It wanted several minutes of midnight, and Glyndon repaired to the
appointed spot. The mysterious empire which Zicci had acquired over him
was still more solemnly confirmed by the events of the last few hours;
the sudden fate of the Prince, so deliberately foreshadowed, and yet so
seemingly accidental--brought out by causes the most commonplace, and
yet associated with words the most prophetic,--impressed him with the
deepest sentiments of admiration and awe. It was as if this dark and
wondrous being would convert the most ordinary events and the meanest
instruments into the agencies of his inscrutable will; yet, if so, why
have permitted the capture of Isabel? Why not have prevented the crime
rather than punished the criminal? And did Zicci really feel love for
Isabel? Love, and yet offer to resign her to himself,--to a rival whom
his arts could not fail to baffle? He no longer reverted to the belief
that Zicci or Isabel had sought to dupe him into marriage. His fear and
reverence for the former now forbade the notion of so poor an imposture.
Did he any longer love Isabel himself? No. When, that morning, he heard
of her danger, he had, it is true, returned to the sympathies and the
fears of affection; but with the death of the Prince her image faded
again from his heart, and he felt no jealous pang at the thought that
she had been saved by Zicci,--that at that moment she was perhaps
beneath his roof. Whoever has, in the course of his life, indulged the
absorbing passion of the gamester, will remember bow all other pursuits
and objects vanished from his mind, how solely he was wrapped in the one
wild delusion; with what a sceptre of magic power the despot demon ruled
every feeling and every thought. Far more intense than the passion of
the gamester was the frantic yet sublime desire that mastered the breast
of Glyndon. He would be the rival of Zicci, not in human and perishable
affections, but in preternatural and eternal lore. He would have laid
down life with content, nay, rapture, as the price of learning those
solemn secrets which separated the stranger from mankind.. Such fools
are we when we aspire to be over-wise! To be enamoured too madly of the
goddess of goddesses is only to embrace a cloud, and to forfeit alike
heaven and earth.
The night was most lovely and serene, and the waves scarcely rippled at
his feet as the Englishman glided on by the cool and starry beach. At
length he arrived at the spot, and there, leaning against the broken
pillar, he beheld a man wrapped in a long mantle and in an attitude
of profound repose. He approached, and uttered the name of Zicci. The
figure turned, and he saw the face of a stranger,--a face not stamped by
the glorious beauty of the Corsican, but equally majestic in its
aspect, and perhaps still more impressive from the mature age and the
passionless depth of thought that characterized the expanded forehead
and deep-set but piercing eyes.
“You seek Zicci,” said the stranger,--“he will be here anon; but perhaps
he whom you see before you is more connected with your destiny, and more
disposed to realize your dreams.”
“Hath the earth then another Zicci?”
“If not,” replied the stranger, “why do you cherish the hope and the
wild faith to be yourself a Zicci? Think you that none others
have burned with the same godlike dream? Who, indeed, in his first
youth;--youth, when the soul is nearer to the heaven from which it
sprang, and its divine and primal longings are not all effaced by the
sordid passions and petty cares that are begot in time?--who is there
in youth that has not nourished the belief that the universe has
secrets not known to the common herd, and panted, as the hart for the
water-springs, for the fountains that he hid and far away amidst the
broad wilderness of trackless science? The music of the fountain is
heard in the soul within till the steps, deceived and erring, rove away
from its waters, and the wanderer dies in the mighty desert. Think you
that none who have cherished the hope have found the truth, or that the
yearning after the Ineffable Knowledge was given to us utterly in vain?
No. Every desire in human hearts is but a glimpse of things that exist,
alike distant and divine. No! in the world there have been, from age to
age, some brighter and happier spirits who have won to the air in which
the beings above mankind move and breathe. Zicci, great though he be,
stands not alone; he has his predecessors, his contemporary rivals, and
long lines of successors are yet to come!”
“And will you tell me,” said Glyndon, “that in yourself I behold one of
that mighty few over whom Zicci has no superiority in power and wisdom?”
“In me,” answered the stranger, “you see one from whom Zicci himself
learned many of his loftiest secrets. Before his birth my wisdom was!
On these shores, on this spot, have I stood in ages that your chronicles
but feebly reach. The Phoenician, the Greek, the Oscan, the Roman, the
Lombard,--I have seen them all!--leaves gay and glittering on the trunk
of the universal life--scattered in due season and again renewed; till,
indeed, the same race that gave its glory to the ancient world bestowed
a second youth on the new. For the pure Greeks--the Hellenes, whose
origin has bewildered your dreaming scholars--were of the same great
family as the Norman tribe, born to be the lords of the universe, and
in no land on earth destined to be the hewers of wood. Even the dim
traditions of the learned that bring the sons of Hellas from the vast
and undetermined territories of Northern Thrace, to be the victors of
the pastoral Pelasgi, and the founders of the line of demi-gods, might
serve you to trace back their primeval settlements to the same region
whence, in later times, the Norman warriors broke on the dull and savage
hordes of the Celt, and became the Greeks of the Christian world. But
this interests you not, and you are wise in your indifference. Not
in the knowledge of things without, but in the perfection of the soul
within, lies the empire of man aspiring to be more than men.”
