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The Church of the Capuchins (where, as the reader
may remember, some of our acquaintances had made an
engagement to meet) stands a little aside from the Piazza
Barberini. Thither, at the hour agreed upon on the
morning after the scenes last described, Miriam and Donatello
directed their steps. At no time are people so
sedulously careful to keep their trifling appointments,
attend to their ordinary occupations, and thus put a commonplace
aspect on life, as when conscious of some secret
that if suspected would make them look monstrous in the
general eye.

Yet how tame and wearisome is the impression of all
ordinary things in the contrast with such a fact! How
sick and tremulous, the next morning, is the spirit that
has dared so much, only the night before! How icy cold
is the heart, when the fervor, the wild ecstasy of passion
has faded away, and sunk down among the dead ashes of
the fire that blazed so fiercely, and was fed by the very
substance of its life! How faintly does the criminal stagger
onward, lacking the impulse of that strong madness

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that hurried him into guilt, and treacherously deserts him
in the midst of it!

When Miriam and Donatello drew near the church,
they found only Kenyon awaiting them on the steps.
Hilda had likewise promised to be of the party, but had
not yet appeared. Meeting the sculptor, Miriam put a
force upon herself and succeeded in creating an artificial
flow of spirits, which to any but the nicest observation
was quite as effective as a natural one. She spoke sympathizingly
to the sculptor on the subject of Hilda's absence,
and somewhat annoyed him by alluding in Donatello's
hearing to an attachment which had never been
openly avowed, though perhaps plainly enough betrayed.
He fancied that Miriam did not quite recognize the limits
of the strictest delicacy; he even went so far as to generalize,
and conclude within himself that this deficiency is
a more general failing in woman than in man, the highest
refinement being a masculine attribute.

But the idea was unjust to the sex at large, and especially
so to this poor Miriam, who was hardly responsible
for her frantic efforts to be gay. Possibly, moreover,
the nice action of the mind is set ajar by any
violent shock as of great misfortune or great crime, so
that the finer perceptions may be blurred thenceforth,
and the effect be traceable in all the minutest conduct
of life.

“Did you see anything of the dear child after you left
us?” asked Miriam, still keeping Hilda as her topic of
conversation. “I missed her sadly on my way homeward;
for nothing insures me such delightful and

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innocent dreams (I have experienced it twenty times) as a
talk late in the evening with Hilda.”

“So I should imagine,” said the sculptor, gravely;
“but it is an advantage that I have little or no opportunity
of enjoying. I know not what became of Hilda
after my parting from you. She was not especially my
companion in any part of our walk. The last I saw of
her she was hastening back to rejoin you in the courtyard
of the Palazzo Caffarelli.”

“Impossible!” cried Miriam, starting.

“Then did you not see her again?” inquired Kenyon,
in some alarm.

“Not there,” answered Miriam, quietly; “indeed, I
followed pretty closely on the heels of the rest of the
party. But do not be alarmed on Hilda's account; the
Virgin is bound to watch over the good child, for the sake
of the piety with which she keeps the lamp alight at her
shrine. And, besides, I have always felt that Hilda is
just as safe in these evil streets of Rome as her white
doves when they fly downwards from the tower-top, and
run to and fro among the horses' feet. There is certainly
a providence or purpose for Hilda, if for no other human
creature.”

“I religiously believe it,” rejoined the sculptor; “and
yet my mind would be the easier, if I knew that she had
returned safely to her tower.”

“Then make yourself quite easy,” answered Miriam.
“I saw her (and it is the last sweet sight that I remember)
leaning from her window midway between earth
and sky!”

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Kenyon now looked at Donatello.

“You seem out of spirits, my dear friend,” he observed.
“This languid Roman atmosphere is not the
airy wine that you were accustomed to breathe at home.
I have not forgotten your hospitable invitation to meet
you this summer at your castle among the Apennines.
It is my fixed purpose to come, I assure you. We shall
both be the better for some deep draughts of the mountain-breezes.”

“It may be,” said Donatello, with unwonted sombreness;
“the old house seemed joyous when I was a child.
But as I remember it now it was a grim place, too.”

The sculptor looked more attentively at the young man,
and was surprised and alarmed to observe how entirely
the fine, fresh glow of animal spirits had departed out of
his face. Hitherto, moreover, even while he was standing
perfectly still, there had been a kind of possible gambol
indicated in his aspect. It was quite gone now. All
his youthful gayety, and with it his simplicity of manner,
was eclipsed, if not utterly extinct.

