MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLO
The gentle reader, we trust, would not thank us for one of those minute
elucidations, which are so tedious, and, after all, so unsatisfactory,
in clearing up the romantic mysteries of a story. He is too wise to
insist upon looking closely at the wrong side of the tapestry, after the
right one has been sufficiently displayed to him, woven with the best of
the artist’s skill, and cunningly arranged with a view to the harmonious
exhibition of its colors. If any brilliant, or beautiful, or even
tolerable effect have been produced, this pattern of kindly readers will
accept it at its worth, without tearing its web apart, with the idle
purpose of discovering how the threads have been knit together; for the
sagacity by which he is distinguished will long ago have taught him that
any narrative of human action and adventure whether we call it history
or romance--is certain to be a fragile handiwork, more easily rent than
mended. The actual experience of even the most ordinary life is full of
events that never explain themselves, either as regards their origin or
their tendency.
It would be easy, from conversations which we have held with the
sculptor, to suggest a clew to the mystery of Hilda’s disappearance;
although, as long as she remained in Italy, there was a remarkable
reserve in her communications upon this subject, even to her most
intimate friends. Either a pledge of secrecy had been exacted, or a
prudential motive warned her not to reveal the stratagems of a religious
body, or the secret acts of a despotic government--whichever might be
responsible in the present instance--while still within the scope of
their jurisdiction. Possibly, she might not herself be fully aware what
power had laid its grasp upon her person. What has chiefly perplexed us,
however, among Hilda’s adventures, is the mode of her release, in which
some inscrutable tyranny or other seemed to take part in the frolic of
the Carnival. We can only account for it, by supposing that the fitful
and fantastic imagination of a woman--sportive, because she must
otherwise be desperate--had arranged this incident, and made it the
condition of a step which her conscience, or the conscience of another,
required her to take.
A few days after Hilda’s reappearance, she and the sculptor were
straying together through the streets of Rome. Being deep in talk, it so
happened that they found themselves near the majestic, pillared portico,
and huge, black rotundity of the Pantheon. It stands almost at the
central point of the labyrinthine intricacies of the modern city, and
often presents itself before the bewildered stranger, when he is in
search of other objects. Hilda, looking up, proposed that they should
enter.
“I never pass it without going in,” she said, “to pay my homage at the
tomb of Raphael.”
“Nor I,” said Kenyon, “without stopping to admire the noblest edifice
which the barbarism of the early ages, and the more barbarous pontiffs
and princes of later ones, have spared to us.”
They went in accordingly, and stood in the free space of that great
circle, around which are ranged the arched recesses and stately altars,
formerly dedicated to heathen gods, but Christianized through twelve
centuries gone by. The world has nothing else like the Pantheon. So
grand it is, that the pasteboard statues over the lofty cornice do not
disturb the effect, any more than the tin crowns and hearts, the dusty
artificial flowers, and all manner of trumpery gew-gaws, hanging at the
saintly shrines. The rust and dinginess that have dimmed the precious
marble on the walls; the pavement, with its great squares and rounds
of porphyry and granite, cracked crosswise and in a hundred directions,
showing how roughly the troublesome ages have trampled here; the gray
dome above, with its opening to the sky, as if heaven were looking down
into the interior of this place of worship, left unimpeded for prayers
to ascend the more freely; all these things make an impression of
solemnity, which St. Peter’s itself fails to produce.
“I think,” said the sculptor, “it is to the aperture in the dome--that
great Eye, gazing heavenward that the Pantheon owes the peculiarity of
its effect. It is so heathenish, as it were,--so unlike all the snugness
of our modern civilization! Look, too, at the pavement, directly beneath
the open space! So much rain has fallen there, in the last two thousand
years, that it is green with small, fine moss, such as grows over
tombstones in a damp English churchyard.”
“I like better,” replied Hilda, “to look at the bright, blue sky,
roofing the edifice where the builders left it open. It is very
delightful, in a breezy day, to see the masses of white cloud float over
the opening, and then the sunshine fall through it again, fitfully, as
it does now. Would it be any wonder if we were to see angels hovering
there, partly in and partly out, with genial, heavenly faces, not
intercepting the light, but only transmuting it into beautiful colors?
Look at that broad, golden beam--a sloping cataract of sunlight--which
comes down from the aperture and rests upon the shrine, at the right
hand of the entrance!”
“There is a dusky picture over that altar,” observed the sculptor. “Let
us go and see if this strong illumination brings out any merit in it.”
Approaching the shrine, they found the picture little worth looking at,
but could not forbear smiling, to see that a very plump and comfortable
tabby-cat--whom we ourselves have often observed haunting the
Pantheon--had established herself on the altar, in the genial sunbeam,
and was fast asleep among the holy tapers. Their footsteps disturbing
her, she awoke, raised herself, and sat blinking in the sun, yet with a
certain dignity and self-possession, as if conscious of representing a
saint.
