Zanoni Part 46

CHAPTER 7.V.

Van seco pur anco Sdegno ed Amor, quasi due Veltri al fianco.

"Ger. Lib." cant. xx. cxvii.

(There went with him still Disdain and Love, like two greyhounds side by side.)

Glyndon did not perceive, as he hurried from the house, two forms crouching by the angle of the wall. He saw still the spectre gliding by his side; but he beheld not the yet more poisonous eyes of human envy and woman's jealousy that glared on his retreating footsteps.

Nicot advanced to the house; Fillide followed him in silence. The painter, an old sans-culotte, knew well what language to a.s.sume to the porter. He beckoned the latter from his lodge, "How is this, citizen?

Thou harbourest a 'suspect.'"

"Citizen, you terrify me!--if so, name him."

"It is not a man; a refugee, an Italian woman, lodges here."

"Yes, au troisieme,--the door to the left. But what of her?--she cannot be dangerous, poor child!"

"Citizen, beware! Dost thou dare to pity her?"

"I? No, no, indeed. But--"

"Speak the truth! Who visits her?"

"No one but an Englishman."

"That is it,--an Englishman, a spy of Pitt and Coburg."

"Just Heaven! is it possible?"

"How, citizen! dost thou speak of Heaven? Thou must be an aristocrat!"

"No, indeed; it was but an old bad habit, and escaped me unawares."

"How often does the Englishman visit her?"

"Daily."

Fillide uttered an exclamation.

"She never stirs out," said the porter. "Her sole occupations are in work, and care of her infant."

"Her infant!"

Fillide made a bound forward. Nicot in vain endeavoured to arrest her.

She sprang up the stairs; she paused not till she was before the door indicated by the porter; it stood ajar, she entered, she stood at the threshold, and beheld that face, still so lovely! The sight of so much beauty left her hopeless. And the child, over whom the mother bent!--she who had never been a mother!--she uttered no sound; the furies were at work within her breast. Viola turned, and saw her, and, terrified by the strange apparition, with features that expressed the deadliest hate and scorn and vengeance, uttered a cry, and s.n.a.t.c.hed the child to her bosom.

The Italian laughed aloud,--turned, descended, and, gaining the spot where Nicot still conversed with the frightened porter drew him from the house. When they were in the open street, she halted abruptly, and said, "Avenge me, and name thy price!"

"My price, sweet one! is but permission to love thee. Thou wilt fly with me to-morrow night; thou wilt possess thyself of the pa.s.sports and the plan."

"And they--"

"Shall, before then, find their asylum in the Conciergerie. The guillotine shall requite thy wrongs."

"Do this, and I am satisfied," said Fillide, firmly.

And they spoke no more till they regained the house. But when she there, looking up to the dull building, saw the windows of the room which the belief of Glyndon's love had once made a paradise, the tiger relented at the heart; something of the woman gushed back upon her nature, dark and savage as it was. She pressed the arm on which she leaned convulsively, and exclaimed, "No, no! not him! denounce her,--let her perish; but I have slept on HIS bosom,--not HIM!"

"It shall be as thou wilt," said Nicot, with a devil's sneer; "but he must be arrested for the moment. No harm shall happen to him, for no accuser shall appear. But her,--thou wilt not relent for her?"

Fillide turned upon him her eyes, and their dark glance was sufficient answer.

CHAPTER 7.VI.

In poppa quella Che guidar gli dovea, fatal Donsella.

"Ger. Lib." cant. xv. 3.

(By the prow was the fatal lady ordained to be the guide.)

The Italian did not overrate that craft of simulation proverbial with her country and her s.e.x. Not a word, not a look, that day revealed to Glyndon the deadly change that had converted devotion into hate. He himself, indeed, absorbed in his own schemes, and in reflections on his own strange destiny, was no nice observer. But her manner, milder and more subdued than usual, produced a softening effect upon his meditations towards the evening; and he then began to converse with her on the certain hope of escape, and on the future that would await them in less unhallowed lands.

"And thy fair friend," said Fillide, with an averted eye and a false smile, "who was to be our companion?--thou hast resigned her, Nicot tells me, in favour of one in whom he is interested. Is it so?"

"He told thee this!" returned Glyndon, evasively. "Well! does the change content thee?"

"Traitor!" muttered Fillide; and she rose suddenly, approached him, parted the long hair from his forehead caressingly, and pressed her lips convulsively on his brow.

"This were too fair a head for the doomsman," said she, with a slight laugh, and, turning away, appeared occupied in preparations for their departure.

