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The Marble Faun, Or The Romance of Monte Beni, Volume 1.....................................................................1

Nathaniel Hawthorne...............................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER I. MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLO................................................................1

CHAPTER II. THE FAUN ......................................................................................................................4

CHAPTER III. SUBTERRANEAN REMINISCENCES.......................................................................7

CHAPTER IV. THE SPECTRE OF THE CATACOMB ......................................................................10

CHAPTER V. MIRIAM'S STUDIO.....................................................................................................15

CHAPTER VI. THE VIRGIN'S SHRINE .............................................................................................21

CHAPTER VII. BEATRICE.................................................................................................................25

CHAPTER VIII. THE SUBURBAN VILLA ........................................................................................28

CHAPTER IX. THE FAUN AND NYMPH.........................................................................................31

CHAPTER X. THE SYLVAN DANCE ................................................................................................35

CHAPTER XI. FRAGMENTARY SENTENCES ................................................................................38

CHAPTER XII. A STROLL ON THE PINCIAN .................................................................................41

CHAPTER XIII. A SCULPTOR'S STUDIO........................................................................................47

CHAPTER XIV. CLEOPATRA ............................................................................................................51

CHAPTER XV. AN AESTHETIC COMPANY ...................................................................................55

CHAPTER XVI. A MOONLIGHT RAMBLE.....................................................................................59

CHAPTER XVII. MIRIAM'S TROUBLE............................................................................................64

CHAPTER XVIII. ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE.......................................................................68

CHAPTER XIX. THE FAUN'S TRANSFORMATION .......................................................................73

CHAPTER XX. THE BURIAL CHANT..............................................................................................76

CHAPTER XXI. THE DEAD CAPUCHIN ..........................................................................................79

CHAPTER XXII. THE MEDICI GARDENS .......................................................................................83

CHAPTER XXIII. MIRIAM AND HILDA..........................................................................................86

Four individuals, in whose fortunes we should be glad to interest the reader, happened to be standing in one

of the saloons of the sculpturegallery in the Capitol at Rome. It was that room (the first, after ascending the

staircase) in the centre of which reclines the noble and most pathetic figure of the Dying Gladiator, just

sinking into his deathswoon. Around the walls stand the Antinous, the Amazon, the Lycian Apollo, the

Juno; all famous productions of antique sculpture, and still shining in the undiminished majesty and beauty of

their ideal life, although the marble that embodies them is yellow with time, and perhaps corroded by the

damp earth in which they lay buried for centuries. Here, likewise, is seen a symbol (as apt at this moment as

it was two thousand years ago) of the Human Soul, with its choice of Innocence or Evil close at hand, in the

pretty figure of a child, clasping a dove to her bosom, but assaulted by a snake.

From one of the windows of this saloon, we may see a flight of broad stone steps, descending alongside the

antique and massive foundation of the Capitol, towards the battered triumphal arch of Septimius Severus,

right below. Farther on, the eye skirts along the edge of the desolate Forum (where Roman washerwomen

hang out their linen to the sun), passing over a shapeless confusion of modern edifices, piled rudely up with

ancient brick and stone, and over the domes of Christian churches, built on the old pavements of heathen

temples, and supported by the very pillars that once upheld them. At a distance beyondyet but a little way,

considering how much history is heaped into the intervening spacerises the great sweep of the Coliseum,

with the blue sky brightening through its upper tier of arches. Far off, the view is shut in by the Alban

Mountains, looking just the same, amid all this decay and change, as when Romulus gazed thitherward over

We glance hastily at these things,at this bright sky, and those blue distant mountains, and at the ruins,

Etruscan, Roman, Christian, venerable with a threefold antiquity, and at the company of worldfamous

statues in the saloon,in the hope of putting the reader into that state of feeling which is experienced

oftenest at Rome. It is a vague sense of ponderous remembrances; a perception of such weight and density in

a bygone life, of which this spot was the centre, that the present moment is pressed down or crowded out, and

our individual affairs and interests are but half as real here as elsewhere. Viewed through this medium, our

narrativeinto which are woven some airy and unsubstantial threads, intermixed with others, twisted out of

the commonest stuff of human existencemay seem not widely different from the texture of all our lives.

Side by side with the massiveness of the Roman Past, all matters that we handle or dream of nowadays look

It might be that the four persons whom we are seeking to introduce were conscious of this dreamy character

of the present, as compared with the square blocks of granite wherewith the Romans built their lives. Perhaps

it even contributed to the fanciful merriment which was just now their mood. When we find ourselves fading

into shadows and unrealities, it seems hardly worth while to be sad, but rather to laugh as gayly as we may,

Of these four friends of ours, three were artists, or connected with art; and, at this moment, they had been

simultaneously struck by a resemblance between one of the antique statues, a wellknown masterpiece of

"You must needs confess, Kenyon," said a darkeyed young woman, whom her friends called Miriam, "that

you never chiselled out of marble, nor wrought in clay, a more vivid likeness than this, cunning a bustmaker

as you think yourself. The portraiture is perfect in character, sentiment, and feature. If it were a picture, the

resemblance might be half illusive and imaginary; but here, in this Pentelic marble, it is a substantial fact, and

may be tested by absolute touch and measurement. Our friend Donatello is the very Faun of Praxiteles. Is it

"Not quitealmostyes, I really think so," replied Hilda, a slender, brownhaired, New England girl,

whose perceptions of form and expression were wonderfully clear and delicate. "If there is any difference

between the two faces, the reason may be, I suppose, that the Faun dwelt in woods and fields, and consorted

with his like; whereas Donatello has known cities a little, and such people as ourselves. But the resemblance

"Not so strange," whispered Miriam mischievously; "for no Faun in Arcadia was ever a greater simpleton

than Donatello. He has hardly a man's share of wit, small as that may be. It is a pity there are no longer any of

"Hush, naughty one!" returned Hilda. "You are very ungrateful, for you well know he has wit enough to

"Then the greater fool he!" said Miriam so bitterly that Hilda's quiet eyes were somewhat startled.

"Donatello, my dear friend," said Kenyon, in Italian, "pray gratify us all by taking the exact attitude of this

The young man laughed, and threw himself into the position in which the statue has been standing for two or

three thousand years. In truth, allowing for the difference of costume, and if a lion's skin could have been

substituted for his modern talma, and a rustic pipe for his stick, Donatello might have figured perfectly as the

"Yes; the resemblance is wonderful," observed Kenyon, after examining the marble and the man with the

accuracy of a sculptor's eye. "There is one point, however, or, rather, two points, in respect to which our

friend Donatello's abundant curls will not permit us to say whether the likeness is carried into minute detail."

And the sculptor directed the attention of the party to the ears of the beautiful statue which they were

But we must do more than merely refer to this exquisite work of art; it must be described, however

The Faun is the marble image of a young man, leaning his right arm on the trunk or stump of a tree; one hand

hangs carelessly by his side; in the other he holds the fragment of a pipe, or some such sylvan instrument of

music. His only garmenta lion's skin, with the claws upon his shoulderfalls halfway down his back,

leaving the limbs and entire front of the figure nude. The form, thus displayed, is marvellously graceful, but

has a fuller and more rounded outline, more flesh, and less of heroic muscle, than the old sculptors were wont

to assign to their types of masculine beauty. The character of the face corresponds with the figure; it is most

agreeable in outline and feature, but rounded and somewhat voluptuously developed, especially about the

throat and chin; the nose is almost straight, but very slightly curves inward, thereby acquiring an

indescribable charm of geniality and humor. The mouth, with its full yet delicate lips, seems so nearly to

smile outright, that it calls forth a responsive smile. The whole statueunlike anything else that ever was

wrought in that severe material of marbleconveys the idea of an amiable and sensual creature, easy,

mirthful, apt for jollity, yet not incapable of being touched by pathos. It is impossible to gaze long at this

stone image without conceiving a kindly sentiment towards it, as if its substance were warm to the touch, and

imbued with actual life. It comes very close to some of our pleasantest sympathies.

Perhaps it is the very lack of moral severity, of any high and heroic ingredient in the character of the Faun,

that makes it so delightful an object to the human eye and to the frailty of the human heart. The being here

represented is endowed with no principle of virtue, and would be incapable of comprehending such; but he

would be true and honest by dint of his simplicity. We should expect from him no sacrifice or effort for an

abstract cause; there is not an atom of martyr's stuff in all that softened marble; but he has a capacity for

strong and warm attachment, and might act devotedly through its impulse, and even die for it at need. It is

possible, too, that the Faun might be educated through the medium of his emotions, so that the coarser animal

portion of his nature might eventually be thrown into the background, though never utterly expelled.

The animal nature, indeed, is a most essential part of the Faun's composition; for the characteristics of the

brute creation meet and combine with those of humanity in this strange yet true and natural conception of

antique poetry and art. Praxiteles has subtly diffused throughout his work that mute mystery,which so

hopelessly perplexes us whenever we attempt to gain an intellectual or sympathetic knowledge of the lower

orders of creation. The riddle is indicated, however, only by two definite signs: these are the two ears of the

Faun, which are leaf shaped, terminating in little peaks, like those of some species of animals. Though not so

seen in the marble, they are probably to be considered as clothed in fine, downy fur. In the coarser

representations of this class of mythological creatures, there is another token of brute kindred,a certain

caudal appendage; which, if the Faun of Praxiteles must be supposed to possess it at all, is hidden by the

lion's skin that forms his garment. The pointed and furry ears, therefore, are the sole indications of his wild,

Only a sculptor of the finest imagination, the most delicate taste, the sweetest feeling, and the rarest artistic

skillin a word, a sculptor and a poet toocould have first dreamed of a Faun in this guise, and then have

succeeded in imprisoning the sportive and frisky thing in marble. Neither man nor animal, and yet no

monster, but a being in whom both races meet on friendly ground. The idea grows coarse as we handle it, and

hardens in our grasp. But, if the spectator broods long over the statue, he will be conscious of its spell; all the

pleasantness of sylvan life, all the genial and happy characteristics of creatures that dwell in woods and fields,

will seem to be mingled and kneaded into one substance, along with the kindred qualities in the human soul.

Trees, grass, flowers, woodland streamlets, cattle, deer, and unsophisticated man. The essence of all these

was compressed long ago, and still exists, within that discolored marble surface of the Faun of Praxiteles.

And, after all, the idea may have been no dream, but rather a poet's reminiscence of a period when man's

affinity with nature was more strict, and his fellowship with every living thing more intimate and dear.

Donatello," playfully cried Miriam, "do not leave us in this perplexity! Shake aside those brown curls, my

friend, and let us see whether this marvellous resemblance extends to the very tips of the ears. If so, we shall

"No, no, dearest signorina," answered Donatello, laughing, but with a certain earnestness. "I entreat you to

take the tips of my ears for granted." As he spoke, the young Italian made a skip and jump, light enough for a

veritable faun; so as to place himself quite beyond the reach of the fair hand that was outstretched, as if to

settle the matter by actual examination. "I shall be like a wolf of the Apennines," he continued, taking his

stand on the other side of the Dying Gladiator, "if you touch my ears ever so softly. None of my race could

He spoke in Italian, with the Tuscan rusticity of accent, and an unshaped sort of utterance, betokening that he

"Well, well," said Miriam, "your tender pointyour two tender points, if you have themshall be safe, so

far as I am concerned. But how strange this likeness is, after all! and how delightful, if it really includes the

pointed ears! O, it is impossible, of course," she continued, in English, "with a real and commonplace young

man like Donatello; but you see how this peculiarity defines the position of the Faun; and, while putting him

where he cannot exactly assert his brotherhood, still disposes us kindly towards the kindred creature. He is

not supernatural, but just on the verge of nature, and yet within it. What is the nameless charm of this idea,

"It perplexes me," said Hilda thoughtfully, and shrinking a little; "neither do I quite like to think about it."

"But, surely," said Kenyon, "you agree with Miriam and me that there is something very touching and

impressive in this statue of the Faun. In some longpast age, he must really have existed. Nature needed, and

still needs, this beautiful creature; standing betwixt man and animal, sympathizing with each, comprehending

the speech of either race, and interpreting the whole existence of one to the other. What a pity that he has

forever vanished from the hard and dusty paths of life,unless," added the sculptor, in a sportive whisper,

"You cannot conceive how this fantasy takes hold of me," responded Miriam, between jest and earnest.

