"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.
