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+Project Gutenberg's The Marble Faun, Volume II., by Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Marble Faun, Volume II.
+       The Romance of Monte Beni
+
+Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+Release Date: February 25, 2006 [EBook #2182]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARBLE FAUN, VOLUME II. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Michael Pullen and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MARBLE FAUN,
+
+or The Romance of Monte Beni
+
+BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
+
+
+Volume II.
+
+In Two Volumes
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+     Volume I
+
+     I       MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLO
+     II      THE FAUN
+     III     SUBTERRANEAN REMINISCENCES
+     IV      THE SPECTRE OF THE CATACOMB
+     V       MIRIAM'S STUDIO
+     VI      THE VIRGIN'S SHRINE
+     VII     BEATRICE
+     VIII    THE SUBURBAN VILLA
+     IX      THE FAUN AND NYMPH
+     X       THE SYLVAN DANCE
+     XI      FRAGMENTARY SENTENCES
+     XII     A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN
+     XIII    A SCULPTOR'S STUDIO
+     XIV     CLEOPATRA
+     XV      AN AESTHETIC COMPANY
+     XVI     A MOONLIGHT RAMBLE
+     XVII    MIRIAM'S TROUBLE
+     XVIII   ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE
+     XIX     THE FAUN'S TRANSFORMATION
+     XX      THE BURIAL CHANT
+     XXI     THE DEAD CAPUCHIN
+     XXII    THE MEDICI GARDENS
+     XXIII   MIRIAM AND HILDA
+
+
+     Volume II
+
+     XXIV    THE TOWER AMONG THE APENNINES
+     XXV     SUNSHINE
+     XXVI    THE PEDIGREE OF MONTE BENI
+     XXVII   MYTHS
+     XXVIII  THE OWL TOWER
+     XXIX    ON THE BATTLEMENTS
+     XXX     DONATELLO'S BUST
+     XXXI    THE MARBLE SALOON
+     XXXII   SCENES BY THE WAY
+     XXXIII  PICTURED WINDOWS
+     XXXIV   MARKET-DAY IN PERUGIA
+     XXXV    THE BRONZE PONTIFF'S BENEDICTION
+     XXXVI   HILDA'S TOWER
+     XXXVII  THE EMPTINESS OF PICTURE GALLERIES
+     XXXVIII ALTARS AND INCENSE
+     XXXIX   THE WORLD'S CATHEDRAL
+     XL      HILDA AND A FRIEND
+     XLI     SNOWDROPS AND MAIDENLY DELIGHTS
+     XLII    REMINISCENCES OF MIRIAM
+     XLIII   THE EXTINCTION OF A LAMP
+     XLIV    THE DESERTED SHRINE
+     XLV     THE FLIGHT OF HILDA'S DOVES
+     XLVI    A WALK ON THE CAMPAGNA
+     XLVII   THE PEASANT AND CONTADINA
+     XLVIII  A SCENE IN THE CORSO
+     XLIX    A FROLIC OF THE CARNIVAL
+     L       MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLO
+
+
+
+
+THE MARBLE FAUN
+
+Volume II
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+THE TOWER AMONG THE APENNINES
+
+
+It was in June that the sculptor, Kenyon, arrived on horseback at the
+gate of an ancient country house (which, from some of its features,
+might almost be called a castle) situated in a part of Tuscany somewhat
+remote from the ordinary track of tourists. Thither we must now
+accompany him, and endeavor to make our story flow onward, like a
+streamlet, past a gray tower that rises on the hillside, overlooking a
+spacious valley, which is set in the grand framework of the Apennines.
+
+The sculptor had left Rome with the retreating tide of foreign
+residents. For, as summer approaches, the Niobe of Nations is made to
+bewail anew, and doubtless with sincerity, the loss of that large
+part of her population which she derives from other lands, and on whom
+depends much of whatever remnant of prosperity she still enjoys. Rome,
+at this season, is pervaded and overhung with atmospheric terrors, and
+insulated within a charmed and deadly circle. The crowd of wandering
+tourists betake themselves to Switzerland, to the Rhine, or, from this
+central home of the world, to their native homes in England or America,
+which they are apt thenceforward to look upon as provincial, after
+once having yielded to the spell of the Eternal City. The artist, who
+contemplates an indefinite succession of winters in this home of art
+(though his first thought was merely to improve himself by a brief
+visit), goes forth, in the summer time, to sketch scenery and costume
+among the Tuscan hills, and pour, if he can, the purple air of Italy
+over his canvas. He studies the old schools of art in the mountain towns
+where they were born, and where they are still to be seen in the faded
+frescos of Giotto and Cimabue, on the walls of many a church, or in
+the dark chapels, in which the sacristan draws aside the veil from a
+treasured picture of Perugino. Thence, the happy painter goes to walk
+the long, bright galleries of Florence, or to steal glowing colors from
+the miraculous works, which he finds in a score of Venetian palaces.
+Such summers as these, spent amid whatever is exquisite in art, or wild
+and picturesque in nature, may not inadequately repay him for the chill
+neglect and disappointment through which he has probably languished, in
+his Roman winter. This sunny, shadowy, breezy, wandering life, in which
+he seeks for beauty as his treasure, and gathers for his winter's honey
+what is but a passing fragrance to all other men, is worth living for,
+come afterwards what may. Even if he die unrecognized, the artist has
+had his share of enjoyment and success.
+
+Kenyon had seen, at a distance of many miles, the old villa or castle
+towards which his journey lay, looking from its height over a broad
+expanse of valley. As he drew nearer, however, it had been hidden among
+the inequalities of the hillside, until the winding road brought him
+almost to the iron gateway. The sculptor found this substantial barrier
+fastened with lock and bolt. There was no bell, nor other instrument
+of sound; and, after summoning the invisible garrison with his voice,
+instead of a trumpet, he had leisure to take a glance at the exterior of
+the fortress.
+
+About thirty yards within the gateway rose a square tower, lofty
+enough to be a very prominent object in the landscape, and more than
+sufficiently massive in proportion to its height. Its antiquity was
+evidently such that, in a climate of more abundant moisture, the ivy
+would have mantled it from head to foot in a garment that might, by this
+time, have been centuries old, though ever new. In the dry Italian air,
+however, Nature had only so far adopted this old pile of stonework as to
+cover almost every hand's-breadth of it with close-clinging lichens
+and yellow moss; and the immemorial growth of these kindly productions
+rendered the general hue of the tower soft and venerable, and took away
+the aspect of nakedness which would have made its age drearier than now.
+
+Up and down the height of the tower were scattered three or four
+windows, the lower ones grated with iron bars, the upper ones vacant
+both of window frames and glass. Besides these larger openings, there
+were several loopholes and little square apertures, which might be
+supposed to light the staircase, that doubtless climbed the
+interior towards the battlemented and machicolated summit. With this
+last-mentioned warlike garniture upon its stern old head and brow,
+the tower seemed evidently a stronghold of times long past. Many a
+crossbowman had shot his shafts from those windows and loop-holes, and
+from the vantage height of those gray battlements; many a flight of
+arrows, too, had hit all round about the embrasures above, or the
+apertures below, where the helmet of a defender had momentarily
+glimmered. On festal nights, moreover, a hundred lamps had often gleamed
+afar over the valley, suspended from the iron hooks that were ranged for
+the purpose beneath the battlements and every window.
+
+Connected with the tower, and extending behind it, there seemed to be
+a very spacious residence, chiefly of more modern date. It perhaps owed
+much of its fresher appearance, however, to a coat of stucco and
+yellow wash, which is a sort of renovation very much in vogue with the
+Italians. Kenyon noticed over a doorway, in the portion of the edifice
+immediately adjacent to the tower, a cross, which, with a bell suspended
+above the roof, indicated that this was a consecrated precinct, and the
+chapel of the mansion.
+
+Meanwhile, the hot sun so incommoded the unsheltered traveller, that he
+shouted forth another impatient summons. Happening, at the same moment,
+to look upward, he saw a figure leaning from an embrasure of the
+battlements, and gazing down at him.
+
+"Ho, Signore Count!" cried the sculptor, waving his straw hat, for he
+recognized the face, after a moment's doubt. "This is a warm reception,
+truly! Pray bid your porter let me in, before the sun shrivels me quite
+into a cinder."
+
+"I will come myself," responded Donatello, flinging down his voice out
+of the clouds, as it were; "old Tomaso and old Stella are both asleep,
+no doubt, and the rest of the people are in the vineyard. But I have
+expected you, and you are welcome!"
+
+The young Count--as perhaps we had better designate him in his ancestral
+tower--vanished from the battlements; and Kenyon saw his figure
+appear successively at each of the windows, as he descended. On every
+reappearance, he turned his face towards the sculptor and gave a nod and
+smile; for a kindly impulse prompted him thus to assure his visitor of a
+welcome, after keeping him so long at an inhospitable threshold.
+
+Kenyon, however (naturally and professionally expert at reading the
+expression of the human countenance), had a vague sense that this was
+not the young friend whom he had known so familiarly in Rome; not the
+sylvan and untutored youth, whom Miriam, Hilda, and himself had liked,
+laughed at, and sported with; not the Donatello whose identity they had
+so playfully mixed up with that of the Faun of Praxiteles.
+
+Finally, when his host had emerged from a side portal of the mansion,
+and approached the gateway, the traveller still felt that there was
+something lost, or something gained (he hardly knew which), that set the
+Donatello of to-day irreconcilably at odds with him of yesterday. His
+very gait showed it, in a certain gravity, a weight and measure of step,
+that had nothing in common with the irregular buoyancy which used to
+distinguish him. His face was paler and thinner, and the lips less full
+and less apart.
+
+"I have looked for you a long while," said Donatello; and, though his
+voice sounded differently, and cut out its words more sharply than had
+been its wont, still there was a smile shining on his face, that, for
+the moment, quite brought back the Faun. "I shall be more cheerful,
+perhaps, now that you have come. It is very solitary here."
+
+"I have come slowly along, often lingering, often turning aside,"
+replied Kenyon; "for I found a great deal to interest me in the
+mediaeval sculpture hidden away in the churches hereabouts. An artist,
+whether painter or sculptor, may be pardoned for loitering through such
+a region. But what a fine old tower! Its tall front is like a page of
+black letter, taken from the history of the Italian republics."
+
+"I know little or nothing of its history," said the Count, glancing
+upward at the battlements, where he had just been standing. "But I thank
+my forefathers for building it so high. I like the windy summit better
+than the world below, and spend much of my time there, nowadays."
+
+"It is a pity you are not a star-gazer," observed Kenyon, also looking
+up. "It is higher than Galileo's tower, which I saw, a week or two ago,
+outside of the walls of Florence."
+
+"A star-gazer? I am one," replied Donatello. "I sleep in the tower,
+and often watch very late on the battlements. There is a dismal old
+staircase to climb, however, before reaching the top, and a succession
+of dismal chambers, from story to story. Some of them were prison
+chambers in times past, as old Tomaso will tell you."
+
+The repugnance intimated in his tone at the idea of this gloomy
+staircase and these ghostly, dimly lighted rooms, reminded Kenyon of the
+original Donatello, much more than his present custom of midnight vigils
+on the battlements.
+
+"I shall be glad to share your watch," said the guest; "especially by
+moonlight. The prospect of this broad valley must be very fine. But I
+was not aware, my friend, that these were your country habits. I have
+fancied you in a sort of Arcadian life, tasting rich figs, and squeezing
+the juice out of the sunniest grapes, and sleeping soundly all night,
+after a day of simple pleasures."
+
+"I may have known such a life, when I was younger," answered the Count
+gravely. "I am not a boy now. Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow
+behind."
+
+The sculptor could not but smile at the triteness of the remark, which,
+nevertheless, had a kind of originality as coming from Donatello. He had
+thought it out from his own experience, and perhaps considered himself
+as communicating a new truth to mankind.
+
+They were now advancing up the courtyard; and the long extent of the
+villa, with its iron-barred lower windows and balconied upper ones,
+became visible, stretching back towards a grove of trees.
+
+"At some period of your family history," observed Kenyon, "the Counts
+of Monte Beni must have led a patriarchal life in this vast house. A
+great-grandsire and all his descendants might find ample verge here, and
+with space, too, for each separate brood of little ones to play within
+its own precincts. Is your present household a large one?"
+
+"Only myself," answered Donatello, "and Tomaso, who has been butler
+since my grandfather's time, and old Stella, who goes sweeping and
+dusting about the chambers, and Girolamo, the cook, who has but an idle
+life of it. He shall send you up a chicken forthwith. But, first of all,
+I must summon one of the contadini from the farmhouse yonder, to take
+your horse to the stable."
+
+Accordingly, the young Count shouted again, and with such effect that,
+after several repetitions of the outcry, an old gray woman protruded
+her head and a broom-handle from a chamber window; the venerable butler
+emerged from a recess in the side of the house, where was a well, or
+reservoir, in which he had been cleansing a small wine cask; and
+a sunburnt contadino, in his shirt-sleeves, showed himself on the
+outskirts of the vineyard, with some kind of a farming tool in his
+hand. Donatello found employment for all these retainers in providing
+accommodation for his guest and steed, and then ushered the sculptor
+into the vestibule of the house.
+
+It was a square and lofty entrance-room, which, by the solidity of its
+construction, might have been an Etruscan tomb, being paved and walled
+with heavy blocks of stone, and vaulted almost as massively overhead.
+On two sides there were doors, opening into long suites of anterooms
+and saloons; on the third side, a stone staircase of spacious breadth,
+ascending, by dignified degrees and with wide resting-places, to another
+floor of similar extent. Through one of the doors, which was ajar,
+Kenyon beheld an almost interminable vista of apartments, opening one
+beyond the other, and reminding him of the hundred rooms in Blue Beard's
+castle, or the countless halls in some palace of the Arabian Nights.
+
+It must have been a numerous family, indeed, that could ever have
+sufficed to people with human life so large an abode as this, and impart
+social warmth to such a wide world within doors. The sculptor confessed
+to himself, that Donatello could allege reason enough for growing
+melancholy, having only his own personality to vivify it all.
+
+"How a woman's face would brighten it up!" he ejaculated, not intending
+to be overheard.
+
+But, glancing at Donatello, he saw a stern and sorrowful look in his
+eyes, which altered his youthful face as if it had seen thirty years of
+trouble; and, at the same moment, old Stella showed herself through one
+of the doorways, as the only representative of her sex at Monte Beni.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+SUNSHINE
+
+
+"Come," said the Count, "I see you already find the old house dismal.
+So do I, indeed! And yet it was a cheerful place in my boyhood. But, you
+see, in my father's days (and the same was true of all my endless line
+of grandfathers, as I have heard), there used to be uncles, aunts, and
+all manner of kindred, dwelling together as one family. They were
+a merry and kindly race of people, for the most part, and kept one
+another's hearts warm."
+
+"Two hearts might be enough for warmth," observed the sculptor, "even in
+so large a house as this. One solitary heart, it is true, may be apt to
+shiver a little. But, I trust, my friend, that the genial blood of your
+race still flows in many veins besides your own?"
+
+"I am the last," said Donatello gloomily. "They have all vanished from
+me, since my childhood. Old Tomaso will tell you that the air of Monte
+Beni is not so favorable to length of days as it used to be. But that is
+not the secret of the quick extinction of my kindred."
+
+"Then you are aware of a more satisfactory reason?" suggested Kenyon.
+
+"I thought of one, the other night, while I was gazing at the stars,"
+answered Donatello; "but, pardon me, I do not mean to tell it. One
+cause, however, of the longer and healthier life of my forefathers was,
+that they had many pleasant customs, and means of making themselves
+glad, and their guests and friends along with them. Nowadays we have but
+one!"
+
+"And what is that?" asked the sculptor.
+
+"You shall see!" said his young host.
+
+By this time, he had ushered the sculptor into one of the numberless
+saloons; and, calling for refreshment, old Stella placed a cold fowl
+upon the table, and quickly followed it with a savory omelet, which
+Girolamo had lost no time in preparing. She also brought some cherries,
+plums, and apricots, and a plate full of particularly delicate figs, of
+last year's growth. The butler showing his white head at the door, his
+master beckoned to him. "Tomaso, bring some Sunshine!" said he. The
+readiest method of obeying this order, one might suppose, would have
+been to fling wide the green window-blinds, and let the glow of the
+summer noon into the carefully shaded room. But, at Monte Beni, with
+provident caution against the wintry days, when there is little
+sunshine, and the rainy ones, when there is none, it was the hereditary
+custom to keep their Sunshine stored away in the cellar. Old Tomaso
+quickly produced some of it in a small, straw-covered flask, out of
+which he extracted the cork, and inserted a little cotton wool, to
+absorb the olive oil that kept the precious liquid from the air.
+
+"This is a wine," observed the Count, "the secret of making which has
+been kept in our family for centuries upon centuries; nor would it avail
+any man to steal the secret, unless he could also steal the vineyard, in
+which alone the Monte Beni grape can be produced. There is little else
+left me, save that patch of vines. Taste some of their juice, and tell
+me whether it is worthy to be called Sunshine! for that is its name."
+"A glorious name, too!" cried the sculptor. "Taste it," said Donatello,
+filling his friend's glass, and pouring likewise a little into his own.
+"But first smell its fragrance; for the wine is very lavish of it, and
+will scatter it all abroad."
+
+"Ah, how exquisite!" said Kenyon. "No other wine has a bouquet like
+this. The flavor must be rare, indeed, if it fulfill the promise of this
+fragrance, which is like the airy sweetness of youthful hopes, that no
+realities will ever satisfy!"
+
+This invaluable liquor was of a pale golden hue, like other of the
+rarest Italian wines, and, if carelessly and irreligiously quaffed,
+might have been mistaken for a very fine sort of champagne. It was not,
+however, an effervescing wine, although its delicate piquancy produced
+a somewhat similar effect upon the palate. Sipping, the guest longed
+to sip again; but the wine demanded so deliberate a pause, in order to
+detect the hidden peculiarities and subtile exquisiteness of its flavor,
+that to drink it was really more a moral than a physical enjoyment.
+There was a deliciousness in it that eluded analysis, and--like whatever
+else is superlatively good--was perhaps better appreciated in the memory
+than by present consciousness.
+
+One of its most ethereal charms lay in the transitory life of the wine's
+richest qualities; for, while it required a certain leisure and delay,
+yet, if you lingered too long upon the draught, it became disenchanted
+both of its fragrance and its flavor.
+
+The lustre should not be forgotten, among the other admirable endowments
+of the Monte Beni wine; for, as it stood in Kenyon's glass, a little
+circle of light glowed on the table round about it, as if it were really
+so much golden sunshine.
+
+"I feel myself a better man for that ethereal potation," observed the
+sculptor. "The finest Orvieto, or that famous wine, the Est Est Est of
+Montefiascone, is vulgar in comparison. This is surely the wine of the
+Golden Age, such as Bacchus himself first taught mankind to press from
+the choicest of his grapes. My dear Count, why is it not illustrious?
+The pale, liquid gold, in every such flask as that, might be solidified
+into golden scudi, and would quickly make you a millionaire!"
+
+Tomaso, the old butler, who was standing by the table, and enjoying
+the praises of the wine quite as much as if bestowed upon himself, made
+answer,--"We have a tradition, Signore," said he, "that this rare wine
+of our vineyard would lose all its wonderful qualities, if any of it
+were sent to market. The Counts of Monte Beni have never parted with a
+single flask of it for gold. At their banquets, in the olden time, they
+have entertained princes, cardinals, and once an emperor and once a
+pope, with this delicious wine, and always, even to this day, it has
+been their custom to let it flow freely, when those whom they love and
+honor sit at the board. But the grand duke himself could not drink that
+wine, except it were under this very roof!"
+
+"What you tell me, my good friend," replied Kenyon, "makes me venerate
+the Sunshine of Monte Beni even more abundantly than before. As I
+understand you, it is a sort of consecrated juice, and symbolizes the
+holy virtues of hospitality and social kindness?"
+
+"Why, partly so, Signore," said the old butler, with a shrewd twinkle
+in his eye; "but, to speak out all the truth, there is another excellent
+reason why neither a cask nor a flask of our precious vintage should
+ever be sent to market. The wine, Signore, is so fond of its native
+home, that a transportation of even a few miles turns it quite sour. And
+yet it is a wine that keeps well in the cellar, underneath this floor,
+and gathers fragrance, flavor, and brightness, in its dark dungeon. That
+very flask of Sunshine, now, has kept itself for you, sir guest (as a
+maid reserves her sweetness till her lover comes for it), ever since a
+merry vintage-time, when the Signore Count here was a boy!"
+
+"You must not wait for Tomaso to end his discourse about the wine,
+before drinking off your glass," observed Donatello. "When once the
+flask is uncorked, its finest qualities lose little time in making their
+escape. I doubt whether your last sip will be quite so delicious as you
+found the first."
+
+And, in truth, the sculptor fancied that the Sunshine became almost
+imperceptibly clouded, as he approached the bottom of the flask. The
+effect of the wine, however, was a gentle exhilaration, which did not so
+speedily pass away.
+
+Being thus refreshed, Kenyon looked around him at the antique saloon
+in which they sat. It was constructed in a most ponderous style, with
+a stone floor, on which heavy pilasters were planted against the wall,
+supporting arches that crossed one another in the vaulted ceiling. The
+upright walls, as well as the compartments of the roof, were completely
+Covered with frescos, which doubtless had been brilliant when first
+executed, and perhaps for generations afterwards. The designs were of
+a festive and joyous character, representing Arcadian scenes, where
+nymphs, fauns, and satyrs disported themselves among mortal youths and
+maidens; and Pan, and the god of wine, and he of sunshine and music,
+disdained not to brighten some sylvan merry-making with the scarcely
+veiled glory of their presence. A wreath of dancing figures, in
+admirable variety of shape and motion, was festooned quite round the
+cornice of the room.
+
+In its first splendor, the saloon must have presented an aspect both
+gorgeous and enlivening; for it invested some of the cheerfullest ideas
+and emotions of which the human mind is susceptible with the external
+reality of beautiful form, and rich, harmonious glow and variety of
+color. But the frescos were now very ancient. They had been rubbed and
+scrubbed by old Stein and many a predecessor, and had been defaced in
+one spot, and retouched in another, and had peeled from the wall in
+patches, and had hidden some of their brightest portions under dreary
+dust, till the joyousness had quite vanished out of them all. It was
+often difficult to puzzle out the design; and even where it was more
+readily intelligible, the figures showed like the ghosts of dead and
+buried joys,--the closer their resemblance to the happy past, the
+gloomier now. For it is thus, that with only an inconsiderable change,
+the gladdest objects and existences become the saddest; hope fading
+into disappointment; joy darkening into grief, and festal splendor into
+funereal duskiness; and all evolving, as their moral, a grim identity
+between gay things and sorrowful ones. Only give them a little time, and
+they turn out to be just alike!
+
+"There has been much festivity in this saloon, if I may judge by the
+character of its frescos," remarked Kenyon, whose spirits were still
+upheld by the mild potency of the Monte Beni wine. "Your forefathers,
+my dear Count, must have been joyous fellows, keeping up the vintage
+merriment throughout the year. It does me good to think of them
+gladdening the hearts of men and women, with their wine of Sunshine,
+even in the Iron Age, as Pan and Bacchus, whom we see yonder, did in the
+Golden one!"
+
+"Yes; there have been merry times in the banquet hall of Monte Beni,
+even within my own remembrance," replied Donatello, looking gravely
+at the painted walls. "It was meant for mirth, as you see; and when
+I brought my own cheerfulness into the saloon, these frescos looked
+cheerful too. But, methinks, they have all faded since I saw them last."
+
+"It would be a good idea," said the sculptor, falling into his
+companion's vein, and helping him out with an illustration which
+Donatello himself could not have put into shape, "to convert this saloon
+into a chapel; and when the priest tells his hearers of the instability
+of earthly joys, and would show how drearily they vanish, he may point
+to these pictures, that were so joyous and are so dismal. He could not
+illustrate his theme so aptly in any other way."
+
+"True, indeed," answered the Count, his former simplicity strangely
+mixing itself up with ah experience that had changed him; "and yonder,
+where the minstrels used to stand, the altar shall be placed. A sinful
+man might do all the more effective penance in this old banquet hall."
+
+"But I should regret to have suggested so ungenial a transformation in
+your hospitable saloon," continued Kenyon, duly noting the change in
+Donatello's characteristics. "You startle me, my friend, by so ascetic a
+design! It would hardly have entered your head, when we first met. Pray
+do not,--if I may take the freedom of a somewhat elder man to advise
+you," added he, smiling,--"pray do not, under a notion of improvement,
+take upon yourself to be sombre, thoughtful, and penitential, like all
+the rest of us."
+
+Donatello made no answer, but sat awhile, appearing to follow with
+his eyes one of the figures, which was repeated many times over in the
+groups upon the walls and ceiling. It formed the principal link of an
+allegory, by which (as is often the case in such pictorial designs)
+the whole series of frescos were bound together, but which it would be
+impossible, or, at least, very wearisome, to unravel. The sculptor's
+eyes took a similar direction, and soon began to trace through the
+vicissitudes,--once gay, now sombre,--in which the old artist had
+involved it, the same individual figure. He fancied a resemblance in it
+to Donatello himself; and it put him in mind of one of the purposes with
+which he had come to Monte Beni.
+
+"My dear Count," said he, "I have a proposal to make. You must let me
+employ a little of my leisure in modelling your bust. You remember what
+a striking resemblance we all of us--Hilda, Miriam, and I--found between
+your features and those of the Faun of Praxiteles. Then, it seemed an
+identity; but now that I know your face better, the likeness is far less
+apparent. Your head in marble would be a treasure to me. Shall I have
+it?"
+
+"I have a weakness which I fear I cannot overcome," replied the Count,
+turning away his face. "It troubles me to be looked at steadfastly."
+
+"I have observed it since we have been sitting here, though never
+before," rejoined the sculptor. "It is a kind of nervousness, I
+apprehend, which, you caught in the Roman air, and which grows upon you,
+in your solitary life. It need be no hindrance to my taking your bust;
+for I will catch the likeness and expression by side glimpses, which
+(if portrait painters and bust makers did but know it) always bring home
+richer results than a broad stare."
+
+"You may take me if you have the power," said Donatello; but, even as he
+spoke, he turned away his face; "and if you can see what makes me shrink
+from you, you are welcome to put it in the bust. It is not my will, but
+my necessity, to avoid men's eyes. Only," he added, with a smile which
+made Kenyon doubt whether he might not as well copy the Faun as model a
+new bust,--"only, you know, you must not insist on my uncovering these
+ears of mine!"
+
+"Nay; I never should dream of such a thing," answered the sculptor,
+laughing, as the young Count shook his clustering curls. "I could not
+hope to persuade you, remembering how Miriam once failed!"
+
+Nothing is more unaccountable than the spell that often lurks in a
+spoken word. A thought may be present to the mind, so distinctly that
+no utterance could make it more so; and two minds may be conscious of
+the same thought, in which one or both take the profoundest interest;
+but as long as it remains unspoken, their familiar talk flows quietly
+over the hidden idea, as a rivulet may sparkle and dimple over something
+sunken in its bed. But speak the word, and it is like bringing up a
+drowned body out of the deepest pool of the rivulet, which has been
+aware of the horrible secret all along, in spite of its smiling surface.
+
+And even so, when Kenyon chanced to make a distinct reference to
+Donatello's relations with Miriam (though the subject was already in
+both their minds), a ghastly emotion rose up out of the depths of the
+young Count's heart. He trembled either with anger or terror, and
+glared at the sculptor with wild eyes, like a wolf that meets you in
+the forest, and hesitates whether to flee or turn to bay. But, as Kenyon
+still looked calmly at him, his aspect gradually became less disturbed,
+though far from resuming its former quietude.
+
+"You have spoken her name," said he, at last, in an altered and
+tremulous tone; "tell me, now, all that you know of her."
+
+"I scarcely think that I have any later intelligence than yourself,"
+answered Kenyon; "Miriam left Rome at about the time of your own
+departure. Within a day or two after our last meeting at the Church of
+the Capuchins, I called at her studio and found it vacant. Whither she
+has gone, I cannot tell."
+
+Donatello asked no further questions.
+
+They rose from table, and strolled together about the premises, whiling
+away the afternoon with brief intervals of unsatisfactory conversation,
+and many shadowy silences. The sculptor had a perception of change in
+his companion,--possibly of growth and development, but certainly of
+change,--which saddened him, because it took away much of the simple
+grace that was the best of Donatello's peculiarities.
+
+Kenyon betook himself to repose that night in a grim, old, vaulted
+apartment, which, in the lapse of five or six centuries, had probably
+been the birth, bridal, and death chamber of a great many generations
+of the Monte Beni family. He was aroused, soon after daylight, by the
+clamor of a tribe of beggars who had taken their stand in a little
+rustic lane that crept beside that portion of the villa, and were
+addressing their petitions to the open windows. By and by they appeared
+to have received alms, and took their departure.
+
+"Some charitable Christian has sent those vagabonds away," thought the
+sculptor, as he resumed his interrupted nap; "who could it be? Donatello
+has his own rooms in the tower; Stella, Tomaso, and the cook are a
+world's width off; and I fancied myself the only inhabitant in this part
+of the house."
+
+In the breadth and space which so delightfully characterize an Italian
+villa, a dozen guests might have had each his suite of apartments
+without infringing upon one another's ample precincts. But, so far as
+Kenyon knew, he was the only visitor beneath Donatello's widely extended
+roof.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+THE PEDIGREE OF MONTE BENI
+
+
+From the old butler, whom he found to be a very gracious and affable
+personage, Kenyon soon learned many curious particulars about the family
+history and hereditary peculiarities of the Counts of Monte Beni. There
+was a pedigree, the later portion of which--that is to say, for a little
+more than a thousand years--a genealogist would have found delight in
+tracing out, link by link, and authenticating by records and documentary
+evidences. It would have been as difficult, however, to follow up the
+stream of Donatello's ancestry to its dim source, as travellers have
+found it to reach the mysterious fountains of the Nile. And, far beyond
+the region of definite and demonstrable fact, a romancer might have
+strayed into a region of old poetry, where the rich soil, so long
+uncultivated and untrodden, had lapsed into nearly its primeval state
+of wilderness. Among those antique paths, now overgrown with tangled and
+riotous vegetation, the wanderer must needs follow his own guidance, and
+arrive nowhither at last.
+
+The race of Monte Beni, beyond a doubt, was one of the oldest in Italy,
+where families appear to survive at least, if not to flourish, on their
+half-decayed roots, oftener than in England or France. It came down in
+a broad track from the Middle Ages; but, at epochs anterior to those,
+it was distinctly visible in the gloom of the period before chivalry put
+forth its flower; and further still, we are almost afraid to say, it was
+seen, though with a fainter and wavering course, in the early morn of
+Christendom, when the Roman Empire had hardly begun to show symptoms of
+decline. At that venerable distance, the heralds gave up the lineage in
+despair.
+
+But where written record left the genealogy of Monte Beni, tradition
+took it up, and carried it without dread or shame beyond the Imperial
+ages into the times of the Roman republic; beyond those, again, into the
+epoch of kingly rule. Nor even so remotely among the mossy centuries did
+it pause, but strayed onward into that gray antiquity of which there
+is no token left, save its cavernous tombs, and a few bronzes, and some
+quaintly wrought ornaments of gold, and gems with mystic figures and
+inscriptions. There, or thereabouts, the line was supposed to have had
+its origin in the sylvan life of Etruria, while Italy was yet guiltless
+of Rome.
+
+Of course, as we regret to say, the earlier and very much the larger
+portion of this respectable descent--and the same is true of many
+briefer pedigrees--must be looked upon as altogether mythical. Still,
+it threw a romantic interest around the unquestionable antiquity of the
+Monte Beni family, and over that tract of their own vines and fig-trees
+beneath the shade of which they had unquestionably dwelt for immemorial
+ages. And there they had laid the foundations of their tower, so long
+ago that one half of its height was said to be sunken under the surface
+and to hide subterranean chambers which once were cheerful with the
+olden sunshine.
+
+One story, or myth, that had mixed itself up with their mouldy
+genealogy, interested the sculptor by its wild, and perhaps grotesque,
+yet not unfascinating peculiarity. He caught at it the more eagerly,
+as it afforded a shadowy and whimsical semblance of explanation for the
+likeness which he, with Miriam and Hilda, had seen or fancied between
+Donatello and the Faun of Praxiteles.
+
+The Monte Beni family, as this legend averred, drew their origin
+from the Pelasgic race, who peopled Italy in times that may be called
+prehistoric. It was the same noble breed of men, of Asiatic birth,
+that settled in Greece; the same happy and poetic kindred who dwelt in
+Arcadia, and--whether they ever lived such life or not--enriched the
+world with dreams, at least, and fables, lovely, if unsubstantial, of a
+Golden Age. In those delicious times, when deities and demigods appeared
+familiarly on earth, mingling with its inhabitants as friend with
+friend,--when nymphs, satyrs, and the whole train of classic faith or
+fable hardly took pains to hide themselves in the primeval woods,--at
+that auspicious period the lineage of Monte Beni had its rise. Its
+progenitor was a being not altogether human, yet partaking so largely of
+the gentlest human qualities, as to be neither awful nor shocking to
+the imagination. A sylvan creature, native among the woods, had loved
+a mortal maiden, and--perhaps by kindness, and the subtile courtesies
+which love might teach to his simplicity, or possibly by a ruder
+wooing--had won her to his haunts. In due time he gained her womanly
+affection; and, making their bridal bower, for aught we know, in the
+hollow of a great tree, the pair spent a happy wedded life in that
+ancient neighborhood where now stood Donatello's tower.
+
+From this union sprang a vigorous progeny that took its place
+unquestioned among human families. In that age, however, and long
+afterwards, it showed the ineffaceable lineaments of its wild paternity:
+it was a pleasant and kindly race of men, but capable of savage
+fierceness, and never quite restrainable within the trammels of social
+law. They were strong, active, genial, cheerful as the sunshine,
+passionate as the tornado. Their lives were rendered blissful by art
+unsought harmony with nature.
+
+But, as centuries passed away, the Faun's wild blood had necessarily
+been attempered with constant intermixtures from the more ordinary
+streams of human life. It lost many of its original qualities, and
+served for the most part only to bestow an unconquerable vigor, which
+kept the family from extinction, and enabled them to make their own part
+good throughout the perils and rude emergencies of their interminable
+descent. In the constant wars with which Italy was plagued, by the
+dissensions of her petty states and republics, there was a demand for
+native hardihood.
+
+The successive members of the Monte Beni family showed valor and policy
+enough' at all events, to keep their hereditary possessions out of the
+clutch of grasping neighbors, and probably differed very little from the
+other feudal barons with whom they fought and feasted. Such a degree
+of conformity with the manners of the generations through which it
+survived, must have been essential to the prolonged continuance of the
+race.
+
+It is well known, however, that any hereditary peculiarity--as a
+supernumerary finger, or an anomalous shape of feature, like the
+Austrian lip--is wont to show itself in a family after a very wayward
+fashion. It skips at its own pleasure along the line, and, latent for
+half a century or so, crops out again in a great-grandson. And thus, it
+was said, from a period beyond memory or record, there had ever and
+anon been a descendant of the Monte Benis bearing nearly all the
+characteristics that were attributed to the original founder of the
+race. Some traditions even went so far as to enumerate the ears, covered
+with a delicate fur, and shaped like a pointed leaf, among the proofs
+of authentic descent which were seen in these favored individuals. We
+appreciate the beauty of such tokens of a nearer kindred to the great
+family of nature than other mortals bear; but it would be idle to ask
+credit for a statement which might be deemed to partake so largely of
+the grotesque.
+
+But it was indisputable that, once in a century or oftener, a son of
+Monte Beni gathered into himself the scattered qualities of his
+race, and reproduced the character that had been assigned to it from
+immemorial times. Beautiful, strong, brave, kindly, sincere, of
+honest impulses, and endowed with simple tastes and the love of homely
+pleasures, he was believed to possess gifts by which he could associate
+himself with the wild things of the forests, and with the fowls of the
+air, and could feel a sympathy even with the trees; among which it was
+his joy to dwell. On the other hand, there were deficiencies both of
+intellect and heart, and especially, as it seemed, in the development of
+the higher portion of man's nature. These defects were less perceptible
+in early youth, but showed themselves more strongly with advancing
+age, when, as the animal spirits settled down upon a lower level, the
+representative of the Monte Benis was apt to become sensual, addicted to
+gross pleasures, heavy, unsympathizing, and insulated within the narrow
+limits of a surly selfishness.
+
+A similar change, indeed, is no more than what we constantly observe to
+take place in persons who are not careful to substitute other graces for
+those which they inevitably lose along with the quick sensibility and
+joyous vivacity of youth. At worst, the reigning Count of Monte Beni,
+as his hair grew white, was still a jolly old fellow over his flask of
+wine, the wine that Bacchus himself was fabled to have taught his sylvan
+ancestor how to express, and from what choicest grapes, which would
+ripen only in a certain divinely favored portion of the Monte Beni
+vineyard.
+
+The family, be it observed, were both proud and ashamed of these
+legends; but whatever part of them they might consent to incorporate
+into their ancestral history, they steadily repudiated all that referred
+to their one distinctive feature, the pointed and furry ears. In a great
+many years past, no sober credence had been yielded to the mythical
+portion of the pedigree. It might, however, be considered as typifying
+some such assemblage of qualities--in this case, chiefly remarkable for
+their simplicity and naturalness--as, when they reappear in successive
+generations, constitute what we call family character. The sculptor
+found, moreover, on the evidence of some old portraits, that the
+physical features of the race had long been similar to what he now saw
+them in Donatello. With accumulating years, it is true, the Monte
+Beni face had a tendency to look grim and savage; and, in two or three
+instances, the family pictures glared at the spectator in the eyes like
+some surly animal, that had lost its good humor when it outlived its
+playfulness.
+
+The young Count accorded his guest full liberty to investigate the
+personal annals of these pictured worthies, as well as all the rest
+of his progenitors; and ample materials were at hand in many chests of
+worm-eaten papers and yellow parchments, that had been gathering into
+larger and dustier piles ever since the dark ages. But, to confess the
+truth, the information afforded by these musty documents was so much
+more prosaic than what Kenyon acquired from Tomaso's legends, that even
+the superior authenticity of the former could not reconcile him to its
+dullness. What especially delighted the sculptor was the analogy between
+Donatello's character, as he himself knew it, and those peculiar traits
+which the old butler's narrative assumed to have been long hereditary
+in the race. He was amused at finding, too, that not only Tomaso but the
+peasantry of the estate and neighboring village recognized his friend
+as a genuine Monte Beni, of the original type. They seemed to cherish a
+great affection for the young Count, and were full of stories about his
+sportive childhood; how he had played among the little rustics, and been
+at once the wildest and the sweetest of them all; and how, in his very
+infancy, he had plunged into the deep pools of the streamlets and never
+been drowned, and had clambered to the topmost branches of tall trees
+without ever breaking his neck. No such mischance could happen to the
+sylvan child because, handling all the elements of nature so fearlessly
+and freely, nothing had either the power or the will to do him harm.
+
+He grew up, said these humble friends, the playmate not only of all
+mortal kind, but of creatures of the woods; although, when Kenyon
+pressed them for some particulars of this latter mode of companionship,
+they could remember little more than a few anecdotes of a pet fox, which
+used to growl and snap at everybody save Donatello himself.
+
+But they enlarged--and never were weary of the theme--upon the
+blithesome effects of Donatello's presence in his rosy childhood and
+budding youth. Their hovels had always glowed like sunshine when he
+entered them; so that, as the peasants expressed it, their young master
+had never darkened a doorway in his life. He was the soul of vintage
+festivals. While he was a mere infant, scarcely able to run alone, it
+had been the custom to make him tread the winepress with his tender
+little feet, if it were only to crush one cluster of the grapes. And the
+grape-juice that gushed beneath his childish tread, be it ever so small
+in quantity, sufficed to impart a pleasant flavor to a whole cask of
+wine. The race of Monte Beni--so these rustic chroniclers assured
+the sculptor--had possessed the gift from the oldest of old times of
+expressing good wine from ordinary grapes, and a ravishing liquor from
+the choice growth of their vineyard.
+
+In a word, as he listened to such tales as these, Kenyon could have
+imagined that the valleys and hillsides about him were a veritable
+Arcadia; and that Donatello was not merely a sylvan faun, but the genial
+wine god in his very person. Making many allowances for the poetic
+fancies of Italian peasants, he set it down for fact that his friend, in
+a simple way and among rustic folks, had been an exceedingly delightful
+fellow in his younger days.
+
+But the contadini sometimes added, shaking their heads and sighing, that
+the young Count was sadly changed since he went to Rome. The village
+girls now missed the merry smile with which he used to greet them.
+
+The sculptor inquired of his good friend Tomaso, whether he, too,
+had noticed the shadow which was said to have recently fallen over
+Donatello's life.
+
+"Ah, yes, Signore!" answered the old butler, "it is even so, since
+he came back from that wicked and miserable city. The world has grown
+either too evil, or else too wise and sad, for such men as the old
+Counts of Monte Beni used to be. His very first taste of it, as you see,
+has changed and spoilt my poor young lord. There had not been a single
+count in the family these hundred years or more, who was so true a Monte
+Beni, of the antique stamp, as this poor signorino; and now it brings
+the tears into my eyes to hear him sighing over a cup of Sunshine! Ah,
+it is a sad world now!"
+
+"Then you think there was a merrier world once?" asked Kenyon.
+
+"Surely, Signore," said Tomaso; "a merrier world, and merrier Counts of
+Monte Beni to live in it! Such tales of them as I have heard, when I was
+a child on my grandfather's knee! The good old man remembered a lord of
+Monte Beni--at least, he had heard of such a one, though I will not make
+oath upon the holy crucifix that my grandsire lived in his time who used
+to go into the woods and call pretty damsels out of the fountains, and
+out of the trunks of the old trees. That merry lord was known to dance
+with them a whole long summer afternoon! When shall we see such frolics
+in our days?"
+
+"Not soon, I am afraid," acquiesced the sculptor. "You are right,
+excellent Tomaso; the world is sadder now!"
+
+And, in truth, while our friend smiled at these wild fables, he sighed
+in the same breath to think how the once genial earth produces, in every
+successive generation, fewer flowers than used to gladden the preceding
+ones. Not that the modes and seeming possibilities of human enjoyment
+are rarer in our refined and softened era,--on the contrary, they never
+before were nearly so abundant,--but that mankind are getting so far
+beyond the childhood of their race that they scorn to be happy any
+longer. A simple and joyous character can find no place for itself
+among the sage and sombre figures that would put his unsophisticated
+cheerfulness to shame. The entire system of man's affairs, as at present
+established, is built up purposely to exclude the careless and happy
+soul. The very children would upbraid the wretched individual who should
+endeavor to take life and the world as w what we might naturally suppose
+them meant for--a place and opportunity for enjoyment.
+
+It is the iron rule in our day to require an object and a purpose in
+life. It makes us all parts of a complicated scheme of progress, which
+can only result in our arrival at a colder and drearier region than
+we were born in. It insists upon everybody's adding somewhat--a mite,
+perhaps, but earned by incessant effort--to an accumulated pile of
+usefulness, of which the only use will be, to burden our posterity with
+even heavier thoughts and more inordinate labor than our own. No life
+now wanders like an unfettered stream; there is a mill-wheel for the
+tiniest rivulet to turn. We go all wrong, by too strenuous a resolution
+to go all right.
+
+Therefore it was--so, at least, the sculptor thought, although partly
+suspicious of Donatello's darker misfortune--that the young Count found
+it impossible nowadays to be what his forefathers had been. He could
+not live their healthy life of animal spirits, in their sympathy with
+nature, and brotherhood with all that breathed around them. Nature, in
+beast, fowl, and tree, and earth, flood, and sky, is what it was of old;
+but sin, care, and self-consciousness have set the human portion of the
+world askew; and thus the simplest character is ever the soonest to go
+astray.
+
+"At any rate, Tomaso," said Kenyon, doing his best to comfort the old
+man, "let us hope that your young lord will still enjoy himself at
+vintage time. By the aspect of the vineyard, I judge that this will be
+a famous year for the golden wine of Monte Beni. As long as your grapes
+produce that admirable liquor, sad as you think the world, neither the
+Count nor his guests will quite forget to smile."
+
+"Ah, Signore," rejoined the butler with a sigh, "but he scarcely wets
+his lips with the sunny juice."
+
+"There is yet another hope," observed Kenyon; "the young Count may fall
+in love, and bring home a fair and laughing wife to chase the gloom out
+of yonder old frescoed saloon. Do you think he could do a better thing,
+my good Tomaso?"
+
+"Maybe not, Signore," said the sage butler, looking earnestly at him;
+"and, maybe, not a worse!"
+
+The sculptor fancied that the good old man had it partly in his mind to
+make some remark, or communicate some fact, which, on second thoughts,
+he resolved to keep concealed in his own breast. He now took his
+departure cellarward, shaking his white head and muttering to himself,
+and did not reappear till dinner-time, when he favored Kenyon, whom he
+had taken far into his good graces, with a choicer flask of Sunshine
+than had yet blessed his palate.
+
+To say the truth, this golden wine was no unnecessary ingredient towards
+making the life of Monte Beni palatable. It seemed a pity that Donatello
+did not drink a little more of it, and go jollily to bed at least,
+even if he should awake with an accession of darker melancholy the next
+morning.
+
+Nevertheless, there was no lack of outward means for leading an
+agreeable life in the old villa. Wandering musicians haunted the
+precincts of Monte Beni, where they seemed to claim a prescriptive
+right; they made the lawn and shrubbery tuneful with the sound of
+fiddle, harp, and flute, and now and then with the tangled squeaking of
+a bagpipe. Improvisatori likewise came and told tales or recited verses
+to the contadini--among whom Kenyon was often an auditor--after their
+day's work in the vineyard. Jugglers, too, obtained permission to do
+feats of magic in the hall, where they set even the sage Tomaso, and
+Stella, Girolamo, and the peasant girls from the farmhouse, all of a
+broad grin, between merriment and wonder. These good people got food and
+lodging for their pleasant pains, and some of the small wine of Tuscany,
+and a reasonable handful of the Grand Duke's copper coin, to keep up
+the hospitable renown of Monte Beni. But very seldom had they the young
+Count as a listener or a spectator.
+
+There were sometimes dances by moonlight on the lawn, but never since he
+came from Rome did Donatello's presence deepen the blushes of the
+pretty contadinas, or his footstep weary out the most agile partner or
+competitor, as once it was sure to do.
+
+Paupers--for this kind of vermin infested the house of Monte Beni worse
+than any other spot in beggar-haunted Italy--stood beneath all the
+windows, making loud supplication, or even establishing themselves on
+the marble steps of the grand entrance. They ate and drank, and filled
+their bags, and pocketed the little money that was given them, and went
+forth on their devious ways, showering blessings innumerable on the
+mansion and its lord, and on the souls of his deceased forefathers, who
+had always been just such simpletons as to be compassionate to
+beggary. But, in spite of their favorable prayers, by which Italian
+philanthropists set great store, a cloud seemed to hang over these once
+Arcadian precincts, and to be darkest around the summit of the tower
+where Donatello was wont to sit and brood.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+MYTHS
+
+
+After the sculptor's arrival, however, the young Count sometimes
+came down from his forlorn elevation, and rambled with him among the
+neighboring woods and hills. He led his friend to many enchanting nooks,
+with which he himself had been familiar in his childhood. But of late,
+as he remarked to Kenyon, a sort of strangeness had overgrown them,
+like clusters of dark shrubbery, so that he hardly recognized the places
+which he had known and loved so well.
+
+To the sculptor's eye, nevertheless, they were still rich with beauty.
+They were picturesque in that sweetly impressive way where wildness, in
+a long lapse of years, has crept over scenes that have been once adorned
+with the careful art and toil of man; and when man could do no more for
+them, time and nature came, and wrought hand in hand to bring them to a
+soft and venerable perfection. There grew the fig-tree that had run wild
+and taken to wife the vine, which likewise had gone rampant out of
+all human control; so that the two wild things had tangled and
+knotted themselves into a wild marriage bond, and hung their various
+progeny--the luscious figs, the grapes, oozy with the Southern juice,
+and both endowed with a wild flavor that added the final charm--on the
+same bough together.
+
+In Kenyon's opinion, never was any other nook so lovely as a certain
+little dell which he and Donatello visited. It was hollowed in among the
+hills, and open to a glimpse of the broad, fertile valley. A fountain
+had its birth here, and fell into a marble basin, which was all covered
+with moss and shaggy with water-weeds. Over the gush of the small
+stream, with an urn in her arms, stood a marble nymph, whose nakedness
+the moss had kindly clothed as with a garment; and the long trails and
+tresses of the maidenhair had done what they could in the poor thing's
+behalf, by hanging themselves about her waist, In former days--it might
+be a remote antiquity--this lady of the fountain had first received the
+infant tide into her urn and poured it thence into the marble basin.
