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86 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI1.
of putting into her productions, and which all the
world could feel. Her nature had a great deal of
color, and, in accordance with it, so likewise had her
pictures.
Miriam had great apparent freedom of intercourse ;
her manners were so far from evincing shyness, that
it seemed easy to become acquainted with her, and not
difficult to develop a casual acquaintance into intimacy.
Such, at least, was the impression which she made,
upon brief contact, but not such the ultimate conclu-
sion of those who really sought to know her. So airy,
free, and affable was Miriam’s deportment towards all
who came within her sphere, that possibly they might
never be conscious of the fact; but so it was, that
they did not get on, and were seldom any further ad-
vanced into her good graces to-day than yesterday.
By some subtile quality, she kept people at a distance,
without so much as letting them know that they were
excluded from her inner circle. She resembled one of
those images of light, which conjurers evoke and cause
to shine before us, in apparent tangibility, only an
arm’s-length beyond our grasp: we make a step in ad-
vance, expecting to seize the illusion, but find it still
precisely so far out of our reach. Finally, society be-
gan to recognize the impossibility of getting nearer to
Miriam, and gruffly acquiesced.
There were two persons, however, whom she ap-
peared to acknowledge as friends in the closer and
truer sense of the word; and both of these more fa-
vored individuals did credit to Miriam’s selection.
One was a young American sculptor, of high promise
and rapidly increasing celebrity ; the other, a girl of
the same country, a painter like Miriam herself, but
in a widely different sphere of art. Her heart flowed
o
SUBTERRANEAN REMINISCENCES. 87
out towards these two; she requited herself by their
society and friendship (and especially by Haulda’s)
for all the loneliness with which, as regarded the rest
of the world, she chose to be surrounded. Her two
friends were conscious of the strong, yearning grasp
which Miriam laid upon them, and gave her their
affection in full measure; Hilda, indeed, responding
with the fervency of a girl’s first friendship, and Ken-
yon with a manly regard, in which there was nothing
akin to what is distinctively called love.
A sort of intimacy subsequently grew up between
these three friends and a fourth individual; it was a
young Italian, who, casually visiting Rome, had been
attracted by the beauty which Miriam possessed in a
remarkable degree. He had sought her, followed her,
and insisted, with simple perseverance, upon being ad-
mitted at least to her acquaintance ; a boon which had
been granted, when a more artful character, seeking it
by a more subtle mode of pursuit, would probably have
failed to obtain it. This young man, though anything
but intellectually brilliant, had many agreeable char-
acteristics which won him the kindly and half-contemp-
tuous regard of Miriam and her two friends. It was
he whom they called Donatello, and whose wonderful
resemblance to the Faun of Praxiteles forms the key-
note of our narrative.
Such was the position in which we find Miriam
some few months after her establishment at Rome. It
must be added, however, that the world did not per-
mit her to hide her antecedents without making her
the subject of a good deal of conjecture ; as was nat-
ural enough, considering the abundance of her per-
sonal charms, and the degree of notice that she at-
tracted as an artist. There were many stories about
38 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
Miriam’s origin and previous life, some of which had
a very probable air, while others were evidently wild
and romantic fables. We cite a few, leaving the
reader to designate them either under the probable or
the romantic head. !
It was said, for example. that Miriam was the
daughter and heiress of a great Jewish banker (an
idea perhaps suggested by a certain rich Oriental
character in her face), and had fled from her pater-
nal home to escape a union with a cousin, the heir of
another of that golden brotherhood ; the object being,
to retain their vast accumulation of wealth within the
family. Another story hinted that she was a German
princess, whom, for reasons of state, it was proposed
to give in marriage either to a decrepit sovereign, or a
prince still in his cradle. According to a third state-
ment, she was the offspring of a Southern American
planter, who had given her an elaborate education and
endowed her with his wealth; but the one burning
drop of African blood in her veins so affected her with
a sense of ignominy, that she relinquished all and fled
her country. By still another account she was the
lady of an English nobleman ; and, out of mere love
and honor of art, had thrown aside the splendor of her
rank, and come to seek a subsistence by her pencil in
a Roman studio.
In all the above cases, the fable seemed to be in-
stigated by the large and bounteous impression which
Miriam invariably made, as if necessity and she could
have nothing to do with one another. Whatever de-
privations she underwent must needs be voluntary.
But there were other surmises, taking such a common-
place view as that Miriam was the daughter of a mer.
chant or financier, who had been ruined in a great
*
SUBTERRANEAN REMINISCENCES. 39
commercial crisis ; and, possessing a taste for art, she
had attempted to support herself by the pencil, in pref-
erence to the alternative of going out as governess.
Be these things how they might, Miriam, fair as she
looked, was plucked up out of a mystery, and had its
roots still clinging to her. She was a beautiful and
attractive woman, but based, as it were, upon a cloud,
and all surrounded with misty substance; so that the
result was to render her sprite-like in her most ordi-
nary manifestations. This was the case even in respect
to Kenyon and Hilda, her especial friends. But such
was the effect of Miriam’s natural language, her gen-
erosity, kindliness, and native truth of character, that
these two received her as a dear friend into their
hearts, taking her good qualities as evident and genu-
ine, and never imagining that what was hidden must
be therefore evil.
We now proceed with our narrative.
The same party of friends, whom we have seen at
the sculpture gallery of the Capitol, chanced to have
gone together, some months before, to the catacomb of
St. Calixtus. They went joyously down into that vast
tomb, and wandered by torchlight through a sort of
dream, in which reminiscences of church- aisles and
grimy cellars —and chiefly the latter — seemed to be
broken into fragments, and hopelessly intermingled.
The intricate passages along which they followed their
guide had been hewn, in some forgotten age, out of a
dark-red, crumbly stone. On either side were hori-
zontal niches, where, if they held their torches closely,
the shape of a human body was discernible in white
ashes, into which the entire mortality of a man or
woman had resolved itself. Among all this extinct
dust, there might perchance be a thigh-bone, which
40 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENTI.
crumbled at a touch; or possibly a skull, grinning at
its own wretched plight, as is the ugly and empty
habit of the thing.
Sometimes their gloomy pathway tended upward,
so that, through a crevice, a little daylight glimmered *
down upon them, or even a streak of sunshine peeped
into a burial niche; then again, they went downward
by gradual descent, or by abrupt, rudely hewn steps,
into deeper and deeper recesses of the earth. Here
and there the narrow and tortuous passages widened
somewhat, developing themselves into small chapels ;
which once, no doubt, had been adorned with marble-
work and lighted with ever-burning lamps and tapers.
All such illumination and ornament, however, had
long since been extinguished and stript away ; except,
indeed, that the low roofs of a few of these ancient
sites of worship were covered with dingy stucco, and
frescoed with scriptural scenes and subjects, in the
dreariest stage of ruin.
In one such chapel, the guide showed them a low
arch, beneath which the body of St. Cecilia had been
buried after her martyrdom, and where it lay till a
sculptor saw it, and rendered it forever beautiful in
marble.
In a similar spot they found two sarcophagi, one
containing a skeleton, and the other a shrivelled body,
which still wore the garments of its former lifetime.
*“‘ How dismal all this is!” said Hilda, shuddering.
“ I do not know why we came here, nor why we should
stay a moment longer.”’
“‘T hate it all!” cried Donatello, with peculiar en-
ergy. ‘Dear friends, let us hasten back into the
blessed daylight! ”
From the first, Donatello had shown little fancy for
SUBTERRANEAN REMINISCENCES. 41
the expedition ; for, like most Italians, and in especial
accordance with the law of his own simple and _ phys-
ically happy nature, this young man had an infinite re-
pugnance to graves and skulls, and to all that ghast-
liness which the Gothic mind loves to associate with
the idea of death. He shuddered, and looked fear-
fully round, drawing nearer to Miriam, whose attrac-
tive influence alone had enticed him into that gloomy
region.
** What a child you are, poor Donatello!” she ob-
served, with the freedom which she always used to-
wards him. ‘“ You are afraid of ghosts!”
“Yes, signorina; terribly afraid!” said the truthful
Donatello.
‘“‘T also believe in ghosts,” answered Miriam, “ and
could tremble at them, in a suitable place. But these
sepulchres are so old, and these skulls and white ashes
so very dry, that methinks they have ceased to be
haunted. The most awful idea connected with the
catacombs is their interminable extent, and the possi-
bility of going astray into this labyrinth of darkness,
which broods around the little glimmer of our ta-
pers.”
“‘ Has any one ever been lost here?” asked Kenyon
of the guide.
“Surely, signor; one, no longer ago than my fa-
ther’s time,” said the guide; and he added, with the
air of a man who believed what he was telling, “but
the first that went astray here was a pagan of old
Rome, who hid himself in order to spy out and betray
the blessed saints, who then dwelt and worshipped in
these dismal places. You have heard the story, sign-
or? A miracle was wrought upon the accursed one;
and, ever since (for fifteen centuries at least), he has
= = Cf
t
4
42 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
been groping in the darkness, seeking his way out of
the catacomb.”
“Has he ever been seen?” asked Hilda, who had
great and tremulous faith in marvels of this kind.
“These eyes of mine never beheld him, signorina ;
the saints forbid!” answered the guide. “ But it is
well known that he watches near parties that come into
the catacomb, especially if they be heretics, hoping to
lead some straggler astray. What this lost wretch
pines for, almost as much as for the blessed sunshine,
is a companion to be miserable with him.”
“Such an intense desire for sympathy indicates
something amiable in the poor fellow, at all events,”
observed Kenyon.
They had now reached a ined chapel than those
heretofore seen ; it was of a circular shape, and, though
hewn out of the solid mass of red sandstone, had pil-
lars, and a carved roof, and other tokens of a regular
architectural design. Nevertheless, considered as a
church, it was exceedingly minute, being scarcely twice
a man’s stature in height, and only two or three paces
from wall to wall; and while their collected torches
illuminated this one small, consecrated spot, the great
darkness spread all round it, like that immenser mys-
tery which envelops our little life, and into which
friends vanish from us, one by one.
“Why, where is Miriam?” cried Hilda.
The party gazed hurriedly from face to face, and
became aware that one of their party had vanished
into the great darkness, even while they were shudder.
ing at the remote possibility of such a misfortune.
CHAPTER IV.
THE SPECTRE OF THE CATACOMB.
“SURELY, she cannot be lost! ” exclaimed Kenyon.
“‘ It is but a moment since she was speaking.”
“No, no!” said Hilda, in great alarm. ‘ She was
behind us all; and it is a long while since we have
heard her voice! ”
“Torches! torches!” cried Donatello, desperately.
“‘T will seek her, be the darkness ever so dismal!”
But the guide held him back, and assured them all
that there was no possibility of assisting their lost
companion, unless by shouting at the very top of their
voices. As the sound would go very far along these
close and narrow passages, there was a fair probability
that Miriam might hear the call, and be able to re-
trace her steps.
Accordingly, they all — Kenyon with his bass voice ;
Donatello with his tenor; the guide with that high and
hard Italian ery, which makes the streets of Rome so
resonant ; and Hilda with her slender scream, piercing
farther than the united uproar of the rest — began to
shriek, halloo, and bellow, with the utmost force of
their lungs. And, not to prolong the reader’s sus-
pense (for we do not particularly seek to interest him
in this scene, telling it only on account of the trouble
and strange entanglement which followed), they soon
heard a responsive call, in a female voice.
“Tt was the signorina!” cried Donatello, joyfully.
44 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
“Yes; it was certainly dear Miriam’s voice,” said
Hilda. ‘And here she comes! Thank Heaven! Thank
Heaven!”
The figure of their friend was now discernible by
her own torchlight, approaching out of one of the cav-
ernous passages. Miriam came forward, but not with
the eagerness and tremulous joy of a fearful girl, just
rescued from a labyrinth of gloomy mystery. She
made no immediate response to their inquiries and
tumultuous congratulations; and, as they afterwards
remembered, there was something absorbed, thought-
ful, and self -concentrated in her deportment. She
looked pale, as well she might, and held her torch
with a nervous grasp, the tremor of which was seen in
the irregular twinkling of the flame. This last was
the chief perceptible sign of any recent agitation or
alarm.
“ Dearest, dearest Miriam,” exclaimed Hilda, throw-
ing her arms about her friend, “ where have you been
straying from us? Blessed be Providence, which has
rescued you out of that miserable darkness!”
“Hush, dear Hilda!” whispered Miriam, with a
strange little laugh. ‘Are you quite sure that it was
Heaven’s guidance which brought me back. IE so, it
was by an odd messenger, as you will confess. See;
there he stands.”
Startled at Miriam’s words and manner, Hilda gazed
into the duskiness whither she pointed, and there be-
held a figure standing just on the doubtful limit of
obscurity, at the threshold of the small, illuminated
chapel. Kenyon discerned him at the same instant,
and drew nearer with his torch; although the guide
attempted to dissuade him, averring that, once beyond
the consecrated precincts of the chapel, the apparition
THE SPECTRE OF THE CATACOMB. 45
would have power to tear him limb from limb. It
struck the sculptor, however, when he afterwards re-
curred to these circumstances, that the guide mani-
fested no such apprehension on his own account as he
professed on behalf of others; for he kept pace with
Kenyon as the latter approached the figure, though
still endeavoring to restrain him.
In fine, they both drew near enough to get as good
a view of the spectre as the smoky light of their
torches, struggling with the massive gloom, could sup-
ply.
The stranger was of exceedingly picturesque, and
even melodramatic aspect. He was clad in a volu-
minous cloak, that seemed to be made of a buffalo’s
hide, and a pair of those goat-skin breeches, with the
hair outward, which are still commonly worn by the
peasants of the Roman Campagna. In this garb, they
look like antique Satyrs; and, in truth, the Spectre
of the Catacomb might have represented the last sur-
vivor of that vanished race, hiding himself in sepul-
chral gloom, and mourning over his lost life of woods
and streams.
Furthermore, he had on a broad - brimmed, conical
hat, beneath the shadow of which a wild visage was
indistinctly seen, floating away, as it were, into a
dusky wilderness of mustache and beard. His eyes
winked, and turned uneasily from the torches, like a
creature to whom midnight would be more congenial
than noonday.
On the whole, the spectre might have made a con-
siderable impression on the sculptor’s nerves, only
that he was in the habit of observing similar figures,
almost every day, reclining on the Spanish steps, and
waiting for some artist to invite them within the magic
46 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
realm of picture. Nor, even thus familiarized with
the stranger’s peculiarities of appearance, could Ken-
yon help wondering to see such a personage, shaping
himself so suddenly out of the void darkness of the
catacomb.
“What are you?” said the sculptor, advancing his
torch nearer. ‘And how long have you been wander-
ing here?”
‘‘A thousand and five hundred years!” muttered
the guide, loud enough to be heard by all the party.
“Tt is the old pagan phantom that I told you of, who
sought to betray the blessed saints!”
“Yes; it is a phantom!” cried Donatello, with a
shudder. ‘“ Ah, dearest signorina, what a fearful thing
has beset you in those dark corridors !”
“Nonsense, Donatello,” said the sculptor. ‘The
man is no more a phantom than yourself. The only
marvel is, how he comes to be hiding himself in the
catacomb. Possibly, our guide might solve the rid-
dle.”
The spectre himself here settled the point of his
tangibility, at all events, and physical substance, by
approaching a step nearer, and laying his hand on
Kenyon’s arm.
“Inquire not what I am, nor wherefore I abide in
the darkness,” said he, in a hoarse, harsh voice, as if
a great deal of damp were clustering in his throat.
“‘ Henceforth, | am nothing but a shadow behind her
footsteps. She came to me when I sought her not.
She has called me forth, and must abide the conse-
quences of my reappearance in the world.”
“Holy Virgin! I wish the signorina joy of her
prize,” said the guide, half to himself. “And in any
case, the catacomb is well rid of him.”
{??
.
1
‘
’
q
THE SPECTRE OF THE CATACOMB. 47
We need follow the scene no further. So much is
essential to the subsequent narrative, that, during the
short period while astray in those tortuous passages,
Miriam had encountered an unknown man, and led
him forth with her, or was guided back by him, first
into the torchlight, thence into the sunshine.
It was the further singularity of this affair, that the
connection, thus briefly and casually formed, did not
terminate with the incident that gave it birth. As if
her service to him, or his service to her, whichever
it might be, had given him an. indefeasible claim on
Miriam’s regard and protection, the Spectre of the
Catacomb never long allowed her to lose sight of him,
from that day forward. He haunted her footsteps
with more than the customary persistency of Italian
mendicants, when once they have recognized a bene-
factor. For days together, it is true, he occasionally
vanished, but always reappeared, gliding after her
through the narrow streets, or climbing the hundred
steps of her staircase and sitting at her threshold.
Being often admitted to her studio, he left his fea-
tures, or some shadow or reminiscence of them, in
many of her sketches and pictures. The moral at-
mosphere of these productions was thereby so influ-
enced, that rival painters pronounced it a case of
hopeless mannerism, which would destroy all Miriam’s
prospects of true excellence in art.
The story of this adventure spread abroad, and
made its way beyond the usual gossip of the Fores-
tieri, even into Italian circles, where, enhanced by a
still potent spirit of superstition, it grew far more
wonderful than as above recounted. Thence, it came
back among the Anglo-Saxons, and was communi-
eated to the German artists, who so richly supplied it
48 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
with romantic ornaments and excrescences, after their
fashion, that it became a fantasy worthy of Tieck or
Hoffmann. For nobody has any conscience about add-
ing to the improbabilities of a marvellous tale.
The most reasonable version of the incident, that
could anywise be rendered acceptable to the auditors,
was substantially the one suggested by the guide of
the catacomb, in his allusion to the legend of Mem-
mius. This man, or demon, or man-demon, was a spy
during the persecutions of the early Christians, prob-
ably under the Emperor Diocletian, and penetrated
into the catacomb of St. Calixtus, with the malignant
purpose of tracing out the hiding-places of the refu-
gees. But, while he stole craftily through those dark
corridors, he chanced to come upon a little chapel,
where tapers were burning before an altar and a cru-
cifix, and a priest was in the performance of his sacred
office. By divine indulgence, there was a single mo-
ment’s grace allowed to Memmius, during which, had
he been capable of Christian faith and love, he might
have knelt before the cross, and received the holy light
into his soul, and so have been blest forever. But he
resisted the sacred impulse. As soon, therefore, as
that one moment had glided by, the light of the con-
secrated tapers, which represent all truth, bewildered
the wretched man with everlasting error, and the
blessed cross itself was stamped as a seal upon his
heart, so that it should never open to receive convic-
tion.
Thenceforth, this heathen Memmius has haunted
the wide and dreary precincts of the catacomb, seek-
ing, as some say, to beguile new victims into his own
misery ; but, according to other statements, endeavor-
ing to prevail on any unwary visitor to take him by
THE SPECTRE OF THE CATACOMB. 49
the hand, and guide him out into the daylight. Should
his wiles and entreaties take effect, however, the man-
demon would remain only a little while above ground.
He would gratify his fiendish malignity by perpetrat-
ing signal mischief on his benefactor, and perhaps
bringing some old pestilence or other forgotten and
long-buried evil on society ; or, possibly, teaching the
modern world some decayed and dusty kind of crime,
which the antique Romans knew; and then would
hasten back to the catacomb, which, after so long
haunting it, has grown his most congenial home.
Miriam herself, with her chosen friends, the sculp-
tor and the gentle Hilda, often laughed at the mon-
strous fictions that had gone abroad in reference to
her adventure. Her two confidants (for such they
were, on all ordinary subjects) had not failed to ask
an explanation of the mystery, since undeniably a
mystery there was, and one sufficiently perplexing in
itself, without any help from the imaginative faculty.
And, sometimes responding to their inquiries with a
melancholy sort of playfulness, Miriam let her fancy
run off into wilder fables than any which German in-
genuity or Italian superstition had contrived.
For example, with a strange air of seriousness over
all her face, only belied by a laughing gleam in her
dark eyes, she would aver that the spectre (who had
been an artist in his mortal lifetime) had promised
to teach her a long lost, but invaluable secret of old
Roman fresco-painting. The knowledge of this pro-
cess would place Miriam at the head of modern art;
the sole condition being agreed upon, that she should
return with him into his sightless gloom, after enrich-
ing a certain extent of stuccoed wall with the most
brilliant and lovely designs. And what true votary of
VOL. VI.
ili oo
50 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
art would not purchase unrivalled excellence, even at
so vast a sacrifice !
Or, if her friends still solicited a soberer account,
Miriam replied, that, meeting the old infidel in one of
the dismal passages of the catacomb, she had entered
into controversy with him, hoping to achieve the glory
and satisfaction of converting him to the Christian
faith. For the sake of so excellent a result, she had
even staked her own salvation against his, binding
herself to accompany him back into his penal gloom,
if, within a twelve-month’s space, she should not have
convinced him of the errors through which he had so
long groped and stumbled. But, alas! up to the pres-
ent time, the controversy had gone direfully in favor
of the man-demon; and Miriam (as she whispered in
Hilda’s ear) had awful forebodings, that, in a few
‘more months, she must take an eternal farewell of
the sun !
It was somewhat remarkable that all her romantic
fantasies arrived at this self-same dreary termination ;
it appeared impossible for her even to imagine any
other than a disastrous result from her connection
with her ill-omened attendant.
This singularity might have meant nothing, how-
ever, had it not suggested a despondent state of mind,
which was likewise indicated by many other tokens.
Miriam’s friends had no difficulty in perceiving that,
in one way or another, her happiness was very seri-
ously compromised. Her spirits were often depressed
into deep melancholy. If ever she was gay, it was
seldom with a healthy cheerfulness. She grew moody,
moreover, and subject to fits of passionate ill-temper;
which usually wreaked itself on the heads of those
who loved her best. Not that Miriam’s indifferent
THE SPECTRE OF THE CATACOMB. 51
acquaintances were safe from similar outbreaks of her
displeasure, especially if they ventured upon any allu-
sion to the model. In such cases, they were left with
little disposition to renew the subject, but inclined, on
the other hand, to interpret the whole matter as much
to her discredit as the least favorable coloring of the
facts would allow. |
It may occur to the reader, that there was really no
demand for so much rumor and speculation in regard
to an incident, which might well enough have been ex-
plained without going many steps beyond the limits of
probability. The spectre might have been merely a
Roman beggar, whose fraternity often harbor in stran-
ger shelters than the catacombs; or one of those pil-
grims, who still journey from remote countries to
kneel and worship at the holy sites, among which these
haunts of the early Christians are esteemed especially
sacred. Or, as was perhaps a more plausible theory,
he might be a thief of the city, a robber of the Cam-
pagna, a political offender, or an assassin, with blood
upon his hand; whom the negligence or connivance of
the police allowed to take refuge in those subterranean
fastnesses, where such outlaws have been accustomed
to hide themselves from a far antiquity downward.
Or he might have been a lunatic, fleeing instinctively
from man, and making it his dark pleasure to dwell
among the tombs, like him whose awful cry echoes
afar to us from Scripture times.
And, as for the stranger’s attaching himself so de-
votedly to Miriam, her personal magnetism might be
allowed a certain weight in the explanation. For
what remains, his pertinacity need not seem so very
singular to those who consider how slight a link serves
to connect these vagabonds of idle Italy with any per-
o2 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
son that may have the ill-hap to bestow charity, or be
otherwise serviceable to them, or betray the slightest
interest in their fortunes.
Thus little would remain to be accounted for, ex-
cept the deportment of Miriam herself ; her reserve,
her brooding melancholy, her petulance, and moody
passion. If generously interpreted, even these morbid
symptoms might have sufficient cause in the stimulat-
ing and exhaustive influences of imaginative art, exer-
cised by a delicate young woman, in the nervous and
unwholesome atmosphere of Rome. Such, at least, was
the view of the case which Hilda and Kenyon endeav-
ered to impress on their own minds, and impart to
those whom their opinions might influence.
One of Miriam’s friends took the matter sadly to
heart. This was the young Italian. Donatello, as we
have seen, had been an eye-witness of the stranger's
first appearance, and had ever since nourished a sin-
gular prejudice against the mysterious, dusky, death-
scented apparition. Itresembled not so much a human
dislike or hatred, as one of those instinctive, unrea-
soning antipathies which the lower animals sometimes
display, and which generally prove more trustworthy
than the acptest insight into character. The shadow
of the model, always flung into the light which Mir-
iam diffused around her, caused no slight trouble to
Donatello. Yet he was of a nature so remarkably
genial and joyous, so simply happy, that he might
well afford to have something subtracted from his
comfort, and make tolerable shift to live upon what
remained.
CHAPTER V.
MIRIAM’S STUDIO.
THE court-yard and staircase of a palace built three
hundred years ago are a peculiar feature of modern
Rome, and interest the stranger more than many
things of which he has heard loftier descriptions.
You pass through the grand breadth and height of a
squalid entrance- way, and perhaps see a range of
dusky pillars, forming a sort of cloister round the
court, and in the intervals, from pillar to pillar, are
strewn fragments of antique statues, headless and leg-
less torsos, and busts that have invariably lost — what
it might be well if living men could lay aside in that
unfragrant atmosphere — the nose. Bas - reliefs, the
spoil of some far older palace, are set in the surround-
ing walls, every stone of which has been ravished
from the Coliseum, or any other imperial ruin which
earlier barbarism had not already levelled with the
earth. Between two of the pillars, moreover, stands
an old sarcophagus without its lid, and with all its
more prominently projecting sculptures broken off ;
perhaps it once held famous dust, and the bony frame-
work of some historic man, although now only a re-
ceptacle for the rubbish of the court-yard, and a half-
worn broom.
In the centre of the court, under the blue Italian
sky, and with the hundred windows of the vast palace
gazing down upon it, from four sides, appears a foun-
54 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
tain. It brims over from one stone basin to another,
or gushes from a Naiad’s urn, or spurts its many lit-
tle jets from the mouths of nameless monsters, which
were merely grotesque and artificial when Bernini, or
whoever was their unnatural father, first produced
them ; but now the patches of moss, the tufts of grass,
the trailing maiden-hair, and all sorts of verdant
weeds that thrive in the cracks and crevices of moist
marble, tell us that Nature takes the fountain back
into her great heart, and cherishes it as kindly as if
it were a woodland spring. And, hark, the pleasant
murmur, the gurgle, the plash! You might hear just
those tinkling sounds from any tiny waterfall in the
forest, though here they gain a delicious pathos from
the stately echoes that reverberate their natural lan-
guage. So the fountain is not altogether glad, after
all its three centuries at play!
In one of the angles of the court-yard, a pillared
door - way gives access to the staircase, with its spa-
cious breadth of low, marble steps, up which, in
former times, have gone the princes and cardinals of
the great Roman family who built this palace. Or
they have come down, with still grander and loftier
mien, on their way to the Vatican or the Quirinal,
there to put off their scarlet hats in exchange for the
triple crown. But, in fine, all these illustrious per-
sonages have gone down their hereditary staircase for
the last time, leaving it to be the thoroughfare of am-
bassadors, English noblemen, American millionnaires,
artists, tradesmen, washerwomen, and people of every
degree ; all of whom find such gilded and marble-
panelled saloons as their pomp and luxury demand, or
such homely garrets as their necessity can pay for,
within this one multifarious abode. Only, in not a
oe v bake fee Sear er ag Seah Son Omit
~ a
MIRIAM’S STUDIO. 55
single nook of the palace (built for splendor, and the
accommodation of a vast retinue, but with no vision
of a happy fireside or any mode of domestic enjoy-
ment) does the humblest or the haughtiest occupant
find comfort.
Up such a staircase, on the morning after the scene
at the sculpture gallery, sprang the light foot of Dona-
tello. He ascended from story to story, passing lofty
door-ways, set within rich frames of sculptured mar-
ble, and climbing unweariedly upward, until the glories
of the first piano and the elegance of the middle
height were exchanged for a sort of Alpine region,
cold and naked in its aspect. Steps of rough stone,
rude wooden balustrades, a brick pavement in the pas-
sages, a dingy whitewash on the walls; these were here
the palatial features. Finally, he paused’ before an
oaken door, on which was pinned a card, bearing the
name of Miriam’ Schaefer, artist in oils. Here Dona-
tello knocked, and the door immediately fell some-
what ajar; its latch having been pulled up by means
of a string on the inside. Passing through a little
anteroom, he found himself in Miriam’s presence.
“ Come in, wild Faun,” she said, “ and tell me the
latest news from Arcady! ” |
The artist was not just then at her easel, but was
busied with the feminine task of mending a pair of
gloves.
There is something extremely pleasant, and even
touching, —at least, of very sweet, soft, and winning
effect, — in this peculiarity of needlework, distinguish-
ing women from men. Our own sex is incapable of
any such by-play aside from the main business of life ;
but women — be they of what earthly rank they may,
however gifted with intellect or genius, or endowed
56 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
with awful beauty —have always some little handi-
work ready to fill the tiny gap of every vacant mo-
ment. A needle is familiar to the fingers of them all.
A queen, no doubt, plies it on occasion ; the woman
poet can use it as adroitly as her pen; the woman’s
eye, that has discovered a new star, turns from its
glory to send the polished little instrument gleaming
along the hem of her kerchief, or to darn a casual
fray in her dress. And they have greatly the advan-
tage of us in this respect. The slender thread of silk
or cotton keeps them united with the small, familiar,
gentle interests of life, the continually operating in-
fluences of which do so much for the health of the
character, and carry off what would otherwise be a
dangerous accumulation of morbid sensibility. A vast
deal of human sympathy runs along this electric line,
stretching from the throne to the wicker chair of the
humblest seamstress, and keeping high and low in a
species of communion with their kindred beings. Me-
thinks it is a token of healthy and gentle characteris-
tics, when women of high thoughts and accomplish-
ments love to sew; especially as they are never more ~
at home with their own hearts than while so occupied.
And when the work falls in a woman’s lap, of its
own accord, and the needle involuntarily ceases to fly,
it is a sign of trouble, quite as trustworthy as the
throb of the heart itself. This was what happened to
Miriam. Even while Donatello stood gazing at her,
she seemed to have forgotten his presence, allowing
him to drop out of her thoughts, and the torn glove
+o fall from her idle fingers. Simple as he was, the
young man knew by his sympathies that something
was amiss.
“Dear lady, you are sad,” said he, drawing close to
her.
ee ee
MIRIAM’S STUDIO. 57
“Tt is nothing, Donatello,” she replied, resuming
her work; “yes; a little sad, perhaps; but that is
not strange for us people of the ordinary world, espe-
cially for women. You are of a cheerfuller race, my
friend, and know nothing of this disease of sadness.
But why do you come into this shadowy room of
mine ?”
‘““ Why do you make it so shadowy ?” asked he.
“We artists purposely exclude sunshine, and all
but a partial light,” said Miriam, “ because we think it
necessary to put ourselves at odds with Nature before
trying to imitate her. That strikes you very strangely,
does it not? But we make very pretty pictures some-
times with our artfully arranged lights and shadows.
Amuse yourself with some of mine, Donatello, and by
and by I shall be in the mood to begin the portrait we
were talking about.”
The room had the customary aspect of a painter’s
studio; one of those delightful spots that hardly seem
to belong to the actual world, but rather to be the out-
ward type of a poet’s haunted imagination, where there _
are glimpses, sketches, and half-developed hints of be-
ings and objects grander and more beautiful than we
can anywhere find in reality. The windows were closed
with shutters, or deeply curtained, except one, which
was partly open to a sunless portion of the sky, admit-
ting only from high upward that partial light which,
with its strongly marked contrast of shadow, is the
first requisite towards seeing objects pictorially. Pen-
cil-drawings were pinned against the wall or scattered
on the tables. Unframed canvases turned their backs
on the spectator, presenting only a blank to the eye,
and churlishly concealing whatever riches of scenery
or human beauty Miriam’s skill had depicted on the
other side.
58 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
In the obscurest part of the room Donatello was
half startled at perceiving duskily a woman with long
dark hair, who threw up her arms with a wild gesture
of tragic despair, and appeared to beckon him into
the darkness along with her.
“Do not be afraid, Donatello,” said Miriam, smil-
ing to see him peering doubtfully into the mysterious
dusk. ‘She means you no mischief, nor could perpe-
trate any if she wished it ever so much. It is a lady
of exceedingly pliable disposition ; now a heroine of
romance, and now a rustic maid; yet all for show;
being created, indeed, on purpose to wear rich shawls
and other garments in a becoming fashion. This is the
true end of her being, although she pretends to assume
the most varied duties and perform many parts in life,
while really the poor puppet has nothing on earth to
do. Upon my word, I am satirical unawares, and seem
to be describing nine women out of ten in the person
of my lay-figure. For most purposes she has the ad-
vantage of the sisterhood. Would I were like her!”
“ How it changes her aspect,” exclaimed Donatello,
“to know that she is but a jointed figure! When my
eyes first fell upon her, I thought her arms moved, as
if beckoning me to help her in some direful peril.”
“ Are you often troubled with such sinister freaks
of fancy?” asked Miriam. “I should not have sup-
posed it.”
“To tell you the truth, dearest signorina,” answered
the young Italian, “I am apt to be fearful in old,
gloomy houses, and in the dark. I love no dark or
dusky corners, except it be in a grotto, or among the
thick green leaves of an arbor, or in some nook of the
woods, such as I know many in the neighborhood of
my home. Even there, if a stray sunbeam steal in,
the shadow is all the better for its cheerful glimmer ”
MIRIAM’S STUDIO. 59
“Yes; you are a Faun, you know,” said ‘the fair
artist, laughing at the remembrance of the scene of
the day before. ‘‘ But the world is sadly changed
nowadays; grievously changed, poor Donatello, since
those happy times when your race used to dwell in
the Arcadian woods, playing hide-and-seek with the
nymphs in grottos and nooks of shrubbery. You have
reappeared on earth some centuries too late.”
‘I do not understand you now,” answered Dona-
tello, looking perplexed; “ only signorina, I am glad
to have my lifetime while you live; and where you
are, be it in cities or fields, I would fain be there too.”
“TI wonder whether I ought to allow you to speak in
this way,” said Miriam, looking thoughtfully at him.
“Many young women would think it behoved them to
be offended. Hilda would never let you speak so, I
dare say. But he is a mere boy,” she added, aside, “a
simple boy, putting his boyish heart to the proof on
the first woman whom he chances to meet. If yonder
lay-figure had had the luck to meet him first, she
would have smitten him as deeply as I.”
“ Are you angry with me?” asked Donatello, dolo-
rously.
‘“‘ Not in the least,” answered Miriam, frankly giv-
ing him her hand. ‘“ Pray look over some of these
sketches till I have leisure to chat with you a little. I
hardly think I am in spirits enough to begin your por-
trait to-day.”
Donatello was as gentle and docile as a pet spaniel ;
as playful, too, in his general disposition, or sadden-
ing with his mistress’s variable mood like that or any
other kindly animal which has the faculty of bestowing
its sympathies more completely than men or women
can ever do. Accordingly, as Miriam bade him, he
60 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
tried to turn his attention to a great pile and confu-
sion of pen-and-ink sketches and pencil - drawings
which lay tossed together on a table. As it chanced,
however, they gave the poor youth little delight.
The first that he took up was a very impressive
sketch, in which the artist had jotted down her rough
ideas for a picture of Jael driving the nail through
the temples of Sisera. It was dashed off with remark-
able power, and showed a touch or two that were ac-
tually life-like and death-like, as if Miriam had been
standing by when Jael gave the first stroke of her
murderous hammer, or as if she herself were Jael, and
felt irresistibly impelled to make her bloody confes-
sion in this guise.
Her first conception of the stern Jewess had evi-
dently been that of perfect womanhood, a lovely form,
and a high, heroic face of lofty beauty; but, dissat-
isfied either with her own work or the terrible story
itself, Miriam had added a certain wayward quirk of
her pencil, which at once converted the heroine into
a vulgar murderess. “It was evident that a Jael like
this would be sure to search Sisera’s pockets as soon
as the breath was out of his body.
In another sketch she had attempted the story of
Judith, which we see represented by the old masters
so often, and in such various styles. Here, too, be-
ginning with a passionate and fiery conception of the
subject in all earnestness, she had given the last
touches in utter scorn, as it were, of the feelings which
at first took such powerful possession of her hand.
The head of Holofernes (which by the by had a pair
of twisted mustaches, like those of a certain potentate
of the day) being fairly cut off, was screwing its eyes
upward and twirling its features into a diabolical grin
a a a
MIRIAM’S STUDIO, 61
of triumphant malice, which it flung right in Judith’s
face. On her part, she had the startled aspect that
might be conceived of a cook if a calf’s head should
sneer at her when about to be popped into the dinner-
pot.
Over and over again, there was the idea of woman,
acting the part of a revengeful mischief towards man.
It was, indeed, very singular to see how the artist’s
linagination seemed to run on these stories of blood-
shed, in which woman’s hand was crimsoned by the
stain ; and how, too,— in one form or another, gro-
tesque or sternly sad, — she failed not to bring out
the moral, that woman must strike through her own
heart to reach a human life, whatever were the motive
that impelled her.
One of the sketches represented the daughter of
Herodias receiving the head of John the Baptist in a
charger. The general conception appeared to be taken
from Bernardo Luini’s picture, in the Uffizzi Gallery
at Florence ; but Miriam had imparted to the saint’s
face a look of gentle and heavenly reproach, with sad
and blessed eyes fixed upward at the maiden; by the
force of which miraculous glance, her whole woman-
hood was at once awakened to love and endless re-
morse.
These sketches had a most disagreeable effect on
Donatello’s peculiar temperament. He gave a shud-
der; his face assumed a look of trouble, fear, and
disgust; he snatched up one sketch after another, as
if about to tear it in pieces. Finally, shoving away
the pile of drawings, he shrank back from the table
and clasped his hands over his eyes.
‘“What is the matter, Donatello?” asked Miriam,
looking up from a letter which she was now writing.
62 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
«Ah! I did not mean you to see those drawings.
They are ugly phantoms that stole out of my mind;
not things that I created, but things that haunt me.
See! here are some trifles that perhaps will please you
better.”
She gave him a portfolio, the sketches in which in-
dicated a happier mood of mind, and one, it is to be
hoped, more truly characteristic of the artist. Sup-
posing neither of these classes of subject to show any-
thing of her own individuality, Miriam had evidently
a great scope of fancy, and a singular faculty of put-
ting what looked like heart into her productions. The
latter sketches were domestic and common scenes, so
finely and subtilely idealized that they seemed such
as we may see at any moment, and everywhere; while
still there was the indefinable something added, or
taken away, which makes all the difference between
sordid life and an earthly paradise. The feeling and
sympathy in all of them were deep and true. There
was the scene, that comes once in every life, of the
lover winning the soft and pure avowal of bashful af-
fection from the maiden whose slender form half leans
towards his arm, half shrinks from it, we know not
which. There was wedded affection in its successive
stages, represented in a series of delicately conceived
designs, touched with a holy fire, that burned from
youth to age in those two hearts, and gave one iden-
tical beauty to the faces throughout all the changes of
feature.
There was a drawing of an infant’s shoe, half worn
out, with the airy print of the blessed foot within ; a
thing that would make a mother smile or weep out
of the very depths of her heart; and yet an actual
mother would not have been likely to appreciate the
MIRIAM’S STUDIO. 63
poetry of the little shoe, until Miriam revealed it to
her. It was wonderful, the depth and force with
which the above, and other kindred subjects, were de-
picted, and the profound significance which they often
acquired. The artist, still in her fresh youth, could
not probably have drawn any of these dear and rich
‘experiences from her own life ; unless, perchance, that
'first sketch of all, the avowal of maiden affection, were
a remembered incident, and not a prophecy. But it is
more delightful to believe that, from first to last, they
were the productions of a beautiful imagination, deal-
ing with the warm and pure suggestions of a woman’s
heart, and thus idealizing a truer and lovelier picture
of the life that belongs to woman, than an actual ac-
quaintance with some of its hard and dusty facts could
have inspired. So considered, the sketches intimated
such a force and variety of imaginative sympathies as
would enable Miriam to fill her life richly with the
bliss and suffering of womanhood, however barren it
might individually be.
There was one observable point, indeed, betokening
that the artist relinquished, for her personal self, the
happiness which she could so profoundly appreciate
for others. In all those sketches of common life, and
the affections that spiritualize it, a figure was por-
trayed apart ; now it peeped between the branches of
a shrubbery, amid which two lovers sat; now it was
looking through a frosted window, from the outside,
while a young wedded pair sat at their new fireside
within ; and once it leaned from a chariot, which six
horses were whirling onward in pomp and pride, and
gazed at a scene of humble enjoyment by a cottage-
door. Always it was the same figure, and always de-
picted with an expression of deep sadness; and in
64 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
every instance, slightly as they were brought out, the
face and form had the traits of Miriam’s own.
“Do you like these sketches better, Donatello ?”
asked Miriam.
“ Yes,” said Donatello, rather doubtfully.
“Not much, I fear,” responded she, laughing. “And
what should a boy like you—a Faun, too — know
about the joys and sorrows, the intertwining light
and shadow, of human life? I forgot that you were
a Faun. You cannot suffer deeply; therefore you
can but half enjoy. Here, now, is a subject which
you can better appreciate.”
The sketch represented merely a rustic dance, but
with such extravagance of fun as was delightful to be-
hold; and here there was no drawback, except that
strange sigh and sadness which always come when we
are merriest.
“Tam going to paint the picture in oils,” said the
artist; “and I want you, Donatello, for the wildest
dancer of them all. Will you sit for me, some day?
— or, rather, dance for me?”
“Oh, most gladly, signorina!” exclaimed Donatello.
* See; it shall be like this.”
And forthwith he began to dance, and flit about the
studio, like an incarnate sprite of jollity, pausing at
last on the extremity of one toe, as if that were the
only portion of himself whereby his frisky nature
could come in contact with the earth. The effect in
that shadowy chamber, whence the artist had so care-
fully excluded the sunshine, was as enlivening as if
one bright ray had contrived to shimmer in and frolic
around the walls, and finally rest just in the centre of
the floor.
“That was admirable!” said Miriam, with an ap- —
MIRIAM’S STUDIO. 65
proving smile. “If I can catch you on my canvas, it
will be a glorious picture; only I am afraid you will
dance out of it, by the very truth of the representa-
tion, just when I shall have given it the last touch.
We will try it one of these days. And now, to reward
you for that jolly exhibition, you shall see what has
been shown to no one else.”’
She went to her easel, on which was placed a pic-
ture with its back turned towards the spectator. Re-
versing the position, there appeared the portrait of a
beautiful woman, such as one sees only two or three,
if even so many times, in all a lifetime; so beautiful,
that she seemed to get into your consciousness and
memory, and could never afterwards be shut out, but
haunted your dreams, for pleasure or for pain; hold-
ing your inner realm as a conquered territory, though
without deigning to make herself at home there.
She was very youthful, and had what was usually
thought to be a Jewish aspect; a complexion in which
there was no roseate bloom, yet neither was it pale ;
dark eyes, into which you might look as deeply as your
glance would go, and still be conscious of a depth that
you had not sounded, though it lay open to the day.
She had black, abundant hair, with none of the vulgar
glossiness of other women’s sable locks; if she were
really of Jewish blood, then this was Jewish hair, and
a dark glory such as crowns no Christian maiden’s
head. Gazing at this portrait, you saw what Rachel
might have been, when Jacob deemed her worth the
Wooing seven years, and seven more; or perchance she
might ripen to be what Judith was, when she van-
quished Holofernes with her beauty, and slew him for
too much adoring it.
Miriam watched Donatello’s contemplation of the
VOL. VI.
66 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
picture, and seeing his simple rapture, a smile of pleas-
ure brightened on her face, mixed with a little scorn ;
at least, her lips curled, and her eyes gleamed, as if
she disdained either his admiration or her own enjoy-
ment of it.
«Then you like the picture, Donatello?” she asked.
«“ Oh, beyond what I can tell!” he answered. “ So
beautiful ! — so beautiful!”
« And do you recognize the likeness?”
“ Signorina,” exclaimed Donatello, turning from the
picture to the artist, in astonishment that she should
ask the question, “the resemblance 1s as little to be
mistaken as if you had bent over the smooth surface
of a fountain, and possessed the witcheraft to call forth
the image that you made there! It is yourself ! ””
Donatello said the truth; and we forbore to speak
descriptively of Miriam’s beauty earlier in our narra-
tive, because we foresaw this occasion to bring it per-
haps more forcibly before the reader.
