Page:The Coming Race, etc - 1888.djvu/321

Rh "Then I renounce her!—I renounce love—I renounce happiness. Welcome solitude—welcome despair—if they are the entrances to thy dark and sublime secret."

"I will not take thy answer now; at midnight—thou shalt give it in one word aye or no! Farewell till then."

The mystic waved his hand; and descending rapidly—was seen no more.

Glyndon rejoined his impatient and wondering friend; but Merton, gazing on his face, saw that a great change had passed there. The flexile and dubious expression of youth was for ever gone. The features were locked, rigid, and stern; and so faded was the natural bloom, that an hour seemed to have done the work of years. CHAPTER XI.

N returning from Vesuvius or Pompeii, you enter Naples, through its most animated, its most Neapolitan quarter—through that quarter in which Modern life most closely resembles the Ancient; and in which, when on a fair day, the thoroughfare swarms alike with Indolence and Trade, you are impressed at once with the recollection of that restless, lively race, from which the population of Naples derives its origin: so that in one day you may see at Pompeii the habitations of a remote age; and on the Mole at Naples, you may imagine you behold the very beings with which those habitations had been peopled. The language of words is dead, but the language of gestures remains little impaired. A fisherman, a peasant, of Naples, will explain to you the motions, the attitudes, the gestures of the figures painted on the antique vases, better than the most learned antiquary of Gottingen or Leipsic.

But now, as the Englishmen rode slowly through the deserted streets, lighted but by the lamps of heaven, all the gaiety of the day was hushed and breathless. Here and there, stretched under a portico or a dingy booth, were sleeping groups of houseless Lazzaroni, a tribe now happily merging this indolent individuality amidst an energetic and active population.

The Englishmen rode on in silence; for Glyndon neither appeared to heed or hear the questions and comments of Merton, and Merton himself was almost as weary as the jaded animal he bestrode.