“I presume,” remarked Kenyon, “that this is the first of the feline race
that has ever set herself up as an object of worship, in the Pantheon or
elsewhere, since the days of ancient Egypt. See; there is a peasant from
the neighboring market, actually kneeling to her! She seems a gracious
and benignant saint enough.”
“Do not make me laugh,” said Hilda reproachfully, “but help me to drive
the creature away. It distresses me to see that poor man, or any human
being, directing his prayers so much amiss.”
“Then, Hilda,” answered the sculptor more seriously, “the only Place
in the Pantheon for you and me to kneel is on the pavement beneath
the central aperture. If we pray at a saint’s shrine, we shall give
utterance to earthly wishes; but if we pray face to face with the
Deity, we shall feel it impious to petition for aught that is narrow and
selfish. Methinks it is this that makes the Catholics so delight in the
worship of saints; they can bring up all their little worldly wants and
whims, their individualities and human weaknesses, not as things to be
repented of, but to be humored by the canonized humanity to which they
pray. Indeed, it is very tempting!”
What Hilda might have answered must be left to conjecture; for as she
turned from the shrine, her eyes were attracted to the figure of a
female penitent, kneeling on the pavement just beneath the great central
eye, in the very spot which Kenyon had designated as the only one whence
prayers should ascend. The upturned face was invisible, behind a veil or
mask, which formed a part of the garb.
“It cannot be!” whispered Hilda, with emotion. “No; it cannot be!”
“What disturbs you?” asked Kenyon. “Why do you tremble so?”
“If it were possible,” she replied, “I should fancy that kneeling figure
to be Miriam!”
“As you say, it is impossible,” rejoined the sculptor; “We know too
well what has befallen both her and Donatello.” “Yes; it is impossible!”
repeated Hilda. Her voice was still tremulous, however, and she seemed
unable to withdraw her attention from the kneeling figure. Suddenly,
and as if the idea of Miriam had opened the whole volume of Hilda’s
reminiscences, she put this question to the sculptor: “Was Donatello
really a Faun?”
“If you had ever studied the pedigree of the far-descended heir of Monte
Beni, as I did,” answered Kenyon, with an irrepressible smile, “you
would have retained few doubts on that point. Faun or not, he had a
genial nature, which, had the rest of mankind been in accordance with
it, would have made earth a paradise to our poor friend. It seems
the moral of his story, that human beings of Donatello’s character,
compounded especially for happiness, have no longer any business on
earth, or elsewhere. Life has grown so sadly serious, that such men must
change their nature, or else perish, like the antediluvian creatures
that required, as the condition of their existence, a more summer-like
atmosphere than ours.”
“I will not accept your moral!” replied the hopeful and happy-natured
Hilda.
“Then here is another; take your choice!” said the sculptor, remembering
what Miriam had recently suggested, in reference to the same point. “He
perpetrated a great crime; and his remorse, gnawing into his soul,
has awakened it; developing a thousand high capabilities, moral and
intellectual, which we never should have dreamed of asking for, within
the scanty compass of the Donatello whom we knew.”
“I know not whether this is so,” said Hilda. “But what then?”
“Here comes my perplexity,” continued Kenyon. “Sin has educated
Donatello, and elevated him. Is sin, then,--which we deem such a
dreadful blackness in the universe,--is it, like sorrow, merely an
element of human education, through which we struggle to a higher and
purer state than we could otherwise have attained? Did Adam fall, that
we might ultimately rise to a far loftier paradise than his?” “O hush!”
cried Hilda, shrinking from him with an expression of horror which
wounded the poor, speculative sculptor to the soul. “This is terrible;
and I could weep for you, if you indeed believe it. Do not you perceive
what a mockery your creed makes, not only of all religious sentiments,
but of moral law? And how it annuls and obliterates whatever precepts of
Heaven are written deepest within us? You have shocked me beyond words!”
“Forgive me, Hilda!” exclaimed the sculptor, startled by her agitation;
“I never did believe it! But the mind wanders wild and wide; and, so
lonely as I live and work, I have neither pole-star above nor light
of cottage windows here below, to bring me home. Were you my guide, my
counsellor, my inmost friend, with that white wisdom which clothes you
as a celestial garment, all would go well. O Hilda, guide me home!”
“We are both lonely; both far from home!” said Hilda, her eyes filling
with tears. “I am a poor, weak girl, and have no such wisdom as you
fancy in me.”
