“You demand mastery over the past, a conception of the future. Has not the art that is truly noble for its domain the future and the past? You would conjure the invisible beings to your charm; and what is painting but the fixing into substance the Invisible? Are you discontented with this world? This world was never meant for genius! To exist, it must create another. What magician can do more; nay, what science can do as much? There are two avenues from the little passions and the drear calamities of earth; both lead to heaven and away from hell,--art and science. But art is more godlike than science; science discovers, art creates. You have faculties that may command art; be contented with your lot. The astronomer who catalogues the stars cannot add one atom to the universe; the poet can call a universe from the atom; the chemist may heal with his drugs the infirmities of the human form; the painter, or the sculptor, fixes into everlasting youth forms divine, which no disease can ravage, and no years impair. Renounce those wandering fancies that lead you now to myself, and now to yon orator of the human race; to us two, who are the antipodes of each other! Your pencil is your wand; your canvas may raise Utopias fairer than Condorcet dreams of. I press not yet for your decision; but what man of genius ever asked more to cheer his path to the grave than love and glory?” “But,” said Glyndon, fixing his eyes earnestly on Zanoni, “if there be a power to baffle the grave itself--” Zanoni’s brow darkened. “And were this so,” he said, after a pause, “would it be so sweet a lot to outlive all you loved, and to recoil from every human tie? Perhaps the fairest immortality on earth is that of a noble name.” “You do not answer me,--you equivocate. I have read of the long lives far beyond the date common experience assigns to man,” persisted Glyndon, “which some of the alchemists enjoyed. Is the golden elixir but a fable?” “If not, and these men discovered it, they died, because they refused to live! There may be a mournful warning in your conjecture. Turn once more to the easel and the canvas!” So saying, Zanoni waved his hand, and, with downcast eyes and a slow step, bent his way back into the city. CHAPTER 2.VIII. The Goddess Wisdom. To some she is the goddess great; To some the milch cow of the field; Their care is but to calculate What butter she will yield. From Schiller. This last conversation with Zanoni left upon the mind of Glyndon a tranquillising and salutary effect.