The Marble Faun; Or, The Romance of Monte Beni - Volume 2

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  ALTARS AND INCENSE

  Rome has a certain species of consolation readier at hand, for all thenecessitous, than any other spot under the sun; and Hilda's despondentstate made her peculiarly liable to the peril, if peril it can justly betermed, of seeking, or consenting, to be thus consoled.

  Had the Jesuits known the situation of this troubled heart, herinheritance of New England Puritanism would hardly have protected thepoor girl from the pious strategy of those good fathers. Knowing, asthey do, how to work each proper engine, it would have been ultimatelyimpossible for Hilda to resist the attractions of a faith, which somarvellously adapts itself to every human need. Not, indeed, that it cansatisfy the soul's cravings, but, at least, it can sometimes helpthe soul towards a higher satisfaction than the faith contains withinitself. It supplies a multitude of external forms, in which thespiritual may be clothed and manifested; it has many painted windows,as it were, through which the celestial sunshine, else disregarded, maymake itself gloriously perceptible in visions of beauty and splendor.There is no one want or weakness of human nature for which Catholicismwill own itself without a remedy; cordials, certainly, it possesses inabundance, and sedatives in inexhaustible variety, and what may oncehave been genuine medicaments, though a little the worse for longkeeping.

  To do it justice, Catholicism is such a miracle of fitness for itsown ends, many of which might seem to be admirable ones, that it isdifficult to imagine it a contrivance of mere man. Its mighty machinerywas forged and put together, not on middle earth, but either aboveor below. If there were but angels to work it, instead of the verydifferent class of engineers who now manage its cranks and safetyvalves, the system would soon vindicate the dignity and holiness of itsorigin.

  Hilda had heretofore made many pilgrimages among the churches of Rome,for the sake of wondering at their gorgeousness. Without a glimpse atthese palaces of worship, it is impossible to imagine the magnificenceof the religion that reared them. Many of them shine with burnishedgold. They glow with pictures. Their walls, columns, and arches seem aquarry of precious stones, so beautiful and costly are the marbleswith which they are inlaid. Their pavements are often a mosaic, of rareworkmanship. Around their lofty cornices hover flights of sculpturedangels; and within the vault of the ceiling and the swelling interiorof the dome, there are frescos of such brilliancy, and wrought with soartful a perspective, that the sky, peopled with sainted forms, appearsto be opened only a little way above the spectator. Then there arechapels, opening from the side aisles and transepts, decorated byprinces for their own burial places, and as shrines for their especialsaints. In these, the splendor of the entire edifice is intensifiedand gathered to a focus. Unless words were gems, that would flame withmany-colored light upon the page, and throw thence a tremulous glimmerinto the reader's eyes, it were wain to attempt a description of aprincely chapel.

  Restless with her trouble, Hilda now entered upon another pilgrimageamong these altars and shrines. She climbed the hundred steps of the AraCoeli; she trod the broad, silent nave of St. John Lateran; she stoodin the Pantheon, under the round opening in the dome, through whichthe blue sunny sky still gazes down, as it used to gaze when there wereRoman deities in the antique niches. She went into every church thatrose before her, but not now to wonder at its magnificence, when shehardly noticed more than if it had been the pine-built interior of a NewEngland meeting-house.

  She went--and it was a dangerous errand--to observe how closely andcomfortingly the popish faith applied itself to all human occasions. Itwas impossible to doubt that multitudes of people found their spiritualadvantage in it, who would find none at all in our own formless mode ofworship; which, besides, so far as the sympathy of prayerful souls isconcerned, can be enjoyed only at stated and too unfrequent periods. Buthere, whenever the hunger for divine nutriment came upon the soul, itcould on the instant be appeased. At one or another altar, the incensewas forever ascending; the mass always being performed, and carryingupward with it the devotion of such as had not words for their ownprayer. And yet, if the worshipper had his individual petition to offer,his own heart-secret to whisper below his breath, there were divineauditors ever ready to receive it from his lips; and what encouraged himstill more, these auditors had not always been divine, but kept, withintheir heavenly memories, the tender humility of a human experience. Nowa saint in heaven, but once a man on earth.

  Hilda saw peasants, citizens, soldiers, nobles, women with bare heads,ladies in their silks, entering the churches individually, kneeling formoments or for hours, and directing their inaudible devotions to theshrine of some saint of their own choice. In his hallowed person, theyfelt themselves possessed of an own friend in heaven. They were toohumble to approach the Deity directly. Conscious of their unworthiness,they asked the mediation of their sympathizing patron, who, on the scoreof his ancient martyrdom, and after many ages of celestial life, mightventure to talk with the Divine Presence, almost as friend with friend.Though dumb before its Judge, even despair could speak, and pour out themisery of its soul like water, to an advocate so wise to comprehend thecase, and eloquent to plead it, and powerful to win pardon whateverwere the guilt. Hilda witnessed what she deemed to be an example of thisspecies of confidence between a young man and his saint. He stood beforea shrine, writhing, wringing his hands, contorting his whole frame inan agony of remorseful recollection, but finally knelt down to weep andpray. If this youth had been a Protestant, he would have kept all thattorture pent up in his heart, and let it burn there till it seared himinto indifference.

