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 heart-strings 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 grove. 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.