“You are surely ill, my dear fellow,” exclaimed Kenyon.

“Am I? Perhaps so,” said Donatello, indifferently;
“I never have been ill, and know not what it may be.”

“Do not make the poor lad fancy-sick,” whispered
Miriam, pulling the sculptor's sleeve. “He is of a nature
to lie down and die at once, if he finds himself drawing
such melancholy breaths as we ordinary people are
enforced to burden our lungs withal. But we must get
him away from this old, dreamy, and dreary Rome, where

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nobody but himself ever thought of being gay. Its influences
are too heavy to sustain the life of such a creature.”

The above conversation had passed chiefly on the steps
of the Cappuccini; and, having said so much, Miriam
lifted the leathern curtain that hangs before all church
doors in Italy.

“Hilda has forgotten her appointment,” she observed,
“or else her maiden slumbers are very sound this morning.
We will wait for her no longer.”

They entered the nave. The interior of the church
was of moderate compass, but of good architecture, with
a vaulted roof over the nave, and a row of dusky chapels
on either side of it instead of the customary side-aisles.
Each chapel had its saintly shrine, hung round with offerings;
its picture above the altar, although closely veiled,
if by any painter of renown; and its hallowed tapers,
burning continually, to set alight the devotion of the worshippers.
The pavement of the nave was chiefly of
marble, and looked old and broken, and was shabbily
patched here and there with tiles of brick; it was inlaid,
moreover, with tombstones of the mediæval taste, on
which were quaintly sculptured borders, figures, and portraits
in bas-relief, and Latin epitaphs, now grown illegible
by the tread of footsteps over them. The church
appertains to a convent of Capuchin monks; and, as
usually happens when a reverend brotherhood have such
an edifice in charge, the floor seemed never to have been
scrubbed or swept, and had as little the aspect of sanctity
as a kennel; whereas, in all churches of nunneries,

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the maiden sisterhood invariably show the purity of their
own hearts by the virgin cleanliness and visible consecration
of the walls and pavement.

As our friends entered the church, their eyes rested at
once on a remarkable object in the centre of the nave.
It was either the actual body, or, as might rather have
been supposed at first glance, the cunningly wrought
waxen face and suitably draped figure of a dead monk.
This image of wax or clay-cold reality, whichever it
might be, lay on a slightly elevated bier, with three tall
candles burning on each side, another tall candle at the
head, and another at the foot. There was music, too, in
harmony with so funereal a spectacle. From beneath the
pavement of the church came the deep, lugubrious strain
of a De Profundis, which sounded like an utterance of
the tomb itself; so dismally did it rumble through the
burial-vaults, and ooze up among the flat gravestones and
sad epitaphs, filling the church as with a gloomy mist.

“I must look more closely at that dead monk before
we leave the church,” remarked the sculptor. “In the
study of my art, I have gained many a hint from the
dead, which the living could never have given me.”

“I can well imagine it,” answered Miriam. “One clay
image is readily copied from another. But let us first
see Guido's picture. The light is favorable now.”

Accordingly, they turned into the first chapel on the
right hand, as you enter the nave; and there they beheld—
not the picture, indeed — but a closely drawn curtain.
The churchmen of Italy make no scruple of sacrificing
the very purpose for which a work of sacred art has been

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created; that of opening the way for religious sentiment
through the quick medium of sight, by bringing angels,
saints, and martyrs, down visibly upon earth; of sacrificing
this high purpose, and, for aught they know, the welfare
of many souls along with it, to the hope of a paltry
fee. Every work by an artist of celebrity is hidden
behind a veil, and seldom revealed, except to Protestants,
who scorn it as an object of devotion, and value
it only for its artistic merit.

The sacristan was quickly found, however, and lost no
time in disclosing the youthful Archangel, setting his
divine foot on the head of his fallen adversary. It was
an image of that greatest of future events, which we hope
for so ardently, — at least, while we are young, — but
find so very long in coming, — the triumph of goodness
over the evil principle.

“Where can Hilda be?” exclaimed Kenyon. “It is
not her custom ever to fail in an engagement; and the
present one was made entirely on her account. Except
herself, you know, we were all agreed in our recollection
of the picture.”