We know not whether the portrait were a flattered
likeness ; probably not, regarding it merely as the de-
lineation of a lovely face; although Miriam, like all
self-painters, may have endowed herself with certain
graces which other eyes might not discern. Artists
are fond of painting their own portraits; and, in Flor-
ence, there is a gallery of hundreds of them, including
the most illustrious, in all of which there are autobi-
ographical characteristics, so to speak ; traits, expres-
sions, loftinesses, and amenities, which would have been
invisible, had they not been painted from within. Yet
their reality and truth are none the less. Miriam, in
like manner, had doubtless conveyed some of the inti-
mate results of her heart-knowledge into her own por-
trait, and perhaps wished to try whether they would
MIRIAM’S STUDIO. 67
be perceptible to so simple and natural an observer as
Donatello.
“ Does the expression please you?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Donatello, hesitatingly ; “if it would
only smile so like the sunshine as you sometimes do.
No, it is sadder than I thought at first. Cannot you
make yourself smile a little, signorina?”
“A forced smile is uglier than a frown,” said Miriam,
a bright, natural smile breaking out over her face even
as she spoke.
“Oh, catch it now!” cried Donatello, clapping his
hands. “Let it shine upon the picture! There! it
has vanished already! And you are sad again, very
sad; and the picture gazes sadly forth at me, as if
some evil had befallen it in the little time since I
looked last.’’
“ How perplexed you seem, my friend!” answered
Miriam. “TJ really half believe you are a Faun, there
is such a mystery and terror for you in these dark
moods, which are just as natural as daylight to us peo-
ple of ordinary mould. I advise you, at all events, to
look at other faces with those innocent and happy eyes,
and never more to gaze at mine! ”
“You speak in vain,” replied the young man, with
a deeper emphasis than she had ever before heard in
his voice; “ shroud yourself in what gloom you will, I
must needs follow you.”
“ Well, well, well,” said Miriam, impatiently ; “but
leave me now; for to speak plainly, my good friend,
you grow a little wearisome. I walk this afternoon in
the Borghese grounds. Meet me there, if it suits your
pleasure.”
CHAPTER VI.
THE VIRGIN’S SHRINE.
Arter Donatello had left the studio, Miriam her-
self came forth, and taking her way through some
of the intricacies of the city, entered what might be
called either a widening of a street, or a small piazza.
The neighborhood comprised a baker’s oven, emitting
the usual fragrance of sour bread; a shoe-shop; a
linen-draper’s shop; a pipe and cigar shop; a lottery
office; a station for French soldiers, with a sentinel
pacing in front; and a fruit-stand, at which a Ro-
man matron was selling the dried kernels of chest-
nuts, wretched little figs, and some bouquets of yester-
day. A church, of course, was near at hand, the fa-
cade of which ascended into lofty pinnacles, whereon
were perched two or three winged figures of stone,
either angelic or allegorical, blowing stone trumpets
in close vicinity to the upper windows of an old and
shabby palace. This palace was distinguished by a
feature not very common in the architecture of Roman
edifices ; that is to say, a medizval tower, square, mas-
sive, lofty, and battlemented and machicolated at the
summit.
At one of the angles of the battlements stood a
shrine of the Virgin, such as we see everywhere at the
street-corners of Rome, but seldom or never, except
in this solitary instance, at a height above the ordi-
nary level of men’s views and aspirations. Connected
THE VIRGIN’S SHRINE. 69
with this old tower and its lofty shrine, there is a
legend which we cannot here pause to tell; but for
centuries a lamp has been burning before the Virgin’s
image, at noon, at midnight, and at all hours of the
twenty-four, and must be kept burning forever, as
long as the tower shall stand; or else the tower it-
self, the palace, and whatever estate belongs to it,
shall pass from its hereditary possessor, in accordance
with an ancient vow, and become the property of the
Church.
As Miriam approached, she looked upward, and
saw, —not, indeed, the flame of the never-dying lamp,
which was swallowed up in the broad sunlight that
brightened the shrine, but a flock of white doves,
skimming, fluttering, and wheeling about the topmost
height of the tower, their silver wings flashing in the
pure transparency of the air. Several of them sat on
the ledge of the upper window, pushing one another
off by their eager struggle for this favorite station,
and all tapping their beaks and flapping their wings
tumultuously against the panes; some had alighted in
the street, far below, but flew hastily upward, at the
sound of the window being thrust ajar, and opening in
the middle, on rusty hinges, as Roman windows do.
A fair young girl, dressed in white, showed herself
at the aperture for a single instant, and threw forth
as much as her two small hands could hold of some
kind of food, for the flock of eleemosynary doves. It
seemed greatly to the taste of the feathered people ;
for they tried to snatch beakfuls of it from her grasp,
caught it in the air, and rushed downward after it
upon the pavement.
“ What a pretty scene this is,” thought Miriam, with
a kindly smile, “and how like a dove she is herself,
70 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
the fair, pure creature! The other doves know her
for a sister, | am sure.”
Miriam passed beneath the deep portal of the pal-
ace, and turning to the left, began to mount flight
after flight of a staircase, which, for the loftiness of
its aspiration, was worthy to be Jacob’s ladder, or, at
all events, the staircase of the Tower of Babel. The
city bustle, which is heard even in Rome, the rumble
of wheels over the uncomfortable paving - stones, the
hard harsh eries reéchoing in the high and narrow
streets, grew faint and died away; as the turmoil of
the world will always die, if we set our faces to climb
heavenward. Higher, and higher still ; and now,
glancing through the successive windows that threw in
their narrow light upon the stairs, her view stretched
across the roofs of the city, unimpeded even by the
stateliest palaces. Only the domes of churches as-
cend into this airy region, and hold up their golden
crosses on a level with her eye; except, that, out of
the very heart of Rome, the column of Antoninus
thrusts itself upward, with St. Paul upon its summit,
the sole human form that seems to have kept her com-
any.
Finally, the staircase came to an end ; save that,
on one side of the little entry where it terminated, a
flight of a dozen steps gave access to the roof of the
tower and the legendary shrine. On the other side
was a door, at which Miriam knocked, but rather as a
friendly announcement of her presence than with any
doubt of hospitable welcome; for, awaiting no re-
sponse, she lifted the latch and entered.
“What a hermitage you have found for yourself,
dear Hilda!” she exclaimed. ‘“ You breathe sweet
air, above all the evil scents of Rome; and even so,
THE VIRGIN’S SHRINE. 14
in your maiden elevation, you dwell above our vanities
and passions, our moral dust and mud, with the doves
and the angels for your nearest neighbors. I should
not wonder if the Catholics were to make a saint of
you, like your namesake of old; especially as you have
almost avowed yourself of their religion, by under-
taking to keep the lamp alight before the Virgin’s
shrine.”
“ No, no, Miriam!” said Hilda, who had come joy-
fully forward to greet her friend. ‘ You must not
call me a Catholic. A Christian girl —even a daugh-
ter of the Puritans — may surely pay honor to the idea
of divine Womanhood, without giving up the faith of
her forefathers. But how kind you are to climb into
my dove-cote ! ”
“Jt is no trifling proof of friendship, indeed,” an-
swered Miriam; “I should think there were three
hundred stairs at least.”
“ But it will do you good,” continued Hilda. “ A
height of some fifty feet above the roofs of Rome gives
me all the advantages that I could get from fifty
miles of distance. The air so exhilarates my spirits,
that sometimes I feel half inclined to attempt a flight
from the top of my tower, in the faith that I should
float upward.”
“Oh, pray don’t try it!” said Miriam, laughing.
“Tf it should turn out that you are less than an an-
gel, you would find the stones of the Roman pavement
very hard; and if an angel, indeed, I am afraid you
would never come down among us again.”
This young American girl was an example of the
freedom of life which it is possible for a female artist
to enjoy at Rome. She dwelt in her tower, as free to
descend into the corrupted atmosphere of the city be-
72 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
neath, as one of her companion doves to fly downward
into the street ;—all alone, perfectly independent, un-
der her own sole guardianship, unless watched over by
the Virgin, whose shrine she tended ; doing what she
liked without a suspicion or a shadow upon the snowy
whiteness of her fame. The customs of artist life
bestow such liberty upon the sex, which is elsewhere
restricted within so much narrower limits ; and it is
perhaps an indication that, whenever we admit women
to a wider scope of pursuits and professions, we must
also remove the shackles of our present conventional
rules, which would then become an insufferable re-
straint on either maid or wife. The system seems to
work unexceptionably in Rome; and in many other
cases, as in Hilda’s, purity of heart and life are al-
lowed to assert themselves, and to be their own proof
and security, to a degree unknown in the society of
other cities. |
Hilda, in her native land, had early shown what was
pronounced by connoisseurs a decided genius for the
pictorial art. Even in her school-days — still not so
very distant — she had produced sketches that were
seized upon by men of taste, and hoarded as among
the choicest treasures of their portfolios; scenes deli-
cately imagined, lacking, perhaps, the reality which
comes only from a close acquaintance with life, but so
softly touched with feeling and fancy, that you seemed
to be looking at humanity with angels’ eyes. With
years and experience she might be expected to attain
a darker and more forcible touch, which would impart
to her designs the relief they needed. Had Hilda re-
mained in her own country, it is not improbable that
she might have produced original works worthy to
hang in that gallery of native art which, we hope, is
THE VIRGIN’S SHRINE. 73
destined to extend its rich length through many fut-
ure centuries. An orphan, however, without near rela-
tives, and possessed of a little property, she had found
it within her possibilities to come to Italy ; that cen-
tral clime, whither the eyes and the heart of every ar-
tist turn, as if pictures could not be made to glow in
any other atmosphere, as if statues could not assume
grace and expression, save in that land of whitest
marble.
Hilda’s gentle courage had brought her safely over
land and sea; her mild, unflagging perseverance had
made a place for her in the famous city, even like a
flower that finds a chink for itself, and a little earth
to grow in, on whatever ancient wall its slender roots
may fasten. Here she dwelt, in her tower, possessing
a friend or two in Rome, but no home companion ex-
cept the flock of doves, whose cote was in a ruinous
chamber contiguous to her own. They soon became
as familiar with the fair-haired Saxon girl as if she
were a born sister of their brood; and her custom-
ary white robe bore such an analogy to their snowy
plumage that the confraternity of artists called Hilda
the Dove, and recognized her aerial apartment as the
Dove-cote. And while the other doves flew far and
wide in quest of what was good for them, Hilda like-
wise spread her wings, and sought such ethereal and
imaginative sustenance as God ordains for creatures
of her kind.
We know not whether the result of her Italian stud-
les, so far as it could yet be seen, will be accepted as
a good or desirable one. Certain it is, that since her
arrival in the pictorial land, Hilda seemed to have
entirely lost the impulse of original design, which
brought her thither. No doubt the girl’s early dreams
T4 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
had been of sending forms and hues of beauty into
the visible world out of her own mind ; of compelling
scenes of poetry and history to live before men’s eyes,
through conceptions and by methods individual to her-
self. But more and more, as she grew familiar with
the miracles of art that enrich so many galleries in
Rome, Hilda had ceased to consider herself as an orig:
‘nal artist. No wonder that this change should have
befallen her. She was endowed with a deep and sen-
sitive faculty of appreciation ; she had the gift of dis-
cerning and worshipping excellence in a most unusual
measure. No other person, it is probable, recognized
so adequately, and enjoyed with such deep delight, the
pictorial wonders that were here displayed. She saw
—no, not saw, but felt — through and through a pic-
ture; she bestowed upon it all the warmth and rich-
ness of a woman’s sympathy; not by any intellectual
effort, but by this strength of heart, and this guiding
light of sympathy, she went straight to the central
point, in which the master had conceived his work.
Thus, she viewed it, as it were, with his own eyes, and
hence her comprehension of any picture that interested
her was perfect.
This power and depth of appreciation depended
partly upon Hilda’s physical organization, which was
at once healthful and exquisitely delicate ; and, con-
nected with this advantage, she had a command of
hand, a nicety and force of touch, which is an endow- —
ment separate from pictorial genius, though indispen-
sable to its exercise.
It has probably happened in many other instances,
as it did in Hilda’s case, that she ceased to aim at
original achievement in consequence of the very gifts
which so exquisitely fitted her to profit by familiarity
THE VIRGIN’S SHRINE. 15
with the works of the mighty old masters. Reverenc-
ing these wonderful men so deeply, she was too grate-
ful for all they bestowed upon her, too loyal, too hum-
ble, in their awful presence, to think of enrolling
herself in their society. Beholding the miracles of
beauty which they had achieved, the world seemed al-
ready rich enough in original designs, and nothing
more was so desirable as to diffuse those self-same
beauties more widely among mankind. All the youth-
ful hopes and ambitions, the fanciful ideas which she
had brought from home, of great pictures to be con-
ceived in her feminine mind, were flung aside, and, so
far as those most intimate with her could discern, re-
linquished without a sigh. All that she would hence-
forth attempt — and that most reverently, not to say
religiously — was to catch and reflect some of the
glory which had been shed upon canvas from the im-
mortal pencils of old.
So Hilda became a copyist: in the Pinacotheca of
the Vatican, in the galleries of the Pamfili-Doria pal-
ace, the Borghese, the Corsini, the Sciarra, her easel
was set up before many a famous picture by Guido,
Domenichino, Raphael, and the devout painters of
earlier schools than these. Other artists and visitors
from foreign lands beheld the slender, girlish figure
in front of some world-known work, absorbed, uncon-
scious of everything around her, seeming to live only
im what she sought todo. They smiled, no doubt, at
the audacity which led her to dream of copying those
mighty achievements. But, if they paused to look
over her shoulder, and had sensibility enough to un-
derstand what was before their eyes, they soon felt
inclined to believe that the spirits of the old masters
were hovering over Hilda, and guiding her delicate
76 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
white hand. In truth, from whatever realm of bliss
and many-colored beauty those spirits might descend,
it would have been no unworthy errand to help so
gentle and pure a worshipper of their genius in giving
the last divine touch to her repetitions of their works.
Her copies were indeed marvellous. Accuracy was
not the phrase for them ; a Chinese copy is accurate.
Hilda’s had that evanescent and ethereal life — that
flitting fragrance, as it were, of the originals — which
it is as difficult to catch and retain as it would be for
a sculptor to get the very movement and varying color
of a living man into his marble bust. Only by watch-
ing the efforts of the most skilful copyists-— men who
spend a lifetime, as some of them do, in multiplying
copies of a single picture — and observing how invari-
ably they leave out just the indefinable charm that in-
volves the last, inestimable value, can we understand
the difficulties of the task which they undertake.
It was not Hilda’s general practice to attempt repro-
ducing the whole of a great picture, but to select some
high, noble, and delicate portion of it, in which the
spirit and essence of the picture culminated: the Vir-
gin’s celestial sorrow, for example, or a hovering an-
gel, imbued with immortal light, or a saint with the
glow of heaven in his dying face, — and these would
be rendered with her whole soul. If a picture had
darkened into an indistinct shadow through time and
neglect, or had been injured by cleaning, or retouched
by some profane hand, she seemed to possess the
faculty of seeing it in its pristine glory. The copy
would come from her hands with what the beholder
felt must be the light which the old master had left
upon the original in bestowing his final and most
ethereal touch. In some instances even (at least, so
THE VIRGIN’S SHRINE. 17
those believed who best appreciated Hilda’s power and
sensibility) she had been enabled to execute what the
great master had conceived in his imagination, but had
not so perfectly succeeded in putting upon canvas; a
result surely not impossible when such depth of sympa-
thy as she possessed was assisted by the delicate skill
and accuracy of her slender hand. In such cases the
girl was but a finer instrument, a more exquisitely ef-
fective piece of mechanism, by the help of which the
spirit of some great departed painter now first achieved
his ideal, centuries after his own earthly hand, that
other tool, had turned to dust.
Not to describe her as too much a wonder, however,
Hilda, or the Dove, as her well-wishers half laughingly
delighted to call her, had been pronounced by good
judges incomparably the best copyist in Rome. After
minute examination of her works, the most skilful
artists declared that she had been led to her results
by following precisely the same process step by step
through which the original painter had trodden to the
development of his idea. Other copyists — if such
they are worthy to be called — attempt only a super-
ficial imitation. Copies of the old masters in this
sense are produced by thousands; there are artists, as
we have said, who spend their lives in painting the
works, or perhaps one single work, of one illustrious
painter over and over again: thus they convert them-
selves into Guido machines, or Raphaelic machines.
Their performances, it is true, are often wonderfully
deceptive to a careless eye; but working entirely from
the outside, and seeking only to reproduce the surface,
these men are sure to leave out that indefinable ,noth-
ing, that inestimable something, that constitutes the
life and soul through which the picture gets its im-
78 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENTI.
mortality. Hilda was no such machine as this; she
wrought religiously, and therefore wrought a miracle.
It strikes us that there is something far higher and
nobler in all this, in her thus sacrificing herself to the
devout recognition of the highest excellence in art,
than there would have been in cultivating her not
inconsiderable share of talent for the production of
works from her own ideas. She might have set up
for herself, and won no ignoble name; she might have
helped to fill the already crowded and cumbered world
with pictures, not destitute of merit, but falling short,
if by ever so little, of the best that has been done; she
might thus have gratified some tastes that were in-
capable of appreciating Raphael. But this could be
done only by lowering the standard of art to the com-
prehension of the spectator. She chose the better and
loftier and more unselfish part, laying her individual
hopes, her fame, her prospects of enduring remem-
brance, at the feet of those great departed ones, whom
she so loved and venerated ; and therefore the world
was the richer for this feeble girl.
Since the beauty and glory of a great picture are
confined within itself, she won out that glory by pa-
tient faith and self-devotion, and multiplied it for
mankind. From the dark, chill corner of a gallery, —
from some curtained chapel in a church, where the
light came seldom and aslant,—from the prince’s
carefully guarded cabinet, where not one eye in thou-
sands was permitted to behold it, — she brought the
wondrous picture into daylight, and gave all its magic
splendor for the enjoyment of the world. Hilda’s fac.
ulty of genuine admiration is one of the rarest to be
_ found in human nature ; and let us try to recompense
- her in kind by admiring her generous self-surrender,
THE VIRGIN’S SHRINE. 79
and her brave, humble magnanimity in choosing to be
the handmaid of those old magicians, instead of a
minor enchantress within a circle of her own.
The handmaid of Raphael, whom she loved with a
virgin’s love! Would it have been worth Hilda’s
while to relinquish this office for the sake of giving
the world a picture or two which it would call orig-
inal; pretty fancies of snow and moonlight ; the coun-
terpart in picture of so many feminine achievements
in literature !
CHAPTER VIL
BEATRICE.
Mrrtam was glad to find the Dove in her turret-
home ; for being endowed with an infinite activity,
and taking exquisite delight in the sweet labor of
which her life was full, it was Hilda’s practice to flee
abroad betimes, and haunt the galleries till dusk.
Happy were those (but they were very few) whom she
ever chose to be the companions of her day; they saw
the art-treasures of Rome, under her guidance, as they
had never seen them before. Not that Hilda could
dissertate, or talk learnedly about pictures ; she would
probably have been puzzled by the technical terms of
her own art. Not that she had much to say about
what she most profoundly admired; but even her si-
lent sympathy was so powerful that it drew your own
along with it, endowing you with a second-sight that
enabled you to see excellences with almost the depth
and delicacy of her own perceptions.
All the Anglo-Saxon denizens of Rome, by this time,
knew Hilda by sight. Unconsciously, the poor child
had become one of the spectacles of the Eternal City,
and was often pointed out to strangers, sitting at her
easel among the wild-bearded young men, the white-
haired old ones, and the shabbily dressed, painfully
plain women, who make up the throng of copyists.
The old custodes knew her well, and watched over her
as their own child. Sometimes a young artist, instead
BEATRICE. 81
of going on with a copy of the picture before which he
had placed his easel, would enrich his canvas with an
original portrait of Hilda at her work. A lovelier sub-
ject could not have been selected, nor one which re-
quired nicer skill and insight in doing it anything like
justice. She was pretty at all times, in our native
New England style, with her light-brown ringlets, her
delicately tinged, but healthful cheek, her sensitive,
intelligent, yet most feminine and kindly face. But,
every few moments, this pretty and girlish face grew
beautiful and striking, as some inward thought and
feeling brightened, rose to the surface, and then, as it
were, passed out of sight again; so that, taking into
view this constantly recurring change, it really seemed
as if Hilda were only visible by the sunshine of her
soul.
In other respects, she was a good subject for a por.
trait, being distinguished by a gentle picturesqueness,
which was perhaps unconsciously bestowed by some
minute peculiarity of dress, such as artists seldom fail
to assume. ‘The effect was to make her appear like
an inhabitant of picture-land, a partly ideal creature,
not to be handled, nor even approached too closely.
In her feminine self, Hilda was natural, and of pleas-
ant deportment, endowed with a mild cheerfulness of
temper, not overflowing with animal spirits, but never
long despondent. There was a certain simplicity that
made every one her friend, but it was combined with a
subtile attribute of reserve, that insensibly kept those
at a distance who were not suited to her sphere.
Miriam was the dearest friend whom she had ever
known. Being a year or two the elder, of longer ac-
quaintance with Italy, and better fitted to deal with
its crafty and selfish inhabitants, she had helped Hilda
VOL. VI.
82 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
to arrange her way of life, and had encouraged her
through those first weeks, when Rome is so dreary to
every new-comer.
“But how luckily that you are at home to-day,”
said Miriam, continuing the conversation which was
begun, many pages back. “I hardly hoped to find
you, though I had a favor to ask, — a commission to
put into your charge. But what picture is this?”
“See!” said Hilda, taking her friend’s hand, and
leading her in front of the easel. “I wanted your
opinion of it.”
“Tf you have really succeeded,” observed Miriam,
recognizing the picture at the first glance, “it will be
the greatest miracle you have yet achieved.”
The picture represented simply a female head; a
very youthful, girlish, perfectly beautiful face, envel-
oped in white drapery, from beneath which strayed a
lock or two of what seemed a rich, though hidden lux-
uriance of auburn hair. The eyes were large and
brown, and met those of the spectator, but evidently
with a strange, ineffectual effort to escape. There
was a little redness about the eyes, very slightly indi-
cated, so that you would question whether or no the
girl had been weeping. The whole face was quiet ;
there was no distortion or disturbance of any single
feature; nor was it easy to see why the expression
was not cheerful, or why a single touch of the artist’s
pencil should not brighten it into joyousness. But,
in fact, it was the very saddest picture ever painted
or conceived; it involved an unfathomable depth of
sorrow, the sense of which came to the observer by a
sort of intuition. It was a sorrow that removed this
beautiful girl out of the sphere of humanity, and set
her in a far-off region, the remoteness of which —
BEATRICE. 83
while yet her face is so close before us — makes us
shiver as at a spectre. }
“Yes, Hilda,” said her friend, after closely examin-
ing the picture, “you have done nothing else so won-
derful as this. But by what unheard-of solicitations or
secret interest have you obtained leave to copy Guido’s
Beatrice Cenci? It is an unexampled favor ; and the
impossibility of getting a genuine copy has filled the
Roman picture-shops with Beatrices, gay, grievous, or
coquettish, but never a true one among them.”
“There has been one exquisite copy, I have heard,”
said Hilda, “by an artist capable of appreciating the
spirit of the picture. It was Thompson, who brought
it away piecemeal, being forbidden (like the rest of
us) to set up his easel before it. As for me, I knew
the Prince Barberini would be deaf to all entreaties ;
so I had no resource but to sit down before the pic-
ture, day after day, and let it sink into my heart. I
do believe it is now photographed there. It is a sad
face to keep so close to one’s heart; only, what is so
very beautiful can never be quite a pain. Well; after
studying it in this way, I know not how many times, I
came home, and have done my best to transfer the
image to canvas.”
‘Here it is then,” said Miriam, contemplating Hil-
da’s work with great interest and delight, mixed with
the painful sympathy that the picture excited. “Ev-
erywhere we see oil-paintings, crayon-sketches, cameos,
engravings, lithographs, pretending to be Beatrice, and
representing the poor girl with blubbered eyes, a leer
of coquetry, a merry look as if she were dancing, a
piteous look as if she were beaten, and twenty other
modes of fantastic mistake. But here is Guido’s very
Beatrice ; she that slept in the dungeon, and awoke,
84. ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
betimes, to ascend the scaffold. And now that you
have done it, Hilda, can you interpret what the feel-
ing is, that gives this picture such a mysterious force?
For my part, though deeply sensible of its influence, I
cannot seize it.”
“Nor can I, in words,” replied her friend. ‘“ But
while I was painting her, I felt all the time as if she
were trying to escape from my gaze. She knows that
her sorrow is so strange and so immense, that she
ought to be solitary forever, both for the world’s sake
and her own; and this is the reason we feel such a dis~
tance between Beatrice and ourselves, even when our
eyes meet hers. It is infinitely heart-breaking to meet
her glance, and to feel that nothing can be done to
help or comfort her; neither does she ask help or com-
fort, knowing the hopelessness of her case better than
we do. She is a fallen angel, — fallen, and yet sin-
less; and it is only this depth of sorrow, with its
weight and darkness, that keeps her down upon earth,
and brings her within our view even while it sets her
beyond our reach.”
“You deem her sinless?” asked Miriam; “that 1s
not so plain to me. If I can pretend to see at all into
that dim region, whence she gazes so strangely and
sadly at us, Beatrice’s own conscience does not acquit
her of something evil, and never to be forgiven! ”
“Sorrow so black as hers oppresses her very nearly
as sin would,” said Hilda.
“Then,” inquired Miriam, “ do you think that there
was no sin in the deed for which she suffered?”
“Ah!” replied Hilda, shuddering, “I really had
quite forgotten Beatrice’s history, and was thinking of
her only as the picture seems to reveal her character.
Yes, yes; it was terrible guilt, an inexpiable crime
BEATRICE. 85
and she feels it to be so. Therefore it is that the for-
Jorn creature so longs to elude our eyes, and forever
vanish away into nothingness! Her doom is just !”
“OQ Hilda, your innocence is like a sharp steel
sword!” exclaimed her friend. “Your judgments
are often terribly severe, though you seem all made up
of gentleness and mercy. Beatrice’s sin may not have
been so great: perhaps it was no sin at all, but the
best virtue possible in the circumstances. If she
viewed it as a sin, it may have been because her na-
ture was too feeble for the fate imposed upon her.
Ah!” continued Miriam, passionately, “if I could
only get within her consciousness ! —if Iscould but
clasp Beatrice Cenci’s ghost, and draw it into myself !
I would give my life to know whether she thought
herself innocent, or the one great criminal since time
began.”
As Miriam gave utterance to these words, Hilda
looked from the picture into her face, and was startled
to observe that her friend’s expression had become al-
most exactly that of the portrait ; as if her passionate
wish and struggle to penetrate poor Beatrice’s mystery
had been successful.
‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Miriam, do not look so!”
she cried. ‘“ What an actress you are! And I never
guessed it before. Ah! now you are yourself again!”
she added, kissing her. “Leave Beatrice to me in
future.”
“Cover up your magical picture, then,” replied her
friend, “else I never can look away from it. It is
strange, dear Hilda, how an innocent, delicate, white
soul like yours has been able to seize the subtle mys-
tery of this portrait ; as you surely must, in order to
reproduce it so perfectly. Well; we will not talk of
86 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENTI.
it any more. Do you know, I have come to you this
morning on a small matter of business. Will you un-
dertake it for me?”
“Oh, certainly,” said Hilda, laughing; “if you
choose to trust me with business.”
“ Nay, it is not a matter of any difficulty,” answered
Miriam; “merely to take charge of this packet, and
keep it for me awhile.”
“ But why not keep it yourself?” asked Hilda.
“‘ Partly because it will be safer in your charge,”
said her friend. “1 ama careless sort of person in
ordinary things ; while you, for all you dwell so high
above the world, have certain little housewifely ways
of accuracy and order. The packet is of some slight
importance ; and yet, it may be, I shall not ask you
for it again. In a week or two, you know, I am leav-
ing Rome. You, setting at defiance the malarial fever,
mean to stay here and haunt your beloved galleries
through the summer. Now, four months hence, un-
less you hear more from me, | would have you deliver
the packet according to its address.”
Hilda read the direction; it was to Signore Luca
Barboni, at the Palazzo Cenci, third piano.
“YT will deliver it with my own hand,” said she,
‘precisely four months from to-day, unless you bid
me to the contrary. Perhaps I shall meet the ghost
of Beatrice in that grim old palace of her forefathers.”
“In that case,’ rejoined Miriam, “do not fail to
speak to her, and try to win her confidence. Poor
thing! she would be all the better for pouring her
heart out freely, and would be glad to do it, if she
were sure of sympathy. It irks my brain and heart to
think of her, all shut up within herself.” She -with-
drew the cloth that Hilda had drawn over the picture,
mt
BEATRICE. 87
and took another long look at it, —‘“ Poor sister Bea-
trice! for she was still a woman, Hilda, still a sister,
be her sin or sorrow what they might. How well you
have done it, Hilda! I know not whether Guido will
thank you, or be jealous of your rivalship.”
“ Jealous, indeed!” exclaimed Hilda. “If Guido
‘had not wrought through me, my pains would have
been thrown away.”
“ After all,” resumed Miriam, “if a woman had
painted the original picture, there might have been
something in it which we miss now. I have a great
mind to undertake a copy myself, and try to give it
what it lacks. Well; good-by. But, stay! I am
going for a little airing to the grounds of the Villa
Borghese this afternoon. You will think it very fool-
ish, but I always feel the safer in your company,
Hilda, slender little maiden as you are. Will you
come ?”’
“ Ah, not to-day, dearest Miriam,” she replied; “I
have set my heart on giving another touch or two to
this picture, and shall not stir abroad till nearly sun-
set.”
“Farewell, then,” said her visitor. “I leave you in
your dove-cote. What a sweet, strange life you lead
here; conversing with the souls of the old masters,
feeding and fondling your sister-doves, and trimming
the Virgin’s lamp! Hilda, do you ever pray to the
Virgin while you tend her shrine ?”
“Sometimes I have been moved to do so,” replied
the Dove, blushing, and lowering her eyes; “she was
a woman once. Do you think it would be wrong?”
“Nay, that is for you to judge,” said Miriam; “but
when you pray next, dear friend, remember me! ”
She went down the long descent of the lower stair-
88 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
case, and just as she reached the street the flock of
doves again took their hurried flight from the pave-
ment to the topmost window. She threw her eyes
upward and beheld them hovering about Hilda’s head;
for, after her friend’s departure, the girl had been
more impressed than before by something very sad
and troubled in her manner. She was, therefore,
leaning forth from her airy abode, and flinging down
a kind, maidenly kiss, and a gesture of farewell, in
the hope that these might alight upon Miriam’s heart,
and comfort its unknown sorrow a little. Kenyon the
sculptor, who chanced to be passing the head of the
street, took note of that ethereal kiss, and wished that
he could have caught it in the air and got Hilda’s
leave to keep it.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SUBURBAN VILLA. a
DONATELLO, while it was still a doubtful question
betwixt afternoon and morning, set forth to keep the
appointment which Miriam had carelessly tendered
him in the grounds of the Villa Borghese.
The entrance to these grounds (as all my readers
know, for everybody nowadays has been in Rome) is
just outside of the Porta del Popolo. Passing be-
neath that not very impressive specimen of Michael
Angelo’s architecture, a minute’s walk will transport
the visitor from the small, uneasy, lava stones of the
Roman pavement into broad, gravelled carriage-drives,
whence a little farther stroll brings him to the soft
turf of a beautiful seclusion. A seclusion, but seldom
a solitude; for priest, noble, and populace, stranger
and native, all who breathe Roman air, find free ad-
mission, and come hither to taste the languid enjoy-
ment of the day-dream that they call life.
But Donatello’s enjoyment was of a livelier kind.
He soon began to draw long and delightful breaths
among those shadowy walks. Judging by the pleas-
_ ure which the sylvan character of the scene excited in
him, it might be no merely fanciful theory to set him
down as the kinsman, not far remote, of that wild,
sweet, playful, rustic creature, to whose marble image
he bore so striking a resemblance. How mirthful a
discovery would it be (and yet with a touch of pathos
90 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
in it), if the breeze which sported fondly with his |
clustering locks were to waft them suddenly aside,
and show a pair of leaf-shaped, furry ears! What an
honest strain of wildness would it indicate! and ito
what regions of rich mystery would it extend Dona-
tello’s sympathies, to be thus linked (and by no mon-
strous chain) with what we call the inferior tribes of
being, whose simplicity, mingled with his human in-
telligence, might partly restore what man has lost of
the divine!
The scenery amid which the youth now strayed was
such as arrays itself in the imagination when we read
the beautiful old myths, and fancy a brighter sky, a
softer turf, a more picturesque arrangement of vener-
able trees, than we find in the rude and untrained
landscapes of the Western world. The ilex-trees, so
ancient and time-honored were they, seemed to have
lived for ages undisturbed, and to feel no dread of
profanation by the axe any more than overthrow by
the thunder-stroke. It had already passed out of
their dreamy old memories that only a few years ago
they were grievously imperilled by the Gaul’s last as-
sault upon the walls of Rome. As if confident in the
long peace of their lifetime, they assumed attitudes of
indolent repose. They leaned over the green turf in
ponderous grace, throwing abroad their great branches
without danger of interfering with other trees, though
other majestic trees grew near enough for dignified
society, but too distant for constraint. Never was
there a more venerable quietude than that which slept
among their sheltering boughs; never a sweeter sun-
shine than that now gladdening the gentle gloom
which these leafy patriarchs strove to diffuse over the
swelling and subsiding lawns.
THE SUBURBAN VILLA. 91
In other portions of the grounds the stone-pines
lifted their dense clump of branches upon a slender
length of stem, so high that they looked like green
islands in the air, flinging down a shadow upon the
turf so far off that you hardly knew which tree had
made it. Again, there were avenues of cypress, re-
sembling dark flames of huge funeral candles, which
spread dusk and twilight round about them instead
of cheerful radiance. The more open spots were all
a-bloom, even so early in the season, with anemones
of wondrous size, both white and rose-colored, and
violets that betrayed themselves by their rich fra-
grance, even if their blue eyes failed to meet your
own. Daisies, too, were abundant, but larger than
the modest little English flower, and therefore of
small account.
These wooded and flowery lawns are more beautiful
than the finest of English park-scenery, more touch-
ing, more impressive, through the neglect that leaves
Nature so much to her own ways and methods. Since
man seldom interferes with her, she sets to work in
her quiet way and makes herself at home. There is
enough of human care, it is true, bestowed, long ago
and still bestowed, to prevent wildness from growing
into deformity ; and the result is an ideal landscape, a
woodland scene that seems to have been projected out
of the poet’s mind. If the ancient Faun were other
than a mere creation of old poetry, and could have re-
appeared anywhere, it must have been in such a scene
as this.
In the openings of the wood there are fountains
plashing into marble basins, the depths of which are
shaggy with water-weeds ; or they tumble like natural
cascades from rock to rock, sending their murmur
99 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
afar, to make the quiet and silence more appreciable.
Seattered here and there with careless artifice, stand
old altars bearing Roman inscriptions. Statues, gray
with the long corrosion of even that soft atmosphere,
half hide and half reveal themselves, high on pedestals,
or perhaps fallen and broken on the turf. Terminal
figures, columns of marble or granite porticos, arches,
are seen in the vistas of the wood-paths, either verita-
ble relics of antiquity, or with so exquisite a touch of
artful ruin on them that they are better than if really
antique. At all events, grass grows on the tops of the
shattered pillars, and weeds and flowers root them-
selves in the chinks of the massive arches and fronts
of temples, and clamber at large over their pediments,
as if this were the thousandth summer since their
winged seeds alighted there.
What a strange idea — what a needless labor — to
construct artificial ruins in Rome, the ‘native soil of
ruin! But even these sportive imitations, wrought by
man in emulation of what time has done to temples
and palaces, are perhaps centuries old, and, beginning
as illusions, have grown to be venerable in sober ear-
nest. The result of all is a scene, pensive, lovely,
dream-like, enjoyable and sad, such as is to be found
nowhere save in these princely villa-residences in the
neighborhood of Rome; a scene that must have re-
quired generations and ages, during which growth,
decay, and man’s intelligence wrought kindly together,
to render it so gently wild as we behold it now.
The final charm is bestowed by the malaria. There
is a piercing, thrilling, delicious kind of regret in the
idea of so much beauty thrown away, or only enjoya-
ble at its half-development, in winter and early spring,
and never to be dwelt amongst, as the home-scenery
THE SUBURBAN VILLA. 93
of any human being. For if you come hither in sum-
mer, and stray through these glades in the golden
sunset, fever walks arm in arm with you, and death
awaits you at the end of the dim vista. Thus the
scene is like Eden in its loveliness; like Eden, too,
in the fatal spell that removes it beyond the scope of
man’s actual possessions. But Donatello felt nothing
of this dream-like melancholy that haunts the spot.
As he passed among the sunny shadows, his spirit
seemed to acquire new elasticity. The flicker of the
sunshine, the sparkle of the fountain’s gush, the dance
of the leaf upon the bough, the woodland fragrance,
the green freshness, the old sylvan peace and freedom,
were all intermingled in those long breaths which he
drew.
The ancient dust, the mouldiness of Rome, the dead
atmosphere in which he had wasted so many months,
the hard pavements, the smell of ruin and decaying
generations, the chill palaces, the convent-bells, the
heavy incense of altars, the life that he had led in
those dark, narrow streets, among priests, soldiers,
nobles, artists, and women, — all the sense of these
things rose from the young man’s consciousness like a
cloud which had darkened over him without his know-
ing how densely.
He drank in the natural influences of the scene, and
was intoxicated as by an exhilarating wine. He ran
races with himself along the gleam and shadow of the
wood-paths. He leapt up to catch the overhanging
bough of an ilex, and swinging himself by it alighted
far onward, as if he had flown thither through the air.
In a sudden rapture he embraced the trunk of a sturdy
tree, and seemed to imagine it a creature worthy of af-
fection and capable of a tender response; he clasped
94 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
it closely in his arms, as a Faun might have clasped
the warm feminine grace of the nymph, whom antiq-
uity supposed to dwell within that rough, encircling
rind. Then, in order to bring himself closer to the
genial earth, with which his kindred instincts linked
him so strongly, he threw himself at full length on the
turf, and pressed down his lips, kissing the violets and
daisies, which kissed him back again, though shyly, in
their maiden fashion.
While he lay there, it was pleasant to see how the
green and blue lizards, who had been basking on some
rock or on a fallen pillar that absorbed the warmth of
the sun, scrupled not to scramble over him with their
small feet; and how the birds alighted on the nearest
twigs and sang their little roundelays unbroken by any
chirrup of alarm; they recognized him, it may be, as
something akin to themselves, or else they fancied
that he was rooted and grew there; for these wild
pets of nature dreaded him no more in his buoyant
life than if a mound of soil and grass and flowers had
long since covered his dead body, converting it back
to the sympathies from which human existence had
estranged it.
All of us, after a long abode in cities, have felt the
blood gush more joyously through our veins with the
first breath of rural air; few could feel it so much as
Donatello, a creature of simple elements, bred in the
sweet sylvan life of Tuscany, and for months back
dwelling amid the mouldy gloom and dim splendor of
old Rome. Nature has been shut out for numberless
centuries from those stony-hearted streets, to which he
had latterly grown accustomed ; there is no trace of
her, except for what blades of grass spring out of the
pavements of the less trodden piazzas, or what weeds
THE SUBURBAN VILLA. 95
cluster and tuft themselves on the cornices of ruins.
Therefore his joy was like that of a child that had
gone astray from home, and finds him suddenly in his
mother’s arms again.
At last, deeming it full time for Miriam to keep her
tryst, he climbed to the tiptop of the tallest tree, and
thence looked about him, swaying to and fro in the
gentle breeze, which was like the respiration of that
great leafy, living thing. Donatello saw beneath him
the whole circuit of the enchanted ground; the statues
and columns pointing upward from among the shrub-
bery, the fountains flashing in the sunlight, the paths
winding hither and thither, and continually finding
out some nook of new and ancient pleasantness. He
saw the villa, too, with its marble front incrusted all
over with bas-reliefs, and statues in its many niches.
It was as beautiful as a fairy palace, and seemed an
abode in which the lord and lady of this fair domain
might fitly dwell, and come forth each morning to en-
joy as sweet a life as their happiest dreams of the past
night could have depicted. All this he saw, but his
first glance had taken in too wide a sweep, and it was
not till his eyes fell almost directly beneath him, that
Donatello beheld Miriam just turning into the path
that led across the roots of his very tree.
He descended among the foliage, waiting for her to
come close to the trunk, and then suddenly dropped
from an impending bough, and alighted at her side.
It was as if the swaying of the branches had let a
ray of sunlight through. The same ray likewise glim-
mered among the gloomy meditations that encom-
passed Miriam, and lit up the pale, dark beauty of
her face, while it responded pleasantly to Donatello’s
glance.
96 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
“7 hardly know,” said she, smiling, “ whether you
have sprouted out of the earth, or fallen from the
clouds. In either case you are welcome.”
And they walked onward together.
CHAPTER IX.
THE FAUN AND NYMPH.
Mrriam’s sadder mood, it might be, had at first an
effect on Donatello’s spirits. It checked the joyous
ebullition into which they would otherwise have effer-
vesced when he found himself in her society, not, as
‘heretofore, in the old gloom of Rome, but under that
bright soft sky and in those Arcadian woods. He
was silent for a while ; it being, indeed, seldom Dona-
tello’s impulse to express himself copiously in words.
His usual modes of demonstration were by the natural
language of gesture, the instinctive movement of his
agile frame, and the unconscious play of his features,
which, within a limited range of thought and emotion,
would speak volumes in a moment.
By and by, his own mood seemed to brighten Mir-
iam’s, and was reflected back upon himself. He be-
gan inevitably, as it were, to dance along the wood-
path, flinging himself into attitudes of strange comic
grace. Often, too, he ran a little way in advance of
his companion, and then stood to watch her as she ap-
proached along the shadowy and sun-fleckered path.
With every step she took, he expressed his joy at her
nearer and nearer presence by what might be thought
an extravagance of gesticulation, but which doubtless
was the language of the natural man, though laid aside
and forgotten by other men, now that words have been
feebly substituted in the place of signs and symbols.
VOL. VI.
98 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
He gave Miriam the idea of a being not precisely man,
nor yet a child, but, in a high and beautiful sense, an
animal, —a creature in a state of development less
than what mankind has attained, yet the more perfect
within itself for that very deficiency. This idea filled
her mobile imagination with agreeable fantasies, which,
after smiling at them herself, she tried to convey to
the young man.
“What are you, my friend?” she exclaimed, always
keeping in mind his singular resemblance to the Faun
of the Capitol. “If you are, in good truth, that wild
and pleasant creature whose face you wear, pray make
me known to your kindred. They will be found here- »
abouts, if anywhere. Knock at the rough rind of this
ilex-tree, and summon forth the Dryad! Ask the
water-nymph to rise dripping from yonder fountain,
and exchange a moist pressure of the hand with me!
Do not fear that I shall shrink, even if one of your
rough cousins, a hairy Satyr, should come capering on
his goat-legs out of the haunts of far antiquity, and
propose to dance with me among these lawns! And
will not Bacchus, — with whom you consorted so fa-
miliarly of old, and who loved you so well,— will he
not meet us here, and squeeze rich grapes into his cup
for you and me?”
Donatello smiled; he laughed heartily, indeed, in
sympathy with the mirth that gleamed out of Miriam’s
deep, dark eyes. But he did not seem quite to under-
stand her mirthful talk, nor to be disposed to explain
what kind of creature he was, or to inquire with what
divine or poetic kindred his companion feigned to link
him. He appeared only to know that Miriam was
beautiful, and that she smiled graciously upon him;
that the present moment was very sweet, and himself
THE FAUN AND NYMPH. 99
most happy, with the sunshine, the sylvan scenery,
and woman’s kindly charm, which it enclosed within
its small circumference. It was delightful to see the
trust which he reposed in Miriam, and _ his pure joy in
her propinquity ; he asked nothing, sought nothing,
save to be near the beloved object, and brimmed over
with ecstasy at that simple boon. A creature of the
happy tribes below us sometimes shows the capacity
of this enjoyment ; a man, seldom or never.
“ Donatello,” said Miriam, looking at him thought-
fully, but amused, yet not without a shade of sorrow,
“you seem very happy ; what makes you so?”
“ Because I love you!” answered Donatello.
