CHAPTER XVII
MIRIAM'S TROUBLE
As usual of a moonlight evening, several carriages stood at the entranceof this famous ruin, and the precincts and interior were anything but asolitude. The French sentinel on duty beneath the principal archway eyedour party curiously, but offered no obstacle to their admission. Within,the moonlight filled and flooded the great empty space; it glowed upontier above tier of ruined, grass-grown arches, and made them eventoo distinctly visible. The splendor of the revelation took away thatinestimable effect of dimness and mystery by which the imaginationmight be assisted to build a grander structure than the Coliseum, and toshatter it with a more picturesque decay. Byron's celebrated descriptionis better than the reality. He beheld the scene in his mind's eye,through the witchery of many intervening years, and faintly illuminatedit as if with starlight instead of this broad glow of moonshine.
The party of our friends sat down, three or four of them on a prostratecolumn, another on a shapeless lump of marble, once a Roman altar;others on the steps of one of the Christian shrines. Goths andbarbarians though they were, they chatted as gayly together as if theybelonged to the gentle and pleasant race of people who now inhabitItaly. There was much pastime and gayety just then in the area of theColiseum, where so many gladiators and Wild beasts had fought and died,and where so much blood of Christian martyrs had been lapped up by thatfiercest of wild beasts, the Roman populace of yore. Some youths andmaidens were running merry races across the open space, and playing athide and seek a little way within the duskiness of the ground tier ofarches, whence now and then you could hear the half-shriek, halflaugh ofa frolicsome girl, whom the shadow had betrayed into a young man'sarms. Elder groups were seated on the fragments of pillars and blocksof marble that lay round the verge of the arena, talking in the quick,short ripple of the Italian tongue. On the steps of the great blackcross in the centre of the Coliseum sat a party singing scraps of songs,with much laughter and merriment between the stanzas.
It was a strange place for song and mirth. That black cross marks one ofthe special blood-spots of the earth where, thousands of times over, thedying gladiator fell, and more of human agony has been endured for themere pastime of the multitude than on the breadth of many battlefields.From all this crime and suffering, however, the spot has derived a morethan common sanctity. An inscription promises seven years' indulgence,seven years of remission from the pains of purgatory, and earlierenjoyment of heavenly bliss, for each separate kiss imprinted on theblack cross. What better use could be made of life, after middle age,when the accumulated sins are many and the remaining temptations few,than to spend it all in kissing the black cross of the Coliseum!
Besides its central consecration, the whole area has been made sacredby a range of shrines, which are erected round the circle, eachcommemorating some scene or circumstance of the Saviour's passion andsuffering. In accordance with an ordinary custom, a pilgrim wasmaking his progress from shrine to shrine upon his knees, and saying apenitential prayer at each. Light-footed girls ran across the path alongwhich he crept, or sported with their friends close by the shrineswhere he was kneeling. The pilgrim took no heed, and the girls meantno irreverence; for in Italy religion jostles along side by sidewith business and sport, after a fashion of its own, and people areaccustomed to kneel down and pray, or see others praying, between twofits of merriment, or between two sins.
To make an end of our description, a red twinkle of light was visibleamid the breadth of shadow that fell across the upper part of theColiseum. Now it glimmered through a line of arches, or threw a broadergleam as it rose out of some profound abyss of ruin; now it was muffledby a heap of shrubbery which had adventurously clambered to that dizzyheight; and so the red light kept ascending to loftier and loftierranges of the structure, until it stood like a star where the blue skyrested against the Coliseum's topmost wall. It indicated a party ofEnglish or Americans paying the inevitable visit by moonlight, andexalting themselves with raptures that were Byron's, not their own.
Our company of artists sat on the fallen column, the pagan altar, andthe steps of the Christian shrine, enjoying the moonlight and shadow,the present gayety and the gloomy reminiscences of the scene, in almostequal share. Artists, indeed, are lifted by the ideality of theirpursuits a little way off the earth, and are therefore able to catchthe evanescent fragrance that floats in the atmosphere of life abovethe heads of the ordinary crowd. Even if they seem endowed with littleimagination individually, yet there is a property, a gift, a talisman,common to their class, entitling them to partake somewhat morebountifully than other people in the thin delights of moonshine andromance.
