The Marble Faun Volume 1 - Page 113/130

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 over the evil principle.

"Where can Hilda be?" exclaimed Kenyon. "It is not her custom ever to

fail in an engagement; and the present one was made entirely on

her account. Except herself, you know, we were all agreed in our

recollection of the picture."

"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 which those clear, soft eyes of hers have ever rested."

"And she has studied and admired few pictures so much as this," observed

the sculptor. "No wonder; for there is hardly another so beautiful in

the world. What an expression of heavenly severity in the 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 clearly than ever before."

"What are some of them?" asked Kenyon.

"That Archangel, now," Miriam continued; "how fair he looks, with his

unruffled wings, with his unhacked sword, and clad in his bright

armor, and that exquisitely fitting sky-blue tunic, cut in the latest

Paradisiacal mode! What a dainty air of the first celestial society!

With what half-scornful 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."