Zanoni — Chapter 12

O chiunque tu sia, che fuor d’ogni uso Pieghi Natura ad opre altere e strane, E, spiando i segreti, entri al piu chiuso Spazi’ a tua voglia delle menti umane--Deh, Dimmi!

“Gerus.

Lib.

,” Cant.

x.

xviii.

(O thou, whoever thou art, who through every use bendest Nature to works foreign and strange; and by spying into her secrets, enterest at thy will into the closest recesses of the human mind,--O speak!

O tell me!

) Early the next morning the young Englishmen mounted their horses, and took the road towards Baiae.

Glyndon left word at his hotel, that if Signor Zanoni sought him, it was in the neighbourhood of that once celebrated watering-place of the ancients that he should be found.

They passed by Viola’s house, but Glyndon resisted the temptation of pausing there; and after threading the grotto of Posilipo, they wound by a circuitous route back into the suburbs of the city, and took the opposite road, which conducts to Portici and Pompeii.

It was late at noon when they arrived at the former of these places.

Here they halted to dine; for Mervale had heard much of the excellence of the macaroni at Portici, and Mervale was a bon vivant.

They put up at an inn of very humble pretensions, and dined under an awning.

Mervale was more than usually gay; he pressed the lacrima upon his friend, and conversed gayly.

“Well, my dear friend, we have foiled Signor Zanoni in one of his predictions at least.

You will have no faith in him hereafter.

” “The ides are come, not gone.

” “Tush!

If he be the soothsayer, you are not the Caesar.

It is your vanity that makes you credulous.

Thank Heaven, I do not think myself of such importance that the operations of Nature should be changed in order to frighten me.

” “But why should the operations of Nature be changed?

There may be a deeper philosophy than we dream of,--a philosophy that discovers the secrets of Nature, but does not alter, by penetrating, its courses.

” “Ah, you relapse into your heretical credulity; you seriously suppose Zanoni to be a prophet,--a reader of the future; perhaps an associate of genii and spirits!

” Here the landlord, a little, fat, oily fellow, came up with a fresh bottle of lacrima.

He hoped their Excellencies were pleased.

He was most touched--touched to the heart, that they liked the macaroni.

Were their Excellencies going to Vesuvius?

There was a slight eruption; they could not see it where they were, but it was pretty, and would be prettier still after sunset.

“A capital idea!

” cried Mervale.

“What say you, Glyndon?

” “I have not yet seen an eruption; I should like it much.

” “But is there no danger?

” asked the prudent Mervale.

“Oh, not at all; the mountain is very civil at present.

It only plays a little, just to amuse their Excellencies the English.

” “Well, order the horses, and bring the bill; we will go before it is dark.

Clarence, my friend,--nunc est bibendum; but take care of the pede libero, which will scarce do for walking on lava!

” The bottle was finished, the bill paid; the gentlemen mounted, the landlord bowed, and they bent their way, in the cool of the delightful evening, towards Resina.

The wine, perhaps the excitement of his thoughts, animated Glyndon, whose unequal spirits were, at times, high and brilliant as those of a schoolboy released; and the laughter of the Northern tourists sounded oft and merrily along the melancholy domains of buried cities.

Hesperus had lighted his lamp amidst the rosy skies as they arrived at Resina.

Here they quitted their horses, and took mules and a guide.

As the sky grew darker and more dark, the mountain fire burned with an intense lustre.

In various streaks and streamlets, the fountain of flame rolled down the dark summit, and the Englishmen began to feel increase upon them, as they ascended, that sensation of solemnity and awe which makes the very atmosphere that surrounds the Giant of the Plains of the Antique Hades.

It was night, when, leaving the mules, they ascended on foot, accompanied by their guide, and a peasant who bore a rude torch.

The guide was a conversable, garrulous fellow, like most of his country and his calling; and Mervale, who possessed a sociable temper, loved to amuse or to instruct himself on every incidental occasion.

“Ah, Excellency,” said the guide, “your countrymen have a strong passion for the volcano.

Long life to them, they bring us plenty of money!

