with
it came, like the sound of its tread, a roll of muttered thunder.
I recoiled, with a cry that rang loud through the lurid air.
“Courage l’” said the voice of Ayesha. “Trembling soul,
yield not an inch to the demon '''
At the charm, the wonderful charm, in the tone of the Veiled
Woman's voice, my will seemed to take a force more sublime
than its own. I folded my arms on my breast, and stood as if
rooted to the spot, confronting the Column of smoke and the
stride of the giant Foot. And the Foot halted, mute.
Again, in the momentary hush of that suspense, I heard
a voice—it was Margrave's.
“The last hour expires—the work is accomplished Come!
come!—aid me to take the cauldron from the fire; and,
quick!—or a drop may be wasted in vapor—the Elixir of Life
from the cauldron ''' g
At that cry I receded, and the Foot advanced.
And at that moment, suddenly, unawares, from behind, I was
N
A. STRAN GE STORY. 41 I
stricken down. Over me, as I lay, swept a whirlwind of trampl-
ing hoofs and glancing horns. The herds, in their flight from
the burning pastures, had rushed over the bed of the water-
course—scaled the slopes of the banks. Snorting and bellowing,
they plunged their blind way to the mountain. One cry alone,
more wild than their own savage blare, pierced the reek through
which the Brute Hurricane swept. At that cry of wrath and
despair I struggled to rise, again dashed to earth by the hoofs
and the horns. But was it the dreamlike deceit of my reeling
senses, or did I see that giant Foot stride past through the
close-serried ranks of the maddening herds? Did I hear, dis-
tinct through all the huge uproar of animal terror, the roll of
low thunder which followed the stride of that Foot?
CHAPTER LXXXVIII.
WHEN my sense had recovered its shock, and my eyes looked
dizzily round, the charge of the beasts had swept by ; and of
all the wild tribes which had invaded the magical circle, the
only lingerer was the brown Death-adder, coiled close by the
spot where my head had rested. Beside the extinguished
lamps which the hoofs had confusedly scattered, the fire, ar-
rested by the watercourse, had consumed the grasses that fed it,
and there the plains stretched, black and desert as the Phlegraean
Field of the Poet's Hell. But the fire still raged in the forest
beyond: white flames, soaring up from the trunks of the tallest
trees, and forming, through the sullen dark of the smoke-reek,
innumerable pillars of fire, like the halls in the City of Fiends.
Gathering myself up, I turned my eyes from the terrible
pomp of the lurid forest, and looked fearfully down on the
hoof-trambled sward for my two companions.
I saw the dark image of Ayesha still seated, still bending, as
I had seen it last. I saw a pale hand feebly grasping the rim
of the magical cauldron, which lay hurled down from its tripod by
the rush of the beasts, yards away from the dim fading embers
of the scattered wood pyre. I saw the faint writhings of a frail
wasted frame, over which the Veiled Woman was bending. I
saw, as I moved with bruised limbs to the place, close by the
lips of the dying magician, the flash of the ruby-like essence
spilt on the sward, and, meteor-like, Sparkling up from the torn
tufts of herbage. Y
I now reached Margrave's side. Bending over him as the
Veiled Woman bent, and as I sought gently to raise him, he
4f 2 A STRANGE STORY.
turned his face, fiercely faltering out: “Touch me not, rob me
not! You share with me! Never—never! These glorious
drops are all mine! Die all else! I will live—I will live!”
Writhing himself from my pitying arms, he plunged his face
amidst the beautiful, playful flame of the essence, as if to lap
the elixir with lips scorched away from its intolerable burning.
Suddenly, with a low shriek, he fell back, his face upturned
to mine, and on that face unmistakably reigned Death !
Then Ayesha tenderly, silently, drew the young head to her
lap, and it vanished from my sight behind her black veil.
I knelt beside her, murmuring some trite words of comfort;
but she heeded me not, rocking herself to and fro as the mother
who cradles a child to sleep. Soon, the fast-flickering sparkles
of the lost elixir died out on the grass; and with their last
sportive diamond-like tremble of light, up, in all the sudden-
ness of Australian day, rose the sun, lifting himself royally
above the mountain-tops, and fronting the meaner blaze of the
forest as a young king fronts his rebels. And as there, where
the bush-fires had ravaged, all was a desert; so there, where
their fury had not spread, all was a garden. Afar, at the foot
of the mountains, the fugitive herds were grazing; the cranes
flocking back to the pools, renewed the strange grace of their
gambols; and the great kingfisher, whose laugh, half in mirth,
half in mockery, leads the choir that welcome the morn—which
in Europe is night—alighted bold on the roof of the cavern,
whose floors were still white with the bones of races, extinct
before—so helpless through instincts, so royal through Soul—
rose MAN!
But there, on the ground where the dazzling elixir had
wasted its virtues—there the herbage already had a freshness
of verdure which, amid the duller sward round it, was like an
oasis of green in a desert. And, there, wild flowers, whose
chill hues the eye would have scarcely distinguished the day
before, now glittered forth in blooms of unfamiliar beauty.
Towards that spot were attracted myriads of happy insects,
whose hum of intense joy was musically loud. But the form
of the life-seeking sorcerer lay rigid and stark—blind to the
bloom of the wild flowers, deaf to the glee of the insects; one
hand still resting heavily on the rim of the emptied cauldron,
and the face still hid behind the Black Veil. What! the won-
drous elixir, sought with such hope and well-nigh achieved
through such dread, fleeting back to the earth from which its
material was drawn, to give bloom, indeed—but to herbs; joy
indeed—but to insects! * -
A STRANGE STORY. 4I 3
f
And now, in the flash of the sun, slowly wound up the slopes
that led to the circle the same barbaric procession which had
sunk into the valley under the ray of the moon. The armed
men came first, stalwart and tall, their vests brave with crimson
and golden lace, their weapons gayly gleaming with holiday
silver. After them, the Black Litter. As they came to the
place, Ayesha, not raising her head, spoke to them in her own
Eastern tongue. A wail was her answer. The armed men
bounded forward, and the bearers left the litter.
All gathered round the dead form with the face concealed
under"the black veil—all knelt, and all wept. Far in the dis-
tance, at the foot of the blue mountains, a crowd of the savage
natives had risen up as if from the earth; they stood motion-
less, leaning on their clubs and spears, and looking towards the
spot on which we were; strangely thus brought into the land-
scape, as if they too, the wild dwellers on the verge which Hu-
manity guards from the Brute, were among the mourners for
the mysterious Child of mysterious Nature And still, in the
herbage, hummed the small insects, and still, from the cavern,
laughed the great kingfisher. I said to Ayesha: " Farewell
your love mourns the dead, mine calls me to the living. You
are now with your own people, they may console you—say if I
can assist.”
“There is no consolation for me! What mourner can be
consoled if the dead die forever? Nothing for him is left but
• a grave; that grave shall be in the land where fºr ~nnº ºf
Ayesha first lulled him to sleep. Thou assist Mr---ſhoº, ,
wise man of Europe! From me ask assistance. . . . . . .
wilt thou take to thy home?”
“There is but one road known to me through the maze of
the solitude—that which we took to this upland.”
“On that road Death lurks, and awaits thee! Blind dupe,
couldst thou think that if the grand secret of life had been won,
he whose head rests on my lap would have yielded thee one
petty drop of the essence which had filched from his store of
life but a moment? Me, who so loved and so cherished him—
me he would have doomed to the pitiless cord of my servant,
the Strangler, if my death could have lengthened a hairbreadth
the span of his being. But what matters to me his crime or
his madness? I loved him—I loved him!”
She bowed her veiled head lower and lower; perhaps under
the veil, her lips kissed the lips of the dead. Then she said
whisperingly:
“Juma, the Strangler, whose word never failed to his mas-
4I4 A STRANGE STORY.
ter, whose prey never slipped from his snare, waits thy step on
the road to thy home ! But thy death can not now profit the
dead, the beloved. And thou hast had pity for him who took
but thine aid to design thy destruction. His life is lost, thine
is saved l’’
She spoke no more in the tongue that I could interpret.
She spoke, in the language unknown, a few murmured words
to her Swarthy attendants; then the armed men, still weeping,
rose, and made a dumb sign to me to go with them. I under-
stood by the sign that Ayesha had told them to guard me on
my way; but she gave no reply to my parting thanks. *
CHAPTER LXXXIX.
I DESCENDED into the valley; the armed men followed.
The path, on that side of the watercourse not reached by the
flames, wound through meadows still green, or amidst groves
still unscathed. As a turning in the way brought in front of
my sight the place I had left behind, I beheld the black litter
creeping down the descent, with its curtains closed, and the
Veiled Woman walking by its side. But soon the funeral pro-
cession was lost to my eyes, and the thoughts that it roused
were erased. The waves in man’s brain are like those of the
sea, rushing on, rushing over the wrecks of the vessels that rode
on their surface, to sink, after storm, in their deeps. One
thought cast forth into the future now mastered all in the past:
“Was Lilian living still?” Absorbed in the gloom of that
thought, hurried on by the goad that my heart, in its tortured
impatience, gave to my footstep, I outstripped the slow stride
of the armed men, and, midway between the place I had left
and the home which I sped to, came, far in advance of my
guards, into the thicket in which the bushmen had started up
in my path on the night that Lilian had watched for my com-
ing. The earth at my feet was rife with creeping plants and
many-colored flowers, the sky overhead was half-h’d by motion-
less pines. Suddenly, whether crawling out from the herbage
or dropping down from the trees, by my side stood the white-
robed and skeleton form—Ayesha's attendant, the Strangler.
I sprang from him in shuddering, then halted and faced him.
The hideous creature crept towards me, cringing and fawning,
making signs of humble good-will and servile obeisance. Again
I recoiled, wrathfully, loathingly; turned my face homeward,
and fled on. I thought I had baffled his chase, when, just at
A STRANGE STORY. 4I 5
the mouth of the thickº, he dropped from a bough in my path
close behind me. Before I could turn, some dark muffling
substance fell between my sight and the sun, and I felt a fierce
strain at my throat. But the words of Ayesha had warned me;
with one rapid hand I seized the noose before it could tighten
too closely, with the other I tore the bandage away from my
eyes, and, wheeling round on the dastardly foe, struck him
down with one spurn of my foot. His hand, as he fell, re-
laxed its hold on the noose; I freed my throat from the knot,
and sprang from the Copse into the broad Sunlit plain. I saw
no more of the armed men or the Strangler. Panting and
breathless, I paused at last before the fence, fragrant with
blossoms, that divided my home from the solitude.
The windows of Lilian's room were darkened—all within
the house seemed still.
Darkened and silenced Home! with the light and sounds of
the jocund day all around it. Was there yet Hope in the Uni-
verse for me? All to which I had trusted Hope, had broken
down; the anchors I had forged for her hold in the beds of
the ocean, her stay from the drifts of the storm, had snapped
like the reeds which pierce the side that leans on the barb of
their points and confides in the strength of their stems. No
hope in the baffled resources of recognized knowledge! No
hope in the daring adventures of Mind into regions unknown;
vain alike the calm lore of the practised physician, and the magi-
cal arts of the fated Enchanter! I had fled from the common-
place teachings of Nature, to explore in her Shadow-land mar-
vels at variance with reason. Made brave by the grandeur of
love, I had opposed without quailing the stride of the Demon,
and my hope, when fruition seemed nearest, had been trodden
into dust by the hoofs of the beast! And yet, all the while, I
had scorned, as a dream more wild than the word of a sorcerer,
the hope that the old man and child, the wise and the ignor-
ant, took from their souls as inborn. Man and fiend had alike
failed a mind, not ignoble, not skilless, not abjectly craven;
alike failed a heart not feeble and selfish, not dead to the hero’s
devotion, willing to shed every drop of its blood for a some-
thing more dear than an animal’s life for itself! What re-
mained—what remained for man’s hope?—man's mind and
man’s heart thus exhausting their all with no other result but
despair? What remained but the mystery of mysteries, so clear
to the sunrise of childhood, the sunset of age, only dimmed by
the clouds which collect round the noon of our manhood? .
Where yet was Hope found? In the soul; in its every-day im-
416 A STRANGE STORY.
** *** -
pulse to supplicate comfort and light, from the Giver of soul,
wherever the heart is afflicted, the mind is obscured.
Then the words of Ayesha rushed over me: “What mourner
can be consoled, if the Dead die forever?” Through every
pulse of my frame throbbed that dread question. All Nature
around seemed to murmur it. And suddenly, as by a flash
from Heaven, the grand truth in Faber’s grand reasoning shone
on me, and lighted up all, within and without. Man alone, of
all earthly creatures, asks, “Can the Dead die forever?” and
the instinct that urges the question is God’s answer to man!
No instinct is given in vain. •
And, born with the instinct of soul is the instinct that leads
the soul from the seen to the unseen, from time to eternity,
from the torrent that foams towards the Ocean of Death to the
source of its stream, far aloft from the Ocean.
“Know thyself,” said the Pythian of old. “That precept
descended from Heaven.” Know thyself! is that maxim wise?
If so, know thy soul. But never yet did man come to the
thorough conviction of soul, but what he acknowledged the
sovereign necessity of prayer. In my awe, in my rapture, all my
thoughts seemed enlarged and illumed and exalted. I prayed—
all my soul seemed one prayer. All my past, with its pride
and presumption and folly, grew distinct as the form of a peni-
tent, kneeling for pardon before setting forth on the pilgrimage
vowed to a shrine. And, sure now, in the deeps of a soul first
revealed to myself, that the Dead do not die forever, my human
love soared beyond its brief trial of terror and sorrow. Dar-
ing not to ask from Heaven's wisdom that Lilian, for my sake,
might not yet pass away from the earth, I prayed that my soul
might be fitted to bear with submission whatever my Maker
might ordain. And if surviving her—without whom no beam
from yon material sun could ever warm into joy a morrow in
human life—so to guide my steps that they might rejoin her
at last, and, in rejoining, regain forever!
How trivial now became the weird riddles that, a little while
before, had been clothed in so solemn an awe What mattered
it to the vast interests involved in the clear recognition of Soul
and Hereafter, whether or not my bodily sense, for a moment,
obscure the face of the Nature I should one day behold as a
spirit? Doubtless the sights and the sounds which had haunted
the last gloomy night, the calm reason of Faber would strip of
their magical seemings; the Eyes in the space and the Foot in
the circle might be those of no terrible Demons, but of the wild's
savage children whom I had seen, halting curious and mute, in
***,
__ & TRANGE STORY. 4I 7
the light of the morning. The tremor of the ground (if not, as
heretofore, explicable by the illusory impression of my own
treacherous senses) might be but the natural effect of elements
struggling yet under a soil unmistakably charred by volcanoes.
The luminous atoms dissolved in the cauldron might as little
be fraught with a vital elixir as are the splendors of naphtha or
phosphor. As it was, the weird rite had no magic result. The
magician was not rent limb from limb by the fiends. By causes
as natural as ever extinguishéd life's spark in the frail lamp of
clay, he had died out of sight—under the black veil.
What mattered henceforth to Faith, in its ſar grander questions
and answers, whether Reason, in Fabcr, or Fancy, in me, sup-
plied the more probable guess at a hieroglyph which, if con-
strued aright, was but a word of small mark in the mystical
language of Nature? If all the arts of enchantment recorded
by Fable were attested by facts which Sages were forced to ac-
knowledge, Sages would sooner or later find some cause for such
portents—not supernatural. But what Sage, without cause
supernatural, both without and within him, can guess at the
wonders he views in the growth of a blade of grass, or the
tints on an insect's wing? Whatever art Man can achieve in
his progress through time, Man's reason, in time, can suffice
to explain. But the wonders of God? These belong to the
Infinite; and these, O Immortal! will but develop new won-
der on wonder, though thy sight be a spirit's, and thy leisure
to track and to solve, an eternity. a
As I raised my face from my clasped hands, my eyes fell full
upon a form standing in the open doorway. There, where on
, the night in which Lilian's long struggle for reason and life
had begun, the Luminous Shadow had been beheld in the
doubtful light of a dying moon and a yet hazy dawn; there, on
, the threshold, gathering round her bright locks the aureole of
the glorious sun, stood Amy, the blessed child ! And as I
gazed, drawing nearer and nearer to the silenced house, and
that Image of Peace on its threshold, I felt that Hope met me
at the door—Hope in the child’s steadfast eyes—Hope in the
child's welcoming smile! s:
“I was at watch for you,” whispered Amy. “All is well.”
“She lives still—she lives! Thank God—thank God!’’
“She lives—she will recover!” said another voice, as my
head sunk on Faber's shoulder. “For some hours in the night
her sleep was disturbed—convulsed. I feared then, the worst.
Suddenly, just before the dawn, she called out aloud, still in
sleep:
418 A STRANGE STORY.
“‘The cold and dark shadow has passed away from me, and
from Allen—passed away from us both forever!’
“And from that moment the fever left her; the breathing
became soft, the pulse steady, and the color stole gradually
back to her cheek. The crisis is past. Nature's benign Dis-
poser has permitted Nature to restore your life's gentle partner,
heart to heart, mind to mind—” *
“And soul to soul,” I cried, in my solemn joy. “Above as
below, soul to soul!” Then, at a sign from Faber, the child
took me by the hand and led me up the stairs into Lilian's "
TOOIn.
Again those dear arms closed round me in wife-like and holy
love, and those true lips kissed away my tears—even as now,
at the distance of years from that happy morn, while I write
the last words of this Strange Story, the same faithful arms
close around me, the same tender lips kiss away my tears.
TPIE END.
THE
HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERS:
- OR, .
THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN.
A FRIEND of mine, who is a man of letters and a philosopher,
said to me-one day, as if between jest and earnest : “Fancy
since we last met, I have discovered a haunted house in the
midst of London.” . - . . .
“Really haunted —and by what? : Ghosts 2 " . ... --
“Well, I can't answer that question; all I know is this—six
weeks ago my wife and I were in search of a furnished apart-
ment. Passing a quiet street, we saw on the window of one of
the houses a bill, “Apartments Furnished.” The situation
suited us ; we entered the house, liked the rooms, engaged
them by the week, and left them the third day. No power on
earth could have reconciled my wife to stay longer; and I
don’t wonder at it.” . . . . . .
“What did you see P’’ -
* “Excuse me—I have no desire to be ridiculed as a supersti-
tious dreamer, nor, on the other hand, could I ask, you to
accept on my affirmation what you would hold to be incredi-
ble without the evidence of your own senses. Let me only say
this, it was not so much what we saw or heard (in which you
might fairly suppose that we were the dupes of our own ex-
cited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that drove
us away, as it was an undefinable terror which seized both of
us whenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished
room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And the
strangest marvel of all was, that for once in my life I agreed
with my wife, silly woman though ghº be, and allowed, after
the third night, that it was impossibie to stay a fourth in that
house. Accordingly, on the fourth morning I summoned the
woman who kept the house and attººded on us, and told her
*
2 THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERs, *
that the rooms did not quite suit us, and we would not stay -
out our week. She said dryly: ‘I know why; you have
stayed longer than any other lodger. Few ever stayed a
second night ; none before you a third. But I take it they
have been very kind to you.’
“‘They—who 7' I asked, affecting to smile. .*
“Why, they who haunt the house, whoever they are. I
don’t mind them ; I remember them many years ago when I
lived in this house, not as a servant; but I know they will be
the death of me some day. I don’t care—I'm old, and must
die soon anyhow ; and then I shall be with them, and in this
house still.” The woman spoke with so dreary a calmness,
that really it was a sort of awe that prevented my conversing
with her further. I paid for my week, and too happy were
my wife and I to get off so cheaply.”
“You excite my curiosity,” said I; “Nothing I should like
better than to sleep in a haunted house. Pray give the address
of the one which you left so ignominiously.
My friend” gave me the address; and when we parted, I
walked straight towards the house thus indicated.
It is situated on the north side of Oxford Street, in a dull
but respectable thoroughfare. I found the house shut up—no
bill at the window, and no response to my knock. As I was
turning away, a beer-boy, collecting pewter pots at the
neighboring areas, said to me : “Do you want any one at that
house, sir?”
“Yes, I heard it was to be let.”
“Let ! Why, the woman who kept it is dead—has been
dead these three weeks, and no one can be found to stay there,
though Mr. J offered ever so much. He offered mother,
who chars for him, 24, I a week just to open and shut the win.
dows, and she would not.”
“Would not And why?”
“The house is haunted ; and the old woman who kept it
was found dead in her bed, with her eyes wide open. They
say the devil strangled her.”
“Pooh You speak of Mr. J
*house P”
& 4 Yes.”
“Where does he live º’”
“In G Street, No. —.
“What is he l—in any business P’’
“No, sir—nothing particular; a single gentleman.”
J gave the pot-boy the gratuity earned by his liberal in-
Is he the owner of the
OR, THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN. 3
Ž -
ormation, and proceeded to Mr. J , in G Street,
which was close by the street that boasted the haunted house.
I was lucky enough to find Mr. J at home—an elderly
man, with intelligent countenance and prepossessing manners.
I communicated my name and my business frankly. I said
I heard the house was considered to be haunted; that I had
a strong desire to examine a house with so equivocal a repu-
tation ; that I should be greatly obliged if he would allow me
to hire it, though only for a night. I was willing to pay for
that privilege what he might be inclined to ask. “Sir,” said
Mr. J , with great courtesy, “the house is at your service,
* for as short or as long a time as you please. Rent is out of
the question—the obligation will be on my side should you be
able to discover the cause of the strange phenomena which at
present deprive it of all value. I cannot let it, for I cannot
even get a servant to keep it in order or answer the door.
-Unluckily the house is haunted, if I may use that expression,
not only by night, but by day; though at night the disturbances
are of a more unpleasant and sometimes of a more alarming
character. The poor old woman who died in it three weeks
ago was a pauper whom I took out of a workhouse, for in her
childhood she had been known to some of my family, and had
once been in such good circumstances that she had rented
that house of my uncle. She was a woman of superior educa-
tion and strong mind, and was the only person I could ever
induce to remain in the house. Indeed, since her death,
which was sudden, and the coroner's inquest, which gave it
a notoriety in the neighborhood, I have so despaired of finding
any person to take charge of the house, much more a tenant,
that I would willingly let it rent-free for a year to any one who
would pay its rates and taxes.”
“How long is it since the house acquired this sinister char-
acter P’’
“That I can scarcely tell you, but very many years since.
The old woman I spoke of said it was haunted when she rent-
ed it between thirty and forty years ago. The fact is, that my
life has been spent in the East Indies, and in the civil service
of the Company. I returned to England last year, on inherit-
ing the fortune of an uncle, among whose possessions was the
house in question. I found it shut up and uninhabited. I
was told that it was haunted ; that no one would inhabit it.
I smiled at what seemed to me so idle a story. I spent some
money in repairing it; added to its old-fashioned furniture a
few modern articles; advertised it, and obtained a lodger for
&
4 THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERs;
a year. He was a colonel retired on half-pay. He came in
with his family, a son and a daughter, and four or five servants:
they all left the house the next day; and, though each of them
declared that he had seen something different from that which
scared the others, a something still was equally terrible to all.
I really could not in conscience sue, nor even blame, the
colonel for breach of agreement. Then I put in the old wo-
man I have spoken of, and she was empowered to let the house
in apartments. I never had one lodger who stayed.more than .
three days. I do not tell you their stories—to no two lodgers
have there been exactly the same phenomena repeated. It is
better that you should judge for yourself than enter the house .
with an imagination influenced by previous narratives ; only
be prepared to see and to hear something or other, and take
whatever precautions you yourself please.” -
“Have you never had a curiosity yourself to pass a night in
that house P” ... • - -
“Yes. I passed not a night, but three hours in broad day-
light alone in that house. My curiosity is not satisfied, but it
is quenched. I have no desire to renew the experiment. You
cannot complain, you see, sir, that I am not sufficiently can-
did ; and unless your interest be exceedingly, eager and your
nerves unusually strong, I honestly add, that I advise you not
to pass a night in that house.” w " -
“My interest is exceedingly keen,” said I, “and though only
a coward will boast of his nerves in situations wholly unfa-
miliar to him, yet my nerves have been seasoned in such vari-
'ety of danger that I have the right to rely on them—even in a
“haunted house.” a-
Mr. J : said very little more ; he took the keys of the
house out of his bureau, gave them to me, and, thanking him
cordially for his frankness, and his urbane concession to my
wish, I carried off my prize. -
Impatient for the experiment, as soon as I reached home, I.
summoned my confidential servant—a young man of gay
spirits, fearless temper, and as free from superstitious prejudice
as any one I could think of. r --"
“F ,” said I, “you remember in Germany how disap-
pointed we were at not finding a ghost in that old castle, which
was said to be haunted by a headless apparition ? Well, I have
heard of a house in London which, I have reason to hope, is
decidedly haunted. I mean to sleep there to-night. From
what I hear there is no doubt that something will allow itself
to be seen or to be heard—something, perhaps, excessively
z oR, THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN. 5’ tº
horrible. Do you think if I take you with me, I may rely on
your presence of mind, whatever may happen 7" -
“Oh, sir! pray trust me,” answered F-, grinning with
delight. - - - ,’ t
“Very well; then here are the keys of the house—this is the
address. Go now—select for me any bedroom you please ;
and since the house has not been inhabited for weeks, make
up a good fire, air the bed well—see, of course, that there are
candles as well as fuel. Take with you my revolver and my
dagger—so much for my weapons—arm yourself equally well;
and if we are not a match for a dozen ghosts, we shall be but
a sorry couple of Englishmen.” x
I was engaged for the rest of the day on business so urgent
that I had not leisure to think much on the nocturnal adven.
ture to which I had plighted my honor. I dined alone, and
very late, and while dining, read, as is my habit. I selected
one of the volumes of Macaulay's Essays. I thought to myself
that I would take the book with me ; there was so much health-
fulness in the style, and practical life in the subjects, that it
would serve as an antidote against the influences of supersti-
tious fancy. - - .
Accordingly, about half-past nine, I put the book into my
pocket, and strolled leisurely towards the haunted house. I
took with me a favorite dog—an exceedingly sharp, bold, and
vigilant bull-terrier—a dog fond of prowling about strange
ghostly corners and passages at night in search of rats—a dog
of dogs for a ghost. * - ,< , ºr
It was a summer night, but chilly, the sky somewhat gloomy
and overcast. Still there was a moon—faint and sickly, but
still a moon—and if the clouds permitted, after midnight it
would be brighter. &
I reached the house, knocked, and my servant opened with
a cheerful smile. - -
“All right, sir, and very comfortable.” -
“Oh !” said I, rather disappointed ; “have you not seen nor
heard anything remarkable 7" -
“Well, sir, I must own I have heard something queer.”
“What 7–what ?” .
“The sound of feet pattering behind me; and once or twice
small noises like whispers close at my ear—nothing more.”
“You are not at all frightened " - .
“ I | Not a bit of it, sir”; and the man's bold look reas-
sured me on one point, viz., that happen what might, he
would not desert me, -- * .- -
6 THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERS:
*
b.
We were in the hall, the street-door closed, and my atten-
tion was now drawn to my dog. He had at first run in eagerly
enough, but had sneaked back to the door, and was scratching
and whining to get out. After patting him on the head, and
encouraging him gently, the dog seemed to reconcile himself
to the situation and followed me and F through the
house, but keeping close at my heels instead of hurrying in-
quisitively in advance, which was his usual and natural habit
in all strange places. We first visited the subterranean apart-
ments, the kitchen and other offices, and especially the cellars,
in which last there were two or three bottles of wine still left in
a bin, covered with cobwebs, and evidently, by their appear-
ance, undisturbed for many years. It was clear that the ghosts
were not wine-bibbers. For the rest we discovered nothing of
interest. There was a gloomy little backyard, with very high
walls. The stones of this yard were very damp; and what
with the damp, and what with the dust and smoke-grime on the
pavement, our feet left a slight impression where we passed.
And now appeared the first strange phenomenon witnessed by
myself in this strange abode. I saw, just before me, the print
of a foot suddenly form itself, as it were. I stopped, caught
hold of my servant, and pointed to it. In advance of that
footprint as suddenly dropped another. We both saw it. I
advanced quietly to the place; the footprint kept advancing
before me, a small footprint—the foot of a child : the impres-
sion was too faint thoroughly to distinguish the shape, but it
seemed to us both that it was the print of a naked foot. This
phenomenon ceased when we arrived at the opposite wall, nor
did it repeat itself on returning... We remounted the stairs, and
entered the rooms on the ground floor, a dining-parlor, a small
back parlor, and a still smaller third room that had been prob-.
ably appropriated to a footman—all still as death. We then
visited the drawing-rooms, which seemed fresh and new. In
the front room I seated myself in an armchair, F placed
on the table the candlestick with which he had lighted us. I
told him to shut the door. As he turned to do so, a chair op-
posite to me moved from the wall quickly and noiselessly, and
dropped itself about a yard from my own chair, immediately
fronting it. ->
“Why, this is better than the turning tables,” said I, with a
half-laugh ; and as I laughed, my dog put back his head and
howled. g
F , coming back, had not observed the movement of the
chair He employed himself now in stilling the dog. I con-
*
OR, THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN. 7
tinued to gaze on the chair, and fancied I saw on it a pale blue
misty outline of a human figure, but an outline so indistinct
that I could only distrust my own vision. The dog now was
quiet.
“Put back that chair opposite to me,” said I to F
it back to the wall.” ---
F obeyed., “Was that you, sir?” said he, turning ab
ruptly.
“I l—What 2 °
“Why, something struck me. I felt it sharply on the
shoulder—just here.”
“No,” said I. “But we have jugglers present, and though
we may not discover their tricks, we shall catch them before
they frighten us.”
We did not stay long in the drawing-rooms—in fact, they felt
so damp and chilly that I was glad to get to the fire upstairs.
We locked the doors of the drawing-rooms—a precaution
which, I should observe, we had taken with all the rooms we
had searched below. The bedroom my servant had selected
for me was the best on the floor—a large one, with two win-
dows fronting the street. The four-posted bed, whi 'h took up
no inconstderable space, was opposite to the fire, which burnt
clear and bright; a door in the wall to the left, between the
bed and the window, communicated with the room which my
servant appropriated to himself. This last was a small room
with a sofa-bed and had no communication with the landing-
place—no other door but that which conducted to the bedroom
I was to occupy. On either side of my fireplace was a cup-
board, without locks, flush with the wall, and covered with the
same dull-brown paper. We examined these cupboards—only
hooks to suspend female dresses—nothing else ; we sounded
the walls—evidently solid—the outer walls of the building.
Having finished the survey of these apartments, warmed my-
self a few moments, and lighted my cigar, I then, still accom-
panied by F , went forth to complete my reconnoitre. In
the landing-place there was another door ; it was closed firmly.
“Sir,” said my servant, in surprise, “I unlocked this door with
all the others when I first came ; it cannot have got locked from
the inside, for—” -
Before he had finished his sentence the door, which neither
of us then was touching, opened quietly of itself. We looked
at each other a single instant. The same thought seized
both—some human agency might be detected here. I rushed
in first, my servant followed. A small, blank, dreary room with:
; “put
8 THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERs;
out furniture—few empty boxes and hampers in a corner, a
small window, the shutters closed, not even a fire-place ; no
other door but that by which we had entered ; no carpet on the
floor, and the floor seemed very old, uneven, worm-eaten,
mended here and there, as was shown by the whiter patches
on the wood ; but no living being, and no visible place in
which a living being could have hidden. . As we stood gazing
round, the door by which we had entered closed as quietly as
it had before opened ; we were imprisoned. -
For the first time I felt a creep of undefinable horror. Not
so my servant. “Why, they don't think to trap us, sir; I
could break the trumpery door with a kick of my foot.”
“Try first if it will open to your hand,” said I, shaking off
the vague apprehension that had seized me, “while I unclose
the shutters and see what is without.” - .
I unbarred the shutters'; the window looked on the little back:
yard I have before described ; there was no ledge without—
nothing to break the sheer descent of the wall. No man get-
ting out of that window would have found any footing till he
had fallen on the stones below.
F , meanwhile, was vainly attempting to open the door.
He now turned round to me and asked my pernfission to use
force. And I should here state, in justice to the servant, that,
far from evincing any superstitious terrors, his nerve, compos-
ure, and even gayety amidst circumstances so extraordinary,
compelled my admiration, and made me congratulate myself
on having secured a companion fitted in every way for the
occasion. I willingly gave him the permission he required.
But though he was a remarkably strong man, his force was as
idle as his milder efforts; the door did not even shake to his
stoutest kick. Breathless and panting, he desisted. I then
tried the door myself, equally in vain. As I ceased from the
effort, again that creep of horror came over me: but this time
it was more cold and stubborn. I felt as if some strange and
ghastly exhalation were rising up from the chinks of that rug-
ged floor, and filling the atmosphere with a venomous influence
hostile to human life. The door now very slowly and quietly
opened as of its own accord. We precipitated ourselves into
the landing-place. We both saw a large pale light—as large as
the human figure but shapeless and unsubstantial—move before
us, and ascend the stairs that led from the landing into the
attics. I followed the light, and my servant followed me. It
entered, to the right of the landing, a small garret, of which
the door stood open. I entered in the same instant. The light
then collapsed into a small globule, exceedingly brilliant and
vivid; rested a moment on a bed in the corner, quivered, and
vanished. We approached the bed and examined it—a half-
tester, such as is commonly found in attics devoted to servants.
On the drawers that stood near it we perceived an old faded
silk kerchief, with the needle still left in a rent half-repaired.
The kerchief was covered with dust; probably it had belonged
to the old woman who had last died in that house, and this
might have been her sleeping-room. I had sufficient curiosity
to open the drawers : there were a few odds and ends of
female dress, and two letters tied round with a narrow ribbon
of faded yellow. I took the liberty to possess myself of the
letters. We found nothing else in the room worth noticing,
nor did the light reappear ; but we distinctly heard, as we
turned to go, a pattering footfall on the floor just before us.
We went through the other attics (all four), the footfall still
preceding us. Nothing to be seen—nothing but the footfall
heard. I had the letters in my hand : just as I was descend-
ing the stairs I distinctly felt my wrist seized, and a faint
soft effort made to draw the letters from my clasp. I only
held them the more tightly, and the effort ceased.
We regained the bedchamber appropriated to myself, and I
then remarked that my dog had not followed us when we had
left it. He was thrusting himself close to the fire, and trem-
bling. I was impatient to examine the letters; and while I
read them, my servant opened a little box in which he had
deposited the weapons I had ordered him to bring ; took them
out, placed them on a table close at my bed-head, and then
occupied himself in soothing the dog, who, however, seemed
to heed him very little. & . -
The letters were short—they were dated ; the dates exactly
thirty-five years ago. They were evidently from a lover to his
mistress, or a husband to some young wife. Not only the
terms of expression, but a distinct reference to a former voy-
age, indicated the writer to have been a seafarer. The spell-
ing and handwriting were those of a man imperfectly educated,
but still the language itself was forcible. In the expressions
of endearment there was a kind of rough, wild love; but here
and there were dark unintelligible hints at some secret not of
love—some secret that seemed of crime, “We ought to love
each other,” was one of the sentences I remember, “for how
every one else would execrate us if all was known.” Again :
“Don’t let any one be in the same room with you at night—
you talk in your sleep.” And again : “What's done can't be
IO THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERs;
undone ; and I tell you there's nothing against us unless the
dead could come to life.” Here there was underlined in a bet-
ter handwriting (a female's), “They do | " At the end of the
letter latest in date the same female hand had written these
words: “Lost at sea the 4th of June, the same date as —.”
I put down the letters, and began to muse over their con-
tentS.
Fearing, however, that the train of thought into which I fell
might unsteady my nerves, I fully determined to keep my mind
in a fit state to cope with whatever of marvellous the advanc-
ing night might bring forth. I roused myself, laid the letters
on the table, stirred up the fire, which was still bright and
cheering, and opened my volume of Macaulay. I read quietly
enough till about half-past eleven. I then threw myself
dressed upon the bed, and told my servant he might retire to
his own room, but must keep himself awake. Ibade him leave
open the door between the two rooms. Thus alone, I kept two
candles burning on my bed-head. I placed my watch beside
the weapons, and calmly resumed my Macaulay. Opposite to
me the fire burned clear; and on the hearthrug, seemingly
asleep, lay the dog. . In about twenty minutes I felt an
exceedingly cold air pass by my cheek like a sudden draught.
I fancied the door to my right, communicating with the land-
ing-place, must have got open ; but no—it was closed., I then
turned my gaze to my left, and saw the flame of the candles
violently swayed as by a wind. At the same moment my
watch beside the revolver softly slid from the table—softly,
softly—no visible hand—it was gone. I sprang up, seizing the
revolver with the one hand, the dagger with the other ; I was
not willing that my weapons should share the fate of my
watch. Thus armed, I looked round the floor—no sign of the
watch. Three slow, loud, distinct knocks were now heard at
the bed-head ; my servant called out, “Is that you, sir?”
“No ; be on your guard.”
The dog now roused himself and sat on his haunches, his
ears moving quickly backwards and forwards. He kept his
eyes fixed on me with a look so strange that he concentrated
all my attention on himself. Slowly he rose up, all his hair
bristling, and stood perfectly rigid, and with the same wild
stare. I had no time, however, to examine the dog. Presently
my servant emerged from his room ; and if ever I saw horror
in the human face, it was then. I should not have recognized
him had we met in the street, so altered was every lineament.
He passed by me quickly, saying in a whisper that seemed
$
or, the House AND THE BRAIN. 11
scarcely to come from his lips: “Run—run It is after me!”
He gained the door to the landing, pulled it open, and
rushed forth. I followed him into the landing involuntarily.
calling him to stop ; but, without heeding me, he bounded down
the stairs, clinging to the balusters, and taking several steps at
a time. I heard, where I stood, the street-door open—heard
it again clap to. I was left alone in the haunted house. t
It was but for a moment that I remained undecided whether
or not to follow my servant ; pride and curiosity alike forbade
so dastardly a flight. I re-entered my room, closing the door
after me, and proceeded cautiously into the interior chamber.
I encountered nothing to justify my servant's terror. I again
carefully examined the walls, to see if there were any con-
cealed door. I could find no trace of one, not even a seam in
the dull-brown paper with which the room was hung. How,
then, had the THING, whatever it was, which had so scared
him, obtained ingress except through my own chamber 2
I returned to my room, shut and locked the door that
opened upon the interior one, and stood on the hearth, expect-
ant and prepared. I now perceived that the dog had slunk
into an angle of the wall, and was pressing himself close
against it, as if literally striving to force his way into it ; the
poor brute was evidently beside itself with terror. It showed
all its teeth, the slaver dropping from its jaws, and would cer-
tainly have bitten me if I had touched it. It did not seem to
... recognize me. Whoever has seen at the Zoological Gardens a
rabbit fascinated by a serpent, cowering in a corner, may form
some idea of the anguish which the dog exhibited. Finding
all efforts to soothe the animal in vain, and fearing that his
bite might be as venomous in that state as in the madness of
hydrophobia, I left him alone, placed my weapons on the table
beside the fire, seated myself, and recommenced my Macaulay.
Perhaps, in order not to appear seeking credit for a courage,
or rather coolness, which the reader may conceive I exaggerate,
I may be pardoned if I pause to indulge in one or two egotis-
tical remarks. . . . -
As I hold presence of mind, or what is called courage, to be
precisely proportioned to familiarity with the circumstances
that lead to it, so I should say that I had been long sufficiently
familiar with all experiments that appertain to the Marvelous.
I had witnessed many very extraordinary phenomena that
would be either totally disbelieved if I stated them, or ascribed .
to supernatural agencies. Now, my theory is that the Supernatu-
ral is the Impossible, and that what is called supernatural is
*-*.
&
I 2 THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERs ;
only a something in the laws of nature of which we have been
hitherto ignorant. Therefore, if a ghost rise before me, I have-
not the right to say, “So, then, the supernatural is possible,”
but rather, “So, then, the apparition of a ghost is, contrary to.
received opinion, within the laws of nature, i. e., not super-
natural.” - s -
Now, in all that I had hitherto witnessed, and indeed in all
the wonders which the amateurs of mystery in our age record
as facts, a material living agency is always required. On the
Continent you will find still magicians who assert that they can
raise spirits. Assume for the moment that they assert truly,
still the living material form of the magician is present ; and he
is the material agency by which, from some constitutional
peculiarities, certain strange phenomena are represented to your
natural senses. -
Accept, again, as truthful, the tales of Spirit Manifestation
in America—musical or other sounds—writings on paper, pro-
duced by no discernible hand, articles of furniture moved with-
out apparent human agency, or the actual sight and touch of
hands, to which no bodies seem to belong—still there must be
found the MEDIUM, or living being, with constitutional peculi-
arities capable of obtaining these signs. In fine, in all such
marvels, supposing even that there is no imposture, there must
be a human being like ourselves by whom, or through whom,
the effects presented to human beings are produced. It is so
with the now familiar phenomena of mesmerism or electro-2-
biology ; the mind of a person operated on is affected through
a material living agent. Nor, supposing it true that a mesmer-
ized patient can respond to the will or passes of a mesmerizer
a hundred miles distant, is the response less occasioned by a
material being ; it may be through a material fluid—call it
Electric, call it Odic, call it what you will—which has the
power of traversing space and passing obstacles, that the ma-
terial effect is communicated from one to the other. Hence.
all that I had hitherto witnessed, or expected to witness, in
this strange house, I believed to be occasioned through some
agency or medium as mortal as myself ; and this idea neces-
sarily prevented the awe with which those who regard as super-
natural, things that are not within the ordinary operations of
nature, might have been impressed by the adventures of that
memorable night.
As, then, it was my conjecture that all that was presented,
or would be presented to my senses, must originate in some
human being gifted by constitution with the power so to pre-
.*
---"
or, the House AND THE BRAIN. f3
sent them, and having some motive so to do, I felt an interest
in my 'theory which, in its way, was rather philosophical than
superstitious. And I can sincerely say that I was in as tran-
quil a temper for observation as any practical experimentalist
could be in awaiting the effects of some rare, though perhaps
perilous, chemical combination. Of course, the more I kept
my mind detached from fancy, the more the temper fitted for
observation would be obtained ; and I therefore riveted eye
and thought on the strong daylight sense in the page of my
Macaulay.
I now became aware that something interposed between the
page and the light—the page was overshadowed : I looked up,
and I saw what I shall find it very difficult, perhaps impossible,
to describe.
It was a Darkness shaping itself forth from the air in very
undefined outline. I cannot say it was of a human form, and
yet it had more resemblance to a human form, or rather shadow,
than to anything else. As it stood, wholly apart and distifict
from the air and the light around it, its dimensions seemed
gigantic, the summit nearly touching the ceiling. While I
gazed, a feeling of intense cold seized me. An iceberg before
me could not more have chilled me ; nor could the cold of an
iceberg have been more purely physical. I feel convinced that
it was not the cold caused by fear. As I continued to gaze, I
thought—but this I cannot say with precision—that I distin-
guished two eyes looking down on me from the height. One
moment I fancied that I distinguished them clearly, the next
they seemed gone; but still two rays of a pale-blue light fre-
quently shot through the darkness, as from the height on which
I half believed, half doubted, that I had encountered the eyes.
“I strove to speak—my voice utterly failed me ; I could only
think to myself : “Is this fear 2 it is not fear !” I strove to
rise—in vain ; I felt as if weighed down by an irresistible force.
Indeed, my impression was that of an immense and overwhel-
ming Power opposed to my volition ; that sense of utter inade-
quacy to cope with a force beyond man's, which one may feel
physically in a storm at sea, in a conflagration, or when con-
fronting some terrible wild beast, or rather, perhaps, the shark
of the ocean, I felt morally. Opposed to my will was another
will, as far superior to its strength as storm, fire, and shark, are
superior in material force to the force of man.
And now, as this impression grew on me—now came, at last,
horror—horror to a degree that no words can convey. Still I
retained pride, if not courage ; and in my own mind I said:
14 - THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERs;
“This is horror, but it is not fear; unless I fear I cannot be
harmed ; my reason rejects this thing ; it is an illusion—I do
not fear.” With a violent effort I succeeded at last in stretch-
ing out my hand towards the weapon on the table : as I did so,
on the arm and shoulder"I received a strange shock, and my -
arm fell to my side powerless. And now, to add to my horror,
the light began slowly to wane from the candles—they were
not, as it were, extinguished, but their flame seemed very grad-
ually withdrawn : it was the same with the fire—the light was
extracted from the fuel ; in a few minutes the room was in
utter darkness. The dread that came over me, to be thus in
the dark with that dark Thing, whose power was so intensely
felt, brought a reaction of nerve. In fact, terror had reached
that climax, that either my senses must have deserted me, or I
must have burst through the spell. I did burst through it. I
found voice, though the voice was a shriek. I remember that
I broke forth with words like these : “I do not fear, my soul
does not fear”; and at the same time I found the strength to
rise. Still in that profound gloom I rushed to one of the win-
dows, tore aside the curtain, flung open the shutters; my first
thought was—LIGHT. And when I saw the moon high, clear,
and calm, I felt a joy that almost compensated for the previous
terror. There was the moon, there, was also the light from the
gas-lamps in the deserted, slumberous street. I turned to look
back into the room ; the moon penetrated its shadow very
palely and partially—but still there was light. The dark Thing,
whatever it might be, was gone—except that I could yet see a
dim shadow, which seemed the shadow of that shade, against
the opposite wall. -
My eye now rested on the table, and from under the t able º
(which was without cloth or cover—an old mahogany round
table) there rose a hand, visible as far as the wrist. It was a
hand, seemingly, as much of flesh and blood as my own, but
the hand of an aged person, lean, wrinkled, small, too—a wo-
man's hand. That hand very softly closed on the two letters
that lay on the table : hand and letters both vanished. There
then came the same three loud measured knocks I had heard
at the bed-head before this extraordinary drama had com-
menced. . -
As those sounds slowly ceased, I felt the whole room vibrate
sensibly ; and at the far end there rose, as from the floor, .
sparks or globules like bubbles of light, many-colored—green,
yellow, fire-red, azure. Up and down, to and fro, hither, thither.
as tiny Will-o'-the-Wisps, the sparks moved, slow or swift, each
OR, THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN. 15
at its own caprice. A chair (as in the drawing-room below)
was now advanced from the wall without apparent agency,
and placed at the opposite side of the table. Suddenly, as
forth from the chair, there grew a shape—a woman's shape. It
was distinct as a shape of life, ghastly as a shape of death.
The face was that of youth, with a strange, mournful beauty ;
the throat and shoulders were bare, the rest of the form in a
loose robe of cloudy white. It began sleeking its long yellow
hair, which fell over its shoulders ; its eyes were not turned
towards me, but to the door; it seemed listening, watching,
waiting. The shadow of the shade in the background grew
darker; and again I thought I beheld the eyes gleaming out
from the summit of the shadow—eyes fixed upon that shape.
As if from the door, though it did not open, there grew out
another shape, equally distinct, equally ghastly—a man's shape
—a young man's. It was in the dress of the last century, or
rather in a likeness of such dress (for both the male shape and
the female, though defined, were evidently unsubstantial, impal-
pable—simulacra—phantasms); and there was something incon-
gruous, yet fearful, in the contrast between the elaborate finery,
the courtly position of that old-fashioned garb, with its ruffles.
and lace and buckles, and the corpse-like aspect and ghost-like
stillness of the flitting wearer. "Just as the male shape.
approached the female, the dark Shadow started from the wall,
all three for a moment wrapped in darkness. When the pale
light, returned, the two phantoms were as if in the grasp of the
shadow that towered between them ; and there was a blood-
stain on the breast of the female ; and the phantom male was
leaning on its phantom sword, and blood seemed trickling fast
from the ruffles, from the lace ; and the darkness of the inter-
mediate Shadow swallowed them up—they were gone. And
again the bubbles of light shot, and sailed, and undulated,
growing thicker and thicker and more wildly confused in their
In OVenn entS. –
The closet door to the right of the fireplace now opened,
and from the aperture there came the form of an aged woman.
In her hand she held letters—the very letters over which I had.
seen the Hand close : and behind her I heard a footstep.
She turned round, as if to listen, and then she opened the let-
ters and seemed to read : and over her shoulder I saw a livid
face, the face of a man long drowned—bloated, bleached—
seaweed tangled in its dripping hair ; and at her feet lay a
form as of a corpse, and beside the corpse there cowered a
child, a misèrable squalid child, with famine in its cheeks and
tº
16 THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERs;
fear in its eyes. And as I looked in the old woman's face,
the wrinkles and lines vanished, and it became a face of
youth—hard-eyed, stony, but still youth ; and the Shadow
darted forth, and darkened over the phantoms as it had dark-
ened over the last. -
Nothing now was left but the Shadow, and on that my eyes
were intently fixed, till again eyes grew out of the Shadow—
malignant, serpent eyes. And the bubbles of light again rose
and fell, and in their disordered, irregular, turbulent maze,
mingled with the wan moonlight. And now from those glob-
ules themselves, as from the shell of an egg, monstrous things
burst out ; the air grew filled with them ; larvae so bloodless
and so hideous that I can in no way describe them except to
remind the reader of the swarming life which the solar micro-
scope brings before his eyes in a drop of water—things trans-
parent, supple, agile, chasing each other, devouring each
other—forms like nought ever beheld by the naked eye. As
the shapes were without symmetry, so their movements were
without order. In their very vagrancies there was no sport ;
they came round me and round, thicker and faster and swifter,
swarming over my head, crawling over my right arm, which
was outstretched in involuntary command against all evil
beings. Sometimes I felt myself touched, but not by them ;
invisible hands touched me. Once I felt the clutch as of cold,
soft fingers at my throat. I was still equally conscious that if
I gave way to fear I should be in bodily peril ; and I concen-
trated all my faculties in the single focus of resisting, stubborn
will. And I turned my sight from the Shadow—above all,
from those strange serpent eyes—eyes that had now become.
distinctly visible. For there, though in nought else around
me, I was aware that there was a WILL, and a will of intense,
creative, working evil, which might crush down my own.
The pale atmosphere in the room began now to redden as
iſ in the air of some conflagration. The larvae grew lurid as
things that live in fire. Again the room vibrated ; again were
heard the three measured knocks ; and again all things were
swallowed up in the darkness of the dark Shadow, as if out of
that darkness all had come, into that darkness all returned.
As the gloom receded, the Shadow was wholly gone. Slowly
as it had been withdrawn, the flame grew again into the can-
dles on the table, again into the fuel in the grate. The whole
room came once more calmly, healthfully, into sight. *
The two doors were still closed, the door communicating
with the servant's room still locked. In the corner of the wall
* -
> OR, THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN." 17
into which he had so convulsively niched himself, lay the dog.
I called to him—no movement ;.. I approached—the animal
was dead ; his eyes protruded ; his tongue out of his mouth ;
the froth gathered round his jaws. I took him in my arms ; I
brought him to the fire ; I felt acute grief for the loss of my
poor favorite—acute self-reproach ; I accused myself of his
death ; I imagined he had died of fright. But what was my
surprise on finding that his neck was actually broken. Had
this been done in the dark 2 Must it not have been by a hand
human as mine P Must there not have been a human agency
all the while in that room 2 Good cause to suspect it. I can-
not tell. I cannot do more than , state the fact fairly ; the
reader my draw his own inference.
Another surprising circumstance—my watch was restored to
the table from which it had been so mysteriously withdrawn ;
but it had stopped at the very moment it was so withdrawn ;
nor, despite all the skill of the watchmaker, has it ever gone
since ; that is, it will go in a strange erratic way for a few hours,
and then come to a dead stop—it is worthless.
Nothing more chanced for the rest of the night. Nor, in-
deed, had I long to wait before the dawn broke, Nor till
broad daylight did I quit the haunted house. Before I did so,
I revisited the blind room in which my servant and myself had
been for a long time imprisoned. I had a strong impression,
for which I could not account, that from that room had origi-
nated the mechanism of the phenomena—if I may use the
term—which had been experienced in my chamber. And
though I entered it now in the clear day, with the sun peering
through the filmy window, I still felt, as I stood on its floor,
the creep of the horror which I had first there experienced
the night before, and which had been so aggravated by what
had passed in my own chamber. I could not, indeed, bear
to stay more than half a minute within those walls. . I de-
scended the stairs, and again I heard the footfall before me ;
and, when I opened the street door, I thought I could distin-
guish a very low laugh. I gained my own home, expecting to
find my runaway servant there. But he had not presented him-
self; nor did I hear more of him for three days, when I
received a letter from him, dated from Liverpool to this
effect : *3 .
“HonoRED SIR :
I humbly entreat your pardon, though I can scarcely hope
that you will think I deserve it, unless—which Heaven forbid—
18 - THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERs; . . .
you saw what I did. I feel that it will be years before I can re-
cover myself, and as to being-fit for service, it is out of the ques-
tion. I am-therefore going to my brother-in-law at Melbourne.
The ship sails to-morrow. Perhaps the long voyage may set me
up. I do nothing now but start and tremble, and fancy IT is
behind me. I humbly beg you, honored sir, to order my clothes,
and whatever wages are due to me, to be sent to my mother's at
Walworth. John knows her address.” -
The letter ended with additional apologies, somewhat incohe-
rent, and explanatory details as to effects that had been under
the writer's charge. &
This flight may perhaps warrant a suspicion that the man
wished to go to Australia, and had been somehow or other
fraudulently mixed up with the events of the night. I say
nothing in refutation of that conjecture ; rather, I suggest it as
one that would seem to many persons the most probable solu-
tion of improbable occurrences. My belief in my own theory
remained unshaken. I returned in the evening to the house,
to bring away in a hack cab the things I had left there, with
my poor dog's body. In this task I was not disturbed, nor
did any incident worth note befall me, except that still, on as-
cending and descending the stairs, I heard the same footfall in
advance. On leaving the house, I went to Mr. J.'s. He was
at home. I returned him the keys, told him that my curiosity
was sufficiently gratified, and was about to relate quickly what
had passed, when he stopped me, and said, though with much
politeness, that he had no longer any interest in a mystery .
which none had ever solved. . -
I determined at least to tell him of the two letters I had read,
as well as of the extraordinary manner in which they had dis-
appeared, and I then inquired if he thought they had been äd-
dressed to the woman who had died in the house, and if there
were anything in her early history which could possibly confirm
the dark suspicions to which the letters gave rise. Mr. J
seemed startſed, and, after musing a few moments, answered :
“I am but little acquainted with the woman's earlier history,
except, as I before told you, that her family were known to
mine. But you revive some vague reminiscences to her pre-
... judice. I will make inquiries, and inform you of their result.
Still, even if we could admit the popular superstition that a
person who had been either the perpetrator or the victim of
dark crimes in life could revisit, as a restless spirit, the scene
in which those crimes had been committed, I should ob-
serve that the house was infested by strange sights and sounds
*
. . . .
y
oR, THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN. 19
say?" - -
“I would say this, that I am convinced, if we could get to the
bottom of these mysteries, we should find a living human
agency.” - - - -- -
“What You believe it is all an imposture For what
object 2" ... •
“Not an imposture in the ordinary sense of the word. If
suddenly. I were to sink into a deep sleep, from which you
could not awake me, but in that sleep could answer questions
with an accuracy which I could not pretend to when awake—
tell you what money you had in your pocket, nay, describe
your very thoughts—it is, not necessarily an imposture, any
more than it is necessarily supernatural. I should be, uncon-
sciously to myself, under a mesmeric influence, conveyed to me
from a distance by a human being who had acquired power over
me by previous rapport.” •
“But if a mesmerizer could so affect another living being,
can you suppose that a mesmerizer could also affect inanimat
objects : move chairs, open and shut doors 2 ” -
“Or impress our senses with the belief in such effects—
we never having been en rapport with the person acting on us?
No. What is commonly called mesmerism could not do this ;
but there may be a power akin to mesmerism, and superior
to it—the power that in the old days was called Magic.
That such a power may extend to all inanimate objects of
matter, I do not say; but if so, it would not be against nature,
it would be only a rare power in nature which might be given
to constitutions with certain peculiarities, and cultivated by
practice to an extraordinary degree. That such a power might
extend over the dead—that is, over certain thoughts and .
memories that the dead may still retain—and compel, not that
which ought properly to be called the SouL, and which is far
beyond human reach, but rather a phantom of what has been
most earth-stained on earth, to make itself apparent to our
senses, is a very ancient though obsolete theory, upon which
I will hazard no opinion. But I do not conceive the power
would be supernatural. Let me illustrate what I mean from
an experiment which Paracelsus describes as not difficult, and
which the author of the “Curiosities of Literature” cites
as credible: A flower perishes; you burn it. Whatever were
the elements of that flower while it lived are gone, dispersed,
you know not whither; you can never discover nor re-collect
them. But you can, by chemistry, out of the burnt dust of that
before the the old woman died—you smile—what would you
2O THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERs ;
flower, raise a spectrum of the flower, just as it seemed in life.
It may be the same with human beings. The soul has as
much escaped you as the essence or elements of the flower.
Still you may make a spectrum of it. And this phantom,
though in the popular superstition it is held to be the soul
of the departed, must not be confounded with the true soul;
it is but the eidolon of the dead form. Hence, like the best-
attested stories of ghosts or spirits, the thing that most
strikes us is the absence of what we hold to be soul ; that is,
of superior emancipated intelligence. These apparitions come
for little or no object; they seldom speak when they do
come ; if they speak, utter no ideas above those of an ordinary
person on earth. American spirit-seers have published vol-
umes of communications in prose and verse, which they assert
to be given in the names of the most illustrious dead—Shak-
speare, Bacon—heaven knows whom. Those communications,
taking the best, are certainly not a whit of higher order than
would be communications from living persons of fair talent
and education ; they are wondrously inferior to what Bacon,
Shakspeare, and Plato said and wrote when on earth. Nor,
what is more noticeable, do they ever contain an idea that
was not on the earth before. Wonderful, therefore, as such
phenomena may be (granting them to be truthful), I see much
that philosophy may question, nothing that it is incumbent
on philosophy to deny, viz., nothing supernatural. They are
but ideas conveyed somehow or other (we have not yet dis-
covered the means) from one mortal brain to another.
Whether, in so doing, tables walk of their own accord, or fiend-
like shapes appear in a magic circle, or bodyless hands rise and
remove material objects, or a Thing of Darkness, such as pre-
sented itself to me, freeze our blood—still am I persuaded
that these are but agencies conveyed, as by electric wires, to
imy own brain from the brain of another. In some constitu-
tions there is a natural chemistry, and these constitutions may
produce chemic wonders; in others a natural fluid, call it
electricity, and these may produce electric wonders. But the
wonders differ from Normal Science in this: they are alike ob-
jectless, purposeless, puerile, frivolous. They lead on to no
grand results; and therefore the world does not heed, and
true sages have not cultivated them. But sure I am, that
of all I saw or heard, a man, human as myself, was the re-
mote originator ; and Isbelieve unconsciously to himself as to
the exact effects produced, for this reason : no two persons, you
say, have ever told you that they experienced exactly the same
OR, THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN. 2 I
thing. Well, observe, no two persons ever experience exactly
the same dream. If this were an ordinary imposture, the
machinery would be arranged for results that would but little
vary ; if it were a supernatural agency permitted by the Al-
mighty, it would surely be for some definite end. These pheno-
mena belong to neither class ; my persuasion is, that they
originate in some brain now far distant ; that that brain had
no distinct volition in anything that occurred ; that what does
occur reflects but its devious, motley, ever-shifting, half-
formed thoughts; in short, that it has been but the dreams of
such a brain put into action and invested with a semi-substance.
That this brain is of immense power ; that it can set matter
into movement; that it is malignant and destructive, I be-
lieve ; some material force must have killed my dog ; the same
- force might, for aught I know, have sufficed to kill myself, had
I been as subjugated by terror as the dog—had my intellect
or my spirit given me no countervailing resistance in my will.”
“It killed your dog ' That is fearful Indeed it is strange
that no animal can be induced to stay in that house; not even
a cat. Rats and mice are never found in it.”
“The instincts of the brute creation detect influences deadly
to their existence. Man's reason has a sense less subtle, be-
cause it has a resisting power more supreme. But enough ;
do you comprehend my theory 2"
“Yes, though imperfectly—and I accept any crotchet (pardon
the word), however odd, rather than embrace at once the notion
of ghosts and hobgoblins we imbibed in our nurseries. Still,
to my unfortunate house the evil is the same. What on earth
can I do with the house P’’
“I will tell you what I would do. I am convinced from my
own internal feelings that the small unfurnished room at right
angles to the door of the bedroom which I occupied, forms a
starting-point or or receptacle for the influences which haunt
the house ; and I strongly advise you to have the walls opened,
the floor removed—nay, the whole room pulled down. I
observe that it is detached from the body of the house, built
over the small back-yard, and could be removed without injury
to the rest of the building.”
“And you think, if I did that—”
“You would cut off the telegraph wires. Try it. I am so
persuaded that am I right that I will pay half the expense if
you will allow me to direct the operations.”
“Nay, I am well able to afford the cost ; for the rest, allow
me to write to you.” £º-
22 THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERs;
About ten days afterwards I received a letter from Mr. J $
telling me that he had visited the house since I had seen him ;
that he had found the two letters I had described replaced in
the drawer from which I had taken them ; that he had read
them with misgivings like my own ; that he had instituted a
cautious inquiry about the woman to whom I rightly con-
jectured they had been written. It seemed that thirty-six
years ago (a year before the date of the letter) she had married,
against the wish of her relations, an American of very suspicious
character : in fact, he was generally believe to have been a pirate,
She herself was the daughter of very respectable tradespeople,
and had served in the capacity of a nursery governess before
her marriage. She had a brother, a widower, who was con-
sidered wealthy, and who had one child of about six years old.
A month after the marriage, the body of this brother was found
in the Thames, near London Bridge ; there seemed some marks
of violence about his throat, but they were not deemed sufficient
to warrant the inquest in any other verdict than that of
“found drowned.”
The American and his wife took charge of the little boy, the
deceased brother having by his will left his sister the guardian
of his only child—and in the event of the child's death, the
sister inherited. The child died about six months afterwards—
it was supposed to have been neglected and ill-treated. The
neighbors deposed to have heard it shriek at night. The surgeon
who had examined it after death, said that it was emaciated as
if from want of nourishment, and the body was covered with
livid bruises. It seemed that one winter night the child had
sought to escape—crept out into the back-yard, tried to scale the
wall, fallen back exhausted, and been found at morning on the
stones in a dying state. But though there was some evidence
of cruelty, there was none of murder ; and the aunt and her
husband had sought to palliate cruelty by alleging the exceed-
ing stubbornness and perversity of the child, who was declared
to be half-witted. Be that as it may, at the orphan's death
the aunt inherited her brother's fortune. Before the first
wedded year was out the American quitted England abruptly,
and never returned to it. He obtained a cruising vessel, which
was lost in the Atlantic two years afterwards. The widow
was left in affluence ; but reverses of various kinds had befallen
her : a bank broke, an investment failed ; she went into a
small business and became insolvent ; then she entered into
service, sinking lower and lower, from housekeeper down to
maid-of-all work—never long retaining a place, though nothing
OR, THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN. 23
decided against her character was ever alleged. She was con-
sidered sober, honest, and peculiárly quiet in her ways; still
nothing prospered with her. And so she had dropped into
the workhouse, from which Mr. J–— had taken her to be placed
in charge of the very house which she had rented as mistress
in the first year of her wedded life.
Mr. J added that he had passed an hour alone in the
unfurnished room which I had urged him to destroy, and that
his impressions of dread while there were so great, though he
had neither heard nor seen anything, that he was eager to have
the walls bared and the floors removed, as I had suggested. He
had engaged persons for the work, and would commence any
day I would name. º
The day was accordingly fixed. I repaired to the haunted
house ; we went into the blind dreary room, took up the skirt-
ing, and then the floors. Under the rafters, covered with rub-
bish, was found a trap-door, quite large enough to admit a man.
It was closely nailed down, with clamps and rivets of iron. On
removing these we descended into a room below, the existence of
which had never been suspected. In this room there had been
a window and a flue, but they had been bricked over, evidently
for many years. By the help of candles we examined this place;
it still retained some mouldering furniture—three chairs, an oak
settle, a table—all of the fashion of about eighty years ago.
There was a chest of drawers against the wall, in which we
found, half-rotted away, old-fashioned articles of a man's dress,
such as might have been worn eighty or a hundred years ago by
a gentleman of some rank—costly steel buckles and buttons,
like those yet worn in court-dresses, a handsome court sword;
in a waistcoat which had once been rich with gold-lace, but
which was now blackened and foul with damp, we found five
guineas, a few silver coins, and an ivory ticket, probably for
some place of entertainment long since passed away. But our
maia discovery was in a kind of iron safe fixed to the wall, the
lock of which it cost us much trouble to get picked.
In this safe were three shelves, and two small drawers.
Ranged on the shelves were several small bottles of crystal, her-
metically stopped. They contained colorless volatile essences,
of which I shall only say that they were not poisons—phosphor
and ammonia entered into some of them. There were also some
very curious glass tubes, and a small pointed rod of iron, with a
large lump of rock-crystal, and another of amber—also a load-
stone of great power. *
In one of the drawers we found a miniature portrait set in
24 THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERs;
gold, and retaining the freshness of its colors most remarkably,
considering the length of time it had probably been there.
The portrait was that of a man who might be somewhat ad-
vanced in middle life, perhaps forty-seven or forty-eight.
It was a remarkable face—a most impressive face. If you
could fancy some mighty serpent transformed into a man,
preserving in the human lineaments the old serpent type, you
would have a better idea of that countenance than long descrip-
tions can convey; the width and flatness of frontal ; the taper-
ing elegance of contour disguising the strength of the deadly
jaw ; the long, large, terrible eye, glittering and green as the
emerald ; and withal a certain ruthless calm, as if from the
consciousness of an immense power.
Mechanically I turned round the miniature to examine the
back of it, and on the back was engraved a pentacle ; in the
middle of the pentacle a ladder, and the third step of
the ladder was formed by the date 1765. Examining
still more minutely, I detected a spring ; this, on being
pressed, opened the back of the miniature as a lid. With-
inside the lid were engraved, “Marianna to thee—be faithful
in life and in death to .” Here follows a name that I will
not mention, but it was not unfamiliar to me. I had heard it
spoken of by old men in my childhood as the name borne by a
dazzling charlatan who had made a great sensation in London
for a year or so, and had fled the country on the charge of a
double murder within his own house—that of his mistress and
his rival. I said nothing of this to Mr. J , to whom reluc-
tantly I resigned the miniature.
We had found no difficulty in opening the first drawer within
the iron safe; we found great difficulty in opening the second ;
it was not locked, but it resisted all efforts till we inserted in the
, chinks the edge of a chisel. When we had thus drawn it forth,
we found a very singular apparatus in the nicest order. Upon
a small thin book, or rather tablet, was placed ā saucer - of
crystal : this saucer was filled with a clear liquid ; on that
liquid floated a kind of compass, with a needle shifting rapidly
round ; but instead of the usual points of a compass were
seven strange characters, not very unlike those used by astrol-
ogers to denote the planets. A peculiar, but not strong nor dis-
pleasing, odor came from this drawer, which was lined with a
wood that we afterwards discovered to be hazel. Whatever the
cause of this odor, it produced a material effect on the nerves.
We all felt it, even the two workmen who were in the room—a
creeping, tingling sensation from the tips of the fingers to the
OR, THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN. S 25
^,
roots of the hair. Impatient to examine the tablet, I removed
_ the saucer. As I did so the needle of the compass went round
and round with exceeding swiftness and I felt a shock that ran
through my whole frame, so that I dropped the saucer on the
floor. The liquid was spilt, the saucer was broken, the compass
rolled to the end of the room ; and at that instant the walls
shook to and fro, as if a giant had swayed and rocked them.
The two workmen were so frightened that they ran up the
ladder by which we had descended from the trap-door ; but
seeing that nothing more happened, they were easily induced
to return.
Meanwhile I had opened the tablet : it was bound in plain
red leather, with a silver clasp ; it contained but one sheet of
thick vellum, and on that sheet were inscribed, within a double
pentacle, words in old monkish Latin, which are literally to be
translated thus : “On all that it can reach within these walls—
sentient or inanimate, living or dead—as moves the needle, so
work my will Accursed be the house, and restless be the
dwellers therein.”
We found no more. Mr. J burnt the tablet and its ana-
thema. He razed to the foundations the part of the building
containing the secret room with the chamber over it. He had
then the courage to inhabit the house himself for a month,
and a quieter, better-conditioned house could not be found in
all London. Subsequently he let it to advantage, and his
tenant has made no complaints. / *.
THE END.
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INTERNATIONAL BOOK Co.
310–318 SIXTH AVENUE
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DEDICA 7'oz y EPIs Tze.
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 English- -
men, 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 con-
vey; elevated by the ideal which he exalts, and serenely dwelling in a glori-
ous 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 unsuilied 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 dis-
tortion, to lower your taste to the level of the Hour; you have lived, and you
have labored, 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, eleyating, the timidity of inex-
perience, 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 con-
tributed 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 excel-
lence 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
&
1V DEDICATORY EPISTLE.
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, be-
cause 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 con-
ceive and to perform. If I had graven it on the rocks of a desert, this ap-
parition 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 prin-
ciples 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.
º
INTRODUCTION.
㺠**
It is possible that, among my readers, there may be a few not unac
quainted with an old bookshop, existing some years since in the neighbor-
hood of Covent Garden ; I say a few, for certainly there was little enough
to attract the many, in those plecious volumes which the labor 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 Al-
chemist, Cabalist, and Astrologer. The owner had lavished a for tune 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
favorite 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 be-
liever himself in his Averroes and Paracelsus, he was as loth as the philoso-
phers he studied to communicate to the profane the learning he had col-
lected.
It so chanced that some years ago, in my younger days, whether of author-
ship 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 collec-
tion, which was rich not only in black letter, but in manuscripts, might
contain some more accurate and authentic records of that famous brother,
hood, written, who knows 2 by one of their own order, and confirming by
authority and detail the pretensions to wisdom and to virtue which Blingaret
had arrogated to the successors of the Chaldean Gymnosophist. Accord-
ingly I repaired to what, doubtless, I ought to be ashamed to confess, was
once one of my favorite haunts. But are theie no errors and no fallacies, in
the chronicles of our own day, as absurd as those of the alchemists of old 2
Our very newspapers may seem to our postelity 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 cus-
tomer 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
why
vi INTRODUCTION.
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 P 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 2 ''
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 discre-
tion.”
Here he paused, and seemed about to retire, when I said, somewhat ab-
ruptly, 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 sur-
veyed 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 2 ”
“Aha ” thought I, “this, then, is “the august fraternity’ of which you
spoke. Heaven be praised I certainly have stumbled on one of the broth-
erhood.” - *
“But,” I said, aloud, “if not in books, sir, where else am I to obtain in-
formation ? Nowadays one can hazard nothing in print without authority,
and one may scarcely quote Shakspeare 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 intel-
ligence.” And with that he buttoned his great. Joat, 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 bookshop. I was riding
leisurely towards Highgate, when at the foot of its classic hill I recognized
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 com-
mencement of a long hill, where, unless he has borrowed a friend's favorite
hack, he cannot in decent humanity to the brute creation ride away frcm
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 extra-
ordinary 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
INTRODUCTION. vii
an adept in the practice. Without fatiguing the reader with irrelevant criti.
cism, it is necessary, perhaps, as elucidating much of the design and charac-
ter 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 dis-
tinguished author has upon that of the Sciences; that he held that in all
works of imagination, whether expressed by words or by colors, 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 exal-
tation 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 im-
agination, to say that its characters are exact to common life. Even in
sculpture—”
“In sculpture | No-no Z'here 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 Shakspeare has ceased to be admired 2’’
“On the contrary ; people make the adoration of Shakspeare the excuse
for attacking everybody else. But then our critics have discovered that
Shakspeare 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 l’’ -
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.
“A’evenons & nos moutons,” said I; “you promised to enlighten my igno-
rance as to the Rosicrucians.”
“Well,” quoth he, rather sternly; “but for what purpose 2 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
Abbé 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 ailegorical 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 Rosicru-
cians, some of whom, he asserted, still existed, and still prosecuted in
august secresy their profound researches into natural science and occult phi-
losophy. g -
“But this fraternity,” said he, “however respectable and virtuous—virtu-
ous I say, for no monastic order is more severe in the practice of moral pre-
cepts, 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 P”
“I have occasionally lost my way in their labyrinth,” said I. “Faith,
tney are raher disficult gentiemet, to understand.”
…”
viii INTRO] ) { CTION,
“Yet their knottiest problems have never yet been published. Their sub-
limest 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 impostor of Tyanea Are his writings extant 2 ”
“Impostor , ” cried my host; “Apollonius an impostor . "
“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 re-
spectable 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 2" 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 Samari-
tan ; and as his virtues were softened by the gentlest charity, so his hopes were
based upon the devoutest belief. He neverconversed 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 be-
queathed 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 fol-
lowing 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 affa-
ble 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 follow-
ing effect :
“Plato here expresses four kinds of Mania, by which I desire to under-
stand 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 theo-
rNTRODUCTION. jx
rems with almost intuitive rapidity, by another, through which high art is ac,
complished, like the statues of Phidias, proceeded to state, that “enthusi-
asm, 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 le id
back the soul to its first divinity and happiness; but that there is an inti-
mate union with them all : and that the ordinary progress through which
the soul ascends is, primarily, through the musical ; next, through the teles-
tic or mystic ; thirdly, through the prophetic ; and lastly, through the en-
thusiasm of Love.” -
While with a bewildered understanding and a reluctant attention, I list-
ened 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.”
“Pavus sum, non GEdipus,” said I, shaking my head discontentedly.
“All this may be exceedingly fine, but, Heaven forgive me, I don't under-
stand a word of it. The mysteries of your Rosicrucians, and your fraterni-
ties, 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 2 ”
“But if I have already composed a book with that thesis for its theme,
will you prepare it for the public 2" -
“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 wº º?”
ºf is not a romance. It is a truth for those who
- An extravagance for those who cannot.”
ºe arrived the manuscripts, with a brief note from my deceased
tºº. 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 spec-
11 ſher) : -
2 +7 & v 4, ºr 3
3 Ay’ J m so on for 940 mortal pages in toolsap. T
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 un-