"Imagine, now, a real being, similar to this mythic Faun; how happy, how genial, how satisfactory would be

his life, enjoying the warm, sensuous, earthy side of nature; revelling in the merriment of woods and streams;

living as our fourfooted kindred do,as mankind did in its innocent childhood; before sin, sorrow or

morality itself had ever been thought of! Ah! Kenyon, if Hilda and you and Iif I, at leasthad pointed

ears! For I suppose the Faun had no conscience, no remorse, no burden on the heart, no troublesome

"What a tragic tone was that last, Miriam!" said the sculptor; and, looking into her face, he was startled to

"Let it go as it came," said Miriam, "like a thundershower in this Roman sky. All is sunshine again, you

Donatello's refractoriness as regarded his ears had evidently cost him something, and he now came close to

Miriam's side, gazing at her with an appealing air, as if to solicit forgiveness. His mute, helpless gesture of

entreaty had something pathetic in it, and yet might well enough excite a laugh, so like it was to what you

may see in the aspect of a hound when he thinks himself in fault or disgrace. It was difficult to make out the

character of this young man. So full of animal life as he was, so joyous in his deportment, so handsome, so

physically welldeveloped, he made no impression of incompleteness, of maimed or stinted nature. And yet,

in social intercourse, these familiar friends of his habitually and instinctively allowed for him, as for a child

or some other lawless thing, exacting no strict obedience to conventional rules, and hardly noticing his

eccentricities enough to pardon them. There was an indefinable characteristic about Donatello that set him

He caught Miriam's hand, kissed it, and gazed into her eyes without saying a word. She smiled, and bestowed

on him a little careless caress, singularly like what one would give to a pet dog when he puts himself in the

way to receive it. Not that it was so decided a caress either, but only the merest touch, somewhere between a

pat and a tap of the finger; it might be a mark of fondness, or perhaps a playful pretence of punishment. At all

events, it appeared to afford Donatello exquisite pleasure; insomuch that he danced quite round the wooden

"It is the very step of the Dancing Faun," said Miriam, apart, to Hilda. "What a child, or what a simpleton, he

is! I continually find myself treating Donatello as if he were the merest unfledged chicken; and yet he can

claim no such privileges in the right of his tender age, for he is at leasthow old should you think him,

"Twenty years, perhaps," replied Hilda, glancing at Donatello; "but, indeed, I cannot tell; hardly so old, on

second thoughts, or possibly older. He has nothing to do with time, but has a look of eternal youth in his

"Donatello has certainly the gift of eternal youth, as Hilda suggests," observed Kenyon, laughing; "for,

judging by the date of this statue, which, I am more and more convinced, Praxiteles carved on purpose for

him, he must be at least twentyfive centuries old, and he still looks as young as ever."

"Signorina, I do not know," he answered; "no great age, however; for I have only lived since I met you."

"Now, what old man of society could have turned a silly compliment more smartly than that!" exclaimed

Miriam. "Nature and art are just at one sometimes. But what a happy ignorance is this of our friend

Donatello! Not to know his own age! It is equivalent to being immortal on earth. If I could only forget mine!"

"It is too soon to wish that," observed the sculptor; "you are scarcely older than Donatello looks."

"I shall be content, then," rejoined Miriam, "if I could only forget one day of all my life." Then she seemed to

repent of this allusion, and hastily added, "A woman's days are so tedious that it is a boon to leave even one

The foregoing conversation had been carried on in a mood in which all imaginative people, whether artists or

poets, love to indulge. In this frame of mind, they sometimes find their profoundest truths side by side with

the idlest jest, and utter one or the other, apparently without distinguishing which is the most valuable, or

assigning any considerable value to either. The resemblance between the marble Faun and their living

companion had made a deep, halfserious, halfmirthful impression on these three friends, and had taken

them into a certain airy region, lifting up, as it is so pleasant to feel them lifted, their heavy earthly feet from

the actual soil of life. The world had been set afloat, as it were, for a moment, and relieved them, for just so

It might be under this influenceor, perhaps, because sculptors always abuse one another's worksthat

"I used to admire this statue exceedingly," he remarked, "but, latterly, I find myself getting weary and

annoyed that the man should be such a length of time leaning on his arm in the very act of death. If he is so

terribly hurt, why does he not sink down and die without further ado? Flitting moments, imminent

emergencies, imperceptible intervals between two breaths, ought not to be incrusted with the eternal repose of

marble; in any sculptural subject, there should be a moral standstill, since there must of necessity be a

physical one. Otherwise, it is like flinging a block of marble up into the air, and, by some trick of

enchantment, causing it to stick there. You feel that it ought to come down, and are dissatisfied that it does

"I see," said Miriam mischievously, "you think that sculpture should be a sort of fossilizing process. But, in

truth, your frozen art has nothing like the scope and freedom of Hilda's and mine. In painting there is no

similar objection to the representation of brief snatches of time, perhaps because a story can be so much

more fully told in picture, and buttressed about with circumstances that give it an epoch. For instance, a

painter never would have sent down yonder Faun out of his far antiquity, lonely and desolate, with no

"Ah, the Faun!" cried Hilda, with a little gesture of impatience; "I have been looking at him too long; and

now, instead of a beautiful statue, immortally young, I see only a corroded and discolored stone. This change

"And a similar one in pictures, surely," retorted the sculptor. "It is the spectator's mood that transfigures the

Transfiguration itself. I defy any painter to move and elevate me without my own consent and assistance."

The party now strayed onward from hall to hall of that rich gallery, pausing here and there, to look at the

multitude of noble and lovely shapes, which have been dug up out of the deep grave in which old Rome lies

buried. And still, the realization of the antique Faun, in the person of Donatello, gave a more vivid character

to all these marble ghosts. Why should not each statue grow warm with life! Antinous might lift his brow,

and tell us why he is forever sad. The Lycian Apollo might strike his lyre; and, at the first vibration, that other

Faun in red marble, who keeps up a motionless dance, should frisk gayly forth, leading yonder Satyrs, with

shaggy goatshanks, to clatter their little hoofs upon the floor, and all join hands with Donatello! Bacchus,

too, a rosy flush diffusing itself over his timestained surface, could come down from his pedestal, and offer

a cluster of purple grapes to Donatello's lips; because the god recognizes him as the woodland elf who so

often shared his revels. And here, in this sarcophagus, the exquisitely carved figures might assume life, and

chase one another round its verge with that wild merriment which is so strangely represented on those old

burial coffers: though still with some subtile allusion to death, carefully veiled, but forever peeping forth

As the four friends descended the stairs, however, their play of fancy subsided into a much more sombre

mood; a result apt to follow upon such exhilaration as that which had so recently taken possession of them.

"Do you know," said Miriam confidentially to Hilda, "I doubt the reality of this likeness of Donatello to the

Faun, which we have been talking so much about? To say the truth, it never struck me so forcibly as it did

Kenyon and yourself, though I gave in to whatever you were pleased to fancy, for the sake of a moment's

mirth and wonder." "I was certainly in earnest, and you seemed equally so," replied Hilda, glancing back at

Donatello, as if to reassure herself of the resemblance. "But faces change so much, from hour to hour, that the

same set of features has often no keeping with itself; to an eye, at least, which looks at expression more than

outline. How sad and sombre he has grown all of a sudden!" "Angry too, methinks! nay, it is anger much

more than sadness," said Miriam. "I have seen Donatello in this mood once or twice before. If you consider

him well, you will observe an odd mixture of the bulldog, or some other equally fierce brute, in our friend's

composition; a trait of savageness hardly to be expected in such a gentle creature as he usually is. Donatello

is a very strange young man. I wish he would not haunt my footsteps so continually."

"You have bewitched the poor lad," said the sculptor, laughing. "You have a faculty of bewitching people,

and it is providing you with a singular train of followers. I see another of them behind yonder pillar; and it is

They had now emerged from the gateway of the palace; and partly concealed by one of the pillars of the

portico stood a figure such as may often be encountered in the streets and piazzas of Rome, and nowhere else.

He looked as if he might just have stepped out of a picture, and, in truth, was likely enough to find his way

into a dozen pictures; being no other than one of those living models, dark, bushy bearded, wild of aspect and

attire, whom artists convert into saints or assassins, according as their pictorial purposes demand.

Miriam's model has so important a connection with our story, that it is essential to describe the singular mode

of his first appearance, and how he subsequently became a selfappointed follower of the young female

artist. In the first place, however, we must devote a page or two to certain peculiarities in the position of

There was an ambiguity about this young lady, which, though it did not necessarily imply anything wrong,

would have operated unfavorably as regarded her reception in society, anywhere but in Rome. The truth was,

that nobody knew anything about Miriam, either for good or evil. She had made her appearance without

introduction, had taken a studio, put her card upon the door, and showed very considerable talent as a painter

in oils. Her fellow professors of the brush, it is true, showered abundant criticisms upon her pictures, allowing

them to be well enough for the idle halfefforts of an amateur, but lacking both the trained skill and the

Nevertheless, be their faults what they might, Miriam's pictures met with good acceptance among the patrons

of modern art. Whatever technical merit they lacked, its absence was more than supplied by a warmth and

passionateness, which she had the faculty 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 conclusion 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 advanced into her good graces today 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 advance,

expecting to seize the illusion, but find it still precisely so far out of our reach. Finally, society began to

recognize the impossibility of getting nearer to Miriam, and gruffly acquiesced.

There were two persons, however, whom she appeared to acknowledge as friends in the closer and truer sense

of the word; and both of these more favored 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 out towards these two;

she requited herself by their society and friendship (and especially by Hilda'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 Kenyon with a manly regard, in which

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

admitted 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 characteristics which won him the kindly and

halfcontemptuous 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 keynote 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 permit her to hide her antecedents without making her the subject of a

good deal of conjecture; as was natural enough, considering the abundance of her personal charms, and the

degree of notice that she attracted as an artist. There were many stories about 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 paternal 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 statement, 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 instigated by the large and bounteous impression which Miriam

invariably made, as if necessity and she could have nothing to do with one another. Whatever deprivations

she underwent must needs be voluntary. But there were other surmises, taking such a commonplace view as

that Miriam was the daughter of a merchant or financier, who had been ruined in a great commercial crisis;

and, possessing a taste for art, she had attempted to support herself by the pencil, in preference to the

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 spritelike in her most ordinary

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 generosity, 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 genuine, and never

The same party of friends, whom we have seen at the sculpturegallery 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

cellarsand chiefly the latterseemed 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

darkred, crumbly stone. On either side were horizontal 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 thighbone, which 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 marblework and lighted with everburning 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

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

"How dismal all this is!" said Hilda, shuddering. "I do not know why we came here, nor why we should stay

"I hate it all!" cried Donatello with peculiar energy. "Dear friends, let us hasten back into the blessed

From the first, Donatello had shown little fancy for the expedition; for, like most Italians, and in especial

accordance with the law of his own simple and physically happy nature, this young man had an infinite

repugnance to graves and skulls, and to all that ghastliness which the Gothic mind loves to associate with the

idea of death. He shuddered, and looked fearfully round, drawing nearer to Miriam, whose attractive

"What a child you are, poor Donatello!" she observed, with the freedom which she always used towards him.

"I 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 possibility

of going astray into this labyrinth of darkness, which broods around the little glimmer of our tapers."

