University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
HILDA'S TOWER.

When we have once known Rome, and left her where
she lies, like a long decaying corpse, retaining a trace of
the noble shape it was, but with accumulated dust and a
fungous growth overspreading all its more admirable features
— left her in utter weariness, no doubt, of her narrow,
crooked, intricate streets, so uncomfortably paved with little
squares of lava that to tread over them is a penitential
pilgrimage, so indescribably ugly, moreover, so cold, so
alley-like, into which the sun never falls, and where a
chill wind forces its deadly breath into our lungs — left
her, tired of the sight of those immense seven-storied,
yellow-washed hovels, or call them palaces, where all that
is dreary in domestic life seems magnified and multiplied,
and weary of climbing those staircases, which ascend
from a ground-floor of cook-shops, cobblers' stalls, stables,
and regiments of cavalry, to a middle region of princes,
cardinals, and ambassadors, and an upper tier of artists,
just beneath the unattainable sky — left her, worn out
with shivering at the cheerless and smoky fireside by day,
and feasting with our own substance the ravenous little

populace of a Roman bed at night — left her, sick at
heart of Italian trickery, which has uprooted whatever
faith in man's integrity had endured till now, and sick at
stomach of sour bread, sour wine, rancid butter, and bad
cookery, needlessly bestowed on evil meats — left her,
disgusted with the pretence of holiness and the reality of
nastiness, each equally omnipresent — left her, half lifeless
from the languid atmosphere, the vital principle of
which has been used up long ago, or corrupted by myriads
of slaughters — left her, crushed down in spirit with the
desolation of her ruin, and the hopelessness of her future
— left her, in short, hating her with all our might, and
adding our individual curse to the infinite anathema which
her old crimes have unmistakably brought down, — when
we have left Rome in such mood as this, we are astonished
by the discovery, by-and-by, that our heartstrings
have mysteriously attached themselves to the Eternal
City, and are drawing us thitherward again, as if it were
more familiar, more intimately our home, than even the
spot where we were born.

It is with a kindred sentiment, that we now follow the
course of our story back through the Flaminian Gate,
and, treading our way to the Via Portoghese, climb the
staircase to the upper chamber of the tower, where we
last saw Hilda.

Hilda all along intended to pass the summer in Rome;
for she had laid out many high and delightful tasks, which
she could the better complete while her favorite haunts
were deserted by the multitude that thronged them,
throughout the winter and early spring. Nor did she

dread the summer atmosphere, although generally held
to be so pestilential. She had already made trial of it,
two years before, and found no worse effect than a kind
of dreamy languor, which was dissipated by the first cool
breezes that came with autumn. The thickly populated
centre of the city, indeed, is never affected by the feverish
influence that lies in wait in the Campagna, like a besieging
foe, and nightly haunts those beautiful lawns and
woodlands, around the suburban villas, just at the season
when they most resemble Paradise. What the flaming
sword was to the first Eden, such is the malaria to these
sweet gardens and groves. We may wander through
them, of an afternoon, it is true, but they cannot be made
a home and a reality, and to sleep among them is death.
They are but illusions, therefore, like the show of gleaming
waters and shadowy foliage in a desert.

But Rome, within the walls, at this dreaded season, enjoys
its festal days, and makes itself merry with characteristic
and hereditary pastimes, for which its broad
piazzas afford abundant room. It leads its own life with
a freer spirit, now that the artists and foreign visitors are
scattered abroad. No bloom, perhaps, would be visible in
a cheek that should be unvisited, throughout the summer,
by more invigorating winds than any within fifty miles of
the city; no bloom, but yet, if the mind kept its healthy
energy, a subdued and colorless well-being. There was
consequently little risk in Hilda's purpose to pass the
summer days in the galleries of Roman palaces, and her
nights in that aërial chamber, whither the heavy breath of
the city and its suburbs could not aspire. It would probably

harm her no more than it did the white doves, who
sought the same high atmosphere at sunset, and, when
morning came, flew down into the narrow streets, about
their daily business, as Hilda likewise did.