He made this momentous confession as if it were
the most natural thing in the world ; and on her part,
—such was the contagion of his simplicity, — Miriam
heard it without anger or disturbance, though with no
responding emotion. It was as if they had strayed
across the limits of Arcadia, and come under a civil
polity where young men might avow their passion
with as little restraint as a bird pipes its note to a
similar purpose.
“ Why should you love me, foolish boy ?” said she.
“We have no points of sympathy at all. There are
not two creatures more unlike, in this wide world, than
you and [!”
“You are yourself, and I am Donatello,” replied
he. “Therefore I love you! There needs no other
reason.”
Certainly, there was no better or more explicable
reason. It might have been imagined that Donatello’s
unsophisticated heart would be more readily attracted
to a feminine nature of clear simplicity like his own,
than to one already turbid with grief or wrong, as
100 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
Miriam’s seemed to be. Perhaps, on the other hand,
his character needed the dark element, which it found
in her. The force and energy of will, that sometimes
flashed through her eyes, may have taken him captive;
or, not improbably, the varying lights and shadows of
her temper, now so mirthful, and anon so sad with
mysterious gloom, had bewitched the youth. Analyze
the matter as we may, the reason assigned by Dona-
tello himself was as satisfactory as we are likely to at-
tain.
Miriam could not think seriously of the avowal that
had passed. He held out his love so freely, in his
open palm, that she felt it could be nothing but a toy,
which she might play with for an instant, and give
back again. And yet Donatello’s heart was so fresh
a fountain, that, had Miriam been more world-worn
than she was, she might have found it exquisite to
slake her thirst with the feelings that welled up and
brimmed over from it. She was far, very far, from
the dusty medieval epoch, when some women have a
taste for such refreshment. Even for her, however,
there was an inexpressible charm in the simplicity
that prompted Donatello’s words and deeds; though,
unless she caught them in precisely the true light,
they seemed but folly, the offspring of a maimed or
imperfectly developed intellect. Alternately, she al-
most admired, or wholly scorned him, and knew not
which estimate resulted from the deeper appreciation.
But it could not, she decided for herself, be other than
an innocent pastime, if they two —sure to be sepa-
rated by their different paths in life, to-morrow — were
to gather up some of the little pleasures that chanced
to grow about their feet, like the violets and wood-
anemones, to-day.
THE FAUN AND NYMPH. 101
Yet an impulse of rectitude impelled Miriam to
give him what she still held to be a needless warning
against an imaginary peril.
“If you were wiser, Donatello, you would think me
a dangerous person,” said she. “If you follow my
footsteps, they will lead you to no good. You ought
to be afraid of me.”
“T would as soon think of fearing the air we
breathe,” he replied.
“And well you may, for it is full of malaria,” said
Miriam ; she went on, hinting at an intangible confes-
sion, such as persons with overburdened hearts often
make to children or dumb animals, or to holes in the
earth, where they think their secrets may be at once
revealed and buried. “Those who come too near me
are in danger of great mischiefs, I do assure you.
Take warning, therefore! It is a sad fatality that
has brought you from your home among the Apen-
nines, — some rusty old castle, I suppose, with a vil-
lage at its foot, and ‘an Arcadian environment of vine-
yards, fig-trees, and olive-orchards, —a sad mischance,
I say, that has transported you to my side. You have
had a happy life hitherto, — have you not, Dona-
tello?”
“Oh, yes,” answered the young man; and, though
not of a retrospective turn, he made the best effort he
could to send his mind back into the past. “I re-
member thinking it happiness to dance with the con-
tadinas at a village feast; to taste the new, sweet wine
at vintage-time, and the old, ripened wine, which our
podere is famous for, in the cold winter evenings; and
to devour great, luscious figs, and apricots, peaches,
cherries, and melons. I was often happy in the woods,
too, with hounds and horses, and very happy in watch-
102 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
ing all sorts of creatures and birds that haunt the
leafy solitudes. But never half so happy as now!”
“Tn these delightful groves?” she asked.
“‘ Here, and with you,” answered Donatello. “Just
as we are now.”
‘“ What a fulness of content in him! How silly,
and how delightful!” said Miriam to herself. Then
addressing him again: ‘“ But, Donatello, how long
will this happiness last? ”
“ How long!” he exclaimed ; for it perplexed him
even more to think of the future than to remember
the past. ‘Why should it have any end? How long!
Forever! forever! forever !”
“The child! the simpleton!” said Miriam, with
sudden laughter, and checking it as suddenly. “ But
is he a simpleton indeed? Here, in those few natural
words, he has expressed that deep sense, that profound
conviction of its own immortality, which genuine love
never fails to bring. He perplexes me, — yes, and
bewitches me, — wild, gentle, beautiful creature that
he is! It is like playing with a young greyhound! ”
Her eyes filled with tears, at the same time that a
smile shone out of them. Then first she became sen-
sible of a delight and grief at once, in feeling this
zephyr of a new affection, with its untainted freshness,
blow over her weary, stifled heart, which had no right
to be revived by it. The very exquisiteness of the en-
joyment made her know that it ought to be a forbid-
den one. |
“ Donatello,” she hastily exclaimed, “ for your own
sake, leave me! It is not such a happy thing as you
imagine it, to wander in these woods with me, a girl
from another land, burdened with a doom that she
tells to none. I might make you dread me, — per
THE FAUN AND NYMPH. 103
haps hate me, —if I chose; and I must choose, if I
find you loving me too well!”
“| fear nothing!” said Donatello, looking into her
unfathomable eyes with perfect trust. “I love al-
ways!”
“T speak in vain,” thought Miriam within herself.
‘Well, then, for this one hour, let me be such as
he imagines me. To-morrow will be time enough to
come back to my reality. My reality! what is it? Is
the past so indestructible? the future so immitigable ?
Is the dark dream, in which I walk, of such solid,
stony substance, that there can be no escape out of its
dungeon? Be itso! There is, at least, that ethereal
quality in my spirit, that it can make me as gay as
Donatello himself, — for this one hour?”
And immediately she brightened up, as if an inward
flame, heretofore stifled, were now permitted to fill her
with its happy lustre, glowing through her cheeks and
dancing in her eye-beams.
Donatello, brisk and cheerful as he seemed before,
showed a sensibility to Miriam’s gladdened mood by
breaking into still wilder and ever-varying activity.
He frisked around her, bubbling over with joy, which
clothed itself in words that had little individual mean-
ing, and in snatches of song that seemed as natural as
bird-notes. Then they both laughed together, and
heard their own laughter returning in the echoes,
and laughed again at the response, so that the ancient
and solemn grove became full of merriment for these
two blithe spirits. A bird happening to sing cheerily,
Donatello gave a peculiar call, and the little feathered
creature came fluttering about his head, as if it had
known him through many summers.
“¢ How close he stands to nature!” said Miriam, ob
104 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
serving this pleasant familiarity between her compan-
ion and the bird. ‘“ He shall make me as natural as
himself for this one hour.”
As they strayed through that sweet wilderness, she
felt more and more the influence of his elastic tem-
perament. Miriam was an impressible and impulsive
creature, as unlike herself, in different moods, as if a
melancholy maiden and a glad one were both bound
within the girdle about her waist, and kept in magic
thraldom by the brooch that clasped it. Naturally, it
is true, she was the more inclined to melancholy, yet
fully capable of that high frolic of the spirits which
richly compensates for many gloomy hours; if her
soul was apt to lurk in the darkness of a cavern, she
could sport madly in the sunshine before the cavern’s
mouth. Except the freshest mirth of animal spirits,
like Donatello’s, there is no merriment, no wild ex-
hilaration, comparable to that of melancholy people
escaping from the dark region in which it is their cus
tom to keep themselves imprisoned.
So the shadowy Miriam almost outdid Donatello on
his own ground. They ran races with each other, side
by side, with shouts and laughter; they pelted one
another with early flowers, and gathering them up
twined them with green leaves into garlands for both
their heads. They played together like children, or
creatures of immortal youth. So much had they flung
aside the sombre habitudes of daily life, that they
seemed born to be sportive forever, and endowed with
eternal mirthfulness instead of any deeper joy. It
was a glimpse far backward into Arcadian life, or,
further still, into the Golden Age, before mankind
was burdened with sin and sorrow, and before pleas.
ure had been darkened with those shadows that bring
it into high relief, and make it happiness.
THE FAUN AND NYMPH. 105
“ Hark!” cried Donatello, stopping short, as he
was about to bind Miriam’s fair hands with flowers,
and lead her along in triumph, “ there is music some-
where in the grove!”
“Tt is your kinsman, Pan, most likely,” said Mir-
iam, “ playing on his pipe. Let us go seek him, and
make him puff out his rough cheeks and pive his mer
riest air! Come; the strain of music will guide us
onward like a gayly colored thread of silk.”
“Or like a chain of flowers,” responded Donatello,
drawing her along by that which he had twined.
“This way ! —Come!”
CHAPTER X.
THE SYLVAN DANCE.
As the music came fresher on their ears, they
danced to its cadence, extemporizing new steps and
attitudes. Each varying movement had a grace which
might have been worth putting into marble, for the
long delight of days to come, but vanished with the
movement that gave it birth, and was effaced from
memory by another. In Miriam’s motion, freely as
she flung herself into the frolic of the hour, there was
still an artful beauty; in Donatello’s, there was a
charm of indescribable grotesqueness hand in hand
with grace; sweet, bewitching, most provocative of
laughter, and yet akin to pathos, so deeply did it
touch the heart. This was the ultimate peculiarity,
the final touch, distinguishing between the sylvan
creature and the beautiful companion at his side.
Setting apart only this, Miriam resembled a Nymph,
as much as Donatello did a Faun.
There were flitting moments, indeed, when she
played the sylvan character as perfectly as he. Catch-
ing glimpses of her, then, you would have fancied that
an oak had sundered its rough bark to let her dance
freely forth, endowed with the same spirit in her hu-
man form as that which rustles in the leaves; or that
she had emerged through the pebbly bottom of a foun-
tain, a water-nymph, to play and sparkle in the sum
THE SYLVAN DANCE. 107
shine, flinging a quivering light around her, ard sud-
denly disappearing in a shower of rainbow drops.
As the fountain sometimes subsides into its basin,
so in Miriam there were symptoms that the frolic of
her spirits would at last tire itself out.
“Ah! Donatello,” cried she, laughing, as she
stopped to take breath ; “ you have an unfair advan-
tage over me! I am no true creature of the woods
while you are a real Faun, I do believe. When your
curls shook just now, methought I had a peep at the
_ pointed ears.”
Donatello snapped his fingers above his head, as
-fauns and satyrs taught us first to do, and seemed to
radiate jollity out of his whole nimble person. Never-
theless, there was a kind of dim apprehension in his
face, as if he dreaded that a moment’s pause might
break the spell, and snatch away the sportive compan-
ion whom he had waited for through so many dreary
months.
“Dance! dance!” cried he, joyously. “If we
take breath, we shall be as we were yesterday. There,
now, is the music, just beyond this clump of trees.
Dance, Miriam, dance!”
They had now reached an open, grassy glade (of
which there are many in that artfully constructed wil-
derness), set round with stone seats, on which the
aged moss had kindly essayed to spread itself instead
of cushions. On one of the stone benches sat the
musicians, whose strains had enticed our wild couple
thitherward. They proved to be a vagrant band, such
as Rome, and all Italy, abounds with; comprising a
harp, a flute, and a violin, which, though greatly the
worse for wear, the performers had skill enough to pro-
voke and modulate into tolerable harmony. It chanced
108 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
to be A feast-day; and, instead of playing in the sun-
scorched piazzas of the city, or beneath the windows of
some unresponsive palace, they had bethought them-
selves to try the echoes of these woods; for, on the
festas of the Church, Rome scatters its merry-makers
all abroad, ripe for the dance or any other pastime.
As Miriam and Donatello emerged from among the
trees, the musicians scraped, tinkled, or blew, each ac-
cording to his various kind of instrument, more in-
spiringly than ever. A dark-cheeked little girl, with
bright black eyes, stood by, shaking a tambourine set
round with tinkling bells, and thumping it on its
parchment head. Without interrupting his brisk,
though measured movement, Donatello snatched away
this unmelodious contrivance, and flourishing it above
his head, produced music of indescribable potency,
still dancing with frisky step, and striking the tam-
bourine, and ringing its little bells, all in one jovial
act.
It might be that there was magic in the sound, or
contagion, at least, in the spirit which had got posses-
sion of Miriam and himself, for very soon a number of
festal people were drawn to the spot, and struck into
the dance, singly, or in pairs, as if they were all gone
mad with jollity. Among them were some of the
plebeian damsels whom we meet bareheaded in the
Roman streets, with silver stilettos thrust through
their glossy hair; the contadinas, too, from the Cam-
pagna and the villages, with their rich and picturesque
costumes of scarlet and all bright hues, such as fairer
maidens might not venture to put on. Then came the
modern Roman from Trastevere, perchance, with his
old cloak drawn about him like a toga, which anon, as
his active motion heated him, he flung aside. Three
THE SYLVAN DANCE. 109
French soldiers capered freely into the throng, in wide
scarlet trousers, their short swords dangling at their
sides ; and three German artists in gray flaccid hats
and flaunting beards; and one of the Pope’s Swiss
guardsmen in the strange motley garb which Michael
Angelo contrived for them. Two young English tour-
ists (one of them a lord) took contadine partners and
dashed in, as did also a shaggy man in goat - skin
breeches, who looked like rustic Pan in person, and
footed it as merrily as he. Besides the above there
was a herdsman or two from the Campagna, and a
few peasants in sky-blue jackets, and small-clothes
tied with ribbons at the knees; haggard and sallow
were these last, poor serfs, having little to eat and
nothing but the malaria to breathe ; but still they
plucked up a momentary spirit and joined hands in
Donatello’s dance.
Here, as it seemed, had the Golden Age come back
again within the precincts of this sunny glade, thaw-
ing mankind out of their cold formalities, releasing
them from irksome restraint, mingling them together
in such childlike gayety that new flowers (of which
the old bosom of the earth is full) sprang up beneath
their footsteps. The sole exception to the geniality
of the moment, as we have understood, was seen in a
countryman of our own, who sneered at the spectacle,
and declined to compromise his dignity by making
part of it.
The harper thrummed with rapid fingers ; the vio-
lin-player flashed his bow back and forth across the
strings ; the flautist poured his breath in quick puffs
of jollity, while Donatello shook the tambourine above
his head, and led the merry throng with unweariable
steps. As they followed one another in a wild ring
110 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
of mirth, it seemed the realization of one of those bas-
reliefs where a dance of nymphs, satyrs, or bacchanals
is twined around the circle of an antique vase ; or it
was like the sculptured scene on the front and sides
of a sarcophagus, where, as often as any other device,
a festive procession mocks the ashes and white bones
that are treasured up within. You might take it for
a marriage-pageant ; but after a while, if you look at
these merry-makers, following them from end to end
of the marble coffin, you doubt whether their gay
movement is leading them to a happy close. A youth
has suddenly fallen in the dance; a chariot is over-
turned and broken, flinging the charioteer headlong
to the ground; a maiden seems to have grown faint
or weary and is drooping on the bosom of a friend.
Always some tragic incident is shadowed forth or
thrust sidelong into the spectacle ; and when once it
has caught your eye you can look no more at the fes-
tal portions of the scene, except with reference to this
one slightly suggested doom and sorrow.
As in its mirth, so in the darker characteristic here
alluded to, there was an analogy between the sculp-
tured scene on the sarcophagus and the wild dance
which we have been describing. In the midst of its
madness and riot Miriam found herself suddenly con-
fronted by a strange figure that shook its fantastic
carments in the air, and pranced before her on its tip-
toes, almost vying with the agility of Donatello him-
self. It was the model.
A moment afterwards Donatello was aware that she
had retired from the dance. He hastened towards
her, and flung himself on the grass beside the stone
bench on which Miriam was sitting. But a strange
distance and unapproachableness had all at once en-
THE SYLVAN DANCE. 111
veloped her; and though he saw her within reach of
his arm, yet the light of her eyes seemed as far off as
that of a star, nor was there any warmth in the mel-
ancholy smile with which she regarded him.
“ Come back!” cried he. “ Why should this happy
hour end so soon ?”
“It must end here, Donatello,” said she, in answer
to his words and outstretched hand ; “ and such hours,
I believe, do not often repeat themselves in a lifetime.
Let me go, my friend ; let me vanish from you quietly
among the shadows of these trees. See, the compan-
ions of our pastime are vanishing already!”
Whether it was that the harp-strings were broken,
the violin out of tune, or the flautist out of breath, so
it chanced that the music had ceased, and the dancers
come abruptly to a pause. All that motley throng of
rioters was dissolved as suddenly as it had been drawn
together. In Miriam’s remembrance the scene had a,
character of fantasy. It was as if a company of satyrs,
fauns, and nymphs, with Pan in the midst of them,
had been disporting themselves in these venerable
woods only a moment ago; and now in another mo-
ment, because some profane eye had looked at them
too closely, or some intruder had cast a shadow on
their mirth, the sylvan pageant had utterly disap-
peared. If a few of the merry-makers lingered among
the trees, they had hidden their racy peculiarities un-
der the garb and aspect of ordinary people, and shel-
tered themselves in the weary commonplace of daily
life. Just an instant before it was Arcadia and the
Golden Age. The spell being broken, it was now
only that old tract of pleasure-ground, close by the
people’s gate of Rome,—a tract where the crimes
and calamities of ages, the many battles, blood reck-
ne be ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
lessly poured out, and deaths of myriads, have cor-
rupted all the soil, creating an influence that makes
the air deadly to human lungs. |
‘You must leave me,” said Miriam to Donatello,
more imperatively than before; “ have I not said it?
Go; and look not behind you.”
“Miriam,” whispered Donatello, grasping her hand.
forcibly, “who is it that stands in the shadow yonder,
beckoning you to follow him ?”
“Hush; leave me!” repeated Miriam. ‘“ Your
hour is past ; his hour has come.”
Donatello still gazed in the direction which he had
indicated, and the expression of his face was fearfully
changed, being so disordered, perhaps with terror, —
at all events with anger and invincible repugnance, —
that Miriam hardly knew him. His lips were drawn
apart so as to disclose his set teeth, thus giving him
a look of animal rage, which we seldom see except in
persons of the simplest and rudest natures. A shudder
seemed to pass through his very bones.
“‘T hate him!” muttered he.
“ Be satisfied ; I hate him too! ” said Miriam.
She had no thought of making this avowal, but was
irresistibly drawn to it by the sympathy of the dark
emotion in her own breast with that so strongly ex-
pressed by Donatello. Two drops of water or of blood
do not more naturally flow into each other than did
her hatred into his.
“Shall I clutch him by the throat?” whispered
Donatello, with a savage scowl. ‘“ Bid me do so, and
we are rid of him forever.”
“In Heaven’s name, no violence!” exclaimed Mir
iam, affrighted out of the scornful control which she
had. hitherto held over her companion, by the fierce:
THE SYLVAN DANCE. 113
ness that he so suddenly developed. “Oh, have pity
on me, Donatello, if for nothing else, yet because in
the midst of my wretchedness I let myself be your
playmate for this one wild hour! Follow me no
farther. Henceforth, leave me to my doom. Dear
friend, — kind, simple, loving friend, — make me not
more wretched by the remembrance of having thrown
fierce hates or loves into the wellspring of your happy
life!”
“ Not follow you!” repeated Donatello, soothed from
anger into sorrow, less by the purport of what she said,
than by the melancholy sweetness of her voice, — “ not
follow you! What other path have I?”
“ We will talk of it once again,” said Miriam, still
soothingly ; “soon — to-morrow — when you will ; only
leave me now.”
VOL. VL
CHAPTER XI.
FRAGMENTARY SENTENCES.
In the Borghese Grove, so recently uproarious with
merriment and music, there remained only Miriam and
her strange follower.
A solitude had suddenly spread itself around them.
It perhaps symbolized a peculiar character in the re-
lation of these two, insulating them, and building up
an insuperable barrier between their life-streams and
other currents, which might seem to flow in close
vicinity. For it is one of the chief earthly incommod-
ities of some species of misfortune, or of a great
crime, that it makes the actor in the one, or the suf-
ferer of the other, an alien in the world, by interpos-
ing a wholly unsympathetic medium betwixt himself
and those whom he yearns to meet.
Owing, it may be, to this moral estrangement, —
this chill remoteness of their position, — there have
come to us but a few vague whisperings of what passed
in Miriam’s interview that afternoon with the sinister ©
personage who had dogged her footsteps ever since the
visit to the catacomb. In weaving these mystic utter-
ances into a continuous scene, we undertake a task re-
sembling in its perplexity that of gathering up and
piecing together the fragments of a letter which has
been torn and scattered to the winds. Many words of
deep significance, many entire sentences, and those
possibly the most important ones, have flown too far
FRAGMENTARY SENTENCES. 115
on the winged breeze to be recovered. If we insert
our own conjectural amendments, we perhaps give a
purport utterly at variance with the true one. Yet
unless we attempt something in this way, there must
remain an unsightly gap, and a lack of continuousness
and dependence in our narrative; so that it would
' arrive at certain inevitable catastrophes without due
warning of their imminence.
Of so much we are sure, that there seemed to be a)
sadly mysterious fascination in the influence of this ill-
omened person over Miriam; it was such as beasts and
reptiles of subtle and evil nature sometimes exercise
upon their victims. Marvellous it was to see the hope-
lessness with which — being naturally of so courageous
a spirit — she resigned herself to the thraldom in which
he held her. That iron chain, of which some of the
massive links were round her feminine waist, and the
others in his ruthless hand, — or which, perhaps, bound
the pair together by a bond equally torturing to each,
—must have been forged in some such unhallowed
furnace as is only kindled by evil passions and fed by
evil deeds.
Yet, let us trust, there may have been no crime in
Miriam, but only one of those fatalities which are
among the most insoluble riddles propounded to mor-
tal comprehension ; the fatal decree by which every
crime is made to be the agony of many innocent per-
sons, as well as of the single guilty one.
It was, at any rate, but a feeble and despairing kind
of remonstrance which she had now the energy to op-
pose against his persecution.
“ You follow me too closely,” she said, in low, falter-
ing accents ; “ you allow me too scanty room to draw
my breath. Do you know what will be the end of
this?”
116 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
‘‘T know well what must be the end,” he replied.
“‘ Tell me, then,” said Miriam, “that I may com-
pare your foreboding with my own. Mine is a very
dark one.”
‘There can be but one result, and that soon,” an-
swered the model. ‘* You must throw off your present
mask and assume another. You must vanish out of
the scene: quit Rome with me, and leave no trace
whereby to follow you. It is in my power, as you well
know, to compel your acquiescence in my bidding.
You are aware of the penalty of a refusal.”
“Not that penalty with which you would terrify
me,” said Miriam; “another there may be, but not so
grievous.”
‘‘ What is that other?” he inquired.
“Death! simply death!” she answered.
“ Death,” said her persecutor, “is not so simple and
opportune a thing as you imagine. You are strong
and warm with life. Sensitive and irritable as your
spirit is, these many months of trouble, this latter
thraldom in which I hold you, have scarcely made
your cheek paler than I saw it in your girlhood. Mir-
iam, — for I forbear to speak another name, at which
these leaves would shiver above our heads, — Miriam,
you cannot die !”’
“ Might not a dagger find my heart?” said she, for
the first time meeting his eyes. ‘‘ Would not poison
make an end of me? Will not the Tiber drown me?”
“Tt might,’ he answered; “for I allow that you
are mortal. But, Miriam, believe me, it is not your
fate to die while there remains so much to be sinned
and suffered in the world. We have a destiny which
we must needs fulfil together. I, too, have struggled
to escape it. I was as anxious as yourself to break the
FRAGMENTARY SENTENCES. 117
tie between us, — to bury the past in a fathomless
grave, — to make it impossible that we should ever
meet, until you confront me at the bar of Judgment!
You little can imagine what steps I took to render all
this secure; and what was the result? Our strange
interview in the bowels of the earth convinced me of
the futility of my design.”
“ Ah, fatal chance!” cried Miriam, covering her
face with her hands.
“Yes, your-heart trembled with horror when you
recognized me,” rejoined he; “ but you did not guess
that there was an equal horror in my own!”
“Why would not the weight of earth above our
heads have crumbled down upon us both, forcing us
apart, but burying us equally?” cried Miriam, in a
burst of vehement passion. ‘“ Oh, that we could have
wandered in those dismal passages till we both per-
ished, taking opposite paths in the darkness, so that
when we lay down to die our last breaths might not
mingle !”
‘‘ It were vain to wish it,” said the model. “In all
that labyrinth of midnight paths, we should have found
one another out to live or die together. Our fates
cross and are entangled. The threads are twisted into
a strong cord, which is dragging us to an evil doom.
Could the knots be severed, we might escape. But
neither can your slender fingers untie these knots, nor
my masculine force break them. We must submit! ”
“ Pray for rescue, as I have,” exclaimed Miriam.
“ Pray for deliverance from me, since I am your evil
genius, as you mine. Dark as your life has been, I
have known you to pray in times past!”
At these words of Miriam, a tremor and horror ap-
peared to seize upon her persecutor, insomuch that he
118 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
shook and grew ashy pale before her eyes. In this
man’s memory, there was something that made it aw-
ful for him to think of prayer; nor would any torture
be more intolerable than to be reminded of such divine
comfort and succor as await pious souls merely for the
asking. This torment was perhaps the token of a na-
tive temperament deeply susceptible of religious 1m-
pressions, but which had been wronged, violated, and
debased, until, at length, it was capable only of terror
from the sources that were intended for our purest
and loftiest consolation. He looked so fearfully at
her, and with such intense pain struggling in his eyes,
that Miriam felt pity.
And, now, all at once, it struck her that he might
be mad. It was an idea that had never before seri-
ously occurred to her mind, although, as soon as sug-
gested, it fitted marvellously into many circumstances
that lay within her knowledge. But, alas! such was
her evil fortune, that, whether mad or no, his power
over her remained the same, and was likely to be used
only the more tyrannously, if exercised by a lunatic.
“T would not give you pain,” she said, soothingly ;
“your faith allows you the consolations of penance
and absolution. Try what help there may be in these,
and leave me to myself.”
“Do not think it, Miriam,” said he; “ we are bound
together, and can never part again.”
“ Why should it seem so impossible?” she rejoined.
“ Think how I had escaped from all the past! I had
made for myself a new sphere, and found new friends,
new occupations, new hopes and enjoyments. My
heart, methinks, was almost as unburdened as if there
had been no miserable life behind me. The human
spirit does not perish of a single wound, nor exhaust
FRAGMENTARY SENTENCES. 119
itself in a single trial of life. Let us but keep asun-
der, and all may go well for both.”
“We fancied ourselves forever sundered,” he re-
plied. “ Yet we met once, in the bowels of the earth ;
and, were we to part now, our fates would fling us
together again in a desert, on a mountain-top, or in
whatever spot seemed safest. You speak in vain,
therefore.”
“You mistake your own will for an iron necessity,”
said Miriam ; “ otherwise, you might have suffered me
to glide past you like a ghost, when we met among
those ghosts of ancient days. Even now you might
bid me pass as freely.”
“Never!” said he, with unmitigable will; « your
reappearance has destroyed the work of years. You
know the power that I have over you. Obey my bid-
ding ; or, within a short time, it shall be exercised :
nor will I cease to haunt you till the moment comes.”
“Then,” said Miriam, more calmly, “I foresee the
end, and have already warned you of it. It will be
death !”
“Your own death, Miriam, — or mine?” he asked,
looking fixedly at her.
“Do you imagine me a murderess?” said she,
shuddering ; “ you, at least, have no right to think me
so!”
“Yet,” rejoined he, with a glance of dark meaning,
“men have said that this white hand had once a crim-
son stain.” He took her hand as he spoke, and held
it in his own, in spite of the repugnance, amounting
to nothing short of agony, with which she struggled to
regain it. Holding it up to the fading light (for there
was already dimness among the trees), he appeared
to examine it closely, as if to discover the imaginary
120 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
blood-stain with which he taunted her. He smiled as
he let it go. “It looks very white,” said he; “ but 1
have known hands as white, which all the water in the
ocean would not have washed clean.”
“Tt had no stain,” retorted Miriam, bitterly, “ until
you grasped it in your own.”
The wind has blown away whatever else they may
have spoken.
They went together towards the town, and, on their
way, continued to make reference, no doubt, to some
strange and dreadful history of their former life, be-
longing equally to this dark man and to the fair and
youthful woman whom he persecuted. In their words,
or in the breath that uttered them, there seemed to
be an odor of guilt, and a scent of blood. Yet, how
can we imagine that a stain of ensanguined crime
should attach to Miriam! Or how, on the other hand,
should spotless innocence be subjected to a thraldom
like that which she endured from the spectre, whom
she herself had evoked out of the darkness! Be this
as it might, Miriam, we have reason to believe, still
continued to beseech him, humbly, passionately, wildly,
only to go his way, and leave her free to follow her
own sad path.
Thus they strayed onward through the green wil-
derness of the Borghese grounds, and soon came near
the city wall, where, had Miriam raised her eyes, she
might have seen Hilda and the sculptor leaning on
the parapet. But she walked in a mist of trouble, and
could distinguish little beyond its limits. As they
came within public observation, her persecutor fell be-
hind, throwing off the imperious manner which he had
assumed during their solitary interview. The Porta
del Popolo swarmed with life. The merry-makers, who
FRAGMENTARY SENTENCES 121
had spent the feast-day outside the walls, were now
thronging in; a party of horsemen were entering be-
neath the arch; a travelling-carriage had been drawn
up Just within the verge, and was passing through the
villanous ordeal of the papal custom-house. In the
broad piazza, too, there was a motley crowd.
But the stream of Miriam’s trouble kept its way
through this flood of human life, and neither mingled
with it nor was turned aside. With a sad kind of
feminine ingenuity, she found a way to kneel before
her tyrant undetected, though in full sight of all the
people, still beseeching him for freedom, and in vain,
CHAPTER XII.
A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN.
Hitpa, after giving the last touches to the picture
of Beatrice Cenci, had flown down from her dove-cote,
late in the afternoon, and gone to the Pincian Hill, in
the hope of hearing a strain or two of exhilarating
music. There, as it happened, she met the sculptor;
for, to say the truth, Kenyon had well noted the fair
artist’s ordinary way of life, and was accustomed to
shape his own movements, so as to bring him often
within her sphere.
The Pincian Hill is the favorite promenade of the
Roman aristocracy. At the present day, however, like
most other Roman possessions, it belongs less to the
native inhabitants than to the barbarians from Gaul,
Great Britain, and beyond the sea, who have estab-
lished a peaceful usurpation over whatever is enjoya-
ble or memorable in the Eternal City. These foreign
guests are indeed ungrateful, if they do not breathe a
prayer for Pope Clement, or whatever Holy Father it
may have been, who levelled the summit of the mount
so skilfully, and bounded it with the parapet of the
city wall; who laid out those broad walks and drives,
and overhung them with the deepening shade of many
kinds of tree; who scattered the flowers of all seasons,
and of every clime, abundantly over those green, cen-
tral lawns; who scooped out hollows, in fit places,
and, setting great basins of marble in them, caused
A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN. 128
ever-gushing fountains to fill them to the brim; who
reared up the immemorial obelisk out of the soil that
had long hidden it; who placed pedestals along the
borders of the avenues, and crowned them with busts
of that multitude of worthies — statesmen, heroes, art-
ists, men of letters and of song — whom the whole
world claims as its chief ornaments, though Italy pro-
duced them all. In a word, the Pincian garden is
one of the things that reconcile the stranger (since he
fully appreciates the enjoyment, and feels nothing of
the cost) to the rule of an irresponsible dynasty of
Holy Fathers, who seem to have aimed at making life
as agreeable an affair as it can well be.
In this pleasant spot, the red-trousered French sol-
diers are always to be seen; bearded and grizzled vet-
erans, perhaps with medals of Algiers or the Crimea
on their breasts. To them is assigned the peaceful
duty of seeing that children do not trample on the
flower-beds, nor any youthful lover rifle them of their
fragrant blossoms to stick in the beloved one’s hair.
Here sits (drooping upon some marble bench, in the
treacherous sunshine) the consumptive girl, whose
friends have brought her, for cure, to a climate that
instils poison into its very purest breath. Here, all
day, come nursery-maids, burdened with rosy English
babies, or guiding the footsteps of little travellers from
the far Western world. Here, in the sunny after-
noons, roll and rumble all kinds of equipages, from the
cardinal’s old-fashioned and gorgeous purple carriage
to the gay barouche of modern date. Here horsemen
gallop on thoroughbred steeds. Here, in short, all the
transitory population of Rome, the world’s great wa-
tering-place, rides, drives, or promenades! Here are
beautiful sunsets; and here, whichever way you turn
124 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENTI.
your eyes, are scenes as well worth gazing at, both in
themselves and for their historic interest, as any that
the sun ever rose and set upon. Here, too, on certain
afternoons of the week, a French military band flings
out rich music over the poor old city, floating her with
strains as loud as those of her own echoless triumphs.
Hilda and the sculptor (by the contrivance of the
latter, who loved best to be alone with his young
country-woman) had wandered beyond the throng of
promenaders, whom they left in a dense cluster around
the music. They strayed, indeed, to the farthest
point of the Pincian Hill, and leaned over the para-
pet, looking down upon the Muro Torto, a massive
fragment of the oldest Roman wall, which juts over,
as if ready to tumble down by its own weight, yet
seems still the most indestructible piece of work that
men’s hands ever piled together. In the blue distance
rose Soracte, and other heights, which have gleamed
afar, to our imaginations, but look scarcely real to our
bodily eyes, because, being dreamed about so much,
they have taken the aerial tints which belong only to
a dream. These, nevertheless, are the solid frame-
work of hills that shut in Rome, and its wide sur-
rounding Campagna; no land of dreams, but the
broadest page of history, crowded so full with mem-
orable events that one obliterates another; as if Time
had crossed and recrossed his own records till they
grew illegible.
But, not to meddle with history, — with which our
narrative is no otherwise concerned, than that the
very dust of Rome is historic, and inevitably settles
on our page and mingles with our ink, — we will re-
turn to our two friends, who were still leaning over
the wall. Beneath them lay the broad sweep of the
A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN. 125
Borghese grounds, covered with trees, amid which ap-
peared the white gleam of pillars and statues, and
the flash of an upspringing fountain, all to be over:
shadowed at a later period of the year by the thicker
growth of foliage.
The advance of vegetation, in this softer climate, is
less abrupt than the inhabitant of the cold North is
accustomed to observe. Beginning earlier, — even in
February, — Spring is not compelled to burst into
Summer with such headlong haste; there is time to
dwell upon each opening beauty, and to enjoy the
budding leaf, the tender green, the sweet youth and
freshness of the year; it gives us its maiden charm,
before settling into the married Summer, which, again,
does not so soon sober itself into matronly Autumn.
In our own country, the virgin Spring hastens to its
bridal too abruptly. But, here, after a month or two
of kindly growth, the leaves of the young trees, which
cover that portion of the Borghese grounds nearest
the city wall, were still in their tender half-develop-
ment.
In the remoter depths, among the old groves of ilex-
trees, Hilda and Kenyon heard the faint sound of
music, laughter, and mingling voices. It was proba-
bly the uproar — spreading even so far as the walls
of Rome, and growing faded and melancholy in its
passage — of that wild sylvan merriment, which we
have already attempted to describe. By and by, it
ceased; although the two listeners still tried to dis-
tinguish it between the bursts of nearer music from
the military band. But there was no renewal of that
distant mirth. Soon afterwards, they saw a solitary
figure advancing along one of the paths that lead from
the obscurer part of the ground towards the gateway.
126 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
“ Look! is it not Donatello?” said Hilda.
“He it is, beyond a doubt,” replied the sculptor.
“But how gravely he walks, and with what long looks
behind him! He seems either very weary, or very
sad. I should not hesitate to call it sadness, if Dona-
tello were a creature capable of the sin and folly of
low spirits. In all these hundred paces, while we
have been watching him, he has not made one of those
little caprioles in the air which are characteristic of
his natural gait. I begin to doubt whether he is a
veritable Faun.”
“Then,” said Hilda, with perfect simplicity, “ you
have thought him —and do think him — one of that
strange, wild, happy race of creatures, that used to
laugh and sport in the woods, in the old, old times?
So do I, indeed! But I never quite believed, till
now, that fauns existed anywhere but in poetry.”
The sculptor at first merely smiled. Then, as the
idea took further possession of his mind, he laughed
outright, and wished from the bottom of his heart
(being in love with Hilda, though he had never told
her so) that he could have rewarded or punished her
for its pretty absurdity with a kiss. |
“QO Hilda, what a treasure of sweet faith and pure
imagination you hide under that little straw hat!”
cried he, at length. “A Faun! a Faun! Great Pan
is not dead, then, after all! The whole tribe of myth-
ical creatures yet live in the moonlit seclusion of a
young girl’s fancy, and find it a lovelier abode and
play-place, I doubt not, than their Arcadian haunts of
yore. What bliss, if a man of marble, like myself,
could stray thither, too!”
“Why do you laugh so?” asked Hilda, redden-
ing; for she was a little disturbed at Kenyon’s ridi
“<5 oan
A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN. 107
cule, however kindly expressed. “What can I have
said, that you think so very foolish ? ”
“Well, not foolish, then,” rejoined the sculptor,
“but wiser, it may be, than I can fathom. Really,
however, the idea does strike one as delightfully fresh,
when we consider Donatello’s position and external
environment. Why, my dear Hilda, he is a Tuscan
born, of an old noble race in that part of Italy; and
he has a moss-grown tower among the Apennines,
where he and his forefathers have dwelt, under their
own vines and fig-trees, from an unknown antiquity.
His boyish passion for Miriam has introduced him
familiarly to our little circle; and our republican and
artistic simplicity of intercourse has included this
young Italian, on the same terms as one of ourselves.
But, if we paid due respect to rank and title, we
should bend reverentially to Donatello, and saluie
him as his Excellency the Count di Monte Beni.”
“That is a droll idea, — much droller than his being
a Faun!” said Hilda, laughing in her turn. “This
does not quite satisfy me, however, especially as you
yourself recognized and acknowledged his wonderful
resemblance to the statue.”
“Except as regards the pointed ears,” said Ken-
yon; adding, aside, “and one other little peculiarity,
generally observable in the statues of fauns.”
“As for his Excellency the Count di Monte Beni’s
ears,” replied Hilda, smiling again at the dignity with
which this title invested their playful friend, “you
know we could never see their shape, on account of
his clustering curls. N ay, | remember, he once started
back, as shyly as a wild deer, when Miriam made a
pretense of examining them. How do you explain
that?”
128 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
“Oh, I certainly shall not contend against such a
weight of evidence; the fact of his faunship being
otherwise so probable,” answered the sculptor, still
hardly retaining his gravity. “Faun or not, Dona-
tello — or the Count di Monte Beni —1is a singularly
wild creature, and, as I have remarked on other occa-~
sions, though very gentle, does not love to be touched.
Speaking in no harsh sense, there is a great deal of
animal nature in him, as if he had been born in the
woods, and had run wild all his childhood, and were
as yet but imperfectly domesticated. Life, even in
our day, is very simple and unsophisticated in some of
the shaggy nooks of the Apennines.”
“Tt annoys me very much,” said Hilda, ‘ this ineli-
nation, which most people have, to explain away the
wonder and the mystery out of everything. Why
could not you allow me —and yourself, too — the sat-
isfaction of thinking him a Faun?”
“‘ Pray keep your belief, dear Hilda, if it makes you
any happier,” said the sculptor; “and I shall do my
best to become a convert. Donatello has asked me to
spend the summer with him, in his ancestral tower,
where I purpose investigating the pedigree of these
sylvan counts, his forefathers; and if their shadows
beckon me into dreamland, I shall willingly follow.
By the by, speaking of Donatello, there is a point on
\which I should like to be enlightened.”
“Can I help you, then?” said Hilda, in answer to
his look.
“Ts there the slightest chance of his winning Mir-
iam’s affections?” suggested Kenyon.
‘Miriam! she, so accomplished and gifted!” ex
claimed Hilda; “and he, a rude, uncultivated boy!
No, no, no!”
A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN. 129
“It would seem impossible,” said the sculptor.
“But, on the other hand, a gifted woman flings away
her affections so unaccountably, sometimes! Miriam,
of late, has been very morbid and miserable, as we
both know. Young as she is, the morning light seems
already to have faded out of her life ; and now comes
Donatello, with natural sunshine enough for himself
and her, and offers her the opportunity of making her
heart and life all new and cheery again. People of
high intellectual endowments do not require similar
ones in those they love. They are just the persons to
appreciate the wholesome gush of natural feeling, the
honest affection, the simple joy, the fulness of content-
ment with what he loves, which Miriam sees in Dona-
tello. True; she may call him a simpleton. It is a
necessity of the case ; for a man loses the capacity for
this kind of affection, in proportion as he cultivates
and refines himself.”
“Dear me!” said Hilda, drawing imperceptibly
away from her companion. “Is this the penalty of
refinement ? Pardon me; I do not believe it. It is
because you are a sculptor, that you think nothing can
be finely wrought except it be cold and hard, like the
marble in which your ideas take shape. I am a
paintér, and know that the most delicate beauty may
be softened and warmed throughout.”
“T said a foolish thing, indeed,” answered the sculp-
tor. “It surprises me, for I might have drawn a
wiser knowledge out of my own experience. It is the
surest test of genuine love, that it brings back our
early simplicity to the worldliest of us.”
Thus talking, they loitered slowly along beside the
parapet which borders the level summit of the Pincian
with its irregular sweep. At intervals they looked
VOL. VI.
130 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENTI.
through the lattice-work of their thoughts at the varied
prospects that lay before and beneath them.
From the terrace where they now stood there is an
abrupt descent towards the Piazza del Popolo; and
looking down into its broad space they beheld the tall
palatial edifices, the church-domes, and the ornamented
gateway, which grew and were consolidated out of the
thought of Michael Angelo. They saw, too, the red
granite obelisk, oldest of things, even in Rome, which
rises in the centre of the piazza, with a fourfold foun-
tain at its base. All Roman works and ruins (whether
of the empire, the far-off republic, or the still more
distant kings) assume a transient, visionary, and im-
palpable character when we think that this indestruc-
tible monument supplied one of the recollections which
Moses and the Israelites bore from Egypt into the des-
ert. Perchance, on beholding the cloudy pillar and
the fiery column, they whispered awe-stricken to one
another, ‘In its shape it is like that old obelisk which
we and our fathers have so often seen on the borders
of the Nile.” And now that very obelisk, with hardly
a trace of decay upon it, is the first thing that the
modern traveller sees after entering the Flaminian
Gate!
Lifting their eyes, Hilda and her companion gazed
westward, and saw beyond the invisible Tiber the Cas-
tle of St. Angelo; that immense tomb of a pagan em-
peror, with the archangel at its summit.
Still farther off appeared a mighty pile of buildings,
surmounted by the vast dome, which all of us have
shaped and swelled outward, like a huge bubble, to
the utmost scope of our imaginations, long before we
see it floating over the worship of the city. It may
be most worthily seen from precisely the point where
A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN. 131
aur two friends were now standing. At any nearer
view the grandeur of St. Peter’s hides itself behind
the immensity of its separate parts, so that we see
only the front, only the sides, only the pillared length
and loftiness of the portico, and not the mighty whole.
But at this distance the entire outline of the world’s
cathedral, as well as that of the palace of the world’s
chief priest, is taken in at once. In such remoteness,
moreover, the imagination is not debarred from lend-
ing its assistance, even while we have the reality be-
fore our eyes, and helping the weakness of human
sense to do justice to so grand an object. It requires
both faith and fancy to enable us to feel, what is nev-
ertheless so true, that yonder, in front of the purple
outline of hills, is the grandest edifice ever built by
man, painted against God’s loveliest sky.
After contemplating a little while a scene which
their long residence in Rome had made familiar to
them, Kenyon and Hilda again let their glances fall
into the piazza at their feet. They there beheld Mir-
iam, who had just entered the Porta del Popolo, and
was standing by the obelisk and fountain. With a
gesture that impressed Kenyon as at once suppliant
and imperious, she seemed to intimate to a figure
which had attended her thus far, that it was now her
desire to be left alone. The pertinacious model, how-
ever, remained immovable.
And the sculptor here noted a circumstance, which,
according to the interpretation he might put upon it,
was either too trivial to be mentioned, or else so mys-
teriously significant that he found it difficult to be-
lieve his eyes. Miriam knelt down on the steps of the
fountain ; so far there could be no question of the fact.
