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Hilda, after giving the last touches to the picture of
Beatrice Cenci, had flown down from her dove-cote, late
in the afternoon, and gone to the Pincian Hill, in the
hope of hearing a strain or two of exhilarating music.
There, as it happened, she met the sculptor; for, to say
the truth, Kenyon had well noted the fair artist's ordinary
way of life, and was accustomed to shape his own movements
so as to bring him often within her sphere.

The Pincian Hill is the favorite promenade of the Roman
aristocracy. At the present day, however, like most
other Roman possessions, it belongs less to the native inhabitants
than to the barbarians from Gaul, Great Britain,
and beyond the sea, who have established a peaceful usurpation
over whatever is enjoyable or memorable in the
Eternal City. These foreign guests are indeed ungrateful,
if they do not breathe a prayer for Pope Clement, or
whatever Holy Father it may have been, who levelled
the summit of the mount so skilfully, and bounded it with
the parapet of the city wall; who laid out those broad
walks and drives, and overhung them with the deepening

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shade of many kinds of tree; who scattered the flowers
of all seasons, and of every clime, abundantly over those
green, central lawns; who scooped out hollows, in fit
places, and setting great basins of marble in them, caused
ever-gushing fountains to fill them to the brim; who
reared up the immermorial obelisk out of the soil that had
long hidden it; who placed pedestals along the borders of
the avenues, and crowned them with busts of that multitude
of worthies — statesmen, heroes, artists, men of letters,
and of song — whom the whole world claims as its
chief ornaments, though Italy produced them all. In a
word, the Pincian garden is one of the things that reconcile
the stranger (since he fully appreciates the enjoyment,
and feels nothing of the cost) to the rule of an
irresponsible dynasty of Holy Fathers, who seem to have
aimed at making life as agreeable an affair as it can well
be.

In this pleasant spot the red-trousered French soldiers
are always to be seen; bearded and grizzled veterans,
perhaps, with medals of Algiers or the Crimea on their
breasts. To them is assigned the peaceful duty of seeing
that children do not trample on the flower-beds, nor any
youthful lover rifle them of their fragrant blossoms to
stick in the beloved one's hair. Here sits (drooping upon
some marble bench, in the treacherous sunshine) the consumptive
girl, whose friends have brought her, for cure,
to a climate that instils poison into its very purest breath.
Here, all day, come nursery-maids, burdened with rosy
English babies, or guiding the footsteps of little travellers
from the far Western world. Here, in the sunny

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afternoons, roll and rumble all kinds of equipages, from the
cardinal's old-fashioned and gorgeous purple carriage to
the gay barouche of modern date. Here horsemen gallop
on thorough-bred steeds. Here, in short, all the transitory
population of Rome, the world's great watering-place,
rides, drives, or promenades! Here are beautiful sunsets;
and here, whichever way you turn your eyes, are
scenes as well worth gazing at, both in themselves and for
their historic interest, as any that the sun ever rose and
set upon. Here, too, on certain afternoons of the week,
a French military band flings out rich music over the
poor old city, floating her with strains as loud as those of
her own echoless triumphs.

Hilda and the sculptor (by the contrivance of the latter,
who loved best to be alone with his young country-woman)
had wandered beyond the throng of promenaders,
whom they left in a dense cluster around the music.
They strayed, indeed, to the farthest point of the Pincian
Hill, and leaned over the parapet, looking down upon the
Muro Torto, a massive fragment of the oldest Roman
wall, which juts over, as if ready to tumble down by its
own weight, yet seems still the most indestructible piece
of work that men's hands ever piled together. In the blue
distance, rose Soracte, and other heights, which have
gleamed afar, to our imaginations, but look scarcely real
to our bodily eyes, because, being dreamed about so much,
they have taken the aërial tints which belong only to a
dream. These, nevertheless, are the solid framework of
hills that shut in Rome, and its wide surrounding Campagna;
no land of dreams, but the broadest page of

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history, crowded so full with memorable events that one
obliterates another; as if Time had crossed and recrossed
his own records till they grew illegible.

But, not to meddle with history — with which our narrative
is no otherwise concerned, than that the very dust
of Rome is historic, and inevitably settles on our page
and mingles with our ink — we will return to our two
friends, who were still leaning over the wall. Beneath
them lay the broad sweep of the Borghese grounds, covered
with trees, amid which appeared the white gleam of
pillars and statues, and the flash of an upspringing fountain,
all to be overshadowed at a later period of the year,
by the thicker growth of foliage.

