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 excellence in art.

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

Anglo-Saxons, 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 of a

marvellous tale.

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 man-demon, 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 hiding-places 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.




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