< ... INTRODUCTION.
canny 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 eager-
mess I had hitherto overlooked. I opened this volume with great precau-
tion, 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 labors, 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 honor 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 befel
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 re-model, and the chapters
I had written to re-translate. 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 gen-
tleman's vagaries with a muse of equivocal character must be my only ex-
cuse, 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 mean-
ing 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 discerni-
ble, but which, I flatter myself, are not inharmº 3 ºn
This confession leads me to the sentence with whº
reader, in this book there be anything that pleases yoºly mine;
but whenever you come to something you dislike, lay the b * upon the
old gentleman - • ...
London; anuary, 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
Che di diverso effetto hanno liquore l’’ “
—ARIOSTO, Orland. Fur., Canto i, 7.
Two Founts
That hold a draught of different effects.
CHAPTER I.
“Vergina era
D'alta beltà, ma sua beltà non cura !
:k + §: -3% :k *
Di natura, d’amor, de ’cieli amici
Le negligenze sue sono artifici.” ”
–Gerusal. Zió., canto ii., xiv.–xviii.
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 geniº, but not of popular reputation ; there
was in all his composi...ons something capricious and fantastic,
wkiich did not Rease the taste of the dile tant of Naples :ry
Jäe was fo, of u\{amiliar subjects, into which he introduced
"airs and symphonies hat excited a kind of terror in those who
listened. The names sf his pieces will probably suggest their
nature. I find, for instance, among his MSS., these titles,
“The Feast of the Harbies,” “The Witches at Benevento,”
“The Descent of Orpheus, into Hades,” “The Evil Eye,”
“The Eumenides,” and ºne. that evince a powerful
imagination, delighting in thes 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,

*. She was a virgin of a #. beauty, but regarded not her beauty. . . . Negligence
itself is art in those favored by nature, by love, and by the heavens
^, 9
* I O • * ZANONY.
however effeminate, of the ancient union between Song and
Drama, when, after long obscurity and dethronement, it re-
gained 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 repeti-
tion of the “Euridice” which Jacopi Peri set to nusic 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 ex-
travagances 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 re-
corded that no less than five times he had been deposed from
his desk for having shocked the conoscánti, 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
einstalment. and he lºad now, for the mos. Apart, reconciled
himself to the narrow sphere of his appointed adagios on
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 mighſ, also be detected by the
eye as well as the ear, in some strºńge contortion of visage,
and some ominous flourish of his Zow, a gentle and admonitory
murmur recalled the musician fºom his Elysium or his Tar-
tarus, 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

* Orpheus was the favorite hero of early Italian Opera, or Lyrical Drama. The Orfeo
ºf Angelo Politiano was produced 1475. The Orfeo of Monteverde was performed at
Venice in 1667.
...”
ZANONI. - II
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.
This man's appearance was in keeping with the characteris-
tics 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 ex-
hibited in music appropriate to this his favorite instrument, of
all. unquestionably the most various and royal in its resources
/ and power over the passions. As Shakspeare 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 unpub-
lished, his unpublishable and imperishable opera of the “Siren.”
This great work had been the dream of his boyhood, the mis-
tress 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 favored him with a
specimen of one of his most thrilling scenas. And yet, Paisi-
I 2 ZANONI.
ello, 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 loved him. How she came to marry him, or
how this shy, unsocial, wayward creature ever ventured to pro-
pose, 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 dependent, 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 2 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 un-
known, 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 lanthorn 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 delighted!y 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
sate beside him that whatever was tender or fairy-like in his
motley fantasia crept into the harmony as by stealth. Doubt-
less 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 that he told her so twenty times a day; but
ZANONI. I3
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 of-
fered more for the case than Pisani had ever made by the vio-
lin. 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 2 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 at-
tributes. 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—
splendor. The complexion exquisitely fair, but never the
same : vivid in one moment, pale the next. And with the com-
plexion the expression also varied ; 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 favored 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,
I4. ZANONI.
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 vam-
pire, 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
aſterthought and later years might labor vainly to dispel.
And all this especially fitted her to hang, with a fearful joy,
upon her father's music. Those visionary strains, ever strug-
gling 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 significa-
tion 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 Óf 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, some-
thing 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

2AM ONI. 15
§
&
/
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 unsul-
lied. She seized on nature and truth intuitively. Her recita-
tions 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 re-
peat, 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 from 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 rest-
less streams of sound that constantly played around it :- for it
is noticeablé, that to those who are much alive to the effects of
music, airs and tunes often come back, in the commonest pur-
suits of life, to vex, as it were, and haunt them. Then music,
once admitted to the soul, becomes also a sort of Spirit, and
never dies. It wanders perturbedly through the halls and gal-
leries 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
childish mirth, and sit apart and muse.
16 ZANONI.
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 ro-
mance and revery which made the atmosphere she breathed.
Frequently she would climb through the thickets that clothed
the neighboring grotto of Posilipo-the mighty work of the old
Cimmerians,—and, seated by the haunted tomb of Virgil, in-
dulge those visions, the subtle vagueness of which no poetry
can render palpable and defined : for the Poet that surpasses
all who ever sung, is the Heart of dreaming Youth ! Fre-
quently there, too, beside the threshold over which the vine-
1eaves 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 prerog-
ative 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 phantasms.
CHAPTER II.
“Fu stupor, fu vaghezza, fu diletto **
—Gerusal. Lib., cant. ii. xxi.
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 2 to whose genius is she to give embodi-
ment and form 2 Ah, there is the secret ! Rumors go abroad
that the inexhaustible Paisiello, charmed with her performance
of his Me/ corpiu mon me semfo, and his ſo son Zindoro, will pro-
duce some new masterpiece to introduce the debutante. Others
* Desire it was, ’twas wonder, 'twas delight.—WiFFEN's translation.
A \
ZANONI. 17
|t
t
re
insist upon it that her forte is the comic, and that Cimarosa is
hard at work at another Matrimonio Segreto. But in the mean-
while there is a check in the diplomacy somewhere. The Car-
dinal is observed to be out of humor. 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 perver-
seness 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 ſº. 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 famil-
iar. 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 Car-
dinal. 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 rumor of a new opera
and a new singer. But whose the opera 2 No cabinet intrigue
ever was so secret. Pisani came back one night from the
theatre evidently disturbed and irate. Woe to thine ears
18 ZANONI.
hadst thou heard the barbiton that night ! They had suspended
him from his office; they feared that the new opera, and the
first début 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 housetop
(whither, when thoroughly out of humor, the Musician some-
times 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, seem-
ingly 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 prob-
lems; “do / ever meddle with domestic affairs P’’ But what
are mathematics to music—music, that not only composes
operas, but plays on the barbiton 2 Do you know what the
illustrious Giardini said when the tyro asked how long it
would take to learn to play on the violin P 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 2 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 con-
spiracy against him 1 Sharper than the serpent's tooth was
---
tº ZANONI 19
}
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 2 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 2 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 even 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
innmortal child—the spirit-infant of his soul—his darling of
many years of patient obscurity and pining genius—his master-
piece—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 2
At last the curtain fell; but on such a storm—and diapason
of applause ! Uprose the audience as one man ; as with one
2O ZANON? Q
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 recognized
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 !”
9
CHAPTER III.
“Fra si contrarie tempre in ghiaccio e in foco,
In riso e in pianto, e fra paura e spene
L'ingannatrice Donna—” *
—Gerusal. Ziff., cant. iv. xciv.
Now, notwithstanding the "triumph both of the singer and
the opera, there had been one moment in the first act, and con-
sequently, 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 this Maelstrom of
Capricci whirled and foamed, and tore ear and sense through
every variety of sound, the audience simultaneously recognized
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 favorite Paisiello. Long accustomed to ridi-
cule 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 in potent while all goes
well, but a dangerous ambush the instant some accident throws
into confusion the march to 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
* Between such contrarious mixtures of ice and fire, laughter and tears, fear and hope,
the deceiving dame-
|
\
ZAN ONI. * , 21.
would grow contagious. It was the breath that stirred the im-
pending 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, re-
transformed into the trembling girl, stood pale and mute be-
fore 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 coun-
tenance which at once, and like magic, produced on her mind
an effect never to be analyzed 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 splendor of the eyes that met her own there was
indeed so much of gentle encouragement, of benign and com-
passionate 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 deb-
Ultante.
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 which she presided.
It seemed that the stranger's presence only served still more to
22 * ZANoN1.
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 house-
hold and filial love. Yet again, as she turned from the stage,
she looked back involuntarily, and the stranger's calm and
half melancholy Smile sunk into her heart, to live there, to be
recalled with confused memories, half of pleasure and half of
palm. sº
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 ecstacies of admiration which buzzed in the singer's
ear, as once more, in her modest veil and quiet dress, she es-
caped 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 de-
serted 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,
zenimus ad Zarem mostrum ; * 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 7 Up, rouse thee .
Every dimple on the cheek of home must smile to-night.
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 bar-
biton, 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, be-
tween every mouthful, turned to talk to it of something he had
forgotten to relate before. The good wife looked on affection-
* We come to our own house.
* “Ridete est quidquid est Domi cachimnorum.”—CATULL. ad Sirm. Penin.
2
!
ZANONI. 23
ately, 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, re-arranged 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 naïve 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 intoxica-
tion 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 P 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 clue
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
24 ZANONI.
below ; “why, my father, was your inspiration so sad, after the
joy of last night P’’
“I know not, child. I meant to be merry, and compose an
air in honor of thee, but he is an obstinate fellow, this—and
We would have it so.”
CHAPTER IV.
** E COSi i pigli e timidi desiri
y
Sprona.””—Gerusal. Lib., cant. iv. lxxxviii.
It was the custom of Pisani, except when the duties of his
profession made special demand on his time, to devote a cer-
tain 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 practise, 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 revery than thought, a man com-
ing from the direction of Posilipo, with a slow step and down-
cast eyes, passed close by the house, and Viola, looking up
abruptly, started in a kind of terror as she recognized 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.
* And thus the slow and timid passions urged,
º ZANONI. } 25
x-
.-
|
',
*
*
f
*..
t--;
rº
“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 1"
“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, per-
haps, 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 : be-
cause I saw in your heart a nobler ambition that that of
the woman's vanity; it was the daughter that interested me.
Perhaps you would rather I should have admired the
singer ?” º
“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 theatré
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 compre-
hending, 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. “Aºsimple 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 P’’ -
“Not, at least, for some time, I leave Naples to-day.”
26 § ZAN ONI. *- ---
“Indeed”; and Viola's heart sunk 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 neighbor's gar-
den. Look how it grows up, crooked and distorted. Some
wind scattered the germ, from which it sprung, 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 make 3 to that life the necessity and the principle :
you see how it has writhed and twisted; how, meeting the bar-
rier in one spot, it has labored and worked, stem and branches,
towards the 'clear skies at last. What has preserved it through
each disfavor 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, be-
cause of the very instinct that impelled the struggle ; because
the labor 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 mêonlight vanishes, and things
assume their common aspect of the rugged and the mean, he
receded from her eyes, and the outward scene was common-
place 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.
2ANONI. 27
A group of young, dissipated courtiers loitering by the gate-
way of a house which was open for the favorite pastime of the
day—the resort of the wealthier and 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 2 ”
“Ay; they say his wealth is incalculable !”
“ They say. Who are they 2 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 P’’
“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 ! haſ 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 l but he is a most agreeable and
witty gentleman l’’
“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 2) 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 honor 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

28 ZANONI.
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 ; it is a trifle he tells me ; the
jewellers value it at 5ooo pistoles | The merriest evening I
have passed these ten years ”
The cavaliers crowded round to admire the diamond.
“Signor Count Cetgxa,” said one grave-looking sombre man,
who had crossed himself two or three times during the Neapoli-
tan'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 2 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 rumors, 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 splendor, 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 honor 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
ZANONI. 29
envious of my diamond. Gentlemen, you sup with me to-night.
I assure you I never met a more delightful, sociable, entertain-
ing person than my dear friend, the Signor Zanoni.”
CHAPTER V.
“Quello Ippogifo, grande e strang augello
Lo polta via.” +—Orl. Fur., c. vi. xviii.
AND now, accompanying this mysterious Zanoni, am I com-
pelled 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 I 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, omni's copia marium, that clothe the mountain skirts
of the silent Lantulae 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 2
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
beart 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 wayworn ; receive us in si-
lence, amidst ruins ! Where is the traveller we pursue 2 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 inwader; 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, gray Marathon . We stand amidst weeds,
* That hippogriff, great and marvellous bird, bears him away.
17
V. *-*. ---
3o 2ANoN1.
and brambles, and long waving herbage. Where we stand
reigned Nero ; here were his tesselated 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 mas-
ter—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 scat-
tered 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 Mid-
dle 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, breathes in safety the pesti-
lential air. He has no friends, 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 in-
firm ; 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 par-
ticipates 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.
...ANONI. * 3I
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,” stood as at the deathbed of the Old World, and beheld
the New Orb, blood-red amidst cloud and vapor, 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 dark-
ens 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 hat 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 immortal-
ity, 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 Sarco-
phagus called Life immures in its clay the Everlasting !
But thou, Zanoni, thou hast refused to live only in the intel-
lect; 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 VI.
“Précepteurs ignorans de ce faible univers.”4
—VOLTAIRE.
“Nous étions à table chez un denos confrères à l'Académie, Grand Seigneur
et homme d'esprit.’”f—LA HARPE.
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
* “An des Jahrhunderts Neige,
Der reifste Sohn der Zeit.”
—Die Kaizistler.
t Ignorant teachers of this weak world. -º-"
$ We supped with one of our confrères of the Academy , a great nobleman and wit.
*
32 ZANONI.
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 Male-
sherbes, “l'amour et les delices de la Nation.” . There Jean
Silvain Bailly, the accomplished scholar; the aspiring politi-
cian. 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 labor for me—vain labor almost for the grave English
language, to do justice to the sparkling paradoxes that flew from
lip to lip. The favorite theme was the superiority of the Mod-
erns 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 fidicule lavished on the dull pedantry
which finds everything ancient necessarily sublime.
“Yet,” said the graceful Marquis de , as the cham-
pagne danced to his glass, “more ridiculous still is the super-
stition that finds everything incomprehensible holy . But in-
telligence 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.’”
“ Unguestionably, the great Revolution draws near to its
final completion—d £as de géant, 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 antici-
pation of the brilliant things to which “the great Revolution ”
was to give birth. Here Condorcet is more eloquent than
before.
* The idol and delight of the nation (so called by his historian, Gaillard),
wº.
:-
f"
/ ZAN ONI 33
“Il faut absolument que la Superstition et le Fanatisme fas-
sent place à la philosophie.” 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 prêtre
Serrez le cou du dermier roi.’” +
“And then,” resumed Cordorcet ; “then commences the
Age of Reason Equality in instruction, equality in institu-
tions, equality in wealth ! The great impediments to knowl-
edge 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 an universal language As to the sec-
ond, the organic perfectibility of the vegetable world is undis-
puted, is Nature less powerful in the nobler existence of think-
ing man 2 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.f
The art of medicine will then be honored 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 vigor to its offspring, so man shall transmit his
improved organization, 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 hand-
some 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 ar-
rived in Paris, where his wealth, his person, and his accom-
plishments 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
Jºe Diable Amoureux.
These two conversed familiarly, and apart from the rest, and
only by an occasional smile testified their attention to the gen-
eral conversation.
* It must necessarily happen that superstition and fanaticism give place to philosophy.
t And throttle the neck of the last king, with a string from the bowels of the last priest.
: See Condorcet's posthumous work on the progress of the human mind.—EDITOR,
.*
34 ZAN ONY \
-4
“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 initia-
tion into the mysterious order of Martines de Pasqualis.” “
“Ah ! Is it possible ! You are one of that theurgic brother-
hood P”
“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.” ~ J
“You have not shaken it off,” returned the stranger gravely;
“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 experi-
ence and history of his listener, which Cazotte thrilled to find
so familiar to a stranger.
Gradually the old man’s pleasing and benevolent coun-
tenance grew overcast, and he turned, from time to time, search-
ing, curious, uneasy glances towards his companion.
The charming Duchess 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 7"
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.
* It is so recorded of Cazotte. Of Martines de Pasqualis little is known ; even the coun-
try 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 1ts favor; for in spite of his mysticism, no man more beneficent, gener-
ous, 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
fervor 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 sin-
cere 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 offense; Dieu.”
* My wife, my children, weep not for me ; forget me not, but remember above every-
thing never to offend God.
ZAN ONI. 35
ſº,
- at word, Cazotte's face grew locked and rigid, his eyes
J vacantly on space, and in a low, hollow voice, he thus
* , , , ºvered : º:
“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 philos-
opher 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 P”
“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. # “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 Z have
no part to play-in this drama of your rºtasies : ". *x-º-
At this question, Cazotte's countenance lost its unnatural
expression of awe and sternness; the sardonic humor 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 immoder-
ate fit of laughter, while Cazotte, as if exhausted by his pre-
dictions, sunk back in his chair, and breathed hard and heavily.
“Nay,” said Madame de G , “you who have predicted
* 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, vol. i., p. 62. It is not for
me to inquire if there be doubts of its foundation on fact.—ED.
+ Champfort, one of those men of letters who, though misled by the first fair show of thc
Revolution, lefused to follow the baser men of action into its horrible excesses, lived to
sxpress the murderous philanthropy of its agents by the best bon mot of the time. Seeing
written on the walls, ‘ #. ou la Mort,” he observed, that the sentiment should be
;ranslated thus—' Sois mon /rère, ou je te łue.”
} * Be my brother or I kill thee,
36 ZAN ONI.
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 l’”
“Well, Cazotte, well ?”
“And on the seventh day, while he thus spoke, a stone from e
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 VII.
Qui donc t'a donné la mission s'annoncer au peuple que la divinité n'existe
pas—quel avantage trouves-tu ä persuader å l’homme qu'une force aveugle
préside à ses destinées et frappe au hasard le crime et la vertu ?,*—ROBEs-
PIERRE, Discours, Mai 7, 1794.
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 fugifſves 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 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 :
* 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 hap-hazard both crime and virtue 2
}:
g §
tº:
§:
f *
hº
$ 4
łº
f ZANONI. 37
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 ante-room, meanly furnished, and
stood in a bed-chamber 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 attend-
ant was by ; he seemed left alone to breathe his last. “Water,”
he moaned feebly ; “water—I parch—I burn " The intrud-
er 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 P”
“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 con-
tents was yet left there.
“Who administered this to you?”
“Who 2 Jean | Who else should I have no servant,
none ! I am poor, very poor, sir. But no l you physicians do
not care for the poor. Z am rich / Can you cure me 2"
“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 re-
turned in a few moments with some preparation that had the
instant result of an antidote. The pain ceased, the blue and
livid color receded from the lips; the old man fell into a pro-
found 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 deline-
38 ZANONI.
ated 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 care-
lessly. Several shelves were filled with books; these were al-
most entirely the works of the philosophers of the time—the
philosophers of the material school, especially the Encyclopé-
distes, whom Robespierre afterwards so singularly attacked,
when the coward deemed it unsafe to leave his reign without a
God.* A volume lay on a table, it was one of Voltaire, and
the page was opened at his argumentative assertion of the exis-
tence of the Supreme Being. 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 in-
stant, 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 / "
* Cette secte (les Encyclopédistes) propagea avec beaucoup de zèle 1'opinion du materi-
alisme, qui prevalut parini les grands et parmiles beaux esprits; on lui doit en partie cette
espèce de philosophie pratique qui, reduisant l'Egoisme en système, regårde a société
humaine comme un guerre de ruse, le succés comme la régle du juste et de l’injuste, la pro-
bité comme une affaire de goût, ou de bienséance, le monde comme le patrimonie des
fripons adroits.”—Discours DE ROBESPIERRE, May 7, 1794.
f Histoire de Jenni.
* This set (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. *. ---
ZANONí. 39
The robber started ; the gold fell from his hand, and rolled
on the floor.
“What l” he said. “Art thou not dead yet? Has the poison
failed P’’
“Poison, boy Ah ” shrieked the old man, and covered
hls face with his hands; then, with sudden energy, he ex-
claimed, “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 2" cried the old
man. “What but loved and cherished thee 2 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 2 What have I
done to thee P”
“Thou hast continued to live, and thou wouldst make no will.”
“Mon Dieu ! Mon Dieu ! ”
“Tom Dieu / Thy God Fool | Hast thou not told me,
from my childhood, that there is no God 2 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 2 Hideous
and misshapen, mankind jeer at me as I pass the streets.
What hast thou done to me 2 Thou hast taken away from me,
who am the scoff of this world, the hopes of another Is there
no other life 2 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 2 ” He advanced with a gloomy scowl and a
menacing gesture as he spoke.
" _ºs.-->
40 2ANONI.
The old man's anger changed to fear. He cowered before
the savage. “Let me live | Let me live —that—that—”
“That—what P*
“I may pardon thee! Yes, thou hast nothing to fear from,
me. I swear it !”
“Swear ! But by whom and what, old man 2 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 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 wains them involuntarily againt
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 pre-
server with tearful fervor, 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 circum-
stances of his connection with his intended murderer.
It seems that in earlier life he had quarrelled with his rela-
tions—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.
ZAN ONI. 4 I
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 favorite expressions were :
“Ala Jumière et la vertu.”.” 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 Supréme. 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 mul-
titude of defects, the boy listened eagerly and was consoled.
To save money for his protégé—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 vir-
tue 2 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, hap-
pened 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 informa-
tion against his protégé.
“Tush, tush, Réné 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: “Ven-
erable sage, how you misjudge me. I lament more than any
one the severity of our code. I think the State never should
* Light and virtue,
42 2ANON I.
take away life—no, not even the life of a murderer. I agree
with that young statesman, Maximilian Robespierre, that the
executioner is the invention of the tyrant. My very attach-
ment 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 Réné,” 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 P”
“And,” said the old man hesitatingly, “you do not think,
with this noble gentleman, that I erred in the precepts I in-
stilled into that wretched man P’’
“Erred I Was Socrates to blame if Alcibiades was an adul-
terer and a traitor P”
“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 vener-
able man 2 Oh, if ever I can repay you ; if ever you want the
heart's blood of Réné Dumas 1” Thus volubly delivering
himself, he followed the stranger to the threshold of the sec-
ond 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 P’’
ZANONI. 43
*
“Ha, ha º 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 Réné Dumas 2 Or the
fugitive assassin 2 Why did the buoyant air of Paris seem to
him heavy with the steams of blood 2 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 market-place as on the moun-
tain. But we, reader, we too, escape from these scenes of false
wisdom clothing godless crime. Away, once more
“In den heitelm Regionen
* - e 3.3
Wo die reinen Formen wohnen.
Away, to the loftier realm where the pure dwellers are. Un-
polluted 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
On CC Ill OTC.
CHAPTER IX.
“Che non vuol che 'I destrier più vada in alto:
Poilo lega nel margine marino
A un verde mirto in mezzo un lauro e um pino.”
—Orl. Fur., c. vi. xxiii.
O MUSICIAN art thou happy now 2 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 remorse-
less hand. They understand now how irregular is ever the
symmetry of real genius. The inequalities in its surface make
* As he did not wish that his charger (the hippogriff) should take any further excur-
sons into the higher regions for the present, he bound him at the seashore to a green myr-
tle between a laurel and a pine. &

44 ZANONI.
\se
the moon luminous to man. Giovanni Paisiello, Máestro 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 fantastic to the Siren, at whose measures shook queru-
lously 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 for-
ever. 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 1
Pisani has been two-thirds of a life at silent work on his mas-
terpiece : there is nothing he can add to that, however he
might have sought to improve on the masterpieces of others.
Is not this common 2 The least little critic, in reviewing some
work of art, will say, “Pity this, and pity that ”; “This should
have been altered, that onlitted.” Yea, with his wiry fiddle-
string 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 strug-
gle 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 SQund opened with the gay merriment of a feast.
Y
t
j
#
i. - zANóNI, 45
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 dis-
cord, into that long, silvery, mournful music 2 The transforma-
tion 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 labor 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 recov-
ered 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 recognized 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 2"
“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 P’’
Viola could not speak ; but she busied herself in pouring
forth an anodyne, which she had been directed to give the suf-
ferer 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
Gioretta's pretended illness, had been induced to supply her
place; but the hireling answered not. She flew through the
*
46 - ZANONI. * . º
chambers to search for her in vain ; the hireling had caught
Gionetta's fears, and vanished. What was to be done 2 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 ano-
dyne 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 ap-
peared to have done; instead of healthful sleep, it had brought
on a kind of light-headed somnolence, in which the mind, pre-
ternaturally 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 vigor. Pisani
missed something—what, he scarcely knew ; it was a combi-
nation of the two wants most essential to his mental life : the
voice of his wife, the touch of his Familiar. He rose—he leff
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 mem-
ory; 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 sep-
arated 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 cham-
bers 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 P"
“Who, dear master 2 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 2 Is any one dead?”
“Ah ! don't talk so; you must know it well ; my poor mis-
agº.
ZANONI, 47
tress—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 Gio-
netta, woe is me ! Go, go–to–to bed again, dearest master—
go !”
The poor musician stood for one moment mute and unmov-
ing, 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 neg-
lected instrument. g *
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 hast-
ened 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 associ-
ation—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 nerve-
less hand. ---
48 ZANONI. T 2
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 X. -
“Ché difesa miglior ch’usbergo e scudo
E la Santa innocenza al petto ignudo . * *
—Ger. Ziff., c. viii. xli.
AND they buried the Musician and his barbiton together, in
the same coffin. That famous Steiner—Primaeval Titan of the
great Tyrolese race—often hast thoti 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 in-
supportable. 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 2 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 noth-
ing speaks to you of the lost, have ye not felt again a yearning
for that very food to memory which was just before but bitter-
ness and gall? Is it not almost impious and profane to aban-
don 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 house-
hold gods. Deaf is the heart to which the Lares call from the
* Better defence than shield or breast-plate, is holy innocence to the naked breast !
A ZANONſ. 49
desolate floors in vain. At first Viola had, in her intolerable
anguish, gratefully welcomed the refuge which the house and
family of a kindly neighbor, 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 unfa-
miliar in our grief, the consolation of the stranger, how it irri-
tates 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 time-
piece 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 com-
pany 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 faith-
ful 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 un-
guarded 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 honor and religion. And all love that spoke not of the altar
5o ZANONI. -
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 well-nigh 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 be-
cause 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 2 Or is the danger greater in thy unfound ideal
And now, as the overture to some strange and wizard spec-
tacle, 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. Zzb., cant. xiv. 69.)
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 montagne ascende
Disabitata e d'ombre oscura e bruna;
E par incanto a lei nevose rende
* Where ship seldom or never comes from our coasts.
* ZAN ONI. 3. 51
Le spalle e i fianchi ; e sensa neve alcuna
Gli lascia il capo verdeggiante e vago ;
E vi fonda un palagio appresso un lago.””
BOOK II.—ART, LOVE, AND WONDER.
“Diversi aspetti in un confusi e misti.” f—Ger. Lib., cant. iv. *
CHAPTER I. *
“Centuari, e Sfingi, e pallide Gorgoni.”f—Ger. Lib. c. iv. v.
ONE moonlit night, in the Gardens at Naples, some four or
five gentlemen were seated under a tree, drinking their sherbet
and listening, in the intervals of conversation, to the music
which enlivened that gay and favorite 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 revery.
One of his countrymen observed this sudden gloom, and, tap-
ping him on the back, said : “What ails you, Glyndon 2 Are
you ill 2 You have grown quite pale—you tremble. Is it a
sudden chill 2 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 per-
haps,” 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 sen-
sation of coldness and awe" creeps over you ; your blood cur-
dles, and the heart stands still ; the limbs shiver, the hair
* 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.
f Different appearances, confused and mixt in one.
# Centaurs, and Sphinxes, and pallid Gorgons,
52 * ZANONI.
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 2 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 2 ”
“I know the signs of the visitation,” returned the stranger
gravely, “they are not to be mistaken by one of my experi-
ence.”
All the gentlemen present then declared that they could
comprehend, and had felt, what the stranger had described.
“According to one of our national superstitions,” said Mer-
vale, 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 Gro-
tesque 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—” gº
“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.”
ZAN ONI. 53
“You are a believer in spirits, then P’’ 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 2 " asked
young Glyndon abruptly. “Are the traditions of sorcerer and
wizard, universal and immemorial as they are, merely fables P”
“Perhaps yes; perhaps no,” answered the stranger indiffer-
ently. “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 P Enough of these idle speculations.”
Here, the stranger rose, summoned the attendant, paid for
his sherbet, and, bowing slightly to the company, soon dis-
appeared among the trees.
“Who is that gentleman P” asked Glyndon eagerly.
The rest looked at each other, without replying, for some
In OmentS.
“I never saw him before,” said Mervale, at last.
& 4 Nor I.”
“Nor I.”
“I know him well,” said the Neapolitan, who was, indeed,
the Count Cetoxa. “If you remember, it was as my com-
panion that he joined you. He visited Naples about two years
ago, and has recently returned ; he is very rich, indeed enor-
mously 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
54 2ANONI.
worthy of lively interest. May I inquire what are the reperts,
and what is the circumstance you refer to 2"
“As to the reports, gentlemen,” said Cetoxa, cóurteously ad-
dressing himself to the two Englishmen, “it may suffice to ob-
serve, 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 illus-
trates these qualities, and is, I must own, somewhat startling.
You probably play, gentlemen P” (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 hap-
pened that I had been playing pretty high, and had lost con-
siderably. I rose from the table, resolved no longer to tempt
fortune, when I suddenly perceived Zanoni, whose acquaint-
ance 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 2 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 ; be-
sides, 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 sate 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 P’’ 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 dis-
ZANONI. 55
posed 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 eye 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 gen-
tleman, thus disarmed by a look from Zanoni, turned his whole
anger upon me–the–but perhaps you do not know, gentle-
men, that I have some repute with my weapon 2 ”
“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 gentle-
men, 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 P “Do you then know his family P’ I asked with
great surprise. Zanoni made me no answer, and the next
moment I was engaged with the Sicilian. To do him jus-
tice, his imbrogliafo was magnificent, and a swifter lunger
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 7' He shook his head. “Where
would you wish to be interred P’ He pointed towards the Sicil-
ian coast. “What ' ' said I, in surprise, ‘not by the side of your
Mather, in the church of San Gennaro 2' 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, ow-
ing, it was said, to the heat of the weather, Suspicion once
56 ZAN ONI.
*.
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 the brain, and drew but one drop
of blood, which the gray hairs concealed. The accomplice will
be executed.”
“And Zanoni–Did he give evidence P Did he account for—”
“No,” interrupted the Count: “he declared that he had by
accident visited the church that morning; that he had obse, ved
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 ac-
cepted, 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; be-
sides, I have had 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 P” said Glyndon, as the young
men walked homeward.”
“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 Mar-
vellous. 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 Ce-
toxa’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
honor. Besides, this stranger, with his noble presence, and
lofty air, so calm, so unobtrusive, has nothing in common with
the forward garrulity of an impostor.” .
“My dear Glyndon, pardon me; but you have not yet ac-
quired any knowledge of the world ! The stranger makes the
best of a fine person, and his grand air is but a trick of the
\ ZANONI. 57.
sº
trade. But, to change the subject—how advances the love
affair P’’ **~~~
“Oh, Viola could not see me to-day.”
“You must not marry her. What would they all say at home 2"
“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 II.
“A “Prende, giovine audace e impaziente,
L'occasione offerta avidamente.” ”
—Ger. Lib., c. vi. xxix.
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 paint-
ing, 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 calcula-
tion, and portraits of Alderman Simpkins. Glyndon was sup-
posed by his friends to possess no inconsiderable genius; but
it was of a rash and presumptuous order. He was averse from
continuous and steady labor, 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 am-
bition, and living beauty distracted his worship from the sense-
less 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.
Jt 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
* Take, youth, bold and impatient, the offered occasion eagerly.
58 ZANONI. }
*…
Belief, arose many shapeless and unformed chimeras. Need I
remind the reader, that while that was the day for polished scep-
ticism and affected wisdom, it was the day also for the most
egregious credulity and the most mystical superstition ; 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
vapors were to vanish, stalked from their graves in the feudal
ages all the phantoms that had flitted before the eyes of Para-
celsus and Agrippa. Dazzled by the dawn of the Revolution,
Glyndon was yet more attracted by its strange accompani-
ments, 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 mar-
vellous Elysium. $4
In his travels, he had listened with vivid interest, at least, if
not with implicit belief, to the wonders told of each more re-
nowned Ghostseer, and his mind was therefore prepared for the
impression which the mysterious Zanoni at first sight had pro-
duced upon it.
There might be another cause for this disposition to credu-
lity. 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 pre-
served 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 conse-
quences 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 Ura-
ditional history of this distinguished progenitor, And Clarence
ZANONI. * e 59
thrilled with a fearful pleasure when his mother playfully de-
tected a striking likeness between the features of the young
heir and the faded portrait of the alchemist that overhung
their mantel-piece, 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 labor, had wandered front
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 am-
bition, 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 pas-
sions 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 com-
prehend the full value of the greatest. It is the shallow sen-
sualists 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.
~fike 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 honorable de-
signs. 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
OO *
& * 2ANONI.
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 fervor, and a cool breeze sprung
up voluptuously from the sparkling sea. Bending over a frag-
ment of stone near the roadside, he perceived the form of a
man ; and when he approached, he recognized Zanoni.
The Englishman saluted him courteously. “Have you dis-
covered some antique 2 ” 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 a herbalist P” - * &
& 4 I am.”
“It is, I am told, a study full of interest.”
“To those who understand it, doubtless.”
“Is the knowledge, then, so rare P’’
“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 2 What the fable of Medea, but a proof
of the powers that may be extracted from the germ and leaf 2
The most gifted of all the Priestcrafts, the mysterious sister-
hoods of Cuth, concerning whose incantations Learning vainly
bewilders itself amidst the maze of legends, sought in the mean-
est herbs what, perhaps, the Babylonian Sages explored in vain
amidst the loftiest stars. Tradition yet tells you that there
existed a race” who could slay their enemies from afar, with-
out 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 theold Circaean Promontory—came the Wise
from the farthest East to search for plants and simples which
your Pharmacists of the Counter would fling frôm them as
weeds 2 The first Herbalists—the master chemists of the
world—were the tribe that the ancient reverence called by the
name of Titans.f I remember once, by the Hebrus, in the
* PLUt. Symp., l. 5, c. 7.
t Syncellus, p. 14—"Chemistry the Invention of the Giants.”
*
e gº
ZANONI. $ 61
reign of— But this talk,” said Zanoni, checking himself ab-
ruptly, and with a cold smile, “serves only to waste your time
and my own.” He paused, looked steadily at Glyndon, and con-
tinued : “Young man, think you that vague Curiosity will supply
the place of earnest labor 2 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 Glyn-
don, somewhat discomposed. “Suppose I were desirous to culti-
vate your acquaintance, why should you reject my advances 2 ”
“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 P’’
“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 mys-
terious 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 in-
terested 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 wrapt in delicious revery, 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.”
y 5
62 * ZANONI.
Before Glyndon recovered from his surprise, Zanoni dis-
appeared ; 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: y
“Oh, Gionetta He is here again —the stranger of whom I
spoke to thee And again, he alone, of the whole theatre, with-
holds from me his applause.”
“Which is he, my darling?” said the old woman, with fond-
ness 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 ex-
erted herself as if inspired. Zanoni listened, and observed her
with an attentive gaze, but no approval escaped his lips; no emo-
tion 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 insen-
sible, 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
ZANONI. 63
, fired me beyond endurance. To-night, this very night, she shall
be mine ! You have arranged all, Mascari 2 ”
“All, Signor. And the young Englishman 2"
“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 2 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 favor 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 mis-
tress 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 coax-
ingly ; “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 expostula-
tion 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 re-
turn 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 disgorg-
ing its crowds; they hustled, and pressed upon him; but he rec-
ognized 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 7”
64 ZANONI.
“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 immedi-
ately 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 ” Glyn-
don 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 ex-
aggerates, could not but be drawn yet closer than usual, in a sit-
uation so friendless as that of the orphan actress. In all that
concerned the weakness of the heart, Gionetta had large expe-
rience ; 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 senti-
ment of love. And here, she was well fitted to sympathize and
console. Confidant 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 2" 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 I’’ interrupted the young actress. “Zanoni ! Speak
of the Englishman no more.” A.
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.
ZANONI. 65
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 arms round the form of the
fair actress, and endeavored 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 mo-
tioned : they advanced ; he pointed towards the first mask,
who was in fact the Prince di , and to his unspeakable as-
tonishment, the Prince was suddenly seized from behind.
“Treason 1" he cried. “Treason among my own men
What means this 2 ”
“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 raw-
isher 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 frus-
66 ZANONI.
trated 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.”
CFIAPTER 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.”
—SHAKSPEARE.
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, stand-
ing 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 dis-
honor only, but, perhaps, from death. The Prince di y
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
ZANONI. 67
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 where-
fore ?” Zanoni paused , and smiled mournfully, as he added :
“You will not wrong me by the thought that he who has pre-
served 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 2 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 imagina-
tion. It is to warn you against what could bring you but
sorrow, as I warned you once to prepare for Sörrow 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 honored 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, Shad-
owed 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.
68 ZANONI.
“This Englishman is of thine own years, not far above thine
own rank. Thou mayst share his thoughts in life ; thou may st
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 2 ” } g
“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 werit 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 Sud-
denly to his) mine eyes could thus search and confront thine
own 2 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 2 " 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 mis-
tress 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
A
ZAN ONI. 69
tender affection, in his eyes; but his lips were stern, and his
voice cold, as he replied :
“Do you know what you ask, Viola P Do you guess the
danger to yourself—perhaps to both of us—which you court 2
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 2 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 hom-
age, 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 in .
pulse 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 ſlower 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 honor 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.
7o ZANONI
CHAPTER IV.
“Les Intelligences Célestes se font voir, et se communiquent plus volon.
tiers, dans le silence, et dans la tranquillité de la solitude. On aura donc
une petite chambre ou un cabinet secret,” etc.—Aes Clavicules de AEaběi Salo-
mon, chap. 3; traduites exactement du texte Hebrez, par M. Pierre Morisso-
neaze, A’rofesseur des Zangues Orientales, et Sectateur de la Philosophie des
Sages Cabalistes. (Manuscript 7’ranslation.)
THE Palace retained by Zanoni was in one of the less fre-
quented quarters of the city. It still stands, now ruined and
dismantled, a monument of the splendor of a chivalry long
since vanished from Naples, with the lordly races of the Nor-
man 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
rumor; 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 ac-
count for the rumors 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 in-
vention of magic mechanism, communicated to him the influ-
ences 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
color his peculiar conversation with abstract notions, and often
with recondite learning. No books spoke to him in his soli
tude ; 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 there was 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
* The Celestial Intelligences exhibit and explain themselves most freely in the silence
and tra.uquillity of solitude. One will have then a little chamber, or a scolet cabinet, etc.
* -
ZANONI. - 71
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 favorable 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 com-
pensated himself for the 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, ob-
served, 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 him-
self. -
The solemn voice of Time, from the neighboring church,
at last aroused the lord of the palace from the deep and mo-
tionless revery, 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 Aug.- .
oeides,” why descendest thou from thy sphere * Why from the
eternal, starlike, and passionless Serene, shrinkest thou back
to the mists of the dark sarcophagus 2 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 2"
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 rest-
less strides paced the narrow floor. “Away from this world !”
* Aiyoetónç—a word favored by the mystical Platonists, opalpa tlv.2% aiyoetóng,
brav umre Škretvmtat Štt tu, amte éoo ovutperm pumté ovvuſavm 32%a port Wapitm.
rat, 6 tim, àAmfletav ćpg. Tm, travrov, Kat tmw &v airm.—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 centered in itself.”
72 - ZAN ONI.
-***
N
he exclaimed at length, with an impatient tone. “Can no time
loosen its fatal ties 2 As the attraction that holds the earth in
space, is the attraction that fixes the soul to earth. Away,
from the dark-gray planet ! Break, ye fetters; arise, ye
wings ” -
He passed through the silent galleries, and up the lofty
stairs, and entered the secret chamber.
* Sk >}; * # * : *k * *
CHAPTER 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 benevo-
lent, yet his manners chilling and repellent. Why at one mo-
ment reject Glyndon's acquaintance, at another save him from
danger ? How had Zanoni thus acquired the knowledge of
enemies unknown to Glyndon himself 2 His interest was
deeply aroused, 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 inform-
ing me of the quarter to which I may look for enmity and
peril.” -
“You are gallant,” said Zanoni with a smile, and in the En-
glish language, “and do you know so little of the South as
not to be aware that gallants have always rivals P’’
“Are you serious 7" said Glyndon, coloring.
“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 Za-
noni haughtily ; “and to me it matters nothing whether you
regard or scorn my warning.”
ZANONI. 73
“Well, if I may not question you, be it so ; but at least ad-
vise me what to do.”
“Would you follow my advice P’’
“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 7"
“You are right,” said the young Englishman with energy.
“No 1 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 inexor-
able 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 harmonize
with His solemn ends. You have before you an option.
Honorable 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 2 ”
“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 uni-
verse, 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
74 ZANONT.
r
Christianity the nations of the earth. In conduct, the hum-
blest fisherman on yonder sea, who believes in the miracles of
San Gennaro, may be a better man than Luther. To the senti-
ments of Luther the mind of modern Europe is indebted for
the noblest revolution it has known. Our opinions, young En-
glishman, are the angel part of us; our acts, the earthly.”
“You have reflected deeply for an Italian,” said Glyndon.
“Who told you I was an Italian P’’
“Are you not P 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 P’’
“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 impostor.”
“Well, proceed . "
“I mean, then,” continued Glyndon resolutely, though some-
what 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
eye and heightened color testified the spirit to support his
words, and replied: “So bold ! Well; it becomes you. But
ºs
ZANONI. 75
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 would wed another : to save
her from myself Listen to me. That girl, humble and un-
educated 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 affec-
tion, 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 colorless, 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 2 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 2 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 per-
secution, 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 irresisti-
bly 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 were 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 I can you
dare to solve them 7 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.
76 ZANONI.
*
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 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 2 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 phrase-
ology 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.* Man cannot
contradict the Laws of Nature. But are all the Laws of Na-
ture yet discovered 2
“Give me a proof of your Art,” says the rational inquirer.
“When I have seen the effect, I will endeavor, with you, to as-
certain the causes.”
Somewhat to the above effect were the first thoughts of Clar-
ence 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 en-
deavored, in vain, at some moments rousing himself from cre-
* Mr. D'Israeli, in his “Curiosities of Literature” (article Alchemy), 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 re-
ferred: “Sir Humphry Davy told me that he did not consider this undiscovered art ag.
impossible; but should it ever be discovered, it would certainly be useless.”
ZAN ONI. 77
dulity to the scepticism he deprecated, to reconcile what he
had heard with the probable motives and designs of an impos-
tor. Unlike Mesmer and Cagliostro, Zanoni, whatever his pre-
tensions, did not make them a source of profit, nor was Glyn-
don'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 jar-
gon of prophecy and menace be but artifices to dupe him 2 He
felt an unjust resentment towards Viola, at her 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 ex-
ternal 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 splendor, 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 con-
versed with him in English, and with a conmand of the lan-
guage so complete that he might have passed for a native. On
the other hand, in Italian Zanoni was equally at ease. Glyn-
don 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 Za-
noni, 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, scarcely 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,” asserting
* Printed in 1635,
78 ZANONI.
that all the languages of 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 con-
sidered themselves the heirs of all that the Chaldaeans, the
IMagi, 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 favor. Some acts, not of in-
discriminate, 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 con-
ferred 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, con-
versed with them, and they were cured ; it usually, however,
happened that a deep sleep had preceded the recovery.
Anothér 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 thought-
less, 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 recon-
ciliation 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 inexhaust.
ZANONY. 79
ible 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 cer-
tainly 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
ſix 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,” to the radicals of the
extinct language, Zan was unquestionably the Chaldaean ap-
pellation 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 f 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, viz., 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 2 How
clear all the ensuing corruptions of the august name—Smin-
theus—Smitheus—Smithé—Smith ! And even now, I may re-
mark 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
Smithe ”
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. *. &
* The author of two works on botany and rare plants.
+ ‘Qöe Aueyaç Ketta, Zav.*—Cyril contra Julian.
* Here lies great Jove.
8o - ZANONI.
CHAPTER 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 com-
panionship of Mervale, Glyndon sauntered musingly into the
public gardens, and paused Yunder 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 revery, 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 to 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 ſavored ; 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
ZANONI. 81
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 neighbor, he blushed at his own dismay,
and recognized 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 coloring was hard and shallow, as was
that generally of the French school at the time, his drawings
were admirable for symmetry, simple elegance, and classie
vigor ; 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 sublimestories of scriptural record from which
Raffaele and Michel 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 mis-
sionaries whom, from the earliest period of the Revolution, the
regenerators of mankind were pleased to dispatch to the vari-
ous States yet shackled, whether by actual tyranny, or whole-
some laws. Certainly, as the historian of Italy * has observed,
there was no city in Italy where these new doctrines would be
received with greater favor 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
* Botta.
82 ŽANONI
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 aspira-
tions of the hideous philanthropist.
“It is so long since we have met, cher confrère,” 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 in trucion, 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
Piable / 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 : Patri-
otism 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 com-
prehend, 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 labor, 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 grati-
tude. 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—”
ZANONI. 83
“And in the mean time,” said a low voice, at hand, “in the
mean time, Jean Nicot 2 ”
The two artists started, and Glyndon recognized Zanoni.
He gazed with a brow of unusual sternness on Nicot, who,
lumped together as he sate, 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 2
“It is not the first time I have been a witness to your opinions
on the infirmity of gratitude,” said Zanoni. As
Nicot suppressed an exclamation, and, after gloomily survey-
ing 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 sprung forward a step, with hands clenched, and show-
ing 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 7" 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 2"
“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 P’’
“What opinions "
Glyndon paused, somewhat puzzled to define ; but at length
he said, “Nay, I must wrong you ; for you, of all men, I sup-
pose, 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
84 ZANON f.
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 false-
hood, they could not make it law. Level all conditions to-day,
and you only smooth away all obstacies to tyranny to-morrow.
A nation that aspires to equality is unfit for freedom. Through-
out 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 dis-
parities of life never to be removed 2 ”
“Disparities of the physical life 2 Oh, let us hope so. But
disparities of the intellectual and the moral, never ! Universal
equality of intelligence, of mind, Óf 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 multi-
tude 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 : * “A good intellect is the chorus of divinity.’”
Struck and touched with these sentiments, which he little ex-
pected to fall from one to whom he ascribed those powers which
the superstitions of childhood ascribe to the darker agencies,
* Sextus, the Pythagorean. Y.
ZANONI. 85
}
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 2 When the traveller beholds
in Persia the ruins of palaces and temples, the ignorant inhab-
itants inform him they were the work of magicians ! What is
beyond their own power, the yulgar 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. Know-
est thou not that magic was taught in the schools of old 2
But how, and by whom P As the last and most solemn
lesson, by the Priests who ministered to the temple.f And
you, who would be a painter, is not there a magic also in
the art you would advance 2 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 2 See you not that
The Grander Art, whether of poet or of painter, ever seek-
ing for the TRUE, abhors the REAL ; that you must seize Na-
ture as her master, not lackey her as her slave? You de-
mand 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 2 You would conjure the invisible beings to your
charm ; and what is painting but the fixing into substance the
"Invisible 2 Are you discontented with this world 2 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 P
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 ; sci-
ence discovers, art creates. You have faculties that may com-
mand art ; be contented with your lot. The astronomer who
catalogues the stars cannot add one atom to the universe ; the
poet can call an 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
+ Psellus de Daemon. (M.S.)
86 2ANON1.
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 3 Perhaps the fairest immor-
tality on earth is that 6f 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 en-
joyed. Is the golden elixir but a fable 2"
“If not, and these men discovered it, they died, because they
refused to live There may be a mournful warning in your con-
jecture. 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 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.”—Sch.ILLER.
THIS last conversation with Zanoni left upon the mind of
Glyndon a tranquillizing and salutary effect. From the con-
fused 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 be-
yond the Eden which is gladdened by an Eve. Insensibly be-
fore 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 phantasies
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
COIn II). On-Sen Se. w
Whoever has studied the lives of persons in whom the imagina-
tion is stronger than the will, who suspect their own knowledge
& ZANONI. 87
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 down-
right honest man, could not sympathize with the extravagance
of generosity any more than with that of presumption and cre-
dulity. He walked the straight line of life, and felt an equal
contempt for the man who wandered up the hillsides, no
matter whether to chase a butterfly or to catch a prospect of the
OCéan. &
“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 I Glyndon colored as he an-
swered :
“Would you speak thus of her if she were my wife 2"
“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 2 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 be-
lieve that a young Englishman, of good fortune and respecta-
ble birth, who marries a singer from the Theatre at 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 any-
thing against the laudable industry of one who follows such a
profession for the sake of subsistence ; but with means and con-
88 ZANONI.
nections that will raise you in life, why voluntarily sink into a
mere artist P 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 advan-
tage and honor ; 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 ; his new connections serve to promote his objects. At the
age of five-and-forty, what, in all probability, may Clarence
Glyndon be 2 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
colors 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 2 Oh, the celebrated Pisani's husband
What else 2 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 P The mullets
mere are remarkably fine.”
*3.
§
ZANON I. 89
CHAPTER IX.
“Wollt ihr hoch auf ibren 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 heavenwardeen its joyous wing
Cast off the earthly burthen of the Real ;
High from this cramp'd and dungeon'd 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 under-
stands not that beauty in art is created by what Raffaele so well
describes, viz., 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, colors 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
ôf 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 discre,
tion and the larger wisdom. In the last there is a certain rash,
ness which the first disdains :
“The purbhind see but the receding shore,
Not that to which the bold wave wafts them ger.”
****
Yet in this logic of the prudent and the worldly tiºs oftei,
a reasoning unanswerable of its kind. evº
You must have a feeling, a faith in whatever is self-sacrific-
ing 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 Win-
kelman and Vasari, to Reynolds and Fuseli, has sought to
instruct the painter that Nature is not to be copied, but exa/fed;
that the loftiest order of art, selecting only the loftiest combina-
tions, 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 Raffaele ; there is truth in the
Apollo, the Antinois, and the Laocoön, But you do not meet
^
* g
90 ZANONI.
the originals of the words, the cartoons, or the marble, in
Oxford street or St. James's. All these, to return to Raffaele,
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 Qf exquisite suggestions to him who has
formed this idea ; a Venus of flesh and blood would be vulgar-
ized 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
idealized 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 idealizing prin-
ciple, 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;fºir.
But º, 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 colored with 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,
ZANONI. 91.
t
ſ
w
l
;}
CHAPTER X.
** O sollecito dubbio e fredda tema
Che pensando l'accresci.” +
—TASSO, Canzone vi.
SHE was seated outside her doº-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 fishermen 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 ener-
vating, but delicious charm, believe that you can com-
prehend all the meaning of the Dolce far niente ; # and
when that luxury has been known, when you have breathed
that atmosphere of faery 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 color served to deepen the golden hue of 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
tlooked 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 her gown.
\
* O anxious doubt and chilling fear, that grows by thinking.
t The pleasure of doing nothing.
92 ZANONI. **
“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 beau-
tiful, than this Znglese; and I am told that all the Inglesi are
much richer than they seem. Though they have no trees in
their country, poor people's 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 here-
tics 1) 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 earnest-
ness, “that sorcery still exists P’’
“Believe Do I believe in the blessed San Gennaro 2 How
do you think he cured old Filippo, the fisherman, when the
doctor gave him up 2 How do you think he has managed him-
self to live at least these three hundred years 2 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 experi-
enced would have resolved to love.
“And, then, why has this great Prince di been so terri-
fied by him Why has he ceased to persecute us? Why
has he been so quiet and still 2 Is there no sorcery in all
that 2 ''
“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
zANóNí.
lightest every spot but this. Go, Gionetta Leave me 3
leave me !” - i
“And indeed it is time I should leave you ; for the Žººſa
will be spoiled, and you have ate 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 polemia.”
“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 sun-
beam over the hilltops, 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 1–be//issima / 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 draw-
ing 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 favored ’’ q.
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, who-
ever wastes his thoughts on an actress must submit to have
rivals. It is our unhappy destiny not to be sacred even to our-
selves.”
“But you do not love this destiny, glittering though it seem ;
your heart is not in the vocation which your gifts adorn.”
“Ah, no l’” 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."



zANoNI.
, then, with me,” said the artist passionately; “quit
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 gal-
leries 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 P’’
“Ah, speak not with such cruel coldness l’”
“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 my-
self 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 2 Perhaps”—she
paused, and added, with an effort : “Foreigner, and wouldst
thou wed the orphan 2 Ah, thou at least art generous ! It is
not the innocence thou wouldst destroy ”
Glyndon drew back, conscience-stricken.
“No, it may not be l’” 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 per-
turbation. “Viola,” he exclaimed, as she ceased, “your words

ZANONI. 95
more than ever enchain me to you ! As you feel, I º
too, have been ever haunted with a chill and unearthly
boding. Amidst the crowds of men I have felt alone. In all
my pleasures, my toils, my pursuits, a warning voice has mur-
mured 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. Gradu-
ally the rigor and tension of that wonderful face relaxed, the
color 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 2"
“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 2 ”
“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 anima-
tion) that with HIM was connected the secret of your life P”
“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 recollec-
tion of that moonlit hour in the gardens, of the strange ad-
dress of Zanoni, froze up all human passion. Viola herself, if
96 ZAN ONI.
lº shrunk back like a shadow into the recesses of
*- - - - - - east. 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.—THE URGIA.
“I cavalier sen vanno
Dove il pino fatal gli attende in porto.” +
—Gerus. Lib., cant. xv. (Azgomento.)
CHAPTER I.
“But that which especially distinguishes the brotherhood is their marvellous
knowledge of all the resources of medical art. They work not by chalms,
but simples.”—A/S. Account of the Origin and Attributes of the True A'osi-
crucians, by V. Von D *
At this time it chanced that Viola had the opportunity to re-
turn 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
* The knights came where the fatal bark awaited them in the Port.
~ *
geºs . . ;