The next morning, when he rose, Glyndon did not see the Italian; she was absent from the house when he left it. It was necessary that he should once more visit C-- before his final Departure, not only to arrange for Nicot's partic.i.p.ation in the flight, but lest any suspicion should have arisen to thwart or endanger the plan he had adopted. C--, though not one of the immediate coterie of Robespierre, and indeed secretly hostile to him, had possessed the art of keeping well with each faction as it rose to power. Sprung from the dregs of the populace, he had, nevertheless, the grace and vivacity so often found impartially amongst every cla.s.s in France. He had contrived to enrich himself--none knew how--in the course of his rapid career. He became, indeed, ultimately one of the wealthiest proprietors of Paris, and at that time kept a splendid and hospitable mansion. He was one of those whom, from various reasons, Robespierre deigned to favour; and he had often saved the proscribed and suspected, by procuring them pa.s.sports under disguised names, and advising their method of escape. But C-- was a man who took this trouble only for the rich. "The incorruptible Maximilien," who did not want the tyrant's faculty of penetration, probably saw through all his manoeuvres, and the avarice which he cloaked beneath his charity.

But it was noticeable that Robespierre frequently seemed to wink at--nay, partially to encourage--such vice in men whom he meant hereafter to destroy, as would tend to lower them in the public estimation, and to contrast with his own austere and una.s.sailable integrity and PURISM. And, doubtless, he often grimly smiled in his sleeve at the sumptuous mansion and the griping covetousness of the worthy Citizen C--.

To this personage, then, Glyndon musingly bent his way. It was true, as he had darkly said to Viola, that in proportion as he had resisted the spectre, its terrors had lost their influence. The time had come at last, when, seeing crime and vice in all their hideousness, and in so vast a theatre, he had found that in vice and crime there are deadlier horrors than in the eyes of a phantom-fear. His native n.o.bleness began to return to him. As he pa.s.sed the streets, he revolved in his mind projects of future repentance and reformation. He even meditated, as a just return for Fillide's devotion, the sacrifice of all the reasonings of his birth and education. He would repair whatever errors he had committed against her, by the self-immolation of marriage with one little congenial with himself. He who had once revolted from marriage with the n.o.ble and gentle Viola!--he had learned in that world of wrong to know that right is right, and that Heaven did not make the one s.e.x to be the victim of the other. The young visions of the Beautiful and the Good rose once more before him; and along the dark ocean of his mind lay the smile of reawakening virtue, as a path of moonlight. Never, perhaps, had the condition of his soul been so elevated and unselfish.

In the meanwhile Jean Nicot, equally absorbed in dreams of the future, and already in his own mind laying out to the best advantage the gold of the friend he was about to betray, took his way to the house honoured by the residence of Robespierre. He had no intention to comply with the relenting prayer of Fillide, that the life of Glyndon should be spared.

He thought with Barrere, "Il n'y a que les morts qui ne revient pas."

In all men who have devoted themselves to any study, or any art, with sufficient pains to attain a certain degree of excellence, there must be a fund of energy immeasurably above that of the ordinary herd. Usually this energy is concentrated on the objects of their professional ambition, and leaves them, therefore, apathetic to the other pursuits of men. But where those objects are denied, where the stream has not its legitimate vent, the energy, irritated and aroused, possesses the whole being, and if not wasted on desultory schemes, or if not purified by conscience and principle, becomes a dangerous and destructive element in the social system, through which it wanders in riot and disorder. Hence, in all wise monarchies,--nay, in all well-const.i.tuted states,--the peculiar care with which channels are opened for every art and every science; hence the honour paid to their cultivators by subtle and thoughtful statesmen, who, perhaps, for themselves, see nothing in a picture but coloured canvas,--nothing in a problem but an ingenious puzzle. No state is ever more in danger than when the talent that should be consecrated to peace has no occupation but political intrigue or personal advancement. Talent unhonoured is talent at war with men. And here it is noticeable, that the cla.s.s of actors having been the most degraded by the public opinion of the old regime, their very dust deprived of Christian burial, no men (with certain exceptions in the company especially favoured by the Court) were more relentless and revengeful among the scourges of the Revolution. In the savage Collot d'Herbois, mauvais comedien, were embodied the wrongs and the vengeance of a cla.s.s.

Now the energy of Jean Nicot had never been sufficiently directed to the art he professed. Even in his earliest youth, the political disquisitions of his master, David, had distracted him from the more tedious labours of the easel. The defects of his person had embittered his mind; the atheism of his benefactor had deadened his conscience.