  Often and long, Hilda lingered before the shrines and chapels of theVirgin, and departed from them with reluctant steps. Here, perhaps,strange as it may seem, her delicate appreciation of art stood herin good stead, and lost Catholicism a convert. If the painter hadrepresented Mary with a heavenly face, poor Hilda was now in the verymood to worship her, and adopt the faith in which she held so elevateda position. But she saw that it was merely the flattered portrait ofan earthly beauty; the wife, at best, of the artist; or, it might be, apeasant girl of the Campagna, or some Roman princess, to whom he desiredto pay his court. For love, or some even less justifiable motive, theold painter had apotheosized these women; he thus gained for them, asfar as his skill would go, not only the meed of immortality, but theprivilege of presiding over Christian altars, and of being worshippedwith far holier fervors than while they dwelt on earth. Hilda's finesense of the fit and decorous could not be betrayed into kneeling atsuch a shrine.

  She never found just the virgin mother whom she needed. Here it wasan earthly mother, worshipping the earthly baby in her lap, as any andevery mother does, from Eve's time downward. In another picture, therewas a dim sense, shown in the mother's face, of some divine qualityin the child. In a third, the artist seemed to have had a higherperception, and had striven hard to shadow out the Virgin's joy atbringing the Saviour into the world, and her awe and love, inextricablymingled, of the little form which she pressed against her bosom. Sofar was good. But still, Hilda looked for something more; a face ofcelestial beauty, but human as well as heavenly, and with the shadowof past grief upon it; bright with immortal youth, yet matronly andmotherly; and endowed with a queenly dignity, but infinitely tender, asthe highest and deepest attribute of her divinity.

  "Ah," thought Hilda to herself, "why should not there be a woman tolisten to the prayers of women? A mother in heaven for all motherlessgirls like me? In all God's thought and care for us, can he havewithheld this boon, which our weakness so much needs?"

  Oftener than to the other churches, she wandered into St. Peter's.Within its vast limits, she thought, and beneath the sweep of its greatdome, there should be space for all forms of Christian truth; room bothfor the faithful and the heretic to kneel; due help for every creature'sspiritual want.

  Hilda had not always been adequately impressed by the grandeur of thismighty cathedral. When she first lifted the heavy leathern curtain, atone of the doors, a shadowy edifice in her imagina
tion had been dazzledout of sight by the reality. Her preconception of St. Peter's was astructure of no definite outline, misty in its architecture, dimand gray and huge, stretching into an interminable perspective, andoverarched by a dome like the cloudy firmament. Beneath that vastbreadth and height, as she had fancied them, the personal man mightfeel his littleness, and the soul triumph in its immensity. So, inher earlier visits, when the compassed splendor Of the actual interiorglowed before her eyes, she had profanely called it a great prettiness;a gay piece of cabinet work, on a Titanic scale; a jewel casket,marvellously magnified.

  This latter image best pleased her fancy; a casket, all inlaid in theinside with precious stones of various hue, so that there Should not bea hair's-breadth of the small interior unadorned with its resplendentgem. Then, conceive this minute wonder of a mosaic box, increased tothe magnitude of a cathedral, without losing the intense lustre of itslittleness, but all its petty glory striving to be sublime. The magictransformation from the minute to the vast has not been so cunninglyeffected but that the rich adornment still counteracts the impression ofspace and loftiness. The spectator is more sensible of its limits thanof its extent.

  Until after many visits, Hilda continued to mourn for that dim,illimitable interior, which with her eyes shut she had seen fromchildhood, but which vanished at her first glimpse through the actualdoor. Her childish vision seemed preferable to the cathedral whichMichael Angelo, and all the great architects, had built; because, ofthe dream edifice, she had said, "How vast it is!" while of the real St.Peter's she could only say, "After all, it is not so immense!" Besides,such as the church is, it can nowhere be made visible at one glance.It stands in its own way. You see an aisle, or a transept; you see thenave, or the tribune; but, on account of its ponderous piers and otherobstructions, it is only by this fragmentary process that you get anidea of the cathedral.

  There is no answering such objections. The great church smiles calmlyupon its critics, and, for all response, says, "Look at me!" and if youstill murmur for the loss of your shadowy perspective, there comes noreply, save, "Look at me!" in endless repetition, as the one thing tobe said. And, after looking many times, with long intervals between, youdiscover that the cathedral has gradually extended itself over the wholecompass of your idea; it covers all the site of your visionary temple,and has room for its cloudy pinnacles beneath the dome.

