"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 Zanoni. Thou, too, wilt know his power, but not till it consume thee. 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 the 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 by a spell, upon his face and form? Dost thou not know that from that hour his fortunes rose? Kinsmen the most remote died; estate upon estate fell into