“And what books contain that science; from what laboratory is it
wrought?”
“Nature supplies the materials: they are around you in your daily walks;
in the herbs that the beast devours and the chemist disdains to cull; in
the elements, from which matter in its meanest and its mightiest shapes
is deduced; in the wide bosom of the air; in the black abysses of the
earth,--everywhere are given to mortals the resources and libraries
of immortal lore. But as the simplest problems in the simplest of
all studies are obscure to one who braces not his mind to their
comprehension; as the rower in yonder vessel cannot tell you why two
circles can touch each other only in one point,--so, though all earth
were carved over and inscribed with the letters of diviner knowledge,
the characters would be valueless to him who does not pause to inquire
the language and meditate the truth. Young man, if thy imagination is
vivid; if thy heart is daring, if thy curiosity is insatiate, I will
accept thee as my pupil. But the first lessons are stern and dread.”
“If thou hast mastered them, why not I?” answered Glyndon, boldly. “I
have felt from my boyhood that strange mysteries were reserved for my
career, and from the proudest ends of ordinary ambition I have carried
my gaze into the cloud and darkness that stretch beyond. The instant I
beheld Zicci, I felt as if I had discovered the guide and the tutor for
which my youth had idly languished and vainly burned.”
“And to me his duty can be transferred,” replied the stranger. “Yonder
lies, anchored in the bay, the vessel in which Zicci seeks a fairer
home; a little while and the breeze will rise, the sail will swell, and
the stranger will have passed like a wind away. Still, like the wind, he
leaves in thy heart the seeds that may bear the blossom and the fruit.
Zicci hath performed his task--he is wanted no more; the perfecter of
his work is at thy side. He comes--I hear the dash of the oar. You will
have your choice submitted to you. According as you decide, we shall
meet again.” With these words the stranger moved slowly away, and
disappeared beneath the shadow of the cliffs. A boat glided rapidly
across the waters; it touched land, a man leapt on shore, and Glyndon
recognized Zicci.
“I give thee, Glyndon, I give thee no more the option of happy love and
serene enjoyment. That hour is past, and fate has linked the hand that
might have been thine own to mine. But I have ample gifts to bestow
upon thee if thou wilt abandon the hope that gnaws thy heart, and the
realization of which even I have not the power to foresee. Be thine
ambition human, and I can gratify it to the full. Men desire four things
in life,--love, wealth, fame, power. The first I cannot give thee,--no
matter why; the rest are at my disposal. Select which of them thou wilt,
and let us part in peace.”
“Such are not the gifts I covet: I choose knowledge, which indeed, as
the schoolman said, is power, and the loftiest; that knowledge must
be thine own. For this, and for this alone, I surrendered the love of
Isabel; this, and this alone, must be any recompense.”
“I cannot gainsay thee, though I can warn. The desire to learn does not
always contain the faculty to acquire. I can give thee, it is true, the
teacher; the rest must depend on thee. Be wise in time, and take that
which I can assure to thee.”
“Answer me but these questions, and according to your answer I will
decide. Is it in the power of man to attain intercourse with the beings
of other worlds? Is it in the power of man to read the past and the
future, and to insure life against the sword and against disease?”
“All this may be possible,” answered Zicci evasively, “to the few. But
for one who attains such secrets, millions may perish in the attempt.”
“One question more. Thou--”
“Beware! Of myself, as I have said before, I render no account.”
“Well, then, the stranger I have met this night--are his boasts to be
believed? Is he in truth one of the chosen seers whom you allow to have
mastered the mysteries I yearn to fathom?”
“Rash man,” said Zicci, in a tone of compassion, “thy crisis is past,
and thy choice made. I can only bid thee be bold and prosper. Yes, I
resign thee to a master who has the power and the will to open to thee
the gates of the awful world. Thy weal or woe are as nought in the eyes
of his relentless wisdom. I would bid him spare thee, but he will heed
me not. Mejnour, receive thy pupil!” Glyndon turned, and his heart beat
when he perceived that the stranger, whose footsteps he had not heard on
the pebbles, whose approach he had not beheld in the moonlight, was once
more by his side.
Glyndon’s eyes followed the receding form of the mysterious Corsican.
He saw him enter the boat, and he then for the first time noticed that
besides the rowers there was a female, who stood up as Zicci gained
the boat. Even at this distance he recognized the once-adored form of
Isabel. She waved her hand to him, and across the still and shining air
came her voice, mournfully and sweetly in her native tongue, “Farewell,
Clarence--farewell, farewell.”
He strove to answer, but the voice touched a chord at his heart, and the
words failed him. Isabel was then lost forever,--gone with this dread
stranger,--darkness was round her lot. And he himself had decided
her fate and his own! The boat bounded on, the soft waves flashed
and sparkled beneath the oars, and it was along one sapphire track
of moonlight that the frail vessel bore away the lovers. Farther and
farther from his gaze sped the boat, till at last the speck, scarcely
visible, touched the side of the ship that lay lifeless in the glorious
bay. At that instant, as if by magic, up sprang with a glad murmur the
playful and refreshing wind. And Glyndon turned to Mejnour, and broke
the silence.
“Tell me,--if thou canst read the future,--tell me that her lot will be
fair, and that her choice at least is wise.”
