SIX SUNNY MONTHS.BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.CHAPTERIV.—CONTINUED.Mr. Baileyhad finally, after some management, got Bianca quite to himself, and, discovering that they had mutual friends, and that she liked those parts of his writings which he considered the best, the two were quite over the threshold of a ceremonious acquaintance, and talking together very amicably.“You may stay to supper, if you will,” the Signora whispered to him. “But don’t say so, because I shall not ask any one else. Get yourself out of sight somewhere.”“Fly with me!” he said tragically to Bianca. “May we go to theloggia, Signora?”She nodded.“If you will watch the windows, and come in the instant I call you; and if that child will get something on the way to put over her head and shoulders.”The two stole out of the drawing-rooms with all the merry pleasure of children playing a prank.“Stop a moment!” the young man said when they reached thesala. “See how this room, almost encircled by brightly-lighted chambers, looks like the old moon in the new moon’s arms. Isn’t it pretty?”They passed the dining-room, traversed the long western wing, went up a little stair, and found themselves on the roof of a building that had been added to the house and used as a studio for sculptors. A balustrade ran across one side,and at the side opposite a door entered an upper room of the studio. The two connecting sides, the one toward the west and that next the house, had trellises, over which morning-glory vines were running. A few pots of flowers and a chair or two completed the furniture of the place. Below, the garden and vineyard pressed close against its walls, breathing perfume, and just stirring the evening air with a delicate ripple of water and a whisper of leaves.Bianca leaned on the balustrade and wished she were alone. The silent beauty was too solemn for talk; and, besides, it was the hour when one remembers the absent. Her companion was too sensitive not to perceive and respect her mood. “Only keep the shawl well about you,” he said, as if in reply to some spoken word, then left her to herself, and paced to and fro at the most distant part of theloggia, drinking in the scene, which would some day flow from his pen-point in glowing words. It seemed not ten minutes when the Signora’s voice was heard across the silence, “Children, come in!”Both sighed as they left the charmed spot, and had half a mind to disobey the summons. “But, after all, it will only be exchanging one picture for another,” the author said. “And,ecco!”He pointed to the foot of the littlestair that led from theloggiadown to the passage. Adriano stood there in the shade, like a portrait framed in ebony, holding in his hand one of the long-handled brass lamps of Italy, the light from whose three wicks struck upwards over his handsome dark face peering out sharply, but not at first seeing them.“Strong light and shade will make a picture of anything,” Bianca said. “And there is a companion.”He glanced at the dining-room window, and saw through the open half of a shutter Isabel standing under the chandelier, with face and hand uplifted to examine some pendants that had just caught her attention. The light poured over her face, and filled her beautiful, undazzled eyes, and the hand that held the crystal looked as if carved out of pink transparent coral.Going in, they found the supper-table set, and Mr. Vane entertaining the ladies with a story of two politicians, of opposite parties, who were so candid they were always convincing each other, and, consequently, were never of the same opinion, except when they were each half convinced; and even then they were not of the same opinion, for their minds turned different ways, like two persons who meet on the threshold of a house, one going in and one coming out. They went on year after year in this way, arguing, and trying to arrive at the truth, till at last they both went crazy and were locked up in separate mad-houses. At length both returned to their first opinions, and so were restored to reason. But when they were set at liberty, they became as great bigots as they had before been liberals, and each was so determined not only not to yield to the other, whom he regarded as the cause of hismisfortunes, but even to own that he could be sincere in his opinions, that they never met without fighting. Their rancor went on increasing, till they finally challenged each other at the same moment; and, in disputing as to which was the challenged and which the challenger, flew into such a fury that at last they killed each other, without ever having had time to fight a duel.“The moral of it is,” Mr. Vane concluded, “that when a man has once chosen his opinions, he has no more right to hear them abused than he has to hear his wife abused, no matter what she may be; and the cream of the moral is that all arguments are not only useless but dangerous.”“I know now what is meant by espousing an opinion or a cause,” the Signora said. “I had supposed the word was used merely for variety of phrase. It means, then, ‘for better or for worse.’ Poor Truth! how many buffets she gets! Not from you!” she added hastily, and blushing as she saw that her words had made Mr. Vane suddenly serious, and that he was looking at her with an expression almost reproachful. “No matter what you may say, I am sure you would never see Truth standing on your threshold without bidding her welcome.”He looked down, and a faint smile rather shone through his face than parted his lips. He seemed to thank her so.“I fancy she comes oftenest in silence and by herself,” he said in a very quiet tone.Something in his voice and look made Clive Bailey regard him with a momentary keenness. He felt that they indicated an almost feminine delicacy, and a depth of sensitivesweetness he had not looked to find in Mr. Vane.The Signora begged to call their attention to theminestrathat was steaming on the table. “Annunciata deserves that we should attend to it at once,” she said; “for she has given her best thoughts to it the whole afternoon. I couldn’t tell how many things have gone to its composition. I do hope it is good, so that we can consistently praise it. I should feel less disappointment in having a book fall dead from the press, than she will if we take no notice of her cooking. Don’t let the vacant chair injure your appetites; it is not for a ghost, but for Signor Leonardo, your Italian teacher. I told him to come to supper, and he is just five minutes too late—a wonder for him. He is the soul of promptness.”The door opened as she spoke, and Signor Leonardo stood bowing on the threshold—a dark, circumspect little man, who gave an impression of such stiffness and dryness that one almost expected to hear him crackle and snap in moving. He recovered from his low bow, however, without any accident, and, with some excess of ceremoniousness, got himself down to the table, where he sat on the very edge of his chair, looking so solemn and polite that Isabel, as she afterward declared, longed to get up and shake him. “He would have rattled all to pieces, if I had,” she said.This wooden little body contained, however, a cultivated mind and a good heart, and he was one of the most faithful, modest, and patient of men.He had been at the Vatican that morning, he said, in answer to the Signora’s questions, and had seen the Holy Father in good health andspirits, laughing at the cardinals who were with him, all of whom carried canes. “‘I am older than any of you,’ he said, ‘and, see! I can walk without my cane. Oh! I am a young man yet.’”“I saw Monsignor M——,” the professor added, “and he requested me to give you this,” presenting a little package.The Signora opened it in smiling expectation, and held up a small half-roll of bread out of which a piece had been bitten. “See how we idolaters love the Pope!” she said to Mr. Vane. “I begged Monsignor to get me a piece of bread from his breakfast-table. Let me see what he has written about it,” reading a card that accompanied this singular gift.“My dear Signora,” the prelate wrote, “behold your keepsake! I stood by while the Holy Father breakfasted, like a dog watching for a bone, and the moment I saw the one bite taken out of this bread I begged the rest for you. ‘What!’ said the Pope, ‘my children take the very bread from my mouth!’ and gave it to me, laughing pleasantly.”“The dear father,” the Signora said, kissing her treasure, as she rose to put it away in safety.This little incident led the talk to the Pope, and to many incidents illustrative of his goodness and the affection the people bore him.“A few years ago, in the old time,” the Signora said, “the price of bread was raised in Rome, for some reason or other, or for no reason. Some days after the Holy Father passed by here on his way to his favorite church, and ours, Bianca. He was walking, and his carriage following. I can see him now, in his white robe, his hands behind his back, holding his hat,and his sweet face ready with a kind glance for all. A poor man approached, asked to speak to him, and was allowed. ‘Holy Father,’ he said, kneeling down, ‘the price of bread is raised, and the people are hungry, for they cannot afford to buy it.’ The Pope gave him an alms and his benediction, and passed on. The next day the price of bread was reduced to its former rate.“‘Such grace had kings when the world began.’”One anecdote led to another; and then there was some music, Isabel playing rather brilliantly on the piano in thesala, a group of candles at either hand lighting up her face and person and that part of the room. Afterward, when the rest of the company had gone into the drawing-rooms, Bianca, sitting in a half-dark, sang two or three ballads so sweetly that they almost held their breaths to listen to her.Her singing made them feel quiet, and as if the evening were over; and when it ended, Mr. Bailey and thesignoretook leave. The family sat a while longer in thesala, with no light but a lamp that burned before a Madonna at the end of the long room. Outside, a pine-tree lifted its huge umbrella against the pure sky, and a great tower showed in the same lucid deep. The streets in front were still and deserted, the windows all dark and sullen. The moon had long since set, and the stars were like large, wide-open eyes that stare with sleepiness. Some Campagna people, who had been in the city, and were going home again, passed by, and stirred the silence with the sound of an accordeon, with which they enlivened their midnight walk; then all was still again.“The night-sounds of Rome arealmost always pleasant,” the Signora said. “Sometimes the country people come in with a tambourine and singing, but it is not noisy, and if it wakes you it is only for a few minutes. Sometimes it is a wine-cart, with all its little bells.”The clock ofSanta Maria Maggiorewas heard striking twelve. “My bells!” she exclaimed; then added: “I wish I could tell you all their lovely ways. For one, when they have the Forty Hours at the basilica, only the great bell strikes the hours, instead of three smaller ones, as now; and for the Angelus the four bells ring steadily together their little running song, while the great bell strikes now and then, but so softly as to be only a dream of a sound, as ifMaria Assuntawere talking to herself. It is delicious!”“I hear a bell now—a little bell,” Mr. Vane said.They listened, and found that his keen hearing had not deceived him. There was a sound of a little bell in the street, faint, but coming slowly nearer. What could it be? They looked out and saw nothing but the long, white street, stretching its ghostly length from hill to hill. The sound, however, was in the street, and at a spot where they looked and saw nothing, and it came constantly nearer. At length, when it was almost under their windows, they perceived a motion, slow and colorless, as if the paving-stones were noiselessly turning over and rolling off toward the Quirinal, and then the paving-stones became a tide of pale water tossing a black stick as it flowed; and, at last, it was sheep, and the stick was a man. The whole street was alive with their little bobbing heads and close pressed, woolly bodies. Soft and timid, they trotted past, as if afraidof waking the terrible lion of a city in whose sleeping jaws they found themselves. The dogs made no sound as they kept the stragglers in bounds, the men spoke not a word as they moved here and there among their flocks; there was only the small trotting of a multitude of little feet, and bell after bell on the leader of flock after flock. It seemed as if the world had turned to sheep.“I didn’t know there were so many in the world!” Isabel whispered.And still they came, stretching a mile, from beyond the Esquiline to beyond the Quirinal—an artery full of tender and innocent life flowing for an hour through the cruel, unconscious town.The Signora explained that the flocks were being taken from one pasture-ground to another, their shortest way being through the city. “I once saw a herd of cattle pass,” she said. “It was another thing, as you may imagine. Such a sense of the presence of fierce, strong life, and anger barely suppressed, I never experienced. It was their life that called my attention, as one feels lightning in the air. Then I heard their hoofs and the rattling of their horns, and then here they were! They were by no means afraid of Rome, but seemed, rather, impatient and angry that it should be here, drying up the pleasant hills where they would have liked to graze, reposing under the trees afterward, and looking dreamily off to the soft sea-line. How sleepy sheep make one!”The soft procession passed at length, and the family bade each other good-night.The next morning Isabel resolved not to be outdone by the other two ladies, and accordingly, whenshe heard the door shut softly after them as they went out to early Mass, she made haste to dress and follow. They, meanwhile, walked slowly on, unconscious of her intention, which would scarcely have given them the pleasure she imagined; for they were bound on an errand which would have rendered her society particularly uncongenial.Isabel went scrupulously to Communion three or four times a year, on certain great festivals, and at such times, according to her light, strove to do what she thought was required. She made her confession, but with scarcely more feeling than she would have reckoned up her money accounts, scrupulous to pay every cent, and, when every cent was paid, having a satisfied conviction that the account was square. Of that generous, higher honesty which, when casting up its accounts with God, blushes and abases itself in view of the little it has paid, or can pay, and which would fain cast itself into the balance, and, by an utter annihilation of every wish, hope, and pleasure that was not penitence, strive to express its gratitude at least for the ever unpayable debt—of this she knew nothing. She acknowledged freely that she was a sinner. “Of course I am a sinner!” she would say. “We are all sinners”; as if she should say, “Of course I am a biped!” but all as a matter of course. If anything decidedly offensive to her human sense of honor lay on her conscience, she certainly had a feeling of shame for it, and resolved not to transgress in that manner again; but there was no tremulous self-searching, no passion of prayer for illumination, unless at some odd time when sickness or peril had made death seemnear. The confession over, she went to church quietly, not talking much, and read respectfully the prayers in her prayer-book, which were, indeed, far warmer on her lips than in her heart. She tried not to look about, and, while her face was buried in her hands, shut her eyes, lest she should peep in spite of herself. Then, the whole over, she left the church, feeling much relieved that it was over, hoping that she had done right, and remaining rather serious for several hours after. Ordinarily, too, since the merciful Lord accepts even the smallest gift, and answers even the most tepid prayer, if they are sincerely offered, she felt some faint sweetness as she turned away, a tender touch of peace that brushed her in passing, and, moved by that slight experience of the rapture of the saints, as if a drop of spray from one of their fountains had fallen on her, she was conscious of an inexplicable regret that made her renew her good resolutions, and say a tiny prayer in her own words far more fervent than any she had breathed through the words of her book. For two days after her prayers were usually longer and more attentive, and she went to Mass; then Richard was himself again.Knowing all this, then, as we know things without thinking of them, or allowing ourselves to know that we know them, both the Signora and Bianca would far rather have been by themselves in going to church, especially when going to Holy Communion.They walked through the morning, already hot, though the hour was so early, with a sultry, splendid blue over their heads, and the air too sweet as it flowed over the garden-walls. The orange-trees seemed to be oppressed by the weightof their own odors, and to throw them off in strong, panting respirations. The sun was blazing directly behind one of the cupolas of the basilica, as they went up the hill, seeming to be set in the lantern; and then a light coolness touched them in the shadow, and they entered the beautiful church, where perpetual freshness reigns, rivalling the climate ofSt.Peter’s.The bells were just dropping off for the last fifteen minutes’ tolling, and the canons were coming in for choir, one by one, or two by two. One or two of the earlier ones, in their snow-whitecottasand ermine capes, were kneeling before a shrine or strolling slowly across the nave toward the choir-chapel. Here and there a Mass was being said, with a little group of poor people gathered about the altar, kneeling on the magnificent pavement of involved mosaic work, or sitting on the bases of the great columns. A woman with a white handkerchief on her head received communion at one altar, two little children playing about her, and clinging to her skirts as she got up to go to her place, her hands folded, her face wrapt in devotion, as undisturbed by the prattling and pulling of the little ones asSt.Charles Borromeo over his altar by the winged cherubs that held up and peeped through his long scarlet train.Our American ladies knelt near the door, by the side of the tribune, facing the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament at the other side of the church. The morning light entering this chapel set all its marbles glittering, and made the gilt tabernacle in the centre brighter than the lamps that burned before it, and, shining out into the church, set the great porphyry columns of the canopy in a glow. One might fancy thatthe blood of the martyrs whose bodies and relics reposed beneath was beginning to rise and circulate through the rich stone, above which the martyr’s crown and palm stood out in burning gold.Having finished their prayer to “His Majesty,” as the Spaniards beautifully express it, the two knelt at theprie-dieubefore the entrance to the gorgeous Borghese Chapel, to salute Our Lady in sight ofSt.Luke’s portrait of her. The face was doubly covered by its curtain of gold-embroidered silk and gates of transparent alabaster; but their eyes were fixed on the screen as they prayed, and these needed no more than they saw. Of this picture it has been said that sometimes angels have been found chanting litanies about it.There was no Mass in this chapel, and our friends went down the basilica to the chapel of the Sacred Heart, where a Mass was just beginning. The celebrant was an old man with hair as white as snow, and a face as peaceful and happy as a child’s. The Signora often encountered him in the church, and always felt like touching his robe in passing.