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

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  CHAPTER L

  MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLO

  The gentle reader, we trust, would not thank us for one of those minuteelucidations, which are so tedious, and, after all, so unsatisfactory,in clearing up the romantic mysteries of a story. He is too wise toinsist upon looking closely at the wrong side of the tapestry, after theright one has been sufficiently displayed to him, woven with the best ofthe artist's skill, and cunningly arranged with a view to the harmoniousexhibition of its colors. If any brilliant, or beautiful, or eventolerable effect have been produced, this pattern of kindly readers willaccept it at its worth, without tearing its web apart, with the idlepurpose of discovering how the threads have been knit together; for thesagacity by which he is distinguished will long ago have taught him thatany narrative of human action and adventure whether we call it historyor romance--is certain to be a fragile handiwork, more easily rent thanmended. The actual experience of even the most ordinary life is full ofevents that never explain themselves, either as regards their origin ortheir tendency.

  It would be easy, from conversations which we have held with thesculptor, to suggest a clew to the mystery of Hilda's disappearance;although, as long as she remained in Italy, there was a remarkablereserve in her communications upon this subject, even to her mostintimate friends. Either a pledge of secrecy had been exacted, or aprudential motive warned her not to reveal the stratagems of a religiousbody, or the secret acts of a despotic government--whichever might beresponsible in the present instance--while still within the scope oftheir jurisdiction. Possibly, she might not herself be fully aware whatpower had laid its grasp upon her person. What has chiefly perplexed us,however, among Hilda's adventures, is the mode of her release, in whichsome inscrutable tyranny or other seemed to take part in the frolic ofthe Carnival. We can only account for it, by supposing that the fitfuland fantastic imagination of a woman--sportive, because she mustotherwise be desperate--had arranged this incident, and made it thecondition of a step which her conscience, or the conscience of another,required her to take.

  A few days after Hilda's reappearance, she and the sculptor werestraying together through the streets of Rome. Being deep in talk, it sohappened that they found themselves near the majestic, pillared portico,and huge, black rotundity of the Pantheon. It stands almost at thecentral point of the labyrinthine intricacies of the modern city, andoften presents itself before the bewildered stranger, when he is insearch of other objects. Hilda, looking up, proposed that they shouldenter.

  "I never pass it without going in," she said, "to pay my homage at thetomb of Raphael."

  "Nor I," said Kenyon, "without stopping to admire the noblest edificewhich the barbarism of the early ages, and the more barbarous pontiffsand princes of later ones, have spared to us."

  They went in accordingly, and stood in the free space of that greatcircle, around which are ranged the arched recesses and stately altars,formerly dedicated to heathen gods, but Christianized through twelvecenturies gone by. The world has nothing else like the Pantheon. Sogrand it is, that the pasteboard statues over the lofty cornice do notdisturb the effect, any more than the tin crowns and hearts, the dustyartificial flowers, and all manner of trumpery gew-gaws, hanging at thesaintly shrines. The rust and dinginess that have dimmed the preciousmarble on the walls; the pavement, with its great squares and roundsof porphyry and granite, cracked crosswise and in a hundred directions,showing how roughly the troublesome ages have trampled here; the graydome above, with its opening to the sky, as if heaven were looking downinto the interior of this place of worship, left unimpeded for prayersto ascend the more freely; all these things make an impression ofsolemnity, which St. Peter's itself fails to produce.

  "I think," said the sculptor, "it is to the aperture in the dome--thatgreat Eye, gazing heavenward that the Pantheon owes the peculiarity ofits effect. It is so heathenish, as it were,--so unlike all the snugnessof our modern civilization! Look, too, at the pavement, directly beneaththe open space! So much rain has fallen there, in the last two thousandyears, that it is green with small, fine moss, such as grows overtombstones in a damp English churchyard."

  "I like better," replied Hilda, "to look at the bright, blue sky,roofing the edifice where the builders left it open. It is verydelightful, in a breezy day, to see the masses of white cloud float overthe opening, and then the sunshine fall through it again, fitfully, asit does now. Would it be any wonder if we were to see angels hoveringthere, partly in and partly out, with genial, heavenly faces, notintercepting the light, but only transmuting it into beautiful colors?Look at that broad, golden beam--a sloping cataract of sunlight--whichcomes down from the aperture and rests upon the shrine, at the righthand of the entrance!"

  "There is a dusky picture over that altar," observed the sculptor. "Letus go and see if this strong illumination brings out any merit in it."