“My pupil,” answered Mejnour, in a voice the calmness of which well
accorded with the chilling words, “thy first task must be to withdraw
all thought, feeling, sympathy from others. The elementary stage of
knowledge is to make self, and self alone, thy study and thy world.
Thou hast decided thine own career; thou hast renounced love; thou hast
rejected wealth, fame, and the vulgar pomps of power. What, then,
are all mankind to thee? To perfect thy faculties and concentrate thy
emotions is henceforth thy only aim.”
“And will happiness be the end?”
“If happiness exist,” answered Mejnour, “it must be centred in A Self to
which all passion is unknown. But happiness is the last state of being,
and as yet thou art on the threshold of the first!”
As Mejnour spoke, the distant vessel spread its sails to the wind,
and moved slowly along the deep. Glyndon sighed, and the pupil and the
master retraced their steps towards the city.
BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.
It was about a month after the date of Zicci’s departure and Glyndon’s
introduction to Mejnour, when two Englishmen were walking arm-in-arm
through the Toledo.
“I tell you,” said one (who spoke warmly), “that if you have a particle
of common-sense left in you, you will accompany me to England. This
Mejnour is an impostor more dangerous--because more in earnest--than
Zicci. After all, what do his promises amount to? You allow that nothing
can be more equivocal. You say that he has left Naples, that he has
selected a retreat more genial than the crowded thoroughfares of men to
the studies in which he is to initiate you; and this retreat is among
the haunts of the fiercest bandits of Italy,--haunts which Justice
itself dare not penetrate; fitting hermitage for a sage! I tremble for
you. What if this stranger, of whom nothing is known, be leagued with
the robbers; and these lures for your credulity bait but the traps
for your property,--perhaps your life? You might come off cheaply by
a ransom of half your fortune; you smile indignantly well! put
common-sense out of the question; take your own view of the matter.
You are to undergo an ordeal which Mejnour himself does not profess to
describe as a very tempting one. It may, or it may not, succeed; if it
does not, you are menaced with the darkest evils; and if it does, you
cannot be better off than the dull and joyless mystic whom you have
taken for a master. Away with this folly! Enjoy youth while it is left
to you. Return with me to England; forget these dreams. Enter your
proper career; form affections more respectable than those which
lured you a while to an Italian adventuress, and become a happy and
distinguished man. This is the advice of sober friendship; yet the
promises I hold out to you are fairer than those of Mejnour.”
“Merton,” said Glyndon, doggedly, “I cannot, if I would, yield to
your wishes. A power that is above me urges me on; I cannot resist its
fascination. I will proceed to the last in the strange career I have
commenced. Think of me no more. Follow yourself the advice you give to
me, and be happy.”
“This is madness,” said Merton, passionately, but with a tear in his
eye; “your health is already failing; you are so changed I should
scarcely know you: come, I have already had your name entered in my
passport; in another hour I shall be gone, and you, boy that you are,
will be left without a friend to the deceits of your own fancy and the
machinations of this relentless mountebank.”
“Enough,” said Glyndon, coldly; “you cease to be an effective counsellor
when you suffer your prejudices to be thus evident. I have already had
ample proof,” added the Englishman, and his pale cheek grew more pale,
“of the power of this man,--if man he be, which I sometimes doubt; and,
come life, come death, I will not shrink from the paths that allure me.
Farewell, Merton: if we never meet again; if you hear amidst our old
and cheerful haunts that Clarence Glyndon sleeps the last sleep by the
shores of Naples, or amidst the Calabrian hills,--say to the friends of
our youth, ‘He died worthily, as thousands of martyr-students have died
before him, in the pursuit of knowledge.’”
He wrung Merton’s hand as he spoke, darted from his side, and
disappeared amidst the crowd.
That day Merton left Naples; the next morning Glyndon also quitted the
City of Delight, alone and on horseback. He bent his way into those
picturesque but dangerous parts of the country which at that time were
infested by banditti, and which few travellers dared to pass, even in
broad daylight, without a strong escort. A road more lonely cannot well
be conceived than that on which the hoofs of his steed, striking upon
the fragments of rock that encumbered the neglected way, woke a dull
and melancholy echo. Large tracts of waste land, varied by the rank and
profuse foliage of the South, lay before him; occasionally a wild goat
peeped down from some rocky crag, or the discordant cry of a bird of
prey, startled in its sombre haunt, was heard above the hills. These
were the only signs of life; not a human being was met, not a hut was
visible. Wrapped in his own ardent and solemn thoughts, the young man
continued his way, till the sun had spent its noonday heat, and a breeze
that announced the approach of eve sprung up from the unseen ocean
that lay far distant to his sight. It was then that a turn in the road
brought before him one of those long, desolate, gloomy villages which
are found in the interior of the Neapolitan dominions; and now he came
upon a small chapel on one side of the road, with a gaudily painted
image of the Virgin in the open shrine. Around this spot, which in the
heart of a Christian land retained the vestige of the old idolatry (for
just such were the chapels that in the Pagan age were dedicated to the
demon-saints of mythology), gathered six or seven miserable and squalid
wretches, whom the Curse of the Leper had cut off from mankind. They
set up a shrill cry as they turned their ghastly visages towards the
horseman; and, without stirring from the spot, stretched out their gaunt
arms, and implored charity in the name of the Merciful Mother. Glyndon
hastily threw them some small coins, and, turning away his face, clapped
spurs to his horse, and relaxed not his speed till he entered the
village. On either side the narrow and miry street, fierce and haggard
forms--some leaning against the ruined walls of blackened huts, some
seated at the threshold, some lying at full length in the mud--presented
groups that at once invoked pity and aroused alarm; pity for their
squalor,--alarm for the ferocity imprinted on their savage aspects. They
gazed at him, grim and sullen, as he rode slowly up the rugged street;
sometimes whispering significantly to each other, but without attempting
to stop his way. Even the children hushed their babble, and ragged
urchins, devouring him with sparkling eyes, muttered to their mothers,
“We shall feast well to-morrow!” It was, indeed, one of those hamlets
in which Law sets not its sober step, in which Violence and Murder house
secure,--hamlets common then in the wilder parts of Italy, in which the
peasant was but the gentler name for the robber.
