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."