  Approaching the shrine, they found the picture little worth looking at,but could not forbear smiling, to see that a very plump and comfortabletabby-cat--whom we ourselves have often observed haunting thePantheon--had established herself on the altar, in the genial sunbeam,and was fast asleep among the holy tapers. Their footsteps disturbingher, she awoke, raised herself, and sat blinking in the sun, yet with acertain dignity and self-possession, as if conscious of representing asaint.

  "I presume," remarked Kenyon, "that this is the first of the feline racethat has ever set herself up as an object of worship, in the Pantheon orelsewhere, since the days of ancient Egypt. See; there is a peasant fromthe neighboring market, actually kneeling to her! She seems a graciousand benignant saint enough."

  "Do not make me laugh," said Hilda reproachfully, "but help me to drivethe creature away. It distresses me to see that poor man, or any humanbeing, directing his prayers so much amiss."

  "Then, Hilda," answered the sculptor more seriously, "the only Placein the Pantheon for you and me to kneel is on the pavement beneaththe central aperture. If we pray at a saint's shrine, we shall giveutterance to earthly wishes; but if we pray face to face with theDeity, we shall feel it impious to petition for aught that is narrow andselfish. Methinks it is this that makes the Catholics so delight in theworship of saints; they can bring up all their little worldly wants andwhims, their individualities and human weaknesses, not as things to berepented of, but to be humored by the canonized humanity to which theypray. Indeed, it is very tempting!"

  What Hilda might have answered must be left to conjecture; for as sheturned from the shrine, her eyes were attracted to the figure of afemale penitent, kneeling on the pavement just beneath the great centraleye, in the very spot which Kenyon had designated as the only one whenceprayers should ascend. The upturned face was invisible, behind a veil ormask, which formed a part of the garb.

  "It cannot be!" whispered Hilda, with emotion. "No; it cannot be!"

  "What disturbs you?" asked Kenyon. "Why do you tremble so?"

  "If it were possible," she replied, "I should fancy that kneeling figureto be Miriam!"

  "As you say, it is impossible," rejoined the sculptor; "We know toowell what has befallen both her and Donatello." "Yes; it is impossible!"repeated Hilda. Her voice was still tremulous, however, and she seemedunable to withdraw her attention from the kneeling figure. Suddenly,and as if the idea of Miriam had opened the whole volume of Hilda'sreminiscences, she put this question to the sculptor: "Was Donatelloreally a Faun?"

  "If you had ever studied the pedigree of the far-descended heir of MonteBeni, as I did," answered Kenyon, with an irrepressible smile, "youwould have retained few doubts on that point. Faun or not, he had agenial nature, which, had the rest of mankind been in accordance withit, would have made earth a paradise to our poor friend. It seemsthe moral of his story, that human beings of Donatello's character,compounded especially for happiness, have no longer any business onearth, or elsewhere. Life has grown so sadly serious, that such men mustchange their nature, or else perish, like the antediluvian creaturesthat required, as the condition of their existence, a mo
re summer-likeatmosphere than ours."

  "I will not accept your moral!" replied the hopeful and happy-naturedHilda.

  "Then here is another; take your choice!" said the sculptor, rememberingwhat Miriam had recently suggested, in reference to the same point. "Heperpetrated a great crime; and his remorse, gnawing into his soul,has awakened it; developing a thousand high capabilities, moral andintellectual, which we never should have dreamed of asking for, withinthe scanty compass of the Donatello whom we knew."

  "I know not whether this is so," said Hilda. "But what then?"

  "Here comes my perplexity," continued Kenyon. "Sin has educatedDonatello, and elevated him. Is sin, then,--which we deem such adreadful blackness in the universe,--is it, like sorrow, merely anelement of human education, through which we struggle to a higher andpurer state than we could otherwise have attained? Did Adam fall, thatwe might ultimately rise to a far loftier paradise than his?" "O hush!"cried Hilda, shrinking from him with an expression of horror whichwounded the poor, speculative sculptor to the soul. "This is terrible;and I could weep for you, if you indeed believe it. Do not you perceivewhat a mockery your creed makes, not only of all religious sentiments,but of moral law? And how it annuls and obliterates whatever precepts ofHeaven are written deepest within us? You have shocked me beyond words!"

  "Forgive me, Hilda!" exclaimed the sculptor, startled by her agitation;"I never did believe it! But the mind wanders wild and wide; and, solonely as I live and work, I have neither pole-star above nor lightof cottage windows here below, to bring me home. Were you my guide, mycounsellor, my inmost friend, with that white wisdom which clothes youas a celestial garment, all would go well. O Hilda, guide me home!"

  "We are both lonely; both far from home!" said Hilda, her eyes fillingwith tears. "I am a poor, weak girl, and have no such wisdom as youfancy in me."