Glyndon’s heart somewhat failed him as he looked around, and the
question he desired to ask died upon his lips. At length, from one of
the dismal cabins emerged a form superior to the rest. Instead of the
patched and ragged overall which made the only garment of the men he
had hitherto seen, the dress of this person was characterized by all the
trappings of Calabrian bravery. Upon his raven hair, the glossy curls
of which made a notable contrast to the matted and elfin locks of the
savages around, was placed a cloth cap with a gold tassel that hung
down to his shoulder; his mustaches were trimmed with care, and a silk
kerchief of gay lines was twisted round a well-shaped but sinewy throat;
a short jacket of rough cloth was decorated with several rows of gilt
filagree buttons; his nether garments fitted tight to his limbs, and
were curiously braided; while in a broad, party-colored sash were placed
four silver-hilted pistols; and the sheathed knife, usually worn by
Italians of the lower order, was mounted in ivory elaborately carved. A
small carbine of handsome workmanship was slung across his shoulder, and
completed his costume. The man himself was of middle size, athletic, yet
slender; with straight and regular features,--sunburnt, but not swarthy;
and an expression of countenance which, though reckless and bold, had in
it frankness rather than ferocity, and, if defying, was not altogether
unprepossessing.
Glyndon, after eyeing this figure for some moments with great attention,
checked his rein, and asked in the provincial patois, with which he was
tolerably familiar, the way to the “Castle of the Mountain.”
The man lifted his cap as he heard the question, and, approaching
Glyndon, laid his hand upon the neck of the horse, and said in a low
voice, “Then you are the cavalier whom our patron the signor expected.
He bade me wait for you here, and lead you to the castle. And indeed,
signor, it might have been unfortunate if I had neglected to obey
the command.” The man then, drawing a little aside, called out to the
bystanders in a loud voice, “Ho, ho, my friends, pay henceforth and
forever all respect to this worshipful cavalier. He is the accepted
guest of our blessed patron of the Castle of the Mountain. Long life to
him! May he, like his host, be safe by day and by night, in the hill and
on the waste, against the dagger and the bullet, in limb and in life!
Cursed be he who touches a hair of his head, or a baioccho in his pouch.
Now and forever we will protect and honor him; for the law or against
the law; with the faith, and to the death. Amen. Amen!”
“Amen!” responded in wild chorus a hundred voices, and the scattered
and straggling groups pressed up the street, nearer and nearer to the
horseman.
“And that he may be known,” continued the Englishman’s strange
protector, “to the eye and to the ear, I place around him the white
sash, and I give him the sacred watchword,--‘Peace to the Brave.’
Signor, when you wear this sash, the proudest in these parts will bare
the head and bend the knee. Signor, when you utter this watchword, the
bravest hearts will be bound to your bidding. Desire you safety, or ask
you revenge; to gain a beauty, or to lose a foe, speak but the word,
and we are yours, we are yours! Is it not so, comrades?” And again the
hoarse voices shouted, “Amen, amen!”
“Now, signor,” whispered the bravo, in good Italian, “if you have a few
coins to spare, scatter them amongst the crowd, and let us be gone.”
Glyndon, not displeased at the concluding sentence, emptied his purse
in the street; and while, with mingled oaths, blessings, shrieks, and
yells, men, women, and children scrambled for the money, the bravo,
taking the rein of the horse, led it a few paces through the village at
a brisk trot, and then turning up a narrow lane to the left, in a few
minutes neither houses nor men were visible, and the mountains closed
their path on either side. It was then that, releasing the bridle and
slackening his pace, the guide turned his dark eyes on Glyndon with an
arch expression, and said,--
“Your Excellency was not, perhaps, prepared for the hearty welcome we
have given you.”
“Why, in truth, I ought to have been prepared for it, since my friend,
to whose house I am bound, did not disguise from me the character of the
neighborhood. And your name, my friend, if I may call you so?”
“Oh, no ceremonies with me, Excellency. In the village I am generally
called Maestro Paulo. I had a surname once, though a very equivocal one;
and I have forgotten that since I retired from the world.”
“And was it from disgust, from poverty, or from some some ebullition
of passion which entailed punishment, that you betook yourself to the
mountains?”
