第169章

"Why," added Zanoni,--"why to thee have been only the penance and the terror,--the Threshold and the Phantom? Vain man! look to the commonest elements of the common learning.Can every tyro at his mere wish and will become the master; can the student, when he has bought his Euclid, become a Newton; can the youth whom the Muses haunt, say, 'I will equal Homer;' yea, can yon pale tyrant, with all the parchment laws of a hundred system-shapers, and the pikes of his dauntless multitude, carve, at his will, a constitution not more vicious than the one which the madness of a mob could overthrow? When, in that far time to which I have referred, the student aspired to the heights to which thou wouldst have sprung at a single bound, he was trained from his very cradle to the career he was to run.The internal and the outward nature were made clear to his eyes, year after year, as they opened on the day.He was not admitted to the practical initiation till not one earthly wish chained that sublimest faculty which you call the IMAGINATION, one carnal desire clouded the penetrative essence that you call the INTELLECT.And even then, and at the best, how few attained to the last mystery!

Happier inasmuch as they attained the earlier to the holy glories for which Death is the heavenliest gate."Zanoni paused, and a shade of thought and sorrow darkened his celestial beauty.

"And are there, indeed, others, besides thee and Mejnour, who lay claim to thine attributes, and have attained to thy secrets?""Others there have been before us, but we two now are alone on earth.""Imposter, thou betrayest thyself! If they could conquer Death, why live they not yet?" (Glyndon appears to forget that Mejnour had before answered the very 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!"