The Tales of Haunted Nights (Gothic Horror: Bulwer-Lytton-Series). Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон
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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 he not fled with her as his companion? Glyndon never paused to consider if there are no distinctions between one kind of love and another. Where, too, was the great offence of yielding to a temptation which only existed for the brave? Had not the mystic volume which Mejnour had purposely left open, bid him but “Beware of fear”? Was not, then, every wilful provocative held out to the strongest influences of the human mind, in the prohibition to enter the chamber, in the possession of the key which excited his curiosity, in the volume which seemed to dictate the mode by which the curiosity was to be gratified? As rapidly these thoughts passed over him, he began to consider the whole conduct of Mejnour either as a perfidious design to entrap him to his own misery, or as the trick of an imposter, who knew that he could not realise the great professions he had made. On glancing again over the more mysterious threats and warnings in Mejnour’s letter, they seemed to assume the language of mere parable and allegory—the jargon of the Platonists and Pythagoreans. By little and little, he began to consider that the very spectra he had seen—even that one phantom so horrid in its aspect—were but the delusions which Mejnour’s science had enable him to raise. The healthful sunlight, filling up every cranny in his chamber, seemed to laugh away the terrors of the past night. His pride and his resentment nerved his habitual courage; and when, having hastily dressed himself, he rejoined Paolo, it was with a flushed cheek and a haughty step.
“So, Paolo,” said he, “the Padrone, as you call him, told you to expect and welcome me at your village feast?”
“He did so by a message from a wretched old cripple. This surprised me at the time, for I thought he was far distant; but these great philosophers make a joke of two or three hundred leagues.”
“Why did you not tell me you had heard from Mejnour?”
“Because the old cripple forbade me.”
“Did you not see the man afterwards during the dance?”
“No, Excellency.”
“Humph!”
“Allow me to serve you,” said Paolo, piling Glyndon’s plate, and then filling his glass. “I wish, signor, now the Padrone is gone—not,” added Paolo, as he cast rather a frightened and suspicious glance round the room, “that I mean to say anything disrespectful of him—I wish, I say, now that he is gone, that you would take pity on yourself, and ask your own heart what your youth was meant for? Not to bury yourself alive in these old ruins, and endanger body and soul by studies which I am sure no saint could approve of.”
“Are the saints so partial, then, to your own occupations, Master Paolo?”
“Why,” answered the bandit, a little confused, “a gentleman with plenty of pistoles in his purse need not, of necessity, make it his profession to take away the pistoles of other people! It is a different thing for us poor rogues. After all, too, I always devote a tithe of my gains to the Virgin; and I share the rest charitably with the poor. But eat, drink, enjoy yourself; be absolved by your confessor for any little peccadilloes and don’t run too long scores at a time—that’s my advice. Your health, Excellency! Pshaw, signor, fasting, except on the days prescribed to a good Catholic, only engenders phantoms.”
“Phantoms!”
“Yes; the devil always tempts the empty stomach. To covet, to hate, to thieve, to rob, and to murder—these are the natural desires of a man who is famishing. With a full belly, signor, we are at peace with all the world. That’s right; you like the partridge! Cospetto! when I myself have passed two or three days in the mountains, with nothing from sunset to sunrise but a black crust and an onion, I grow as fierce as a wolf. That’s not the worst, too. In these times I see little imps dancing before me. Oh, yes; fasting is as full of spectres as a field of battle.”
Glyndon thought there was some sound philosophy in the reasoning of his companion; and certainly the more he ate and drank, the more the recollection of the past night and of Mejnour’s desertion faded from his mind. The casement was open, the breeze blew, the sun shone—all Nature was merry; and merry as Nature herself grew Maestro Paolo. He talked of adventures, of travel, of women, with a hearty gusto that had its infection. But Glyndon listened yet more complacently when Paolo turned with an arch smile to praises of the eye, the teeth, the ankles, and the shape of the handsome Fillide.
This man, indeed, seemed the very personation of animal sensual life. He would have been to Faust a more dangerous tempter than Mephistopheles. There was no sneer on HIS lip at the pleasures which animated his voice. To one awaking to a sense of the vanities in knowledge, this reckless ignorant joyousness of temper was a worse corrupter than all the icy mockeries of a learned Fiend. But when Paolo took his leave, with a promise to return the next day, the mind of the Englishman again settled back to a graver and more thoughtful mood. The elixir seemed, in truth, to have left the refining effects Mejnour had ascribed to it. As Glyndon paced to and fro the solitary corridor, or, pausing, gazed upon the extended and glorious scenery that stretched below, high thoughts of enterprise and ambition—bright visions of glory—passed in rapid succession through his soul.
“Mejnour denies me his science. Well,” said the painter, proudly, “he has not robbed me of my art.”
What! Clarence Glyndon, dost thou return to that from which thy career commenced? Was Zanoni right after all?
He found himself in the chamber of the mystic; not a vessel—not an herb! the solemn volume is vanished—the elixir shall sparkle for him no more! But still in the room itself seems to linger the atmosphere of a charm. Faster and fiercer it burns within thee, the desire to achieve, to create! Thou longest for a life beyond the sensual!—but the life that is permitted to all genius—that which breathes through the immortal work, and endures in the imperishable name.
Where are the implements for thine art? Tush!—when did the true workman ever fail to find his tools? Thou art again in thine own chamber—the white wall thy canvas, a fragment of charcoal for thy pencil. They suffice, at least, to give outline to the conception that may otherwise vanish with the morrow.
The idea that thus excited the imagination of the artist was unquestionably noble and august. It was derived from that Egyptian ceremonial which Diodorus has recorded—the Judgment of the Dead by the Living (Diod., lib. i.): when the corpse, duly embalmed, is placed by the margin of the Acherusian Lake; and before it may be consigned to the bark which is to bear it across the waters to its final resting-place, it is permitted to the appointed judges to hear all accusations of the past life of the deceased, and, if proved, to deprive the corpse of the rites of sepulture.
Unconsciously to himself, it was Mejnour’s description of this custom, which he had illustrated by several anecdotes not to be found in books, that now suggested the design to the artist, and gave it reality and force. He supposed a powerful and guilty king whom in life scarce a whisper had dared to arraign, but against whom, now the breath was gone, came the slave from his fetters, the mutilated victim from his dungeon, livid and squalid as if dead themselves, invoking with parched lips the justice that outlives the grave.
Strange fervour this, O artist! breaking suddenly forth from the mists and darkness which the occult science had spread so long over thy fancies—strange that the reaction of the night’s terror and the day’s disappointment should be back to thine holy art! Oh, how freely goes the bold hand over the large outline! How, despite those rude materials, speaks forth no more the pupil, but the master! Fresh yet from the glorious