A FROLIC OF THE CARNIVAL
The crowd and confusion, just at that moment, hindered the sculptor from
pursuing these figures,--the peasant and contadina,--who, indeed, were
but two of a numerous tribe that thronged the Corso, in similar costume.
As soon as he could squeeze a passage, Kenyon tried to follow in their
footsteps, but quickly lost sight of them, and was thrown off the track
by stopping to examine various groups of masqueraders, in which he
fancied the objects of his search to be included. He found many a sallow
peasant or herdsman of the Campagna, in such a dress as Donatello
wore; many a contadina, too, brown, broad, and sturdy, in her finery
of scarlet, and decked out with gold or coral beads, a pair of heavy
earrings, a curiously wrought cameo or mosaic brooch, and a silver comb
or long stiletto among her glossy hair. But those shapes of grace and
beauty which he sought had vanished.
As soon as the procession of the Senator had passed, the merry-makers
resumed their antics with fresh spirit, and the artillery of bouquets
and sugar plums, suspended for a moment, began anew. The sculptor
himself, being probably the most anxious and unquiet spectator there,
was especially a mark for missiles from all quarters, and for the
practical jokes which the license of the Carnival permits. In fact,
his sad and contracted brow so ill accorded with the scene, that the
revellers might be pardoned for thus using him as the butt of their idle
mirth, since he evidently could not otherwise contribute to it.
Fantastic figures, with bulbous heads, the circumference of a bushel,
grinned enormously in his face. Harlequins struck him with their wooden
swords, and appeared to expect his immediate transformation into some
jollier shape. A little, long-tailed, horned fiend sidled up to him and
suddenly blew at him through a tube, enveloping our poor friend in a
whole harvest of winged seeds. A biped, with an ass’s snout, brayed
close to his ear, ending his discordant uproar with a peal of human
laughter. Five strapping damsels--so, at least, their petticoats bespoke
them, in spite of an awful freedom in the flourish of their legs--joined
hands, and danced around him, inviting him by their gestures to perform
a hornpipe in the midst. Released from these gay persecutors, a clown in
motley rapped him on the back with a blown bladder, in which a handful
of dried peas rattled horribly.
Unquestionably, a care-stricken mortal has no business abroad, when
the rest of mankind are at high carnival; they must either pelt him
and absolutely martyr him with jests, and finally bury him beneath the
aggregate heap; or else the potency of his darker mood, because the
tissue of human life takes a sad dye more readily than a gay one, will
quell their holiday humors, like the aspect of a death’s-head at a
banquet. Only that we know Kenyon’s errand, we could hardly forgive him
for venturing into the Corso with that troubled face.
Even yet, his merry martyrdom was not half over. There came along a
gigantic female figure, seven feet high, at least, and taking up a third
of the street’s breadth with the preposterously swelling sphere of
her crinoline skirts. Singling out the sculptor, she began to make a
ponderous assault upon his heart, throwing amorous glances at him out
of her great goggle eyes, offering him a vast bouquet of sunflowers and
nettles, and soliciting his pity by all sorts of pathetic and passionate
dumb-show. Her suit meeting no favor, the rejected Titaness made a
gesture of despair and rage; then suddenly drawing a huge pistol,
she took aim right at the obdurate sculptor’s breast, and pulled the
trigger. The shot took effect, for the abominable plaything went off
by a spring, like a boy’s popgun, covering Kenyon with a cloud of lime
dust, under shelter of which the revengeful damsel strode away.
Hereupon, a whole host of absurd figures surrounded him, pretending
to sympathize in his mishap. Clowns and party-colored harlequins;
orang-outangs; bear-headed, bull-headed, and dog-headed individuals;
faces that would have been human, but for their enormous noses; one
terrific creature, with a visage right in the centre of his breast;
and all other imaginable kinds of monstrosity and exaggeration. These
apparitions appeared to be investigating the case, after the fashion
of a coroner’s jury, poking their pasteboard countenances close to the
sculptor’s with an unchangeable grin, that gave still more ludicrous
effect to the comic alarm and sorrow of their gestures. Just then, a
figure came by, in a gray wig and rusty gown, with an inkhorn at his
buttonhole and a pen behind his ear; he announced himself as a notary,
and offered to make the last will and testament of the assassinated man.