+But now the sculptured urn had a great crack from top to bottom; and the
+discontented nymph was compelled to see the basin fill itself through
+a channel which she could not control, although with water long ago
+consecrated to her.
+
+For this reason, or some other, she looked terribly forlorn; and you
+might have fancied that the whole fountain was but the overflow of her
+lonely tears.
+
+"This was a place that I used greatly to delight in," remarked
+Donatello, sighing. "As a child, and as a boy, I have been very happy
+here."
+
+"And, as a man, I should ask no fitter place to be happy in," answered
+Kenyon. "But you, my friend, are of such a social nature, that I should
+hardly have thought these lonely haunts would take your fancy. It is
+a place for a poet to dream in, and people it with the beings of his
+imagination."
+
+"I am no poet, that I know of," said Donatello, "but yet, as I tell you,
+I have been very happy here, in the company of this fountain and this
+nymph. It is said that a Faun, my oldest forefather, brought home hither
+to this very spot a human maiden, whom he loved and wedded. This spring
+of delicious water was their household well."
+
+"It is a most enchanting fable!" exclaimed Kenyon; "that is, if it be
+not a fact."
+
+"And why not a fact?" said the simple Donatello. "There is, likewise,
+another sweet old story connected with this spot. But, now that I
+remember it, it seems to me more sad than sweet, though formerly the
+sorrow, in which it closes, did not so much impress me. If I had the
+gift of tale-telling, this one would be sure to interest you mightily."
+
+"Pray tell it," said Kenyon; "no matter whether well or ill. These wild
+legends have often the most powerful charm when least artfully told."
+
+So the young Count narrated a myth of one of his Progenitors,--he might
+have lived a century ago, or a thousand years, or before the Christian
+epoch, for anything that Donatello knew to the contrary,--who had made
+acquaintance with a fair creature belonging to this fountain. Whether
+woman or sprite was a mystery, as was all else about her, except that
+her life and soul were somehow interfused throughout the gushing water.
+She was a fresh, cool, dewy thing, sunny and shadowy, full of pleasant
+little mischiefs, fitful and changeable with the whim of the moment, but
+yet as constant as her native stream, which kept the same gush and flow
+forever, while marble crumbled over and around it. The fountain woman
+loved the youth,--a knight, as Donatello called him,--for, according
+to the legend, his race was akin to hers. At least, whether kin or no,
+there had been friendship and sympathy of old betwixt an ancestor of
+his, with furry ears, and the long-lived lady of the fountain. And,
+after all those ages, she was still as young as a May morning, and as
+frolicsome as a bird upon a tree, or a breeze that makes merry with the
+leaves.
+
+She taught him how to call her from her pebbly source, and they spent
+many a happy hour together, more especially in the fervor of the summer
+days. For often as he sat waiting for her by the margin of the spring,
+she would suddenly fall down around him in a shower of sunny raindrops,
+with a rainbow glancing through them, and forthwith gather herself up
+into the likeness of a beautiful girl, laughing--or was it the warble of
+the rill over the pebbles?--to see the youth's amazement.
+
+
+Thus, kind maiden that she was, the hot atmosphere became deliciously
+cool and fragrant for this favored knight; and, furthermore, when he
+knelt down to drink out of the spring, nothing was more common than for
+a pair of rosy lips to come up out of its little depths, and touch his
+mouth with the thrill of a sweet, cool, dewy kiss!
+
+"It is a delightful story for the hot noon of your Tuscan summer,"
+observed the sculptor, at this point. "But the deportment of the watery
+lady must have had a most chilling influence in midwinter. Her lover
+would find it, very literally, a cold reception!"
+
+"I suppose," said Donatello rather sulkily, "you are making fun of the
+story. But I see nothing laughable in the thing itself, nor in what you
+say about it."
+
+He went on to relate, that for a long While the knight found infinite
+pleasure and comfort in the friendship of the fountain nymph. In his
+merriest hours, she gladdened him with her sportive humor. If ever he
+was annoyed with earthly trouble, she laid her moist hand upon his brow,
+and charmed the fret and fever quite away.
+
+But one day--one fatal noontide--the young knight came rushing with
+hasty and irregular steps to the accustomed fountain. He called the
+nymph; but--no doubt because there was something unusual and frightful
+in his tone she did not appear, nor answer him. He flung himself down,
+and washed his hands and bathed his feverish brow in the cool, pure
+water. And then there was a sound of woe; it might have been a woman's
+voice; it might have been only the sighing of the brook over the
+pebbles. The water shrank away from the youth's hands, and left his brow
+as dry and feverish as before.
+
+Donatello here came to a dead pause.
+
+"Why did the water shrink from this unhappy knight?" inquired the
+sculptor.
+
+"Because he had tried to wash off a bloodstain!" said the young Count,
+in a horror-stricken whisper. "The guilty man had polluted the pure
+water. The nymph might have comforted him in sorrow, but could not
+cleanse his conscience of a crime."
+
+"And did he never behold her more?" asked Kenyon.
+
+"Never but once," replied his friend. "He never beheld her blessed face
+but once again, and then there was a blood-stain on the poor nymph's
+brow; it was the stain his guilt had left in the fountain where he tried
+to wash it off. He mourned for her his whole life long, and employed
+the best sculptor of the time to carve this statue of the nymph from his
+description of her aspect. But, though my ancestor would fain have had
+the image wear her happiest look, the artist, unlike yourself, was so
+impressed with the mournfulness of the story, that, in spite of his best
+efforts, he made her forlorn, and forever weeping, as you see!"
+
+Kenyon found a certain charm in this simple legend. Whether so intended
+or not, he understood it as an apologue, typifying the soothing and
+genial effects of an habitual intercourse with nature in all ordinary
+cares and griefs; while, on the other hand, her mild influences fall
+short in their effect upon the ruder passions, and are altogether
+powerless in the dread fever-fit or deadly chill of guilt.
+
+"Do you say," he asked, "that the nymph's race has never since been
+shown to any mortal? Methinks you, by your native qualities, are as well
+entitled to her favor as ever your progenitor could have been. Why have
+you not summoned her?"
+
+"I called her often when I was a silly child," answered Donatello; and
+he added, in an inward voice, "Thank Heaven, she did not come!"
+
+"Then you never saw her?" said the sculptor.
+
+"Never in my life!" rejoined the Count. "No, my dear friend, I have
+not seen the nymph; although here, by her fountain, I used to make many
+strange acquaintances; for, from my earliest childhood, I was familiar
+with whatever creatures haunt the woods. You would have laughed to see
+the friends I had among them; yes, among the wild, nimble things, that
+reckon man their deadliest enemy! How it was first taught me, I cannot
+tell; but there was a charm--a voice, a murmur, a kind of chant--by
+which I called the woodland inhabitants, the furry people, and the
+feathered people, in a language that they seemed to understand."
+
+"I have heard of such a gift," responded the sculptor gravely, "but
+never before met with a person endowed with it. Pray try the charm;
+and lest I should frighten your friends away, I will withdraw into this
+thicket, and merely peep at them."
+
+"I doubt," said Donatello, "whether they will remember my voice now. It
+changes, you know, as the boy grows towards manhood."
+
+Nevertheless, as the young Count's good-nature and easy persuadability
+were among his best characteristics, he set about complying with
+Kenyon's request. The latter, in his concealment among the shrubberies,
+heard him send forth a sort of modulated breath, wild, rude, yet
+harmonious. It struck the auditor as at once the strangest and the
+most natural utterance that had ever reached his ears. Any idle boy,
+it should seem, singing to himself and setting his wordless song to
+no other or more definite tune than the play of his own pulses,
+might produce a sound almost identical with this; and yet, it was as
+individual as a murmur of the breeze. Donatello tried it, over and over
+again, with many breaks, at first, and pauses of uncertainty; then with
+more confidence, and a fuller swell, like a wayfarer groping out
+of obscurity into the light, and moving with freer footsteps as it
+brightens around him.
+
+Anon, his voice appeared to fill the air, yet not with an obtrusive
+clangor. The sound was of a murmurous character, soft, attractive,
+persuasive, friendly. The sculptor fancied that such might have been
+the original voice and utterance of the natural man, before the
+sophistication of the human intellect formed what we now call language.
+In this broad dialect--broad as the sympathies of nature--the human
+brother might have spoken to his inarticulate brotherhood that prowl the
+woods, or soar upon the wing, and have been intelligible to such extent
+as to win their confidence.
+
+The sound had its pathos too. At some of its simple cadences, the tears
+came quietly into Kenyon's eyes. They welled up slowly from his heart,
+which was thrilling with an emotion more delightful than he had often
+felt before, but which he forbore to analyze, lest, if he seized it, it
+should at once perish in his grasp.
+
+Donatello paused two or three times, and seemed to listen,--then,
+recommencing, he poured his spirit and life more earnestly into the
+strain. And finally,--or else the sculptor's hope and imagination
+deceived him,--soft treads were audible upon the fallen leaves. There
+was a rustling among the shrubbery; a whir of wings, moreover, that
+hovered in the air. It may have been all an illusion; but Kenyon fancied
+that he could distinguish the stealthy, cat-like movement of some small
+forest citizen, and that he could even see its doubtful shadow, if not
+really its substance. But, all at once, whatever might be the reason,
+there ensued a hurried rush and scamper of little feet; and then the
+sculptor heard a wild, sorrowful cry, and through the crevices of the
+thicket beheld Donatello fling himself on the ground.
+
+Emerging from his hiding-place, he saw no living thing, save a brown
+lizard (it was of the tarantula species) rustling away through the
+sunshine. To all present appearance, this venomous reptile was the only
+creature that had responded to the young Count's efforts to renew his
+intercourse with the lower orders of nature.
+
+"What has happened to you?" exclaimed Kenyon, stooping down over his
+friend, and wondering at the anguish which he betrayed.
+
+"Death, death!" sobbed Donatello. "They know it!"
+
+He grovelled beside the fountain, in a fit of such passionate sobbing
+and weeping, that it seemed as if his heart had broken, and spilt its
+wild sorrows upon the ground. His unrestrained grief and childish tears
+made Kenyon sensible in how small a degree the customs and restraints of
+society had really acted upon this young man, in spite of the quietude
+of his ordinary deportment. In response to his friend's efforts to
+console him, he murmured words hardly more articulate than the strange
+chant which he had so recently been breathing into the air.
+
+"They know it!" was all that Kenyon could yet distinguish,--"they know
+it!"
+
+"Who know it?" asked the sculptor. "And what is it their know?" "They
+know it!" repeated Donatello, trembling. "They shun me! All nature
+shrinks from me, and shudders at me! I live in the midst of a curse,
+that hems me round with a circle of fire! No innocent thing can come
+near me."
+
+"Be comforted, my dear friend," said Kenyon, kneeling beside him. "You
+labor under some illusion, but no curse. As for this strange, natural
+spell, which you have been exercising, and of which I have heard before,
+though I never believed in, nor expected to witness it, I am satisfied
+that you still possess it. It was my own half-concealed presence, no
+doubt, and some involuntary little movement of mine, that scared away
+your forest friends."
+
+"They are friends of mine no longer," answered Donatello.
+
+"We all of us, as we grow older," rejoined Kenyon, "lose somewhat of our
+proximity to nature. It is the price we pay for experience."
+
+"A heavy price, then!" said Donatello, rising from the ground. "But we
+will speak no more of it. Forget this scene, my dear friend. In your
+eyes, it must look very absurd. It is a grief, I presume, to all men, to
+find the pleasant privileges and properties of early life departing from
+them. That grief has now befallen me. Well; I shall waste no more tears
+for such a cause!"
+
+Nothing else made Kenyon so sensible of a change in Donatello, as his
+newly acquired power of dealing with his own emotions, and, after a
+struggle more or less fierce, thrusting them down into the prison cells
+where he usually kept them confined. The restraint, which he now put
+upon himself, and the mask of dull composure which he succeeded in
+clasping over his still beautiful, and once faun-like face, affected the
+sensitive sculptor more sadly than even the unrestrained passion of the
+preceding scene. It is a very miserable epoch, when the evil necessities
+of life, in our tortuous world, first get the better of us so far as to
+compel us to attempt throwing a cloud over our transparency. Simplicity
+increases in value the longer we can keep it, and the further we carry
+it onward into life; the loss of a child's simplicity, in the inevitable
+lapse of years, causes but a natural sigh or two, because even his
+mother feared that he could not keep it always. But after a young man
+has brought it through his childhood, and has still worn it in
+his bosom, not as an early dewdrop, but as a diamond of pure white
+lustre,--it is a pity to lose it, then. And thus, when Kenyon saw how
+much his friend had now to hide, and how well he hid it, he would have
+wept, although his tears would have been even idler than those which
+Donatello had just shed.
+
+They parted on the lawn before the house, the Count to climb his tower,
+and the sculptor to read an antique edition of Dante, which he had found
+among some old volumes of Catholic devotion, in a seldom-visited room,
+Tomaso met him in the entrance hall, and showed a desire to speak.
+
+"Our poor signorino looks very sad to-day!" he said.
+
+"Even so, good Tomaso," replied the sculptor. "Would that we could raise
+his spirits a little!"
+
+"There might be means, Signore," answered the old butler, "if one might
+but be sure that they were the right ones. We men are but rough nurses
+for a sick body or a sick spirit."
+
+"Women, you would say, my good friend, are better," said the sculptor,
+struck by an intelligence in the butler's face. "That is possible! But
+it depends."
+
+"Ah; we will wait a little longer," said Tomaso, with the customary
+shake of his head.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+THE OWL TOWER
+
+
+"Will you not show me your tower?" said the sculptor one day to his
+friend.
+
+"It is plainly enough to be seen, methinks," answered the Count, with
+a kind of sulkiness that often appeared in him, as one of the little
+symptoms of inward trouble.
+
+"Yes; its exterior is visible far and wide," said Kenyon. "But such
+a gray, moss-grown tower as this, however valuable as an object of
+scenery, will certainly be quite as interesting inside as out. It cannot
+be less than six hundred years old; the foundations and lower story are
+much older than that, I should judge; and traditions probably cling to
+the walls within quite as plentifully as the gray and yellow lichens
+cluster on its face without."
+
+"No doubt," replied Donatello,--"but I know little of such things, and
+never could comprehend the interest which some of you Forestieri take
+in them. A year or two ago an English signore, with a venerable white
+beard--they say he was a magician, too--came hither from as far off as
+Florence, just to see my tower."
+
+"Ah, I have seen him at Florence," observed Kenyon. "He is a
+necromancer, as you say, and dwells in an old mansion of the Knights
+Templars, close by the Ponte Vecchio, with a great many ghostly books,
+pictures, and antiquities, to make the house gloomy, and one bright-eyed
+little girl, to keep it cheerful!"
+
+"I know him only by his white beard," said Donatello; "but he could
+have told you a great deal about the tower, and the sieges which it has
+stood, and the prisoners who have been confined in it. And he gathered
+up all the traditions of the Monte Beni family, and, among the rest,
+the sad one which I told you at the fountain the other day. He had known
+mighty poets, he said, in his earlier life; and the most illustrious
+of them would have rejoiced to preserve such a legend in immortal
+rhyme,--especially if he could have had some of our wine of Sunshine to
+help out his inspiration!"
+
+"Any man might be a poet, as well as Byron, with such wine and such
+a theme," rejoined the sculptor. "But shall we climb your tower The
+thunder-storm gathering yonder among the hills will be a spectacle worth
+witnessing."
+
+"Come, then," said the Count, adding, with a sigh, "it has a weary
+staircase, and dismal chambers, and it is very lonesome at the summit!"
+
+"Like a man's life, when he has climbed to eminence," remarked the
+sculptor; "or, let us rather say, with its difficult steps, and the dark
+prison cells you speak of, your tower resembles the spiritual experience
+of many a sinful soul, which, nevertheless, may struggle upward into the
+pure air and light of Heaven at last!"
+
+Donatello sighed again, and led the way up into the tower.
+
+Mounting the broad staircase that ascended from the entrance hall,
+they traversed the great wilderness of a house, through some obscure
+passages, and came to a low, ancient doorway. It admitted them to a
+narrow turret stair which zigzagged upward, lighted in its progress by
+loopholes and iron-barred windows. Reaching the top of the first flight,
+the Count threw open a door of worm-eaten oak, and disclosed a chamber
+that occupied the whole area of the tower. It was most pitiably forlorn
+of aspect, with a brick-paved floor, bare holes through the massive
+walls, grated with iron, instead of windows, and for furniture an
+old stool, which increased the dreariness of the place tenfold, by
+suggesting an idea of its having once been tenanted.
+
+"This was a prisoner's cell in the old days," said Donatello; "the
+white-bearded necromancer, of whom I told you, found out that a certain
+famous monk was confined here, about five hundred years ago. He was a
+very holy man, and was afterwards burned at the stake in the Grand-ducal
+Square at Firenze. There have always been stories, Tomaso says, of
+a hooded monk creeping up and down these stairs, or standing in the
+doorway of this chamber. It must needs be the ghost of the ancient
+prisoner. Do you believe in ghosts?"
+
+"I can hardly tell," replied Kenyon; "on the whole, I think not."
+
+"Neither do I," responded the Count; "for, if spirits ever come back,
+I should surely have met one within these two months past. Ghosts never
+rise! So much I know, and am glad to know it!"
+
+Following the narrow staircase still higher, they came to another room
+of similar size and equally forlorn, but inhabited by two personages of
+a race which from time immemorial have held proprietorship and occupancy
+in ruined towers. These were a pair of owls, who, being doubtless
+acquainted with Donatello, showed little sign of alarm at the entrance
+of visitors. They gave a dismal croak or two, and hopped aside into the
+darkest corner, since it was not yet their hour to flap duskily abroad.
+
+"They do not desert me, like my other feathered acquaintances," observed
+the young Count, with a sad smile, alluding to the scene which Kenyon
+had witnessed at the fountain-side. "When I was a wild, playful boy, the
+owls did not love me half so well."
+
+He made no further pause here, but led his friend up another flight of
+steps--while, at every stage, the windows and narrow loopholes afforded
+Kenyon more extensive eye-shots over hill and valley, and allowed him
+to taste the cool purity of mid-atmosphere. At length they reached the
+topmost chamber, directly beneath the roof of the tower.
+
+"This is my own abode," said Donatello; "my own owl's nest."
+
+In fact, the room was fitted up as a bedchamber, though in a style of
+the utmost simplicity. It likewise served as an oratory; there being
+a crucifix in one corner, and a multitude of holy emblems, such as
+Catholics judge it necessary to help their devotion withal. Several
+ugly little prints, representing the sufferings of the Saviour, and the
+martyrdoms of saints, hung on the wall; and behind the crucifix there
+was a good copy of Titian's Magdalen of the Pitti Palace, clad only in
+the flow of her golden ringlets. She had a confident look (but it was
+Titian's fault, not the penitent woman's), as if expecting to win
+heaven by the free display of her earthly charms. Inside of a glass case
+appeared an image of the sacred Bambino, in the guise of a little waxen
+boy, very prettily made, reclining among flowers, like a Cupid, and
+holding up a heart that resembled a bit of red sealing-wax. A small vase
+of precious marble was full of holy water.
+
+Beneath the crucifix, on a table, lay a human skull, which looked as if
+it might have been dug up out of some old grave. But, examining it
+more closely, Kenyon saw that it was carved in gray alabaster; most
+skillfully done to the death, with accurate imitation of the teeth,
+the sutures, the empty eye-caverns, and the fragile little bones of the
+nose. This hideous emblem rested on a cushion of white marble, so nicely
+wrought that you seemed to see the impression of the heavy skull in a
+silken and downy substance.
+
+Donatello dipped his fingers into the holy-water vase, and crossed
+himself. After doing so he trembled.
+
+"I have no right to make the sacred symbol on a sinful breast!" he said.
+
+"On what mortal breast can it be made, then?" asked the sculptor. "Is
+there one that hides no sin?"
+
+"But these blessed emblems make you smile, I fear," resumed the Count,
+looking askance at his friend. "You heretics, I know, attempt to pray
+without even a crucifix to kneel at."
+
+"I, at least, whom you call a heretic, reverence that holy symbol,"
+answered Kenyon. "What I am most inclined to murmur at is this death's
+head. I could laugh, moreover, in its ugly face! It is absurdly
+monstrous, my dear friend, thus to fling the dead weight of our
+mortality upon our immortal hopes. While we live on earth, 't is true,
+we must needs carry our skeletons about with us; but, for Heaven's sake,
+do not let us burden our spirits with them, in our feeble efforts to
+soar upward! Believe me, it will change the whole aspect of death, if
+you can once disconnect it, in your idea, with that corruption from
+which it disengages our higher part."
+
+"I do not well understand you," said Donatello; and he took up the
+alabaster skull, shuddering, and evidently feeling it a kind of penance
+to touch it. "I only know that this skull has been in my family for
+centuries. Old Tomaso has a story that it was copied by a famous
+sculptor from the skull of that same unhappy knight who loved the
+fountain lady, and lost her by a blood-stain. He lived and died with a
+deep sense of sin upon him, and on his death-bed he ordained that this
+token of him should go down to his posterity. And my forefathers, being
+a cheerful race of men in their natural disposition, found it needful to
+have the skull often before their eyes, because they dearly loved life
+and its enjoyments, and hated the very thought of death."
+
+"I am afraid," said Kenyon, "they liked it none the better, for seeing
+its face under this abominable mask."
+
+Without further discussion, the Count led the way up one more flight of
+stairs, at the end of which they emerged upon the summit of the tower.
+The sculptor felt as if his being were suddenly magnified a hundredfold;
+so wide was the Umbrian valley that suddenly opened before him, set in
+its grand framework of nearer and more distant hills. It seemed as if
+all Italy lay under his eyes in that one picture. For there was the
+broad, sunny smile of God, which we fancy to be spread over that favored
+land more abundantly than on other regions, and beneath it glowed a
+most rich and varied fertility. The trim vineyards were there, and the
+fig-trees, and the mulberries, and the smoky-hued tracts of the olive
+orchards; there, too, were fields of every kind of grain, among which,
+waved the Indian corn, putting Kenyon in mind of the fondly remembered
+acres of his father's homestead. White villas, gray convents, church
+spires, villages, towns, each with its battlemented walls and towered
+gateway, were scattered upon this spacious map; a river gleamed across
+it; and lakes opened their blue eyes in its face, reflecting heaven,
+lest mortals should forget that better land when they beheld the earth
+so beautiful.
+
+
+What made the valley look still wider was the two or three varieties
+of weather that were visible on its surface, all at the same instant of
+time. Here lay the quiet sunshine; there fell the great black patches
+of ominous shadow from the clouds; and behind them, like a giant of
+league-long strides, came hurrying the thunderstorm, which had already
+swept midway across the plain. In the rear of the approaching tempest,
+brightened forth again the sunny splendor, which its progress had
+darkened with so terrible a frown.
+
+All round this majestic landscape, the bald-peaked or forest-crowned
+mountains descended boldly upon the plain. On many of their spurs and
+midway declivities, and even on their summits, stood cities, some of
+them famous of old; for these had been the seats and nurseries of early
+art, where the flower of beauty sprang out of a rocky soil, and in
+a high, keen atmosphere, when the richest and most sheltered gardens
+failed to nourish it.
+
+"Thank God for letting me again behold this scene!" Said the sculptor, a
+devout man in his way, reverently taking off his hat. "I have viewed it
+from many points, and never without as full a sensation of gratitude
+as my heart seems capable of feeling. How it strengthens the poor human
+spirit in its reliance on His providence, to ascend but this little way
+above the common level, and so attain a somewhat wider glimpse of His
+dealings with mankind! He doeth all things right! His will be done!"
+
+"You discern something that is hidden from me," observed Donatello
+gloomily, yet striving with unwonted grasp to catch the analogies
+which so cheered his friend. "I see sunshine on one spot, and cloud in
+another, and no reason for it in either ease. The sun on you; the cloud
+on me! What comfort can I draw from this?"
+
+"Nay; I cannot preach," said Kenyon, "with a page of heaven and a page
+of earth spread wide open before us! Only begin to read it, and you
+will find it interpreting itself without the aid of words. It is a great
+mistake to try to put our best thoughts into human language. When we
+ascend into the higher regions of emotion and spiritual enjoyment, they
+are only expressible by such grand hieroglyphics as these around us."
+
+They stood awhile, contemplating the scene; but, as inevitably happens
+after a spiritual flight, it was not long before the sculptor felt his
+wings flagging in the rarity of the upper atmosphere. He was glad to let
+himself quietly downward out of the mid-sky, as it were, and alight on
+the solid platform of the battlemented tower. He looked about him,
+and beheld growing out of the stone pavement, which formed the roof, a
+little shrub, with green and glossy leaves. It was the only green thing
+there; and Heaven knows how its seeds had ever been planted, at that
+airy height, or how it had found nourishment for its small life in the
+chinks of the stones; for it had no earth, and nothing more like soil
+than the crumbling mortar, which had been crammed into the crevices in a
+long-past age.
+
+Yet the plant seemed fond of its native site; and Donatello said it
+had always grown there from his earliest remembrance, and never, he
+believed, any smaller or any larger than they saw it now.
+
+"I wonder if the shrub teaches you any good lesson," said he, observing
+the interest with which Kenyon examined it. "If the wide valley has a
+great meaning, the plant ought to have at least a little one; and it has
+been growing on our tower long enough to have learned how to speak it."
+
+"O, certainly!" answered the sculptor; "the shrub has its moral, or
+it would have perished long ago. And, no doubt, it is for your use and
+edification, since you have had it before your eyes all your lifetime,
+and now are moved to ask what may be its lesson."
+
+"It teaches me nothing," said the simple Donatello, stooping over the
+plant, and perplexing himself with a minute scrutiny. "But here was a
+worm that would have killed it; an ugly creature, which I will fling
+over the battlements."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+ON THE BATTLEMENTS
+
+
+The sculptor now looked through art embrasure, and threw down a bit of
+lime, watching its fall, till it struck upon a stone bench at the rocky
+foundation of the tower, and flew into many fragments.
+
+"Pray pardon me for helping Time to crumble away your ancestral walls,"
+said he. "But I am one of those persons who have a natural tendency to
+climb heights, and to stand on the verge of them, measuring the depth
+below. If I were to do just as I like, at this moment, I should fling
+myself down after that bit of lime. It is a very singular temptation,
+and all but irresistible; partly, I believe, because it might be so
+easily done, and partly because such momentous consequences would ensue,
+without my being compelled to wait a moment for them. Have you never
+felt this strange impulse of an evil spirit at your back, shoving you
+towards a precipice?"
+
+"Ah, no!" cried. Donatello, shrinking from the battlemented wall with a
+face of horror. "I cling to life in a way which you cannot conceive; it
+has been so rich, so warm, so sunny!--and beyond its verge, nothing
+but the chilly dark! And then a fall from a precipice is such an awful
+death!"
+
+"Nay; if it be a great height," said Kenyon, "a man would leave his life
+in the air, and never feel the hard shock at the bottom."
+
+"That is not the way with this kind of death!" exclaimed Donatello, in a
+low, horror-stricken voice, which grew higher and more full of emotion
+as he proceeded. "Imagine a fellow creature,--breathing now, and looking
+you in the face,--and now tumbling down, down, down, with a long shriek
+wavering after him, all the way! He does not leave his life in the air!
+No; but it keeps in him till he thumps against the stones, a horribly
+long while; then he lies there frightfully quiet, a dead heap of bruised
+flesh and broken bones! A quiver runs through the crushed mass; and no
+more movement after that! No; not if you would give your soul to make
+him stir a finger! Ah, terrible! Yes, yes; I would fain fling myself
+down for the very dread of it, that I might endure it once for all, and
+dream of it no more!"
+
+"How forcibly, how frightfully you conceive this!" said the sculptor,
+aghast at the passionate horror which was betrayed in the Count's words,
+and still more in his wild gestures and ghastly look. "Nay, if the
+height of your tower affects your imagination thus, you do wrong to
+trust yourself here in solitude, and in the night-time, and at all
+unguarded hours. You are not safe in your chamber. It is but a step or
+two; and what if a vivid dream should lead you up hither at midnight,
+and act itself out as a reality!"
+
+Donatello had hidden his face in his hands, and was leaning against the
+parapet.
+
+"No fear of that!" said he. "Whatever the dream may be, I am too genuine
+a coward to act out my own death in it."
+
+The paroxysm passed away, and the two friends continued their desultory
+talk, very much as if no such interruption had occurred. Nevertheless,
+it affected the sculptor with infinite pity to see this young man, who
+had been born to gladness as an assured heritage, now involved in a
+misty bewilderment of grievous thoughts, amid which he seemed to go
+staggering blindfold. Kenyon, not without an unshaped suspicion of
+the definite fact, knew that his condition must have resulted from the
+weight and gloom of life, now first, through the agency of a secret
+trouble, making themselves felt on a character that had heretofore
+breathed only an atmosphere of joy. The effect of this hard lesson,
+upon Donatello's intellect and disposition, was very striking. It was
+perceptible that he had already had glimpses of strange and subtle
+matters in those dark caverns, into which all men must descend, if
+they would know anything beneath the surface and illusive pleasures of
+existence. And when they emerge, though dazzled and blinded by the first
+glare of daylight, they take truer and sadder views of life forever
+afterwards.
+
+From some mysterious source, as the sculptor felt assured, a soul had
+been inspired into the young Count's simplicity, since their intercourse
+in Rome. He now showed a far deeper sense, and an intelligence that
+began to deal with high subjects, though in a feeble and childish way.
+He evinced, too, a more definite and nobler individuality, but developed
+out of grief and pain, and fearfully conscious of the pangs that had
+given it birth. Every human life, if it ascends to truth or delves down
+to reality, must undergo a similar change; but sometimes, perhaps, the
+instruction comes without the sorrow; and oftener the sorrow teaches
+no lesson that abides with us. In Donatello's case, it was pitiful, and
+almost ludicrous, to observe the confused struggle that he made; how
+completely he was taken by surprise; how ill-prepared he stood, on this
+old battlefield of the world, to fight with such an inevitable foe as
+mortal calamity, and sin for its stronger ally.
+
+"And yet," thought Kenyon, "the poor fellow bears himself like a hero,
+too! If he would only tell me his trouble, or give me an opening to
+speak frankly about it, I might help him; but he finds it too horrible
+to be uttered, and fancies himself the only mortal that ever felt the
+anguish of remorse. Yes; he believes that nobody ever endured his agony
+before; so that--sharp enough in itself--it has all the additional zest
+of a torture just invented to plague him individually."
+
+The sculptor endeavored to dismiss the painful subject from his mind;
+and, leaning against the battlements, he turned his face southward and
+westward, and gazed across the breadth of the valley. His thoughts
+flew far beyond even those wide boundaries, taking an air-line from
+Donatello's tower to another turret that ascended into the sky of the
+summer afternoon, invisibly to him, above the roofs of distant Rome.
+Then rose tumultuously into his consciousness that strong love for
+Hilda, which it was his habit to confine in one of the heart's inner
+chambers, because he had found no encouragement to bring it forward. But
+now he felt a strange pull at his heart-strings. It could not have been
+more perceptible, if all the way between these battlements and Hilda's
+dove-cote had stretched an exquisitely sensitive cord, which, at the
+hither end, was knotted with his aforesaid heart-strings, and, at the
+remoter one, was grasped by a gentle hand. His breath grew tremulous. He
+put his hand to his breast; so distinctly did he seem to feel that cord
+drawn once, and again, and again, as if--though still it was bashfully
+intimated there were an importunate demand for his presence. O for the
+white wings of Hilda's doves, that he might, have flown thither, and
+alighted at the Virgin's shrine!
+
+But lovers, and Kenyon knew it well, project so lifelike a copy of
+their mistresses out of their own imaginations, that it can pull at
+the heartstrings almost as perceptibly as the genuine original. No airy
+intimations are to be trusted; no evidences of responsive affection less
+positive than whispered and broken words, or tender pressures of the
+hand, allowed and half returned; or glances, that distil many passionate
+avowals into one gleam of richly colored light. Even these should
+be weighed rigorously, at the instant; for, in another instant, the
+imagination seizes on them as its property, and stamps them with its
+own arbitrary value. But Hilda's maidenly reserve had given her lover no
+such tokens, to be interpreted either by his hopes or fears.
+
+"Yonder, over mountain and valley, lies Rome," said the sculptor; "shall
+you return thither in the autumn?"
+
+"Never! I hate Rome," answered Donatello; "and have good cause."
+
+"And yet it was a pleasant winter that we spent there," observed
+Kenyon, "and with pleasant friends about us. You would meet them again
+there--all of them."
+
+"All?" asked Donatello.
+
+"All, to the best of my belief," said the sculptor: "but you need not go
+to Rome to seek them. If there were one of those friends whose lifetime
+was twisted with your own, I am enough of a fatalist to feel assured
+that you will meet that one again, wander whither you may. Neither can
+we escape the companions whom Providence assigns for us, by climbing an
+old tower like this."
+
+"Yet the stairs are steep and dark," rejoined the Count; "none but
+yourself would seek me here, or find me, if they sought."
+
+As Donatello did not take advantage of this opening which his friend had
+kindly afforded him to pour out his hidden troubles, the latter again
+threw aside the subject, and returned to the enjoyment of the scene
+before him. The thunder-storm, which he had beheld striding across the
+valley, had passed to the left of Monte Beni, and was continuing its
+march towards the hills that formed the boundary on the eastward.
+Above the whole valley, indeed, the sky was heavy with tumbling vapors,
+interspersed with which were tracts of blue, vividly brightened by the
+sun; but, in the east, where the tempest was yet trailing its ragged
+skirts, lay a dusky region of cloud and sullen mist, in which some of
+the hills appeared of a dark purple hue. Others became so indistinct,
+that the spectator could not tell rocky height from impalpable cloud.
+Far into this misty cloud region, however,--within the domain of chaos,
+as it were,--hilltops were seen brightening in the sunshine; they looked
+like fragments of the world, broken adrift and based on nothingness,
+or like portions of a sphere destined to exist, but not yet finally
+compacted.
+
+The sculptor, habitually drawing many of the images and illustrations
+of his thoughts from the plastic art, fancied that the scene represented
+the process of the Creator, when he held the new, imperfect earth in his
+hand, and modelled it.
+
+"What a magic is in mist and vapor among the mountains!" he exclaimed.
+"With their help, one single scene becomes a thousand. The cloud scenery
+gives such variety to a hilly landscape that it would be worth while to
+journalize its aspect from hour to hour. A cloud, however,--as I have
+myself experienced,--is apt to grow solid and as heavy as a stone the
+instant that you take in hand to describe it, But, in my own heart,
+I have found great use in clouds. Such silvery ones as those to the
+northward, for example, have often suggested sculpturesque groups,
+figures, and attitudes; they are especially rich in attitudes of living
+repose, which a sculptor only hits upon by the rarest good fortune. When
+I go back to my dear native land, the clouds along the horizon will be
+my only gallery of art!"
+
+"I can see cloud shapes, too," said Donatello; "yonder is one that
+shifts strangely; it has been like people whom I knew. And now, if I
+watch it a little longer, it will take the figure of a monk reclining,
+with his cowl about his head and drawn partly over his face, and--well!
+did I not tell you so?"
+
+"I think," remarked Kenyon, "we can hardly be gazing at the same cloud.
+What I behold is a reclining figure, to be sure, but feminine, and with
+a despondent air, wonderfully well expressed in the wavering outline
+from head to foot. It moves my very heart by something indefinable that
+it suggests."
+
+"I see the figure, and almost the face," said the Count; adding, in a
+lower voice, "It is Miriam's!"
+
+"No, not Miriam's," answered the sculptor. While the two gazers thus
+found their own reminiscences and presentiments floating among the
+clouds, the day drew to its close, and now showed them the fair
+spectacle of an Italian sunset. The sky was soft and bright, but not so
+gorgeous as Kenyon had seen it, a thousand times, in America; for there
+the western sky is wont to be set aflame with breadths and depths of
+color with which poets seek in vain to dye their verses, and which
+painters never dare to copy. As beheld from the tower of Monte Beni, the
+scene was tenderly magnificent, with mild gradations of hue and a lavish
+outpouring of gold, but rather such gold as we see on the leaf of a
+bright flower than the burnished glow of metal from the mine. Or, if
+metallic, it looked airy and unsubstantial, like the glorified dreams
+of an alchemist. And speedily--more speedily than in our own clime--came
+the twilight, and, brightening through its gray transparency, the stars.
+
+A swarm of minute insects that had been hovering all day round the
+battlements were now swept away by the freshness of a rising breeze.
+The two owls in the chamber beneath Donatello's uttered their soft
+melancholy cry,--which, with national avoidance of harsh sounds, Italian
+owls substitute for the hoot of their kindred in other countries,--and
+flew darkling forth among the shrubbery. A convent bell rang out near at
+hand, and was not only echoed among the hills, but answered by another
+bell, and still another, which doubtless had farther and farther
+responses, at various distances along the valley; for, like the English
+drumbeat around the globe, there is a chain of convent bells from end
+to end, and crosswise, and in all possible directions over priest-ridden
+Italy.
+
+"Come," said the sculptor, "the evening air grows cool. It is time to
+descend."
+
+"Time for you, my friend," replied the Count; and he hesitated a little
+before adding, "I must keep a vigil here for some hours longer. It is my
+frequent custom to keep vigils,--and sometimes the thought occurs to me
+whether it were not better to keep them in yonder convent, the bell of
+which just now seemed to summon me. Should I do wisely, do you think, to
+exchange this old tower for a cell?"
+
+"What! Turn monk?" exclaimed his friend. "A horrible idea!"
+
+"True," said Donatello, sighing. "Therefore, if at all, I purpose doing
+it."
+
+"Then think of it no more, for Heaven's sake!" cried the sculptor.
+"There are a thousand better and more poignant methods of being
+miserable than that, if to be miserable is what you wish. Nay; I
+question whether a monk keeps himself up to the intellectual and
+spiritual height which misery implies. A monk I judge from their sensual
+physiognomies, which meet me at every turn--is inevitably a beast! Their
+souls, if they have any to begin with, perish out of them, before their
+sluggish, swinish existence is half done. Better, a million times, to
+stand star-gazing on these airy battlements, than to smother your new
+germ of a higher life in a monkish cell!"
+
+"You make me tremble," said Donatello, "by your bold aspersion of men
+who have devoted themselves to God's service!"
+
+"They serve neither God nor man, and themselves least of all, though
+their motives be utterly selfish," replied Kenyon. "Avoid the convent,
+my dear friend, as you would shun the death of the soul! But, for my own
+part, if I had an insupportable burden,--if, for any cause, I were
+bent upon sacrificing every earthly hope as a peace-offering towards
+Heaven,--I would make the wide world my cell, and good deeds to mankind
+my prayer. Many penitent men have done this, and found peace in it."
+
+"Ah, but you are a heretic!" said the Count.
+
+Yet his face brightened beneath the stars; and, looking at it through
+the twilight, the sculptor's remembrance went back to that scene in the
+Capitol, where, both in features and expression, Donatello had seemed
+identical with the Faun. And still there was a resemblance; for now,
+when first the idea was suggested of living for the welfare of his
+fellow-creatures, the original beauty, which sorrow had partly effaced,
+came back elevated and spiritualized. In the black depths the Faun had
+found a soul, and was struggling with it towards the light of heaven.
+
+The illumination, it is true, soon faded out of Donatello's face. The
+idea of lifelong and unselfish effort was too high to be received by
+him with more than a momentary comprehension. An Italian, indeed,
+seldom dreams of being philanthropic, except in bestowing alms among the
+paupers, who appeal to his beneficence at every step; nor does it
+occur to him that there are fitter modes of propitiating Heaven than
+by penances, pilgrimages, and offerings at shrines. Perhaps, too, their
+system has its share of moral advantages; they, at all events, cannot
+well pride themselves, as our own more energetic benevolence is apt to
+do, upon sharing in the counsels of Providence and kindly helping out
+its otherwise impracticable designs.
+
+And now the broad valley twinkled with lights, that glimmered through
+its duskiness like the fireflies in the garden of a Florentine palace. A
+gleam of lightning from the rear of the tempest showed the circumference
+of hills and the great space between, as the last cannon-flash of a
+retreating army reddens across the field where it has fought. The
+sculptor was on the point of descending the turret stair, when,
+somewhere in the darkness that lay beneath them, a woman's voice was
+heard, singing a low, sad strain.
+
+"Hark!" said he, laying his hand on Donatello's arm.
+
+And Donatello had said "Hark!" at the same instant.
+
+The song, if song it could be called, that had only a wild rhythm, and
+flowed forth in the fitful measure of a wind-harp, did not clothe itself
+in the sharp brilliancy of the Italian tongue. The words, so far as they
+could be distinguished, were German, and therefore unintelligible to the
+Count, and hardly less so to the sculptor; being softened and molten,
+as it were, into the melancholy richness of the voice that sung them. It
+was as the murmur of a soul bewildered amid the sinful gloom of earth,
+and retaining only enough memory of a better state to make sad music
+of the wail, which would else have been a despairing shriek. Never was
+there profounder pathos than breathed through that mysterious voice;
+it brought the tears into the sculptor's eyes, with remembrances and
+forebodings of whatever sorrow he had felt or apprehended; it made
+Donatello sob, as chiming in with the anguish that he found unutterable,
+and giving it the expression which he vaguely sought.
+
+But, when the emotion was at its profoundest depth, the voice rose out
+of it, yet so gradually that a gloom seemed to pervade it, far upward
+from the abyss, and not entirely to fall away as it ascended into a
+higher and purer region. At last, the auditors would have fancied that
+the melody, with its rich sweetness all there, and much of its sorrow
+gone, was floating around the very summit of the tower.
+
+"Donatello," said the sculptor, when there was silence again, "had that
+voice no message for your ear?"
+
+"I dare not receive it," said Donatello; "the anguish of which it spoke
+abides with me: the hope dies away with the breath that brought it
+hither. It is not good for me to hear that voice."
+
+The sculptor sighed, and left the poor penitent keeping his vigil on the
+tower.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+DONATELLO'S BUST
+
+
+Kenyon, it will be remembered, had asked Donatello's permission to model
+his bust. The work had now made considerable progress, and necessarily
+kept the sculptor's thoughts brooding much and often upon his host's
+personal characteristics. These it was his difficult office to bring out
+from their depths, and interpret them to all men, showing them what they
+could not discern for themselves, yet must be compelled to recognize at
+a glance, on the surface of a block of marble.
+
+He had never undertaken a portrait-bust which gave him so much trouble
+as Donatello's; not that there was any special difficulty in hitting
+the likeness, though even in this respect the grace and harmony of
+the features seemed inconsistent with a prominent expression of
+individuality; but he was chiefly perplexed how to make this genial and
+kind type of countenance the index of the mind within. His acuteness and
+his sympathies, indeed, were both somewhat at fault in their efforts
+to enlighten him as to the moral phase through which the Count was now
+passing. If at one sitting he caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a
+genuine and permanent trait, it would probably be less perceptible on
+a second occasion, and perhaps have vanished entirely at a third. So
+evanescent a show of character threw the sculptor into despair; not
+marble or clay, but cloud and vapor, was the material in which it
+ought to be represented. Even the ponderous depression which constantly
+weighed upon Donatello's heart could not compel him into the kind of
+repose which the plastic art requires.
+
+Hopeless of a good result, Kenyon gave up all preconceptions about the
+character of his subject, and let his hands work uncontrolled with the
+clay, somewhat as a spiritual medium, while holding a pen, yields it
+to an unseen guidance other than that of her own will. Now and then he
+fancied that this plan was destined to be the successful one. A skill
+and insight beyond his consciousness seemed occasionally to take up the
+task. The mystery, the miracle, of imbuing an inanimate substance
+with thought, feeling, and all the intangible attributes of the soul,
+appeared on the verge of being wrought. And now, as he flattered
+himself, the true image of his friend was about to emerge from the
+facile material, bringing with it more of Donatello's character than
+the keenest observer could detect at any one moment in the face of the
+original Vain expectation!--some touch, whereby the artist thought to
+improve or hasten the result, interfered with the design of his unseen
+spiritual assistant, and spoilt the whole. There was still the moist,
+brown clay, indeed, and the features of Donatello, but without any
+semblance of intelligent and sympathetic life.
+
+"The difficulty will drive me mad, I verily believe!" cried the sculptor
+nervously. "Look at the wretched piece of work yourself, my dear friend,
+and tell me whether you recognize any manner of likeness to your inner
+man?"
+
+"None," replied Donatello, speaking the simple truth. "It is like
+looking a stranger in the face."
+
+This frankly unfavorable testimony so wrought with the sensitive artist,
+that he fell into a passion with the stubborn image, and cared not what
+might happen to it thenceforward. Wielding that wonderful power which
+sculptors possess over moist clay, however refractory it may show itself
+in certain respects, he compressed, elongated, widened, and otherwise
+altered the features of the bust in mere recklessness, and at every
+change inquired of the Count whether the expression became anywise more
+satisfactory.
+
+"Stop!" cried Donatello at last, catching the sculptor's hand. "Let
+it remain so!" By some accidental handling of the clay, entirely
+independent of his own will, Kenyon had given the countenance a
+distorted and violent look, combining animal fierceness with intelligent
+hatred. Had Hilda, or had Miriam, seen the bust, with the expression
+which it had now assumed, they might have recognized Donatello's face as
+they beheld it at that terrible moment when he held his victim over the
+edge of the precipice.
+
+"What have I done?" said the sculptor, shocked at his own casual
+production. "It were a sin to let the clay which bears your features
+harden into a look like that. Cain never wore an uglier one."
+
+"For that very reason, let it remain!" answered the Count, who had grown
+pale as ashes at the aspect of his crime, thus strangely presented to
+him in another of the many guises under which guilt stares the criminal
+in the face. "Do not alter it! Chisel it, rather, in eternal marble!
+I will set it up in my oratory and keep it continually before my eyes.
+Sadder and more horrible is a face like this, alive with my own crime,
+than the dead skull which my forefathers handed down to me!"
+
+But, without in the least heeding Donatello's remonstrances, the
+sculptor again applied his artful fingers to the clay, and compelled the
+bust to dismiss the expression that had so startled them both.
+
+"Believe me," said he, turning his eyes upon his friend, full of grave
+and tender sympathy, "you know not what is requisite for your spiritual
+growth, seeking, as you do, to keep your soul perpetually in the
+unwholesome region of remorse. It was needful for you to pass through
+that dark valley, but it is infinitely dangerous to linger there too
+long; there is poison in the atmosphere, when we sit down and brood in
+it, instead of girding up our loins to press onward. Not despondency,
+not slothful anguish, is what you now require,--but effort! Has there
+been an unalterable evil in your young life? Then crowd it out with
+good, or it will lie corrupting there forever, and cause your capacity
+for better things to partake its noisome corruption!"
+
+"You stir up many thoughts," said Donatello, pressing his hand upon his
+brow, "but the multitude and the whirl of them make me dizzy."
+
+They now left the sculptor's temporary studio, without observing that
+his last accidental touches, with which he hurriedly effaced the look of
+deadly rage, had given the bust a higher and sweeter expression than it
+had hitherto worn. It is to be regretted that Kenyon had not seen
+it; for only an artist, perhaps, can conceive the irksomeness, the
+irritation of brain, the depression of spirits, that resulted from his
+failure to satisfy himself, after so much toil and thought as he had
+bestowed on Donatello's bust. In case of success, indeed, all this
+thoughtful toil would have been reckoned, not only as well bestowed,
+but as among the happiest hours of his life; whereas, deeming himself to
+have failed, it was just so much of life that had better never have
+been lived; for thus does the good or ill result of his labor throw back
+sunshine or gloom upon the artist's mind. The sculptor, therefore, would
+have done well to glance again at his work; for here were still the
+features of the antique Faun, but now illuminated with a higher meaning,
+such as the old marble never bore.
+
+Donatello having quitted him, Kenyon spent the rest of the day strolling
+about the pleasant precincts of Monte Beni, where the summer was now
+so far advanced that it began, indeed, to partake of the ripe wealth of
+autumn. Apricots had long been abundant, and had passed away, and plums
+and cherries along with them. But now came great, juicy pears, melting
+and delicious, and peaches of goodly size and tempting aspect, though
+cold and watery to the palate, compared with the sculptor's rich
+reminiscences of that fruit in America. The purple figs had already
+enjoyed their day, and the white ones were luscious now. The contadini
+(who, by this time, knew Kenyon well) found many clusters of ripe grapes
+for him, in every little globe of which was included a fragrant draught
+of the sunny Monte Beni wine.
