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Miriam's model has so important a connection with
our story, that it is essential to describe the singular mode
of his first appearance, and how he subsequently became
a self-appointed follower of the young female artist. In
the first place, however, we must devote a page or two to
certain peculiarities in the position of Miriam herself.

There was an ambiguity about this young lady, which,
though it did not necessarily imply anything wrong, would
have operated unfavorably as regarded her reception in
society, anywhere but in Rome. The truth was, that nobody
knew anything about Miriam, either for good or evil.
She had made her appearance without introduction, had
taken a studio, put her card upon the door, and showed
very considerable talent as a painter in oils. Her fellow-professors
of the brush, it is true, showered abundant
criticisms upon her pictures, allowing them to be well
enough for the idle half-efforts of an amateur, but lacking
both the trained skill and the practice that distinguish the
works of a true artist.

Nevertheless, be their faults what they might, Miriam's

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pictures met with good acceptance among the patrons of
modern art. Whatever technical merit they lacked, its
absence was more than supplied by a warmth and passionateness,
which she had the faculty of putting into her
productions, and which all the world could feel. Her
nature had a great deal of color, and, in accordance with
it, so likewise had her pictures.

Miriam had great apparent freedom of intercourse;
her manners were so far from evincing shyness, that it
seemed easy to become acquainted with her, and not difficult
to develop a casual acquaintance into intimacy.
Such, at least, was the impression which she made, upon
brief contact, but not such the ultimate conclusion of those
who really sought to know her. So airy, free, and affable
was Miriam's deportment towards all who came within
her sphere, that possibly they might never be conscious
of the fact; but so it was, that they did not get on, and
were seldom any farther advanced into her good graces
to-day than yesterday. By some subtle quality, she kept
people at a distance, without so much as letting them
know that they were excluded from her inner circle.
She resembled one of those images of light, which conjurors
evoke and cause to shine before us, in apparent
tangibility, only an arm's length beyond our grasp: we
make a step in advance, expecting to seize the illusion,
but find it still precisely so far out of our reach. Finally,
society began to recognize the impossibility of getting
nearer to Miriam, and gruffly acquiesced.

There were two persons, however, whom she appeared
to acknowledge as friends in the closer and truer sense of

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the word; and both of these more favored individuals did
credit to Miriam's selection. One was a young American
sculptor, of high promise and rapidly increasing celebrity;
the other, a girl of the same country, a painter like Miriam
herself, but in a widely different sphere of art. Her
heart flowed out towards these two; she requited herself
by their society and friendship (and especially by Hilda's)
for all the loneliness with which, as regarded the rest of
the world, she chose to be surrounded. Her two friends
were conscious of the strong, yearning grasp which Miriam
laid upon them, and gave her their affection in full measure;
Hilda, indeed, responding with the fervency of a
girl's first friendship, and Kenyon with a manly regard,
in which there was nothing akin to what is distinctively
called love.

A sort of intimacy subsequently grew up between these
three friends and a fourth individual; it was a young
Italian, who, casually visiting Rome, had been attracted
by the beauty which Miriam possessed in a remarkable
degree. He had sought her, followed her, and insisted,
with simple perseverance, upon being admitted at least to
her acquaintance; a boon which had been granted, when
a more artful character, seeking it by a more subtle mode
of pursuit, would probably have failed to obtain it. This
young man, though anything but intellectually brilliant,
had many agreeable characteristics which won him the
kindly and half-contemptuous regard of Miriam and her
two friends. It was he whom they called Donatello, and
whose wonderful resemblance to the Faun of Praxiteles
forms the key-note of our narrative.

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Such was the position in which we find Miriam some
few months after her establishment at Rome. It must
be added, however, that the world did not permit her to
hide her antecedents without making her the subject of a
good deal of conjecture; as was natural enough, considering
the abundance of her personal charms, and the degree
of notice that she attracted as an artist. There were
many stories about Miriam's origin and previous life,
some of which had a very probable air, while others were
evidently wild and romantic fables. We cite a few, leaving
the reader to designate them either under the probable
or the romantic head.

It was said, for example, that Miriam was the daughter
and heiress of a great Jewish banker, (an idea perhaps
suggested by a certain rich Oriental character in her
face,) and had fled from her paternal home to escape a
union with a cousin, the heir of another of that golden
brotherhood; the object being, to retain their vast accumulation
of wealth within the family. Another story
hinted, that she was a German princess, whom, for reasons
of state, it was proposed to give in marriage either
to a decrepit sovereign, or a prince still in his cradle.
According to a third statement, she was the offspring of a
Southern American planter, who had given her an elaborate
education and endowed her with his wealth; but the
one burning drop of African blood in her veins so affected
her with a sense of ignominy, that she relinquished all,
and fled her country. By still another account she was
the lady of an English nobleman; and, out of mere love
and honor of art, had thrown aside the splendor of her

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rank, and come to seek a subsistence by her pencil in a
Roman studio.

In all the above cases, the fable seemed to be instigated
by the large and bounteous impression which Miriam invariably
made, as if necessity and she could have nothing
to do with one another. Whatever deprivations she underwent
must needs be voluntary. But there were other
surmises, taking such a commonplace view as that Miriam
was the daughter of a merchant or financier, who had
been ruined in a great commercial crisis; and, possessing
a taste for art, she had attempted to support herself by
the pencil, in preference to the alternative of going out as
governess.