To other observers, if any there were, she probably
132 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
appeared to take this attitude merely for the conven-
ience of dipping her fingers into the gush of water
from the mouth of one of the stone lions. But as she
clasped her hands together after thus bathing them,
and glanced upward at the model, an idea took strong
possession of Kenyon’s mind that Miriam was kneel-
ing to this dark follower there in the world’s face!
‘Do you see it?” he said to Hilda.
“See what?” asked she, surprised at the emotion
of his tone. ‘I see Miriam, who has just bathed her
hands in that delightfully cool water. I often dip my
fingers into a Roman fountain, and think of the brook
that used to be one of my playmates in my New Eng-
land village.”
“TJ fancied I saw something else,” said Kenyon ;
‘“‘ but it was doubtless a mistake.”
But, allowing that he had caught a true glimpse
into the hidden significance of Miriam’s gesture, what
a terrible thraldom did it suggest! Free as she seemed
to be, — beggar as he looked, — the nameless vagrant
must then be dragging the beautiful Miriam through
the streets of Rome, fettered and shackled more cruelly
than any captive queen of yore following in an em-
peror’s triumph. And was it conceivable that she
would have been thus enthralled unless some great
error — how great Kenyon dared not think — or some
fatal weakness had given this dark adversary a van-
tage-ground ?
“ Hilda,” said he, abruptly, “ who and what is Mir-
iam? Pardon me; but are you sure of her?”
“Sure of her!” repeated Hilda, with an angry
blush, for her friend’s sake. ‘I am sure that she is
kind, good, and generous; a true and faithful friend,
whom I love dearly, and who loves me as well! What
more than this need I be sure of ?”
A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN. 133
“And your delicate instincts say all this in her
favor ? — nothing against her?” continued the sculp-
tor, without heeding the irritation of Hilda’s tone.
“These are my own impressions, too. But she is such
a mystery! We do not even know whether she is a
country woman of ours, or an Englishwoman, or a Ger-
man. There is Anglo-Saxon blood in her veins, one
would say, and a right English accent on her tongue,
but much that is not English breeding, nor American.
Nowhere else but in Rome, and as an artist, could she
hold a place in society without giving some clew to
her past life.”
“ I love her dearly,” said Hilda, still with displeas-
ure in her tone, “and trust her most entirely.”
“ My heart trusts her at least, whatever my head
may do,” replied Kenyon ; “ and Rome is not like one
of our New England villages, where we need the per-
mission of each individual neighbor for every act that
we do, every word that we utter, and every friend that
we make or keep. In these particulars the papal des-
potism allows us freer breath than our native air;
and if we like to take generous views of our associates,
we can do so, to a reasonable extent, without ruining
ourselves,”
“The music has ceased,” said Hilda; “I am going
now.”
There are three streets that, beginning close beside
each other, diverge from the Piazza del Popolo to-
wards the heart of Rome: on the left, the Via del
Babuino ; on the right, the Via della Ripetta ; and be-
tween these two that world-famous avenue, the Corso.
It appeared that Miriam and her strange companion
were passing up the first-mentioned of these three, and
were soon hidden from Hilda and the sculptor.
(
134 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENTI.
The two latter left the Pincian by the broad and
stately walk that skirts along its brow. Beneath them,
from the base of the abrupt descent, the city spread
wide away in a close contiguity of red-earthen roofs,
above which rose eminent the domes of a hundred
churches, beside here and there a tower, and the up-
per windows of some taller or higher situated palace,
looking down on a multitude of palatial abodes. At
a distance, ascending out of the central mass of edi-
fices, they could see the top of the Antonine column,
and near it the circular roof of the Pantheon looking
heavenward with its ever-open eye.
Except these two objects, almost everything that
they beheld was medieval, though built, indeed, of the
massive old stones and indestructible bricks of im-
perial Rome ; for the ruins of the Coliseum, the
Golden House, and innumerable temples of Roman
gods, and mansions of Czsars and senators, had sup-
plied the material for all those gigantic hovels, and
their walls were cemented with mortar of inestimable
cost, being made of precious antique statues, burnt
Jong ago for this petty purpose.
Rome, as it now exists, has grown up under the
Popes, and seems like nothing but a heap of broken
rubbish, thrown into the great chasm between our own
days and the Empire, merely to fill it up; and, for the
better part of two thousand years, its annals of ob-
scure policies, and wars, and continually recurring
misfortunes, seem also but broken rubbish, as com-
pared with its classic history.
If we consider the present city as at all connected
with the famous one of old, it is only because we find
it built over its grave. A depth of thirty feet of soil
has covered up the Rome of ancient days, so that it
A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN. 135
lies like the dead corpse of a giant, decaying for cen.
turies, with no survivor mighty enough even to bury
it, until the dust of all those years has gathered slowly
over its recumbent form and made a casual sepulchre.
We know not how to characterize, in any accordant
and compatible terms, the Rome that lies before us;
its sunless alleys, and streets of palaces; its churches,
lined with the gorgeous marbles that were originally
polished for the adornment of pagan temples; its
thousands of evil smells, mixed up with fragrance of
rich incense, diffused from as many censers ; its little
life, deriving feeble nutriment from what has long
been dead. Everywhere, some fragment of ruin sug-
gesting the magnificence of a former epoch; every-
where, moreover, a Cross, — and. nastiness at the foot
of it. As the sum of all, there are recollections that
kindle the soul, and a gloom and languor that depress
it beyond any depth of melancholic sentiment that can
be elsewhere known.
Yet how is it possible to say an unkind or irreveren-
tial word of Rome? The city of all time, and of all
the world! The spot for which man’s great life and
deeds have done so much, and for which decay has
done whatever glory and dominion could not do! At
this moment, the evening sunshine is flinging its
golden mantle over it, making all that we thought
mean magnificent; the bells of all the churches sud-
denly ring out, as if it were a peal of triumph because
Rome is still imperial.
“YT sometimes fancy,” said Hilda, on whose sus-
ceptibility the scene always made a strong impression,
“that Rome — mere Rome — will crowd everything
else out of my heart.”
“‘ Heaven forbid!” ejaculated the sculptor.
136 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
They had now reached the grand stairs that aseend
from the Piazza di Spagna to the hither brow of the
Pincian Hill. Old Beppo, the millionnaire of his
ragged fraternity, — it is a wonder that no artist
paints him as the cripple whom St. Peter heals at the
Beautiful Gate of the Temple, — was just mounting
his donkey to depart, laden with the rich spoil of the
day’s beggary.
Up the stairs, drawing his tattered cloak about his
face, came the model, at whom Beppo looked askance,
jealous of an encroacher on his rightful domain. The
figure passed away, however, up the Via Sistina. In
the piazza below, near the foot of the magnificent
steps, stood Miriam, with her eyes bent on the ground,
as if she were counting those little, square, uncomfort-
able paving-stones, that make it a penitential pilgrim- —
age to walk in Rome. She kept this attitude for sey-
eral minutes, and when, at last, the importunities of a
beggar disturbed her from it, she seemed bewildered
and pressed her hand upon her brow.
“She has been in some sad dream or other, poor
thing!” said Kenyon, sympathizingly ; “and even
now, she is imprisoned there in a kind of cage, the
iron bars of which are made of her own thoughts.”
‘] fear she is not well,” said Hilda. ‘Iam going
down the stairs, and will join Miriam.” |
“Farewell, then,” said the sculptor. ‘ Dear Hilda,
this is a perplexed and troubled world! It soothes me
inexpressibly to think of you in your tower, with white
doves and white thoughts for your companions, so high
above us all, and with the Virgin for your household
friend. You know not how far it throws its light, that
lamp which you keep burning at her shrine! I passed
beneath the tower last night, and the ray cheered me,
— because you lighted it.”
A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN. 137
“It has for me a religious significance,” replied
Hilda, quietly, “and yet I am no Catholic.”
They parted, and Kenyon made haste along the Via
Sistina, in the hope of overtaking the model, whose
haunts and character he was anxious to investigate,
for Miriam’s sake. He fancied tnat he saw him a
long way in advance, but before he reached the Foun-
tain of the Triton, the dusky figure had vanished.
CHAPTER XIII.
A SCULPTOR’S STUDIO.
Axzovt this period, Miriam seems to have been
goaded by a weary restlessness that drove her abroad
on any errand or none. She went one morning to
visit Kenyon in his studio, whither he had invited her
to see a new statue, on which he had staked many
hopes, and which was now almost completed in the
clay. Next to Hilda, the person for whom Miriam
felt most affection and confidence was Kenyon; and
in all the difficulties that beset her life, it was her
impulse to draw near Hilda for feminine sympathy,
and the sculptor for brotherly counsel.
Yet it was to little purpose that she approached the
edge of the voiceless gulf between herself and them.
Standing on the utmost verge of that dark chasm, she
might stretch out her hand, and never clasp a hand of
theirs; she might strive to call out, “ Help, friends !
help!” but, as with dreamers when they shout, her
voice would perish inaudibly in the remoteness that
seemed such a little way. This perception of an in-
finite, shivering solitude, amid which we cannot come
close enough to human beings to be warmed by them,
and where they turn to cold, chilly shapes of mist, 1s
one of the most forlorn results of any accident, misfor-
tune, crime, or peculiarity of character, that puts an
individual ajar with the world. Very often, as in
Miriam’s case, there is an insatiable instinct that de-
A SCULPTOR’S STUDIO. 139
mands friendship, love, and intimate communion, but
is forced to pine in empty forms; a hunger of the
heart, which finds only shadows to feed upon.
Kenyon’s studio was in a cross-street, or, rather, an
ugly and dirty little lane, between the Corso and the
Via della Ripetta; and though chill, narrow, gloomy,
and bordered with tall and shabby structures, the lane
was not a whit more disagreeable than nine tenths
of the Roman streets. Over the door of one of the
houses was a marble tablet, bearing an inscription, to
the purport that the sculpture-rooms within had for-
merly been occupied by the illustrious artist Canova.
In these precincts (which Canova’s genius was not
quite of a character to render sacred, though it cer-
tainly made them interesting) the young American
sculptor had now established himself.
The studio of a sculptor is generally but a rough
and dreary-looking place, with a good deal the aspect,
indeed, of a stone-mason’s workshop. Bare floors of
brick or plank, and plastered walls; an old chair or
two, or perhaps only a block of marble (containing,
however, the possibility of ideal grace within it) to sit
down upon; some hastily scrawled sketches of nude
figures on the whitewash of the wall. These last are
probably the sculptor’s earliest glimpses of ideas that
may hereafter be solidified into imperishable stone, or
perhaps may remain as impalpable as a dream. Next
there are a few very roughly modelled little figures
in clay or plaster, exhibiting the second stage of the
idea as it advances towards a marble immortality; and
then is seen the exquisitely designed shape of clay,
more interesting than even the final marble, as be-
ing the intimate production of the sculptor himself,
moulded throughout with his loving hands, and near-
140 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
est to his imagination and heart. In the plaster-cast,
from this clay model, the beauty of the statue strangely
disappears, to shine forth again with pure white radi-
ance, in the precious marble of Carrara. Works in
all these stages of advancement, and some with the
final touch upon them, might be found in Kenyon’s
studio.
Here might be witnessed the process of actually
chiselling the marble, with which (as it is not quite
satisfactory to think) a sculptor in these days has very
little to do. In Italy, there is a class of men whose
merely mechanical skill is perhaps more exquisite than
was possessed by the ancient artificers, who wrought
out the designs of Praxiteles ; or, very possibly, by
Praxiteles himself. Whatever of illusive representa-
tion can be effected in marble, they are capable of
achieving, if the object be before their eyes. The
sculptor has but to present these men with a plaster-
cast of his design, and a sufficient block of marble,
and tell them that the figure is imbedded in the stone,
and must be freed from its encumbering superfluities ;
and, in due time, without the necessity of his touching
the work with his own finger, he will see before him
the statue that is to make him renowned. His creative
power has wrought it with a word.
In no other art, surely, does genius find such effec-
tive instruments, and so happily relieve itself of the
drudgery of actual performance ; doing wonderfully
nice things by the hands of other people, when it may
be suspected they could not always be done by the
sculptor’s own. And how much of the admiration
which our artists get for their buttons and button-
holes, their shoe-ties, their neck-cloths, — and these, at
our present epoch of taste, make a large share of the
A SCULPTOR’S STUDIO. 141
renown, — would be abated, if we were generally
aware that the sculptor can claim no credit for such
pretty performances, as immortalized in marble! They
are not his work, but that of some nameless machine
in human shape.
Miriam stopped an instant in an antechamber, to
look at a half-finished bust, the features of which
seemed to be struggling out of the stone; and, as it
were, scattering and dissolving its hard substance by
the glow of feeling and intelligence. As the skilful
workman gave stroke after stroke of the chisel with
apparent carelessness, but sure effect, it was impos-
sible not to think that the outer marble was merely
an extraneous environment; the human countenance
within its embrace must have existed there since the
limestone ledges of Carrara were first made. Another
bust was nearly completed, though still one of Ken-
yon’s most trustworthy assistants was at work, giving
delicate touches, shaving off an impalpable something,
and leaving little heaps of marble-dust to attest it.
“ As these busts in the block of marble,” thought
Miriam, “so does our individual fate exist in the lime-
stone of time. We fancy that we carve it out; but
its ultimate shape is prior to all our action.”
Kenyon was in the inner room, but, hearing a step
in the antechamber, he threw a veil over what he was
at work upon, and came out to receive his visitor. He
was dressed in a gray blouse, with a little cap on the
top of his head ; a costume which became him better
than the formal garments which he wore, whenever he
passed out of his own domains. The sculptor had a
face which, when time had done a little more for it,
would offer a worthy subject for as good an artist as
himself: features finely cut, as if already marble; an
142 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
ideal forehead, deeply set eyes, and a mouth much
hidden in a light-brown beard, but apparently sensi-
tive and delicate.
“T will not offer you my hand,” said he; “it is
grimy with Cleopatra's clay.”
“No; I will not touch clay; it is earthy and hu-
man,” answered Miriam. “I have come to try whether
there is any calm and coolness among your marbles.
My own art is too nervous, too passionate, too full of
agitation, for me to work at it whole days together,
without intervals of repose. So, what have you to
show me?”
“ Pray look at everything here,” said Kenyon. “I
love to have painters see my work. Their judgment
is unprejudiced, and more valuable than that of the
world generally, from the light which their own art
throws on mine. More valuable, too, than that of my
brother sculptors, who never judge me fairly, — nor I
them, perhaps.”
To gratify him, Miriam looked round at the speci-
mens in marble or plaster, of which there were several
in the room, comprising originals or casts of most of
the designs that Kenyon had thus far produced. He
was still too young to have accumulated a large gal-
lery of such things. What he had to show were
chiefly the attempts and experiments, in various di-
rections, of a beginner in art, acting as a stern tutor
to himself, and profiting more by his failures than by
any successes of which he was yet capable. Some of
them, however, had great merit ; and in the pure, fine
glow of the new marble, it may be, they dazzied the
judgment into awarding them higher praise than they
deserved. Miriam admired the statue of a beautiful
youth, a pearl-fisher, who had got entangled in the
A SCULPTOR’S STUDIO. 148
weeds at the bottom of the sea, and lay dead among
the pearl-oysters, the rich shells, and the sea-weeds,
all of like value to him now.
“The poor young man has perished among the
prizes that he sought,’ remarked she. ‘ But what a
strange efficacy there is in death! If we cannot all
win pearls, it causes an empty shell to satisfy us just
as well. I like this statue, though it is too cold and
stern in its moral lesson; and, physically, the form
has not settled itself into sufficient repose.”
In another style, there was a grand, calm head of
Milton, not copied from any one bust or picture, yet
more authentic than any of them, because all known
representations of the poet had been profoundly stud-
ied, and solved in the artist’s mind. The bust over
the tomb in Grey Friars Church, the original minia-
tures and pictures, wherever to be found, had mingled
each its special truth in this one work ; wherein, like-
wise, by long perusal and deep love of the “ Paradise
Lost,” the “Comus,” the “ Lycidas,” and “ L’ Allegro,”
the sculptor had succeeded, even better than he knew,
in spiritualizing his marble with the poet’s mighty
genius. And this was a great thing to have achieved,
such a length of time after the dry bones and dust of
Milton were like those of any other dead man.
There were also several portrait-busts, comprising
those of two or three of the illustrious men of our
own country, whom Kenyon, before he left America,
had asked permission to model. He had done so, be-
cause he sincerely believed that, whether he wrought
the busts in marble or bronze, the one would corrode
and the other crumble in the long lapse of time, be-
neath these great men’s immortality. Possibly, how-
ever, the young artist may have under-estimated the
144 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
durability of his material. Other faces there were,
too, of men who (if the brevity of their remembrance,
after death, can be augured from their little value in
life) should have been represented in snow rather
than marble. Posterity will be puzzled what to do
with busts like these, the concretions and petrifactions
of a vain self-estimate ; but will find, no doubt, that
they serve to build into stone-walls, or burn into quick-
lime, as well as if the marble had never been blocked
into the guise of human heads.
But it is an awful thing, indeed, this endless endur.
ance, this almost indestructibility, of a marble bust!
Whether in our own case, or that of other men, it
bids us sadly measure the little, little time during
which our lineaments are likely to be of interest
to any human being. It is especially singular that
Americans should care about perpetuating themselves
in this mode. The brief duration of our families,
as a hereditary household, renders it next to a cer-
tainty that the great-grandchildren will not know their
father’s grandfather, and that half a century hence at
furthest, the hammer of the auctioneer will thump its
knock-down blow against his blockhead, sold at so
much for the pound of stone! And it ought to make
us shiver, the idea of leaving our features to be a
dusty-white ghost among strangers of another genera-
tion, who will take our nose between their thumb and
fingers (as we have seen men do by Cesar’s), and in-
fallibly break it off if they can do so without detec-
tion !
“Yes,” said Miriam, who had been revolving some
such thoughts as the above, “ it is a good state of mind
for mortal man, when he is content to leave no more
definite memorial than the grass, which will sprout
A SCULPTOR'S STUDIO. 145
kindly and speedily over his grave, if we do not make
the spot barren with marble. Methinks, too, it will
be a fresher and better world, when it flings off this
great burden of stony memories, which the ages have
deemed it a piety to heap upon its back.”
“What you say,” remarked Kenyon, “ goes against
my whole art. Sculpture, and the delight which men
naturally take in it, appear to me a proof that it is
good to work with all time before our view.”
* Well, well,” answered Miriam, “TI must not quar-
rel with you for flinging your heavy stones at poor
Posterity ; and, to say the truth, I think you are as
likely to hit the mark as anybody. These busts, now.
much as I seem to scorn them, make me feel as if you
were a magician. You turn feverish men into cool,
quiet marble. What a blessed change for them!
Would you could do as much for me!”
“Oh, gladly!” cried Kenyon, who had long wished
to model that beautiful and most expressive face.
“ When will you begin to sit?”
“ Poh! that was not what I meant,” said Miriam.
“Come, show me something else.”
“ Do you recognize this?” asked the sculptor.
He took out of his desk a little old-fashioned lvory
coffer, yellow with age; it was richly carved with an-
tique figures and foliage; and had Kenyon thought
fit to say that Benvenuto Cellini wrought this precious
box, the skill and elaborate fancy of the work would
by no means have discredited his word, nor the old
artist’s fame. At least, it was evidently a production
of Benvenuto’s school and century, and might once
have been the jewel-case of some grand lady at the
court of the De’ Medici.
Lifting the lid, however, no blaze of diamonds was
VOL. VI.
146 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
disclosed, but only, lapped in fleecy cotton, a small,
beautifully shaped hand, most delicately sculptured in
marble. Such loving care and nicest art had been
lavished here, that the palm really seemed to have a
tenderness in its very substance. Touching those
lovely fingers, — had the jealous sculptor allowed you
to touch,— you could hardly believe that a virgin
warmth would not steal from them into your heart.
“ Ah, this is very beautiful!’ exclaimed Miriam,
with a genial smile. “It is as good in its way as Lou-
lie’s hand with its baby-dimples, which Powers showed
me at Florence, evidently valuing it as much as if he
had wrought it out of a piece of his great heart. As
good as Harriet Hosmer’s clasped hands of Browning
and his wife, symbolizing the individuality and heroie
union of tw» high, poetic lives! Nay, I do not ques-
tion that it is better than either of those, because you
must have wrought it passionately, in spite of its
maiden palm and dainty finger-tips.”
‘Then you do recognize it?” asked Kenyon.
“There is but one right hand on earth that could
have supplied the model,’ answered Miriam; “so
small and slender, so perfectly symmetrical, and yet
with acharacter of delicate energy. I have watched
it a hundred times at its work; but I did not dream
that you had won Hilda so far! How have you per-
suaded that shy maiden to let you take her hand in
marble ?”’
“Never! She never knew it!” hastily replied
Kenyon, anxious to vindicate his mistress’s maidenly
reserve. “I stole it from her. The hand is a remt-
niscence. After gazing at it so often, and even hold.
ing it once for an instant, when Hilda was not think
ing of me, I should be a bungler indeed, if I could not
now reproduce it to something like the life.”
A SCULPTOR®S STUDIO. 147
“« May you win the original one day!” said Miriam,
kindly.
“T have little ground to hope it,” answered the
sculptor, despondingly ; “ Hilda does not dwell in our
mortal atmosphere; and gentle and soft as she ap-
pears, it will be as difficult to win her heart as to en-
tice down a white bird from its sunny freedom in the
sky. It is strange, with all her delicacy and fragility,
the impression she makes of being utterly sufficient to
herself. No; I shall never win her. She is abun-
dantly capable of sympathy, and delights to receive it,
but she has no need of love.”
“I partly agree with you,” said Miriam. “It is a
mistaken idea, which men generally entertain, that na-
ture has made women especially prone to throw their
whole being into what is technically called love. We
have, to say the least, no more necessity for it than
yourselves ; only we have nothing else to do with our
hearts. When women have other objects in life, they
are not apt to fall in love. I can think of many
women distinguished in art, literature, and science, —
and multitudes whose hearts and minds find good em-
ployment in less ostentatious ways, — who lead high,
lonely lives, and are conscious of no sacrifice so far as
your sex is concerned.”
“And Hilda will be one of these!” said Kenyon,
sadly ; “the thought makes me shiver for myself, and
— and for her, too.”
“ Well,” said Miriam, smiling, “ perhaps she may
sprain the delicate wrist which you have sculptured to
such perfection. In that case you may hope. These
old masters to whom she has vowed herself, and whom
her slender hand and woman’s heart serve so faith-
fully, are your only rivals.”
148 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
The sculptor sighed as he put away the treasure of
Hilda’s marble hand into the ivory coffer, and thought
how slight was the possibility that he should ever feel
responsive to his own the tender clasp of the original.
He dared not even kiss the image that he himself had
made: it had assumed its share of Hilda’s remote and
shy divinity.
« And now,” said Miriam, “ show me the new statue
which you asked me hither to see.”
CHAPTER XIV.
CLEOPATRA.
“ My new statue! ” said Kenyon, who had positively
forgotten it in the thought of Hilda; “here it is, un-
der this veil.”
“Not a nude figure, I hope,” observed Miriam.
“Every young sculptor seems to think that he must
give the world some specimen of indecorous woman-
hood, and call it Eve, Venus, a Nymph, or any name
that may apologize for a lack of decent clothing. I
am weary, even more than I am ashamed, of seeing’
such things. Nowadays people are as good as born in
their clothes, and there is practically not a nude hu-
man being in existence. An artist, therefore, as you
must candidly confess, cannot sculpture nudity with a
pure heart, if only because he is compelled to steal
guilty glimpses at hired models. The marble inevita-
bly loses its chastity under such circumstances. An
old Greek sculptor, no doubt, found his models in the
open sunshine, and among pure and princely maidens,
and thus the nude statues of antiquity are as modest
as violets, and sufficiently draped in their own beauty.
But as for Mr. Gibson’s colored Venuses (stained, I
believe, with tobacco-juice), and all other nudities of
to-day, I really do not understand what they have to
say to this generation, and would be glad to see as
many heaps of quicklime in their stead.”
“You are severe upon the professors of my art,”
150 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
said Kenyon, half smiling, half seriously; “ not that
you are wholly wrong, either. We are bound to ac-
cept drapery of some kind, and make the best of it.
But what are we todo? Must we adopt the costume
of to-day, and carve, for example, a Venus in a hoop-
petticoat ?”
“That would be a bowlder, indeed!” rejoined Mir-
iam, laughing. “ But the difficulty goes to confirm
me in my belief that, except for portrait-busts, seulp-
ture has no longer a right to claim any place among
living arts. It has wrought itself out, and come fairly
to an end. There is never a new group nowadays ;
never even so much as a new attitude. Greenough
(I take my examples among men of merit) imagined
nothing new; nor Crawford either, except in the tai-
loring line. There are not, as you will own, more than
half a dozen positively original statues or groups in
the world, and these few are of immemoriai antiquity.
A person familiar with the Vatican, the Uffizai Gal-
lery, the Naples Gallery, and the Louvre, will at once
refer any modern production to its antique prototype ;
which, moreover, had begun.to get out of fashion, even
in old Roman days.”
“Pray stop, Miriam,” cried Kenyon, “or I shall
fling away the chisel forever ! ”
“Fairly own to me, then, my friend,” rejoined Mir-
iam, whose disturbed mind found a certain relief in
this declamation, “that you sculptors are, of necessity,
the greatest plagiarists in the world.”
“JT do not own it,”’ said Kenyon, “ yet cannot utterly
contradict you, as regards the actual state of the art.
But as long as the Carrara quarries still yield pure
blocks, and while my own country has marble moun-
tains, probably as fine in quality, I shall steadfastly
CLEOPATRA. 151
believe that future sculptors will revive this noblest
of the beautiful arts, and people the world with new
shapes of delicate grace and massive grandeur. Per-
haps,” he added, smiling, “‘ mankind will consent to
wear a more manageable costume; or, at worst, we
sculptors shall get the skill to make broadcloth trans-
parent, and render a majestic human character visible
through the coats and trousers of the present day.”
“ Be it so!” said Miriam ; “you are past my coun-
sel. Show me the veiled figure, which I am afraid, I
have criticised beforehand. To make amends, I am
in the mood to praise it now.”
But, as Kenyon was about to take the cloth off the
clay model, she laid her hand on his arm.
“Tell me first what is the subject,” said she, “for I
have sometimes incurred great displeasure from mem-
bers of your brotherhood by being too obtuse to puzzle
out the purport of their productions. It is so difficult,
you know, to compress and define a character or story,
and make it patent at a glance, within the narrow
scope attainable by sculpture! Indeed I fancy it is
still the ordinary habit with sculptors, first to finish
their group of statuary, —in such development as the
particular block of marble will allow, — and then to
choose the subject ; as John of Bologna did with his
‘Rape of the Sabines.’ Have you followed that good
example ?”
“No; my statue is intended for Cleopatra,” replied
Kenyon, a little disturbed by Miriam’s raillery. “The
special epoch of her history you must make out for
yourself.”
He drew away the cloth that had served to keep the
moisture of the clay model from being exhaled. The
sitting figure of a woman was seen. She was draped
152 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
from head to foot in a costume minutely and scrupu
lously studied from that of ancient Egypt, as revealed
by the strange sculpture of that country, its coins, draw-
ings, painted mummy-cases, and whatever other tokens
have been dug out of its pyramids, graves, and cata-
combs. Even the stiff Egyptian head-dress was ad-
hered to, but had been softened into a rich feminine
adornment, without losing a particle of its truth. Dif-
ficulties that might well have seemed insurmountable
had been courageously encountered and made flexible
to purposes of grace and dignity; so that Cleopatra
sat attired in a garb proper to her historic and queenly
state, as a daughter of the Ptolemies, and yet such
as the beautiful woman would have put on as best
adapted to heighten the magnificence of her charms,
and kindle a tropic fire in the cold eyes of Octavius.
A marvellous repose — that rare merit in statuary,
except it be the lumpish repose native to the block
of stone — was diffused throughout the figure. The
spectator felt that Cleopatra had sunk down out of
the fever and turmoil of her life, and for one instant
—as it were, between two pulse-throbs —had relin-
quished all activity, and was resting throughout every
vein and muscle. It was the repose of despair, indeed ;
for Octavius had seen her, and remained insensible to
her enchantments. But still there was a great smoul-
dering furnace deep down in the woman’s heart. The
repose, no doubt, was as complete as if she were never
to stir hand or foot again ; and yet, such was the crea-
ture’s latent energy and fierceness, she might spring
upon you like a tigress, and stop the very breath that
you were now drawing midway in your throat.
The face was a miraculous success. The sculptor
had not shunned to give the full Nubian lips, and other
CLEOPATRA. 153
characteristics of the Egyptian physiognomy. His
courage and integrity had been abundantly rewarded ;
for Cleopatra’s beauty shone out richer, warmer, more
triumphantly beyond comparison, than if, shrinking
timidly from the truth, he had chosen the tame Gre-
cian type. The expression was of profound, gloomy,
heavily revolving thought; a glance into her past life
and present emergencies, while her spirit gathered it-
self up for some new struggle, or was getting sternly
reconciled to impending doom. In one view, there
was a certain softness and tenderness, — how breathed
into the statue, among so many strong and passionate
elements, it is impossible to say. Catching another
glimpse, you beheld her as implacable as a stone and
cruel as fire.
In a word, all Cleopatra — fierce, voluptuous, pas-
sionate, tender, wicked, terrible, and full of poisonous
and rapturous enchantment — was kneaded into what,
only a week or two before, had been a lump of wet
clay from the Tiber. Soon, apotheosized in an inde-
structible material, she would be one of the images
that men keep forever, finding a heat in them which
does not cool down, throughout the centuries.
“What a woman is this! ” exclaimed Miriam, after
along pause. ‘Tell me, did she ever try, even while
you were creating her, to overcome you with her fury
or her love?' Were you not afraid to touch her, as
she grew more and more towards hot life beneath your
hand? My dear friend, it is a great work! How
have you learned to do it?”
“It is the concretion of a good deal of thought,
emotion, and toil of brain and hand,” said Kenyon,
not without a perception that his work was good ;
“but I know not how it came about at last. I kin
154 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
dled a great fire within my mind, and threw in the
material, —as Aaron threw the gold of the Israelites
into the furnace, —and in the midmost heat uprose
Cleopatra, as you see her.”
_ “ What I most marvel at,” said Miriam, “is the
womanhood that you have so thoroughly mixed up
with all those seemingly discordant elements. Where
did you get that secret? You never found it in your
gentle Hilda, yet I recognize its truth.”
‘No, surely, it was not in Hilda,” said Kenyon.
‘“¢ Her womanhood is of the ethereal type, and incom-
patible with any shadow of darkness or evil.”
“You are right,” rejoined Miriam; “there are wo-
men of that ethereal type as you term it, and Hilda
is one of them. She would die of her first wrong-
doing, — supposing for a moment that she could be
capable of doing wrong. Of sorrow, slender as she
seems, Hilda might bear a great burden; of sin, not a
feather’s weight. Methinks now, were it my doom, I
could bear either, or both at once; but my conscience
is still as white as Hilda’s. Do you question it?”
‘“‘ Heaven forbid, Miriam!” exclaimed the sculptor.
He was startled at the strange turn which she had
so suddenly given to the conversation. Her voice, too,
— so much emotion was stifled rather than expressed
in it, — sounded unnatural.
‘Oh, my friend,” cried she, with sudden passion,
‘¢ will you be my friend indeed? I am lonely, lonely,
lonely! There is a secret in my heart that burns me,
—that tortures me! Sometimes I fear to go mad of
it; sometimes I hope to die of it; but neither of the
two happens. Ah, if I could but whisper it to only
one human soul! And you—vyou see far into wo
manhood ; you receive it widely into your large view
CLEOPATRA. 155
Perhaps — perhaps, but Heaven only knows, you might
understand me! Oh, let me speak!”
‘“‘ Miriam, dear friend,” replied the sculptor, “ if I
can help you, speak freely, as to a brother.”
“Help me? No!” said Miriam.
Kenyon’s response had been perfectly frank and
kind; and yet the subtlety of Miriam’s emotion de-
tected a certain reserve and alarm in his warmly ex-
pressed readiness to hear her story. In his secret
soul, to say the truth, the sculptor doubted whether
it were well for this poor, suffering girl to speak what
she so yearned to say, or for him to listen. If there
were any active duty of friendship to be performed,
then, indeed, he would joyfully have come forward to
do his best. But if it were only a pent-up heart that
sought an outlet ? in that case it was by no means so
certain that a confession would do good. The more
her secret struggled and fought to be told, the more
certain would it be to change all former relations that
had subsisted between herself and the friend to whom
she might reveal it. Unless he could give her all the
sympathy, and just the kind of sympathy that the oc-
casion required, Miriam would hate him by and by,
and herself still more, if he let her speak.
This was what Kenyon said to himself; but his re-
luctance, after all, and whether he were conscious of
it or no, resulted from a suspicion that had crept into
his heart and lay there in a dark corner. Obscure as
it was, when Miriam looked into his eyes, she detected
it at once.
_ “Ah, I shall hate you!” cried she, echoing the
thought which he had not spoken; she was _ half
choked with the gush of passion that was thus turned
back upon her. ‘ You are as cold and pitiless as
your own marble.”
156 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENTI.
“No; but full of sympathy, God knows!” replied
he.
In truth his suspicions, however warranted by the
mystery in which Miriam was enveloped, had vanished
in the earnestness of his kindly and sorrowful emotion.
.He was now ready to receive her trust.
“Keep your sympathy, then, for sorrows that admit
of such solace,” said she, making a strong effort to
compose herself. “As for my griefs, I know how to
manage them. It was all a mistake: you can do noth-
ing for me, unless you petrify me into a marble com-
panion for your Cleopatra there; and I am not of her
sisterhood, I do assure you. Forget this foolish scene,
my friend, and never let me see a reference to it in
your eyes when they meet mine hereafter.”
‘Since you desire it, all shall be forgotten,” an-
swered the sculptor, pressing her hand as she de-
parted ; “ or, if ever I can serve you, let my readiness
to do so be remembered. Meanwhile, dear Miriam,
let us meet in the same clear, friendly light as hereto-
fore.”
“You are less sincere than I thought you,” said
Miriam, “if you try to make me think that there will
be no change.”
As he attended her through the antechamber, she
pointed to the statue of the pearl-diver.
“My secret is not a pearl,” said she; “yet a man
might drown himself in plunging after it.”
After Kenyon had closed the door, she went wearily
down the staircase, but paused midway, as if debating
with herself whether to return. ;
“The mischief was done,” thought she; “and I
might as well have had the solace that ought to
come with it. I have lost, — by staggering a little
CLEOPATRA. 157
way beyond the mark, in the blindness of my distress,
— I have lost, as we shall hereafter find, the genuine
friendship of this clear-minded, honorable, true-hearted
young man, and all for nothing. What if I should go
back this moment and compel him to listen ? ”
She ascended two or three of the stairs, but again.
paused, murmured to herself, and shook her head.
“No, no, no,” she thought; “and I wonder how I
ever came to dream of it. Unless I had his heart for
my own, —and that is Hilda’s, nor would I steal it
from her, — it should never be the treasure-place of
my secret. It is no precious pearl, as I just now told
him; but my dark-red carbuncle —red as blood —is
too rich a gem to put into a stranger’s casket.”
She went down the stairs, and found her Shadow
waiting for her in the street,
CHAPTER XV.
AN STHETIC COMPANY.
On the evening after Miriam’s visit to Kenyon’s
studio, there was an assemblage composed almost en-
tirely of Anglo-Saxons, and chiefly of American ar-
tists, with a sprinkling of their English brethren ; and
some few of the tourists who still lingered in Rome,
now that Holy Week was past. Miriam, Hilda, and
the sculptor were all three present, and, with them,
Donatello, whose life was so far turned from its natu-
ral bent, that, like a pet spaniel, he followed his be-
loved mistress wherever he could gain admittance.
The place of meeting was in the palatial, but some-
what faded and gloomy apartment of an eminent mem-
ber of the esthetic body. It was no more formal an
occasion than one of those weekly receptions, common
among the foreign residents of Rome, at which pleas-
ant people — or disagreeable ones, as the case may be
— encounter one another with little ceremony.
If anywise interested in art, a man must be difficult
to please who cannot find fit companionship among a
crowd of persons, whose ideas and pursuits all tend
towards the general purpose of enlarging the world’s
stock of beautiful productions.
One of the chief causes that make Rome the favorite
residence of artists — their ideal home which they sigh
for in advance, and are so loath to migrate from, after
once breathing its enchanted air—- is, doubtless, that
AN ESTHETIC COMPANY. 159
they there find themselves in force, and are numerous
enough to create a congenial atmosphere. In every
other clime they are isolated strangers ; in this land of
art, they are free citizens.
Not that, individually, or in the mass, there appears
to be any large stock of mutual affection among the
brethren of the chisel and the pencil. On the con-
trary, it will impress the shrewd observer that the jeal-
ousies and petty animosities, which the poets of our
day have flung aside, still irritate and gnaw into the
hearts of this kindred class of imaginative men. It is
not difficult to suggest reasons why this should be the
fact. The public, in whose good graces lie the sculp-
tor’s or the painter’s prospects of success, is infinitely
smaller than the public to which literary men make
their appeal. It is composed of a very limited body
of wealthy patrons; and these, as the artist well
knows, are but blind judges in matters that require
the utmost delicacy of perception. Thus, success in
art is apt to become partly an affair of intrigue; and
it is almost inevitable that even a gifted artist should
look askance at his gifted brother’s fame, and be chary
of the good word that might help him to sell still
another statue or picture. You seldom hear a painter
heap generous praise on anything in his special line
of art; a sculptor never has a favorable eye for any
marble but his own.
Nevertheless, in spite of all these professional
grudges, artists are conscious of a social warmth from
each other’s presence and contiguity. They shiver at
the remembrance of their lonely studios in the unsym-
pathizing cities of their native land. For the sake of
such brotherhood as they can find, more than for any
good that they get from galleries, they linger year af-
160 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
ter year in Italy, while their originality dies out of
them, or is polished away as a barbarism.
The company this evening included several men and
women whom the world has heard of, and many others,
beyond all question, whom it ought to know. It would
be a pleasure to introduce them upon our humble
pages, name by name, and — had we confidence enough
in our own taste — to crown each well-deserving brow
according to its deserts. The opportunity is tempting,
but not easily manageable, and far too perilous, both
in respect to those individuals whom we might bring
forward, and the far greater number that must needs
be left in the shade. Ink, moreover, is apt to have a
corrosive quality, and might chance to raise a blister,
instead of any more agreeable titillation, on skins so
sensitive as those of artists. We must therefore
forego the delight of illuminating this chapter with
personal allusions to men whose renown glows richly
on canvas, or gleams in the white moonlight of mar-
ble.
Otherwise we might point to an artist who has stud-
ied Nature with such tender love that she takes him to
her intimacy, enabling him to reproduce her in land-
scapes that seem the reality of a better earth, and yet
are but the truth of the very scenes around us, ob-
served by the painter’s insight and interpreted for us
by his skill. By his magic, the moon throws her light
far out of the picture, and the crimson of the summer
night absolutely glimmers on the beholder’s face. Or
we might indicate a poet-painter, whose song has the
vividness of picture, and whose canvas is peopled with
angels, fairies, and water-sprites, done to the ethereal
life, because he saw them face to face in his poeti¢
mood. Or we might bow before an artist, who has
AN ZSTHETIC COMPANY. 161
wrought too sincerely, too religiously, with too earnest
a feeling, and too delicate a touch, for the world at
once to recognize how much toil and thought are com-
pressed into the stately brow of Prospero, and Miran-
da’s maiden loveliness ; or from what a depth within
this painter’s heart the Angel is leading forth St.
Peter.
Thus it would be easy to go on, perpetrating a score
of little epigrammatical allusions, like the above, all
kindly meant, but none of them quite hitting the
mark, and often striking where they were not aimed.
It may be allowable to say, however, that American
art is much better represented at Rome in the picto-
rial than in the sculpturesque department. Yet the
men of marble appear to have more weight with the
public than the men of canvas ; perhaps on account of
the greater density and solid substance of tht material
in which they work, and the sort of physical advantage
which their labors thus acquire over the illusive unre.
ality of color. ‘To be a sculptor seems a distinction in
itself ; whereas a painter is nothing, unless individually
eminent.
One sculptor there was, an Englishman, endowed
with a beautiful fancy, and possessing at his fingers’
ends the capability of doing beautiful things. He was
a quiet, simple, elderly personage, with eyes brown
and bright} under a slightly impending brow, and a
Grecian profile, such as he might have cut with his
own chisel. He had spent his life, for forty years, in
making Venuses, Cupids, Bacchuses, and a vast deal
of other marble progeny of dream-work, or rather frost-
work : it was all a vapory exhalation out of the Grecian
mythology, crystallizing on the dull window-panes of
to-day. Gifted with a more delicate power than any
VOL. VI.
162 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
other man alive, he had foregone to be a Christian real-
ity, and perverted himself into a Pagan idealist, whose
business or efficacy, in our present world, it would be
exceedingly difficult to define. And, loving and rever-
encing the pure material in which he wrought, as surely
this admirable sculptor did, he had nevertheless robbed
the marble of its chastity, by giving it an artificial
warmth of hue. Thus it became a sin and shame to
look at his nude goddesses. They had revealed them-
selves to his imagination, no doubt, with all their deity
about them ; but, bedaubed with buff-color, they stood
forth to the eyes of the profane in the guise of naked
women. But, whatever criticism may be ventured on
his style, it was good to meet aman so modest and
yet imbued with such thorough and simple conviction
of his own right principles and practice, and so quietly
satisfied that his kind of antique achievement was all
that sculpture could effect for modern life.
This eminent person’s weight and authority among
his artistic brethren were very evident ; for beginning -
unobtrusively to utter himself on a topic of art, he
was soon the centre of a little crowd of younger sculp-
tors. They drank in his wisdom, as if it would serve
all the purposes of original inspiration; he, mean-
while, discoursing with gentle calmness, as if there
could possibly be no other side, and often ratifying,
as it were, his own conclusions by a mildly emphatic
“Yes.”
The veteran sculptor’s unsought audience was com-
posed mostly of our own countrymen. It is fair to
say, that they were a body of very dexterous and
capable artists, each of whom had probably given
the delighted public a nude statue, or had won credit
for even higher skill by the nice carving of button-
AN ZSTHETIC COMFANY. 163
holes, shoe-ties, coat-seams, shirt-bosoms, and other such
graceful peculiarities of modern costume. Smart,
practical men they doubtless were, and some of them
far more than this, but, still, not precisely what an un-
initiated person looks for in a sculptor. A sculptor,
indeed, to meet the demands which our preconceptions
make upon him, should be even more indispensably
a poet than those who deal in measured verse and
rhyme. His material, or instrument, which serves
him in the stead. of shifting and transitory language,
is a pure, white, undecaying substance. It insures
immortality to whatever is wrought in it, and there-
fore makes it a religious obligation to commit no idea
to its mighty guardianship, save such as may repay
the marble for its faithful care, its incorruptible fidel-
ity, by warming it with an ethereal life. Under this
aspect, marble assumes a sacred character; and no
man should dare to touch it unless he feels within
himself a certain consecration and a priesthood, the
only evidence of which, for the public eye, will be the
high treatment of heroic subjects, or the delicate evo-
lution of spiritual, through material beauty.
No ideas such as the foregoing — no misgivings sug-
gested by them — probably troubled the self-compla-
cency of most of these clever sculptors. Marble, in
their view, had no such sanctity as we impute to it.
Tt was merely a sort of white limestone from Carrara,
cut into convenient blocks, and worth, in that state,
about two or three dollars per pound ; and it was sus-
ceptible of being wrought into certain shapes (by their
own mechanical ingenuity, or that of artisans in their
employment) which would enable them to sell it again
at a much higher figure. Such men, on the strength
of some small knack in handling clay, which might
164 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
have been fitly employed in making wax -work, are
bold to call themselves sculptors. How terrible should
be the thought, that the nude woman whom the mod-
ern artist patches together, bit by bit, from a dozen
heterogeneous models, meaning nothing by her, shall
last as long as the Venus of the Capitol! — that his
group of — no matter what, since 1¢ has no moral or
intellectual existence — will not physically crumble
any sooner than the immortal agony of the Laocoén !