“Why, signor,” said the bravo, with a gay laugh, “hermits of my class
seldom love the confessional. However, I have no secrets while my step
is in these defiles, my whistle in my pouch, and my carbine at my back.”
With that the robber, as if he loved permission to talk at his will,
hemmed thrice, and began with much humor; though, as his tale proceeded,
the memories it roused seemed to carry him further than he at first
intended, and reckless and light-hearted ease gave way to that fierce
and varied play of countenance and passion of gesture which characterize
the emotions of his countrymen.
“I was born at Terracina,--a fair spot, is it not? My father was a
learned monk, of high birth; my mother--Heaven rest her!--an innkeeper’s
pretty daughter. Of course there was no marriage in the case; and when
I was born, the monk gravely declared my appearance to be miraculous. I
was dedicated from my cradle to the altar; and my head was universally
declared to be the orthodox shape for a cowl. As I grew up, the monk
took great pains with my education, and I learned Latin and psalmody as
soon as less miraculous infants learn crowing. Nor did the holy man’s
care stint itself to my interior accomplishments. Although vowed to
poverty, he always contrived that my mother should have her pockets
full; and between her pockets and mine there was soon established a
clandestine communication; accordingly, at fourteen, I wore my cap
on one side, stuck pistols in my belt, and assumed the swagger of a
cavalier and a gallant. At that age my poor mother died; and about the
same period, my father, having written a ‘History of the Pontifical
Bulls,’ in forty volumes, and being, as I said, of high birth, obtained
a cardinal’s hat. From that time he thought fit to disown your humble
servant. He bound me over to an honest notary at Naples, and gave me two
hundred crowns by way of provision. Well, signor, I saw enough of the
law to convince me that I should never be rogue enough to shine in
the profession. So instead of spoiling parchment, I made love to the
notary’s daughter. My master discovered our innocent amusement, and
turned me out of doors,--that was disagreeable. But my Ninetta loved
me, and took care that I should not lie out in the streets with the
lazzaroni. Little jade, I think I see her now, with her bare feet,
and her finger to her lips, opening the door in the summer nights,
and bidding me creep softly into the kitchen, where--praised be the
saints!--a flask and a manchet always awaited the hungry amoroso. At
last, however, Ninetta grew cold. It is the way of the sex, signor.
Her father found her an excellent marriage in the person of a withered
picture-dealer. She took the spouse, and very properly clapped the door
in the face of the lover. I was not disheartened, Excellency; no, not
I. Women are plentiful while we are young. So, without a ducat in my
pocket, or a crust for my teeth, I set out to seek my fortune on board
of a Spanish merchantman. That was duller work than I expected: but
luckily we were attacked by a pirate; half the crew were butchered, the
rest captured. I was one of the last,--always in luck, you see, signor,
monks’ sons have a knack that way! The captain of the pirate took a
fancy to me. ‘Serve with us,’ said he. ‘Too happy,’ said I. Behold me
then a pirate. Oh jolly life! how I blest the old notary for turning
me out of doors! What feasting! what fighting! what wooing! what
quarreling! Sometimes we ran ashore and enjoyed ourselves like princes;
sometimes we lay in a calm for days together, on the loveliest sea that
man ever traversed. And then, if the breeze rose, and a sail came
in sight, who so merry as we? I passed three years in that charming
profession, and then, signor, I grew ambitious. I caballed against the
captain; I wanted his post. One still night we struck the blow. The ship
was like a log in the sea,--no land to be seen from the mast-head, the
waves like glass, and the moon at its full. Up we rose,--thirty of
us and more. Up we rose with a shout; we poured into the captain’s
cabin,--I at the head. The brave old boy had caught the alarm, and there
he stood at the doorway, a pistol in each hand; and his one eye (he had
only one) worse to meet than the pistols were.
“‘Yield,’ cried I, ‘your life shall be safe.’
“‘Take that,’ said he, and whiz went the pistol; but the saints took
care of their own, and the ball passed by my cheek, and shot the
boatswain behind me. I closed with the captain, and the other pistol
went off without mischief in the struggle; such a fellow he was, six
feet four without his shoes! Over we went, rolling each on the other.
Santa Maria!--no time to get hold of one’s knife. Meanwhile, all the
crew were up, some for the captain, some for me; clashing and firing,
and swearing and groaning, and now and then a heavy splash in the sea!
Fine supper for the sharks that night! At last old Bilboa got uppermost:
out flashed his knife; down it came, but not in my heart. No! I gave my
left arm as a shield, and the blade went through and through up to the
hilt, with the blood spurting up like the rain from a whale’s nostril.
With the weight of the blow the stout fellow came down, so that his face
touched mine; with my right hand I caught him by the throat, turned him
over like a lamb, signor, and faith it was soon all up with him; the
boatswain’s brother, a fat Dutchman, ran him through with a pike.
“‘Old fellow,’ said I, as he turned up his terrible eye to me, ‘I bear
you no malice, but we must try to get on in the world, you know.’ The
captain grinned and gave up the ghost. I went upon deck; what a sight!
