call thee father! Zanoni, its young lips shall pray for thee! Ah, spare
thy child, for infants are the saints of earth, and their mediation
may be heard on high! Shall I tell thee why I part? No; thou, the
wisely-terrible, canst divine what the hand trembles to record; and
while I shudder at thy power,--while it is thy power I fly (our child
upon my bosom),--it comforts me still to think that thy power can read
the heart! Thou knowest that it is the faithful mother that writes
to thee, it is not the faithless wife! Is there sin in thy knowledge,
Zanoni? Sin must have sorrow: and it were sweet--oh, how sweet--to be
thy comforter. But the child, the infant, the soul that looks to mine
for its shield!--magician, I wrest from thee that soul! Pardon, pardon,
if my words wrong thee. See, I fall on my knees to write the rest!

"Why did I never recoil before from thy mysterious lore; why did the
very strangeness of thine unearthly life only fascinate me with a
delightful fear? Because, if thou wert sorcerer or angel-demon, there
was no peril to other but myself: and none to me, for my love was my
heavenliest part; and my ignorance in all things, except the art to love
thee, repelled every thought that was not bright and glorious as thine
image to my eyes. But NOW there is another! Look! why does it watch me
thus,--why that never-sleeping, earnest, rebuking gaze? Have thy spells
encompassed it already? Hast thou marked it, cruel one, for the terrors
of thy unutterable art? Do not madden me,--do not madden me!--unbind the
spell!

"Hark! the oars without! They come,--they come, to bear me from thee! I
look round, and methinks that I see thee everywhere. Thou speakest to
me from every shadow, from every star. There, by the casement, thy lips
last pressed mine; there, there by that threshold didst thou turn again,
and thy smile seemed so trustingly to confide in me! Zanoni--husband!--I
will stay! I cannot part from thee! No, no! I will go to the room
where thy dear voice, with its gentle music, assuaged the pangs
of travail!--where, heard through the thrilling darkness, it first
whispered to my ear, 'Viola, thou art a mother!' A mother!--yes, I rise
from my knees,--I AM a mother! They come! I am firm; farewell!"

Yes; thus suddenly, thus cruelly, whether in the delirium of blind and
unreasoning superstition, or in the resolve of that conviction which
springs from duty, the being for whom he had resigned so much of empire
and of gl