"Surely, signor; one, no longer ago than my father'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, signor? A miracle was wrought upon the accursed one; and, ever since (for

fifteen centuries at least), he has 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

"Such an intense desire for sympathy indicates something amiable in the poor fellow, at all events," observed

They had now reached a larger chapel than those heretofore seen; it was of a circular shape, and, though

hewn out of the solid mass of red sandstone, had pillars, 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

mystery 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 shuddering at the remote possibility of such a

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

"Torches! torches!" cried Donatello desperately. "I 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 retrace

Accordingly, they allKenyon with his bass voice; Donatello with his tenor; the guide with that high and

hard Italian cry, which makes the streets of Rome so resonant; and Hilda with her slender scream, piercing

farther than the united uproar of the restbegan to shriek, halloo, and bellow, with the utmost force of their

lungs. And, not to prolong the reader's suspense (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

"Yes; it was certainly dear Miriam's voice," said Hilda. "And here she comes! Thank Heaven! Thank

The figure of their friend was now discernible by her own torchlight, approaching out of one of the cavernous

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, thoughtful, and

selfconcentrated 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

"Dearest, dearest Miriam," exclaimed Hilda, throwing 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? If so, it was by an odd messenger, as you will confess. See; there he

Startled at Miriam's words and manner, Hilda gazed into the duskiness whither she pointed, and there beheld

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 would have

power to tear him limb from limb. It struck the sculptor, however, when he afterwards recurred to these

circumstances, that the guide manifested 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

In fine, they both drew near enough to get as good a view of the spectre as the smoky light of their torches,

The stranger was of exceedingly picturesque, and even melodramatic aspect. He was clad in a voluminous

cloak, that seemed to be made of a buffalo's hide, and a pair of those goatskin 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 survivor of that

vanished race, hiding himself in sepulchral gloom, and mourning over his lost life of woods and streams.

Furthermore, he had on a broadbrimmed, 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

On the whole, the spectre might have made a considerable 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 realm of picture. Nor, even thus familiarized with the

stranger's peculiarities of appearance, could Kenyon help wondering to see such a personage, shaping himself

"What are you?" said the sculptor, advancing his torch nearer. "And how long have you been wandering

"A thousand and five hundred years!" muttered the guide, loud enough to be heard by all the party. "It is the

"Yes; it is a phantom!" cried Donatello, with a shudder. "Ah, dearest signorina, what a fearful thing has beset

"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 riddle."

The spectre himself here settled the point of his tangibility, at all events, and physical substance, by

"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, I 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 consequences of my

"Holy Virgin! I wish the signorina joy of her prize," said the guide, half to himself. "And in any case, the

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 benefactor. 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 features, or some shadow or reminiscence of them, in many of

her sketches and pictures. The moral atmosphere of these productions was thereby so influenced, that rival

painters pronounced it a case of hopeless mannerism, which would destroy all Miriam's prospects of true

The story of this adventure spread abroad, and made its way beyond the usual gossip of the Forestieri, 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 AngloSaxons, and was communicated to the German

artists, who so richly supplied it with romantic ornaments and excrescences, after their fashion, that it became

a fantasy worthy of Tieck or Hoffmann. For nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities

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 Memmius. This

man, or demon, or mandemon, was a spy during the persecutions of the early Christians, probably under the

Emperor Diocletian, and penetrated into the catacomb of St. Calixtus, with the malignant purpose of tracing

out the hidingplaces of the refugees. 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 crucifix, and a priest was in the

performance of his sacred office. By divine indulgence, there was a single moment'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 consecrated 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 conviction.

Thenceforth, this heathen Memmius has haunted the wide and dreary precincts of the catacomb, seeking, as

some say, to beguile new victims into his own misery; but, according to other statements, endeavoring to

prevail on any unwary visitor to take him by the hand, and guide him out into the daylight. Should his wiles

and entreaties take effect, however, the mandemon would remain only a little while above ground. He

would gratify his fiendish malignity by perpetrating signal mischief on his benefactor, and perhaps bringing

some old pestilence or other forgotten and longburied 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 sculptor and the gentle Hilda, often laughed at the monstrous

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

For example, with a strange air of seriousness over all her face, only belied by a laughlng 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 longlost, but invaluable secret of old Roman fresco painting. The knowledge of this process 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 enriching a certain extent of stuccoed wall with the most brilliant and lovely

designs. And what true votary of 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

twelvemonth'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 present time, the controversy had gone direfully in favor of the

mandemon; and Miriam (as she whispered in Hilda's ear) had awful forebodings, that, in a few more

It was somewhat remarkable that all her romantic fantasies arrived at this selfsame dreary termination,it

appeared impossible for her even to imagine any other than a disastrous result from her connection with her

This singularity might have meant nothing, however, 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 seriously 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 acquaintances were safe from similar outbreaks of her displeasure, especially if

they ventured upon any allusion 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

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 explained without going many steps beyond the limits of

probability. The spectre might have been merely a Roman beggar, whose fraternity often harbor in stranger

shelters than the catacombs; or one of those pilgrims, 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 Campagna, 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

And, as for the stranger's attaching himself so devotedly 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 person that may have

the illhap to bestow charity, or be otherwise serviceable to them, or betray the slightest interest in their

Thus little would remain to be accounted for, except 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 stimulating and exhaustive influences of imaginative art,

exercised 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 endeavored to impress on their own minds, and impart to

One of Miriam's friends took the matter sadly to heart. This was the young Italian. Donatello, as we have

seen, had been an eyewitness of the stranger's first appearance, and had ever since nourished a singular

prejudice against the mysterious, dusky, deathscented apparition. It resembled not so much a human dislike

or hatred, as one of those instinctive, unreasoning antipathies which the lower animals sometimes display,

and which generally prove more trustworthy than the acutest insight into character. The shadow of the model,

always flung into the light which Miriam 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.

The courtyard 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 entranceway, 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 legless torsos, and busts that have invariably lost what it might be well if living men

could lay aside in that unfragrant atmospherethe nose. Basreliefs, the spoil of some far older palace, are

set in the surrounding 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 framework of some historic man, although now only a

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 fountain. It brims over from one stone basin to another, or gushes

from a Naiad's urn, or spurts its many little 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 maidenhair, 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 language. So the fountain is not

In one of the angles of the courtyard, a pillared doorway gives access to the staircase, with its spacious

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 personages have gone down their hereditary staircase for the last time, leaving it to

be the thoroughfare of ambassadors, English noblemen, American millionnaires, artists, tradesmen,

washerwomen, and people of every degree,all of whom find such gilded and marblepanelled 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 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 enjoyment) does the humblest or

Up such a staircase, on the morning after the scene at the sculpture gallery, sprang the light foot of Donatello.

He ascended from story to story, passing lofty doorways, set within rich frames of sculptured marble, 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 passages, 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 Donatello knocked, and the door immediately fell somewhat ajar; its latch having

been pulled up by means of a string on the inside. Passing through a little anteroom, he found himself in

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, distinguishing women from men. Our own sex is incapable of any

such byplay aside from the main business of life; but womenbe they of what earthly rank they may,

however gifted with intellect or genius, or endowed with awful beautyhave always some little handiwork

ready to fill the tiny gap of every vacant moment. 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 advantage 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 influences 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. Methinks it is a token of healthy and

gentle characteristics, when women of high thoughts and accomplishments love to sew; especially as they are

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 to fall from her idle fingers. Simple as he was, the young man knew by his

"It 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, especially 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?"

"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 sometimes 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

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 outward type of a poet's haunted imagination, where there are

glimpses, sketches, and halfdeveloped hints of beings 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, admitting only from high upward that partial light which, with its

strongly marked contrast of shadow, is the first requisite towards seeing objects pictorially. Pencildrawings

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

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

"Do not be afraid, Donatello," said Miriam, smiling to see him peering doubtfully into the mysterious dusk.

"She means you no mischief, nor could perpetrate 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 layfigure. For most purposes she has the advantage

"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 supposed 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."

"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

grottoes and nooks of shrubbery. You have reappeared on earth some centuries too late."

"I do not understand you now," answered Donatello, 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."

"I wonder whether I ought to allow you to speak in this way," said Miriam, looking thoughtfully at him.

"Many young women would think it behooved 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 layfigure had had the luck to meet him first, she would

"Not in the least," answered Miriam, frankly giving 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 portrait today."

Donatello was as gentle and docile as a pet spaniel; as playful, too, in his general disposition, or saddening

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 tried to

turn his attention to a great pile and confusion 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 remarkable power, and

showed a touch or two that were actually lifelike and deathlike, 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

Her first conception of the stern Jewess had evidently been that of perfect womanhood, a lovely form, and a

high, heroic face of lofty beauty; but, dissatisfied 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

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, beginning 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 bye, 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 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

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 imagination seemed to run on these stories of bloodshed, in

which woman's hand was crimsoned by the stain; and how, too,in one form or another, grotesque or

sternly sad,she failed not to bring out the moral, that woman must strike through her own heart to reach a

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 womanhood

These sketches had a most disagreeable effect on Donatello's peculiar temperament. He gave a shudder; 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

"What is the matter, Donatello?" asked Miriam, looking up from a letter which she was now writing. "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 indicated a happier mood of mind, and one, it is to be hoped,

more truly characteristic of the artist. Supposing neither of these classes of subject to show anything of her

own individuality, Miriam had evidently a great scope of fancy, and a singular faculty of putting 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 eye,where; 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 affection 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 identical beauty to the faces throughout

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 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 depicted, 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, dealing 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 acquaintance 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

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 portrayed 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 depicted with an expression of deep sadness; and in every instance, slightly

"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 youa 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 behold;

and here there was no drawback, except that strange sigh and sadness which always come when we are

"I am going to paint the picture in oils," said the artist; "and I want you, Donatello, for the wildest dancer of

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 carefully excluded the

sunshine, was as enlivening as if one bright ray had contrived to shimmer in and. frolic around the walls, and

"That was admirable!" said Miriam, with an approving 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 representation, 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

She went to her easel, on which was placed a picture with its back turned towards the spectator. Reversing 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; holding your inner realm as a

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 vanquished Holofernes with

Miriam watched Donatello's contemplation of the picture, and seeing his simple rapture, a smile of pleasure

brightened on her face, mixed with a little scorn; at least, her lips curled, and her eyes gleamed, as if she

"Signorina," exclaimed Donatello, turning from the picture to the artist, in astonishment that she should

ask/:he question, "the resemblance is as little to be mistaken as if you had bent over the smooth surface of a

fountain, and possessed the witchcraft to call forth the image that you made there! It is yourself!"

Donatello said the truth; and we forebore to speak descriptively of Miriam's beauty earlier in our narrative,

because we foresaw this occasion to bring it perhaps more forcibly before the reader.

We know not whether the portrait were a flattered likeness; probably not, regarding it merely as the

delineation of a lovely face; although Miriam, like all selfpainters, may have endowed herself with certain

graces which Other eyes might not discern. Artists are fond of painting their own portraits; and, in Florence,

there is a gallery of hundreds of them, including the most illustrious, in all of which there are

autobiographical characteristics, so to speak,traits, expressions, 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 intimate results of her heart knowledge into her

own.portrait, and perhaps wished to try whether they would be perceptible to so simple and natural an

"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

"O, 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

"How perplexed you seem, my friend!" answered Miriam. "I 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 people of

ordinary mould. I advise you, at all events, to look at other faces with those innocent and happy eyes, and

"You speak in vain," replied the young man, with a deeper emphasis than she had ever before heard in his

"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

After Donatello had left the studio, Miriam herself 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

linendraper's shop; a pipe and cigar shop; a lottery office; a station for French soldiers, with a sentinel

pacing in front; and a fruitstand, at which a Roman matron was selling the dried kernels of chestnuts,

wretched little figs, and some bouquets of yesterday. A church, of course, was near at hand, the facade 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 mediaeval tower, square, massive, 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 ordinary level of

men's views and aspirations. Connected 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 twentyfour, and must be kept burning forever, as long as the tower shall

stand; or else the tower itself, 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 neverdying 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

"What a pretty scene this is," thought Miriam, with a kindly smile, "and how like a dove she is herself, the

Miriam passed beneath the deep portal of the palace, 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 pavingstones, the hard harsh cries reechoing 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 ascend 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

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 response, 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, 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 undertaking to keep the lamp alight before the Virgin's shrine."

"No, no, Miriam!" said Hilda, who had come joyfully forward to greet her friend. "You must not call me a

Catholic. A Christian girleven a daughter of the Puritansmay 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

"It is no trifling proof of friendship, indeed," answered Miriam; "I should think there were three hundred

"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."

