At that very instant, and while the spy’s head was thus turned from him, standing in the half-open gateway of the house immediately before him, he perceived the stranger who had warned; the figure, scarcely distinguishable through the mantle that wrapped it, motioned to him to enter. He sprang noiselessly through the friendly opening: the door closed; breathlessly he followed the stranger up a flight of broad stairs and through a suite of empty rooms, until, having gained a small cabinet, his conductor doffed the large hat and the long mantle that had hitherto concealed his shape and features, and Glyndon beheld Zanoni! CHAPTER 7.IX. Think not my magic wonders wrought by aid Of Stygian angels summoned up from hell; Scorned and accursed be those who have essayed Her gloomy Dives and Afrites to compel. But by perception of the secret powers Of mineral springs in Nature’s inmost cell, Of herbs in curtain of her greenest bowers, And of the moving stars o’er mountain tops and towers. Wiffen’s “Translation of Tasso,” cant. xiv. xliii. “You are safe here, young Englishman!” said Zanoni, motioning Glyndon to a seat. “Fortunate for you that I come on your track at last!” “Far happier had it been if we had never met! Yet even in these last hours of my fate, I rejoice to look once more on the face of that ominous and mysterious being to whom I can ascribe all the sufferings I have known. Here, then, thou shalt not palter with or elude me. Here, before we part, thou shalt unravel to me the dark enigma, if not of thy life, of my own!” “Hast thou suffered? Poor neophyte!” said Zanoni, pityingly. “Yes; I see it on thy brow. But wherefore wouldst thou blame me? Did I not warn thee against the whispers of thy spirit; did I not warn thee to forbear? Did I not tell thee that the ordeal was one of awful hazard and tremendous fears,--nay, did I not offer to resign to thee the heart that was mighty enough, while mine, Glyndon, to content me? Was it not thine own daring and resolute choice to brave the initiation! Of thine own free will didst thou make Mejnour thy master, and his lore thy study!” “But whence came the irresistible desires of that wild and unholy knowledge? I knew them not till thine evil eye fell upon me, and I was drawn into the magic atmosphere of thy being!” “Thou errest!--the desires were in thee; and, whether in one direction or the other, would have forced their way! Man! thou askest me the enigma of thy fate and my own! Look round all being, is there not mystery everywhere? Can thine eye trace the ripening of the grain beneath the earth? In the moral and the physical world alike, lie dark portents, far more wondrous than the powers thou wouldst ascribe to me!” “Dost thou disown those powers; dost thou confess thyself an imposter?--or wilt thou dare to tell me that thou art indeed sold to the Evil one,--a magician whose familiar has haunted me night and day?”