ANTONINA.
Who that has been at Rome does not remember with delight the
attractions of the Pincian Hill? Who, after toiling through the
wonders of the dark, melancholy city, has not been revived by a visit
to its shady walks, and by breathing its fragrant breezes? Amid the
solemn mournfulness that reigns over declining Rome, this delightful
elevation rises light, airy, and inviting, at once a refreshment to the
body and a solace to the spirit. From its smooth summit the city is
seen in its utmost majesty, and the surrounding country in its
brightest aspect. The crimes and miseries of Rome seem deterred from
approaching its favoured soil; it impresses the mind as a place set
apart by common consent for the presence of the innocent and the
joyful--as a scene that rest and recreation keep sacred from the
intrusion of tumult and toil.
Its appearance in modern days is the picture of its character for ages
past. Successive wars might dull its beauties for a time, but peace
invariably restored them in all their pristine loveliness. The old
Romans called it 'The Mount of Gardens'. Throughout the disasters of
the Empire and the convulsions of the Middle Ages, it continued to
merit its ancient appellation, and a 'Mount of Gardens' it still
triumphantly remains to the present day.
At the commencement of the fifth century the magnificence of the
Pincian Hill was at its zenith. Were it consistent with the conduct of
our story to dwell upon the glories of its palaces and its groves, its
temples and its theatres, such a glowing prospect of artificial
splendour, aided by natural beauty, might be spread before the reader
as would tax his credulity, while it excited his astonishment. This
task, however, it is here unnecessary to attempt. It is not for the
wonders of ancient luxury and taste, but for the abode of the zealous
and religious Numerian, that we find it now requisite to arouse
interest and engage attention.
At the back of the Flaminian extremity of the Pincian Hill, and
immediately overlooking the city wall, stood, at the period of which we
write, a small but elegantly built house, surrounded by a little garden
of its own, and protected at the back by the lofty groves and
outbuildings of the palace of Vetranio the senator. This abode had
been at one time a sort of summer-house belonging to the former
proprietor of a neighbouring mansion.
Profligate necessities, however, had obliged the owner to part with
this portion of his possessions, which was purchased by a merchant well
known to Numerian, who received it as a legacy at his friend's death.
Disgusted, as soon as his reforming projects took possession of his
mind, at the bare idea of propinquity to the ennobled libertines of
Rome, the austere Christian determined to abandon his inheritance, and
to sell it to another; but, at the repeated entreaties of his daughter,
he at length consented to change his purpose, and sacrifice his
antipathy to his luxurious neighbours to his child's youthful
attachment to the beauties of Nature as displayed in his legacy on the
Pincian Mount. In this instance only did the natural affection of the
father prevail over the acquired severity of the reformer. Here he
condescended, for the first and the last time, to the sweet
trivialities of youth. Here, indulgent in spite of himself, he fixed
his little household, and permitted to his daughter her sole
recreations of tending the flowers in the garden and luxuriating in the
loveliness of the distant view.
* * * * *
The night has advanced an hour since the occurrence mentioned in the
preceding chapter. The clear and brilliant moonlight of Italy now
pervades every district of the glorious city, and bathes in its pure
effulgence the groves and palaces on the Pincian Mount. From the
garden of Numerian the irregular buildings of the great suburbs of
Rome, the rich undulating country beyond, and the long ranges of
mountains in the distance, are now all visible in the soft and
luxurious light. Near the spot which commands this view, not a living
creature is to be seen on a first examination; but on a more
industrious and patient observation, you are subsequently able to
detect at one of the windows of Numerian's house, half hidden by a
curtain, the figure of a young girl.
Soon this solitary form approaches nearer to the eye. The moonbeams,
that have hitherto shone only upon the window, now illuminate other
objects. First they display a small, white arm; then a light, simple
robe; then a fair, graceful neck; and finally a bright, youthful,
innocent face, directed steadfastly towards the wide moon-brightened
prospect of the distant mountains.
