Zanoni Part 4

Quello Ippogifo, grande e strano augello Lo porta via.

"Orlando Furioso," c. vi. xviii.

(That hippogriff, great and marvellous bird, bears him away.)

And now, accompanying this mysterious Zanoni, am I compelled to bid a short farewell to Naples. Mount behind me,--mount on my hippogriff, reader; settle yourself at your ease. I bought the pillion the other day of a poet who loves his comfort; it has been newly stuffed for your special accommodation. So, so, we ascend! Look as we ride aloft,--look!--never fear, hippogriffs never stumble; and every hippogriff in Italy is warranted to carry elderly gentlemen,--look down on the gliding landscapes! There, near the ruins of the Oscan's old Atella, rises Aversa, once the stronghold of the Norman; there gleam the columns of Capua, above the Vulturnian Stream. Hail to ye, cornfields and vineyards famous for the old Falernian! Hail to ye, golden orange-groves of Mola di Gaeta! Hail to ye, sweet shrubs and wild flowers, omnis copia narium, that clothe the mountain-skirts of the silent Lautulae! Shall we rest at the Volscian Anxur,--the modern Terracina,--where the lofty rock stands like the giant that guards the last borders of the southern land of love? Away, away! and hold your breath as we flit above the Pontine Marshes. Dreary and desolate, their miasma is to the gardens we have pa.s.sed what the rank commonplace of life is to the heart when it has left love behind.

Mournful Campagna, thou openest on us in majestic sadness. Rome, seven-hilled Rome! receive us as Memory receives the way-worn; receive us in silence, amidst ruins! Where is the traveller we pursue? Turn the hippogriff loose to graze: he loves the acanthus that wreathes round yon broken columns. Yes, that is the arch of t.i.tus, the conqueror of Jerusalem,--that the Colosseum! Through one pa.s.sed the triumph of the deified invader; in one fell the butchered gladiators. Monuments of murder, how poor the thoughts, how mean the memories ye awaken, compared with those that speak to the heart of man on the heights of Phyle, or by thy lone mound, grey Marathon! We stand amidst weeds and brambles and long waving herbage. Where we stand reigned Nero,--here were his tessellated floors; here,

"Mighty in the heaven, a second heaven,"

hung the vault of his ivory roofs; here, arch upon arch, pillar on pillar, glittered to the world the golden palace of its master,--the Golden House of Nero. How the lizard watches us with his bright, timorous eye! We disturb his reign. Gather that wild flower: the Golden House is vanished, but the wild flower may have kin to those which the stranger's hand scattered over the tyrant's grave; see, over this soil, the grave of Rome, Nature strews the wild flowers still!

In the midst of this desolation is an old building of the middle ages.

Here dwells a singular recluse. In the season of the malaria the native peasant flies the rank vegetation round; but he, a stranger and a foreigner, no a.s.sociates, no companions, except books and instruments of science. He is often seen wandering over the gra.s.s-grown hills, or sauntering through the streets of the new city, not with the absent brow and incurious air of students, but with observant piercing eyes that seem to dive into the hearts of the pa.s.sers-by. An old man, but not infirm,--erect and stately, as if in his prime. None know whether he be rich or poor. He asks no charity, and he gives none,--he does no evil, and seems to confer no good. He is a man who appears to have no world beyond himself; but appearances are deceitful, and Science, as well as Benevolence, lives in the Universe. This abode, for the first time since thus occupied, a visitor enters. It is Zanoni.

You observe those two men seated together, conversing earnestly. Years long and many have flown away since they met last,--at least, bodily, and face to face. But if they are sages, thought can meet thought, and spirit spirit, though oceans divide the forms. Death itself divides not the wise. Thou meetest Plato when thine eyes moisten over the Phaedo.

May Homer live with all men forever!

They converse; they confess to each other; they conjure up the past, and repeople it; but note how differently do such remembrances affect the two. On Zanoni's face, despite its habitual calm, the emotions change and go. HE has acted in the past he surveys; but not a trace of the humanity that partic.i.p.ates in joy and sorrow can be detected on the pa.s.sionless visage of his companion; the past, to him, as is now the present, has been but as Nature to the sage, the volume to the student,--a calm and spiritual life, a study, a contemplation.

From the past they turn to the future. Ah! at the close of the last century, the future seemed a thing tangible,--it was woven up in all men's fears and hopes of the present.