“I am glad we shall receive communion from his hands,” she whispered to Bianca. “I always feel as if he were an angel only half disguised.”Half an hour afterward they left the chapel, but still lingered in the church, loath to go. There was no one in sight, but the strong, manly chorus of voices from the canons’ choir came out to them, now faintly heard as they moved out of its range, now clear and strong as they went nearer.“We really must go. They will be waiting for us at home,” the Signora said.Turning back for one more glance at the door, they saw the procession coming from the sacristy for the canons’ Mass, the vestments glittering brightly as they passed a streak of sunshine coming into the middle of the nave.“It is a constant succession of pictures,” sighed Bianca, who seemed hardly able to tear herself away.They stopped a few minutes on the steps.“Whatever else is injured by these new people, this basilica has certainly profited,” the Signora said. “The tribune front was a little low for the breadth. By digging down the hill, and, consequently, adding so many more steps to this superb flight, they have made the proportion perfect. Then they have also had to make a deeper pedestal to the obelisk, which is an improvement. The new white stone shows now in harsh contrast with the soft-toned old, but time will soon mellow it. And, moreover, they are doing their work well. They really seem to take pride in it. Thepiazzawas formerly muddy or dusty. Now they have made a solid foundation, and it will be all covered, when done, with that gold-colored gravel you see in patches. Fancy a goldenpiazzaleading up to my golden basilica!”She led her young friend along to the other end of the steps, and pointed up to where beautiful spikes of pink flowers were growing in interstices of the carving, and lovely plants made a fine fringe high in the air. Flights of birds came and went, brushing the flowers with their wings, and alighted, singing and twittering, all about the cupola over the Blessed Sacrament, going away only to return.“The little wild birds come to our Lord’s cupola,” she said, “andthere are always flocks of doves about Our Lady’s. I wonder why it is?”Going home, they found Isabel sitting with her bonnet on, taking coffee, and talking to her father, who seemed amused.“Here they are at last!” she exclaimed. “I have been toSanta Maria Maggiore, hoping to find you, and you weren’t there.”“Indeed we were there!” she was told.“You were hiding from me, then,” she went on. “No matter, I had a very pleasant morning, though rather a peculiar one. I searched and searched for you, and saw nothing of you; finally, seeing a movement of clergy toward a chapel at the right side as you go in, half-way down the church, I thought that must be the proper place to go. Accordingly, I went in and took a seat. Some clergymen seated themselves on the same bench, lower down, and I thought it more modest to move up. Then more clergy came, and I kept moving up toward the altar. I began to wish that some woman would come in, if it were only a beggar-woman; even the sight of a poor man or of a child would have been a relief. But there was no one but me besides the clergy. Well, I stood my ground, hoping that when the services should begin some people would come, and, on the whole, rather congratulating myself that I had secured so good a post. I kept moving up till at length I found myself close to the altar, and with a great stand before me on which was a great book. It was one of those turning lecterns, aren’t they?—set on a post about six feet high, and having five or six sides at the top. After a while I began to feel myself getting in a perspiration. Not a soulcame but priests. I looked in their faces to see if they were astonished at my being there, but not one seemed to be even conscious of my presence. They sat in two rows, facing each other, part of them in ermine capes, part in gray squirrel, and with the loveliest little white tunics all crimped and crimped. I didn’t enjoy the crimping much, though, for I perceived at last that I was the right person in the wrong place. The bell stopped ringing, a prelate took his place before the big stand and opened the big book, and there was I in the very highest place in the synagogue,“Canons to right of me,Canons to left of me,Canons in front of me,”and, at length, one of them smiling, I caught sight of a sidelong glance from him, and saw that he was shaking with laughter. He was a young man, and I forgive him.” Isabel paused to wipe the perspiration from her flushed face, then addressed the Signora solemnly: “My dear Signora, that choir-chapel is a mile long!”“I dare say you found it so,” was the laughing response. “But, also, I do not doubt that you made the best of the matter, and came out with deliberate dignity. Don’t cry about it, child. They probably thought you were a Protestant stranger. Protestants are expected to commit almost any enormity in Roman churches, and they do not disappoint the expectation. Last Christmas two women, well dressed and genteel-looking, went into the tribune during the High Mass, one of the assistants having left the gate open, and coolly took possession of a vacant seat there, in the face, not only of the assembled chapter and officiating prelate, but of a large congregation. I wonder what theywould say if a stranger should walk into one of their meeting-houses and take a seat in the pulpit? I will explain to you now what I thought you understood. The canons always sing their office together in choir, morning and afternoon, while other clergy say it privately, and the public have nothing to do with it. There is no harm in assisting, but it is not usual to do so. I like to listen, though, and there are certain parts that please me very much. When you hear them again, mark how theDeo gratiascomes out; and once in a while they will respond with anAmenthat is stirring. However, it is merely the office rapidly chanted by alternate choirs, and is not intended as a musical feast. They have a High Mass a little later, and then one can enter, if there should be room. I never go. There is always a Low Mass in the basilica or the Borghese.”“Doesn’t the Borghese Chapel belong to the basilica?” Mr. Vane inquired.“Yes, and no. The Prince Borghese is at the head of it, and, Ithink, supports it. It has its own clergy, and its separate services sometimes; for example, there is always the Litany of Our Lady Saturday evening, and they have their own Forty Hours. On some otherfestasthe chapter of the basilica go there for service—as Our Lady of Snow, Nativity of Our Lady, and the Immaculate Conception. Now I must leave you for an hour or two, and take my little baroness to see Monsignore. And, if you wish, I will at the same time arrange for an audience for you at the Vatican. Some time within a week, shall I say? It will have to be after Ascension, I think.”“How beautiful life begins to be!” said Bianca softly, after the three had sat awhile alone.Mr. Vane smiled, but made no reply.Isabel sighed deeply, buried in gloomy reflections. “I wish I knew,” she said, “what they call the man who stands at the desk and sings a part of the office alone; because that is the name by which the canons are calling me at this minute. I feel it in my bones.”CHAPTERVI.CARLIN’S NEST.Yes, life was beginning to grow beautiful to them—beautiful in the sweet, natural sense. Here and there a buckle that held the burden of it was loosed, here and there a flower was set. That uneasy feeling that one ought to be doing something, which often haunts and wearies even those who do nothing and never will do anything, began to give place to a contentment far more favorable to the accomplishment of real good. A generous wish to share their peacefulness with others made them practise every little kindness that occurred to them. Not a hand was stretched to them in vain, no courtesy from the humblest remained unacknowledged, and thus, accompanied by a constant succession of little beneficences, like a stream that passes between flowery banks its own waters keeping fresh, their lives flowed sweetly and brightly on from day to day.Of course they had the reputation of being angels with the poor about them. It is so easy for the rich and happy to be canonized by the poor. A smile, a kind word, and a penny now and then—that is all that is necessary. But the kindness of these three women was something more than a mere good-natured generosity; for no one of them was very rich, and all had to deprive themselves of something in order to give.Life was indeed becoming beautiful to them; for they had not yet settled, perhaps were not of a nature to settle, into the worse sort of Roman life, in which idle people collected from every part of the world gradually sink into a round of eating, visiting, gossip, and intrigue, which make the society of the grandest city of the world a strange spectacle of shining saintliness and disgusting meanness and corruption moving side by side.There is, indeed, no city that tries the character like Rome; for it holds a prize for every ambition, except that of business enterprise. The Christian finds here primitive saintliness flowering in its native soil, and can walk barefoot, though he have purple blood in his veins, and not be wondered at; the artist, whether he use chisel, brush, or pen, finds himself in the midst of a lavish beauty which the study of a life could not exhaust; the lover of nature sees around him the fragments of an only half-ruined paradise; the tuft-hunter finds a confusion of ranks where he may approach the great more nearly than anywhere else, and, perhaps, chat at ease with a princess who, in her own country, would pass him without a nod of recognition; the idle and luxurious can live here like Sybarites on an income that, in anothercountry, would scarcely give them the comforts of life; the lover of solitude can separate himself from his kind in the midst of a crowd, and yet fill his hours with delight in the contemplation of that ever-visible past which here lies in the midst of the present like an embalmed and beautiful corpse resting uncorrupted in the midst of flowers. But one must have an earnest pursuit, active or intellectual; for thedolce far nienteof Italy is like one of the soulless masks of women formed by Circe, which transformed their lovers into beasts.“I have heard,” the Signora said, “of a man who, lying under a tree in summer-time and gazing at the slow, soft clouds as they floated past, wished that that were work, and he well paid for doing it. My life is almost a realization of that man’s wish. What I should choose to do as a pleasure, and the greatest pleasure possible to me, I have to do as a duty. It is my business to see everything that is beautiful, and to study and dream over it, and turn it into as many shapes as I can. If I like to blow soap-bubbles, then it becomes a trade, and I merit in doing it. If a science should catch my fancy, and invite me to follow awhile its ordered track, I go in a palace-car, and the wheels make music of the track for me. And what friends I have, what confidences receive! The ugliest, commonest object in the world, scorned or disregarded by all, will look at me and whisper a sweet word or reveal a hidden beauty as I pass. You see that log,” pointing to the fire-place, where a mossy stick lay wreathed about by a close network of vine-twigs clinging still in death where they had clung and grown in life. “The moment my eyes fell on that itsang me a song. In every balcony, every stair, every house they are cutting down to make their new streets, every smallest place where the wind can carry a feathered seed, the seed of a story has lodged for me, and, as I look, it sprouts, grows, blossoms, and overshadows the whole place. But for the pain of bringing out and putting into shape what is in my mind, my life would be too exquisite for earth. If I could give immediate birth to my imaginings, I should be like some winged creature, living for ever in air. I’m glad I work in words, and not in marble, like Carlin here. And, apropos, suppose we should go in there.”Carlin was the sculptor whose studio was attached toCasa Ottant’-Otto. He was a great friend of the Signora, who had permission to see him work when she liked, and to go and come with her friends as it pleased her.“We may as well take our work,” she said. “It is pleasanter there than here this morning. When Mr. Vane and Isabel come in from their visit, we shall hear them ring the bell.”The two went out to theloggia, where the morning sun was blazing hotly on the pink and purple morning-glories, and, passing an ante-room where two marble-workers were chipping away, each at his snowy block, tapped at the door of an inner chamber.A loud “Avanti!” answered the knock.“Welcome!” said a voice when they entered. “Make yourselves at home. I’m busy with a model, you see.”Bianca glanced about in search of the source of this salutation, and perceived presently a large head looking at them over thetop of a screen. The rest of the body was invisible. This head was so colossal and of such a height that for a moment she doubted if it might not be a colored bust on a shelf. But its eyes moved, and in a second it nodded itself out of sight, leaving on the gazer an impression of having seen a large, kind Newfoundland dog. Poor Carlin was very shaggy, his hair almost too profuse, and constantly getting itself tangled, and his beard growing nearly to his eyes. But the eyes were bright, dark, and pleasant, the nose superlatively beautiful, and, by some unexplained means, every one was aware at once that under this mass of shadowy beard there were two deep dimples, one in the cheek and another in the chin.Before they had well shut the door, the screen was swept aside and the sculptor’s whole form appeared. It was so large as to reduce the head to perfect proportion, and was clad in a suit of dull blue cotton worn with a careless grace that was very picturesque. One hand held a bit of clay; the other pulled off his skull-cap in reverence to his visitors. He said nothing, but immediately replaced the cap, and began rolling the clay between his hands.He was modelling a group, and his model, a beautiful youngcontadina, stood before him with her arms up, holding a copper water-vase on her head. Her mother sat near, a dark, bilious, wrinkled Lady Macbeth, who wore her soiled and faded clothes as if they had been velvets and embroideries, and reclined in an old leather chair as superbly as if she sat on a gilded throne with a canopy over her head. A pair of huge rings of pure gold hung from her ears, and two heavygold chains surrounded her dark neck, and dropped each its golden locket on her green bodice.“We won’t mind them,” the Signora said to her friend. “Come and be introduced to the bird of our country.”“He’s been behaving badly to-day,” the sculptor said, “and I had to beat him. Look and see what he has done to my blouse! The whole front is in rags. He flew at me to dig my heart out, I suppose, with his claws, and screamed so in my face that I was nearly deafened. It took both the men to get him off.”This contumacious eagle was chained to his perch, and had the stick with which he had been beaten so placed as to be a constant reminder of the consequences attending on any exhibition of ill-temper. He was greatly disconcerted when the two ladies approached him, changed uneasily from foot to foot, and, half lifting his wide wings, curved his neck, and seemed about to hide his head in shame. Then, as they still regarded him, he suddenly lifted himself to his full height, and stared back at them with clear, splendid eyes.“What pride and disdain!” exclaimed Bianca. “I had no idea the creature was so human. Let’s go away. If we stay much longer, he will speak to us. He considers himself insulted.”Three walls of the room and a great part of the central space were occupied by the usual medley of a sculptor’s studio—busts, groups, masks, marble and plaster, armor, vases, and a hundred other objects; but the fourth side was hung all over with fragments of baby contours. Single legs and crossed legs; arms from the shoulder down, with the soft flattening of flesh above the elbow, and the sustained roundnessbelow; little clenched fists, and hands with sprawling, dimpled fingers; chubby feet in every position of little curled toes, each as expressive of delicious babyhood as if the whole creature were there—the wall was gemmed with them. In the midst was a square window, without a sash, and just then crowded as full as it could be. A vine, a breeze, and as much of a hemisphere of sunshine as could get in were all pressing in together. The breeze got through in little puffs that dropped as soon as they entered; the sunshine sank to the tiled floor, where it led a troubled existence by reason of the leaf-shadows that never would be still; and the vine ran over the wall, and in and out among the little hands and feet, kissing them with tender leaf and bud, which seemed to have travelled a long distance for nothing else but that.Bianca put her face to this window, and drew it back again. “There is nothing visible outside,” she said, “but a fig-tree, half the rim of a great vase, a bit of wall, and a sky full of leaves.”She seated herself by the Signora, and they made believe to work, dropping a loop of bright wool or silken floss now and then, and glancing from time to time at the artist as he punched and pressed a meaning into the clay before him.“I never see a sculptor make a human figure in clay without thinking of the creation of Adam and Eve,” the Signora said. “The Mohammedans say that angels first kneaded the clay for I don’t know how many years. How beautiful they must have been! ‘In His own image.’ Did you observe in the Barbarini gallery Domenichino’s picture of Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise? You were too muchoccupied with the Cenci. Everybody is at first. I was thinking, while I looked at that representation of the Creator, reclining on his divan of cherubim, what a pity it is that artists should have tried to do it, or, trying, should not have been able to do more. How that eagle does fret! It requires all my friendship for Carlin to prevent my cutting the leather thong that holds the chain to its leg some fine day. Wouldn’t it be pleasant to see him shoot like a bomb out through the window, tearing the vines away like cobwebs with his strong wings, and carrying off little green tendrils clinging to his feathers! The sunlight would be shut out a moment, there would be a rush as of waters, then the room would be light again. But, in such an event, the only gain would be a change of personality in the prisoner, and thirtylireout of my pocket. That is what Carlin paid for this unhappy wretch, and what I should be bound to pay him to buy another unhappy wretch to languish in his place. How do you like Carlin?”“I don’t know,” Bianca answered slowly. “Isn’t he a sort of savage?—a good one, you know.”“Precisely! All the polish he has is inside. Fortunately, however, he is transparent, and the brightness is bright enough to shine out through him. He is full of good-nature and enthusiasm. Once liking him, you will like him always, and better and better always. None but dishonest people dislike him, though there are some very good people who say he is not to their taste. Dear me! he is making a mistake in that group. O Carlin!” she called out, “do let me say something. Your water-carrier is going to look like a teapotif you place her so. Let her put the other arm out for a spout, and the thing will be perfect.”It was a group of a girl and her lover at a fountain.He was just knitting his brows over the hand that held the handle of the vase, rolling bits of clay between his palms and arranging them for fingers. He threw the last one away. “I know it’s a stupid thing,” he said discontentedly; “but what can I do? It struck me as a pretty subject; but now I have begun to work it out, it seems to me I remember having seen a hundred like it, each one as stupid as mine. I was this instant thinking my grandmother must have had a cream-pitcher of this design.”“Why don’t you make her stooping a little to lift the vase to her head, and looking up at the fellow?” the Signora suggested. “It will bring out your knowledge of anatomy a little more, and it will wake her up. Don’t you see her face is as dull as her sandal?”This conversation, being in English, was not understood by the model, who stood stupid, and straight, and tired, trying to look picturesque.The artist considered a minute, then said abruptly: “Put down the vase, not on the floor, but in a chair.”She obeyed.“Now take it up—slowly—and stop the instant I tell you.”She bent her strong and supple figure a little, and began lifting the vase.“Stop there!” he called out, “and look up at me. Look as pretty as you can. Think that I am somegiovanottowho is going, perhaps, to ask you of your mother.”Half shy, half saucy, she lookedup as commanded, gratified vanity and friendly regard uniting to give her face as much expression as it was capable of.Carlin seized his pencil and began sketching rapidly.“He hasn’t a particle of imagination,” the Signora said in a low tone, “but he has excellent eyes and much humor. I sometimes think that humor and imagination never go together. Indeed, I don’t believe they ever do in any superlative degree.”A little bell sounded timidly at her side, pulled by a cord that she perceived now by its vibration coming in at the window, the bell itself being quite hidden by the vine-leaves, where it was held between two large nails driven into the window-frame.“Would—you—be so very kind—as to throw—that—loaf of bread out of the window, Signora?” the artist asked, abstractedly dropping one word at a time between the strokes of his pencil and glances at his model, whose fire was beginning to fade. “I can’t stop.”The lady looked at him in wonder.“It’s a beggar,” he explained after a moment, scratching away rapidly. “I can’t be bothered with them in here.”She looked out of the window as well as she could for the leaves, and saw an arm in a ragged coat-sleeve, and a hand stretching toward the wall, and, at the same instant, the bell rang in her very ear with a force that made her start back. The bread was on a little shelf near by, an old knife beside it. She prudently cut the loaf in two, and dropped half to the unseen mendicant.“That’s just like Carlin!” she exclaimed. “I don’t suppose anyone else would think of rigging up a beggars’ bell.”“I shall know where to go when I want bread,” she said aloud, seeing him pause in his work. “It will be only to come under your window, pull a string, and hold up my apron.”“Oh! by the way, please to pull in the string,” he added. “I never let it hang out, except when I have made an appointment. I told him to come if he didn’t get anything for dinner. Said he hadn’t eaten anything for twenty-four hours. It’s a disagreeable thing to go twenty-four hours without eating.”Carlin knew what it was well. He had come to Rome fifteen years before without a dollar in his pocket, except what had paid his passage, and, without patronage, almost without friends, had climbed, step by step, through all the dark, steep ways of poverty, suffering what no one but himself knew, till at length a modest success rewarded his efforts. He never told his experiences, seemed to choose to forget them; but never a pitiful tale of suffering from poverty was told him without the ready answer, “Yes, yes, I know all about it,” springing as if involuntarily to his lips.There was a knock at the door, which immediately opened without a permission, and a young man entered—one of those odious, well-dressed, rather handsome, and easy-mannered men who repel one more than rags, and ugliness, and stupidity.“Good-morning!” he said with confident politeness. “Don’t let me interrupt you. I only want to see Mrs. Cranston’s bust. Promised her I would take a look at it.”His coming produced the effect of a slight frost in the air. TheSignora grew dignified, and made a little sign to Bianca to take a seat which would turn her back to the new-comer. Carlin frowned slightly and bent to his work; the oldcontadinaglared from the man to her daughter, and the daughter blushed uneasily.The young man seemed to be entirely unconscious of not having received a welcome, sauntered across the studio, pausing here and there, and at length, stopping under the pretence of examining a bust, fixed his eyes on the model.“Look here, sir!” said Carlin, after five minutes of silence, “you’d better come in some other time, when I’m not busy.”“Oh! don’t mind me,” was the careless reply.Carlin waited a minute longer, then swung the screen round between his model and her tormentor.The young man smiled slightly, gave his shoulders the least possible shrug, and began to saunter about the studio again, pausing finally at a spot that gave him a still better view of the girl.The pencil quivered in Carlin’s hands, but his voice was gentle enough when he spoke again. “I don’t care to have visitors in the morning,” he said. “Come in in the afternoon, when I am working in marble. I work in clay always in the morning.”“My dear fellow, I don’t want you to trouble yourself in the least about me. I can amuse myself,” the visitor replied.Carlin seemed to be galvanized so suddenly he started upright, with anger in every nerve of him. “Confound you!” he cried out, “do you want me to pitch you out of the window? Go about your business.”He had no cause to repeat the request. Coolly and disdainfully, but with a paleness that showed both fear and anger, the young exquisite walked out as leisurely as he had come in.A laugh as sharp and bright as a blade shot across the old woman’s face, but she said not a word.“You are getting acquainted with him rapidly,” the Signora whispered to her friend. “Isn’t he refreshing? It is so beautiful to see a man whose first impulse is to protect a woman from annoyance, even when the woman doesn’t belong to him. Carlin is truly a manly, honorable fellow.”“I hear a faint little song, sweet and low,” said Bianca, listening with her pretty head aside and her eyes lifted.“It is Carlin’s bird,” said the Signora.The girl glanced about, but saw no cage.“It is a soft, cooing sound,” she said.“It is Carlin’s dove,” the Signora replied.Bianca looked at her inquiringly, her lips still apart, and her head turned to listen to the melody.“He doesn’t keep it in a cage, but in a nest,” the Signora went on, smiling. “Come, and I will show you. Step lightly, and do not speak. He is too busy to notice, and this great tapestry will hide us. You must examine this some time, by the way. It is all in rags, but very precious. See that foot on it! Doesn’t it look as if it were just set on the green ground—after a bath, too? It is so fresh and perfect.”She led the way to an alcove of the studio hidden from the other rooms by this tapestry, and pointed to the inner wall, where a small, lowdoor showed, half hidden by draperies and armor. “Some day we will go in; but to-day I will give you a peep only.”She went to the door, and noiselessly pushed away a little slide in the panel, then motioned Bianca to look through. The girl obeyed, and found herself looking into a square room whose one great arched window had a snow-white fringed curtain waving slowly in the slight breeze, alternately giving glimpses of, and hiding, aloggiafull of flowers and the green outside curtain of a grape-vine. Only tiny glints of sunshine entered through this double drapery, making the white curtain look as if it were embroidered with spots of gold. From the centre of a vaulted white ceiling hung a brass lamp, swinging slowly on its chain, and catching a point of light in place of the extinguished flame. On the white wall opposite the door hung high up an ebony crucifix, with a blue niche below, in which stood a marble statue of the Madonna. A tiny lamp burned before the two, and a branch of roses was twisted about the statue’s feet. In the centre of the room a green-covered table stood on a large green cloth that covered nearly the whole of the stone floor, and two or three cane-seated chairs were visible. The bird still sung her low, cooing song, an improvised melody set to inarticulate murmurs that now and then broke softly into words—a word of human love and blessing, a word of prayer, or a word of happiness. As when a gentle brook flows with only its waters now, and now with a flower or leaf, and now a little boat on its tide, and now a break of foam, and then a clear reflection as vivid as a tangible object, so thesong flowed, with its word here and there.Carlin’s dove was a young woman with a sweet, motherly face, and, as she sang, she swung to and fro a hammock that was hung directly under the blue niche of the Virgin; and her eyes were raised from time to time to the statue or the crucifix, with anAveor aGesù mio, or dropped to the baby she hushed to sleep with a word as tender. All the room seemed to swing with the hammock, as if it were in a tree-top; to float in an atmosphere of love and happiness with the mother and her child. Slowly the white lids of the little one dropped, like two rose-petals that cover two stars, and a dimpled hand clinging to the mother’s loosened its hold, as the angel of sleep unclasped it gently, finger by finger. Silence settled over the song, the hammock ceased to swing, and the mother, shining with love and happiness, bent over her sleeping babe, gazing at it as if her eyes were gifted to see through its white and rosy flesh, and behold the resting, folded soul hidden there like a sleeping butterfly in a shut flower.The Signora closed the slide as noiselessly as she had opened it, and the two, exchanging a smile of sympathetic pleasure, turned away from Carlin’s nest.The sculptor had made his sketch, and was just sending his model away. He turned immediately to his visitors, and began to show them his latest works, half a dozen things in clay, some finished, some requiring still a few touches. One group was especially pretty. It represented a family scene in one of the little Italian towns where all the business of life goes on in the street. On the rude stonesteps outside a door sat a mother winding a skein of yarn held for her by a pretty girl of ten years or thereabouts, whose small arms were stretched to their utmost extent in the task. A little chubby boy leaned on the mother’s lap, and put up his finger to pull at the thread. At the front of the steps sat the father cobbling shoes.“I found that at Monte Compatri,” he said; “and the figures are all portraits. I was afraid I couldn’t do it, for it is better adapted for canvas than marble; but the walls hold them together, you see.”“We must go to Monte Compatri, Bianca,” the Signora said. “It’s one of the most primitive places in the world—a Ghetto perched on a mountain-top, as filthy and as picturesque as can be imagined. The air is delicious, the view superb, and the salads beggar description.”All Carlin’s best groups and figures were, like this, copies from nature. When he attempted anything else, he unconsciously copied the works of others or he failed.“I’m so glad you made that suggestion about the water-carrier,” he said, taking up his sketch. “I find it is always better for me to put considerable action into my figures. If I give them a simplepose, they are stupid. Would you have her looking up or down?”“Let the little minx look up, by all means,” the Signora said. “She’s a good girl, enough, as a butterfly or a bird may be good. There isn’t enough of her for a down look; but that saucy little coquettish up-look is rather piquant. Besides, it is true to her nature. If she thought any one were admiring her, she wouldn’t have subtilty enough to look down and pretend not to see, and she wouldn’t have self-control enough, either. She would wish toknow just how much she was admired, and to attitudinize as long as it paid her vanity to do so. Bianca, my dear, there is our bell. Your father and Isabel must have come home.”They went down again through the complicated passages and stairs, where arched windows and glimpses into vaulted rooms and into gardens crowded with green made them seem far from home.“How beautiful orange-trees are!” Bianca exclaimed, stopping to look at one that filled roundly a window seen at the end of a long passage. “It has the colors of Paradise, I fancy. I don’t like yellow to wear, not even gold; but I like it for everything else.”“Wait till you see the snow on an orange-tree, if you would see it at its perfection,” was the reply. “Perhaps you might wait many years, to be sure. I saw it once, and shall never forget. A light snow came down over the garden a few winters since, and dropped its silvery veil over the orange-trees. Fancy the dark green leaves and the golden fruit through that glittering lace! I had thought that our northern cedars and pines, with their laden boughs, were beautiful; but the oranges were exquisite. Would you believe that our kitchen door was so near?”Isabel ran to meet the two, all in a breeze.“Hurry on your things in two minutes to go to the Vatican,” she said. “Here are the cards. Monsignor forgot to send them, and has only now given them to us. The carriage is at the door.”Off came the summer muslins in a trice, and in little more than the time allowed the three ladies tripped, rustling, down the stairs, in their black silk trains and black veils.“I am constantly going to the Vatican in this breathless way,” the Signora said, as they drove rapidly through the hot sunshine. “With the usual sublime ignorance of men, and especially of clergymen, of the intricacies of the feminine toilet, my kind friends always give me ten minutes to prepare. One needs to keep one’s papal court dress laid out all ready for use at a moment’s warning. Fortunately, it is very simple. But Bianca has found time to mount the papal colors,” she added, seeing a bunch of yellow jasmine tucked into her friend’s belt.“Is it allowed?” the girl asked doubtfully. “I can leave it in the carriage. But I always like to have a flower about me.”“Oh! keep it,” her friend replied, and smiled, but suppressed the words that would have followed. For while Bianca Vane carried that face about with her, she never lacked a flower.They were just in time for the audience, and an hour later drove slowly homeward through the silent town. Bianca was leaning back in the corner of the carriage with her eyes shut. The audience had been especially pleasant for her; for the Holy Father, seeing her kneel with her hands tightly clasped, and her eyes, full of delight, raised to his face, had smiled and laid his hand on her head, instead of giving it to her to kiss. The others said but little. The languor of the hour was upon them.“Does any one say, Signora, that the Pope has a shining face?” Mr. Vane asked.“Certainly,” she replied.“Then I am not original in thinking that I found something luminous about him,” the gentleman went on. “It is as if I had seen a lamp. And what a sweet voice he has!He said ‘la Chiesa’ in a tone that made me think of David mourning over Absalom.”Mr. Vane had been much impressed by the beautiful presence of the reverend Pontiff, and had behaved himself, not only like a gentleman, but like a Catholic. The Signora had seen how he blushed in kissing the Pope’s hand, not as if with shame at paying such an act of homage, but as if some new sentiment of tender reverence and humility had just entered his heart. It had been very pleasant to her to see this, both on account of the love she bore the object of the homage, and the respect she had, and wished to retain, for him who paid it.The driver held in his panting horses, and walked them on the side of the streets where a narrow strip of shadow cooled the heat of the burning stones; the pines and cypress in the gardens they passed, which in the morning had been so full of silvery twitterings that the fine, sweet sounds seemed almost to change the color of them and make them glisten with brightness, were now sombre and silent. The birds were all hid in their dark green shadows, or perched in cool, sunless angles and nooks of vases, balustrades, statues, and cornices of church or palace. Here and there a workman lay stretched at length on the sidewalk or on steps, sleeping soundly.At length they reached home. The porter sat sleeping in his chair at the great door, and a family of beggars, four or five women and children, lay curled up outside on the curbstone.Inside all was deliciously cool and tranquil. Dinner was on the table; for the servants had been watching for them, and had brought the soup in directly, and they sat down withappetites improved by the delay. The Signora poured out some wine for herself.