CHAPTER 3.XVI.

Ardua vallatur duris sapientia scrupis.
Hadr. Jun., "Emblem." xxxvii.

(Lofty wisdom is circled round with rugged rocks.)

We must go back some hours in the progress of this narrative. It was the
first faint and gradual break of the summer dawn; and two men stood in
a balcony overhanging a garden fragrant with the scents of the awakening
flowers. The stars had not yet left the sky,--the birds were yet silent
on the boughs: all was still, hushed, and tranquil; but how different
the tranquillity of reviving day from the solemn repose of night! In the
music of silence there are a thousand variations. These men, who alone
seemed awake in Naples, were Zanoni and the mysterious stranger who
had but an hour or two ago startled the Prince di -- in his voluptuous
palace.

"No," said the latter; "hadst thou delayed the acceptance of the
Arch-gift until thou hadst attained to the years, and passed through
all the desolate bereavements that chilled and seared myself ere my
researches had made it mine, thou wouldst have escaped the curse of
which thou complainest now,--thou wouldst not have mourned over the
brevity of human affection as compared to the duration of thine own
existence; for thou wouldst have survived the very desire and dream
of the love of woman. Brightest, and, but for that error, perhaps the
loftiest, of the secret and solemn race that fills up the interval in
creation between mankind and the children of the Empyreal, age after age
wilt thou rue the splendid folly which made thee ask to carry the
beauty and the passions of youth into the dreary grandeur of earthly