e
he had ever departed even so far from a certain austerity which perhaps
made her fear him and her own thoughts the less.

"Viola," said he, and his voice trembled, "the danger that I can avert
no more, if thou linger still in Naples, comes hourly near and near to
thee! On the third day from this thy fate must be decided. I accept thy
promise. Before the last hour of that day, come what may, I shall see
thee again, HERE, at thine own house. Till then, farewell!"

CHAPTER 3.IV.

Between two worlds life hovers like a star
'Twixt night and morn.
--Byron.

When Glyndon left Viola, as recorded in the concluding chapter of the
second division of this work, he was absorbed again in those mystical
desires and conjectures which the haunting recollection of Zanoni
always served to create. And as he wandered through the streets, he
was scarcely conscious of his own movements till, in the mechanism of
custom, he found himself in the midst of one of the noble collections of
pictures which form the boast of those Italian cities whose glory is
in the past. Thither he had been wont, almost daily, to repair, for the
gallery contained some of the finest specimens of a master especially
the object of his enthusiasm and study. There, before the works of
Salvator, he had often paused in deep and earnest reverence. The
striking characteristic of that artist is the "Vigour of Will;" void
of the elevated idea of abstract beauty, which furnishes a model and
archetype to the genius of more illustrious order, the singular energy
of the man hews out of the rock a dignity of his own. His images have
the majesty, not of the god, but the savage; utterly free, like the
sublimer schools, from the common-place of imitation,--apart, with
them, from the conventional littleness of the Real,--he grasps the
imagination, and compels it to follow him, not to the heaven, but
through all that is most wild and fantastic upon earth; a sorcery, not
of the starry magian, but of the gloomy wizard,--a man of romance whose
heart beat strongly, griping art with a hand of iron, and forcing it
to idealise the scenes of his actual life. Before this powerful will,
Glyndon drew back more awed and admiring than before the calmer beauty
which rose from the soul of Raphael, like Venus from the deep.

And now, as awaking from his reverie, he stood opposite to that wild and
magnificent gloom of Nature which frowned on him from the canvas,
the very leave