The Marble Faun Volume 1 - Page 66/130

We know not how to characterize, in any accordant and compatible

terms, the Rome that lies before us; its sunless alleys, and streets

of palaces; its churches, lined with the gorgeous marbles that were

originally polished for the adornment of pagan temples; its thousands of

evil smells, mixed up with fragrance of rich incense, diffused from as

many censers; its little life, deriving feeble nutriment from what

has long been dead. Everywhere, some fragment of ruin suggesting the

magnificence of a former epoch; everywhere, moreover, a Cross,--and

nastiness at the foot of it. As the sum of all, there are recollections

that kindle the soul, and a gloom and languor that depress it beyond any

depth of melancholic sentiment that can be elsewhere known.

Yet how is it possible to say an unkind or irreverential word of Rome?

The city of all time, and of all the world! The spot for which man's

great life and deeds have done so much, and for which decay has done

whatever glory and dominion could not do! At this moment, the evening

sunshine is flinging its golden mantle over it, making all that we

thought mean magnificent; the bells of all the churches suddenly ring

out, as if it were a peal of triumph because Rome is still imperial.

"I sometimes fancy," said Hilda, on whose susceptibility the scene

always made a strong impression, "that Rome--mere Rome--will crowd

everything else out of my heart."

"Heaven forbid!" ejaculated the sculptor. They had now reached the grand

stairs that ascend from the Piazza di Spagna to the hither brow of the

Pincian Hill. Old Beppo, the millionnaire of his ragged fraternity,

it is a wonder that no artist paints him as the cripple whom St. Peter

heals at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple,--was just mounting his donkey

to depart, laden with the rich spoil of the day's beggary.

Up the stairs, drawing his tattered cloak about his face, came the

model, at whom Beppo looked askance, jealous of an encroacher on his

rightful domain. The figure passed away, however, up the Via Sistina. In

the piazza below, near the foot of the magnificent steps, stood Miriam,

with her eyes bent on the ground, as if she were counting those

little, square, uncomfortable paving-stones, that make it a penitential

pilgrimage to walk in Rome. She kept this attitude for several minutes,

and when, at last, the importunities of a beggar disturbed her from it,

she seemed bewildered and pressed her hand upon her brow.

"She has been in some sad dream or other, poor thing!" said Kenyon

sympathizingly; "and even now she is imprisoned there in a kind of cage,

the iron bars of which are made of her own thoughts."

"I fear she is not well," said Hilda. "I am going down the stairs, and

will join Miriam."