To rebuild on words the fragments of this history, it seems to me as if, in a solemn trance, I was led through the ruins of a city whose only remains were tombs.

From the sarcophagus and the urn I awake the genius (The Greek Genius of Death.) of the extinguished Torch, and so closely does its shape resemble Eros, that at moments I scarcely know which of ye dictates to me,--O Love! O Death! And it stirred in the virgin's heart,--this new, unfathomable, and divine emotion! Was it only the ordinary affection of the pulse and the fancy, of the eye to the Beautiful, of the ear to the Eloquent, or did it not justify the notion she herself conceived of it,--that it was born not of the senses, that it was less of earthly and human love than the effect of some wondrous but not unholy charm?
I said that, from that day in which, no longer with awe and trembling, she surrendered herself to the influence of Zanoni, she had sought to put her thoughts into words.
Let the thoughts attest their own nature.
THE SELF CONFESSIONAL.
"Is it the daylight that shines on me, or the memory of thy presence?
Wherever I look, the world seems full of thee; in every ray that trembles on the water, that smiles upon the leaves, I behold but a likeness to thine eyes.

What is this change, that alters not only myself, but the face of the whole universe?
....
"How instantaneously leaped into life the power with which thou swayest my heart in its ebb and flow.

Thousands were around me, and I saw but thee.

That was the night in which I first entered upon the world which crowds life into a drama, and has no language but music.