Zanoni eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 579 pages of information about Zanoni.

Zanoni eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 579 pages of information about Zanoni.

The dark brow of the wretched wanderer grew animated; he gazed from the window on the throng that marched below, beneath their waving Oriflamme.  They shouted as they beheld the patriot Nicot, the friend of Liberty and relentless Hebert, by the stranger’s side, at the casement.

“Ay, shout again!” cried the painter,—­“shout for the brave Englishman who abjures his Pitts and his Coburgs to be a citizen of Liberty and France!”

A thousand voices rent the air, and the hymn of the Marseillaise rose in majesty again.

“Well, and if it be among these high hopes and this brave people that the phantom is to vanish, and the cure to come!” muttered Glyndon; and he thought he felt again the elixir sparkling through his veins.

“Thou shalt be one of the Convention with Paine and Clootz,—­I will manage it all for thee!” cried Nicot, slapping him on the shoulder:  “and Paris—­”

“Ah, if I could but see Paris!” cried Fillide, in her joyous voice.  Joyous! the whole time, the town, the air—­save where, unheard, rose the cry of agony and the yell of murder—­were joy!  Sleep unhaunting in thy grave, cold Adela.  Joy, joy!  In the Jubilee of Humanity all private griefs should cease!  Behold, wild mariner, the vast whirlpool draws thee to its stormy bosom!  There the individual is not.  All things are of the whole!  Open thy gates, fair Paris, for the stranger-citizen!  Receive in your ranks, O meek Republicans, the new champion of liberty, of reason, of mankind!  “Mejnour is right; it was in virtue, in valour, in glorious struggle for the human race, that the spectre was to shrink to her kindred darkness.”

And Nicot’s shrill voice praised him; and lean Robespierre—­“Flambeau, colonne, pierre angulaire de l’edifice de la Republique!” ("The light, column, and keystone of the Republic.”—­“Lettre du Citoyen P—­; Papiers inedits trouves chez Robespierre,” tom 11, page 127.)—­smiled ominously on him from his bloodshot eyes; and Fillide clasped him with passionate arms to her tender breast.  And at his up-rising and down-sitting, at board and in bed, though he saw it not, the Nameless One guided him with the demon eyes to the sea whose waves were gore.

BOOK VI. —­ SUPERSTITION DESERTING FAITH.

     Why do I yield to that suggestion, Whose horrid image doth unfix
     my hair.—­Shakespeare

CHAPTER 6.I.

     Therefore the Genii were painted with a platter full of garlands
     and flowers in one hand, and a whip in the other.—­Alexander
     Ross, “Mystag.  Poet.”

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Project Gutenberg
Zanoni from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.