Part 49 (1/2)
(The sword is raised against you on all sides.)
In the mean time Glyndon, after an audience of some length with C--, in which the final preparations were arranged, sanguine of safety, and foreseeing no obstacle to escape, bent his way back to Fillide.
Suddenly, in the midst of his cheerful thoughts, he fancied he heard a voice too well and too terribly recognised, hissing in his ear, ”What!
thou wouldst defy and escape me! thou wouldst go back to virtue and content. It is in vain,--it is too late. No, _I_ will not haunt thee; HUMAN footsteps, no less inexorable, dog thee now. Me thou shalt not see again till in the dungeon, at midnight, before thy doom! Behold--”
And Glyndon, mechanically turning his head, saw, close behind him, the stealthy figure of a man whom he had observed before, but with little heed, pa.s.s and repa.s.s him, as he quitted the house of Citizen C--.
Instantly and instinctively he knew that he was watched,--that he was pursued. The street he was in was obscure and deserted, for the day was oppressively sultry, and it was the hour when few were abroad, either on business or pleasure. Bold as he was, an icy chill shot through his heart, he knew too well the tremendous system that then reigned in Paris not to be aware of his danger. As the sight of the first plague-boil to the victim of the pestilence, was the first sight of the shadowy spy to that of the Revolution: the watch, the arrest, the trial, the guillotine,--these made the regular and rapid steps of the monster that the anarchists called Law! He breathed hard, he heard distinctly the loud beating of his heart. And so he paused, still and motionless, gazing upon the shadow that halted also behind him.
Presently, the absence of all allies to the spy, the solitude of the streets, reanimated his courage; he made a step towards his pursuer, who retreated as he advanced. ”Citizen, thou followest me,” he said. ”Thy business?”
”Surely,” answered the man, with a deprecating smile, ”the streets are broad enough for both? Thou art not so bad a republican as to arrogate all Paris to thyself!”
”Go on first, then. I make way for thee.”
The man bowed, doffed his hat politely, and pa.s.sed forward. The next moment Glyndon plunged into a winding lane, and fled fast through a labyrinth of streets, pa.s.sages, and alleys. By degrees he composed himself, and, looking behind, imagined that he had baffled the pursuer; he then, by a circuitous route, bent his way once more to his home. As he emerged into one of the broader streets, a pa.s.senger, wrapped in a mantle, brus.h.i.+ng so quickly by him that he did not observe his countenance, whispered, ”Clarence Glyndon, you are dogged,--follow me!” and the stranger walked quickly before him. Clarence turned, and sickened once more to see at his heels, with the same servile smile on his face, the pursuer he fancied he had escaped. He forgot the injunction of the stranger to follow him, and perceiving a crowd gathered close at hand, round a caricature-shop, dived amidst them, and, gaining another street, altered the direction he had before taken, and, after a long and breathless course, gained without once more seeing the spy, a distant quartier of the city.
Here, indeed, all seemed so serene and fair that his artist eye, even in that imminent hour, rested with pleasure on the scene. It was a comparatively broad s.p.a.ce, formed by one of the n.o.ble quays. The Seine flowed majestically along, with boats and craft resting on its surface.
The sun gilt a thousand spires and domes, and gleamed on the white palaces of a fallen chivalry. Here fatigued and panting, he paused an instant, and a cooler air from the river fanned his brow. ”Awhile, at least, I am safe here,” he murmured; and as he spoke, some thirty paces behind him, he beheld the spy. He stood rooted to the spot; wearied and spent as he was, escape seemed no longer possible,--the river on one side (no bridge at hand), and the long row of mansions closing up the other. As he halted, he heard laughter and obscene songs from a house a little in his rear, between himself and the spy. It was a cafe fearfully known in that quarter. Hither often resorted the black troop of Henriot,--the minions and huissiers of Robespierre. The spy, then, had hunted the victim within the jaws of the hounds. The man slowly advanced, and, pausing before the open window of the cafe, put his head through the aperture, as to address and summon forth its armed inmates.
At that very instant, and while the spy's head was thus turned from him, standing in the half-open gateway of the house immediately before him, he perceived the stranger who had warned; the figure, scarcely distinguishable through the mantle that wrapped it, motioned to him to enter. He sprang noiselessly through the friendly opening: the door closed; breathlessly he followed the stranger up a flight of broad stairs and through a suite of empty rooms, until, having gained a small cabinet, his conductor doffed the large hat and the long mantle that had hitherto concealed his shape and features, and Glyndon beheld Zanoni!
CHAPTER 7.IX.
Think not my magic wonders wrought by aid Of Stygian angels summoned up from h.e.l.l; Scorned and accursed be those who have essayed Her gloomy Dives and Afrites to compel.
But by perception of the secret powers Of mineral springs in Nature's inmost cell, Of herbs in curtain of her greenest bowers, And of the moving stars o'er mountain tops and towers.
Wiffen's ”Translation of Ta.s.so,” cant. xiv. xliii.
”You are safe here, young Englishman!” said Zanoni, motioning Glyndon to a seat. ”Fortunate for you that I come on your track at last!”
”Far happier had it been if we had never met! Yet even in these last hours of my fate, I rejoice to look once more on the face of that ominous and mysterious being to whom I can ascribe all the sufferings I have known. Here, then, thou shalt not palter with or elude me. Here, before we part, thou shalt unravel to me the dark enigma, if not of thy life, of my own!”
”Hast thou suffered? Poor neophyte!” said Zanoni, pityingly. ”Yes; I see it on thy brow. But wherefore wouldst thou blame me? Did I not warn thee against the whispers of thy spirit; did I not warn thee to forbear? Did I not tell thee that the ordeal was one of awful hazard and tremendous fears,--nay, did I not offer to resign to thee the heart that was mighty enough, while mine, Glyndon, to content me? Was it not thine own daring and resolute choice to brave the initiation! Of thine own free will didst thou make Mejnour thy master, and his lore thy study!”
”But whence came the irresistible desires of that wild and unholy knowledge? I knew them not till thine evil eye fell upon me, and I was drawn into the magic atmosphere of thy being!”
”Thou errest!--the desires were in thee; and, whether in one direction or the other, would have forced their way! Man! thou askest me the enigma of thy fate and my own! Look round all being, is there not mystery everywhere? Can thine eye trace the ripening of the grain beneath the earth? In the moral and the physical world alike, lie dark portents, far more wondrous than the powers thou wouldst ascribe to me!”
”Dost thou disown those powers; dost thou confess thyself an imposter?--or wilt thou dare to tell me that thou art indeed sold to the Evil one,--a magician whose familiar has haunted me night and day?”
”It matters not what I am,” returned Zanoni; ”it matters only whether I can aid thee to exorcise thy dismal phantom, and return once more to the wholesome air of this common life. Something, however, will I tell thee, not to vindicate myself, but the Heaven and the Nature that thy doubts malign.”
Zanoni paused a moment, and resumed with a slight smile,--
”In thy younger days thou hast doubtless read with delight the great Christian poet, whose muse, like the morning it celebrated, came to earth, 'crowned with flowers culled in Paradise.' ('L'aurea testa Di rose colte in Paradiso infiora.' Ta.s.so, ”Ger. Lib.” iv. l.)
”No spirit was more imbued with the knightly superst.i.tions of the time; and surely the Poet of Jerusalem hath sufficiently, to satisfy even the Inquisitor he consulted, execrated all the pract.i.tioners of the unlawful spells invoked,--
'Per isforzar Cocito o Flegetonte.' (To constrain Cocytus or Phlegethon.)