“The people here say that you should take a little wine before your soup,” she said. “My formerpadronatold me the nuns in the convents she knew always did. I don’t know why it is good for the stomach, but bow to their superior wisdom.”“Doesn’t the hair on the top of my head look unusually bright?” Bianca asked after a while. She was still thinking of the sacred hand that had rested there, still feeling its gentle pressure.The others looked, not understanding.“Why, your veil covers it,” Isabel said. “But there’s a bright garnet and gold pin at the top.”Bianca lifted her arms to loosen the veil, took the gold hairpin out and kissed it. “He must have touched it,” she said, “and so it has been blessed. Do you know, Signora, what thought came into my mind at the moment? I thought as he touched me, ‘It is the hand that holds the keys of purgatory and of heaven!’”“My own thought!” her friend exclaimed. “I had the same benediction once, and it set me rhyming. I do not set up for a poet, you know, but there are feelings that will sing in spite of one. This was one, and I must show you the lines some time soon, to see if they express you. I don’t know where they are.”“I know where something of yours is,” Bianca said eagerly. “I saw it in your blotting-book, and had to call up all my honesty not to read it. Reward me now! I will bring it.”She looked so bright and coaxing, and the others so cordiallyjoined in her request, that the Signora could not but consent, though usually shy of reading her unpublished productions to any one.“How I like hot noons!” she sighed through a smile of languid contentment, leaning back in her chair, and dropping in her lap the folded paper Bianca had brought her. “I found out the charm of them when I was in Frascati. At this early season the heat of the city, too, is good—a pure scorch and scald. In August it is likely to be thick and morbid. That first noon in Frascati was a new experience to me. I went to see Villa Torlonia, which was open to the public only between the hours of eleven and five—a time when scarcely any one, especially any Italian, wants to go out in hot weather. I wished to see the villa, however, and I went, stealing along the shadowy edges of streets, and down a long stairway street that is nearly or always shaded by the tall houses at either side and the hill behind, catching my breath as I passed through the furnace of sunshine in the openpiazza, finally, with my face in a flame, stepping under the great trees inside the gate, and pausing to refresh myself a little before going on. There was still the open terrace to pass, and the grand unshaded steps to ascend; but it was easier to go forward than back, for a few minutes would bring me to avenues as dim asAve Mariatime. I stood a little and dreaded the sun. Thecasinoand the gravel of the terrace and the steps were reflecting it so that one might almost have fancied the rays clashed on each other in the midst of the opening. The rose-trees in the flower-garden looked as if they bore clusters of fire-coals, and some sort of flowering tree in the green spacesbetween the stairs seemed to be breaking out into flame with its red and yellow blossoms. I remembered Mrs. Browning’s“‘The flowers that burn, and the trees that aspire,And the insects made of a song or a fire.’”She paused to lay a laurel leaf over acarafonof cream that a fly was buzzing about, then exclaimed: “Why wasn’t that woman a Catholic, and why isn’t she alive now, that I may kiss her hand, and her cheek, if she would let me? Fancy such a genius consecrated to religion! You know the other stanza of that poem I have just quoted:“‘And, oh! for a seer to discern the same,’Sighed the South to the North;‘For the poet’s tongue of baptismal flame,To call the tree and the flower by its name,’Sighed the South to the North.“It seems to me that not one person in a thousand—Italians no more than strangers—would know there were anything remarkable here, if a small, small number of persons hadn’t told them there is. How they all repeat the same words, from the teeth out, and talk learnedly of what they know nothing about! They don’t one of them find a beauty that isn’t in the guidebooks.”She sighed impatiently, and returned to her subject.“I was telling you about noon in Villa Torlonia: I stood under the great solid trees awhile, then took courage and walked into the sun again, across the terrace, with only a glance at the vast panorama visible from it, up the steps that were hot to my feet, and then plunged into the upper avenues as into a cool bath. There was another opening to cross, for I wanted to go to the upper fountain; but here the cascade cooled the eyes, at least. I went up the cascade stairs as the waters came down, and found myselfalone in that beautiful green-walled drawing-room, with the fountain leaping all to itself in the centre, and the forty masks of the balustrade about the basin each telling its different story. Beside the tall central jet there used to be, perhaps may now be, a jet from each of these masks that are carved on the great posts of the balustrade, no two alike. I made a circuit of the place to assure myself that no one else was there; looking down each path that led away through the over-arching trees. Not a soul was in sight. There was no danger of Italians being there; and as forforestieri, there were none in Frascati. How delicious it was simply to sit on one of the stone benches and live! A spider’s web glistened across the place, starting straight from a tree behind me. Where it was fastened at the other end I could not guess; for the nearest object in that line was the tossing column of foamy water, fifty feet, may be more, distant, then an equal distance to the trees at the other side. There was no sound but that of falling water, that seemed to carry the chirp of thecicaliand the whisper of the trees, as the waters themselves carried the dry leaves and twigs that fell into them. All around the sun searched and strove to enter through the thick green, so near that his fiery breath touched my face. How my chains melted off! How pure the heat was, and how sweet! One bird sang through it now and then—sang for me: he the only lark abroad at that hour, as I was the only signora. I answered him with a little faint song, to which again he replied. I never was so happy, never felt so free from all that could annoy. Probably Adam and Eve had some such delight in the mere feelingthat they were alive. And so I sat there, hour after hour, half asleep, half fainting with the heat, in which I seemed to float. If I had been called on then to say what God is, I should have said, He is a fire that burns without consuming. Fire and its attendant heat were the perfection of all things, and coldness was misery—but a pure, clear fire which an anemone could pass through unscathed.”The Signora drew a breath that was half a sigh, and took up the folded paper from her lap. “How happy I am in Italy in the summer!” she said, half to herself. “I can work in the cool months, but I live in the hot ones.”“Bianca wants me to read this rhyme? It is a summer rhyme, too, and commemorates a little incident of my first summer here—a visit toSanta Maria della Vittoria. You have not been there yet. It is very near, just out on theVia della porta Pia, which the new people callVenti Settembre, because the invaders came in that way on the 20th of September. They try to keep the anniversary, and to make the city look as if the people cared for it, but it is a dreary pretence. A military procession, a few flags hung out here and there from houses of government officials and foreigners, chiefly Americans—that is all.”She read:Never so fair a rose as this, I think,E’er bloomed on a rose-tree;So sweet a rose as this, I surely know,Was never given to me.Like the reviving draught to fainting lips,The gentle word to strife,Cool, fresh, and tender, in a bitter hour,It dropt into my life.Hid in the silence of a darkened room,With sleepless eyes I lay,And an unresting mind, that vainly stroveTo shut its thoughts away.When through the loosenedperslaneslippedA sunbeam, sharply bright,That cleft the chamber’s quiet duskiness,And put my dreams to flight.Before the windows, in a dusty squareFretted by restless feet,Where once a palace-garden had unrolledIts alleys green and sweet,Men rooted up a fountain-base that layWhitened like bleaching bones,Or into new walls piled, with a weary care.The weary, ancient stones.And all about the slowly-growing work,In warlike mantles drest,Disputing with the spade for every sod,The angry poppies prest.And when I thought how fate uproots alwaysMy gardens, budding sweet,The hotsciroccoof an angry painBlew me into the street.The unveiled heights of sapphire overheadDazzled the lifted eyes;The sun, in lovely splendor, blazed from outThe keystone of the skies;And Rome sat glowing on her seven hills,Yellow with fervid heat,And scorched the green Campagna, where it creptAnd clung about her feet.The ways were silent where the sunshine pouredIts simmering, golden stream;For half the town slept in its shaded halls,Half worked as in a dream;The very fountains dropt from sleepiness,Pillowed in their own foam,I only, and the poppies, it would seem,Were wide awake in Rome.There were the gray old ruins, in whose nooksNodded each wild flower-bell,Where San Bernardo’s fane is hidden, likeA pearl within its shell.There marched the Piedmont robber and his hostIn through the long, long street;And there the open portal of a churchDrew in my straying feet.Silence and coolness, and a shade so deep,At first I saw no moreThan circling clouds and cherubs, with the dome’sBright bubble floating o’er;Wide flocks of milk-white angels in the roof,The hovering Bird divine;And, starring the lower dusk, the steady lampsThat marked each hidden shrine.Then marble walls and gilded galleriesGrew slowly into sight;And holy visions peered from out the gloomOf chapels left and right;And I perceived a brown-robed sacristan,With a good, pleasant face,Who sat alone within an altar-railTo guard the sacred place.He showed me all their treasures—the dead saintWithin her altar-shrine;Showed where the Master sat, in gilded bronze,Blessing the bread and wine;Unveiled the niche whose swooning marble form’Tis half a sin to see—Bernini’sSt.Teresa—and betrayedHer dying ecstasy;Then led me to the sacristy, where hung,Painted the glorious field—Lepanto’s—and he told the ancient tale,How, like a magic shield,Our Lady’s sacred picture, borne aloftIn the dread battle’s shock.Had sent the scattered Paynim flying far,Like foam from off a rock.When all was seen and said, my parting footA soft “Aspetti!” stayedJust where a tiny garden ’mid the wallsIts nook of verdure made.And while I waited, was broke off for meA bright geranium bloom,And this blush-rose, whose richly-perfumed breathHas sweetened the whole room.“O Rosa Mystica!” I thought, and feltConsoled, scarce knowing why;It seemed that in that brief hour all my wrongHad righted silently,As when, new-shriven, we go forth to treadThe troubled ways of men.Folded in peace, and with no need, it seems,Ever to speak again.Lady invincible! Her grander fieldsAre praised ’neath every sun;But who shall count the secret victoriesHer gentler arms have won?Hers are the trumpet and the waving flag;But there is one who knowsThat on a certain summer day in RomeShe conquered with a rose.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.
Mr. Baileyhad finally, after some management, got Bianca quite to himself, and, discovering that they had mutual friends, and that she liked those parts of his writings which he considered the best, the two were quite over the threshold of a ceremonious acquaintance, and talking together very amicably.
“You may stay to supper, if you will,” the Signora whispered to him. “But don’t say so, because I shall not ask any one else. Get yourself out of sight somewhere.”
“Fly with me!” he said tragically to Bianca. “May we go to theloggia, Signora?”
She nodded.
“If you will watch the windows, and come in the instant I call you; and if that child will get something on the way to put over her head and shoulders.”
The two stole out of the drawing-rooms with all the merry pleasure of children playing a prank.
“Stop a moment!” the young man said when they reached thesala. “See how this room, almost encircled by brightly-lighted chambers, looks like the old moon in the new moon’s arms. Isn’t it pretty?”
They passed the dining-room, traversed the long western wing, went up a little stair, and found themselves on the roof of a building that had been added to the house and used as a studio for sculptors. A balustrade ran across one side,and at the side opposite a door entered an upper room of the studio. The two connecting sides, the one toward the west and that next the house, had trellises, over which morning-glory vines were running. A few pots of flowers and a chair or two completed the furniture of the place. Below, the garden and vineyard pressed close against its walls, breathing perfume, and just stirring the evening air with a delicate ripple of water and a whisper of leaves.
Bianca leaned on the balustrade and wished she were alone. The silent beauty was too solemn for talk; and, besides, it was the hour when one remembers the absent. Her companion was too sensitive not to perceive and respect her mood. “Only keep the shawl well about you,” he said, as if in reply to some spoken word, then left her to herself, and paced to and fro at the most distant part of theloggia, drinking in the scene, which would some day flow from his pen-point in glowing words. It seemed not ten minutes when the Signora’s voice was heard across the silence, “Children, come in!”
Both sighed as they left the charmed spot, and had half a mind to disobey the summons. “But, after all, it will only be exchanging one picture for another,” the author said. “And,ecco!”
He pointed to the foot of the littlestair that led from theloggiadown to the passage. Adriano stood there in the shade, like a portrait framed in ebony, holding in his hand one of the long-handled brass lamps of Italy, the light from whose three wicks struck upwards over his handsome dark face peering out sharply, but not at first seeing them.
“Strong light and shade will make a picture of anything,” Bianca said. “And there is a companion.”
He glanced at the dining-room window, and saw through the open half of a shutter Isabel standing under the chandelier, with face and hand uplifted to examine some pendants that had just caught her attention. The light poured over her face, and filled her beautiful, undazzled eyes, and the hand that held the crystal looked as if carved out of pink transparent coral.
Going in, they found the supper-table set, and Mr. Vane entertaining the ladies with a story of two politicians, of opposite parties, who were so candid they were always convincing each other, and, consequently, were never of the same opinion, except when they were each half convinced; and even then they were not of the same opinion, for their minds turned different ways, like two persons who meet on the threshold of a house, one going in and one coming out. They went on year after year in this way, arguing, and trying to arrive at the truth, till at last they both went crazy and were locked up in separate mad-houses. At length both returned to their first opinions, and so were restored to reason. But when they were set at liberty, they became as great bigots as they had before been liberals, and each was so determined not only not to yield to the other, whom he regarded as the cause of hismisfortunes, but even to own that he could be sincere in his opinions, that they never met without fighting. Their rancor went on increasing, till they finally challenged each other at the same moment; and, in disputing as to which was the challenged and which the challenger, flew into such a fury that at last they killed each other, without ever having had time to fight a duel.
“The moral of it is,” Mr. Vane concluded, “that when a man has once chosen his opinions, he has no more right to hear them abused than he has to hear his wife abused, no matter what she may be; and the cream of the moral is that all arguments are not only useless but dangerous.”
“I know now what is meant by espousing an opinion or a cause,” the Signora said. “I had supposed the word was used merely for variety of phrase. It means, then, ‘for better or for worse.’ Poor Truth! how many buffets she gets! Not from you!” she added hastily, and blushing as she saw that her words had made Mr. Vane suddenly serious, and that he was looking at her with an expression almost reproachful. “No matter what you may say, I am sure you would never see Truth standing on your threshold without bidding her welcome.”
He looked down, and a faint smile rather shone through his face than parted his lips. He seemed to thank her so.
“I fancy she comes oftenest in silence and by herself,” he said in a very quiet tone.
Something in his voice and look made Clive Bailey regard him with a momentary keenness. He felt that they indicated an almost feminine delicacy, and a depth of sensitivesweetness he had not looked to find in Mr. Vane.
The Signora begged to call their attention to theminestrathat was steaming on the table. “Annunciata deserves that we should attend to it at once,” she said; “for she has given her best thoughts to it the whole afternoon. I couldn’t tell how many things have gone to its composition. I do hope it is good, so that we can consistently praise it. I should feel less disappointment in having a book fall dead from the press, than she will if we take no notice of her cooking. Don’t let the vacant chair injure your appetites; it is not for a ghost, but for Signor Leonardo, your Italian teacher. I told him to come to supper, and he is just five minutes too late—a wonder for him. He is the soul of promptness.”
The door opened as she spoke, and Signor Leonardo stood bowing on the threshold—a dark, circumspect little man, who gave an impression of such stiffness and dryness that one almost expected to hear him crackle and snap in moving. He recovered from his low bow, however, without any accident, and, with some excess of ceremoniousness, got himself down to the table, where he sat on the very edge of his chair, looking so solemn and polite that Isabel, as she afterward declared, longed to get up and shake him. “He would have rattled all to pieces, if I had,” she said.
This wooden little body contained, however, a cultivated mind and a good heart, and he was one of the most faithful, modest, and patient of men.
He had been at the Vatican that morning, he said, in answer to the Signora’s questions, and had seen the Holy Father in good health andspirits, laughing at the cardinals who were with him, all of whom carried canes. “‘I am older than any of you,’ he said, ‘and, see! I can walk without my cane. Oh! I am a young man yet.’”