If our fortunes depended on the Neapolitans, we should starve.

” “True, they have no curiosity,” said Mervale.

“Do you remember, Glyndon, the contempt with which that old count said to us, ‘You will go to Vesuvius, I suppose?

I have never been; why should I go?

You have cold, you have hunger, you have fatigue, you have danger, and all for nothing but to see fire, which looks just as well in a brazier as on a mountain.

’ Ha!

ha!

the old fellow was right.

” “But, Excellency,” said the guide, “that is not all: some cavaliers think to ascend the mountain without our help.

I am sure they deserve to tumble into the crater.

” “They must be bold fellows to go alone; you don’t often find such.

” “Sometimes among the French, signor.

But the other night--I never was so frightened--I had been with an English party, and a lady had left a pocket-book on the mountain, where she had been sketching.

She offered me a handsome sum to return for it, and bring it to her at Naples.

So I went in the evening.

I found it, sure enough, and was about to return, when I saw a figure that seemed to emerge from the crater itself.

The air there was so pestiferous that I could not have conceived a human creature could breathe it, and live.

I was so astounded that I stood still as a stone, till the figure came over the hot ashes, and stood before me, face to face.

Santa Maria, what a head!

” “What!

hideous?

” “No; so beautiful, but so terrible.

It had nothing human in its aspect.

” “And what said the salamander?

” “Nothing!

It did not even seem to perceive me, though I was near as I am to you; but its eyes seemed to emerge prying into the air.

It passed by me quickly, and, walking across a stream of burning lava, soon vanished on the other side of the mountain.

I was curious and foolhardy, and resolved to see if I could bear the atmosphere which this visitor had left; but though I did not advance within thirty yards of the spot at which he had first appeared, I was driven back by a vapour that wellnigh stifled me.

Cospetto!

I have spat blood ever since.

” “Now will I lay a wager that you fancy this fire-king must be Zanoni,” whispered Mervale, laughing.

The little party had now arrived nearly at the summit of the mountain;

and unspeakably grand was the spectacle on which they gazed.

From the crater arose a vapour, intensely dark, that overspread the whole background of the heavens; in the centre whereof rose a flame that assumed a form singularly beautiful.

It might have been compared to a crest of gigantic feathers, the diadem of the mountain, high-arched, and drooping downward, with the hues delicately shaded off, and the whole shifting and tremulous as the plumage on a warrior’s helmet.

The glare of the flame spread, luminous and crimson, over the dark and rugged ground on which they stood, and drew an innumerable variety of shadows from crag and hollow.

An oppressive and sulphureous exhalation served to increase the gloomy and sublime terror of the place.

But on turning from the mountain, and towards the distant and unseen ocean, the contrast was wonderfully great; the heavens serene and blue, the stars still and calm as the eyes of Divine Love.

It was as if the realms of the opposing principles of Evil and of Good were brought in one view before the gaze of man!

Glyndon--once more the enthusiast, the artist--was enchained and entranced by emotions vague and undefinable, half of delight and half of pain.

Leaning on the shoulder of his friend, he gazed around him, and heard with deepening awe the rumbling of the earth below, the wheels and voices of the Ministry of Nature in her darkest and most inscrutable recess.

Suddenly, as a bomb from a shell, a huge stone was flung hundreds of yards up from the jaws of the crater, and falling with a mighty crash upon the rock below, split into ten thousand fragments, which bounded down the sides of the mountain, sparkling and groaning as they went.

One of these, the largest fragment, struck the narrow space of soil between the Englishmen and the guide, not three feet from the spot where the former stood.

Mervale uttered an exclamation of terror, and Glyndon held his breath, and shuddered.

“Diavolo!

” cried the guide.

“Descend, Excellencies,--descend!

we have not a moment to lose; follow me close!

” So saying, the guide and the peasant fled with as much swiftness as they were able to bring to bear.

Mervale, ever more prompt and ready than his friend, imitated their example; and Glyndon, more confused than alarmed, followed close.

