all the haughty arrogance and learned scepticism of his
maturer manhood combated in vain. The apparition of Mejnour served,
indeed, to invest Zanoni with a character in which the prince had not
hitherto regarded him. He felt a strange alarm at the rival he had
braved,--at the foe he had provoked. When, a little before his banquet,
he had resumed his self-possession, it was with a fell and gloomy
resolution that he brooded over the perfidious schemes he had previously
formed. He felt as if the death of the mysterious Zanoni were necessary
for the preservation of his own life; and if at an earlier period of
their rivalry he had determined on the fate of Zanoni, the warnings of
Mejnour only served to confirm his resolve.

"We will try if his magic can invent an antidote to the bane," said
he, half-aloud, and with a stern smile, as he summoned Mascari to his
presence. The poison which the prince, with his own hands, mixed into
the wine intended for his guest, was compounded from materials, the
secret of which had been one of the proudest heir-looms of that able
and evil race which gave to Italy her wisest and guiltiest tyrants. Its
operation was quick yet not sudden: it produced no pain,--it left on
the form no grim convulsion, on the skin no purpling spot, to arouse
suspicion; you might have cut and carved every membrane and fibre of the
corpse, but the sharpest eyes of the leech would not have detected the
presence of the subtle life-queller. For twelve hours the victim felt
nothing save a joyous and elated exhilaration of the blood; a delicious
languor followed, the sure forerunner of apoplexy. No lancet then
could save! Apoplexy had run much in the families of the enemies of the
Visconti!

The hour of the feast arrived,--the guests assembled. There were the
flower of the Neapolitan seignorie, the descendants of the Norman, the
Teuton, the Goth; for Naples had then a nobility, but derived it from
the North, which has indeed been the Nutrix Leonum,--the nurse of the
lion-hearted chivalry of the world.

Last of the guests came Zanoni; and the crowd gave way as the dazzling
foreigner moved along to the lord of the palace. The prince greeted him
with a meaning smile, to which Zanoni answered by a whisper, "He who
plays with loaded dice does not always win."

The prince bit his lip, and Zanoni, passing on, seemed deep in
conversation with the fawning Mascari.

"Who is the prince's heir?" asked the guest.

"A distant re