This solemn duty, however, was interrupted by a surgeon, who brandished
a lancet, three feet long, and proposed to him to let him take blood.
The affair was so like a feverish dream, that Kenyon resigned himself to
let it take its course. Fortunately the humors of the Carnival pass from
one absurdity to another, without lingering long enough on any, to wear
out even the slightest of them. The passiveness of his demeanor afforded
too little scope for such broad merriment as the masqueraders sought. In
a few moments they vanished from him, as dreams and spectres do, leaving
him at liberty to pursue his quest, with no impediment except the crowd
that blocked up the footway.
He had not gone far when the peasant and the contadina met him. They
were still hand in hand, and appeared to be straying through the
grotesque and animated scene, taking as little part in it as himself. It
might be because he recognized them, and knew their solemn secret, that
the sculptor fancied a melancholy emotion to be expressed by the very
movement and attitudes of these two figures; and even the grasp of their
hands, uniting them so closely, seemed to set them in a sad remoteness
from the world at which they gazed.
“I rejoice to meet you,” said Kenyon. But they looked at him through the
eye-holes of their black masks, without answering a word.
“Pray give me a little light on the matter which I have so much at
heart,” said he; “if you know anything of Hilda, for Heaven’s sake,
speak!”
Still they were silent; and the sculptor began to imagine that he
must have mistaken the identity of these figures, there being such a
multitude in similar costume. Yet there was no other Donatello, no other
Miriam. He felt, too, that spiritual certainty which impresses us with
the presence of our friends, apart from any testimony of the senses.
“You are unkind,” resumed he,--“knowing the anxiety which oppresses me,
--not to relieve it, if in your power.”
The reproach evidently had its effect; for the contadina now spoke, and
it was Miriam’s voice.
“We gave you all the light we could,” said she. “You are yourself
unkind, though you little think how much so, to come between us at this
hour. There may be a sacred hour, even in carnival time.”
In another state of mind, Kenyon could have been amused by the
impulsiveness of this response, and a sort of vivacity that he had
often noted in Miriam’s conversation. But he was conscious of a profound
sadness in her tone, overpowering its momentary irritation, and assuring
him that a pale, tear-stained face was hidden behind her mask.
“Forgive me!” said he.
Donatello here extended his hand,--not that which was clasping
Miriam’s,--and she, too, put her free one into the sculptor’s left; so
that they were a linked circle of three, with many reminiscences and
forebodings flashing through their hearts. Kenyon knew intuitively that
these once familiar friends were parting with him now.
“Farewell!” they all three said, in the same breath.
No sooner was the word spoken, than they loosed their hands; and the
uproar of the Carnival swept like a tempestuous sea over the spot which
they had included within their small circle of isolated feeling.
By this interview, the sculptor had learned nothing in reference to
Hilda; but he understood that he was to adhere to the instructions
already received, and await a solution of the mystery in some mode
that he could not yet anticipate. Passing his hands over his eyes, and
looking about him,--for the event just described had made the scene even
more dreamlike than before,--he now found himself approaching that broad
piazza bordering on the Corso, which has for its central object the
sculptured column of Antoninus. It was not far from this vicinity
that Miriam had bid him wait. Struggling onward as fast as the tide of
merrymakers, setting strong against him, would permit, he was now beyond
the Palazzo Colonna, and began to count the houses. The fifth was a
palace, with a long front upon the Corso, and of stately height, but
somewhat grim with age.
Over its arched and pillared entrance there was a balcony, richly hung
with tapestry and damask, and tenanted, for the time, by a gentleman of
venerable aspect and a group of ladies. The white hair and whiskers of
the former, and the winter roses in his cheeks, had an English look; the
ladies, too, showed a fair-haired Saxon bloom, and seemed to taste the
mirth of the Carnival with the freshness of spectators to whom the scene
was new. All the party, the old gentleman with grave earnestness, as if
he were defending a rampart, and his young companions with exuberance of
frolic, showered confetti inexhaustibly upon the passers-by.
