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 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 Zicci 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 scared myself ere my researches
had made it mine, thou wouldest have escaped the curse of which thou
complainest now. Thou wouldest not have mourned over the brevity of
human affection as compared to the duration of thine own existence, for
thou wouldest 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 demons, 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 Zicci, coldly. “The transport
and the sorrow, so wildly blended, which diversify 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 have still
left to me the sublime pleasures of wisdom and of friendship. 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, Zicci (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 thickened the grosser senses, have blunted the imagination. I
relinquish him to his doom.”
“And still then, Mejnour, you cherish the desire to increase our scanty
and scattered host 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 among the nearest ministrants and
agents gathered round the Throne of Thrones? What matter a thousand
victims for one convert to our band? And you, Zicci,” 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 Zicci, 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 color--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 prophesy 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! Fool, thou hast given
up thy youth!”