What further may have passed between these lovers, while standing before
the pillared shrine, and the marble Madonna that marks Raphael’s tomb;
whither they had now wandered, we are unable to record. But when the
kneeling figure beneath the open eye of the Pantheon arose, she looked
towards the pair and extended her hands with a gesture of benediction.
Then they knew that it was Miriam. They suffered her to glide out of
the portal, however, without a greeting; for those extended hands, even
while they blessed, seemed to repel, as if Miriam stood on the other
side of a fathomless abyss, and warned them from its verge.
So Kenyon won the gentle Hilda’s shy affection, and her consent to
be his bride. Another hand must henceforth trim the lamp before the
Virgin’s shrine; for Hilda was coming down from her old tower, to be
herself enshrined and worshipped as a household saint, in the light of
her husband’s fireside. And, now that life had so much human promise in
it, they resolved to go back to their own land; because the years,
after all, have a kind of emptiness, when we spend too many of them on
a foreign shore. We defer the reality of life, in such cases, until a
future moment, when we shall again breathe our native air; but, by and
by, there are no future moments; or, if we do return, we find that the
native air has lost its invigorating quality, and that life has shifted
its reality to the spot where we have deemed ourselves only temporary
residents. Thus, between two countries, we have none at all, or
only that little space of either in which we finally lay down our
discontented bones. It is wise, therefore, to come back betimes, or
never.
Before they quitted Rome, a bridal gift was laid on Hilda’s table. It
was a bracelet, evidently of great cost, being composed of seven ancient
Etruscan gems, dug out of seven sepulchres, and each one of them the
signet of some princely personage, who had lived an immemorial time ago.
Hilda remembered this precious ornament. It had been Miriam’s; and once,
with the exuberance of fancy that distinguished her, she had amused
herself with telling a mythical and magic legend for each gem,
comprising the imaginary adventures and catastrophe of its former
wearer. Thus the Etruscan bracelet became the connecting bond of a
series of seven wondrous tales, all of which, as they were dug out of
seven sepulchres, were characterized by a sevenfold sepulchral gloom;
such as Miriam’s imagination, shadowed by her own misfortunes, was wont
to fling over its most sportive flights.
And now, happy as Hilda was, the bracelet brought the tears into her
eyes, as being, in its entire circle, the symbol of as sad a mystery
as any that Miriam had attached to the separate gems. For, what was
Miriam’s life to be? And where was Donatello? But Hilda had a hopeful
soul, and saw sunlight on the mountain-tops.
CONCLUSION
There comes to the author, from many readers of the foregoing pages, a
demand for further elucidations respecting the mysteries of the story.
He reluctantly avails himself of the opportunity afforded by a new
edition, to explain such incidents and passages as may have been left
too much in the dark; reluctantly, he repeats, because the necessity
makes him sensible that he can have succeeded but imperfectly, at best,
in throwing about this Romance the kind of atmosphere essential to the
effect at which he aimed.
He designed the story and the characters to bear, of course, a certain
relation to human nature and human life, but still to be so artfully and
airily removed from our mundane sphere, that some laws and proprieties
of their own should be implicitly and insensibly acknowledged.
The idea of the modern Faun, for example, loses all the poetry and
beauty which the Author fancied in it, and becomes nothing better than a
grotesque absurdity, if we bring it into the actual light of day. He
had hoped to mystify this anomalous creature between the Real and
the Fantastic, in such a manner that the reader’s sympathies might be
excited to a certain pleasurable degree, without impelling him to ask
how Cuvier would have classified poor Donatello, or to insist upon being
told, in so many words, whether he had furry ears or no. As respects all
who ask such questions, the book is, to that extent, a failure.
Nevertheless, the Author fortunately has it in his power to throw light
upon several matters in which some of his readers appear to feel an
interest. To confess the truth, he was himself troubled with a curiosity
similar to that which he has just deprecated on the part of his readers,
and once took occasion to cross-examine his friends, Hilda and the
sculptor, and to pry into several dark recesses of the story, with which
they had heretofore imperfectly acquainted him.
We three had climbed to the top of St. Peter’s, and were looking down
upon the Rome we were soon to leave, but which (having already sinned
sufficiently in that way) it is not my purpose further to describe. It
occurred to me, that, being so remote in the upper air, my friends might
safely utter here the secrets which it would be perilous even to whisper
on lower earth.
“Hilda,” I began, “can you tell me the contents of that mysterious
packet which Miriam entrusted to your charge, and which was addressed to
Signore Luca Barboni, at the Palazzo Cenci?”
“I never had any further knowledge of it,” replied Hilda, “nor felt it
right to let myself be curious upon the subject.”
“As to its precise contents,” interposed Kenyon, “it is impossible to
speak. But Miriam, isolated as she seemed, had family connections in
Rome, one of whom, there is reason to believe, occupied a position in
the papal government.