+
+Unexpectedly, in a nook close by the farmhouse, he happened upon a spot
+where the vintage had actually commenced. A great heap of early ripened
+grapes had been gathered, and thrown into a mighty tub. In the middle
+of it stood a lusty and jolly contadino, nor stood, merely, but stamped
+with all his might, and danced amain; while the red juice bathed his
+feet, and threw its foam midway up his brown and shaggy legs. Here,
+then, was the very process that shows so picturesquely in Scripture
+and in poetry, of treading out the wine-press and dyeing the feet and
+garments with the crimson effusion as with the blood of a battlefield.
+The memory of the process does not make the Tuscan wine taste more
+deliciously. The contadini hospitably offered Kenyon a sample of the new
+liquor, that had already stood fermenting for a day or two. He had tried
+a similar draught, however, in years past, and was little inclined to
+make proof of it again; for he knew that it would be a sour and bitter
+juice, a wine of woe and tribulation, and that the more a man drinks of
+such liquor, the sorrier he is likely to be.
+
+The scene reminded the sculptor of our New England vintages, where the
+big piles of golden and rosy apples lie under the orchard trees, in the
+mild, autumnal sunshine; and the creaking cider-mill, set in motion by
+a circumgyratory horse, is all a-gush with the luscious juice. To speak
+frankly, the cider-making is the more picturesque sight of the two,
+and the new, sweet cider an infinitely better drink than the ordinary,
+unripe Tuscan wine. Such as it is, however, the latter fills thousands
+upon thousands of small, flat barrels, and, still growing thinner and
+sharper, loses the little life it had, as wine, and becomes apotheosized
+as a more praiseworthy vinegar.
+
+Yet all these vineyard scenes, and the processes connected with the
+culture of the grape, had a flavor of poetry about them. The toil that
+produces those kindly gifts of nature which are not the substance of
+life, but its luxury, is unlike other toil. We are inclined to fancy
+that it does not bend the sturdy frame and stiffen the overwrought
+muscles, like the labor that is devoted in sad, hard earnest to
+raise grain for sour bread. Certainly, the sunburnt young men and
+dark-cheeked, laughing girls, who weeded the rich acres of Monte Beni,
+might well enough have passed for inhabitants of an unsophisticated
+Arcadia. Later in the season, when the true vintage time should come,
+and the wine of Sunshine gush into the vats, it was hardly too wild a
+dream that Bacchus himself might revisit the haunts which he loved of
+old. But, alas! where now would he find the Faun with whom we see him
+consorting in so many an antique group?
+
+Donatello's remorseful anguish saddened this primitive and delightful
+life. Kenyon had a pain of his own, moreover, although not all a pain,
+in the never quiet, never satisfied yearning of his heart towards Hilda.
+He was authorized to use little freedom towards that shy maiden, even
+in his visions; so that he almost reproached himself when sometimes his
+imagination pictured in detail the sweet years that they might spend
+together, in a retreat like this. It had just that rarest quality of
+remoteness from the actual and ordinary world B a remoteness
+through which all delights might visit them freely, sifted from all
+troubles--which lovers so reasonably insist upon, in their ideal
+arrangements for a happy union. It is possible, indeed, that even
+Donatello's grief and Kenyon's pale, sunless affection lent a charm
+to Monte Beni, which it would not have retained amid a more abundant
+joyousness. The sculptor strayed amid its vineyards and orchards,
+its dells and tangled shrubberies, with somewhat the sensations of an
+adventurer who should find his way to the site of ancient Eden, and
+behold its loveliness through the transparency of that gloom which has
+been brooding over those haunts of innocence ever since the fall. Adam
+saw it in a brighter sunshine, but never knew the shade of Pensive
+beauty which Eden won from his expulsion.
+
+It was in the decline of the afternoon that Kenyon returned from his
+long, musing ramble, Old Tomaso--between whom and himself for some time
+past there had been a mysterious understanding,--met him in the entrance
+hall, and drew him a little aside.
+
+"The signorina would speak with you," he whispered.
+
+"In the chapel?" asked the sculptor.
+
+"No; in the saloon beyond it," answered the butler: "the entrance you
+once saw the signorina appear through it is near the altar, hidden
+behind the tapestry."
+
+Kenyon lost no time in obeying the summons.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+THE MARBLE SALOON
+
+
+In an old Tuscan villa, a chapel ordinarily makes one among the numerous
+apartments; though it often happens that the door is permanently closed,
+the key lost, and the place left to itself, in dusty sanctity, like that
+chamber in man's heart where he hides his religious awe. This was very
+much the case with the chapel of Monte Beni. One rainy day, however,
+in his wanderings through the great, intricate house, Kenyon had
+unexpectedly found his way into it, and been impressed by its solemn
+aspect. The arched windows, high upward in the wall, and darkened with
+dust and cobweb, threw down a dim light that showed the altar, with a
+picture of a martyrdom above, and some tall tapers ranged before it.
+They had apparently been lighted, and burned an hour or two, and been
+extinguished perhaps half a century before. The marble vase at the
+entrance held some hardened mud at the bottom, accruing from the dust
+that had settled in it during the gradual evaporation of the holy water;
+and a spider (being an insect that delights in pointing the moral of
+desolation and neglect) had taken pains to weave a prodigiously thick
+tissue across the circular brim. An old family banner, tattered by
+the moths, drooped from the vaulted roof. In niches there were some
+mediaeval busts of Donatello's forgotten ancestry; and among them, it
+might be, the forlorn visage of that hapless knight between whom and the
+fountain-nymph had occurred such tender love passages.
+
+Throughout all the jovial prosperity of Monte Beni, this one spot within
+the domestic walls had kept itself silent, stern, and sad. When the
+individual or the family retired from song and mirth, they here sought
+those realities which men do not invite their festive associates to
+share. And here, on the occasion above referred to, the sculptor had
+discovered--accidentally, so far as he was concerned, though with a
+purpose on her part--that there was a guest under Donatello's roof,
+whose presence the Count did not suspect. An interview had since taken
+place, and he was now summoned to another.
+
+He crossed the chapel, in compliance with Tomaso's instructions, and,
+passing through the side entrance, found himself in a saloon, of no
+great size, but more magnificent than he had supposed the villa to
+contain. As it was vacant, Kenyon had leisure to pace it once or twice,
+and examine it with a careless sort of scrutiny, before any person
+appeared.
+
+This beautiful hall was floored with rich marbles, in artistically
+arranged figures and compartments. The walls, likewise, were almost
+entirely cased in marble of various kinds, the prevalent, variety
+being giallo antico, intermixed with verd-antique, and others equally
+precious. The splendor of the giallo antico, however, was what gave
+character to the saloon; and the large and deep niches, apparently
+intended for full length statues, along the walls, were lined with the
+same costly material. Without visiting Italy, one can have no idea of
+the beauty and magnificence that are produced by these fittings-up of
+polished marble. Without such experience, indeed, we do not even know
+what marble means, in any sense, save as the white limestone of which
+we carve our mantelpieces. This rich hall of Monte Beni, moreover, was
+adorned, at its upper end, with two pillars that seemed to consist of
+Oriental alabaster; and wherever there was a space vacant of precious
+and variegated marble, it was frescoed with ornaments in arabesque.
+Above, there was a coved and vaulted ceiling, glowing with pictured
+scenes, which affected Kenyon with a vague sense of splendor, without
+his twisting his neck to gaze at them.
+
+It is one of the special excellences of such a saloon of polished and
+richly colored marble, that decay can never tarnish it. Until the house
+crumbles down upon it, it shines indestructibly, and, with a little
+dusting, looks just as brilliant in its three hundredth year as the day
+after the final slab of giallo antico was fitted into the wall. To the
+sculptor, at this first View of it, it seemed a hall where the sun was
+magically imprisoned, and must always shine. He anticipated Miriam's
+entrance, arrayed in queenly robes, and beaming with even more than the
+singular beauty that had heretofore distinguished her.
+
+While this thought was passing through his mind, the pillared door, at
+the upper end of the saloon, was partly opened, and Miriam appeared. She
+was very pale, and dressed in deep mourning. As she advanced towards the
+sculptor, the feebleness of her step was so apparent that he made haste
+to meet her, apprehending that she might sink down on the marble floor,
+without the instant support of his arm.
+
+But, with a gleam of her natural self-reliance, she declined his aid,
+and, after touching her cold hand to his, went and sat down on one of
+the cushioned divans that were ranged against the wall.
+
+"You are very ill, Miriam!" said Kenyon, much shocked at her appearance.
+"I had not thought of this."
+
+"No; not so ill as I seem to you," she answered; adding despondently,
+"yet I am ill enough, I believe, to die, unless some change speedily
+occurs."
+
+"What, then, is your disorder?" asked the sculptor; "and what the
+remedy?"
+
+"The disorder!" repeated Miriam. "There is none that I know of save too
+much life and strength, without a purpose for one or the other. It is
+my too redundant energy that is slowly--or perhaps rapidly--wearing me
+away, because I can apply it to no use. The object, which I am bound to
+consider my only one on earth, fails me utterly. The sacrifice which I
+yearn to make of myself, my hopes, my everything, is coldly put aside.
+Nothing is left for me but to brood, brood, brood, all day, all night,
+in unprofitable longings and repinings."
+
+"This is very sad, Miriam," said Kenyon.
+
+"Ay, indeed; I fancy so," she replied, with a short, unnatural laugh.
+
+"With all your activity of mind," resumed he, "so fertile in plans as
+I have known you, can you imagine no method of bringing your resources
+into play?"
+
+"My mind is not active any longer," answered Miriam, in a cold,
+indifferent tone. "It deals with one thought and no more. One
+recollection paralyzes it. It is not remorse; do not think it! I put
+myself out of the question, and feel neither regret nor penitence on
+my own behalf. But what benumbs me, what robs me of all power,-it is
+no secret for a woman to tell a man, yet I care not though you know it,
+--is the certainty that I am, and must ever be, an object of horror in
+Donatello's sight."
+
+The sculptor--a young man, and cherishing a love which insulated
+him from the wild experiences which some men gather--was startled to
+perceive how Miriam's rich, ill-regulated nature impelled her to
+fling herself, conscience and all, on one passion, the object of which
+intellectually seemed far beneath her.
+
+"How have you obtained the certainty of which you speak?" asked he,
+after a pause.
+
+"O, by a sure token," said Miriam; "a gesture, merely; a shudder, a cold
+shiver, that ran through him one sunny morning when his hand happened to
+touch mine! But it was enough."
+
+"I firmly believe, Miriam," said the sculptor, "that he loves you
+still."
+
+She started, and a flush of color came tremulously over the paleness of
+her cheek.
+
+"Yes," repeated Kenyon, "if my interest in Donatello--and in yourself,
+Miriam--endows me with any true insight, he not only loves you still,
+but with a force and depth proportioned to the stronger grasp of his
+faculties, in their new development."
+
+"Do not deceive me," said Miriam, growing pale again.
+
+"Not for the world!" replied Kenyon. "Here is what I take to be
+the truth. There was an interval, no doubt, when the horror of some
+calamity, which I need not shape out in my conjectures, threw Donatello
+into a stupor of misery. Connected with the first shock there was an
+intolerable pain and shuddering repugnance attaching themselves to
+all the circumstances and surroundings of the event that so terribly
+affected him. Was his dearest friend involved within the horror of that
+moment? He would shrink from her as he shrank most of all from himself.
+But as his mind roused itself,--as it rose to a higher life than he had
+hitherto experienced,--whatever had been true and permanent within him
+revived by the selfsame impulse. So has it been with his love."
+
+"But, surely," said Miriam, "he knows that I am here! Why, then, except
+that I am odious to him, does he not bid me welcome?"
+
+"He is, I believe, aware of your presence here," answered the sculptor.
+"Your song, a night or two ago, must have revealed it to him, and, in
+truth, I had fancied that there was already a consciousness of it in
+his mind. But, the more passionately he longs for your society, the more
+religiously he deems himself bound to avoid it. The idea of a lifelong
+penance has taken strong possession of Donatello. He gropes blindly
+about him for some method of sharp self-torture, and finds, of course,
+no other so efficacious as this."
+
+"But he loves me," repeated Miriam, in a low voice, to herself. "Yes; he
+loves me!"
+
+It was strange to observe the womanly softness that came over her,
+as she admitted that comfort into her bosom. The cold, unnatural
+indifference of her manner, a kind of frozen passionateness which had
+shocked and chilled the sculptor, disappeared. She blushed, and turned
+away her eyes, knowing that there was more surprise and joy in their
+dewy glances than any man save one ought to detect there.
+
+"In other respects," she inquired at length, "is he much changed?"
+
+"A wonderful process is going forward in Donatello's mind," answered the
+sculptor. "The germs of faculties that have heretofore slept are fast
+springing into activity. The world of thought is disclosing itself to
+his inward sight. He startles me, at times, with his perception of deep
+truths; and, quite as often, it must be owned, he compels me to smile by
+the intermixture of his former simplicity with a new intelligence. But
+he is bewildered with the revelations that each day brings. Out of
+his bitter agony, a soul and intellect, I could almost say, have been
+inspired into him."
+
+"Ah, I could help him here!" cried Miriam, clasping her hands. "And
+how sweet a toil to bend and adapt my whole nature to do him good! To
+instruct, to elevate, to enrich his mind with the wealth that would flow
+in upon me, had I such a motive for acquiring it! Who else can perform
+the task? Who else has the tender sympathy which he requires? Who else,
+save only me,--a woman, a sharer in the same dread secret, a partaker in
+one identical guilt,--could meet him on such terms of intimate equality
+as the case demands? With this object before me, I might feel a right to
+live! Without it, it is a shame for me to have lived so long."
+
+"I fully agree with you," said Kenyon, "that your true place is by his
+side."
+
+"Surely it is," replied Miriam. "If Donatello is entitled to aught on
+earth, it is to my complete self-sacrifice for his sake. It does not
+weaken his claim, methinks, that my only prospect of happiness a
+fearful word, however lies in the good that may accrue to him from our
+intercourse. But he rejects me! He will not listen to the whisper of his
+heart, telling him that she, most wretched, who beguiled him into evil,
+might guide him to a higher innocence than that from which he fell. How
+is this first great difficulty to be obviated?"
+
+"It lies at your own option, Miriam, to do away the obstacle, at any
+moment," remarked the sculptor. "It is but to ascend Donatello's tower,
+and you will meet him there, under the eye of God."
+
+"I dare not," answered Miriam. "No; I dare not!"
+
+"Do you fear," asked the sculptor, "the dread eye-witness whom I have
+named?"
+
+"No; for, as far as I can see into that cloudy and inscrutable thing, my
+heart, it has none but pure motives," replied Miriam. "But, my friend,
+you little know what a weak or what a strong creature a woman is! I
+fear not Heaven, in this case, at least, but--shall I confess it? I
+am greatly in dread of Donatello. Once he shuddered at my touch. If he
+shudder once again, or frown, I die!"
+
+Kenyon could not but marvel at the subjection into which this proud and
+self-dependent woman had willfully flung herself, hanging her life upon
+the chance of an angry or favorable regard from a person who, a little
+while before, had seemed the plaything of a moment. But, in Miriam's
+eyes, Donatello was always, thenceforth, invested with the tragic
+dignity of their hour of crime; and, furthermore, the keen and deep
+insight, with which her love endowed her, enabled her to know him
+far better than he could be known by ordinary observation. Beyond all
+question, since she loved him so, there was a force in Donatello worthy
+of her respect and love.
+
+"You see my weakness," said Miriam, flinging out her hands, as a person
+does when a defect is acknowledged, and beyond remedy. "What I need,
+now, is an opportunity to show my strength."
+
+"It has occurred to me," Kenyon remarked, "that the time is come when
+it may be desirable to remove Donatello from the complete seclusion in
+which he buries himself. He has struggled long enough with one idea.
+He now needs a variety of thought, which cannot be otherwise so readily
+supplied to him, as through the medium of a variety of scenes. His mind
+is awakened, now; his heart, though full of pain, is no longer benumbed.
+They should have food and solace. If he linger here much longer, I fear
+that he may sink back into a lethargy. The extreme excitability, which
+circumstances have imparted to his moral system, has its dangers and
+its advantages; it being one of the dangers, that an obdurate scar may
+supervene upon its very tenderness. Solitude has done what it could for
+him; now, for a while, let him be enticed into the outer world."
+
+"What is your plan, then?" asked Miriam.
+
+"Simply," replied Kenyon, "to persuade Donatello to be my companion in
+a ramble among these hills and valleys. The little adventures and
+vicissitudes of travel will do him infinite good. After his recent
+profound experience, he will re-create the world by the new eyes with
+which he will regard it. He will escape, I hope, out of a morbid life,
+and find his way into a healthy one."
+
+"And what is to be my part in this process?" inquired Miriam sadly, and
+not without jealousy. "You are taking him from me, and putting yourself,
+and all manner of living interests, into the place which I ought to
+fill!"
+
+"It would rejoice me, Miriam, to yield the entire responsibility of this
+office to yourself," answered the sculptor. "I do not pretend to be
+the guide and counsellor whom Donatello needs; for, to mention no
+other obstacle, I am a man, and between man and man there is always an
+insuperable gulf. They can never quite grasp each other's hands; and
+therefore man never derives any intimate help, any heart sustenance,
+from his brother man, but from woman--his mother, his sister, or his
+wife. Be Donatello's friend at need, therefore, and most gladly will I
+resign him!"
+
+"It is not kind to taunt me thus," said Miriam. "I have told you that I
+cannot do what you suggest, because I dare not."
+
+"Well, then," rejoined the sculptor, "see if there is any possibility of
+adapting yourself to my scheme. The incidents of a journey often fling
+people together in the oddest and therefore the most natural way.
+Supposing you were to find yourself on the same route, a reunion with
+Donatello might ensue, and Providence have a larger hand in it than
+either of us."
+
+"It is not a hopeful plan," said Miriam, shaking her head, after a
+moment's thought; "yet I will not reject it without a trial. Only in
+case it fail, here is a resolution to which I bind myself, come what
+come may! You know the bronze statue of Pope Julius in the great square
+of Perugia? I remember standing in the shadow of that statue one sunny
+noontime, and being impressed by its paternal aspect, and fancying that
+a blessing fell upon me from its outstretched hand. Ever since, I have
+had a superstition, you will call it foolish, but sad and ill-fated
+persons always dream such things,--that, if I waited long enough in
+that same spot, some good event would come to pass. Well, my friend,
+precisely a fortnight after you begin your tour,--unless we sooner
+meet,--bring Donatello, at noon, to the base of the statue. You will
+find me there!"
+
+Kenyon assented to the proposed arrangement, and, after some
+conversation respecting his contemplated line of travel, prepared to
+take his leave. As he met Miriam's eyes, in bidding farewell, he was
+surprised at the new, tender gladness that beamed out of them, and at
+the appearance of health and bloom, which, in this little while, had
+overspread her face.'
+
+"May I tell you, Miriam," said he, smiling, "that you are still as
+beautiful as ever?"
+
+"You have a right to notice it," she replied, "for, if it be so, my
+faded bloom has been revived by the hopes you give me. Do you, then,
+think me beautiful? I rejoice, most truly. Beauty--if I possess
+it--shall be one of the instruments by which I will try to educate and
+elevate him, to whose good I solely dedicate myself."
+
+The sculptor had nearly reached the door, when, hearing her call him, he
+turned back, and beheld Miriam still standing where he had left her, in
+the magnificent hall which seemed only a fit setting for her beauty. She
+beckoned him to return.
+
+"You are a man of refined taste," said she; "more than that,--a man of
+delicate sensibility. Now tell me frankly, and on your honor! Have I not
+shocked you many times during this interview by my betrayal of woman's
+cause, my lack of feminine modesty, my reckless, passionate, most
+indecorous avowal, that I live only in the life of one who, perhaps,
+scorns and shudders at me?"
+
+Thus adjured, however difficult the point to which she brought him, the
+sculptor was not a man to swerve aside from the simple truth.
+
+"Miriam," replied he, "you exaggerate the impression made upon my
+mind; but it has been painful, and somewhat of the character which you
+suppose."
+
+"I knew it," said Miriam, mournfully, and with no resentment. "What
+remains of my finer nature would have told me so, even if it had not
+been perceptible in all your manner. Well, my dear friend, when you
+go back to Rome, tell Hilda what her severity has done! She was all
+womanhood to me; and when she cast me off, I had no longer any terms to
+keep with the reserves and decorums of my sex. Hilda has set me free!
+Pray tell her so, from Miriam, and thank her!"
+
+"I shall tell Hilda nothing that will give her pain," answered Kenyon.
+"But, Miriam, though I know not what passed between her and yourself, I
+feel,--and let the noble frankness of your disposition forgive me if
+I say so,--I feel that she was right. You have a thousand admirable
+qualities. Whatever mass of evil may have fallen into your life,
+--pardon me, but your own words suggest it,--you are still as capable
+as ever of many high and heroic virtues. But the white shining purity
+of Hilda's nature is a thing apart; and she is bound, by the undefiled
+material of which God moulded her, to keep that severity which I, as
+well as you, have recognized."
+
+"O, you are right!" said Miriam; "I never questioned it; though, as
+I told you, when she cast me off, it severed some few remaining bonds
+between me and decorous womanhood. But were there anything to forgive, I
+do forgive her. May you win her virgin heart; for methinks there can
+be few men in this evil world who are not more unworthy of her than
+yourself."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+SCENES BY THE WAY
+
+
+When it came to the point of quitting the reposeful life of Monte Beni,
+the sculptor was not without regrets, and would willingly have dreamed a
+little longer of the sweet paradise on earth that Hilda's presence
+there might make. Nevertheless, amid all its repose, he had begun to be
+sensible of a restless melancholy, to which the cultivators of the ideal
+arts are more liable than sturdier men. On his own part, therefore, and
+leaving Donatello out of the case, he would have judged it well to go.
+He made parting visits to the legendary dell, and to other delightful
+spots with which he had grown familiar; he climbed the tower again, and
+saw a sunset and a moonrise over the great valley; he drank, on the
+eve of his departure, one flask, and then another, of the Monte Beni
+Sunshine, and stored up its flavor in his memory as the standard of what
+is exquisite in wine. These things accomplished, Kenyon was ready for
+the journey.
+
+Donatello had not very easily been stirred out of the peculiar
+sluggishness, which enthralls and bewitches melancholy people. He had
+offered merely a passive resistance, however, not an active one, to his
+friend's schemes; and when the appointed hour came, he yielded to the
+impulse which Kenyon failed not to apply; and was started upon the
+journey before he had made up his mind to undertake it. They wandered
+forth at large, like two knights-errant, among the valleys, and the
+mountains, and the old mountain towns of that picturesque and
+lovely region. Save to keep the appointment with Miriam, a fortnight
+thereafter, in the great square of Perugia, there was nothing more
+definite in the sculptor's plan than that they should let themselves
+be blown hither and thither like Winged seeds, that mount upon each
+wandering breeze. Yet there was an idea of fatality implied in the
+simile of the winged seeds which did not altogether suit Kenyon's fancy;
+for, if you look closely into the matter, it will be seen that whatever
+appears most vagrant, and utterly purposeless, turns out, in the end,
+to have been impelled the most surely on a preordained and unswerving
+track. Chance and change love to deal with men's settled plans, not with
+their idle vagaries. If we desire unexpected and unimaginable events,
+we should contrive an iron framework, such as we fancy may compel the
+future to take one inevitable shape; then comes in the unexpected, and
+shatters our design in fragments.
+
+The travellers set forth on horseback, and purposed to perform much of
+their aimless journeyings under the moon, and in the cool of the morning
+or evening twilight; the midday sun, while summer had hardly begun to
+trail its departing skirts over Tuscany, being still too fervid to allow
+of noontide exposure.
+
+For a while, they wandered in that same broad valley which Kenyon had
+viewed with such delight from the Monte Beni tower. The sculptor soon
+began to enjoy the idle activity of their new life, which the lapse of
+a day or two sufficed to establish as a kind of system; it is so natural
+for mankind to be nomadic, that a very little taste of that primitive
+mode of existence subverts the settled habits of many preceding years.
+Kenyon's cares, and whatever gloomy ideas before possessed him, seemed
+to be left at Monte Beni, and were scarcely remembered by the time
+that its gray tower grew undistinguishable on the brown hillside. His
+perceptive faculties, which had found little exercise of late, amid so
+thoughtful a way of life, became keen, and kept his eyes busy with a
+hundred agreeable scenes.
+
+He delighted in the picturesque bits of rustic character and manners, so
+little of which ever comes upon the surface of our life at home. There,
+for example, were the old women, tending pigs or sheep by the wayside.
+As they followed the vagrant steps of their charge, these venerable
+ladies kept spinning yarn with that elsewhere forgotten contrivance,
+the distaff; and so wrinkled and stern looking were they, that you might
+have taken them for the Parcae, spinning the threads of human destiny.
+In contrast with their great-grandmothers were the children, leading
+goats of shaggy beard, tied by the horns, and letting them browse on
+branch and shrub. It is the fashion of Italy to add the petty industry
+of age and childhood to the hum of human toil. To the eyes of an
+observer from the Western world, it was a strange spectacle to see
+sturdy, sunburnt creatures, in petticoats, but otherwise manlike,
+toiling side by side with male laborers, in the rudest work of the
+fields. These sturdy women (if as such we must recognize them) wore the
+high-crowned, broad brimmed hat of Tuscan straw, the customary female
+head-apparel; and, as every breeze blew back its breadth of brim, the
+sunshine constantly added depth to the brown glow of their cheeks. The
+elder sisterhood, however, set off their witch-like ugliness to the
+worst advantage with black felt hats, bequeathed them, one would fancy,
+by their long-buried husbands.
+
+Another ordinary sight, as sylvan as the above and more agreeable, was
+a girl, bearing on her back a huge bundle of green twigs and shrubs,
+or grass, intermixed with scarlet poppies and blue flowers; the verdant
+burden being sometimes of such size as to hide the bearer's figure, and
+seem a self-moving mass of fragrant bloom and verdure. Oftener, however,
+the bundle reached only halfway down the back of the rustic nymph,
+leaving in sight her well-developed lower limbs, and the crooked knife,
+hanging behind her, with which she had been reaping this strange
+harvest sheaf. A pre-Raphaelite artist (he, for instance, who painted
+so marvellously a wind-swept heap of autumnal leaves) might find an
+admirable subject in one of these Tuscan girls, stepping with a free,
+erect, and graceful carriage. The miscellaneous herbage and tangled
+twigs and blossoms of her bundle, crowning her head (while her ruddy,
+comely face looks out between the hanging side festoons like a
+larger flower), would give the painter boundless scope for the minute
+delineation which he loves.
+
+Though mixed up with what was rude and earthlike, there was still a
+remote, dreamlike, Arcadian charm, which is scarcely to be found in the
+daily toil of other lands. Among the pleasant features of the wayside
+were always the vines, clambering on fig-trees, or other sturdy trunks;
+they wreathed themselves in huge and rich festoons from one tree to
+another, suspending clusters of ripening grapes in the interval between.
+Under such careless mode of culture, the luxuriant vine is a lovelier
+spectacle than where it produces a more precious liquor, and is
+therefore more artificially restrained and trimmed. Nothing can be
+more picturesque than an old grapevine, with almost a trunk of its own,
+clinging fast around its supporting tree. Nor does the picture lack its
+moral. You might twist it to more than one grave purpose, as you saw how
+the knotted, serpentine growth imprisoned within its strong embrace
+the friend that had supported its tender infancy; and how (as seemingly
+flexible natures are prone to do) it converted the sturdier tree
+entirely to its own selfish ends, extending its innumerable arms on
+every bough, and permitting hardly a leaf to sprout except its own. It
+occurred to Kenyon, that the enemies of the vine, in his native land,
+might here have seen an emblem of the remorseless gripe, which the habit
+of vinous enjoyment lays upon its victim, possessing him wholly, and
+letting him live no life but such as it bestows.
+
+The scene was not less characteristic when their path led the two
+wanderers through some small, ancient town. There, besides the
+peculiarities of present life, they saw tokens of the life that had long
+ago been lived and flung aside. The little town, such as we see in our
+mind's eye, would have its gate and its surrounding walls, so ancient
+and massive that ages had not sufficed to crumble them away; but in the
+lofty upper portion of the gateway, still standing over the empty arch,
+where there was no longer a gate to shut, there would be a dove-cote,
+and peaceful doves for the only warders. Pumpkins lay ripening in the
+open chambers of the structure. Then, as for the town wall, on the
+outside an orchard extends peacefully along its base, full, not of
+apple-trees, but of those old humorists with gnarled trunks and twisted
+boughs, the olives. Houses have been built upon the ramparts, or
+burrowed out of their ponderous foundation. Even the gray, martial
+towers, crowned with ruined turrets, have been converted into rustic
+habitations, from the windows of which hang ears of Indian corn. At a
+door, that has been broken through the massive stonework where it
+was meant to be strongest, some contadini are winnowing grain. Small
+windows, too, are pierced through the whole line of ancient wall, so
+that it seems a row of dwellings with one continuous front, built in a
+strange style of needless strength; but remnants of the old battlements
+and machicolations are interspersed with the homely chambers and
+earthen-tiled housetops; and all along its extent both grapevines and
+running flower-shrubs are encouraged to clamber and sport over the
+roughness of its decay.
+
+Finally the long grass, intermixed with weeds and wild flowers, waves
+on the uppermost height of the shattered rampart; and it is exceedingly
+pleasant in the golden sunshine of the afternoon to behold the warlike
+precinct so friendly in its old days, and so overgrown with rural
+peace. In its guard rooms, its prison chambers, and scooped out of its
+ponderous breadth, there are dwellings nowadays where happy human lives
+are spent. Human parents and broods of children nestle in them, even as
+the swallows nestle in the little crevices along the broken summit of
+the wall.
+
+Passing through the gateway of this same little town, challenged only
+by those watchful sentinels, the pigeons, we find ourselves in a long,
+narrow street, paved from side to side with flagstones, in the old Roman
+fashion. Nothing can exceed the grim ugliness of the houses, most of
+which are three or four stories high, stone built, gray, dilapidated, or
+half-covered with plaster in patches, and contiguous all along from
+end to end of the town. Nature, in the shape of tree, shrub, or grassy
+sidewalk, is as much shut out from the one street of the rustic village
+as from the heart of any swarming city. The dark and half ruinous
+habitations, with their small windows, many of which are drearily closed
+with wooden shutters, are but magnified hovels, piled story upon story,
+and squalid with the grime that successive ages have left behind them.
+It would be a hideous scene to contemplate in a rainy day, or when
+no human life pervaded it. In the summer noon, however, it possesses
+vivacity enough to keep itself cheerful; for all the within-doors of
+the village then bubbles over upon the flagstones, or looks out from the
+small windows, and from here and there a balcony. Some of the populace
+are at the butcher's shop; others are at the fountain, which gushes into
+a marble basin that resembles an antique sarcophagus. A tailor is sewing
+before his door with a young priest seated sociably beside him; a burly
+friar goes by with an empty wine-barrel on his head; children are at
+play; women, at their own doorsteps, mend clothes, embroider, weave hats
+of Tuscan straw, or twirl the distaff. Many idlers, meanwhile, strolling
+from one group to another, let the warm day slide by in the sweet,
+interminable task of doing nothing.
+
+From all these people there comes a babblement that seems quite
+disproportioned to the number of tongues that make it. So many words are
+not uttered in a New England village throughout the year--except it
+be at a political canvass or town-meeting--as are spoken here, with no
+especial purpose, in a single day. Neither so many words, nor so much
+laughter; for people talk about nothing as if they were terribly
+in earnest, and make merry at nothing as if it were the best of all
+possible jokes. In so long a time as they have existed, and within such
+narrow precincts, these little walled towns are brought into a closeness
+of society that makes them but a larger household. All the inhabitants
+are akin to each, and each to all; they assemble in the street as their
+common saloon, and thus live and die in a familiarity of intercourse,
+such as never can be known where a village is open at either end, and
+all roundabout, and has ample room within itself.
+
+Stuck up beside the door of one house, in this village street, is a
+withered bough; and on a stone seat, just under the shadow of the
+bough, sits a party of jolly drinkers, making proof of the new wine, or
+quaffing the old, as their often-tried and comfortable friend. Kenyon
+draws bridle here (for the bough, or bush, is a symbol of the wine-shop
+at this day in Italy, as it was three hundred years ago in England), and
+calls for a goblet of the deep, mild, purple juice, well diluted with
+water from the fountain. The Sunshine of Monte Beni would be welcome
+now. Meanwhile, Donatello has ridden onward, but alights where a shrine,
+with a burning lamp before it, is built into the wall of an inn stable.
+He kneels and crosses himself, and mutters a brief prayer, without
+attracting notice from the passers-by, many of whom are parenthetically
+devout in a similar fashion. By this time the sculptor has drunk off his
+wine-and-water, and our two travellers resume their way, emerging from
+the opposite gate of the village.
+
+Before them, again, lies the broad valley, with a mist so thinly
+scattered over it as to be perceptible only in the distance, and most so
+in the nooks of the hills. Now that we have called it mist, it seems
+a mistake not rather to have called it sunshine; the glory of so much
+light being mingled with so little gloom, in the airy material of that
+vapor. Be it mist or sunshine, it adds a touch of ideal beauty to the
+scene, almost persuading the spectator that this valley and those hills
+are visionary, because their visible atmosphere is so like the substance
+of a dream.
+
+Immediately about them, however, there were abundant tokens that the
+country was not really the paradise it looked to be, at a casual glance.
+Neither the wretched cottages nor the dreary farmhouses seemed to
+partake of the prosperity, with which so kindly a climate, and so
+fertile a portion of Mother Earth's bosom, should have filled them, one
+and all. But possibly the peasant inhabitants do not exist in so grimy
+a poverty, and in homes so comfortless, as a stranger, with his native
+ideas of those matters, would be likely to imagine. The Italians appear
+to possess none of that emulative pride which we see in our New England
+villages, where every householder, according to his taste and
+means, endeavors to make his homestead an ornament to the grassy
+and elm-shadowed wayside. In Italy there are no neat doorsteps
+and thresholds; no pleasant, vine-sheltered porches; none of those
+grass-plots or smoothly shorn lawns, which hospitably invite the
+imagination into the sweet domestic interiors of English life.
+Everything, however sunny and luxuriant may be the scene around, is
+especially disheartening in the immediate neighborhood of an Italian
+home.
+
+An artist, it is true, might often thank his stars for those old houses,
+so picturesquely time-stained, and with the plaster falling in blotches
+from the ancient brick-work. The prison-like, iron-barred windows, and
+the wide arched, dismal entrance, admitting on one hand to the stable,
+on the other to the kitchen, might impress him as far better worth
+his pencil than the newly painted pine boxes, in which--if he be an
+American--his countrymen live and thrive. But there is reason to suspect
+that a people are waning to decay and ruin the moment that their life
+becomes fascinating either in the poet's imagination or the painter's
+eye.
+
+As usual on Italian waysides, the wanderers passed great, black crosses,
+hung with all the instruments of the sacred agony and passion: there
+were the crown of thorns, the hammer and nails, the pincers, the spear,
+the sponge; and perched over the whole, the cock that crowed to St.
+Peter's remorseful conscience. Thus, while the fertile scene showed the
+never-failing beneficence of the Creator towards man in his transitory
+state, these symbols reminded each wayfarer of the Saviour's infinitely
+greater love for him as an immortal spirit. Beholding these consecrated
+stations, the idea seemed to strike Donatello of converting the
+otherwise aimless journey into a penitential pilgrimage. At each of them
+he alighted to kneel and kiss the cross, and humbly press his forehead
+against its foot; and this so invariably, that the sculptor soon learned
+to draw bridle of his own accord. It may be, too, heretic as he was,
+that Kenyon likewise put up a prayer, rendered more fervent by the
+symbols before his eyes, for the peace of his friend's conscience and
+the pardon of the sin that so oppressed him.
+
+Not only at the crosses did Donatello kneel, but at each of the many
+shrines, where the Blessed Virgin in fresco--faded with sunshine and
+half washed out with showers--looked benignly at her worshipper; or
+where she was represented in a wooden image, or a bas-relief of plaster
+or marble, as accorded with the means of the devout person who built,
+or restored from a mediaeval antiquity, these places of wayside worship.
+They were everywhere: under arched niches, or in little penthouses with
+a brick tiled roof just large enough to shelter them; or perhaps in
+some bit of old Roman masonry, the founders of which had died before the
+Advent; or in the wall of a country inn or farmhouse; or at the midway
+point of a bridge; or in the shallow cavity of a natural rock; or high
+upward in the deep cuts of the road. It appeared to the sculptor that
+Donatello prayed the more earnestly and the more hopefully at these
+shrines, because the mild face of the Madonna promised him to intercede
+as a tender mother betwixt the poor culprit and the awfulness of
+judgment.
+
+It was beautiful to observe, indeed, how tender was the soul of man and
+woman towards the Virgin mother, in recognition of the tenderness which,
+as their faith taught them, she immortally cherishes towards all human
+souls. In the wire-work screen 'before each shrine hung offerings of
+roses, or whatever flower was sweetest and most seasonable; some already
+wilted and withered, some fresh with that very morning's dewdrops.
+Flowers there were, too, that, being artificial, never bloomed on earth,
+nor would ever fade. The thought occurred to Kenyon, that flower-pots
+with living plants might be set within the niches, or even that
+rose-trees, and all kinds of flowering shrubs, might be reared under the
+shrines, and taught to twine and wreathe themselves around; so that
+the Virgin should dwell within a bower of verdure, bloom, and fragrant
+freshness, symbolizing a homage perpetually new. There are many things
+in the religious customs of these people that seem good; many things,
+at least, that might be both good and beautiful, if the soul of goodness
+and the sense of beauty were as much alive in the Italians now as they
+must have been when those customs were first imagined and adopted. But,
+instead of blossoms on the shrub, or freshly gathered, with the dewdrops
+on their leaves, their worship, nowadays, is best symbolized by the
+artificial flower.
+
+The sculptor fancied, moreover (but perhaps it was his heresy that
+suggested the idea), that it would be of happy influence to place a
+comfortable and shady seat beneath every wayside shrine. Then the weary
+and sun-scorched traveller, while resting himself under her protecting
+shadow, might thank the Virgin for her hospitality. Nor, perchance,
+were he to regale himself, even in such a consecrated spot, with the
+fragrance of a pipe, would it rise to heaven more offensively than
+the smoke of priestly incense. We do ourselves wrong, and too meanly
+estimate the Holiness above us, when we deem that any act or enjoyment,
+good in itself, is not good to do religiously.
+
+Whatever may be the iniquities of the papal system, it was a wise and
+lovely sentiment that set up the frequent shrine and cross along the
+roadside. No wayfarer, bent on whatever worldly errand, can fail to be
+reminded, at every mile or two, that this is not the business which
+most concerns him. The pleasure-seeker is silently admonished to look
+heavenward for a joy infinitely greater than he now possesses. The
+wretch in temptation beholds the cross, and is warned that, if he yield,
+the Saviour's agony for his sake will have been endured in vain. The
+stubborn criminal, whose heart has long been like a stone, feels it
+throb anew with dread and hope; and our poor Donatello, as he went
+kneeling from shrine to cross, and from cross to shrine, doubtless found
+an efficacy in these symbols that helped him towards a higher penitence.
+
+Whether the young Count of Monte Beni noticed the fact, or no, there was
+more than one incident of their journey that led Kenyon to believe that
+they were attended, or closely followed, or preceded, near at hand, by
+some one who took an interest in their motions. As it were, the
+step, the sweeping garment, the faintly heard breath, of an invisible
+companion, was beside them, as they went on their way. It was like a
+dream that had strayed out of their slumber, and was haunting them in
+the daytime, when its shadowy substance could have neither density nor
+outline, in the too obtrusive light. After sunset, it grew a little more
+distinct.
+
+"On the left of that last shrine," asked the sculptor, as they rode,
+under the moon, "did you observe the figure of a woman kneeling, with
+her, face hidden in her hands?"
+
+"I never looked that way," replied Donatello. "I was saying my own
+prayer. It was some penitent, perchance. May the Blessed Virgin be the
+more gracious to the poor soul, because she is a woman."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+PICTURED WINDOWS
+
+
+After wide wanderings through the valley, the two travellers directed
+their course towards its boundary of hills. Here, the natural scenery
+and men's modifications of it immediately took a different aspect from
+that of the fertile and smiling plain. Not unfrequently there was a
+convent on the hillside; or, on some insulated promontory, a mined
+castle, once the den of a robber chieftain, who was accustomed to dash
+down from his commanding height upon the road that wound below. For ages
+back, the old fortress had been flinging down its crumbling ramparts,
+stone by stone, towards the grimy village at its foot.
+
+Their road wound onward among the hills, which rose steep and lofty from
+the scanty level space that lay between them. They continually thrust
+their great bulks before the wayfarers, as if grimly resolute to forbid
+their passage, or closed abruptly behind them, when they still dared to
+proceed. A gigantic hill would set its foot right down before them, and
+only at the last moment would grudgingly withdraw it, just far enough to
+let them creep towards another obstacle. Adown these rough heights were
+visible the dry tracks of many a mountain torrent that had lived a life
+too fierce and passionate to be a long one. Or, perhaps, a stream was
+yet hurrying shyly along the edge of a far wider bed of pebbles and
+shelving rock than it seemed to need, though not too wide for the
+swollen rage of which this shy rivulet was capable. A stone bridge
+bestrode it, the ponderous arches of which were upheld and rendered
+indestructible by the weight of the very stones that threatened to crush
+them down. Old Roman toil was perceptible in the foundations of that
+massive bridge; the first weight that it ever bore was that of an army
+of the Republic.
+
+Threading these defiles, they would arrive at some immemorial city,
+crowning the high summit of a hill with its cathedral, its many
+churches, and public edifices, all of Gothic architecture. With no more
+level ground than a single piazza in the midst, the ancient town tumbled
+its crooked and narrow streets down the mountainside, through arched
+passages and by steps of stone. The aspect of everything was awfully
+old; older, indeed, in its effect on the imagination than Rome itself,
+because history does not lay its finger on these forgotten edifices and
+tell us all about their origin. Etruscan princes may have dwelt in them.
+A thousand years, at all events, would seem but a middle age for these
+structures. They are built of such huge, square stones, that their
+appearance of ponderous durability distresses the beholder with the idea
+that they can never fall,--never crumble away,--never be less fit than
+now for human habitation. Many of them may once have been palaces, and
+still retain a squalid grandeur. But, gazing at them, we recognize how
+undesirable it is to build the tabernacle of our brief lifetime out of
+permanent materials, and with a view to their being occupied by future
+'generations.
+
+All towns should be made capable of purification by fire, or of decay,
+within each half-century. Otherwise, they become the hereditary haunts
+of vermin and noisomeness, besides standing apart from the possibility
+of such improvements as are constantly introduced into the rest of
+man's contrivances and accommodations. It is beautiful, no doubt, and
+exceedingly satisfactory to some of our natural instincts, to imagine
+our far posterity dwelling under the same roof-tree as ourselves. Still,
+when people insist on building indestructible houses, they incur, or
+their children do, a misfortune analogous to that of the Sibyl, when
+she obtained the grievous boon of immortality. So we may build almost
+immortal habitations, it is true; but we cannot keep them from growing
+old, musty, unwholesome, dreary,--full of death scents, ghosts, and
+murder stains; in short, such habitations as one sees everywhere in
+Italy, be they hovels or palaces.
+
+"You should go with me to my native country," observed the sculptor to
+Donatello. "In that fortunate land, each generation has only its own
+sins and sorrows to bear. Here, it seems as if all the weary and dreary
+Past were piled upon the back of the Present. If I were to lose my
+spirits in this country,--if I were to suffer any heavy misfortune
+here,--methinks it would be impossible to stand up against it, under
+such adverse influences."
+
+"The sky itself is an old roof, now," answered the Count; "and, no
+doubt, the sins of mankind have made it gloomier than it used to be."
+"O, my poor Faun," thought Kenyon to himself, "how art thou changed!"
+
+A city, like this of which we speak, seems a sort of stony growth out
+of the hillside, or a fossilized town; so ancient and strange it looks,
+without enough of life and juiciness in it to be any longer susceptible
+of decay. An earthquake would afford it the only chance of being ruined,
+beyond its present ruin.
+
+Yet, though dead to all the purposes for which we live to-day, the place
+has its glorious recollections, and not merely rude and warlike ones,
+but those of brighter and milder triumphs, the fruits of which we still
+enjoy. Italy can count several of these lifeless towns which, four or
+five hundred years ago, were each the birthplace of its own school of
+art; nor have they yet forgotten to be proud of the dark old pictures,
+and the faded frescos, the pristine beauty of which was a light and
+gladness to the world. But now, unless one happens to be a painter,
+these famous works make us miserably desperate. They are poor, dim
+ghosts of what, when Giotto or Cimabue first created them, threw a
+splendor along the stately aisles; so far gone towards nothingness,
+in our day, that scarcely a hint of design or expression can glimmer
+through the dusk. Those early artists did well to paint their frescos.
+Glowing on the church-walls, they might be looked upon as symbols of the
+living spirit that made Catholicism a true religion, and that glorified
+it as long as it retained a genuine life; they filled the transepts with
+a radiant throng of saints and angels, and threw around the high altar
+a faint reflection--as much as mortals could see, or bear--of a Diviner
+Presence. But now that the colors are so wretchedly bedimmed,--now that
+blotches of plastered wall dot the frescos all over, like a mean reality
+thrusting itself through life's brightest illusions,--the next best
+artist to Cimabue or Giotto or Ghirlandaio or Pinturicchio will be he
+that shall reverently cover their ruined masterpieces with whitewash!
+
+Kenyon, however, being an earnest student and critic of Art, lingered
+long before these pathetic relics; and Donatello, in his present phase
+of penitence, thought no time spent amiss while he could be kneeling
+before an altar. Whenever they found a cathedral, therefore, or a Gothic
+church, the two travellers were of one mind to enter it. In some of
+these holy edifices they saw pictures that time had not dimmed nor
+injured in the least, though they perhaps belonged to as old a school
+of Art as any that were perishing around them. These were the painted
+windows; and as often as he gazed at them the sculptor blessed the
+medieval time, and its gorgeous contrivances of splendor; for surely the
+skill of man has never accomplished, nor his mind imagined, any other
+beauty or glory worthy to be compared with these.
+
+It is the special excellence of pictured glass, that the light, which
+falls merely on the outside of other pictures, is here interfused
+throughout the work; it illuminates the design, and invests it with
+a living radiance; and in requital the unfading colors transmute the
+common daylight into a miracle of richness and glory in its passage
+through the heavenly substance of the blessed and angelic shapes which
+throng the high-arched window.
+
+"It is a woeful thing," cried Kenyon, while one of these frail yet
+enduring and fadeless pictures threw its hues on his face, and on the
+pavement of the church around him,--"a sad necessity that any Christian
+soul should pass from earth without once seeing an antique painted
+window, with the bright Italian sunshine glowing through it! There is
+no other such true symbol of the glories of the better world, where
+a celestial radiance will be inherent in all things and persons, and
+render each continually transparent to the sight of all."
+
+"But what a horror it would be," said Donatello sadly, "if there were a
+soul among them through which the light could not be transfused!"
+
+"Yes; and perhaps this is to be the punishment of sin," replied the
+sculptor; "not that it shall be made evident to the universe, which can
+profit nothing by such knowledge, but that it shall insulate the sinner
+from all sweet society by rendering him impermeable to light, and,
+therefore, unrecognizable in the abode of heavenly simplicity and truth.
+Then, what remains for him, but the dreariness of infinite and eternal
+solitude?"
+
+"That would be a horrible destiny, indeed!" said Donatello.
+
+His voice as he spoke the words had a hollow and dreary cadence, as if
+he anticipated some such frozen solitude for himself. A figure in a dark
+robe was lurking in the obscurity of a side chapel close by, and made an
+impulsive movement forward, but hesitated as Donatello spoke again.
+
+"But there might be a more miserable torture than to be solitary
+forever," said he. "Think of having a single companion in eternity, and
+instead of finding any consolation, or at all events variety of torture,
+to see your own weary, weary sin repeated in that inseparable soul."
+
+"I think, my dear Count, you have never read Dante," observed Kenyon.
+"That idea is somewhat in his style, but I cannot help regretting that
+it came into your mind just then."
+
+The dark-robed figure had shrunk back, and was quite lost to sight among
+the shadows of the chapel.
