Page:The Coming Race, etc - 1888.djvu/330

316 his eyes so penetrating, yet so calm in their gaze, that the Prince shrunk from them as we shrink from a questioner who is drawing forth the guiltiest secrets of our hearts.

"What would you with me?" asked the Prince, motioning his visitor to a seat.

"Prince di " said the stranger, in a voice deep and sweet,

but foreign in its accent, "son of the most energetic and masculine race that ever applied godlike genius to the service of the Human Will, with its winding wickedness and its stubborn grandeur descendant of the great Visconti, in whose chronicles lie the History of Italy in her palmy day, and in whose rise was the development of the mightiest intellect ripened by the most relentless ambition—I come to gaze upon the last star in a darkening firmament. By this hour to-morrow space shall know it not. Man! thy days are numbered!"

"What means this jargon?" said the Prince, in visible astonishment and secret awe. "Comest thou to menace me in my own halls, or wouldest thou warn me of a danger? Art thou some itinerant mountebank, or some unguest-of friend? Speak out, and plainly. What danger threatens me?"

"Zicci!" replied the stranger.

"Ha! ha ! " said the Prince, laughing scornfully; " I half suspected thee from the first. Thou art, then, the accomplice or the tool of that most dexterous, but, at present, defeated charlatan. And I suppose thou wilt tell me that, if I were to release a certain captive I have made, the danger would vanish, and the hand of the dial would be put back?"

"Judge of me as thou wilt, Prince di . I confess my knowledge of Zicci; a knowledge shared but by a few, who but this touches thee not. I would save therefore I warn thee. Dost thou ask me why? I will tell thee. Canst thou remember to have heard wild tales of thy grandsire?—of his desire for a knowledge that passes that of the schools and cloisters?—of a strange man from the East, who was his familiar and master in lore, against which the Vatican has from age to age launched its mimic thunder? Dost thou call to mind the fortunes of thy ancestor?—how he succeeded in youth to little but a name?—how, after a career wild and dissolute as thine, he disappeared from Milan, a pauper and a self-exile?—how, after years spent—none knew in what climes or in what pursuits he again revisited the city where his progenitors had reigned?—how with him came this wise man of the East—the mystic Mejnour?—how they who beheld him, beheld with amaze and fear that time had ploughed no furrow on his brow—that youth seemed fixed as