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_ Hilda, 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, anti beyond the sea, who have established a peaceful usurpation
over whatever is enjoyable 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, central
lawns; who scooped out hollows in fit places, and, setting great basins of
marble in them, caused 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, artists,
men of letters and of song--whom the whole world claims as its chief
ornaments, though Italy produced 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 soldiers are always to be
seen; bearded and grizzled veterans, 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 afternoons, 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
watering-place, rides, drives, or promenades! Here are beautiful sunsets;
and here, whichever way you turn 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 countrywoman) 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 parapet, 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 framework of hills that shut in Rome, and its
wide surrounding Campagna,--no land of dreams, but the broadest page of
history, crowded so full with memorable 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 return to our two
friends, who were still leaning over the wall. Beneath them lay the broad
sweep of the Borghese grounds, covered with trees, amid which appeared the
white gleam of pillars and statues, and the flash of an upspringing
fountain, all to be overshadowed 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 halfdevelopment.
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 probably 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 distinguish 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.
"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 Donatello 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.
"O 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 mythical
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, reddening; for she was a little
disturbed at Kenyon's ridicule, 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 salute 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 Kenyon; 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. Nay, I remember, he once started back, as shyly as a
wild deer, when Miriam made a pretence of examining them. How do you
explain that?"
"O, 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, Donatello or the Count
di Monte Beni--is a singularly wild creature, and, as I have remarked on
other occasions, 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."
"It annoys me very much," said Hilda, "this inclination, 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 satisfaction 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 bye, 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.
"Is there the slightest chance of his winning Miriam's affections?"
suggested Kenyon.
"Miriam! she, so accomplished and gifted!" exclaimed Hilda; "and he, a
rude, uncultivated boy! No, no, no!"
"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 contentment with what he loves, which Miriam sees in
Donatello. 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 painter, and know that the most delicate beauty may be
softened and warmed throughout."
"I said a foolish thing, indeed," answered the sculptor. "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 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 fountain 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 impalpable character when we think that this indestructible monument
supplied one of the recollections which Moses and the Israelites bore from
Egypt into the desert. Perchance, on beholding the cloudy pillar and the
fiery column, they whispered awestricken 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 Castle of St. Angelo; that immense tomb of a pagan
emperor, 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 our 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
lending its assistance, even while we have the reality before 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
nevertheless 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 Miriam, 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,
however, 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 mysteriously significant that he found it difficult
to believe 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 appeared to take this attitude merely for the
convenience 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 kneeling 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 England village."
"I 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 emperor'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 vantage
ground?
"Hilda," said he abruptly, "who and what is Miriam? 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?"
"And your delicate instincts say all this in her favor?--nothing against
her?" continued the sculptor, 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 countrywoman of ours, or an Englishwoman,
or a German. 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 displeasure 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
permission 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 despotism 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 towards the heart of Rome: on the left, the Via
del Babuino; on the right, the Via della Ripetta; and between these two
that worldfamous 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.
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 upper 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 edifices, 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 mediaeval,
though built, indeed, of the massive old stones and indestructible bricks
of imperial Rome; for the ruins of the Coliseum, the Golden House, and
innumerable temples of Roman gods, and mansions of Caesars and senators,
had supplied the material for all those gigantic hovels, and their walls
were cemented with mortar of inestimable cost, being made of precious
antique statues, burnt long 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 obscure policies, and wars, and
continually recurring misfortunes, seem also but broken rubbish, as
compared 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
lies like the dead corpse of a giant, decaying for centuries, 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 suggesting the magnificence of a former
epoch; everywhere, 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 irreverential word of Rome?
The city of ail 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 suddenly ring out, as if
it were a peal of triumph because Rome is still imperial.
"I sometimes fancy," said Hilda, on whose susceptibility the scene always
made a strong impression, "that Rome--mere Rome--will crowd everything
else out of my heart."
"Heaven forbid!" ejaculated the sculptor. They had now reached the
grand stairs that ascend 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,
uncomfortable paving-stones, that make it a penitential pilgrimage to walk
in Rome. She kept this attitude for several 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."
"I fear she is not well," said Hilda. "I am 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."
"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 that he saw him a long way in
advance, but before he reached the Fountain of the Triton the dusky figure
had vanished. _
Read next: VOLUME I: CHAPTER XIII - A SCULPTOR'S STUDIO
Read previous: VOLUME I: CHAPTER XI - FRAGMENTARY SENTENCES
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