Yet we love the artists, in every kind; even these,
whose merits we are not quite able to appreciate.
Sculptors, painters, crayon - sketchers, or whatever
branch of esthetics they adopted, were certainly pleas-
anter people, as we saw them that evening, than the
average whom we meet in ordinary society. They
were not wholly confined within the sordid compass of
practical life; they had a pursuit which, if followed
faithfully out, would lead them to the beautiful, and
always had a tendency thitherward, even if they lin-
gered to gather up golden dross by the wayside. Their
actual business (though they talked about it very
much as other men talk of cotton, politics, flour-bar-
rels, and sugar) necessarily illuminated their conver-
sation with something akin to the ideal. So, when
the guests collected themselves in little groups, here
and. there, in the wide saloon, a cheerful and airy gos-
sip began to be heard. The atmosphere ceased to be
precisely that of common life; a faint, mellow tinge,
such as we see in pictures, mingled itself with the
lamplight.
This good effect was assisted by many curious lit-
tle treasures of art, which the host had taken care to
strew upon his tables. They were principally such
bits of antiquity as the soil of Rome and its neighbor-
AN A4STHETIC COMPANY. 165
hood are still rich in; seals, gems, small figures of
bronze, medizval carvings in ivory ; things which had
been obtained at little cost, yet might have borne no
inconsiderable value in the museum of a virtuoso.
As interesting as any of these relics was a large
portfolio of old drawings, some of which, in the opin-
ion of their possessor, bore evidence on their faces of
the touch of master-hands. Very ragged and ill-con-
ditioned they mostly were, yellow with time, and tat-
tered with rough usage; and, in their best estate, the
designs had been scratched rudely with pen and ink,
on coarse paper, or, if drawn with charcoal or a pen-
cil, were now half rubbed out. You would not any-
where see rougher and homelier things than these.
But this hasty rudeness made the sketches only the
more valuable; because the artist seemed to have be-
stirred himself at the pinch of the moment, snatching
up whatever material was nearest, so as to seize the
first glimpse of an idea that might vanish in the
twinkling of an eye. Thus, by the spell of a creased,
soiled, and discolored scrap of paper, you were ena-
bled to steal close to an old master, and watch him in
the very effervescence of his genius.
According to the judgment of several connoisseurs,
Raphael’s own hand had communicated its magnetism
to one of these sketches; and, if genuine, it was evi-
dently his first conception of a favorite Madonna, now
hanging in the private apartment of the Grand Duke,
at Florence. Another drawing was attributed to Leo-
nardo da Vinci, and appeared to be a somewhat varied
design for his picture of Modesty and Vanity, in the
Sciarra Palace. There were at least half a dozen
others, to which the owner assigned as high an origin.
It was delightful to believe in their authenticity, at
166 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
all events ; for these things make the: spectator more
vividly sensible ‘of a great painter’s power, than the
final glow and perfected art of the most consummate
picture that may have been elaborated from them.
There is an effluence of divinity in the first sketch;
and there, if anywhere, you find the pure light of in-
spiration, which the subsequent toil of the artist serves
to bring out in stronger lustre, indeed, but likewise
adulterates it with what belongs to an inferior mood.
The aroma and fragrance of new thought were percep-
tible in these designs, after three centuries of wear
and tear. The charm lay partly in their very imper-
fection ; for this is suggestive, and sets the imagina-
tion at work ; whereas, the finished picture, if a good
one, leaves the spectator nothing to do, and, if bad,
confuses, stupefies, disenchants, and disheartens him.
Hilda was greatly interested in this rich portfolio.
She lingered so long over one particular sketch, that
Miriam asked her what discovery she had made.
“Look at it carefully,” replied Hilda, putting the
sketch into her hands. “If you take pains to disen-
tangle the design from those pencil-marks that seem —
to have been scrawled over it, I think you will see
something very curious.”
“Tt is a hopeless affair, I am afraid,” said Miriam.
“J have neither your faith, dear Hilda, nor your per-
ceptive faculty. Fie! what a blurred scrawl it is in- —
deed !”
The drawing had originally been very slight, and
had suffered more from time and hard usage than al-
most any other in the collection ; it appeared, too, that
there had been an attempt (perhaps by the very hand
that drew it) to obliterate the design. By Hilda’s
help, however, Miriam pretty distinctly made out a
AN ZESTHETIC COMPANY. 167
winged figure with a drawn sword, and a dragon, or a
demon, prostrate at his feet.
“ T am convinced,” said Hilda, in a low, reverential
tone, “that Guido’s own touches are on that ancient
scrap of paper! If so, it must be his original sketch
for the picture of the Archangel Michael setting his
foot upon the demon, in the Church of the Cappuccini.
The composition and general arrangement of the sketch
are the same with those of the picture; the only dif-
ference being, .that the demon has a more upturned
face, and scowls vindictively at the Archangel, who
turns away his eyes in painful disgust.”
“No wonder!” responded Miriam. “The expres-
sion suits the daintiness of Michael’s character, as
Guido represents him. He never could have looked
the demon in the face!”
“ Miriam!” exclaimed her friend, reproachfully,
“you grieve me, and you know it, by pretending to
speak contemptuously of the most beautiful and the
divinest figure that mortal painter ever drew.”
“ Forgive me, Hilda!” said Miriam. “ You take
these matters more religiously than I can, for my life.
Guido’s Archangel is a fine picture, of course, but it
never impressed me as it does you.”
“Well; we will not talk of that,” answered Hilda.
“What I wanted you to notice, in this sketch, is the
face of the demon. It is entirely unlike the demon
of the finished picture. Guido, you know, always af-
firmed that the resemblance to Cardinal Pamfili was
either casual or imaginary. Now, here is the face as
he first conceived it.”
“ And amore energetic demon, altogether, than that
of the finished picture,” said Kenyon, taking the sketch
into his hand. “ What a spirit is conveyed into the
168 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
ugliness of this strong, writhing, squirming dragon,
under the Archangel’s foot! Neither is the face an
impossible one. Upon my word, I have seen it some:
where, and on the shoulders of a living mam! ”
‘¢ And so have I,”’ said Hilda. ‘ It was what struck
me from the first.”
“Donatello, look at this face!” cried Kenyon.
The young Italian, as may be supposed, took little
interest in matters of art, and seldom or never ven-
tured an opinion respecting them. After holding the
sketch a single instant in his hand, he flung it from
him with a shudder of disgust and repugnance, and a
frown that had all the bitterness of hatred.
“T know the face well!” whispered he. “It is
Miriam’s model ! ”
It was acknowledged both by Kenyon and Hilda
that they had detected, or fancied, the resemblance
which Donatello so strongly affirmed; and it added
not a little to the grotesque and weird character which,
half playfully, half seriously, they assigned to Mir-
iam’s attendant, to think of him as personating the
demon’s part in a picture of more than two centuries
ago. Had Guido, in his effort to imagine the utmost
of sin and misery, which his pencil could represent,
hit ideally upon just this face? Or was it an actual
portrait of somebody, that haunted the old master, as
Miriam was haunted now? Did the ominous shadow
‘follow him through all the sunshine of his earlier ca-
reer, and into the gloom that gathered about its close ?
And when Guido died, did the spectre betake himself
to those ancient sepulchres, there awaiting a new vic-
tim, till it was, Miriam’s ill-hap to encounter him ?
“JT do not acknowledge the resemblance at all,”
said Miriam, looking narrowly at the sketch; ‘and, as
AN AESTHETIC COMPANY. 169
I have drawn the face twenty times, I think you will
own that I am the best judge.”
A discussion here arose, in reference to Guido’s
Archangel, and it was agreed that these four friends
should visit the Church of the Cappuccini the next
morning, and critically examine the picture in ques-
tion ; the similarity between it and the sketch being,
at all events, a very curious circumstance.
It was now a little past ten o’clock, when some of
the company, who had been standing in a balcony, de-
elared the moonlight to be resplendent. They pro-
posed a ramble through the streets, taking in their
way some of those scenes of ruin which produced their
best effects under the splendor of the Italian moon.
CHAPTER XVI.
A MOONLIGHT RAMBLE,
THE proposal for a moonlight ramble was received
with acclamation by all the younger portion of the
company. ‘They immediately set forth and descended
from story to story, dimly lighting their way by waxen
tapers, which are a necessary equipment to those whose
thoroughfare, in the night-time, lies up and down a
Roman staircase. Emerging from the court-yard of
the edifice, they looked upward and saw the sky full
of light, which seemed to have a delicate purple or
crimson lustre, or, at least, some richer tinge than the
cold, white moonshine of other skies. It gleamed over
the front of the opposite palace, showing the architec-
tural ornaments of its cornice and pillared portal, as
well as the iron-barred basement-windows, that gave
such a prison-like aspect to the structure, and the
shabbiness and squalor that lay along its base. A
cobbler was just shutting up his little shop, in the
basement of the palace; a cigar-vender’s lantern flared
in the blast that came through the archway; a French
sentinel paced to and fro before the portal; a home-
less dog, that haunted thereabouts, barked as obstrepe-
rously at the party as if he were the domestic guardian
of the precincts.
The air was quietly full of the noise of falling water,
the cause of which was nowhere visible, though appar-
ently near at hand. This pleasant, natural sound, not
%
A MOONLIGHT RAMBLE. 171
unlike that of a distant cascade in the forest, may be
heard in many of the Roman streets and plazzas, when
the tumult of the city is hushed ; for consuls, empe-
rors, and popes, the great men of every age, have
found no better way of immortalizing their memories,
than by the shifting, indestructible, ever new, yet un-
changing, upgush and downfall of water. They have
written their names in that unstable element, and
proved it a more durable record than brass or marble.
“ Donatello, you had better take one of those gay,
boyish artists for your companion,” said Miriam,
when she found the Italian youth at her side. “Iam
not now in a merry mood, as when we set all the
world a-dancing the other afternoon, in the Borghese
grounds.”
“I never wish to dance any more,” answered Dona-
tello.
“ What a melancholy was in that tone!” exclaimed
Miriam. “ Youare getting spoilt in this dreary Rome,
and will be as wise and as wretched as all the rest of
mankind, unless you go back soon to your Tuscan
vineyards. Well; give me your arm then! But take
care that no friskiness comes over you. We must
walk evenly and heavily to-night! ”
The party arranged itself according to its natural
affinities or casual likings ; a sculptor generally choos-
ing a painter, and a painter a sculptor, for his com-
panion, in preference to brethren of their own art.
Kenyon would gladly have taken Hilda to himself,
and have drawn her a little aside from the throng of
merry wayfarers. But she kept near Miriam, and
seemed, in her gentle and quiet way, to decline a sepa-
rate alliance either with him or any other of her ac-
quaintances.
172 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
So they set forth, and had gone but a little way,
when the narrow street emerged into a piazza, on one
side of which glistening, and dimpling in the moon-
light, was the most famous fountain in Rome. Its
murmur — not to say its uproar — had been in the
ears of the company, ever since they came into the
open air. It was the Fountain of Trevi, which draws
its precious water from a source far beyond the walls,
whence it flows hitherward through old subterranean
aqueducts, and sparkles forth as pure as the virgin
who first led Agrippa to its well-spring, by her father’s
door.
‘‘T shall sip as much of this water as the hollow
of my hand will hold,” said Miriam. “I am leaving
Rome in a few days; and the tradition goes, that a
parting draught at the Fountain of Trevi insures the
traveller’s return, whatever obstacles and improbabili-
ties may seem to beset him. Will you drink, Dona-
tello ?”’
“ Signorina, what you drink, I drink,” said the
youth.
They and the rest of the party descended some steps
to the water’s brim, and, after a sip or two, stood gaz-
ing at the absurd design of the fountain, where some
sculptor of Bernini’s school had gone absolutely mad
in marble. It was a great palace-front, with niches
and many bas-reliefs, out of which looked Agrippa’s
legendary virgin, and several of the allegoric sister-
hood; while, at the base, appeared Neptune, with his
floundering steeds, and Tritons blowing their horns
about him, and twenty other artificial fantasies, which
the calm moonlight soothed into better taste than was
native to them.
And, after all, it was as magnificent a piece of work
A MOONLIGHT RAMBLE. 173
as ever human skill contrived. At the foot of the pa-
latial fagade was strown, with careful art and ordered
irregularity, a broad and broken heap of massive rock,
looking as if it might have lain there since the deluge.
Over a central precipice fell the water, in a semicircu-
lar cascade; and from a hundred crevices, on all sides,
snowy jets gushed up, and streams spouted out of the
mouths and nostrils of stone monsters, and fell in glis-
tening drops; while other rivulets, that had run wild,
came leaping from one rude step to another, over
stones that were mossy, slimy, and green with sedge,
because, in a century of their wild play, Nature had
adopted the Fountain of Trevi, with all its elaborate
devices, for her own. Finally, the water, tumbling,
sparkling, and dashing, with joyous haste and never-
ceasing murmur, poured itself into a great marble-
brimmed reservoir, and filled it with a quivering tide ;
on which was seen, continually, a snowy semicircle of
momentary foam from the principal cascade, as well
as a multitude of snow-points from smaller jets. The
basin oceupied the whole breadth of the piazza, whence
flights of steps descended to its border. A boat might
float, and make voyages from one shore to another in
this mimic lake.
In the daytime, there is hardly a livelier scene in
Rome than the neighborhood of the Fountain of Trevi;
for the piazza is then filled with the stalls of vegetable
and fruit-dealers, chestnut-roasters, cigar-venders, and
other people, whose petty and wandering traffic is
transacted in the open air. It is likewise thronged
with idlers, lounging over the iron railing, and with
Forestieri, who came hither to see the famous foun-
tain. Here, also, are seen men with buckets, urchins
with cans, and maidens (a picture as old as the patri-
174 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
archal times) bearing their pitchers upon their heags.
For the water of Trevi is in request, far and wide, a
the most refreshing draught for feverish lips, the pleas-
antest to mingle with wine, and the wholesomest to
drink, in its native purity, that can anywhere be found.
But now, at early midnight, the piazza was a solitude;
and it was a delight to behold this untamable water,
sporting by itself in the moonshine, and compelling
all the elaborate trivialities of art to assume a natu-
ral aspect, in accordance with its own powerful sim-
plicity. .
‘¢ What would be done with this water-power,” sug:
gested an artist, “if we had it in one of our American
cities? Would they employ it to turn the machinery
of a cotton-mill, I wonder ?”
“The good people would pull down those rampant
marble deities,” said Kenyon, “and, possibly, they
would give me a commission to carve the one -and-
thirty (is that the number ? ) sister States, each pour-
ing a silver stream from a separate can into one vast
basin, which should represent the grand reservoir of
national prosperity.”
“Or, if they wanted a bit of satire,” remarked an
English artist, “you could set those same one -and-
thirty States to cleansing the national flag of any
stains that it may have incurred. The Roman washer-
women at the lavatory yonder, plying their labor in
the open air, would serve admirably as models.”
“I have often intended to visit this fountain by
“moonlight,” said Miriam, “ because it was here that
the interview took place between Corinne and Lord
Neville, after their separation and temporary estrange-
ment. Pray come behind me, one of you, and let me
try whether the face can be recognized in the water.”
A MOONLIGHT RAMBLE. 175
Leaning over the stone brim of the basin, she
heard footsteps stealing behind her, and knew that
somebody was looking over her shoulder. The moon-
shine fell directly behind Miriam, illuminating the
palace-front and the whole scene of statues and rocks,
and filling the basin, as it were, with tremulous and
palpable light. Corinne, it will be remembered, knew
Lord Neville by the reflection of his face in the water,
In Miriam’s case, however (owing to the agitation of
the water, its transparency, and the angle at which she
was compelled to lean over), no reflected image ap-
peared ; nor, from the same causes, would it have been
possible for the recognition between Corinne and her
lover to take place. The moon, indeed, flung Mir-
iam’s shadow at the bottom of the basin, as well as
two more shadows of persons who had followed her,
on either side.
“ Three shadows!” exclaimed Miriam. “ Three sep-
arate shadows, all so black and heavy that they sink
in the water! There they lie on the bottom, as if all
three were drowned together. This shadow on my
right is Donatello; I know him by his curls, and the
turn of his head. My left-hand companion puzzles
me; a shapeless mass, as indistinct as the premonition
of calamity! Which of you can it be? Ah!”
She had turned round, while speaking, and saw be-
side her the strange creature, whose attendance on her
was already familiar, as a marvel and a jest, to the
whole company of artists. A general burst of laugh-
ter followed the recognition; while the model Jeaned
towards Miriam, as she shrank from him, and mut-
tered something that was inaudible to those who wit
hessed the scene. By his gestures, however, they con
cluded that he was inviting her to bathe her hands.
176 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
“¢ He cannot be an Italian; at least not a Roman,”
observed an artist. ‘I never knew one of them to
care about ablution. See him now! It is as if he
were trying to wash off the time-stains and earthly soil
of a thousand years!”
Dipping his hands into the capacious washbowl be-
fore him, the model rubbed them together with the ut-
most vehemence. Ever and anon, too, he peeped into
the water, as if expecting to see the whole Fountain of
Trevi turbid with the results of his ablution. Miriam
looked at him, some little time, with an aspect of real
terror, and even imitated him by leaning over to peep
into the basin. Recovering herself, she took up some
of the water in the hollow of her hand, and practised
an old form of exorcism by flinging it in her persecu-
tor’s face.
“In the name of all the Saints,” cried she, “ van-
ish, Demon, and let me be free of you now and for-
ever !”
“Tt will not suffice,” said some of the mirthful par-
ty, “unless the Fountain of Trevi gushes with holy
water.”
In fact, the exorcism was quite ineffectual upon the
pertinacious demon, or whatever the apparition might
be. Still he washed his brown, bony talons ; still he
peered into the vast basin, as if all the water of that
great drinking-cup of Rome must needs be stained
black or sanguine ; and still he gesticulated to Miriam
to follow his example. The spectators laughed loudly,
but yet with a kind of constraint; for the creature’s
aspect was strangely repulsive and hideous.
Miriam felt her arm seized violently by Donatello,
She looked at him, and beheld a tiger-like fury gleam
ing from his wild eyes.
A MOONLIGHT RAMBLE. 177
“Bid me drown him!” whispered he, shuddering
between rage and horrible disgust. “You shall hear
his death-gurgle in another instant! ”
“Peace, peace, Donatello!” said Miriam, soothing-
ly, for this naturally gentle and sportive being seemed
all aflame with animal rage. “Do him no mischief !
He is mad ; and we are as mad as he, if we suffer our-
selves to be disquieted by his antics. Let us leave
him to bathe his hands till the fountain run dry, if he
find solace and pastime in it. What is it to you or
me, Donatello? There, there! Be quiet, foolish
boy!”
Her tone and gesture were such as she might have
used in taming down the wrath of a faithful hound,
that had taken upon himself to avenge some supposed
affront to his mistress. She smoothed the young
man’s curls (for his fierce and sudden fury seemed to
bristle among his hair), and touched his cheek with
her soft palm, till his angry mood was a little as-
suaged.
“Signorina, do I look as when you first knew me?”
asked he, with a heavy, tremulous sigh, as they went
onward, somewhat apart from their companions. ‘“Me-
thinks there has been a change upon me, these many
months; and more and more, these last few days.
The joy is gone out of my life; all gone! all gone!
Feel my hand! Is it not very hot? Ah; and my
heart burns hotter still!”
-““My poor Donatello, you are ill!” said Miriam,
with deep sympathy and pity. “This melancholy and
sickly Rome is stealing away the rich, joyous life that
belongs to you. Go back, my dear friend, to your
home among the hills, where (as I gather from what
you have told me) your days were filled with simple
VOL. VI.
178 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
and blameless delights. Have you found aught in the
world that is worth what you there enjoyed? Tell me
truly, Donatello!”
“Yes!” replied the young man.
‘¢ And what, in Heaven’s name?” asked she.
“This burning pain in my heart,” said Donatello;
‘“‘for you are in the midst of it.”
By this time, they had left the Fountain of Trevi
considerably behind them. Little further allusion was.
made to the scene at its margin; for the party re-
garded Miriam’s persecutor as diseased in his wits,
and were hardly to be surprised by any eccentricity in
his deportment.
Threading several narrow streets, they passed through
the Piazza of the Holy Apostles, and soon came to
Trajan’s Forum. All over the surface of what once
~ was Rome, it seems to be the effort of Time to bury
up the ancient city, as if it were a corpse, and he the
sexton; so that, in eighteen centuries, the soil over its
grave has grown very deep, by the slow scattering of
dust, and the accumulation of more modern decay
upon older ruin.
This was the fate, also, of Trajan’s Forum, until
some papal antiquary, a few hundred years ago, began
to hollow it out again, and disclosed the full height
of the gigantic column wreathed round with bas-reliefs
of the old emperor’s warlike deeds. In the area be-
fore it stands a grove of stone, consisting of the broken
and unequal shafts of a vanished temple, still keeping
a majestic order, and apparently incapable of further
demolition. The modern edifices of the piazza (wholly
built, no doubt, out of the spoil of its old magnifi-
cence) look down into the hollow space whence these
pillars rise.
A MOONLIGHT RAMBLE. 179
One of the immense gray granite shafts lay in the
piazza, on the verge of the area. It was a great, solid
fact of the Past, making old Rome actually sensible to
the touch and eye; and no study of history, nor force
of thought, nor magic of song, could so vitally assure
us that Rome once existed, as this sturdy specimen of
what its rulers and people wrought.
“ And see!” said Kenyon, laying his hand upon it,
“there is still a polish remaining on the hard sub-
stance of the pillar; and even now, late as it is, I can
feel very sensibly the warmth of the noonday sun,
which did its best to heat it through. This shaft will
endure forever. The polish of eighteen centuries ago,
as yet but half rubbed off, and the heat of to-day’s
sunshine, lingering into the night, seem almost equally
ephemeral in relation to it.”
“There is comfort to be found in the pillar,” re-
marked Miriam, “hard and heavy as it is. Lying
here forever, as it will, it makes all human trouble
appear but a momentary annoyance.”
“And human happiness as evanescent too,” ob-
served Hilda, sighing; “and beautiful art hardly less
so! I do not love to think that this dull stone,
merely by its massiveness, will last infinitely longer
than any picture, in spite of the spiritual life that
ought to give it immortality!”
“ My poor little Hilda,” said Miriam, kissing her
compassionately, “‘ would you sacrifice this greatest
mortal consolation, which we derive from the transi-
toriness of all things, —from the right of saying, in
every conjecture, ‘ This, too, will pass away,’ — would
you give up this unspeakable boon, for the sake of
making a picture eternal ?”
Their moralizing strain was interrupted by a dem.
180 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
onstration from the rest of the party, who, after talk-
ing and laughing together, suddenly joined their voices,
and shouted at full pitch, —
“Trajan! Trajan!”
“ Why do you deafen us with such an uproar ? ”” ine
quired Miriam.
In truth, the whole piazza had been filled with their
idle vociferation; the echoes from the surrounding
houses reverberating the cry of “Trajan,” on all
sides ; as if there was a great search for that imperial
personage, and not so much as a handful of his ashes
to be found.
“ Why, it was a good opportunity to air our voices
in this resounding piazza,” replied one of the artists.
“Besides, we had really some hopes of summoning
Trajan to look at his column, which, you know, he
never saw in his lifetime. Here is your model (who,
they say, lived and sinned before Trajan’s death) still
wandering about Rome; and why not the Emperor
Trajan ?”
“Dead emperors have very little delight in their
columns, I am afraid,” observed Kenyon. “ All that
rich sculpture of Trajan’s bloody warfare, twining
from the base of the pillar to its capital, may be but
an ugly spectacle for his ghostly eyes, if he considers
that this huge, storied shaft must be laid before the
judgment-seat, as a piece of the evidence of what he
did in the flesh. If ever I am employed to sculpture
a hero’s monument, I shall think of this, as I put in
the bas-reliefs of the pedestal !”
“There are sermons in stones,” said Hilda, thought-
fully, smiling at Kenyon’s morality; “and especially
in the stones of Rome.”
The party moved on, but deviated a little from the
straight way, in order to glance at the ponderous re-
A MOONLIGHT RAMBLE. 181
mains of the temple of Mars Ultor, within which a
convent of nuns is now established, — a dove-cote, in
the war-god’s mansion. At only a little distance, they
passed the portico of a Temple of Minerva, most rich |
and beautiful in architecture, but wotully gnawed by L~
‘time and shattered by violence, besides being buried
midway in the accumulation of soil, that rises over
dead Rome like a flood-tide. Within this edifice of
antique sanctity, a baker’s shop was now established, _
with an entrance on one side; for, everywhere, the
remnants of old grandeur and divinity have been
made available for the meanest necessities of to-day.
“The baker is just drawing his loaves out of the
oven,’ remarked Kenyon. “Do you smell how sour
they are? I should fancy that Minerva (in revenge
for the desecration of her temple) had slyly poured
vinegar into the batch, if I did not know that the
modern Romans prefer their bread in the acetous fer-
mentation.”
They turned into the Via Alessandria, and thus
gained the rear of the Temple of Peace, and, passing
beneath its great arches, pursued their way along a
hedge-bordered lane. In all probability, a stately
Roman street lay buried beneath that rustic-looking
pathway ; for they had now emerged from the close
and narrow avenues of the modern city, and were
treading on a soil where the seeds of antique grandeur
had not yet produced the squalid crop that elsewhere
sprouts from them. Grassy as the lane was, it skirted
along heaps of shapeless ruin, and the bare site of the
vast temple that Hadrian planned and built. It ter-
minated on the edge of a somewhat abrupt descent, at
the foot of which, with a muddy ditch between, rose,
in the bright moonlight, the great curving wail and
multitudinous arches of the Coliseum.
CHAPTER XVII.
MIRIAM’S TROUBLE.
As usual of a moonlight evening, several carriages
stood at the entrance of this famous ruin, and the
precincts and interior were anything but a solitude.
The French sentinel on duty beneath the principal
archway eyed our party curiously, but offered no ob-
stacle to their admission. Within, the moonlight
filled and flooded the great empty space; it glowed
upon tier above tier of ruined, grass-grown arches,
and made them even too distinctly visible. The splen-
dor of the revelation took away that inestimable effect
of dimness and mystery by which the imagination
might be assisted to build a grander structure than
the Coliseum, and to shatter it with a more pictur-
esque decay. Byron’s celebrated description is better
than the reality. He beheld the scene in his mind’s
eye, through the witchery of many intervening years,
and faintly illuminated it as if with starlight instead
of this broad glow of moonshine.
The party of our friends sat down, three or four of
them on a prostrate column, another on a shapeless
lump of marble, once a Roman altar; others on the
steps of one of the Christian shrines. Goths and bar-
barians though they were, they chatted as gayly to-
gether as if they belonged to the gentle and pleasant
race of people who now inhabit Italy. There was
much pastime and gayety just then in the area of the
MIRIAM’S TROUBLE. 183
Coliseum, where so many gladiators and wild beasts
‘had fought and died, and where so much blood of
Christian martyrs had been lapped up by that fiercest
of wild beasts, the Roman populace of yore. _Some
youths and maidens were running merry races across
the open space, and playing at hide-and-seek a little
way within the duskiness of the ground-tier of arches,
whence now and then you could hear the half-shriek,
half-laugh of a frolicsome girl, whom the shadow had
betrayed into a young man’s arms. Elder groups were
seated on the*fragments of pillars and blocks of marble
that lay round the verge of the arena, talking in the
quick, short ripple of the Italian tongue. On the steps
of the great black cross in the centre of the Coliseum
sat a party singing scraps of songs, with much laughter
and merriment between the stanzas.
It was a strange place for song and mirth. That
black cross marks one of the special blood-spots of the
earth where, thousands of times over, the dying gladia-
tor fell, and more of human agony has been endured
for the mere pastime of the multitude than on the
breadth of many battle-fields. From all this crime
and suffering, however, the spot has derived a more
than common sanctity. An inscription promises seven
years’ indulgence, seven years of remission from the
pains of purgatory, and earlier enjoyment of heavenly
bliss, for each separate kiss imprinted on the black
cross. What better use could be made of life, after
middle-age, when the accumulated sins are many and
the remaining temptations few, than to spend it all in
kissing the black cross of the Coliseum !
Besides its central consecration, the whole area has
been made sacred by a range of shrines, which are
erected round the circle, each commemorating some
184 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT
scene or circumstance of the Saviour’s passion and
suffermg. In accordance with an ordinary custom a
pilgrim was making his progress from shrine to shrine
upon his knees, and saying a penitential prayer at
each. Light-footed girls ran across the path along
which he crept, or sported with their friends close by
the shrines where he was kneeling. The pilgrim took
no heed, and the girls meant no irreverence; for in
Italy religion jostles along side by side with business
and sport, after a fashion of its own, and people are
accustomed to kneel down and pray, or see others
praying, between two fits of merriment, or between
two sins.
To make an end of our description, a red twinkle of
light was visible amid the breadth of shadow that fell
across the upper part of the Coliseum. Now it glim-
mered through a line of arches, or threw a broader
gleam as it rose out of some profound abyss of ruin;
now it was muffled by a heap of shrubbery which had
adventurously clambered to that dizzy height; and
so the red light kept ascending to loftier and loftier
ranges of the structure, until it stood like a star where
the blue sky rested against the Coliseum’s topmost
wall. It indicated a party of English or Americans
paying the inevitable visit by moonlight, and exalting
themselves with raptures that were Byron’s, not their
own.
Our company of artists sat on the fallen column,
the pagan altar, and the steps of the Christian shrine,
enjoying the moonlight and shadow, the present gay.
ety and the gloomy reminiscences of the scene, in al-
most equal share. Artists, indeed, are lifted by the
ideality of their pursuits a little way off the earth, and
are therefore able to catch the evanescent fragrance
MIRIAM’S TROUBLE. 185
that floats in the atmosphere of life above the heads
of the ordinary crowd. Even if they seem endowed
with little imagination individually, yet there is a
property, a gift, a talisman, common to their class,
entitling them to partake somewhat more bountifully
than other people in the thin delights of moonshine
and romance. :
“ How delightful this is!” said Hilda; and she
sighed for very pleasure.
“Yes,” said Kenyon, who sat on the column, at her
side. “The Coliseum is far more delightful, as we
enjoy it now, than when eighty thousand persons sat
Squeezed together, row above row, to see their fellow-
creatures torn by lions and tigers limb from limb.
What a strange thought that the Coliseum was really
built for us, and has not come to its best uses till al-
most two thousand years after it was finished ! ”
“The Emperor Vespasian scarcely had us in his
mind,” said Hilda, smiling; “but I thank him none
_ the less for building it.”
“He gets small thanks, I fear, from the people
whose bloody instincts he pampered,” rejoined Ken-
yon. “ Fancy a nightly assemblage of eighty thou-
sand melancholy and remorseful ghosts, looking down
from those tiers of broken arches, striving to repent of
the savage pleasures which they once enjoyed, but still
longing to enjoy them over again.”
“ You bring a Gothic horror into this peaceful moon-
light scene,” said Hilda.
“ Nay, I have good authority for peopling the Coli-
seum with phantoms,” replied the sculptor. ‘Do you
remember that veritable scene in Benvenuto Cellini’s
autobiography, in which a necromancer of his acquaint-
ance draws a magic circle — just where the black cross
186 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
stands now, I suppose — and raises myriads of de
mons? Benvenuto saw them with his own eyes, —
giants, pygmies, and other creatures of frightful as-
pect, — capering and dancing on yonder walls. Those
spectres must have been Romans, in their lifetime, and
frequenters of this bloody amphitheatre.”
““T see a spectre, now!” said Hilda, with a little
thrill of uneasiness. ‘‘ Have you watched that pil-
grim, who is going round the whole circle of shrines,
on his knees, and praying with such fervency at every
one? Now that he has revolved so far in his orbit,
and has the moonshine on his face as he turns towards
us, methinks I recognize him!”
“ And so do I,” said Kenyon. “ Poor Miriam! Do
you think she sees him ?”
They looked round, and perceived that Miriam had
risen from the steps of the shrine and disappeared.
She had shrunk back, in fact, into the deep obscurity
of an arch that opened just behind them.
Donatello, whose faithful watch was no more to be
eluded than that of a hound, had stolen after her,
and became the innocent witness of a spectacle that
had its own kind of horror. Unaware of his pres-
ence, and fancying herself wholly unseen, the beautiful
Miriam began to gesticulate extravagantly, gnashing
her teeth, flinging her arms wildly abroad, stamping
with her foot. It was as if she had stepped aside for
an instant, solely to snatch the relief of a brief fit of
madness. Persons in acute trouble, or laboring under
strong excitement, with a necessity for concealing it,
are prone to relieve their nerves in this wild way;
although, when practicable, they find a more effectual
solace in shrieking aloud.
Thus, as soon as she threw off her self-control, under
MIRIAM’S TROUBLE. 187
the dusky arches of the Coliseum, we may consider
Miriam as a mad woman, concentrating the elements
of a long insanity into that instant.
“ Signorina! signorina! have pity on me! ” cried
Donatello, approaching her ; “ this is too terrible! ”
“How dare you look at me!” exclaimed Miriam,
with a start; then, whispering below her breath, “men
have been struck dead for a less offence! ”
“Tf you desire it, or need it,” said Donatello, hum-
bly, “I shall not be loath to die.”
“ Donatello,” said Miriam, coming close to the young
man, and speaking low, but still the almost insanity of
the moment vibrating in her voice, “if you love your-
self; if you desire those earthly blessings, such as you,
of all men, were made for; if you would come to a
good old age among your olive-orchards and your
Tuscan vines, as your forefathers did; if you would
leave children to enjoy the same peaceful, happy, in-
nocent life, then flee from me. Look not behind you!
Get you gone without another word.” He gazed sadly
at her, but did not stir. “I tell you,” Miriam went
on, “there is a great evil hanging over me! I know
it; I see it in the sky; I feel it in the air! It will
overwhelm me as utterly as if this arch should crum-
ble down. upon our heads! It will crush you, too, if
you stand at my side! Depart, then; and make the
sign of the cross, as your faith bids you, when an evil
spirit is nigh. Cast me off, or you are lost forever.”
A higher sentiment brightened upon Donatello’s
face than had hitherto seemed to belong to its simple
expression and sensuous beauty.
“Twill never quit you,” he said ; “ you cannot drive
me from you.”
“ Poor Donatello!” said Miriam, in a changed tone,
188 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
and rather to herself than him. “Is there no other
that seeks me out, —follows me,—is obstinate to
share my affliction and my doom, — but only you!
They call me beautiful; and I used to fancy that, at
my need, I’ could bring the whole world to my feet.
And lo! here is my utmost need; and my beauty and.
my gifts have brought me only this poor, simple boy.
Half-witted, they call him; and surely fit for nothing
but to be happy. And I accept his aid! To-morrow,
to-morrow, I will tell him all! Ah! what a sin to
stain his joyous nature with the blackness of a woe
like mine!”
She held out her hand to him, and smiled sadly as
Donatello pressed it to his lips. They were now about
to emerge from the depth of the arch; but, just then,
the kneeling pilgrim, in his revolution round the orbit
of the shrines, had reached the one on the steps of
which Miriam had been sitting. There, as at the other
shrines, he prayed, or seemed to pray. It struck Ken-
yon, however, — who sat close by, and saw his face
distinctly, —that the supplant was merely perform-
ing an enjoined penance, and without the penitence
that ought to have given it effectual life. Even as he
knelt, his eyes wandered, and Miriam soon felt that
he had detected her, half hidden as she was within the
obscurity of the arch.
“He is evidently a good Catholic, however,” whis-
pered one of the party. “ After all, I fear we cannot’
identify him with the ancient pagan who haunts the
catacombs.”
“The doctors of the Propaganda may have converted
him,” said another; “they have had fifteen hundred
years to perform the task.”
The company now deemed. it time to continue their
8
MIRIAM’S TROUBLE. 189
ramble. Emerging from a side entrance of the Coli-
seum, they had on their left the Arch of Constantine,
and, above it, the shapeless ruins of the Palace of the
Czsars ; portions of which have taken shape anew, in
medizval convents and modern villas. They turned
their faces cityward, and, treading over the broad
flagstones of the old Roman pavement, passed through
the Arch of Titus. The moon shone brightly enough
within it, to show the seven-branched Jewish candle-
stick, cut in the marble of the interior. The original
of that awful trophy lies buried, at this moment, in
the yellow mud of the Tiber ; and, could its gold of
Ophir again be brought to light, it would be the most
precious relic of past ages, in the estimation of both
Jew and Gentile.
Standing amid so much ancient dust, it is difficult
to spare the reader the commonplaces of enthusiasm,
on which hundreds of tourists have already insisted.
Over this half-worn pavement, and beneath this Arch
of Titus, the Roman armies had trodden in their out-
ward march, to fight battles, a world’s width away.
Returning victorious, with royal captives and inesti-
mable spoil, a Roman triumph, that most gorgeous pa-
geant of earthly pride, had streamed and flaunted in
hundred-fold succession over these same flagstones, and
through this yet stalwart archway. It is politic, how-
ever, to make few allusions to such a past; nor, if we
would create an interest in the characters of our story,
is it wise to suggest how Cicero’s foot may have stepped
on yonder stone, or how Horace was wont to stroll near
by, making his footsteps chime with the measure of the
ode that was ringing in his mind. The very ghosts of
that massive and stately epoch have so much density
that the actual people of to-day seem the thinner of the
v
190 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
two, and stand more ghostlike by the arches and col-
umns, letting the rich sculpture be discerned through
their ill-compacted substance.
The party kept onward, often meeting pairs and
groups of midnight strollers like themselves. On such
a moonlight night as this, Rome keeps itself awake
and stirring, and is full of song and pastime, the noise
of which mingles with your dreams, if you have gone
betimes to bed. But it is better to be abroad, and
take our own share of the enjoyable time; for the
languor that weighs so heavily in the Roman atmos-
phere by day is lightened beneath the moon and stars.
They had now reached the precincts of the Forum.
CHAPTER XVIII.
ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE.
“ Ler us settle it,” said Kenyon, stamping his foot
firmly down, “ that this is precisely the spot where the
chasm opened, into which Curtius precipitated his good
steed and himself. Imagine the great, dusky gap, im-
penetrably deep, and with half - shaped monsters and
hideous faces looming upward out of it, to the vast af-
fright of the good citizens who peeped over the brim!
There, now, is a subject, hitherto unthought of, for a
grim and ghastly story, and, methinks, with a moral as
deep as the gulf itself. Within it, beyond a question,
there were prophetic visions, — intimations of all the
future calamities of Rome, — shades of Goths, and
Gauls, and even of the French soldiers of to-day. It
was a pity to close it up so soon! I would give much
for a peep into such a chasm.”
“TI fancy,” remarked Miriam, “that every person
takes a peep into it in moments of gloom and despon-
dency ; that is to say, in his moments of deepest in-
sight.”
“Where is it, then?” asked Hilda. “I never
peeped into it.”
“ Wait, and it will open for you,” replied her friend.
“The chasm was merely one of the orifices of that pit
of blackness that lies beneath us, everywhere. The
firmest. substance of human happiness is but a thin
crust spread over it, with just reality enough to bear
192 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
up the illusive stage-scenery amid which we tread. It
needs no earthquake to open the chasm. A footstep,
a little heavier than ordinary, will serve; and we must
step very daintily, not to break through the crust at
any moment. By and by, we inevitably sink! It
was a foolish piece of heroism in Curtius to precipitate
himself there, in advance ; for all Rome, you see, has
been swallowed up in that gulf, in spite of him. The
Palace of the Caesars has gone down thither, with a
hollow, rumbling sound of its fragments! All the
temples have tumbled into it ; and thousands of stat-
ues have been thrown after! All the armies and the
triumphs have marched into the great chasm, with
their martial music playing, as they stepped over the
brink. All the heroes, the statesmen, and the poets !
All piled upon poor Curtius, who thought to have
saved them all! Iam loath to smile at the self-con-
ceit of that gallant horseman, but cannot well avoid
it.’
“Tt grieves me to hear you speak thus, Miriam,”
said Hilda, whose natural and cheerful piety was
shocked by her friend’s gloomy view of human desti-
nies. “It seems to me that there is no chasm, nor
any hideous emptiness under our feet, except what the
evil within us digs. If there be such a chasm, let us
bridge it over with good thoughts and deeds, and we
shall tread safely to the other side. It was the guilt
of Rome, no doubt, that caused this gulf to open ; and
Curtius filled it up with his heroic self-sacrifice and
patriotism, which was the best virtue that the old
Romans knew. Every wrong thing makes the gulf
deeper ; every right one helps to fill it up. As the
evil of Rome was far more than its good, the whole
commonwealth finally sank into it, indeed, but of no
original necessity.”
ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE. 193
** Well, Hilda, it came to the same thing at last,”
answered Miriam, despondingly.
*‘ Doubtless, too,” resumed the sculptor (for his im-
agination was greatly excited by the idea of this won-
drous chasm), “all the blood that the Romans shed,
whether on battle-fields, or in the Coliseum, or on the
cross, — in whatever public or private murder, — ran
into this fatal gulf, and formed a mighty subterranean —
lake of gore, right beneath our feet. The blood from
the thirty wounds in Czxsar’s breast flowed hitherward, |
and that pure little rivulet from Virginia’s bosom, too!
Virginia, beyond all question, was stabbed by her fa-
ther, precisely where we are standing.”
“Then the spot is hallowed forever!” said Hilda.
“Is there such. blessed potency in bloodshed?”
asked Miriam. “Nay, Hilda, do not protest! I take
your meaning rightly.”
They again moved forward. And still, from the
Forum and the Via Sacra, from beneath the arches of
the Temple of Peace on one side, and the acclivity of
the Palace of the Caesars on the other, there arose
singing voices of parties that were strolling through
the moonlight. Thus, the air was full of kindred
melodies that encountered one another, and twined
themselves into a broad, vague music, out of which no
single strain could be disentangled. These good ex-
amples, as well as the harmonious influences of the
hour, incited our artist-friends to make proof of their
own vocal powers. With what skill and breath they
had, they set up a choral strain, — “ Hail, Columbia!”
we believe, — which those old Roman echoes must
have found it exceeding difficult to repeat aright.
Even Hilda poured the slender sweetness of her note
into her country’s song. Miriam was at first silent,
VOL. VI.
194 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
being perhaps unfamiliar with the air and burden,
But, suddenly, she threw out such a swell and gush of
sound, that it seemed to pervade the whole choir of
other voices, and then to rise above them all, and be-
come audible in what would else have been the silence
of an upper region. That volume of melodious voice
was one of the tokens of a great trouble. ‘There had
long been an impulse upon her — amounting, at last,
to a necessity —to shriek aloud; but she had strug-
gled against it, till the thunderous anthem gave her
an opportunity to relieve her heart by a great cry.
They passed the solitary Column of Phocas, and
looked down into the excavated space, where a confu-
sion of pillars, arches, pavements, and shattered blocks
and shafts —the erumbs of various ruin dropped from
the devouring maw of Time — stand, or lie, at the
base of the Capitoline Hill. That renowned hillock
(for it is little more) now arose abruptly above them.
The ponderous masonry, with which the hill-side is
built up, is as old as Rome itself, and looks likely to
endure while the world retains any substance or per-
manence. It once sustained the Capitol, and now
bears up the great pile which the medizval builders
raised on the antique foundation, and that still lof-
tier tower, which looks abroad upon a larger page of
deeper historic interest than any other scene can show.
On the same pedestal of Roman masonry, other struc-
tures will doubtless rise, and vanish like ephemeral
things.
To a spectator on the spot, it is remarkable that the
events of Roman history, and Roman life itself, ap-
pear not so distant as the Gothic ages which succeeded
them. We stand in the Forum, or on the height of
the Capitol, and seem to see the Roman epoch close at
ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE. 195
hand. We forget that a chasm extends between it
and ourselves, in which lie all those dark, rude, unlet-
tered centuries, around the birth-time of Christianity,
as well as the age of chivalry and romance, the feudal
system, and the infancy of a better civilization than
that of Rome. Or, if we remember these medieval
times, they look further off than the Augustan age.
The reason may be, that the old Roman literature sur-
vives, and creates for us an intimacy with the classic
ages, which we have no means of forming with the
subsequent ones.
The Italian climate, moreover, robs age of its rever-
ence and makes it look newer than it is. Not the Coli-
seum, nor the tombs of the Appian Way, nor the old-
est pillar in the Forum, nor any other Roman ruin, be
it as dilapidated as it may, ever give the impression of
venerable antiquity which we gather, along with the
ivy, from the gray walls of an English abbey or castle.
