[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

“Surely, she cannot be lost!” exclaimed Kenyon.
“It is but a moment since she was speaking.”

“No, no!” said Hilda, in great alarm. “She was
behind us all; and it is a long while since we have heard
her voice!”

“Torches! torches!” cried Donatello, desperately. “I
will seek her, be the darkness ever so dismal!”

But the guide held him back, and assured them all,
that there was no possibility of assisting their lost companion,
unless by shouting at the very top of their voices.
As the sound would go very far along these close and
narrow passages, there was a fair probability that Miriam
might hear the call, and be able to retrace her steps.

Accordingly, they all — Kenyon with his bass voice;
Donatello with his tenor; the guide with that high and
hard Italian cry, which makes the streets of Rome so
resonant; and Hilda with her slender scream, piercing
farther than the united uproar of the rest — began to
shriek, halloo, and bellow, with the utmost force of their
lungs. And, not to prolong the reader's suspense, (for we

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

do not particularly seek to interest him in this scene, telling
it only on account of the trouble and strange entanglement
which followed,) they soon heard a responsive
call, in a female voice.

“It was the signorina!” cried Donatello, joyfully.

“Yes; it was certainly dear Miriam's voice,” said
Hilda. “And here she comes! Thank Heaven! Thank
Heaven!”

The figure of their friend was now discernible by her
own torchlight, approaching out of one of the cavernous
passages. Miriam came forward, but not with the eagerness
and tremulous joy of a fearful girl, just rescued from
a labyrinth of gloomy mystery. She made no immediate
response to their inquiries and tumultuous congratulations;
and, as they afterwards remembered, there was
something absorbed, thoughtful, and self-concentrated in
her deportment. She looked pale, as well she might, and
held her torch with a nervous grasp, the tremor of which
was seen in the irregular twinkling of the flame. This
last was the chief perceptible sign of any recent agitation
or alarm.

“Dearest, dearest Miriam,” exclaimed Hilda, throwing
her arms about her friend, “where have you been straying
from us? Blessed be Providence, which has rescued
you out of that miserable darkness!”

“Hush, dear Hilda!” whispered Miriam, with a
strange little laugh. “Are you quite sure that it was
Heaven's guidance which brought me back. If so, it
was by an odd messenger, as you will confess. See;
there he stands.”

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

Startled at Miriam's words and manner, Hilda gazed
into the duskiness whither she pointed, and there beheld
a figure standing just on the doubtful limit of obscurity,
at the threshold of the small, illuminated chapel. Kenyon
discerned him at the same instant, and drew nearer with
his torch; although the guide attempted to dissuade him,
averring that, once beyond the consecrated precincts of
the chapel, the apparition would have power to tear him
limb from limb. It struck the sculptor, however, when
he afterwards recurred to these circumstances, that the
guide manifested no such apprehension on his own account
as he professed on behalf of others; for he kept
pace with Kenyon as the latter approached the figure,
though still endeavoring to restrain him.

In fine, they both drew near enough to get as good a
view of the spectre as the smoky light of their torches,
struggling with the massive gloom, could supply.

The stranger was of exceedingly picturesque, and even
melodramatic aspect. He was clad in a voluminous
cloak, that seemed to be made of a buffalo's hide, and a
pair of those goat-skin breeches, with the hair outward,
which are still commonly worn by the peasants of the
Roman Campagna. In this garb, they look like antique
Satyrs; and, in truth, the Spectre of the Catacomb might
have represented the last survivor of that vanished race,
hiding himself in sepulchral gloom, and mourning over
his lost life of woods and streams.

Furthermore, he had on a broad-brimmed, conical hat,
beneath the shadow of which a wild visage was indistinctly
seen, floating away, as it were, into a dusky

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

wilderness of moustache and beard. His eyes winked, and
turned uneasily from the torches, like a creature to whom
midnight would be more congenial than noonday.

On the whole, the spectre might have made a considerable
impression on the sculptor's nerves, only that he was
in the habit of observing similar figures, almost every
day, reclining on the Spanish steps, and waiting for some
artist to invite them within the magic realm of picture.
Nor, even thus familiarized with the stranger's peculiarities
of appearance, could Kenyon help wondering to see
such a personage, shaping himself so suddenly out of the
void darkness of the catacomb.

“What are you?” said the sculptor, advancing his
torch nearer. “And how long have you been wandering
here?”

“A thousand and five hundred years!” muttered the
guide, loud enough to be heard by all the party. “It is
the old pagan phantom that I told you of, who sought to
betray the blessed saints!”

“Yes; it is a phantom!” cried Donatello, with a shudder.
“Ah, dearest signorina, what fearful thing has
beset you, in those dark corridors!”

“Nonsense, Donatello,” said the sculptor. “The man
is no more a phantom than yourself. The only marvel
is, how he comes to be hiding himself in the catacomb.
Possibly, our guide might solve the riddle.”

The spectre himself here settled the point of his tangibility,
at all events, and physical substance, by approaching
a step nearer, and laying his hand on Kenyon's arm.

“Inquire not what I am, nor wherefore I abide in the

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

darkness,” said he, in a hoarse, harsh voice, as if a great
deal of damp were clustering in his throat. “Henceforth,
I am nothing but a shadow behind her footsteps. She
came to me when I sought her not. She has called me
forth, and must abide the consequences of my reappearance
in the world.”

“Holy Virgin! I wish the signorina joy of her prize,”
said the guide, half to himself. “And in any case, the
catacomb is well rid of him.”

We need follow the scene no farther. 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,

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

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 hidingplaces
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

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

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.