"O, pray don't try it!" said Miriam, laughing; "If it should turn out that you are less than an angel, you would

find the stones of the Roman pavement very hard; and if an angel, indeed, I am afraid you would never come

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 beneath,

as one of her companion doves to fly downward into the street;all alone, perfectly independent, under 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 restraint 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 allowed to assert themselves, and to be their own proof and security, to a degree

Hilda, in her native land, had early shown what was pronounced by connoisseurs a decided genius for the

pictorial art. Even in her schooldaysstill not so very distantshe had produced sketches that were seized

upon by men of taste, and hoarded as among the choicest treasures of their portfolios; scenes delicately

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 remained 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 destined to

extend its rich length through many future centuries. An orphan, however, without near relatives, and

possessed of a little property, she had found it within her possibilities to come to Italy; that central clime,

whither the eyes and the heart of every artist 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 except the flock of doves, whose cote was in a ruinous chamber contiguous

to her own. They soon became as familiar with the fairhaired Saxon girl as if she were a born sister of their

brood; and her customary 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 Dovecote. And while the other doves

flew far and wide in quest of what was good for them, Hilda likewise spread her wings, and sought such

We know not whether the result of her Italian studies, 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 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 herself. 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 original artist. No, wonder that this change should have befallen her. She was

endowed with a deep and sensitive faculty of appreciation; she had the gift of discerning 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 picture; she bestowed upon it all the warmth and richness 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,

This power and depth of appreciation depended partly upon Hilda's physical organization, which was at once

healthful and exquisitely delicate; and, connected with this advantage, she had a command of hand, a nicety

and force of touch, which is an endowment separate from pictorial genius, though indispensable to its

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 with the

works of the mighty old masters. Reverencing these wonderful men so deeply, she was too grateful for all

they bestowed upon her, too loyal, too humble, in their awful presence, to think of enrolling herself in their

society. Beholding the miracles of beauty which they had achieved, the world seemed already rich enough in

original designs, and nothing more was so desirable as to diffuse those selfsame beauties more widely

among mankind. All the youthful hopes and ambitions, the fanciful ideas which she had brought from home,

of great pictures to be conceived in her feminine mind, were flung aside, and, so far as those most intimate

with her could discern, relinquished without a sigh. All that she would henceforth attempt and that most

reverently, not to say religiously was to catch and reflect some of the glory which had been shed upon canvas

So Hilda became a copyist: in the Pinacotheca of the Vatican, in the galleries of the PamfiliDoria palace,

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 worldknown work, absorbed, unconscious of

everything around her, seeming to live only in what she sought to do. 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 understand 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 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

Her copies were indeed marvellous. Accuracy was not the phrase for them; a Chinese copy is accurate.

Hilda's had that evanescent and ethereal lifethat flitting fragrance, as it were, of the originalswhich 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 watching the efforts of the most skilful copyistsmen who spend a

lifetime, as some of them do, in multiplying copies of a single pictureand observing how invariably they

leave out just the indefinable charm that involves the last, inestimable value, can we understand the

It was not Hilda's general practice to attempt reproducing 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 Virgin's

celestial sorrow, for example, or a hovering angel, 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 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 sympathy 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 effective piece of

mechanism,.by the help of which the spirit of some great departed painter now first achieved his ideal,

Not to describe her as too much a wonder, however, Hilda, or the Dove, as her wellwishers 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 copyistsif such they are worthy to be calledattempt only a superficial

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 themselves 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 nothing, that inestimable

something, that constitutes the life and soul through which the picture gets its immortality. Hilda was no such

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 incapable of appreciating Raphael. But this could be done

only by lowering the standard of art to the comprehension of the spectator. She chose the better and loftier

and more unselfish part, laying her individual hopes, her fame, her prospects of enduring remembrance, at the

feet of those great departed ones whom she so loved and venerated; and therefore the world was the richer for

Since the beauty and glory of a great picture are confined within itself, she won out that glory by patient faith

and selfdevotion, 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 thousands 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 faculty 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 selfsurrender, and her brave, humble magnanimity in choosing to be the handmaid of

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 original; pretty

fancies of snow and moonlight; the counterpart in picture of so many feminine achievements in literature!

Miriam was glad to find the Dove in her turrethome; 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 silent sympathy was so powerful that it drew your own along with it, endowing you

with a secondsight that enabled you to see excellences with almost the depth and delicacy of her own

All the AngloSaxon 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 wildbearded young men, the whitehaired 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 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 subject

could not have been selected, nor one which required nicer skill and insight in doing it anything like justice.

She was pretty at all times, in our native New England style, with her lightbrown 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 portrait, 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 pictureland, a partly ideal creature, not to be

handled, nor even approached too closely. In her feminine self, Hilda was natural, and of pleasant

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

acquaintance with Italy, and better fitted to deal with its crafty and selfish inhabitants, she had helped Hilda

to arrange her way of life, and had encouraged her through those first weeks, when Rome is so dreary to

"But how lucky that you are at home today," 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

"See! "said Hilda, taking her friend's hand, and leading her in front of the easel. "I wanted your opinion of it."

"If you have really succeeded," observed Miriam, recognizing the picture at the first glance, "it will be the

The picture represented simply a female head; a very youthful, girlish, perfectly beautiful face, enveloped in

white drapery, from beneath which strayed a lock or two of what seemed a rich, though hidden luxuriance 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 indicated, 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 faroff region, the remoteness of whichwhile yet her face is so close before usmakes us

"Yes, Hilda," said her friend, after closely examining the picture," you have done nothing else so wonderful

as this. But by what unheardof 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 picture, 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

"Here it is, then," said Miriam, contemplating Hilda's work with great interest and delight, mixed with the

painful sympathy that the picture excited. "Everywhere we see oilpaintings, 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,

betimes, to ascend the scaffold, And now that you have done it, Hilda, can you interpret what the feeling is,

that gives this picture such a mysterious force? For my part, though deeply sensible of its influence, I cannot

"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 distance between

Beatrice and ourselves, even when our eyes meet hers. It is infinitely heartbreaking to meet her glance, and

to feel that nothing can be done to help or comfort her; neither does she ask help or comfort, knowing the

hopelessness of her case better than we do. She is a fallen angel,fallen, and yet sinless; and it is only this

depth of sorrow, with its weight and darkness, that keeps her down upon earth, and brings her within our

"You deem her sinless?" asked Miriam; "that is 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

"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, and she feels

it to be so. Therefore it is that the forlorn creature so longs to elude our eyes, and forever vanish away into

"O 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 nature was too feeble for the fate imposed upon her. Ah!" continued Miriam

passionately, "if I could only get within her consciousness!if I could 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

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 almost exactly that of the pottrait; as if her passionate wish

"O, 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 mystery of this

portrait; as you surely must, in order to reproduce it so perfectly. Well; we will not talk of it any more. Do

you know, I have come to you this morning on a small matter of business. Will you undertake it for me?"

"O, 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

"Partly because it will be safer in your charge," said her friend. "I am a 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 leaving Rome. You, setting at defiance the malarial fever, mean to stay here

and haunt your beloved galleries through the summer. Now, four months hence, unless you hear more from

Hilda read the direction; it was to Signore Luca Barboni, at the Plazzo Cenci, third piano.

"I will deliver it with my own hand," said she, "precisely four months from today, 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 withdrew the cloth that

Hilda had drawn over the picture, and took another long look at it. "Poor sister Beatrice! 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 knot

"Jealous, indeed!" exclaimed Hilda. "If Guido had not wrought through me, my pains would have been

"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; goodby. But, stay! I am going for a little airing to the grounds of the Villa Borghese this afternoon.

You will think it very foolish, but I always feel the safer in your company, Hilda, slender little maiden as you

"Ah, not today, dearest Miriam," she replied; "I have set my heart on giving another touch or two to this

"Farewell, then," said her visitor. "I leave you in your dovecote. 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

"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 staircase, and just as she reached the street the flock of doves

again took their hurried flight from the pavement 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

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 carriagedrives, 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 daydream that

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 leafshaped, 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 ilextrees, so ancient and

timehonored 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 thunderstroke. 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

In other portions of the grounds the stonepines 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 rosecolored, 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

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

In the openings of the wood there are fountains plashing into marble basins, the depths of which are shaggy

with waterweeds; 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 woodpaths, 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

What a strange ideawhat a needless laborto 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 villaresidences 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

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 halfdevelopment, 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 dreamlike

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

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

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 woodpaths. 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

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

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 stonyhearted 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

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

Mirian'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 effervesced 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 Donatello'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

By and by, his own mood seemed to brighten Miriam's, and was reflected back upon himself. He began

inevitably, as it were, to dance along the woodpath; 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 approached

along the shadowy and sunfleckered 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. 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 cofivey to the young

"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 hereabouts, if anywhere. Knock at the rough rind of this ilextree,

and summon forth the Dryad! Ask the waternymph 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 goatlegs 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 familiarly 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 understand 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 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

"Donatello," said Miriam, looking at him thoughtfully, but amused, yet not without a shade of sorrow, "you

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

"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 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 Donatello himself was as satisfactory as we are likely to attain.

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 worldworn 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 mediaeval 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 almost 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 twosure to be separated by their different

paths in life, tomorrowwere to gather up some of the little pleasures that chanced to grow about their feet,

Yet an impulse of rectitude impelled Miriam to give him what she still held to be a needless warning against

"If you were wiser, Donatello, you would think me a dangerous person," said she, "If you follow my

"And well you may, for it is full of malaria," said Miriam; she went on, hinting at an intangible confession,

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 Apennines,some rusty old castle, I suppose, with a village at its foot, and an

Arcadian environment of vineyards, figtrees, 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, Donatello?"

"O, 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 remember thinking it happiness to dance with the contadinas at a

village feast; to taste the new, sweet wine at vintagetime, 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 watching all

sorts, of creatures and birds that haunt the leafy solitudes. But never half so happy as now!"

"What a fulness of content in him! How silly, and how delightful!" said Miriam to herself. Then addressing

"How long!" he exclaimed; for it perplexed him even more to think of the future than to remember the past.

"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 sensible 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 enjoyment made her

"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,perhaps hate me,if I chose; and I must choose, if I find you loving me too

"I fear nothing!" said Donatello, looking into her unfathomable eyes with perfect trust. "I love always!"

"Well, then, for this one hour, let me be such as he imagines me. Tomorrow 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 it

so! There is, at least, that ethereal quality in my spirit, that it can make me as gay as Donatello himself,for

And immediately she brightened up, as if an inward flame, heretofore stifled, were now permitted to fill her

Donatello, brisk and cheerful as he seemed before, showed a sensibility to Miriam's gladdened mood by

breaking into still wilder and evervarying activity. He frisked around her, bubbling over with joy, which

clothed itself in words that had little individual meaning, 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, observing this pleasant familiarity between her companion and

As they strayed through that sweet wilderness, she felt more and more the influence of his elastic

temperament. 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 exhilaration, comparable

to that of melancholy people escaping from the dark region m which it is their custom to keep themselves

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 pleasure had been darkened with those shadows that bring it into high relief, and make it

"Hark!" cried Donatello, stopping short, as he was about to bind Miriam's fair hands with flowers, and lead

"It is your kinsman, Pan, most likely," said Miriam, "playing on his pipe. Let us go seek him, and make him

puff out his rough cheeks and pipe his merriest air! Come; the strain of music will guide us onward like a

"Or like a chain of flowers," responded Donatello, drawing her along by that which he had twined. "This

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. Catching

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 human form as that which rustles in the leaves; or that she had

emerged through the pebbly bottom of a fountain, a waternymph, to play and sparkle in the sunshine,

flinging a quivering light around her, and suddenly 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

"Ah! Donatello," cried she, laughing, as she stopped to take a breath; "you have an unfair advantage 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,

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. Nevertheless, 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 companion whom he had

"Dance! dance!" cried he joyously. "If we take breath, we shall be as we were yesterday. There, now, is the

They had now reached an open, grassy glade (of which there are many in that artfully constructed

wilderness), 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, theperformers had skill enough to provoke and

modulate into tolerable harmony. It chanced to be a feastday; and, instead of playing in the sunscorched

piazzas of the city, or beneath the windows of some unresponsive palace, they had bethought themselves to

try the echoes of these woods; for, on the festas of the Church, Rome scatters its merrymakers all abroad, ripe

As Miriam and Donatello emerged from among the trees, the musicians scraped, tinkled, or blew, each

according to his various kind of instrument, more inspiringly than ever. A darkchecked 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 tambourine, 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 possession 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 Campagna 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 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 tourists (one of them a lord) took contadine partners and dashed in, as did also a shaggy

man in goatskin 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 skyblue jackets, and

smallclothes 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

Here, as it seemed, had the Golden Age come back again within the Precincts of this sunny glade, thawing

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

The harper thrummed with rapid fingers; the violin 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 of mirth, it

seemed the realization of one of those basreliefs 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

merrymakers, 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 overturned 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 festal portions of the scene,

As in its mirth, so in the darker characteristic here alluded to, there was an analogy between the sculptured

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 confronted by a strange figure that shook its fantastic garments in the air,

and pranced before her on its tiptoes, almost vying with the agility of Donatello himself. 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 enveloped 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 melancholy smile with

"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 companions of our pastime are vanishing already!"