ZAN ONI. 97
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 pow-
dered 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 ca-
lamities. The wife was more active, more bustling, more hope-
ful, and more tearful. Viola took heed of all three. But to-
wards 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 l’’
“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 2 The in-
fant's sharp cry of pain called her back to the couch ; and
there still sate the old man, unconscious of his wife's move-
ments, 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 fre-
quent, 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 case-
ment—steps were heard on the stairs—the old woman entered
_ _ 98 ZANONY
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 ab-
ruptly; 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 color revived rapidly on the lips and cheeks; in a few
moments the sufferer slept calmly, and with the regular breath-
ing of painless sleep. And then the old man rose, rigidly, as a
corpse might rise—looked down, listened, and creeping gently a
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 2
Thinkest thou still that this knowledge is of a 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 P
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
ZANONI. 99.
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, sus-
pect, aught injurious and false to my preserver, my tears flow
from happiness, not remorse. Oh ” she continued with a
simple fervor, unconscious, in her innocence and 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 2 The commonest leech will tend the sick for
his fee. Are prayers and blessings a less reward than gold 7"
“And mine, then, are not worthless 2 Thou wilt accept of
mine P’’
“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 to delight me !” He checked
himself, and his face became grave and sad. “And this,” he
added in altered tone, “because if thou wouldst heed my coun-
sels, 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, re-
plied calmly :
“Be it so. Sister, I will visit thee again l’’
CHAPTER II.
“Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.”—SHAKSPEARE.
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 hap-
piness to the pure to love, but oh, such more than happiness to
believe in the worth of the One beloved. Between them there
IOO T ZANONI.
might be human obstacles: wealth, rank, Iran's little world.
But there was no longer that dark gulf which tº imagination
recoils to dwell on, and which separates forever gºt,' from soul.
He did not love her in return. Love her | Bit did she ask
for love P Did she herself love 2 No ; or ºne would never
have been at once so humble and so bold. How merrily the
ocean murmured in her ear ; how radiant an aspect the com-
monest 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 Confes-
sional, the transfusion of thought to writing. Now, suddenly,
her heart felt an impulse ; a newborn 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 III.
“In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes.”—SHAKSPEARE.
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 per-
ceive 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 revery. -
ZANONI. IOI
“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 re-
strained her heart, and listened to him in silence
At last he said: “Thou hast promised thou wilt obey my
counsels, and iſ, Viola, I should ask thee, nay, adjure, to ac-
cept this stranger's hand, and share his fate, should he offer to
thee such a lot—wouldst thou refuse 2"
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. . e *
“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,
Aere, at thine own house. Till then, farewell !”
* CHAPTER 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
*
/
I O2 -- - - ZANONI.
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 speci-
mens 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 charac-
teristic of that artist is the Vigor 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 im-
ages have the majesty, not of the god, but the savage ;
utterly free, like the sublimer schools, from the commonplace
of imitation—apart, with them, from the conventional littleness
of the Real—he grasps the imagination and compels it to fol-
low 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
, idealize 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 Raffaele, like
Venus from the deep. And now, as awaking from his revery,
he stood opposite to that wild and magnificent gloom of Na-
ture which frowned on him from the canvas, the very leaves on
those gnomelike, distörted trees seemed to rustle sibylline se-
crets 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 little-
ness of Man. As in genius of the more spiritual cast, the liv-
ing 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 an accessory. The
Matter seems to reign supreme, and its true lord to creep be-
ZANONI. to3
neath 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 terri-
ble 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 Raffaele 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 P.”
“From history, without doubt,” returned Nicot pragmati-
cally ; “those great Roman actions which inspire men with
sentiments of liberty and valor, with the virtues of a republic.
I wish the cartoons of Raffaele 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 Raffaele are to you only
men and women P’’ repeated Glyndon, going back to Nicot's
candid confession in amaze, and scarcely hearing the deduc-
tions 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 7"
“The ideal l’’ 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
IO4 ZANOINT,
i
voice to the thoughts which the sight of the picture had awak-
ened. He shook his head without reply.
“Tell me,” said Nicot abruptly, “that impostor—Zanoni 2
Oh I 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 doc-
trines.”
“Aha Was that all 7" said Nicot. “He is a notable in-
ventor, and since, when we met last, I unmasked his delusions,
I thought he might retaliate by some tale of slander.”
“ Unmasked his delusions ! How 2 ”
“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 ac-
quaintance.” 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 in-
terruption. He turned from the landscape of Salvator, and his
eye falling on a Nativity by Correggio, 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, Lay,
that was the true school | He quitted the gallery with reluc-
tant steps and inspired ideas; he sought his own home. Here,
pleased not to find the sober Mervale, he leant his face on his
hands, and endeavored 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 Raffaele 2 Yes, art was magic;
and as he owned the truth of the aphorism, he could compre-
hend 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, re-
vived, 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 commen-
tary of Nicot, seemed to open to him a new world of invention.
‘He seized the happy moment; he placed before him the
colors and the canvas. Lost in his conceptions of a fresh
*
r
zANONI. 165
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 become 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 ex-
istence, he remained for three days, and almost nights, absorbed
in his employment ; but on the fourth morning came that
reaction to which all labor 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 lan-
guages, 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 docr.
“And is that all you have done 2" 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 P”
“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 2"
“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 confrère. I wished to speak to you.
106 zANONI.
*
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 P 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 2 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 French-
man at that moment. He saw in Glyndon's expressive coun-
tenance all the weariness and disgust he endured. After so
wrapt 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 ap-
proval of the little finger 4.
“Oh,” said Glyndon, peevishly throwing the cloth over his
design, “enough of my poor performance | What is it you
have to say to me 2''
“In the first place,” said Nicot, huddling himself together
upon a stool; “In the first place, this Signor Zanoni—this sec-
ond 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 P”
“Yes,” said Nicot fiercely. “Yes, I hear he is courting the
girl I mean to marry.”
“You ! Whom do you speak of 7"
“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 !”
Meryale rubbed his hands, and chuckled. Glyndon colored
with rage and shame.
“Do you know the Signora Pisanif 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.”
ZANONI. Io'7
-:
“Be quiet! What are you about 7” 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. 's
“A better offer P 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 honorable. I alone have pity on her friend-
less 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 re-
fuse the hand of an artist for the settlements of a prince 2 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 admira-
tion at the size of his large feet.
“I myself admire Viola Pisani.”
“Every painter must 1”
“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 confrère, you have prejudices.”
“You do not dare to say you would make profit from your
own wife 2''
“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 €taf.
Will you marry me 2' So do your worst, cher confrère. Azz re.
voir, behind the scenes "
Ioš ZANON I. \
* }
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 defi-
ance, and casting over his left shoulder a glance of triumph
and malice at the indignant Glyndon, sauntered out of the
l'OOH].
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 ap-
pearance and aspect of this personage imposed a kind of reluc-
tant 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 unex-
pected 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 con-
ceived ”
Charmed back to his art by this unlooked-for praise, Glyn-
don replied modestly : “I thought well of my design till
this morning ; and then I was disenchanted of my happy per-
suasion.”
“Say, rather, that, unaccustomed to continuous labor, you
were fatigued with your enployment.”
“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 fish-
erman, 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 In-
vention 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; descend.
ZANONI. Io9
ing to what pedants would call the trivial and the friyolous.
From every mesh in the social web he can disentangle a grace.
And for him each airy gossamer floats in the gold of the sun-
light. Know you not that around the animalcule that sports
in the water there shines a halo, as around the star * that re-
volves in bright pastime through the space 2 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 Raffaele did not enjoy
the life without, carrying everywhere with him the one inward
idea of beauty which attracted and embedded in its own amber
every straw that the feet of the dull man trampled into mud P
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 unwit-
nessed cave, so Genius searches through wood and waste un-
tiringly 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 labors. Pardon me if I
pass from the toil to the reward. You have uttered dim proph-
ecies 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 experi-
ence, or that which aspires to prediction ?”
“Are they not allied ? Is it not he best accustomed to cal-
culation who can solve at a glance any new problem in the
arithmetic of chances 2 ”
“You evade my question.”
“No ; but I will adapt my answer the better to your com-
prehension, 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 what-
ever 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
. . *The monas mica, found in the purest pools, is encompassed with a halo. And this
is frequent amongst many other species of animalculae.
I IO --- ZAN ONI.
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, in-
dolence 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.* ---
“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 ob-
jects 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, centered 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 up-
ward, as a sacred hymn carries aloft the spirits of the world.
Your nature wants the harmony, the music which, as the Pytha'
* Iamb. de Vit. Pythag,
-**
ZANONI. I f it
goreans 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 2"
“I offer it to you, if your love be lawful, if your faith in vir-
tue and yourself be deep and loyal ; if not, think you that
I would disenchant her with truth to make her adore a false-
hood P’’
– “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 con-
ceive 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?” ſº
“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 re-
linquishes 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 for-
feiting all the possessions which his schemes already had par-
celled out, to pursue with dishonorable 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 ?”
1 I 2 <! ZAN ONI. W.
“To ask what dower shall go with Viola Pisani, the morn-
ing that she leaves the palace of the Prince.”
“And how do you know all this P’’
“Fool | I tell thee again, because a lover is a watcher by
night and day; because love never sleeps when danger men-
aces 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 l’”
“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 P’’
“Before midnight, where you may least expect me. You
cannot shun me, though you may seek to do so t”
“Stay one moment You condemn me as doubtful, irreso-
lute, suspicious. Have I no cause 2 Can I yield without a
struggle to the strange fascination you exert upon my mind 2
What interest can you have in me, a stranger, that you should
thus dictate to me the gravest action in the life of man 2 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 commu-
nicate, thou wouldst listen to me then, and obey me without a
doubt ”
“It is true ; and I can account for this only by the im-
perfect associations of my childhood; by traditions in our
house of— ” º a.
“Your forefather, who, in the revival of science, sought the
secrets of Apollonius and Paracelsus.”
“What l” said Glyndon, amazed. “Are you so well acquaint-
ed with the annals of an obscure lineage 2 ''
“To the man who aspires to know, no man who has been
the meanest student of knowledge should be unknown. You
-- -- ZANONI. f I 3
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 Fra-
ternity as to whose laws and whose mysteries the most inquisi-
tive 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 f"
“What do you ask 7" 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 ambi-
tion, 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 2 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, coloring 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 im-
pulses 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 Cardi-
nal'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 occu-
pied 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 sº &
1 I4 ZANONI. *
*
CHAPTER V.
“Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still.”
—SHAKSPEARE,
-
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 cen-
tury, all that time has spared of the august and ven-
Terable 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 igno-
rance 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,” 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 Shemaſa of the Chal-
dean Lore, and gleamed dimly through the darkened knowledge
of later disciples, laboring, like Psellus and Iamblichus, to re-
vive the embers of the fire which burned in the Hamarin of
the East. Though not to us of an aged and hoary world, is vouch-
safed the NAME which, so say the earliest oracles of the earth,
“rushes into the infinite worlds,” yet is it ours to trace the reviv.
ing 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 Principle 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 f of the extinguished Torch, and
so closely does its shape resemble Eros, that at moments I
scarcely know which of yé dictates to me—O Love | O
Death !
* The reader will have the goodness to remember that this is said by the author of the
original MS., not by the editor.
# The Greek Genius of Death. .
ZANONſ. 115
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 con-
ceived 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 2 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 SELFCON FESSION AL.
“Is it the Daylight that shines on me, or the memory of thy
presence P 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 2
* * * * :}; :}; *
How instantaneously leapt 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
--- *
|
—I 16 % ZANON f. }
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.
:k: Sk >k Sk $: * *
“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
:}; §: §: :k :: * >k *
“Often in my childhood I have mused and asked for what I
was born ; and my soul answered my heart, and said : * Z hou
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 be-
fore 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 2
:}; :}; sk >k * : #:
“In the gardens-of my neighbor there is a small fountain. I
stood by it this morning after sunrise. How it sprung up, with
se-ºs
ZANONI. 117
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.
:}; :}; * Sk :#; >}; #:
#
“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 2—'
“‘Ah !' I said, ‘what to thee this history of the heart of a
child P’
“‘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 1 And thy night-
ingale, when they caught and caged it, refused to sing 2–’
“‘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 look-
ing through the moonlight, thine eyes saw that it had found its
mate. It sang to thee then from the boughs a long, loud, joy-
ous 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.’ &P
“How didst thou know my thoughts in that childlike time
better than I knew myself P. 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
Sk :k Sk :}; :k $: :k
“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
118 - ZANONI. *
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 dicta-
tion. 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 up-
ward, 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
* * Sk $: Sk * *
“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 com-
mon world, and I feel glad that thou art not by when crowds
have a right to judge me.
:k * * :k :: * sk
“And he spoke to me of ANother: to another he would con-
sign 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 in-
strument 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
$
.-- ZANONI. I 19
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
* tº: >k * $: sk >}:
jº
“ANOTHER My memory echoes back that word. Another
Dost thou mean that I shall see thee no more ? It is not sad-
ness—it is not despair that seizes me. I cannot weep. It is
an utter sense of desolation. I am plunged back into the com-
mon 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
Oh, how sweet it were to die
“Why do I not struggle from the web in which my will is
thus entangled 2 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 2 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.
sk sk §: Sk * * Sk
“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 some-
I 2 O ** ZANONI.
thing 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 VI.
“Tu vegga o per violenzia o per inganno
Patire o disonore o mortal danno.” +
—Orl. Pur., Cant. xlii. i.
It was a small cabinet ; the walls were covered with pic-
tures, 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 sate to Titian, and his portrait
may be inestimable ! A few inches of painted canvas a thou-
sand times more valuable than a man with his veins and
muscles, brain, will, heart, and intellect 1 ---
In this cabinet sate a man of about three and forty; dark-
eyed, sallow, with short, prominent features, a massive con-
formation 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, barri-
cadoed 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 P”
“Is your Excellency serious P So soon after the death of
his Eminence 2''
“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.”
* Thou art about either through violence or artifice to suffer dishonor or mortal loss.
ZANONI. I 2 I
&
“The Signor Zanoni ! Are you sure, my Prince 2"
“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 Za-
noni hath not yet honored our poor house with his presence.
-He is a distinguished stranger ; we must give a banquet in his
honor.” *:
“Ah, and the Cyprus wine ! The cypress is a proper em-
blem 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
ou.”
“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 unde-
cayed. My honor is now enlisted in this pursuit—Viola must
be mine !” |
“Another ambuscade 7" said Mascari inquiringly.
“Nay, why not enter the house itself 2 The situation is lone,
ly, and the door is not made of iron.”
“But what if, on her return home, she tell the tale of our
violence 2 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 2 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 2 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 honor highly prized,” said the Prince. “I have
long desired to clasp the hand of one so distinguished—”
- (
< *.
-º-º:
I 2.2 '' zANONI.
“And I give it in the spirit with which you seek it,” replied
Zanoni. sº-
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 our pretensions 2 ”
“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 P’’
“Yes, on my faith.” -
“And for him who breaks his word so plighted, what shall
be the forfeit P’’
“The sword lies next to the dice-box, Signor Zanoni. Let
him who stands not by his honor, 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 eye steadfastly on the parasite ; Mascari in
vain struggled to extricate himself 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. º
The Prince darted a glance of fire at his minion, who stood
y
*º.
ZAN ONI. 123
with gaping mouth, staring at the dice, and trembling from
head to foot.
“I have won, you see,” said Zanoni; “may we befriends still 2”
“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 7”
“Ah, do not think so ill of my gallantry; and,” resumed
Zanoni, with a stern meaning in his voice, “forget not the for-
feit 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 favor me with your
presence at a little feast I propose to give in honor,”—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 7 °
“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 settled his cravat.
“My blood is up : I will win this girl, if I die for it ! What
noise is that P*
“It is but the sword of your illustrious ancestor that has
fallen from the table.”
CHAPTER VII.
“Il ne faut appeller aucun ordre si ce n'est en tems clair et serein.”
—Les Clavicules du A'abbi Salomon.
LETTER FROM ZANON I TO MEJNOUR.
My art is already dim and troubled. I have lost the tran-
quillity 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
* No order of spirits must be invoked unless the weather be clear and serene.
t
124 ZAN ONI.
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-lové.
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, un-
seen, unheard, unrecognized, 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 en-
circle 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 my-
self 2 A moment in the life of ages, a bubble on the shoreless
sea. What else to me can be human love 2 And in this exqui-
site 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
Jhand, I sought to guide her path through the realms of terror
to the light, think of the Haunter of the Threshold, and shud-
der with me at the awful hazard I have endeavored 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
--- ZANONI. X- - 125
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 per-
plexes 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 timese per-
turbed 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. Ac-
cording 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 mayst yet daunt him from his doom. And I also mys-
teriously, by the same bond, am pledged to obey, if he so com-
…and, a ſess guilty descendant of a baffled but nobler student.
ºf he reject tº y counsel, and insist upon the pledge, Mejnour,
thout 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 VIII.
“Illupo
Ferito, credo, mi conobbe e 'ncontro
Mivenne con la bocca sanguinosa.”” l
—Amzinta, At. iv. sc. i.
AT Naples, the Tomb of Virgil, beetling over the cave of
Posilipo, is reverenced, not with the feelings that should hallow
* The wounded wolf, I think, knew me, and came to meet me with its bloody mouth.
I 26 ZAN ONI.
ºr
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 lux-
uriant 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. Dulled in its azure splen-
dor lay the Siren's sea ; and the gray 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 vapor 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, emerg-
ing from the bushes that clad the crags, and so singularly did
it harmonize in its uncouth ugliness with the wild nature of
the scene immediately around her, and the wizard traditions
of the place, that the color 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 difference 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 favorably 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 :
e
ZANONI. . . 127
“You are very beautiful, Viola Pisani, and I am not sur-
- prised 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 indig-
nant Listen to me. Has the Prince di ever spoken to
thee of marriage | Or the beautiful impostor, Zanoni 2 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 call-
ing of the stage is in the eyes of prejudice, that is, of the com-
mon opinion of mankind 2 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 honor P 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 2 ”
Never had Viola felt as she felt then ; never had she so
thoroughly seen all the perils of her forlorn condition and her
fearful renown. Nicot continued : -
“Zanoni would but amuse himself with thy vanity; Glyn-
don would despise himself, if he offered thee his name—and
thee, if phou 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 ex-
clamation 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.
128 \ ZANONI.
\ }
}
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 sud-
denly, 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 to me of
love P” *
“By my honor, words fail to tell thee how I love . "
“Wilt thou give me thy home—thy name 2 Dost thou woo
me as thy wife P” And at that moment, had Glyndon an-
swered 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 2 Was
not the great Actress rehearsing a premeditated part 2 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 2 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 2" 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 color
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, in-
deed, that I am the Pariah and the outcast.”
". ZANONI. I29s
“Hear me. I retract. Viola, Viola . It is for you to
forgive ” -
But Viola waved him from her, and similing mournfully, as
she passed him by, glided from the chamber; and he did
not dare to detain her.
CHAPTER IX.
DAFNE. Ma, chi lung’ & d’Amor 2
TIRSI. Chi teme e fugge.
DAFNE. E. che giova fuggir da lui ch’ ha l'ali ?
TIRSI. Amor nascenzie ſha corte l'ali f * *
- _ _ - A minta, At. ii. sc. ii.
WHEN Glyndon found himself without Viola's house Mer-
vale, 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 discom-
posed, 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
harboring dishonoráble 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, suppress-
ing only, he scarce knew why, the reference to his ancestor
and the mysterious brotherhood. *
y
* DAFNE. But who is far from Love 2–TIRS1. He who fears and flies.--DAFNE.
What use to flee from one who has wings 2—TIRSI. The wings of Love, while he yet
grows, are short. ---
13o rºx. ZANONI. r
This recital gave to Mervale all the advantage he could de-
sire. Heavens, with what sound, shrewd common-sense he
talked How evidently some charlatanic coalition between
the actress, and perhaps—who knows?—her clandestine pro-
tector, 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 I 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 2 **-
“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 neighboring 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 reason-
ings 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 2"
“Yes; and you—”
“Have seen and conversed with her. She shall be Madame
Nicot before this day week , I am going to the café, 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 2 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 2 "
“This man must lie.”
“Will you write to her at once 2"
ZANONI. I3 I
“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 X.
“O chiumque tusia, che fuor d'ogni use
& Pieghi Natura ad opre altere e strane,
E, spiando i Secreti, entro al piu chiuso
• Spazja tua voglia delle menti umane,
Deh-Dimmi !” ”—Gerus. Lib., cant. x. xviii.
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 neighborhood 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 sub-
urbs 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 zizant.
They put up at an inn of very humble pretensions, and dined
under an awning. Mervale was more than usually gay ; he
pressed the Lăcrima 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
fiereafter.” • *
“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 2
There may be a deeper philosophy than we dream of—a phi-
losophy that discovers the secrets of nature, but does not alter,
by penetrating, its course.”
“Ah, you relapse into your heretical credulity ; you seri-
*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–Oh speak, oh tell me !
132 ,” ZANONI.
ously suppose Zanonſ 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 Läcrima. 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 2 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 yod, Glyn-
.don 2 ” ^, e
“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 be-
fore it is dark. Clarence, my friend—Nunc est bibendum; but
take care of the pede libero, which will scarce do for walking
on lava ” wº
The bottle was finished, the bill paid ; the gentlemen mount-
ed, 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 bril-
liant 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 variouse
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 conversible, garrulous fellow, like
most of his country and his calling; and Mervale, who pos-
sessed 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
*s.
*
ZAN ONI. I33
bring us plenty of money. If our fortunes depended on the
Neapolitans, we should starve.”
“True, they have no curiosity,” said Mervale. “Do you re-
member, Glyndon, the contempt with which that old Count
said to us, ‘You will go to Vesuvius, I suppose 2 I have never
been ; why should I go 2 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 haſ 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 P’’
“No ; so beautiful, but so terrible. It had nothing human
in its aspect.”
“And what said the salamander-2"
“Nothing ! It did not even seem to perceive me, though I
was near as I am to you,; but its eyes seemed to emerge pry-
ing into the air. It passed by me quickly, and, walking across
a stream of burning lava, soon vanished on this other side of
the mountain. I was curious and foolhardy, and resolved to
see if I could bear the atmosphere which the 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 vapor
that well-nigh 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
**
%
I34 ZANONI.
they gazed. From the crater arose a vapor, 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 droop-
ing 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 sulphurous 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 en:
tranced 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 Na-
ture in her darkest and most inscrutable 1ecess. 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 Englishman 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. Af
“Diavolo / " cried the guide. “Descend; Excellencies—de-
scend | We have not a moment to lose : follow me close l’’
So saying, the guide and the peasant fled with as much swift-
ness 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 Sud-
den blast, came from the crater an enormous volume of vapor.
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, ałready
distant, and lost in an instant amidst the sound of the rushing
f
sº ZANONI, ** 135
fi
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 vapor 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 him-
self, 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 sudden, sullen, slow, rolling sound 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 des-
perately, 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
around 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 clue, some other pathway.
Fer 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 yårds when he halted abruptly;
an unspeakable and unaccountable horror, not hitherto expe-
rienced 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 be-
hind, 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 roll-
* *
136 * ZANONI. <sº,
º
ing down his brow ; and his eyes starting wildly from their
sockets; he saw before him, at some distance, gradually shap-
ing 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 be-
side, 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
thc Superhuman. It was but for a moment, nay, for the tenth
part of a moment, that this sight was permitted to the wan-
derer. A second eddy of sulphurous vapors 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 XI.
**Was hab' ich
Wenn ich nicht Alles habe?—sprach der Jüngling.” +
--- —Das Verschleierte Bild zu Sais.
MERVALE and the Italians arrived in safety at the spot where
they had left the mules; and not until 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 gen-
eral, grew seriously alarmed, He insisted on returning, to
search for his friend ; and by dint of prodigal promises, pre-
vailed 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 to-
wards them. g
As they came near Mervale recognized the form of his
friend. “Thank Heaven, he is safe,” he cried, turning to the
guide.
* “What have I, if I possess not All 2 ” said the youth.
zANONI. 1.37
“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 P’’ stammered Mervale, in great con-
fusion 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 frus-
trate, your friend would, ere this time, have been a corpse:
one minute more, and the vapor had done its work. Adieu ;
good-night, and pleasant dreams.” - *.
“But, my preserver, you will not leave us !” said Glyndon
anxiously, and speaking for the first time. “Will you not re-
turn 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 in-
sulted her whom you profess to love. It is not too late to re-
pent. 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.” 2. *
“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 re-
mind 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.”
138 ZANONI.
“I bid thee consider well; on the one hand, Viola, a tran-
quil 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 con-
tented 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 2 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 waived his hand; and, descending rapidly, was seen
In O m Ore. *
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 XII.
** Was ist’s
Das hinter diesem Schleier sich verbirgt?” +
—/Das Verschleierie AE2/a/ 22, Sais.
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 de-
* What is it that conceals itself behind this veil 7
ZANONI. I39
serted 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 individu-
ality amidst an energetic and active population.
The Englishmen 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 pre-
ceding the last hour of night. Glyndon started from his
revery, and looked anxiously round. As thé 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
recognized the features and mien of Zanoni.
“What, do we meet again, Signor P” said Mervale, in a vexed
but drowsy tone. º
“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 P’’
“There is no danger l’’ returned Zanoni, with a slight ex-
pression of disdain in his voice.
“None to me—but to Glyndon 2 ”
“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.
I4o ZANONI.
“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.” 9. N
In the retirement of his chamber, Glyndon sought to recol-
lect 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 the
spot in which he could never, by ordinary reasoning, have cal-
culated 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 asbes-
tos-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 overpass 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 dis-
ordered 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. g
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 re-
pose to the madness of earthly passions. But such was Glyn-
don'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 sympa-
thy to agitate the wings of the spirit no longer contented with
its cage. As he gazed, a star shot from its brethren, and van-
ished from the depth of space |
ZANONI. * I4I
CHAPTER XIII.
“Oh, be gone !
By Heaven, I love thee better than myself,
For I came hither arm'd against myself.”
—Romeo and Juliet.
THE young actress and Gionetta had returned from the
theatre ; and Viola, fatigued and exhausted, had thrown her-
self 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 gossip-
ing on about the little events of the night, the scandal and pol-
itics 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 scandalized 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 rumors 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 agi-
tated steps; she recalled the frightful suit of Nicot; the inju-
rious taunt of Glyndon ; and she sickened at the remembrance
of the hollow applauses which, bestowed on the actress, not the
…:
I42 - * ZAN ONI.
woman, only subjected her to contumely and insult. In t
room the recollection of her father's death, the withered laur
and the broken chords, rose chillingly before her. Hers, sh;3
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 parents,
dost thou fear the presence of the dead
And was Zanoni indeed about to quit Naples 2 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 l 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 2 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 2 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 inno-
cence, 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, trem-
bling 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 heav-
ing 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 under-
take another's ; thou knowest I would—thou knowest it ! But
he is not worthy of thee, the cold Englishman | I throw my-
self at thy feet; have trust in me and fly.”
He grasped her hand passionately as he dropped on his knee,
*






=~~ ZANON f. 143'
$
and looked up into her face with his bright beseeching
eyes." -
“Fly with thee!” said Viola, scarce believing her senses.
“With me, Name, fame, honor—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 P 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 l’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 2 ” said Viola, turning pale,
and shrinking from his side; “Leave me—I fear no danger.
My life, and therefore my honor, is in mine own hands.”
“Be not so mad,” said Zanoni. “Hark! do you hear the
neigh of my steed It is an alarum that warns us of the ap-
proaching 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 aims drooping
mournfully, and her hands clasped together with the proud bit-
terness 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, advanc-
ing, he wound his arm round her waist. “Come, Viola ; be-
lieve at least in my friendship, my honor, my protection—”
“And not thy love,” said the Italian, turning on him her
reproachful eyes. Those eyes met his, and he could not with-
draw from the charm of their gaze. He felt her heart throb-
bing 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 burn-
ing sigh, he murmured : “Viola, I love thee! Oh !” he con-
tinued, passionately, and releasing his hold, he threw himself
'144 ZANONI, S
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 sor-
rowful in the world ; and knew that dangers from which I
might save thee were gathering near thee and around. Beauti-
ful 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 shrunk 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, pro-
tect 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 for-
gotten 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;
2A1V ÖNî. I45
and may love supply the loss of all that it has dared to sacri-
fice 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 l’’ cried Zanoni, in a
sharp tone of agony, as he hurried to the door. He º
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 o
|
CHAPTER XIV.
“Malasciamo, per Dio, Signore, orma
Di parlar d'ira, e di cantar di morte.” +
—Orl. Aſur., can to xvii. xvii.
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, characterized the palaces of the great seigneurs of
Italy. Her first thought was for Zanoni. Was he yet living 2
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 ap-
proaching 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 faith-
ful still to Zanoni ! There was a new motive to the preserva-
tion of honor. The door opened, and the Prince entered, in
the gorgeous and gaudy costume still worn at that time in
Naples. º
“Fair and cruel one,” said he, advancing, with a half-sn
* But leave me, I solemnly conjure thee, Signor, to speak of wrath, and to sing of de






146 2ANONI. -
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 ob-
ject less dear to him than thou art. Thy lover, presumptuous
though he be, is not by to save thee. Mine thou art; but in-
stead 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 bold-
ness he was but little prepared for. He was not, however, a
man easily intimidated or deferred 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 7”
“He asserts that your life is in imminent danger. The
source whence it proceeds he will relate to your Excellency
alone.” P
The Prince frowned ; but his color 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 authori-
ties 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
s surrounded by officious attendants, whom she at length,
ith some difficulty, dismissed ; and refusing to retire to rest,



ZAN ONI. Í4.
-m- -y
she spent the night in examining the chamber, which she foung
was secured, and in thoughts of Zanoni, in whose power sh
felt an almost preternatural confidence.
Meanwhile, the Prince descended the stairs, and sought th
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 worr
by ecclesiastics. The face of this stranger was remarkable
So sunburnt and swarthy were his hues, that he must, appa
rently, have derived his origin amongst the races of the furthes
East. His forehead was lofty, and his eyes so penetrating, ye
so calm in their gaze, that the Prince shrunk from them as w;
shrink from a questioner who is drawing forth the guilties
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 anc
sweet, but foreign in its accent; “son of the most energetic
and masculine race that ever applied godlike genius to t
service of Human Will, with its winding wickedness and i
stubborn grandeur; descendant of the great Visconti, in whos
chronicles lies the History of Italy in her palmy day, and
whose rise was the development of the mightiest int
ripened by the most restless ambition, I come to gaze upon t
last star in a darkening firmament. By this hour to-mory
space shall know it not. Man, unless thy whole nature ch:
thy days are numbered ' "
“What means this jargon P’’ said the Prince, in visibl
tonishment and secret awe. “Comest thou to menace me
my own halls, or wouldst thou warn me, of a danger ? A
thou some itinerant mountebank, or sonse unguessed of frienq
Speak out, and plainly. What danger, threatens me 2''
“Zanoni and thy ancestor's sword," replied the strange
“Ha! haſ " said the Prince, laughing scornfully, “
suspected thee from the first. Thou art then the accom
or the tool of that most dexterous, but, at present, defea
charlatan 2 And I suppose thou wilt tell me that, if I wer
release a certain_captive I have made, the danger would
ish, and the hand Öf the dial would be put back P”
“Judge of me as thou wilt, Prince di I confess
knowledge of Zanoni. Thou, too, wilt know his power,
not till it consume thee. I would save, therefore I warn
Dost thou ask me why? I will tell thee. Canst thou re
ber to have heard wild tales of thy grandsire P Of his d

ºis * * ZANONI.
for a knowledge that passes that of the schools and cloisters?
Of a strange man from the East, who was his familiar and
}º in lore, against which the Vatican has, from age to age,
launched its mimic thunder P Dost thou call to mind the for-
tunes of thy ancestor 2 How he succeeded in youth to little
but a name 2 How, after a career wild and dissolute as thine,
he disappeared from Milan, a pauper, and a self-exile 2 How,
after years spent, none knew in what Climes or in what pur-
suits, he again revisited the city where his progenitors had
reigned 2 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 2
Dost thou not know that from that hour his fortunes rose 2 :
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 trans-
erred his splendor from Milan to the Sicilian realms. Vis-
lons of high ambition were then present with him nightly and
aily. Had he lived, Italy would have known a new dynasty,
nd the Visconti would have reigned over Magna-Graecia. He
as a man such as the world rarely sees ; but his ends, too
rthly, were at war with the means he sought. Had his am-
tion been more or less, he had been worthy of a realm might-
than the Caesars swayed ; worthy of our solemn order;
y of the fellowship of Mejnour, whom you now behold
ore you.” -
The Prince, who had listened with deep and breathless at-
ention to the words of his singular guest, started from his seat
t his last words. “Impostorſ ’’ he cried, “can you dare thus
play with my credulity ? Sixty years have flown since my
&ndsire died ; were he living, he had passed his hundred
twentieth year; and you, whose old age is erect and vig-
ºis, have the assurance to pretend to have been his contem-
‘ary But you have imperfectly learned your tale. You
ow not, it seems, that my grandsire, wise and illustrious in-
| in all save his faith, in a charlatan, was found dead in
ed, in the very hour when his colossal"plans were ripe for
Sution, and that Mejnour was guilty of his murder.”
Alas !” answered the stranger, in a voice of great sadness,
d he but listened to Mejnour ; had he but delayed the
and most perilous ordeal of daring wisdom until the requi-
training and initiation had been completed, your ancestor
-
\,









Nî. f49
Lºve stºred 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 ab-
solute commands, and in the sublime rashness of a soul that
panted for secrets, which he who desires orbs and sceptres
never Gan obtain, perished, the victim of his own frenzy.”
“He was poisoned, and Mejnour fled.”
“Mejnour fled not,” answered the stranger proudly; “Mej-
nour 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 draught 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 experi-
ment 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 cham-
ber. “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 attend-
ants, and his step was heard in-his châmber, pacing to and fro,
with heavy awd disordered strides. Not till an hour before his
banquet the next day did he seem restored to his former self.




150
A
CHAPTER XV.
“Oime ! come poss 'io
Altri trovar, se me trovar non posso P”* -
—Amint., At. i. Sc. ii.
THE sleep of Glyndon, the night after his last interview with
Zanoni, w s 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 repent-
ance 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 favorite 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 finety of the profession was visible, on the
one hand; none of the sloveſity disorder common to the hum-
bler classes of the South, on the other. All was pure and
simple ; even the ornaments were those of an innocent refine-
ment ; a few books, placed carefully on shelves, a few half-
faded flowers in an earthen vase, which was modelled and
painted in the Etruscan ſashion. The sunlight streamed over
*Alas ! how can I find another, when I cannot find myself?