  One afternoon, as Hilda entered St. Peter's in sombre mood, its interiorbeamed upon her with all the effect of a new creation. It seemed anembodiment of whatever the imagination could conceive, or the heartdesire, as a magnificent, comprehensive, majestic symbol of religiousfaith. All splendor was included within its verge, and there was spacefor all. She gazed with delight even at the multiplicity of ornament.She was glad at the cherubim that fluttered upon the pilasters, and ofthe marble doves, hovering unexpectedly, with green olive-branchesof precious stones. She could spare nothing, now, of the manifoldmagnificence that had been lavished, in a hundred places, richly enoughto have made world-famous shrines in any other church, but whichhere melted away into the vast sunny breadth, and were of no separateaccount. Yet each contributed its little all towards the grandeur of thewhole.

  She would not have banished one of those grim popes, who sit each overhis own tomb, scattering cold benedictions out of their marble hands;nor a single frozen sister of the Allegoric family, to whom--as, likehired mourners at an English funeral, it costs them no wear and tear ofheart--is assigned the office of weeping for the dead. If you choose tosee these things, they present themselves; if you deem them unsuitableand out of place, they vanish, individually, but leave their life uponthe walls.

  The pavement! it stretched out illimitably, a plain of many-coloredmarble, where thousands of worshippers might kneel together, andshadowless angels tread among them without brushing their heavenlygarments against those earthly ones. The roof! the dome! Rich, gorgeous,filled with sunshine, cheerfully sublime, and fadeless aftercenturies, those lofty depths seemed to translate the heavens to mortalcomprehension, and help the spirit upward to a yet higher and widersphere. Must not the faith, that built this matchless edifice, andwarmed, illuminated, and overflowed from it, include whatever cansatisfy human aspirations at the loftiest, or minister to humannecessity at the sorest? If Religion had a material home, was it nothere?

  As the scene which we but faintly suggest shone calmly before the NewEngland maiden at her entrance, she moved, as if by very instinct, toone of the vases of holy water, upborne against a column by two mightycherubs. Hilda dipped her fingers, and had almost signed the cross uponher breast, but forbore, and trembled, while shaking the water from herfinger-tips. She felt as if her mother's spirit, somewhere withinthe dome, were looking down upon her child, the daughter of Puritanforefathers, and weeping to behold her ensnared by these gaudysuperstitions. So she strayed sadly onward, up the nave, and towards thehundred golden lights that swarm before the high altar. Seeing a woman;a priest, and a soldier kneel to kiss the toe of the brazen St. Peter,who protrudes it beyond his pedestal for the purpose, polished brightwith former salutations, while a child stood on tiptoe to do the same,the glory of the church was darkened before Hilda's eyes. But again shewent onward into remoter regions. She turned into the right transept,and thence found her way to a shrine, in the extreme corner of theedifice, which is adorned with a mosaic copy of Guido's beautifulArchangel, treading on the prostrate fiend.

  This was one of the few pictures, which, in these dreary days, had notfaded nor deteriorated in Hilda's estimation; not that it was betterthan many in which she no longer took an interest; but the subtiledelicacy of the painter's genius was peculiarly adapted to hercharacter. She felt, while gazing at it, that the artist had done agreat thing, not merely for the Church of Rome, but for the cause ofGood. The moral of the picture, the immortal youth and loveliness ofvirtue, and its irresistibles might against ugly Evil, appealed as muchto Puritans as Catholics.

  Suddenly, and as if it were done in a dream, Hilda found herselfkneeling before the shrine, under the ever-burning lamp that throwsits rays upon the Archangel's face. She laid her forehead on the marblesteps before the altar, and sobbed out a prayer; she hardly knew towhom, whether Michael, the Virgin, or the Father; she hardly knew forwhat, save only a vague longing, that thus the burden of her spiritmight be lightened a little.

  In an instant she snatched herself up, as it were, from her knees, alla-throb with the emotions which were struggling to force their way outof her heart by the avenue that had so nearly been opened for them. Yetthere was a strange sense of relief won by that momentary, passionateprayer; a strange joy, moreover, whether from what she had done, or forwhat she had escaped doing, Hilda could not tell. But she felt as onehalf stifled, who has stolen a breath of air.

  Next to the shrine where she had knelt there is another, adorned witha picture by Guercino, representing a maiden's body in the jaws of thesepulchre, and her lover weeping over it; while her beatified spiritlooks down upon the scene, in the society of the Saviour and a throngof saints. Hilda wondered if it were not possible, by some miracle offaith, so to rise above her present despondency that she might look downupon what she was, just as Petronilla in the picture looked at her owncorpse. A hope, born of hysteric trouble, fluttered in her heart. Apresentiment, or what she fancied such, whispered her, that, before shehad finished the circuit of the cathedral, relief would come.

  The unhappy are continually tantalized by similar delusions of succornear at hand; at least, the despair is very dark that has no suchwill-o'-the-wisp to glimmer in it.