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_ 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 beneath 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 admission, and come hither to
taste the languid enjoyment 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
pleasure 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 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 into what regions of rich mystery would it extend
Donatello's sympathies, to be thus linked (and by no monstrous chain) with
what we call the inferior trioes of being, whose simplicity, mingled with
his human intelligence, 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 venerable 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 assault 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 sunshine than that now gladdening the gentle gloom
which these leafy patriarchs strove to diffuse over the swelling and
subsiding lawns.
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, resembling dark flames of huge funeral candles, which spread
dusk and twilight round about them instead of cheerful radiance. The more
open spots were all abloom, even so early in the season, with anemones of
wondrous size, both white and rose-colored, and violets that betrayed
themselves by their rich fragrance, 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 touching, 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 reappeared 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 afar, to
make the quiet and silence more appreciable. Scattered 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
veritable 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
themselves 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 earnest. The result of all is a scene, pensive, lovely,
dreamlike, 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 required 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 enjoyable at its half-development, in winter and early
spring, and never to be dwelt amongst, as the home scenery of any human
being. For if you come hither in summer, 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 knowing 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 affection
and capable of a tender response; he clasped it closely in his arms, as a
Faun might have clasped the warm feminine grace of the nymph, whom
antiquity 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 beta 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 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
shrubbery, 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 basreliefs, 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 enjoy 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 glimmered among the gloomy meditations
that encompassed Miriam, and lit up the pale, dark beauty of her face,
while it responded pleasantly to Donatello's glance.
"I 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. _
Read next: VOLUME I: CHAPTER IX - THE FAUN AND NYMPH
Read previous: VOLUME I: CHAPTER VII - BEATRICE
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