youth! I have been better and humbler since thy presence has dispelled
the mist of the air. The future!--well, when I have cause to dread it, I
will look up to heaven, and remember who guides our fate!"

As she lifted her eyes above, a dark cloud swept suddenly over the
scene. It wrapped the orange-trees, the azure ocean, the dense sands;
but still the last images that it veiled from the charmed eyes of
Glyndon were the forms of Viola and Zanoni. The face of the one rapt,
serene, and radiant; the face of the other, dark, thoughtful, and locked
in more than its usual rigidness of melancholy beauty and profound
repose.

"Rouse thyself," said Mejnour; "thy ordeal has commenced! There are
pretenders to the solemn science who could have shown thee the
absent, and prated to thee, in their charlatanic jargon, of the secret
electricities and the magnetic fluid of whose true properties they know
but the germs and elements. I will lend thee the books of those glorious
dupes, and thou wilt find, in the dark ages, how many erring steps have
stumbled upon the threshold of the mighty learning, and fancied they
had pierced the temple. Hermes and Albert and Paracelsus, I knew ye all;
but, noble as ye were, ye were fated to be deceived. Ye had not souls
of faith, and daring fitted for the destinies at which ye aimed! Yet
Paracelsus--modest Paracelsus--had an arrogance that soared higher than
all our knowledge. Ho, ho!--he thought he could make a race of men from
chemistry; he arrogated to himself the Divine gift,--the breath of life.
(Paracelsus, 'De Nat. Rer.,' lib. i.)

"He would have made men, and, after all, confessed that they could be but
pygmies! My art is to make men above mankind. But you are impatient of
my digressions. Forgive me. All these men (they were great dreamers, as