* ZANONI. * 15I
*
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 2 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 per-
ceived 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 neighborhood, was, that a lazzarone, from his nocturnal
resting-place on the Chiaja, had seen by the moonlight a car-
riage, which he recognized as belonging to the Prince di 3.
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 motion-
less 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 2 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 2 Though mentally irreso-
lute, 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 cº
CHAPTER XVI.
“Ardua vallatur duris sapientia scrupis.”*
—HADR. JUN., Emblem. xxxvii.
We must go back some hours in the progress of this narra-
tive, It was the first faint and gradual break of the summer
* Lofty wisdom is circled round with rugged rocks,
I52 g ZANONI. '
dawn ; and two mén 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 tran-
quillity 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. g
“No,” said the latter ; “hadst thou delayed the acceptance
of the Arch Gift until thou hast 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 Qf 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,
A-
\
º, ZAN ON I. I53
that have thickened his grosser senses, have blunted his imagi-
nation. 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 suf-
ficient 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 inimi-
cal and malignant tribes by which at this moment we are sur-
rounded,—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 2 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 yout
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 2 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 strain-
ing 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
color—could brave one glance of—Away ! The very thought
of such sights for her makes even myself a coward . "
I54 YAN ONI. * .*
“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 2 How know you what her curiosity may
learn and her courage brave P But enough of this—you are
lent on your pursuit * *
“The fiat has gone forth.” [3
“And to-morrow 2 ”
“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 XVII. --
ALCH. Thou always speakest riddles. Tell me if thou art that fountain
of which Bernard Lord Trevizan writ?
MERC. I am not that fountaln, but I am the water. The fountain com-
passeth me about.—SANDIVOGIUS, AVew Zight 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 alchymy in a spirit half mocking and
half reverential. ---,
Pleasure soon distracted him from such speculations, and
his talents, which were unquestionably great, were wholly per-
verted 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
*sº
ZANON I. 155
Neapolitan with awe and wonder, against which all the
haughty arrogance and learned scepticism of his maturer man-
hood 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 sum-
moned 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 heirlooms 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 AVut, ix. Meomum, 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 2 ” asked the guest.
156 ZANONI,
“A distant relation on the mother's side; with his Excel-
lency 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 ſets 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 ac-
quaintance not only amongst the beaux esprits of his own coun-
try, 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 régime, 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. o the manners of his host,
those of Zanoni afforded a striking contrast. The bearing of
this singular person was at all times characterized 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 character-
ized his remarks upon the topics on which the conversation
fell, it appeared to men who took nothing in earnest to be the
\ ZANONT. 15?
*
g
language both of wit and wisdom. To the Frenchmen in par-
ticular 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 sar-
casms) 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, per-
ceiving by his dress that he was not one of the invited guests,
told him that his Excellency was engaged, and oh no account
could be disturbed ; and Glyndon then, for the first time, be-
came 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, surroileded by the rank of Na-
ples, and to arraign him for what to his boon companions
would appear but an act of gallantry, was an exploit that could
not fall 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 Za-
noni. 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 every-
where ; 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.” ºx
Glyndon's brow was sullen ; and he was about to startle the
& & \ Asºº
158 ŽAN ONI. § .*-
guests oy nis reply, when Zanoni, touching his arm significant-
ly, whispered in English : “I know why you have sought
me. Be silent, and witness what ensues,” t
“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 steams of blood. Be still, and learn the fate that
awaits the Wicked ’’
“My lord,” said Zanoni, speaking aloud, “the Signor Glyn-
don 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 honored me with
most loyal friendship,” replied Zanoniº 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. “‘Mot to ad-
mire,’ was the Roman's maxim ; ‘AWever to mourn,’ is mine.
There is nothing in life to grieve for, save, indeed, Signor Za-
noni, 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 for-
tunate 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 the draught, 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 favor us with your
opinion ?”
ZAN ONI. I59
*-
4.
“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 P The English are
said to love their potations warm and pungent.”
“Do you wish my friend also to taste the wine, Prince 2 ”
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 Bur-
*:::::: Has it borne the journº "-
fi," said Zanoni, “lef -tº-eiränge both the wine and the
theme.” •º • *.
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 con-
tagion. The former, indeed, whom the words and gaze of Za-
noni, when he drained the poison, had filled with fearful mis-
givings, now hailed in the brilliant eloquence of his wit a cer-
tain sign of the operation of the bane. The wine circulated
fast ; but none seemed conscious of its effects. One by one
$g
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 them that Zanoni rose.
“Well, gentlemen,” said he, “we have not yet wearied our
host, I hope; and his garden offers a new temptation to pro-
tract our stay. Have you no musicians among your train,
Prince, that might regale our ears while we inhale the fra-
grance of your orange trees 2"
“An excellent thought !” said the Prince. “Mascari, see
to the music.”
I6O ZANONI.
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 clamor
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, vivacroſsraadjrascible 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 neces-
sary that the Duc should himself give evidence of what oc-
curred, 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 re-
leased 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 in most 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 un
sympathizing sinile upon his countenance which had charac-
terized 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 tranquil-
lity 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
*AN ONI. I6 I
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 our-
selves, but it did not produce the same effect of noisy excite-
ment. 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 in-
fected him ; and in imitating the manner of his guest, he sur-
passed the original. He rallied me on some court gossip,
which had honored my name by associating it with a certain
beautiffſ and distinguished serieſiian-kedy, and affected to treat
with contempt that which, had it been true, I should have "re-
garded as a boast. He spoke, indeed, as if he himself had
gathered all the flowers of Naples, and left us foreigners only
'he 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 P’
“‘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 in perious self-con-
ceit.”
“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 demand-
ed, half laughingly, half seriously, that he should produce the
I 62 ZANONI.
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 her-
self 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
e ~~~ºst ſ
an example, that I cannot hesitate-to-pºsue the pathºbnored
by your own footsteps. All Naples knows that the Pisani de-
spises at once your gold and your love ; that force alone could
have brought her under your roof ; and that you refuse to pro-
duce her, because you fear her complaints, and know enough of
the chivalry your vanity sneers at to feel assured that the gentle-
men 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 con-
ciliate ; some took one side, some another. The issue may be
well foreseen. Swords were called for and procured. Two
were oſfered 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 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
mélée, 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 at-
tendants, and fought like madmen, without skill or method. I
ZANONI.
&63
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 whis-
pering 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 hor-
ror 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 un-
fortunate nobleman, for the lenient and generous, yet just, in-
terpretation 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 par-
ticipated largely in the excesses of the revel. For his exemp-
tion from both, he was perhaps indebted to the whispered ex-
hortations 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. Glyn-
don followed Zanoni into the banquet-room, which, save where
the moonlight slept on the marble floor, was wrapt 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 fightin
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 ’’
I64 ZANONI.
--
Here Mascari approached, and Zanoni, turning to the Italian,
and waving his hand to Glyndon, drew the former aside. Glyn-
don slowly departed. º
“Mascari,” said Zanoni: “ tron i º
5 ; your patron is no more ; your
services will be valueless to his heir ; a sober man, whom pov-
erty 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 re-act 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 peni-
...tent. Enough of this ; conduct me to the chamber of Viola
Pisani. You have no further need of her. The death of
the gaoler opens the cell of the captive. Be quick, I would
be gone.” lº.
Mascari uttered some inaudible words, bowed low, and led
the wav to the chamber in which Viola was confined.
CHAPTER XVIII.
MERC. Tell me, therefore, what thou seekest after, and what thou wilt
have. What dost thou desire to make 2
ALCH. The Philosopher's Stone.—SANDIVOGIUS.
It wanted several minutes of midnight, and Glyndon re-
paired to the appointed spot. The mysterious empire which
Zanoni had acquired over him was still more solemnly con-
firmed 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 ordi-
nary events and the meanest instruments into the agencies of
his inscrutalyle will ; yet if so, why have permitted the capture
of Viola 2 Why not have prevented the crime, rather than
punish the criminal 2 And did Zanoni really feel love for
Viola 2 Love, and yet offer to resign her to himself ; to a
rival whom llis 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 2 No ; when that
morning he had heard of her danger, he had, it is true,
*-
- - ZANONI. - 165
returned to the sympathies and the fears of affection ; * ~
but with the death of the Prince her image faded again
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 ganiester, will
remember how all other pursuits and objects vanished from
his mind ; how solely he was wrapped in the one wild delu-
sion; with what a sceptre of magic power the despot-daemon
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 pre-
ternatural 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. Enam-
oured 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 re-
pose. 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 ma-
ture age and the passionless depth of thought that charac-
terized the expanded forehead, and deep-set but piercing
eyes. r *
“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 realize 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 2 Who,
indeed, in his first youth—youth when the soul is nearer to the
heaven from which it sprung, and its divine and primal long-
ings 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
I66 ZANONI. -
~~~
wilderness of trackless science 2 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 Inef-
fable Knowledge was given to us utterly in vain 7 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 succes-
sors 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 supe-
riority in power and wisdom º "
“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 uni-
verse, 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 pop-
ulation bronzed beneath the suns of the West, the blue-eyed
Minerva and the yellow-haired Achilles (physical character-
istics 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 men.”
ZANONI. 167
“And what books contains that science From what lab-
oratory is it wrought?” sº
“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 ; every-
where are given to mortals the resources and libraries of im-
mortal 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 let-
ters 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 Glyn-
don boldly. “I have felt from my boyhood that strange mys-
teries 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 be-
held 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 leapt on shore, and Glyndon recognized 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 realiza-
168 ZANONI.
tion 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 can-
not 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.” sº
“I cannot gainsay 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 an-
swer I will decide. Is it in the power of man to attain inter-
course with the beings of other worlds? Is it in the power of
man to influence the elements, and to ensure 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 2 Is he in truth one of the chosen seers
whom you allow to have mastered the mysteries I yearn to
fathom P’’
“Rash man,” said Zanoni, in a tone of compassion, “thy
crisis is past, and thy choice made 1 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 mysteri-
ous 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
*
ZANONI. 169
he recognized 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 : “Fare-
well, 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 man-
kind to thee P 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.
*
17o - ZANONT.
BOOK IV.- THE DWELLER OF THE
TH RESHOLD.
“Sey hinter ihm was will Ich heb ihn auf.”
—Das zerschleierte Bild zu Sais.
CHAPTER I.
“Comme vittima io vengo all’ ara.” +—METAST., At. ii. Sc. 7.
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 impostor more danger-
ous, 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 thorough',
fares of men to the studies in which he is to initiate you ; and
this retreat is among the haunts of the fiercest bandits in a
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 2 You might come off
cheaply by a ransom of half your fortune. You smile indig-
nantly | 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.” *
* Be behind what there may—I raise the veil.
f As a victim 1 go to the altar.
ZAN ONI. I7 I
“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 pass-
port ; 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 English-
man, 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
yo, hid yourself 2 Have you been absorbed in your studies 2"
& Yes.”
“I am about to leave Naples for Paris. Will you accompany
me 2 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 º Take example by me. I have already consoled
myself with Bianca Sacchini—a handsome woman—enlight-
ened—no prejudices. A valuable creature I shall find her, no
doubt. But as for this Zanoni !—”
“What of him P”
“If ever I paint an allegorical subject, I will take his like-
ness as Satan. Ha, ha! A true painter's revenge—eh 2 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-”
172 , ZANONI. -
“Wherefore ?”
“Wherefore | Has he not carried off the wife and the
dowry I had marked for myself 2 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 feel 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 confrère—-we, too, may meet again Vive la
A’épublique / 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 lills. 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 noon-
day 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 of 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 ves-
tige of the old idolatry (for just such were the chapels that in
the pagan age were dedicated to the demon-saints of mythol-
ogy), 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,
s-ºr
ZANONI. 173
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 signifi-
cantly 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 2 ” 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 overall, which
made the only garment of the men he had hitherto seen, the
dress of this person was characterized 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-colored 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 ex-
pression of countenance which, though reckless and bold, had
in it frankness rather than ferocity, and, if defying, was not al-
together 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 liſted his cap as he heard the question, and,
I 74 ZANONI.
-
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 by-
standers, in a loud voice : “Ho, ho my friends, pay hence-
forth 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 1 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 honor 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:
‘A’eace 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, com-
rades P’’ And again the hoarse voices shouted, “Amen,
Amen ''
“Now, Signor,” whispered the bravo, “if you have a few
coins to spare, scattér 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 moun-
tains 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 :
ZANONI. 175
“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 neighborhood. And your name, my
friend, if I may so call you?”
“Oh, no ceremonies with me, Excellency. In the village I
am generally called Maëstro Páolo. 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 humor; though as his tale pro-
ceeded, 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 characterize the emotions of his
countrymen.
“I was born at Terracina—a fair spot, is it not 2 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 dedi-
cated from my cradle to the altar ; and my head was univer-
sally 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 con-
trived that my mother should have her pockets full: and, be-
tween her pockets and mine, there was soon established a clan-
destine 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
176 : ZANONI.
me over to an honest notary at Naples, and gave me two hun-
dred 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 amon oso. At last, how-
ever, Ninetta grew cold. It is the way of the sex, Signor. Her
father found her an excellent marriage in the person of a with-
ered old picture-dealer. She took the spouse, and very prop-
erly clapped the door in the face of the lover. I was not dis-
heartened, 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 butch-
ered, 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 blest the old notary for turning me out of
doors | What feasting, what fighting, what wooing, what quar-
relling ! 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 masthead, 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,
-**
© ZAN ON 1. #. 177
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 Bil-
boa 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 spirting 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 if it were water. Well, Signor, the victory was ours,
and the ship mine ; I ruled merrily enough for six months.
We then attacked a French ship twice our size. What sport it
was And we had not had a good fight so long, we were quite
like virgins at it ! We got the best of it, and won ship and
cargo. They wanted to pistol the captain, but that was against
my laws; so we gagged him, for he scolded as loud as if we
were married to him ; left him and the rest of his crew on
board our own vessel, which was terribly battered ; clapped our
black flag on the Frenchman's, and set off merrily, with a brisk
wind in our favor. But luck deserted us on forsaking our own
dear old ship. A storm came on, a plank struck ; several of us
escaped in the boat; we had lots of gold with us, but no water |
For two days and two nights we suffered horribly ; but at last
we ran ashore near a French seaport. Our sorry plight moved
compassion, and as we had money we were not suspected—
people only suspect the poor. Here we soon recovered our fa-
tigues, rigged ourselves out gayly, and your humble servant
was considered as noble a captain as ever walked deck. But
now, alas, my fate would have it that I should fall in love with
a silk-mercer's daughter. Ah, how I loved her l—the pretty
Clara ! Yes, I loved her so well, that I was seized with horror
178 * ZANONI. *-
at my past life I resolved to repent, to marry her, and settle
down into an honest man. Accordingly, I summoned my
messmates, told them my resolution, resigned my command,
and persuaded them to depart. They were good fellows ; en-
gaged with a Dutchman, against whom I heard afterwards they
made a successful mutiny, but I never saw them more. I had two
thousand crowns still left ; with this sum I obtained the consent
of the silk-mercer, and it was agreed that I should become a
partner in the firm. I need not say that no one suspected that
I had been so great a man, and I passed for a Neapolitan
goldsmith's son instead of a cardinal's. I was very happy then,
Signor, very—I could not have harmed a fly I Had I married
Clara, I had been as gentle a mercer as ever handled a
measure.”
The bravo paused a moment, and it was easy to see that he
felt more than his words and tone betokened. “Well, well,
we must not look back at the past too earnestly—the sunlight
upon it makes one's eyes water. The day was fixed for our
wedding—it approached. On the evening before the ap-
pointed day, Clara, her mother, her little sister, and myself,
were walking by the port, and as we looked on the sea I was
telling them old gossip-tales of mermaids and sea-serpents,
when a red-faced, bottle-nosed Frenchman clapped himself
right before me, and placing his 'spectacles very deliberately
astride his proboscis, echoed out : “Sacré, miſle tonnerres, this is
the damned pirate who boarded the Mipbe '' º
“‘None of your jests,’ said I mildly. ‘Ho, ho!’ said he ;
‘I can't be mistaken ; help there !’ and he griped me by the
collar. I replied, as you may suppose, by laying him in the
kennel; but it would not do. The French captain had a
French lieutenant at his back, whose memory was as good as
his chief's. A crowd assembled ; other sailors came up ; the
odds were against me. I slept that night in prison ; and in a
few weeks afterwards, I was sent to the galleys. They spared
my life, because the old Frenchman politely averred that I
had made my crew spare his. You may believe that the oar
and the chain was not to my taste. I and two others escaped ;
they took to the road, and have, no doubt, been long since
broken on the wheel. I, soft soul, would not commit another
crime to gain my bread, for Clara was still at my heart with
her sweet eyes: so, limiting my rogueries to the theft of a beg-
gar's rags, which I compensated by leaving him my galley at-
tire instead, I begged my way to the town where I left Clara.
It was a clear winter's day when I approached the outskirts of
ZANONI. f79
the town. I had no fear of detection, for my beard and hair
were as good as a mask. Oh, Mother of Mercy there came
across my way a funeral procession | There, now you know
it ; I can tell you no more. She had died, perhaps of love,
more likely of shame. Can you guess how I spent that night—
I stole a pickaxe from a mason's shed, and all alone and un-
seen, under the frosty heavens, I dug the fresh mould from the
grave; I lifted the coffin, I wrenched the lid, I saw her again—
again Decay had not touched her. She was always pale in
life I could have sworn she lived It was a blessed thing
to see her once more, and all alone too ! But then, at dawn,
to give her back to the earth, to close the lid, to throw down
the mould, to hear the pebbles rattle on the coffin—that was
dreadful Signor, I never knew before, and I don’t wish to
think now, how valuable a thing human life is. At sunrise I
was again a wanderer; but now that Clara was gone, my
scruples vanished, and again Pºwas at war with my betters. I
contrived at last, at O , to get taken on board a vessel
bound to Leghorn, working out my passage. From Leghorn I
went to Rome, and stationed myself at the door of the cardi-
aal's palace. Out he came, his gilded coach at the gate.
“‘Ho, father l’ said I; “don’t you know me?’
“‘Who are you?”
“‘Your son,’ said I, in a whisper.
“The cardinal drew back, looked at me earnestly, and mused
a moment. “All men are my sons,’ quoth he then, very mildly,
‘there is gold for thee! To him who begs once, alms are due ;
to him who begs twice, jails are open. Take the hint, and
molest me no more. Heaven bless thee ' ' With that he got
into his coach, and drove off to the Vatican. His purse which
he had left behind was well supplied. I was grateful and con-
tented, and took my way to Terracina. I had not long passed
the marshes, when I saw two horsemen approach at a canter.
“‘You look poor, friend,' said one of them, halting ; ‘yet
you are strong.’ - *.
“‘Poor men and strong are both serviceable and dangerous,
Signor Cavalier.’”
“‘Well said; follow us.”
“I obeyed, and became a bandit. I rose by degrees; and
as I have always been mild in my calling, and have taken
purses without cutting throats, I bear an excellent character,
and can eat my macaroni at Naples without any danger to life
and limb. For the last two years I have settled in these parts,
where I hold sway, and where I have purchased land. I am .
*
18o --- ZANONI.
called a farmer, Signor; and I myself now only rob for amuse.
ment, and to keep my hand in. I trust I have satisfied your
curiosity. We are within a hundred yards of the castle.”
“And how,” asked the Englishman, whose interest had been
much excited by his companion's narrative, “And how came
you acquainted with my host P And by what means has he so
well conciliated the good will of yourself and your friends?” "
Maéstro Páolo turned his black eyes very gravely towards
his questioner. “Why Signor,” said he, “you must surely
know more of the foreign cavalier with the hard name than I
do. All I can say is, that about a fortnight ago I chanced to
be standing by a booth in the Toledo at Naples, when a sober-
looking gentleman touched me by the arm, and said, ‘Maéstro
Páolo, I want to make your acquaintance; do me the favor to
come into yonder tavern, and drink a flask of làcrima.” “Will-
ingly,” said I. So we entered the tavern. When we were
seated, my new acquaintance thus accosted me : ‘The Count
d'O—— has offered to let me hire his old castle near B––.
You know the spot ?’
“‘Extremely well; no one has inhabited it for a century
at least ; it is half in ruins, Signor. A queer place to hire ; I
hope the rent is not heavy.'
“‘Maëstro Páolo,” said he, “I am a philosopher, and don't
care for luxuries. I want a quiet retreat for some scientific
experiments. The castle will suit me very well, provided you
will accept me as a neighbor, and place me and my friends
under your special protection. I am rich ; but I shall take
nothing to the castle worth robbing. I will pay one rent to
the Count, and another to you.’
“With that we soon came to terms ; and as the strange
Signor doubled the sum I myself proposed, he is in high favor
with all his neighbors. We would guard the old castle against
an army. And now, Signor, that I have been thus frank, be
frank with me. Who is this singular cavalier?”
“Who 2 He himself told you, a philosopher.” ~~~
“Hem | Searching for the philosopher's stone,—eh A bit
of a magician ; afraid of the priests 2 ”
“Precisely. You have hit it.”
“I thought so ; and you are his pupil 2"
“I am.”
“I wish you well through it,” said the robber seriously, and
crossing himself with much devotion: “I am not much better
than other people, but one's soul is one's soul. I do not mind
a little honest robbery, or knocking a man on the head if need
A sº
ZANONI. 181
be, but to make a bargain with the devil | Ah take care,
young gentleman, take care.” º
“You need not fear,” said Glyndon, smiling; “my preceptor
is too wise and too good for such a compact. But here we
are, I suppose. A noble ruin—a glorious prospect ”
Glyndon paused delightedly, and surveyed the scene before
and below with the eye of a painter. Insensibly, while listen-
ing to the bandit, he had wound up a considerable ascent, and
now he was upon a broad ledge of rock covered with mosses
and dwarf shrubs. Between this eminence and another of
equal height upon which the castle was built, there was a deep
but narrow fissure, overgrown with the most profuse foliage, so
that the eye could not penetrate many yards below the rugged
surface of the abyss ; but the profoundness might be well con-
jectured by the hoarse, low, monotonous roar of waters unseen
that rolled below, and the subsequent course of which was visible
at a distance in a perturbed and rapid stream, that intersected
the waste and desolate valleys. To the left, the prospect
seemed almost boundless ; the extreme clearness of the purple
air serving to render distinct the features of a range of country
that a conqueror of old might have deemed in itself a king-
dom. Lonely and desolate as the road which Glyndon had
passed that day had appeared, the landscape now seemed
studded with castles, spires, and villages. Afar off, Naples
gleamed whitely in the last rays of the sun, and the rose-tints
of the horizon melted into the azure of her glorious bay. Yet
more remote, and in another part of the prospect, might be
caught, dim and shadowy, and backed by the darkest foliage,
the ruined pillars of the ancient Posidonia. There, in the
midst of his blackened and sterile realms, rose the dismal
Mount of Fire ; while, on the other hand, winding through
variegated plains, to which distance lent all its magic, glittered
many and many a stream, by which Etruscan and Sybarite,
Roman and Saracen, and Norman, had, at intervals of ages,
pitched the invading tent. All the visions of the past—the
stormy and dazzling histories of southern Italy—rushed over
the artist's mind as he gazed below. And then, slowly turn-
ing to look behind, he saw the gray and mouldering walls of
the castle, in which he sought the secrets that were to give to
hope in the Future a mightier empire than memory owns in
the Past. It was one of those baronial fortresses with which
Italy was studded in the earlier middle ages, having but little
of the Gothic grace or grandeur which belongs to the ecclesi.
astical architecture of the same time; but rude, vast, and men.
182 * ZANONI.
acing, even in decay. A wooden bridge was thrown over
the chasm, wide enough to admit two horsemen abreast; and
the planks trembled and gave back a hollow sound as Glyndon
urged his jaded steed across.
A road which had once been broad and paved with rough
flags, but which now was half obliterated by long grass and
rank weeds, conducted to the outer court of the castle hard
by ; the gates were open, and half the building in this part was
dismantled ; the ruins partially hid by ivy that was the growth
of centuries. But on entering the inner court, Glyndon was
nat Sorry to notice that there was less appearance of neglect
and decay; some wild roses gave a smile to the gray walls,
and in the centre there was a fountain, in which the waters
still trickled coolly, and with a pleasing murmur, from the
jaws of a gigantic Triton. Here he was met by Mejnour with
a smile.
“Welcome, my friend and pupil,” said he ; “he who seeks
for Truth can find in these solitudes an immortal Academe.”
ºx.
CHAPTER II.
“And Abaris, so far from esteeming Pythagoras, who taught these things,
a necromancer or wizard, rather revered and admired him as something
divine.”—IAMBLICH. Vit Aºythag.
THE attendants whom Mejnour had engaged for his strange
abode were such as might suit a philosopher of few wants.
An old Armenian, whom Glyndon recognized as in the mys-
tic's service in Naples; a tall, hard-featured woman, from the
village, recommended by Maëstro Páolo, and two long-haired,
smooth-spoken, but fierce-visaged youths from the same place,
and honored by the same sponsorship, constituted the estab-
lishment. The rooms used by the sage were commodious and
weather-proof, with some remains of ancient splendor in the
faded arras that clothed the walls, and the huge tables of costly
marble and elaborate carving. Glyndon's sleeping apartment
communicated with a kind of belvidere or terrace, that com-
manded prospects of unrivalled béauty and extent, and was
separated on the other side by a long gallery, and a flight of
ten or a dozen stairs, from the private chambers of the mystic.
There was about the whole place a sombre and yet not dis-
pleasing depth of repose. It suited well with the studies to
which it was now to be appropriated.
For several days Mejnour refused to confer with Glyndon
on the subjects nearest to his heart. d
ZANONI, 183
§.
“All without,” said he, “is prepared, but not all within ;
your own soul must grow accustomed to the spot, and filled
with the , surrounding nature; for nature is the source of all
inspiration.”
... With these words Mejnour turned to lighter topics. He
made the Englishman accompany him in long rambles through
the wild scenes around, and he smiled approvingly when the
young artist gave way to the enthusiasm which their fearful
beauty could not have failed to rouse in a duller breast ; and
then Mejnour poured forth to his wondering pupil the stores of
a knowledge that seemed inexhaustible and boundless. He
gave accounts the most curious, graphic, and minute, of the
various races (their characters, habits, creeds, and manners),
by which that fair land had been successively overrun. It is
true, that his descriptions could not be found in books, and
were unsupported by learned authorities ; but he possessed
the true charm of the tale-teller, and spoke of all with the ani-
mated confidence of a personal witness. Sometimes, too, he
would converse upon the more durable and the loftier mysteries
of Nature with an eloquence and a research which invested
them with all the colors rather of poetry than science. In-
sensibly the young artist found himself elevated and soothed
by the lore of his companion; the fever of his wild desires
was slaked. His mind became more and more lulled into the
divine tranquillity of contemplation ; he felt himself a nobler
being ; and in the silence of his senses he imagined that he
heard the voice of his soul.
It was to this state that Mejnour evidently sought to bring
the neophyte, and in this elementary initiation the mystic was
like every more ordinary sage. For he who seeks to Discover
must first reduce himself into a kind of abstract idealism, and
be rendered up, in solemn and sweet bondage, to the faculties
which ContFMPLATE and IMAGINE.
Glyndon noticed that, in their rambles, Mejnour often
paused where the foliage was rifest, to gather some herb or
flower; and this reminded him that he had seen Zanoni simi-
larly occupied. “Can these humble children of nature,” said
he one day to Mejnour, “things that bloom and wither in a
day, be serviceable to the science of the higher secrets 2 Is
there a pharmacy for the soul as well as the body, and do the
nurslings of the summer minister not only to human health
but spiritual immortality ?”
“If,” answered Mejnour, “a stranger had visited a wander-
rug tribe before one property of herbalism was known to them ;
184 ZAN ONI. r
if he had told the savages that the herbs, which every day they
trampled under foot, were endowed with the most potent vir-
tues; that one would restore to health a brother on the verge
of death ; that another would paralyze into idiocy their wisest
sage ; that a third would strike lifeless to the dust their most
stalwart champion ; that tears and laughter, vigor and disease,
madness and reason, wakefulness and sleep, existence and dis-
solution, were coiled up in those unregarded leaves—would
they not have held him a sorcerer or a liar P To half the vir-
tues of the vegetable world mankind are yet in the darkness of
the savages I have supposed. There are faculties within us
with which certain herbs have affinity, and over which they
have power. The moly of the ancients is not all a fable.”
The apparent character of Mejnour differed in much from that
of Zanoni; and while it fascinated Glyndon less, it subdued
and impressed him more. The conversation of Zanoni evinced
a deep and general interest for mankind ; a feeling approach-
iug to enthusiasm for Art and Beauty. The stories circulated
concerning his habits elevated the mystery of his life by actions
of charity and beneficence. And in all this, there was some-
thing genial and humane that softened the awe he created, and
tended, perhaps, to raise suspicions as to the loftier secrets that
he arrogated to himself. But Mejnour seemed wholly indif-
ferent to all the actual world. If he committed no evil, he
seemed equally apathetic to good. His deeds relieved no
want, his words pitied no distress. What we call the heart
appeared to have merged into the intellect. He moved, thought,
and lived, like some regular and calm Abstraction, rather than
one who yet retained, with the form, the feelings and sympa-
thies of his kind
Glyndon once, observing the tone of supreme indifference
with which he spoke of those changes on the face of earth,
which he asserted he had witnessed, ventured to remark to him
, the distinction he had noted. *
“It is true,” said Mejnour coldly. “My life is the life that
contemplates, Zanoni's is the life that enjoys ; when I gather
the herb, I think but of its uses ; Zanoni will pause to admire
its beauties.”
“And you deem your own the superior and the loftier exist-
ence P’’
“No. His is the existence of youth, mine of age. We
have cultivated different faculties. Each has powers the other
cannot aspire to. Those with whom he associates live better;
those who associate with me know more.” *
ZAN ONI. 185
*
“I have heard, in truth,” said Glyndon, that his companions
at Naples were observed to lead purer and nobler lives aſter
intercourse with Zanoni; yet were they not strange compan-
ions, at the best, for a sage 2 This terrible power, too, that he
exercises at will, as in the death of the Prince di , and that
of the Count Ughelli, Scarcely becomes the tranquil seeker
after good.” - ,
“True,” said Mejnour, with an icy smile ; “such must ever
be the error of those philosophers who would meddle with the
active life of mankind. You cannot serve some without in-
juring others ; you cannot protect the good without warring
on the bad ; and if you desire to reform the faulty, why you
must lower yourself to live with the faulty to know their faults.
Even so saith Paracelsus, a great man, though often wrong.”
Not mine this folly ; I live but in knowledge—I have no life
in mankind l’’
Another time, Glyndon questioned the mystic as to the na-
ture of that union or fraternity to which Zanoni had once
referred.
“I am right, I suppose,” said he, “in conjecturing that you
and himself profess to be the brothers of the Rosy Cross P’’
“Do you imagine,” answered Mejnour, “that there were no
mystic and solemn unions of men seeking the same end through
the same means, before the Arabians of Damus, in 1378, taught
to a wandering German the secrets which founded the Institu-
tion of the Rosicrucians ? I allow, however, that the Rosi-
crucians formed a sect descended from the greater and earlier
school. They were wiser than the Alchemists ; their masters
are wiser than they,”
“And of this early and primary order how many still exist 2"
“Zanoni and myself.”
“What, two only . And you profess the power to teach to
all the secret that baffles Death 2 ”
“Your ancestor attained that secret ; he died rather than
survive the only thing he loved. We have, my pupil, no arts
by which we can put Death out of our option, or out of the will
of Heaven. These walls may crush me as I stand. All that
we profess to do is but this : to find out the secrets of the
human frame, to know why the parts Ossify and the blood stag-
nates, and to apply continual preventives to the effects of
Time. This is not Magic ; it is the Art of Medicine rightly
understood. In our order we hold most noble, first, that
* “It is as necessary to know evil;things as good, for who can know what is good without
the knowing what is evil r" etc.—PARACELSUs, De Nat. Rer., lib. 3,
I86 ſº ZANONI.
*
knowledge which elevates the intellect ; secondly, that which
preserves the body. But the mere art (extracted from the
juices and simples) which recruits the animal vigor and arrests
the progress of decay, or that more noble secret which I will
only hint to thee at present, by which HEAT OR CALORIC, as ye
call it, being, as Heraclitus wisely taught, the primordial prin-
ciple of life, can be made its perpetual renovator, these, I say,
would not suffice for safety. It is ours" also to disarm and
elude the wrath of men, to turn the Swords of our foes against
each other, to glide (if not incorporeal) invisible to eyes over
which we can throw a mist and darkness. And this some seers
have professed to be the virtue of a stone of agate. Abaris
placed it in his arrow. I will find you a herb in yon valley
that will give a surer charm than the agate and the arrow.
In one word, know this, that the humblest and meanest pro-
ducts of Nature are those from which the sublimest properties
are to be drawn.”
“But,” said Glyndon, “if possessed of these great secrets,
why so churlish in withholding their diffusion. Does not the
false or charlatanic science differ in this from the true and
indisputable—that the last communicates to the world the
process by which it attains its discoveries; the first boasts of
marvellous results, and refuses to explain the causes 2 ”
“Well said, O Logician of the Schools; but think again.
Suppose we were to impart all our knowledge to all mankind,
indiscriminately, alike to the vicious and the virtuous, should
we be benefactors or scourges 2 Imagine the tyrant, the sen-
sualist, the evil and corrupted, being possessed of these tre-
mendous powers; would he not be a demon let loose on
earth 2 Grant that the same privilege be accorded also to the
good ; and in what state would be society 2 Engaged in a
Titan war, the good forever on the defensive, the bad forever
in assault. In the present condition of the earth, evil is a more
active principle than good, and the evil would prevail. It is
for these reasons that we are not only solemnly bound to ad-
minister our lore only to those who will not misuse and pervert
it ; but that we place our ordeal in tests that purify the pas-
sions, and elevate the desires. And Nature in this controls
and assists us : for it places awful guardians and insurmount-
able barriers between the ambition of vice and the heaven of
the loftier science.”
Such made a small part of the numerous conversations
Mejnour held with his pupil—conversations that, while they
appeared to address themselves to the reason, inflamed yet
ZAN ONI. º 187
more the fancy. It was the very disclaiming of all powers
which Nature, properly investigated, did not suffice to create,
that gave an air of probability to those which Mejnour asserted
Nature might bestow. ---
Thus days and weeks rolled on ; and the mind of Glyndon,
gradually fitted to this sequestered and musing life, forgot at
last the vanities and chimeras of the world without.
One evening he had lingered alone and late upon the ram-
parts, watching the stars as, one by one, they broke upon the
twilight: Never had he felt so sensibly the mighty power of
the heavens and the earth upon man How much the springs
of our intellectual being are moved and acted upon by the
solemn influences of nature . As a patient on whom, slowly
and by degrees, the agencies of mesmerism are brought to
bear, he acknowledged to his heart the growing force of that
vast and universal magnetism which is the life of creation, and
binds the atom to the whole. A strange and ineffable con-
sciousness of power, of the SOMETHING GREAT within the per-
ishable clay, appealed to feelings at once dim and glorious,
like the faint recognitions of a holier and former being. An
impulse that he could not resist led him to seek the mystic.
He would demand, that hour, his initiation into the worlds be-
yond our world ; he was prepared to breathe a diviner air. He
entered the castle, and strode the shadowy and star-lit gallery
which conducted to Mejnour's apartment.
CHAPTER III.
‘Man is the eye of things.”—EURYPH. de Vit. Hum.
“There is, thereforé, a certain ecsta'ical or transporting power which, if
at any time it shall be excited or stirred up by an ardent desire and most
strong imagination, is able to conduct the spirit of the more outward, even
to some absent and far-distant object.”—VON HELMONT.
THE rooms that Mejnour occupied consisted of two cham-
bers communicating with each other, and a third in which he
slept. All these rooms were placed in the huge square tower
that beetled over the dark and bush-grown precipice. The
first chamber which Glyndon entered was empty. With a
noiseless step he passed on, and opened the door that
admitted into the inner one. He drew back at the threshold,
overpowered by a strong fragrance which filled the chamber;
a kind of mist thickened the air, rather than obscured it, for
this vapor was not dark, but resembled a snow-cloud moving
188 ZAN ONI,
=-
slowly, and in heavy undulations, wave upon wave, regularly
over the space. A mortal cold struck to the Englishman's
heart, and his blood froze. He stood rooted to the spot ; and
as his eyes strained involuntarily through the vapor, he fancied
(for he could not be sure that it was not the trick of his imag-
ination) that he saw dim, spectre-like, but gigantic forms float-
ing through the mist; or was it not rather the mist itself that
formed its vapors fantastically into those moving, impalpable
and bodiless apparitions P A great painter of antiquity is said,
in a picture of Hades, to have represented the monsters that
glide through the ghostly River of the Dead so artfully, that
the eye perceived at once that the river itself was but a spectre,
and the bloodless things that tenanted it had no life, their
forms blending with the dead waters, till, as the eye continued
to gaze, it ceased to discern them from the preternatural ele-
ment they were supposed to inhabit. Such were the moving
outlines that coiled and floated through the mist; but before
Glyndon had even drawn breath in this atmosphere—for his
life itself seemed arrested or changed into a kind of horrid
trance—he felt his hand seized, and he was led from that room
into the outer one. He heard the door close ; his blood rushed
again through his veins, and he saw Mejnour by his side.
Strong convulsions then suddenly seized his whole frame; he
fell to the ground insensible. When he recovered, he found
himself in the open air, in a rude balcony of stone that jutted
from the chamber ; the stars shining serenely over the dark
abyss below, and resting calmly upon the face of the mystic,
who stood beside him with folded arms.
“Young man,” said Mejnour, “judge by what you have just
felt, how dangerous it is to seek knowledge until prepared to
receive it. Another moment in the air of that chamber, and
you had been a corpse.”
- “Then of what nature was the knowledge, that you, once mor-
tal like myself, could safely have sought in that icy atmosphere
which it was death for me to breathe 2 Mejnour,” continued
Glyndon, and his wild desire, sharpened by the very danger he
had passed, once more animated and nerved him ; “I am pre-
pared, at least for the first steps. I come to you as, of old, the
pupil to the Hierophant, and demand the initiation.”
Mejnour passed his hand over the young man's heart—it
beat loud, regularly, and boldly. He looked at him with some-
thing almost like admiration in his passionless and frigid
features, and muttered, half to himself: “Surely, in so much
courage the true disciple is found at last.” Then, speaking
2ANONI. 189
aloud, he added : “Be it so ; man's first Initiation is in TRANCE,
In dreams commences all human knowledge ; in dreams hovers
over measureless space the first faint bridge between spirit and
spirit—this world and the worlds beyond Look steadfastly
on yonder star !”
Glyndon obeyed, and Mejnour retired into the chamber ;
from which there then slowly emerged a vapor, somewhat paler
and of fainter odor than that which had nearly produced so
fatal an effect on his frame. This, on the contrary, as it coiled
around him, and then melted in thin spires into the air,
breathed a refreshing and healthful fragrance. He still kept
his eyes on the star, and the star seemed gradually to fix and
command his gaze. A sort of languor next seized his frame,
but without, as he thought, communicating itself to the mind;
and as this crept over him, he felt his temples sprinkled with
some volatile and fiery essence. At the same moment, a slight
tremor shook his limbs, and thrilled through his veins. The
languor increased ; still he kept his gaze upon the star; and
now its luminous circumference seemed to expand and dilate.
It became gradually softer and clearer in its light; spreading
wider and broader, it diffused all space—all space seemed
swallowed up in it. And at last, in the midst of a silver shin-
ing atmosphere, he felt as if something burst within his brain,
as if a strong chain were broken ; and at that moment a sense
of heavenly liberty, of unutterable delight, of freedom from the
body, of birdlike lightness, seemed to float him into the space
itself. “Whom, now upon earth, dost thou wish to see P’’
whispered the voice of Mejnour. “Viola and Zanoni . "
answered Glyndon, in his heart ; but he felt that his lips moved
not. Suddenly at that thought—through this space, in which
nothing save one mellow, translucent light had been discerni-
ble—a swift succession of shadowy landscapes seemed to roll :
trees, mountains, cities, seas, glided along, like the changes of
a phantasmagoria ; and at last, settled and stationary, he saw a
cave by the gradual marge of an ocean shore—myrtles and
orange trees clothing the gentle banks. On a height, at a dis-
tance, gleamed the white but shattered relics of some ruined
heathen edifice ; and the moon, in calm splendor, shiming over
all, literally bathed with its light two forms without the cave,
at whose feet the blue waters crept, and he thought that he
even heard them murmur. He recognized both the figures.
Zanoni was seated on a fragment of stone; Viola, half reclin-
ing by his side, was looking into his face, which was bent down
to her, and in her countenance was the expression of that per-
I90 O 2AN ON 1.
fect happiness which belongs to perfect love. “Wouldst thou
hear them speak P” whispered Mejnour; and again, without
sound, Glyndon inly answered, “Yes | " Their voices then
came to his ear, but in tones that seemed to him strange; so
subdued were they, and sounding, as it were, so far off, that
they were as voices heard in the visions of some holier men,
from a distant sphere.
“And how is it,” said Viola, “that thou canst find pleasure
in listening to the ignorant 2 ”
“Because the heart is never ignorant; because the mysteries
of the feelings are as full of wonder as those of the intellect.
If at times thou canst not comprehend the language of my
thoughts, at times, also, I hear sweet enigmas in that of thy
emotions.” -
“Ah, say not so !” said Viola, winding her arm tenderly
round his neck, and under that heavenly light her face seemed
lovelier for its blushes. “For the enigmas are but love's com-
mon language, and love should solve them. Till I knew thee—
till I lived with thee—till I learned to watch for thy footstep
when absent—yet even in absence to see thee everywhere !—I
dreamed not how strong and all-pervading is the connection
“And yet,” she continued, “I am now assured of what I at
first believed, that the feelings which attracted me towards thee
at first were not those of love. I know that, by comparing the
Present with the Past ; it was a sentiment then wholly of the
mind or the spirit ! I could not hear thee now say, ‘Viola, be
happy with another l’”
“And I could not now tell thee so ! Ah, Viola, never be
weary of assuring me that thou art happy ”
“Happy, while thou art so. Yet, at times, Zanoni, thou art
so sad ”
“Because human life is so short ; because we must part at
last ; because yon moon shines on when the nightingale sings
to it no more | A little while, and thine eyes will grow dim,
and thy beauty haggard, and these locks that I toy with now
will be gray and loveless.”
“And thou, cruel one !” said Viola touchingly. “I shall
never see the signs of age in thee / But shall we not grow old
together, and our eyes be accustomed to a change which the
heart shall not share ”
Zanoni sighed . He turned away, and seemed to coromune
with himself.
Glyndon's attention grew yet more earnest.
*-x. *- ZANONI. I 91
“But were it so,” muttered Zanoni; and then looking stead-
fastly at Viola, he said, with a half smile : “Hast thou no
curiosity to learn more of the Lover thou once couldst believe
the agent of the evil one * *
“None ; all that one wishes to know of the beloved one, I
know, that Zhou Jozſest me / ''
“I have told thee that my life is apart from others. Wouldst
thou not seek to share it 2"
“I share it now !”
“But were it possible to be thus young and fair forever, till
the world blazes round us as one funeral pyre ”
“We shall be so, when we leave the world !”
Zanoni was mute for some moments, and at length he said :
“Canst thou recall those brilliant and aerial dreams which
once visited thee, when thou didst fancy that thou wert pre-
ordained to some fate aloof and afar from the common children
of the earth !”
“Zanoni, the fate is found.”
“And hast thou no terror of the future ?”
“The future | I forget it ! Time past, and present, and to
come, reposes in thy Smile. Ah, Zanoni, play not with the
foolish credulities of my youth ! I have been better and
humbler since thy presence has dispelled the mist of the air.
The Future | Well, when I have cause to dread it, I will look
up to Heaven ; and remember who guides our fate l’’
As she lifted her eyes above, a dark cloud swept suddenly
over the scene. It wrapt the Orange trees, the azure ocean, the
dense sands; but still the last images that it veiled from the
charmed eyes of Glyndon were the forms of Viola and Zanoni.
The face of the one rapt, serene, and radiant; the face of the
other, dark, thoughtful, and locked in more than its usual
rigidness of melancholy beauty and profound repose.
“Rouse thyself,” said Mejnour, “thy ordeal has com-
menced . There are pretenders to the solemn science, who
could have shown thee the absent ; and prated to thee, in their
charlatanic jargon, of the secret electricities and the magnetic
fluid, of whose true properties they know but the germs and ele-
ments. I will lend thee the books of those glorious dupes, and
thou wilt find, in the dark ages, how many erring steps have
stumbled upon the threshold of the mighty learning, and
fancied they had pierced the temple. Hermes, and Albert,
and Paracelsus, I knew ye all ; but, noble as ye were, ye were
fated to be deceived. Ye had not souls of faith, and daring
fitted for the destinies at which ye aimed ! Yet Paracelsus—
I92 ZANONI.
modest Paracelsus-—had an arrogance that soared higher than
all our knowledge. Ho ; ho ! He thought he could make a
race of men from chemistry ; he arrogated to himself the Di-
vine.gift—the breath of life.” He would have made men, and,
after all, confessed that they could be but pigmies My art is
to make men above mankind. But you are impatient of my
digressions. Forgive me. All these men (they were great
dreamers, as you desire to be) were intimate friends of mine.
But they are dead and rotten. They talked of spirits, but they
dreaded to be in other company than that of men. Like ora-
tors whom I have heard, when I stood by the Pnyx of Athens,
blazing with words like comets in the assembly, and extinguish-
ing their ardor-like holyday rockets when they were in the
field. Ho ; ho Demosthenes, my hero-coward, how nimble
were thy heels at-Chaeronea . And thou art impatient still
Boy, I could tell thee such truths of the Past as would make
thee the luminary of schools. But thou lustest only for the
shadows of the Future. Thou shalt have thy wish. But the
mind must be first exercised and trained. Go to thy room, and
sleep; fast austerely ; read no books; meditate, imagine,
dream, bewilder thyself, if thou wilt. Thought shapes out its
own chaos at last. Before midnight, seek me again l’’
CHAPTER IV.
“It is fit that we who endeavor to rise to an elevation so sublime, should
study first to leave behind carnal affections, the frailty of the senses, the
passions that belong to matter; secondly, to learn by what means we may
ascend to the climax of pure intellect, united with the powers above, with-
out which never can we gain the lore of secret things, nor the magic that
effects true wonders.”—TRITEMIUS on Secret Things and Secret Spirits.
IT wanted still many minutes of midnight, and Glyndon was
once more in the apartment of the mystic. He had rigidly
observed the fast ordained to him ; and in the rapt and in-
tense reveries into which his excited fancy had plunged him,
he was not only insensible to the wants of the flesh—he felt
above them.
Mejnour, seated beside his disciple, thus addressed him :
“Man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance. Man's
natural tendency is to egotism. Man in his infancy of knowl-
edge thinks that all creation was formed for him. For several
ages he saw in the countless worlds, that sparkle through space
* PARAcELSUs, De Nat. Rer, lib, i.
ZANONI. I93
| *
like the bubbles of a shoreless ocean, only the petty candles,
the household torches, that Providence had been pleased to
light for no other purpose but to make the night more agree-
able to man. Astronomy has corrected this delusion of human
vanity ; and man now reluctantly confesses that the stars are
worlds, larger and more glorious than his own ; that the earth
on which he crawls is a scarce visible speck on the vast chart
of creation. But in the small as in the vast, God is equally
profuse of life. The traveller looks upon the tree, and fancies
its boughs were formed for his shelter in the summer sun, or
his fuel in the winter frosts. But in each leaf of these boughs
the Creator has made a world ; it swarms with innumerable
races. Each drop of the water in yon moat is an orb more
populous than a kingdom is of men. Everywhere, then, in
this immense design, Science brings new life to light. Life is
the one pervading principle, and even the thing that seems to
die and putrify, but engenders new life, and changes to fresh
forms of matter. Reasoning, then, by evident analogy, if not
a leaf, if not a drop of water, but is, no less than yonder
stars, a habitable and breathing world,—nay, if even man him-
self is a world to other lives, and millions and myriads dwell in
the rivers of his blood, and inhabit man’s frame as man in-
habits earth, common sense (if your schoolmen had it) would
suffice to teach that the circumfluent infinite which you call
space—the boundless Impalpable which divides earth from the
moon and stars—is filled also with its correspondent and ap-
propriate life. Is it not a visible absurdity to suppose that
Being is crowded upon every leaf, and yet absent from the
immensities of space 2 The law of the Great System forbids
the waste even of an atom ; it knows no spot where something
of life does not breathe. In the very charnel-house is the
nursery of production and animation. Is that truth 2 Well,
then, can you conceive that space which is the Infinite itself is
alone a waste, is alone lifeless, is less useful to the one design
of universal being than the dead carcass of a dog, than the
peopled leaf, than the swarming globule 2 The microscope
shows you the creatures on the leaf; no mechanical tube is
yet invented to discover the nobler and more gifted things that
hover in the illinnitable air. Yet between these last and man is
a mysterious and terrible affinity. And hence, by tales and
legends, not wholly false nor wholly true, have arisen from
time to time beliefs in apparitions and spectres. If more com-
mon to the earlier and simpler tribes than to the men of your
duller age, it is but that, with the first, the senses are more
I94 --- ZANONI.
* }
keen and quick. And as the savage can see or scent, miles
away, the traces of the foe, invisible to the gross sense of the
civilized animal, so the barrier itself between him and the
creatures of the airy world is less thickened and obscured. Do
you listen ?”
“With my soul l’”
“But first, to penetrate this barrier, the soul with which you
listen must be sharpened by intense enthusiasm, purified from
all earthlier desires. Not without reason have the so-styled
magicians, in all lands and times, insisted on chastity and ab-
stemious revery as the communicants of inspiration. When
thus prepared, science can be brought to aid it; the sight itself
may be rendered more subtle, the nerves more acute, the spirit
more alive and outward, and the element itself—the air, the
space—may be made, by certain secrets of the higher chemis-
try, more palpable and clear. And this, too, is not magic as
the credulous call it; as I have so often said before, magic (or
science that violates Nature) exists not ; it is but the science
by which Nature can be controlled. Now, in space there are
millions of beings, not literally spiritual, for they have all, like
the animalculae unseen by the naked eye, certain forms of mat-
ter, though matter so delicate, air-drawn, and subtle, that it is,
as it were, but a film, a gossamer that clothes the spirit. Hence
the Rosicrucian's lovely phantoms of sylph and gnome. Yet,
in truth, these races and tribes differ more widely, each from
each, than the Calmuck from the Greek—differ in attributes and
powers. In the drop of water you see how the animalculae
vary, how vast and terrible are some of those monster-mites as
compared with others. Equally so with the Inhabitants of the
atmosphere: some of surpassing wisdom, some of horrible
malignity ; some hostile as fiends to men, others gentle as mes-
sengers between earth and heaven. He who would establish
intercourse with these varying beings resembles the traveller
who would penetrate into unknown lands. He is exposed to
strange dangers and unconjectured terrors. That intercourse
once gained, I cannot secure thee from the chances to which thy
journey is exposed. I cannot direct thee to paths free from the
wanderings of the deadliest foes. Thou must alone, and of
thyself, face and hazard all. But if thou art so enamoured of
life as to care only to live on, no matter for what ends, recruit-
ing the nerves and veins with the alchemist's vivifying elixir,
why seek these dangers from the intermediate tribes? Be-
cause the very elixir that pours a more glorious life into the frame,
so sharpens the senses that those larvae of the air become to
–
ZANONI. I95
thée audible and apparent; so that, unless trained by degrees.
to endure the phantoms and subdue their malice, a life thus
gifted would be the most awful doom man could bring upon
himself. Hence it is that though the elixir be compounded of
the simplest herbs, his frame only is prepared to receive it who
has gone through the subtlest trials. Nay, some, scared and
daunted into the most intolerable horror by the sights that
burst upon their eyes at the first draught, have found the potion
less powerful to save than the agony and travail of Nature to
destroy. To the unprepared the elixir is thus but the deadliest
poison. Amidst the dwellers of the threshold is ONE, too, sur-
passing in malignity and hatred all her tribe—one whose eyes
bave paralyzed the bravest, and whose power increases over
the spirit precisely in proportion to its fear. Does thy cour-
age falter P”
“Nay ; thy words but kindle it.” --
“Follow me, then ; and submit to the initiatory labors.”.
With that, Mejnour led him into the interior chamber, and
proceeded to explain to him certain chemical operations,
which, though extremely simple in themselves, Glyndon soon
perceived were capable of very extraordinary results.
“In the remoter times,” said Mejnour, smiling, “our
brotherhood were often compelled to recur to delusions to pro-
tect realities ; and, as dexterous mechanicians or expert chem-
ists, they obtained the name of sorcerers. Observe how easy
to construct is the Spectre Lion that attended the renowned
Ileonardo da Vinci !”
And Glyndon beheld with delighted surprise, the simple
means by which the wildest cheats of the imagination can be
formed. The magical landscapes in which Baptista Porta re-
joiced ; the apparent change of the seasons with which
Albertus Magnus startled the Earl of Holland ; nay, even
those more dread delusions of the Ghost and Image with
which the Necromancers of Heraclea woke the conscience of
the Conqueror of Plataea º–all these, as the showman enchants
some trembling children on a Christmas Eve with his lanthorn
and phantasmagoria, Mejnour exhibited to his pupil.
^, * $: Sk * :: sk t;
“And now laugh forever at magic when these, the very
tricks, the very sports and frivolities of science, were the very
acts which men viewed with abhorrence ; and Inquisitors and
Kings rewarded with the rack and the stake.”
“But the Alchemist's transmutation of metals—”
\ * Pausanias—see Plutarch,
\,
\
196 -" ZANONI.
... “Nature herself is a laboratory in which metals, and allº
elements, are forever at change. Easy to make gold ; easier,
more commodious, and cheaper still, to make the pearl, the
diamond, and the ruby. Oh, yes; wise men found sorcery in
this, too; but they found no sorcery in the discovery, that by
the simplest combination of things of every-day use they could
raise a Devil that would sweep away thousands of their kind
by the breath of consuming fire. Discover what will destroy
life, and you are a great man | What will prolong it, and
you are an impostor | Discover some invention in machinery
that will make the rich more rich and the poor more poor,
and they will build you a statue ! Discover some mystery in
art, that will equalize physical disparities, and they will pull
down their own houses to stone you ! Ha, ha, my pupil,
such is the world Zanoni still cares for You and I will leave
this world to itself. And now that you have seen some few
of the effects of science, begin to learn its grammar.”
Mejnour then set before his pupil certain tasks, in which
the rest of the night wore itself away. -
CHAPTER V.
“Great travell hath the gentle Calidore,
And toyle endured . . . .
There on a day— - -
He chaunst to spy a sort ºf shepheard groomes,
Playing on pipes and caroling apace.
. . . . He, there, besyde !
Saw a faire damzell.”—SPENSER, Faerie Queene, cant. ix.
For a considerable period the pupil of Mejnour was now
absorbed in labor dependent on the most vigilant attention, on
the most minute and subtle calculation. Results astonishing
and various rewarded his toils and stimulated his interest. Nor
were these studies limited to chemical discovery, in which it is
permitted me to say that the greatest marvels upon the organ-
ization of physical life seemed wrought by experiments of the
vivifying influence of heat. Mejnour professed to find a link be-
tween all intellectual beings in the existence of a certain a]’
pervading and invisible fluid resembling electricity, yet dist -
from the known operations of that mysterious agency—a "...iit.
that connected thought to thought with the rapidity ar. . . . . c-
cision of the modern telegraph, and the influence of tº inići.
according to Mejnour, extended to the remotest pºs., ; ; 13t is
to say, whenever and wheresoever man had though: ; bus, if
.."ZANONI. . 197
the doctrine were true, all human knowledge became attainable
through a medium established between the brain of the individ-
ual inquirer and all the farthest and obscurest regions in the
universe of ideas. Glyndon was surprised to find Mejnour at-
tached to the abstruse mysteries which the Pythagoreans ascribed
to the occult science of NUMBERS. In this last, new lights glim-
mered dimly on his eyes; and he began to perceive that even
the power to predict, or rather to calculate, results, might by— ”
- * :; >}; * sk :}; >}: tº
But he observed that the last brief process by which, in each
of these experiments, the wonder was achieved, Mejnour re-
served for himself, and refused to communicate the secret.
The answer he obtained to his remonstrances on this head was
more stern than satisfactory : .
“Dost thou think,” said Mejnour, “that I would give to the
mere pupil, whose qualities are not yet tried, powers that might
change the face of the social world 2 The last secrets are en-
trusted only to him of whose virtue the Master is convinced.
Patience . It is labor itself that is the great purifier of the
mind; and by degrees the secrets will grow upon thyself as thy
mind becomes riper to receive them.” -
At last Mejnour professed himself satisfied with the progress
made by his pupil. “The hour now arrives,” he said, “when
thou mayst pass the great but airy barrier; when thou mayest
gradually confront the terrible Dweller of the Threshold. Con-
–tinue thy labors; continue to suppress thine impatience for re-
sults until thou canst fathom the causes. I leave thee for one
month ; if at the end of that operiod, when I return, the tasks set
thee are completed, and thy mind prepared by contemplation
and austere thought for the ordeal, I promise thee the ordeal
shall commence. One caution alone I give thee, regard it as
a peremptory command : Enter not this chamber ' " (They
were then standing in the room where their experiments had
been chiefly made, and in which Glyndon, on the night he had
sought the solitude of the Mystic, had nearly fallen a victim to
his intrusion.) - - -
“Enter not this chamber till my return ; or, above all, if by
any search for materials necessary to thy toils, thou shouldst
venture hither, forbear to light the naphtha in those vessels,
and to open the vases on yonder shelves. I leave the key of
the room in thy keeping, in order to try thy abstinence and
self-control, Young man, this very temptation is a part of thy
trial.” -
* Here there is an erasure in the MS,
198 ZANONI."
With that, Mejnour placed the key in his hands; and at
sunset he left the castle.
For several days Glyndon continued immersed in employ-
ments which strained to the utmost all the faculties of his
intellect. Even the most partial success depended so entirely
on the abstraction of the mind, and the minuteness of its cal-
culations, that there was scarcely room for any other thought
than those absorbed in the occupation. And doubtless this
perpetual strain of the faculties was the object of Mejnour in
works that did not seem exactly pertinent to the purposes in
view. As the study of the elementary mathematics, for ex-
ample, is not so profitable in the solving of problems, useless
in our after-callings, as it is serviceable in training the intellect
to the comprehension and analysis of general truths.
But in less than half the time which Mejnour had stated for
the duration of his absence, all that the Mystic had appointed
to his toils was completed by the Pupil; and then his mind,
thus relieved from the drudgery and mechanism of employ-
ment, once more sought occupation in dim conjecture and
restless fancies. His inquisitive and rash nature grew excited
by the prohibition of Mejnour, and he found himself gazing
too often, with perturbed and daring curiosity, upon the key
of the forbidden chamber. He began to feel indignant at a
trial of constancy which he deemed frivolous and puerile.
What nursery tales of Bluebeard and his closet were revived
to daunt and terrify him How could the mere walls of a
chamber, in which he had so often securely pursued his labors,
start into living danger ? If haunted, it could be but by those
delusions which Mejnour had taught to despise. A shadowy
lion, a chemical phantasm Tush ! He lost half his awe of
Mejnour when he thought that by such tricks the sage could
practise upon the very intellect he had awakened and in-
structed Still he resisted the impulses of his curiosity and
his pride, and, to escape from their dictation, he took long
rambles on the hills, or amidst the valleys that surrounded the
castle; seeking by bodily fatigue to subdue the unreposing
mind. One day, suddenly emerging from a dark ravine, he
came upon one of those Italian scenes of rural festivity and
mirth in which the classic age appears to revive. It was a
festival, partly agricultural, partly religious, held yearly by the
e gº g &
peasants of that district. Assembled at the outskirts of a vil-
lage, animated crowds, just returned from a procession to a
neighboring chapel, were now forming themselves into groups—
the old to taste the vintage, the young to dance, all to be
ZANONI. 199
gay and happy. This sudden picture of easy joy and care-
less ignorance, contrasting so forcibly with the intense studies
and that parching desire for wisdom which had so long made
up his own life, and burned at his own heart, sensibly affected
Glyndon. As he stood aloof and gazing on them, the young
man felt once more that he was young. The memory of all he
had been content to sacrifice spoke to him like the sharp voice
of remorse. The flitting forms of the women in their pictur-
esque attire, their happy laughter ringing through the cool,
still air of the autumn noon, brought back to the heart, or
rather perhaps to the senses, the images of his past time, the
“golden shepherd hours,” when to live was but to enjoy.
He approached nearer and nearer to the scene, and sud-
denly a noisy group swept round him ; and Maëstro Páolo,
tapping him familiarly on the shoulder, exclaimed, in a hearty
voice: “Welcome, Excellency We are rejoiced to see you
amongst us.” Glyndon was about to reply to this salutation,
when his eyes rested upon the face of a young girl, leaning on
Páolo's arm, of a beauty so attractive, that his color rose and
his heart beat as he encountered her gaze. Her eyes sparkled
with a roguish and petulant mirth, her parted lips showed teeth
like pearls; as if impatient at the pause of her companion from
the revel of the rest, her little foot beat the ground to a
measure that she half hummed, half chanted. Páolo laughed
as he saw the effect the girl had produced upon the young
foreigner. *.
“Will you not dance, Excellency Come, lay aside your
greatness, and be merry, like us poor devils. See how our
pretty Fillide is longing for a partner. Take compassion on
her.”
Fillide pouted at this speech; and, disengaging her arm
from Páolo's, turned away,but threw over her shoulder a glance
half inviting, half defying. Glyndon, almost involuntarily, ad-
vanced to her, and addressed her.
Oh yes, he addresses her | She looks down, and smiles.
Päolo leaves them to themselves, sauntering off with a devil-
me-carish air, Fillide speaks now, and looks up at the schol-
ar's face with arch invitation. He shakes his head : Fillide
laughs, and her laugh is silvery. She points to a gay moun-
taineer, who is tripping up to her merrily. Why does Glyndon
feel jealous * Why, when she speaks again, does he shake his
head no more ? He offers his hand ; Fillide blushes, and
takes it with a demure coquetry. What Is it so, indeed
They whirl into the noisy circle of the revellers. Ha! haſ
2OO ZANONI.
Is not this better than distilling herbs, and breaking thy
brains on Pythagorean numbers? How lightly Fillide bounds
along ! How her lithesome waist supples itself to thy circling
arm | Tara-ra-tara, ta-tara, rarā-ra ! What the devil is in
the measure, that it makes the blood course like quick-
silver through the veins 2 Was there ever a pair of eyes
like Fillide's? Nothing of the cold stars there ! Yet how
they twinkle and laugh at thee And that rosy, pursed-up
mouth, that will answer so sparingly to thy flatteries, as if
words were a waste of time, and kisses were their proper lan-
guage. Oh, pupil of Mejnour ! Oh, would-be Rosicrucian—
Platonist—Magian—I know not what I am ashamed of thee
What, in the names of Averroes, and Burri, and Agrippa, and
Hermes, have become of thy austere contemplations 2 Was it
for this thou didst resign Viola 2 I don't think thou hast the
smallest recollection of the elixir or the cabala. Take care
What are you about, sir? Why do you clasp that small hand
locked within your own 2 Why do you—Tara-rara tara-ra,
tara-rara-ra, rarara, ta-ra a-ra ! Keep your eyes off those
slender ankles, and that crimson bodice | Tara-rara-ra 2 There
they go again And now they rest under the broad trees.
The revel has whirled away from them. They hear—or do
they not hear—the laughter at the distance 2 They see—or if
they have their eyes about them, they should see—couple after
couple, gliding by, love-talking and love-looking. But I will
lay a wager, as they sit under that tree, and the round sun goes
down behind the mountains, that they see or hear very little
except themselves | º
“Hollo, Signor Excellency And how does your partner
please you ? Come and join our feast, Loiterers ; one dances
more merrily after wine.”
“Down goes the round sun ; up goes the autumn moon.
Tara, tara, rarara, rarara, tarara-ra ! Dancing again ; is it a
dance, or some movement gayer, noisier, wilder still P How
they glance and gleam through the night-shadows—those flit-
ting forms What confusion | What order Ha, that is the
Tarantula dance ; Maëstro Páolo foots it bravely Diavolo,
what fury ! The tarantula has stung them all. Dance, or die;
it is fury—the Corybantes—the Maenads—the– Ho, ho!
More wine ! The Sabbat of the Witches at Benevento is a
joke to this 1. From cloud to cloud wanders the moon, now
shining, now lost. Dimness while the maiden blushes; light
when the maiden smiles.
“Fillide, thou art an enchantress "
ZANONI. . 2Of
“Buona motle, Excellency ; you will see me again " *ś
“Ah, young man,” said an old, decrepit, hollow-eyed octo-
genarian, leaning-on his staff, “make the best of your youth.
I, too, once had a Fillide I was handsomer than you then I
Alas ! if we could be always young !”
“Always young !” Glyndon started, as he turned his gaze
from the fresh, fair, rosy face of the girl, and saw the eyes
dropping rheum, the yellow wrinkled skin, the tottering frame
of the old man.
“Ha, ha ’’ said the decrepit creature, hobbling near to him,
and with a malicious laugh. “Yet I, too, was young once 1
Give me a baioccho for a glass of acqua vita "
Tara, rară, ra-rara, tara, rara-ra ! There dances Youth !
Wrap thy rags round thee, and totter off, Old Age |
CHAPTER VI.
“Whilest Calidore does follow that faire mayd,
Unmindful of his vow and high beheast
Which by the Faerie Queene was on him layd.”
—SPENSER, Faerie Queene, cant. x. 2.
It was that gray, indistinct, struggling interval between the
night and the dawn, when Clarence stood once more in his
chamber. The abstruse calculations lying on his table caught
his eye, and filled him with a sentiment of weariness and dis-
taste. But—“Alas, if we could be always young ! Oh, thou
horrid spectre of the old, rheum-eyed man | What apparition
can the mystic chamber shadow forth more ugly and more
hateful than thou? Oh, yes; if we could be always young
But not (thinks the neophyte now)—not to labor forever at
these crabbed figures and these cold compounds of herbs and
drugs. No ; but to enjoy, to love, to revel ! What should be
the companion of youth but pleasure ? And the gift of eter-
nal youth may be mine this very hour ! What means this pro-
hibition of Mejnour's 2 Is it not of the same complexion as
his ungenerous reserve even in the minutest secrets of chemis-
try, or the numbers of his cabala 2 Compelling me to perform
all the toils, and yet witholding from me the knowledge of the
crowning result? No doubt he will still, on his return, show
me that the great mystery can be attained ; but will still forbid
me to attain it. Is it not as if he desired to keep my youth the
slave to his age 2 To make me dependent solely on himself?
To bind me to a journeyman's service by perpetual excitement
•º
2O2 - - ZANONI.
to curiosity, and the sight of the fruits he places beyond my
lips ?" These, and many reflections still more repining, dis-
turbed and irritated him. Heated with wine, excited by the
wild revels he had left, he was unable to sleep. The image of
that revolting Old Age which Time, unless defeated, must
bring upon himself, quickened the eagerness of his desire
for the dazzling and imperishable Youth he ascribed to
Zanoni. The prohibition only served to create a spirit of de-
fiance. The reviving day, laughing jocundly through his lat-
tice, dispelled all the fears and superstitions that belong to
night. The mystic chamber presented to his imagination
nothing to differ from any other apartment in the castle.
What foul or malignant apparition could harm him in the light of
that blessed sun It was the peculiar, and on the whole most
unhappy, contradiction in Glyndon's nature, that while his rea-
sonings led him to doubt—and doubt rendered him in moral
conduct irresolute and unsteady—he was physically brave to
rashness. Nor is this uncommon : Scepticism and presump-
tion are often twins. When a man of this character deter-
mines upon any action, personal fear never deters him ; and
for the moral fear, any sophistry suffices to self-will. Almost
without analyzing himself the mental process by which his
nerves hardened themselyes and his limbs moved, he traversed
, the corridor, gained Mejñour's apartment; and opened the for.
bidden door. All was as he had been accustomed to see it,
save that on a table in the centre of the room lay open a large
volume. He approached, and gazed on the characters on the
page ; they were in a cipher, the study of which had made a
part of his labors. With but slight difficulty he imagined that
he interpreted the meaning of the first sentences, and that
they ran, thus:
“To quaff the inner life, is to see the outer life; to live in
defiance of time, is to live in the whole. He who discovers the
elixir, discovers what lies in space; for the spirit that vivifies
the frame strengthens the senses. There is attraction in the
elementary principle of light. In the lamps of Rosicrusius, the
fire is the pure elementary principle. Kindle the lamps while
thou openest the vessel that contains the elixir, and the light
attracts towards thee those beings whose life is that light. Be-
ware of Fear: Fear is the deadliest enemy to Knowledge.”
Here the ciphers changed their character, and became incom-
prehensible. But had he not read enough P Did not the last
sentence suffice? “Beware of Fear !” It was as if Mejnour
ZANONI. .* 2O3
had purposely left the page open ; as if the trial was, in truth,
the reverse of the one pretended ; as if the Mystic had de- .
signed to make experiment of his courage while affecting but
that of his forbearance. Not Boldness, but Fear, was the dead-
liest enemy to Knowledge. He moved to the shelves on which
the crystal vases were placed ; with an untrembling hand he
took from one of them the stopper, and a delicious odor sud-
denly diffused itself through the room. The air sparkled as if
with a diamond dust. A sense of unearthly delight, of an ex-
istence that seemed all spirit, flashed through his whole frame;
- and a faint, low, but exquisite music crept, thrilling, through
the chamber. At this moment he heard a voice in the corri-
dor, calling on his name ; and presently there was a knock at
the door without. “Are you there, Signor?” said the clear
tones of MaéStro Páolo. Glyndon hastily reclosed and replaced
the vial; and bidding Páolo await him in his own apartment,
tarried till he heard the intruder's step depart ; he then re-
luctantly quitted the room. As he locked the door, he still
... heard the dying strain of that fairy music; and with a light
'step, and a joyous heart, he repaired to Páolo, inly resolving to
visit again the chamber at an hour when his experiment would
be safe from interruption.
As he crossed his threshold, Páolo started back, and
exclaimed : “Why, Excellency, I scarcely recognize you !
Amusement I see is a great beautifier of the young. Yester-
day you looked so pale and haggard ; but Fillide's merry eyes
have done more for you than the philosopher's stone (Saints,
forgive me for naming it !) ever did for the wizards.” And
Glyndon, glancing at the old Venetian mirror, as Páolo spoke,
was scarcely less startled than Páolo himself at the change in
his own mien and bearing. His form, before bent with thought,
seemed to him taller by half the head, so lithesome and erect
rose his slender stature; his eyes glowed, his cheeks bloomed
with health and the innate and pervading pleasure. If the
mere fragrance of the elixir was thus potent, well might the
alchemists have ascribed life and youth to the draught ! .
“You must forgive me, Excellency, for disturbing you,” said
Páolo, producing a letter from his pouch ; but our Patron has
just written to me to say that he will be here to-morrow, and
desired me to lose not a moment in giving to yourself this bil-
let, which he enclosed.” -
“Who brought the letter?”
“A horseman, who did not wait for any reply.”
Glyndon opened the letter, and read as follows :
-º. º
... g.
*
2O4 ^. ZANONI.
“I return a week sooner than I had intended, and you will
expect me to-morrow. You will then enter on the ordeal you
desire ; but remember that, in doing so, you must reduce Being
as far as possible into Mind. The senses must be mortified
and subdued, not the whisper of one passion heard. Thou
mayst be master of the Cabala and the Chemistry; but thou
must be master also over the Flesh and the Blood—over Love
and Vanity, Ambition and Hate. I will trust to find thee so.
Fast and meditate till we meet !”
Glyndon crumpled the letter in his hand with a smile of dis-
dain. What more drudgery, more abstinence 1 Youth with-
out love and pleasure . Ha, ha! baffled Mejnour, thy pupil
shall gain thy secrets without thine aid
“And Fillide I passed her cottage in my way—she blushed
and sighed when I jested her about you, Excellency!”
“Well, Páolo | I thank thee for so charming an introduc-
tion. Thine must be a rare life.”
“Ah, Excellency, while we are young, nothing like adven-
ture—except love, wine, and laughter | "
“Very true. Farewell Maëstro Páolo; we will talk more
with each other in a few days.”
All that morning Glyndon was almost overpowered, with the
new sentiment of happiness that had entered into him. He
roamed into the woods, and he felt a pleasure that resembled
his earlier life of an artist, but a pleasure yet more subtle and
vivid, in the various colors of the autumn foliage. Certainly,
Nature seemed to be brought closer to him ; he comprehended
better all that Mejnour had often preached to him of the mys-
tery of sympathies and attractions. He was about to enter
into the same law as those mute children of the forests | He
was to know the renewal of life : the seasons that chilled to
winter" should yet bring again the bloom and the mirth of
spring. Man's common existence is as one year to the vege-
table world : he has his spring, his summer, his autumn, and
winter—but only once. But the giant oaks around him go
through a revolving series of verdure and youth, and the green
of the centenarian is as vivid in the beams of May as that of
the sapling by its side. “Mine shall be your spring, but not