Whether it was that the harpstrings 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 moment, 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 disappeared. If a few of the merrymakers lingered among the trees, they had

hidden their racy peculiarities under the garb and aspect of ordinary people, and sheltered 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 gat:e of Rome,a tract where

the crimes and calamities of ages, the many battles, blood recklessly poured out, and deaths of myriads, have

corrupted 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

"Miriam," whispered Donatello, grasping her hand forcibly, "who is it that stands in the shadow yonder,

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.

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 expressed by Donatello. Two drops of water or of blood do

"Shall I clutch him by the throat?" whispered Donatello, with a savage scowl. "Bid me do so, and we are rid

"In Heaven's name, no violence!" exclaimed Miriam, affrighted out of the scornful control which she had

hitherto held over her companion, by the fierceness that he so suddenly developed. "O, 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

"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; "soontomorrow when you will; only leave

In the Borghese Grove, so recently uproarious with merriment and music, there remained only Miriam and

A solitude had suddenly spread itself around them. It perhaps symbolized a peculiar character in the relation

of these two, insulating them, and building up an insuperable barrier between their lifestreams and other

currents, which might seem to flow in close vicinity. For it is one of the chief earthly incommodities of some

species of misfortune, or of a great crime, that it makes the actor in the one, or the sufferer of the other, an

alien in the world, by interposing a wholly unsympathetic medium betwixt himself and those whom he yearns

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

utterances into a continuous scene, we undertake a task resembling in its perplexity that of gathering up and

piecing together the fragments ora 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 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

Of so much we are sure, that there seemed to be a sadly mysterious fascination in the influence of this

illomened 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 hopelessness 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

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 mortal comprehension; the fatal decree by which every crime is

made to be the agony of many innocent persons, 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 oppose

"You follow me too closely," she said, in low, faltering accents; "you allow me too scanty room to draw my

breath. Do you know what will be the end of this?" "I know well what must be the end," he replied.

"Tell me, then," said Miriam, "that I may compare your foreboding with my own. Mine is a very dark one."

"There can be but one result, and that soon," answered 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

"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. Miriam,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

"It 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 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

"Yes, your heart trembled with horror when you recognized me," rejoined he; "but you did not guess that

"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. "O, that we could have wandered in those

dismal passages till we both perished, taking opposite paths in the darkness, so that when we lay down to die,

"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 appeared to seize upon her persecutor, insomuch that he shook

and grew ashy pale before her eyes. In this man's memory there was something that made it awful 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 native

temperament deeply susceptible of religious impressions, 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

And now, all at once, it struck her that he might be mad. It was an idea that had never before seriously

occurred to her mind, although, as soon as suggested, 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.

I would not give you pain," she said, soothingly; "your faith allows you the consolations of penance and

"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 itself in a single trial of life. Let us but keep asunder, and all may go well for both." "We

fancied ourselves forever sundered," he replied. "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 mountaintop, or in whatever spot seemed

"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

"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 bidding; or, within a short time, it shall be exercised: nor will I cease to

"Then," said Miriam more calmly," I foresee the end, and have already warned you of it. It will be death!"

"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 crimson

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 bloodstain with

which he taunted her. He smiled as he let it go. "It looks very white," said he; "but I have known hands as

"It had no stain," retorted Miriam bitterly, "until you grasped it in your own."

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, belonging 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,

Thus they strayed onward through the green wilderness 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 behind, throwing off the imperious manner which he had assumed during

their solitary interview. The Porta del Popolo swarmed with life. The merrymakers, who had spent the

feastday outside the walls, were now thronging in; a party of horsemen were entering beneath the arch; a

travelling carriage had been drawn up just within the verge, and was passing through the villainous ordeal of

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.

Hilda, after giving the last touches to the picture of Beatrice Cenci, had flown down from her dovecote, 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

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 evergushing 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 worthiesstatesmen, heroes, artists, men of

letters and of songwhom 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

In this pleasant spot, the redtrousered 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 nurserymaids, 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 oldfashioned 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 wateringplace, 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

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

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

In the remoter depths, among the old groves of ilextrees, Hilda and Kenyon heard the faint sound of music,

laughter, and mingling voices. It was probably the uproarspreading even so far as the walls of Rome, and

growing faded and melancholy in its passageof that wild sylvan merriment, which we have already

attempted to describe. By and by it ceasedalthough 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

"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

"Then," said Hilda, with perfect simplicity, "you have thought himand do think himone 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

"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 playplace, 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

"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 mossgrown

tower among the Apennines, where he and his forefathers have dwelt, under their own vines and figtrees,

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

"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

"Except as regards the pointed ears," said Kenyon; adding, aside, "and one other little peculiarity, generally

"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

"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 Beniis 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

"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 meand yourself, toothe satisfaction of

"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

"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

"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

"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

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 latticework of their thoughts at the varied

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 faroff 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

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

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!

"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

"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 errorhow great Kenyon dared not thinkor some fatal

"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

"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

AngloSaxon 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

"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

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 redearthen 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

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

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

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

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,

"I sometimes fancy," said Hilda, on whose susceptibility the scene always made a strong impression, "that

"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 pavingstones, 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

"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

"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.

About 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

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 infinite,

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, is one of the most forlorn results of any accident, misfortune,

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 demands friendship, love, and intimate communion, but is forced to pine in

Kenyon's studio was in a crossstreet, 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 sculpturerooms within had formerly 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 certainly made them interesting) the young American sculptor had now

The studio of a sculptor is generally but a rough and drearylooking place, with a good deal the aspect,

indeed, of a stonemason'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 being the

intimate production of the sculptor himself, moulded throughout with his loving hands, and nearest to his

imagination and heart. In the plastercast, from this clay model, the beauty of the statue strangely disappears,

to shine forth again with pure white radiance, 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 representation 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 plastercast 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

In no other art, surely, does genius find such effective 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 buttonholes, their shoeties, their neckcloths,and these, at our present

epoch of taste, make a large share of the 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,

Miriam stopped an instant in an antechamber, to look at a halffinished 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 impossible 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 Kenyon's most

trustworthy assistants was at work, giving delicate touches, shaving off an impalpable something, and leaving

"As these busts in the block of marble," thought Miriam, "so does our individual fate exist in the limestone 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 tho 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 ideal forehead,

deeply set eyes, and a mouth much hidden in a lightbrown beard, but apparently sensitive and delicate.

"No; I will not touch clay; it is earthy and human," 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,

To gratify him, Miriam looked round at the specimens 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 gallery of such things. What he had to show were chiefly the attempts

and experiments, in various directions, 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 dazzled the judgment into awarding them

higher praise than they deserved. Miriam admired the statue of a beautiful youth, a pearlfisher; who had got

entangled in the weeds at the bottom of the sea, and lay dead among the pearloysters, the rich shells, and the

"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

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 studied, and

solved in the artist's mind. The bust over the tomb in Grey Friars Church, the original miniatures and pictures,

wherever to be found, had mingled each its special truth in this one work; wherein, likewise, 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

There were also several portraitbusts, 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, because 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, beneath these great men's immortality. Possibly, however, the young

artist may have underestimated the 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 selfestimate; but will find, no doubt, that they serve to build into stone

walls, or burn into quicklime, 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 endurance, 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 certainty that the greatgrandchildren will not know their father's grandfather, and that

half a century hence at furthest, the hammer of the auctioneer will thump its knockdown 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 dustywhite ghost among strangers of another generation, who will take our nose between

their thumb and fingers (as we have seen men do by Caesar's), and infallibly break it off if they can do so

"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 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

"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, "I must not quarrel 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

"O, gladly!" cried Kenyon, who had long wished to model that beautiful and most expressive face. "When

He took out of his desk a little oldfashioned ivory coffer, yellow with age; it was richly carved with antique

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

Lifting the lid, however, no blaze of diamonds was 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

"Ah, this is very beautiful!" exclaimed Miriam, with a genial smile. "It is as good in its way as Loulie's hand

with its babydimples, 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 heroic union of two high, poetic lives! Nay, I do not question that it is

better than either of those, because you must have wrought it passionately, in spite of its maiden palm and

"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 a character 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 persuaded that shy

"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 reminiscence. After gazing at it so often, and even holding it once for an

instant, when Hilda was not thinking of me, I should be a bungler indeed, if I could not now reproduce it to

"I have little ground to hope it," answered the sculptor despondingly; "Hilda does not dwell in our mortal

atmosphere; and gentle and soft as she appears, it will be as difficult to win her heart as to entice 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 abundantly capable of

"I partly agree with you," said Miriam. "It is a mistaken idea, which men generally entertain, that nature 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 employment in less

ostentatious ways,who lead high, lonely lives, and are conscious of no sacrifice so far as your sex is

"And Hilda will be one of these!" said Kenyon sadly; "the thought makes me shiver for myself, and and for

"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

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

"And now," said Miriam, "show me the new statue which you asked me hither to see."

My new statue!" said Kenyon, who had positively forgotten it in the thought of Hilda; "here it is, under 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 womanhood, 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 human 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 inevitably 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 today, 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," said Kenyon, half smiling, half seriously; "not that you are

wholly wrong, either. We are bound to accept drapery of some kind, and make the best of it. But what are we

to do? Must we adopt the costume of today, and carve, for example, a Venus in a hooppetticoat?"

"That would be a boulder, indeed!" rejoined Miriam, laughing. "But the difficulty goes to confirm me in my

belief that, except for portraitbusts, sculpture 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 tailoring 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 immemorial antiquity. A person familiar with the Vatican,

the Uffizzi Gallery, 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."

"Fairly own to me, then, my friend," rejoined Miriam, whose disturbed mind found a certain relief in this

declamation, "that you sculptors are, of necessity, the greatest plagiarists in the world."

"I 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 mountains,

probably as fine in quality, I shall steadfastly 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. Perhaps," he

added, smiling, "mankind will consent to wear a more manageable costume; or, at worst, we sculptors shall

get the skill to make broadcloth transparent, and render a majestic human character visible through the coats

"Be it so!" said Miriam; "you are past my counsel. Show me the veiled figure, which, I am afraid, I have

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 members

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

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 from head to foot in a costume minutely and

scrupulously studied from that of ancient Egypt, as revealed by the strange sculpture of that country, its coins,

drawings, painted mummycases, and whatever other tokens have been dug out of its pyramids, graves, and

catacombs. Even the stiff Egyptian headdress was adhered to, but had been softened into a rich feminine

adornment, without losing a particle of its truth. Difficulties 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

A marvellous reposethat rare merit in statuary, except it be the lumpish repose native to the block of

stonewas diffused throughout the figure. The spectator felt that Cleopatra had sunk down out of the fever

and turmoil of her life, and for one instantas it were, between two pulse throbshad relinquished 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 smouldering 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 creature'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

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 Grecian type. The expression was of profound, gloomy,

heavily revolving thought; a glance into her past life and present emergencies, while her spirit gathered itself

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

In a word, all Cleopatrafierce, voluptuous, passionate, tender, wicked, terrible, and full of poisonous and

rapturous enchantmentwas kneaded into what, only a week or two before, had been a lump of wet clay

from the Tiber. Soon, apotheosized in an indestructible 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 a long 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

"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 kindled 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

"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,

"No, surely, it was not in Hilda," said Kenyon. "Her womanhood is of the ethereal type, and incompatible

"You are right," rejoined Miriam; "there are women of that ethereal type, as you term it, and Hilda is one of

them. She would die of her first wrongdoing,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

He was startled at the strange turn which she had so suddenly given to the conversation. Her voice, too,so

"O, 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

youyou see far into womanhood; you receive it widely into your large view. Perhapsperhaps, but

"Miriam, dear friend," replied the sculptor, "if I can help you, speak freely, as to a brother."