“I saw Monsignor M——,” the professor added, “and he requested me to give you this,” presenting a little package.
The Signora opened it in smiling expectation, and held up a small half-roll of bread out of which a piece had been bitten. “See how we idolaters love the Pope!” she said to Mr. Vane. “I begged Monsignor to get me a piece of bread from his breakfast-table. Let me see what he has written about it,” reading a card that accompanied this singular gift.
“My dear Signora,” the prelate wrote, “behold your keepsake! I stood by while the Holy Father breakfasted, like a dog watching for a bone, and the moment I saw the one bite taken out of this bread I begged the rest for you. ‘What!’ said the Pope, ‘my children take the very bread from my mouth!’ and gave it to me, laughing pleasantly.”
“The dear father,” the Signora said, kissing her treasure, as she rose to put it away in safety.
This little incident led the talk to the Pope, and to many incidents illustrative of his goodness and the affection the people bore him.
“A few years ago, in the old time,” the Signora said, “the price of bread was raised in Rome, for some reason or other, or for no reason. Some days after the Holy Father passed by here on his way to his favorite church, and ours, Bianca. He was walking, and his carriage following. I can see him now, in his white robe, his hands behind his back, holding his hat,and his sweet face ready with a kind glance for all. A poor man approached, asked to speak to him, and was allowed. ‘Holy Father,’ he said, kneeling down, ‘the price of bread is raised, and the people are hungry, for they cannot afford to buy it.’ The Pope gave him an alms and his benediction, and passed on. The next day the price of bread was reduced to its former rate.
“‘Such grace had kings when the world began.’”
One anecdote led to another; and then there was some music, Isabel playing rather brilliantly on the piano in thesala, a group of candles at either hand lighting up her face and person and that part of the room. Afterward, when the rest of the company had gone into the drawing-rooms, Bianca, sitting in a half-dark, sang two or three ballads so sweetly that they almost held their breaths to listen to her.
Her singing made them feel quiet, and as if the evening were over; and when it ended, Mr. Bailey and thesignoretook leave. The family sat a while longer in thesala, with no light but a lamp that burned before a Madonna at the end of the long room. Outside, a pine-tree lifted its huge umbrella against the pure sky, and a great tower showed in the same lucid deep. The streets in front were still and deserted, the windows all dark and sullen. The moon had long since set, and the stars were like large, wide-open eyes that stare with sleepiness. Some Campagna people, who had been in the city, and were going home again, passed by, and stirred the silence with the sound of an accordeon, with which they enlivened their midnight walk; then all was still again.
“The night-sounds of Rome arealmost always pleasant,” the Signora said. “Sometimes the country people come in with a tambourine and singing, but it is not noisy, and if it wakes you it is only for a few minutes. Sometimes it is a wine-cart, with all its little bells.”
The clock ofSanta Maria Maggiorewas heard striking twelve. “My bells!” she exclaimed; then added: “I wish I could tell you all their lovely ways. For one, when they have the Forty Hours at the basilica, only the great bell strikes the hours, instead of three smaller ones, as now; and for the Angelus the four bells ring steadily together their little running song, while the great bell strikes now and then, but so softly as to be only a dream of a sound, as ifMaria Assuntawere talking to herself. It is delicious!”
“I hear a bell now—a little bell,” Mr. Vane said.
They listened, and found that his keen hearing had not deceived him. There was a sound of a little bell in the street, faint, but coming slowly nearer. What could it be? They looked out and saw nothing but the long, white street, stretching its ghostly length from hill to hill. The sound, however, was in the street, and at a spot where they looked and saw nothing, and it came constantly nearer. At length, when it was almost under their windows, they perceived a motion, slow and colorless, as if the paving-stones were noiselessly turning over and rolling off toward the Quirinal, and then the paving-stones became a tide of pale water tossing a black stick as it flowed; and, at last, it was sheep, and the stick was a man. The whole street was alive with their little bobbing heads and close pressed, woolly bodies. Soft and timid, they trotted past, as if afraidof waking the terrible lion of a city in whose sleeping jaws they found themselves. The dogs made no sound as they kept the stragglers in bounds, the men spoke not a word as they moved here and there among their flocks; there was only the small trotting of a multitude of little feet, and bell after bell on the leader of flock after flock. It seemed as if the world had turned to sheep.
“I didn’t know there were so many in the world!” Isabel whispered.
And still they came, stretching a mile, from beyond the Esquiline to beyond the Quirinal—an artery full of tender and innocent life flowing for an hour through the cruel, unconscious town.
The Signora explained that the flocks were being taken from one pasture-ground to another, their shortest way being through the city. “I once saw a herd of cattle pass,” she said. “It was another thing, as you may imagine. Such a sense of the presence of fierce, strong life, and anger barely suppressed, I never experienced. It was their life that called my attention, as one feels lightning in the air. Then I heard their hoofs and the rattling of their horns, and then here they were! They were by no means afraid of Rome, but seemed, rather, impatient and angry that it should be here, drying up the pleasant hills where they would have liked to graze, reposing under the trees afterward, and looking dreamily off to the soft sea-line. How sleepy sheep make one!”
The soft procession passed at length, and the family bade each other good-night.
The next morning Isabel resolved not to be outdone by the other two ladies, and accordingly, whenshe heard the door shut softly after them as they went out to early Mass, she made haste to dress and follow. They, meanwhile, walked slowly on, unconscious of her intention, which would scarcely have given them the pleasure she imagined; for they were bound on an errand which would have rendered her society particularly uncongenial.
Isabel went scrupulously to Communion three or four times a year, on certain great festivals, and at such times, according to her light, strove to do what she thought was required. She made her confession, but with scarcely more feeling than she would have reckoned up her money accounts, scrupulous to pay every cent, and, when every cent was paid, having a satisfied conviction that the account was square. Of that generous, higher honesty which, when casting up its accounts with God, blushes and abases itself in view of the little it has paid, or can pay, and which would fain cast itself into the balance, and, by an utter annihilation of every wish, hope, and pleasure that was not penitence, strive to express its gratitude at least for the ever unpayable debt—of this she knew nothing. She acknowledged freely that she was a sinner. “Of course I am a sinner!” she would say. “We are all sinners”; as if she should say, “Of course I am a biped!” but all as a matter of course. If anything decidedly offensive to her human sense of honor lay on her conscience, she certainly had a feeling of shame for it, and resolved not to transgress in that manner again; but there was no tremulous self-searching, no passion of prayer for illumination, unless at some odd time when sickness or peril had made death seemnear. The confession over, she went to church quietly, not talking much, and read respectfully the prayers in her prayer-book, which were, indeed, far warmer on her lips than in her heart. She tried not to look about, and, while her face was buried in her hands, shut her eyes, lest she should peep in spite of herself. Then, the whole over, she left the church, feeling much relieved that it was over, hoping that she had done right, and remaining rather serious for several hours after. Ordinarily, too, since the merciful Lord accepts even the smallest gift, and answers even the most tepid prayer, if they are sincerely offered, she felt some faint sweetness as she turned away, a tender touch of peace that brushed her in passing, and, moved by that slight experience of the rapture of the saints, as if a drop of spray from one of their fountains had fallen on her, she was conscious of an inexplicable regret that made her renew her good resolutions, and say a tiny prayer in her own words far more fervent than any she had breathed through the words of her book. For two days after her prayers were usually longer and more attentive, and she went to Mass; then Richard was himself again.
Knowing all this, then, as we know things without thinking of them, or allowing ourselves to know that we know them, both the Signora and Bianca would far rather have been by themselves in going to church, especially when going to Holy Communion.
They walked through the morning, already hot, though the hour was so early, with a sultry, splendid blue over their heads, and the air too sweet as it flowed over the garden-walls. The orange-trees seemed to be oppressed by the weightof their own odors, and to throw them off in strong, panting respirations. The sun was blazing directly behind one of the cupolas of the basilica, as they went up the hill, seeming to be set in the lantern; and then a light coolness touched them in the shadow, and they entered the beautiful church, where perpetual freshness reigns, rivalling the climate ofSt.Peter’s.
The bells were just dropping off for the last fifteen minutes’ tolling, and the canons were coming in for choir, one by one, or two by two. One or two of the earlier ones, in their snow-whitecottasand ermine capes, were kneeling before a shrine or strolling slowly across the nave toward the choir-chapel. Here and there a Mass was being said, with a little group of poor people gathered about the altar, kneeling on the magnificent pavement of involved mosaic work, or sitting on the bases of the great columns. A woman with a white handkerchief on her head received communion at one altar, two little children playing about her, and clinging to her skirts as she got up to go to her place, her hands folded, her face wrapt in devotion, as undisturbed by the prattling and pulling of the little ones asSt.Charles Borromeo over his altar by the winged cherubs that held up and peeped through his long scarlet train.
Our American ladies knelt near the door, by the side of the tribune, facing the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament at the other side of the church. The morning light entering this chapel set all its marbles glittering, and made the gilt tabernacle in the centre brighter than the lamps that burned before it, and, shining out into the church, set the great porphyry columns of the canopy in a glow. One might fancy thatthe blood of the martyrs whose bodies and relics reposed beneath was beginning to rise and circulate through the rich stone, above which the martyr’s crown and palm stood out in burning gold.
Having finished their prayer to “His Majesty,” as the Spaniards beautifully express it, the two knelt at theprie-dieubefore the entrance to the gorgeous Borghese Chapel, to salute Our Lady in sight ofSt.Luke’s portrait of her. The face was doubly covered by its curtain of gold-embroidered silk and gates of transparent alabaster; but their eyes were fixed on the screen as they prayed, and these needed no more than they saw. Of this picture it has been said that sometimes angels have been found chanting litanies about it.
There was no Mass in this chapel, and our friends went down the basilica to the chapel of the Sacred Heart, where a Mass was just beginning. The celebrant was an old man with hair as white as snow, and a face as peaceful and happy as a child’s. The Signora often encountered him in the church, and always felt like touching his robe in passing.
“I am glad we shall receive communion from his hands,” she whispered to Bianca. “I always feel as if he were an angel only half disguised.”
Half an hour afterward they left the chapel, but still lingered in the church, loath to go. There was no one in sight, but the strong, manly chorus of voices from the canons’ choir came out to them, now faintly heard as they moved out of its range, now clear and strong as they went nearer.
“We really must go. They will be waiting for us at home,” the Signora said.
Turning back for one more glance at the door, they saw the procession coming from the sacristy for the canons’ Mass, the vestments glittering brightly as they passed a streak of sunshine coming into the middle of the nave.
“It is a constant succession of pictures,” sighed Bianca, who seemed hardly able to tear herself away.
They stopped a few minutes on the steps.
“Whatever else is injured by these new people, this basilica has certainly profited,” the Signora said. “The tribune front was a little low for the breadth. By digging down the hill, and, consequently, adding so many more steps to this superb flight, they have made the proportion perfect. Then they have also had to make a deeper pedestal to the obelisk, which is an improvement. The new white stone shows now in harsh contrast with the soft-toned old, but time will soon mellow it. And, moreover, they are doing their work well. They really seem to take pride in it. Thepiazzawas formerly muddy or dusty. Now they have made a solid foundation, and it will be all covered, when done, with that gold-colored gravel you see in patches. Fancy a goldenpiazzaleading up to my golden basilica!”
She led her young friend along to the other end of the steps, and pointed up to where beautiful spikes of pink flowers were growing in interstices of the carving, and lovely plants made a fine fringe high in the air. Flights of birds came and went, brushing the flowers with their wings, and alighted, singing and twittering, all about the cupola over the Blessed Sacrament, going away only to return.
“The little wild birds come to our Lord’s cupola,” she said, “andthere are always flocks of doves about Our Lady’s. I wonder why it is?”
Going home, they found Isabel sitting with her bonnet on, taking coffee, and talking to her father, who seemed amused.
“Here they are at last!” she exclaimed. “I have been toSanta Maria Maggiore, hoping to find you, and you weren’t there.”
“Indeed we were there!” she was told.
“You were hiding from me, then,” she went on. “No matter, I had a very pleasant morning, though rather a peculiar one. I searched and searched for you, and saw nothing of you; finally, seeing a movement of clergy toward a chapel at the right side as you go in, half-way down the church, I thought that must be the proper place to go. Accordingly, I went in and took a seat. Some clergymen seated themselves on the same bench, lower down, and I thought it more modest to move up. Then more clergy came, and I kept moving up toward the altar. I began to wish that some woman would come in, if it were only a beggar-woman; even the sight of a poor man or of a child would have been a relief. But there was no one but me besides the clergy. Well, I stood my ground, hoping that when the services should begin some people would come, and, on the whole, rather congratulating myself that I had secured so good a post. I kept moving up till at length I found myself close to the altar, and with a great stand before me on which was a great book. It was one of those turning lecterns, aren’t they?—set on a post about six feet high, and having five or six sides at the top. After a while I began to feel myself getting in a perspiration. Not a soulcame but priests. I looked in their faces to see if they were astonished at my being there, but not one seemed to be even conscious of my presence. They sat in two rows, facing each other, part of them in ermine capes, part in gray squirrel, and with the loveliest little white tunics all crimped and crimped. I didn’t enjoy the crimping much, though, for I perceived at last that I was the right person in the wrong place. The bell stopped ringing, a prelate took his place before the big stand and opened the big book, and there was I in the very highest place in the synagogue,
“Canons to right of me,Canons to left of me,Canons in front of me,”
“Canons to right of me,Canons to left of me,Canons in front of me,”
“Canons to right of me,
Canons to left of me,
Canons in front of me,”
and, at length, one of them smiling, I caught sight of a sidelong glance from him, and saw that he was shaking with laughter. He was a young man, and I forgive him.” Isabel paused to wipe the perspiration from her flushed face, then addressed the Signora solemnly: “My dear Signora, that choir-chapel is a mile long!”
“I dare say you found it so,” was the laughing response. “But, also, I do not doubt that you made the best of the matter, and came out with deliberate dignity. Don’t cry about it, child. They probably thought you were a Protestant stranger. Protestants are expected to commit almost any enormity in Roman churches, and they do not disappoint the expectation. Last Christmas two women, well dressed and genteel-looking, went into the tribune during the High Mass, one of the assistants having left the gate open, and coolly took possession of a vacant seat there, in the face, not only of the assembled chapter and officiating prelate, but of a large congregation. I wonder what theywould say if a stranger should walk into one of their meeting-houses and take a seat in the pulpit? I will explain to you now what I thought you understood. The canons always sing their office together in choir, morning and afternoon, while other clergy say it privately, and the public have nothing to do with it. There is no harm in assisting, but it is not usual to do so. I like to listen, though, and there are certain parts that please me very much. When you hear them again, mark how theDeo gratiascomes out; and once in a while they will respond with anAmenthat is stirring. However, it is merely the office rapidly chanted by alternate choirs, and is not intended as a musical feast. They have a High Mass a little later, and then one can enter, if there should be room. I never go. There is always a Low Mass in the basilica or the Borghese.”
“Doesn’t the Borghese Chapel belong to the basilica?” Mr. Vane inquired.
“Yes, and no. The Prince Borghese is at the head of it, and, Ithink, supports it. It has its own clergy, and its separate services sometimes; for example, there is always the Litany of Our Lady Saturday evening, and they have their own Forty Hours. On some otherfestasthe chapter of the basilica go there for service—as Our Lady of Snow, Nativity of Our Lady, and the Immaculate Conception. Now I must leave you for an hour or two, and take my little baroness to see Monsignore. And, if you wish, I will at the same time arrange for an audience for you at the Vatican. Some time within a week, shall I say? It will have to be after Ascension, I think.”