your winter " '' exclaimed the Aspirant.
Wrapt in these sanguine and joyous reveries, Glyndon, quit-
ting the woods, found himself amidst cultivated fields and
vineyards to which his footstep had not before wandered : and
there stood, by the skirts of a green lane that reminded him of
*.
<º
*
**
ZANONI. 2O5
verdant England, a modest house—half cottage, half farm.
The door was open, and he saw a girl at work with her distaff.
She looked up, uttered a slight cry, and, tripping gayly into the
lane to his side, he recognized the dark-eyed Fillide.
“Hist!” she said, archly putting her finger to her lip ; “do
not speak loud—my mother is asleep within ; and I knew you
would come to see me. It is kind ' "
Glyndon, with a little embarrassment, accepted the compli- .
ment to his kindness, which he did not exactly deserve. “You
have thought, then, of me, fair Fillide 2"
“Yes,” answered the girl coloring, but with that frank, bold
ingenuousness which characterizes the females of Italy, espe-
cially of the lower class, and in the southern provinces : “Oh
yes / I have thought of little else. Páolo said he knew you
would visit me.” --
“And what relation is Páolo to you?”
“None ; but a good friend to us all. My brother is one of
his band.”
“One of his band A robber P”
“We, of the mountains, do not call a mountaineer “a rob-
ber,' Signor.”
“I ask pardon. Do you not tremble sometimes for your
brother's life 2 The law—”
“Law never ventures into these defiles. Tremble for him
No. My father and grandsire were of the same calling. I
often wish i were a man ''
“By these lips, I am enchanted that your wish cannot be
realized ”
“Fie, Signor And do you really love me 2 ”
“With my whole heart 1"
“And I thee!” said the girl, with a candor that seemed in-
nocent, as she suffered him to clasp her hand.
“But,” she added, “thou wilt soon leave us; and I–”
She stopped short, and the tears stood in her eyes.
There was something dangerous in this, it must be con-
fessed. Certainly Fillide had not the seraphic loveliness of
Viola; but hers was a beauty that equally at least touched the
senses. Perhaps Glyndon had never really loved Viola; per-
haps the feelings with which she had inspired him were not of
that ardent character which deserves the name of love. How-
ever that be, he thought as he gazed on those dark eyes that
he had never loved before. &
“And couldst thou not leave thy mountains 7" he whispered,
as he drew yet nearer to her.
A
*
206 :- ZANONI.
-
“Dost thou ask me 7" she said, retreating, and looking him
steadfastly in the face. “Dost thou know what we daughters
of the mountains are 2 You gay, smooth cavaliers of cities
seldom mean what you speak. With you, love is amusement;
with us, it is life. Leave these mountains ! Well? I should
not leave my nature.”
“Keep thy nature ever, it is a sweet one.” -
“Yes, sweet while thou art true; stern, if thou art faithless.
Shall I tell thee what I–what the girls of this country, are 2
Daughters of men whom you call robbers, we aspire to be the
companions of our lovers or our husbands. We love ardently,
we own it boldly. We stand by your side in danger ; we
serve you as slaves in safety ; we never change, and we re-
sent change. You may reproach, strike us, trample us as , a
dog—we bear all without a murmur ; betray us, and no tiger
is more relentless. Be true, and Qur hearts reward you ; be
false, and our hands revenge Dost thou love me now 2°
During this speech the Italian's countenance had most elo-
quently aided her words, by turns soft, frank, fierce, and, at
the last question, she inclined her head humbly, and stood,
as in fear of his reply, before him. The stern, brave, wild
spirit, in which what seemed unfeminine was yet, if I may so
say, still womanly, did not recoil, it rather captivated, Glyndon.
He answered readily, briefly, and freely : “Fillide, yes | *
Oh, “yes | " forsooth, Clarence Glyndon | Every light na-
ture answers “yes” lightly to such a question from lips so
rosy Have a care, have a care : Why the deuce, Mejnour,
do you leave your pupil of four-and-twenty to the mercy of
these wild cats-a-mountain | Preach fast, and abstinence, and
sublime renunciation of the cheats of the senses | Very well
in you, sir, heaven knows how many ages old ! But, at four-
and-twenty, your Hierophant would have kept you out of
Fillide's way, or you would have had small taste for the Cabala
And so they stood, and talked, and vowed, and whispered, till
the girl's mother made some noise within the house, and Fillide
bounded back to the distaff, her finger once more on her lip.
“There is more magic in Fillide than in Mejnour,” said
Glyndon to himself, walking gayly home; “yet, on second
thoughts, I know not if I quite so well like a character so
ready for revenge | But he who has the real secret can baffle
even the vengeance of a woman, and disarm all danger "
Sirrah, dost thou even already meditate the possibility on
treason 7 Oh, well said Zanoni, “to pour pure water into the
muddy well does but disturb the mud " .
- 2AMONI. 267
CHAPTER VII.
“Cernis, custodia qualis .
Westibulo sedeat 2 facies quae limina servet?” +
—Aneid, lib. vi. 574.
AND it is profound night. All is at rest within the old
castle, all is breathless under the melancholy stars. Now is
the time. Mejnour with his austere wisdom—Mejnour, the
enemy to love—Mejnour, whose eye will read thy heart, and re-
fuse thee the promised secrets, because the sunny face of Fillide
disturbs the lifeless shadow that he calls repose—Mejnour
comes to-morrow ! Seize the night ! Beware of fear ! Never,
or this hour ! So, brave youth—brave despite all thy errors—
so, with a steady pulse, thy hand unlocks once more the for-
bidden door
He placed his lamp on the table beside the book, which still
lay there opened ; he turned over the leaves, but could not de-
cipher their meaning till he came to the following passage :
“When, then, the pupil is thus, initiated and prepared, let
him open the casement, light the lamps, and bathe his temples
with the elixir. He must beware how he presume yet to quaff
the volatile and fiery spirit. To taste till repeated inhalations
have accustomed the frame gradually to the ecstatic liquid, is
to know not life but death.”
He could penetrate no farther into the instructions; the
cipher again changed. He now looked steadily and earnestly
round the chamber. The moonlight came quietly through the
lattice as his hand opened it, and seemed, as it rested on the
floor and filled the walls, like the presence of some ghostly and
mournful Power. He ranged the mystic lamps (nine in num-
ber), round the centre of the room, and lighted them one by
one. A flame of silvery and azure tints sprung up from each,
and lighted the apartment with a calm and yet most dazzling
splendor; but presently this light grew more soft and dim, as a
thin gray cloud, like a mist, gradually spread over the room ; ,
and an icy thrill shot, through the heart of the Englishman,
and quickly gathered over him like the coldness of death. In-
stinctively aware of his danger, he tottered, though with dif-
ficulty, for his limbs seemed rigid and stone-like, to the shelf
that contained the crystal vials; hastily he inhaled the spirit,
and laved his temples with the sparkling liquid. The same
sensation of vigor, and youth, and joy, and airy lightness, that
ſ * See you, what porter sits within the vestibule : What face watches at the threshold?
y
208 ZANONI.
3.
he had felt in the morning; instantaneously replaced the deadly
numbness that just before had invaded the citadel of life. He
stood, with his arms folded on his bosom, erect and dauntless,
to Watch what should ensue.
The vapor had now assumed almost the thickness and seemi-
ing consistency of a snow-cloud ; the lamps piercing it like
stars. And now he distinctly saw shapes, somewhat resem-
bling in outline those of the human form, gliding slowly and
with regular evolutions, through the cloud. They appeared
bloodless ; their bodies were transparent, and contracted or
expanded, like the folds of a serpent. As they moved in ma-
jestic order, he heard a low sound—the ghost as it were of
voice—which each caught and echoed from each other ; a low
Sound, but musical, which seemed the chant of some unspeak-
ably tranquil joy. None of these apparitions heeded him.
His intense longing to accost them, to be of them, to make one
of this movement of aerial happiness—for such it seemed to
him—made him stretch forth his arms and seek to cry aloud,
but only an inarticulate whisper passed his lips; and the move-
ment and the music went on the same as if the mortal were
not there. Slowly they glided round and aloft, till, in the
same majestic order, one after one, they floated through the
casement and were lost in the moonlight ; then, as his eyes fol-
lowed them, the casement became darkened with some object
undistinguishable at the first gaze, but which sufficed mysterious-
ly to change into ineffable horror the delight he had before expe-
rienced. By degrees, this object shaped itself to his sight. It
was as that of a human head, covered with a dark veil, through
which glared with livid and demoniac fire eyes that froze the
marrow of his bones. Nothing else of the face was distinguish-
able—nothing but those intolerable eyes; but his terror, that
even at the first seemed beyond nature to endure, was increased
a thousand-fold, when, after a pause, the Phantom glided slow-
ly into the chamber. The cloud retreated from it as it ad-
vanced ; the bright lamps grew wan, and flickered restlessly as
at the breath of its presence. Its form was veiled as the face,
but the outline was that of a female ; yet it moved not as move
even the ghosts that simulate the living. It seemed rather to
crawl as some vast misshapen reptile ; and pausing, at length
it cowered beside the table which held the mystic volume, and
again fixed its eyes through the filmy veil on the rash invoker.
All fancies, the most grotesque, of Monk or Painter in the early
North, would have failed to give to the visage of imp or fiend
that aspect of deadly malignity which spoke to the shuddering
ZANONI. * 209
nature in those eyes alone. All else so dark-shrouded—veiled
and larva-like. But that burning glare so intense, so livid,
yet so living, had in it something that was almost human, in its
passion of hate and mockery ; something that served to show
that the shadowy Horror was not all a spirit, but partook of
matter enough, at least, to make it more deadly and fearful an
enemy to material forms. As, clinging with the grasp of agony
to the wall, his hair erect, his eyeballs starting, he still gazed
back upon that appalling gaze, the Image spoke to him—his
soul rather than his ear comprehended the words it said.
“Thou hast entered the immeasurable region. I am the
Dweller of the Threshold. What wouldst thou with me 2 Si-
lent 2 Dost thou fear me 2 Am I not thy beloved 2 Is it not
for me that thou hast rendered up the delights of thy race 2
Wouldst thou be wise? Mine is the wisdom of the countless
ages. Kiss me, my mortal lover.” And the Horror crawled
near and nearer to him ; it crept to his side, its breath breathed
upon his cheek With a sharp cry he fell to the earth insen-
sible, and knew no more till, far in the noon of the next day,
he opened his eyes and found himself in his bed, the glorious
sun streaming through his lattice, and the bandit Páolo by his
side engaged in polishing his carbine, and whistling a Calabri-
an love air.
, CHAPTER VIII.
“Thus Man pursues his weary calling,
And wrings the hard life from the sky,
While Happiness unseen is falling
Down from God’s bosom silently.”—SCHILLER.
IN one of those islands whose history the imperishable
literature and renown of Athens yet invest with melancholy
interest, and on which Nature, in whom “there is nothing
melancholy,” still bestows a glory of scenery and climate
equally radiaht for the freeman or the slave—the Ionian, the
Venetian, the Gaul, the Turk, or the restless Briton—Zanoni
had fixed his bridal home. There the air carries with it the
perfumes of the plains for miles along the blue translucent
deep.” Seen from one of its green sloping heights, the island
he had selected seemed one delicious garden. The towers
and turrets of its capital gleaming amidst groves of oranges
and lemons ; vineyards and olivewoods filling up the valleys,
and clambering along the hillsides; and villa, farm, and cot-
} * See Dr. Holland's Travels to the Ionian Isles, etc., p. 18.
2 IO © ZANONI. .*
-—s
tage covered with-luxuriant trellises of dark green leaves and
purple fruit. For there the prodigal beauty yet seems half to
justify those graceful superstitions of a creed that, too enam-
oured of earth, rather brought the deities to man, than raised
the man to their less alluring and less voluptuous Olympus.
And still to the fishermen, weaving yet their antique dances
on the sand ; to the maiden, adorning yet, with many a silver
fibula, her glossy tresses under the tree that overshadows her
tranquil cot, the same Great Mother that watched over the
wise of Samos, the democracy of Corcyra, the graceful and
deep-taught loveliness of Miletus, smiles as graciously as of
yore. For the North, philosophy and freedom are essentials
to human happiness. In the lands which Aphrodite rose from
the waves to govern, as the Seasons, hand in hand, stood to
welcome her on the shores,” Nature is all-sufficient. {}
The isle which Zanoni had selected was one of the loveliest
in that divine sea. His abode, at some distance from the city,
but near one of the creeks on the shore, belonged to a Vene-
tian, and though small, had more of elegance than the natives
ordinarily cared for. On the seas, and in sight, rode his
vessel. His Indians, as before, ministered in mute gravity to
the service of the household. No spot could be more beauti-
ful, no solitude less invaded. To the mysterious knowledge
of Zanoni, to the harmless ignorance of Viola, the babbling
and garish world of civilized man, was alike unheeded. The
loving sky and the lovely earth are companions enough to
Wisdom and to Ignorance while they love .
Although, as I have before said, there was nothing in the
visible occup utions of Zanoni that betrayed a cultivator of the
occult sciences, his habits were those of a man who remembers
or reflects. He loved to roam alone, chiefly at dawn, or at
night, when the moon was clear (especially in each month, at
its rise and full), miles and miles away over the rich inlands of
the island, and to cull herbs and flowers, which he hoarded
with jealous care. Sometimes at the dead of night Viola would
wake by an instinct that told her he was not by her side, and,
stretching out her arms, find that the instinct had not deceived
her. But she early saw that he was reserved on his peculiar
habits, and if at times a chill, a foreboding, a suspicious awe
crept over her, she forebore to question him. But his rambles
were not always unaccompanied ; he took pleasure in excur-
sions less solitary. Often, when the sea lay before them like a
lake, the barren dreariness of the opposite coast of Cephal-
-- * Homeric Hymn.
ZANONI. 2 I 1
lenia contrasting the smiling shores on which they dwelt, Viola
and himself would pass days in cruising slowly around the
coast, or in visits to the neighboring isles. Every spot of the
Greek soil, “that fair Fable-Land,” seemed to him familiar;
and as he conversed of the Past, and its exquisite traditions, he
taught Viola to love the race from which have descended the
poetry and the wisdom of the world. There was much in Za-
noni, as she knew him better, that deepened the fascination in
which Viola was from the first enthralled. His love for herself
was so tender, so vigilant, and had that best and most enduring
attribute, that it seemed rather grateful for the happiness in its
own cares than vain of the happiness it created. His habitual
mood with all who approached him was calm and gentle, al-
most to apathy. An angry word never passed his lips, an
angry gleam never shot from his eyes. Once they had been
exposed to the danger not uncommon in those then half-savage
lands. Some pirates who infested the neighboring coasts had
heard of the arrival of the strangers, and the seamen Zanoni
employed had gossiped of their master's wealth. One
night after Viola had retired to rest she was awakened by a
slight 'noise below. Zanoni was not by her side; she listened
in some alarm. Was that a groan that came upon her ear?
She started up, she went to the door; all was still. A footstep
now slowly approached, and Zanoni entered calm as usual, and
seemed unconscious of her fears. The next morning three
men were found. dead at the threshold of the principal entrance,
the door of which had been forced. They were recognized in
the neighborhood as the most sanguine and terrible marauders
of the coasts, men stained with a thousand murders, and who
had never hitherto failed in any attempt to which the lust of
rapine had impelled them. The footsteps of many others were
tracked to the seashore. It seemed that their accomplices
must have fled on the death of their leaders. But when the
Venetian Proveditore, or authority of the island, came to ex-
amine into the matter, the most unaccountable mystery was the
manner in which these ruffians had met their fate. Zanoni
had not stirred from the apartment in which he ordinarily pur-
sued his chemical studies. None of the servants had even
been disturbed from their slumbers. No marks of human vio-
lence were on the bodies of the dead. They died, and made
no sign. From that moment Zanoni's house, nay, the whole
vicinity, was sacred. The neighboring villages, rejoiced to be
delivered from a scourge, regarded the stranger as one whom
the Pagiana (or Virgin) held under her especial protection.
2 T2 ZANONT. ~ T
In truth, the lively Greeks around, facile to all external ini-
pressions, and struck with- the singular and majestic beauty of
the man who "knew their language as a native, whose voice
often cheered them in their humble sorrows, and whose hand
was never closed to their wants, long after he had left their
shore preserved his memory by grateful traditions, and still
point to the lofty platanus beneath which they had often seen
him seated, alone and thoughtful, in the heats of noon. But
Zanoni had haunts less open to the gaze than the shade of the
platanus. In that isle there are the bituminous springs which
Herodotus has commemorated. Often at night, the moon, at
least, beheld him emerging from the myrtle and cystus that
clothe the hillocks around the marsh that embeds the pools con-
taining the inflammable materia, all the medical uses of which,
as applied to the nerves of organic life, modern science has not
yet perhaps explored. Yet more often would he pass his hours
in a cavern, by the loneliest part of the beach, where the stal-
actites seem almost arranged by the hand of art, and which the
Superstition of the peasants associate, in some ancient legends,
with the numerous and almost incessant earthquakes to which
the island is so singularly subjected. *
Whatever the pursuits that instigated these wanderings and
favored these haunts, either they were linked with, or else sub-
ordinate to, one main and master desire, which every fresh day,
passed in the sweet human company of Viola, confirmed and
strengthened. * &
The scene that Glyndon had witnessed in his trance was faith-
ful to truth. And some little time after the date of that night,
Viola was dimly aware that an influence, she knew not of what
nature, was struggling to establish itself over her happy life.
Visions, indistinct and beautiful, such as those she had known
in her earlier days, but more constant and impressive, began to
haunt her night and day when Zanoni was absent, to fade in
his presence, and seem less fair than that. Zanoni questioned
her eagerly and minutely of these visitations, but seemed dis-
satisfied, and at times perplexed, by her answers.
“Tell me not,” he said one day, “ of those unconfected
images, those evolutions of starry shapes in a choral dance, or
those delicious melodies that seem to thee of the music and the
language of the distant spheres. Has no one shape been to
thee more distinct and more beautiful than the rest ? No voice
uttering, or seeming to utter, thine own tongue and whispering
to thee of strange secrets and solemn knowledge?”
“No ; all is confused in these dreams, whether of day or
ZANONI. 213
d
night; and when at the sound of thy footsteps I recover, my
memory retains nothing but a vague impression of happiness.
How different—how cold—to the rapture of hanging on thy
Smile, and listening to thy voice, when it says, “I love thee’ſ ”
“Yet, how is it that visions less fair than these once seemed
to thee so alluring? How is it that they then stirred thy fancies
and filled thy heart? Once thou didst desire a fairy-land, and
, now thou seemest so contented with common life ”
“Have I not explained it to thee before ? Is it common life,
then, to love and to live with the one we love? My true fairy-
land is won 1 Speak to me of no other.”
And so Night surprised them by the lonely beach ; and
Zanoni, allured from his sublimer projects, and bending over
that tender face, forgot that, in the Harmonious Infinite which
spread around, there were other worlds than that one human
heart |
--- * CHAPTER IX.
“There is a principle of the soul, superior to all nature, through which we
are capable of surpassing the order and systems of the world. When the
soul is elevated to natures better than itself, then it is entirely separated
from subordinate natures, exchanges this for another life, and, deserting the
order of things with which it was connected, links and mingles itself with
another.”—IAMBLICHUs.
*
“ADON-AI Adon-Ai ! Appear, appear !”
And in the lonely cave, whence once had gone forth the
oracles of a heathen god, there emerged from the shadows of
fantastic rocks a luminous and gigantic column, glittering and
shifting. It resembled the shining but misty spray, which,
seen afar off, a fountain seems to send up on a starry night.
The radiance lit the stalactites, the crags, the arches of the
cave, and shed a pale and tremulous splendor on the features
of Zanoni.
“Son of eternal light,” said the invoker, “thou to whose
knowledge, grade after grade, race after race, I attained at last,
on the broad Chaldaean plains ; thou from whom I have drawn
so largely of the unutterable knowledge, that yet eternity alone
can suffice to drain ; thou who, congenial with myself, so far
as our various beings will permit, hast been for centuries my
familiar and my friend—answer me and counsel !”
From the column there emerged a shape of unimaginable
glory. Its face was that of a man in its first youth ; but
solemn, as with the consciousness of eternity and the tranquil-
lity of wisdom : light, like starbeams, flowed through its trans-
214 - ZANONI. • *
. . - *. a
parent veins; light made its limbs themselves, and undulated,
in restless sparkles, through the waves of its dazzling hair.
With its arms folded on its breast, it stood distant a few feet.
from Zanoni, and its low voice murmured gently: “My coun-
sels were sweet to thee once; and once, night after night, thy
soul could follow my wings through the untroubled splendors-
of the Infinite. Now thou hast bound thyself back to the earth
by its strongest chains, and the attraction to the clay is more a
potent than the sympathies that drew to thy charms the Dweller
of the Starbeam and the Air When last thy soul hearkened:
to me, the senses already troubled thine intellect and obscured
thy vision. Once again I come to thee; but thy power even
to summon me to thy side is fading from thy spirit, as sun-
shine fades from the wave, when the winds drive the cloud
between the ocean and the sky.” ºr’
“Alas, Adon-Ai !” answered the seer mournfully, “I know
too well the conditions of the being which thy presence was
wont to rejoice. I know that our wisdom comes but from the
indifference to the things of the world which the wisdom
masters. The mirror of the soul cannot reflect both earth and
heaven ; and the one vanishes from the surface as the other
is glassed upon its deeps. But it is not to restore me to that
sublime abstraction in which the Intellect, free and disem-
bodied, rises, region after region, to the spheres, that once
again, and with the agony and travail of enfeebled power, I
have called thee to mine aid. I love ; and in love I begin to
live in the sweet humanities of another! If wise, yet in all
which makes danger powerless against myself, or those on
whom I can gaze from the calm height of indifferent science,
I am blind as the merest mortal to the destinies of the creature
that makes my heart beat with the passions which obscure my
aze.” -
gaſ. What matter 1" answered Adon-Ai. “Thy love must be
but a mockery of the name; thou canst not love as they do
for whom there are death and the grave. A short time—like
a day in thy incalculable life—and the form thou dotest on is
dust Others of the nether world go hand in hand, each with
each, unto the tomb ; hand in hand they ascend from the worm
to new cycles of existence. For thee, below are ages; for
her, but hours. And for her and thee, O poor, but mighty
one ! will there be even a joint hereafter | | Through what
grades and heavens of spiritualized being will her soul have
passed when thou, the solitary Loiterer, comest from the vapors
of the earth to the gates of light !”
ZANONI. 2 I5
“Son of the Starbeam, thinkest thou that this thought is not
with me forever; and seest thou not that I have invoked thee
to hearken and minister to my design Readest thou not my
desire and dream to raise the conditions of her being to my
own 2 Thou, Adon-Ai, bathing the celestial joy that makes
thy life in the oceans of eternal splendor; thou, save by the
sympathies of knowledge, Canst conjecture not what I, the
offspring of mortals, feel—debarred yet from the objects of the
tremendous and sublime ambition that first winged my desires
above the clay—when I see myself compelled to stand in this
low world alone. I have sought amongst my tribe for comrades,
and in vain. At last I have found a mate | The wild bird and
the wild beast have theirs; and my mastery over the malignant
tribes of terror can banish their larvae from the path that shall
lead her upward till the air of eternity fits the frame for the
elixir that baffles death.” *
, “And thou hast begun the initiation, and thou art foiled ! I
know it. Thou hast conjured to her sleep the fairest visions;
thou hast invoked the loveliest children of the air to murmur
their music to her trance, and her soul heeds them not ; and,
returning to the earth, escapes from their control. Blind one,
wherefore ? Canst thou not perceive P Because in her soul all
is love. There is no intermediate passion with which the
things thou wouldst charm to her have association and affini-
ties. Their attraction is but to the desires and cravings of the
intellect. What have they with the passion that is of earth, and
the hope that goes direct to Heaven 2 ”
“But can there be no medium, no link, in which our souls,
as our hearts, can be united, and so mine may have influence
over her own 2''
“Ask me not—thou wilt not comprehend me !”
“I adjure thee! Speak "
“When two souls are divided, knowest thou not that a third
in which both meet and live is the link between them ' "
“I do comprehend thee, Adon-Ai,” said Zanoni, with a light
of more human joy upon his face than it had ever before
been seen to wear ; “and if my destiny, which here is dark to
• mine eyes, vouchsafes to me the happy lot of the humble ; if
ever there be a child that I may clasp to my bosom and cal)
my own —”
“And is it to be man at last, that thou hast aspired to be
more than man 2" * *
“But a child—a second Viola : " murmured Zanoni, scarcely
heeding the Son of Light; “a young soul fresh from Heaven,
216 ZAN ONI.
that I may rear from the first moment it touches earth ; whose
wings I may train to follow mine through the glories of crea-
tion ; and through whom the mother herself may be led up-
ward over the realm of death !”
“Beware—reflect Knowest thou not that thy darkest
enemy dwells in the Real 2 Thy wishes bring thee nearer and
nearer to humanity.”
“Ah, Humanity is sweet !” answered Zanoni.
And as the Seer spoke, on the glorious face of Adon-Ai there
broke a smile. _ =
* :}; * * * * Sº
CHAPTER X-
“AEterna aeternus tribuit, mortalia confert
Mortalis; divina Deus, peritura caducus.” ” s
AUREL. PRUD., contra Symmachum, lib. ii.
*** .*
ExTRACTs. FROM THE LETTERS OF ZANONI TO MEJNOUR.
LETTER. I.
THOU hast not informed me of the progress of thy pupil ;
and I fear that so differently does Circumstance shape the
minds of the generations to which we are descended, from the
intense and earnest children of the earlier world, that even thy
most careful and elaborate guidance would fail, with loftier and
purer natures than that of the neophyte thou hast admitted
within thy gates. Even that third state of being, which the
Indian sage frightly recognizes as being between the sleep and
the waking, and describes imperfectly by the name of TRANCE,
is unknown to the children of the northern world ; and few but
would recoil to indulge it, regarding its peopled calm as the
mdyd and delusion of the mind. Instead of ripening and cul-
turing that airy soil, from which nature, duly known, can evoke
fruits so rich and flowers so fair, they strive but to exclude it
from their gaze; they esteem that struggle of the intellect from
men's narrow world, to the spirit's infinite home, as a disease
which the leech must extirpate with pharmacy and drugs, and
‘know not even that it is from this condition of their being, in
its most imperfect and infant form, that Poetry, Music, Art—all
that belongs to an Idea of Beauty, to which neither sleeping nor
* The Eternal gives eternal things; the Mortal gathers mortal things: God, that which
is divine, and the perishable that which is perishable.
+ The Brahmins, speaking of Brahm, say: “To the Omniscient the three modes of
being—sleep, waking, and trance,—are not ”; distinctly recognizing trance as a third and
coequal condition of being,
> { …” *A
&
ZANONI. 217
waking can furnish archetype and actual semblance, take their
immortal birth. When we, O Mejnour, in the far time, were
ourselves the neophytes and aspirants, we were of a class to
which the actual world was shut and barred. Our fore-
fathers had no object in life but knowledge. From the cradle we
were predestined and reared to wisdom, as to a priesthood.
We commenced research where modern Conjecture closes its
faithless wings. And with us, those were the common elements
of science which the sages of to-day disdain as wild chimeras,
or despair of as unfathomable mysteries. Even the funda-
mental principles, the large, yet simple theories of Electricity
and Magnetism, rest obscure and dim in the disputes of their
blinded schools; yet, even in our youth, how few ever at-
tained to the first circle of the brotherhood, and, after
wearily enjoying the sublime privileges they sought, they vol-
untarily abandoned the light of the Sun, and sunk, without ef-
fort, to the grave, like pilgrims in a trackless desert, overawed
by the stillness of their solitude, and appalled by the absence
of a goal. Thou, in whom nothing seems to live but the desire
to know ; thou, who, indifferent whether it leads to weal or to
woe, lendest thyself to all who would tread the path of mys-
terious science—a Human Book, insensate to the precepts it
enounces—thou hast ever sought, and often made, additions to
our number. But to these have only been vouchsafed partial se-
crets; vanity and passion unfitted them for the rest ; and now,
without other interest than that of an experiment in science,
without love, and without pity, thou exposest this new Soul to
the hazards of the tremendous ordeal | Thou thinkest that a
zeal so inquisitive, a courage so absolute and dauntless, may
suffice to conquer, where austerer intellect and purer virtue
have so often failed. Thou thinkest, too, that the germ of art
that lies in the Painter’s mind, as it comprehends in itself the
entire embryo of Power and Beauty, may be expanded into the
stately flower of the Golden Science. It is a new experiment
to thee. Be gentle with thy neophyte, and if his nature disap-
point thee in the first stages of the process, dismiss him back
to the Real, while it is yet time to enjoy the brief and outward
life which dwells in the senses, and closes with the tomb.
And as I thus admonish the, O Mejnour, wilt thou smile at
my inconsistent hopes I, who have so invariably refused to
initiate others into our mysteries, I begin at last to compre-
hend why the great law, which binds man to his kind, even
when seeking most to set himself aloof from their condition,
has made thy cold and bloodless science the link between thy.
P
*
218 ZANONI.
self and thy race; why thou hast sought converts and pupils;
why, in seeing life after life voluntarily dropping from our .
starry order, thou still aspirest to renew the vanished, and re-
pair the lost ; why, amidst thy calculations, restless and un-
ceasing as the wheels of Nature herself, thou recoilest from the
thought To BE ALONE " So with myself; at last I, too, seek a
convert—an equal ; I, too, shudder to be alone ! What thou
hast warned me of has come to pass. Love, reduces all things
to itself. Either must I be drawn down to the nature of the
beloved, or hers must be lifted to my own. As whatever be-
longs to true Art has always necessarily had attraction for us,
whose very being is in the ideal whence art descends, so in this
fair creature I have learned, at last, the secret that bound me
to her at the first glance. The daughter of music—music
passing into her being, became poetry. It was not the stage
that attracted her, with its hollow falsehoods ; it was the land
in her own fancy which the stage seemed to centre and repre-
sent. There the poetry found a voice; there it struggled into
imperfect shape; and then (that land insufficient for it) it fell
back upon itself. It colored her thoughts, it suffused her
Soul ; it asked not words, it created not things ; it gave birth
but to emotions, and lavished itself on dreams. At last came
love ; and there, as a river into the sea, it poured its restless
waves, to become mute, and deep, and still, the everlasting
mirror of the heavens.
And is it not through this poetry which lies within her that
she may be led into the large poetry of the universe ! Often I
listen to her careless talk, and find oracles in its unconscious
beauty, as we find strange virtues in some lonely flower. I
see her mind ripening under my eyes; and in its fair fertility
what ever-teeming novelties of thought ! O Mejnour, how
many of our tribe have unravelled the laws of the universe,
have selved the riddles of the exterior nature, and deduced
the light from darkness And is not the POET, who studies
nothing but the human heart, a greater philosopher than all ?
Knowledge and atheism are incompatible. To know nature is
to know that there must be a God | But does it require this
to examine the method and architecture of creation ? Me-
thinks, when I look upon a pure mind, however ignorant and
childlike, that I, see the August and Immaterial One, more
clearly than in all the orbs of matter which career at His
bidding through the space.
Rightly is it the fundamental decree of our order, that we
must impart our secrets only to the pure, The most terrible
f 2ANoN1. . 219
part of the ordeal is in the temptations that our power affords
to the criminal. If it were possible that a malevolent being
could attain to our faculties, what disorder it might introduce
into the globe Happy that it is not possible ; the malevolence
would disarm the power. It is in the purity of Viola that I
rely, as thou more vainly hast relied on the courage or the
genius of thy pupils. Bear me witness, Mejnour ! Never
since the distant day in which. I pierced the Arcana of our
knowledge, have I ever sought to make its mysteries subserv-
ient to unworthy objects; though, alas ! the extension of our
existence, robs us of a country and a home ; though the law
that places all science, as all art, in the abstraction from the
noisy passions and turbulent ambition of actual life, forbids us
to influence the destinies of nations, for which Heaven selects
ruder and blinder agencies ; yet, wherever have been my wan-
derings, I have sought to soften distress, and to convert from
sin. My power has been hostile only to the guilty ; and yet,
with all our lore, how in each step we are reduced to be but
the permitted instruments of the Power, that vouchsafes our
own, but only to direct it. How all our wisdom shrinks into
nought, compared with that which gives the meanest herb its
virtues, and peoples the smallest globule with its appropriate
world. And while we are allowed at times to influence the
happiness of others, how mysteriously the shadows thicken
round our own future doom | We cannot be prophets to our-
selves | With what trembling hope I nurse the thought that I
may preserve to my solitude the light of a living smile !
$: * $: : * ::: Sk
EXTRACTS FROM LETTER II.
Deeming myself not pure enough to initiate so pure a heart,
I invoke to her trance those fairest and most tender inhabitants
of space that have furnished to Poetry, which is the in-
stinctive guess into creation, the ideas of the Glendoveer and
Sylph. And these were less pure than her own thoughts, and
less tender than her own love . They could not raise her
above her human heart, for that has a heaven of its own.
>}: * * * * * ::
I have just looked on her in sleep—I have heard her breathe
my name. Alas ! that which is so sweet to others has its bitter-
ness to me ; for I think how soon the time may come when
that sleep will be without a dream ; when the heart that dic-
tates the name will be cold, and the lips that utter it be dumb.
What a twofold shape there is in love . If we examine it
* *.
22O ZANONI.
coarsely—if we look but on its fleshly ties, its enjoyments of a
moment, its turbulent fever and its dull reaction, how strange,
it seems that this passion should be the supreme mover of the
world ; that it is this which has dictated the greatest sacrifices,
and influenced all societies and all times; that to this the
loftiest and loveliest genius has ever consecrated its devotion;
that but for love there were no civilization, no music, no
poetry, no beauty, no life beyond the brute's.
But examine it in its heavenlier shape, in its utter abnegation
of self, in its intimate connection with all that is most delicate
and subtle in the spirit—its power above all that is, sordid in
existence ; its mastery over the idols of the baser worship ; its
ability to create a palace of the cottage, an oasis in the desert,
a summer in the Iceland—where it breathes, and fertilizes, and
glows ; and the wonder rather becomes how so few regard it in
its holiest nature. What the sensual call its enjoyments, are
the least of its joys. True love is less a passion than a sym-
bol. Mejnour, shall the time come when I can speak to thee
of Viola as a thing that was 2
sk :}; >}< * >}: >k Sk
ExTRACT FROM LETTER III.
Knowest thou that of late I have sometimes asked myself,
“Is there no guilt in the knowledge that has so divided us from
our race 2 ” It is true that the higher we ascend, the more
hateful seem to us the vices of the short-lived creepers of the
earth—the more the sense of the goodness of the All-good pen-
etrates and suffuses us, and the more immediately does our
happiness seem to emanate from Him. But, on the other hand,
how many virtues must lie dead in those who live in the world .
of death, and refuse to die Is not this sublime egotism, this
state of abstraction and revery, this self-wrapt and self-depen-
dent majesty of existence, a resignation of that nobility which
incorporates our own welfare, our joys, our hopes, our fears'
with others ? To live on in no dread of foes, undegraded by
infirmity, secure through the cares, and free from the disease
of flesh, is a spectacle that captivates our pride. And yet dost
thou not more admire—him who dies for another ? Since I
have loved her, Mejnour, it seems almost cowardice to elude
the grave which devours the hearts that wrap us in their folds.
I feel it—the earth grows upon my spirit. Thou wert right ;
eternal age, serene, and passionless, is a happier boon than
eternal youth, with its yearnings and desires. Until we can be
all spirit, the tranquility of solitude must be indifference.
ZANONI. 22 |
^
EXTRACTS FROM LETTER IV.
I have received thy communication. What Is it so? Has
thy pupil disappointed thee ? Alas, poor pupil But—
(Here follow comments on those passages in Glyndon's life
already known to the reader, or about to be made so, with earnest
adjurations to Mejnour to watch yet over the fate of his scholar.)
#: * >}: * :k $: *
But I cherish the same desire, with a warmer heart. My pupil
How the terrors that shall encompass thine ordeal warn me
from the task 1. Once more I will seek the Son of Light.
>}: #: Sk >}: * >}: *
Yes, Adon-Ai, long deaf to my call, at last, has descended to
my vision, and left behind him the glory of his presence in the
shape of Hope. Oh, not impossible, Viola, not impossible, 2.
that we yet may be united, soul with soul.
EXTRACT FROM LETTER v. (many months after the last).
Mejnour, awake from thine apathy—rejoice . A new soul
will be born to the world. A new soul that shall call me Father.
Ah, if they for whom exist all the occupations and resources of
human life—if they can thrill, with exquisite emotion, at the
thought of hailing again their own childhood in the faces of
their children ; if, in that birth, they are born once more
into the holy Innocence which is the first state of existence;
if they can feel that on man devolves almost an Angel's duty,
when he has a life to guide from the cradle, and a soul to nur-
ture for the Heaven—what to me must be the rapture, to wel-
come an Inheritor of all the gifts which double themselves in
being shared How sweet the power to watch, and to guard ; to
instil the knowledge, to avert the evil, and to guide back the
river of life in a richer, and broader, and deeper stream, to the
paradise from which it flows ' And beside that river our souls
shall meet, sweet Mother. Our child shall supply the sympathy
that fails as yet ; and what shape shall haunt thee, what terror
shall dismay, when thy initiation is beside the cradle of thy child !
CHAPTER XI.
“They thus beguile the way
Until the blustring storme is ovel blowne,
When weening to leturne whence they did stray
They cannot finde that path which first was showne,
But wander to and fro in waies unknowne,”
—SPENSER's Faerie Queene, book i. canto i. st. x.
YES, Viola, thou art another being than when, by the
*
222 ZANONI.
threshold of thy Italian home, thou didst follow thy dim fan-
cies through the Land of Shadow ; or when thou didst vainly
seek to give voice to an Ideal beauty, on the boards where
Illusion counterfeits Earth and Heaven for an hour, till the
weary sense, awaking, sees but the tinsel and the scene-shifter.
Thy spirit reposes in its own happiness. Its wanderings have
found a goal. In a moment, there often dwells the sense of
eternity; for when profoundly happy, we know that it is im-
possible to die. Whenever the soul feels itself, it feels ever-
lasting life
The initiation is deferred ; thy days and nights are left to
no other visions than those with which a contented heart en-
chants a guileless fancy. Glendoveers and sylphs, pardon me
if I question whether those visions are not lovelier than your-
...selves | **
They stand by the beach, and see the sun sinking into the
sea. How long now have they dwelt on that island 2 What
matters . It may be months, or years—what matters Why
should I, or they, keep account of that happy time 2 As in the
dream of a moment ages may seem to pass, so shall we measure
transport or woe—by the length of the dream, or the number
of emotions that the -dream involves 2
The sun sinks slowly down ; the air is arid and oppressive ;
on the sea the stately vessel lies motionless ; on the shore no
leaf trembles on the trees.
Viola drew nearer to Zanoni ; a presentiment she could not
define made her heart beat more quickly; and, looking into his
face, she was struck with its expression ; it was anxious, ab-
stracted, perturbed.
“This stillness awes me,” she whispered.
Zanoni did not seem to hear her. He muttered to himself,
and his eyes gazed round restlessly. She knew not why, but
that gaze, which seemed to pierce into space, that muttered
voice in some foreign language, revived dimly her earlier su-
perstitions. She was more fearful since the hour when she
knew that she was to be a mother. Strange crisis in the life
of woman, and in her love | Something yet unborn begins
already to divide her heart with that which had been before its
only monarch ! * .
“Look on me, Zanoni,” she said, pressing his hand.
He turned : “Thou art pale, Viola ; thy hand trembles . "
“It is true. I feel as if some enemy were creeping near us.”
“And the instinct deceives thee not. An enemy is indeed
at hand. I see it through the heavy air ; I hear it through the
ZANONI. 223
~/.
silence : the Ghostly One—the Destroyer—the PESTILENCE
Ah, seest thou how the leaves swarm with insects, only by an
effort visible to the eye. They follow the breath of the
plague !” As he spoke, a bird fell from the boughs at Viola's
feet; it fluttered, it writhed an instant, and was dead.
“Oh, Viola l’’ cried Zanoni passionately, “that is death.
Dost thou not fear to die P’’
“To leave thee Ah, yes | "
“And if I could teach thee how Death may be defied, if I
could arrest for thy youth the course of time, if I could—”
He paused abruptly, for Viola's eyes spoke only terror ; her
cheek and lips were pale. * “y
“Speak not thus—look not thus,” she said, recoiling from
him. “You dismay me. Ah, speak not thus, or I should
tremble—no, not for myself, but for thy child.”
“Thy child ! But wouldst thou reject for thy child the
same glorious boon P"
“Zanoni . "
“Well "
“The sun has sunk from our eyes but to rise on those of
others. To disappear from this world, is to live in the world
afar. O, lover ! husband ' " she continued, with sudden energy,
“tell me that thou didst but jest, that thou didst but trifle with
my folly There is less terror in the pestilence than in thy
words.”
, Zanoni's brow darkened; he looked at her in silence for some
noments, and then said, almost severely :
“What hast thou known of me to distrust P”
“Oh, pardon, pardon | Nothing !” cried Viola, throwing
herself on his breast, and bursting into tears. “I will not be-
lieve even thine own words if they seem to wrong thee!” He
kissed the tears from her eyes, but made no answer.
“And ah ' " she resumed, with an enchanting and child-like
smile, “if thou wouldst give me a charm against the pestilence,
see, I will take it from thee.” And she laid her hand on a
small antique amulet that he wore on his breast.
“Thou knowest how often this has made me jealous of the
past: surely some love-gift, Zanoni 2 But no, thou didst not
love the giver as thou dost me. Shall I steal thine amulet 2"
“Infant,” said Zanoni tenderly; “she who placed this
round my neck deemed it indeed a charm, for she had super-
stitions like thyself; but to me it is more than the wizard's
spell—it is the relic of a sweet vanished time, when none who
loved me could distrust.”
*
224 ZAN ONI.
He said these words in a tone of such melancholy reproach,
that it went to the heart of Viola; but the tone changed into a
solemnity which chilled back the gush of her feelings as he re-
sumed : “And this, Viola, one day perhaps I will transfer from
my breast to thine ; yes, whenever thou shalt comprehend me
better, whenever the laws of our being shall be the same.”
He moved on gently. They returned slowly home; but fear
still was in the heart of Viola, though she strove to shake it
off. Italian and Catholic she was, with all the superstitions of
land and sect. She stole to her chamber and prayed before a
little relic of San Gennaro, which the priest of her house had
given to her in childhóod, and which had accompanied her in
all her wanderings. She had never deemed it possible to part
with it before. Now, if there was a charm against the pesti-
lence, did she fear the pestilence for herself 2 The next
morning when he woke, Zanoni found the relic of the saint
suspended, with his mystic amulet, round his neck.
“Ah ! thou wilt have nothing to fear from the pestilence
now,” said Viola, between tears and smiles; “and when thou
wouldst talk to me again as thou didst last night, the, saint
shall rebuke thee.” & &
Well, Zanoni, can there ever indeed be commune of thought
and spirit, except with equals º
Yes, the Plague broke out ; the island home must be aban-
doned. Mighty Seer, thou hast no power to save those whom
thou loves? / Farewell, thou bridal roof Sweet resting-place
from Care, farewell ! Climates as soft may greet ye, O lovers';
skies as serene, and waters as blue and calm. But that time,
can it ever more return ? Who shall say that the heart does not
change with the scene, the place where we first dwelt with the
beloved one 2 Every spot there has so many memories which
the place only can recall. The past that haunts it seems to
command such constancy in the future. If a thought less kind,
less trustful, enter within us, the sight of a tree under which a
vow has been exchanged, a tear has been kissed away, restores
us again to the hours of the first divine illusion. But in a
home where nothing speaks of the first nuptials, where there is
no eloquence of association, no holy burial-places of emotions,
whose ghosts are angels —yes, who that has gone through the
sad history of Affection will tell us that the heart changes not
with the scene ! Blow fair, ye favoring winds ; cheerily swell,
ye sails; away from the land where Death has come to snatch
the sceptre of Love . The shores glide by ; new coasts suc-
ceed to the green hills and orange groves of the Bridal lsle,
A. ZANONI. 225
From afar now gleam in the moonlight the columns, yet ex-
tant, of a temple which the Athenians dedicated to Wisdom :
and, standing on the bark that bounded on in the freshening
gale, the votary who had survived the goddess murmured to
himself:
“Has the wisdom of ages brought me no happier hours than
those common to the shepherd and the herdsman, with no
world beyond their village, no aspiration beyond the kiss and
the smile of home P”
And the moon resting alike over the ruins of the temple of
the departed Creed, over the hut of the living peasant, over
the immemorial mountain top, and the perishable herbage that
clothed its sides, seemed to smile back its answer of calm dis-
dain to the being who, perchance, might have seen the temple
built, and who, in his inscrutable existence, might behold the
mountain shattered from its base.
BOOK V.—THE EFFECTS OF THE
ELIXIR.
“Frommt's den Schleier aufzuheben,
Wo das nahe Schreckniss droht?
Nur das Irrthum ist das Leben
Und das Wissen ist der Tod.” +
—SCHILLER, Kassandrz.
*s CHAPTER I.
** Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach in meiner Brust.
Sk :k Sk *
Was stehst du so, und blicksterstaunt hinaus P’ +
* —Aaze ºf.
IT will be remembered that we left Master Páolo by the bed-
side of Glyndon ; and as, waking from that profound slumber.
the recollections of the past night came horribly back to his
mind, the Englishman uttered a cry, and covered his face with
his hands.
“Good-morrow, Excellency,” said Páolo gayly. “Corpo di
Bacco, you have slept soundly ' "
* Delusion is the life we live
And knowledge death ; oh, wherefore, then,
To sight the coming evils give
And lift the veil of Fate to Man 2
t Two souls dwell, alas ! in my breast.
>{< x: :k ×
Why standest thou so, and lookest out astonished 2
226 ZAN ONI.
The sound of this man’s voice, so lusty, ringing, and health-
ful, served to scatter before it the phantasma that yet haunted
Glyndon's memory. gº
He rose erect in his bed. “And where did you find me?
Why are you here P’’
“Where did I find you !” repeated Páolo in surprise ; “in .
your bed, to be sure. “Why am I here ! Because the Padrone
bade me await your waking, and attend your commands.”
“The Padrone, Mejnour ! Is he arrived P’’ •.
“Arrived and departed, Signor. He has left this letter for
you.” l ---
“Give it me, and wait without till I am dressed.”
“At your service. I have bespoke an excellent breakfast:
you must be hungry. I am a very tolerable cook: a monk’s
son ought to be | You will be startled at my genius in the
dressing of fish. My singing, I trust, will not disturb you. I
always sing while I prepare a salad ; it harmonizes the ingredi-
ents.” And slinging his carbine over his shoulder, Páolo
sauntered from the room, and closed the door.
Glyndon was already deep in the contents of the following
letter :
“When I first received thee as my pupil, I promised Zanoni,
if 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 wretch-
edness 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 : -
“It was I who prepared Páolo to receive thee at the revel.
It was I who instigated the old beggar to ask thee for alms. It
was I who left open the book that thou couldst not read with-
out violating my command. Well, thou hast seen what awaits
thee at the threshold of knowledge. Thou hast confronted
the first foe that menaces him whom the senses yet grasp and
enthral. Dost thou wonder that I close upon thee the gates
forever ! Dost thou not comprehend, at last, that it needs a
soul tempered, and purified, and raised, not by external spells,
but by its own sublimity and valor, to pass the threshold, and
disdain the foe Wretch, all my science avails nothing for the
rash, for the sensual—for him who desires our secrets but to pol-
lute them to gross enjoyments and selfish vice, How have the im-
\ |
zANONI. 227
postors and sqrcerers of the earlier times perished by their very
attempt to penetrate the mysteries that should purify, and not
deprave They have boasted of the philosopher's stone, and
died in rags of the immortal elixir, and sank to their grave,
gray before their time. Legends tell you, that the fiend rent
them into fragments. Yes; the fiend of their own unholy
desires and criminal designs ! What they coveted thou covet-
est; and if thou hadst the wings of a seraph, thou couldst soar
not from the slough of thy mortality. Thy desire for knowl-
edge, but petulant presumption ; thy thirst for happiness, but
the diseased longing for the unclean and muddied waters of
Corporeal pleasure; thy very love, which usually elevates even
the mean, a passion that calculates treason, annidst the first
glow of lust—thou, one of us ! Thou, a brother of the August
Order | Thou, an Aspirant to the Stars that shine in the She-
maiã of the Chaldaean lore | The eagle can raise but the eaglet
to the sun. I abandon thee to thy twilight !
“But, alas, for thee, disobedient and profane ! thou hast
inhaled the elixir; thou hast attracted to thy presence a
ghastly and remorseless foe Thou thyself must exorcise the
phantom thou hast raised. Thou must return to the world ;
but not without punishment and strong effort canst thou regain
the calm and the joy of the life thou hast left behind. This
for thy comfort will I tell thee: he who has drawn into his
frame even so little of the volatile and vital energy of the aerial
juices as thyself, has awakened faculties that cannot sleep—
faculties that may yet, with patient humility, with sound faith,
and the courage that is not of the body like thine, but of the
resolute and virtuous mind, attain, if not to the knowledge
that reigns above, to high achievement in the career of men.
Thou wilt find the restless influence in all that thou wouldst
undertake. Thy heart, amidst vulgar joys, will aspire to some-
thing holier; thy ambition, amidst coarse excitement, to some-
thing beyond thy reach. But deem not that this of itself will
suffice for glory. Equally may the craving lead thee to shame
and guilt. It is but an imperfect and newborn energy, which
will not suffer thee to repose. As thou directest it, must thou
believe it to be the emanation of thine evil genius or thy good.
“But woe to thee insect meshed in the web in which thou
hast entangled limbs and wings | Thou has not only inhaled
the elixir, thou hast conjured the spectre ; of all the tribes of
the space, no foe is so malignant to man—and thou hast lifted
the veil from thy gaze. I cannot restore to thee the happy
dimness of thy vision. Know, at least, that all of us—the
228 ZANONI.
highest and the wisest—who have, in sober truth, ºassed beyond
the threshold, have had, as our first fearful task, to master and
subdue its grisly and appalling guardian. Know that thou
camst deliver thyself from those livid eyes ; know that, while
they haunt, they cannot harm, if thou resistest the thoughts to
which they tempt, and the horror they engender. Dread them
most when thou beholdest them not. And thus, son of the worm,
we part | All that I can tell thee to encourage, yet to warn
and to guide, I have told thee in these lines. Not from me,
from thyself, has come the gloomy trial, from which I yet trust
thou wilt emerge into peace. Type of the knowledge that I
serve, I withhold no lesson from the pure aspirant ; I am a dark
enigma to the general seeker. As man's only indestructible
possession is his memory, so it is not in mine art to crumble
into matter the immaterial thoughts that have sprung up with-
in thy breast. The tyro might shatter this castle to the dust,
and topple down the mountain to the plain. The master has
no power to say, ‘Exist no more,' to one THOUGHT that his
knowledge has inspired. Thou mayst change the thought into
new forms; thou maySt rarify and sublimate it into a finer
spirit, but thou canst not annihilate that which has no home
but in the memory, no substance but the idea. EVERY
THoug HT Is A SouL | Vainly, therefore, would I or thou
undo the past, or restoreto thee the gay blindness of thy youth.
Thou must endure the influence of the elixir thou has inhaled ;
thou must wrestle with the spectre thou hast invoked l’’
The letter fell from Glyndon's hand. A sort of stupor suc-
ceeded to the various emotions which had chased each other
in the perusal—a stupor, resembling that which follows the
sudden destruction of any aident and long-nursed hope in the
human heart, whether it be of love, of avarice, of ambition.
The loftier world for which he had so thirsted, sacrificed, and
toiled, was closed upon him “forever,” and by his own faults
of rashness and presumption. But Glyndon's was not of that
nature which submits long to condemn itself. His indignation
began to kindle against Mejnour, who owned he had tempted,
and who now abandoned him—abandoned him to the presence
of a spectre. The Mystic's reproaches stung, rather than
humbled, him. What crime had he committed to deserve lan-
guage so harsh and disdainful ? Was it so deep a debasement
to feel pleasure in the smile and the eyes of Fillide 2 Had not
Zanoni himself conſessed love for Viola P Had he not fled
with her as his companion ? Glyndon never paused to con-
sider if there are no distinctions between one kind of love and
* i
º ZANONI. *. 229
another | Where, too, was the great offence of yielding to a
temptation wi.ich only existed for the brave 2 Had not the
mystic volume which Mejnour had purposely left open, bid
him, but “Beware of fear ”? Was not, then, every wilful pro-
vocative held out to the strongest influences of the human
mind, in the prohibition to enter the chamber; in the posses-
sion of the key which excited his curiosity ; in the volume
which seemed to dictate the mode by which the curiosity was
to be gratified ? As, rapidly, these thoughts passed over him,
he began to consider the whole conduct of Mejnour either as
a perfidious design to entrap him to his own misery, or as the
trick of an impostor, who knew that he could not realize the
great professions he had made. On glancing again over the
more mysterious threats and warnings in Mejnour's letter, they
seemed to assume the language of mere parable and allegory—
the jargon of the Platonists and Pythagoreans. By little and
little, he began to consider that the very spectra he had seen—
even that one phantom so horrid in its aspect—were but the
delusions which Mejnour's science had enabled him to raise.
The healthful sunlight, filling up every cranny in his chamber,
seemed to laugh away the terrors of the past night. His pride
and his resentment nerved his habitual courage ; and when,
having hastily dressed himself, he rejoined Páolo, it was with
a flushed cheek, and a haughty step.
“So, Páolo,” said he, “the Padrone, as you call him, told
you to expect and welcome me at your village feast?”
“He did so, by a message from a wretched old cripple. This
surprised me at the time, for I thought he was far distant. But
these great philosophers make a joke of two or three hundred
leagues.”
“Why did you not tell me you had heard from Mejnour?”
“Because the old cripple forbade me.”
“Did you not see the man afterwards during the dance 2"
“No, Excellency.”
“Humph "
“Allow me to serve you,” said Páolo, piling Glyndon's plate,
and then filling his glass. “I wish, Signor, now the Padrone
is gone, not (added Páolo, as he cast rather a frightened and
suspicious glance round the room), that I mean to say anything
disrespectful of him—I wish, I say, now that he is gone, that
you would take pity on yourself, and ask your own heart what
your youth was meant for 2 Not to bury yourself alive in these
old ruins, and endanger body and soul by studies which I am
sure no saint could approve of.”
23o * ZANQNI. w
“Are the saints so partial, then, to your own occupations,
Master Páolo P”
“Why,” answered the bandit, a little confused, “a gentleman
with plenty of pistoles in his purse need not, of necessity, make
it his profession to take away the pistoles of other people ! It
is a different thing for us poor rogues. After all, too, I always
devote a tithe of my gains to the Virgin ; and I share the rest
charitably with the poor. But eat, drink, enjoy yourself, be
absolved by your confessor for any little peccadilloes, and don't
run too long scores at a time—that's my advice. Your health,
Excellency J Pshaw, Signor, fasting, except on the days pre-
scribed to a good Catholic, only engenders phantoms.”
“Phantoms ”
“Yes; the devil always tempts the empty stomach. To covet,
to hate, to thieve, to rob, and to murder—these are the natural
desires of a man who is famishing. With a full belly, Signor,
we are at peace with all the world. That's right : you like the
partridge Cospetto ' When I myself have passed two or
three days in the mountains, with nothing from sunset to sunrise
but a black crust and an onion, I grow as fierce as a wolf.
That's not the worst, too. In these times I see little imps danc-
ing before me. Oh, yes; fasting is as full of spectres as a field
of battle.”
Glyndon thought there was some sound philosophy in the rea-
soning of his companion ; and, certainly, the more he ate and
drank, the more the recollection of the past night and of Mej-
nour's desertion faded from his mind. The casement was open,
the breeze blew, the sun shone, all Nature was merry ; and
merry as Nature herself grew Maëstro Páolo. He talked of
adventures, of travel, of women, with a hearty gusto that had
its infection. But Glyndon listened yet more complacently
when Páolo turned with an arch smile to praises of the eye, the
teeth, the ankles, and the shape of the handsome Fillide.
This man, indeed, seemed the very personation of animal
sensual life. He would have been to Faust a more dangeröus
tempter than Mephistopheles. There was no sneer on his lip
at the pleasures which animated his voice. To one awaking to
a sense of the vanities in knowledge, this reckless, ignorant
joyousness of temper was a worse corruptor than all the icy
mockeries of a learned Fiend. But when Páolo took his leave,
with a promise to return the next day, the mind of the English-
man again Séttled back to a graver and more thoughtful mood.
The elixir seemed, in truth, to have left the refining effects
Mejnour had ascribed to it. As Glyndon paced to and fro the
4
ZANON f. º 231
solitary corridor, or pausing, gazed upon the extended and
glorious scenery that stretched below, high thoughts of enter-
prise and ambition, bright visions of glory, passed in rapid suc-
cession through his soul.
“Mejnour denies me his science. Well,” said the painter
proudly, “he has not robbed me of my art.”
What, Clarence Glyndon, dost thou return to that from which
thy career commenced 2 Was Zanoni right after all 2
He found himself in the chamber of the Mystic : not a ves-
sel, not a herb . The solemn volume is vanished, the elixir
shall sparkle for him no more | But still in the room itself
seems to linger the atmosphere of a charm. Faster and fiercer
it burns within thee, the desire to achieve, to create | Thou
longest for a life beyond the sensual But the life that is per-
mitted to all genius—that which breathes through the immor-
tal work, and endures in the imperishable name.
Where are the implements for thine art? Tush | When did
the true workman ever fail to find his tools 2 Thou art again
in thine own chamber—the white wall thy canvas-a fragment
of charcoal for thy pencil. They suffice, at least, to give out-
line to the conception, that may otherwise vanish with the
In OTrOW.
The idea that thus excited the imagination of the artist was
unquestionably noble and august. It was derived from that
Egyptian ceremonial which Diodorus has recorded ; the
Judgment of the Dead by the Living : * when the corpse, duly
embalmed, is placed by the margin of the Acherusian Lake,
and before it may be consigned to the bark which is to bear it
across the waters to its final resting-place, it is permitted to the
appointed judges to hear all accusations of the past life of the
deceased, and, if proved, to deprive the corpse of the rites of
sepulture.
Unconsciously to himself, it was Mejnour's description of
this custom, which he had illustrated by several anecdotes not
to be found in books, that now suggested the design to the
artist, and gave it reality and force. He supposed a powerful
and guilty king whom in life scarce a whisper had dared to
arraign, but against whom, now the breath was gone, came the
slave from his fetters, the mutilated victim from his dungeon,
livid and squalid as if dead themselves, invoking with parched
lips the justice that outlives the grave.
Strange fervor this, O Artist, breaking suddenly forth from
the mists and darkness which the occult science had spread so
* DIoD., lib. i.
232 w ZANONT.
long over thy fancies—strange that the reaction of the night's
terror and the day’s disappointment should be back to thine
holy art | Oh, how freely goes the bold hand over the large
outline ! How, despite those rude materials, speaks forth no
more the pupil, but the master | Fresh yet from the glorious
elixir, how thou givest to thy creatures the finer life denied to
thyself 2 Some power not thine own writes the grand symbols
on the wall. Behind, rises the mighty sepulchre, on the build-
ing of which repose to the dead, the lives of thousands had
been consumed. There, sit in a semicircle the solemn judges.
Black and sluggish flows the lake. There lies the mummied
and royal dead. Dost thou quail at the frown on his lifelike
brow 2 Ha! bravely done, O Artist Up rise the haggard
forms 1 Pale speak the ghastly faces ! Shall not Humanity
after death avenge itself on Power 2 Thy conception, Clarence
Glyndon, is a sublime truth ; thy design promises renown to
genius. Better this magic than the charms of the volume and
the vessel. Hour after hour has gone; thou hast lighted the
lamp; night sees thee yet at thy labor. Merciful heaven
What chills the atmosphere P Why does the lamp grow wan P
Why does thy hair bristle 2 There !—there !—there ! At the
casement It gazes on thee, the dark, mantled, loathsome
Thing ! There, with their devilish mockery and hateful craft,
glare on thee those horrid eyes |
He stood and gazed. It was no delusion. It spoke not,
moved not, till, unable to bear longer that steady and burning
look, he covered his face with his hands. With a start, with a
thrill he removed them ; he felt the nearer presence of the
Nameless. There, it cowered on the floor beside his design ;
and, lo l the figures seemed to start from the wall ! Those
pale, accusing figures, the shapes he himself had raised, frowned
at him and gibbered. With a violent effort that convulsed his
whole being, and bathed his body in the sweat of agony, the
young man mastered his horror. He strode towards the Phan-
tom ; he endured its eyes; he accosted it with a steady voice ;
he demanded its purpose and defied its power.
And then, as a wind from a charnel, was heard its voice.
What it said, what revealed, it is forbidden the lips to repeat,
the hand to record. Nothing, save the subtle life that yet ani-
mated the frame, to which the inhalations of the elixir had
given vigor and energy beyond the strength of the strongest,
could have survived that awful hour. Better to wake in the
catacombs and, see the buried rise from their cerements, and
hear the ghouls, in their horrid orgies, amongst the festering
ZANON i. 233
ghastliness of corruption, than to front those features when
the veil was lifted, and listen to that whispered voice
* $k * :}; * * :};
The next day Glyndon fled from the ruined castle. With
what hopes of starry light had he crossed the threshold ; with
what memories to shudder evermore at the darkness, did he
look back at the frown of its time-worn towers.
CHAPTER II.
* FAUST. Wohin soll es mun gehn?
MEPHIST. Wohines Dir gefällt.
Wir sehn di kleine, dann di grosse Welt.” +
—Faust.
DRAW your chair to the fireside, brush clean the hearth, and
trim the lights. Oh, home of sleekness, order, substance, com-
fort. Oh, excellent thing art thou, Matter of Fact,
It is some time after the date of the last chapter. Here we
are, not in moonlit islands, or mouldering castles, but in a room
twenty-six feet by twenty-two, well carpeted, well cushioned,
solid arm-chairs, and eight such bad pictures, in such fine
frames, upon the walls | Thomas Mervale, Esq., merchant of
London, you are an enviable dog ' , -
It was the easiest thing in the world for Mervale, on return-
ing from his continental episode of life, to settle down to his
desk : his heart had been always there. The death of his
father gave him, as a birthright, a high position in a respecta-
ble, though second-rate, firm. To make this establishment first-
rate was an honorable ambition—it was his He had lately
married, not entirely for money—no ! he was worldly rather
than mercenary. He had no romantic ideas of love ; but he
was too sensible a man not to know that a wife should be a
companion, not merely a speculation. He did not care for
beauty and genius, but he liked health and good temper, and a
certain portion of useful understanding. He chose a wife from
his reason, not his heart, and a very good choice he made.
Mrs. Mervale was an excellent young woman : bustling, man-
aging, economical, but affectionate and good. She had a will
of her own, but was no shrew. She had a great notion of the
rights of a wife, and a strong perception of the qualities that
ensule comfort. She would never have forgiven her husband,
* F. Whither go now
M. Whither it pleases thee.
We see the small world, then the great.
234 Z.A. NON I.
had she found him guilty of the most passing fancy for another ;
but, in return, she had the most admirable sense of propriety
herself. She held in abhorrence all levity, all flirtation, all co-
quetry : Small vices, which often ruin domestic happiness, but
which a giddy nature incurs without consideration. But she did
not think it right to love a husband overmuch. She left a surplus
of affection for all her relations, all her friends, some of her
acquaintances, and the possibility of a second marriage, should
any accident happen to Mr. M. She kept a good table, for it
suited their station, and her temper was considered even, though
firm ; but she could say a sharp thing or two, if Mr. Mervale
was not punctual to a moment. She was very particular that
he should change his shoes on coming home—the carpets were
new and expensive. She was not sulky, nor passionate, Heaven
bless her for that But when displeased, she showed it, ad-
ministered a dignified rebuke, alluded to her own virtues ; to
her uncle, who was an admiral, and to the thirty thousand
pounds which she had brought to the object of her choice.
But as Mr. Mervale was a good-humored man, owned his faults,
and subscribed to her excellence, the displeasure was soon
O Ver.
Every household has its little disagreements; none fewer
than that of Mr. and Mrs. Mervale. Mrs. Mervale, without
being improperly fond of dress, paid due attention to it. She
was never seen out of her chamber with papers in her hair,
nor in that worst of disillusions—a morning wrapper. At half-
past eight every morning Mrs. Mervale was dressed for the
day, that is, till she re-dressed for dinner; her stays well
laced, her cap prim, her gowns, winter and summer, of a thick,
handsome silk. Ladies at that time wore very short waists;
so did Mrs. Mervale. Her morning ornaments were a thick
gold chain, to which was suspended a gold watch—none of
those fragile dwarfs of mechanism, that look so pretty, and go
so ill—but a handsome repeater, which chronicled Father
Time to a moment ; also a mosaic brooch ; also a miniature of
her uncle, the admiral, set in a bracelet. For the evening, she
had two handsome sets—necklace, earrings, and bracelets com-
plete—one of amethysts, the other topazes. With these, her
costume, for the most part, was gold-colored Satin and a turban,
in which last her picture had been taken. Mrs. Mervale had
an aquiline nose, good teeth, fair hair, and light eyelashes,
rather a high complexion, what is generally called a fine bust,
full cheeks, large useful feet, made for walking, large white
hands, with filbert nails, on which not a speck of dust had,
*-ºr
ZAN ONI. 235
even in childhood, ever been known to alight. She looked a
little older than she really, was ; but that might arise from a
certain air of dignity, and the aforesaid aquiline nose. She
generally wore short mittens. She never read any poetry but
Goldsmith's and Cowper's. She was not amused by novels,
though she had no prejudice against them. She liked a play
and a pantomime, with a slight Supper afterwards. She did not
like concerts nor operas. At the beginning of the winter, she
selected some book to read, and some piece of work to com-
mence. The two lasted her till the spring, when, though she
continued to work, she left off reading. Her favorite study
was history, which she read through the medium of Dr. Gold-
Smith. Her favorite author in the belles lettres was, of course,
Dr. Johnson. A worthier woman, or one more respected, was
not to be found, except in an epitaph
It was an autumn night. Mr. and Mrs. Mervale, lately re-
turned from an excursion to Weymouth, are in the drawing-
room—“the dame sate on this side, the man sat on that.”
“Yes, I assure you, my dear, that Glyndon, with all his ec-
centricities, was a very engaging, amiable fellow. You would
certainly have liked him—all the women did.”
“My dear Thomas, you will forgive the remark, but that ex-
pression of yours—‘all the women’—”
“I beg your pardon, you are right. I meant to say that he
was a general favorite with your charming sex.”
“I understand, rather a frivolous character.”
“Frivolous ! No, not exactly ; a little unsteady, very odd,
but certainly not frivolous ; presumptuous and headstrong in
character, but modest and shy in his manners, rather too much
so—just what you like. However, to return ; I am seriously
uneasy at the accounts I have heard of him to-day. He has
been living, it seems, a very strange and irregular life, travel-
ling from place to place, and must have spent already a great
deal of money.”
“Apropos of money,” said Mrs. Mervale; “I fear we must
change our butcher : he is certainly in league with the cook.”
“Thet is a pity; his beef is remarkably fine. These Lon-
don servants are as bad as the Carbonari. But, as I was say-
ing, poor Glyndon—”
Here a knock was heard at the door. “Bless me,” said
Mrs. Mervale, “it is past ten | Who can that possibly be 2 "
“Perhaps your uncle, the admiral,” said the husband, with
a slight peevishness in his accent, “He generally favors us
about this hour.”
236 ZANONI.
“I hope, my love, that none of my relations are unwelcome
visitors at your house. The admiral. is a most entertaining
man, and—his fortune is entirely at his own disposal.”
“No one I respect more,” said Mr. Mervale, with emphasis.
The servant threw open the door, and announced Mr. Glyn-
don.
“Mr. Glyndon | What an extraordinary—” exclaimed Mrs.
Mervale, but before she could conclude the sentence, Glyndon
was in the room. W
The two friends greeted each other with all the warmth of
early recollection and long absence. An appropriate and
proud presentation to Mrs. Mervale ensued ; and Mrs. Mer-
vale, with a dignified smile, and a furtive glance at his boots,
bade her husband's friend welcome to England.
Glyndon was greatly altered since Mervale had seen him
last. Though less than two years had elapsed since then, his
fair"complexion was more bronzed and manly. Deep lines of
care, or thought, or dissipation, had replaced the smooth con-
tour of happy youth. To a manner once gentle and polished,
had succeeded a certain recklessness of mien, tone, and bear-
ing, which bespoke the habits of a society that cared littlé for
the calm decorums of conventional ease. Still a kind of wild
. not before apparent in him, characterized his aspect,
and gave something of dignity to the freedom of his language
and gestures. &
“So, then, you are settled, Mervale, I need not ask you if
you are happy. Worth, sense, wealth, character, and so fair a
companion, deserve happiness, and command it.”
“Would you like some tea, Mr. Glyndon 2 ” asked Mrs.
Mervale kindly.
“Thank you, no. I propose a more convivial stimulus to
my old friend. Wine, Mervale—wine, eh ! or a bowl of old
English punch. Your wife will excuse us—we will make a
night of it !”
Mrs. Mervale drew back her chair, and tried not to look
aghast. Glyndon did not give his friend time to reply—
“So at last I am in England,” he said, looking round the
room, with a slight sneer on his lips; “surely this sober air
must have its influence; surely here I shall be like the rest.”
“Have you been ill, Glyndon P’’
“Ill yes. Humph you have a fine house. Does it con-
tain a spare room for a solitary wanderer P”
Mr. Mervale glanced at his wife, and his wife looked steadily.
on the carpet, “ Modest and shy in his manners—rather too
s=s* ZANONI. 237
much so!" Mrs. Mervale was in the seventh heaven of in.
dignation and amaze
“My dear 2 ” said Mr. Mervale at last, meekly and inter-
rogatingly.
“My dear !” returned Mrs. Mervale, innocently and sourly.
“We can make up a room for my old friend, Sarah P”
The old friend had sunk back on his chair; and, gazing in-
tently on the fire, with his feet at ease upon the fender, seemed
to have forgotten his question.
Mrs. Mervale bit her lips, looked thoughtful, and at last coldly
replied : “Certainly, Mr. Mervale; your friends do right
to make themselves at home.”
YWith that she lighted a candle, and moved majestically from
the room. When she returned, the two friends had vanished
into Mr. Mervale's study.
Twelve o'clock struck—one o'clock—two Thrice had Mrs.
Mervale sent into the room to know, first, if they wanted any-
thing ; secondly, if Mr. Glyndon slept on a mattress or feather-
bed ; thirdly, to inquire if Mr. Glyndon's trunk, which he had
brought with him, should be unpacked. And to the answer
to all these questions, was added, in a loud voice from the
visitor—a voice that pierced from the kitchen to the attic—
“Another bowl | Stronger, if you please, and be quick with it !”
At last, Mr. Mervale appeared in the conjugal chamber—
not penitent, not apologetic—no, not a bit of it. His eyes
twinkled, his cheek-flushed, his feet reeled ; he sung—Mr.
Thomas Mervale positively sung !
“Mr. Mervale, is it possible, sir!—”
“‘Old King Cole was a merry old soul—’”
“Mr. Mervale, sir—leave me alone, sir!”
“‘And a merry old soul was he—
“What an example to the servants ”
“‘And he called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl—’”
“If you don't behave yourself, sir, I shall call—”
“‘Call for his fiddlers three ’”
y 9
CHAPTER III.
“In der Welt Weit
Aus der Einsamkeit
Wollen sie Dich locken.” ”—Faust.
THE next morning, at breakfast, Mrs. Mervale looked as if
all the wrongs of injured woman sat upon her brow. Mr. Mer.
* In the wide world, out of the solitude, will these allure thee.
34
238 ZANONI.
vale seemed the picture of remorseful"guilt and avenging bile.
He said little, except to complain of headache, and to request
the eggs to be removed from the table. Clarence Glyndon,
impervious, unconscious, unailing, impenitent, was in noisy
spirits and talked for three. .
“Poor Mervale ! he has lost the habit of good fellowship,
madam. Another night or two, and he will be himself again ”
“Sir,” said Mrs. Mervale, launching a premeditated sentence
with more than Johnsonian dignity; “permit me to remind
you that Mr. Mervale is now a married man, the destined
father of a family, and the present master of a household.”
“Precisely the reasons why I envy him so much. I myself
have a great mind to marry. Happiness is contagious.” - ...,
“Do you still take to painting 2 ” asked Mervale languidly,
endeavoring to turn the tables on his guest. *
“Oh, no ; I have adopted your advice. No art, no ideal,
nothing loftier than Commonplace for me now. If I were to
paint again, I positively think you would purchase my pictures.
Make haste and finish your breakfast, man ; I wish to consult
you. I have come to England to see after my affairs. My
ambition is to make money; your counsels and experience
cannot fail to assist me here.”
“Ah, you were soon disenchanted of your Philosopher's
stone. You must know, Sarah, that when I last left Glyndon,
he was bent upon turning alchemist and magician.”
“You are witty to-day, Mr. Mervale.” "
“Upon my honor, it is true. I told you so before.” $
Glyndon rose abruptly.
“Why revive those recollections of folly and presumption.
Have I not said that I have returned to my native land to pur-
sue the healthful avocations of my kind Oh yes | What so
healthful, so noble, so fitted to our nature, as what you call the
Practical Life? If we have faculties, what is their use, but to
sell them to advantage 2 Buy knowledge as we do our goods ;
buy it at the cheapest market, sell it at the dearest. Have you
not breakfasted yet 2 ”
The friends walked into the streets, and Mervale shrunk
from the irony with which Glyndon, complimented him on his
respectability, his station, his pursuits, his happy marriage, and
his eight pictures in their handsome frames. Formerly the
sober Mervale had commanded an influence over his friend ;
Ais had been the sarcasm ; Glyndon's the irresolute shame at
his own peculiarities. Now this position was reversed. There
was a fierce earnestness in Glyndon's altered temper which
§
*
- --- zANONI. 239
*
awed and silenced the quiet commonplace of his friend's char-
acter. He seemed to take a malignant delight in persuading
himself that the sober life of the world was contemptible and
base. Kºč *
“Ah !” he exclaimed, “how right you were to tell me to
marry respectably; to have a solid position ; to live in dec-
orous fear of the world and one’s wife ; and to command
the envy of the poor, the good opinion of the rich. You have
practiced what you preach. Delicious existence . The mer-
chant's desk, and, the curtain lecture Ha! haſ Shall wé
have another night of it 2 ”
Mervale, embarrassed and irritated, turned the conversation
upon Glyndon's affairs. He was surprised at the knowledge
of the world which the artist seemed to have suddenly ac-
quired; surprised still more at the acuteness and energy with
which he spoke of the speculations most in vogue at the market.
Yes; Glyndon was certainly in earnest; he desired to be rich
and respectable, and to make at least ten per cent. for his
money !
After spending some days with the merchant, during which
time he contrived to disorganize all the mechanism of the
house, toº turn night into day, harmony into discord, to drive
poor Mrs. Mervale half distracted, and to convince her hus-
band that he was horribly henpecked, the ill-omened visitor
left them as suddenly as he had arrived. He took a house of
...his own ; he sought the Society of persons of substance; he
devoted himself to the money-market ; he seemed to have be-
come a man of business; his schemes were bold and colossal;
his calculations rapid and profound. He startled Mervale by
his energy, and dazzled him by his success. Mervale began
to envy him ; to be discontented with his own regular and slow
gains. When Glyndon bought or sold in the funds, wealth
rolled upon him like the tide of a sea ; what years of toil could
not have done for him in art, a few months, by a succession of
lucky chances, did for him in speculation. Suddenly, how-
ever, he relaxed his exertions; new objects of ambition seemed
to attract him. If he heard a drum in the streets, what glory
like the soldier's 2 If a new poem were published, what re-
nown like the poet's P He began works in literature, which
promised great excellence, to throw them aside in disgust. All
at once he abandoned the decorous and formal society he had
courted ; he joined himself with young and riotous associates;
he plunged into the wildest excesses of the great city, where
Gold reigns alike over Toil and Pleasure. Through all, he
*
\ …”
t
24O ZANONI. …”
carried with him a certain power and heat of soul. In all so-
ciety he aspired to command, in all pursuits to excel. Yet
whatever the passion of the moment, the reaction was terrible
in its gloom. He sunk, at times, into the most profound and
the darkest reveries. His fever was that of a mind that would
escape memory, his repose that of a mind which the memory
seizes again, and devours as a prey. Mervale now saw little
of him ; they shunned each other. Glyndon had no confidant,
and no friend. \
&
CHAPTER IV. *
“Ich fühle Dich mir nahe,
Die Einsamkeit belebt;
Wie über seinen Welten
Der Unsichtbare schwebt.”—UHLAND.
FROM this state of restlessness and agitation rather than con-
tinuous action, Glyndon was aroused by a visitor who seemed
to exercise the most salutary influence over him. His sister,
an orphan with himself, had resided in the country with her
aunt. In the early years of hope and home, he had loved this
girl, much younger than himself, with all a brother's tender.
ness. On his return to England, he had seemed to forget her
existence. She recalled herself to him on her aunt's death by
a touching and melancholy letter ; she had now no home but
his, no dependence save on his affection ; he wept when he read
it, and was impatient till Adela arrived. º
This girl, then about eighteen, concealed beneath a gentle
and calm exterior much of the romance or enthusiasm that
had, at her own age, characterized her brother. But her en-
thusiasm was of a far purer order, and was restrained within
proper bounds, partly by the sweetness of a very feminine
nature, and partly by a strict and methodical education. She
differed from him especially in a timidity of character which
exceeded that usual at her age, but which the habit of self-
command concealed no less carefully than that timidity itself
concealed the romance I have ascribed to her. &
Adela was not handsome ; she had the complexion and the
form of delicate health ; and too fine an organization of the
nerves rendered her susceptible to every impression that could
influence the health of the frame through the sympathy of the
mind. But as she never complained, and as the singular
* I feel thee near to me;
The loneliness takes life—
As over its world
The Invisible hovers. *
*
ZANoNI. 241
serenity of her manners seemed to betoken an equanimity of
temperament which, with the vulgar, might have passed for in-
difference, her sufferings had so long been borne unnoticed,
that it ceased to be an effort to disguise them. Though, as I
have said, not handsome, her countenance was interesting and
pleasing ; and there was that caressing kindness, that winning