For one great excellence of religion--above all, the Religion of the Cross--is, that it raises PATIENCE first into a virtue, and next into a hope. Take away the doctrine of another life, of requital hereafter, of the smile of a Father upon our sufferings and trials in our ordeal here, and what becomes of patience? But without patience, what is man?--and what a people? Without patience, art never can be high; without patience, liberty never can be perfected. By wild throes, and impetuous, aimless struggles, Intellect seeks to soar from Penury, and a nation to struggle into Freedom. And woe, thus unfortified, guideless, and unenduring,--woe to both!

Nicot was a villain as a boy. In most criminals, however abandoned, there are touches of humanity,--relics of virtue; and the true delineator of mankind often incurs the taunt of bad hearts and dull minds, for showing that even the worst alloy has some particles of gold, and even the best that come stamped from the mint of Nature have some adulteration of the dross. But there are exceptions, though few, to the general rule,--exceptions, when the conscience lies utterly dead, and when good or bad are things indifferent but as means to some selfish end. So was it with the protege of the atheist. Envy and hate filled up his whole being, and the consciousness of superior talent only made him curse the more all who pa.s.sed him in the sunlight with a fairer form or happier fortunes. But, monster though he was, when his murderous fingers griped the throat of his benefactor, Time, and that ferment of all evil pa.s.sions--the Reign of Blood--had made in the deep h.e.l.l of his heart a deeper still. Unable to exercise his calling (for even had he dared to make his name prominent, revolutions are no season for painters; and no man--no! not the richest and proudest magnate of the land, has so great an interest in peace and order, has so high and essential a stake in the well being of society, as the poet and the artist), his whole intellect, ever restless and unguided, was left to ponder over the images of guilt most congenial to it. He had no future but in this life; and how in this life had the men of power around him, the great wrestlers for dominion, thriven? All that was good, pure, unselfish,--whether among Royalists or Republicans,--swept to the shambles, and the deathsmen left alone in the pomp and purple of their victims! n.o.bler paupers than Jean Nicot would despair; and Poverty would rise in its ghastly mult.i.tudes to cut the throat of Wealth, and then gash itself limb by limb, if Patience, the Angel of the Poor, sat not by its side, pointing with solemn finger to the life to come! And now, as Nicot neared the house of the Dictator, he began to meditate a reversal of his plans of the previous day: not that he faltered in his resolution to denounce Glyndon, and Viola would necessarily share his fate, as a companion and accomplice,--no, THERE he was resolved! for he hated both (to say nothing of his old but never-to-be-forgotten grudge against Zanoni). Viola had scorned him, Glyndon had served, and the thought of grat.i.tude was as intolerable to him as the memory of insult. But why, now, should he fly from France?--he could possess himself of Glyndon's gold; he doubted not that he could so master Fillide by her wrath and jealousy that he could command her acquiescence in all he proposed. The papers he had purloined--Desmoulins' correspondence with Glyndon--while it insured the fate of the latter, might be eminently serviceable to Robespierre, might induce the tyrant to forget his own old liaisons with Hebert, and enlist him among the allies and tools of the King of Terror. Hopes of advancement, of wealth, of a career, again rose before him. This correspondence, dated shortly before Camille Desmoulins' death, was written with that careless and daring imprudence which characterised the spoiled child of Danton. It spoke openly of designs against Robespierre; it named confederates whom the tyrant desired only a popular pretext to crush. It was a new instrument of death in the hands of the Death-compeller. What greater gift could he bestow on Maximilien the Incorruptible?

Nursing these thoughts, he arrived at last before the door of Citizen Dupleix. Around the threshold were grouped, in admired confusion, some eight or ten st.u.r.dy Jacobins, the voluntary body-guard of Robespierre,--tall fellows, well armed, and insolent with the power that reflects power, mingled with women, young and fair, and gayly dressed, who had come, upon the rumour that Maximilien had had an attack of bile, to inquire tenderly of his health; for Robespierre, strange though it seem, was the idol of the s.e.x!

Through this cortege stationed without the door, and reaching up the stairs to the landing-place,--for Robespierre's apartments were not s.p.a.cious enough to afford sufficient antechamber for levees so numerous and miscellaneous,--Nicot forced his way; and far from friendly or flattering were the expressions that regaled his ears.

"Aha, le joli Polichinelle!" said a comely matron, whose robe his obtrusive and angular elbows cruelly discomposed. "But how could one expect gallantry from such a scarecrow!"