Zanoni

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Zanoni


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. Space 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 space is as yet the heritage! For to
the infant, before reason dawns,--before man's bad passions 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 space 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 noble
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 noble 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,
God, the Ever-living, vindicates to man the sanctity 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 pass 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 passed 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 passed 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 encompass
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 casement,
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 superstition 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 superstition 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 passed 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 passed, 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 passed, 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 passionate
love, it seemed as if the fictitious 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 sex knows, alone and unseen, she who had slept on the
breast of Zanoni found a shelter for their child. As when, in the
noble 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 passive
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 massacre!"

"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 passion, "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 passion 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 space; 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.



CHAPTER 7.V.

Van seco pur anco
Sdegno ed Amor, quasi due Veltri al fianco.
"Ger. Lib." cant. xx. cxvii.

(There went with him still Disdain and Love, like two greyhounds
side by side.)

Glyndon did not perceive, as he hurried from the house, two forms
crouching by the angle of the wall. He saw still the spectre gliding by
his side; but he beheld not the yet more poisonous eyes of human envy
and woman's jealousy that glared on his retreating footsteps.

Nicot advanced to the house; Fillide followed him in silence. The
painter, an old sans-culotte, knew well what language to assume to the
porter. He beckoned the latter from his lodge, "How is this, citizen?
Thou harbourest a 'suspect.'"

"Citizen, you terrify me!--if so, name him."

"It is not a man; a refugee, an Italian woman, lodges here."

"Yes, au troisieme,--the door to the left. But what of her?--she cannot
be dangerous, poor child!"

"Citizen, beware! Dost thou dare to pity her?"

"I? No, no, indeed. But--"

"Speak the truth! Who visits her?"

"No one but an Englishman."

"That is it,--an Englishman, a spy of Pitt and Coburg."

"Just Heaven! is it possible?"

"How, citizen! dost thou speak of Heaven? Thou must be an aristocrat!"

"No, indeed; it was but an old bad habit, and escaped me unawares."

"How often does the Englishman visit her?"

"Daily."

Fillide uttered an exclamation.

"She never stirs out," said the porter. "Her sole occupations are in
work, and care of her infant."

"Her infant!"

Fillide made a bound forward. Nicot in vain endeavoured to arrest her.
She sprang up the stairs; she paused not till she was before the door
indicated by the porter; it stood ajar, she entered, she stood at the
threshold, and beheld that face, still so lovely! The sight of so much
beauty left her hopeless. And the child, over whom the mother bent!--she
who had never been a mother!--she uttered no sound; the furies were at
work within her breast. Viola turned, and saw her, and, terrified by the
strange apparition, with features that expressed the deadliest hate and
scorn and vengeance, uttered a cry, and snatched the child to her bosom.
The Italian laughed aloud,--turned, descended, and, gaining the spot
where Nicot still conversed with the frightened porter drew him from the
house. When they were in the open street, she halted abruptly, and said,
"Avenge me, and name thy price!"

"My price, sweet one! is but permission to love thee. Thou wilt fly with
me to-morrow night; thou wilt possess thyself of the passports and the
plan."

"And they--"

"Shall, before then, find their asylum in the Conciergerie. The
guillotine shall requite thy wrongs."

"Do this, and I am satisfied," said Fillide, firmly.

And they spoke no more till they regained the house. But when she there,
looking up to the dull building, saw the windows of the room which the
belief of Glyndon's love had once made a paradise, the tiger relented at
the heart; something of the woman gushed back upon her nature, dark and
savage as it was. She pressed the arm on which she leaned convulsively,
and exclaimed, "No, no! not him! denounce her,--let her perish; but I
have slept on HIS bosom,--not HIM!"

"It shall be as thou wilt," said Nicot, with a devil's sneer; "but he
must be arrested for the moment. No harm shall happen to him, for no
accuser shall appear. But her,--thou wilt not relent for her?"

Fillide turned upon him her eyes, and their dark glance was sufficient
answer.



CHAPTER 7.VI.

In poppa quella
Che guidar gli dovea, fatal Donsella.
"Ger. Lib." cant. xv. 3.

(By the prow was the fatal lady ordained to be the guide.)

The Italian did not overrate that craft of simulation proverbial with
her country and her sex. Not a word, not a look, that day revealed to
Glyndon the deadly change that had converted devotion into hate. He
himself, indeed, absorbed in his own schemes, and in reflections on his
own strange destiny, was no nice observer. But her manner, milder
and more subdued than usual, produced a softening effect upon his
meditations towards the evening; and he then began to converse with her
on the certain hope of escape, and on the future that would await them
in less unhallowed lands.

"And thy fair friend," said Fillide, with an averted eye and a false
smile, "who was to be our companion?--thou hast resigned her, Nicot
tells me, in favour of one in whom he is interested. Is it so?"

"He told thee this!" returned Glyndon, evasively. "Well! does the change
content thee?"

"Traitor!" muttered Fillide; and she rose suddenly, approached him,
parted the long hair from his forehead caressingly, and pressed her lips
convulsively on his brow.

"This were too fair a head for the doomsman," said she, with a slight
laugh, and, turning away, appeared occupied in preparations for their
departure.

The next morning, when he rose, Glyndon did not see the Italian; she was
absent from the house when he left it. It was necessary that he should
once more visit C-- before his final Departure, not only to arrange for
Nicot's participation in the flight, but lest any suspicion should have
arisen to thwart or endanger the plan he had adopted. C--, though not
one of the immediate coterie of Robespierre, and indeed secretly hostile
to him, had possessed the art of keeping well with each faction as
it rose to power. Sprung from the dregs of the populace, he had,
nevertheless, the grace and vivacity so often found impartially amongst
every class in France. He had contrived to enrich himself--none knew
how--in the course of his rapid career. He became, indeed, ultimately
one of the wealthiest proprietors of Paris, and at that time kept a
splendid and hospitable mansion. He was one of those whom, from various
reasons, Robespierre deigned to favour; and he had often saved the
proscribed and suspected, by procuring them passports under disguised
names, and advising their method of escape. But C-- was a man who took
this trouble only for the rich. "The incorruptible Maximilien," who did
not want the tyrant's faculty of penetration, probably saw through all
his manoeuvres, and the avarice which he cloaked beneath his charity.
But it was noticeable that Robespierre frequently seemed to wink
at--nay, partially to encourage--such vice in men whom he meant
hereafter to destroy, as would tend to lower them in the public
estimation, and to contrast with his own austere and unassailable
integrity and PURISM. And, doubtless, he often grimly smiled in his
sleeve at the sumptuous mansion and the griping covetousness of the
worthy Citizen C--.

To this personage, then, Glyndon musingly bent his way. It was true, as
he had darkly said to Viola, that in proportion as he had resisted the
spectre, its terrors had lost their influence. The time had come at
last, when, seeing crime and vice in all their hideousness, and in so
vast a theatre, he had found that in vice and crime there are deadlier
horrors than in the eyes of a phantom-fear. His native nobleness began
to return to him. As he passed the streets, he revolved in his mind
projects of future repentance and reformation. He even meditated, as a
just return for Fillide's devotion, the sacrifice of all the reasonings
of his birth and education. He would repair whatever errors he had
committed against her, by the self-immolation of marriage with one
little congenial with himself. He who had once revolted from marriage
with the noble and gentle Viola!--he had learned in that world of wrong
to know that right is right, and that Heaven did not make the one sex to
be the victim of the other. The young visions of the Beautiful and the
Good rose once more before him; and along the dark ocean of his mind lay
the smile of reawakening virtue, as a path of moonlight. Never, perhaps,
had the condition of his soul been so elevated and unselfish.