 | MORNING, NOON, AND EVENING. Reveries of a bachelor, or, A book of the heart |  |
Enrica.
I hear her glancing feet, the moment I have tinkled
the bell;—and there she is, with her brown hair
gathered into braids, and her eyes full of joy, and
greeting. And as I walk with the mother to the
window to look at some pageant that is passing,—she
steals up behind, and passes her arm around me, with
a quick electric motion, and a gentle pressure of
welcome—that tells more than a thousand words.
It is a pageant of death that is passing below. Far
down the street, we see heads thrust out of the windows,
and standing in bold relief against the red
torch-light of the moving train. Below, dim figures
are gathering on the narrow side ways to look at the
solemn spectacle. A hoarse chant rises louder, and
louder; and half dies in the night air, and breaks out
again with new, and deep bitterness.
Now, the first torch-light under us shines plainly
on faces in the windows, and on the kneeling women
in the street. First, come old retainers of the dead
one, bearing long blazing flambeaux. Then comes a
company of priests, two by two, bare-headed, and
chanting.
Next, is a brotherhood of friars in brown cloaks,
with sandalled feet;—and the red-light streams full
upon their grizzled heads. They add their heavy
guttural voices to the chant, and pass slowly on.
Then comes a company of priests, in white muslin
capes, and black robes, and black caps,—bearing
books in their hands, wide open, and lit up plainly
by the torches of churchly servitors, who march beside
them; and from the books, the priests chant
loud and solemnly. Now, the music is loudest; and
the friars take up the dismal notes from the white-capped
priests, and the priests before catch them from
the brown-robed friars, and mournfully the sound rises
up between the tall buildings,—into the blue night-sky,
that lies between Heaven and Rome.
—“Vede—vede!”—says Cesare; and in a blaze of
the red-torch fire, comes the bier, borne on the necks
of stout friars; and on the bier, is the body of a dead
man, habited like a priest. Heavy plumes of black
wave at each corner.
—“Hist!”—says my landlady.
The body is just under us. Enrica crosses herself;
her smile is for the moment gone. Cesare's boy-face
is grown suddenly earnest. We could see the pale,
youthful features of the dead man. The glaring
light over the wan visage of the sleeper. A thousand
eyes were looking on him; but his face careless of
them all, was turned up, straight toward the stars.
Still the chant rises; and companies of priests follow
the bier, like those who had gone before. Friars,
in brown cloaks, and prelates, and Carmelites come
after—all with torches. Two by two—their voices
growing hoarse—they tramp, and chant.
For a while the voices cease, and you can hear the
rustling of their robes, and their foot-falls, as if your
ear was to the earth. Then the chant rises again, as
they glide on in a wavy, shining line, and rolls back
over the death-train, like the howling of a wind in
winter.
As they pass, the faces vanish from the windows.
The kneeling women upon the pavement, rise up,
mindful of the paroxysm of Life once more. The
groups in the door-ways scatter. But their low
voices do not drown the voices of the host of mourners,
and their ghost-like music.
I look long upon the blazing bier, trailing under
the deep shadows of the Roman palaces, and at the
stream of torches, winding like a glittering, scaled
serpent.—It is a priest—say I to my landlady, as
she closes the window.
“No, signor,—a young man never married, and so
“So I”—says the pretty Enrica—“if I should
die, would be robed in white, as you saw me on a
carnival night, and be followed by nuns for sisters.”
“A long way off may it be, Enrica!”
She took my hand in hers, and pressed it. An
Italian girl does not fear to talk of death; and we
were talking of it still, as we walked back to my little
parlor—my hand all the time in hers—and sat down
by the blaze of my fire.
It was holy week—never had Enrica looked more
sweetly than in that black dress,—under that long,
dark veil of the days of Lent. Upon the broad
pavement of St. Peter's,—where the people flocking
by thousands, made only side groups about the altars
of the vast temple—I have watched her kneeling,
beside her mother,—her eyes bent down, her lips
moving earnestly, and her whole figure tremulous with
deep emotion. Wandering around among the halberdiers
of the Pope, and the court coats of Austria,
and the bare-footed pilgrims with sandal, shell and
staff, I would sidle back again, to look upon that
kneeling figure; and leaning against the huge
columns of the church, would dream—even as I
am dreaming now.
At night-fall, I urge my way into the Sistine
the gaunt figures of the Judgment of Angelo. They
are chanting the Miserere. The twelve candle-sticks
by the altar are put out one by one, as the service
continues. The sun has gone down, and only the red
glow of twilight steals through the dusky windows.
