University of Virginia Library

25. CHAPTER XXV.

The roar of the carnival had died away, and
dusky twilight had fallen on Rome, when a solitary
passenger, muffled in a cloak, paced thoughtfully
through the black lanes and broken squares—by
the towering palaces—the spouting fountains—the
sculptured cathedrals—the leaning walls—the prostrate
temples. Impatience appeared in his step
and manner. Many a sacred wreck he passed unpausingly.
The mute, scarred Pantheon—that gem
rescued from the deep of time—won not his regard.
Old Tiber rolled his yellow waves unseen. Where
was bent his gaze? There!—where from the circus
of the imperial fiend another Pantheon sat
amid the stars, throned in all the pomp of colonnade
and pilaster, of fountain and statue—to astound and
dazzle unborn ages. There his eyes were fixed—
thither his step advanced.

If you have never seen St. Peter's, reader, you
are to be envied. In your perspective lies the possibility

of a new impression. Its immensity and
magnificence almost cease to be physical objects.
They strike, they amaze, they exalt the mind.
They awaken, impress, and overwhelm the imagination.
They roll over you with the mastery and
solemn thrill of something intellectual and ideal.
Its mighty floor spreads from your feet with the
level that tasks the eye to receive—its brilliant
walls, gorgeous with all that earth can yield, that
genius can create, rise around with an intense grandeur
that pains the gaze and the comprehension.
You stand in the midst, lost and diminished; now
lifting the eye with mute incredulous wonder to the
golden roofs, the vast and radiant dome; now measuring
the ponderous monuments, peopled with exquisitely
majestic, almost breathing forms of marble.
With a hesitating step you approach an infant
angel, that grows as you advance into gigantic
and impossible dimensions. Bewildered you recede
from some stupendous pile, which, with each
enchanted moment, falls lovelier and yet more lovely
into all the proportions of grace and the perfection
of nature.

The stranger lifted the heavy curtain. He stood
within the wondrous hall. Was his soul struck?
Was his vision dazzled and overwhelmed? No.
Such a powerful charmer is custom, such a yet
more potent necromancer is interest, that he trod
the endless pavement as if it had been the commonest
sward of green in a silent forest. Mark how
his eye darts around amid the wilderness of glittering
marbles and beaming pictures.

“Who moves on the broad area yonder? It
cannot be she!”

No, it is a single traveller, hushed and awe-struck,

gazing and gazing upon the interminable piles of
gorgeousness.

A step approaches our stranger.

“ 'Tis she!”

No. A priest glides along with half-heard step,
and disappears.

“For the love of the Madona, signore!” cries a
voice.

“Ha! at last!” thus said the eye and start of the
muffled wanderer.

No. A blind beggar, led by a filthy child, craves,
amid this wondrous wealth, for means whereby to
live.

With still and watchful pace, on and on he went
—by the cinders of the great, by the works of the
inspired, by sacred statue and holy relic, by mouldering
king and forgotten pope, by couchant lion and
winged seraph. With a beating heart he stands by
the altar of St. Leo. He stands alone.

“Hist!”

Was it fancy?

“Hist!”

“Again!”

He approached the immense tomb.

“Ha! Is it you?”

“Yes; but away!—again you are watched.”

“I care not. I am armed.”

The figure lurked behind a giant image. The
face was half visible.

“Mysterious being,” said Leslie, “for the love
of God, relieve my racked soul.”

“I dare not now. Yonder priest, who passed us
but now, is, I fear, the companion and agent of
your bitterest foe and mine. I dare not remain.
He knows me. But to-morrow, after the carnival,

meet me at the Coliseum. Watch till I come, if
it be till midnight.”

“But, one word. Rosalie Romain! does she live?
Can I learn aught of her?”

The priest had approached again. He was at
their side before they knew he had turned. His
eyes were fixed upon them. From their evident
disguise and mysterious manner of meeting, they
were well calculated to attract attention. It might
have been mere fancy that he knew aught of them
or their affairs. Leslie bent on him a stern glance.
It seemed to quail him. He shrunk back, and retreated.

“Now, strange woman!”

The figure was gone. He passed behind the
tomb. No one was to be seen but the blind beggar
with the little girl, who had hobbled after him
with his extended hat, and a group of foreigners,
mute and motionless—their eyes fixed on a magnificent
statue.