Zanoni — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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that the diseased mind requires in the confidant whom it selects as its physician. And how irresistible is that desire to communicate! How often the lonely man thought to himself, “My heart would be lightened of its misery, if once confessed!” He felt, too, that in the very youth, the inexperience, the poetical temperament of Adela, he could find one who would comprehend and bear with him better than any sterner and more practical nature. Mervale would have looked on his revelations as the ravings of madness, and most men, at best, as the sicklied chimeras, the optical delusions, of disease. Thus gradually preparing himself for that relief for which he yearned, the moment for his disclosure arrived thus: — One evening, as they sat alone together, Adela, who inherited some portion of her brother’s talent in art, was employed in drawing, and Glyndon, rousing himself from meditations less gloomy than usual, rose, and affectionately passing his arm round her waist, looked over her as she sat. An exclamation of dismay broke from his lips, — he snatched the drawing from her hand: “ What are you about? — what portrait is this? ” “ Dear Clarence, do you not remember the original ? —it is a copy from that portrait of our wise ancestor which our poor mother used to say so strongly resembled you. I thought it would please you if I copied it from memory.” “ Accursed was the likeness!” said Glyndon, gloomily. “ Guess you not the reason why I have shunned to return to the home of my fathers! — because I dreaded to meet that portrait! — because — because — but pardon me; I alarm you! ” “Ah, no, — no, Clarence, you never alarm me when you speak: only when you are silent! Oh, if you

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thought me worthy of your trust; oh, if you had given me the right to reason with you in the sorrows that I yearn to share! ” Glyndon made no answer, but paced the room for some moments with disordered strides. He stopped at last, and gazed at her earnestly. “ Yes, you, too, are his descendant; you know that such men have lived and suffered; you will not mock me, — you will not disbelieve! Listen! hark! — what sound is that?” “ But the wind on the house-top, Clarence, — but the wind.” “Give me your hand; let me feel its living clasp; and when I have told you, never revert to the tale again. Conceal it from all: swear that it shall die with us, — the last of our predestined race! ” “Never will I betray your trust; I swear it, — never! ” said Adela, firmly; and she drew closer to his side. Then Glyndon commenced his story. That which, perhaps, in writing, and to minds prepared to question and disbelieve, may seem cold and terrorless, became far different when told by those blanched lips, with all that truth of suffering which convinces and appalls. Much, indeed, he concealed, much he involuntarily softened; but he revealed enough to make his tale intelligible and distinct to his pale and trembling listener. “ At daybreak,” he said, “I left that unhallowed and abhorred abode. I had one hope still, —I would seek Mejnour through the world. I would force him to lay at rest the fiend that haunted my soul. With this intent I journeyed from city to city. I instituted the most vigilant researches through the police of Italy. I even employed the services of the Inquisition at Rome, which had lately asserted its ancient powers in the trial vf the less dangerous Cagliostro. All was in vain; nota

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trace of him could be discovered. I was not alone, Adela.

Here Glyndon paused a moment, as if embarrassed ; for in his recital, I need scarcely say that he had only indistinctly alluded to Fillide, whom the reader may surmise to be his companion. ‘I was not alone, but the associate of my wanderings was not one in whom my soul could confide, — faithful and affectionate, but without education, without faculties to comprehend me, with natural instincts rather than cultivated reason ; one in whom the heart might lean in its careless hours, but with whom the mind could have no commune, in whom the bewildered spirit could seek no guide.

Yet in the society of this person the demon troubled me not. Let me explain yet more fully the dread conditions of its presence. In coarse excitement, in commonplace life, in the wild riot, in the fierce excess, in the torpid lethargy of that animal existence which we share with the brutes, its eyes were invisible, its whisper was unheard.

But whenever the soul would aspire, whenever the imagination kindled to the loftier ends, whenever the consciousness of our proper destiny struggled against the unworthy life I pursued, then, Adela — then, it cowered by my side in the light of noon, or sat by my bed, —a Darkness visible through the Dark.

If, in the galleries of Divine Art, the dreams of my youth woke the early emulation, — if I turned to the thoughts of sages; if the example of the great, if the converse of the wise, aroused the silenced intellect, the demon was with me as by a spell. At last, one evening, at Genoa, to which city I had travelled in pursuit of the mystic, suddenly, and when least expected, he appeared before me. It was the time of the Carnival.

It was in one of those half-frantic scenes of noise and revel, call it not gayety, which establish a heathen saturnalia in