Twenty bold fellows stark and cold, and the moon sparkling on the
puddles of blood as calmly as if it were water. Well, signor, the
victory was ours, and the ship mine; I ruled merrily enough for six
months. We then attacked a French ship twice our size; what sport it
was! And we had not had a good fight so long we were quite like virgins
at it! We got the best of it, and won ship and cargo. They wanted to
pistol the captain: but that was against my laws; so we gagged him, for
he scolded as loud as if we were married to him; left him and the
rest of his crew on board our own vessel, which was terribly battered:
clapped our black flag on the Frenchman’s, and set off merrily, with a
brisk wind in our favor. But luck deserted us on forsaking our own dear
old ship. A storm came on; a plank struck; several of us escaped in the
boats; we had lots of gold with us, but no water. For two days and two
nights we suffered horribly: but at last we ran ashore near a French
seaport; our sorry plight moved compassion, and as we had money we were
not suspected; people only suspect the poor. Here we soon recovered
our fatigues, rigged ourselves out gayly, and your humble servant was
considered as noble a captain as ever walked deck. But now, alas, my
fate would have it that I should fall in love with a silk-mercer’s
daughter. Ah! how I loved her,--the pretty Clara! Yes, I loved her
so well, that I was seized with horror at my past life; I resolved to
repent, to marry her, and settle down into an honest man. Accordingly, I
summoned my messmates, told them my resolution, resigned my command,
and persuaded them to depart. They were good fellows; engaged with a
Dutchman, against whom I heard afterwards they made a successful mutiny,
but I never saw them more. I had two thousand crowns still left; with
this sum I obtained the consent of the silk-mercer, and it was agreed
that I should become a partner in the firm. I need not say that no
one suspected I had been so great a man, and I passed for a Neapolitan
goldsmith’s son instead of a cardinal’s. I was very happy then, signor,
very,--I could not have harmed a fly. Had I married Clara I had been as
gentle a mercer as ever handled a measure.”
The bravo paused a moment, and it was easy to see that he felt more than
his words and tone betokened. “Well, well, we must not look back at the
Past too earnestly,--the sun light upon it makes one’s eyes water. The
day was fixed for our wedding, it approached; on the evening before the
appointed day, Clara, her mother, her little sister, and myself were
walking by the port, and as we looked on the sea I was telling them
old gossip tales of mermaids and sea-serpents,--when a red-faced
bottle-nosed Frenchman clapped himself right before me, and placing his
spectacles very deliberately astride his proboscis, echoed out, ‘Sacre,
mille tonnerres! This is the damned pirate that boarded the “Niobe”!’”
“None of your jests,’ said I, mildly. ‘Ho, ho,’ said he. ‘I can’t be
mistaken. Help there,’ and he gripped me by the collar. I replied, as
you may suppose, by laying him in the kennel; but it would not do. The
French captain had a French lieutenant at his back, whose memory was as
good as his master’s. A crowd assembled; other sailors came up; the
odds were against me. I slept that night in prison; and, in a few weeks
afterwards, I was sent to the galleys. They had spared my life because
the old Frenchman politely averred that I had made my crew spare his.
You may believe that the oar and the chain were not to my taste. I, and
two others, escaped; they took to the road, and have, no doubt, been
long since broken on the wheel. I, soft soul, would not commit another
crime to gain my bread, for Clara was still at my heart with her soft
eyes; so, limiting my rogueries to the theft of a beggar’s rags, which I
compensated him by leaving my galley attire instead, I begged my way
to the town where I left Clara. It was a clear winter’s day when I
approached the outskirts of the town. I had no fear of detection, for my
beard and hair were as good as a mask. Oh, Mother of Mercy! there came
across my way a funeral procession! There, now, you know it. I can tell
you no more. She had died, perhaps of love, more likely of shame. Do you
know how I spent that night? I will tell you; I stole a pickaxe from a
mason’s shed, and, all alone and unseen, under the frosty heavens I dug
the fresh mould from the grave; I lifted the coffin; I wrenched the lid,
I saw her again--again. Decay had not touched her. She was always pale
in her life! I could have sworn she lived! It was a blessed thing to see
her once more,--and all alone too! But then at dawn, to give her back
to the earth,--to close the lid, to throw down the mould, to hear the
pebbles rattle on the coffin,--that was dreadful! Signor, I never knew
before, and I don’t wish to think now, how valuable a thing human life
is. At sunrise I was again a wanderer; but now that Clara was gone my
scruples vanished, and again I was at war with my betters. I contrived,
at last, at O--, to get taken on board a vessel bound to Leghorn,
working out my passage. From Leghorn I went to Rome, and stationed
myself at the door of the cardinal’s palace. Out he came,--his gilded
coach at the gate. “‘Ho, father,’ said I, ‘don’t you know me?’
“‘Who are you?’
“‘Your son,’ said I, in a whisper.
“The cardinal drew back, looked at me earnestly, and mused a moment.
‘All men are my sons,’ quoth he then, very mildly; ‘there is gold for
thee. To him who begs once, alms are due; to him who begs twice, jails
are open. Take the hint and molest me no more. Heaven bless thee!’ With
that he got into his coach and drove off to the Vatican. His purse,
which he had left behind, was well supplied. I was grateful and
contented, and took my way to Terracina. I had not long passed the
marshes, when I saw two horsemen approach at a canter.
“‘You look poor, friend,’ said one of them, halting; ‘yet you are
strong.’