“How beautiful life begins to be!” said Bianca softly, after the three had sat awhile alone.
Mr. Vane smiled, but made no reply.
Isabel sighed deeply, buried in gloomy reflections. “I wish I knew,” she said, “what they call the man who stands at the desk and sings a part of the office alone; because that is the name by which the canons are calling me at this minute. I feel it in my bones.”
CARLIN’S NEST.
Yes, life was beginning to grow beautiful to them—beautiful in the sweet, natural sense. Here and there a buckle that held the burden of it was loosed, here and there a flower was set. That uneasy feeling that one ought to be doing something, which often haunts and wearies even those who do nothing and never will do anything, began to give place to a contentment far more favorable to the accomplishment of real good. A generous wish to share their peacefulness with others made them practise every little kindness that occurred to them. Not a hand was stretched to them in vain, no courtesy from the humblest remained unacknowledged, and thus, accompanied by a constant succession of little beneficences, like a stream that passes between flowery banks its own waters keeping fresh, their lives flowed sweetly and brightly on from day to day.
Of course they had the reputation of being angels with the poor about them. It is so easy for the rich and happy to be canonized by the poor. A smile, a kind word, and a penny now and then—that is all that is necessary. But the kindness of these three women was something more than a mere good-natured generosity; for no one of them was very rich, and all had to deprive themselves of something in order to give.
Life was indeed becoming beautiful to them; for they had not yet settled, perhaps were not of a nature to settle, into the worse sort of Roman life, in which idle people collected from every part of the world gradually sink into a round of eating, visiting, gossip, and intrigue, which make the society of the grandest city of the world a strange spectacle of shining saintliness and disgusting meanness and corruption moving side by side.
There is, indeed, no city that tries the character like Rome; for it holds a prize for every ambition, except that of business enterprise. The Christian finds here primitive saintliness flowering in its native soil, and can walk barefoot, though he have purple blood in his veins, and not be wondered at; the artist, whether he use chisel, brush, or pen, finds himself in the midst of a lavish beauty which the study of a life could not exhaust; the lover of nature sees around him the fragments of an only half-ruined paradise; the tuft-hunter finds a confusion of ranks where he may approach the great more nearly than anywhere else, and, perhaps, chat at ease with a princess who, in her own country, would pass him without a nod of recognition; the idle and luxurious can live here like Sybarites on an income that, in anothercountry, would scarcely give them the comforts of life; the lover of solitude can separate himself from his kind in the midst of a crowd, and yet fill his hours with delight in the contemplation of that ever-visible past which here lies in the midst of the present like an embalmed and beautiful corpse resting uncorrupted in the midst of flowers. But one must have an earnest pursuit, active or intellectual; for thedolce far nienteof Italy is like one of the soulless masks of women formed by Circe, which transformed their lovers into beasts.
“I have heard,” the Signora said, “of a man who, lying under a tree in summer-time and gazing at the slow, soft clouds as they floated past, wished that that were work, and he well paid for doing it. My life is almost a realization of that man’s wish. What I should choose to do as a pleasure, and the greatest pleasure possible to me, I have to do as a duty. It is my business to see everything that is beautiful, and to study and dream over it, and turn it into as many shapes as I can. If I like to blow soap-bubbles, then it becomes a trade, and I merit in doing it. If a science should catch my fancy, and invite me to follow awhile its ordered track, I go in a palace-car, and the wheels make music of the track for me. And what friends I have, what confidences receive! The ugliest, commonest object in the world, scorned or disregarded by all, will look at me and whisper a sweet word or reveal a hidden beauty as I pass. You see that log,” pointing to the fire-place, where a mossy stick lay wreathed about by a close network of vine-twigs clinging still in death where they had clung and grown in life. “The moment my eyes fell on that itsang me a song. In every balcony, every stair, every house they are cutting down to make their new streets, every smallest place where the wind can carry a feathered seed, the seed of a story has lodged for me, and, as I look, it sprouts, grows, blossoms, and overshadows the whole place. But for the pain of bringing out and putting into shape what is in my mind, my life would be too exquisite for earth. If I could give immediate birth to my imaginings, I should be like some winged creature, living for ever in air. I’m glad I work in words, and not in marble, like Carlin here. And, apropos, suppose we should go in there.”
Carlin was the sculptor whose studio was attached toCasa Ottant’-Otto. He was a great friend of the Signora, who had permission to see him work when she liked, and to go and come with her friends as it pleased her.
“We may as well take our work,” she said. “It is pleasanter there than here this morning. When Mr. Vane and Isabel come in from their visit, we shall hear them ring the bell.”
The two went out to theloggia, where the morning sun was blazing hotly on the pink and purple morning-glories, and, passing an ante-room where two marble-workers were chipping away, each at his snowy block, tapped at the door of an inner chamber.
A loud “Avanti!” answered the knock.
“Welcome!” said a voice when they entered. “Make yourselves at home. I’m busy with a model, you see.”
Bianca glanced about in search of the source of this salutation, and perceived presently a large head looking at them over thetop of a screen. The rest of the body was invisible. This head was so colossal and of such a height that for a moment she doubted if it might not be a colored bust on a shelf. But its eyes moved, and in a second it nodded itself out of sight, leaving on the gazer an impression of having seen a large, kind Newfoundland dog. Poor Carlin was very shaggy, his hair almost too profuse, and constantly getting itself tangled, and his beard growing nearly to his eyes. But the eyes were bright, dark, and pleasant, the nose superlatively beautiful, and, by some unexplained means, every one was aware at once that under this mass of shadowy beard there were two deep dimples, one in the cheek and another in the chin.
Before they had well shut the door, the screen was swept aside and the sculptor’s whole form appeared. It was so large as to reduce the head to perfect proportion, and was clad in a suit of dull blue cotton worn with a careless grace that was very picturesque. One hand held a bit of clay; the other pulled off his skull-cap in reverence to his visitors. He said nothing, but immediately replaced the cap, and began rolling the clay between his hands.
He was modelling a group, and his model, a beautiful youngcontadina, stood before him with her arms up, holding a copper water-vase on her head. Her mother sat near, a dark, bilious, wrinkled Lady Macbeth, who wore her soiled and faded clothes as if they had been velvets and embroideries, and reclined in an old leather chair as superbly as if she sat on a gilded throne with a canopy over her head. A pair of huge rings of pure gold hung from her ears, and two heavygold chains surrounded her dark neck, and dropped each its golden locket on her green bodice.
“We won’t mind them,” the Signora said to her friend. “Come and be introduced to the bird of our country.”
“He’s been behaving badly to-day,” the sculptor said, “and I had to beat him. Look and see what he has done to my blouse! The whole front is in rags. He flew at me to dig my heart out, I suppose, with his claws, and screamed so in my face that I was nearly deafened. It took both the men to get him off.”
This contumacious eagle was chained to his perch, and had the stick with which he had been beaten so placed as to be a constant reminder of the consequences attending on any exhibition of ill-temper. He was greatly disconcerted when the two ladies approached him, changed uneasily from foot to foot, and, half lifting his wide wings, curved his neck, and seemed about to hide his head in shame. Then, as they still regarded him, he suddenly lifted himself to his full height, and stared back at them with clear, splendid eyes.
“What pride and disdain!” exclaimed Bianca. “I had no idea the creature was so human. Let’s go away. If we stay much longer, he will speak to us. He considers himself insulted.”
Three walls of the room and a great part of the central space were occupied by the usual medley of a sculptor’s studio—busts, groups, masks, marble and plaster, armor, vases, and a hundred other objects; but the fourth side was hung all over with fragments of baby contours. Single legs and crossed legs; arms from the shoulder down, with the soft flattening of flesh above the elbow, and the sustained roundnessbelow; little clenched fists, and hands with sprawling, dimpled fingers; chubby feet in every position of little curled toes, each as expressive of delicious babyhood as if the whole creature were there—the wall was gemmed with them. In the midst was a square window, without a sash, and just then crowded as full as it could be. A vine, a breeze, and as much of a hemisphere of sunshine as could get in were all pressing in together. The breeze got through in little puffs that dropped as soon as they entered; the sunshine sank to the tiled floor, where it led a troubled existence by reason of the leaf-shadows that never would be still; and the vine ran over the wall, and in and out among the little hands and feet, kissing them with tender leaf and bud, which seemed to have travelled a long distance for nothing else but that.
Bianca put her face to this window, and drew it back again. “There is nothing visible outside,” she said, “but a fig-tree, half the rim of a great vase, a bit of wall, and a sky full of leaves.”
She seated herself by the Signora, and they made believe to work, dropping a loop of bright wool or silken floss now and then, and glancing from time to time at the artist as he punched and pressed a meaning into the clay before him.
“I never see a sculptor make a human figure in clay without thinking of the creation of Adam and Eve,” the Signora said. “The Mohammedans say that angels first kneaded the clay for I don’t know how many years. How beautiful they must have been! ‘In His own image.’ Did you observe in the Barbarini gallery Domenichino’s picture of Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise? You were too muchoccupied with the Cenci. Everybody is at first. I was thinking, while I looked at that representation of the Creator, reclining on his divan of cherubim, what a pity it is that artists should have tried to do it, or, trying, should not have been able to do more. How that eagle does fret! It requires all my friendship for Carlin to prevent my cutting the leather thong that holds the chain to its leg some fine day. Wouldn’t it be pleasant to see him shoot like a bomb out through the window, tearing the vines away like cobwebs with his strong wings, and carrying off little green tendrils clinging to his feathers! The sunlight would be shut out a moment, there would be a rush as of waters, then the room would be light again. But, in such an event, the only gain would be a change of personality in the prisoner, and thirtylireout of my pocket. That is what Carlin paid for this unhappy wretch, and what I should be bound to pay him to buy another unhappy wretch to languish in his place. How do you like Carlin?”
“I don’t know,” Bianca answered slowly. “Isn’t he a sort of savage?—a good one, you know.”
“Precisely! All the polish he has is inside. Fortunately, however, he is transparent, and the brightness is bright enough to shine out through him. He is full of good-nature and enthusiasm. Once liking him, you will like him always, and better and better always. None but dishonest people dislike him, though there are some very good people who say he is not to their taste. Dear me! he is making a mistake in that group. O Carlin!” she called out, “do let me say something. Your water-carrier is going to look like a teapotif you place her so. Let her put the other arm out for a spout, and the thing will be perfect.”
It was a group of a girl and her lover at a fountain.
He was just knitting his brows over the hand that held the handle of the vase, rolling bits of clay between his palms and arranging them for fingers. He threw the last one away. “I know it’s a stupid thing,” he said discontentedly; “but what can I do? It struck me as a pretty subject; but now I have begun to work it out, it seems to me I remember having seen a hundred like it, each one as stupid as mine. I was this instant thinking my grandmother must have had a cream-pitcher of this design.”
“Why don’t you make her stooping a little to lift the vase to her head, and looking up at the fellow?” the Signora suggested. “It will bring out your knowledge of anatomy a little more, and it will wake her up. Don’t you see her face is as dull as her sandal?”
This conversation, being in English, was not understood by the model, who stood stupid, and straight, and tired, trying to look picturesque.
The artist considered a minute, then said abruptly: “Put down the vase, not on the floor, but in a chair.”
She obeyed.
“Now take it up—slowly—and stop the instant I tell you.”
She bent her strong and supple figure a little, and began lifting the vase.
“Stop there!” he called out, “and look up at me. Look as pretty as you can. Think that I am somegiovanottowho is going, perhaps, to ask you of your mother.”
Half shy, half saucy, she lookedup as commanded, gratified vanity and friendly regard uniting to give her face as much expression as it was capable of.
Carlin seized his pencil and began sketching rapidly.
“He hasn’t a particle of imagination,” the Signora said in a low tone, “but he has excellent eyes and much humor. I sometimes think that humor and imagination never go together. Indeed, I don’t believe they ever do in any superlative degree.”
A little bell sounded timidly at her side, pulled by a cord that she perceived now by its vibration coming in at the window, the bell itself being quite hidden by the vine-leaves, where it was held between two large nails driven into the window-frame.
“Would—you—be so very kind—as to throw—that—loaf of bread out of the window, Signora?” the artist asked, abstractedly dropping one word at a time between the strokes of his pencil and glances at his model, whose fire was beginning to fade. “I can’t stop.”
The lady looked at him in wonder.
“It’s a beggar,” he explained after a moment, scratching away rapidly. “I can’t be bothered with them in here.”
She looked out of the window as well as she could for the leaves, and saw an arm in a ragged coat-sleeve, and a hand stretching toward the wall, and, at the same instant, the bell rang in her very ear with a force that made her start back. The bread was on a little shelf near by, an old knife beside it. She prudently cut the loaf in two, and dropped half to the unseen mendicant.
“That’s just like Carlin!” she exclaimed. “I don’t suppose anyone else would think of rigging up a beggars’ bell.”
“I shall know where to go when I want bread,” she said aloud, seeing him pause in his work. “It will be only to come under your window, pull a string, and hold up my apron.”
“Oh! by the way, please to pull in the string,” he added. “I never let it hang out, except when I have made an appointment. I told him to come if he didn’t get anything for dinner. Said he hadn’t eaten anything for twenty-four hours. It’s a disagreeable thing to go twenty-four hours without eating.”
Carlin knew what it was well. He had come to Rome fifteen years before without a dollar in his pocket, except what had paid his passage, and, without patronage, almost without friends, had climbed, step by step, through all the dark, steep ways of poverty, suffering what no one but himself knew, till at length a modest success rewarded his efforts. He never told his experiences, seemed to choose to forget them; but never a pitiful tale of suffering from poverty was told him without the ready answer, “Yes, yes, I know all about it,” springing as if involuntarily to his lips.
There was a knock at the door, which immediately opened without a permission, and a young man entered—one of those odious, well-dressed, rather handsome, and easy-mannered men who repel one more than rags, and ugliness, and stupidity.
“Good-morning!” he said with confident politeness. “Don’t let me interrupt you. I only want to see Mrs. Cranston’s bust. Promised her I would take a look at it.”
His coming produced the effect of a slight frost in the air. TheSignora grew dignified, and made a little sign to Bianca to take a seat which would turn her back to the new-comer. Carlin frowned slightly and bent to his work; the oldcontadinaglared from the man to her daughter, and the daughter blushed uneasily.
The young man seemed to be entirely unconscious of not having received a welcome, sauntered across the studio, pausing here and there, and at length, stopping under the pretence of examining a bust, fixed his eyes on the model.
“Look here, sir!” said Carlin, after five minutes of silence, “you’d better come in some other time, when I’m not busy.”
“Oh! don’t mind me,” was the careless reply.
Carlin waited a minute longer, then swung the screen round between his model and her tormentor.
The young man smiled slightly, gave his shoulders the least possible shrug, and began to saunter about the studio again, pausing finally at a spot that gave him a still better view of the girl.
The pencil quivered in Carlin’s hands, but his voice was gentle enough when he spoke again. “I don’t care to have visitors in the morning,” he said. “Come in in the afternoon, when I am working in marble. I work in clay always in the morning.”