At the verge of that hundred years, Man, the ripest born of Time,

("An des Jahrhunderts Neige, Der reifste Sohn der Zeit." "Die Kunstler.")

stood as at the deathbed of the Old World, and beheld the New Orb, blood-red amidst cloud and vapour,--uncertain if a comet or a sun.

Behold the icy and profound disdain on the brow of the old man,--the lofty yet touching sadness that darkens the glorious countenance of Zanoni. Is it that one views with contempt the struggle and its issue, and the other with awe or pity? Wisdom contemplating mankind leads but to the two results,--compa.s.sion or disdain. He who believes in other worlds can accustom himself to look on this as the naturalist on the revolutions of an ant-hill, or of a leaf. What is the Earth to Infinity,--what its duration to the Eternal? Oh, how much greater is the soul of one man than the vicissitudes of the whole globe! Child of heaven, and heir of immortality, how from some star hereafter wilt thou look back on the ant-hill and its commotions, from Clovis to Robespierre, from Noah to the Final Fire. The spirit that can contemplate, that lives only in the intellect, can ascend to its star, even from the midst of the burial-ground called Earth, and while the sarcophagus called Life immures in its clay the everlasting!

But thou, Zanoni,--thou hast refused to live ONLY in the intellect; thou hast not mortified the heart; thy pulse still beats with the sweet music of mortal pa.s.sion; thy kind is to thee still something warmer than an abstraction,--thou wouldst look upon this Revolution in its cradle, which the storms rock; thou wouldst see the world while its elements yet struggle through the chaos!

Go!

CHAPTER 1.VI.

Precepteurs ignorans de ce faible univers.--Voltaire.

(Ignorant teachers of this weak world.)

Nous etions a table chez un de nos confreres a l'Academie, Grand Seigneur et homme d'esprit.--La Harpe.

(We supped with one of our confreres of the Academy,--a great n.o.bleman and wit.)

One evening, at Paris, several months after the date of our last chapter, there was a reunion of some of the most eminent wits of the time, at the house of a personage distinguished alike by n.o.ble birth and liberal accomplishments. Nearly all present were of the views that were then the mode. For, as came afterwards a time when nothing was so unpopular as the people, so that was the time when nothing was so vulgar as aristocracy. The airiest fine gentleman and the haughtiest n.o.ble prated of equality, and lisped enlightenment.

Among the more remarkable guests were Condorcet, then in the prime of his reputation, the correspondent of the king of Prussia, the intimate of Voltaire, the member of half the academies of Europe,--n.o.ble by birth, polished in manners, republican in opinions. There, too, was the venerable Malesherbes, "l'amour et les delices de la Nation." (The idol and delight of the nation (so-called by his historian, Gaillard).) There Jean Silvain Bailly, the accomplished scholar,--the aspiring politician.

It was one of those pet.i.ts soupers for which the capital of all social pleasures was so renowned. The conversation, as might be expected, was literary and intellectual, enlivened by graceful pleasantry. Many of the ladies of that ancient and proud n.o.blesse--for the n.o.blesse yet existed, though its hours were already numbered--added to the charm of the society; and theirs were the boldest criticisms, and often the most liberal sentiments.

Vain labour for me--vain labour almost for the grave English language--to do justice to the sparkling paradoxes that flew from lip to lip. The favourite theme was the superiority of the moderns to the ancients. Condorcet on this head was eloquent, and to some, at least, of his audience, most convincing. That Voltaire was greater than Homer few there were disposed to deny. Keen was the ridicule lavished on the dull pedantry which finds everything ancient necessarily sublime.

"Yet," said the graceful Marquis de --, as the champagne danced to his gla.s.s, "more ridiculous still is the superst.i.tion that finds everything incomprehensible holy! But intelligence circulates, Condorcet; like water, it finds its level. My hairdresser said to me this morning, 'Though I am but a poor fellow, I believe as little as the finest gentleman!'" "Unquestionably, the great Revolution draws near to its final completion,--a pas de geant, as Montesquieu said of his own immortal work."

Then there rushed from all--wit and n.o.ble, courtier and republican--a confused chorus, harmonious only in its antic.i.p.ation of the brilliant things to which "the great Revolution" was to give birth. Here Condrocet is more eloquent than before.

"Il faut absolument que la Superst.i.tion et le Fanatisme fa.s.sent place a la Philosophie. (It must necessarily happen that superst.i.tion and fanaticism give place to philosophy.) Kings persecute persons, priests opinion. Without kings, men must be safe; and without priests, minds must be free."

"Ah," murmured the marquis, "and as ce cher Diderot has so well sung,--

'Et des boyaux du dernier pretre Serrez le cou du dernier roi.'"