But they had not gone many yards, before, with a rushing and sudden blast, came from the crater an enormous volume of vapour.

It pursued,--it overtook, it overspread them.

It swept the light from the heavens.

All was abrupt and utter darkness; and through the gloom was heard the shout of the guide, already distant, and lost in an instant amidst the sound of the rushing gust and the groans of the earth beneath.

Glyndon paused.

He was separated from his friend, from the guide.

He was alone,--with the Darkness and the Terror.

The vapour rolled sullenly away; the form of the plumed fire was again dimly visible, and its struggling and perturbed reflection again shed a glow over the horrors of the path.

Glyndon recovered himself, and sped onward.

Below, he heard the voice of Mervale calling on him, though he no longer saw his form.

The sound served as a guide.

Dizzy and breathless, he bounded forward; when--hark!

--a sullen, slow rolling sounded in his ear!

He halted,--and turned back to gaze.

The fire had overflowed its course; it had opened itself a channel amidst the furrows of the mountain.

The stream pursued him fast--fast; and the hot breath of the chasing and preternatural foe came closer and closer upon his cheek!

He turned aside; he climbed desperately with hands and feet upon a crag that, to the right, broke the scathed and blasted level of the soil.

The stream rolled beside and beneath him, and then taking a sudden wind round the spot on which he stood, interposed its liquid fire,--a broad and impassable barrier between his resting-place and escape.

There he stood, cut off from descent, and with no alternative but to retrace his steps towards the crater, and thence seek, without guide or clew, some other pathway.

For a moment his courage left him; he cried in despair, and in that overstrained pitch of voice which is never heard afar off, to the guide, to Mervale, to return to aid him.

No answer came; and the Englishman, thus abandoned solely to his own resources, felt his spirit and energy rise against the danger.

He turned back, and ventured as far towards the crater as the noxious exhalation would permit; then, gazing below, carefully and deliberately he chalked out for himself a path by which he trusted to shun the direction the fire-stream had taken, and trod firmly and quickly over the crumbling and heated strata.

He had proceeded about fifty yards, when he halted abruptly; an unspeakable and unaccountable horror, not hitherto experienced amidst all his peril, came over him.

He shook in every limb; his muscles refused his will,--he felt, as it were, palsied and death-stricken.

The horror, I say, was unaccountable, for the path seemed clear and safe.

The fire, above and behind, burned clear and far; and beyond, the stars lent him their cheering guidance.

No obstacle was visible,--no danger seemed at hand.

As thus, spell-bound, and panic-stricken, he stood chained to the soil,--his breast heaving, large drops rolling down his brow, and his eyes starting wildly from their sockets,--he saw before him, at some distance, gradually shaping itself more and more distinctly to his gaze, a colossal shadow; a shadow that seemed partially borrowed from the human shape, but immeasurably above the human stature; vague, dark, almost formless; and differing, he could not tell where or why, not only from the proportions, but also from the limbs and outline of man.

The glare of the volcano, that seemed to shrink and collapse from this gigantic and appalling apparition, nevertheless threw its light, redly and steadily, upon another shape that stood beside, quiet and motionless; and it was, perhaps, the contrast of these two things--the Being and the Shadow--that impressed the beholder with the difference between them,--the Man and the Superhuman.

It was but for a moment--nay, for the tenth part of a moment--that this sight was permitted to the wanderer.

A second eddy of sulphureous vapours from the volcano, yet more rapidly, yet more densely than its predecessor, rolled over the mountain; and either the nature of the exhalation, or the excess of his own dread, was such, that Glyndon, after one wild gasp for breath, fell senseless on the earth.

CHAPTER 3. XI.

Was hab’ich, Wenn ich nicht Alles habe?

--sprach der Jungling.

“Das Verschleierte Bild zu Sais.

” (“What have I, if I possess not All?

” said the youth.

) Mervale and the Italians arrived in safety at the spot where they had left the mules; and not till they had recovered their own alarm and breath did they think of Glyndon.

But then, as the minutes passed, and he appeared not, Mervale, whose heart was as good at least as human hearts are in general, grew seriously alarmed.

