Zanoni Part 45

CHAPTER 7.III.

Liebe sonnt das Reich der Nacht.

"Der Triumph der Liebe."

(Love illumes the realm of Night.)

Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.

Paris.

Dost thou remember in the old time, when the Beautiful yet dwelt in Greece, how we two, in the vast Athenian Theatre, witnessed the birth of Words as undying as ourselves? Dost thou remember the thrill of terror that ran through that mighty audience, when the wild Ca.s.sandra burst from her awful silence to shriek to her relentless G.o.d! How ghastly, at the entrance of the House of Atreus, about to become her tomb, rang out her exclamations of foreboding woe: "Dwelling abhorred of heaven!--human shamble-house and floor blood-bespattered!" (Aesch. "Agam." 1098.) Dost thou remember how, amidst the breathless awe of those a.s.sembled thousands, I drew close to thee, and whispered, "Verily, no prophet like the poet! This scene of fabled horror comes to me as a dream, shadowing forth some likeness in my own remoter future!" As I enter this slaughter-house that scene returns to me, and I hearken to the voice of Ca.s.sandra ringing in my ears. A solemn and warning dread gathers round me, as if I too were come to find a grave, and "the Net of Hades"

had already entangled me in its web! What dark treasure-houses of vicissitude and woe are our memories become! What our lives, but the chronicles of unrelenting death! It seems to me as yesterday when I stood in the streets of this city of the Gaul, as they shone with plumed chivalry, and the air rustled with silken braveries. Young Louis, the monarch and the lover, was victor of the Tournament at the Carousel; and all France felt herself splendid in the splendour of her gorgeous chief!

Now there is neither throne nor altar; and what is in their stead? I see it yonder--the GUILLOTINE! It is dismal to stand amidst the ruins of mouldering cities, to startle the serpent and the lizard amidst the wrecks of Persepolis and Thebes; but more dismal still to stand as I--the stranger from Empires that have ceased to be--stand now amidst the yet ghastlier ruins of Law and Order, the shattering of mankind themselves! Yet here, even here, Love, the Beautifier, that hath led my steps, can walk with unshrinking hope through the wilderness of Death.

Strange is the pa.s.sion that makes a world in itself, that individualises the One amidst the Mult.i.tude; that, through all the changes of my solemn life, yet survives, though ambition and hate and anger are dead; the one solitary angel, hovering over a universe of tombs on its two tremulous and human wings,--Hope and Fear!

How is it, Mejnour, that, as my diviner art abandoned me,--as, in my search for Viola, I was aided but by the ordinary instincts of the merest mortal,--how is it that I have never desponded, that I have felt in every difficulty the prevailing prescience that we should meet at last? So cruelly was every vestige of her flight concealed from me,--so suddenly, so secretly had she fled, that all the spies, all the authorities of Venice, could give me no clew. All Italy I searched in vain! Her young home at Naples!--how still, in its humble chambers, there seemed to linger the fragrance of her presence! All the sublimest secrets of our lore failed me,--failed to bring her soul visible to mine; yet morning and night, thou lone and childless one, morning and night, detached from myself, I can commune with my child! There in that most blessed, typical, and mysterious of all relations, Nature herself appears to supply what Science would refuse. s.p.a.ce cannot separate the father's watchful soul from the cradle of his first-born! I know not of its resting-place and home,--my visions picture not the land,--only the small and tender life to which all s.p.a.ce is as yet the heritage! For to the infant, before reason dawns,--before man's bad pa.s.sions can dim the essence that it takes from the element it hath left, there is no peculiar country, no native city, and no mortal language. Its soul as yet is the denizen of all airs and of every world; and in s.p.a.ce its soul meets with mine,--the child communes with the father! Cruel and forsaking one,--thou for whom I left the wisdom of the spheres; thou whose fatal dower has been the weakness and terrors of humanity,--couldst thou think that young soul less safe on earth because I would lead it ever more up to heaven! Didst thou think that I could have wronged mine own? Didst thou not know that in its serenest eyes the life that I gave it spoke to warn, to upbraid the mother who would bind it to the darkness and pangs of the prison-house of clay? Didst thou not feel that it was I who, permitted by the Heavens, shielded it from suffering and disease? And in its wondrous beauty, I blessed the holy medium through which, at last, my spirit might confer with thine!

And how have I tracked them hither? I learned that thy pupil had been at Venice. I could not trace the young and gentle neophyte of Parthenope in the description of the haggard and savage visitor who had come to Viola before she fled; but when I would have summoned his IDEA before me, it refused to obey; and I knew then that his fate had become entwined with Viola's. I have tracked him, then, to this Lazar House. I arrived but yesterday; I have not yet discovered him.