“This Signore Luca Barboni was either the assumed name of the personage
in question, or the medium of communication between that individual and
Miriam. Now, under such a government as that of Rome, it is obvious that
Miriam’s privacy and isolated life could only be maintained through the
connivance and support of some influential person connected with the
administration of affairs. Free and self-controlled as she appeared, her
every movement was watched and investigated far more thoroughly by the
priestly rulers than by her dearest friends.
“Miriam, if I mistake not, had a purpose to withdraw herself from this
irksome scrutiny, and to seek real obscurity in another land; and the
packet, to be delivered long after her departure, contained a reference
to this design, besides certain family documents, which were to be
imparted to her relative as from one dead and gone.”
“Yes, it is clear as a London fog,” I remarked. “On this head no further
elucidation can be desired. But when Hilda went quietly to deliver the
packet, why did she so mysteriously vanish?”
“You must recollect,” replied Kenyon, with a glance of friendly
commiseration at my obtuseness, “that Miriam had utterly disappeared,
leaving no trace by which her whereabouts could be known. In the
meantime, the municipal authorities had become aware of the murder
of the Capuchin; and from many preceding circumstances, such as his
persecution of Miriam, they must have seen an obvious connection between
herself and that tragical event. Furthermore, there is reason to believe
that Miriam was suspected of connection with some plot, or political
intrigue, of which there may have been tokens in the packet. And when
Hilda appeared as the bearer of this missive, it was really quite
a matter of course, under a despotic government, that she should be
detained.”
“Ah, quite a matter of course, as you say,” answered I. “How excessively
stupid in me not to have seen it sooner! But there are other riddles.
On the night of the extinction of the lamp, you met Donatello, in a
penitent’s garb, and afterwards saw and spoke to Miriam, in a coach,
with a gem glowing on her bosom. What was the business of these two
guilty ones in Rome, and who was Miriam’s companion?”
“Who!” repeated Kenyon, “why, her official relative, to be sure; and
as to their business, Donatello’s still gnawing remorse had brought him
hitherward, in spite of Miriam’s entreaties, and kept him lingering
in the neighborhood of Rome, with the ultimate purpose of delivering
himself up to justice. Hilda’s disappearance, which took place the day
before, was known to them through a secret channel, and had brought them
into the city, where Miriam, as I surmise, began to make arrangements,
even then, for that sad frolic of the Carnival.”
“And where was Hilda all that dreary time between?” inquired I.
“Where were you, Hilda?” asked Kenyon, smiling.
Hilda threw her eyes on all sides, and seeing that there was not even a
bird of the air to fly away with the secret, nor any human being nearer
than the loiterers by the obelisk in the piazza below, she told us about
her mysterious abode.
“I was a prisoner in the Convent of the Sacre Coeur, in the Trinita
de Monte,” said she, “but in such kindly custody of pious maidens, and
watched over by such a dear old priest, that--had it not been for one
or two disturbing recollections, and also because I am a daughter of the
Puritans I could willingly have dwelt there forever.
“My entanglement with Miriam’s misfortunes, and the good abbate’s
mistaken hope of a proselyte, seem to me a sufficient clew to the whole
mystery.”
“The atmosphere is getting delightfully lucid,” observed I, “but there
are one or two things that still puzzle me. Could you tell me--and it
shall be kept a profound secret, I assure you what were Miriam’s real
name and rank, and precisely the nature of the troubles that led to all
those direful consequences?”
“Is it possible that you need an answer to those questions?” exclaimed
Kenyon, with an aspect of vast surprise. “Have you not even surmised
Miriam’s name? Think awhile, and you will assuredly remember it. If not,
I congratulate you most sincerely; for it indicates that your feelings
have never been harrowed by one of the most dreadful and mysterious
events that have occurred within the present century!”
“Well,” resumed I, after an interval of deep consideration, “I have but
few things more to ask. Where, at this moment, is Donatello?”
“The Castle of Saint Angelo,” said Kenyon sadly, turning his face
towards that sepulchral fortress, “is no longer a prison; but there are
others which have dungeons as deep, and in one of them, I fear, lies our
poor Faun.”
“And why, then, is Miriam at large?” I asked.
“Call it cruelty if you like, not mercy,” answered Kenyon. “But, after
all, her crime lay merely in a glance. She did no murder!”
“Only one question more,” said I, with intense earnestness. “Did
Donatello’s ears resemble those of the Faun of Praxiteles?”
“I know, but may not tell,” replied Kenyon, smiling mysteriously. “On
that point, at all events, there shall be not one word of explanation.”
Leamington, March 14, 1860.
End of Project Gutenberg’s The Marble Faun, Volume II., by Nathaniel Hawthorne