“Yes, Fillide, more fair than ever. But what meanest thou?”
“There is a painter here—a great man, one of their great men at Paris, I know not what they call them; but he rules over all here—life and death; and he has paid me largely but to sit for my portrait. It is for a picture to be given to the Nation, for he paints only for glory. Think of thy Fillide’s renown!” And the girl’s wild eyes sparkled; her vanity was roused. “And he would have married me if I would!—divorced his wife to marry me! But I waited for thee, ungrateful!”
A knock at the door was heard—a man entered.
“Nicot!”
“Ah, Glyndon!—hum!—welcome! What! thou art twice my rival! But Jean Nicot bears no malice. Virtue is my dream—my country, my mistress. Serve my country, citizen; and I forgive thee the preference of beauty. Ca ira! ca ira!”
But as the painter spoke, it hymned, it rolled through the streets—the fiery song of the Marseillaise! There was a crowd, a multitude, a people up, abroad, with colours and arms, enthusiasm and song—with song, with enthusiasm, with colours and arms! And who could guess that that martial movement was one, not of war, but massacre—Frenchmen against Frenchmen? For there are two parties in Marseilles—and ample work for Jourdan Coupe-tete! But this, the Englishman, just arrived, a stranger to all factions, did not as yet comprehend. He comprehended nothing but the song, the enthusiasm, the arms, and the colours that lifted to the sun the glorious lie, “Le peuple Francais, debout contre les tyrans!” (Up, Frenchmen, against tyrants!)
The dark brow of the wretched wanderer grew animated; he gazed from the window on the throng that marched below, beneath their waving Oriflamme. They shouted as they beheld the patriot Nicot, the friend of Liberty and relentless Hebert, by the stranger’s side, at the casement.
“Ay, shout again!” cried the painter—“shout for the brave Englishman who abjures his Pitts and his Coburgs to be a citizen of Liberty and France!”
A thousand voices rent the air, and the hymn of the Marseillaise rose in majesty again.
“Well, and if it be among these high hopes and this brave people that the phantom is to vanish, and the cure to come!” muttered Glyndon; and he thought he felt again the elixir sparkling through his veins.
“Thou shalt be one of the Convention with Paine and Clootz—I will manage it all for thee!” cried Nicot, slapping him on the shoulder: “and Paris—”
“Ah, if I could but see Paris!” cried Fillide, in her joyous voice. Joyous! the whole time, the town, the air—save where, unheard, rose the cry of agony and the yell of murder—were joy! Sleep unhaunting in thy grave, cold Adela. Joy, joy! In the Jubilee of Humanity all private griefs should cease! Behold, wild mariner, the vast whirlpool draws thee to its stormy bosom! There the individual is not. All things are of the whole! Open thy gates, fair Paris, for the stranger-citizen! Receive in your ranks, O meek Republicans, the new champion of liberty, of reason, of mankind! “Mejnour is right; it was in virtue, in valour, in glorious struggle for the human race, that the spectre was to shrink to her kindred darkness.”
And Nicot’s shrill voice praised him; and lean Robespierre—“Flambeau, colonne, pierre angulaire de l’edifice de la Republique!” (“The light, column, and keystone of the Republic.”—“Lettre du Citoyen P—; Papiers inedits trouves chez Robespierre,” tom 11, page 127.)—smiled ominously on him from his bloodshot eyes; and Fillide clasped him with passionate arms to her tender breast. And at his up-rising and down-sitting, at board and in bed, though he saw it not, the Nameless One guided him with the demon eyes to the sea whose waves were gore.
BOOK VI. — SUPERSTITION DESERTING FAITH.
Why do I yield to that suggestion, Whose horrid image doth unfix
my hair.—Shakespeare
CHAPTER 6.I.
Therefore the Genii were painted with a platter full of garlands
and flowers in one hand, and a whip in the other.—Alexander
Ross, “Mystag. Poet.”
According to the order of the events related in this narrative, the departure of Zanoni and Viola from the Greek isle, in which two happy years appear to have been passed, must have been somewhat later in date than the arrival of Glyndon at Marseilles. It must have been in the course of the year 1791 when Viola fled from Naples with her mysterious lover, and when Glyndon sought Mejnour in the fatal castle. It is now towards the close of 1793, when our story again returns to Zanoni. The stars of winter shone down on the lagunes of Venice. The hum of the Rialto was hushed—the last loiterers had deserted the Place of St. Mark’s, and only at distant intervals might be heard the oars of the rapid gondolas, bearing reveller or lover to his home. But lights still flitted to and fro across the windows of one of the Palladian palaces, whose shadow slept in the great canal; and within the palace watched the twin Eumenides that never sleep for Man—Fear and Pain.
“I will make thee the richest man in all Venice, if thou savest her.”
“Signor,” said the leech; “your gold cannot control death, and the will of Heaven, signor, unless within the next hour there is some blessed change, prepare your courage.”
Ho—ho, Zanoni! man of mystery and might, who hast walked amidst the passions of the world, with no changes on thy brow, art thou tossed at last upon the billows of tempestuous fear? Does thy spirit reel to and fro?—knowest thou at last the strength and the majesty of Death?
He fled, trembling, from the pale-faced man of art—fled through stately hall and long-drawn corridor, and gained a remote chamber in the palace, which other step than his was not permitted to profane. Out with thy herbs and vessels. Break from the enchanted elements, O silvery-azure flame! Why comes he not—the Son of the Starbeam! Why is Adon-Ai deaf to thy solemn call? It comes not—the luminous and delightsome Presence! Cabalist! are thy charms in vain? Has thy throne vanished from the realms of space? Thou standest pale and trembling. Pale trembler! not thus didst thou look when the things of glory gathered at thy spell. Never to the pale trembler bow the things of glory: the soul, and not the herbs, nor the silvery-azure flame, nor the spells of the Cabala, commands the children of the air; and THY soul, by Love and Death, is made sceptreless and discrowned!
At length the flame quivers—the air grows cold as the wind in charnels. A thing not of earth is present—a mistlike, formless thing. It cowers in the distance—a silent Horror! it rises; it creeps; it nears thee—dark in its mantle of dusky haze; and under its veil it looks on thee with its livid, malignant eyes—the thing of malignant eyes!
“Ha, young Chaldean! young in thy countless ages—young as when, cold to pleasure and to beauty, thou stoodest on the old Firetower, and heardest the starry silence whisper to thee the last mystery that baffles Death—fearest thou Death at length? Is thy knowledge but a circle that brings thee back whence thy wanderings began! Generations on generations have withered since we two met! Lo! thou beholdest me now!”
“But I behold thee without fear! Though beneath thine eyes thousands have perished; though, where they burn, spring up the foul poisons of the human heart, and to those whom thou canst subject to thy will, thy presence glares in the dreams of the raving maniac, or blackens the dungeon of despairing crime, thou art not my vanquisher, but my slave!”
“And as a slave will I serve thee! Command thy slave, O beautiful Chaldean! Hark, the wail of women!—hark, the sharp shriek of thy beloved one! Death is in thy palace! Adon-Ai comes not to thy call. Only where no cloud of the passion and the flesh veils the eye of the Serene Intelligence can the Sons of the Starbeam