In the rear of the balcony, a broad-brimmed, ecclesiastical beaver was
visible. An abbate, probably an acquaintance and cicerone of the English
family, was sitting there, and enjoying the scene, though partially
withdrawn from view, as the decorum for his order dictated.
There seemed no better nor other course for Kenyon than to keep watch at
this appointed spot, waiting for whatever should happen next. Clasping
his arm round a lamp-post, to prevent being carried away by the
turbulent stream of wayfarers, he scrutinized every face, with the idea
that some one of them might meet his eyes with a glance of intelligence.
He looked at each mask,--harlequin, ape, bulbous-headed monster, or
anything that was absurdest,--not knowing but that the messenger might
come, even in such fantastic guise. Or perhaps one of those quaint
figures, in the stately ruff, the cloak, tunic, and trunk-hose of three
centuries ago, might bring him tidings of Hilda, out of that long-past
age. At times his disquietude took a hopeful aspect; and he fancied that
Hilda might come by, her own sweet self, in some shy disguise which the
instinct Of his love would be sure to penetrate. Or, she might be
borne past on a triumphal car, like the one just now approaching, its
slow-moving wheels encircled and spoked with foliage, and drawn by
horses, that were harnessed and wreathed with flowers. Being, at best,
so far beyond the bounds of reasonable conjecture, he might anticipate
the wildest event, or find either his hopes or fears disappointed in
what appeared most probable.
The old Englishman and his daughters, in the opposite balcony, must have
seen something unutterably absurd in the sculptor’s deportment, poring
into this whirlpool of nonsense so earnestly, in quest of what was to
make his life dark or bright. Earnest people, who try to get a reality
out of human existence, are necessarily absurd in the view of the
revellers and masqueraders. At all events, after a good deal of mirth at
the expense of his melancholy visage, the fair occupants of the balcony
favored Kenyon with a salvo of confetti, which came rattling about him
like a hailstorm. Looking up instinctively, he was surprised to see
the abbate in the background lean forward and give a courteous sign of
recognition.
It was the same old priest with whom he had seen Hilda, at the
confessional; the same with whom he had talked of her disappearance on
meeting him in the street.
Yet, whatever might be the reason, Kenyon did not now associate this
ecclesiastical personage with the idea of Hilda. His eyes lighted on the
old man, just for an instant, and then returned to the eddying throng of
the Corso, on his minute scrutiny of which depended, for aught he knew,
the sole chance of ever finding any trace of her. There was, about this
moment, a bustle on the other side of the street, the cause of which
Kenyon did not see, nor exert himself to discover. A small party of
soldiers or gendarmes appeared to be concerned in it; they were perhaps
arresting some disorderly character, who, under the influence of an
extra flask of wine, might have reeled across the mystic limitation of
carnival proprieties.
The sculptor heard some people near him talking of the incident.
“That contadina, in a black mask, was a fine figure of a woman.”
“She was not amiss,” replied a female voice; “but her companion was far
the handsomer figure of the two. Could they be really a peasant and a
contadina, do you imagine?”
“No, no,” said the other. “It is some frolic of the Carnival, carried a
little too far.”
This conversation might have excited Kenyon’s interest; only that, just
as the last words were spoken, he was hit by two missiles, both of a
kind that were flying abundantly on that gay battlefield. One, we are
ashamed to say, was a cauliflower, which, flung by a young man from a
passing carriage, came with a prodigious thump against his shoulder;
the other was a single rosebud, so fresh that it seemed that moment
gathered. It flew from the opposite balcony, smote gently on his lips,
and fell into his hand. He looked upward, and beheld the face of his
lost Hilda!
She was dressed in a white domino, and looked pale and bewildered,
and yet full of tender joy. Moreover, there was a gleam of delicate
mirthfulness in her eyes, which the sculptor had seen there only two or
three times in the course of their acquaintance, but thought it the most
bewitching and fairylike of all Hilda’s expressions. That soft, mirthful
smile caused her to melt, as it were, into the wild frolic of the
Carnival, and become not so strange and alien to the scene, as her
unexpected apparition must otherwise have made her.
