Ombra piu che di notte, in cui di luce
Raggio misto non e;
....
Ne piu il palagio appar, ne piu le sue
Vestigia; ne dir puossi--egli qui fue.
--“Ger. Lib.”, canto xvi.-lxix.
(Darkness greater than of night, in which not a ray of light is
mixed;...The palace appears no more: not even a vestige,--nor
can one say that it has been.)
The clubs are noisy with clamorous frenzy; the leaders are grim with
schemes. Black Henriot flies here and there, muttering 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 Revolution, 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? How changed! How pale and worn! 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 wandered,
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 she had evermore abandoned lived her life. She
did not repent,--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 enchanters. 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 labour of a
calling. Hovering between two lives, the Real and 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
itself. It had been the worst infidelity to the Lost, to have descended
again to live on the applause of others. And so--for she would not
accept alms from Glyndon--so, by the commonest arts, the humblest
industry which 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 thunderbolt 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, earnest, 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 herself! She heard not the
roar without, she felt not one amidst those stormy millions,--worlds
of excitement labouring 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
unconsciousness,--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 entered. His manner
was more agitated than usual.
“Is it you, Clarence?” she said in her soft, languid tones. “You are
before the hour I expected you.”
“Who can count on his hours at Paris?” returned Glyndon, with a
frightful smile. “Is it not enough that I am here! Your apathy in the
midst of these sorrows appalls 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.”
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.
“O 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? 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 return
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
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 resolution it appears,--ay, I behold it now; there,
there, with its livid eyes!”--and the drops 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 endeavour to comfort
each other, and forget the past.”
“No,” said Viola, calmly; “I have no further wish to stir, till I am
born 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.”
“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 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 Absent, 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
happen to thee here, what becomes of thine infant? Shall it be brought
up an orphan, in a country that has desecrated thy religion, and where
human charity exists no more? Ah, weep, and clasp it to thy bosom; but
tears do not protect and save.”
“Thou hast conquered, my friend, I will fly with thee.”
“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.