Ma lasciamo, per Dio, Signore, ormai
Di parlar d’ ira, e di cantar di morte.
“Orlando Furioso,” Canto xvii. xvii.
(But leave me, I solemnly conjure thee, signor, to speak of
wrath, and to sing of death.)
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 characterised
the palaces of the great seigneurs of Italy. Her first thought was for
Zanoni. Was he yet living? 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 approaching 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 faithful still to Zanoni! There was a new
motive to the preservation of honour. The door opened, and the prince
entered in the gorgeous and gaudy custume still worn at that time in
Naples.
“Fair and cruel one,” said he, advancing with a half-sneer 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 object less dear to him
than thou art. Thy lover, presumptuous though he be, is not by to save
thee. Mine thou art; but instead of thy master, suffer me to be thy
slave.”
“Prince,” said Viola, with a stern gravity, “your boast is in vain. Your
power! I am NOT in your power. Life and death are in my own hands. 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 boldness he was but
little prepared for. He was not, however, a man easily intimidated or
deterred 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?”
“He asserts that your life is in imminent danger. The source whence it
proceeds he will relate to your Excellency alone.”
The prince frowned; but his colour 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 authorities 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 was surrounded
by officious attendants, whom she at length, with some difficulty,
dismissed; and, refusing to retire to rest, she spent the night in
examining the chamber, which she found was secured, and in thoughts of
Zanoni, in whose power she felt an almost preternatural confidence.
Meanwhile the prince descended the stairs and sought the 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 worn by ecclesiastics. The
face of this stranger was remarkable. So sunburnt and swarthy were his
hues, that he must, apparently, have derived his origin amongst the
races of the farthest East. His forehead was lofty, and his eyes so
penetrating yet so calm in their gaze that the prince shrank from them
as we shrink from a questioner who is drawing forth the guiltiest 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 and sweet, but
foreign in its accent,--“son of the most energetic and masculine race
that ever applied godlike genius to the service of Human Will, with its
winding wickedness and its stubborn grandeur; descendant of the great
Visconti in whose chronicles lies the history of Italy in her palmy
day, and in whose rise was the development of the mightiest intellect,
ripened by the most restless ambition,--I come to gaze upon the last
star in a darkening firmament. By this hour to-morrow space shall know
it not. Man, unless thy whole nature change, thy days are numbered!”
“What means this jargon?” said the prince, in visible astonishment and
secret awe. “Comest thou to menace me in my own halls, or wouldst
thou warn me of a danger? Art thou some itinerant mountebank, or some
unguessed-of friend? Speak out, and plainly. What danger threatens me?”
“Zanoni and thy ancestor’s sword,” replied the stranger.
“Ha! ha!” said the prince, laughing scournfully; “I half-suspected thee
from the first. Thou art then the accomplice or the tool of that most
dexterous, but, at present, defeated charlatan? And I suppose thou wilt
tell me that if I were to release a certain captive I have made, the
danger would vanish, and the hand of the dial would be put back?”
“Judge of me as thou wilt, Prince di --. I confess my knowledge of
Zanoni. Thou, too, wilt know his power, but not till it consume thee.
I would save, therefore I warn thee. Dost thou ask me why? I will tell
thee. Canst thou remember to have heard wild tales of thy grandsire;
of his desire for a knowledge that passes that of the schools and
cloisters; of a strange man from the East who was his familiar and
master in lore against which the Vatican has, from age to age,
launched its mimic thunder? Dost thou call to mind the fortunes of thy
ancestor?--how he succeeded in youth to little but a name; how, after a
career wild and dissolute as thine, he disappeared from Milan, a pauper,
and a self-exile; how, after years spent, none knew in what climes or
in what pursuits, he again revisited the city where his progenitors had
reigned; 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? Dost thou not know that from that hour his
fortunes rose? 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 transferred his splendour from Milan to the
Sicilian realms. Visions of high ambition were then present with him
nightly and daily. Had he lived, Italy would have known a new dynasty,
and the Visconti would have reigned over Magna-Graecia. He was a man
such as the world rarely sees; but his ends, too earthly, were at war
with the means he sought. Had his ambition been more or less, he had
been worthy of a realm mightier than the Caesars swayed; worthy of our
solemn order; worthy of the fellowship of Mejnour, whom you now behold
before you.”
The prince, who had listened with deep and breathless attention to the
words of his singular guest, started from his seat at his last words.
“Imposter!” he cried, “can you dare thus to play with my credulity?
Sixty years have flown since my grandsire died; were he living, he had
passed his hundred and twentieth year; and you, whose old age is
erect and vigorous, have the assurance to pretend to have been his
contemporary! But you have imperfectly learned your tale. You know not,
it seems, that my grandsire, wise and illustrious indeed, in all save
his faith in a charlatan, was found dead in his bed, in the very hour
when his colossal plans were ripe for execution, and that Mejnour was
guilty of his murder.”
“Alas!” answered the stranger, in a voice of great sadness, “had he
but listened to Mejnour,--had he but delayed the last and most perilous
ordeal of daring wisdom until the requisite training and initiation had
been completed,--your ancestor would have stood 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
absolute commands, and in the sublime rashness of a soul that panted
for secrets, which he who desires orbs and sceptres never can obtain,
perished, the victim of his own frenzy.”
“He was poisoned, and Mejnour fled.”
“Mejnour fled not,” answered the stranger, proudly--“Mejnour 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 draft 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 experiment 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 chamber. “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 attendants, and his step was heard in his
chamber, pacing to and fro, with heavy and disordered strides. Not till
an hour before his banquet the next day did he seem restored to his
wonted self.