The Marble Faun; Or, The Romance of Monte Beni - Volume 2
Page 23
CHAPTER XLVI
A WALK ON THE CAMPAGNA
It was a bright forenoon of February; a month in which the briefseverity of a Roman winter is already past, and when violets and daisiesbegin to show themselves in spots favored by the sun. The sculptor cameout of the city by the gate of San Sebastiano, and walked briskly alongthe Appian Way.
For the space of a mile or two beyond the gate, this ancient and famousroad is as desolate and disagreeable as most of the other Roman avenues.It extends over small, uncomfortable paving-stones, between brick andplastered walls, which are very solidly constructed, and so high asalmost to exclude a view of the surrounding country. The houses are ofmost uninviting aspect, neither picturesque, nor homelike and social;they have seldom or never a door opening on the wayside, but areaccessible only from the rear, and frown inhospitably upon the travellerthrough iron-grated windows. Here and there appears a dreary inn or awine-shop, designated by the withered bush beside the entrance, withinwhich you discern a stone-built and sepulchral interior, where guestsrefresh themselves with sour bread and goats'-milk cheese, washed downwith wine of dolorous acerbity.
At frequent intervals along the roadside up-rises the ruin of an ancienttomb. As they stand now, these structures are immensely high and brokenmounds of conglomerated brick, stone, pebbles, and earth, all moltenby time into a mass as solid and indestructible as if each tomb werecomposed of a single boulder of granite. When first erected, they werecased externally, no doubt, with slabs of polished marble, artfullywrought bas-reliefs, and all such suitable adornments, and were renderedmajestically beautiful by grand architectural designs. This antiquesplendor has long since been stolen from the dead, to decorate thepalaces and churches of the living. Nothing remains to the dishonoredsepulchres, except their massiveness.
Even the pyramids form hardly a stranger spectacle, or are more alienfrom human sympathies, than the tombs of the Appian Way, with theirgigantic height, breadth, and solidity, defying time and the elements,and far too mighty to be demolished by an ordinary earthquake. Here youmay see a modern dwelling, and a garden with its vines and olive-trees,perched on the lofty dilapidation of a tomb, which forms a precipice offifty feet in depth on each of the four sides. There is a home onthat funereal mound, where generations of children have been born, andsuccessive lives been spent, undisturbed by the ghost of the stern Romanwhose ashes were so preposterously burdened. Other sepulchres wear acrown of grass, shrubbery, and forest-trees, which throw out a broadsweep of branches, having had time, twice over, to be a thousand yearsof age. On one of them stands a tower, which, though immemorially moremodern than the tomb, was itself built by immemorial hands, and isnow rifted quite from top to bottom by a vast fissure of decay; thetomb-hillock, its foundation, being still as firm as ever, and likely toendure until the last trump shall rend it wide asunder, and summon forthits unknown dead.
Yes; its unknown dead! For, except in one or two doubtful instances,these mountainous sepulchral edifices have not availed to keep so muchas the bare name of an individual or a family from oblivion. Ambitiousof everlasting remembrance, as they were, the slumberers might justas well have gone quietly to rest, each in his pigeon-hole of acolumbarium, or under his little green hillock in a graveyard, without aheadstone to mark the spot. It is rather satisfactory than otherwise, tothink that all these idle pains have turned out so utterly abortive.
About two miles, or more, from the city gate, and right upon theroadside, Kenyon passed an immense round pile, sepulchral in itsoriginal purposes, like those already mentioned. It was built ofgreat blocks of hewn stone, on a vast, square foundation of rough,agglomerated material, such as composes the mass of all the otherruinous tombs. But whatever might be the cause, it was in a farbetter state of preservation than they. On its broad summit rose thebattlements of a mediaeval fortress, out of the midst of which (so longsince had time begun to crumble the supplemental structure, and coverit with soil, by means of wayside dust) grew trees, bushes, and thickfestoons of ivy. This tomb of a woman had become the citadel anddonjon-keep of a castle; and all the care that Cecilia Metella's husbandcould bestow, to secure endless peace for her beloved relics, had onlysufficed to make that handful of precious ashes the nucleus of battles,long ages after her death.
A little beyond this point, the sculptor turned aside from the AppianWay, and directed his course across the Campagna, guided by tokens thatwere obvious only to himself. On one side of him, but at a distance, theClaudian aqueduct was striding over fields and watercourses. Before him,many miles away, with a blue atmosphere between, rose the Alban hills,brilliantly silvered with snow and sunshine.
He was not without a companion. A buffalo-calf, that seemed shy andsociable by the selfsame impulse, had begun to make acquaintance withhim, from the moment when he left the road. This frolicsome creaturegambolled along, now before, now behind; standing a moment to gaze athim, with wild, curious eyes, he leaped aside and shook his shaggy head,as Kenyon advanced too nigh; then, after loitering in the rear, he camegalloping up, like a charge of cavalry, but halted, all of a sudden,when the sculptor turned to look, and bolted across the Campagna at theslightest signal of nearer approach. The young, sportive thing, Kenyonhalf fancied, was serving him as a guide, like the heifer that ledCadmus to the site of his destined city; for, in spite of a hundredvagaries, his general course was in the right direction, and along byseveral objects which the sculptor had noted as landmarks of his way.
In this natural intercourse with a rude and healthy form of animal life,there was something that wonderfully revived Kenyon's spirits. The warmrays of the sun, too, were wholesome for him in body and soul; and sowas a breeze that bestirred itself occasionally, as if for the solepurpose of breathing upon his cheek and dying softly away, when he wouldfain have felt a little more decided kiss. This shy but loving breezereminded him strangely of what Hilda's deportment had sometimes beentowards himself.
