“But woe to thee! insect meshed in the web in which thou hast entangled limbs and wings!  Thou hast not only inhaled the elixir, thou hast conjured the spectre; of all the tribes of the space, no foe is so malignant to man,—­and thou hast lifted the veil from thy gaze.  I cannot restore to thee the happy dimness of thy vision.  Know, at least, that all of us—­the highest and the wisest—­who have, in sober truth, passed beyond the threshold, have had, as our first fearful task, to master and subdue its grisly and appalling guardian.  Know that thou canst deliver thyself from those livid eyes,—­know that, while they haunt, they cannot harm, if thou resistest the thoughts to which they tempt, and the horror they engender.  Dread them most when thou beholdest them not.  And thus, son of the worm, we part!  All that I can tell thee to encourage, yet to warn and to guide, I have told thee in these lines.  Not from me, from thyself has come the gloomy trial from which I yet trust thou wilt emerge into peace.  Type of the knowledge that I serve, I withhold no lesson from the pure aspirant; I am a dark enigma to the general seeker.  As man’s only indestructible possession is his memory, so it is not in mine art to crumble into matter the immaterial thoughts that have sprung up within thy breast.  The tyro might shatter this castle to the dust, and topple down the mountain to the plain.  The master has no power to say, ‘Exist no more,’ to one thought that his knowledge has inspired.  Thou mayst change the thoughts into new forms; thou mayst rarefy and sublimate it into a finer spirit,—­but thou canst not annihilate that which has no home but in the memory, no substance but the idea.  Every thought is A soul!  Vainly, therefore, would I or thou undo the past, or restore to thee the gay blindness of thy youth.  Thou must endure the influence of the elixir thou hast inhaled; thou must wrestle with the spectre thou hast invoked!”

The letter fell from Glyndon’s hand.  A sort of stupor succeeded to the various emotions which had chased each other in the perusal,—­a stupor resembling that which follows the sudden destruction of any ardent and long-nursed hope in the human heart, whether it be of love, of avarice, of ambition.  The loftier world for which he had so thirsted, sacrificed, and toiled, was closed upon him “forever,” and by his own faults of rashness and presumption.  But Glyndon’s was not of that nature which submits long to condemn itself.  His indignation began to kindle against Mejnour, who owned he had tempted, and who now abandoned him,—­abandoned him to the presence of a spectre.  The mystic’s reproaches stung rather than humbled him.  What crime had he committed to deserve language so harsh and disdainful?  Was it so deep a debasement to feel pleasure in the smile and the eyes of Fillide?  Had not Zanoni himself confessed love for Viola; had