  What further may have passed between these lovers, while standing beforethe pillared shrine, and the marble Madonna that marks Raphael's tomb;whither they had now wandered, we are unable to record. But when thekneeling figure beneath the open eye of the Pantheon arose, she lookedtowards the pair and extended her hands with a gesture of benediction.Then they knew that it was Miriam. They suffered her to glide out ofthe portal, however, without a greeting; for those extended hands, evenwhile they blessed, seemed to repel, as if Miriam stood on the otherside of a fathomless abyss, and warned them from its verge.

  So Kenyon won the gentle Hilda's shy affection, and her consent tobe his bride. Another hand must henceforth trim the lamp before theVirgin's shrine; for Hilda was coming down from her old tower, to beherself enshrined and worshipped as a household saint, in the light ofher husband's fireside. And, now that life had so much human promise init, they resolved to go back to their own land; because the years,after all, have a kind of emptiness, when we spend too many of them ona foreign shore. We defer the reality of life, in such cases, until afuture moment, when we shall again breathe our native air; but, by andby, there are no future moments; or, if we do return, we find that thenative air has lost its invigorating quality, and that life has shiftedits reality to the spot where we have deemed ourselves only temporaryresidents. Thus, between two countries, we have none at all, oronly that little space of either in which we finally lay down ourdiscontented bones. It is wise, therefore, to come back betimes, ornever.

  Before they quitted Rome, a bridal gift was laid on Hilda's table. Itwas a bracelet, evidently of great cost, being composed of seven ancientEtruscan gems, dug out of seven sepulchres, and each one of them thesignet of some princely personage, who had lived an immemorial time ago.Hilda remembered this precious ornament. It had been Miriam's; and once,with the exuberance of fancy that distinguished her, she had amusedherself with telling a mythical and magic legend for each gem,comprising the imaginary adventures and catastrophe of its formerwearer. Thus the Etruscan bracelet became the connecting bond of aseries of seven wondrous tales, all of which, as they were dug out ofseven sepulchres, were characterized by a sevenfold sepulchral gloom;such as Miriam's imagination, shadowed by her own misfortunes, was wontto fling over its most sportive flights.

  And now, happy as Hilda was, the bracelet brought the tears into hereyes, as being, in its entire circle, the symbol of as sad a mysteryas any that Miriam had attached to the separate gems. For, what wasMiriam's life to be? And where was Donatello? But Hilda had a hopefulsoul, and saw sunlight on the mountain-tops.

  CONCLUSION

  There comes to the author, from many readers of the foregoing pages, ademand for further elucidations respecting the mysteries of the story.

  He reluctantly avails himself of the opportunity afforded by a newedition, to explain such incidents and passages as may have been lefttoo much in the dark; reluctantly, he repeats, because the necessitymakes him sensible that he can have succeeded but imperfectly, at best,in throwing about this Romance the kind of atmosphere essential to theeffect at which he aimed.

  He designed the story and the characters to bear, of course, a certainrelation to human nature and human life, but still to be so artfully andairily removed from our mundane sphere, that some laws and proprietiesof their own should be implicitly and insensibly acknowledged.

  The idea of the modern Faun, for example, loses all the poetry andbeauty which the Author fancied in it, and becomes nothing better than agrotesque absurdity, if we bring it into the actual light of day. Hehad hoped to mystify this anomalous creature between the Real andthe Fantastic, in such a manner that the reader's sympathies might beexcited to a certain pleasurable degree, without impelling him to askhow Cuvier would have classified poor Donatello, or to insist upon beingtold, in so many words, whether he had furry ears or no. As respects allwho ask such questions, the book is, to that extent, a failure.

  Nevertheless, the Author fortunately has it in his power to throw lightupon several matters in which some of his readers appear to feel aninterest. To confess the truth, he was himself troubled with a curiositysimilar to that which he has just deprecated on the part of his readers,and once took occasion to cross-examine his friends, Hilda and thesculptor, and to pry into several dark recesses of the story, with whichthey had heretofore imperfectly acquainted him.

  We three had climbed to the top of St. Peter's, and were looking downupon the Rome we were soon to leave, but which (having already sinnedsufficiently in that way) it is not my purpose further to describe. Itoccurred to me, that, being so remote in the upper air, my friends mightsafely utter here the secrets which it would be perilous even to whisperon lower earth.

  "Hilda," I began, "can you tell me the contents of that mysteriouspacket which Miriam entrusted to your charge, and which was addressed toSignore Luca Barboni, at the Palazzo Cenci?"

  "I never had any further knowledge of it," replied Hilda, "nor felt itright to let myself be curious upon the subject."