For some time the girl remains in contemplation at her window. Then
she leaves her post, and almost immediately reappears at a door leading
into the garden. Her figure, as she advances towards the lawn before
her, is light and small--a natural grace and propriety appear in her
movements--she holds pressed to her bosom and half concealed by her
robe, a gilt lute. When she reaches a turf bank commanding the same
view as the window, she arranges her instrument upon her knees, and
with something of restraint in her manner gently touches the chords.
Then, as if alarmed at the sound she has produced, she glances
anxiously around her, apparently fearful of being overheard. Her
large, dark, lustrous eyes have in them an expression of apprehension;
her delicate lips are half parted; a sudden flush rises in her soft,
olive complexion as she examines every corner of the garden. Having
completed her survey without discovering any cause for the suspicions
she seems to entertain, she again employs herself over her instrument.
Once more she strikes the chords, and now with a bolder hand. The
notes she produces resolve themselves into a wild, plaintive, irregular
melody, alternately rising and sinking, as if swayed by the fickle
influence of a summer wind. These sounds are soon harmoniously
augmented by the young minstrel's voice, which is calm, still, and
mellow, and adapts itself with exquisite ingenuity to every arbitrary
variation in the tone of the accompaniment. The song that she has
chosen is one of the fanciful odes of the day. Its chief merit to her
lies in its alliance to the strange Eastern air which she heard at her
first interview with the senator who presented her with the lute.
Paraphrased in English, the words of the composition would run thus:--
THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC
I.
Spirit, whose dominion reigns
Over Music's thrilling strains,
Whence may be thy distant birth?
Say what tempted thee to earth?
Mortal, listen: I was born
In Creation's early years,
Singing, 'mid the stars of morn,
To the music of the spheres.
Once as, within the realms of space,
I view'd this mortal planet roll,
A yearning towards they hapless race,
Unbidden, filled my seraph soul!
Angels, who had watched my birth,
Heard me sigh to sing to earth;
'Twas transgression ne'er forgiv'n
To forget my native Heav'n;
So they sternly bade me go--
Banish'd to the world below.
II.
Exil'd here, I knew no fears;
For, though darkness round me clung,
Though none heard me in the spheres,
Earth had listeners while I sung.
Young spirits of the Spring sweet breeze
Came thronging round me, soft and coy,
Light wood-nymphs sported in the trees,
And laughing Echo leapt for joy!
Brooding Woe and writhing Pain
Soften'd at my gentle strain;
Bounding Joy, with footstep fleet,
Ran to nestle at my feet;
While, aroused, delighted Love
Softly kiss'd me from above!
III.
Since those years of early time,
Faithful still to earth I've sung;
Flying through each distant clime,
Ever welcome, ever young!
Still pleas'd, my solace I impart
Where brightest hopes are scattered dead;
'Tis mine--sweet gift!--to charm the heart,
Though all its other joys have fled!
Time, that withers all beside,
Harmless past me loves to glide;
Change, that mortals must obey,
Ne'er shall shake my gentle sway;
Still 'tis mine all hearts to move
In eternity of love.
As the last sounds of her voice and her lute died softly away upon the
still night air, an indescribable elevation appeared in the girl's
countenance. She looked up rapturously into the far, star-bright sky;
her lip quivered, her dark eyes filled with tears, and her bosom heaved
with the excess of the emotions that the music and the scene inspired.
Then she gazed slowly around her, dwelling tenderly upon the fragrant
flower-beds that were the work of her own hands, and looking forth with
an expression half reverential, half ecstatic over the long, smooth,
shining plains, and the still, glorious mountains, that had so long
been the inspiration of her most cherished thoughts, and that now
glowed before her eyes, soft and beautiful as her dreams on her virgin
couch. Then, overpowered by the artless thoughts and innocent
recollections which on the magic wings of Nature and Night came wafted
over her mind, she bent down her head upon her lute, pressed her round,
dimpled cheek against its smooth frame, and drawing her fingers
mechanically over its strings, abandoned herself unreservedly to the
reveries of maidenhood and youth.