Kenyon's response had been perfectly frank and kind; and yet the subtlety of Miriam's emotion detected a

certain reserve and alarm in his warmly expressed 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 pentup 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 occasion required, Miriam would hate him by and by, and herself still more, if he let her

This was what Kenyon said to himself; but his reluctance, 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

"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."

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 nothing for

me, unless you petrify me into a marble companion 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

"Since you desire it, all shall be forgotten," answered the sculptor, pressing her hand as she departed; "or, if

ever I can serve you, let my readiness to do so be remembered. Meanwhile, dear Miriam, let us meet in the

"You are less sincere than I thought you," said Miriam, "if you try to make me think that there will be no

As he attended her through the antechamber, she pointed to the statue of the pearldiver.

"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

"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 way beyond the mark, in the blindness of my distress, I have lost, as we

shall hereafter find, the genuine friendship of this clearminded, honorable, truehearted young man, and all

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 darkred carbunclered as bloodis too rich a gem

On the evening after Miriam's visit to Kenyon's studio, there was an assemblage composed almost entirely of

AngloSaxons, and chiefly of American artists, 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 fits natural bent that, like a pet

The place of meeting was in the palatial, but somewhat faded and gloomy apartment of an eminent member

of the aesthetic body. It was no more formal an occasion than one of those weekly receptions, common

among the foreign residents of Rome, at which pleasant peopleor disagreeable ones, as the case may

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

One of the chief causes that make Rome the favorite residence of artiststheir ideal home which they sigh

for in advance, and are so loath to migrate from, after once breathing its enchanted airis, doubtless, that

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 contrary, it will impress the shrewd observer that the jealousies

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 sculptor'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 unsympathizing

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 after year in Italy, while their originality dies out of them, or is polished

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 tasteto crown each welldeserving 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

OtherWise we might point to an artist who has studied Nature with such tender love that she takes him to her

intimacy, enabling him to reproduce her in landscapes that seem the reality of a better earth, and yet are but

the truth of the very scenes around us, observed 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 poetpainter, 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 poetic mood. Or we might bow before an artist, who has 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 compressed into the stately brow of Prospero, and Miranda's maiden loveliness; or from

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 pictorial 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 the material in which they

work, and the sort of physical advantage which their labors thus acquire over the illusive unreality 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 dreamwork, or rather frostwork: it was all a vapory exhalation out of the Grecian mythology,

crystallizing on the dull windowpanes of today. Gifted with a more delicate power than any other man

alive, he had foregone to be a Christian reality, 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 reverencing 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 themselves 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 a man 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 sculptors.

They drank in his wisdom, as if it would serve all the purposes of original inspiration; he, meanwhile,

discoursing with gentle calmness, as if there could possibly be no other side, and often ratifying, as it were,

The veteran Sculptor's unsought audience was composed 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 buttonholes, shoeties,

coatseams, shirtbosoms, 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 uninitiated 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 therefore 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 fidelity, 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 he the high treatment of heroic subjects, or the

No ideas such as the foregoingno misgivings suggested by them probably, troubled the selfcomplacency

of most of these clever sculptors. Marble, in their view, had no such sanctity as we impute to it. It 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 susceptible 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 have been fitly

employed in making waxwork, are bold to call themselves sculptors. How terrible should be the thought that

the nude woman whom the modern 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 ofno matter what,

since it has no moral or intellectual existence will not physically crumble any sooner than the immortal agony

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 aesthetics they adopted, were certainly pleasanter 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 lingered 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 barrels, and sugar) necessarily illuminated their conversation 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 gossip began to be heard. The atmosphere ceased to be precisely that of common life; a hint,

This good effect was assisted by many curious little 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 neighborhood are still

rich in; seals, gems, small figures of bronze, mediaeval 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 opinion of

their possessor, bore evidence on their faces of the touch of masterhands. Very ragged and ill conditioned

they mostly were, yellow with time, and tattered 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 pencil, were now half

rubbed out. You would not anywhere see rougher and homelier things than these. But this hasty rudeness

made the sketches only the more valuable; because the artist seemed to have bestirred 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 enabled to steal close to an old master, and watch him in the very effervescence of his genius.

According to the judgment of several con, noisseurs, Raphael's own hand had communidated its magnetism

to one of these sketches; and, if genuine, it was evidently his first conception of a favorite Madonna, now

hanging in the private apartment of the Grand Duke, at Florence. Another drawing was attributed to Leonardo

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 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 inspiration, 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 thoughts were perceptible in these designs, after three centuries of wear and tear. The charm

lay partly in their very imperfection; for this is suggestive, and sets the imagination at work; whereas, the

finished picture, if a good one, leaves the spectator nothing to do, and, if bad, confuses, stupefies,

Hilda was greatly interested in this rich portfolio. She lingered so long over one particular sketch, that Miriam

"Look at it carefully," replied Hilda, putting the sketch into her hands. "If you take pains to disentangle the

design from those pencil~ marks that seem to have been scrawled over it, I think you will see something very

"It is a hopeless affair, I am afraid," said Miriam. "I have neither your faith, dear Hilda, nor your perceptive

The drawing had originally been very slight, and had suffered more from time and hard usage than almost

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 winged figure

"I 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 difference being, that the demon has a more upturned face, and scowls

"No wonder!" responded Miriam. "The expression suits the daintiness of Michael's character, as Guido

"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 affirmed that the

resemblance to Cardinal Pamfili was either casual or imaginary. Now, here is the face as he first conceived

"And a more energetic demon, altogether, than that of the finished picture," said Kenyon, taking the sketch

into his hand. "What a spirit is conveyed into the 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 somewhere, and on

The young Italian, as may be supposed, took little interest in matters of art, and seldom or never ventured 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.

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 Miriam'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 career, 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 victim, till it was Miriam's illhap to

"I do not acknowledge the resemblance at all," said Miriam, looking narrowly at the sketch; "and, as I have

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 question; 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, declared

the moonlight to be resplendent. They proposed 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.

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 nighttime, lies up and down a

Roman staircase. Emerging from the courtyard 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 architectural

ornaments of its cornice and pillared portal, as well as the ironbarred basement windows, that gave such a

prisonlike 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 homeless dog, that haunted

thereabouts, barked as obstreperously 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

apparently near at hand. This pleasant, natural sound, not unlike that of a distant cascade in the forest, may be

heard in many of the Roman streets and piazzas, when the tumult of the city is hushed; for consuls, emperors,

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 unchanging, 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. "I am not now in a merry mood, as when we set all the world adancing

"What a melancholy was in that tone!" exclaimed Miriam. "You are 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

The party arranged itself according to its natural affinities or casual likings; a sculptor generally choosing a

painter, and a painter a sculptor, for his companion, 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 separate alliance

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 moonlight, was the most famous fountain in Rome. Its murmurnot to

say its uproarhad 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

"I 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 improbabilities may seem to beset him. Will you drink,

They and the rest of the party descended some steps to the water's brim, and, after a sip or two, stood gazing

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 basreliefs, out of which looked Agrippa's

legendary virgin, and several of the allegoric sisterhood; while, at the base, appeared Neptune, with his

floundering steeds, and Tritons blowing their horns about him, and twenty other artificial fantasies, which the

And, after all, it was as magnificent a piece of work as ever human skill contrived. At the foot of the palatial

facade was strewn, with careful art and ordered irregularity, a broad and broken heap of massive rock,

looking is if it might have lain there since the deluge. Over a central precipice fell the water, in a semicircular

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 glistening 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

neverceasing murmur, poured itself into a great marblebrimmed 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 occupied 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

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 fountain. Here,

also, are seen men with buckets, urchins with cans, and maidens (a picture as old as the patriarchal times)

bearing their pitchers upon their heads. For the water of Trevi is in request, far and wide, as the most

refreshing draught for feverish lips, the pleasantest 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 natural aspect, in accordance with its own powerful simplicity.

"What would be done with this water power," suggested an artist, "if we had it in one of our American cities?

"The good people would pull down those rampant marble deities," said Kenyon, "and, possibly, they would

give me a commission to carve the oneandthirty (is that the number?) sister States, each pouring a silver

stream from a separate can into one vast basin, which should represent the grand reservoir of national

"Or, if they wanted a bit of satire," remarked an English artist, "you could set those same oneandthirty

States to cleansing the national flag of any stains that it may have incurred. The Roman washerwomen 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 estrangement.

Pray come behind me, one of you, and let me try whether the face can be recognized in the water."

Leaning over the stone brim of the basin, she heard footsteps stealing behind her, and knew that somebody

was looking over her shoulder. The moonshine 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 appeared; 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 Miriam'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 separate 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 lefthand 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 beside 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 laughter followed

the recognition; while the model leaned towards Miriam, as she shrank from him, and muttered something

that was inaudible to those who witnessed the scene. By his gestures, however, they concluded that he was

"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 timestains and earthly soil of a thousand

Dipping his hands into the capacious washbowl before him, the model rubbed them together with the utmost

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 persecutor's face.

"In the name of all the Saints," cried she, "vanish, Demon, and let me be free of you now and forever!"

"It will not suffice," said some of the mirthful party, "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

drinkingcup 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

Miriam felt her arm seized violently by Donatello. She looked at him, and beheld a tigerlike fury gleaming

"Bid me drown him!" whispered he, shuddering between rage and horrible disgust. "You shall hear his death

"Peace, peace, Donatello!" said Miriam soothingly, 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 ourselves 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

"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. "Methinks 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

"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 and blameless

delights. Have you found aught in the world that is worth' what you there enjoyed? Tell me truly, Donatello!"

"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 regarded Miriam's persecutor as diseased in his wits, and were hardly

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 basreliefs of

the old emperor's warlike deeds. In the area before 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

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

"And see!" said Kenyon, laying his hand upon it, "there is still a polish remaining on the hard substance 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 today's sunshine, lingering into the night, seem almost equally ephemeral in

"There is comfort to be found in the pillar," remarked Miriam, "hard and heavy as it is. Lying here forever, as

"And human happiness as evanescent too," observed 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

"My poor little Hilda," said Miriam, kissing her compassionately, "would you sacrifice this greatest mortal

consolation, which we derive from the transitoriness 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

Their moralizing strain was interrupted by a demonstration from the rest of the party, who, after talking and

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

"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

"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

judgmentseat, 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 basreliefs of the pedestal!"

"There are sermons in stones," said Hilda thoughtfully, smiling at Kenyon's morality; "and especially in the

The party moved on, but deviated a little from the straight way, in order to glance at the ponderous remains of

the temple of Mars Ultot, within which a convent of nuns is now established,a dovecote, in the wargod's

mansion. At only a little distance, they passed the portico of a Temple of Minerva, most rich and beautiful in

architecture, but woefully gnawed by 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 today.

"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 fermentation."

