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 characterized
the palaces of the great seigneurs of Italy. Her first thought was for
Zicci,--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. She placed her hand on the dagger that at all
hours she wore concealed in her bosom. Living or dead, she would be
faithful still to Zicci There was a new motive to the preservation of
honor. The door opened, and the Prince entered, in a dress that
sparkled with jewels.
"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."
"My lord," said Isabel, with a stern gravity which perhaps the Stage had
conspired with Nature, to bestow upon her, "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 Isabel, 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 a 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 Isabel, 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 color changed. He mused a moment, and then,
re-entering the chamber and advancing towards Isabel, 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 becalm, and your dreams propitious to my hopes!"
With these words he retired, and in a few moments Isabel 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
Zicci, 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 him 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 secrets of our
hearts.
"What would you with me?" asked the Prince, motioning his visitor to a
seat.
"Prince di --," 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 the 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 relentless ambition,--I come to gaze upon
the last star in a darkening firmament. By this hour to-morrow space
shall know it not. Man, thy days are cumbered!"
"What means this jargon?" said the Prince, in visible astonishment and
secret awe. "Comest thou to menace me in my own halls, or wouldest thou
warn me of a danger? Art thou some itinerant mountebank, or some
unguessed of friend? Speak out, and plainly. What danger threatens
me?"
"Zicci!" replied the stranger.
"Ha! ha!" said the Prince, laughing scornfully; "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
Zicci,--a knowledge shared but by a few, who--But this touches thee not.
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 this 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 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 allied himself with the royalty
of Austria, 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 its splendor 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;
he was worthy to be of us, worthy to be the pupil of Mejnour,--whom you
now see 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.
"Impostor!" he cried, "can you dare thus to play with my credulity?
Sixty years have passed since my grandsire died; and you, a man younger
apparently than myself, 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 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 the last
secrets, perished,--the victim of his own frenzy."
"He was poisoned, and Mejnour fled."
"Mejnour fled not," answered the stranger, quickly and 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 draught
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.
"On the night on which your grandsire breathed his last, I was
standing alone at moonlight on the ruins of Persepolis,--for my
wanderings, space hath no obstacle. But a truce with this: I loved your
grandsire; I would save the last of his race. Oppose not thyself to
Zicci. Oppose not thyself 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, 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.