“‘Poor men and strong are both serviceable and dangerous, Signor
Cavalier.’
“‘Well said! follow us.’
“I obeyed and became a bandit. I rose by degrees; and as I have always
been mild in my calling, and have taken purses without cutting throats,
bear an excellent character, and can eat my macaroni at Naples without
any danger to life and limbs. For the last two years I have settled in
these parts, where I hold sway, and where I have purchased land. I am
called a farmer, signor; and I myself now only rob for amusement, and to
keep my hand in. I trust I have satisfied your curiosity. We are within
a hundred yards of the castle.”
“And how,” asked the Englishman, whose interest had been much excited
by his companion’s narrative, “and how came you acquainted with my host?
and by what means has he so well conciliated the goodwill of yourself
and your friends?”
Maestro Paulo turned his black eyes gravely towards his questioner.
“Why, signor,” said he, “you must surely know more of the foreign
cavalier with the hard name than I do. All I can say is, that about
a fortnight ago I chanced to be standing by a booth in the Toledo at
Naples, when a sober-looking gentleman touched me by the arm, and said,
‘Maestro Paulo, I want to make your acquaintance; do me the favor to
come into yonder tavern.’ When we were seated, my new acquaintance thus
accosted me: ‘The Count d’ O--has offered to let me hire his old castle
near B----. You know the spot?’
“‘Extremely well; no one has inhabited it for a century at least; it
is half in ruins, signor. A queer place to hire; I hope the rent is not
heavy.’
“‘Maestro Paulo,’ said he, ‘I am a philosopher, and don’t care for
luxuries. I want a quiet retreat for some scientific experiments.
The castle will suit me very well, provided you will accept me as a
neighbor, and place me and my friends under your special protection. I
am rich; but I shall take nothing to the castle worth robbing. I will
pay one rent to the count, and another to you.’
“With that we soon came to terms, and as the strange signor doubled the
sum I myself proposed, he is in high favor with all his neighbors. We
would guard the old castle against an army. And now, signor, that I have
been thus frank, be frank with me. Who is this singular cavalier?”
“Who?--he himself told you, a philosopher.”
“Hem! Searching for the philosopher’s stone, eh? A bit of a magician;
afraid of the priests?”
“Precisely. You have hit it.”
“I thought so; and you are his pupil?”
“I am.”
“I wish you well through it,” said the robber, seriously, and crossing
himself with much devotion; “I am not much better than other people,
but one’s soul is one’s soul. I do not mind a little honest robbery, or
knocking a man on the head if need be,--but to make a bargain with the
devil!--Ah! take care, young gentleman, take care.”
“You need not fear,” said Glyndon, smiling; “my preceptor is too wise
and too good for such a compact. But here we are, I suppose. A noble
ruin! A glorious prospect!”
Glyndon paused delightedly, and surveyed the scene before and below
with the eye of a poet and a painter. Insensibly, while listening to
the bandit, he had wound up a considerable ascent, and now he was upon
a broad ledge of rock covered with mosses and dwarf shrubs. Between this
eminence and another of equal height, upon which the castle was built,
there was a deep but narrow fissure, overgrown with the most profuse
foliage, so that the eye could not penetrate many yards below the rugged
surface of the abyss; but the profoundness might well be conjectured by
the hoarse, low, monotonous sound of waters unseen that rolled below,
and the subsequent course of which was visible at a distance in a
perturbed and rapid stream that intersected the waste and desolate
valleys. To the left, the prospect seemed almost boundless; the extreme
clearness of the purple air serving to render distinct the features of
a range of country that a conqueror of old might have deemed in itself
a kingdom. Lonely and desolate as the road which Glyndon had passed that
day had appeared, the landscape now seemed studded with castles, spires,
and villages. Afar off, Naples gleamed whitely in the last rays of the
sun, and the rose-tints of the horizon melted into the azure of her
glorious bay. Yet more remote, and in another part of the prospect,
might be caught, dim and shadowy, and backed by the darkest foliage,
the ruined village of the ancient Possidonia. There, in the midst of his
blackened and sterile realms, rose the dismal Mount of Fire; while, on
the other hand, winding through variegated plains, to which distance
lent all its magic, glittered many a stream, by which Etruscan and
Sybarite, Roman and Saracen and Norman, had, at intervals of ages,
pitched the invading tent. All the visions of the past the stormy and
dazzling histories of Southern Italy--rushed over the artist’s mind as
he gazed below. And then, slowly turning to look behind, he saw the gray
and mouldering walls of the castle in which he sought the secrets that
were to give to hope in the Future a mightier empire than memory owns in
the Past. It was one of those baronial fortresses with which Italy was
studded in the earlier middle ages, having but little of the Gothic
grace of grandeur which belongs to the ecclesiastical architecture of
the same time; but rude, vast, and menacing even in decay. A wooden
bridge was thrown over the chasm, wide enough to admit two horsemen
abreast; and the planks trembled and gave back a hollow sound as Glyndon
urged his jaded steed across.
