CHAPTER 4.III.
Man is the eye of things.--Euryph, "de Vit. Hum."
...There is, therefore, a certain ecstatical or transporting
power, which, if at any time it shall be excited or stirred up by
an ardent desire and most strong imagination, is able to conduct
the spirit of the more outward even to some absent and
far-distant object.--Von Helmont.
The rooms that Mejnour occupied consisted of two chambers
communicating with each other, and a third in which he slept.
All these rooms were placed in the huge square tower that beetled
over the dark and bush-grown precipice. The first chamber which
Glyndon entered was empty. With a noiseless step he passed on,
and opened the door that admitted into the inner one. He drew
back at the threshold, overpowered by a strong fragrance which
filled the chamber: a kind of mist thickened the air rather than
obscured it, for this vapour was not dark, but resembled a snow-
cloud moving slowly, and in heavy undulations, wave upon wave
regularly over the space. A mortal cold struck to the
Englishman's heart, and his blood froze. He stood rooted to the
spot; and as his eyes strained involuntarily through the vapour,
he fancied (for he could not be sure that it was not the trick of
his imagination) that he saw dim, spectre-like, but gigantic
forms floating through the mist; or was it not rather the mist
itself that formed its vapours fantastically into those moving,
impalpable, and bodiless apparitions? A great painter of
antiquity is said, in a picture of Hades, to have represented the
monsters that glide through the ghostly River of the Dead, so
artfully, that the eye perceived at once that the river itself
was but a spectre, and the bloodless things that tenanted it had
no life, their forms blending with the dead waters till, as the
eye continued to gaze, it ceased to discern them from the
preternatural element they were supposed to inhabit. Such were
the moving outlines that coiled and floated through the mist; but
before Glyndon had even drawn breath in this atmosphere--for his
life itself seemed arrested or changed into a kind of horrid
trance--he felt his hand seized, and he was led from that room
into the outer one. He heard the door close,--his blood rushed
again through his veins, and he saw Mejnour by his side. Strong
convulsions then suddenly seized his whole frame,--he fell to the
ground insensible. When he recovered, he found himself in the
open air in a rude balcony of stone that jutted from the chamber,
the stars shining serenely over the dark abyss below, and resting
calmly upon the face of the mystic, who stood beside him with
folded arms.
"Young man," said Mejnour, "judge by what you have just felt, how
dangerous it is to seek knowledge until prepared to receive it.
Another moment in the air of that chamber and you had been a
corpse."
"Then of what nature was the knowledge that you, once mortal like
myself, could safely have sought in that icy atmosphere, which it
was death for me to breathe? Mejnour," continued Glyndon, and
his wild desire, sharpened by the very danger he had passed, once
more animated and nerved him, "I am prepared at least for the
first steps. I come to you as of old the pupil to the
Hierophant, and demand the initiation."
Mejnour passed his hand over the young man's heart,--it beat
loud, regularly, and boldly. He looked at him with something
almost like admiration in his passionless and frigid features,
and muttered, half to himself, "Surely, in so much courage the
true disciple is found at last." Then, speaking aloud, he added,
"Be it so; man's first initiation is in TRANCE. In dreams
commences all human knowledge; in dreams hovers over measureless
space the first faint bridge between spirit and spirit,--this
world and the worlds beyond! Look steadfastly on yonder star!"
Glyndon obeyed, and Mejnour retired into the chamber, from which
there then slowly emerged a vapour, somewhat paler and of fainter
odour than that which had nearly produced so fatal an effect on
his frame. This, on the contrary, as it coiled around him, and
then melted in thin spires into the air, breathed a refreshing
and healthful fragrance. He still kept his eyes on the star, and
the star seemed gradually to fix and command his gaze. A sort of
languor next seized his frame, but without, as he thought,
communicating itself to the mind; and as this crept over him, he
felt his temples sprinkled with some volatile and fiery essence.
At the same moment a slight tremor shook his limbs and thrilled
through his veins. The languor increased, still he kept his gaze
upon the star, and now its luminous circumference seemed to
expand and dilate. It became gradually softer and clearer in its
light; spreading wider and broader, it diffused all space,--all
space seemed swallowed up in it. And at last, in the midst of a
silver shining atmosphere, he felt as if something burst within
his brain,--as if a strong chain were broken; and at that moment
a sense of heavenly liberty, of unutterable delight, of freedom
from the body, of birdlike lightness, seemed to float him into
the space itself. "Whom, now upon earth, dost thou wish to see?"
whispered the voice of Mejnour. "Viola and Zanoni!" answered
Glyndon, in his heart; but he felt that his lips moved not.
Suddenly at that thought,--through this space, in which nothing
save one mellow translucent light had been discernible,--a swift
succession of shadowy landscapes seemed to roll: trees,
mountains, cities, seas, glided along like the changes of a
phantasmagoria; and at last, settled and stationary, he saw a
cave by the gradual marge of an ocean shore,--myrtles and
orange-trees clothing the gentle banks. On a height, at a
distance, gleamed the white but shattered relics of some ruined
heathen edifice; and the moon, in calm splendour, shining over
all, literally bathed with its light two forms without the cave,
at whose feet the blue waters crept, and he thought that he even
heard them murmur. He recognised both the figures. Zanoni was
seated on a fragment of stone; Viola, half-reclining by his side,
was looking into his face, which was bent down to her, and in her
countenance was the expression of that perfect happiness which
belongs to perfect love. "Wouldst thou hear them speak?"
whispered Mejnour; and again, without sound, Glyndon inly
answered, "Yes!" Their voices then came to his ear, but in tones
that seemed to him strange; so subdued were they, and sounding,
as it were, so far off, that they were as voices heard in the
visions of some holier men from a distant sphere.