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 hedgebordered lane. In all probability, a stately Roman street lay

buried beneath that rusticlooking 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 terminated on the edge of a

somewhat abrupt descent, at the foot of which, with a muddy ditch between, rose, in the bright moonlight, the

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 obstacle to their admission. Within, the moonlight filled and flooded the great

empty space; it glowed upon tier above tier of ruined, grassgrown arches, and made them even too distinctly

visible. The splendor 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

picturesque 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

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 barbarians though

they were, they chatted as gayly together 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 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 halfshriek, halflaugh 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

It was a strange place for song and mirth. That black cross marks one of the special bloodspots of the earth

where, thousands of times over, the dying gladiator fell, and more of human agony has been endured for the

mere pastime of the multitude than on the breadth of many battlefields. 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

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 scene or circumstance of the Saviour's passion and suffering. 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. Lightfooted 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

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 glimmered 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

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 gayety and the gloomy reminiscences of the scene, in almost

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 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

"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 almost 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

"He gets small thanks, I fear, from the people whose bloody instincts he pampered," rejoined Kenyon. "Fancy

a nightly assemblage of eighty thousand 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

"Nay, I have good authority for peopling the Coliseum with phantoms," replied the sculptor. "Do you

remember that veritable scene in Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography, in which a necromancer of his

acquaintance draws a magic circlejust where the black cross stands now, I supposeand raises myriads of

demons? Benvenuto saw them with his own eyes,giants, pygmies, and other creatures of frightful aspect,

capering and dancing on yonder walls. Those spectres must have been Romans, in their lifetime, and

"I see a spectre, now!" said Hilda, with a little thrill of uneasiness. "Have you watched that pilgrim, 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

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 presence, and

fancying herself wholly unseen, the beautiful Miriam began to gesticulate extravagantly, gnashing her teeth,

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 selfcontrol, under 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

"If you desire it, or need it," said Donatello humbly, "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 yourself; 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, innocent 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 crumble 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,

A higher sentiment brightened upon Donatello's face than had hitherto seemed to belong to its simple

"Poor Donatello!" said Miriam in a changed tone, 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. Halfwitted, they call

him; and surely fit for nothing but to be happy. And I accept his aid! Tomorrow, tomorrow, 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 Kenyon, however,who sat close by, and saw his face distinctly, that

the suppliant was merely performing 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

"He is evidently a good Catholic, however," whispered one of the party. "After all, I fear we cannot identify

"The doctors of the Propaganda may have converted him," said another; "they have had fifteen hundred years

The company now deemed it time to continue their ramble. Emerging from a side entrance of the Coliseum,

they had on their left the Arch of Constantine, and above it the shapeless ruins of the Palace of the Caesars;

portions of which have taken shape anew, in mediaeval 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 sevenbranched Jewish candlestick, 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,

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 halfworn pavement, and beneath this Arch of

Titus, the Roman armies had trodden in their outward march, to fight battles a world's width away. Returning

victorious, with royal captives and inestimable spoil, a Roman triumph, that most gorgeous pageant of earthly

pride, had streamed and flaunted in hundredfold succession over these same flagstones, and through this yet

stalwart archway. It is politic, however, 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 today seem the thinner of the two, and stand more ghostlike by the arches and columns,

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 atmosphere by day is

"Let 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,

impenetrably deep, and with halfshaped monsters and hideous faces looming upward out of it, to the vast

affright 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 today. It was a pity to close it up so soon! I would give much for a

"I fancy," remarked Miriam, "that every person takes a peep into it in moments of gloom and despondency;

"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 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 statues 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! I am loath to smile at the selfconceit of that gallant horseman, but cannot well avoid

"It 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 destinies. "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 selfsacrifice 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,

"Doubtless, too," resumed the sculptor (for his imagination was greatly excited by the idea of this wondrous

chasm), "all the blood that the Romans shed, whether on battlefields, 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 Caesar's breast flowed hitherward, and that pure

little rivulet from Virginia's bosom, too! Virginia, beyond all question, was stabbed by her father, precisely

"Is there such blessed potency in bloodshed?" asked Miriam. "Nay, Hilda, do not protest! I take your meaning

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 examples, 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, 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 become audible in what would else have been thee 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 heramounting, at last,

to a necessity to shriek aloud; but she had struggled against it, till the thunderous anthem gave her an

They passed the solitary Column of Phocas, and looked down into the excavated space, where a confusion of

pillars, arches, pavements, and shattered blocks and shaftsthe crumbs 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 hillside is built up, is as old

as Rome itself, and looks likely to endure while the world retains any substance or permanence. It once

sustained the Capitol, and now bears up the great pile which the mediaeval builders raised on the antique

foundation, and that still loftier 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 structures will doubtless rise, and

To a spectator on the spot, it is remarkable that the events of Roman history, and Roman life itself, appear 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 hand. We forget that a chasm extends between it and ourselves, in

which lie all those dark, rude, unlettered centuries, around the birthtime 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 mediaeval times, they look further off than the Augustan age. The reason may be, that the old

Roman literature survives, and creates for us an intimacy with the classic ages, which we have no means of

The Italian climate, moreover, robs age of its reverence and makes it look newer than it is. Not the Coliseum,

nor the tombs of the Appian Way, nor the oldest 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 Natures 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 effect is concerned, by stealing away the marble and hewn stone, and

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

imperial robe of light. It is the most majestic representation 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 beneficence

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 benediction.

"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"

"O, if there were but one such man as this?" exclaimed 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 relieved. We

would come to him with our griefs, whatever they might be,even a poor, frail woman burdened with her

heavy heart,and lay them at his feet, and never need to take them up again. The rightful king would see to

"What an idea of the regal office and duty!" said Kenyon, with a smile. "It is a woman's idea of the whole

"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 hopemy life, O how freelyfor 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?"

"Hush, hush? do not let them hear yet!" whispered Miriam. "I frighten you, you say; for Heaven's sake, how?

"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 courtyard. It was

The spot, for some reason or other, impressed them 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 courtyard, 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 appeared 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 beyond 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

"What a beautiful view of the city!" exclaimed Hilda; "and I never saw Rome from this point before."

"It ought to afford a good prospect," said the sculptor; "for it was from this pointat least we are at liberty to

think so, if we choosethat 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 accumulated at the foot of

They all bent over, and saw that the cliff fell perpendicularly 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 in ancient stonework, 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 adown the height, it scarcely showed what portion of it was man's work and what was nature's,

but left it all in very much the same kind of ambiguity and halfknowledge in which antiquarians generally

The roofs of some poorlooking 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 downward

"I prefer this to any other site as having been veritably the Traitor's Leap," said Kenyon, "because it was so

convenient to the Capitol. It was an admirable idea of those stern old fellows to fling their political 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

"Come, come; it is midnight," cried another artist, "too late to be moralizing here. We are literally dreaming

The sculptor was not without hopes that he might be favored with the sweet charge of escorting Hilda to the

foot of her tower. Accordingly, when the party prepared to turn back, he offered her his arm. Hilda at first

accepted it; but when they had partly threaded the passage between the little courtyard and the Piazza del

"I 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

The sculptor was a good deal mortified, and perhaps 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 return alone.

Meanwhile Miriam had not noticed the departure of the rest of the company; she remained on the edge of the

"It 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 without 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 fascination

which haunts the brow of precipices, tempting 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 than before. He

then stood silent a brief space, struggling, perhaps, to make himself conscious of the historic associations of

"Who are they," said he, looking earnestly in her face, "who have been flung over here in days gone by?"

"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

"It was well done," answered Miriam; "innocent persons were saved by the destruction of a guilty one, who

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 direct

attention to something nearer at, hand. Miriam seemed now first to become aware of the silence that had

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 indescribable feeling of security. All gone; and only herself and

Not so, however; not entirely alone! In the basement wall of the palace, shaded from the moon, there was a

deep, empty niche, that had probably once contained 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 promptitude of thought. Miriam

seemed dreamily to remember falling on her knees; but, in her whole recollection 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

Hilda, meanwhile, had separated herself from the sculptor, and turned back to rejoin her friend. At a distance,

she still heard the mirth of her late companions, who were going down the cityward descent of the Capitoline

Hill; they had set up a new stave of melody, in which her own soft voice, as well as the powerful sweetness

The door of the little courtyard 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 courtyard, and saw the whole quick passage of a deed,

The door of the courtyard 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 a man;

it had developed within him an intelligence which was no native characteristic of the Donatello whom we

The glow of rage was still lurid on Donatello's face, and now flashed out again from his eyes.

"I did what ought to be done to a traitor!" he replied. "I did what your eyes bade me do, when I asked them

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 denyshe was not sure whether it might be so, or nothat a wild joy had flamed up in her heart, when

she beheld her persecutor in his mortal peril. Was it horror?or ecstasy? or both in one? Be the emotion

what it might, it had blazed up more madly, when Donatello flung his victim off the cliff, and more and more,

while his shriek went quivering downward. With the dead thump upon the stones below had come an

They both leaned over the parapet, and gazed downward as earnestly as if some inestimable treasure had

fallen over, and were yet recoverable. On the pavement 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 consent,and, in another

She turned to him,the guilty, bloodstained, 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

"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 courtyard, 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 m solitude. Their

deedthe crime which Donatello wrought, and Miriam accepted on the instanthad wreathed itself, as she

said, like a serpent, in inextricable 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 moments, 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

When they reached the flight of steps leading downward from the Capitol, there was a faroff noise of singing

and laughter. Swift, indeed, had been the rush of the crisis that was come and gone! This was 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 cadence 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 pertained 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

"O 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 companionshiP that

"Only yesterday," continued Miriam; "nay, only a short halfhour 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

"None, my beautiful one!" responded Miriam, gazing 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."

The young man started at the word which he had himself spoken; it may be that it brought home, to the

simplicity of his imagination, what he had not before dreamed of,the everincreasing loathsomeness of a

union that consists in guilt. Cemented with blood, which would corrupt and grow more noisome forever and

"Forget it! Cast it all behind you!" said Miriam, detecting, by her sympathy, the pang that was in his heart.

They flung the past behind them, as she counselled, or else distilled from it a fiery, intoxication, which

sufficed 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 insanity, 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 fearfully,

but with a stately gait and aspect. Passion lent them (as it does to meaner shapes) its brief nobility 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 bloodstained city. And, at Miriam's suggestion, they turned aside,

"For there was a great deed done here!" she said,"a deed of blood like ours! Who knows but we may meet

the high and eversad fraternity of Caesar's murderers, and exchange a salutation?"

"Yes; all of them," said Miriam," and many another, whom the world little dreams of, has been made our

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 bloodstain 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

wrongdoing 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. "Tonight, 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 glimmer of

these two was the loftiest light beneath the stars. Miriam drew Donatello's arm, to make him stop, and while

they stood at some distance looking at Hilda's window, they beheld her approach and throw it open. She

"The good, pure child! She is praying, Donatello," said Miriam, with a kind of simple joy at witnessing the

devoutness of her friend. Then her own sin rushed upon her, and she shouted, with the rich strength of her

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 cry of her condemned

The 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 appointments, attend to their ordinary occupations, and thus put a

commonplace aspect on life, as when conscious of some secret that if suspected would make them look

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 fiercely, 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

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 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 subject

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 failing in woman than in man, the highest refinement being a

But the idea was unjust to the sex at large, and especially so to this poor Miriam, who was hardly responsible

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

"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 opportunity of

enjoying. I know not what became of Hilda after 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 courtyard of the

"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

"I religiously believe it," rejoined the sculptor; "and yet my mind would be the easier, if I knew that she had

"Then make yourself quite easy," answered Miriam. "I saw her (and it is the last sweet sight that I remember)

"You seem out of spirits, my dear friend," he observed. "This languid Roman atmosphere is not the airy wine

that you were accustomed to breathe at home. I have not forgotten your hospitable invitation to meet you this

summer at your castle among the Apennines. It is my fixed purpose to come, I assure you. We shall both be

"It may he," said Donatello, with unwonted sombreness; "the old house seemed joyous when I was a child.

The sculptor looked more attentively at the young man, and was surprised and alarmed to observe how

entirely the fine, fresh glow of animal spirits had departed 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.

"Am I? Perhaps so," said Donatello indifferently; "I never have been ill, and know not what it may be."

"Do not make the poor lad fancysink," whispered Miriam, pulling the sculptor's sleeve. "He is of a nature to

lie down and die at once, if he finds himself drawing such melancholy breaths as we ordinary people 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

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 churchdoors in italy. " Hilda has forgotten her appointment,"

she observed, "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

sideaisles. Each chapel had its saintly shrine, hung round with offerings; its picture above the altar, although

closely veiled, if by any painter of renown; and its hallowed tapers, burning continually, to set alight the

devotion of the worshippers. The pavement 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

mediaeval taste, on which were quaintly sculptured borders, figures, and portraits in basrelief, and Latin

epitaphs, now grown illegible by the tread of footsteps over them. The church appertains 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 sanctity as a kennel;

whereas, in all churches of nunneries, the maiden sisterhood invariably show the purity of their own hearts by

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 cunningly wrought

waxen face and suitably draped figure of a dead monk. This image of wax or claycold reality, 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 funereal a spectacle. From beneath

the pavement of the church came the deep, lugubrious strain of a De Profundis, which sounded like an

utterance of the tomb itself; so dismally did it rumble through the burial vaults, and ooze up among the flat

"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

Accordingly, they turned into the first chapel on the right hand, as you enter the nave; and there they

beheld,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

religious 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 artist of celebrity is hidden behind a veil, and seldom

revealed, 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, which we

hope for so ardently, at least, while we are young,but find so very long in coming, the triumph of goodness

"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

"But we were wrong, and Hilda right, as you perceive," said Miriam, directing his attention to the point on

which their dispute of the night before had arisen. "It is not easy to detect her astray as regards any picture on

"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 Archangel'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."