Be these things how they might, Miriam, fair as she
looked, was plucked up out of a mystery, and had its
roots still clinging to her. She was a beautiful and attractive
woman, but based, as it were, upon a cloud, and all
surrounded with misty substance; so that the result was
to render her sprite-like in her most ordinary manifestations.
This was the case even in respect to Kenyon and
Hilda, her especial friends. But such was the effect of
Miriam's natural language, her generosity, kindliness, and
native truth of character, that these two received her as a
dear friend into their hearts, taking her good qualities as
evident and genuine, and never imagining that what was
hidden must be therefore evil.

We now proceed with our narrative.

The same party of friends, whom we have seen at the
sculpture gallery of the Capitol, chanced to have gone
together, some months before, to the catacomb of St.

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Calixtus. They went joyously down into that vast tomb,
and wandered by torchlight through a sort of dream, in
which reminiscences of church-aisles and grimy cellars —
and chiefly the latter — seemed to be broken into fragments,
and hopelessly intermingled. The intricate passages
along which they followed their guide had been
hewn, in some forgotten age, out of a dark-red, crumbly
stone. On either side were horizontal niches, where, if
they held their torches closely, the shape of a human
body was discernible in white ashes, into which the entire
mortality of a man or woman had resolved itself. Among
all this extinct dust, there might perchance be a thigh-bone,
which crumbled at a touch; or possibly a skull,
grinning at its own wretched plight, as is the ugly and
empty habit of the thing.

Sometimes their gloomy pathway tended upward, so
that, through a crevice, a little daylight glimmered down
upon them, or even a streak of sunshine peeped into a
burial niche; then again, they went downward by gradual
descent, or by abrupt, rudely hewn steps, into deeper and
deeper recesses of the earth. Here and there the narrow
and tortuous passages widened somewhat, developing
themselves into small chapels; which once, no doubt, had
been adorned with marble-work and lighted with everburning
lamps and tapers. All such illumination and
ornament, however, had long since been extinguished and
stript away; except, indeed, that the low roofs of a few
of these ancient sites of worship were covered with dingy
stucco, and frescoed with scriptural scenes and subjects, in
the dreariest stage of ruin.

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In one such chapel, the guide showed them a low arch,
beneath which the body of St. Cecilia had been buried
after her martyrdom, and where it lay till a sculptor saw
it, and rendered it forever beautiful in marble.

In a similar spot they found two sarcophagi, one containing
a skeleton, and the other a shrivelled body, which
still wore the garments of its former lifetime.

“How dismal all this is!” said Hilda, shuddering. “I
do not know why we came here, nor why we should stay
a moment longer.”

“I hate it all!” cried Donatello, with peculiar energy.
“Dear friends, let us hasten back into the blessed daylight!”

From the first, Donatello had shown little fancy for the
expedition; for, like most Italians, and in especial accordance
with the law of his own simple and physically happy
nature, this young man had an infinite repugnance to
graves and skulls, and to all that ghastliness which the
Gothic mind loves to associate with the idea of death.
He shuddered, and looked fearfully round, drawing nearer
to Miriam, whose attractive influence alone had enticed
him into that gloomy region.

“What a child you are, poor Donatello!” she observed,
with the freedom which she always used towards him.
“You are afraid of ghosts!”

“Yes, signorina; terribly afraid!” said the truthful
Donatello.

“I also believe in ghosts,” answered Miriam, “and
could tremble at them, in a suitable place. But these
sepulchres are so old, and these skulls and white ashes so

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very dry, that methinks they have ceased to be haunted.
The most awful idea connected with the catacombs is
their interminable extent, and the possibility of going
astray into this labyrinth of darkness, which broods
around the little glimmer of our tapers.”

“Has any one ever been lost here?” asked Kenyon
of the guide.

“Surely, signor; one, no longer ago than my father's
time,” said the guide; and he added, with the air of a
man who believed what he was telling, “but the first that
went astray here was a pagan of old Rome, who hid himself
in order to spy out and betray the blessed saints, who
then dwelt and worshipped in these dismal places. You
have heard the story, signor? A miracle was wrought
upon the accursed one; and, ever since (for fifteen centuries
at least), he has been groping in the darkness, seeking
his way out of the catacomb.”

“Has he ever been seen?” asked Hilda, who had
great and tremulous faith in marvels of this kind.

“These eyes of mine never beheld him, signorina; the
saints forbid!” answered the guide. “But it is well
known that he watches near parties that come into the
catacomb, especially if they be heretics, hoping to lead
some straggler astray. What this lost wretch pines for,
almost as much as for the blessed sunshine, is a companion
to be miserable with him.”

“Such an intense desire for sympathy indicates something
amiable in the poor fellow, at all events,” observed
Kenyon.

They had now reached a larger chapel than those

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heretofore seen; it was of a circular shape, and though hewn
out of the solid mass of red sandstone, had pillars, and a
carved roof, and other tokens of a regular architectural
design. Nevertheless, considered as a church, it was exceedingly
minute, being scarcely twice a man's stature in
height, and only two or three paces from wall to wall;
and while their collected torches illuminated this one,
small, consecrated spot, the great darkness spread all
round it, like that immenser mystery which envelops our
little life, and into which friends vanish from us, one by
one.

“Why, where is Miriam?” cried Hilda.

The party gazed hurriedly from face to face, and became
aware that one of their party had vanished into the
great darkness, even while they were shuddering at the
remote possibility of such a misfortune.

p576-046

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