His indignation began to kindle against Mejnour, who owned he had tempted, and who now abandoned him,--abandoned him to the presence of a spectre.

The mystic's reproaches stung rather than humbled him.

What crime had he committed to deserve language so harsh and disdainful?
Was it so deep a debasement to feel pleasure in the smile and the eyes of Fillide?
Had not Zanoni himself confessed love for Viola; had he not fled with her as his companion?
Glyndon never paused to consider if there are no distinctions between one kind of love and another.

Where, too, was the great offence of yielding to a temptation which only existed for the brave?
Had not the mystic volume which Mejnour had purposely left open, bid him but "Beware of fear"?
Was not, then, every wilful provocative held out to the strongest influences of the human mind, in the prohibition to enter the chamber, in the possession of the key which excited his curiosity, in the volume which seemed to dictate the mode by which the curiosity was to be gratified?
As rapidly these thoughts passed over him, he began to consider the whole conduct of Mejnour either as a perfidious design to entrap him to his own misery, or as the trick of an imposter, who knew that he could not realise the great professions he had made.

On glancing again over the more mysterious threats and warnings in Mejnour's letter, they seemed to assume the language of mere parable and allegory,--the jargon of the Platonists and Pythagoreans.