With the Virgin's aid and blessing, which might be
hoped for even by a heretic, who so religiously lit the
lamp before her shrine, the New England girl would
sleep securely in her old Roman tower, and go forth on
her pictorial pilgrimages without dread or peril. In view
of such a summer, Hilda had anticipated many months of
lonely, but unalloyed enjoyment. Not that she had a
churlish disinclination to society, or needed to be told that
we taste one intellectual pleasure twice, and with double
the result, when we taste it with a friend. But, keeping
a maiden heart within her bosom, she rejoiced in the
freedom that enabled her still to choose her own sphere,
and dwell in it, if she pleased, without another inmate.

Her expectation, however, of a delightful summer was
wofully disappointed. Even had she formed no previous
plan of remaining there, it is improbable that Hilda
would have gathered energy to stir from Rome. A torpor,
heretofore unknown to her vivacious though quiet
temperament, had possessed itself of the poor girl, like a
half-dead serpent knotting its cold, inextricable wreaths
about her limbs. It was that peculiar despair, that chill
and heavy misery, which only the innocent can experience,
although it possesses many of the gloomy characteristics
that mark a sense of guilt. It was that heartsickness,
which, it is to be hoped, we may all of us have
been pure enough to feel, once in our lives, but the

capacity for which is usually exhausted early, and perhaps
with a single agony. It was that dismal certainty
of the existence of evil in the world, which, though we
may fancy ourselves fully assured of the sad mystery
long before, never becomes a portion of our practical
belief until it takes substance and reality from the sin of
some guide, whom we have deeply trusted and revered,
or some friend whom we have dearly loved.

When that knowledge comes, it is as if a cloud had
suddenly gathered over the morning light; so dark a
cloud, that there seems to be no longer any sunshine behind
it or above it. The character of our individual
beloved one having invested itself with all the attributes
of right, — that one friend being to us the symbol and
representative of whatever is good and true, — when he
falls, the effect is almost as if the sky fell with him,
bringing down in chaotic ruin the columns that upheld
our faith. We struggle forth again, no doubt, bruised and
bewildered. We stare wildly about us, and discover —
or, it may be, we never make the discovery — that it was
not actually the sky that has tumbled down, but merely
a frail structure of our own rearing, which never rose
higher than the house-tops, and has fallen because we
founded it on nothing. But the crash, and the affright
and trouble, are as overwhelming, for the time, as if the
catastrophe involved the whole moral world. Remembering
these things, let them suggest one generous motive
for walking heedfully amid the defilement of earthly
ways! Let us reflect, that the highest path is pointed
out by the pure Ideal of those who look up to us, and

who, if we tread less loftily, may never look so high
again.

Hilda's situation was made infinitely more wretched by
the necessity of confining all her trouble within her own
consciousness. To this innocent girl, holding the knowledge
of Miriam's crime within her tender and delicate
soul, the effect was almost the same as if she herself had
participated in the guilt. Indeed, partaking the human
nature of those who could perpetrate such deeds, she felt
her own spotlessness impugned.

Had there been but a single friend — or, not a friend,
since friends were no longer to be confided in, after
Miriam had betrayed her trust — but, had there been any
calm, wise mind, any sympathizing intelligence; or, if
not these, any dull, half-listening ear into which she might
have flung the dreadful secret, as into an echoless cavern
— what a relief would have ensued! But this awful
loneliness! It enveloped her whithersoever she went.
It was a shadow in the sunshine of festal days; a mist
between her eyes and the pictures at which she strove to
look; a chill dungeon, which kept her in its gray twilight
and fed her with its unwholesome air, fit only for a criminal
to breathe and pine in! She could not escape from
it. In the effort to do so, straying farther into the intricate
passages of our nature, she stumbled, ever and
again, over this deadly idea of mortal guilt.

