Il ne faut appeler aucun ordre si ce n’est en tems clair et serein.

“Les Clavicules du Rabbi Salomon.”

(No order of spirits must be invoked unless the weather be clear and serene.)

Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.

My art is already dim and troubled. I have lost the tranquillity which is power. I cannot influence the decisions of those whom I would most guide to the shore; I see them wander farther and deeper into the infinite ocean where our barks sail evermore to the horizon that flies before us! Amazed and awed to find that I can only warn where I would control, I have looked into my own soul. It is true that the desires of earth chain me to the present, and shut me from the solemn secrets which Intellect, purified from all the dross of the clay, alone can examine and survey. The stern condition on which we hold our nobler and diviner gifts darkens our vision towards the future of those for whom we know the human infirmities of jealousy or hate or love. Mejnour, all around me is mist and haze; I have gone back in our sublime existence; and from the bosom of the imperishable youth that blooms only in the spirit, springs up the dark poison-flower of human love.

This man is not worthy of her,— I know that truth; yet in his nature are the seeds of good and greatness, if the tares and weeds of worldly vanities and fears would suffer them to grow. If she were his, and I had thus transplanted to another soil the passion that obscures my gaze and disarms my power, unseen, unheard, unrecognised, I could watch over his fate, and secretly prompt his deeds, and minister to her welfare through his own. But time rushes on! Through the shadows that encircle me, I see, gathering round her, the darkest dangers. No choice but flight,— no escape save with him or me. With me!— the rapturous thought,— the terrible conviction! With me! Mejnour, canst thou wonder that I would save her from myself? A moment in the life of ages,— a bubble on the shoreless sea. What else to me can be human love? And in this exquisite nature of hers,— more pure, more spiritual, even in its young affections than ever heretofore the countless volumes of the heart, race after race, have given to my gaze: there is yet a deep-buried feeling that warns me of inevitable woe. Thou austere and remorseless Hierophant,— thou who hast sought to convert to our brotherhood every spirit that seemed to thee most high and bold,— even thou knowest, by horrible experience, how vain the hope to banish FEAR from the heart of woman.

My life would be to her one marvel. Even if, on the other hand, I sought to guide her p............