CHAPTER 6.III.
Fuscis tellurem amplectitur alis.
Virgil.
(Embraces the Earth with gloomy wings.) Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.
Mejnour, Humanity, with all its sorrows and its joys, is mine once more.
Day by day, I am forging my own fetters.

I live in other lives than my own, and in them I have lost more than half my empire.

Not lifting them aloft, they drag me by the strong bands of the affections to their own earth.

Exiled from the beings only visible to the most abstract sense, the grim Enemy that guards the Threshold has entangled me in its web.
Canst thou credit me, when I tell thee that I have accepted its gifts, and endure the forfeit?
Ages must pass ere the brighter beings can again obey the spirit that has bowed to the ghastly one! And-- ....
In this hope, then, Mejnour, I triumph still; I yet have supreme power over this young life.

Insensibly and inaudibly my soul speaks to its own, and prepares it even now.