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+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Marble Faun, VOL. II by Hawthorne
+#9 in our series by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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+The Marble Faun, VOL. II
+
+by Nathaniel Hawthorne
+
+May, 2000  [Etext #2182]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Marble Faun, VOL. II by Hawthorne
+******This file should be named 2faun10.txt or 2faun10.zip******
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+
+THE MARBLE FAUN, VOL. II
+or The Romance of Monte Beni
+
+BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES
+
+
+
+
+Table of 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 ironbarred 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, horrorstricken 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 morel"
+
+"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
+cannonflash 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 timestained, 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 sodety 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 ail 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 morel" 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 summerlike 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 Etext of The Marble Faun, VOL. II by Hawthorne
+