“My dear fellow, I don’t want you to trouble yourself in the least about me. I can amuse myself,” the visitor replied.
Carlin seemed to be galvanized so suddenly he started upright, with anger in every nerve of him. “Confound you!” he cried out, “do you want me to pitch you out of the window? Go about your business.”
He had no cause to repeat the request. Coolly and disdainfully, but with a paleness that showed both fear and anger, the young exquisite walked out as leisurely as he had come in.
A laugh as sharp and bright as a blade shot across the old woman’s face, but she said not a word.
“You are getting acquainted with him rapidly,” the Signora whispered to her friend. “Isn’t he refreshing? It is so beautiful to see a man whose first impulse is to protect a woman from annoyance, even when the woman doesn’t belong to him. Carlin is truly a manly, honorable fellow.”
“I hear a faint little song, sweet and low,” said Bianca, listening with her pretty head aside and her eyes lifted.
“It is Carlin’s bird,” said the Signora.
The girl glanced about, but saw no cage.
“It is a soft, cooing sound,” she said.
“It is Carlin’s dove,” the Signora replied.
Bianca looked at her inquiringly, her lips still apart, and her head turned to listen to the melody.
“He doesn’t keep it in a cage, but in a nest,” the Signora went on, smiling. “Come, and I will show you. Step lightly, and do not speak. He is too busy to notice, and this great tapestry will hide us. You must examine this some time, by the way. It is all in rags, but very precious. See that foot on it! Doesn’t it look as if it were just set on the green ground—after a bath, too? It is so fresh and perfect.”
She led the way to an alcove of the studio hidden from the other rooms by this tapestry, and pointed to the inner wall, where a small, lowdoor showed, half hidden by draperies and armor. “Some day we will go in; but to-day I will give you a peep only.”
She went to the door, and noiselessly pushed away a little slide in the panel, then motioned Bianca to look through. The girl obeyed, and found herself looking into a square room whose one great arched window had a snow-white fringed curtain waving slowly in the slight breeze, alternately giving glimpses of, and hiding, aloggiafull of flowers and the green outside curtain of a grape-vine. Only tiny glints of sunshine entered through this double drapery, making the white curtain look as if it were embroidered with spots of gold. From the centre of a vaulted white ceiling hung a brass lamp, swinging slowly on its chain, and catching a point of light in place of the extinguished flame. On the white wall opposite the door hung high up an ebony crucifix, with a blue niche below, in which stood a marble statue of the Madonna. A tiny lamp burned before the two, and a branch of roses was twisted about the statue’s feet. In the centre of the room a green-covered table stood on a large green cloth that covered nearly the whole of the stone floor, and two or three cane-seated chairs were visible. The bird still sung her low, cooing song, an improvised melody set to inarticulate murmurs that now and then broke softly into words—a word of human love and blessing, a word of prayer, or a word of happiness. As when a gentle brook flows with only its waters now, and now with a flower or leaf, and now a little boat on its tide, and now a break of foam, and then a clear reflection as vivid as a tangible object, so thesong flowed, with its word here and there.
Carlin’s dove was a young woman with a sweet, motherly face, and, as she sang, she swung to and fro a hammock that was hung directly under the blue niche of the Virgin; and her eyes were raised from time to time to the statue or the crucifix, with anAveor aGesù mio, or dropped to the baby she hushed to sleep with a word as tender. All the room seemed to swing with the hammock, as if it were in a tree-top; to float in an atmosphere of love and happiness with the mother and her child. Slowly the white lids of the little one dropped, like two rose-petals that cover two stars, and a dimpled hand clinging to the mother’s loosened its hold, as the angel of sleep unclasped it gently, finger by finger. Silence settled over the song, the hammock ceased to swing, and the mother, shining with love and happiness, bent over her sleeping babe, gazing at it as if her eyes were gifted to see through its white and rosy flesh, and behold the resting, folded soul hidden there like a sleeping butterfly in a shut flower.
The Signora closed the slide as noiselessly as she had opened it, and the two, exchanging a smile of sympathetic pleasure, turned away from Carlin’s nest.
The sculptor had made his sketch, and was just sending his model away. He turned immediately to his visitors, and began to show them his latest works, half a dozen things in clay, some finished, some requiring still a few touches. One group was especially pretty. It represented a family scene in one of the little Italian towns where all the business of life goes on in the street. On the rude stonesteps outside a door sat a mother winding a skein of yarn held for her by a pretty girl of ten years or thereabouts, whose small arms were stretched to their utmost extent in the task. A little chubby boy leaned on the mother’s lap, and put up his finger to pull at the thread. At the front of the steps sat the father cobbling shoes.
“I found that at Monte Compatri,” he said; “and the figures are all portraits. I was afraid I couldn’t do it, for it is better adapted for canvas than marble; but the walls hold them together, you see.”
“We must go to Monte Compatri, Bianca,” the Signora said. “It’s one of the most primitive places in the world—a Ghetto perched on a mountain-top, as filthy and as picturesque as can be imagined. The air is delicious, the view superb, and the salads beggar description.”
All Carlin’s best groups and figures were, like this, copies from nature. When he attempted anything else, he unconsciously copied the works of others or he failed.
“I’m so glad you made that suggestion about the water-carrier,” he said, taking up his sketch. “I find it is always better for me to put considerable action into my figures. If I give them a simplepose, they are stupid. Would you have her looking up or down?”
“Let the little minx look up, by all means,” the Signora said. “She’s a good girl, enough, as a butterfly or a bird may be good. There isn’t enough of her for a down look; but that saucy little coquettish up-look is rather piquant. Besides, it is true to her nature. If she thought any one were admiring her, she wouldn’t have subtilty enough to look down and pretend not to see, and she wouldn’t have self-control enough, either. She would wish toknow just how much she was admired, and to attitudinize as long as it paid her vanity to do so. Bianca, my dear, there is our bell. Your father and Isabel must have come home.”
They went down again through the complicated passages and stairs, where arched windows and glimpses into vaulted rooms and into gardens crowded with green made them seem far from home.
“How beautiful orange-trees are!” Bianca exclaimed, stopping to look at one that filled roundly a window seen at the end of a long passage. “It has the colors of Paradise, I fancy. I don’t like yellow to wear, not even gold; but I like it for everything else.”
“Wait till you see the snow on an orange-tree, if you would see it at its perfection,” was the reply. “Perhaps you might wait many years, to be sure. I saw it once, and shall never forget. A light snow came down over the garden a few winters since, and dropped its silvery veil over the orange-trees. Fancy the dark green leaves and the golden fruit through that glittering lace! I had thought that our northern cedars and pines, with their laden boughs, were beautiful; but the oranges were exquisite. Would you believe that our kitchen door was so near?”
Isabel ran to meet the two, all in a breeze.
“Hurry on your things in two minutes to go to the Vatican,” she said. “Here are the cards. Monsignor forgot to send them, and has only now given them to us. The carriage is at the door.”
Off came the summer muslins in a trice, and in little more than the time allowed the three ladies tripped, rustling, down the stairs, in their black silk trains and black veils.
“I am constantly going to the Vatican in this breathless way,” the Signora said, as they drove rapidly through the hot sunshine. “With the usual sublime ignorance of men, and especially of clergymen, of the intricacies of the feminine toilet, my kind friends always give me ten minutes to prepare. One needs to keep one’s papal court dress laid out all ready for use at a moment’s warning. Fortunately, it is very simple. But Bianca has found time to mount the papal colors,” she added, seeing a bunch of yellow jasmine tucked into her friend’s belt.
“Is it allowed?” the girl asked doubtfully. “I can leave it in the carriage. But I always like to have a flower about me.”
“Oh! keep it,” her friend replied, and smiled, but suppressed the words that would have followed. For while Bianca Vane carried that face about with her, she never lacked a flower.
They were just in time for the audience, and an hour later drove slowly homeward through the silent town. Bianca was leaning back in the corner of the carriage with her eyes shut. The audience had been especially pleasant for her; for the Holy Father, seeing her kneel with her hands tightly clasped, and her eyes, full of delight, raised to his face, had smiled and laid his hand on her head, instead of giving it to her to kiss. The others said but little. The languor of the hour was upon them.
“Does any one say, Signora, that the Pope has a shining face?” Mr. Vane asked.
“Certainly,” she replied.
“Then I am not original in thinking that I found something luminous about him,” the gentleman went on. “It is as if I had seen a lamp. And what a sweet voice he has!He said ‘la Chiesa’ in a tone that made me think of David mourning over Absalom.”
Mr. Vane had been much impressed by the beautiful presence of the reverend Pontiff, and had behaved himself, not only like a gentleman, but like a Catholic. The Signora had seen how he blushed in kissing the Pope’s hand, not as if with shame at paying such an act of homage, but as if some new sentiment of tender reverence and humility had just entered his heart. It had been very pleasant to her to see this, both on account of the love she bore the object of the homage, and the respect she had, and wished to retain, for him who paid it.
The driver held in his panting horses, and walked them on the side of the streets where a narrow strip of shadow cooled the heat of the burning stones; the pines and cypress in the gardens they passed, which in the morning had been so full of silvery twitterings that the fine, sweet sounds seemed almost to change the color of them and make them glisten with brightness, were now sombre and silent. The birds were all hid in their dark green shadows, or perched in cool, sunless angles and nooks of vases, balustrades, statues, and cornices of church or palace. Here and there a workman lay stretched at length on the sidewalk or on steps, sleeping soundly.
At length they reached home. The porter sat sleeping in his chair at the great door, and a family of beggars, four or five women and children, lay curled up outside on the curbstone.
Inside all was deliciously cool and tranquil. Dinner was on the table; for the servants had been watching for them, and had brought the soup in directly, and they sat down withappetites improved by the delay. The Signora poured out some wine for herself.
“The people here say that you should take a little wine before your soup,” she said. “My formerpadronatold me the nuns in the convents she knew always did. I don’t know why it is good for the stomach, but bow to their superior wisdom.”
“Doesn’t the hair on the top of my head look unusually bright?” Bianca asked after a while. She was still thinking of the sacred hand that had rested there, still feeling its gentle pressure.
The others looked, not understanding.
“Why, your veil covers it,” Isabel said. “But there’s a bright garnet and gold pin at the top.”
Bianca lifted her arms to loosen the veil, took the gold hairpin out and kissed it. “He must have touched it,” she said, “and so it has been blessed. Do you know, Signora, what thought came into my mind at the moment? I thought as he touched me, ‘It is the hand that holds the keys of purgatory and of heaven!’”
“My own thought!” her friend exclaimed. “I had the same benediction once, and it set me rhyming. I do not set up for a poet, you know, but there are feelings that will sing in spite of one. This was one, and I must show you the lines some time soon, to see if they express you. I don’t know where they are.”
“I know where something of yours is,” Bianca said eagerly. “I saw it in your blotting-book, and had to call up all my honesty not to read it. Reward me now! I will bring it.”
She looked so bright and coaxing, and the others so cordiallyjoined in her request, that the Signora could not but consent, though usually shy of reading her unpublished productions to any one.
“How I like hot noons!” she sighed through a smile of languid contentment, leaning back in her chair, and dropping in her lap the folded paper Bianca had brought her. “I found out the charm of them when I was in Frascati. At this early season the heat of the city, too, is good—a pure scorch and scald. In August it is likely to be thick and morbid. That first noon in Frascati was a new experience to me. I went to see Villa Torlonia, which was open to the public only between the hours of eleven and five—a time when scarcely any one, especially any Italian, wants to go out in hot weather. I wished to see the villa, however, and I went, stealing along the shadowy edges of streets, and down a long stairway street that is nearly or always shaded by the tall houses at either side and the hill behind, catching my breath as I passed through the furnace of sunshine in the openpiazza, finally, with my face in a flame, stepping under the great trees inside the gate, and pausing to refresh myself a little before going on. There was still the open terrace to pass, and the grand unshaded steps to ascend; but it was easier to go forward than back, for a few minutes would bring me to avenues as dim asAve Mariatime. I stood a little and dreaded the sun. Thecasinoand the gravel of the terrace and the steps were reflecting it so that one might almost have fancied the rays clashed on each other in the midst of the opening. The rose-trees in the flower-garden looked as if they bore clusters of fire-coals, and some sort of flowering tree in the green spacesbetween the stairs seemed to be breaking out into flame with its red and yellow blossoms. I remembered Mrs. Browning’s
“‘The flowers that burn, and the trees that aspire,And the insects made of a song or a fire.’”
“‘The flowers that burn, and the trees that aspire,And the insects made of a song or a fire.’”
“‘The flowers that burn, and the trees that aspire,
And the insects made of a song or a fire.’”
She paused to lay a laurel leaf over acarafonof cream that a fly was buzzing about, then exclaimed: “Why wasn’t that woman a Catholic, and why isn’t she alive now, that I may kiss her hand, and her cheek, if she would let me? Fancy such a genius consecrated to religion! You know the other stanza of that poem I have just quoted:
“‘And, oh! for a seer to discern the same,’Sighed the South to the North;‘For the poet’s tongue of baptismal flame,To call the tree and the flower by its name,’Sighed the South to the North.
“‘And, oh! for a seer to discern the same,’Sighed the South to the North;‘For the poet’s tongue of baptismal flame,To call the tree and the flower by its name,’Sighed the South to the North.
“‘And, oh! for a seer to discern the same,’
Sighed the South to the North;
‘For the poet’s tongue of baptismal flame,
To call the tree and the flower by its name,’
Sighed the South to the North.
“It seems to me that not one person in a thousand—Italians no more than strangers—would know there were anything remarkable here, if a small, small number of persons hadn’t told them there is. How they all repeat the same words, from the teeth out, and talk learnedly of what they know nothing about! They don’t one of them find a beauty that isn’t in the guidebooks.”
She sighed impatiently, and returned to her subject.
“I was telling you about noon in Villa Torlonia: I stood under the great solid trees awhile, then took courage and walked into the sun again, across the terrace, with only a glance at the vast panorama visible from it, up the steps that were hot to my feet, and then plunged into the upper avenues as into a cool bath. There was another opening to cross, for I wanted to go to the upper fountain; but here the cascade cooled the eyes, at least. I went up the cascade stairs as the waters came down, and found myselfalone in that beautiful green-walled drawing-room, with the fountain leaping all to itself in the centre, and the forty masks of the balustrade about the basin each telling its different story. Beside the tall central jet there used to be, perhaps may now be, a jet from each of these masks that are carved on the great posts of the balustrade, no two alike. I made a circuit of the place to assure myself that no one else was there; looking down each path that led away through the over-arching trees. Not a soul was in sight. There was no danger of Italians being there; and as forforestieri, there were none in Frascati. How delicious it was simply to sit on one of the stone benches and live! A spider’s web glistened across the place, starting straight from a tree behind me. Where it was fastened at the other end I could not guess; for the nearest object in that line was the tossing column of foamy water, fifty feet, may be more, distant, then an equal distance to the trees at the other side. There was no sound but that of falling water, that seemed to carry the chirp of thecicaliand the whisper of the trees, as the waters themselves carried the dry leaves and twigs that fell into them. All around the sun searched and strove to enter through the thick green, so near that his fiery breath touched my face. How my chains melted off! How pure the heat was, and how sweet! One bird sang through it now and then—sang for me: he the only lark abroad at that hour, as I was the only signora. I answered him with a little faint song, to which again he replied. I never was so happy, never felt so free from all that could annoy. Probably Adam and Eve had some such delight in the mere feelingthat they were alive. And so I sat there, hour after hour, half asleep, half fainting with the heat, in which I seemed to float. If I had been called on then to say what God is, I should have said, He is a fire that burns without consuming. Fire and its attendant heat were the perfection of all things, and coldness was misery—but a pure, clear fire which an anemone could pass through unscathed.”
