CHAPTER 6.VIII.
Qui? Toi m'abandonner! Ou vas-tu? Non! demeure,
Demeure!
La Harpe, "Le Comte de Warwick," Act 3, sc. 5.
(Who? THOU abandon me!--where goest thou? No! stay, stay!)
Letter from Viola to Zanoni.
"It has come to this!--I am the first to part! I, the unfaithful
one, bid thee farewell forever. When thine eyes fall upon this
writing thou wilt know me as one of the dead. For thou that
wert, and still art my life,--I am lost to thee! O lover! O
husband! O still worshipped and adored! if thou hast ever loved
me, if thou canst still pity, seek not to discover the steps that
fly thee. If thy charms can detect and tract me, spare me, spare
our child! Zanoni, I will rear it to love thee, to call thee
father! Zanoni, its young lips shall pray for thee! Ah, spare
thy child, for infants are the saints of earth, and their
mediation may be heard on high! Shall I tell thee why I part?
No; thou, the wisely-terrible, canst divine what the hand
trembles to record; and while I shudder at thy power,--while it
is thy power I fly (our child upon my bosom),--it comforts me
still to think that thy power can read the heart! Thou knowest
that it is the faithful mother that writes to thee, it is not the
faithless wife! Is there sin in thy knowledge, Zanoni? Sin must
have sorrow: and it were sweet--oh, how sweet--to be thy
comforter. But the child, the infant, the soul that looks to
mine for its shield!--magician, I wrest from thee that soul!
Pardon, pardon, if my words wrong thee. See, I fall on my knees
to write the rest!
"Why did I never recoil before from thy mysterious lore; why did
the very strangeness of thine unearthly life only fascinate me
with a delightful fear? Because, if thou wert sorcerer or angel-
demon, there was no peril to other but myself: and none to me,
for my love was my heavenliest part; and my ignorance in all
things, except the art to love thee, repelled every thought that
was not bright and glorious as thine image to my eyes. But NOW
there is another! Look! why does it watch me thus,--why that
never-sleeping, earnest, rebuking gaze? Have thy spells
encompassed it already? Hast thou marked it, cruel one, for the
terrors of thy unutterable art? Do not madden me,--do not madden
me!--unbind the spell!
"Hark! the oars without! They come,--they come, to bear me from
thee! I look round, and methinks that I see thee everywhere.
Thou speakest to me from every shadow, from every star. There,
by the casement, thy lips last pressed mine; there, there by that
threshold didst thou turn again, and thy smile seemed so
trustingly to confide in me! Zanoni--husband!--I will stay! I
cannot part from thee! No, no! I will go to the room where thy
dear voice, with its gentle music, assuaged the pangs of
travail!--where, heard through the thrilling darkness, it first
whispered to my ear, 'Viola, thou art a mother!' A mother!--yes,
I rise from my knees,--I AM a mother! They come! I am firm;
farewell!"
Yes; thus suddenly, thus cruelly, whether in the delirium of
blind and unreasoning superstition, or in the resolve of that
conviction which springs from duty, the being for whom he had
resigned so much of empire and of glory forsook Zanoni. This
desertion, never foreseen, never anticipated, was yet but the
constant fate that attends those who would place Mind BEYOND the
earth, and yet treasure the Heart WITHIN it. Ignorance
everlastingly shall recoil from knowledge. But never yet, from
nobler and purer motives of self-sacrifice, did human love link
itself to another, than did the forsaking wife now abandon the
absent. For rightly had she said that it was not the faithless
wife, it WAS the faithful mother that fled from all in which her
earthly happiness was centred.
As long as the passion and fervour that impelled the act animated
her with false fever, she clasped her infant to her breast, and
was consoled,--resigned. But what bitter doubt of her own
conduct, what icy pang of remorse shot through her heart, when,
as they rested for a few hours on the road to Leghorn, she heard
the woman who accompanied herself and Glyndon pray for safety to
reach her husband's side, and strength to share the perils that
would meet her there! Terrible contrast to her own desertion!
She shrunk into the darkness of her own heart,--and then no voice
from within consoled her.