+
+"There was an English poet," resumed Kenyon, turning again towards the
+window, "who speaks of the 'dim, religious light,' transmitted through
+painted glass. I always admired this richly descriptive phrase; but,
+though he was once in Italy, I question whether Milton ever saw any
+but the dingy pictures in the dusty windows of English cathedrals,
+imperfectly shown by the gray English daylight. He would else have
+illuminated that word 'dim' with some epithet that should not chase
+away the dimness, yet should make it glow like a million of rubies,
+sapphires, emeralds, and topazes. Is it not so with yonder window? The
+pictures are most brilliant in themselves, yet dim with tenderness and
+reverence, because God himself is shining through them."
+
+"The pictures fill me with emotion, but not such as you seem to
+experience," said Donatello. "I tremble at those awful saints; and, most
+of all, at the figure above them. He glows with Divine wrath!"
+
+"My dear friend," said Kenyon, "how strangely your eyes have transmuted
+the expression of the figure! It is divine love, not wrath!"
+
+"To my eyes," said Donatello stubbornly, "it is wrath, not love! Each
+must interpret for himself."
+
+The friends left the church, and looking up, from the exterior, at
+the window which they had just been contemplating within, nothing; was
+visible but the merest outline of dusky shapes, Neither the individual
+likeness of saint, angel, nor Saviour, and far less the combined scheme
+and purport of the picture, could anywise be made out. That miracle of
+radiant art, thus viewed, was nothing better than an incomprehensible
+obscurity, without a gleam of beauty to induce the beholder to attempt
+unravelling it.
+
+"All this," thought the sculptor, "is a most forcible emblem of the
+different aspect of religious truth and sacred story, as viewed from the
+warm interior of belief, or from its cold and dreary outside. Christian
+faith is a grand cathedral, with divinely pictured windows. Standing
+without, you see no glory, nor can possibly imagine any; standing
+within, every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendors."
+
+After Kenyon and Donatello emerged from the church, however, they had
+better opportunity for acts of charity and mercy than for religious
+contemplation; being immediately surrounded by a swarm of beggars, who
+are the present possessors of Italy, and share the spoil of the stranger
+with the fleas and mosquitoes, their formidable allies. These pests--the
+human ones--had hunted the two travellers at every stage of their
+journey. From village to village, ragged boys and girls kept almost
+under the horses' feet; hoary grandsires and grandames caught glimpses
+of their approach, and hobbled to intercept them at some point of
+vantage; blind men stared them out of countenance with their sightless
+orbs; women held up their unwashed babies; cripples displayed their
+wooden legs, their grievous scars, their dangling, boneless arms, their
+broken backs, their burden of a hump, or whatever infirmity or deformity
+Providence had assigned them for an inheritance. On the highest mountain
+summit--in the most shadowy ravine--there was a beggar waiting for them.
+In one small village, Kenyon had the curiosity to count merely how many
+children were crying, whining, and bellowing all at once for alms. They
+proved to be more than forty of as ragged and dirty little imps as any
+in the world; besides whom, all the wrinkled matrons, and most of the
+village maids, and not a few stalwart men, held out their hands grimly,
+piteously, or smilingly in the forlorn hope of whatever trifle of
+coin might remain in pockets already so fearfully taxed. Had they
+been permitted, they would gladly have knelt down and worshipped the
+travellers, and have cursed them, without rising from their knees, if
+the expected boon failed to be awarded.
+
+Yet they were not so miserably poor but that the grown people kept
+houses over their heads.
+
+In the way of food, they had, at least, vegetables in their little
+gardens, pigs and chickens to kill, eggs to fry into omelets with oil,
+wine to drink, and many other things to make life comfortable. As for
+the children, when no more small coin appeared to be forthcoming, they
+began to laugh and play, and turn heels over head, showing themselves
+jolly and vivacious brats, and evidently as well fed as needs be. The
+truth is, the Italian peasantry look upon strangers as the almoners of
+Providence, and therefore feel no more shame in asking and receiving
+alms, than in availing themselves of providential bounties in whatever
+other form.
+
+In accordance with his nature, Donatello was always exceedingly
+charitable to these ragged battalions, and appeared to derive a certain
+consolation from the prayers which many of them put up in his behalf. In
+Italy a copper coin of minute value will often make all the difference
+between a vindictive curse--death by apoplexy being the favorite
+one-mumbled in an old witch's toothless jaws, and a prayer from the same
+lips, so earnest that it would seem to reward the charitable soul with
+at least a puff of grateful breath to help him heavenward. Good wishes
+being so cheap, though possibly not very efficacious, and anathemas so
+exceedingly bitter,--even if the greater portion of their poison remain
+in the mouth that utters them,--it may be wise to expend some reasonable
+amount in the purchase of the former. Donatello invariably did so; and
+as he distributed his alms under the pictured window, of which we have
+been speaking, no less than seven ancient women lifted their hands and
+besought blessings on his head.
+
+"Come," said the sculptor, rejoicing at the happier expression which he
+saw in his friend's face. "I think your steed will not stumble with you
+to-day. Each of these old dames looks as much like Horace's Atra Cura
+as can well be conceived; but, though there are seven of them, they will
+make your burden on horseback lighter instead of heavier."
+
+"Are we to ride far?" asked the Count.
+
+"A tolerable journey betwixt now and to-morrow noon," Kenyon replied;
+"for, at that hour, I purpose to be standing by the Pope's statue in the
+great square of Perugia."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+MARKET DAY IN PERUGIA
+
+
+Perugia, on its lofty hilltop, was reached by the two travellers before
+the sun had quite kissed away the early freshness of the morning. Since
+midnight, there had been a heavy, rain, bringing infinite refreshment to
+the scene of verdure and fertility amid which this ancient civilization
+stands; insomuch that Kenyon loitered, when they came to the gray city
+wall, and was loath to give up the prospect of the sunny wilderness that
+lay below. It was as green as England, and bright as Italy alone. There
+was all the wide valley, sweeping down and spreading away on all sides
+from the weed grown ramparts, and bounded afar by mountains, which lay
+asleep in the sun, with thin mists and silvery clouds floating about
+their heads by way of morning dreams.
+
+"It lacks still two hours of noon," said the sculptor to his friend, as
+they stood under the arch of the gateway, waiting for their passports
+to be examined; "will you come with me to see some admirable frescos by
+Perugino? There is a hall in the Exchange, of no great magnitude, but
+covered with what must have been--at the time it was painted--such
+magnificence and beauty as the world had not elsewhere to show."
+
+"It depresses me to look at old frescos," responded the Count; "it is a
+pain, yet not enough of a pain to answer as a penance."
+
+"Will you look at some pictures by Fra Angelico in the Church of San
+Domenico?" asked Kenyon; "they are full of religious sincerity, When
+one studies them faithfully, it is like holding a conversation about
+heavenly things with a tender and devout-minded man."
+
+"You have shown me some of Fra Angelico's pictures, I remember,"
+answered Donatello; "his angels look as if they had never taken a flight
+out of heaven; and his saints seem to have been born saints, and always
+to have lived so. Young maidens, and all innocent persons, I doubt not,
+may find great delight and profit in looking at such holy pictures. But
+they are not for me."
+
+"Your criticism, I fancy, has great moral depth," replied Kenyon; "and
+I see in it the reason why Hilda so highly appreciates Fra Angelico's
+pictures. Well; we will let all such matters pass for to-day, and stroll
+about this fine old city till noon."
+
+They wandered to and fro, accordingly, and lost themselves among the
+strange, precipitate passages, which, in Perugia, are called streets,
+Some of them are like caverns, being arched all over, and plunging down
+abruptly towards an unknown darkness; which, when you have fathomed
+its depths, admits you to a daylight that you scarcely hoped to behold
+again. Here they met shabby men, and the careworn wives and mothers
+of the people, some of whom guided children in leading strings through
+those dim and antique thoroughfares, where a hundred generations had
+passed before the little feet of to-day began to tread them. Thence they
+climbed upward again, and came to the level plateau, on the summit of
+the hill, where are situated the grand piazza and the principal public
+edifices.
+
+It happened to be market day in Perugia. The great square, therefore,
+presented a far more vivacious spectacle than would have been witnessed
+in it at any other time of the week, though not so lively as to overcome
+the gray solemnity of the architectural portion of the scene. In the
+shadow of the cathedral and other old Gothic structures--seeking shelter
+from the sunshine that fell across the rest of the piazza--was a crowd
+of people, engaged as buyers or sellers in the petty traffic of a
+country fair. Dealers had erected booths and stalls on the pavement,
+and overspread them with scanty awnings, beneath which they stood,
+vociferously crying their merchandise; such as shoes, hats and caps,
+yarn stockings, cheap jewelry and cutlery, books, chiefly little volumes
+of a religious Character, and a few French novels; toys, tinware,
+old iron, cloth, rosaries of beads, crucifixes, cakes, biscuits,
+sugar-plums, and innumerable little odds and ends, which we see no
+object in advertising. Baskets of grapes, figs, and pears stood on the
+ground. Donkeys, bearing panniers stuffed out with kitchen vegetables,
+and requiring an ample roadway, roughly shouldered aside the throng.
+
+Crowded as the square was, a juggler found room to spread out a white
+cloth upon the pavement, and cover it with cups, plates, balls, cards,
+w the whole material of his magic, in short,--wherewith he proceeded to
+work miracles under the noonday sun. An organ grinder at one point, and
+a clarion and a flute at another, accomplished what their could towards
+filling the wide space with tuneful noise, Their small uproar,
+however, was nearly drowned by the multitudinous voices of the people,
+bargaining, quarrelling, laughing, and babbling copiously at random;
+for the briskness of the mountain atmosphere, or some other cause, made
+everybody so loquacious, that more words were wasted in Perugia on this
+one market day, than the noisiest piazza of Rome would utter in a month.
+
+Through all this petty tumult, which kept beguiling one's eyes and upper
+strata of thought, it was delightful to catch glimpses of the grand
+old architecture that stood around the square. The life of the
+flitting moment, existing in the antique shell of an age gone by, has a
+fascination which we do not find in either the past or present, taken by
+themselves. It might seem irreverent to make the gray cathedral and
+the tall, time-worn palaces echo back the exuberant vociferation of the
+market; but they did so, and caused the sound to assume a kind of
+poetic rhythm, and themselves looked only the more majestic for their
+condescension.
+
+On one side, there was an immense edifice devoted to public purposes,
+with an antique gallery, and a range of arched and stone-mullioned
+windows, running along its front; and by way of entrance it had a
+central Gothic arch, elaborately wreathed around with sculptured
+semicircles, within which the spectator was aware of a stately and
+impressive gloom. Though merely the municipal council-house and exchange
+of a decayed country town, this structure was worthy to have held in
+one portion of it the parliament hall of a nation, and in the other, the
+state apartments of its ruler. On another side of the square rose the
+mediaeval front of the cathedral, where the imagination of a Gothic
+architect had long ago flowered out indestructibly, in the first place,
+a grand design, and then covering it with such abundant detail of
+ornament, that the magnitude of the work seemed less a miracle than its
+minuteness. You would suppose that he must have softened the stone
+into wax, until his most delicate fancies were modelled in the pliant
+material, and then had hardened it into stone again. The whole was a
+vast, black-letter page of the richest and quaintest poetry. In fit
+keeping with all this old magnificence was a great marble fountain,
+where again the Gothic imagination showed its overflow and gratuity of
+device in the manifold sculptures which it lavished as freely as the
+water did its shifting shapes.
+
+Besides the two venerable structures which we have described, there were
+lofty palaces, perhaps of as old a date, rising story above Story, and
+adorned with balconies, whence, hundreds of years ago, the princely
+occupants had been accustomed to gaze down at the sports, business, and
+popular assemblages of the piazza. And, beyond all question, they thus
+witnessed the erection of a bronze statue, which, three centuries since,
+was placed on the pedestal that it still occupies.
+
+"I never come to Perugia," said Kenyon, "without spending as much time
+as I can spare in studying yonder statue of Pope Julius the Third. Those
+sculptors of the Middle Age have fitter lessons for the professors of
+my art than we can find in the Grecian masterpieces. They belong to our
+Christian civilization; and, being earnest works, they always express
+something which we do not get from the antique. Will you look at it?"
+
+"Willingly," replied the Count, "for I see, even so far off, that the
+statue is bestowing a benediction, and there is a feeling in my heart
+that I may be permitted to share it."
+
+Remembering the similar idea which Miriam a short time before had
+expressed, the sculptor smiled hopefully at the coincidence. They made
+their way through the throng of the market place, and approached close
+to the iron railing that protected the pedestal of the statue.
+
+It was the figure of a pope, arrayed in his pontifical robes, and
+crowned with the tiara. He sat in a bronze chair, elevated high above
+the pavement, and seemed to take kindly yet authoritative cognizance
+of the busy scene which was at that moment passing before his eye. His
+right hand was raised and spread abroad, as if in the act of shedding
+forth a benediction, which every man--so broad, so wise, and so serenely
+affectionate was the bronze pope's regard--might hope to feel quietly
+descending upon the need, or the distress, that he had closest at his
+heart. The statue had life and observation in it, as well as patriarchal
+majesty. An imaginative spectator could not but be impressed with
+the idea that this benignly awful representative of divine and human
+authority might rise from his brazen chair, should any great public
+exigency demand his interposition, and encourage or restrain the people
+by his gesture, or even by prophetic utterances worthy of so grand a
+presence.
+
+And in the long, calm intervals, amid the quiet lapse of ages, the
+pontiff watched the daily turmoil around his seat, listening with
+majestic patience to the market cries, and all the petty uproar that
+awoke the echoes of the stately old piazza. He was the enduring friend
+of these men, and of their forefathers and children, the familiar face
+of generations.
+
+"The pope's blessing, methinks, has fallen upon you," observed the
+sculptor, looking at his friend.
+
+In truth, Donatello's countenance indicated a healthier spirit than
+while he was brooding in his melancholy tower. The change of scene, the
+breaking up of custom, the fresh flow of incidents, the sense of being
+homeless, and therefore free, had done something for our poor Faun;
+these circumstances had at least promoted a reaction, which might else
+have been slower in its progress. Then, no doubt, the bright day, the
+gay spectacle of the market place, and the sympathetic exhilaration
+of so many people's cheerfulness, had each their suitable effect on a
+temper naturally prone to be glad. Perhaps, too, he was magnetically
+conscious of a presence that formerly sufficed to make him happy. Be the
+cause what it might, Donatello's eyes shone with a serene and hopeful
+expression while looking upward at the bronze pope, to whose widely
+diffused blessing, it may be, he attributed all this good influence.
+
+"Yes, my dear friend," said he, in reply to the sculptor's remark, "I
+feel the blessing upon my spirit."
+
+"It is wonderful," said Kenyon, with a smile, "wonderful and delightful
+to think how long a good man's beneficence may be potent, even after his
+death. How great, then, must have been the efficacy of this excellent
+pontiff's blessing while he was alive!"
+
+"I have heard," remarked the Count, "that there was a brazen image set
+up in the wilderness, the sight of which healed the Israelites of their
+poisonous and rankling wounds. If it be the Blessed Virgin's pleasure,
+why should not this holy image before us do me equal good? A wound has
+long been rankling in my soul, and filling it with poison."
+
+"I did wrong to smile," answered Kenyon. "It is not for me to limit
+Providence in its operations on man's spirit."
+
+While they stood talking, the clock in the neighboring cathedral told
+the hour, with twelve reverberating strokes, which it flung down upon
+the crowded market place, as if warning one and all to take advantage
+of the bronze pontiff's benediction, or of Heaven's blessing, however
+proffered, before the opportunity were lost.
+
+"High noon," said the sculptor. "It is Miriam's hour!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+THE BRONZE PONTIFF'S BENEDICTION
+
+
+When the last of the twelve strokes had fallen from the cathedral clock,
+Kenyon threw his eyes over the busy scene of the market place, expecting
+to discern Miriam somewhere in the 'crowd. He looked next towards the
+cathedral itself, where it was reasonable to imagine that she might have
+taken shelter, while awaiting her appointed time. Seeing no trace of
+her in either direction, his eyes came back from their quest somewhat
+disappointed, and rested on a figure which was leaning, like Donatello
+and himself, on the iron balustrade that surrounded the statue. Only a
+moment before, they two had been alone.
+
+It was the figure of a woman, with her head bowed on her hands, as if
+she deeply felt--what we have been endeavoring to convey into our feeble
+description--the benign and awe-inspiring influence which the pontiff's
+statue exercises upon a sensitive spectator. No matter though it were
+modelled for a Catholic chief priest, the desolate heart, whatever be
+its religion, recognizes in that image the likeness of a father.
+
+"Miriam," said the sculptor, with a tremor in his voice, "is it
+yourself?"
+
+"It is I," she replied; "I am faithful to my engagement, though with
+many fears." She lifted her head, and revealed to Kenyon--revealed to
+Donatello likewise--the well-remembered features of Miriam. They were
+pale and worn, but distinguished even now, though less gorgeously, by
+a beauty that might be imagined bright enough to glimmer with its own
+light in a dim cathedral aisle, and had no need to shrink from the
+severer test of the mid-day sun. But she seemed tremulous, and hardly
+able to go through with a scene which at a distance she had found
+courage to undertake.
+
+"You are most welcome, Miriam!" said the sculptor, seeking to afford
+her the encouragement which he saw she so greatly required. "I have
+a hopeful trust that the result of this interview will be propitious.
+Come; let me lead you to Donatello."
+
+"No, Kenyon, no!" whispered Miriam, shrinking back; "unless of his own
+accord he speaks my name,--unless he bids me stay,--no word shall ever
+pass between him and me. It is not that I take upon me to be proud at
+this late hour. Among other feminine qualities, I threw away my pride
+when Hilda cast me off."
+
+"If not pride, what else restrains you?" Kenyon asked, a little angry at
+her unseasonable scruples, and also at this half-complaining reference
+to Hilda's just severity. "After daring so much, it is no time for fear!
+If we let him part from you without a word, your opportunity of doing
+him inestimable good is lost forever."
+
+"True; it will be lost forever!" repeated Miriam sadly. "But, dear
+friend, will it be my fault? I willingly fling my woman's pride at his
+feet. But--do you not see?--his heart must be left freely to its own
+decision whether to recognize me, because on his voluntary choice
+depends the whole question whether my devotion will do him good or
+harm. Except he feel an infinite need of me, I am a burden and fatal
+obstruction to him!"
+
+"Take your own course, then, Miriam," said Kenyon; "and, doubtless,
+the crisis being what it is, your spirit is better instructed for its
+emergencies than mine."
+
+While the foregoing words passed between them they had withdrawn a
+little from the immediate vicinity of the statue, so as to be out of
+Donatello's hearing. Still, however, they were beneath the pontiff's
+outstretched hand; and Miriam, with her beauty and her sorrow, looked up
+into his benignant face, as if she had come thither for his pardon and
+paternal affection, and despaired of so vast a boon.
+
+Meanwhile, she had not stood thus long in the public square of Perugia,
+without attracting the observation of many eyes. With their quick sense
+of beauty, these Italians had recognized her loveliness, and spared not
+to take their fill of gazing at it; though their native gentleness and
+courtesy made their homage far less obtrusive than that of Germans,
+French, or Anglo-Saxons might have been. It is not improbable that
+Miriam had planned this momentous interview, on so public a spot and at
+high noon, with an eye to the sort of protection that would be thrown
+over it by a multitude of eye-witnesses. In circumstances of profound
+feeling and passion, there is often a sense that too great a seclusion
+cannot be endured; there is an indefinite dread of being quite alone
+with the object of our deepest interest. The species of solitude that
+a crowd harbors within itself is felt to be preferable, in certain
+conditions of the heart, to the remoteness of a desert or the depths
+of an untrodden wood. Hatred, love, or whatever kind of too
+intense emotion, or even indifference, where emotion has once been,
+instinctively seeks to interpose some barrier between itself and the
+corresponding passion in another breast. This, we suspect, was what
+Miriam had thought of, in coming to the thronged piazza; partly this,
+and partly, as she said, her superstition that the benign statue held
+good influences in store.
+
+But Donatello remained leaning against the balustrade. She dared not
+glance towards him, to see whether he were pale and agitated, or calm as
+ice. Only, she knew that the moments were fleetly lapsing away, and that
+his heart must call her soon, or the voice would never reach her. She
+turned quite away from him and spoke again to the sculptor.
+
+"I have wished to meet you," said she, "for more than one reason. News
+has come to me respecting a dear friend of ours. Nay, not of mine! I
+dare not call her a friend of mine, though once the dearest."
+
+"Do you speak of Hilda?" exclaimed Kenyon, with quick alarm. "Has
+anything befallen her? When I last heard of her, she was still in Rome,
+and well."
+
+"Hilda remains in Rome," replied Miriam, "nor is she ill as regards
+physical health, though much depressed in spirits. She lives quite alone
+in her dove-cote; not a friend near her, not one in Rome, which, you
+know, is deserted by all but its native inhabitants. I fear for her
+health, if she continue long in such solitude, with despondency preying
+on her mind. I tell you this, knowing the interest which the rare beauty
+of her character has awakened in you."
+
+"I will go to Rome!" said the sculptor, in great emotion. "Hilda has
+never allowed me to manifest more than a friendly regard; but, at least,
+she cannot prevent my watching over her at a humble distance. I will set
+out this very hour."
+
+"Do not leave us now!" whispered Miriam imploringly, and laying her hand
+on his arm. "One moment more! Ah; he has no word for me!"
+
+"Miriam!" said Donatello.
+
+Though but a single word, and the first that he had spoken, its tone was
+a warrant of the sad and tender depth from which it came. It told Miriam
+things of infinite importance, and, first of all, that he still loved
+her. The sense of their mutual crime had stunned, but not destroyed, the
+vitality of his affection; it was therefore indestructible. That tone,
+too, bespoke an altered and deepened character; it told of a vivified
+intellect, and of spiritual instruction that had come through sorrow and
+remorse; so that instead of the wild boy, the thing of sportive,
+animal nature, the sylvan Faun, here was now the man of feeling and
+intelligence.
+
+She turned towards him, while his voice still reverberated in the depths
+of her soul.
+
+"You have called me!" said she.
+
+"Because my deepest heart has need of you!" he replied. "Forgive,
+Miriam, the coldness, the hardness with which I parted from you! I was
+bewildered with strange horror and gloom."
+
+"Alas! and it was I that brought it on you," said she. "What repentance,
+what self-sacrifice, can atone for that infinite wrong? There was
+something so sacred in the innocent and joyous life which you were
+leading! A happy person is such an unaccustomed and holy creature in
+this sad world! And, encountering so rare a being, and gifted with the
+power of sympathy with his sunny life, it was my doom, mine, to bring
+him within the limits of sinful, sorrowful mortality! Bid me depart,
+Donatello! Fling me off! No good, through my agency, can follow upon
+such a mighty evil!"
+
+"Miriam," said he, "our lot lies together. Is it not so? Tell me, in
+Heaven's name, if it be otherwise."
+
+Donatello's conscience was evidently perplexed with doubt, whether the
+communion of a crime, such as they two were jointly stained with, ought
+not to stifle all the instinctive motions of their hearts, impelling
+them one towards the other. Miriam, on the other hand, remorsefully
+questioned with herself whether the misery, already accruing from
+her influence, should not warn her to withdraw from his path. In this
+momentous interview, therefore, two souls were groping for each other in
+the darkness of guilt and sorrow, and hardly were bold enough to grasp
+the cold hands that they found.
+
+The sculptor stood watching the scene with earnest sympathy.
+
+"It seems irreverent," said he, at length; "intrusive, if not
+irreverent, for a third person to thrust himself between the two solely
+concerned in a crisis like the present. Yet, possibly as a bystander,
+though a deeply interested one, I may discern somewhat of truth that
+is hidden from you both; nay, at least interpret or suggest some ideas
+which you might not so readily convey to each other."
+
+"Speak!" said Miriam. "We confide in you." "Speak!" said Donatello. "You
+are true and upright."
+
+"I well know," rejoined Kenyon, "that I shall not succeed in uttering
+the few, deep words which, in this matter, as in all others, include the
+absolute truth. But here, Miriam, is one whom a terrible misfortune has
+begun to educate; it has taken him, and through your agency, out of a
+wild and happy state, which, within circumscribed limits, gave him joys
+that he cannot elsewhere find on earth. On his behalf, you have incurred
+a responsibility which you cannot fling aside. And here, Donatello, is
+one whom Providence marks out as intimately connected with your destiny.
+The mysterious process, by which our earthly life instructs us for
+another state of being, was begun for you by her. She has rich gifts of
+heart and mind, a suggestive power, a magnetic influence, a sympathetic
+knowledge, which, wisely and religiously exercised, are what your
+condition needs. She possesses what you require, and, with utter self
+devotion, will use it for your good. The bond betwixt you, therefore,
+is a true one, and never--except by Heaven's own act--should be rent
+asunder."
+
+"Ah; he has spoken the truth!" cried Donatello, grasping Miriam's hand.
+
+
+"The very truth, dear friend," cried Miriam.
+
+"But take heed," resumed the sculptor, anxious not to violate the
+integrity of his own conscience, "take heed; for you love one another,
+and yet your bond is twined with such black threads that you must never
+look upon it as identical with the ties that unite other loving souls.
+It is for mutual support; it is for one another's final good; it is for
+effort, for sacrifice, but not for earthly happiness. If such be your
+motive, believe me, friends, it were better to relinquish each other's
+hands at this sad moment. There would be no holy sanction on your wedded
+life."
+
+"None," said Donatello, shuddering. "We know it well."
+
+"None," repeated Miriam, also shuddering. "United--miserably entangled
+with me, rather--by a bond of guilt, our union might be for eternity,
+indeed, and most intimate;--but, through all that endless duration, I
+should be conscious of his horror."
+
+"Not for earthly bliss, therefore," said Kenyon, "but for mutual
+elevation, and encouragement towards a severe and painful life, you take
+each other's hands. And if, out of toil, sacrifice, prayer, penitence,
+and earnest effort towards right things, there comes at length a sombre
+and thoughtful, happiness, taste it, and thank Heaven! So that you live
+not for it,--so that it be a wayside flower, springing along a path that
+leads to higher ends,--it will be Heaven's gracious gift, and a token
+that it recognizes your union here below."
+
+"Have you no more to say?" asked Miriam earnestly. "There is matter of
+sorrow and lofty consolation strangely mingled in your words."
+
+"Only this, dear Miriam," said the sculptor; "if ever in your lives
+the highest duty should require from either of you the sacrifice of the
+other, meet the occasion without shrinking. This is all."
+
+While Kenyon spoke, Donatello had evidently taken in the ideas which he
+propounded, and had ennobled them by the sincerity of his reception.
+His aspect unconsciously assumed a dignity, which, elevating his former
+beauty, accorded with the change that had long been taking place in his
+interior self. He was a man, revolving grave and deep thoughts in his
+breast. He still held Miriam's hand; and there they stood, the beautiful
+man, the beautiful woman, united forever, as they felt, in the
+presence of these thousand eye-witnesses, who gazed so curiously at the
+unintelligible scene. Doubtless the crowd recognized them as lovers,
+and fancied this a betrothal that was destined to result in lifelong
+happiness. And possibly it might be so. Who can tell where happiness may
+come; or where, though an expected guest, it may never show its face?
+Perhaps--shy, subtle thing--it had crept into this sad marriage bond,
+when the partners would have trembled at its presence as a crime.
+
+"Farewell!" said Kenyon; "I go to Rome."
+
+"Farewell, true friend!" said Miriam.
+
+"Farewell!" said Donatello too. "May you be happy. You have no guilt to
+make you shrink from happiness."
+
+At this moment it so chanced that all the three friends by one impulse
+glanced upward at the statue of Pope Julius; and there was the majestic
+figure stretching out the hand of benediction over them, and bending
+down upon this guilty and repentant pair its visage of grand benignity.
+There is a singular effect oftentimes when, out of the midst of
+engrossing thought and deep absorption, we suddenly look up, and catch a
+glimpse of external objects. We seem at such moments to look farther and
+deeper into them, than by any premeditated observation; it is as if they
+met our eyes alive, and with all their hidden meaning on the surface,
+but grew again inanimate and inscrutable the instant that they became
+aware of our glances. So now, at that unexpected glimpse, Miriam,
+Donatello, and the sculptor, all three imagined that they beheld the
+bronze pontiff endowed with spiritual life. A blessing was felt
+descending upon them from his outstretched hand; he approved by look and
+gesture the pledge of a deep union that had passed under his auspices.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+HILDA'S TOWER
+
+
+When we have once known Rome, and left her where she lies, like a
+long-decaying corpse, retaining a trace of the noble shape it was, but
+with accumulated dust and a fungous growth overspreading all its more
+admirable features, left her in utter weariness, no doubt, of her
+narrow, crooked, intricate streets, so uncomfortably paved with little
+squares of lava that to tread over them is a penitential pilgrimage, so
+indescribably ugly, moreover, so cold, so alley-like, into which the sun
+never falls, and where a chill wind forces its deadly breath into our
+lungs,--left her, tired of the sight of those immense seven-storied,
+yellow-washed hovels, or call them palaces, where all that is dreary
+in domestic life seems magnified and multiplied, and weary of climbing
+those staircases, which ascend from a ground-floor of cook shops,
+cobblers' stalls, stables, and regiments of cavalry, to a middle region
+of princes, cardinals, and ambassadors, and an upper tier of artists,
+just beneath the unattainable sky,--left her, worn out with shivering
+at the cheerless and smoky fireside by day, and feasting with our own
+substance the ravenous little populace of a Roman bed at night,--left
+her, sick at heart of Italian trickery, which has uprooted whatever
+faith in man's integrity had endured till now, and sick at stomach
+of sour bread, sour wine, rancid butter, and bad cookery, needlessly
+bestowed on evil meats,--left her, disgusted with the pretence of
+holiness and the reality of nastiness, each equally omnipresent,--left
+her, half lifeless from the languid atmosphere, the vital principle
+of which has been used up long ago, or corrupted by myriads of
+slaughters,--left her, crushed down in spirit with the desolation of her
+ruin, and the hopelessness of her future,--left her, in short, hating
+her with all our might, and adding our individual curse to the infinite
+anathema which her old crimes have unmistakably brought down,--when we
+have left Rome in such mood as this, we are astonished by the discovery,
+by and by, that our heart-strings have mysteriously attached themselves
+to the Eternal City, and are drawing us thitherward again, as if it were
+more familiar, more intimately our home, than even the spot where we
+were born.
+
+It is with a kindred sentiment, that we now follow the course of our
+story back through the Flaminian Gate, and, treading our way to the Via
+Portoghese, climb the staircase to the upper chamber of the tower where
+we last saw Hilda.
+
+Hilda all along intended to pass the summer in Rome; for she had laid
+out many high and delightful tasks, which she could the better complete
+while her favorite haunts were deserted by the multitude that thronged
+them throughout the winter and early spring. Nor did she dread the
+summer atmosphere, although generally held to be so pestilential. She
+had already made trial of it, two years before, and found no worse
+effect than a kind of dreamy languor, which was dissipated by the first
+cool breezes that came with autumn. The thickly populated centre of the
+city, indeed, is never affected by the feverish influence that lies in
+wait in the Campagna, like a besieging foe, and nightly haunts those
+beautiful lawns and woodlands, around the suburban villas, just at the
+season when they most resemble Paradise. What the flaming sword was to
+the first Eden, such is the malaria to these sweet gardens and grove. We
+may wander through them, of an afternoon, it is true, but they cannot
+be made a home and a reality, and to sleep among them is death. They are
+but illusions, therefore, like the show of gleaming waters and shadowy
+foliage in a desert.
+
+But Rome, within the walls, at this dreaded season, enjoys its festal
+days, and makes itself merry with characteristic and hereditary
+pas-times, for which its broad piazzas afford abundant room. It leads
+its own life with a freer spirit, now that the artists and foreign
+visitors are scattered abroad. No bloom, perhaps, would be visible in
+a cheek that should be unvisited, throughout the summer, by more
+invigorating winds than any within fifty miles of the city; no bloom,
+but yet, if the mind kept its healthy energy, a subdued and colorless
+well-being. There was consequently little risk in Hilda's purpose to
+pass the summer days in the galleries of Roman palaces, and her nights
+in that aerial chamber, whither the heavy breath of the city and its
+suburbs could not aspire. It would probably harm her no more than it
+did the white doves, who sought the same high atmosphere at sunset, and,
+when morning came, flew down into the narrow streets, about their daily
+business, as Hilda likewise did.
+
+With the Virgin's aid and blessing, which might be hoped for even by
+a heretic, who so religiously lit the lamp before her shrine, the New
+England girl would sleep securely in her old Roman tower, and go forth
+on her pictorial pilgrimages without dread or peril. In view of such
+a summer, Hilda had anticipated many months of lonely, but unalloyed
+enjoyment. Not that she had a churlish disinclination to society, or
+needed to be told that we taste one intellectual pleasure twice, and
+with double the result, when we taste it with a friend. But, keeping a
+maiden heart within her bosom, she rejoiced in the freedom that enabled
+her still to choose her own sphere, and dwell in it, if she pleased,
+without another inmate.
+
+Her expectation, however, of a delightful summer was woefully
+disappointed. Even had she formed no previous plan of remaining there,
+it is improbable that Hilda would have gathered energy to stir from
+Rome. A torpor, heretofore unknown to her vivacious though quiet
+temperament, had possessed itself of the poor girl, like a half-dead
+serpent knotting its cold, inextricable wreaths about her limbs. It
+was that peculiar despair, that chill and heavy misery, which only
+the innocent can experience, although it possesses many of the gloomy
+characteristics that mark a sense of guilt. It was that heartsickness,
+which, it is to be hoped, we may all of us have been pure enough to
+feel, once in our lives, but the capacity for which is usually exhausted
+early, and perhaps with a single agony. It was that dismal certainty of
+the existence of evil in the world, which, though we may fancy ourselves
+fully assured of the sad mystery long before, never becomes a portion of
+our practical belief until it takes substance and reality from the sin
+of some guide, whom we have deeply trusted and revered, or some friend
+whom we have dearly loved.
+
+When that knowledge comes, it is as if a cloud had suddenly gathered
+over the morning light; so dark a cloud, that there seems to be
+no longer any sunshine behind it or above it. The character of our
+individual beloved one having invested itself with all the attributes
+of right,--that one friend being to us the symbol and representative of
+whatever is good and true,--when he falls, the effect is almost as if
+the sky fell with him, bringing down in chaotic ruin the columns
+that upheld our faith. We struggle forth again, no doubt, bruised and
+bewildered. We stare wildly about us, and discover--or, it may be, we
+never make the discovery--that it was not actually the sky that has
+tumbled down, but merely a frail structure of our own rearing, which
+never rose higher than the housetops, and has fallen because we founded
+it on nothing. But the crash, and the affright and trouble, are as
+overwhelming, for the time, as if the catastrophe involved the whole
+moral world. Remembering these things, let them suggest one generous
+motive for walking heedfully amid the defilement of earthly ways! Let us
+reflect, that the highest path is pointed out by the pure Ideal of those
+who look up to us, and who, if we tread less loftily, may never look so
+high again.
+
+Hilda's situation was made infinitely more wretched by the necessity of
+Confining all her trouble within her own consciousness. To this innocent
+girl, holding the knowledge of Miriam's crime within her tender and
+delicate soul, the effect was almost the same as if she herself had
+participated in the guilt. Indeed, partaking the human nature of
+those who could perpetrate such deeds, she felt her own spotlessness
+impugnent.
+
+Had there been but a single friend,--or not a friend, since friends were
+no longer to be confided in, after Miriam had betrayed her trust,--but,
+had there been any calm, wise mind, any sympathizing intelligence; or,
+if not these, any dull, half-listening ear into which she might have
+flung the dreadful secret, as into an echoless cavern, what a relief
+would have ensued! But this awful loneliness! It enveloped her
+whithersoever she went. It was a shadow in the sunshine of festal days;
+a mist between her eyes and the pictures at which she strove to look; a
+chill dungeon, which kept her in its gray twilight and fed her with its
+unwholesome air, fit only for a criminal to breathe and pine in! She
+could not escape from it. In the effort to do so, straying farther into
+the intricate passages of our nature, she stumbled, ever and again, over
+this deadly idea of mortal guilt.
+
+Poor sufferer for another's sin! Poor wellspring of a virgin's heart,
+into which a murdered corpse had casually fallen, and whence it could
+not be drawn forth again, but lay there, day after day, night after
+night, tainting its sweet atmosphere with the scent of crime and ugly
+death!
+
+The strange sorrow that had befallen Hilda did not fail to impress
+its mysterious seal upon her face, and to make itself perceptible to
+sensitive observers in her manner and carriage. A young Italian artist,
+who frequented the same galleries which Hilda haunted, grew deeply
+interested in her expression. One day, while she stood before Leonardo
+da Vinci's picture of Joanna of Aragon, but evidently without seeing
+it,--for, though it had attracted her eyes, a fancied resemblance to
+Miriam had immediately drawn away her thoughts,--this artist drew a
+hasty sketch which he afterwards elaborated into a finished portrait. It
+represented Hilda as gazing with sad and earnest horror at a bloodspot
+which she seemed just then to have discovered on her white robe. The
+picture attracted considerable notice. Copies of an engraving from
+it may still be found in the print shops along the Corso. By many
+connoisseurs, the idea of the face was supposed to have been suggested
+by the portrait of Beatrice Cenci; and, in fact, there was a look
+somewhat similar to poor Beatrice's forlorn gaze out of the dreary
+isolation and remoteness, in which a terrible doom had involved a tender
+soul. But the modern artist strenuously upheld the originality of his
+own picture, as well as the stainless purity its subject, and chose
+to call it--and was laughed at for his pains--"Innocence, dying of a
+Blood-stain!"
+
+"Your picture, Signore Panini, does you credit," remarked the picture
+dealer, who had bought it of the young man for fifteen scudi, and
+afterwards sold it for ten times the sum; "but it would be worth a
+better price if you had given it a more intelligible title. Looking at
+the face and expression of this fair signorina, we seem to comprehend
+readily enough, that she is undergoing one or another of those troubles
+of the heart to which young ladies are but too liable. But what is this
+blood-stain? And what has innocence to do with it? Has she stabbed her
+perfidious lover with a bodkin?"
+
+"She! she commit a crime!" cried the young artist. "Can you look at the
+innocent anguish in her face, and ask that question? No; but, as I
+read the mystery, a man has been slain in her presence, and the blood,
+spurting accidentally on her white robe, has made a stain which eats
+into her life."
+
+"Then, in the name of her patron saint," exclaimed the picture dealer,
+"why don't she get the robe made white again at the expense of a few
+baiocchi to her washerwoman? No, no, my dear Panini. The picture being
+now my property, I shall call it 'The Signorina's Vengeance.' She
+has stabbed her lover overnight, and is repenting it betimes the next
+morning. So interpreted, the picture becomes an intelligible and very
+natural representation of a not uncommon fact."
+
+Thus coarsely does the world translate all finer griefs that meet its
+eye. It is more a coarse world than an unkind one.
+
+But Hilda sought nothing either from the world's delicacy or its pity,
+and never dreamed of its misinterpretations. Her doves often flew in
+through the windows of the tower, winged messengers, bringing her what
+sympathy they could, and uttering soft, tender, and complaining sounds,
+deep in their bosoms, which soothed the girl more than a distincter
+utterance might. And sometimes Hilda moaned quietly among the doves,
+teaching her voice to accord with theirs, and thus finding a temporary
+relief from the burden of her incommunicable sorrow, as if a little
+portion of it, at least, had been told to these innocent friends, and
+been understood and pitied.
+
+When she trimmed the lamp before the Virgin's shrine, Hilda gazed at
+the sacred image, and, rude as was the workmanship, beheld, or fancied,
+expressed with the quaint, powerful simplicity which sculptors sometimes
+had five hundred years ago, a woman's tenderness responding to her
+gaze. If she knelt, if she prayed, if her oppressed heart besought the
+sympathy of divine womanhood afar in bliss, but not remote, because
+forever humanized by the memory of mortal griefs, was Hilda to be
+blamed? It was not a Catholic kneeling at an idolatrous shrine, but a
+child lifting its tear-stained face to seek comfort from a mother.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+THE EMPTINESS OF PICTURE GALLERIES
+
+
+Hilda descended, day by day, from her dove-cote, and went to one or
+another of the great old palaces,--the Pamfili Doria, the Corsini, the
+Sciarra, the Borghese, the Colonna,--where the doorkeepers knew her
+well, and offered her a kindly greeting. But they shook their heads and
+sighed, on observing the languid step with which the poor girl toiled up
+the grand marble staircases. There was no more of that cheery alacrity
+with which she used to flit upward, as if her doves had lent her their
+wings, nor of that glow of happy spirits which had been wont to set the
+tarnished gilding of the picture frames and the shabby splendor of the
+furniture all a-glimmer, as she hastened to her congenial and delightful
+toil.
+
+An old German artist, whom she often met in the galleries, once laid a
+paternal hand on Hilda's head, and bade her go back to her own country.
+
+
+"Go back soon," he said, with kindly freedom and directness, "or you
+will go never more. And, if you go not, why, at least, do you spend the
+whole summer-time in Rome? The air has been breathed too often, in so
+many thousand years, and is not wholesome for a little foreign
+flower like you, my child, a delicate wood-anemone from the western
+forest-land."
+
+"I have no task nor duty anywhere but here," replied Hilda. "The old
+masters will not set me free!"
+
+"Ah, those old masters!" cried the veteran artist, shaking his head.
+"They are a tyrannous race! You will find them of too mighty a spirit to
+be dealt with, for long together, by the slender hand, the fragile mind,
+and the delicate heart, of a young girl. Remember that Raphael's genius
+wore out that divinest painter before half his life was lived. Since you
+feel his influence powerfully enough to reproduce his miracles so well,
+it will assuredly consume you like a flame."
+
+"That might have been my peril once," answered Hilda. "It is not so
+now."
+
+"Yes, fair maiden, you stand in that peril now!" insisted the kind old
+man; and he added, smiling, yet in a melancholy vein, and with a
+German grotesqueness of idea, "Some fine morning, I shall come to the
+Pinacotheca of the Vatican, with my palette and my brushes, and shall
+look for my little American artist that sees into the very heart of the
+grand pictures! And what shall I behold? A heap of white ashes on the
+marble floor, just in front of the divine Raphael's picture of the
+Madonna da Foligno! Nothing more, upon my word! The fire, which the poor
+child feels so fervently, will have gone into her innermost, and burnt
+her quite up!"
+
+"It would be a happy martyrdom!" said Hilda, faintly smiling. "But I
+am far from being worthy of it. What troubles me much, among other
+troubles, is quite the reverse of what you think. The old masters hold
+me here, it is true, but they no longer warm me with their influence.
+It is not flame consuming, but torpor chilling me, that helps to make me
+wretched."
+
+"Perchance, then," said the German, looking keenly at her, "Raphael has
+a rival in your heart? He was your first love; but young maidens are not
+always constant, and one flame is sometimes extinguished by another!"
+Hilda shook her head, and turned away. She had spoken the truth,
+however, in alleging that torpor, rather than fire, was what she had
+to dread. In those gloomy days that had befallen her, it was a great
+additional calamity that she felt conscious of the present dimness of an
+insight which she once possessed in more than ordinary measure. She had
+lost--and she trembled lest it should have departed forever--the faculty
+of appreciating those great works of art, which heretofore had made so
+large a portion of her happiness. It was no wonder.
+
+A picture, however admirable the painter's art, and wonderful his power,
+requires of the spectator a surrender of himself, in due proportion with
+the miracle which has been wrought. Let the canvas glow as it may, you
+must look with the eye of faith, or its highest excellence escapes you.
+There is always the necessity of helping out the painter's art with your
+own resources of sensibility and imagination. Not that these qualities
+shall really add anything to what the master has effected; but they must
+be put so entirely under his control, and work along with him to such
+an extent, that, in a different mood, when you are cold and critical,
+instead of sympathetic, you will be apt to fancy that the loftier merits
+of the picture were of your own dreaming, not of his creating.
+
+Like all revelations of the better life, the adequate perception of a
+great work of art demands a gifted simplicity of vision. In this, and
+in her self-surrender, and the depth and tenderness of her sympathy, had
+lain Hilda's remarkable power as a copyist of the old masters. And now
+that her capacity of emotion was choked up with a horrible experience,
+it inevitably followed that she should seek in vain, among those friends
+so venerated and beloved, for the marvels which they had heretofore
+shown her. In spite of a reverence that lingered longer than her
+recognition, their poor worshipper became almost an infidel, and
+sometimes doubted whether the pictorial art be not altogether a
+delusion.
+
+For the first time in her life, Hilda now grew acquainted with that
+icy demon of weariness, who haunts great picture galleries. He is
+a plausible Mephistopheles, and possesses the magic that is the
+destruction of all other magic. He annihilates color, warmth, and, more
+especially, sentiment and passion, at a touch. If he spare anything, it
+will be some such matter as an earthen pipkin, or a bunch of herrings by
+Teniers; a brass kettle, in which you can see your rice, by Gerard Douw;
+a furred robe, or the silken texture of a mantle, or a straw hat, by Van
+Mieris; or a long-stalked wineglass, transparent and full of shifting
+reflection, or a bit of bread and cheese, or an over-ripe peach with
+a fly upon it, truer than reality itself, by the school of Dutch
+conjurers. These men, and a few Flemings, whispers the wicked demon,
+were the only painters. The mighty Italian masters, as you deem them,
+were not human, nor addressed their work to human sympathies, but to
+a false intellectual taste, which they themselves were the first to
+create. Well might they call their doings "art," for they substituted
+art instead of nature. Their fashion is past, and ought, indeed, to have
+died and been buried along with them.
+
+Then there is such a terrible lack of variety in their subjects. The
+churchmen, their great patrons, suggested most of their themes, and
+a dead mythology the rest. A quarter part, probably, of any large
+collection of pictures consists of Virgins and infant Christs, repeated
+over and over again in pretty much an identical spirit, and generally
+with no more mixture of the Divine than just enough to spoil them as
+representations of maternity and childhood, with which everybody's heart
+might have something to do. Half of the other pictures are Magdalens,
+Flights into Egypt, Crucifixions, Depositions from the Cross, Pietas,
+Noli-me-tangeres, or the Sacrifice of Abraham, or martyrdoms of saints,
+originally painted as altar-pieces, or for the shrines of chapels, and
+woefully lacking the accompaniments which the artist haft in view.
+
+The remainder of the gallery comprises mythological subjects, such as
+nude Venuses, Ledas, Graces, and, in short, a general apotheosis of
+nudity, once fresh and rosy perhaps, but yellow and dingy in our day,
+and retaining only a traditionary charm. These impure pictures are from
+the same illustrious and impious hands that adventured to call before
+us the august forms of Apostles and Saints, the Blessed Mother of the
+Redeemer, and her Son, at his death, and in his glory, and even the
+awfulness of Him, to whom the martyrs, dead a thousand years ago, have
+not yet dared to raise their eyes. They seem to take up one task or the
+other w the disrobed woman whom they call Venus, or the type of highest
+and tenderest womanhood in the mother of their Saviour with equal
+readiness, but to achieve the former with far more satisfactory success.
+If an artist sometimes produced a picture of the Virgin, possessing
+warmth enough to excite devotional feelings, it was probably the object
+of his earthly love to whom he thus paid the stupendous and fearful
+homage of setting up her portrait to be worshipped, not figuratively as
+a mortal, but by religious souls in their earnest aspirations towards
+Divinity. And who can trust the religious sentiment of Raphael, or
+receive any of his Virgins as heaven-descended likenesses, after seeing,
+for example, the Fornarina of the Barberini Palace, and feeling how
+sensual the artist must have been to paint such a brazen trollop of his
+own accord, and lovingly? Would the Blessed Mary reveal herself to his
+spiritual vision, and favor him with sittings alternately with that type
+of glowing earthliness, the Fornarina?
+
+But no sooner have we given expression to this irreverent criticism,
+than a throng of spiritual faces look reproachfully upon us. We see
+cherubs by Raphael, whose baby innocence could only have been nursed
+in paradise; angels by Raphael as innocent as they, but whose serene
+intelligence embraces both earthly and celestial things; madonnas by
+Raphael, on whose lips he has impressed a holy and delicate reserve,
+implying sanctity on earth, and into whose soft eyes he has thrown a
+light which he never could have imagined except by raising his own
+eyes with a pure aspiration heavenward. We remember, too, that divinest
+countenance in the Transfiguration, and withdraw all that we have said.
+
+Poor Hilda, however, in her gloomiest moments, was never guilty of the
+high treason suggested in the above remarks against her beloved and
+honored Raphael. She had a faculty (which, fortunately for themselves,
+pure women often have) of ignoring all moral blotches in a character
+that won her admiration. She purified the objects; of her regard by the
+mere act of turning such spotless eyes upon them.
