_ Miriam's model has so important a connection with our story, that it is
essential to describe the singular mode of his first appearance, and how
he subsequently became a self-appointed follower of the young female
artist. In the first place, however, we must devote a page or two to
certain peculiarities in the position of Miriam herself.
There was an ambiguity about this young lady, which, though it did not
necessarily imply anything wrong, would have operated unfavorably as
regarded her reception in society, anywhere but in Rome. The truth was,
that nobody knew anything about Miriam, either for good or evil. She had
made her appearance without introduction, had taken a studio, put her card
upon the door, and showed very considerable talent as a painter in oils.
Her fellow professors of the brush, it is true, showered abundant
criticisms upon her pictures, allowing them to be well enough for the idle
half-efforts of an amateur, but lacking both the trained skill and the
practice that distinguish the works of a true artist.
Nevertheless, be their faults what they might, Miriam's pictures met with
good acceptance among the patrons of modern art. Whatever technical merit
they lacked, its absence was more than supplied by a warmth and
passionateness, which she had the faculty of putting into her productions,
and which all the world could feel. Her nature had a great deal of color,
and, in accordance with it, so likewise had her pictures.
Miriam had great apparent freedom of intercourse; her manners were so far
from evincing shyness, that it seemed easy to become acquainted with her,
and not difficult to develop a casual acquaintance into intimacy. Such,
at least, was the impression which she made, upon brief contact, but not
such the ultimate conclusion of those who really sought to know her. So
airy, free, and affable was Miriam's deportment towards all who came
within her sphere, that possibly they might never be conscious of the fact,
but so it was, that they did not get on, and were seldom any further
advanced into her good graces to-day than yesterday. By some subtile
quality, she kept people at a distance, without so much as letting them
know that they were excluded from her inner circle. She resembled one of
those images of light, which conjurers evoke and cause to shine before us,
in apparent tangibility, only an arm's length beyond our grasp: we make a
step in advance, expecting to seize the illusion, but find it still
precisely so far out of our reach. Finally, society began to recognize
the impossibility of getting nearer to Miriam, and gruffly acquiesced.
There were two persons, however, whom she appeared to acknowledge as
friends in the closer and truer sense of the word; and both of these more
favored individuals did credit to Miriam's selection. One was a young
American sculptor, of high promise and rapidly increasing celebrity; the
other, a girl of the same country, a painter like Miriam herself, but in a
widely different sphere of art. Her heart flowed out towards these two;
she requited herself by their society and friendship (and especially by
Hilda's) for all the loneliness with which, as regarded the rest of the
world, she chose to be surrounded. Her two friends were conscious of the
strong, yearning grasp which Miriam laid upon them, and gave her their
affection in full measure; Hilda, indeed, responding with the fervency of
a girl's first friendship, and Kenyon with a manly regard, in which there
was nothing akin to what is distinctively called love.
A sort of intimacy subsequently grew up between these three friends and a
fourth individual; it was a young Italian, who, casually visiting Rome,
had been attracted by the beauty which Miriam possessed in a remarkable
degree. He had sought her, followed her, and insisted, with simple
perseverance, upon being admitted at least to her acquaintance; a boon
which had been granted, when a more artful character, seeking it by a more
subtle mode of pursuit, would probably have failed to obtain it. This
young man, though anything but intellectually brilliant, had many
agreeable characteristics which won him the kindly and halfcontemptuous
regard of Miriam and her two friends. It was he whom they called
Donatello, and whose wonderful resemblance to the Faun of Praxiteles forms
the keynote of our narrative.
Such was the position in which we find Miriam some few months after her
establishment at Rome. It must be added, however, that the world did not
permit her to hide her antecedents without making her the subject of a
good deal of conjecture; as was natural enough, considering the abundance
of her personal charms, and the degree of notice that she attracted as an
artist. There were many stories about Miriam's origin and previous life,
some of which had a very probable air, while others were evidently wild
and romantic fables. We cite a few, leaving the reader to designate them
either under the probable or the romantic head.
It was said, for example, that Miriam was the daughter and heiress of a
great Jewish banker (an idea perhaps suggested by a certain rich Oriental
character in her face), and had fled from her paternal home to escape a
union with a cousin, the heir of another of that golden brotherhood; the
object being to retain their vast accumulation of wealth within the family.
Another story hinted that she was a German princess, whom, for reasons
of state, it was proposed to give in marriage either to a decrepit
sovereign, or a prince still in his cradle. According to a third
statement, she was the off-spring of a Southern American planter, who had
given her an elaborate education and endowed her with his wealth; but the
one burning drop of African blood in her veins so affected her with a
sense of ignominy, that she relinquished all and fled her country. By
still another account she was the lady of an English nobleman; and, out of
mere love and honor of art, had thrown aside the splendor of her rank, and
come to seek a subsistence by her pencil in a Roman studio.
In all the above cases, the fable seemed to be instigated by the large and
bounteous impression which Miriam invariably made, as if necessity and she
could have nothing to do with one another. Whatever deprivations she
underwent must needs be voluntary. But there were other surmises, taking
such a commonplace view as that Miriam was the daughter of a merchant or
financier, who had been ruined in a great commercial crisis; and,
possessing a taste for art, she had attempted to support herself by the
pencil, in preference to the alternative of going out as governess.