charm about her smile, her manners, her anxiety to please, to
comfort, and to soothe, which went at once to the heart, and
made her lovely, because so loving.
Such was the sister whom Glyndon had so long neglected,
and whom he now so cordially welcomed. Adela had passed
many years a victim to the caprices, and a nurse to the mala-
dies, of a selfish and exacting relation. The delicate, and gen-
erous, and respectful affection of her brother was no less new
to her than delightful. He took pleasure in the happiness he
created ; he gradually weaned himself from other society; he
felt the Charm of Home. It is not surprising, then, that this
young creature, free and virgin from every more ardent attach-
ment, concentrated all her grateful love on this cherished and
protecting relative. Her study by day, her dream by night,
was to repay him for his affection. She was proud of his tal-
ents, devoted to his welfare ; the smallest trifle that could in-
terest him swelled in her eyes to the gravest affairs of life. In
short, all the long-hoarded enthusiasm which was her perilous
and only heritage, she invested in this one object of her holy
tenderness, her pure ambition.
But in proportion as Glyndon shunned those excitements by
which he had so long sought to occupy his time, or distract his
thoughts, the gloom of his calmer hours became deeper and
more continuous. He ever and especially dreaded to be alone ;
he could not bear his new companion to be absent from his
eyes; he rode with her, walked with her, and it was with visible
reluctance, which almost partook of horror, that he retired to
rest at an hour when even revel grows fatiguing. This gloom
was not that which could be called by the soft name of melan-
choly—it was far more intense; it seemed rather like despair.
Often after a silence as of death, so heavy, abstracted, motion-
less did it appear, he would start abruptly, and cast hurried
glances around him, his limbs trembling, his lips livid, his
brows bathed in dew. Convinced that some secret Sorrow
preyed upon his mind, and would consume his health, it was
the dearest as the most natural desire of Adela to become his
confidante and consoler. She observed, with the quick tact of
the delicate, that he disliked her to seem affected by, or even
242 ZANONI. -
sensible of, his darker moods. She schooled herself to sup-
press her fears, and her feelings. She would not ask his confi-
dence; she sought to steal into it. By little and little she felt
that she was succeeding. Too wrapped in his own strange ex-
istence to be acutely observant of the character of others,
Glyndon mistook the self-content of a generous and humble
affection for constitutional fortitude; and this quality pleased
and soothed him. It is fortitude that the diseased mind re-
quires in the confidant whom it selects as its physician. And
how irresistible is that desire to communicate How often the
lonely man thought to himself, “My heart would be lightened
of its misery, if once confessed l’’ He felt, too, that in the
very youth, the inexperience, the poetical temperament of
Adela, he could find one who would comprehend and bear
with him better than any sterner and more practical nature.
Mervale would have looked on his revelations as the ravings
of madness, and most men, at best, as the sicklied chimeras,
the optical delusions, of disease. Thus gradually preparing
himself for that relief for which he yearned, the moment fo
his disclosure arrived thus: -
One evening, as they sat alone together, Adela, who inher-
ited some portion of her brother's talent in art, was employed
in drawing, and Glyndon, rousing himself from meditations
less gloomy than usual, rose, and affectionately passing his arm
round her waist, looked over her as she sat. An exclamation
of dismay broke from his lips; he snatched the drawing from
her hand : “What are you about 2 What portrait is this?”
“Dear Clarence, do you not remember the original 2 It
is a copy from that portrait of . our wise ancestor which our
poor mother used to say so strongly resembled you. I thought
it would please you if I copied it from memory.” **
“Accursed was the likeness ' " said Glyndon gloomily.
“Guess you not the reason why I have shunned to return
to the home of my fathers 2 Because I dreaded to meet
that portrait ! Because—because—but pardon me—I alarm
you !” #
“Ah, no—no, Clarence, you never alarm me when you speak,
only when you are silent Oh, if you thought me worthy of
your trust Oh, if you had given me the right to reason with
you in the sorrows that I yearn to share l’”
Glyndon made no answer, but paced the room for some mo-
ments with disordered strides. He stopped at last, and gazed
at her earnestly. “Yes, you, too, are his descendant You
know that such men have lived and suffered ; you will not
--> ZAN ONI. 243
mock me; you will not disbelieve I Listen Hark! What
sound is that P”
“But the wind on the house-top, Clarence—but the wind.”
“Give me your hand; let me feel its living clasp, and when I
have told you, never revert to the tale again. Conceal it from
all—swear that it shall die with us, the last of our predestined
race I’’
“Never will I betray your trust; I swear it—never !” said
Adela firmly ; and she drew closer to his side : Then Glyndon
commenced his story. That which, perhaps in writing and to
minds prepared to question and disbelieve, may seem cold and
terrorless, became far different when told by those blanched
.lips, with all that truth of suffering which convinces and appals.
Much, indeed, he concealed, much he involuntarily softened ;
but he revealed enough to make his tale intelligible and dis-
tinct to his pale and trembling listener. “At daybreak,” he
said, “I left that unhallowed and abhorred abode. I had one
hope still—I would seek Mejnour through the world. I would
force him to lay at rest the fiend that haunted my soul. With
this intent I journeyed from city to city. I instituted the most
vigilant researches through the police of Italy. I even em-
ployed the services of the Inquisition at Rome, which had
lately asserted its ancient pówers in the trial of the less dan-
gerous Cagliostro. All was in vain; not a trace of him could
be discovered. I was not alone, Adela.” Here Glyndon
paused a moment, as if embarrassed ; for in his recital, I need
scarcely say that he had only indistinctly alluded to Fillide,
whom the reader may surmise to be his companion. “I was
-not alone, but the associate of my wanderings was not one in
whom my soul could confide—faithful and affectionate, but
without education, without faculties to comprehend me, with
natural instincts rather than cultivated reason, one in whom
the heart might lean in its careless hours, but with whom the
mind could have no commune, in whom the bewildered spirit
could seek no guide. Yet in the society of this person the
daemon troubled me not. Let me explain yet more fully the
dread conditions of its presence. In coarse excitement, in
commonplace life, in the wild riot, in the fierce excess, in the
torpid lethargy of that animal existence which we share with
the brutes, its eyes were invisible, its whisper was unheard.
But whenever the soul would aspire; whenever the imagination
kindled to the loftier ends; whenever the consciousness of our
proper destiny struggled against the unworthy life I pursued,
then, Adela, then, it cowered by my side in the light of noon,
244 ZANONI.
or sat by my bed—a Darkness visible through the Dark. If,
in the galleries of Divine Art, the dreams of my youth woke
the early emulation; if I turned to the thoughts of sages; if
the example of the great, if the converse of the wise, aroused
the silenced intellect, the daemon was with me as by a spell.
At last, one evening, at Genoa, to which city I had travelled
in pursuit of the Mystic, suddenly, and when least expected,
he appeared before me. It was the time of the Carnival. ‘It
was in one of those half-frantic scenes of noise and revel, call
it not gayety, which establish a heathen saturnalia in the midst
of a Christian festival. Wearied with the dance, I had entered
a room in which several revellers were seated, drinking, sing-
ing, shouting; and in their fantastic dresses and hideous masks,
their orgies seemed scarcely human. I placed myself amongst
them, and in that fearful excitement of the spirits which the
happy never know, I was soon the most riotous of all. The
conversation fell on the Revolution of France, which had
always possessed for me an absorbing fascination. The masks
spoke of the millennium it was to bring on earth, not as phi-
losophers rejoicing in the advent of light, but as ruffians exult-
ing in the anpihilation of law. I know not why it was, but
their licentious language infected myself; and, always desirous
to be foremost in every circle, I soon exceeded even these
rioters in declamations on the nature of the liberty which was
about to embrace all the families of the globe: a liberty that
should pervade not only public legislation, but domestic life :
an emancipation from every fetter that men had forged for
themselves. In the midst of this tirade one of the masks
whispered me : ^,
“‘Take care. One listens to you, who seems to -be a
spy l’ -
“My eyes followed those of the mask, and I observed a man
who took no part in the conversation, but whose gaze was bent
upon me. He was disguised like the rest, yet I found by a
general whisper that none had observed him enter. His
silence, his attention, had alarmed the fears of the other rev-
ellers—they only excited me the more. Rapt in my subject, I
pursued it, insensible to the signs of those about me; and,
addressing myself only to the silent mask who sat alone, apart
from the group, I did not even observe that, one by one, the
revellers slunk off, and that I and the silent listener were left
alone, until, pausing from my heated and impetuous declama-
tions, I said :
“‘And you, Signor, what is your view of this mighty era 2
jº
ZAN ONI. 245
Opinion without persecution ; brotherhood without jealousy;
love without bondage—
“‘And life without God,” added the mask, as I hesitated for
new images.
“The sound of that well-known voice changed the current
of my thought. I sprung forward, and cried :
“‘Impostor or Fiend, we meet at last !’
“The figure rose as I advanced, and, unmasking, showed the
features of Mejnour. His fixed eye, his majestic aspect, awed
and repelled me. I stood rooted to the ground.
“‘Yes,’ he said solemnly, “we meet, and it is this meeting
that I have sought. How hast thou followed my admonitions 2
Are these the scenes in which the Aspirant for the Serene
Science thinks to escape the Ghastly Enemy 2 Do the thoughts
thou hast uttered—thoughts that would strike all order from
the universe—express the hopes of the sage who would rise to
the Harmony of the Eternal Spheres 2'
“‘It is thy fault—it is thine !' I exclaimed. ‘Exorcise the
phantom Take the haunting terror from my soul '
“Mejnour looked at me a moment with a cold and cynical
disdain, which provoked at once my fear and rage, and replied :
“‘No, foot of thine own senses | No ; thou must have full
and entire experience of the illusions to which the Knowledge
that is without Faith climbs its Titan way. Thou pantest for
- this millennium—thou shalt behold it ! Thou shalt be one of
the agents of the era of Light and Reason. I see, while I
speak, the Phantom thou fliest, by thy side It marshals thy
path ; it has power over thee as yet—a power that defies my
own. In the last days of that Revolution which thou hailest,
amidst the wrecks of the Order thou cursest as Oppression,
seek the fulfilment of thy destiny and await thy cure.’
“At that instant a troop of masks, clamorous, intoxicated,
reeling, and rushing as they reeled, poured into the room, and
separated me from the Mystic. I broke through them, and
sought him everywhere, but in vain. All my researches the
next day were equally fruitless. Weeks were consumed in the
same pursuit—not a trace of Mejnour could be discovered.
Wearied, with false pleasures, roused by reproaches I had de-
served, recoiling from Mejijour's prophecy of the scene in
which I was to seek deliverance, it occurred to me, at last,
that in the sober air of my native country, and amidst its
orderly and vigorous pursuits, I might work out my own eman-
cipation from the spectre... I left all whom I had before courted
and clung to : I came hither. Amidst mercenary schemes and
246 ZANONI.
selfish speculations, I found the same relief as in debauch and
excess. The Phantom was invisible, but these pursuits soon
became to me distasteful as the rest. Ever and ever I felt
that I was born for something nobler than the greed of gain,
that life may be made equally worthless, and the soul equally
degraded by the icy lust of Avarice, as by the noisier passions.
A higher Ambition never ceased to torment me. But, but,”
continued Glyndon, with a whitening lip and a visible shudder,
“at every attempt to rise into loftier existence came that hide-
ous form. It gloomed beside me at the easel. Before the
volumes of Poet and Sage it stood with its burning eyes in
the stillness of night, and I thought I heard its horrible whis-
pers uttering temptations never to be divulged.” He paused,
and the drops stood upon his brow.
“But I,” said Adela mastering her fears, and throwing her
arms around him ; “But I henceforth will have no life but in
thine. And in this love so pure, so holy, thy terror shall fade
away.”
“No, no l’’ exclaimed Glyndon, starting from her. “The
worst revelation is to come. Since thou hast been here ; since
I have sternly and resolutely refrained from every haunt, every
scene in which this preternatural enemy troubled me not, I–
I—have—Oh, heaven Mercy—mercy There it stands—
there, by thy side—there—there !” And he fell to the ground
insensible.
CHAPTER V.
“Doch wunderbar ergriff mich's diese Nacht ;
Die Glieder schienen schon in Todes Macht.”
* —UHLAND.
A FEVER, attended with delirium, for several days deprived
Glyndon of consciousness; and when, by Adela's care, more
than the skill of the physicians, he was restored to life and
reason, he was unutterably shocked by the change in his sister's
appearance ; at first, he fondly imagined that her health, aſ-
fected by hèr vigils, would recover with his own. But he soon
saw, with an anguish which partook of remorse, that the malady
was deep-seated—deep, deep beyond the reach of AEsculapius
and his drugs. Her imagination, little less lively than his own,
was awfully impressed by the strange confessions she had
heard, by the ravings of his delirium. Again and again, had
he shrieked forth : “It is there---there—by thy side, my
* This night it fearfully seized on me; my limbs appeared already in the power of death.
* •º
ZANONI. 247
sister l’’ He had transferred to her fancy the spectre, and the
horror that cursed himself. He perceived this, not by her
words, but her silence, by the eyes that strained into space, by
the shiver that came over her frame, by the start of terror, by
the look that did not dare to turn behind. Bitterly he repented
his confession ; bitterly he felt that between his sufferings and
human sympathy, there could be no gentle and holy com-
mune ; vainly he sought to retract; to undo what he had done;
to declare all was but the chimera of an overheated brain.
And brave and generous was this denial of himself ; for,
often and often, as he thus spoke, he saw the Thing of Dread
gliding to her side, and glaring at him as he disowned its being.
But what chilled him, if possible, yet more than her wasting
form and trembling nerves, was the change in her love for him ;
a natural terror had replaced it. She turned paler if he ap-
proached ; she shuddered if he took her hand. Divided from
the rest of earth, the gulf of the foul remembrance yawned
now between his sister and himself. He could endure no more
the presence of the one whose life his life had embittered. He
made some excuses for departure, and writhed to see that they
were greeted eagerly. The first gleam of joy he had detected
since that fatal night, on Adela's face, he beheld when he mur-
mured “Farewell.” He travelled for some weeks through the
wildest parts of Scotland ; scenery, which makes the artist, was
loveless to his haggard eyes. A letter recalled him to London,
on the wings of new agony and fear; he arrived to find his
sister in a condition both of mind and health which exceeded
his worst apprehensions.
Her vacant look, her lifeless posture, appalled him ; it was
as one who gazed on the Medusa's head, and felt, without a
struggle, the human being gradually harden to the statue. It
was not frenzy, it was not idiotcy; it was an abstraction, an
apathy, a sleep in waking. Only as the night advanced to-
wards the eleventh hour—the hour in which Glyndon had con-
cluded his tale—she grew vividly uneasy, anxious, and per-
turbed. Then her lips muttered, her hands writhed ; she
looked round with a look of unspeakable appeal for succor, for
protection ; and suddenly, as the clock struck, fell with a
shriek to the ground, cold and lifeless. With difficulty, and
not until after the most earnest prayers, did she answer the
agonized questions of Glyndon ; at last she owned that at that
hour, and that hour alone, wherever she was placed, however
occupied, she distinctly beheld the apparition of an old hag ;
who, after thrice knocking at the door, entered the room, and
248 ZANONI.
hobbling up to her with a countenance distorted by hideous
rage and menace, laid its icy fingers on her forehead ; from that
moment she declared that sense forsook her; and when she
woke again, it was only to wait, in suspense that froze up her
blood, the repetition of the ghastly visitation.
The physician who had been summoned before Glyndon's
return, and whose letter had recalled him to London, was a
commonplace practitioner; ignorant of the case, and honestly
anxious that one more experienced should be employed.
Clarence called in one of the most eminent of the faculty, and
to him he recited the optical delusion of his sister. The
physician listened attentively, and seemed sanguine in his
hopes of cure. He came to the house two hours before the
one so dreaded by the patient. He had quietly arranged that
the clocks should be put forward half an hour, unknown to
Adela, and even to her brother. He was a man of the most
extraordinary powers of conversation, of surpassing wit, of all
the faculties that interest and amuse. He first administered
to the patient a harmless potion, which he pledged himself
would dispel the delusion. His confident tone woke her own
hopes; he continued to excite her attention, to rouse her
lethargy ; he jested, he laughed away -the time. The hour
struck. “Joy, my brother ' " she exclaimed, throwing herself
, in his arms; “the time is past !” And then, like one released
from a spell, she suddenly assumed more than her ancient
cheerfulness. “Ah, Clarence ” she whispered, “forgive me
tor my former desertion—forgive me that I feared you. I
shall live—I shall live in my turn to banish the spectre that
haunts my brother l’’ And Clarence smiled and wiped the
tears from his burning eyes. The physician renewed his
stories, his jests. In the midst of a stream of rich humor, that
seemed to carry away both brother and sister, Glyndon sud-
denly saw over Adela's face the same fearful change, the same
anxious look, the same restless, straining eye, he had beheld
the night before. He rose—he approached her. Adela started
up. “Look—look—look " " she exclaimed. “She comes
Save me—save me !” and she fell at his feet in strong convul-
sions; as the clock, falsely and in vain put back, struck the half-
hour.
The physician lifted her in his arms. “My worst fears are
confirmed,” he said gravely ; “the disease is epilepsy.” “.
The next night at the same hour Adela G.yndon died.
*The most celebrated practitioner in Dublin related to the Editor a story of optical de-
lusion, precisely similar in its circumstances and its physical cause, to the one here nar.
rated,
ZANONI. 249
CHAPTER VI.
“La loi dont le régne vous épouvante a son glaive levé survous: elle vous
frappera tous ; le genre humain a beson de cet exemple.” *—CouTHON.
YS &
“OH, joy, joy thou art come again This is thy hand,
these thy lips. Say that thou didst not desert me from the love
of another; say it again—say it ever ! and I will pardon thee
all the rest ''
“So thou hast mourned for me?” .
“Mourned And thou wert cruel enough to leave me gold—
there it is—there—untouched ”
“Poor child of Nature . How, then, in this strange town of
Marseilles, hast thou found bread and shelter 2 ”
“Honestly, soul of my soul honestly, but yet by the face
thou didst once think so fair : thinkest thou that now 2 ”
“Yes, Fillide, more fair than ever. But what meanest
thou ?” e
, “There is a painter here: a great man, one of their great men
at Paris; I know not what they call them ; but he rules over all
here—life and death ; and he has paid me largely but to sit for
my portrait. It is for a picture to be given to the Nation, for
Jhe paints only for glory. Think of thy Fillide's renown ”
And the girl's wild eyes sparkled ; her vanity was roused.
“And he would have married me if I would ! Divorced his
wife to marry me ! But I waited for thee, ungrateful ”
A knock at the door was heard ; a man entered.
“Nicot ” “...
“Ah, Glyndon Hum ! Welcome ! What thou art twice
my rival But Jean Nicot bears no malice. Virtue is my dream,
my country, my mistress. Serve my country, citizen ; and I
forgive thee the preference of beauty. Ca ira / ga ira / "
But as the painter spoke, it hymned, it rolled through the
the streets—the fiery song of the Marseillaise ! There was a
crowd, a multitude, a people up, abroad, with colors and arms,
enthusiasm and song; with song, with enthusiasm, with colors
and arms. And who could guess that that martial movement
was one, not of war, but massacre—Frenchmen against French-
men 2 For their are two parties in Marseilles—and ample
work for Jourdan Coupe-tête But this, the Englishman,
just arrived, a stranger to all factions, did not as yet compre-
hend. He comprehended nothing but the song, the enthusiasm,
* The law, whose reign terrifies you, has its sword raised against you ; it will strike you
all ; humanity has need of this example,
#
25o ZANONI.
*~.
the arms, and the colors that lifted to the sun the glorious lie:
Le peuple Français debout contre les tyrams / "* .
The dark brow of the wretched wanderer grew animated;
he gazed from the window on the throng that marched below,
beneath their waving Oriflamme. They shouted as they beheld
the patriot Nicot, the friend of Liberty and relentless Hébert,
by the stranger's side, at the casement. *
“Ay, shout again ” cried the painter; “shout for the brave
Englishman who abjures his Pitts and his Coburgs to be a citi-
zen of Liberty and France . "
A thousand voices rent the air, and the hymn of the Marseil-
laise rose in majesty again.
“Well, and if it be among these high hopes and this brave
people that the phantom is to vanish, and the cure to come !”
muttered Glyndon; and he thought he felt again the elixir
sparkling through his veins.
“Thou shalt be one of the Convention with Paine and Clootz—
I will manage it all for thee / " cried Nicot, slapping him on
the shoulder; “and Paris—” p
“Ah, if I could but see Paris I’’ cried Fillide, in her joyous
voice. Joyous ! the whole time, the town, the air—save where,
unheard, rose the cry of agony and the yell of murder—were
joy | Sleep unhaunting in thy grave, cold Adela. Joy, joy
In the Jubilee of Humanity all private griefs should cease!
Behold, wild Mariner, the vast whirlpool draws thee to its stormy
bosom. There, the individual is not. All things are of the
whole ! Open thy gates, fair Paris, for the stranger-citizen
Receive in your ranks, O meek Republicans, the new champion
of liberty, of reason, of mankind “Mejnour is right; it was
in virtue, in valor, in glorious struggle for the human race, that
the spectre was to shrink to her kindred darkness.”
And Nicot's shrill voice praised him ; and lean Robespierre—
“Flambeau, colonne, pierre angulaire de l'édifice de la Répu-
blique” f—smiled ominously on him from his bloodshot eyes;
and Fillide, clasped him with passionate arms to her tender
breast. And at his up-rising and down-sitting, at board and in
bed, though he saw it not, the Nameless One guided him with
the daemon eyes to the sea, whose waves were gore. *
* Up, Frenchmen, against tyrants.
t “The light, column, and keystone of the Republic.” Lettre du Citoyen P—,
Papiers inédits trouyes chez Robespierre-Tom. II, p. ix.7.
ZANONT. 251
**
BOOK VI.-SUPERSTITION DESERTING
FAITH. *
“Why do I yield to that suggestion,
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair?”
—SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER I.
“Therefore the Genii were painted with a platter full of garlands and
ºrs in one hand, and a whip in the other.”—ALEXANDER Ross, Mystag.
Oéz.
Accorp ING to the order of the events related in this narra-
tive, the departure of Zanoni and Viola from the Greek Isle, in
which two happy years appear to have been passed, must have
been somewhat later in date than the arrival of Glyndon at
Marseilles. It must have been in the course of the year 1791
when Viola fled from Naples with her mysterious lover, and
when Glyndon sought Mejnour in the fatal Castle. It is now
towards the close of 1793, when our story again returns to
Zanoni. The stars of winter shone down on the Lagunes of
Venice. The hum of the Rialto was hushed, the last loiterers
had deserted the place of St. Mark's, and only at distant inter-
vals might be heard the oars of the rapid gondolas, bearing
reveller or lover to his home. But lights still flitted to and fro
across the windows of one of the Palladian palaces, whose
shadow slept in the great canal ; and within the Palace watched
the twin Eumenides, that never sleep for Man,—Fear, and Pain.
“I will make thee the richest man in all Venice, if thou
savest her.”
“Signor,” said the leech ; “your gold cannot control death,
and the will of Heaven ; Signor, unless within the next hour
there is some blessed change, prepare your courage.”
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 tempestu-
ous fear 2 Does thy spirit reel to and fro? Knowest thou at
last the strength and the majesty of Death 2
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, Oh silvery, azure flame !
252 --- ŻANONI.
Why comes he not—the Son of the Starbeam : Why is Adon-
Ai deaf to thy solemn call 2 It comes not—the luminous and
delightsome Presence Cabalist, are thy charms in vain 2
Has thy throne vanished from the realms of space 2 Thou
standest pale and trembling. Pale trembler, not thus didst
thou look, when the things of glory gathered at thy spell !
Never to the pale trembler bow the things of glory : the soul,
and not the herbs, nor the silvery azure flame, nor the spells of
the Cabala, conimands the children of the air ; and thy soul,
by Love and Death, is made sceptreless and discrowned
At length the flame quivers ; the air grows cold as the wind
in charnels. A thing not of earth is present—a mistlike, form-
less thing. It cowers in the distance—a silent Horror It
rises—it creeps—it nears thee—dark in its mantle of dusky
haze; and under its veil"it looks on thee with its livid, malig-
nant eyes—the thing of malignant eyes |
“Ha, young Chaldaean young in thy countless ages—young
as when, cold to pleasure and to beauty, thou stoodest on the
old Fire-tower, and heardest the starry silence whisper to thee
the last mystery that baffles Death, fearest thou Death at
length ! Is thy knowledge but a circle that brings thee back
whence thy wanderings began Generations on generations
have withered since we two met ! Lo! thou beholdest me now !”
“But I behold thee without fear ! Though beneath thine
eyes thousands have perished ; though, where they burn, spring
up the foul poisons of the human heart, and to those whom
thou ganst subject to thy will, thy presence glares in the
jº the raving maniac, or blackens the dungeon of de-
spairing crime, thou art not my vanquisher, but my slave ”
“And as a slave will I serve thee Command thy slave, O
beautiful Chaldaean : 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.
“Oh, Viola, I can save thee not l’exclaimed the Seer pas-
sionately. My love for thee has made me powerless ” *
“Not powerless; I can gift thee with the art to save her, I
can place healing in thy hand ' "
“For both 2 child and mother—for both 7"
“Both l’’
| ??
ZANONf. 253
A convulsion shook the limbs of the Seer—a mighty struggle
shook him as a child : the Humanity and the Hour conquered
the repugnant spirit.
“I yield ! Mother and child—save both !”
* * * * * * *
In the dark chamber lay Viola, in the sharpest agonies of
travail; life seemed rending itself away in the groans and cries
that spoke of pain in the midst of frenzy; and still, in groan
and cry, she called on Zanoni, her beloved. The physician
looked to the clock; on it beat—the Heart of Time—regularly
and slowly—Heart that never sympathized with Life, and
never flagged for Death ! “The cries are fainter,” said the
leech ; “in ten minutes more all will be past.”
Fool the minutes laugh at thee; Nature even now, like a
blue sky through a shattered temple, is smiling through the tor-
tured frame. The breathing grows more calm and hushed, the
voice of delinium is dumb, a sweet dream has come to Viola.
Is it a dream, or is it the soul that sees P 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 pray upon her ; the touch of his hand cools
the fever on her brow ; she hears his voice in murmurs—it is a
music from which the fiends fly. Where is the mountain that
seemed to press upon her temples 2 Like a vapor, it rolls away.
In the frosts of the winter night she sees the sun laughing in
luxurious heaven ; she hears the whisper of green leaves; the
beautiful world, valley, and stream, and woodland, lie before
her, and with a common voice speak to her—“We are not yet
past for theč ' " Fool of drugs and formula, look to thy dial-
plate –the hand has moved on ; the minutes are with Eternity ;
the soul thy sentence would have dismissed still dwells on the
shores of Time. She sleeps; the fever abates; the convul-
sions are gone ; the living rose blooms upon her cheek; the
crisis is past ! Husband, thy wife lives | Lover, thy universe
is no solitude. Heart of Time, beat on | A while—a little
while—joy joy joy | Father, embrace thy child !
CHAPTER II.
“Tristis Elinnys
Praetulit infaustas sanguinolenta faces.” +—OvID,
AND they placed the child in the father's arms As silently
he bent over it, tears—tears how human l—fell from his eyes like
* Erinnys, doleful and bloody, extends the unblessed torches.
254 ZANONI. -
rain' And the little one smiled through the tears that bathed
its cheeks Ah, with what happy tears we welcome the
stranger into our sorrowing world ! With what agonizing
tears we dismiss the stranger back to the angels | Unselfish
joy ; but how selfish is the sorrow !
And now through the silent chamber a faint, sweet voice is
heard—the young mother's voice.
“I am here : I am by thy side : " murmured Zanoni.
The mother Smiled, and clasped his hand, and asked no
more; she was contented.
:k * , * * Sk :}; *
Viola recovered with a rapidity that startled the physician ;
and the young stranger thrived as if it already loved the world
to which it had descended. From that hour Zanoni seemed
to live in the infant's life ; and in that life the souls of mother
and father met as in a new bond. Nothing more beautiful
than this infant had eye ever dwelt upon. It was strange to
the nurses that it came not wailing to the light, but smiled to
the light as a thing familiar to it before. It never uttered one
cry of childish pain. In its very repose it seemed to be listen-
ing to some happy voice within its heart : it seemed itself so
happy. In its eyes you would have thought intellect already
kindled, though it had not yet found a language. Already it
seemed to recognize its parents; already it stretched forth its
arms when Zanoni bent over the bed, in which it breathed and
bloomed, the budding flower And from that bed he was
rarely absent: gazing upon it with his serene, delighted eyes,
his soul seemed to feed its own. At night and in utter dark-
ness he was still there; and Viola often heard him murmuring
over it as she lay in a half sleep. But the murmur was in a
language strange to her ; and sometimes when she heard, she
feared, and vague, undefined superstitions came back to her—
the superstitions of earlier youth. A mother fears everything,
even the gods, for her newborn. The mortals shrieked aloud,
when of old they saw the great Demeter seeking to make their
child immortal |
But Zanoni, wrapt in the sublime designs that animated the
human love to which he was now awakened, forgot all, even all
he had forfeited or incurred, in the love that blinded him.
But the dark, formless thing, though he nor invoked nor saw
it, crept, often, round and . round him ; and often sat by the
infant's couch, with its hateful eyes.
*
ZANONI. 255
CHAPTER III.
“Fuscis tellurem amplectituralis.”*—VIRGIL.
LETTER FROM ZANONI TO MEJNou R.
MEJNOUR, Humanity, with all its sorrows and its joys, is
nine once more. Day by day, I am forging my own fetters.
I live in other lives than my own, and in them I have lost more
than half my empire. Not lifting them aloft, they drag me by
the strong bands of the affections to their own earth. Exiled
from the beings only visible to the most abstract sense, the grim
Enemy that guards the Threshold has entangled me in its web.
Canst thou credit me, when I tell thee that I have accepted its
gifts, and endure the forfeit. Ages must pass ere the brighter
beings can again obey the spirit that has bowed to the ghastly
one ! And—
* * * * * * * *
In this hope, then, Mejnour, I triumph still ; I yet have supreme
power over this young life. Insensibly and inaudibly my soul
speaks to its own, and prepares it even now. Thou knowest
that for the pure and unsullied infant spirit, the ordeal has no
terror and no peril. Thus unceasingly I nourish it with no
unholy light; and ere it yet be conscious of the gift, it will
gain the privileges it has been mine to attain : the child, by
slow and scarce-seen degrees, will communicate its own attri-
butes to the mother ; and content to see Youth forever radiant
on the brows of the two that now suffice to fill up my whole
infinity of thought, shall I regret the airier kingdom, that
vanishes hourly from my grasp? But thou, whose vision is
still clear and serene, look into the far deeps shut from my gaze,
and counsel me, or forewarn I' know that the gifts of the
Being whose race is so hostile to our own are, to the common
seeker, fatal and perfidious as itself. And hence, when, at the
outskirts of knowledge, which in earlier ages men called Magic,
they encountered the things of the hostile tribes, they believed
the apparitions to be fiends, and, by fancied compacts, imagined
they had signed away their souls ; as if man could give for an
eternity that over which he has control but while he lives |
Dark, and shrouded forever from human sight, dwell the daemon
rebels, in their impenetrable realm ; in them is no breath of
the Divine One. In every human creature the Divine One
breathes ; and He alone can judge His own hereafter, and allot
its new career and home. Could man sell himself to the fiend,
* Embraces the Earth with gloomy wings.
,”
..~ *
256 ZAN ONI.
man could prejudge himself, and arrogate the disposal of eter.
nity . But these creatures, modifications as they are of matter,
and some with more than the malignity of man, may well seem,
to fear and unreasoning superstition, the representatives of
fiends. And from the darkest and mightiest of them I have
accepted a boon—the secret that startled Death from those so
dear to me. Can I not trust that enough of power yet remains
to me, to baffle or to daunt the Phantom, if it seek to pervert
the gift 2 Answer me, Mejnour; for in the darkness that veils
me, I see only the pure eyes of the newborn ; I hear only the
low beating of my heart. Answer me, thou whose wisdom is
without love MEJNOUR TO ZANONI,
* - Rome.
FALLEN ONE I see before thee, Evil and Death, and Woe!
Thou to have relinquished Adon-Ai, for the nameless Terror—
the heavenly stars, for those fearful eyes | Thou, at the last
to be the victim of the Larva of the dreary Threshold, that, in
thy first novitiate, fled, withered and shrivelled, from thy kingly
brow ! When, at the primary grades of initiation, the pupil I
took from thee on the shores of the changed Parthenopé, fell
senseless and cowering before that Phantom-Darkness, I knew
that his spirit was not formed to front the worlds beyond ; for
FEAR is the attraction of man to earthiest earth ; and while he
fears, he cannot soar. But thou, seest thou not that to love is
but to fear 2 Seest thou not, that the power of which thou
boasted over the malignant one is already gone It awes, it
masters thee; it will mock thee, and betray. Lose not a
moment ; come to me. If there can yet be sufficient sympathy
between us, through my eyes shalt thou see, and perhaps guard
against the perils that, shapeless yet, and looming through the
shadow, marshal themselves àround thee and those whom thy
very love has doomed. Come from all the ties of thy fond
humanity ; they will but obscure thy vision | Come forth from
thy fears, and hopes, thy desires and passions. Come, as alone,
Mind can be the monarch and the seer, shining through the
home it tenants—a pure, impressionless, sublime intelligenceſ
CHAPTER IV.
“Plus que vous ne pensez ce moment est terrible.” ”
—LA HARPE, Me Comte de Warwick, act 3, sc. 5.
- For the first time since their union Zanoni and Viola were
separated—Zanoni went to Rome, on important business. “It
d * The moment is more terrible than you think.
ZAN ONI. 257
was,” he said, “but for a few days”; and he went so suddenly
that there was little time either for surprise or sorrow. But
first parting is always more melancholy than it need be ; it seems
an interruption to the existence which Love shares with Love;
it makes the heart feel what a void life will be, when the
last parting shall succeed, as succeed it must, the first. But
Viola had a new companion : she was enjoying that most de-
licious novelty which ever renews the youth, and dazzles the
eyes, of woman. As the mistress—the wife—she leans on an-
other ; from another are reflected her happiness, her being—
as an orb that takes light from its sun. But now, in turn, as
the mother, she is raised from dependence into power ; it is
another that leans on her—a star has sprung into space, to
which she herself has become the sun
A few days—but they will be sweet through the sorrow ! A
few days—every hour of which seems an era to the infant, over
whom bend watchful the eyes and the heart. 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
dprogress 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 Smile on, weep on,
young mother Already the fairest leaf in the wild volume is
closed for thee . And the invisible finger turns the page |
By the bridge of the Rialto stood two Venetians, ardent Re-
publicans and Democrats, looking to the Revolution of France
as the earthquake which must shatter their own expiring and
vicious constitution, and give equality of ranks and rights to
Venice.
“Yes, Cottalto,” said one ; “my correspondent of Paris has
promised to elude all obstacles, and baffle all danger. He will
arrange with us the hour of revolt, when the legions of France
shall be within hearing of our guns. One day in this week, at
this hour, he is to meet me here. This is but the fourth day.”
He had scarce said these words before a man, wrapped in his
roquelaire, emerging from one of the narrow streets to the left,
halted opposite the pair, and eyeing them for a few moments
with an earnest scrutiny, whispered : “Salut | "
258 ZANONI.
“Ff fratermite,” answered the speaker.
“You, then, are the brave Dandolo with whom the Comité
deputed me to correspond 2 And this citizen— ?”
“Is Cottalto, whom my letters have so often mentioned.” +
“Health and brotherhood to him I have much to impart
to you both. I will meet you at night, Dandolo. But in the
streets we may be observed.”
“And I dare not appoint my own house ; tyranny makes
spies of our very walls. But the place herein designated is se-
cure "; and he slipped an address into the hand of his corre-
spondent.
“To-night, then, at nine ! Meanwhile I have other busi-
ness.” The man paused, his color changed, and it was with an
eager and passionate voice that he resumed :
“Your last letter mentioned this wealthy and mysterious
visitor—this Zanoni. He is still at Venice 2 ”
“I heard that he had left this morning ; but his wife is still
here.”
“His wife I That is well ’’
“What know you of him 2 Think you that he would join,
us 2 His wealth would be—” *
“His house, his address—quick 1 ° interrupted the man. -
“The Palazzo di , on the Grand Canal.”
“I thank-you-at nine we meet.”
The man hurried on through the street from which he had
emerged ; and, passing by the house in which he had taken up
his lodging (he had arrived at Venice the night before), a wo-
man who stood by the door caught his arm.
“Monsieur,” she said in French, “I have been watching for
your return. Do you understand me 2 I will brave all, risk
all, to go back with you to France; to stand, through life or
in death, by my husband's side "
“Citoyenne, I promised your husband that, if such your
choice, I would hazard my own safety to aid it. But, think
again : Your husband is one of the faction which Robes-
pierre's eyes have already marked : he cannot fly. All France
is become a prison to the 'suspect.’ You do but endanger
yourself by return. Frankly, citoyenne, the fate you would
share may be the guillotine. I speak (as you know by his
letter) as your husband bade me.”
“Monsieur, I will return with you,” said the woman, with a
smile upon her pale face.
* I know not if the author of the original MSS. designs, under these names, to introduce
the real Cottalto and the true Dandolo, who, in 1797, distinguished themselves by their
sympathy with the French and their democratic ardor, ED.
- ZANON I.
* 259
“And yet, you deserted your husband in the fair sunshine
of the Revolution, to return to him amidst its storms and thun-
der ’’ said the man, in a tone half of wonder, half rebuke.
“Because my father's days were doomed ; because he had
no safety but in flight to a foreign land ; because he was old;
and penniless, and had none but me to work for him ; because
my husband was not then in danger, and my father was ; he is
dead—dead My husband is in danger now. The daughter's
duties are no more—the wife's return ”
“Be it so, citoyenne : on the third night I depart. Before
then you may retract your choice.”
“Never !”
A dark smile passed over the man’s face.
“O guillotine !” he said, “how many virtues hast thou
brought to light ! Well may they call thee ‘A Holy Mother,’
Ogory guillotine !”
He passed on, muttering to himself, hailed a gondola, and
was soon amidst the crowded waters of the Grand Canal.
CHAPTER V.
“Ce que j’ignore
Est plus triste peut-être et plus affreux encore.” +
—LA HARPE, Ze Comte de Warwick,” act 5, sc. I.
THE casement stood open, and Viola was seated by it. Be-
neath sparkled the broad waters, in the cold but cloudless sun-
light; and to that fair form, that half-averted face, turned the
eyes of many a gallant cavalier, as their gondolas glided by.
But at last, in the centre of the canal, one of these dark
vessels halted motionless, as a man fixed his gaze from its
lattice upon that stately palace. He gave the word to the
rowers, the vessel approached the marge. The stranger quitted
the gondola ; he passed up the broad stairs; he entered the
palace. Weep on Smile no more, young mother l—the last
page is turned ū
An attendant entered the foom, and gave to Viola a card,
with these words in English: “Viola, I must see you ! Clar-
ence Glyndon.”
Oh, yes, how gladly Viola would see him " How gladly speak
to him of her happiness—of Zanoni ! How gladly show to
him her child ! Poor Clarence 1 she had forgotten him till
now, as she had all the fever of her earlier life—its dreams, its
* That which I know not is, perhaps, more sad and fearful still,
*
\
26o * ZANONI.
vanities, its poor excitements, the lamps of the gaudy theatre,
the applause of the noisy crowd.
He entered. She started to behold him, so changed were
his gloomy brow, his resolute, careworn features, from the
grâceful form and careless countenance of the artist-lover. His
dress, though not mean, was rude, neglected, and disordered.
A wild, desperate, half-savage air had supplanted that ingenu-
ous mien—diffident in its grace, earnest in its diffidence,—
which had once characterized the young worshipper of Art,
the dreaming Aspirant after some starrier lore
“Is it you ?” she said at last. “Poor Clarence, how changed . "
“Changed ' " he said abruptly, as he placed himself by her
side. “And whom am I to thank, but the fiends, the sorcerers,
who have seized upon thy existence, as upon mine 2 Viola,
hear me. A few weeks since, the news reached me that you
were in Venice. Under other pretences, and through innumer-
able dangers, I have come hither, risking liberty, perhaps life,
if my name and career are known in Venice, to warn and
save you. Changed you call me ! Changed without ; but
what is that to the ravages within P Be warned, be warned in
time !”
The voice of Glyndon, sounding hollow and sepulchral,
alarmed Viola even more than his words. Pale, haggard,
emaciated, he seemed almost as one risen from the dead, to
appall and awe her. “What,” she said at last, in a faltering
voice, “what wild words do you utter | Can you—”
“Listen l’’ interrupted Glyndon, laying his hand upon her
arm, and its touch was as cold as death—“listen You have
heard of the old stories of men who have leagued themselves
with devils for the attainment of preternatural powers. Those
stories are not fables. Such men live. Their delight is to in-
crease the unhallowed circle of wretches like themselves. If
their proselytes fail in the ordeal, the daemon seizes them, even
in this life, as it hath seized me ! If they succeed, woe, yea, a
more lasting woe There is another life, where no spells can
charm the evil one, or allay the, torture. I have come from a
scene where blood flows in rivers; where Death stands by the
side of the bravest and the highest, and the one monarch is
the Guillotine; but all the mortal perils with which men can
be beset, are nothing to the dreariness of a chamber where the
Horror that passes death moves and stirs ”
It was then that Glyndon, with a cold and distinct precision,
detailed, as he had done to Adela, the initiation through which
he had gone. He described in words that froze the blood of
f
&
ZAN ONI. 261
his listener, the appearance of that formless phantom, with
the eyes that seared the brain and congealed the marrow of
those who beheld. Once seen it never was to be exorcised. It
came at its own will, prompting black thoughts, whispering
strange temptations. Only in scenes of turbulent excitement
was it absent Solitude, Serenity, the struggling desires after
peace and virtue—these were the elements it lovéd to haunt
Bewildered, terror-stricken, the wild account confirmed by the
dim impressions that never, in the depth and confidence of
affection, had been ciosely examined, but rather banished as
soon as felt ; that the life and attributes of Zanoni were not
like those of mortals—impressions which her own love had
made her hitherto censure, as suspicions that wronged, and
which, thus mitigated, had perhaps only served to rivet the
fascinated chains in which he bound her heart and senses, but
which now, as Glyndon's awful narrative filled her with con-
tagious dread, half unbound the very spells they had woven be-
fore, Viola started up in fear—not for herself ; and clasped
her child in her arms
“ Unbappiest one !” cried Glyndon, shuddering, “ hast thou
indeed given birth to a victim thou canst not save Refuse it
sustenance ; let it look to thee in vain for food In the grave,
at least there are repose and peace . "
Then there came back to Viola's mind the remembrance of
Zanoni's night-long watches by that cradle, and the fear which
even then had crept over her as she heard his murmured, half-
chanted words. And, as the child looked at her with its clear,
steadfast eye, in the strange intelligence of that look there was
something that only confirmed her ayve. So there both Mother
and Forewarner stood in silence, the sun smiling upon them
through the casement, and dark, by the cradle, though they
saw it not, sate the motionless veiled Thing !
But by degrees better, and juster, and more grateful mem.
ories of the past returned to the young mother. The features
of the infant, as she gazed, took the aspect of the absent father.
A voice seemed to break from those rosy lips, and say mourns
fully: “I speak to thee in thy child. In return for all my
love for thee and thine, dost thou distrust me, at the first sen-
tence of a maniac who accuses P’’ es
Her breast heaved, her stature rose, her eyes shone with a
serene and holy light.
“Go, poor victim of thine own delusions,” she said to Glyn
don; “I would not believe mine own senses, if they accused
its father'ſ And what knowest thou of Zanoni What relation
262 ZANONI.
have Mejnour and the grisly spectres he invoked, with the
radiant image with which thou wouldst connect them l’’
“Thou wilt learn too soon,” replied Glyndon gloomily. “And
the very phantom that haunts me whispers, with its bloodless
lips, that its horrors await both thine and thee! I take not
thy decision yet; before I leave Venice we shall meet again.”
He said, and departed.
CHAPTER VI.
“Quel est l'égarement ou ton àme se livre 2 "*
—LA HARPE, Le Comte de Warwick, act. 4, sc. 4.
ALAs, Zanoni, the Aspirer, the dark bright one, didst thou
think that the bond between the survivor of ages and the
daughter of a day could endure ? Didst thou not foresee that,
until the ordeal was past, there could be no equality between
thy wisdom and her love 2 Art thou absent now, seeking,
amidst thy solemn secrets, the solemn safeguards for child and
mother, and forgettest thou that the phantom that served thee
hath power over its own gifts—over the lives it taught thee to
rescue from the grave 2 Dost thou not know that Fear and
Distrust, once sown in the heart of Love, spring up from the
seed into a forest that excludes the stars? Dark bright one,
the hateful eyes glare beside the mother and the child !
All that day Viola was distracted by a thousand thoughts
and terrors, which fled as she examined them, to settle back
the darklier. She remembered that, as she had once said to
Glyndon, her very childhood had been haunted with strange
forebodings that she was ordained for some preternatural
doom. She remembered that, as she had told him this, sitting
by the seas that slumbered in the arms of the Bay of Naples,
he, too, had acknowledged the same forebodings, and a mys-
terious sympathy had appeared to unite their fates. She
remembered, above all, that, comparing their entangled thoughts,
both had, then, said that with the first sight of Zanoni the
foreboding, the instinct, had spoken to their hearts more
audibly than before, whispering that “with HIM was connected
the secret of the unconjectured life.”
And now, when Glyndon and Viola met again, the haunting
fears of childhood, thus referred to, woke from their enchanted
sleep. With Glyndon's terror she felt a sympathy, against
which her reason and her love struggled in vain. And still,
when she turned her looks upon her child, it watched her with
* To what delusion does thy soul abandon itself?
*
* ZANONI. 263
that steady, earnest eye, and its lips moved as if it sought to
speak to her; but no sound came. The infant refused to
sleep. Whenever she gazed upon its face, still those wakeful,
watchful eyes 1 and in their earnestness, there spoke some-
thing of pain, of upbraiding, of accusation. They chilled her
as she looked. Unable to endure, of herself, this sudden and
complete revulsion of all the feelings which had hitherto made
up her life, she formed the resolution natural to her land and
Creed ; she sent for the priest who had habitually attended
her at Venice, and to him she confessed, with passionate sobs
and intense terror, the doubts that had broken upon her.
The good father, a worthy and pious man, but with little
education and less sense, one who held (as many of the lower
Italians do to this day) even a poet to be a sort of sorcerer,
seemed to shut the gates of hope upon her heart. His remon.
strances were urgent, for his horror was unfeigned. He joined
with Glyndon in imploring her to fly if she felt the smallest
doubt that her husband's pursuits were of the nature which
the Roman Church had benevolently burned so many scholars
for adopting. And even the little that Viola could communi-
cate seemed, to the ignorant ascetic, irrefragable proof of
sorcery and witchcraft; he had, indeed, previously heard
some of the strange rumors which followed the path of Zanoni,
and was therefore prepared to believe the worst; the worthy
Bartoloméo would have made no bones of sending Watt to the
stake had he heard him speak of the steam-engine ! But Viola,
as untutored as himself, was terrified by his rough and vehe-
ment eloquence ; terrified, for by that penetration which
Catholic priests, however dull, generally acquire, in their vast
experience of the human heart hourly exposed to their probe,
Bartoloméo spoke less of danger to herself than to her child.
“Sorcerers,” said he, “have ever sought the most to decoy and
seduce the souls of the young—nay, the infant ’’; and there-
with he entered into a long catalogue of legendary fables,
which he quoted as historical facts; all at which an English
woman would have smiled, appalled the tender but superstitous
Neapolitan ; and when the priest left her, with solemn rebukes
and grave accusations of a dereliction of her duties to her
child, if she hesitated to fly with it from an abode polluted by
the darker powers and unhallowed arts, Viola, still clinging to
the image of Zanoni, sunk into a passive lethargy, which held
her very reason in suspense.
The hours passed ; night came on ; the house was hushed ;
and Viola, slowly awakened from the numbness and torpor
264 ZAN ONI.
*:
which had usurped her faculties, tossed to and fro on her
couch, restless and perturbed. The stillness became intoler-
able ; yet more intolerable the sound that alone broke it, the
voice of the clock, knelling moment after moment to its grave.
The Moments, at last, seemed themselves to find voice, to gain
shape. She thought she beheld them springing, wan and fairy-
like, from the womb of darkness; and ere they fell again, ex-
tinguished, into that womb, their grave, their low, small voices
murmured : “Woman, we report to eternity all that is done in
time ! What shall we report of thee, O guardian of a new-
born soul ?” She became sensible that her fancies had
brought a sort of partial delirium, that she was in a state be-
tween sleep and waking, when suddenly one thought became
more predominant than the rest. The chamber which, in that
and every house they had inhabited, even that in the Greek
isles, Zanoni had set apart to a solitude on which none might
intrude, the threshold of which even Viola's step was forbid to
cross, and never, hitherto, in that sweet repose of confidence
which belongs to contented love, had she even felt the curious
desire to disobey—now, that chamber drew her towards it.
Perhaps, there, might be found a somewhat to solve the riddle,
to dispel or confirm the doubt: that thought grew and deep-
ened in its intenseness; it fastened on her as with a palpable and
irresistible grasp: it seemed to raise her limbs without her will.
And now, through the chamber, along the galleries thou
glidest, O lovely shape | Sleep-walking, yet awake. The
moon shines on thee as thou glidest by casement after case-
ment, white-robed and wandering spirit; thine arms crossed
upon thy bosom, thine eyes fixed and open, with a calm un-
fearing awe. Mother, it is thy child that leads thee on. The
fairy Moments go before thee. Thou hearest still the clock-
knell tolling them to their graves behind. On, gliding on,
thou hast gained the door ; no lock bars thee, no magic spell
drives thee back. Daughter of the dust, thou standest alone
with Night in the chamber where, pale and numberless, the
hosts of space have gathered round the seer
CHAPTER VII.
‘‘ Des Erdenlebens
Schweres Traumbild sinkt, und sinkt, und sinkt.””
—/)as Zdeal und das Lebens.
SHE stood within the chamber, and gazed around her ; no-
signs by which an Inquisitor of old could have detected
* The Dream-Shape of the heavy earthly life sinks, and sinks, and sinks.
ZANONI. 265
the Scholar of the Black Art were visible. No crucibles and
caldrons, no brass-bound volumes and ciphered girdles, no
skulls and cross-bones. Quietly streamed the broad moon-
light through the desolate chamber with its bare white walls.
A few bunches of withered herbs, a few antique vessels of
bronze, placed carelessly on a wooden form, were all which
that curious gaze could identify with the pursuits of the absent
owner. The magic, if it existed, dwelt in the artificer, and the
materials, to other hands, were but herbs and bronze. So is it
ever with thy works and wonders, O Genius, Seeker of the
Stars Words themselves are the common property of all
men ; yet, from words themselves, Thou, Architect of Im-
mortalities, pilest up temples that shall outlive the Pyramids,
and the very leaf of the Papyrus becomes a Shinar, stately with
towers, round which the Deluge of Ages shall roar in vain
But in that solitude has the Presence that there had invoked
its wonders left no enchantment of its own It seemed so ;
for as Viola stood in the chamber, she became sensible that
some mysterious change was at work within herself. Her
blood coursed rapidly, and with a sensation of delight, through
her veins; she felt as if chains were falling from her limbs, as
if cloud after cloud was rolling from her gaze. All the con-
fused thoughts which had moved through her trance, settled
and centered themselves in one intense desire to see the Ab-
sent One, to be with him. The monads that make up space
and air seemed charged with a spiritual attraction; to become
a medium through which her spirit could pass from its clay,
and confer with the spirit to which the unutterable desire com.
pelled it. A faintness seized her ; she tottered to the seat on
which the vessels and herbs were placed, and, as she bent
down, she saw in one of the vessels a small vase of crystal. By
a mechanical and involuntary impulse her hand seized the vase ;
she opened it, and the volatile essence it contained sparkled
up, and spread through the room a powerful and delicious
fragrance. She inhaled the odor, she laved her temples with
the liquid, and suddenly her life seemed to spring up from the
previous faintness : to spring, to soar, to float, to dilate, upon
the wings of a bird.
The room vanished from her eyes. Away—away, over
lands, and seas, and space, on the rushing desire flies the dis-
prisoned mind
Upon a stratum, not of this world, stood the world-born
shapes of the sons of Science ; upon an embryo world, upon a
crude, wan, attenuated mass of matter, one of the Nebulae,
266 ZAN ON I. - *-.
Aº
which the suns of the myriad systems throw off as they roll
round the Creator's throne,” to become themselves new worlds
of symmetry and glory—planets and Suns, that forever and
forever shall in their turn multiply their shining race, and be
the fathers of suns and planets yet to come. •
There in that enormous solitude of an infant world, which
thousands and thousands of years can alone ripen into form,
the spirit of Viola beheld the shape of Zanoni, or rather the
likeness, the simulacrum, the LEMUR of his shape, not its hu-
man and corporeal substance,—as if, like hers, the Intelligence
was parted from the Clay; and as the sun, while it revolves
and glows, had cast off into remotest space that Nebular image
of itself, so the thing of earth, in the action of its more lumi-
nous and enduring being, had thrown its likeness into that new-
born stranger of the heavens. There stood the phantom, a
phantom of Mejnour by its side. In the gigantic chaos around
raved and struggled the kindling elements—water and fire,
darkness and light, at war—vapor and cloud hardening into
mountains, and the Breath of Life moving like a steadfast
splendor over all ! *
As the dreamer looked, and shivered, she beheld that even
there the two phantoms of humanity were not alone. Dim
monster-forms that that disordered chaos alone could engen-
der, the first reptile colossal race that wreathe and crawl
through the earliest stratum of a world laboring into life, coiled
in the oozing matter or hovered through the meteorous vapors.
But these the two seekers seemed not to heed ; their gaze was
fixed intent upon an object in the farthest space. With the
eyes of the spirit, Viola followed theirs; with a terror far
greater than the chaos and its hideous inhabitants produced,
she beheld a shadowy likeness of the very room in which her
form yet dwelt, its white walls, the moonshine sleeping on its
floor, its open casement, with the quiet roofs and domes of
Venice looming over the sea that sighed below ; and in that
room the ghost-like image of herself This double phantom—
* “Astronomy instructs us, that in the original condition of the solar system, the sun was
the nucleus of a nebulosity or luminous mass, which revolved on its axis, and extended far
beyond the orbits of all the planets; the planets as yet having no existence. Its tempera-
ture gradually diminished, and becoming contracted by cooling, the rotation increased in
rapidity, and zones of nebulosity were successively thrown off, in consequence of the cen-
trifugal force overpowering the central attraction. The condensation of these separate
masses constituted the planets and satellites. But this view of the conversion of gaseous
matter into planetary bodies is not limited to our own system : it extends to the formation
of the innumerable suns and worlds which are distributed throughout the universe. The
sublime discoveries of modern astronomers have shown that every part of the realms of
space abounds in large expansions of attenuated matter termed meðulae, which are irregularly
reflective of light, of various figures, and in different states of condensation, from that of a
diffused luminous mass to suns and planets like our own.”—From Mantell's eloquent and
delightful work, entitled, “The Wondels of Geology,” vol. i., p. 22.
-*
Asºº
ZAN ONI. 267
here herself a phantom, gazing there upon a phantom-self—had
in it a horror which no words can tell, no length of life forego.
But presently she saw this image of herself rise slowly, leave
the room with its noiseless feet—it passes the corridor—it
kneels by a cradle ! Heaven of Heaven she beholds her
child —still with its wondrous childlike beauty and its silent
wakeful eyes. 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 cham-
ber seem to open as the scene of a theatre. A grim dungeon—
streets through which pour shadowy clouds—wrath, and hatred,
and the aspect of daemons 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. It sprang towards her;
her spirit could bear no more. She shrieked, she woke She
found that in truth she had left that dismal chamber ; the
cradle was before her—the child ! all—all as that trance had
seen it, and, vanishing into air, even that dark, formless Thing !
“My child ! my child ! thy mother shall save thee yet !”
CHAPTER VIII.
“Qui 2 Toi ! m’abandonner, où vas-tu ? non demeure,
Demeure | **—LAHARPE, Ze Comte de Warwick, act 3, sc. 5.
LETTER FROM VIOLA TO ZANONI.
“ IT has come to this I am the first to part I, the un-
faithful one, bid thee farewell forever. 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 J 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
track 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 Shall
I tell thee why I part 2 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
* Who? Thou abandon me * Where goest thou ? No, stay, stay !
4.
sº
268 ZAN ONI.
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 | Pardon, pardon, if my words
wrong thee. See, I fall on my knees to write the rest
“Why did I never recoil from thy mysterious lore ? Why did
the very strangeness of thine unearthly life only fascinate me
with a delightful fear 2 Because, if thou wert sorcerer or angel-
daemon, there was no peril to other than myself ; and none to me,
for my love was my heavenliest part ; and my ignorance in all
things, except the art to love thee, repelled every thought that
was not bright and glorious as thine image to my eyes. But
Now there is another | Look, why does it watch me thus 2
Why that never-sleeping, earnest, rebuking gaze P Have thy
spells encompassed it already ? Hast thou marked it, cruel
one, for the terrors of thy unutterable art 2 Do not madden
me—do not madden me ! Unbind the spell !
“Hark! the oars without ! They come—they come, to
bear me from thee / I look round, and methinks that I see
thee everywhere. Thou speakest to me from every shadow,
from every star. There, by the casement, thy lips last pressed
mine ; there, there by that threshold didst thou turn again, and
thy smile seemed so trustingly to confide in me ! Zanoni
Husband I will stay ! I cannot part from thee / No, no
I will go to the room where thy dear voice, with its gentle
music, assuaged the pangs of travail —where, heard through
the thrilling darkness, it first whispered to my ear ‘Viola, thou
art a mother ' ' A mother | Yes, I rise from my knees—I am
a mother They come ! I am firm ; farewell !”
Yes; thus suddenly, thus cruelly, whether in, the delirium
of blind and unreasoning Superstition, or in the resolve of that
conviction which springs from duty, the being for whom he had
resigned so much of empire and of glory forsook Zanoni.
This desertion, never foreseen, never anticipated, was yet but
the constant fate that attends those who would place Mind
beyond the earth, and yet treasure the Heart within it. Igno-
rance everlastingly shall recoil from knowledge. But never
yet, from nobler and purer motives of self-sacrifice, did human
love link itself to another, than did the forsaking wife now
abandon the absent. For rightly had she said, that it was not
the faithless wife, it was the faithful mother that fled from all
in which her earthly happiness was centered.
|
3.
*
ZAN ONI. 269
Á
As long as the passion and fervor that impelled the act ani-
mated her with false fever, she clasped her infant to her breast,
and was consoled—resigned. But what bitter doubt of her
own conduct, what icy pang of remorse shot through her heart,
when, as they rested for a few hours on the road to Leghorn,
she heard the woman who accompanied herself and Glyndon
pray for safety to reach her husband's side, and strength to
share the perils that would meet her there ! Terrible contrast
to her own desertion She shrunk into the darkness of her
own heart, and then no voice from within consoled her.
CHAPTER IX.
“Zukunft hast du mir gegeben,
Doch du nehmst den Augenblick.” ”
—A assandra.
“MEJNour, behold thy work | Out, out, upon our little
vanities of wisdom | Out, upon our ages of lore and life To
save her from Peril, I left her presence, and the Peril has seized
her in its grasp !”
“Chide not thy wisdom, but thy passions ! Abandon thine
idle hope of the love of woman. See, for those who would
unite the lofty with the lowly, the inevitable curse; thy very
nature uncomprehended, thy sacrifices unguessed. The lowly
one views but in the lofty a necromancer or a fiend. Titan,
canst thou weep ’’’
“I know it now—I see it all ! It was her spirit that stood
beside our own, and escaped my airy clasp ! O strong desire
of motherhood and nature unveiling all our Secrets, piercing
space, and traversing worlds ! Mejnour, whât awful learning
lies hid in the ignorance of the heart that loves | "
“The heart,” answered the Mystic coldly; “Ay, for five
thousand years I have ransacked the mysteries of creation ; but
I have not yet discovered all the wonders in the heart of the
simplest boor ”
“Yet our solemn rites deceived us not ; the prophet-shad-
ows, dark with terror and red with blood, still foretold that,
even in the dungeon, and before the deathsman, I–/ had the
power to save them both !”
“But at some unconjectured and most fatal sacrifice to
thyself.” *...
“To myself Icy sage, there is no self in love | I go.
* Futurity hast thou given to me—yet thou takest from me the Moment,
4
27o - ZANONI.
Nay, alone ; I want thee not. I want now no other guide but
the human instincts of affection. No cave-so dark, no solitude
so vast, as to conceal her. Though mine art fail me ; though
the stars heed me not ; though space, with its shining myriads,
is again to me but the azure void, I return but to love, and
youth, and hope When have they ever failed to triumph and
to save ”
BOOK VII. THE REIGN OF TERROR.
“Orrida maestà nel fero aspetto
Terrore accresce, e più superbo il rende ;
Rosseggian gli occhi, e di veneno infetto
Come infausta cometa, il guardo Splende.
Gli involve il mento, e sull 'irsuto petto
Ispida e folta la gran barbe scende ;
B in guisa di voragine profonda
S'apre la bocca d'airo sangue immonda.” ”
—Ger. Lib., cant. iv. 7.
CHAPTER I.
“Qui suis-je, moi qu'on accuse 2 Un esclave de la liberté, un martyr
vivant de la République " +–Discours de Robespierre, 8 Thermidor.
IT roars—the River of Hell, whose first outbreak was
chaunted as the gush of a channel to Elysium. How burst into
blossoming hopes fair hearts that had nourished themselves on
the diamond dews of the rosy dawn, when Liberty came from
the dark ocean, and the arms of decrepit Thraldom—Aurora
from the bed of Tithon Hopes, ye have ripened into fruit,
and the fruit is gore and ashes | Beautiful Roland, eloquent
Vergniaud, visionary Condorcet, high-hearted Malesherbes |
Wits, philosophers, statesmen, patriots, dreamers behold the
millennium for which ye dared and labored
I invoke the ghosts Saturn hath devoured his children,
and lives alone—in his true name of Moloch *jº-
It is the Reign of Terror, with Robespierre the king. The
struggles between the boa and the lion are past ; the boa has
consumed the lion, and is heavy with the gorge ; Danton has
fallen, and Camille Desmoulins. Danton had said before his
* A hoi rible majesty in the fierce aspect increases its terror, and renders it more superb.
Red glow the eyes and the aspect infected, like a baleful comet, evenomed influences,
glared around. A vast beard covels the chin—and, longh and thick, descends over the
shaggy breast. And like a profound gulf expands the jaws, foul with black gore,
f Who am I, I whom they accuse A slave of Liberty, a living martyr for the Republic,
# La Révolution est comme Saturne, elle dévorera tous ses enfans.—VERGNIAUp.
gºt
ŻANONI. 27 F
death, “The poltroon Robespierre, I alone could have saved
him.” From that hour, indeed, the blood of the dead giant
clouded the craft of “Maximilien the Incorruptible,” as at last,
amidst the din of the roused Convention, it choked his voice.*
If, after that last sacrifice, essential, perhaps, to his safety.
Robespierre had proclaimed the close of the Reign of Terror,
and acted upon the mercy which Danton had begun to preach,
he might have lived and died a monarch. But the prisons cons
tinued to reek, the glaive to fall ; and Robespierre perceived
not that his mobs were glutted to satiety with death, and the
strongest excitement a chief could give would be a return from
devils into men.
We are transported to a room in the house of Citizen Du-
pleix, the ménuisier, in the month of July, 1794; or in the calendar
of the Revolutionists it was the Thermidor of the Second Year
of the Republic, One and Indivisible Though the room was
small, it was furnished and decorated with a minute and care-
ful effort at elegance and refinement. It seemed, indeed, the
desire of the owner to avoid at once what was mean and rude,
and what was luxurious and voluptuous. It was a trim, orderly,
precise grace that shaped the classic chairs, arranged the ample
draperies, sunk the frameless mirrors into the wall, placed bust
and bronze on their pedestals, and filled up the niches here and
there with well-bound books, filed regularly in their appointed
ranks. An observer would have said: “This man wishes to
imply to you—I am not rich ; I am not ostentatious ; I am not
luxurious ; I am no indolent Sybarite, with couches of down,
and pictures that provoke the sense; I am no haughty noble,
with spacious halls, and galleries that awe the echo. But so
much the greater is my merit if I disdain these excesses of the
ease or the pride, since I love the elegant, and have a taste |
Others may be simple and honest, from the very coarseness of
their habits; if I, with so much refinement and delicacy, am
simple and honest–reflect, and admire me !”
On the walls of this chamber hung many portraits ; most of
them represented but one face; on the formal pedestals were
grouped many busts, most of them sculptured but one head.
In that small chamber Egotism sat Supreme, and made the Arts
its looking-glasses. Erect in a chair, before a large table spread
with letters, sat the original of bust and canvas, the owner of
the apartment. He was alone, yet he sat erect, formal, stiff,
* Le sang de Danton t”étouffe l’’ (the blood of Danton chokes thee) said Garnier de
l'Aube, when, on the fatal 9th of Thermidor, Robespierre gašped feebly forth-" Pour la
dernière fois, Président des Assassins, je te demande la parole.” (For the last time, Presi-
dent of Assassins, I demand to speak.)
272 ZANONI.
*
precise, as if in his very home he was not at ease. His dress
was in harmony with his posture and his chamber, it affected a
neatness of its own, foreign both to the sumptuous fashions of
the deposed nobles, and the filthy ruggedness of the sans cu-
Joſſes. Frizzled and coiffe, not a hair was out of order, not a
speck lodged on the sleek surface of the blue coat, not a wrin-
kle crumpled the snowy vest, with its under relief of delicate
pink. At the first glance, you might have seen in that face
nothing but the ill-favored features of a sickly countenance.
At a second glance you would have perceived that it had a
power, a character of its own. The forehead, though low and
compressed, was not without that appearance of thought and
intelligence which, it may be observed, that breadth between
fhe eyebrows almost invariably gives; the lips were firm and
tightly drawn together, yet ever and anon they trembled, and
writhed restlessly. The eyes, sullen and gloomy, were yet
-piercing, and full of a concentrated vigor, that did not seem
supported by the thin, feeble frame, or the green lividness of
the hues which told of anxiety and disease.
Such was Maximilien Robespierre; such the chamber over
the ménuisier's shop, whence issued the edicts that launched
armies on their career of glory, and ordained an artificial con-
duit to carry off the blood that deluged the metropolis of the
most martial people in the globe | Such was the man who had
resigned a judicial appointment (the early object of his ambi-
tion), rather than violate his philanthropical principles, by sub-
scribing to the death of a single fellow-creature | Such was
the virgin enemy to capital punishments, and such, Butcher-
Dictator now, was the man whose pure and rigid manners, whose
incorruptible honesty, whose hatred of the excesses that tempt
to love and wine, would—had he died five years earlier—have
left him the model for prudent fathers and careful citizens to
place before their sons. Such was the man who seemed to
have no vice, till circumstance, that hotbed, brought forth the
two which, in ordinary times, lie ever the deepest and most
latent in a man's heart—Cowardice and Envy. To one of
these sources is to be traced every murder that master-fiend
committed. His cowardice was of a peculiar and strange sort;
for it was accompanied with the most unscrupulous and deter-
mined wil/—a will that Napoleon reverenced, a will of iron, and
yet nerves of aspen. Mentally, he was a hero ; physically, a
dastard. When the veriest shadow of danger threatened his
person, the frame cowered, but the will swept the danger to the
slaughter-house. “So there he sat, bolt upright, his small, lean
t
ZAN ÖNi. 273 -
fingers clenched convulsively, his sullen eyes straining into
space, their whites yellowed with streaks of corrupt blood, his
ears literally moving to and fro like the ignobler animals', to
catch every sound—a Dionysius in his cave—but his posture
decorous and collected, and every formal hair in its frizzled place.
“Yes, yes,” he said in a muttered tone, “I hear them ; my
good Jacobins are at their post on the stairs. Pity they swear
so | I have a law against oaths ; the manners of the poor and
virtuous speople must be reformed. When all is safe, an
example or two amongst those good Jacobins would make
effect. Faithful fellows, how they love me ! Hum ! What an
oath was that ' They need not swear so loud—upon the very
staircase, too ! It detracts from my reputation. Ha steps ' "
The soliloquist glanced at the opposite mirror, and took up
a volume; he seemed absorbed in its contents, as a tall fellow,
a bludgeon in his hand, a girdle, adorned with pistols, round
his waist, opened the door, and announced two visitors. The
one was a young man, said to resemble Robespierre in person ;
but of a far more decided and resolute expression of counte-
nance. He entered first, and looking over the volume in Robes-
pierre's hand, for the latter seemed still intent on his lecture,
exclaimed :
“What Rousseau's Heloïse 2 A love tale !”
“Dear Payan, it is not the love, it is the philosophy that
charms me. What noble sentiments | What ardor of virtue !
If Jean Jacques had but lived to see this day !”
While the Dictator thus commented on his favorite author,
whom, in his orations, he labored hard to imitate, the second
visitor was wheeled into the room in a chair. This man was
also in what, to most, is the prime of life, viz., about thirty-
eight; but he was literally dead in the lower limbs; Crippled,
paralytic, distorted, he was yet, as the time soon came to tell
him, a Hercules in Crime ! But the sweetest of human smiles
dwelt upon his lips, a beauty almost angelic characterized his
features ;..* an inexpressible aspect of kindness, and the resig-
nation of suffering but cheerful benignity, stole into the hearts
of those who for the first time beheld him. With the most
caressing, silver, flute-like voice, Citizen Couthon saluted the
admirer of Jean Jacques.
* “Figure d’ange,” says one of his contemporaries, in describing Couthon. . The ad-
dress, drawn up most probably by Payam (Thermidor 9), after the arrest of Robespierre,
thus mentions his crippled colleague : “Couthon, ce citoyen vertueux, qui m'a gue le
carur et la fête de vivaxs, mais quiles a brûlants de patriotisme.””
* Couthon, that virtuous citizen, who has but the head and heart of the living, yet
possesses those ail on flame with patriotism.
• 274 ZAN ON."
~.
“Nay, do not say that it is not the love that attracts thee; it
is the love | But not the gross, sensual attachment of man for
woman. No 1 the sublime affection for the whole human race,
and, indeed, for all that lives | "
And Citizen Couth on, bending down, fondled the little
spaniel that he invariably carried in his bosom, even to the
Convention, as a vent for the exuberant sensibilities which
overflowed his affectionate heart.*
“Yes, for all that lives,” repeated Robespierre etenderly.
“Good Couthon—poor Couthon Ah, the malice of men How
we are misrepresented . To be calumniated as the executioners
of our colleagues Ah, it is that which pierces the heart ' To
be an object of terror to the enemies of our country, that is
noble ; but to be an object of terror to the good, the patriotic,
to those one loves and reveres, that is the most terrible of
human tortures; at least to a susceptible and honest heart | "f
“How I love to hear him " " ejaculated Couthon.
“Hem ’ ” said Payan, with some impatience. “But now to
business ''' *
“Ah, to business " " said Robespierre, with a sinister glance
from his bloodshot eyes.
“The time has come,” said Payan, “when the safety of the
Republic demands a complete concentration of its power.
These brawlers of the Comité du Salut Auðlic can only destroy ;
they cannot construct. They hated you, Maximilien, from the
moment you attempted to replace anarchy by institutions.
How they mock at the festival which proclaimed the acknowl-
edgement of a Supreme Being : they would have no ruler, even
in heaven Your clear and vigorous intellect saw that, having
wrecked an old world, it became neeessary to shape a new one.
The first step towards construction must be to destroy the de-
stroyers. While we deliberate, your enemies act. Better this
very night to attack the handful of gens d'armes that guard
them, than confront the battalions they may raise to-morrow.”
“No,” said Robespierre, who recoiled before the determined
* This tenderness for some pet animal was by no means peculiar to Couthon ; it seems
rather a common fashion with the gentle butchers of the Revolution. M. George Duval
informs us (“Souvenirs de la Terreur,” vol. iii. p. 183) that Chaumette had an aviary, to
which he devoted his harmless leisure ; the murderous Fournier carried, on his shoulders a
pretty little squirrel, attached by a silver chain ; Panis bestowed the superfluity of his
affections upon two gold pheasants; and Marat, who would not abate one of the three
hundred thousand heads he demanded, reared dozes / Apropos of the spaniel of Couthon,
Duval gives us an amusing anecdote of Sergent, not one of the least relentless agents
of the massacre of September. A lady came to implore his protection for one of her rela-
tions confined in the Abbaye. He scarcely deigned to speak to her. As she retired in
despair, she trod by accident on the paw of his favorite spaniel. Sergent, turning round,
enraged and furious, exclaimed: “Madam, have you no humanity / ''
t Not to fatigue the reader with annotations, I may here observe that nearly every senti-
ment ascribed in the text to Robespierre is to be found expressed in his various discourses.
*
ZANONI. 275
'spirit of Payan ; I have a better and safer plan. This is the
6th of Thermidor; on the 10th–on the Ioth, the Convention go
in a body to the Féte Décadaire. A mob shall form ; the cam-
onniers, the troops of Henriot, the young pupils de l'Acole de
Mars, shall mix in the crowd. Easy, then, to strike the con-
spirators whom we shall designate to our agents. On the same
day, too, Fouquier and Dumas shall not rest ; and a sufficient
number of ‘the suspect ' to maintain salutary awe, and keep up
the revolutionary excitement, shall perish by the g/aize of the
law. The Ioth shall be the great day of action. Payan, of
these last culprits, have you prepared a list?”
“It is here,” returned Payan laconically, presenting a paper.
Robespierre glanced over it rapidly. “Collot d'Herbois —
good | Barrère —ay, it was Barrère who said, ‘Let us strike;
the dead alone never return.' * Vadier, the savage jester —
good—good Vadier of the Mountain. He has called me
‘Mahomet' / Scélérat / Blasphemer ' "
“Mahomet is coming to the Mountain,” said Couthor, with
his silvery accent, as he caressed his spaniel.
“But how is this 2 I do not see the name of Tallien Tal-
lien—I hate that man ; that is,” said Robespierre, correcting
himself with the hypocrisy or self-deceit which those who
formed the council of this phrasemonger exhibited habitually,
even among themselves—“that is, Virtue and our Country hate
him There is no man in the whole Convention who inspires
me with the same horror as Tallien. Couthon, I see a thou-
sand Dantons where Tallien sits ”
“Tallien has the only head that belongs to this deformed
body,” said Payan, whose ferocity and crime, like those of St.
Just, were not unaccompanied by talents of no common order.
“Were it not better to draw away the head, to win, to buy him,
for the time, and dispose of him better when left alone He
may hate you, but he loves money.”
“No,” said Robespierre, writing down the name of Jean-
Lambert Tallien, with a slow hand, that shaped each letter
with stern distinctness; “that one head is my necessity / "
“I have a small list here,” said Couthon sweetly ; “a zery
small list. You are dealing with the Mountain ; it is necessary
to make a few examples in the Plain. These moderates are as
straws which follow the wind. They turned against us yester-
day in the Convention. A little terror will correct the weather-
cocks. Poor creatures I owe them no ill-will ; I could weep
for them. But before all, la chere patrie / "
- * Frappons! il n'y a que les morts quine revient pas.”—BARRERE.
-*
&
276 ZANONI. & ---
The terrible glance of Robespierre devoured the list which .
the man of sensibility submitted to him. “Ah, these are well
chosen ; men not of mark enough to be regretted, which is the
best policy with the relics of that party ; some, foreigners too;
yes, they have no parents in Paris. These wives and parents
are beginning to plead against us. Their complaints demoral-
ize the guillotine !”
“Couth on is right,” said Payan ; “my list contains those
whom it will be safer to despatch en masse in the crowd assem-
bled at the Fête. His list selects those whom we may
prudently consign to the law. Shall it not be signed at
Once 2'' &
“It is signed,” said Robespierre, formally replacing his pen
upon the inkstand. “Now to more important matters. These
deaths will create no excitement; but Collot d’Herbois, Bour-
don de l'Oise, Tallien"—the last name Robespierre gasped as
he pronounced—“they are the heads of parties. This is life
or death to us as well as them.”
“Their heads are the footstools to your curule chair,” said
Payan, in a half-whisper. “There is no danger if we are bold.
Judges, juries, all have been your selection. You seize with
one hand the army, with the other, the law. Your voice yet
commands the people—”
“The poor and virtuous people,” murmured Robespierre.
“And even,” continued Payan, “if our design at the Fête
fail us) we must not shrink from the resources still at our com-
mand. Reflect ' Henriot, the general of the Parisian army,
furnishes you with troops to arrest ; the Jacobin club with
the public to approve ; inexorable Dumas with judges who
never acquit. We must be bold !”
“And we are bold,” exclaimed Robespierre, with sudden
passion, and striking his hand on the table as he rose, with his
crest erect, as a serpent in the act to strike. “In seeing the
multitude of vices that the revolutionary torrent mingles with
civic virtues, I tremble to be sullied in the eyes of posterity by
the impure neighborhood of these perverse men, who thrust
themselves among the sincere defenders of humanity. What
they think to divide the country like a booty I thank them
for their hatred to all that is virtuous and worthy | These
men,” and he grasped the list of Payan in his hand, “these !
not we—have drawn the line of demarcation between them-
selves and the lovers of France 1 ''
“True, we must reign alone !” muttered Payan ; “in other
words, the State needs unity of will"; working, with his strong
y
cº *
ZANONI. 277
practical mind, the corollary from the logic of his word-com-
pelling colleague !
“I will go to the Convention,” continued Robespierre. “I
have absented myself too long, lest I might seem to overawe
the Republic that I have created. Away with such scruples
I will prepare the people ! I will blast the traitors with a
look ’’
He spoke with the terrible firmness of the orator that had
never failed ; of the moral will that marched like a warrior on
the cannon. At that instant he was interrupted ; a letter was
brought to him ; he opened it ; his face fell ; he shook from
limb to limb ; it was one of the anonymous warnings by which
the hate and revenge of those yet left alive to threaten tor- -
tured the death-giver.
“Thou art smeared,” ran the lines, “with the best blood of
France. Read thy sentence I await the hour when the peo-
ple shall knell thee to the doomsman. If my hope deceive
me, if deferred too long, hearken—read This hand, which
thine eyes shall search in vain to discover, shall pierce thy
heart. I see thee every day—I am with thee every day. At
each hour my arm rises against thy breast. Wretch live yet