"How delightful this is!" said Hilda; and she sighed for very pleasure.
"Yes," said Kenyon, who sat on the column, at her side. "The Coliseumis far more delightful, as we enjoy it now, than when eighty thousandpersons sat squeezed together, row above row, to see their fellowcreatures torn by lions and tigers limb from limb. What a strangethought that the Coliseum was really built for us, and has not come toits best uses till almost two thousand years after it was finished!"
"The Emperor Vespasian scarcely had us in his mind," said Hilda,smiling; "but I thank him none the less for building it."
"He gets small thanks, I fear, from the people whose bloody instinctshe pampered," rejoined Kenyon. "Fancy a nightly assemblage of eightythousand melancholy and remorseful ghosts, looking down from those tiersof broken arches, striving to repent of the savage pleasures which theyonce enjoyed, but still longing to enjoy them over again."
"You bring a Gothic horror into this peaceful moonlight scene," saidHilda.
"Nay, I have good authority for peopling the Coliseum with phantoms,"replied the sculptor. "Do you remember that veritable scene in BenvenutoCellini's autobiography, in which a necromancer of his acquaintancedraws a magic circle--just where the black cross stands now, Isuppose--and raises myriads of demons? Benvenuto saw them with hisown eyes,--giants, pygmies, and other creatures of frightful aspect,capering and dancing on yonder walls. Those spectres must have beenRomans, in their lifetime, and frequenters of this bloody amphitheatre."
"I see a spectre, now!" said Hilda, with a little thrill of uneasiness."Have you watched that pilgrim, who is going round the whole circle ofshrines, on his knees, and praying with such fervency at every one? Nowthat he has revolved so far in his orbit, and has the moonshine on hisface as he turns towards us, methinks I recognize him!"
"And so do I," said Kenyon. "Poor Miriam! Do you think she sees him?"
They looked round, and perceived that Miriam had risen from the steps ofthe shrine and disappeared. She had shrunk back, in fact, into the deepobscurity of an arch that opened just behind them.
Donatello, whose faithful watch was no more to be eluded than that ofa hound, had stolen after her, and became the innocent witness of aspectacle that had its own kind of horror. Unaware of his presence,and fancying herself wholly unseen, the beautiful Miriam began togesticulate extravagantly, gnashing her teeth, flinging her arms wildlyabroad, stamping with her foot.
It was as if she had stepped aside for an instant, solely to snatch therelief of a brief fit of madness. Persons in acute trouble, or laboringunder strong excitement, with a necessity for concealing it, are proneto relieve their nerves in this wild way; although, when practicable,they find a more effectual solace in shrieking aloud.
Thus, as soon as she threw off her self-control, under the dusky archesof the Coliseum, we may consider Miriam as a mad woman, concentratingthe elements of a long insanity into that instant.
"Signorina! signorina! have pity on me!" cried Donatello, approachingher; "this is too terrible!"
"How dare you look, at me!" exclaimed Miriam, with a start; then,whispering below her breath, "men have been struck dead for a lessoffence!"
"If you desire it, or need it," said Donatello humbly, "I shall not beloath to die."
"Donatello," said Miriam, coming close to the young man, and speakinglow, but still the almo
st insanity of the moment vibrating in her voice,"if you love yourself; if you desire those earthly blessings, such asyou, of all men, were made for; if you would come to a good old ageamong your olive orchards and your Tuscan vines, as your forefathersdid; if you would leave children to enjoy the same peaceful, happy,innocent life, then flee from me. Look not behind you! Get you gonewithout another word." He gazed sadly at her, but did not stir. "I tellyou," Miriam went on, "there is a great evil hanging over me! I knowit; I see it in the sky; I feel it in the air! It will overwhelm meas utterly as if this arch should crumble down upon our heads! It willcrush you, too, if you stand at my side! Depart, then; and make the signof the cross, as your faith bids you, when an evil spirit is nigh. Castme off, or you are lost forever."
