Glyndon’s eyes followed him in surprise.

“And what know you of this man?” said Zanoni.

“I know him as one like myself,—­a follower of art.”

“Of art!  Do not so profane that glorious word.  What Nature is to God, art should be to man,—­a sublime, beneficent, genial, and warm creation.  That wretch may be a painter, not an artist.”

“And pardon me if I ask what you know of one you thus disparage?”

“I know thus much, that you are beneath my care if it be necessary to warn you against him; his own lips show the hideousness of his heart.  Why should I tell you of the crimes he has committed?  He speaks crime!”

“You do not seem, Signor Zanoni, to be one of the admirers of the dawning Revolution.  Perhaps you are prejudiced against the man because you dislike the opinions?”

“What opinions?”

Glyndon paused, somewhat puzzled to define; but at length he said, “Nay, I must wrong you; for you, of all men, I suppose, cannot discredit the doctrine that preaches the infinite improvement of the human species.”

“You are right; the few in every age improve the many; the many now may be as wise as the few were; but improvement is at a standstill, if you tell me that the many now are as wise as the few are.”

“I comprehend you; you will not allow the law of universal equality!”

“Law!  If the whole world conspired to enforce the falsehood they could not make it law.  Level all conditions to-day, and you only smooth away all obstacles to tyranny to-morrow.  A nation that aspires to equality is unfit for freedom.  Throughout all creation, from the archangel to the worm, from Olympus to the pebble, from the radiant and completed planet to the nebula that hardens through ages of mist and slime into the habitable world, the first law of Nature is inequality.”

“Harsh doctrine, if applied to states.  Are the cruel disparities of life never to be removed?”

“Disparities of the physical life?  Oh, let us hope so.  But disparities of the intellectual and the moral, never!  Universal equality of intelligence, of mind, of genius, of virtue!—­no teacher left to the world! no men wiser, better than others,—­were it not an impossible condition, what A hopeless prospect for humanity!  No, while the world lasts, the sun will gild the mountain-top before it shines upon the plain.  Diffuse all the knowledge the earth contains equally over all mankind to-day, and some men will be wiser than the rest to-morrow.  And this is not a harsh, but a loving law,—­the real law of improvement; the wiser the few in one generation, the wiser will be the multitude the next!”

As Zanoni thus spoke, they moved on through the smiling gardens, and the beautiful bay lay sparkling in the noontide.  A gentle breeze just cooled the sunbeam, and stirred the ocean; and in the inexpressible clearness of the atmosphere there was something that rejoiced the senses.  The very soul seemed to grow lighter and purer in that lucid air.