Such was the being devoted by her father's fatal ambition to a lifelong
banishment from all that is attractive in human art and beautiful in
human intellect! Such was the daughter whose existence was to be one
long acquaintance with mortal woe, one unvaried refusal of mortal
pleasure, whose thoughts were to be only of sermons and fasts, whose
action were to be confined to the binding up of strangers' wounds and
the drying of strangers' tears; whose life, in brief, was doomed to be
the embodiment of her father's austere ideal of the austere virgins of
the ancient Church!
Deprived of her mother, exiled from the companionship of others of her
age, permitted no familiarity with any living being, no sympathies with
any other heart, commanded but never indulged, rebuked but never
applauded, she must have sunk beneath the severities imposed on her by
her father, but for the venial disobedience committed in the pursuit of
the solitary pleasure procured for her by her lute. Vainly, in her
hours of study, did she read the fierce anathemas against love,
liberty, and pleasure, poetry, painting, and music, gold, silver, and
precious stones, which the ancient fathers had composed for the benefit
of the submissive congregations of former days; vainly did she imagine,
during those long hours of theological instruction, that her heart's
forbidden longings were banished and destroyed--that her patient and
childlike disposition was bowed in complete subserviency to the most
rigorous of her father's commands. No sooner were her interviews with
Numerian concluded than the promptings of that nature within us, which
artifice may warp but can never destroy, lured her into a forgetfulness
of all that she had heard and a longing for much that was forbidden.
We live, in this existence, but by the companionship of some sympathy,
aspiration, or pursuit, which serves us as our habitual refuge from the
tribulations we inherit from the outer world. The same feeling which
led Antonina in her childhood to beg for a flower-garden, in her
girlhood induced her to gain possession of a lute.
The passion for music which prompted her visit to Vetranio, which alone
saved her affections from pining in the solitude imposed on them, and
which occupied her leisure hours in the manner we have already
described, was an inheritance of her birth.
Her Spanish mother had sung to her, hour after hour, in her cradle, for
the short time during which she was permitted to watch over her child.
The impression thus made on the dawning faculties of the infant,
nothing ever effaced. Though her earliest perception were greeted only
by the sight of her father's misery; though the form which his
despairing penitence soon assumed doomed her to a life of seclusion and
an education of admonition, the passionate attachment to the melody of
sound, inspired by her mother's voice--almost imbibed at her mother's
breast--lived through all neglect, and survived all opposition. It
found its nourishment in childish recollections, in snatches of street
minstrelsy heard through her window, in the passage of the night winds
of winter through the groves on the Pincian Mount, and received its
rapturous gratification in the first audible sounds from the Roman
senator's lute. How her possession of an instrument, and her skill in
playing, were subsequently gained, the reader already knows from
Vetranio's narrative at Ravenna. Could the frivolous senator have
discovered the real intensity of the emotions his art was raising in
his pupil's bosom while he taught her; could he have imagined how
incessantly, during their lessons, her sense of duty struggled with her
love for music--how completely she was absorbed, one moment by an agony
of doubt and fear, another by an ecstasy of enjoyment and hope--he
would have felt little of that astonishment at her coldness towards
himself which he so warmly expressed at his interview with Julia in the
gardens of the Court. In truth, nothing could be more complete than
Antonina's childish unconsciousness of the feelings with which Vetranio
regarded her. In entering his presence, whatever remnant of her
affections remained unwithered by her fears was solely attracted and
engrossed by the beloved and beautiful lute. In receiving the
instrument, she almost forgot the giver in the triumph of possession;
or, if she thought of him at all, it was to be grateful for having
escaped uninjured from a member of that class, for whom her father's
reiterated admonitions had inspired her with a vague feeling of dread
and distrust, and to determine that, now she had acknowledged his
kindness and departed from his domains, nothing should ever induce her
to risk discovery by her father and peril to herself by ever entering
them again.