The weather had very much to do, no doubt, with these genial anddelightful sensations, that made the sculptor so happy with mere life,in spite of a head and heart full of doleful thoughts, anxieties, andfears, which ought in all reason to have depressed him. It was like noweather that exists anywhere, save in Paradise and in Italy; certainlynot in America, where it is always too strenuous on the side either ofheat or cold. Young as the season was, and wintry, as it would havebeen under a more rigid sky, it resembled summer rather than what weNew Englanders recognize in our idea of spring. But there was anindescribable something, sweet, fresh, and remotely affectionate, whichthe matronly summer loses, and which thrilled, and, as it were, tickledKenyon's heart with a feeling partly of the senses, yet far more aspiritual delight. In a word, it was as if Hilda's delicate breath wereon his cheek.
After walking at a brisk pace for about half an hour, he reached aspot where an excavation appeared to have been begun, at some notvery distant period. There was a hollow space in the earth, lookingexceedingly like a deserted cellar, being enclosed within oldsubterranean walls, constructed of thin Roman bricks, and madeaccessible by a narrow flight of stone steps. A suburban villa hadprobably stood over this site, in the imperial days of Rome, and thesemight have been the ruins of a bathroom, or some other apartment thatwas required to be wholly or partly under ground. A spade can scarcelybe put into that soil, so rich in lost and forgotten things, withouthitting upon some discovery which would attract all eyes, in any otherland. If you dig but a little way, you gather bits of precious marble,coins, rings, and engraved gems; if you go deeper, you break intocolumbaria, or into sculptured and richly frescoed apartments that looklike festive halls, but were only sepulchres.
The sculptor descended into the cellar-like cavity, and sat down on ablock of stone. His eagerness had brought him thither sooner thanthe appointed hour. The sunshine fell slantwise into the hollow, andhappened to be resting on what Kenyon at first took to be a shapelessfragment of stone, possibly marble, which was partly concealed by thecrumbling down of earth.
But his practised ey
e was soon aware of something artistic in this rudeobject. To relieve the anxious tedium of his situation, he clearedaway some of the soil, which seemed to have fallen very recently, anddiscovered a headless figure of marble. It was earth stained, as well itmight be, and had a slightly corroded surface, but at once impressed thesculptor as a Greek production, and wonderfully delicate and beautiful.The head was gone; both arms were broken off at the elbow. Protrudingfrom the loose earth, however, Kenyon beheld the fingers of a marblehand; it was still appended to its arm, and a little further searchenabled him to find the other. Placing these limbs in what the niceadjustment of the fractures proved to be their true position, thepoor, fragmentary woman forthwith showed that she retained her modestinstincts to the last. She had perished with them, and snatched themback at the moment of revival. For these long-buried hands immediatelydisposed themselves in the manner that nature prompts, as the antiqueartist knew, and as all the world has seen, in the Venus de' Medici.
"What a discovery is here!" thought Kenyon to himself. "I seek forHilda, and find a marble woman! Is the omen good or ill?"
In a corner of the excavation lay a small round block of stone, muchincrusted with earth that had dried and hardened upon it. So, at least,you would have described this object, until the sculptor lifted it,turned it hither and thither in his hands, brushed off the clingingsoil, and finally placed it on the slender neck of the newly discoveredstatue. The effect was magical. It immediately lighted up and vivifiedthe whole figure, endowing it with personality, soul, and intelligence.The beautiful Idea at once asserted its immortality, and converted thatheap of forlorn fragments into a whole, as perfect to the mind, if notto the eye, as when the new marble gleamed with snowy lustre; nor wasthe impression marred by the earth that still hung upon the exquisitelygraceful limbs, and even filled the lovely crevice of the lips. Kenyoncleared it away from between them, and almost deemed himself rewardedwith a living smile.
It was either the prototype or a better repetition of the Venus of theTribune. But those who have been dissatisfied with the small head, thenarrow, soulless face, the button-hole eyelids, of that famous statue,and its mouth such as nature never moulded, should see the genialbreadth of this far nobler and sweeter countenance. It is one of the fewworks of antique sculpture in which we recognize womanhood, and that,moreover, without prejudice to its divinity.
Here, then, was a treasure for the sculptor to have found! How happenedit to be lying there, beside its grave of twenty centuries? Why were notthe tidings of its discovery already noised abroad? The world was richerthan yesterday, by something far more precious than gold. Forgottenbeauty had come back, as beautiful as ever; a goddess had risen from herlong slumber, and was a goddess still. Another cabinet in the Vaticanwas destined to shine as lustrously as that of the Apollo Belvedere;or, if the aged pope should resign his claim, an emperor would woo thistender marble, and win her as proudly as an imperial bride!
Such were the thoughts with which Kenyon exaggerated to himself theimportance of the newly discovered statue, and strove to feel at leasta portion of the interest which this event would have inspired in him alittle while before. But, in reality, he found it difficult to fixhis mind upon the subject. He could hardly, we fear, be reckoned aconsummate artist, because there was something dearer to him than hisart; and, by the greater strength of a human affection, the divinestatue seemed to fall asunder again, and become only a heap of worthlessfragments.
While the sculptor sat listlessly gazing at it, there was a sound ofsmall hoofs, clumsily galloping on the Campagna; and soon his friskyacquaintance, the buffalo-calf, came and peeped over the edge of theexcavation. Almost at the same moment he heard voices, which approachednearer and nearer; a man's voice, and a feminine one, talking themusical tongue of Italy. Besides the hairy visage of his four footedfriend, Kenyon now saw the figures of a peasant and a contadina, makinggestures of salutation to him, on the opposite verge of the hollowspace.