The advance of vegetation, in this softer climate, is less
abrupt than the inhabitant of the cold North is accustomed
to observe. Beginning earlier — even in February —
Spring is not compelled to burst into Summer with such
headlong haste; there is time to dwell upon each opening
beauty, and to enjoy the budding leaf, the tender green,
the sweet youth and freshness of the year; it gives us its
maiden charm, before settling into the married Summer,
which, again, does not so soon sober itself into matronly
Autumn. In our own country, the virgin Spring hastens
to its bridal too abruptly. But, here, after a month or
two of kindly growth, the leaves of the young trees,
which cover that portion of the Borghese grounds nearest
the city wall, were still in their tender half-development.

In the remoter depths, among the old groves of ilex-trees,
Hilda and Kenyon heard the faint sound of music,

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laughter, and mingling voices. It was probably the uproar—
spreading even so far as the walls of Rome, and
growing faded and melancholy in its passage — of that
wild sylvan merriment, which we have already attempted
to describe. By and by, it ceased; although the two
listeners still tried to distinguish it between the bursts of
nearer music from the military band. But there was no
renewal of that distant mirth. Soon afterwards, they saw
a solitary figure, advancing along one of the paths that
lead from the obscurer part of the grounds, towards the
gateway.

“Look! is it not Donatello?” said Hilda.

“He it is, beyond a doubt,” replied the sculptor. “But
how gravely he walks, and with what long looks behind
him! He seems either very weary, or very sad. I
should not hesitate to call it sadness, if Donatello were a
creature capable of the sin and folly of low spirits. In
all these hundred paces, while we have been watching
him, he has not made one of those little caprioles in the
air, which are a characteristic of his natural gait. I
begin to doubt whether he is a veritable Faun.”

“Then,” said Hilda, with perfect simplicity, “you have
thought him — and do think him — one of that strange,
wild, happy race of creatures, that used to laugh and
sport in the woods, in the old, old times? So do I, indeed!
But I never quite believed, till now, that fauns
existed anywhere but in poetry.”

The sculptor at first merely smiled. Then, as the idea
took further possession of his mind, he laughed outright,
and wished from the bottom of his heart (being in love

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with Hilda, though he had never told her so) that he
could have rewarded or punished her for its pretty absurdity
with a kiss.

“Oh, Hilda, what a treasure of sweet faith and pure
imagination you hide under that little straw hat!” cried
he, at length. “A Faun! a Faun! Great Pan is not
dead, then, after all! The whole tribe of mythical creatures
yet live in the moonlit seclusion of a young girl's
fancy, and find it a lovelier abode and play-place, I doubt
not, than their Arcadian haunts of yore. What bliss, if
a man of marble, like myself, could stray thither too!”

“Why do you laugh so?” asked Hilda, reddening; for
she was a little disturbed at Kenyon's ridicule, however
kindly expressed. “What can I have said, that you think
so very foolish?”

“Well, not foolish, then,” rejoined the sculptor, “but
wiser, it may be, than I can fathom. Really, however,
the idea does strike one as delightfully fresh, when we
consider Donatello's position and external environment.
Why, my dear Hilda, he is a Tuscan born, of an old
noble race in that part of Italy; and he has a moss-grown
tower among the Apennines, where he and his forefathers
have dwelt, under their own vines and fig-trees,
from an unknown antiquity. His boyish passion for
Miriam has introduced him familiarly to our little circle;
and our republican and artistic simplicity of intercourse has
included this young Italian, on the same terms as one of
ourselves. But, if we paid due respect to rank and title,
we should bend reverentially to Donatello, and salute him
as his Excellency the Count di Monte Beni.”

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“That is a droll idea — much droller than his being a
Faun!” said Hilda, laughing in her turn. “This does
not quite satisfy me, however, especially as you yourself
recognized and acknowledged his wonderful resemblance
to the statue.”

“Except as regards the pointed ears,” said Kenyon;
adding, aside — “and one other little peculiarity, generally
observable in the statues of fauns.”

“As for his Excellency the Count di Monte Beni's
ears,” replied Hilda, smiling again at the dignity with
which this title invested their playful friend, “you know
we could never see their shape, on account of his clustering
curls. Nay, I remember, he once started back, as
shyly as a wild deer, when Miriam made a pretence of
examining them. How do you explain that?”

