Zanoni — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

in its gay delight on the terror and agony of the last! The child, where it lay at the feet of Viola, stretched out its dimpled hands as if to clasp the dancing motes that revelled in the beam. The mother turned her eyes from the glory; it saddened her yet more. She turned and sighed. Is this the same Viola who bloomed fairer than their own Idalia under the skies of Greece? How changed! How pale and worn! She sat listlessly, her arms dropping on her knee; the smile that was habitual to her lips was gone. A heavy, dull despondency, as if the life of life were no more, seemed to weigh down her youth, and make it weary of that happy sun! In truth, her existence had languished away since it had wandered, as some melancholy stream, from the source that fed it. The sudden enthusiasm of fear or superstition that had almost, as if still in the unconscious movements of a dream, led her to fly from Zanoni, had ceased from the day which dawned upon her ina foreign land. Then — there — she felt that in the smile she had evermore abandoned lived her life. She did not repent, — she would not have recalled the impulse that winged her flight. Though the enthusiasm was gone, the superstition yet remained; she still believed she had saved her child from that dark and guilty sorcery, concerning which the traditions of all lands are prodigal, but in none do they find such credulity, or excite such dread, as in the South of Italy. This impression was confirmed by the mysterious conversations of Glyndon, and by her own perception of the fearful change that had passed over one who represented himself as the victim of the enchanters. She did not, therefore, repent; but her very volition seemed gone. On their arrival at Paris, Viola saw her companion ~

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the faithful wife— no more. Ere three weeks were passed, husband and wife had ceased to live. And now, for the first time, the drudgeries of this hard earth claimed the beautiful Neapolitan. In that profession, giving voice and shape to poetry and song, in which her first years were passed, there is, while it lasts, an excitement in the are that lifts it from the labor of a calling. Hovering between two lives, the Real and Ideal, dwells the life of music and the stage. But that life was lost evermore to the idol of the eyes and ears of Naples. Lifted to the higher realm of passionate love, it seemed as if the fictitious genius which represents the thoughts of others was merged in the genius that grows all thought itself. It had been the worst infidelity to the Lost, to have descended again to live on the applause of others. And so—for she would not accept alms from Glyndon — so, by the commonest arts, the humblest industry which the sex knows, alone and unseen, she who had slept on the breast of Zanoni found a shelter for their child. As when, in the noble verse prefixed to this chapter, Armida herself has destroyed her enchanted palace, — not a vestige of that bower, raised of old by Poetry and Love, remained to say, “ It had been! ” And the child avenged the father; it bloomed, it thrived, — it waxed strong in the light of life. But still it seemed haunted and preserved by some other being than her own. In its sleep there was that slumber, so deep and rigid, which a thunderbolt could not have disturbed; and in such sleep often it moved its arms, as to embrace the air: often its lips stirred with murmured sounds of indistinct affection, — not for her ; and all the while upon its cheeks a hue of such celestial bloom, upon its lips a smile of such mysterious joy!

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Then, when it waked, its eyes did not turn first to her, — wistful, earnest, wandering, they roved around, to fix on her pale face, at last, in mute sorrow and reproach. Never had Viola felt before how mighty was her love for Zanoni; how thought, feeling, heart, soul, life, — all lay crushed and dormant in the icy absence to which she had doomed herself! She heard not the roar without, she felt not one amidst those stormy millions, — worlds of excitement laboring through every hour. Only when Glyndon, haggard, wan, and spectre-like, glided in, day after day, to visit her, did the fair daughter of the careless South know how heavy and universal was the Death-Air that girt her round. Sublime in her passive unconsciousness, — her mechanic life, — she sat, and feared not, in the den of the Beasts of Prey. The door of the room opened abruptly, and Glyndon entered. His manner was more agitated than usual. “Ts it you, Clarence?” she said in her soft, languid tones. “ You are before the hour I expected you.” “Who can count on his hours at Paris?” returned Glyndon, with a frightful smile. “Is it not enough that I am here! Your apathy in the midst of these sorrows appalls me. You say calmly, ‘ Farewell; ’ calmly you bid me, ‘ Welcome! ’ — as if in every corner there was not a spy, and as if with every day there was not a massacre! ” “Pardon me! But in these walls lies my world. I can hardly credit all the tales you tell me. Everything here, save that, ” and she pointed to the infant, “seems already so lifeless, that in the tomb itself one could scarcely less heed the crimes that are done without.”

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