And yet every brick or stone, which we pick up among
the former, had fallen ages before the foundation of
the latter was begun. This is owing to the kindliness
with which Nature takes an English ruin to her heart,
covering it with ivy, as tenderly as Robin Redbreast
covered the dead babes with forest leaves. She strives
to make it a part of herself, gradually obliterating the
handiwork of man, and supplanting it with her own
mosses and trailing verdure, till she has won the whole
structure back. But, in Italy, whenever man has once
hewn a stone, Nature forthwith relinquishes her right
to it, and never lays her finger on it again. Age after
age finds it bare and naked, in the barren sunshine,
and leaves it so. Besides this natural disadvantage,
too, each succeeding century, in Rome, has done its
best to ruin the very ruins, so far as their picturesque
196 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
effect is concerned, by stealing away the marble and
hewn stone, and leaving only yellow bricks, which
never can look venerable.
The party ascended the winding way that leads from
the Forum to the Piazza of the Campidoglio on the
summit of the Capitoline Hill. They stood awhile to
contemplate the bronze equestrian statue of Marcus
Aurelius. The moonlight glistened upon traces of the
gilding which had once covered both rider and steed ;
these were almost gone, but the aspect of dignity was
still perfect, clothing the figure as it were with an mm-
perial robe of light. It is the most majestic represen-
tation of the kingly character that ever the world has
seen. A sight of the old heathen emperor is enough
to create an evanescent sentiment of loyalty even in .
a democratic bosom, so august does he look, so fit to
rule, so worthy of man’s profoundest homage and
obedience, so inevitably attractive of his love. He
stretches forth his hand with an air of grand benefi-
cence and unlimited authority, as if uttering a decree
from which no appeal was permissible, but in which
the obedient subject would find his highest interests
consulted; a command that was in itself a benedic-
tion.
“The sculptor of this statue knew what a king
should be,” observed Kenyon, “and knew, likewise,
the heart of mankind, and how it craves a true ruler,
under whatever title, as a child its father.”
“ Oh, if there were but one such man as this!” ex-
claimed Miriam. “One such man in an age, and one
in all the world; then how speedily would the strife,
wickedness, and sorrow of us poor creatures be re-
lieved. We would come to him with our griefs, what-
ever they might be,—even a poor, frail woman bur-
ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE. 197
dened with her heavy heart, —and lay them at his
feet, and never need to take them up again. The
rightful king would see to all.”
“ What an idea of the regal office and duty!” said
Kenyon, with a smile. “It is a woman’s idea of the
whole matter to perfection. It is Hilda’s, too, no
doubt ?”
“No,” answered the quiet Hilda; “I should never
look for such assistance from an earthly king.”
“Hilda, my religious Hilda,” whispered. Miriam,
suddenly drawing the girl close to her, “ do you know
how it is with me? I would give all I have or hope
—my life, oh how freely —for one instant of your
trust in God! You little guess my need of it. You
really think, then, that He sees and cares for us?”
“‘ Miriam, you frighten me.”
“Hush, hush! do not let them hear you!” whis-
pered Miriam. “TI frighten you, you say ; for Heaven’s
sake, how? Am I strange? is there anything wild in
my behavior ?”
“Only for that moment,” replied Hilda, “ because
you seemed to doubt God’s providence.”
“We will talk of that another time,” said her friend.
“ Just now it is very dark to me.”
On the left of the Piazza of the Campidoglio, as
you face cityward, and at the head of the long and
stately flight of steps descending from the Capitoline
Hill to the level of lower Rome, there is a narrow
lane or passage. Into this the party of our friends
now turned. The path ascended a little, and ran along
under the walls of a palace, but soon passed through
a gateway, and terminated in a small paved court-
yard. It was bordered by a low parapet.
The spot, for some reason or other, impressed them
198 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
as exceedingly lonely. On one side was the great
height of the palace, with the moonshine falling over
it, and showing all the windows barred and shuttered.
Not a human eye could look down into the little court-
yard, even if the seemingly deserted palace had a
tenant. On all other sides of its narrow compass
there was nothing but the parapet, which as it now aps
peared was built right on the edge of a steep precipice.
Gazing from its imminent brow, the party beheld a
crowded confusion of roofs spreading over the whole
space between them and the line of hills that lay be-
yond the Tiber. A long, misty wreath, just dense
enough to catch a little of the moonshine, floated
above the houses, midway towards the hilly line, and
showed the course of the unseen river. Far away on
the right, the moon gleamed on the dome of St.
Peter’s as well as on many lesser and nearer domes.
“ What a beautiful view of the city!” exclaimed
Hilda; “and I never saw Rome from this point be-
fore.”
“Tt ought to afford a good prospect,” said the sculp-
tor; “for it was from this point —at least we are at
liberty to think so, if we choose — that many a famous
Roman caught his last glimpse of his native city, and
of all other earthly things. This is one of the sides
of the Tarpeian Rock. Look over the parapet, and
see what a sheer tumble there might still be for a
traitor, in spite of the thirty feet of soil that have ac-
cumulated at the foot of the precipice.”
They all bent over, and saw that the cliff fell per-
pendicularly downward to about the depth, or rather
more, at which the tall palace rose in height above their
heads. Not that it was still the natural, shaggy front
of the original precipice ; for it appeared to be cased
ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE. 199
in ancient stone-work, through which the primeval rock
showed its face here and there grimly and doubtfully.
Mosses grew on the slight projections, and little shrubs
sprouted out of the crevices, but could not much soften
the stern aspect of the cliff. Brightly as the Italian
moonlight fell a-down the height, it scarcely showed
what portion of it was man’s work, and what was nae
ture’s, but left it all in very much the same kind of
ambiguity and half-knowledge in which antiquarians
generally leave the identity of Roman remains.
The roofs of some poor-looking houses, which had
been built against the base and sides of the cliff, rose
nearly midway to the top; but from an angle of the
parapet there was a precipitous plunge straight down-
ward into a stone-paved court.
“I prefer this to any other site as having been ver-
itably the Traitor’s Leap,” said Kenyon, “ because it
was so convenient to the Capitol. It was an admi-
rable idea of those stern old fellows to fling their po-
litical criminals down from the very summit on which
stood the Senate House and Jove’s Temple, emblems
of the institutions which they sought to violate. It
symbolizes how sudden was the fall in those days
from the utmost height of ambition to its profoundest
ruin.”
“Come, come; it is midnight,” cried another artist,
“too late to be moralizing here. We are literally
dreaming on the edge of a precipice. Let us go
home.”
“Tt is time, indeed,” said Hilda.
The sculptor was not without hopes that he might
be favored with the sweet charge of escorting Hilda
fo the foot of her tower. Accordingly, when the party
prepared to turn back, he offered her his arm. Hilda
200 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
at first accepted it ; but when they had partly threaded
the passage between the little court-yard and the Pi.
azza del Campidoglio, she discovered that Miriam had
remained behind.
“JT must go back,” said she, withdrawing her arm
from Kenyon’s; “but pray do not come with me.
Several times this evening I have had a fancy that —
Miriam had something on her mind, some sorrow or
perplexity, which, perhaps, it would relieve her to tell
me about. No, no; do not turn back! Donatello will
be a sufficient guardian for Miriam and me.”
The sculptor was a good deal mortified, and per-
haps a little angry: but he knew Hilda’s mood of
gentle decision and independence too well not to obey
her. He therefore suffered the fearless maiden to re-
turn alone.
Meanwhile Miriam had not noticed the departure
of the rest of the company; she remained on the edge
of the precipice and Donatello along with her.
‘‘ I+ would be a fatal fall, still,” she said to herself,
looking over the parapet, and shuddering as her eye
measured the depth. ‘ Yes; surely yes! Even with-
out the weight of an overburdened heart, a human
body would fall heavily enough upon those stones to
shake all its joints asunder. How soon it would be
over!”
Donatello, of whose presence she was possibly not
aware, now pressed closer to her side; and he, too,
like Miriam, bent over the low parapet and trembled
violently. Yet he seemed to feel that perilous fas-
cination which haunts the brow of precipices, tempt-
ing the unwary one to fling himself over for the very
horror of the thing, for, after drawing hastily back,
he again looked down, thrusting himself out farther
ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE. 201
than before. He then stood silent a brief space, strug-
gling, perhaps, to make himself conscious of the his-
toric associations of the scene.
“What are you thinking of, Donatello?” asked
Miriam.
“Who are they,” said he, io0king earnestly in her
face, “who have been flung over here in days gone
by ? 29 .
“ Men that cumbered the world,” she replied. “Men
whose lives were the bane of their fellow-creatures,
Men who poisoned the air, which is the common
breath of all, for their own selfish purposes. There
was short work with such men in old Roman times.
Just in the moment of their triumph, a hand, as of an
avenging giant, clutched them, and dashed the wretches
down this precipice.”
‘“‘ Was it well done?” asked the young man.
“It was well done,” answered Miriam ; “innocent
persons were saved by the destruction of a guilty one,
who deserved his doom.”
While this brief conversation passed, Donatello had
once or twice glanced aside with a watchful air, just
as a hound may often be seen to take sidelong note
of some suspicious object, while he gives his more di-
rect attention to something nearer at hand. Miriam
seemed now first to become aware of the silence that
had followed upon the cheerful talk and laughter of a
few moments before.
Looking round, she perceived that all her company
of merry friends had retired, and Hilda, too, in whose
soft and quiet presence she had always an indescrib-
able feeling of security. All gone; and only herself
and Donatello left hanging over the brow of the ome
nous precipice.
202 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
Not so, however; not entirely alone! In the base-
ment wall of the palace, shaded from the moon, there
was a deep, empty niche, that had probably once con-
tained a statue; not empty, either; for a figure now
came forth from it and approached Miriam. She
must have had cause to dread some unspeakable evil
from this strange persecutor, and to know that this
was the very crisis of her calamity; for, as he drew
near, such a cold, sick despair crept over her, that it
impeded her breath, and benumbed her natural promp-
titude of thought. Miriam seemed dreamily to re-
member falling on her knees; but, in her whole recol-
lection of that wild moment, she beheld herself as in a
dim show, and could not well distinguish what was
done and suffered; no, not even whether she were
really an actor and sufferer in the scene.
Hilda, meanwhile, had separated herself from the
sculptor, and turned back to rejoin her friend. Ata
distance, she still heard the mirth of her late compan-
ions, who were going down the cityward descent of the
Capitoline Hill; they had set up a new stave of mel-
ody, in which her own soft voice, as well as the power-
ful sweetness of Miriam’s, was sadly missed.
The door of the little court-yard had swung upon
its hinges, and partly closed itself. Hilda (whose
native gentleness pervaded all her movements) was
quietly opening it, when she was startled, midway, by
the noise of a struggle within, beginning and ending
all in one breathless instant. Along with it, or closely
succeeding it, was a loud, fearful cry, which quivered
upward through the air, and sank quivering downward
to the earth. Then, a silence! Poor Hilda had looked
into the court-yard, and saw the whole quick passage
of a deed, which took but that little time to grave it
self in the eternal adamant.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE FAUN’S TRANSFORMATION.
THE door of the court-yard swung slowly, and closed
itself of its own accord. Miriam and Donatello were
now alone there. She clasped her hands, and looked
wildly at the young man, whose form seemed to have
dilated, and whose eyes blazed with the fierce energy
that had suddenly inspired him. It had kindled him
into aman; it had developed within him an intelli-
gence which was no native characteristic of the Dona-
tello whom we have heretofore known. But that sim-
ple and joyous creature was gone forever.
‘“‘ What have you done?” said Miriam, in a horror-
stricken whisper.
The glow of rage was still lurid on Donatello’s face,
and now flashed out again from his eyes.
“J did what ought to be done to a traitor!” he re-
plied. “I did what your eyes bade me do, when I
asked them with mine, as I held the wretch over the
precipice ! ”
These last words struck Miriam like a bullet. Could
it be so? Had _ her eyes provoked or assented to this
deed? She had not known it. But, alas! looking
back into the frenzy and turmoil of the scene just
acted, she could not deny — she was not sure whether
it might be so, or no — that a wild joy had flamed up
in her heart, when she beheld her persecutor in his
mortal peril. Was it horror? — or ecstasy ? —or
204 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
both in one? Be the emotion what it might, 1¢ had
blazed up more madly, when Donatello flung his vic-
tim off the cliff, and more and more, while his shriek
went quivering downward. With the dead thump
upon the stones below, had come an unutterable hor.
ror.
« And my eyes bade you do it! ” repeated she.
They both leaned over the parapet, and gazed down-
ward as earnestly as if some inestimable treasure had
fallen over, and were yet recoverable. On the pave-
ment, below, was a dark mass, lying in a heap, with
little or nothing human in its appearance, except that
the hands were stretched out, as if they might have
clutched, for a moment, at the small square stones.
But there was no motion in them now. Miriam
watched the heap of mortality while she could count a
hundred, which she took pains to do. No stir; not
a finger moved!
“ You have killed him, Donatello! He is quite
dead!” said she. ‘Stone dead! Would I were so,
too!”
‘Did you not mean that he should die?” sternly
asked Donatello, still in the glow of that intelligence
which passion had developed in him. “There was
short time to weigh the matter; but he had his trial
in that breath or two while I held him over the cliff,
and his sentence in that one glance, when your eyes
responded to mine! Say that I have slain him against
your will, —say that he died without your whole con-
sent, — and, in another breath, you shall see me lying
beside him.”
“Oh, never!” cried Miriam. “My one, own friend!
Never, never, never !”
She turned to him, — the guilty, blood - stained,
THE FAUN’S TRANSFORMATION. 205
lonely woman, — she turned to her fellow - criminal,
the youth, so lately innocent, whom she had drawn
into her doom. She pressed him close, close to her
bosom, with a clinging embrace that brought their two
hearts together, till the horror and agony of each was
combined into one emotion, and that a kind of rap-
ture. \
“Yes, Donatello, you speak the truth!” said she;
“my heart consented to what you did. We two slew
yonder wretch. The deed knots us together, for time
and eternity, like the coil of a serpent!”
They threw one other glance at the heap of death
below, to assure themselves that it was there ; so like
a dream was the whole thing. Then they turned from
that fatal precipice, and came out of the court-yard,
arm in arm, heart in heart. Instinctively, they were
heedful not to sever themselves so much as a pace
or two from one another, for fear of the terror and
deadly chill that would thenceforth wait for them in
solitude. Their deed —the crime which Donatello
wrought, and Miriam accepted on the instant — had
wreathed itself, as she said, like a serpent, in inextric-
able links about both their souls, and drew them into
one, by its terrible contractile power. It was closer
than a marriage-bond. So intimate, in those first mo-
ments, was the union, that it seemed as if their new
sympathy annihilated all other ties, and that they were
released from the chain of humanity; a new sphere,
a special law, had been created for them alone. The
world could not come near them; they were safe!
When they reached the flight of steps leading down-
ward from the Capitol, there was a far-off noise of
singing and laughter. Swift, indeed, had been the
tush of the crisis that was come and gone! This was
206 ROMANCE QF MONTE BENI.
still the merriment of the party that had so recently
been their companions. They recognized the voices
which, a little while ago, had accorded and sung in
vadence with their own. But they were familiar voices
no more; they sounded strangely, and, as it were, out
of the depths of space; so remote was all that per-
tained to the past life of these guilty ones, in the moral
seclusion that had suddenly extended itself around
them. But how close, and ever closer, did the breath
of the immeasurable waste, that lay between them and
all brotherhood or sisterhood, now press them one
within the other !
“QO friend!” cried Miriam, so putting her soul into
the word that it took a heavy richness of meaning,
and seemed never to have been spoken before, — “ O
friend, are you conscious, as I am, of this companion-
ship that knits our heart-strings together ?”
“T feel it, Miriam,” said Donatello. “ We draw
one breath; we live one life!”
“Only yesterday,” continued Miriam; “ nay, only
a short half-hour ago, I shivered in an icy solitude.
No friendship, no sisterhood, could come near enough
to keep the warmth within my heart. In an instant, —
all is changed! There can be no more loneliness !”
“None, Miriam!” said Donatello.
“None, my beautiful one!” responded Miriam, gaz-
ing in his face, which had taken a higher, almost an
heroic aspect, from the strength of passion. ‘ None,
my innocent one! Surely, it is no crime that we have
committed. One wretched and worthless life has been.
sacrificed to cement two other lives for evermore.”
‘6 Hor evermore, Miriam!” said Donatello; “ ce
mented with his blood!”
The young man started at the word which he had
THE FAUN’S TRANSFORMATION. 207
himself spoken ; it may be that it brought home, to
the simplicity of his imagination, what he had rot be-
fore dreamed of, — the ever-increasing loathsomeness
of a union that consists in guilt. Cemented with
blood, which would corrupt and grow more noisome
forever and forever, but bind them none the less
strictly for that.
“Forget it! Cast it all behind you!” said Miriam,
detecting, by her sympathy, the pang that was in his
heart. ‘The deed has done its office, and has no ex-
istence any more.”
They flung the past behind them, as she counselled,
or else distilled from it a fiery intoxication, which suf-
ficed to carry them triumphantly through those first
moments of their doom. For, guilt has its moment of
rapture too. The foremost result of a broken law is
ever an ecstatic sense of freedom. And thus there
exhaled upward (out of their dark sympathy, at the
base of which lay a human corpse) a bliss, or an in-
sanity, which the unhappy pair imagined to be well
worth the sleepy innocence that was forever lost to
them. |
As their spirits rose to the solemn madness of the
occasion, they went onward, — not stealthily, not fear-
fully,— but with a stately gait and aspect. Passion
lent them (as it does to meaner shapes) its brief no-
bility of carriage. They trod through the streets of
Rome, as if they, too, were among the majestic and
guilty shadows, that, from ages long gone by, have
haunted the blood-stained city. And, at Miriam’s
suggestion, they turned aside, for the sake of treading
loftily past the old site of Pompey’s Forum.
“ For there was a great deed done here!” she said,
— “a deed of blood like ours! Who knows, but we
208 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
may meet the high and ever-sad fraternity of Cesar’s
murderers, and exchange a salutation ? ”
“ Are they our brethren, now?” asked Donatello.
“Yes; all of them,” said Miriam; “ and many an-
other, whom the world little dreams of, has been made
our brother or our sister, by what we have done within
this hour ! ”
And, at the thought, she shivered. Where, then, was
the seclusion, the remoteness, the strange, lonesome
Paradise, into which she and her one companion had
been transported by their crime? Was there, indeed,
no such refuge, but only a crowded thoroughfare and
jostling throng of criminals? And was it true, that
whatever hand had a blood-stain on it, —or had poured
out poison, —or strangled a babe at its birth, — or
clutched a grandsire’s throat, he sleeping, and robbed
him of his few last breaths, — had now the right to
offer itself in fellowship with their two hands? Too
certainly, that right existed. It is a terrible thought,
that an individual wrong-doing melts into the great
mass of human crime, and makes us, — who dreamed
only of our own little separate sin, —makes us guilty
of the whole. And thus Miriam and her lover were
not an insulated pair, but members of an innumerable
confraternity of guilty ones, all shuddering at each
other.
“ But not now; not yet,” she murmured to herself.
“To-night, at least, there shall be no remorse !”
Wandering without a purpose, it so chanced that
they turned into a street, at one extremity of which
stood Hilda’s tower. There was a light in her high
chamber ; a light, too, at the Virgin’s shrine; and the
climmer of these two was the loftiest light beneath
the stars. Miriam drew Donatello’s arm, to make him
THE FAUN’S TRANSFORMATION. 209
stop, and while they stood at some distance looking at
Hilda’s window, they beheld her approach and throw
itopen. She leaned far forth, and extended her clasped
hands towards the sky.
“The good, pure, child! She is praying, Dona-
tello,” said Miriam, with a kind of simple joy at wite
nessing the devoutness of her friend. Then her own
sin rushed upon her, and she shouted, with the rich
strength of her voice, “ Pray for us, Hilda; we need
it!”
Whether Hilda heard and recognized the voice we
cannot tell. The window was immediately closed, and
her form disappeared from behind the snowy curtain.
Miriam felt this to be a token that the ery of her con-
demned spirit was shut out of heaven.
VOL. Vi-
CHAPTER XX.
THE BURIAL CHANT.
Tur Church of the Capuchins (where, as the reader
may remember, some of our acquaintances had made
an engagement to meet) stands a little aside from the
Piazza Barberini. Thither, at the hour agreed upon,
on the morning after the scenes last described, Miriam
and Donatello directed their steps. At no time are
people so sedulously careful to keep their trifling ap-
pointments, attend to their ordinary occupations, and
thus put a commonplace aspect on life, as when con-
scious of some secret that if suspected would make
them look monstrous in the general eye.
Yet how tame and wearisome is the impression of
all ordinary things in the contrast with such a fact!
How sick and tremulous, the next morning, is the
spirit that has dared so much only the night before!
How icy cold is the heart, when the fervor, the wild
ecstasy of passion, has faded away, and sunk down
among the dead ashes of the fire that blazed so fierce-
ly, and was fed by the very substance of its life! How
faintly does the criminal stagger onward, lacking the
impulse of that strong madness that hurried him into
guilt, and treacherously deserts him in the midst of
it !
When Miriam and Donatello drew near the church,
they found only Kenyon awaiting them on the steps.
Hilda had likewise promised to be of the party, but —
THE BURIAL CHANT, ya |
had not yet appeared. Meeting the sculptor, Miriam
put a force upon herself and succeeded in creating an
artificial flow of spirits, which, to any but the nicest
observation, was quite as effective as a natural one.
She spoke sympathizingly to the sculptor on the sub-
ject of Hilda’s absence, and somewhat annoyed him
by alluding in Donatello’s hearing to an attachment
which had never been openly avowed, though perhaps
plainly enough betrayed. He fancied that Miriam did
not quite recognize the limits of the strictest delicacy ;
he even went so far as to generalize, and conclude
within himself, that this deficiency is a more general
failig in woman than in man, the highest refinement
being a masculine attribute.
But the idea was unjust to the sex at large, and es-
pecially so to this poor Miriam, who was hardly re-
sponsible for her frantic efforts to be gay. Possibly,
moreover, the nice action of the mind is set ajar by any
violent shock, as of great misfortune or great crime, so
that the finer perceptions may be blurred thenceforth,
and the effect be traceable in all the minutest conduct
of life.
“Did you see anything of the dear child after you
left us?” asked Miriam, still keeping Hilda as her
topic of conversation. “I missed her sadly on my way
homeward ; for nothing insures me such delightful and
innocent dreams (I have experienced it twenty times)
as a talk late in the evening with Hilda.” .
“So I should imagine,” said the sculptor, gravely ;
“but it is an advantage that I have little or no oppor-
tunity of enjoying. I knownot what became of Hilda
alter my parting from you. She was not especially
my companion in any part of our walk. The last I
Saw of her she was hastening back to rejoin you in the
court-yard of the Palazzo Caffarelli.”
212 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
“ Impossible!” cried Miriam, starting.
“Then did you not see her again?” inquired Kens
yon, in some alarm.
‘‘ Not there,” answered Miriam, quietly ; “ indeed, i
followed pretty closely on the heels of the rest of the
party. But do not be alarmed on Hilda’s account;
the Virgin is bound to watch over the good child, for
the sake of the piety with which she keeps the lamp
alight at her shrine. And, besides, I have always felt
that Hilda is just as safe in these evil streets of Rome
as her white doves when they fly downwards from the
tower-top, and run to and fro among the horses’ feet.
There is certainly a providence on purpose for Hilda,
if for no other human creature.”
“JT religiously believe it,” rejoined the sculptor ;
“and yet my mind would be the easier, if I knew that
she had returned safely to her tower.”
“Then make yourself quite easy,” answered Miriam.
‘“T saw her (and it is the last sweet sight that I re-
member) leaning from her window midway between
earth and sky!”
Kenyon now looked at Donatello.
“ You seem out of spirits, my dear friend,” he ob-
served. ‘This languid Roman atmosphere is not the
airy wine that you were accustomed to breathe at
home. I have not forgotten your hospitable invita-
tion to meet you this summer at your castle among
the Apennines. It is my fixed purpose to come, I as-
sure you. We shall both be the better for some deep
draughts of the mountain-breezes.”
“Tt may be,” said Donatello, with unwonted sombre-
ness ; “ the old house seemed joyous when I was a child.
But as I remember it now it was a grim place, too.”
The sculptor looked more attentively at the young
THE BURIAL CHANT. 9138
man, and was surprised and alarmed to observe how
entirely the fine, fresh glow of animal spirits had de-
parted out of his face. Hitherto, moreover, even while
he was standing perfectly still, there had been a kind
of possible gambol indicated in his aspect. It was
quite gone now. All his youthful gayety, and with it
, his simplicity of manner, was eclipsed, if not utterly
extinct.
“You are surely ill, my dear fellow,” exclaimed
Kenyon.
“Am I? Perhaps so,” said Donatello indiffer-
ently ; “I never have been ill, and know not what it
may be.”
“ Do not make the poor lad fancy-sick,” whispered
Miriam, pulling the sculptor’s sleeve. ‘“ He is of a na-
ture to lie down and die at once, if he finds himself
drawing such melancholy breaths as we ordinary peo-
ple are enforced to burden our lungs withal. But we
must get him away from this old, dreamy, and dreary
Rome, where nobody but himself ever thought of being
gay. Its influences are too heavy to sustain the life of
such a creature.”
The above conversation had passed chiefly on the
steps of the Cappuccini; and, having said so much,
Miriam lifted the leathern curtain that hangs before
all church-doors in Italy.
“Hilda has forgotten her appointment,” she ob-
served, “or else her maiden slumbers are very sound
this morning. We will wait for her no longer.”
They entered the nave. The interior of the church
was of moderate compass, but of good architecture,
with a vaulted roof over the nave, and a row of dusky
chapels on either side of it instead of the customary
side-aisles. Each chapel had its saintly shrine, hung
214 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
round with offerings ; its picture above the altar, al-
though closely veiled, if by any painter of renown ;
and its hallowed tapers, burning continually, to set
alight the devotion of the worshippers. The pave-
ment of the nave was chiefly of marble, and looked
old and broken, and was shabbily patched here and
there with tiles of brick; it was inlaid, moreover,
with tombstones of the medizval taste, on which were
quaintly sculptured borders, figures, and portraits in
bas-relief, and Latin epitaphs, now grown illegible by
the tread of footsteps over them. The church apper-
tains to a convent of Capuchin monks; and, as usually
happens when a reverend brotherhood have such an
edifice in charge, the floor seemed never to have been
scrubbed or swept, and had as little the aspect of sanc-
tity as a kennel ; whereas, in all churches of nunneries,
the maiden sisterhood invariably show the purity of
their own hearts by the virgin cleanliness and visible
consecration of the walls and pavement.
As our friends entered the church, their eyes rested
at once on a remarkable object in the centre of the
nave. It was either the actual body, or, as might
rather have been supposed at first glance, the cun-
ningly wrought waxen face and suitably draped figure
of a dead monk. This image of wax or clay-cold real-
ity, whichever it might be, lay on a slightly elevated
bier, with three tall candles burning on each side,
another tall candle at the head, and another at the
foot. There was music, too, in harmony with so fune-
real a spectacle. From beneath the pavement of the
church came the deep, lugubrious strain of a De Pro-
fundis, which sounded like an utterance of the tomb
itself; so dismally did it rumble through the burial-
vaults, and ooze up among the flat gravestones and sad
epitaphs, filling the church as with a gloomy mist.
THE BURIAL CHANT. . 215
“I must look more closely at that dead monk before
we leave the church,” remarked the sculptor. “In the
study of my art, I have gained many a hint from the
dead, which the living could never have given me.”
“ I can well imagine it,” answered Miriam. “ One
clay image is readily copied from another. But let’
us first see Guido’s picture. The light is favorable
now.”
Accordingly, they turned into the first chapel on the
right hand, as you enter the nave; and there they be-
held, — not the picture, indeed, — but a closely drawn
curtain. : The churchmen of Italy make no scruple of
sacrificing the very purpose for which a work of sacred
art has been created ; that of opening the way for re-
ligious sentiment through the quick medium of sight,
by bringing angels, saints, and martyrs down visibly
upon earth ; of sacrificing this high purpose, and, for
aught they know, the welfare of many souls along with
it, to the hope of a paltry fee. Every work by an art-
ist of celebrity is hidden behind a veil, and seldom re-
vealed, except to Protestants, who scorn it as an object
of devotion, and value it only for its artistic merit,
The sacristan was quickly found, however, and lost
no time in disclosing the youthful Archangel, setting
his divine foot on the head of his fallen adversary. It
was an image of that greatest of future events, whick
we hope for so ardently, —at least, while we are young,
_— but find so very long in coming, —the triumph of
goodness over the evil principle.
“ Where can Hilda be?” exclaimed Kenyon. “It
is not her custom ever to fail in an engagement ; and
the present one was made entirely on her account,
Except herself, you know, we were all agreed in our
recollection of the picture.”
216 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
“ But we were wrong, and Hilda right, as you per-
ceive,” said Miriam, directing his attention to the point
on which their dispute of the night before had arisen. .
“Tt is not easy to detect her astray as regards any
picture on which those clear, soft eyes of hers have
ever rested.”
« And she has studied and admired few pictures so
much as this,” observed the sculptor. “No wonder ;
for there is hardly another so beautiful in the world.
What an expression of heavenly severity in the Arch-
ungel’s face! There is a degree of pain, trouble, and
disgust at being brought in contact with sin, even for
the purpose of quelling and punishing it; and yet a
celestial tranquillity pervades his whole being.”
“JT have never been able,” said Miriam, “ to admire
this picture nearly so much as Hilda does, in its moral
and intellectual aspect. If it cost her more trouble to
be good, if her soul were less white and pure, she’
would be a more competent critic of this picture, and.
would estimate it not half so high. I see its defects
to-day more clearly than ever before.”
“ What are some of them?” asked Kenyon.
“That Archangel, now,” Miriam continued ; “ how
fair he looks, with his unruffled wings, with his un-
hacked sword, and clad in his bright armor, and that
exquisitely fitting sky-blue tunic, cut in the latest Par-
adisiacal mode! What a dainty air of the first ce-
lestial society! With what half-scornful delicacy he
sets his prettily sandalled foot on the head of his pros-
trate foe! But, is it thus that virtue looks the mo-
ment after its death-struggle with evil? No, no; I
could have told Guido better. A full third of the
Archangel’s feathers should have been torn from his
wings; the rest all ruffled, till they looked like Satan’s
THE BURIAL CHANT. 217
own! His sword should be streaming with blood, and
perhaps broken half-way to the hilt ; his armor crushed,
his robes rent, his breast gory ; a bleeding gash on his
brow, cutting right across the stern scowl of battle!
He should press his foot hard down upon the old
serpent, as if his very soul depended upon it, feeling
him squirm mightily, and doubting whether the fight
were half. over yet, and how the victory might turn!
And, with all this fierceness, this grimness, this unut-
terable horror, there should still be something high,
tender, and holy in Michael’s eyes, and around his
mouth. But the battle never was such child’s play as
Guido’s dapper Archangel seems to have found it.”
“For Heaven’s sake, Miriam,” cried Kenyon, aston-
ished at the wild energy of her talk; “paint the pic-
ture of man’s struggle against sin according to your
own idea! I think it will be a masterpiece.”
“The picture would have its share of truth, I as-
sure you,” she answered; “but I am sadly afraid the
victory would fall on the wrong side. Just fancy a
smoke - blackened, fiery -eyed demon, bestriding that
nice young angel, clutching his white throat with one
of his hinder claws; and giving a triumphant whisk
of his scaly tail, with a poisonous dart at the end of
it! That is what they risk, poor souls, who do battle
with Michael’s enemy.”
It now, perhaps, struck Miriam that her mental dis-
quietude was impelling her to an undue vivacity ; for
she paused, and turned away from the picture, without
saying a word more about it. All this while, more-
over, Donatello had been very ill at ease, casting awe-
stricken and inquiring glances at the dead monk; as
if he could look nowhere but at that ghastly object,
merely because it shocked him. Death has probably
218 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
a peculiar horror and ugliness, when forced upon the
contemplation of a person so naturally joyous as Do-
natello, who lived with completeness in the present
moment, and was able to form but vague images of
the future.
“‘ What is the matter, Donatello?” whispered Mir-
iam, soothingly. ‘“ You are quite in a tremble, my
poor friend! What is it?”
“This awful chant from beneath the church,” an-
swered Donatello; “it oppresses me; the air is so
heavy with it that I can scarcely draw my breath.
And yonder dead monk! I feel as if he were lying
right across my heart.”
“ Take courage!’ whispered she again; “‘ come, we
will approach clese to the dead monk. The only way,
in such cases, is to stare the ugly horror right in the
face ; never a sidelong glance, nor haltf-look, for those
are what show a frightful thing in its frightfullest as-
pect. Lean on me, dearest friend! My heart is very
strong for both of us. Be brave ; and all is well.”
Donatello hung back for a moment, but then pressed
close to Miriam’s side, and suffered her to lead him up
to the bier. The sculptor followed. A number of
persons, chiefly women, with several children among
them, were standing about the corpse; and as our
three friends drew nigh, a mother knelt down, and
caused her little boy to kneel, both kissing the beads
and crucifix that hung from the monk’s girdle. Pos-
sibly he had died in the odor of sanctity; or, at all
events, death and his brown frock and cowl made a
sacred image of this reverend father.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE DEAD CAPUCHIN.
THE dead monk was clad, as when alive, in the
brown woollen frock of the Capuchins, with the hood
drawn over his head, but so as to leave the features
and a portion of the beard uncovered. His rosary and
cross hung at his side; his hands were folded over his
breast ; his feet (he was of a barefooted order in his
lifetime, and continued so in death) protruded from
beneath his habit, stiff and stark, with a more waxen
look than even his face. They were tied together at
the ankles with a black ribbon.
The countenance, as we have already said, was fully
displayed. It had a purplish hue upon it, unlike the
paleness of an ordinary corpse, but as little resembling
the flush of natural life. The eyelids were but par-
tially drawn down, and showed the eyeballs beneath ;
as if the deceased friar were stealing a glimpse at
the by-standers, to watch whether they were duly im-
pressed with the solemnity of his obsequies. The
shaggy eyebrows gave sternness to the look.
Miriam passed between two of the lighted candles,
and stood close beside the bier.
“My God!” murmured she. ‘ What is this?”
She grasped Donatello’s hand, and, at the same in-
stant, felt him give a convulsive shudder, which she
knew to have been caused by a sudden and terrible
throb of the heart. His hand, by an instantaneous
220 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
change, became like ice within hers, which likewise
grew so icy, that their insensible fingers might have
rattled, one against the other. No wonder that their
blood curdled ; no wonder that their hearts leaped and
paused! The dead face of the monk, gazing at them
beneath its half-closed eyelids, was the same visage
that had glared upon their naked souls, the past mid-
night, as Donatello flung him over the precipice.
The sculptor was standing at the foot of the bier,
and had not yet seen the monk’s features.
“Those naked feet!” said he. “I know not why,
but they affect. me strangely. They have walked to
and fro over the hard pavements of Rome, and through
a hundred other rough ways of this life, where the
monk went begging for his brotherhood; along the
cloisters and dreary corridors of his convent, too, from
his youth upward! It is a suggestive idea, to track
those worn feet backward through all the paths they
have trodden, ever since they were the tender and rosy
little feet of a baby, and (cold as they now are) were
kept warm in his mother’s hand.”
As his companions, whom the sculptor supposed to
be close by him, made no response to his fanciful
musing, he looked up, and saw them at the head of
the bier. He advanced thither himself.
“Ha!’’ exclaimed he.
He cast a horror-stricken and bewildered glance at
Miriam, but withdrew it immediately. Not that he
had any definite suspicion, or, it may be,. even a re-
mote idea, that she could be held responsible, in the
least degree, for this man’s sudden death. In truth,
it seemed too wild a thought to connect, in reality,
Miriam’s persecutor of many past months and the
vagabond of the preceding night, with the dead Cap-
THE DEAD CAPUCHIN. 221
uchin of to-day. It resembled one of those unac-
countable changes and interminglings of identity,
which so often occur among the personages of a
dream. But Kenyon, as befitted the professor of
an imaginative art, was endowed with an exceedingly
quick sensibility, which was apt to give him intima-
tions of the true state of matters that lay beyond his
actual vision. There was a whisper in his ear; it
said, “ Hush!” Without asking himself wherefore,
he resolved to be silent as regarded the mysterious
discovery which he had made, and to leave any re-
mark or exclamation to be voluntarily offered by Mir-
iam. If she never spoke, then let the riddle be un-
solved.
And now occurred a circumstance that would seem
too fantastic to be told, if it had not actually hap-
pened, precisely as we set it down. As the three
friends stood by the bier, they saw that a little stream
of blood had begun to ooze from the dead monk’s
nostrils ; it crept slowly towards the thicket of his
beard, where, in the course of a moment or two, it hid
itself.
“‘ How strange!” ejaculated Kenyon. “The monk
died of apoplexy, I suppose, or by some sudden acci-
dent, and the blood has not yet congealed.”
“Do you consider that a sufficient explanation?”
asked Miriam, with a smile from which the sculptor
involuntarily turned away his eyes. “Does it satisfy
you?”
“ And why not?” he inquired.
“Of course, you know the old superstition about
this phenomenon of blood flowing from a dead body,”
she rejoined. ‘“ How can we tell but that the mur-
derer of this monk (or, possibly, it may be only that
02% ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
privileged murderer, his physician) may have just en
tered the church?”
“T cannot jest about it,” said Kenyon. “It is an
ugly sight!”
“True, true; horrible to see, or dream of !” she re»
plied, with one of those long, tremulous sighs, which
so often betray a sick heart by escaping unexpectedly.
“We will not look at it any more. Come away, Do-
natello. Let us escape from this dismal church. The
sunshine will do you good.”
When had ever a woman such a trial to sustain as
this! By no possible supposition could Miriam ex-
plain the identity of the dead Capuchin, quietly and
decorously laid out in the nave of his convent church,
with that of her murdered persecutor, flung heedlessly
at the foot of the precipice. The effect upon her im-
agination was as if a strange and unknown corpse had
miraculously, while she was gazing at it, assumed the
likeness of that face, so terrible henceforth in her re-
membrance. It was a symbol, perhaps, of the deadly
iteration with which she was doomed to behold the
image of her crime reflected back upon her in a thou-
sand ways, and converting the great, calm face of Na-
ture, in the whole, and in its innumerable details, into
a manifold reminiscence of that one dead visage.
No sooner had Miriam turned away from the bier,
and gone a few steps, than she fancied the likeness
altogether an illusion, which would vanish at a closer
and colder view. She must look at it again, there-
fore, and at once; or else the grave would close over
the face, and leave the awful fantasy that had con-
nected itself therewith fixed ineffaceably in her brain.
‘Wait for me, one moment!” she said to her com=
panions. “Only a moment!”
THE DEAD CAPUCHIN. 223
So she went back, and gazed once more at the
corpse. Yes; these were the features that Miriam
had known so well; this was the visage that she re-
membered from a far longer date than the most inti-
mate of her friends suspected; this form of clay had
held the evil spirit which blasted her sweet youth,
and compelled her, as it were, to stain her womanhood
with crime. But, whether it were the majesty of
death, or something originally noble and lofty in the
character of the dead, which the soul had stamped
upon the features, as it left them; so it was that Mir-
iam now quailed and shook, not for the vulgar horror
of the spectacle, but for the severe, reproachful glance
that seemed to come from between those half-closed
lids. True, there had been nothing, in his lifetime,
viler than this man. She knew it; there was no other
fact within her consciousness that she felt to be so
certain; and yet, because her persecutor found him-
self safe and irrefutable in death, he frowned upon his
victim, and threw back the blame on her!
“Ts it thou, indeed?” she murmured, under her
breath. “Then thou hast no right to scowl upon me
so! But art thou real, or a vision?”
She bent down over the dead monk, till one of her
rich curls brushed against his forehead. She touched
one of his folded hands with her finger.
“Ttéis he,” said Miriam. “ There is the scar, that
1 know so well, on his brow. And it is no vision; he
is palpable to my touch! I will question the fact no
longer, but deal with it as I best can.”
It was wonderful to see how the crisis developed in
Miriam its own proper strength, and the faculty of
sustaining the demands which it made upon her forti‘
tude. She ceased to tremble; the beautiful woman
224 ROMANCE: OF MONTE BENT.
gazed sternly at her dead enemy, endeavoring’ to meet
and quell the look of accusation that he threw from
between his half-closed eyelids.
‘No; thou shalt not scowl me down!” said she.
«Neither now, nor when we stand together at the
judgment-seat. I fear not to meet thee there. Fare.
well, till that next encounter !”’
Haughtily waving her hand, Miriam rejoined her
friends, who were awaiting her at the door of the
church. As they went out, the sacristan stopped them,
and proposed to show the cemetery of the convent,
where the deceased members of the fraternity are laid
to rest in sacred earth, brought long ago from Jeru-
salem.
“ And will yonder monk be buried there?” she
asked.
“ Brother Antonio?” exclaimed the sacristan.
“ Surely, our good brother will be put to bed there!
His grave is already dug, and the last occupant has
made room for him. Will you look at it, signorina?”
“T will!” said Miriam. —
“Then excuse me,” observed Kenyon; “for I shall
leave you. One dead monk has more than sufficed
me; and I am not bold enough to face the whole mor. :
tality of the convent.”
It was easy to see, by Donatello’s looks, that he, as
well as the sculptor, would gladly have escaped a visit
to the famous cemetery of the Cappuccini. But Mir-
iam’s nerves were strained to such a pitch, that she
anticipated a certain solace and absolute relief in pass-
ing from one ghastly spectacle to another of long-ac-
cumulated ugliness; and there was, besides, a singu-
lar sense of duty which impelled her to look at the
final resting-place of the being whose fate had been se
THE DEAD CAPUCHIN. 225
disastrously involved with her own. She therefore
followed the sacristan’s guidance, and drew her com-
panion along with her, whispering encouragement as
they went. é
The cemetery is beneath the church, but entirely
above ground, and lighted by a row of iron-grated
windows without glass. A corridor runs along: be-
side these windows, and gives access to three or four
vaulted recesses, or chapels, of considerable breadth
and height, the floor of which consists of the conse-
crated earth of Jerusalem. It is smoothed decorously
over the deceased brethren of the convent, and is kept
quite free from grass or weeds, such as would grow
even in these gloomy recesses, if pains were not be-
stowed to root them up. But, as the cemetery is small,
and it is a precious privilege to sleep in holy ground,
the brotherhood are immemorially accustomed, when
one of their number dies, to take the longest - buried
skeleton out of the oldest grave, and lay the new slum-
berer there instead. Thus, each of the good friars, in
his turn, enjoys the luxury of a consecrated bed, at-
tended with the slight drawback of being forced to get
up long before daybreak, as it were, and make room
for another lodger.
The arrangement of the unearthed skeletons is what
makes the special interest of the cemetery. The arched
and vaulted walls of the burial recesses are supported
by massive pillars and pilasters made of thigh-bones
and skulls; the whole material of the structure ap-
pears to be of a similar kind; and the knobs and
embossed ornaments of this strange architecture are
represented by the joints of the spine, and the more
delicate tracery by the smaller bones of the human
frame. The summits of the arches are adorned with
WOL. VIL
926 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
entire skeletons, looking as if they were wrought most
skilfully in bas-relief. There is no possibility of de-
scribing how ugly and grotesque is the effect, com-
bined with a certain artistic merit, nor how much per-
verted ingenuity has been shown in this queer way,
nor what a multitude of dead monks, through how
many hundred years, must have contributed their bony
framework to build up these great arches of mortality.
On some of the skulls there are inscriptions, purport-
ing that such a monk, who formerly made use of that
particular headpiece, died on such a day and year;
but vastly the greater number are piled up indistin-
guishably into the architectural design, like the many
deaths that make up the one glory of a victory.
In the side walls of the vaults are niches where
skeleton monks sit or stand, clad in the brown habits
that they wore in life, and labelled with their names
and the dates of their decease. Their skulls (some
quite bare, and others still covered with yellow skin,
and hair that has known the earth-damps) look out
from beneath their hoods, grinning hideously repul-
sive. One reverend father has his mouth wide open,
as if he had died in the midst of a howl of terror and.
remorse, which perhaps 1s even now screeching through
eternity. As a general thing, however, these frocked
and hooded skeletons seem to take a more cheerful
view of their position, and try with ghastly smiles to
turn it into a jest. But the cemetery of the Capu-
chins is no place to nourish celestial hopes: the soul
sinks forlorn and wretched under all this burden of
dusty death; the holy earth from Jerusalem, so im-
bued is it with mortality, has grown as barren of the
flowers of Paradise as it is of earthly weeds and grass.