Thenceforth, this heathen Memmius has haunted the
wide and dreary precincts of the catacomb, seeking, as
some say, to beguile new victims into his own misery;
but, according to other statements, endeavoring to prevail
on any unwary visitor to take him by the hand, and guide
him out into the daylight. Should his wiles and entreaties
take effect, however, the man-demon would remain
only a little while above ground. He would gratify his
fiendish malignity by perpetrating signal mischief on his
benefactor, and perhaps bringing some old pestilence or
other forgotten and long-buried evil on society; or, possibly,
teaching the modern world some decayed and dusty
kind of crime, which the antique Romans knew; and
then would hasten back to the catacomb, which, after so
long haunting it, has grown his most congenial home.

Miriam herself, with her chosen friends, the sculptor
and the gentle Hilda, often laughed at the monstrous
fictions that had gone abroad in reference to her adventure.
Her two confidants (for such they were, on all
ordinary subjects) had not failed to ask an explanation of
the mystery, since undeniably a mystery there was, and

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

one sufficiently perplexing itself, without any help from
the imaginative faculty. And, sometimes responding to
their inquiries with a melancholy sort of playfulness,
Miriam let her fancy run off into wilder fables than any
which German ingenuity or Italian superstition had contrived.

For example, with a strange air of seriousness over all
her face, only belied by a laughing gleam in her dark
eyes, she would aver that the spectre (who had been an
artist in his mortal lifetime) had promised to teach her a
long lost, but invaluable secret of old Roman fresco-painting.
The knowledge of this process would place Miriam
at the head of modern art; the sole condition being
agreed upon, that she should return with him into his
sightless gloom, after enriching a certain extent of stuccoed
wall with the most brilliant and lovely designs.
And what true votary of art would not purchase unrivalled
excellence, even at so vast a sacrifice!

Or, if her friends still solicited a soberer account,
Miriam replied, that, meeting the old infidel in one of the
dismal passages of the catacomb, she had entered into
controversy with him, hoping to achieve the glory and
satisfaction of converting him to the Christian faith. For
the sake of so excellent a result, she had even staked her
own salvation against his, binding herself to accompany
him back into his penal gloom, if, within a twelvemonth's
space, she should not have convinced him of the errors
through which he had so long groped and stumbled. But,
alas! up to the present time, the controversy had gone
direfully in favor of the man-demon; and Miriam (as

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

she whispered in Hilda's ear) had awful forebodings, that,
in a few more months, she must take an eternal farewell
of the sun!

It was somewhat remarkable, that all her romantic
fantasies arrived at this selfsame dreary termination; it
appeared impossible for her even to imagine any other
than a disastrous result from her connection with her illomened
attendant.

This singularity might have meant nothing, however,
had it not suggested a despondent state of mind, which
was likewise indicated by many other tokens. Miriam's
friends had no difficulty in perceiving that, in one way or
another, her happiness was very seriously compromised.
Her spirits were often depressed into deep melancholy.
If ever she was gay, it was seldom with a healthy cheerfulness.
She grew moody, moreover, and subject to fits
of passionate ill-temper; which usually wreaked itself on
the heads of those who loved her best. Not that Miriam's
indifferent acquaintances were safe from similar outbreaks
of her displeasure, especially if they ventured upon any
allusion to the model. In such cases, they were left with
little disposition to renew the subject, but inclined, on the
other hand, to interpret the whole matter as much to her
discredit as the least favorable coloring of the facts would
allow.

It may occur to the reader, that there was really no
demand for so much rumor and speculation in regard to
an incident, which might well enough have been explained
without going many steps beyond the limits of
probability. The spectre might have been merely a

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

Roman beggar, whose fraternity often harbor in stranger
shelters than the catacombs; or one of those pilgrims,
who still journey from remote countries to kneel and
worship at the holy sites, among which these haunts of
the early Christians are esteemed especially sacred. Or,
as was perhaps a more plausible theory, he might be a
thief of the city, a robber of the Campagna, a political
offender, or an assassin, with blood upon his hand; whom
the negligence or connivance of the police allowed to take
refuge in those subterranean fastnesses, where such outlaws
have been accustomed to hide themselves from a far
antiquity downward. Or he might have been a lunatic,
fleeing instinctively from man, and making it his dark
pleasure to dwell among the tombs, like him whose awful
cry echoes afar to us from Scripture times.

And, as for the stranger's attaching himself so devotedly
to Miriam, her personal magnetism might be allowed
a certain weight in the explanation. For what remains,
his pertinacity need not seem so very singular to those
who consider how slight a link serves to connect these
vagabonds of idle Italy with any person that may have
the ill-hap to bestow charity, or be otherwise serviceable
to them, or betray the slightest interest in their fortunes.

Thus little would remain to be accounted for, except
the deportment of Miriam herself; her reserve, her
brooding melancholy, her petulance, and moody passion.
If generously interpreted, even these morbid symptoms
might have sufficient cause in the stimulating and exhausting
influences of an imaginative art, exercised by a
delicate young woman, in the nervous and unwholesome

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

atmosphere of Rome. Such, at least, was the view of
the case which Hilda and Kenyon endeavored to impress
on their own minds, and impart to those whom their
opinions might influence.

One of Miriam's friends took the matter sadly to heart.
This was the young Italian. Donatello, as we have seen,
had been an eye-witness of the stranger's first appearance,
and had ever since nourished a singular prejudice
against the mysterious, dusky, death-scented apparition.
It resembled not so much a human dislike or hatred, as
one of those instinctive, unreasoning antipathies which
the lower animals sometimes display, and which generally
prove more trustworthy than the acutest insight into
character. The shadow of the model, always flung into
the light which Miriam diffused around her, caused no
slight trouble to Donatello. Yet he was of a nature so
remarkably genial and joyous, so simply happy, that he
might well afford to have something subtracted from his
comfort, and make tolerable shift to live upon what remained.

p576-057

Previous section

Next section