awhile, though but for ſew and miserable days—live to think
of me—sleep to dream of me ! Thy terror, and thy thought
of me, are the heralds of thy doom. Adieu ! this day itself, I
go forth to riot on thy fears *
“Your lists are not full enough !” said the tyrant, with a
hollow voice, as the paper dropped from his trembling hand.
“Give them to me ! give them to me ! Think again —think
again Barrère is right—right ! “Frappons ! il n'y a que les
morts que ne revient pas ” \
*
CHAPTER II.
“La haine dans ces lieux n’a qu'un glaive assassin.
Elle marche dans l'ombre.” +
—LA HARPE, Jeanne de Maples, Act iv. sc. r.
WHILE such the designs and fears of Maximilien Robes-
pierre, common danger, common hatred, whatever was yet left
of mercy or of virtue, in the agents of the Revolution, served
to unite strange opposites in hostility to the universal death-
dealer. There was, indeed, an actual conspiracy at work
_* See Papiers inédits trouvés chez Robespierre, etc.—vol. ii. p. 155. (No. lx.)
† Hate, in these regions, has but the sword of the assassin. She moves in the shade.
wº-
*_ *
278 ZANONI.
.*
against him among men little less bespattered than himself with
innocent blood. But that conspiracy would have been idle of
itself, despite the abilities of Tallien and Barras (the only men
whom it comprised, worthy, by foresight and energy, the names
of “leaders ”). The sure and destroying elements that gath-
ered round the tyrant were Time and Nature ; the one, which
he no longer suited ; the other, which he had outraged and
stirred up in the human breast. The most atrocious party of
the Revolution, the followers of Hébert, gone to his last ac-
count, the butcher-atheists, who, in desecrating heaven and
earth, still arrogated inviolable sanctity to themselves, were
equally enraged at the execution of their filthy chief, and the
proclamation of a Supreme Being. The populace, brutal as it
had been, started as from a dream of blood, when their huge
idol, Danton, no longer filled the stage of terror, rendering
crime popular by that combination of careless frankness and
eloquent energy which endears their heroes to the herd. The
g/aive of the guillotine had turned against themselves. They
had yelled and shouted, and sung and danced, when the ven-
erable age, or the gallant youth, of aristocracy or letters, passed
by their streets in the dismal tumbrils; but they shut up their
shops, and murmured to each other, when their own order was
invaded, and tailors and cobblers, and journeymen and labor-
ers, were huddled off to the embraces of the “Holy Mother Guil-
lotine,” with as little ceremony as if they had been the Mont-
morencies or the La Trémouilles, the Malesherbes or the La-
voisiers. “At this time,” said Couthon justly, “Ies ombres de
ZXanton, d'A'ébert, de Chaumette, se promènent parmi mous /* *
Among those who had shared the doctrines, and who now dread-
ed the fate, of the atheist Hébert was the painter, Jean Nicot.
Mortified and enraged to find that, by the death of his patron,
his career was closed ; and that, in the zenith of the Revolu-
tion for which he had labored, he was lurking in caves and
cellars, more poor, more obscure, more despicable than he had
been at the commencement; not daring to exercise even his
art, and fearful every hour that his name would swell the lists
of the condemned, he was naturally one of the bitterest ene-
mies of Robespierre and his government. He held secret
meetings with Collot d’Herbois, who was animated by the same
spirit ; and with the creeping and furtive craft that character-
ized his abilities, he contrived, undetected, to disseminate tracts
and invectives against the Dictator, and to prepare, amidst
“the poor and virtuous people,” the train for the grand explo-
* The shades of Danton, Hébert, and Chaumette, walk amongst us.
ZANONI. 279
sion. But still so firm to the eyes, even of profounder politi-
cians than Jean Nicot, appeared the sullen power of the incor.
ruptible Maximilien ; so timorous was the movement against
him, that Nicot, in common with many others, placed his
hopes rather in the dagger of the assassin, than the revolt of
the multitude. But Nicot, though not actually a coward,
shrunk himself from braving the fate of the martyr; he had
sense enough to see that though all parties might rejoice in the
assassination, all parties would probably-concur in beheading
the assassin. He had not the virtue to become a Brutus. His
object was to inspire a proxy-Brutus; and in the centre of that
inflammable population, this was no improbable hope.
Amongst those loudest and sternest against the reign of
blood; amongst those most disenchanted of the Revolution ;
amongst those-most appalled by its excesses, was, as might be
expected, the Englishman, Clarence Glyndon. The wit and
accomplishments, the uncertain virtues that had lighted with
fitful gleams the mind of Camille Desmoulins had fascinated
Glyndon more than the qualities of any other agent in the
Revolution. And when (for Camille Desmoulins had a heart,
which seemed dead or dormant in most of his contemporaries)
that vivid child of genius and of error, shocked at the massacre
of the Girondins, and repentant of his own efforts against them,
began to rouse the serpent malice of Robespierre by new doc-
trines of mercy and toleration, Glyndon espoused his views.
with his whole strength and soul. Camille Desmoulins perished,
and Glyndon, hopeless at once of his own life and the cause of
humanity, from that time, sought only the occasion of flight from
the devouring Golgotha. He had two lives to heed besides his
own ; for them he trembled, and for them he schemed and
plotted the means of escape. Though "Glyndon hated the
principles, the party,” and the vices of Nicot, he yet extended
to the painter's penury the means of subsistence; and Jean
Nicot in return, designed to exalt Glyndon to that very im-
mortality of a Brutus, from which he modestly recoiled him-
self. He founded his designs on the physical courage, on the
wild and unsettled fancies of the English artist ; and on the
vehement hate, and indignant loathing, with which he openly
regarded the government of Maximilien.
At the same hour on the same day in July in which Robes-
pierre conferred (as we have seen) with his allies, two persons
* None were more opposed to the Hébertists than Camille Desmoulins and his friends,
It is curious and amusing to see these leaders of the mob, calling the mob '' the people,”
one day, and the “cana ille” the next, according as it suits them, “I know,” says
Camille, “that they, the Hébertists, have all the canaille with them,” (Ils ont toute la
canaille pour eux,)
&
28o ZANONI.
were seated in a small room, in one of the streets leading out
of the Rue St. Honoré: the one, a man, appeared listening
patiently, and with a sullen brow, to his companion, a woman
of singular beauty, but with a bold and reckless expression,
and her face as she spoke was animated by the passions of a
half savage and vehement nature. **
“Englishman,” said the woman, “beware You know
that, whether in flight or at the place of death, I would brave
all to be by your side—you know that ſ Speak ( " '
“Well, Fillide; did I ever doubt your fidelity ?”
“Doubt it you cannot, betray it you may. You tell me
that in flight you must have a companion besides myself, and
that companion is a female. It shall not be ”
“Shall not ”
“It shall not ” repeated Fillide firmly, and folding her
arms across her breast ; before Glyndon could reply, a slight
knock at the door was heard, and Nicot opened the latch and
entered.
Fillide sunk into her chair, and leaning her face on her
hands, appeared unheeding of the intruder, and the conversa.
tion that ensued. * ~,
S “I cannot bid thee good-day, Glyndon,” said Nicot, as in his
sans-culotte fashion he strode towards the artist, his ragged hat
on his head, his hands in his pockets, and the beard of a
week's growth upon his chin ; “I cannot bid thee good-day.
for while the tyrant lives, evil is every sun that sheds its beams
on France.”
“It is true; what then 2 We have sowed the wind, we must
reap the whirlwind.”
“And yet,” said Nicot, apparently not hearing the reply,
and as if musingly"a himself, “it is strange to think that the
butcher is as mortal as the butchered ; that his life hangs on
as slight a thread ; that between the cuticle and the heart
there is as short a passage ; that, in short, one blow can free
France, and redeem mankind.”
Glyndon surveyed the speaker with a careless and haughty
scorn, and made no answer.
“And,” proceeded Nicot, “I have sometimes looked around
for the man born for this destiny, and whenever I have done
so, my steps have led me hither l’’
“Should they not rather have led thee to the side of Maxi-
milien Robespierre P’’ said Glyndon, with a sneer.
“No,” returned Nicot coldly; “No ; for I am a ‘suspect"—
I could not mix with his train ; I could not approach within a
ZAN ONI. 281
hundred yards of his person, but I should be seized ; you, as
yet, are safe. Hear me!” and his voice became earnest and
expressive ; “Hear me ! There seems danger in this action ;
there is none. I have been with Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-
Varennes ; they will hold him harmless who strikes the blow ;
the populace would run to thy support ; the Convention would
hail thee as their deliverer—the—”
“Hold, man How darest thou couple my name with the
act of an assassin P Let the tocsin sound from yonder tower,
to a war between Humanity and the Tyrant, and I will not be
the last in the field; but liberty never yet acknowledged a de-
fender in a felon.”
There was something so brave and noble in Glyndon's voice,
mien, and manner, as he thus spoke, that Nicot at once was
silenced ; at once he saw that he had misjudged the man.
“No,” said Fillide, lifting her face from her hands; “No
Your friend has a wiser scheme in preparation : he would
leave you wolves to mangle each other. He is right ; but—”
“Flight !” exclaimed Nicot; “Is it possible Flight !
How When P By what means ? All France begirt with
spies and guards ! Flight ! Would to Heaven it were in our
power l’’
“Dost thou, too, desire to escape the blessed Revolution ?”
“Desire Oh ” cried Nicot suddenly, and, falling down,
he clasped Glyndon's knees; “Oh spare me with thyself
My life is a torture; every moment the guillotine frowns before
me. I know that my hours are numbered ; I know that the
tyrant waits but his time to write my name in his inexorable
list; I know that Réné Dumas, the judge who never pardons,
has, from the first, resolved upon my death. Oh, Glyndon, by
our old friendship, by our common art, by thy loyal English
faith, and good English heart, let me share thy flight !”
“If thou wilt, so be it.”
“Thanks : My whole life shall thank thee. But how hast
thou prepared the means—the passports, the disguise, the—”
“I will tell thee. Thou knowest C , of the Convention :
he has power, and he is covetous. ‘Qu'om me meprise pourzu
que je dine,’” said he, when reproached for his avarice.”
“Well ?” *
“By the help of this sturdy republican, who has friends
enough in the Comité, I have obtained the means necessary for
flight; I have purchased them. For a consideration, I can
procure thy passport also.”
* Let them despise me, provided that I dine,
*
282 ZAN ONI.
“Thy riches, then, are not in assignats 3",
“No, I have gold enough for us all.”
And here Glyndon, beckoning Nicot into the next room,
first briefly and rapidly detailed to him the plan proposed, and
the disguises to be assumed conformably to the passports, and
then added: “In return for the service I render thee, grant
me one favor, which I think is in thy power. Thou remember-
est Viola Pisani P”
“Ah—remember | Yes | And the lover with whom she
fled.”
“And from whom she is a fugitive now.”
“Indeed—what I understand. Sacré' blue / but you are
a lucky fellow, cher confrère.” -*
“Silence, man With thy eternal prate of brotherhood and
virtue, thou seemest never to believe in one kindly action, or
one virtuous thought !”
Nicot bit his lip, and replied sullenly, “Experience is a
great undeceiver. Humph : What service can I do thee, with
regard to the Italian P" e
“I have been accessory to her arrival in this city of snares
and pitfalls. I cannot leave her alone amidst dangers from
which neither innocence nor obscurity is a safeguard. In your
blessed Republic, a good and unsuspected citizen, who casts a
desire on any woman, maid, or wife, has but to say: “Be mine
or I denounce you !' -In a word, Viola must share our flight.”
“What so easy 2 I see your passports provide for her.”
“What so easy What so difficult 2 This Fillide—would
that I had never seen her | Would that I had never enslaved
my soul to my senses . The love of an uneducated, violent,
unprincipled woman opens with a heaven, to merge in a hell !
She is jealous as all the Furies, she will not hear of a female
companion; and when once she see the beauty of Viola I
tremble to think of it. She is capable of any excess in the
storm of her passions.”
“Aha, I know what such women are My wife, Beatrice
Sacchini, whom I took from Naples, when I failed with this
very Viola, divorced me when my money failed, and as the
mistress of a Judge, passes me in her carriage while I crawl
through the streets. Plague on her 1 - But patience, patience
such is the lot of virtue. Would I were Robespierre for a
day !”
“Cease these tirades '' exclaimed Glyndon impatiently;
“and to the point. What would you advise 2"
“Leave your Fillide behind.”
f
ZANON }, 283
* Leave her to her own ignorance; leave her unprotected
even by the mind; leave her in the Saturnalia of Rape and
Murder 7 No,' I have sinned against her once. But come
what may, I will not so basely desert one who, with all her
errors, trusted her faith to my love.”
“You deserted her at Marseilles.”
“True ; but I left her in safety, and I did not then believe
her love to be so deep and faithful. I left her gold, and I im-
agined she would be easily consoled ; but, since then, we have
Ánown danger together / And now to leave her alone to that
danger which she would never have incurred but for devotion to
me ! No, that is impossible ! A project occurs to me. Canst
thou not say that thoti hast a sister, a relative, or a benefac-
tress, whom thou wouldst save 2 Can we not, till we have left
France, make Fillide believe that Viola is one in whom thou
only art interested ; and whom, for thy sake only, I permit to
share in our escape P”
“Ha, well thought of . Certainly ”
“I will then appear to yield to Fillide's wishes, and resign
the project, which she so resents, of saving the innocent object
of her frantic jealousy. You, meanwhile, shall yourself en-
treat Fillide to intercede with me, to extend the means of
escape to—”
“To a lady (she knows I have no sister) who has aided me
in my distress. Yes, I will manage all, never fear. One word
more—what has become of that Zanoni?”
“Talk not of him—I know not.”
“Does he love this girl still?” -
“It would seem so. She is his wife, the mother of his in-
fant, who is with her.”
“Wife Mother He loves her Aha And why——”
“No questions now. I will go and prepare Viola for the
flight ; you, meanwhile, return to Fillide.”
“But the address of the Neapolitan It is necessary I
should know, lest Fillide inquire.”
“Rue M T , No 27. Adieu.”
Glyndon seized his hat, and hastened from the house.
Nicot, left alone, seemed for a few moments buried in thought.
“Oho,” he muttered to himself, “can I not turn all this to my
account 2 Can I not avenge myself on thee, Zanoni, as I have
so often sworn, through thy wife and child 2 Can I not possess
myself of thy gold, thy passports, and thy Fillide, hot English-
man, who wouldst humble me with thy loathed benefits, and
who has chucked me thine alms as to a beggar? And Fillide,
284 ZANoN1.
I love her; and thy gold, I love that more Puppets, I move
your strings ”
He passed slowly into the chamber where Fillide yet sat,
with gloomy thought on her brow and tears standing in her
dark eyes. She looked up eagerly as the door opened, and
turned from the rugged face of Nicot with an impatient move-
ment of disappointment. •
“Glyndon,” said the painter, drawing a chair to Fillide's,
“has left me to enliven your solitude, fair Italian. He is not
jealous of the ugly Nicot; haſ hal—yet Nicot loved thee well
once, when his fortunes were more fair. But enough of such
past follies.”
“Your friend, then, has left the house. Whither Ah
you look away—you falter—you cannot meet my eyes | Speak"
I implore, I command thee, speak l’”
“Anfant / and what dost thou fear P’’
“A’ear / Yes, alas, I fear !” said the Italian ; and her whole
frame seemed to shrink into itself as she fell once more back
into her seat.
Then, after a pause, she tossed the long hair from her eyes,
and, starting up abruptly, paced the room with disordered
strides. At length she stopped opposite to Nicot, laid her
hand on his arm, drew him toward an escritoire, which she un-
locked, and opening a well, pointed to the gold that lay within,
and said: “Thou art poor, thou lovest money; take what thou
wilt, but undeceive me. Who is this woman whom thy friend
visits 2 And does he love her ?”
Nicot's eyes sparkled, and his hands opened and clenched,
and clenched and opened, as he gazed upon the coins. But
reluctantly resisting the impulse, he said with an affected bit-
terness: “Thinkest thou to bribe me 2 If so, it cannot be
with gold. But what if he does love a rival? What if he be-
trays thee 2 What if, wearied by thy jealousies, he designs in
his flight to leave thee behind 2 Would such knowledge make
thee happier 2"
“Yes | " exclaimed the Italian fiercely ; “Yes, for it would
be happiness to hate and to be avenged Oh, thou knowest
not how sweet is hatred to those who have really loved.”
“But wilt thou swear, if I reveal to thee the secret, that thou
wilt not betray me; that thou wilt not fall, as women do, into
weak tears and fond reproaches when thy betrayer returns 2"
“Tears—reproaches | Revenge hides itself in smiles . "
“Thou art a brave creature ' " said Nicot, almost admiringly.
“One condition more : thy lover designs to fly with his new
wa. ZANONI. 285
love, to leave thee to thy fate; if I prove this to thee, and if I
give thee revenge against thy rival, wilt thou fly with me? I
love thee! I will wed thee l’’
Fillide's eyes flashed fire; she looked at him with unutter-
able disdain, and was silent.
Nicot felt he had gone too far ; and with that knowledge of
the evil part of our nature, which his own heart and associa-
tion with crime had taught him, he resolved to trust the rest
to the passions of the Italian, when raised to the height to ~
which he was prepared to lead them.
“Pardon me,” he said: “my love made me too presumptuous;
and yet it is only that love, my sympathy for thee, beautiful
and betrayed, that can induce me to wrong, with my revela-
tions, one whom I have regarded as a brother. I can depend
upon thine oath to conceal all from Glyndon 2 ”
“On my oath, and my wrongs, and my mountain blood l’’
“Enough Get thy hat and mantle, and follow me !”
As Fillide left the room, Nicot's eyes again rested on the
gold; it was much—much more than he had dared to hope for ;
and as he peered into the well, and opened the drawers, he
perceived a packet of letters in the well-known hand of Camille
Desmoulins. He seized, he opened the packet ; his looks
brightened as he glanced over a few sentences. “This would
give fifty Glyndons to the guillotine !” he muttered, and thrust
the packet into his bosom.
O Artist J O haunted one ! O erring Genius ! Behold the
two worst foes—the False Ideal that knows no God, and the
False Love that burns from the corruption of the senses, and
takes no lustre from the soul |
CHAPTER III. *~ *.
* Liebe Sonnt das Reich der Nacht.” ”
—Der Zziumph der Ziebe.
LETTER FROM ZANONI TO MEJNOUR.
--sº" Aarº.
DOST thou remember in the old time, when the Beautiful
yet dwelt in Greece, how we two, in the vast Athenian Theatre,
witnessed the birth of Words as undying as ourselves? Dost
thou remember the thrill of terror that ran through that
mighty audience, when the wild Cassandra burst from her
awful silence to shriek to her relentless god How ghastly,
a * Love illumes the realms of Night.
*
286 ZANONI. P **.
*
*-- *-
at the entrance of the House of Atreus, about to become her
tomb, rang out her exclamations of foreboding woe: “Dwell-
ing abhorred of Heaven Human shamble-house, and floor
blood-bespattered ” * Dost thou remember how, amidst the
breathless awe of those assembled thousands, I drew close to
thee, and whispered : “Verily, no prophet like the Poet !
This scene of fabled horror comes to me as a dream, shadow-
ing forth some likeness in my own remoter future | " As I
enter this slaughter-house, that scene returns to me, and I
hearken to the voice of Cassandra ringing in my ears. A
solemn and warning dread gathers round me, as if I too were
come to find a grave, and “the Net of Hades” had already
entangled me in its web | What dark treasure-houses of vicis-
situde and woe are our memories become ! What our lives,
but the chronicles of unrelenting Death ! It seems to me as
yesterday when I stood in the streets of this city of the Gaul,
as they shone with plumed chivalry, and the air rustled with
silken braveries, Young Louis, the monarch and the lover, was
victor of the Tournament at the Carousel ; and all France felt
herself splendid in the splendor of her gorgeous chief Now
there is neither throne nor altar; and what is in their stead 2
I see it yonder—THE GUILLOTINE It is dismal to stand
amidst the ruins of mouldering cities, to startle the serpent
and the lizard amidst the wrecks of Persepolis and Thebes ;
but more dismal still to stand as I–the stranger from Empires
that have ceased to be—stand now amidst the yet ghastlier
ruins of Law and Order, the shattering of mankind themselves |
Yet here, even here, Love, the Beautifier, that hath led my
steps, can walk with unshrinking hope through the wilderness
of Death ! Strange is the passion that makes a world in itself,
that individualizes the One amidst the Multitude; that, through
all the changes of my solemn life, yet survives, though ambition,
and hate, and anger are dead ; the one solitary angel, hov-
ering over an universe of tombs on its two tremulous and
human wings—Hope and Fear !
How is it, Mejnour, that, as my diviner art abandoned me ;
as, in my search for Viola, I was aided but by the ordinary in-
stincts of the merest mortal—how is it that I have never de-
sponded, that I have felt in every difficulty the prevailing
prescience that we should meet at last 2 So cruelly was every
vestige of her flight concealed from me ; so suddenly, so
secretly had she fled, that all the spies, all the Authorities
of Venice, could give me no clue. All Italy I searched in
* AEscH., Agam., Io98. *
ZANONI. 287
vain Her young home at Naples —how still, in its hum-
ble chambers, there seemed to linger the fragrance of her
presence 1 All the sublimest secrets of our lore failed me ;
failed to bring her soul visible to mine ; yet morning and
night, thou lone and childless one, morning and night, de-
tached from myself, I can commune with my child There
in that most blessed, typical, and mysterious of all relations,
Nature herself appears to supply what Science would refuse.
Space cannot separate the Father's watchful soul from the
cradle of his first-born I know not of its resting-place and
home—my visions picture not the land—only the small and
tender life to which all space is as yet the heritage For to
the infant, before reason dawns, before man's bad passions can
dim the essence that it takes from the element it hath left,
there is no peculiar country, no native city, and no mortal
language. Its soul as yet is the denizen of all airs and of
every world ; and in space its soul meets with mine, the Child
communes with the Father | Cruel and forsaking one, thou
for whom I left the wisdom of the spheres, thou, whose fatal
dower has been the weakness and terrors of humanity, couldst
thou think that young soul less safe on earth because I would
lead it evermore up to heaven | Didst thou think that I could
have wronged, mine own P Didst thou not know that in its
serenest eyes the life that I gave it spoke to warn, to upbraid
the mother who would bind it to the darkness and pangs of
the prison-house of clay ? Didst thou not feel that it was I
who, permitted by the Heavens, shielded it from suffering and
disease ? And in its wondrous beauty, I blessed the holy
medium through which, at last, my spirit might confer with
thine !
And how have I tracked them hither? I learned that thy
pupil had been at Venice. I could not trace the young and gentle
Neophyte of Parthenope in the description of the haggard and
savage visitor who had come to Viola before she fled ; but
when I would have summoned his IDEA before me, it refused
to obey ; and I knew then that his fate had become entwined
with Viola's. I have tracked him, then, to this Lazar House ;
I arrived but yesterday; I have not yet discovered him.
Sk sk Sk §: & Sk sk
I have just returned from their courts of justice—dens where
tigers arraign their prey. I find not whom I would seek.
They are saved as yet ; but I recognize in the crimes of mor-
tals the dark wisdom of the Everlasting. Mejnour, I see here,
for the first time, how majestic and beauteous a thing is Death !
§
288 ZANONI.
Qf what sublime virtues we robbed ourselves, when, in the
thirst for virt. we attained the art by which we can refuse to
die ' When, in some happy clime, where to breathe is to enjoy,
the charnel-house swallows up the young and fair ; when, in
the noble pursuit of knowledge, Death comes to the student,
and shuts out the enchanted land, which was opening to his
gaze, how natural for us to desire to live ; how natural to make
perpetual life the first object of research But here, from my
tower of time, looking over the darksome past, and into the
starry future, I learn how great hearts feel what sweetness and
glory there is to die for the things they love I saw a father
sacrificing himself for his son; he was subjected to charges
which a word of his could dispel—he was mistaken for his boy.
With what joy he seized the error, confessed the noble crimes
of valor and fidelity which the son had indeed committed, and
went to the doom, exulting that his death saved the life he had
given, not in vain ' I saw women, young, delicate, in the
bloom of their beauty ; they had vowed themselves to the
cloister. Hands smeared with the blood of saints opened the
grate that had shut them from the world, and bade them go
forth, forget their vows, forswear the Divine One these daemons
would depose, find lovers and helpmates, and be free. And
some of these young hearts had loyed, and even, though in
struggles, loved, yet. Did they forswear the vow 2 Did they
abandon the faith ? Did even love allure them 2 Mejnour,
with one voice they preferred to die And whence comes this
courage 2 Because such hearts ſize in some more abstract and
holier life than their own. But to live forever upon this earth, is
to live in nothing diviner than ourselves. Yes, even amidst this
gory butcherdom, God, the Ever-living, vindicates to man the
sanctity of His servant, Death !
* * 3& *
Again I have seen thee in spirit ; I have seen arfd blessed
thee, my sweet child ! Dost thou not knows me also in thy
dreams ? Dost thou not feel the beating of my heart through
the veil of thy rosy slumbers ? Dost thoº, not hear the wings
of the brighter beings that I yet can conjure around thee, to
watch, to nourish, and to save 2 And when the spell fades at
thy waking, when thine eyes open to the day, will they not look
round for me, and ask thy mother, with their mute eloquence,
“why she has robbed thee of a father” 2
Woman, dost thou not repent thee ? Flying from imaginary
fears, has thou not come to the very lair of terror, where
Danger sits visible and incarnate 2 Oh, if we could but meet,
*
* * *
X
* ~~
ZAN ONI. 289
wouldst thou not fall upon the bosom thou hast so wrönged,
and feel, poor wanderer amidst the storms, , ; if thou hadst
regained the shelter Mejnour, still my researches fail me.
I mingle with all men, even their judges and their spies, but I
cannot yet gain the clue. I know that she is here. I know it
by an instinct ; the breath of my child seems warmer and
more familiar.
They peer at me with venomous looks, as I pass through
their streets. With a glance I disarm their malice, and fasci-
nate the basilisks. Everywhere I see the track and scent the
presence of the Ghostly One that dwells on the Threshold, and
whose victims are the souls that would aspi, c, and can only
fear. I see its dim shapelessness going before the men of
blood, and marshalling their way. Robespierre passed me with
his furtive step. Those eyes of horror were gnawing into his
heart. I looked down upon their Senate; the grim Phantom
sat cowering on its floor. It hath taken up its abode in the
city of Dread. And what in truth are these would-be builders
of a new world 2 Like the students who have vainly struggled
after our supreme science, they have attempted what is beyond
their power ; they have passed from this solid earth of usages
and forms, into the land of shadow ; and its loathsome keeper
has seized them as its prey. I looked into the tyrant's shud-
dering soul, as it trembled past me. There, amidst the ruins
of a thousand systems which aimed at virtue, sat Crime, and
shivered at its desolation. Yet this man is the only Thinker,
the only Aspirant, amongst them all. He still looks for a future
of peace and mercy, to begin—ay ! at what date When he
has swept away every foe. Fool | New foes spring from every
drop of blood. Led by the eyes of the Unutterable, he is walk-
ing to his doom. ---
O Viola, thy innocence protects thee . Thou whom the sweet
humanities of love shut out even from the dreams of aerial and
spiritual beauty, making thy heart an universe of visions fairer
than the wanderer over the rosy Hesperus can survey, shall not
the same pure affection encompass thee even here, with a
charmed atmosphere ; and terror itself fall harmless on a life
too innocent for wisdom P
* * * * * * *
29O ZANON3.
CHAPTER IV.
“Ombra più che di notte, in cui di luce
Raggio misto non è;
* :: :k *
Ně più il palagio appar, né più le sue
Vestigia; né dir puossi—egli qui fue.” ”
—Ger. Lib., canto xvi.-lxix.
THE clubs are noisy with clamorous frenzy; the leaders are
grim with schemes. Black Henriot flies here and there, mut-
tering to his armed troops : “Robespierre, your beloved, is in
danger | " Robespierre stalks perturbed, his list of victims
swelling every hour. Tallien, the Macduff to the doomed
Macbeth, is whispering courage to his pale conspirators. Along
the streets heavily roll the tumbrils. The shops are closed; the
people are gorged with gore and will lap no more. And night
after night, to the eighty theatres flock the children of the Rev-
olution, to laugh at the quips of comedy, and weep gentle tears
over imaginary woes |
In a small chamber, in the heart of the city, sits the mother,
watching over her child ! It is quiet, happy noon ; the sunlight,
broken by the tall roofs in the narrow street, comes yet through
the open casement, the impartial playfellow of the air, gleesome
alike in temple and prison, hall and hovel; as golden and as
blithe, whether it laugh over the first hour of life, or quiver in
its gay delight on the terror and agony of the last ! The child,
where it lay at the feet of Viola, stretched out its dimpled hands
as if to clasp the dancing motes that revelled in the beam. The
mother turned her eyes from the glory; it saddened her yet
more. She turned and sighed. *-
Is this the same Viola who bloomed fairer than their own
Idalia under the skies of Greece 2 How changed . How pale
and worn 1 She sat listlessly, her arms dropping on her knee;
the smile that was habitual to her lips was gone. A heavy,
dull despondency, as if the life of life were no more, seemed to
weigh down her youth, and make it weary of that happy Sun
In truth, her existence had languished away since it had wan-
dered, as some melancholy stream, from the source that fed it.
The sudden enthusiasm of fear or superstition that had almost,
as if still in the unconscious movements of a dream, led her to
fly from Zanoni, had ceased from the day which dawned upon
her in a foreign land. Then—there—she felt that in the smile
* Darkness greater than of night, in which not a ray of light is mixed ; . . . The Pal-
ace appears no more--not even a vestige—nor can one say that it has been.
ZANONI. 29I
she had evermore abandoned lived her life. She did not re-
pent, she would not have recalled the impulse that winged her
flight. Though the enthusiasm was gone, the superstition yet
remained ; she still believed she had saved her child from that
dark and guilty sorcery, concerning which the traditions of all
lands are prodigal, but in none do they find such credulity, or
excite such dread, as in the south of Italy. This impression
was confirmed by the mysterious conversations of Glyndon, and
by her own perception of the fearful change that had passed
over one who represented himself as the victim of the enchant-
ers. She did not, therefore, repent, but her very volition seemed
gone.
On their arrival at Paris, Viola saw her companion, the
faithful wife, no more. Ere three weeks were passed, husband
and wife had ceased to live.
And now, for the first time, the drudgeries of this hard earth
claimed the beautiful Neapolitan. In that profession, giving
voice and shape to poetry and song, in which her first years
were passed, there is, while it lasts, an excitement in the art that
lifts it from the labor of a calling. Hovering between two lives,
the Real and the Ideal, dwells the life of music and the stage.
But that life was lost evermore to the idol of the eyes and ears
of Naples. Lifted to the higher realm of passionate love, it
seemed as if the fictitious genius which represents the thoughts
of others was merged in the genius that grows all thought it-
self. It had been the worst infidelity to the Lost, to have de-
scended again to live on the applause of others. And so—for
she would not accept alms from Glyndon—so, by the com-
monest arts, the. humblest industry that the sex knows, alone
and unseen, she who had slept on the breast of Zanoni found
a shelter for their child. As when, in the noble verse prefixed
to this chapter, Armida herself has destroyed her enchanted
palace, not a vestige of that bower, raised of old by Poetry and
Love, remained to say “it had been . "
And the child avenged the father: it bloomed ; it thrived ;
it waxed strong in the light of life. But still it seemed haunted
and preserved by some other being than her own. In its sleep
there was that slumber, so deep and rigid, which a thunder-
bolt could not have disturbed ; and in such sleep often it
moved its arms, as to embrace the air : often its lips stirred
with murmured sounds of indistinct affection—not for her ;
and all the while upon its cheeks a hue of such celestial
bloom, upon its lips a smile of such mysterious joy . Then
when it waked, its eyes did not turn first to her—wistful, earn-
.”
e
292 ZANONI.
arº
est, wandering, they roved arºund, to fix on her pale face, at
last, in mute sorrow and reproach.
Never had Viola felt before how mighty was her love for
Zanoni ; how thought, feeling, heart, soul, life—all lay crushed
and dormant in the icy absence to which she had doomed her-
self She heard not the roar without, she felt not one amidst
those stormy millions—worlds of excitement laboring through
every hour. Only when Glyndon, haggard, wan, and spectre-
like, glided in, day after day, to visit her, did the fair daughter
of the careless South know how heavy and universal was the
Death-Air that girt her round. Sublime in her passive un-
consciousness, her mechanic life, she sat, and feared not, in
the den of the Beasts of Prey !
The door of the room opened abruptly, and Glyndon en-
tered. His manner was more agitated than usual.
“Is it you, Clarence 2 ” she said in her soft, languid tones.
“You are before the hour I expected you.”
“Who can count on his hours at Paris P’’ returned Glyndon
with a frightful smile. “Is it not enough that I am here 2
Your apathy in the midst of these sorrows appals me. You
say calmly, “Farewell !' Calmly you bid me “Welcome !’
As if in every corner there was not a spy, and as if with every
day there was not a massacre ”
“Pardon me ! But in these walls lies my world. I can
hardly credit all the tales you tell me. Everything here, save
that (and she pointed to the infant), seems already so lifeless,
that in the tomb itself one could scarcely less heed the crimes
that are done without.” & g
Glyndon paused for a few moments, and gazed with strange
and mingled feelings upon that face and form, still so young,
and yet so invested with that saddest of all repose—when the
heart feels old. *
“Oh Viola : " said he, at last; and in a voice of suppressed
passion ; “was it thus I ever thought to see you, ever thought
to feel for you, when we two first met in the gay haunts of
Naples 2 Ah why then did you refuse my love? Or why
was mine not worthy of you? Nay, shrink not Let me touch
your hand. No passion so sweet as that youthful love can re-
turn to me again. I feel for you but as a brother for some
younger and lonely sister. With you, in your presence, sad
though it be, I seem to breathe back the purer air of my early
life. Here alone, except in scenes of turbulence and tempest,
the Phantom ceases to pursue me. I forget even the Death
that stalks behind, and haunts me as my shadow. But better
*.
ZANONI. 293
days may be in store for us yet. Viola, I at last begin dimly
to perceive how to baffle and subdue the Phantom that has
- cursed my life—it is to brave, and defy it. In sin and in riot,
as I have told thee, it haunts me not. But I comprehend now
what Mejnour said in his dark apothegms, ‘that I should dread
the spectre most when unseen." In virtuous and calm resolu-
tion it appears—ay, I behold it now—there—there, with its
livid eyes | (and the diops fell from his brow). But it shall
no longer daunt me from that resolution. I face it, and it
gradually darkens back into the shade.” He paused, and his
eyes dwelt with a terrible exultation upon the sunlit space;
then, with a heavy and deep-drawn breath, he resumed :
“Viola, I have found the means of escape. We will leave this
city. In some other land we will endeavor to comfort each
other, and forget the past.”
“No,” said Viola calmly ; “I have no further wish to stir,
till I am borne hence to the last resting-place. I dreamed
of him last night, Clarence Dreamed of him for the first
time since we parted : and, do not mock me, methought that
he forgave the deserter, and called me, ‘Wife.' That dream
hallows the room. Perhaps it will visit me again before
I die.” sy
“Talk not of him—of the demi-fiend ” cried Glyndon
fiercely, and stamping his foot. “Thank the Heavens for any
fate that hath rescued thee from him.”
“Hush ’’ said Viola gravely. And as she was about to
proceed, her eye fell upon the child. It was standing in the
the very centre of that slanting column of light which the sun
poured into the chamber; and the rays seemed to surround it
as a halo, and settled, crown-like, on the gold of its shining
hair. In its small shape, so exquisitely modelled ; in its large,
steady, tranquil eyes, there was something that awed, while it
charmed the mother's pride. It gazed on Glyndon as he
spoke, with a look which almost might have seemed disdain,
and which Viola, at least, interpreted as a defence of the Ab-
sent, stronger than her own lips could frame.
Glyndon broke the pause.
“Thou wouldst stay,+for what ? To betray a mother's
duty . If any evil happens to thee here, what becomes of
thine infant 2 Shall it be brought up an orphan, in a country
that has desecrated thy religion, and where human charity ex-
ists no more Ah, weep, and clasp it to thy bosom 1 But
tears do not protect and save.”
“Thou hast conquered, my friend, I will fly with thee,”
294 º ZANONI.
“,
“To-morrow night, then, be prepared. I will bring thee
the necessary disguises.”
And Glyndon then proceeded to sketch rapidly the outline
of the path they were to take, and the story they were to tell.
Viola listened, but scarcely comprehended : he pressed her
hand to his heart, and departed.
CHAPTER V. ^
“Van seco pur anco
Sdegno ed Amor, quasi due Veltri al fianco.”*
—Ger. Lib. cant. xx. cxvii.
GLYNDoN did not perceive, as he hurried from the house,
two- forms crouching by the angle of the wall. He saw still
the spectre gliding by his side, but he beheld not the yet more
poisonous eyes of human envy and woman's jealousy that
glared on his retreating footsteps. \
Nicot advanced to the house ; Fillide followed him in
silence. The Painter, an old sans-culotte, knew well what
language to assume to the porter. He beckoned the latter
from his lodge : “How is this, Citizen 2 Thou harborest a
‘suspect.’” * - *.
“Citizen, you terrify me ! If so, name him.”
“It is not a man ; a refugee—an Italian woman, lodges
here.” * *
“Yes, au froſsième—the door to the left. But what of her P
She cannot be dangerous, poor child !”
“Citizen, beware ' - Dost thou dare to pity her?”
“I 2 No, no, indeed. But—”
“Speak the truth ! Who visits her ?”
“No one but an Englishman.”
“That is it—an Englishman, a spy of Pitt and Coburg.”
“Just Heaven Is it possible 7" *
“How, Citizen Dost thou speak of Heaven 2 Thou must
be an aristocrat ' '.'
“No, indeed ; it was but an old, bad habit, and escaped me
unawares.”
“How often does the Englishman visit her ?”
“Daily.”
Fillide uttered an exclamation.
“She never stirs out,” said the porter. “Her sole occupa-
tions are in work, and care of her infant.”
“Her infant I’’
* There went with him still Disdain and Love, like two greyhounds side by side,
2. ZANONI. 295
Fillide made a bound forward. Nicot in vain endeavored
to arrest her. She sprung up the stairs ; she paused not till
she was before the door indicated by the porter ; it stood ajar,
she entered—she stood at the threshold, and beheld that face,
still so lovely . The sight of so much beauty left her hopeless.
And the child, over whom the mother bent —she who had
neyer been a mother | She uttered no sound—the furies were
at work within her breast. Viola turned, and saw her ; and,
terrified by the strange apparition, with features that expressed
the deadliest hate, and scorn, and vengeance, uttered a cry,
and snatched the child to her bosom. The Italian laughed
aloud, turned, descended, and gaining the spot were Nicot
still conversed with the frightened porter, drew him from the
house. When they were in the open street, she halted abruptly,
and said : “Avenge me, and name thy price ”
“My price, sweet one, is but permission to love thee. Thou
wilt fly with me to-morrow night; thou wilt possess thyself of
the passports and the plan.” *
“And they—” &
“Shall, before then, find their asylum in the Conciergerie.
The guillotine shall requite thy wrongs.”
“Do this, and I am satisfied,” said Fillide firmly.
And they spoke no more, till they regained the house. But
when she there, looking up to the dull building, saw the win-
dows of the room which the belief of Glyndon's love had once
made a paradise, the tiger relented at the heart ; something of
the woman gushed back upon her nature, dark and savage as
it was. She pressed the arm on which she leant convulsively,
and exclaimed : “No, no !—not him Denounce her—let her
perish ; but I have slept on his bosom—not him /*
“It shall be as thou wilt,” said Nicot, with a devil's sneer ;
“but he must be arrested for the moment. No harm shall
happen to him, for no accuser shall appear. But her—thou
wilt not relent for her P”
Fillide turned upon him her eyes, and their dark glance was
sufficient answer.
CHAPTER VI.
* “In poppa quella
Che guidar gli dovea, fatal Donzella.””
—Ger. Zió., cant. xv. 3.
&
THE Italian did not overrate that craft of simulation pro-
verbial with her country and her sex. Not a word, not a look
* By the prow was the fatal lady ordained to be the guide.
§
296 ZAN ONI.
º
{
that day revealed to Glyndon the deadly change that had con-
verted devotion into hate. He himself, indeed, absorbed in
his own schemes, and in reflections on his own strange destiny,
was no nice observer. But her manner, milder and more sub-
dued than usual, produced a softening effect upon his medita-
tions towards the evening ; and he then began to converse with
her on the certain hope of escape, and on the future that would
await them in less unhallowed lands.
“And thy fair friend,” said Fillide, with an averted eye and
a false smile, “who was to be our companion ? Thou hast re-
signed her, Nicot tells me, in favor of one in whom he is inter-
ested. Is it so 2 ” ---
“He told thee this 1" returned Glyndon evasively. “Well !
Does the change content thee 7"
“Traitor ” muttered Fillide ; and she rose suddenly, ap-
proached him, parted the long hair from his forehead, caress-
ingly, and pressed her lips convulsively on his brow. y
“This were too fair ; head for the doomsman,” said she,
with a slight laugh, and, turning away, appeared occupied in
preparations for their departure.
The next morning, when he rose, Glyndon did not see the
Italian ; she was absent from the house when he left it. It was
necessary that he should once more visit C–, before his final
departure, not only to arrange for Nicot's participation in the
flight, but lest any suspicion should have arisen to thwart or
endanger the plan he had adopted. C , though not one of
the immediate coterie of Robespierre, and indeed secretly hos-
tile”to him, had possessed the art of keeping well with each
faction as it rose to power. Sprung from the dregs of the pop-
ulace, he had, nevertheless, the grace and vivacity so often
found impartially amongst every class in France. He had
contrived to enrich himself—none knew how—in the course of
his rapid career. He became, indeed, ultimately one of the
wealthiest proprietors of Paris, and at that time kept a splendid
and hospitable mansion. He was one of those whom, from
various reasons, Robespierre deigned to favor; and he had
often saved the proscribed and suspected, by procuring them
passports under disguised names, and advising their method
of escape. But C was a man who tôok this trouble only
for the rich. “The incorruptible Maximilien,” who did not
want the tyrant's faculty of penetration, probably saw through
all his manoeuvres, and the avarice which he cloaked beneath
his charity. But it was noticeable that Robespierre frequently
seemed to wink at, nay, partially to encourage, such vices in
§
*
ZANONI. 297
men whom he meant hereafter to destroy, as would tend to
lower them in the public estimation, and to contrast with his
own austere and unassailable integrity and purism. And,
doubtless, he often grimly smiled in his sleeve at the sumptu-
ous mansion, and the griping covetousness of the worthy citi-
zen C * *:
To this personage, then, Glyndon musingly bent his way.
It was true, as he had darkly said to Viola, that in proportion
as he had resisted the spectre, its terrors had lost their influ-
ence. The time had come at last, when, seeing crime and vice
in all their hideousness, and in so vast a theatre, he had found
that in vice and crime there are deadlier horrors than in the
eyes of a phantom-fear. His native nobleness began to return
to him. As he passed the streets, he revolved in his mind pro-
jects of future repentance and reformation. He even medi-
tated, as a just return for Fillide's devotion, the sacrifice of all
the reasonings of his birth and education. He would repair
whatever errors he had committed against her, by the self-
immolation of marriage with one little congenial with himself.
He who had once revolted from marriage with the noble and
gentle Viola –he had learned in that world of wrong to know
that right is right, and that Heaven did not make the one sex
to be the victim of the other. The young visions of the Beau-
tiful and the Good rose once more before him ; and along the
dark ocean of his mind lay the smile of reawakening virtue,
as a path of moonlight. Never, perhaps, had the condition of
his soul been so elevated and so unselfish.
In the mean while, Jean Nicot, equally absorbed in dreams
of the future, and already in his own mind laying out
to the best advantage the gold of the friend he was about to
betray, took his way to the house honored by the residence of
Robespierre. He had no intention to comply with the relent-
ing prayer of Fillide, that the life of Glyndon should be spared.
He thought with Barrère, “il m'y a gue les morts qui me revient
pas.” In all men who have devoted themselves to any study,
or any art, with sufficient pains to attain a certain degree of
excellence, there must be a fund of energy immeasurably above
that of the ordinary herd. Usually this energy is concentred
on the objects of their professional ambition, and leaves them,
therefore, apathetic to the other pursuits of men. But where
those objects are denied, where the stream has not its legiti-
mate vent, the energy, irritated and aroused, possesses the
whole being, and if not wasted on desultory schemes, or if not
purified by conscience and principle, becomes a dangerous
•->
|
298 ZANONT. * , *.
and destructive element in the social system, through which
it wanders in riot and disorder. Hence, in all wise monarchies,
nay, in all well-constituted States, the peculiar care with which
channels are opened for every art and every science; hence
the honer paid to their cultivators by subtle and thoughtful
statesmen, who, perhaps, for themselves see nothing in a pic-
ture but colored canvas, nothing in a problem but an ingenious
puzzle. No State is ever more in danger than when the talent
that should be consecrated to peace has no occupation but
political intrigue or personal advancement. Talent unhon-
ored is talent at war with men. And here it is notice-
able, that the class of Actors having been the most degraded
by the public opinion of the old regime, their very dust
deprived of Christian burial, no men (with certain exceptions
in the company especially favored by the Court) were more
relentless and revengeful among the scourges of the Revolu-
tion. In the savage Collot d'Herbois, mauvais comédien, were
embodied the wrongs and the vengeance of a class.
Now the energy of Jean Nicot had never been sufficiently
directed to the Art he professed. Even in his earliest youth,
the political disquisitions of his master, David, had distracted
him from the more tedious labors of the easel. The defects of
his person had embittered his mind; the Atheism of his bene-
factor had deadened his conscience. For one great excellence
of Religion—above all, the Religion of the Cross—is, that it
raises PATIENCE first into a Virtue, and next into a Hope. Take
-away the doctrine of another life, of requital hereafter, of the
smile of a Father upon our sufferings and trials in our ordeal
here, and what becomes of Patience 2 But without patience,
what is man 2 And what a people * Without patience, Art
never can be high ; without patience, Liberty never can be
perfected. By wild throes, and impetuous, aimless struggles,
Intellect seeks to soar from Penury, and a nation to struggle
into Freedom. And woe, thus unfortified, guideless, and unen-
during, woe to both ! .
Nicot was a villain as a boy. In most criminals, however
abandoned, there are touches of humanity, relics of virtue;
and the true delineator of mankind often incurs the taunt of
bad hearts and dull minds, for showing that even the worst al-
loy has some particles of gold, and even the best that come
stamped from the mint of Nature have some adulteration of
the dross. But there are exceptions, though few, to the general
rule ; exceptions, when the conscience lies utterly dead, and
when good or bad are things indifferent but as means to some
ZAN ONI. 299
selfish end. So was it with the protégé of the atheist. Envy
and hate filled up his whole being, and the consciousness of
superior talent only made him curse the more all who passed
him in the sunlight with a fairer form or happier fortunes.
But monster though he was when his murderous fingers griped
the throat of his benefactor, Time, and that ferment of all evil
passions, the Reign of Blood, had made in the deep hell of his
heart a deeper still. Unable to exercise his calling (for even
had he dared to make his name prominent, revolutions are no
season for painters ; and no man—no, not the richest and
proudest magnate of the land, has so great an interest in peace
and order, has so high and essential a stake in the well-being
of society, as the poet and the artist), his whole intellect, ever
restless and unguided, was left to ponder over the images of
guilt most congenial to it. He had no Future but in this life ;
and how in this life had the men of power around him, the
great wrestlers for dominion, thriven 2 All that was good,
pure, unselfish, whether among Royalists or Republicans, swept
to the shambles, and the deathsmen left alone in the pomp and
purple of their victims Nobler paupers than Jean Nicot
would despair ; and Poverty would rise in its ghastly multi-
tudes to cut the throat of Wealth, and then gash itself limb
by limb, if Patience, the Angel of the Poor, sat not by its side,
pointing with solemn finger to the life to come ! And now as
Nicot neared the house of the Dictator, he began to meditate
a reversal of his plans of the previous day : not that he faltered
in his resolution to denounce Glyndon, and Viola would nec-
essarily share his fate, as a companion and accomplice,—no,
there he was resolved For he hated both (to say nothing of
his old but never-to-be-forgotten grudge against Zanoni); Viola
had scorned him, Glyndon had served, and the thought of grat-
itude was as intolerable to him as the memory of insult. But
why, now, should he fly from France 2 He could possess him-
self of Glyndon's gold ; he doubted not that he could so mas-
ter Fillide by her wrath and jealousy that he could command
her acquiescence in all he proposed. The papers he had pur-
loined—Desmoulin's correspondence with Glyndon——while it
ensured the fate of the latter, might be eminently serviceable
to Robespierre ; might induce the tyrant to forget his own old
/iaisons with Hébert, and enlist him among the allies and tools
of the King of Terror. Hopes of advancement, of wealth, of
a career, again rose before him. This correspondence, dated
shortly before Camille Desmoulins' death, was written with that
careless and daring imprudence which characterized the spoiled
3oo ---
ZANONI.
child of Danton. It spoke openly of designs against Robes.
pierre ; it named confederates whom the tyrant desired only a
popular pretext to crush. It was a new instrument of death in
the hands of the Death-compeller. What greater gift could
he bestow on Maximilien the Incorruptible 7
Nursing these thoughts he arrived at last before the door of
Citizen Dupleix. Around the threshold were grouped, in ad-
mired confusion, some eight or ten sturdy Jacobins, the volun-
tary body-guard of Robespierre : tall fellows, well armed, and
insolent with the power that reflects power, mingled with women,
young and fair, and gayly dressed, who had come upon the ru-
mor that Maximilien had had an attack of bile, to inquire
tenderly of his health ; for Robespierre, strange though it
seem, was the idol of the sex --
Through this cortège, stationed without the door, and reach-
ing up the stairs to the landing-place, for Robespierre's apart-
ments were not spacious enough to afford sufficient ante-cham-
ber for levees so numerous and miscellaneous, Nicot forced his
way ; and far from friendly or flattering were the expressions
that regaled his ears. *
“Aha, le ſoli Polichinelle / " said a comely matron, whose
robe his obtrusive and angular elbows cruelly discomposed.
“But how could one expect gallantry from such a scarecrow !”
“Citizen, I beg to avise thee * that thou art treading on
my feet. I beg thy pardon, but now I look at thine, I see the
hall is not wide enough for them.”
“Ho, Citizen Nicot,” cried a Jacobin, shouldering his for-
midable bludgeon, “and what brings thee hither ? Thinkest
thou that Hébert's crimes are forgotten already ? Off, sport
of Nature, and thank the Etre Supréme that he made thee insig-
nificant enough to be forgiven.”
“A pretty face to look out of the National Window,” t said
the woman whose robe the painter had ruffled.
“Citizens,” said Nicot, white with passion, but constraining
himself so that his words seemed to come from his grinded
teeth, “I have the honor to inform you that I seek the Repré.
sentant Jupon business of the utmost importance to the public
and himself; and,” he added, slowly, and malignantly glaring
round, “I call all good citizens to be my witnesses when I shall
* The courteous use of the plural was proscribed at Paris. The Sociétés Požze/aires
had decided that whoever used it should be prosecuted as suspect et adulate ur / At
the door of the public administrations and popular societies was written up : “Ici on
s’honore du Citoyen, et on se tutoye "/ / / " Take away Murder from the French Revo-
lution, and it becomes the greatest Farce ever played before the Angels!
* Here they respect the title of Citizen, and they thee and thou one another,
f The Guillotine.
ZANONI. 3o I
complain to Robespierre of the reception bestowed on me by
some àmongst you.”
There was in the man's look and his tone of voice so much
of deep and concentrated malignity that the idlers drew back;
and as the remembrance of the sudden ups and downs of revo-
lutionary life occurred to them, several voices were lifted to
assure the squalid and ragged painter that nothing was farther
from their thoughts than to offer affront to a citizen, whose
very appearance proved him to be an exemplary sans-culotte.
Nicot received these apologies in sullen silence; and folding
his arms leant against the wall, waiting in grim patience for his
admission.
The loiterers talked to each other in separate knots of two
and three ; and through the general hum rung the clear, loud,
careless whistle of the tall Jacobin who stood guard by the
stairs. Next to Nicot, an old woman and a young virgin were
muttering in earnest whispers, and the atheist painter chuckled
inly to overhear their discourse.
“I assure thee, my dear,” said the crone, with a mysterious
shake of head, “that the divine Catherine Theot, whom the
impious now persecute, is really inspired. There can be no
doubt that the elect, of whom Dom Gerle and the virtuous
Robespierre are destined to be the two grand prophets, will
enjoy eternal life here, and exterminate all their enemies.
There is no doubt of it, not the least !”
“How delightful ' " said the girl; “ce cher Robespierre / He
does not look very long-lived either l’”
“The greater the miracle,” said the old woman. “I am just
eighty-one, and I don't feel a day older since Catherine Theot
promised me I should be one of the elect ' "
Here the women were jostled aside by some new-comers, who
talked loud and eagerly.
“Yes,” cried a brawny man whose garb denoted him to be
a butcher, with bare arms, and a cap of liberty on his head, “I
am come to warn Robespierre. They lay a snare for him ;
they offer him the Palais National. On me pett &re ami du
peuple et habiter ten palais.””
“No, indeed,” answered a cordonnier ; “I like him best in
his little lodging with the ménuisier : it looks like one of us.”
Another rush of the crowd, and a new group were thrown
forward in the vicinity of Nicot. And these men gabbled and
chattered faster and louder than the rest.
* No one can be a friend of the people, and dwell in a palace.-Papiers inédits trouvés
shes Robespierre, etc., vol. ii. p. 132. |
s
3O2 ZANONI. - -- r —
“But my plan is—”
“Au diable with your plan. I tell you my scheme is—';
“Nonsense !” cried a third. “When Robespierre under.
stands my new method of making gunpowder, the enemies of
France shall—” *
“Bah who fears foreign enemies?” interrupted a fourth ;
“The enemies to be feared are at home. My new guillotine
takes off fifty heads at a time !” g *-
“But my new Constitution : " exclaimed a fifth.
“My new Religion, citizen I’’ murmured, complacently, a
sixth. *
“Sacré mille tonnerres, silence " roared forth one of the
Jacobin guard.
And the crowd suddenly parted as a fierce-looking man, but-
toned up to the chin, his sword rattling by his side, his spurs
clinking at his heel, descended the stairs; his cheeks swollen
and purple with intemperance, his eyes dead and Savage as a
vulture's. There was a still pause, as all, with pale cheeks,
made way for the relentless Henriot.* Scarce had this gruff
and iron minion of the tyrant stalked through the throng, than
a new movement of respect, and agitation, and fear, swayed
the increasing crowd, as there glided in, with the noiselessness
of a shadow, a smiling, sober citizen, plainly but neatly clad,
with a downcast, humble eye. A milder, meeker face, no pas-
toral poet could assign to Corydon or Thyrsis—why did the
crowd shrink and hold their breath P As the ferret in a burrow
crept that slight form amongst the larger and rougher creatures,
that huddled and pressed back on each other as he passed.
A wink of his stealthy eye, and the huge Jacobins left the pas-
sage clear, without sound or question. On he went to the
apartment of the tyrant; and thither will we follow him.
CHAPTER VII.
“Constitutum est ut quisquis eum hominem, dixisset, fuisse, capitalem
penderet poenam.” +–ST. AUG., Of the God Serapis, I, 18, de Civ. Dei, c. 5.
ROBESPIERRE was reclining languidly in his fauteuil, his
cadavel ous countenance more jaded and fatigued than usual.
He to whom Catherine Theot assured immortal life looked,
* Or Hanriot. It is singular how undetermined are not only the characters of the
French Revolution, but even the spelling of their names. With the historians it is Vergni-
aud, with the journalists of the time, it is Vergniaux. With one authority it is Robes-
pierre ; with another, Roberspierre.
t It was decreed, that whoso should say that he had been a man should suffer the pun-
ishment of a capital offence. §
|
*-
ZANONI. 3O3
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 régime), was employed in peeling the
Hesperian fruits for the sick Dragon, with delicate fingers cov-
ered with jewels. I have before said that Robespierre was the
idol of the women. Strange, certainly 1–but then they were
French women . The old Marquise, who, like Catherine Theot,
called him “son,” really seemed to love him piously and disin-
terestedly 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 approach-
ing Robespierre, whispered to him the name of Guérin. # 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 mur-
mured : “Que/ ange /*
Robespierre waved his hand impatiently; and the old woman,
with a sigh, patted his pale cheek, kissed his forehead, and sub-
missively 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; Guérin, the most renowned of his
€couteurs, 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 P’’
“This morning, early, two minutes after eight, he went
out.”
“So early 2 Hem "
“He passed Rue des Quatre Fils, Rue du Temple, Rue de
t See, for the espionage on which Guérin was employed, Les Papiers inédits, etc., vol.
i. p. 366. No. xxviii. 3.
3O4 * ZANONI.
**
La Réunion, au Marais, Rue Martin ; nothing observable, ex.
cept that—” º
“That what P*
“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 to:
gether about the street some minutes, and were joined by
Legendre.” *
“Legendre Approach, Payan Legendre, thou hearest l”
“I went into a fruit-stall, and hired two little girls to go and
play at ball within hearing. They heard Legendre say, “I be-
lieve 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. . “Hal” 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 P’’ &
“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 I 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, Guérin-whis-
pered :
“Is not that the citizen Aristides 2 ”
“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 1 that is true.” And Robespierre, drawing out his
*
ZANONI. 365
pocket-book, wrote a memorandum in it, replaced it in his vest,
and resumed :
“What else of Tallien P’’
“Nothing more. He and Legendre, with the unknown,
walked to the Jardin Egalité, and there parted. I saw Tallien
to his house. But I have other news. Thou badst me watch
for those who threaten thee in secret letters.” e
“Guérin Hast thou detected them 2 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 Hébert Aha N.B. Réné Dumas knows of his
early career, and crimes. Proceed ”
“This Nicot has been suspected of diffusing tracts and pam-
phlets against thyself, and the Comité. 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, therein a drawing of thyself at the guillo-
tine ; and underneath was written : ‘Aourreau de-ton pays, Wis
/'arrêt de ſon châtiment / '* I compared the words with the
fragments of the various letters thou gavest me : the hand-
writing tallies with one. See, I tore off the writing.”
Robespierre looked, smiled, and, as if his vengeance were al-
ready satisfied, threw himself on his chair. “It is well ! I
feared it was a more powerful enemy. This man must be ar-
rested at once.”
“And he waits below. I brushed by him as I ascended the
stairs.”
“Does he so 7 Admit ! Nay—hold ! hold ! Guérin, with-
draw 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 mo-
ment, and left the room.
Meanwhile Robespierre, with his head buried in his bosom,
* Executioner of thy country, read the decree of thy punishment.
§
305 ZANONI. --
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.*
“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 dams sa dermière 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 Ze
sopha de la présidence, 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 suffi-
cient 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 con-
clude—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 I thou
wert right; better to be a poor fisherman, than to govern men.” f
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 Rev-
olution were singularly hideous in appearance: from the colos-
sal 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
* Papiers inédits, etc., vol. ii. p. 156.
+ “AZ zazza'rait maiezzar,” said Danton, in his dungeon, “etre ten £azz/re 23rheur gue
ale gouzerner les hommes.”
2ANONI. 367
more remarkable the disorderly ruffianism that characterized
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 over-
looked too long. Thou wouldst ask some suitable provision in
the State 2 Scruple not—say on ’’
“Virtuous Robespierre, toi qui éclaires /'univers,” I come not
to ask a favor, but to render service to the State. I have dis-
covered 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. Barrère-Legendre I have them | Camille Des-
moulins 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
Anacharsis Clootz. I beg pardon, Citizen Nicot ; but Clootz
and Hébert were thy friends.” T
“Nay,” said Nicot apologetically, “we are all liable to be
deceived. I ceased to honor 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.f “And my justice shall no longer be blind to
thy services, good Nicot. Thou knowest this Glyndon 2 ”
“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 favors from this man.”
“Aha and thou dost honestly hold the doctrine that where
a man threatens my life, all personal favors are to be forgotten ?”
& 4 All ! $ 2
“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.
- * Thou who enlightenest the world. sº
t.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 Desmou-
lins, the day that he signed the warrant for his arrest,
308 ZANONI
*=
2.
“Write on, kind Nicot I"
The painter slowly obeyed.
“Who are the other familiars of Glyndon 2"
“It was on that point I was about to speak to thee, Repre-
sentant,” said Nicot. “He visits daily a woman, a foreigner,
who knows all his secrets ; she affects to be poor, and to sup-
port 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 1 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 2 This seems almost like a disguised
character.”
“I should not like them to know who denounced them,
A'eprésentant.”
“Good | Good | Thy virtue shall be rewarded, trust me.
Salut et fraternité / " ;
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 : “Fol-
low 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 !
Guérin (the spy reappeared) “take these addresses . Within
an hour this Englishman and this woman must be in prison;
their revelations will aid me against worthier foes. They shall
die ; they shall perish with the rest on the I oth—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 Fête on the Ioth. We must trust only to
the Sword of the law. I must compose my thoughts, prepare
my harangue. To-morrow I will re-appear at the Convention ;
-**
ZANONT. 309
to-morrow bold St. Just joins 11s, fresh from our victorious
armies; to-morrow, from the tribune, I will dart the thunder-
bolt on the masked enemies of France; to-morrow I will
demand, in the face of the country, the heads of the conspirators.”
CHAPTER VIII.
“Le glaive est contre toi tourné des toutes parties.””
—LA HARPE, Jeanne de ZVaples, act iv. sc. 4.
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 cheer-
ful thoughts, he fancied he heard a voice too well and too ter-
ribly recognized, 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 be-
hind 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 oppres-
sively 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 2"
“Surely,” answered the man, with a deprecating smile, “the
*The sword is raised against you on all sides.
N,
31 O ZANON I. --
streets are broad enough for both 2 Thou art not so bad a
republican 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 degress he composed himself, and, looking behind, imag-
ined 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 be-
fore 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
quais. 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 chiv-
alry. Here, fatigued and panting, he paused an instant, and a
cooler air from the river fanned his brow. “A while, 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 café fear-
fully known in that quarter. Hither often resorted the black
troop of Henriot—the minions and the huissiers of Robes-
pierre. The spy, then, had hunted the victim within the
jaws of the hounds. The man slowly advanced, and pausing
before the opened window of the café, 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
*
..ºr ^ ZANONI. 3II
flouse 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 haſ and the
long mantle that had hitherto concealed his shape and features,
and Glyndon beheld Zanoni. *
.*
CHAPTER IX.
“Think not my magic wonders wrought by aid
Of Stygian angels summoned up from hell ;
Scorned and accursed by those who have essay’d,
Her gloomy Dives and Afrites to compel.
But by perception of the secret powers
Of mineral springs, in nature's in most 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 !” s
“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 2 Poor Neophyte . " said Zanoni pity-
ingly. “Yes, I see it on thy brow. But wherefore wouldst
thou blame me * Did I not warn thee against the whispers of
thy spirit P Did I not warn thee to forbear 2 Did I not tell
thee that the ordeal was one of awful hazard and tremendous
fears P 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 law 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 !” **
3I 2 -- ZANONI. .*
“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 2 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 thy-
self an impostor . 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 Para-
dise.' * No spirit was more imbued with the knightly supersti-
tions of the time ; and surely the Poet of Jerusalem hath
sufficiently, to satisfy even the Inquisitor he consulted, exe-
crated all the practitioners of the unlawful spells invoked :
“Per isforzar Cocito o Flegetonte.” +
But in his sorrows and his wrongs, in the prison of his mad-
house, 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 brother-
hoods, from the Chaldaean to the later Rosicrucian, discrimi-
nates, 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 2 . His, not
the charms wrought by the aid of the Stygian Rebels; Î but the
* “L’aurea lesta •
Di rose colte in Paradiso infiora.”
TAsso, Ger. Liê. iv. 1.
t To constrain Cocytus or Phlegethon.
# See this remarkable passage, which does indeed not unfaithfully represent the doc-
trine of the Pythagorean and the Platonist., In, Tasso, cant. xiv., stanzas xli. to xlvii.
(Ger, Lió.) They are beautifully translated by Wiffen, ****.
* &
ZANONI. 313
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 gen-
erations 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), com-
mand him to lay aside these sublime studies, ‘Le Solite arte e
l'uso mio '? No 1 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 civilization 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 castes through which no
intellect could pierce, no valor 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 busi-
ness and homes of men. It dwelt amidst the wonders of the
loftier creation ; it sought to analyze 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 fan-
cied 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.* 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
*Agreeably, it would seem, to the notion of Iamblichus and Plotinus. that the universe
is 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,
3I4 J ZAN ONI.
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
ecstacies 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 splendor
and beneficence of God. And if they sought, and at last dis-
covered, how to the eye of the Spirit all the subtler modifica-
tions 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 sublim-
est 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 su-
perior 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.* 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 2 Away with your
gloomy phantasies of sorcerer and daemon The soul can
aspire only to the light; and even the error of our lofty knowl-
edge 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 an-
ticipated, that he remained for some moments speechless, and
at length faltered out :
“But why, then, to me—” .-->
* From IAMBLICH., on the Mysteries, c. 7, sect. 7.
2ANONI. 315
*
“Why,” added Zanoni, “Why to thee have been only the
penance and the terror—the Threshold and the Phantom 2
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 2 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 constitu-
, tion not more vicious than the one which the madness of a
mob could overthrow 2 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 ini-
tiation 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 mys-
tery ! Happier inasmuch as they attained the earlier to the
holy glories for which Death is the heavenliest gate.”
Zanoni paused, and a shade of thought and Sorrow darkened
his celestial beauty.
“And are there, indeed, others, besides thee and Mejnour,
who lay claim to thine attributes, and have attained to thy
secrets P’’
“Others there have been before us, but we two now are
alone on earth.”
“Impostor thou betrayest thyself | If they could conquer
Death, why live they not yet P’’”
“Child of a day !” answered Zanoni mournfully, “Have I
not told thee the error of our knowledge was the forgetfulness
of the desires and passions which the spirit never can wholly
and permanently conquer, while this matter chokes it 2 Canst
thou think that it is no sorrow, either to reject all human ties,
all friendship, and all love, or to see, day after day, friendship
and love wither from our life, as blossoms from the stem.
Canst thou wonder how, with the power to live while the world
, shall last, ere even our ordinary date be finished, we yet may
prefer to die P Wonder rather that there are two who have clung
-soº faithfully to earth ! Me, I confess, that earth can enamour
* Glyndon appears to forget that Mejnour had before answered the very question which
his doubts, here, a second time suggest. p
316 ZANONI.
Af
*
yet. Attaining to the last secret while youth was in its bloom,
youth still colors all around me with its own luxuriant beauty ; .
to me, yet, to breathe is to enjoy. The freshness has not
faded from the face of Nature, and not a herb in which I can-
not discover a new charm—an undetected wonder. As with
my youth, so with Mejnour's age ; he will tell you, that life to
him is but a power to examine ; and not till he has exhausted
all the marvels which the Creator has sown on earth, would he
desire new habitations for the renewed Spirit to explore. We
are the types of the two essences of what is imperishable—.
‘ART, that enjoys, and SCIENCE, that contemplates ' ' And
now, that thou mayest be contented that the secrets are not
vouchsafed to thee, learn that so utterly must the idea de-
tach itself from what makes up the occupation and excitement
of men, so must it be void of whatever would covet, or love,
or hate ; that for the ambitious man, for the lover, the hater,
the power avails not. And I, at last, bound and blinded by
the most common of household ties—I, darkened and helpless,
adjure thee, the baffled and discontented—I adjure thee to
direct, to guide me —where are they–Oh, tell me—speak |
My wife—my child 2 Silent Oh, thou knowest now that I
am no sorcerer, no enemy. I cannot give thee what thy facul-
ties deny; I cannot achieve what the passionless Mejnour
failed to accomplish ; but I can give thee the next best boon,
perhaps the fairest: I can reconcile thee to the daily world, and
place peace between thy conscience and thyself.”
“Wilt thou promise?” &
“By their sweet lives, I promise !”
Glyndon looked and believed. He whispered the address to
the house whither his fatal step already had brought woe and
doom.
“Bless thee for this,” exclaimed Zanoni passionately, “and
thou shalt be blessed ' What I Couldst thou not perceive that
at the entrance to all the grander worlds dwell the race that
intimidate and awe ? Who in the daily world ever left the old
regions of Custom and Prescription, and felt not the first seizure
of the shapeless and nameless Fear 2 Everywhere around
thee, where men aspire and labor, though they see it not—in
the closet of the sage, in the council of the demagogue, in the
camp of the warrior—everywhere cowers and darkens the Un-
utterable Horror. But there, where thou hast ventured, alone
is the phantom visible ; and never will it cease to haunt, titl
thou canst pass to the Infinite, as the seraph, or return to the
Familiar, as a child ! But answer me this : When, seeking to
$ * *
** ZANONI, 31 7
adhere to some calm resolve of virtue, the Phantom hath
stalked suddenly to thy side ; when its voice hath whispered
thee despair; when its ghastly eyes would scare thee back to
those scenes of earthly craft or riotous excitement, from which,
as it leaves thee to worse foes to the soul, its presence is ever
absent, hast thou never bravely resisted the spectre and thine
own horror 2 Hast thou never said, ‘Come what may, to
Virtue I will cling’ 2 ” <
“Alas!” answered Glyndon, “only of late have I dared to
do so.” *
“And thou hast felt then that the Phantom grew more dim
and its power more faint.”
“It is true.”
“Rejoice, then | Thou hast overcome the true terror and
mystery of the ordeal. Resolve is the first success. Rejoice,
for the exorcism is sure | Thou art not of those who, denying
a life to come, are the victims of the Inexorable Horror. Oh,
when shall men learn, at last, that if the Great Religion incul-
cates so rigidly the necessity of FAITH, it is not alone that
FAITH leads to the world to be ; but that without faith there is
no excellence in this—faith in something wiser, happier, diviner,
than we see on earth ! The Artist calls it the Ideal ; the
Priest, Faith. The Ideal and Faith are one and the same.
Return, O wanderer, return 1 Feel what beauty and holiness
dwell in the Customary and the Old. Back to thy gateway
glide, thou Horror And calm, on the childlike heart, smile
again, O azure Heaven, with thy night and thy morning-star
but as one, though under its double name of Memory and
Hope l’” -
As he thus spoke, Zanoni laid his hand gently on the burn-
ing temples of his excited and wondering listener; and pres-
ently a sort of trance came over him : he imagined that he
was returned to the home of his infancy; that he was in the
"small chamber where, over his early slumbers, his mother had
watched and prayed. There it was, visible, palpable, solitary,
unaltered. In the recess, the homely bed : on the walls, the
shelves filled with holy books ; the very casel on which he had
~first sought to call the ideal to the canvas, dust-covered, broken,
in the corner. Below the window lay the old churchyard ; he
saw it green in the distance, the sun glancing through the yew
trees; he saw the tomb where father and mother lay united,
and the spire-pointing up to Heaven, the symbol of the hopes
of those who consigned the ashes to the dust; in his ear rang
the bells, pealing, as on a Sabbath day ; far fled all the visions
&
318 ZANONI.
of anxiety and awe that had haunted and convulsed; youth,
boyhood, childhood, came back to him with innocent desires
and hopes; he thought he fell upon his knees to pray. He
woke—he woke in delicious tears ; he felt that the phantom
was fled forever. He looked round—Zanoni was gone. On
the table lay these lines, the ink yet wet :
“I will find ways and means for thy escape. At nightfall, as
the clock strikes nine, a boat shall wait thee on the river before
this house, the boatman will guide thee to a retreat where thou
maySt rest in safety, till the Reign of Terror, which nears its
close, be past. Think no more of the sensual love that lured,
and well-nigh lost, thee. It betrayed, and would have destroyed.
Thou wilt regain thy land in safety, long years yet spared to
thee to muse over the past, and to redeem it. For thy future,
be thy dream thy guide, and thy tears thy baptism.”
The Englishman obeyed the injunctions of the letter, and
found their truth.
CHAPTER X.
“Quid mirare meas tot in uno corpore formas?” ”
*- —PROPERT.
ZANONI TO MEJNou R.
* :}; :}; * >k :*: *
“SHE is in one of their prisons—their inexorable prisons.
It is Robespierre's order; I have tracked the cause to Glyn-
don. This, then, made that terrible connection between their
fates which I could not unravel, but which (till severed as it
now is) wrapped Glyndon himself in the same cloud that con-
cealed her. In prison—in prison . It is the gate of the gravel
Her trial, and the inevitable execution that follows such trial,
is the third day from this. The tyrant has fixed all his schemes
of slaughter for the 10th of Thermidor. While the deaths of
the unoffending strike awe to the city, his satellites are to
massacre his foes. There is but one hope left, that the Power
which now dooms the doomer may render me an instrument
to expedite his fall. But two days left—two days In all my
wealth of time I see but two days; all beyond—darkness, soli-
tude. I may save her yet. The tyrant shall fall the day before
that which he has set apart for slaughter | For the first time
I mix among the broils and stratagems of men, and my mind
leaps up from my despair, armed and eager for the contest,”
:k $ :}; :}; #: #ee 2:
A crowd had gathered round the Rue St. Honoré–a young
*Why wonder that I have so many forms in a single body?
-** 2
• - " Á
*. * ZANONI. * 3IQ
man was just arrested by the order of Robespierre. He was
known to be in the service of Tallien, that hostile leader in the
Convention, whom the tyrant had hitherto trembled to attack.
This incident had therefore produced a greater excitement
than a circumstance so customary as an arrest in the Reign
of Terror might be supposed to create. Amongst the crowd
were many friends of Tallien, many foes to the tyrant, many
weary of beholding the tiger dragging victim after victim to its
den. Hoarse, foreboding murmurs were heard; fierce eyes
glared upon the officers as they seized their prisoner; and
though they did not yet dare openly to resist, those in the rear
pressed on those behind, and encumbered the path of the
captive and his captors. The young man struggled hard for
escape, and, by a violent effort, at last wrenched himself from
the grasp. The crowd made way, and closed round to protect
him, as he dived and darted through their ranks; but suddenly
the trampling of horses was heard at hand : the savage Henriot
and his troop were bearing down upon the mob. The crowd
gave way in alarm, and the prisoner was again seized by one
of the partisans of the Dictator. At that moment a voice
whispered the prisoner: “Thou hast a letter, which, if found
on thee, ruins thy last hope. Give it to me ! I will bear it to
Tallien.” The prisoner turned in amaze, read something
that encouraged him in the eyes of the stranger who thus ac-
costed him ; the troop were now on the spot; the Jacobin who
had seized the prisoner released hold of him for a moment, to
escape the hoofs of the horses; in that moment the oppor-
tunity was found—the stranger has disappeared.
At the house of Tallien the principal foes of the tyrant were
assembled. Common danger made common fellowship. All
factions laid aside their feuds for the hour to unite against the
formidable man who was marching over all factions to his
gory throne. There, was bold Lecointre, the declared enemy;
there, creeping Barrère, who would reconcile all extremes, the
hero of the cowards ; Barras, calm and collected ; Collot
d'Herbois, breathing wrath and vengeance, and seeing not
that the crimes of Robespierre alone sheltered his own.
The council was agitated and irresolute. The awe which
the uniform success and the prodigious energy of Robespierre
excited, still held the greater part under its control. Tallien,
whom the tyrant most feared, and who alone could give head
and substance and direction to so many contradictory passions,
was too sullied by the memory of his own cruelties, not to feel .
32O ZANONI. •.
embarrassed by his position as the champion of mercy. “It is
true,” he said, after an animating harangüe from Lecoin tre,
“that the Usurper menaces us all. But he is still so beloved by
his mobs, still so supported by his Jacobins—better delay open
hostilities till the hour is more ripe. To attempt and not suc-
ceed is to give us, bound hand and foot, to the guillotine.
Every day his power must decline. Procrastination is our
best ally—” While yet speaking, and while yet producing the
effect of water on the fire, it was announced that a stranger
demanded to see him instantly on business that brooked no
delay. & *-ºse
“I am not at leisure,” said the orator impatiently. The ser-
vant placed a note on the table. Tallien opened it, and found
these words in pencil, “From the prison of Teresa de Fon-
tenai.” He turned pale, started up, and hastened to the ante-
room, where he beheld a face entirely strange to him.
“Hope of France 1" said the visitor to him, and the very
sound of his voice went straight to the heart, “your servant is
arrested in the streets. I have saved your life, and that of
your wife who will be. I bring to you this letter from Teresa
de Fontenai.” -- *
Tallien, with a trembling hand, opened the letter, and read:
“Am I forever to implore you in vain 2 Again and again I
say, Lose not an hour, if you value my life and your own. My
trial and death are fixed the third day from this—the 1 oth
Thermidor. Strike while it is yet time ! Strike the mon-
ster —you have two days yet. If you fail—if you procrasti-
nate—see me for the last time as I pass your windows to the
guillotine !” , / 3.
“Her trial will give proof against you,” said the stranger.
“Her death is the herald of your own. Fear not the popu-
ace—the populace would have rescued your servant. Fear not
Robespierre—he gives himself to your hands. To-morrow he
comes to the Convention ; to-morrow, you must cast the last
throw for his head or your own.”
“To-morrow he comes to the Convention And who are
you, that know so well what is concealed from me?”
“A man, like you, who would save the woman he loves.”
Before Tallien could recover his surprise, the visitor was gone.
* Back went the Avenger to his conclave, an altered man. “I
have heard tidings—no matter what,” he cried, “that have
changed my purpose. On the Ioth we are destined to the
guillotine. I revoke my counsel for delay. Robespierre