There is a pause, and a brief reading from a red-cloaked
cardinal, and all kneel down. She kneels
beside me: and the sweet, mournful flow of the
Miserere begins again,—growing in force, and depth,
till the whole chapel rings, and the balcony of the
choir trembles: then, it subsides again into the low
soft wail of a single voice—so prolonged—so tremulous,
and so real, that the heart aches, and the tears
start—for Christ is dead!
—Lingering yet, the wail dies not wholly, but
just as it seemed expiring, it is caught up by another
and stronger voice that carries it on, plaintive as
ever;—nor does it stop with this—for just as you
looked for silence, three voices more begin the
lament—sweet, touching, mournful voices,—and bear
it up to a full cry, when the whole choir catch its
burden, and make the lament change into the wailings
of a multitude—wild, shrill, hoarse—with swift chants
intervening, as if agony had given force to anguish.
Then, sweetly, slowly, voice by voice, note by note,
the wailings sink into the low, tender, moan of a
the utterance; and swelling out, as if despair sustained
it.
It was dark in the chapel, when we went out;
voices were low. Enrica said nothing—I could
say nothing.
I was to leave Rome after Easter; I did not
love to speak of it—nor to think of it. Rome—that
old city, with all its misery, and its fallen state, and
its broken palaces of the Empire—grows upon one's
heart. The fringing shrubs of the coliseum, flaunting
their blossoms at the tall beggar-men in cloaks, who
grub below,—the sun glimmering over the mossy pile
of the House of Nero,—the sweet sunsets from the
Pincian, that make the broad pine-tops of the Janiculan,
stand sharp and dark against a sky of gold,
cannot easily be left behind. And Enrica with her
silver brown hair, and the silken fillet that bound
it,—and her deep blue eyes,—and her white, delicate
fingers,—and the blue veins chasing over her fair
temples—ah, Easter is too near!
But it comes; and passes with the glory of St.
Peter's—lighted from top to bottom. With Enrica—
I saw it from the Ripetta, as it loomed up in the
distance, like a city on fire.
The next day, I bring home my last bunch of
flowers, and with it a little richly-chased Roman ring.
Warm days have come, and the summer air, even
now, hangs heavy with fever, in the hollows of the
plain.
I heard them stirring early on the morning on
which I was to go away. I do not think I slept very
well myself—nor very late. Never did Enrica look
more beautiful—never. All her Carnival robes, and
the sad drapery of the Friday of Crucifixion could
not so adorn her beauty as that neat morning dress,
and that simple rosebud she wore upon her bosom.
She gave it to me—the last—with a trembling hand.
I did not, for I could not, thank her. She knew it;
and her eyes were full.
The old man kissed my cheek—it was the Roman
custom, but the custom did not extend to the Roman
girls;—at least not often. As I passed down the
Corso, I looked back at the balcony, where she stood
in the time of Carnival, in the brown Sombrero, with
the white plume. I knew she would be there now;
and there she was. My eyes dwelt upon the vision,
very loth to leave it; and after my eyes had lost it,
my heart clung to it,—there, where my memory
clings now.
At noon, the carriage stopped upon the hills, toward
Soracte, that overlooked Rome. There was a
stunted pine tree grew a little way from the road, and
I looked back with strange tumult of feeling, upon
the sleeping city, with the gray, billowy sea of the
Campagna, lying around it.
I seemed to see Enrica—the Roman girl, in that
morning dress, with her brown hair in its silken fillet;
—but the rose-bud that was in her bosom, was now
in mine. Her silvery voice too, seemed to float past
me, bearing snatches of Roman songs;—but the songs
were sad and broken.
—After all, this is sad vanity!—thought I: and
yet if I had espied then some returning carriage
going down toward Rome, I will not say—but that I
should have bailed it, and taken a place,—and gone
back, and to this day, perhaps—have lived at Rome.
But the vetturino called me; the coach was ready;
—I gave one more look toward the dome that guarded
the sleeping city; and then, we galloped down the
mountain, on the road that lay towards Perugia, and
Lake Thrasimene.
—Sweet Enrica! art thou living yet? Or hast
thou passed away to that Silent Land, where the
good sleep, and the beautiful?
The visions of the Past fade. The morning breeze
has died upon the meadow; the Bob-o'-Lincoln sits
swaying on the willow tufts—singing no longer. The
and dense upon the silver stream.
Noon has broken into the middle sky; and Morning
is gone.
| MORNING, NOON, AND EVENING. Reveries of a bachelor, or, A book of the heart | |