But his rambles were not always unaccompanied,—­he took pleasure in excursions less solitary.  Often, when the sea lay before them like a lake, the barren dreariness of the opposite coast of Cephallenia contrasting the smiling shores on which they dwelt, Viola and himself would pass days in cruising slowly around the coast, or in visits to the neighbouring isles.  Every spot of the Greek soil, “that fair Fable-Land,” seemed to him familiar; and as he conversed of the past and its exquisite traditions, he taught Viola to love the race from which have descended the poetry and the wisdom of the world.  There was much in Zanoni, as she knew him better, that deepened the fascination in which Viola was from the first enthralled.  His love for herself was so tender, so vigilant, and had that best and most enduring attribute, that it seemed rather grateful for the happiness in its own cares than vain of the happiness it created.  His habitual mood with all who approached him was calm and gentle, almost to apathy.  An angry word never passed his lips,—­an angry gleam never shot from his eyes.  Once they had been exposed to the danger not uncommon in those then half-savage lands.  Some pirates who infested the neighbouring coasts had heard of the arrival of the strangers, and the seamen Zanoni employed had gossiped of their master’s wealth.  One night, after Viola had retired to rest, she was awakened by a slight noise below.  Zanoni was not by her side; she listened in some alarm.  Was that a groan that came upon her ear?  She started up, she went to the door; all was still.  A footstep now slowly approached, and Zanoni entered calm as usual, and seemed unconscious of her fears.

The next morning three men were found dead at the threshold of the principal entrance, the door of which had been forced.  They were recognised in the neighbourhood as the most sanguinary and terrible marauders of the coasts,—­men stained with a thousand murders, and who had never hitherto failed in any attempt to which the lust of rapine had impelled them.  The footsteps of many others were tracked to the seashore.  It seemed that their accomplices must have fled on the death of their leaders.  But when the Venetian Proveditore, or authority, of the island, came to examine into the matter, the most unaccountable mystery was the manner in which these ruffians had met their fate.  Zanoni had not stirred from the apartment in which he ordinarily pursued his chemical studies.  None of the servants had even been disturbed from their slumbers.  No marks of human violence were on the bodies of the dead.  They died, and made no sign.  From that moment Zanoni’s house—­nay, the whole vicinity—­was sacred.  The neighbouring villages, rejoiced to be delivered from a scourge, regarded the stranger as one whom the Pagiana (or Virgin) held under her especial protection.