Thank Heaven for its blue sky; it needs a long, up-
THE DEAD CAPUCHIN. 227
ward gaze to give us back our faith. Not here can
we feel ourselves immortal, where the very altars in
these chapels of horrible consecration are heaps of hu-
man bones.
Yet let us give the cemetery the praise that it de-
serves. There is no disagreeable scent, such as might
have been expected from the decay of so many holy
persons, in whatever odor of sanctity they may have
taken their departure. The same number of living
monks would not smell half so unexceptionably.
Miriam went gloomily along the corridor, from one
vaulted Golgotha to another, until in the farthest re-
cess she beheld an open grave.
“Is that for him who lies yonder in the nave?” she
asked.
“Yes, signorina, this is to be the resting-place of
Brother Antonio, who came to his death last night,”
answered the sacristan ; “and in yonder niche, you
see, sits a brother who was buried thirty years ,ago,
and has risen to give him place.”
“It is not a satisfactory idea,” observed Miriam,
“that you poor friars cannot call even your graves
permanently your own. You must lie down in them,
methinks, with a nervous anticipation of being dis-
turbed, like weary men who know that they shall be
summoned out of bed at midnight. Is it not possible
Gf money were to be paid for the privilege) to leave
Brother Antonio — if that be his name —in the oc-
fupancy of that narrow grave till the last trumpet
sounds?” |
“By no means, signorina; neither is it needful or
desirable,” answered the sacristan. “A quarter of a
century's sleep in the sweet earth of Jerusalem is
better than a thousand years in any other soil. Our
228 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
brethren find good rest there. No ghost was ever
known to steal out of this blessed cemetery.”
“That is well,” responded Miriam ; “may he whom
you now lay to sleep prove no exception to the rule!”
As they left the cemetery she put money into the
sacristan’s hand to an amount that made his eyes open
wide and glisten, and requested that it might be ex-
pended in masses for the repose of Father Antonio’s
soul.
CHAPTER XXIL
THE MEDICI GARDENS.
“ DONATELLO,” said Miriam, anxiously, as they
eame through the Piazza Barberini, “what can I do
for you, my beloved friend? You are shaking as with
the cold fit of the Roman fever.”
“Yes,” said Donatello; « my heart shivers.”
As soon as she could collect her thoughts, Miriam
led the young man to the gardens of the Villa Medici,
hoping that the quiet shade and sunshine of that de-
lightful retreat would a little revive his spirits. The
grounds are there laid out in the old fashion of straight
paths, with borders of box, which form hedges of great
height and density, and are shorn and trimmed to
the evenness of a wall of ‘stone, at the top and sides.
There are green alleys, with long vistas overshadowed
by ilex-trees; and at each intersection of the paths,
the visitor finds seats of lichen-covered stone to repose
upon, and marble statues that look forlornly at him,
regretful of their lost noses. In the more open por-
tions of the garden, before the sculptured front of the
villa, you see fountains and flower-beds, and, in their
season, a profusion of roses, from which the genial sun
of Italy distils a fragrance, to be scattered abroad by
the no less genial breeze.
But Donatello drew no delight from these things.
He walked onward in silent apathy, and looked at
Miriam with strangely half-awakened and bewildered
230 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
eyes, when she sought to bring his mind into sym-
pathy with hers, and so relieve his heart of the burden
that lay lumpishly upon it.
She made him sit down on a stone bench, where
two embowered alleys crossed each other ; so that they
could discern the approach of any casual intruder a
long way down the path.
“My sweet friend,” she said, taking one of his pas-
sive hands in both of hers, “ what can I say to comfort
you?” 7
“ Nothing!” replied Donatello, with sombre reserve.
“ Nothing will ever comfort me.”
«“T aecept my own misery,” continued Miriam, “ my
own guilt, if guilt it be; and, whether guilt or misery,
I shall know how to deal with it. But you, dearest
friend, that were the rarest creature in all this world,
and seemed a being to whom sorrow could not cling,
— you, whom I half fancied to belong to a race that
had vanished forever, you only surviving, to show
mankind how.genial and how joyous life used to be,
in some long-gone age, — what had you to do with
grief or crime ?”
“They came to me as to other men,” said Donatello,
broodingly. ‘“ Doubtless I was born to them.”
“No, no; they came with me,” replied Miriam.
“Mine is the responsibility! Alas! wherefore was I
born? Why did we ever meet? Why did I not drive
you from me, knowing — for my heart foreboded. it —
that the cloud in which I walked would likewise en-
velop you!”
Donatello stirred uneasily, with the irritable impa-
tience that is often combined with a mood of leaden
despondency. A brown lizard with two tails — a
monster often engendered by the Roman surshine —
THE MEDICI GARDENS. 931
ran across his foot, and made him start. Then he sat
silent awhile, and so did Miriam, trying to dissolve
her whole heart into sympathy, and lavish it all upon
him, were it only for a moment’s cordial.
The young man lifted his hand to his breast, and,
unintentionally, as Miriam’s hand was within his, he
lifted that along with it.
“‘T have a great weight here! ”’ said he.
The fancy struck Miriam (but she drove it reso-
lutely down) that Donatello almost imperceptibly
shuddered, while, in pressing his own hand against
his heart, he pressed hers there too.
‘Rest your heart on me, dearest one!” she resumed.
“‘ Let me bear all its weight; I am well able to bear
it; for I am a woman, and I love you! I love you,
Donatello! Is there no comfort for you in this
avowal? Look at me! Heretofore, you have found
me pleasant to your sight. Gaze into my eyes! Gaze
into my soul! Search as deeply as you may, you can
never see half the tenderness and devotion that I
henceforth cherish for you. All that I ask is your
acceptance of the utter self-sacrifice (but it shall be
no sacrifice, to my great love) with which I seek to
remedy the evil you have incurred for my sake!”
All this fervor on Miriam’s part; on Donatello’s, a
heavy silence.
“Oh, speak to me!” she exclaimed. ‘Only promise
me to be, by and by, a little happy! ”
“ Happy ?” murmured Donatello, ‘ Ah, never
again ! never again!”
“Never? Ah, that is a terrible word to say to me!”
answered Miriam. “A terrible word to let fall upon
a woman’s heart, when she loves you, and is conscious
of having caused your misery! If you love me, Dona-
Don ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
tello, speak it not again. And surely you did love
me?”
“J did,” replied Donatello, gloomily and absently.
Miriam released the young man’s hand, but suffered
one of her own to lie close to his, and waited a moment
to see whether he would make any effort to retain it.
There was much depending upon that simple experi-
ment.
With a deep sigh —as when, sometimes, a slum-
berer turns over in a troubled dream — Donatello
changed his position, and clasped both his hands over
his forehead. The genial warmth of a Roman April
kindling into May was in the atmosphere around
them; but when Miriam saw that involuntary move-
ment and heard that sigh of relief (for so she inter-
preted it), a shiver ran through her frame, as if the
iciest wind of the Apennines were blowing over her.
“He has done himself a greater wrong than I
dreamed of,” thought she, with unutterable compas-
sion. “Alas! it was a sad mistake! He might have
had a kind of bliss in the consequences of this deed,
had he been impelled to it by a love vital enough to
survive the frenzy of that terrible moment, — mighty
enough to make its own law, and justify itself against
the natural remorse. But to have perpetrated a dread-
ful murder (and such was his crime, unless love, an-
nihilating moral distinctions, made it otherwise) on no
better warrant than a boy’s idle fantasy! I pity him
from the very depths of my soul! As for myself, I
am past my own or other’s pity.”
She arose from the young man’s side, and stood be-
fore him with a sad, commiserating aspect ; it was the
Jook of a ruined soul, bewailing, in him, a grief less
than what her profounder sympathies imposed upon
herself.
THE MEDICI GARDENS. 233
“ Donatello, we must part,” she said, with melan-
choly firmness. ‘“ Yes; leave me! Go back to your
old tower, which overlooks the green valley you have
told me of among the Apennines. Then, all that has
passed will be recognized as but an ugly dream. For,
in dreams, the conscience sleeps, and we often stain
ourselves with guilt of which we should be incapable
in our waking moments. The deed you seemed to do,
last night, was no more than such a dream ; there was
as little substance in what you fancied yourself doing.
Go; and forget it all!”
“ Ah, that terrible face!” said Donatello, pressing
his hands over his eyes. ‘ Do you call that unreal ?”
“Yes; for you beheld it with dreaming eyes,” re-
pled Miriam. “It was unreal; and, that you may
feel it so, it is requisite that you see this face of mine
.no more. Once, you may have thought it beauti-
ful; now, it has lost its charm. Yet it would still re-
tain a miserable potency to bring back the past illu.
sion, and, in its train, the remorse and anguish that
would darken all your life. Leave me, therefore, and
forget me.”
“ Forget you, Miriam!” said Donatello, roused
somewhat from his apathy of despair. “If I could re-
member you, and behold you, apart from that fright-
ful visage which stares at me over your shoulder, that
were a consolation, at least, if not a joy.”
“« But since that visage haunts you along with mine,”
rejoined Miriam, glancing behind her, “ we needs must
part. Farewell, then! But if ever —in distress, peril,
shame, poverty, or whatever anguish is most poignant,
whatever burden heaviest — you should require a life
to be given wholly, only to make your own a little
easier, then summon me! As the case now stands
234 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
between us, you have bought me dear, and find me
of little worth. Fling me away, therefore! May you
never need me more! But, if otherwise, a wish —
almost an unuttered wish — will bring me to you!”
She stood a moment, expecting a reply. But Do.
natello’s eyes had again fallen on the ground, and he
had not, in his bewildered mind and overburdened
heart, a word to respond.
“ That hour I speak of may never come,” said Mir-
iam. ‘So farewell, — farewell forever.”’
‘¢ Farewell,” said Donatello.
His voice hardly made its way through the environ-
ment of unaccustomed thoughts and emotions which
had settled over him like a dense and dark cloud.
Not improbably, he beheld Miriam through so dim a
medium that she looked visionary ; heard her speak
only in a thin, faint echo.
She turned from the young man, and, much as her
heart yearned towards him, she would not profane
that heavy parting by an embrace, or even a pressure
of the hand. So soon after the semblance of such
mighty love, and after it had been the impulse to so
terrible a deed, they parted, in all outward show, as
coldly as people part whose whole mutual intercourse
has been encircled within a single hour.
And Donatello, when Miriam had departed, stretched
himself at full length on the stone bench, and drew
his hat over his eyes, as the idle and light-hearted
youths of dreamy Italy are accustomed to do, when
they lie down in the first convenient shade, and snatch
a noonday slumber. A stupor was upon him, which
he mistook for such drowsiness as he had known in
his innocent past life. But, by and by, he raised him-
self slowly and left the garden. Sometimes poor Do-
THE MEDICI GARDENS. 235
natello started, as if he heard a shriek ; sometimes he
shrank back, as if a face, fearful to behold, were thrust
close to his own. In this dismal mood, bewildered
with the novelty of sin and grief, he had little left of
that singular resemblance, on account of which, and
for their sport, his three friends had fantastically ree-
ognized him as the veritable Faun of Praxiteles.
CHAPTER XXIII.
MIRIAM AND HILDA,
On leaving the Medici Gardens Miriam felt herself
astray in the world ; and having no special reason to
seek one place more than another, she suffered chance
to direct her steps as it would. Thus it happened,
that, involving herself in the crookedness of Rome,
she saw Hilda’s tower rising before her, and was put
in mind to climb to the young girl’s eyry, and ask
why she had broken her engagement at the church of
the Capuchins. People often do the idlest acts of
their lifetime in their heaviest and most anxious mo-
ments; so that it would have been no wonder had
Miriam been impelled only by so slight a motive of
curiosity as we have indicated. But she remembered,
too, and with a quaking heart, what the sculptor had
mentioned of Hilda’s retracing her steps towards the
court-yard of the Palazzo Caffarelli in quest of Miriam
herself. Had she been compelled to choose between
infamy in the eyes of the whole world, or in Hilda’s
eyes alone, she would unhesitatingly have accepted the
former, on condition of remaining spotless in the esti-
mation of her white-souled friend. This possibility,
therefore, that Hilda had witnessed the scene of the
past night, was unquestionably the cause that drew
Miriam to the tower, and made her linger and falter
as she approached it.
As she drew near, there were tokens to which her
MIRIAM AND HILDA. 237
disturbed mind gave a sinister interpretation. Some
of her friend’s airy family, the doves, with their heads
imbedded disconsolately in their bosoms, were hud-
dled in a corner of the piazza; others had alighted on
the heads, wings, shoulders, and trumpets of the mar-
ble angels which adorned the facade of the neighbor-
ing church ; two or three had betaken themselves to
the Virgin’s shrine; and as many as could find room
were sitting on Hilda’s window-sill. But all of them,’
so Miriam fancied, had a look of weary expectation
and disappointment, —no flights, no flutterings, no
cooing murmur ; something that ought to have made
their day glad and bright was evidently left out of
this day’s history. And, furthermore, Hilda’s white
window-curtain was closely drawn, with only that one
little aperture at the side, which Miriam remembered
noticing the night before.
** Be quiet,” said Miriam to her own heart, pressing:
her hand hard upon it. ‘ Why shouldst thou throb
now? Hast thou not endured more terrible things
than this?”
Whatever were her apprehensions, she would not
turn back. It might be—and the solace would be
worth a world — that Hilda, knowing nothing of the
past night’s calamity, would greet her friend with a
_Sunny smile, and so restore a portion of the vital
warmth, for lack of which her soul was frozen. But
could Miriam, guilty as she was, permit Hilda to kiss
her cheek, to clasp her hand, and thus be no longer
so unspotted from the world as heretofore ?
“TY will never permit her sweet touch again,” said
Miriam, toiling up the staircase, “if I can find strength
of heart to forbid it. But, oh! it would be so sooth-
ing in this wintry fever-fit of my heart. There can be
238 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
no harm to my white Hilda in one parting kiss. That
shall be all!”
But, on reaching the upper landing-place, Miriam
paused, and stirred not again till she had brought her-
self to an immovable resolve.
““ My lips, my hand, shall never meet Hilda’s more,”
sald she.
Meanwhile, Hilda sat listlessly in her painting-room.
Had you looked into the little adjoining chamber, you
might have seen the slight imprint of her figure on
the bed, but would also have detected at once that the
white counterpane had not been turned down. The
pillow was more disturbed ; she had turned her face
upon it, the poor child, and bedewed it with some of
those tears (among the most chill and forlorn that
gush from human sorrow) which the innocent heart
pours forth at its first actual discovery that sin is in
the world. The young and pure are not apt to find
out that miserable truth until it is brought home to
them by the guiltiness of some trusted friend. They
may have heard much of the evil of the world, and
seem to know it, but only as an impalpable theory.
In due time, some mortal, whom they reverence too
highly, is commissioned by Providence to teach them
this direful lesson; he perpetrates a sin; and Adam
falls anew, and Paradise, heretofore in unfaded bloom,
is lost again, and closed forever, with the fiery swords
gleaming at its gates.
The chair in which Hilda sat was near the portrait
of Beatrice Cenci, which had not yet been taken from
the easel. It is a peculiarity of this picture, that
its profoundest expression eludes a straightforward
glance, and can only be caught by side glimpses, or
when the eye falls casually upon it; even as if the
MIRIAM AND HILDA. 239
painted face had a life and consciousness of its own,
and, resolving not to betray its secret of grief or guilt,
permitted the true tokens to come forth only when it
imagined itself unseen. No other such magical effect
has ever been wrought by pencil.
Now, opposite the easel hung a looking - glass, in
which Beatrice’s face and Hilda’s were both reflected.
In one of her weary, nerveless changes of position,
Hilda happened to throw her eyes on the glass, and
took in both these images at one unpremeditated
glance. She fancied — nor was it without horror —
that Beatrice’s expression, seen aside and vanishing
in a moment, had been depicted in her own face like-
wise, and flitted from it as timorously.
“ Am I, too, stained with guilt?” thought the poor
girl, hiding her face in her hands.
Not so, thank Heaven! But, as regards Beatrice’s
picture, the incident suggests a theory which may ac-
count for its unutterable grief and mysterious shadow
of guilt, without detracting from the purity which we
love to attribute to that ill-fated girl. Who, indeed,
ean look at that mouth, — with its lips half apart, as
innocent as a baby’s that has been crying, — and not
pronounce Beatrice sinless? It was the intimate con-
sciousness of her father’s sin that threw its shadow
over her, and frightened her into a remote and inac-
cessible region, where no sympathy could come. It
was the knowledge of Miriam’s guilt that lent the
same expression to Hilda’s face.
But Hilda nervously moved her chair, so that the
images in the glass should be no longer visible. She
now watched a speck of sunshine that came through
a shuttered window, and crept from object to object,
indicating each with a touch of its bright finger, and
240 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
then letting them all vanish successively. In like
manner, her mind, so like sunlight in its natural cheer-
fulness, went from thought to thought, but found
nothing that it could dwell upon for comfort. Never
before had this young, energetic, active spirit known
what it is to be despondent. It was the unreality of
the world that made her so. Her dearest friend,
whose heart seemed the most’ solid and richest of
Hilda’s possessions, had no existence for her any
more; and in that dreary void, out of which Miriam
had disappeared, the substance, the truth, the integrity
of life, the motives of effort, the joy of success, had
departed along with her.
It was long past noon, when a step came up the
staircase. It had passed beyond the limits where
there was communication with the lower regions of
the palace, and was mounting the successive flights
which led only to Hilda’s precincts. Faint as the
tread was, she heard and recognized it. It startled
her into sudden life. Her first impulse was to spring
to the door of the studio, and fasten it with lock and
bolt. But a second thought made her feel that this
would be an unworthy cowardice, on her own part,
and also that Miriam — only yesterday her closest
friend — had a right to be told, face to face, that
thenceforth they must be forever strangers.
She heard Miriam pause, outside of the door. We
have already seen what was the latter’s resolve with
respect to any kiss or pressure of the hand between
Hilda and herself. We know not what became of
the resolution. As Miriam was of a highly impulsive
character, it may have vanished at the first sight of
Hilda; but, at all events, she appeared to have dressed
herself up in a garb of sunshine, and was disclosed, as
MIRIAM AND HILDA. 241
the door swung open, in all the glow of her remarka-
ble beauty. The truth was, her heart leaped conclu-
sively towards the only refuge that it had, or hoped.
She forgot, just one instant, all cause for holding her-
self aloof. Ordinarily there was a certain reserve in
Miriam’s demonstrations of affection, in consonance
with the delicacy of her friend. To-day, she opened
her arms to take Hilda in.
“ Dearest, darling Hilda!” she exclaimed. “It
gives me new life to see you! ”
Hilda was standing in the middle of the room.
When her friend made a step or two from the door,
she put forth her hands with an involuntary repellent
gesture, so expressive, that Miriam at once felt great
chasm opening itself between them two. They might
gaze at one another from the opposite side, but with-
out the possibility of ever meeting more; or, at least,
since the chasm could never be bridged over, they
must tread the whole round of Eternity to meet on
the other side. There was even a terror in the thought
of their meeting again. It was as if Hilda or Miriam
were dead, and could no longer hold intercourse witb.
out violating a spiritual law.
Yet, in the wantonness of her despair, Miriam made
one more step towards the friend whom she had lost.
“ Do not come nearer, Miriam! ” said Hilda.
Her look and tone were those of sorrowful entreaty,
and yet they expressed a kind of confidence, as if the
girl were conscious of a safeguard that could not be
violated. ;
“ What has happened between us, Hilda?” asked
Miriam. “ Are we not friends ?”
_ “No, no!” said Hilda, shuddering.
“At least Wwe have been friends 2 continued Miriam.
>
VOL. VI.
242 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
“JT loved you dearly! I love you still! You were te
me as a younger sister; yes, dearer than sisters of the
same blood ; for you and I were so lonely, Hilda, that
the whole world pressed us together by its solitude
and strangeness. Then, will you not touch my hand?
Am I not the same as yesterday? ”’
“¢ Alas! no, Miriam!” said Hilda.
“ Yes, the same, —the same for you, Hilda,” re-
joined her lost friend. “ Were you to touch my hand,
you would find it as warm to your grasp as ever. If
you were sick or suffering, I would watch night and
day for you. It is in such simple offices that true at-
fection shows itself; and so I speak of them. Yet
now, Hilda, your very look seems to put me beyond
the limits of human kind!”
“Tt isnot I, Miriam,” said Hilda; “ not I that have
done this.”
“ You, and you only, Hilda,” replied Miriam,
stirred up to make her own cause good by the repel-
lent force which her friend opposed to her. “I ama
woman, as I was yesterday; endowed with the same
truth of nature, the same warmth of heart, the same
genuine and earnest love, which you have always
known in me. In any regard that concerns yourself,
I am not changed. And believe me, Hilda, when a
human being has chosen a friend out of all the world,
it is only some faithlessness between themselves, ren-
dering true intercourse impossible, that can justify
either friend in severing the bond. Have I deceived
you? Then cast me off! Have I wronged you per-
sonally ? Then forgive me, if you can. But, have I
sinned against God and man, and deeply sinned ?
Then be more my friend than ever, for I need you
more.”
MIRIAM AND HILDA. 243
“Do not bewilder me thus, Miriam!” exclaimed
Hilda, who had not forborne to express, by look and
gesture, the anguish which this interview inflicted on
her. “If I were one of God’s angels, with a nature
incapable of stain, and garments that never could be
spotted, I would keep ever at your side, and try to
lead you upward. But I am a poor, lonely girl, whom
God has set here in an evil world, and given her only
a white robe, and bid her wear it back to Him, as
white as when she put it on. Your powerful magnet-
ism would be too much for me. The pure, white at-
mosphere, in which I try to discern what things are
good and true, would be discolored. And, therefore,
Miriam, before it is too late, I mean to put faith in
this awful heart-quake, which warns me henceforth to
avoid you.”
“Ah, this is hard! Ah, this is terrible!” mur-
mured Miriam, dropping her forehead in her hands.
In a moment or two she looked up again, as pale as
death, but with a composed countenance: “I always
said, Hilda, that you were merciless; for I had a per-
ception of it, even while you loved me best. You
have no sin, nor any conception of what it is; and
therefore you are so terribly severe! As an angel,
you are not amiss; but, as a human creature, and a
woman among earthly men and women, you need a sin
to soften you.”
“God forgive me,” said Hilda, “if I have said a
needlessly cruel word! ”
“ Let it pass,” answered Miriam; “I, whose heart
it has smitten upon, forgive you. And tell me, before
we part forever, what have you seen or known of me,
since we last met ? ”
“A terrible thing, Miriam,” said Hilda, growing
paler than before.
244 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
“Do you see it written in my face, or painted in
my eyes?” inquired Miriam, her trouble seeking re-
lief in a half-frenzied raillery. “I would fain know
how it is that Providence, or fate, brings eye-witnesses
to watch us, when we fancy ourselves acting in the
remotest privacy. Did all Rome see it, then? Or, at
least, our merry company of artists? Or is it some
blood-stain on me, or death-scent in my garments?
They say that monstrous deformities sprout out of
fiends, who once were lovely angels. Do you perceive
such in me already? ‘Tell me, by our past friendship,
Hilda, all you know.”
Thus adjured, and frightened by the wild emotion
which Miriam could not suppress, Hilda strove to tell
what she had witnessed.
«“ After the rest of the party had passed on, I went
back to speak to you,” she said; ‘for there seemed
to be a trouble on your mind, and I wished to share it
with you, if you could permit me. The door of the
little court-yard was partly shut ; but I pushed it open,
and saw you within, and Donatello, and a third person,
whom I had before noticed in the shadow of a niche.
He approached you, Miriam. You knelt to him!—
I saw Donatello spring upon him! I would have
shrieked, but my throat was dry. I would have rushed
forward, but my limbs seemed rooted to the earth.
It was like a flash of lightning. A look passed from
your eyes to Donatello’s — a look” —
“Yes, Hilda, yes! ” exclaimed Miriam, with intense
eagerness. ‘Do not pause now! That look?”
“Tt revealed all your heart, Miriam,” continued
Hilda, covering her eyes as if to shut out the recollec-
tion; “a look of hatred, triumph, vengeance, and, as
it were, joy at some unhoped-for relief.”
MIRIAM AND HILDA. 245
*“ Ah! Donatello was right, then,’ murmured Mir-
iam, who shook throughout all her frame. “ My eyes
bade him do it! Go on, Hilda.”
“It all passed so quickly, — all like a glare of
lightning,” said Hilda, “and yet it seemed to me that
Donatello had paused, while one might draw a breath.
But that look ! — Ah, Miriam, spare me. Need I tell
more ? ”
‘““No more; there needs no more, Hilda,” replied
Miriam, bowing her head, as if listening to a sentence
of condemnation from a supreme tribunal. “It is
enough! You have satisfied my mind on a point
where it was greatly disturbed. Henceforward, I
shall be quiet. Thank you, Hilda.”
She was on the point of departing, but turned back
again from the threshold.
“This is a terrible secret to be kept in a young
gitl’s bosom,” she observed; “ what will you do with
it, my poor child ? ”
“Heaven help and guide me,” answered Hilda,
bursting into tears; “for the burden of it crushes me
to the earth! It seems a crime to know of such a
thing, and to keep it to myself. It knocks within my
heart continually, threatening, imploring, insisting to
be let out! Oh, my mother! —my mother! Were
she yet living, I would travel over land and sea to tell
her this dark secret, as I told all the little troubles of
my infancy. But I am alone— alone! Miriam, you
were my dearest, only friend. Advise me what to do.”
This was a singular appeal, no doubt, from the
stainless maiden to the guilty woman, whom she had
just banished from her heart forever. But it bore
striking testimony to the impression which Miriam’s
natural uprightness and impulsive generosity had
246 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
made on the friend who knew her best ; and it deeply
comforted the poor criminal, by proving to her that
the bond between Hilda and herself was vital yet.
As far as she was able, Miriam at once responded
to the girl’s cry for help.
«Tf I deemed it good for your peace of mind,” she
said, “to bear testimony against me for this deed, in
the face of all the world, no consideration of myself
should weigh with me an instant. But I believe that
you would find no relief in such a course. What men
call justice lies chiefly in outward formalities, and has
never the close application and fitness that would be
satisfactory to a soul like yours. I cannot be fairly
tried and judged before an earthly tribunal ; and of
this, Hilda, you would perhaps become fatally con-
scious when it was too late. Roman justice, above all
things, is a byword. What have you to do with it?
Leave all such thoughts aside! Yet, Hilda, I would
not have you keep my secret imprisoned in your heart
if it tries to leap out, and stings you, like a wild, ven-
omous thing, when you thrust it back again. Have
you no other friend, now that you have been forced to
give me up?”
“No other,” answered Hilda, sadly.
“Yes; Kenyon!” rejoined Miriam.
“ He cannot be my friend,” said Hilda, “ because —
because — I have fancied that he sought to be some:
thing more.”
“ Fear nothing!” replied Miriam, shaking her head,
with a strange smile. “This story will frighten his
new-born love out of its little life, if that be what you
wish. Tell him the secret, then, and take his wise and
honorable counsel as to what should next be done. J
know not what else to say.”
MIRIAM AND GILDA. Y47
“JT never dreamed,” said Hilda, — “how could you
think it ?— of betraying you to justice. But I see how
it is, Miriam. I must keep your secret, and die of it,
unless God sends me some relief by methods which
are now beyond my power to imagine. It is very
dreadful. Ah! now I understand how the sins of
generations past have created an atmosphere of sin
for those that follow. While there is a single guilty
person in the universe, each innocent one must feel
his innocence tortured by that guilt. Your deed, Mir-
iam, has darkened the whole sky! ”
Poor Hilda turned from her unhappy friend, and,
sinking on her knees in a corner of the chamber, could
not be prevailed upon to utter another word. And
Miriam, with a long regard from the threshold, bade
farewell to this doves’ nest, this one little nook of pure
thoughts and innocent enthusiasms, into which she had
brought such trouble. Every crime destroys more
Edens than our own!
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE TOWER AMONG THE APENNINES.
Ir 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 some-
what 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 hill-side, 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 doubt-
less 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 pros-
perity she still enjoys. Rome, at this season, 1s per-
vaded 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 contem-
plates an indefinite succession of winters in this home
THE TOWER AMONG THE APENNINES. 249
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 galler-
ies of Florence, or to steal glowing colors from the mi-
raculous 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, shad-
owy, 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, look-
ing from its height over a broad expanse of valley. As
he drew nearer, however, it had been hidden among’
the inequalities of the hill-side, until the winding road
brought him almost to the iron gateway. The sculp-
tor 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.
250 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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, how-
_ ever, Nature had only so far adopted this old pile of
stone-work 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 vener-
able, 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 doubt-
less climbed the interior towards the battlemented and
machicolated summit. With this last-mentioned war-
like garniture upon its stern old head. and brow, the
tower seemed evidently a stronghold of times long
past. Many a cross-bowman had shot his shafts from
those windows and loopholes, and from the vantage-
height of those gray battlements; many a flight of ar-
rows, 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 battle-
-ments and every window.
THE TOWER AMONG THE APENNINES. 251
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 ad-
jacent to the tower, a cross, which, with a bell sus-
pended above the roof, indicated that this was a con-
secrated precinct, and the chapel of the mansion.
Meanwhile, the hot sun so incommoded the unshel-
tered 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 mo-
ment’s doubt. “This is a warm reception, truly!
Pray bid your porter let me in, before the sun shriv-
els 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 desig-
nate him in his ancestral tower — vanished from the
battlements ; and Kenyon saw his figure appear suc-
cessively 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.
252 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENi.
Kenyon, however (naturally and professionally ex-
pert at reading the expression of the human counte:
nance), 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 Prax-
iteles.
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 cer-
tain 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 thin-
ner, and the lips less full and less apart.
“T have looked for you a long while,” said Dona-
tello; 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. “TI shall be
more cheerful, perhaps, now that you have come. It
is very solitary here.”
“T have come slowly along, often lingering, often
turning aside,” replied Kenyon; “ for I found a great
deal to interest me in the medizval 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.” |
THE TOWER AMONG THE APENNINES. 253
“T 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 bet-
ter than the world below, and spend much of my time
there, nowadays.”
“Tt 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? Iam 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.
“J 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.”
“T may have known such a life, when I was young:
er,” answered the Count, gravely. “Iam not a boy
now. ‘Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow be«
hind.”
254 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
The sculptor could not but smile at the triteness of
the remark, which, nevertheless, had a kind of orig-
inality 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 court-yard ; and ©
the long extent of the villa, with its iron-barred lower
windows and balconied upper ones, became visible,
stretching back towards a grove of trees.
“ At some period of your family history,” observed
Kenyon, “ the Counts of Monte Beni must have led a
patriarchal life in this vast house. A great-grandsire
and all his descendants might find ample verge here,
and with space, too, for each separate brood of little
ones to play within its own precincts. Is your present
household a large one?”’
“Only myself,” answered Donatello, “ and Tomaso,
who has been butler since my grandfather’s time, and
old Stella, who goes sweeping and dusting about the
chambers, and Girolamo, the cook, who has but an
idle life of it. He shall send you up a chicken forth-
with. But, first of all, I must summon one of the
contadini from the farm-house yonder, to take your
horse to the stable.”
Accordingly, the young Count shouted amain, 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 conta,
dino, in his shirt-sleeves, showed himself on the out-
skirts of the vineyard, with some kind of a farming
tool in his hand. Donatello found employment for all
THE TOWER AMONG THE APENNINES. 255
these retainers in providing accomodation for his guest
and steed, and then ushered the sculptor into the vesti-
bule 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
dlocks of stone, and vaulted almost as massively over-
head. 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 inter-
minable 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 con-
fessed 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 sor-
rowiul 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,’ ob-
served 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?”
“Tam 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 rea<
son?” suggested Kenyon.
“J thought of one, the other night, while I was gaz-
ing at the stars,” answered Donatello; “but, pardon
me, I do not mean to tell it. One cause, however, of
SUNSHINE. 200
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 refresh-
ment, 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 aizr.
“This is a wine,” observed the Count, “ the secret
of making which has been kept in our family for cen-
turies 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,
VOL. VI.
258 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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 fulfil 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, how-
ever, an effervescing wine, although its delicate pigq-
uancy 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 de-
tect 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 re-
quired 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
SUNSHINE. 259
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 pota-
tion,” 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 2? The pale, liquid
gold, in every such flask as that, might be solidified
into golden scudi, and would quickly make you a mil-
lionnaire! ”
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
tare wine of our vineyard would lose all its wonder-
ful 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 un-
der this very roof ! ”
“What you tell me, my good friend,” replied Ken-
yon, “makes me venerate the Sunshine of Monte Benj
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
260 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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 sweet-
ness 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 dis-
course about the wine, before drinking off your glass,”
observed Donatello. ‘When once the flask is un-
corked, 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 Sun-
shine became almost imperceptibly clouded, as he ap-
proached 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 con-
structed 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,
SUNSHINE. 261
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 ad-
mirable 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 real-
ity of beautiful form, and rich, harmonious glow and
variety of color. But the frescos were now very an-
cient. They had been rubbed and scrubbed by old
Stella and many a predecessor, and had been defaced
in one spot, and retouched in another, and had peeled
from the wali 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 in-
considerable change, the gladdest objects and exist-
ences become the saddest; hope fading into disappoint-
ment; joy darkening into grief, and festal splendor
Into funereal duskiness; and all evolving, as their
moral, a grim identity between gay things and sorrow-
ful 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
262 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
potency of the Monte Beni wine. “ Your forefathers,
my dear Count, must have been joyous fellows, keep-
ing 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 Sun-
shine, 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.
“Tt 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.”
‘“‘Tt 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 van-
ish, he may point to these pictures, that were so joy-
ous 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 an experi-
ence 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 charac-
teristics. “ You startle me, my friend, by so ascetic 2
design! It would hardly have entered your head, when
SUNSHINE. 2638
we first met. Pray do not, —if I may take the free-
dom of a somewhat elder man to advise you,” added
he, smiling, —“ pray do not, under a notion of im-
provement, take upon yourself to be sombre, thought-
ful, and penitential, like all the rest of 18, 4
Donatello made no answer, but sat awhile, appear-
ing 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 picto-
rial 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 fig--
ure. He fancied a resemblance in it to Donatello
himself ; and it put him in mind of one of the pur-
poses 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 strik-
ing resemblance we all of us— Hilda, Miriam, and I—
found between your features and those of the F aun of
Praxiteles. Then, it seemed an identity ; but now that
I know your face better, the likeness is far less appar-
ent. Your head in marble would be a treasure to me.
Shall I have it?”
“I have a weakness which I fear I cannot over-
come,” replied the Count, turning away his face. “It
troubles me to be looked at steadfastly.”
“TI have observed it since we have been sitting here,
though never before,” rejoined the sculptor. “It is
& kind of nervousness, I apprehend, which you caught
264 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI. —
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 re-
sults 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,” an-
swered the sculptor, laughing, as the young Count
shook his clustering curls. ‘I could not hope to per-
suade you, remembering how Miriam once failed !”
Nothing is more unaccountable than the spell that
often lurks in a spoken word. A thought may be pres
ent 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 pro-
foundest 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 hor.
rible secret all along, in spite of its smiling surface.
And even so, when Kenyon chanced to make a dis:
tinct reference to Donatello’s relations with Miriam
(though the subject was already in both their minds),
SUNSHINE. 265
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 quie-
tude.
“You have spoken her name,” said he, at last, in an
altered and tremulous tone; “tell me, now, all that
you know of her.”
“TI 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 inter-
vals 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, be-
cause it took away much of the simple grace that was
the best of Donaiello’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, bri-
dal, 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 be-
side that portion of the villa, and were addressing their
266 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
petitions to the open windows. By and by, they ap-
peared to have received alms, and took their depar-
ture.
“Some charitable Christian has sent those vaga-
bonds 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 char-
acterize an Italian villa, a dozen guests might have
had gach his suite of apartments without infringing
upon one another’s ample precincts. But, so far as
Kenyon knew, he was the only visitor beneath Dona-
tello’s widely extended roof.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE PEDIGREE OF MONTE BENT.
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 diffi-
cult, 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 ar.
tive 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
@ broad track from the Middle Ages ; but, at epochs
anterior to those, it was distinctly visible in the gloom
268 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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 with-
out 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 ori-
gin 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 antiq-
_uity 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
THE PEDIGREE OF MONTE BENI. 269
their mouldy genealogy, interested the sculptor by its
wild, and perhaps grotesque, yet not unfascinating pe-
culiarity. He caught at it the more eagerly, as it
afforded a shadowy and whimsical semblance of ex-
planation 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 demi-
gods 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, na-
tive 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, mak-
ing their bridal bower, for aught we know, in the hol-
low of a great tree, the pair spent a happy wedded life
in that ancient neighborhood where now stood Dona-
tello’s tower.
270 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
_ 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 tor-
nado. Their lives were rendered blissful by an un-
sought 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 hu-
man life. It lost many of its original qualities, and
served, for the most part, only to bestow an uncon-
querable vigor, which kept the family from extine-
tion, 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 grasp-
ing neighbors, and probably differed very little from
the other feudal barons with whom they fought and
feasted. Such a degree of conformity with the man-
ners of the generations, through which it survived,
must have been essential to the prolonged continu-
ance of the race.
It is well known, however, that any hereditary pecul-
larity — as a supernumerary finger, or an anomalous
‘shape of feature, like the Austrian lip—is wont to
THE PEDIGREE OF MONTE BENT. 271
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 be-
yond 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 imme-
morial 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 them-
selves 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
yl 09 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
sensual, addicted to gross pleasures, heavy, unsympa-
thizing, 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 choic-
est grapes, which would ripen only in a certain di-
vinely 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. Ina great many years past, no sober credence
had. been yielded to the mythical portion of the pedi-
gree. It might, however, be considered as typity-
ing 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 seulp-
tor found, moreover, on the evidence of some old por-
traits, 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 playful-
ness.
THE PEDIGREE OF MONTE BENI. 273
The young Count accorded his guest full liberty to
investigate the personal annals of these pictured wor-
thiesas 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 for-
mer could not reconcile him to its dulness.
What especially delighted the sculptor was the anal-
ogy between Donatello’s character, as he himself knew
it, and those peculiar traits which the old butler’s nar-
rative 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 neighbor-
ing 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 with-
out 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 play-
mate 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,
VOL. VI.
274 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
they could remember little more than a few anecdotes
of a pet fox, which used to growl and snap at every-
body 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
wine-press 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 ex-—
pressing good wine from ordinary grapes, and a ray-
ishing 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
hill-sides 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 al-
lowances 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 de-
lightful fellow in his younger days.
But the contadini sometimes added, shaking their
heads and sighing, that the young Count was sadly
ehanged since he went to Rome. The village girls
now missed the merry smile with which he used to
greet them.
THE PEDIGREE OF MONTE BENJI. 275
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, “ itis
even so, since he came back from that wicked and mis-
erable 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 fam-
ily these hundred years or more, who was so true a
Monte Beni, of the antique stamp, as this poor signo-
rino ; 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 dam-
sels 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 sad-
der now! ”
And, in truth, while our friend smiled at these wild
fables, he sighed in the same breath to think how the
276 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
once genial earth produces, in every successive genera-
tion, fewer flowers than used to gladden the preced-
ing ones. Not that the modes and seeming possibili.
ties 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 get-
ting 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 unso-
phisticated 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—
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 com-
plicated 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 mis:
fortune — that the young Count found it impossible
nowadays to be what his forefathers had been. He
THE PEDIGREE OF MONTE BENTI. ik
eould 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 sim-
plest 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 yon-
der old, frescoed saloon. Do you think he could do a
better thing, my good Tomaso ?”
“Maybe not, Signore,” said the sage butler, look-
ing 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 communi-
cate 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 mut-
tering 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 Sun-
shine than had yet blessed his palate.
To say the truth, this golden wine was no unneces-
278 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
sary 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. Wan-
dering 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. Improvvisatori like-
wise came and told tales or recited verses to the conta-
dini— 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, Gir-
olamo, and the peasant-girls from the farm - house,
all of a broad grin, between merriment and wonder.
These good people got food and lodging for their pleas-
ant 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 lis-
tener or a spectator.
There were sometimes dances by moonlight on the
lawn, but never since he came from Rome did Dona-
tello’s presence deepen the blushes of the pretty conta-
dinas, 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 them.
THE PEDIGREE OF MONTE BENI. 279
selves on the marble steps of the grand entrance.
They ate and drank, and filled their bags, and pock-
eted the little money that was given them, and went
forth on their devious ways, showering blessings innu-
merable 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 eleva-
tion, and rambled with him among the neighboring
woods and hills. He led his friend to many enchant-
ing 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 clus-
ters 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 toa
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
MYTHS. 281
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 sculp-
tured 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 con-
trol, 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.”
“T 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
282 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENTI.
hither to this very spot a human maiden, whom he
loved and wedded. This spring of delicious water was
their household well.”
“Tt is a most enchanting fable!” exclaimed Ken-
yon; “ 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 sor-
row, 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 belong-
ing 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 crum-
bled 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.
MYTHS. 283
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 rain-drops, with a rainbow glanc-
ing 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 atmos-
phere became deliciously cool and fragrant for this fa-
vored 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 !
“Tt 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 ! ”
“T suppose,” said Donatello, rather sulkily, “you
are making fun of the story. But I see nothing laugh-
able 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
284 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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 blood-stain ! ”
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 Ken-
yon. |
“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 mournful-
MYTHS. 285
ness 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 leg-
end. 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 pas-
sions, and are altogether powerless in the dread fever-
fit or deadly chill of guilt.
“Do you say,” he asked, “that the nymph’s face
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 ?”
“IT called her often when I was a silly child,” an-
swered 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.”
“T have heard of such a gift,” responded the sculp.
tor, gravely, “but never before met with a person en
286 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
dowed 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.”
“TI doubt,” said Donatello, “ whether they will re-
member 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 characteris-
tics, 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 orig-
inal 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
MYTHS. 287
been intelligible to such extent as to win their con-
fidence.
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 ery, 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
enguish which he betrayed.
288 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
‘“ 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 cus-
toms and restraints of society had really acted upon
this young man, in spite of the quietude of his ordi-
nary deportment. In response to his friend’s efforts
to console him, he murmured words hardly more ar-
ticulate than the strange chant which he had so re;
cently 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 they 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 cure of fire! No innocent
thing can come near me.’
Be comforted, my dear friend,” sie Kenyon,
kneeling beside him. ‘“ You labor under some illu-
sion, 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,
Donatello.
“ We allof us, as we grow older,” rejoined Kenyon,
> answered
MYTHS. 289
“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. For-
get 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 be-
fallen 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 unre-
strained 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 inevi-
table 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 dew-drop, 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
VOL. VI.
290 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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 roem.
Tomaso met him in the entrance-hall, and showed a,
desire to speak.
‘“‘Qur poor signorino looks very sad to-day!” he
said.
“Kven 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 bet-
ter,” 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,” an-.
swered the Count, with a kind of sulkiness that often
appeared in him, as one of the little symptoms of in-
ward trouble.
“Yes; its exterior is visible far and wide,” said
Kenyon. “But sucha 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 inter-
est 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 Ken-
yon. “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,
292 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
pictures, and antiquities, to make the house gloomy,
and one bright-eyed little girl, to keep it cheerful!”
“T know him only by his white beard,” said Dona-
tello ; “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 gath-
ered 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 illus-
trious 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 hilis 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 emi-
nence,’ 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 strug-
gle 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
THE OWL TOWER. 293
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 cham-
ber 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 ?”
“TI 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 for-
Jorn, 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
294 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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 wit-
nessed 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 eyeshots 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 ring-
lets. 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 sa-
ered Bambino, in the guise of a little waxen boy, very
THE OWL TOWER. 295
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, Ken-
yon saw that it was carved in gray alabaster, most
skilfully 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 heave
skull in a silken and downy substance.
Donatello dipped his fingers into the holy - water
vase, and crossed himself. Aton doing so he trembled.
“J 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 with-
evt even a crucifix to kneel at.”
“T, 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 fee-
296 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
ble 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.”
“JT 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 un-
happy 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 or-
dained 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.”
