The abbate, however, drew the old gentleman aside, and whispered a few
words that served to mollify him; he bestowed on Hilda a sufficiently
benignant, though still a perplexed and questioning regard, and invited
her, in dumb-show, to put herself at her ease.
But, whoever was in fault, our shy and gentle Hilda had dreamed of no
intrusion. Whence she had come, or where she had been hidden, during
this mysterious interval, we can but imperfectly surmise, and do not
mean, at present, to make it a matter of formal explanation with the
reader. It is better, perhaps, to fancy that she had been snatched away
to a land of picture; that she had been straying with Claude in the
golden light which he used to shed over his landscapes, but which he
could never have beheld with his waking eyes till he awoke in the better
clime. We will imagine that, for the sake of the true simplicity
with which she loved them, Hilda had been permitted, for a season, to
converse with the great, departed masters of the pencil, and behold
the diviner works which they have painted in heavenly colors. Guido had
shown her another portrait of Beatrice Cenci, done from the celestial
life, in which that forlorn mystery of the earthly countenance was
exchanged for a radiant joy. Perugino had allowed her a glimpse at his
easel, on which she discerned what seemed a woman's face, but so divine,
by the very depth and softness of its womanhood, that a gush of happy
tears blinded the maiden's eyes before she had time to look. Raphael
had taken Hilda by the hand, that fine, forcible hand which Kenyon
sculptured,--and drawn aside the curtain of gold-fringed cloud that
hung before his latest masterpiece. On earth, Raphael painted the
Transfiguration. What higher scene may he have since depicted, not from
imagination, but as revealed to his actual sight!
Neither will we retrace the steps by which she returned to the actual
world. For the present, be it enough to say that Hilda had been summoned
forth from a secret place, and led we know not through what mysterious
passages, to a point where the tumult of life burst suddenly upon her
ears. She heard the tramp of footsteps, the rattle of wheels, and the
mingled hum of a multitude of voices, with strains of music and loud
laughter breaking through. Emerging into a great, gloomy hall, a
curtain was drawn aside; she found herself gently propelled into an
open balcony, whence she looked out upon the festal street, with gay
tapestries flaunting over all the palace fronts, the windows thronged
with merry faces, and a crowd of maskers rioting upon the pavement
below.
Immediately she seemed to become a portion of the scene. Her pale,
large-eyed, fragile beauty, her wondering aspect and bewildered grace,
attracted the gaze of many; and there fell around her a shower of
bouquets and bonbons--freshest blossoms and sweetest sugar plums, sweets
to the sweet--such as the revellers of the Carnival reserve as tributes
to especial loveliness. Hilda pressed her hand across her brow; she let
her eyelids fall, and, lifting them again, looked through the grotesque
and gorgeous show, the chaos of mad jollity, in quest of some object
by which she might assure herself that the whole spectacle was not an
illusion.