But Rome, within the walls, at this dreaded season, enjoys its festal
days, and makes itself merry with characteristic and hereditary
pas-times, 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 aerial 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 woefully
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.