Zanoni — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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the midst of a Christian festival. Wearied with the dance, I had entered a room in which several revellers were seated, drinking, singing, shouting; and in their fantastic dresses and hideous masks, their orgy seemed scarcely human. I placed myself amongst them, and in that fearful excitement of the spirits which the happy never know, I was soon the most riotous of all. The conversation fell on the Revolution of France, which had always possessed for me an absorbing fascination. The masks spoke of the millennium it was to bring on earth, not as philosophers rejoicing in the advent of light, but as ruffians exulting in the annihilation of law. I know not why it was, but their licentious language infected myself; and, always desirous to be foremost in every circle, I soon exceeded even these rioters in declamations on the nature of the liberty which was about to embrace all the families of the globe, —a liberty that should pervade not only public legislation, but domestic life ; an emancipation from every fetter that men had forged for themselves. In the midst of this tirade one of the masks whispered me, — * «Take care. One listens to you who seems to be a spy!’ “ My eyes followed those of the mask, and I observed a man who took no part in the conversation, but whose gaze was bent upon me. He was disguised like the rest, yet I found by a general whisper that none had observed him enter. His silence, his attention, had alarmed the fears of the other revellers, — they only excited me the more. Rapt in my subject, I pursued it, insensible to the signs of those about me; and, addressing myself only to the silent mask who sat alone, apart from the group, I did not even cbserve that, one by one, the revellers slunk off, and that I and the silent

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listener were left alone, until, pausing from my heated and impetuous declamations, I said, — “¢ And you, signor,— what is your view of this mighty era? Opinion without persecution; brotherhood without jealousy; love without bondage — ’ “ ¢ And life without God,’ added the mask as I hesitated for new images. “The sound of that well-known voice changed the current of my thought. I sprang forward, and cried, — “¢ Tmposter or Fiend, we meet at last!’ “The figure rose as I advanced, and, unmasking, showed the features of Mejnour. His fixed eye, his majestic aspect, awed and repelled me. I stood rooted to the ground. “* Yes,’ he said solemnly, ‘ we meet, and it is this meeting that I have sought. How hast thou followed my admonitions! Are these the scenes in which the Aspirant for the Serene Science thinks to escape the Ghastly Enemy? Do the thoughts thou hast uttered — thoughts that would strike all order from the universe — express the hopes of the sage who would rise to the Harmony of the Eternal Spheres?” “Tt is thy fault, —it is thine!’ I exclaimed. ‘ Exorcise the phantom! ‘Take the haunting terror from my soul!’ “Mejnour looked at me a moment with a cold and cynical disdain which provoked at once my fear and rage, and replied, — “© No; fool of thine own senses! No; thou must have full and entire experience of the illusions to which the Knowledge that is without Faith climbs its Titan way. ‘Thou pantest for this Millennium, — thou shalt behold it! Thou shalt be one of the agents of the era of Light and Reason. I see, while I speak, the Phan-

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tom thou fliest, by thy side; it marshals thy path; it has power over thee as yet, —a power that defies my own. In the last days of that Revolution which thou hailest, amidst the wrecks of the Order thou cursest as Oppression, seek the fulfilment of thy destiny, and await thy cure.’ “At that instant a troop of masks, clamorous, intoxicated, reeling, and rushing, as they reeled, poured into the room, and separated me from the mystic.

I broke through them, and sought him everywhere, but in vain. All my researches the next day were equally fruitless, Weeks were consumed in the same pursuit, — not a trace of Mejnour could be discovered.

Wearied with false pleasures, roused by reproaches I had deserved, recoiling from Mejnour’s prophecy of the scene in which I was to seek deliverance, it occurred to me, at last, that in the sober air of my native country, and amidst its orderly and vigorous pursuits, I might work out my own emancipation from the spectre. I left all whom I had before courted and clung to, —I came hither.

Amidst mercenary schemes and selfish speculations, I found the same relief as in debauch and excess. The Phantom was invisible; but these pursuits soon became to me distasteful as the rest. Ever and ever I felt that I was born for something nobler than the greed of gain, — that life may. be made equally worthless, and the soul equally degraded by the icy lust of avarice, as by the noisier passions. A higher ambition never ceased to torment me.

But, but,” continued Glyndon, with a whitening lip and a visible shudder, “at every attempt to rise into loftier existence, came that hideous form. It gloomed beside me at the easel. Before the volumes of poet and sage it stood with its burning eyes in the stillness of night, and I thought I heard its horrible