(And throttle the neck of the last king with the string from the bowels of the last priest.)

"And then," resumed Condorcet,--"then commences the Age of Reason!--equality in instruction, equality in inst.i.tutions, equality in wealth! The great impediments to knowledge are, first, the want of a common language; and next, the short duration of existence. But as to the first, when all men are brothers, why not a universal language?

As to the second, the organic perfectibility of the vegetable world is undisputed, is Nature less powerful in the n.o.bler existence of thinking man? The very destruction of the two most active causes of physical deterioration--here, luxurious wealth; there, abject penury,--must necessarily prolong the general term of life. (See Condorcet's posthumous work on the Progress of the Human Mind.--Ed.) The art of medicine will then be honoured in the place of war, which is the art of murder: the n.o.blest study of the acutest minds will be devoted to the discovery and arrest of the causes of disease. Life, I grant, cannot be made eternal; but it may be prolonged almost indefinitely. And as the meaner animal bequeaths its vigour to its offspring, so man shall transmit his improved organisation, mental and physical, to his sons.

Oh, yes, to such a consummation does our age approach!"

The venerable Malesherbes sighed. Perhaps he feared the consummation might not come in time for him. The handsome Marquis de -- and the ladies, yet handsomer than he, looked conviction and delight.

But two men there were, seated next to each other, who joined not in the general talk: the one a stranger newly arrived in Paris, where his wealth, his person, and his accomplishments, had already made him remarked and courted; the other, an old man, somewhere about seventy,--the witty and virtuous, brave, and still light-hearted Cazotte, the author of "Le Diable Amoureux."

These two conversed familiarly, and apart from the rest, and only by an occasional smile testified their attention to the general conversation.

"Yes," said the stranger,--"yes, we have met before."

"I thought I could not forget your countenance; yet I task in vain my recollections of the past."

"I will a.s.sist you. Recall the time when, led by curiosity, or perhaps the n.o.bler desire of knowledge, you sought initiation into the mysterious order of Martines de Pasqualis."

(It is so recorded of Cazotte. Of Martines de Pasqualis little is known; even the country to which he belonged is matter of conjecture. Equally so the rites, ceremonies, and nature of the cabalistic order he established. St. Martin was a disciple of the school, and that, at least, is in its favour; for in spite of his mysticism, no man more beneficent, generous, pure, and virtuous than St. Martin adorned the last century. Above all, no man more distinguished himself from the herd of sceptical philosophers by the gallantry and fervour with which he combated materialism, and vindicated the necessity of faith amidst a chaos of unbelief. It may also be observed, that Cazotte, whatever else he learned of the brotherhood of Martines, learned nothing that diminished the excellence of his life and the sincerity of his religion.

At once gentle and brave, he never ceased to oppose the excesses of the Revolution. To the last, unlike the Liberals of his time, he was a devout and sincere Christian. Before his execution, he demanded a pen and paper to write these words: "Ma femme, mes enfans, ne me pleurez pas; ne m'oubliez pas, mais souvenez-vous surtout de ne jamais offenser Dieu." ("My wife, my children, weep not for me; forget me not, but remember above everything never to offend G.o.d.)--Ed.)

"Ah, is it possible! You are one of that theurgic brotherhood?"

"Nay, I attended their ceremonies but to see how vainly they sought to revive the ancient marvels of the cabala."

"Such studies please you? I have shaken off the influence they once had on my own imagination."

"You have not shaken it off," returned the stranger, bravely; "it is on you still,--on you at this hour; it beats in your heart; it kindles in your reason; it will speak in your tongue!"

And then, with a yet lower voice, the stranger continued to address him, to remind him of certain ceremonies and doctrines,--to explain and enforce them by references to the actual experience and history of his listener, which Cazotte thrilled to find so familiar to a stranger.

Gradually the old man's pleasing and benevolent countenance grew overcast, and he turned, from time to time, searching, curious, uneasy glances towards his companion.

The charming d.u.c.h.esse de G-- archly pointed out to the lively guests the abstracted air and clouded brow of the poet; and Condorcet, who liked no one else to be remarked, when he himself was present, said to Cazotte, "Well, and what do YOU predict of the Revolution,--how, at least, will it affect us?"

At that question Cazotte started; his cheeks grew pale, large drops stood on his forehead; his lips writhed; his gay companions gazed on him in surprise.

"Speak!" whispered the stranger, laying his hand gently upon the arm of the old wit.