+
+Hilda's despondency, nevertheless, while it dulled her perceptions in
+one respect, had deepened them in another; she saw beauty less vividly,
+but felt truth, or the lack of it, more profoundly. She began to suspect
+that some, at least, of her venerated painters, had left an inevitable
+hollowness in their works, because, in the most renowned of them, they
+essayed to express to the world what they had not in their own souls.
+They deified their light and Wandering affections, and were continually
+playing off the tremendous jest, alluded to above, of offering the
+features of some venal beauty to be enshrined in the holiest places. A
+deficiency of earnestness and absolute truth is generally discoverable
+in Italian pictures, after the art had become consummate. When you
+demand what is deepest, these painters have not wherewithal to respond.
+They substituted a keen intellectual perception, and a marvellous knack
+of external arrangement, instead of the live sympathy and sentiment
+which should have been their inspiration. And hence it happens, that
+shallow and worldly men are among the best critics of their works; a
+taste for pictorial art is often no more than a polish upon the hard
+enamel of an artificial character. Hilda had lavished her whole heart
+upon it, and found (just as if she had lavished it upon a human idol)
+that the greater part was thrown away.
+
+For some of the earlier painters, however, she still retained much
+of her former reverence. Fra Angelico, she felt, must have breathed a
+humble aspiration between every two touches of his brush, in order to
+have made the finished picture such a visible prayer as we behold it, in
+the guise of a prim angel, or a saint without the human nature. Through
+all these dusky centuries, his works may still help a struggling heart
+to pray. Perugino was evidently a devout man; and the Virgin, therefore,
+revealed herself to him in loftier and sweeter faces of celestial
+womanhood, and yet with a kind of homeliness in their human mould, than
+even the genius of Raphael could imagine. Sodoma, beyond a question,
+both prayed and wept, while painting his fresco, at Siena, of Christ
+bound to a pillar.
+
+In her present need and hunger for a spiritual revelation, Hilda felt a
+vast and weary longing to see this last-mentioned picture once again. It
+is inexpressibly touching. So weary is the Saviour and utterly worn out
+with agony, that his lips have fallen apart from mere exhaustion; his
+eyes seem to be set; he tries to lean his head against the pillar, but
+is kept from sinking down upon the ground only by the cords that
+bind him. One of the most striking effects produced is the sense of
+loneliness. You behold Christ deserted both in heaven and earth; that
+despair is in him which wrung forth the saddest utterance man ever made,
+"Why hast Thou forsaken me?" Even in this extremity, however, he is
+still divine. The great and reverent painter has not suffered the Son of
+God to be merely an object of pity, though depicting him in a state so
+profoundly pitiful. He is rescued from it, we know not how,--by nothing
+less than miracle,--by a celestial majesty and beauty, and some quality
+of which these are the outward garniture. He is as much, and as visibly,
+our Redeemer, there bound, there fainting, and bleeding from the
+scourge, with the cross in view, as if he sat on his throne of glory in
+the heavens! Sodoma, in this matchless picture, has done more towards
+reconciling the incongruity of Divine Omnipotence and outraged,
+suffering Humanity, combined in one person, than the theologians ever
+did.
+
+This hallowed work of genius shows what pictorial art, devoutly
+exercised, might effect in behalf of religious truth; involving, as it
+does, deeper mysteries of revelation, and bringing them closer to man's
+heart, and making him tenderer to be impressed by them, than the most
+eloquent words of preacher or prophet.
+
+It is not of pictures like the above that galleries, in Rome or
+elsewhere, are made up, but of productions immeasurably below them,
+and requiring to be appreciated by a very different frame of mind. Few
+amateurs are endowed with a tender susceptibility to the sentiment of
+a picture; they are not won from an evil life, nor anywise morally
+improved by it. The love of art, therefore, differs widely in its
+influence from the love of nature; whereas, if art had not strayed away
+from its legitimate paths and aims, it ought to soften and sweeten
+the lives of its worshippers, in even a more exquisite degree than the
+contemplation of natural objects. But, of its own potency, it has no
+such effect; and it fails, likewise, in that other test of its moral
+value which poor Hilda was now involuntarily trying upon it. It cannot
+comfort the heart in affliction; it grows dim when the shadow is upon
+us.
+
+So the melancholy girl wandered through those long galleries, and over
+the mosaic pavements of vast, solitary saloons, wondering what had
+become of the splendor that used to beam upon her from the walls. She
+grew sadly critical, and condemned almost everything that she was wont
+to admire. Heretofore, her sympathy went deeply into a picture, yet
+seemed to leave a depth which it was inadequate to sound; now, on the
+contrary, her perceptive faculty penetrated the canvas like a steel
+probe, and found but a crust of paint over an emptiness. Not that she
+gave up all art as worthless; only it had lost its consecration. One
+picture in ten thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the applause of
+mankind, from generation to generation, until the colors fade and
+blacken out of sight, or the canvas rot entirely away. For the rest, let
+them be piled in garrets, just as the tolerable poets are shelved, when
+their little day is over. Is a painter more sacred than a poet?
+
+And as for these galleries of Roman palaces, they were to Hilda,
+--though she still trod them with the forlorn hope of getting back her
+sympathies,--they were drearier than the whitewashed walls of a prison
+corridor. If a magnificent palace were founded, as was generally the
+case, on hardened guilt and a stony conscience,--if the prince or
+cardinal who stole the marble of his vast mansion from the Coliseum, or
+some Roman temple, had perpetrated still deadlier crimes, as probably he
+did,--there could be no fitter punishment for his ghost than to wander,
+perpetually through these long suites of rooms, over the cold marble or
+mosaic of the floors, growing chiller at every eternal footstep. Fancy
+the progenitor of the Dorias thus haunting those heavy halls where
+his posterity reside! Nor would it assuage his monotonous misery, but
+increase it manifold, to be compelled to scrutinize those masterpieces
+of art, which he collected with so much cost and care, and gazing at
+them unintelligently, still leave a further portion of his vital warmth
+at every one.
+
+Such, or of a similar kind, is the torment of those who seek to enjoy
+pictures in an uncongenial mood. Every haunter of picture galleries,
+we should imagine, must have experienced it, in greater or less degree;
+Hilda never till now, but now most bitterly.
+
+And now, for the first time in her lengthened absence, comprising
+so many years of her young life, she began to be acquainted with the
+exile's pain. Her pictorial imagination brought up vivid scenes of her
+native village, with its great old elm-trees; and the neat, comfortable
+houses, scattered along the wide, grassy margin of its street, and the
+white meeting-house, and her mother's very door, and the stream of gold
+brown water, which her taste for color had kept flowing, all this
+while, through her remembrance. O dreary streets, palaces, churches, and
+imperial sepulchres of hot and dusty Rome, with the muddy Tiber eddying
+through the midst, instead of the gold-brown rivulet! How she pined
+under this crumbly magnificence, as if it were piled all upon her
+human heart! How she yearned for that native homeliness, those familiar
+sights, those faces which she had known always, those days that never
+brought any strange event; that life of sober week-days, and a solemn
+sabbath at the close! The peculiar fragrance of a flower-bed, which
+Hilda used to cultivate, came freshly to her memory, across the windy
+sea, and through the long years since the flowers had withered. Her
+heart grew faint at the hundred reminiscences that were awakened by that
+remembered smell of dead blossoms; it was like opening a drawer, where
+many things were laid away, and every one of them scented with lavender
+and dried rose-leaves.
+
+We ought not to betray Hilda's secret; but it is the truth, that being
+so sad, and so utterly alone, and in such great need of sympathy, her
+thoughts sometimes recurred to the sculptor. Had she met him now, her
+heart, indeed, might not have been won, but her confidence would have
+flown to him like a bird to its nest. One summer afternoon, especially,
+Hilda leaned upon the battlements of her tower, and looked over Rome
+towards the distant mountains, whither Kenyon had told her that he was
+going.
+
+"O that he were here!" she sighed; "I perish under this terrible secret;
+and he might help me to endure it. O that he were here!"
+
+That very afternoon, as the reader may remember, Kenyon felt
+Hilda's hand pulling at the silken cord that was connected with his
+heart-strings, as he stood looking towards Rome from the battlements of
+Monte Beni.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+ALTARS AND INCENSE
+
+
+Rome has a certain species of consolation readier at hand, for all the
+necessitous, than any other spot under the sun; and Hilda's despondent
+state made her peculiarly liable to the peril, if peril it can justly be
+termed, of seeking, or consenting, to be thus consoled.
+
+Had the Jesuits known the situation of this troubled heart, her
+inheritance of New England Puritanism would hardly have protected the
+poor girl from the pious strategy of those good fathers. Knowing, as
+they do, how to work each proper engine, it would have been ultimately
+impossible for Hilda to resist the attractions of a faith, which so
+marvellously adapts itself to every human need. Not, indeed, that it can
+satisfy the soul's cravings, but, at least, it can sometimes help
+the soul towards a higher satisfaction than the faith contains within
+itself. It supplies a multitude of external forms, in which the
+spiritual may be clothed and manifested; it has many painted windows,
+as it were, through which the celestial sunshine, else disregarded, may
+make itself gloriously perceptible in visions of beauty and splendor.
+There is no one want or weakness of human nature for which Catholicism
+will own itself without a remedy; cordials, certainly, it possesses in
+abundance, and sedatives in inexhaustible variety, and what may once
+have been genuine medicaments, though a little the worse for long
+keeping.
+
+To do it justice, Catholicism is such a miracle of fitness for its
+own ends, many of which might seem to be admirable ones, that it is
+difficult to imagine it a contrivance of mere man. Its mighty machinery
+was forged and put together, not on middle earth, but either above
+or below. If there were but angels to work it, instead of the very
+different class of engineers who now manage its cranks and safety
+valves, the system would soon vindicate the dignity and holiness of its
+origin.
+
+Hilda had heretofore made many pilgrimages among the churches of Rome,
+for the sake of wondering at their gorgeousness. Without a glimpse at
+these palaces of worship, it is impossible to imagine the magnificence
+of the religion that reared them. Many of them shine with burnished
+gold. They glow with pictures. Their walls, columns, and arches seem a
+quarry of precious stones, so beautiful and costly are the marbles
+with which they are inlaid. Their pavements are often a mosaic, of rare
+workmanship. Around their lofty cornices hover flights of sculptured
+angels; and within the vault of the ceiling and the swelling interior
+of the dome, there are frescos of such brilliancy, and wrought with so
+artful a perspective, that the sky, peopled with sainted forms, appears
+to be opened only a little way above the spectator. Then there are
+chapels, opening from the side aisles and transepts, decorated by
+princes for their own burial places, and as shrines for their especial
+saints. In these, the splendor of the entire edifice is intensified
+and gathered to a focus. Unless words were gems, that would flame with
+many-colored light upon the page, and throw thence a tremulous glimmer
+into the reader's eyes, it were wain to attempt a description of a
+princely chapel.
+
+Restless with her trouble, Hilda now entered upon another pilgrimage
+among these altars and shrines. She climbed the hundred steps of the Ara
+Coeli; she trod the broad, silent nave of St. John Lateran; she stood
+in the Pantheon, under the round opening in the dome, through which
+the blue sunny sky still gazes down, as it used to gaze when there were
+Roman deities in the antique niches. She went into every church that
+rose before her, but not now to wonder at its magnificence, when she
+hardly noticed more than if it had been the pine-built interior of a New
+England meeting-house.
+
+She went--and it was a dangerous errand--to observe how closely and
+comfortingly the popish faith applied itself to all human occasions. It
+was impossible to doubt that multitudes of people found their spiritual
+advantage in it, who would find none at all in our own formless mode of
+worship; which, besides, so far as the sympathy of prayerful souls is
+concerned, can be enjoyed only at stated and too unfrequent periods. But
+here, whenever the hunger for divine nutriment came upon the soul, it
+could on the instant be appeased. At one or another altar, the incense
+was forever ascending; the mass always being performed, and carrying
+upward with it the devotion of such as had not words for their own
+prayer. And yet, if the worshipper had his individual petition to offer,
+his own heart-secret to whisper below his breath, there were divine
+auditors ever ready to receive it from his lips; and what encouraged him
+still more, these auditors had not always been divine, but kept, within
+their heavenly memories, the tender humility of a human experience. Now
+a saint in heaven, but once a man on earth.
+
+Hilda saw peasants, citizens, soldiers, nobles, women with bare heads,
+ladies in their silks, entering the churches individually, kneeling for
+moments or for hours, and directing their inaudible devotions to the
+shrine of some saint of their own choice. In his hallowed person, they
+felt themselves possessed of an own friend in heaven. They were too
+humble to approach the Deity directly. Conscious of their unworthiness,
+they asked the mediation of their sympathizing patron, who, on the score
+of his ancient martyrdom, and after many ages of celestial life, might
+venture to talk with the Divine Presence, almost as friend with friend.
+Though dumb before its Judge, even despair could speak, and pour out the
+misery of its soul like water, to an advocate so wise to comprehend the
+case, and eloquent to plead it, and powerful to win pardon whatever
+were the guilt. Hilda witnessed what she deemed to be an example of this
+species of confidence between a young man and his saint. He stood before
+a shrine, writhing, wringing his hands, contorting his whole frame in
+an agony of remorseful recollection, but finally knelt down to weep and
+pray. If this youth had been a Protestant, he would have kept all that
+torture pent up in his heart, and let it burn there till it seared him
+into indifference.
+
+Often and long, Hilda lingered before the shrines and chapels of the
+Virgin, and departed from them with reluctant steps. Here, perhaps,
+strange as it may seem, her delicate appreciation of art stood her
+in good stead, and lost Catholicism a convert. If the painter had
+represented Mary with a heavenly face, poor Hilda was now in the very
+mood to worship her, and adopt the faith in which she held so elevated
+a position. But she saw that it was merely the flattered portrait of
+an earthly beauty; the wife, at best, of the artist; or, it might be, a
+peasant girl of the Campagna, or some Roman princess, to whom he desired
+to pay his court. For love, or some even less justifiable motive, the
+old painter had apotheosized these women; he thus gained for them, as
+far as his skill would go, not only the meed of immortality, but the
+privilege of presiding over Christian altars, and of being worshipped
+with far holier fervors than while they dwelt on earth. Hilda's fine
+sense of the fit and decorous could not be betrayed into kneeling at
+such a shrine.
+
+She never found just the virgin mother whom she needed. Here it was
+an earthly mother, worshipping the earthly baby in her lap, as any and
+every mother does, from Eve's time downward. In another picture, there
+was a dim sense, shown in the mother's face, of some divine quality
+in the child. In a third, the artist seemed to have had a higher
+perception, and had striven hard to shadow out the Virgin's joy at
+bringing the Saviour into the world, and her awe and love, inextricably
+mingled, of the little form which she pressed against her bosom. So
+far was good. But still, Hilda looked for something more; a face of
+celestial beauty, but human as well as heavenly, and with the shadow
+of past grief upon it; bright with immortal youth, yet matronly and
+motherly; and endowed with a queenly dignity, but infinitely tender, as
+the highest and deepest attribute of her divinity.
+
+"Ah," thought Hilda to herself, "why should not there be a woman to
+listen to the prayers of women? A mother in heaven for all motherless
+girls like me? In all God's thought and care for us, can he have
+withheld this boon, which our weakness so much needs?"
+
+Oftener than to the other churches, she wandered into St. Peter's.
+Within its vast limits, she thought, and beneath the sweep of its great
+dome, there should be space for all forms of Christian truth; room both
+for the faithful and the heretic to kneel; due help for every creature's
+spiritual want.
+
+Hilda had not always been adequately impressed by the grandeur of this
+mighty cathedral. When she first lifted the heavy leathern curtain, at
+one of the doors, a shadowy edifice in her imagination had been dazzled
+out of sight by the reality. Her preconception of St. Peter's was a
+structure of no definite outline, misty in its architecture, dim
+and gray and huge, stretching into an interminable perspective, and
+overarched by a dome like the cloudy firmament. Beneath that vast
+breadth and height, as she had fancied them, the personal man might
+feel his littleness, and the soul triumph in its immensity. So, in
+her earlier visits, when the compassed splendor Of the actual interior
+glowed before her eyes, she had profanely called it a great prettiness;
+a gay piece of cabinet work, on a Titanic scale; a jewel casket,
+marvellously magnified.
+
+This latter image best pleased her fancy; a casket, all inlaid in the
+inside with precious stones of various hue, so that there Should not be
+a hair's-breadth of the small interior unadorned with its resplendent
+gem. Then, conceive this minute wonder of a mosaic box, increased to
+the magnitude of a cathedral, without losing the intense lustre of its
+littleness, but all its petty glory striving to be sublime. The magic
+transformation from the minute to the vast has not been so cunningly
+effected but that the rich adornment still counteracts the impression of
+space and loftiness. The spectator is more sensible of its limits than
+of its extent.
+
+Until after many visits, Hilda continued to mourn for that dim,
+illimitable interior, which with her eyes shut she had seen from
+childhood, but which vanished at her first glimpse through the actual
+door. Her childish vision seemed preferable to the cathedral which
+Michael Angelo, and all the great architects, had built; because, of
+the dream edifice, she had said, "How vast it is!" while of the real St.
+Peter's she could only say, "After all, it is not so immense!" Besides,
+such as the church is, it can nowhere be made visible at one glance.
+It stands in its own way. You see an aisle, or a transept; you see the
+nave, or the tribune; but, on account of its ponderous piers and other
+obstructions, it is only by this fragmentary process that you get an
+idea of the cathedral.
+
+There is no answering such objections. The great church smiles calmly
+upon its critics, and, for all response, says, "Look at me!" and if you
+still murmur for the loss of your shadowy perspective, there comes no
+reply, save, "Look at me!" in endless repetition, as the one thing to
+be said. And, after looking many times, with long intervals between, you
+discover that the cathedral has gradually extended itself over the whole
+compass of your idea; it covers all the site of your visionary temple,
+and has room for its cloudy pinnacles beneath the dome.
+
+One afternoon, as Hilda entered St. Peter's in sombre mood, its interior
+beamed upon her with all the effect of a new creation. It seemed an
+embodiment of whatever the imagination could conceive, or the heart
+desire, as a magnificent, comprehensive, majestic symbol of religious
+faith. All splendor was included within its verge, and there was space
+for all. She gazed with delight even at the multiplicity of ornament.
+She was glad at the cherubim that fluttered upon the pilasters, and of
+the marble doves, hovering unexpectedly, with green olive-branches
+of precious stones. She could spare nothing, now, of the manifold
+magnificence that had been lavished, in a hundred places, richly enough
+to have made world-famous shrines in any other church, but which
+here melted away into the vast sunny breadth, and were of no separate
+account. Yet each contributed its little all towards the grandeur of the
+whole.
+
+She would not have banished one of those grim popes, who sit each over
+his own tomb, scattering cold benedictions out of their marble hands;
+nor a single frozen sister of the Allegoric family, to whom--as, like
+hired mourners at an English funeral, it costs them no wear and tear of
+heart--is assigned the office of weeping for the dead. If you choose to
+see these things, they present themselves; if you deem them unsuitable
+and out of place, they vanish, individually, but leave their life upon
+the walls.
+
+The pavement! it stretched out illimitably, a plain of many-colored
+marble, where thousands of worshippers might kneel together, and
+shadowless angels tread among them without brushing their heavenly
+garments against those earthly ones. The roof! the dome! Rich, gorgeous,
+filled with sunshine, cheerfully sublime, and fadeless after
+centuries, those lofty depths seemed to translate the heavens to mortal
+comprehension, and help the spirit upward to a yet higher and wider
+sphere. Must not the faith, that built this matchless edifice, and
+warmed, illuminated, and overflowed from it, include whatever can
+satisfy human aspirations at the loftiest, or minister to human
+necessity at the sorest? If Religion had a material home, was it not
+here?
+
+As the scene which we but faintly suggest shone calmly before the New
+England maiden at her entrance, she moved, as if by very instinct, to
+one of the vases of holy water, upborne against a column by two mighty
+cherubs. Hilda dipped her fingers, and had almost signed the cross upon
+her breast, but forbore, and trembled, while shaking the water from her
+finger-tips. She felt as if her mother's spirit, somewhere within
+the dome, were looking down upon her child, the daughter of Puritan
+forefathers, and weeping to behold her ensnared by these gaudy
+superstitions. So she strayed sadly onward, up the nave, and towards the
+hundred golden lights that swarm before the high altar. Seeing a woman;
+a priest, and a soldier kneel to kiss the toe of the brazen St. Peter,
+who protrudes it beyond his pedestal for the purpose, polished bright
+with former salutations, while a child stood on tiptoe to do the same,
+the glory of the church was darkened before Hilda's eyes. But again she
+went onward into remoter regions. She turned into the right transept,
+and thence found her way to a shrine, in the extreme corner of the
+edifice, which is adorned with a mosaic copy of Guido's beautiful
+Archangel, treading on the prostrate fiend.
+
+This was one of the few pictures, which, in these dreary days, had not
+faded nor deteriorated in Hilda's estimation; not that it was better
+than many in which she no longer took an interest; but the subtile
+delicacy of the painter's genius was peculiarly adapted to her
+character. She felt, while gazing at it, that the artist had done a
+great thing, not merely for the Church of Rome, but for the cause of
+Good. The moral of the picture, the immortal youth and loveliness of
+virtue, and its irresistibles might against ugly Evil, appealed as much
+to Puritans as Catholics.
+
+Suddenly, and as if it were done in a dream, Hilda found herself
+kneeling before the shrine, under the ever-burning lamp that throws
+its rays upon the Archangel's face. She laid her forehead on the marble
+steps before the altar, and sobbed out a prayer; she hardly knew to
+whom, whether Michael, the Virgin, or the Father; she hardly knew for
+what, save only a vague longing, that thus the burden of her spirit
+might be lightened a little.
+
+In an instant she snatched herself up, as it were, from her knees, all
+a-throb with the emotions which were struggling to force their way out
+of her heart by the avenue that had so nearly been opened for them. Yet
+there was a strange sense of relief won by that momentary, passionate
+prayer; a strange joy, moreover, whether from what she had done, or for
+what she had escaped doing, Hilda could not tell. But she felt as one
+half stifled, who has stolen a breath of air.
+
+Next to the shrine where she had knelt there is another, adorned with
+a picture by Guercino, representing a maiden's body in the jaws of the
+sepulchre, and her lover weeping over it; while her beatified spirit
+looks down upon the scene, in the society of the Saviour and a throng
+of saints. Hilda wondered if it were not possible, by some miracle of
+faith, so to rise above her present despondency that she might look down
+upon what she was, just as Petronilla in the picture looked at her own
+corpse. A hope, born of hysteric trouble, fluttered in her heart. A
+presentiment, or what she fancied such, whispered her, that, before she
+had finished the circuit of the cathedral, relief would come.
+
+The unhappy are continually tantalized by similar delusions of succor
+near at hand; at least, the despair is very dark that has no such
+will-o'-the-wisp to glimmer in it.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+
+THE WORLD'S CATHEDRAL
+
+
+Still gliding onward, Hilda now looked up into the dome, where the
+sunshine came through the western windows, and threw across long shafts
+of light. They rested upon the mosaic figures of two evangelists above
+the cornice. These great beams of radiance, traversing what seemed the
+empty space, were made visible in misty glory, by the holy cloud of
+incense, else unseen, which had risen into the middle dome. It was to
+Hilda as if she beheld the worship of the priest and people ascending
+heavenward, purified from its alloy of earth, and acquiring celestial
+substance in the golden atmosphere to which it aspired, She wondered if
+angels did not sometimes hover within the dome, and show themselves, in
+brief glimpses, floating amid the sunshine and the glorified vapor, to
+those who devoutly worshipped on the pavement.
+
+She had now come into the southern transept. Around this portion of the
+church are ranged a number of confessionals. They are small tabernacles
+of carved wood, with a closet for the priest in the centre; and, on
+either side, a space for a penitent to kneel, and breathe his confession
+through a perforated auricle into the good father's ear. Observing this
+arrangement, though already familiar to her, our poor Hilda was anew
+impressed with the infinite convenience--if we may use so poor a
+phrase--of the Catholic religion to its devout believers.
+
+Who, in truth, that considers the matter, can resist a similar
+impression! In the hottest fever-fit of life, they can always find,
+ready for their need, a cool, quiet, beautiful place of worship. They
+may enter its sacred precincts at any hour, leaving the fret and trouble
+of the world behind them, and purifying themselves with a touch of
+holy water at the threshold. In the calm interior, fragrant of rich and
+soothing incense, they may hold converse with some saint, their awful,
+kindly friend. And, most precious privilege of all, whatever perplexity,
+sorrow, guilt, may weigh upon their souls, they can fling down the dark
+burden at the foot of the cross, and go forth--to sin no more, nor be
+any longer disquieted; but to live again in the freshness and elasticity
+of innocence.
+
+"Do not these inestimable advantages," thought Hilda, "or some of them
+at least, belong to Christianity itself? Are they not a part of the
+blessings which the system was meant to bestow upon mankind? Can the
+faith in which I was born and bred be perfect, if it leave a weak girl
+like me to wander, desolate, with this great trouble crushing me down?"
+
+A poignant anguish thrilled within her breast; it was like a thing that
+had life, and was struggling to get out.
+
+"O help! O help!" cried Hilda; "I cannot, cannot bear it!"
+
+Only by the reverberations that followed--arch echoing the sound to
+arch, and a pope of bronze repeating it to a pope of marble, as each
+sat enthroned over his tomb--did Hilda become aware that she had really
+spoken above her breath. But, in that great space, there is no need to
+hush up the heart within one's own bosom, so carefully as elsewhere;
+and if the cry reached any distant auditor, it came broken into many
+fragments, and from various quarters of the church.
+
+Approaching one of the confessionals, she saw a woman kneeling within.
+Just as Hilda drew near, the penitent rose, came forth, and kissed the
+hand of the priest, who regarded her with a look of paternal benignity,
+and appeared to be giving her some spiritual counsel, in a low voice.
+She then knelt to receive his blessing, which was fervently bestowed.
+Hilda was so struck with the peace and joy in the woman's face, that, as
+the latter retired, she could not help speaking to her.
+
+"You look very happy!" said she. "Is it so sweet, then, to go to the
+confessional?"
+
+"O, very sweet, my dear signorina!" answered the woman, with moistened
+eyes and an affectionate smile; for she was so thoroughly softened with
+what she had been doing, that she felt as if Hilda were her younger
+sister. "My heart is at rest now. Thanks be to the Saviour, and the
+Blessed Virgin and the saints, and this good father, there is no more
+trouble for poor Teresa!"
+
+"I am glad for your sake," said Hilda, sighing for her own. "I am a poor
+heretic, but a human sister; and I rejoice for you!"
+
+She went from one to another of the confessionals, and, looking at
+each, perceived that they were inscribed with gilt letters: on one,
+Pro Italica Lingua; on another, Pro Flandrica Lingua; on a third, Pro
+Polonica Lingua; on a fourth, Pro Illyrica Lingua; on a fifth, Pro
+Hispanica Lingua. In this vast and hospitable cathedral, worthy to be
+the religious heart of the whole world, there was room for all nations;
+there was access to the Divine Grace for every Christian soul; there was
+an ear for what the overburdened heart might have to murmur, speak in
+what native tongue it would.
+
+When Hilda had almost completed the circuit of the transept, she came to
+a confessional--the central part was closed, but a mystic room protruded
+from it, indicating the presence of a priest within--on which was
+inscribed, Pro Anglica Lingua.
+
+It was the word in season! If she had heard her mother's voice from
+within the tabernacle, calling her, in her own mother-tongue, to come
+and lay her poor head in her lap, and sob out all her troubles, Hilda
+could not have responded with a more inevitable obedience. She did not
+think; she only felt. Within her heart was a great need. Close at hand,
+within the veil of the confessional, was the relief. She flung herself
+down in the penitent's place; and, tremulously, passionately, with sobs,
+tears, and the turbulent overflow of emotion too long repressed, she
+poured out the dark story which had infused its poison into her innocent
+life.
+
+Hilda had not seen, nor could she now see, the visage of the priest.
+But, at intervals, in the pauses of that strange confession, half choked
+by the struggle of her feelings toward an outlet, she heard a mild, calm
+voice, somewhat mellowed by age. It spoke soothingly; it encouraged her;
+it led her on by apposite questions that seemed to be suggested by a
+great and tender interest, and acted like magnetism in attracting the
+girl's confidence to this unseen friend. The priest's share in the
+interview, indeed, resembled that of one who removes the stones,
+clustered branches, or whatever entanglements impede the current of a
+swollen stream. Hilda could have imagined--so much to the purpose were
+his inquiries--that he was already acquainted with some outline of what
+she strove to tell him.
+
+Thus assisted, she revealed the whole of her terrible secret! The whole,
+except that no name escaped her lips.
+
+And, ah, what a relief! When the hysteric gasp, the strife between words
+and sobs, had subsided, what a torture had passed away from her soul! It
+was all gone; her bosom was as pure now as in her childhood. She was a
+girl again; she was Hilda of the dove-cote; not that doubtful creature
+whom her own doves had hardly recognized as their mistress and playmate,
+by reason of the death-scent that clung to her garments!
+
+After she had ceased to speak, Hilda heard the priest bestir
+himself with an old man's reluctant movement. He stepped out of the
+confessional; and as the girl was still kneeling in the penitential
+corner, he summoned her forth.
+
+"Stand up, my daughter," said the mild voice of the confessor; "what we
+have further to say must be spoken face to face."
+
+Hilda did his bidding, and stood before him with a downcast visage,
+which flushed and grew pale again. But it had the wonderful beauty which
+we may often observe in those who have recently gone through a great
+struggle, and won the peace that lies just on the other side. We see
+it in a new mother's face; we see it in the faces of the dead; and
+in Hilda's countenance--which had always a rare natural charm for her
+friends--this glory of peace made her as lovely as an angel.
+
+On her part, Hilda beheld a venerable figure with hair as white as snow,
+and a face strikingly characterized by benevolence. It bore marks of
+thought, however, and penetrative insight; although the keen glances of
+the eyes were now somewhat bedimmed with tears, which the aged shed, or
+almost shed, on lighter stress of emotion than would elicit them from
+younger men.
+
+"It has not escaped my observation, daughter," said the priest, "that
+this is your first acquaintance with the confessional. How is this?"
+
+"Father," replied Hilda, raising her eyes, and again letting them fall,
+"I am of New Eng land birth, and was bred as what you call a heretic."
+
+"From New England!" exclaimed the priest. "It was my own birthplace,
+likewise; nor have fifty years of absence made me cease to love it. But
+a heretic! And are you reconciled to the Church?"
+
+"Never, father," said Hilda.
+
+"And, that being the case," demanded the old man, "on what ground, my
+daughter, have you sought to avail yourself of these blessed privileges,
+confined exclusively to members of the one true Church, of confession
+and absolution?"
+
+"Absolution, father?" exclaimed Hilda, shrinking back. "O no, no! I
+never dreamed of that! Only our Heavenly Father can forgive my sins; and
+it is only by sincere repentance of whatever wrong I may have done, and
+by my own best efforts towards a higher life, that I can hope for his
+forgiveness! God forbid that I should ask absolution from mortal man!"
+
+"Then wherefore," rejoined the priest, with somewhat less mildness in
+his tone,--"wherefore, I ask again, have you taken possession, as I may
+term it, of this holy ordinance; being a heretic, and neither seeking to
+share, nor having faith in, the unspeakable advantages which the Church
+offers to its penitents?"
+
+"Father," answered Hilda, trying to tell the old man the simple truth,
+"I am a motherless girl, and a stranger here in Italy. I had only God
+to take care of me, and be my closest friend; and the terrible, terrible
+crime, which I have revealed to you, thrust itself between him and me;
+so that I groped for him in the darkness, as it were, and found him
+not,--found nothing but a dreadful solitude, and this crime in the midst
+of it! I could not bear it. It seemed as if I made the awful guilt my
+own, by keeping it hidden in my heart. I grew a fearful thing to myself.
+I was going mad!"
+
+"It was a grievous trial, my poor child!" observed the confessor. "Your
+relief, I trust, will prove to be greater than you yet know!"
+
+"I feel already how immense it is!" said Hilda, looking gratefully in
+his face. "Surely, father, it was the hand of Providence that led me
+hither, and made me feel that this vast temple of Christianity, this
+great home of religion, must needs contain some cure, some ease, at
+least, for my unutterable anguish. And it has proved so. I have told the
+hideous secret; told it under the sacred seal of the confessional; and
+now it will burn my poor heart no more!"
+
+"But, daughter," answered the venerable priest, not unmoved by what
+Hilda said, "you forget! you mistake!--you claim a privilege to which
+you have not entitled yourself! The seal of the confessional, do you
+say? God forbid that it should ever be broken where it has been fairly
+impressed; but it applies only to matters that have been confided to its
+keeping in a certain prescribed method, and by persons, moreover, who
+have faith in the sanctity of the ordinance. I hold myself, and any
+learned casuist of the Church would hold me, as free to disclose all the
+particulars of what you term your confession, as if they had come to my
+knowledge in a secular way."
+
+"This is not right, father!" said Hilda, fixing her eyes on the old
+man's.
+
+"Do not you see, child," he rejoined, with some little heat, "with all
+your nicety of conscience, cannot you recognize it as my duty to make
+the story known to the proper authorities; a great crime against public
+justice being involved, and further evil consequences likely to ensue?"
+
+"No, father, no!" answered Hilda, courageously, her cheeks flushing and
+her eyes brightening as she spoke. "Trust a girl's simple heart sooner
+than any casuist of your Church, however learned he may be. Trust your
+own heart, too! I came to your confessional, father, as I devoutly
+believe, by the direct impulse of Heaven, which also brought you hither
+to-day, in its mercy and love, to relieve me of a torture that I could
+no longer bear. I trusted in the pledge which your Church has always
+held sacred between the priest and the human soul, which, through his
+medium, is struggling towards its Father above. What I have confided to
+you lies sacredly between God and yourself. Let it rest there, father;
+for this is right, and if you do otherwise, you will perpetrate a great
+wrong, both as a priest and a man! And believe me, no question, no
+torture, shall ever force my lips to utter what would be necessary,
+in order to make my confession available towards the punishment of the
+guilty ones. Leave Providence to deal with them!"
+
+"My quiet little countrywoman," said the priest, with half a smile on
+his kindly old face, "you can pluck up a spirit, I perceive, when you
+fancy an occasion for one."
+
+"I have spirit only to do what I think right," replied Hilda simply. "In
+other respects I am timorous."
+
+"But you confuse yourself between right feelings and very foolish
+inferences," continued the priest, "as is the wont of women,--so much
+I have learnt by long experience in the confessional,--be they young or
+old. However, to set your heart at rest, there is no probable need
+for me to reveal the matter. What you have told, if I mistake not, and
+perhaps more, is already known in the quarter which it most concerns."
+
+"Known!" exclaimed Hilda. "Known to the authorities of Rome! And what
+will be the consequence?"
+
+"Hush!" answered the confessor, laying his finger on his lips. "I tell
+you my supposition--mind, it is no assertion of the fact--in order
+that you may go the more cheerfully on your way, not deeming yourself
+burdened with any responsibility as concerns this dark deed. And now,
+daughter, what have you to give in return for an old man's kindness and
+sympathy?"
+
+"My grateful remembrance," said Hilda, fervently, "as long as I live!"
+
+"And nothing more?" the priest inquired, with a persuasive smile. "Will
+you not reward him with a great joy; one of the last joys that he may
+know on earth, and a fit one to take with him into the better world? In
+a word, will you not allow me to bring you as a stray lamb into the true
+fold? You have experienced some little taste of the relief and comfort
+which the Church keeps abundantly in store for all its faithful
+children. Come home, dear child,--poor wanderer, who hast caught a
+glimpse of the heavenly light,--come home, and be at rest."
+
+"Father," said Hilda, much moved by his kindly earnestness, in
+which, however, genuine as it was, there might still be a leaven of
+professional craft, "I dare not come a step farther than Providence
+shall guide me. Do not let it grieve you, therefore, if I never return
+to the confessional; never dip my fingers in holy water; never sign my
+bosom with the cross. I am a daughter of the Puritans. But, in spite of
+my heresy," she added with a sweet, tearful smile, "you may one day
+see the poor girl, to whom you have done this great Christian kindness,
+coming to remind you of it, and thank you for it, in the Better Land."
+
+The old priest shook his head. But, as he stretched out his hands at the
+same moment, in the act of benediction, Hilda knelt down and received
+the blessing with as devout a simplicity as any Catholic of them all.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+
+HILDA AND A FRIEND
+
+
+When Hilda knelt to receive the priest's benediction, the act was
+witnessed by a person who stood leaning against the marble balustrade
+that surrounds the hundred golden lights, before the high altar. He had
+stood there, indeed, from the moment of the girl's entrance into the
+confessional. His start of surprise, at first beholding her, and
+the anxious gloom that afterwards settled on his face, sufficiently
+betokened that he felt a deep and sad interest in what was going
+forward.
+
+After Hilda had bidden the priest farewell, she came slowly towards the
+high altar. The individual to whom we have alluded seemed irresolute
+whether to advance or retire. His hesitation lasted so long that the
+maiden, straying through a happy reverie, had crossed the wide extent
+of the pavement between the confessional and the altar, before he had
+decided whether to meet her. At last, when within a pace or two, she
+raised her eyes and recognized Kenyon.
+
+"It is you!" she exclaimed, with joyful surprise. "I am so happy."
+
+In truth, the sculptor had never before seen, nor hardly imagined, such
+a figure of peaceful beatitude as Hilda now presented. While coming
+towards him in the solemn radiance which, at that period of the day, is
+diffused through the transept, and showered down beneath the dome, she
+seemed of the same substance as the atmosphere that enveloped her. He
+could scarcely tell whether she was imbued with sunshine, or whether it
+was a glow of happiness that shone out of her.
+
+At all events, it was a marvellous change from the sad girl, who had
+entered the confessional bewildered with anguish, to this bright, yet
+softened image of religious consolation that emerged from it. It was
+as if one of the throng of angelic people, who might be hovering in the
+sunny depths of the dome, had alighted on the pavement. Indeed, this
+capability of transfiguration, which we often see wrought by inward
+delight on persons far less capable of it than Hilda, suggests how
+angels come by their beauty, it grows out of their happiness, and lasts
+forever only because that is immortal.
+
+She held out her hand, and Kenyon was glad to take it in his own, if
+only to assure himself that she was made of earthly material.
+
+"Yes, Hilda, I see that you are very happy," he replied gloomily, and
+withdrawing his hand after a single pressure. "For me, I never was less
+so than at this moment."
+
+"Has any misfortune befallen you?" asked Hilda with earnestness. "Pray
+tell me, and you shall have my sympathy, though I must still be very
+happy. Now I know how it is that the saints above are touched by the
+sorrows of distressed people on earth, and yet are never made wretched
+by them. Not that I profess to be a saint, you know," she added, smiling
+radiantly. "But the heart grows so large, and so rich, and so variously
+endowed, when it has a great sense of bliss, that it can give smiles to
+some, and tears to others, with equal sincerity, and enjoy its own peace
+throughout all."
+
+"Do not say you are no saint!" answered Kenyon with a smile, though he
+felt that the tears stood in his eves. "You will still be Saint Hilda,
+whatever church may canonize you."
+
+"Ah! you would not have said so, had you seen me but an hour ago!"
+murmured she. "I was so wretched, that there seemed a grievous sin in
+it."
+
+"And what has made you so suddenly happy?" inquired the sculptor. "But
+first, Hilda, will you not tell me why you were so wretched?"
+
+"Had I met you yesterday, I might have told you that," she replied.
+"To-day, there is no need."
+
+"Your happiness, then?" said the sculptor, as sadly as before. "Whence
+comes it?"
+
+"A great burden has been lifted from my heart--from my conscience, I had
+almost said,"--answered Hilda, without shunning the glance that he fixed
+upon her. "I am a new creature, since this morning, Heaven be praised
+for it! It was a blessed hour--a blessed impulse--that brought me
+to this beautiful and glorious cathedral. I shall hold it in loving
+remembrance while I live, as the spot where I found infinite peace after
+infinite trouble."
+
+Her heart seemed so full, that it spilt its new gush of happiness, as
+it were, like rich and sunny wine out of an over-brimming goblet. Kenyon
+saw that she was in one of those moods of elevated feeling, when the
+soul is upheld by a strange tranquility, which is really more passionate
+and less controllable than emotions far exceeding it in violence. He
+felt that there would be indelicacy, if he ought not rather to call it
+impiety, in his stealing upon Hilda, while she was thus beyond her
+own guardianship, and surprising her out of secrets which she might
+afterwards bitterly regret betraying to him. Therefore, though yearning
+to know what had happened, he resolved to forbear further question.
+
+Simple and earnest people, however, being accustomed to speak from their
+genuine impulses, cannot easily, as craftier men do, avoid the subject
+which they have at heart. As often as the sculptor unclosed his lips,
+such words as these were ready to burst out:--"Hilda, have you flung
+your angelic purity into that mass of unspeakable corruption, the Roman
+Church?"
+
+"What were you saying?" she asked, as Kenyon forced back an almost
+uttered exclamation of this kind.
+
+"I was thinking of what you have just remarked about the cathedral,"
+said he, looking up into the mighty hollow of the dome. "It is indeed
+a magnificent structure, and an adequate expression of the Faith which
+built it. When I behold it in a proper mood,--that is to say, when I
+bring my mind into a fair relation with the minds and purposes of its
+spiritual and material architects,--I see but one or two criticisms to
+make. One is, that it needs painted windows."
+
+"O, no!" said Hilda. "They would be quite inconsistent with so much
+richness of color in the interior of the church. Besides, it is a Gothic
+ornament, and only suited to that style of architecture, which requires
+a gorgeous dimness."
+
+"Nevertheless," continued the sculptor, "yonder square apertures,
+filled with ordinary panes of glass, are quite out of keeping with the
+superabundant splendor of everything about them. They remind me of that
+portion of Aladdin's palace which he left unfinished, in order that
+his royal father-in-law might put the finishing touch. Daylight, in its
+natural state, ought not to be admitted here. It should stream through a
+brilliant illusion of saints and hierarchies, and old scriptural images,
+and symbolized dogmas, purple, blue, golden, and a broad flame of
+scarlet. Then, it would be just such an illumination as the Catholic
+faith allows to its believers. But, give me--to live and die in--the
+pure, white light of heaven!"
+
+"Why do you look so sorrowfully at me?" asked Hilda, quietly meeting his
+disturbed gaze. "What would you say to me? I love the white light too!"
+
+"I fancied so," answered Kenyon. "Forgive me, Hilda; but I must needs
+speak. You seemed to me a rare mixture of impressibility, sympathy,
+sensitiveness to many influences, with a certain quality of common
+sense;--no, not that, but a higher and finer attribute, for which I find
+no better word. However tremulously you might vibrate, this quality,
+I supposed, would always bring you back to the equipoise. You were a
+creature of imagination, and yet as truly a New England girl as any with
+whom you grew up in your native village. If there were one person in
+the world whose native rectitude of thought, and something deeper, more
+reliable, than thought, I would have trusted against all the arts of a
+priesthood,--whose taste alone, so exquisite and sincere that it rose
+to be a moral virtue, I would have rested upon as a sufficient
+safeguard,--it was yourself!"
+
+"I am conscious of no such high and delicate qualities as you allow me,"
+answered Hilda. "But what have I done that a girl of New England birth
+and culture, with the right sense that her mother taught her, and the
+conscience that she developed in her, should not do?"
+
+"Hilda, I saw you at the confessional!" said Kenyon.
+
+"Ah well, my dear friend," replied Hilda, casting down her eyes, and
+looking somewhat confused, yet not ashamed, "you must try to forgive me
+for that,--if you deem it wrong, because it has saved my reason, and
+made me very happy. Had you been here yesterday, I would have confessed
+to you."
+
+"Would to Heaven I had!" ejaculated Kenyon.
+
+"I think," Hilda resumed, "I shall never go to the confessional again;
+for there can scarcely come such a sore trial twice in my life. If I had
+been a wiser girl, a stronger, and a more sensible, very likely I might
+not have gone to the confessional at all. It was the sin of others that
+drove me thither; not my own, though it almost seemed so. Being what
+I am, I must either have done what you saw me doing, or have gone mad.
+Would that have been better?"
+
+"Then you are not a Catholic?" asked the sculptor earnestly.
+
+"Really, I do not quite know what I am," replied Hilda, encountering his
+eyes with a frank and simple gaze. "I have a great deal of faith, and
+Catholicism seems to have a great deal of good. Why should not I be a
+Catholic, if I find there what I need, and what I cannot find elsewhere?
+The more I see of this worship, the more I wonder at the exuberance with
+which it adapts itself to all the demands of human infirmity. If its
+ministers were but a little more than human, above all error, pure from
+all iniquity, what a religion would it be!"
+
+"I need not fear your conversion to the Catholic faith," remarked
+Kenyon, "if you are at all aware of the bitter sarcasm implied in your
+last observation. It is very just. Only the exceeding ingenuity of the
+system stamps it as the contrivance of man, or some worse author; not an
+emanation of the broad and simple wisdom from on high."
+
+"It may be so," said Hilda; "but I meant no sarcasm."
+
+Thus conversing, the two friends went together down the grand extent
+of the nave. Before leaving the church, they turned to admire again its
+mighty breadth, the remoteness of the glory behind the altar, and the
+effect of visionary splendor and magnificence imparted by the long bars
+of smoky sunshine, which travelled so far before arriving at a place of
+rest.
+
+"Thank Heaven for having brought me hither!" said Hilda fervently.
+
+Kenyon's mind was deeply disturbed by his idea of her Catholic
+propensities; and now what he deemed her disproportionate and misapplied
+veneration for the sublime edifice stung him into irreverence.
+
+"The best thing I know of St. Peter's," observed he, "is its equable
+temperature. We are now enjoying the coolness of last winter, which, a
+few months hence, will be the warmth of the present summer. It has no
+cure, I suspect, in all its length and breadth, for a sick soul, but
+it would make an admirable atmospheric hospital for sick bodies. What
+a delightful shelter would it be for the invalids who throng to Rome,
+where the sirocco steals away their strength, and the tramontana stabs
+them through and through, like cold steel with a poisoned point! But
+within these walls, the thermometer never varies. Winter and summer are
+married at the high altar, and dwell together in perfect harmony."
+
+"Yes," said Hilda; "and I have always felt this soft, unchanging climate
+of St. Peter's to be another manifestation of its sanctity."
+
+"That is not precisely my idea," replied Kenyon. "But what a delicious
+life it would be, if a colony of people with delicate lungs or merely
+with delicate fancies--could take up their abode in this ever-mild and
+tranquil air. These architectural tombs of the popes might serve for
+dwellings, and each brazen sepulchral doorway would become a domestic
+threshold. Then the lover, if he dared, might say to his mistress,
+'Will you share my tomb with me?' and, winning her soft consent, he
+would lead her to the altar, and thence to yonder sepulchre of Pope
+Gregory, which should be their nuptial home. What a life would be
+theirs, Hilda, in their marble Eden!"
+
+"It is not kind, nor like yourself," said Hilda gently, "to throw
+ridicule on emotions which are genuine. I revere this glorious church
+for itself and its purposes; and love it, moreover, because here I have
+found sweet peace, after' a great anguish."
+
+"Forgive me," answered the sculptor, "and I will do so no more. My heart
+is not so irreverent as my words."
+
+They went through the piazza of St. Peter's and the adjacent streets,
+silently at first; but, before reaching the bridge of St. Angelo,
+Hilda's flow of spirits began to bubble forth, like the gush of a
+streamlet that has been shut up by frost, or by a heavy stone over its
+source. Kenyon had never found her so delightful as now; so softened
+out of the chillness of her virgin pride; so full of fresh thoughts,
+at which he was often moved to smile, although, on turning them over
+a little more, he sometimes discovered that they looked fanciful only
+because so absolutely true.
+
+But, indeed, she was not quite in a normal state. Emerging from gloom
+into sudden cheerfulness, the effect upon Hilda was as if she were
+just now created. After long torpor, receiving back her intellectual
+activity, she derived an exquisite pleasure from the use of her
+faculties, which were set in motion by causes that seemed inadequate.
+She continually brought to Kenyon's mind the image of a child, making
+its plaything of every object, but sporting in good faith, and with
+a kind of seriousness. Looking up, for example, at the statue of St.
+Michael, on the top of Hadrian's castellated tomb, Hilda fancied an
+interview between the Archangel and the old emperor's ghost, who was
+naturally displeased at finding his mausoleum, which he had ordained
+for the stately and solemn repose of his ashes, converted to its present
+purposes.
+
+"But St. Michael, no doubt," she thoughtfully remarked, "would finally
+convince the Emperor Hadrian that where a warlike despot is sown as the
+seed, a fortress and a prison are the only possible crop."