“Oh, I certainly shall not contend against such a weight
of evidence; the fact of his faunship being otherwise so
probable,” answered the sculptor, still hardly retaining his
gravity. “Faun or not, Donatello — or the Count di
Monte Beni — is a singularly wild creature, and as I
have remarked on other occasions, though very gentle,
does not love to be touched. Speaking in no harsh sense,
there is a great deal of animal nature in him, as if he had
been born in the woods, and had run wild all his childhood,
and were as yet but imperfectly domesticated.
Life, even in our day, is very simple and unsophisticated
in some of the shaggy nooks of the Apennines.”

“It annoys me very much,” said Hilda, “this inclination,
which most people have, to explain away the wonder
and the mystery out of everything. Why could not

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you allow me — and yourself, too — the satisfaction of
thinking him a Faun?”

“Pray keep your belief, dear Hilda, if it makes you
any happier,” said the sculptor; “and I shall do my best
to become a convert. Donatello has asked me to spend
the summer with him, in his ancestral tower, where I purpose
investigating the pedigree of these sylvan counts,
his forefathers; and if their shadows beckon me into
dreamland, I shall willingly follow. By the by, speaking
of Donatello, there is a point on which I should like to
be enlightened.”

“Can I help you, then?” said Hilda, in answer to his
look.

“Is there the slightest chance of his winning Miriam's
affections?” suggested Kenyon.

“Miriam! she, so accomplished and gifted!” exclaimed
Hilda — “and he, a rude, uncultivated boy! No, no,
no!”

“It would seem impossible,” said the sculptor. “But,
on the other hand, a gifted woman flings away her affections
so unaccountably, sometimes! Miriam, of late, has
been very morbid and miserable, as we both know.
Young as she is, the morning light seems already to have
faded out of her life; and now comes Donatello, with
natural sunshine enough for himself and her, and offers
her the opportunity of making her heart and life all new
and cheery again. People of high intellectual endowments
do not require similar ones in those they love.
They are just the persons to appreciate the wholesome
gush of natural feeling, the honest affection, the simple

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joy, the fulness of contentment with what he loves, which
Miriam sees in Donatello. True; she may call him a
simpleton. It is a necessity of the case; for a man loses
the capacity for this kind of affection, in proportion as he
cultivates and refines himself.”

“Dear me!” said Hilda, drawing imperceptibly away
from her companion. “Is this the penalty of refinement?
Pardon me; I do not believe it. It is because you are a
sculptor, that you think nothing can be finely wrought,
except it be cold and hard, like the marble in which your
ideas take shape. I am a painter, and know that the
most delicate beauty may be softened and warmed throughout.”

“I said a foolish thing, indeed,” answered the sculptor.
“It surprises me, for I might have drawn a wiser knowledge
out of my own experience. It is the surest test of
genuine love, that it brings back our early simplicity to
the worldliest of us.”

Thus talking, they loitered slowly along beside the parapet
which borders the level summit of the Pincian with
its irregular sweep. At intervals they looked through
the lattice-work of their thoughts at the varied prospects
that lay before and beneath them.

From the terrace where they now stood there is an
abrupt descent towards the Piazza del Popolo; and looking
down into its broad space they beheld the tall palatial
edifices, the church-domes, and the ornamented gateway,
which grew and were consolidated out of the thought of
Michael Angelo. They saw, too, the red granite obelisk,
oldest of things, even in Rome, which rises in the centre

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of the piazza, with a fourfold fountain at its base. All
Roman works and ruins (whether of the empire, the far-off
republic, or the still more distant kings) assume a
transient, visionary, and impalpable character when we
think that this indestructible monument supplied one of
the recollections which Moses and the Israelites bore
from Egypt into the desert. Perchance, on beholding the
cloudy pillar and the fiery column, they whispered awe-stricken
to one another, “In its shape it is like that old
obelisk which we and our fathers have so often seen on
the borders of the Nile.” And now that very obelisk,
with hardly a trace of decay upon it, is the first thing
that the modern traveller sees after entering the Flaminian
Gate!

Lifting their eyes, Hilda and her companion gazed
westward, and saw beyond the invisible Tiber the Castle
of St. Angelo; that immense tomb of a pagan emperor,
with the archangel at its summit.

