“Do you know what you ask, Viola?  Do you guess the danger to yourself—­perhaps to both of us—­which you court?  Do you know that my life, separated from the turbulent herd of men, is one worship of the Beautiful, from which I seek to banish what the Beautiful inspires in most?  As a calamity, I shun what to man seems the fairest fate,—­the love of the daughters of earth.  At present I can warn and save thee from many evils; if I saw more of thee, would the power still be mine?  You understand me not.  What I am about to add, it will be easier to comprehend.  I bid thee banish from thy heart all thought of me, but as one whom the Future cries aloud to thee to avoid.  Glyndon, if thou acceptest his homage, will love thee till the tomb closes upon both.  I, too,” he added with emotion,—­“I, too, might love thee!”

“You!” cried Viola, with the vehemence of a sudden impulse of delight, of rapture, which she could not suppress; but the instant after, she would have given worlds to recall the exclamation.

“Yes, Viola, I might love thee; but in that love what sorrow and what change!  The flower gives perfume to the rock on whose heart it grows.  A little while, and the flower is dead; but the rock still endures,—­the snow at its breast, the sunshine on its summit.  Pause,—­think well.  Danger besets thee yet.  For some days thou shalt be safe from thy remorseless persecutor; but the hour soon comes when thy only security will be in flight.  If the Englishman love thee worthily, thy honour will be dear to him as his own; if not, there are yet other lands where love will be truer, and virtue less in danger from fraud and force.  Farewell; my own destiny I cannot foresee except through cloud and shadow.  I know, at least, that we shall meet again; but learn ere then, sweet flower, that there are more genial resting-places than the rock.”

He turned as he spoke, and gained the outer door where Gionetta discreetly stood.  Zanoni lightly laid his hand on her arm.  With the gay accent of a jesting cavalier, he said,—­

“The Signor Glyndon woos your mistress; he may wed her.  I know your love for her.  Disabuse her of any caprice for me.  I am a bird ever on the wing.”

He dropped a purse into Gionetta’s hand as he spoke, and was gone.

CHAPTER 2.IV.

Les Intelligences Celestes se font voir, et see communiquent plus volontiers, dans le silence et dans la tranquillite de la solitude.  On aura donc une petite chambre ou un cabinet secret, etc.

“Les Clavicules de Rabbi Salomon,” chapter 3; traduites exactement du texte Hebreu par M. Pierre Morissoneau, Professeur des Langues Orientales, et Sectateur de la Philosophie des Sages Cabalistes. (Manuscript Translation.)

     (The Celestial Intelligences exhibit and explain themselves most
     freely in silence and the tranquillity of solitude.  One will
     have then a little chamber, or a secret cabinet, etc.)