+
+They stopped on the bridge to look into the swift eddying flow of the
+yellow Tiber, a mud puddle in strenuous motion; and Hilda wondered
+whether the seven-branched golden candlestick,--the holy candlestick of
+the Jews, which was lost at the Ponte Molle, in Constantine's time, had
+yet been swept as far down the river as this.
+
+"It probably stuck where it fell," said the sculptor; "and, by this
+time, is imbedded thirty feet deep in the mud of the Tiber. Nothing will
+ever bring it to light again."
+
+"I fancy you are mistaken," replied Hilda, smiling. "There was a meaning
+and purpose in each of its seven branches, and such a candlestick cannot
+be lost forever. When it is found again, and seven lights are kindled
+and burning in it, the whole world will gain the illumination which
+it needs. Would not this be an admirable idea for a mystic story or
+parable, or seven-branched allegory, full of poetry, art, philosophy,
+and religion? It shall be called 'The Recovery of the Sacred
+Candlestick.' As each branch is lighted, it shall have a differently
+colored lustre from the other six; and when all the seven are kindled,
+their radiance shall combine into the intense white light of truth."
+
+"Positively, Hilda, this is a magnificent conception," cried Kenyon.
+"The more I look at it, the brighter it burns."
+
+"I think so too," said Hilda, enjoying a childlike pleasure in her own
+idea. "The theme is better suited for verse than prose; and when I go
+home to America, I will suggest it to one of our poets. Or seven poets
+might write the poem together, each lighting a separate branch of the
+Sacred Candlestick."
+
+"Then you think of going home?" Kenyon asked.
+
+"Only yesterday," she replied, "I longed to flee away. Now, all is
+changed, and, being happy again, I should feel deep regret at leaving
+the Pictorial Land. But I cannot tell. In Rome, there is something
+dreary and awful, which we can never quite escape. At least, I thought
+so yesterday."
+
+When they reached the Via Portoghese, and approached Hilda's tower, the
+doves, who were waiting aloft, flung themselves upon the air, and came
+floating down about her head. The girl caressed them, and responded to
+their cooings with similar sounds from her own lips, and with words
+of endearment; and their joyful flutterings and airy little flights,
+evidently impelled by pure exuberance of spirits, seemed to show that
+the doves had a real sympathy with their mistress's state of mind. For
+peace had descended upon her like a dove.
+
+Bidding the sculptor farewell, Hilda climbed her tower, and came forth
+upon its summit to trim the Virgin's lamp. The doves, well knowing her
+custom, had flown up thither to meet her, and again hovered about her
+head; and very lovely was her aspect, in the evening Sunlight, which had
+little further to do with the world just then, save to fling a golden
+glory on Hilda's hair, and vanish.
+
+Turning her eyes down into the dusky street which she had just quitted,
+Hilda saw the sculptor still there, and waved her hand to him.
+
+"How sad and dim he looks, down there in that dreary street!" she said
+to herself. "Something weighs upon his spirits. Would I could comfort
+him!"
+
+"How like a spirit she looks, aloft there, with the evening glory round
+her head, and those winged creatures claiming her as akin to them!"
+thought Kenyon, on his part. "How far above me! how unattainable! Ah,
+if I could lift myself to her region! Or--if it be not a sin to wish
+it--would that I might draw her down to an earthly fireside!"
+
+What a sweet reverence is that, when a young man deems his mistress a
+little more than mortal, and almost chides himself for longing to bring
+her close to his heart! A trifling circumstance, but such as lovers
+make much of, gave him hope. One of the doves, which had been resting on
+Hilda's shoulder, suddenly flew downward, as if recognizing him as its
+mistress's dear friend; and, perhaps commissioned with an errand of
+regard, brushed his upturned face with its wings, and again soared
+aloft.
+
+The sculptor watched the bird's return, and saw Hilda greet it with a
+smile.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+
+SNOWDROPS AND MAIDENLY DELIGHTS
+
+
+It being still considerably earlier than the period at which artists
+and tourists are accustomed to assemble in Rome, the sculptor and Hilda
+found themselves comparatively alone there. The dense mass of native
+Roman life, in the midst of which they were, served to press them near
+one another. It was as if they had been thrown together on a desert
+island. Or they seemed to have wandered, by some strange chance, out
+of the common world, and encountered each other in a depopulated city,
+where there were streets of lonely palaces, and unreckonable treasures
+of beautiful and admirable things, of which they two became the sole
+inheritors.
+
+In such circumstances, Hilda's gentle reserve must have been stronger
+than her kindly disposition permitted, if the friendship between Kenyon
+and herself had not grown as warm as a maiden's friendship can ever be,
+without absolutely and avowedly blooming into love. On the sculptor's
+side, the amaranthine flower was already in full blow. But it is very
+beautiful, though the lover's heart may grow chill at the perception, to
+see how the snow will sometimes linger in a virgin's breast, even after
+the spring is well advanced. In such alpine soils, the summer will not
+be anticipated; we seek vainly for passionate flowers, and blossoms
+of fervid hue and spicy fragrance, finding only snowdrops and sunless
+violets, when it is almost the full season for the crimson rose.
+
+With so much tenderness as Hilda had in her nature, it was strange that
+she so reluctantly admitted the idea of love; especially as, in
+the sculptor, she found both congeniality and variety of taste, and
+likenesses and differences of character; these being as essential as
+those to any poignancy of mutual emotion.
+
+So Hilda, as far as Kenyon could discern, still did not love him, though
+she admitted him within the quiet circle of her affections as a dear
+friend and trusty counsellor. If we knew what is best for us, or could
+be content with what is reasonably good, the sculptor might well have
+been satisfied, for a season, with this calm intimacy, which so sweetly
+kept him a stranger in her heart, and a ceremonious guest; and yet
+allowed him the free enjoyment of all but its deeper recesses. The
+flowers that grow outside of those minor sanctities have a wild, hasty
+charm, which it is well to prove; there may be sweeter ones within the
+sacred precinct, but none that will die while you are handling them, and
+bequeath you a delicious legacy, as these do, in the perception of their
+evanescence and unreality.
+
+And this may be the reason, after all, why Hilda, like so many other
+maidens, lingered on the hither side of passion; her finer instinct and
+keener sensibility made her enjoy those pale delights in a degree of
+which men are incapable. She hesitated to grasp a richer happiness, as
+possessing already such measure of it as her heart could hold, and of a
+quality most agreeable to her virgin tastes.
+
+Certainly, they both were very happy. Kenyon's genius, unconsciously
+wrought upon by Hilda's influence, took a more delicate character than
+heretofore. He modelled, among other things, a beautiful little statue
+of maidenhood gathering a snowdrop. It was never put into marble,
+however, because the sculptor soon recognized it as one of those fragile
+creations which are true only to the moment that produces them, and
+are wronged if we try to imprison their airy excellence in a permanent
+material.
+
+On her part, Hilda returned to her customary Occupations with a fresh
+love for them, and yet with a deeper look into the heart of things; such
+as those necessarily acquire who have passed from picture galleries into
+dungeon gloom, and thence come back to the picture gallery again. It is
+questionable whether she was ever so perfect a copyist thenceforth. She
+could not yield herself up to the painter so unreservedly as in times
+past; her character had developed a sturdier quality, which made her
+less pliable to the influence of other minds. She saw into the picture
+as profoundly as ever, and perhaps more so, but not with the devout
+sympathy that had formerly given her entire possession of the old
+master's idea. She had known such a reality, that it taught her to
+distinguish inevitably the large portion that is unreal, in every work
+of art. Instructed by sorrow, she felt that there is something beyond
+almost all which pictorial genius has produced; and she never forgot
+those sad wanderings from gallery to gallery, and from church to church,
+where she had vainly sought a type of the Virgin Mother, or the Saviour,
+or saint, or martyr, which a soul in extreme need might recognize as the
+adequate one.
+
+How, indeed, should she have found such? How could holiness be revealed
+to the artist of an age when the greatest of them put genius and
+imagination in the place of spiritual insight, and when, from the pope
+downward, all Christendom was corrupt?
+
+Meanwhile, months wore away, and Rome received back that large portion
+of its life-blood which runs in the veins of its foreign and temporary
+population. English visitors established themselves in the hotels, and
+in all the sunny suites of apartments, in the streets convenient to
+the Piazza di Spagna; the English tongue was heard familiarly along the
+Corso, and English children sported in the Pincian Gardens.
+
+The native Romans, on the other hand, like the butterflies and
+grasshoppers, resigned themselves to the short, sharp misery which
+winter brings to a people whose arrangements are made almost exclusively
+with a view to summer. Keeping no fire within-doors, except possibly a
+spark or two in the kitchen, they crept out of their cheerless houses
+into the narrow, sunless, sepulchral streets, bringing their firesides
+along with them, in the shape of little earthen pots, vases, or pipkins,
+full of lighted charcoal and warm ashes, over which they held their
+tingling finger-ends. Even in this half-torpid wretchedness, they still
+seemed to dread a pestilence in the sunshine, and kept on the shady side
+of the piazzas, as scrupulously as in summer. Through the open doorways
+w no need to shut them when the weather within was bleaker than
+without--a glimpse into the interior of their dwellings showed the
+uncarpeted brick floors, as dismal as the pavement of a tomb.
+
+They drew their old cloaks about them, nevertheless, and threw the
+corners over their shoulders, with the dignity of attitude and action
+that have come down to these modern citizens, as their sole inheritance
+from the togated nation. Somehow or other, they managed to keep up their
+poor, frost-bitten hearts against the pitiless atmosphere with a quiet
+and uncomplaining endurance that really seems the most respectable point
+in the present Roman character. For in New England, or in Russia, or
+scarcely in a hut of the Esquimaux, there is no such discomfort to be
+borne as by Romans in wintry weather, when the orange-trees bear icy
+fruit in the gardens; and when the rims of all the fountains are shaggy
+with icicles, and the Fountain of Trevi skimmed almost across with a
+glassy surface; and when there is a slide in the piazza of St. Peter's,
+and a fringe of brown, frozen foam along the eastern shore of the Tiber,
+and sometimes a fall of great snowflakes into the dreary lanes and
+alleys of the miserable city. Cold blasts, that bring death with them,
+now blow upon the shivering invalids, who came hither in the hope of
+breathing balmy airs.
+
+Wherever we pass our summers, may all our inclement months, from
+November to April, henceforth be spent in some country that recognizes
+winter as an integral portion of its year!
+
+Now, too, there was especial discomfort in the stately picture
+galleries, where nobody, indeed,--not the princely or priestly founders,
+nor any who have inherited their cheerless magnificence,--ever dreamed
+of such an impossibility as fireside warmth, since those great palaces
+were built. Hilda, therefore, finding her fingers so much benumbed that
+the spiritual influence could not be transmitted to them, was persuaded
+to leave her easel before a picture, on one of these wintry days, and
+pay a visit to Kenyon's studio. But neither was the studio anything
+better than a dismal den, with its marble shapes shivering around the
+walls, cold as the snow images which the sculptor used to model in his
+boyhood, and sadly behold them weep themselves away at the first thaw.
+
+Kenyon's Roman artisans, all this while, had been at work on the
+Cleopatra. The fierce Egyptian queen had now struggled almost out of the
+imprisoning stone; or, rather, the workmen had found her within the mass
+of marble, imprisoned there by magic, but still fervid to the touch
+with fiery life, the fossil woman of an age that produced statelier,
+stronger, and more passionate creatures than our own. You already felt
+her compressed heat, and were aware of a tiger-like character even in
+her repose. If Octavius should make his appearance, though the marble
+still held her within its embrace, it was evident that she would tear
+herself forth in a twinkling, either to spring enraged at his
+throat, or, sinking into his arms, to make one more proof of her rich
+blandishments, or, falling lowly at his feet, to try the efficacy of a
+woman's tears.
+
+"I am ashamed to tell you how much I admire this statue," said Hilda.
+"No other sculptor could have done it."
+
+"This is very sweet for me to hear," replied Kenyon; "and since your
+reserve keeps you from saying more, I shall imagine you expressing
+everything that an artist would wish to hear said about his work."
+
+"You will not easily go beyond my genuine opinion," answered Hilda, with
+a smile.
+
+"Ah, your kind word makes me very happy," said the sculptor, "and I
+need it, just now, on behalf of my Cleopatra. That inevitable period has
+come,--for I have found it inevitable, in regard to all my works,--when
+I look at what I fancied to be a statue, lacking only breath to make it
+live, and find it a mere lump of senseless stone, into which I have not
+really succeeded in moulding the spiritual part of my idea. I should
+like, now,--only it would be such shameful treatment for a discrowned
+queen, and my own offspring too,--I should like to hit poor Cleopatra a
+bitter blow on her Egyptian nose with this mallet."
+
+"That is a blow which all statues seem doomed to receive, sooner or
+later, though seldom from the hand that sculptured them," said Hilda,
+laughing. "But you must not let yourself be too much disheartened by
+the decay of your faith in what you produce. I have heard a poet express
+similar distaste for his own most exquisite poem, and I am afraid that
+this final despair, and sense of short-coming, must always be the reward
+and punishment of those who try to grapple with a great or beautiful
+idea. It only proves that you have been able to imagine things too high
+for mortal faculties to execute. The idea leaves you an imperfect image
+of itself, which you at first mistake for the ethereal reality, but soon
+find that the latter has escaped out of your closest embrace."
+
+"And the only consolation is," remarked Kenyon, "that the blurred and
+imperfect image may still make a very respectable appearance in the eyes
+of those who have not seen the original."
+
+"More than that," rejoined Hilda; "for there is a class of spectators
+whose sympathy will help them to see the perfect through a mist of
+imperfection. Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures
+or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or
+artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness."
+
+"You, Hilda, are yourself the only critic in whom I have much faith,"
+said Kenyon. "Had you condemned Cleopatra, nothing should have saved
+her."
+
+"You invest me with such an awful responsibility," she replied, "that I
+shall not dare to say a single word about your other works."
+
+"At least," said the sculptor, "tell me whether you recognize this
+bust?"
+
+He pointed to a bust of Donatello. It was not the one which Kenyon had
+begun to model at Monte Beni, but a reminiscence of the Count's face,
+wrought under the influence of all the sculptor's knowledge of his
+history, and of his personal and hereditary character. It stood on a
+wooden pedestal, not nearly finished, but with fine white dust and small
+chips of marble scattered about it, and itself incrusted all round with
+the white, shapeless substance of the block. In the midst appeared
+the features, lacking sharpness, and very much resembling a fossil
+countenance,--but we have already used this simile, in reference to
+Cleopatra, with the accumulations of long-past ages clinging to it.
+
+And yet, strange to say, the face had an expression, and a more
+recognizable one than Kenyon had succeeded in putting into the
+clay model at Monte Beni. The reader is probably acquainted with
+Thorwaldsen's three-fold analogy,--the clay model, the Life; the plaster
+cast, the Death; and the sculptured marble, the Resurrection,--and
+it seemed to be made good by the spirit that was kindling up these
+imperfect features, like a lambent flame.
+
+"I was not quite sure, at first glance, that I knew the face," observed
+Hilda; "the likeness surely is not a striking one. There is a good
+deal of external resemblance, still, to the features of the Faun of
+Praxiteles, between whom and Donatello, you know, we once insisted that
+there was a perfect twin-brotherhood. But the expression is now so very
+different!"
+
+"What do you take it to be?" asked the sculptor.
+
+"I hardly know how to define it," she answered. "But it has an effect
+as if I could see this countenance gradually brightening while I look
+at it. It gives the impression of a growing intellectual power and
+moral sense. Donatello's face used to evince little more than a genial,
+pleasurable sort of vivacity, and capability of enjoyment. But here, a
+soul is being breathed into him; it is the Faun, but advancing towards a
+state of higher development."
+
+"Hilda, do you see all this?" exclaimed Kenyon, in considerable
+surprise. "I may have had such an idea in my mind, but was quite unaware
+that I had succeeded in conveying it into the marble."
+
+"Forgive me," said Hilda, "but I question whether this striking effect
+has been brought about by any skill or purpose on the sculptor's part.
+Is it not, perhaps, the chance result of the bust being just so far
+shaped out, in the marble, as the process of moral growth had advanced
+in the original? A few more strokes of the chisel might change the whole
+expression, and so spoil it for what it is now worth."
+
+"I believe you are right," answered Kenyon, thoughtfully examining his
+work; "and, strangely enough, it was the very expression that I tried
+unsuccessfully to produce in the clay model. Well; not another chip
+shall be struck from the marble."
+
+And, accordingly, Donatello's bust (like that rude, rough mass of the
+head of Brutus, by Michael Angelo, at Florence) has ever since remained
+in an unfinished state. Most spectators mistake it for an unsuccessful
+attempt towards copying the features of the Faun of Praxiteles. One
+observer in a thousand is conscious of something more, and lingers long
+over this mysterious face, departing from it reluctantly, and with many
+a glance thrown backward. What perplexes him is the riddle that he sees
+propounded there; the riddle of the soul's growth, taking its first
+impulse amid remorse and pain, and struggling through the incrustations
+of the senses. It was the contemplation of this imperfect portrait of
+Donatello that originally interested us in his history, and impelled us
+to elicit from Kenyon what he knew of his friend's adventures.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+
+REMINISCENCES OF MIRIAM
+
+
+When Hilda and himself turned away from the unfinished bust, the
+sculptor's mind still dwelt upon the reminiscences which it suggested.
+"You have not seen Donatello recently," he remarked, "and therefore
+cannot be aware how sadly he is changed."
+
+"No wonder!" exclaimed Hilda, growing pale.
+
+The terrible scene which she had witnessed, when Donatello's face
+gleamed out in so fierce a light, came back upon her memory, almost
+for the first time since she knelt at the confessional. Hilda, as is
+sometimes the case with persons whose delicate organization requires
+a peculiar safeguard, had an elastic faculty of throwing off such
+recollections as would be too painful for endurance. The first shock
+of Donatello's and Miriam's crime had, indeed, broken through the frail
+defence of this voluntary forgetfulness; but, once enabled to relieve
+herself of the ponderous anguish over which she had so long brooded, she
+had practised a subtile watchfulness in preventing its return.
+
+"No wonder, do you say?" repeated the sculptor, looking at her with
+interest, but not exactly with surprise; for he had long suspected that
+Hilda had a painful knowledge of events which he himself little more
+than surmised. "Then you know!--you have heard! But what can you
+possibly have heard, and through what channel?"
+
+"Nothing!" replied Hilda faintly. "Not one word has reached my ears from
+the lips of any human being. Let us never speak of it again! No, no!
+never again!"
+
+"And Miriam!" said Kenyon, with irrepressible interest. "Is it also
+forbidden to speak of her?"
+
+"Hush! do not even utter her name! Try not to think of it!" Hilda
+whispered. "It may bring terrible consequences!"
+
+"My dear Hilda!" exclaimed Kenyon, regarding her with wonder and deep
+sympathy. "My sweet friend, have you had this secret hidden in your
+delicate, maidenly heart, through all these many months! No wonder that
+your life was withering out of you."
+
+"It was so, indeed!" said Hilda, shuddering. "Even now, I sicken at the
+recollection."
+
+"And how could it have come to your knowledge?" continued the sculptor.
+"But no matter! Do not torture yourself with referring to the subject.
+Only, if at any time it should be a relief to you, remember that we can
+speak freely together, for Miriam has herself suggested a confidence
+between us."
+
+"Miriam has suggested this!" exclaimed Hilda. "Yes, I remember, now, her
+advising that the secret should be shared with you. But I have
+survived the death struggle that it cost me, and need make no further
+revelations. And Miriam has spoken to you! What manner of woman can
+she be, who, after sharing in such a deed, can make it a topic of
+conversation with her friends?"
+
+"Ah, Hilda," replied Kenyon, "you do not know, for you could never
+learn it from your own heart, which is all purity and rectitude, what
+a mixture of good there may be in things evil; and how the greatest
+criminal, if you look at his conduct from his own point of view, or from
+any side point, may seem not so unquestionably guilty, after all. So
+with Miriam; so with Donatello. They are, perhaps, partners in what we
+must call awful guilt; and yet, I will own to you,--when I think of the
+original cause, the motives, the feelings, the sudden concurrence of
+circumstances thrusting them onward, the urgency of the moment, and
+the sublime unselfishness on either part,--I know not well how to
+distinguish it from much that the world calls heroism. Might we not
+render some such verdict as this?--'Worthy of Death, but not unworthy of
+Love! '"
+
+"Never!" answered Hilda, looking at the matter through the clear crystal
+medium of her own integrity. "This thing, as regards its causes, is all
+a mystery to me, and must remain so. But there is, I believe, only one
+right and one wrong; and I do not understand, and may God keep me from
+ever understanding, how two things so totally unlike can be mistaken for
+one another; nor how two mortal foes, as Right and Wrong surely are, can
+work together in the same deed. This is my faith; and I should be led
+astray, if you could persuade me to give it up."
+
+"Alas for poor human nature, then!" said Kenyon sadly, and yet half
+smiling at Hilda's unworldly and impracticable theory. "I always felt
+you, my dear friend, a terribly severe judge, and have been perplexed to
+conceive how such tender sympathy could coexist with the remorselessness
+of a steel blade. You need no mercy, and therefore know not how to show
+any."
+
+"That sounds like a bitter gibe," said Hilda, with the tears springing
+into her eyes. "But I cannot help it. It does not alter my perception of
+the truth. If there be any such dreadful mixture of good and evil as
+you affirm,--and which appears to me almost more shocking than
+pure evil,--then the good is turned to poison, not the evil to
+wholesomeness."
+
+The sculptor seemed disposed to say something more, but yielded to the
+gentle steadfastness with which Hilda declined to listen. She grew very
+sad; for a reference to this one dismal topic had set, as it were, a
+prison door ajar, and allowed a throng of torturing recollections to
+escape from their dungeons into the pure air and white radiance of
+her soul. She bade Kenyon a briefer farewell than ordinary, and went
+homeward to her tower.
+
+In spite of her efforts to withdraw them to other subjects, her thoughts
+dwelt upon Miriam; and, as had not heretofore happened, they brought
+with them a painful doubt whether a wrong had not been committed on
+Hilda's part, towards the friend once so beloved. Something that Miriam
+had said, in their final conversation, recurred to her memory, and
+seemed now to deserve more weight than Hilda had assigned to it, in her
+horror at the crime just perpetrated. It was not that the deed looked
+less wicked and terrible in the retrospect; but she asked herself
+whether there were not other questions to be considered, aside from that
+single one of Miriam's guilt or innocence; as, for example, whether a
+close bond of friendship, in which we once voluntarily engage, ought to
+be severed on account of any unworthiness, which we subsequently detect
+in our friend. For, in these unions of hearts,--call them marriage,
+or whatever else,--we take each other for better for worse. Availing
+ourselves of our friend's intimate affection, we pledge our own, as
+to be relied upon in every emergency. And what sadder, more desperate
+emergency could there be, than had befallen Miriam? Who more need the
+tender succor of the innocent, than wretches stained with guilt! And
+must a selfish care for the spotlessness of our own garments keep us
+from pressing the guilty ones close to our hearts, wherein, for the very
+reason that we are innocent, lies their securest refuge from further
+ill?
+
+It was a sad thing for Hilda to find this moral enigma propounded to her
+conscience; and to feel that, whichever way she might settle it, there
+would be a cry of wrong on the other side. Still, the idea stubbornly
+came back, that the tie between Miriam and herself had been real, the
+affection true, and that therefore the implied compact was not to be
+shaken off.
+
+"Miriam loved me well," thought Hilda remorsefully, "and I failed her at
+her sorest need."
+
+Miriam loved her well; and not less ardent had been the affection which
+Miriam's warm, tender, and generous characteristics had excited in
+Hilda's more reserved and quiet nature. It had never been extinguished;
+for, in part, the wretchedness which Hilda had since endured was but
+the struggle and writhing of her sensibility, still yearning towards
+her friend. And now, at the earliest encouragement, it awoke again, and
+cried out piteously, complaining of the violence that had been done it.
+
+Recurring to the delinquencies of which she fancied (we say "fancied,"
+because we do not unhesitatingly adopt Hilda's present view, but rather
+suppose her misled by her feelings)--of which she fancied herself guilty
+towards her friend, she suddenly remembered a sealed packet that
+Miriam had confided to her. It had been put into her hands with earnest
+injunctions of secrecy and care, and if unclaimed after a certain
+period, was to be delivered according to its address. Hilda had
+forgotten it; or, rather, she had kept the thought of this commission in
+the background of her consciousness, with all other thoughts referring
+to Miriam.
+
+But now the recollection of this packet, and the evident stress which
+Miriam laid upon its delivery at the specified time, impelled Hilda to
+hurry up the staircase of her tower, dreading lest the period should
+already have elapsed.
+
+No; the hour had not gone by, but was on the very point of passing.
+Hilda read the brief note of instruction, on a corner of the envelope,
+and discovered, that, in case of Miriam's absence from Rome, the packet
+was to be taken to its destination that very day.
+
+"How nearly I had violated my promise!" said Hilda. "And, since we are
+separated forever, it has the sacredness of an injunction from a dead
+friend. There is no time to be lost."
+
+So Hilda set forth in the decline of the afternoon, and pursued her way
+towards the quarter of the city in which stands the Palazzo Cenci. Her
+habit of self-reliance was so simply strong, so natural, and now so well
+established by long use, that the idea of peril seldom or never occurred
+to Hilda, in her lonely life.
+
+She differed, in this particular, from the generality of her sex,
+--although the customs and character of her native land often produce
+women who meet the world with gentle fearlessness, and discover that its
+terrors have been absurdly exaggerated by the tradition of mankind. In
+ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the apprehensiveness of women is
+quite gratuitous. Even as matters now stand, they are really safer in
+perilous situations and emergencies than men; and might be still more
+so, if they trusted themselves more confidingly to the chivalry of
+manhood. In all her wanderings about Rome, Hilda had gone and returned
+as securely as she had been accustomed to tread the familiar street of
+her New England village, where every face wore a look of recognition.
+With respect to whatever was evil, foul, and ugly, in this populous and
+corrupt city, she trod as if invisible, and not only so, but blind. She
+was altogether unconscious of anything wicked that went along the same
+pathway, but without jostling or impeding her, any more than gross
+substance hinders the wanderings of a spirit. Thus it is, that, bad as
+the world is said to have grown, innocence continues to make a paradise
+around itself, and keep it still unfallen.
+
+Hilda's present expedition led her into what was--physically, at
+least--the foulest and ugliest part of Rome. In that vicinity lies the
+Ghetto, where thousands of Jews are crowded within a narrow compass,
+and lead a close, unclean, and multitudinous life, resembling that of
+maggots when they over-populate a decaying cheese.
+
+Hilda passed on the borders of this region, but had no occasion to
+step within it. Its neighborhood, however, naturally partook of
+characteristics 'like its own. There was a confusion of black and
+hideous houses, piled massively out of the ruins of former ages; rude
+and destitute of plan, as a pauper would build his hovel, and yet
+displaying here and there an arched gateway, a cornice, a pillar, or
+a broken arcade, that might have adorned a palace. Many of the houses,
+indeed, as they stood, might once have been palaces, and possessed still
+a squalid kind of grandeur. Dirt was everywhere, strewing the narrow
+streets, and incrusting the tall shabbiness of the edifices, from the
+foundations to the roofs; it lay upon the thresholds, and looked out of
+the windows, and assumed the guise of human life in the children that
+Seemed to be engendered out of it. Their father was the sun, and their
+mother--a heap of Roman mud.
+
+It is a question of speculative interest, whether the ancient Romans
+were as unclean a people as we everywhere find those who have succeeded
+them. There appears to be a kind of malignant spell in the spots that
+have been inhabited by these masters of the world, or made famous in
+their history; an inherited and inalienable curse, impelling their
+successors to fling dirt and defilement upon whatever temple, column,
+mined palace, or triumphal arch may be nearest at hand, and on every
+monument that the old Romans built. It is most probably a classic trait,
+regularly transmitted downward, and perhaps a little modified by the
+better civilization of Christianity; so that Caesar may have trod
+narrower and filthier ways in his path to the Capitol, than even those
+of modern Rome.
+
+As the paternal abode of Beatrice, the gloomy old palace of the Cencis
+had an interest for Hilda, although not sufficiently strong, hitherto,
+to overcome the disheartening effect of the exterior, and draw her over
+its threshold. The adjacent piazza, of poor aspect, contained only an
+old woman selling roasted chestnuts and baked squash-seeds; she looked
+sharply at Hilda, and inquired whether she had lost her way.
+
+
+"No," said Hilda; "I seek the Palazzo Cenci."
+
+"Yonder it is, fair signorina," replied the Roman matron. "If you wish
+that packet delivered, which I see in your hand, my grandson Pietro
+shall run with it for a baiocco. The Cenci palace is a spot of ill omen
+for young maidens."
+
+Hilda thanked the old dame, but alleged the necessity of doing her
+errand in person. She approached the front of the palace, which, with
+all its immensity, had but a mean appearance, and seemed an abode which
+the lovely shade of Beatrice would not be apt to haunt, unless her doom
+made it inevitable. Some soldiers stood about the portal, and gazed at
+the brown-haired, fair-cheeked Anglo-Saxon girl, with approving glances,
+but not indecorously. Hilda began to ascend the staircase, three lofty
+flights of which were to be surmounted, before reaching the door whither
+she was bound.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+
+THE EXTINCTION OF A LAMP
+
+Between Hilda and the sculptor there had been a kind of half-expressed
+understanding, that both were to visit the galleries of the Vatican
+the day subsequent to their meeting at the studio. Kenyon, accordingly,
+failed not to be there, and wandered through the vast ranges of
+apartments, but saw nothing of his expected friend. The marble faces,
+which stand innumerable along the walls, and have kept themselves so
+calm through the vicissitudes of twenty centuries, had no sympathy
+for his disappointment; and he, on the other hand, strode past these
+treasures and marvels of antique art, with the indifference which any
+preoccupation of the feelings is apt to produce, in reference to objects
+of sculpture. Being of so cold and pure a substance, and mostly deriving
+their vitality more from thought than passion, they require to be seen
+through a perfectly transparent medium.
+
+And, moreover, Kenyon had counted so much upon Hilda's delicate
+perceptions in enabling him to look at two or three of the statues,
+about which they had talked together, that the entire purpose of his
+visit was defeated by her absence. It is a delicious sort of mutual aid,
+when the united power of two sympathetic, yet dissimilar, intelligences
+is brought to bear upon a poem by reading it aloud, or upon a picture
+or statue by viewing it in each other's company. Even if not a word
+of criticism be uttered, the insight of either party is wonderfully
+deepened, and the comprehension broadened; so that the inner mystery
+of a work of genius, hidden from one, will often reveal itself to two.
+Missing such help, Kenyon saw nothing at the Vatican which he had not
+seen a thousand times before, and more perfectly than now.
+
+In the chili of his disappointment, he suspected that it was a very
+cold art to which he had devoted himself. He questioned, at that moment,
+whether sculpture really ever softens and warms the material which it
+handles; whether carved marble is anything but limestone, after all;
+and whether the Apollo Belvedere itself possesses any merit above
+its physical beauty, or is beyond criticism even in that generally
+acknowledged excellence. In flitting glances, heretofore, he had seemed
+to behold this statue, as something ethereal and godlike, but not now.
+
+Nothing pleased him, unless it were the group of the Laocoon, which,
+in its immortal agony, impressed Kenyon as a type of the long, fierce
+struggle of man, involved in the knotted entanglements of Error and
+Evil, those two snakes, which, if no divine help intervene, will be sure
+to strangle him and his children in the end. What he most admired was
+the strange calmness diffused through this bitter strife; so that it
+resembled the rage of the sea made calm by its immensity,' or the tumult
+of Niagara which ceases to be tumult because it lasts forever. Thus, in
+the Laocoon, the horror of a moment grew to be the fate of interminable
+ages. Kenyon looked upon the group as the one triumph of sculpture,
+creating the repose, which is essential to it, in the very acme of
+turbulent effort; but, in truth, it was his mood of unwonted despondency
+that made him so sensitive to the terrible magnificence, as well as to
+the sad moral, of this work. Hilda herself could not have helped him to
+see it with nearly such intelligence.
+
+A good deal more depressed than the nature of the disappointment
+warranted, Kenyon went to his studio, and took in hand a great lump of
+clay. He soon found, however, that his plastic cunning had departed from
+him for the time. So he wandered forth again into the uneasy streets
+of Rome, and walked up and down the Corso, where, at that period of the
+day, a throng of passers-by and loiterers choked up the narrow sidewalk.
+A penitent was thus brought in contact with the sculptor.
+
+It was a figure in a white robe, with a kind of featureless mask
+over the face, through the apertures of which the eyes threw an
+unintelligible light. Such odd, questionable shapes are often seen
+gliding through the streets of Italian cities, and are understood to be
+usually persons of rank, who quit their palaces, their gayeties, their
+pomp and pride, and assume the penitential garb for a season, with a
+view of thus expiating some crime, or atoning for the aggregate of petty
+sins that make up a worldly life. It is their custom to ask alms, and
+perhaps to measure the duration of their penance by the time requisite
+to accumulate a sum of money out of the little droppings of individual
+charity. The avails are devoted to some beneficent or religious purpose;
+so that the benefit accruing to their own souls is, in a manner, linked
+with a good done, or intended, to their fellow-men. These figures have
+a ghastly and startling effect, not so much from any very impressive
+peculiarity in the garb, as from the mystery which they bear about with
+them, and the sense that there is an acknowledged sinfulness as the
+nucleus of it.
+
+In the present instance, however, the penitent asked no alms of Kenyon;
+although, for the space of a minute or two, they stood face to face, the
+hollow eyes of the mask encountering the sculptor's gaze. But, just as
+the crowd was about to separate them, the former spoke, in a voice not
+unfamiliar to Kenyon, though rendered remote and strange by the guilty
+veil through which it penetrated.
+
+"Is all well with you, Signore?" inquired the penitent, out of the cloud
+in which he walked.
+
+"All is well," answered Kenyon. "And with you?"
+
+But the masked penitent returned no answer, being borne away by the
+pressure of the throng.
+
+The sculptor stood watching the figure, and was almost of a mind to
+hurry after him and follow up the conversation that had been begun; but
+it occurred to him that there is a sanctity (or, as we might rather term
+it, an inviolable etiquette) which prohibits the recognition of persons
+who choose to walk under the veil of penitence.
+
+"How strange!" thought Kenyon to himself. "It was surely Donatello! What
+can bring him to Rome, where his recollections must be so painful, and
+his presence not without peril? And Miriam! Can she have accompanied
+him?"
+
+He walked on, thinking of the vast change in Donatello, since those days
+of gayety and innocence, when the young Italian was new in Rome, and was
+just beginning to be sensible of a more poignant felicity than he had
+yet experienced, in the sunny warmth of Miriam's smile. The growth of
+a soul, which the sculptor half imagined that he had witnessed in his
+friend, seemed hardly worth the heavy price that it had cost, in the
+sacrifice of those simple enjoyments that were gone forever. A creature
+of antique healthfulness had vanished from the earth; and, in his stead,
+there was only one other morbid and remorseful man, among millions that
+were cast in the same indistinguishable mould.
+
+The accident of thus meeting Donatello the glad Faun of his imagination
+and memory, now transformed into a gloomy penitent--contributed to
+deepen the cloud that had fallen over Kenyon's spirits. It caused him
+to fancy, as we generally do, in the petty troubles which extend not a
+hand's-breadth beyond our own sphere, that the whole world was saddening
+around him. It took the sinister aspect of an omen, although he could
+not distinctly see what trouble it might forebode.
+
+If it had not been for a peculiar sort of pique, with which lovers are
+much conversant, a preposterous kind of resentment which endeavors to
+wreak itself on the beloved object, and on one's own heart, in requital
+of mishaps for which neither are in fault, Kenyon might at once have
+betaken himself to Hilda's studio, and asked why the appointment was not
+kept. But the interview of to-day was to have been so rich in present
+joy, and its results so important to his future life, that the bleak
+failure was too much for his equanimity. He was angry with poor Hilda,
+and censured her without a hearing; angry with himself, too, and
+therefore inflicted on this latter criminal the severest penalty in
+his power; angry with the day that was passing over him, and would not
+permit its latter hours to redeem the disappointment of the morning.
+
+To confess the truth, it had been the sculptor's purpose to stake all
+his hopes on that interview in the galleries of the Vatican. Straying
+with Hilda through those long vistas of ideal beauty, he meant, at last,
+to utter himself upon that theme which lovers are fain to discuss in
+village lanes, in wood paths, on seaside sands, in crowded streets; it
+little matters where, indeed, since roses are sure to blush along the
+way, and daisies and violets to spring beneath the feet, if the spoken
+word be graciously received. He was resolved to make proof whether
+the kindness that Hilda evinced for him was the precious token of an
+individual preference, or merely the sweet fragrance of her disposition,
+which other friends might share as largely as himself. He would try if
+it were possible to take this shy, yet frank, and innocently fearless
+creature captive, and imprison her in his heart, and make her sensible
+of a wider freedom there, than in all the world besides.
+
+It was hard, we must allow, to see the shadow of a wintry sunset falling
+upon a day that was to have been so bright, and to find himself just
+where yesterday had left him, only with a sense of being drearily
+balked, and defeated without an opportunity for struggle. So much had
+been anticipated from these now vanished hours, that it seemed as if no
+other day could bring back the same golden hopes.
+
+In a case like this, it is doubtful whether Kenyon could have done a
+much better thing than he actually did, by going to dine at the Cafe
+Nuovo, and drinking a flask of Montefiascone; longing, the while, for a
+beaker or two of Donatello's Sunshine. It would have been just the wine
+to cure a lover's melancholy, by illuminating his heart with tender
+light and warmth, and suggestions of undefined hopes, too ethereal for
+his morbid humor to examine and reject them.
+
+No decided improvement resulting from the draught of Montefiascone, he
+went to the Teatro Argentino, and sat gloomily to see an Italian
+comedy, which ought to have cheered him somewhat, being full of glancing
+merriment, and effective over everybody's disabilities except his own.
+The sculptor came out, however, before the close of the performance, as
+disconsolate as he went in.
+
+As he made his way through the complication of narrow streets, which
+perplex that portion of the city, a carriage passed him. It was driven
+rapidly, but not too fast for the light of a gas-lamp to flare upon a
+face within--especially as it was bent forward, appearing to recognize
+him, while a beckoning hand was protruded from the window. On his part,
+Kenyon at once knew the face, and hastened to the carriage, which had
+now stopped.
+
+"Miriam! you in Rome?" he exclaimed "And your friends know nothing of
+it?"
+
+"Is all well with you?" she asked.
+
+This inquiry, in the identical words which Donatello had so recently
+addressed to him from beneath the penitent's mask, startled the
+sculptor. Either the previous disquietude of his mind, or some tone in
+Miriam's voice, or the unaccountableness of beholding her there at all,
+made it seem ominous.
+
+"All is well, I believe," answered he doubtfully. "I am aware of no
+misfortune. Have you any to announce'?"
+
+He looked still more earnestly at Miriam, and felt a dreamy uncertainty
+whether it was really herself to whom he spoke. True; there were those
+beautiful features, the contour of which he had studied too often, and
+with a sculptor's accuracy of perception, to be in any doubt that it was
+Miriam's identical face. But he was conscious of a change, the nature of
+which he could not satisfactorily define; it might be merely her dress,
+which, imperfect as the light was, he saw to be richer than the simple
+garb that she had usually worn. The effect, he fancied, was partly owing
+to a gem which she had on her bosom; not a diamond, but something that
+glimmered with a clear, red lustre, like the stars in a southern sky.
+Somehow or other, this colored light seemed an emanation of herself,
+as if all that was passionate and glowing in her native disposition
+had crystallized upon her breast, and were just now scintillating more
+brilliantly than ever, in sympathy with some emotion of her heart.
+
+Of course there could be no real doubt that it was Miriam, his artist
+friend, with whom and Hilda he had spent so many pleasant and familiar
+hours, and whom he had last seen at Perugia, bending with Donatello
+beneath the bronze pope's benediction. It must be that selfsame Miriam;
+but the sensitive sculptor felt a difference of manner, which impressed
+him more than he conceived it possible to be affected by so external a
+thing. He remembered the gossip so prevalent in Rome on Miriam's first
+appearance; how that she was no real artist, but the daughter of an
+illustrious or golden lineage, who was merely playing at necessity;
+mingling with human struggle for her pastime; stepping out of her native
+sphere only for an interlude, just as a princess might alight from her
+gilded equipage to go on foot through a rustic lane. And now, after a
+mask in which love and death had performed their several parts, she had
+resumed her proper character.
+
+"Have you anything to tell me?" cried he impatiently; for nothing causes
+a more disagreeable vibration of the nerves than this perception of
+ambiguousness in familiar persons or affairs. "Speak; for my spirits and
+patience have been much tried to-day."
+
+Miriam put her finger on her lips, and seemed desirous that Kenyon
+should know of the presence of a third person. He now saw, indeed, that,
+there was some one beside her in the carriage, hitherto concealed by
+her attitude; a man, it appeared, with a sallow Italian face, which the
+sculptor distinguished but imperfectly, and did not recognize.
+
+"I can tell you nothing," she replied; and leaning towards him, she
+whispered,--appearing then more like the Miriam whom he knew than in
+what had before passed,--"Only, when the lamp goes out do not despair."
+
+The carriage drove on, leaving Kenyon to muse over this unsatisfactory
+interview, which seemed to have served no better purpose than to fill
+his mind with more ominous forebodings than before. Why were Donatello
+and Miriam in Rome, where both, in all likelihood, might have much to
+dread? And why had one and the other addressed him with a question that
+seemed prompted by a knowledge of some calamity, either already fallen
+on his unconscious head, or impending closely over him?
+
+"I am sluggish," muttered Kenyon, to himself; "a weak, nerveless fool,
+devoid of energy and promptitude; or neither Donatello nor Miriam could
+have escaped me thus! They are aware of some misfortune that concerns me
+deeply. How soon am I to know it too?"
+
+There seemed but a single calamity possible to happen within so narrow
+a sphere as that with which the sculptor was connected; and even to that
+one mode of evil he could assign no definite shape, but only felt that
+it must have some reference to Hilda.
+
+Flinging aside the morbid hesitation, and the dallyings with his own
+wishes, which he had permitted to influence his mind throughout the day,
+he now hastened to the Via Portoghese. Soon the old palace stood before
+him, with its massive tower rising into the clouded night; obscured from
+view at its midmost elevation, but revealed again, higher upward, by
+the Virgin's lamp that twinkled on the summit. Feeble as it was, in
+the broad, surrounding gloom, that little ray made no inconsiderable
+illumination among Kenyon's sombre thoughts; for; remembering Miriam's
+last words, a fantasy had seized him that he should find the sacred lamp
+extinguished.
+
+And even while he stood gazing, as a mariner at the star in which he put
+his trust, the light quivered, sank, gleamed up again, and finally went
+out, leaving the battlements of Hilda's tower in utter darkness. For the
+first time in centuries, the consecrated and legendary flame before the
+loftiest shrine in Rome had ceased to burn.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+
+THE DESERTED SHRINE
+
+
+Kenyon knew the sanctity which Hilda (faithful Protestant, and daughter
+of the Puritans, as the girl was) imputed to this shrine. He was aware
+of the profound feeling of responsibility, as well earthly as religious,
+with which her conscience had been impressed, when she became the
+occupant of her aerial chamber, and undertook the task of keeping the
+consecrated lamp alight. There was an accuracy and a certainty about
+Hilda's movements, as regarded all matters that lay deep enough to have
+their roots in right or wrong, which made it as possible and safe to
+rely upon the timely and careful trimming of this lamp (if she were in
+life, and able to creep up the steps), as upon the rising of to-morrow's
+sun, with lustre-undiminished from to-day.
+
+The sculptor could scarcely believe his eyes, therefore, when he saw the
+flame flicker and expire. His sight had surely deceived him. And now,
+since the light did not reappear, there must be some smoke wreath
+or impenetrable mist brooding about the tower's gray old head, and
+obscuring it from the lower world. But no! For right over the dim
+battlements, as the wind chased away a mass of clouds, he beheld a star,
+and moreover, by an earnest concentration of his sight, was soon able to
+discern even the darkened shrine itself. There was no obscurity around
+the tower; no infirmity of his own vision. The flame had exhausted its
+supply of oil, and become extinct. But where was Hilda?
+
+A man in a cloak happened to be passing; and Kenyon--anxious to distrust
+the testimony of his senses, if he could get more acceptable evidence on
+the other side--appealed to him.
+
+"Do me the favor, Signore," said he, "to look at the top of yonder
+tower, and tell me whether you see the lamp burning at the Virgin's
+shrine."
+
+"The lamp, Signore?" answered the man, without at first troubling
+himself to look up. "The lamp that has burned these four hundred years!
+How is it possible, Signore, that it should not be burning now?" "But
+look!" said the sculptor impatiently. With good-natured indulgence for
+what he seemed to consider as the whim of an eccentric Forestiero, the
+Italian carelessly threw his eyes upwards; but, as soon as he perceived
+that there was really no light, he lifted his hands with a vivid
+expression of wonder and alarm.
+
+"The lamp is extinguished!" cried he. "The lamp that has been
+burning these four hundred years! This surely must portend some great
+misfortune; and, by my advice, Signore, you will hasten hence, lest the
+tower tumble on our heads. A priest once told me that, if the Virgin
+withdrew her blessing and the light went out, the old Palazzo del Torte
+would sink into the earth, with all that dwell in it. There will be a
+terrible crash before morning!"
+
+The stranger made the best of his way from the doomed premises; while
+Kenyon--who would willingly have seen the tower crumble down before his
+eyes, on condition of Hilda's safety--determined, late as it was, to
+attempt ascertaining if she were in her dove-cote.
+
+Passing through the arched entrance,--which, as is often the case with
+Roman entrances, was as accessible at midnight as at noon,--he groped
+his way to the broad staircase, and, lighting his wax taper, went
+glimmering up the multitude of steps that led to Hilda's door. The hour
+being so unseasonable, he intended merely to knock, and, as soon as
+her voice from within should reassure him, to retire, keeping his
+explanations and apologies for a fitter time. Accordingly, reaching the
+lofty height where the maiden, as he trusted, lay asleep, with angels
+watching over her, though the Virgin seemed to have suspended her care,
+he tapped lightly at the door panels,--then knocked more forcibly,--then
+thundered an impatient summons. No answer came; Hilda, evidently, was
+not there.
+
+After assuring himself that this must be the fact, Kenyon descended the
+stairs, but made a pause at every successive stage, and knocked at the
+door of its apartment, regardless whose slumbers he might disturb, in
+his anxiety to learn where the girl had last been seen. But, at each
+closed entrance, there came those hollow echoes, which a chamber, or any
+dwelling, great or small, never sends out, in response to human knuckles
+or iron hammer, as long as there is life within to keep its heart from
+getting dreary.
+
+Once indeed, on the lower landing-place, the sculptor fancied that there
+was a momentary stir inside the door, as if somebody were listening at
+the threshold. He hoped, at least, that the small iron-barred aperture
+would be unclosed, through which Roman housekeepers are wont to take
+careful cognizance of applicants for admission, from a traditionary
+dread, perhaps, of letting in a robber or assassin. But it remained
+shut; neither was the sound repeated; and Kenyon concluded that his
+excited nerves had played a trick upon his senses, as they are apt to do
+when we most wish for the clear evidence of the latter.
+
+There was nothing to be done, save to go heavily away, and await
+whatever good or ill to-morrow's daylight might disclose.
+
+Betimes in the morning, therefore, Kenyon went back to the Via
+Portoghese, before the slant rays of the sun had descended halfway down
+the gray front of Hilda's tower. As he drew near its base, he saw the
+doves perched in full session, on the sunny height of the battlements,
+and a pair of them--who were probably their mistress's especial pets,
+and the confidants of her bosom secrets, if Hilda had any--came shooting
+down, and made a feint of alighting on his shoulder. But, though they
+evidently recognized him, their shyness would not yet allow so decided
+a demonstration. Kenyon's eyes followed them as they flew upward, hoping
+that they might have come as joyful messengers of the girl's safety,
+and that he should discern her slender form, half hidden by the parapet,
+trimming the extinguished lamp at the Virgin's shrine, just as other
+maidens set about the little duties of a household. Or, perhaps, he
+might see her gentle and sweet face smiling down upon him, midway
+towards heaven, as if she had flown thither for a day or two, just to
+visit her kindred, but had been drawn earthward again by the spell of
+unacknowledged love.