A higher sentiment brightened upon Donatello's face than had hithertoseemed to belong to its simple expression and sensuous beauty.
"I will never quit you," he said; "you cannot drive me from you."
"Poor Donatello!" said Miriam in a changed tone, and rather to herselfthan him. "Is there no other that seeks me out, follows me,--isobstinate to share my affliction and my doom,--but only you! They callme beautiful; and I used to fancy that, at my need, I could bring thewhole world to my feet. And lo! here is my utmost need; and my beautyand my gifts have brought me only this poor, simple boy. Half-witted,they call him; and surely fit for nothing but to be happy. And I accepthis aid! To-morrow, to-morrow, I will tell him all! Ah! what a sin tostain his joyous nature with the blackness of a woe like mine!"
She held out her hand to him, and smiled sadly as Donatello pressed itto his lips. They were now about to emerge from the depth of the arch;but just then the kneeling pilgrim, in his revolution round the orbit ofthe shrines, had reached the one on the steps of which Miriam had beensitting. There, as at the other shrines, he prayed, or seemed topray. It struck Kenyon, however,--who sat close by, and saw his facedistinctly, that the suppliant was merely performing an enjoinedpenance, and without the penitence that ought to have given it effectuallife. Even as he knelt, his eyes wandered, and Miriam soon felt thathe had detected her, half hidden as she was within the obscurity of thearch.
"He is evidently a good Catholic, however," whispered one of the party."After all, I fear we cannot identify him with the ancient pagan whohaunts the catacombs."
"The doctors of the Propaganda may have converted him," said another;"they have had fifteen hundred years to perform the task."
The company now deemed it time to continue their ramble. Emerging froma side entrance of the Coliseum, they had on their left the Arch ofConstantine, and above it the shapeless ruins of the Palace of theCaesars; portions of which have taken shape anew, in mediaeval conventsand modern villas. They turned their faces cityward, and, treading overthe broad flagstones of the old Roman pavement, passed through theArch of Titus. The moon shone brightly enough within it to show theseven-branched Jewish candlestick, cut in the marble of the interior.The original of that awful trophy lies buried, at this moment, in theyellow mud of the Tiber; and, could its gold of Ophir again be broughtto light, it would be the most precious relic of past ages, in theestimation of both Jew and Gentile.
Standing amid so much ancient dust, it is difficult to spare the readerthe commonplaces of enthusiasm, on which hundreds of tourists havealready insisted. Over this half-worn pavement, and beneath this Archof Titus, the Roman armies had trodden in their outward march, to fightbattles a world's width away. Returning victorious, with royal captivesand inestimable spoil, a Roman triumph, that most gorgeous pageant ofearthly pride, had streamed and flaunted in hundred-fold successionover these same flagstones, and through this yet stalwart archway. It ispolitic, however, to make few allusions to such a past; nor, if we wouldcreate an interest in the characters of our story, is it wise to suggesthow Cicero's foot may have stepped on yonder stone, or how Horace waswont to stroll near by, making his footsteps chime with the measure ofthe ode that was ringing in his mind. The very ghosts of that massiveand stately epoch have so much density that the actual people of to-dayseem the thinner of the two, and stand more ghost-like by the archesand columns, letting the rich sculpture be discerned through theirill-compacted substance.
The party kept onward, often meeting pairs and groups of midnightstrollers like themselves. On such a moonlight night as this, Rome keepsitself awake and stirring, and is full of song and pastime, the noise ofwhich mingles with your dreams, if you have gone betimes to bed. But itis better to be abroad, and take our own share of the enjoyable time;for the languor that weighs so heavily in the Roman atmosphere by day islightened beneath the moon and stars.
They had now reached the precincts of the Forum.