The Marble Faun Volume 1 - Page 65/130

"I love her dearly," said Hilda, still with displeasure in her tone,

"and trust her most entirely."

"My heart trusts her at least, whatever my head may do," replied Kenyon;

"and Rome is not like one of our New England villages, where we need the

permission of each individual neighbor for every act that we do, every

word that we utter, and every friend that we make or keep. In these

particulars the papal despotism allows us freer breath than our native

air; and if we like to take generous views of our associates, we can do

so, to a reasonable extent, without ruining ourselves."

"The music has ceased," said Hilda; "I am going now."

There are three streets that, beginning close beside each other, diverge

from the Piazza del Popolo towards the heart of Rome: on the left, the

Via del Babuino; on the right, the Via della Ripetta; and between these

two that world-famous avenue, the Corso. It appeared that Miriam and her

strange companion were passing up the first mentioned of these three,

and were soon hidden from Hilda and the sculptor.

The two latter left the Pincian by the broad and stately walk that

skirts along its brow. Beneath them, from the base of the abrupt

descent, the city spread wide away in a close contiguity of red-earthen

roofs, above which rose eminent the domes of a hundred churches, beside

here and there a tower, and the upper windows of some taller or higher

situated palace, looking down on a multitude of palatial abodes. At a

distance, ascending out of the central mass of edifices, they could see

the top of the Antonine column, and near it the circular roof of the

Pantheon looking heavenward with its ever-open eye.

Except these two objects, almost everything that they beheld was

mediaeval, though built, indeed, of the massive old stones and

indestructible bricks of imperial Rome; for the ruins of the Coliseum,

the Golden House, and innumerable temples of Roman gods, and mansions of

Caesars and senators, had supplied the material for all those gigantic

hovels, and their walls were cemented with mortar of inestimable cost,

being made of precious antique statues, burnt long ago for this petty

purpose.

Rome, as it now exists, has grown up under the Popes, and seems like

nothing but a heap of broken rubbish, thrown into the great chasm

between our own days and the Empire, merely to fill it up; and, for the

better part of two thousand years, its annals of obscure policies,

and wars, and continually recurring misfortunes, seem also but broken

rubbish, as compared with its classic history.

If we consider the present city as at all connected with the famous one

of old, it is only because we find it built over its grave. A depth of

thirty feet of soil has covered up the Rome of ancient days, so that it

lies like the dead corpse of a giant, decaying for centuries, with no

survivor mighty enough even to bury it, until the dust of all those

years has gathered slowly over its recumbent form and made a casual

sepulchre.