d to have been initiated--the
former in old age, the latter in youth--more than five thousand
years before the story opens. Thus Mejnour remains for ever a
vigorous old man; while Zanoni, his pupil, enjoys perpetual
youth. Mejnour is purely intellectual, and spends his life in
contemplation; while Zanoni, though he must avoid love and
friendship which are unknown to the passionless Intelligences,
feels sympathy with human beings.

Zanoni, who spends his life in the pursuit of pleasure, after
fifty centuries at last falls in love with Viola, an Italian
opera-singer. Like Melmoth the Wanderer, Zanoni is reluctant to
bind the woman he loves to his own fate. He tries to renounce
Viola to an Englishman, Glyndon, who eventually chooses to
relinquish love for the sake of achieving the unearthly knowledge
of Mejnour. Glyndon, however, fails in the trial, and is
consequently haunted by the horror of the Dweller of the
Threshold. Meanwhile Zanoni is united to Viola; and because he
has succumbed to the force of love, his peculiar powers begin to
fail. He can no longer see the beautiful, aerial intelligence,
Adon-Ai. To save from death Viola and the child who is born to
them, Zanoni ere long yields to the Dweller of the Threshold his
gift of communion with the inhabitants of heaven. Later Viola,
who incidentally typifies Superstition deserting Faith, leaves
Zanoni at the call of Glyndon, and in Paris, during the Reign of
Terror, is doomed to die. Zanoni invokes the aid of the
mysterious Intelligences, and his courage at length brings
Adon-Ai again to his side. He wins a day's reprieve for Viola,
and is executed in her stead. The death of Robespierre releases
the prisoners, but Viola dies the next day.

The compact between Zanoni and the Dweller of the Threshold is a
renovation of the time-worn legend of the bargain with an evil
spirit, but Lytton transforms it almost beyond recognition.
Zanoni is no criminal. He has attained his secrets through
will-power, self-conquest, and the subordination of the flesh to
the spirit, and he surrenders his gifts willingly for the sake of
another. Both Mejnour and Zanoni disclaim miraculous powers, yet
Zanoni is ready to stake his mistress on a cast of the dice, and
can cause the death of three sanguinary marauders without
stirring from the apartment in which he ordinarily pursues his
chemical studies. From such incidents as these it would seem as
if Lytton, for the actual craftsmanship of _Z