Zicci Complete
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron, 1803-1873
English
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Below is a summary of Zicci Complete
ZICCI
A Tale
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
In the gardens at Naples, one summer evening in the last century, some
four or five gentlemen were seated under a tree drinking their sherbet
and listening, in the intervals of conversation, to the music which
enlivened that gay and favorite resort of an indolent population. One of
this little party was a young Englishman who had been the life of the
whole group, but who for the last few moments had sunk into a gloomy and
abstracted revery. One of his countrymen observed this sudden gloom, and
tapping him on the back, said, "Glyndon, why, what ails you? Are you ill?
You have grown quite pale; you tremble: is it a sudden chill? You had
better go home; these Italian nights are often dangerous to our English
constitutions."
"No, I am well now,--it was but a passing shudder; I cannot account for
it myself."
A man apparently of about thirty years of age, and of a mien and
countenance strikingly superior to those around him, turned abruptly, and
looked steadfastly at Glyndon.
"I think I understand what you mean," said he,--"and perhaps," he added,
with a grave smile, "I could explain it better than yourself." Here,
turning to the others, he added, "You must often have felt,
gentlemen,--each and all of you,--especially when sitting alone at night,
a strange and unaccountable sensation of coldness and awe creep over you;
your blood curdles, and the heart stands still; the limbs shiver, the
hair bristles; you are afraid to look up, to turn your eyes to the darker
corners of the room; you have a horrible fancy that something unearthly
is at hand. Presently the whole spell, if I may so call it, passes away,
and you are ready to laugh at your own weakness. Have you not often felt
what I have thus imperfectly described? If so, you can understand what
our young friend has just experienced, even amidst the delights of this
magical scene, and amidst the balmy whispers of a July night."
"Sir," replied Glyndon, evidently much surprised, "you have defined
exactly the nature of that shudder which came over me. But how could my
manner be so faithful an index to my impressions?"
"I know the signs of the visitation," returned the stranger, gravely;
"they are not to be mistaken by one of my experience."
All the gentlemen present then declared that they could comprehend, and
had felt, what the stranger had described. "According to one of our
national superstitions," said Merton, the Englishman who had first
addressed Glyndon, "the moment you so feel your blood creep, and your
hair stand on end, some one is walking over the spot which shall be your
grave."
"There are in all lands different superstitions to account for so common
an occurrence," replied the stranger; "one sect among the Arabians hold
that at that instant God is deciding the hour either of your death or
that of some one dear to you. The African savage, whose imagination is
darkened by the hideous rites of his gloomy idolatry, believes that the
Evil Spirit is pulling you towards him by the hair. So do the Grotesque
and the Terrible mingle with each other."
"It is evidently a mere physical accident,--a derangement of the stomach;
a chill of the blood," said a young Neapolitan.
"Then why is it always coupled, in all nations, with some superstitious
presentiment or terror,--some connection between the material frame and
the supposed world without us?" asked the stranger. "For my part, I
think--"
"What do you think, sir?" asked Glyndon, curiously.
"I think," continued the stranger, "that it is the repugnance and horror
of that which is human about us to something indeed invisible, but
antipathetic to our own nature, and from a knowledge of which we are
happily secured by the imperfection of our senses."
"You are a believer in spirits, then?" asked Merton, with an incredulous
smile.
"Nay, I said not so. I can form no notion of a spirit, as the
metaphysicians do, and certainly have no fear of one; but there may be
forms of matter as invisible and impalpable to us as the animalculae to
which I have compared them. The monster that lives and dies in a drop of
water, carniverous, insatiable, subsisting on the creatures minuter than
himself, is not less deadly in his wrath, less ferocious in his nature,
than the tiger of the desert. There may be things around us malignant and
hostile to men, if Providence had not placed a wall between them and us,
merely by different modifications of matter."
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