o me. Can I not trust that enough of power yet
remains to me to baffle or to daunt the Phantom, if it seek to pervert
the gift? Answer me, Mejnour, for in the darkness that veils me, I see
only the pure eyes of the new-born; I hear only the low beating of my
heart. Answer me, thou whose wisdom is without love!

Mejnour to Zanoni.

Rome.

Fallen One!--I see before thee Evil and Death and Woe! Thou to have
relinquished Adon-Ai for the nameless Terror,--the heavenly stars for
those fearful eyes! Thou, at the last to be the victim of the Larva of
the dreary Threshold, that, in thy first novitiate, fled, withered
and shrivelled, from thy kingly brow! When, at the primary grades of
initiation, the pupil I took from thee on the shores of the changed
Parthenope, fell senseless and cowering before that Phantom-Darkness, I
knew that his spirit was not formed to front the worlds beyond; for
FEAR is the attraction of man to earthiest earth, and while he fears, he
cannot soar. But THOU, seest thou not that to love is but to fear; seest
thou not that the power of which thou boastest over the malignant one
is already gone? It awes, it masters thee; it will mock thee and betray.
Lose not a moment; come to me. If there can yet be sufficient sympathy
between us, through MY eyes shalt thou see, and perhaps guard against
the perils that, shapeless yet, and looming through the shadow, marshal
themselves around thee and those whom thy very love has doomed. Come
from all the ties of thy fond humanity; they will but obscure thy
vision! Come forth from thy fears and hopes, thy desires and passions.
Come, as alone Mind can be the monarch and the seer, shining through the
home it tenants,--a pure, impressionless, sublime intelligence!

CHAPTER 6.IV.

Plus que vous ne pensez ce moment est terrible.
La Harpe, "Le Comte de Warwick," Act 3, sc. 5.

(The moment is more terrible than you think.)

For the first time since their union, Zanoni and Viola were
separated,--Zanoni went to Rome on important business. "It was," he
said, "but for a few days;" and he went so suddenly that there was
little time either for surprise or sorrow. But first parting is always
more melancholy than it need be: it seems an interruption to the
existence which Love shares with Love; it makes the heart feel what a
void life will be when the last parting shall succeed, as succeed it
must, the first. But Viola had a new companion; she was enjoying that