"I 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 today more

"That Archangel, now," Miriam continued; "how fair he looks, with his unruffled wings, with his unhacked

sword, and clad in his bright armor, and that exquisitely fitting skyblue tunic, cut in the latest Paradisiacal

mode! What a dainty air of the first celestial society! With what halfscornful delicacy he sets his prettily

sandalled foot on the head of his prostrate foe! But, is it thus that virtue looks the moment 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 own! His sword should be streaming

with blood, and perhaps broken halfway 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

unutterable horror, there should still be something high, tender, and holy in Michael's eyes, and around his

mouth. But the battle never was such a child's play as Guido's dapper Archangel seems to have found it."

"For Heaven's sake, Miriam," cried Kenyon, astonished at the wild energy of her talk; "paint the picture 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 assure you," she answered; "but I am sadly afraid the victory

would fail on the wrong side. Just fancy a smokeblackened, fieryeyed 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

It now, perhaps, struck Miriam that her mental disquietude 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, moreover,

Donatello had been very ill at ease, casting awestricken 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 a peculiar

horror and ugliness, when forced upon the contemplation of a person so naturally joyous as Donatello, 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 Miriam soothingly. "You are quite in a tremble, my poor friend!

"This awful chant from beneath the church,," answered 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 close 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 halflook, for those are what

show a frightfill thing in its frightfullest aspect. Lean on me, dearest friend! My heart is very strong for both

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. Possibly 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

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

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 partially

drawn down, and showed the eyeballs beneath; as if the deceased friar were stealing a glimpse at the

bystanders, to watch whether they were duly impressed 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

She grasped Donatello's hand, and, at the same instant, 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 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 halfclosed eyelids, was the same visage that had glared upon their

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

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.

He cast a horrorstricken and bewildered glance at Miriam, but withdrew it immediately. Not that he had any

definite suspicion, or, it may be, even a remote 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 Capuchin of today. It resembled

one of those unaccountable 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 intimations 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 remark or

exclamation to be voluntarily offered by Miriam. If she never spoke, then let the riddle be unsolved.

And now occurred a circumstance that would seem too fantastic to be told, if it had not actually happened,

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

"How strange!" ejaculated Kenyon. "The monk died of apoplexy, I suppose, or by some sudden accident, and

"Do you consider that a sufficient explanation?" asked Miriam, with a smile from which the sculptor

"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 murderer of this monk (or, possibly, it may be only that privileged

"True, true; horrible to see, or dream of!" she replied, 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, Donatello. Let us

When had ever a woman such a trial to sustain as this! By no possible supposition could Miriam explain 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 imagination 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 remembrance. 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 thousand ways, and converting

the great, calm face of Nature, in the whole, and in its innumerable details, into a manifold reminiscence of

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, therefore,

and at once; or else the grave would close over the face, and leave the awful fantasy that had connected itself

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 remembered from a far longer date than the most intimate 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 Miriam 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 halfclosed 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 himself safe and irrefutable in death, he frowned upon

"Is 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

"It is he," said Miriam. "There is the scar, that I 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 fortitude. She ceased to tremble; the beautiful woman gazed

sternly at her dead enemy, endeavoring to meet and quell the look of accusation that he threw from between

"No; thou shalt not scowl me down!" said she. "Neither now, nor when we stand together at the

judgmentseat. I fear not to meet thee there. Farewell, 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 Jerusalem.

"Surely, our good brother will be put to bed there! His grave is already dug, and the last occupant has made

"Then excuse me," observed Kenyon; "for I shall leave you. One dead monk has more than sufficed me; and I

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 Miriam's nerves were strained to such a pitch, that she

anticipated a certain solace and absolute relief in passing from one ghastly spectacle to another of

longaccumulated ugliness; and there was, besides, a singular sense of duty which impelled her to look at the

final restingplace of the being whose fate had been so disastrously involved with her own. She therefore

followed the sacristan's guidance, and drew her companion along with her, whispering encouragement as they

The cemetery is beneath the church, but entirely above ground, and lighted by a row of irongrated windows

without glass. A corridor runs along beside 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 consecrated 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 bestowed 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 slumberer there instead. Thus, each of the good friars, in his turn, enjoys the

luxury of a consecrated bed, attended with the slight drawback of being forced to get up long before

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 thighbones

and skulls; the whole material of the structure appears 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 entire skeletons,

looking as if they were wrought most skilfully in basrelief. There is no possibility of describing how ugly

and grotesque is the effect, combined with a certain artistic merit, nor how much perverted 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, purporting 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 indistinguishably into the architectural design, like

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 earthdamps) look out from beneath their

hoods, grinning hideously repulsive. 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 is 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 Capuchins 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 imbued 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, upward 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

Yet let us give the cemetery the praise that it deserves. 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 recess

"Yes, signorina, this is to be the restingplace 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

"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 disturbed,

like weary men who know that they shall be summoned out of bed at midnight. Is it not possible (if money

were to be paid for the privilege) to leave Brother Antonioif that be his namein the occupancy of that

"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 brethren find good

"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 expended in masses for the repose of Father Antonio's soul.

Donatello," said Miriam anxiously, as they came 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 delightful 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 ilextrees; and at each intersection of the paths, the visitor

finds seats of lichencovered stone to repose upon, and marble statues that look forlornly at him, regretful of

their lost noses. In the more open portions of the garden, before the sculptured front of the villa, you see

fountains and flowerbeds, and in their season a profusion of roses, from which the genial sun of Italy distils

But Donatello drew no delight from these things. He walked onward in silent apathy, and looked at Miriam

with strangely halfawakened and bewildered eyes, when she sought to bring his mind into sympathy with

She made him sit down on a stone bench, where two embowered alleys crossed each other; so that they could

"My sweet friend," she said, taking one of his passive hands in both of hers, "what can I say to comfort you?"

"Nothing!" replied Donatello, with sombre reserve. "Nothing will ever comfort me."

"I accept 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

"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 itthat the cloud in

Donatello stirred uneasily, with the irritable impatience that is often combined With a mood of leaden

despondency. A brown lizard with two tailsa monster often engendered by the Roman sunshineran

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. "I have a great weight here!" said he. The fancy struck Miriam (but she drove it resolutely

down) that Donatello almost imperceptibly shuddered, while, in pressing his own hand against his heart, he

"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 selfsacrifice (but it shall be no sacrifice, to my great love) with

"O, speak to me!" she exclaimed. "Only promise me to be, by and by, a little happy!"

"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,

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

With a deep sighas when, sometimes, a slumberer 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 movement and heard that

sigh of relief (for so she interpreted it), a shiver ran through her frame, as if the iciest wind of the Apennines

"He has done himself a greater wrong than I dreamed of," thought she, with unutterable compassion. "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 dreadful murder (and such was his

crime, unless love, annihilating 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 before him with a sad, commiserating aspect; it was the look

of a ruined soul, bewailing, in him, a grief less than what her profounder sympathies imposed upon herself.

"Donatello, we must part," she said, with melancholy 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

"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," replied 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 beautiful; now, it has lost its

charm. Yet it would still retain a miserable potency' to bring back the past illusion, 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 remember you, and behold you, apart from that frightful visage which stares at me over your

"But since that visage haunts you along with mine," rejoined Miriam, glancing behind her, "we needs must

part. Farewell, then! But if everin distress, peril, shame, poverty, or whatever anguish is most poignant,

whatever burden heaviestyou should require a life to be given wholly, only to make your own a little

easier, then summon me! As the case now stands 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 wishalmost an

She stood a moment, expecting a reply. But Donatello's eyes had again fallen on the ground, and he had not,

"That hour I speak of may never come," said Miriam. "So farewellfarewell forever."

His voice hardly made its way through the environment 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

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 lighthearted 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 himself slowly and

left the garden. Sometimes poor Donatello 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

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 moments; 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 courtyard 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 estimation of her whitesouled 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 disturbed mind gave a sinister interpretation. Some of her

friend's airy family, the doves, with their heads imbedded disconsolately in their bosoms, were huddled in a

corner of the piazza; others had alighted on the heads, wings, shoulders, and trumpets of the marble angels

which adorned the facade of the neighboring church; two or three had betaken themselves to the Virgin's

shrine; and as many as could find room were sitting on Hilda's windowsill. 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 windowcurtain was closely drawn, with only that one little aperture at the side,

"Be quiet," said Miriam to her own heart, pressing her hand hard upon it. "Why shouldst thou throb now?

Whatever were her apprehensions, she would not turn back. It might beand the solace would be worth a

worldthat 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

"I will never permit her sweet touch again," said Miriam, toiling up the staircase, "if I can find strength of

heart to forbid it. But, O! it would be so soothing in this wintry feverfit of my heart. There can be no harm

But, on reaching the upper landingplace, Miriam paused, and stirred not again till she had brought herself to

Meanwhile, Hilda sat listlessly in her paintingroom. 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 dosed 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 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

Now, opposite the easel hung a lookingglass, 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 fanciednor was it without horrorthat Beatrice's

expression, seen aside and vanishing in a moment, had been depicted in her own face likewise, and flitted

"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 account

for its unutterable grief and mysterious shadow of guilt, without detracting from the purity which we love to

attribute to that illfated girl. Who, indeed, can look at that mouth,with its lips half apart, as innocent as a

babe's that has been crying, and not pronounce Beatrice sinless? It was the intimate consciousness of her

father's sin that threw its shadow over her, and frightened her into a remote and inaccessible 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 then letting them all vanish successively. In like manner

her mind, so like sunlight in its natural cheerfulness, 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

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

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 the door swung

open, in all the glow of her remarkable beauty. The truth was, her heart leaped conclusively towards the only

refuge that it had, or hoped. She forgot, just one instant, all cause for holding herself aloof. Ordinarily there

was a certain reserve in Miriam's demonstrations of affection, in consonance with the delicacy of her friend.

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 a great chasm

opening itself between them two. They might gaze at one another from the opposite side, but without 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 without violating a

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.

"At least we have been friends," continued Miriam. "I loved you dearly! I love you still! You were to 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

"Yes, the same, the same for you, Hilda," rejoined 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 affection shows itself; and so I speak of them. Yet now, Hilda, your very look

"You, and you only, Hilda," replied Miriam, stirred up to make her own cause good by the repellent force

which her friend opposed to her. "I am a 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, rendering true intercourse

impossible, that can justify either friend in severing the bond. Have I deceived you? Then cast me off! Have I

wronged you personally? Then forgive me, if you can. But, have I sinned against God and man, and deeply

"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 magnetism would be too much for

me. The pure, white atmosphere, 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 heartquake which warns me

"Ah, this is hard! Ah, this is terrible!" murmured 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 perception 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."

"Let it pass," answered Miriam; "I, whose heart it has smitten upon, forgive you. And tell me, before we part

"Do you see it written in my face, or painted in my eyes?" inquired Miriam, her trouble seeking relief in a

halffrenzied raillery. "I would fain know how it is that Providence, or fate, brings eyewitnesses 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 bloodstain on me, or deathscent in my garments? They say that

monstrous deformities sprout out of fiends, who once were lovely angels. Do you perceive such in me

Thus adjured, and frightened by the wild emotion which Miriam could not suppress, Hilda strove to tell what

"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

courtyard 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'sa

look""Yes, Hilda, yes!" exclaimed Miriam, with intense eagerness. "Do not pause now! That look?"

"It revealed all your heart, Miriam," continued Hilda, covering her eyes as if to shut out the recollection; "a

look of hatred, triumph, vengeance, and, as it were, joy at some unhopedfor relief."

"Ah! Donatello was right, then," murmured Miriam, who shook throughout all her frame. "My eyes bade him

"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

"This is a terrible secret to be kept in a young girl's bosom," she observed; "what will you do with it, my poor

"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! O 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

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 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.

"If 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 conscious 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, venomous thing, when you thrust it back again. Have you no other friend, now that

"He cannot be my friend," said Hilda, "becausebecauseI have fancied that he sought to be something

"Fear nothing!" replied Miriam, shaking her head, with a strange smile. "This story will frighten his

newborn love out of its little life, if that be what you wish. Tell him the secret, then, and take his wise and

"I 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, Miriam, 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