Poor sufferer for another's sin! Poor wellspring of a
virgin's heart, into which a murdered corpse had casually
fallen, and whence it could not be drawn forth again,
but lay there, day after day, night after night, tainting

its sweet atmosphere with the scent of crime and ugly
death!

The strange sorrow that had befallen Hilda did not
fail to impress its mysterious seal upon her face, and to
make itself perceptible to sensitive observers in her manner
and carriage. A young Italian artist, who frequented
the same galleries which Hilda haunted, grew deeply interested
in her expression. One day, while she stood
before Leonardo da Vinci's picture of Joanna of Arragon,
but evidently without seeing it, — for, though it had attracted
her eyes, a fancied resemblance to Miriam had
immediately drawn away her thoughts, — this artist drew
a hasty sketch which he afterwards elaborated into a
finished portrait. It represented Hilda as gazing with
sad and earnest horror at a blood-spot which she seemed
just then to have discovered on her white robe. The
picture attracted considerable notice. Copies of an engraving
from it may still be found in the print-shops
along the Corso. By many connoisseurs, the idea of the
face was supposed to have been suggested by the portrait
of Beatrice Cenci; and, in fact, there was a look somewhat
similar to poor Beatrice's forlorn gaze out of the
dreary isolation and remoteness, in which a terrible doom
had involved a tender soul. But the modern artist
strenuously upheld the originality of his own picture, as
well as the stainless purity of its subject, and chose to
call it — and was laughed at for his pains — “Innocence,
dying of a blood-stain!”

“Your picture, Signor Panini, does you credit,” remarked
the picture-dealer, who had bought it of the

young man for fifteen scudi, and afterwards sold it for ten
times the sum; “but it would be worth a better price if
you had given it a more intelligible title. Looking at
the face and expression of this fair signorina, we seem to
comprehend readily enough, that she is undergoing one
or another of those troubles of the heart to which young
ladies are but too liable. But what is this blood-stain?
And what has innocence to do with it? Has she stabbed
her perfidious lover with a bodkin?”

“She! she commit a crime!” cried the young artist.
“Can you look at the innocent anguish in her face, and
ask that question? No; but, as I read the mystery, a
man has been slain in her presence, and the blood, spirting
accidentally on her white robe, has made a stain
which eats into her life.”

“Then, in the name of her patron saint,” exclaimed
the picture-dealer, “why don't she get the robe made
white again at the expense of a few baiocchi to her
washer-woman? No, no, my dear Panini. The picture
being now my property, I shall call it `The Signorina's
Vengeance.' She has stabbed her lover overnight, and
is repenting it betimes the next morning. So interpreted,
the picture becomes an intelligible and very natural representation
of a not uncommon fact.”

Thus coarsely does the world translate all finer griefs
that meet its eye. It is more a coarse world than an unkind
one.

But Hilda sought nothing either from the world's delicacy
or its pity, and never dreamed of its misinterpretations.
Her doves often flew in through the windows of

the tower, winged messengers, bringing her what sympathy
they could, and uttering soft, tender, and complaining
sounds, deep in their bosoms, which soothed the girl
more than a distincter utterance might. And sometimes
Hilda moaned quietly among the doves, teaching her
voice to accord with theirs, and thus finding a temporary
relief from the burden of her incommunicable sorrow, as
if a little portion of it, at least, had been told to these
innocent friends, and been understood and pitied.

When she trimmed the lamp before the Virgin's shrine,
Hilda gazed at the sacred image, and, rude as was the
workmanship, beheld, or fancied, expressed with the
quaint, powerful simplicity which sculptors sometimes
had five hundred years ago, a woman's tenderness responding
to her gaze. If she knelt, if she prayed, if her
oppressed heart besought the sympathy of divine womanhood
afar in bliss, but not remote, because forever humanized
by the memory of mortal griefs, was Hilda to
be blamed? It was not a Catholic kneeling at an idolatrous
shrine, but a child lifting its tear-stained face to
seek comfort from a mother.