applause of others. And so--for she would not
accept alms from Glyndon--so, by the commonest arts, the humblest
industry which the sex knows, alone and unseen, she who had slept on the
breast of Zanoni found a shelter for their child. As when, in the
noble verse prefixed to this chapter, Armida herself has destroyed her
enchanted palace,--not a vestige of that bower, raised of old by Poetry
and Love, remained to say, "It had been!"

And the child avenged the father; it bloomed, it thrived,--it waxed
strong in the light of life. But still it seemed haunted and preserved
by some other being than her own. In its sleep there was that slumber,
so deep and rigid, which a thunderbolt could not have disturbed; and
in such sleep often it moved its arms, as to embrace the air: often its
lips stirred with murmured sounds of indistinct affection,--NOT FOR HER;
and all the while upon its cheeks a hue of such celestial bloom, upon
its lips a smile of such mysterious joy! Then, when it waked, its eyes
did not turn first to HER,--wistful, earnest, wandering, they roved
around, to fix on her pale face, at last, in mute sorrow and reproach.

Never had Viola felt before how mighty was her love for Zanoni; how
thought, feeling, heart, soul, life,--all lay crushed and dormant in
the icy absence to which she had doomed herself! She heard not the
roar without, she felt not one amidst those stormy millions,--worlds
of excitement labouring through every hour. Only when Glyndon, haggard,
wan, and spectre-like, glided in, day after day, to visit her, did the
fair daughter of the careless South know how heavy and universal was
the Death-Air that girt her round. Sublime in her passive
unconsciousness,--her mechanic life,--she sat, and feared not, in the
den of the Beasts of Prey.

The door of the room opened abruptly, and Glyndon entered. His manner
was more agitated than usual.

"Is it you, Clarence?" she said in her soft, languid tones. "You are
before the hour I expected you."

"Who can count on his hours at Paris?" returned Glyndon, with a
frightful smile. "Is it not enough that I am here! Your apathy in the
midst of these sorrows appalls me. You say calmly, 'Farewell;' calmly
you bid me, 'Welcome!'--as if in every corner there was not a spy, and
as if with every day there was not a massacre!"

"Pardon me! But in these walls lies my world. I can hardly credit all
the tales you tell me. Everything here, save THAT," and she pointed
to the