Be these things how they might, Miriam, fair as she looked, was plucked up
out of a mystery, and had its roots still clinging to her. She was a
beautiful and attractive woman, but based, as it were, upon a cloud, and
all surrounded with misty substance; so that the result was to render her
sprite-like in her most ordinary manifestations. This was the case even
in respect to Kenyon and Hilda, her especial friends. But such was the
effect of Miriam's natural language, her generosity, kindliness, and
native truth of character, that these two received her as a dear friend
into their hearts, taking her good qualities as evident and genuine, and
never imagining that what was hidden must be therefore evil.
We now proceed with our narrative.
The same party of friends, whom we have seen at the sculpture-gallery of
the Capitol, chanced to have gone together, some months before, to the
catacomb of St. Calixtus. They went joyously down into that vast tomb,
and wandered by torchlight through a sort of dream, in which reminiscences
of church aisles and grimy cellars--and chiefly the latter--seemed to be
broken into fragments, and hopelessly intermingled. The intricate
passages along which they followed their guide had been hewn, in some
forgotten age, out of a dark-red, crumbly stone. On either side were
horizontal niches, where, if they held their torches closely, the shape of
a human body was discernible in white ashes, into which the entire
mortality of a man or woman had resolved itself. Among all this extinct
dust, there might perchance be a thigh-bone, which crumbled at a touch; or
possibly a skull, grinning at its own wretched plight, as is the ugly and
empty habit of the thing.
Sometimes their gloomy pathway tended upward, so that, through a crevice,
a little daylight glimmered down upon them, or even a streak of sunshine
peeped into a burial niche; then again, they went downward by gradual
descent, or by abrupt, rudely hewn steps, into deeper and deeper recesses
of the earth. Here and there the narrow and tortuous passages widened
somewhat, developing themselves into small chapels;--which once, no doubt,
had been adorned with marble-work and lighted with ever-burning lamps and
tapers. All such illumination and ornament, however, had long since been
extinguished and stript away; except, indeed, that the low roofs of a few
of these ancient sites of worship were covered with dingy stucco, and
frescoed with scriptural scenes and subjects, in the dreariest stage of
ruin.
In one such chapel, the guide showed them a low arch, beneath which the
body of St. Cecilia had been buried after her martyrdom, and where it lay
till a sculptor saw it, and rendered it forever beautiful in marble.
In a similar spot they found two sarcophagi, one containing a skeleton,
and the other a shrivelled body, which still wore the garments of its
former lifetime.
"How dismal all this is!" said Hilda, shuddering. "I do not know why we
came here, nor why we should stay a moment longer."
"I hate it all!" cried Donatello with peculiar energy. "Dear friends,
let us hasten back into the blessed daylight!"
From the first, Donatello had shown little fancy for the expedition; for,
like most Italians, and in especial accordance with the law of his own
simple and physically happy nature, this young man had an infinite
repugnance to graves and skulls, and to all that ghastliness which the
Gothic mind loves to associate with the idea of death. He shuddered, and
looked fearfully round, drawing nearer to Miriam, whose attractive
influence alone had enticed him into that gloomy region.
"What a child you are, poor Donatello!" she observed, with the freedom
which she always used towards him. "You are afraid of ghosts!"
"Yes, signorina; terribly afraid!" said the truthful Donatello.
"I also believe in ghosts," answered Miriam, "and could tremble at them,
in a suitable place. But these sepulchres are so old, and these skulls
and white ashes so very dry, that methinks they have ceased to be haunted.
The most awful idea connected with the catacombs is their interminable
extent, and the possibility of going astray into this labyrinth of
darkness, which broods around the little glimmer of our tapers."
"Has any one ever been lost here?" asked Kenyon of the guide.
"Surely, signor; one, no longer ago than my father's time," said the guide;
and he added, with the air of a man who believed what he was telling,
"but the first that went astray here was a pagan of old Rome, who hid
himself in order to spy out and betray the blessed saints, who then dwelt
and worshipped in these dismal places. You have heard the story, signor?
A miracle was wrought upon the accursed one; and, ever since (for fifteen
centuries at least), he has been groping in the darkness, seeking his way
out of the catacomb."
"Has he ever been seen?" asked Hilda, who had great and tremulous faith
in marvels of this kind.
"These eyes of mine never beheld him, signorina; the saints forbid!"
answered the guide. "But it is well known that he watches near parties
that come into the catacomb, especially if they be heretics, hoping to
lead some straggler astray. What this lost wretch pines for, almost as
much as for the blessed sunshine, is a companion to be miserable with him."
"Such an intense desire for sympathy indicates something amiable in the
poor fellow, at all events," observed Kenyon.
They had now reached a larger chapel than those heretofore seen; it was of
a circular shape, and, though hewn out of the solid mass of red sandstone,
had pillars, and a carved roof, and other tokens of a regular
architectural design. Nevertheless, considered as a church, it was
exceedingly minute, being scarcely twice a man's stature in height, and
only two or three paces from wall to wall; and while their collected
torches illuminated this one small, consecrated spot, the great darkness
spread all round it, like that immenser mystery which envelops our little
life, and into which friends vanish from us, one by one. "Why, where is
Miriam?" cried Hilda. The party gazed hurriedly from face to face, and
became aware that one of their party had vanished into the great darkness,
even while they were shuddering at the remote possibility of such a
misfortune. _