objects all your desires?
The heart must rest, that the mind may be active. At present you wander
from aim to aim. As the ballast to the ship, so to the spirit are faith
and love. With your whole heart, affections, humanity, centred in one
object, your mind and aspirations will become equally steadfast and in
earnest. Viola is a child as yet; you do not perceive the high nature
the trials of life will develop. Pardon me, if I say that her soul,
purer and loftier than your own, will bear it upward, as a secret hymn
carries aloft the spirits of the world. Your nature wants the harmony,
the music which, as the Pythagoreans wisely taught, at once elevates and
soothes. I offer you that music in her love."

"But am I sure that she does love me?"

"Artist, no; she loves you not at present; her affections are full of
another. But if I could transfer to you, as the loadstone transfers its
attraction to the magnet, the love that she has now for me,--if I could
cause her to see in you the ideal of her dreams--"

"Is such a gift in the power of man?"

"I offer it to you, if your love be lawful, if your faith in virtue and
yourself be deep and loyal; if not, think you that I would disenchant
her with truth to make her adore a falsehood?"

"But if," persisted Glyndon,--"if she be all that you tell me, and if
she love you, how can you rob yourself of so priceless a treasure?"

"Oh, shallow and mean heart of man!" exclaimed Zanoni, with unaccustomed
passion and vehemence, "dost thou conceive so little of love as not to
know that it sacrifices all--love itself--for the happiness of the thing
it loves? Hear me!" And Zanoni's face grew pale. "Hear me! I press this
upon you, because I love her, and because I fear that with me her fate
will be less fair than with yourself. Why,--ask not, for I will not
tell you. Enough! Time presses now for your answer; it cannot long be
delayed. Before the night of the third day from this, all choice will be
forbid you!"

"But," said Glyndon, still doubting and suspicious,--"but why this
haste?"

"Man, you are not worthy of her when you ask me. All I can tell you
here, you should have known yourself. This ravisher, this man of will,
this son of the old Visconti, unlike you,--steadfast, resolute, earnest
even in his crimes,--never relinquishes an object. But one passion
controls his lust,--it is his avarice. The day after his attempt on
Viola, his uncle, the Cardinal --, from whom he has large exp