He insisted on returning to search for his friend; and by dint of prodigal promises prevailed at last on the guide to accompany him.

The lower part of the mountain lay calm and white in the starlight; and the guide’s practised eye could discern all objects on the surface at a considerable distance.

They had not, however, gone very far, before they perceived two forms slowly approaching them.

As they came near, Mervale recognised the form of his friend.

“Thank Heaven, he is safe!

” he cried, turning to the guide.

“Holy angels befriend us!

” said the Italian, trembling,--“behold the very being that crossed me last Friday night.

It is he, but his face is human now!

” “Signor Inglese,” said the voice of Zanoni, as Glyndon--pale, wan, and silent--returned passively the joyous greeting of Mervale,--“Signor Inglese, I told your friend that we should meet to-night.

You see you have NOT foiled my prediction.

” “But how?

--but where?

” stammered Mervale, in great confusion and surprise.

“I found your friend stretched on the ground, overpowered by the mephitic exhalation of the crater.

I bore him to a purer atmosphere; and as I know the mountain well, I have conducted him safely to you.

This is all our history.

You see, sir, that were it not for that prophecy which you desired to frustrate, your friend would ere this time have been a corpse; one minute more, and the vapour had done its work.

Adieu;

goodnight, and pleasant dreams.

” “But, my preserver, you will not leave us?

” said Glyndon, anxiously, and speaking for the first time.

“Will you not return with us?

” Zanoni paused, and drew Glyndon aside.

“Young man,” said he, gravely, “it is necessary that we should again meet to-night.

It is necessary that you should, ere the first hour of morning, decide on your own fate.

I know that you have insulted her whom you profess to love.

It is not too late to repent.

Consult not your friend: he is sensible and wise;

but not now is his wisdom needed.

There are times in life when, from the imagination, and not the reason, should wisdom come,--this, for you, is one of them.

I ask not your answer now.

Collect your thoughts,--recover your jaded and scattered spirits.

It wants two hours of midnight.

Before midnight I will be with you.

” “Incomprehensible being!

” replied the Englishman, “I would leave the life you have preserved in your own hands; but what I have seen this night has swept even Viola from my thoughts.

A fiercer desire than that of love burns in my veins,--the desire not to resemble but to surpass my kind; the desire to penetrate and to share the secret of your own existence--the desire of a preternatural knowledge and unearthly power.

I make my choice.

In my ancestor’s name, I adjure and remind thee of thy pledge.

Instruct me; school me; make me thine; and I surrender to thee at once, and without a murmur, the woman whom, till I saw thee, I would have defied a world to obtain.

” “I bid thee consider well: on the one hand, Viola, a tranquil home, a happy and serene life; on the other hand, all is darkness,--darkness, that even these eyes cannot penetrate.

” “But thou hast told me, that if I wed Viola, I must be contented with the common existence,--if I refuse, it is to aspire to thy knowledge and thy power.

” “Vain man, knowledge and power are not happiness.

” “But they are better than happiness.

Say!

--if I marry Viola, wilt thou be my master,--my guide?

Say this, and I am resolved.

“It were impossible.

” “Then I renounce her?

I renounce love.

I renounce happiness.

Welcome solitude,--welcome despair; if they are the entrances to thy dark and sublime secret.

” “I will not take thy answer now.

Before the last hour of night thou shalt give it in one word,--ay or no!

Farewell till then.

” Zanoni waved his hand, and, descending rapidly, was seen no more.

Glyndon rejoined his impatient and wondering friend; but Mervale, gazing on his face, saw that a great change had passed there.

The flexile and dubious expression of youth was forever gone.

The features were locked, rigid, and stern; and so faded was the natural bloom, that an hour seemed to have done the work of years.

CHAPTER 3. XII.

Was ist’s Das hinter diesem Schleier sich verbirgt?

“Das Verschleierte Bild zu Sais.

” (What is it that conceals itself behind this veil?