+
+But his eyes were blessed by no such fair vision or reality; nor, in
+truth, were the eager, unquiet flutterings of the doves indicative of
+any joyful intelligence, which they longed to share with Hilda's friend,
+but of anxious inquiries that they knew not how to utter. They could
+not tell, any more than he, whither their lost companion had withdrawn
+herself, but were in the same void despondency with him, feeling their
+sunny and airy lives darkened and grown imperfect, now that her sweet
+society was taken out of it.
+
+In the brisk morning air, Kenyon found it much easier to pursue his
+researches than at the preceding midnight, when, if any slumberers heard
+the clamor that he made, they had responded only with sullen and drowsy
+maledictions, and turned to sleep again. It must be a very dear and
+intimate reality for which people will be content to give up a dream.
+When the sun was fairly up, however, it was quite another thing. The
+heterogeneous population, inhabiting the lower floor of the old tower,
+and the other extensive regions of the palace, were now willing to tell
+all they knew, and imagine a great deal more. The amiability of these
+Italians, assisted by their sharp and nimble wits, caused them to
+overflow with plausible suggestions, and to be very bounteous in their
+avowals of interest for the lost Hilda. In a less demonstrative people,
+such expressions would have implied an eagerness to search land and sea,
+and never rest till she were found. In the mouths that uttered them they
+meant good wishes, and were, so far, better than indifference. There
+was little doubt that many of them felt a genuine kindness for the shy,
+brown-haired, delicate young foreign maiden, who had flown from some
+distant land to alight upon their tower, where she consorted only with
+the doves. But their energy expended itself in exclamation, and they
+were content to leave all more active measures to Kenyon, and to the
+Virgin, whose affair it was to see that the faithful votary of her lamp
+received no harm.
+
+In a great Parisian domicile, multifarious as its inhabitants might
+be, the concierge under the archway would be cognizant of all their
+incomings and issuings forth. But except in rare cases, the general
+entrance and main staircase of a Roman house are left as free as the
+street, of which they form a sort of by-lane. The sculptor, therefore,
+could hope to find information about Hilda's movements only from casual
+observers.
+
+On probing the knowledge of these people to the bottom, there was
+various testimony as to the period when the girl had last been seen.
+Some said that it was four days since there had been a trace of her;
+but an English lady, in the second piano of the palace, was rather of
+opinion that she had met her, the morning before, with a drawing-book
+in her hand. Having no acquaintance with the young person, she had taken
+little notice and might have been mistaken. A count, on the piano next
+above, was very certain that he had lifted his hat to Hilda, under the
+archway, two afternoons ago. An old woman, who had formerly tended the
+shrine, threw some light upon the matter, by testifying that the lamp
+required to be replenished once, at least, in three days, though its
+reservoir of oil was exceedingly capacious.
+
+On the whole, though there was other evidence enough to create some
+perplexity, Kenyon could not satisfy himself that she had been visible
+since the afternoon of the third preceding day, when a fruit seller
+remembered her coming out of the arched passage, with a sealed packet in
+her hand. As nearly as he could ascertain, this was within an hour
+after Hilda had taken leave of the sculptor at his own studio, with the
+understanding that they were to meet at the Vatican the next day. Two
+nights, therefore, had intervened, during which the lost maiden was
+unaccounted for.
+
+The door of Hilda's apartments was still locked, as on the preceding
+night; but Kenyon sought out the wife of the person who sublet them, and
+prevailed on her to give him admittance by means of the duplicate key
+which the good woman had in her possession. On entering, the maidenly
+neatness and simple grace, recognizable in all the arrangements, made
+him visibly sensible that this was the daily haunt of a pure soul, in
+whom religion and the love of beauty were at one.
+
+Thence, the sturdy Roman matron led the sculptor across a narrow
+passage, and threw open the door of a small chamber, on the threshold of
+which he reverently paused. Within, there was a bed, covered with white
+drapery, enclosed with snowy curtains like a tent, and of barely width
+enough for a slender figure to repose upon it. The sight of this cool,
+airy, and secluded bower caused the lover's heart to stir as if enough
+of Hilda's gentle dreams were lingering there to make him happy for
+a single instant. But then came the closer consciousness of her loss,
+bringing along with it a sharp sting of anguish.
+
+"Behold, Signore," said the matron; "here is the little staircase by
+which the signorina used to ascend and trim the Blessed Virgin's lamp.
+She was worthy to be a Catholic, such pains the good child bestowed to
+keep it burning; and doubtless the Blessed Mary will intercede for her,
+in consideration of her pious offices, heretic though she was. What will
+become of the old palazzo, now that the lamp is extinguished, the saints
+above us only know! Will you mount, Signore, to the battlements, and see
+if she have left any trace of herself there?"
+
+The sculptor stepped across the chamber and ascended the little
+staircase, which gave him access to the breezy summit of the tower. It
+affected him inexpressibly to see a bouquet of beautiful flowers beneath
+the shrine, and to recognize in them an offering of his own to Hilda,
+who had put them in a vase of water, and dedicated them to the Virgin,
+in a spirit partly fanciful, perhaps, but still partaking of the
+religious sentiment which so profoundly influenced her character. One
+rosebud, indeed, she had selected for herself from the rich mass of
+flowers; for Kenyon well remembered recognizing it in her bosom when he
+last saw her at his studio.
+
+"That little part of my great love she took," said he to himself. "The
+remainder she would have devoted to Heaven; but has left it withering
+in the sun and wind. Ah! Hilda, Hilda, had you given me a right to watch
+over you, this evil had not come!"
+
+"Be not downcast, signorino mio," said the Roman matron, in response to
+the deep sigh which struggled out of Kenyon's breast. "The dear little
+maiden, as we see, has decked yonder blessed shrine as devoutly as
+I myself, or any Other good Catholic woman, could have done. It is a
+religious act, and has more than the efficacy of a prayer. The signorina
+will as surely come back as the sun will fall through the window
+to-morrow no less than to-day. Her own doves have often been missing
+for a day or two, but they were sure to come fluttering about her head
+again, when she least expected them. So will it be with this dove-like
+child."
+
+"It might be so," thought Kenyon, with yearning anxiety, "if a pure
+maiden were as safe as a dove, in this evil world of ours."
+
+As they returned through the studio, with the furniture and arrangements
+of which the sculptor was familiar, he missed a small ebony writing-desk
+that he remembered as having always been placed on a table there. He
+knew that it was Hilda's custom to deposit her letters in this desk,
+as well as other little objects of which she wished to be specially
+careful.
+
+"What has become of it?" he suddenly inquired, laying his hand on the
+table.
+
+"Become of what, pray?" exclaimed the woman, a little disturbed. "Does
+the Signore suspect a robbery, then?"
+
+"The signorina's writing-desk is gone," replied Kenyon; "it always stood
+on this table, and I myself saw it there only a few days ago."
+
+"Ah, well!" said the woman, recovering her composure, which she seemed
+partly to have lost. "The signorina has doubtless taken it away with
+her. The fact is of good omen; for it proves that she did not go
+unexpectedly, and is likely to return when it may best suit her
+convenience."
+
+"This is very singular," observed Kenyon. "Have the rooms been entered
+by yourself, or any other person, since the signorina's disappearance?"
+
+"Not by me, Signore, so help me Heaven and the saints!" said the matron.
+"And I question whether there are more than two keys in Rome that will
+suit this strange old lock. Here is one; and as for the other, the
+signorina carlies it in her pocket."
+
+The sculptor had no reason to doubt the word of this respectable dame.
+She appeared to be well meaning and kind hearted, as Roman matrons
+generally are; except when a fit of passion incites them to shower
+horrible curses on an obnoxious individual, or perhaps to stab him
+with the steel stiletto that serves them for a hairpin. But Italian
+asseverations of any questionable fact, however true they may chance to
+be, have no witness of their truth in the faces of those who utter them.
+Their words are spoken with strange earnestness, and yet do not vouch
+for themselves as coming from any depth, like roots drawn out of the
+substance of the soul, with some of the soil clinging to them. There is
+always a something inscrutable, instead of frankness, in their eyes. In
+short, they lie so much like truth, and speak truth so much as if they
+were telling a lie, that their auditor suspects himself in the wrong,
+whether he believes or disbelieves them; it being the one thing certain,
+that falsehood is seldom an intolerable burden to the tenderest of
+Italian consciences.
+
+"It is very strange what can have become of the desk!" repeated Kenyon,
+looking the woman in the face.
+
+"Very strange, indeed, Signore," she replied meekly, without turning
+away her eyes in the least, but checking his insight of them at about
+half an inch below the surface. "I think the signorina must have taken
+it with her."
+
+It seemed idle to linger here any longer. Kenyon therefore departed,
+after making an arrangement with the woman, by the terms of which she
+was to allow the apartments to remain in their present state, on his
+assuming the responsibility for the rent.
+
+He spent the day in making such further search and investigation as he
+found practicable; and, though at first trammelled by an unwillingness
+to draw public attention to Hilda's affairs, the urgency of the
+circumstances soon compelled him to be thoroughly in earnest. In the
+course of a week, he tried all conceivable modes of fathoming the
+mystery, not merely by his personal efforts and those of his brother
+artists and friends, but through the police, who readily undertook the
+task, and expressed strong confidence of success. But the Roman police
+has very little efficiency, except in the interest of the despotism of
+which it is a tool. With their cocked hats, shoulder belts, and swords,
+they wear a sufficiently imposing aspect, and doubtless keep their eyes
+open wide enough to track a political offender, but are too often blind
+to private outrage, be it murder or any lesser crime. Kenyon counted
+little upon their assistance, and profited by it not at all.
+
+Remembering the mystic words which Miriam had addressed to him, he
+was anxious to meet her, but knew not whither she had gone, nor how
+to obtain an interview either with herself or Donatello. The days wore
+away, and still there were no tidings of the lost one; no lamp rekindled
+before the Virgin's shrine; no light shining into the lover's heart;
+no star of Hope--he was ready to say, as he turned his eyes almost
+reproachfully upward--in heaven itself!
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+
+THE FLIGHT OF HILDA'S DOVES
+
+
+Along with the lamp on Hilda's tower, the sculptor now felt that a light
+had gone out, or, at least, was ominously obscured, to which he owed
+whatever cheerfulness had heretofore illuminated his cold, artistic
+life. The idea of this girl had been like a taper of virgin wax, burning
+with a pure and steady flame, and chasing away the evil spirits out of
+the magic circle of its beams. It had darted its rays afar, and modified
+the whole sphere in which Kenyon had his being. Beholding it no more, he
+at once found himself in darkness and astray.
+
+This was the time, perhaps, when Kenyon first became sensible what a
+dreary city is Rome, and what a terrible weight is there imposed on
+human life, when any gloom within the heart corresponds to the spell of
+ruin that has been thrown over the site of ancient empire. He wandered,
+as it were, and stumbled over the fallen columns, and among the tombs,
+and groped his way into the sepulchral darkness of the catacombs, and
+found no path emerging from them. The happy may well enough continue to
+be such, beneath the brilliant sky of Rome. But, if you go thither in
+melancholy mood, if you go with a ruin in your heart, or with a
+vacant site there, where once stood the airy fabric of happiness, now
+vanished,--all the ponderous gloom of the Roman Past will pile itself
+upon that spot, and crush you down as with the heaped-up marble and
+granite, the earth-mounds, and multitudinous bricks of its material
+decay.
+
+It might be supposed that a melancholy man would here make acquaintance
+with a grim philosophy. He should learn to bear patiently his individual
+griefs, that endure only for one little lifetime, when here are the
+tokens of such infinite misfortune on an imperial scale, and when so
+many far landmarks of time, all around him, are bringing the remoteness
+of a thousand years ago into the sphere of yesterday. But it is in vain
+that you seek this shrub of bitter sweetness among the plants that root
+themselves on the roughness of massive walls, or trail downward from the
+capitals of pillars, or spring out of the green turf in the palace of
+the Caesars. It does not grow in Rome; not even among the five hundred
+various weeds which deck the grassy arches of the Coliseum. You look
+through a vista of century beyond century,--through much shadow, and a
+little sunshine,--through barbarism and civilization, alternating with
+one another like actors that have prearranged their parts: through
+a broad pathway of progressive generations bordered by palaces and
+temples, and bestridden by old, triumphal arches, until, in the
+distance, you behold the obelisks, with their unintelligible
+inscriptions, hinting at a past infinitely more remote than history
+can define. Your own life is as nothing, when compared with that
+immeasurable distance; but still you demand, none the less earnestly, a
+gleam of sunshine, instead of a speck of shadow, on the step or two that
+will bring you to your quiet rest.
+
+How exceedingly absurd! All men, from the date of the earliest
+obelisk,--and of the whole world, moreover, since that far epoch, and
+before,--have made a similar demand, and seldom had their wish. If they
+had it, what are they the better now? But, even while you taunt yourself
+with this sad lesson, your heart cries out obstreperously for its small
+share of earthly happiness, and will not be appeased by the myriads of
+dead hopes that lie crushed into the soil of Rome. How wonderful
+that this our narrow foothold of the Present should hold its own so
+constantly, and, while every moment changing, should still be like a
+rock betwixt the encountering tides of the long Past and the infinite
+To-come!
+
+Man of marble though he was, the sculptor grieved for the Irrevocable.
+Looking back upon Hilda's way of life, he marvelled at his own blind
+stupidity, which had kept him from remonstrating as a friend, if with no
+stronger right against the risks that she continually encountered. Being
+so innocent, she had no means of estimating those risks, nor even a
+possibility of suspecting their existence. But he--who had spent
+years in Rome, with a man's far wider scope of observation and
+experience--knew things that made him shudder. It seemed to Kenyon,
+looking through the darkly colored medium of his fears, that all modes
+of crime were crowded into the close intricacy of Roman streets, and
+that there was no redeeming element, such as exists in other dissolute
+and wicked cities.
+
+For here was a priesthood, pampered, sensual, with red and bloated
+cheeks, and carnal eyes. With apparently a grosser development of animal
+life than most men, they were placed in an unnatural relation with
+woman, and thereby lost the healthy, human conscience that pertains to
+other human beings, who own the sweet household ties connecting them
+with wife and daughter. And here was an indolent nobility, with no high
+aims or opportunities, but cultivating a vicious way of life, as if
+it were an art, and the only one which they cared to learn. Here was a
+population, high and low, that had no genuine belief in virtue; and
+if they recognized any act as criminal, they might throw off all
+care, remorse, and memory of it, by kneeling a little while at the
+confessional, and rising unburdened, active, elastic, and incited by
+fresh appetite for the next ensuing sin. Here was a soldiery who felt
+Rome to be their conquered city, and doubtless considered themselves the
+legal inheritors of the foul license which Gaul, Goth, and Vandal have
+here exercised in days gone by.
+
+And what localities for new crime existed in those guilty sites,
+where the crime of departed ages used to be at home, and had its long,
+hereditary haunt! What street in Rome, what ancient ruin, what one place
+where man had standing-room, what fallen stone was there, unstained with
+one or another kind of guilt! In some of the vicissitudes of the city's
+pride or its calamity, the dark tide of human evil had swelled over it,
+far higher than the Tiber ever rose against the acclivities of the
+seven hills. To Kenyon's morbid view, there appeared to be a contagious
+element, rising fog-like from the ancient depravity of Rome, and
+brooding over the dead and half-rotten city, as nowhere else on earth.
+It prolonged the tendency to crime, and developed an instantaneous
+growth of it, whenever an opportunity was found; And where could it be
+found so readily as here! In those vast palaces, there were a hundred
+remote nooks where Innocence might shriek in vain. Beneath meaner houses
+there were unsuspected dungeons that had once been princely chambers,
+and open to the daylight; but, on account of some wickedness there
+perpetrated, each passing age had thrown its handful of dust upon the
+spot, and buried it from sight. Only ruffians knew of its existence, and
+kept it for murder, and worse crime.
+
+Such was the city through which Hilda, for three years past, had been
+wandering without a protector or a guide. She had trodden lightly over
+the crumble of old crimes; she had taken her way amid the grime and
+corruption which Paganism had left there, and a perverted Christianity
+had made more noisome; walking saint-like through it all, with white,
+innocent feet; until, in some dark pitfall that lay right across her
+path, she had vanished out of sight. It was terrible to imagine what
+hideous outrage might have thrust her into that abyss!
+
+Then the lover tried to comfort himself with the idea that Hilda's
+sanctity was a sufficient safeguard. Ah, yes; she was so pure! The
+angels, that were of the same sisterhood, would never let Hilda come to
+harm. A miracle would be wrought on her behalf, as naturally as a father
+would stretch out his hand to save a best-beloved child. Providence
+would keep a little area and atmosphere about her as safe and wholesome
+as heaven itself, although the flood of perilous iniquity might hem
+her round, and its black waves hang curling above her head! But these
+reflections were of slight avail. No doubt they were the religious
+truth. Yet the ways of Providence are utterly inscrutable; and many a
+murder has been done, and many an innocent virgin has lifted her white
+arms, beseeching its aid in her extremity, and all in vain; so that,
+though Providence is infinitely good and wise, and perhaps for that very
+reason, it may be half an eternity before the great circle of its scheme
+shall bring us the superabundant recompense for all these sorrows! But
+what the lover asked was such prompt consolation as might consist with
+the brief span of mortal life; the assurance of Hilda's present safety,
+and her restoration within that very hour.
+
+An imaginative man, he suffered the penalty of his endowment in the
+hundred-fold variety of gloomily tinted scenes that it presented to
+him, in which Hilda was always a central figure. The sculptor forgot his
+marble. Rome ceased to be anything, for him, but a labyrinth of dismal
+streets, in one or another of which the lost girl had disappeared. He
+was haunted with the idea that some circumstance, most important to be
+known, and perhaps easily discoverable, had hitherto been overlooked,
+and that, if he could lay hold of this one clew, it would guide him
+directly in the track of Hilda's footsteps. With this purpose in
+view, he went, every morning, to the Via Portoghese, and made it
+the starting-point of fresh investigations. After nightfall, too, he
+invariably returned thither, with a faint hope fluttering at his heart
+that the lamp might again be shining on the summit of the tower, and
+would dispel this ugly mystery out of the circle consecrated by its
+rays. There being no point of which he could take firm hold, his mind
+was filled with unsubstantial hopes and fears. Once Kenyon had seemed
+to cut his life in marble; now he vaguely clutched at it, and found it
+vapor.
+
+In his unstrung and despondent mood, one trifling circumstance affected
+him with an idle pang. The doves had at first been faithful to their
+lost mistress. They failed not to sit in a row upon her window-sill,
+or to alight on the shrine, or the church-angels, and on the roofs
+and portals of the neighboring houses, in evident expectation of her
+reappearance. After the second week, however, they began to take flight,
+and dropping off by pairs, betook themselves to other dove-cotes. Only a
+single dove remained, and brooded drearily beneath the shrine. The
+flock that had departed were like the many hopes that had vanished
+from Kenyon's heart; the one that still lingered, and looked so
+wretched,--was it a Hope, or already a Despair?
+
+In the street, one day, the sculptor met a priest of mild and venerable
+aspect; and as his mind dwelt continually upon Hilda, and was especially
+active in bringing up all incidents that had ever been connected with
+her, it immediately struck him that this was the very father with whom
+he had seen her at the confessional. Such trust did Hilda inspire
+in him, that Kenyon had never asked what was the subject of the
+communication between herself and this old priest. He had no reason for
+imagining that it could have any relation with her disappearance,
+so long subsequently; but, being thus brought face to face with a
+personage, mysteriously associated, as he now remembered, with her whom
+he had lost, an impulse ran before his thoughts and led the sculptor to
+address him.
+
+It might be that the reverend kindliness of the old man's expression
+took Kenyon's heart by surprise; at all events, he spoke as if there
+were a recognized acquaintanceship, and an object of mutual interest
+between them.
+
+"She has gone from me, father," said he.
+
+"Of whom do you speak, my son?" inquired the priest.
+
+"Of that sweet girl," answered Kenyon, "who knelt to you at the
+confessional. Surely you remember her, among all the mortals to whose
+confessions you have listened! For she alone could have had no sins to
+reveal."
+
+"Yes; I remember," said the priest, with a gleam of recollection in his
+eyes. "She was made to bear a miraculous testimony to the efficacy of
+the divine ordinances of the Church, by seizing forcibly upon one of
+them, and finding immediate relief from it, heretic though she was.
+It is my purpose to publish a brief narrative of this miracle, for
+the edification of mankind, in Latin, Italian, and English, from the
+printing press of the Propaganda. Poor child! Setting apart her heresy,
+she was spotless, as you say. And is she dead?"
+
+"Heaven forbid, father!" exclaimed Kenyon, shrinking back. "But she has
+gone from me, I know not whither. It may be--yes, the idea seizes upon
+my mind--that what she revealed to you will suggest some clew to the
+mystery of her disappearance.'"
+
+"None, my son, none," answered the priest, shaking his head;
+"nevertheless, I bid you be of good cheer. That young maiden is not
+doomed to die a heretic. Who knows what the Blessed Virgin may at this
+moment be doing for her soul! Perhaps, when you next behold her, she
+will be clad in the shining white robe of the true faith."
+
+This latter suggestion did not convey all the comfort which the old
+priest possibly intended by it; but he imparted it to the sculptor,
+along with his blessing, as the two best things that he could bestow,
+and said nothing further, except to bid him farewell.
+
+When they had parted, however, the idea of Hilda's conversion to
+Catholicism recurred to her lover's mind, bringing with it certain
+reflections, that gave a new turn to his surmises about the mystery into
+which she had vanished. Not that he seriously apprehended--although
+the superabundance of her religious sentiment might mislead her for
+a moment--that the New England girl would permanently succumb to the
+scarlet superstitions which surrounded her in Italy. But the incident
+of the confessional if known, as probably it was, to the eager
+propagandists who prowl about for souls, as cats to catch a mouse--would
+surely inspire the most confident expectations of bringing her over to
+the faith. With so pious an end in view, would Jesuitical morality be
+shocked at the thought of kidnapping the mortal body, for the sake of
+the immortal spirit that might otherwise be lost forever? Would not the
+kind old priest, himself, deem this to be infinitely the kindest service
+that he could perform for the stray lamb, who had so strangely sought
+his aid?
+
+If these suppositions were well founded, Hilda was most likely a
+prisoner in one of the religious establishments that are so numerous in
+Rome. The idea, according to the aspect in which it was viewed, brought
+now a degree of comfort, and now an additional perplexity. On the one
+hand, Hilda was safe from any but spiritual assaults; on the other,
+where was the possibility of breaking through all those barred portals,
+and searching a thousand convent cells, to set her free?
+
+Kenyon, however, as it happened, was prevented from endeavoring to
+follow out this surmise, which only the state of hopeless uncertainty,
+that almost bewildered his reason, could have led him for a moment
+to entertain. A communication reached him by an unknown hand, in
+consequence of which, and within an hour after receiving it, he took his
+way through one of the gates of Rome.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+
+A WALK ON THE CAMPAGNA
+
+
+It was a bright forenoon of February; a month in which the brief
+severity of a Roman winter is already past, and when violets and daisies
+begin to show themselves in spots favored by the sun. The sculptor came
+out of the city by the gate of San Sebastiano, and walked briskly along
+the Appian Way.
+
+For the space of a mile or two beyond the gate, this ancient and famous
+road is as desolate and disagreeable as most of the other Roman avenues.
+It extends over small, uncomfortable paving-stones, between brick and
+plastered walls, which are very solidly constructed, and so high as
+almost to exclude a view of the surrounding country. The houses are of
+most uninviting aspect, neither picturesque, nor homelike and social;
+they have seldom or never a door opening on the wayside, but are
+accessible only from the rear, and frown inhospitably upon the traveller
+through iron-grated windows. Here and there appears a dreary inn or a
+wine-shop, designated by the withered bush beside the entrance, within
+which you discern a stone-built and sepulchral interior, where guests
+refresh themselves with sour bread and goats'-milk cheese, washed down
+with wine of dolorous acerbity.
+
+At frequent intervals along the roadside up-rises the ruin of an ancient
+tomb. As they stand now, these structures are immensely high and broken
+mounds of conglomerated brick, stone, pebbles, and earth, all molten
+by time into a mass as solid and indestructible as if each tomb were
+composed of a single boulder of granite. When first erected, they were
+cased externally, no doubt, with slabs of polished marble, artfully
+wrought bas-reliefs, and all such suitable adornments, and were rendered
+majestically beautiful by grand architectural designs. This antique
+splendor has long since been stolen from the dead, to decorate the
+palaces and churches of the living. Nothing remains to the dishonored
+sepulchres, except their massiveness.
+
+Even the pyramids form hardly a stranger spectacle, or are more alien
+from human sympathies, than the tombs of the Appian Way, with their
+gigantic height, breadth, and solidity, defying time and the elements,
+and far too mighty to be demolished by an ordinary earthquake. Here you
+may see a modern dwelling, and a garden with its vines and olive-trees,
+perched on the lofty dilapidation of a tomb, which forms a precipice of
+fifty feet in depth on each of the four sides. There is a home on
+that funereal mound, where generations of children have been born, and
+successive lives been spent, undisturbed by the ghost of the stern Roman
+whose ashes were so preposterously burdened. Other sepulchres wear a
+crown of grass, shrubbery, and forest-trees, which throw out a broad
+sweep of branches, having had time, twice over, to be a thousand years
+of age. On one of them stands a tower, which, though immemorially more
+modern than the tomb, was itself built by immemorial hands, and is
+now rifted quite from top to bottom by a vast fissure of decay; the
+tomb-hillock, its foundation, being still as firm as ever, and likely to
+endure until the last trump shall rend it wide asunder, and summon forth
+its unknown dead.
+
+Yes; its unknown dead! For, except in one or two doubtful instances,
+these mountainous sepulchral edifices have not availed to keep so much
+as the bare name of an individual or a family from oblivion. Ambitious
+of everlasting remembrance, as they were, the slumberers might just
+as well have gone quietly to rest, each in his pigeon-hole of a
+columbarium, or under his little green hillock in a graveyard, without a
+headstone to mark the spot. It is rather satisfactory than otherwise, to
+think that all these idle pains have turned out so utterly abortive.
+
+About two miles, or more, from the city gate, and right upon the
+roadside, Kenyon passed an immense round pile, sepulchral in its
+original purposes, like those already mentioned. It was built of
+great blocks of hewn stone, on a vast, square foundation of rough,
+agglomerated material, such as composes the mass of all the other
+ruinous tombs. But whatever might be the cause, it was in a far
+better state of preservation than they. On its broad summit rose the
+battlements of a mediaeval fortress, out of the midst of which (so long
+since had time begun to crumble the supplemental structure, and cover
+it with soil, by means of wayside dust) grew trees, bushes, and thick
+festoons of ivy. This tomb of a woman had become the citadel and
+donjon-keep of a castle; and all the care that Cecilia Metella's husband
+could bestow, to secure endless peace for her beloved relics, had only
+sufficed to make that handful of precious ashes the nucleus of battles,
+long ages after her death.
+
+A little beyond this point, the sculptor turned aside from the Appian
+Way, and directed his course across the Campagna, guided by tokens that
+were obvious only to himself. On one side of him, but at a distance, the
+Claudian aqueduct was striding over fields and watercourses. Before him,
+many miles away, with a blue atmosphere between, rose the Alban hills,
+brilliantly silvered with snow and sunshine.
+
+He was not without a companion. A buffalo-calf, that seemed shy and
+sociable by the selfsame impulse, had begun to make acquaintance with
+him, from the moment when he left the road. This frolicsome creature
+gambolled along, now before, now behind; standing a moment to gaze at
+him, with wild, curious eyes, he leaped aside and shook his shaggy head,
+as Kenyon advanced too nigh; then, after loitering in the rear, he came
+galloping up, like a charge of cavalry, but halted, all of a sudden,
+when the sculptor turned to look, and bolted across the Campagna at the
+slightest signal of nearer approach. The young, sportive thing, Kenyon
+half fancied, was serving him as a guide, like the heifer that led
+Cadmus to the site of his destined city; for, in spite of a hundred
+vagaries, his general course was in the right direction, and along by
+several objects which the sculptor had noted as landmarks of his way.
+
+In this natural intercourse with a rude and healthy form of animal life,
+there was something that wonderfully revived Kenyon's spirits. The warm
+rays of the sun, too, were wholesome for him in body and soul; and so
+was a breeze that bestirred itself occasionally, as if for the sole
+purpose of breathing upon his cheek and dying softly away, when he would
+fain have felt a little more decided kiss. This shy but loving breeze
+reminded him strangely of what Hilda's deportment had sometimes been
+towards himself.
+
+The weather had very much to do, no doubt, with these genial and
+delightful sensations, that made the sculptor so happy with mere life,
+in spite of a head and heart full of doleful thoughts, anxieties, and
+fears, which ought in all reason to have depressed him. It was like no
+weather that exists anywhere, save in Paradise and in Italy; certainly
+not in America, where it is always too strenuous on the side either of
+heat or cold. Young as the season was, and wintry, as it would have
+been under a more rigid sky, it resembled summer rather than what we
+New Englanders recognize in our idea of spring. But there was an
+indescribable something, sweet, fresh, and remotely affectionate, which
+the matronly summer loses, and which thrilled, and, as it were, tickled
+Kenyon's heart with a feeling partly of the senses, yet far more a
+spiritual delight. In a word, it was as if Hilda's delicate breath were
+on his cheek.
+
+After walking at a brisk pace for about half an hour, he reached a
+spot where an excavation appeared to have been begun, at some not
+very distant period. There was a hollow space in the earth, looking
+exceedingly like a deserted cellar, being enclosed within old
+subterranean walls, constructed of thin Roman bricks, and made
+accessible by a narrow flight of stone steps. A suburban villa had
+probably stood over this site, in the imperial days of Rome, and these
+might have been the ruins of a bathroom, or some other apartment that
+was required to be wholly or partly under ground. A spade can scarcely
+be put into that soil, so rich in lost and forgotten things, without
+hitting upon some discovery which would attract all eyes, in any other
+land. If you dig but a little way, you gather bits of precious marble,
+coins, rings, and engraved gems; if you go deeper, you break into
+columbaria, or into sculptured and richly frescoed apartments that look
+like festive halls, but were only sepulchres.
+
+The sculptor descended into the cellar-like cavity, and sat down on a
+block of stone. His eagerness had brought him thither sooner than
+the appointed hour. The sunshine fell slantwise into the hollow, and
+happened to be resting on what Kenyon at first took to be a shapeless
+fragment of stone, possibly marble, which was partly concealed by the
+crumbling down of earth.
+
+But his practised eye was soon aware of something artistic in this rude
+object. To relieve the anxious tedium of his situation, he cleared
+away some of the soil, which seemed to have fallen very recently, and
+discovered a headless figure of marble. It was earth stained, as well it
+might be, and had a slightly corroded surface, but at once impressed the
+sculptor as a Greek production, and wonderfully delicate and beautiful.
+The head was gone; both arms were broken off at the elbow. Protruding
+from the loose earth, however, Kenyon beheld the fingers of a marble
+hand; it was still appended to its arm, and a little further search
+enabled him to find the other. Placing these limbs in what the nice
+adjustment of the fractures proved to be their true position, the
+poor, fragmentary woman forthwith showed that she retained her modest
+instincts to the last. She had perished with them, and snatched them
+back at the moment of revival. For these long-buried hands immediately
+disposed themselves in the manner that nature prompts, as the antique
+artist knew, and as all the world has seen, in the Venus de' Medici.
+
+"What a discovery is here!" thought Kenyon to himself. "I seek for
+Hilda, and find a marble woman! Is the omen good or ill?"
+
+In a corner of the excavation lay a small round block of stone, much
+incrusted with earth that had dried and hardened upon it. So, at least,
+you would have described this object, until the sculptor lifted it,
+turned it hither and thither in his hands, brushed off the clinging
+soil, and finally placed it on the slender neck of the newly discovered
+statue. The effect was magical. It immediately lighted up and vivified
+the whole figure, endowing it with personality, soul, and intelligence.
+The beautiful Idea at once asserted its immortality, and converted that
+heap of forlorn fragments into a whole, as perfect to the mind, if not
+to the eye, as when the new marble gleamed with snowy lustre; nor was
+the impression marred by the earth that still hung upon the exquisitely
+graceful limbs, and even filled the lovely crevice of the lips. Kenyon
+cleared it away from between them, and almost deemed himself rewarded
+with a living smile.
+
+It was either the prototype or a better repetition of the Venus of the
+Tribune. But those who have been dissatisfied with the small head, the
+narrow, soulless face, the button-hole eyelids, of that famous statue,
+and its mouth such as nature never moulded, should see the genial
+breadth of this far nobler and sweeter countenance. It is one of the few
+works of antique sculpture in which we recognize womanhood, and that,
+moreover, without prejudice to its divinity.
+
+Here, then, was a treasure for the sculptor to have found! How happened
+it to be lying there, beside its grave of twenty centuries? Why were not
+the tidings of its discovery already noised abroad? The world was richer
+than yesterday, by something far more precious than gold. Forgotten
+beauty had come back, as beautiful as ever; a goddess had risen from her
+long slumber, and was a goddess still. Another cabinet in the Vatican
+was destined to shine as lustrously as that of the Apollo Belvedere;
+or, if the aged pope should resign his claim, an emperor would woo this
+tender marble, and win her as proudly as an imperial bride!
+
+Such were the thoughts with which Kenyon exaggerated to himself the
+importance of the newly discovered statue, and strove to feel at least
+a portion of the interest which this event would have inspired in him a
+little while before. But, in reality, he found it difficult to fix
+his mind upon the subject. He could hardly, we fear, be reckoned a
+consummate artist, because there was something dearer to him than his
+art; and, by the greater strength of a human affection, the divine
+statue seemed to fall asunder again, and become only a heap of worthless
+fragments.
+
+While the sculptor sat listlessly gazing at it, there was a sound of
+small hoofs, clumsily galloping on the Campagna; and soon his frisky
+acquaintance, the buffalo-calf, came and peeped over the edge of the
+excavation. Almost at the same moment he heard voices, which approached
+nearer and nearer; a man's voice, and a feminine one, talking the
+musical tongue of Italy. Besides the hairy visage of his four footed
+friend, Kenyon now saw the figures of a peasant and a contadina, making
+gestures of salutation to him, on the opposite verge of the hollow
+space.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+
+THE PEASANT AND CONTADINA
+
+
+They descended into the excavation: a young peasant, in the short blue
+jacket, the small-clothes buttoned at the knee, and buckled shoes, that
+compose one of the ugliest dresses ever worn by man, except the wearer's
+form have a grace which any garb, or the nudity of an antique statue,
+would equally set off; and, hand in hand with him, a village girl, in
+one of those brilliant costumes largely kindled up with scarlet, and
+decorated with gold embroidery, in which the contadinas array themselves
+on feast-days. But Kenyon was not deceived; he had recognized the voices
+of his friends, indeed, even before their disguised figures came between
+him and the sunlight. Donatello was the peasant; the contadina, with the
+airy smile, half mirthful, though it shone out of melancholy eyes,--was
+Miriam.
+
+They both greeted the sculptor with a familiar kindness which reminded
+him of the days when Hilda and they and he had lived so happily
+together, before the mysterious adventure of the catacomb. What a
+succession of sinister events had followed one spectral figure out of
+that gloomy labyrinth.
+
+"It is carnival time, you know," said Miriam, as if in explanation of
+Donatello's and her own costume. "Do you remember how merrily we spent
+the Carnival, last year?"
+
+"It seems many years ago," replied Kenyon. "We are all so changed!"
+
+When individuals approach one another with deep purposes on both sides,
+they seldom come at once to the matter which they have most at heart.
+They dread the electric shock of a too sudden contact with it. A natural
+impulse leads them to steal gradually onward, hiding themselves, as it
+were, behind a closer, and still a closer topic, until they stand face
+to face with the true point of interest. Miriam was conscious of this
+impulse, and partially obeyed it.
+
+"So your instincts as a sculptor have brought you into the presence of
+our newly discovered statue," she observed. "Is it not beautiful? A
+far truer image of immortal womanhood than the poor little damsel at
+Florence, world famous though she be."
+
+"Most beautiful," said Kenyon, casting an indifferent glance at the
+Venus. "The time has been when the sight of this statue would have been
+enough to make the day memorable."
+
+"And will it not do so now?" Miriam asked.
+
+"I fancied so, indeed, when we discovered it two days ago. It is
+Donatello's prize. We were sitting here together, planning an interview
+with you, when his keen eyes detected the fallen goddess, almost
+entirely buried under that heap of earth, which the clumsy excavators
+showered down upon her, I suppose. We congratulated ourselves, chiefly
+for your sake. The eyes of us three are the only ones to which she
+has yet revealed herself. Does it not frighten you a little, like the
+apparition of a lovely woman that livid of old, and has long lain in the
+grave?"
+
+"Ah, Miriam! I cannot respond to you," said the sculptor, with
+irrepressible impatience. "Imagination and the love of art have both
+died out of me."
+
+"Miriam," interposed Donatello with gentle gravity, "why should we keep
+our friend in suspense? We know what anxiety he feels. Let us give him
+what intelligence we can."
+
+"You are so direct and immediate, my beloved friend!" answered Miriam
+with an unquiet smile. "There are several reasons why I should like
+to play round this matter a little while, and cover it with fanciful
+thoughts, as we strew a grave with flowers."
+
+"A grave!" exclaimed the sculptor.
+
+"No grave in which your heart need be buried," she replied; "you have no
+such calamity to dread. But I linger and hesitate, because every word I
+speak brings me nearer to a crisis from which I shrink. Ah, Donatello!
+let us live a little longer the life of these last few days! It is so
+bright, so airy, so childlike, so without either past or future! Here,
+on the wild Campagna, you seem to have found, both for yourself and me,
+the life that belonged to you in early youth; the sweet irresponsible
+life which you inherited from your mythic ancestry, the Fauns of Monte
+Beni. Our stern and black reality will come upon us speedily enough.
+But, first, a brief time more of this strange happiness."
+
+"I dare not linger upon it," answered Donatello, with an expression
+that reminded the sculptor of the gloomiest days of his remorse at Monte
+Beni. "I dare to be so happy as you have seen me, only because I have
+felt the time to be so brief."
+
+"One day, then!" pleaded Miriam. "One more day in the wild freedom of
+this sweet-scented air."
+
+"Well, one more day," said Donatello, smiling; and his smile touched
+Kenyon with a pathos beyond words, there being gayety and sadness both
+melted into it; "but here is Hilda's friend, and our own. Comfort him,
+at least, and set his heart at rest, since you have it partly in your
+power."
+
+"Ah, surely he might endure his pangs a little longer!" cried Miriam,
+turning to Kenyon with a tricksy, fitful kind of mirth, that served to
+hide some solemn necessity, too sad and serious to be looked at in its
+naked aspect. "You love us both, I think, and will be content to suffer
+for our sakes, one other day. Do I ask too much?"
+
+"Tell me of Hilda," replied the sculptor; "tell me only that she is
+safe, and keep back what else you will."
+
+"Hilda is safe," said Miriam. "There is a Providence purposely for
+Hilda, as I remember to have told you long ago. But a great trouble--an
+evil deed, let us acknowledge it has spread out its dark branches so
+widely, that the shadow falls on innocence as well as guilt. There was
+one slight link that connected your sweet Hilda with a crime which it
+was her unhappy fortune to witness, but of which I need not say she was
+as guiltless as the angels that looked out of heaven, and saw it too.
+No matter, now, what the consequence has been. You shall have your lost
+Hilda back, and--who knows?--perhaps tenderer than she was."
+
+"But when will she return?" persisted the sculptor; "tell me the when,
+and where, and how!"
+
+"A little patience. Do not press me so," said Miriam; and again Kenyon
+was struck by the sprite-like, fitful characteristic of her manner, and
+a sort of hysteric gayety, which seemed to be a will-o'-the-wisp from
+a sorrow stagnant at her heart. "You have more time to spare than I.
+First, listen to something that I have to tell. We will talk of Hilda by
+and by."
+
+Then Miriam spoke of her own life, and told facts that threw a gleam
+of light over many things which had perplexed the sculptor in all his
+previous knowledge of her. She described herself as springing from
+English parentage, on the mother's side, but with a vein, likewise, of
+Jewish blood; yet connected, through her father, with one of those few
+princely families of Southern Italy, which still retain great wealth and
+influence. And she revealed a name at which her auditor started and grew
+pale; for it was one that, only a few years before, had been familiar
+to the world in connection with a mysterious and terrible event.
+The reader, if he think it worth while to recall some of the strange
+incidents which have been talked of, and forgotten, within no long time
+past, will remember Miriam's name.
+
+"You shudder at me, I perceive," said Miriam, suddenly interrupting her
+narrative.
+
+"No; you were innocent," replied the sculptor. "I shudder at the
+fatality that seems to haunt your footsteps, and throws a shadow of
+crime about your path, you being guiltless."
+
+"There was such a fatality," said Miriam; "yes; the shadow fell upon
+me, innocent, but I went astray in it, and wandered--as Hilda could tell
+you--into crime."
+
+She went on to say that, while yet a child, she had lost her English
+mother. From a very early period of her life, there had been a contract
+of betrothal between herself and a certain marchese, the representative
+of another branch of her paternal house,--a family arrangement between
+two persons of disproportioned ages, and in which feeling went for
+nothing. Most Italian girls of noble rank would have yielded themselves
+to such a marriage as an affair of course. But there was something
+in Miriam's blood, in her mixed race, in her recollections of her
+mother,--some characteristic, finally, in her own nature,--which
+had given her freedom of thought, and force of will, and made this
+prearranged connection odious to her. Moreover, the character of her
+destined husband would have been a sufficient and insuperable objection;
+for it betrayed traits so evil, so treacherous, so vile, and yet so
+strangely subtle, as could only be accounted for by the insanity which
+often develops itself in old, close-kept races of men, when long unmixed
+with newer blood. Reaching the age when the marriage contract should
+have been fulfilled, Miriam had utterly repudiated it.
+
+Some time afterwards had occurred that terrible event to which Miriam
+had alluded when she revealed her name; an event, the frightful and
+mysterious circumstances of which will recur to many minds, but of which
+few or none can have found for themselves a satisfactory explanation. It
+only concerns the present narrative, inasmuch as the suspicion of being
+at least an accomplice in the crime fell darkly and directly upon Miriam
+herself.
+
+"But you know that I am innocent!" she cried, interrupting herself
+again, and looking Kenyon in the face.
+
+"I know it by my deepest consciousness," he answered; "and I know it by
+Hilda's trust and entire affection, which you never could have won had
+you been capable of guilt."
+
+"That is sure ground, indeed, for pronouncing me innocent," said Miriam,
+with the tears gushing into her eyes. "Yet I have since become a horror
+to your saint-like Hilda, by a crime which she herself saw me help to
+perpetrate!"
+
+She proceeded with her story. The great influence of her family
+connections had shielded her from some of the consequences of her
+imputed guilt. But, in her despair, she had fled from home, and had
+surrounded her flight with such circumstances as rendered it the most
+probable conclusion that she had committed suicide. Miriam, however, was
+not of the feeble nature which takes advantage of that obvious and poor
+resource in earthly difficulties. She flung herself upon the world,
+and speedily created a new sphere, in which Hilda's gentle purity,
+the sculptor's sensibility, clear thought, and genius, and Donatello's
+genial simplicity had given her almost her first experience of
+happiness. Then came that ill-omened adventure of the catacomb, The
+spectral figure which she encountered there was the evil fate that had
+haunted her through life.
+
+Looking back upon what had happened, Miriam observed, she now considered
+him a madman. Insanity must have been mixed up with his original
+composition, and developed by those very acts of depravity which it
+suggested, and still more intensified, by the remorse that ultimately
+followed them. Nothing was stranger in his dark career than the
+penitence which often seemed to go hand in hand with crime. Since his
+death she had ascertained that it finally led him to a convent,
+where his severe and self-inflicted penance had even acquired him the
+reputation of unusual sanctity, and had been the cause of his enjoying
+greater freedom than is commonly allowed to monks.
+
+"Need I tell you more?" asked Miriam, after proceeding thus far. "It
+is still a dim and dreary mystery, a gloomy twilight into which I guide
+you; but possibly you may catch a glimpse of much that I myself can
+explain only by conjecture. At all events, you can comprehend what my
+situation must have been, after that fatal interview in the catacomb.
+My persecutor had gone thither for penance, but followed me forth with
+fresh impulses to crime. He had me in his power. Mad as he was, and
+wicked as he was, with one word he could have blasted me in the belief
+of all the world. In your belief too, and Hilda's! Even Donatello would
+have shrunk from me with horror!"
+
+"Never," said Donatello, "my instinct would have known you innocent."
+
+"Hilda and Donatello and myself,--we three would have acquitted you,"
+said Kenyon, "let the world say what it might. Ah, Miriam, you should
+have told us this sad story sooner!"
+
+"I thought often of revealing it to you," answered Miriam; "on one
+occasion, especially,--it was after you had shown me your Cleopatra;
+it seemed to leap out of my heart, and got as far as my very lips. But
+finding you cold to accept my confidence, I thrust it back again. Had I
+obeyed my first impulse, all would have turned out differently."
+
+"And Hilda!" resumed the sculptor. "What can have been her connection
+with these dark incidents?"
+
+"She will, doubtless, tell you with her own lips," replied Miriam.
+"Through sources of information which I possess in Rome, I can assure
+you of her safety. In two days more--by the help of the special
+Providence that, as I love to tell you, watches over Hilda--she shall
+rejoin you."
+
+"Still two days more!" murmured the sculptor.
+
+"Ah, you are cruel now! More cruel than you know!" exclaimed Miriam,
+with another gleam of that fantastic, fitful gayety, which had more than
+once marked her manner during this interview. "Spare your poor friends!"
+
+"I know not what you mean, Miriam," said Kenyon.
+
+"No matter," she replied; "you will understand hereafter. But could
+you think it? Here is Donatello haunted with strange remorse, and an
+unmitigable resolve to obtain what he deems justice upon himself. He
+fancies, with a kind of direct simplicity, which I have vainly tried to
+combat, that, when a wrong has been done, the doer is bound to submit
+himself to whatsoever tribunal takes cognizance of such things, and
+abide its judgment. I have assured him that there is no such thing
+as earthly justice, and especially none here, under the head of
+Christendom."
+
+"We will not argue the point again," said Donatello, smiling. "I have no
+head for argument, but only a sense, an impulse, an instinct, I believe,
+which sometimes leads me right. But why do we talk now of what may make
+us sorrowful? There are still two days more. Let us be happy!"
+
+It appeared to Kenyon that since he last saw Donatello, some of the
+sweet and delightful characteristics of the antique Faun had returned
+to him. There were slight, careless graces, pleasant and simple
+peculiarities, that had been obliterated by the heavy grief through
+which he was passing at Monte Beni, and out of which he had hardly
+emerged when the sculptor parted with Miriam and him beneath the bronze
+pontiffs outstretched hand. These happy blossoms had now reappeared. A
+playfulness came out of his heart, and glimmered like firelight in
+his actions, alternating, or even closely intermingled, with profound
+sympathy and serious thought.
+
+"Is he not beautiful?" said Miriam, watching the sculptor's eye as
+it dwelt admiringly on Donatello. "So changed, yet still, in a deeper
+sense, so much the same! He has travelled in a circle, as all things
+heavenly and earthly do, and now comes back to his original self, with
+an inestimable treasure of improvement won from an experience of pain.
+How wonderful is this! I tremble at my own thoughts, yet must needs
+probe them to their depths. Was the crime--in which he and I were
+wedded--was it a blessing, in that strange disguise? Was it a means of
+education, bringing a simple and imperfect nature to a point of feeling
+and intelligence which it could have reached under no other discipline?"
+
+"You stir up deep and perilous matter, Miriam," replied Kenyon. "I dare
+not follow you into the unfathomable abysses whither you are tending."
+
+"Yet there is a pleasure in them! I delight to brood on the verge of
+this great mystery," returned she. "The story of the fall of man! Is it
+not repeated in our romance of Monte Beni? And may we follow the analogy
+yet further? Was that very sin,--into which Adam precipitated himself
+and all his race, was it the destined means by which, over a long
+pathway of toil and sorrow, we are to attain a higher, brighter, and
+profounder happiness, than our lost birthright gave? Will not this idea
+account for the permitted existence of sin, as no other theory can?"
+
+"It is too dangerous, Miriam! I cannot follow you!" repeated the
+sculptor. "Mortal man has no right to tread on the ground where you now
+set your feet."
+
+"Ask Hilda what she thinks of it," said Miriam, with a thoughtful smile.
+"At least, she might conclude that sin--which man chose instead of
+good--has been so beneficently handled by omniscience and omnipotence,
+that, whereas our dark enemy sought to destroy us by it, it has really
+become an instrument most effective in the education of intellect and
+soul."