Meanwhile, the venerable Englishman and his daughters were staring at
poor Hilda in a way that proved them altogether astonished, as well
as inexpressibly shocked, by her sudden intrusion into their private
balcony. They looked,--as, indeed, English people of respectability
would, if an angel were to alight in their circle, without due
introduction from somebody whom they knew, in the court above,--they
looked as if an unpardonable liberty had been taken, and a suitable
apology must be made; after which, the intruder would be expected to
withdraw.
The abbate, however, drew the old gentleman aside, and whispered a few
words that served to mollify him; he bestowed on Hilda a sufficiently
benignant, though still a perplexed and questioning regard, and invited
her, in dumb-show, to put herself at her ease.
But, whoever was in fault, our shy and gentle Hilda had dreamed of no
intrusion. Whence she had come, or where she had been hidden, during
this mysterious interval, we can but imperfectly surmise, and do not
mean, at present, to make it a matter of formal explanation with the
reader. It is better, perhaps, to fancy that she had been snatched away
to a land of picture; that she had been straying with Claude in the
golden light which he used to shed over his landscapes, but which he
could never have beheld with his waking eyes till he awoke in the better
clime. We will imagine that, for the sake of the true simplicity
with which she loved them, Hilda had been permitted, for a season, to
converse with the great, departed masters of the pencil, and behold
the diviner works which they have painted in heavenly colors. Guido had
shown her another portrait of Beatrice Cenci, done from the celestial
life, in which that forlorn mystery of the earthly countenance was
exchanged for a radiant joy. Perugino had allowed her a glimpse at his
easel, on which she discerned what seemed a woman’s face, but so divine,
by the very depth and softness of its womanhood, that a gush of happy
tears blinded the maiden’s eyes before she had time to look. Raphael
had taken Hilda by the hand, that fine, forcible hand which Kenyon
sculptured,--and drawn aside the curtain of gold-fringed cloud that
hung before his latest masterpiece. On earth, Raphael painted the
Transfiguration. What higher scene may he have since depicted, not from
imagination, but as revealed to his actual sight!
Neither will we retrace the steps by which she returned to the actual
world. For the present, be it enough to say that Hilda had been summoned
forth from a secret place, and led we know not through what mysterious
passages, to a point where the tumult of life burst suddenly upon her
ears. She heard the tramp of footsteps, the rattle of wheels, and the
mingled hum of a multitude of voices, with strains of music and loud
laughter breaking through. Emerging into a great, gloomy hall, a
curtain was drawn aside; she found herself gently propelled into an
open balcony, whence she looked out upon the festal street, with gay
tapestries flaunting over all the palace fronts, the windows thronged
with merry faces, and a crowd of maskers rioting upon the pavement
below.
Immediately she seemed to become a portion of the scene. Her pale,
large-eyed, fragile beauty, her wondering aspect and bewildered grace,
attracted the gaze of many; and there fell around her a shower of
bouquets and bonbons--freshest blossoms and sweetest sugar plums, sweets
to the sweet--such as the revellers of the Carnival reserve as tributes
to especial loveliness. Hilda pressed her hand across her brow; she let
her eyelids fall, and, lifting them again, looked through the grotesque
and gorgeous show, the chaos of mad jollity, in quest of some object
by which she might assure herself that the whole spectacle was not an
illusion.
Beneath the balcony, she recognized a familiar and fondly remembered
face. The spirit of the hour and the scene exercised its influence over
her quick and sensitive nature; she caught up one of the rosebuds that
had been showered upon her, and aimed it at the sculptor; It hit the
mark; he turned his sad eyes upward, and there was Hilda, in whose
gentle presence his own secret sorrow and the obtrusive uproar of the
Carnival alike died away from his perception.
That night, the lamp beneath the Virgin’s shrine burned as brightly as
if it had never been extinguished; and though the one faithful dove had
gone to her melancholy perch, she greeted Hilda rapturously the next
morning, and summoned her less constant companions, whithersoever they
had flown, to renew their homage.