Still farther off appeared a mighty pile of buildings,
surmounted by the vast dome, which all of us have
shaped and swelled outward, like a huge bubble, to the
utmost scope of our imaginations, long before we see it
floating over the worship of the city. It may be most
worthily seen from precisely the point where our two
friends were now standing. At any nearer view the
grandeur of St. Peter's hides itself behind the immensity
of its separate parts, so that we see only the front, only
the sides, only the pillared length and loftiness of the
portico, and not the mighty whole. But at this distance
the entire outline of the world's cathedral, as well as that

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of the palace of the world's chief priest, is taken in at
once. In such remoteness, moreover, the imagination is
not debarred from lending its assistance, even while we
have the reality before our eyes, and helping the weakness
of human sense to do justice to so grand an object.
It requires both faith and fancy to enable us to feel, what
is nevertheless so true, that yonder, in front of the purple
outline of hills, is the grandest edifice ever built by man,
painted against God's loveliest sky.

After contemplating a little while a scene which their
long residence in Rome had made familiar to them, Kenyon
and Hilda again let their glances fall into the piazza
at their feet. They there beheld Miriam, who had just
entered the Porta del Popolo, and was standing by the
obelisk and fountain. With a gesture that impressed
Kenyon as at once suppliant and imperious, she seemed
to intimate to a figure which had attended her thus far,
that it was now her desire to be left alone. The pertinacious
model, however, remained immovable.

And the sculptor here noted a circumstance, which, according
to the interpretation he might put upon it, was
either too trivial to be mentioned, or else so mysteriously
significant that he found it difficult to believe his eyes.
Miriam knelt down on the steps of the fountain; so far
there could be no question of the fact. To other observers,
if any there were, she probably appeared to take this
attitude merely for the convenience of dipping her fingers
into the gush of water from the mouth of one of the
stone lions. But as she clasped her hands together after
thus bathing them, and glanced upward at the model, an

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idea took strong possession of Kenyon's mind that Miriam
was kneeling to this dark follower there in the world's
face!

“Do you see it?” he said to Hilda.

“See what?” asked she, surprised at the emotion of
his tone. “I see Miriam, who has just bathed her hands
in that delightfully cool water. I often dip my fingers
into a Roman fountain, and think of the brook that used
to be one of my playmates in my New England village.”

“I fancied I saw something else,” said Kenyon; “but
it was doubtless a mistake.”

But, allowing that he had caught a true glimpse into
the hidden significance of Miriam's gesture, what a terrible
thraldom did it suggest! Free as she seemed to be—
beggar as he looked — the nameless vagrant must then
be dragging the beautiful Miriam through the streets of
Rome, fettered and shackled more cruelly than any captive
queen of yore following in an emperor's triumph.
And was it conceivable that she would have been thus
enthralled unless some great error — how great Kenyon
dared not think — or some fatal weakness had given this
dark adversary a vantage-ground?

“Hilda,” said he, abruptly, “who and what is Miriam?
Pardon me; but are you sure of her?”

“Sure of her!” repeated Hilda, with an angry blush,
for her friend's sake. “I am sure that she is kind, good,
and generous; a true and faithful friend, whom I love
dearly, and who loves me as well! What more than this
need I be sure of?”

“And your delicate instincts say all this in her favor?

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— nothing against her?” continued the sculptor, without
heeding the irritation of Hilda's tone. “These are my
own impressions, too. But she is such a mystery! We do
not even know whether she is a country woman of ours, or
an Englishwoman, or a German. There is Anglo-Saxon
blood in her veins, one would say, and a right English
accent on her tongue, but much that is not English breeding,
nor American. Nowhere else but in Rome, and as an
artist, could she hold a place in society without giving
some clue to her past life.”

“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.

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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, besides 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 mediæval, though built, indeed, of the massive
old stones and indestructible bricks of imperial Rome;
for the ruin of the Coliseum, the Golden House, and innumerable
temples of Roman gods, and mansions of
Cæsars 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

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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.

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

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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.”

“Farewell, then,” said the sculptor. “Dear Hilda,
this is a perplexed and troubled world! It soothes me

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inexpressibly to think of you in your tower, with white
doves and white thoughts for your companions, so high
above us all, and with the Virgin for your household
friend. You know not how far it throws its light, that
lamp, which you keep burning at her shrine! I passed
beneath the tower last night, and the ray cheered me —
because you lighted it.”

“It has for me a religious significance,” replied Hilda,
quietly, “and yet I am no Catholic.”

They parted, and Kenyon made haste along the Via
Sistina, in the hope of overtaking the model, whose
haunts and character he was anxious to investigate, for
Miriam's sake. He fancied that he saw him a long way
in advance, but before he reached the Fountain of the
Triton, the dusky figure had vanished.