Innocent in her isolation, almost infantine in her natural simplicity,
a single enjoyment was sufficient to satisfy all the passions of her
age. Father, mother, lover, and companion; liberties, amusements, and
adornments--they were all summed up for her in that simple lute. The
archness, the liveliness, and the gentleness of her disposition; the
poetry of her nature, and the affection of her heart; the happy bloom
of youth, which seclusion could not all wither nor distorted precept
taint, were now entirely nourished, expanded, and freshened--such is
the creative power of human emotion--by that inestimable possession.
She could speak to it, smile on it, caress it, and believe, in the
ecstasy of her delight, in the carelessness of her self-delusion, that
it sympathised with her joy. During her long solitudes, when she was
silently watched in her father's absence by the brooding, melancholy
stranger whom he had set over her, it became a companion dearer than
the flower-garden, dearer even that the plains and mountains which
formed her favourite view. When her father returned, and she was led
forth to sit in a dark place among strange, silent people, and to
listen to interminable declamations, it was a solace to think of the
instrument as it lay hidden securely in her chamber, and to ponder
delightedly on what new music of her own she could play upon it next.
And then, when evening arrived, and she was left alone in her
garden--then came the hour of moonlight and song; the moment of rapture
and melody that drew her out of herself, elevated her she felt not how,
and transported her she knew not whither.
But, while we thus linger over reflection on motives and examinations
into character, we are called back to the outer world of passing
interests and events by the appearances of another figure on the scene.
We left Antonina in the garden thinking over her lute. She still
remains in her meditative position, but she is now no longer alone.
From the same steps by which she had descended, a man now advances into
the garden, and walks towards the place she occupies. His gait is
limping, his stature crooked, his proportions distorted. His large,
angular features stand out in gaunt contrast to his shrivelled cheeks.
His dry, matted hair has been burnt by the sun into a strange tawny
brown. His expression is one of fixed, stern, mournful thought. As he
steps stealthily along, advancing towards Antonina, he mutters to
himself, and clutches mechanically at his garments with his lank,
shapeless fingers. The radiant moonlight, falling fully upon his
countenance, invests it with a livid, mysterious, spectral appearance:
seen by a stranger at the present moment, he would have been almost
awful to look upon.
This was the man who had intercepted Vetranio on his journey home, and
who had now hurried back so as to regain his accustomed post before his
master's return, for he was the same individual mentioned by Numerian
as his aged convert, Ulpius, in his interview with the landholder at
the Basilica of St. Peter.
When Ulpius had arrived within a few paces of the girl he stopped,
saying in a hoarse, thick voice--
'Hide your toy--Numerian is at the gates!'
Antonina started violently as she listened to those repulsive accents.
The blood rushed into her cheeks; she hastily covered the lute with her
robe; paused an instant, as if intending to speak to the man, then
shuddered violently, and hurried towards the house.
As she mounted the steps Numerian met her in the hall. There was now
no chance of hiding the lute in its accustomed place.
'You stay too late in the garden,' said the father, looking proudly, in
spite of all his austerity, upon his beautiful daughter as she stood by
his side. 'But what affects you?' he added, noticing her confusion.
'You tremble; your colour comes and goes; your lips quiver. Give me
your hand!'
As Antonina obeyed him, a fold of the treacherous robe slipped aside,
and discovered a part of the frame of the lute. Numerian's quick eye
discovered it immediately. He snatched the instrument from her feeble
grasp. His astonishment on beholding it was too great for words, and
for an instant he confronted the poor girl, whose pale face looked
rigid with terror, in ominous and expressive silence.
'This thing,' said he at length, 'this invention of libertines in my
house--in my daughter's possession!' and he dashed the lute into
fragments on the floor.
For one moment Antonina looked incredulously on the ruins of the
beloved companion, which was the centre of all her happiest
expectations for future days. Then, as she began to estimate the
reality of her deprivation, her eyes lost all their heaven-born
brightness, and filled to overflowing with the tears of earth.