  "As to its precise contents," interposed Kenyon, "it is impossible tospeak. But Miriam, isolated as she seemed, had family connections inRome, one of whom, there is reason to believe, occupied a position inthe papal government.

  "This Signore Luca Barboni was either the assumed name of the personagein question, or the medium of communication between that individual andMiriam. Now, under such a government as that of Rome, it is obvious thatMiriam's privacy and isolated life could only be maintained through theconnivance and support of some influential person connected with theadministration of affairs. Free and self-controlled as she appeared, herevery movement was watched and investigated far more thoroughly by thepriestly rulers than by her dearest friends.

  "Miriam, if I mistake not, had a purpose to withdraw herself from thisirksome scrutiny, and to seek real obscurity in another land; and thepacket, to be delivered long after her departure, contained a referenceto this design, besides certain family documents, which were to beimparted to her relative as from one dead and gone."

  "Yes, it is clear as a London fog," I remarked. "On this head no furtherelucidation can be desired. But when Hilda went quiet
ly to deliver thepacket, why did she so mysteriously vanish?"

  "You must recollect," replied Kenyon, with a glance of friendlycommiseration at my obtuseness, "that Miriam had utterly disappeared,leaving no trace by which her whereabouts could be known. In themeantime, the municipal authorities had become aware of the murderof the Capuchin; and from many preceding circumstances, such as hispersecution of Miriam, they must have seen an obvious connection betweenherself and that tragical event. Furthermore, there is reason to believethat Miriam was suspected of connection with some plot, or politicalintrigue, of which there may have been tokens in the packet. And whenHilda appeared as the bearer of this missive, it was really quitea matter of course, under a despotic government, that she should bedetained."

  "Ah, quite a matter of course, as you say," answered I. "How excessivelystupid in me not to have seen it sooner! But there are other riddles.On the night of the extinction of the lamp, you met Donatello, in apenitent's garb, and afterwards saw and spoke to Miriam, in a coach,with a gem glowing on her bosom. What was the business of these twoguilty ones in Rome, and who was Miriam's companion?"

  "Who!" repeated Kenyon, "why, her official relative, to be sure; andas to their business, Donatello's still gnawing remorse had brought himhitherward, in spite of Miriam's entreaties, and kept him lingeringin the neighborhood of Rome, with the ultimate purpose of deliveringhimself up to justice. Hilda's disappearance, which took place the daybefore, was known to them through a secret channel, and had brought theminto the city, where Miriam, as I surmise, began to make arrangements,even then, for that sad frolic of the Carnival."

  "And where was Hilda all that dreary time between?" inquired I.

  "Where were you, Hilda?" asked Kenyon, smiling.

  Hilda threw her eyes on all sides, and seeing that there was not even abird of the air to fly away with the secret, nor any human being nearerthan the loiterers by the obelisk in the piazza below, she told us abouther mysterious abode.

  "I was a prisoner in the Convent of the Sacre Coeur, in the Trinitade Monte," said she, "but in such kindly custody of pious maidens, andwatched over by such a dear old priest, that--had it not been for oneor two disturbing recollections, and also because I am a daughter of thePuritans I could willingly have dwelt there forever.

  "My entanglement with Miriam's misfortunes, and the good abbate'smistaken hope of a proselyte, seem to me a sufficient clew to the wholemystery."

  "The atmosphere is getting delightfully lucid," observed I, "but thereare one or two things that still puzzle me. Could you tell me--and itshall be kept a profound secret, I assure you what were Miriam's realname and rank, and precisely the nature of the troubles that led to allthose direful consequences?"

  "Is it possible that you need an answer to those questions?" exclaimedKenyon, with an aspect of vast surprise. "Have you not even surmisedMiriam's name? Think awhile, and you will assuredly remember it. If not,I congratulate you most sincerely; for it indicates that your feelingshave never been harrowed by one of the most dreadful and mysteriousevents that have occurred within the present century!"

  "Well," resumed I, after an interval of deep consideration, "I have butfew things more to ask. Where, at this moment, is Donatello?"

  "The Castle of Saint Angelo," said Kenyon sadly, turning his facetowards that sepulchral fortress, "is no longer a prison; but there areothers which have dungeons as deep, and in one of them, I fear, lies ourpoor Faun."

  "And why, then, is Miriam at large?" I asked.

  "Call it cruelty if you like, not mercy," answered Kenyon. "But, afterall, her crime lay merely in a glance. She did no murder!"

  "Only one question more," said I, with intense earnestness. "DidDonatello's ears resemble those of the Faun of Praxiteles?"

  "I know, but may not tell," replied Kenyon, smiling mysteriously. "Onthat point, at all events, there shall be not one word of explanation."

  Leamington, March 14, 1860.