) On returning from Vesuvius or Pompeii, you enter Naples through its most animated, its most Neapolitan quarter,--through that quarter in which modern life most closely resembles the ancient; and in which, when, on a fair-day, the thoroughfare swarms alike with Indolence and Trade, you are impressed at once with the recollection of that restless, lively race from which the population of Naples derives its origin; so that in one day you may see at Pompeii the habitations of a remote age; and on the Mole, at Naples, you may imagine you behold the very beings with whom those habitations had been peopled.

But now, as the Englishmen rode slowly through the deserted streets, lighted but by the lamps of heaven, all the gayety of day was hushed and breathless.

Here and there, stretched under a portico or a dingy booth, were sleeping groups of houseless Lazzaroni,--a tribe now merging its indolent individuality amidst an energetic and active population.

The Englishman rode on in silence; for Glyndon neither appeared to heed nor hear the questions and comments of Mervale, and Mervale himself was almost as weary as the jaded animal he bestrode.

Suddenly the silence of earth and ocean was broken by the sound of a distant clock that proclaimed the quarter preceding the last hour of night.

Glyndon started from his reverie, and looked anxiously round.

As the final stroke died, the noise of hoofs rung on the broad stones of the pavement, and from a narrow street to the right emerged the form of a solitary horseman.

He neared the Englishmen, and Glyndon recognised the features and mien of Zanoni.

“What!

do we meet again, signor?

” said Mervale, in a vexed but drowsy tone.

“Your friend and I have business together,” replied Zanoni, as he wheeled his steed to the side of Glyndon.

“But it will be soon transacted.

Perhaps you, sir, will ride on to your hotel.

” “Alone!

” “There is no danger!

” returned Zanoni, with a slight expression of disdain in his voice.

“None to me; but to Glyndon?

” “Danger from me!

Ah, perhaps you are right.

” “Go on, my dear Mervale,” said Glyndon; “I will join you before you reach the hotel.

” Mervale nodded, whistled, and pushed his horse into a kind of amble.

“Now your answer,--quick?

” “I have decided.

The love of Viola has vanished from my heart.

The pursuit is over.

” “You have decided?

” “I have; and now my reward.

” “Thy reward!

Well; ere this hour to-morrow it shall await thee.

” Zanoni gave the rein to his horse; it sprang forward with a bound: the sparks flew from its hoofs, and horse and rider disappeared amidst the shadows of the street whence they had emerged.

Mervale was surprised to see his friend by his side, a minute after they had parted.

“What has passed between you and Zanoni?

” “Mervale, do not ask me to-night!

I am in a dream.

” “I do not wonder at it, for even I am in a sleep.

Let us push on.

” In the retirement of his chamber, Glyndon sought to recollect his thoughts.

He sat down on the foot of his bed, and pressed his hands tightly to his throbbing temples.

The events of the last few hours; the apparition of the gigantic and shadowy Companion of the Mystic, amidst the fires and clouds of Vesuvius; the strange encounter with Zanoni himself, on a spot in which he could never, by ordinary reasoning, have calculated on finding Glyndon, filled his mind with emotions, in which terror and awe the least prevailed.

A fire, the train of which had been long laid, was lighted at his heart,--the asbestos-fire that, once lit, is never to be quenched.

All his early aspirations--his young ambition, his longings for the laurel--were merged in one passionate yearning to surpass the bounds of the common knowledge of man, and reach that solemn spot, between two worlds, on which the mysterious stranger appeared to have fixed his home.

Far from recalling with renewed affright the remembrance of the apparition that had so appalled him, the recollection only served to kindle and concentrate his curiosity into a burning focus.

He had said aright,--LOVE HAD VANISHED FROM HIS HEART; there was no longer a serene space amidst its disordered elements for human affection to move and breathe.

The enthusiast was rapt from this earth; and he would have surrendered all that mortal beauty ever promised, that mortal hope ever whispered, for one hour with Zanoni beyond the portals of the visible world.

He rose, oppressed and fevered with the new thoughts that raged within him, and threw open his casement for air.

The ocean lay suffused in the starry light, and the stillness of the heavens never more eloquently preached the morality of repose to the madness of earthly passions.