The Signora drew a breath that was half a sigh, and took up the folded paper from her lap. “How happy I am in Italy in the summer!” she said, half to herself. “I can work in the cool months, but I live in the hot ones.”
“Bianca wants me to read this rhyme? It is a summer rhyme, too, and commemorates a little incident of my first summer here—a visit toSanta Maria della Vittoria. You have not been there yet. It is very near, just out on theVia della porta Pia, which the new people callVenti Settembre, because the invaders came in that way on the 20th of September. They try to keep the anniversary, and to make the city look as if the people cared for it, but it is a dreary pretence. A military procession, a few flags hung out here and there from houses of government officials and foreigners, chiefly Americans—that is all.”
She read:
Never so fair a rose as this, I think,E’er bloomed on a rose-tree;So sweet a rose as this, I surely know,Was never given to me.Like the reviving draught to fainting lips,The gentle word to strife,Cool, fresh, and tender, in a bitter hour,It dropt into my life.Hid in the silence of a darkened room,With sleepless eyes I lay,And an unresting mind, that vainly stroveTo shut its thoughts away.When through the loosenedperslaneslippedA sunbeam, sharply bright,That cleft the chamber’s quiet duskiness,And put my dreams to flight.Before the windows, in a dusty squareFretted by restless feet,Where once a palace-garden had unrolledIts alleys green and sweet,Men rooted up a fountain-base that layWhitened like bleaching bones,Or into new walls piled, with a weary care.The weary, ancient stones.And all about the slowly-growing work,In warlike mantles drest,Disputing with the spade for every sod,The angry poppies prest.And when I thought how fate uproots alwaysMy gardens, budding sweet,The hotsciroccoof an angry painBlew me into the street.The unveiled heights of sapphire overheadDazzled the lifted eyes;The sun, in lovely splendor, blazed from outThe keystone of the skies;And Rome sat glowing on her seven hills,Yellow with fervid heat,And scorched the green Campagna, where it creptAnd clung about her feet.The ways were silent where the sunshine pouredIts simmering, golden stream;For half the town slept in its shaded halls,Half worked as in a dream;The very fountains dropt from sleepiness,Pillowed in their own foam,I only, and the poppies, it would seem,Were wide awake in Rome.There were the gray old ruins, in whose nooksNodded each wild flower-bell,Where San Bernardo’s fane is hidden, likeA pearl within its shell.There marched the Piedmont robber and his hostIn through the long, long street;And there the open portal of a churchDrew in my straying feet.Silence and coolness, and a shade so deep,At first I saw no moreThan circling clouds and cherubs, with the dome’sBright bubble floating o’er;Wide flocks of milk-white angels in the roof,The hovering Bird divine;And, starring the lower dusk, the steady lampsThat marked each hidden shrine.Then marble walls and gilded galleriesGrew slowly into sight;And holy visions peered from out the gloomOf chapels left and right;And I perceived a brown-robed sacristan,With a good, pleasant face,Who sat alone within an altar-railTo guard the sacred place.He showed me all their treasures—the dead saintWithin her altar-shrine;Showed where the Master sat, in gilded bronze,Blessing the bread and wine;Unveiled the niche whose swooning marble form’Tis half a sin to see—Bernini’sSt.Teresa—and betrayedHer dying ecstasy;Then led me to the sacristy, where hung,Painted the glorious field—Lepanto’s—and he told the ancient tale,How, like a magic shield,Our Lady’s sacred picture, borne aloftIn the dread battle’s shock.Had sent the scattered Paynim flying far,Like foam from off a rock.When all was seen and said, my parting footA soft “Aspetti!” stayedJust where a tiny garden ’mid the wallsIts nook of verdure made.And while I waited, was broke off for meA bright geranium bloom,And this blush-rose, whose richly-perfumed breathHas sweetened the whole room.“O Rosa Mystica!” I thought, and feltConsoled, scarce knowing why;It seemed that in that brief hour all my wrongHad righted silently,As when, new-shriven, we go forth to treadThe troubled ways of men.Folded in peace, and with no need, it seems,Ever to speak again.Lady invincible! Her grander fieldsAre praised ’neath every sun;But who shall count the secret victoriesHer gentler arms have won?Hers are the trumpet and the waving flag;But there is one who knowsThat on a certain summer day in RomeShe conquered with a rose.
Never so fair a rose as this, I think,E’er bloomed on a rose-tree;So sweet a rose as this, I surely know,Was never given to me.Like the reviving draught to fainting lips,The gentle word to strife,Cool, fresh, and tender, in a bitter hour,It dropt into my life.Hid in the silence of a darkened room,With sleepless eyes I lay,And an unresting mind, that vainly stroveTo shut its thoughts away.When through the loosenedperslaneslippedA sunbeam, sharply bright,That cleft the chamber’s quiet duskiness,And put my dreams to flight.Before the windows, in a dusty squareFretted by restless feet,Where once a palace-garden had unrolledIts alleys green and sweet,Men rooted up a fountain-base that layWhitened like bleaching bones,Or into new walls piled, with a weary care.The weary, ancient stones.And all about the slowly-growing work,In warlike mantles drest,Disputing with the spade for every sod,The angry poppies prest.And when I thought how fate uproots alwaysMy gardens, budding sweet,The hotsciroccoof an angry painBlew me into the street.The unveiled heights of sapphire overheadDazzled the lifted eyes;The sun, in lovely splendor, blazed from outThe keystone of the skies;And Rome sat glowing on her seven hills,Yellow with fervid heat,And scorched the green Campagna, where it creptAnd clung about her feet.The ways were silent where the sunshine pouredIts simmering, golden stream;For half the town slept in its shaded halls,Half worked as in a dream;The very fountains dropt from sleepiness,Pillowed in their own foam,I only, and the poppies, it would seem,Were wide awake in Rome.There were the gray old ruins, in whose nooksNodded each wild flower-bell,Where San Bernardo’s fane is hidden, likeA pearl within its shell.There marched the Piedmont robber and his hostIn through the long, long street;And there the open portal of a churchDrew in my straying feet.Silence and coolness, and a shade so deep,At first I saw no moreThan circling clouds and cherubs, with the dome’sBright bubble floating o’er;Wide flocks of milk-white angels in the roof,The hovering Bird divine;And, starring the lower dusk, the steady lampsThat marked each hidden shrine.Then marble walls and gilded galleriesGrew slowly into sight;And holy visions peered from out the gloomOf chapels left and right;And I perceived a brown-robed sacristan,With a good, pleasant face,Who sat alone within an altar-railTo guard the sacred place.He showed me all their treasures—the dead saintWithin her altar-shrine;Showed where the Master sat, in gilded bronze,Blessing the bread and wine;Unveiled the niche whose swooning marble form’Tis half a sin to see—Bernini’sSt.Teresa—and betrayedHer dying ecstasy;Then led me to the sacristy, where hung,Painted the glorious field—Lepanto’s—and he told the ancient tale,How, like a magic shield,Our Lady’s sacred picture, borne aloftIn the dread battle’s shock.Had sent the scattered Paynim flying far,Like foam from off a rock.When all was seen and said, my parting footA soft “Aspetti!” stayedJust where a tiny garden ’mid the wallsIts nook of verdure made.And while I waited, was broke off for meA bright geranium bloom,And this blush-rose, whose richly-perfumed breathHas sweetened the whole room.“O Rosa Mystica!” I thought, and feltConsoled, scarce knowing why;It seemed that in that brief hour all my wrongHad righted silently,As when, new-shriven, we go forth to treadThe troubled ways of men.Folded in peace, and with no need, it seems,Ever to speak again.Lady invincible! Her grander fieldsAre praised ’neath every sun;But who shall count the secret victoriesHer gentler arms have won?Hers are the trumpet and the waving flag;But there is one who knowsThat on a certain summer day in RomeShe conquered with a rose.
Never so fair a rose as this, I think,E’er bloomed on a rose-tree;So sweet a rose as this, I surely know,Was never given to me.Like the reviving draught to fainting lips,The gentle word to strife,Cool, fresh, and tender, in a bitter hour,It dropt into my life.
Never so fair a rose as this, I think,
E’er bloomed on a rose-tree;
So sweet a rose as this, I surely know,
Was never given to me.
Like the reviving draught to fainting lips,
The gentle word to strife,
Cool, fresh, and tender, in a bitter hour,
It dropt into my life.
Hid in the silence of a darkened room,With sleepless eyes I lay,And an unresting mind, that vainly stroveTo shut its thoughts away.When through the loosenedperslaneslippedA sunbeam, sharply bright,That cleft the chamber’s quiet duskiness,And put my dreams to flight.
Hid in the silence of a darkened room,
With sleepless eyes I lay,
And an unresting mind, that vainly strove
To shut its thoughts away.
When through the loosenedperslaneslipped
A sunbeam, sharply bright,
That cleft the chamber’s quiet duskiness,
And put my dreams to flight.
Before the windows, in a dusty squareFretted by restless feet,Where once a palace-garden had unrolledIts alleys green and sweet,Men rooted up a fountain-base that layWhitened like bleaching bones,Or into new walls piled, with a weary care.The weary, ancient stones.
Before the windows, in a dusty square
Fretted by restless feet,
Where once a palace-garden had unrolled
Its alleys green and sweet,
Men rooted up a fountain-base that lay
Whitened like bleaching bones,
Or into new walls piled, with a weary care.
The weary, ancient stones.
And all about the slowly-growing work,In warlike mantles drest,Disputing with the spade for every sod,The angry poppies prest.And when I thought how fate uproots alwaysMy gardens, budding sweet,The hotsciroccoof an angry painBlew me into the street.
And all about the slowly-growing work,
In warlike mantles drest,
Disputing with the spade for every sod,
The angry poppies prest.
And when I thought how fate uproots always
My gardens, budding sweet,
The hotsciroccoof an angry pain
Blew me into the street.
The unveiled heights of sapphire overheadDazzled the lifted eyes;The sun, in lovely splendor, blazed from outThe keystone of the skies;And Rome sat glowing on her seven hills,Yellow with fervid heat,And scorched the green Campagna, where it creptAnd clung about her feet.
The unveiled heights of sapphire overhead
Dazzled the lifted eyes;
The sun, in lovely splendor, blazed from out
The keystone of the skies;
And Rome sat glowing on her seven hills,
Yellow with fervid heat,
And scorched the green Campagna, where it crept
And clung about her feet.
The ways were silent where the sunshine pouredIts simmering, golden stream;For half the town slept in its shaded halls,Half worked as in a dream;The very fountains dropt from sleepiness,Pillowed in their own foam,I only, and the poppies, it would seem,Were wide awake in Rome.
The ways were silent where the sunshine poured
Its simmering, golden stream;
For half the town slept in its shaded halls,
Half worked as in a dream;
The very fountains dropt from sleepiness,
Pillowed in their own foam,
I only, and the poppies, it would seem,
Were wide awake in Rome.
There were the gray old ruins, in whose nooksNodded each wild flower-bell,Where San Bernardo’s fane is hidden, likeA pearl within its shell.There marched the Piedmont robber and his hostIn through the long, long street;And there the open portal of a churchDrew in my straying feet.
There were the gray old ruins, in whose nooks
Nodded each wild flower-bell,
Where San Bernardo’s fane is hidden, like
A pearl within its shell.
There marched the Piedmont robber and his host
In through the long, long street;
And there the open portal of a church
Drew in my straying feet.
Silence and coolness, and a shade so deep,At first I saw no moreThan circling clouds and cherubs, with the dome’sBright bubble floating o’er;Wide flocks of milk-white angels in the roof,The hovering Bird divine;And, starring the lower dusk, the steady lampsThat marked each hidden shrine.
Silence and coolness, and a shade so deep,
At first I saw no more
Than circling clouds and cherubs, with the dome’s
Bright bubble floating o’er;
Wide flocks of milk-white angels in the roof,
The hovering Bird divine;
And, starring the lower dusk, the steady lamps
That marked each hidden shrine.
Then marble walls and gilded galleriesGrew slowly into sight;And holy visions peered from out the gloomOf chapels left and right;And I perceived a brown-robed sacristan,With a good, pleasant face,Who sat alone within an altar-railTo guard the sacred place.
Then marble walls and gilded galleries
Grew slowly into sight;
And holy visions peered from out the gloom
Of chapels left and right;
And I perceived a brown-robed sacristan,
With a good, pleasant face,
Who sat alone within an altar-rail
To guard the sacred place.
He showed me all their treasures—the dead saintWithin her altar-shrine;Showed where the Master sat, in gilded bronze,Blessing the bread and wine;Unveiled the niche whose swooning marble form’Tis half a sin to see—Bernini’sSt.Teresa—and betrayedHer dying ecstasy;
He showed me all their treasures—the dead saint
Within her altar-shrine;
Showed where the Master sat, in gilded bronze,
Blessing the bread and wine;
Unveiled the niche whose swooning marble form
’Tis half a sin to see—
Bernini’sSt.Teresa—and betrayed
Her dying ecstasy;
Then led me to the sacristy, where hung,Painted the glorious field—Lepanto’s—and he told the ancient tale,How, like a magic shield,Our Lady’s sacred picture, borne aloftIn the dread battle’s shock.Had sent the scattered Paynim flying far,Like foam from off a rock.
Then led me to the sacristy, where hung,
Painted the glorious field—
Lepanto’s—and he told the ancient tale,
How, like a magic shield,
Our Lady’s sacred picture, borne aloft
In the dread battle’s shock.
Had sent the scattered Paynim flying far,
Like foam from off a rock.
When all was seen and said, my parting footA soft “Aspetti!” stayedJust where a tiny garden ’mid the wallsIts nook of verdure made.And while I waited, was broke off for meA bright geranium bloom,And this blush-rose, whose richly-perfumed breathHas sweetened the whole room.
When all was seen and said, my parting foot
A soft “Aspetti!” stayed
Just where a tiny garden ’mid the walls
Its nook of verdure made.
And while I waited, was broke off for me
A bright geranium bloom,
And this blush-rose, whose richly-perfumed breath
Has sweetened the whole room.
“O Rosa Mystica!” I thought, and feltConsoled, scarce knowing why;It seemed that in that brief hour all my wrongHad righted silently,As when, new-shriven, we go forth to treadThe troubled ways of men.Folded in peace, and with no need, it seems,Ever to speak again.
“O Rosa Mystica!” I thought, and felt
Consoled, scarce knowing why;
It seemed that in that brief hour all my wrong
Had righted silently,
As when, new-shriven, we go forth to tread
The troubled ways of men.
Folded in peace, and with no need, it seems,
Ever to speak again.
Lady invincible! Her grander fieldsAre praised ’neath every sun;But who shall count the secret victoriesHer gentler arms have won?Hers are the trumpet and the waving flag;But there is one who knowsThat on a certain summer day in RomeShe conquered with a rose.
Lady invincible! Her grander fields
Are praised ’neath every sun;
But who shall count the secret victories
Her gentler arms have won?
Hers are the trumpet and the waving flag;
But there is one who knows
That on a certain summer day in Rome
She conquered with a rose.