“T 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 hun-
dred-fold ; so wide was the Umbrian valley that sud-
denly 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
THE OWL TOWER. 297
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 gate-
way, 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 for-
get 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 leacue-long strides, came hurrying the
thunder-storm, 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 nurse-
ries of early art, where the flower of beauty sprang out
of a rocky soil, and in a high, keen atinosphere, when
the richest and most sheltered gardens failed to nour-
ish it.
“Thank God for letting me again behold this
scene!” said the sculptor, a devout man in his way,
reverently taking off his hat. “TI have viewed it from
298 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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 un-
wonted 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 case. 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 hu-
man language. When we ascend into the higher re-
gions 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 battle-
mented 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
THE OWL TOWER. 299
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 hig
earliest remembrance, and never, he believed, any
smaller or any larger than they saw it now.
“JT wonder if the shrub teaches you any good les-
son,” said he, observing the interest with which Ken-
yon 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.”
“Oh, 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.”
“Tt 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 XXTX.
ON THE BATTLEMENTS.
THE sculptor now looked through an 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 con-
sequences 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 bat-
tlemented wall with a face of horror. “TI 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.”
ON THE BATTLEMENTS. 301
“That is not the way with this kind of death! ” ex.
claimed Donatello, in a low, horror- stricken voice,
which grew higher and more full of emotion as he
proceeded. “ Imagine a fellow-creature, — breathing,
now, and looking you in the face,—and now tum-
bling 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
fies 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
afinger! Ah, terrible! Yes, yes; I would fain fling
myself down for the very dread of it, that I might en-
dure it once for all, and dream of it no more! ”
“ How forcibly, how frightfully you conceive this!”
said the sculptor, aghast at the passionate horror which
was betrayed in the Count’s words, and still more in
his wild gestures and ghastly look. “N ay, 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. N evertheless, it affected the
302 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
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. Ken-
yon, 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 atmos-
phere 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 any-
thing beneath the surface and illusive pleasures of ex-
istence. 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 intelli-
gence 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 as-
cends to truth or delves down to reality, must undergo —
a similar change ; but sometimes, perhaps, the instruc-
tion comes without the sorrow; and oftener the sor-
row teaches no lesson that abides with us. In Dona.
tello’s case, it was pitiful, and almost ludicrous, to ob-
serve the confused struggle that he made; how com:
pletely he was taken by surprise ; how ill-prepared he
ON THE BATTLEMENTS. 303
stood, on this old battle-field 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 sub-
ject from his mind ; and, leaning against the battle-
ments, 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 con-
fine 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 heartstrings. 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 heartstrings,
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 impor-
304 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
tunate demand for his presence. Oh, 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 im-
aginations, that it can pull at the heartstrings almost
as perceptibly as the genuine original. No airy inti-
mations are to be trusted; no evidences of respon-
sive 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 arbi-
trary 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! JI 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 compan
ON THE BATTLEMENTS. 305
ions 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 open-
ing 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 to-
wards the hills that formed the boundary on the east-
ward. 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, — hill - tops
were seen brightening in the sunshine; they looked
like fragments of the world, broken adrift and based
on nothingness, or like portions of asphere destined to
exist, but not yet finally compacted.
The sculptor, habitually drawing many of the im-
ages 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
VOL. VI.
306 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
single scene becomes a thousand. The cloud-scenery
gives such variety to a hilly landscape that 1t would
be worth while to journalize its aspect from hour to
hour. A cloud, however, —as I have myself experi-
enced, —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 ex-
ample, have often suggested sculpturesque groups, fig-
ures, and attitudes; they are especially rich in atti-
tudes 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!”
“‘T can see cloud-shapes, too,” said Donatello ; “ yon-
der is one that shifts strangely ; it has been like peo-
ple whom I knew. And now, if 1 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?”
“T think,” remarked Kenyon, “we can hardly be —
gazing at the same cloud. What I behold is a reclin-
ing figure, to be sure, but feminine, and with a de-
spondent air, wonderfully well expressed in the way-
ering outline from head to foot. It moves my very
heart by something indefinable that it suggests.”
“T 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 reminis-
cences 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,
ON THE BATTLEMENTS. 307
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
2 lavish outpouring of gold, but rather such gold as
we see on the leaf of a bright flower than the bur-
nished 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, brighten
ing 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 ery, — 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 Eng-
lish drumbeat around the globe, there is a chain of
convent-bells from end to end, and cross-wise, 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, oc-
308 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENTI.
curs 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
—TI 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, | 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.”
ON THE BATTLEMENTS. 309
‘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 re-
membrance 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 sug-
gested 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 strug-
gling with it towards the light of heaven.
The illumination, it is true, soon faded out of Dona-
tello’s face. The idea of life-long and unselfish effort
was too high to be received by him with more than a
momentary comprehension. An Italian, indeed, sel-
dom dreams of being philanthropic, except in bestow-
ing alms among the paupers, who appeal to his benef-
icence 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. Per-
haps, too, their system has its share of moral advan-
tages ; 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 fire-flies in
the garden of a Florentine palace. A gleam of light-
ning from the rear of the tempest showed the cireum-
ference of hills, and the great space between, as the
Jast cannon-flash of a retreating army reddens across
the field where it has fought. The sculptor was on
the point of descending the turret-stair, when, some-
310 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
where 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 in-
stant.
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 brill.
iancy 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 fore-
bodings of whatever sorrow he had felt or appre-
hended ; it made Donatello sob, as chiming in with
the anguish that he found unutterable, and il it
the expression which he vaguely sought.
But, when the emotion was at its profoundest depite
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
ON THE BATTLEMENTS. d11
silence again, “had that voice no message for your
ear?”
“‘T dare not receive it,” said Donatello; “the an-
guish 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 Dona-
tello’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 com-
pelled 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 ex-
pression 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
DONATELLO’S BUST. 313
marble or clay, but cloud and vapor, was the material
in which it ought to be represented. Even the ponder-
ous depression which constantly weighed upon Dona.
tello’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 pre-
conceptions 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 inani-
mate substance with thought, feeling, and all the in-
tangible 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 Donatel-
lo’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 sem-
blance of intelligent and sympathetic life.
“The difficulty will drive me mad, I verily be-
lieve!” 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.”
514 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
This frankly unfavoravte 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 re-
fractory it may show itself in certain respects, he com-
pressed, 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!” eried Donatello, at last, catching the sculp.
tor’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 recog-
nized Donatello’s face as they beheld it at that terri-
ble 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 an-
other 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 ora-
tory 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!”
DONATELLO’S BUST. 815
But, without in the least heeding Donatello’s remon-
strances, the sculptor again applied his artful fingers
to the clay, and compelled the bust to dismiss the ex-
pression 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, seek-
ing, 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 infi-
nitely 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 for-
ever, and cause your capacity for better things to par-
take its noisome corruption ! ”
“ You stir up many thoughts,” said Donatello, press-
ing his hand upon his brow, “ but the multitude and
the whirl of them make me dizzy.” |
They now left the sculptor’s temporary studio, with-
out 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 suc-
cess, indeed, all this thoughtful toil would have been
reckoned, not only as well bestowed, but as among the
316 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
happiest hours of his life ; whereas, deeming himself
to have failed, it was just so much of life that had bet-
ter 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 ad-
vanced 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 tempt-
ing aspect, though cold and watery to the palate, com-
pared with the sculptor’s rich reminiscences of that
fruit in America. The purple figs had already en-
joyed 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 farm-house,
he happened upon a spot where the vintage had ac-
tually 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 con-
tadino, 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
DONATELLO’S BUST. 317
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 battle-field. 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 bit-
ter 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 Eng-
land vintages, where the big piles of golden and rosy
apples lie under the orchard trees, in the mild, autum-
nal sunshine ; and the creaking cider-mill, set in mo-
tion 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 ordi-
nary, 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 con-
nected 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 in-
clined 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
318 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENTI.
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 primi-
tive 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 to-
wards that shy maiden, even in his visions; so that he
almost reproached himself when sometimes his imagi-
nation 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 — a remoteness through which all
delights might visit them freely, sifted from all trou-
bles — 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 joy-
ousness. ‘The sculptor strayed amid its vineyards and
orchards, its dells and tangled shrubberies, with some-
what the sensations of an adventurer who should find
his way to the site of ancient Eden, and behold its love-
liness 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,
DONATELLO’S BUST. 319
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 whis-
pered.
“In the chapel?” asked the sculptor.
“No; in the saloon beyond it,” answered the but-
ler: “the entrance — you once saw the signorina ap-
pear through it — is near the altar, hidden behind the
tapestry.”
Kenyon lost no time in obeying the summons,
CHAPTER XXXT.
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 relig-
ious awe. This was very much the case with the chapel
of Monte Beni. One rainy day, however, in his wan-
derings through the great, intricate house, Kenyon had
unexpectedly found his way into it, and been impressed
by its solemn aspect. The arched windows, high up-
ward 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 spl-
der (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 me-
\dizeval busts of Donatello’s forgotten ancestry ; and
among them, it might be, the forlorn visage of that
THE MARBLE SALOON. 821
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 as-
sociates to share. And here, on the occasion above re-
ferred 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 sum-
moned 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 seru-
tiny, 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 pre-
cious. ‘The splendor of the giallo antico, however, was
what gave character to the saloon; and the large and
leep niches, apparently intended for full-length stat-
ues, 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
VOL. VI.
322 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
means, in any sense, save as the white limestone of
which we carve our mantel-pieces. This rich hall of
Monte Beni, moreover, was adorned, at its upper end,
with two pillars that seemed to consist of Oriental ala-
baster ; and wherever there was a space vacant of pre-
cious and variegated marble, it was frescoed with orna-
ments in arabesque. Above, there was a coved and
vaulted ceiling, glowing with pictured scenes, which
affected Kenyon with a vague sense of splendor, with-
out 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 impris-
oned, and must always shine. He anticipated Miriam’s
entrance, arrayed in queenly robes, and beaming with
even more than the singular beauty that had hereto-
fore 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.
THE MARBLE SALOON. 323
“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 sculp-
tor; “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 long-
ings 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 Mir-
lam, 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.”
824 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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 Mir-
iam’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.
“Oh, 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.”
“JT 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 Dona-
tello — 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 circum-
stances 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
THE MARBLE SALOON. 325
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
self-same 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,”’ an-
swered the sculptor. “ Your song, a night or two ago,
must have revealed it to him, and, in truth, I had fan-
cied 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 life-long 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 man-
ner, 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 Dona-
tello’s mind,” answered the sculptor. ‘The germs of
faculties that have heretofore slept are fast springing
into activity. The world of thought is disclosing it-
self to his inward sight. He startles me, at times,
BG ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
with his perception of deep truths ; and, quite as often,
it must be owned, he compels me to smile by the inter-
mixture of his former simplicity with a new intelli-
gence. 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, clasp-
ing 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 ac-
quiring 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.”
“T 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 ac-
crue 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 MARBLE SALOON. Out
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.”
‘“T 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 mo-
tives,’ 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 Dona-
tello. Once he shuddered at my touch. If he shud-
der once again, or frown, I die!”
Kenyon could not but marvel at the subjection into
which this proud and self-dependent woman had wil-
fully 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 mo-
ment. 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 acknowl-
edged, 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
328 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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 excita-
bility, 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 super-
vene 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?” in-
quired 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 coun-
sellor whom Donatello needs ; for, to mention no other
obstacle, | am a man, and between man and man there
THE MARBLE SALOON. 329
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!”
“Tt is not kind to taunt me thus,” said Miriam.
“T 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 Proy-
idence have a larger hand in it than either of us.”
“Tt 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 be-
ing 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,
3390 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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 edu-
cate 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 Mir-
iam still standing where he had left her, in the magnif-
icent 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 impres
sion made upon my mind; but it has been painful,
and somewhat of the character which you suppose.”
THE MARBLE SALOON. 331
“T 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 per-
ceptible in all your manner. Well, my dear friend,
when you go back to Rome, tell Hilda what her sever-
ity 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 Mir-
iam, and thank her! ”
“T shail 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 for-
give 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 cap-
able 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.”
“Oh, you are right!” said Miriam ; “ I never ques-
.tioned 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 your:
self.”
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 re-
egrets, 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 stand-
ard of what is exquisite in wine. These things ac-
complished, Kenyon was ready for the journey.
Donatello had not very easily been stirred out of
the peculiar sluggishness, which inthralls and _be-
witches 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 wan-
SCENES BY THE WAY. 333
dered 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 there-
after, in the great square of Perugia, there was noth-
ing 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 Ken-
yon’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 be-
gan 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 no-
madic, that a very little taste of that primitive mode
334 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENTI.
of existence subverts the settled habits of many pre-
ceding 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
hill-side. 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 hun-
dred agreeable scenes.
He delighted in the picturesque bits of rustic char-
acter 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 Parc, 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 ob-
server from the Western world, it was a strange spec-
tacle 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 sun-
shine constantly added depth to the brown glow of
their cheeks. The elder sisterhood, however, set off
SCENES BY THE WAY. 335
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, in-
termixed 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 half-way 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 in-
stance, 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 herb-
age 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 earth-
like, there was still a remote, dream-like, Arcadian
eharm, 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, sus-
pending clusters of ripening grapes in the interval
between. Under such careless mode of culture, the
luxuriant vine is a lovelier spectacle than where it
336 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
produces a more precious liquor, and is therefore more
artificially restrained and trimmed. Nothing can be
more picturesque than an old grape-vine, 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 na-
tures are prone to do) it converted the sturdier tree
entirely to its own selfish ends, extending its innumer-
able 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 vic-
tim, 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, an-
cient town. There, besides the peculiarities of pres-
ent 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 peace-
fully along its base, full, not of apple-trees, but of
those old humorists with gnarled trunks and twisted
SCENES BY THE WAY. Sau
boughs, the olives. Houses have been built upon the
ramparts, or burrowed out of their ponderous founda-
tion. Even the gray, martial towers, crowned with
ruined turrets, have been converted into rustic habita-
tions, from the windows of which hang ears of In-
dian corn. At a door, that has been broken through
the massive stone- work, 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 need-
less strength; but remnants of the old battlements
and machicolations are interspersed with the homely
chambers and earthen-tiled house-tops; and all along
its extent both grape-vines and running flower-shrubs
are encouraged to clamber and sport over the rough-
ness of its decay.
Finally the long grass, intermixed with weeds and
wild-flowers, waves on the uppermost height of the shat-
tered 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-cham-
bers, 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 crev-
ices along the broken summit of the wall.
Passing through the gateway of this same little town,
challenged only by those watchful sentinels, the pig-
eons, 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,
VOL. VI.
3938 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
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 habi-
tations, with their small windows, many of which are
drearily closed with wooden shutters, are but magni-
fied 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 sum-
mer-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
SCENES BY THE WAY. 339
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 so-
ciety 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 vil-
lage 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
Ttaly, 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 Sun-
shine of Monte Beni would be welcome now. Mean-
while, 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 him-
self, and mutters a brief prayer, without attracting
notice from the passers-by, many of whom are paren-
thetically 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
340 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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 at-
mosphere is so like the substance of a dream.
Immediately about them, however, there were abun-
dant tokens that the country was not really the para-
dise it looked to be, at a casual glance. Neither the
wretched cottages nor the dreary farm-houses 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 home-
stead 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 do-
mestic interiors of English life. Everything, however
sunny and luxuriant may be the scene around, is es-
pecially disheartening in the immediate neighborhood
of an Italian Home.
An artist, it is true, might often thank his stars for
those old houses, so picturesquely time - stained, and
SCENES BY THE WAY. 341
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 benef-
icence 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 im-
mortal spirit. Beholding these consecrated stations,
the idea seemed to strike Donatello of converting the
otherwise aimless journey into a penitential pilgrim-
age. 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
342 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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 medieval 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 farm-house ; or at the midway point of a bridge ;
or in the shallow cavity of a natural rock; or high up-
ward 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 awful-
ness 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 to-
wards all human souls. In the wire-work screen, be-
fore each shrine, hung offerings of roses, or whatever
flower was sweetest and most seasonable ; some already
wilted and withered, some fresh with that very morn-
ing’s dew-drops. 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
SCENES BY THE WAY. 343
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, in-
stead of blossoms on the shrub, or freshly gathered,
with the dew-drops on their leaves, their worship, now-
adays, 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 him-
self, even in such a consecrated spot, with the fra-
grance of a pipe, would it rise to heaven more offen-
sively than the smoke of priestly incense. We do
ourselves wrong, and too meanly estimate the Holi-
ness above us, when we deem that any act or enjoy-
ment, 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 fre-
quent shrine and cross along the roadside. No way-
farer, 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
@ 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
344 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
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 out-
line, in the too obtrusive light. After sunset, it grew
a little more distinct.
“On the left of that last shrine,” asked the sculp-
tor, as they rode, under the moon, “did you observe
the figure of a woman kneeling, with her face hidden
in her hands? ”
“1 never looked that way,” replied Donatello. “I
was saying my own prayer. It was some penitent,
perchance. May the Blessed Virgin be the more gra
ious to the poor soul, because she is a woman.”
CHAPTER XXXII
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 modifi-
cations of it immediately took a different aspect from
that of the fertile and smiling plain. Not unfre-
quently there was a convent on the hill-side; or, on
some insulated promontory, a ruined 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
346 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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 Ro:
man 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 edi-
fices, 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
mountain-side, 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 ori-
gin. 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 du-
rability 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 un-
desirable ‘it is to build the tabernacle of our brief life-
time 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 nok
PICTURED WINDOWS. 847
someness, besides standing apart from the possibility
of such improvements as are constantly introduced
into the rest of man’s contrivances and accommoda-
tions. It is beautiful, no doubt, and exceedingly satis-
factory to some of our natural instincts, to imagine our
far posterity dwelling under the same roof-tree as our-
selves. Still, when people insist on building indestruc-
tible houses, they incur, or their children do, a misfor-
tune 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
Ttaly, be they hovels or palaces.
“ You should go with me to my native country,”
observed the sculptor to Donatello. “In that fortu-
nate 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 Pres-
ent. IfI were to lose my spirits in this country, —
if I were to suffer any heavy misfortune here, — me-
thinks 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.”
“Oh, 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 hill-side, or a fossilized town;
so ancient and strange it looks, without enough of life
and juiciness in it to be any longer susceptible of de-
fay. An earthquake would afford it the only chance
of being ruined, beyond its present ruin.
348 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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 en-
joy. 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 Cathol-
icism 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 Cim-
abue 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 rel-
ics; and Donatello, in his present phase of penitence,
PICTURED WINDOWS. 349
thought no time spent amiss while he could be kneel-
ing before an altar. Whenever they found a cathe-
dral, 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
medizval time, and its gorgeous contrivances of splen-
dor; for surely the skill of man has never accom.
plished, 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 ra-
diance; 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.
“Tt is a woful 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 sun-
shine 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,
350 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
sadly, “if there were a soul among them through
which the light could not be transfused !”
“Yes; and perhaps this is to be the punishment of
sin,” replied the sculptor ; “ not that it shall be made
evident to the universe, which can profit nothing by
such knowledge, but that it shall insulate the sinner
from all sweet society by rendering him impermeable
to light, and, therefore, unrecognizable in the abode
of heavenly simplicity and truth. Then, what remains
for him, but the dreariness of infinite and eternal solli-
tude ?” 3
“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 insep-
arable soul.”
“T 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
PICTURED WINDOWS. 301
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 illumi-
nated 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 to-
pazes. Is it not so with yonder window? The pic-
tures are most brilliant in themselves, yet dim with
tenderness and reverence, because God himself is shin-
ing 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 fig-
ure! 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 con-
templating within, nothing was visible but the merest
outline of dusky shapes. Neither the individual like-
ness of saint, angel, nor Saviour, and far less the com-
bined scheme and purport of the picture, could any-
wise 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 be-
holder 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 be-
ay ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
lief, or from its cold and dreary outside. Christian
faith is a grand cathedral, with divinely pictured win-
dows. 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 merey than for religious contempla-
tion ; 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 mos-
quitoes, their formidable allies. These pests — the hu-
man ones — had hunted the two travellers at every
stage of their journey. From village to village, rag-
ged 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 counte-
nance 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 in-
firmity or deformity Providence had assigned them for
an inheritance. On the highest mountain summit —
in the most shadowy ravine — there was a beggar wait-
ing for them. In one small village, Kenyon had the
curiosity to count merely how many children were ery-
ing, whining, and bellowing all at once for alms. They
proved to be more than forty of as ragged and dirty
little imps as any in the world ; besides whom, all the
wrinkled matrons, and most of the village maids, and
not a few stalwart men, held out their hands grimly,
piteously, or smilingly in the forlorn hope of whatever
trifle of coin might remain in pockets already so fear-
PICTURED WINDOWS. 353
fully 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 lit-
tle 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 evi-
dently as well fed as needs be. The truth is, the Ital-
ian peasantry look upon strangers as the almoners of
Providence, and therefore feel no more shame in ask-
ing and receiving alms, than in availing themselves of
providential bounties in whatever other form.
In accordance with his nature, Donatello was al-
ways 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 char-
itable 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
VOL. VI.
304 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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.
Prrveta, 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 refresh-
ment 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 wilder-
ness 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 moun-
tains, 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 gate-
way, 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 te
answer as a penance.”
306 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
“ Will you look at some pictures by Fra Angelico
*n the Church of San Domenico?” asked Kenyon;
“ they are full of religious sincerity. When one stud-
ies 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 pic-
tures, 1 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 al-
ways to have lived so. Young maidens, and all inno-
cent 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 toa
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 chil-
dren in leading-strings through those dim and an-
tique 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 publie
edifices. |
MARKET-DAY IN PERUGIA. 857
It happened to be market-day in Perugia. The
great square, therefore, presented a far more viva-
cious 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,
tin-ware, old iron, cloth, rosaries of beads, crucifixes,
cakes, biscuits, sugar- plums, and innumerable little
odds and ends, which we see no object in advertis-
ing. 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, — the whole
material of his magic, in short, — wherewith he pro-
ceeded to work miracles under the noonday sun. An
organ-grinder at one point, and a clarion and a flute
at another, accomplished what they could towards fill-
ing the wide space with tuneful noise. Their small
uproar, however, was nearly drowned by the multitu-
dinous voices of the people, bargaining, quarrelling,
laughing, and babbling copiously at random ; for the
358 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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 beguil-
ing one’s eyes and upper strata of thought, it was de-
lightful 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 vocif-
eration 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, run-
ning 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 medi-
eval front of the cathedral, where the imagination of
a Gothic architect had long ago flowered out inde-
structibly, 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
MARKET-DAY IN PERUGIA. 859
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 quaint-
est poetry. In fit keeping with all this old magnifi-
cence 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 erec-
tion 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 sculp-
tors of the Middle Age have fitter lessons for the pro-
fessors of my art than we can find in the Grecian
masterpieces. They belong to our Christian civiliza-
tion ; 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 per-
mitted to share it.”
Remembering the similar idea which Miriam a short
time before had expressed, the sculptor smiled hope-
360 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.,
fully 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 affec-
tionate 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 endur-
ing 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 health:
ler spirit than while he was brooding in his melan-
MARKET-DAY IN PERUGIA. 361
choly 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 some-
thing 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 cheerful-
ness, had each their suitable effect on a temper natu-
rally prone to be glad. Perhaps, too, he was magnet-
ically conscious of a presence that formerly sufficed to
make him happy. Be the cause what it might, Dona-
tello’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 sculp-
tor’s remark, “T 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! ”
“JT 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 pleas-
ure, 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.”
“JT 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 neigh
562 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
boring cathedral told the hour, with twelve reverber.
ating strokes, which it flung down upon the crowded
market-place, as if warning one and all to take advan-
tage 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.
WuaeEn 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 dis-
cern Miriam somewhere in the crowd. He looked
next towards the cathedral itself, where it was rea-
sonable 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
om 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 relig-
ion, recognizes in that image the likeness of a father.
“ Miriam,” said the sculptor, with a tremor in his
voice, “is it yourself? ”
“Tt is I,” she replied; “I am faithful to my en-
gagement, though with many fears.”
She lifted her head, and revealed to Kenyon — re-
vealed to Donatello likewise — the well-remembered
364 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENi.
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 glim-
mer 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 sculp-
tor, 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 will-
ingly 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
THE BRONZE PONTIFF’S BENEDICTION. 365
feel an infinite need of me, I am a burden and fatal
obstruction to him!”
“Take your own course, then, Miriam,” said Ken-
yon ; “and, doubiless, 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 vicin-
ity of the statue, so as to be out of Donatello’s hear-
ing. 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 af-
fection, and despaired of so vast a boon.
Meanwhile, she had not stood thus long in the pub-
lic square of Perugia, without attracting the observa-
tion 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 na-
tive 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 mul-
titude 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 in-
definite dread of being quite alone with the object of
our deepest interest. The species of solitude that a
erowd 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
°
366 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
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 balus-
trade. 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 de-
pressed 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 soli-
tude, 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.”
THE BRONZE PONTIFF’S BENEDICTION. 367
“ Do not leave us now!” whispered Miriam, implor-
Ingly, and laying her hand on his arm. “One mo-
ment 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 syl-
van Haun, here was now the man of feeling and intel-
ligence.
She turned towards him, while his voice still rever-
berated 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 hard-
ness 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 sa-
cred 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, encoun-
tering 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!
368 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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 mo-
mentous 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.
“Tt seems irreverent,” said he, at length; ‘ intru-
sive, if not irreverent, for a third person to thrust him-
self between the two solely concerned in a crisis like
the present. Yet, possibly as a by-stander, though a
deeply interested one, I may discern somewhat of
truth that is hidden from you both; nay, at least in-
terpret 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 up-
right.”
“ T 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
THE BRONZE PONTIFF’S BENEDICTION. 369
your agency, out of a wild and happy state, which,
within circumscribed limits, gave him joys that he can-
not 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 sugges-
tive power, a magnetic influence, a sympathetic knowl-
edge, 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
Jook 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
VOL. VI.
370 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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 to-
wards 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 gra-
cious gift, and a token that it recognizes your union
here below.”
“Have you no more to say?” asked Miriam, ear-
nestly. ‘ There is matter of sorrow and lofty consola-
tion 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 un-
consciously 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 lov-
ers, and fancied this a betrothal that was destined to
THE BRONZE PONTIFF’S BENEDICTION. 371
result in life-long 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 mo-
ments 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 out-
stretched hand ; he approved by look and gesture the
pledge of a deep union that had passed under his au-
spices.
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 accumu-
lated dust and a fungous growth overspreading all its
more admirable features, — left her in utter weari-
ness, 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, yel-
low-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, cob-
blers’ stalls, stables, and regiments of cavalry, to a
middle region of princes, cardinals, and ambassadors,
and an upper tier of artists, just beneath the unattain-
able 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 Ital
ian 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
HIEDA’S TOWER. 373
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 indi-
vidual 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 aston-
ished by the discovery, by and by, that our heart-
strings have mysteriously attached themselves to the
Kternal 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 dissi-
pated by the first cool breezes that came with autumn.
The thickly populated centre of the city, indeed, is
hever affected by the feverish influence that lies in
374 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENTI.
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 gar-
dens and groves. 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 pastimes, for which its
broad piazzas afford abundant room. It leads its own
life with a freer spirit, now that the artists and for-
eign 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 lit-
tle 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 prob-
ably 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 ot
HILDA’S TOWER. 375
peril. In view of such a summer, Hilda had antici-
pated many months of lonely, but unalloyed enjoy-
ment. Not that she had a churlish disinclination to
society, or needed to be told that we taste one intel-
lectual 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 wofully 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, inex-
tricable 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 heart-sickness, 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 our-
selves 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
576 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
behind it or above it. The character of oux individual
beloved one having invested itself with all the attri-
butes of right, — that one friend beimg to us the sym-
bol and representative of whatever is good and true,
— when he falls, the effect is alraost 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 house-tops,
and has fallen because we founded it on nothing. But
the crash, and the affright and trouble, are as over-
whelming, for the time, as if the catastrophe involved
the whole moral world. Remembering these things, let
them suggest one generous motive for walking heed-
fully amid the defilement of earthly ways! Let us re-
flect, 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, partak-
ing the human nature of those who could perpetrate
such deeds, she felt her own spotlessness impugned.
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 intelli-
gence; or, if not these, any dull, half-listening ear
HILDA’S TOWER. Baee
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 sun-
shine 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 pas-
sages of our nature, she stumbled, ever and again,
over this deadly idea of mortal guilt.
Poor sufferer for another’s sin! Poor well-spring
of a virgin’s heart, into which a murdered corpse had
easually 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 re-
‘semblance 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 hor-
ror at 4 blood-spot which she seemed just then to have
discovered on her white robe. The picture attracted
considerable notice. Copies of an engraving from it
378 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
may still be found in the print-shops along the Corso,
By many connoisseurs, the idea of the. face was sup-
posed to have been suggested by the portrait of Bea-
trice Cenci; and, in fact, there was a look somewhat
sunilar 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 of 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,” re-
marked 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 bet-
ter price if you had given it a more intelligible title.
Looking at the face and expression of this fair signo-
rina, 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!” eried the young ar-
tist. “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
washer-woman? No, no, my dear Panini. The pic-
ture being now my property, I shall call it ‘The Sig:
HILDA’S TOWER. 379
norina’s Vengeance.’ She has stabbed her lover over-
night, 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 misinter-
pretations. Her doves often flew in through the win-
dows 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 find-
ing a temporary relief from the burden of her incom-
municable sorrow, as if a little portion of it, at least,
had been told to these innocent friends, and been un-
derscood 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 ten-
derness 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, be-
cause forever humanized by the memory of mortal
griefs, was Hilda to be blamed? It was not a Catho-
lic 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.
Hitpa 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 door-keepers knew
her well, and offered her a kindly greeting. But they
shook their heads and sighed, on observing the lan-
guid 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.”
“T have no task nor duty anywhere but here,” re-
plied Hilda. “The old masters will not set me free! ”
EMPTINESS OF PICTURE GALLERIES. 381
“ Ah, those old masters!” cried the veteran ar-
tist, 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 frag-
ile mind, and the delicate heart, of a young girl. Re-
member 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 mir-
acles 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 grotesque-
ness 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! N othing 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
382 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
your first-love ; but young maidens are not always con-
stant, and one flame is sometimes extinguished by an-
other!”
Hilda shook her head, and turned away.
She had spoken the truth, however, in alleging that
torpor, rather than fire, was what she had now 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. I¢ was no wonder.
A picture, however admirable the painter’s art, and
wonderful his power, requires of the spectator a sur-
render 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 high-
est excellence escapes you. There is always the neces-
sity of helping out the painter’s art with your own re-
sources 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 ex-
tent, 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-surren-
der, and the depth and tenderness of her sympathy,
had lain Hilda’s remarkable power as a copyist of the
EMPTINESS OF PICTURE GALLERIES. 383
old masters. And now that her capacity of emotion
was choked up with a horrible experience, it inevita-
bly 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 al-
together a delusion.
For the first time in her life, Hilda now grew ac-
quainted with that icy demon of weariness, who haunts
great picture galleries. He is a plausible Mephistophe-
les, and possesses the magic that is the destruction of
all other magic. He annihilates color, warmth, and,
more especially, sentiment and passion, ata 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 face, by Ge-
rard Douw; a furred robe, or the silken texture of a
mantle, or a straw hat, by Van Mieris; or a long-
stalked wine-glass, transparent and full of shifting re-
flection, 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 substi-
tuted 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
384 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
subjects. The churchmen, their great patrons, sug
gested most of their themes, and a dead mythology
the rest. A quarter-part, probably, of any large col-
lection of pictures, consists of Virgins and infant
Christs, repeated over and over again in pretty much
an identical spirit, and generally with no more mix-
ture 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, Pie-
tas, Noli-me-tangeres, or the Sacrifice of Abraham, or
martyrdoms of saints, originally painted as altar-pieces,
or for the shrines of chapels, and wofully lacking the
accompaniments which the artist had in view.
The remainder of the gallery comprises mytholog-
ical 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 im-
pure pictures are from the same illustrious and impi-
ous 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 —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 pro-
duced a picture of the Virgin, possessing warmth
enough to excite devotional feelings, it was probably
EMPTINESS OF PICTURE GALLERIES. 885
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 to-
wards Divinity. And who can trust the religious sen-
tment 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 bra-
zen 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 ir-
reverent 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 coun-
tenance 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 Ra-
phael. She had a faculty (which, fortunately for
themselves, pure women often have) of ignoring all
moral blotches in a character that won her admire
VOL VI.
386 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
tion. 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 sus-
pect 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, al-
luded to above, of offering the features of some venal
beauty to be enshrined in the holiest places. A de-
ficiency of earnestness and absolute truth is generally
discoverable in Italian pictures, after the art had be-
come consummate. When you demand what is deep-
est, 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 Angel-
ico, 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
EMPTINESS OF PICTURE GALLERIES. 88%
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. So-
doma, 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 reve-
lation, 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 sink-
ing 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 de-
serted 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 garni-
ture. 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
388 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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 relig-
ious 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 appre-
ciated by a very different frame of mind. Few ama-
teurs 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 involunta-
rily 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, sol-
itary saloons, wondering what had become of the
splendor that used to beam upon her from the walls.
She grew sadly critical, and condemned almost every:
thing that she was wont to admire. Heretofore, her
sympathy went deeply into a picture, yet seemed te
t
\
EMPTINESS OF PICTURE GALLERIES. 889
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 genera-
tion, 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, and perpetrated still deadlier crimes,
as probably he did, — there could be no fitter punish-
ment 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 in-
crease 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
390 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.,
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 ab-
sence, 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. Oh,
dreary streets, palaces, churches, and imperial sepul-
chres 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 magnif-
icence, 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 sab-
bath 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 blos-
soms; 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
EMPTINESS OF PICTURE GALLERIES. 391
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 con-
fidence 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.
“Oh, that he were here!” she sighed ; “I perish un-
der this terrible secret ; and he might help me to en-
dure it. Oh, 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 heartstrings, 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 un-
der the sky ; 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 trou-
bled heart, her inheritance of New England Puritan-
ism 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 some-
times help the soul towards a higher satisfaction than
the faith contains within itself. It supplies a multi-
tude 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 inexhaus-
tible variety, and what may once have been genuine
medicaments, though a little the worse for long keep-
ing.
ALTARS AND INCENSE. 393
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 engi-
neers who now manage its cranks and satety-valves,
the system would soon vindicate the dignity and holi-
ness 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 pal-
aces of worship, it is impossible to imagine the mag-
nificence of the religion that reared them. Many of
them shine with burnished gold. They glow with pic-
tures. Their walls, columns, and arches seem a quarry
of precious stones, so beautiful and costly are the mar-
bles 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 in-
terior of the dome, there are frescos of such brill-
lancy, 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 vain to attempt a description of
a princely chapel. |
394 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
Restless with her trouble, Hilda now entered upon
another pilgrimage among these altars and shrines.
She climbed the hundred steps of the Ara Celi; 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 Eng-
land meeting-house.
She went — and it was a dangerous errand — to ob-
serve how closely and comfortingly the popish faith
applied itself to all human occasions. It was impos-
sible 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 peri-
ods. But here, whenever the hunger for divine nutri-
ment 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. Nowa saint in heaven, but once a man
on earth.
ALTARS AND INCENSE. 395
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 hal-
lowed 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
396 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
portrait of an earthly beauty ; the wife, at best, of the
artist; or, it might be, a peasant-girl of the Cam-
pagna, or some Roman princess, to whom he desired
to pay his court. For love, or some even less justifi-
able 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 bring-
ing 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 en-
dowed 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 ? ” :
ALTARS AND INCENSE. 397
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 preconcep-
tion of St. Peter’s was a structure of no definite out-
line, misty in its architecture, dim and gray and huge,
stretching into an interminable perspective, and over-
arched 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 in
terior 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 mag-
nified.
This latter image best pleased her fancy ; a casket,
all inlaid, in the inside, with precious stones of vari-
ous 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, with-
out losing the intense lustre of its littleness, but all its
petty glory striving to be sublime. The magic trans-
formation 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
398 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
spectator is more sensible of its limits than of its ex
tent.
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 proc-
ess 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 re-
sponse, 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 som-
bre 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
ALTARS AND INCENSE. 399
within its verge, and there was space for all. She
gazed with delight even at the multiplicity of orna-
ment. 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 mani-
fold magnificence that had been lavished, in a hun-
dred 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 sep-
arate account. Yet each contributed its little all to-
wards 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 un-
suitable 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 worship-
* pers 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 sub-
lime, and fadeless after centuries, those lofty depths
seemed to translate the heavens to mortal comprehen-
sion, 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 over-
flowed from it, include whatever can satisfy human as-
400 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
pirations 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 en-
trance, 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 deli-
cacy 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
ALTARS AND INCENSE. 401
Church of Rome, but for the cause of Good. The
moral of the picture, the immortal youth and loveli-
ness of Virtue, and its irresistible 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 Arch-
angel’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, more-
over, 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 an-
other, adorned with a picture by Guercino, represent-
ing 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 Sav-
iour 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. presenti-
ment, or what she fancied such, whispered her, that,
VOL. VI.
402 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
before she had finished the circuit of the cathedral, re-
lief 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 glim-
mer in it.
CHAPTER XXXTX.
THE WORLD’S CATHEDRAL.
STILL gliding onward, Hilda now looked up into
the dome, where the sunshine came through the west-
ern windows, and threw across long shafts of light.
They rested upon the mosaic figures of two evange-
lists above the cornice. These gre.t beams of radi-
ance, traversing what seemed the empty space, were
made visible in misty glory, by the hcly cloud of in-
cense, 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, puri-
fied from its alloy of earth, and acquiring celestial
substance in the golden atmosphere to which it as-
pired. 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 pave-
ment.
She had now come into the southern transept.
Around this portion of the church are ranged a num-
ber 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 au-
ricle into the good father’s ear. Observing this ar-
rangement, though already familiar to her, our poor
Hilda was anew impressed with the infinite convens
404 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
ience —if we may use so poor a phrase — of the Cath-
olic religion to its devout believers.
Who, in truth, that considers the matter, can re-
sist 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 them-
selves with a touch of holy water at the threshold. In
the calm interior, fragrant of rich and soothing in-
cense, they may hold converse with some saint, their
awful, kindly friend. And, most precious privilege of
all, whatever perviexity, 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 Chris-
tianity 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 per-
fect, 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.
“Oh, help! Oh, 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 re-
peating 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
THE WORLD’S CATHEDRAL. 405
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 wo-
‘man 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 be-
nignity, and appeared to be giving her some spiritual
counsel, in a low voice. She then knelt to receive lis
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 ? ”
“ Oh, 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 Te-
resa!”’ |
“JT 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 ITatica Lingua; on
another, Pro Fianprica Lineva; on a third, Pro
Potonica Lingua; ona fourth, Pro Intyrica Lin-
GUA; on a fifth, Pro Hispanica Lineua. In this
406 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
vast and hospitable cathedral, worthy to be the relig«
ious 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 rod protruded from it,
indicating the presence of a priest within — on which
was inscribed, Pro AneLica LINGUA. i
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 obe-
dience. 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 her-
self down in the penitent’s place; and, tremulously,
passionately, with sobs, tears, and the turbulent over-
flow of emotion too long repressed, she poured out the
dark story which had infused its poison into her mno-
cent life.
Hilda had not seen, nor could she now see the vis-
age 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 sooth-
ingly ; 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
THE WORLD’S CATHEDRAL. 407
who removes the stones, clustered branches, or what-
ever entanglements impede the current of a swollen
stream. Hilda could have imagined — so much to the
purpose were his inquiries — that he was already ac-
quainted 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 sum-
moned 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 counte-
nance — which had always a rare natural charm for
her friends — this glory of peace made her as lovely
as an angel.
408 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
On her part, Hilda beheld a venerable figure with
hair as white as snow, and a face strikingly charac-
terized 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.
“Tt 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 England 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 ex-
clusively to members of the one true Church, of con-
fession and absolution ? ”
“ Absolution, father?” exclaimed Hilda, shrinking
back. “Ohno, 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 some-
what less mildness in his tone, — “ wherefore, I ask
again, have you taken possession, as I may term it, of
THE WORLD’S CATHEDRAL. 409
this holy ordinance ; being a heretic, and neither seek-
ing to share, nor having faith in, the unspeakable ad-
vantages 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 hid-
den in my heart. I grew a fearful thing to myself.
I was going mad!”
“Tt was a grievous trial, my poor child!” observed
the confessor. “Your relief, I trust, will prove to be
greater than you yet know! ”
“TI 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 mis-
take !— 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
410 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
in a certain prescribed method, and by persons, more-
over, 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, ed 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
easuist of your Church, however learned he may be.
Trust your own heart, too! JI came to your con-
fessional, 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 me-
dium, 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 anda 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!”
THE WORLD’S CATHEDRAL. 411
“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 occa-
sion for one.”
“T have spirit only to do what I think right,” re-
plied Hilda, simply. “In other respects I am timo-
rous.”
“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 con-
cerns.”
“ Known!” exclaimed Hilda. “Known to the au-
thorities of Rome! And what will be the conse-
quence ?”
“ 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
412 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
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 bene-
diction, 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 benedic-
tion, the act was witnessed by a person who stood lean-
ing 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 en-
trance into the confessional. His start of surprise, at
first beholding her, and the anxious gloom that after-
wards settled on his face, sufficiently betokened that
he felt a deep and sad interest in what was going’ for-
ward.
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.
“T 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
414 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
down beneath the dome, she seemed of the same sub-
stance as the atmosphere that enveloped her. He
could scarcely tell whether she was imbued with sun-
shine, or whether it was a glow of happiness that
shone out of her.
Ai 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 re-
ligious consolation that emerged from it. It was as if
one of the throng of angelic people, who might be hoy-
ering in the sunny depths of the dome, had alighted
on the pavement. Indeed, this capability of transfig-
uration, 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 re-
plied, gloomily, and withdrawing his hand after a sin-
gle 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
HILDA AND A FRIEND. 415
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
eyes. “ 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 ? ” in-
quired 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 re-
membrance while I live, as the spot where I found in-
finite 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 tranquillity, 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
eall it impiety, in his stealing upon Hilda, while she
416 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
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 accus-
tomed 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.
“T 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 magnif-
icent 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 spir-
itual and material architects, — I see but one or two
criticisms to make. One is, that it needs painted win- |
dows.”
“Oh, no!” said Hilda. ‘ They would be quite in-
consistent with so much richness of color in the in-
terior of the church. Besides, it is a Gothic ornament,
and only suited to that otis of architecture, which re-
quires a gorgeous dimness.”
*¢ Nevertheless,” continued the sculgine “ vonder
square apertures, filled with ordinary panes of glass,
are quite out of keeping with the superabundant splen«
HILDA AND A FRIEND. 417
dor of everything about them. They remind me of
that portion of Aladdin’s palace which he left unfin-
ished, 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 tome? I love the white light too!”
“T 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 attri-
bute, for which I find no better word. However trem-
ulously 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 some-
thing 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!”
“T am conscious of no such high and delicate quali-
ties as you allow me,” answered Hilda. ‘“ But what
VOL. YI.
418 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
have I done that a girl of New England birth and eul-
ture, 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 rea-
son, and made me very happy. Had you been here
yesterday, I would have confessed to you.”
“ Would to Heaven I had!” ejaculated Kenyon.
“ T 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 wor-
ship, 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! ”
HILDA AND A FRIEND. 419
“JT 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 enjoy-
ing 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 at-
mospheric 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
420 ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI.
summer are married at the high altar, and dwell to:
gether 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 se-
pulchral 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 gen-
uine. 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 sono 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
HILDA AND A FRIEND. 421
moved to smile, although, on turning them over a lit-
tle 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 ac-
tivity, 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 play-
thing 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
eastellated 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 re-
marked, “ would finally convince the Emperor Ha-
drian 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 can-
dlestick 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.
‘“‘ Tt 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.”
499, ROMANCE OF MONTE BENT.
“‘T 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, philoso-
phy, and religion? It shall be called ‘ The Recovery
of the Sacred Candlestick.’ As each branch is lighted,
it shall have a differently colored Iustre 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 concep-
tion,” cried Kenyon. “The more I look at it, the
brighter it burns.”
“TY 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 sepa-
rate 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 ap-
proached 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
HILDA AND A FRIEND. 423
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 crea-
tures claiming her as akin to them!” thought Ken-
yon, on his part. ‘How far above me! how unat-
tainable! 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 al-
most chides himself for longing to bring her close to
his heart!
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