“But we were wrong, and Hilda right, as you perceive,”
said Miriam, directing his attention to the point on which
their dispute of the night before had arisen. “It is not
easy to detect her astray, as regards any picture on which
those clear, soft eyes of hers have ever rested.”

“And she has studied and admired few pictures so
much as this,” observed the sculptor. “No wonder; for
there is hardly another so beautiful in the world. What
an expression of heavenly severity in the Archangel's

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face! There is a degree of pain, trouble, and disgust at
being brought in contact with sin, even for the purpose
of quelling and punishing it; and yet a celestial tranquillity
pervades his whole being.”

“I have never been able,” said Miriam, “to admire
this picture nearly so much as Hilda does, in its moral
and intellectual aspect. If it cost her more trouble to be
good, if her soul were less white and pure, she would be
a more competent critic of this picture, and would estimate
it not half so high. I see its defects to-day more
clearly than ever before.”

“What are some of them?” asked Kenyon.

“That Archangel, now,” Miriam continued; “how fair
he looks, with his unruffled wings, with his unhacked
sword, and clad in his bright armor, and that exquisitely
fitting sky-blue tunic, cut in the latest Paradisiacal mode!
What a dainty air of the first celestial society! With
what half-scornful delicacy he sets his prettily sandalled
foot on the head of his prostrate foe! But, is it thus that
virtue looks, the moment after its death-struggle with
evil? No, no; I could have told Guido better. A full
third of the Archangel's feathers should have been torn
from his wings; the rest all ruffled, till they looked like
Satan's own! His sword should be streaming with blood,
and perhaps broken half way to the hilt; his armor
crushed, his robes rent, his breast gory; a bleeding gash
on his brow, cutting right across the stern scowl of battle!
He should press his foot hard down upon the old
serpent, as if his very soul depended upon it, feeling him
squirm mightily, and doubting whether the fight were

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half over yet, and how the victory might turn! And,
with all this fierceness, this grimness, this unutterable
horror, there should still be something high, tender, and
holy, in Michael's eyes, and around his mouth. But the
battle never was such child's play as Guido's dapper
Archangel seems to have found it.”

“For Heaven's sake, Miriam,” cried Kenyon, astonished
at the wild energy of her talk; “paint the picture of
man's struggle against sin according to your own idea!
I think it will be a masterpiece.”

“The picture would have its share of truth, I assure
you,” she answered; “but I am sadly afraid the victory
would fall on the wrong side. Just fancy a smoke-blackened,
fiery-eyed demon, bestriding that nice young angel,
clutching his white throat with one of his hinder claws;
and giving a triumphant whisk of his scaly tail, with a
poisonous dart at the end of it! That is what they risk,
poor souls, who do battle with Michael's enemy.”

It now, perhaps, struck Miriam that her mental disquietude
was impelling her to an undue vivacity; for she
paused, and turned away from the picture, without saying
a word more about it. All this while, moreover, Donatello
had been very ill at ease, casting awe-stricken and
inquiring glances at the dead monk; as if he could look
nowhere but at that ghastly object, merely because it
shocked him. Death has probably a peculiar horror and
ugliness, when forced upon the contemplation of a person
so naturally joyous as Donatello, who lived with completeness
in the present moment, and was able to form but
vague images of the future.

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“What is the matter, Donatello?” whispered Miriam,
soothingly. “You are quite in a tremble, my poor friend!
What is it?”

“This awful chant from beneath the church,” answered
Donatello; “it oppresses me; the air is so heavy with it
that I can scarcely draw my breath. And yonder dead
monk! I feel as if he were lying right across my heart.”

“Take courage!” whispered she again, “come; we
will approach close to the dead monk. The only way, in
such cases, is to stare the ugly horror right in the face;
never a side-long glance, nor a half-look, for those are
what show a frightful thing in its frightfullest aspect.
Lean on me, dearest friend! My heart is very strong
for both of us. Be brave; and all is well.”

Donatello hung back for a moment, but then pressed
close to Miriam's side, and suffered her to lead him up to
the bier. The sculptor followed. A number of persons,
chiefly women, with several children among them, were
standing about the corpse; and as our three friends drew
nigh, a mother knelt down, and caused her little boy to
kneel, both kissing the beads and crucifix that hung from
the monk's girdle. Possibly he had died in the odor of
sanctity; or, at all events, death and his brown frock and
cowl made a sacred image of this reverend father.

p576-236

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