ery question which his doubts here a second time suggest.)

"Child of a day!" answered Zanoni, mournfully, "have I not told thee the
error of our knowledge was the forgetfulness of the desires and passions
which the spirit never can wholly and permanently conquer while this
matter cloaks it? Canst thou think that it is no sorrow, either to
reject all human ties, all friendship, and all love, or to see, day
after day, friendship and love wither from our life, as blossoms from
the stem? Canst thou wonder how, with the power to live while the world
shall last, ere even our ordinary date be finished we yet may prefer to
die? Wonder rather that there are two who have clung so faithfully to
earth! Me, I confess, that earth can enamour yet. Attaining to the last
secret while youth was in its bloom, youth still colours all around me
with its own luxuriant beauty; to me, yet, to breathe is to enjoy. The
freshness has not faded from the face of Nature, and not an herb in
which I cannot discover a new charm,--an undetected wonder.

"As with my youth, so with Mejnour's age: he will tell you that life to
him is but a power to examine; and not till he has exhausted all
the marvels which the Creator has sown on earth, would he desire new
habitations for the renewed Spirit to explore. We are the types of the
two essences of what is imperishable,--'ART, that enjoys; and SCIENCE,
that contemplates!' And now, that thou mayest be contented that the
secrets are not vouchsafed to thee, learn that so utterly must the idea
detach itself from what makes up the occupation and excitement of men;
so must it be void of whatever would covet, or love, or hate,--that for
the ambitious man, for the lover, the hater, the power avails not. And
I, at last, bound and blinded by the most common of household ties; I,
darkened and helpless, adjure thee, the baffled and discontented,--I
adjure thee to direct, to guide me; where are they? Oh, tell me,--speak!
My wife,--my child? Silent!--oh, thou knowest now that I am no sorcerer,
no enemy. I cannot give thee what thy faculties deny,--I cannot achieve
what the passionless Mejnour failed to accomplish; but I can give thee
the next-best boon, perhaps the fairest,--I can reconcile thee to the
daily world, and place peace between thy conscience and thyself."

"Wilt thou promise?"

"By their sweet lives, I promise!"

Glyndon looked and believed. He whispered the address to the house
whither his fatal step alread