"And how is it," said Viola, "that thou canst find pleasure in
listening to the ignorant?"
"Because the heart is never ignorant; because the mysteries of
the feelings are as full of wonder as those of the intellect. If
at times thou canst not comprehend the language of my thoughts,
at times also I hear sweet enigmas in that of thy emotions."
"Ah, say not so!" said Viola, winding her arm tenderly round his
neck, and under that heavenly light her face seemed lovelier for
its blushes. "For the enigmas are but love's common language,
and love should solve them. Till I knew thee,--till I lived with
thee; till I learned to watch for thy footstep when absent: yet
even in absence to see thee everywhere!--I dreamed not how strong
and all-pervading is the connection between nature and the human
soul!...
"And yet," she continued, "I am now assured of what I at first
believed,--that the feelings which attracted me towards thee at
first were not those of love. I know THAT, by comparing the
present with the past,--it was a sentiment then wholly of the
mind or the spirit! I could not hear thee now say, 'Viola, be
happy with another!'"
"And I could not now tell thee so! Ah, Viola, never be weary of
assuring me that thou art happy!"
"Happy while thou art so. Yet at times, Zanoni, thou art so
sad!"
"Because human life is so short; because we must part at last;
because yon moon shines on when the nightingale sings to it no
more! A little while, and thine eyes will grow dim, and thy
beauty haggard, and these locks that I toy with now will be grey
and loveless."
"And thou, cruel one!" said Viola, touchingly, "I shall never see
the signs of age in thee! But shall we not grow old together,
and our eyes be accustomed to a change which the heart shall not
share!"
Zanoni sighed. He turned away, and seemed to commune with
himself.
Glyndon's attention grew yet more earnest.
"But were it so," muttered Zanoni; and then looking steadfastly
at Viola, he said, with a half-smile, "Hast thou no curiosity to
learn more of the lover thou once couldst believe the agent of
the Evil One?"
"None; all that one wishes to know of the beloved one, I know--
THAT THOU LOVEST ME!"
"I have told thee that my life is apart from others. Wouldst
thou not seek to share it?"
"I share it now!"
"But were it possible to be thus young and fair forever, till the
world blazes round us as one funeral pyre!"
"We shall be so, when we leave the world!"
Zanoni was mute for some moments, and at length he said,--
"Canst thou recall those brilliant and aerial dreams which once
visited thee, when thou didst fancy that thou wert preordained to
some fate aloof and afar from the common children of the earth?"
"Zanoni, the fate is found."
"And hast thou no terror of the future?"
"The future! I forget it! Time past and present and to come
reposes in thy smile. Ah, Zanoni, play not with the foolish
credulities of my youth! I have been better and humbler since
thy presence has dispelled the mist of the air. The future!--
well, when I have cause to dread it, I will look up to heaven,
and remember who guides our fate!"
As she lifted her eyes above, a dark cloud swept suddenly over
the scene. It wrapped the orange-trees, the azure ocean, the
dense sands; but still the last images that it veiled from the
charmed eyes of Glyndon were the forms of Viola and Zanoni. The
face of the one rapt, serene, and radiant; the face of the other,
dark, thoughtful, and locked in more than its usual rigidness of
melancholy beauty and profound repose.
"Rouse thyself," said Mejnour; "thy ordeal has commenced! There
are pretenders to the solemn science who could have shown thee
the absent, and prated to thee, in their charlatanic jargon, of
the secret electricities and the magnetic fluid of whose true
properties they know but the germs and elements. I will lend
thee the books of those glorious dupes, and thou wilt find, in
the dark ages, how many erring steps have stumbled upon the
threshold of the mighty learning, and fancied they had pierced
the temple. Hermes and Albert and Paracelsus, I knew ye all;
but, noble as ye were, ye were fated to be deceived. Ye had not
souls of faith, and daring fitted for the destinies at which ye
aimed! Yet Paracelsus--modest Paracelsus--had an arrogance that
soared higher than all our knowledge. Ho, ho!--he thought he
could make a race of men from chemistry; he arrogated to himself
the Divine gift,--the breath of life. (Paracelsus, "De Nat.
Rer.," lib. i.)
He would have made men, and, after all, confessed that they could
be but pygmies! My art is to make men above mankind. But you
are impatient of my digressions. Forgive me. All these men
(they were great dreamers, as you desire to be) were intimate
friends of mine. But they are dead and rotten. They talked of
spirits,--but they dreaded to be in other company than that of
men. Like orators whom I have heard, when I stood by the Pnyx of
Athens, blazing with words like comets in the assembly, and
extinguishing their ardour like holiday rockets when they were in
the field. Ho, ho! Demosthenes, my hero-coward, how nimble were
thy heels at Chaeronea! And thou art impatient still! Boy, I
could tell thee such truths of the past as would make thee the
luminary of schools. But thou lustest only for the shadows of
the future. Thou shalt have thy wish. But the mind must be
first exercised and trained. Go to thy room, and sleep; fast
austerely, read no books; meditate, imagine, dream, bewilder
thyself if thou wilt. Thought shapes out its own chaos at last.
Before midnight, seek me again!"