But such was Glyndon’s mood that their very hush only served to deepen the wild desires that preyed upon his soul; and the solemn stars, that are mysteries in themselves, seemed, by a kindred sympathy, to agitate the wings of the spirit no longer contented with its cage.

As he gazed, a star shot from its brethren, and vanished from the depth of space!

CHAPTER 3. XIII.

O, be gone!

By Heaven, I love thee better than myself, For I came hither armed against myself.

--“Romeo and Juliet.

” The young actress and Gionetta had returned from the theatre; and Viola fatigued and exhausted, had thrown herself on a sofa, while Gionetta busied herself with the long tresses which, released from the fillet that bound them, half-concealed the form of the actress, like a veil of threads of gold.

As she smoothed the luxuriant locks, the old nurse ran gossiping on about the little events of the night, the scandal and politics of the scenes and the tireroom.

Gionetta was a worthy soul.

Almanzor, in Dryden’s tragedy of “Almahide,” did not change sides with more gallant indifference than the exemplary nurse.

She was at last grieved and scandalised that Viola had not selected one chosen cavalier.

But the choice she left wholly to her fair charge.

Zegri or Abencerrage, Glyndon or Zanoni, it had been the same to her, except that the rumours she had collected respecting the latter, combined with his own recommendations of his rival, had given her preference to the Englishman.

She interpreted ill the impatient and heavy sigh with which Viola greeted her praises of Glyndon, and her wonder that he had of late so neglected his attentions behind the scenes, and she exhausted all her powers of panegyric upon the supposed object of the sigh.

“And then, too,” she said, “if nothing else were to be said against the other signor, it is enough that he is about to leave Naples.

” “Leave Naples!

--Zanoni?

” “Yes, darling!

In passing by the Mole to-day, there was a crowd round some outlandish-looking sailors.

His ship arrived this morning, and anchors in the bay.

The sailors say that they are to be prepared to sail with the first wind; they were taking in fresh stores.

They--” “Leave me, Gionetta!

Leave me!

” The time had already passed when the girl could confide in Gionetta.

Her thoughts had advanced to that point when the heart recoils from all confidence, and feels that it cannot be comprehended.

Alone now, in the principal apartment of the house, she paced its narrow boundaries with tremulous and agitated steps: she recalled the frightful suit of Nicot,--the injurious taunt of Glyndon; and she sickened at the remembrance of the hollow applauses which, bestowed on the actress, not the woman, only subjected her to contumely and insult.

In that room the recollection of her father’s death, the withered laurel and the broken chords, rose chillingly before her.

Hers, she felt, was a yet gloomier fate,--the chords may break while the laurel is yet green.

The lamp, waning in its socket, burned pale and dim, and her eyes instinctively turned from the darker corner of the room.

Orphan, by the hearth of thy parent, dost thou fear the presence of the dead!

And was Zanoni indeed about to quit Naples?

Should she see him no more?

Oh, fool, to think that there was grief in any other thought!

The past!

--that was gone!

The future!

--there was no future to her, Zanoni absent!

But this was the night of the third day on which Zanoni had told her that, come what might, he would visit her again.

It was, then, if she might believe him, some appointed crisis in her fate; and how should she tell him of Glyndon’s hateful words?

The pure and the proud mind can never confide its wrongs to another, only its triumphs and its happiness.

But at that late hour would Zanoni visit her,--could she receive him?

Midnight was at hand.

Still in undefined suspense, in intense anxiety, she lingered in the room.

The quarter before midnight sounded, dull and distant.

All was still, and she was about to pass to her sleeping-room, when she heard the hoofs of a horse at full speed;

the sound ceased, there was a knock at the door.

Her heart beat violently; but fear gave way to another sentiment when she heard a voice, too well known, calling on her name.

She paused, and then, with the fearlessness of innocence, descended and unbarred the door.

Zanoni entered with a light and hasty step.

His horseman’s cloak fitted tightly to his noble form, and his broad hat threw a gloomy shade over his commanding features.