comes to the Convention to-morrow ; there we must confront
ZANONI. sº 32 I
and crush him. From the Mountain shall frown as...," him
the grim shade of Danton; from the Plain shall ri c, ºr their
bloody cerements, the spectres of Vergniaud and Condorcet.
Frappons / " *-
“Prappons /* cried even Barrère, startled into energy by the
new daring of his colleague. “Arappons / il my a gue les
morts qui me reviennent pas.” §
It was observable (and the fact may be found in one of the
memoirs of the time) that, during that day and night (the 7th
Thermidor), a stranger to all the previous events of that stormy
time was seen in various parts of the city : in the cafés, the
clubs, the haunts of the various factions; that, to the astonish-
ment and dismay of his hearers, he talked aloud of the crimes
of Robespierre, and predicted his coming fall ; and as he
spoke, he stirred up the hearts of men, he loosed the bonds of
their fear, he inflamed them with unwonted rage and daring.
But what surprised them most was, that no voice replied ; no
hand was lifted against him ; no minion, even of the tyrant,
cried, “Arrest the Traitor.” In that impunity men read, as in
a book, that the populace had deserted the man of blood.
Once only a fierce, brawny Jacobin sprung up from the table
at which he sat, drinking deep, and, approaching the stranger,
said : “I seize thee, in the name of the Republic.”
“Citizen Aristides,” answered the stranger, in a whisper,
“go to the lodgings of Robespierre ; he is from home, and in
the left pocket of the vest, which he cast off not an hour since,
thou wilt find a paper ; when thou hast read that, return, I
will await thee: and if thou wouldst then seize me, I will go
without a struggle. Look round on those lowering brows,
touch me now, and thou wilt be torn to pieces.”
The Jacobin felt as if compelled to obey against his will.
He went forth muttering : he returned, the stranger was still
there : “Mille tonnerres,” he said to him, “I thank thee; the
poltroon had my name in his list for the guillotine.”
With that the Jacobin Aristides sprung upon the table, and
shouted “Death to the Tyrant l”
CHAPTER XI.
“Le lendemain, 8 Thermidor, Robespierre se décida a prononcer son
fameux discours.”—THIERS, Hist. de la Revolution.
THE morning rose—the 8th of Thermidor (July 26). Robes-
pierre has gone to the Convention. He has gone, with his
* The next day, 8 Thermidor, Robespierre resolved to deliver his celebrated discourse.
322 ZANONI. *
labored speech ; he has gone, with his phrases of philanthropy
and virtue; he has gone to single out his prey. All his agents
are prepared for his reception ; the fierce St. Just has arrived
from the armies, to second his courage and inflame his wrath.
His ominous apparition prepares the audience for the crisis.
“Citizens !” screeched the shrill voice of Robespierre, “others
have placed before you flattering pictures; I come to announce
to you useful truths. g
* * * * * *
And they attribute to me, to me alone, whatever of harsh or evil is
committed; it is Robespierre who wishes it ; it is Robespierre
who ordains it. Is there a new tax 2 It is Robespierre who ruins
you. They call me tyrant And why P Because I have ac-
quired some influence ; but how 2 In speaking truth ; and
who pretends that truth is to be without force in the mouths of
the Representatives of the French people? Doubtless, Truth has
its power, its rage, its despotism, its accents, touching, terrible,
which resound in the pure heart, as in the guilty conscience;
and which Falsehood can no more imitate than Salmoneus
could forge the thunderbolts of Heaven. What am I, whom
they accuse 2 A slave of liberty, a living martyr of the Re-
public, the victim, as the enemy, of crime ! All ruffianism
affronts me ; and actions legitimate in others are crimes in
me; it is enough to know me to be calumniated. It is in my
very zeal that they discover my guilt. Take from me my con-
science and I should be the most miserable of men . "
He paused ; and Couthon wiped his eyes, and St. Just mur-
mured applause, as with stern looks he gazed on the rebellious
Mountain ; and there was a dead, mournful, and chilling
silence through the audience. The touching sentiment woke
no echo.
The orator cast his eyes around. Ho ; he will soon arouse
that apathy. He proceeds: he praises, he pities himself, no
more. He denounces, he accuses. Overflooded with his
venom, he vomits it forth on all. At home, abroad, finances,
war—on all ! Shriller and sharper rose his voice :
“A conspiracy exists against the Public Liberty. It owes
its strength to a criminal coalition in the very bosom of the
Convention ; it has accomplices in the bosom of the Commit-
tee of Public Safety. . . . What is the remedy to this evil 2
To punish the traitors; to purify the committee; to crush all
factions by the weight of the National Authority; to raise
upon their ruins the power of Liberty and Justice. Such are
the principles of that Reform. Must I be ambitious to profess,
T^*- - --~~~~~~, ac-ºs-
ZANONI. 323
them Then the principles are proscribed, and Tyranny
reigns amongst us ! For what can you object to a man who is **.
in the right, and has, at least, this knowledge—he knows how
to die for his native land 1 I am made to combat crime, and
not to govern it. The time, alas, is not yet arrived when men
of worth can serve with impunity their country ! So long as the
knaves rule, the defenders of liberty will be only the proscribed.”
For two hours through that cold and gloomy audience shrilled
the Death-speech. In silence it began, in silence closed. The
enemies of the orator were afraid to express resentment : they
knew not yet the exact balance of power. His partisans were
afraid to approve ; they knew not whom of their own friends
and relations the accusations were designed to single forth.
“Take care ” whispered each to each, “it is thou whom he
threatens.” But silent though the audience, it was, at the first,
well-nigh subdued. There was still about this terrible man the
spell of an overmastering will. Always—though not what is
called a great orator—resolute, and sovereign in the use of
words, words seemed as things when uttered by one who with
a nod moved the troops of Henriot, and influenced the judg-
ment of Réné Dumas, grim President of the Tribunal. Lecointre
of Versailles rose, and there was an anxious movement of
attention ; for Lecointre was one of the fiercest foes of the
tyrant. What was the dismay of the Tallien faction, what the
complacent smile of Couthon, when Lecointre demanded only
that the oration should be printed 2 All seemed paralyzed.
At length, Bourdon de l’Oise, whose name was doubly marked
in the black list of the Dictator, stalked to the tribune, and -
moved the bold counter-resolution, that the speech should be
referred to the fºo Committees whom that very speech accused.
Still no applause from the conspirators: they sat torpid as
frozen men. The shrinking Barrère, ever on the prudent side,
looked round before he rose. He rises, and sides with Lecointre
Then Couthon seized the occasion, and from his seat (a privi-
lege permitted alone to the paralytic philanthropist),” and with
his melodious voice, sought to convert the crisis into a triumph.
He demanded, not only that the harangue should be printed,
but sent to all the communes and all the armies. It was neces-
sary to 'soothe a wronged and ulcerated heart. Deputies, the
most faithful, had been accused of shedding blood. “Ah, if
Jie had contributed to the death of one innocent man, he should
* M. Thiers in his History, vol. iv. p. 79, makes a curious blunder: he says, “Couthon
... s'elance & Za tribune.” (Couthon darted towards the tribune.) Poor Couthon whese
...half body was dead, and who was always wheeled in his chair into the Convention, and
spoke sitting.
* f. s”< *
324 '- ZANONI.
immolate himself with grief.” Beautiful tenderness ſ—and .
while he spoke, he fondled the spaniel in his bosom. Bravo,
Couthon Robespierre triumphs . The reign of Terror shall
endure." The old submission settles dove-like back in the as-
sembly They vote the printing of the Death-speech, and its
transmission to all the municipalities. From the benches of
the Mountain, Tallien, alarmed, dismayed, impatient, and in-
dignant, cast his gaze where sat the strangers admitted to hear
the debates. And, suddenly, he met the eyes of the Unknown
who had brought to him the letter from Teresa de Fontenai,
the preceding day. The eyes fascinated him as he gazed. In
after-times, he often said, that their regard, fixed, earnest, half
reproachful, and yet cheering and triumphant, filled him with
new life and courage. They spoke to his heart as the trumpet
speaks to the war-horse. He moved from his seat ; he whis.
pered with his allies; the spirit he had drawn in was contagious;
the men whom Robespierre especially had denounced, and who
saw the sword over their heads, woke from their torpid trance.
Vadier, Cambon, Billaud-Varennes, Panis, Amar, rose at once---
all at once demanded speech. Vadier is first heard, the rest
succeed. It burst forth, the Mountain, with its fires and con-
suming lava Flood upon flood they rush, a legion of Ciceros
upon the startled Catiline !. Robespierre falters—hesitates—
would qualify, retract. They gather new courage from his new
fears; they interrupt him ; they drown his voice ; they de-
mand the reversal of the motion. Amar moves again that the
- speech be referred to the Committees—to the Committees—to
•º
his enemies Confusion, and noise, and clamor Robespierre
wraps himself in silent and superb disdain. Pale, defeated,
but not yet destroyed, he stands, a storm in the midst of storm
The motion is carried. All men foresee in that defeat the
Dictator’s downfall. A solitary cry rose from the galleries; it
was caught up ; it circled through the hall—the audience: “A
bas le tyrant / Vive la république / "*
CHAPTER XII.
“Auprés d'un corps aussiavili que la Convention il restait des chances pour
que Robespierre sortit vainqueur de cette lutte.” +—LACRETELLE, vol. xii.
As Robespierre left the hall, there was a dead and ominous
silence...in the crowd without. The herd, in every count y,
* Down with the tyrant! Hurrah for the republic
+ Amongst a body so debased as the Convention,there still remained some chances tº " .
Robespierre would come off the victor in the struggle.
y *: ZANONI. 325
}
side with success; and the rats run from the falling tower,
But Robespierre, who wanted courage, never wanted pride,
and the last often supplied the place of the first : thoughtfully,
and with an impenetrable brow, he passed through the throng,
leaning on St. Just, Payan and his brother following him.
As they got into the open space, Robespierre abruptly broke
the silence. ** Qº.
“How many heads were to fall upon the tenth 7"
“Eighty,” replied Payan. •º.
“Ah, we must not tarry so long; a day may lose an empire ;
terrorism must serve us yet !”
He was silent a few moments, and his eyes roved suspiciously
through the street. tº
“St. Just,” he said abruptly, “they have not found this
Englishman, whose revelations or whose trial would have
crushed the Amars and the Talliens. No, no My Jacobins
themselves are growing dull and blind. But they have seized
a woman—only a woman ’’
“A woman's hand stabbed Marat,” said St. Just. Robes-
pierre stopped short, and breathed hard.
“St. Just,” said he, “when this peril is past, we will found
the Reign of Peace. There shall be homes and gardens set
apart for the old. David is already designing the porticos.
Virtuous men shall be appointed to instruct the young. All
vice and disorder shall be not exterminated ; no, no only
banished . We must not die yet. Posterity cannot judge
us till our work is done. We have recalled Z'Etre Supréme :
we must now remodel this corrupted world. All shall be love
and brotherhood ; and—hoº! Simon Simon l—hold | Your
pencil, St. Just ” And Robespierre wrote hastily. “This to
Citizen President Dumas. Go with it quick, Simon. These
eighty heads must fall to-morrow—to morrow, Simon. Dumas
will advance their trial a day. I will write to Fouquier Tinville,
the public accuser. We meet at the Jacobins to-night, Simon ;
there, we will denounce the Convention itself ; there we will
rally round us the last friends of liberty and France.”
A shout was heard in the distance behind ; “Vive la ré-
publique / "
. The tyrant's eye shot a vindictive gleam. “The repub-
lic l—faugh We did not destroy the throne of a thousand
years for that canaille / "
The trial, the execution of the victims is advanced a day / By
the aid of the mysterious intelligence that had guided and
animated him hitherto, Zanoni learned that his arts had been
f
326 ZANONI.
}
in vain. He knew that Viola was safe, if she could but sur-
vive an hour the life of the tyrant. He knew that Robespierre's
hours were numbered ; that the Ioth of Thermidor, on which
he had originally designed the execution of his last victims,
would see himself at the scaffold. Zanoni had toiled, had .
schemed, for the fall of the Butcher and his reign. To what
end? A single word from the tyrant had baffled the result of
all. The execution of Viola is advanced a day. Vain seer,
who wouldst make thyself the instrument of the Eternal, the
very dangers that now beset the tyrant but expedite the doom
of his victims To-morrow, eighty heads, and hers whose
pillow has been thy heart | To-morrow ! and Maximilien is
safe to-night ! &
CHAPTER XIII.
“Erde mag zurück in Erde stauben,
Fliegt der Geist doch aus dem morschen Haus !
Seine Asche mag der Sturmwind treiben,
Sein Leben dauert ewig aus !” ”—Elegie.
To-MORRow !—and it is already twilight. One after one the
gentle stars come smiling through the heaven. The Seine, in
its slow waters, yet trembles with the last kiss of the rosy day;
and still in the blue sky gleams the spire of Notre Dame ; and
still in the blue sky looms the guillotine by the Barrière du
Trône. Turn to that time-worn building, once the church and
the convent of the Frères-Précheurs, known by the then holy
name of Jacobins; there the new Jacobins hold their club.
There, in that oblong hall, once the library of the peaceful
monks, assemble the idolators of Saint Robespierre. Two im-
mense tribunes, raised at either end, contain the lees and dregs
of the atrocious populace—the majority of that audience con-
sisting of the furies of the guillotine (furies de guillotine). In
the midst of the hall are the bureau and chair of the president—
the chair long preserved by the piety of the monks as the relic
of St. Thomas Aquinas . Above this seat scowls the harsh
bust of Brutus. An iron lamp, and two branches, scatter over
the vast room a murky, fuliginous ray, beneath the light of
which the fierce faces of that Pandaemonium seem more grim
and haggard. There, from the orator's tribune, shrieks the
shrill wrath of Robespierre
Meanwhile, all is chaos, disorder, -half daring and half cow-
ardice, in the Committee of his foes. Rumors fly from street
* Earth may crumble back into earth; the Spirit will still escape from its frail tenement,
The wind of the storm may scatter his ashes ; his being endures forever,
*~ *
**.
zANoNI. 327
*
to street, from haunt to haunt, from house to house. The swal-
lows flit low, and the cattle group together before the storm.
And above this roar of the lives and things of the little hour,
alone in his chamber stood he on whose starry youth—symbol
of the imperishable bloom of the calm Ideal amidst the mould-
ering Actual—the clouds of ages had rolled in vain.
All those exertions which ordinary wit and courage could
suggest had been tried in vain. All such exertions were in vain,
where, in that Saturnalia of death, a life was the object.
Nothing but the fall of Robespierre could have saved his vic-
tims; now, too late, that fall would only serve to avenge.
Once more in that last agony of excitement and despair, the
Seer had plunged into solitude, to invoke again the aid or coun-
sel of those mysterious intermediates between earth and heaven
who had renounced the intercourse of the spirit when subjected
to the common bondage of the mortal. In the intense desire
and anguish of his heart, perhaps, lay a power not yet called
forth ; for who has not felt that the sharpness of extreme grief
cuts and grides away many of those strongest bonds of infirmity
and doubt which bind down the souls of men to the cabined
darkness of the hour; and that from the cloud and thunder-
storm often swoops the Olympian eagle that can ravish us aloft
And the invocation was heard—the bondage of sense was
rent away from the visual mind. He looked, and saw—no, not
the being he had called, with its limbs of light and unutterably
tranquil smile—not his familiar, Adon-Ai, the Son of Glory
and the Star, but the Evil Omen, the dark Chimera, the im-
placable Foe, with exultation and malice burning in its hell-
lit eyes. The Spectre, no longer cowering and retreating
into shadow, rose before him, gigantic and erect; the face,
whose veil no mortal hand had ever raised, was still concealed,
but the form was more distinct, corporeal, and cast from it, as
an atmosphere, horror, and rage, and awe. As an iceberg, the
breath of that presence froze the air; as a cloud, it filled the
chamber, and blackened the stars from heaven. *
“Lo ' " said Its voice, “I am here once more. Thou hast
robbed me of a meaner prey. Now exorcise thyself from my
power Thy life has left thee, to live in the heart of a daugh-
ter of the charnel and the worm. In that life I come to thee
with my inexorable tread. Thou art returned to the Thres-
hold—thou, whose steps have trodden the verges of the Infi-
nite And, as the goblin of its phantasy seizes on a child in
the dark,+mighty one, who wouldst conquer Death, I seize on
thee . "
3- § < *.
*
328 • ZANONI. & “s * e.”
“Back to thy thraldom, slave If thou art come to the
voice that called thee not, it is again not to command, but to -
obey ! Thou, from whose whisper I gained the boon of the
lives lovelier and dearer than my own—thou—I command
thee, not by spell and charm, but by the force of a soul mightier
than the malice of thy being—thou serve me yet, and speak
again the secret that can rescue the lives thou hast, by permis-
sion of the Universal Master, permitted me to retain awhile
in the temple of the clay !”
Brighter and more devopuringly burnt the glare from those
lurid eyes; more visible and colossal yet rose the dilating
shape ; a yet fiercer and more disdainful hate spoke in the
voice that answered: “Didst thou think that my boon would
be other than thy curse 2 Happy for thee thou hadst mourned
over the deaths, which come by the gentle hand of Nature;
hadst thou never known how the name of mother consecrates
the face of Beauty, and never, bending over thy first-born, felt
the imperishable sweetness of a father's love . They are saved,
for what? The mother, for the death of violence and shame,
and blood ; for the doomsman's hand to put aside that shining
hair which has entangled thy bridegroom kisses; the child,
first and last of thine offspring, in whom thou didst hope to
found a race that should hear with thee the music of celestial
harps, and float, by the side of thy familiar, Adon-Ai, through
the azure rivers of joy—the child, to live on a few days, as a
fungus in a burial vault, a thing of the loathsome dungeon,
dying of cruelty, and neglect, and famine. Ha 1 ha thou who
wouldst baffle death, learn how the deathless die if they dare
to love the mortal. Now, Chaldaean, behold my boons ! Now
I seize and wrap thee with the pestilence of my presence; now,
evermore, till thy long race is run, mine eyes shall glow into thy
brain, and mine arms shall clasp thee, when thou wouldst take
the wings of the Morning, and flee from the embrace of Night !”
“I tell thee, no | And again I compel thee, speak and an-
swer to the lörd who can command his slave. I know, though
my lore fails me, and the reeds on which I leaned pierced my
side, I know yet that it is written that the life of which I ques-
tion can be saved from the headsman. Thou wrappest her
future in the darkness of thy shadow, but thou canst not shape
it. Thou mayst foreshow the antidote ; thou canst not ef-
fect the bane. From thee I wring the secret, though it tor-
ture thee to name it. I approach thee; I look, dauntless, into
thine eyes. The soul that loves can dare all things. Shadow,
I defy thee, and compel !”
jºr
2ANON?. 329
The spectre waned and recoiled. Like a vapor that lessens
as the sun pierces and pervades it, the form shrunk cowering
- and dwarfed in the dimmer distance, and through the case-
ment again rushed the stars.
“Yes,” said the Voice, with a faint and hollow accent, “thou
camst save her from the headsman ; for it is written that sacri-
fice can save. Ha! haſ " And the shape again suddenly
dilated into the gloom of its giant stature, and its ghastly laugh
exulted, as if the Foe, a moment baffled, had regained its
might. “Ha! ha 1–thou canst save her life, if thou wilt sacri-
fice thine own Is it for this thou hast lived on through
crumbling empires and countless generations of thy race? At
last shall Death reclaim thee ? Wouldst thou save her 2—die
for her / Fall, O stately column, over which stars yet un-
formed may gleam—fall, that the herb at thy base may drink
a few hours longer the sunlight and the dews : Silent Art
thou ready for the sacrifice 2 See, the moon moves up through
Heaven. Beautiful and wise one, wilt thou bid her smile to-
morrow on thy headless clay ?”
“Back! for my soul, in answering thee from depths where
thou canst not hear it, has regained its glory ; and I hear the
wings of Adon-Ai gliding musical through the air.” "
He spoke ; and with a low shriek of baffled rage and hate,
the Thing was gone, and through the room rushed, luminous -
and sudden, the Presence of silvery light.
As the Heavenly visitor stood in the atmosphere of his own
lustre, and looked upon the face of the Theurgist with an aspect
of ineffable tenderness and love, all space seemed lighted from
his smile. Along the blue air without, from that chamber in
which his wings had halted, to the farthest star in the azure
distance, it seemed as if the track of his flight were visible, by
a lengthened splendor in the air, like the column of moonlight
on the sea. Like the flower that diffuses perfume as the very
breath of its life, so the emanation of that presence was joy.
Over the world, as a million times swifter than light, than elec-
tricity, the Son of Glory had sped his way to the side of love,
his wings had scattered delight as the morning scatters dew.
For that brief moment, Poverty had ceased to mourn, Disease
fled from its prey, and Hope breathed a dream, of Heaven into
the darkness of Despair.
“Thou art right,” said the melodious Voice. “Thy courage
has restored thy power. Once more, in the haunts of earth,
thy soul charms me to thy side. Wiser now, in the moment
when thou comprehendest Death, than when thy unfettered
r
y
330 ZAN ONI. " ~. ... • / >
*-
$ºe
.*
spirit learned the solemn mystery 6f Life; the human affec.
tions that thralled and humbled thee awhile bring to thee, in
these last hours of thy mortality, the sublimest heritage of thy
race—the eternity that commences from the grave.” 2.
“O Adon-Ai,” said the Chaldaean, as, circumfused in the
splendor of the visitant, a glory more radiant than human
beauty settled round his form, and seemed already to belong
to the eternity of which the Bright One spoke, “as men, be-
fore they die, see and comprehend the enigmas hidden from
them before,” so in this hour, when the sacrifice of self to an-
other brings the course of ages to its goal, I see the littleness
of Life compared to the majesty of Death ; but oh, Divine
Consoler, even here, even in thy presence, the affections that
2nspire me sadden. To leave behind me in this bad world,
unaided, unprotected, those for whom I die The wife the
child ! —Oh, speak comfort to me in this ”
“And what,” said the visitor, with a slight accent of reproof
in the tone of celestial pity; “What, with all thy wisdom and
thy starry secrets, with all thy empire of the past, and thy .
visions of the future—what art thou to the All-Directing and
Omniscient 2 Canst thou yet imagine that thy presence on earth
can give to the hearts thou lovest the shelter which the hum-
blest take from the wings of the Presence that lives in Heaven 2
Fear not thou for their future. Whether thou live or die, their
future is the care of the Most High In the dungeon and on
the scaffold looks everlasting the Eye of HIM, tenaerer than
thou to love, wiser than thou to guide, mightier than thou to
save | * --
Zanoni bowed his head; and when he looked up again,
the last shadow had left his brow. The visitor was gone ; but
still the glory of his presence seemed to shine upon the spot ;
still the solitary air seemed to murmur with tremulous delight.
And thus ever sha N it be with those who have,once, detaching
themselves utterly from life, received the visit of the Angel
FAITH. Solitude and space retain the splendor, and it settles
like a halo round their graves.
* The greatest Poet, and one of the noblest thinkers, of the last age, said, on his death-
bed, “ Many things obscure to me before, now clear up and become visible.”—See the
A.2/e of Schiller. #
ZANONI. , 331
CHAPTER XIV.
* Dann zur Blumenflur der Sterne
Aufgeschauet liebewarm,
Fass ihn freundlich Arm in Arm
Trag' ihn in die blaue Ferne.” +
—UHLAND, Aze den Tod.
N- e
He stood upon the lofty balcony that ºverlooked the quiet
oity. . Though afar, the fiercest passions of men were at work
on the web of strife and doom, all that gave itself to his view
re
was calm and still in the rays of the summer moon, for his soul
was wrapped from man and man's narrow sphere, and only the
serener glories of creation were present to the vision of the seer.
There he stood, alone and thoughtful, to take the last farewell
of the wondrous life that he had known.
- Coursing through the fields of space, he beheld the gossamer
shapes, whose choral joys his spirit had so often shared.
There, group upon group, they circled in the starry silence
multiform in the unimaginable beauty of a being fed by ambro-
sial dews and serenest light. In his trance, all the universe
stretched visible beyond; in the green valleys afar, he saw the
dances of the fairies; in the bowels of the mountains, he be-
held the race that breathe the lurid air of the volcanoes, and
hide from the light of Heaven; on every leaf in the number-
less forests, in every drop of the unmeasured seas, he surveyed
its separate and swarming world ; far up, in the farthest blue,
he saw orb upon orb ripening into shape, and planets starting
from the central fire, to run their day of ten thousand years
For everywhere in creation is the breath of the Creator, and in
every spot where the breath breathes is life And alone, in
the distance, the lonely man beheld his Magian brother. There,
at work with his numbers and his cabala, amidst the wrecks of
Rome, passionless and calm, sat in his cell the mystic Mejnour;
living on, living ever while the world lasts, indifferent whether
his knowledge produces weal or woe ; a mechanical agent of a
more tender and a wiser Will, that guides every spring to its
inscrutable designs. Living on–living ever—as Science that
cares alone for knowledge, and halts not to consider how
knowledge advances happiness ; how Human Improvement,
rushing through civilization, crushes in its march all who can-
* Then towards ºne Garden of the Star º
Lift up thine aspect warm with love,
And, friendlike link'd through space afar,
Mount with him, arm in arm, above.
-UHLAND, Poem to DEATH.
t
332 , ZAN ONI.
not grapple to its wheels; * ever, with its cabala and its num-
bers, lives on to change, in its bloodless movements, the face of
the habitable world !
And, “Oh, farewell to life " " murmured the glorious
dreamer. “Sweet, O life, hast thou been to me ! How
fathomless thy joys—how rapturously has my soul bounded
forth upon the upward paths To him who forever renews
his youth in the clear fount of Nature, how exquisite is the
mere happiness to be / Farewell, ye lamps of heaven, and ye
million tribes, the Populace of Air. Not a mote in the beam,
not a herb on the mountain, not a pebble on the shore, not a
seed far-blown into the wilderness, but contributed to the lore
that sought in all, the true principle of life, the Beautiful, the
Joyous, the Immortal. To others, a land, a city, a hearth, has
been a home; my home has been wherever the intellect could
pierce, or the spirit could breathe the air.”
He paused, and through the immeasurable space, his eyes
and his heart, penetrating the dismal dungeon, rested on his
child. He saw it slumbering in the arms of the pale mother,
and his soul spoke to the sleeping soul. “Forgive me, if my
desire was sin ; I dreamed to have reared and nurtured thee
to the divinest destinies my visions could foresee. Betimes, as
the mortal part was strengthened against disease, to have puri-
fied the spiritual from every sin ; to have led thee, heaven upon
heaven, through the holy ecstasies which make up the exist-
ence of the orders that dwell on high ; to have formed, from
thy sublime affections, the pure and ever-living communication
between thy mother and myself. The dream was but a
dream—it is no more In sight myself of the grave, I feel, at
last, that through the portals of the grave lies the true initiation
into the holy and the wise. Beyond those portals I await ye
both, beloved pilgrims "
From his numbers and his cabala, in his cell, amidst the
wrecks of Rome, Mejnour, startled, looked up, and, through
the spirit, felt that the spirit of his distant friend addressed
him.
“Fare thee well forever upon this earth ! Thy last com-
panion forsakes thy side. Thine age survives the youth of all;
and the Final Day shall find thee still the contemplater of our
* “You colonize the lands of the savage with the Anglo-Saxon ; you civilize that por-
tion of the earth ; but is the saz age civilized 2 He is exterminated | You accumulate
machinery; you increase the total of wealth : but what becomes of the labor you displace 2
One generation is sacrifided to the next. You diffuse knowledge, and the world seems to
grow brighter; but Discontent at Poverty replaces Ignorance, happy with its crust. Every
improvement, every advancement in civilization, injures some, to benefit others, and eithel
cherishes the want of to-day, or prepares the revolution of to-morrow,”—STEPHEN
MonTAGUE,
ZAIN ONI. 333
tombs. I go with my free-will into the land of darkness; but
new Suns and systems blaze around us from the grave. I go
where the souls of those for whom I resign the clay shall be
my co-mates through eternal youth. At last, I recognize the
true ordeal and the real victory. Mejnour, cast down thy
elixir; lay by thy load of years | Wherever the soul can
wander, the Eternal Soul of all things protects it still ”
CHAPTER xv.
“Ils ne veulent plus perdre un moment d'une nuit si précieuse.” +
—LACRETELLE, tom. xii.
IT was late that night, and Réné-François Dumas, President
of the Revolutionary Tribunal, had re-entered his cabinet, on
his return from the Jacobin club. With him were two men
who might be said to represent, the one the moral, the other
the physical force of the Reign of Terror : Fouquier-Tinville,
the Public Accuser, and François Henriot, the General of the
Parisian National Guard. This formidable triumvirate were
assembled to debate on the proceedings of the next day ; and
the three sister-witches, over their hellish caldron, were scarcely
animated by a more fiend-like spirit, or engaged in more execra-
... ble designs, than these three heroes of the Revolution in their
premeditated massacre of the morrow. & *
Dumas was but little altered in appearance since, in the
earlier part of this narrative, he was presented to the reader,
except that his manner was somewhat more short and severe,
... and his eye yet more restless. But he seemed almost a supe-
rior being by the side of his associates. Réné-Dumas, born of
respectable parents, and, well-educated, despite his ferocity,
was not without a certain refinement, which perhaps rendered
him the more acceptable to the precise and formal Robespierre.f
But Henriot had been a lackey, a thief, a spy of the police; he
had drunk the blood of Madame de Lamballe, and had risen
to his present rank for no quality but his ruffianism ; and
Fouquier-Tinville, the son of a provincial agriculturist, and
afterwards a clerk at the Bureau of the Police, was little less
base in his manners, and yet more, from a certain loathsome
buffoonery, revolting in his speech ; bull-headed, with black,
sleek hair, with a narrow and livid forehead, with small eyes,
that twinkled with a sinister malice ; strongly and coarsely
* They would not lose another m >ment of so precious a night, ~k.
mi* was a Beau in his way. His gala dress was a blood-red coał, with the finests
^.
334 * ZANONI. *~s.
built, he looked what he was, the audacious Bully of a lawless
and relentless Bar. tº ---
Dumas trimmed the candles, and bent over the list of the
victims for the morrow.
“It is a long catalogue,” said the President ; “eighty trials
for one day ! And Robespierre's orders to despatch the whole
fournée are unequivocal.” --
“Pooh 1” said Fouquier, with a coarse, loud laugh ; we must
try them en masse. I know how to deal with our jury. ‘Je
pense, Citoyens, que vous étes convaincus du crime des accuses 2'"
Ha 1 ha 1–the longer the list, the shorter the work.”
“Oh, yes,” growled out Henriot, with an oath—as usual,
half drunk, and lolling on his chair, with his spurred heels on
the table—“little Tinville is the man for despatch.”
“Citizen Henriot,” said Dumas gravely, “permit, me to
request thee to select another footstool ; and for the rest, let
me warn thee that to-morrow is a critical and important day;
one that will decide the fate of France.” \
“A fig for little France Vice le Vertueux Robespierre, la
Colonne de la République / f Plague on this talking ; it is dry
work. Hast thou no eau de vie in that little cupboard 7"
Dumas and Fouquier exchanged looks of disgust. Dumas
shrugged his shoulders, and replied :
“It is to guard thee against eau de vie, Citizen General Hen-
riot, that I have requested thee to meet me here. Listen, if thou
CanSt ” *
“Oh, talk away ! Thy métier is to talk, mine to fight and to
drink.” º
“To-morrow, I tell thee then, the populace will be abroad ;"
all factions will be astir. It is probable enough that they will
even seek to arrest our tumbrils on their way to the guillotine.
Have thy men armed and ready ; keep the streets clear ; cut
down without mercy whomsoever may obstruct the ways.”
“I understand ”; said Henriot, striking his sword so loudly
that Dumas half started at the clank; “Black Henriot is no
“Indulgent.’”
“Look to it, then, Citizen—look to it ! And hark thee,” he
added, with a grave and sombre brow, “if thou wouldst keep
thine own head on thy shoulders, beware of the eau de vie.” "
“My own head —sacre mille tommerres / Dost thou threaten
the General of the Parisian army P" { f
Dumas, like Robespierre, a precise, atrabilious, and arrogant
* I think, citizens, that you are convinced of the crime of the accused,
* Long life to the virtuous Robespierre, the pillar of the Republic,
*.
ZANONI. 335
man, was about to retort, when the craftier Tinville laid his
hand on his arm, and, turning to the General, said : “My
dear Henriot, thy dauntless republicanism, which is too ready
to give offence, must learn to take a reprimand from the repre-
sentative of Republican Law. Seriously, mon cher, thou must
-be sober for the next three or four days; after the crisis is
over, thou and I will drink a bottle together. Come, Dumas,
relax thine austerity, and shake hands with our friend. No
quarrels amongst ourselves | " e
Dumas hesitated, and extended his hand, which the ruffian
clasped ; and, maudlin tears succeeding his ferocity, he half
sobbed, half hiccuped forth his protestations of civism and his
promises of sobriety. *
“Well, we depend on thee, mon Général,” said Dumas; “and
now, since we shall all have need of vigor for to-morrow, go
home and sleep soundly.”
“Yes, I forgive thee, Dumas—I forgive thee. I am not vin-
dictive—I but still, if a man threatens me—if a man insults
me—” And, with the quick changes of intoxication, again his
eyes gleamed fire through their foul tears. With some diffi-
culty, Fouquier succeeded at last in soothing the brute, and
leading him from the chamber. But still, as some wild beast
disappointed of a prey, he growled and snarled, as his heavy
tread descended the stairs. A tall trooper, mounted, was lead-
ing Henriot's horse to and fro the streets ; and as the General
waited at the porch till his attendant turned, a stranger
stationed by the wall accosted him :
“General Henriot, I have desired to speak with thee. Next
to Robespierre, thou art, or shouldst be, the most powerful
man in France.”
“Hem | Yes, I ought to be. What then Every man has
not his deserts . "
“Hist!” said the stranger, “thy pay is scarcely suitable to
thy rank and thy wants.” ~~~
“That is true.”
“Even in a revolution, a man takes care of his fortunes . "
“Diable / speak out, Citizen.”
“I have a thousand pieces of gold with me; they are thine
if thou wilt grant me one small favor.”
“Citizen, I grant it !” said Henriot, waving his hand majestic-
ally. “Is it to denounce some rascal who has offended thee P”
“No ; it is simply this ; write these words to President
Dumas : “Admit the bearer to thy presence ; and if thou canst
grant him the request he will make to thee, it will be an
335 2ANoNt. * ~~
inestimable obligation to François Henriot.’” The stranger,
as he spoke, placed pencil and tablets in the shaking hands of
the soldier.
“And where is the gold P”
“Here.”
With some difficulty, Henriot scrawled the words dictated to
him, clutched the gold, mounted his horse, and was gone.-
Meanwhile Fouquier, when he had closed the door upon
Henriot, said sharply : “How canst thou be so mad as to
incense that brigand 2 Knowest thou not that our laws are
nothing without the physical force of the National Guard, and
that he is their leader?” tº. Q
“I know this, that Robespierre must have been mad to place
that drunkard at their head ; and mark my words, Fouquier,
if the struggle come, it is that man's incapacity and cowardice
that will destroy us. Yes, thou mayst live thyself to accuse
thy beloved Robespierre, and to perish in his fall.”
“For all that, we must keep well with Henriot till we can
find the occasion to seize and behead him. To be safe, we
must fawn on those who are still in power; and fawn the more,
the more we would depose them. Do not think this Henriot,
when he wakes to-morrow, will forget thy threats. He is the
most revengeful of human beings. Thou must send, and soothe
him in the morning !”
“Right,” said Dumas, convinced. “I was too hasty; and
-*
N.
now I think we have nothing further to do, since we have
arranged to make short work with our ſourmée of to-morrow.
I see in the list a knave I have long marked out, though his
crime once procured me a legacy—Nicot, the Hébertist.”
“And young André Chenier, the Poet P Ah, I forgot; we
beheaded him to-day ! Revolutionary virtue is at its acmé.
His own brother abandoned him ”*
“There is a foreigner—an Italian woman—in the list; but
I can find no charge made out against her.”
“All the same ; we must execute her for the sake of the
round number ; eighty sounds better than seventy-nine !”
Here a huissier brought a paper, on which was written the
request of Henriot.
“Ah, this is fortunate,” said Tinville, to whom Dumas
* His brother is said, indeed, to have contributed to the condemnation of this virtuous
and illustrious person. He was heard to cry aloud—“Si mon frère est coupable, qu'il
perisse.” (If my brother be culpable, let him die.) This brother, Marie-Joseph, also a
poet, and the author of “Charles IX.,” so celebrated in the earlier days of the Revolution,
enjoyed, of course, according to the wonted justice of the world, a triumphant career ; and
was proclaimed in the Champ de Mars, “le premier des poètes Français,” a title due to
his murdered brother.
:S
}
r
ZANON1. 337
chucked the scroll; “grant the prayer by all means; so at
least that it does not lessen our bead-roll. But I will do Hen-
riot the justice to say, that he never asks to let off, but to put
on. Good-night ! I am worn out ; my escort waits below.
Only on such an occasion would I venture forth in the streets at
night.” ” And Fouquier, with a long yawn, quitted the room.
“Admit the bearer ’’ said Dumas, who, withered and dried,
as lawyers in practice mostly are, seemed to require as little
sleep as his parchments. -
The stranger entered.
“Réné-François Dumas,” said he, seating himself opposite to
the President; and markedly adopting the plural, as if in con-
tempt of the revolutionary jargon; “amidst the excitement and
occupations of your later life, I know not if you can remember
that we have met before ?”
The judge scanned the features of his visitor, and a pale
blush settled on his sallow cheeks: “Yes, Citizen, I remember 1’’
“And you recall the words I then uttered You spoke
tenderly and philanthropically of your horror of capital execu-
tions; you exulted in the approaching Revolution as the ter-
mination of all sanguinary punishments; you quoted reverently
the saying of Maximilien Robespierre, the rising statesman,
‘the executioner is the invention of the tyrant’; and I replied
that while you spoke, a foreboding seized me that we should
meet again when your ideas of death and the philosophy of
revolutions might be changed Was I right, Citizen Réné-
François Dumas, President of the Revolutionary Tribunal 2 ”
“Pooh !” said Dumas, with some confusion on his brazen
brow, “I spoke then as men speak who have not acted. Revo-
lutions are not made with rose-water | But truce to the gossip
of the long-ago. I remember, also, that thou didst then save
the life of my relation, and it will please thee to learn that his
intended murderer will be guillotined to-morrow.”
“That concerns yourself—your justice or your revenge.
Permit me the egotism to remind you, that you then promised
that if ever a day should come when you could serve me, your
life—yes, the phrase was, ‘your heart's blood '—was at my
bidding. Think not, austere judge, that I come to ask a boon
that can affect yourself; I come but to ask a day's respite for
another | *
“Citizen, it is impossible ! I have the order of Robespierre
that not one less than the total on my list must undergo their
&
+ During the latter part of the Reign of Terror, Fouquier rarely stirred out at night, and
never without an escort. In the Reign of Terror, those most terrified were its kings.
**
338 , ZANONI.
s
trial for to-morrow. As for the verdict, that rests with the
jury . "
“I do not ask you to diminish the catalogue. Listen still
In your death-roll there is the name of an Italian woman,
whose youth, whose beauty, and whose freedom, not only from
every crime, but every tangible charge, will 'excite only com-
passion, and not terror. Even you would tremble to pronounce
her sentence. It will be dangerous on a day when the popu-
lace will be excited, when your tumbrils may be arrested, to
expose youth and innocence and beauty to the pity and cour-
age of a revolted crowd.”
Dumas looked up, and shrunk from the eye of the stranger.
“I do not deny, Citizen, that there is reason in what thou
urgest. But my orders are positive.” – 4.
“Positive only as to the number of the victims. I offer you
a substitute for this one. I offer you the head of a man who
knows all of the very conspiracy which now threatens Robes-
pierre and yourself; and compared with one clue to which,
you would think even eighty ordinary lives a cheap purchase.”
“That alters the case,” said Dumas eagerly; “if thou canst
do this, on my own responsibility I will postpone the trial of
the Italian. Now name the proxy ' "
“You behold him ”
“Thou !” exclaimed Dumas, while a fear he could not con
ceal betrayed itself through his surprise. “Thou !—and thou
comest to me alone at night, to offer thyself to justice. Ha!—
this is a snare. Tremble, fool | Thou art in my power, and I
can have both / "
“You can,” said the stranger, with a calm smile of disdain;
“but my life is valueless without my revelations. Sit still, I
command you, -hear me !” and the light in those dauntless
eyes spellbound and awed the judge. “You will remove me to
the Conciergerie; you will fix my trial, under the name of Za-
noni, amidst your fourmee of to-morrow. If I do not satisfy
you by my speech, you hold the woman I die to save as your
hostage. It is but the reprieve for her of a single day that I
demand. The day following the morrow, I shall be dust, and
you may wreak your vengeance on the life that remains. Tush !
Judge and condemner of thousands, do you hesitate 2 Do you
imagine that the man who voluntarily offers himslf to death,
will be daunted into uttering one syllable at your bar against
his will? Have you not had experience enough of the inflexi-
bility of pride and courage 2 President, I place before you the
ink and implements Write to the gaoler a reprieve of one
ZANONI. 339
day for the woman whose life can avail you nothing, and I will
bear the order to my own prison—I, who can now tell this much
as an earnest of what I can communicate—while I speak, your
own name, Judge, is in a list of death. I can tell you by whose
hand it is written down ; I can tell you in what quarter to look
for danger ; I can tell you from what cloud, in this lurid at-
mosphere, hangs the storm that shall burst on Robespierre and
his reign "
Dumas grew pale; and his eyes vainly sought to escape the
magnetic gaze that overpowered and mastered him. Mechan-
ically, and as if under an agency not his own, he wrote while
the stranger dictated.
“Well,” he said, then, forcing a smile to his lips; “I prom-
ised I would serve you ; see, I am faithful to my word. I sup-
pose that you are one of those fools of feeling—those professors
of anti-revolutionary virtue, of whom I have seen not a few be-
fore my bar. Faugh ! it sickens me to see those who make a
merit of incivism, and perish to save some bad patriot, because
it is a son, or a father, or a wife, or a daughter, who is saved.”
“I am one of those fools of feeling,” said the stranger, rising.
“You have divined aright.”
“And wilt thou not, in return for my mercy, utter to-night
the revelations thou wouldst proclaim to-morrow 2 Come; and,
perhaps, thou too—nay, the woman also—may receive not re-
prieve, but pardon.”
“Before your tribunal, and there alone ! Nor will I deceive
you, President. My information may avail you not; and even
while I show the cloud, the bolt may fall.”
“Tush | Prophet, look to thyself Go, madman ; go. I
know, too well, the contumacious obstinacy of the class to which
I suspect thou belongest to waste further words. Diable / but
ye grow so accustomed to look on death, that ye forget the re-
spect ye owe to it. Since thou offerest me thy head, I accept
it. To-morrow, thou mayst repent ; it will be too late.”
“Ay, too late, President ' " echoed the calm visitor.
“But, remember, it is not pardon, it is but a day's reprieve,
I have promised to this woman. According as thou dost sat-
isfy me to-morrow, she lives or dies. I am frank, citizen ; thy
ghost shall not haunt me for want of faith.”
“It is but a day that I have asked ; the rest I leave to justice
and to Heaven. Your huissiers wait below.”
34o ZANONI.
CHAPTER XVI.
“Und den Mordstahl seh' ich blinken;
|Und das Morderauge gluhn ”*
—Kassandra.
VIOLA was in the prison, that opened not but for those al-
ready condemned before adjudged. Since her exile from
Zanoni, her very intellect had seemed paralyzed. All that
beautiful exuberance of fancy, which, if not the fruit of genius,
seemed its blossoms : all that gush of exquisite thought, which
Zanoni had justly told her flowed with mysteries and subtleties
ever new to him, the wise one,—all were gone, annihilated ;
the blossom withered, the fount dried up. From something
almost above womanhood, she seemed listlessly to sink into
something below childhood. With the inspirer the inspirations
had ceased ; and, in deserting love, genius also was left behind.
She scarcely comprehended why she had been thus torn
from her home and the mechanism of her dull tasks. She
scarcely knew what meant those kindly groups, that, struck
with her exceeding loveliness, had gathered round her in the
prison, with mournful looks, but with words of comfort. She,
who had hitherto been taught to abhor those whom Law Con-
demns for crime, was amazed to hear that beings thus com-
passionate and tender, with cloudless and lofty brows, with
gallant and gentle mien, were criminals, for whom Law had no
punishment short of death. But they, the savages, gaunt, and
menacing, who had dragged her from her home, who had at-
tempted to snatch from her the infant, while she clasped it in
her arms, and laughed fierce Scorn at her mute quivering lips—
THEy were the chosen citizens, the men of virtue, the favorites
of Power, the ministers of Law"! . Such thy black caprices, O
thou, the ever-shifting and calumnious—Human Judgment
A squalid, and yet a gay world, did the prison houses of that
day present. There, as in the sepulchre to which they led, all
ranks were cast, with an even-handed scorn. And yet there,
the reverence that comes from great emotions restored Nature's
first and imperishable, and most lovely, and most noble Law—
THE INEQUALITY BETWEEN MAN AND MAN | There, place
was given by the prisoners, whether royalists or sans-culottes,
to Age, to Learning, to Renown, to Beauty; and Strength,
with its own inborn chivalry, raised into rank the helpless and
the weak. The iron sinews and the Herculean shoulders made
* And I see the steel of Murder glitter,
And the eye of Murder glow-
A.
.3
- ZANONI. . 341
i
.
*-
way for the woman and the child ; and the graces of Humanity,
lost elsewhere, sought their refuge in the abode of Terror.
“And wherefore, my child, do they bring thee hither ?”
asked an old gray-haired priest.
“I cannot guess.”
“Ah, if you know not your offence, fear the worst.”
“And, my child 2 ” (for the infant was still suffered to rest
upon her bosom).
“Alas, young mother they will suffer thy child to live.”
“And for this—an orphan in the dungeon " " murmured the
accusing heart of Viola, “ have I reserved his offspring ! Za-
noni, even in thought, ask not—ask not, what I have done with
the child I bore thee ’’
Night came ; the crowd rushed to the grate, to hear the
muster-roll.” Her name was with the doomed. And the old
priest, better prepared to die, but reserved from the death-list,
laid his hands on her head, and blessed her while he wept.
She heard, and wondered ; but she did not weep. With down-
cast eyes, with arms folded on her bosom, she bent submissively
to the call. But now, another name was uttered ; and a man,
who had pushed rudely past her, to gaze or to listen, shrieked
out a howl of despair and rage. She turned, and their eyes
met. Through the distance of time, she recognized that hideous
aspect. Nicot's face settled back into its devilish sneer. “At
least, gentle Neapolitan, the Guillotine will unite us. Oh, we
shall sleep well our wedding night !” And, with a laugh, he
strode away through the crowd, and vanished into his lair.
She was placed in her gloomy cell, to await the morrow. But
the child was still spared her ; and she thought it seemed as if
conscious of the awful Present. In their way to the prison it
had not moaned or wept ; it had looked with its clear eyes, un-
shrinking, on the gleaming pikes and savage brows of the huis-
siers. And now, alone in the dungeon, it put its arms round
her neck, and murmured its indistinct sounds, low and sweet as
some unknown language of consolation and of Heaven. And
of Heaven it was . For, at the murmur, the terror melted
from her soul : upward, from the dungeon and the death—up-
ward, where the happy cherubim chaunt the mercy of the All-
loving, whispered that cherub's voice. She fell upon her
knees, and prayed. The despoilers of all that beautifies and
hallows life had desecrated the altar, and denied the God |
They had removed from the last hour of their victims the
* Called in the mocking jargon of the day, “Evening Gazette.”
342 • , ZAN ON I.
Priest, the Scripture, and the Cross | But Faith builds in the
dungeon and the lazar-house its sublimest shrines ; and up,
through roofs of stone, that shut out the eye of Heaven, ascends
the ladder where the angels glide to and fro–PRAYER.
And there, in the very cell beside her own, the atheist, Nicot;
sits stolid amidst the darkness, and hugs the thought of Dan-
ton, that death is nothingness.” His, no spectacle of an ap-
palled and perturbed conscience I Remorse is the echo of a
lost virtue, and virtue he never knew. Had he to live again,
he would live the same. But more terrible than the deathbed
of a believing and despairing sinner, that blank gloom of
apathy, that contemplation of the worn and the rat of the
charnel house, that grim and loathsome NOTHING NESS which,
for his eye, falls like a pall over the universe of life. Still,
staring into space, gnawing his livid lip, he looks upon the
darkness, convinced that darkness is forever and forever !
#: * #: Sk >{< sk *
Place, there ! place Room yet in your crowded cells.
Another has come to the slaughter-house. *
As the gaoler, lamp in hand, ushered in the stranger, the lat-
ter touched him, and whispered. The stranger drew a jewel
from his finger. Diamtre, how the diamond flashed in the ray
of the lamp ! Value each head of your eighty at a thousand
francs, and the jewel is more worth than all ! The gaoler
paused, and the diamond laughed in his dazzled eyes. O thou
Cerberus, thou hast mastered all else that seems human in that
fell employ. Thou hast no pity, no love, and no remorse.
But Avarice survives the rest, and the foul heart's master-ser-
pent swallows up the tribe. Ha 1 ha Crafty stranger, thou
hast conquered They tread the gloomy corridor; they arrive
at the door where the gaoler has placed the fatal mark, now to
be erased, for the prisoner within is to be reprieved a day.
The key grates in the lock—the door yawns—the stranger takes
the lamp and enters.
CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH AND LAST.
“Cosi vince Goffredo l’H
—Ger. Lib., cant. xx.-xliv.
AND Viola was in prayer. She heard not the opening of
the door; she saw not the dark shadow that fell along the
* “Ma demeure sera bientôt le NáANT' (My abode will soon be Nothingness), said Dan-
ton before his judges.
f Thus conquered Godfrey.
#
ZANONI. 343
floor. His power, his arts were gone ; but the mystery and the
spell known to her simple heart did not desert her in the hours
of trial and despair. When Science falls as a firework from
the sky it would invade; when Genius withers as a flower in
the breath of the icy charnel, the Hope of a child-like soul
wraps the air in light, and the innocence of unquestioning
Belief covers the grave with blossoms.
In the farthest corner of the cell she knelt ; and the infant,
as if to imitate what it could not comprehend, bent its little
limbs, and bowed its smiling-face, and knelt with her also, by
her side.
He stood, and gazed upon them as the light of the lamp fell
calmly on their forms. It fell over those clouds of golden
hair, dishevelled, parted, thrown back from the rapt, candid
brow ; the dark eyes raised on high, where, through the
human tears, a light as from above was mirrored ; the
hands clasped, the lips apart, the form all animate and holy
with the sad serenity of innocence and the touching humility
of woman. And he heard her voice, though it scarcely left
her lips—the low voice that the heart speaks—loud enough for
God to hear !
“And if never more to see him, O Father, canst thou not
make the love that will not die, minister, even beyond the
grave, to his earthly fate 2 Canst thou not yet permit it, as a
living spirit, to hover over him—a spirit fairer than all his
science can conjure ? Oh, whatever lot be ordained to either,
grant—even though a thousand ages may roll between us—
grant, when at last, purified and regenerate, and fitted for the
transport of such reunion—grant that we may meet once
more And for his child—it kneels to thee from the dungeon
floor To-morrow, and whose breast shall cradle it ! Whose
hand shall feed ' Whose lips shall pray for its weal below
and its soul hereafter l’” She paused, her voice choked
with sobs. . e
“Thou, Viola | Thou, thyself. He whom thou hast de.
serted is here to preserve the mother to the child !”
She started | Those accents, tremulous as her own She
started to her feet ! He was there—in all the pride of his un-
waning youth and superhuman beauty . There, in the house
of dread, and in the hour of travail There, image and per-
sonation of the love that can pierce the Valley of the Shadow,
and can glide, the sunscathed wanderer from the heaven,
through the roaring abyss of hell.
With a cry, never, perhaps, heard before in that gloomy
344 2 ANONI.
t
vault—a cry of delight and rapture, she sprang forward, and
fell at his feet. -
He bent down to raise her, but she slid from his arms. He
called her by the familiar epithets of the old endearment, and
she only answered him by sobs. Wildly, passionately, she
kissed his hands, the hem of his garment, but voice was gone.
“Look up, look up ! I am here—I am here to save thee!
Wilt thou deny to me thy sweet face 2 Truant, wouldst thou
fly me still?” & *
“Fly thee!” she said, at last, and in a broken voice; “oh,
if my thoughts wronged thee; oh, if my dream, that awful
dream, deceived—kneel down with me, and pray for our
child !” Then, springing to her feet with a sudden impulse,
she caught up the infant, and placing it in his arms, sobbed
forth, with deprecating and humble tones: “Not for my
sake—not for mine, did I abandon thee, but—”
“Hush ' " said Zanoni: “I know all the thoughts that thy
confused and struggling senses can scarcely analyze them-
selves. And see how, with a look, thy child answers them l’”
And in truth the face of that strange infant seemed radiant
with its silent and unfathomable joy. It seemed as if it rec-
ognized the father; it clung—it forced itself to his breast, and
there, nestling, turned its bright, clear eyes upon Viola, and
smiled. *
“Pray for my child !” said Zanoni mournfully. “The
thoughts of souls that would aspire as mine, are all prayer / "
And, seating himself by her side, he began to reveal to her
some of the holier secrets of his lofty being. He spoke of the
sublime and intense faith from which alone the diviner knowl-
edge can arise—the faith which, seeing the immortal every-
where, purifies and exalts the mortal that beholds—the glorious
ambition that dwells not in the cabals and crimes of earth,
but amidst those solemn wonders that speak not of men, but
of God; of that power to abstract the soul from the clay which
gives to the eye of the soul its subtle vision, and to the soul's
wing the unlimited realm ; of that pure, severe, and daring
initiation, from which the mind emerges, as from death, into
clear perceptions of its kindred with the Father-Principles of
life and light, so that, in its own sense of the Beautiful, it finds
its joy! In the serenity of its will, its power; in its sympathy
with the youthfulness of the Infinite Creation, of which itself
is an essence and a part, the secrets that embalm the very clay
which they consecrate, and renew the strength of life with the
ambrosia of mysterious ànd celestial sleep. And while he
*:
sº ZANONI. 345
spoke, Viola listened, breathless, If she could not compre-
hend, she no longer dared to distrust. She felt that in that en-
thusiasm, self-deceiving or not, no fiend could lurk ; and by
an intuition, rather that an effort of the reason, she saw be-
fore her, like a starry ocean, the depth and mysterious beauty
of the soul which her fears had wronged. Yet, when he said
(concluding his strange confession), that to this life within life
and above life, he had dreamed to raise her own, the fear of
humanity crept over her, and he read in her silence how vain,
with all his science, would the dream have been.
But now, as he closed, and, leaning on his breast, she felt the
clasp of his protecting arm ; when, in one holy kiss, the past
was forgiven and the present lost, then there returned to her
the sweet and warm hopes of the natural life—of the loving
woman. He was come to save her | She asked not how, she
believed it without a question. They should be at last again
united. They would-fly far from those scenes of violence and
blood. Their happy Ionian isle, their fearless solitudes, would
once more receive them. She laughed, with a child's joy, as
this picture rose up amidst the gloom of the dungeon | Her
mind, faithful to its sweet, simple instincts, refused to receive
the lofty images that flitted confusedly by it, and settled back
to its human visions, yet more baseless, of the earthly happi-
ness and the tranquil home.
“Talk not now to me, beloved—talk not more now to me of
the past ! Thou art here; thou wilt save me; we shall live
yet the common happy life; that life with thee is happiness
and glory enough to me. Traverse, if thou wilt, in thy pride
of soul, the universe; thy heart again is the universe to mine.
I thought but now that I was prepared to die; I see thee, touch
thee, and again I know how beautiful a thing is life See
through the grate the stars are fading from the sky; the mor-
row will soon be here—THE MORRow which will open the prison
doors | Thou sayest thou canst save me—I will not doubt it
now. Oh, let us dwell no more in cities I never doubted
thee in our lovely isle; no dreams haunted me there, except
dreams of joy and beauty; and thine eyes made yet more
beautiful and joyous the world in waking. To-morrow !—
why do you not smile 2 To-morrow, love | Is not to-morrow
a blessed word | Cruel ! you would punish me still, that you
will not share my joy. Aha! see our ſittle one, how it laughs
to my eyes | I will talk to that. Child, thy father is come
back " "
And taking the infant in her arms, and seating herself at a
346 .." ZANONI, -.
little distance, she rocked it to and fro on her bosom, and
prattled to it, and kissed it between every word ; and laughed
and wept by fits, as ever and anon she cast over her shoulder
her playful, mirthful glance upon the father to whom those
fading stars smiled sadly their last farewell. How beautiful
she seemed as she thus sat, unconscious of the future | Still
half a child herself, her child laughing to her laughter—two
soft triflers on the brink of the grave Over her throat as she
bent, fell, like a golden cloud, her redundant hair; it covered
her treasure like a veil of light ; and the child’s little hands
put it aside from time to time, to smile through the parted
tresses, and then to cover its face and peep and smile again.
It were cruel to damp that joy, more cruel still to share it.
“Viola,” said Zanoni, at last, “dost thou remember that,
seated by the cave on the moonlit beach, in our bridal isle,
thou once didst ask me for this amulet 2—the charm of a super-
stition long vanished from the world, with the creed to which
it belonged. It is the last relic of my native land, and my
mother, on her death-bed, placed it round my neck. I told
thee then I would give it thee on that day when the laws of our
being should become the same.”
“I remember it well.”
“To-morrow it shall be thine !”
“Ah, that dear to-morrow !” And, gently laying down her
child, for it slept now, she threw herself on his breast, and
pointed to the dawn that began grayly to creep along the skies.
There, in those horror-bleathing walls, the day-star looked
through the dismal bars upon those three beings, in whom were
concentered whatever is most tender in human ties ; whatever
is most mysterious in the combinations of the human mind ;
the sleeping Innocence; the trustful Affection, that, contented
with a touch, a breath, can foresee no sorrow ; the weary
Science that, traversing all the secrets of creation, comes at
last to Death for their solution, and still clings, as it nears the
threshold, to the breast of Love. Thus, within, the within—a
dungeon ; without, the without—stately with marts and halls,
with palaces and temples—Revenge and Terror, at their dark
schemes and counter-schemes—to and fro, upon the tide of the
shifting passions, reeled the destinies of men and nations;
and hard at hand that day-star, waning into space, looked
with impartial eye on the church tower and the guillotine.
Up springs the blithesome morn. In yon gardens the birds
renew their familiar song. The fishes are sporting through the
freshening waters of the Seine. The gladness of divine nature,
i
ZANONY - 347
*
3.
the roar and dissonance of mortal life awake again ; the trader
- unbars his windows, the flower-girls troop gayly to their haunts,
busy feet are tramping to the daily drudgeries that revolutions
which strike down kings and kaisars leave the same Cain's
heritage to the boor ; the wagons groan and reel to the mart ;
Tyranny, up betimes, holds its pallid levee; Conspiracy, that
hath not slept, hears the clock, and whispers to its own heart,
“The hour draws near.” A group gather, eager-eyed, round
the purlieus of the Convention Hall ; to-day decides the
sovereignty of France—about the courts of the Tribunal their
customary hum and stir. No matter what the hazard of the
die, or who the ruler, this day eighty heads shall fall !
gº #: >}<
And she slept so sweetly. Wearied out with joy, secure in
the presence of the eyes regained, she had laughed and wept
herself to sleep ; and still, in that slumber, there seemed a
happy consciousness that the Loved was by—the Lost was
found. For she smiled and murmured to herself, and breathed
his name often, and stretched out her arms, and sighed if they
touched him not. He gazed upon her as he stood apart—with
what emotions it were vain to say. She would wake no more
to him ; she could not know how dearly the safety of that sleep
was purchased. That morrow she had so yearned for, it had
come at last. How would she greet the eve 2 Amidst all the
exquisite hopes with which love and youth contemplate the
future, her eyes had closed. Those hopes still lent their iris-
colors to her dreams. She would wake to live To-morrow,
..and the Reign of Terror was no more ; the prison gates would
be opened, she would go forth, with their child, into that sum-
mer-world of light. And he £ He turned, and his eye fell
upon the child, it was broad awake, and that clear, serious,
thoughtful look which it mostly wore watched him with a solemn
steadiness. He bent over and kissed its lips.
“Never more,” he murmured, “O heritor of love and grief—
never more wilt thou see me in thy visions; never more will
the light of those eyes be fed by celestial conmune ; never
more can my soul guard from thy pillow the trouble and the
disease. Not such as I would have vainly shaped it must be
thy lot. In common with thy race, it must be thine to suffer,
to struggle, and to err. But mild be thy human trials, and
strong be thy spirit, to love and to believe And thus, as I
gaze upon thee—thus may my nature breathe into thine its
last and most intense desire ; may my love for thy mother pass
lo thee, and in thy looks may she hear my spirit comfort and
§
• -
348 ZANONI.
console her. Hark! they come ! Yes! I await ye both
beyond the grave '"
The door slowly opened; the gaoler appeared, and through
the aperture rushed, at the same instant, a ray of sunlight ; it
streamed over the fair, hushed face of the happy sleeper; it
played like a smile upon the lips of the child, that still, mute
and steadfast, watched the movements of its father. At that
moment Viola muttered in her sleep : “The day is come—the
gates are open Give me thy hand ; we will go forth ! To
sea—to sea How the sunshine plays upon the waters | To
home, belovéd one ! to home again.”
“Citizen, thine hour is come !”
“Hist!—she sleeps | A moment . There ! it is done, thank
Heaven—and still she sleeps I’” He would not kiss lest he
should awaken her, but gently placed round her neck the amu-
let that would speak to her, hereafter, the farewell; and
promise, in that farewell, re-union . He is at the threshold ; he
turns again, and again. The door closes | He is gone forever.
She woke at-last; she gazed round. “Zanoni, it is day !”
No answer but the low wail of her child. Merciful Heaven,
was it then all a dream P. She tossed back the long tresses that
must veil her sight; she felt the amulet on her bosom—it was
no dream “Oh, God and he is gone !” She sprang to the
door; she shrieked aloud. The gaoler comes “My husband,
my child's father ?”
“He is gone before thee, woman l’’
“Whither? Speak—speak . " *
“To the guillotine !” and the black door closed again. s
It closed upon the Senseless As a lightning flash, Zanoni's
words, his sadness, the true meaning of his mystic gift, the
very sacrifice he made for her, all became distinct for a moment
to her mind—and then darkness swept on it like a storm, yet
darkness which had its light. - And while she sat there, mute,
rigid, voiceless, as congealed to stone, A VISION, like a wind,
glided over the deeps within The grim court—the judge—
the jury—the accuser; and amidst the victims, the one daunt-
less and radiant form,
“Thou knowest the danger to the State—confess!”
“I know ; and I keep my promise. Judge, I reveal thy
doom-' I know that the Anarchy thou callest a State expires
with the setting of this sun. Hark! to the tramp without !
Hark! to the roar qf voices ! Room there, ye Dead | Room
in hell for Robespierre and his crew l’”
They hurry into the court—the hasty and pale messengers;
$º
.*
*. rº- * ***
--- **** -- §:
!
ZANONt. 349
there is confusion, and fear, and dismay ! “Off with the con-
spirator And to-morrow the woman thou wouldst have saved
shall die ”
“To-morrow, President, the steel falls on THEE "
On, through the crowded and roaring streets, on moves the
Procession of Death. Ha, brave people ! thou art aroused at
last. They shall not die Death is dethroned Robespierre .
has fallen . They rush to the rescue ! Hideous in the tumbril,
by the side of Zanoni, raved and gesticulated that form which,
in his prophetic dreams, he had seen his companion at the
place of death. “Save us ! Save us !” howled the atheist,
Nicot “On, brave populace we shall be saved ” And
through the crowd, her dark hair streaming wild, her eyes flash-
ing fire, pressed a female form : “My Clarence 1 " she shrieked,
in the soft southern language, native to the ears of Viola ;
“Butcher, what hast thou done with Clarence 2 ” Her eyes
roved over the eager faces of the prisoners ; she saw not the
one she sought. “Thank Heaven Thank Heaven I am
not thy murderess P’’ ---
Nearer and nearer press the populace—another moment, and
the deathsman is defrauded. O Zanoni ! why still upon thy
brow the resignation, that speaks no hope 2 Tramp tramp !
through the streets, dash the armed troop : faithful to his
orders, black Henriot leads them on. Tramp ! tramp ! over
the craven and scattered crowd Here, flying in disorder ;
there, trampled in the mire, the shrieking rescuers | And
amidst them, stricken by the sabres of the guard, her long hair
blood-bedabbled, lies the Italian woman ; and still upon her
writhing lips sits joy, as they murmur : “Clarence I have
not destroyed thee l’’
On to the Barrière du Trône. It frowns dark in the air—the
giant instrument of murder One after one to the glaive :
another and another and another | Mercy J O mercy Is
the bridge between the sun and the shades so brief ?—brief as
a sigh 2 There, there—his turn has come. “Die not yet ; leave
me not behind. Hear me—hear me !” shrieked the inspired
sleeper. “What and thou smilest still !” They smiled—
those pale lips—and with the smile, the place of doom, the
headsman, the horror vanished With that smile, all space
seemed suffused in eternal sunshine. Up from the earth he
rose—he hovered over her—a thing not of matter—an IDEA of
joy and light ! Behind, Heaven opened, deep after deep ;
and the Hosts of Beauty were seen; rank upon rank, afar ; and
“Welcome,” in a myriad melodies, broke from your choral
350 - ZANON1.
multitude, ye People of the Skies—“Welcome ! O purified
by sacrifice, and immortal only through the grave—this it is to
die.” And radiant amidst the radiant, the IMAGE stretched
forth its arms, and murmured to the sleeper : “Companion of
Eternity,+this it is to die ' "
“Ho ! wherefore do they make us signs from the house-
tops ? Wherefore gather the crowds through the street P Why
sounds the bell ? Why shrieks the tocsin P Hark to the guns !
The armed clash ! Fellow-captives, is there hope for us at
last 2" * *
So gasp out the prisoners, each to each. Day wanes,
evening closes ; still they press their white faces to the bars ;
and still from window, and from house-top, they see the smiles
of friends—the waving signals “Hurrah ” at last. “Hur-
rah Robespierre is fallen The Reign of Terror is no more I
God hath permitted us to live . "
Yes; cast thine eyes into the hall, where thé tyrant and his
conclave hearkened to the roar without ! Fulfilling the proph-
ecy of Dumas, Henriot, drunk with blood and alcohol, reels
Twithin, and chucks his gory sabre on the floor. “All is
lost ” ---
“Wretch, thy cowardice hath destroyed us !” yelled the
fierce Coffinhal, as he hurled the coward from the window.
Calm as despair stands the stern St. Just ; the palsied Cou-
thon crawls, grovelling, beneath the table ; a shot—an explo-
sion Robespierre would destroy himself The trembling
hand has mangled, and failed to kill The clock of the Hôtel
de Ville strikes the third hour. Through the battered door,
along the gloomy passages, into the Death-hall, burst the
crowd. Mangled, livid, blood-stained, speechless, but not un-
conscious, sits haughty yet, in his seat erect, the Master-Mur-
derer Around him they throng—they hoot—they execrate
Their faces gleaming in the tossing torches . He, and not the
starry Magian, the real Sorcerer And round his last hours
gather the Fiends he raised
They drag him forth ! Open thy gates, inexorable prison 1
The Conciergerie receives its prey ! Never a word again on
earth spoke Maximilien Robespierre Pour forth thy thou-
sands, and tens of thousands, emancipated Paris To the
Place de la Révolution rolls the tumbril of the King of Terror—
St. Just, Dumas, Couthon—his companions to the gravel A
woman—a childless woman, with hoary hair, springs to his side :
“Thy death makes me drunk with joy . " He opened his
g
*
*...,
ZANONI. 351
****
bloodshot eyes: “Descend to hell, with the curses of wives
and mothers . "
The headsmen wrench the rag from the shattered jaw A
shriek, and the crowd laugh, and the axe descends amidst the
shout of the countless thousands. And blackness rushes on
thy soul, Maximilien Robespierre . So ended the Reign of
Terror.
#: Sk * Sk a sk >}: sk
Daylight in the prison. From cell to cell they hurry with
the news; crowd upon crowd : the joyous captives mingled
with the very gaolers, who, for fear, would fain seem joyous
too ; they stream through the dens and alleys of the grim
house they will shortly leave. They burst into a cell, forgotten
since the previous morning. They found there a young female
sitting upon her wretched bed ; her arms crossed upon her
bosom, her face raised upward ; the eyes unclosed, and a smile,
of more than serenity, of bliss upon her lips. Even in the riot
of their joy, they drew back in astonishment and awe. Never
had they seen life so beautiful ; and as they crept nearer, and
with noiseless feet, they saw that the lips breathed not, that the
repose was of marble, that the beauty and the ecstasy were of
death. They gathered round in silence ; and lo! at her feet
there was a young infant, who, wakened by their tread, looked
at them steadfastly, and with its rosy fingers played with its
dead mother's robe. An orphan there in the dungeon vault
“Poor one !” said a female (herself a parent), “And they
say the father fell yesterday ; and now, the mother Alone in
the world, what can be its fate 2''
The infant smiled fearlessly on the crowd, as the woman
spoke thus. And the old Priest, who stood amongst them,
said gently : “Woman, see the orphan smiles | THE FATHER-
LESS ARE THE CARE OF GOD !”
f
tº N O T E .
THE curiosity which Zanoni has excited among those who think it worth while to dive
into the subtler meanings they believe it intended to convey, may excuse me in adding a
few words, not in explanation of its mysteries, but upon the principles which permit them.
Zanoni is not, as some have supposed, an allegory ; but beneath the narrative it relates,
#yżical meanings are concealed. It is to be regarded in two characters, distinct yet harmo-
nious—First, that of the simple and objective fiction, in which (once granting the license
of the author to select a subject which is, or appears to be, preternatural) the reader judges
the writer by the usual canons; viz., by the consistency of his characters under such ad-
mitted circumstances, the interest of his story, and the coherence of his plot; of the work
regarded in this view, it is not my intention to say anything, whether in exposition of the
design, or in defence of the execution. No typical meanings (which, in plain terms, are but
moral suggestions, more or less numerous, more or less subtle) can afford just excuse to a
writer of fiction, for the errors he should avoid in the most ordinary novel. We have no
right to expect the most ingenious reader to search for the inner meaning, if the obvious
course of the narrative be tedious and displeasing. It is, on the contrary, in proportion as
we are satisfied with the objective sense of a work of imagination, that we are inclined to
search into its depths for the more secret intentions of the author. Were we not so divinely
charmed with “Faust,” and “Hamlet,” and “Prometheus,” so aidently carried on by the
interest of the story told to the common undelstanding, we should trouble ourselves little
with the types in each which all of us can detect, none of us can elucidate – none elucidate,
for the essence of type is mystery. We behold the figure, we cannot lift the veil. The
Author himself is not called upon to explaim what he designed. An Allegory is a persona-
tion of distinct and definite things—Virtues or Qualities—and the key can be given easily;
but a writer who conveys typical meanings may express them in myriads. He cannot dis-
entangle all the hues which commingle Into the light he seeks to cast upon truth ; and
therefore the great masters of this enchanted soil—Fairy land of Fairy land—Poetry em-
bedded beneath Poetry—wisely leave to each mind to guess at such truths as best please or
instruct it. To have asked Goethe to explain the “Faust” would have entailed as complex
and puzzling an answer as to have asked Mephistopheles to explain what is beneath the
earth we tread on. The stores beneath may differ for every passenger; each step may
require a new description: and what is treasure to the geologist may be rubbish to the
. Six worlds may lie under a sod, but to the common eye they are but six layers
Of Stone.
Art in itself, if not necessarily typical, is essentially a suggester of something subtler
than that which it embodies to the sense. What Pliny tells us of a great painter of old, is
true of most great painters: “their works express something beyond the works”—“more
felt than understood.” This belongs to the concentration of intellect which high Art
demands, and which, of all the Aits, Sculpture best illustrates. Take Thorwaldsen's
Statue of Mercury; it is but a single figure, yet it tells to those conversant with Mythology
a whole legend. The god has removed the pipe from his lips, because he has lulled already
the Argus, whom you do not see, to sleep. He is pressing his heel against his sword,
because the moment is come when he may slay his victim. Apply the , inciple of this
noble concentration of Art to the moral writer; he, too, gives to your eye Lūt a single
figure ; yet each attitude, each expression, may refer to events and truths you must have
the learning to remember, the acuteness to penetrate, or the imagination to conjecture.
But to a classical judge of sculpture, would not the exquisite pleasure of discovering the
all not told in Thorwaldsen’s masterpiece be destroyed if the artist had engraved in detail
his meaning at the base of the statue? Is it not the same with the typical sense which
the artist in words conveys * The pleasure of divining Art in each is the noble exercise of
all by whom Art is worthily regarded. §
We of the humbler race not unreasonably shelter ourselves under the Authority of the
Masters, on whom the world's judgment is pronounced ; and great names are cited, not
with the arrogance of equals, but with the humility of inferiors.
The author of Zanoni, gives, then, no key to mysteries, be they trivial or important,
which may be found in the secret chambers by those who liſt the tapestry from the wall ;
but out of the many solutions of the main enigma—if enigma, Indeed, there be—which
have been sent to him, he ventures to select the one which he subjoins, from the ingenuity
and thought which it displays, and from respect for the distinguished writer (one of the
most eminent time has produced) who deemed him worthy of an honor he is proud to
display. He leaves it to the reader to agree with, or dissent from, the explanation. “A
hundred men,” says the old Platonist, “may read the book by the help of the same lamp,
yet all may differ on the text; for the lamp only lights the characters—the mind must
divine the meaning.” The object of a Parable is not that of a Problemſ; it does not seek
to convince, but to suggest, . It takes the thought below the surface of the understanding
to t deeper intelligence which the world rarely tasks. It is not sunlight on the water, it
is a hymn chanted to the Nymph who heal kens and awakes below.
y
* *
• “ZANONI EXPLAINED.
5 y
BY —.
Meymour-Contemplation of the Actual—SCIENCE. Always old, and must last as long as
the Actual. Less fallible than Idealism, but less practically potent, from its ignorance
of the human heart.
Zanoni—tontemplation of the Ideal,—IDEALISM. Always necessarily sympathetic: lives
by enjoyment ; and is the efore typified by eternal youth.* Idealism is the potent In-
terpreter and Prophet of the Reaſ; but its powers are impaired in-proportion to their
exposure to human passion.
Wiola—Human INSTINCT. (Hardly worthy to be called LovE, as Love would not forsake
its object at the bidding of Superstition.) Resorts, first, in its aspination after the
Ideal, to tinsel shows: then relinquishes these for a higher love; but is still, from the
conditions of its nature, inadequate to this, and liable to suspicion and mistrust. Its
greatest folce (Maternal Instinct) has power to penetrate some secrets, to trace some
movements of the Ideal, but, too feeble to command them, yields to Superstition: sees
sin where there is none, while committing sin, under a false guidance ; weakly seeking
refuge amidst the very tumults of the warling passions of the Actual, while deserting
the serene Ideal ; pining, nevertheless, in the absence of the Ideal, and expiring (not
perishing, but becoming transmuted) in the aspiration after having the laws of the two
natures reconciled. *
(It might best suit popular apprehension to call these three the Understanding, the
Imagination, and the Healt.) *
child—NEw-Born INSTINCT, while trained and informed by Idealism, promises a preter-
-- human result by its early, incommunicable vigilance and intelligence, but is compelled,
---. by inevitable orphanhood, and the one-half of the laws of its existence, to lapse into
ordinary conditions.
Aidon-Ai-FAITH, which manifests its splendor, and delivers its oracles, and imparts its
4. marvels, only to the higher moods of the soul, and whose directed antagonism is with
. FEAR ; so that those who employ the resources of Fear must dispense with those of
Faith. Yet aspiration holds open a way of restoration, and may summon Faith, even
- when the cry issues from beneath the yoke of Fear.
Dweller of the Threshold—FEAR (or Horror), from whose ghastliness men are protected
by the opacity of the region of Prescription and Custom. The moment this protection
t is relinquished, and the human spirit pierces the cloud, and enters alone on the unex-
plored regions of Nature, this Natural Horror haunts it, and is to be successfully
encountered only by defiance,—by aspiration towards, and reliance on, the Formel and
Director of Nature, whose Messenger and Instrument of re-assurance is Faith.
Mezzale—Convention ALISM.
Micot–Base, gr velling, malignant PASSION.
Glyndon-ÜNSºsrAINED AspirATION: Would follow Instinct, but is deterred by Conven-
|tionalism.; is overawed by Idealism, yet attracted, and transiently inspired; but has
not steadiness for the initiatory contemplation of the Actual. He conjoins its snatched
privileges with a besetting sensualism, and suffers at once from the horror of the one, *
and the disgust of the other, involving the innocent in the fatal conflict of his spirit.
When on the point of perishing, he is rescued by Idealism ; and, unable to rise to that
species of existence, is grateful to be replunged into the region of the Familiar, and
takes up his rest henceforth in Custom. (Mirror of Young Manhood.)
* “I do not understand the making Idealism less undying (on this scene of existence)
than Science ’’—CoMMENTATOR.—Because, granting the above premises, Idealism is more
subjected than Science to the Affections, or to Instinct, because the Affections, sooner or
later, force Idealism into the Actual, and in the Actual its immortality departs. The only
absolutely Actual portion of the work is found in the concluding scenes that depict the
Reign of Terror. The introduction of this part was objected to by some as out of keeping
with the fanciful portions that preceded it. But if the writer of the solution has rightly
- shown or suggested the intention of the author, the most strongly and rudelv actual scene
of the age in which the story is cast was the necessary and harmonious cłł' pletion of the
whole. The excesses and crimes of Humanity are the grave of the laeal,—AUTHOR.
353
t -- a 3° 5.4 g
354 ZAN ONI EXPLAIN ED.
ARGUMENT.
Human existence, subject to, and exempt from, ordinary conditions—(Sickness, Pov-
erty, Ignorance, Death). * af
Science is ever striving to carry the most gifted beyond ordinary conditions; the result
being as many victims as efforts, and the striver being finally left a solitary--for his object
is unsuitable to the natures he has to deal with.
The pursuit of the Idea’ involves so much emotion as to render the Idealist vulnerable
by human passion—however long and well guarded, still vulnerable—liable, at last, to an
union with Instinct. Passion obscures both Insight and Forecast. All effort to elevate
Instinct to Idealism is abortive, the laws of their being not coinciding (in the early stage of
the existence of the one). Instinct is either alarmed, and takes refuge in Superstition or
Custom, or is left helpless to human charity, or given over to providential care.
Idealism, stripped of insight and forecast, loses its serenity, becomes subject once more
to the horror from which it had escaped, and by accepting its aids, forfeits the higher help
of Faith :—aspiration, however, remaining still possible; and, thereby, slow restoration;
and also, som ETHING BETTER. gº i
Summoned by aspiration, Faith extorts from Fear itself the saving truth to which
Science continues blind, and which Idealism itself halls as its crowning acquisition,-the
inestimable Proof wrought out by all labors and all conflicts.
Pending the elaboration of this proof, Cozzentionalism, plods on, safe and complacent:
Selfish Passion perishes, grovelling and hopeless:
Instinct sleeps, in order to a loftier waking: and
• Idealism, learns, as its ultimate lesson, that self-sacrifice is true redemption ; that the
region beyond the grave is the fitting one for exemption from mortal conditions;
and that Death is the everlasting poital, indicated by the finger of God, the broa
avenue, through which man does not issue, solitary and stealthy, into the region
of Free Existence, but enters triumphant, hailed by a hierarchy of immortal
InatureS. *
The result is (in other words), THAT THE UNIVERSAL HUMAN LOT IS, AFTER ALL, THAT
OF THE HIGHEST PRIVILEGE,
*
THE END. .
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