Ardua vallatur duris sapientia scrupis.
Hadr. Jun., “Emblem.” xxxvii.
(Lofty wisdom is circled round with rugged rocks.)
We must go back some hours in the progress of this narrative. It was the
first faint and gradual break of the summer dawn; and two men 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 tranquillity 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.
“No,” said the latter; “hadst thou delayed the acceptance of the
Arch-gift until thou hadst 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 of 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,
that have quickened his grosser senses, have blunted his imagination. 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 sufficient 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 inimical and
malignant tribes by which at this moment we are surrounded: 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? 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 your 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? 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 straining 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 colour--could brave one glance of--Away! the very thought of such
sights for her makes even myself a coward!”
“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; how know you what her curiosity may
learn and her courage brave? But enough of this,--you are bent on your
pursuit?”
“The fiat has gone forth.”
“And to-morrow?”
“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!”