Zanoni — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

wishes, We shall have new laws of divorce, Do you imagine that an Italian girl — and in no country in the world are maidens, it seems, more chaste (though wives may console themselves with virtues more philosophical) — would refuse the hand of an artist for the settlements of a prince? No; I think better of the Pisani than you do. I shall hasten to introduce myself to her.” “T wish you all success, Monsieur Nicot,” said Mervale, rising, and shaking him heartily by the hand. Glyndon cast at them both a disdainful glance. “Perhaps, Monsieur Nicot,” said he, at length, constraining his lips intoa bitter smile, — “ perhaps you may have rivals.” “So much the better,” replied Monsieur Nicot, carelessly, kicking his heels together, and appearing absorbed in admiration at the size of his large feet. “T myself admire Viola Pisani.” “Every painter must! ” “T may offer her marriage as well as yourself.” “That would be folly in you, though wisdom in me. You would not know how to draw profit from the speculation! Cher confrére, you have prejudices.” “You do not dare to say you would make profit from your own wife?” “The virtuous Cato lent his wife to a friend. I love virtue, and I cannot do better than imitate Cato. But to be serious, —I do not fear you as arival. You are good-looking, and I am ugly. But you are irresolute, and I decisive. While you are uttering fine phrases, I shall say, simply, ‘I have a don état. Will you marry me?’ So do your worst, cher confrére. Au revoir, behind the scenes! ” So saying, Nicot rose, stretched his long arms and short legs, yawned till he showed all his ragged teeth

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from ear to ear, pressed down his cap on his shaggy head with an air of defiance, and casting over his left shoulder a glance of triumph and malice at the indignant Glyndon, sauntered out of the room. Mervale burst into a violent fit of laughter. “See how your Viola is estimated by your friend. A fine victory, to carry her off from the ugliest dog between Lapland and the Calmucks.” Glyndon was yet too indignant to answer, when a new visitor arrived. It was Zanoni himself. Mervale, on whom the appearance and aspect of this personage imposed a kind of reluctant deference, which he was unwilling to acknowledge, and still more to betray, nodded to Glyndon, and saying, simply, “ More when I see you again, ” left the painter and his unexpected visitor. “T see,” said Zanoni, lifting the cloth from the canvas, “that you have not slighted the advice I gave you. Courage, young artist; this is an escape from the schools: this is full of the bold self-confidence of real genius. You had no Nicot— no Mervale —at your elbow when this image of true beauty was conceived! ” Charmed back to his are by this unlooked-for praise, Glyndon replied modestly, “I thought well of my design till this morning; and then I was disenchanted of my happy persuasion.” “Say, rather, that, unaccustomed to continuous labor, you were fatigued with your employment.” “That is true. Shall I confess it? I began to miss the world without. It seemed to me as if, while I layished my heart and my youth upon visions of beauty, I was losing the beautiful realities of actual life. And I envied the merry fisherman, singing as he passed below my casement, and the lover conversing with his mistress.”

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“ And,” said Zanoni, with an encouraging smile, “do you blame yourself for the natural and necessary return to earth, in which even the most habitual visitor of the Heavens of Invention seeks his relaxation and repose ? Man’s genius is a bird that cannot be always on the wing; when the craving for the actual world is felt, it is a hunger that must be appeased. They who command best the ideal, enjoy ever most the real. See the true artist, when abroad in men’s thoroughfares, ever observant, ever diving into the heart, ever alive to the least as to the greatest of the complicated truths of existence ; descending to what pedants would call the trivial and the frivolous. From every mesh in the social web, he can disentangle a grace. And for him each airy gossamer floats in the gold of the sunlight. Know you not that around the animalcule that sports in the water there shines a halo, as around the star! that revolves in bright pastime through the space? True are finds beauty everywhere. In the street, in the market-place, in the hovel, it gathers food for the hive of its thoughts. In the mire of politics, Dante and Milton selected pearls for the wreath of song. Who ever told you that Raphael did not enjoy the life without, carrying everywhere with him the one inward idea of beauty which attracted and imbedded in its own amber every straw that the feet of the dull man trampled into mud? As some lord of the forest wanders abroad for its prey, and scents and follows it over plain and hill, through brake and jungle, but, seizing it at last, bears the quarry to its unwitnessed cave, —so Genius searches through wood and waste, untiringly and eagerly, every sense awake, every