y)
even a poet to be a sort of sorcerer, seemed to shut the gates of
hope upon her heart. His remonstrances were urgent, for his horror was
unfeigned. He joined with Glyndon in imploring her to fly, if she felt
the smallest doubt that her husband's pursuits were of the nature which
the Roman Church had benevolently burned so many scholars for adopting.
And even the little that Viola could communicate seemed, to the ignorant
ascetic, irrefragable proof of sorcery and witchcraft; he had, indeed,
previously heard some of the strange rumours which followed the path
of Zanoni, and was therefore prepared to believe the worst; the worthy
Bartolomeo would have made no bones of sending Watt to the stake, had he
heard him speak of the steam-engine. But Viola, as untutored as himself,
was terrified by his rough and vehement eloquence,--terrified, for
by that penetration which Catholic priests, however dull, generally
acquire, in their vast experience of the human heart hourly exposed
to their probe, Bartolomeo spoke less of danger to herself than to her
child. "Sorcerers," said he, "have ever sought the most to decoy and
seduce the souls of the young,--nay, the infant;" and therewith he
entered into a long catalogue of legendary fables, which he quoted
as historical facts. All at which an English woman would have smiled,
appalled the tender but superstitious Neapolitan; and when the priest
left her, with solemn rebukes and grave accusations of a dereliction of
her duties to her child, if she hesitated to fly with it from an abode
polluted by the darker powers and unhallowed arts, Viola, still clinging
to the image of Zanoni, sank into a passive lethargy which held her very
reason in suspense.

The hours passed: night came on; the house was hushed; and Viola, slowly
awakened from the numbness and torpor which had usurped her faculties,
tossed to and fro on her couch, restless and perturbed. The stillness
became intolerable; yet more intolerable the sound that alone broke it,
the voice of the clock, knelling moment after moment to its grave. The
moments, at last, seemed themselves to find voice,--to gain shape. She
thought she beheld them springing, wan and fairy-like, from the womb of
darkness; and ere they fell again, extinguished, into that womb, their
grave, their low small voices murmured, "Woman, we report to eternity
all that is done in time! What shall we report of thee, O guardian of a
new-born soul?" She became sensible th