And from the darkest and mightiest of them I have accepted a boon,--the secret that startled Death from those so dear to me.

Can I not trust that enough of power yet remains to me to baffle or to daunt the Phantom, if it seek to pervert the gift?
Answer me, Mejnour, for in the darkness that veils me, I see only the pure eyes of the new-born; I hear only the low beating of my heart.

Answer me, thou whose wisdom is without love! Mejnour to Zanoni.
Rome.
Fallen One!--I see before thee Evil and Death and Woe! Thou to have relinquished Adon-Ai for the nameless Terror,--the heavenly stars for those fearful eyes! Thou, at the last to be the victim of the Larva of the dreary Threshold, that, in thy first novitiate, fled, withered and shrivelled, from thy kingly brow! When, at the primary grades of initiation, the pupil I took from thee on the shores of the changed Parthenope, fell senseless and cowering before that Phantom-Darkness, I knew that his spirit was not formed to front the worlds beyond; for FEAR is the attraction of man to earthiest earth, and while he fears, he cannot soar.

But THOU, seest thou not that to love is but to fear; seest thou not that the power of which thou boastest over the malignant one is already gone?
It awes, it masters thee; it will mock thee and betray.
Lose not a moment; come to me.

If there can yet be sufficient sympathy between us, through MY eyes shalt thou see, and perhaps guard against the perils that, shapeless yet, and looming through the shadow, marshal themselves around thee and those whom thy very love has doomed.