The solemn voice of Time, from the neighbouring church at last aroused the lord of the palace from the deep and motionless reverie, rather resembling a trance than thought, in which his mind was absorbed.

“It is one more sand out of the mighty hour-glass,” said he, murmuringly, “and yet time neither adds to, nor steals from, an atom in the Infinite!  Soul of mine, the luminous, the Augoeides (Augoeides,—­a word favoured by the mystical Platonists, sphaira psuches augoeides, otan mete ekteinetai epi ti, mete eso suntreche mete sunizane, alla photi lampetai, o ten aletheian opa ten panton, kai ten en aute.—­Marc.  Ant., lib. 2.—­The sense of which beautiful sentence of the old philosophy, which, as Bayle well observes, in his article on Cornelius Agrippa, the modern Quietists have (however impotently) sought to imitate, is to the effect that ’the sphere of the soul is luminous when nothing external has contact with the soul itself; but when lit by its own light, it sees the truth of all things and the truth centred in itself.’), why descendest thou from thy sphere,—­why from the eternal, starlike, and passionless Serene, shrinkest thou back to the mists of the dark sarcophagus?  How long, too austerely taught that companionship with the things that die brings with it but sorrow in its sweetness, hast thou dwelt contented with thy majestic solitude?”

As he thus murmured, one of the earliest birds that salute the dawn broke into sudden song from amidst the orange-trees in the garden below his casement; and as suddenly, song answered song; the mate, awakened at the note, gave back its happy answer to the bird.  He listened; and not the soul he had questioned, but the heart replied.  He rose, and with restless strides paced the narrow floor.  “Away from this world!” he exclaimed at length, with an impatient tone.  “Can no time loosen its fatal ties?  As the attraction that holds the earth in space, is the attraction that fixes the soul to earth.  Away from the dark grey planet!  Break, ye fetters:  arise, ye wings!”

He passed through the silent galleries, and up the lofty stairs, and entered the secret chamber....

CHAPTER 2.V.

     I and my fellows
     Are ministers of Fate. 
     —­“The Tempest.”

The next day Glyndon bent his steps towards Zanoni’s palace.  The young man’s imagination, naturally inflammable, was singularly excited by the little he had seen and heard of this strange being,—­a spell, he could neither master nor account for, attracted him towards the stranger.  Zanoni’s power seemed mysterious and great, his motives kindly and benevolent, yet his manners chilling and repellent.  Why at one moment reject Glyndon’s acquaintance, at another save him from danger?  How had Zanoni thus acquired the knowledge of enemies unknown to Glyndon himself?  His interest was deeply roused, his gratitude appealed to; he resolved to make another effort to conciliate the ungracious herbalist.