esmoulins. He seized--he opened the packet;
his looks brightened as he glanced over a few sentences. "This would
give fifty Glyndons to the guillotine!" he muttered, and thrust the
packet into his bosom.

O artist!--O haunted one!--O erring genius!--behold the two worst
foes,--the False Ideal that knows no God, and the False Love that burns
from the corruption of the senses, and takes no lustre from the soul!

CHAPTER 7.III.

Liebe sonnt das Reich der Nacht.
"Der Triumph der Liebe."

(Love illumes the realm of Night.)

Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.

Paris.

Dost thou remember in the old time, when the Beautiful yet dwelt in
Greece, how we two, in the vast Athenian Theatre, witnessed the birth of
Words as undying as ourselves? Dost thou remember the thrill of terror
that ran through that mighty audience, when the wild Cassandra burst
from her awful silence to shriek to her relentless god! How ghastly, at
the entrance of the House of Atreus, about to become her tomb, rang out
her exclamations of foreboding woe: "Dwelling abhorred of heaven!--human
shamble-house and floor blood-bespattered!" (Aesch. "Agam." 1098.)
Dost thou remember how, amidst the breathless awe of those assembled
thousands, I drew close to thee, and whispered, "Verily, no prophet like
the poet! This scene of fabled horror comes to me as a dream, shadowing
forth some likeness in my own remoter future!" As I enter this
slaughter-house that scene returns to me, and I hearken to the voice of
Cassandra ringing in my ears. A solemn and warning dread gathers round
me, as if I too were come to find a grave, and "the Net of Hades"
had already entangled me in its web! What dark treasure-houses of
vicissitude and woe are our memories become! What our lives, but the
chronicles of unrelenting death! It seems to me as yesterday when I
stood in the streets of this city of the Gaul, as they shone with plumed
chivalry, and the air rustled with silken braveries. Young Louis, the
monarch and the lover, was victor of the Tournament at the Carousel; and
all France felt herself splendid in the splendour of her gorgeous chief!
Now there is neither throne nor altar; and what is in their stead? I
see it yonder--the GUILLOTINE! It is dismal to stand amidst the ruins
of mouldering cities, to startle the serpent and the lizard amidst
the wrecks of Persepolis and Thebes; but more dismal still to stand as
I--the stranger from Empires that have ceased to b