I have just returned from their courts of justice,--dens where tigers arraign their prey. I find not whom I would seek. They are saved as yet; but I recognise in the crimes of mortals the dark wisdom of the Everlasting. Mejnour, I see here, for the first time, how majestic and beauteous a thing is death! Of what sublime virtues we robbed ourselves, when, in the thirst for virtue, we attained the art by which we can refuse to die! When in some happy clime, where to breathe is to enjoy, the charnel-house swallows up the young and fair; when in the n.o.ble pursuit of knowledge, Death comes to the student, and shuts out the enchanted land which was opening to his gaze,--how natural for us to desire to live; how natural to make perpetual life the first object of research! But here, from my tower of time, looking over the darksome past, and into the starry future, I learn how great hearts feel what sweetness and glory there is to die for the things they love! I saw a father sacrificing himself for his son; he was subjected to charges which a word of his could dispel,--he was mistaken for his boy. With what joy he seized the error, confessed the n.o.ble crimes of valour and fidelity which the son had indeed committed, and went to the doom, exulting that his death saved the life he had given, not in vain! I saw women, young, delicate, in the bloom of their beauty; they had vowed themselves to the cloister. Hands smeared with the blood of saints opened the gate that had shut them from the world, and bade them go forth, forget their vows, forswear the Divine one these demons would depose, find lovers and helpmates, and be free. And some of these young hearts had loved, and even, though in struggles, loved yet. Did they forswear the vow? Did they abandon the faith? Did even love allure them?

Mejnour, with one voice, they preferred to die. And whence comes this courage?--because such HEARTS LIVE IN SOME MORE ABSTRACT AND HOLIER LIFE THAN THEIR OWN. BUT TO LIVE FOREVER UPON THIS EARTH IS TO LIVE IN NOTHING DIVINER THAN OURSELVES. Yes, even amidst this gory butcherdom, G.o.d, the Ever-living, vindicates to man the sanct.i.ty of His servant, Death!

Again I have seen thee in spirit; I have seen and blessed thee, my sweet child! Dost thou not know me also in thy dreams? Dost thou not feel the beating of my heart through the veil of thy rosy slumbers? Dost thou not hear the wings of the brighter beings that I yet can conjure around thee, to watch, to nourish, and to save? And when the spell fades at thy waking, when thine eyes open to the day, will they not look round for me, and ask thy mother, with their mute eloquence, "Why she has robbed thee of a father?"

Woman, dost thou not repent thee? Flying from imaginary fears, hast thou not come to the very lair of terror, where Danger sits visible and incarnate? Oh, if we could but meet, wouldst thou not fall upon the bosom thou hast so wronged, and feel, poor wanderer amidst the storms, as if thou hadst regained the shelter? Mejnour, still my researches fail me. I mingle with all men, even their judges and their spies, but I cannot yet gain the clew. I know that she is here. I know it by an instinct; the breath of my child seems warmer and more familiar.

They peer at me with venomous looks, as I pa.s.s through their streets.

With a glance I disarm their malice, and fascinate the basilisks.

Everywhere I see the track and scent the presence of the Ghostly One that dwells on the Threshold, and whose victims are the souls that would ASPIRE, and can only FEAR. I see its dim shapelessness going before the men of blood, and marshalling their way. Robespierre pa.s.sed me with his furtive step. Those eyes of horror were gnawing into his heart. I looked down upon their senate; the grim Phantom sat cowering on its floor.

It hath taken up its abode in the city of Dread. And what in truth are these would-be builders of a new world? Like the students who have vainly struggled after our supreme science, they have attempted what is beyond their power; they have pa.s.sed from this solid earth of usages and forms into the land of shadow, and its loathsome keeper has seized them as its prey. I looked into the tyrant's shuddering soul, as it trembled past me. There, amidst the ruins of a thousand systems which aimed at virtue, sat Crime, and shivered at its desolation. Yet this man is the only Thinker, the only Aspirant, amongst them all. He still looks for a future of peace and mercy, to begin,--ay! at what date? When he has swept away every foe. Fool! new foes spring from every drop of blood.

Led by the eyes of the Unutterable, he is walking to his doom.

O Viola, thy innocence protects thee! Thou whom the sweet humanities of love shut out even from the dreams of aerial and spiritual beauty, making thy heart a universe of visions fairer than the wanderer over the rosy Hesperus can survey,--shall not the same pure affection encompa.s.s thee, even here, with a charmed atmosphere, and terror itself fall harmless on a life too innocent for wisdom?

CHAPTER 7.IV.

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 cas.e.m.e.nt, 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 superst.i.tion 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 superst.i.tion 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sionate love, it seemed as if the fict.i.tious 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 s.e.x knows, alone and unseen, she who had slept on the breast of Zanoni found a shelter for their child. As when, in the n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sive 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 ma.s.sacre!"

"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 pa.s.sion, "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 pa.s.sion 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 s.p.a.ce; 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.