'To your chamber!' thundered Numerian, as she knelt, sobbing
convulsively, over those hapless fragments. 'To your chamber!
Tomorrow shall bring this mystery of iniquity to light!'
She rose humbly to obey him, for indignation had no part in the
emotions that shook her gentle and affectionate nature. As she moved
towards the room that no lute was henceforth to occupy, as she thought
on the morrow that no lute was henceforth to enliven, her grief almost
overpowered her. She turned back and looked imploringly at her father,
as if entreating permission to pick up even the smallest of the
fragments at his feet.
'To your chamber!' he reiterated sternly. 'Am I to be disobeyed to my
face?'
Without any repetition of her silent remonstrance, she instantly
retired. As soon as she was out of sight, Ulpius ascended the steps
and stood before the angered father.
'Look, Ulpius,' cried Numerian, 'my daughter, whom I have so carefully
cherished, whom I intended for an example to the world, has deceived
me, even thus!'
He pointed, as he spoke, to the ruins of the unfortunate lute; but
Ulpius did not address to him a word in reply, and he hastily
continued:--
'I will not sully the solemn offices of tonight by interrupting them
with my worldly affairs. To-morrow I will interrogate my disobedient
child. In the meantime, do not imagine, Ulpius, that I connect you in
any way with this wicked and unworthy deception! In you I have every
confidence, in your faithfulness I have every hope.'
Again he paused, and again Ulpius kept silence. Any one less agitated,
less confiding, than his unsuspicious master, would have remarked that
a faint sinister smile was breaking forth upon his haggard countenance.
But Numerian's indignation was still too violent to permit him to
observed, and, spite of his efforts to control himself, he again broke
forth in complaint.
'On this night too, of all others,' cried he, 'when I had hoped to lead
her among my little assembly of the faithful, to join in their prayers,
and to listen to my exhortations--on this night I am doomed to find her
a player on a pagan lute, a possessor of the most wanton of the world's
vanities! God give me patience to worship this night with unwandering
thoughts, for my heart is vexed at the transgression of my child, as
the heart of Eli of old at the iniquities of his sons!'
He was moving rapidly away, when, as if struck with a sudden
recollection, he stopped abruptly, and again addressed his gloomy
companion.
'I will go by myself to the chapel to-night,' said he. 'You, Ulpius,
will stay to keep watch over my disobedient child. Be vigilant, good
friend, over my house; for even now, on my return, I thought that two
strangers were following my steps, and I forebode some evil in store
for me as the chastisement for my sins, even greater than this misery
of my daughter's transgression. Be watchful, good Ulpius--be watchful!'
And, as he hurried away, the stern, serious man felt as overwhelmed at
the outrage that had been offered to his gloomy fanaticism, as the
weak, timid girl at the destruction that had been wreaked upon her
harmless lute.
After Numerian had departed, the sinister smile again appeared on the
countenance of Ulpius. He stood for a short time fixed in thought, and
then began slowly to descend a staircase near him which led to some
subterranean apartments. He had not gone far when a slight noise
became audible at an extremity of the corridor above. As he listened
for a repetition of the sound, he heard a sob, and looking cautiously
up, discovered, by the moonlight, Antonina stepping cautiously along
the marble pavement of the hall.
She held in her hand a little lamp; her small, rosy feet were
uncovered; the tears still streamed over her cheeks. She advanced with
the greatest caution (as if fearful of being overheard) until she
gained the part of the floor still strewn with the ruins of the broken
lute. Here she knelt down, and pressed each fragment that lay before
her separately to her lips. Then hurriedly concealing a single piece
in her bosom, she arose and stole quickly away in the direction by
which she had come.
'Be patient till the dawn,' muttered her faithless guardian, gazing
after her from his concealment as she disappeared; 'it will bring to
thy lute a restorer, and to Ulpius an ally!'