night I depart. Before then you may
retract your choice."

"Never!"

A dark smile passed over the man's face.

"O guillotine!" he said, "how many virtues hast thou brought to light!
Well may they call thee 'A Holy Mother!' O gory guillotine!"

He passed on muttering to himself, hailed a gondola, and was soon amidst
the crowded waters of the Grand Canal.

CHAPTER 6.V.

Ce que j'ignore
Est plus triste peut-etre et plus affreux encore.
La Harpe, "Le Comte de Warwick," Act 5, sc. 1.

(That which I know not is, perhaps, more sad and fearful still.)

The casement stood open, and Viola was seated by it. Beneath sparkled
the broad waters in the cold but cloudless sunlight; and to that
fair form, that half-averted face, turned the eyes of many a gallant
cavalier, as their gondolas glided by.

But at last, in the centre of the canal, one of these dark vessels
halted motionless, as a man fixed his gaze from its lattice upon that
stately palace. He gave the word to the rowers,--the vessel approached
the marge. The stranger quitted the gondola; he passed up the
broad stairs; he entered the palace. Weep on, smile no more, young
mother!--the last page is turned!

An attendant entered the room, and gave to Viola a card, with these
words in English, "Viola, I must see you! Clarence Glyndon."

Oh, yes, how gladly Viola would see him; how gladly speak to him of her
happiness, of Zanoni!--how gladly show to him her child! Poor Clarence!
she had forgotten him till now, as she had all the fever of her earlier
life,--its dreams, its vanities, its poor excitement, the lamps of the
gaudy theatre, the applause of the noisy crowd.

He entered. She started to behold him, so changed were his gloomy brow,
his resolute, careworn features, from the graceful form and careless
countenance of the artist-lover. His dress, though not mean, was rude,
neglected, and disordered. A wild, desperate, half-savage air had
supplanted that ingenuous mien, diffident in its grace, earnest in its
diffidence, which had once characterised the young worshipper of Art,
the dreaming aspirant after some starrier lore.

"Is it you?" she said at last. "Poor Clarence, how changed!"

"Changed!" he said abruptly, as he placed himself by her side. "And whom
am I to thank, but the fiends--the sorcerers--who have seized upon thy
existence, as upon mine? Viola, hear me. A few weeks since the news
reached me that you were in Venice. Under oth