A road that had once been broad, and paved with rough flags, but which
now was half obliterated by long grass and rank weeds, conducted to the
outer court of the castle hard by; the gates were open, and half the
building in this part was dismantled, the ruins partially hid by ivy
that was the growth of centuries. But on entering the inner court,
Glyndon was not sorry to notice that there was less appearance of
neglect and decay: some wild roses gave a smile to the gray walls; and
in the centre there was a fountain, in which the waters still trickled
coolly, and with a pleasing murmur, from the jaws of a gigantic triton.
Here he was met by Mejnour with a smile.
“Welcome, my friend and pupil,” said he; “he who seeks for Truth can
find in these solitudes an immortal Academe.”
CHAPTER. II.
The attendants which Mejnour had engaged for his strange abode were such
as might suit a philosopher of few wants. An old Armenian, whom Glyndon
recognized as in the mystic’s service at Naples; a tall, hard-featured
woman from the village, recommended by Maestro Paulo; and two
long-haired, smooth-spoken, but fierce-visaged youths, from the
same place, and honored by the same sponsorship,--constituted
the establishment. The rooms used by the sage were commodious and
weather-proof, with some remains of ancient splendor in the faded
arras that clothed the walls and the huge tables of costly marble and
elaborate carving. Glyndon’s sleeping apartment communicated with a kind
of belvidere or terrace that commanded prospects of unrivalled beauty
and extent, and was separated, on the other side, by a long gallery
and a flight of ten or a dozen stairs, from the private chambers of
the mystic. There was about the whole place a sombre, and yet not
displeasing, depth of repose. It suited well with the studies to which
it was now to be appropriated.
For several days Mejnour refused to confer with Glyndon on the subjects
nearest to his heart.
“All without,” said he, “is prepared, but not all within. Your own
soul must grow accustomed to the spot, and filled with the surrounding
Nature; for Nature is the source of all inspiration.”
With these words, which savored a little of jargon, Mejnour turned to
lighter topics. He made the Englishman accompany him in long rambles
through the wild scenes around, and he smiled approvingly when the young
artist gave way to the enthusiasm which their fearful beauty could not
have failed to rouse in a duller breast; and then Mejnour poured
forth to his wondering pupil the stores of a knowledge that seemed
inexhaustible and boundless. He gave accounts the most curious, graphic,
and minute, of the various races--their characters, habits, creeds, and
manners--by which that fair land had been successively overrun. It
is true that his descriptions could not be found in books, and were
unsupported by learned authorities; but he possessed the true charm
of the tale-teller, and spoke of all with the animated confidence of
a personal witness. Sometimes, too, he would converse upon the more
durable and the loftier mysteries of Nature with an eloquence and a
research which invested them with all the colors rather of poetry than
science. Insensibly the young artist found himself elevated and soothed
by the lore of his companion; the fever of his wild desires was slaked.
His mind became more and more lulled into the divine tranquillity of
contemplation; he felt himself a nobler being; and in the silence of his
senses he imagined that he heard the voice of his soul.
It was to this state that Mejnour sought to bring the Neophyte, and in
this elementary initiation the mystic was like every more ordinary sage.
For he who seeks to discover must first reduce himself into a kind of
abstract idealism, and be rendered up; in solemn and sweet bondage, to
the faculties which contemplate and imagine.
Glyndon noticed that, in their rambles, Mejnour often paused where the
foliage was rifest, to gather some herb or flower; and this reminded him
that he had seen Zicci similarly occupied. “Can these humble children of
Nature,” said he one day to Mejnour, “things that bloom and wither in
a day, be serviceable to the science of the higher secrets? Is there a
pharmacy for the soul as well as the body, and do the nurslings of the
summer minister not only to human health but spiritual immortality?”
“If,” answered Mejnour, “before one property of herbalism was known
to them, a stranger had visited a wandering tribe,--if he had told the
savages that the herbs, which every day they trampled underfoot, were
endowed with the most potent virtues; that one would restore to health
a brother on the verge of death; that another would paralyze into idiocy
their wisest sage; that a third would strike lifeless to the dust their
most stalwart champion; that tears and laughter, vigor and disease,
madness and reason, wakefulness and sleep, existence and dissolution,
were coiled up in those unregarded leaves,--would they not have held him
a sorcerer or a liar? To half the virtues of the vegetable world mankind
are yet in the darkness of the savages I have supposed. There are
faculties within us with which certain herbs have affinity, and over
which they have power. The moly of the ancients was not all a fable.”
One evening, Glyndon had lingered alone and late upon the
ramparts,--watching the stars as, one by one, they broke upon the
twilight. Never had he felt so sensibly the mighty power of the heavens
and the earth upon man! how much the springs of our intellectual being
are moved and acted upon by the solemn influences of Nature! As a
patient on whom, slowly and by degrees, the agencies of mesmerism are
brought to bear, he acknowledged to his heart the growing force of that
vast and universal magnetism which is the life of creation, and binds
the atom to the whole. A strange and ineffable consciousness of power,
of the something great within the perishable clay, appealed to feelings
at once dim and glorious,--rather faintly recognized than all unknown.
An impulse that he could not resist led him to seek the mystic. He would
demand, that hour, his initiation into the worlds beyond our world; he
was prepared to breathe a diviner air. He entered the castle, and strode
through the shadowy and star-lit gallery which conducted to Mejnour’s
apartment.
THE END. (1)
(1) [So far as Zicci was ever finished.]