+
+Miriam paused a little longer among these meditations, which the
+sculptor rightly felt to be so perilous; she then pressed his hand, in
+token of farewell.
+
+"The day after to-morrow," said she, "an hour before sunset, go to the
+Corso, and stand in front of the fifth house on your left, beyond the
+Antonine column. You will learn tidings of a friend."
+
+Kenyon would have besought her for more definite intelligence, but she
+shook her head, put her finger on her lips, and turned away with an
+illusive smile. The fancy impressed him that she too, like Donatello,
+had reached a wayside paradise, in their mysterious life journey, where
+they both threw down the burden of the before and after, and, except for
+this interview with himself, were happy in the flitting moment. To-day
+Donatello was the sylvan Faun; to-day Miriam was his fit companion,
+a Nymph of grove or fountain; to-morrow--a remorseful man and woman,
+linked by a marriage bond of crime--they would set forth towards an
+inevitable goal.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+
+A SCENE IN THE CORSO
+
+
+On the appointed afternoon, Kenyon failed not to make his appearance in
+the Corso, and at an hour much earlier than Miriam had named.
+
+It was carnival time. The merriment of this famous festival was in full
+progress; and the stately avenue of the Corso was peopled with hundreds
+of fantastic shapes, some of which probably represented the mirth of
+ancient times, surviving through all manner of calamity, ever since the
+days of the Roman Empire. For a few afternoons of early spring, this
+mouldy gayety strays into the sunshine; all the remainder of the
+year, it seems to be shut up in the catacombs or some other sepulchral
+storehouse of the past.
+
+Besides these hereditary forms, at which a hundred generations have
+laughed, there were others of modern date, the humorous effluence of the
+day that was now passing. It is a day, however, and an age, that appears
+to be remarkably barren, when compared with the prolific originality
+of former times, in productions of a scenic and ceremonial character,
+whether grave or gay. To own the truth, the Carnival is alive, this
+present year, only because it has existed through centuries gone by. It
+is traditionary, not actual. If decrepit and melancholy Rome smiles,
+and laughs broadly, indeed, at carnival time, it is not in the old
+simplicity of real mirth, but with a half-conscious effort, like our
+self-deceptive pretence of jollity at a threadbare joke. Whatever it may
+once have been, it is now but a narrow stream of merriment, noisy of set
+purpose, running along the middle of the Corso, through the solemn heart
+of the decayed city, without extending its shallow influence on either
+side. Nor, even within its own limits, does it affect the mass of
+spectators, but only a comparatively few, in street and balcony, who
+carry on the warfare of nosegays and counterfeit sugar plums. The
+populace look on with staid composure; the nobility and priesthood take
+little or no part in the matter; and, but for the hordes of Anglo-Saxons
+who annually take up the flagging mirth, the Carnival might long ago
+have been swept away, with the snowdrifts of confetti that whiten all
+the pavement.
+
+No doubt, however, the worn-out festival is still new to the youthful
+and light hearted, who make the worn-out world itself as fresh as Adam
+found it on his first forenoon in Paradise. It may be only age and
+care that chill the life out of its grotesque and airy riot, with the
+impertinence of their cold criticism.
+
+Kenyon, though young, had care enough within his breast to render the
+Carnival the emptiest of mockeries. Contrasting the stern anxiety of his
+present mood with the frolic spirit of the preceding year, he fancied
+that so much trouble had, at all events, brought wisdom in its train.
+But there is a wisdom that looks grave, and sneers at merriment; and
+again a deeper wisdom, that stoops to be gay as often as occasion
+serves, and oftenest avails itself of shallow and trifling grounds of
+mirth; because, if we wait for more substantial ones, we seldom can be
+gay at all. Therefore, had it been possible, Kenyon would have done well
+to mask himself in some wild, hairy visage, and plunge into the throng
+of other maskers, as at the Carnival before. Then Donatello had danced
+along the Corso in all the equipment of a Faun, doing the part with
+wonderful felicity of execution, and revealing furry ears, which looked
+absolutely real; and Miriam had been alternately a lady of the antique
+regime, in powder and brocade, and the prettiest peasant girl of the
+Campagna, in the gayest of costumes; while Hilda, sitting demurely in a
+balcony, had hit the sculptor with a single rosebud,--so sweet and fresh
+a bud that he knew at once whose hand had flung it.
+
+These were all gone; all those dear friends whose sympathetic mirth had
+made him gay. Kenyon felt as if an interval of many years had passed
+since the last Carnival. He had grown old, the nimble jollity was tame,
+and the maskers dull and heavy; the Corso was but a narrow and shabby
+street of decaying palaces; and even the long, blue streamer of Italian
+sky, above it, not half so brightly blue as formerly.
+
+Yet, if he could have beheld the scene with his clear, natural eyesight,
+he might still have found both merriment and splendor in it. Everywhere,
+and all day long, there had been tokens of the festival, in the baskets
+brimming over with bouquets, for sale at the street corners, or borne
+about on people's heads; while bushels upon bushels of variously colored
+confetti were displayed, looking just like veritable sugar plums; so
+that a stranger would have imagined that the whole commerce and business
+of stern old Rome lay in flowers and sweets. And now, in the sunny
+afternoon, there could hardly be a spectacle more picturesque than the
+vista of that noble street, stretching into the interminable distance
+between two rows of lofty edifices, from every window of which, and
+many a balcony, flaunted gay and gorgeous carpets, bright silks, scarlet
+cloths with rich golden fringes, and Gobelin tapestry, still lustrous
+with varied hues, though the product of antique looms. Each separate
+palace had put on a gala dress, and looked festive for the occasion,
+whatever sad or guilty secret it might hide within. Every window,
+moreover, was alive with the faces of women, rosy girls, and children,
+all kindled into brisk and mirthful expression, by the incidents in the
+street below. In the balconies that projected along the palace fronts
+stood groups of ladies, some beautiful, all richly dressed, scattering
+forth their laughter, shrill, yet sweet, and the musical babble of their
+voices, to thicken into an airy tumult over the heads of common mortals.
+
+All these innumerable eyes looked down into the street, the whole
+capacity of which was thronged with festal figures, in such fantastic
+variety that it had taken centuries to contrive them; and through the
+midst of the mad, merry stream of human life rolled slowly onward a
+never-ending procession of all the vehicles in Rome, from the ducal
+carriage, with the powdered coachman high in front, and the three golden
+lackeys clinging in the rear, down to the rustic cart drawn by its
+single donkey. Among this various crowd, at windows and in balconies, in
+cart, cab, barouche, or gorgeous equipage, or bustling to and fro afoot,
+there was a sympathy of nonsense; a true and genial brotherhood and
+sisterhood, based on the honest purpose--and a wise one, too--of being
+foolish, all together. The sport of mankind, like its deepest earnest,
+is a battle; so these festive people fought one another with an
+ammunition of sugar plums and flowers.
+
+Not that they were veritable sugar plums, however, but something that
+resembled them only as the apples of Sodom look like better fruit.
+They were concocted mostly of lime, with a grain of oat, or some other
+worthless kernel, in the midst. Besides the hailstorm of confetti, the
+combatants threw handfuls of flour or lime into the air, where it hung
+like smoke over a battlefield, or, descending, whitened a black coat or
+priestly robe, and made the curly locks of youth irreverently hoary.
+
+At the same time with this acrid contest of quicklime, which caused much
+effusion of tears from suffering eyes, a gentler warfare of flowers
+was carried on, principally between knights and ladies. Originally, no
+doubt, when this pretty custom was first instituted, it may have had a
+sincere and modest import. Each youth and damsel, gathering bouquets
+of field flowers, or the sweetest and fairest that grew in their own
+gardens, all fresh and virgin blossoms, flung them with true aim at the
+one, or few, whom they regarded with a sentiment of shy partiality at
+least, if not with love. Often, the lover in the Corso may thus have
+received from his bright mistress, in her father's princely balcony,
+the first sweet intimation that his passionate glances had not struck
+against a heart of marble. What more appropriate mode of suggesting
+her tender secret could a maiden find than by the soft hit of a rosebud
+against a young man's cheek?
+
+This was the pastime and the earnest of a more innocent and homelier
+age. Nowadays the nosegays are gathered and tied up by sordid hands,
+chiefly of the most ordinary flowers, and are sold along the Corso,
+at mean price, yet more than such Venal things are worth. Buying a
+basketful, you find them miserably wilted, as if they had flown hither
+and thither through two or three carnival days already; muddy, too,
+having been fished up from the pavement, where a hundred feet have
+trampled on them. You may see throngs of men and boys who thrust
+themselves beneath the horses' hoofs to gather up bouquets that were
+aimed amiss from balcony and carriage; these they sell again, and yet
+once more, and ten times over, defiled as they all are with the wicked
+filth of Rome.
+
+Such are the flowery favors--the fragrant bunches of sentiment--that fly
+between cavalier and dame, and back again, from one end of the Corso to
+the other. Perhaps they may symbolize, more aptly than was intended,
+the poor, battered, wilted hearts of those who fling them; hearts
+which--crumpled and crushed by former possessors, and stained with
+various mishap--have been passed from hand to hand along the muddy
+street-way of life, instead of being treasured in one faithful bosom.
+
+These venal and polluted flowers, therefore, and those deceptive
+bonbons, are types of the small reality that still subsists in the
+observance of the Carnival. Yet the government seemed to imagine that
+there might be excitement enough,--wild mirth, perchance, following its
+antics beyond law, and frisking from frolic into earnest,--to render it
+expedient to guard the Corso with an imposing show of military power.
+Besides the ordinary force of gendarmes, a strong patrol of papal
+dragoons, in steel helmets and white cloaks, were stationed at all the
+street corners. Detachments of French infantry stood by their stacked
+muskets in the Piazza del Popolo, at one extremity of the course, and
+before the palace of the Austrian embassy, at the other, and by the
+column of Antoninus, midway between. Had that chained tiger-cat, the
+Roman populace, shown only so much as the tip of his claws, the sabres
+would have been flashing and the bullets whistling, in right earnest,
+among the combatants who now pelted one another with mock sugar plums
+and wilted flowers.
+
+But, to do the Roman people justice, they were restrained by a better
+safeguard than the sabre or the bayonet; it was their own gentle
+courtesy, which imparted a sort of sacredness to the hereditary
+festival. At first sight of a spectacle so fantastic and extravagant, a
+cool observer might have imagined the whole town gone mad; but, in the
+end, he would see that all this apparently unbounded license is kept
+strictly within a limit of its own; he would admire a people who can
+so freely let loose their mirthful propensities, while muzzling those
+fiercer ones that tend to mischief. Everybody seemed lawless; nobody was
+rude. If any reveller overstepped the mark, it was sure to be no Roman,
+but an Englishman or an American; and even the rougher play of this
+Gothic race was still softened by the insensible influence of a moral
+atmosphere more delicate, in some respects, than we breathe at home. Not
+that, after all, we like the fine Italian spirit better than our own;
+popular rudeness is sometimes the symptom of rude moral health. But,
+where a Carnival is in question, it would probably pass off more
+decorously, as well as more airily and delightfully, in Rome, than in
+any Anglo-Saxon city.
+
+When Kenyon emerged from a side lane into the Corso, the mirth was at
+its height. Out of the seclusion of his own feelings, he looked forth at
+the tapestried and damask-curtained palaces, the slow-moving double line
+of carriages, and the motley maskers that swarmed on foot, as if he were
+gazing through the iron lattice of a prison window. So remote from
+the scene were his sympathies, that it affected him like a thin dream,
+through the dim, extravagant material of which he could discern more
+substantial objects, while too much under its control to start forth
+broad awake. Just at that moment, too, there came another spectacle,
+making its way right through the masquerading throng.
+
+It was, first and foremost, a full band of martial music, reverberating,
+in that narrow and confined though stately avenue, between the walls of
+the lofty palaces, and roaring upward to the sky with melody so powerful
+that it almost grew to discord. Next came a body of cavalry and mounted
+gendarmes, with great display of military pomp. They were escorting a
+long train of equipages, each and all of which shone as gorgeously as
+Cinderella's coach, with paint and gilding. Like that, too, they were
+provided with coachmen of mighty breadth, and enormously tall footmen,
+in immense powdered wigs, and all the splendor of gold-laced, three
+cornered hats, and embroidered silk coats and breeches. By the
+old-fashioned magnificence of this procession, it might worthily have
+included his Holiness in person, with a suite of attendant Cardinals,
+if those sacred dignitaries would kindly have lent their aid to heighten
+the frolic of the Carnival. But, for all its show of a martial escort,
+and its antique splendor of costume, it was but a train of the municipal
+authorities of Rome,--illusive shadows, every one, and among them a
+phantom, styled the Roman Senator,--proceeding to the Capitol.
+
+The riotous interchange of nosegays and confetti was partially
+suspended, while the procession passed. One well-directed shot,
+however,--it was a double handful of powdered lime, flung by an impious
+New Englander,--hit the coachman of the Roman Senator full in the face,
+and hurt his dignity amazingly. It appeared to be his opinion that the
+Republic was again crumbling into ruin, and that the dust of it now
+filled his nostrils; though, in fact, it would hardly be distinguished
+from the official powder with which he was already plentifully bestrewn.
+
+While the sculptor, with his dreamy eyes, was taking idle note of this
+trifling circumstance, two figures passed before him, hand in hand. The
+countenance of each was covered with an impenetrable black mask; but one
+seemed a peasant of the Campagna; the other, a contadina in her holiday
+costume.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+
+A FROLIC OF THE CARNIVAL
+
+
+The crowd and confusion, just at that moment, hindered the sculptor from
+pursuing these figures,--the peasant and contadina,--who, indeed, were
+but two of a numerous tribe that thronged the Corso, in similar costume.
+As soon as he could squeeze a passage, Kenyon tried to follow in their
+footsteps, but quickly lost sight of them, and was thrown off the track
+by stopping to examine various groups of masqueraders, in which he
+fancied the objects of his search to be included. He found many a sallow
+peasant or herdsman of the Campagna, in such a dress as Donatello
+wore; many a contadina, too, brown, broad, and sturdy, in her finery
+of scarlet, and decked out with gold or coral beads, a pair of heavy
+earrings, a curiously wrought cameo or mosaic brooch, and a silver comb
+or long stiletto among her glossy hair. But those shapes of grace and
+beauty which he sought had vanished.
+
+As soon as the procession of the Senator had passed, the merry-makers
+resumed their antics with fresh spirit, and the artillery of bouquets
+and sugar plums, suspended for a moment, began anew. The sculptor
+himself, being probably the most anxious and unquiet spectator there,
+was especially a mark for missiles from all quarters, and for the
+practical jokes which the license of the Carnival permits. In fact,
+his sad and contracted brow so ill accorded with the scene, that the
+revellers might be pardoned for thus using him as the butt of their idle
+mirth, since he evidently could not otherwise contribute to it.
+
+Fantastic figures, with bulbous heads, the circumference of a bushel,
+grinned enormously in his face. Harlequins struck him with their wooden
+swords, and appeared to expect his immediate transformation into some
+jollier shape. A little, long-tailed, horned fiend sidled up to him and
+suddenly blew at him through a tube, enveloping our poor friend in a
+whole harvest of winged seeds. A biped, with an ass's snout, brayed
+close to his ear, ending his discordant uproar with a peal of human
+laughter. Five strapping damsels--so, at least, their petticoats bespoke
+them, in spite of an awful freedom in the flourish of their legs--joined
+hands, and danced around him, inviting him by their gestures to perform
+a hornpipe in the midst. Released from these gay persecutors, a clown in
+motley rapped him on the back with a blown bladder, in which a handful
+of dried peas rattled horribly.
+
+Unquestionably, a care-stricken mortal has no business abroad, when
+the rest of mankind are at high carnival; they must either pelt him
+and absolutely martyr him with jests, and finally bury him beneath the
+aggregate heap; or else the potency of his darker mood, because the
+tissue of human life takes a sad dye more readily than a gay one, will
+quell their holiday humors, like the aspect of a death's-head at a
+banquet. Only that we know Kenyon's errand, we could hardly forgive him
+for venturing into the Corso with that troubled face.
+
+Even yet, his merry martyrdom was not half over. There came along a
+gigantic female figure, seven feet high, at least, and taking up a third
+of the street's breadth with the preposterously swelling sphere of
+her crinoline skirts. Singling out the sculptor, she began to make a
+ponderous assault upon his heart, throwing amorous glances at him out
+of her great goggle eyes, offering him a vast bouquet of sunflowers and
+nettles, and soliciting his pity by all sorts of pathetic and passionate
+dumb-show. Her suit meeting no favor, the rejected Titaness made a
+gesture of despair and rage; then suddenly drawing a huge pistol,
+she took aim right at the obdurate sculptor's breast, and pulled the
+trigger. The shot took effect, for the abominable plaything went off
+by a spring, like a boy's popgun, covering Kenyon with a cloud of lime
+dust, under shelter of which the revengeful damsel strode away.
+
+Hereupon, a whole host of absurd figures surrounded him, pretending
+to sympathize in his mishap. Clowns and party-colored harlequins;
+orang-outangs; bear-headed, bull-headed, and dog-headed individuals;
+faces that would have been human, but for their enormous noses; one
+terrific creature, with a visage right in the centre of his breast;
+and all other imaginable kinds of monstrosity and exaggeration. These
+apparitions appeared to be investigating the case, after the fashion
+of a coroner's jury, poking their pasteboard countenances close to the
+sculptor's with an unchangeable grin, that gave still more ludicrous
+effect to the comic alarm and sorrow of their gestures. Just then, a
+figure came by, in a gray wig and rusty gown, with an inkhorn at his
+buttonhole and a pen behind his ear; he announced himself as a notary,
+and offered to make the last will and testament of the assassinated man.
+This solemn duty, however, was interrupted by a surgeon, who brandished
+a lancet, three feet long, and proposed to him to let him take blood.
+
+The affair was so like a feverish dream, that Kenyon resigned himself to
+let it take its course. Fortunately the humors of the Carnival pass from
+one absurdity to another, without lingering long enough on any, to wear
+out even the slightest of them. The passiveness of his demeanor afforded
+too little scope for such broad merriment as the masqueraders sought. In
+a few moments they vanished from him, as dreams and spectres do, leaving
+him at liberty to pursue his quest, with no impediment except the crowd
+that blocked up the footway.
+
+He had not gone far when the peasant and the contadina met him. They
+were still hand in hand, and appeared to be straying through the
+grotesque and animated scene, taking as little part in it as himself. It
+might be because he recognized them, and knew their solemn secret, that
+the sculptor fancied a melancholy emotion to be expressed by the very
+movement and attitudes of these two figures; and even the grasp of their
+hands, uniting them so closely, seemed to set them in a sad remoteness
+from the world at which they gazed.
+
+"I rejoice to meet you," said Kenyon. But they looked at him through the
+eye-holes of their black masks, without answering a word.
+
+"Pray give me a little light on the matter which I have so much at
+heart," said he; "if you know anything of Hilda, for Heaven's sake,
+speak!"
+
+Still they were silent; and the sculptor began to imagine that he
+must have mistaken the identity of these figures, there being such a
+multitude in similar costume. Yet there was no other Donatello, no other
+Miriam. He felt, too, that spiritual certainty which impresses us with
+the presence of our friends, apart from any testimony of the senses.
+
+"You are unkind," resumed he,--"knowing the anxiety which oppresses me,
+--not to relieve it, if in your power."
+
+The reproach evidently had its effect; for the contadina now spoke, and
+it was Miriam's voice.
+
+"We gave you all the light we could," said she. "You are yourself
+unkind, though you little think how much so, to come between us at this
+hour. There may be a sacred hour, even in carnival time."
+
+In another state of mind, Kenyon could have been amused by the
+impulsiveness of this response, and a sort of vivacity that he had
+often noted in Miriam's conversation. But he was conscious of a profound
+sadness in her tone, overpowering its momentary irritation, and assuring
+him that a pale, tear-stained face was hidden behind her mask.
+
+"Forgive me!" said he.
+
+Donatello here extended his hand,--not that which was clasping
+Miriam's,--and she, too, put her free one into the sculptor's left; so
+that they were a linked circle of three, with many reminiscences and
+forebodings flashing through their hearts. Kenyon knew intuitively that
+these once familiar friends were parting with him now.
+
+"Farewell!" they all three said, in the same breath.
+
+No sooner was the word spoken, than they loosed their hands; and the
+uproar of the Carnival swept like a tempestuous sea over the spot which
+they had included within their small circle of isolated feeling.
+
+By this interview, the sculptor had learned nothing in reference to
+Hilda; but he understood that he was to adhere to the instructions
+already received, and await a solution of the mystery in some mode
+that he could not yet anticipate. Passing his hands over his eyes, and
+looking about him,--for the event just described had made the scene even
+more dreamlike than before,--he now found himself approaching that broad
+piazza bordering on the Corso, which has for its central object the
+sculptured column of Antoninus. It was not far from this vicinity
+that Miriam had bid him wait. Struggling onward as fast as the tide of
+merrymakers, setting strong against him, would permit, he was now beyond
+the Palazzo Colonna, and began to count the houses. The fifth was a
+palace, with a long front upon the Corso, and of stately height, but
+somewhat grim with age.
+
+Over its arched and pillared entrance there was a balcony, richly hung
+with tapestry and damask, and tenanted, for the time, by a gentleman of
+venerable aspect and a group of ladies. The white hair and whiskers of
+the former, and the winter roses in his cheeks, had an English look; the
+ladies, too, showed a fair-haired Saxon bloom, and seemed to taste the
+mirth of the Carnival with the freshness of spectators to whom the scene
+was new. All the party, the old gentleman with grave earnestness, as if
+he were defending a rampart, and his young companions with exuberance of
+frolic, showered confetti inexhaustibly upon the passers-by.
+
+In the rear of the balcony, a broad-brimmed, ecclesiastical beaver was
+visible. An abbate, probably an acquaintance and cicerone of the English
+family, was sitting there, and enjoying the scene, though partially
+withdrawn from view, as the decorum for his order dictated.
+
+There seemed no better nor other course for Kenyon than to keep watch at
+this appointed spot, waiting for whatever should happen next. Clasping
+his arm round a lamp-post, to prevent being carried away by the
+turbulent stream of wayfarers, he scrutinized every face, with the idea
+that some one of them might meet his eyes with a glance of intelligence.
+He looked at each mask,--harlequin, ape, bulbous-headed monster, or
+anything that was absurdest,--not knowing but that the messenger might
+come, even in such fantastic guise. Or perhaps one of those quaint
+figures, in the stately ruff, the cloak, tunic, and trunk-hose of three
+centuries ago, might bring him tidings of Hilda, out of that long-past
+age. At times his disquietude took a hopeful aspect; and he fancied that
+Hilda might come by, her own sweet self, in some shy disguise which the
+instinct Of his love would be sure to penetrate. Or, she might be
+borne past on a triumphal car, like the one just now approaching, its
+slow-moving wheels encircled and spoked with foliage, and drawn by
+horses, that were harnessed and wreathed with flowers. Being, at best,
+so far beyond the bounds of reasonable conjecture, he might anticipate
+the wildest event, or find either his hopes or fears disappointed in
+what appeared most probable.
+
+The old Englishman and his daughters, in the opposite balcony, must have
+seen something unutterably absurd in the sculptor's deportment, poring
+into this whirlpool of nonsense so earnestly, in quest of what was to
+make his life dark or bright. Earnest people, who try to get a reality
+out of human existence, are necessarily absurd in the view of the
+revellers and masqueraders. At all events, after a good deal of mirth at
+the expense of his melancholy visage, the fair occupants of the balcony
+favored Kenyon with a salvo of confetti, which came rattling about him
+like a hailstorm. Looking up instinctively, he was surprised to see
+the abbate in the background lean forward and give a courteous sign of
+recognition.
+
+It was the same old priest with whom he had seen Hilda, at the
+confessional; the same with whom he had talked of her disappearance on
+meeting him in the street.
+
+Yet, whatever might be the reason, Kenyon did not now associate this
+ecclesiastical personage with the idea of Hilda. His eyes lighted on the
+old man, just for an instant, and then returned to the eddying throng of
+the Corso, on his minute scrutiny of which depended, for aught he knew,
+the sole chance of ever finding any trace of her. There was, about this
+moment, a bustle on the other side of the street, the cause of which
+Kenyon did not see, nor exert himself to discover. A small party of
+soldiers or gendarmes appeared to be concerned in it; they were perhaps
+arresting some disorderly character, who, under the influence of an
+extra flask of wine, might have reeled across the mystic limitation of
+carnival proprieties.
+
+The sculptor heard some people near him talking of the incident.
+
+"That contadina, in a black mask, was a fine figure of a woman."
+
+"She was not amiss," replied a female voice; "but her companion was far
+the handsomer figure of the two. Could they be really a peasant and a
+contadina, do you imagine?"
+
+"No, no," said the other. "It is some frolic of the Carnival, carried a
+little too far."
+
+This conversation might have excited Kenyon's interest; only that, just
+as the last words were spoken, he was hit by two missiles, both of a
+kind that were flying abundantly on that gay battlefield. One, we are
+ashamed to say, was a cauliflower, which, flung by a young man from a
+passing carriage, came with a prodigious thump against his shoulder;
+the other was a single rosebud, so fresh that it seemed that moment
+gathered. It flew from the opposite balcony, smote gently on his lips,
+and fell into his hand. He looked upward, and beheld the face of his
+lost Hilda!
+
+She was dressed in a white domino, and looked pale and bewildered,
+and yet full of tender joy. Moreover, there was a gleam of delicate
+mirthfulness in her eyes, which the sculptor had seen there only two or
+three times in the course of their acquaintance, but thought it the most
+bewitching and fairylike of all Hilda's expressions. That soft, mirthful
+smile caused her to melt, as it were, into the wild frolic of the
+Carnival, and become not so strange and alien to the scene, as her
+unexpected apparition must otherwise have made her.
+
+Meanwhile, the venerable Englishman and his daughters were staring at
+poor Hilda in a way that proved them altogether astonished, as well
+as inexpressibly shocked, by her sudden intrusion into their private
+balcony. They looked,--as, indeed, English people of respectability
+would, if an angel were to alight in their circle, without due
+introduction from somebody whom they knew, in the court above,--they
+looked as if an unpardonable liberty had been taken, and a suitable
+apology must be made; after which, the intruder would be expected to
+withdraw.
+
+The abbate, however, drew the old gentleman aside, and whispered a few
+words that served to mollify him; he bestowed on Hilda a sufficiently
+benignant, though still a perplexed and questioning regard, and invited
+her, in dumb-show, to put herself at her ease.
+
+But, whoever was in fault, our shy and gentle Hilda had dreamed of no
+intrusion. Whence she had come, or where she had been hidden, during
+this mysterious interval, we can but imperfectly surmise, and do not
+mean, at present, to make it a matter of formal explanation with the
+reader. It is better, perhaps, to fancy that she had been snatched away
+to a land of picture; that she had been straying with Claude in the
+golden light which he used to shed over his landscapes, but which he
+could never have beheld with his waking eyes till he awoke in the better
+clime. We will imagine that, for the sake of the true simplicity
+with which she loved them, Hilda had been permitted, for a season, to
+converse with the great, departed masters of the pencil, and behold
+the diviner works which they have painted in heavenly colors. Guido had
+shown her another portrait of Beatrice Cenci, done from the celestial
+life, in which that forlorn mystery of the earthly countenance was
+exchanged for a radiant joy. Perugino had allowed her a glimpse at his
+easel, on which she discerned what seemed a woman's face, but so divine,
+by the very depth and softness of its womanhood, that a gush of happy
+tears blinded the maiden's eyes before she had time to look. Raphael
+had taken Hilda by the hand, that fine, forcible hand which Kenyon
+sculptured,--and drawn aside the curtain of gold-fringed cloud that
+hung before his latest masterpiece. On earth, Raphael painted the
+Transfiguration. What higher scene may he have since depicted, not from
+imagination, but as revealed to his actual sight!
+
+Neither will we retrace the steps by which she returned to the actual
+world. For the present, be it enough to say that Hilda had been summoned
+forth from a secret place, and led we know not through what mysterious
+passages, to a point where the tumult of life burst suddenly upon her
+ears. She heard the tramp of footsteps, the rattle of wheels, and the
+mingled hum of a multitude of voices, with strains of music and loud
+laughter breaking through. Emerging into a great, gloomy hall, a
+curtain was drawn aside; she found herself gently propelled into an
+open balcony, whence she looked out upon the festal street, with gay
+tapestries flaunting over all the palace fronts, the windows thronged
+with merry faces, and a crowd of maskers rioting upon the pavement
+below.
+
+Immediately she seemed to become a portion of the scene. Her pale,
+large-eyed, fragile beauty, her wondering aspect and bewildered grace,
+attracted the gaze of many; and there fell around her a shower of
+bouquets and bonbons--freshest blossoms and sweetest sugar plums, sweets
+to the sweet--such as the revellers of the Carnival reserve as tributes
+to especial loveliness. Hilda pressed her hand across her brow; she let
+her eyelids fall, and, lifting them again, looked through the grotesque
+and gorgeous show, the chaos of mad jollity, in quest of some object
+by which she might assure herself that the whole spectacle was not an
+illusion.
+
+Beneath the balcony, she recognized a familiar and fondly remembered
+face. The spirit of the hour and the scene exercised its influence over
+her quick and sensitive nature; she caught up one of the rosebuds that
+had been showered upon her, and aimed it at the sculptor; It hit the
+mark; he turned his sad eyes upward, and there was Hilda, in whose
+gentle presence his own secret sorrow and the obtrusive uproar of the
+Carnival alike died away from his perception.
+
+That night, the lamp beneath the Virgin's shrine burned as brightly as
+if it had never been extinguished; and though the one faithful dove had
+gone to her melancholy perch, she greeted Hilda rapturously the next
+morning, and summoned her less constant companions, whithersoever they
+had flown, to renew their homage.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+
+MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLO
+
+
+The gentle reader, we trust, would not thank us for one of those minute
+elucidations, which are so tedious, and, after all, so unsatisfactory,
+in clearing up the romantic mysteries of a story. He is too wise to
+insist upon looking closely at the wrong side of the tapestry, after the
+right one has been sufficiently displayed to him, woven with the best of
+the artist's skill, and cunningly arranged with a view to the harmonious
+exhibition of its colors. If any brilliant, or beautiful, or even
+tolerable effect have been produced, this pattern of kindly readers will
+accept it at its worth, without tearing its web apart, with the idle
+purpose of discovering how the threads have been knit together; for the
+sagacity by which he is distinguished will long ago have taught him that
+any narrative of human action and adventure whether we call it history
+or romance--is certain to be a fragile handiwork, more easily rent than
+mended. The actual experience of even the most ordinary life is full of
+events that never explain themselves, either as regards their origin or
+their tendency.
+
+It would be easy, from conversations which we have held with the
+sculptor, to suggest a clew to the mystery of Hilda's disappearance;
+although, as long as she remained in Italy, there was a remarkable
+reserve in her communications upon this subject, even to her most
+intimate friends. Either a pledge of secrecy had been exacted, or a
+prudential motive warned her not to reveal the stratagems of a religious
+body, or the secret acts of a despotic government--whichever might be
+responsible in the present instance--while still within the scope of
+their jurisdiction. Possibly, she might not herself be fully aware what
+power had laid its grasp upon her person. What has chiefly perplexed us,
+however, among Hilda's adventures, is the mode of her release, in which
+some inscrutable tyranny or other seemed to take part in the frolic of
+the Carnival. We can only account for it, by supposing that the fitful
+and fantastic imagination of a woman--sportive, because she must
+otherwise be desperate--had arranged this incident, and made it the
+condition of a step which her conscience, or the conscience of another,
+required her to take.
+
+A few days after Hilda's reappearance, she and the sculptor were
+straying together through the streets of Rome. Being deep in talk, it so
+happened that they found themselves near the majestic, pillared portico,
+and huge, black rotundity of the Pantheon. It stands almost at the
+central point of the labyrinthine intricacies of the modern city, and
+often presents itself before the bewildered stranger, when he is in
+search of other objects. Hilda, looking up, proposed that they should
+enter.
+
+"I never pass it without going in," she said, "to pay my homage at the
+tomb of Raphael."
+
+"Nor I," said Kenyon, "without stopping to admire the noblest edifice
+which the barbarism of the early ages, and the more barbarous pontiffs
+and princes of later ones, have spared to us."
+
+They went in accordingly, and stood in the free space of that great
+circle, around which are ranged the arched recesses and stately altars,
+formerly dedicated to heathen gods, but Christianized through twelve
+centuries gone by. The world has nothing else like the Pantheon. So
+grand it is, that the pasteboard statues over the lofty cornice do not
+disturb the effect, any more than the tin crowns and hearts, the dusty
+artificial flowers, and all manner of trumpery gew-gaws, hanging at the
+saintly shrines. The rust and dinginess that have dimmed the precious
+marble on the walls; the pavement, with its great squares and rounds
+of porphyry and granite, cracked crosswise and in a hundred directions,
+showing how roughly the troublesome ages have trampled here; the gray
+dome above, with its opening to the sky, as if heaven were looking down
+into the interior of this place of worship, left unimpeded for prayers
+to ascend the more freely; all these things make an impression of
+solemnity, which St. Peter's itself fails to produce.
+
+"I think," said the sculptor, "it is to the aperture in the dome--that
+great Eye, gazing heavenward that the Pantheon owes the peculiarity of
+its effect. It is so heathenish, as it were,--so unlike all the snugness
+of our modern civilization! Look, too, at the pavement, directly beneath
+the open space! So much rain has fallen there, in the last two thousand
+years, that it is green with small, fine moss, such as grows over
+tombstones in a damp English churchyard."
+
+"I like better," replied Hilda, "to look at the bright, blue sky,
+roofing the edifice where the builders left it open. It is very
+delightful, in a breezy day, to see the masses of white cloud float over
+the opening, and then the sunshine fall through it again, fitfully, as
+it does now. Would it be any wonder if we were to see angels hovering
+there, partly in and partly out, with genial, heavenly faces, not
+intercepting the light, but only transmuting it into beautiful colors?
+Look at that broad, golden beam--a sloping cataract of sunlight--which
+comes down from the aperture and rests upon the shrine, at the right
+hand of the entrance!"
+
+"There is a dusky picture over that altar," observed the sculptor. "Let
+us go and see if this strong illumination brings out any merit in it."
+
+Approaching the shrine, they found the picture little worth looking at,
+but could not forbear smiling, to see that a very plump and comfortable
+tabby-cat--whom we ourselves have often observed haunting the
+Pantheon--had established herself on the altar, in the genial sunbeam,
+and was fast asleep among the holy tapers. Their footsteps disturbing
+her, she awoke, raised herself, and sat blinking in the sun, yet with a
+certain dignity and self-possession, as if conscious of representing a
+saint.
+
+"I presume," remarked Kenyon, "that this is the first of the feline race
+that has ever set herself up as an object of worship, in the Pantheon or
+elsewhere, since the days of ancient Egypt. See; there is a peasant from
+the neighboring market, actually kneeling to her! She seems a gracious
+and benignant saint enough."
+
+"Do not make me laugh," said Hilda reproachfully, "but help me to drive
+the creature away. It distresses me to see that poor man, or any human
+being, directing his prayers so much amiss."
+
+"Then, Hilda," answered the sculptor more seriously, "the only Place
+in the Pantheon for you and me to kneel is on the pavement beneath
+the central aperture. If we pray at a saint's shrine, we shall give
+utterance to earthly wishes; but if we pray face to face with the
+Deity, we shall feel it impious to petition for aught that is narrow and
+selfish. Methinks it is this that makes the Catholics so delight in the
+worship of saints; they can bring up all their little worldly wants and
+whims, their individualities and human weaknesses, not as things to be
+repented of, but to be humored by the canonized humanity to which they
+pray. Indeed, it is very tempting!"
+
+What Hilda might have answered must be left to conjecture; for as she
+turned from the shrine, her eyes were attracted to the figure of a
+female penitent, kneeling on the pavement just beneath the great central
+eye, in the very spot which Kenyon had designated as the only one whence
+prayers should ascend. The upturned face was invisible, behind a veil or
+mask, which formed a part of the garb.
+
+"It cannot be!" whispered Hilda, with emotion. "No; it cannot be!"
+
+"What disturbs you?" asked Kenyon. "Why do you tremble so?"
+
+"If it were possible," she replied, "I should fancy that kneeling figure
+to be Miriam!"
+
+"As you say, it is impossible," rejoined the sculptor; "We know too
+well what has befallen both her and Donatello." "Yes; it is impossible!"
+repeated Hilda. Her voice was still tremulous, however, and she seemed
+unable to withdraw her attention from the kneeling figure. Suddenly,
+and as if the idea of Miriam had opened the whole volume of Hilda's
+reminiscences, she put this question to the sculptor: "Was Donatello
+really a Faun?"
+
+"If you had ever studied the pedigree of the far-descended heir of Monte
+Beni, as I did," answered Kenyon, with an irrepressible smile, "you
+would have retained few doubts on that point. Faun or not, he had a
+genial nature, which, had the rest of mankind been in accordance with
+it, would have made earth a paradise to our poor friend. It seems
+the moral of his story, that human beings of Donatello's character,
+compounded especially for happiness, have no longer any business on
+earth, or elsewhere. Life has grown so sadly serious, that such men must
+change their nature, or else perish, like the antediluvian creatures
+that required, as the condition of their existence, a more summer-like
+atmosphere than ours."
+
+"I will not accept your moral!" replied the hopeful and happy-natured
+Hilda.
+
+"Then here is another; take your choice!" said the sculptor, remembering
+what Miriam had recently suggested, in reference to the same point. "He
+perpetrated a great crime; and his remorse, gnawing into his soul,
+has awakened it; developing a thousand high capabilities, moral and
+intellectual, which we never should have dreamed of asking for, within
+the scanty compass of the Donatello whom we knew."
+
+"I know not whether this is so," said Hilda. "But what then?"
+
+"Here comes my perplexity," continued Kenyon. "Sin has educated
+Donatello, and elevated him. Is sin, then,--which we deem such a
+dreadful blackness in the universe,--is it, like sorrow, merely an
+element of human education, through which we struggle to a higher and
+purer state than we could otherwise have attained? Did Adam fall, that
+we might ultimately rise to a far loftier paradise than his?" "O hush!"
+cried Hilda, shrinking from him with an expression of horror which
+wounded the poor, speculative sculptor to the soul. "This is terrible;
+and I could weep for you, if you indeed believe it. Do not you perceive
+what a mockery your creed makes, not only of all religious sentiments,
+but of moral law? And how it annuls and obliterates whatever precepts of
+Heaven are written deepest within us? You have shocked me beyond words!"
+
+"Forgive me, Hilda!" exclaimed the sculptor, startled by her agitation;
+"I never did believe it! But the mind wanders wild and wide; and, so
+lonely as I live and work, I have neither pole-star above nor light
+of cottage windows here below, to bring me home. Were you my guide, my
+counsellor, my inmost friend, with that white wisdom which clothes you
+as a celestial garment, all would go well. O Hilda, guide me home!"
+
+"We are both lonely; both far from home!" said Hilda, her eyes filling
+with tears. "I am a poor, weak girl, and have no such wisdom as you
+fancy in me."
+
+What further may have passed between these lovers, while standing before
+the pillared shrine, and the marble Madonna that marks Raphael's tomb;
+whither they had now wandered, we are unable to record. But when the
+kneeling figure beneath the open eye of the Pantheon arose, she looked
+towards the pair and extended her hands with a gesture of benediction.
+Then they knew that it was Miriam. They suffered her to glide out of
+the portal, however, without a greeting; for those extended hands, even
+while they blessed, seemed to repel, as if Miriam stood on the other
+side of a fathomless abyss, and warned them from its verge.
+
+So Kenyon won the gentle Hilda's shy affection, and her consent to
+be his bride. Another hand must henceforth trim the lamp before the
+Virgin's shrine; for Hilda was coming down from her old tower, to be
+herself enshrined and worshipped as a household saint, in the light of
+her husband's fireside. And, now that life had so much human promise in
+it, they resolved to go back to their own land; because the years,
+after all, have a kind of emptiness, when we spend too many of them on
+a foreign shore. We defer the reality of life, in such cases, until a
+future moment, when we shall again breathe our native air; but, by and
+by, there are no future moments; or, if we do return, we find that the
+native air has lost its invigorating quality, and that life has shifted
+its reality to the spot where we have deemed ourselves only temporary
+residents. Thus, between two countries, we have none at all, or
+only that little space of either in which we finally lay down our
+discontented bones. It is wise, therefore, to come back betimes, or
+never.
+
+Before they quitted Rome, a bridal gift was laid on Hilda's table. It
+was a bracelet, evidently of great cost, being composed of seven ancient
+Etruscan gems, dug out of seven sepulchres, and each one of them the
+signet of some princely personage, who had lived an immemorial time ago.
+Hilda remembered this precious ornament. It had been Miriam's; and once,
+with the exuberance of fancy that distinguished her, she had amused
+herself with telling a mythical and magic legend for each gem,
+comprising the imaginary adventures and catastrophe of its former
+wearer. Thus the Etruscan bracelet became the connecting bond of a
+series of seven wondrous tales, all of which, as they were dug out of
+seven sepulchres, were characterized by a sevenfold sepulchral gloom;
+such as Miriam's imagination, shadowed by her own misfortunes, was wont
+to fling over its most sportive flights.
+
+And now, happy as Hilda was, the bracelet brought the tears into her
+eyes, as being, in its entire circle, the symbol of as sad a mystery
+as any that Miriam had attached to the separate gems. For, what was
+Miriam's life to be? And where was Donatello? But Hilda had a hopeful
+soul, and saw sunlight on the mountain-tops.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+There comes to the author, from many readers of the foregoing pages, a
+demand for further elucidations respecting the mysteries of the story.
+
+He reluctantly avails himself of the opportunity afforded by a new
+edition, to explain such incidents and passages as may have been left
+too much in the dark; reluctantly, he repeats, because the necessity
+makes him sensible that he can have succeeded but imperfectly, at best,
+in throwing about this Romance the kind of atmosphere essential to the
+effect at which he aimed.
+
+He designed the story and the characters to bear, of course, a certain
+relation to human nature and human life, but still to be so artfully and
+airily removed from our mundane sphere, that some laws and proprieties
+of their own should be implicitly and insensibly acknowledged.
+
+The idea of the modern Faun, for example, loses all the poetry and
+beauty which the Author fancied in it, and becomes nothing better than a
+grotesque absurdity, if we bring it into the actual light of day. He
+had hoped to mystify this anomalous creature between the Real and
+the Fantastic, in such a manner that the reader's sympathies might be
+excited to a certain pleasurable degree, without impelling him to ask
+how Cuvier would have classified poor Donatello, or to insist upon being
+told, in so many words, whether he had furry ears or no. As respects all
+who ask such questions, the book is, to that extent, a failure.
+
+Nevertheless, the Author fortunately has it in his power to throw light
+upon several matters in which some of his readers appear to feel an
+interest. To confess the truth, he was himself troubled with a curiosity
+similar to that which he has just deprecated on the part of his readers,
+and once took occasion to cross-examine his friends, Hilda and the
+sculptor, and to pry into several dark recesses of the story, with which
+they had heretofore imperfectly acquainted him.
+
+We three had climbed to the top of St. Peter's, and were looking down
+upon the Rome we were soon to leave, but which (having already sinned
+sufficiently in that way) it is not my purpose further to describe. It
+occurred to me, that, being so remote in the upper air, my friends might
+safely utter here the secrets which it would be perilous even to whisper
+on lower earth.
+
+"Hilda," I began, "can you tell me the contents of that mysterious
+packet which Miriam entrusted to your charge, and which was addressed to
+Signore Luca Barboni, at the Palazzo Cenci?"
+
+"I never had any further knowledge of it," replied Hilda, "nor felt it
+right to let myself be curious upon the subject."
+
+"As to its precise contents," interposed Kenyon, "it is impossible to
+speak. But Miriam, isolated as she seemed, had family connections in
+Rome, one of whom, there is reason to believe, occupied a position in
+the papal government.
+
+"This Signore Luca Barboni was either the assumed name of the personage
+in question, or the medium of communication between that individual and
+Miriam. Now, under such a government as that of Rome, it is obvious that
+Miriam's privacy and isolated life could only be maintained through the
+connivance and support of some influential person connected with the
+administration of affairs. Free and self-controlled as she appeared, her
+every movement was watched and investigated far more thoroughly by the
+priestly rulers than by her dearest friends.
+
+"Miriam, if I mistake not, had a purpose to withdraw herself from this
+irksome scrutiny, and to seek real obscurity in another land; and the
+packet, to be delivered long after her departure, contained a reference
+to this design, besides certain family documents, which were to be
+imparted to her relative as from one dead and gone."
+
+"Yes, it is clear as a London fog," I remarked. "On this head no further
+elucidation can be desired. But when Hilda went quietly to deliver the
+packet, why did she so mysteriously vanish?"
+
+"You must recollect," replied Kenyon, with a glance of friendly
+commiseration at my obtuseness, "that Miriam had utterly disappeared,
+leaving no trace by which her whereabouts could be known. In the
+meantime, the municipal authorities had become aware of the murder
+of the Capuchin; and from many preceding circumstances, such as his
+persecution of Miriam, they must have seen an obvious connection between
+herself and that tragical event. Furthermore, there is reason to believe
+that Miriam was suspected of connection with some plot, or political
+intrigue, of which there may have been tokens in the packet. And when
+Hilda appeared as the bearer of this missive, it was really quite
+a matter of course, under a despotic government, that she should be
+detained."
+
+"Ah, quite a matter of course, as you say," answered I. "How excessively
+stupid in me not to have seen it sooner! But there are other riddles.
+On the night of the extinction of the lamp, you met Donatello, in a
+penitent's garb, and afterwards saw and spoke to Miriam, in a coach,
+with a gem glowing on her bosom. What was the business of these two
+guilty ones in Rome, and who was Miriam's companion?"
+
+"Who!" repeated Kenyon, "why, her official relative, to be sure; and
+as to their business, Donatello's still gnawing remorse had brought him
+hitherward, in spite of Miriam's entreaties, and kept him lingering
+in the neighborhood of Rome, with the ultimate purpose of delivering
+himself up to justice. Hilda's disappearance, which took place the day
+before, was known to them through a secret channel, and had brought them
+into the city, where Miriam, as I surmise, began to make arrangements,
+even then, for that sad frolic of the Carnival."
+
+"And where was Hilda all that dreary time between?" inquired I.
+
+"Where were you, Hilda?" asked Kenyon, smiling.
+
+Hilda threw her eyes on all sides, and seeing that there was not even a
+bird of the air to fly away with the secret, nor any human being nearer
+than the loiterers by the obelisk in the piazza below, she told us about
+her mysterious abode.
+
+"I was a prisoner in the Convent of the Sacre Coeur, in the Trinita
+de Monte," said she, "but in such kindly custody of pious maidens, and
+watched over by such a dear old priest, that--had it not been for one
+or two disturbing recollections, and also because I am a daughter of the
+Puritans I could willingly have dwelt there forever.
+
+"My entanglement with Miriam's misfortunes, and the good abbate's
+mistaken hope of a proselyte, seem to me a sufficient clew to the whole
+mystery."
+
+"The atmosphere is getting delightfully lucid," observed I, "but there
+are one or two things that still puzzle me. Could you tell me--and it
+shall be kept a profound secret, I assure you what were Miriam's real
+name and rank, and precisely the nature of the troubles that led to all
+those direful consequences?"
+
+"Is it possible that you need an answer to those questions?" exclaimed
+Kenyon, with an aspect of vast surprise. "Have you not even surmised
+Miriam's name? Think awhile, and you will assuredly remember it. If not,
+I congratulate you most sincerely; for it indicates that your feelings
+have never been harrowed by one of the most dreadful and mysterious
+events that have occurred within the present century!"
+
+"Well," resumed I, after an interval of deep consideration, "I have but
+few things more to ask. Where, at this moment, is Donatello?"
+
+"The Castle of Saint Angelo," said Kenyon sadly, turning his face
+towards that sepulchral fortress, "is no longer a prison; but there are
+others which have dungeons as deep, and in one of them, I fear, lies our
+poor Faun."
+
+"And why, then, is Miriam at large?" I asked.
+
+"Call it cruelty if you like, not mercy," answered Kenyon. "But, after
+all, her crime lay merely in a glance. She did no murder!"
+
+"Only one question more," said I, with intense earnestness. "Did
+Donatello's ears resemble those of the Faun of Praxiteles?"
+
+"I know, but may not tell," replied Kenyon, smiling mysteriously. "On
+that point, at all events, there shall be not one word of explanation."
+
+Leamington, March 14, 1860.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Marble Faun, Volume II., by Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
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